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backofthebookshelf · 3 years

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The DMCA and You; or, why Tumblr won’t get sued over Post+

I keep seeing people saying “doesn’t Tumblr understand they’re inviting an avalanche of lawsuits” and being baffled that people think this, and then I remembered that most of you were not both alive and in fandom in 1998 and therefore probably haven’t spent hours reading through the DMCA trying to figure out exactly how it was going to screw us. (Turns out we were right, but not nearly pessimistic enough.) So gather ‘round, children, it’s time for another bout of fandom history.

You have to understand what the internet looked like in 1998. Most people didn’t have internet access at home, and for those who did, you got a whopping 54 kbps (yes, that’s kilobytes per second) (compare that to 4G wireless, which 14 Mbps, not to mention, you know, wireless) unless you wanted to shell out for ISDN, which was twice the speed and five times the cost. Only 47% of American adults “went online” at all, never mind the two to six hours per day that current internet users are estimated to spend.

And I mean, why would you? There wasn’t that much there. If you wanted to post something online, your first and best option was to pay for web hosting of your own, or mooch off a friend’s. Or you could get a Geocities site, which would be plastered with ads and limited you to such a small amount of storage that you couldn’t have more than a couple dozen low-resolution images at best, or you could post on a message board (which would be essentially mooching off of a friend’s paid web hosting, because most sites that hosted message boards were just some guy who wanted to have a place to chat with his friends that wasn’t a Yahoo! email list), where you might get permission to post three or four images at a time. Music? Rude, takes up too much bandwidth, don’t do that to people. Video? You’re hilarious. (I once left my computer on for a week while I attempted to illegally download a copy of Velvet Goldmine but I finally gave up and got it from the video store instead.)

But still, at the time that was magic, and as more and more stuff found its way online, somebody who held a copyright somewhere (read: music studios and Disney) realized they had to get out in front of things. And into this brave new world came the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was passed in 1998 and was already skewing the shape of the internet of the future when it came into effect in 2000.

It did a lot of dumb things but the one we’re concerned about is the “safe harbor” provision, which basically says that in the case of an online copyright infringement, there are three parties: the infringer, the copyright holder, and the internet host, and the host is not a part of the copyright dispute.

Prior to this, if Sony or Disney or whoever found an illegal copy of their intellectual property (read: an mp3 or an avi) online, they’d go after whoever owned the server it lived on. Which made sense! If you find stolen TVs in someone’s basement, you go after the guy who owns the basement, and “I didn’t know my deadbeat brother in law was stealing TVs” is something you’ll have to prove in a court of law.

But internet companies like Geocities and Yahoo! and anyone else who offered random users the chance to post things on the internet using a free account said wait a minute, this doesn’t make sense. Because the internet is not like a physical basement; we have no reason to see someone carrying stolen mp3s down the basement stairs, and the scale is such that we couldn’t see all of them if we tried (unless we banned all mp3s, which means goodbye, MySpace, and goodbye indie bands). You wouldn’t go after a landlord in New York because their tenant in New Jersey is stealing TVs, would you?

So the DMCA said fine, we understand that the internet as it currently exists, and as it is attempting to exist (remember this is still the height of the dot.com boom and people are making money hand over fist by just owning websites), can’t operate if we try to do this. So instead of letting big companies sue big companies over copyright law, we’ll let big companies sue individual humans over copyright violations. That’s much more fair.

Of course most of what resulted wasn’t lawsuits at all; it was individuals getting threatening letters from Sony and Disney promising them that they were planning to sue but if you, Joe User, will just delete the thing you posted from the internet, we’re willing to make this all go away. And people did, because fuck, who’s going to duke it out with Disney?

The DMCA is the reason tumblr exists in the first place (not to mention twitter, and facebook, and essentially the entire part of the internet that isn’t either an ad or a news website). Technically, if tumblr was responsible for copyright violations, they’re already a prime target for a lawsuit, because they’re running ads on a website where people post copyright violations on a daily basis. Adding the opportunity for you to make money off your copyright violations doesn’t make them any more liable than they already are, which is not at all.

So here’s what predict will happen with Post+ at the beginning: absolutely nothing. A few people will monetize gifsets or fanfiction or vids and no one will pay attention and no one will care. But some small creators, people who post original fiction, people who post craft patterns, people who post insightful analysis, will start using it as part of their actual revenue stream. Sooner or later someone will be making enough money that it pings someone’s radar, and sooner or later someone making money will slip up and post something that could plausibly be a copyright violation, and they won’t get sued. They’ll get a takedown notice, a threatening letter from whoever owns the thing they infringed upon (...so Disney), and they’ll pull the thing. But it’s hard to pull things from the internet, much harder than it used to be, and nearly impossible the way tumblr works. So they get another takedown notice. Or Disney’s lawyers go through their blog with a fine-toothed comb and they start getting more and more unreasonable takedown notices, but now they’re scared and fuck, who’s going to duke it out with Disney? So they take their blog down entirely, and now that person is a little bit poorer and Disney is out the cost of four or five stamps and envelopes and the time their lawyer spent fifteen years ago drafting the takedown notice template.

I guarantee you that the people who decided to implement this know that this is going to happen, and they do not care. We’ve reached the “we could make this website work if we could just get rid of fandom” stage, which never ends well for the website but they never seem to learn that. So please, please don’t try to monetize fandom content on the assumption that tumblr is going to be the one to get slapped with a lawsuit for it, that’s just not how it works. It never has been and it never will be.

#tumblr is a website #fandom history #copyright law #psa

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theepisceswriter · 3 years

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Erwin Smith the Brat Tamer Headcanons

A/N: Guys *sigh* I got my first ever request today and I accidentally deleted the fucking ask when I went to go edit it and I feel so bad because that ask was so sweet 😭 whoever that was I want you to know that ily *does a cartwheel 🤸‍♂️ and gives you a kiss* and here is the brat tamer Erwin content you asked for. I’m glad you enjoy my blog 💜

TW: Dom!Erwin, Sub!reader, spanking, slight choking, fembodied!reader, NS4W things underneath the read more, 18+

No offense because I love my blonde man with blue eyes, I really do love Erwin, but I feel like in a relationship sometimes he can get really annoying at times. I can see him wanting things to go a certain way and getting slightly agitated when they don’t and wanting you to follow orders he gives you because he’s a very dominating person in general. He doesn’t do this to be controlling or annoying on purpose, but because he’s planned out what he thinks is the best outcome for you and he just has to learn how to not be uptight and let things go wrong every now and then.

You tell him this all the time but he never listens, so you often get attitudes with him because it feels like you’re talking to a brick wall sometimes. Most of the time you work yourself up to the point where you separate yourself from him for like an hour or two to cool down. But sometimes you just have to be sassy and, like in those jealousy headcanons I made, let out a snarky remark or two.

