#with few existing resources...very scary

[bf-rally]

Progress on the interaction page!

[syluses]

omg I saw your post about frontman!sylus in a squid game au! now the rot is taking over my brain

does sylus have a heartbreaking moment with the reader where he fake dies like the real frontman does in the show? I can imagine it so clearly where reader is devastated that someone she's become so close with is taken from her in one of the last few rounds of the game... until she wins and is escorted to the office where he unmasks and her heart drops in relief that he's alive! but wait... why are you up here, all cleaned up and in a similar uniform to the guards?.. until it finally clicks and the relief morphs into horror...

would love to hear your thoughts!

frontman! sylus

cw. squidgame! au, manipulation, being held hostage, yandere themes, 1.5k

an. nonnie i loooove the way you think!! 😣sorry i was sitting on this but im actually obsessed & just wanted to give it some extra thought bc your idea is 🔥🔥 MWAH sorry its a lil long im insane and sleepy lol :,)

Frontman! Sylus is unreachable to most guards.

With the attention the games require of him and other related matters (communication, keeping the place under wraps, organizing meetings, just to name a few), it’s gonna take a little more than just a red mask to score a conversation with him. He’s worked for. Not worked with. To most, he’s just a deep, mechanical voice who stands tall behind a wall of television screens, and someone in so much power that it’s implicitly understood that he is not to be fucked or toyed with. So all obey him.

He expects nothing but order and blind loyalty and even though it brings a certain monotony he can’t quite shake, he gets exactly what he demands.

Frontman! Sylus is disgustingly wealthy through underhanded means, but he’s oddly classy for someone who holds a mantle earned entirely through blood and violence. This is one big dirty game he oversees, but the contestants know what they’re signing up for, so he can’t really will himself into guilt when they’re all the same— different faces and names but identical minds and hearts. Corrupted. Selfish.

Sylus values a purity that cannot be found within the massive walls of red light green light as players push and step over each other; dalgona, as idiotic sheep use contraband lighters and sweat as a ticket to the next game; mingle, as the more irredeemable of the men yank women from their rooms and lock the door behind them. Sylus also values a purity that does not exist within himself, or not anymore: whatever he had of that is beaten to a pulp as hours pass behind an obsidian mask and he grows colder for it.

Richer, too, so powerful it’s scary— but that’s beside the point.

With every match he witnesses, he loses another scrap of faith he had in humanity. To be fair, he knows he’s no saint, he would never claim to be, but—

But when you come along— a bungling girl who’s landed herself in a debt she can’t hope to climb out of, surprisingly kind to the others but a bit too naive- resourceful, though, enough to inspire the success of several other contestants— his world tilts. A hand reaches through the static of his screen and dares to lift his mask. He sees your pretty face staring agog at the floating piggybank when he closes his eyes: the aquamarine jersey, the white label 109, seared into his conscience and there to stay.

And at first, he’s intrigued more than anything. It’s just curiosity. Maybe a little bit of mean amusement too, okay sure- he’ll admit it’s a whit hard to not chuckle when you cutely plead for the bathroom to a stoic guard(— it’s alright, let 109 in— ) who’s just not hearing you or nearly fall off your bunk amidst a very fitful sleep.

But those feelings that develop within the span of a couple days are nothing too crazy, nothing he can’t manage and process.

For a short time.

You seem a silly, clumsy girl at face value, your trembling hands, clear as day through the monitor, a blatant sign of the fear you do a damn bad job at hiding- yet it’s not enough to cloud your mind. You prevail through the games and pull some unexpected, winning move right when he’s convinced you’ll succumb to stupidity, a mistake (either yours or another’s), or the malicious will of someone you’d looked at as a friend mere moments before the timer started.

You’re clever. Adaptive. He’s reminded of bunnies and how even the smallest, fairest of creatures have the base survival instinct in them; you’ll do what you must to make it out of here.

Your half-baked plan of going along with the flow and later adjusting to it is as unreliable as it is unable to be helped- you don’t have much better options in such an unpredictable environment. It goes surprisingly well, though, and earns both the respect and attention of an otherwise unfeeling frontman.

Well, it goes well up until it doesn’t. It goes well until it’s nighttime and the lights go out and Sylus braces for utter chaos to unloose itself between the bunks— unexpectedly stiff behind his screen as he searches for your figure amidst a collage of thermal shapes. Your ragtag group of misfits (the unwanted: elderly folk, females and the disabled) is attacked and takes an impressive stand, but you’re just a girl at the end of the day, and your foes are more numbered, so much bigger and infinitely more cruel—

Sylus rushes out the viewing room, briskly replacing his ominous, black garb for a teal-blue tracksuit. There’s no questions asked; the guards carry on with their jobs quietly, noting their boss’s strange behavior with a little jerk of their heads but no outward shock is risked beyond that.

They give him a wide berth because the look smoldering in ruby-red eyes is frightening.

Sylus decides right then, in the unfurling havoc, that he’s sure as hell no saint but he can play the part for a few games if it means saving your ass now.

And eventually, when it’s dwindled down to just a few players, he’ll even be a martyr. He’s not entirely sure why he does what he does where your presence is involved, the measures he goes to— all Sylus knows is that he needs to protect you from the fucked-up, dog-eat-dog world (and maybe the consequences of your own financial actions), and maybe endear yourself to him in the process.

…What better way to endear yourself to him than to watch as he consistently puts his life on the line for you throughout the course of the next few games-? snarling in the faces of other hostile, foolish players while you’re cowering behind his broad back, guarding you like a hound as you rest, suggesting his arms as your ulitimate safehouse and whispering shh, sweetie, I won’t let anything get close tonight, so sleep.

To hell with all that— what better way to endear yourself to him than to die in your place?

So he does. Or, you’re all but convinced he does, and that’s all that matters.

In the last round, more or less the grand finale of the whole game, he goes out like a hero, sacrificing himself for you with a few dying words and a gentle command ‘to remain true to yourself’ as you cup his face for as long as you’re allowed before the red-suited figures almost hesitantly step over and drag him away. Sylus knows telling you his name is risky- even making a short cameo in the activities is life-threatening- but he can’t find it in him to regret it when you’re howling it over the speakers, knelt to the ground and ugly-crying as you shake your fists. No doubt you’re blaming yourself, deciding in your heart that it should’ve been you instead of him.

No, it should’ve been everybody else, kitten, and he made damned sure it was.

Sylus is charmed by it, readying himself by the door as a muffled hubbub of boots echo on the other side, committing your each and every kindness to memory. It wounds him, again to his own surprise, to see you so devastated and know he’s the catalyst for it, but a part of him preens when you’re so wrapped up in your own heartbreak over his supposed death that you forget your handsome cash prize entirely.

Unselfish girl. Beautiful girl. His chest puffs with pride. You really are his girl.

And in the end, all of these rotten games were worth it, the time and violence and the better part of his humanity. Even if you don’t quite realize that yet, stumbling through his door with wobbling knees and a ruddy face that quickly warps with a plethora of emotions- confusion, relief, and then a brilliant look of mortification that steals the breath from his lungs- even if it takes time and patience on his end to work you through it. He’ll gently assure that he won’t hurt you, that you’ll never end up as an insignificant player in those childish killing fields again.

He’ll scoop your broken pieces up in his strong arms and tuck you under his chin, to his breast, murmuring sweet nothings as he sends his watchful unit of guards a quiet look to leave the room. And of course they do because they value their heads.

“You did well, Sweetie- but don’t forget about your prize, hm? Tonight, I’ll give you more than you could possibly imagine,” he plants a kiss to your forehead, sickeningly tender, and knuckles aside the hair matted there, damp from all your needless sobbing.

He chuckles lightly, voice velvety soft. “I think some… thanks are in order, don’t you?”

[call-me-strega]

New chapter of HBSD for Jason is just like, hey you get your crush in your bed! But not in that way, actually it’s much worse whoops

I am curious though, what does Jason think happened in Danny/Ellie’s backstory? Because what he has to go off of is 1) Vlad is paying child support and low key Danny is worried about custody 2) Ellie and other attempts were created, but not how (and obv most people wouldn’t assume cloning) 3) Ellie was introduced to Danny LATER 4) Vlad is simultaneously creepy/involved in Ellie’s creation, but also still trying to date Danny’s mom

If I overheard that phone convo, I would be very concerned (obviously), but also trying to figure out how…how the hell any of them are related. Like, trans Danny with Ellie taken early and reintroduced later? Vlad is trans? Is Vlad even biologically involved because Danny never says so, just that he’s in some way responsible so-Vlad paid someone to be a surrogate at some point for some reason? I would have NO idea because none of those explanations would quite make sense from the phone convo unless I knew cloning was an option, you know?

Oh, I totally see how that'd be confusing. Let me explain my thought process when I wrote this.

You see after hearing that conversation, in the moment Jason assumes that something was happening along the lines of the trans theory. The pit rage did cloud his judgment a bit, so he focused more on the custody/separation aspects and wanting to protect these new people in his territory who have something akin to an age-old story he has heard before. Plus, later on during the 4th of July chapter Danny reveals more of his parents' relationship with Vlad and alludes to what happened between them, basically implying that they trusted Vlad near Danny, but he did something to Danny to get his genetic material. Which isn't untrue but somewhat misleading. Later when he has time to re-examine the info from both conversations he adjusts his theory.

Keeping in mind that this is the same universe where cloning is possible and genetic studies are likely more advanced in turn it wouldn't be a stretch to assume test tube babies are a Thing that Exist more commonly there than in the real world. Especially, if we use the version of the story where Damian was a test tube baby rather than Talia actually getting pregnant making it a possibility Jason would definitely be aware of.

Jason's leading theory right now was that some creepy old guy (Vlad) was obsessed with Danny's mom, and later Danny himself. And because his parents trusted Vlad they let him get close to Danny despite Danny recognizing Vlad was a creep. All of this is basically accurate, so here's where things diverge. Jason assumes Danny was assaulted (either physically or sexually) by Vlad, who took his genetic material by force. Then the creepy old rich guy used his money to try and create a test tube baby using their combined DNA. The first few attempts failed but when one finally took Danielle was the result. The creep then tried to raise her and poison her against her other genetic donor, to little success because she was such a small child. Danny became aware of what Vlad had done shortly after Danielle was born, but was too young and vulnerable to fight back and get custody. However, once he got older he finally gathered the resources to fight back and managed to get custody of his daughter. Danny has something he can use against Vlad to keep him in check, likely a scary lawyer or some sort of blackmail. Now he's trying to live a normal life with Ellie and makes sure Vlad compensates him with child support. All things considered not to far from the truth but missing some key context details.

With the type of shenanigans always going down the DC universe his theory really isn't that much of a stretch. In all honesty though, Jason tries not to spend too much time dwelling on it for a couple of reasons: 1) In his experience, people who go through similar things want to be left alone, lest something happen that could jeopardize their situation (hiding from an abuser). 2) Danny made it clear when he declined seeking protection from Red Hood that he had the situation handled and didn't want anyone getting involved, Jason's meddling wouldn't help anything. 3.) Jason wants Danny to trust him enough to tell him the whole story himself, and 4.) Jason is busy with other stuff like work, vigilante-ing, and falling in love to go unnecessarily digging around in a story that honestly isn't as unique as one might think.

Obviously, there might still be holes in my logic but that's basically what I believe Jason's view on the situation would be. I hope that sheds some light onto how I intended the situation to look like from the outside.

[cellophaine]

Chapter VII: DROP SHOT

Masterlist

Pairing: Art Donaldson x F!Reader

Warnings: None.

Author's Note: I'm so so sorry for the late upload! Your girl has been in the trenches mentally and creatively lately 😭

GIF Source:@/birdmans

2007. Stanford.

New year, new semester, and what came with it was a promising fresh start. Despite the mental toll from the disastrous few days spent with your parents, you chose not to address it. You could never get the time you cried over them back, and it was time to move on. Your focus was swiftly redirected to something much more pleasant and exciting: you had started drafting for a new project. 

