#and I know most people don't mean any harm! a lot of them even apologize and I appreciate that

[thestreamdreampony]

Me adding my two cents is probably not gonna do much, but here I go, I guess:

I want to preface this with saying that Wilbur's content and Lovejoy have been incredibly important to me and I've put a lot of time, effort and money into supporting Lovejoy especially. So finding out about this, before finding out about the details, I had originally reacted with incredulous derision of twitter stans. And then erring on the side of caution about how things developed.

At this point there's almost no question that it's Wilbur, for the simple reason that Shubble would have cleared up his name if it wasn't. There's no way she would throw someone innocent under the bus, if she knew somebody else was guilty. Additionally, not a single person in Wilbur's surroundings has disputed any claims and have only narrowed it down further towards Wilbur. At this point it is incredibly unlikely she is talking about anybody else.

I do want to take a moment to comdemn those (mostly on twitter) who used this opportunity to dig into both Shubble and Wilbur's private lives, trying to construct a narrative of her abuse and in some cases going so far as doxxing Wilbur. It is entirely possible to support Shelby and condemn her abuser, without invading their privacy and endangering people's lives. Shelby's goal was to warn people and to make them more aware of the signs of abuse. As well as make it as clear as possible, who she's talking about without saying who it is directly, for a meriad of possible reasons. It was not an invitation to write abuse fanfiction about her private life.

That being said, the way I will feel about this in the long run will depend heavily on how Wilbur deals with this situation. I will definitely distance myself either way (slowly but surely), but his reaction to this will influence how I will act moving forward.

Should he stay silent or respond with insincerity/derision/defensiveness/etc., then that's it for me. Fuck him.

But should he come forward, own up to it, apologize and prove that he is working on himself, then I might be able to find it in myself to give him a second chance over time. I just don't believe that doing bad things makes you irredeemable forever and ever and ever.

We know for a fact that Wilbur has been struggling with mental health problems for most of his teen and adult life and from his solo music we are also aware that he is incredibly aware of the fact that he is the problem in his relationships. Expressing dark thoughts in music, does not automatically mean somebody is abusive. In fact, creating dark art is an excellent way to deal with harmful thoughts and impulses. I have literally never taken his lyrics to mean that.

However, his lyrics in YCGMA and MSR have always been incredibly autobiographical and do show that he is acutely aware that he's the unhealthy element in his unhealthy relationships.

We also know directly from him, that he has distanced himself from most of his social circle and sought out therapy as recently as 2 weeks ago in an effort to improve his mental health.

This does not excuse his actions whatsoever. Mentally ill people are still responsible for the harm that they cause and Shelby is unbelievably brave to tell their story. I hope they finds peace, I hope she has all the support she could ever need and I hope she has achieved her goal of making people more aware of how people end up in situations like this. She is an inspiration for standing up for herself like this.

But I also think that, should Wilbur come forward, admit to his wrongdoings and prove over time that he is working on becoming a better person, friend and partner, that he does not have to be shunned forever and ever and ever. He has a long life in front of him and I hope both for him and all his future friends and partners that he manages to find a healthy, happy way of living. This can happen, even while he never bothers Shelby, or the other people he hurt, again.

This is a best case scenario. I do think he is allowed to take some time to formulate a response. A hasty response to situations like this have never helped anyone ever, neither the victim, nor the accused. Taking his time to come to terms with the situation, which surely came as a shock, and to really think about how he wants to deal with this situation is much better than him writing a twitlonger as soon as he finds out.

Either way, I will distance myself from him and Lovejoy, slowly but surely. I won't get rid of the merch clothing I own because it was quite expensive and throwing it away is a waste of perfectly good clothing, but I won't find the joy I once felt wearing them. (I am salty about me being gone from home for a few months and having ordered Lovejoy merch, which had been waiting for me for weeks and then finding out about this literally the day I travelled back. It definitely felt weird as hell to unpack that stupid NORMAL longsleeve with his fucking face on it, while being hurt and confused and angry.)

Listening to Lovejoy's music, likewise, will never feel as euphoric as it once did, even if I go back to it. Which really sucks cuz they genuinly hit my sweet spot in music taste. YCGMA and SISV specifically, have been so, so important to me and removing them from my listening rotation i going to Hurt.

Interestingly, I don't feel quite as terrible as last time I had to suddenly cut a content creator out of my life. So I guess practice makes perfect lmao.

I don't know if me writing and posting this had any point. I guess I just wanted to get it off my chest and maybe it resonates with somebody.

Anyway, take care of yourselves. Take it easy and try to focus on other things, if this hit you hard (ideally offline). Try to meet with friends, maybe play some boardgames (or video games), go for a walk,read a book, have a coffee with a loved one. There's joy in the world, despite it all.

#wilbur soot

[v-anrouge]

This is a queued post and it includes talks about transphobia and mentions of self harm and eating disorders

Im here to talk and announce a break, first thing's first j relapsed, in literally like everything sh ed and didn't try to kill myself is because of a few people and the fact my pills ended. For a very long time in this blog u have not been feeling like human, it's like most of you don't even actually like and just come talk to me when im being funny and fun or when i post something rook related that you like, ive really been trying to get rid of that feeling but it keeps on coming back and it's unbearable to be in this blog at this point. this situation with Shiba only really confirmed it for me, I saw about like 4 mutuals referring to this as drama, and complaining about seeing it on dash and while obviously you have all the rights to be displeased with a constant show of negativity in your dash, i beg of you to try and think how i, a trans man, must feel seeing you refer to me and other mutuals calling out transphobia and have to read you refer to this as drama and not as a literal crime. I understand if you got annoyed by me talking about it constantly and to that i ask that you please block me, because i have been literally beaten, bullied, harassed and even doxxed by transphobes, I do not take anything that displays even a bit of prejudice against my trans siblings lightly, hence why i was so "histerical and obsessed" and was being so "stupid and acting like an idiot" as someone people would claim. I do not care what view you have of me i really don't, im used to this shit, ive been trans and alive in the most transphobic country for 20 years, it's no news, but it still hurts. And it hurts even more when I see someone say i was an idiot for blocking someone immediately and calling them out when they side with a transphobe, and it hurts even more when I see a person i thought liked me complain about "drama still going on" rest assured that i won't be "bitching" about it any longer

For soru, who cant possibly process why i have blocked you, your take on that situation and your friend have both brought me terrible flashbacks of my own past as a child dealing with transphobia, of being told people like me are sick and are the seeds of the devil and that we are animals or that there's something wrong with us, like your friend said, their apology is both not genuine and extremely poorly made as they still can't accept the fact that yes, they are transphobic, and you soru, can't imagine how it broke my soul to see your post saying you had given them a chance, but seeing the post you made after, in which you literally agree with your mother you should've stayed away from trans people, that's what broke me the most, and j couldn't even speak about it, because it's "too negative" or im "drama chasing" im sick of this, you can hate and insult me all you want soru rest assured you're not the only one you're not the first nor the last one, maybe this will come off as a surprise to the people that are sure im obsessed with drama and chasing people around but i genuinely did have a lot of respect for you, if the hours ive spent crying over this say anything at all, it's sad that this had to end this way, but not for me, I don't care, this isn't the first or the last time this happens to me, but to my mutuals who i am very sure many are angry that i have made this situation happen, perhaps i should've stayed quiet and keep being funny as people like me best, well it is too late, but i hope that you'll forgive me mutuals, for once again ruining something good.

I don't know how long this break will last or if ill ever even return to this account at all, but i sincerely thank the ones that did treat me like a human, as an equal, that actually saw the person behind v-anrouge. you can't possibly believe how much you mean to me

That's about it, do have a great day

[transmutationisms]

i am the world's biggest wikipedia defender (especially against people who say that it's unreliable) because, while i know it's not infallible (is anything, though?), it is peer-reviewed. once, my friend edited the othello page to include a joke we had made and she got her account banned. how do you reckon with wikipedia as a source of knowledge? my understanding of it is that it can serve as a good base for things, but learning never stops and one should read as many sources as possible to gain a fuller understanding of whatever they want to know about. this is a very long-winded way of asking your opinions on wikipedia. my apologies, and i hope today is alright for you :~)

wikipedia obviously gets a lot of flak for the fact that anyone can edit it, which means that people certainly can and do check each other's work, but also that anybody with an axe to grind or just a poor understanding of a subject can potentially really distort the presentation of that topic. there have been some high-profile cases of bad and even dangerous editorialising, like the woman who basically single-handedly is trying to correct a whole bunch of pages for former nazis that really whitewashed their legacies and cited various antisemitic and white supremacist sources to do so. i think it would be foolish to claim that crowdsourced knowledge is inherently accurate, fair, nuanced, &c. wikipedia replicates the biases people put into it, and just having more people edit it doesn't instantly 'average them out' because yknow, we're often talking about widely held positions or prejudices that have also caused distortions in many of the cited sources. also, wikipedia has many more gaps than most people realise, partly because an encyclopedia is necessarily a massive undertaking and also because, by design, it excludes eg oral traditions, non-literate people, &c.

however i do find a lot of wikipedia criticism annoying because it will usually involve trying to counterpose wikipedia to approved academic channels of knowledge production, specifically in a way that sets academic institutions and publishing as an intellectual gold standard that crowd knowledge simply can't compete with. academia is not some kind of magical solution to problems of distortion and bias; academics have their own ways of perpetuating and rationalising prejudices, and reinforcing rather than challenging each other's epistemological authority and laziest, most harmful assumptions. not to mention that many shitty wikipedia articles do actually cite approved academic sources published by university presses! because these characteristics do not actually guarantee that a source is good, only that it passed quality control at a reactionary institution lol.

ultimately i approach wikipedia basically the same way i approach any academic text, which is to say i have to read both with attention to how the arguments are being developed, what evidence they rely on, what ideological assumptions are being made or defended, and so forth. i can't really think of a source or genre of source that i would endorse just reading and uncritically believing; in that sense i certainly agree with people who point out the major potential for inaccuracy in wikipedia articles, only i think this line of criticism is totally useless and blatantly elitist if it simply exempts 'respectable' academic sources or presumes institutional channels of knowledge to be epistemologically infallible.

anyway i use wikipedia to check dates of major events and it's sometimes useful or intriguing simply to see what about a topic interested people enough to write an entry about it. but i don't automatically trust any arguments or analyses in wikipedia articles, any more than i would the thesis of any nonfiction book i pick up.

[havocskies]

Hi! How you doing? Idk if u write yandere (If u don't feel free to delete this!!) if yes could u write some soft yandere hcs for Vance? Have a nice day!

👻- anon

OVERPROTECTIVE VANCE HOPPER HEADCANONS

hi hi hello !!! i do not write yandere things but i will write overprotective/protective ! thank you so much for the request !

༶•┈┈୨♡୧┈┈•༶

vance isn't very good at handling his emotions in general so sometimes he's not exactly sure on how protective he should be , he just knows he wants to protect you

he cares abt you a lot which means nothing's happening to you. like at all

he's the toughest kid at school so most people don't even try

if they do though they're paying for it in the worst ways imaginable

someone says something even slightly rude to you? yea he's gonna make them fear for their life

he tried his best to keep his anger under control especially for you so most of the time he doesn't actually do much. they might get grabbed by the shoulders or thrown a bit but that's the least of what he usually does so it's better than the other option

when they test him however he's SERIOUS

pretty sure brady confirmed him to be a sociopath and that if you mess w him he comes back worse

so yea you're basically safe from pretty much everything

other than being an absolute menace to everyone around that he thinks might cause you an ounce of any kind of harm he's genuinely really sweet towards you

maybe not exactly romantic simply bc he's a little awkward (he doesn't get into many romantic relationships due to his habits of threatening people daily) but it'll be clear he favors you over others

he'll let you wear his jacket every once in a while just bc the happiness it gives you makes him even happier than you are (even if the scowl on his face doesn't show it)

he'd be hesitant to let you wear his choker since his mom made it for him but after a while he'd probably let you wear it while he could make sure it didn't get ruined or anything

anyway back to the protective stuff

he occasionally (often) misjudges when he's actually needed

someone bumped into you in the hall? they're now bumped against the lockers by their shoulders and being yelled at

very awkward conversation afterwards bc he'd try his best to defend his behavior

would make it up to you in some subtle way. might buy you a bag of chips a week later when you've already forgotten abt the whole ordeal

he's not good at apologizing like AT ALL simply bc he just doesn't do it often. the most apologizing he does is to his mom when he's at the police station again

his definition of apologizing after a fight between him and someone he thought was a threat to you would be him buying you something tbh

not many apologies through words

dude is horrible at communicating in general honestly

he would NOT be abusive in the slightest. honestly he'd be the absolute opposite

he looks very intimidating (and he is) but he loves being close to you and sharing moments when no one else is around

he's not too big on pda unless someone is flirting w you

then you get an arm around you and the other person gets a fist to their face

most romantic gesture you'd ever get from him honestly

if you ever had any bullies before you started dating you definitely don't anymore

even if you kept it a secret from him he'd find out somehow one way or another

he'd likely be a little upset w you for not telling him but he wouldn't take it out on you in the slightest

honestly it's all gonna be taken out on the bullies

he's definitely been dragged away by cops a couple of times because he wanted to protect you

even though he's not that good at communication from his side if you ever stated his overprotective behavior bothered you he'd try his best to fix it

of course he'd still let his anger control him every once in a while but most of the time he'd ask you for permission to beat them up before he actually does

vance has a dude hanging from the collar of his shirt and just casually looks to you for permission to knock him out

very satisfied when you say yes

whenever you say no though he huffs in a disappointed matter but drops him n just walks away grumbling

probably abt how you shouldn't let people walk all over you n he could've helped

still not necessarily upset w you though

vance would probably leave in order to calm himself down and take you w him bc you're one of the number 1 people to calm him down, his mom being the only other one

he genuinely just loves you so much

dude cannot stand to see you upset in any way

#vance hopper #vance hopper x reader #pinball vance #vance hopper headcanons #the black phone #the black phone movie #the black phone x you #the black phone headcanons #the black phone x reader #overprotective #protective #romantic headcanons #headcanons #brady hepner #vance the black phone #the black phone vance #vance hopper x you #horror #thriller #soft #soft headcanons #horror movie #thriller movie #the grabber #finney blake #robin arellano #bruce yamada #billy showalter #paperboy #griffin stagg

[silverstagspirit]

Where have you been?

