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dreamcatcherrs · 3 years

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dating a faceless streamer/youtuber; mcyt x reader

+ this was a request, but it got deleted in my drafts ;-; sorry!

dream:

since he is also a faceless youtuber

he’s very understanding of keeping your privacy

and whatever reason you have to not reveal your face, he respects it

he knows what it’s like to have people tell him to face reveal

sometimes his voice will just appear in the back of your streams/videos

like in sapnap’s with the question about one direction

and chat is like, how long has he been here?????

the two of you would hint at a face reveal

and then after weeks brush it off like it was nothing

because you like to torture the fans, I guess🙄

because dream never has a face cam on

he has the perfect seat for you on his lap whenever he streams/films

and the same thing goes for when you film/stream; he’ll be sitting right next to you with his hand in yours or on your thigh

you’re known as the faceless couple

georgenotfound:

it really doesn't bother him at all that you’re a faceless streamer/youtuber

I don't see him as the type to post a whole lot of pictures with his s/o anyways

or something along those lines

so it wouldn't make a big difference to him

would just think it was funny to tease chat about knowing what you look like, when they don't

and then having them just hear you voice in the background of his videos sometimes

but not actually seeing you

he kinda likes that your relationship is more concealed

and that it’s harder for people to come at you when they don't know what you look like exactly, just because he’s dating you

because that would honestly be his biggest worry when revealing your relationship

so he’s happy that’s one less worry :)

sapnap:

does everything to not get people to beg for a face reveal

he doesn't want people to put that kind of pressure on you

especially if they go after you for it just because you're dating him

like, he will make a video about it if he has to

or tweet about it

the last thing he wants is for the fake fans to try and reveal your face or other things about you

when clearly that’s what you wanna keep private

that being said, he’d do so many streams with you

wether it’s gong against each other, or being on the same team

you always have so much fun together

even if you're literally in the same room together

if his face cam is on, he’d look over at you every now and then and send you a smile or some shit like that

there’s some pretty cute moments - expect a compilation

badboyhalo:

bad would be really proud to have an s/o who did youtube/streamed

and he would for sure help you out if you ever needed him to!

like with coding

or just general growth in your channel

wouldn't really care if you showed your face or not - whatever you're happy with makes him happy

he would just make sure that you never felt pressured to show your face

he knows people out there can be meanies

and come for you just because you don't show your face

and he’d always be there to talk to about it if it ever stressed you out

he would also make sure that you didn't hide your face because you didn’t like it or something like that

and if that was the case, you bet he’d be reassuring you

calling your all kinds of sweet things and show you lots of love

he takes lots of pictures of his two favourite girls

you and rat, of course (without showing your face, obviously)

technoblade:

he actually really likes that you're a faceless streamer/youtuber

like, he doesn't notice how much he likes it

before he realises all of the times you'd sneaked some hand-holding while streaming, or shared little kisses when on mute wouldn't have been possible if you both didn't show your faces

you’d share these secret glances when streaming/filming together

and no one would even know about it

sometimes his chat hears a little talking in the background from you

but techno just brushes it off like you weren't sitting right next to him the entire time

and vice versa

he also just stays with you when you're working

sharing small touches and words

chat also notice eventually how much you gush over each other without noticing

it happens A LOT more than you realise

especially from his side🤭

wilbur soot:

okay so

I think wilbur would have a hard time not showing you off to stream every second of the day

he would just always talk about you and want you there with him in his streams

and miss your touch after 5 minutes of being apart

but would be totally respectful of you wanting to remain faceless

he would just talk to you from an angle where chat couldnt see you

but yeah, he loves that you do the same type of job as him

and most of all, you motivate each other on days where you can't be bothered to even get out of bed

you’re definitely that couple that everyone makes cute compilations of

and that everyone strives to be

chat loves you, what more can I say

corpse husband:

ANOTHER FACELESS COUPLE

the power you two hold over everyone is actually immaculate

you stream/film together all the time

just having fun and being yourselves

he would definitely ask if you could join the games he plays with others when streaming

and if that wasn't possible, he’d just get you to come into his room and be part of it that way

he teases you a lot on stream

both cutely and mischievously

and your viewers are like👀

while his chat is just going crazy

you share lots of giggles

like, seriously, the majority of the videos/streams consists of you two laughing your asses off

you two will forever be known as the faceless couple

even if you both face reveal, that’ll always be your title

skeppy:

zak will find a way to show you off no matter what

he just can't resist

the way his heart is always beating out of his chest because of you is just too much for him to not ever show you to the world

but of course with your consent only

he wouldn't ever pressure you or anything

but since you're only remaining faceless

you can expect LOTS of matching outfit pictures taken in the mirror

and just lots of pictures of you in general

with your face blocked out or not in view, of course

you'd always be helping each other with your setups or videos

and he’d want to introduce you to literally everyone he knows

especially bad

you don't necessarily stream/film a lot with each other

but you're always in each others’ company in some shape or form

he always mentions you in his streams

just small stories or conversations

chat can tell he’s head over heels for you

karl jacobs:

he's the most support person everrr

he’d always be celebrating even the tiniest achievements with you

you hit 2k subs? he’ll treat you to an expensive ass dinner

you hit 1 million subs? he’ll buy you a whole room full of filming gear to improve from your previous ones

you managed to finish that one video you've been struggling with? he takes you on a weekend trip to somewhere you’ve always wanted to go

he’ll beg you to join him in is streams

just so he can hold your hand :)

or laugh with you every once in a while

he doesn't need you to face reveal at all

your company is all that matters to him when it includes the rest of the world

I mean, he’s the one able to see your beautiful face all the time, so he can't really complain even if he felt like it

always tweets about you or tweets things at you that only you two understand

and everyone is like ?????

but you don't care :)

fundy:

fundy actually doesn't talk a lot about you in his streams or videos

mostly to avoid people leaving bad light on you in the chat

unless he’s in the same game as you, of course

which in that case, the first thing he’d want to do is find you and talk to you in the game

he’s very respectful of you keeping your face private

and tries his best to keep the pressure of a face reveal off your shoulders

especially if it’s happening in his or your comments

if it gets really bad, he’ll eventually talk about it on twitter or something like that

does tiktoks with you

only with your voice though

and posts manyyy pictures where you’re tagged, but only slightly in view

he doesn't really care about your face being a secret

as long as he gets to see it, he’s happy

quackity:

alex has so much fun making videos or going live with you

and obviously you have the best collabs

you’re the funniest couple on the platform and it shows

he would talk so much about you - like, telling embarrassing stories about you or some shit like that

or saying how clingy you are with him

and chat would be like AWW HE TALKS ABOUT THEM

and he's like “no”😤

but alex can't fool anyone

he’s in it for real with you🥴

and at times, he doesn't even try to hide it

especially when he speaks up about ho proud he is of you

and how people should respect your choice of remaining faceless to the world

but then he quickly moves on to his silly self again

with blushy cheeks ^w^

punz:

has you on his lap constantly

even when his hand-cam is on

nothing will stop him from making you sit on his lap while he’s streaming

he loves that he can rant to you about the problems he faces sometimes concerning his streams

because you get it

he’d teach you the games you didn't know of

and you'd teach him the games that he didn't know of

and then you'd stream/film together after learning the basics

he doesn't talk about you a lot on stream

but chat eventually figures out it’s because you're literally in the same room as him

and how do they find that out, you may ask?

well, your snores coming from his headphones made it very obvious to say the least

awesamdude:

sam knows what it’s like being a faceless streamer

so if you wanted, he’d give you all of the advice you needed

and if you ever considered face revealing, he'd totally help you!

you guys have matching setups

you sometimes talk to each other across the room as you're playing the same game together

because it’s funny to tease chat that way

you’d be posting pictures on social media

that give off hints that you're with each other a lot

like, in one photo he’s wearing a hoodie

and the next day, you post a photo of you in that exact same hoodie

stuff like that

he also celebrates big and small achievements with you

wether it be you achieving them or him, you always celebrate together

eret:

matching. outfits.

STRAWBERRY DRESSES

PLATFORM HEELS

ahhhh chat would be going absolutely crazy at the fits you guys have sometimes

and you're always matching

as in always

he tells their stream that you have a matching crown like his

but that chat obviously can't see it on you because you don’t have a face-cam

she likes telling stories about you

like, memories they have of you two together

and he just always compliments you and praises you for your hard work on her streams

telling everyone how happy you make them

she also always invites you to join his streams because it means a lot to them that you're there :)

jack manifold:

jack is so excited about the fact that you're also a streamer/youtuber

it makes it easier to open up about your relationship online

because some people already knew you before you revealed you two were dating

though I feel like jack would kinda like the secrecy of your face online

just to brag to his audience about how he gets to see your face every day

but also because he likes that there’s more privacy for you

sometimes he’d pop into your room without knowing you were streaming/filming

and would just start talking to you while you giggled about how you were “kinda in the middle of something”

when jack realised what you meant, he’d hurry out of the room in an instant

you’d always be in each others chats/comments

showing what a supportive couple you were

he always raids you at the end of his streams if you’re streaming at the same time

tommyinnit:

tommy always forgets that you're a faceless streamer/youtuber

and is sometimes sooo close to blurting out something he shouldn't

because he’s so used to seeing you, he just kinda forgets that no one else can

you always have to send him a text to “sToP TalKIng AbOUt yOu” so he doesn't accidentally reveal something

that being said, he literally talks so much about you

again, I’m bringing up that time he said that tubbo is so clingy

he says the same thing about you

but he’s really the clingy one, and it’s pretty obvious

you catch him saying things like “yeah, y/n is really cool”

or “guys, please don't say stuff like that to y/n”

getting all serious and shit🥺

he asks you constantly if you can join his vc

even when you're busy, he’s like “pay. attention. to. me😤”

it’s really entertaining sometimes

especially when his streams just consist of you two bickering the whole time

calls you his favourite woman

tubbo:

ahhh tubbo is so sweet when it comes to you

like, when anyone mentions you he just starts smiling

and wants to tell everyone about you

even if they already know you from your channel

he just can't help but ramble on about you

especially to tommy

he replies to all of your tweets

and you reply to all of his

you always feature each other on your channels/streams

and share a celebratory cake when reaching subgoals

sometimes chat notices similarities in your layouts

like a colour change

or a similar pattern

posts a photo of your pinkies intertwined

wearing matching bracelets you made yourself

and everyone finds it super cute<3

ranboo:

he would encourage you so much to join his videos

and wear the same type of outfit to cover your face with

but with a sense of yourself in it so you'd look similar, but not exactly like each other

you'd be matching outfits so often

doesn't talk a lot about you on his streams

apart from mentioning how short you are

but on TWITTER

that's a whole other story

his twitter has practically just become a fan account of you

he’s always in your comments

just to leave a :)

or a supportive comment

if you ever wanted to do a face reveal

he would do it with you if it meant making you feel more comfortable about it

or less nervous

you’re just very lowkey and cute

___________________________________

tag list✰

@zayenz @terribletoothbat @0t0n1n @0125cm @yukiuheh @shinee-is-5-forever @regularnoceur @b01nk-b0w@christhebish@nutritious-emo-crackkk@bookishreid@giavanna-707 @reddiesmcdonalds@cosmins@vixxzial@autumnpleaves@paradigmax@meaganjm@shiningsunrises@moralofwalls@username1212131@gxldentaestuff@innitdream @televisionpresent38 @bubblyanis@zurami @highoffhockey @popinjaytaylor@196os@livsbaby@doubts-of-gold@bunlina@retrav @mcyt-is-my-life@aleaisntcreative @my-shitpost-of-writing @my-shitpost-of-writing @clownsdrowning @pissbabywastaken@shiningsunrises @tie-dyed-dumbass @death-by-rats@simpfordraco @bippity-boppity-boopa@neongreendaydreams @vibin-by-myself@littlepotatos0w0@christhebish @pipp-poppz@btsiguess-kpop@prettysmallfries@hiyoko-kos@kenmxskitten@fudrudy@weepingartanimespy@rhino-zucchini@goldenstarofthunderclan@melonmarz@ubeicecreamisthebest@polaroidinurroom @ady-yoo@isimpforeveryone@edenhollandd@ineedtogetoutofhere@glitter-night @hamilsandersfam@mothheart-witch @wrong-exit@trashcanfullofdork @hellfirepheonixx @marshmallow-babe@isimpforeveryone @ky50621 @randomcloud@wormie4k@dinonuggies50 @p4rty-t4ttoos@aspenthegremlin@book-of-anarchy @jeyacore @thetattooink@gogywasfound@millavalntyne@junob1ade@ubeicecreamisthebest@karida @i-have-paws-love@drvgonraja@eatasslikegrass@creamofweep@venusomega@lunarfedora@rowe-n @wreny24 @vincent-stargogh @floatingplanets @vernon-dursley @childhoodgrunge @fivxss @hexagonclash @crazyjuls12 @littlebabysandboxburritos @shifted-dreams@lenamarie666 @reinyrei @sozvuchiy @weaslvy-mxlfoy @aiofheavenandhell @honeyglaazed @carisle-mikealson @ineedtogetoutofhere @twist3dtinkerbell@cracraforfandoms@angel-dazey @leia-starly @smiithys @squiddyyyy @c0wc0ww @animeweeb019284 @m00-bl00m-k0le @stqrs-thoughts @jenlouvre @uhhhguiltypleasures @trappedchest @punzrights @trashgremlin36 @cyberrsoot @elebeleb @k3nn3dis-crap @karlshoodies @rascal-in-banishment

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ghoste-catte · 3 years

Note

I was curious what advice would you give to someone new to writing fics? I've been wanting to get back into it but haven't seriously written something since high school. I hope this isn't an annoying question or anything!

Not an annoying question at all! I'm just a little worried that I won't have terribly good or useful advice. To be honest, I also sort of stopped writing in earnest right as I finished high school, and didn't pick it back up until my late 20s. It's certainly an adjustment! But I think the few things that really helped me get back into writing fic as a hobby and something I spend quite a bit of time on would be:

Write for yourself first, then find your other motivations. My original inspiration in getting back into fic writing was that there just were not that many fics I liked for my favorite pairing, and I wanted more of them, and I especially wanted more with the tropes and characterizations I wanted to see. I think at the very core of anything you need that internal spark that drives you. At the same time, for me at least, if I just relied on my own drive, I would not get much done; I need some external guardrails. So having people send prompts, or writing for particular events, or writing stuff for friends really helps me to get my ass in gear and finish stuff. That may not be the perfect motivator for you, and that's fine! You just gotta figure out what is.

Be open to inspiration. Anything and everything can be spun out into a story with the right tweaking. Obviously stuff like music is a classic inspiration source, but I've also pulled ideas from poetry, from memes, from Reddit threads, from YouTube videos, from rambling conversations on Discord and from real life to make fics out of. So many times, someone will post a silly Twitter screencap, and I'll think, There's a fic in this. And a lot of the time, there is! Research is a wonderful thing, but so is serendipity. If you're out there actively looking for ideas, eventually one that you like will stumble past you.

Find your community. I can genuinely say I never would have finished more than one fic if I didn't have fandom friends to talk to about even stupid headcanons, to bounce ideas off of, and to encourage me (and to encourage them in turn!). Discord has been a godsend, and some of my closest online friends are people I met in the GaaLee discord server. As I've gotten more comfortable as a writer, I've also joined general writing servers and Reddit communities and have found them immensely helpful on both a motivational level (bingos, sprints, owe-me challenges) and on a craft level (plot workshopping and writing ethics and live grammar help). It's a lot easier to think about fic ideas and hash through problem moments when I have a constant stream of fandom-related chatter coming from the little people who live in my phone! Ao3 is an amazing website, and it's great as, well, an archive, but it isn't social media by design. If you want conversation and human connection and cheerleading, you've gotta forge out and find it.

Make it a habit ... If you want to produce anything longer than a couple hundred words, you really have to set aside time for it. And writing is just like knitting or dirt biking or painting little model figurines: the more you do it, the more easily it comes. When I was first getting back into the proper swing of things, I committed myself to 30 minutes of writing per week. Just 30 minutes. I didn't even hit that goal every week, but there were tons of weeks I got on a roll and went over that amount, and by the end of the year I'd written over 200,000 words. I used to spend an hour laboriously tip-tapping out 200 words, but now I can easily blow through 1k in a 50 minute sprint. It's all about training that muscle.

... But don't make it a chore. With fanfic, you aren't doing this as a job, and you aren't ultimately doing it for anyone other than you. That means you can take breaks when you need them, you can set deadlines and then fail to meet them, you can write stuff and then decide to never post it. When you start getting burnt out, when the practice loses the joy and energy, stop. There's no 'hustle' here. In our capitalist society we're so trained to push past our limits and keep going even when it hurts us, but the hobby you do for connection and relaxation and whatever else shouldn't be like that.

Ignore metrics. Sometimes stuff isn't gonna get hits, or kudos, or comments. There are some basic 'rules' as to the stuff that does and doesn't get traction, but every time you post something it's a roll of the dice. If you're focused on watching that kudos counter tick up, you will get bummed out fast. And any writer will tell you that the stuff you think is your best work will never be the stuff that gets the most accolades. So you have to find something else to give you a sense of success. For me, it's watching my wordcount go up in my stats and those occasional comments where someone has a lot to say and that one person who always leaves me a <3 emoji (and, shout out to @egregiousderp, having someone to have long one-on-one conversations with about the stuff that never made it to page).

Don't strive for perfection. It's really easy to want your first ever fic to be a complete showstopper, the best fic fandom has ever seen, hitting all the tropes and the ideas and the characterization that you just know fandom is missing and would be everyone's top favorite if only it was written. This is a trap. No one fic can be all things. Most people who want to write an epic as their very first venture will not see the end of that epic, because they haven't put in the practice hours to make something on that scale work. That's not to say you can't start out with a big, sprawling multichap, just don't expect it to be the greatest thing since sliced bread if you're just starting out, and be okay with abandoning it for greener pastures if you get to that point. Think of the first time someone makes a vase out of clay or bakes a loaf of bread. That's never their best vase or their best bread. If they keep up with it, they'll make more and better vases and loaves. Likewise, your first fic is probably not gonna be your best fic. See it for what it is: your launchpad.

