#catch my old fandom references LOL

[zombee]

I feel like the luckiest Our Flag Means Death fan in the world after the season 2 finale. By a series of incredible circumstances - including a significant metatextual realization that came in at the 11th hour - it was close to perfect for me.

This essay has everything. Completely normal behavior over a television series. Steven Universe references. The David Jenkins School of Whatever is Best for the Bit. Humbling catharsis.

First: this piece does not exist with the central thesis of “it’s okay to not like something but that’s not the same thing as it being bad.” I feel like thousands of words have already been written on this since Thursday, so I’m going to try to not get too in depth on that.

Second, cards on the table, because it’s relevant and I don’t want to waste your time if this is going to sour your ability to hear me out: I’m an Izzy Canyon hater. For MANY reasons, but from way before the concept of the Canyon existed, (some) Izzy fans pinged me in the same way as Snape/Kylo Ren fans did, and before May 2022 was over I went from genuinely enjoying Izzy’s character and place in the narrative to hating him because his fans made it impossible for me to enjoy him anymore.

(SOME! of his fans. Please don’t keep making me say this, although I’m not going to talk about the Canyon directly anymore after this. I know there are a ton of normal Izzy Enjoyers and even Canyonites, I am literally friends with many of them, please take this all in the good faith it’s intended and if you’re not One Of The Bad Ones then you’re fine! I very carefully don’t go anti-Izzy on main, and when I stopped enjoying his character, I stopped writing him into fics. I’m not trying to be a dick, I just want to be honest. Anyway.)

The season 2 finale made me weep over Izzy Goddamn hands.

ALL season long, I was disgruntled. All season long. I really, truly, DEEPLY appreciated what they were doing with his character and arc, I thought it was wildly on brand for the themes of community/queerness in the show, I saw the vision, I liked it!!! But. I wanted a fucking apology, yall. I needed three seconds of “sorry I called you a slur, Ed :/” and that would have been enough. But I had to let it go. It was poisoning my enjoyment of the whole season, which I loved with very little exception (not none!) and I just had to let it go. I wasn’t getting an apology. That didn’t negate what they were doing with his character.

Yall. They withheld the apology on purpose.

THIS FUCKING SHOW!!!

Let’s go back a bit. I was at the episode 6 + 7 screening, and the breakup shook me. Probably a LOT more than if I had watched it alone in bed at 3am on my laptop - five days of no sleep after NYCC, lots of emotions, seeing it on a big screen with a hundred other intense fans, etc etc - but I did see other folks reacting in parallel ways to me when the episodes aired to the regular public, so maybe I would have felt the same way. Regardless, I was mad at Stede and to a lesser extent Ed. I NEEDED AN APOLOGY FOR THAT FISH LINE. I needed it! “Whativah” autocorrects to “WHATIVAH” in my phone. I was going through it.

(When I rewatched the episode when it aired it was not nearly as bad as I remember, lol)

So now the episode 8 screeners go out and the reviews drop and I think I catch one half-glimpse of a “What a heartbreaking ending!” kind of snippet, and some of my friends who are spoiler fiends unintentionally drop little hints about similar ideas (devastating/heartbreaking/split the fandom) type shit.

And I was a fucking WRECK! about it.

I do love this whole show with my whole chest. I do!!! But I’m not rotted because this is an excellent television show, I’m rotted because two old men kiss each other! On the MOUTH!!! in an excellent television show. You get it, right? I’ve written 700,000 words across almost 100 fics and 98% of them are dedicated to those two men falling in love in different universes. 

So it just did not even occur to me the “heartbreak/devastation/fandom split” would be about anything but Gentlebeard.

Another piece of this that was fucking me up - David Jenkins and his “satisfactory” ending biz. My brain was reacting like this show was ENDING ending, even if I knew logically! that this is just season 2!!! And I wasn’t ready for that, because what if it wasn’t personally satisfying, and I’m a mess about it? Why was I so worried about not liking it? I’d liked the whole season! Even if they didn’t nail the landing I wasn’t going to stop writing fic or hanging out with my pirate community & friends. 

…is what I kept trying to tell myself, but the way anxiety disorders work is funny like that lol. What if I did stop writing fic and hanging out in pirate spaces? That would hurt much more than a show I like disappointing me. And for anyone who’s having that experience with ofmd s2, I’m so very, very sorry. It sucks and that’s where my epiphany came from on Wednesday before the finale.

Because it has happened to me before.

I flit from hyperfocus to hyperfocus, as ya do when you’re spicy, but the last thing to get its hooks in me PROPERLY like pirates was Steven Universe. And I did NOT like the way the regular season ended!!! (I actually really did like most of Future; that’s not what I mean. I mean season 5). I don’t like how they handled the Diamonds, tldr; I think the scope of their villainy got too out of hand, and I was left grieving the thing that had meant enough to me I ran a fan convention for four years based around it. 

Side note: imagine if I had channeled the hyperfocus of almost a million words of fanfiction into an American OFMD con instead. We could have made magic :( I did consult with Our Con Means Death though so I am at least a teeny tiny bit of that one!

I did not like the way Steven ended… but I do respect the story they were telling and think they told it well.

I’m still sad about it. Steven is still one of my most beloved, it will always be beautiful and great to me, but that experience did and does sully my memories. There is so, so, so, SO much more good than bad from being in that fandom, and I cherish it. And I hope, if you’re having this experience with OFMD right now, that you’ll find similar comfort.

But, like I said at the top, “it’s okay to not like something but that’s not the same thing as it being bad” has been belabored already by people better at writing about it than me. I just had the incredible privilege to remember my brush with lower case T trauma and having that experience in my last REALLY big deal fandom. That’s why I had been so extra anxious about being disappointed. Because it happened to me before. It helped so much to connect those two.

So the finale happens, and it’s actually about twelve hours of me going from “eh, rushed but fun, whole season was great” to “THIS MAYBE IS THE BEST SHOW OF ALL TIME, ACTUALLY!”

BECAUSE THIS SHOW MADE ME CRY OVER IZZY FUCKING HANDS!!!!

They literally told me this was the story they were telling this season. “Men can change” “The end  of piracy” “Ed leaving Blackbeard behind (ish).”

As for me? I didn’t get an apology for the fish. Instead, I got “Sorry I was a dick.” “You weren’t a dick. Life’s a dick.”

Just… fuckity BAM. THREE FUCKING SENTENCES resolving that fight. Saying so much in so little.

In real life, should these two men have an actual conversation about this shit? Sure!!! But that’s not how OFMD tells its stories!

It works in symbolism. It works in vibes. It works in an hour’s worth of content into each half-hour episode, and for how much lamenting I have done about the pacing, I would prefer that 100x to having to stretch it out too much.

I have said since March 24, 2022 that OFMD wields anachronism as a weapon. First and foremost, it’s fucking funny, but in addition to that, it’s stating clearly: “This is a fantasy world. This is not real history. This show is about romance (and so much more than that), and the rest is just VIBES!!!”

Sometimes vibes can be historical accuracy. Sometimes vibes can be true emotional poignancy. Sometimes vibes can be Ed finding his sunken leathers in the sea, changing underwater somehow, and coming out of the ocean like the Birth of Fucking Venus, because water and rebirth and mermaids and shit is all very prominent this season. And ALSO, and this is very important! BECAUSE IT LOOKS FUCKING COOL!

I don’t want to do much real Izzy meta here. It’s been said by others, and better than me. But it was telegraphed and it was symbolic – he was the paragon of Traditional Piracy in season 1, for goodness’ sake, and Traditional Piracy is Toxic Masculinity, and he was a part of Blackbeard and Ed had to leave Blackbeard behind (yknow, ish), and he got this ABSOLUTLEY FUCKING LOVELY! storyline about appreciating what a (queer) community can do, and god fucking shit fucking dammit… most of all, best of all (for me), was Buttons landing on Izzy’s grave at the end. Men can change. And Izzy DID!!! He did it for Ed. For love. For community. I am puzzled by “it’s fucked up to use Izzy to further Ed’s storyline” because… this was Ed’s season, in the way that season 1 was Stede’s. And Ed cannot be removed from piracy as a whole (neither can Stede!) so to have this old, set in his ways, coded-queerphobic character blossom to the point he can give this gift to Ed and to piracy… idk man. I just find it so fucking beautiful.

It is okay not to like what they did. It’s okay!!! It’s okay, and it’s okay to mourn, and while it’s not okay to do [insert vile behavior here], it’s okay to carefully examine what you think is “bad writing” vs “what you would have preferred to happen” and give good-faith, textually-based criticism on that.

But I want to remind you over and over and over again, this show works on vibes. It tells its stories leaving many, many, many gaps. There are many things I would have liked to see, and y’know what? I would have told the Izzy story differently. I would have personally done it differently. But it’s not my show! It’s not my show, and I am humbled and delighted to remember that, and to appreciate Our Flag Means Death for what it is and not what it isn’t.

Other words have been written better than I could about the 18 months between seasons 1 and 2 and what that does to us as rabid fans with expectations of how things will go. Millions and millions and millions of words have been written about OFMD, fictional and non, and that is going to color our expectations and experience. We had built it up SO MUCH in our minds and along the way I think some of us forgot (INCLUDING ME!!!) that it is first and foremost about Vibes.

The vibes of Izzy’s death are about rebirth and forgiveness and leaving traditional piracy behind. And he got to die in Ed’s arms, knowing (HAPPILY!) that he had been wrong, and giving Ed the gift of letting him know he is loved, and being a part of something. We had a funeral but we also had a wedding. The only constant is change. Men, piracy, Blackbeard; it all changes. And Izzy found peace in that.

Before my last point, I want to @ myself on things I felt versus realizing in the end it is (I will say it until I’m blue in the face) about vibes.

· I was convinced they left Buttons’ transformation ambiguous because they wanted to leave room for it not having been real. NO!!! It is real, until they decided it isn’t. Magic in the OFMD universe? Fucking why not!!! IT’S SYMBOLIC!!! IT’S IMPORTANT TO ED’S STORYLINE AND THE CENTRAL THESES OF THE SHOW!

· I was unhappy, and still am a little, about the Polycule Situation, but now that I realize Oluwande is Zheng’s Stede… I am less so. The Zheng : Auntie :: Ed : Izzy vibes, btw? Fuckin immaculate.

