#vaguely in some way. but i wasnt in the fandom or even interested in it at all at the time it was just something i knew of yknow

[motherforthefamicom]

this video is so fucking good

[dravidson]

Dream is ruining his career in the most interesting and sad way.

There were so many drantis at twitchcon and it makes me nervous, even in general just him being outside, because somehow the hate for him is getting worse and they are getting bolder. Like, theres tiktoks of you getting called a pedophile with hundreds of thousands of likes and you do nothing?

The worst part is that dream is fully aware. He knows what they call him, the jokes they make, and how people view him. Yet keeps putting off addressing the allegations and continues putting himself in bad situations. I dont care about him using the old snapchat, i care about how it'll look for the people who convinced themselves he stopped using it after the allegations. I dont care about him hooking up, i care about him somehow choosing the worst people for it and not being careful enough. I dont care about him using dating apps, but when its ones as casual as bumble and tinder theres bound to be people who match with him and dont like him, who will use it for bad things. Not only that, but posting things he knows are cringe because "he finds them funny", like at some point setting yourself up that much should be considered selfharm

He only has himself to blame because hes had plenty of time to drop the thing addressing the drituation. i didnt know it was possible but somehow it keeps getting so much fucking worse and dream dropping the video is the only thing that could stop it or slow it down. It's been over a year and he has done nothing but post a vague statement when he wasnt even fullly aware of what was going on. I think he has enough evidence to make a good statement about it, thats not the issue, the problem is that hes not posting it because hes busy doing other things and doesnt want to bring it up again.

The fandom is eating itself alive while everyone calls them groomer apologists, doesnt he realize how tiring it is? I think more people are gonna leave soon and if he keeps pushing it back he wont have a big enough fandom to support him through it. He's obviously not gonna gain fans from posting it, and if he doesnt drop it then he wont gain any from his new projects either. He's so fucking stupid and i dont understand what hes thinking.

[orionsangel86]

Aa someone who pretty much threw away all their hope as soon as SPN cons started up again after the finale, it is a really crazy position to be in now to have to once again adjust my views and reconsider everything thats been said over the last 2.5 years.

I quit spn fandom and stopped paying attention to cast interviews because frankly:

Jared literally does nothing but spew the absolute worst most rancid takes I have ever heard to the point that I genuinely believe the man is completely deranged and has no idea about the show he filmed for 15 years

Misha has basically given up hope and stopped caring. He started off fighting to ensure people took the confession seriously, and seemed genuinely proud and passionate about ensuring people understood the love confession was legit and Cas knew exactly what he was saying, but over the years it seemed like he was broken down behind the scenes and forced to toe a company line of ambiguity for some unknown suspicious reason. Now he's back to resorting to jokes most of the time.

Jackles though, Jackles has until this point always been a fucking head fuck of a mystery. The "sexy silence" post finale. The sole interactions being with Misha and about the confession. The way he gushed about the confession shortly after it aired before the finale. Then the production company, The Winchesters, the J2 messy public fallout and cringy PR fake reassurance of love for his "brother". The fact that in every con up until this point he has kept any answers about the confession abiguous and deliberately vague - always playing both sides, always trying to keep ALL fans happy whatever they believe about the show. The attempt to explain it as Cas not feeling love the way humans do at one point (much to fandoms horror).

I admit I have joked many times about the "jackles long con" (the conspiracy theory that ever since he found out how spn has ended he has personally been on a war path to fix things and give us a satisfactory ending for Dean and Cas) but I was always in 2 minds about whether it was legit a thing. I believed he wanted to fix Dean's ending somehow yes, but I always figured Cas's story was an afterthought the same way Sam's was. I had no delusions that Jackles would legit want to give closure to the confession and give us reciprocated Destiel - whatever that may look like. It just didn't seem like a thing Jackles would want to do. Save Dean? Yes definitely. But actually make it canon that Dean is bisexual and madly in love with his angelic best friend? Even on his most Destiel friendly days I have never been able to truly believe that.

But this latest response from him at jibcon is veerrrry interesting. To plainly state that he hopes the confession is addressed. That he wants to see that. Its the first time he's ever mentioned it in non vague terms.

Look I have no hope of a fanfiction style sappy romantic destiel reunion scene in the Winchesters or whatever. But for Jensen to genuinely give a clear and thoughtful response about what he thinks that would look like, that he thinks Dean would want to talk about that, and address it, that is certainly progress beyond anything we've had from him before.

One of my friends in our group chat raised the thought of Jackles addressing the confession only to have Dean tell Cas he's sorry, but he doesn't feel the same way. THAT is a terrifying thought, but I gotta ask, would Jackles really do such a thing? He knows exactly how much Destiel means to the fans. He knows how important it is, hell, he was online watching the Nov 5th fallout along with everyone else. If it wasnt important, it wouldn't have trended above the US election. He would alienate the majority of his fanbase. Remember, he has already technically picked a side - something I thought he would never do. The Jared stans and bronlies and Destiel haters all loathe him now. They curse his name as much as Misha's ever since he dared to exclude Sam/Jared from The Winchesters. Jensen isn't an idiot, he knows who his main fanbase is, and that is proved even more obvious by The Winchesters itself, which according to my friends who watch it, is very pro Destiel. My friend described it as what SPN could have been were it not for Jared and Bob Singer - a kinder, friendlier, queerer, and more equal, show. I haven't watched it so I can't comment, but I see so many people say that this among other recent behaviours proves that Jackles is on our side.

I am of course still a bit hesitant to give him so much credit. I'm not gonna stamp him with a big HELLER FRIEND stamp like the one we stamped on Misha years ago. But I am feeling more positive towards him than I have in ages.

Ever since the confession, the official stance on Destiel seems to be to keep it as vague and ambiguous as possible. To never confirm or deny anything especially when it comes to Dean. This has been frustrating, but has kept the door open at least.

By Jackles stating today that he wants the confession addressed and even hinting that it may be in the cards sooner rather than later, tells me that a decision has possibly been made.

The ambiguity has got to go. Dean either reciprocates or he doesn't. Those are the only options available.

If, as it has so often been teased and alluded to, Cas is going to make an appearance in The Winchesters, Jackles would surely need to get Misha on board with his plans. Misha who has been firmly on the side of Destiel since day 1. Would Misha really agree to step back into Cas's shoes only to have his heart broken by a rejection from the man he loves? I don't think he would.

So surely, the only way for the confession to be addressed is to go with the other option. Full reciprocation.

Who else is there to even object anymore? Jared? Fuck that guy? Bob Singer? That old asshole has no power anymore. The CW? Maybe. I dunno what Jackles situation is with the execs and how much power he has over the Winchesters stories. But perhaps he's been able to convince them? Given the state of queer media in 2022 and how rapidly the world has moved on from tolerating CW style queerbait.

Shows like OFMD, Good Omens, The Sandman, IWTV, WWDITS, etc etc... they have proven that queer is popular. It brings in cash. The CW has always been sitting on a goldmine with Destiel, which has never really stopped being popular, even now. They were fools to not go all the way the first time around, and after the queer media boom of 2022 they look like even bigger fools. I still have my own beliefs about the circumstances that prevented a proper destiel ending (mostly to do with the business of the one star the CW were holding onto at that time and his stupid cop propoganda show) but considering all that has happened since then, were the CW given another chance to explore Destiel now, I think they'd be absolute fools not to take it.

Anyway, the point of all my rambling is this: I think I'm back on board. Laying it all out logically, if Jackles is gonna address this, he's gonna do it in the way that will be the most popular, and generate the most publicity, engagement, and ultimately, cash.

In other words: we may see yet ANOTHER "Destiel is canon" day before the decade is over.

[cquackity]

sorry for bringing it up again when its over and feel free to answer privately/ignore me, i just wanted to explain why i find the eret stuff upsetting. i think its fair to think c!eret didnt need an apology from wilbur; thats just not the entire picture of what eret fans see when people go after her for that stream so we might be a little defensive.

i think to me the issue is that c & cc!eret crit cant be separated-- after the apology stream i literally couldnt be on here because people were being so awful about eret and consistently c!eret neg is tied in with people being assholes to the cc. also to me it reads as disrespectful to place all the blame for disliking that stream on eret when wilbur was on that stream, participated, and co-wrote that lore. i have never once had to avoid the dash due to cc!wilbur neg the way i have for eret, and thats pretty telling. not that ccwilbur deserves that, just that its interesting how bad eret gets it in comparison. even the post-utah stream didnt make me as upset as the way people talked about eret did and i am by far more of a wilburian than anything else.

to me, the apology was more for cc!eret for how poorly shes been treated for the last two years and because the fandom treats wilbur (c and cc) like the ultimate moral & narrative arbiter (despite the fact that a key element of his character is being an unreliable narrator); only his apology would make people actually think about how badly eret has been treated. and then it all backfired and everyone was so heinous about it that it was genuinely painful to be on here as a wilbur and eret enjoyer.

besides that meta element i genuinely liked that stream and felt like cwilbur did need a knock in the right direction, as i felt much of the apology tour was an empty gesture that externalized his need for self-forgiveness. not that he deserved to feel guilty or that his apologies were hollow, just that he wasnt going about his efforts to forgive himself in a healthy way, and hearing from someone who already got through it was super helpful.

im sorry folks sent you awful asks (and im also sorry for vagueing, i just couldnt figure out how to lay out my own feelings) but to me it feels really hurtful to see people shit on eret, c or cc, bc shes worked so hard and was the key to a really core moment on the server and gets very little recognition for it from other ccs (constantly being shut out of lore) and from the fandom.

sorry if this is a jumbled mess feel free to ignore it i just wanted to explain a little bit

hello bell! thank you for explaining i genuinely do appreciate your point of view! there is a reason i didn't unfollow you for vauging me lul, i find you to be a reasonable person who has reasonable standpoints on things. but like this goes for everybody who sees this: if you have an issue with me, just send me an ask like this! or a dm. or whatever. i'd also like to think i'm a pretty reasonable guy. i'm also pretty sure i tagged that post with the proper tags to be filtered too? at least i hope i did 💀

first off i'd again like to reiterate that i have literally nothing against cc!eret. i never mentioned cc!eret in my post, i have never posted cc!eret neg before, and the only point i made was that i don't believe c!eret deserved an apology from c!wilbur. i had more good things to say about c!eret in that post than negative. what other people are saying, that's not what i'm saying. i think it's unfair to group me in with people who have/are posting cc!eret neg. at the end of the day even if that's what you've seen that's not what i was talking about in the slightest. regardless of what content creator made the decision to have c!wilbur apologize i think it's a bad one. i stand by that.

nor do i think that it's entirely fair to treat that stream as some sort of meta on the cc!s lives instead of the characters. i've just never thought about that stream like that before, and it doesn't really make sense to me to do so. if either cc!wilbur or cc!eret have alluded to the apology being more for cc!eret i would be open to seeing a clip like that

i also disagree with c!wilbur needing to be "knocked in the right direction" mostly because i think there's several other more compelling turning points for his character post-revival, but i do respect c!eret fans wanting to enjoy a moment between the two of them.

tldr; i wasn't talking about cc!eret at all, and it's unfair to take my words that way when it was never the intention, and not separate them from their original meaning. please separate my discussion of the c!s and the cc!s

[fixielixie]

It’s frustrating, because in some ways I think Jiang Cheng is one of the most interesting characters in MDZS. He’s a foil for some many characters. Almost every decision or motivation he has is a direct contrast to a decision or motivation of a different character. And I would love to be able to talk about that. But doing so all needs to stem from admitting the fact that he does bad things and is pretty irredeemable, but so much of the fandom has decided that he’s just a lil’ grumpy angel who’s never done anything wrong and wanting to talk about the bad things he did isn’t allowed because his parents, were like, just so mean to him.

see this is the confronting thing about jc because i came out of reading mdzs with very little to say about his character. i like him for the role he played within the narrative, and even felt vaguely sorry for him once finishing the novel, but i remember when it was revealed why he lost his core my biggest reaction was "typical jiang cheng". i didnt like jiang cheng but i had nothing against his character, he was a shitty person who never really tried to hide that he was a shitty person, like he horrible to everyones faces. it wasnt until i entered mdzs fandom spaces that i saw this wave of people who were willing to justify every little thing jiang cheng has ever done, using other random characters (mostly wwx and jcs parents) as scapegoats when they couldn't explain their reasoning properly. its just wild that so many people have no idea/refuse to believe what he is actually like? its a similar shock i got to when i realised how little of the fandom had actually read mdzs.

like theres a certain point with jiang cheng, probably right up to the fall of lotus pier, that i can understand sympathising with him. but people just go so far you know?

but you are very right, its hard to have a decent conversation about jiang cheng as an actual character and the role he plays in the narrative, because so many people have such a 'uwu grumpy uncle' lense on him.