You can't edit an empty page, but you can over-edit a full one. This kind of spins off of #7, but if the words aren't there, you can't fix them. Daydreams and headcanons are fantastic (and god, how many times have I wished for a speech-to-text engine that projected my falling asleep thoughts onto a Google doc for later perusal), but they aren't fic. If you want to write fic, you've gotta get comfortable with the idea of sloppy outlines and rough first drafts. You can't build a house without a frame and you can't build a man without a skeleton (I mean, you can, I guess, but he'd be one floppy man). The nice thing about fic is that it doesn't matter if that frame is structurally unsound or the skeleton has 18 too many bones, you can clean that up in the editing process. But you can't start hanging curtains and arranging furniture in something that doesn't even have walls. That's the process. But! Also know when to set down the editor's pen and say, "Okay, this is good enough for government work", and call it done. ("Done" doesn't have to mean "posted", but it does mean, "I'm done picking at this for now, and I'm gonna go write some more stuff".) Over-editing can make stuff seem laborious and forced, and it prevents you from actually improving. To continue belaboring the house metaphor, you can spend your whole life rearranging furniture in just one room, but the end result of that is a pretty narrow existence and a room with a lot of footprints and tracks in the carpet.

Write shit down. When you have ideas, jot them down--in a notebook, in a Google Doc, in the Notes app of your phone, in pen on the back of your hand. You think you will remember that brilliant line of dialogue or sparkling snippet of narration or genius plot that came to you in a dream, but you Will Not. Write it down. Write it down. Write it down! There have been so many times when a fic was completely saved by past!me having written down my shower thoughts about what happens next in the fic, that present!me had completely forgotten about and was floundering over.

Have fun with it! Try different stuff. Try stupid stuff. Try experimental stuff. Do stuff you've never done before that you aren't sure will work. It's important to get comfortable with your niche (for example, I know I'm never going to be the sort of person who writes intricate plots of intrigue or super long 100k epics or detailed battles), but you can't find that niche unless you explore lots of different niches! Figure out what you love and what you absolutely hate, and then keep doing the stuff you love.

Okay, so that was actually TEN things, but ... I hope you still found this helpful. Feel free to send another ask if any of this was confusing or unclear. Good luck with your fic writing and, if you want, send me a link to what you've written once you've written it! I'd love to read it.

#answered #anonymous #writing advice #i guess?#am i qualified to give this?#no #but im doing it anyway

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ackerpreach · 3 years

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This ending .... I can name 500 reasons and I will name them right now, because I don’t think I’m the only one who is upset with how things turned out. (Also, A positive message for all of you at the end)

MAJOR LEAKS SPOILERS/ READ WITH CAUTION

Update: after reading more theories from fellow RM bloggers, and sleeping over it one day, this entire chapter might be an april fools... Don't fully lose hope yet beautiful people. It's me just giving a review on a possible fake April fools chapter

After following this franchise since 2013, so nearly a DECADE. this ending is a pure disserve to the entire fandom. I feel like Yams has rushed it just for the sake of being done with the entire manga. So many things are left open, characters and their developemt are reverted back all the way to chapter 1 or are left even worse than that...

Mikasa’s worthless character development/ Aaronmika’s horrible toxic codependent relationship

Oh honey... Let’s start with how horrible Isayama has treated her. We were all rooting for her, because we all felt like she was so misunderstood. She had a horrible childhood and imprinted on a guy who treated her like trash 99 percent of the story. And then, slowly but surely, she starts to realize she has to stop obsessing over him in the uprising arc with the help of a real man who treats her like a queen, more importantly, he treats her like a real human being. This man sees her for her abilities and that she has the power to be self dependent. She learned parts of herself, that she was able to work together with him like no one else could. She learned parts of herself she was unable to do so if she kept obsessing about Aaron. All this love, care, mutual understanding and RESPECT these two shared.

but...NAH FUCK THAT, right Yams?? Throw all this development away, all this bonding. Let’s make the main female lead even more yandere than she already was in the first season. Let her make out with his decapacitated head (like dude, this is also pure disrespect to Aaron’s dead body btw) and let her obsess even more about the guy who has treated her no better than a piece of toilet cloth 99 percent of the time. The guy who was never really appreciative in front of her for saving his ass billions of times, who always pushed her away, who yells at her and snaps at her whenever he can instead of reasoning and talking calmly with her in mature way. (EVEN PARODY YOUTUBE CHANNELS WHO DONT SHIP ANYTHING MAKE IT A TROPE WHERE AARON TELLS MIKASA HE HATES HER GUTS WHENEVER HE CAN)

Then after all that, suddenly Yams tries to last minute persuade us Aaron’s always been head over heels for her??? He should have build their relationship better which he hasn’t even tried to do so... He must be thinking his fans are stupid for eating this from his hands.

Like seriously??? What is this???

Isayama is just fully contradicting himself. It’s like someone tipped him off with a buttload of money for him to write Aaron like this to satisfy shipping needs and to cash in those extra money’s from it. Even if he tried to cater to Erem*ika, this is not how you write a loving and caring couple which people will root for.

This next two panels just freaking infuriates me to the core of my soul. I can’t even describe how dissapointed I am with Mikasa.

Why is she clutching that head so obsessively like that? Why is she walking and turning her back away from her comrades? After everything they have done for her, after all they’ve been through?! After everything Armin has done? Standing up for Mikasa, beating up Aaron for hurting her. I feel like even Jean, Connie and Sasha have cared more for her in a healthy way. Sure, Aaron cares for her romantically too apparently (What a twist Yams :)), but has he aided her to becoming a mentally healthier individual? Has he aided in her mental stability? The answer is a big fat NO! All I see between these two after today’s raw Chapter’s are too Yandere obsessed individuals who have no clue on how to maintain a healthy relationship.

Love should only go as far as the heart can endure and it seems like her character is not willing to be aware of that. Even Armin was able to let go of Aaron in those latest panels. Why does her entire character resolve around this guy??? I really do not understand. Her Ackerbond and her age is not an excuse for her to throw her life away like this.

Shonen’s disgusting portrayal of women

I’ve seen this countless of times in the many years I’ve watched anime. SasuS*ku from Naruto, Ichih*me from Bleach, Shinji and that oranged hair girl from Neon Evangelion.. Why do these women get decreased to simpletons with one single goal? And that is to obsess over a bland male lead who either treats them like trash or doesn’t notice them up until the last last chapter (LITERALLY WHAT YAMS HAS DONE). Some go even as far as the male leading wanting the kill the female love interest and yet the female lead is still in love with them???. It’s disgusting for him to write the MAIN female character this way.

It’s dissapointing we believed in Isayama doing Mikasa’s character right. That she’s finally being able to let go of her codependency and to live for herself maybe live in Hizuru and find more about her roots???, but every single time she shows some improvement, it’s burried deep in the ground again by the Author. It almost seems like a lowkey kink of some of the male Mangaka’s to write about a girl obsessing over them no matter what. I see this so many times to the point that I truly stand behind it that some of them might have this fantasy.

I wished he didn’t portray her last panels like this. Everyone else is living their lives while Mikasa is still grieving about him. I’m not saying she’s not allowed to grieve and everyone takes it at their own pace, but cmon... Show her living her life too. This is too much. Her being next to his grave and grieving him as her last panels just shoves it in our faces that YET AGAIN, BEING OBSESSED WITH AARON IS ALL HER CHARACTER STANDS FOR.

I truly despise how Isayama handles her grieving, kissing his decapacitated head, carrying it around like some handbag, and her last panels being thissss.

The world leaving Paradis alone miraciously after all that???

It’s so weird and out of place with so many political feuds and disagreements between the world and Paradis, the entire Rumbling happening and we can see Mikasa just chilling outside in Paradis with no one bothering them. You can see the rings of the walls in the picture below. I don’t know the exact reason behind as the manga is still in Korean, but from what I see, the story went the route of: throwing a happy ending without enough proper reason and it was all fixed just like that in a snap! It doesn’t fit the entire narrative of attack on titan for things to be so peacful out of nowhere. When it comes to the narrative, how things work in that world, how hard it is to achieve peace, everything made somewhat sense up until chapter 138. 139 seems so so out of place... It’s like I’m reading a chapter from a totally different manga.

Aaron Yoghurt got defeated so easily/ Aaron’s character assassination

The build up on the first part of the rumbling was great, those kids carrying coins. You could feel humanity’s fear and Aaron’s hatred in those pages. As if he truly had a goal and he has turned away completely from his comrades and his closest friends with no return. The world seemed truly doomed, but he got defeated just like that. He was in the nape all this time (because screw the warhammer power of hiding yourself elsewhere in his ginormous titan body). There is no master plan as we all expected, and in the end he just acts all yandere in the paths with Armin and that’s it... They massacared his entire character as well. Many fan theories created a better ending with his character. Him being reincarnated as Historia’s baby would be so much better. For him to still keep on seeking and to strive for power. It has always been his motive. It’s his personality from the start until chapter 138. Even if things are okay, to keep on going and to seek that adventure, but then.. He’s so weak and directionless suddenly.. It’s so weird... This is not Aaron at all???

Using Aaron for him this entire post, because I don’t want others to invade our tags... :)))

Historia’s baby

The only panel we got from Historia’s child was this. Just a normal kid, normal life... Why did Isayama put so much effort in highlighting Historia’s pregnancy if it was nothing too spectacular anyway? It seemed he had major plans for this kid and for their development too??? It’s again, big plans, big developments, big relationship dynamic, but all got thrown out of the window...

Don’t read the next sentence if you are a minor :’)

It’s like almost ejaculating, but stopping right before it and repeating that every single Arc.

My energy when writing about this chapter is the same as Nostalgia Critic and his hatred for atla the live action

In Conclusion...

I know us fans should not be deciding on how this story should end, because this is Isayama’s story after all, but I truly wished for him to wrap up things much more rounded. There are so many unanswered questions... Again, I think for the sake of being done with this manga, he rushed all of it. He’s become a millionaire from this story and now his pockets are jammed full, I guess he doesn’t need to put in any effort anymore, right? Perhaps a controversial opinion, but I really wished he cared for his fans a little bit more with this last chapter by giving some answers that make sense at least. It’s his fans who gave him this platform and the opportunity to tell his story and for him to at least give in a bit of effort especially in the last chapter is the least he can do. Rivamika being canon or not, he truly rushed it without thinking much about the entire story line. He expanded it so much, he didn’t know how to bind it all together.

Even after all this, I’ll still ship them in the headcanon type of way. I do give credit to Isayama for giving us a template for such a beautiful dynamic between Levi and Mikasa. He decides to waste it, but that doesn’t mean we have to. I want to thank all the people with amazing writing skills, the ones who give us beautiful art like @carmenlee @phit chan @vialesana and many more. I want to remind all of you that we can create something beautiful of our own and we don’t neccesarily need canon lore for that. The art I’ve seen, the fanfictions I’ve read have touched me deeper than Isayama ever could at times.The Mikasa in our mind is appreciate of Levi, is mature, classy and has a strong will for herself. They spend their remaining days together peacefully. Keep writing, keep drawing, stay creative.

I love you all so so much, I’ve only been publicly active since March, but thank you Rivamika fandom for giving me so much joy as a lurker these past 7 years <3

#rivamika #snk leaks #snk 139 leaks #levimika #mikalevi

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madeyoumyvillain · 3 years

Text

Although I say I love Aleksander because he's hot and evil and sexy,this man genuinely makes me tear up. I love him. No,you don't get it. I love him. I have immense respect for this man and how driven and determined he is even at his worst. He deserved better,and this is a hill I'm willing to be buried alive on.

The fact that when he was a child,who was almost murdered by children his own age, decided to make this world a better place for others like him so NO ONE has to go through that,is said to be his "villain origin story" is so fucked up.

Respectfully,that's not a villain. That's a child who knows nothing but fear. Fear of living. Fear of being caught. Fear of disappointing his mother. Fear of not living upto his potential. Fear of forgetting his own name. This child was almost murdered by his own kind,but it did not make him angry. It made him understand. It made him realise that the helplessness of his people is the reason why they take such desperate measures. And he promises himself that he will make sure no other person his kind has,no matter how weak or strong,will ever go through the same circumstances. This isn't a villain origin story,it's the birth of a revolutionary, tired of being scared of merely existing.

Alot of people in this fandom say Aleksander is a fascist. Who's gonna tell them that a man fighting against the majority who allow his people to be murdered is not a stand-in for Hitler? He is the oppressed minority here,not the oppressor. He's not the one killing innocent people for existing. (Read a book,y'all)

The Grishas face state sanctioned violence,are sold as slaves, treated like lab rats and experimented on,burned at stakes like witches for simply existing. And Aleksander is a man who's seen centuries of this. He is someone who's fighting wars on three different fronts. This man is the only one in those books trying to break the status quo and bring down the monarchy. If you stop siding with the oppressed minority just because their methods don't fit into your boxes,you are siding with the oppressor. Of course he's going to be brutal,he did not turn into what he is in a single day. He was a child who strived for peace and centuries later,he's an immortal who's tired of fighting the "right way". He is the only person who fought for the Grishas. Alina joined hands with the same monarchy that ignored the violence against Grishas and Nikolai is pretty much the woke,white saviour,a product of the same monarchy. Even if it's called The Grisha Triology,it's heavily anti-Grisha and does nothing to ease their suffering. The narrative that "killing=bad" is shoved down our throats multiple times. In itself,it's a pretty centrist take. Aleksander was NOT a supremacist,he was NOT a fascist. They did not care about his motives,they just saw him as evil because those methods didn't cater to their ideals. So they killed him,destroyed the Fold,one piece of protection for the Grishas and called it a day. What about Shu Han experimenting on Grishas, Fjerda burning them on stakes and Kerch selling them as slaves? Bad guy gone,Fold gone,time to fulfill my cottagecore dreams<3 Also,Zoya becoming the Queen of Ravka doesn't solve anything. Assuming this gives off the same vibes as "Oh,a Black President,racism solved!!!" NO. Girlboss-ifying Zoya isn't the answer, especially when people have such strong hatred towards Grishas. It needs to be eradicated from the grass root level and will take years to happen.

The flashback in the show,where the king's soldiers repeatedly shoot arrows at him no matter how many times he told them he did not want to harm them and then seeing Luda being killed immediately while he kept on begging,makes his behaviour totally understandable. "But there has to be another way,right?" Try telling this to the centuries old man who has used any method possible. Served several kings and won them wars to get on their good side hoping it would make things easier for his people. His methods are shown to be brutal now because he's been trying for a long time and nothing else worked.

Given the present day scenario and minorities all over the world facing systemic oppression and their lives being threatened, Aleksander did NOTHING wrong. We can take into account the BLM and Stop Asian Hate movements. If you do not fit into their boxes of activism and protests,they claim you're the wrong ones. They do not work for your betterment,but they keep on demonizing you and belittling your cause. In the same way, Aleksander was leading a rebellion against the persecutors,while the Good Ones™ only cared about his methods and reminding us how evil he is, not giving a single fuck about his motives,or the geopolitical situation. At the end of the day,they win. Because it's easy to kill the rebel,easier than helping him in his cause and taking away the suffering of his people. If Alina and the rest of them really wanted to be the heroes of this story then they shouldn't have made killing the only man who gave Grisha a sanctuary and was trying to improve their situation as their main goal if they were going to do nothing after their woke victory moment. I have absolutely no idea how they're going to acknowledge racism against Grishas in the show and kill the only person striving to stop it without recieving backlash for it.

TL;DR: If a revolutionary man came to me, asking for help to make this world a better place for OUR people,stop their oppression and bring down the ones who use our people for their benefit but do not bat a fucking eyelash when they're killed,I would've helped him. No matter how evil or corrupted I'm being framed as. RIP to Alina Starkov,but I'm built different. (I'll also like to fuck him but we're talking about serious stuff rn and y'all already know I'm a whore for him)

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cheri-translates · 3 years

Text

[CN] Shaw’s Creative Date

🍒 Warning: This post contains detailed spoilers for a date, 创意之约, which has not been released in EN! 🍒

This date features S2 Shaw, but contains no spoilers for S2!

[ This date was released on 13 May 2021 ]

Removing the VR headset, I rub my slightly sore eyes. Seeing the familiar modern furniture leaves me in a momentary trance.

MC: I finally cleared it - this game about the ancient times is pretty immersive.

Aside from completing missions, the game also has a rich plot written in a classical literary style. As a “workshop apprentice”, I successfully created a string of wood carved persimmons.

Rotating my aching wrists, it’s as though the sensation of carving products is still lingering on my hands.

MC: It’s a shame that I could only do that in the game...

Just when I’m about to continue grumbling, my phone suddenly rings.

Tapping the answer button, a familiar voice drifts lazily to my ear.

Shaw: Not a sound from you even during the weekend. What are you up to?

MC: I just played an immersive game, and it’s pretty fun.

At the other end of the line, Shaw makes an “oh” sound, then continues asking.

Shaw: Are you planning to stay at home today?

MC: Mm. I finally finished a big program, so I’m pretty comfortable playing games at home.

Hearing my response, Shaw’s tone lifts slightly at the end.

Shaw: It’s just a game. You can play it anytime, can’t you? The weather outside is great. Staying at home is such a waste. Why not take a stroll outside?

My gaze sweeps over the VR headset. While I’m hesitating whether or not to agree, a thought suddenly flashes across my mind, and I have an idea.

MC: Shaw, why don't you accompany me somewhere?

Shaw pauses for a moment, his subtle breathing drifting over the phone along with the electric currents.

Shaw: Where do you want to go?

MC: I’ll keep it a secret first. You’ll know when you get there. It’s definitely a place you wouldn’t expect.

Shaw chuckles softly, and he seems to stretch.

Shaw: All right. Since you invited me with such magnificent hospitality, I’ll reluctantly keep you company.

Soon after, the both of us stand at the entrance of a wood carving studio. Shaw tilts his head, looking me up and down.

Shaw: You sure we’re not at the wrong place?

I nod my head.