An inkling of an idea bloomed from the paradoxical of your life. Being on the verge of entering your 20s, you were aware of your inadequacy when it came to love. Yet, you couldn't keep the feeling of knowing and understanding its inner workings and mechanisms from rising above your insecurity. Being a child of parents who weren't very loving and born into the belief that everything was transactional, you thought you knew everything there was about love. There needed to be a form of reciprocation so the relationship could thrive. Love wasn't an infinite resource that you could take and take because, eventually, the other person would grow tired of you and leave. This belief was built into your foundational core, and its development intertwined with yours as you grew up. 

But Art confused you. He gave up his vacation in Vermont to spend time with you and make sure you were okay without the constant reminder that you owed him something. He'd made you feel like you deserved to be cared for without conditions attached. The dismantling of your guarded exterior was slow, yet he had been so patient. You realized you didn't need it when you were with him. 

The connection you shared was something different. It passed the point of infatuation but not quite there at love. Unknown yet so unanimous in its nature that you didn't have to say it out loud. A beautiful thing that was nameless, yet its existence was tangible and real. It lived in the vigorous beats of your heart every time he was close. It ran wild in your bloodstream every time he smiled at you. Its cadence rose and fell with the touches of laughter you shared. 

In a way, Art had become your muse. You started to write about the way Art made you feel, about the way your perception of love had changed, and what it was like to be on the receiving end of it. You would often feel the itch to write, to grasp onto one of the many loose threads that swirled around your mind and follow it to wherever it'd take you. The wandering then materialized on the pages of the notebook he gave you, glistened in the fine ink. Pages after pages, and he knew of none of them. You felt like it was fitting to immortalize him with your words, within the scope of your ability in the only way you knew how. The more you filled the notebook, the closer you came to realizing that you were falling for him, with each walk to the tennis court, with each minute he spent with you at the coffee shop, and outside of that, too. It was scary to be so smitten with him, but you didn't care. He was your only friend, your most trustworthy companion, and no one could compare to that. You declined invitations to go out with Grace and Ashley so you could spend more time with Art. Your world revolved around him like he was the most important person in the world. What else did you need?

You accompanied Art to practice whenever you could, and during late hours, when the soft white lights lit up the court, he taught you how to play. He fixed your stance, adjusted your grip, and showed you the basics. After a few weeks, you could rally with him. You came to every match and cheered him on. You came to Tashi's matches, too, just to spend more time with Art. You never failed to notice that distant look in his eyes as he watched Tashi play, almost like a longing, a hopeless yearning for something he couldn't quite reach. Was it wrong that you wanted Art to look at you that way? Was it selfish of you that you wanted his longing gaze to be on you and only you? Even though when he looked back at you, he would flash you a smile that made you temporarily forget about the pestering question. 

/

The sun was warm on your skin, staving off the brisk wind, but you didn't want to move from your spot in the corner of the court. With the notebook on your lap, you were writing while waiting for Art to finish practice. He was with Robbie, and you could hear his grunts from where you were sitting. In your bag were two admissions to the movie Art told you he had been wanting to see but didn't have the time to check it out. Your excitement and anticipation were barely contained; you had looked forward to surprising him all week.

The gate rattled, and then, a voice called out.

"Let's go!"

That made you look up from your notebook. You watched as the stranger sauntered over in Art's direction.

"Come on, Donaldson, big serve. Big serve!"

Art went to serve but gave up halfway as the newcomer called out again in a teasing tone. Art angled his body to face the new guy, finally acknowledging him. 

"Finish it up, Donaldson. Come on."

Art went for a serve so quick that Robbie couldn't catch on. He turned towards the guy, and the racquet fell limp in his grasp. The stranger opened his arms and walked toward Art, who then walked away and playfully dismissed the gesture. You could see a genuine smile on his face, highlighting the boyish charm in his features. You watched as they started to chase each other through the courts, jumping over the net and other boys on the bench. 

You waited until their chase came to a stop, when they were standing face to face, talking to one another in an effervescent manner. You noted to yourself that this was a new side of Art that you hadn't seen yet. 

Art waved at you as you approached, drawing the newcomer's attention to you. He looked at you up and down as Art introduced the two of you. His big hand enveloped yours in its warmth and callouses. Patrick's eyes had a spark of recognition the moment you told him your name. He smirked, still holding your hand.

"It's nice to finally meet the girl Art's been 'hanging out' with."

He glanced cheekily at Art. 

"What do you mean?"

"Art wasn't being very clear on that, so …"

You looked to Art to see him glaring at Patrick. Your brows furrowed as understanding dawned on you. Your heart thumped harshly in your chest. 

"Oh, right."

Patrick didn't seem to catch onto your confusion. He drew you closer by tugging on your hand, which was still wrapped in his.

"I don't get it. If I was him, I'd waste no time."

Art elbowed Patrick lightly.

"Dude, what about Tashi?"

"Dude, I said if I was you."

You interrupted before Art could say anything.

"You're not wrong. We're just casual friends."

Art looked at you, his gaze inquisitive, but you pretended that nothing was wrong. You put on a cheery voice, hoping Art would overlook what you'd just said.

"Anyway, it looks like you'll be busy. I'll… see you later."

Without waiting for an answer from Art, you turned to Patrick.

"It's nice to meet you, Patrick."

Patrick's reciprocation fell on your ears as you turned around and walked away. You didn't make it too far before Art got a hold of your wrist. 

"Wait, didn't you say you wanted to ask me something?"

You thought about the tickets in your bag, but you shook your head.

"No, it's nothing."

"Are you sure? I'm sorry, but I didn't know Patrick were stopping by today. I haven't seen him in a few weeks as well ..."

You understood his implication perfectly. You patted his forearm. 

"I'm sure. Don't worry about it. Go hang out with your friend."

You made a move to leave, but Art didn't budge, holding you in place.

"Will I see you tomorrow? Tashi's match?"

You nodded without hesitation.

"Of course."

This time, you were able to leave without Art's intervention. Almost immediately, your mind started to whirl, hurtling headfirst into overanalyzing what you had witnessed. You knew that Patrick was Art's friend from the academy. From what Art had told you, they were very close. But you couldn't shake the feeling that there was more to it. 

Each step was heavier than the last as you felt the increasing disappointment weighing on your mind. Instead of going home or to the theatre, you pivoted in the direction of the library. Choosing the most private spot in the computer area, you looked up Art and Patrick's names. A list of articles unfolded themselves before your eyes, inviting you to click on them, with most of them reporting on their victory at the US Junior Open last year. You read through the articles, and your eyes studied every single photo attached. Art and Patrick posing for pictures, kissing their cups, and celebrating their victory. 

But pictures could only tell so much. Opening a new web browser, you went on YouTube and searched for their names. You clicked on the first one you saw, which highlighted their best performances throughout the tournament. They played so well together. They fit like two pieces of a puzzle. What one person lacked, the other would make up for it. They were unstoppable, and it was hard to look away from their exquisite dynamic. 

You watched as the camera zoomed in on the two of them celebrating in the final, clinging to one another as they went down to the ground. You replayed the moment over and over until you could recount it as if you were there. You clicked on another video, then another, going from the beginning of their US Junior Doubles tournament to the very end. You were fixated and only left the library late into the night when fatigue took over. The night went by as you sat by your phone, assignments on your desk, waiting for a call or a text from Art. You went to bed that night disappointed, with a spark of indignation simmering in your mind.  

/

Even though your class ended at 12, and you could've gone home to study, you went to Tashi's match anyway. You hadn't met the girl yet, but you had been to her matches as if you were a Duncanator yourself. But you went because Art would be there, and you wanted to spend time with him. Even though he'd spend most of that time looking at another girl. Despite going to the match of your own volition, your anger still felt justified somehow. 

You came in, and the bleacher was already half filled with people. You looked around to find Art. He saw you first, his long arm reaching up and waving at you. You didn't wave back; instead, you looked down, pretending to watch your steps as you made your way to him. He beamed at you as you inched closer to his seat.

"Hey."

"Hey."

You took the seat next to him without making eye contact with him. Art seemed to catch onto your mood. 

"Look, about yesterday–"

"Where's Patrick?"

He took a brief moment before answering. 

"I ... don't know. I texted him, but he hasn't answered."

"Oh. I was looking forward to seeing more of him today."

Still refusing to look at Art, you trained your gaze toward the court. At that, he sat up straight. 

"What do you mean by that?"

"I like him. He seems like a fun guy."

You turned your head to look at him. You could almost see the thoughts written on his face, and your tense moment was interrupted by an onslaught of cheer as Tashi made her appearance. You used that moment to look away, to direct your attention to Tashi and clap for her. But it didn't stop the heat from spreading through your skin and burning your cheeks. You knew what you were doing was petty, but at that moment, all you cared about was getting back at Art. 

The match commenced with bated breath and tension so heavy you could feel it in the air. Tashi's usual assertiveness was replaced by a nervous energy. She usually met each volley with precision and confidence, but right now, it was because she had to. You had watched her play enough to tell the difference. And in a blink of an eye, you almost missed it. The air shifted with Tashi as she went down to the ground with a sharp cry. The sight and sound were so visceral that you sprang from your seat, your mouth parted in shock as you watched Tashi writhe on the ground, hugging her knee. Her cries were piercing in the dead quiet of the court, and before you could say anything to Art, he took off. 

You followed his blurred movements and watched as he jumped over the net to get to Tashi. Your eyes glued on them as Art put Tashi's head on his lap; his mouth moved, whispering things you couldn't hear over the rising whispers around you.

The audience dispersed after a while. You stood outside of the rec centre where Tashi was taken, debating whether you should go in or not. After another long moment of consideration, you sucked in a breath and entered the building. After asking for directions, you went down the corridor and looked at each room before you found Tashi on a bed with her arm on her forehead. Art sat on a chair next to the bed she was resting on and was partially shielded by her, but he saw you. He squeezed her arm, telling her he would be right back. You instinctively stepped back from the opening of the door, not wanting Tashi to spot you. Even with what she was going through right now, you doubted that she cared. It was purely from the fact that you weren't ready to be confronted by what you'd been suspecting.

"How is she doing?"

You whispered. Art shook his head, his lips flattened into a grim line. 

"Not good."

"What can they do for her?"

"Not much. They can't tell until they can get the x-rays from the hospital. We're waiting for the ambulance right now." 

You nodded. Behind the outline of Art's body, you could see Tashi. Crestfallen, scared, if the impatient shakes of her uninjured leg were any indication.

"Is there ... anything I can do?"

You didn't even know why you offered. Still, you felt like you needed to do something, to be useful even though nothing in this situation pertained to you. 

"No, nothing. I'll stay with her to make sure that she's okay." 

You resigned with a nod. 

"Alright. Call me later, okay? Let me know how she's doing."

He inclined his head in agreement and went back to Tashi without sparing a second glance at you. Your heart chipped a little at that, but you brushed it off. Art cared about her, and there was nothing wrong with that. They were friends. You'd do the same for Grace and Ashley. To feel jealous was to be irrational, and you didn't want that. But was your inkling of doubt really unreasonable?

You were about to round the corner when Patrick almost ran into you. He murmured an apology before taking off. He stopped in front of the door you were at just moments ago. You were frozen in place, hearing Patrick's desperate pleas, Tashi's angry cry, and, at last, Art's thunderous shout echoed down the hallway.

"Patrick, get the fuck out!!"

You had never heard him like that. Angry, with a territorial edge to it. You forced yourself to walk away; the need to withdraw into yourself once again overwhelmed your mind despite your conscious effort not to think about what'd just happened. But you couldn't help it. 

Later that night, there was no phone call, not even a text. Art's silence was a knife that dug deep into your heart, but like always, you ignored it, even though you knew it had never been a good idea.

Likes, reblogs, and comments are greatly appreciated! I'd love to read your thoughts on the story!

For updates, please follow @cellophaine-archives

[olderthannetfic]

Honestly my biggest problem with self diagnosis is people deciding that they have something, inserting themselves into the community, and then acting like authorities on that condition and talking over people who actually have it.

