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higgsbison · 1 year

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where can i start reading disc world?

(tl;dr version: Either with Guards!Guards! if you want angry urban fantasy or Wyrd Sisters if you want angry rural fantasy, then follow the list for that sub-series)

Oh anon brace yourself, there are in fact several ways people have big opinions on.

These are mine:

1. My least favorite way is from the start in chronological order

the trouble here is the first few Discworld novels were written as these kinda silly goofy fantasy/dnd parodies that weren't even supposed to be a part of a bigger thing and they honestly aren't that good, especially not compared to later books. That's the way I started and I just dropped the series for a few years cause of it, so I really don't recommend it. The author himself said he wasn't that good of a writer back then which is understandable, cause it was like 40 books ago.

2. What I reccomend is in chronological order based on different sub-series

Discworld novels all happen in the same world, but they follow different groups of characters, so you have several sub-series.

I'll post a list here, but it's pretty confusing so I'll also explain two of my favs below.

City Novels (Watch novels and Industrial Revolution novels)

About a huge, terrible metropolis and the people that help it run, stumble and sometimes trip over the years.

People normally split this into watch novels which follow the city watch and are crime procedurals/adventure books with a ton of social commentary and industrial revolution novels which are about the city speedrunning from medieval to industrial era via several inventions and follow different main characters who are mostly all there against their will.

To me, the main character is the city itself and I super recommend reading these from start to finish in order to see how it changes with time.

starting book: Guards! Guards!

Witches Novels

About three witches doing witch things in a small mountain kingdom, unless they're going on a trip somewhere.

Incredible horrid old lady characters, a lot of exploration of fantasy tropes, some deep emotional beats, very warm human phlosophy and personal responsibility themes.

There's a semi-seperate "YA" series about a younger witch (Tiffany Aching novels), but don't let that fool you, because those hit just as hard as the "adult" ones.

starting book: Wyrd Sisters (technically Equal Rites, but that's also in the awkward early books period for me)

As for the others, the death novels are also very very good, Small Gods is an amazing standalone book and I'd literally just avoid the Rincewind novels until you're already hooked on the series, but they probably have their fans too.

3. Just pick up a random book you see in the library

A tried and tested method a lot of people swear by, most of the books are standalone enough for this to work, BUT my personal opinion is at least the city books should be read in order (especially Night Watch) and there's several less than stellar books you could pick up first by mistake this way (Color of Magic, Light Fantastic, Interesting Times and Faust being the worst imo).

#discworld #this is my personal opinion ofc but imagine your first books was interesting times #everytime someone asks me how to get into discworld i transform into that look how hard i can piss comic

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demilypyro · 1 year

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I think Dark Souls 3 is the most “self-aware” Fromsoft game, only possibly topped by Elden Ring. With Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 they’re still figuring stuff out, and Bloodborne was very experimental, but Dark Souls 3 says “alright you know what this is” and just lays it on really thick.

Some have called Dark Souls 3 uninspired, and to a point it’s true that it reuses a lot of stuff, while Dark Souls 2 made more of an effort to invent new things, but I think the game is making a point. More than any other game in the series, DS3 is playing the hits. It languishes in the tropes the series itself established, plays around with them and creates variations on them, but retains their core. It’s almost joking about how repetitive it all is.

You know the drill, says Dark Souls 3. Here’s your hub area, here’s your firekeeper, here’s your standard covenants, here’s Patches, here’s the Onion Knight, here’s all the weapons you know and love, here’s a mimic in the very first level, here’s a stormruler fight, here’s a boss that evokes Big Hat Logan, and here’s a boss that strongly evokes fan-favorite boss Artorias. One of the major bosses is literally wearing the skin of one of the bosses from Dark Souls 1. It’s all a rehash, but it works, because it knows it’s doing it. It’s the point, it’s central to the plot: the world has repeated and repeated itself to perpetuity and it’s breaking down and it can’t go on, so it’s time for it all to come to an end.

Dark Souls 3 is a statement on franchises, how they repeat themselves and stagnate, and it indulges in its own legacy to an almost comical amount, but it also says “this has to end somewhere”, and that’s the note it leaves things on. The final boss is an embodiment of the franchise itself, an amalgamation of people who have perpetuated the cycle, symbolizing every single person who’s contributed to the franchise’s continuation, and by defeating it, you lay the series to rest. The fire can’t be linked any further. The cycle breaks.

Finally, in the DLC, the idea is taken further, leaving the game on a statement of hope. One day, a new world will be created, it says. A little game called Elden Ring will sift the ashes, taking a lot of the tropes and running with them, and leaving some to rest where they were. Using the blood of the Dark Soul to paint a renewed experience.

#i just think it's all really neat #dark souls 3

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the-eeveekins · 9 months

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For people who think the finale of G-Witch only implied that Suletta & Miorine are married and nothing explicitly confirmed it in-series:

Eri calls Miorine her sister-in-law. That explicitly confirms in the show that Suletta & Miorine are married. You'd literally have to invent a new sibling for Suletta that never existed in the show for that line to mean anything else.

That line combined with the matching rings and their entire interaction in the epilogue is just completely explicit, if you don't think so you're either in denial because there was no kiss/wedding or you've got some homophobia going on. It may not be the way of explicit confirmation everyone wanted, but it is explicit, and the staff committed to that much. It's canon. There's no subtext you have to read into to confirm they're married. They're textually, in the show, explicitly married.

And while I'm at it, if you think there wasn't anything romantic about their relationship before the timeskip, you've really got to work on your heteronormative mindset. They have so many moments and scenes together that would be clearly and unquestionably romantic if it was a straight couple. So many tropes surrounding them are clearly romantic tropes. Miorine asks Suletta to promise to stay by her side forever. Suletta openly asks Miorine to choose her so they can get married, and openly talks about her hopes and dreams for their wedding!

Please stop downplaying their relationship and the romantic aspects of it just because they're both girls. Especially when people act like Suletta clearly had romantic feelings for Elan, when she never comes close to expressing these sort of feelings about him or to him!