MC: How is it? I already said you definitely wouldn’t expect it.

Shaw arches his brows, a somewhat surprised expression in his eyes.

Shaw: When did you get a new hobby?

Not giving Shaw a direct response, I lift my hand, raising my phone to his face. The picture on the screen features the string of wood carved persimmons I made in the game.

MC: Look at this string of persimmons. I carved it bit by bit in the game. Looks good, doesn’t it? I plan to carve a replica based on this later.

Shaw leans closer to give it a sweeping glance, his expression a little subtle.

Shaw: ...the object in the picture isn’t too bad. But do you like it that much that you must carve a string of persimmons?

MC: Don’t underestimate this small string of persimmons. Slow work yields fine products. The smaller something is, the more patience and carving skills are tested. Also, this is the first wood carving I made in the game. Furthermore, “everything will go according to one’s wishes” is a wonderful message and well-wish. Making it myself will feel very meaningful.

[Note] For the translation of “everything will go according to one’s wishes”, What MC says is “柿柿如意”, which is a pun based on the popular well-wish “事事如意” (“everything will go according to one’s wishes”)

“Persimmon” is 柿 (“shi”). “Everything” is 事事 (“shi shi”)

Shaw: But based on the level of complexity, you can’t make it without having a foundation in carving.

Predicting that Shaw would say this, I make a fist, lifting my head up confidently.

MC: Don’t underestimate me. I think I’m naturally talented in handwork. If I can make it in the game, I might be able to in reality.

Hearing my “lofty aspirations”, the corners of Shaw’s lips hook upwards, and he elongates the tail of his sentence coolly.

Shaw: Fine, I’ll wait and see.

Probably because it’s the lunch break, only the boss is in the shop.

After telling the boss my purpose in coming, he very quickly prepares the wooden block and burin, then comprehensively explains some matters I should take note of.

[Trivia] A burin (刻刀 - “ke dao”) is a handheld steel tool used for carving metal or wood

MC: Draw a design first, then trace a copy onto the wooden block, then...

Hearing me mumble to myself, Shaw can’t help but arch his brows.

Shaw: It’s no use simply memorising the steps. You’ve got to get started to get the feel of it.

...that make sense.

Very soon, I successfully draw a design based on the picture. However, I keep sensing that something’s missing when I look at the picture of the string of persimmons in my hand.

Darting a glance at Shaw, who occasionally looks at the drawing paper in my hand, I turn my body to the side, displaying the drawing paper in front of him.

MC: Shaw, didn’t you brag about being the “best in hand-drawn sketches” in your department? Want to take a look and make adjustments for me?

[Note] For those who are unaware, Shaw is the only graduate student in the archaeological department of Loveland University, so... of course he’s the best in everything LOL

Shaw’s brows arch slightly. Grabbing a pen on the table casually, he starts making amendments quickly.

Shaw: Done.

Unexpectedly, with just a few strokes, the fullness and lushness of the persimmons are outlined, and the entire picture instantly becomes much more vibrant.

Once all the preparatory work is done, the next step is to saw the sides of the wood carving. Placing the wooden block on the machine, I test out suitable positions.

All of a sudden, Shaw presses on my hand.

Shaw: Didn’t the boss mention that it’d be safer to place it a little beyond the peripheral line?

While saying this, he pulls on my wrist, causing the wooden block to shift to the side slightly. After verifying that it’s in the right place, he releases my hand.

Wood carving in real life is much more difficult than I imagined. The more I tell myself to be calm, the more my hands refuse to obey.

I take a deep breath -

Shaw: Tch, aren’t you going a little too fast?

Right after he finishes speaking, my hand suddenly trembles, and I saw a small hole into the wooden block.

Shaw pauses for a few seconds, then bursts into laughter mercilessly.

He leans over, pointing at the small hole, his eyes gloating over my misfortune.

Shaw: Heh. Did someone take a bite out of the persimmon? It’s actually pretty creative.

Faced with Shaw’s mockery, I pout without saying anything. Then, I mimic his usual tone and glare at him.

MC: Why are you laughing so loudly? My hearing is good, okay.

Shaw casually props himself on the table with his elbows. He turns his head to the side and watches me, eyes filled with interest and a smile.

Perhaps because we’re too close in proximity, I seem to feel his warmth encasing my surroundings.

Smelling the scent of peppermint at the tip of my nose, I subconsciously turn away, muttering softly.

MC: Stop crowding over here... it’s a little warm.

The corners of Shaw’s eyes lift upwards slightly, and he sweeps a gaze over my face. He chuckles, sitting down on the chair behind in a wilful manner.

Not long after, I painstakingly saw the overall outer shape of the wooden block. After that, I start using a chisel to carefully craft the outline and thickness.

Probably because I’m unfamiliar with the techniques, the thickness of both sides of the wood carving are very different despite me putting in a lot of effort into correcting it.

I steal a glance at Shaw who is behind. After some hesitation, I clear my throat.

MC: Erm, could you help me with a little something?

Shaw loosens his shoulders.

Shaw: You want my help?

MC: Since you look like you don't have much to do, why not adjust the thickness of the outline with me?

Shaw doesn’t respond immediately. He folds his arms and leans against the wall, both legs placed casually.

Beneath the sunlight of the scorching afternoon sun, the corners of his lips tilt upwards, revealing a mischievous smile.

Shaw: Someone made a solemn vow earlier that she could do it by herself. So, in order for you to experience this fully, I refuse.

I don’t even spare Shaw half a glance after this, heart sinking as I lower my head in silence, focusing on the wood carving alone.

Perhaps grasping some tricks, my actions are gradually much more proficient than before, despite slow improvement.

The doors to the shop are suddenly pushed open. A parent walks in with a little boy.

The boss greets the new customers. Shaw suddenly lifts his arm and waves, walking over to the boss.

Shaw: Boss, give me a burin too.

Thinking that Shaw was suddenly “pricked by his conscience” and is planning to help, I lift my head to look at him in anticipation.

Unexpectedly, after getting the burin, Shaw picks up the leftover linden wood that I had sawed off earlier.

He stands near the window, lifting his hand leisurely. Against the light, that head of bluish purple hair is even more eye-catching.

Shaw: It’s boring to wait. I’ll try it with you, and give you some competitive motivation.

He reveals a confident smile, his tone not at all humble.

Shaw: I’ll also show you what it means to be “naturally talented”.

Shaw deliberately sits down at a table that’s further away from me.

Seeing that my gaze continues to linger on him, Shaw lifts his eyes, asking teasingly.

Shaw: Why are you staring at me?

MC: ...you already know the answer. Also, you’re pretending to be mysterious. What exactly do you plan to carve?

Shaw: You want to know? All the more reason not to tell you.

With this, he lowers his head, the tip of the pen making rustling sounds. He’s likely drawing a design on the rough paper.

Pursing my lips with a “hmph”, I decide to throw myself into crafting the wood carving.

Just as I strive to painstakingly carve the appearance of the wood carving, the little boy who accompanied his parent here seems to be restless.

He runs around the shop, and finally scuttles to Shaw’s side.

Little Boy: Big Bro, your hair’s really cool!

Shaw releases a “hmph”, paying no attention to the boy. But the little boy is fearless, and continues curiously.

Little Boy: Big Bro, what are you carving?

Unintentionally hearing this, I hurriedly perk up my ears, turning my body towards Shaw secretly.

Shaw glances at the boy from the side, placing the prototype wood carving on the table and leaning it from side to side.

Shaw: Make a guess.

The boy stares at it for a while, then exclaims excitedly.

Little Boy: I see it now - it’s a fish! Big Bro, did I guess correctly?

Shaw doesn’t deny it, revealing an expression which says “you’re pretty knowledgeable”.

Shaw: [aww he sounds so affectionate] Little Imp, your eyesight isn’t bad.

Little Boy: But why do you want to carve a fish?

The boy doesn’t seem to understand, and is also slightly disdainful.

Little Boy: Fishes are so unimpressive. If it were me, I’d carve a big tiger. It’s the king of all creatures, and it’s so impressive!

While the boy speaks, he chuckles in satisfaction.

Shaw laughs, then purses his lips.

Shaw: A wooden carved fish is much more interesting than your big tiger.

The boy has an expression on his face which reads “nonsense”. Shaw casts a sidelong glance at him, scoffing softly.

Shaw: Forget it. You wouldn't understand even if I told you.

Little Boy: Who says I wouldn’t understand? I’ve already learnt many things!

The boy grumbles in dissatisfaction, his arms akimbo, pestering Shaw unflinchingly.

I try my best to control the smile at the corners of my lips, and suddenly have an idea. Clearing my throat, I pretend to be a bystander, inserting myself into the conversation.

MC: What this little boy said is correct. Young man, you can’t look down on others just because you’re older by a few years.

Little Boy: Hmph! That’s right!

My “encouragement” enables the boy to be even less willing to back down, and he purses his small mouth.

Shaw: Oh?

Hearing my response, Shaw lifts his eyes, a mischievous smile curling the corners of his lips upwards.

Shaw: What is it? You also want to know?

MC: Since you started it, it’s only right for you to talk about it more.

Shaw: Since the both of you are pretty eager to learn, I’ll broaden your knowledge.

Next to the window, the rays of light are bright. Shaw arches his brows wilfully.

Shaw: To put it simply, this is related to the history of “fish culture”. Since ancient times, fish have represented auspicious signs and well-wishes.

Little Boy: I know about this! Is this how people wish each other “may you have abundance year after year”? I heard my teacher mentioning it before. It’s because “鱼” and “余” are homophonic!

[Note] The well-wish the boy is referring to is “年年有鱼”, which is a pun based on the proper saying “年年有余”

“Fish” is 鱼 (“yu”), while 余 (also “yu”) means abundance

Shaw: In that case, your teacher only told you half of it.

Shaw fiddles with the burin in his hand, spinning it casually.

Shaw: Fishes are an embodiment of luck. Patterns of fish can often be seen on antiques.

MC: What’s the origin of wooden carved fishes then?

Shaw pauses for a second before responding.

Shaw: Over seven thousand years ago, the most ancient wooden carved fishes were in the Hemudu culture. Based on conjectures, they were likely used for praying and well-wishes.

[Trivia] The Hemudu culture was a Neolithic culture spanning from 5500 BC to 3300 BC, located south of the Hangzhou Bay in Jiangnan in Zhejiang, China

Shaw speaks indifferently, but the boy listens at the side, his eyes wide.

Little Boy: Big Bro, you really know a lot! You’re even more incredible than my teacher!

The corners of Shaw’s lips hook upwards with pride.

Shaw: I guess so. Little Imp, remember to read more books and learn properly.

The boy runs away contentedly. My gaze lands on the wooden carving in Shaw’s hand that I can’t see quite clearly yet.

I didn’t expect the wooden carved fish to have the same symbolism as the string of persimmons. I tilt my head, feeling slightly emotional.

Time flows by as the seconds and minutes pass. Before realising it, the sky dims, and the studio lights are bright.

Swinging my hands which have almost lost all physical strength, I release a long sigh.

At the other side of the table, Shaw lifts his chin towards me.

Shaw: Progress isn’t going smoothly?

Looking at the half-finished product with uneven contours next to my hand, I shake my head a little despondently.

MC: Looks like I won’t be able to finish it today, and would have to come back next time. Also, the actual wood carving is light-years away from what I expected...

Hearing my soft grumbling at the end, Shaw arches his brows.

Shaw: Just by looking at it, the string of persimmons isn’t easy to make. But you dug this pit yourself, so I’ll wait and watch you fill it up.

Ignoring the teasing tone in his voice, I purse my lips.

MC: I definitely won’t give up. What about you? Are you done with the carving?

Shaw has an expression which reads “of course”, and he nods unhesitatingly.

Shaw: It was done a long time ago.

I’m stunned for a moment, both surprised and curious.

One hand supports Shaw’s cheek lightly. With a stretch of his long arm, the wooden carved fish is brought before my eyes.

This is a bright coloured wood carving of a fish. It has a roundish head and a chubby belly, and looks extremely adorable.

I lift up the wooden fish sculpture with both hands, as though instantly struck by its adorable shape.

Shaw: Excellent workmanship with profound symbolism. Your goal has been overtaken by me.

Behind the table, Shaw arches his brows in satisfaction, casually twisting the burin, his pose utterly flamboyant.

Even though his carving is indeed not bad, the moment I lift my eyes and see Shaw’s insuppressible pride, I can’t help but remain silent.

With the sudden impulse to sing a different tune, I deliberately purse my lips, speaking calmly.

MC: It’s just like this I guess. In terms of exquisiteness, I’d give a passing mark at most.

The smile on Shaw’s lips retracts slightly. While looking at me from the side, he releases a “hmph” from his nose.

Shaw: You have the nerve to criticise me? Why don’t you look at your own standard. Also, this is my exclusive design. It’s much more creative than you making a duplicate from the game.

Hearing the unwillingness to back down hidden in his tone, I can’t help but smile secretly.

Shaw glances at me indifferently. He seems to catch the secret smile on my lips, and an indiscernible light flashes across his eyes.

Shaw: Hey, shouldn’t you return it to me after touching it for half a day? You don’t like it anyway.

MC: Who says-

Almost making a slip of the tongue, I hurriedly change my words.

MC: Actually, on closer inspection, it seems that your carving is pretty okay.

Shaw: Just “okay”?

MC: ...I’ll add one mark for its symbolism and origin then.

Pleased with this, Shaw rolls his shoulders, chuckling softly.

Shaw: You still have some taste.

He crosses his leg over the other, his eyebrows suddenly furrowing. He seems to blurt out what’s in his mind.

Shaw: But the head of this fish seems a little too round... Hm, it’s a little irksome. Looks like I need to make some corrections.

MC: No it isn’t? It looks just right like this!

Afraid that Shaw would snatch it back, I hurriedly fold my hands over the wooden carving, and notice a hint of slyness in his eyes.

He leans closer abruptly, instantly closing the distance between us.

Shaw: Looking at your posture... What is it? Can’t bear to return it?

Specks of bright light reminiscent of daytime dance on Shaw’s bluish purple hair, outlining his expression and making it look even more triumphant.

I blink my eyes.

MC: Since you’re already done, I think I should observe it for a while longer, and have some “luck” rubbed off on me. I might even be able to quickly and successfully finish my wood carving too.

Shaw turns his head, the corners of his lips turning upwards relaxedly. A pondering smile surfaces in his bright eyes.

Shaw: You’ve got taste. If you really like it, it’s not that I can’t give it to you.

My heart stirs, eyes widening as I look at him. But I have the feeling that there should be a second half to his sentence.

Shaw leans back relaxedly, stretching casually.

Shaw: But I need to make up for the costs.

...just as I guessed.

Cradling the wooden carving in my hand, I lift my chin towards Shaw.

MC: Go on, what’s the “fee”?

Shaw lowers his head, pretending to deliberate for a few seconds. Then, he lifts his eyes, meeting mine.

Shaw: When you’re done with your wooden carving...

Shaw: It belongs to me.

[Note] There are actually two ways one can interpret this line because it’s kept purposefully vague. It’s simply “归我”, which means “belong to me”. This means we can’t be sure if he’s asking for the wooden carving or MC herself :>

Shaw: How is it? Isn’t it very fair?

Light falls on the tips of Shaw’s hair, reflecting a bright and sly smile in his eyes.

Before I can react, he has already stood up.

Shaw: All right, that’s how it’d be.

🐟 Phone call: here

🐟 Support the cafe by dropping by the tip jar!

#mlqc #mlqc cn #mlqc spoilers #mlqc shaw

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lucenties · 3 years

Note

Oooh I see your fav is Joseph and I've been so soft for him lately so I'd like to drop a request! Fic or headcanons, idc, whatever comes to ya! And female or neutral reader, if that matters? Reader has been subject to wearing the training mask, just like Joseph, but is handling it horribly. And Joseph finds them hiding somewhere to stress cry, because they don't want anyone to think they're weak? 🥺 (but now they're double embarrassed cuz their crush caught them crying?)

— training woes

such a cute concept I love it!

battle tendency!joseph x gn!reader

⤷ fluff, slight angst (lack of self confidence)

⤷ 1.2k words

You always knew becoming a hamon master would mean you would have to endure hellish training. Every day you took blow after blow that was thrown at you, putting every single bit of your skill on the table so that Lisa Lisa could finally see that you were ready to go out and battle on your own. It was painful, yet the years worth of bruises and sore muscles were nothing compared to the tightening growing in your chest when Caesar emerged from the oil-slick hellhole, shortly followed by Joseph.

It just wasn’t fair.

You always expected Caesar to finish his trial long before you; he was already growing proficient in his Hamon training upon your arrival on Air Supplena Island. Although you’ve always worked your butt off, it was thanks to his support that Lisa Lisa even considered giving you the training mask. He never turned down your request to be a sparring partner, even if he went easy on you most of the time, and despite his own training, he always gave you pointers on how to improve.

Joseph, however, was a prodigy. In the short time that he spent on the island, he managed to conquer the very pillar that took the lives of many previous hamon users. He never seemed to let anything get him down; even when things didn’t go his way and his sharp tongue got the best of him, his wit and skill managed to get him out of any situation. Conquering the Hell Climb Pillar was only his most recent accomplishment. This was only the beginning. His skill was impressive and he was so cool in your eyes; he was everything you only dreamed of being.

He confused you. On one side, you couldn’t help but feel intimidated and slightly jealous of his abilities and his knack for quick learning. On the other hand, that same skill and resiliency is what led you to look up to him and strive to become better. Although Caesar was your go-to for help with training, with Loggins and Messina assisting here and there, you couldn't bring yourself to ask Joseph for help. Feeling too weak in comparison, shame always seemed to overcome you and pulled you away from even asking for his help. You not only looked up to him, Joseph had you head over heels and wrapped around his finger without even realizing it. However, the attraction you felt towards him and the fear of disappointing him were too great to allow yourself to get too close to him.

"You have to move faster if you want to gain the upper hand against the Pillar Men, [Y/N]." Despite Lisa Lisa's corrections, the balls of hamon launched your way were only narrowly being avoided, if not crashed into you entirely.

