#This is about Being A Queer Person and also Being Autistic and having nobody believe you about anything or whatever

[ghostprinceiii]

ah, discouraged once again from continuing Persona 5 because of how People Like Me are portrayed and treated :/

Ended up down kindof a chain of articles (like this) (and this one) that confirm how I've already been feeling —ie that the NPCs are not only actively hostile to 'me' as a character, but me as a player, as well, in many ways.

What I've seen and read of the characters and world-concept from a distanced perspective (through the lens of an audience, and not Experiencing The Story As Joker) has been cool and interesting and the music fucks, obviously, but idk, I'm just tired of this shit, today. Maybe this just Isn't The Game For Me and this is just another factor of that to add to the list, maybe it's just not the right time to be playing it and I'll do another 8 hours in another 5 months, or get super into it next week, I dunno.

Anyways. The articles give some good context for part of what I'm referring to here, and I thought they were quite well-written, so I'm linking them above if anyone's interested.^^

#kindof a messy post but we've been Doing Blogging recently so can't shut up in text form. #This is about Being A Queer Person and also Being Autistic and having nobody believe you about anything or whatever #its like 2am and I'm still pissed about this one entitled person who made fun of me on a post about my gameplay observations on #another site (about HSR) and then asked for an abridged version of the post. Jackass. Blocked. #So anyways brain not really working probably would feel less miserable after sleeping but... not happening. #Gonna refocus on new Rain World DLC announcement instead and maybe look for lists of games with canon queer protags??? #Experiencing Feelings rn but like as a third-party so who knows whats going on. #no main tags cuz even I dont know what the hell I just said I wasnt listening #ghostprince posts #delete later?

[drdemonprince]

In a piece for The New Inquiry from back in 2017, George Dust states that when queer people complain about there being a top shortage, what they really mean is “nobody is fucking me the way I want, and I have no agency in that.” Alongside co-authors Billy-Ray Belcourt and Kay Gabriel, Dust suggests that many queer people align themselves with a passive or “bottom” position because they believe that role will absolve them of the guilt of really wanting things. They present themselves as what they believe to be the sexual party with zero power; the receiver, the accepter of action rather than its cause.

This position is drawn in contrast to the bottom-identified person’s idea of a top: the one who approaches, the person with hungers and desires, the person who decides which sexual activities will happen and how intense they will get. The top, from this perspective, is the stronger, more capable, more dangerous person. They’re the only one who can ever be guilty of intruding or harming somebody else. This power is scary, but it’s also compelling.

Dust calls this fantastical version of a top a “brute” — and they are the most cartoonish stereotype of what it means in society to be a man. Because it’s a cartoonish stereotype, no human actually lives up to it — and we’d probably revile a person even if they could.

Though queer people know we are harmed by the gender binary and heteronormativity and all the social scripts those things force upon us, its biases are still embossed on our brains. Without meaning to, we reproduce tired gender stereotypes in our relationships. And so we see expressing a sexual want as masculine, and being masculine as being more capable of violence and coercive control, and thus bad. We see failing to communicate one’s desires openly as desirably feminine, as well as a sign of blamelessness and purity — because on some level we still feel it is wrong to have desires.

But this entire worldview is a complete lie. Desire is not evil. Expressing attraction is not a violation. Failing to express oneself can be just as dangerous as not listening to someone else’s limits. Women can be abusive. Bottoms can sexually assault. No matter our gender, presentation, or sexual role, we are each capable of harm. And the only way to make a safe, mutually pleasurable sexual encounter happen is by going after it, actively, and communicating from a position of inner strength.

So how do you do that, if society’s been telling you all your life that you’re meant to date by acting like a deer passively snapping twigs in the woods, waiting for some hunter to hear you, and pursue you? (That really is dating advice that Evangelical Christian counselors give to women, if you can believe it).

By not fixating so much on what you’re doing or not doing to draw other people toward you, and instead thinking in terms of what you want and what you observe beyond yourself.

[anendoandfriendo]

Endogenics and their supporters: *shares several scientific papers, books, the literal links to the DSM and ICD*

Anti-endogenics: "Waaaah I'm not looking at all of that!!! That's too much and I don't want to approach this in good faith so I'll just accuse you of pulling things out of context instead of critically thinking and looking at these credible sources the endos provided. Maybe if they provided personal experiences instead I might listen. :))"

Endogenics and their supporters: *share links to posts about personal experiences and pluralpedia, etc*

Anti-endos: "Waaaaah I'm not looking at that, that is not a scientific paper or the DSM."

Like, we aren't saying this is EVERY anti-endo but we see this enough that by and large we think it is flat our bigotry in 99% of cases and so we simply block them when we see them.

It's the same thing the abusive stepmother did to us when she wanted to gaslight us, it's what the "day school" we went to did when they wanted an excuse to drag us into a social isolation/"SI" room, it's the same thing republicans do when they want to hate on queer people and people of color, and it's what bcbas do when autistic people challenge them on their bullshit.

All of them, every time, when they wanted to deflect the blame and create an easy target when they did not want to be held accountable for their actions.

So, yes, being anti-endogenic is at best abuse and at worst is authoritarianism.

And then when we say "hey CDDs can be/are highly correlated to trauma...but like have you considered this is more of a chicken versus egg question and some people choose chicken and some choose egg...and correlation is not causation, so like, we need to be much more nuanced here, maybe there are some rare occasions nobody has thoight over" they somehow read that to mean "CDDs are never caused by trauma," which is like the opposite of what we said because this is the piss on the poor website

So like, we also believe they're anti-science and projecting what they're doing onto endogenics and their supporters, but that's more our opinion

And also ioo endogenics and also systems in general shouldn't have to justify their existence like this. Imagine saying that to a queer person? Bitch you sound like how people did a few decades back for transgender folks all you gotta do is switch those words around. If you say "something subjective should not be constrained by the DSM" that also includes the nature consciousness itself, so if you are anti-endo you don't actually think something subjective should not be constrained by the DSM, you're a hypocrite.

!! FORGOT TO ADD THIS BUT THIS IS A VENT AND NOT AN EXCUSE TO DEBATE US !!

!! WE REPEAT THIS IS A VENT AND NOT AN EXCUSE TO DEBATE US !!

!! IF YOU LEAVE US ALONE WE WILL LEAVE YOU ALONE !!

[drunkengodsofslaughter]

This is going to be a long ask I'm sorry in advance.

I guess my major problem with shipping in general is I always ship people that have chemistry in canon and I always make sure ships make sense for the characters in that relationship. Like I know fandom is all about headcanon and alternative universes and it's definitely a me problem that I probably don't have the imagination when it comes to fanon ships like Steddie or Ronance.

Ronance for example just doesn't make sense to me because of what you mentioned, people entirely dismiss Robins feelings and when they talk about Ronance it's about how this ship mostly benefits Nancy. Nancy isn't even queer, I know people headcanon her as bi and if lesbians or queer people identify with her that's amazing but Nancy always gave me homophobic vibes. In the show Nancy is a very judgy person, who sometimes says and does hurtful things but the show never truly adresses her faults so she gives me this weird vibe. The way she talked to Robin also makes me believe she would have problems with her autistic traits, again the way she looked (eye rolling, visibly annoyed) and talked to Robin was just not it. And once again she doesn't apologize for it later, like how she never apologized for cheating on Steve. However, all the characters seem to like her sm she can't do wrong, but as an audience member Nancy kinda frustrats me and I personally want someone better for my girl Robin. Robin is clearly enamored with Vickie, in fact Vickie made her feel normal about her own rambling, which she describes to Nancy as flaws because she felt so judged by her. But this gets largely ignored by the fandom as unfortunately Vickie has not enough screentime, however if she were a dude and we would talk about a gay relationship you bet the fandom would come up with thousands of headcanons for her.

The timing is also off because Nancy hasn't been single since she was like 15, she literally dumped Steve (not clearly) and moved on to Jonathan in two days, and now she seems to be unsure again and makes eyes at Steve. Nancy doesn't know what she wants, she needs to be single and figure out who she is before she keeps hurting people. Being thrown into another relationship, this time a queer one, which she didn't show any signs before would put additional struggle on her self discovery. Like she obviously can explore her sexuality, but she has to deal with her own shit before she can be a good girlfriend to anyone. Like someone made this brilliant analysis how Robin is the first girl friend she was open with after Barb, how probably lonely she is and longs for a friend but then bam they make this post into a shipping one and I'm like please listen to yourself.

I think a lot of Ronance manifesting also comes from the actress pushing for it and idk it got to a point where it's kinda queerbaity with how she phrased Robin is an option for Nancy even though in the canon show Nancy never showed romantic feelings for girls. (On the same note it's kinda queerbaity of the actor of Tommy to come out after years yeah Tommy was gay for Steve even though in the show we never saw that play out. Kinda think he said that to be relevant and bc again every white dude that breathes at Steve is gay)

As for Steddie, well that's like so personal to me because Steve is my favorite. I always watch shows, where I have a comfort character, imagining myself as a character so in reality I basically ship nobody with Steve because I gotta put me first lmao. However my point still stands the fandom wouldn't go this crazy if Eddie wasn't played by Joe Q. If he was played by Eduardo there would be way less discourse about it. Also again in canon Steve was uncomfortable by Eddie invading his personal space and he's so hung up on Nancy (also extremely anti Stancy on my part it honestly ruined s4 for me) he didn't even care that much about Eddie's death.

And again most of the headcanons suck because people mischaracterizes both Eddie and Steve. Like first of all people make out that Steve is in a toxic relationship with Billy before Eddie scoops in or they make him or Eddie the toxic one. Like it's all over the top, especially because people are so obsessed with the whole sub/dom dynamic in that ship. Making Steve some inexperienced loser who never smoked weed for example even tho he was the first character in canon who admitted to smoking in s3, plus he was literally underage drinking in s1. Idk in general people just don't really give a fuck about getting the characters right.