I have autism and I'm really active in the communities so I'll use that as an example.

I very frequently see self diagnosed people insisting that being autistic is an amazing, wonderful superpower that causes them no problems whatsoever, and saying that the only reason it's considered a disability is because society is ableist.

They come into the community, see that the rest of us are struggling with our literal disability, and then go "Um, autism isn't a disability, it's amazing! I love being autistic, so if you don't, you just have internalized ableism and you hate yourself :)"

Which is, uh, certainly an interesting take considering the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-V and ICD-11 states that to be diagnosed with autism the symptoms must cause significant impairment.

And like, even if we did live in a magical utopia where autism is 100% accepted and no one is ever ableist (which will not exist in my lifetime, if ever), I would still hate being autistic!

I would still be unable to wear clothes that I want to wear or eat food that I want to eat because the texture makes me want to cry, and I would still have horrible meltdowns that result in me punching and biting myself.

We're also shamed and silenced for wanting actual, effective treatments, which is fucking insane. Why is it okay if I want medication to treat my ADHD, but if I want medication to stop my nervous system from overloading and breaking down over normal stimuli like wearing jeans or hearing a dog bark, I'm an evil ableist eugenicist?

I have no problem with people who take the time to read through the diagnostic criteria, read posts from people in the community, and then go, "Yeah, you know what, I've ruled out everything else it could be, I'm probably autistic."

But if someone's just going to watch a few Tiktoks with vague, cutesy symptoms and go "Omg I tap my fingers, that's stimming! And I really love cartoons, and I'm super shy and awkward sometimes! I'm definitely neurospicy :3" and then come into the community and demand that we sanitize everything and stop talking about our scary, yucky, unpleasant symptoms like incontinence and meltdowns and executive dysfunction, then yeah, get the fuck out.

--

It's always annoying when someone enters a space that's essentially about providing resources and starts hogging them or blocking others' access.

[wiseguynephile]

re the red flag shirt post

the thing is that any man who's paying attention realizes that loud male sexuality is scary. not inherently, not to everyone; but it's scary to a lot of women as a result of the world we live in and the experiences they have had at the hands of other men. and so we have to reckon with that

we don't get to be confidently, aggressively sexual in public*. because that's harassment. some people say this and they mean "that's what those feminazi SJWs will call 'harassment,' and it's oppression" — please understand that's the opposite of what i'm saying. I'm saying, if a man confidently, aggressively displays sexuality in public, that is in fact harassment. it scares and hurts people, it makes them feel threatened, it makes them feel like they can't just safely exist in public. it causes all of the feelings in some bystanders that we are trying to prevent and avoid when we take steps to prevent harassment.

i would love to be a visibly sexual being! i'd adore an opportunity to "display myself as sexually available" or "present myself to the female gaze" or whatever else the notes on that post said. in the vanishingly few places i get that opportunity, i take it immediately. but generally, men don't get to do that. because of the shitty behavior of other men, no men get to "confidently" display their sexuality. only women get to do that, because women's sexuality is not inherently, automatically a threat. men's is. we get to display our sexuality with explicit consent, or within very specific, clearly delineated spaces that defang it and make it safe,** and otherwise we are morally obligated to try to be sexually nonthreatening in public.

meanwhile other men who simply do not care about any of the above and do not think they have any obligation to care about other people's feelings do go around Confidently Displaying their sexuality. and as that poll showed, 60% of women go "ooh cool sexy" so those men are sexually successful. and 40% of women continue to feel scared and uncomfortable. same as it ever was.

i hope one day this stops being true, i don't think it's inherent in any laws of the universe (gender is fake, it's all made up). it's just a conditional result of the world we currently live in where so hugely many women are being harassed and assaulted by male sexuality on a constant basis. once that stops happening, then a display of male sexuality can become acceptable and fun

* unless we're being fruity about it, which also clearly defangs it—if it's clearly a display of gay sexuality then women know it is not a threat to them. that's why this isn't nearly so much of an issue for gay men.

** or, third case, if we're simply extremely attractive, in which case we often get given a pass. lots of people who'd be bothered if it was an ugly dude with the slutty shirt (or whatever) will be okay with it if he's hot. that's just the classic "hello, human resources???" dynamic at work. but even then you're still making a bunch of women feel unsafe, just a smaller bunch; it's not really okay, you're just more likely to get away with it.

[in-mutual-weirdness]

On Dating My Partners

Here is a personal essay on being in a singlet-plural relationship, originally posted on cohost (RIP) and subsequently onto dreamwidth as well. Enough people liked it both times that I'm sharing it here as well.

So, dating and plurality are topics that get covered a fair bit online, when you know the right places to look. Tumblr's got a not-insignificant corner, even if I don't go looking for it. Unfortunately, the broader public not knowing a ton about plurality also means that there's a lot of facets of my relationships that I don't really get to share or talk about. I had a handful of opportunities to write about it recently, so now I'm making a big ol' post about it here. In case it helps people learn, or understand something a little better, or maybe gives some folks an idea of what their lives could look like.

Also! If you want to hear more about dating from plural folks themselves, I'd recommend you check out the work of LB Lee (on dreamwidth and itch.io), and the many videos available on the plural events youtube channel, the archive for the Plural Positivity World Conference. There are other written accounts on people's personal blogs and youtube channels, but these are the ones I personally go back to often.

--- 2 Girlfriends, 1 Butch, and Assorted Roommates in a Trench Coat My partner(s) and I started dating when we both thought we were cisgender. We'd figured out our respective flavors of queer, more or less, but transness was something that emerged over the course of our relationship together. There's nothing quite as fun as t4t high-fiving on the escalators as you swap places in the gender binary.

Of course, even with our established baseline of queerness (and even after my partner had already spoken to me about being nonbinary), I was nervous coming out to them at the time. It's a big deal after all, to tell your partner that you're not the person who you (or they) thought you were. In a lot of ways transness is an unfurling of what was already there, and a partner who is flexible and compatible enough will be able to accept this change as who you are, and keep growing alongside you. But also. How do you know if the person you are going to become is someone who will be compatible with them, or if they will stay compatible with you?

All this to say, I think in a very real way, our existing experience with coming out and transitioning in the context of a relationship prepared us both to better handle the syscovery when it happened.

I'm not gonna like, go into it in a lot of detail. That's really not my story to tell. I will say that I owe a lot to the educational and outreach efforts of folks who were already out and plural, from the 20-teens onward. My partnersys sorted their selves-discovery out with the help of some close plural friends and many good written resources around plurality, questioning, and figuring things out. Meanwhile I'd also benefited from casual internet friendships with both that same system and other systems who I'd met among other internet communities. As many of y'all already know, few things help better than simply getting to know people from the identity/affinity group and these folks becoming part of your normal. And several of them helped me way at the beginning when all of this was new and a little confusing and scary because it was new and not yet known or predictable.

Eventually, people in the system started taking on names, and figuring themselves out as individuals. And that's when I started getting to know them as them and not just as the gestalt single person I'd known up until then. And being able to do that has been one of the best parts of my relationship.

One of the major, baseline requirements toward respecting plurality is being able to treat different system members as independent autonomous people. Yeah, they're a collective in the sense of being all in the same body, and there's gonna be a degree of memory & knowledge sharing depending on the system in question. But like, they're still separate entities from each other, which means you gotta forge a relationship with each of them as individuals. What was once a relationship with a single person now is a multifaceted web across multiple people, with different comfort levels, boundaries, and personal tastes. That was the first major piece of advice I got, when I binged through a DID youtuber's channel[1], and watched the video their partner made.

In his case, he spoke about how his partner was Jess, the system host (not all systems have one, but this one did). The other system members were all distinct people who he forged unique relationships with. Some of them were still interested in physical affection/intimacy, while others weren’t, and they were simply roommates/friends. Even though they weren't all dating, however, he saw forming a relationship with them and getting to know them as an essential part of his relationship with Jess, and part of his duty as a partner. These were important people in her life, after all, and at minimum he didn't want to be an asshole. So he spent time with all of them, talked to them about their interests, and did stuff they liked together. No matter who was out, he respected them as a person, respected their autonomy and their boundaries when they differed from his partner’s, and didn’t treat them as peripheral or disposable, or do things like ask them to bring his partner back out, please. (Fewer ways to make someone feel unwanted than to directly ask them to get someone else instead. They have a place in this body and in this world as much as anyone else in the system does.)

Some systems do date as a collective, where every member participates in the romantic relationship. My partnersys does not, however, so our relationship is much more like the one from the youtube channel. Three of the most common fronters are my partners (the aforementioned two gfs and one butch [Edit: at time of this repost, we're now married]). The rest of the system members are either close friends, or similarly are people I care about because of their connection to the system and my partners. If they don't show up externally often, I may not be very close to them, but like. They're still people in my family unit and household.

All of us are tied by our mutual connections to the members I am dating, and our lives intersect closely due to us living together and all the system members sharing a body. Not all of the system members share romantic love with me, whether due to incompatibility, personal disinterest, or stuff like "being 12 years old". To a degree, I was already used to dealing with these sorts of incompatibilities or drastic changes in boundaries - they just used to manifest as shutdowns where my partner would suddenly withdraw from affection and not want to be touched. Some of that was more typical "I feel like shit and don't want to be touched", but some of that was also people with very different boundaries sharing a body in an atmosphere where they were socially expected to be available and receptive to touch at all times, and failing to do so was a mark against them as a Good Partner. (Even if I knew to respect sudden withdrawals, none of us are immune to societal messaging.) If anything, knowing what's behind it has made it much easier to accommodate and meet everyone's differing needs. It's made me better at being a truly safe person to be around, because I know they're there and can respond accordingly.

It is nice being able to date my 3 partners. In the same way that transness is an uncovering of what was there, I recognize aspects of each of the system members in ways they acted before discovering plurality. We have the many years of previous relationship history to build from, but it is a joyful thing to get to learn each of them as themselves. The things they like, the specific dynamics we build between each other, the ways they understand themselves and their relationships. All 3 of them are therian and bring those aspects of their identity into their relationships as well (i.e. ways they like to give/receive affection, ways they structure their relationships. The wolf has his pack, and one of the dragons has her hoard - each valued, unique, but never given primacy or ownership over her. I will be her husband, but she won't be my wife.) Getting to know them means each of them get to be loved as themselves, and like. Yeah, I am loved many times over because there are more of them. I love the cheerful energetic affection of Quinn, the gruff protective masculinity of Ace, the devastating femme elegance of Orchid. Each of them show up so differently even within the same body - in language, in voice, in mannerisms. I love how each of them love me in different ways, and how that feeds different facets of me. I love being shared by them, and the ways they'll tease me about each other. I love the act of caring for each other, and the ways those make our collective lives better because their needs are being met.[2] I love the ways that these have all added to my life.

--- Intersections with Polyamory: or, Sharing the Trenchcoat On top of me having this web of relationships, each of them also have their own partnerships with others. Some of these are spread across multiple bodies, and some of these are other folks within a single system. I make the distinction because sharing a body and therefore having to share consciousness and control of said body imposes some practical limitations on your daily life.

For one thing, you straight up cannot control who's at the wheel at any given time. Some systems have no control over switching, but even those who can control switching and consciously hand off front time to each other don't always have that control. Sometimes people might white-knuckle from stress and get stuck in front, to the point that even if they try to let someone else show up, they'll resurface by accident. Sometimes people run out of steam sooner than expected, or are struggling with something that makes being present too painful, and have to hand it off to someone else. Others might spontaneously show up because something has pulled them to front, or they get so excited they barge past everyone else.[3] They might be one of your partners, they might be someone else. It means that even if you're dating multiple people and hold them in equal esteem, you won't always get to spend as much time with them as you want. Or they might want to spend part of their limited slice of front time talking to other people, who they also have relationships and obligations to. Time is still a very present constraint, when the same 24 hrs and limited physical energy must be shared across multiple people.

