#but then making it myself felt weird so I put them on the most gender character that lives in my head

[pinksilvace]

Just putting the blorbo in some of my regular outfits

#my art #fernart #but REALLY I started sketching these outfits while wanting to imagine what they'll look like after teet yeet #but then making it myself felt weird so I put them on the most gender character that lives in my head #I've also had hades on the brain so that's why we're deviating from the usual style. my regular takes too long anyway #cats the musical #alonzo cats

[cocklessboy]

I see a lot of people saying that gender-affirming health care like top surgery for trans people like myself should be freely available (which is correct), but one of the reasons they often give is that top surgery is very safe and has a very low rate of complications compared to other surgeries. And I often see transphobes clutching their pearls over the few people who do have complications. What about them?! What if you're one of the unlucky ones?! Should we really let those transes risk it??!!!

Setting aside the fact that no one raises such concerns over other types of surgery, I'd like to use myself as an example for anyone who needs one.

In May of 2022 I had top surgery (double mastectomy). The surgery was done by a gynecological surgeon, not a plastic surgeon, because that way my insurance would cover it.

The surgeon did his job and removed the breast tissue, but he did not make it look pretty. I have dog-ears at both ends of both scars (extra bits of skin that hang off in a very unappealing fashion), my chest still looks unnaturally flat with no muscle or fat despite a lot of working out, and one of the stitches didn't heal properly and was left as an open wound through "secondary healing" for several months before it finally healed over into a very large scab (and eventually a very large scar). My nipples are uneven and irregular and look... well, just awful, really. Due to bad genetic luck, I wound up with keloid scars which, instead of getting smaller and lighter over time, have instead expanded, becoming thicker and darker. Worst of all, I now have chronic nerve pain in my chest. My GP thinks the surgeon must have hit a nerve during the procedure, and now I have random sharp pains all over my chest even now, nearly ten months later. The pain might improve with time, or it might not.

I basically had almost every possible complication one can have from this surgery short of infection or death. Some of the aesthetics might be fixable with more surgery (though plastic surgery will be expensive). Some are probably permanent. I might never feel comfortable taking my shirt off in public again. I might have to tattoo over the scars.

And pay attention to this next bit, because it's the most important part of this whole post: I do not regret the surgery. Even with all the complications and the ugly state of my chest and the pain. If someone said they could push a button and make it so that the surgery never happened and I'd have a perfect, unmarred chest with C-cup breasts again, I would tell them to take their button and fuck right off. Because even with basically the worst of all possible outcomes, that surgery was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I don't feel good about taking my shirt off in front of people now. I do think my chest is ugly. But it's a male chest now. When I put on a t-shirt, it rests flat against my chest. No one will ever mistake me for a woman again. I'll never have to wear a bra or binder ever again.

The dysphoria I felt from having breasts was so severe that a hideously scarred chest and chronic pain are vastly preferable. The euphoria I feel when I look in the mirror with a shirt on is something I never knew I was capable of feeling.

And it's my fucking body, and it's up to me what I do with it. If I wanted to tattoo myself from head to toe, or file my teeth into fangs, or have a doctor break my legs and surgically implant extensions to make me taller, that's my right because it's my body. The fact that all those things are regarded as basically acceptable (if a little weird), but I had to have a dehumanizing interview with an old cis psychiatrist who hates trans people and wants us all sterilized just to get a piece of paper giving me permission to have my tits removed, is fucking absurd.

Top surgery (of any kind) is generally very safe, and complications are rare. But even with the worst outcome, a trans person will basically never regret it.

And frankly, if a cis woman wants her tits cut off, or a cis man wants a pair of boobs to play with on his own chest, more power to them because literally who gives a fuck what people do to their own bodies? I saw a dude on TV when I was a kid who'd tattooed his whole body to look like a cat, filed his teeth into fangs, and had loads of plastic surgery to surgically implant whiskers and make his face look more feline. It was weird! But literally no one said that should be banned because he might regret it. It's his body to do whatever weird shit he wants with.

The next time someone clutches their pearls and kicks and screams about how you can't let someone permanently alter their body in a way they might regret, feel free to point to me and my complete and utter lack of regret.

(Or have a little fun with it, go hard in the other direction, and say you absolutely agree, which is why we should ban ALL non-emergency surgeries until the patient has been FULLY evaluated by three psychiatrists - along with tattoos and piercings. Oh, and ballet lessons for anyone under the age of 25, since ballet changes the structure of a child's body FOREVER.)

#transgender #transmasc #trans man #lgbtqia+ #queer #top surgery #gender dysphoria

[solar-wing]

☀️ Omegaverse: Alpha & Omega Biology ☀️

Hi guys!

I wanted to make this post because I expected that I would need to explain this topic and my reasoning behind it at some point. Many of you have read my Omegaverse fics and have probably guessed correctly that it's my favorite AU or trope to write about.

But, I'm sure many of you have been slightly put off or dissuaded by my tendency to describe the Omega Male Reader with a cunt, wet heat or core, and their Alpha sucking on a 'nub' or playing with a cocklette. I totally get it.

I am a male author who writes for male readers, cis and trans alike. But, I am also someone who in my years has grown to detest labels and gender roles and the silent rules they put on us.

This is why I set up my version of Omegaverse and A/B/O Dynamics on the basis that Omegas have vaginal genitals and Alphas have phallus genitals, regardless of gender. In my eyes, it helps to create a more imaginable and realistic explanation of male pregnancy and pregnancy between two women, which I hope gives inspiration to wlw authors, even though I already know I'm not the first person to use this idea. Not even close.

Also, I just like the chaoticness of it all.

But, I know it can be jarring or off-putting for male readers who may not want to think of their themselves as the readers having a cunt or a pleasure nub. Which, also let me explain that.

Since I write for male readers, and I'm sure some may have an aversion to the terms vagina, pussy, folds, clit, etc., I do my best to steer away from using those words as much as possible. I know 'cunt' is probably not the next best thing but if anyone has suggestions, I'm more than open to hearing them!

But, I also detail the use of cocklettes and twats which may be a little confusing (and weird) to imagine or think about, but it's fiction. We all have weird fantasies, thoughts, ideas, etc.

The cocklette is the male omega's version of a penis. This tiny and often defective organ typically serves no purpose but as a bundle of nerves/pleasure spot for Omegas. A male equivalent of a clit.

Let me be clear; I am a cis-gendered male author. But, as I said, I write for male readers, ALL male readers. Cis, trans, and those are non-binary alike. This is why I typically don't put non-binary or trans in my tags because I'm keeping the reader as a character as ambiguous and open as possible.

The most I put in the tags regarding identity or label is gay so that it reaches more of the audience I want it to reach. That's it.

Also, I'm sure it doesn't help that I mainly write from a submissive point of view. I'm biased toward bottom/sub-male readers, I admit it. And I know there's a growing demand for top/dominant male reader content, but I'm sorry, that is just not my cup of tea.

But, if you don't want to read about yourself having vaginal parts and a cocklette, that is more than okay. That's why I always put a disclaimer in the warnings section of my author's notes if a fic is Omegaverse and include a link to my headcanons. I'm letting you know from jump what's in the fic you're about to read and giving you more than enough opportunity to turn away.

I do write smut that's not Omegaverse as well, plus I have many fics with no smut at all that keep things clean and open for my male readers to imagine themselves in.

This is not shade or me throwing shots at anyone who felt uncomfortable or surprised by it. It's completely valid, and I understand. But, I give plenty of warning and opportunity so there isn't any confusion.

You will likely never see me write an explicit trans male character since that's not part of my identity and I'd rather give that opportunity and shine to the authors who are of that identity. I just write what I like to write, or better yet, what I myself like to read.

The only thing that doesn't change is that my characters, reader or original, are and will always be MALE characters. Even if my Omegaverse characters have vaginal parts and their nipples leak more milk than a pregnant cow, they are MALE characters. Not female. They are boys, men, fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, nephews, boyfriends, husbands, misters, kings, princes, dukes, barons, cowboys, bachelors, fucking dudes, and every other word related in the dictionary. Again, no shade to any female reader I have, but yall know what it is to.

I hope this doesn't discourage anyone and that everyone receives it as I intended it. If you like my fics, please engage more with them and tell me the things you like and want to see more of! If you want more regular smut and less Omegaverse smut, I'm more than happy to comply, just please check my rules first!

Thank you!

#solar-wing ☀️ #���️🪽.info #☀️🪽.omegaverse #☀️🪽.txt #gay #male reader #x male reader #omegaverse #a/b/o dynamics #omega male reader #bottom male reader #sub male reader

[my-castles-crumbling]

I made a huge mistake almost a whole year ago and I still think about it all of the time.

I was working with this new staff member… and I did the worst thing anyone could do and assumed their pronouns… I was using the wrong pronouns for weeks until my sister told me that they go by they/them. When she told me that my entire heart shattered. I felt like the biggest asshole ever. How could I, a member of the lgbtqia+ community fuck up that badly. I felt horrible and of course I still do.! (No one knows I’m queer so I also feel like now they think I’m transphobic and/or homophobic)

I wanted to apologise but then I felt like I’d be making up excuses for myself and I’m also like really socially awkward so I didn’t end up saying anything.

The thing is, I still feel so horrible about it and I guess that’s a good thing bc at least I know that I care about being respectful but it just really sucks that I was misgendering someone for so long and didn’t realise the harm I could have been causing them.

I’m so sorry to be ranting to you at 2am but I genuinely don’t think I’ll ever get over this and I just needed to speak about it to someone.

Ps- I am the agender questioning anon and so thank you so much for helping me with that… I think I’m starting to understand myself so much more now!

So much love to you Cas, I hope you have the most amazing day! 🫶🏼

Hi love!

woah woah woah. Take a breath <3

Here's the thing. Yeah, it sucks to be misgendered. and yeah, in a perfect world, we should ask people for their pronouns every time we meet them.

But here's the thing: that's not reality. Why?

It's not always safe to ask for/share pronouns. There are many situations where I, myself, don't feel comfortable asking someone's pronouns or sharing my own. So I assume. And unfortunately, that means I get misgendered and so do other people. But my safety and the safety of others is first and foremost.

Also, it's a habit to get into, to ask people for their pronouns, even when they might present in a way that makes you assume. Habits are difficult to form, and sometimes a mistake like this helps you become more eager to form them.

And here's the thing: you did the EXACT RIGHT THING by not making a big deal of it when you found out and (I'm assuming) just using the right pronouns from then on. You didn't put that person in a weird situation and now they're being gendered correctly.

Let me give you an example that will hopefully make you feel better:

I have been wearing a pin on my lanyard at work for five months now with my pronouns. I work with about a hundred adults. Guess how many people use my pronouns? ONE.

Until the other day.

All of a sudden, my coworker started referring to me with my pronouns. And I was SO EXCITED! She didn't have to give an apology. She just needed to start respecting my identity.

