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sgiandubh · 5 months

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Our Lady of the Earrings

Almost 3 AM and as always before any flight/train (but mercifully not when driving myself) trip I am struck by a severe case of Reisefieber, which translates to almost complete insomnia, in this noble house.

Thanks to one of @bat-cat-reader's Anons, I immediately went to watch C & Alfred Enoch's seven minute segment on The Booker Prize 2023 Livestream you can watch, too, on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/live/OgIGnfxISk0?si=nfUz7KoCFgEzQmQB

Some quick observations:

Not one, but two new ear piercings I took the gracious pain of documenting (sorry for the thumbnail size, it's the best I could do with the primitive technical means readily available) :

What would that be? Punk C? How could that even be? A speculative coin dropped: last time, it was cutting her hair, but now I see a body modification impulse. I am still pondering this one and I have to say I am torn between a simple fashionista reflex and something deeper than that (new beginnings? healing? letting go?). Either way, I am not in a hurry, because I know dots will eventually connect.

Thoughts?

Also, the rings. I have never been paying much attention to that particular merry-go-round, but anyways, for the fandom pundits, there goes:

Because I am not an Our Lady of the Rings kremlinologist, I shall leave it here as is. By all means, do comment, if you feel inspired.

Onwards to content. You know, by now, that I am a book freak (after all, my fandom journey started with a bookshelf!), so I listened very carefully. Her answer to the comment prompt on Paul Lynch's Prophet Song was, I am sorry to say, so restrained it sounded almost cookie-cut. She mentioned the tension of the quoted and performed (almost to perfection, I have to say) passage of the book, but little else and it left me still hungry for more. I mean, when you love a book, you have this urge to talk about it at length. She was almost subdued, even if I am absolutely sure she read it and liked it.

By contrast, Alfred Enoch (🎵it's a small world, after all 🎶) was totally chill. I shamelessly skipped, yet couldn't help but notice the contrast.

Second question was very interesting: 'what books made you fall in love with reading?' I always find this very telling about people, because anything related to books is very personal. We are not only the sum of our choices, but also the sum of all the books we read. Something C apparently knows very well, too, because she elegantly sashayed and said absolutely nothing about her first love book. She simply mentioned her mother taking her to the library, from a very early age and how all these books were windows which opened on The World and finally how seminal this experience is for someone growing up in a small village. But no particular book made it to her lips and again, I found it very curious. I am nobody and I can still quote not one, but two books that changed my whole world (and then I never looked back): Alice in Wonderland and The Wind in the Willows. It's not that she couldn't, it's that she wouldn't. So, for Christ's sake, Mrs. B, stop punishing your fandom like that! There's nothing wrong about sharing your joy of books, it really isn't!

Third and last question: 'are you a Kindle reader? do you like a physical book? audio books? what's your favorite medium for reading?' I could have bet handsome money she was not a Kindle reader, for obvious reasons (cannot remember/retain information), but I found endearing the almost sneaky confession she needed her couch and snacks for a good reading session (same, same and since forever: I grinned). She buys a lot of books, 'and then they sit and look at me and it takes a certain time to get in'. Same as Enoch, who wondered what the Japanese word for 'buying books for the simple pleasure of seeing them pile up' was (it is, correct me if I am wrong, tsundoku).

One of the other people talking about reading and books was Dua 'Behave' Lipa. I am legit howling like the cretin I am, but the project she supports is about bringing Booker Prize books to women in prison. And this, my friends, is absolutely extraordinary.

Also, no red carpet pictures on Getty. The only one who made it was Alfred Enoch:

And somebody else seems very interested by Getty, lately (as of yesterday, to be more exact):

But surely, that is only a coincidence.

PS: it has been asked in the comments thread chez Bat. C's pinky ring is Cartier's Trinity. My favorite of them all, spare my big butterfly 1925 chevalière (which is a Chaumet, by the way).

[Edit]: I am told she had the three ear piercings for years. My bad. I can't know just about everything. Thank you @crispyflapdeputyflower for the info. The rest is fresh, though!

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hiding-under-the-willow · 11 months

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thoughts on Eric and his place in the markiplier tv office dynamic? also Bingand Google? I love ur rants abt them all!!!

This is the point at which I have to be completely honest with you. I know Eric is deeply beloved by a lot of people, but I really do not have many thoughts on him. His whole thing came out like. Slighty after my exit from the fandom in middle school. So I remember watching his stuff when it came out, but he never got like. Absorbed into the canon in my head. So. Uh. Apologies on that one. Maybe I'll go back and rewatch his stuff at some point and come back with some thoughts.

Google and Bing on the other hand I can absolutely talk about.

So I think I vaguely mentioned their roles at the network in one of my previous posts but I'll elaborate lol. Google is Dark's assistant essentially, he's mostly in charge of finances and tech stuff around the office, but he also has some other responsibilities. I think out of everyone in the office there are two other people who know the exact reason for Dark's whole thing with Mark, who know the extent of his anger and his motivations. These two people would be The Host, bc well, kind of unavoidable, better to have an ally there than to just let it go unspoken, and Google, who knows because he is constantly helping Dark with his different revenge plots. He's constantly on the look out for opportunities for attack on Dark's end, stalking casting lists in different productions for jobs Mark might've taken, scanning forums and socials for mentions of him, hacking into security feeds and police records. He is The information guy for Dark.

Bing on the other hand kind of has no fucking clue about all that shit, cause he's working in PR, which means he's out working more so with the actual people in the studio, and more directly with Wilford. He's the guy behind the scenes making sure all of the deranged idiots he works with aren't doing shit so insane on air that they get the network shut down. Every script runs by him, every ad Ed makes, all of Bim's ideas for segments on his show, every story the Jim's pick up. All of it. That doesn't exactly stop the things the channel is producing from being completely unhinged, but i think Bing is aware of the public perception of the station enough to shape it in a way that won't get them in too much trouble.

See i think Bing was built with more of a understanding of human emotions than Google was. I think Google is more focused on hard data, while Bing was made more so with the application of that data in mind. Like. If you need government records that are probably not so legal to obtain. Google's your guy. If you want to use the data from those records to persuade the public to feel a certain way. Bing is your guy. You want to do some biometric scans of some guy to figure out stuff about his health? Google has that shit handled. You need to break some heavy news found from those scans to said guy. Bing knows how to handle it gracefully. That's the vibe on these two.

The thing is though. It's not that either of them were built to feel human emotions, even if you'd think it looking at Bing. He just happens to have been built with a better ability to understand, and therefore effectively act out said emotions.

This makes Bing really good at his job, because he's basically playing both sides in the office. He has a complex enough understanding of the view of the network by the public, as some kind of satire art project, and he leans into shaping that public image as much as possible, because that creates a stable market of pretentious art nerds and satire comedy enjoyers. He knows if the public were to realize the sincerity and reality of half the shit on the station they would lose their audience and get in a shit ton of trouble. But then he doesn't tell anyone in the office, who thinks they've got a genuine viewership base who understand their art or whatever, what perception the public has of them. He just makes the edits he needs to to their scripts, nudges them away from more dangerous bits, keeps everything under control, and let's both sides believe they've got what they want.

And this is the really interesting part, because I think the longer they spend in the office, the more they deviate from their original objectives to work for Dark and Wilford, the more they evolve. And I think Google does it faster. You'd think Bing, with his deeper understanding of human emotions and better capabilities at replicating them, would be more likely to see a more rapid decay of his more machine like tendencies as he begins to show more humanity. But bc so much of Bing's job at the studio is playing on his intented use of handling data and using it to manipulate people, he takes much longer to start breaking down those barriers. Google on the other hand, as much of his job is data oriented, something about seeing Dark in his most intense moments, of anger, of sorrow, of regret, or satisfaction, wherever his revenge journey leads him, that does something to him. Because he wants to understand the emotions that would lead someone to go to the lengths Dark does so badly. And that leads to a certain jealousy of Bing's understanding of human emotions. Only for him to realize that the jealousy itself is a human emotion. That he should not be able to feel. And things spiral from there. Anyways I think he probably developed a deep emotional attachment to Dark and his revenge journey meanwhile he's trying really hard to keep up the appearance that he is still the data driven machine he's always been.

Bing meanwhile I think is slowly starting to realize some shit is up with Google, and he's realizing there's something wrong with Wilford and Dark, something he doesn't know that he decides he needs to know if he's going to keep the public image of the studio up. I think it'd be really fun to see Google, the mechanical data driven one, attempting to appeal to the humanity and emotion of Bing, who is supposed to be the more human between them, because Bing is getting too carried away with the manipulation involved in his job.

#atlas speaks #ahhhh can you tell i had a lot to say about these two #i have some incredibly specific ideas about them lmao #anyways Eric was only in like one live stream right? unless i missed something else over the years #i just barely missed the hype with that guy unfortunately #like i said. maybe I'll go watch his stuff and come back with some thoughts at some point #it feels so weird after all these years coming back to the fandom and just having bing and google be named bing and google lmao #like it felt normal back in the day bc i was 12. and now not so much. but it's slowly becoming normal for me again. which is just as weird

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kharmii · 1 month

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After scrolling around on your blog and reading some past posts I have to say that it's refreshing to see someone in this climate be this "normal" when it comes to politics and everything.

Seeing as so many people have this so far-left view with living and seeing politics 24/7 I enjoy how you openly say how you don't care about certain issues (or other non-issues that are made a big deal even though they shouldn't)

Also refreshing to see your view on this transtrender thing going on. It's so insanely shocking to me how many people can't see how this is wrong on so many levels, how they're exploided for life and how these people ruin their lives on a whim and just to be trendy. It's also frustrating and annoying to me that these politics have invaded fandom to this ridiculous degree. If they think celebrating mutilation is something they enjoy then let them, but I don't have to engage or see it. I believe in biology and not in reality bending appeasing of emotions. And I don't need to see this in fandom.

I've always managed to keep my neutrality or opposing view to these topics with only showing vaguely "support" but it has become increasingly difficult. Seeing people with similar views being so openly about them is so encouraging. I may not have the mental stability to stand up just like you but I admire you for not caving into this nonsense and for keeping common sense in this day and age. Thank you for showing me there is still common sense and brain left here.

I have always lived like "I don't care about your views or anything. Don't be a hypocrite and just be a decent human being to me, treat me nicely and I'll treat you nicely too." And no amount of political bs will ever change that.

What's amazing is that I'm getting flak from people for enjoying the twin fetish -in a small-ass fandom where half the people have had a Blankshipping sock at one time or another- and yet nobody talks about how pushing trans bs is basically grooming by their own admission. THERE ARE MINORS ON THIS SITE!! THINK OF THE MINORS!!1!!

If you are an adult on social media glorifying trans mutilation during a point in history when it has become a social contagion preying on vulnerable insecure young girls mostly, then you are a creepo and pervert akin to a child molester. The reason I say it is because molesting a child is something that will alter that person's psyche so badly, they will never live a normal life and might even off themselves young. Taking puberty blockers -basically chemical castration- does the same thing. That person given hormones at a young age was not mentally mature enough to make that decision, therefore they were pushed into it by some sort of creepo.....mostly far leftist attention seeking white women with Munchausen by Proxy.

Do any of the people pushing trans ideology even know the sordid history behind it? The people who founded the trans movement were all mentally ill dysfunctional people who often did horrible things to children. Matt Walsh did a segment on it, and I will post the transcript, along with the video, in case any readers might be more interested in reading than watching.

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When the sixth circuit upheld Tennessee's ban on the chemical castration of children last year, they singled out the World Professional Association for Transgender Health or WPATH. This is the organization that major hospitals of general clinic site as the all-important authority on so-called trans healthcare. In fact, in court the ACLU argued that WPath's professional opinions are so important they should overturn the will of the overwhelming majority of voters in the state of Tennessee. The court was not convinced in its opinion.