Even if you can request people to get someone else...well, see what me and that other partner said in the previous section. That is not a request that can be made lightly, if you value everyone's autonomy. If you make someone feel unwanted, or disrespected, or less important/real than the others, you are Being A Dick. And that unequal treatment causes internal conflict for the system. Simply from a pragmatic point, you make shit worse for your partner if you cannot be nice to the people sharing their head.

In terms of how that impacts relationships and communication, for me it means having to save shit for the next time they're around. If I want to talk to Ace about a book we both read, I gotta wait til he's around. If I found some cute gay art for Quinn, I save it if she's out of town, so to speak. Yeah, if I post the link in our DMs, she'll be able to see it eventually, but I can't just keep spamming Quinn-links into the channel when someone else is there. It gets tiresome for them, especially if their interests don't overlap.

Their level of internal communication means that I can mention stuff to others and they can usually pass it on, or have a solid guess on what that person's response would be. For example, when I wrote a book review post and talked about reading it with Zanj (one of the "roommate" suite), I sent that passage to Quinn for a onceover before hitting post. Zanj eventually also showed up to comment directly (another reason to be careful with direct communication - you may unseat the current person in front if the person you've summoned crowds them out). For bigger things, like taking on a roommate or making travel plans, or anything that needs direct input from everyone, you do just gotta wait. The opinion of one person won't necessarily reflect the opinion of another, and while they can discuss stuff internally to reach a collective decision, that shit also takes time. Some folks may be difficult to reach, or they may need to resolve an impasse first.

Sharing the trenchcoat here also refers to the complications of dating multiple people in the same body. It is important that you not forget who they are. I've had moments where one person was out more consistently for a very long stretch of time, and when a different partner was out for a while, I treated them like the first person out of habit - got surprised by something the second partner did differently, or when they expressed an interest that the first partner didn't have. If you can see how that would be frustrating or hurtful to people who didn't share a body - congratulations. You now know exactly why that felt shitty for the second partner.

It is also important that you share independent time with each person. Yes, they have collective memory, so a date night I enjoyed with Ace is something that all three of them can remember (and I'm pretty sure Quinn stole his leftovers the next day for lunch). But like. This follows once again from the basic principle of "they are independent autonomous people." They will want different things. One may enjoy much more casual intimate touch, another may be asexual and disinterested in that kind of touch. The ways you banter with each other or spend your time together will be different. And like, shared memory doesn't mean they will feel the same immediacy to that memory - memories Belong to the person they happened to, even if you share the same brain. Quinn and Orchid know about the date, but they don't feel connected to the memory in the same way because it happened to someone else. If I want to date them, I have to date them. Otherwise all I'm giving them is secondhand affection and care. Not a great way to prove that you care about and value them as a person.

At the same time, this relationship arrangement is also different from previous poly arrangements I've had with people across multiple bodies. It's certainly cheaper to find shared housing with three partners if they're all in the same meatsuit. I don't have to navigate travel or scheduling in the same way - they handle the sharing of time among themselves, according to ability and circumstance. I just wake up and see who's around that day. And even if they're not in front, they can still be around. I have physical tokens and reminders around - a plushie they like, or a necklace they own. I already liked keeping orchid flowers in the house for personal and cultural reasons - now I have one more. The person who's in front may also pass on commentary or reactions, and I briefly get to glimpse them from their life inside. They all have a shared collective history, and we draw from the same 8-year accumulated bank of in-jokes and shared language. They rotate in and out of my daily life with ease, immediacy, and fluidity. It was different from the much slower work of building from scratch with someone entirely new. But it is nice to do that work as well. There is a different kind of novelty in getting to know someone with an entirely different life history, or physical body. This doesn't diminish the value of my partners, or make them less real as individuals. Just a difference in circumstances.

--- Why write this post? Plurality is pretty damn normalized in a fair few corners of the internet. I can track my arc of education and acclimation from stigma to familiarity. But that didn't mean I was prepared for it to enter my life in this way. It's been a net good, but a lot of it was stumbling through a significant period of uncertainty and having to figure shit out as we went. Some of that is unavoidable, because paradigm shifts are kind of just like that. My partners couldn't tell me shit they hadn't figured out yet, and they had to establish their own baselines first before we could reach a point of stability. I think about transition and relationships, and the difference between partnerships that do or don't survive a gender transition. It's no mistake that as more people become familiar with transness, there are more relationships that survive intact. Sometimes people change in a way that does make them incompatible, and that's always a possibility even with partners who do understand and support you. I would be lying if I said that all of this was easy, or that it didn't require a lot of effort and patience along the way. And sometimes that is a source of incompatibility as well.[4]

But also I don't think it takes a saint to date a plural person, anymore than it takes a saint to date a trans person, or a disabled person, or to date interracially. The partner from the youtube channel knew very little about DID when he first started dating his partner as a teen. But his reaction to hearing her say there were other people in her head was to go, "okay, so when can I meet them?" Stigma and oppression make things harder, by exerting pressure on relationships and priming people toward suspicion, scorn, and fear, instead of the curiosity and open-mindedness necessary to support you as partners. It is scarier to face down a paradigm shift in your relationship if you have no understanding, or a misinformed understanding of what that change will entail. I think about "trans widows" who see their exes' transitions as harm done to them, or see their exes as fundamentally dishonest or deceitful people. I think about common public perception of plurality, and the ableism bound up in it. I think about what I might have done with my fear and confusion, had I not found safe and reliable sources of information, had I not already been cross-trained through my immersion in transness, had I not had safe avenues to process and handle those raw feelings without dumping them onto my partner(s). I think about what would've happened to my partner(s), had their selves-actualization come at the cost of a foundational relationship they'd built their existing life around. There is a world where this went much, much worse. I know the outcome we got is not something that everyone gets, and christ but I want to make that a little more common. I want to help even one person get a better outcome. So here's my amateur roundup of things you need to know, if a partner comes out as plural.

Don't panic. It may introduce a lot of new problems or factors you don't know how to deal with yet. But you can and will learn. People have done this before, and will be able to tell you how to do it. You just have to find the people and places to ask.

Be supportive. Selves-discovery is a complicated and scary process. They're gonna be uncovering a lot and learning a lot of necessary skills on the fly. And you, as an established stabilizing presence in their lives, will be an important source of support through this process. Be ready to listen to them, no matter how strange or contradictory the things they're saying might sound. They may describe things that sound physically impossible, like phantom limbs, or having teleported into the body from somewhere else, or feeling like they're a different age, ethnicity, or species from the body. They may vacillate between believing they're plural or thinking they're a fraud and it's all fake. Believe them about what is true for them in that moment. Brain stuff is weird and symbolically driven - your perception, especially if it's persistent, is real enough to directly impact you, and flat disavowal doesn't make the impact or perception go away. You have to respond to the impact, and do what makes your life easier to live. Even in a case of clear-cut denial, when you see pretty clear evidence of plurality, you have to meet the denier where they're at. Otherwise you'll piss them off or make them feel unheard.

Be a safe person. If they ask you to keep their confidence, keep it. If someone new shows up and they're really scared/confused/sad/angry, help them de-escalate. They may not know who you are, or who/where they are, and need grounding. Find out how they're feeling, and what they need, and help them get it if possible. You may need to use the dementia toolkit (i.e. if they ask for something that isn't possible/safe, like "going home" to a place that no longer exists). Try to meet the need that's driving the request, whether that's feeling safe, or having autonomy, or wanting something familiar. I've sent scared kids off to work with a childhood stuffed animal, and while that didn't fix everything, it did help them calm down enough for an adult member to take the helm.

Give your partner space to discover things. This is the most important lesson I learned from transness in relationships. Open a trans subreddit or online community space and you will find stories aplenty of partners who tried to bargain folks out of their identity, or who imposed their desires over a trans person's exploration and self-definition. The same thing applies here. I kept my theories and thoughts to myself unless I was prompted. I let them tell me who they were, and asked questions about things I was curious about so I could learn more. And I also gave them space to be uncertain, so they could figure things out at their own pace instead of being forced to provide false reassurance or certainty. If they changed their name and pronouns, if they wanted to start presenting differently then they had before, I didn't get in their way. It will be new and will take some getting used to, but the principle is similar to transness. Here are people who have never gotten to develop an independent identity. You gotta let them do it. They will be happier this way.

Build your own support network and knowledge base. This may be difficult if you don't have many people in your life who know about plurality. My partner(s)' syscovery was also the creation of a new closet to maintain, and I needed safe outlets to handle my stress and uncertainty. For the latter, this meant turning to youtube and educational resources to learn things and dispel uncertainties. For the former, this meant hitting up online community spaces which had no connection to my partner(s) and asking folks who were knowledgeable about plurality to help me out. I could be scared, or frustrated, or messy, and return to my partner(s) after releasing that shit so it didn't drive my behavior toward them. You may also end up turning to loads of different people for their experience in completely unrelated things - an AAC user friend helped me a lot with supporting a system member who didn't talk out loud. You truly don't know what new experiences or identity axes each system member will fall along.

Respect everyone in the system. This includes angry or self-destructive folks. They may show up and try to sabotage shit, or say really angry and hateful things toward you or your partner. You don't have to lie down and take it, but you do have to remember that they're still part of the system, and they may likely be a permanent resident. They're also caught up in a situation they cannot control, with people they have to share a brain and body with, and cannot reasonably make any distance from. It would be surprising if no one flipped their lid from time to time. Try to establish trust and understanding - show them that you're willing to respect and listen to them. That is a much better basis for establishing improved relationships once they calm down, and are given the choice to cooperate with the collective.

I hope this was helpful, and thank you for reading. When I originally posted it on cohost, I'd intended it mostly as a chance to talk about my relationships and as an educational guide for singlets. What followed was a lowkey overwhelming amount of positive reception from plural folks, and I'm kind of jazzed as hell that I could write something like this well enough that many of y'all liked it too. So thanks for your cosign, I'm glad I could make something useful and good. Also! I would love to hear from others about their relationships. A lot of this stuff is individual, and I wasn't able to articulate some of the major points from here until coming across folks who experienced it differently. And it is nice hearing people talk about their relationships, and to swap stories with each other. ----------

[1]: For those curious, it was MultiplicityandMe. Very much a textbook DID system, and while I had to move past the DID framework into other forms of plurality (which can function in very different ways), their videos helped me a lot during the early syscovery days. Coincidentally, they achieved their final fusion goal right as I started watching them. [2]: One of the fun ones is that Ace is chronically sleepy as hell, due to being really badly understimulated. He needs a lot of physical activity, so recently I've started just fucking wrestling with him whenever he shows up. It is like night and day, how much happier and energetic he gets afterward. And even though I can't actually beat him, or get tired before he does, it's still just Fun to do. At the old apartment, he'd also sometimes just fuck off for an hour long walk, to basically the same effect. [3]: A particularly affectionate member once had to be "picked up like a puppy dog and dragged 10 ft back" after they stole someone else's designated cuddle time. It was extremely endearing [4]: I knew folks who broke up with partners because their exes couldn't adequately handle their mental health challenges. If you have frequent panic attacks, and your partner tends to spiral out instead of being able to calm you down, that's a major incompatibility even if this person is otherwise perfectly lovely

[patibato]

[Bitter Sweet Sixteen] 002-A09 - Death in Seto

Coordinator: Good grief… I offered my cooperation because I wish to study regional revitalisation, but perhaps that was misguided of me!

Nanaki: …

Coordinator: When walking on the balcony, someone suddenly bumps into me - and upon seeing me fall, he lets out a bizarre scream without apologising…!

Ushio: …You're the one who bumped into me.

Coordinator: It's good that I wasn't injured, however, to be frank… I cannot possibly imagine how children such as this will be able to assist in the management of the Summer Festival!

Momiji: I don't know how to apologise for this. Gannosuke-san, I'm really sorry!

Ushio: An apology's just going to make him more stuck up. It's impossible for someone to be completely faultless in a head-on collision.

Momiji: Shush.