All this to say: yes, it sucks to be misgendered, and in a perfect world we should never assume. But you're still LEARNING and if you've corrected yourself and do your best to do better from now on then, as long as this coworker is a decent person, they aren't mad. I promise!

Sending you lots of love and also maybe some forgiveness for yourself. <333

#ask #asks #ask cas

[valyrou]

Hi!! Could I request dazai with a weird person? (Ik it's not the term, maybe artistic, maybe something else, weird is the only global term which isn't that wrong). Basically they're extremely drawn by art, notice the most niche and least noticeable things and 'it makes sense in my head sorry' is their daily sentence which leads them to feel alone and not understood. Like this with dazai would be interesting I think (like the dynamic, i cant go on bc its starting to get so long but the whole 'dont feel like a proper human being too' ahhh i cant put the right words). There again- I'm sorry it makes sense for me-

Anyway have a good day and sorry <33

A/n: Hello Anon!! Of course I can do that!! I am working on multiple requests at once, kinda overworking myself with studies and work and on top of that I have finals soon and I should study a bit more.. ANYWAYS I related to this a little too much so I think I know what you mean by „weird person that can’t really describe what they think“ kinda stuff. But this isn’t about me so I HOPE YOU ENJOYYY

Warnings: to lazy to read over this rn so not proof read at all.. ALSO INSPIRED BY „no longer human“ by osamu Dazai lol?? Don’t know why but here we are :) reader doesn’t have a gender aswell, so GN reader

Dazai x Misunderstood! Reader

You couldn’t quite remember how you got to the art gallery with Dazai, but here you stood Infront of an magnificent piece of art. You could see how old it was by the cracks and discoloration, yet the way it was drawn, with such delicacy was as if it was drawn only a few minutes ago to you. The emotions and thought behind it, still visible to your eye. The way the eyes of that women were slightly casted down, the dark colored theme, the way the posture was drawn, everything seemed so right.

That was something everyone could see, yet even the way the clothes hung from her body made an important difference to the picture „Can you see her naked shoulder and the robe that almost seems to be put on lazily?“ you had begun your sentence, „it resembles her innocence and purity, no men could ever touch her..“ your voice got a little dreamier on the end. It took you some seconds to notice that’s Dazai didn’t respond. You immediately got embarrassed „it made sense in my head.. sorry“

You looked to your feet, cursing yourself out for saying such stupid things to him as if he could understand what you were thinking… if he could ever understand how you felt when the art practically screamed for you to tell its story, because you knew no one else could quite think like you. No one could. You were alone in this world that seemed to abandon you. Reject you from society as if you weren’t a human being. As if, the moment you shared a piece of your mind, you were no longer human..

You snapped out of your thoughts as you felt a soft hand on your shoulder „Yea, but also look at her hips, the way her robe curves there.“ he pointed subtly to were he meant, „she also seems tense, as if to say that she knew what the men around think of her.“ impressed you looked up to the tall brunette „You saw that?“ in response, Dazai only chuckled „Of course, you are not the only one that has a unique way to see and think.“ his hand gently squeezing your shoulder

„You are not alone. Not everyone might understand what you are trying to say, but I promise you there are always a hand full of people that do. Don’t push yourself down, see the ups of having a unique way to think, even if you can’t voice it.“ he shot you a cheerful smile and for the first time, you felt accepted. Accepted in this so shallow society you always had claimed not to be a part of.

#Bsd #bsd x y/n #bsd x you #bsd x gender neutral reader #bsd imagines #bsd dazai #Dazai #dazai x you #bsd dazai x reader #dazai x reader #Dazai Osamu #dazai osamu x reader #Dazai Osamu imagines #bungou stray dogs headcanons #bungou stray dogs imagines #bungou stray dogs x reader #bungou stray dogs #anime #no longer human #no longer human Osamu dazai

[possibilistfanfiction]

Genuine question, how did you figure out or realize the whole being butch thing? What does being butch mean to you?

idk if it was like… figure out? more so just putting a name to something i’ve always felt or known about myself. i came out as a lesbian, then i came out as nb, then i was like well i want gender affirming care so that must mean i am Trans™️, & it’s like… none of those words or kind of… vibes (lol sorry) quite fit? i don’t feel like a cis lesbian, & i actually kind of despise non-binary as a concept (don’t send asks abt this i won’t answer them lol, do ur own thing if u love it that’s cool); i think for me personally Transness is a little too serious & intense & limiting to how i feel. & im a white afab person in a smaller body, & honestly…….. we are often the wooooorst demographic of trans ppl lmao so i just didn’t even rly like some spaces i was in. i got the most important gender affirming care i wanted, i moved & i got married, i got to work remotely etc

& so just sitting with all of that it was like. ok well a lot of neoliberal queer spaces piss me the fuck off; i’m not cis, but i’m not TRANS in the way a lot of ppl (very validly) feel; i do Not like nb. i’d read stone butch blues before, i have a degree in critical theory where i worked a loooot w queer theory, obviously i’ve written abt queerness for ages lol. so then i was just like ah. butch. dyke. YAH! sweet. 100/10 feels amazing i love it

& i think for me i love those words most bc they’re rooted in really radical belief that i have. they carry an ethic with them that, at its best & most intersectional ofc, i want to act on, all the time. i want to show up for people & be protective & tough & strong but i also so deeply want to be nurturing & nourishing. i want to allow myself to be nourished & cared for. i think it feels rly wonderful to have a word for transgressive gender that sums it all up bc people lived it before me. they made that very specific & particular space to experience femininity in a way that doesn’t feel like a noose.

i think also butchness is so expansive! something that never sat right w me abt the way we talk abt transness in the west is that i don’t think there are ‘pre’ & ‘post’ transition selves. like… i’ve never been Not Me? like i came out of the womb a dyke. all i did my entire childhood is run around in the mountains, catalogue leaves, play w my dog, read nancy drew, & avidly watch + play any women’s soccer i could. i loved to fish & mountain bike, i grew up in the desert so gardening to me was a miracle. i never cared abt gender at all beyond like ‘well i guess i’m a girl & the women i admire just won a world cup, they’re badass’ & that was it. i liked boys clothes bc they were practical & felt better, but i just. didn’t think about it. ppl called me a tomboy which was fine, i liked scout in to kill a mockingbird so whatever. but i never felt “non-binary” & i certainly never felt like a boy.

& i am… still just like that lmao. i hated my boobs, point blank day 1 lol, but that doesn’t have to mean i’m trans, or that i’ve somehow changed in a way that requires separation from who i’ve been my whole life. i HATE the language of ‘dead/lived’ name; i hate the weird expectation that u should allow the state to have all of ur gender stuff on record (no fucking thank you, y’all can keep my legal name & i will be flying under the radar lol). so i think western transness rly just. irritates me. doesn’t fit. hasn’t ever fit.

so butchness is like. i am 8 year old jude, i’m just older now. if this makes sense ur butch lmao but. it’s this rly free space to play w masculinity in a way that doesn’t necessitate western transness, & also doesn’t necessitate a separation from maternalism, which i fundamentally believe in. i don’t even rly think of my own care as “gender affirming” & more just like… essence affirming. i didn’t want top surgery so my body could be read as male; i wanted it so i could look like me. i want my clothes to feel & fit in a Very particular way bc that’s how i like them. it’s abt practicality, efficiency, comfort.

& lastly to me butchness has a remarkable space for tenderness that masculinity on its own just cannot hold. like. it’s abt being protective & strong, sure, but it’s in service of others. always always always. so sometimes that looks like communicating calmly, sometimes that looks like infinite small acts of service for ur friends or ur partner. when i think of settling into myself it’s more about returning to who i knew i was when i was a kid, when i was the only person my dog liked & how it felt to sit on the swings when the sun was setting after the monsoon; it’s allowing myself to love like that — caring, & quiet, & full.

ultimately to me butchness is about devotion, more than anything in the world. devoted to safety, devoted to community. no one is devoted the way dykes are bc it’s how we survive. it’s how we have always survived — the steadfastness, the faith, the joy, even thru suffering, to not be boxed in. to help each other. to be funny & kind & thoughtful & not reject the absolute best parts of womanhood for the sake of a western box. to demand care. it’s so beautiful. devotion.

tldr it’s the best

#got a lot of big feelings abt this right before therapy i guess lmfao

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Hi sex witch, i realise that this is not an actual sex ed related question and I hope this isn't overstepping any bounds.

I'm sort of in a weird spot right now a la my sexuality and am trying to figure out if I actually want a relationship and if what I feel is romantic attraction or Friendship levelled up. I've known for a long time that I'm Demisexual or Ace, and I thought I knew that I still felt romantic attraction but now I'm less sure.

How did you come to realise that you were aromantic? In that discovery did you ever wonder if it was a sort of 'mental block' or something similar that would be better off working through? (I ask because I'm sort of stuck in that state of mind right now, and I'm just curious to see if it's a common experience or not)

I realise that this is a fairly sensitive topic, and I really don't mean offense by asking.

I also realise that no two people's experiences will be the same but I was interested in hearing about it from another person's perspective.

I hope you have a great day whether or not you give this ask the time of day.

I've asked you other things in the past and it's always been brilliantly helpful. Thanks a lot for everything you do.

hi anon,

no worries about overstepping boundaries :) this is a pretty reasonable thing to ask of someone, and I'm happy to talk about it!

there's a funny story that I tell about the moment I probably should have known, but didn't yet have the language. in sixth grade my class had an assignment that involved making a collage timeline of the rest of our lives (a proto-vision board of sorts) and I think I was the only kid in the class who didn't put getting married on my timeline. everyone else did, as far as I can remember, and most of them also included having kids. being a pedantic little fuck I pointed out to several of my friends that it was really unreasonable to assume they would find someone they liked enough to marry who liked them back, to which everyone told me (paraphrasing) to shut the fuck up and stop being a little bastard.

but it still seemed very strange to me, because even when I was very young - back when I barely had the language to conceptualize being gay, let alone aromantic - I never imagined my life with a romantic partner. romantic pairings were interesting in stories, sure, I ate that shit up from a very young age! the star-crossed lovers shit going on in American Dragon: Jake Long did a number on my developing brain, and my Barbies and Littlest Pet Shops got up to INSANE relationship drama, but for myself it never really felt, like, relevant? not unpleasant, just uninteresting.

but I still had crushes on people as I grew up, and more importantly I had crushes on people of various genders, so during my teen years I was WAY more preoccupied with repressing my burgeoning bisexuality than drawing any conclusions about my romantic orientation

spoilers: the bisexuality won.

in college I had a friend who identified as asexual at the time, who spent maybe a year trying to convince me that I was aromantic. and I didn't want to hear it! I don't know why, honestly; maybe some part of me, despite loving the community I had found coming into my queerness, was still subconsciously afraid of being too different and grappling with the consequences.

so instead I did this uuuuh real dirtbag thing where instead of just acknowledging to myself that I was pretty fundamentally uninterested in romantic relationships and that that's fine, I spent the first half of college leaning hard on self-deprecation to explain my single status. oh, me? why aren't I dating? well, I'd probably be a really bad partner. yeah, I suck. I mean, I'm so busy all the time! and I'm weird.