The start of a new series. Where Yuu has finally come home after a year in Twisted Wonderland and reunites with thier family. But things don't go back to normal though, people become suspicious about where they've been because they won't tell.

Warnings: None.

A/N: I'm still new to writing stories, this Yuu is intended to be GN but I apologize if I make any mistakes. This Yuu has an older brother, a mom and a dad. I don't know how to write younger siblings so I didn't include one.

Gif by WiffleGif

-

Yuu had made many friends in Twisted Wonderland. Their fighting spirit never ceases in their quest to get home. They had earned the respect of others and discovered amazing things on the way. Their fighting finally paid off when one day, the mirror announced that it had found a way home for them. At long last, they would see their family again.

"We'll find a way to keep in touch right?"

"I'm sure we'll figure something out. You go back to your world Yuu. Take care of yourself."

"Thanks Ace."

"You know you mean a lot to us Prefect. We respect your decision to leave and we'll never forget you. I wish you the best."

"Thank you too Jack."

"Bye minion. The Great Grim gives his praises to his most useful henchman."

"Goodbye Grim. Remember to study well."

With thier last words to them said and done, they stepped through the portal.

-

Stepping through the portal, their senses were lit up with a myriad of different colors before they felt themselves moving at breakneck speed. They were going so fast, yet they couldn't will themselves to scream. But then, just as fast as it started, it stopped. Yuu opened their eyes to find themselves in front of a large mirror in an old, abandoned house. They got up and looked around. The house looked as decrepit as Ramshackle when they first arrived in Twisted Wonderland. Albeit much smaller, more like a log cabin.

Going outside, they were met with the sight of a forest all around them. There was a path leading from the porch to somewhere covered in foliage. After clearing the thick brush with their bare hands, they uncovered another path. This one is leading much farther than before. Following the path down the hill eventually led them to a road. Not wanting to go back to the cabin, they made the decision to follow the road and hope it would lead them somewhere where they could get help. The thought had crossed their mind earlier that maybe it wasn't the right place. In that case, they made a mental note to remember their way back to the cabin if things got hairy.

Yuu walked for many hours. Their feet began to hurt. The mirror had replaced their NRC uniform with some other plain pair of clothes and a scarf. They were given some type of gum boots as shoes. which were convenient for when they were trekking through the brush, but now they were getting hot and uncomfortable the more they walked. They were grateful for the scarf, though, as well as the long sleeved outfit. There was quite a strong breeze blowing that made them shiver. The scarf also doubled as a way to keep prying eyes off of the scar on their neck left behind after Riddle's overblot.

It was after this thought that they came across a river near the road. With big rocks surrounding each side that made quite the photogenic spot. Yuu was utterly exhausted at this point, so they saw no harm in taking a small rest. They lurched their way to the river's edge with renewed motivation. Remembering a wilderness survival technique from their brother, they made sure to stay away from the still water that might be stagnant. Yuu made sure they didn't drink too much water because they did not look forward to having to pee in the bush if they didn't find a town soon. They even took off their boots and socks to dip their feet in the water.

Sometime later, they dried off, put their shoes back on, and continued on their way. It was all going fine until later they noticed something. It was starting to get dark, which made Yuu fidget nervously. It spelled bad news to be caught in the dark at a time like this. Thinking this, they quickened their pace. All the walking eventually led them to a street sign. The sign had many names on it, but there was one that stood out to them. The name of their town. There was a fork in the road with three ways to choose from. So they set off in that direction.

After about 5 minutes of walking, they were met with the sight of their town. They felt a huge wave of relief, knowing that this was the place. Remembering the way to their house, they continued their journey. It was now dark at this point. Down the hill and through the familiar roads they went. Some cars drove by, but they didn't need to flag them down at this point, for they knew where to go. There were no people out during this time of night. They were all in their homes. Making the atmosphere even more tense when they got to their street. They could see their house from here. They were almost there. Yuu crossed the road and walked up to their home.

The lights were still on, and they could hear people talking. The weight of the fact that they were finally here after half an entire year was now settling in. And they began to panic silently. What do they say? What will they say? After some breathing techniques learned from Vil, they stepped up to the door. They couldn't find their voice to speak yet, so they knocked three times. No answer. So they knocked again. A bit louder this time. This time, they heard something: footsteps coming up to the door. Yuu held their breath when the door began to open.

"Hello. Can I help yo-

CRASH

The glass their mother had been holding was now shattered and forgotten on the ground as she stared at them. Yuu couldn't make eye contact, but they knew she was shocked speechless. The commotion caused two more sets of footsteps to approach.

"Honey, what is i-

Their father and their brother appeared behind their mom and stopped dead in their tracks. They had the same looks on their faces as their mom. They kept staring at them as though they were an impossible thing. There was a moment of complete silence as they stared at them.

"...um...hi, I-

All of them ran towards Yuu at once. They hugged them like they would disapear if they didn't hold tight enough. They were all crying. Yuu stood there frozen. They themselves began tearing up. Then, for the first time since Twisted Wonderland. They let the tears roll down. They cried in their family's embrace and let the stress out. They could hear their parents mumbling words to them. However, they didn't have the energy to decipher it. They kept crying into their mother's shoulder, tears soiling her blouse. They eventually cried themselves to sleep, and their dad took them to their bedroom, the bedroom they had not slept in for months, and lay them on thier bed. They stayed with them for a while until they, too, had to go to bed.

Yuu was finally home.

-

Meanwhile, in Twisted Wonderland, the boys were already beginning to feel Yuu's absence. Even those who claimed they didn't care had a small pain in their chest when they were not there. It was during these moments when they wondered if they would ever see Yuu again...

And if there was a way for Yuu to come back.

PART 2

Taglist: @twisted-wonderland-but-gayer @naughtybodypillow

#twisted wonderland #twst #yuu #twst mc #bittersweet fluff

[therainbowwillow]

I am not by any means someone who has a large platform on the internet, but seeing as my most popular post of all time, seen by tens of thousands of people, was on hbomberguy's Plagiarism and You(Tube), I would like to publicly get my thoughts straight on what has happened since.

I've seen a lot of discussion about who is to blame for James' recent mental health crisis and I would like to firmly state that hbomberguy (and Kat, his producer), others who made good faith videos on the situation (The Ace Couple, Jessie Gender, Todd in the Shadows), and people who commented on the situation in good faith are not to blame in the slightest. At the same time, I understand that the sudden loss of support, friends, and a career undoubtedly harmed James Somerton and that it is upsetting to me to see anyone put in that position, regardless of their actions. I believe that hbomberguy used his platform responsibly. From the beginning, I noticed that he was making clear, intentional choices regarding his treatment of the situation, including framing Nick as a possible victim rather than an accomplice to the plagiarism, reminding his audience not to harass James Somerton, and refusing to stoop to personal attacks in his video. Having seen hbomberguy's professional handling of the situation, I believe that he is a person who has a good understanding of the sway he has online and how to use that power delicately. I'm sure a choice was made weighing the benefit of speaking out against the possible harm and I believe that hbomberguy & crew made the correct decision. The same goes for The Ace Couple, Jessie Gender, and Todd in the Shadows. I think it is a creator's duty to understand that regardless of how professionally they treat a situation, there are bound to be some bad actors in their audience who will attempt to harass others in their name. It seems to me that all of these creators understood that and made an educated decision to speak out publicly. Had they kept quiet, harm would have continued to be done to the authors and artists who had their work stolen and monetized by someone who did not fairly compensate them (or even acknowledge their existence). With this in mind, I do believe that it is important to have empathy for James as well. I understand feeling hurt, betrayed, and skeptical of the legitimacy of everything he says from this point on, knowing what we know now about how he built his career. I have those feelings myself. They are valid. However, there is no situation in which people should be publicly speculating on the legitimacy of his mental health struggles or celebrating his suffering. I do believe that James knew what he was doing, I believe he knew that he was causing some harm (to what extent he understood that, no one but James can say), and I do believe that it was wrong. At this point, the community does as well. I think the best thing for him would've been to step away from the internet, but at the same time, I understand why he did not. He went from being a fairly popular online queer voice to one of the community's most hated content creators. I imagine there was some whiplash and confusion and that it must've been upsetting and scary. James did not make the right decision in trying to come back and that poor choice was his own, but at the same time, I don't think there's much use in rehashing that to him in the comments of his apology or on Twitter.

I don't think it would've been any better to let his actions fade to complete obscurity, but I also believe that trying to hold him immediately accountable was doomed from the start. If there was a path forward as a content creator, James strayed far from it. Regardless, I think the moral thing to do right now is to treat him with grace and not speculate about his honesty or intentions online. I hesitate to invalidate people's concerns, but regardless, they don't belong in the public sphere at this moment.

Ultimately, I wish James the best. I hope he finds safety, comfort, and happiness going forwards. I also wish hbomberguy & team as well as all the other creators and audience members who spoke to their experiences in good faith all the best. These people are not to blame for James' mental health struggles. If we mean to reduce as much harm as possible, I think the ideal path forwards is show empathy for everyone involved and lay the idea of blame to rest.

#james somerton #hbomberguy #i'm hesitant to post this #but since my previous post on this situation was as popular as it was #i want to make my thoughts clear #also i haven't seen much discussion of responsible use of platforms re: hbomb + others #and i think that should be central to this conversation #as we talk about platforming vs deplatforming #i think we should recognize what responsible use of that social power looks like #and i think the way this situation was handled by hbomberguy is overall an example of responsible platform use #regardless of the results #in this specific case #i hope everyone involved is taking care of themselves right now #and to anyone reading this #i hope you are too! #tw suicide #tw mental health

[ladyluscinia]

So I think I've settled on the first trend in meta I've clocked as weird coming out of S2. Namely that Edward will not apologize to anyone about anything on account of it's not that kind of show, and he shouldn't be expected to or criticized if he doesn't.

Mostly I've seen this backed up with the fact that OFMD is more about being your authentic self than being a good person, and that physical harm is brushed off or prioritized under emotional harm (and Edward was suffering maximum emotional harm). And I mean... Yeah, the show does care about emotional health, but I'm not seeing how that means expecting our protagonists to gain the faintest awareness of their social contract to others is absurd?

Edward and Stede are both wildly self-centered and morally bankrupt people, which is funny. I don't expect them to suddenly gain a respect for the lives of every random stranger they stumble into anymore than I would expect the house vampires from WWDITS to do the same. They aren't going to stop being pirates. And frankly, they don't even have to stop being mostly self-centered (I'm not even sure they could, tbh).

But unlike the house vampires, Edward and Stede have a lot more people in their lives who they are directly responsible for. And we like those people!

The show has not pulled its punches on how Edward and Stede and their relationship issues have hurt the crew. Edward tried to murder-suicide everyone with him after making them miserable! Stede has struggled to even care about their hurts even when Lucius is shouting them in his face! Found family? Where???

The crew is doing a great job of learning to support each other and the captains, but Stede and Edward do not reciprocate that support internally. (They sometimes do against outside threats.) And, yeah, even in my silly black comedy about murderers, I would like to see them say "sorry we used you as physical and emotional punching bags" and show a bit of awareness of their authority before the show sends them off on a happy ending with the crew presumably still working for them?!?

It's not weird to expect crumbs of character growth???

And like, crucially, this isn't even a new idea in the show! Mutual respect and support and trying not to harm each other is the beating heart of Stede's new pirate culture goal. It's fundamental to any social contract where everyone gets to "be themselves" because it's hard for Jim and Archie to do that when Edward decides in his true self / place of authority they actually need to fight to the death for his broken heart. And Stede starts off not doing this correctly because he doesn't instinctively know how to be kind or caring, but that's what character growth is for.

WWDITS has Guillermo as the one person all these terrible people are obligated to give consideration to in their social contract, and they have increasingly learned and shown that reciprocal support. Including apologies.