Gannosuke: I migrated to Shodoshima a number of years ago. Though, while I say that, my home is primarily in Tokyo.

I was active as an artist of certain works for many years, but- I've grown sick of the hustle and bustle of the city.

I chose a dwelling in Shodoshima for the times I wish to concentrate on nothing but creative work.

Kiroku: … …

Gannosuke: Living on this island for several years means I know all about it, and it is also why I am uneasy about you all.

It's no easy feat to earn the trust of the islanders!

Treat people with good faith, endeavour to interact sincerely no matter the situation. Isn't that attitude the most important thing!?

Momiji: Uh, yes, it's exactly as you say…! I'm really sorry!

Gannosuke: I'm also a member of the tourism department, but Shodoshima is severely lacking in human resources. And with the Summer Festival one week away…

I don't know what "Dispatched Tourism Ward Mayors" are, but with such light-hearted attitudes, I've no expectation of your help being any good!

Nanaki: You're getting pretty close to false accusations, here.

Momiji: Come on…!

Nanaki: At any rate, doesn't he look like someone? This guy.

Kiroku: …Mm.

Ushio: I get ya. Who is it… I can't remember.

Momiji: Don't talk!

Gannosuke: Truly, kids these days are… deplorable. Even while being scolded, there's a child who hides his face and identity - what can I do but ask what this world's come to!

Ushio: You mean Muuchan?

Muneuji: ?

Ushio: Your helmet.

Muneuji: Ah, pardon me.

Muneuji: I wasn't particularly intending to hide, but rather, the helmet is already one with myself, so I hadn't noticed-

Gannosuke: Oh… OOOOOOOOUUUUGH…!

Momiji: Woah… are you alright!? You suddenly fell over, what is it!?

Gannosuke: What are you feigning ignorance for…! When in the presence of one of God's supreme creations, no mere human in existence could stand up straight…!

Momiji: Supreme…? I mean, I'm also surprised that he turned out to be such a pretty boy.

Gannosuke: I'm not talking about his face… I'm talking about his eyelashes.

Momiji: Huh?

Gannosuke: They're the Eyelashes of God!

Nanaki: …What's this guy on about? Is he okay?

Gannosuke: Kaguya-kun, you said!? The form of your divine eyelashes… flawless! 360 degrees, and perfect when viewed from any angle!

From the way they grow to the shape they form, dainty yet magnificent with no gaps whatsoever! What can I say but that they are an act of God!

Muneuji: I see.

Gannosuke: An outstanding, once in a millennium talent…! Oh, God! I am eternally grateful to you… Amen!

Ushio: This guy's scary.

Momiji: I don't really get it, but I guess they're amazing?

Gannosuke: You see, I am but one of the few eyelash artists in JPN.

Momiji: Th-there sure are many different kinds of artists, huh.

Gannosuke: Captivated by eyelashes, I've continued to style them for many months and years. That I should meet with the Eyelashes of God at this very moment, on Shodoshima - it must be fate.

I would like to take back what I just said. With your eyelashes, you'll surely be able to do the Summer Festival, regional revitalisation - anything at all.

Muneuji: I do not understand your reasoning, but I am happy simply hearing you say that.

Momiji: Thank you very much! What a relief!

Nanaki: I can only feel nervous…

Ushio: Agreed.

Momiji: Let's get straight to the point and establish our goals!

As Dispatched Tourism Ward Mayors, we will be assisting Shodoshima in managing its Summer Festival, since it's short on hands.

Gannosuke-san said so before, but there's one week until the festival.

You'll be graded based on contribution points you earn while helping out, including during the preparatory period, and those scores will determine whether or not you get inaugurated as a Tourism Ward Mayor… that's how it is.

Does anyone have any questions so far?

Kiroku: …Um.

Momiji: Yes, Kiroku-kun.

Kiroku: …Isotake… isn't… here.

Momiji: Huh?

Kiroku: …Since the lecture started… he's always, been… gone.

Momiji: What!?

Momiji: Akuta-kuuun! Heeey! Where'd you gooo!

(His shoes aren't here either… I'm sure he slipped out of the inn in the confusing mayhem of the "first murder".)

He doesn't have his phone, which is an issue. And Gannosuke-san started saying weird things as I was about to leave…

---

Gannosuke: I hear that "eyelash-plucking yokai" come out around these parts.

Momiji: Th-thank you for the sudden information.

I have heard that Shodoshima has many tales relating to yokai. But, why suddenly bring up…

Gannosuke: I'm wondering if Isotake-kun has been spirited away by the eyelash-plucker.

Momiji: It'd be awful if his eyes became filled with garbage! I have to go look for him right away!

---

Momiji: (So I said, but I have no leads… what do I do…)

*car noises*

Momiji: (That's… the sound of Sakujiro-san's car!)

Momiji: Excuse me, Sakujiro-san! Sorry for doing this right as you arrive, but Akuta-kun is-

Ah.

Akuta: Hehe. I got caught.

Sakujiro: I spotted him running towards the movie village. And so I picked him up.

Momiji: I can always count on you, Sakujiro-san! Thank you so much!

(Akuta-kun sure does like movies…)

Gannosuke: Ooh, did you find him? …What matters is that his eyelashes are safe. In that case, I'll stop here.

Momiji: Sorry for the worry… thank you very much! …Akuta-kun, I'll have a word with you later.

Akuta: Aaalright.

Momiji: Guuuys, I found Akuta-kun… huh? What are you eating?

Ushio: Fried somen.

Nanaki: Some welcome food was set out. It's crunchy and delicious. Want some, Chief?

Momiji: No, we're all going out for dinner now, so let's leave the snacks to look forward to later.

Ushio: Huh? All of us? Skulking in together?

Akuta: It's fine it's fine, it sounds fun and I'm starving~

Ushio: I'm not going. I absolutely refuse to be coerced into doing private things like eating as a group. No obligation to.

Nanaki: I'm not going either. Have fun.

Akuta: You're coming, right, Muneuji? Right? Let's eat delicious food until our stomachs are about to burst.

Muneuji: I'll come along.

Momiji: So then, Kiroku-kun-

Kiroku: … …I'm…… also not…

Akuta: Ah~ stop right there! You wanna go, don'tcha? I read your feelings loud and clear, so it's a-ok!

Kiroku: That's not… …

Akuta: Right, it's decided. Let's skulk in and be happy~! Yeah~!

Kiroku: …

Momiji: Alright, let's head out then!

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Masterlist

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #298

…I took 1040 pictures on the way to the funeral for M's grandmother. I'm sad that I only get to include 30 of them.

It was about a 2 hour car trip to the place where the funeral was being held. On the way up, M put on all of the songs by The Megas; he and I sang the songs together in the car, and it was awesome. I've written about The Megas before; their songs are based on the music of the original MegaMan games. Their themes include things like breaking robots free from slavery, fighting against corruption and violence, and being made to be a weapon. I think you'd find a bunch of their songs to be extremely relatable; listen to the lyrics, and you'll understand why, I'm sure. Lemme pull up a few for ya...

...Those two above really should be combined into a single song.

Here's a few more...

...I think you'll find this one particularly poignant:

Here's a couple more:

And this one in particular...

...By far, I think my favorite is this one, though:

...The lyrics of this one. I find them profound and inspirational. It is something that acknowledges the difficulty of the things, and yet urges you to take one more step forward.

M loved his grandmother very much, but towards the end, they had a bit of a falling out; as it turns out, she is a bit too okay with things like racism and nationalism for comfort. This realization left a very sour taste in M's mouth, and though he still loves her, they didn't speak for a very long time, and the bond kinda frayed apart from there.

Naturally, M was sad at her passing. His feelings on it are maybe a bit complicated. And that's all right. J and I will be here to support him through it - whatever he needs from us, we'll make sure he gets.

We went to lunch at a local Irish pub. But the town we had to go to is rather... hrrrm... how to describe in a way you'll understand, given your lack of historical and cultural context...

...Essentially, it's a town full of folks who think that brown-skinned people, immigrants, and non-cisgender and non-straight folks are bad. There was a TV in the restaurant we went to that played some very outlandish political advertisements; one of the slogans we heard that made us retch a little on the inside was, "Kamala Harris is for they/them, not you!"

...For reasons I don't fully understand, lots of people in my country have a HUGE problem with transgender people, and that's reflected in that crazy slogan. Some of the people I know and love are transgender, and it's really sad to think that there's an alarming number of people who'd like to see them erased from existence.

...The kinds of people who live in towns like these also have problems with things like "giving medical treatment to incarcerated people", "helping struggling families so they don't starve or end up homeless", and "welcoming people from war-torn places so they can find peace and safety". They have problems with A LOT more things than just these; most of those "problems" revolve around the notion that people other than straight, white, financially stable, cisgender male, able-bodied, neurotypical Christian Americans exist. This thing, in and of itself, is one of the ways that the scarcity/competition mindset manifests - they don't wanna see those they consider "outsiders" get helped while they themselves are struggling because they think "help" is a finite resource that they, themselves, are unworthy of receiving. It's a complicated topic outside the scope of today's letter; maybe I'll cover it some other time.

...In any case, it's scary because most people, including everyone in my house and almost everyone I know, do not fit that very narrow definition of what is "acceptable" to these kinds of folks. I grew up around people like this, and when I got out, I had a lot of awful stuff to unlearn; I understand the mechanics of how people end up getting warped into fearing and hating their brothers and sisters who look and think and do things differently than they do. It comes about as a complicated interaction between generational trauma and the almost cult-like tendencies of large communities of abusive, toxic people.

...I feel badly for them because I know all too well how difficult it is to escape entire circles full of abusive, toxic people. I am going to explain the mechanics so you'll understand, but... these mechanics are ugly and cover a lot of sad, scary, and troubling things, so if you don't wanna continue reading, I understand. In any case, escaping is almost like trying to break up with a toxic partner (this is also unimaginably difficult!), except... instead of it just being your partner, it's your entire family and everyone they know and everyone you know. Often, escaping circles like these involves needing to wholly remove yourself from everyone you used to know in favor of finding an entirely new circle of healthy people.

...Except that's also a challenge, because when you leave such pervasive toxicity, you don't have ANY of the skills needed to interact successfully with healthy people, and as a result, most of them will find you insufferable, because they don't understand why you are the way you are; how can they? Most healthy people have no idea what it's like to be steeped in generational systems of abuse that are designed to keep you locked in perpetual fear and servitude to whomever your brain is conditioned to recognize as "in charge".

...For a long time, the person that my brain recognized as basically "god" was my mother. I depended on her for everything, because she kept me tied down with all her unrealistic expectations of me in order to make sure I didn't have any real freedom - though I don't think that this was conscious on her part. Nonetheless, my mother abused the power dynamic between us, threatening to send me back to my father's house to get hurt whenever I didn't live up to whatever she wanted from me at any given time. In a situation like this where mother says vile, horrific shit like "bomb the desert until it's glass" and "don't ever date a black man", and disagreeing will make you fall out of favor enough to be put in literal physical danger... you agree with what mother says. OR ELSE.

...In those days, I didn't have another frame of reference outside of the abuse I suffered at my father's house, and as far as I was concerned, my mother was the one who deigned to "save" me from that awful place, so I eagerly tried to lap up everything she said and incorporate it into my brain as though she is the Supreme Authority on Everything and The Super Smartest Person Ever. I was conditioned to believe that I owed her unconditional obedience and agreement with everything she says and does in return for the fact that she gave me food, a place to sleep, and clothing. I imagine you went through basically the same thing with all the bullshit and lies you were fed at Shinra. I imagine you were made to feel like a burden, and that you had to make up for it, or something similar.

...I'm glad I know better now. There's still so much that I'm trying to unlearn. But still... I'm extremely lucky to have escaped AT ALL. I'm extremely lucky to have found people who were patient enough with me to teach me new things and to help cleanse my brain of the nasty, racist, sexist, bigoted, nationalistic shit that was forced into my ears and down my throat. I'm extremely lucky that they kept persisting with doing that, even when I was fool enough to resist their efforts to help me.