[cavehags]

i realize this will probably bring up old drama so you might not want to answer it. but do you ever regret, however on purpose or on accident, bringing all that unnecesary hate towards Katara? i'm really sad and dissapointed tbh. i'm a woman of color and katara was so important to me growing up. my favorite animated woman ever. and then this resurgence comes and theres so, so much unnecesary hatred for her and everyone ignoring everything that makes her a good character.

(2/3) 2- and you know, i expected this from the male side of the fandom. they were misogynistic to her and the others even back then so i would expect it to be even worse with how internet culture is more mysogistic now that ever. and i wasnt wrong. male atla fans had some truly horrible takes and views that just came across as racism and misogyny. but, i expected these circles to be better. to be a safe space for us woc who love this character. but i found the same weird hatred for her.

(3/3) 3-i just, i cant believe i feel less welcome now that i did even back then. and back then i didnt even paricipate really. but at least i could enjoy fandom content without stumbling into misogyny and racism every other post. also sorry for sending this to your personal blog b i just wanted to let you know you controbuted to that too even if it wasnt your intention. at least you realized that and arent contributing to it anymore right? cause honestly the hate has only gotten worse not less.

hey anon. thanks for asking this question, because i hadn’t addressed this topic previously and this gave me an opportunity to do so. 

no, i don’t regret publicly interpreting a character whom i love through a nuanced and human lens. and i don’t regret combating the one-dimensional interpretation of this character, which posits that she’s merely an vaguely defined object of attraction for some boy or another, and a singularly gentle, mature, maternal figure whose sole purpose in life is to nurture others. those interpretations suck. they rob her of the humanity and complexity that make her character unique and they stem from misogynistic tropes that reduce women to the services they can provide to men. the thing in the world that matters most to me is fighting misogyny, and this trend to diminish a proud and powerful and angry teenage girl by exaggerating only her most socially acceptable traits is misogyny. 

unlike you, i did not grow up watching avatar: the last airbender. the shows i watched growing up did not have a lot of girls who felt real to me. the girls i saw on tv growing up were simple. they were the main characters’ crushes. they were simple, desirable, usually sweet and loving, and not much else. if they had a flaw, it was that they were, at best, “awkward.” whatever that means. or if they were the protagonists, which was rare, they were nice enough and tried to do the right thing, but they never had strong feelings like resentment and anger. they weren’t allowed to be unfeminine which meant they weren’t allowed to be bitter, angry or in any way flawed. they didn’t look like the version of girlhood i knew to be true for me personally, which included a lot of anger and frustration and powerlessness. 

that crappy representation left me with internalized misogyny that chased me for longer than i’d like to admit. i did not learn to think of girls as humans who could be as interesting and flawed and messy as the boys were. i did not value myself as a girl, and later a woman, because i thought the best thing a girl could be was... bland. boring. pretty, but empty. passionless.

it would have meant the world to me to see a character like katara. 

because katara is angry. she has every right to be: she’s had so much stolen from her, including her mother, her people, and her childhood. katara has a short fuse. she yells. she snaps. she fucks up. sometimes she makes mean jokes! i never saw a single one of those dreamily perfect cartoon love interests make mean jokes when i was a kid. she is extremely idealistic--it’s her defining character trait--but we see the bad side of that as well as the good. we see that her need to help others  leads her to act rashly, to get herself into danger, to put others in danger too. 

and she has her very own arc. it’s not about her love for another person, either (what a snooze of a storyline); it’s about growing up and learning to break down some of that stubborn black-and-white thinking that we all indulge in as children. it’s a true coming-of-age arc and it belongs to a fourteen-year-old girl. 

when i, to use a phrase i find crass, “entered the fandom,” i quickly realized that other fans’ perceptions of katara did not line up with the things i valued most about her. other fans seemed to valorize her most socially acceptable feminine qualities: her generosity, her kindness, her dedication to helping others. and of course i love those parts of her--i love everything about her--but what is really remarkable about avatar: the last airbender is that katara’s many important virtues are also counterbalanced by equally significant flaws. a good character has flaws. katara is a good character, and a deviation from the characters who made up my formative media landscape, because she has flaws. her temper, her idealism, her stubbornness--these are flaws. flaws make her seem real and human and challenge the mainstream sentiment that girls are not real or human.

it simply did not occur to me that celebrating these aspects of katara that make her a realistic and well-written teenage girl would spark ire from other adult fans. it absolutely did not occur to me that i would then be blamed for somehow causing misogynistic interpretations of this character, particularly given that misogynistic interpretations of this character are the very thing i sought to correct when i began to blog about this television show.

i’m told there are “fans” on instagram and tiktok who think katara is whiny, annoying, and overly preoccupied with her trauma. i do not use instagram or tiktok, so i wouldn’t know, but i’ll take your word for it. respectfully, however, they didn’t get that from me. misogynistic takes on katara have existed since before i came along. i have never, ever called katara whiny. and seeing as i have been treating my own PTSD in therapy for nine years, you can safely conclude that i don’t think anyone, katara included, is overly preoccupied with their trauma. that’s not a thing. do i think she’s annoying? of course not! as a character, she’s a delight. does she sometimes find real joy in aggravating her brother and her friends? yes, because she’s 14. i, an adult, am not annoyed by her. sokka and toph often are, because that is katara’s goal and katara always succeeds in her goals. she’s not “annoying.” 

if there are “fans” who are indeed following lesbians4sokka and somehow misreading every single post and interpreting them to mean that we hate katara and they should too, i don’t really know what you want me to do about that. l4s has over ten thousand followers and we have already posted so many essays disavowing katara hate. our feminist and antiracist objectives in running the blog are literally pinned with the headline “please read.”

furthermore, you cannot reasonably expect my co-blogger and me to control the way our words will be received. we should not have to, and are not going to, add a disclaimer to every post saying that when we critique or make jokes about a teenage girl we are doing so through a feminist lens. our url is lesbians4sokka, and we are clearly women. if that alone doesn’t make it obvious, then refer back to that pinned post. 

it is indescribably frustrating, and really goddamn depressing as well, that people are so comfortable with the misogynistic binary of Perfect Good Women and Flawed Wicked Bitches that they perceive any discussion of a woman’s flaws to be necessarily relegating her to the latter camp. if that is how you (a generic you) perceive women, then i’m sorry, but you’ve internalized sexism that i cannot cure you of. and it’s unjust to expect my friend and me to write for the lowest common denominator of readers who have not yet had their own feminist awakenings. we do not write picture books for babies. we write for ourselves, and with the expectation that our readers can think critically. reading media through a feminist lens is my primary interest; i have no intention of excising that angle from my writing.

as i go through my life, i am going to embrace the flaws of girls and women because not enough people do. as long as the dominant narratives surrounding women are “good and perfect” and “unlovable wh*re,” you’ll find me highlighting flawed, realistic, righteously angry women in the margins. and for what it’s worth, it’s not just katara. i champion depictions of angry girls in all sorts of media. that’s sort of my whole thing. my favorite movies are part of the angry girl cinematic universe: thoroughbreds, jennifer’s body, hard candy, jojo rabbit, et cetera. on tv, in addition to katara, you’ll find me celebrating tuca and bertie, poppy from mythic quest, tulip and lake from infinity train, korra, and more. i adore all these women and see myself in them. i hope you find this suitably persuasive to establish that i have sufficient Feminist Cred, according to your standards, to observe and write about these very flawed and human fictional women. 

what i’m saying is this: i decline to take responsibility for the misogynistic discourse orbiting a children’s cartoon. as someone who writes about that series from a perspective that seeks to add humanity and nuance to the reductive, one-dimensional, overwhelmingly sexist writing that already exists, i am pretty taken aback that i am the one being blamed for the very problem i sought to address. except not that taken aback because i am a woman online, haha! and this is always how it goes for us. 

finally, i think it sucks that you’ve chosen to blame me for a problem that begins and ends with the patriarchy. i can’t control the way this response will be perceived, just like how i can’t control the way anything will be perceived because i am just one human woman, but i do hope you choose to be reflective, and consider why you’ve chosen this avenue to assign blame. 

[aegialia]

self-indulgent reflection on being on tumblr

so i recently hit 1000 followers on here and this blog has existed for almost exactly 8 years, so i wanted to ramble about tumblr and my experience of it for awhile. under the cut so definitely feel free to ignore this.

i started this blog right around when i was fourteen and had just started high school. at that point, i was out to my parents (and no one else) as bi, i had an inkling i was Struggling with something but i had no idea what and felt like i couldnt actually acknowledge it, and i had left leaning but very vague politics. tumblr definitely has shaped my journey around sexuality/gender/mental health/politics, both for good and for ill. 

for good: 

seeing other ppl talk about being lesbians helped me realize i could be a lesbian w/o being a traitor to the concept of bisexuality. hearing trans ppl talk about their experiences and explaining non-binary stuff and dysphoria helped me understand what i was going through 

i don’t like talking about my mental health stuff in detail on here, but suffice to say, i was Going Through it in high school. i’m still going through it now, but i am in a much better place (thank you medication and 7 years of therapy!). seeing ppl talk about the weird, dumb, awful parts of mental illness let me acknowledge that i was going through those things too, that i wasnt like evil for feeling like that, that i could change. people talking about adhd/autism was particularly helpful---being able to identify why i’d always felt like my brain just didn’t work right is the first step in the (ongoing) process of not hating myself for the way my brain works

politics is definitely the area where i think tumblr was the best for me. i got exposed to so many opinions i definitely wasn’t hearing in school, from intelligent, well-read people who could articulate theory in ways i could understand. tumblr didn’t give me my politics and i didn’t learn everything i know about theory from it, but the communities of people i was around pointed me in the right directions. tumblr was also a good place to learn how to react to criticism. this doesn’t seem to be most people’s experience, but getting called out over minor things on tumblr genuinely helped me learn how to take a step back, look at my behavior, apologize, and try to change, which, as it turns out, is a helpful skill irl as well

for ill:

wrt sexuality and gender, it’s probably pretty obvious someone who’s journey is ‘cis bi girl -> cis with a million different microlabels -> nb w a million different microlabels for both sexuality and gender -> nb butch lesbian who’s not super into romance’ would have some bad times on tumblr. the bi circles i was in made being a lesbian seem like an immoral choice, the ‘’’mogai’’’ (or whatever u wanna call them) circles made me feel like i had to divy up and perfectly label every aspect of myself in a way that really wasn’t helpful for me, the lesbian circles i was in made me feel like being a lesbian was about ending up in a monogamous butch/femme cottagecore relationship and that there was something wrong with me for not really wanting that. to be clear i think microlabels can be very helpful for people/a monogamous butch/femme relationship is a perfectly fine thing to want, they just didn’t work for me. im very very glad ive reached a point in my life where i dont feel the need to stay up to date on the latest discourse and am more focused on finding a way to exist that is comfortable for me and supporting my community irl. 10/10 would recommend to everyone

not going to get deep into it, but social media is. not good for my brain in general. i still enjoy using tumblr, but these days im pretty careful to step back from it frequently and treat it as an occasional hobby. 

the cons of political stuff on tumblr are probably also very obvious. there are some just awful discussions on here and the culture surrounding the way we handle bad behavior and justice and accountability and working to become a better person and make up for the harm you’ve caused has historically been fucking awful and trying to unlearn it and find new ways to engage with this stuff is exhausting. 

for all that i’ve changed over the course of having this blog, this blog has stayed pretty fucking static. i started out being super into diana wynne jones and the iliad and those are still two of my biggest interests and things i talk about the most on here. there are definitely specific things that have petered away (i started this blog almost entirely to keep up with good omens fan stuff and i pretty much haven’t touched it since the miniseries came out, i haven’t sought out pacific rim/supernatural/elementary/mcu content in years), but im still pretty much interested in the same things. i like relatively small fandoms, i like weird side characters, i like to be a grumpy child playing with my toys in the corner. when a fandom im in gets popular, i tend to stop engaging with it entirely (hello rqg/tma/good omens/enola holmes!). i dont think its a pretentious ‘i liked it before it was cool’ thing so much as a ‘people get Weird and awful when a fandom hits a certain level of popularity and there’s too much content and i really, really hate the bad faith arguments larger fandoms tend to spawn’ thing. i’ll consume content from big fandoms, but i pretty much refuse to actually engage with them at this point.

one of the stranger parts of my experience of tumblr is the social side. i’ve never really known how people make friends online---how do you go from liking each other’s posts and occasionally replying to them to actually being friends who communicate off social media? i’ve had conversations with ppl on tumblr and i’ve had sort-of friendships that are contained to tumblr where i’d like to get to know them better, but i’ve never figured out how to do that. my best friend’s job is pretty much to make friends/connections on the internet (she’s an activist and artist), my dad knows people everywhere in the world from twitter, and i’m just sitting here like a little old grandpa who doesn’t understand how you can have internet friends. 