·        Obviously they touched on Stede/Ed’s “killing people trauma” but I’d reallyyyy like Stede to address it, and even though I think Ed’s is left on a very satisfying note, I’d like him to dip a bit more into it as well. But if they don’t, oh well! It’s not like they ignored it, they just didn’t have a Deep Dive like I Wanted Them To!

· They didn’t deal with Ed throwing Stede’s shit away. They just ignored it! Stede started to collect new trinkets, and I believe that was as much about giving the audience back the old feeling of the Revenge as it was anything important (not to say it wasn’t also important thematically!!!). Just like Ed going back to his leathers is both Extremely Important thematically and about putting Taika back in the leathers because that’s what Blackbeard should be wearing for the epic final scenes for the sake of visually keeping the show consistent. That’s Blackbeard’s uniform.

· Stede’s frilly little outfits my beloved. God I hope they give him back some of his frippery in season 3. I think they will re: cursed suit BUT his journey this season was about something else, so!

· Ed’s stupid little non-profit non-apology, oh my god. It was so funny. And there is a transition from eps 5 to 6 where Ed is back in his leathers and the crew is more comfortable around him. They didn’t have to have him do a Real Apology, it’s implied it was all settled. What was the timeline? A day? DOESN’T MATTER, BABY, VIBES!!!

· Lots more, I’m sure, but now that I’ve tried to let it all go, I’m remembering less of what I wanted and appreciating what I got!

And, last point here, I think it is also very very very important to remember that a lot of people are normal about this show. In fact, WAY more people are normal about this show than aren’t. And that is EXTREMELY! IMPORTANT!!! because otherwise it wouldn’t be profitable and we all know what would happen then. We are the core of it, to be sure. Without word of mouth that stems from our intensity, this show would not be NEARLY as successful as it is. I truly, truly believe that.

But.

Do normies need deeply emotional discussions dissecting the central relationships? No. What normies need is Ed and Stede running dramatically toward each other on the beach and kissing. And I am happy, so fucking happy, to realize that’s what I need too. I’ve got fanworks for the rest.

I love this fucking show and this fucking fandom and its fucking creators so much. Fuck.

#our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd s2 #ofmd season 2

[toxicanonymity]

Why is dads best friend Joel so hot? Why are we so attracted to him? What does this mean?

(This is an old ask, sorry). IDK if this is about my original DBF or DBFs in general, I guess I'll assume the latter and say it varies with personal taste. Obviously there are different things we like about the individual stories but I believe you're referring more to the concept of "dad's best friend." For me, it's usually the "We shouldn't be doing this" / extra layer of depravity. For some it's a paternal figure like protectiveness. Maybe someone who feels forbidden but at the same time safe if your dad is a good man and close to him. . . DBFs have been a thing for a long time in my understanding, and were popular in this fandom from the start (at least, while the show was still airing). I'm glad they're popular because whether people acknowledge it or not it's often written a little dark but accepted mainstream. there's often an inherent power imbalance.

I was hesitant to do one at first because there were already so many but I tried to do something different with mine to the point where IDK if people even think of mine as DBFs lol. In the first one from March I wanted to give the reader some power and have a kind of switch/shifting power dynamic. In the current one, well.

-------------

My DBFs

Complete series - Silence can never be bought (dbf, AU)⭐ Joel is a family friend. You catch him in a compromising position and hold it over him until you both realize what you really want. The dad will be more relevant in the next 'season' if there's enough interest for this to be continued.

Ongoing series - Left in Lincoln (dbf x virgin) Post-outbreak, He's a neighbor your dads trust to look in on you while they seek treatment for Frank.

One shot /one-off joel- Fucking Joel at your dad's house - Reader is the aggressor.

Two shot with potential - Canopy is just risky smut, but in part 2 on a different day y'all get caught

#dbf!joel miller #toxic ask

[waitmyturtles]

Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: The Bad Buddy Rewatch Edition, Part 0.5 -- The BBS Meta Series Preamble

[What’s going on here? After joining Tumblr and discovering Thai BLs through KinnPorsche in 2022, I began watching GMMTV’s new offerings -- and realized that I had a lot of history to catch up on, to appreciate the more recent works that I was delving into. From tropes to BL frameworks, what we’re watching now hails from somewhere, and I’m learning about Thai BL's history through what I’m calling the Old GMMTV Challenge (OGMMTVC). Starting with recommendations from @absolutebl on their post regarding how GMMTV is correcting for its mistakes with its shows today, I’ve made an expansive list to get me through a condensed history of essential/classic/significant Thai BLs produced by GMMTV and many other BL studios. My watchlist, pasted below, lists what I’ve watched and what’s upcoming, along with the reviews I’ve written so far. Today, I'm preambling a series of posts that I'll be publishing throughout November and December about my OGMMTVC rewatch of Bad Buddy and Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars.]

After nearly a month of rewatching Bad Buddy and Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars -- TWICE, holy shit! -- I'm finally putting pen to paper on a four-part series of BBS meta that I've been looking forward to writing nearly all year.

Before I start the series, I'd like to offer a not-so-quick preamble of how I got here. Before the birth of this Old GMMTV Challenge project, I was flitting and floating, enjoying a dalliance with Thai BLs here and there, while still mostly watching Japanese BLs, my entrée into overall Asian BL content. I started with KinnPorsche in the late summer of 2022, picked up The Eclipse after that on the recommendation of a dear mutual (@the-nihongo-adventure, I hope you're well!), and then picked up A Tale of Thousand Stars in order to prepare for my first live GMMTV fandom experience on Tumblr in early January with Moonlight Chicken.

That was the exact order by which I came to Bad Buddy, which I watched for the first time in January and February of this year, after MLC ended. I was so blown away. I thought I was a drama girlie before Bad Buddy, but it was like Bad Buddy had made me see facets of drama-making that I had never known or appreciated before. The act structure of episode 10 alone just sat me the hell down, let alone the brilliance of the overall story arc vis à vis Pat, Pran, the themes and motifs of intergenerational trauma and filial piety that I related to, down to my bones and bloodstream, and the millions of layers on this show that we could spend a lifetime parsing.

My first piece about Bad Buddy, published in February, is the post on Tumblr that I am the most proud of writing, my first post (as a relatively new Tumblr-ite) that I took days and drafts to work on. In that post, I worked out what I saw as the major theme of intergenerational trauma dominating the story landscape of Bad Buddy, framed in what I interpreted as a reflection of David Hegel's thesis-antithesis-synthesis modality of change in philosophy and art, as most poignantly reflected in Herman Hesse's Siddhartha.

In other words, y'all: I became a BBS girlie, lol.

And, partly in conversation with @miscellar, and partly by way of the just TREMENDOUS, TREMENDOUS amount of meta on Bad Buddy on Tumblr (whew, the MASTERS, @telomeke, @grapejuicegay, @dribs-and-drabbles, @airenyah, @dudeyuri, @dimplesandfierceeyes, oh my gosh, so many many more, I can't list them all!), I came to learn that Bad Buddy was a home to so many other themes, motifs, and references that honestly, my mind was blown.

For me, personally, it was ABL Sensei's original post on the newer landscape of GMMTV BLs answering to Thailand's seminal BLs, as well as @miscellar's post on BL tropes referenced and reshaped in Bad Buddy, that served as the original inspiration for the creation of the Old GMMTV Challenge project.

I needed to watch older Thai BLs to understand the landscape of how this genre was born and how it's changed and developed over time, to truly and deeply understand the impact that Bad Buddy had on me personally and artistically, and how it stands in the echelon of the Thai BL genre today, particularly by way of the influence of BBS's director, the brilliant Aof Noppharnach. I needed to know about the food that fed Bad Buddy to make Bad Buddy what it was as its own seminal drama.

So, after 32 shows and movies watched on the OGMMTVC list, I get to this moment -- my turn, my time, to pound out some BBS meta, knowing what I know now about the history of the Thai BL genre up to 2021-2022.

My four-part series of BBS meta will focus on the following:

Part 1: A look at how previous GMMTV BLs spoke to Bad Buddy in their own development, and to Bad Buddy itself. I'll take a look at the BL tropes that Bad Buddy references and reshapes. I'll touch upon Theory of Love, A Tale of Thousand Stars, Still 2gether, and many more older shows. I'll also take a look at themes in BBS that I didn't touch upon in my first BBS thesis from February 2023.

Part 2: In conjunction with my Big Meta series on themes of pain in Asian dramas, I want to take a look at the themes of pain, trust, and separation (sometimes voluntary, sometimes forced) in some Asian dramas, including Bad Buddy, Still 2gether, A Tale of Thousand Stars, Until We Meet Again, and I Promised You The Moon.

Part 3: I have had the extremely GREAT luck to engage in lengthy discussion about Bad Buddy with a number of Asian Tumblr bloggers, to discuss how we related to BBS as Asians, and what themes we could analyze from our culturally attuned and lived-in perspectives. In this meta, I'll take a look at Asian cultural touchpoints including inherited and intergenerational trauma; competition amongst one's peers; the nature of secret-keeping and what's "acceptable" to explicitly talk about in Asian family systems; and much more. (I may need to split this post into two, we'll see!)

Part 4: I'll offer some thoughts, based off of the Pain, Trust, and Separation Big Meta and the BBS Asian Cultural Touchpoints meta, on Pran leaving for Singapore, and how Thai vs. international audiences may interpret his decision to leave Thailand for two years.

I'm late to the BBS meta game, but there's no time like the present to catch the hell up. I'm happy to celebrate Bad Buddy's two-year anniversary this way, and I'm really excited that the OGMMTVC allows me to do so.

Part 1 drops later this week. Meet me at Wai's bar for a chit-chat -- and thank you for reading along!

(Tagging @dribs-and-drabbles by request! If you'd like to be tagged, please let me know! <3 )

[Here's the complete OGMMTVC watchlist as it stands today. For a more accurate look at what I've watched, please mosey over to this link!