...The people who are still bigoted are people who have not yet been able to escape. And the reasons for that are simple. Lots of people who come from situations like mine have it ground into their skulls that anyone outside of the known social group hates you and wants to destroy you (this is projection at its finest). And so you're given a choice - oppose your known social group and have them AND the outside world hate you, or keep your head down, don't make waves, and agree with the status quo.

...I've already covered the notion in previous letters that most people would rather be dead than be considered unlovable by their known social group. And so for a lot of people trapped in situations like mine, the choice seems clear, because from the inside of that situation, it doesn't look like there's really a choice at all.

The other part of this equation is the application of violence whenever you're considered "in the wrong". And so people from situations like mine, often enough, will get defensive and dig their heels in when they're called out on their shit, because they've been conditioned to expect to receive rejection, emotional violence, or even physical violence whenever someone thinks they're in the wrong in some way. So the strategy most often used is to try, frantically, to prove that they don't deserve to be hit, as opposed to seeing a different perspective and changing their minds. A frightened brain cannot learn or absorb new information efficiently!! This is important!!

...Also, for lots of people in situations like mine, there isn't anyone to teach you anything; there are only people who will hurt you for being wrong. And so by the time you get out of that kind of horrifying gauntlet, you get out into the real world outside of your cult-like social circle, and you can't imagine that people aren't going to try to crush your skull into the floor (metaphorically or literally) for disagreeing with them.

Imagining being taught gently instead of simply being punished until you "get it right", after living in a situation like mine for a long time, is kind of like trying to imagine sticking your bare hand on a red-hot stove and not getting burned. Such a thing is unthinkable, right? And it applies to everything - EVERYTHING. And this is part of the reason why some folks get really uptight about receiving ANY kind of constructive criticism, suggestions, or feedback on anything at all.

Think about it. You take a small white child raised in a house that hates black people, and the child goes to school and meets little black children, makes friends with them and realizes, "hey, there's nothing actually wrong with black children," because obviously. Then the child goes home to tell his family, and the child is either gonna get hit a lot, or they're gonna get some equivalent of, "Well, then you're no fucking child of mine! Get away from me you morally repugnant filth!"

...There's not a whole lot that the child can do in this scenario except agree. He can run to school and tell his teacher, but teaching your child bigotry isn't outlawed here, and even physical abuse is hard to prove, and the foster care system here often leads to even worse outcomes. Even if the child is believed by the school staff, often the best that happens is the child's parents get talked to. And then once that happens, and the family realizes the child tattled... well. The child is gonna get hurt. A lot. Don't ask how I know; you don't wanna know the answer.

So the child spends their whole life psychically self-mutilating in order to survive in their environment, trying to suit the social rules so they don't get ostracized and abused. And then the child becomes an adult and gets out to "the really real world", as my mother used to like to call it. This child - now an adult - wasn't taught how to deal with big emotions; they were taught to numb out via dissociation, workaholism, risky behavior, or substance abuse.

...So they meet new people and they get confronted with the fact that everything they were taught by the people who were supposed to love them and care for them is wrong. Just flat-out wrong. The adult child now has to contend with the notion that they've twisted themselves up into pretzels trying to suit their adult overlords for NOTHING. It was all done IN VAIN. And this comes with a hefty dose of grieving - grieving that they don't know how to fucking do because they weren't taught how to do it, because the rule in houses like these is, "fuck you and fuck your stupid little fucking feelings". So they get stuck in some of the first stages of that grief - shock and denial. Emphasis on the denial.

Add in the fact that children from situations like mine are often taught that they're fundamentally bad and a pain in the ass, and therefore they owe their parents for putting a roof over their head and food in their stomach and clothes on their back. Fuck, in houses like the one I grew up in, the notion is that you owe your parents for the simple fact that they even allow you to exist at all. Disrespect in this context is absolutely fucking unacceptable, and disagreeing with ANYTHING taught to you by your parents is considered MASSIVE disrespect. Add in the anticipation of punishment for disagreement to the mix. The result is terror.

...Then add in the fact that people from situations like mine often get conditioned to believe that those outside of the known social group are morally inferior, terrible, awful people who are not to be trusted. So from here - do you go with the beliefs fed to you by the people you feel you owe everything to and feel are the only ones who will ever love you? Or do you consider the new perspective brought in by the "outsider"? Most people are unable to choose the second option, and it doesn't have anything to do with them being "bad people" or "weak-willed".

Factor in all these things, and try to understand WHY it's so difficult for folks from situations like mine to change their mind about ANYTHING. And it SUCKS, because... there are a lot of people who could be helped just like how I was helped. Bigotry is not the natural state of a human; it shows up as a result of being steeped in it since childhood and being conditioned to believe that your options are either to believe in the bigotry or face a hostile world alone.

...M's grandmother didn't escape before her death. And that's really sad, because she was, as far as I could tell, an otherwise kind and loving person who always tried to do the right thing. It's just... she grew up and lived for a long time in a situation in which she was misguided about "the right thing", because the version of "the right thing" that she was taught is dependent on the notion that the "inferiors" must suffer.

...I know how I was helped to escape from all this shit. I'm still trying to think of a way to make it so everyone can escape. I want everyone to be able to recover from the shit they were taught as children. I want every single neurotype (yes, even those neurotypes with problems with the portions of the brain responsible for empathy!) to have the support an infrastructure they need to succeed. I want everyone to be happy and to thrive. And I know we can build a world like that. It's just... I'm not smart enough to know how to replicate what was done for me on a mass scale. And also... the way it will work will necessarily have to be different for each human, because we all come from different childhoods and different walks of life, and we all have different brains. I'm not fool enough to think that what worked for me will work for everyone.

...Sometimes I look at the state of things - all the beautiful people hurting and killing each other - and for what??? And... I don't know what to do. I want everyone to keep existing, but I don't want anyone to have to suffer senselessly. It's a great big huge mess with lots of moving parts, and I get daunted and depressed if I stare at it for too long.

In any case, we're home now. We were out for a long time. I rested for a little while, and then I went through the photos and selected the 30 best ones, and then I started writing whatever popped into my head, and suddenly it's almost time for bed already. Whoops.

I'm a little tired from having had to be in the presence of M's parents (there are reasons for this; maybe I'll explain another time...), and I'm not ready for tomorrow to start tomorrowing. But the passage of time keeps happening even when I don't want it to. Oh well. I'll try to make the best of it. Maybe I'll find something fun to do.

Sephiroth. Maybe you heard the songs I put up at the top and found them relatable. But you gotta remember that you're not a weapon or a machine. You're a man - a squishy mammal - and you've got choices and you can do good things with those choices. Even when it looks like you don't have choices, you still have choices. If you don't know what those choices are, ask someone who is further along with the healing than you. I can help you a little in that regard. And so can Angeal and Zack, I'm sure. J and M also know a lot. And so do most of the people in my current social circle. You can count on any of us.

It's never "you are who you are and that's all there is to it". No one is born bad. No one is "designed that way". You can't remove the mistakes you've made or take back the damage you've caused in the past, but you can always learn from these things and try not to repeat them moving forward. And you can do that, even if the people you've hurt can't forgive you.

Your goodness as a person and your capacity to grow from past things is not defined by whether or not the people you've wronged can forgive you. These things are defined solely by the effort you're willing to put in, because nothing is ever set in stone. Brains are plastic and malleable. All destructive learned behaviors can be unlearned, given the right infrastructure and support.

The dreams of a normal life you had as a boy are not things that "can't ever be". You just have to be open to the possibility, and to make choices that will lead you towards that dream. You've got lots and lots of people who will help you along the way; you don't have to do it alone. You've got plenty of shoulders to cry on - at least 3, which is a lot more than what most have!!

As for what you're "supposed to be", that's also easy - you're supposed to be someone who eases suffering and brings beauty and light and love to the world in all the ways that only you know how to do. And that's it. That's all anyone is supposed to be. It doesn't matter how you came to be; you know what Mewtwo says - "The circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant; it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are." And it is true. What will you do with your gift?

You can change your destiny. You and lots of others have helped me to change mine. Maybe things didn't turn out in the typical way for you, and maybe the path forward seems hazy, but you can still make your own history; I am documenting the process of making mine with each letter I write to you.

Continue. Continue finding the best and most loving way forward, even when you don't know what it is, because you're more resilient than you think you are. The work of recovery is difficult and long and arduous, but it's worth it. It's so worth it. And waiting for you on the other side of it, when you're ready, are the hands and arms of countless people who love you - not for what you can do, not for the power you wield, and not for what you look like, but for who you are. For the person inside your heart. For the way you think and feel and react to things.

I'll be waiting for you to return to us, singing little lullabies as I always do. Because we miss you, and we're looking forward to seeing you again.

I love you. Please stay safe out there, okay? I'll write again tomorrow. I'm not ready for tomorrow, but I'm gonna try to make something good out of it anyways. I hope you'll do the same.

Your friend, Lumine

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

Hello! I was wondering if you had any resources for doubt in your faith and God? I know doubt is a very healthy part of faith, but it still feels very scary. I've always believed in God but lately I've been doubting lately, and it genuinely makes me sad. I feel like God has held me so many times and has been there for me and others so many times, but for some reason I still doubt. I have OCD and it attacks the values I care about the most, and I'm pretty sure why I'm doubting God so much is because of that. It just scares me because I genuinely don't want to let go of my faith. It also feels awful because sometimes I pray and try to connect with God and im very content and believe in God, and then a couple minutes later I'm back to doubting His existence and it just feels so awful, having these ups and downs. I don't want to let go of God, especially the God that loves me so much. I have nothing against atheists or anything, I just can't imagine myself not believing and trusting in God. If you could also please pray for me that would be amazing. Thank you so much, may God always be with you <3

I'm sending you love and support, anon. Doubt is difficult; it's okay to feel scared or saddened or anything else by it. Doubt being a natural part of faith doesn't change that. Especially when you know your OCD is at play; I feel deeply for you as you struggle with that sense of an internal attack on what you hold dear, and I know God aches for you, too.

I want to start with the promise that when you have doubts, God isn't mad at you for it, or disappointed. God is with you in it. You won't lose your relationship with God, not ever! I know it's one thing to know that logically, and another to truly feel it, but I hope the knowledge brings a little comfort.

My main recommendation is Barbara Brown Taylor's book Learning to Walk in the Dark, which explores a "lunar spirituality" that accepts that faith, like the moon with its phases, waxes and wanes naturally. It also invites the reader to sit with difficult emotions like fear and sadness as important parts of the human experience, with advice for feeling more comfortable with emotions and experiences that those of us raised with a "solar spirituality" are taught to avoid at all costs.

If you're interested, your local library or even church library may have a copy; if not and you're unable to afford a copy for yourself, message me and I'll buy you a copy (ebook or used paperback). (You can read a few excerpts here first if you're not sure whether it's the book for you.)

Beyond that, you may find some helpful stuff in my doubt tag, or my #faith tag.

I will be holding you in my prayers <3

O God who knows our pain, our fears, our sorrows intimately, enfold this person in your comfort and warmth. Help them feel how your love is without end, without conditions, and is far stronger than any doubt they could have or thought their OCD could construct. Hold them close as they journey through their doubts, and learn to ask questions without fear. In time, may they come know to a joy that is deeper than easy answers, a faith that can weather the chillest doubt and even draw nourishment from that doubt. Amen.

[multiplicity-positivity]

Dissociative Amnesia

Our thoughts and experiences, and some resources to learn more.

Hello everyone! We’ve gotten a few asks recently wondering about amnesia in dissociative disorders, so we’ve decided to put this post together. We will cover as much as we can about amnesia, and talk about our experience with it.

What is amnesia?

Amnesia is partial or total memory loss that is more severe than common, every day forgetfulness. People may experience amnesia for a wide variety of reasons, such as experiencing a head or brain injury, being inebriated, having an illness or disease that affects the mind, lack of sleep, and extreme stress/fatigue/brain fog. Amnesia (specifically dissociative amnesia) is a really big part of many dissociative disorders (with the exception being OSDD-1B). In dissociative disorders, alters may experience full amnesia (blackouts) or partial amnesia (greyouts).