“You’re not my fucking dad, Erwin so stop acting like it.” “God, it’s like every fucking time I say something to you in goes in one ear and out through the other.” “Go find somebody else to dick ride you because I’m not going to!”

That’s when he gives you that look; the look that turns his icy blue eyes dull and has your stomach feeling like moths are buzzing around in there. You know you fucked up when he gives you that look, letting you know that you’re in for it once he’s able to get you alone.

Erwin is terrible with it too. He’ll go on with the rest of the day like nothing even happened. Giving you that false sense of security and that you’re off the hook. When really he’s just so quiet because he’s thinking of what he’s going to do to you tonight, but you don’t know that.

It’s not until the two of you get home from work that you’re reminded of your attitude from earlier. His hands are on you in an instant, wrapping around your neck with a force that leaves you grasping for air and pressing you up against the nearest wall he can. You two do have a traffic light system(is that what it’s called? Idk but yolo) implemented into your sex life, so this is where he’ll ask you: “What color are you currently at?” “Green” “Good, me too”

We love a man who respect sex boundaries yes we do.

Aint shit sweet at this point, okay? Be prepared for a long night because Erwin is not letting you off the hook for talking to him the way you did earlier. The very first punishment, yes FIRST punishment, he would start you off with would be spanking.

He’d lay you across his lap with your pants and underwear pooled around your ankles. He would pull them off completely but he’s found keeping them pooled around your ankles helps limit your mobility.

Without warning he’d land the first strike on your ass cheeks, giving you time to recover before he tells you how many you’re going to get that night and how he wants to to count them out loud; one error and he’s starting the whole process over again. The number is usually around 10-15 which isn’t too many, but this man already has your ass red after the first smack so just imagine.

He’d check up on you after a couple of smacks to make sure you’re still in the green area zone and at this point he’s worked up quite the erection watching your face flush and tears brim your eyes after every smack.

“Don’t you want to help daddy feel good, hm? Especially after being such a pain in my ass all day long?” Um yes please, sir.

He’s s ruthless with his blowjobs too when he’s in Dom mode and if it wasn’t for the fact that you enjoyed when you gave him blowjobs, then this would definitely count as a punishment as well.

He has you in front of him on your knees, your hands flat against your thighs not to be moved or else you’d get added punishment, and the belt holding his pants up around your neck being used as a makeshift collar; his hand wrapped around the long part using it to push your head down on his cock while he simultaneously bucks his hips up into your mouth to face fuck you. It’s sloppy and messy; drool all over your face messing up your makeup and getting all over his thighs and nothing but gargling noises and gags filling the room.

“I think I like you so much better with your mouth full with my cock.” Or he would lift your mouth off of his cock completely to tease you with a, “Huh, what was that? I couldn’t quite hear you?” And shove your mouth back down on his cock before you could even answer because he’s a menace like that.

He would finish on your face and he wouldn’t let you wipe it, but force you to keep it there until your session is done. Which wouldn’t be for quite a while, so by the time you’re done with everything you’re going to have a face with ruined makeup, dried spit, and dried up cum all over it. He might even take a picture of you for keepsake.....but he’s not done yet!

Because you made him feel good he lays you back on the bed, finally getting you off of your sore knees that are probably covered in bruises at this point, and returns the favor with his fingers. He doesn’t even have to lubricate his fingers up because he knows you’re dripping with wetness, but just to mess with you he makes you suck on his fingers and even makes you deepthroat them, then mixes the saliva on his fingers with the spit and cum on your face before he’s shoving them in you without warning.

Mind you, this is the first time he’s touched you in a sexual way since giving you your spankings, so this was very much needed. Your pussy had been calling out to him the whole night and he was finally attending to it. Fingers hitting the spots he knew made your stomach clench with pleasure and thumb rubbing your clit the way you always requested from him. His free hand even goes up to pinch at one of your sensitive nipples before cooling the burning sensation with his warm tongue. Whispering things like “You won’t ever talk back to daddy again now, will you?” Into your body.

Each sentence brings you closer and closer to that climax you know is going to hit you like a truck. You can feel yourself clenching around his fingers and he can too. That’s why at the first sign of your orgasm approaching he pulls himself away from your body completely. Fingers retracting and even his mouth leaving your nipples.

“Brats don’t get to cum. Now go get yourself cleaned up.” He’s such a meanie 😔 but when you get out the shower he has your clothes already gathered on the bed for you along with some snacks and an assortment of movies to pick from. He apologizes for how controlling and annoying he was being earlier to even get you to react like that and talks it through with you, making up for everything with a movie night.

Of course, he’s an old man so he falls asleep halfway through the first movie but you’re tired as hell yourself so you end up falling asleep on his chest.

#aot x reader #attack on titan x reader #aot smut #erwin smith x reader #erwin smith smut #Erwin Smith headcanons #Spicy.

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thattimdrakeguy · 2 years

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I wish I had it in me to delete my account and never come back again.

Some people would want that, and I don’t really care, because if they seriously care that much, holy shit they’re a loser.

But like none of this is even fun anymore. I can’t think of the last time I even seen people try to have fun that wasn’t someone new or is barely on here. And I know Tumblr died ages ago and we’re residing in a dead cadaver, but like man, it’s so empty at times.

I’ve never been a fan of this site beyond how easy it is to use. Like something about it just appeals to me. Even though I’ve never been a fan of a lot of people on it. But at least I could engage with people in a way that I felt like, was a real conversation.

There is none of that anymore. And I have no where else to go to really, to talk about my interests. And I’m not doing a lot of talking about comics because the emptiness of this sphere is deafening, but like, I don’t know. I knew this point would come but I don’t know what to do now.

I have hobbies, but I didn’t exactly come here for fun. I used to feel like I had some portion of my brain working, because I did have fun making big posts about my interests, since never had a lot of friends, let alone ones that shared my interests as much as me. So that was something to do.

But now, it is so dry.

Not going to go to the fandom on Twitter that’s for damn sure. Even the fandom on Twitter knows the fandom on Twitter is ape-shit.

Yet there’s nothing on Tumblr hardly anymore. Only blogs I ever see get traction, and this isn’t always the case, but usually they say the most mind-bogglingly stupid shit that people actually take seriously. And that is no place to be. There is no fun to being in a space where that’s a thing that’s happening.

The comics have always sucked since I been around, but there used to be something interesting to say about them. Like I could use a part of my mind to figure out how to express myself. But now they’re so shallow and empty, that I can’t find anything interesting to say about them.

I still like these characters, but I’m not going to turn loony like other people and start making posts saying crap that no one that thinks very well, or isn’t interesting to talk to would interact with. You can’t have a real conversation with somebody that can’t even take a minute to be real about anything. I know it’s fiction, but it was fun to talk to people that used to look at it like fiction and talk about it. It can be fascinating. But the way I see people talk about stuff is so--so empty eternally. It’s just playing dumb for the oddest of reasons, or getting upset over nothing. That’s not a conversation, I don’t know what that is.