I can see Steve as bi like there are little moments in the show (more than for Nancy) but Steddie still doesn't make sense to simply because Steve looked so disgusted when Eddie was near him. I too wish they would have explored Steve's feelings about how Dustin seemed to replace him with someone better but unfortunately the writers decided to put their focus on a dead relationship and make Steve soley into Nancy's love interest again. (Can you tell I'm still bitter about it?)

It's just frustrating being in the fandom because everyone shoves those ships down your throat, you can't go on tiktok because every tiktok about Steve slowly turns into a Steddie theory and I can't listen to it anymore. I already blocked the respective tags on twitter or tumblr but still. I wish I could be on board with it because it wouldn't annoy me every day and I would love some peace.

Before I joined the fandom for me Stranger Things was always about friendship but now there is a shipping war for every character in that show.

It’s all good I love asks! And I love discussing things. Honestly I love the way you view shipping and seeing if it makes sense for the characters. Honestly it’s all good with not having imagination with fanon ships. I honestly only came up with one at one point and then others I just see floating around and I’m either like ‘cool or nah I don’t vibe with that’ lol.

Honestly yeah I get what you’re saying about Nancy and those vibes that she gives off. Ngl I don’t think a lot about character’s sexualities if it isn’t clearly stated in canon so whenever I saw headcanons about Nancy I was like ‘okay cool’ and then kind of moved on lol. And also everything you said about Nancy. Like I never used to see her interactions with Robin as being bad but then I saw other people stating that they didn’t like the way Nancy reacted Robin. And I can totally see why people believe that way. And why it came off as weird interactions cuz now it comes off to me that way too. Also I agree about Nancy sometimes frustrating you cuz sometimes I can get that way too. But I also think all the main characters in st have moments where you get frustrated at them so I don’t like to be too nit picky about them ya know?

Okay everything you said about Vickie making Robin feel comfortable about her rambling. Like they’re both able to ease each other about their rambling and it just goes to show how complimentary they are. Like Robin also validated Vickie’s feelings about rambling. And Robin listened to vickie too when vickie was rambling. So Robin can ramble but she can also listen when other people ramble and give them that comfort too. I agree about that last comment in that paragraph. Cuz you’re sooo right if it was two dudes talking and it was clear that they liked each other in a romantic way people would go nuts.

Yes yes yes I agree about the whole Nancy thing not being single. And about her wanting to be single. Cuz I’m honestly a firm believer that she should end up single. Cuz she’s very goal oriented in her own goals but when it comes to romance she just doesn’t know entirely what she wants. Yeah like I think Nancy going into a queer relationship especially in that period could also drag Robin down too if ronance happened. Like Robin is so sure of who she is now and what she wants in her romance life. And yet Nancy doesn’t. So it would just end up not being a good mentality for Robin. I think I saw that analysis too and I thought the same thing. Like I was soo annoyed about it cuz the friend thing was amazing and then suddenly romance was in there. And it just tainted the whole thing for me.

Honestly yeah I can totally see why your frustrated about the actress and actor. (Honestly the whole thing with Tommy’s actor was weird. Cuz not only did he state that Tommy had some romantic feelings for Steve, he also stated that Tommy would do anything for Steve. Despite canon not showing that in the slightest and instead in the show Tommy drops Steve like a hot potato). Also ngl I think some of the fandom just doesn’t understand that actors have their own headcanons for their characters too. Especially when the main actors have been on for years at this point. Like it’s obvious that they’re going to have headcanons about their characters just like we have headcanons. And they’re going to have wishes just like we do. But ultimately it’s up to the duffer bros and people need to understand that.

Lmao about the Steve part and wanting to put you first about the shipping cuz like that’s valid. Honestly I totally agree with you about if it wouldn’t have been joe Q they probs wouldn’t have gone crazy about it. Yes like Steve was soo uncomfortable with Eddie but he was just being who he was and helping out eddie. And everyone turned that into shipping. Ngl I would have been fine if Steve finally had another guy friend his own age. Anyway yeah I’m also bitter about the whole stancy thing. I legit hate the toxic aspects of Steve and anyone together. Like idk why they even need to put billy and Steve together as exes when Steve legit would have never even got together with billy in the first place. Like it feels sooo unnecessary.

I also don’t understand why they make Steve or Eddie be the toxic one especially when they like the ship soo yeah making one of them be incredibly toxic is weird. Yeah the whole sub/dom thing is sooo weird also. Yep you hit it right about the Steve characterization part and how people don’t care about his characterization at all. Ngl I think Steve is one of the most mischaracterized in fandom out of all the mains. Mainly cuz of shipping but that’s just my opinion so you don’t have to agree lol.

Yeah I totally see Steve as bi too. Like I think there are some good moments in there to have evidence of it. Yep honestly you’re right. Like steddie makes no sense especially cuz they didn’t even like each other. Sure they came together and stuff but also their foundation only seems to me like ‘we could have been friends if the story ended differently and if Eddie didn’t die.’ Ya know? And even if they were friends it would have been a very basic thing to me. Like I don’t see them being besties besties and close like that.

I’m also bitter about the whole stancy thing ngl. Like I get the intentions of trying to bring them back and why they would try to since this is like the first time in a while that they’re in the same place together on screen. And their relationship ended with a lot of baggage. But I wish it could have been less screen time. Especially because a lot of Steve’s emotional scenes were with Nancy and it just bothers me how he couldn’t get one with Dustin or Max or Lucas. Especially because this little group looked soo promising in the promos.

You’re right like the shoving down the the throats of it all is majorly annoying. Especially because sometimes they use it as weapons too. Like if you don’t like the ship then sometimes you can get called homophobic despite that not being the reason you don’t like that ship at all. Yeah I legit blocked the tags too cuz it’s just been sooo annoying. I also filter out these tags whenever looking for fics so I don’t have to see it. That last sentence is everything!!!! Like st has always been about friendship and yet now all you see is discourse about shipping and etc about shipping. And it’s just the worst.

#answered asks #honestly this is long af but I wanted to hit all the point here!

[dallonm-archive]

[image description: a cropped image of a pink sky. on the right hand side is a bunch of darker pink clouds. Just left of the centre is a full moon. In the centre, in a white serif font reads "writing update" /end id]

july writing update

Hi friends! This writing update is me pretending I did Camp Nano and didn't kinda give up a week in! I had a proper goal and everything, but a lot of things got in the way that I'm not gonna talk about here because I already ranted about it in another update I'm drafting rn. Lets just say it's Disability Pride Month and being not neurotypical or able bodied in writing communities and their inherent focus on productivity is Hard.

But I did get some writing done and wanted to do a little Camp wrap up post regardless. And I'm doing it now because I'm cancelling the last week of July for some rest/self care and I do not want to think about writing for that time and if I write a tumblr post about July Nano being over my brain will think it's actually over <3 I will probably do updates like these for most months tho! Depends on how much I write lol! This one is not too long (by my standards) and has some Revelations, Revelations, Life Cycle of Massive Stars, Nocturne for the Holy and a new wip idea 👁️

excerpts under the cut!

general taglist ; ask to be + or - ; i only have one! ; @childhoodlovers @svpphicwrites @abiandwriting @kowlazovdi @avi-why @ryns-ramblings @kitblogsthings @bijouxs @bookphobe @moonhungers @alicewestwater @bookpacking @shaelinwrites @onlyganymede @theelectricfactory @write-like-babs @oceancold @sidhewrites @wolf-oak @oasis-of-you @coffeeandcalligraphy @cecilsstorycorner @howdywrites @keira-is-writing @flip-phones @piyawrites @avakrahn @goose-books @finch-goes-write @ziyin @aphaimaniis @isherwoodj @laughtracksonata

I'm also editing this in to say I only just realised that July is my writeblr birthday month and that is very weird to me! A year and a couple days ago I impulsively turned an old blog into a place to document writing for me and ended up meeting people who now mean the world to me and my writing blossoming in a way I never thought it would. And the funny part is it doesn't feel like it's been a year, ever since I joined it's just felt like life has Always been this way and I cannot fathom that it hasn't. I'm sappy bc it's 4am lol but ultimately the friends I made (you know who you are) and the community I found is what retaught me the value of writing and helped me unlearn toxic ideas and whilst the last year was tough I wish I could tell July 2020 Dallon (who did not realise he was Dallon yet </3) what July 2021 would look like.

revelations, revelations ;

Oh the absolute state of affairs with this book rn. Nothing bad but I don't know when I'm gonna update y'all because sometimes I do not know where to start when talking about this wip lol! Currently on a break with it (but also my thesis work is on late 20th century queer lit/history rn so am ever really free of RR? <3) but had a lot of fun with it at the end of June/start of July. Anyway here's Dorothy finally revealing more of herself to me after a year. Dorothy as a character is like, I truly believe she is capable of killing a man but the story she is in just does not allow that so I am trying to grow her unhinged side a little bit in other ways bc I know she has it in her but I also really cannot deal with the plot repercussions of her actually killing a man! I'm sorry Dotty but this'll have to do!