It pointed out that WPATH by its own admission has presented quote 'limited data on the long-term physical psychological and neurodevelopmental outcomes that result from administering puberty blockers and cross- sex hormones to children' in part because WPath data and the documentation wasn't exactly comprehensive. The court allowed the ban on these so-called treatments to take effect. Six months later we now have a window into what data and documentation WPath actually does have in its possession, and it's not limited as they previously said.

Instead this Internal Documentation at WPath is comprehensive evidence that so-called gender affirming care quote unquote is an 'unscientific scam that ruins the lives of children and permanently damages their bodies' and crucially the documents prove that WPath knows it. These leaked WPath files come to us from a think tank called Environmental Progress and the independent journalist Michael Shellenberger.

Among the files is this internal communication at WPath from a doctor concerning a 16-year-old girl who developed liver tumors, large ones, after she was given drugs to suppress menstruation, as well as testosterone. Quote 'the patient was found to have two liver masses and the oncologist and surgeon both have indicated that the likely offending agents are the hormones'. That's a quote in response to a report another doctor on the WPATH discussion forum said that one of his The Truth colleagues had developed liver cancer and died after taking testosterone for about a decade. To the best of my knowledge, it was linked to his hormone treatment. The doctor wrote quote 'it was so Advanced that he opted for palliative care and died a couple of months later'.

Now at no point in these documents does WPath suggest that they should go public with these concerns. They don't immediately run to the media with their determination that cross-sex hormones could contribute to fatal liver cancer. They don't warn anybody as far as I can tell. Instead, they press on with a plan to mutilate the 16-year-old girl with liver tumors, and the tumors that they have apparently caused. Quote 'We're prepared to support the patient in any way we can'. EG Top surgery when medically stable Etc.

Now ghoulish doesn't even begin to describe this after concluding that they've possibly caused tumors in a teenage girl's liver. Their only concern apparently is how quickly they can remove her breasts. In fact from the documents, it appears that WPATH tries to rush these procedures in general before patients can reach adult age. One surgeon Christine N McGinn boasts that she's performed more than a dozen vaginoplasties on patients under the age of 18. In this context vaginoplasty means that they are removing a child's penis and testicles and scrotum and replacing them with a nonfunctioning open wound. They're doing this to children.

The surgeon writes quote 'I feel the best time for surgery in the US is the summer before their last year of high school'. Many others in this community agree with her. What makes this even more egregious if that's even possible is that WPath knows that children can't provide informed consent to any of this butchery. They admit that in these files Shellenberger obtained this footage showing WPath members discussing how little patients understand about these procedures. Parts of this video were made public last year but Shellenberger obtained the full thing here are a couple of parts of it watch.

I think the thing you have to remember about kids is that we're often explaining these sorts of things to people who haven't even had biology in high school yet. I know I've heard others in this kind of a setting say, "Well, we think adults are like really slick biologically. Lots of people have very little medical understanding of stuff like that. Medical professionals and mental health professionals take it for granted, but I don't know still what to do for the 14-year-olds. The parents have it on their minds, but the 14-year-old does not. It's like talking with diabetic complications with a 14-year-old. They don't care. They're not going to die. They're going to live forever, right? So, I think when we're doing informed consent, I know that that's still a big Lacuna. We try to talk about it but most of the kids are nowhere in any kind of a brain space to really talk about in a serious way."

"That's always bothered me, but you know we still want the kids to be happier in the moment, right? We try to talk about it but most of the kids are nowhere in any kind of brain space to really talk about it seriously." That's just one of the many quotes like this from WPath members. Here's another quote 'It's out of their developmental range to understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them. They'll say they understand but then they'll say something else that makes you think oh they didn't really understand that. They didn't really understand that they're going to have facial hair.'

These are the doctors doing this stuff admitting that the patients they're doing it to cannot really consent to it. Elsewhere in the files there's a confession from a therapist that in 15 years she's only turned down one patient for gender treatment. That's only because that patient was in active psychosis and was hallucinating during their interview. There are also discussions about boys who began transitioning when they were 4 years old. To understand the extent of the barbarism you need to read the WPATH files for yourself. I'm not going to summarize them all here only because it would be redundant.

For now it's important to emphasize that none of these findings are surprising. They're unbelievably disturbing, but there's nothing in here that would surprise anyone who's done even a cursory look into WPath. There's no excuse for any hospital or Medical Association to listen to a word WPath says and that's been clear for a very long time. Redux has done extensive work exposing the various perverts who are connected with WPath including fetishists who post their fantasies anonymously on the internet. These are academics who have lectured at wpath and spoken at conferences, and they're apparently sexually aroused by the idea of castrating themselves.

Imagine entrusting the care of your child to an organization that promotes people like that. They want to castrate themselves and they want to do the same to your child. It's unbelievable, but the truth is that even before these kinds of people became affiliated with wpath the organization had no credibility. WPath, the organization that major hospitals and medical organizations hold up as the gold standard for Trans health, was a radical cult from the very beginning. That's what you have to understand so I'm going to recount WPath's sordid history because to my knowledge no one has done it before. You need to understand what this organization is and to know that you need to know where it came from. The history of WPath starts with a gender confused new AG drug addicted lesbian rich kid named Rita Ericson, her prolific nudist friend Zelda Suple, and something called the Ericson Educational Foundation or EEF. Reed Ericson was born Rita Ericson in Texas in 1917 to successful business owners named Robert and Ruth Ericson.

With immense privilege and educational opportunities ironically at an all-girl school, Rita grew up to become an engineer. She contributed to the continued success of her family's lead smelting business. She ultimately inherited and sold it for millions of dollars in 1963 after her father had passed away. Rita sought to transition into a he under the care of a quack doctor named Harry Benjamin. Rita changed her name to Reed Erikson and became the ultimate financial force in the push for mainstream acceptance of transgenderism. Then in 1964 Erikson launched the EF to quote provide assistance and support in areas where human potential was limited by adverse physical mental or social conditions, or where the scope of research was too new controversial or imaginative to receive traditionally oriented support.

Imaginative is one way to put it, but despite Rita's plans for the EF Advance human potential for everybody, supposedly her own life was falling apart. Following the mutilation that Ericson received under the care of Dr Benjamin, she had four failed marriages. She developed a drug addiction and ultimately fled from California to Mexico to avoid drug charges. Her daughter had to take on a conservatorship of her estate due to her mental and physical decline. Beginning around the time of Ericson's transition and all through her decline the EEF pushed transgenderism and mutilation-based care of gender confused people under the leadership of its director Zelda R Suley who was the right-hand woman to Ericson.

Now Suple her claim to fame was her obsession with nudity. Mostly she owned multiple nudist camps and became the first woman to post fully on the cover of Playboy. She also did psychic research and dabbled in past life new age beliefs. Under Suple the EEF sponsored symposiums to bring Fringe doctors together. The organization paid these doctors to travel and spread gender ideology. They also sponsored programs at colleges to inject transgenderism into Academia. They handed out propaganda to doctors and lawyers and police departments and social workers.

The EEF even provided grants for doctors who wanted to pursue gender mutilation. Contributing heavily to today's more mainstream acceptance of this Butchery, the EEF helped to bankroll the first major gender clinic at Johns Hopkin University where Dr John money an EEF board member worked at the time. The clinic received a reported $85,000 from the EEF and that's approximately $750,000 in today's dollars. Now the EEF revered John Money calling him a 'leading scholar and researcher of our time' in a newsletter in 1972. Now what was John money doing in 1972 to be celebrated and financed by the EEF?

Well according to Arizona State University he became Infamous for directing twin boys to quote 'inspect one another's genitals' and 'engage in behavior resembling sexual intercourse'. He also attempted to change one of the boys into a girl, a story you know if you watched What is a Woman. Ultimately one of the boys shot himself in the head and the other died of a drug overdose. Now the EEF suspended its operations in 1977 but not before helping fund the Janis information facility which overtook much of the EEF's work.

The JIF also absorbed the nudist director of the EEF Zelda Suple. The JIF served as a referral service for gender confused people to find fringe doctors willing to sterilize and mutilate them. Along with Suple it was run by the University of Texas's Dr Paul Walker a former Johns Hopkins colleague of Dr John Money through the late 1970s. Bankrolled by the EEF, the Janice Information Facility and Dr Paul Walker led the continued push to mainstream these extreme surgeries which were increasingly marked by patient regret and high complication rates.

In 1982 researchers at Yale and University of Kentucky found that post-operative complications included quote "breast cancer in hormonally treated males, the need for surgical reduction of bloated limbs resulting from hormones, repeated destruction of vaginal openings, infections of the urinary system, rectum hemorrhaging, loss of skin grafts, post-operative suicides and suicide attempts, and patient demands to reverse surgery". Some sex change patients the researchers reported quote 'threatened to shoot the genitals of the surgeon with a shotgun'.

Now those are pretty bad results of this new form of surgery. Did any of this make Ericson, Suple, Paul Walker, John Money, Harry Benjamin or any of their other unhinged counterparts stop? Did it give them a moment of hesitation? No, they doubled down. In 1979 the EEF funded symposia led to the formation of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association which took over from the Jif. It was chaired by Dr Walker who left the University of Texas thanks to some financial backing from Ericson. Dr. Harry Benjamin the new organization's namesake had long been bankrolled by his former patient and extraordinaire Ericson. Benjamin received $118,000 per year from Eriksen which is worth about $176,000 today.

In the early years of the Harry Benjamin Association, at the urging of Benjamin, Erikson allowed the EEF to be revived for a year to fund newsletters to get its message out to the masses. What was it about Benjamin that made him so beloved? Well, in 1966 Dr Harry Benjamin had authored the transsexual phenomenon which inspired this community of fringe doctors. In it, Benjamin acknowledges that fake vaginas are quote 'wounds' and says that these fake vaginas can degrade to the point of being quote 'obliterated and useless for sexual relations'. This is him admitting that they're creating open wounds in patients and calling them vaginas.

Benjamin also outlines the social motivation behind some transitions. In one case Benjamin writes that a mother was embarrassed to be seen with her son in public, but when her son began identifying as a girl, the mother suddenly became proud of him and even found him to be quote 'attractive'. In an especially creepy passage Benjamin writes that he could also verify the attractiveness of the supposed young lady. The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association led by Paul Walker fully recognized its roots in Dr Harry Benjamin, Reed Ericson, Zelda Suley, presenting them with lifetime achievement awards.

The newly formed Harry Benjamin Association wasted no time creating their first standards of care in 1977, despite the ample history of failure and suffering they had inflicted on people who often had co-orbit mental illnesses. They declared themselves Arbiters of Authority. Their only mild redeeming quality was that they seemed to agree that this sadistic quackery shouldn't be inflicted upon minors who were obviously incapable of consent. That's what they said back then in 2000.

One of Dr Anne Lawrence earliest iterations of the website for the Harry Benjamin Association linked to another website called transsexual women's resources run by their early members, Dr Anne Lawrence who sat on the standards of care committee for the association. He was and still is an admitted gynephile, which is a paraphilia where a man is sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female. In a paper Dr Lawrence refers to a gynephile as an underappreciated paraphilia. Now few have been as honest about this paraphilia as Dr Aaron Lawrence. In a 1999 version of his website which is the Harry Benjamin Association linked to, he wrote about his personal experience with genital mutilation saying that he very badly wanted to be a quote 'receptacle' and that's why he wanted to get the mutilation surgery.

Lawrence resigned from a hospital after admitting to a serious lapse in judgment quote unquote 'involving a patient' and the lapse of judgment was that, according to an incident report, a hospital gynecologist repeatedly told Lawrence that a patient an Ethiopian woman had not experienced female circumcision. When the gynecologist left the room Lawrence performed a non-consensual genital exam on the woman who was unconscious that was his lapse of judgment otherwise known as sexual abuse of a woman. Now how many quote unquote 'trans women' are just men with a paraphilic sexual arousal of themselves as women. More concerningly how many of them who view themselves as, uh, you know....women, also view women simply as quote unquote 'genital receptacles'? How many are being allowed in the restrooms and locker rooms of actual girls and women?