Even people I used to find interesting to interact with, or have even the most brief of interesting conversation with aren’t around. The level-headed people, that just seemed so chill, and could talk about stuff on a level that felt genuine regardless of agreeing or not. I’m sure there’s still some around, but it feels so rare at times. And I know some are for sure, but I mean just out in the wild, you know?

I knew it was coming, but now that it’s been here, and for a while, it really is like “Huh. What now?”.

And I’ve not been spending as much time here as I was years ago anyway, but I still hate to see it. Wasn’t a great time, but it was interesting and sometimes engaging at the very least. I enjoyed that much.

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queenlua · 3 years

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hey, i started following you recently and ur bio says ur a hacker? any tips on where to start? hacking seems like a v cool/fun way to learn more abt coding and cybersecurity/infrastructure and i'd like to explore it but there's so much on the internet and like, i'm not trying to get into anything illegal. thanks!

huh, an interesting question, ty!

i can give more tailored advice if you hit me up on chat with more specifics on your background/interests.

given what you've written here, though, i'll just assume you don't have any immediate professional aspirations (e.g. you just want to learn some things, and you aren't necessarily trying to get A Cyber Security Job TM within the next three months or w/e), and that you don't know much about any specific programming/computering domain yet.

(stuff under cut because long)

first i'd probably just try to pick some interesting problem that you think you can solve with tech. this doesn't need to be a "hacking" project at first; i was just messing around with computers for ages before i did anything involving security/exploitation.

if you don't already know how to program, you should ideally pick a problem you can solve via programming. for instance: i learned a lot back in the 2000s, when play-by-post forum RPGs were in vogue. see, i'd already been messing around, building my own personal sites, first just with HTML & CSS, and later on with Javascript and PHP. and i knew the forum software everyone used (InvisionPowerBoard) was written in PHP. so when one of the admins at my RPG complained that they'd like the ability to set multiple profile pictures, i was like, "hey i'm good at programming, want me to create a mod to do that," and then i just... did. so then they asked me to program more features, and i got all the sexy nerd cred for being Forum Mod Queen, and it was a good time, i learned a lot.

(i also got to be the person who was frantically IMed at 2am because wtf the forum is down and there's an inscrutable error, what do??? basically sysadmining! also, much less sexy! still, i learned a lot!)

the key thing is that it's gotta be a problem that's interesting to you: as much as i love making dorky sites in PHP, half the fun was seeing other people using my stuff, and i think the era of forum-based RPGs has passed. but maybe you can apply some programming talents to something that you are interested in—maybe you want to make a silly Chrome extension to make people laugh, a la Cloud to Butt, or maybe you'd like to make a program that converts pixel art into cross-stitching patterns, maybe you want to just make a cool adventure game on those annoying graphing calculators they make you use in class, or make a script for some online game you play, or make something silly with Arduino (i once made a trash can that rolled toward me when i clapped my hands; it was fun, and way easier than you'd think!), whatever.

i know a lot of hacker-types who got their start doing ROM hacking for video games—replacing the character art or animations or whatever in old NES games. that's probably more relevant than the PHP websites, at least, and is probably a solid place to get started; in my experience those communities tend to be reasonably friendly to questions. pick a small thing you want to do & ask how to do it.

also, a somewhat unconventional path, but—once i knew how to program a bit of Python, i started doing goofy junk, like, "hey can i implemented NamedTuple from scratch,” which tends to lead to Python metaprogramming, which leads to surprising shit like "oh, stack frames are literally just Python objects and you can manually edit them in the interpreter to do deliberately horrendous/silly things, my god this language allows too much reflection and i'm having too much fun"... since Python is a lot of folks' first language these days, i thought i'd point that out, since i think this is a pretty accessible start to thinking about How Programs Actually Work under the hood. allison kaptur has some specific recommendations on how to poke around, if you wanna go that route.

it's reasonably likely you'll end up doing something "hackery" in the natural course of just working on stuff. for instance, while i was working on the IPB forum software mods, i became distressed to learn that everyone was using an INSECURE version of the software! no one was patching their shit!! i yelled at the admins about it, and they were like "well we haven't been hacked yet so it's not a problem," so i uh, decided to demonstrate a proof of concept? i downloaded some sketchy perl script, kicked it until it worked, logged in as the admins, and shitposted a bit before i logged out, y'know, to prove my point.

(they responded by banning me for two weeks, and did not patch their software. which, y'know, rip to them; they got hacked by an unrelated Turkish group two months later, and those dudes just straight-up deleted the whole website. i was a merciful god by comparison!)

anyway, even though downloading a perl script and just pointing it at a website isn't really "hacking" (it's the literal definition of script kiddie, heh)—the point is i was just experimenting a lot and trying a lot of stuff, which meant i was getting comfortable with thinking of software as not just some immutable relic, but something you can touch and prod in unexpected ways.

this dovetails into the next thing, which is like, just learn a lot of stuff. a boring conventional computer science degree will teach you a lot (provided you take it seriously and actually try to learn shit); alternatively, just taking the same classes as a boring conventional computer science degree, via edX or whatever free online thingy, will also teach you a lot. ("contributing to open source" also teaches you a lot but... hngh... is a whole can of worms; send a follow-up ask if you want that rant.)

here's where i should note that "hacking" is an impossibly broad category: the kind of person who knows how to fuck with website authentication tokens is very different than someone who writes a fuzzer, who is often quite different than someone who looks at the bug a fuzzer produces and actually writes a program that can exploit that bug... so what you focus on depends on what you're interested in. i imagine classes with names like "compilers," "operating systems," and "networking" will teach you a lot. but, like, idk, all knowledge is god-breathed and good for teaching. hell, i hear some universities these days have actual computer security classes? that's probably a good thing to look at, just to get a sense of what's out there, if you already know how to program.

also be comfortable with not knowing everything, but also, learn as you go. the bulk of my security knowledge came when i got kinda airdropped into a work team that basically hired me entirely on "potential" (lmao), and uh, prior to joining i only had the faintest idea what a hypervisor was? or the whole protection ring concept? or ioctls or sandboxing or threat models or, fuck, anything? i mostly just pestered people with like 800 questions and slowly built up a knowledge base, and remember being surprised & delighted when i went to a security conference a year later and could follow most of the talks, and when i wound up at a bar with a guy on the xbox security team and we compared our security models a bunch, and so on. there wasn't a magic moment when i "got it", i was just like, "okay huh this dude says he found a ring-0 exploit... what does that mean... okay i think i got that... why is that a big deal though... better ask somebody.." (also: reading an occasional dead tree book is a good idea. i owe my firstborn to Robert Love's Linux Kernel Development, as outdated as it is, and also O'Reilly's kookaburra book gave me a great overview of web programming back in the day, etc. you can learn a lot by just clicking around random blogs, but you’ll often end up with a lot of random little facts and no good mental scaffolding for holding it together; often, a decent book will give you that scaffolding.)