#sulemio #g witch #the witch from mercury #gundam the witch from mercury #miorine rembran #suletta mercury

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thecreaturecodex · 2 years

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Monster Art History: The Wendigo

You may be wondering why the wendigo, which has become very popular in pop culture over the last 10 years or so, is usually depicted in Western sources with a deer head. This appears nowhere in Native American traditions, despite the creature having lots of folkloric variations. The association of the wendigo with deer is 100% Western, 100% modern, and has a long, weird history.

Just in case you need a primer, the windigo or witiko is a supernatural being from the Algonquin speaking nations of the eastern American continent. It appears as an emaciated figure, sometimes giant, sometimes covered in ice, sometimes both. In many stories, they have a literal heart of ice. Windigos are manifestations of cannibalism and winter, and hunt, kill and eat people. Someone who resorts to cannibalism to survive, or otherwise abandons their community for personal gain, will become one of them. A few stories tell of someone being “cured” and turned back into a human, but usually the only cure is to kill the monster. In the last several decades, native writers have associated windigos with capitalism and deforestation as an extension of their selfishness. If you would like to know more about the properly Native windigo in context, I recommend Dangerous Spirits: The Windigo in Myth and History by Shawn Smallman.

The creature first came into horror fiction with Algernon Blackwood’s “The Wendigo”. Note the spelling, which would become the standard in horror, and generally in non-academic Western sources. In that story, it is not associated with cannibalism, but instead is a more generic “evil spirit of nature”. This wendigo stalks white people in the wilderness and turns a Native character into a new wendigo by seizing them and flying with them into the sky. This definitely better fits fears about non white people, fears about nature, and how the one is closer to the other than “civilized” people. Its description in the story is vague (the most we get is that it has burned its feet away by running into the sky). But when the story appeared in Weird Tales in the 1930s, Virgil Finlay illustrated it like this, the first antlered wendigo I know of.

This story was ripped off by August Derleth, a prominent Weird author in the 1940s and the main popularizer of HP Lovecraft. In his Cthulhu Mythos stories, he introduces Ithaqua the Wind Walker, which is an alien version of Blackwood’s monster. This fits into Derleth’s vision of the gods and monsters of HP Lovecraft falling into the four classical elements, with Ithaqua being invented to represent Air. Ithaqua is usually depicted as an icy, emaciated giant, so ironically is one of the more accurate wendigos to Indigeonous beliefs in pop culture.

Image from a recent French edition of Call of Cthulhu RPG, by Loic Muzy

In Pet Sematary, Stephen King uses a wendigo as the reason for why the titular cemetery is cursed. This is an update of the classic racist trope of the “Indian Burial Ground”, except this time what gets buried there comes back animalistic and evil. The racist implications of that are pretty apparent. This wendigo is seen briefly and has ram’s horns. It does not appear in the first film adaptation, but does in the more recent one... with deer horns instead, because those are trendy right now.

A good scholarly look at the real windigo versus the 20th century horror wendigo is “The Appropriation of the Windigo Spirit in Horror Literature” by Kallie Hunchman.

In the 1980s, a movie called Frostbiter: Wrath of the Wendigo was produced, but it wasn’t released until 1995 by Troma. From what I’ve read, it’s a pretty transparent ripoff of Evil Dead 2, with the characters being picked off in a haunted cabin with a zombie in the basement. The “twist” is that the origin of the horrors is a wendigo released by breaking a Christian demonology-style sacred circle. This wendigo is realized in stop motion animation, and has the most deer-like body yet.

A number of other independent horror movies in the 90s and 2000s used wendigos as a plot element. These follow the Blackwood/King approach of having the wendigo being something evil, ancient and Native American, reflecting white anxieties about living on stolen land more than Native anxieties about cannibalism and greed. Wendigo (2001) has the creature sicced on a white family when they hit a deer with their car. The Last Winter (2006) posits that global warming and fossil fuel extraction have unleashed the ghosts of dead animals, which are wendigo apparently, to revenge themselves on mankind. Which approaches the idea that greed is wendigo sickness, but I don’t think intentionally as a reference to modern Native literature. The “wendigo” in this movie are spectral moose and caribou.

The mainstream breakthrough of the deer-headed wendigo was in, appropriately enough for this blog, Pathfinder RPG. In “Spires of Xin-Shalast”, the last volume of Rise of the Runelords published in 2008, a wendigo is a major encounter. I suspect that either the author (Greg A. Vaughn), or one of the editorial staff had seen Frostbiter, as the setup involves a cabin haunted by dwarven cannibal ghosts who all killed and ate each other due to a wendigo’s influence. This wendigo is a hybrid of the Blackwood and Cree versions in terms of its MO: it is a cannibal ice spirit that wants to make more cannibals, and does so by abducting people and running off into the sky with them. Its design is the standard for what most Western artists depict wendigos as these days: an emaciated humanoid with the head and antlers of a deer (and the burned off feet of Algernon Blackwood, which are less common):

Image by Tyler Walpole, © Paizo Publishing

This wendigo definitely made a splash at the time; it was the first time I remember seeing a deer-headed wendigo, and art of that design started to become common. It pushed away previous wendigo depictions, which were typically werewolves (as French Canadian trappers had blended the concept with their own loup-garou, and Werewolf the Apocalypse had a whole faction of racist Native American “wendigos”) or shaggy and ape like (based more on the look of the Marvel Comics villain).

What turned wendigos from “folklore/horror monster” to “fandom blorbo” was Hannibal, which first aired in 2013. In that series, the first murder is a woman’s body impaled on a stag’s head, after which protagonist Will Graham has visions of a black stag, and a man with the antlers of a stag, representing murder, evil, and of course the cannibalistic murderer Hannibal Lecter.

Since Hannibal was super popular with the shipping fandom set, wendigo themed characters became popular in its wake, creating a wholly new way to culturally appropriate the wendigo. This was magnified by Over the Garden Wall, which came out in 2014, and its villain The Beast. The Beast is never called a wendigo, but is an antlered giant associated with winter, and so is commonly head-canoned as a wendigo and associated with them in fandom circles.