(at the time I know I definitely had friends who assumed I was Like That because my parents were divorced, which is hilarious old-fashioned and also categorically untrue. I was Like This way before my parents got divorced!)

it actually took a relationship ending pretty badly to make peace with the idea that maybe I didn't want a relationship at all. I won't get into the details on that, because it involves another person and we were both very young and accidentally hurt each other a lot in ways we didn't mean and I don't think anyone was the villain, but I don't want it to come across like I had one bad breakup and then swore off romance, a thing I'd previously been interested in, forever. it was more like I found myself in a really heightened situation - they really desperately needed a good and attentive romantic partner after getting out of a bad relationship, I wanted our friendship to stay exactly the same but with a sexual component - that made very, very obvious what I was actually looking for in non-platonic relationships. which was, I guess, actually pretty platonic relationships, but with genitals involved.

haha just kidding, I actually didn't get that part through my skull until I spent an entire summer crying constantly, dissociating frequently, and spending way too much time on BAD dates having even worse sex that made me feel gross! but we got there eventually.

that part probably isn't super relatable to you if you're somewhere in the ace realm, sorry about that.

anyway, once the dust settled and I felt halfway human again I was feeling vulnerable and open to change - finally willing to see myself in a new way and reckon with parts of myself that I hadn't been before. I remembered what my buddy had always said about me seeming Really Aromantic, and I let it settle on me. how would I feel, if I actually was aromantic? how would it change my life, how I thought about myself?

and if I can use a cliche with you? it felt like a weight rolling off my shoulders. I suddenly had a whole sturdy base to build a better understanding of myself on, an easy way to justify the way I lived that didn't require throwing myself under a bus.

thinking of myself through the lens of aromanticism felt like a huge, HUGE relief, and frankly I think that, more than anything, is the best way for anyone to decide if they should be applying any identity label to themselves. which brings us back to you! I actually don't believe in the model of sexuality and gender that posits a secret innate Right Answer buried in each person that they'll discover if the just find the right terminology. all of the words we use are the result of our time and place, right? people like us existed all through history with different words for themselves, and they'll exist way after us calling themselves things we can't imagine.

so basically: I came to realize I was aromantic because calling myself aromantic felt like loving myself, and if that's the case for you than I strongly recommend you do it, too.

happy pride xoxo

#queer stuff #aro #god i don't have an aro tag i'm a fake aromantic

[stemmmm]

Stem's thoughts on Harvest Moon GBC2

AKA how I ruined a perfectly good game for myself

The first Harvest Moon on the GameBoy was a port of a pretty simple game onto an even simpler console. The limitations involved meant that only the most basic mechanics could reasonably be left in. The farming gameplay loop still existed, but without any superfluous aspects like wandering the forest for forage or speaking to any of the NPCs. The town still existed of course, as you needed to have a place where you could buy more things for your farm. The compromise they made was to turn the whole thing into a menu where you could choose a business and go inside to buy things, but nothing else, which is disappointing but understandable for such a simple game.

The first thing that Harvest Moon GBC 2 does is put you in a conversation with an NPC, and then makes you run around the town– a place that you can actually walk around in, with buildings and people outside –to talk to and meet everyone as you tell them that you’re going to take over the old farm.

To say this game was a relief to play is an understatement. I actually played this one immediately after GB1 because I decided to skip 64, so when I turned on the game and experienced its opening, I was still extremely raw from how awful GB1 felt. The first time I played it, I actually had to stop after day one, I didn’t even get to do any farming yet, because I was reeling so hard from how absurdly different this one was– and how COMPLETE! The excuses I made in my mind for GB1 were a complete and total sham!

The first thing that you see when starting a new file is something of a character creator. It’s a simple menu where you choose your name, your gender, pick a birthday out of any day in one of the four seasons (64 only let you choose a season), and then choose between a cat or dog for a pet. You aren’t told this in the selection, but a cat will bring home random seeds you can plant, and a dog will scare away wild animals, meaning that you can only leave your livestock outside overnight if you have a dog. I like free stuff though, so I chose the cat.

The next thing you’re exposed to is the town and what story there is, but I’ll get into that later. What I’ll instead explain next is your farm, which is a little weird compared to earlier games. In the first area, you have your house, a big open space, and then the usual barn, coop, silo, wood bin, with extra space on the left and bottom of the farm for a sheep pen and hothouse/greenhouse that you can buy in the future. You cannot grow crops in this area. Instead, there’s a different area to the south that hosts a huge, empty field where you’re expected to grow everything. This is also the only place where there’s an outdoor shipping bin, so you have to go all the way down there rather than just to the entrance of your farm if you have forage to ship. To the east of the farming area is a lake where you can catch fish, and a pond where you can save fish you’ve previously caught. The only thing to do with fish is sell them though, so the only reason I can really see for using the pond is if you caught something past 5PM, when anything put in storage will rot before it can be picked up. The lake is connected to a river that runs through the crop fields, and there’s actually a space to put a bridge so you can access the other half of the space for double the planting capacity. 

You won’t use any of that space to plant grass though, as all of that is meant to go behind the animal houses. Each one has its own individual field behind it for planting grass, and the game won’t let you buy any animals to go in the corresponding buildings unless a certain amount of grass is growing in the field behind it. It’s pretty awkward to make sure the grass is actually cut, as a player who doesn’t go back there every day, but I see the logic behind it.  They want to make people plant grass as an extra way to gatekeep animals beyond just money. It also works pretty tidily with the mechanics they have for putting animals in and out, which is that you get special tools for each of them that automatically sends them in or outside. I didn’t use these things because I didn’t have a dog, so putting my animals outside was equivalent to throwing them to the wolves… literally. And as you may have already theorized, individual items for three different types of animals turns into an inventory disaster because of the way tools work.

In your house is a tool chest that opens a menu when you interact with it. The chest holds up to 20 tools, each with a designated slot, and it has an additional page for all the different types of seeds you can buy. You’re able to carry four different tools or types of seeds on your person at any given time, with the ability to swap between which one is equipped quickly via the START button, or more precisely by opening up the inventory menu via the SELECT button, which is pretty nice in my opinion! It works quickly, and four tools is more than any other game has let you carry so far, but that only means so much when the game has such an excess of tools, while most others only have about six– not including seeds. Navigating the tool chest also becomes something of a pain because there are so many items, so it’s desirable to only keep the absolute necessities on your person.

Included in the excessive amount of tools is an exciting new item: the bug net. See, this game has reincorporated the forest as a foraging area, but it’s a little more than that. While it has the usual seasonal wild plants, a daily-replenishing supply of lumber, and a hot spring, it also has a myriad of insects that wander or fly around in short, predictable loops. It’s no Animal Crossing– the bugs always spawn in the same place and do the same thing for a whole season until the next one, where they’re replaced by a different kind of insect doing the same amount of nothing, but I think that’s appropriate for a game on such a short schedule. Bug catching is less about skill and more about remembering to bring your net with you on days and times that you haven’t gone bug-catching before. The fishing mechanic is similarly simple– it’s less about waiting and more about timing, as the rod will bob in the same pattern every time you cast it, you just have to catch it at the right time. As a result, if you get the timing down, you can always reel it in at the first bob and catch fish extremely quickly. This strategy ended up being my favorite during the time while I was getting started and didn’t have a lot of cash for seeds or animals yet.

But what do you do with these things you catch? You can sell fish but you can’t sell bugs. Instead, both are recorded in collections that you can access at the library in town! The function of the library is to let you access your collections of bugs and fish, view photos that you collected through experiencing events (kind of like what was in 64), and connect to the save files of your friends who have the game to share information and trade items. See, this game took a little inspiration from Pokemon in that while there aren’t separate versions, you only get access to certain things if you’re playing as either a boy or a girl. You get different crops, different bug and fish spawns, and there’s a certain quest that requires making a connection. It’s very cute! But inaccessible if you aren’t playing a physical copy of the game on original hardware, unfortunately.

Other than the library, the town has a carpenter, clinic, church, restaurant, ranch, tool shop, and flower shop. My making a big deal about how the town isn’t a menu this time feels a little disingenuous getting more into it, because while it is a space you can navigate and where people walk around, once you go in a building it’s almost exactly the same– no interior, just a portrait of the shop owner and their wares, but all of this is preceded by an option to talk to them this time around! Not that they have much to say, but it’s still a difference. You get another chance to talk to the shopkeepers and give them gifts (because you can carry items between rooms this time) on Sundays when all the shops are closed, which is another unique feature compared to GB1 where every day was exactly the same.

To the north of the town is a little square with a fountain and bulletin board where everyone who isn’t employed usually wanders about during the business week. At the start of the game, the bulletin board is loaded up with handy tutorials on how to play the game (yet another thing GB1 severely lacked). Later on, it fills up with dates for town festivals like the cherry blossom festival and horse races. The festivals usually aren’t much, shops don't even close for the majority of them, but they give the world a little more life and variety and the horse race gives you the ability to purchase a minigame from the tool shop that you can play anytime you want! There are several minigames which are all unlocked to replay by doing things like going to events or completing certain objectives.

The last new thing in this game is that if you press SELECT twice, instead of giving you the option to turn on Harvest Sprite helpers (no sprites to be found here), you get a more detailed menu with information about your animals, possessions, and then a long FAQ list with information like “weeds are back!” and explanations on how to get sheep or grow flowers inside the hothouse.

The Story

The premise of the story is that there’s an old farm in town that’s going to be replaced by an amusement park. It opens with your character trying to talk the mayor out of agreeing to any deals, saying that you’ll take over the farm to save it. He agrees to give you three years to do the best work you can and then you’re sent on your way. The first thing you have to do is announce the deal to everyone in town, who all happen to already know you… and apparently very well! The town doctor confirms that you grew up in this town, and everyone around is your childhood friend. I’ve never personally seen any farming sim take this angle, and I think it’s pretty fun! The game doesn’t do a ton with it, but it at least has a different vibe. It works well for a game where you do have relationships with these people, but they’re not in a ton of depth and they don’t go anywhere in the end because marriage doesn’t exist here.

This entry is also the first in the series that we see a wholly unique cast (almost). You could argue that 64 does it since technically the folks in town aren’t the same, but they’re awfully damn similar. Everyone here is a new character design unrelated to anyone we’ve seen before. Aside from Mary (librarian) and Ken (carpenter) anyways, who are both the same exact design as their counterparts in 64. While their personalities are similar, there’s nothing to indicate that these are the same characters in any way.

The stories to do with all of these characters mostly aren’t anything too special. There’s twin boys who run the tool shop and their narrative is tied to how you get tool upgrades. Whether you play as a boy or a girl, there are a couple events that indicate certain characters have a crush on your farmer. There’s also a marriage that happens once you make it into year three that puts a tiny change in the town where Rosie, who runs the restaurant is replaced by her sister. Some of these events have to do with little quests where just about all you have to do is go to a certain location when asked, others just occur. As I said before, the story’s all very simple, but it’s just fine like that. 