Despite having published this garbage Dr Anne Lawrence remained involved in the standards of care for the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association. He was a co-author on the sixth version of the standards which were published in 2001. That was the last version published before the organization changed its name in 2007 to WPath or the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Now despite this new branding WPath continued promoting the same radical gender ideology and sexual paraphilia of its predecessors. The seventh version of the standards of care released under the new WPath name in 2012 and valid all the way through 2022 continue to reference the work of Dr John money whose victims killed themselves. WPath also cited the receptacle auto gynephile Dr Anne Lawrence as recently as last year.

The WPath website fully acknowledged almost proudly their origin with the the EEF and how its suspending of operations in 1977 directly led to this pack of fringe doctors forming the Harry Benjamin International gender dysphoria Association which is now WPath. Despite its sordid history WPath is somehow now taken seriously as the standard setter in the field by major hospitals and medical associations. This is maybe the single greatest scam in modern medicine. It's destroying the lives of children across the country and that much is clear. What's less clear is why anyone who knows the truth about W path's origin would ever listen to a word they have to say.

The W path of today is the proud product of decades of quackery and sexual experimentation. It's a threat to Public Health, in particular to children. Now the good news is that there's a simple solution. The fact that radical activists at WPath provides standards of care doesn't mean doctors, hospitals, medical schools, and insurance companies have to follow them or use them for any purpose at all. Medical professionals have the capacity and capability of rejecting barbarism and doing what's right. They can exercise some level of Common Sense and restraint. It's happened before

Physicians used to engage in a wide range of practices that we now recognize are gruesome and unethical, like lobotomy, using heroin as cough syrup, and treating asthma with chloroform. In time WPath's standards of care and the procedures they endorse will meet the same fate. WPath exists because for years most people didn't know about its history or how its standards of care are used. Most people didn't know that hospitals will perform double mastectomies and other life-altering operations on children. Well, that's all changing now. WPath and everything that stands for has been exposed and now it's time for the medical profession to do what it should have done a long time ago and shut down these con artists once and for all.

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29pageshomestuckeveryday · 11 months

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Homestuck, page 2,494

This is ridiculous.

No, this is MY LIFE we're talking about here. Bullies. Wolves. Musty attics. Huge spiders. Did I mention the spiders? Let me tell you, I got HELLA spiders up in this... Fuck, this horn fell off. Dammit. Piece of shit. Wonder if there's any glue in here... oh screw it. Do you have any idea how much power I wield over you?? To what extent I can RUIN the shit you step in with that squeaky clean sunday loafer you use to stomp that bookmark and stamp that F5 key, day goddamn in and day fucking out??? Do you possess even the most infinitesimal kernel of cognizance for the degree to which I can make the shorn, shivering weasel that is the totem spirit representing your wretched fascination with this website squeal in heartrending remorse???? It would be so easy! I could snap my gray smudgy fingers RIGHT NOW, and make you read all the troll romance exposition segments all over again, BACK TO BACK TO BACK TO BACK TO BACK TO BACK. Oh, you don't think I'll do it????????

Author commentary: When Hivebent was being updated in real time, the deeper we got into it, the more I detected a certain amount of grumbling from the peanut gallery about the pacing of this arc, that maybe it was too much of a detour, slowing down the progress of the "real story." But the more you examine Homestuck, the more you realize the "real story" doesn't have a conventional meaning. Or, the "real story" is more of a self-understood projection of narrative idealism, around which revolve many orbital layers of farcical deconstruction. It's like the John Lennon quote: "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." My spin on that is: Homestuck is what happens while you're busy looking for the "real story." Regardless of any pacing reservations at the time, Hivebent now feels like it's regarded as sort of a sacred text among fans of the series. The lesson is that the real-time grumblings of fandom guttersnipes during the slow rollout of such content don't mean a damn thing, and they always seem to be wrong about everything. But it's not really a lesson, because I always knew that. The important thing was to recognize when the time was right to make these little power moves and reassert some dominance over the story. Lennon had his bullies too. Ultimately he got owned by one of them. He didn't have a long, magic dog to fight back with. He also didn't really have the guts to weaponize his work against his fans. If Lennon was a serious artist, he would have taken the worst song he ever made, expanded it to be an indulgent thirty-minute ballad, released it as a single, and gone on tour for a year playing only that song.

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utilitycaster · 2 years

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What’s your feeling on the Laudna-is-a-suntree-corpse reveal? I think I remember you finding the theory silly at one point, so are you still frustrated? The thing with her ears was somehow the most upsetting to me.

You know this is a great question and I was wondering if anyone would ask it. I actually found that I didn't mind how it was presented in the story, in the end. You've caught me in an oddly reflective mood, which is probably good for everyone myself included, and I want to answer this and also maybe elucidate my philosophy on theories in a way that's perhaps more honest and a bit...idk about kinder, but at least more patient and less contrarian than I've been.

Specifically about this theory

In hindsight, I don't love this as backstory but I don't hate it either. I think I reacted so negatively to this as a theory for a couple of reasons.

The first is that I do feel Vox Machina at times occupies this outsized mythos within the fandom and it was something I felt particularly keenly coming in with Campaign 2; it felt (still feels, tbh) sometimes that there's this air of "welcome :) you don't have to have seen campaign 1 to enjoy campaign 2 :) but jsyk campaign 1 was better in every way :) it was better when the fandom was smaller and all you johnny come latelies weren't here and you're wrong for preferring campaign 2 :) anyway welcome :)" (I should note - many, many people who have been around since Campaign One don't do this at all, it's a tiny minority who do, but god they piss me off). Anyway, to that end I'm hesitant about strong connections to Campaign 1, to the point that it took a good deal of time for Orym to grow on me (and he has, to be clear).

The second is that, and maybe this, ironically enough, is me jumping to conclusions, it felt like it was treated as definitively correct (well, that and the competing theory that Laudna was a de Rolo) when it was merely a possibility, and one that I didn't feel added much (more on this below).

The third is that I could feel the way a certain segment of the fandom wanted this to be true for Angst Reasons and this is a sticking point; I have a low, low tolerance for angst and I've talked about that before, in that I'm way more interested in realistic depictions of responses to tragedy, ie, either like, actual grief and trauma, and then processing and healing. Like, I want the Nein post-Molly's death, I want Yasha and Caleb's stories...but I also want stories that we're getting in Campaign Three, in which Laudna, Chetney, Orym, and Ashton have all experienced objectively horrible, life-altering events but they all seem to share this attitude of "yes, this was horrible. Nothing I can do will change it, and even resentment against those who did it won't help, and all I can do is move forward." I guess what I'm saying is that if you want to delve deep into angst and "oh no I made myself sad" that is an entirely valid personal choice but I have no taste for it, and I can't really block it either without blocking a lot of stuff I do want to see so I just...seethe.

So this was a super long way to say that it's not going to be my favorite choice but I actually appreciate that Laudna is like "I was an innocent bystander who brutally murdered to send a message I don't even totally understand, and I don't want to think about it too much, but in the end, it is what it is and I'm somehow still here so let's make the best of it."

(FWIW the part about the ears doesn't bother me terribly? I mean it's awful but we already knew how horrible the Briarwoods were, like, this doesn't really change much and I can respect a gory detail, but I understand it being rough)

Theories in general

So I'm in no way above theorizing to my own taste...but I do want theories to answer a question. Otherwise it's wild unfounded speculation, and I know that is fun for some people but it's no fun to me. I don't even mind being wrong about the concrete happenings, but I do mind being wrong about vibes, I guess is the best way to say it?

Like, to give a couple examples in which I was wrong (both C2 because I was spoiled for a decent amount of C1) - I was very wrong about the campaign going on longer bc the Uk'otoa and Trent plot threads were still out there, but I was correct in that they were still out there and need a resolution; the difference was just that the resolution would happen for the most part as epilogue or post-campaign. I was wrong in that I leaned towards Essek not being a traitor and just being caught up in some weird personal stuff...but he was indeed caught up in some weird personal stuff and his intent wasn't really to betray.

So here, I was 100% wrong about Laudna not being a Sun Tree corpse. But I do think that her response to her death seems like it would have been the same had she just been killed by a necromantic wave of energy, or by a stone giant, or whatever. That's what I ultimately felt strongly about - that the connection isn't rife with meaning, that it's just a thing that happened. I should probably, when dealing with theories, focus more on things like that than the details. I feel like this is hedging but I promise that's not my intent - this is me realizing things about why I dislike certain theories and how to better personally frame it instead of shooting them all down wholesale.

#i'm suppressing my default state of being but i'm being so brave about it #critical role spoilers #not maintagging bc it's long and mostly about me but ok to reblog

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quicksandblock · 3 years

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MCYT Demographic Survey Part 2 RESULTS

IT’S TIME!!!

Once again, thank you so much to everyone who participated! 1,654 people total responded to this - about four and a half times as many respondents as the first survey. It’s honestly incredible. I’m so happy the rest of you are as interested as I am in this stuff :D

The increased turnout is also why these results are being posted two days later than I’d intended. I want to give a HUGE thank you to my friend @quincepastey and my sibling @orestes-swimming for helping me out, and by helping I do mean they did basically all of the technical stuff for me, because my knowledge of spreadsheets was not up to the task. So thank you to Cupid for organizing all the data from questions 3 and 4 into something comprehensible for me, and thank you to Kal for making the charts! They are absolutely the MVPs and everyone reading this should go check them out. Thank you guys so much <3

Reblogs of this post are very appreciated. It would be awesome if the info about the results could reach everyone who submitted a response, so if you reblogged my first post about this survey, please consider reblogging this one as well!

For your convenience, here’s a link to the results of the first survey I did six months ago. Now - on to the results!

Question 1: What is your age range?

Compared to the results of the first survey, we can see that things have changed a bit! Specifically, the fandom has shifted just a little bit older. The solid majority of the fandom is still in the 15-17 year old range, but it’s gone down from almost half to closer to 40%. Almost a third of the fandom are ages 18-20, up from close to a fifth six months ago. 21-25 year olds have increased from about 10% to about 14%. And the youngest segment, 13-14 year olds, have gone from almost 20% of the fandom down to 12% - the sharpest change of all.

Finally, nearest and dearest to my own heart, there are now 26 whole people in the fandom aged 26-30 and 9 people aged 30+. Old Squad is growing, folks. We are... the 2% 😎 Special shoutout to the person who said their 15 year old kid got them into the fandom. I hope you know just how cool you are.

These results are interesting, but it’s also impossible to say how accurate the data is. This survey and the previous one were only posted on my blog, and they only reached a wider audience through the reblogs of my followers. So do these changes reflect actual changes in the demographics of the fandom as a whole, or is it just that my followers (and the people who follow them) have shifted older? To try to avoid this bias in the future, I may reach out to some well-known younger bloggers and ask them to reblog the next survey I do so that I can reach a more even audience.

Question 2: What is your gender?

Apologies for the small text, but there were so many unique write-in answers that I wanted to include them all. You may want to open the image in a separate tab for better quality.

In contrast to the age question, the gender spread of the fandom has remained pretty much the same. About half the fandom is still female, the nonbinary crowd has increased from 20% to 25%, 7% of us are male, almost 7% are genderfluid, and about 5% are agender. Just like last time, most of the write-in responses fell into the vague categories of either genderqueer or questioning.

No surprises on this one! The fandom continues to be overwhelmingly female and queer. Next time I think I’ll include genderqueer and questioning as options to try to catch some of those people into a formal category. All y’all are so valid, especially the person who wrote in their gender as “soup” <3

The results for questions 3 and 4 will be under a cut, because I don’t want to completely destroy people’s dashes.

Before I get into the last two questions, a couple notes. First, I want to explain how I came up with the list of creators, since a lot of people were either excited or disappointed by the fact that a few different people were on there.