Which gets us to the modern day, where teenagers have misunderstood wendigo OCs, any character with antlers can be called a wendigo on the internet, and actual First Nations people with an actual cultural connection to the legend wish that people would just knock it off.

#and now you know #wendigo #windigo #witiko #creature design #art history #pathfinder rpg #algernon blackwood #august derleth #cthulhu mythos #stephen king #b movies #stop motion #hannibal #native american #first nations #cultural appropriation #long post

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pluckyredhead · 7 months

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hi! i'm new to comics and i got in through reading your fics and wayne family adventures. i've since started reading more of the mainstream verse and i realized that most comic fans consider wfa to be totally fanon. you're one of the few i saw that disagrees. would you mind elaborating a lil on why? i'm too new to really form an opinion either way but i'd like to know your's!

(also yes i really did stalk your blog back years worth of posts i'm sorry! 😭😭)

Aw I love this! Welcome!

So I think it's really important to be clear on definitions here:

Canon means it's part of an official text. It's literally in a comic (or book or movie or other property) published or licensed by DC.

Fanon means it's made up by fans. That doesn't mean bad or good, it just means that it comes from fandom and is not part of the official text.

Wayne Family Adventures is an official licensed comic by DC, so by definition, it cannot be fanon. That doesn't mean everyone has to like it, but it's not a fan comic. It's an official DC product. It's not fanon.

Now, WFA isn't part of the main DCU canon. It takes place in a separate universe. The Jason in Batman #138 and the Jason in WFA are not the same and they are having very different experiences. (And I'm sure the Jason in WFA would be grateful if he knew.)

But that's no different than a comic that takes place in an alternate universe, like Dark Knights of Steel or DCeased, or a movie like Blue Beetle or a show like My Adventures with Superman. They all take place in their own universes, but all of those universes are canon. None of them are fanon.

What I think most people mean when they say WFA is fanon is that WFA draws on tropes and characterizations that are popular in fandom. Which...yes, absolutely. This is on purpose, and honestly, it pisses me off when people complain about it. (Not you, anon! Your question was lovely, you just triggered my unskippable cut scene of dialogue. Sorry lol.)

Wayne Family Adventures is probably the single best idea DC has had in the 20 years I've been reading comics. (The second best was the kids and YA graphic novel lines.)

I just checked, and WFA has 1.3 MILLION subscribers. That's more than every floppy comic starring Batman sells in a month, combined. It's more than literally any superhero comic has sold in decades - in this century! The combined strips have over A HUNDRED MILLION VIEWS. That is bonkerstown. That is a readership like DC hasn't seen since the 1970s. That is unparalleled success, and it's introducing characters like Kate Kane and Duke Thomas to a whole new audience.

Now, WFA was clearly designed to appeal to Batfans who were active on social media and fanfic sites like AO3 and Wattpad, and Webtoon readers. The readership of Webtoon is mostly young and female. Fandom as a whole is mostly female. The writer of WFA is female.

And maybe I'm not being fair here, but when I see people dismiss WFA as "just fanon," I always catch a whiff of "It's not a real Batman comic. It's a girl comic for girls."

I have spent the past 20 years begging DC (and Marvel, DC is not alone in this) to see women as a viable audience - as their largest potential growth audience! I have watched in dumbfounded frustration as they ignored the juggernaut success of Raina Telgemeier and Ngozi Ukazu and Alice Oseman running rings around the NY Times bestseller list and counted a 50k shipment here and there as a resounding triumph. I have literally seen them throw out survey responses from women because "those women had an agenda." (This is a true story. 2011 was rough, y'all.)

And all of a sudden, they gave us a comic actually catering to women and young people and fandom, and they put it on the most popular, current, modern platform for comics availably - and it's brilliant. It's smart and funny and stunningly drawn and every episode makes clever, inventive use of the scrolling format. They FINALLY gave us a girl comic for girls, and it's a masterpiece.

And yes, it riffs on fanon concepts. It also has its roots firmly in mainstream DCU canon. It references deep cuts. CRC Payne and StarBite know their shit. Jason Todd being a bookworm may be a fanon staple, but he does plenty of reading - including Jane Austen - in the 100% canon mainstream DCU comics.

It's not going to be for everything, because nothing is. It's completely fine if you don't like WFA. No one has to read it or enjoy it. If you're into Batman for the darkness and the crime and the ongoing plotlines and the angst, WFA won't be for you, and that's totally fine!

But to finally, finally be valued as a reader by DC, to have them do something smart and innovative and so, so well executed, and have the exact people they made it for dismiss it out of hand because Bruce has a "World's Okayest Dad" mug or whatever? Yeah, that chafes.

#wayne family adventures #this one's gonna get me in trouble

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lurkinglurkerwholurks · 5 months

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The WFA comic surpassing other Batman comics is so funny to me because in some way *we* kiiiiind of created part of that shit (legal disclaimer OBVIOUSLY I don't mean this literally, what I'm saying is that the fandom created certain fandom representations of batfam that then translated over to WFA). To be fair, Batfam definitely wasn't always grimdark. The fandom itself did not invent Good Dad Bruce and all the rest, the comics themselves did, buuut it definitely solidified many of the tropes that are seen in WFA and it's quite amazing to see how long it's taken DC to realize what the current audience is looking for in a Batman comic. Even writing fic in my own little corner has made me feel that I have influenced how the characters are seen even if it's in a small way. Your impact has been outsized ofcourse. Either way it's kind of a W? Kinda cool? We can always keep making fan works, so w/e DC wants to do is whatever to me. But it is nice to be recognized in a sense.

I think it's fantastic. Truly. So much of what appears in the series are common fanon tropes that have circulated so much that they genuinely are shared pieces. To me, it in no way feels like being mined for cheap ideas or anything like that. I am fully convinced that CRC Payne is a fanfic writer, on Tumblr or AO3 or FFN or wherever. (CRC if you're out there I love yoooou.) We already know Starbite is on here.