1) The Love of Siam (2007) (movie) (review here) 2) My Bromance (2014) (movie) (review here) 3) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here) 4) Gay OK Bangkok Season 1 (2016) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 5) Make It Right (2016) (review here) 6) SOTUS (2016-2017) (review here) 7) Gay OK Bangkok Season 2 (2017) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 8) Make It Right 2 (2017) (review here) 9) Together With Me (2017) (review here) 10) SOTUS S/Our Skyy x SOTUS (2017-2018) (review here) 11) Love By Chance (2018) (review here) 12) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) (no review) 13) He’s Coming To Me (2019) (review here) 14) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) and Our Skyy x Kiss Me Again (2018) (review here) 15) TharnType (2019-2020) (review here) 16) Senior Secret Love: Puppy Honey (OffGun BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (no review) 17) Theory of Love (2019) (review here) 18) 3 Will Be Free (2019) (a non-BL and an important harbinger of things to come in 2019 and beyond re: Jojo Tichakorn pushing queer content in non-BLs) (review here) 19) Dew the Movie (2019) (review here) 20) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020) (review here) (and notes on my UWMA rewatch here) 21) 2gether (2020) and Still 2gether (2020) (review here) 22) I Told Sunset About You (2020) (review here) 23) YYY (2020, out of chronological order) (review here) 24) Manner of Death (2020-2021) (not a true BL, but a MaxTul queer/gay romance set within a genre-based show that likely influenced Not Me and KinnPorsche) (review here) 25) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here) 26) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake Of Rewatching Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (re-review here) 27) Lovely Writer (2021) (review here) 28) Last Twilight in Phuket (2021) (the mini-special before IPYTM) (review here) 29) I Promised You the Moon (2021) (review here) 30) Not Me (2021-2022) (review here)

31) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here) 32) 55:15 Never Too Late (2021-2022) (not a BL, but a GMMTV drama that features a macro BL storyline about shipper culture and the BL industry) (review here) 33) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch (watching) 34) Secret Crush On You (2022) [watching for Cheewin’s trajectory of studying queer joy from Make It Right (high school), to SCOY (college), to Bed Friend (working adults)] 35) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here) 36) KinnPorsche (2022) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For the Sake of Re-Analyzing the KP Cultural Zeitgeist 37) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 38) The Eclipse OGMMTVC Rewatch For the Sake of Re-Analyzing an Politics-Focused Show After Not Me 39) GAP (2022-2023) (Thailand’s first GL) 40) My School President (2022-2023) and Our Skyy 2 x My School President (2023) 41) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here) 42) Bed Friend (2023) (tag here) (Cheewin’s latest show, depicting a queer joy journey among working adults) 43) Be My Favorite (2023) (tag here) (I’m including this for BMF’s sophisticated commentary on Krist’s career past as a BL icon) 44) Wedding Plan (2023) (Recommended as an important trajectory in the course of MAME’s work and influence from TharnType) 45) Only Friends (2023) (tag here)]

#bad buddy #bad buddy the series #bad buddy meta #the bbs ogmmtvc meta series #turtles catches up with old gmmtv #turtles catches up with thai BLs #turtles catches up with the essential BLs #the old gmmtv challege #ogmmtvc #backaof noppharnach #aof noppharnach

[monstersinthecosmos]

Can you elaborate onthe "lack of childhood" though? Sure he had the trauma from when he was abducted, then abducted again by the cult, but him growing up with his mortal family + those years with Marius (and especially since he remembers his early memories), I wouldn't say that's a -complete- lack of childhood lol. I'd say more of having to care for others from an early age (I'm including Marius here too, affectionately, the man was a mess back then)?

These are great points!!!!!!!!!

I have three basic concepts I want to submit here, and your mileage may vary! Some of this goes into headcanon territory so we might land in different places. My questions are:

 If you had a good childhood that you can’t really remember, does it count?

 Can a young person sincerely be that pious without it being manipulative?

What age does Armand’s “childhood” end when he’s abducted at 14, at the oldest?

We don’t get a ton of information about his life before he was abducted and part of that is because he’s so traumatized that he doesn’t remember—a mega Capital T Trauma happening as a young teen I think informs “childhood”. I cede your point because I think a lot of people think of “childhood” as more early childhood, and especially in the historical context of kids growing up faster, we don’t know that much about his early childhood. When he goes back to visit with Marius he talks a bit about remembering his uncle’s singing and stuff, so we have that clue that his family did things together.

But we also have stuff like

I stood with my head bowed. I let my temple rest against the mud. I wished to find the boy, so pure of soul, who had opened these cells to bring the hermits just enough food and drink to keep them alive. But I couldn't find the boy. I couldn't. And I felt only a raging pity for him that he had ever suffered here, thin and miserable, and desperate, and ignorant, oh, so terribly ignorant, having but one sensuous joy in life and that was to see the colors of the ikon catch fire.

He also immediately shows up and refers to his family as “filthy peasants”.

And it seemed I understood more viscerally than ever the atmosphere of purposeful gloom which had overhung my childhood in far-off Kiev. I saw again the muddy catacombs, and the half-buried monks who had cheered me on to become one of them.

So I’m admittedly really skeptical about most religions LOL but this entire book is Armand struggling with his religious trauma and like, when you think about it, cave monks aren’t like. Very typical?

When he says stuff like “purposeful gloom” and “cheered me on to become one of them” I can’t imagine a situation where this isn’t coercive on their part, that he wasn't being manipulated and groomed into a cult. And his father didn’t want him to join them; the cult was pulling Armand away from his family and life. And he mentions that the monks are all starving and cold like, it’s not like this was some glamourous life he could’ve lived where they were saving him.

He says:

I looked back at my scholarly brethren.

All were emaciated, dressed in cheap black wool, reeking of old sweat and dirt, and their heads were all but shaved. Their long beards were thin and uncombed. I thought I knew one of them, had loved him somewhat even, but this seemed remote and not worth considering anymore.

To Marius, who stood beside me as faithfully as a shadow, I confided that I could not have endured it, but we both knew this was a lie. In all likelihood I would have endured it, and I would have died without ever knowing any other world.

And like fandom can debate all day and night about like the historical context of Armand’s age, and whether or not he was a child when he lived with Marius, but I think a lot about how his indoctrination into the Children of Darkness wasn’t simply him being brainwashed, it was his relapse. So when you look at the timeline of his life, if you think of like, say 300ish years with a cult, does he fold that tiny blip of time with Marius into his “childhood” ? idk.

But yeah I think like, to put a finer point on it aside from “lack of childhood” what we really mean when we say that is like, some kids go through traumas that force them to grow up quickly, and for a lot of kids it comes with parentification. Like, it’s enough that Armand was a hungry peasant in a cold climate, was (possibly) groomed by a cult, and then abducted and trafficked. But I wonder what Marius did to him too when it comes to like, the emotional support he needed and how he used Armand as balm to his own loneliness, all the while not allowing Armand to have his own emotional needs.

People kept stealing him and it makes sense that he might find a place in that world, and become a leader. It feels like the end result of a long series of events of having to put others’ needs ahead of his own, and also a way for him to have some semblance of control in the situation he’s been thrust into. So I think I when I say “lack of childhood” I’m really just gesturing wildly at All This Stuff and how it connects and relates to itself in the end. 

His time with the Children of Darkness is a coming home of sorts; he still winds up pious and underground, and it’s like his whole life he keeps trying to climb his way out of it and always gets dragged back down. Like I think even his suicide attempt fits this as a relapse into religious crisis. He was doing so good!!!!!!!! ☹ Sigh.

And the thing about it, and reaching out more broadly to this concept of VAMPIRE THERAPY LOL is like, a lot of times children grow up thinking their world is normal, or a default, and the work we put in as adults is unlearning that idea and coming to terms with that fact that something was wrong. Armand might not have been traumatized by being cold and hungry and ready to bury himself in a cave but when it's time to dismantle all that stuff I think it's important to make space for it. And even saying like, the concept of Armand going to therapy is silly hahaha so maybe it's not literal, but, I think it's still reaching the same idea if you ask him to grow as a person, to connect with Daniel and reevaluate his feelings about mortality and humanity, to care for Benji & Sybelle, to create Trinity Gate and get back together with Louis in a new way. All of this marks growth that he got to have.

So returning to my original point LOL, I always look at the way he’s built Trinity Gate as a safe haven, landing spot, and how trauma can be so deeply tangled in us that it’s like, how much of this is me and how much is the trauma, when does the trauma end and my personality begin, etc, and like. The truth is that sometimes you have to be patient and accept that it IS part of you, and you can try to be healthy and productive and kind to yourself without simply exorcising all the bad parts. For Armand it can be: "I created Trinity Gate as a safe haven for my friends & family out of love and it also feels like a burden sometimes."

#armand pain #vampire chronicles #the vampire armand #armand #deep ass thoughts about vampires #anne rice #i'm sad about armand again good morning! #vampire therapy thoughts #trauma hole theory #ARMANDS TRAUMA HOLE

[nikki-tine]

So it's come to my attention that despite the page I have set up within the desktop version of my blog, I don't have a mobile version of an introduction post here. Oops! This one's newly written, too, in a different format than the other.

So, that being said - Hello!

I am Nikki/Niko (Whichever you prefer!) and I am a 27-year old Genderfluid artist person (My birthday is on January 9th!). I don't think there's too much to be said here, but I can and will say with confidence that this blog has been, especially in the last few or so years built up to be a catch-all for whatever I deem good to reblog or post (All of which typically related to fluff stuff, feel-good vibes or something that I may feel strongly about).

This place is, and always will be a safe space for a) People with disabilities (I am autistic, have ADD and Bipolar as well as Anxiety) and b) LGBTQ+-identifying people (I am, as mentioned before Genderfluid, and I'm Pansexual Panromantic!).

If a reblog or post makes you uncomfortable, then I will happily delete it if asked.

I make it a point to keep these posts SFW especially nowadays - however, I can't quite vouch for possibly the oldest of my posts (as I've been here since the early 2010s along with some ol' dumb teen thoughts involved and it'd take forever to sort absolutely everything out from over a decade ago at this point). I'm pretty sure that I've removed most of the NSFW stuff already from those years ago, but if I missed something then I don't mind deleting it as long as you let me know first (I'm incredibly disorganized and would appreciate a nudge in the right direction).

With these details out of the way - I am an artist that dabbles in various fandoms with no real sense of rhyme or reason outside of either hyperfixated interest or otherwise with the intent to update old ideas and refresh them into new ones. Like most artists on the internet, I ask that you do not repost without credit, trace and/or copy my work. I'm quite literally living paycheck by paycheck with my family right now. You CAN however use my artwork as a reference or as inspiration for your own work - If you do, lemme know! I'd love to see the result!

Here's a vague list of fandoms I dabble in (though my post history doesn't quite show that as I tend to leave most of my stuff to posting on Discord instead):

Pokemon (I've been a part of this one almost my entire life lol)

Sonic the Hedgehog (Another fandom I've been in for a grand majority of my life! I'm more of a casual fan as I haven't made much art recently, but I still absolutely love looking at what others come up with for OCs and stuff.)