(cw for groping/a man being creepy as hell, death/funeral mention, drug mention, drowning imagery kinda)

There’s too much to tell Felix. That his sister lives on the fringe of Castro and has attended three funerals since September; that it’s January 11th and she’s already attended one this year. That his sister drives through sunsets and imagines parties: the amber dusk, warm mosaic tiles, platters of Greek salad skewers and shrimp tostadas, and sometimes Jolie joins her and they share a blunt on the hill. That his sister bought an aquamarine body-length dress for six bucks in a thrift store sale bin, so when her and Jolie broke up for the second time, she waltzed into a sunset party, locked arms with a CEO’s son and gave him a fake number and plucked strawberries out of champagne and blended so well nobody noticed when she left. That during the summer of ’83, his sister walked a neighbour’s Golden Retriever on Wednesdays, and on the sixth Wednesday he gave her a wad of tens with one hand and palmed the back of her neck with the other, so she walked his dog to the beach and stole another hundred from his wallet. That his sister bombed an interview for a Nursing school and didn’t get home until night and missed their monthly call, and Jolie heard the phone ring and didn’t take a message, so his sister snuck into the CEO’s son’s villa and floated in the centre of their heated pool like a cloud. A pause, a breath, an Opheliean threat.

life cycle of massive stars ;

Switched to LCOMS this month because I was burnt out with RR and it made such the difference! I really love working on two novels at once because it keeps me consistently creative but also both of these books are so different so its always refreshing to bounce back into one from another. I have a whole update in the drafts rn for this so keeping this part brief but still love this book, still the best thing that has ever happened to me, me and this book will have a glorious summer wedding etc etc. These excerpts are from chapters that summarise the first semester of each character's first year and have to say it. has been Very Fun to get into the mindset of Freshers Melodrama. Here's Junie having a crisis and an unhealthy relationship with her hetero flatmate :( (alcohol cw for both excerpts)

In October you are drinking double espresso and trying to breathe normally in lectures and you are trying to figure out your favourite colour because Fleur asked and you stumbled out an answer (Purple, I think. Violet? Lavender? Indigo?) and it didn’t match hers (I like yellow. I like sunlight). You buy mugs from IKEA to paint you paint cats and fireworks and constellations and moon phases and daisies. You try to scratch paint stains off your desk. You do laundry at 2am. In October you colour code your notes with pastel highlighters. You go to the library at 3am. You paint your nails sunlight and hate it. You finish an essay that’s due in December. You knock on Fleur’s door at 8am so she makes her 9am. You wear off the shoulder tops and you let a girl dab glitter on your collarbones and you are watching Fleur kiss a boy from the neighbouring hall. You bite your sunlight nails. You break the handle off your IKEA constellation mug. You leave your keys in a lecture hall and stand at the reception for forty minutes waiting for them to realise that the keys on the desk have the moon chain you mentioned - or, you are waiting to say it yourself. You are watching the rain trail down your window. In October you get a halo headband tangled in your hair you are sipping a vampire themed cocktail that tastes like acetone you rip your heels off and you go home early and do laundry at 2am and you are waiting for the courage to tell Fleur you don’t like clubbing - or, you are waiting for her to ask where you are. In October you are many things / a good student a dancer a painter an angel a big sister an alarm clock you are nocturnal and a lucid dreamer and confused about your sexuality / and it’s still October but it’s not because it’s November now and you are still Junie but not because you don’t know who Junie is. It’s November, it’s September October November December. It’s 2016 2017 2018 2019. You are fragments and you don’t know if you are a kaleidoscope or shattered glass.

And here's first year Tomas being like I Moved Countries For University And All I Got Was Homesickness And A Crush On My Flatmate And Resurging Autistic Symptoms And This Lousy T Shirt (cw: vomit mention, injection mention, parental death mention)

Kristen is seven months younger and five inches taller than you. He’s the last flatmate you met and the only one you talk to beyond kitchen greetings and passive aggressive texts about dirty dishes. He is too quiet and too loud and not the type of person you befriend. The first night, he lost Ring of Fire and downed the concoction of Echo Falls, Dark Fruits, Jack Daniels and coke, vodka and lemonade alongside a cigarette and said he’d let God figure out the rest. He held your hair back when you threw up amaretto and held onto your knee when you first self-injected testosterone. He taught you Yorkshire dialect and you pretended to understand the Yorkshire dialect. He told you he got diagnosed at four and you told him you didn’t get past the first assessment but sometimes you flick the bathroom light on and it’s fire: the orange on the orange towel is louder, the white on the white tiles are louder, the colours and light and sink and showerhead are prickly and all you can do is blink and breathe until it fizzles out. You reminded him to take his meds and asked if you were weak for wanting to drop out and hop on the first Eurostar to Rotterdam. He reminded you to take off your binder and asked if he was robotic for not grieving his mother. You spent inky nights on the kitchen floor, counting the dead flies in the lights and scooping crumbly coconut ice cream out of a maker you got for half price in TK Maxx. You spent dusk-dusted afternoons at the global street food markets, at the vegan markets. Spent student loans on raspberry lemonade in recycled cups, veggie burgers in beetroot buns, got him hooked on poffertjes and advocaat and could’ve cried when the vendor spoke to you in Dutch. Sometimes you didn’t buy anything. Just liked hovering at stalls ambered with fairy lights, writing down Etsy stores on your notes app; just liked Kristen’s impulse to trek forty minutes into the city for a market he didn’t know existed until five minutes before; just liked how he always invited only you, cancelling your other plans last minute, the feeling of being ambushed; just liked how he stopped to take photos of dogs and the sunset; just liked how he looked haloed under lampposts waiting for Ubers, golden on golden.

This is also nearing creative nonfiction because Sheffield truly is a haven for just. vegan markets and cafes lol! I experimented with veganism there and never struggled to find something and at this point I call myself a fake vegan because it's too easy to be vegan in Sheffield and too difficult to be vegan in my actual hometown. And the global street food markets!!! SO GOOD! I miss pre pandemic days

nocturne for the holy ;

Giving her a little shout out because she does exist actually! I've figured out a really good system for working on two novels at a time, so my plan is maybe to start properly on this after I finish either RR or LCOMS. Idk I got 3 novels to pick from haha oops! I did do some free drafting back in April though and found it recently and I Like It! And I edited it so it counts as Something I Did This Month :) Also have decided that I loathe this working title <3 Okay see you with an update for this novel in like a year, sorry for the absolute zero context for this excerpt hehe

The morning I was due back, I hadn’t yet decided that this would be my last visit. I wandered between rooms like an overstayed guest, like I didn’t know which crockery lived in which cabinet and which bedroom had the best view of the overlapped hills. Dad would wake for his run in an hour, plastered to his twenty-year-old routine. Mum would pretend to be asleep until breakfast. Until then, it was myself and the house, hazed by sleepy sunrise. Downstairs. The peeling paisley wallpaper in the lounge, the lilies in the middle of the kitchen table, the vases of candy floss pink peonies wilting on every windowsill, the desolate double swing-set in the garden. The mist-clogged mornings. I stood outside in my dressing-gown until my fingertips felt numb. Upstairs. The sage coloured bathroom. The bathtub I’d laze in with my clothes on and no water because it was the quietest room in the house. The dusty dance trophies on the top of my wardrobe. Wine-flushed Jeanette in my teenage bedroom. The stale grey mum painted my teenage bedroom after I moved out. Minus their room, I stalked the layout of the house three times before settling back into bed - teenage Nora’s bed. Nora who cared for peonies and pushed her brother on the swing set and flung her ceramic ballerina at the wall and jogged with her father and collected wine bottles and acorns and kisses from girls who were supposed to visit for dance practice. Before I left, I’d have cycled each room another three times. And in every room he was there, hovered in the corner like black mould.

love this update bc it's like i've got my third person, my second person, my first person! collecting all the POVs like chaos emeralds :)

eulogy for our burnings ;

-looks away-

girl help I did it AGAIN!!!! Apparently Camp Nano is just the perfect time for me to get novel ideas. I made this post specifically to talk a bit about this because I have no idea when I'll draft it but it's certainly not soon. This is not me trying to doubt my own skill but I feel like I am not in the place I'd like to be as a writer to tackle this project with the zest it needs, however I am v excited by the prospect of it! Don't know how I feel about the working title bc I'm like "that doesn't sound right but I don't know enough about this wip to dispute it" but the only purpose my working titles serve is to sound pretty lol! But here's the tea:

1991, UK.

2nd person present + past. Very flexible form. I can't decipher how yet but I'm feeling interviews, newspaper articles, receipts, grocery store lists weaved with actual narrative, that kinda vibe.

Best summary is we follow our nameless narrator, a stealth trans man, as he becomes unhealthily obsessed with a man who "hires" him to photograph the buildings he burns

Very,,, isolated? Minimal settings, minimal characters, minimal prose etc. Almost claustrophobic

There's basically only two characters and they are probably the most morally deplorable, indefensible characters I've created which just means most of you are gonna LOVE this /lh I do too I do too

Only comp title I can give is it has the vibes/tone of Boy Parts by Eliza Clark (just with none of the nsfw content lol if you've read the book you know what I'm talking about) (also that book is great for morally deplorable women protagonists but omg look up the content warnings because it caught me off guard! enjoyed it tho gave it 4 stars)

The pinterest board is the best visualisation of the Vibes also follow me on pinterest lol

And that's all I've got today! A bigger Life Cycle of Massive Stars update coming in the next few weeks. Might do a proper intro post for Eulogy For Our Burnings but idk!!! It's a surprise :) Thank you for reading this far!

#also i have LOTS to catch up on so if u tagged me in anything im gonna do a big queue of rb's soon! #promise im not ignoring anybody! #just barely functioning <3 #atlastracking #writing update #revelations revelations #life cycle of massive stars #nocturne for the holy #eulogy for our burnings

[smolsleepyfox]

I posted 980 times in 2021

99 posts created (10%)

881 posts reblogged (90%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 8.9 posts.