WFA feels like a small, miraculous little hat tip to all the passionate people who have poured their love into this strange family for decades, and I'm grateful for it.

#wayne family adventures #wfa #webtoons #batfam #fanfic writer problems

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txttletale · 9 days

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What are your thoughts (lorewise) on Warhammer fantasy so far and what's your favorite faction

i love skaven. ive been a skaven fan for like 20000 years ever since i briefly played actual tabletop. they're just funny little guys :)

when warhammer is good it's because it's embracing its original 80s gonzo spirit of 'just throw any old pop cultuire shit in there and figure it out later' -- i love how the skaven are, like, cartoon mad scientists with nuclear power and genetic engineering and also stupid rats who love scheming and betrayal anbd they waltz around with giant fucking flesh monsters and gatling guns and Combat Hamster Wheels. ther'es other stuff in this vein that's good too: orcs being english football hooligans is never going to stop delighting me, the tomb kings are a really cool concept, the vampire pirates (as far as i'm aware a CA invention?) are so fucking goofy and they rule so so hard.

overall though there's al ot of really really uncomfortable undertones to the world of warhammer fantasy. first of all there is the straight up racist shit, i love the lizardmen (i am currently deep into a mazdamundi campaign) and some of their lore is really interesting and in some ways avoids some of the common pitfalls of 'fantasy indigenous peoples'--it's made very clear they are an advanced society, technologically and socially complex, with a rich culture and history. but the lazy aping and blending of half-remembered maya/aztec aesthetics and the '''''funny''''' joke names they have and the fact that they are ancient and mystical and Not Of This Age just adds up to them being a really racist caricature of mesoamerican societies.

also WHF leans really really really hard into the biological determinism stuff. i love the skaven but the fact that they're a rapidly breeding menace that secretly infiltrates your cities and kidnaps people and gorge themselves on resources and have an Evil Religion and are As A Race predisposed to treachery and viciousness and are depicted as literal vermin brings to mind yknow the place all these tropes hold in the racist and antisemitic cultural imaginary and it definitely makes me kind of uncomfortable. i think the same can be said of the (also straight-up racist) depiction of beastmen as Tribes and Hordes that are very literally More Animal Than Human. like, there's so much of That Shit, of X Race are Biologically Fundamentally Like This, and the Like This often happens to coincide with a constellation of tropes used to demonize and justify the extermination of real people, and i really hate That Shit.

i also find the (also quite typical of fantasy) Order (Good) and Chaos (Evil) moral distinction to be pretty ideologically repugnant

so overall, yknow. mixed feelings innit. that said i'm having an absolute blast with TWWH2 this shit rules im driving my big dinosaur around and eating mother fuckers

#ask #also i have never once in my life thought about age of sigm ar

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autistichalsin · 2 months

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I'm going to go off here just because I'm so frustrated.

So this drama all started when someone- a self-identified anti- posted a rant that I "wrote Halsin rape fantasy fiction." I was annoyed, as anyone would be, but even more because such a fiction didn't exist! But also, it sounded like a great fic, Halsin using a rape fantasy/consensual nonconsent to work through his Underdark traumas. So I said "you know what, I can't let the fake version of me you invented be cooler than the real me, can I?" And then I set to work plotting out Too Many Burdens to Bear, which would take about another month to be ready to post after that.

The group were angry at this, and soon after, they started a callout, cancelled me, harassed me, whatever word you want to use for this nonsense. They couldn't keep their story straight, from the start. Some of them claimed it was the simple fact that the fic was CNC that was wrong. Others, who were okay with CNC themselves but still wanted to have a reason to hate me, said my fic WASN'T CNC, and obviously that was the problem, it would be different "if" it was just CNC. (Then, when they were corrected, they....... never changed their tune.) Another said I was planning to write a fic about "Halsin being raped again" and had said "getting raped would help Halsin heal from his traumas."

It's like they're playing a game of telephone, but instead of changing a single word, the goal is to change the entire sentence.

Others insisted the problem was that I wrote it to "spite" the person who "only said they were uncomfortable with rape" (lol, then don't read it, you fucking dumbass!!!) I got told I was retraumatizing myself and others, that I didn't care about/fetishized rape, etc. They have since gone on to claim I posted the fic untagged, hoping to trigger the anti who started this.

These are the tags on the fic in question, which they would know if they bothered to LOOK at what they were criticizing.

Could this possibly be ANY better tagged? I even had someone who is squicked by PIV sex reach out to thank me because no one EVER warns for that. That's how above and beyond I went in avoiding squicking anyone.

Like, literally everything this group claimed about my actions being problematic falls apart with the most cursory check at the ACTUALITY of what has been posted.

And these people, who claim care SO much about rape, who care SO MUCH about survivors? Yesterday, Mish made a post about Neil (as in, Astarion's actor) getting sexually harassed, and one of these people replied that it was "hypocritical" to say so while supporting me, who writes CNC. When someone replied that this was about a real human, not fiction, they literally said they DIDN'T CARE. They care more about defending the honor of Halsin, a fictional survivor of rape, than they care about the real person who played Astarion, who is a REAL survivor of rape.

When Mish and I said we are both survivors of rape and sexual abuse, respectively, these people said we were "playing the survivor card" (an utterly vile thing to say). I received an anon questioning whether I was really sexually abused.

They also, at the same time as the initial bout of drama over my CNC fic, began calling me a pedophile because of an omegaverse Halsin headcanon I made. For those unaware, omegaverse is an AU with many related tropes. Which ones get used vary by the author, but they always include heats and animalistic behavior, and often include knotting, mpreg, themes of subjugation based on gender, breeding kink, and others. However, while the trope started as a kink one, it has since branched out, and some write fics without smut at all, instead focusing on gender dynamics, kidfic, or other aspects of the universe.

I made a headcanon that Halsin, who in that universe I headcanon as an omega- who, in omegaverse stories, can get pregnant, and have heats- would want children of his own. I headcanoned that after taking care of children at his commune after the ending, that this might trigger a heat for him.