at this point in my life, i’m fine with this, but this has made me feel real fucking bad in the past---like, if everyone online, even the ppl who say they’re weird and brainbad in a similar way to me, can make friends on the internet, what’s wrong with me? particularly in high school and my first year of college, when i was just horribly lonely all the time, it made me feel super disconnected and like there was something fundamentally bad about me. these days, i’m a lot chiller about it. i use social media to engage with stuff i enjoy and share my thoughts about it. it’s okay that my social difficulties extend to me not knowing how to use the internet to socialize.

on a somewhat related topic, it’s wild that i have 1000 followers. obviously, that’s not an actually super large number and a huge number of them are probably bots or inactive. if you post consistently for eight years and follow lots of people, like i do, it’s not a surprise to end up with this many followers. it is also, thankfully, the sort of followers that are not fans. probably most ppl following this blog dont remember why they followed and dont know anything about me or my interests. this sounds like its meant to be depressing but it’s not. i like that my way of engaging w the internet lets me do pretty much whatever i want and no one will care. the mere concept of being. like. tumblr famous in any capacity, even just in one community/fandom, is viscerally horrifying to me. 

i really enjoy the space i’ve created for myself on here. on one hand, going back through my blog is obviously embarrassing and full of hating my past self. on the other hand, i now have a very nice collection of things i enjoy in this blog. i like seeing what i’ve been interested in and (when i’m in a good mental health place) i like to be able to remember how i thought and talked about the things i loved when i was younger. im not at the place in my life where i can love a younger version of myself, but sometimes i can laugh at zir with a level of fondness. 

i’ve always been paranoid about sharing details about my life on here (and the fact that my parents have always been able to see it certainly contributed), so the version of jack on here is a carefully curated version, who’s super enthusiastic about the things they love, was very conscientious about apologizing and trying to do better when ze messed up, and tried to be polite to others. that’s a younger version of myself that i’m closer to being able to have compassion for than the version i find in essays and poems and memories. 

i’m starting grad school in ten days and i’m still using the blog i started when i began high school. tumblr has helped me in a lot of ways and hurt me in a lot of ways, but i still have to admit that it’s been a significant factor in shaping me. i’d be incredibly embarrassed to admit that irl, but it’s true. other than my family and like one friend, this blog is one of the only things that’s ‘known’ me since i started high school. i’ve changed so much in that time and im glad to have this weird little record of myself throughout those changes, even if i’d probably warn my younger self away from tumblr if i could go back in time.

tl;dr i have had a mixed experience on tumblr and i have mixed feelings about that experience. no idea if anyone read any of this very long, very rambling internet memoir

p.s. fun facts about this blog:

i’ve never changed my icon or blog title

i recently got a second version of the poster i got my blog title from. i chose my blog title by looking at what was hanging on the wall directly in front of me. 

my original url was gloomthkin. this was not, as you’d probably assume, an otherkin thing. i had literally no idea what otherkin was at that point. i’d just learned the word gloomth from a bill bryson book and thought it would be cool n edgy to be the child of the quality of gloom. i changed my url after i learned what otherkin was and realized everyone probably assumed something about me that wasn’t true which i hated (not bc i had an issue w otherkin, just bc i don’t like ppl thinking untrue things about me)

during my good omens days, i once sent a tumblr ask to nail guyman which, in retrospect, was kinda rude. i stand by the content but id never send an ask like that now. he replied to it privately in a way that so deeply embarrassed and shamed 15 year old me that i’ve never gotten over it. i still get nervous and embarrassed when i see anything about him or his books

[savnofilter]

TW: MENTIONS OF DISCOURSE, GR//MING, P/D/PHILIA, ASS//LT, C//NSENT, D//RK CONTENT.

- this isnt under a read more because i want people to read this, but please read past this/tread carefully if you cannot handle such topics. this is not meant to be interacted with.

I'm not sure how to really go about this. I've been overthinking if I should address this and bring up some stuff while I've been gone, so sorry the absence. I deleted the tumblr app a few days ago and I downloaded it again today so i could post this. I really don't like making posts like this because it cuts the vibe that I've been trying to portray that everything is okay and it makes me feel really disconnected to you guys. I am sorry for the abrupt absence and cutting off any source of communication between us. I knew if I left any form of direct line of talk to me that I would receive hate and I just mentally decided that I cant sit through being harassed right now.

Have you guys ever paid attention to the same people who always have a statement to say or is always in discourse? It's very telling how everyone can post about me, but I shouldnt dare post about them. I'm tired of not being able to post about what I want without people vague posting about me, bringing me up every time they start another discourse with another writer or directly talking about me. My days on here are starting to feel the same. Its good then it goes bad. Good goes bad and bad goes good. It's not even tiring, annoying, or angering -- its repetitive. When I'm not saying anything people create fake stories about me, and when i speak about it im the one starting discourse. Don't get me wrong, I'm nowhere near perfect and I have made my own mistakes. But why the fuck am I always being told to be the mature one, why am I the one who should've done better, why do you people expect so much from me. It's the fact people are always quick to say, "no one cares about you, youre fishing for attention" when they're the ones who vague and interact with me while ive been minding my business for months now. Hm. The fact people have me proudly blocked but still harass me anyways shows a lot about themselves than it does for me. How its such an issue that im a minor until it comes to demonizing, tearing down my character, gaslighting, lying and bullying. I'm a literal example of how their friend group manipulates their followers and exiles people from fandoms for not kissing their ass. except now its in your face.

Consider this my last post about this discourse. I'm not going to waste my time on people who fail to digest other peoples thoughts and opinions time and time again because theyre weak narcissists. If I so choose to decide to shit post my opinions or argue with someone, none of you should be aggravated or moved by it because youre not even supposed to be on my page. If its not something serious i will not be wasting energy that i can be using to build on myself as a growing person than on miserable old ladies that have to use fanfiction to have excitement in their pity, depressing and lackluster lives. If people so do choose to create stories or vague about me, I do not care. So I ask respectfully to people who do lurk on my page to not attempt to message, post or vague about me please. This includes sending anons to yourself to make shit happen.

Past that, something got me thinking. My (older) friend had showed me screenshots of adult writers (no one i have spoken to) that were very excited to write underaged reader with adult characters. There are other instances where writers (that you have probably read from) on here openly made reader underage while aging characters up as adults/with adults. There are many more but there's really no point in listing them nor do I really care. But least to say, the same people who are gung-ho over these pedophilic themes/stories are the same people who support predatory people.

I've been thinking about whether or not i should continue writing for the students anymore. Granted, I still think they're attractive because one snap of the fingers cant stop that. I had been teetering on this thought for awhile because of how borderline pedophilic the people are here towards my age group. I enjoy writing but not to the point of willingly being in a straight line of sight where people who are well over 16 are harassing me and lurking on my page, especially to other minors solely because they are my friends. Backtracking to the statement before, I honestly dont know if I will either stop writing or just for the students as a whole. It shows that clearly some people are using their attraction to teens with the excuse that the characters are fake. The rapid normalization on dark problematic "kinks" is disgusting and vile, and the fact that its discourse now to shame said interests is appalling. Concluding that combined with my experiences here, i feel unsafe.

***(TRIGGER WARNING)*** I dont talk about my personal life on here that much cause I dont see the need too nor do i think its anyone's business. Paired with the fact that the people i have trusted personal information with have used it against me, I will be preventing myself from opening that door. Besides that for now, I have sparsely shared I've been assaulted before. This is my first time really opening up about this and i kind of find it necessary now. Coming from someone who has been a victim of assault and CP by people my age and well over, writing nsfw has been the only way where I could feel comfortable with sex in general. I won't get into details because mentioning this is triggering already and can make people uncomfortable. It feels like anywhere I go, I'm constantly putting myself in a position to be abused. The same people who told me I didn't have to worry about my age and be judged for it, exposed the minimum comfort of keeping myself private online to demonize, judge and hurt me. People call me "extra" for being distraught about my face and age being posted because they think im trying to be sneaky which isn't the case. Its the principle that they KNEW I wasnt ready to share said things, and coming from someone who is inherently a private and closed person, she knew damn well what she was doing when posting screenshots of me on Tumblr. There is no excuse for it. The same writers who write dub/non-con can BARELY understand basic consent and its fucking terrifying. This site was the only other place I could cope without being criticized. To see people who some i was close to proudly lie on my name, (adults) say that i sent them pornographic content without their consent is so very hurtful. To watch people supposedly be victims and then use their own trauma to invalidate my own was so fucking humiliating, disgusting and nerve wracking. Although I knew I made the terrible decision to interact with stories, I have never initiated any NSFW discussion with anyone in DMs unless they did it with me first and a few times -- and trust me raise your hand I'll show you the proof. I was sure that everyone I talked to regularly knew that I was a minor, and to my general consensus, people were under the impression I was 15/16 (which I was and am).***

Whether it be victim blaming from the grooming discourse, I've been met with racism, harassment towards my friends, people wanting me to harm myself and be assaulted. I fear what will happen when i will turn 18, if the harassment will escalate and what not. A big part of me is that I'm still here anyways because it pisses people off and I don't care when I receive hate. I can take it but I don't want it. A good conscious of me knows that I should be doing what's best for me but at the end I'm still attached to my ego-self with the added fact that I sincerely enjoy interacting with my followers and posting stories.

I just don't know how the options look. I'll probably be updating my blog rules as of right now. I've been writing more sfw lately because of this and it'd be nice if you guys supported those until I properly decide. I still have plenty of requests of a bunch of characters (mostly Bakugo and Dabi) and original stuff (all sfw & nsfw) that I really wanna share with you guys. But I just ask that what I do modify that you will respect it like you would to any other writer on here.

Stay safe, keep your mask on, and thank you.

[vagarius]

misukazu 21

(if you saw me fuck up the other one no you didnt)

EDIT I THINK THIS ONE GOT A LITTLE FUCKED UP TOO BUT IT’S... READABLE...

questions from this post, and answers originally written for this thread!!

If you had to change the pairing’s very first meeting, how would you change it?    their canon first meeting is already so good SHDGFLJASHG but if i had to choose a different one that's still within the context of mankai... meeting as kids and losing touch and coming back together completely different at mankai

What song fits your pairing the most?    uhhHHhhHHH i don't have a real answer but i do have a partial playlist for one of my misukazu aus and the only two songs in it are furaregai girl by sayuri and champagne's for celebrating by mayday parade and i feel like that says enough sldhgalsdhfalsh

What is your favorite AU/prompt idea/trope for your pairing?     ALL MISUKAZU AUS ARE GOOD but. i really love any au where their first meeting is in the future and both are still kind of lost but they're Older and it's hard to let themselves fall into the easy trust they find in canon. i just think that'd be neat.

Do you prefer canon ideas or do you have your own headcanons for them?     I'VE SAID THIS MANY TIMES BUT CANON MISUKAZU GIVES OFF MADE FOR EACH OTHER VIBES AND USUALLY I DON'T VIBE WITH THAT BUT THEY REALLY ARE WHAT THE OTHER NEEDS... AND I THINK EVEN IF THEY HAD TO PART THEY'D STILL BE ABLE TO BE BETTER PEOPLE BC THEY HAD MET

Favorite canon moment of them?     THERE ARE SO MANY but the one that immediately comes to mind is misumi carrying drunk kazu to bed (latest bday line) because drunk kazu is so soft and it implies that misumi wanted to wish happy birthday to kazu pretty late... what did he want to give him...

Least favorite canon moment of them?     hmm... there's not really one i can think of??? IM SORRY I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY I LOVE ALL THEIR CANON MOMENTS

Favorite headcanon trope/idea? (Your own or someone else’s)    this is somehow both vague and very specific but i think misukazu gives off this vibe: He's beautiful. I can't tell him. or "Kazu is always beautiful~" Don't call me that, Kazu thinks. I'm not. so... insecurities i guess ????? AJSHAJJD

Favorite aspect of them/their relationship dynamics?     THIS IS GOING TO SOUND SO CHEESY but i love how /real/ they allow themselves to be around each other. misukazu at their best is when one thinks "you're you. and i love that you" and the other knows this. i just. THEY VALIDATE THE OTHER SO MUCH CRIES

Least favorite aspect of them/their relationship dynamics? (Can be headcannon)     this isn't a "least fav" so much as "it makes me sad" but if either of them showed any sign of not being interested anymore the other is more likely to give up then push anything. sort of like "it was bound to happen, so i'll enjoy now until they drop me" or EVEN WORSE they think the other would be better off without them and pushes them away. so yeah the fact i can see one of these happening makes me sad.

If they aren’t a canon pairing, how would you get them together?     they give off "everyone knows we're dating but us" energy but at the same time i feel like they'd acknowledge there's something and just not define it bc a) they don't need to (misumi) or b) they're too nervous to (kazu). in other words i think one day they are holding hands and misumi says "kazu? is this dating?" and kazu holds his breath before asking "do you want it to be?"