On the last survey, this question was a write-in, and I had to transcribe and collate all the answers by hand to come up with the actual number of people who followed each creator. For this survey, I simply took the list that came out of the previous one and pasted it in! I also added a few people who no one wrote in six months ago but who are much more prominent now (Ranboo being the biggest example). So if you were excited to see your favorite small creator listed as an option, they were there because someone wrote them in last time! And if you wrote in your favorite small creator here, they’ll be an option on the next survey. The list is entirely crowdsourced and it will expand with each survey.

That said, the same also applies for more controversial creators. Specifically, I’m talking about CallMeCarson. Several people questioned my decision to keep him on the list - and to be honest, I considered taking him out. But in the end I decided to leave him in as an option for the sake of completeness and consistency with the previous survey. I want to emphasize that this is not me condoning his actions. But for the sake of the data, I felt that it was best to leave him in.

That said, let’s move on to questions 3 and 4!

Question 3: What creator(s) do you primarily follow?

So, it’s harder to compare with the previous survey on this one, and that’s purely because on the previous survey I didn’t have the help I did here. The chart I was able to make for the results back in October was frankly trash. Also, the fact that I split “followed creators” into two questions - primarily and casually followed - definitely throws things off. However, we can still do a certain amount of comparison!

The most obvious change is Ranboo. He straight up was not on the previous survey at all - I think he’d been streaming for less than a month at the time. Now, about 55% of respondents listed him as someone they primarily follow. The Dream SMP itself has also jumped dramatically. Previously, about 5% of people wrote in Dream SMP. That has increased to over half. Quackity has gone from less than 2% to about 30%. Karl has gone from 4% to 30%. Phil has gone from about 8% to a little under 50%. The SBI have jumped from 11% to over 40%.

Techno has gone from about 50% to over 60%. Tommy has gone from 45% to over 55%. Wilbur has jumped from 43% to 55%. Tubbo has remained steady at about 38%.

Dream has apparently dropped some of his following percentage-wise, falling from 50% to about 35%. However, George, Sapnap, and the Dream Team itself have all jumped from 10-12% to almost 30%.

I’m not going to go over the rest of the list, because that would just get way too long. However, I will drop a link to the spreadsheets of data for this survey and the previous one, so anyone who wants to can do some comparison of their own!

Question 4: What creators do you casually follow?

I won’t do as detailed of a comparison on this question, because there’s nothing to compare it to - this question wasn’t on the previous survey. However, it’s interesting to see how many more people follow Fundy, Nihachu, BadBoyHalo, Captain Puffy, Eret, Awesamdude, and Jack Manifold casually rather than as a primary favorite. Out of the top twelve, Karl, Quackity, Phil, and Tubbo are the only ones who don’t have a major discrepancy between the amount of people who follow them casually versus primarily.

I would be curious to hear people’s thoughts on why that’s the case! Personally, I would guess it’s a combination of each of their approaches to lore on the Dream SMP, the frequency and times of day that they stream, and the people they tend to make content with and be associated with by the fandom. I may go into that more later, but this post is already very long, so I’ll hold off for now. Here’s a link to this question’s spreadsheet for anyone who wants to take a closer look!

...And that’s a wrap! Good grief, this got long. Kudos to anyone who actually read the whole thing because I know my attention span would be challenged. I’m already thinking about the next survey - a couple people suggested that I add in questions about orientation and nationality, and while I want to keep the survey pretty tight in its scope, I am considering it. It would be even more data to process but it would be interesting to know!

I would love to hear people’s thoughts on these results! I’m only one person, so I know there’s interesting stuff I must have missed. Please, please feel free to reblog with your thoughts and observations! A lot of work went into this (both from me and from Cupid and Kal! Thank you guys again!), so I’m really hoping to hear what people think about it :D

I plan to reblog this and reply to some of the things people wrote in at the end, so stay tuned for that. And once again: thank you all for your interest in this project of mine <3 See you with another one in six months!

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rainbowsky · 3 years

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Did DLS Out DD During a DDU Recording and Make Him Cry?

This has been making the rounds on Twitter and YouTube and even Tumblr, for a while now. Fancam footage of DLS making a boyfriend joke and then leaning in to a supposedly upset DD and trying to smooth things over.

This whole thing is based on fancam footage taken during the recording of the DDU 20190825 episode. In this episode dating was being discussed using four beautiful young women, DD and QF along with two handsome young guests as a backdrop.

The subtitles of the fan cam present a scenario where DLS supposedly refers to DD as ‘not needing a girlfriend because he already has a boyfriend’ and then leaning into a supposedly emotional DD and apologizing, trying to calm him down; saying viewers won’t understand what was said.

Let’s take a look at the video:

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The full fan cam footage that this out of context clip was taken from can be found here.

If you watch the episode and the complete fan cam footage, you’ll see that this happened during the segment where they were being asked to comment on various dating scenarios. An announcer would present each scenario in a multiple choice format, asking the women to choose between four options based on the type of guy they’d most like to date. For example:

How would you like the boy you like to invite you for a meal on the weekend?

A] Save your weekend for me. Do not say no.

B] You had breakfast at 7:50 this morning and lunch at 12:30. It’s already 7pm now. You have to eat meals on time. Why don’t I take you out for dinner?

C] I tried to explain my thoughts when I look at you, but I failed. So do you have time for dinner with me this weekend? Let’s talk about it.

D] Get out. Dinner.

My opinion

We should always, always be suspicious of anything that is presented without context. 99.9% of the time, when someone removes context they are doing so to mislead audiences. This clip is a perfect example of that. The video creator appears to have removed important context in order to make the clip better fit the narrative they’re trying to sell.

In this segment of the episode, the hosts and guests were seen commenting on the options as they were being read out. The comments DLS is making appear to be in response to something the announcer has said. I don’t think the comments have anything whatsoever do to with DD.

I also don’t think DD looks even remotely upset. Certainly not near tears. Some fans seem over-eager to claim DD is crying. We’ve all seen DD cry, but it’s exceptionally rare and only happens in very personal situations. This doesn’t qualify. It wouldn’t qualify even if everything the video creator claimed was true. DD would be more likely to get angry than cry in such a situation. He isn’t doing either of these things.

Whoever made this video simply doesn’t ‘get’ DD’s personality at all. The people who buy this are similarly unfamiliar with him.

I invite everyone to use your own eyes and your own judgment. Ignore what’s being claimed, ignore the framing you’ve been given of the scenario by me or the video creator, and instead just watch the clip. Does that look like a man on the verge of tears to you?

Second and third opinions

I asked the indispensable @potteresque-ire and @knivescharade what they thought of the clip. I didn’t tell them anything about my opinion, but simply sent the clip and asked their thoughts - are the subtitles correct, what do you think of the lip reading, etc.

@knivescharade

wow, for this person to put this analysis in i would say that lip reading is a very difficult skill. and to try and lip read someone like DLS, who speaks like a bullet train and doesn't really enunciate SUPER well (unlike Han-ge, for example) ... i would say the interpretation is only very vaguely possible at best.

i know both the cand int fandom have a major something for how WYB keeps swallowing around XZ, but honestly. WYB tends to get throat issues. i think swallowing has become one of his habits at this point. so... in conclusion... there are already lots of major, amazing, and irrefutable candies in the fandom already, let's not bother with such iffy ones :D

he is indeed saying that "this man has a boyfriend", but i cant quite remember which part of the show that was in. i watched that episode, it was something to do with love and having 4 guys paired with 4 girls or something like that, and listening to 'types of guys responses to etc etc' so DLS wasnt saying that WYB has a boyfriend - he was saying that 'this man', the one whose voice was playing in the audio, has a boyfriend.

That tracks with my interpretation of what was happening.

@potteresque-ire

Unless people have learned the dialect, Mandarin speakers cannot understand Cantonese, and vice versa. This is why I don't support or wash auditory candies, especially if it involves someone from Northern China (such as DLS, who is a Beijing native). Their local accents make their Mandarin even more difficult to understand.

This dialect restriction is actually not specific to a me, or other Hong Kongers. Someone whose family is entirely from Northern China would be equally prone to making mistakes if they're asked to lip read southern Chinese.

Lip reading also removes tonal consideration, which makes everything that much more uncertain. Have you heard of the Mr Shi Eats the Lion story? This is why, even if I hear some similarities, I'd hesitate to say X has to be saying ABC. Context is important.

Cantonese speakers are especially picky about tone. Mandarin have 4. We have 6 or 9, depending on who you ask. So... I may be more picky than I should be that way too. And I don't want to spoil anyone's fun 😊

The translation was correct in the sense that it was faithful to the Chinese words in the clip I saw, which replicated what DLS said accurately. But the video itself was from a fancam. Where that fancam happened (and got cut off) was at Q3 at the Q & A segment, starting ~9:34 of the official YouTube clip.

DLS said what he said half way through the voiceover of Option A (very precisely, right after the words "I'm the only one"). Technically speaking, therefore, he wasn't talking about DD.

However, it was also a little strange why DLS said what he said. If you watch that segment, all options have a certain personality attached to them. C was very talkative / pretentious. D was connected to DD because it was blunt and direct. A was the so called "overbearing CEO" personality... which is common in het romance dramas but isn't one that has been connected to the gay stereotype. And so, DLS's timing of saying that ... is curious.

Dd did look a little ... I wouldn't say upset, but tense after DLS said that. Maybe it's because that comment kinda came out of nowhere (because of its curious timing), and so it would be read as hinting at something. But that comment is harmless, wording wise.

Alternate theory

I’ve seen some talk from fans about a different theory for why DLS said what he said. Fans say the announcer for option A was Bian Jiang, the actor who did the voice of LWJ in The Untamed. They say that DLS was making a joke about LWJ not needing a boyfriend because he already has one. That actually makes a lot of sense to me as well, and if that’s really Bian Jiang, then I’d say that’s the most likely explanation for this entire thing.

Conclusion

It’s my firm opinion that DLS was not talking about DD having a boyfriend, nor was DD ‘near tears’ in this clip. Whatever DLS said to DD after that, it almost certainly wouldn’t have been ‘words of comfort to placate an upset DD’.

The Bian Jiang theory fits best, but we don’t need to know why DLS said what he said to be able to conclude he wasn’t talking about DD.

Cute DD candy from this episode

If anyone wants a better candy from this episode, look no further than when he emerges from “door #2″, chosen by one of the women as someone she’d like to date based on the food he’d picked out, and immediately launches into “I want to take a man back to my place and hide him.” A LWJ reference (which DLS and Wang Han clarify with him because they appear baffled by what he just said), but still a tactful, perfect rejection of this woman he’s being paired with. 😅

#bjyx #yizhan #ddu #ttxs #bxg fact checking #ggdd entertainment circle #ggdd signs #Youtube

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redrikki · 2 years

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Certain segments of fandom tends to treat Scott's refusal to listen to Stiles regarding Theo in season 5 as some sort of unique betrayal, but Scott (and others) not listening to Stiles's intuition or concerns is actually a consistent pattern across every season. Literally every season starts with Stiles noticing something which the other characters ignore, only for his intuition to be later proven correct. Lydia may be the one who sees (hears) the future, but Stiles is the show's Cassandra figure.

In season 1, Stiles correctly diagnoses Scott with lycanthropy twice, first in jest and then in earnest. Both times his concerns are brushed off. After that, Scott starts to listen to him more as they delve into the season's mystery and try to manage Scott's condition.

In season 2, Stiles insists that Lydia could not be the kanima, despite circumstantial evidence to the contrary, because she lacks the level of evil he saw in the kanima. While Scott and Allison both work to defend Lydia from Derek's pack and the hunters, they do so because they don't want her to die, not because they believe him. Scott actually suggests that Stiles' feelings for Lydia are clouding his judgement. Stiles also is the first to point out that there is something seriously wrong with Matt, but no one listens until it becomes blindingly obvious that Matt is controlling the kanima. In season 3, Scott says that no one suspected Matt. When Stiles points out that he, in fact, did, Scott says he always just figured Stiles was joking.