A normal person would look at this and go "aw, Halsin has baby fever! Cute!"

These are not normal people, so they looked at it and went "ewww, this pedo thinks Halsin gets turned on by being around kids!"

They literally said this. While also admitting that they do not read omegaverse stories. Multiple people who do read them tried to explain that it's just how reproduction works in that AU, but this person just stuck their fingers in their ears and yelled "lalala HEATS ARE HORNY IF YOU WRITE HEATS IT'S ONLY TO BE HORNY HORNY HORNY! NOT LISTENING!"

After they accused me of being a pedophile for this, I fired back and said "if you can look at this headcanon and think it has anything to do with attraction to children, you're the pedophile." I should not have called them one back, and I apologize for it, but this person has since gone on to lie and play the victim, saying "I just said their tweet was a bit sus and they called me a pedophile FOR NO REASON." They also said that they "wouldn't have been so quick to call it pedo if [I] wasn't so open about being a proshipper."

If I wasn't so open about saying that fiction is not morality, you wouldn't have been so quick to say that my fiction represented my morality? Hmmm.

If you notice, their posts all have the same formulaic deception and manipulative slant to them: they will say something about the fiction I write/enjoy, or the characters I don't like, etc, with a personal attack against my character. When I respond, they will then claim to have been attacked, violently and without provocation, "just because" they (x), where (x) is the most blatant glossing over of their actions. Them calling me a pedophile became "just saying their tweet was sus." Them harassing me for weeks over a CNC fic that HADN'T EVEN BEEN WRITTEN YET was "just saying we aren't comfortable with rape." So uncomfortable with rape, remember, that they said they DIDN'T CARE about Neil being harassed, because CNC about Halsin was worse.

You would think these two things alone would be enough to utterly destroy this group's credibility; they are either blatant liars, or their perception of reality is so poor that nothing they say is to be trusted. Anyone who prioritizes a fictional character's rape over a real person's is not living in reality. Anyone who thinks baby fever is pedophilia should not be trusted on, well, anything. It would be like trusting a flat-earther to give geography lessons.

But unfortunately, people wanted to listen to them over Mish and I, and sadly, it's easy to see why. The antis positioned themselves so that if you disagreed with their harassment, you were "pro rape". And no one wants a label that toxic associated with them, so they jumped ship on principle. Even though Mish is the nicest person in the entire fandom and has never hurt anyone at all, even though Mish is an IRL advocate for rape survivors and against gender-based violence in her country and has thus done more for rape survivors than these people ever have or will. It doesn't matter to them.

Other equally bizarre accusations have been lobbed at us; I'm "lesbophobic" and "called all lesbians TERFs" (I called the rhetoric from a group of like five people TERF-ish, but since they think they represent all lesbians, they claimed it was against all lesbians- WHICH, by the way, is my identity as well. They are calling me a self-hating lesbian over this.)

This group has a history of starting harassment against people, then cry-bullying that the pushback they get is a form of lesbophoia; for example, a few months ago, they harassed a bi woman off of Twitter who asked them to stop being biphobic by calling it gross to ship Shadowheart, a canonically bisexual woman, with men. They branded this user lesbophobic and harassed her until she permanently deactivated. They posted that it was gross to ship Karlach with Dammon, too, and when a user, who is herself lesbian, headcanons Karlach as a lesbian, and doesn't ship her with Dammon chimed in to say why OTHERS ship it, they attacked her too. They attacked the actor for Rolan for sharing/supporting a fan petition for Rolan to be romanceable. They called Dave, Halsin's actor, a creep for sharing NSFW art of Halsin on his page, and tried to insinuate he was a pedophile (saying they wouldn't be surprised if he had a scandal like "that Genshin actor," who, for those who don't know, was found to have groomed a child online.)

They claimed that I "called everyone who doesn't like Halsin ableist", when what was actually said was that IF we call everyone who doesn't like Minthara lesbophobic because a lot of her fans are lesbians (which is a thing that one of them had just said), THEN using the same logic, we could say that hating Halsin is ableist because a lot of his fans are autistic. (Sidenote: this group of people repeatedly mocked my special interest (making meta essays) after being told it was my special interest, which is pretty gross, to me.)

It genuinely boggles my mind that a group of people can be so toxic to the actors and still given a platform in the fandom. This is entirely new behavior to me- even in the most toxic fandom's I've been in or rubbernecked on, harassing the actors was always considered the line not to cross and would make you persona non grata. It was the one thing everyone could agree on as unacceptable. Yet these people are openly attacking Dave's character and are still not only listened to when they make up allegations against people, but they are well-respected in the fandom. Either people don't think harassing an actor is a big deal anymore, these fans secretly AGREE with the harassment and slander against him, or (most generous explanation) they don't know who they're actually supporting here.

These people gleefully mocked my abuse from my mother. I said that some of Minthara's abusive actions (poisoning a romanced player without her consent) reminded me of similar actions my mom did, and are part of my aversion to the character. I posted this untagged- I even censored Minthara's name so that her fans wouldn't find it. But because they were cyberstalking me so obsessively, they QRTed it and proceeded to bring it up multiple times to snark about "the essential oils". When someone called them out and asked if they really thought it was funny, they answered, without hesitation, yes. They said that I had already "mocked my own abuse" by bringing up how Minthara triggers memories of her, so they therefore had every right to laugh at the bodily harm I faced when my mother would deliberately cause me asthma attacks by forcing me to inhale essential oils. Because I said that a fictional character's similar actions triggered memories of it. That was worthy of mocking to them.

So they support survivors of rape and abuse who have triggers related to fiction, unless that survivor is a survivor of child abuse who is triggered by their favorite character, in which case they deserve to be mocked. I guess they don't believe in supporting survivors who have trigger reactions to fiction after all... what a surprise. Almost like they never cared about anything they claimed to.