If you had to take them and plunk them into another fandom, what fandom would that be? Why?     i think theyd be hilarious in any sports animanga (kazu is manager tho bc noodle arms but maybe they bond when misumi walks him through some of his usual training menu one night - ahem. anyway) BUT ALSO horimiya au...

How hard is it write/draw your pairing? Scale of 1-10.     AJDHAJDHSF I REALLY LOVE THEM SO IT COMES PRETTY EASILY... but sometimes you try to put them in tropes and realize they would Just Not Work Like That. idk where i'm going with this. but yeah. anyway 3 for sankaku.

Is there a pairing that you think rivals them?     in terms of what i ship, i tend to ship kazu and misumi individually with a lot of dif charas AJDHAKD. but in terms of like... in-universe "rival" pairings: kazu side: tsuzukazu (maybe, lbr it would take them 273924 yrs to actually get together), kazu x someone from winter (i... have my reasons but they'd take longer than what this answer entails) misumi side: ... surprisingly none that i can think of ahdjahd

Which character of the pairing do you like more? (Would you ever pair yourself with them?)     you know that tweet that's like "sometimes a ship is just your two favs"? yeah that's misukazu for me. but if i had to choose... misumi AJDHAJHDSF I HONESTLY WASNT THAT INTO YUME UNTIL THESE TWO CAME AROUND (NOT COUNTING 707)... but yeah if they wanted to hold me in their arms i wouldn't oppose

Which character of your pairing would be the one to break up with the other? Why?     OOOOOH BOY well. i think it could be either of them. i don't think they'd break up for lack of love but too much love and wanting the other to be happy and thinking that the only way to give them that is to let them go. so i guess the question is which of them would be more likely to be selfish and hold on. thinking this way, i think misumi would be more likely to break-up, bc kazu has lots of friends who are better than him!! and misumi is more ready to leave if he thinks he needs to than kazu is. now im sad.

Are they relatable as characters or as a pairing?     THE NUMBER OF TIMES I'VE BEEN CALLED KAZU KIN... in all seriousness kazu's struggles with speaking out and (shinobi spoilers) his uncertainty over his future hit real close to home... while i don't relate as much as misumi, his struggles always manage to tear my heart into pieces... ((oversharing alert) i guess what really separates me from misumi is his struggle with his desire to connect with family who has treated him poorly... whereas im more "lol fuck you") tldr i relate to kazu slightly more LOL

Did you once/ever dislike one/both of them?     i never disliked them but i was NOT expecting either of them to shoot up so quickly into my favs list ahdjahdjf. also i started shipping them Immediately After reading summer main story so there's that

On an estimate, how many posts have you made about them?    as of september 28th 2020 i make up 11/78 fics on ao3 in the romantic misukazu tag and 2/12 in the platonic one. i may have brainrot.

What made you decide to ship them?     TBH I FINISHED THE MAIN STORY AND WENT "OH MY GOD... THAT'S MY SHIP" but now that i'm here i continue to ship them because they have the potential to bring out both the best and the worst in each other and i'm all about that

Favorite genre for them? (Angst, fluff, etc.)     angst. i just. angst hurt/comfort all the way. im so sorry babies.

lol you thought there would just be 21 ANYWAY EXTRA 1: how do they spend breaks/vacation?    they'd travel a lot when they're older!! kazunari loves to travel and misumi would follow kazunari anywhere (also, new triangles!!) so they go somewhere new whenever they have the time. however i think eventually one or both of their future careers will take them anywhere and everywhere anyway, so their "ideal vacation" might turn into an evening in, cuddling and catching up (as if they didn't already send play-by-play updates over the phone of whatever they did during the day)

EXTRA 2: first date?     i don't they ever have an explicit first date, but if asked they'll cite the time they had a picnic in the park turned triangle hunt turned accidental dip in the duck pond. at least, kazunari will. misumi just tilts his head and wonders what you mean.

EXTRA 3: gifts?     IM FEELING REALLY CHEESY SO I'M MAKING THIS ABOUT ANNIVERSARY GIFTS they both end up getting each other jewelry (although kazu was really really nervous bc he wasn't sure if misumi would wear it). kazu gets misumi a bracelet (with triangles, of course although misumi only wears it sometimes because he doesn't want to lose it) and misumi gets kazu a pair of triangle earrings "so we can match!" and kazunari combusts at the implications

EXTRA 4: sharing clothes     THEY'RE ACTUALLY AROUND THE SAME SIZE (and tend to wear baggier stuff barring kazu's skinny jeans)... but they have completely different Styles so it's still really obvious when steal each other's stuff ahdjajdkaf. as cute as kazu would look in sumi's sweatshirt i think the much more likely scenario is kazu wrapping misumi in his jackets because this boy nEVER BRINGS HIS ANYWHERE anyway just. accidental shared wardrobe misukazu.

EXTRA 5: lake house au    consider: kazunari living in a house on the shore of a lake for a summer for Art Purposes (and a little bit for Dealing With Life purposes but he's not gonna admit that) and meets his lake neighbor misumi who kazu thinks might be a ghost or spirit for a while but he actually just lives further down the lake and misumi unknowingly helps kazu with his Life Issues and maybe they fall in love

[incarnateirony]

In what season and episode did you realised that Destiel went from subtext to actual text?

Difficult question really. I don’t exactly have a magic switch of some weird personal set goalpost I have, and frankly, wasn’t even really a shipper, just defended shippers, until... 13.5/6. I think I started slipping after 12.19 because I’m not a moron, I don’t live under a rock, I have eyes and know what the fuck a mixtape means to Gen X. But I kept it at arms reach because even Carver era was so totally subtextual-- atop all the stuff that got cut S10 after the S9 blowout, I didn’t exactly want to invest myself as much as point out shippers weren’t crazy for seeing what they saw, especially S8/9+ and even prior the resonance of the hero’s journey over our entire human civilization and historical othering of queerness made earlier readings or notices of it completely fair even if not really like, directional by the crew?

But to begin, Carver era was when I saw /intentful and meritful construction of the body of text, via subtext, to subtextually tell a story with classic queer coding./ Because a lot of what this fandom calls queer coding makes me want to hide my face behind a quantum hole of facepalms and is often like, pretty much the reverse of what should be advocated or considered. All those retro old “he’s been written as queer from S1″ make me want to kick puppies or something because oh my god it’s Not Good, most of the content there is Very Bad And Hugely Problematic, and it’s an attempt to retroactively prove what old canon was doing without any substance.

Carver era was the shift to substance, but silent substance. Subtext that’s genuinely thematically scaffolded into the storyline in a way that while the events themselves were largely cued on subtext, consideration of that subtext was critical to understanding the full body of text and people that refused to grow into and adapt with that text as the tone shifted are the ones that got more and more confused and angry.

Dabb era was the threshold crossing into (often low-visibility) text. Fandom intentionally arguing points that require complete removal from social structures (which is everything from regional meanings of major symbols, social codes, language, or why-letters-mean-things) doesn’t mean shit doesn’t mean what it means. A mixtape isn’t subtext any more than getting on one knee and popping open a box is subtext even if they don’t verbalize the words. We know what these fucking things mean and anyone who doesn’t is in DESPERATE need of going outside and experiencing the real world before making any kind of social commentary on a body of text.

When it comes to dialogue text, Last Call is where Bi Dean or at least Queer Umbrella Dean was textualized. Again, it doesn’t matter if people don’t understand the long argued history that was put to bed about repeat sexual encounters with men, it doesn’t matter what the gender of the other triplets were, literally none of that matters. It doesn’t matter if the person understands it. It doesn’t matter if they know their queer culture enough to know their arguments were already buried. It is what it is.

There’s this disillusionment that unspoken physicalized shit like kissing or sex, or verbalized ones like “I love you,” but “I love you, in a gay way, specifically and only you, and want to be romantic with you” because every other statement of the like so far has people crying or arguing about it as not enough either. 

These things are nice, but it is not the only way to deliver a textual romance. These are things we want and deserve, and people aren’t wrong for wanting them, the only wrong comes in deleting other text because it isn’t the style of text they want. 100% unhelpful.

Text in AV is complex. No matter how decontextualized people try to pretend this all is, throwing pasta at the wall and calling it an argument worth validating, AV media study doesn’t just incorporate social codes on shit like dialogue -- though anyone that applies those social codes wouldn’t be arguing anyway, as per my old post on that -- but visual language and TV literacy are a long studied topic and are just as relevant as understanding of textual/verbal language and having textual literacy. People trying to eschew these in the interest of favoring fanspaces to try to keep them equal within the canon, which is NOT what fandom space equality is supposed to be about, is just... lol. 

When that soap opera reporter that doesn’t even watch the show wandered in commenting on the full mise en scene of the 15.03 breakup being classical “Dark Point in the Romance” framing, that’s not subtext. In a book, characters aren’t running around on a blank canvas. Their environments are the text. 

What people may draw symbolically out of an environment varies, and if someone’s /interpretation/ holds up, that’s fine. But being able to digest the entire presentation of a work, that is to say, to read an entire scene in a book and understand their setting and the relevance of that setting is simply a form of text. And when literal fucking randos can spot classic cinematography, it’s time to consider what the full cinematic framework is telling you both in incremental minutiae of texts and in the full body of work.

So basically, I acknowledged lowkey text based on the most basic understanding of social codes, by 12.19, even if I was still kinda eyerolling about it. By 13.5/6, Castiel returned to Dean in something later echoed by Eileen for the zoom shot, but the rest of the arrangement was verbatim identical to the original ending of Swan Song with Lisa, with the only difference being “Never too late” wasn’t a verbal line, but an entire sound track they applied to highlight the scene.

Despite the Swan Song parallel ending reactives went up in arms about the fact that they weren’t having big romantic moments anymore and kinda failed to wrap braincases around the fact that the endgame reunion that was literally the ORIGINAL endgame shot, which ALSO didn’t include physicality (in fact, the text read, “this isn’t sexual at all. He’s a lost soul, and she’s his home” in the script for Lisa), and this dumbass fandom would go “SEE PROOF THAT MEANS THE TEXT MEANS IT WASNT SEXUAL AND HE JUST BECAME BEST FRIENDS THAT WAS HER BEDWARMER MAYBE SHE HAS COLD FEET AT NIGHT” and that’s not how this fucking WORKS. Common sense is NOT removed from fucking discussion and what sense is applied needs to be levelly-- again, social codes.

So at 13.5/6 I had considered it textually paramount to the original endgame arrangement. S14 was just... blatant ass domesticity. Dean got his happy ending. He had his family. He got his win, his everything. They spoke frequently in the kitchen -- only vaguely over cases, more slapping around idioms, eyerolling over barbarous eating, and occasionally discussing how to raise their son. In fact, if you look at non-research-non-casework S14 kitchen scenes I’m gonna let you sit there and map out what all those domestic moments in the heart of the kitchen was, minding 13.5/6. 

It was something gained. It was their life. And it was something to lose. 14.18 already advert framed it, we all saw it. Troubled family. People delete history of what is connected where to pretend “we” is vague or makes the romance any less of a canon piece and lmao guys 

And season 15 is their year long run where they’re spearheading a huge part of the plot and will be a critical final resolution.

Speaking of 13.5/6 and social codes, anyone remember that Jack hadn’t met Dave Mather and looked at one nonphysical picture of them and recognized “he’s her boyfriend”? SOCIAL CODES MEAN SHIT GUYS.

So there’s no magic moment. There’s S8/9 coding and subtext. There’s S12′s tape and other elements -- tape is just the easiest to nail down but several through the year tbh -- there’s S13′s Never Too Late, and all things that followed that in waterfall. There’s S14′s established domesticity with Castiel having essentially moved into the bunker, something that wasn’t even entirely established in S12 yet even if he was more frequent there than Carver era.

Without social codes, I could argue that “Dean loves pie” doesn’t actually mean he loves pie. In fact, I could argue those letters mean nothing, because basic social codes are what even give words meanings. Without them these are just squiggly lines on a screen. If I eschew social codes, I could take a “love me some pie” line from Dean and say it means he fornicates with children and make long convoluded excuses around it instead of the observable fucking fact that Dean fucking Winchester likes goddamn pie.

Waiting for your perfect personally dreamed magic moment for a landmark to call text generally disregards the full body of the text and merit of the work. The amount of time and effort this FUCKING shipping fandom has put into -- even Destiel shippers -- bashing down and calling blatant ass text subtext because it’s not the text they want -- just because they want to argue with people that threw the logic baby out with the destiel bathwater they thought was dirty -- it’s fucking embarrassing tbqh. Imagine if people’s competitive fandom BS was muted how anyone here would be addressing this body of text.