For the most part, necessary events will trigger when the time is right, but other things only happen if you’ve made good friends with everyone by talking on a regular basis and occasionally giving gifts. You’ll know if you’re on the right track when peoples’ dialogue changes, which happens a few times as you become closer. There’s apparently all kinds of little events in the game, but I failed to see a good number of them.

As usual, the easiest way to get on everyone's good sides and progress the story further is by doing well on your farm and either giving people the appropriate harvests as gifts or just upgrading things further. Despite all the changes to your farm layout, the actual things you have to do to work the land and care for animals are the same as ever. It’s pretty simple and quick to get good farming work done, and a decent amount of options afforded to you in terms of how you want to focus your energy– be it crops, animals, fishing, forage, or friendship, so it’s up to you how you want to get to the finish line. While you’re not told the requirements very clearly, the game is pretty low-stakes and just wants you to take your time and enjoy the three whole years it expects you to play.

How I ruined the game for myself

So of course, without a clear goal given to me, I had to look up the endings as soon as possible. Which brings me to my problem with this game: the requirements it has for the best ending are completely absurd. Well, to be accurate, one of the requirements is completely absurd. The best ending in the game requires 70 or more Happiness Points, having 10,000 G or more, have at least 3 of each animal (cow, sheep, and chicken), find 10 Power Berries, and have the third home expansion built, which are all extremely reasonable to do. So reasonable in fact that I handily managed all of those things before the end of year two out of three. The final, problematic requirement is to ship 10,000 or more items. This is a ridiculous amount of items. This is a “fill your entire field to the brim and never let it run empty” amount of items. I knew this from the second I saw it, but… well, it’s three years of gameplay right? And you aren’t told this is what you need anywhere within the game that I saw, so surely the developers thought this would be a reasonable goal for people, right? I had to give it a try, right?

Saying this from the future where I succeeded, I wish I didn’t try at all. I spent the full three years of this game constantly on the grind, filling my fields as completely as I could, and panicking to rush everything to the shipping bin before 5PM hit so I would have more empty land to plant more crops that I would water in the dark of night before going to bed and doing it again. Fun fact, this game doesn’t make you reset until 6AM the next morning and without any real repercussions. I only found this out because I’d stay out all night weeding and watering. There was very little time left to talk to the people in town after that. I did manage to get them all up to their maximum friendships pretty early on, before I had the means to constantly be churning out veggies, so I had every opportunity to catch their events, I just missed them because every day, no matter the season, I was farming.

The funny thing is, I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy playing the games this way. That is still true, and I very well could have enjoyed my time much more if it weren’t for the damned horse and its awful AI. See, there may be four inventory slots for tools, but there are none for items. Every individual one has to be plucked and carried to the shipping bin, same as SNES, same as GB1. The saving grace in those two games, and technically this one as well, is that around winter-ish of your first year, a horse will appear on your farm, and when it grows up in a couple seasons, it either already has or you can buy for it a saddle bag which functions as a mobile shipping bin. All you have to do is ride your horse out to where you’re harvesting and while it wanders a bit, it stays put well enough for you to load it up with veggies as you run back and forth to harvest, which speeds up the process dramatically in the vast fields you have to work in these games.

This horse is not like those other horses. This horse will take off in a dead sprint with no warning in any direction it pleases. In my experience, this was usually in the worst possible direction that would put it the farthest away from me. And the timing of it was typically whenever I was about to throw something into the saddlebag. This aggravated the hell out of me not only because it was a huge waste of my limited time, not only because it wasted a ton of crops, but also because it was constant. Nothing I did, no positioning I tried was able to help keep the horse where I needed it, and this was how I was spending 80% of my time in this game, dealing with this horse. I could have been seeing fun events, I could have been peacefully farming at my own pace and leisure, even better this technique easily could have just worked out if the horse didn’t behave so erratically. 

But I can’t judge the game on the merit of all the time I spent with the horse alone because that was my own choice to do. The best ending may require 10,000 shipped items, but all it takes to avoid the worst ending is to have more than 10 Happiness Points, more than 2,000G, more than four Power Berries, expand my house, and ship 100 items. With three entire years of game, the only way you fail to achieve that is by basically not playing the game. The vast space between the requirements for the best ending and the worst ending is to get a normal ending that accomplishes exactly the same thing as the best ending does, only the cutscene is different and you get a trophy for the best one. The cutscene barely stands out as anything special, which led to me having no idea what ending I got until I discovered the trophy was a thing I had to search for in my house. That’s it, you still get to keep playing the game either way, not that there’s terribly much else to do regardless of which ending you get, since there’s no special post-ending content.

I’ll still judge it a little bit though

While it makes sense to use your workable area to its fullest extent, having it be a requirement for the good ending to use all of it to the best of your ability for the whole extent of the game is excessive to me, especially since by year 3 it becomes completely unnecessary to try to earn money. I already had everything I was working for, and the requirement being to ship more things rather than better things meant there was no reason to get anything other than what was cheap and quick. No reason to make my animals like me so they’d produce better stuff, no reason to use the maker machines even though they weren’t obtainable until it got to the point where money had no meaning. I hardly bothered with the hothouses because they were both so confusing about what I could plant in each, and so tedious both to unlock and to harvest things since I needed a special tool that would take up a precious inventory space, lest I have to run back and forth between the tool chest. The hothouse might have been more useful if there weren’t winter crops, but there were.

What’s wild about my criticisms is that the game itself has something built in to mitigate everything that I struggled with. There is a tool called the miracle glove that automatically ships your crops the moment that they are harvested. But the only way to get it is via a link connection to a friend’s copy of the game– something near impossible in this day and age because you’d need to somehow find two working copies of this game with two functional GameBoys, and completely impossible if you’re using the magic of the 3DS eShop which doesn’t exist anymore and didn’t have functional multiplayer for most games anyways. That item alone would have solved the biggest problem I had in playing this game, and it was functionally DLC.

Closing thoughts

It took me a really long time to try and get to this review, and I’ve beaten two more games since, which has given me a new perspective. My original nugget for this one was going to focus on how much I hated the horse the whole way through and on how disappointed I was that the game was so hard for such little reward, but I’ve since realized that playing in a way that was no fun for me was my own choice. At any point I could have scaled things down and reprioritized to focus on the details of the game that are more fun like seeing events, but I just clung to that damn horse for 50 hours instead– which by the way, is longer than it’s taken me to beat any other game in this series so far that I’ve recorded my playtime for. The average sits around 25 hours.

If you don’t play like I did, it’s actually a really neat game!It’s not dissimilar to a scaled-down version of 64, with the way it focuses a little more on events and adds features to make the world feel just a touch more alive like the bug and fish collections. It’s not as deep or detailed as 64, but you still get to experience something of a sweet little story with a small set of characters in a game that feels very smooth and fun to play.On the bright side, even with the struggle I went through trying to get the perfect score, it was still a better game than GB1. It says a lot that I’ve found it more appropriate to compare it to  64, a fantastic game, rather than its actual predecessor.

#m.txt #hm posting #harvest moon #story of seasons #harvest moon gbc2 #hm gbc2 #game review #the worst part of these is always getting images together #i think you can see me getting lazier with each entry #by the time we reach the wii games these will be text only

[chipped-chimera]

So, I'm a Lesbian I guess.

So uh, life update. I came out to my Mum, so I figured I'd do so here too.

I've done a bunch of self reflection, healing. I reached out to my ex and we had a good conversation and I think that just made everything even clearer for me.

So yeah, this is me saying I'm not bisexual. I'm lesbian. And I probably always was.

More context below the cut if you want it (it's long). But anyway, here's to finally feeling like I'm finding the real 'me' in all this rubble.

❤️🧡🤍💖💜

I thought I was bisexual for ages. The fact I even got to think that wouldn't have happened if it weren't for my ex, who identified that way and I felt in a safe enough environment to express it. In the past two months I went through some self reflection, and talked to my ex for the first time in 2 years. It was good, and it's too complicated to explain easily but at least on my end I was getting a double dosage of the comphet juice between just regular expectations and the undiagnosed autism (also jesus christ, being a teenager in 2005-2010 that environment was just fucked up for anyone who might be trying to come to terms with not being straight). Kids in my school were more accepting, but also in the same breath using 'Gay' as an insult).

We were both undiagnosed neurodiverse people and maybe it was just the first time we'd encountered someone who just actually understood for once. Who saw who we were and were okay with that. The 10 year relationship, put in that context makes a lot of sense. So I don't blame him for how it ended. If anything I thanked him for breaking it off, because I was in such a goddamn state after being used by the Australian government (see Robodebt) there was no way in hell I had the mental tools or even brain space to realise anything about myself because I was too busy just trying to fucking survive. I would have lived and died in that relationship simply because at least it was safe, and stable. But it wasn't genuine.

Past two years since that relationship ended were fucking rough. For most of this year I kind of just turned into myself I guess, but I was letting it happen because after finding out about the high comorbidity of chronic health conditions with Autism and how it's likely related to long-term compound stress from masking for so long, I really asked myself when was the last time I just let myself 'rest'? Didn't do anything I didn't want to do or feel compelled to do because of some social contract or guilt?

I couldn't come up with an answer.

So I rested. And I think that's basically given me the strength now to finally 'wake up'. I dunno. That's how it feels. I only recently noticed my thoughts about women were structurally very different than the ones about men (and yeah it's goddamn fuckin' embarassing to say but uh thanks Larian specifically for giving me a female love interest tailored to my exact preference which FINALLY connected some dusty neuron in the back of my head or something. It was Karlach. MY GODDAMN GAY AWAKENING WAS KARLACH, ffs) and the more I examined it, the more everything became clear. I was hesitant to remove the bi label from myself, wondering if this was just a really extreme 'bi-cycle' swing but the more and more I thought about it, went through memories in my life, how I could never see myself with someone else it was always characters together and really it was the relationship and intimacy between them, regardless of gender that I was appreciating.

I thought I was grey ace but after going 'huh these thoughts are kind of different' and realising that yeah, I could imagine myself with a woman - it wasn't some weird other shit I'd told myself like it was just visceral self hatred or something, placing myself with a guy it was literally I did not want to be with a guy - it became obvious. So fucking, embarrassingly obvious.

I'm not sure where things will go from here. I am incredibly socially isolated in real life. My best friend is my Mum. I don't have a social circle at all outside of online spaces. I'm 30 and that's a fucking weird age to be thrown out into the world essentially experiencing goddamn delayed idk mental puberty because you suppressed it that hard. I haven't used a dating app in my LIFE. I'm still kind of scared of being hurt by others and I'm aware it's not entirely logical, but I just feel fragile. I'm also still picking up the pieces of my life.