They're actually remarkably transparent about not actually caring about ANY issue they claim to champion. They claim to be fighting for rape survivors while harassing not one but two survivors from the fandom into mental breakdowns (the tweet about my mom was so bad it made me have a flashback, and their harassment of Mish did similar to her) and saying they DON'T CARE about Neil's sexual harassment because fiction about Halsin is more important. They claim to oppose lesbophobia while repeatedly attacking lesbians who disagree with them on anything from shipping to whether queer male sexuality is inherently predatory. I could go on.

Somehow, no matter how blatant it is that they don't actually care about anything, and are just using fake moralizing as a vehicle for sadism, people still keep taking them at face value. Again, I get it. They have positioned themselves as fighting against rape and abuse, so by extension, they have positioned it so that anyone who is against them is liable to be accused of supporting rape and abuse. It's a great system for them, really; bullying is a behavior that would otherwise be reviled, but by framing everyone they don't like as a bad person, as an existential threat to marginalized communities (who, conveniently, always have their own marginalized identities ignored until it becomes convenient to bring it up again to harass them for it), they turn their bullying into not only something acceptable, but into a moral act to be commended. A moral obligation, even, because don't pedos deserve to be hunted for sport? (This is the same reason why the alt-right is obsessively pedojacketing the entire LGBT community as they move to censor queer fiction, for the record.)

I don't know what else to say besides that I really, really hope that people are waking up to that group's nonsense, or at least that they will soon, and will realize that fiction is not reality, and that that group of known disingenuous liars and manipulators are being... disingenuous liars and manipulators, yet again.

Unfortunately, it's too late since they've already chased Mish out of the fandom, and I will honestly never forgive that group of people and their enablers for it. But I have hope that maybe the rest of the fandom will come around, especially because, as all of us who have experience with antis know, they are never going to stop. They aren't going to stop targeting people for everything from making a harmless mod that turns Scratch into Astarion to saying it's okay to ship Karlach/Dammon or Shadowheart/men to writing a fic about Halsin using kink to explore his trauma from being enslaved to being an actor for the show who retweets NSFW art of his character to making a headcanon that Astarion wants to dance with Tav to making an omegaverse headcanon... I could go on and on.

Sorry for the novel, and I hope this is the last post I make about this drama, but I am so beyond tired and frustrated. This hurt Mish deeply- the nicest person in the entire fandom- and seeing the raw sadism from her bullies, sadism that is being praised, makes me feel physically ill, honestly.

I won't be using any fandom tags for this post, but I will be tagging this with various proship related things since I feel this is relevant.

#proship #proshipper #proshippers please interact #discourse

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panvani · 27 days

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Idk obviously people who say shit like this are just insanely racist and have no sincere objection to sex in video games but it is kind of incredible how, based off of my own experience and in good faith conversations, Western Bloggers(tm) are very quick to point out misogyny and objectification in Asian art but react with complete bafflement if you point out that these same tropes are also extremely prevalent in Western art, just styled differently and thus less challenging to whatever sensibilities they've developed. The amount of incest in Star Wars and Game of Thrones is basically a meme, and the titular character of Indiana Jones has a romance with a 15 year old girl as an adult. Lara Croft is one of the most iconic characters in video games specifically as a sex symbol, not only because she is styled to be objectified by the (male) player character but because Tomb Raider games very infamously allow the player to watch Lara being tortured to death in various inventive ways as one of its core stylistic features. But since these are Western-styled works about white people, they are not grotesque, degenerate, or base like Asian art of the same subject matter.

Meanwhile these people don't react with the same disgust to, for example, the sheer insane number of Western video games with the premise of "you are an American soldier whose only mission is to kill as many brown people as possible." They might tut at it or complain about COD boys, but will condescend towards any sincere discussion or expression of horror about how these games are literally funded by the US government to act as conditioning and propaganda to create a willing force for genocide in MENA. But, I mean, sure, Asians are disgusting because they'll make a game where a woman is naked.

#logxx

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cripplecharacters · 11 months

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hi! i wanted to ask a question though because i understand its not rlly ur specialty im just asking if u know any other blogs that can help. I work with visual arts, and thats how i wanna do my stories, through something like comics, so i wanted to ask if you know of any resources to help me with properly representing things like scarring, especially facial scarring and facial differences.But anything on representing disability in visual mediums would help. Thank you regardless!

Hello,

I actually work with visual arts and draw a lot of characters with facial differences (FD) on the daily! I hope I'll be able to help.

I'm not aware of any resources for visual mediums specifically (especially if you mean something like a "how to draw [specific facial difference]" type thing. Despite comic book authors drawing facial differences for ages for their villains there really aren't any good tutorials that I know of) so I tried to combine a few points that maybe will be helpful to you;

Reference photos of real people with the condition your character has. Try to research the symptoms of it as well (especially if it's a syndrome) - maybe it will turn out that the symptoms your character has require a trach tube or a nasal cannula, or something completely different.

Don't overexaggerate their facial difference for the shock value...

...or downplay it for the cuteness/attractiveness factor.

What I mean is - whether your character is the adorable love interest or the morally gray criminal, their facial difference shouldn't reflect that. Don't make some kind of moral connection of "major craniofacial condition = bad person, teeny tiny scar = good person".

Don't draw your character with FD constantly covered in blood and running around with an axe. The portrayal of people with FD as violent/murderous is not only offensive and not helping the public perception of facial differences, but is also just incredibly boring and overdone. 99% of "representation" looks like this and has been looking like this since horror movies have been invented. I'm 100% serious when I say that drawing a person with a facial difference just having friends is a thousand times more groundbreaking than all these horror tropes combined.

Don't use the ancient "facial difference = joke" design trope. Authors love using strabismus, drooling, lacking teeth or skull conditions as shortcuts for "humor". These conditions are all real and real people have them (including me, hi). They don't exist as some kind of signifier that a character is "stupid" or "crazy". It is extremely prevalent and hard to unsee once you start noticing.