Undertale (ESPECIALLY AU-centric)

Digimon (Passionate about this one specifically - I have a project I've been working with under this fandom since 2014 on and off)

Cookie Run (Kingdom primarily with a minor Ovenbreak focus for AU concept ideas)

Dark Cloud/Dark Chronicle (This one's SO obscure, but if you know these games then I give you a virtual baked good of your liking! These two games hold a very special place in my heart.)

Dance Dance Revolution, NotITG, Friday Night Funkin (I'm a rhythm game nerd and love the creativity of the communities surrounding these three - I just haven't been able to piece together anything for it yet visually except for FNF stuff on and off)

A Dance of Fire and Ice (Same as the DDR fandom part, but I've made a couple fanart pieces before so this one I may have an easier time of conceptualizing later)

FNAF (Specifically Security Breach AU work! This one's not as frequent as others but I still have stuff in mind for it. Security Breach is how I finally caved with the FNAF series as a whole after watching how the fandom grew over the years.)

Warriors (Warrior Cats, in our year 2024? Eeyup. I just like the funny spiritual witties!)

Team Fortress 2 (This one's in and out but it's one that I come back to a lot as my boyfriend, regularly interacting and involved in the GMOD animation community reminds me of my own TF2 stuff with his presence alone lol. Love you James! &lt;3)

Persona 3, 4 and 5 (This one's a lil self-explanatory but I have AU ideas surrounding these games that I want to make more art for eventually)

If I have anything else not listed before, I'll add it to the list. C: Please keep in mind that although I dabble in these fandoms, AU versions of existing characters may be changed in terms of sexuality, personality etc to reflect the AU they are from (For example, I have a version of Cream Unicorn Cookie that uses he/they pronouns, and my Redeemed!Pomegranate Cookie from the same AU leans bisexual over lesbian for reasons relating to reflection of character and overall character development. I like to make characters more flexible while self-indulging, so keep this in mind). I note this because my own headcanons about certain characters have set off one or two people in the past unintentionally and they VERY much have pushed things in an effort to keep canon down my throat out of retaliation. Let's just say that this part in particular is a thing that taps a sore spot for me for personal reasons. :/

When it concerns making art of my characters - surprise or not, feel free to make art of them and mention me in post (and/or message me, either way works)! It makes me feel SO loved when I get art from others, and I appreciate every piece dearly. 💜💜💜 (I go so far as to hold onto an archive of art that was done for me - with artist names in-tact within the file name nowadays!)

A few things to consider when it concerns tickling-related matters with me:

I am a Switch! I'm unsure how far Ler or Lee I am just yet, but I do enjoy tickling both ways. Unfortunately, however, I'm the kind of person that practically flies across a room when poked,, (if it comes down to tickling my sona - Niko Spirata - tie or hold 'em down if you want to wreck 'em with tickles lol)

My interest in tickling alone is purely SFW - It feels too weird looking at IRL photos/videos with very rare exception (a lot of the exception is the giggle the lee produces from ticklish contact). As a result, all the stuff I'll be reblogging and posting here is art or animation-related instead!

My favorite tickle trope is the one where a shrunken someone or a small something wiggles under the unwitting lee's clothing to tickle them! (Points at wormonastriing's Squirmles as an example of this trope :3) No, seriously. If I end up with art of any of my characters getting destroyed with tickles in this manner I will ASCEND BEYOND GALAXIES.

My favorite spots with tickling overall are belly, side and rib tickling - on rarer occasions, I enjoy tickling in other places (I prefer foot tickling if the lee has paws instead of normal feet!). This lines up with a particular enjoyment of characters being slightly chubby! I looove a good squeeze of the sides or belly, enough to get the lee blurting out giggles.

I have only a few tags I use now on a regular, but these are:

#nikki-tine (This is my user tag and I put it in with my art posts and other things I post sometimes. You may also see others' posts under this tag, primarily with stuff related to asks or when art's been posted for me in the past &lt;3)

#art, #tickle art, #tickling art (These are self-explanatory!)

#NJEGNJ (Something to that effect, lol. It's not exact but keyboard smash tag is typically wrote similarly or around the same for several posts, all of which ones that got me chuckling or giggling like a dork!)

~

My Commission Status is currently set to OPEN (paypal only, for now).

It's really complicated, however, and I don't have any other methods than Paypal and Robux right now so if you have questions about that then feel free to message me and I'll try to clear it up as best I can!

I only have two prices, both fully colored and shaded.

Chibies are $25 USD (+ 5 for an extra character)

My normal art style is $50 USD (+ 10 for an extra character)

I do best leaving the BG transparent, but if I HAVE to work on one then I can do nature-themed backgrounds pretty okay. It’s not a strong-suit of mine, however…

My Art Trade Status is Busted Wide Open™ to Mutuals, but I'm a little picky and choosy with random people.

If I decline an Art Trade, please don't take it personally!

In terms of Roleplay, It's Closed on-blog, BUT I'm Open to Roleplay in Discord servers (Provided there's a Tupperbot there for me to use).

I've been looking to find an RP server that has mutuals/friends and allows Undertale-related stuff (especially of the tickling-related kind!), so if you're a part of one please let me know!

DM Status overall is Open (As long as you are kind to me, I will return kindness back!).

My Asks are ALWAYS OPEN! I really like getting stuff in my inbox (and I unfortunately don't get asks often at all).

I'm most comfortable interacting with other adults and SFW blogs (this is more-so for safety than anything else on my end. I don't have the emotional or mental energy to handle potential drama involving context-disconnected words). I don't mind interacting with NSFW blogs here but only if in the context of specific interests of mine and not much else.

I don't really have much in the way of who can't interact with me as long as you are respectful/mindful of chat etiquette and are aware of the kind of impact you may make in messaging people like myself.

I do my best to look at blog descriptions and respect DNI's - If I end up poking at something I shouldn't by accident, as long as it's not met with aggression in DMs, I will happily fix whatever problem you may have related to that. I HATE making others uncomfortable/upset!

If you have questions, feel free to ask! I don't really use other forms of Social Media, but I do use some websites with a social aspect to them casually.

Links:

Flightrising (Funny dragon site)

Chicken Smoothie (This one's a fun lil adopt site from the late 2000s)

GPX Plus (This is literally Pokefarm Q before Pokefarm Q lol)

Gaia Online (Another old site with unfortunate currency inflation, but it's the site that's kept me going with character designing and such over the years! The blog part here is old, but the avatar is updated from time to time. This site is the reason I lean on Monochrome + a color as an aesthetic a lot lol)

Bluesky (mostly inactive - want activity there? nudge me here!)

DeviantArt (It's VERY rare I post here now. Also a warning for those under 18 - there's suggestive and nsfw art in my favorites dotted here and there so look with caution. my gallery itself is SFW however and all the works that would have been nsfw are archived.)

Artfight (Self-explanatory!)

#nikki-tine #introduction post #intro post #perpetual pin #hopefully it's enough for you guys - if I'm missing anything lemme know and I'll add what I can #Update 3/14/2024 - Added StH to my list of fandoms #Of all the things to forget adding... #Update 3/18/24 - Added info about making art of my characters in the post! #It’s been asked only a few times over the years but I figured it’d be good to add that in #Was asked about it in messages very recently - long story short PLEASE DO #I would ASCEND to see art of my characters!! #Update 3/21/24 - Added Ask inbox status #Update 3/22/24 - Added commission prices #Update 4/12/24 - Added my birthday! #Update 4/22/24 - Added commission post to comm status

[eemamminy-art]

Author Interview

Tagged by @allaganexarch!! 😊

Long post with many questions below the cut

1. how many works do you have on AO3?

Somehow... I have 50?? Wild to me, but I suppose I have had the account for 10 years so maybe that's not so strange.

2. what's your total AO3 word count?

142,785. I don't know if that's a lot or not, I tend to just write short oneshots because it's all I have patience for lol

3. what fandoms do you write for?

Anything that catches my interest really haha most of my fics at this point are FFXIV but.. so is most of my art, it's kind of had me in a chokehold for the last 6 years

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

(all of the following are explicit btw, be careful if clicking the links. Just mind warnings and tags thanks :3)

Licking Wounds - FFXIV (Estinien/Aymeric) - 247 kudos I want to chock this up to just the fact that I wrote it in 2018 when there was next to nothing in the ship tag lol. After I wrote it I started writing a lot lot lot more (in longform rp mostly and then moved onto fic) and I feel like everything else I've written afterward is so much better!! It kind of irks me when people have said it's their favorite estimeric fic of mine, because it is far and away my least favorite thing I've written for the ship.

Say my name - FFXIV (Estinien/Aymeric) - 204 kudos This was honestly like my attempt 2 at the story I wanted to convey in Licking Wounds, but it's 10000% better please read this one instead 😂 Both this one and the previous one are meant to be the inception of their relationship immediately following the Through Fire and Blood canon short story.

Sleepless Night - FFXIV (Estinien/Aymeric) - 185 kudos I sort of revisited the idea in this one later too (Chipped Porcelain), but I'm still not 100% satisfied with it so I may return to this idea in a third fic one day. I do like it for the fact that it's not set during Heavensward, which was a first for me at the time! I love stormblood and as little of a role as Aymeric and Estinien have in it, I really really liked the tiny mentions of them and wanted to expand on it. They have so few scenes in 4.0 and 5.0 that it leaves a lot of room open for exploration of their relationship at that time!!

Long distance - FFXIV (Estinien/Aymeric) - 151 kudos I don't think on a technical/creative level I enjoy this fic much since I wrote it really quickly without much editing, but I love it in the sense that it was one of the first things I wrote while coming out of this notion that post-HW Estinien and Aymeric are exes/do not like each other/have beef/etc. That's a popular fanon for them based on how they interact in 5.X and 6.0 especially but I can't stand it and it frankly makes me really sad! It clicked for me that they could just have a long distance relationship and that suddenly opened up my eyes to all the potential stories they could have outside of the context of pre-canon or 3.X.

Vigil - FFXIV (Estinien/Aymeric) - 130 kudos This one was kind of a sequel to Licking Wounds actually, or at least I made reference to it in there! Kind of me facing my old writing that I didn't like very much. I feel a little embarrassed rereading this one because it's really shmoopy but that's kind of my style when I create anything so I should probably just embrace that!

5. do you respond to comments?