Like. “After Carver directed Misha to play Castiel as a jilted lover in season 9, Cain through S10 escalated it into Castiel as Colette, which was confirmed by both the author and actors, seating him as a lover, as Sam was Abel the brother; by season 11, pining and connected hearts becomes the driving theme of the show, repeatedly denounced both in text and showrunner commentary that it wasn’t Amara that was that romance, and instead, a different one rose; by season 12, domestic arguments were many, mixtapes were shared, coming into rooms and playing people for things secretly stashed under pillows were a hinging plot moment, by season 13 he was the Never Too Late Big Win as a far more powerful version of Lisa, by season 14 Castiel moved in, by season 15 their giant sacred marriage euchartist ceremonies on repeat are driving the entire body of the season while overtly making the straight pairing a secondary parallel to the primary Dean and Castiel pairing by 15.09 such as the AU scene, or the ending where they mimicked the same phrase, truncated by physicality. But anyone viewing this text is an adult not competing for their preferred fandom playbox to be considered in the text, and had eyeballs, saw Sam and Eileen were clearly courting, flirting, and/or romantically engaged for a long time before this.”

Can we hope for the equality in that, sure.  I want that, sure. That doesn’t erase all the other modes of text before that though. 

But there, I just addressed 4 consecutive seasons of storytelling as its stands in the critical themes, without breaking down the dozens of independent scenes themselves that have already been analyzed to death and yall have scorched in your eyeballs by now like angels have prophet names. 

I’ve seen people desperately, desperately try to reinterpret this text, or this story structure, in inconsistent ways that fall short. They’re never held accountable for their entire shit falling flat on their face, they just keep building new shit that falls on its face too and keep using it as a base. People can *interpret* ~text~ however they want. Anyone that tells you that “true text is inarguable” is either an idiot or selling you something for your subscription to their blog. Anyone CAN make any jackass interpretation of anything they want. 

So sure. You can make some nonsensical explanation around every core theme their relationship is shadowed by, removing all social codes and context from basic elements understood by adult human beings natively, whatever. You can take 200 pages writing around it and degaying it. Generally when I see this, I see unhinged, incomplete writings with no central thread, just a thousand disembodied excuses that don’t even make a story. They’re just that. Desperate excuses. Years of it at this point. And they’re free to /interpret the text like that/ if they want. But that’s their /interpretation/ of a /text/ and as-above generally in /intentional, willful, conscious denial and erasure of the basic social codes we all understand./

Just because they /can/ warp the most left field interpretation doesn’t make it not text. If I pulled an “I don’t know I can’t english suddenly” and threw those codes out the window that doesn’t mean that the shit doesn’t mean the shit it means just because it’s inconvenient to me lmao

And this isn’t necessarily at you, Nonnie, I just feel the need to expand on this because any single time I don’t nail down these conversational stakes, someone breezes through and intentionally hotboxes the conversation to go down these very predictable manipulations and extremizations of the conversation that I really am far too tired to repeat the arguments raging in my mentions again, so I head ‘em off before the shit ever reblogs.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

let's see those Prime Numbers for the ask meme

2) favorite albums?

well i was Ready for kesha’s album Warrior to come out in iiii think it was the end of 2012 or early 2013?? i snuck out to that tour in dc that summer also. totally solid album and it was fun to have something so fun during a totally Not Fun period lol. i was also pretty into owl city at the exact same time lmao, that’s Blatantly for when you’re depressed lol...and i also eventually saw that guy on tour when a new album came out in 2015, and that was fun too, and was Enjoying Myself a factor in the tipping point of “ah jeez i gots 2 get outta here” that i had in the next month? maybe! and uhhh i listened a lot to the phoenix te amo album. that one wasnt tied to anything at all but i have heard it So much. super short and also rock solid and relistenable. and then here we are and the bmc obcr is a gift to the world b/c a) it exists and b) Cuz It All Slaps and c) it’s so fun to either sing or dance along, or cry along if it’s the agtikbi reprise and d) lgw... and e) all the eternal, well-mixed wroland vocals

3) favorite memes?

oh god lmao idk......real earlier 10s stuff was the I Say Hey he-man meme, and the “that really rustles my jimmies” meme which was real underrated......there’s been plenty of Memes where i’ve been like “this one is funny to me Every Time” but of course now looking back on it it’s like. what’s a meme??? Vine

(skipping 5 & 11 cuz that’s the Entirety of someone else’s ask and i don’t wanna just have to scrap theirs completely and i’ll get to it next!!)

11) favorite fanarts?

you know what, there’s continuously been a ton of amazing fanart where i’m like, i’m so glad i’m seeing this, & this is Artistic Fuel, and marge simpson anime has really been just this Standout Experience lmao like......idk for as Inspiring as it is, there’s only a couple things i’ve drawn that are Directly inspired, but i just flip for it all the time and like, it’s supremely expressive and like, comics that aren’t chronological but more like a Collage Of a Moment / Concept which i think is super cool and also i love when stuff reminds me that it doesn’t have to look ~super cleaned up~ to look great.

13) favorite people you know?

oh god this one really got out of control lol i started like, talking about everyone ever from this past decade. so for Convenience i’m interpreting this as “people *i* know, but they don’t know me” so that i can cheat and say will roland, voted person of the year 2019. by extension, essential supporting crew who helped us reach this point, like john simpkins or joe iconis. leave it at that!! it’s 5am and you know i’m not lying. who knew where going “wow, This guy” in late 2018 would have so much Value.

17) a fandom you wish more people were in/you had more people to talk to about?

oof hmm.......amnesia tdd didn’t really have a “fandom” even though it obviously got a lot of attention, it’dve been fun if it had though lol. it’s tricky to answer this one cuz i always prefer like, smaller fandoms and/or finding the Niche or some other way of just like, interacting with a small corner of things, so i’m never like wow god damn wish i’d been absolutely in the thick of it with this thing. i’ve been in Corners n Niches and it’s been fine by me, really

19) a fandom that you had the best time in?

HMM lol.........marble hornets sure was fun but like, a lot of that was just the content itself and not necessarily The Fan Experience, tho i sure got a lot out of it in a ton of ways. i mean tbh that’s true of each thing i’ve really Gotten Into majorly, i go hard af and then walk out the other side with these #connections or #experiences like whoa where’d these come from lol!! but really like, overall, i’m probably having the best time right now. the “fandom” is basically just our agenda lmao but like i said i’m always having the best time when it’s a pretty niche deal, And the sheer variety of Contents n Characters to draw from here is super nice, and the fact that it’s like, oh yeah and i’m finally recognizing this should’ve-been-obvious entire Passionne i’ve had since always, and that’s great too, and like, also just having the Variety Of Live / Current Unfoldings that go down.....like, everyone havin fun with the Joe Iconis Xmas Xtrav was entirely great. and just the Engagement level is basically the best, cuz like there’s the times where maybe i’ll get a zillion notes and that’s definitely fun in its own way but i always enjoy just the way smaller amount of ppl who are Particularly Enthusiastic, and like, there’s times where like, maybe i’m *technically* in this larger circle of ppl but like, totally more of like a Tangent or peripheral to that circle or whatever lol........this feels like a really solid balance of like, being sorta in this orbit of people in a chill way, but also definitely the direct interactions Existing, which is always important lol but hasn’t always been a constant throughout my Fandom Experiences at all

23) who were you at the beginning of this decade?

2009-2010 was a real distinct year lol i was in my second year of college in the middle of my teens, when i’d hardly really been getting to Explore My Interests Freely up to that point and still wasn’t, but all of a sudden it’s like goddamn i have to figure out my major???? and i’m like, obviously in the middle of only just now Really getting to figure out my identity in this deeper and more genuine way, thanks to being lucky enough to Live On Campus and be away from home like, 2/3 of the year, but i was just like, oh god i’m in Stress Hell now all the time cuz like. i’m trying to figure out my whole thing and what my ~Career~ should be and i just have no idea but am like, trying super hard all the time lol it was not successful and i was just really stressed about it all the time. i was def quieter back then.....pretty lonely at the time, i did not get into mh and gain the presence of any Online Friends until late 2010, and i hadn’t yet been sort of accepted by a small faction of theatre people via my roommate’s connections.....i wasn’t at all Out yet, and was def In Progress of figuring it all out.....i didn’t have nearly the Self-Esteem i have now lmao, it was Not a great time and in a lot of ways ‘09-’10 was the start of a downturn into Worse Than Usual Times, though in Other ways it was definitely an upturn lol like. the latter related to stuff that was important to me / who i am, the former tied to the situations i was in and the godawful morale that resulted

29) a time when the worst case scenario happened but you pulled through?

well by the end of 2012 i had my Wrath Parent deluxe mad at me big time, AND i was stuck at home all of thee time with that (not at all hours but. every day.) it was terrible!!! tf was going on in 2013, cuz that shit was definitely like, a gross blur of a lot of indistinct misery. and then, relatedly, when it was so shitty in 2015 that i was like fantastic, i am so officially sick of this i’m outta here. i revisited some Misery Posts from that period lately for someone stranger on twitter’s project or something, and boy i was having a bad time Summer Of ‘15 lol, things not getting better at home And a job that was so shitty that it was like..................bye. lol. and then i spent a year living out of a minivan. which was real lucky in ways b/c like. infinitely better than if i had not had that minivan. and when that broke down i was also then lucky enough to have this friend who was relatively nearby who’d also been willing to just like, set me up to Not have to ask the lgbt center where that trans-friendly forest zone a couple cities over was. nothing as dramatic as it could’ve been, fortunately

31) a time you were scared?

hmmm when leaving The Parents Home overnight, that was intimidating. bit of completely jumping into the unknown there, and also like, when you spend your lifetime assuming that Someone’s Arbitrary Wrath will be uponst you always, it’s hard to shake that sense of dread and doom, like ah jeez i am really potentially bringing hell on myself here........and like i mentioned with Start Of The Decade, there was just a ton of fear there all the time lol, trying to figure out virtually overnight The Whole Of Who I Am And What I Want when i’d only just even gotten to start......also i wanna say i maybe came out in 2011?? and i sort of also felt obligated to come out to my parents also (plus i think i was giving them like, one last chance to surprise me and be decent and kind of Grow Up themselves even tho i was the like, 16 y.o.) which yknow, kids you do not have to come out to anyone at all. someone was talking the other day abt how they didn’t think lgbtq “discourse” had evolved as much as you’d hope over the past decade, but idk about that, it's only a little bit of a wildly complex topic, and for starters Online Trans “Discourse” of a decade back was wayyyyyy in a vastly different place than it is now, leaps and strides really. so the way to ~really~ do it was presented kind of more rigidly i think. anyways i did it via email and was incredibly stressed to even open the reply a couple days later lol......which ended up being really weird and vague, and then there was a phone call where no one brought it up, and the only result was increased ire and resentment :( ........and then there was still like, cops encounters! near or not-as-bad-as-they-could’ve-been vehicular collisions! but tbh generally my reaction to the latter was underwhelming, except for one particular time when i was a passenger and also tense af for the rest of the ride. that’s it for Immediate fear really lol......oh wait one time i was at this decent sized Convention Panel Event and when i’m nervous i can Only talk more (it’s possible!!) and i snuck into line for the q&a and Right when i got to the mic (intimidating) they were like oop we’re low on time, lightning round!! :’] that was obviously more just a crapton of l’anxiete

37) a fashion that fell out of style that you wish would make a resurgence?

were Gladiator sandals this decade? the strappy deals that like, went up the ankles / calves? that was in fashion for a year or two and i’m into it. i like sandals and that kind of drama

41) something you learned a lot that not a lot of other people might know about?

i don’t know that i learned way a lot of anything that’s real in-depth knowledge and niche lore.........i have learned Nothing

43) an important relationship (of any kind) you had?

i had???? lmao well either way let’s say current relationships count and like, pretty much everyone in my Sphere i value a lot! i never like, have or have had a ~close~ ring of ppl around me lol like i thought it was lucky if i talked to someone Every Day (and not at all the Usual thing) and now it’s more likely that i talk to two people every day and maybe that sounds sarcastic but it’s not at all lol. i know my social stats aren’t impressive but i so appreciate what i get to enjoy and have. and other Connections might be way more like, we are friendly acquaintances, we talk on rare occasions, we haven’t talked at all in ages, we talk but only to trade cute pics of cats, Etc etc, but i seriously do appreciate all of everyone who’s cool who i get to interact with in any way and like, be in each other’s spheres and Not just like, absolutely on nobody’s radar. also obviously soph you are here in that list in case i wasn’t implying it good enough lol it is 5am and god knows deciphering what i say at any time can be its own challenge.....ur Epic Highs and Lows of bmc 3.0 is so good lmao

[wittywallflower]

There's No Avoiding an Alvarez

After reading the entire Alvareider tag on AO3, i decided there wasnt enough in it so here is ch1 of my contribution to the ship's fandom. Sorry for lack of Read More and wonky formatting, mobile is a pill.