(also, it's pretty useful if you can find a knowledgable someone to pepper with random questions as you go. finding someone who will actively mentor you is tricky, but most working computery folks are happy to tell you things like "what you're doing is actually impossible, here's why," or "here's a tutorial someone told me was good for learning how to write a linux kernel module," or "here's my vague understanding of this concept you know nothing about," or "here's how you automate something to click on a link on a webpage," which tends to be handier than just google on its own.)

if you're reading this and you're like "ok cool but where's the part where i'm handed a computer and i gotta break in while going all hacker typer”—that's not the bulk of the work, alas! like, for sure, we do have fun pranking each other by trying dumb ways of stealing each other's passwords or whatever (once i stuck a keylogger in a dude's keyboard, fun times). but a lot of my security jobs have involved stuff like, "stare at this disassembly a long fuckin' time to figure out how the program pointer got all fucked up," or, "write a fuzzer that feeds a lot of randomized input to some C++ program, watch the program crash because C++ is a horrible language for writing software, go fix all the bugs," or "think Really Hard TM about all the settings and doohickeys this OS/GPU/whatever has, think about all the awful things someone could do with it, threat model and sandbox accordingly." occasionally i have done cool proof-of-concept hacks but honestly writing exploits can kinda be tedious, lol, so like, i'm only doing that if it's the only way i can get people to believe that Yes This Is Actually A Problem, Fix Your Code

"lua that's cool and all but i wanted, like, actual links and recommendations and stuff" okay, fair. here's some ideas:

microcorruption: very fun embedded security CTF; teaches you everything you need to know as you're doing it.

cryptopals crypto challenges: very fun little programming exercises that teach you a lot of fundamental cryptography concepts as you're going along! you can do these even as a bit of a n00b; i did them in Python for the lulz

the binary bomb lab is hilariously copied by, like, so many CS programs, lol, but for good reason. it's accessible and fun and is the first time most people get to feel like a real hacker! (requires you know a bit of C beforehand)

ctftime is a good way to see when new CTFs ("capture the flag"s; security-focused competitions) are coming up. or, sometimes CTFs post their source code, so you can continue trying them after the CTF is over. i liked Stripe's CTFs when they were going, because they focused on "web stuff", and "web stuff" was all i really knew at the time. if you're more interested in staring at disassembly, there's CTFs focused on that sort of thing too.

azeria has good ARM assembly & exploitation tutorials

also, like, lots of good talks out there; just watching defcon/cansecwest/etc talks until something piques your interest is very fun. i'd die on a battlefield for any of Christopher Domas's talks, but he assumes a lot of specific x86/OS knowledge, lol, so maybe don’t start with that. oh, Julia Evans's blog is honestly probably pretty good for just learning a lot of stuff and really beginner-friendly?

oh and wrt legality... idk, i haven't addressed it here since it hasn't come up in my own work much, tbh. if you're just getting started you're kind of unlikely to Break The Law without, y'know, realizing maybe you're doing something a bit gray-area? and you can cross that bridge when you come to it? Real Hacking TM is way more of a pain-in-the-ass than doing CTFs and such, and you'll learn way more with the latter, so who cares lol just do the fun thing

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rechoired · 4 years

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A problem with the Tales Of Arcadia community

First and foremost, I’d like to ask anyone taking the time to read this to please read the post all the way through before commenting on the matter. There is a lot of dirty laundry to unpack here, and some points will be building off previous ones.

I’ll get right to the point. Most everybody in the Tales of Arcadia fandom will have heard of the blog imthegingerninja / ginger-le-gay. She is one of the most well-known ToA-centric blogs, after all. (If you’re wanting to avoid her on Twitter as well, her account is Margaret Bell, or @The_Book_Bell.)

This is your PSA, TOA fandom: Ginger is a toxic, manipulative person.

This is not a claim I like to make lightly, but it’s long overdue that this issue is properly brought up within the fandom.

I’ve seen so many people wonder why the Tales of Arcadia fandom is so small. Well, I and many others very strongly believe that Ginger is one of the main reasons for that, if not the main one. To make matters easier, I’ve tried to break this down into some main points. So let’s take a look at how Ginger falls under this category.

Disclaimer: Please DO NOT look at this post as an excuse to harass Ginger or any other blog mentioned here. This sort of behavior is NOT acceptable. The point of this post is to educate those who may not know the extent of her harrowing behavior, nothing more.

1. Dishonesty and Death Threats

[EDIT: Shortly after this post went up, she started blatantly lying about me to try to cover for herself. You can see those lies being easily disproven here]

Ginger has been kicked from at least three Tales of Arcadia servers, all for similar reasons of violence. While I cannot provide screenshots as I am no longer part of the servers they were in, there are multiple witnesses that can verify the disgusting behavior she engaged in. The one I saw specifically was her saying that certain members of the fandom should be gathered up and hunted for sport, among other gross things. (Elaboration of why can be found in point 3, though it still doesn’t excuse this kind of talk)

Here is some points made by another blog that also sums up similar issues with Ginger, though:

While there were multiple instances of her inciting violence towards others, this is unfortunately one topic I cannot provide specific screenshots for at this time. But I will add them in as I can find them. That being said, I want to move to the dishonesty, something I do have a screenshot for.

While you could argue that people sometimes notice the similar things, this is far too close together to be considered an “original find”. The reblog button is there for a reason, but she instead decides to steal the OP’s premise and present it as her own original thought.

There have been a couple other blogs that have confirmed that their theories and analysis posts were often stolen and presented as Ginger’s own as well, to the point where they stopped bothering even making such posts, as the above blog points out. (Out of respect for their privacy, I will not be naming these blogs. Say what you will about that possibly weakening my point, but if she’s willing to so blatantly steal from that person shown above, it shouldn’t surprise you that she’s so willing to do it to others.)

Theory-making and analysis posts aren’t as solidly “original content” as a piece of art or fanfiction, sure, but it’s still common fandom courtesy to give credit where it’s due. Ginger has intentionally avoided extending that courtesy far too many times.

2. Hypocrisy

Most of this is going to be about past Merlin vs. Morgana drama, though there are also words to be said for the incredibly shaky relationships she forms with “friends”.

But first let’s talk about those wizards.

This is a topic I’ve tried to approach with Ginger before, but she borderline refused to acknowledge any of the points I was trying to make, and when she did, I don’t know if I just wasn’t being clear or what, but it honestly looked as though she was purposefully trying to misunderstand what I was saying in her bizarre responses. (To be fair, I was sending messages out of anger because she vagueposted about a blog I admired, calling them a “disgusting creep” because of them simply saying they’d hoped Jim and Merlin would be able to actually bond at some point... Not really a justifiable reaction to such a harmless thought, in my opinion. But my point is, I recognize that the circumstances may have clouded my ability to vocalize my thoughts clearly.)