I try but I feel so weird about it!! 😭 I probably should at least say "thank you" but it feels like not enough when someone sends me some long thoughtful comment, so then I end up letting them sit and be like.. damn I should reply to this... I really appreciate every comment I get, it's just that I am not very confident in my writing and struggle to accept praise for it I think.

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

No one ever said it would be this hard, I think is probably the angstiest one! I love angst but I love it in the sense that it amplifies the relief of having a happy ending follow it. This fic though I wrote during a really bad time in my life, and after I had felt kind of betrayed by a video game character who had been giving me some comfort back then 😂 I had lost my parents in 2013 and 2014 and found a great outlet for my grief in Fallout 4, particularly with Shaun and with Piper, and it felt like a gut punch that despite romancing her Piper was NOT on board with reuniting our little family lol. In hindsight uh no kidding she wasn't, but at the time I was like wow how could she do this to me!! 😭 So I wrote this little tiny ficlet on a fucking napkin on my break at work on Christmas Eve that year, since I was already sad anyway I thought, let's just wallow in this shall we? And then I transcribed it after I got home later.

7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I usually write happy endings so it's hard to decide. I think Benevolence probably stands out the most to me though, because it's a happy ending for Zenos which is something I crave every hour, every day, every week, since I played Endwalker 😂

8. do you get hate on fics?

Not to my face, though I've come across some subtweets about my lesbian au stuff quite a few times. I did get a weird anon hate on ao3 the other day though that sounded like a high schooler wrote it 😂 I just turned off anon comments though because I don't need people wasting my time to tell me they didn't like something I wrote

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

On occasion.. <:') it's always really romantic though, I love stuff that really focuses on emotional bonds and senses and just the intimacy of it all. I do find that people tend to like my works better when I dip into more raunchy stuff, but it's really rare that I have any desire to write smut like that.

10. do you write crossovers? what's the craziest one you've written?

So... okay idk if this counts, but my ex-gf and my ex-bestfriend and I had this LJ community where it was like a multi-universe rp but the rp was like, these random characters all writing on the same forum and being insufferable to one another 😂 it was so stupid but it was a lot of fun at the time!

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge, but I've had my art stolen quite a lot of times.

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! Or at least, it's been asked of me! I don't know if they did it in the end or not. I think it was for some of my estimeric fics? I was asked on twitter if it would be okay to translate it into chinese, since there is evidently a decent community for the ship with chinese fans!!

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not exactly, though my partner gives me a lot of ideas for things to write or draw, and I've been helping my friend brainstorm a lot for a series they are working on!

14. what's your all-time favourite ship?

As if I could pick just one!! 😩 Well I think in recent years it's been obvious I adore Estinien/Aymeric, Fordola/Lyse, and Zenos/WoL (specifically meteor but other wols are also good sometimes, depends on the wol though). They all make me really happy.. I do a little finger touch and have a little giggle when I see them.. 🥺

15. what's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I think if I were to finish it, I would go back and redo it entirely, but I had a wip that I'd just barely started about Aymeric meeting Thordan face to face for the first time. I don't really want to go into much detail beyond that, but I really loved the concept and have wanted to go back and work on it for years, but I think I built it up too much in my head about how perfect I wanted it to be. But maybe someday!!!!

16. what are your writing strengths?

Characterization and specifically internal monolog/descriptions from character POV.

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

Dialog, especially when it comes to the fantasy ye olde english type of dialog, too much repetition and too much simple language. Run on sentences, like uh all of this post lmao.

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I think it would be cool!! I speak like the most simplest amount of a second language so I don't think I'd be able to do it for a long time unless I had a lot of help, but I like the concept of it! I wanted for a long time to draw a short original lesbian comic and put out versions in both english and polish, but at this point the idea I had for it is a little too simple and my inspiration for it is a little too dim, but maybe one day I will attempt it!

19. first fandom you wrote for?

Probably either Inuyasha or Ranma 1/2, when I was like.. 12 or something 😂 If we're counting just what's on my ao3 though, my first fics were for Deus Ex (set somewhere between human revolution and the first game) though I have since orphaned them because I'm no longer comfortable with them.

20. favourite fic you've written?

I don't think I can narrow it down to just one!!

A port in a storm is without a doubt my favorite character study of Estinien pre-canon. It's in my lesbian au so it's not exactly how he would be, he's perhaps even more averse to other people in this universe, but it's I think a great example of his kind of frightened cat with their hackles raised demeanor. Plus it portrays really well the dynamic I love between Estinien and Aymeric, and also butch and femme identities.

Bewitched is another favorite, because it's another sort of character study but this time for Zenos. I really really liked the idea of Garleans being culturally conditioned to fear magic due to their inability to use it, and I liked exploring that in this fic, of making the warrior of light be terrifying and thus exceptional and noteworthy to Zenos, just for the fact that he's a healer.

Just Listen is probably the longest fic I've written both in terms of actual length and in terms of time I spent actively writing it. It was my way of working out my unhappiness with how the relationship between Aymeric and Estinien changed in canon while still trying to keep it relatively canon-compliant! It also was my way of showing just how complicated and messy they are, but unlike other fics I've read about the same sort of topic, I opted for love to triumph over all. If FFXIV has taught me anything, it's that even the worst and most hopeless of times and lowest of lows in relationships can still find happiness in the end with enough love and determination. 💛💛💛

Thanks for reading all this rambling if you did!!! I don't usually like to talk about or even acknowledge my fic so this was a good exercise in doing that. :3

Tagging: @4th-make-quail @notapaladin @salmonking @lesbxdyke @mariyekos @grahatini @randomsquirrel @sherribon @ladyramora and anyone who saw this and thought "hey, this looks like a lot of fun!" :3

#writing stuff #long post #my writing #writing meme

[facedented]

GET TO KNOW THE MUN. || respond to the prompts out of character!

what made you pick up the current muse(s) you have?

uhm well i've been obsessed w/ this band & these characters ( especially 2D ) since i was a wee teenager,,,,,, his muse kinda came out of nowhere after a few years of being quiet & ran me over. he does not have a license.

is there anything you don’t like to write?

well obviously i wont write anything reprehensible or nasty but just like, surface level?? not that i can think of. it depends who / what muses im writing with, too.

is there anything you really enjoy writing?

any opportunity i can get to swim around 2D's head & make him retrospective is always a good time. i love exploring the complex thoughts characters have that we, as an audience, don't really get to see often -- or only catch glimpses of. i like getting messy & philosophical with it. but ofc angst tropes i adore, as well as found family. certain ships with 2D i also wouldnt mind exploring.

how do you come up with headcanons?

a lot of it is lived experience, i think. it'll be like "this character is just like me fr" & then i'll think of ways to make them even MORE like me. it's nice to see yourself represented, even in little ways. but sometimes i'll be inspired by fanfictions, music, tv shows . . . like i listened to an old panic! song & came up with a hc for 2D that way lmao. sometimes i'll just see humans doing human things & relate it to characters. my mind just doesn't shut up tbh

do you write in silence or do you play music?

always music. i feel like i'll pass out if i don't have some kind of sound going on constantly

do you plan your replies or wing them?

9 times out of 10 i'm winging it. sometimes, especially with first time interactions with muses from different fandoms or oc's i do some planning -- just to kind of get a grasp on who the other person is playing & how 2D would interact with them, or how their worlds would intersect. but if i worry too long it just makes me anxious haha so i just try to have fun with it & hope everyone else does, too!

do you enjoy shipping? 

im lowkey kind of reserved with my ships for 2D fjksljflks i only really have two & im not really looking to do shipping rps unless someone mused those characters & felt comfortable, but it's fun to reference his feelings in threads!

what’s your alias/name?

you can call me cal!

age?

24 years young.

birthday?

september 7th! 5 more months.

favorite color?

probably green!

favorite song?

i love music, it changes all the time.

last movie you watched?

a friend of mine showed me the second avatar movie lol

last show you watched?

'baby reindeer' on netflix. chilling.

last song you listened to?

superfast jellyfish -- gorillaz. ( shocker. )

favorite food?

idk man i love to eat but uh. i am always in the mood for chinese food.

favorite season?

fall, by far.

do you have a tumblr best friend?

not atm! most of the gay ppl in my phone are on discord lmao

tagged by : shamelessly stole it

tagging ( only if you want to! ) : @rebelpuff , @manaborn , @poeticvocals , @okoden & @moralpuppet. & anyone else who would like to!

#( ooc. / dash games . ) #should get to replies & things when i'm not so sleepy ghsjfs #so here's this in the meantime <3

[tiktowafel]

Hey love your headcanons! I was wondering if you have any for Tsuburaba?

yup i have many! i love this boy so much

the majority of the class 1b fandom seems to agree that this dude is a total memelord and i honestly can't look him in those googly eyes and disagree with that

he definitely spams the class group chat with memes, recreates vines with his friends, quotes them all the time, gets mildly upset every time someone doesn't understand a reference and acts like he has memorized every knowyourmeme article in existence

i think he's just class 1-b's main funny guy in general, always joking around, telling wacky stories, pulling pranks and just trying to make everyone laugh :)

speaking of pranks: he loves pulling them because his quirk is perfect for that purpose. he did the "putting walls of solid air in doorways and waiting for someone to bump into them" one so may times it's more annoying than funny at this point, but it's his favorite nonetheless. mainly because he really enjoys watching certain people (usually Awase or Kamakiri, the ones who swear the most) get ridiculously pissed over it lol

he also uses his quirk to make little glass figures. he's not much of an artist so they usually come out really wonky but everyone thinks theyre cute

lung capacity has a lot to do with physical endurance so i guess he does long distance running as a form of quirk training? i feel like hes a pretty sporty person in general considering ball sports are canonically one of his favorite things

as much as he likes his quirk, he has to admit that it can be pretty damn inconvenient sometimes. for example respiratory diseases make it go haywire and it's incredibly annoying because it activates every time he coughs or sneezes

(can you tell i love his quirk and think about it a lot?? because i love his quirk and think about it a lot)

his life motto is probably something like "the more stupid shit you do, the more funny stories you'll have to tell your friends later!" because he always gets himself in trouble in dumbest ways possible and then walks up to people like "hey wanna hear about my latest near death experience"

but he's an amazing storyteller, really. this man's got such a way with words that everyone likes listening to him

he'd actually make a pretty good teacher.... if he wasn't absolutely terrible at almost everything school related

english is his only really strong school subject (90% of his skills comes from watching yt videos and looking at memes in english). he's pretty bad at everything else because his memory sucks and he can't pay attention in class to save his life