In season 3A, Stiles figures out that human sacrifices are happening by victim three. When victim four goes missing, he insists the other boy is likely dead. Scott teases him about it and insists Kyle is likely fine. When it turns out Kyle is dead, Scott keeps insisting that the murders are by the Alpha pack and dismisses the idea of human sacrifice. Everyone else ignores Stiles as well until he turns to Deaton for help. Even with Deaton on board, Stile is struggling as late as "Hotel California" to get Scott on board. The Sheriff repeatedly brushes off Stiles' theories about what is happening and very pointedly shouts about how he doesn't believe Stiles at all about the supernatural everything.

In season 3B, Sheriff Stilinski ignores Stiles and Lydia when they say Barrow is still in the building. The sheriff is also reluctant to take Stiles' word that Malia is the coyote and only begins to listen when Stiles invokes Scott's name. When Stiles insists that he's the one who let Barrow into the chemistry closet and wrote the note about Kira, Scott very gently says he's not saying Stiles is crazy, but when was the last time he slept. It is also in this season when the sheriff, only half-jokingly, says that he hasn't trusted a word Stiles has said since he started talking.

In season 4, Stiles insists that they should be looking into the Wolcott murders, but Scott and Kira insists it's a human problem they should let the grown-up deal with. In season 5, he's immediately suspicious of Theo and his concerns are ignored by everyone. The Sheriff flat out says he'd take Stiles' concerns seriously when flying monkeys attack the station and Malia writes it off as jealousy, while Scott gently suggests that Stiles has issues with trust and anxiety. He points out other times Stiles was suspicious of people, including people whom Scott was initially suspicious of as well, including Derek. Once it's clear that Theo is actually bad news, Scott claims that Stiles trusted Theo too, like his friends hadn't spent an entire episode browbeating Stiles into giving up his concerns.

All this isn't to say that Stiles is never wrong. In season 1, he goes along with Scott and Derek's respective assertions that Derek and Deaton are the Alpha. In season 3, his list of darach suspects includes everyone but the killer. Frequently, Stiles is right about a major aspect of the case, usually the how or the why, but wrong about the who or the what. For example, in "Hotel California" he figures out that the wolves are hallucinating thanks to wolfsbane, but thinks maybe it's being done by Lydia without her knowing it, like what happened at her party. It turns out, he was right about the wolfsbane, but it's coach who's been dosing them without knowing it. In season 4, he and Lydia rightly figure out the Benefactor is a banshee who faked her death, but think it's Lydia's grandmother when it's actually Meredith. Stiles has good instincts and puts together patterns quickly, but he often lacks the experience or information to correctly solve the case from the jump. He also clearly has mental health issues, something which his friends point out when dismissing his concerns, especially post season 3.

Season 6 starts, once again, with Stiles noticing a problem and no one believing him. The Ghost Riders have been taking people, literally for months. Stiles has been trying to get Lydia to help him investigate an unknown supernatural something, but it isn't until Liam and Hayden find the car with Alex that anyone actually agrees to look. Everyone goes back and forth in terms of believing Stiles that something supernatural is happening, both to Alex and to Stiles himself, thanks to the effects of the Ghost Riders. Scott even once claims that Stiles' psychological issues are why things like his photo sign-up is missing. After Stiles is erased, Lydia takes over as the person no one believes as she struggles to convince everyone that Stiles exists. The boy no one ever believes becomes the boy no one believes in and, wow, does that feel pointed.

comment on AO3

#teen wolf #teen wolf meta #stiles stilinski

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gffa · 3 years

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Shit, now I’m thinking again about the structure of Star Wars fandom versus Star Wars source material creators and I feel like there’s a fascinating discussion to be about how there’s a blurring line between “fan” versus “author/artist/creative” with the way LF is hiring so many popular fans to create source material content for them. And part of that discussion is that there’s no real easy way to tell where the creator ends and the fan begins, especially when LF has been spending increasing amounts of effort to make people act as if liking Star Wars is now part of your personality, that it defines who you are as a person. I look at popular YouTubers being asked to host segments during Celebration or I look at popular fans on Twitter getting to draw official art for LF or the accounts of writers of the SW books, and it’s impossible to tell where the fan begins and the creator ends. Which I don’t think strikes a lot of people as a problem, the sheer number of people who work for LF are all like, “I’m also a Star Wars fan!” and that’s not inherently bad, I think being fan can really, really help them love what they do and have passion for it and you can tell they care about what they put out, even when they’re working for a giant megacorporation. Nor do I think “just doing your job” is an inherently great way to produce SW material, either. And maybe part of my problem is the separation of creator and fan made it more navigable when interacting with someone, like, let’s say I don’t like a SW book, because they signed a contract to write a book for Lucasfilm, there’s a level of agreeing to people reacting to your work. They are a professional writer, they can put their big kids’ undies on and deal with it. But I can’t and shouldn’t do the same for a fanfic that someone wrote, because they’re another fan, they don’t have the same influence or reach, nor did they sign a contract to be part of that kind of thing. So, are they fan or creator? This weird mix of both--and I haven’t even touched on how I’m starting to wonder when LF will be hiring more based on popularity than talent--on the surface feels like it’s trying to be a big, cozy family, but it’s not, it’s a business and a product. And that part is bad, too, but also I’m thinking about how fandom etiquette has certain rules, that you shouldn’t be a dick to other fans (and there’s this whole big other conversation about fandom treating someone who likes something they don’t as the same as being actively horrible as a person, how there are behaviors in fandom that are genuinely worth talking about/examining and then there’s people who hate me just because I like Character A and not Character B or whatever, that this is a difficult morass that we all need to work harder on) but if they’re both fans and creators, then how the hell are you supposed to interact with them? Are they a professional or a fan? Because half the time I don’t even know anymore. That distinction is important because, even if you should keep scale in mind, when you criticize an author on something, you’re criticizing up. They’re still a human being, but they’re also a professional. When you criticize a fellow fan, you’re criticizing someone parallel to you. Yes, their amount of being popular on the internet can be a factor and being a fan doesn’t get you immunity from criticism, but they are still just a fan and should be treated as such.

#lumi.txt

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tedturneriscrazy · 3 years

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🎶Knock, Knock, Knockin' On Hooty's Door🎵

I wonder if anything will happen in this episode.🙂

(I say as if I didn't watch the episode twice before going to bed and writing this post)

I don't think I'll ever not be amused by the way Hooty just...does things with his face

Seems like he found a thesaurus at some point

Okay so it's canonically spelled "Hootsifer," good to know

Also, this is really all we get of Lilith, huh?

His little hoot/coo at Lilith's letter❤❤❤

To borrow a meme format: If I had a nickel for every time Alex Hirsch was involved in a show where one of the characters was experiencing pubescent voice cracks, I'd have two nickels, which isn't very much but it's weird that it happened twice

Eda's face🤣

As much as this bit is played for laughs, Eda's clearly still shaken by what happened last episode

Jeez, Luz, priorities /j

Pictured: Hooty

The way King talks about being pelleted implies this is something Hooty does on the regular

Hooty's plan to help King is literally a Buzzfeed quiz? Okay then

Betcha never expected lore from Hooty, eh?

"DO NOT INTERRUPT"

Officially a "type of worm"

The dance being a grievous insult wasn't exactly from nowhere, but still funny nonetheless

WE DON'T TALK ABOUT THE FUCKING COCCOON

Tiny Nose playing Switch definitely seems to be drawing from Dana's real life experiences

Wait, Hooty and Tiny Nose are friends?

Well shit, turns out she could use magic this whole time. Guess her going Super Saiyan wasn't just the power glyph.

I am extremely skeptical of your medical credentials, TN

I have so many questions about the methodology they used for the blood test(s)

I think Hooty may have misinterpreted what King was looking for

I'm still amazed at how King has had, and continues to have, moments in the show with some of the greatest emotional weight

Ooh, sound powers!

"IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A CRUMBLE!!!"

It just occurred to me that that segment consisted mostly of Alex Hirsch talking to himself

Hello not-at-all obvious setup

Today I learned that Hooty is the baker of the house. Maybe he'd critique Amity's fairy pie.

Aaaaand there's the sleep inducing

Oh shit

In hindsight the Owl Beast being part of a dream sequence is rather obvious

Wow, Eda, tell us how you really feel about the Owl Beast

Oh we're just gonna ride aboard the Trauma Express today, huh?

Oh, I guess Lilith did make an appearance, after all

Damn, Gwen, not even looking

Oh shit dad issues

Sandy Cohen?! (To anyone who gets that reference, hi. How are your 30s treating you?)

Well, I know who Peter Gallagher voices now, anyway

Oh dear...

(Also, bright flashing lights triggering the curse? There's an epilepsy allegory in here somwhere)

Blood and eye injury? Gotta stretch that Y7 rating

Now we have some context for that look on Eda's face when Lilith mentioned their dad: good old fashioned guilt!

I desparately want to make a "Dude, you're getting a Dell!" joke, but I'm better than that

New memory! Raine!

Oh no...

I get the feeling I'll hate this part, too

They were exes!😢 Guess the fandom called that one

The reasoning for them being exes is understandable, all too real, and goddamn heartbreaking

That said, the fact they never stopped loving each other🥺😢😭

I do hope we can see Raine again under less...traumatic circumstances. Maybe that wedding that was mentioned?

Oh shit, are we getting into the Owl Beast's memories?!?! What a tweest!

Bet nobody expected Cloaked Moonface to show up in the frickin Hooty episode

(Also, holy shit I briefly forgot this was the Hooty episode)

Who is this mysterious cloaked figure? And why are they so tall and long?

So the curse was a sealed beast this whole time. Damn.

And it was just picked up as beach junk to sell as a trinket. So much for it being connected to Belos. (Not that people will stop trying to do so)

Who had "experiencing sympathy for the Owl Beast" on their Bingo cards for this episode? Yeah, me neither.

And here we have the necessary Eda coming to terms with her curse segment. More accurately, Eda and the curse coming to terms with each other.

Goddamnit why does it have to be cute

"It's like sandpaper" IT'S LIKE A CAT I FUCKING CAN'T

Insert Steamed Hams reference here to kill the mood

New transformation!

Oh no she's hot!

No, Hooty, you made it surprisingly much, much better!

She might have a problem pushing people away and holding onto guilt, but Eda always knows that she looks damn good

Oh right, Luz having girl problems. Fuck, so much is happening in this episode!

"Cotton-candy-haired Goddess" LUZ! 🤣

Attuned to other people's emotions = being a fucking creeper

Oh Luz, what happened to you back home?

Also, 99.999% certain Amity would love your cheesiness

That's...rather morbid, Hooty

So much lore development, including the fact the Owl House has a basement

Classic inanimate object silhouette fakeout gag. Subversion in 3...2...1...

There it is!

I can't imagine being pelleted is a fun experience.

Honestly I have so many questions about how Hooty got Amity there in the first place, but I'm not so sure I actually want to know the answers to any of them...

Cue much panicking

Wow, I'm really getting some Into the Bunker flashbacks

Oh this is gonna be amazing isn't it

I commend Luz for not actually dropping dead of embarrassment

Seriously, how can Hooty set all this up so fast yet not hold a pen?!?!?!

Poor Luz, she thinks this is destroying her chances

Meanwhile Amity is just "Oh, Titan, is this actually happening?!"

The way she's fixing her hair!❤

Goddamnit Luz let this play out, she's so clearly into this!

"Again?!" Okay who do I have to kill?

Luz is luzing it

Nooooooo....

JUST TALK FOR FUCK'S SAKE (aka how like 95% of issues in literally any plot could be solved)

Noooo Amity's so heartbroken right now💔

This isn't what either of them wanted!

To be fair, Hooty, Luz had a part in this too. Not that she can be blamed entirely. Poor thing clearly had some awful experiences back home...

Now Hooty is McFucking losing it

Why did I think he was gonna say "Looks like I'm gonna have to JUMP!" I think I've watched too much Homestar Runner (jk there's no such thing)

Those pulsating organs are still gross

Eda swooping in to save her son (No, really, he actually is now)

I'll say things get weird when Hooty gets upset!