Set post s3. An intense moment between Penelope and Schneider during his relapse changes the dynamic between them. Rated T for the moment.

Penelope Alvarez ran through her pre-evening-out checklist. Phone? Wallet? Keys? Check, check, check. Cash in case she got a cab? Check. Breath mints in case she got a kiss? Check. Lipstick applied and in the purse for later? Check

She paused to glance in the mirror on the door, swiping a finger at an imagined imperfection in her makeup. Fluffing out her curls, she stepped back to take in more of her reflection. 

Girls front and center, standing at attention? She gave her cleavage a sassy little jiggle. Check and check. 

Penelope was feeling sexy, confident, and ready to break a heart or maybe even two tonight. It was time to go.

But she was slowed down by the deadbolt being stubborn again, fighting her when she tried to lock the apartment behind her. May as well let Schneider know about it on her way out.

She’d figured she would just pop her head in the door, say hi, ask him to take a look. He wasn’t in the living room so she called out for him as she stepped inside. Penelope caught the faintest whiff of bourbon just as Schneider appeared, trying too hard to act nonchalant by calling her a bunch of his ridiculous nicknames. The booze smell was overpowered by the menthol tang of mouthwash when Schneider passed her to plop down on the sofa. 

For a moment she had a flashback to Victor, how he’d hear her coming down the hall after work and sprint for the bathroom to remove the evidence of a day’s worth of drinking before giving her a kiss hello. 

Okay, Penelope took a deep breath.

Every motherly instinct in her body wanted to yell and scold and punish. That’s what you did with your kids when they did something wrong, that’s how they learned to do better. But this wasn’t one of her kids breaking curfew or mouthing off to her. 

This was an addict relapsing. Again. And a harangue from her was only going to make him feel worse. It certainly wasn’t going to make him any less drunk. She knew recovery was a process. That relapses happened and 8 years of sobriety in his past didn’t mean it was any easier for him in this moment. He needed her help, not her disappointment. 

More importantly, this was Schneider. He’d been through so much, got dealt a lot of caca despite his privileged life, and still came out of it a good man. She didn’t want to be a source of pain. He didn’t need her help to feel bad. But he did need her. 

While Schneider was distracted by with some video game stuff, trying to fumble fresh batteries into a controller, she stepped away to make a couple calls. First to Schneider’s sponsor, then to her friend.

“Hey, Jill? Yeah, I’m going to have to cancel tonight, I’m sorry.”

Penelope screwed up her face in an expression of apology that she knew couldn’t be seen through the phone.

“Girl…” Jill’s voice was full of annoyance. 

“I know, I know. I promise I’m not trying to blow your brother off, I do want to meet him. I just can’t make it tonight.” Penelope turned away from Schneider and lowered her voice further. “Look, a friend needs my help. Like really needs my help… you get me?”

There was a short pause while Jill figured out the subtext. She may not know any of the details, but she knew what it was like to have a crisis and need someone there. She couldn’t begrudge Penny for being a good support system.

“All right, Alvarez, I get you. I’ll introduce you to Jeff next time he’s in town. Good luck with everything.”

“Thanks, girl. Bye.” 

With a quiet sigh, Penelope tucked her phone into her clutch and tossed it on the coffee table. It was followed by the short jacket that made her look young and trendy and badass, but also had a tendency to pinch in the armpits. It had been kind of a waste to wrangle her tetas into the uncomfortable strapless bra her halter top required; worth the effort for how amazing she would have looked on that blind date but it was definitely going to have to come off if she was going to spend all evening trying to sober Schneider up instead. 

She ran her hands through her hair and tucked a few strands behind her ears, careful not to snag the sparkly bracelet on her wrist in her curls. Turning back to Schneider, she found him staring at her, intent but bemused. 

“What?” she asked.

He stammered a non-response, gesturing at her vaguely. But she caught him glance at her chest, squeeze his eyes shut for a moment then pointedly look away. Claro que si. At least he wasn’t a leering drunk. 

“I was going to go out with... some people. But they cancelled.” she added quickly.

Schneider was more important that her social life but he would only feel guilt for interfering with her plans. 

Sober, he never would have fallen for it but drunk Schneider was more interested in Mario Kart. He insisted on playing it, ignoring her insistence that he should speak to his sponsor, have some coffee, maybe talk about what led him back to the bottle. But he refused. Said if she wasn’t going to play then she should just leave.

Schneider trying to kick her out was not an experience she was used to. Unsure how to respond, she had agreed to play. 

He was immediately wreathed in drunk, dopey smiles, looking like a kid excited to play with his friend. Which she guessed he was. She wasn’t sure why he was so anxious to play, he was terrible at it. Like truly terrible. Her kids teased her for being bad, but she was always in the middle of the pack. Schneider kept coming in dead last. It wasn’t long before he got frustrated enough to give up. She may have helped it along by picking Rainbow Road three times in a row, but that definitely didn't excuse him throwing his controller aside and huffing like a petulant child about it.

[marsixm]

edit sorry this post is both long (if the readmore fails i am truly truly sorry) & longwinded im just reflecting and thinking; (another edit: u can probably just read the tl dr and get it)

anyway allow me to spin some very personally based theory here for a mo while i put off/warm my fingers up from the cold in preparation to email my therapist

so growing up i had, i think only, het ships, but i never quite had the ones you were (narratively speaking) “supposed to” have

in most media i recall when i was a kid, there were like, 2 diff structures of character romance plot arcs in media i consumed, there was the main lead and 2 best friends model, where thered be the star of the show who had outside romantic leads and the 2 best friends (who were always a boy and a girl) would have their secondary romance, OR there were ensemble shows where there was a more clear romance set up between the main boy and main girl, then side characters whod pair off in whatever ways ended up happening. in the first, see: hannah montana, the second, see: zoey 101. obv this isnt a hard rule and there were loads of exceptions but like, lets just say i tended not to care for the romances set up for the main girls in the trio models, or quite as hard for the main boy and girl in the ensembles, and in general if there was an obvious romance between two leads i either didnt care or outright hated it

basically i never liked the ships they set up for us in straight media, as a kid (namely, a girl) i liked being that “ew pink!” “i hate valentines day” sort of contrarian, but what i remember actually disliking was the predictability of it, because i clearly still shipped characters, so it wasnt /really/ that i hated romance, per se

looking back on it i think it was probably or at least to a degree more like that i hated the hetero expectation of it- i can nit pick down to more specific examples of why i disliked the main pairings (kataang, for example, i thought was weird bc katara acted like a mother/older sister figure to aang, and i didnt feel like there was romance between them at all except where it felt shoehorned in) - maybe it was also that i thought it made more sense for a main character to be with someone they clearly already spent a lot of time with and not some random new hot boy in town (i very distinctly remember shipping miley and oliver on hannah montana, and i believe that was the first time i ever read fanfiction @ age like... 11 lol) as is often the case w like these things.

theres another level to this though, which is that i notice i tended to ship characters who were more vaguely similar to each other, like, physically (ie, similar heights, or hair colors mainly) obviously this is funny now since my main pairing is johnlock which is such a physically different ship we can construct them from basic shapes and colors and theyre still recognizable as who they are, but i have some thoughts about this- but i think there might be two interesting things about this again in retrospect

first of all, this sounds silly ik, but shipping the vaguely similar ones as a child’s way of queering heterosexuality is an interesting concept and not that difficult, like, two boys are also vaguely similar to each other in a similar way a boy and a girl with the same hair color and height might be, which is something i thought of a while ago

the other way in which this is really interesting to me now, that i think might have been more actually pertinent to myself as a trans child, is that i think i shipped the characters i did in an attempt to morph the concept of boy and girl? to find the boy counterpart to every girl??? that second one makes more sense actually. anyway, i digress

2 start off i definitely had gender feelings starting from a very young age so i think these observations ring more true than just reflections, PERHAPS

so the first thing i remember shipping, ie wanting them to be together, thinking about it an inordinate amount of time outside watching the films, even imagining them eating ice cream together in their pjs (i was NINE DHFJGghfkg) was jack sparrow & elizabeth swan from potc (basically my franchise of choice as a kid bc i never read harry potter) now this doesnt quite fit the “visually similar” thing bc actually orlando bloom looks more like kiera knightly and is prob due to them like making out in one movie, but i think this works for the “shipping as gender expression” theory, because elizabeth swan dressed up as a boy, spent most of that movie wearing boy’s clothes, etc- meanwhile jack was a wacky pirate which like hello duh i’d want to be. so i wonder if beyond the fact that they kissed and flirted, there was something to this concept of me wanting two characters to be together, meant i wanted to marry together two conceptual things happening with two characters, or absorb the cool dude and the boyish girl characters into each other to make one whole archetype for myself? i likewise shipped aang and toph (toph who, normally doesnt really have anyone to be shipped with, since she likes sokka but he has a gf) who we all know is the VERY boyish girl character, so boyish im p sure her actually being a trans dude later in life is a p decently accepted headcanon (i dont actually delve into aatla fandom though so i can only hope) 

another thing about this ship thing, is most of my ships had brown hair (like miley and oliver), just like i always have, and in certain cases the girl character would look a LOT like me (i also shipped logan and quinn on zoey 101, which to my surprise n delight actually came true later (although looking back im like... 11 yr old me is glad they made out a lot but adult me is like uhhh why were the kids on this show making out a lot? anyway thats another issue) and i def was a weirdo girl with glasses and long brown wavy hair) which sort of further fuels my feeling that this was an attempt by my brain to do 1 of 2 things, if my own involvement really was a greater motivating factor in this thing, 1. ship MYSELF with a boy (which is like def possible for my gay kinnie ass, but not quite my thesis here) or 2. morph these boy and girl counterparts by imagining them together, seeing them together, etc

for example, i realize now, when i was a kid i drew an avatar sona for myself and said sona looked an awful lot like how id imagine a katara/zuko fusion would be, and the fact that i shipped zutara (very hard lol) was what lead me down this thought path rn

i feel like even to me this concept sounds weird and far fetched but like, gem fusion made enough sense for someone to write with its clearly, usually, romantic implications and we all “get” that, so whom knows???

another thing ive noticed while writing this is for a good few of these ships you can argue the boys in them can be read gay, like jack sparrow and zuko and aang, which feels even more strongly like me trying to marry my gay boy feelings to my tomboy realities [thinking emoji]

the biggest reason i think this makes sense to me is because when i was 10 i became obsessed with the idea that this boy i was friends with and i were secretly twins separated at birth, like i was so into the concept that we looked alike, i like hoped and wished so hard for it to be true, i wished a christmas miracle would happen for fucking real and a magic door in my house would open and be his new room and itd all work out perfectly! and you might think this was a manifestation of my difficulties with my family and wishing to leave it, but in my dream world my parents were still my parents and he came to live with us- which makes me think the obsession of ME looking like this BOY was a manifestation of my gender feelings, which i think can maybe be traced to this concept of pairing a visually similar, possibly gay, brunette boy to every brunette and/or tomboyish girl

anyway. if you actually read all of this id love it if you lmk somehow (doesnt need to be a like) like this is clearly very long and strange but i hope it makes sense. i think i stop myself a lot from ever commenting on gender or theory or whatever but i am a living breathing trans person who has experienced things and i have opinions and i dont think im claiming anything destructive with this lol i think its not unusual to reflect on the way you interacted with the world as a gay/trans kid

also im obviously not saying that shipping straight things is somehow inherently queer, im not trying to retroactively claim something about straight ships, like, those two characters are still functionally straight, and i definitely also shipped probably all of them for normal shipping reasons (although, kid ones, so less “oh theres a lot of ACTUAL romantic subtext between these two” but rather “oh theyre friends and would be cute together!” (or like they kissed and i was like O: )) but im just trying to theorize about something its possible my tiny trans brain was trying to express- and who knows maybe im not the only one!

anyway i guess the TL;DR is: when i was a kid i had a lot of “unconventional” straight ships- i already observed that i eschewed the main canon pairings in kids media in what was probably my tiny baby brains rejection of hetero culture, but i also actively shipped side characters who looked like me, and also looked like each other (ie, both tall and brunette, a boy and girl counterpart of Each Other) OR characters who seemed to be a gayish boy and a tomboyish girl, and im theorizing that maybe the reason that was was my tiny trans brain wanting to gem fusion those two together because of my Gender Feelings and fuse the boy with the girl and this desire manifested in shipping therefore thinking about a lot these pairings of boy and girl counterparts

[thetravelerwrites]

Daughters (A Stranger Things Drabble)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Fandom: Stranger Things Words: 1855

One of my few non-terato related stories, about a year and a half old. This is a stand alone fic about Hopper showing Eleven the birth certificate from Dr. Owens and explaining what it means. Hopper opens up about his lost daughter, Sara. Feedback is appreciated.