I've confirmed a C-PTSD diagnosis with my psychologist, which explains why all the CBT tools I'd learned over the years just stopped working (CBT doesn't always gel well with PTSD or Autism) so that's probably going to inform treatment going forward. My intense fatigue issues are probably caused by having to carry all this fucking trauma and suppression of myself. As I said to my Mum, it's like I'm just 'Tired from being alive' at this point. I'm really, really fucking hoping it's not Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ME. The new medication I'm on seems to be keeping me going past the 4hr mark though, so we might be onto the right medication mix (I do not appreciate the 7:30pm crash, like clockwork, where instead of feeling unfocused and tired like before I now feel jacked up as hell like I'm waiting for someone to punch me however :V)

I don't know where this is going. Or where I'm going. All I know is 'I'm going'. When the breakup first happened, when I hauled myself out of the Mental Health ward and back to my parents home where I had to figure out what the fuck to do after any kind of certainty of my future had been completely obliterated - I saw a lot of snakes. I'm kind of vaugely pagan, if I'm honest. I don't know how to put it. I am very scientific but I also don't think we know all the answers.

My ancestors were likely heavily Celtic, likely some Viking and Pictish influence as both family lines go back to Scotland and Ireland. I know through my reading that natural signs were important to them, so I start noticing when I see multiple occurrences, especially in odd places (I'll be real, I just remembered earlier in this relationship when I was more into pagan shit I saw a lot of Moths. Yeah. Yeah I feel like smashing my face into my desk about that. No I never figured it out then EITHER). I know quite a few things about snakes. Snakes are an animal that is both used as a symbol for medicine, but also classed as 'evil', especially in the modern christian context.

They are considered symbols of rejuvenation, of immortality, much like the Phoenix, they are constantly reborn through the shedding of their skin. Shedding is critical to a snake, because if it does not shed it's skin, it will die. This is a legitimate concern for zookeepers with snakes that have scars - they often struggle to shed completely, and they have to soak the snake's skin in water so they can cast off the skin.

So it's shed or die.

I have struggled to let go of things. Of everything that was done to me, but I knew it had to be let go. And today I have shed a lot of that shit. I am crying on and off but this is probably the first time it's easy. It's not physically painful, like knives in my throat, or something I have to shove down and keep contained for fear of being rejected. It's happy crying.

Because that skin being shed - it wasn't mine either. I needed rest, I needed to soak in that goddamn water dish so I could get through all the scar tissue. So it's probably the strongest image I have in my mind of everything. Of who I am. My entire life.

If you're going through difficult shit in life, all I can say is - you're strong. You're strong as fuck. Strength isn't being able to get into a physical fight, or being super confident around people - it's enduring life and the chaos thrown at you. It's being able to be broken down and rebuild, just like the snake casts off skin for their new selves. You will endure things and be stronger for it, than those who have lived all their lives without any pain whatsoever.

But it could be better, I know. It doesn't justify the pain. But please listen to yourself. Listen to your body. If you need to be selfish? Be fucking selfish! Don't want to do that thing? Don't do it! If you know it is costing you, if it is adding to that scar tissue - stop. Take the time you need to reset, to regain your breath. Ask yourself who you are doing this for. Ask what skin you are wearing and whether that is something you want to keep. Shed it. Let go.

It will hurt, but this is just the beginning. Change feels like a broken bone. But it will heal.

#kerytalk #lesbian #lgbtq+ #sorry this got real long and kind of spiritual at the end but yeah #this is I guess the culmination of 30 years of my life and a lot of pain #uh yeah that spn tattoo I provided was taken directly from that idea bank for my own tatt because I felt it fit #and it's a good message to carry I think

[sazzujazzu]

Hello, as the days count down and the Bad Batch finale draws closer, may I show to the fine folks of tumblr my first Star Wars OC in 20 years, created thanks to this show? 😃

Too bad, I'm showing them anyway 😊 somberly chilling while listening to their bestie talk.

Please excuse the poor background (I got lazy) and half-finished Tech (I got sad)

there's, uh, a big mess of words under the image because I wanted to put into words the importance this show has for me, and I am bad at doing so.

I want to get some thoughts off my chest, because I have no one in my day-to-day life who cares about the animated Star Wars shows, and especially the Bad Batch. (well, other than my mom, but I don't want to bore her with my rambling too much. she already banned star wars from me once, i won't let that happen again lol)

I can't stop thinking how much I don't want Bad Batch to end.

This show has been so dear to me. I can't remember the last time I've loved something this much.

Before the second season started, I had an artistic block that had lasted way too long. Anything I drew or wrote, mostly turned out a horrible mess after staring at a blank page for hours and hours, if I ever managed to create anything at all. For someone who tends to draw whenever their hands aren't otherwise busy (aka all the damn time), such a block weighed down on my mental health.

Well, then season two happened, and full-on gave me back my love for Star Wars, a love that had somewhat gone out over the last few years. Then, Plan 99 happened, and broke me because again my favorite character "died" (I'm in team Tech lives until I draw my last breath or until proven correct. That chocolate-eyed cutie-pie is alive nothing will convince me otherwise). Pretty much after finishing the episode and staring at a wall for another 30 minutes, I said "nope" and began writing.

I wrote for hours. I believe it's been well over a decade since I last wrote fanfiction, but here I was, creating a Star Wars oc, something I'd last done as a ten-year-old. And now, roughly a year later, I think I've written over a hundred pages of (very self-indulgent) fanfiction with the Batch, and with my oc that I've come to love.

And drawing, oh boy, have I been drawing!

(... Sure, I've mostly been drawing Tech, over and over again, to a point I once actually considered lying and saying "yeah that's my boyfriend haha!" to a man at my job last summer, when asked who it was that I was drawing for maybe fifth day in a row 😂 likely would've been a more acceptable excuse for someone my age. But, I mean... I just really love drawing him, not only because he is my favorite character of maybe all time, but because he is just so fun to draw! And most of all, at least I draw again!)

And it is all thanks to this wonderful show about a bunch of defective and effective copy-paste boys and their sister.

It's probably something many say, but I've always felt like a bit of an outsider. I've felt like I have no place; when I was a kid, my interests were very different from the other kids of [gender assigned at birth], and trying to play with them while inserting my own interests into the games, often didn't go so well. I was... kind of an odd child (although now, older and questionably wiser, knowing that I might actually be autistic, many things make more sense now. me kind of discovering this about myself is also partially thanks to Bad Batch)

Also, growing up trans/non-binary, while not even knowing what that is or having a word for it, didn't really do much to help with the feeling of "I'm different and an outsider because of it". Perhaps it was one more reason I fell in love with Clone Force 99, because I could see some of myself in them. Being different from the "regs".

I love this show, and these fictional people have become my family, and I am not ready to say goodbye to them.

Alright, weird pile of thoughts over. In case someone read all this, uh... thanks 😊

#i'm nervously rambling into the void #the bad batch #the bad batch fanart #star wars oc #jedi oc

[jasper-book-stash]

March 2024 Reading Wrap Up

I got bronchitis and my period at the same time in March, and then spilled tea on my computer, so March was a very stressful time for me. Regardless, I managed to read 10 books! And honestly, overall, this is one of the better months - the lowest I've ranked a book is 6/10, which is damn good considering the absolute bullshit I usually read.

Religious Text

None applicable.

1/10 - Why Did They Publish This?

None applicable.

2/10 - Trash

None applicable.

3/10 - Meh

None applicable.

4 to 6/10 - Mid-Tier

Tomb Sweeping | Alexandra Chang

I read this book while sick. And boy howdy, did that make it a weird experience. I get what it was going for, but it really wasn't my vibe. It just felt like everything was...unfinished. Which was the point, I suppose, but it was still annoying.

7 to 8/10 - Good With Caveats

What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality | Daniel A Helminiak

This is a very short book compared to my usual reads, topping at 152 pages. And I appreciate a book that gets straight to the point and analyzes the historical context around various works, particularly religious works. Good job. My only complaint is some editing issues.

Born to Love, Cursed to Feel | Samantha King

This was a poetry collection and was the only other book I read while sick, and boy howdy did I have a time of it. I spent most of the reading just...putting post-it notes in and nodding along to the lines. It was a surprisingly good book, considering I found it in the back alley version of a book store.

Southern Cunning: Folkloric Witchcraft in the American South | Aaron Oberon

Look. This is not a 101 book. It's not a 102 book. It's not even a 201 book. It simply is. And as much as I enjoyed it and enjoyed reading it, the fact that I spent most of my reading time fixing the editing means that I cannot, in good faith, put this any higher than an 8 out of 10. Dear Aaron Oberon, if you ever read this, PLEASE give me access to the original file so I can fix your punctuation and spelling mistakes. Sincerely, a fellow Southerner.

9/10 - Very Very Good

Snow White with the Red Hair, volumes 21-23 | Sorata Akiduki

I am still so fucking feral over this series. I love them so fucking much. I want them all to be happy but I also like seeing their shenanigans. Unfortunately, though we're at 26 published volumes, we've reached the end of the ones in Missouri Evergreen that I may access. I'll either have to wait and hope that someone gets them, or I'll have to bite the bullet and buy them myself.

Not Pounded By Anything: Six Platonic Tales Of Non-Sexual Encounters | Chuck Tingle

This is my first expedition into the erotic Tingleverse after reading some pieces of the horror Tingleverse in Straight and Camp Damascus. And I really, really like this book. It's 77 pages and is such an easy read. Godspeed, you glorious bastard.

10/10 - Unironically Recommend To Everyone

Well, everyone who's into the genre these fall under, at least.

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, tenth edition | Janet Burroway

I found this in the free section of a bookstore in the middle of nowhere, and let me tell you, it is now marked up one side and down the other with highlighter, because I needed it. There are so many good parts of this book that it's genuinely one I would recommend to people who are trying to figure out why their writing feels flat.

Sacred Gender: Create Trans and Nonbinary Spiritual Connections | Ariana Serpentine

First, I want to congratulate the author on what is possibly the coolest name ever.

Second, if you're an occultist, polytheist, witch, magic practitioner, or in any other way affiliated with things beyond or within mortal ken...get this book. It's making me rethink a lot of my own experiences with my craft and my religion, but in a good way.