Stamina training was harsh, especially with the mask latched on your face restricting your air flow. You managed to redirect some of the energy away from yourself in an effort to catch your breath, yet the orbs kept coming, each leaving aches in your body that were sure to be felt tomorrow.

"You have to push yourself!" your mentor shouted, taking note of the slight improvement in your form. The stinging, wet feeling in your eyes only grew stronger the more her corrections were thrown at you. Despite the pain, you did your best to step out of the way and focused what little energy you had left on dodging the attacks.

"You're doing pretty great, [Y/N]!"

Just like that, the single thread of motivation you were hanging on ripped. Joseph's voice was meant to be encouraging, but the thought of your crush seeing you in such a weak state, not being able to overcome such a simple task, hindered your concentration. A last concentrated bit of hamon rammed against your leg, knocking you over. With a sigh and sympathy in her eyes, Lisa Lisa reached out a hand to help you stand up.

Without even waiting for her dismissal and with a quick mutter of gratitude, you scurried off towards the center of the island and turned the nearest corner. Making sure you were alone, you slid down the wall, the tears finally spilling as you wallow in despair.

You were never going to reach the end of your training. What felt like an eternity spent learning how to channel hamon, practicing how to wield it, and surpassing the stamina techniques was beginning to seem like a waste. It was a waste of Lisa Lisa's time and it was a waste of potential on your part. Now that a new trainee had arrived, far better in every aspect, you began to feel as though there was no point in continuing your trials. Between your blubbering cries muffled in between your legs and the ringing in your ears from exhaustion, you failed to notice the figure closing in on you.

"There you are. Lisa Lisa was concerned when you ran off like— hey, why are you crying?" Again, Joseph's voice only acted as a trigger for your panic. Your head shot up in surprise and mild disbelief. Every single attempt on your part to avoid him seeing you in such a weak state proved to be not enough. It was almost certain his opinion of you shattered in the instant he looked into your sore, bloodshot eyes.

And yet, he slid down on the wall beside you and laid a hand on your shoulder.

"You did pretty good back there," he looked away, still keeping his hold on you. It was firm but not tight, a silent assurance. "The way you held yourself against Lisa Lisa was pretty impressive."

"Yeah right." A mix between a scoff and a squeak leaves your throat. Rolling your eyes, you feel the heat in your cheeks rising at the thought of being pitied. "You're just saying that to make me feel better."

"I'm serious!" This time, Joseph opts for placing your hands in between his and lifting them up towards him. "Even though you weren't able to avoid her attacks, you took each hit like a champ, and there were a lot of hits," he teases. "Lisa Lisa wasn't holding back, either. I saw fire in your eyes that shook me to my core."

At his praise, you finally look up to meet his gaze and you feel a twinkle in your eyes. The heat on your cheeks doubles, and this time it is because you realize this is the closest you've ever been to him. Joseph lets a hand go to reach it up to his head, scratching at it awkwardly. "Don't stare at me like that, it's kinda weird…" he chuckles jokingly.

Wiping away the tears from your face, the tightness in your chest subsides. Joseph stands up and extends an arm to help you up. Without a second thought, you engulf him in a hug that holds all the things you wish you could tell him. His chest rumbles with a hearty laugh and you feel his arms tightly wrap around your smaller frame, offering a sense of peace you haven't felt in a long time.

"Thank you." It's muffled in his shirt. You find comfort in his smell, sharp and sweet but not overwhelming.

For now, it'll have to do.

#jjba #jjba x reader #jjba x oc #jjba reader insert #jjba part 2 #battle tendency #joseph joestar #joseph joestar x reader #JoJo's Bizarre Adventure #gender neutral reader #jjba imagine #fluff #angst

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murder-raven13 · 3 years

Text

My Haikyuu Ships pt. 1

A/N: I figured out the keep reading thing!!! Just took a month

This is a list of my Haikyuu ships. I’ll add an explanation for some if I have one. There is no rhyme or reason to the order of this list.

Warning(s): cursing, minor spoilers (manga & anime), not proofread, loooooong

Word Count: 1,786

Part 2 Part 3

Hinata x Kageyama

Kageyama struggles with communication and understanding others. Hinata, on the other hand, overcommunicates and has a knack for understanding people, even if he doesn’t realize that he does. Plus, Kageyama has struggled to find connections with people because of his zeal for volleyball. This on top of his trouble with communication made it hard for him to make friends. But Hinata matches Kageyama in his zeal and covers Kageyama’s communication weakness well, all while Kageyama gives Hinata a proper volleyball outlet and pushes him to constantly strive to be his best, so I think they’re neat together.

Hinata x Kenma

Again, Kenma is someone that’s not the best at communication, with a little dose of social anxiety on the side. He’s a lot softer than Kageyama and struggles with communication because he thinks too much (which is the opposite of Kageyama lol). Hinata makes him feel comfortable enough that he can communicate without overthinking himself into a hole. And Kenma, for Hinata, gives him a way to talk and an honest opinion when he needs it.

Atsumu x Suna

I will take not shit for ship. They are so cute together. During the match Inarizaki played against Karasuno, Atsumu and Suna bantered and, during the flashbacks, Suna and Atsumu were shown to have a pretty good relationship. Plus, Suna is a pretty laid back person and Atsumu is obviously the kind of person that would overwork himself to death or push forward without thinking of the consequences. Suna is a brutally honest person, but I feel like he struggles a bit with moving forward because it’s hard for him to feel motivated. So, Suna can keep Atsumu from going too far and Atsumu can help motivate Suna to move forward when he doesn’t feel like he can.

Kageyama x Tsukishima [as adults]

Honestly, I don’t even have a good reason for this. They would be dysfunctional because they suck at feelings. Tsukishima never actually says what he means because he’s high key scared of being vulnerable. And Kageyama sucks at communication (but, after Suga’s advice, he takes a much more direct approach to handling Tsukishima, which I feel is what Tsukishima would need in a relationship) and he also sucks at reading body language (particularly Tsukishima’s) which I feel would be something he would need to be with Tsukishima. But Tsukishima would force Kageyama to begin to think more critically in order to keep up with him and Kageyama would force Tsukishima to be more forthcoming with his emotions, even if just because Tsukishima would have to up his passion levels to keep up with Kageyama. So, if they could figure it out, I think they would be a very good couple. If they didn’t though, I feel they would be lowkey toxic.

Daichi x Suga

Can you watch Haikyuu and not ship these two??? Daichi is very calm, collected, and stable. And that’s a good balance with Suga, who’s an instigator, a meddler, and a worrier. They both care a lot and their very attentive, but they’re opposites in that Suga is a chaotic little monster with an angel face. So they would be a good balance when it came to a relationship. Plus, they would be the sappiest motherfuckers alive together, so, they’re kind of like a comfort, fluff ship.

Nishinoya x Asahi

This another one where I ship because they are opposites. Noya is extremely brazen and confident. Asahi is extremely the exact opposite; he’s shy and awkward and self-conscious. Noya, in canon, gets onto Asahi for being self-degrading and hypes him up when he feels Asahi needs it. And Asahi is someone Noya looks up to because he’s strong, even though he struggles, and someone he wants to see succeed. Asahi forces Noya to calm down and allows him to actually feel afraid. One of the reasons Noya understands Asahi so much is because he struggled with being scared when he was younger. So, I feel like Asahi can feel comfortable with Noya because he knows that Noya understands and, at the same time, knows that Noya managed to overcome his fear, which is probably really comforting. Overall, they’re fucking cute and I c a n n o t

Hinata x Tsukishima

They would be so cute, please. Tsukishima is so mean because he’s a big baby and Hinata straight up does not care. It’s also canon [from during the practice match with Seijoh] that Hinata doesn’t like seeing Tsukishima picked on or struggling [he legit offered himself in Tsukki’s place]. Hinata is a big ball of bright emotion and energy where Tsukishima is more clam and reserved, but Hinata has the ability to draw real emotion out of Tsukishima. They’re another two that would balance well. They’re relationship would be a lot of teasing and mocking, though [they have about 3 million inside jokes and Tsukishima revels in leaving people confused with them].

Kiyoko x Tanaka

Please, this man proposed the first time he saw her. And he legit stayed dedicated, but never overstepped Kiyoko’s boundaries. He never harassed her or did anything to make her feel uncomfortable. And Kiyoko was never mean to Tanaka, even when she rejected or ignored him. They had a stable relationship because Tanaka’s a goddamn gentlemen [can you tell I simp for this man?] and Kiyoko knows it. She fell in love with him over time because of how respectful and thoughtful Tanaka was. Plus, she’s seen firsthand, for years, the dedication and passion in Tanaka’s character, which is a good contrast to her colder, calmer personality. She gives Tanaka stability and Tanaka gives her passion and comfortability. The fact that this ship is canon gives me life.

Nishinoya and Tanaka

The level of chaos in this ship, oml. Two disasters. Absolute mess all the time. They love each other so much and they’re both like walking hype-men. Literally no insecurities in this relationship. They are the two most dedicated boys in existence. And they like to have fun, so they’re constantly challenging each other, which keeps their relationship fun and growing; it never really settles, no matter how long they’ve been together because they’re always finding something new to love about the other. They would go on adventures together. So cute.

Kuroo x Kenma

They’re childhood friends. It is law. Kuroo is so smart and so serious and so caring. He makes sure that Kenma isn’t neglecting himself for his games. And he made sure that Kenma got involved with the team so that he would have friends when Kuroo was gone. And Kenma lets Kuroo delve into his passions and gives him a safe place to relax and be goofy. Kenma is so aloof, but also really caring as well and he’s always paying attention, so he would know immediately when Kuroo was pushing himself too far and needed to let off steam [y’all remember that scene where he asked Kuroo if he wanted to level up (go play volleyball) after they lost a game because he couldn’t just sit and game knowing that Kuroo was upset over the loss? yeah that shit]. And Kuroo gives Kenma somewhere safe and secure where he can be himself without worrying about anything else.

Kuroo x Tsukishima

This is one of my favorite ships. They’re both ridiculously smart, so the conversations and witty sass between these two is literal gold-tier shit. Tsukishima never lets himself be goofy and I feel like, the longer that went on, the more it would wear on him mentally. Kuroo, on the other hand, knows the important of not being serious all the time. So, he would bring Tsukishima out of his shell and give him a safe space to be a dorky as he wanted. And Kuroo could talk all the Chemistry and science he wanted and Tsukishima would be able to keep up with him. They would constantly be challenging each other intellectually and they would know so much random shit because of it. Definitely the couple that has trivia date nights just to see who’s smarter. They would be such a well-rounded couple because they would balance and push each not just intellectually, but in every aspect of their lives. I can see them being the couple where one has an exam and the other just brings them coffee or tea, gently mocking and praising them until they can find it in themselves to study and get everything done. The one that doesn’t have the exam or big project at work would do the house chores, quietly, though, so the other could focus on what they needed to do. They would know just when the other needed space and when they needed a distraction or comfort. They just...would know each other so well and I-

Bokuto x Akaashi

[Did you think I wasn’t going to do this one?] Bokuto and Akaashi are both passionate and dedicated. Akaashi is a lot more emotionally stable, but he’s also an extreme overthinker. Man overthinks everything. Bokuto, on the other hand, is an under thinker that functions almost purely on his emotions. So, overthinker + under thinker = the perfect amount of thinking. That combined with the fact that Akaashi is emotionally intelligent, but not emotionally expressive means that Bokuto, who is emotionally intelligent and extremely expressive, can help maintain the right amount of communication in their relationship.

Iwaizumi x Oikawa

I wasn’t kidding when I said this was law for childhood friends. I meant that shit. Oikawa is manipulative, calculating, and extremely driven. But he has no concept of his own limitations or elects to ignore them because he wants to improve. Oikawa is really insecure, too, because he’s constantly trying so hard, pushing himself further than he can go, and it’s still never been enough to make him the best. Because of his fangirls and his desire to be the best, Oikawa is constantly making himself seem perfect, which means hiding parts of his personality at times. And he’s the type of person that has control over his emotions because he’s pretty methodical when it comes to his goals; he’s willing to literally do whatever it takes to succeed at what he wants. Iwaizumi, on the other hand, has known him long enough that Oikawa can literally not be perfect with him. Oikawa has to be real around Iwaizumi, who knows and acknowledges his true personality in its entirety, even going as far as to point out Oikawa’s flaws constantly, to remind Oikawa that he knows him and stays anyway. They make damn good outlets for each other and they know each better than anyone else, which means that they are, quite literally, each other’s safe space.

I have more ships, of course, but this post is already long as shit, so I’ll post those in a part 2

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janekfan · 3 years

Text

Chronic

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27802141

Thank you @taylortut for helping me!!!

Jon looked at the clock.

537.

The glowing numbers burned themselves into his retinas. How had it been less than an hour since last he’d checked? No use for it. Better to get himself up and ready for work. But he’d closed his eyes against the headache blaring like a klaxon and he’d have to open them again at some point.

Taking advantage of his lonely flat, Jon allowed himself to indulge the noise pushing its way through grit teeth as he maneuvered his sore legs from under the quilt. He sat a moment, pressing the bare soles of his feet on the cold floor and levering his heavy body upright with a shaking arm.

Exhausted.

And it’s only--a quick glance.

544.

The hell was wrong with him?

Since just before accepting the position as Head Archivist, and rightly pissing off both Sasha and Tim on her behalf, Jon felt like he’d been constantly coming down with something. Dizzy and nauseous and unable to eat, he was chronically exhausted and while he’d never slept well at the best of times, it was evading him more than ever.

And there were his mornings. Struggling to motivate himself out of bed, brushing his teeth with his eyes closed and leaning against the wall. Deciding he could forgo a shower just once more and choosing instead to make breakfast. Forcing himself to eat a piece of dry toast with his heart hammering away in his throat and half laying on the table, panting through his tea. Mentally, Jon prepared himself for the walk to the train, automatically going for his cane because lord knew he needed the support.

He’d get to the Institute hours early.

At least that made him look good?

Taking advantage of being a cane user, Jon opted for a reserved seat, the guilt at truly needing one eating away at his insides. But there were black spots at the corners of his vision and he had to sit down before he fell down and the guilt is a far sight better than causing a scene. The trip was too short. His chest ached from the constant pounding and he pressed the hand not holding his cane for dear life against his breastbone. It didn’t help but the pressure and touch grounded him enough to stand up. To head to the cross street. To wait for the lights to change. To stagger down the stairs and into his office, to drop into his desk chair and focus on every breath of air moving into his body and back out of it.

Jon put his head down. There was no one here. Wouldn’t be for a couple hours yet and he was exhausted, shaking from it. Nauseated. There wasn’t a fever. He’d gone as far as to purchase a thermometer to be certain when the strange symptoms refused to abate no matter how often he let himself rest, no matter the meals he tried his damndest to eat, the water he drank down. He was trying. Jon couldn’t remember ever taking such good care of himself and of course it refused to pay off. In Uni, he’d driven himself into the ground with little consequence. He’d maintained those habits until a few months ago and now--

Muffled voices drifted through his door, the rise and fall of easy conversation. The kind he’d once been allowed to partake in. Laughter filled the air and while Jon wished to join them he knew he wasn’t welcome.

Why had he done it?

Why hadn’t he refused Elias?

Because you’re selfish. You’ve always been selfish. Needy. Greedy, grasping, always striving to know answers and never satisfied with what you're given. You take what you don’t deserve.

Reluctantly, Jon stood, slowly, because doing anything quickly these days has him ducking his head between his legs or waking up on the floor without any recollection of how he came to be there. He could at least collect their research in person, greet them. Try to be the boss they deserved.

Sasha was the boss they deserved.

“Ah, g’good morning.”

“Jon!” Martin, smiling shyly. “You’re here so early!” He began to stammer and Jon’s legs began to ache. This wasn’t a good day. They seldom were anymore. “I m’mean, of course y’you are, you work very hard!” Martin was saved by Tim swinging an arm around his shoulders.

“You’ve broken ‘im, boss.” A flush rose in Jon’s cheeks. He could feel it. “No worries, Marto. He’s always been an early riser.” While it was said in jest, the tone settled heavy in Jon’s chest, directly beside the pain blossoming like a thorny rose. Luckily, he was rescued by Rosie, standing halfway down the stairs and informing him that Elias requested him in his office. Jon didn’t relish the climb, no matter how grateful he was to escape out from underneath Sash’s heavy gaze. She had every right and he would bear his punishment in silence until she chose, if she ever did, to forgive him.

An indeterminate amount of time later, Jon limped out of Elias’ office without any recollection of what they’d spoken about or if he’d even spoken at all. Thumping pain and panic and he knew he was rude to ignore Rosie at her desk but he wasn’t in any shape to hold a conversation, fairly certain that he wasn’t able to currently speak, far too focused on trying to hide how ill he was. But every sound was magnified tenfold in his ears and he could barely remember where the door to the archives was with the way his head reeled and spun. Jon wanted to sink to the ground once he had the door between himself and the lobby but he’d never make it to his feet again after that. Push through, he told himself. Get to your desk. He allowed himself a moment, two, just to put his head to rights, to try and breathe through the battering of his pulse.

And oh god he wasn’t going to make it and he wondered if somehow Elias knew. It was as though he’d kept him standing there talking about nothing until Jon hit his limit, knowing he wouldn’t have the strength to get back to his office.

But he had to try and he’d almost gotten down the ridiculously narrow stairwell before he forgot nearly entirely why he was there in the first place. Was he going up? Down? Meeting with someone? Just arriving? He could barely breathe and the panic welling in his throat was choking and the black was crawling over his eyes and the dizziness only increased and he needed...needed…

For a moment, Jon didn’t recognize where he was, the migraine, the fuzziness, conspiring against memory and reason. But he knew this color, the hideous lick of paint some contractor had splashed over the walls a lifetime ago.

Breakroom?