And I'm not even expecting anything huge. I don't see any reason they need to dwell on it. We don't need to decide which crew members would realistically deem them unforgivable. Edward doesn't have to grovel on his knees. Stede also needs to apologize. And they can both do it in the most awkward, stilted yet sincere way and then put most of their apology effort into changing behaviors, but I still think it should happen.

So I suppose they can have our main couple continue without acknowledging they fucked up with people besides themselves, but it would make them worse people than the WWDITS vampires and I expect the humor to adapt accordingly.

Final scene is them exchanging wedding vows while the crew pitches the anchor they are both tied to overboard?

#our flag means death #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd meta #blackbeard ofmd #stede bonnet ofmd #genre #character apologism #ladyluscinia #i've seen this argument a couple of times and it seems to be gaining traction #even with people who aren't in the 'disliking ed is racist and also he only really hurt izzy who deserved it' camp

[vivitalks]

you are a wildflower garden growing in my head

not to be insane about my own fanfiction that i wrote but i am a little insane about this one. so like come be insane with me. join me. dont be afraid. i dont bite (lying) nico deserves hobbies especially when they enable his own self-actualization. anyway. this was written for the bingo prompt "jason remembers nico" i'm normal normal normal about it (still lying) title from the witching hour by the ready set. nico di angelo ass song read it here on ao3

Jason finds Nico among the strawberry plants, staining his hands and knees with dirt.

It's not…like, he's not embarrassed. Plenty of people like to garden. Nico is entitled to his hobbies. Even secret ones. And it’s only a secret because he doubts the Demeter and Dionysus kids would be particularly receptive to Nico tampering with their beloved source of income.

Despite this, he can't help his instinct to be defensive when Jason walks up, the early evening sun haloing him in light.

“Whatcha doin’?”

Nico gestures. “Weeding.”

“Cool,” Jason says, because he’s Jason. “Mind if I join you?”

“To keep me company, or to help?”

“Whichever.”

Nico points to a few rogue sprouts. “If you're here anyway, you might as well get your hands dirty.”

“Done,” Jason says, immediately tearing out the weed with ruthless force. Nico cringes.

“Try to be gentler,” he says, and demonstrates on his own. “Like this. And make sure to get the roots out, otherwise it’ll just grow back.”

“What's the difference?” Jason asks. “We're killing it either way.”

“Yeah, but…” Nico squirms. “Just because we're killing it, doesn't mean we have to make it suffer. Wouldn't you rather die in your sleep than bleed out with all your limbs torn off?”

Graphic, but it gets the point across.

“Fair enough.” Jason looks a little faint, but he tugs out the next weed with a lot more precision, careful to unearth its roots and all.

“I know it takes a little longer,” Nico says, “but mercy is a worthwhile use of time. In my opinion.”

Jason has this look. It lands on Nico. “You never cease to amaze me,” he says. Almost reverently.

Nico turns the color of strawberries. “Shut up. Keep weeding.”

“Aye aye.” Jason salutes and returns to his assigned task. Every so often he'll stop to check with Nico if something is a weed or not, but he's always gentle pulling them out.

After a few minutes, Nico says, “How did you find me?”

Because realistically, anyone looking for Nico would probably never consider checking the strawberry fields. In fact, most people would discourage him from being there at all.

“I don't know,” Jason says, which causes Nico to look up in surprise. A thoughtful look crosses Jason's face. “Lucky guess, I suppose.”

“Hell of a guess,” Nico says, reaching for another green shoot. It comes out of the earth so easily, barely old enough to have burrowed down, and some part of Nico feels a sting at that. Plants uprooted before ever having a chance to grow. Nico knows what that's like.

He also knows that weeds don't mean to be bad. They don't mean to be anything; they're harmful only when rooted near bigger, better flora. It's not their fault they hog the nutrients and land. Like any living thing, all they want is to survive. Their only crime is trying to grow with something prettier flourishing close by.

Nico knows that feeling, too.

He really hates weeding. But he's long since learned it's a necessary part of gardening, and of life. Not everyone can live. Not everyone can grow. Some plants — some people — are poison. Sometimes the only thing to do is to whisper apologies and dig out the roots, and hope that whatever this dead plant becomes next has better luck than what it was first.

“Did you need something?”

“Do I have to need something?”

“No, but…” Nico shrugs. “I don’t know. I assume you hunted me down for something. And you didn’t have to stay here and help me weed.”

“I did not hunt you down,” Jason says indignantly. “I was looking for you because I wanted to hang out with you. You’re doing this, so I’m doing it too.” 

“I'm not trying to say you shouldn't. And I always—” Nico falters. Stupid. This is his boyfriend. If he wanted to continue being an unknowable enigma with emotions under lock, key, and unbreakable steel trapdoor, he wouldn't have gotten himself involved with Jason ‘Heart On His Heroic Sleeve’ Grace. “I always want to hang out with you. I just meant, you didn’t have to help. You could have sat and done nothing.”

“Look, if I'm that bad at weeding, you can just say—”

Nico throws a handful of weeds at Jason and he dodges, laughing. “Shut up. I hate you. I wish I could pull you up by the roots.”

Smiling, Jason says, “You kind of did.”

Nico's brain gives him an error message.

“What does that mean?”

“I mean…you literally uprooted me.” Once again, he has that pensive expression, like Nico is an abstract painting that Jason is admiring while also trying to interpret. It's not the worst way to be looked at. “My whole life before you was Camp Jupiter. The legion. Being Roman. Being Jupiter's kid.”

“I didn't change all of that,” Nico points out. “You did.”

He can feel the chill of the cold ground through his jeans. Every inch of his palms is smudged with dirt. Jason's hands are starting to look the same. There's a dark streak by his hairline, and one on his jaw, and the setting sun keeps glinting off his glasses. It is, on the whole, unfairly attractive of him.

Jason hums like maybe, maybe not. “It still feels like you were the catalyst to all that change. The good change, not the…manipulated-by-Juno change.”

“I appreciate what you're doing,” Nico says, “but you understand that's ridiculous, right? We didn't know each other until after the prophecy and the quest and everything. I can't have had any impact on you before then.”

“But you were at Camp Jupiter. You arrived just before I disappeared.”

“I know that,” — People suspected me, Nico doesn't add — “but we barely spoke.”

“Yeah, but you…” Jason falls silent, his eyebrows drawn together. If Nico was art before, he's a riddle now, and Jason is struggling to solve it. “I just…feel like it was important. The timing.”

Nico buries his fingers in the ground, relishing the way the dirt crumbles and closes around his touch.

“The timing was important,” he says. “My dad knew Hera was planning something, so he sent me to Camp Jupiter like…an advance team. But it had nothing to do with you.” He pauses. “No offense.”

“No, none taken.” Jason’s laugh is a little off. “I don't know. Maybe I'm going crazy.”

“If you're crazy, I belong in an asylum,” Nico says, digging and digging until he can feel the roots of the closest weed. He pinches it between his thumb and forefinger, and watches as it turns brown, then shrivels into a dead, drooping dandelion.

He winces. That's his least favorite weeding strategy. He didn't even mean to do it just now. It's like his own body is saying, You're damn right you should be locked up. See what you can do?

I'm helping plants grow, he retorts.

His brain says, Only you would inflict death and call it ‘helping’.

Nico growls under his breath and stops listening to his brain.

“Anyway, you're not crazy,” he adds belatedly. “A goddess literally played with your memory and identity like Play-Doh, so cut yourself some slack.”

It’s quiet for a moment. Nico figures Jason is deep in thought, but when he glances up, he sees a different look on Jason’s face — like he’s just solved the riddle.

“I’ve seen you do that before.”

It’s quiet and distant, Jason’s voice, and weighted with a revelation. Of something, though Nico’s not sure what. Nico doesn’t mean to, but he recoils a little — at the thought of Jason, some previous Jason, watching him ruthlessly murder an innocent plant, maybe even without meaning to.

“At Camp Jupiter,” Jason murmurs.

Those words don’t make sense. They smack into Nico’s memory like birds into a glass window pane, seeking a target and failing miserably.

“What?”

“At camp,” Jason says slowly, his hands resting limply in the loam. Behind the frames of his glasses, his eyes are unfocused. “One of your…first days there. I saw. You killed a hyacinth.”

An icy hand reaches into Nico’s chest, past his ribs, and closes around his heart.

“You saw that?”

Jason nods, still lost in the memory. “You were coming up to the principia, and you knelt to admire the flowers.”

To admire the flowers. Yes. That’s all he'd been doing. The walkway leading to the principia had been gorgeous, elegant flora lining the path in a rainbow of colors, a dozen or more different varieties in bloom. And Nico had only wanted to appreciate their beauty. To breathe in the fragrance of something so alive. 

“As soon as you touched it,” Jason says, “it died.”

Nico flinches.

“I was— I was nervous,” he says anxiously. “You and Reyna had asked to see me, and I was afraid you would decide I couldn’t stay. Couldn’t— be trusted.”

“I…” One of Jason’s hands comes up to rub the back of his neck, smudging dirt all over himself. “When I saw that, I had my doubts. But the way you reacted — like you were scared of yourself.” He shakes his head, his eyes sliding over Nico but with the distinct impression of looking beyond him. “I thought you must not have done it on purpose.”

“I didn’t.” Nico feels sick. He doesn’t know what to do here. Jason can’t even look at him. “I had never done it before, not by accident. I was scared.”

“And then I saw something else,” Jason says, blinking repeatedly. He pulls his glasses down the bridge of his nose and rubs his eyes with grimy hands, leaving the impression of twin shiners behind. But when he pushes his glasses up again, his gaze is sharp and focused. He faces Nico, straightening his shoulders. “That night, I watched you plant a new hyacinth.”

Nico stares. The ground underneath him might as well be thin air. “You…you saw that?”

“It was late,” Jason says, perfectly clear now, growing more certain every second. “I mean, later than anyone should have been up and about, but I left something in the principia, so I went back to get it, and when I came out, you were there. Kneeling by the flowers, just like that morning.”

Nico vividly remembers this. The wilted hyacinth had haunted him that whole day, a lethal combination of guilt and fear in equal measure. Something beautiful and alive was now ugly and dead, because of him. If he could do that to a flower, without even meaning to, what could he do to another person? What if he could stop someone’s heart on contact? How could Nico ever trust his own touch again?

And then something else had arisen, the way a new substance can emerge from two chemicals interacting. Determination. Nico may have been a child of death, but damn it, he could be more than that. He had to be more than that.

“I killed something,” Nico says hollowly. “I wanted to give something else life. To atone.”

Jason puts his dirt-stained hand over the knee of Nico’s equally dirt-stained jeans.

“Nico, I watched you plant that flower. I saw…” He hesitates. “I saw you pray. I couldn’t hear you, but the way you just…” He shakes his head, obviously overcome by the memory. “You didn’t do it for anyone else. You weren’t trying to prove anything to the Romans, you were just trying to make up for your mistake.”

“I didn’t know you were there,” Nico says weakly. How long had Jason stood in the shadows of the principia, a silent observer, as Nico mourned for one dead flower?

Jason ducks his head for a second. “I thought— I didn’t want to embarrass you,” he admits. “I figured you would misunderstand me if I said I had been watching you.”

Well, that’s true enough.

“I forgot,” Jason says, which is a familiar sentence out of his mouth. He grips Nico’s leg tighter. “But now I remember, and I was right. It was important. The timing was important.”

“What timing? What are you talking about?”

“My whole life, I had this feeling like I wanted to be more than who my father was,” Jason says. “I mean, you know. Big Three dad. They named the camp for him. Big shoes to fill, and it wasn’t that I didn’t want to fill them, but a small part of me was always thinking, why me? Why can’t someone else lead? You know?”

Nico nods. He does know.

“And then you came along,” Jason says. “The only other Big Three kid I had ever met. And yeah, at first, you seemed like the quintessential descendant of Pluto.”

“Scary, unapproachable, and surrounded by death?”

Jason breathes a laugh. “Yeah. But then I watched you plant a flower.” A slow-growing smile starts at his lips, then spreads up his cheekbones and illuminates his eyes. “The son of death. Nurturing life. Showing remorse and empathy for the living thing he’d killed, that he didn’t even mean to kill.” There’s impossible brightness in Jason’s gaze. “You were so much more than just the son of Pluto. And I thought: if he can do it, why can’t I?”

Nurturing life. Like now, Nico thinks, deliberately closing his fingers around the base of a strawberry plant. That instance, the one Jason is talking about — that had been the beginning of a chain reaction in Nico, turning all of his fear and self-doubt into stubborn conviction. The slow dawning of his refusal to being bound by his father’s name. He would always be Hades’s son, but sooner or later, he had to become his own man, write his own story, choose his own fate. Be Nico di Angelo, and decide who exactly Nico di Angelo would be.

He’d known then who he wanted to be. Someone who protects. Preserves. Sustains. Someone who accepts death and who cultivates life, who one day strikes a balance between light and dark.

He’s not that person yet. But he’s a hell of a lot closer than he once was. And it began with that hyacinth, planted under moonlight.