I added 494 tags in 2021

#powerwolf - 86 posts

#queer shit - 66 posts

#foxy speaks - 65 posts

#gloryhammer - 62 posts

#me - 56 posts

#lmao - 50 posts

#history - 32 posts

#werewolf - 32 posts

#art tag - 24 posts

#nice - 21 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#i would love to be that long hsired metal dude butvthe secind my hair is longer than like 5cm suddenly people start calling me miss again

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

When Zuko confronted his father, Ozai was 100% ready to kill his own kid with lightning. But Zuko not only confronted his abuser, he caught his lightning and threw it back at him.

If that isn't the best metaphor for his transformation, I don't know.

31 notes • Posted 2021-10-31 16:56:50 GMT

#4

Okay so of the moon was made out of cheese... how did we get that much milk for so much cheese?

Let's see

The moon weighs approx. 7.3476 × 10^22 kg. Depending on the type of cheese you wanna make it takes from 10-30 liters of milk for one kg of cheese. I will go with 10l because it's a nice number.

The average dairy cow produces somewhere between 4l (non-factory farming) and 60l (hard-core factory farming). I'm going with 30l because that seems an okay-ish average. So per day, ignoring any losses during production, one cow makes enough milk for roughly 3kg of cheese.

So we just gotta split the weight of the moon by 3 and that gives us...

Which I believe is 2.4492*10^18 cows we would need to make enough cheese for the moon in one day. Or, alternatively, that many days for just one cow to make our moon.

Which would be...

67 Quintillion years.

I have gained nothing from calculating this, and rest my case.

39 notes • Posted 2021-10-19 18:33:25 GMT

#3

So apparently someone made a blog just to shit over Zsofia Dankova (the person who makes the Powerwolf album artwork) for... using references? And making references to classical imagery?

Literally how sad does your life have to be

45 notes • Posted 2021-08-22 20:21:54 GMT

#2

Concept: A groomer, but for werewolves

"Yeah had a rough moon, can you smooth over that bald spot?"

"God I hate shedding season, without going to Mia's twice a month I'd go insane"

"Wait you shift in the salon? I don't know, I'd feel weird meeting them in human form. I normally just write down my request and pay up front online."

"Listen, I don't care if you think going to a human is pathetic, it's basically a massage and I don't have to check for fleas like you lot."

"Oh no, they're great with pups. Jeremiah was a bit bitey last month, they got armored gloves for that. I don't think they're interested in being turned, the full moon is their busiest time."

46 notes • Posted 2021-08-20 13:29:51 GMT

#1

Things about being on T that nobody told me:

Hand changes

Not only have I gone up around 2 ring sizes, the position of my nails changed. You know how women often have longer nails because they're usually closer to the tip, while men often have their fingertips exposed because the nails are further back? That's apparently a hormone thing. Wild.

Body shape

Yes I know, that's what we all hope for, but I was still not prepared HOW drastic the changes would be. I have consistently been asked how much weight I have lost, despite... Not doing that. My weight in fact went a bit up, but I am a lot thinner than I used to be. My shoulders also got wider (without working out), to the point that tight shirts I bought at the beginning of transitioning don't fit anymore. I'm also starting to get abs with very little training.

Drive to move

Maybe this is a me thing (being autistic and maybe ADD?), but I have a wild drive to actually work out, or just go outside. I even started going to the gym, something I could never imagine before. I can still hyperfocus on stuff and sit on the couch all day but not as long as I used to, my muscles want to actually do stuff now.

Mental health

Unsurprisingly, my overall mental health has improved. I'm louder, because I'm not as anxious anymore, and even now in November (the worst month), my seasonal depression isn't as bad as usual. [This may have to do with working out, with people I like, regularly.]

However, now that most of myself looks the way I want it to, I have the capacity to focus on euphoria in things that were drowned out before (e.g. genitalia, beard growth).

Beard growth is weird

What it says on the tin. I'm using minoxidil to help things along and am quite satisfied so far, but like most hair growth it doesn't go where you want it in the beginning. E.g. my neck has a bunch of hair by now but my face coukd be better. It's also pretty weird having something on your face that tickles when it touches a scarf or mask at first. It also catches food and stuff. You get used to it but it's weird at first.

That's all I can think about right now but I'll add stuff when I remember it. If you got questions, you're also welcome to ask.

55 notes • Posted 2021-12-02 12:35:36 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

[jackonthelongwalk]

what triggers you to block someone?

Um anybody who’s acting like a shithead.

I blocked this one bitch who kept messaging me about the Jacob Twitter thread.

I blocked a person who threw a fit because I called Moon pansexual instead of bisexual in a headcanon post, then I talked to 10 different bisexual and pansexual people and realized that I was in the right and she was wrong so that shit just pissed me off. Also I should clarify that I’m “queer” / bisexual myself. (they are mutuals with a bunch of my mutuals though so I still see some of their interactions and stuff. We’ve both blocked each other though I believe)

Just people who speak with authority or give their opinion when nobody asked particularly on my autistic Hawk posts.

I block terfs, racists, homophobs and ableists.

I get anon messages with people complaining about my writing I generally block those anons. (Complaining about it being smut)

I block people under 15 (if they have their age in the bio or it’s just glaringly obvious from their posts) especially if they are interacting on NSFW posts

#ask box #why I block #it’s not personal #I just don’t have time for shitheads

[ourimpavidheroine]

Do you think Bryke meant to queer-code Wu?

The short answer to this is that no, I don’t think Wu was meant to be queer-coded. I do not think Wu was meant to be gay at all.

That being said? I think there’s a lot more to it than that.

The long answer to this is that I think Wu is, as a character, queer-coded. I mean, wildly so. In fact, I think he’s the most blatantly queer-coded character in both ATLA and TLOK, and I am including characters that Bryke have told us after the fact are queer, including Smellerbee and Kya.

But do I think Bryke purposefully coded him that way? Nope. Not at all.

Now, what they did do was create a character that was meant to a)irritate us, b)eventually amuse us and c)mirror Mako’s growth as a character. To do that, they gave us a very spoiled, very clueless rich boy. However, as part of accomplishing their goal of a character who would give us A, B and C, they chose to make him both effeminate as well as someone who doesn’t respect social/personal boundaries. 

As in, here’s an undeniable sissy-boy who has his hands all over Mako. But! Never fear! To “prove” that he wasn’t (GASP) Gay For Mako, they had him hit on women.

Because apparently, in the minds of cis white Gen X dudes, having a character hit on women, regardless of how badly he does it, sort of Erases The Gay that you’ve coded him into with all the mannerisms and grabby-hands characterization.

I could be wrong, but I am going to make a wild guess that they didn’t have a queer person - especially a gay man - in the writing room. Because I am pretty sure anyone on the rainbow spectrum could have told them that a part and parcel of being in the closet is enthusiastically proclaiming your sexual attraction to people of the opposite sex. Like, very enthusiastically. So everyone will get that you really, really super duper like people of the opposite sex and could not in anyway be construed as being gay/lesbian. Because wooooo-wee! Look at those ladies (men)! Pretty hot, huh? That’s because I am a heterosexual person! Very heterosexual! Yes, I am!

I mean oh my god. Methinks the lady doth protest too much, hello!

Do I think Mike or Bryan are homophobic? Well, I think that they don’t want to be. I think that it is very important to them to have representation and I think they are making a very big effort towards that. I fully believe them when they say they wanted Korra and Asami to be bi and have a relationship in the show and certainly the two of them are a couple in the comics. They had Kya come out in the comics as well and while I personally don’t like the whole coming out/homophobia in the Fire Nation/acceptance in the Air Nomads plotline that was written into canon via the comics I do appreciate that they included it because representation matters to them. Korra, Asami and Kyoshi have been specifically canoned Bi/Pan and Kya is a lesbian and Smellerbee and the nameless City Council clerk in TLOK are somewhere on the trans spectrum.

That being said? I will point out that at this time (unless I have missed it) there have been no actual canon gay men characters or canon bi/pan male characters. 

Which is...par for the course. Lots of het cis guys will include queer female characters and consider that queer representation without realizing that they are excluding men. It happens a whole lot. If you call them on it, they will insist that they are not homophobic! They have lesbians! But gays? Eh, not so much.

(And there’s a whole fucking lot to unpack about that but there are plenty of amazing queer scholars who have already done that work and I don’t need to clumsily rehash it. It’s a well-researched and written about thing. It exists. Systematic homophobia exists.)

I think that Bryke could, if they chose, take a step back and ask themselves why they wrote Wu the way they did. They could also take a step back and ask themselves why, exactly, Wu and Mako could not be a couple when canonically speaking they really do suit each other very well. Mako yells at Wu and Wu doesn’t care! Mako gets all pedantic and pissy and Wu doesn’t care! Mako imparts Mako-wisdom and Wu not only listens but takes it to heart! Wu never shuts the fuck up but Mako’s lived with his brother and clearly doesn’t care! Wu orders Mako around and Mako clearly doesn’t care! Wu buys Mako shit and Mako is clearly used to this and not only doesn’t care but considers it par for the course! 

Mako never quits the job, regardless of how annoying Wu is supposed to be. And he very easily could; he even just accepts it when Beifong tells him Raiko is planning on sending him to Ba Sing Se with Wu which is just bananas. I mean, a)Raiko has no authority to do that whatsoever and b)Mako isn’t even a citizen of the Earth Kingdom. But Mako just...goes along with that without a fight at all. The dude is a pro-bender. He’s the pal of the Avatar and has personal contacts with some of the most influential people in the world. He’s a decent cop (although not a particularly by the rules kind of one, see growing up on the streets in a criminal gang). The man does not need to settle for being a bodyguard if he doesn’t want to be, is all that I am saying. So why does he keep doing the job? Oh, I think we know.