Wha--

“Jon!” He winced, his own name like broken glass shredding every sense to ribbons. “Christ, are you alright?” Martin, the sounds he made were shrill, grating, and if he’d been able to tell him to be silent, he would have. “We heard the noise--you’d, you fainted! On the stairs! Luckily it was only the last few.” Jon blinked, dull and dumb, forcing himself up, up, up, and through heavy mist and fog in his search for words. Weary to the marrow of his aching bones, Jon slumped on the cushions and tried to think of a way to stop Martin’s incessant chattering. Tim and Sasha, alerted most likely by all the commotion, stood over him and he craned his neck up to look at them. Tim especially looked furious.

“You could have been seriously hurt!”

“S’sorry…” And he was, between his rabbiting heartbeat, throbbing migraine, and difficulty drawing breath into his exhausted lungs, he wanted to cry with how sorry he was.

“This is ridiculous. You need to take better care of yourself.” Jon wasn’t sure why the sting from Tim’s accusation cut so deep and he hung his head, biting trembling lips to prevent the tears threatening to spring free.

It wasn’t fair.

By all accounts he was taking care of himself. More than ever!

“Did you even eat today? Drink anything?” He nodded, miserable, unwell, and equipped with no better answers than the truth.

“Tim. He’s just come to.” The understanding was the final straw, and Jon’s sight blurred with salt damp. “I’ll make sure he eats something before going back to work.”

“Alright, Martin. If he gives you any trouble, call.” At Jon, he pointed. “And you, no trouble.” And he nodded miserably.

“Okay, they’ve gone.” The familiar sounds of the kettle heating filled the room, the clink of a pair of ceramic mugs, the rustling of the tea bags, Martin’s distracted murmuring, all combined to calm him. “How long have you been feeling this way?” Jon looked up, surprised, and shrugged one shoulder, accepting the small plate of biscuits and nibbling slowly and when he finished those, Martin offered up the tea. Sitting with him in companionable quiet, he sipped on his own cup. Nothing more was exchanged and when Jon finished he thanked Martin for the company and locked himself away.

Jon was at wit’s end. Nothing he tried seemed to improve anything and the few times he did speak with a doctor, he was sent away with the same, useless advice, or worse, told he was imagining things, making it up, having panic attacks even though he was familiar with those and this was not that.

Work was a nightmare made even more miserable with the overwhelming amount of paperwork, statements, boxes, misfiled folders and envelopes and items and Jon missed the easy camaraderie and understanding he’d had with Sasha and Tim. Maybe he should resign, try and salvage what little of the relationship they still had, or, or invite them out for dinner, his treat, but Elias would never let him quit and the very idea of entertaining exhausted him. A cuppa appeared at his elbow filled with something new, something floral and slightly sweet, accompanied, as always, by a few biscuits.

“That’s a lot of work, Jon.” He sipped, grateful, lifting an eyebrow in response.

“I knew it would be when I accepted this position.” Undeterred, Martin stumbled forward.

“Y’yeah, I mean, you would have. Of course. I just--” A breath. “I’ve finished with my other assignments, ready for round, uh. Well, another round!”

“Ah. Alright, I’ll bring something over when I pick up your translations.” Martin took back the cup, nodding enthusiastically, and Jon appreciated that it was business as usual, selecting a few he’d been putting off and making his way toward his assistants ignoring inquiring looks in favor of taking the chair Martin offered up to go over his expectations. Short, succinct. A few notes on one translation, advice to remember for next time, and Jon felt reasonably confident Martin could handle himself. It wasn’t until he’d gotten back to his office that Jon realized that was the first time he’d been offered a chair. It was becoming apparent that Martin was good at noticing the little things about them. A blush heated his cheeks and he tried to rub it away, feeling ridiculous that such a small act of kindness made him feel so seen.

Jon pushed forward, ignoring the warnings his body was trying to give him in favor of plowing through his work like he’d always done, and by the time he made it home, was on the verge of collapse. Hot tears of frustration stung at the corners of his eyes, spilling over when Jon allowed himself to feel it. More than anything, he was used to having control over himself, working when he wanted, burying himself in the research, devouring knowledge. Now he was at the whim of his physical form. Paying more attention to it than ever before and never knowing if he was going to wake up and have a good day or a bad day and it was maddening. Managing whatever it was without knowing what it was, was impossible with no rhyme or reason he could discern.

So in the absence of both, Jon kept shoving his way through how difficult it was because if he could just be normal through pretending everything was normal, then it would be.

Jon knew Tim was cross with him and managed to avoid him for most of the day, taking breaks here and there like he’d promised Martin he would do. But his luck, while it had been holding steady, had just run out and he found himself cornered in the breakroom.

“What do you think you’re on about?” Frustration had long since turned to outrage, boiling over.

“Tim, I. I’m not sure what you mean--”

“Damn it, Jon! You’ve already taken on a job you aren’t fit for! You can’t keep heaping your work onto Martin and then swanning off!”

“That’s.” He balled his hands into fists, nails biting crescent moons into his palms. How could he explain when even the doctors thought he was making it all up? Heat rushed through him, top to toe, flushing his face and he wavered, legs threatening to buckle, vision threatening to go dark. He was going to pass out a second time today if he didn’t sit down. But that would mean walking away from Tim, and he didn’t think the man would let him. At least not until he was done telling him off. Better to be silent. Try not to pay attention to how erratic the persistent beating caged behind fragile ribs had become.

“Why didn’t you say no?” Because he wanted to be useful. Because Elias made him feel like he was capable even if he wasn’t. “Why didn’t you just let Sasha have this?” Because he was an awful, selfish person. “God, Jon. Why did you drag us all down here with you?”

Because he was lonely.

Because they’d been friends. Once.

Rather than remind Tim that he was free to go at any time, that he and Sash hadn’t been forced or coerced into accepting positions here in the archives, Jon pressed his lips into a thin line.

“Well?!” Sharp, strident, Tim’s shout echoed around in the space between his own hurting, agonal breaths in his ears.

“I. I, I need to si’down…” wanted to lay down. Wanted to sleep, trembling with exhaustion, about to go down.

“What?” Lashes fluttering as he gripped the thread of consciousness with both hands, he barely registered Tim’s hands around his shoulders, guiding him into a chair and pushing his head down between his knees. “Jon?”

“M’okay…”

“You are clearly not.” A wide palm settled on his back, keeping him folded over. It was helping.

“S’mm...been. S’fine.” The floor came back into focus, all the little cracks and imperfections and Jon counted the streaks in the pattern in an attempt to ground himself but kept losing track of the number. Neither moved until Jon attempted to sit up, slowly, accepting Tim’s help.

“Jon?” He looked spooked, pale. “Please, what’s going on?” His hand settled in the crux of shoulder and neck, thumb ghosting along his clammy skin, and Jon allowed himself to find a morsel of comfort in the familiar gesture, the threat of tears closer than ever. So he reached for him.

“I don’t know.” And Tim pulled away as if burned, the frustration and anger rising in his face again, and Jon was bereft. “T’truly! I--”

“Why won’t you be honest with me? Don’t you trust me?” Standing, he took a step backwards, away from him, the hurt in him a palpable thing. “We’re supposed to be friends!”

Yes. They were friends. It was most likely why for the first time in a long while, the pain in his chest wasn’t a physical ache.

“Tim, I.” Fingers folded to fists to rest on his knees. But he was already gone.

“Jon!” Tentative, Martin lifted his chin. “Oh, oh.” Having been crying, Jon figured his eyes were red-rimmed and puffy and he didn’t bother attempting to hide the evidence. “Alright.” Martin went about making tea, chamomile, herbal and calming, placing it before him on the table with a chocolate digestive. “Drink this down and then go home. It’s half six.”

“Mm.”

“Sleep will help.”

“Mm.”

“I could speak to them for you. If--”

“No!” All but shouted. “No. That won’t be necessary, Martin.” Carefully he stood, paused. “Thank you.” And left.

Jon called off.

Called off again.

Again.

Apologized to Elias in a curt email requesting leave and was granted it.

He ignored his phone. His texts. The knock at the door and Martin’s voice behind it. He slept when he was tired and he was tired often and it was easier besides, to finally listen to the screaming of his body. It was after hours on his fifth day gone when Tim let himself in with the spare key to Jon’s flat.

“Hey.” Sheepish, he held up his hands in surrender, a bag of takeaway from Jon’s favorite place dangling from one. “Martin said you wouldn’t let him in.” Dressed in the most comfortable clothes he had, which were also the shabbiest, Jon glared at him from where he laid on the couch. “I was an arse.” Slowly, he sat up, making Tim wait on purpose, a powerful frown still aimed in his direction.

“You were.” He was aware he looked a mess, greasy hair pulled back in a sloppy bun, but he felt a sight better for the rest he’d gotten.

“Would you accept an apology?” Folding his arms, Jon leaned back into the cushions and fixed his stare at whatever rubbish was on the telly.

“Might do.” Silently, Tim scurried into the tiny kitchen and Jon listened to the familiar sounds of him rooting around for cutlery. It smelled delicious and comforting, a reminder of nights spent together laughing at nothing on this same couch and despite himself, Jon began to relax.

“I’m sorry.”

“Alright.” Tim’s face split in a wide, relieved grin, and he flopped down next to him, planting a loud kiss to his temple before urging him to eat. “Martin sent you here.”

“An angry Marto is not to be trifled with.” Through a mouthful of noodles, Tim chuffed in laughter. “Wouldn’t tell me anything, other than to stop being a prick.”

“He did not.”

“He did not. But it was more than implied!” He put his bowl on the low table in front of them, sitting forward with his hands dangling between his knees. “And he was right. I didn’t give you a fair shake and accused you of awful things. And I know you’re doing your best at this job.”

“Gertrude isn’t making it easy.”

“Neither is your health, I take it.” Jon set his own meal aside, curling into the padded arm.

“No. It isn’t.”

“And you don’t know what’s causing it?”

“I know some things that help. M’Martin has been invaluable.”

“Has he, now?”

“Leave off!”

“Okay, okay.” But he continued giggling as Jon felt his face go hot, muttering.

“He really has.” This time Tim pulled him gently into an embrace.

“Then Sash and I will just have to catch up.”

#tma #the magnus archives #jon sims #tim stoker #martin blackwood #sasha james #cane user jon sims #archivist with a cane #chronic illness #undiagnosed #pots #fainting #exhaustion #anxiety #hurt/comfort #internalized ableism

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im-the-punk-who · 4 years

Note

Hi! I’m new to the fandom and I’m simply curious (not trying to start a feud or anything), why don’t you like Steinberg?

Hello dear anon! And welcome to the fandom!

Oof. That’s a question. xD

I’m going to try and stay as uh. neutral as possible. Because I’ve already written the post I know I failed but, the intent in answering this is also not to start a feud or hurt anyone’s feelings.

Okay, so I got fairly negative in this chilis tonight, so I want to start by saying that even in light of the opinions I’m about to express, Black Sails is one of, if not my number one, favorite TV shows of all time. Certainly in recent memory - I’ve been hyperfixating on this show for 18 months with no sign of stopping, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for everyone who worked on the show - even Steinberg. (The one exclusion is Michael Bay, he can go twist.)

AND I think Stienberg is an incredibly talented writer. Black Sails is one of my favorite shows because it does such a wonderful job of weaving stories, creating characters, and melding things in a way that is both unexpected and makes sense narratively. I have changed as a person because of the show, and they will have to pry James McGraw and Thomas Hamilton from my cold dead knives-attached-to-them hands. None of what I’m going to say is meant to detract from that.

I will also say that a lot of these issues are not particular to Steinberg and are in fact a systemic problem with American TV + Film. And I’m not leaving Robert Levine out of my criticism, it’s just that Steinberg had the biggest hand in the pot(he wrote a full half the episodes) and a lot of what I’ve heard as far as talking about the show comes from Steinberg. So, he gets the brunt. But it isn’t that I think Steinberg was the only problematic element of the show.

Also, these are all my opinions and are colored by how I interact with my fandoms. I am not only a fandom veteran, but I work and pretty much live in the entertainment industry. I work in indie film and theatre and am surrounded by artists and creators of all walks of life, like, constantly. I know what is possible, and when I see something that can be improved, I want to note it because it is important to me to always be striving forward. Like Miranda says about Thomas, this isn’t out of malice, or out of hate. It’s because I genuinely love this show, and I love entertainment as a whole, and I think in order to get to a better, more inclusive industry we have to have hard conversations and look critically at the media we consume, and it is frustrating to me to time and again see the same faces in the room.

But if that isn’t your cuppa, that’s fine! Fandom isn’t meant to be stressful and if all you want to do is watch a show about gay pirates that is your tomato and I applaud you. Have at it you funky motherfucker.

OH! One more. At some point I’m going to talk about Silverflint. When I do, it is NOT meant as a ‘you shouldn’t/cant ship this’ or ‘this pairing is bad’ or any negative attack on the people who ship that pairing. My criticisms in this post are exclusively about what it means for Steinberg as a writer and Black Sails’ representation of gay and mlm men. While it’s not my cuppa, this is a sail your own ship blog.

OKAY! SO!

My main criticisms of Steinberg & Co boil down to:

The homozygosity of the writers and directors shows a complete lack of desire to include marginalized people in the writing of a show that is about them. Which leads to:

The centering of white men while choosing a historical setting and time period that was in fact dominated by people of color and specifically a black woman,

The gratuitous inclusion of violence against women, particularly sexual violence, and again, that the female characters are often sidelined for the central male characters.

SO.

Black Sails is a show centered around queer, female, and black leads, and yet there were only two non white-male directors (one bi-racial man and one white woman) and only 7 female writers - one of whom was Latina. The entire rest of the major creative staff was white men. I’m not going to comment on sexualities but none of the writers or directors are out as queer according to a quick google search.

Let me reiterate the important bit there.

In Black Sails, where the last two seasons specifically feature around a real, actually-happened-in-history event that shaped black history in the Caribbean, there was not a single black writer on the entire show.

This is the main difference between inclusion for inclusion’s sake, and actually centering marginalized voices. Black Sails has a ton of gay, POC, and female rep in front of the camera but practically zero representation behind it, which leads to storylines and implications that Steinberg and his writers, as white men, simply would never realize.

It’s like why Silver and Miranda never realized the true reasons James was waging war on England. They just did not have the life experiences to realize they were missing a piece of the puzzle, and so they filled in their own without even realizing they’d done so.

Because no one in the room of Black Sails was a part of these marginalized identities, nuances get lost or mistranslated, motivations get muddled through a white man’s gaze(or a straight person’s) and implications that someone within those communities might think is obvious won’t even come up.

And again, because there were no writers or directors of color in the last two seasons (the biracial man directed episodes 2x02 and 2x04 - WHICH MAKES SENSE IMO) the entirety of the historical lore that the show bases itself on in its latter half is filtered through a white man’s lens. And so there is no discussion of how changing something changes the meaning, how leaving someone out or changing their role to be more minor might affect people for whom that is their heritage. How the entire story they’re telling might change with one simple exclusion or addition.

So, how does this relate directly to Steinberg, you ask? Well, simply, because it was his show.

Steinberg(and Levine) were involved in every major decision about the show, from its conception, to the script, to choosing the writers and directors. They chose how they wanted the show to look, to think, what stories to tell and how they wanted to tell them. Their decisions(and the biases that formed those decisions) are woven into the show.

And look. I don’t for a second believe any of this was willful or malicious. I don’t think that John Steinberg and Robert Levine sat down one day and said ‘you know what would make the gays really angry? If we locked the only two canonically gay men up in a prison camp.’

But the decisions that were made in the show were based in ignorance in a way that shows more than just simple negligence or laziness(especially given the attention to detail in everything else). The things they leave out or change in the Maroon War plotline for instance are not small details easily missed. They are big, giant waving flags. They are things that are irreplaceable to still have the same events and stories and tell them respectfully.

It shows an insane amount of privilege to, for instance, write a show airing during a time when the Black Lives Matter movement was at the forefront of the American conscience, include black characters and black storylines, and yet not include a single black voice on their creative team.

In a show that centers a gay man’s love and his journey in attempting to process the horrible things done to him and his lover because of it, we are given just forty minutes of the entire show dedicated to their relationship - and just fifteen of those minutes actually feature the lover!

(Relatedly, the entirety of the gay romantic rep is two kisses, and a forehead touch. That’s the entirety of your gay intimacy representation. And yet there are in the first two seasons alone - because that’s all I’ve clocked so far - something like twenty seven minutes of scenes involving a naked or half naked woman. Five minutes of that is explicitly wlw sex.

Again, I just want to reiterate this because it’s important in recognizing bias.

There is fully twice as much female nudity in the first two seasons, as the entirety of the time the two gay characters have together on screen. )

Steinberg is a perfect example of how a lack of understanding why the diversity you are representing is important, matters. I dislike Steinberg because he, just like every other straight white cis man I have known, profited off of marginalized voices without including them or creating with them in mind.

Art does not exist in a vacuum. You cannot create something - especially something as back breakingly, intensely a labor of love as Black Sails - without putting several pieces of yourself into it. But those pieces color your narrative. They will expose things about you that you don’t even realize. And it’s in these places we are weakest, and why a diverse group of writers with a diverse group of experiences can help a piece be stronger. But for whatever reason, John Steinberg thought that he could make art with only people who looked and thought and experienced like him.

The lack of representation behind the camera in Black Sails was evident in front of it and yet Steinberg is out here getting to pretend like he created the most inclusive groundbreaking show that ever existed. It is important to me, personally, to acknowledge that. And that it kind of makes my skin crawl in the way all media made by straight white (cis)men makes my skin crawl. I wish I didn’t have to feel that way about my favorite tv show just because it was created by a man of privilege, but here we are.

SO. I hope that helped? Feel free to take what you want and leave what you don’t!

Below the cut is a more in depth look at things that I think show what I’m talking about, but that up there ^^ is the gist. <3 |D

SURPRISE!

The Maroons and the Maroon War

So the first thing I want to point out is that the Maroon War was a real thing that happened. It lasted ten years, and resulted in the most substantial victory the Maroons ever achieved against the British. Not only that, there was in fact a KICKIN’ badass female leader of the maroons named Queen Nanny, who is to this day honored as a national hero in Jamaica. While they weren’t able to drive the British out, the outcome of this war led to a mostly self-governing Maroon population in Jamaica from the mid 1700s on. This was a long term fight that had a very tangible and real outcome, even if it didn’t end in the destruction of colonialism.