A lot of people in the FD community just want characters with FD that are normal, everyday people doing normal everyday things - having a family, hanging out with a friend, petting their cat... Not murderers hunting ablebodied teenagers through the woods. Maybe one of your character's family members has a burn scar without having it be A Big Deal, maybe one of their classmates has Goldenhar Syndrome that everyone just accepts, maybe the background character at the local supermarket has neurofibromas on their face... lots of options that don't involve tired villain tropes. With the advantage of a visual medium, you don't even need to explicitly mention that they have a facial difference - just draw it and let it be there. No dramatic reveal necessary.

Have a range of facial differences represented, even if it's just the side characters. Most people only ever draw scars, usually small and not affecting anything other than the skin, which isn't bad - a lot of people do have scars like that, and they deserve to be represented. However, there are literal thousands of different things that also count as a facial differences. Some of them like strabismus, Down Syndrome, tumors, or nerve palsies (most notably Bell's palsy, but there's 12 of them in total) are quite common, while conditions like Treacher Collins Syndrome, Pfeiffer Syndrome or Anophthalmia are usually considered rare - but a lot of people still have them. Having two or more characters with some kind of facial difference definitely isn't out of place.

This is more of a technical thing, but don't ever tag a visual medium as "gore" or "body horror" because someone has a facial difference. It's ableist and incredibly dehumanizing.

This page regarding facial differences in media (not only visual) is also worth giving a read. I hope any of this was useful. If you have more specific questions, feel free to send another ask

mod Sasza

#anonymous #mod sasza #face difference #art reference #writing advice #writing guide #writing resources #writing help #burn survivor representation

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raina-at · 4 months

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One of the most interesting things about the 20 Questions survey lately was that it revealed the astonishing amount of people who are here through the X-Files to Sherlock pipeline. And it makes total sense, of course, because you have the neurodivergent genius mess and their much shorter, much saner doctor partner. Their relationship is incredibly intense but remains platonic for a very long time, and it's almost impossible to explain to outsiders because the genius one is completely insane and the supposedly sane one is so incredibly repressed you'd need a fucking crowbar to get a straight answer out of them. But they almost need to fuck at some point because they're such insanely intense soul mates that anyone who gets between them gets crushed by the narrative. They're so dysfunctionally co-dependent that they'd literally die without each other, but at the same time they're both such messes that you need, like, 60k of fic to get them to actually express, like, one emotion.

And you can see what the Sherlock fandom has learned from the X-Files fandom, because Trapped Together, Fake Married For A Case, Huddling For Warmth are actual canon tropes in The X Files.

(I remember in one of our fic chats back in the day someone once said that the Sherlock fandom invented the 'fake relationship but it's For A Case' trope, and a lot of us were like, um... that's an actual canon X-Files episode. So many tropes are like... um, that's an ACTUAL CANON EPISODE of the X-Files. Remember when they were trapped in the Arctic? Or stranded in the woods? Or when they were trapped on that rock in Quagmire? Or when they had shared hallucinations? Or when Mulder broke through the mind control because he couldn't bear to shoot Scully? Or when they spent Christmas in a haunted house? Or, you know, THE FUCKING BEE?!?!?)

The X-Files, everybody. The mother of modern internet fandom.

#the x files #sherlock #the overlap is strong in this one

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friends-to-lovers-tournament · 9 months

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Friends to Lovers Tournament: Round 3, Side B, Match 8

propaganda under the cut!

Percabeth:

Submission 1

they are the cutest thing ever with 5 books of slow burn

Submission 2

HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE THEM?? THEY ARE THE BEST OTP! THEY START OFF WITH UNCERTAINTIES BUT ANNABETH CHOOSES TO BE HIS FRIEND, HER FIRST INDEPENDENT STEP TO NOT CONSIDER THE OLYMPIAN'S WISHES WHEN MAKING CHOICES. SHE IGNORED HER MOM'S OPINION GUYS, THAT IS BIG! AND HE DOESNT REALLY HAVE FRIENDS UNTIL THE SUMMER HE TURNS 13 AND SHE IS ONE OF THEM. SHE AND HIM ARE ALWAYS BY EACHOTHER'S SIDES (METAPHORICALLY AT LEAST). THEY WORK TOGETHER ON QUESTS SOO WELL BECAUSE THEY KNOW EACH OTHER THAT WELL. AND SHE KISSED THEM DURING THE LABYRINTH QUEST AND HE KINDA IGNORED IT FOR LIKE A YEAR. AND SHE WAS HIS ANCHOR TO THE MORTAL WORLD. AND HE TOLD HER ABOUT HIS ACHILLES HEEL. AND SHE BACKS HIM UP ALL THE TIME. AND IT WAS THE GREATEST UNDERWATER KISS OF ALL TIME. AND WHEN HE WENT MISSING SHE DID NOT SLEEP. AND SHE WAS ALL HE REMEMBERED WHEN HERA TRIED HER SHENANIGANS. AND THEY FELL TOGETHER. AND THEY ARE EACH OTHERS BEST FRIENDS (sorry grover, but you get it) AND I LOVE THEM TOGETHER SO MUCH. THEY EMAILED EACH OTHER AT 13 BECAUSE CELL PHONES WERE A BIG N O! AND HE KEPT A PICTURE OF HER IN HIS BINDER. AND SHE WANTS TO BUILD SOMETHING PERMANENT WITH HIM.

Kirk/Spock:

Submission 1

They're the ogs. They're in every tumblr ship poll. They spend five years making love eyes at each other, have a massive messy breakup, get back together after 2.8 years and get married. They're idiots and I love them. They invented every trope. I've written so much propaganda for these guys I've lost all ability to be coherent. Just trust me on this and put them in, they'll get far

Submission 2

They are so gentle and teasing with each other. They work side by side and then when their shifts are over they still hang out together and play chess and such. They respect the hell out of one another and trust each other completely. They're literal soul mates. T'hy'la forever :) <3

#friends to lovers tournament #riordanverse #star trek #percabeth #kirk/spock #percy jackson #annabeth chase #jim kirk #spock #tournament polls #polls

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aemondsbeloved · 1 year

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From My Hand To Yours

pairing: Aemond Targaryen x reader

request/summary: Aemond falling for someone who is a snarky genius girl that has a passion for inventing things

warnings/notes: no major warnings, this is very fluffy with some good old friends to lovers trope because I said so, excuse the title I literally could not think of something clever rip

word count: 1.3k

You felt the spark from the wire as it flickered of the reflection of your glasses worn for protection. You took in the piece of metal you had melded together, looking at it wistfully. “Perfect,” You murmured to yourself in the empty courtyard. “Just as I envisioned it.”