Eleven sat on the couch covered in a thick blanket, watching a particularly old western that made very little sense to her, when she heard the special knock on the door.

Without taking her eyes off of the T.V., she reached out mentally and snapped open the four slide locks and the deadbolt with little effort. She heard Hopper enter the cabin, tap his boots against the door frame, and shut the door, though she didn’t turn to look at him. He had gone on his off-day without telling her why, and that, in her experience, was never a good thing. She was a little apprehensive to learn what exactly he’d been up to while he was away.

He stepped around the couch to turn the T.V. off and then sat down beside her, laying two envelopes on the coffee table. One was slim and white, and the second was big, brown, and overflowing.

“What’s that?” Eleven asked, nodding her head at them.

He didn’t answer right away. He sat hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, rubbing his mustache with his right hand, looking down at the brown envelope.

“I went to see Dr. Owens today,” Hopper mumbled from behind his hand.

Eleven’s heart rate accelerated in alarm.

“Bad man,” Eleven said in a nervous whisper.

“Nah, he ain’t all bad,” Hopper said. “He had something for me. Well, it’s for both of us, actually.” He reached for the white envelope and handed it to her. She took it gingerly.

Opening it, she pulled out a blue paper with writing she didn’t understand. “‘Cert…certificate of birth?’ What does that mean?”

“It’s a paper the parents get when a baby is born. Then when that baby gets old enough, they keep it. It’s proof.”

“Proof of what?”

“Life. Existence.” Hopper turned to her. “It shows who your parents are, where you came from.“ He pointed. “It’s also got a social security number.”

“What’s that for?”

“In American, you have to have a social security number to do just about anything. Go to school, get a job, etc. That number is your whole life.”

She frowned at the digits on the page, then the ones on her arm. “Another number.”

“Yeah,” Hopper laughed. “We all got ‘em, kid. I guess most of us are lucky that it’s not our name, too.” He jerked his chin at the paper. “Keep reading.”

“‘This certifies that in the state of Indiana, Jane Hop…’” She looked up at him. “Hopper?”

He nodded solemnly.

“‘Was born in Hawkins, child of Teresa Ives, Mother, and James Hopper… Father.” She looked back at him and lowered the paper, though still clutched it in her fingers. “I don’t understand. What does this mean?”

“Means it’s official,” Hopper said. “We’re family. You’re kinda stuck with me now. Sorry ‘bout that.”

She shook her head, but didn’t say anything. She was feeling a lot of things she hadn’t experienced before and couldn’t properly name, and was having difficulty sorting through them. She stared hard at the paper for a few minutes. Hopper watched her quietly; he seemed to be giving her space to process all this and room to react. Perhaps preparing for a storm, if she wasn’t happy about the arrangement.

After a few minutes, she folded the paper again and gave it back, which he placed on the table next to the large brown envelope.

“What is that?” She asked.

Again, he didn’t answer immediately, and when he did, it was with a very heavy sigh.

“Well... since we’re family now, I figured I should introduce you two.”

He reached into the brown envelope and pulling out everything that was inside it. There were drawings, old elementary work sheets, coloring pages, but most of it was pictures. Sifting through, he extracted a photograph of a small, blonde-haired, blue-eyed child, wearing a frilly blue dress, smiling widely. Her curly hair was pulled up into two pigtails with aqua blue bands.

“Is that Sara?” Eleven asked tentatively.

Hopper nodded. “This was her first grade class photo. Just a month or two before everything went to shit.” He found another photo, in this one, Hopper was sitting with Sara and a blonde haired, blue-eyed woman who strongly resembled Sara. Hopper was clean-shaven in the picture, and they were all smiling.

Eleven pointed to the woman.

“That’s Diane,” Hopper said. “We were married. Then Sara died. Then we weren’t married anymore.”

“Why?”

“My fault mostly,” Hopper said, staring at the picture. “She wanted to move on, try and get her life back, but I couldn’t let go. I started drinkin’, lost my job because I stopped showing up, all kinds of things that she quite understandably didn’t want to deal with. I wouldn’t have wanted to deal with me, either.”

“Where is she?”

“Philadelphia. She got remarried a few years ago, had herself a new little baby boy. She’s doing good. She’s happy.”

He reached into the pile of papers and drew out another certificate, like the one Hopper got from Owens, but from a different state. The name on the top line was “Sara.”

“She’d be your sister,” He said, staring at the type font as though he couldn’t see anything else. “She’d have loved a sister.”

The emotions that had been swirling in Eleven’s body had settled, and of the remaining ones, the most prominent was sorrow. “What was she like?”

Hopper’s chin shook, and she thought he might not be able to talk about it, but he said, “She was so smart. Smarter than me. Got it from her mom, I guess. She’s so interested in science and space and all that stuff.” He plucked at the aqua blue bracelet around his wrist. A tear fell from his eye and disappeared into his beard.

“She was gonna grow up to be a paleontologist and also an astronaut doctor. Not an astronaut that was also a doctor, a doctor that only treated astronauts.“ He smiled. “She was gonna have thirty kids, but she wasn’t gonna get married cause boys were gross. She was going to do so many things.” More tears fell, and he wiped his nose on his sleeve. “She never got the chance to do anything.”

Emotions can be infectious, especially when the person exhibiting them was so stoic and self-contained ordinarily. Eleven could feel tears on her own cheeks as Hopper spoke.

“Her birthday was April 17th,” He said. “She would have been seven if she had made it that long. She nearly made it.” The tears were falling freely now. He didn’t even attempt to wipe them away. Eleven wondered if he had ever said these things to anyone. She knew vaguely that most people in town didn’t even know he had had a daughter.

“A few months after, I came home and Diane was packing up Sara’s room. Just pulling down everything and stuffing it into boxes. I asked what she was doing… and she said she was donating it. That she couldn’t stand looking at it all every day. And I got so… angry. It was like she was just throwing her away and I couldn’t believe she could do that. I over-did it a little; I yelled a lot, started throwing things. That’s when she kicked me out for the last time. That,” He pointed to the pile. “Was all I managed to save. That’s all that’s left of Sara.

“Well,” He said, “That and this.” He pulled the bracelet off of his wrist and toyed with it a little. ”She used to wear these stretchy blue hair bands, like, every day. She had all kinds of different bows and hair things she could’ve worn, but she always wanted these.

“One day, while she was on chemo, she pulled them out so she could take a bath, and all her hair came with them. After that, she couldn’t wear them anymore. I was going to throw them away, but she made them into a little bracelet and had me wear it. She said she wanted to save them for when her hair grew back.”

His face crumpled. Holding the little blue bracelet in both hands, he pressed it against his forehead and wept.

Eleven pulled herself up to her knees and hugged Hopper around the shoulders, crying into his neck. They stayed that way for some time.

When Eleven drew back, inexplicably, the blue bracelet was now circling her wrist. She looked at Hopper questioningly as she reached to pull it off.

He stopped her. “No, you should have it,” He said. “She’d want you to have it. I want you to have it, too. We’re family now.”

She smiled and her lip quivered. She nodded and looked at the bracelet. A tenuous connection to a sister she’d never meet. She looked at the two certificated on the table.

“Sara was your daughter,” Eleven said slowly, carefully. “Does this mean that I am, too?”

“Yeah,” He said, regaining composure. “That’s exactly what that paper means. You’re my daughter. I’m your dad. Officially.”

“Just officially?” Eleven said.

Hopper shook his head. “No, not just officially. If you want, it could be for real.”

“For real,” Eleven repeated. “Not like Papa.”

“No, not like Papa,” Hopper said seriously. “I know he wanted you to call him that, but was there ever a time when he called you his daughter? Treated you like a dad is supposed to?”

Eleven shook her head emphatically.

“No, because he doesn’t even know what it means. I doubt he’s ever really loved anything. Certainly not you.” Hopper looked down at the two certificates. “I loved Sara. And I love you, too, kid.”

Eleven had never once in her entire life heard those words. The swirl of emotions was back, but this time, the most out-standing one was joy. Incapable of speech, all she could do was smile and cry.

Hopper reached out an arm and Eleven hugged him around the middle, resting her head on his chest. He squeezed her tight with both arms and planted a peck on the top of her head. After some time had passed, they let go of each other, but she took his hand and held it. They both needed the comfort of touch right then.

Eleven dared to picked up a drawing and asked Hopper what it meant. He told her it was supposed to be a dog-velociraptor, laughing. It went on like this for several hours: Eleven would choose something from the pile, and Hopper would explain what it was; tell little, loving stories about Sara’s brief life, and then he would put it back into the envelope.

When they had gone through the entirety of the pictures and papers, all that was left were the two certificates sitting side by side on the table. The only thing they had in common was the line, “James Hopper: Father.” He folded them and put them both in the brown envelope and sealed it. This wasn’t just old memories anymore. It was proof, just like Hopper had said. The love of a man for his daughters.

Since my work is no longer searchable, please do me a favor and reblog this story if you enjoyed it. Help me reach a wider audience! To help me continue creating, please consider buying me a Kofi, becoming a Patron, or donating directly to my PayPal!

Thanks for reading!

My Masterlist

The Exophilia Creator’s Masterlist

[crimsonsalutations]

What don't you like about fandom hanzo? :o just asking because I'm really picky about it myself personally

oh anon youve asked the Wrong question bc i have A Lot of thoughts on my boy hanzo

BUT before i say anything i just want 2 say that Despite the fact that i bitch a lot abt characterization on this blog, i dont intend hate or disrespect @ anyone who portrays characters in the way i bitch about. fandom is about making yourself happy & if a characterization makes you happy then you should pursue it despite what my dumb bitch ass has to say about it. ok.

ive mentioned this a few times before but i 

A. love redemption arcs and 

B. dont like... victimization. whether its canon or not-- like a character whose whole thing revolves around them being a victim of everything in their life? eh. boring. like widowmaker: she was a happy ballerina... she got brainwashed... it’s like... now what. she was happy, now she’s a victim, there’s nothing cool in there to explore.

i dislike characterizations of hanzo where people try to explain away the fratricide with ‘he was abused by sojiro’ or ‘he was brainwashed by the clan of elders’ partially because of what i just said and partially because it just seems unlikely in canon bc

1.chu... a while ago, said genji was part of overwatch when he was human, which we took as a slip-up but i dont think(?) that he ever took that back. 

2.genji says something in retribution like ‘no matter what i do... i cannot escape my fate’ when mccree says they’ve become assassins, implying he’s tried to escape becoming an assassin.  

3. overwatch was conveniently close enough to genji & the shimadas that they could swoop in and save him before he actually died

4. genji wasnt murdered. he was brutalized. he has scars up and down his arms, he’s got burn scars on his face, and when hanzo was done with him he couldnt walk anymore. plus there’s a post somewhere on here that theorizes due to the nature of blackwatch genji’s prosthesis +  the blood spatter in hanamura, it seems that hanzo attacked him from behind

hanzo’s bio says

Upon the death of his father, the clan elders instructed Hanzo to straighten out his wayward younger brother so that he, too, might help rule the Shimada empire. When his brother refused, Hanzo was forced to kill him. This act broke Hanzo's heart and drove him to reject blah blah 

but genji’s death doesnt seem like some kind of duty driven, single-manly-tear-slipping-down-the-cheek, hold-him-in-your-arms-as-he-goes death. he was brutalized. hanzo was angry.

while hanzo’s bio talks about hanzo’s broken heart, genji’s bio says this

Hanzo demanded that Genji take a more active role in their late father's empire. Genji refused, enraging Hanzo. The tension between the brothers built to a violent confrontation that left Genji on the verge of dying. 

and i mean ok. im not here to judge hanzo or condemn him (personally i think ppl who try to assert their moral superiority over fictional characters are.. a little pathetic) & there’s a lot that goes into this, pressure from the elders, japanese culture, unhealthy environments. but hanzo had a choice.

all this stuff seems to imply to me that genji betrayed the shimadas for overwatch. maybe he caught on that he was in danger without sojiro around to protect him. maybe he just wanted out. i dont know. does it matter? 

but hanzo couldve spared him. couldve cast him out. couldve done a bunch of things, but he didnt. 

the fact is. that hanzo killed his brother. (brutalized his brother).

 and thats why i find him interesting. how do you deal with that?

like, okay. you’re standing there, and you’ve got your little brother’s blood on your hands. and you’re looking down at him (at his corpse) and the adrenaline high is leaving and it’s beginning to sink in that you’ve murdered your little brother. in cold blood. what do you do? what’s next?

i mean, you punch someone in the face and you feel bad about it, you go ‘oh shit im so sorry’ and you grab them an ice pack. but genji’s dead. there’s no one to apologize to. there’s no way to fix it. you’ve done a terrible thing. an evil thing. an abusive, awful, terrible thing. and you cant take it back. and there’s no one or nothing to blame it on: you did it and there’s nothing you can do to change that. 