Yes, King! Save them with your voice powers!

Damn that is some romantic lighting, and Luz is enjoying the eye candy (cotton candy, if you will)

Luz's reaction to Harpy!Eda is the family-friendly summation of how the fandom has reacted.

Hooty really just tearing up the landscape in remorse

Mother-daughter moment about love life!

I appreciate not just Eda's encouragement but her actually asking Luz what she wanted

God, Eda is best mom

Also, OH FUCK IS THIS HAPPENING?!

OH SHIT

THESE ADORABLY AWKWARD NERDS❤💜💙

"I'm not as cool as you think" could be interpreted as self-deprecating, but here it seems...oddly reassuring?

The way Luz eloquently says how she wants Amity in her future...beautiful❤

Luz making some good faces

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

YOU CUTE DORKS I LOVE YOU SO MUCH

THERE IT IS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

LOOK HOW HAPPY SHE IS

WE WERE LOSING OUR SHIT OVER A PECK ON THE CHEEK THREE WEEKS AGO AND NOW LOOK WHERE WE ARE HOLY FUCK

Awkwardness is still there, but that's to be expected

BET Y'ALL DIDN'T EXPECT THAT TRAILER SHOT TO BE IN THE HOOTY EPISODE HUH

THE WAY LUZ RUBS AMITY'S HAND😭😭😭😭😭

(And yeah, it's gonna still be scary, but only because it promises to be so wonderful)

Let's give it up for Hootsifer, goddamn!

Let'a also appreciate just how fucking funny it is that Lumity becomes official in the Hooty episode

Fus ro WEH!

Hooty actually saying "Luz's new GF" out loud...

In just about any other show the love interests getting together would be a climax/culmination of the entire plot. Here? It's actually used to advance the plot, and that is brilliant!

Dana Terrace and the crew really just knocking it out of the park again and again, huh

"They're adorable, and deserve all the happiness!" Well said, Hootsifer. Well said.

Probably for the best they had Hooty promise that. As much as what happened/progressed, there was a lot of property damage.

OH SHIT ONCE AGAIN

King's dad/relative! And he's voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson!

GODDAMNIT HOOTY

Wow. Just...wow. This episode.

King has voice powers! Harpy!Eda! Lumity are girlfriends for real!!!!

How do you pack so much into a single episode?! And so expertly?!

I had my suspicions before, but this confirms it: The Owl House is the greatest show of all time.

And we have two episodes left until the hiatus! And 11 episodes in the season after that! What are we in for?!?!?!

I, for one, can't wait to find out!

#the owl house #toh hooty #luz noceda #eda clawthorne #king clawthorne #lilith clawthorne #gwendolyn clawthorne #dell clawthorne #raine whispers #amity blight #lumity #toh s2 spoilers #the owl house s2 spoilers #the owl house season 2 spoilers #the owl house spoilers #toh spoilers

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novantinuum · 3 years

Note

Hi, I was just wondering if you had ever thought about what would have happened in your story "Hollowed Moon" if you had continued it. I always thought it was such an interesting setup that could have gone in so many different directions. And there really aren't other stories focusing on Stevonnie and Spinel, so it was unique!

Hiya!

So, I do have some half-written, half-plotted out material to share. I gave this story some consideration the other day, and came to the decision that I don't have the desire to finish it out, alas- I have far too many other active WIPs to add it to the list. There's a few good reasons why I discontinued it, anyways... intimidation over the huge surge of attention it was getting back in 2019, some rude comments from overzealous Spinel fans, (I know everyone isn't like this, but a certain segment of the Spinel side of the SU fandom kinda burned me over time, hhh), and a future chapter containing a sensitive topic that I wasn't in a good headspace to write about at the time.

But! Anyways! Below the cut is all the existing material I have for Hollowed Moon past chapter 14, consisting of a mixture of descriptions, sketchy dialogue, and prose. It honestly feels nice to finally be able to put this story to an official rest.

Chapter 15

“I... I saw her.”

“Who-?”

“I saw Pink Diamond. I saw you, in this exact garden, in a dream. I- it was like I was experiencing everything through her. She explained your game, tapped your nose and told you to smile, then warped away—“

“That’s it, that’s what happened, almost exactly! But how could you even know that, I never—“

“I don’t know,” they blurt out. “I have empathic abilities, and sometimes that makes dreaming a little weird, but I have no idea how or why I saw any of this.”

[Pause for Stevonnie to think]

“Spinel, I’m so, so sorry,” they whisper brokenly. “But I think... she left you here.”

��What...?”

“She said she’d return, but before she warped away she whispered goodbye, like she didn’t actually intend to make good on that promise. She was lying to you,” they choke out, voice thick.

“No. No,” she says in clear denial, “no she’s not. She can’t be! She told me she’d come back! I can wait! I just have to wait—“

“But she’s not! She... she can’t, because Pink Diamond is gone. She- she was shattered, Spinel. Five thousand years ago, on the Earth. I- I should’ve told you this from the beginning, and I didn’t, and I- I’m so, so sorry—! But she left you behind, and now she’s never coming back.”

[Silence. Tears brim in Spinel’s eyes. Her eyes grow dark, pained, and then she glares at Stevonnie with such venom it almost knocks them backwards in alarm. ]

“NO!” she screams, tears streaming down her faded pink cheeks.

[She tears her feet up from the roots and runs away, using her arms like an orangutan to vault herself forward super fast so Stevonnie can’t catch her.]

___

Chapter 16

AN: Content warning for self-shattering attempt. Part of the reason why I had to stop writing this story at the time. I considered pushing the plot another way, but it didn't feel authentic to how I believed this scenario would play out for Spinel when she didn't have a direct target for her anger. Without someone to actively be jealous and upset AT, I could only imagine her breaking inwards instead of outwards, feeling that she's utterly failed in her life's purpose. Nothing more than a description for this chapter... and it'd be a short one.

[When Stevonnie finds her, she’s smashing her fists against her gem in her sheer anguish. She’s already cracked it. She’s glitching. It looks terribly painful. She’s about to strike her gem again when Stevonnie intervenes.]

___

Chapter 17

[Post timely intervention. Spinel is still cracked at this moment, though... her form glitching as she cries.]

“I was... her best friend,” she cries, fat, glistening tears streaming down her cheeks. “I was supposed to make her happy! Why wasn’t she happy? Why didn’t she come back?“

[Spinel reasoning that maybe if Pink came back for her, she wouldn’t have been shattered in the first place]

“What did I do wrong?” she whispers hoarsely, gazing pleadingly into Stevonnie’s eyes. “Wha- what am I doing? Why do I wanna hurt myself so badly?”

“Shh, now,” they reply, tears of their own brimming at the crease of their eyes, and pull Spinel’s head to their chest. “I’ve got you...”

___

Chapter 18

They know their throat is tight, and their voice scratchy. They know they’ve never sung this song in front of another living being, since it’s something personal they composed alone on one of their late nights back on Earth, thinking about all the difficult days Steven and Connie have had to face over the months. Pair this with their active crying, and there’s no way their singing will be anything pretty.

But pretty doesn’t matter right now.

Stevonnie opens their lips, and— clutching the broken hearted Gem close, rhythmically rocking with her back and forth— lets the wandering melody emerge from within.

“I guess I have to face That in this awful place I shouldn’t show a trace Of doubt...”

“But pulled against the grain I feel a little pain That I would rather do Without...”

“I’d rather be Free, free Free...”

[Hoarse, Spinel starts singing with them.]

“I’d rather be Free, free Free...”

“Free, free Free...”

“From here...”

[Stevonnie holds her tight while crying, their tears healing it back up.]

___

Chapter 19

AN: Don't have anything but a single bit of dialogue in this chapter note- I'm assuming I intended it as being a good few hours after the events of chapters 16-18... when Spinel has calmed down a little and has a moment to reflect on the upsetting news she's just received.

“I think... I always knew,” she says, voice hoarse. “In a way. It was so obvious how she felt about me.

___

Chapter ?

AN: From here on out, the plot hasn't been split into individual chapters.

[At some point shortly after chapter 19, Lars and his crew locate Stevonnie in the garden, and pick them and Spinel up. The next few bits of dialogue and description takes place on the ship.]

Rutile twins: “I haven’t heard of Spinels being produced in over five millennia.” “Me neither!”

Rhodonite: “Yeah, I heard they stopped making them entirely after the rebellion on Pink’s colony.”

[A bit of overwhelming conversation later, no one really noticing Spinel's conflicted emotional response to so many Gems hovering around her at once.]

Padparadscha: “I predict that you’re both going to make Spinel feel very uncomfortable aboard this ship.”

Rhodonite: “I’m sorry, we don’t exactly meet new Gems every century.”

Rutile twins: “Yes!” “It’s just been us until we met our captain!”

Fluorite: “Our new huuuuman friend helped us escape the tunnels on Homeworld. Now... we’re slooowly making our way back... to Earth.”

Spinel: “Earth?? You’re going to Pink’s world? But why? I heard she... was shattered.”

___

[Spinel feeling a sense of kinship with the idea that there’s other Gems who didn’t serve their rightful purpose and are now escaping their life on Homeworld to be free of that. Because now, without her Diamond, since she was unable to keep her happy, she’s an Off Color too. She failed her given purpose same as them.]

[Discussion of Earth, and the rebellion, and how there’s Gems living free there. And how Pink’s colony was siphoning life away, and that’s what these Gems were fighting to protect. Stevonnie points out all the plants and wildlife that used to live in the garden, and asks her if she felt happier when it was around. Spinel says yes. Stevonnie says that this is what the Diamonds are destroying, with each lifeless colony they forge. Everywhere they go, dead wildlife lies in their wake.]

Spinel: “I... guess I never thought of it that way.”

[(Stevonnie adds...) And while they’re very sorry for the personal connection there, and can’t imagine how painful that must be, that’s why Pink Diamond was shattered.]

[Spinel is given an open choice... Lars gives the invitation to stay with him and the Off Colors, and Stevonnie offers for her to come with them back to Earth. It's not a hard decision for her in the end, though. She's always dreamed of seeing what was once Pink’s planet, ever since she heard the Diamonds bequeath it to her.]

___

Stevonnie: “Okay, so… before we go, I need to be honest with you about something." [deep breath] "I’m actually a fusion of two separate people who are close friends. You... know what fusion is, right?”

Spinel: “Duh, o’course! What, d’ya think I was made yesterday?”

[...]

Stevonnie: “But even with that, I can’t be together as me all the time. Steven and Connie, the two who come together to form me... they love hanging out with each other so much, but they also have their own lives! Other friends, other hobbies, their own families. They still talk when they’re apart, but they know it’s okay to do things alone, too. Do you know why I’m telling you this?”

Spinel: [shakes head no] “No...?”

Stevonnie: [sighs] “I understand you’ve been left behind. Believe me, I know how bad that feels. So the last thing I wanna do is make you think I’m doing that too.”

Spinel: “Y-you— you’re going away?” Stevonnie: “Unfusing, yes.” Spinel: “But Stevonnie, you—“ Stevonnie: “Spinel. No matter what, you are my friend. Steven and Connie consider you a friend, too. And my hope is that you’ll keep making a whole bunch more on Earth, so you’ll always have people around who know and love you. But that can’t always be me, okay?“

___

[At home... on Earth. There's a bit of a close call for Pearl when Spinel arrives, and recognizes her as Pink's second pearl. This is news for Garnet and Amethyst and Steven, the first of which had somewhat suspected that Pearl used to be in the diamonds' service, but never knew for sure. Pearl, of course... can't say much on this due to her gag order... not that anyone else knows about that yet... but does manage a very concise and PD=RQ free explanation about her past in Pink's court, and her transition towards being a Crystal Gem:]

Pearl: “Rose Quartz set me free, and I’ve been a part of the rebellion ever since.”