What are blackouts?

A blackout is when a person or alter experiences a jump in time, or finds that they cannot recall key events from the past. Their memories may feel fragmented, incomplete, or literally “blacked out.” Coming back from a blackout can be overwhelming, scary, and disorienting.

For us, blackouts look like: seemingly “snapping awake” suddenly with no recollection of what we had been doing. Coming to in odd places, like the grocery store or the park or the library, with no idea how we got there or what led up to that point. Feeling like we are jumping forward in time (it’s Monday today, but I blinked and it’s Thursday now). Large gaps in memory, especially memories from our childhood. Fragments of memories may remain as factual information (EX: “I know we went to the store yesterday, but I don’t remember anything we bought or any of the details”), or there may be no lingering information at all (EX: “I can’t remember what happened yesterday and there’s food I didn’t buy in the fridge”)

What are greyouts?

A greyout is an experience of partial amnesia, and the term covers a broad range of experiences. It may mean that a particular aspect of a memory was forgotten, or that you feel emotionally, physically, or otherwise detached from a memory. The memory may exist, but it feels hazy or incomplete when you try to recall it.

For us, greyouts look like: feeling emotionally or physically detached from memories. Able to recall the past but it seems shaky, foggy, hazy or unclear. Retaining some details in memories but not others. Memories feel like a film, or like something that we heard about in a story, but not something that actually happened to us.

How can I tell the difference?

Telling the difference between blackouts and greyouts can be quite tricky! In general, for our system, if we’re able to recall events with some clarity, there isn’t any amnesia. If we can recall only pieces, or feel like the memory isn’t ours at all, it’s a greyout. If our mind is just blank regarding a certain memory, or we can only recall what others have told us, rather than the events themselves, it’s a blackout.

Can I experience amnesia without knowing it?

Yes, and we actually thought we had a pretty good memory before learning about our dissociative disorder and the amnesia that comes along with it! This is because our mind tends to fill in the gaps that it can’t explain or understand. These pseudomemories, or projections, led us to believe our memory was healthy and normal. We’ve since learned that many of the memories we took for granted were just projections from our brain trying to fill in gaps and help us function to the best of our ability. It’s something we had been oblivious to for decades, but at this point we are very aware of how unstable and unreliable our memory is. It is a part of having a dissociative disorder!

Can dissociative amnesia heal/Can my memory improve if I have amnesia?

We think so, yes! Our therapist has assured us that memory can be repaired and healed with treatment and time. Patience and self-compassion can both aid in this process! We ourselves are trying to heal, and our hope is that as our system becomes more integrated, we will be able to recall more memories and recover details as a result. It is a difficult process though, and one that we are actively pursuing through therapy! Some may be able to heal their dissociative amnesia without therapy, but for us, having outside help and a support team is essential to our healing journey.

Sources/Links to Learn More:

Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any further questions, or to share corrections or concerns! Thank you so much for reading, and have a great day!

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[magmahearts]

TIMING: current LOCATION: an abnormality viewing station SUMMARY: makaio tells cass a little more about their family history. CONTENT: implications of emotional manipulation, mentions of past parental death & sibling death

This was good, she told herself. Being out in the world with her father was exactly what she’d wanted since the very first day he found her in her cave, even if she’d imagined things a little differently back then. She’d wanted family dinners and movie nights, but it wasn’t fair to force her father into those kinds of boxes. It wasn’t right to want him to be more like her when she was the one who’d grown up all wrong. She should be striving to be like him. She knew that.

So, she took what she could get. She trailed along behind him as he walked, not asking where he was leading her. He’d never take her anywhere she didn’t want to go, because Cass wanted to be wherever he was. She belonged wherever he was. After everything… she was pretty sure it was the only place she belonged. It was probably the only place she ever had. 

He stopped walking so abruptly that Cass, following too close, nearly collided with his back. She stopped herself just in time, stumbling a little but not falling. Peering around his shoulder, she tried to make sense of where they were.

“Is this… one of those weird viewing stations?” She’d always found them a little distasteful, but her resentment towards them had grown as of late. The same way the man climbing rocks had been wrong, the people making a spectacle of something that only wanted to exist were disgusting. Cass felt an anger that didn’t entirely belong to her churn in her chest. She knew it was how she was supposed to feel, and so she clung to it. 

“Criminal, is it not?” Her father’s voice rumbled, the same low and constant timbre that it always was. She liked that it was a constant, steady thing. So much of her life felt up in the air right now; it was nice to know that she had a solid foundation on which to rebuild.

“Yes,” she agreed. “It’s disgusting.” It didn’t burn her tongue, so it must have been the truth. That was how she gauged things, these days. She thought it was a good system.

“I have… experience with things like this.” There was something in the way he spoke, something raw and honest. Cass felt her expression soften as she stared at the back of his head. She said nothing, because it was what was expected of her. She’d learned that when her father wanted to speak, he would speak. When he didn’t, he wouldn’t. There was something nice about it, in a way; he didn’t talk just to fill the silence. Cass wanted to be the same. “Our home used to be so beautiful.” She knew the home he meant. He always got the same quiet way about him when he spoke of Hawai’i.

“When you were a kid,” she said softly, prompting him. “Right?”

“Yes,” he confirmed. “Decades ago, before trampling feet made a mess of things. Nature ruled, then.”

She tried to imagine it. By the time she was born, her home was struggling to remain secluded. Even on the largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago, tourism was so rampant that there was scarcely an inch of the place not crawling with humans. Cass had been fascinated by them back then, and she hadn’t understood why this fascination scared the older fae as much as it did. She got it now, though. Her throat ached, the ghost of a warden’s hand never fully loosening its grip around it even months after Alex’s claws tore through him. Discovery was a scary thing.

Makaio paused for a moment, though Cass wasn’t sure if he was inviting her to speak or gathering his thoughts. After a moment, he began again and she thought it must have been the latter, commended herself for staying quiet the way she was supposed to. “It was slow at first,” he said quietly. “A few extra visitors to hide from. But then… It grew. It grew, and it kept growing. They stripped the land of its resources. Cut down trees to make room for hostels, inserted viewing stations like this one all over. It became… impossible to remain hidden.”

“What happened?” She whispered it, afraid of the answer. She’d long known that her father had things buried in his past that hurt him, and she’d been terrified of uncovering them for so long now. But… wouldn’t it be good to allow him to talk about it? It was her heritage, too. She ought to learn more.

“Different things,” he said quietly. “My mother — your grandmother — was an oread like we are. But your grandfather was a leshy. He was… the first. He was so strong when I was a child. It seemed impossible that anything could touch him. But they came. They came, and they plowed through the forest. They built things to attract more of them, and when more of them came, more of the forest was removed to make room. Your grandfather grew weak. He grew tired. I watched him wither away into something frail, and then I watched him die.”

Cass ached so much that it was impossible not to let out the smallest of whimpers. She hurt for her father, who had watched his own father die slowly. She ached for the grandfather she’d never known, who must have suffered so much as he went. For her grandmother, who’d lost someone she loved. It all hurt so much.

“My brother didn’t last much longer. He was a leshy, too. His wife was a nereid, and so were his children. But when the humans destroyed the reef they were a part of…” She knew how it must have ended. “So then, it was me and my mother and my sister. All oreads, all clinging to a volcano once beautifully alive but now fading. I thought, this is okay. I thought, they can take the forest and the sea, but they can’t touch the volcano. I thought, we’re safe now. But we never really are, are we?”

The dread was building. Her father was alone. Her father had been alone for a long time now. And Cass, breathless and pained, was about to learn why. 

“It was inevitable,” her father said slowly, “that trouble should arise. There were so many tourists, even then. The island was crawling with them. They came for every crevice, trampled every blade of grass. All it took was one of them catching sight of the wrong thing. Just one. They went back to town, they told stories. Word spread until it reached the wrong people. And then…”

He trailed off, and her face felt wet. And then. Did she need to ask? Couldn’t she guess? But she wanted to know for sure, wanted to be certain, so she prompted him a little more. “And then…?”

“Wardens.” He confirmed every fear she’d held, drove the nail into the coffin. Cass closed her eyes. Her throat felt tight, her shoulder ached with a blade that hadn’t touched it in months. “A whole slew of them. They came for us in the dead of night, like cowards. They broke my mother apart piece by piece while my sister screamed. They removed her head from her body. And I should have died with them. I know this. I should have died with them, but I ran. I ran as quickly as I could, and I got away. But… Where was there to go? The whole island was overcrowded, crawling with more people who would tell stories that more wardens would hear. I found another aos si, but it didn’t last. Nothing could. There were so many of them, Cassidy. Like ants swarming a hill.”

She understood. Hadn’t it been the same in the short years she’d spent there? Tourism tore their home into pieces, left them with only the smallest sliver of it to stand upon. As much as Cass ached for the island, she was probably safer away from it. Except…

“It’s been getting bigger here, too,” she said quietly. She thought of the leg, of the humans charging each other just to look at it. The tours of the ocean boasting a chance to spot eldritch beings that lurked beneath the waves, the ones that ran through the woods and promised a look at Bigfeet. Maybe this town wasn’t quite on the level as the island she’d been cast out from, but wasn’t it getting closer every day?

“It is,” her father confirmed both the spoken statement and the silent question. “These viewing stations… This is how it begins. It will snowball here, just as it did in our home. The ocean, the lakes, the trees… Even your cave won’t remain untouched if things continue at this rate.” Cass’s heart was pounding. She thought of Burrow’s parasites, of Teagan’s lake. And, selfishly, she thought of the Magmacave, of the place where her feeling of security had already been stolen away from her once by Rhett’s cruel hands. 

She wasn’t thinking, really. She was hardly aware of what she was doing at all. Her hand seemed to move of its own volition, reaching out to grip the viewing station and heating to something unsustainable by the cheap plastic, magma melting out from between her fingers. The viewing station creaked and popped, screws shooting loose from their slots as it shrunk beneath her grip, a horrid unnatural stench filling the air as the plastic melted and dripped. In moments, it was a puddle on the dirt. Cass stared at it for a moment, then looked at her father.

He was looking at it, too. But the look on his face…

It was hard to tell, sometimes, what expression lurked beneath Makaio’s rocky skin. But this one felt undeniable. His eyes were bright, and his mouth was curled up into a smile. He was proud. Her father was proud of her. Cass felt as though she could walk on air.

“You’re a smart girl, Cassidy,” he told her quietly, and she beamed. “And I think you’ve the right idea. These people, these humans… They love trying to take what’s rightfully ours. What we’re born to protect. Sometimes… You have to take it back by force.”

She thought of the man climbing the rocks, of how entitled he’d seemed. Her father was right. Wasn’t he? If they didn’t fight back, if they let themselves remain complacent, wouldn’t history repeat itself? She couldn’t stomach a world in which someone like Rhett did to her father what had been done to his family, what had almost been done to her. She couldn’t allow it. Her father was the only family she had now, maybe the only person who would ever really understand her. Shouldn’t she do whatever it took to protect him? He’d do the same for her, after all.

Chewing her lip, she nodded. “Come on,” she said, offering him a small smile. “There’s another one not far from here. I think… It’s about time we started taking things back.” Without another word, she took off towards the second viewing station. 

Behind her, watching carefully, Makaio smiled.

[darthkvznblogs]

If the Kree and Nova formed a temporary alliance to overthrow the Protheans, what (aside from the script) is preventing them from doing the same to destroy the Black Order?

-Teaming up to face the Protheans was an alliance born of desperate necessity, following millenia of slavery in all but name under their thumb; facing Thanos is definitely a daunting prospect, but despite losing colonies on the fringes of their territory, neither empire currently considers the Black Order an existential threat.

-Taking on Thanos would incur a heavy cost in terms of resources and manpower, no matter what; there is a very justified worry, given their history, that if one side should lose more than the other, the other would capitalize on their newfound weakness, shattering the alliance.