And what is this war turned into in Black Sails? A white ‘madman’s revenge’ that is doomed to failure after six months.

That, my dear pirates, is a problem for me. (And those familiar with my brand of spiceyness know that I do not ascribe to the ‘Flint is a Madman’ trope, but that IS what Steinberg ascribes to, what he seems to have written the show thinking.)

There was no narrative reason to include the Maroon War in the narrative of Black Sails. The Maroon War didn’t happen until a decade after the Golden Age of Piracy, and aside from Silver’s wife being a black woman there is no mention of Silver ever having contact with them. To me, this feels like the choice of a showrunner who found a cool historical event and saw a chance to up the stakes of their white male heroes while getting in some sweet sweet POC rep.

Except that they then took the major events of the Maroon War and gave them to their white characters, Flint and Silver.

Here’s the thing. If you’re going to take a piece of culturally important history and use it for your show, you NEED to have sensitivity writers. You need to have people who are at least familiar with those events and who care about them to do them justice. Have an expert come in and read your script or go over your ideas. Or just like. Hire a black writer. Hire ONE black writer. As a treat.

The important Maroon figures, Nanny, Cudjoe, and Quao, all get sidelined or ‘sexified’ and then used as plot points for the white characters. Nanny gets split into two women - the older mother queen and Madi, the young naive warbent visionary. Quao(Mr. Scott is the closest, or Kofi possibly) gets killed off because the writers realized they didn’t exactly have a place for him in their writing. Cudjoe(Julius) gets a few scenes and one good speech but his entire role in the war gets given to Silver. And THEN. That sexy Queen Madi figure gets used as emotional bait for Silver and then has to learn he has betrayed her and destroyed the hope and freedom she had wanted to bring to her people.

Gross, pirates. Gross.

Anne Bonny/Max/Mary Read - a heads up, this section includes a semi in-depth discussion of both Max and Anne’s sexual assaults. If that bothers you, the paragraphs talking about that begin with a ***

COOL NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT LESBIANS. Words my 20 year old self would never have imagined coming out of my mouth.

Specifically, I want to talk about Max, and Anne, and their backstories both involving extreme sexual trauma at the hands of men. And then Mary Read and the once again sexification of female characters.

(Actually while I’m here another criticism I have of Steinberg is that his writing does not seem to recognize how queer people existed in the past - again, likely because he didn’t have any gay historians to be like ‘actually buddy that doesn’t make sense also why is Anne not dressing as a man? If you want to fuck with anything and insert modern day terminology and ideas into this show, make her non binary and REALLY piss off the hetties.’)

(This same ficitonal gay dramaturg who is definitely not me has also questioned John Steinberg repeatedly about where Mary Read is, unsatisfied with the answer ‘well we wanted her to be hot so we made her a sex worker and then had Anne have to rescue her but then we realized it would be weird not to include her actual character so we gave her a five second cameo at the very end of the series and also made her like 13.’)

Anyway! So my main point in bringing up Anne and Max is the sexual trauma they are exposed to in the show, particularly being that they are the two primary wlw in the show, who Steinberg has said he views as being completely gay, and what THAT whole unexamined idea looks like.

***Max. My dear Max. There was literally no reason to have her be repeatedly r*ped(and for the love of god there was even less reason to make it that gratuitous and graphic). Max being assaulted like that did not add anything to the gravity of Eleanor’s betrayal. The traumatic event was being tossed aside by Eleanor, and that could have been just as emotionally damaging without the sexual assault. And the only reason for her to be continually assaulted was to bring her and Anne together.

***The reason imo that Max’s r*pe plot was added was because it was the only thing these white straight men could come up with that felt emotionally damaging enough to them. The act of betrayal itself wasn’t enough, the act of being thrown away, of having a lover put your life in danger because of her own ambitions wasn’t enough, they needed her to be r*ped to really drive home the point.

***Anne, on the other hand, is never shown being sexually abused, but we are given an explicit account of her own traumatic history and how Jack saved her from this vile beast who was passing her around to his friends.

But here’s the thing pirates - that never happened. According to every account we have of Anne Bonny, she chose her husband, and married him against her father’s wishes. They were probably relatively happy until her husband started being a pirate spy and Anne started cheating on him with Jack.

And yes, when they were found out. Her husband had her beat. That’s not fucking cool, and if they really wanted to go the damsel in distress route they still could have had Jack ‘save’ her from that. But at no point was she sexually abused by her husband(at least not in any accounts I’ve read.)

You know who did likely sexually abuse her or at least manipulate her and Mary for his own benefit? If you guessed our Rat man Jack Rackham, you would be correct, because when he found out about Mary and Anne’s (supposed, but probably real) relationship, it’s implied he extorted both of them into fucking him to keep their secret from the crew.

The addition of sexual abuse to Anne’s past isn’t done to be true to her character and was in fact explicitly untrue. Now of course I don’t know the reasons why they chose to do this, but I can guess. Just as with Max, the most traumatic thing a male writer can think of for a female character is for them to be sexually abused.

And the most disturbing part of this to me? The parallels it has to the real world of why straight men think lesbians exist. These characters who would be called man haters in present day are given these incredibly traumatic man-centered histories. It brings up something very uncomfortable in me about particularly wlw sexuality being viewed as a reaction to trauma at the hands of men. It’s just gross, I dont like it, and honestly there is no fucking excuse for it besides a room full of white straight men writing this bullshit. A room that Steinberg chose, because they fit his ideas.

In Fact heck, the women of Black Sails in general

***I honestly struggle to think of a single female character who I think was treated fairly in Black Sails. Miranda and Eleanor are killed for taking sides and not understanding their partners, Madi is betrayed in the worst way possible, Max is given a pseudo empowering ending but has that fucking terrible start. Idelle ends off fairly well, but tied to a man she may or may not have any actual feelings for, in what is essentially a political marriage. And Anne has her entire identity tied to a man who will be dead in two years as she is robbed of any agency whatsoever without him. (Oh, and the whole r*pe thing. And also her support for Max’s r*pe or death until she started having fee-fees. Who wrote this stuff. >_>)

Even though the characterization of each and every one of these women is PHENOMENAL - and again I will repeat that I absolutely LOVE these characters as they exist in a vacuum. I think they are well rounded, real, feeling people given motivations and drives and FEELINGS and they SHOW THEIR ANGER and i LOVE THEM.

But the show punishes them for it. Miranda is essentially fridged to move Flint’s storyline along, and to make room for Silver. Eleanor is killed for the emotional damage it will cause Rogers. Madi is placed at the center of a conflict she explicitly says she is willing to die for and then not only is her entire cause taken from her, but when she tells Silver to fuck off he - in possibly the most predictable white man move ever - says ‘no i will stay until you change your mind. I will never leave you. I don’t care about your choice in this matter, I will wait forever for you. I’m your biggest fan. I’ll follow you until you love me. papa, - paparazzi.’

And I touched on this before, but I want to talk in more detail about what is possibly my hottest take to date, the sexification of Mary Read and Queen Nanny, as they are presented in the show.

Max is to Anne what Mary Read is, historically. She is the lover that Jack Rackham discovers with Anne, and then he joins them in their bed. They form a triumvirate that upholds Jack at the expense of the women. But for some reason, Steinberg didn’t want to just include Mary Read as an actual character. For some reason he needed to make Anne’s love interest a sex worker who was in need of saving (and who, coincidentally, we never see working the brothel after she becomes lovers with Anne, because she is now a madam. :) Gross.)

And Madi. My dear sweet fucking Madi who didn’t fucking deserve any of this bullshit send tweet.

So, historically, Queen Nanny was the Queen, spiritual advisor, and the military tactician of the Windward Maroons. She would have filled both Madi and the Queen’s character roles(and Flint’s, but who’s counting. A BLACK GAY LEAD? Inconceivable. I digress.) But, I guess, because they were wishy-washing with Silver’s sexuality or felt they needed to give him a female love interest because of Treasure Island, or because they were leaning a bit too hard into the gay shit and needed to backpedal, they took Queen Nanny and split her into a character who is for all intents and purposes powerless in the war and Madi, who is young and naive and does not have any real world experience outside of the Maroon camp.

Because that’s sexy, or something. They could have had the Maroon Queen be a fucking badass lady who works and fights alongside Flint and Silver and one ups them and teaches them shit and has her own ideas about where the British can stick it, but instead they made her into the perfect caricature of a female monarch, letting the big strong men handle the dirty work or something. Because white male power fantasies.

Just let women be powerful and not nubile and let them have character arcs over fucking thirty and let them be CENTERED in their own. fucking. narratives.

God damnit Steinberg.

James Flint, mlm extraordinaire

Oh, my love. My most amazing child. The light of my life. My purest cinnamon roll.

~~And now we’ve come to the dreaded Silverflint criticism part of our programming. Please please know and remember this isn’t a criticism of people who ship Silverflint. As I said up top, Your Tomato Is Not My Tomato and that’s cool. Please don’t take this next part as an attack on Silverflint as a fandom ship.~~

My criticism of Steinberg as it relates to Flint is related to:

What a romantic/sexual relationship with Silver being the basis of the tension and plot means for Flint in particular as a gay or mostly mlm man.

Refusing to confirm Thomas and James being alive at the end and honestly the whole finale in general but like I’ll try and focus.

The major problem I have with Silver and Flint being coded as in love with each other is the implications there in terms of gay men’s relationships to other men.

From every corner, men are inundated with the idea that any close relationship between them must be gay. That intimacy cannot exist unless there are sexual feelings involved. That a relationship cannot be close, deep and soul shattering and life altering, unless one guy secretly(or not so secretly) wants to bone the other dude. That two men cannot value each other as partners or friends or truly know each other unless they are gay.

Seeing both of the meaningful relationships Flint forms with other men be sexually coded feels a bit the same way as Anne and Max’s sexual assault plotlines does vis-a-vis being wlw. (Even with Gates, Flint never spoke about Thomas or his plans - Silver is absolutely the closest person to Flint besides Thomas and Miranda.) And this is just as true for Silver. Having both Flint and Madi - the two people he trusts - both be people he’s in love with also just feels. I don’t know.

It feels like a confusion between male intimacy and male love that is so so familiar to me as a gay man I could choke on it. Where they wanted these men to have a deep and really lasting connection, but could only figure out how to do it if they were in love. Friendship wouldn’t have been enough - only romantic and sexual love is enough for the gay man(or men, at all).

Just because it isn’t queerbaiting doesn’t mean it’s good rep, and I would have liked to see truly deep male friendships that did not center on sexual attraction - particularly for Flint as a confirmed mlm(and Silver too, if you’re counting him. The same arguments for why I dislike Flint being paired with Silver are also true in the reverse.)

Even if both Flint and Silver were confirmed mlm I still would have LOVED to see a platonic relationship between them. In fact I would have loved that EVEN MORE. Men! Who fuck men! Not needing to fuck each other to be important to one another! Who made this. Very delicious.

But because there weren’t any queer writers on the show, writers who understand this kind of struggle that gay and mlm men face, they thought ‘oh, let’s also have them be in love with each other. More gay rep is better gay rep, right?’ False. THOUGHTFUL gay rep is better gay rep.

Okay and here’s my last thing. The fact that Steinberg refuses to say whether or not the explicitly mlm men are alive at the end of the show - that the words he specifically uses are ‘up for interpretation’ is. Fuck, it’s gross, okay? It’s fucking gross.

I have been around enough men, enough people in power, enough people with leverage who also know how to play the field, to know that when someone wants a group’s support but does not agree with them, their go to phrasing is that it is ‘up for debate’ or ‘up for interpretation.’

Say the gays are alive. Steinberg refusing to acknowledge the reality of the ending of his show to maintain his own sense of artistic integrity is what, honestly, really sets me off about him and I don’t care if this is a nuanced take.

Like yes, death of the author. I honestly don’t care if he thinks they’re dead or alive. What I care about is that he thinks he can get away with being clever and leaning hard into a story is true/untrue’ - doesn’t realize what the implications of that are, and didn’t when he was writing, and didn’t have anyone else in the room who would think about it either.

ANYWAY. So this is....my long drawn out explanation for why I do not like Steinberg. Uhhhhh tune in next week for more of my totally unpopular opinions!

#good....fucking lord #i am so sorry #how many opinions can milo fit in one post #i mean i have more but yknow lmao #black sails #behind the black sails #milos black sails meta #long posts #my increasingly devoted attempts to find tumblrs word limit #Anonymous #john steinberg #js critical but the js is jon steinberg

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honeypwark · 4 years

Text

[ A Cup of Soup ]

↳ Clé : LEVANTER era

↳ Xiang takes care of Seungmin when he's sick. She makes soup. He asks her to sing for him.

m.list

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Xiang turns the stove off and moves the pot of soup off the hot burner before finding two mugs and scooping a decent amount into each. She places a spoon in each and carries them out of the kitchen. She nudges a bedroom door open with her foot and steps inside.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you care about me."

"Whatever would give you such a preposterous idea?" Xiang asks as she walks over to Seungmin.

Seungmin caught a cold a few days ago that hit its peak yesterday but left him feeling pretty crappy today as well. She waits for him to sit up before handing him the slightly fuller cup of canned chicken noddle soup.

"Well, despite my protests, you insisted on staying to take care of me instead of going to see Knives Out with everyone," Seungmin says. "And you made me tea earlier and soup now."

"Ah, but you see, I have an ulterior motive," Xiang says, sitting on Hyunjin’s bed across the room from Seungmin.

"What's that?"

"If I take care of you, I can convince Chan to bring us back takeout."

"If you asked, he'd do that even if you weren't taking care of me."

"Shut up and eat your soup."

Later, Xiang finishes her soup first and sets her mug on the ground. She fishes her songbook out of her bag then settles in to write. Seungmin sips spoonfuls of soup at a time as Xiang hums to herself, writing down lyrics as she thinks of them.

"That doesn't sound like a rap," Seungmin speaks up.

"It's not," Xiang sings to the tune in her head, "Good songs have more than just raps."

Seungmin laughs lightly as she sings her sentence, which brings him to cough. He clears his throat then sips some of the broth.

"Will you sing what you're writing for me?"

She lifts up her songbook, "This?"

Seungmin nods.

"It's not finished yet. I haven't even gone back and looked for grammatical errors."

"That's fine, it'll just sound like you when you talk, then."

"Hey!"

Seungmin laughs.

"Fine, smart ass. I'll sing what I've got so far."

The song Xiang sings is melancholic in a way that tugs at Seungmin’s heart. It's lyrics are about working hard for something and losing a piece of yourself along the way. You've achieved your goal but the ending isn't quite as happily ever after as you'd thought. You struggle silently as the world watches on unknowing to the pain that goes into being and maintaining what you've worked to become. It's so raw, just Xiang's voice and her lyrics, unfiltered emotion that one could never get after hours of editing and production.

When she reaches the end of the chorus, she stops without a proper ending, yet that seems to fit the song perfectly. Xiang looks up from her notebook and finds Seungmin looking at her with soft eyes.

She laughs breathlessly and looks back down at her scribbled lyrics, "It's just a song, overdone melodrama and all that."

"It's good," Seungmin says.

"Thanks," she says softly. She notices the empty mug in his hands, "You're finished?"

She takes his mug and picks hers up off the floor, leaving for the kitchen. She washes and dries the mugs and spoons when she normally would have just left them to air dry. She takes a breath once she's finished before returning to Seungmin's room. Seungmin has laid back down when she comes back inside.

"Are you tired?" she asks.

"Not really. Will you sing something else for me?"

Xiang nods, "Sure, any requests? I can pull up an instrumental on YouTube-"

"No, something you wrote. I like it when it's just your voice."

Xiang takes a breath then says, "Okay."

She flips through her songbook to find a song that's a little less self-projecting.

Her second song is motivational. The lyrics have a simplistic beauty to them. They assure you that even when bad things happen, it will get better. You've got to fight your way through for now and struggle now so that in the future you can move on and find your way. No matter what happens to you, there will always be a light at the end of the tunnel. Keep going and one day everything will be alright.

When Xiang finishes, Seungmin is half asleep. Regardless, she finds another song to sing.

This is a song that tells a story of a young boy. A boy wants to be something impossible so badly. He strives to be it and everyone expects him to be this impossible thing. For so long that is all he was supposed to become. He realizes as he grows older that he'll never be what he's expected to be. He feels like a failure, as though he's let everyone down. He is unhappy with what he has to be resigned to be but works toward improvement and becoming something that he can love. He learns that you must learn to accept yourself, if not as you are then as what you can become.

When she finishes, Seungmin is sound asleep. Xiang smiles fondly at him then turns to a blank page in her notebook. She stares at it for a moment, pencil hovering above the paper but never touching. With a soft sigh, she instead flips back a few pages to her song of melancholy and continues to write lyrics for it.

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chixibrown · 4 years

Photo

Upon finishing the Stardew Valley comic

Since the Stardew Valley comic has been released by Fangamer, I am now able to write about what I had been doing in secret for one long year.

■ Gratitude

First of all, to the original creator Eric-san who entrusted the task in my hands, to Kari-san who helped me from early development all the way to printing, to Ryan-san, to Steven-san who did the translations, to Kari-san's mother who assisted in the creation of the envelope, to Erica-san for product photography -- And last but not least, everyone at Fangamer and FangamerJP.

It's thanks to the support of many people that I was able to finish the comic, and I wish to extend my sincerest gratitude towards everyone involved.

■ Chronology

"Chihiro! Big News! Let's create a new merch together!" was a request that I received around autumn of 2018. At first I was wondering if I was going to be asked to design a T-shirt, but turned out to be an invitation to draw a comic book!

At that time, I was posting comics on Twitter at random. Not even in my wildest dreams have I thought that my little comics would be appreciated so, and thus I immediately burst into tears.

I'm very honored and thankful for the opportunity to pen Fangamer's very first comic.

■ Contents

I'll try not to spoil anything about the story in this section.