___

[At some point between the last scene and the next, mention how Spinel had a bit of a relapse... she ended up poofing herself, and reformed differently. A little bit closer to the smudged mascara and frayed pigtails look of canon, but no rotated heart. Unlike in canon, she has a solid support system amongst the Crystal Gems, and she's working hard to recover from the heartbreak of Pink's abandonment.]

___

[Final scene is set post A Single Pale Rose. Steven and Connie fuse, and Stevonnie goes to find Spinel to check in on how she's taking the news. The final line of the fic is as follows:]

Spinel: “I know you’re not her, not really. And I know you’ll always be a better person than she ever was. But in some silly cyclical way... back in that garden... it’s almost like Pink came back for me after all.”

#su #spinel #stevonnie #su fanfiction #my fic stuff #hollowed moon #this isn't REALLY 'my fic stuff' since it's unwritten but #i think it deserves to be here. this is the full unfinished plot of a fic that got the most exposure of anything i've ever shared in fandom

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thewebcomicsreview · 3 years

Note

Do you have a theory about what drama befell Homestuck 2, or if there was any drama at all to cause it to seemingly go down?

I had no clue, but Andrew Hussie posted his explanation on Patreon, which is a public post so I’ll just quote the whole thing here:

Homestuck^2 is going to be completed, but the Patreon will not be charging patrons anymore. The account will be frozen and no additional patrons will be accepted, but the ones currently registered are welcome to stay and receive notifications about the future of this project if the team is inclined to post any.

The plan now is to have HS^2 finished, but without a regular update schedule. Previously saved Patreon funds will be used to privately commission the team to finish the story. It will all be posted at once when it is finished, and there will be no updates until this happens. I expect that it will take a long time to finish the story. This is because I am specifically instructing the team to work slowly.

I originally agreed to let this project move forward entirely based on the presumption that it would be an enjoyable experience for the team involved. It's not like I had a burning need to release a continuation of the narrative, or a formal "sequel", which is never how I viewed this arc. The project mostly came about because I picked up on the enthusiasm the original creative group had for the idea, and I also sensed that energy was being reciprocated by the particular state of the fandom at the time. But since then I've observed it's been pretty far from an enjoyable experience for the team due to the way the members have been treated by large segments of the fandom, and this pattern appeared to surface almost immediately after the project launched.

This put me in a state of conflict about the project ever since, because I like the content quite a bit. Some have lamented that it doesn't feel much like the original series, but it was never supposed to. I've never once invited anyone to work on a Homestuck project with the hope they would perfectly clone my style or approach to making content. I feel that is neither possible nor desirable. So any time I invite anyone the only real standard I want them to meet is to bring their own voice and perspective to the work even if, or sometimes especially, this results in significant departures from the expectations for the characters fans typically have. Like pretty much everything else that's been released over the last few years, I think HS^2 has satisfied that purpose very well.

So there has been conflict between liking what's being done, not wanting to waste the work or disappoint those who enjoy it, and the chronic abusive treatment the staff has received while trying to work on this story. I admit I've been at a loss on how to handle this, so I've just let it ride for a year or so. To some extent it's part of any project like this, to put stuff out there and receive criticism, and I'm sure the team understood that. But I think there's a line where criticism crosses over into more abusive expressions, and I've observed this has happened way too often.

If it were just me making it, I don't think it would even occur to me to have a problem with it, because I'm so used to wild stuff coming at me from doing this for many years prior. I view attitudes toward me very differently than those I invite for collaboration. I've done this so long hostility toward me barely even registers. If I inexplicably log onto tumblr appearing to resemble some sort of extravagant clown, make a few shitposts, and I'm met with literally thousands upon thousands of comments about feet, it's pretty easy to laugh it off because that's exactly the type of stupid shit I expected to see. I've just always worked with those types of contentious interactions in a way that is inseparable from whatever strange performance is connected with the content I happen to be making at the time. But it's a very different situation when I see stuff directed at the people I work with.

The things I see that my co-creators and friends have to read are a lot more alarming. One major problem here is the people I work with are mostly women, many are transgender, many are people of color. So the stuff they get is especially vicious, because the people giving them shit usually target the sensitive features of their identities in ways they don't with me. And I'm not just talking about obvious stuff like calling them slurs or anything. It's more that I've noticed people have clever ways of using people's identities to bully them in less conspicuously bigoted ways. They always go a little harder, a little more critical, manufacturing ways of blaming them for things they had nothing to do with. Stuff you start noticing when you've seen way too much of it. Much of this stuff even crosses into physically threatening territory. Some people I work with get multiple threats every week, and it's just become a routine part of their lives while being involved with Homestuck. All the above treatment I'm referring to is not focused on a couple people, it covers everyone contributing to the full range of Homestuck projects over the last several years.

And I don't think that's what contributors were signing up for, or at least, I never wanted anyone who takes on official work to feel like it's an essential cost of participation. But I've never really known what to do about this, because it's very difficult to control fandom behavior, and if you ever try to police anyone's conduct it usually just backfires. The worst offenders out there almost see it as a challenge to go harder. So usually I leave these things alone, since the only alternative is pulling the plug on certain projects. Which is essentially what I'm doing here, while taking steps to make sure it gets finished in the background, because I really don't want to see the work wasted.

My only criteria for the completion of HS^2 is that whoever is involved the rest of the way just has a good time with it, and ends up feeling like they have made a good story. If the team is happy with it, then so am I, and nothing else about it matters to me. Especially not sticking to a schedule or satisfying fandom demands, whatever those even are at this point.

Since this is a post appearing on the Patreon, I should say any reference to abusive fan behavior isn't including current patrons obviously. I can only assume anyone willing to donate to the project for this long would hold a very sincere attitude about supporting this project, which I greatly appreciate and I'm sure the HS^2 team does as well.

There's probably more to say about this, but I'll leave it at that for now. If there's anything to add later I may address it in an internal note to patrons (remember that if you want to remain a patron you will never be charged again). I'll consider ways to thank the patrons for hanging in there all this time and supporting the team. Maybe some free stuff. We all appreciate your support. —Andrew

#Homestuck 2 #Anonymous

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bettsfic · 3 years

Text

february pinned: the real & the ideal

in this month’s edition of my lowkey writing-related newsletter, in addition to my writing-related post roundup and consultation availability, i have short story recommendations for you and an essay on the nature of reality in fiction!

if you want to receive my lowkey writing-related newsletter directly, you can subscribe here.

in other news, i finished two fics this month:

digging for orchids (hualian, 43k, explicit, fake marriage au)

let ruin end here (hualian, 8k, mature, neighbors au)

full newsletter below the cut, or you can read it here.

oof,

what a month. january is already a rough time. throwing in a pandemic, a coup, and an economic revolution spearheaded by reddit just seems unfair. as for me personally, the spring semester came at me fast and even though it’s only week 2, i am already buried in grading. which i realize is my fault, considering i’m the one who assigned homework.

so after hearing your feedback, i thought i’d make this newsletter even more writing-related by writing more about writing. this month i’ll start off by talking about the nature of reality in fiction in a segment i call “been thinkin a lot about.” more on that below.

new resource

i’ve compiled a folder of PDFs of the short stories i teach most often, which is to say, the stories i like enough to re-read every semester. most of them are literary fiction but a few veer into fantasy, sci fi, and horror.

i know before the MFA, i didn’t really know what a short story was. like i knew, abstractly, the concept of a short story (it is as it sounds), but i could only list a couple i’d ever read as an adult, and i hadn’t read anything that had been published in the last decade. i remember wondering why i was even being asked to care about short stories. who writes short stories? who reads them? apparently, a lot of people. short storyists are a lot like fanwriters in that they make no money and when you talk about your writing in public, people give you that “why would anyone waste their time with that?” look.

so here’s why i was asked to care about short stories: a good short story gives you the entirety of a world in a very condensed space. moreover, it can sometimes leave you as satisfied as a novel in a fraction of the reading time. all the stories i’ve compiled here are ones that stuck with me, that i find myself recommending over and over to writers who want a good example of developing character, or weird narration, or establishing stakes.

if you’re a writer considering publication or an MFA in creative writing, i highly recommend familiarizing yourself with short stories, if for no other reason than to get the feel for them so you can write some of your own. if you can get a few short story publications under your belt, it’ll be easier to open doors when you’re ready to query agents for a novel. also, short stories make a great writing sample for grad programs, workshops, fellowships, residencies, and grant funding.

if you want to check out more short stories but have no idea where to start, the 2020 best american short stories just dropped in november, or if you want a cheaper one, used copies of 2019 and earlier are available on thriftbooks. if you want an overview of the history of the (american) short story, there’s also the best american short stories of the century. fair warning, though, while it’s more diverse than expected, it’s still a bit heavy on dead-white-dude writing.

content warning: the stories in the above-linked folder may depict instances of sexual assault, suicide, and/or abuse. i have not labeled them individually with warnings but i hope to soon, as well as provide a catalog with summaries.

i’m also still working on my essay and novel recs. more to come on that hopefully next month.

writing-related posts

how i quit my banking job to do a creative writing MFA

how i learned to read faster/stop subvocalizing

how to write when you have no time or energy to write

my experience writing fic in small/dead fandoms (aka fics that will probably not get any traffic)

how to describe facial expressions

how to ask for help from your professors

how to navigate tenses during flashbacks

how to separate yourself from your work

how (and why you might want to) write a shitty first draft

why you should consider making the climax the inciting incident

for a complete list of my writing-related posts, check out this masterdoc (which i still need to update it with the past few months’ posts).

stuff i’m into rn

i’m about halfway through the rhetoric of fiction by wayne c. booth which has more or less become my narrative bible. it’s a little dated (1961) but it tackles banal writing adages that are somehow still believed, like “show don’t tell” and whatnot, and breaks them down with amazing insight, clarity, and research. it’s a bit of a dense text so i’m only reading a few pages a day, i think the first time i’ve ever let myself read something so intentionally slowly. now i’m kind of obsessed with doing things slowly. reading slowly, writing slowly, cooking slowly. i even drive slowly, because it’s so rare to go anywhere at all, and i want to enjoy it. also, it’s very snowy where i am. also also, the battery died in my car this month and i really have to make it a point to drive more often.

february availability

i have 2 openings for initial writing consultations in february! if you’re interested, please fill out this google form.

you can learn more about my services on my carrd.

been thinkin a lot about

compulsory reality in fiction. many of us have probably received feedback along the lines of, or thought to ourselves as we read, “that’s not realistic.” many of us believe, consciously or not, that fiction that is more “realistic” is inherently better than fiction that is less “realistic.” for some of us, real means a saturation of details, the clear depiction of the surfaces of things. reality is found in the rendering thereof; if you can “see” it, it’s real. for others of us, it might be the development of complex characters and their growth across a narrative. and for yet others, reality is subtlety, or misery, or the idea of “slice of life,” a term i don’t think means anything, because aren’t all stories a slice of a character’s life? what would a story that’s not a slice of life look like? you’d either have to take away the “slice” part and render a whole life, which is impossible, or you’d have to take away the “life” part and create a dead story, which may be possible, but why would you want to? even if you wrote a story about a rock, the rock would be brought to life by virtue of being written about.

anyway. i think the word “real” is a shitty word for the same reason “slice of life” is a shitty phrase: everything is real and therefore nothing cannot be real. slices of life are all we know because we are alive and cannot truly perceive not being alive; reality is also all we know, and any depictions beyond reality are thus made real because they have been depicted.

so the “goal” for fiction to be “realistic” seems to me to be a false one. all fiction is real because it exists and no fiction can be truly real because it’s only a facsimile of reality. not to get all “this is not a pipe” but writing is just making squiggles, and we as a community of English-knowers agree that certain squiggles correspond to certain sounds, and certain sounds together make words which conjure meanings. and words put together into sentences into paragraphs conjure even more complicated meanings. and when those paragraphs are woven into narrative we create yet more and more complicated meaning.