That aside, we should first acknowledge this post Ginger made to save face after having gotten some backlash about hate-train related things (Side note: I couldn’t find the original post, so this is a screenshot I got from someone else. I did not add the writing. The text underneath it should still be slightly readable, I hope.):

Taken at face value, this is a very reasonable post. I think everybody would and should be able to agree on it. Hate-meme him for fun, sure, but don’t actually harass or insult others over a fictional character. Simple, right?

Apparently not, because Ginger’s done loads of that to others. Probably why the “LOL” was added in, I bet.

This post confused me. First of all, exploring dark topics (”angst”, as you put it) has never been a rare occurrence, every fandom has that content, most in heavy abundance. I’ve noticed no staggering difference in volume of this fandom compared to others I’ve been in. People enjoy angst not because they think the character “deserves to be in pain”, they enjoy a fictional blow to their own emotions. There’s lots of different reasons people like angst, but it’s barely ever been out of a genuine hate for whatever character’s the focus, from all the things I’ve seen. Your own friends have indulged in Jim angst and body horror posts before, does that mean you think they’re awful people? I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain something like this.

Also, way to basically admit you think all Merlin stans get off on child torture. So much for “If you like Merlin as a character, you’re valid”, am I right? God, what a mess of a post. (It’s been very recently deleted, which makes me wonder if she got more backlash on it, but just... wow.)

Let’s look at another one.

Again. Vagueposting about someone specific, I’d wager, since most of the people I’ve seen comment on this topic either think both characters are morally gray, or hate both.

But of course, when it comes to Morgana, suddenly excusing bad behavior can be justified. Ginger can call someone a disgusting creep because they want a familial bond between Jim and Merlin, that’s just wrong, but pushing the Mom-gana narrative with the genocidal abuser and Toby is completely fine, folks.

(Note: I would like to point out that I really don’t care about what theories and hopes people have for Morgana. You should be allowed to love that character in any way you want, same as I would say for Merlin. My issue with these examples is the completely brazen hypocrisy in which these two characters are treated. You’re obviously allowed to love Morgana without consequence, but the same should be said for any character of the show, and yet it’s not.)

The most obvious instance of this double-standard is well observable here, I believe:

... I think this mostly speaks for itself. Sorry, but this is very blatantly trying to excuse Morgana’s actions, here.

Oh hey, remember that post about Ginger saying that liking Merlin must mean you want to see Jim in horrible pain?

Say anything similar about her with Morgana, and suddenly she takes issue with this line of reasoning!

I’m sorry, but if you can’t take this sort of thing, then you shouldn’t be dishing it out. One of your own friends is still getting hate over the simple fact of liking Merlin, and all this mentality is exactly why.

Let’s look at one more.

Fun fact! Morgana horrifically abused somebody for centuries, tried to kill multiple kids, took horrible advantage of Claire (probably traumatized her), and canonically wanted to genocide humanity, not to mention all the OTHER murders she's committed, both directly and indirectly.

But somehow pointing any of this out “doesn’t count”. This is why the fandom keeps saying more and more things like this:

And this:

I could be going through her constant hating on Merlin and people who like Merlin for days straight, but I hope you all get the idea by now.

Again, I would like to just reiterate: You can like whatever character you want for whatever reason you want. The problem with this case is the hypocrisy and mistreatment of others, not your taste in characters.

Now interestingly enough, she’s lately been singing a different tune about the guy, switching from the “I hate Merlin I hope he dies!!!” mentality to “Oh he should get a redemption arc too :)” sort of thing.

I’m highly convinced that the only reasons for this “change of heart” is because of the constant backlash she was getting for the obnoxious amount of hate posts being thrown around all the time, but also because Aaron Waltke keeps tabs on the fandom more lately, and has spoken himself about Merlin not being a villain.

I could go on about this point forever, but I think I’ll just leave the Merlin topic with this post going through the hypocrisy of the Merlin Hate Train. In fact, here’s two just for fun.

Now onto more real-world focused areas of hypocrisy. One such instance can be found in Ginger’s Janus Disorder server.

Just take a look at this post.

While the offender in this case isn’t Ginger specifically, it still takes place in her server, and she made no moves to enforce her “No discourse” rule. All over... what? A random kudos on a fanfiction that’s not even about anything controversial since all characters involved are adults? I immensely don’t understand the point of why this ever had to be an issue, or why nobody spoke up about how ridiculous this is.

I’d also like to point out a certain user called firecat17. For some quick context, waaay back in the Kung Fu Panda fandom (around 2018), this user had been harassing people and saying incredibly vile things, a person of which Ginger had a bit of a feud, but firecat’s anon threats had gotten to the point where Ginger ended up having to block their IP.

Obviously, the user firecat was the one in the wrong, here. (Also, the irony in this comment is through the roof...)

Interesting point there, Ginger. Sure would be nice if you practiced what you preached.

Why am I bringing this random old drama up, you may ask? Well, it just strikes me as strange that someone who was so vile to Ginger is suddenly on her okay-list again, sending her asks and getting casual responses as if nothing ever happened.

To be fair, there is the possibility that they worked out their differences in private. But given the severity of the kinds of words being exchanged, I would still find that rather suspicious.

When someone who’s said things so vile can be so easily forgiven, yet something as harmless as leaving a kudos on some random fanfiction is considered grounds for harassment, it’s obvious there’s no stability or room for trust among this group of people. Unsurprising when there’s been several instances of this “friend group” turning on each other.

If you think you’re somehow different, that your “friendship” with Ginger or the others is more valued than that, then I’m sorry to burst your bubble but it’s likely not true. She’d throw you under the bus at the hint of you doing something she deems problematic, as it’s happened to multiple blogs before you.

3. Demonization of and insensitivity towards s*xual abuse victims

(This topic is one that’s hard for me to talk about, being a victim of CSA myself, so I’ve gathered some different sources to do most of the main talking for me. I tried to form more commentary on this myself, but I get too emotionally charged in my responses, and I don’t want that to cloud any reader’s perception of what I’m trying to communicate here, so I’ll try to keep most of my comments brief on this one.)

One thing recently brought to my attention about Ginger and her squad that especially bothers me is their rashness in labeling people p*dophiles and p*do apologists. If these claims were true, then I wouldn’t have a problem with it.

But these people are accusing others of these horrible things and threatening them on the sole basis of fictional content.

Now before you fly off the handle at me, let me be very clear: I absolutely understand that there are gross people out there who use the “It’s all just fiction” argument to hide their actual, pr*datory behaviors. (We’ve all probably seen at least one or two neckbeard memes of that caliber)

But like it or not, exploring traumatic themes through a fictional lens is something that has been studied and proven to be a genuine coping mechanism for some. It’s not something that works for me, but I knew a few people from past therapy groups that it worked surprisingly well for. Bringing a trauma into a controlled environment and processing it through fictional means can and does help some victims deal with what they went through.