Rin is usually the one who helps him with studying. this is the main reason why they're close because Rin has the soul of an old man and doesn't get Tsuburaba's sense of humor at all lmao

the people who definitely do get his sense of humor are Tokage and Fukidashi. they're the meme trio of class 1-b and they have a separate group chat that exists for shitposting purposes only

he's also really good friends with Kaibara and Awase, the other two common sense kings, plus Tetsutetsu and Kamakiri, buuut i'm too lazy to talk about it rn lol

Yanagi on the other hand really doesn't like him. she considers him an annoying pervert and treats him like a sworn rival. he likes messing with her in return despite not really understanding why she hates him so much. the rest of the class thinks their interactions are hilarious

i mean he's canonically pretty dirty minded, but he's no Mineta!

sure he laughs at dirty jokes and often catches himself staring at people but he usually keeps his... thoughts to himself

idk for some reasons he seems like the kind of guy who sleeps naked (obviously he wears a robe when walking around the dorms)

it's a very good way to keep Tetsutetsu out of his room because Tetsu's the kind of guy who likes storming into peoples rooms in the morning like "it's a beautiful day outside bro!! the birds are singing and the sun is shining, get out of bed and go eat a healthy breakfast!!!" and Tsuburaba needs his beauty sleep lmao

(well maybe he wouldn't need it if he didn't stay up till 3am watching meme compilations on youtube every night)

every common sense king knows how to play an instrument and Tsuburaba's no exception. he's an absolute master at playing the kazoo

and also at whistling

fuck canon. this man has freckles

since freckled people don't tan very well, he gets sunburns a lot. it's not his fault he likes going outside and just forgets his sunscreen sumetimes :(

everyone in his family is taller than him and he hates it

speaking of his family, he has two older siblings - a brother and a sister, and i actually have character designs for them and their parents too (i also made up families for a bunch of other students. maybe one day i'll get myself to draw them and write some headcanons?)

that's all for today! i wanted to make this a bit more serious but decided not to because... idk man i didn't feel like it

#kosei tsuburaba #tsuburaba kosei #class 1b headcanons #class 1b #bnha #tikto's headcanons #its kinda funny how much i like him #like this man has 0 canon personality traits hes my 2nd favorite character in 1b solely because of headcanons #i have 20 reasons to like him and theyre all made up #also #the tsuburaba and yanagi are rivals concept is borrowed from two guys i know from reddit

[personthattoleratesme]

heyy, new phannie anon here again, thank you for your nice reply! in return have a probably way too in depth answer to your question! (sorry)

so, my first dnp video was the funeral one, which somehow intrigued me enough to watch the new heartthrob video (i never realised how horrible this word truly is until i typed it out) two days later.

the thing i remember most vividly about watching it is pure and utter confusion.

like, please just watch the first three minutes of that video through the eyes of someone who has never seen these two people interact in their whole life. looking back, it honestly depicts the whole range of their chaos so nicely. being all happy and domestic but immediately venturing into innuendos, the classic "phil says something weird, dan points it out, phil tries to make it better but just makes it much worse", it has dan being sarcastic and badly trying to act as if he's irritated, phil casually doing the most insane shit, the bantering and teasing, all the references to things i had no clue about.

and i was just sitting there like. i don't know what the fuck is wrong with them but they're amazing. i need to undestand them. so i loosely kept an eye on them but at that point i wasn't really interested in watching the halloween gaming or their old videos. about two weeks went by until...

Enter Halloween Baking

this is what really made it click. i was about halfway through the video when i just knew i need them in my life, actually. i don't think i need to explain because how could one even attempt to put the gloriousness of that video into words? and what can i say, after that it's just a descend into the madness of years of content and fandom lore...

you have nothing to apologize for, this was very fun to read. and you will get another long response in return

the funeral one being the very first is so funny to me, like that has to be deeply confusing with zero context. i'm impressed that it intrigued you enough to watch more, it's quite a strange video lol.

i did go and watch the heartthrob video and yeah the first 3 minutes are just so weird and unhinged. that whole sequence is just so them. i do think it's a perfect representation of who they are in this current era. like it's reminiscent of the stereo days except now it's on youtube. i remember being in awe myself of how chaotic and unhinged those first few minutes were, but it was also so comforting because they were clearly having a lot of fun being back on the channel.

it's honestly fair that you didn't watch spooky week. i think a fair share of even the biggest phannies will skip spooky week cause they really don't care for the horror games. personally, i love watching spooky week cause their silliness really takes away from the horror aspect for me, and it just makes it more fun and entertaining rather than scary. but i think that's more about personal preference.

the baking video is honestly a cultural reset. their baking videos have always been excellent, and now with sister daniel and them being out it just makes it 10x better. if anything is gonna make you a phannie it's that video.

i'm impressed that it's basically only been like 2 weeks of being a phannie for you then. how has it been to catch up on all the videos and lore? have you just been binging their channels?

#anon ask #answered

[dirtyoldmanhole]

time for analyzing the absolute most freak-ass set of supports i have ever seen nintendo handle (affectionately)

A-support first since this got overly long, and i also touch on the JP versions as well.

half meta analysis, half lengthy shitpost because.

well ~

Last time in the Gunter/Corrin support train, we learned that Gunter used a little toy ball to coax Corrin out from her shell post the mind wipes when she was as skittish as a kitten, and then in the B support, Gunter/Corrin played catch again for the first time.

A little odd, but fairly tame. Here though ..... :')

(pardon me for the different "Corrin" look -- i ripped these screenshots off of a youtube version b/c i was lazy about not getting into the game proper) god do you know how many random ass files i have as reference for gunter JP/EN voicelines, JP/EN my room bits, transcripts, sprites, etc ... after this fic is done i'm totally making that fanshrine if only to stick all this shit in one place lol

anyway, corrin starts this bright and peppy and eager for more.

eyebrow waggle-/shot

cute. :D

(the stretching's cute, too. like, more seriously, this isn't just wind-down/playtime, you can tell he's always incorporated this subtly as part of her training, likely modifying some soldier's training in a manner a little bit more befitting of her.)

they keep going...

Corrin: Ready as I'll ever be! There's no way I'm missing one of your throws! Gunter: All right, then. Here we go. Corrin: And easily caught. I have to say, Gunter, you have excellent form and follow-through. You know, I just remembered… Wasn't this ball made from a whip? Gunter: It was indeed. A pretty odd choice for material, I know… Corrin: Gunter… Would you be willing to tell me a few stories from when I was growing up? I still have a lot of holes in my memory from when I was little. Gunter: Of course. But you'll have to pay attention to the ball at the same time!

i do find it interesting garon was keeping tabs enough on corrin to have opinions on how she was being raised, but not close enough that she has any recollection of him.

now for an absolutely wtf level of fridge horror: there's a part of the same JP lines above that made me sit way the fuck up.

Gunther: Of course. Then, as we’re playing… On that day, King Garon was in an incredibly terrible mood… He handed me this whip. He told me that until you were obedient, I was to continue whipping you.

"continue whipping" [record scratch] wait what the fuck

... i think that implies that garon was whipping corrin before she was she was sent to the tower?? man what the hell kind of life did corrin have between being kidnapped out of hoshido and before ending up in the northern fortress under gunter's aegis.

gunter's no saint, not in the least bit (i have sooooooo many issues with the side of fandom who thinks he's just a sweet wholesome old grandpa lmao lol looooooooooooool no), but damn did he sure protect her from the worst of krakenburg.

okay this is interesting

a) she doesn't trust her memory like, at all. it's wild to think that gunter's literally likely the one dude that remembers her early lived life the best considering her other retainers (jakob/flora/felicia) were kids even slightly younger than she was, the hoshidan siblings were really young as well, and no other playable nohrian character was around much other than the occasional visit, post her kidnapping.

it's a little terrifying to think about how (i guess, if you interpret the game that way?) anankos was possessing him way back when and had free reign around corrin. that's kind of why i'm not totally in love with that interpretation (that'd be the perfect time for anankos to take out/corrupt corrin. why didn't he?).

anyway

b) that 'closed off' line says a lot from him, considering Gunter's hardly a socialite, either. in fact their whole support chain was framed around corrin seeking him out because he starkly seeks out alone time so much that it's a little ... isolating.

so like, if mister 'nah i don't need to be around people' is saying that, sheesh. i dabble in it with this slowburn fic, but i could almost see corrin being selectively mute at times, and hiding from people days at a time.

their dynamic ain't normal by any means but you can see how that kind of early-stage trauma bonding on both of their sides would influence [gestures at] everything, you know?

gunter's not just a father("figure"). or just a combat instructor. or just a mentor, or later, just a lover -- he's something that's more, even all combined. there's a hardwired sense of trust and codependency that's seared into them from the get-go.

(it's fucked up! god it's fun to write though.)

so i ambled away from my computer at this line while screenshotting these and only afterwards realized that this out of context sounds like a goddamn porno LMAO

[whispers] what in the fuckity fuck nintendo

corrin, sweetie.....

...................how in the fuck are we supposed to read that with a straight face sjkhshajhjhjjh

lol. lmao.

okay [drags hands down face and cackles]

so this is right about where i really have to say i genuinely cannot see their (romantic) relationship being anything but a kink relationship. (and i say this in the fic notes but it's not the 'bdsm acronym pasta garbage' sense, and it's not in the 50 shades of grey cliche 24/7 M/s sense either, god i cannot fucking stand the cliche version of that shit. shoot me if i ever write that.)

and i say that for several reasons.

one - if you're shipping them, their mutual power dynamics are so hopelessly tangled between them and it's the one language -- in a way -- that they both "speak" later on that is uniquely equipped to handle a lot of that and the trauma junk from both of them in a private, loving, dignifying way. i genuinely mean that, too. rev's possession arc with him, corrin recovering from the mind wipes, etc. they're gonna have to face a lot of unpleasant shit together, and actively grappling at and mutually playing with those realities is, in a complex way, hell of a lot healthier than simply pretending it doesn't exist in the first place.