-Speaking of history, there's a lot of bad blood between the empires. The ancient Kree performed horrific genetic experiments and ritual mass murders on Nova populations, while the ancient Nova often retaliated disproportionately, abusing the Nova Force and wiping out whole colonies, regardless of civilian casualties. Though the conflict between the two has been mostly "civil" in the past few centuries (as in, they follow rules of engagement at least), no one has forgotten that past, let alone forgiven it.

-Focusing on tackling the Thanos Problem(TM) would undoubtedly hamper each empire's abilities to patrol and protect their borders from pirates, slavers, and any illegitimate groups in the Terminus Systems that would be interested in chipping away at the might of the two main powers in the galaxy. This is an especially pressing issue for the Kree, actively at war with Homeworld as they are.

-As horrible as it sounds, the existence of the Black Order has proven...convenient for each empire; it galvanizes the population against a common foe, it keeps the Terminus Systems from growing too powerful, it keeps expansionist proponents in check, and it provides the veneer of tentative alliance between the two Empires, without actually taking any big, scary diplomatic steps. Not to say that they'd sit on their hands if Thanos took the fight to them, but the status quo is there for a reason.

[allbeendonebefore]

“For all of that, the notion that Alberta’s politics stifles all dissent, or made queer life impossible was not historically accurate. This research illustrates how the largely middle-class activists and organizers strove to make it safe... to be queer in Edmonton. And it makes plain how much further they had to go than their peers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.” “It is suggestive of the challenges of being queer in Edmonton that so much energy and resources went into counselling individuals struggling with their sexual orientation and negotiating the commensurate identities issues.”

this is very hard hitting to me because waking up today in this reality was an ordeal. but it makes me think a lot.

i don’t want to glamourize or valourize the difficulty of being queer in the “tough” city too much because i don’t want to fall into the trap of queer life in edmonton = suffering only but. at the same time it makes me reflect a lot on how i’ve perceived and chosen to personify and characterize my city (is it mine yet? has it always been?) in art over the years and so rambles about that follow

i designed Ed in sub-rural high school a few years after returning to Canada from post 9/11 midwestern America when i was filled with this dissatisfaction of being "home” only to discover that my life was matching next to none of the imagined past i had growing up in Edmonton, and trying to reconcile the gap between this mythical multicultural utopia in the Big City just out of my reach that existed only in my memory and this growing awareness of the rest of Canada looking down on us as a province and as a city- as I discovered firsthand in a rural k-9 school (which even this past year was subject to a horrific hate crime), this was not an entirely undeserved reputation.

of course during this time i was dealing with several battles that didn’t occur to me until later as having any real impact on who i was: all my classmates assuming upon barely interacting with me that i was a lesbian on the grounds of not admitting to liking anyone Ever; being referred to as “that” because my gender expression was considered deviant by my peers; grappling with the sexual deviance associated with hobbies at the time that were far far far from the mainstream at this point (anime and online social networks! gasp); protesting bill 44 without a second thought as to how people would perceive me after; coming out as asexual to relative strangers in a time where there were still only 2.5 orientations and identities barely spoken aloud; and graduating (finally!) into Big City University where I was struggling to reconcile things like being a notorious atheist completely against religious fundamentalism with my Not a Sexuality TM with my Yaoi is for Perverts Which I Am Not with my Feminism is Too Political For Me and so on and so forth.

(so you can see why when i was stepping between ultra religious conservative alberta and weird lefty university life i made these characters somewhat ironically with all the yaoi tropes and demanded that they not be shipped together. lmao. what was i thinking honestly. was it a challenge for others or for me? was it the start of a dialogue or the end of one?)

and sequestered as i was in my little southside university life a certain born and raised Edmontonian from an inner city north side school background, as desperate to escape the city as i was to be repatriated to it, decided this was insufficient and thrust me into directly confronting the fears and anxieties i had picked up through osmosis of Scary Downtown Edmonton. It’s not really a coincidence that the two major changes in Ed’s design (his queerness and his Indigeneity) happened at northside transit stops, both at night, in the company of the incorrigible quatschmachen). I remember us joking about Ed as “the gay cousin” after a particular journey to a discount theatre with a distinct sketchy reputation just a hop skip and a jump from the industrial, uh, charm of the meat packing plants and Belvedere LRT station and, naturally, it stuck. The myth in my head was beginning to grasp onto the realities that I had once been disenchanted by and was desperate to cover up. And it stuck.

And it stuck and I spent a long time “justifying” it in my head, because you have to remember up until this point that personifying a place with any “difference” (in ethnicity, ability, etc) or acknowledging the real struggles of being queer in a place outside of the sacrilegiously gay-and-silly and yes subversive heta-verse... it wasn’t acceptable in fandom. It was rarely done and when it was it was often met with extremely virulent hostility, hostility in similar-but-different ways to the hostility i faced for accidentally expressing “difference” that I didn’t realize I was expressing in rural backwater Alberta.

And it stuck and suddenly it became a gateway into this secret untold history of the city.

And maybe I will write more about that as my research progresses. but there you go, a little insight into why I designed Ed the way I did and why I’ve upheld that particular characterization for all these years. And now a decade after designing him exist the citations to back up my choices, on one hand, and the resolve to keep fighting, to keep writing that history in spite of these odds that look insurmountable from the outside.

it’s tough being the tough city but the battles are worth fighting. and that’s why i do what i do.

[inkykeiji]

hi! i have a dumb question but was film school scary? i majored in lit for undergrad and now i’m going to a film program for screenwriting for my masters BUT IM SO SCARED LMAO….like ahhh idk idk!! i have one friend that majored in film for undergrad and she was always studying, working on projects, etc. and now she has so much experience on her resume (w internships, projects etc.) n i don’t have any but got in to the same uni as her (both w screenwriting as our major) so i’m just scared i’m not prepared…

eeeee anon that is so exciting!!!!!! congrats!!!

ah i may not be the best person to ask as i didn’t technically go to film school in the literal sense (aka a program where you are constantly making films & getting hands-on experience), i got a degree in cinema studies (which, in my program, has a program within the cinema studies program for screenwriting that u have to submit a whole application and portfolio for etc). i chose not to go to traditional/hands-on film school because i was privileged enough to have film classes offered at my high school, which i took throughout my entire high school career. i felt like, after four years of practice, i had a pretty good grasp on the practical side of film + editing + all the elements of production n post production, and didn’t want to spend $$$$$ on something i already knew.

but!!! if your masters program is focused on screenwriting, then i don’t think you’ll be doing much hands-on pro / post production stuff??? unless they talk about like on-set rewrites and script doctors, but even then i’d assume that would only be a very small portion of your program. if you can look at the syllabi for a few of your classes you might be able to get a good idea of what to expect!

my point is, if your program is heavily focused on screenwriting (which i assume it would be???) then practical experience on-set + with post production wouldn’t really serve you all that much. if your friend studied film from an academic standpoint & studied film narrative and writing etc or had an internship with a screenwriter (not sure those exist???) or a writers room, then they’d probably have a bit of an upper hand.

either way, i wouldn’t worry too much anon bb <3 you got into the program because the faculty deemed you worthy and capable of being there! they most likely won’t just jump into the material and should offer some sort of refresh/review on the basics before they get started. better yet, they might even fully teach you the basics right off the bat! i can’t say for sure because i don’t know the program u got into obv, but there’s a chance they accepted other lit students too that have a writing background but not a screenwriting background. you probably won’t be alone! and worse case scenario and you feel like you’ve totally been thrown to the sharks, there are tons of incredible screenwriting resources online & in textbooks that you can check out, too!

[captainclickycat]

Whoops turns out I have Further Thoughts on this.

So, here's the thing. We could argue a lot about whether or not characters in horror films make stupid decisions and how it depends on the individual film and what have you all day long. And I'm sure we could come up with a few examples on either side of the argument.

But I think there's a broader point here which is that when people say "what if there was a horror movie that featured a convenient and straightforward way for the characters to get out of trouble without making any sacrifices along the way, so they did that and were fine, the end", and especially when they present this as some kind of refreshing new take on the genre...

Well, aside from the fact that this would make for a very boring and disappointing story for anyone who actually wanted to watch a horror film, it has the same energy as those people who are presented with moral dilemmas as a thought exercise and get fixated on "what if there was a way to stop the trolley and save all six people" "what if you could replace the Omelas kid with a robot" and so on. It's a copout, and it really does come off more like they're balking at the idea that suffering is sometimes unavoidable, that sometimes there are no easy answers and any decision you make comes at a cost.

It reminds me of this other post that was going round a decade or so ago, where the title was something like "horror movies for our generation" and the gist of the whole thing was essentially "if millennials were in a horror movie scenario we'd be able to fix everything and save ourselves straight away because we're so smart and progressive and have the best resources!" (Which to add a bit of extra context was clearly pushing back against a lot of the "millennials are stupid children who don't know how to do anything" think piece discourse that was floating around at the time) and a lot of people in the notes (possibly even including me, at the time) going "omg I need this!! I'd watch the shit out of this!!" which, when you think about it, is really weird when you acknowledge that the scenarios being described were essentially just "what if something that claimed to be a horror story actually just had no plot."

The idea of a horror story where the characters make sensible, realistic, understandable decisions is potentially a great premise (and again, there are plenty of existing horror stories that already meet that criteria.) Crucially, though, that can't be enough to get them out of trouble, at least not instantaneously.

If you could avoid getting lost in the scary woods just by using your trusty functioning gps tracker, there would be no story. So in an actual horror story, the gps wouldn't work, or it would be hijacked by some sinister entity and end up landing the characters right back where they started, or lead them further into danger. The characters happen to have the exact right combination of personalities and skillsets to instantly defeat the monster and go home? Well, first of all that's just dumb luck, and second of all that can't work right away either. There would be a different monster that they can't defeat so easily, or they simply don't have enough information or opportunity for most of the story to be able to actually use their collective skills against it. You managed to evade the killer and get out of the creepy log cabin unharmed? Congratulations. Your best friend is still in there, though, and they might be injured. Are you comfortable leaving them behind and hoping they can fend for themself while you get away? What if it's your child? Sometimes the "stupid" decision is the one you wouldn't be able to live with yourself if you didn't make.

I'm going to give the "cozy romance" person props because at least they're honest about the fact that they don't actually want a horror story, and at least the story they're proposing would actually have a plot, just not a horror one. I can see where their thought process was going; there is something cool about the idea of a secret secondary plot going on in the background that the protagonist managed to narrowly avoid, that we can put the pieces together about if we pay close enough attention. (It's not the best example, there are undoubtedly better ones, but it reminds me a bit of Shaun of the Dead where we get these hints that there's a doppelgänger squad running around in the background, and it seems like just a one-off joke until one of them shows up at the end with the military in tow.)

But the thing about that example and a lot of the other ones is that there's eventually a payoff. Ultimately it does affect the protagonists in some way, even if it's sometimes a subtle way. And there's something sort of weird, and just a little jarring, about the idea of reading a story where you're sort of vaguely aware that horrible things are happening to some poor bastard in the background, and your only takeaway from that is supposed to be "oh well, sucks to be them. Let's continue to enjoy watching these Sensible people kiss! Yay!" Apart from maybe being a cool sort of easter egg, what exactly is the point of this subplot, besides imparting the profoundly unsatisfying message of "you can easily avoid danger and have a wonderful life if you're just smart and sensible enough!" when that's so often and so tragically untrue in real life.

And that's why I feel like this would be a much better premise if the horror eventually caught up with the protagonist. Because sorry folks, but escaping the genre unscathed is too easy and too unsatisfying. It has to at least be a challenge, or there's no story worth reading.

You can't just replace the Omelas kid with a robot.

people are so mean about horror movie victims like. sorry but if i had gone to a cabin in the woods with my friends as a teenager you couldn't have stopped us from reading aloud from the evil tome. how were they supposed to know the ancient curse was real they're like 17