I’ve said before that Mako, in Bryke’s eyes, is clearly the handsome young protagonist. He was a pro-bender and is a self-taught bending master! (There is no other character in either ATLA or TLOK who handles lightning the way Mako does.) He had both the Avatar as well as the beautiful Asami Sato as girlfriends! He had a tragically romantic background! But as the seasons go on it is revealed that actually, Mako is kind of a dork. He’s the Mom friend. He’s pedantic. He’s not really all that great of a cop and not much better as a bodyguard. He’s a socially awkward mess. (I personally think he’s autistic as well as suffering from massive PTSD, but that’s for another time.) But even still, handsome, manly Mako? He can’t possibly go for the Rich Disaster Twink. Because that’s not what handsome young protagonists do. 

I wish like hell there had been a queer person in the writer’s room; I wish they could have taken Bryke aside and pointed out to them that using queer coding in order to make a character annoying is homophobic as fuck, even when you have the best of intentions. But clearly nobody did that, just as nobody has sat them down and said, so after the entirety of Season 4 and all of the good that Mako and Wu do for each other, why exactly are they not a couple? Because Mako is straight and has to remain that way because...why? Why exactly? It’s okay for women to be canonically queer but not men because....?

I just wish.

#blah blah blah #Prince Wu #queer coding #etc etc etc #long post #Anonymous

[thebeauregardbros]

I feel really stupid that I just had this realization now.

I’ve always been told growing up that I’ll never be accepted by society, that I’ll ultimately be a burden on society and an inconvenience to the flow of it’s existence and to other people. I always felt that I would rather not be seen by anybody than to cause anyone distress on accident just by doing something “not good enough”. The stress of always having to do “my best” (aka: “good enough that nobody could ever complain about it or hate me for it”) makes me produce barely anything at all, because my standard of “best”(”good enough for neurotypical people”) will always be fleeting and uncontrollable. I am so rarely in good enough form to exist for everyone else. It’s funny how I only just now realized how stupid it would be to hold that standard for literally anyone else, no matter how mentally healthy they were or how neurotypical they are. Some people might be “better” at being loved by society as a whole, but is being loved by a fundamentally corrupt and broken system really even worthwhile? Is being liked by the majority really worth it if the majority is wrong? We know for a fact that humanity used to not wash their hands and has majorly lower lifespans, and we moved on from that for the better, but at some point people thought never washing your hands was okay.

I’ve been thinking about how hatred towards people with genetically passed down neurological disorders is a form of scientific racism. I also feel like hatred towards queer people could also be a form of racism if there is physical evidence of differences between homosexual and heterosexual individuals - which there is, in form of weird stuff like finger lengths, estrogen and testosterone levels and other weird subtle chemical studies and the like. If you really get down to it, dark skin can be “cured” by taking the melanin out. It’s a chemical. It’s a minor difference. But black people are still human, we’re all part of the human race, and gay people are normal, but autistic people are still a “disease” to be “cured”? (I want to clarify I am NOT saying autistic white people have it worse than neurotypical black people, I only mean to point out the discrepancy on what qualifies as "scientific racism" as a concept)

Every time I think about how autistic people end up being an actual “burden on society”, it tends to be more often than not that we just get upset and distraught over concepts society has built and insist on maintaining that just doesn’t make sense. We KNOW that there’s no reason why we have daylight savings, we KNOW that basing our entire society’s sleep schedule based on incredibly outdated guidelines for good ecological farming is now invalid when the majority of us in 1st world countries are office workers now, we KNOW that memorization is an ineffective way of teaching our children, we KNOW that forcing children to go to school at 8AM instead of 10AM is not good for their brains, we KNOW that at this point school days last as long as they do as a glorified babysitting service for parents who go to work during the day, we KNOW that people are absolutely capable of doing things online or through email instead of in-person or on the telephone but they refuse to for stupid reasons, we KNOW that shaking hands and making eye contact is actually not that fucking important, and we KNOW that we have the choice to wear comfortable clothes, but as a society these things are just unacceptable because “that’s how they’ve always been” and society as a whole is just not ready to change. It’s not okay that a majority of people just accept things as they are when things are not good for us as a whole.

This is also what the whole “abolish the police” concept that’s been a popular topic this year is all about. We’ve come to a point in natural societal evolution that it would be honestly better to abolish certain major systems that have been proven to be inefficient and corrupt and remake them from the ground up in hopes they would work for the better rather than to continue hanging on to the hope that things can change a comfortably small amount for the better. We know that changing things in only a small way barely helps and ultimately just aids the feeling of letting things change ultimately and overall the same.

I am terrified of talking about these things even when I know I might actually be right because I don’t want someone coming on to ask box who doesn’t want to hear it to bully me, taking something I said out of context to create a callout post telling everyone to avoid me, or otherwise just proving the anti-autism and anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda I’ve heard my entire life right - that I shouldn’t exist. Do you have any idea how hard it is to have the idea completely hammered into your entire being that you shouldn’t exist in this world? That human society isn’t for you. That you shouldn’t even be human, because you basically aren’t if you don’t think like the majority. Because you’re different and never will be the same. You’ll never fit in. You’ll never be welcomed. Living as a ticking time bomb to the day you inevitably say something that's misinterpreted because you said it in a weird way - or god forbid, you express any thought out loud that you haven't researched thoroughly beforehand, and get physically or psychologically beaten to a pump for it.

But then I think about the few times I’ve stepped out of my fear-driven comfort zone and said something truly from my heart, and found nothing but support and admiration from strangers. Something I still often felt was just a fluke or undeserved. Complete imposter syndrome because everything I thought I knew was the opposite of what was actually happening. I was actually being helpful to others. I was actually... worthwhile of society.

I think about the few people who’ve told me that they believe in the concept that maybe, just maybe, the theory that autistic people are part of the natural evolution of humans is actually fundamental to our continued existence, that maybe I am needed in this society to improve it for the better, that maybe my discomfort with a broken system is actually helpful. Maybe me calling attention to all these things will actually open up the eyes to others. Maybe people being different is a good thing. Maybe we can only grow if we see the points of view of people we don’t automatically understand.

And isn’t that obvious?

[unproduciblesmackdown]

currently t posing as hard as ever thanks to also being stuck in [i can't believe i have to create what i want to create] mode... comradeship... ✨🔮🍺⚡

ugh smh at all of us attempting to create anything......comrades in this mess for sure B/ when will we learn

✨ Favourite aesthetic?

i can enjoy some like Muted Atmospheric type palettes......like, dim lighting / atmospheric distancing, maybe some monochrome-leaning stuff, Desaturated Colors which is wild as i never use this aesthetic myself lmao and am being unusually “restrained” if i choose Non-100% Saturated Colors.......i like some nighttime / dusk type Visuals although then within that i like both like, more ~realistically~ muted/dark stuff And Also like stylistically brightened / more saturated blues than you’d Really see at night, plus maybe some Warm Lighting from some source, don’t have to lean full thomas kinkade with it or whatever but it’s good. and Sunset type lighting where there’s both like, some colorful Lighting but also more desaturated shadows.......i don’t go so much for earth / jewel tones really like, either Lighter & Brighter or Darker & More Muted is my like Palette sensibilities apparently

🔮 Any advice you would have given 10 y/o you?

i have to like count out like what year of school are people in at whatever age....that’d be circa 4th/5th grade i guess?? not much going on. 4th grade was that one [several scenes from julius caesar] where it was like oh this is pretty clear You’re A Theatre Gay (which i only put together v recently for how obvious it was lol) and also of Course You’re Trans lmao like, may as well explain not only what Being Trans is (i don’t like, particularly remember when i became aware of That Being A Thing was?? like i know i knew by 14 but...) and go ahead and explain being Nonbinary coz it Was a good few years before i like, heard of that as a concept.....speaking of the Circa-’10s Dialogue i could’ve explained “you aren’t obligated to like, lgbtq-dom to Come Out to your family” b/c my Attempt at that only inconvenienced me and it’s just not a good/true sentiment for anyone lol........took a minute to like, get Perspective on things where i had this assumption that i’d Age Out of what turned out to be more inherent issues like [you are autistic, and also queer, and ppl don’t always just Make Friend Groups by high school age lol] and [family dynamics are not all Like This and it seems like the ‘rents approach is Wild b/c it is and it’s not Really going to fundamentally change so just don’t worry about the Continual Strife lol not on you actually] like, there’s a real On The One Hand But On The Other matter where my getting to go away to college gave that chance for some crucial Distance / Perspective on things about myself and my existence, but also forever in “i kind of hate school despite whatever parts are alright-to-good” club and did i need to rack up the tuition-etc Costs, would i have been able to get the Perspective in high school? probably in part but i also would’ve probably hated the [academic] part more and also would’ve been around most of the same ppl since kindergarten and yet i was sitting at the Odds N Ends lunch table probably just reading, so even though i was also not magically Socially Thriving in college, it was better from that angle too.......maybe could’ve told myself to do Backstage Theatre Stuff, since there was that issue of “i like to Perform but didn’t quite enjoy Family Members seeing it lmao”......compromise about your theatre gayness? who knows. generally tell myself to not worry about being Not Unruly as much, see: [the conflict is inevitable and too fundamental] lmao from many angles......who tf knows what primers on [Political Awareness] i could give a 10 yr old, that’s sure developing more in those years............idk like there’s Much 2 Consider but at the same time even Theoretically i’m not pressed to mess with the timeline lmao. like really just Maybe the small tip like “people are trans and specifically being nonbinary is A Thing and you are not obligated to Come Out To Parents” like, lord knows you get enough of their [i suspect and resent my progeny is not gender &/or sexualitying Correctly] without even bothering to confirm it for them