It’s important to understand that not everyone processes their experience in the same neat, little boxes you have laid out as the only “acceptable” ways of coping. Trauma fiction and expressive arts therapy are commonly used by victims, and it does help some people, whether you like it or not.

I’m already dragging this on too much, so here are some sources for better-worded information on the topic (Warning: Most of these deal with highly sensitive themes such as gun violence and s*xual abuse.)

Source 1 - Source 2 - Source 3 - Source 4 - Source 5 (pages 61 onward, specifically) - Source 6 - Source 7 - Source 8 - Source 9 - Source 10 (and believe me, if those all don’t satisfy you, I can easily supply more.)

And this quote from source 9 I think sums it up best:

“Fiction works differently. My imagination gives me a framework to process the grief and terror and the consequences, even when I myself have not found any resolution. It allows me to enter my own traumatic experiences sideways and linger inside them, if I know I can give them to characters who might be lucky enough to find the antidote: love, connection, community, family. In other words, I can enter — and exit — the trauma loop through stories that are not exactly the same as mine.

This goes for the reader also. Recent studies periodically assure us that stories — literary fiction, hardcover books, even the simple act of reading — promote empathy. We rarely have identical experiences, so fiction is how we practice linking our similar or parallel realities so we can feel them. This seems particularly useful in our current society, where we are all so separated, and are working so hard to block the violence that keeps happening to us from our minds.

Fiction connects us, and it can also contribute to our healing. When we see ourselves in worlds we don’t live in, like The Handmaid’s Tale or The Color Purple, sometimes, that very different violence helps us finally process our own. Because as much as our memoirs and testimonies are brave and validating, fiction does not just mirror our truths so they are safe to experience; it also helps us endure the aftermath. Because long after the immediate experience is over, survival struggles onward, in every moment of our daily lives.”

While most professionals have in the past advised that victims keep their trauma-related works more private, to only show it to your trusted friends or family, the fast-growing use of the internet has led more people to sharing it in an online platform, which is not unexpected behavior.

I unfortunately don’t have the screenshot of the original post, but there was a post made some time back literally telling a fandom member to go and hang themselves over this garbage. A survivor of s*xual abuse, no less. And to top that off, one of Ginger’s squad @emmy-puff commented in support of that violent post, as well as blatantly misgendering the target of it. While, again, I was unable to get screenshots, there are multiple witnesses to this instance, one Anonymous even having called them out on it back when it happened. (I suspect that Emmy deleted that answer due to how bad it made them look.) If anybody reading this has screenshots of the initial post or the ask that came of it, please feel free to share.

I don’t care who you are or who you’re talking about, if you use misgendering someone as a way to hurt them, then you are an insult to the trans community. That is an awful thing to do, and you lose so much credibility if that’s the only thing you can fall back on when getting in a fight with someone. While this post isn’t about Emmy specifically, this is exactly the kind of hateful rhetoric that’s being encouraged in the environment Ginger’s made.

Another thing I would like to point out on this matter is an instance that happened in the ToA fandom a couple years back. I, again, don’t have screenshots available (I believe the original post ended up deleted) but the post in question caused enough of a fuss that I’m sure a few people must remember it...

A while back, there was an artist that posted uncensored, untagged r*pe art of Aaarrrgghh, Gunmar, and Jim in the main Trollhunters tag. As you can imagine, this infuriated many people. Many of which are among the list of those who’ve been labeled “p*do apologists”. Almost the very minute that post showed up in the tag with no trigger warnings of any kind, the fandom immediately got on OP’s tail about it, because they all shared that basic understanding of “This is a traumatizing subject for many people and they should have the ability to avoid it”. If the people you’ve labelled as pr*dator supporters were really as awful as you say they are, they would’ve jumped to that person’s defense, too. But they were completely against OP’s horrible lack of consideration of survivors, right alongside the rest of the fandom.

Am I saying you have to like trauma fiction? Absolutely not. Are there people that make trauma fiction that are actual pr*dators? I’m sure there are. But those people would be that way whether trauma fiction was out there or not. Gross people have existed and will always exist regardless of what media is out there.

I deeply understand the controversy, uncertainty, and stress that surrounds this topic, I promise you, I do. But the fact of the matter is, some people actually do use trauma fiction and expressive arts therapy as a way of coping, as has been observed in people even from ages as young as 5. To say otherwise is blatantly untrue. This isn’t a matter of opinion or morals, this is plain, studied facts that you cannot change about human psychology.

Nobody should ever have to go through something as horrible as s*xual abuse of any kind, and I know how deeply upsetting it can be to see certain images or stories with those themes in play. Those users with a sense of decency and understanding for fellow victims will tag their posts with the appropriate warnings. After that, it’s up to you to filter out what you don’t want to see. You curate your own internet experience, and it’s just plain irrational to try and harass everyone into conforming to your rules. While it’s an 18+ blog’s job to make sure to tag and label their content appropriately, it is your job to block the things you don’t want to see, whether you’re an adult or a minor. It is YOUR job to blacklist content that you know will upset you, because it is always going to exist on the internet, and any internet user needs to know and understand that. Multiple times I’d seen people going off about posts that were already appropriately trigger-tagged. If you don’t have those upsetting tags blacklisted by now, then the fault is mostly on you in that kind of case, not the OP.

Before I end this topic off, just one more example of blatant disrespect towards victims:

I’m sorry, but the absolute nerve of comparing some random fictional character you’re petty over to an actual pr*dator who’s terribly hurt real children is just awful. Imagine how insulted one of Onion’s victims would be if they saw that. Lord.

Ginger claims to care about victims, but she’s made it abundantly clear that she only cares about those that behave the way she think a victim should.

4. Ableism

I’m going to just show a couple posts here and let them mostly speak for themselves.

Just... my God. You looked at the definition of psychopath and decided that was enough to give you qualification to speak like this about it? Do you realize the extensive work and study of human psychology goes into the diagnosis and understandings of psychopathy? Not to mention, you just admit to thinking people deserve hate because of a mental disorder they legitimately have no control over? I’m sorry, but that is just cruel. Demonization of the mentally ill is not cute or funny. Next.

While I’m still annoyed with Emmy’s transphobic treatment of another user mentioned earlier, they make a very solid point in this instance. (The first post they referenced has since been deleted, but here’s the second one speaking out against the ableism.) I feel I don’t need to add much to this, as these points have already been argued very well by users better qualified to speak on the subject than I.

5. Manipulation tactics

This part is more observations of two kinds of abuse tactics Ginger appears to demonstrate, using the above as points of reference.

First, there’s DARVO.

Then, less formally, there’s this good point about online cult mentality.