To which Jason bore witness.

If Nico believed in coincidences, he would call this one. As it is, he tends to believe that everything happens for a reason. Nico was fated to plant that flower. Jason was fated to watch.

“I’m telling you, Nico, it was you who got me thinking about how I could be more than just Jupiter’s son,” Jason says. “You really opened my eyes. And then a month later, when Juno took me…” He chews his lip. “I didn’t remember that moment until now, but I remember how I felt afterwards, like I wanted to just — do something spontaneous, something completely out of character. Surrender my rank and figure out what Jason Grace could do that Jupiter couldn’t. Even when I had amnesia, and even after that, I still had that feeling. It’s what made it so easy for me to choose Greek, to promote Frank as praetor, and then to stay here.” His fist knocks a quick pattern against Nico’s chest. The rhythm is indistinguishable from Nico’s heartbeat. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised it started with you.”

Nico, historically not great with emotions, pulls Jason in by the shirtfront and kisses him in all his dirt-smudged glory. Jason laughs, but he doesn’t break away to do it, so it vibrates over Nico’s lips and travels down his throat like a mild electric shock.

“What?” Nico asks, pulling away.

Jason’s smile looks indestructible. “Nothing.”

“You laughed.”

“I like when you kiss me,” Jason says, with the sun shining from his dimples. “That’s all.”

Nico blushes. “Oh.”

“I didn’t mean to stop you.” Jason’s lips twitch. “But while I’m at it, I guess I should thank you.”

“Thank me for what?” For kissing you? Nico considers, but he’s not that deluded. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You always say that,” Jason says, “after doing something amazing.”

This blush is not going anywhere, anytime soon. “Well, I didn’t do anything on purpose. I didn’t know you were watching.”

“Exactly. You inspired me without even meaning to.” Jason cups his face, so tender. Always. “Then and now.”

“It’s like you want me to kiss you,” Nico says, because he can’t take a compliment to save his life.

But Jason only grins. “I do want you to kiss me.”

Out of respect for Jason’s request, Nico kisses him again. 

This time, Jason doesn’t laugh.

Nico twists Jason's shirt into his fingers, right over his hips. Jason buries his hands into Nico’s already-tangled hair. A cool breeze rustles the plants on all sides and tickles their exposed skin.

Jason is gentle. Not like Nico is fragile, but more like Nico is worth taking his time. He breathes, “Sorry if I get dirt in your hair.”

“Don’t care,” Nico murmurs.

If only Nico from Camp Jupiter could see him now. Kissing a beautiful boy in a field of living things. 

I did this, he thinks. I nurtured this.

#jasicobingochallenge2024 #jason remembers nico #fanfiction #tw slight self destructive thoughts BUT just for a second #he's fine guys #jason grace #nico di angelo #jasico #jasico fic #pjo #pjo fic #fic #my fic #my writing #stuff #this user is NORMAL about a son of death who takes up fucking gardening she is regular and not thinking any untoward thoughts about it #she is certainly not obsessing over her own symbolism. NO SIR. #grey. it was this one #anyway!!!!!!!!!!!! have fun guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! have fun in the garden with the boys!!!!!!!!!!!!! #wow it is in fact past midnight #i was honestly going to do this earlier than midnight and then it just did not happen #i am not keeping up with my prompts very well yall i am several days behind #but that's okay because honestly ive already done more writing this month than i wouldve without the bingo #like by leaps and bounds #so it's okay. whatever i do is what i do and if i don't black out the card then so be it #and if i do black it out but it takes me more than a month that's also just life! #but in the end jasico fans have more jasico fanfiction and isnt that the ultimate goal we're all working toward #not world peace or any of that shit but sufficient jasico fanfic? yes? #yes.

[lastwave]

Hello, if you have the energy, time and will, would you expand on the recent post you made on how people in fandom talk about the skills and how harry feels about them? Like, what kind of things people say are hurtful/inaccurate/uncomfortable, in relation to disco elysium?

I do not mean to pressure you to educate me on this topic, as it is not the responsibility of the affected to educate unknowing people just because they are affected, of course. I just have not found many sources discussing the microaggression regarding the way some people talk about the skillset in disco elysium and the way that they might differ from the general microsaggression about psychosis and systems.

I ask this because I am curious about the way other people experience the world (though I know I will not always get my curiosity sated and this might be a selfish reason) and I want to know what not to do or say in talks about the skillset or in depictions of the skillset in art or writing. I want to be able to discuss and use the skillset as a game mechanic, narrative device and characters in a way that minimizes harm to marginalized groups. I also know that venting or talking about frustrations can sometimes help make one feel better, (but I also know that that depends on the person, problem and the relationship between the venter and the person listening) so maybe this can help relieve some feelings? Those are my intentions with this ask.

I apologize if my careful wording is too overly careful or if this question in other ways causes you unnecessary strife. I just try to be a careful person when it comes to these topics. If you'd rather only respond to me personally instead of the ask, feel free to message me. Whatever way you wanna handle this, if it be publicly as a post, a private message or if you do not feel like you want to answer at all.

Whatever you choose, I wish you the best day that you can have today. Kind regards, Chromatophorium

hiii thank u for asking!

im gonna preface the system bit with whether or not harry & his skills are a system is never explicitly stated, so take this all with a grain of salt

the rest is under the readmore so i don't clog up peoples dashboards

so what gets me is a lot of works imply the skills are less as people than Harry. i understand where the assumption comes from tho, because a lot of media likes to purport the idea of an "original" alter, which isn't how the disorder works. harry is the current host, and he identifies with the body, but the host isn't any more or less person than the other alters.

& we know the skills have independent thought from harry and their own, even if some (or a lot) of them share similar goals (see electrochemistry and volition, two very different personalities w/ different thoughts on how to go about things, but share a goal of keeping the system experiencing joy, though echem has considerably worse coping mechanisms). hell, they even have different political affiliations (see different routes) and a method of coming to a consensus on information (thought cabinet.)

and, as implied in the name, the skills have different talents from harry. *harry's* talent is connecting with people. i interpret the red checks with other skills as trying to let another alter front. i know ive had moments where i've had to let a way more socially adept alter take over. this would be a slightly different conversation if he was implied to be polyfragmented, but hes not soo.

that's why im less inclined to believe theyre a delusion or supernatural thing (shivers excluded, shes definitely supernatural), bc on the most part the skills just act like people, and all display signs of did/osdd (amnesia, distinct personalities, dissociation, etc.) if u want i can make a separate post going into individual skills and how i think they fit how certain alters form, but thats off topic

ANYWAY. it irks me when people boil the skills down to "this is the one that wants good things and this is the one that wants silly things and this is the one that wants bad things" bc it really falls easily into the negative stereotypes applied to systems & by extension psychotic people

#morris #hugh txt #disco elysium

[panickingpansexuality]

Together? Until the End

Elliott x Autistic Reader

Autistic people have the average life span of thirty-six years at least in the United States and when I'm reminded that I don't get a lot of time on Earth I get really upset. So this is an intense story of what people may need to hear. So this story talks a lot about death and self harm, you have been warned.

Also it is almost one in the morning so I am not sure if this will be any good.

It was another bad night, something that you often dealt with alone, but now that you were dating an incredibly considerate guy you didn't have to.

Elliott had come over around five to spend the night, he expected to find you outside with your cows or maybe even resting in the grass under a tree, not in bed clutching a stuffed animal to your chest like a life line.

"Love?" Elliott said, coming towards you.

You pressed your face into the stuffed animal as he came closer, Elliott sat near your knees in the bed. His presence making it a little easier for you to be cope.

He knew about your Autism and your history of self harm (he kissed most of your scars whenever he could reach them, a habit he also made when going in between your thighs), but what he didn't know about was this small piece of Autism that you didn't like to share with anyone and you were certain he didn't know.

You only found out when you were a teenager and now that you're older you felt like you didn't have hardly anytime left and you wanted it. You wanted to spend as much time as you could with him, you wanted him engraved into your soul so that in every life you'd remember how you loved each other, how safe he made you feel.

"(y/n)?" Elliott said, his voice pulling you from your thoughts.

"I have to tell you something." You say, "And I'm giving you another out, if you want to leave after I tell you then I won't judge you because no one deserves this."

Silently, Elliott grabbed your hand and squeezed it. The last time you told him this was when you two had first started to become interested in each other and it was when you told him you had autism.

You say up your one arm still clutching the stuffed animal around your chest.

"So autistic people have a shorter life expectancy.." you say unable to look up at him "We're given thirty-six years, sometimes maybe to our fifties, mainly our deaths are from suicide or heart problems...most of the time from stress of having to be "normal" in front of others."

Elliott gripped your hand as tight as he could, he took a deep breath studying the lines of your face. He felt his heart shatter in his chest, he wanted nothing more than to tuck you inside his pocket and keep you safe until you were both one-hundred.

"Can I hold you?" He asked

You nodded and you two met in the middle, your legs going around his waist, his head going to the spot in between your neck and shoulder.

"I'm don't want to leave you so early." You say crying. "I just got you. I don't want to leave you."

"You won't." Elliott said his voice broken, "You're gonna live so much longer."

"I get reminded about it every now and again," you say, "and I just get upset I'm sorry."

"No, no." Elliott said, "You're fine, you don't have to apologize, I'm glad you told me."

"Really?" You ask tears coming out of your eyes.

"Absolutely," Elliott responded, "It gives me an opportunity to insure that you will have a long and happy life. You are my entire world (y/n) and I'm going to do everything in my power to keep you here until we're both one-hundred."

You chuckle into his shoulder and kiss any part of his body you can reach without moving too much. You both move to lay on the bed, facing each other, Elliott's head above yours. His cheeks red from the tears that slipped out.

"I didn't mean to make you cry." You say, "I just..felt like it was something you deserved to know."

"It's not your fault." He said brushing the hair on your head.

"The idea of losing you is worse than any Hell that I could be put through."

"If I do die." You say, "I'd most likely leave the farm to you, you could sell it if you want or live here."

"Why on earth would you leave me anything?" He asks, "You've given me so much already."

"I plan on marrying you." You tell him, face going red, "So legally it would go to you."

Elliott tenses for a small moment and pulls away from you for a moment to look down at you and give you a soft smile.

"I'm glad we have the same plan for our futures together."

You laugh and lean up to kiss him sweetly, kisses with Elliott are always an occasion, they leave you breathless and needing more.

Quickly it becomes your hands roaming against each other wanting nothing more than to just kiss each other and keep each other grounded.

His hands go up your shirt and trace the scars from a time not yet forgotten, he leaves your lips only to go down and inspect your body to make sure you haven't relapsed.

"It's been a bad day." You say, "I'm glad you got here when you did."

"I am too." Elliott says coming back up to your lips, "Another moment away from you and I would've sold my soul to have some magic to transport me to you whenever one of us needed each other."

You roll your eyes at him, smile up at him and press another kiss on his lips.

When your make out session has ended the two of you lay in the bed, too lazy to get up and leave each other's warmth. Looking at Elliott you can't help but appreciate the time you are allowed to have with him and until he can find the fountain of youth to keep you both going for as long as he wishes, you'll just have to cherish every moment with him.

#stardew elliott #stardew valley #elliot stardew valley #stardew fanfiction #elliot x farmer #elliot x reader #elliot x reader stardew valley #sdv #stardew farmer #sdv elliot #sdv elliott #elliott stardew valley #stardew valley elliott #elliot stardew #elliott #elliott sdv #elliott x reader #sdv elliot x farmer #stardew valley elliot #stardew #stardew valley x austisc reader #x autistic reader

[nateriverswife]

Salutations.

First off; I would like to thank you for humoring my questions, by far. Having been in the fandom (Death Note) for quite a while can be daunting at times considering how persistent everyone is on certain views that, more often than not, contradicts the canon itself, though I do not mind the originality. Some of the questions you might remember answering from me would be;

1. How unfair it is for everyone in this fandom to go full autobiography mode on Light Yagami but wrote a piss poor characterisation of other characters.

2. L would not enjoy fighting for Justice under Light's idea

There might be more, but these two are the ones that I remember writing and asking.

I rather enjoy reading your point of views. Being an avid Lawlight shipper myself (which you might found dissapointing, and for that, I apologise) I found it rather... boring that most, if not all, were very insistent that L would join Light's side if given the opportunity while writing him very, very poorly. I enjoy these two through the energy they emitted while actively going against each other. Not when they shook hands and went about it all the same like a carousel ride.

Second: What is your opinion on the whole Wammy's House organisation debacle? On A and B? The whole Successor Programme?

I don't like it. Having being nurtured the same as these children does, I absolutely resented it. Partly because of how harmful the product of the whole environment, largely because of how it reflects the morale ground Quillsh Wammy stood and what he believes in. I despise men in suits, even more so than people in orange jumpers or stripped, black and white outfit.

(Call me E.H. I would like for us to be friends. Mutuals.)

Please, E.H., I would be honoured to be mutuals, but how could you betray me like this? Mid-message? Dropping a bomb of that size on me and my blog?

Seriously, though, I would like that. I will overlook this little flaw of yours, because not everyone can be perfect, and I will accept you with open arms.