🍺 Favourite drink?

damb.......i like a Coffee alright for like, non-practical reasons i.e. all caffeine is likely to do is make me even sweatier than usual........tea can be pretty good, i like fruit / mint flavors (separately...).......sweet tea / lemonade combo (or just sweet tea ft. like a lemon wedge) pretty much fucks, or just regular lemonade on its own lol.......orange juice is okay, teresa was talking abt orange juice And apple cider last night like yeah apple cider’s okay, i went from liking apple juice to finding it intolerable and now i think i Can power through it w/o enthusiasm but apple cider is always great. grape soda is good and so is orange soda, sprite, ginger ale......and also Grape Juice is rly good......s/o to Water, idk that anyone’s enthused or anything on average but thank you for the hydration........idk i’m just out here like Sipppp........just wanna avoid anything Overall bitter really (tea / coffee always gotta be sweetened.....if i’m having Alcohol it’s gotta be like some cocktail and even then i've like multiple times tried and failed to just power through a pina colada. various unsweetened Teas have also just been like, i’d rather have the plain water. oh yeah and sparkling water, tf is going on there, Gross......avoided it wholly for years but last i checked cherry juice Specifically is intolerable 2 me) but idk i guess yeah if you take the Average of everything the answer is just like. water.........this just epitomizes my Asks Answers lmfao there’s no real answer but i take forever writing down whatever thought crosses my mind in the course of figuring it out and go tl;dr n/a or [the most boring answer possible]

⚡ Ever had a Greek Mythology phase?

i feel like i’m sort of forgetting some aspects to the “not really but kind of” answer like, most summers i’d Partake in some sort of daytime 2-3 week Activities camp lmao and i feel like one of them of yore mayyyybe had some kind of greek mythology theme to it b/c we had yknow like these smaller groups and i think we had to come up with Skits explaining greek myths b/c our like 4-5 person group did Arachne and i’m fairly sure that everyone else’s was along those lines lmao nothing Completely Different.......most of what i really remember was like, first of all it’s that “i cannot simply Think Of An Idea” problem lmao like tf do you mean Create A Skit......but it wasn’t just Me so we worked around it lol. and anyways the most Memorable thing was like, the day before we were gonna Present these skits we were like “uh how are we gonna have a Visible Spider’s Web” and one of the people were like “i have like a sheet with a spiderweb design on it” and we were like are you gonna forget to bring it though, and then she forgot to bring it, and when someone in our group like told An Adult like “uh what do we do if a sort of essential prop is Unavailable” we were unhelpfully brushed off with “you’ll just have to use your imaginations” and so we bitterly were like Oh Is THAT The Sentiment Then............and what we did is like, i don’t remember what [sort of chorus / narrator] greek god i happened to be playing but i was the one to hold up the “web” like wow amazing weaving here, as per the myth of arachne, and since we didn’t have anything and were told to just use our imaginations to rectify the issue, i held up the corners of Absolutely Nothing and announced it was sure an incredible woven spider’s web, i.e. the audience had to Imagine It.........a real memorable event of Inspired Pettiness from us like 9 yr olds or whatever the fuck. lmfao. of course nobody would’ve given a shit either way but we were somewhat pressed about it so it was fun to just like, get that Stress brushed off and in turn go “ah fuck it then” lmfao

[drdemonprince]

Autistic friend anon here — thank you so much for your answer and the substack post. I was kind of stuck in the “rejection” feeling of “wait but if being autistic isn’t a bad thing then why are you so upset at the idea that YOU might be autistic”. I took it really personally and wasn’t really thinking about how much it sucks when someone acts like they know you better than you do. I’ll have to keep working through that.

I also often get stuck in the idea that “well if someone had just TOLD ME I was queer/trans/autistic then I could have figured it out sooner and life would be better” or whatever. But after many years of being out as queer/trans, I think that isn’t actually true and even if it is, I don’t interact with other possibly queer/trans people by “diagnosing” them with queerness/transness any more. In my head it seemed like autism was different for some reason, but of course it is not.

Anyway, your answer was really thoughtful and diplomatic, while also being very clear about what is bad behavior on my part. It is genuinely going to be a big benefit in my life.

Hey, nice to hear from you again!

I totally feel you. When I told a friend years ago that I thought she might be a BPDer, I was incensed that she ended up not taking that comment well. I meant it in an affirming, pro-Mad-Pride kinda way! I was a BPDer too! if she thought it was bad to be BPD, what did that mean she thought about me?

But I was looking at it the wrong way. I had just hurled a still very stigmatized label in her direction as a response to her complaining about real relational struggles in her life, which felt diminishing and presumptive. Telling various people in my life that I'm pretty sure they're Autistic can have a similar effect, even if they're on board Autism acceptance as an idea.

I used to fixate on the time I lost not realizing I was trans or queer or whatever the fuck I am yet. I had a vision of an older me materializing before me at age 16, specifically on the corn-lined roads I used to bike up and down furiously, and imagined telling myself the Truth of who I was and what I had to do to be happy. I believed that if i had known I was trans younger I would have avoided a lot of upsetting relationships, eating disordered periods, and general angst.

Now. I am pretty damn sure that is not true. It turns out that being trans was not a solution to all my problems, it was just another problem that I had. In the sense that it's a challenge to navigate on this bitch of an earth. if i hadn't chosen to be trans i would have chosen some other shit to do that also would have been a major pain in the ass i'm sure. that too would have been an interesting back story.

I dont think I was ever going to be outgoing and unneurotic and breezily well adjusted. That's not my lot in life. Feeling a little uncomfortable in my body and around other people is as definitional a part of me as my wit or my weird laugh. I can kinda love that about myself now, or at least accept it. nothing and nobody actually could have saved me. its just not that simple. but it's been a pretty interesting life.

i think we tend to impose our self-narratives onto other people when we are not happy or we are harboring deep regrets about having gotten something wrong or missed something in the past. but we cant spare our friends those journeys. they should get to have them. it's interesting and enriching to get things wrong, be in denial, cope in elaborate stupid ways, soul search, change our minds, miss something, find something, never know what's true.

[catboyfeli]

the past few days i’ve been experiencing so much confusion and dysphoria towards the concept of nonbinary itself, and i think that’s part of why i used to oppose it??

it’s just?? i’m autistic so i take everything literally, so if someone identifies as their agab, but not the gender roles assigned to it, would they be nonbinary? what even is gender to most people?

i’m so loving towards queer cishets because, although i’m not cishet, queer attraction to men as a woman is a big part of my identity, and everyone has different interpretations of what gender is, so if someone experiences their gender as queer, but still identifies as it, wouldn’t they be lgbtq?

like, if a cishet man identifies as male, but does not conform to the male gender role, expresses himself femininely, experiences a disconnect from the male social role, and experiences attraction exclusively to women (or those who present as women), but in a way that isn’t the same as typical cishet men, would he be considered nonbinary or genderqueer?

people go on and on about self identity always being valid, but the second someone identifies as cishet and queer, they act like it’s contradictory. but heterosexual attraction and straight attraction aren’t the same thing?

people say lgbtq means anyone who isn’t cishet, but also talks about how cis individuals may identify as genderqueer, or something similar, to describe their connection to gender roles and social roles. so by that logic, someone can identify as cis + het and queer without it being contradictory.

it’s been on my mind a lot lately and makes me feel like bursting into tears because it’s so overwhelming and confusing and i hate how exclusionary and hateful the community as a whole is.

i just? i have one character i’m kin with, that goes beyond just having them as a character i relate to or find comfort in. he’s a cis man, but very feminine, doesn’t conform to the male social role in the slightest, attracted almost exclusively to women with a rare exception here and there for other feminine men, identifies as male but not with the male social or gender roles

i know it probably sounds silly to most people but for me, this kin majorly affects my identity and so often i just wonder? is he cis? is he nonbinary? i don’t fucking know??? sometimes people say nonbinary and genderqueer can also refer to one’s gender expression, and yeah, this character’s gender expression is 100% nonbinary. he doesn’t “act” like a man whatsoever and identifies more with women than with men, but still identifies as a man.

anyway the big problem is that i roleplay this character, and whenever i think about the fact that people would assume a straight man or lesbian wouldn’t be attracted to him, it makes me feel incredibly dysphoric, because like?? ok he’s male but he doesn’t behave or present male whatsoever, so yeah, some straight men and lesbians COULD be attracted to him because attraction goes far beyond gender identity and is affected more by gender expression than anything else

so this whole thing just makes me feel confused and dysphoric and i’m about to start my period so i’ve been real emotional and disassociative lately which makes me hyperfixate on this and it’s so UGHGHHGGHh.

it’s just so difficult to explain my feelings, beliefs, and experiences to others and it makes me so frustrated and upset.

i just wish? the community would come up with something to refer to actual non lgbtq people? instead of using cishet as a catch-all because it’s really not? someone who’s cis and het can still be queer in their experience with gender and sexuality, and although i’m neither, i’m still supportive due to my past confusion with all of this and knowing what i experienced was queer, but at that time, feeling as if cis and heterosexual best described me.

and plus now even if i was cis and het, my attraction to men and experience with gender would still be queer, regardless of my personal identity or attraction (or lack of) to women.

most of society sees gender as either male or female, depending on your sex or which one you want to transition to, and how you behave and present yourself is independent of your gender. which makes sense, but now i don’t know what i believe and it’s all so fucking confusing and some aspects of nonbinary enforce gender norms and others demolish it and it confuses and distresses the hell out of me

i just wish i had one person who understood my way of thinking, then i’d feel less alone and crazy, because like? a woman who presents as male can still conform to the female social role? gender expression refers to more than just presentation, and a woman who presents as female can not conform to the female social role. is that considered nonbinary or genderqueer? is that why people think i’m crazy for being supportive of queer cishets? is a person who identifies as their agab but has queer gender expression considered nonbinary or genderqueer? have i just been taking this “identity” thing too literally?