The content requested by the original creator Eric-san for the comic was: "The story before the farmer comes to the farm" "With focus on the community center and Joja" "And the protagonist should have no set characteristics"

These were really the ONLY information that we received from Eric-san throughout the whole process (whyyy).

I was definitely worried. In reality, for around six months when I did my preliminary research, I played Stardew Valley every day, took countless pictures, and absorbed myself in collecting materials.

I I ended up taking a little over 20 thousand screenshots total (lol).

I wholeheartedly agree with Eric-san's guideline not to give the protagonist any set characteristics. I think one of the keypoints of this game is that "Anyone can be the protagonist".

The story is set from a few years before the prologue of game, so I was rather careful not to show my own personal interpretation. In principle, the actions of the characters were mostly taken from their in-game dialogue where they mention having done something in the past (For example, the reason Sam got in trouble lmao).

It took a lot of effort outlining the story, which involved things such as "Which characters would be in contact with each other?" and "Which characters may not be present at the valley at the time?". This is the reason why the preliminary research took around six months.

By the way, I was the one who proposed to include a "letter" with the comic, both as a bonus and major spoiler, in a way. But uh, many fellow Japanese may not be able to read it, so... I'll secretly tell you the what's actually written on the letter:

It's the handwritten version of THE letter you receive in the English version of the game's prologue. It's in your hands now. So in conclusion, it's probably exactly what you think it was.

I was quite adamant about how the letter needs to be handwritten. And as who wrote it... I shall keep it a secret here.

The reason why the comic had little to no dialogue is because it was the style I had back from the time I was drawing Stardew Valley fan art. Since Stardew Valley is a media not originally from Japan, that style serves to fulfill my two wishes: "I want people all over the world to be able to read my work" and "I want to cherish the feelings of each individual player" -- That sort of idea, really.

To summarize,

"I want people all over the world to be able to read my work"

"I want to preserve the unique interpretations each individual player might have"

"Anyone can become a Stardew Valley protagonist"

I drew the comic with these concepts in mind.

■ About me

I would like to talk about my experiences throughout the development of the comic.

My name is Chihiro Sakaida (a.k.a. Brown Junimo), I was already working for a game company, so I took advantage of that experience to work on game design and illustration.

Of course, while I was working on the Stardew Valley comic, I was a freelancer and had other jobs to worry about as well, so I ended up spending a lot of time working on the comic at night after work. I also studied digital art for a month for the sake of the comic, and I think it helped improved my work efficiency.

Those were truly, very fun days for me. The only thing that did bother me was the fact that even though I was working on my favorite Stardew Valley content day after day, I couldn't really share it with anyone.

I didn't want to take the risk of accidentally running my mouth on Twitter, and I no longer had the time to draw and post online like I used to -- So I had to resort to posting only low-risk tweets, so to speak, and to be honest, it was quite disheartening.

As such, I felt truly supported by the trusted individuals who knew about the comic. Tori-san, Aki-san, Kari-san, and Ryan-san, thank you so, so much.

■ Those who supported me

Tori-san is my partner, and also a person I respect as a novelist and screenwriter. She kindly and carefully reviewed and summarized my messy story.

Aki-san knew about the comic existed, but also knew next to nothing about it. Because of that, I think it was more than a handful to support me. It must've been really hard on Aki-san, who didn't know the contents of the book and thus had no way to accidentally spoiling the surprise, but whom also probably held even more feelings of shame than I did in regards to social media... I'm sorry that you've had to put up with so much. I was very proud to have you be the first reader of the finished book.

Kari-san is the illustrator of the Official Stardew Valley Guide Book, and I respect her a whole lot.

Both her work are her personality are very kind and easy-going. Together with her partner Ryan-san, she's managed to assist and encourage me many, many times.

No matter what I drew, I was sure to be greeted with her "Chihiro, you're so great!" or "Chihiro, you really did your best!" (Even my own mother have never praise me this much!) Overall, she feels just like an older sister I've always longed for, and it makes me very happy.

No matter what merch was in the process of being created, she would say "Let's make a brown one!!", solely because it's my signature color. It makes me very happy, although probably a tiny bit embarrassed as well to have her value my one schtick this much. She's even came to Japan many times, and listened to me talk all day long. After all, I wouldn't have been able to get this job to begin with if it wasn't for Kari-san, so she's a real lifesaver.

I didn't get to talk directly with Eric-san, the original creator and developer of Stardew Valley. Obviously I received some feedback via Fangamer, but I was refraining from being in contact with him as much as possible. I didn't think I could convey my full sincerity towards him before the comic was completed. I strived to be able to earnestly understand the feelings he wanted to convey via his own words -- Whether it was the game dialogues, his words on the developer blog and interviews, etc.

There was, by the way, no revision whatsoever to the comic. Eric-san did, however, carefully check all of my ideas and always provided words of appreciation; which made me happier than anything else. Those words became my motivation to live, in a sense, which in turn allowed me to freely and happily work on the comic.

■ Going Forward

While I've been talking about how proud I am to have finished the comic, I also would like to talk about what's coming next. While I certainly plan to continue working with Fangamer for the foreseeable future, at the same time, I have also decided to work for another game development company, and I plan to devote my time working on game development for at least the next year.

It has been my dream for the past 15 years to work for this particular company, and I'm elated to see it come true.

However, as a result I think I will have less exposure to social media. I don't think it's going to be easy to recreate that warm and wondrous time where I could interact with people regularly, but my memory of that time is something I will treasure for the rest of my life.

I'm really sorry that I have absolutely nothing to give back, but I sincerely hope the comic has brought a smile to everyone who's read or even merely noticed it.

■ Finally

I'm such a fortunate person -- I've come this far due to everyone's support, and for that, I would also like to extend my deepest gratitude. Thank you so much, for everything, always.

It would delight me if all of you could stay with me from this point on.

As I try to polish my skills and improve myself as a whole.

PS: Thanks to my best friend Ryou-chan for translating this!

#stardew valley

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ibijau · 4 years

Text

Worst engagement AU // on AO3

Set after lxc first saw that bunny painting and accidentally complimented it

I was not planning to spend so long on that painting, and in fact it wasn't even part of the original plan for this story but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s not that Lan Xichen wants to talk to Nie Huaisang. He’s tried before, and all he’s ever gotten out of his attempts is the other boy looking at him with big, frightened eyes and refusing to say more than two words. There’s a reason he doesn’t like his fiancé, as he’s told Lan Wangji quite a few times lately, and that reason is Nie Huaisang’s absolute lack of anything to make him interesting.

Lan Wangji, each time, just gives him that look. He doesn’t bother saying anything. Doesn’t need to. His silences carry entire conversations. In this case, the silence speaks of a painting of rabbits on which, even weeks later, Lan Xichen’s eyes still linger whenever he sees it.

And he sees it often.

Lan Wangji made sure of it.

He asked his uncle to help him display it in his room, where it is visible by any guest he might have. Which mostly means Lan Qiren, who doesn’t care, and Lan Xichen, who knows this is a personal attack against him. All because he tried to be nice to his brother by complimenting a painting that’s just…

A painting which is…

It’s just so…

But that’s the problem, of course. Lan Xichen can’t even bring himself to think that the painting is mediocre, because it’s not. It’s better than anything he’s ever managed to paint. The style shows a certain lack of formal learning, and it is obvious that it was made quickly, but somehow that’s part of what makes it so good. There’s a freedom to the lines that Lan Xichen could only dream to achieve.

He knows. He’s tried to reproduce the painting, in vain. His own attempts aren’t bad, but they feel stiff and heavy compared to the original.

Of course, it’s normal for Lan Xichen to find his own work lacking. He’s only just seventeen, and humble enough to accept there are great masters in this world whose level he will only reach after decades of hard work. It gives him something to strive for, and he rather enjoys the challenge of it all.

But being inferior to Nie Huaisang stings.

Everyone knows that Qinghe Nie isn't a sect for artists. Nie Mingjue shows polite interest when Lan Xichen speaks about painting or music, and he knows just enough to say if something is generally good or bad, but that's it. He doesn't get colours and lines, he can rarely tell one melody from another unless they're different enough, and he clearly doesn't care. So when Nie Mingjue has mentioned in the past that his little brother fancies himself an artist, Lan Xichen has assumed that just means a few childish doodles in the margin of his studies. It's the most anyone would expect from a disciple if Qinghe Nie.

And Lan Xichen likes Qinghe Nie and respects it and he would scold anyone who would call them a butcher's sect, but… but it makes no sense for Nie Huaisang to come from there and be capable of making a painting like that.

So that's what motivates Lan Xichen to give his crybaby of a fiancé another chance. Not his uncle's increasingly stern looks, not Lan Wangji's petulant attitude. No, it's just plain old curiosity.

That and something he won't admit in a thousand years, not even to himself. The hope that maybe, just maybe, he has more to look forward to than a lifetime tied to a blubbering idiot who acts terrified of him. If there is any chance that Nie Huaisang is more than he appears…

But hope is a dangerous thing, so Lan Xichen guards himself against it. In a world such as the one they live in, marriages are rarely happy, arranged ones even less, those of rulers of sects least of all. Of the leaders of the Five Great Sect, which hasn’t had a problematic marriage?

Still, a chance must be given, for the sake of fairness. So when one day Lan Xichen spots Nie Huaisang alone (he's always alone) in one of the gardens, a pile of papers at his side and a brush on his hand… He has to seize the occasion.

After taking his leave from the boys he was walking with, Lan Xichen directly goes to Nie Huaisang. His fiancé is so entranced in whatever he's doing that he doesn't notice him until Lan Xichen stops right next to his bench. In a second, Nie Huaisang gathers all the papers around him and gathers them against his chest, trying to hide them.

"May I sit with you?" Lan Xichen inquires, as if he doesn’t notice the other boy’s panic.

As always, Nie Huaisang looks up at him with the pitiful air of a startled rabbit, clutching his paper tight against his chest. Whatever he's been drawing must have smudged, which annoys Lan Xichen. To be so careless with one's work…

"Lan gongzi may do as he pleases," he mutters, quickly looking down. "This is his garden."

Lan Xichen sat down, careful to leave as much distance as possible between them, for propriety. He tries to peek at the sheets, but Nie Huaisang only holds them closer, wrinkling them and finishing to ruin everything.

"Were you drawing, Nie gongzi ?"

"I wasn't!" Nie Huaisang blatantly lies. "I swear I wasn't. I have far too much homework to be painting!" he claims with an awkward laugh.

And if he has to lie, can't he at least be good at it?

"That's too bad," Lan Xichen says, pretending he believes that. "I've been curious about Nie gongzi's art. Wangji showed me the piece Nie gongzi gifted him."

"Oh, that," Nie Huaisang mutters, his eyes widening. "I'm surprised he didn't throw it away. It was silly, and it's not very good. The rabbits were too fat, and I should have placed them better on the paper. It's really bad, I'm ashamed I gave it as a gift. Lan er-gonzi must think I'm too bold, giving him something this bad."

Past the shock of hearing that painting so easily dismissed, Lan Xichen can't help a slight thrill that Nie Huaisang noticed the same problems as he did. It's easy to see that a piece of art is good. Slightly less so to know why it's good. But it takes an expert eye to find what can still be improved, even in something excellent. It speaks of real skill and good taste, rather than the simple stroke of luck he sometimes told himself the painting might have been.

"Wangji is actually very happy with it," Lan Xichen announces. "He had it hung in his bedroom."

Nie Huaisang looks up at him, gaping in shock and mild horror rather than showing any of the pride Lan Xichen would have expected. It makes his usual annoyance flare up, but he forces it aside for once.

"It is a good painting," he insists instead, hoping his tone is complimentary enough, while also not showing just how much he likes that painting.

"Lan gongzi doesn't need to lie," Nie Huaisang mumbles. "I enjoy painting, but I'm not good, I know that. Father always said it was a waste of time and I should work harder on my cultivation."

"Are you calling me a liar?" Lan Xichen remarks, still fighting to keep his annoyance in check.

Nie Huaisang startles and throws him a terrified look. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean… Lan gongzi didn't lie of course, Lan gongzi was just trying to be kind. It's, it's not necessary though. I know it's a silly hobby. I'm sorry I wasted time on this. I'll stop now and work harder so I don't bring more shame to Lan gongzi."

For a second, Lan Xichen hesitates. It's true that Nie Huaisang should focus more on his studies, especially since his grades are so bad and everyone knows he still doesn't have a golden core, which is shameful at his age. In fact, Lan Xichen half suspects that Nie Huaisang must have skipped classes of some sort to go paint those rabbits, for which he probably ought to be punished.

But no matter what he's saying, Nie Huaisang is a good artist, if that piece with the rabbits is any indication. In any sect but Qinghe Nie, his skill would have been noticed, encouraged and nurtured. In fact, even for his sect it's odd that he hasn't received more attention. If his cultivation were better, his lack of skill there didn’t outweigh other accomplishments of his... It feels unfair, for lack of a better word.

And so Lan Xichen is tempted to do something bad, and encourage Nie Huaisang’s talent. If he could produce a painting like that with nothing but his own taste and determination to guide him, Lan Xichen can't help but feel slightly eager to see what he might do with a few proper lessons. If he offers to teach Nie Huaisang, maybe he can learn in return how the other boy keeps his lines so light and pure.

But that's selfish of him, he figures. Lan Xichen only wants that because if they have this common ground, it will make their future marriage less painful. What's actually good for Nie Huaisang, he knows, is to improve his cultivation and work hard to catch up to others their age. It's just too shameful for a young master to be so bad he doesn't have a golden core. For the good of both their sects' reputation, Nie Huaisang needs to be more serious.

"It might be best if Nie gongzi focused on what's important," Lan Xichen reluctantly agrees. “When your cultivation reaches an acceptable level, you can see about diverting your attention again to other occupations.”

Nie Huaisang sighs, deep and heartfelt, then nods miserably. He really is a pathetic boy, but force once Lan Xichen feels sorry for him rather than angry at his weakness. It’s a little sad that even when finally Nie Huaisang turns out to have some talent, it’s at something that he cannot pursue freely.

“I’ll let you be now,” Lan Xichen announces, quickly rising from the bench, uncomfortable with that newfound pity for this fiancé he still doesn’t want. “Do work hard in the future, or your brother will be disappointed.”

The other boy flinches at that, but Lan Xichen chooses to ignore it and leaves. All in all, it was a disappointing conversation that managed to do little but making him even more frustrated about Nie Huaisang.

And yet, maybe in the future, if Nie Huaisang gets his act together and finally achieves a decent level of cultivation…

Only time will tell, but Lan Xichen wouldn’t hate having someone to paint with.

#xisang #nie huaisang #lan xichen #lan wangji #mo dao zu shi #worst engagement au #jau writes #ok now I'll start munching on those prompts I got but I wanted to finish this first!

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kampjames · 3 years

Text

James L. Feldkamp

James Feldkamp is a federal government and military veteran with over 30 years of service, specialised in international security and foreign policy issues. He successfully managed an international outreach programme to increase marine domain awareness (MDA) and maritime security.

He has over 15 years of university teaching experience, focus on international security, terrorism, counter-terrorism, and transnational crimes. High-level diplomats, top executives, private business leaders, non-governmental organisations, foreign personnel, and military attachés are adept at developing contacts and engaging in productive discussions.

Training specialist, speaker and subject matter expert on global security, terrorism and counter-terrorism trends; James is a sought-after Over 25 major worldwide conferences and symposiums have invited me to speak.

International Security, Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crimes are some topics he's taught at the university level. Intuitive when building relationships with high-level diplomats and executives in the corporate sector, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), foreign nationals, and military attache. Skilled trainer, speaker, and subject matter expert on global security issues relating to terrorism and counter-terrorism.

James Feldkamp, a former adjunct professor and subject matter specialist at Georgetown University, understands that no instructor is perfect.

However, as Feldkamp understands, a successful teacher strives to grow and never takes their position or responsibilities for granted. Jim provides a few ideas for becoming a better teacher — modest but meaningful methods to change your approach and energize your regular classroom routine.

Allow yourself to meditate.

In the United States and elsewhere, many instructors are overworked and underpaid. Students to instructors ratios have risen substantially over the past several decades, so teachers have more work than ever–and very little assistance or aid to handle that task. No matter how hectic your calendar is, James Feldkamp suggests setting aside time to reflect at least once a month or more.

Reflection can be made simpler by journaling and making lists. Jot down your shortcomings, places for growth and, lessons learned that worked or didn't work, along with what contributed to the result. Seeing your ideas written down might help you better examine these components and structure future lesson plans based on previous experiences.

Request Feedback from Students

Depending on the age group you serve, soliciting feedback from your students on assignments, projects, and your general teaching style may be beneficial to develop as an educator. As long as you teach, there will be students who adore your class and some who despise it.

However, as Jim Feldkamp knows, student feedback may be beneficial in detecting patterns and repetitions in your teaching method and making modifications and improvements down the road.

Determining whether or not students can follow your lecture style, for example, may mean adjusting your delivery – or allowing extra time for discussion and questions afterwards.

Take a look at your class.

If you want to avoid any unpleasant surprises in the future, especially when it comes to grades and exam scores, you need to plan. As much as possible, keep an eye on student averages. Look for signs of a declining trend as soon as possible.

Were specific assignments too challenging for the typical student?

In addition to "Did, you find the questions on the last exam challenging? May assist in identifying possible causes and addressing them before they catch you and your school leadership off guard.

Establish Specific Objectives

Feldkamp understands that professional advancement is only achievable when you have specific goals in mind. To that aim, just stating, I want to be a better teacher, a very vague and open-ended objective, is insufficient. Instead, creating a purpose entails sitting down and sketching out specific, exact benchmarks that you want to attain.

Another option is to think about what your favourite coworkers and professors have in common. You should ask yourself what makes them successful or admirable and what makes them such effective instructors.

It's a good idea to make a list of qualities and specific goals that you'd like to achieve by the end. Create goals and methods that will help you achieve them. There is a good chance that you can achieve your purpose by being more precise.

Don't Allow Bad Days to Define You.

Teachers, like everyone else, are fallible. And, as Jim Feldkamp knows, every teacher has a rough day now and then.