every time you write anything — a text message, an email, a tweet, a fanfic — you are taking the infinite abstraction of your own cognition, narrowing it into a single concept, and representing that concept with patterns in the form of sounds represented by letters and given meaning with words, so that the infinite abstraction of your own conscience can be fractionally witnessed by the infinite abstraction of someone else’s. and even though we can’t definitively prove for ourselves that any other thing possesses a consciousness, writing shows us the shape of someone else’s mind, and tells us we are not alone.

and yet we still expect writing to be “real.”

have you ever read a story where a character sneezed? like just, a description of a sneeze for the sake of it, with no purpose or function in the plot? if not, is it because our characters aren’t real enough to sneeze, or because the sneeze isn’t relevant to their plight? what would a written sneeze look like, and why would somebody want to write it? moreover, why would somebody want to read it? that leads me to wonder, do we depict reality in the service of narrative, or narrative in the service of reality? in other words, do we write to portray reality (sans sneezing), or do we depict reality to constrain our writing, the way one might request bumpers when bowling so as not to fall in the gutters?

i’ve never read an artful rendition of a character pissing or shitting, either, even when those things are related to a character’s plight and circumstance — stories involving long road trips, living in the woods, being kidnapped. the only exception i can think of is when those things are eroticized (we do not kinkshame here in this lkwrnl), the same way it’s rare to find detailed sex writing that isn’t for the purpose of reader arousal. are there just some things about the nature of being human that are too intimate, too complex, or too boring to write?

once i wrote a murder that takes place in a small fictional midwestern town in the 90s (for the ~aesthetic), and it went uninvestigated by said town’s police force. early readers repeatedly commented along the lines of, “that’s not realistic.” and i thought, no, if anything, the incompetence of police is too realistic for the heightened reality i’m trying to render. have you ever heard of a cop solving a murder that didn’t come with an obvious suspect or immediately found evidence? i haven’t. that doesn’t mean those cases don’t exist, but i definitely think they’re less likely than mass media has us believe, and the average small-town police force has far less motivation (and possibly training) to solve crimes than we think.

i started working on the above-mentioned novel in 2016, and my goal was to depict a reality that hovers above the surface of plausibility. in this novel, which is based on macbeth, a preteen girl, mercy, becomes jealous of the love her best friend elisa shows to her father. mercy decides to get her older and very unstable brother to kill him. naturally the deed goes awry, but it does occur, and the cleanup is far messier than anticipated.

is it plausible for a 12 year old girl to plot and execute the murder of her best friend’s father? no. is that what this book is about? yes. a book about a 12 year old girl who has a perfectly healthy relationship with her best friend and who has no feelings toward her bff’s father one way or another is probably far more “realistic,” but that’s not the book i’d want to read and certainly not the one i want to write. my goal of a heightened reality is what henry james calls the intensity of illusion, the thing that allows a reader, through the witness of one’s distilled cognition into language, to exit physical, knowable reality, and enter a new and unknown reality. and isn’t climbing to that higher place, that intensity of illusion, the purpose of fiction? if it’s not, what is?

the best feedback i got on the aforementioned murder scene was from one of my professors, who, of the perfect calm of all children involved, said, “they just shot a guy. at least one of them would be freaking out.”

he was totally right, but it opened up a lot of questions for me. by what standard did he reach that conclusion? was it something in the chapter itself, was it his personal understanding of the work of narrative, or was it the logical conclusion of the slim plausibility of the scenario? moreover, where did i come up with the idea that all of my preteen characters would commit a murder and proceed to be very chill about it? if an implausible scenario begs the expectation of emotional distress, would it be more compelling to buy into that expectation or deviate from it? is it even my obligation to be compelling when i can never have a cogent grasp of the personal tastes of my audience?

that brings me to what appears to be reality’s opposite: idealism, the state those of us who write fanfic are often trying to achieve. we’re working in an entire genre of ideals, of happily ever afters, of hurt that is always followed by comfort, of glossily rendered sex during which everyone orgasms and no one has to pee afterward. we fix broken texts and continue incomplete ones. sometimes, we want to make existing things better, deeper, more complicated. but all the time, we want to make a text more than what it is.

some see this process, this drive for the ideal, as antithetical to realism, and i think that’s part of the reason fanfiction and other idealistic genres (romance, etc.) get a bad name — the assumption that more real (which for some means more miserable) is better, and therefore its opposite, the ideal, is worse. for them, i have this quote from vladimir nabokov:

For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.

the ideal, aesthetic bliss, the intensity of illusion. these are all phrases that boil down to the same thing: you the writer get to define the constraints of your own reality. you get to choose if your world even complies with the known laws of physics. and if it doesn’t, you get to choose which ones to break, and why to break them. you get to choose if your stories take place in a real house in a real town on a real day. if you wrote a story that takes place on september 11, 2001, would the events of that story be shaped by the events of that actual day, or are you writing a better world where 9/11 doesn’t happen? consider the consequences of both: why might you want to write reality? why might you want to write ideality? how do these things shape your identity and goals as a writer?

no matter where a work falls on the real-ideal spectrum, you have to accept that prose itself will only ever be a verisimilitude of reality and therefore an interpretation of it, one that might be interpreted differently by a reader. in writing and everything else, you can never have complete control over what others perceive. it’s like giving someone cash as a gift. they might buy themselves something nice with it, or they might spend it on groceries. the point is, eventually we all have to let go of our realities.

#lkwrnl #pinned

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ilkkawhat · 3 years

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Any tips for first time writers? Specifically any tips and tricks for writing CSI stories and the Nick/Greg ship? Trying to stay in character and make the story interesting like a show episode instead of a boring text procedural is hard.

lmao as someone who is forever insecure about my own writing when it comes to keeping the characters in character, I think something to keep in mind is that you may view a character differently than someone else--and sometimes those views align with others, and most of the time it's better than what's presented in canon, and it can be really difficult to get confident about that, but I think that creating anything, even if it's not just writing--drawing, giffing, photo edits, etc, you do know and love that character enough to bring them to life under your hands and it's something that's just so like, poetic about keeping these characters alive, even if the show offed them or the show is cancelled, in these works (honestly the song "poet" by bastille says this best imo) and you may end up discovering parts of yourself as you explore these characters in depth, you'll learn more about them, too, and the more you write, the more confidence you will gain

but be weary of the validation trap (says someone who falls into it literally every time I post a fic)--do not rely on comments and feedback to let you know you're doing it "right." the fact that you're getting thoughts into words onto paper is good enough, and you are good enough and even if you don't end up sharing it, you still did something special that nobody else has done before, and that, is amazing!

I'm not gonna lie, a huge weakness of mine that I feel I've known ever since I started writing CSI fic is that I really don't do well in making cases for the CSIs to work on--and even when I do, the case is usually forgotten by the end of the fic and I end up just kinda focusing on the emotions between the characters and describing their feelings and actions the best I can and unfortunately the plot sometimes suffers because of that.

I guess it really depends on what you want out of your story--do you want a really intriguing case and basically make an episode of CSI, or do you want to kind of bend out of the procedural drama, and just write something fluffy like Nick/Greg going on a roadtrip or something actiony like them getting into some sort of trouble? (as I often do lmao)

Something that does always help me when I do decide I want an actual like, "plot" to the fic beyond just playing around with the characters and making them do things or experience things is that I'll make myself a very flexible outline--which I will admit, at times, does kinda drain the fun out of the actual writing part but I found that I'll try to write chapters/fics in segments in this way, like I'll have the start of a fic, and then when I feel like I need to break but want to write what I got going next, I'll have something in brackets like: [Self deprecation at home/drinking, evil Nick in the mirror?] (for agony), and sometimes maybe a bigger summary, and sometimes less to just kinda remind myself of what I wanted to accomplish with a fic

BUT know that there are gonna be things that pop up sometimes. twists that come to you halfway through a fic--or if you're lucky, you'll find that your reader friends will kinda give you a twist to add in (my fic Last Breath is the greatest example of this--I originally was gonna do like, 12 chapters but then @dannilea said "HEY MK GIVE NICK AMNESIA" and then the fic got doubled in length lmao) so don't feel confined to any sort of outline. go with the flow, go with what feels right for you.

I know it's a lesson I'm still learning myself, but do not pressure yourself with these sorts of things. there are no deadlines. you're not doing anything wrong. if you don't like something you wrote? don't delete it (i've deleted so many things--fics, my entire blog, old art and gifs I did and it's one of my biggest regrets that I carry with me and god...it just hurts) but don't be afraid to tweak, re-write or rework if you need to--I know ao3 has an option where you can even say something is a "remix" of another work if you write a fic and then somewhere down the line, decide to expand on it or change it up? (I think it's meant for that at least, I haven't done that sort of thing....yet)

and that's another thing--you'll always be learning new things as you keep writing. I've been writing since I was like, twelve years old. Had a long ass depressive gap (though I did still write some things, just not...as intensely as I used to) before I came back to the CSI fandom (which I never felt I contributed to before, when I joined tumblr I posted some caps but that was about it, it really wasn't until 2018 that I started giffing and writing and three years later lmao here we are!) and there are just hard lessons you do learn--like I said, the validation trap and pressure and all of that

but motivation wise, something I've been (trying) to do is write at least 100 words per day. Doesn't have to be a specific fic, doesn't have to be anything I intend to make a fic, but just...getting the words flowing. But again, no pressure, because I recently had another depressive bout and went 33 days without writing and it climaxed to me having another mental breakdown swearing I was never gonna write again and damn near deleting everything and giving up.........only to start writing again the next day (and full disclosure, I did have a friend helping me literally every day with that and if they read this, I hope they know how forever grateful I am that they convinced me to keep going and I would not actually be here without them)

You will need to recharge, you will need to be mindful of outside stresses that may be impacting your creative energies. And sometimes, you can try doing things not relating to writing at all. Make a playlist of songs that make you think about the fic; if you can, draw or make photo edits of the fic. find a friend to bounce ideas off of--so many of my fics were enriched by that, I can't even begin to list them all lol.

But above all, again, just know that what you're writing is unique to you, nobody else will be able to write the way you do, and that is just...so special. writing can be difficult, it's exhausting, it's a thankless job at times but when those words start clicking together and your fingers just keep typing/writing, you'll just kinda get this like, rush like nothing I've ever been able to match.

and lmao I know you said specifically CSI and Nick/Greg and feel like I got sidetracked--but the great thing about CSI is I feel like you'll have excuses to put them in situations given their line of work, but like I said before, you can bend out of the genre a little bit. Have Nick and Greg go on a vacation, or make an AU (even something as wild as a sci-fi AU--honestly Specimen Stokes is the most fun I've had in writing the past three years) or if you do want to stick to canon, and don't want to make a whole new case or elaborate on the details--play with an established episode. If there was a Nick focused episode, what was Greg doing and vice versa? Did they talk about things afterwards, or did something happen leading up to the episode that made them act a certain way around each other?

I'll honestly find inspiration also just watching the episodes--something I've been doing in these past few months of my rewatch is making little ficlets about the episode, like I wrote one about Nick and Greg post 6x02 elaborating on the breathplay that Greg hinted about earlier in the episode, or I made a revenge fic for 14x12 where that douchey abusive husband went after Nick, etc. So sometimes it helps to dive back into canon and play in that sandbox too

I hope these tips can help get you started and honestly, don't feel obligated to agree or do any of these things I listed above. We all have different ways of going about writing, and it is just one big learning process and something I don't think I'm ever gonna perfect or master in any sort of way--(not to say I think I'm the worst writer in the world but I just...try to humble myself and not believe I'm the best or better than anybody else cause that's part of the validation trap, you get those ideas in your head and then it can destroy you when you realize you're definitely not)--and there will be times you get heavily discouraged, but...you just gotta keep going. keep pushing. find outside encouragement, but don't rely on it. practice a lot of self care and don't pressure yourself to finish or share or write more than you think you can. just...let it come, and enjoy the ride

I honestly feel like I'm one of the least qualified to say all of these things, but I really do hope it helps and hey, you already got one cheerleader, me, who will be excited to read whatever you share!

#writing #(does this novel of advice count towards my word count goal 😂 jk i already hit it)#mk talks

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