Before you say anything, obviously I don’t think Ginger thinks of herself as some sort of deity. While it could be argued that she considers herself a point of authority within the TOA fandom maybe, I haven’t seen enough of this to say for sure how far that goes. So that point can be ignored, because it mostly doesn’t apply in this case. (The “Dictating parts of your online life” might also not apply, but I can’t say for sure as I haven’t gotten any confirmation of that sort of thing in Ginger’s group.)

But there are grains of truth in the other four points, especially that last one. Plain and simple, she’s made people afraid to speak their minds about even harmless things such as character analysis.

Ginger is someone who can’t seem to comprehend different viewpoints and life experiences. She’s extremely unsympathetic towards people she doesn’t understand, as can be observed in above examples. Assuming malicious intent from everybody you can’t understand is a dangerous and hurtful mindset to have, for both you and those who you unnecessarily scorn.

There are a few outcomes I’ve speculated should she ever come to see this post.

1. She will ignore this post completely, pretending as if it doesn’t exist

2. She will dismiss me as being some sort of horrible person, a p*do apologist or something of the sort (despite being a victim of that myself, clearly she doesn’t care about who’s actually been hurt by real p*dos or not if they don’t conform to her narrow worldview), and claim nothing I’ve said bears any meaning, despite the extensive evidence I’ve provided.

3. She will get people to try and attack me.

4. She will actually address these points in a tactful, mature, and serious manner instead of her usual act of trying to dismiss everything at the slightest hint of non-conformity. (The least likely outcome, but one can dream.)

I could add to this post all day, but it’s long enough as it is and my focus was on getting the main points out of the way. I understand that I lack some of the receipts necessary to back myself up in a few parts, but I know that many other fans have bared witness to those things, so I know there will be at least some people who’ll know what I speak of is true, and that’s good enough for me.

That being said, if anybody has screenshots of the instances I wasn’t able to provide for, it would be greatly appreciated if you could add them into the conversation.

!!!-If you have screenshots, but are too uncomfortable to get involved in this, then you can private-message them to me and I would be grateful and more than happy to add them in while keeping you completely anonymous.-!!!

(I've removed the section with all the tags, as I recognize it was probably going overboard. My goal was just to spread information, not to try and involve those tagged, but I understand how that may have gotten lost in translation and made people uncomfortable. Also, it apparently was showing up multiple times in people’s notifications when I only tagged people twice, so I’m not sure why that glitch happened, but I apologize for that annoyance as well.)

Now, to end us off, my responses to questions or angry comments I’m probably going to get:

You don’t even have all the evidence! How are we to know you’re not just lying about some of this?

Admittedly, I don’t have as much screenshot proof as I would like, that’s true. But for most of the instances I couldn’t provide for, there were other witnesses to her bad behavior. I don’t really have the need to lie when there’s already a lot of knowledge out there of the bad stuff she has done. Nor do I really have the emotional investment in this fandom anymore to lie for the pointless reason of causing drama.

Why post this on a throwaway account if you think people are on your side?

I just don’t really want my main blog associated with TOA anymore, to be frank.

You tagged a bunch of people, so you must be trying to get them to attack Ginger!

No. I tagged a bunch of people because I think this information should be heard on a wider scale, considering the position Ginger has in the fandom. I don’t want her or anybody else to be attacked, but her negative impact on this fandom deserves to be acknowledged.

Again, I don’t think Ginger or any of the others deserve harassment or cyberbullying or anything of that manner, that’s kind of what this whole post is against. And it just hurts the situation more than it helps it. What bothers me is how she’s never apologized for or even once acknowledged the gross way she’s treated people. While she might be more low-key about it now, she still treats people who don’t deserve it like garbage. There are still several people upset about the damage she’s caused to this fandom, rightfully so. I wouldn’t be so loud about making this post if I didn’t think it was something worth drawing attention to.

Thank you for reading.

#TrollHunters #3Below #TOAwizards #Tales of Arcadia #TOA

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fusonzai · 3 years

Text

I think I'm talking about confidence, I'm not too sure.

I was fifteen when I first saw Great Teacher Onizuka. My friend had lent me the DVD set (as you did when it was 2008) and I was about to spend the day watching it, feigning some illness to get out of school for the day. I needed some time alone, to process everything that had been going on around me.

For context, my parents were in the middle of a divorce. My mum, the most amazing person in the world to me, was not having a good time and I was not at all possessed with the skills to help her cope. Processing the concept of divorce, while trying to mediate the two adults going through it, wasn’t something I could handle. I didn’t know what I was doing. I needed a whole day away from friends and away from parents. While everyone was at their day job, I could think about everything and nothing, uninterrupted.

My attempt at getting out of school worked, however it came with a caveat. Mum had decided she’d take the day off with me. Feeling defeated but still stubborn, I insisted that if she was going to stay home too that we were watching GTO. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.

GTO begins with our protagonist, Eikuchi Onizuka, squatting down by a payphone, trying to stare up the skirts of some high school girls coming down the nearby escalator. That’s a bold open. Two delinquents notice this and attempt to then extort him for cash. He promptly beats them up, forcing them to use all the money they have to buy him some food from the nearby convenience store. This scene establishes a few things straight off the bat: Onizuka is, first and foremost, a pervert and he’s physically strong but not to the point of unfairly asserting dominance over others. Onizuka dreams of being a teacher of all things. He wants to be the teacher he never had, being there for students outside the classroom as well as in. The series showcases Onizuka using his ex-biker gang leader skills and sheer determination to change the attitude of the antagonist students in his class. Each week he solves the reason behind their resistance toward him and they join his team until eventually he really is the Great Teacher, Onizuka.

The first delinquent problem Onizuka solves is that of Mizuki Nanako. Her parents aren’t divorced but they’re not exactly doing well. Ever since her father’s company started doing well and they moved into a mansion, she feels as though her parents just aren’t seeing eye to eye anymore. She blames it on a simple wall separating her parents’ private rooms. Before it got put up, her parents would talk and laugh together, sharing in their joys but also their defeats. Then before she knew it, they put a wall up and stopped sharing anything at all.

So, Onizuka arrives at her house. He’s got a bandana tied around his head, his abs gleaming as he’s smoking a cigarette. More importantly, he’s holding a sledgehammer, ready to demolish that wall. With her parents yelling at him threatening to call the police, Onizuka ascends the staircase and begins to take down that wall. Every powerful swing, shaking the wall and cracking the foundation.

(What a man what a man what a man what a might good man)

It felt cruel watching this scene with my mum. Here we were, two people still trying to process a big life event, opting to spend the day away from the problem. Here Onizuka was, just smashing through the problem with nothing but conviction, stupidity and sheer confidence. I couldn’t quite conceptualise the thought just yet but I think I envied that confidence. I wanted to be able to take a sledgehammer to this invisible problem and fix it. I didn’t know what an actual sledgehammer would solve nor was I even able to figure out what my situational sledgehammer would be, I just knew I wanted to be more like that. I wanted that confidence; I just didn’t know what it was yet.