#jasper post #books #bookblr #authors #reading wrap up #2024 #march 2024

[ofmermaidstories]

ur post about oc fic and reader insert fic made me think about how every time i see a post dragging x reader it's kinda just... thinly veiled misogyny.

like i don't wanna get super deep or whatever but a good chunk of x reader writers (myself included) are just women or people socialized as women that have felt unloved or under appreciated in their lives because of their looks or their personality or their skills in things that women/feminine people are expected to excel in and i think that oc/reader insert stories give women a really important space to make themselves (or a version of themselves) the most desired thing which is something that they often don't experience. it's a space where women can feel comfortable and loved in a world where they're under appreciated and tossed aside because of things out of their control and it drives me up a wall when i see people shitting on these spaces and these works because these are just safe spaces for marginalized people PREDOMINATELY CREATED BY MARGINALIZED PEOPLE!!

n e ways this was a long rant oops..

omg see the thing that gets me about the occassional x reader/oc drag is that—the call is coming from inside the house LMAO. like, okay maybe original characters in fics aren’t a niche thing, but x reader sure the hell is, so you have to like, know internet culture/fandom to be aware of it let alone to start using it like an insult, you know? and i would argue that fanfic tends to be a hobby that attracts marginalised identities as you say, so like, why are we clowning on ourselves? LOL. it’s like a mathlete bullying the horse girl of their class, like, buddy—we’re both losers!!! get over yourself LMAO.

i think my favourite dig at x reader (specifically) that i’ve ever seen is some rando on tiktok saying it was fanfic for people who were popular in public school—i think it’s so telling of how other fans might view oc/reader content? like, “oh that’s just some straight girl shit, they’re not putting any effort into it/they’re stealing our precious ship boys for their pORN/they’re ruining the canon story by inserting themselves into it”. and idk—part of it is just human nature (we are always going to shit on things we don’t like, that is a fact) and part of it might be fandom/internet culture at large at the moment (the purity aspect/policing) but at the end of the day all we can do is tell them to eat dog shit when they sprout up in our spaces and ignore ‘em.

idk! it drives me bonkers though, because it does feel like these spaces/niches do get targeted unfairly for it—if it’s not for the simple crime of writing a love story with your favourite character, then it’s like… being old and doing it! because god forbid you be over the age of 18 and still enjoy engaging with fiction! don’t you have a mortgage to go pay? like—i never see that attitude (within a fandom space) directed at the grown-ass men and women and gender neutral pals who play like, Dungeons and Dragons. No one (within a fandom space!) tells them they’re weird for forty-hour long campaigns where they fight and fall in love and idk, put dragons in some dungeons or something. no—it’s the blatant love stories that get picked on. the ones written by girls (gender neutral).

romance—and falling in love—is one of the most universal feelings/acts in the world. we want to fall in love with everything! in every world! we wanna—fall in love and be loved by superheroes and the villains they fight and the monsters in the dark and the good guys that rush in with swords and the cute barista at the coffee shop down the road. if other fans wanna get hung up on the fact that a tiny fraction of others want to insert themselves in these incredible worlds and experience everything they want to (having powers; being saved. saving someone else—saving yourself) then that’s their problem lmaoooo. im sorry you can’t have fun and create whimsy for yourself by drawing an oc who wins the sports festival and saves bakugou from being kidnapped—but im built different. 😌 and im gonna have fun while im here.

#ofmermaidstories-asks #merms argues with people who don’t exist LOL but still im right and ur right anon we’re both right

[batztrangem]

Telephone (Billy Lenz/Reader)

Originally posted on my Wattpad

Rated: T

Warnings/notes: Gender neutral reader, Billy slightly being a perv, cursing

Word count: 1.6k

Author's Note: I have no idea who requested this. Someone requested a Billy Lenz oneshots with no specific plot but I think I accidentally deleted the message. Only one person has requested anything dealing with Billy Lenz so it that was you this is for you! I just lost your request and can't remember who it was.

I apologize if it's too short, but I just didn't feel like writing a super long oneshot right now.

______________________________

Reaching down slowly, I unlocked and opened the door with my free hand. Both of my arms were occupied with multiple bags of groceries.

I made my way inside and shut the front door with my foot. Sighing, I made my way into the kitchen. I sat the bags down on the dining room table and began placing items in their respective spots in the fridge. As I did so, I couldn't help but feel eyes on me. Goosebumps formed on the nape of my neck as closed the fridge.

I looked around the room. There was nobody there. Honestly, I wasn't sure what I expected.

Living alone was fun and all but some days it was a bit unnerving.

After I finished putting up the groceries, I made my way into the living room.

I flopped down on the couch and felt my muscles relax as I sunk into the cushions. The house was quiet and I couldn't have been bothered to reach for the TV remote. If anything, I wanted to take a nap.

As I got more comfortable in my seat my eyes scanned across the living room and I couldn't help but notice something peculiar.

I scrunched my eyes together and opened them again, blinking rapidly to be sure I wasn't seeing things.

On the arm of the recliner across from me was a jacket. A brown overcoat. Most people wouldn't think twice about it. But I knew one thing for sure; I didn't own a brown coat.

I stood up and walked over to the chair, scooping up the jacket in my hand.

"What the-" I thought to myself.

It took only a couple of seconds for me to recognize the jacket. I knew only one person who owned one like the one I was holding.

Suddenly, a wave of frustration washed over me.

"Billy!" I called out as I dropped the jacket back on the chair.

"That son of a bitch broke in," I thought.

I took a step in the hallway and opened the closet but there wasn't a sign of the man.

I had known Billy for a couple of years. Over the course of those years I had learned an array of things about. One being the fact that he was a massive pervert. Another being the fact that he enjoyed breaking into my house.

I loved him, sure. We had started dating about a year after meeting. But man, he knew how to get on my nerves.

And one of the ways he did that was by breaking in, instead of asking or simply using the key I had given him.

"Where are you?" I asked in a sing-song voice.

I tapped my foot as I stood in the hallway, thinking to myself. Right as I was about to continue my search, my cellphone rang from in the living room.

I walked back, picking up the phone and answering.

"You're annoying sometimes, you know that right?" I asked.

"Ouch," Billy said on the other side of the line.

"Is this some game of hide and seek or something?" I asked.

"Hmmm, I like the sound of that. Come find me, (Y/N)."

His voice was practically purring as he spoke barely above a whisper. It wasn't uncommon to hear him sound like that.

"Don't make it weird," I mumbled.

"Oh, how boring," he said with a deep sigh.

I made my way back into the hallway. This time I decided to check the bathroom.

I opened the door and stepped in, turning on the light in the process. I made my way over to the shower and pulled back the curtain. No sign of him.

"Billy, seriously. Where are you?" I asked, my voice echoing in the bathroom.

"Billy, seriously," Billy mimicked in a higher pitched voice.

I rolled my eyes as I fought the urge to end the phonecall.

"Why can't you just tell me?"

"That's not how the game works, sweety," he said.

I thought back on all of the times Billy had pulled something like this, hoping that the answer would be in those memories.

"I bet you're in the attic," I said as I walked out of the bathroom.

“Then why don't you come and check," he hummed.

I made my way upstairs and then pulled down the attic ladder. I climbed up the ladder and peeked into the dark room. I put Billy on speaker phone and turned on the flashlight. Climbing all the way in, I flashed the phone around. There were only storage boxes and a large amount of dust.

"Ok, you're not in here. Basement? That seems like a place you'd hide," I said.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Billy asked.

"That you're a basement dweller," I said as I climbed down the ladder.

"Haha, so funny."

"I know, right. I'm a real comedian at this point," I said as I made my way back downstairs.

At this point, I was just playing along. As much as I probably should, I couldn't stay mad at Billy.

"Hmmm," I hummed to myself as I descended down the basement steps.

"What do you see?" Billy questioned.

I looked around every nook and cranny but alas, he was no where to be found.

"Not you that's for sure," I mumbled in defeat.

"Well, that's too bad," Billy said.

I paused as Billy spoke. There was something there. I heard something. A very familiar sound.

A creak.

"I know where you're at!" I said, rushing back up the basement stairs

"Do you?" Billy asked.

At this point, I was basically sprinting, sliding on the floor as I made my way back up to the second floor to my bedroom. Swinging open the door I saw an all too familiar, smug face. Phone up to his cheek with a grin as he laid on top of my bed.

I jumped on the bed beside him, tapping his chest as if we were playing tag.

"Ha! I got you!" I said, rather proud of myself.

"How did you find me?" he asked as he put the phone down.

"You think I don't know the sound of my own squeaky ass bed?" I said with a laugh.

"You're a good listener," he said.

I turned on my side and curled up to him, resting my arm across his chest. My leg rested in between his.

"You have got to start using a key. Or just...move in," I said.

"Mmm, move in? That's a big step," he said as he pushed some of his hair out of his face.

"Either that or start using your key like a normal person," I said.

"Normal? Ouch, that one hurt. That was an insult," he said with a laugh.

"You know what I mean," I said.

"Mhm."

"So, why'd you pick my room as your hiding spot this time?" I asked.

"I feel like you already know the answer to that," he said, his tone from before coming back as he spoke.

His flirting wasn't exactly subtle, so I got the hint rather quickly.

"Ugh. Once a pervert, always a pervert," I said.

____________________________________

Author's Note: And that's all for now. I hope you guys enjoyed it.

See you in the next post. -Morgan

#billy lenz #billy lenz x reader #slashers x y/n #slashers #fanfiction #horror movie slashers #reader insert #horror #wattpad #horror headcanons #slashers x reader #fanfic #black christmas 1974 #jason vorhees #michael myers #thomas hewitt #bo sinclair #vincent sinclair #harry warden #freddy krueger #slasher community #slasher fandom #pinhead #headcanons #oneshot #fluff #candyman

[dwaekkistar]

Chapter V

           While on our way home after hours of shooting for the music video, our managers decided to buy us takeout for dinner in person instead of paying extra to have it delivered. They had the boys and I dropped off at our dorm and headed back out to get our food for us after asking what we all wanted. As soon as they left I quickly headed for the shower with some pajamas I picked out, as I was pretty tired and sweaty from the day's activities. I quickly took a shower, and after drying myself and putting my underwear on I slipped into a pair of purple pajama shorts with clouds on them, a black crop top, that had the moon phase design, and put on some socks.

         I opened the bathroom door in a hurry to get to my bedroom when I almost bumped into Changbin, who seemed to be heading toward the bathroom I just left. I softly blushed before apologizing, rushing to my room before he could respond. Despite being older than Changbin by a month, I still felt the need to be polite and formal with him, especially after I noticed him and the rest of the 'hyung' line staring at my butt when Chan commented on it earlier.

         'I would have to be extra careful going into the future with those three' I thought to myself, as I finally sat on my bed waiting for Sua or one of the boys to get me for dinner. I carefully picked up my phone and started playing some games on it to keep myself occupied. Well, it seems I had become too occupied after 20 minutes of playing because I eventually failed to realize my door had opened and closed. I failed to notice the dip in my bed, as I was lying on my stomach and facing opposite of my bedroom door. It wasn't until I felt a hand on my lower back that I jumped in fright, calming down when I realized it was Felix in my bed.

"Oh, it's just you..",  I said softly, laying back down next to him.

" So do you know why Changbin was smiling from ear to ear when he came out of the bathroom?" Felix said with a soft chuckle.

" He was?" I said in confusion as I furrowed my eyebrows at him. All I did was apologize for bumping into him, that surely couldn't have been the cause of him smiling that much I thought to myself.

"I thought you would know because you were near the bathroom earlier, my fault," he said softly before assessing what you were wearing, " I swear it's like you have a wardrobe full of these," he said as he tugged on the fabric of my shorts, his eyebrows furrowing as he smirked. "every time I think you're gonna wear something else you pull out another pair of these shorts..."