Okay. Really dropping the act this time. You don’t have to apologies for shipping them, even though I suppose it was more ironic than anything. I already have mutuals that are like you. I filtered out the various tags concerning L/Light – there are a lot of variations –, and I am fine.

I will survive if I add one more… Hopefully — but I think, in this case, it is more of a “probably”, because you do seem to share some of my views on the whole manga/anime and that means we have some common ground, even though I believe that is not that difficult.

I am really glad you like reading my long-ass posts, because I do enjoy writing it. I actually was waiting for some kind of feedback from you, because, truthfully, I wasn’t sure if your opinions were supposed to be just published without any input from me or if you actually wanted me to say something.

I was both confused (didn’t understand why you decided specifically my blog, since it’s not that well know) and delighted by them.

In any case, I am happy to see this message, especially the last part. You are the first person on here who explicitly stated the wish for my friendship. I didn’t expect that at all. I’ve been told that I seem intimidating, and I still don’t get why, so seeing that someone isn’t put off by this, it’s a nice feeling.

I will now get to your questions, and the post is going to be long, because it’s on a topic that I am actually working on and wanted to do a post of my own, but felt like, “why would people care?”, so I am glad that you do.

PREMISE

I need to do a premise before, because I feel like this is relevant to understanding my opinion.

I would love to kick myself in the face every time I happen to mention it (even though I do so to help my motivation), because it seems that I bring it up so many times and it’s making me annoyed, like, “can this bitch (me) just shut the fuck up already?”. However, it’s important in this context.

I am writing a fanfiction about the Wammy’s House, during L’s years there. And, since I am doing this, my idea of the Wammy’s House is crafted in a way that can make my story work, but I do realize this, so I will try to eliminate all my OCs’ stuff (I think I’ll mention them), even though I still believe that some roles or events I have created can be considered plausible (not canon, of course), because they help explain some things that I noticed about L while reading the manga.

Another thing is that this is a work in progress and while I have an outline for the plot, a lot of things about the Wammy’s are still not definitive. So, everything I say is not set in stone. [This question also made me realise that I made a huge error when it comes to the timeline of my fanfic, which screwed up half of the outline, but thank you.]

Other than this, Ohba left a wide-open door for any interpretation of Watari and the Wammy’s, because he didn’t think too much about them. He just wrote them in for plot purposes and never developed them properly, so anything goes, theoretically, so maybe I will be a bit more lenient on both. I don’t deny the possibility of them being pretty fucked up, because I cannot say that what I think is completely backed by canon. To each their own, but since you have experienced a similar environment, I had to preface this, because my view on it doesn’t adhere to the reality of some of these institutions, and I don’t want you to believe that I’m oblivious to the real-life problems that occur.

I think I took more liberty here, because I had few things to start from, and I’m really fond of the idea that the people (Roger and Watari too) at the Wammy’s were like a family, with its ups and downs (more downs than ups – even in my fic, so I realise that not everything is all peaches and cream). It’s just the wishful thinking of my younger self that so desperately wanted to be part of that world, and I have a hard time getting rid of it.

I must also say that most of my choices regarding the Wammy’s structure and organisation is based on “gut feeling”/intuition. More often than not, I feel if something is right or wrong, even though I can’t pinpoint exactly what’s the reason for that. I just have the impression that something must be in a certain way, and if I don’t comply to this, it just feels uncomfortable until I fix it.

WATARI & ROGER

I want to start from them to explain exactly what I think of these two, particularly their past and what led them to create the Wammy’s.

Reference to another post I wrote – headcanons about Roger – but you needn’t to read it, since I am going to repeat it here, and it talks more about their relationship than the Wammy’s.

In my mind, Watari was both a professor and an inventor. The professor job needed to provide for him before his inventions took off and gave him enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life, since it seems that he was quite rich, even before L gained something.

So, together with Roger, who was his assistant, he was in close contact with different types of students and noticed the disparity between those who can study and have the resources and those who don’t them but have the abilities to continue. Of course, they couldn’t intervene in the private business of these people. Instead, they discussed knowledge, intelligence, and the social economic situation of England (and later around the world) that didn’t allow young kids, especially orphans, to develop themselves and their abilities, since they didn’t have the means.

Not trusting the state institutions with their money, they decided to take matters into their own hands and had in mind to create an orphanage that had an internal school, so they can provide them resources and knowledge, without making them sacrifice any of those.

But then a dilemma appeared: “what if some kids can learn faster than others and we end up slowing them down?”

[learn faster than others – because “prodigy” doesn’t mean anything when it comes to orphans that don’t have resources or any help from adults.]

And from that dilemma, the Wammy’s House was born. It was a specific type of the institution they had in mind, which was meant for those who seemed more capable than others.

It’s said that Watari owns different orphanages, but they are not talked about like the Wammy’s, so it’s safe to assume the main difference is this one – what kind of kids are there and what they learn.

About Roger, I honestly think that the “he hates kids” was added to have some sort of comedic effect. However, if it was meant to be taken seriously, and I do consider it canon, there are two reasons to me:

He began to hate them, as he continued to work at the Wammy’s, because they pulled pranks on him. He’s not fierce – shown to us by how he responded to Mello grabbing him and how he stopped Mello from bothering another kid. He is quite passive and not confrontational, so I believe he was an easy target for the kids, and he grew to despise their behaviour and to be quite afraid of them in a way, because, while he tried to stop Mello, his attempt was shallow. I don’t think this is because he didn’t care, but because Mello was angry at him, and his explosive nature made him cautious.

Romantic reason: the kids, and especially L, took Watari from him Watari was too occupied with his work that he almost forgot what he and Roger had. That obviously pained Roger and he began to resent the situation and those who stole him and his attention. That would explain why their relationship grew cold, because we don’t see Roger communicate with Watari once, so it means that something happened that drove them apart, aka these kids got in between.

No matter what the reason is, Roger tries to be emotionally distant from them. I have this trope that I associate with him of the grumpy old man having to deal with a kid because of circumstances he cannot control, and he grows attached to them, wanting to protect them at best of his abilities. This is my wishful thinking, but I believe he has those moments in which he thinks, “maybe they are not that bad”, and they then do something that makes him annoyed, and he’s like, “never mind”.

Watari is emotionally not present too, not because he doesn’t want to be involved, but because he is still an inventor before becoming L’s right hand indefinitely and full-time, so he has to fulfil that role and be involved in that community to promote his stuff, to develop it, and etc. Also, the Wammy’s and the other orphanages are relatively new in my opinion, because he first established them when he’s around 40-45, so a few years before L was born, and he has to make sure they all work as he wants to, and he has to make connections so he can find these kids to bring to the Wammy’s. So, he has a lot on his plate. For this reason, if the kids need to talk to him, they have to go through Roger and get a date and an hour for when he is avaliable. Roger says that if it's urgent, they can talk to him, but they are like, "no, thanks", aka they would rather eat cold and raw food for the rest of their lives.

WAMMY’S HOUSE

Location

I have actually thought about this for a long time, and even wrote a post (after I finished this section, I noticed that I was repeating word for word what I had put here, so please, consider reading it for all the reasons).

Littleton, in the north-west part of Winchester.

I know I’m kind of going the extra mile by doing this, but I’ve always done it for every structure I had to write something about, so the Wammy’s gets a real-life location too.

The actual true reason for which I chose this location is because it’s near big fields, and I needed that for plot purposes, but even without considering that, it seems to fit what we know about L’s life there.

He played tennis – there’s a tennis court 20 minutes by foot from there. Relevant that it’s by foot, because I imagined that Watari couldn’t constantly leave the Wammy’s with L for long periods of time and multiple times a week. He had other affairs to attend to, aside from his responsibility at the Wammy’s.

A’s suicide – there’s a church where he can be buried. It can be reached by foot, so the kids could attend his funeral. I also have a morbid headcanon that B took his body from his grave. I also liked to tie the church to L hearing bells before he dies, so this closeness would make it possible for everyone inside the Wammy’s to hear them.

Big space – because the Wammy’s seems to be pretty big by the manga panels we have, and I have a specific idea of how it’s structured, both its exterior and interior, so it was necessary to have many hectares available.

Structure

I made floor plans. I started this a while ago and never actually completed it, because the site I was using was infuriating, but I found an app, and managed to copy what I had done in the other one. I forgot to change the names of the rooms, because I created this to help me visualise the setting of my fic, so ignore them for now (I will point out some names there, just to explain one thing). Don't mind that they are two different sizes, because the app didn't let me make some of the furniture smaller, so I had to enlarge the rooms, so that's why the first floor is bigger.

It’s not definitive, because I still don’t understand where I should put their stairs – or if to put them, ‘cause based on Mello and L’s egos, they already think so highly of themselves that I don’t think they need a staircase to reach the first floor.

In my fic, I didn’t explicitly state where they are supposed to be. I’m letting the readers figure that one out for me, while I just stick to say if they go down or up them. The main problem is not if they should face or not the entrance, because they have to, but where the hell are on the first floor? My gut feeling keeps making me image them next to Lex’s room, but that doesn’t make sense and would be pretty ugly on the ground floor – they would be too close to the entrance, and I hate it. So, I’m just going to ignore it, until it becomes a problem, which I doubt because I’m the one writing this, and nobody is going to police every single detail.

The two unnamed bedrooms on the ground floor are for people that work there (cooks, cleaning staff or the nurse) that can’t go home for reasons.

In my fic, one of the rooms is always vacant, because I imagine that the employees are near the Wammy’s, so they don’t need to stay there, and it is a storage closet, with all of things – costumes and decorations for all kinds.

It’s a pretty big institution. The size of the rooms might not give that away, but it’s big. It has high ceilings, and the classrooms and bedrooms are longer than wider, but they are still very spacious. When I write and imagine it, even it’s from the perspective of small children, I envision everything to be comfortable even for older kids.

I couldn’t add everything I think it has, so I’ll just list them:

A small football field on the left with two benches, so the kids can rest.

Some big trees next the corners of the garden and some bushes here and there.

A stone path from the main entrance to the gate.

A shed on the right, with all the gardening tools.

The interior might not coincide with the way it is portrayed in the manga panels, but I like to imagine that after A’s death and L’s parting, things got restructured and the internal organisation changed.

Internal organisation - from the year it was founded to 1993, so even during L’s years there

I placed L’s arrival in 1988, when he’s about to turn 9, because L is shown to us to be in relatively light clothing in the one-shot “L: The Wammy’s House”, so it can’t be after 31st October. Winchester usually has a high of 11° and a low of 4° in November, and 8° and 2° in December, so I don’t see why he would be dressed up like that.

And 1993, because he says to Light that he stayed in England for 5 years, which also means that he is not from there. I headcanon him to be born in Scotland, because it’s hilarious to think he has a Scottish accent that he hides – “Bang! if Ah was kira, yoo'd be deid.” | “Looks loch someain drapped thes ceel phain in th' crowd earlier.” and so on. It’s so funny. And also, it kind of makes sense why he wasn’t in England before and why he knows standard English. He could also be from Northern Ireland, but he gives me Scottish vibes.

1993 is also the year in which I place A’s death. I don’t follow the timeline from Another Note, because I cannot imagine A and B being younger than L. I’ll talk about this later.

ENTRY

The first requisite for the kids to be brought to the Wammy’s is to show that they are more able than other (as in “able to learn to a faster speed” or show some specific ability), and they usually are kids that were in another orphanage already. Watari has a wide social network and, to me, he’s called by the people in charge of those institutions (that could be his, like he just owns it and is contact with the ones who take care of it) when they realise a kid’s ability. For this reason, rarely there are kids who are very young, and I put that the second requisite is that they have to be at least 5 years old, because the school inside it goes only from elementary school to high school.

Only in exceptional circumstances, the Wammy’s House takes on younger kids, e.g., if they are in danger and the Wammy’s is the closest place where they can stay. However, after everything is settled (a matter of a few days), they are transferred to other orphanages administrated by Watari if they are that young. They still can come back, when they are older, but it’s a lot more work to look after toddlers or pre-schoolers.

After passing the entry exam, all the kids have their own personal folders with all their existing documents – birth certificate, medical records, etc. – that will be given back to them once they leave the Wammy’s House.

While the whole letter system becomes a thing when L appears, the kids still have to choose their alias, because some of them surely have a troubled past and choosing a new name is a fresh start, as if the bad things that happened to them can’t reach them anymore inside those walls. Since making only some choose it would make them stood out, it is implemented as a general rule, and even Watari does it so it isn't seen as a bad thing.

ENTRY EXAM

To enter the Wammy’s House, there is an exam. Since every one of the kids that are sent here is with the idea that they are more able, the admission rate is 100%.

The exam covers different abilities: raging from knowledge the orphan should possess for their age to difficult stuff (this knowledge is chosen based on the national curriculum for students up to 18 years old), and it includes other scopes (e.g., musical, artistic, etc. – to understand if they have an inclination to something or if they are interested in that).

There is also a social part. Since they live into a community, it’s good to understand how to live with others. If they don’t pass this part, it doesn’t mean they get automatically excluded, but it can lower their position a bit.