The essential thing is not to allow bad days to become the norm but to utilise them as instructional moments - chances that educate your experience and help you avoid future mistakes.

Rather than allowing negative experiences to dominate, create methods to demonstrate the need for openness and responsibility to your pupils. Accept responsibility when anything goes wrong, prefer constructive criticism to retaliation, and recognise successes whenever feasible.

Never, ever lash out or shout at pupils in front of their peers because you're angry. To communicate in this manner is disrespectful.

An alternative would be to instil a What matters is that you recognise what went wrong and discover solutions to prevent it from happening again in the future, no matter how stressful or infuriating the day has been

Fault-finding is a waste. Look for solutions.

Issue kids will always be a problem for most teachers; therefore, it's vital to realise that In the end, you are the instructor, and whether you succeed or fail in classroom management is ultimately your responsibility.

If your class consistently fails or misbehaves, don't force them to learn.

Seek out solutions.

Do you have a very talkative class? Try rearranging the seating chart. Did a single test project fail miserably? Take a step back and think about what you could have done differently.

Sometimes, as James Feldkamp knows, you merely have to get a bit imaginative. It entails not just determining the "why" of the problem but also trying with many solutions until you discover one that works. Being a teacher involves problem-solving.

Motivate students to make their own decisions.

Students might also be motivated by offering them alternatives. Do you remember the proverb, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't force him? A 20-page essay on Shakespeare may not work for every student in your high school class. Consider giving your pupils a choice between various themes or letting them come up with their own. In this approach, they're able to write about what they're passionate Everyone benefits from this!

Make Use of Humor

Let's face it: many students are natural comedians who like a good belly laugh. Not only that, but when professors share a joke with pupils, it helps to relax everyone and creates a pleasant atmosphere. Even if you are not a naturally humorous person, you can keep things light in the classroom.

One method to accomplish this is to include humour into everyday activities such as examinations, writing tasks, and homework. You may also do something like a Humorous Friday once a week when you start the day by inviting students to speak about a funny movie or TV show or share their favourite jokes with the class.

If you don't have a sense of humour, bring something else to the classroom. Is there anything you enjoy more than the arts, music? Do you have a knack for telling a Baker?

As a last thought, one of the most popular strategies to approach kids is to find out what they like and utilise these items as rewards for the desired behaviour. Incentives and rewards might be anything from special activities or privileges to modest presents.

Several teachers claimed that they reward their students with classroom economy programmes, behaviour programmes, group and individual incentives.

Click here

#james feldkamp

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kaotical · 4 years

Note

Not the same anon, but can i ask a question, what motivation do you use for making art, i want to make art but i don’t feel like i will ever improve like others

There are actually a lot of things to consider when it comes to gaining motivation. You should try to figure out a proper balance of inspiration and competition. What I mean is this: When you look at someone’s art, how do you feel about it as it relates to your own art?

Warning, long post ahead :))

For most of my life as an artist, I felt inspired by artwork that was superior to mine and sought to improve to reach that level. Let me tell you — the artwork I first looked at when I was what.. 8 or 9 years old?? They were painted by trained anime professionals. I was astonished, and I aimed to reach that skill level… even though I was a kid with notebook paper and a no.2 pencil looking at artwork done with different layers and brushes on an expensive paint program. It’s been about 10 years, and I still don’t think I’m anywhere near that, but I can’t deny the progress I’ve made so far to get to where I am now! As a kid, I was confident in my skills, even though I cringe today looking at my old artwork. But that fact alone reminds me that progress takes time and I just have to work at it! Who knows, future me will probably be embarrassed of my recent art posts. But I’m choosing to be proud of them now, while also seeking to get better every day. Also, I was first inspired by manga drawings, which led me to develop an art style that only implemented certain parts of that style. Today, my drawings are mostly cartoonish (likely inspired by old cartoons as well as tv shows and video games I enjoy). You never know what’s gonna change as you progress, but based on experience, I’d say that it’s good change!

There’s another way people look at art outside the light of inspiration: competition. When they see a piece of art, they may not only feel motivated, but they want to surpass that level. This is where we have to be careful! I’ll be honest with you; If I had this mindset when I was a starting artist, I would have been severely disappointed early on. I would have expected to be as good as the next person as fast as I could, not realizing that it may take years to develop the proper skills, which requires dedication and passion. As a kid without social media, who didn’t know there was a whole art community where you could interact with artists from miles away, I did not know art was sometimes competitive. Ever since I’ve joined the online community of art, I’ve been seeing it everywhere. What tends to bring people down is the fact that there’s someone better than them. Join the club, pal; even the best artists to ever live had their flaws! No matter how good you are, there’s always someone better than you; I’m sure there are more than thousands better than me! I speak from experience that it’s generally unhealthy to compare yourself to others, as it may bring about feelings of self-doubt — that is, if you let others’ talents get to you, the competition smothering the inspiration. But if you truly feel you can surpass people, don’t go for the ones on top right away; find some friends in the art community who can help you! They don’t necessarily have to be better or worse, but cheering each other on and drawing shared interests or fandom-related things together is a great way to progress, as long as you share a healthy bond with just the right amount of competitive flare! Also, I’ve heard that Artfight is coming up soon. I’ve never done it before, but I feel like it would help lots! Anyway, striving to be the best artist in comparison to everyone else usually isn’t the best option. However, striving to be the best artist you can be is a great goal to have!

Uh, so am I finished with this unnecessarily long answer? …Perhaps. OK now to actually answer your question !! I’m motivated by things I love, which is usually fandom related. Whenever I’m not up to drawing my own characters, I just draw fan art! Occasionally, I’ll browse ye olde internet and find cool projects I’m capable of doing. What really gets me excited is looking at behind the scenes stuff and other interesting secrets! Makes me wanna start something of my own people can be interested in :0

#long post #ask #anon #art talk #motivation

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tuliharja · 4 years

Note

Oh, the otp asks are so interesting! Would you consider for HashiMito answering the following: 3, 9, 12, 21 and 24? I hope it's not too much, but with canonical, and so politically-involved couple those are super interesting.

Thank you so much from the ask @olliya!

Yes, I agree to you! OTP asks are always so interesting~. And I don’t mind at all, since HashiMito is one of my otps, so I was really happy to receive this ask from you! Not to mention the fact you picked very interesting ones. Thank you again from the ask. ^^

(The asks can be found from here.)

Alright, let’s put those shipping goggles on! *Cue for a very long post.*

3. If they complimented each other, what would they say?

Hashirama would probably try to write sonata to Mito and once he would realize it’s much harder than it seems, he would end up asking Tobirama to help. With the help of Tobirama, Hashirama would make most brilliant sonata ever, but once he would present it to Mito…she would be left highly unimpressed.

“Hashirama, did you perhaps ask help from Tobirama?” Mito questioned from her husband, before she sighed. There wasn’t any reason to ask that question when she already knew the answer, yet watching her husband turn into a spluttering mess brought her some sort of amusement. Deciding to be merciful, Mito gently cupped Hashirama’s cheeks, giving him kiss to his forehead. “Hashirama, you don’t have to make me sonatas, poets, or anything that would be too elaborate. As long as it becomes from your heart, I don’t mind even if your compliments would be extremely tacky.”

She watched how her husband slowly turned into a sobbing mess, gently brushing his hair as she merely allowed him to relax in her arms.

After that incident, Hashirama would gift Mito flowers. Being the expert, anything related to plants, he would know each and every flower and those meaning. He probably wouldn’t be best with actual words, but each bouquet would hail Mito’s beauty, kindness, power and how lucky he was when Mito did choose him.

Mito would had mastered the use of words, because she would know how valuable the talent of speaking would be. She could make even most praising comment sound like most wicked insult ever. That’s why, she would rarely compliment Hashirama as she knew her husband already received lots of compliments as he wasn’t any ordinary man. Repeating those same compliments would sound just hollow, empty and she didn’t want that. She would also know repeated words would turn meaningless, so she would rarely use endearing words about Hashirama.

To everybody else she would seem cold as ice, but in those rare moments when she would compliment Hashirama, he would take those into his heart and cherish those. Such occasions would be when Hashirama would manage to genuinely surprise her, show genuine understanding about her feelings and hopes, and take into consideration her wishes. But the most cherished moment would be when Mito would finally admit to Hashirama she was pregnant, while she was a Jinchuuriki. Hashirama would reassure her he wouldn’t leave her and make his best to ensure both she and the child would be safe. After she would calm down, she would spill her heart to Hashirama, telling how blessed she was to have such wonderful husband that would still stand next to her even when she was carrying Tailed-Beast. She would hail his strength, kindness, understanding and way too big heart. Later on, that night they both would compliment each other’s bodies in very sensual manner. ;)

9. Have they made each other cry?

Yes, since what would marriage be without any tears? There have been happy tears, but also sad ones. Happier tears have been in happy occasions, such as when they got married, when their first child did bear and when Mito would tickle the hell out of Hashirama. Who said Mito couldn’t be mischievous when she would want to? They’ve also been crying tears of joy when they got their second born (because it’s kind of their own fault they got a child, now isn’t it? xD)

There has also been tears, when Hashirama has tried to cheer up Mito when she has had extremely bad day when dealing Nine Tails just to see her wife happy. But there has also been tears of sadness as at times Hashirama’s gambling problems would be too much for the stressed-out Mito. She would hide her tears, but Hashirama would know. He would eventually weed out his gambling problem, when they were at the risk of losing their home and the tear-streaked look Mito gave? Yeah, absolute broke Hashirama’s heart. There would also been tears when each of them would get so badly wounded, they would be at the brink of death. One of such was after Mito sealed Kyuubi inside of her. Hashirama was sure Mito would perish as it seemed holding down the beast was too much for her. Hashirama’s eventual death also made Mito cry as she felt like her whole world collapsed at that exact moment, but such is life: many different types of causes which can make one cry.

12. Do they have differing political opinions?

Many people think they would have, but in reality, they don’t have expect in minor businesses. The political field can be extremely messy, especially when considering the fact Hashirama was doing something (building first ninja village) that hadn’t ever been done before.

Before Mito married Hashirama, she understood right to way for things to work she had to do some groundbreaking thinking. She knew if she married Hashirama, she wouldn’t just switch her Uzumaki family to Senju family, like in old times. No, what Hashirama was offering was that, she could still be Uzumaki and Senju. In old times, when one was wed to some more powerful clan, you had automatically become part of that clan. You had to basically throw everything that you had been before, expect your ninja talents. While you could gain a new and possible better family, there was always that fear if your spouse would die. If your spouse would die, you would automatically become an outcast. Just fodder to be used in next fight against some other clan, unless you would marry someone else or become a concubine. The option to go back to your old home wasn’t anymore an option, since you had quite literally been kicked out from there. Of course, some bigger clans treated this possibility much ‘nicer’, but the fact was, your position would still be bad compared to anyone who had born in the clan.

Now this Hashirama was offering something else. A village where you wouldn’t be an outcast, should such a thing occur. Hashirama painted all pretty pictures how they all would be one ‘big happy family’. Of course, Mito knew such thing would take time. But the possibility was tempting and since Mito didn’t want to forget her roots even if she would marry someone, she agreed upon this. She even went so far as convince Uzumaki clan to make their own village, Uzushiogakure, as the Uzumaki clan wasn’t yet ready to be part of some other village. In that way, Mito could keep one leg in her home and one in her new one. It also served as a way to ensure she wouldn’t be treated poorly in her new home, since at times when one would be married to some other clan, the new clan could treat the new spouse extremely badly. Of course, she didn’t have to worry about that (given the fact Hashirama was Hokage).

As time went on, Mito started to see better Hashirama’s views. She liked quite many of those as if those all would become true, there wouldn’t be anymore war, everybody would be treated equally and the children would be taken care of by everybody, even if their parents would die. Of course, she disagreed upon some things her husband suggested, such as sharing Tailed-Beasts between each newly formed village, but to make things work she understood everybody should have equal power at the palm of their hand. She also disagreed when some clans that joined Konoha would get some privileges such as Hyuugas, but since they were newly formed village that was striving for something new, even she understood some sort of bait was needed to get them join them. Things like these made disagreements between her and Hashirama as at times she felt like Hashirama didn’t care or see wrongness that he tried so much to weed out. Times like those, she felt like the village mattered more to her husband than anything else… in those darker times, she would deliver some cold facts to her husband that would make him despair over some of his choices. In those times, Mito would see the man behind the God of Shinobi whom she would comfort as she knew for things to work, they had to stand united together or watch the world burn.

21. How have they changed each other for the better/for the worse?

Hashirama believes his actions toward Madara did drive Mito to seal Nine Tails inside of her which basically did change her in more ways than anyone could had at first believed. While that was true, what Hashirama had hard time to grasp was the fact Mito did it willingly. Hashirama felt incredible guilt about that, because that event made Mito more prone to display her negative emotions. While that might sound like a good thing, because before that Mito tended to hide her negative emotions, it wasn’t at all fun and games when Nine Tails’ negative chakra was leaking out of Mito and she was trashing Hashirama around their house like a ragdoll. In those moments when Mito was very upset or angry, she reminded more a wild animal more than a person.

At first it was very hard, since Hashirama quickly learned Mito had tons of pent-up anger in her. His paperwork being late? Angry kyuubi-Mito. Him forgetting the dishes? Angry kyuubi-Mito. For a while it felt like there were two people inside of Mito, which was true. It took lots of patience, motivational talking and reassurance from Hashirama to make Mito understand not to hide her ire, no matter how small it would be. Eventually Hashirama managed to make Mito embrace her more ‘negative’ self that actually improved their relationship greatly. It also helped Hashirama to understand Mito better.

While Hashirama was already a stunning leader even before Konoha was founded, he was extremely poor what came to social skills. He could give motivational speeches to anyone, but if he had to make deals, small talk, simply listen or anything that would need any kind of ‘fine’ talk, he would more than often ask Tobirama’s help. Yet that behavior wouldn’t anymore cut when he become Hokage. He couldn’t anymore push Tobirama to deal with the stuffy, boring affairs and go train with their students. Which is where Mito stepped in. She put Hashirama through a mini hell to drive into his thick skull at least the bare minimum of social skills. It opened a whole new world to Hashirama. While before his overbearing personality had made some people feel uneasy and even that, he didn’t realize they might actually have brilliant ideas, he would now calm down and listen them. His relationship even with Tobirama did improve, because now he would listen his little brother giving him a speech of his latest invention, that actually made Hashirama understand Tobirama and him weren’t that different. They both were passionate people, yet because he barely before did stop to listen his brother’s ‘odd ideas’ he never knew.

While Mito’s social skills course did bring lot of good things out of Hashirama, it also brought his darker side. Hashirama could now use his ‘happy-go-lucky’ character at times as a façade to gather information and later on use it against Konoha’s enemies as most of his opponents only saw a fool front of them. But Mito teaching how to wear a mask in important meeting? Hashirama was eternally grateful to his wife about that.

24. What is something they have each had to forgive the other for?

When Mito married Hashirama she vowed to herself she would protect Hashirama, no matter what. But to do so, she had to do it while remaining hidden. She would protect Hashirama from the shadows, even going so far as kill someone if they threatened her husband. She would even create secret service, ANBU, just to protect her husband. They were an organization that worked in the shadows, that no-one knew, especially Hashirama. Expect, Hashirama did knew. He knew exactly what his wife was up to, yet he never addressed it as he waited Mito tell him about it. When years went by and Mito still didn’t tell him, Hashirama started to feel uneasy. He would drop intentionally questions or make scenarios that could make a perfect opportunity for Mito to tell about her role in ANBU and the organization itself. But she never did. It started to eat Hashirama in and out. While he knew Mito had her best intentions toward him, it still made Hashirama feel like unworthy of the truth. Didn’t Mito trust him? Did she think he was still that fool that she had met those years ago? Hashirama wanted to trust Mito, but he didn’t want to confront her. It wouldn’t had been same as if she would tell herself the truth.

To numb the pain Hashirama turned into drinking and gambling. With a good buzz he could make his doubts away as it would leave his core thoughts: that which were love. Gambling also brought a thrill to him that he hadn’t felt ever since he had become a Hokage. Maybe Mito wanted simply feel thrill? The adrenaline that would pump to his veins when he would bet everything to win or lose was just exhilarating. Though each time when he would lose and face upset Mito, he would feel a sting of guilt just to remember his wife’s secret. So, another night with gambling it was! Hashirama’s actions were slowly spiraling out of control and he only came into a rude awakening of reality when he faced tear-streaked Mito. She told him they were about to lose their house and everything, if he wouldn’t just stop. It was that moment the two realized they had to change, or they would lose them. Mito was stressed over the fact she tried to keep Hashirama safe, but it was harder than she had first believed, while Hashirama had tried to escape his problems with drinking and gambling. This event was one of those turning points with them as they slowly started to unravel those all. Eventually Mito told Hashirama the truth which lead into his own confession, making both of them to forgive each other and slowly strengthen once again their strained relationship. But even though they had managed to tackle this particular obstacle on their married path, there was still one big obstacle that had been slowly marinating.

While Mito understood in some level Hashirama’s deep friendship with Madara, at times it was extremely hard. In most situations like these, one would pick in a heartbeat their partner. But in Hashirama’s case, it wasn’t ever that simple. While Mito trusted Hashirama, it still made her at times doubt herself and her position as his wife. When she tried to talk about her doubts, most people would dismiss her and tell her how lucky she was. She was married to “God of Shinobi”, so why she was complaining? Wasn’t it beautiful her husband was friends with his childhood friend who had been Senjus mortal enemy? It made Mito hide her doubts and concerns as she all but turned eventually a blind eye her feelings. The worst part was that, Madara was actually nice toward her. But it all came crashing down when she sealed Kyuubi and she realized hiding her negative feelings wasn’t anymore that easy. Her all doubts came flying out of the box that had been hidden deep within her heart. She knew she had to learn to forgive her foolish husband his past ignorance and be more straightforward with Hashirama as Hashirama could be at times very dense. She eventually did forgive Hashirama when he showed her, she was extremely important to him and being friends with Madara didn’t take out or lessen his love toward her.

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