"Is that a bad thing? I don't want to make you guys uncomfortable," I said responded, softly pouting. I didn't want to make the guys feel weird around me if that's what he was trying to insinuate, maybe I would have to stop wearing them.

"No.. no there's nothing wrong with it," he said gently, "you just look adorable when you're wearing them like you have the perfect body shape for it if that makes sense."

Upon finishing his sentence all I could do was blush in response. How do you react to your group mate of the opposite gender telling you that you look cute?

"Thanks," I said with a soft smile, not wanting to make it too obvious that his compliment was getting to me.

"Hey uhm, are you a fan of video games by any chance?" he said raising an eyebrow.

"Felix if you're looking for someone to play with, I'm down," I said softly chuckling as I playfully pushed his shoulder, to which he giggled.

"Cool, then I'll just send a text whenever I'm playing," he replied as he checked his phone, " I should probably head back to the living room though, Sua and Jun will probably be back with the food any time soon."

     Felix left my room as I continued to lay on the bed, the game I was playing not too long ago grasping my attention once more. Eventually, I got a text from sua saying they dropped off the food and were leaving again, so I got off my bed and headed to the living room.

           When I got there most of the boys were already chowing down a variety of different food placed on the table. As I inched closer to the boys, Leeknow noticed me and pulled me into the empty spot between him and Han, handing me a pair of unused chopsticks and a plate with a soft smile. I carefully put a decent amount of food and began to eat it, softly crooning when I realized how good the food tasted.

       A few seconds later as I was eating, Leeknow tapped my shoulders. When I looked up he had a piece of chicken in his chopstick and was moving the food towards my mouth. Not wanting to be rude I carefully opened my mouth and let him feed me it. He smiled widely, and gently ruffled my hair, which was still straightened from the video shoot, not wanting to mess it up too much. He then silently went back to eating his food. 

       Most of the boys were talking about random things, stuff that I couldn't pick up on as they most likely happened before I joined. I couldn't help but get this nagging feeling of being left out, so I ate a little more food before telling everyone good night and heading off to do my nightly routine. I went to the bathroom with my toothbrush and skincare, starting on my teeth as I brushed them, before moving to my skincare, quickly speeding through them.

      I quietly headed to my bedroom and lay in bed, returning to my phone. I get a text from Sua saying how the company wants me to be a little more active on the group's social media, seeing as I haven't posted anything myself. Still lying in bed I fixed my hair and snapped a quick cute picture.

             I then asked Sua for the login and posted the selfie with a caption saying 'getting some beauty rest'. I thought it was a really cute selfie and was hoping that maybe just maybe the fans would think so too. I was about to get ready to text the boys that I posted when many notifications started pouring in. I clicked on the notification and took me to the picture I just posted. 

        There were already a few thousand comments on it, and I began to scroll through them. Some were saying things like 'Jade is so cute OMG' or 'OT8' which I assumed was them saying they didn't want me there, a lot of comments saying different variations of I'm beautiful while others were calling me a 'Pick me' and fat-shaming me. I tried to not pay attention to the negative comments and carefully placed my phone on the nightstand, not being in the mood to continue staying on my phone. I completely hid under my blanket after turning off my bedroom light. It was only 7 p.m. but I just had the urge to go to sleep, that way I wouldn't have to deal with the emotions that would surface because of the comments.

       A few minutes later I heard a soft faint knock at my door, and I'm sure it was because the boys could see the comments on my post. I heard another faint knock followed by someone speaking.

"Can I come in?" someone said softly, and I instantly knew it was Chan based on the accent alone.

"Yeah, you can..." I responded feebly still hiding under the cover.

     A second later, Chan opened the door and walked over to my bed. I couldn't see him as I was still hiding under the blanket but from the sound of it, I was sure he stopped just right next to the bed. He carefully pulled the blanket up to reveal me lying in a fetal position.

"I saw your post, it was quite cute," he said with a soft smile as if he were trying to reassure me. "I also saw the comments... and I know you're most likely questioning yourself so I came here as emotional support I suppose."

     I couldn't help but sigh at the situation I was in, because I honestly wanted to just isolate and cry but I knew that Chan wouldn't be leaving any time soon. Just based on my trainee days around him, he wouldn't leave people alone until he knew for sure that they were okay.

"Do you mind if I lay next to you?" he added after not getting much response from me. I softly nodded and he slipped under the blanket as he silently watched me. I closed my eyes and turned my head away from him, as I tried to fight my tears back when I felt Chan carefully wrap his arm around me. "It's okay Jade, let it out," and as if on cue I turned back towards him and began to bawl my eyes out, not being able to hold back any of the hurt.

     I had bawled until it felt way too draining to continue doing so, eventually transitioning into a more silent cry. All the while Chan softly rubbed my back as he comforted me. I cried until I pretty much fell asleep in Chan's embrace and I knew when I woke up that my face was going to be puffy and red for sure.

Time Skip

           I woke up softly groaning, trying to sit up to stretch but was very surprised when I couldn't. I opened my eyes to see that Chan was still next to me and holding me very close. I thought he would have left sometime during the night after I fell asleep but was surprised to see that he didn't. I softly poked his side to wake him, seeing as I wanted to brush my teeth and I had a really strong urge to pee. In response, Chan faintly groaned before going right back to sleep, to which I poked him again. He finally woke up and released me from his arms with a soft yawn and stretch and that's when I noticed Chan was shirtless. 'Was he shirtless this entire time?' I thought to myself. He couldn't be, because he came into my room last night with a shirt on. That's when I noticed how toned his torso was, and I realized I had been staring the entire time he was stretching. I shook myself out of my thoughts and headed to the bathroom not wanting to get caught looking at Chan.

         With my toothbrush in hand, I finally made it to the bathroom only to realize that Han was in the bathroom currently brushing his teeth. He turned towards the door and looked at me before gesturing to come in. He moved over a bit giving me room to use the sink as I quickly got to work on my teeth. From my peripheral view, I could see that He was looking at my lower body, most likely my ass, but he was trying to be respectful about it so I said nothing not wanting to embarrass him. He smiled and patted my back when he was done before heading out of the bathroom. I soon finished after and headed back to my room, to find an empty bed. I got a text from Sua saying I had a photo shoot scheduled today. I carefully brushed out my hair seeing as it was still straight and quickly put on a rushed outfit because I got another text saying sua was going to be at the dorm in 10 minutes to pick me up. 

          Sua eventually came and left with her. During the entire ride on our way to the photo shoot, she went over my schedule for the next month, as I had more recordings, a few photoshoots, and practice sessions with the group as a whole. We eventually got to the photoshoot venue. My scheduled bodyguard and sua rushed me inside as a few tabloid journalists were waiting outside for some odd reason, trying to get anything out of me.

           Upon getting inside I was taken to a dressing room where they showed her her first outfit. It was a black-and-white ensemble with black heels and they had press one with metallic detail.

       I quickly got dressed in the outfit when a Male worker on the set quickly walked over to me and started touching me. At first, I thought it was normal as the worker seemed to be resting his hand on my shoulder and fixing my accessories and such. But I started to become heavily uncomfortable when I noticed his hands lowering to other parts of my body that I was sure he wasn't supposed to be messing with so I tried to move away not wanting to cause any commotion. He kept softly groping me on areas like my boobs and ass and each time I tried to push him away hoping he would get the hint and leave me alone. But he continued and it got to the point I was almost in tears. I'm sure I would have to redo my make-up. Eventually, I started making my way over to sua.

" Hey is that guy supposed to be touching me?" I said nervously to her as I nervously rubbed my forearm, "he keeps touching me in uncomfortable places."

        Upon my words, Sua looked over at who I was talking about and sighed heavily when he came into view. "He's not supposed to be here... he's had a past of inappropriately touching female idols inappropriately and now he's banned from showing up at the venue when celebrities are on set..." she said as he rested her hands on her temple before turning around.

" WHO LET THIS GUY BACK ON SET?" she yelled at the production team, and when they saw who she was mentioning security quickly removed him from the premises. Soon we returned to the shoot, having my makeup touched up. We took plenty of great shots, ate lunch, and then took even more pictures after an outfit change before leaving to go back to the dorm.

        When I got back I was faced with a living room of chaos as all the boys were practically playing and fighting. I softly chuckled as I closed the front door and locked it before making my way to my room, the guys greeting me on my way there. I softly smiled at them and continued my way wanting to get out of the outfit as the fabric started to feel weird against my skin. 

         As I got to my bedroom closet I pulled out a pair of gray pants and rested it on my bed before looking for a crop top and one of my tube bra tops as I was too lazy to put on anything else and a pair of panties, before rushing to the bathroom and taking a 20-minute shower. I headed back to my bedroom to drop off anything extra I didn't need to be lugging around the dorm before heading to the living room. I looked around realizing the only empty seat left was next to Changbin. I softly smiled and walked over to the seat but before I could Jeongin rushed to sit in the seat, causing Chan to speak out.

"You can sit next to me Jade," he said excitedly as he patted the seat next to him. Felix just so happened to be on the opposite side of the empty spot so I gladly sat. Upon sitting down the two Aussies curiously looked at me as if waiting for me to say something when Felix spoke this time.

"So how did your day go ?" he said curiously furrowing his eyebrows with a smile. "We heard you had a photo shoot."

"Oh it was great," I said with a sheepish smile wondering if I should tell them about what happened. I decided I would because they're my group mates and I was supposed to be able to trust them. "Except some creep kept inappropriately touching me, and then I found out he's not even supposed to be on the set when idols are there."

"What?" they all blurted out although Changbin was a bit louder, his face deadpan, but as I maintained eye contact with him, he seemed to get angrier and angrier. "How the fuck did they allow that to happen? Why weren't they enforcing stricter precautions to prevent that? "

        At this point, Changbin was beyond livid and I couldn't understand why, I mean I was barely close to any of the members minus Chan so I couldn't process why he cared so much, it wasn't like I was hurt or something. "Changbin it's okay, it's not like he hurt me," I said trying to de-escalate the situation, but that seemed to make him even more upset.

"But he could have— he could have done so much worse had he been given the chance Jade! How can you not see that?" he said as he rested his hands on his temple. "He could have violated you way worse than that or possibly injure you—"

" BUT HE DIDN'T," I yelled out nervously, the emotion of the situation getting to me way more deeply than I anticipated. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything. I closed my eyes causing whatever tears were welling up in my eyes to finally fall. Not wanting to embarrass myself in front of everyone I ran to my room and slammed the door behind me. I plopped down into my bed shoving my face into the pillow, as I continued to cry silently. I eventually stopped when my throat began to hurt, and I wiped my tears away. I decided soon after that I was going to take a small little nap.

         I napped way longer than I expected, as it was now 11 p.m. and I had fallen asleep around 7, practically missing dinner. My stomach softly growled and I decided to eat a small snack and go back to sleep, too tired to dish myself out a full meal. I walked over to the kitchen but was stopped in my tracks when I saw Changbin sitting in it all alone. I didn't know if I was ready to speak to him after what happened earlier, but I knew I would eventually have to sooner or later. I continued walking into the kitchen and headed to the fridge, which seemed to catch his attention as he silently watched me, his face having more of a sad expression to it.