There is an obvious fallacy, because if they theoretically know how to behave towards others, it doesn’t mean they employ that behaviour. In fact, most of the kids “know” how to act in a community, but they have some behavioral issues, and the higher they are in the grade system, the worse they are. I like the irony I created, so I’m keeping it in.

This exam focuses more on the thought process than the result.

THE GRADE SYSTEM

I created a system made by 6 grades + 1, which is called “Apex”.

All of them have a basic requirement in knowledge.

The first three (1 is the lowest, 3 is the highest) are more socially oriented and coincide to elementary and middle school. They mostly teach kids social skills, so they can work all together to get to a common objective, aka pass the grade. They focus on play, conversation, emotional intelligence and problem-solving skills.

When developing this, Watari thought it would be quite easy to pass it, but he was wrong. He found out that letting the kids try the test – which is, like, a presentation, a competition and a debate – every year created more hatred between them, so he had to add another year, so they could defuse these feelings and make them understand that cooperation is the best option.

The result here is not that important. The most important part is how they got there and how they all behaved towards each other, which should be inclusive. And, while the kids can maybe work better together as a class or big groups and pass the first two with ease, grade 3 is tricky. Not because the curriculum is hard, but because they need to find a person and trust that they are on the same page as them, but not everyone is eager to get to the new grade.

It never happened for someone of the age 13 to still be in the grade 3, so it was never a problem to “what if they remain there until they become 18?”, because Wammy’s existence is short at this point in time, and usually they find someone, but, in case it happens, Watari has a plan B and it’s individual classes to teach them what they should know at their age. They are still in grade 3 and they still have to do the debate with someone else, but if they pass it, depending on how much they have learnt, they can also do the exam to get to grade 5 or skip the classes about the things they already know, because the other three grades (4 is the lowest, 6 is the highest) are more individualistic. They don’t have to work with the others to pass it, so here is more important the result.

The last “grade” is not a grade, but a category. These are those who fulfilled all the requirements and are “free” to do whatever they want. It’s like they finished high school. They are not required to go to class or take some exams, unless they ask to get a degree or a master, in which case, if they need it, a professor is called to assist them and then, an external qualified examinator to test them and their knowledge. But, other than that, they are completely free.

CLASSES AND TEACHERS

Classes are semi-mandatory, and everyone is greatly encouraged to take part to all of them. Watari may even talk to those who deems more needing to be present, which are usually those in the first grades, especially if they misbehave or show anti-social behaviour.

For the first grades, there is one teacher per grade for every subject, since the syllabus is not hard. They are of course specialized in those parts. This choice was made for consistency and to create a great bond with them, since having different teachers might throw off the dynamics that exist within the class.

For the other grades, since the topics are harder, there is a different teacher for subject.

School time is a bit different from the one for the public school:

Youth Month represents the start of summer break.

Classes are resumed in September.

They have all the other breaks like Easter, Christmas and so on.

The classes are from Monday to Friday, and every student has their own timetable that may or may not coincide with those who share their same grade – it depends on what they know already, determined by a test at the end of every quarter.

ACTIVIES

Youth Month

For this, I took inspiration from youth games in Italy, which is basically an event that promotes inclusivity, sport, healthy competition, and social relations.

It’s in May, and every Sunday there is a different activity in which pairs compete. There are two different competitions based on age: 7-12; 13-17.

In 1989, I put that:

May 7: three legs run.

May 14: relay race.

May 21: treasure hunt.

May 27: cops and robbers (the last game is divided into two big groups to give a chance to gain a lot of points for those who didn’t until then).

In 1990, the only change I made is that the third game is table tennis, since it was raining outside.

Holidays

Valentine's Day, Halloween, Christmas, and New Year's Eve are the main holidays that are celebrated inside the Wammy's, because even though I believe that Watari is Christian and the orphanage has an affiliation to Christianity, I don’t think he indoctrinate the kids. That would go against the core of the Wammy’s in my opinion, because kids are supposed to think critically and accepting the existence of God without questioning it is not. They can always turn to that religion if they feel close to it, but it’s not mandatory. They don’t go to Church (imagine two old gay men having to make sure 30+ kids don’t destroy it every Sunday) nor celebrate other very Christian holidays, like Easter. They might have a feast, but it’s not publicly associated to the resurrection of Jesus.

This is a choice I made based on the fact that nobody showcases any belief in any type of supernatural entities. Mello wears a rosary, and it seems more symbolic than him actually believing and practicing the religion. I associate it to his mother, who I like to headcanon as a devoted Christian, since Eastern Europe/Balkans are very, extremely, to a worrying extent religious, to the point that people would rather go to church or call a priest home and pray instead of visiting a doctor to cure any kind of injury.

[Tangent: and the church as an institution seems like the mafia. I happened to be home in Romania when the priest and his helpers had to bless our home and they made us kneel in the dark with torches in hand. We had to kiss his ring and give him money, and it’s not like a voluntary contribution. It’s pretty much blackmailing, because if you don’t “donate”, they have the right to give your place in the graveyard to someone else, and they write it down how much you paid to see if it’s enough when you die. If it is not, your kids or relatives have to pay. It’s wild. It’s not everywhere like this, but the church is quite shady, at least in Romania, and they brainwashed people, especially older ones, to devote everything to them. It's insane.]

Halloween:

I put that a few days before Halloween one of the older kids is appointed to go around the Wammy’s and take notes of what the kids would love to eat (candies) and what they want to dress up as. Everything is done in the realm of possibilities. Watari is going to buy the costumes he can find. Usually, they are passed down from one person to another, so during L’s years, there have been enough requests to have pretty much the ones that are more common, and the only change is to make them fit the new person wearing it. Kids like also to be crafty, like for a mummy costume, they are going to use toilet paper and so on. It’s more about the candies, because he needs to buy something they will like.

In the first part of the day, Watari calls some outsiders to help him decorate the Wammy’s and carve pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns. Some kids give a hand, but the others are more preoccupied with their costumes.

The party usually starts at 17:30, after they take a group photo under the “Hallowe’en XXXX” banner over their head. They then play games and just do their things, while eating candies and other sweets. At 19, there is a feast. After that, Watari or Roger tell the kids some age-appropriate scary stories, and at 21, Littleton has fireworks, but you really have to be lucky to see them, aka it doesn’t have to rain, and it usually does.

Since trick and treat wasn’t popular in UK until the late 80s-early 90s, I put that the kids at the Wammy’s experienced it for the first time in 1992. Watari didn’t understand it at first, because he was the one to buy candies for the kids, so why would they need to go to someone else? (Poor grandpa, feeling replaced).

Christmas:

I wanted to do something different. Watari doesn’t ask the kids what they might want, but tries to surprise them, showing that he knows them, so that he can make up for all the time he isn’t present, which is a lot. He buys the gifts and places them under the tree in the main hall. After the kids open them, they take again a group photo next to the tree and the kids have all their presents in their hand, showing them to the camera. It’s very cozy and calm holiday. They have a big feast, and the kids are let playing with their new toys. They even watch some Christmas movies.

New Years’s Eve:

Watari doesn’t prepare anything special, other than a feast. There are fireworks, and that's it.

Valentine’s day:

There are two types, for those older than 14 and those younger, because I think the Wammy’s is strict when it comes to romance (mostly about PDA), which is not that serious at that age. But it’s an important part of growing up and they cannot go around fearmongering that liking someone in a romantic sense is bad. That would defeat the purpose of the first 3 grades. If you can’t like someone in that way, then you can’t even get near them, as to avoid the possibility of that feeling to develop.

Generally, everyone gets chocolates and candies, but they are also required to write a nice card to someone else. This person is chosen by extraction – done by Watari, who can pretend that is random, but it’s actually not.

In my fic, they usually write stupid things, like “you are funny”, but some of them get someone they have petty rivalry with, and so they write backhanded compliments, because they can go to Watari and complain about the card, and the sender can just lie that they meant it, that it’s all in good faith.

Those that are older than 14 can ask Watari a gift to buy to someone, but of course, it’s fucking embarrassing to go and ask him that, so they usually just gift their sweets to that person and do a hand-made card for them, if they feel like it. Only those that are braver go to ask him to buy a rose, a special card or something.

Stargazing

I added this activity for the summer break, in which they all gather in a nearby field and look at the sky on some specific days.

There is also an astronomer called by Watari that can answer their question, but the reason for this was to let the kids feel a bit freer and not confined within the gates of the Wammy’s, especially the younger ones that can’t go to the recreational ground. They can play some games there, but usually they just lay on the ground and talk with each other. There is a telescope they can use.

Recreational ground

There’s a park near the Wammy’s – 20 minutes by foot, but they usually use bicycles to get there.

Only those age 13 or up can go there. They can’t go alone, but always with someone. If someone age 11 or up wants to go, they need to be accompanied by someone age 16 or up, because those of 13-14-15 might not pay attention to them that much, even if they say, “yes, of course”.

For extra measure, Watari has the numbers of those who live near the park, that can contact him in case something happens. Those under 11 can’t go there under no circumstances. I decided this because the roads that take to the park are not safe for riding bicycles, and there is an age limit for doing that on the road.

Other than the necessary stuff for riding the bicycles, they have a tag with the number of the Wammy’s and a bag with Wammy’s insignia on it, because I did create it. It was just a vision in my mind, but I did a draft using picsart and color, so here you go. It’s not well made, since the lines of the ribbon banner are not straight. The ribbon banner I took from Google had such a bad quality that I could see each pixels (like in the first picture), so I had to draw over the border to make it more full.

The picture on the left was the first version.

The first idea was to have a W with an H behind it, like this.

But I decided to change it, also because it has all the letters of Watari.

Everything that is propriety of the Wammy’s House has this on.

SUCCESSOR PROGRAMME

Premise

First and foremost, I don’t like the idea of Watari being the one to impose it on everyone, without any regard for what they want to do, because I think he’s experienced enough with kids to know that you can't just force them to do something. They won’t. You can coerce them by using violence and threats, but none of the kids that we know of showcase any sign of being physically abused.

It’s also important to note that not everyone in the Wammy’s is competitive. Mello is the only one who wants to be at the top. Matt and Linda don’t care, and neither does Near. He is just first because he is that smart. However, this is after.

Competitiveness is more prevalent in the system I had created, because being in the Apex means not having to follow classes or have to listen to teachers. That’s the prime reason for why people want to reach it. It’s not about prestige, because I don’t think the kids, especially younger ones, have that concept wired in their brain. And usually, as a self-preservation technique, people tend to consider negative something they cannot reach/have and that opinion is automatically applied to those who can enjoy it, which makes them want to stay away from it so nobody thinks that of them, but if they had the chance to join it, they would take it in a heartbeat.

E.g., imagine someone that wants to go to a water park, but they find out that the entrance costs a lot or it’s far away. They are more likely to think, “well, it wasn’t that good to being with” or that it’s only for rich bastards or something, rather than accept that it just happens. They will even talk badly about it to others. However, if they manage to get in, they will enjoy every second of it.

So, in this case, while advancement is okay, getting to the higher position is pretty much a curse, because if you act in a certain way that is redeemed rude, then the reason is considered to be your status.

In my fic, when A and B got in to the Apex, people started to have a negative opinion of them. They have always been on their own, but since they are now reserved AND in the Apex, then it’s because they think too highly of themselves and less of others, which makes people find them some times annoying, even when they are doing nothing wrong. They might still interact with them nicely, but that doesn’t mean they like them.

Secondly, the general theme of the Death Note is that people are responsible for their own downfall in a way, so I’m going to follow that when it comes to its establishment and organisation.

L's idea

Unlike others in the fandom, I consider A and B to be older than L (4 years apart), so the successor programme was first tasted out when L was living there. Decided this because I want him to see what he caused, and for the reasons in the post I hyperlinked.

I have a kind of specific yet not definitive idea of how L’s life before the Wammy’s was. I won’t write all down because I don’t think it’s that important. The only part that is, is the fact that he managed to stop a terroristic attack to get Watari’s attention, because “go big or go home”, and he was the one who decided to establish the successor programme.

Establishment

When he arrived at the Wammy’s, he wanted immediately to get down to business, and asked Watari to talk to the smartest people there: A and B, together.

L introduced the idea for “when I’m away”, as in “when I am taking a break” – because I imagine him to ramble about his career to Watari in the days they stayed together before going back to the Wammy’s and on the 8-10 hours long trip, and Watari pointed out to him that he needed to have time to play/free time, and L said that he was right, that he’d put someone in his place for that time, he’d teach them what he knew, because he was very good at it, he was basically justice itself for how many things he knew – but A and B took that as in “when he dies”.

It was in that moment that L took everything more seriously. They talked for hours. A and B asked him lots of questions about that project, the possibility of that to happen, and how to make sure that it can last for a long time.

And while the conversation started as more of an abstract idea, after L showed them what he managed to do, they were both impressed and eager to learn to be able to do the same. They too had an interest in solving riddles, and… C’mon, it’s cool to be a detective, especially one that was supposed to be the greatest.