are gender and gender roles considered the same thing? because yeah, they are just about the same thing, but is that how other people view it?

typing this whole thing has helped a little with my thoughts but i still feel distressed and dysphoric as hell. i’m nonbinary, but still have a strong attachment to being female due to, you know, growing up as female and mostly conforming to the female social role, so seeing all this hate towards cishets makes me, by association, feel like shit, and seeing people constantly assume heterosexual attraction conforms to binary gender roles, makes me feel invalidated, invisible, and dysphoric. me being kin with a very gnc male character, who also experiences queer heterosexual attraction, makes it hurt even more and increases my distress and dysphoria.

like on tiktok? i saw some jerk say how “straight people shouldn’t use top/bottom” like??? first of all trans people?? second of all PEGGING?? like i said, i still feel strongly attached to being female, so this made me feel like garbage.

does the community consider those who do not conform to gender expectations as nonbinary or genderqueer? is cis used to refer to those who identify as their agab AND the gender and social roles that go along with it? am i the one who’s out of the loop?

feminine gay men (more specifically, mlm) are normalized in lgbtq spaces, but feminine straight and bi men when it comes to m/f attraction, aren’t, and are inherently assumed to conform to the male social norms. same with women, obviously, but i feel like it’s slightly more accepted with women.

even in bisexual spaces, m/m and f/f relationships are considered ‘superior,’ and m/f relationships are always assumed to conform to gender roles. by the lgbtq community, as well. people think m/f and het mean heteronormative, gender binary conforming. but it doesn’t. is there any sort of term or community for those who don’t conform to this? i’ve been meaning to make my own but i’d really rather not because i just don’t have the energy.

this is what i’m always talking about. this is why i thought so strongly i was just a cis girl that didn’t conform to the female social role. is my understanding of things just off? is being gnc considered genderqueer by default? and when i say gnc, i don’t mean a man who wears dresses or something, i mean men and women who don’t conform to the gender roles assigned to them because it’s who they are inside, not to make a political statement or whatever. i’m not gnc or nonbinary to make a political statement, i am because that’s just who i am.

anyway if i could just be a normal cis girl who isn’t exclusively attracted to femme men that’d be fucking amazing. sometimes i wish i was just a trans guy but even then i feel like i wouldn’t be completely happy since i’m just Not attracted to gender conforming men in the slightest. and yes, i’m bisexual, but lately it’s so rare that i’m attracted to women and when it comes to men, i’m exclusively attracted to femme men, not exclusively attracted to men as a whole.

so often i get jealous of trans men, gay men, and lesbians, and then i feel like an asshole because i shouldn’t be jealous but i am and i just wish i was one of them and not a fucking freak that doesn’t seem to fit any label or community properly. like my gay trans friend? i’m so jealous of him and i feel like an asshole. he has so much community and i have? nobody. i wish i was like him. i don’t know anyone who understands my attraction to exclusively femme men, and especially not girls who understand it. for a long time, you know, despite me feeling drawn towards the nonbinary label, i thought my lack of community of other women who understood how i felt and lack of representation, was why I felt that way, and I thus brushed it off as me being cis and confused.

knowing tumblr, someone’s going to see this and make fun of me or invalidate my feelings, as fucking always, so i don’t even know why i’m posting this. i just have nowhere else i can put it.

#long post #wren speaks #queer word

[aroworlds]

Aro-Spec Artist Profile: Sebastian

Our next aro-spec creator is Sebastian, better known on Tumblr as @gloriousmonsters and @mangledmouth!

Sebastian is a bisexual, autistic, aromantic trans man who is single-handedly covering many literary bases in producing original aro and queer short stories, novels and poetry. Aside from his Tumblr blogs, you can find and support more of his work at his Patreon. If you have a dollar or two you’re wanting to invest in worthy aro-spec talent on a less-regular basis, please take a look at Sebastian’s Ko-Fi!

With us Sebastian talks about identifying with the role of villainy in narrative as an aro creative, aromantic characters and grand emotional gesture, the divide between representation and self-expression, and some spectacular-sounding work-in-progress book titles! His investment in aromantic characters and characterisation shapes every word, so please let’s give him all our love, encouragement, gratitude, kudos and follows for taking the time to explore what it is to be aromantic and creative.

Can you share with us your story in being aro-spec?

It took me a while to realize I was aromantic, but it was one of the things that made me go ‘oh, that makes … a lot of sense’ when I looked back at my childhood. I was a weird, isolated kid, so I didn’t learn from bouncing off other children; I learned through stories.

One of my strongest early memories is of watching a poorly made Red Riding Hood film over and over again, belting out the lyrics to the (poorly written) villain’s song, called ‘Man Without A Heart’. Cut to a year or so later, watching the Rodgers and Hammerstein Cinderella (still the best Cinderella, IMO), I was utterly fascinated by the villainess singing: ‘Falling in love with love is falling for make-believe…’

I didn’t know, that early, that I didn’t feel romantic love. Not consciously. But there was something utterly, obsessively interesting about villains that sneered at love, who were called heartless, who challenged the narrative that there must always be a love story and it must come out right no matter what. I felt, on a deep level, that these people were like me somehow. The additional queercoding and common side-helping of mental illness helped - or didn’t help, depending on your perspective. I grew up knowing, deep down, what my part in life was: I was the villain.

When I hit my rebellious age, it first came out by my saying, ‘But being a villain doesn’t mean you have to be wrong or unhappy’. I began collecting villains like nobody’s business, and writing stories that more and more often centered people whose character types I’d only ever seen as villains. And from there we arrive at today!

Are there any particular ways your aro-spec experience is expressed in your art?

Recently, my brother (who is my sounding board for a lot of stories, as I am for him) looked at my books-to-write list and said, ‘Nearly every idea you have is a deconstructed romance or strong non-romantic relationship.’

I love strong relationships, so I originally thought I needed to write people as love interests to get that; these days I feel more free to focus on whatever the heck I want, and being aro shows in everything. My current WIP centers a poly relationship where two of the partners are aromantic. Two people (often, but not always, a man and a woman due to my frustration with the ‘men and women can’t be friends’ thing) who are the most important people in each others’ lives and are platonic, show up over and over again in my novel ideas; I start with relationships that look like romances and then pull them apart. Part of this, I think, is due to my autistic ‘let’s take this into component parts and see how it works’ tendencies; being autistic and being aro aren’t cause and effect, for me, but they play well together.

When I write poetry, some of it deals explicitly with being aromantic, but all of it is non-romantic. It makes me kind of anxious sometimes to think of people interpreting pieces as being romo because they’re about intense emotions; one of the biggest ways being aro is expressed in my writing is my constant attempts to show other feelings, connections and relationships than romance being worthy of big feelings and gestures. I’ll sometimes refer to myself as ‘aromantic but capital-R Romantic’ (i.e.  extremely dramatic) because of that.

What challenges do you face as an aro-spec artist?

I’m sure I’ll run into more problems as I try to take my increasingly aro and queer and ND works to professional markets, but at the moment my biggest problem is self-censoring. I sit at an awkward junction of having multiple identities I want to include in my work, and being … well, someone who grew up obsessed with villains, who later on developed a decade’s interest in slasher horror, and who still tends to write people who are perceived as, or see themselves as, villains. Awkward because I always have that voice in my head (helped along by some of the stuff I see on social media) going ‘that’s not good rep! nobody will want to read this!’

But I know from experience that not writing from the heart (and look at that, I do have one after all!) doesn’t end well, so I’m working on getting good at writing my weird dark stuff and hoping I’ll find the audience for it. And I always leave a little bit of light in it, because I have another voice in my head, still saying, ‘just because you’re a villain doesn’t mean you can’t be happy’.

It’s a weird sort of positivity, but it works for me.

How do you connect to the aro-spec and a-spec communities as an aro-spec person?

Following and submitting to this blog is part of my first attempts to actually join the aro-spec community. I tend to move slowly and be very nervous of talking to new people, but I’ve been trying to be more affirming of my aromantic identity lately, and seeking out other aros is part of that. Hopefully I’ll settle in a little more as time passes.

How can the aro-spec community best help you as a creative?

At the moment, people following and reblogging from my poetry blog @mangledmouth would be much appreciated. It’s hard to get traction with poetry (especially if you don’t write romantic poetry) and I’d love more people to see my work. I’m proud of a lot of what I’ve done, so check it out! Be warned that my love for horror and oddness turns up there as well, but there’s nothing too graphic.

And Ko-Fi donations or small Patreon subscriptions are always appreciated.

Can you share with us something about your current project?

My current WIP (titled either The Night In Wanting or And One of Us Be Happy, depending on whether I go for the one that sounds better or the one that fits best thematically) is about a third done! Praise me, because I’m really bad at finishing things, but I’m still on track to wrap this up at the end of June. It’s about a Weird Small Town and Sarah, a girl with a reputation for breaking hearts, who decides to date one of her best friends and actually try to make it work. Her attempts at being normal quickly get derailed when their town’s general weirdness turns hostile - attacks by creatures from the woods, unsettling amounts of rain, pictures changing when you’re not looking at them and a really pushy forest spirit trying to bargain with people for a heart. Her attempts at normal are further derailed when she figures out that her new boyfriend is also in love with a mutual friend, and that she might not feel love at all.