"I'm sorry..." I said before carefully grabbing a pudding container from the fridge and turning to him. " I didn't mean to get like that earlier. I'm just not used to people caring about my well-being..."

       His expression changed as he looked up at me trying to process what I said. "Oh... okay. I was going to apologize for getting angry... I notice you don't respond well to it."

"No it's okay, I know you weren't angry at me and more so the situation I was put in," I said softly as I walked over to him. " Thank you for caring," I followed behind that with a soft hug.

       He carefully reciprocated the hug and gently stroked my hair, earning a soft hum in response from me. His touch felt very warm and safe, and I honestly didn't want to let go any time soon. He softly pulled away from still stroking my hair before grabbing my hand, pulling me towards one of the drawers, and pulling a plastic spoon out. He then began walking towards the room which had me a bit confused. A few minutes later he had me in front of my room and opened the door pulling me in before handing the spoon over to me and closing the door. I raised my eyebrow in confusion, not sure what was going on. He carefully sat on my floor before pointing at my bed.

"Sit," he said with a smile, softly licking his lips. "Enjoy your pudding."

       Listening to him I carefully opened the pudding and sat on my bed as I began to eat it. I finished it within a few minutes, satisfied I put the empty container and spoon in my bedroom trash can. I looked back at him furrowing my eyebrows once more.

"You're not gonna just sit there for the rest of the night, are you?" I said softly, catching his attention from whatever thoughts he was having. He got up, getting ready to leave my room, when I grabbed his hand pulling him back. "You came all this way to my room, and you're gonna leave already?"

"Don't you need to sleep?" he said gently, his voice sounding stern but caring, " I don't want to keep you up."

"I don't mind you sleeping here for the night if that's what you're worried about Changbin..." I said softly smiling at him as I reached my hand out. He gently placed his hands in mine with a smile and walked over to the bed. I quickly slid under my covers, Changbin following behind me a few seconds later. I turned on my right side, looking at him, which caused him to smile a bit wider. I moved closer to him and gently wrapped my arm around him, trying to get comfy as I cuddled into him.

"Can I hold you?" he asked calmly as he gestured trying to show me that he wanted to reciprocate the hand placement. I quickly nodded and he cautiously wrapped his arms around my waist seemingly not wanting me to get uncomfortable. I softly hummed in response, as his embrace once again gave me a safe warm feeling. Without realizing I began to nuzzle my face into the crook of his neck, too which he slightly flinched and pulled away. His action took me off guard but when I looked at his face while sitting up, he was staring at me wide-eyed, eyes filled with nothing other than confusion.

"Changbin, I'm just trying to get comfortable..." I responded now just as confused as him. He seemed to calm down a bit at my words pulling me back into his hold. But now I felt quite nervous to repeat my previous reaction as I didn't want to receive the same action twice in a row, so I just went back to sleep while he continued to hold me close to him.

         I woke up the next morning, still being held by changing except he was up, wide awake quietly watching me. We both smiled at each other before he carefully pulled away sat up and he continued to watch me.

"Good morning," he said enthusiastically, the smile never leaving his face. Someone seemed to be happy after sleeping in the same room as me.

"Good morning Changbin," I replied still a bit sleepy as I rubbed my eyes, "I'm gonna brush my teeth and get some breakfast." I carefully hug him before getting off the bed, and quickly shuffling to the bathroom. This time Chan and Minho were sharing the space as they both brushed their teeth when they looked towards me upon hearing my footsteps coming towards the opened door. 

      They both quietly shuffled a bit allowing me into the bathroom before going back to what they were doing. I thoroughly brushed my teeth alongside them before finishing up and leaving the bathroom. I headed to the kitchen and ate a quick bowl of cereal before heading to the couch and sitting on it. Today was another free day so I just turned the TV on to some random channel and watched whatever was playing. Sooner or later the other group members started to come out from their rooms and head to the kitchen or sit in the living room.

        Hyunjin sat right next to me as I picked the remote up and flipped through more channels trying to find something better to watch. He gently rested his head on my shoulder, as it was apparent he was still somewhat sleepy.

"Did you sleep well Hyun-jin?" I said aloud as I finally settled on a channel showing this cute animation.

Hyunjin softly hummed before speaking when he realized I didn't know what the hum signified.

"Not really, but it's nothing to worry about now..." he replied softly, not moving an inch. Jeongin sleepily situated on the couch adjacent to the one I was in to my left. So was Seungmin, and Felix had just made himself comfy in the one to my right. Sooner or later the rest of the boys filed in and we all watched TV for most of the day just trying to forget about the events that took place the previous day. 

#skz #stray kids #stray kids fic #straykids fanfic #9th member of skz #kpop fanfic #kpop #fanfic #female original character #skz x 9th member #skz x female reader #skz x female original character #straykids x original female chracter #fanfiction #cross posted on ao3 #cross posted on wattpad

[zeravmeta]

whining about personal irl introspection stuff

since my friend groups mostly consist of trans peeps it always has kind of wormed its way into my head my own thoughts abt my gender and stuff but like for my whole life ive always been pretty comfortable as a cis dude and like for the most part despite growing up with very traditional parents ive also never really felt pressured to like follow the same gender roles they have like my parents are basically the one foot in the door type where like if for whatever reason hypothetically i come out as trans and gay double whammy them my dad whose a pretty Mans Man type of guy would still love me but i know he'd think that he did something wrong (out of ignorance not malice he would absolutely maul someone if they made fun of me) vs my mom who would also be accepting but it would become the next hot topic of her friend groups gossiping and neither are malicious but ive also seen them make themselves suffer over their own gender roles (men do this v women do this) and like i honestly think the reason i dont put much stock into gender as a concept is because most people focus on the roles aspect of it and even with my best efforts ive never really deprogrammed that out of them but honestly above all else im lazy as hell and wont impose more arbitrary rules like that onto myself so when i say im cis im not cis plus im like cis hasnt touched the personalization settings and forgot the login and ofc this would also bleed into ideas like romance and sexuality with aforementioned roles and when it comes to romance this leads more into my experiences with my asshole brother who would always be bringing girlfriends and bragging about being a sex beast but he could never hold onto a relationship and was always dumped and cheated on multiple times (and with modern context and Adult Brain i know its likely because he was a fucking asshole) while my parents would always argue but theyd also been together for 35+ years and wouldnt trade each other for the world so neither of those would be a good reference point for romance but this one also came down to me Not Really Caring where I wouldn't mind a romantic relationship if it happened and im p sure if I liked the person enough to where said stage of romance would even be happening i would invite it but im also not really agonizing over it and can be pretty comfortable being without a partner and on the sex side of things this one is a little weird because ive also Not Cared about it however i know I do have desire for people so im not ace and when it bleeds so intermittently with the romance aspect i just kind of assumed i was ace for a while in my teens until i learned the Words and Terms and such so i was like oh huh i guess i just dont seek romance and thats not the same as liking other humans physically and on that front i guess im just ok with any type of partner so like with neither of these considerations ever being a factor for gender or presentation esp when im a 6ft behemoth of a guy with a strongman body build and never had any type of body dysphoria with that i was and honestly still am perfectly comfortable just being a cis dude and for the past decade it has literally not changed im here for a good time not a long time

anyways this is a very long winded wordy way of saying that im pretty sure im cis aro and bi/pan because ive never cared about gender never wanted a partner and also i appreciate mens tits and cockenbalsen too much to be straight and this post came about because I was thinking of getting an anime man body pillow cover and was imagining the scandalized looks on my parents faces lol

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

Feel free not answer, by the way.

Is there a healthy version of feminism that focuses on women's rights without becoming a cesspool of negativity and hatred for men, while still keeping in touch with traditional values? I don't know if something like that exists but I thought I'd ask anyways.

In your opinion, do you believe women—in the past, at least—were truly oppressed? I feel like the narrative told by radical feminists is incomplete, since they like to approach things primarily from a men hate women perspective.

One last thing, what are your thoughts on SCUM Manifesto? Reading the book, even back then when I was more radfem-aligned, made me feel uncomfortable. I couldn't relate to weird ramblings that she wrote about. Looking back now, I feel like Valerie was a deeply unwell women with a lot of unresolved issues that she dumped entirely on men. A well-adjusted person wouldn't harbour such extreme hatred. I find the same 'unwellness' in most radical feminists and it kind of makes me sad.

"Is there a healthy version of feminism that focuses on women's rights without becoming a cesspool of negativity and hatred for men, while still keeping in touch with traditional values?"

The only things I'm aware of are small pockets called "Individualist Feminism" or more recently "Ifeminism", which focus on equal rights for both women and men and leave it at that. But the women going by that label are such a incredibly tiny minority and are often distrusted or even attacked by the other feminists who, particularly from the 1970s onwards, are so deeply rooted in man-hating "Patriarchy Theory" that anyone refusing to join in is instantly categorized a traitor and enemy.

My point is, women who refuse to blame men (or the fictional "Patriarchy") for everything will never be welcome within the larger movement, so I'm not able to see the point of identifying that way myself.

"do you believe women—in the past, at least—were truly oppressed?"

I suppose I think the great majority of people could be said to be "oppressed" in some way at some point in their lives: any time an individual or the state uses violence against you, any time a person in authority targets you unfairly or discriminates against you, or compels you to do something you wouldn't choose to do, you have some sort of argument for being "oppressed". Feminism is idiotic and actively harmful because it puts forth a conspiracy theory collectively blaming exactly half of the entire human race for things individuals of all sexes, races, sexualities and political affiliations can do, and it wrongly presents that model as the best way of understanding all past and present human events.

Universal gender roles are overwhelmingly a product of evolution, of adapting to the hostile world over millions of years to best survive: if there ever was a society that sent its women out to hunt and to war while the men stayed home and played with the kids while baking bread, that society was quickly wiped out by war or starvation or population decline, and entirely eradicated from history because of how stupid and delusional it was.

The societal demands on both sexes must have seemed unfair to many people at points throughout history, and there must have been individuals who felt hard-done to and constrained by societal expectations in every age, whether it be the teenage boys being shipped off to die in war against their will or sent down a coal mine every day of their life, or the bored middle class Victorian girls who wanted to make more of themselves in work or travel the world having unaccompanied adventures. I've said before that the most repressive societies in regard to women - such as Islamic societies today - can be best understood as overprotection rather than misogyny: the more warlike or under attack a society perceives itself to be, the more it locks its women away to keep them from being stolen or killed.

Don't know if that fully answers your question but those are some of my thoughts on those matters.

"what are your thoughts on [the] SCUM Manifesto?"

I used to own a copy of that book in my feminist youth. Valerie Solanas was obviously a mentally sick, hysterical and evil woman, but sadly she was the canary in the coal mine for what was to come: There are tens of thousands of Valerie Solanases wandering the world today, making life worse for everyone, and they all seem to have a Tumblr.