what’s next? where do you go from there?

that’s what i find interesting about hanzo. because thats the thing about overwatch. anyone can be a hero. even if youve killed your brother. even if you’re the worst person on the planet. all you have to do is try.

and. in this context it makes more sense that hanzo rejects genji at first. the cycle he mustve been going down those ten years.

i killed my brother --> im a terrible person because ive killed my brother --> i killed my brother because im a terrible person

his whole concept of himself has devolved into this brother-killer who can never redeem himself, and then genji pops up one day like ‘hey whats up’ and this isnt just forcing hanzo to re-evaluate his relationship with genji, but also himself. it’s a bit self-centered, yeah, but he rejects genji in part because He Is A Brother Killer, that’s just how he sees himself. genji shows up and hanzo’s like, ‘you cant be alive because im a filthy bastard that killed my brother’

its obvious he still regrets it though. he says it was duty (i cant even get into that w/o more context abt what he means by ‘duty’ + the whole situation beyond vague descriptions in bios) and he also stopped using a sword after that. which is interesting either way. was that out of respect? did he just feel sick using one? idk. 

the whole idea of blaming what he did on abuse or brainwashing is just so meh :/ to me because i just dont like those kind of stories. partially because a lot of the time they just feel like the author is trying to garner sympathy for an unlikable character, and partially because oftentimes abuse is passed off as a motivation when it’s not. 

lots of people are abused. there is no one reaction or outcome of abuse. someone lashes out at their abuser and kills them, that’s because they were angry or scared, not because they were abused. the anger was created bc of the abuse but the anger is what led them to act, not the abuse. 

hearing about the abuse just makes me sad, and to be completely honest it doesnt make me sympathize with a character any more or less. it’s just like adding really bland cheese to a sandwich. i can tell the cheese is there, but i cant taste it and it doesnt really affect the sandwich. all it does is give me more to chew.

hanzo didnt kill genji because he was abused or brainwashed, or else all abused/brainwashed children would kill their siblings. hanzo killed genji because he was angry (maybe that anger as born of abuse. frankly i dont think it matters much). what i want to see less of with hanzo is ‘fucked up bastard kills his brother’ and less of ‘poor abused baby accidentally tripped and stabbed genji with his sword :(’ and more ‘confused man tries to figure out how to live with himself after realizing he is kind of an awful person’

plus i feel like hanzo is a very specific balance between a broken man and a complete jackass and no one seems to combine those 2 traits in a way that satisfies me

[depressiveoptimist]

BNHA Fanfic: I can’t do this anymore - Chapter 1

Hi guys

I tried to put this onto AO3 until i realised i don't have an account and can't be invited to join until the 7th December (boo!) But i wanted to share my first fanfic in the Boku No Hero Academia `fandom, and well- i decided i could finally share some of my writing.. (i’m shy with my writing)

This is quite a TRIGGERY FANFIC, so i’m putting an explicit warning on this just in case!

Category: Explicit Trigger warnings for: Suicide Mention, Graphic Depictions of Suicide, Depiction of Depression, Depression and Deliberate self harm!

Words: 2,189 

                                         Chapter 1: The End for Me:

Midoriya has finally got to breaking point, the nightmares and his past have slowly spurred him down the wrong path mentally. He tries to take his own life.

It was nighttime when it happened, when a doting mother found her child in the tub fully clothed.
 It was nighttime when she noticed the water was red.
 It was at nighttime her son decided to try and take his own life.

Midoriya Izuku was never one of the luckiest people in the world, on the contrary he was quite unlucky with the hand life had dealt him in the world he was born into.
 A world where 80% of the population possess an ability, a quirk if you will.
It could be anything from the ability to use fire, or to just not need sleep at all- even brainwash those around you.
 Midoriya Izuku idolised the handful of those 80% who pursued a career into heroics and was absolutely obsessed, he even analysed every hero he saw throughout his life- countermeasures and interesting points.
It was a hobby, he said.

There was one hero Midoriya wanted to be like the most, All Might.
 A man with such a vague power that the news labelled as a boost of power, or super strength who in his debut saved more people than was thought physically possible.
 The physically impossible became possible with All Might’s influence, he was a symbol of peace- he was Midoriya’s idol. Midoriya was four years old when he was told he had no chance, he had no quirk. He was “quirkless” or known as the 20% of the population that had the unfortunately of not being granted a quirk at all.

He grew up in a neighbourhood alongside other children who got their quirks at this age, especially his friend Katsuki Bakugou.
 Bakugou or Kacchan as Midoriya called him gained an explosion quirk that their kindergarten teachers assured the blonde would be very useful towards pursuing a hero career when he was older.
Before this happened, him and Katsuki were okay friends- Katsuki would tease him for not being good at stuff, but it was never malicious in any way it was more that his friend was teasing in a way to make himself look better. Not that Midoriya had a problem with it, he looked up to his friend and the way his leadership and confidence shined at such a young age and gathered the neighbourhood kids together in a way only Midoriya could hope of doing himself.
 They talked constantly about not being able to wait until they got their quirks, Katsuki boasting he would get an awesome quirk which followed with small little Midoriya Izuku voicing his hope about getting one just as cool as his friends.
The little ones thought times ahead, being heroes together. But quirks changed that.

Katsuki slowly stopped being friendly, one he got his quirk and became malicious so much as to point out that the character’s in Midoriya’s first name also spelt “Deku” or well “useless” which stung when he pointed it out.
Still, the smaller younger version of himself stuck around the blonde - was it fear of being lonely in the neighbourhood or was the tiny child a glutton for punishment? did he think he deserved it because of his unfortunately to not be given a quirk? The years continued and slowly the teasing went from malicious jabs to Katsuki Bakugou using his quirk against the quirkiness child which meant day in day out the small child sported bruising and grazes from these events.
He would also laugh it off with his mother and say he was always just “messing about” with the kids from his school and that this is just “what boys do” to which his mother would shake her head and scold him for his recklessness. He started keeping a first aid kit hidden in his room, so for the days his mother was working he would come back home and patch himself up before she got there and saw the higher scale of these wounds.

Middle school came and went, or well to Midoriya it felt like an eternity of torment where Katsuki Bakugou had influenced the whole class and well, their homeroom teacher wasnt exactly the nicest when it came to acceptance of “quirkless students” Midoriya got used to being a fast runner after school ended, hoping to get home without a solid scrape on himself and some days he was lucky.
Sometimes he wasn’t.

It was when his application to Yuuei was voiced by the teacher, the aggression that seeped off Katsuki Bakugou like heat off an oven- it had a similar overbearing urge to close your eyes to the incoming onslaught.
The threats and taunts clung to the young teen like shackles as he walked home that day, it made his feet heavy and well. 
Luck just wasn't on his side was it? 
He was ambushed by a slime villain that day, the same day he was saved by All Might. 
 The same day the man he admired changed before his very eyes to an emicicatd person who Midoriya didn’t even realise at the time was the same person!

After that fateful meeting he had head home with his head low only to notice that the same slime villain had escaped, and it had his childhood friend! Katsuki Bakugou was trapped in the villain’s grasp.
 He had moved without thinking even though without a quirk to hope to fight this villain to save his childhood friend.
 All might had reappeared, and when it was over in a flash he was ambushed by said hero.
He was told he could be granted a quirk.

The next months had zoomed since then, the training his body had to undergo to accept the quirk, his application to Yuuei Academy and the entrance exam came and went where he used the quirk for the first time. 
 And broke his arm. See the quirk All might had given him was called One for All- a sacred torch type quirk passed down from bearer to bearer, but Midoriya couldn’t control it. 
It happened time and time again when he was accepted into the Academy, he would damage his body every time.
Even more during the sports festival when the damage on his arm was excruciating painful and affected him for a long time afterwards. They had been moved into dormitories on campus following an attack on the class during a camping trip.

It all led up to this day, Midoryia had been suffering the past weeks trying to maintain his happy go lucky attitude, between putting his body through hell at hero classes, and not sleeping at night due to the nightmares of all he had been through seeped into his brain over the months he had experienced them.
 Would he ever be as good as All Might?
 Why.. did everyone help him when he was really just some loser who got lucky time and time again since he joined the academy? It hurt so much.
His mind couldn’t get over not having to jump or twitch whenever someone else he shared a class with walked into the same room.
He was having trouble concentrating and his grades were slipping.
 Did he really deserve to be here? Maybe Bakugou was right, maybe he was useless. A useless waste of space that people were entertaining, he slowly started to withdraw from his friends and became a lot quieter- not that anyone worried too much, maybe he was just focusing on something! he had a tendency to mutter and study on something in his interesting.


Days started to blur together for him, the play of being a happy person became to much, too tiring for him with the fact he was getting absolutely NO SLEEP. Although, one day he looked at the page of his hero analysis book one day and it slowly dawned on him… 
This didn’t make him happy anymore, why.. was he doing this?
Why did he bother writing these notes anyway.
That was the day he locked them away and the whole class noticed he stopped his muttering and analysis of peoples fighting and quirk use in classes.
It was creepy when he did, again. no-one minded.

It slowly creeped into him, like a darkness burrowing into his heart from that day, why was he even trying and putting himself through so much physical and mental anguish if nothing was making him happy anymore? If nothing could make him happy, would he ever be happy again- was he so useless that now his emotions were leaving him this empty casket of a person, did his emotions just shut up shop and move out?
 He wouldn't blame his emotions if they did, he wished he could just leave his mind for one second. People started to get concerned for him though, when he couldn’t put on his happy mask he would just sigh and say he was tired from the classes and he was going to go for a nap in his dormitory. It was starting to become hard, how easy it was to distance himself from people because would anyone really care? If they did why didn’t they follow him when he started acting different?
Why weren’t people more concerned? If no-one around him cared, would anyone? If he just…disappeared into thin air?

It was a day when he got back to the dormitory and the whole class was sat around their big television.
 A head whipped around towards his direction


“Hey! Midoriya-kun come watch the movie with us!” Kirishima grinned

“Oh, i.. uh, cant today Kirishima-kun!” He waved his arms fluidly looking to the side



“How come?”



“Oh, I’m visiting home tonight! my..mum hasn’t seen me in a while!”

“Huh? I see then, Family is important so take care on your travel there!” The Redhead grinned


“Tell Midoriya-san i said Hi!” Uraraku piped up happily waving to Midoriya “Ah! Wil do Uraraka-chan!” Midoriya beamed her his best fake smile before he darted up to his dormitory.

The moment the door closed, the weight on his shoulder felt like it dropped.
He had been planning all day, today. 
Today was his last day on earth.
 He loved his mother, he wanted his last day to be with her He also knew he’d be interrupted fast if he tried anything in the dormitories, and well..He wasn't planning to see tomorrow anyway.

He wrote a letter, his eyes burnt as he wrote it and by the time he was done there were small dents in the paper where water had impacted the paper.
Damnit he had cried. 
He didn’t know he could still do that.

After quietly packing his whole room into boxes like he had unpacked them out of months earlier, he left with his yellow backpack in tow. After a quiet journey to his childhood home, he prayed no-one had checked on his room yet since he had left quite quietly as to not disturb the movie.
 When he arrived home his mother greeted him with a hug, and for a split second he wondered.
 Should i do this?
 But the soul crushing weight of the past months reassured him this was the correct choice. He waited and endured his mother’s socialising until she went to bed, taking a notepad from the coffee table he wrote the same letter as he did earlier in the dormitories. He then went quietly into his mothers room with the letter he had folded up and put it by her bedside.

“I’m so sorry Mum..” he whispered as he kissed her forehead.

The slow trickle of water soothed him as he rummaged through his backpack to find what he was after.
It was a pack of blades he had found a couple days ago at the supermarket to put in face razors that men had.
He bought one of those to dismiss any concerns from the shop assistant, but the razor stayed in the bag. This was it.

When the water was at an acceptable level he got in, huffing out a breath at the slight tinge of cold it had.
Not that it mattered, he wasn't here to wash himself.
He opened the pack quietly, before one of the sharp razor blades landed in his grip and stood out against the skin of his hand. 
Shining silver against pale skin. 
It was kind of beautiful in a weird way to his eyes. He breathed out shakily, his hands were shaking aswell as his breath.
 He couldn’t turn back. 
It had to end.

He used the strong upper arm muscle he had to force the blade deep into his skin, rivers of scarlet already appearing beneath the silver glint of the razor, he dug until it felt deep enough, and he forced the blade up his arm vertically almost instantly, gasping out involuntarily from the pain. 
It was no arm break but, it was... Painful. He gained his breath back shortly after, and dig the same to the other arm, dropping the razor on instinct before diving his deeply cut arms into the cold water, he hissed in pain before leaning his head and breathing a sigh of relief.

“It’s over…”

Everything went black.