(two - metatextually i think nintendo intentionally encouraged a kink flavor to gunter/corrin because this ship does squick the fuck out of most other people and i'm not totally unsympathetic to that, so i think it's a way of quickly weeding out everyone except the folks who are genuinely here for this in an unironic sense. )

three - i already wrote up kink analysis re: gunter here lol (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ

four - and sorta on this note, what's interesting is... with a lot of kinksters i know, they knew they vibed differently in that way really early on, even as kids. like even in stupid silly make believe play games they'll tie up barbies in random ass ways or discover in a genuinely innocent way that they like specific sensations of pain they can control. later on as adults, a lot of times the brain wires go [bzzt] and suddenly the world of power or sensation play makes a hell of a lot more sense, and frankly, is a lot more fun in certian sexy arenas of life. sometimes it comes along with trauma junk, sometimes it doesn't, it's not a binary thing (as basically everything isn't).

THAT IS A LOT OF WORDS TO SAY corrin also inadvertently being wired that way and having these little semi-accidental lines doesn't actually surprise me that much. (i can also see this specific line being a little bit of a 'hrmm' flag for gunter in that she's not going to run away instantly screaming at the idea of playing these specific kinds of games, later on once when/if they're romantic)

am i projecting a little? fuck yes, that's what we're here for

Gunter: Indeed. I knew that striking you wouldn't ever get you to open up to anyone. So I came up with a different method - one that used this ball. I returned to your room sometime later, and I rolled the ball over to you. Corrin: Which I immediately picked up, examined, and threw back to you. Gunter: Oh, you remember this part? Good.

that actually is incredibly wholesome she remembers this part. ;a; you know gunter was always probably lowkey sad at her not remembering key parts of her childhood, regardless or not if it was moments between them or not.

wheeze

so did you know, treehouse actually neutered this down from the JP version which was straight up, i shit you not:

Gunther: …It’s nostalgic… It really is. Kamui: …How long has it been since? I’ve always considered you like my real father, Gunther-san.

l u l "real father"""""

i'm dying man

every single goddamn time i think this ship can't possibly get more fucked up IT DOES

YOU STRAIGHT UP MARRY YOUR DAD IN THE JP VERSION LMAO

it would be hilarious enough just knowing the whole existence of a (married) S-support coming up but coming right after the heels of that THE BALL WAS A WHAT realization.... hee

anyway here's the last chunk:

Gunter: You… You are much too kind. Ah, now look at what you've made me do. Corrin: Gunter! It's rare that you miss a catch. Gunter: My sincerest apologies. There was… something in my eye. Corrin: Getting sentimental in your old age? Hang on, I'll get you a handkerchief.

damn girl, 'sentimental in your old age'. you vicious! :D

it is horrible of me but every time i think about the end of this support i bust out HYSTERICALLY LAUGHING for a completely different reason since if you headcanon Gunter as always holding a flame for/romantically harboring feelings for Corrin-

CAN YOU IMAGINE WHAT HIS THOUGHTS WERE TO THAT ""FATHER" LINE LMAO

on one hand: 'i'm special to her :'))))'

on the other: [ O H K O ]

anyway half of what makes the A-support peak fridge-[everything] is the S-support right after ~ coming soon!

#krad loveblogs revelations: electric boogaloo

[selamat-linting]

🎶✨ When you get this u have to put 5 songs u actually listen to, publish. Then, send this ask/tag 10 of your favorite followers ✨🎶

(i've been tagged twice for this so im actually pretty excited lol)

1. Periphery - Reptile its 17 minutes of djent and it fucks hard! i dont get genre classifications much but the song also tells a story about alien invasions so i guess its technically some kind of rock opera?

2. SeeYouSpaceCowboy / If I Die First - bloodstainedeyes i've never been there but this song takes the best things from myspace emo music in the mid aughts. watch this in 144p for full immersion

3. VOLA - Head Mounted Sideways this song have the sexiest bass tones i've ever heard. i really like how 'atmospherically heavy' the band sounds in general, if you know what i mean?

4. Dance Gavin Dance - Evaporate imagine youre me. imagine you went to reddit and someone told you to listen to their old songs first before enjoying Evaporate. imagine having your mouth gape wide open as the references from older work starts weaving through the music. Even if you dont know the references, even if youre not part of the fandom, Evaporate is still a very good song. It was so good some people was concerned if this is going to be their last long.

5. Noah - Bintang di Surga this is actually a remastered version of an old song the band did when they're still under the Peterpan name. Both versions are just as good but im posting this instead for recency's sake. Look, this song is just sooo fucking good. Especially in lyrics, like there's people who went through their highschool indo lit class arguing about this song's meaning with their teacher. There are conspiracy videos saying the song is meant to be demonic thats why the lyrics are so subtle and filled with symbolism. the song is just THAT iconic. I will not fucking shut up about this. My personal interpretation of the song is about someone who have gained all the power and all the riches in the world but still felt empty, as if shied away from god's light. The constant use of light and flight related words coupled with grand exaggerations like trusting the sky will catch them if they fail or believing everything is created by God for them only makes the confession that their life felt empty and there is no love left for them hits harder. I should really start translating this song's lyrics so other ppl would get it. Every time I daydream about Vriska, I use this song as her background music.

Okay, now that that's done. I'm gonna tag @potatototheleft @laineysbucketlist @stuhk @babylonbirdmeat @iseeanemeraldinthesky @loudobjectprincess @shadow-banned-the-hedgehog

(btw, you dont have to do this if youre tagged. no pressure!)

#music stuff

[yoongsisbae]

For dat fruity ask game:

🍓🍌🫐

(Aka the makings of a delicious smoothie lol)

🍓 What’s a fic you’ve written you feel is underrated?

I've said this before but! Meet Cute Time Loop is so...cute! And I feel like if it was a JK story instead of a Seokjin story it would have five times as many notes and that makes me sad. Calling all Jin stans! Please give my story a chance 😢

🍌 In your opinion, what’s the funniest joke/reference/pun you’ve made in a fic?

“Come on then!” He jumps on top of a familiar rock, one you used to lay on and watch the stars together on school nights. The sun beamed down on your old friend high above you, and he felt so far away. Yoongi’s words were getting to you.

it's not the funniest, but did I purposely add this into Yoongi's superhero story and then broke said rock when she was spending time with Namjoon over Yoongi just to reference Yoongi is a Rock...yes, yes I did.

Also, I think it's cute (and funny) when writers keep Namjoon not being able to drive canon in every story. Here's my contribution!

“Nothing, I know you don’t need a license, but you should at least learn how to drive, don’t you think, Joon? It might come in handy. What if ‘RM’ had to steer a careening delivery truck off the highway or something?” “I would just stop it with my body.” Joon says, missing the point. You frown, “What about the passengers?” “Uhh I’d fly them to safety before impact!” You glare at your old friend’s simplistic viewpoint, crossing your arms. “Looks like you have it all figured out then.” Christmas Lights Out! Agust D vs RM Super Hero Christmas Special!

Namjoon’s car is already waiting outside, when you jump into the back seat, he reaches over to you, outstretched arm finding the back of your neck, lips connecting to yours hungrily. I Appreciate Your Apology did anyone catch you were both in the backseat LOL

You look out the window, Namjoon is driving so slow you are sure you could beat him on your bike. “Oh my god, RM, you’re driving!” “Huh? Oh, yeah,” He laughs, it’s been a while since anyone has called him ‘RM.’ Jungkook will still jokingly call him Rap Monster, but even Jungkook’s jokes have been declining lately. “You drive like a grandma.” Jimin snickers next to you, and Jungkook turns around in his seat to stare at you. “I’m trying to be safe.” “We are literally the only car on the road.” Namjoon turns his signal on, turning left. Yangyang Living 

🫐 What’s your favorite underrated thing in your fandom? (A ship that only you seem to write for, a character there’s almost no fics about, a trope that criminally hasn’t been written yet, etc.)

I wish there were more futuristic-dystopian-scifi type stories. I get it though, it's so difficult to write, half of my favorite stories out there are unfinished or orphaned or straight up deleted by their writers now 😭😭 cries in Let's Be Bad Guys

Send a fruit emoji for an answer!

#the best smoothie ty 💕 #ask me anything #ask game #amethystwritesbaets

[suborbitaltrash]

I hardly understand the Book of the New Sun and I'm enjoying it a lot

If you're familiar with this series, this post will probably echo a lot of what you've already thought or read about Book of the New Sun. If you've never heard of it and/or are looking to read it, this post might contain a couple of minor spoilers - beware, if you're the type of person who likes to dive in without any prior knowledge. It mostly serves for me to get my unstructured thoughts about this book series in order, and because this is my blog and I want to write my little book report.

I finished reading Shadow & Claw, comprising the first two volumes of Gene Wolfe's science fantasy epic, Book of the New Sun, a couple of days ago. When I first picked it up earlier this year, aside from loads of enthusiastic praise from a certain kind of sci-fi fan, the biggest draw for me was how dense and puzzling it allegedly was on your first read. "Not me", I thought, "I'm different". lol, I say in retrospect, lmao.

The first read-through of Shadow of the Torturer took me a good month or two to get through - the first and biggest hurdle for me was the narrative voice. The book is narrated by its protagonist, Severian, a resident of Urth and a disgraced torturer's apprentice. The most obvious obstacle I encountered at the start was the book's obscure terminology - something I personally am a huge fan of when it comes to sci-fi. Severian lives in a very, very old world and makes many, many assumptions about how much of it the reader is supposed to already understand. The result is a delightfully confusing lingo that uses a lot of (I assume) classical and medieval terms to describe fantastical concepts made mundane to the inhabitants of Urth (I am still not sure if it's pronounced "Earth" or "Oorth"). In the appendix to the first novel, Wolfe credits himself as but a humble translator who has done his best to adapt and estimate concepts unknown to the reader. He's being a little cheeky, and I like that about him. Book of the New Sun lacks a glossary - at least, the edition I've read - but a fan-made one exists online. Personally, I think it's more fun to peek at it minimally and try to guess at the meanings of the verbiage yourself.

Aside from the language, Severian's narration is noticeably all over the place - he jumps between events on the drop of a hat, omits and glosses over crucial details (partially, again, due to the difference in perspective between himself and the reader), and skips very important bits of the fiction, leaving holes for devoted fans to speculate about. All the while, the torturer swears up and down about his supposedly perfect memory. He establishes this early in the book for credibility, and does not neglect to mention it in pretty much every single interlude. My biggest early mistake was taking him at his word - the book gets noticeably easier to read once you understand the crucial detail that Severian is a little shithead liar. The first-person narration made me unconsciously sympathize with him throughout his tale, and it took me longer than I should have to realize that he's not a reliable narrator - or even a decent human being (he's kind of an asshole). Through trial and error, the book teaches you not to trust it, to question every turn of phrase or unexpected action - and comprehend it better for it. Understanding that, the rest of Shadow of the Torturer and the entirety of Claw of the Conciliator were much smoother reads, comparatively. The series is still peppered with unexplained events, hidden connections between the pages, and references to things I may or may not be supposed to understand. I don't catch onto these things that quickly, anyhow. Book of the New Sun is one of those books-as-puzzles that refuses to reveal its whole until you have understood the sum of its parts - that is, read the whole thing multiple times. My first engagement with the Gene Wolfe fandom was the in-joke about rereading his books.