I love these characters, guys. This story is finally coming together after years and the three main characters - Sarah, Mags and Fred - have always been at the heart of it, no matter what shape it took. (Mags used to be a ghost, and the story went through a phase of being a Band AU of itself. Fred kept getting possessed, and there’s a joke about that in the text now that nobody will get but me. And now you guys!) It’s terrifying to write a YA that’s not only poly, but focuses on an aromantic main character, but I’m determined to make it work.

(This is is one of the most sweet/normal things I’ve worked on, despite the healthy dose of horror. I’ve also been writing snippets of a pet project called How The Child-Eater Became King, to give you an idea of the other end of the spectrum.)

Have you any forthcoming works we should look forward to?

I haven’t got the release date for it yet (it’ll probably be a while yet) but I recently sold a short story, Sabuyashi Flies, to Glittership. The main character, Sabuyashi, was originally aroace but turned out to be a lesbian ace during writing. (Characters often decide to come out while I’m writing, which is always fun to handle. I mean that both sarcastically and genuinely.) I’m already working on and off on the sequel story where she meets her future best friend Nathaniel, who is aro. Working title is Nat Luckless and the Girl Made of Beetles. Look for news about Sabuyashi Flies soonish and Nat Luckless whenever my slow butt manages to finish and (fingers crossed) sell it!

#aro spec artist profiles #sebastian #gloriousmonsters #mangledmouth #text #patreon #kofi #glittership #link #original fiction #original poetry and prose #poetry #original fiction and prose #short fiction #fiction #long post #very long post #aromantic #alloaro #support our aro spec creatives if you can #queer #the arospec writers discussing their creativity tag #creativity discussion posts #creativity sharing posts #extremely long post

[troglobite]

a collection of things that confuse me that i should probably talk to my therapist about:

- you don’t have to love yourself to be loved by someone else

- your partner is not obligated to fix you or help you with your bullshit

- helping each other is not a tit for tat, not something you owe someone, it’s not in exchange for anything (for help)

- relationships should be reciprocal and helpful to each person

- you can grow in a relationship, with the person’s help

- you can be Not Ready for a relationship bc you have to work on yourself first

this all conflicts in my head leaving me utterly confused, alone, desperate, and pathetic

i want to be in a relationship

but it’s to “fix problems”

i mostly just want to be close with someone and have someone who, when i put in work for our relationship, also puts in the work

i want to feel loved and cared for and love and care for them not bc they love and care for me, but bc they’re them and i care abt them--and for that to be the same in return for me

i want a partner to help me work through stuff--but they won’t be a therapist, and i will still put in work

but i told my therapist today

i’m just so fucking tired. i’m pissed bc OTHER PEOPLE ruined my life and made me like this, and now it’s MY responsibility to fix it bc now I’M hurting people AND myself. or idk if i’m hurting people literally i spend every waking moment trying to NOT do that. 

but now everything i was traumatized into ruins things for me NOW

and normally i would be okay just trying to work through that

but i’m alone in a new city in a grad program and my regular friends seem to just not give a single shit about me, and i have an absolute GARBAGE time advocating for myself bc i inherently do not believe i deserve it

and i was talking w my therapist today and i just said

no one needs to do the work FOR me. but jfc i want some HELP. why does it have to be ALL ON ME? i already do SO MUCH WORK. making sure everyone else is happy and okay and removing myself when i’m an inconvenience and paying so much attention to how i talk and act so people don’t treat me like shit and so that i don’t hurt other people, and dealing with being autistic and anxious, and having to learn to live by myself when all i feel is depression consuming me

like that’s SO MUCH WORK

and now i have to do MORE WORK? BY MYSELF? TO FIX THAT?

fuck that i want HELP.

i will do it but fucking HELP ME.

you don’t have to give me all the answers while i sit there

but jfc explain the concept to me

give me some examples

give me the set-up/prompt so i can figure out the answer

like i realized that--bc people never want me to talk abt myself, never give me the chance, that when they do, i say EVERYTHING in a small/huge rush so i can get it all out, so nobody asks me follow up questions or takes that as a starting point for a conversation

and it’s like

NOW I HAVE TO MONITOR THAT TOO? like talking to people is ALREADY SO HARD.

WOULD IT KILL ANYONE TO JUST ENGAGE W ME IN CONVERSATION?!

like WHY can’t i have SOMEONE just ask me questions anyway? why is that so hard?

why do i have to fix my entire self to get normal relationships with people?

honestly what it feels like is that whole thing they studied. where autistic kids forced to act ‘normal’ are more traumatized and anxious and ostracized than then NT kids are taught how to interact w autistic kids and vice versa and they find a good middle ground and learn to work together

why do i have to force myself to Be Better in order to GET better? does that make sense? like i have to fix and sublimate all my issues even if they’re not resolved, just so i can get people around me to help me fix them,

and i don’t want to be bitter and angry about it

but that’s all i can feel

and i’m just. watching this show where these two guys are clearly head over heels for each other, and only one really realizes it and goes out of his way to protect the other, and just. something abt queer media like that really hits me and just makes me yearn so hard for SOMETHING. 

i don’t need somebody to be Everything for me. i’m interested in polyamory (partly bc i don’t see myself as ever being Enough for anyone in a romantic relationship--not as Their One Person, just in a romantic [particularly sexual] relationship bc of all my fucking issues--but also partly) bc like, relationship anarchy is cool and chill and ppl are important, but i just.

a romantic partner is someone who would, by nature, hopefully, mean that both of us would work w each other on hard stuff. that i would have someone there for me--and i there for them--to get better at communicating, to work through my shit in practice, but not put all of that on them. just support. a wholeass person on their own whom i would care abt and support to. a team. choosing to work together. to help me think things through--bc your therapist is never there, but your partner can be, and their perspective can be helpful.

but i also just. know i’m inherently unattractive and unappealing in every sense of the word. so i just. get stuck wanting something i can never have.

and i’d be fine w that if my friends were ever collectively that for me. and they just. aren’t. and i dont’ want to force them to be bc what kind of bullshit is that?

saying ‘i feel like you guys don’t ask me about my life. i feel like i’m only here to provide things for you guys. i feel like there are a lot of things you secretly don’t like about me, and instead of talking abt them, they come out in different ways.’

that’s bullshit. 

anyway i’m taking a break from shitty fucking homework translating more garbage from old english and regretting everything in my life and resisting the urge to just keep watching the goddamn show on netflix or finishing shera or something

it’s basically midnight and i’ve done nothing today, time feels fake, idk what i’m doing just at all idk why i’m here and i just want to go fucking HOME

[ourimpavidheroine]

I know it's "tomorrow" for you now and thus technically over but HAPPY TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF YOUR FICS! I didn't begin reading until April (about when Ten Years began) but still, it's almost hard to believe it has been this long. I would also like to wish you a happy Valentine's day. And just many happy days in general, we all know you deserve them.

OH MY GOODNESS!

So it is! I’ve spent the past couple of days dealing with my poor kid who sprained her ankle (doctor visits and x-rays and crutches, oh my!) and it completely flew under my radar.

I wrote Please Excuse My Penmanship on a whim; I hadn’t written any fanfic for about 15 years at that point and had read this big old long screed about how letter fiction/fanfiction was never any good (although Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot would beg to differ) and I was like...huh. Challenge Accepted. And I was shipping Wuko from pretty much the get-go in Book 4 and realized that basically nobody was writing for the ship and I thought, oh what the hell. And the story just poured out of me.

(I never planned on writing anything else, by the way. It was going to be a one shot deal for me. The only reason I continued was because I got so much feedback on it, so if you think that clicking the kudos button doesn’t actually matter to a writer you are so very wrong about that. Uh, not that you think that, Marezelle, CLEARLY.)

My wife died completely unexpectedly in June of 2015 and I started writing A Song of Spring and Autumn about a week after she died because I needed something to keep me from completely dissolving into my grief. I wrote that story through her funeral, through dealing with our completely traumatized children, through trying to get food on the table every night and forcing myself out of bed every morning. That story saved my life. It got me through the first six months, when I honestly didn’t know if I was going to make it or not. I mean, I am crying right now just typing this because I cannot even adequately express how utterly horrible that time was. I poured all of my love for her into that story, instead of my grief.

My stories are personal to me. The way Wing looks at Nuo is the way my wife always looked at me, memorialized in words. Huan’s sly, quiet humor and his way of pushing his head into people’s shoulders owes a lot to my beautiful autistic son. Naoki’s fearlessness and her self-confidence is who my daughter was before her mother died, and who, step by slow step, is finding again in herself. Wu’s love of his adopted home while still feeling the pull of his former culture is one that I, as an immigrant, understand. Baatar Junior’s experiences with Kuvira come out of my childhood, being raised by a malignant Narcissist. My betareader once told me that I was Wu on the inside and Lin on the outside, and she was not wrong about that, not at all. These stories are not the story of my life, of course. But they are personal. Very very personal.

Thank you, my dearest and loveliest of readers, for sticking with me these past two years. This writing has changed my life, and for the better. Some of you read all of it; some of you read just the first few Wuko stories and then head out the door, and that’s okay too. Some of you, like @amiraelizabeth, came for Lin, and that’s marvelous. I’ve gotten heartfelt - and yes, sometimes heartbreaking - messages from readers who have resonated with certain characters (Qi especially) and who have written to me, pouring out their hearts, and who I want to put my arms around and tell them that they are beautiful just as they are and worthy of love and happiness. My work is for anyone to enjoy, of course, but I am especially writing for the misfits out there; the queer kids, the autistics, the people who carry scars of grief or abuse, the ones whose pain lingers. I write for you, and I write for the me I was before I found the woman who would change my life forever. I write to keep the love I had alive. I want you to know that love exists for all of us. And hope. You matter, and you deserve happiness.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you. And once again, thank you for reading.

#my fanfiction #two year anniversary #marezelle