They discussed the technicalities and decided not to limit themselves only to two members, so that’s how the successor programme was actually created. It was also A and B to decide their own names, because they said that, since he’s called L, they too should have they own letters, and, while talking, they said, “I would be an alternative” and “if you are that, then I’ll be your backup”, so that’s how they got them.

Basically, it started with L, but A and B became co-owners of this programme in a way, and L didn’t mind it, because they were older than him, seemed wiser, and he looked up to them in a way.

For the others, the letters were chosen in two different ways: the first five smartest people there would be the first letters of the alphabet, while the others would have their own letter based on their real name, because five people were enough.

And I say, “smartest people”, but A and B advised L to look for other qualities other than that, because you can have someone that is extremely intelligent, but if they are extremely reckless too, then that detective persona is doomed to fail.

All three of them talked to kids in grades 4-5-6 and the Apex (in my fic, there are other two people here) about this project, but they weren’t obliged to accept. They let L speak, who explained what they were planning to do, showed them what he did, and gave them the choice to accept or not. If they didn’t accept, they would ask them to not divulge the information they discussed. In my fic, no one actually says no, because they think it’s awesome.

In case they accepted, he granted them a wish, something that he would fulfil, so that, if they wouldn’t get chosen, at least they wouldn’t think they wasted time. It’s a quality I noticed in L, while reading the manga. I explained it in my long post about the characters: he compensates his actions, which I think it’s something he picked up as he started to be interested in solving cases (before he arrived at the Wammy’s), because he saw what criminals had to do after they got caught doing something bad, and wasting people’s time is bad.

So, everyone had a choice and L, initially, worked mostly with the first five people in the successor programme, but not immediately.

In my fic, there is the MC that tries to destroy him and his project, but even without her, it makes sense that he would take time, years even, to make sure this project can operate without any vulnerabilities. He’s far-sighted and took things more seriously, thanks to A and B’s inputs, so he wanted to create a solid foundation for this detective persona and the project.

However, he didn’t spend all his time thinking about that, because he is also a child, so he experienced a bit of his childhood: he participated in Wammy’s activities, played with the other kids, spent his time picking and giving up interests, etc. He even had tennis practices and tournaments, so it’s not like he just solved cases. He still did – smaller ones – but not all the goddamn time. He was also into stocks, and he had to pay attention to that too.

To me, he started when he was 12-13 to solve them periodically, but not publicly, just to have some credibility in the eyes of England’s law enforcement, that could then recommend him to other national law enforcement, slowly building up his empire.

There wasn’t this urgency or this pressure to be like him. It was like a long-period plan that still had to show its fruits. L wouldn’t even tell all the members everything he solved – just the first five, because he would give them the case files to practice their skills.

ALTERNATIVE / A

So, he was older than L and participated to the establishment of the successor programme.

For the first years, he didn’t actually think too much about it, but as he was slowly approaching being 18, he started to have doubts about his abilities, because, as said before, L gave him case files to solve and he wasn’t able to get any of them entirely right. He still didn’t want to admit defeat and be a disappointment in the other eyes’, so he tried times and times again. This had an impact on his mental health, of course.

L noticed this change in attitude and told him that he can switch places with B. He had no problem with it, but A, instead of admitting that he wasn’t fit for the position, preferred to argue with him, damaging their relation.

The situation was really heavy for him, and since telling the truth was worse than anything else, his first attempt to leave it was by running away from the Wammy’s. That didn’t go well, because B, with a group of people there, managed to find him. A invented some kind of excuse, that he was being followed and didn’t want to bring them to the orphanage. B didn’t buy it, and they too started to argue.

So, in that case, telling the truth was worse than death and he couldn’t bear the idea of being a complete failure, and killed himself.

That’s how I see how things went, more or less. And L was blamed for it. The successor programme was interrupted, and some of them decided not to participate anymore, even though they could always return, once and if it would be resumed.

L left the Wammy’s the same year, before turning 14, which is important, because B kills a 13-years old girl by bashing her head, and that what I think he wanted to do to L (in my fic, it’s him and the MC, but whatever) at that time, but couldn’t.

In my fic, A’s name at the Wammy’s is Natal, because it means birth/birthday. And B’s name is Elioenai, which means “towards him are my eyes”. Now, this can have different interpretations: the “eyes” could mean the Shinigami eyes and “him” could be Natal, or L. I am not sure how much I consider him having the Shinigami eyes to be canon. It’s an interesting concept, but I don’t understand how that would be possible, like what led to that and what else does it mean for B? Is he part Shinigami? Or his mother had wild sex with a Shinigami, that then got some type of punishment by the King, because it’s against the rules?

I don’t know, so I don’t count them as canon, to be honest. Cool, but I don’t get it.

For me, Beyond Birthday means also “After Natal”.

BEYOND BIRTHDAY / B

I don’t believe he went completely insane after A’s death. In my mind, he was always kind of shady, ruthless, based on survival instinct and self-preservation. He had an attachment to A, but he had no problem to consider him also a tool that he could use and then discard, if he needed to. He loved him, but he always prioritized himself, at the end of the day.

I associate to them the betrayal trope - Was It All a Lie?

If things went differently and A became L, that would not last long, because B would kill him so that he could succeed him, and nobody would question it, because they wouldn’t know what truly happened.

A’s death screwed up his plan and blamed L for it. He wanted to take his place, but he first needed his detective persona to be well established. He let L do the hard work to create it. A mostly gave some inputs to help him, while B supervised it, to make sure that everything was going according to his plan.

Since A was chosen as first successor, he couldn’t convince him to switch places, because he didn’t want him and L to have the impression that he really wanted that.

He honestly believed that L would be the first one to crack, because he was younger, but when A died and the project stalled for an indefinite period of time, he couldn’t take it. He planned his life to go in a certain way, but now L wouldn’t work as L anymore for an indefinite time, making no progress, and the project was a big question mark, without any information on when or if it would be resumed? That made him see red.

If he couldn’t become L, then nobody deserved it, and he decided to impersonate L and ruin his career. If he had managed to kill himself in Another Note, while Misora still believed him to be L, then that would’ve had irreparable damages to L’s credibility (Misora would tell Raye, who would tell to the FBI, and etc.), and L would’ve needed a lot of time to get that trust back.

That’s one of my interpretations of the LABB case, because I can’t really explain why B decided to that. We take for granted that the Another Note is canon, given also the praise by Ohba, but… It’s not. I have a hard time to consider things about L published after the manga conclusion canon, because they usually follow the fandom’s reaction. I consider the two one shots about Near canon, because Near has never had the same kind of fanbase L did and does, so it’s easy to not be influenced by what other people think.

In Another Note’s case, it’s also written by someone else and, even though it might be weird to say it, it’s a fanfiction in my eyes, that Ohba considers canon because he is lazy, and couldn’t come up with any type of case L solved. He said that himself.

I pick and choose, basically. I could also throw Another Note out the window, with A and B, and pretend they don’t even exist, and I wouldn’t be “wrong” in doing so, but I like them, even though some parts of the novel leave me confused, because it contradicts the canon.

AFTER A'S DEATH

I haven’t thought about this too much. I have just a general idea of the fact that the orphanage got restructured in some way, but don’t know what exactly changed. It’s just my gut feeling telling me that, as well as saying that the grade system got replaced by a simple graduation list, who ranked the kids based on points they gathered during the year by doing tests, and etc. Can’t go in-depth, because there is nothing here that I actually explored. It isn’t important in my fic, so I haven’t paid too much attention to that. I might start to think about it in the future, but I still want to submit my answer.

It gets tricky when it comes to who decided that Mello and Near are meant to be his successors. It makes sense that it would be something imposed to them, but they seem to want it. Near takes on the title of his successor and even tells Light that he is that, meaning that he does not despise it. Mello clearly wants to be the best, and the best in his eyes is L, and I think this is due to the fact that L, during their time, is an established figure in the world and they want to be like him. He came from the Wammy’s, which tells them that they can reach that level of grandiosity.

In the 2013 “It’s not about justice" one-shot, it said that some of the kids lose respect for L and keep their distance, so it is not mandatory for everyone to be part of the successor programme. Maybe even here, it’s mainly for the best in the institution, so that position was offered to Near, Mello and Matt (third in line).

Mello accepted for obvious reasons. Near because he likes to solve puzzles. Matt because, “yeah, why not”, but never believed that he would ever end up actually taking on that role, because Mello was in front of him.

Here, they are not given letters in an alphabetical order, so there isn’t a first or a second for L’s position (it exists only inside the Wammy’s), and it ties well with what I said before about A and B. A felt like he needed to become L and couldn’t back down or ask for help because he was "A", but now, who feels fit will take on L’s role and can also work with the other, without feeling like they need to do things alone.

I doubt L would make the same mistake twice and impose such job on only one person. Besides, I don’t think L believed to die that young, so while they taught them some important skills to be a detective, the idea was that they will become L later in life – in their 40/50s. Unfortunately, L died young and so even the successors were young.

Maybe it’s just naivety on my part, and the interpretation of the majority in this fandom of the Wammy’s House, Watari and the Successor Programme is more accurate than mine.

Of course, characters’ individual experience of the Wammy’s can be absolutely horrendous and they are not fond of the institution, but I don’t think Wammy’s House was born or became as something meant to create copies of L, especially because Near and Mello’s, as well as Matt and Linda’s, personalities and thought processes aren’t a carbon copy of his. They are their own people, in some way.

That’s all I had to say. I think I wrote enough to get a grasp of my idea of everything, even though there are some parts that I did not disclose or aren’t definitive. So, keep that in mind – I might as well wake up one day and decide to consider Wammy’s a factory of Ls, that resembles the common depiction of Hell in cartoons, but I highly doubt it.

Hope you like it. Let me know. And thank you for the ask, as always.

I kept thinking who you might be, based on when you sent the asks and my notifications around that time – maybe to find a correlation (e.g., you read something I wrote and thought of talking about that) – and I identified some accounts. Some of them are mutuals, that I can now exclude. The other non-mutuals that ship L/Light but have views that are different from yours. So, when I said that maybe I know who you might be, I think I was wrong, so I am quite curious to find out the truth.

Take care, E.H.

#as always - hopefully my english is good lmao #thx again #death note #death note meta #l lawliet #beyond birthday #wammy's house #quillish wammy #watari #roger ruvie #mihael keehl #alternative #mail jeevas #nate river #dn.inbox #dn.general

[bluespiritshonour]

IDK why Azula stans hate acknowledging the fact that Azula is both abused and an abuser? Do you know why?

Okay. I gotta make one thing clear: I really like Azula. Is she terrible? Yeah. Is she iconic? Uh... Also yeah.

I really like Azula and I have no problem acknowledging that she's a terrible, terrible person. And a villain.

This is not aimed at you for asking the question, anon. I just wanted to clarify that I absolutely love both Azula and Zuko. 😅

And for that I've often had people come at me for posts that slightly favoured one over the other like—guys, I like them both? They both also have flaws? They both also did horrible things and committed war crimes?

The only difference is that Zuko got a redemption arc while Azula didn't. But... Pointing out one's mistakes in one post doesn't mean I'm trashing them.

Azula did abuse Zuko. She was also abused by Ozai. She and Zuko were both abused by Ozai and in some ways, Zuko had a support system that she didn't.

They both also suffered. But in different ways. Azula had her father's approval but never his love. Her abuse was psychological. While Zuko's was physical and psychological. They're both children abused by a terrible father.

After Zuko breaks free of his need for his father's approval you see that he doesn't hate Azula anymore. Pre-redemption Zuko would've rejoiced winning an Agni Kai against her.

(Which he would've never won because pre-redemption Zuko would also never have accepted Katara's help and she's technically the one who defeated Azula).

But Zuko that has matured simply feels bad for her because no one knows better than him what growing up with their father is like.

Azula looks out for him too. Like, when she knows he's visiting Iroh in prison and doesn't rat him out. She warns him to be careful. She's a lot more brainwashed than he is—but she's also younger!

It's just... complicated.

As someone who loved Azula because she was efficient—and who also loves Zuko because of everything!—like, damn that kid faced the consequences of his actions, didn't he?—well, it doesn't have to be a fight?

To answer your question, I've seen both Azula stans and Zuko stans that do not want any sort of nuance.

I think it has to do with internet extremism and purity culture. People no longer think “I don't like it”—they have to put a “this is morally wrong” spin on it.

I like Azula and she's a terrible person. Doesn't mean she's irredeemable though. I'd love to see an Azula-redemption arc. Since she's a kid and she deserves to heal.

But I can also say that Azula and her war crimes are fictional, I think she's cool. What she does is wrong. People forget that you're allowed to like villains. You're allowed to like grey characters. And most of all, people really need to learn to distinguish between fiction and reality and where what is acceptable.

Which is why a present day piece of media can never pull off a redemption arc like Zuko's. Because of internet purity culture. Like, fuck it, people can barely handle Taigen!

It's okay to like Azula. You don't have to justify her actions for it. You're not a coloniser sympathiser for liking her as long as you realise what she did was wrong and accept it.

—Yours Sincerely,

A citizen of a formerly colonised country who's very painfully aware of the harms of imperialism.