“What is perfect?” You heard a low voice behind you, but you did not falter nor did you stiffen. This was, after all, a voice you knew very well.

Afer a moment, you turned your head, glancing at him behind you as you pushed the metal bridge of your glasses up your nose. Wordlessly, you lifted up the bronze circular dish, a half sphere shape in his direction.

He stepped towards you, reaching you in a few paces. There was a comfortable look on his face, one of content really as he gingerly picked it up as though it was made of dragon glass and not old bronze that had an uneven texture. “And this is?”

“A dish, of course,” You replied as though it was obvious, a smile on your lips.

“Of course,” He repeated, his smile natural and warm, and he took another step and sat himself next to you. “And what is it you need a dish for, my lady?”

His words were formal, like you had not know each other all your lives, but you had grown accustomed to Aemond’s formalarities during your lifetime. “It’s not for me,” You corrected kindly before a brighter smile took hold on your face. “Your sister. She told me one of her friends was eating through the wooden dish she puts him in. A bronze one would do much better I told her.”

Her friends, of course, were some bug of a sort, Aemond knew you to mean. “She will cherish it dearly I am sure,” He told you.

You smiled in some agreement. Helaena was one of your only true friends in the Red Keep, besides Aemond of course. Many of the other girls thought your proclivity for creating things was strange, but the princess was kind and not so judgemental. You enjoyed making things for her and spending your time with her, but truth be told it was her younger brother’s company you craved.

For a moment nothing was said yet you could feel his stare on the side of your face, no doubt watching your absentminded smile.

“What is it you are thinking of?” He asked in a voice so soft, affectionate even.

You thought for a moment, tilting your head to the side. You could make something up but you had no desire to do so. “Only how no matter how often I see you I always seem to crave your company.”

Aemond was not a man easily flustered and yet you saw him fight the expression on his face before he laughed shortly and you chose to ignore the tinge of pink creeping up his neck. There had been many a time where you thought he might tell you his true feelings and if they aligned with yours of affection, but he did not.

“You are unbearable sometimes,” He jested, a lie in plain sight. It was one you did not take seriously, knowing what his true venom could look like and how it failed to ever be in your direction. “Sometimes I think there is nothing you can not do,” He admitted.

“I am certain that is not true,” You half jested, half confessed. There were many things you could not do. Completely understanding the man in front of you was one of them.

He hummed. “Perhaps you could make me a new eye,” He suggested, though the taste of bitterness on his tongue at the reminder permeated the fresh air.

You furrowed your brows, looking at him and his pinched brows. Knowing him, he would be cursing himself for bringing it up, knowing the thought of the loss of his eye still stung. Without thinking, you reached to grab his hand and gave it a squeeze. As his eyes shot to yours you only said, “I could never make something as brillant as that sapphire I know they gave you.”

He could not tear his eyes from you. Your kindness towards him, the vulnerability you brought out of him was not something he could tame, even if he wished to. His appreciation was in the form of a squeeze to your own hand and you could feel the calluses on his finger tips from years of training the art of the sword as they pressed against your own fingers.

“Why do you never take off your eyepatch around me?” You asked after a moment, your voice softer than before but not insecure. “Do you not trust me enough?”

“I trust you,” He admittedly, but could not help the clench of his jaw, hating knowing how he felt. “But I would not wish to scare you, my lady. Sapphire or not, if I showed you your disgust is not something I could easily forget.”

“But you could never scare me,” You swore to him. “You are my dearest friend, you should know there is nothing you could do that would frighten me.”

“Friend?” He questioned, drinking in your face. Maybe he was trying to get a read on you, you did not know.

“We have known each other since we were children,” You bristled a little, wondering if he was really denying a friendship. Why else would he always seek you out, if not friendship? “I dare say that makes us friends, Aemond.”

He didn’t say a word, tearing his gaze from you as he stared straight ahead. His silence had never plagued you in all your years, but now it seemed to do just that. Maybe it was because you had tried to showcase your feelings to him, nearly confessing that there is no other person you would wish to see every day besides him.

You, who rarely showed annoyance to him ever, huffed, looking away for a moment. “If you intend on keeping all your thoughts to yourself, I see no reason why you came to see me.”

He was silent for another moment, seemingly fighting the conflict in his mind that you now paid no mind to. “Tell me, are we only friends?”

You could not help it as your looked at him incredulously. “Aemond,” You sighed, irritation and affection in your tone. “I told you not moments ago you are to only person I want to see every day and you think I tell all my friends that?”

He looked at you. It was not the first time he had today, in fact whenever you were around each other it was like that was all he ever did as he could not stop looking at you. But now it seemed like it was the first time he was really taking you in and your words. Nothing could be imagined now.

He was only looking at you as you did the same. It was hard to remember who moved closer to the other first or whose gaze flickered to the other’s lips first, but you could only recall what it was like when his hand cupped your cheek and he tilted your head to meet his as your lips met in the first kiss of many.

You had pulled away from it first, breathing a little heavier than before as you appreciated the affectionate look in his eyes that had some wildness in it.

You couldn’t help it as you asked, feeling bold, “Will I get to see you without your eyepatch now, Aemond?”

He laughed an almost hearty laugh, one that was surely sincere and full of humor. So unlike all those rehearsed and mocking ones he gave other people. “In good time,” He said and you couldn’t help but realize it sounded like a promise.

#aemond x reader #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen #aemond imagine #aemond fluff #aemond targaryen fanfic #aemond x reader imagine #hotd #aemond one eye #aemond oneshot

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