To me, reading Book of the New Sun for the first time is a balancing act between probing the book for answers and accepting that you might not have the tools for it. As much as I wanted to read every page several times to really get what's happening, I had to take things at face value with the faith that I will get that other piece of the puzzle I'm looking for, eventually, in a throwaway line somewhere. The book makes it easy to slip into that pattern of thought, employing the same kind of deadpan presentation as magic realist fiction. Wolfe's writing reminded me the most of Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić - both present extraordinary events with a blank expression, play extensively with structure and language, and require you to find their meaning beyond the actual telling of events. I can see it being a frustrating experience to many, and I was left feeling a little stupid myself, having to put down the book for a while before returning to get a fresh outlook. Nevertheless, I think it's a wonderful read if you like books that reward you for being inquisitive and reading a little too much into things - which I am not convinced is possible when it comes to Wolfe. What I like so far: the insanely imaginative worldbuilding, the sense of mystery, the language, the mind games, the corkboard theorizing. What I dislike so far: Severian as a person, some of the authorial decisions regarding female characters and the use of sexual assault as a tool of characterization - there is a scene in Claw that is left up to interpretation, but in my opinion, you'd have to be going out of your way not to see it. It's a minor part of the story, but it was enough to slightly sour my reading. I'm excited to finish the series and post my thoughts upon getting the whole picture, which might take a while.

#book of the new sun #gene wolfe #sci fi writing #sci fi literature #book report

[skepticalarrie]

hey allie! i guess this ask isn’t much of a question lol but i’ve recently come back to tumblr (and really all things involving hl) and even if the time i’ve invested in them have decreased through the years bc of uni and life in general, i don’t think there’s anything that could ever change my mind about them no matter how many stunts have come our way.. lol if anything the fact that the stunts are still happening kinda proves our point! after taking a break last 2020 and your acc is one of my first stops since my hiatus to do some catching up so i’m glad to see that even though most of my old mutuals have kind of slowly disappeared, yours and a couple familiar blogs have remained..

speaking from experience, dealing with annoying stans are easily one of the biggest reasons why people up and leave social media but checking up on some larrie accs on twt on a new account, there is a growing circle among hl stans that do not deal with stunts and babygate. i left my old account and cut off any contact with previous mutuals on twitter bc of our difference in perspective so i have no one to ask, but do you know how and when the shift happened? it was kind of interesting that for the same reason i could have been eaten alive on twitter is exactly why that side of the fandom is thriving now.. (i know it’s kind of an unspoken rule to not bother with annoying twarries so i totally get it if you don’t end up answering this ask, just curious ^^)

Hey, dear. First of all, welcome back 🥰

I could be wrong but I think your question, in general, is more directed to twitter stans behaviour, and I don’t think I’m the best person to answer that but I can try hahaha. What I’ve noticed through the years is that yes, there are more annoying fans now than there were before. The environment has become more hostile towards larries each day and the constant doxxing and bullying discouraged a lot of larries to stick around and actively blogging, although they still support HL.

I think babygate was the thing that tore the fandom apart years ago and, quite honestly, that’s what still does. So maybe that is the reason a lot of larries choose not to engage with it. I mean, talking about stunts is usually what makes our replies and asks to get flooded with hateful comments and regardless of how we take that, it’s a heavy subject loaded with very dense discussions. Closeting, homophobia, PR relationships, marketing moves, fake pregnancies… I mean, it’s not for everyone and I can’t blame people who are just trying to have a good time here instead of engaging with these topics. And as time goes by, it gets deeper and there are more questions left unanswered. It does tire you up.

Plus, the pandemic brought a lot of new fans, and many different kinds of perspectives and expectations. I think a lot of people became frustrated when they realised that this post-pandemic era - where Harry has the most annoying pr relationship ever and is stunting non-stop, and babygate is back with full force - it’s a pretty bad scenario stunt-wise. Harry is more famous than ever, Louis’ fanbase skyrocketed and his career is finally taking a path he seems happy with. And the stunts are still there, we’re still punching bags. So maybe that’s the shift you’re referring to, people are tired.

#ask #fandom discourse

[monstersinthecosmos]

KACY

I know we've talked about it before but never in depth really so I wanna know -- I think at least for me there's THOSE TWO BIG MOMENTS right:

the one where we instantly and impossibly imprinted on our VC faves like lost little ducklings

and then whatever followed that cemented that love for all eternity like- "oh yeah this is it, I don't even need to see or talk to anyone else, we're good"

so what were your Marius Moments? 🥹

!!!!! oh wow what a question!

I know for sure without a doubt that when Marius DEBUTS in TVL is when I was DONE FOR. Like the slow burn leading up to it with Lestat trying to find him and then when he finally shows up he's this like nurturing, comforting force that is so gentle with him!!!!!!!!

Like idk how everyone else feels but my first time reading VC I was just going in cold, like there was fandom on LJ and stuff but I wasn't really lurking (bc spoilers lol) so I was just going into each book completely fresh and ready for an adventure, so I remember feeling like TVL was this MYSTERY to me the first time and I was just so excited to even see what it was about. But TVL (even to this day) really takes off for me when Armand shows up and then like, Armand already intrigued me so much and I was like WHAT WHO * MADE * THIS GUY OH MY GOD and I was just mega excited to meet him.

And as for the second question, I'm not sure I really have an answer! Coming out of TVL he was my favorite character so any time he showed up I was so excited to see him. Again, to this day I think I kinda rank my enjoyment of the VCs depending how much Marius is in them. 😂 But when I first read VC, Merrick was the most current book and it took me a couple years to read and catch up (with the Mayfair detour bc Merrick was supposed to be a crossover lol) so B&G was my first VC that I got to like go out and buy when it came out and it was like THE NEW BOOK MORE VAMPIRES! And just wow like how exciting that I caught up in time for a WHOLE BOOK about my fav. 🥹🥹🥹

But reading B&G maybe cemented it? tbh it was such a long time ago it's hard to say. It's just kinda always been there. Like this all happened when I was 12-13 and it was my first like deep dive into adult books and like coming from reading kids's series and YA it was so weighty to me and gave me so much to think about. But like I vivdly remember the first time I read B&G I was in my room and I kept putting it down to cry because it made me so emotional. Like getting to really get that deep dive into his POV and understand how lonely he was and how conflicted he was about his beliefs.

As a 13 year old I think I connected to it with my own point of reference that's evolved over the years; I revisit the entire series every few years and get different things out of it each time, not just from getting older but also just being more educated as time goes on. And sometimes I wonder if he'd be my fav if I read it for the first time at 25, or even if I'd been born at a different time; like would I have felt the same way if I was 13 but it was 2017 and Tumblr was in full swing with radfem rheotric poisoning the well? idk. But I do know that every time I feel the same way, I still love him just as much, even when I pick apart more flaws I just appreciate this character so deeply.

Like yknow to read VC as a 13 year old who is severely bullied you connect with it as being about "outsiders". The year B&G came out a bully put me in the hospital by bashing my head open on a locker. Teachers at my school thought I was going to be a school shooter because I was goth and I liked horror films. So it's comforting to see someone who is an outsider and struggles with Christofascism but who is surviving. And reading B&G and hearing how much he struggled was so like grounding for me. I'm not sure I can explain it now without it sounding trite (and maybe it was trite bc I was 13). And like him being a savior & mentor to Lestat was so comforting to me like I think at that age my biggest fantasy was that a vampire could come steal me away from my difficult life LOL. I wanted someone to come save me!!!!!!!!!

And then you know, growing up, being in an abusive relationship, having people around me die, trying to understand how I identify as queer, how I navigate my relationship to my own creativity and what it means to me, growing as a person and trying to be the most mindful and empathetic version of myself that I can be; all of this stuff is all over VC and in that book in particular.

It just means a lot to me man!

And I love that VC asks us to empathize with bad people, it asks us to forgive people, it asks us if we're are only our worst deed and if we deserve love even when we've fucked up. Lestat and Marius have so much in common so I think these themes just permeate both of their stories so much in every book, but. Idk for whatever reason Marius is the one that stuck out to me and I've never been able to shake it!!!!!

[ferida-kahlo]

Heyyyy I loved the way you write Michael berzatto!!! Do you have any hcs of him? I literally take anything lol there’s not much stuff about him 🙏IM STARVING

omg anon that is so nice to hear! thank you dear 💖

i must confess i feel a bit uninspired at the moment, especially after finding out j*n b*rnthal is a z*onist it's been difficult for me to separate the character from the actor. however. mikey is so hot to me in comparison to all other characters played by JB it almost transcends the actor so i will indulge for a bit

i don't have any list of hc or anything but if I must think of a couple off the top of my head i guess:

he listens to a LOT of rap and it's either old school classics or the most trap mumble shit you can imagine. no middle ground. i think most ppl in the fandom think of him as a dad rock kind of guy but i don't see it. that's just what he sings in the shower or when he's drunk

that being said, i remember a quote from JAW about how carmy inherited his love for classics from mikey. he was refering to clothes specifically, but i think mikey got that from watching loads of classic films as a kid bc it was the only tapes his parents had at home, and then ended up actually enjoying them. when he grew up and back when he had the time - when the restaurant hadn't yet consumed his entire life - he would go to special screenings of old hollywood movies every time he could catch them. he also quickly realized it was a great date idea to get girls thinking he had a mysterious side 👀

now the nsfw: i already explored this in my fics but i think he is a very passionate lover even when not in a relationship. he'll gasp and whimper and moan and come at the least sexual kinds of touches, like when he's on top of you and you stroke his cheek while looking him in the eyes and smiling, or as your fingers comb through his hair softly when making out. however, if you do those same gestures in a non-sexual context he will play it cool, as if it's no big deal. the physical closeness and vulnerability in the act of sex works as a sort of catharsis for him, the only small moments when he allows himself to feel loved and cared for

hope this helps sate your thirst anon 😁

#ask #anon