Trying to use her abuse as an excuse isn't the way to go. Same for Zuko! I love ATLA because when Zuko apologies to the gaang, he doesn't once bring up his tragic past. It's not an excuse!

Anyways, anon. Thanks for the ask. I really needed to rant. Sorry it became this behemoth though. Haha.

TLDR: the reason is internet purity culture. People feel guilty for liking a villain. Trust me, liking a fictional bad guy—or a morally grey—or complicated guy—does not make you a bad guy. People need to learn to distinguish between fiction and reality.

And even then, in real life you need to learn what makes criminals if you're to stop crime. For example: how poverty leads to crime and eliminating poverty would go a long way in stopping crime than incarceration does. Like, how probably education and societal change where rape is as unthinkable as cannibalism would do more to prevent rapes than purity culture would. If you get what I mean.

#atla #zuko #azula #avatar the last airbender #anonymous letters #rape mention #for those who might want to filter the tag

[mdzs-fanon-exposed]

An in-text rumor rating does sound interesting!

For example, WWX being a ‘playboy’ is something believed by everyone, even JC, and fandom even has a tag for it. But!there are lines about WWX saving his first kiss, he never follows up on his flirts, he actually dies a virgin himself, and a lot of those rumors came from ‘yllz deflowering virgins’ and other propaganda to turn WWX into a public target by the clans. And at the time WWX was stuck on a corpse mountain burying a giggling radish.

So the RUMOR is true but it’s not ‘true’ for the character.

And, JC killing DC cultivators as a ‘rumour’ is interesting. Cuz one of the first thoughts we get from JC is him thinking to take away ‘MXY’ to ‘confirm’ and this is from his first opening appearance. When JC feels sure and WWX is finally cornered, JC just gives a gesture and his disciples act immediately, bribing and cordoning off the inn and absolutely no one intervenes as WWX screams in terror from inside.

Jin Ling is the most important character witness for JC, as he the closest to him and also the one who defends JC the most. And he confirms that JC ‘doesn’t let any of them go even if they’re innocent’ and actively helps MXY escape, saving him from his own Uncle. Even if the specific statement about JC whipping people to death is false, there is enough to say that there is some credibility to it overall. And JC’s overall violent behavior, even to his own nephew, doesn’t do him any favors.

This is getting a bit too long sorry, but I need to point out a problem with mo dao and gui dao. Just in case you don’t know, the official translation messes up these extremely important words which leads to a lot of confusion about WWX’s actual cultivation and fanon claiming that it is evil. WWX practices gui dao and other than one time, uses this to describe his cultivation. Xue Yang uses mo dao and all its horrors as seen in Yi City and the Villainous Friends extra.

This can get very confusing when getting into details and singular incidents, when seeing how the narrative treats WWX’s cultivation, how the public is made to see it, how clans like LQR assume it to be, how JGS tries to recreate it, and of course, how it’s treated when compared to the Nie cultivation and how its users always canonically Qi deviate but doesn’t face such scrutiny cuz Nie is a Great Clan.

But obviously you can’t just believe my words, so perhaps there might be a need for a direct Chinese text confirmation, maybe from a trusted friend or online if you can find a trusted source (very hard in this fandom sadly).

Thank you for your time. I hope this blog is fun for you, I love MDZS and having even more people analyzing this amazing book and text is wonderful.

i really appreciate your second ask, and there's no need to apologize! i did in fact ask for correction on that claim about jiang cheng, and i'm happy to get constructive feedback. thank you for messaging me! (and if these aren't sent from the same person...... whoops)

to your second point: if i'm understanding it correctly, you're saying that the "demonic cultivation" we know from the english translations is actually two things mistranslated as one; wei wuxian's branch "gui dao", which he invented, and the actual "mo dao" of Mo Dao Zu Shi, which is the more... harmful/evil of the two, and which maybe existed before wei wuxian came along? (or he invented both but only uses gui dao?) the implications i'm getting here are that the fandom (and many of the characters) misconstrues wei wuxian's actual method for the "evil" method and so thinks wei wuxian is committing more harm than he actually is.

that's a really interesting point, and i'm glad you brought it to my attention. unfortunately, i don't have any preexisting trusted friends/sources that would be able to help me with the chinese raws. in general, my unfamiliarity with these nuances (and chinese culture as a whole) means that i'm much more likely to make mistakes if i rely on that knowledge base on this blog. as i mentioned in my pinned post, i'm only using the english translation of the novels for this reason, and the english versions don't differentiate between different forms of demonic cultivation.

in future posts i will likely not be making a distinction between "gui dao" and "mo dao" without extra help; however, i also don't intend on answering any submissions that would require me to make the distinction anyways. i'm trying to be as objective as possible on this blog (with the exception of some clearly labeled analysis), and i don't exactly feel qualified to rate something as subjective as morality. i can rate the canon or fanon status of specific actions such as "wei wuxian digs up graves," but submissions that make generalizing statements along the lines of "wei wuxian's branch of cultivation is evil" will be ignored.

thank you again for the ask! i'd love to continue this conversation, especially if you (or anyone else) wants to clarify something here. i love MDZS too and i'm really happy that so many people are coming along for this ride with me :)

#asks and answers

[zuko-always-lies]

You Azula stans seem to think Azula does not need to take responsibility for anything or apologize and just be magically forgiven and accepted by everyone post war . What do you realistically think Azula should do post war as part of her redemption or everyone should just instantly like her just because she was a victim?

First, I want to make it clear that I don't think anyone is obligated to forgive Azula, since forgiveness is never an obligation. I have commented before that I think there are certain characters who would fairly easily forgive Azula or not bear much of a grudge against her in the first place, but that doesn't mean I hold anyone as being obligated to forgive her.

However, Azula is a badly abused child soldier, and I think she deserves to be treated with compassion and humanity. That is the obligation I believe is owed to her.

I also find the emphasis on Azula taking responsibility to be odd, because of what other characters do not do. Zuko never takes responsibility for at least half of the bad things he does, while Iroh only ever takes real responsibility for Lu Ten's death and never really for anything else. Mai and Ty Lee are never shown "taking responsibility" for the bad things they do, and like Zuko their role in conquering Ba Sing Se remains unmarked on. I think the narrative treated Jet poorly, but I don't think he ever clearly takes responsibility for the bad things he did, like manipulating Katara. Singling Azula out seems very odd.

I do think it would be good for Azula to take some responsibility for her actions in the war, but she was an abused child soldier fighting a war that began 85 years before her birth. Thus, ultimately, I don't place that much responsibility on her for the actions she took during the war, so I don't think it would be the end of the world if she didn't clearly take responsibility for what she did but ended up in a position where she wasn't actively doing harm to others. The last bit is probably the most important. She isn't supposed to be the saintlike savior of the Fire Nation whose purpose is to cleanse it of its sins, Zuko is.

Most actions of the actions Azula took which negatively affected named characters(who I know people focus the most on) were normal actions in war. People are rarely expected to apologize for those, even in cases when soldiers from different sides recoincile after the war, and some things would honestly be weird to appologize for.

That being said, if Azula wants personal relationships with certain people, she would probably have to apologize to them.

In any case, the most substantative way that she could "take responsibility" for her role in the war is helping to build a better world after the war. But I think a lot of that is predicate on and tied up with her role as Princess of the Fire Naton, and if she cuts herself off from her old status and position or is forciably cut off from it, her responsibility becomes less clear, as does the degree to which her actions affect the world.

#Azula

[briarpatch-kids]

hEDS anon from before. I think you are right that what happened was we (reasonably) assumed two different types of symptom progression from that person saying they're "losing their ability to walk."

If your assumption was right you might be saving their life. My assumption made it look like you were taking a symptom I personally experience and saying "People with your illness don't have this, period."

Which happens to hEDS people a lot and has a serious impact on our ability to seek care. I'm sorry for getting into it. I'm jumpy because I've seen illness faker communities, including self-identified healthcare providers, swarm people with hEDS and armchair-diagnose them with Munchausens by internet just for posting a selfie in a wheelchair. Again, that's not what you were doing, it just raised red flags for me because we were getting two different things from that post. I apologize.

I wanted to clarify this point because when I say we're not taken seriously, THAT is what I mean—that healthcare providers themselves will gleefully take part in communities like that, and then go to work and be the deciding factor in whether or not somebody gets a diagnosis or a prescription or a referral or a procedure that they desperately need.

I don't have an issue with people rightfully pointing out that hEDS is not the most debilitating illness in the world, and I do understand now that that's all you were doing.

Is there a term you generally prefer people to use? I'm kind of in the same boat as that other anon. I don't really know how I should for instance quickly get across "my knees and ankles are so unstable that they will randomly drop me and every time I put weight on them that instability gets permanently a little worse, which in addition to pain and comorbid POTS means I'm walking less and less, can't leave my home without a wheelchair, and spend most of my time trapped in bed or on the couch, and I don't have access to knowledgeable providers who could prescribe me appropriate PT or orthoses that I can't afford without insurance, so this is unlikely to resolve or even stop progressing any time soon," other than "I'm losing my ability to walk."

I don't mean that in a smartass way. I do understand there's an important distinction between "This thing is hard/painful/exhausting/inconsistent" and "This thing is impossible" but I'm not sure where that distinction is or how to encapsulate it in words.

Obviously that's not your job either, I just wondered if you did know of any better terminology.

Accusing people of being into that illness fakers shit because they said you might be misdiagnosed is not okay. That's basically telling every other disabled person that I'm not safe to be around, which is not true and frankly extremely angering. I'm ALSO harmed by them as an online disabled person with very visible disability aids and I very much take offense at even being compared to them when I was trying to save your life. Not everyone with concerns about EDS is a large reddit group posting about which disabled person took a shit and what conspiracy theory they have on it. Get over yourself holy shit, I'm not illness fakers.

Also, you tell them the issue you're having. "My joints are unstable and causing problems and pain, I need PT" Sensationalized phrases like "I'm losing the ability to walk" even if you ARE aren't going to get you anywhere.

[rainbowsky]

I was just aimlessly scrolling through tumblr and came across a post saying " XZ is straight but WY is not* . This assumption was made because apparently: gay ppl know these things. So does that mean I'm now straight because I believe they're both part of the community in some way? 😃. Also if you're assuming WY is gay based on his words, then by that logic Xz past actions put him in close proximity to that.

We all assume based on perception, however to outright dismiss the possibilities on either side just seems absurd to me.

Hi Anon,

I apologize in advance for what's going to be a bit of an annoyed rant about 'gaydar'.

Fake, fan fiction, CPN.

Both of them are obviously 'not straight', because they're in a relationship. Beyond that it's anyone's guess. I personally don't see any evidence of DD being into women. I talked about that in various previous posts, starting here. I think GG is likely bi, given their banter in the BTS.

The Tumblr post might have been referring to an exchange GG had with a gay acquaintance on Weibo where the guy said he thought GG was straight. Just so everyone knows: Gay people do not have 'special magic powers' to read each other's minds, which is what a lot of straight people seem to think (and even some gays).

This is especially true when someone is in the closet and actively trying to hide their sexuality. Men who attract hordes of women like GG does are doubly able to fly under the radar. There is a reason why gay people often do a lot of hand-wringing over whether the person they're attracted to 'plays for their team'.

And let's not forget the whole aspect of bi erasure that GG's friend might have been engaging in, whether or not he intended to.

I want everyone to please understand, because I get a lot of asks about gaydar:

GAYDAR IS A MYTH

And before anyone sends me a bunch of dubious studies claiming it's 60% accurate, those numbers actually prove that gaydar isn't real.

I actually get pissed off when people talk about gaydar and try to make it out to be some sort of real thing. It's not. All gaydar is for the most part, is garden variety gender role stereotyping being cast into some sort of 'folksy queer intuition' branding to make it seem less offensive. Gender presentation, mannerisms and vocal intonations can't tell us about someone's gender or sexuality.

It might sometimes be fun to joke around about certain stereotypical things as being 'very gay', and for the most part I find that harmless and sometimes make those jokes myself, but 'gaydar' can actually be harmful and misleading.

While most of us joking around about stereotypes understand that a flowy blouse or a tight mesh shirt aren't actually gay, a lot of people treat gaydar as science and genuinely believe it's real. I think we need to be cautious about what we claim, and circumspect about how we use 'gaydar'. It is one of those 'for entertainment purposes only' concepts, and should never be treated as hard evidence of anything.

So a gay person who happens to know GG in college will only know about GG, what GG wants him to know.

GG is even more expressive of queer Pride than DD, so I always find it funny when someone refers to him as straight. Whether gay or bi, he's clearly not straight.

And contrary to what a shocking number of BXG believe, straight guys don't fall in love with men and date/marry them.

(BTW, I'm not saying we should never use the term 'gaydar'. It can be fun, and an easy shorthand in certain contexts. I'm just saying we should always be cautious about how we use the term so that A] we're not hurting others and B] we're not misleading others. It's one of those fun but potentially harmful toys that should be taken away from us when we are irresponsible about how how we play with it.)

#lgbtpride #some guys are not straight guys #ask