Confidence. A complete assuredness in your actions. You may not have any idea of the outcome of said actions but you’re certain in the choice you made taking them. Maybe that’s just one definition. I struggle to this day with how to define confidence, I’ve been confident at different times in my life for different reasons. Mainly it’s been something I’ve found as I’ve gotten older though.

I struggled a lot with it when I was younger. I’d struggle to find it and when I did there was someone there trying to take it from me almost immediately. Pink polos were gay, skinny jeans were gay, being interested in anything outside the norm was gay as well. I wasn’t bullied by any means but there was always somebody around to tell you what they thought. I’d fold under that kind of pressure. I remember when I was 10 and we were in music class, I sang a little too loud and the popular girls behind me started pointing and laughing, clipping me before I got too sure of myself.

I got older and I thought I’d found confidence through weight training, but it was just arrogance. I genuinely thought I was better than other people in my creative writing class because I picked heavy things up and put them down. Of course, this had a drawback, whenever I’d meet someone bigger than me, I’d feel pathetic, jealous and inferior. I thought I’d rid myself of this arrogance when I started studying Japanese. My initial study was diligent and excessive. I’d have two Japanese classes a week and spend the rest of my time after work revising. Looking back now it was necessarily efficient studying, but in terms of time put in the hours were there. I believed I was working hard, which led to this arrogance in my abilities. An arrogance that was swiftly cut down whenever I met somebody better than me.

So, I always arrived at this juncture where I’d learn a new skill or hobby and wonder how to be confident in myself without comparing myself to others. I didn’t quite know how to praise myself for doing well at the gym or learning something new in Japanese without immediately comparing myself to others. It meant that I’d occasionally have these emotional highs when I achieved something only to be brought down to earth when I saw that somebody could do it better. I didn’t know how to make my achievements my own. The confidence I had was too fickle, it didn’t come from within and it often led to feeling superior to others based off of a single quantifier.

I was still uncomfortable with myself. I wanted outside validation which led to comparison, boasting and arrogance. I didn’t realise that I couldn’t get any of that from anyone else, it all had to come from within.

It’s taken me 14 years, but Onizuka finally made sense to me. I was watching the incredibly famous (in Japan) live action version of GTO one night, which turned into a nostalgia trip as all the episodes were almost identical to their anime equivalent. As I was watching I was wondering why I still hold this fictional character in such high regard, of all the powerful charismatic anime protagonists I watched in my teenage years, why does Onizuka persevere?

It’s because he’s kind of a dork.

(Get you a man that can do both)

Along with the confidence and strength that being a protagonist in a medium geared towards young boys affords you, Onizuka also has some very human flaws and vulnerabilities. The intense scenes like surprise renovating Nanako’s house or rescuing a whole bunch of kids from a gang are always juxtaposed with him being absolutely wayward in so many other aspects of life. He lives at the school because he can’t afford rent, he’s 26 and never had a girlfriend and his only friends are his students. We are always shown that his confidence isn’t intrinsically linked to how well his life is going, it’s just his feeling and determination in the moment. For all that bravado we see, we’re also shown the more human, relatable aspects. He’s amazing, brave and confident, but at the same time he’s still vulnerable and human.

Yet here’s the thing, I thought confidence meant a lack of vulnerability. I thought one couldn’t be both confident and vulnerable. This isn’t some segue into Boys Don’t Cry or a delve into masculinity. I didn’t believe that vulnerability wasn’t masculine, I just thought that vulnerability meant you had a long way to go before you were allowed to be confident.

(These lines go from bravado to insecurity in an instant, but I still think Tyler is confident as fuck)

I show what I feel to be the pretty vulnerable content on this blog. I write about my doubts and insecurities, the events that shaped me and the times in my life where I really felt at my lowest. I document the struggle I find myself in now, trying to carve something for myself and come to terms with the changes that keep happening around me. I don’t think anybody reading this would have an image of me as an outgoing, confident person. There’s rays of positivity sprinkled in occasionally but it’s generally content that I struggle to tell people in person.

Before starting this blog, I would have imagined that if I wanted to become this confident idealised version of myself, I’d need to erase any form of vulnerability. Delete the Instagram posts with moody lyrics, delete the couple shots and stop caring. I’d need to kill part of myself to become someone different. I couldn’t consciously accept that they were two signs of the same coin, even if I knew it in the back of my mind. The more I’ve been writing the better I’ve been feeling. These fears and insecurities being out in the open don’t make me any weaker, they actually feel like progress. My weaknesses will exist regardless of whether or not I tell people about them, my insecurities won’t disappear overnight. I’ll never be someone I’m not. What I can do is take these things that used to terrify me and put them out in the open. In my last piece I waxed on about making my words my own, by verbalising and bringing these thoughts into the open I feel like they become my own. They’re not completely stripped of power but they don’t hold the same sway over me that they once did.

So that leaves me with confidence. I can air my vulnerabilities and doubts but then where does my confidence come from? How do I then stop it from becoming arrogance?

Let me tell you about Charisma Man.

You know how when Superman goes back to Krypton he’s just a regular person, but on Earth he’s basically a God? Charisma Man is a joke (turned comic) about how Western Men often believe themselves to be Superman on Earth when they move to Japan. Why? You’re basically bombarded with compliments from the get-go. You get told your Japanese is amazing (when it’s not), that you’re so tall (when you’re short back home) and that you’re such a handsome man (when all experiences up until now have led you to believe the opposite). Thus, you create a kind of false confidence for yourself. Or do the people around you do it for you? You yourself haven’t changed but the people around you have, and they’re whispering sweet nothings in your ear.

(Honestly didn't know it was a comic, initially heard of it on a subreddit making fun of other expats in Japan)

Hell, maybe I am good looking? I studied Japanese for a year back home, maybe I am just really good at it? Maybe those people around me back home were just obnoxiously tall and mean. Maybe I am the shit. You begin to formulate this new identity for yourself. You are Charisma Man now. You’ll be making heaps of money, have girls on standby and be loved by everybody in no time.

Except that never happens.

The reality of Charisma Man isn’t so bright. You’re probably an English teacher living somewhere far away from the big city. Your apartment is probably small and old and your salary is half as much as you were making back home. Despite being told about how good your Japanese is, you still can’t turn on the TV and watch a program. You still can’t go to the bank and open an account with your bilingual Japanese friend. You’re still single and you’re probably getting fatter off convenience store fried chicken, if anything.

It’s fake confidence with no merit, built on nothing. You haven’t put yourself out there or done anything to earn that confidence so it always feels foreign to you. There isn’t some feat you perform or some hurdle you cross to get that kind of confidence. You’re not smashing walls with your sledgehammer or confronting your fears and growing. You just get fed compliments until your confidence balloon bursts.

I felt like I was Charisma Man for a hot minute. Separated from everyone I knew, out drinking every night, being complimented left right and centre. I kept trying and failing to keep my feet on the ground. Back then I thought it was new-found confidence, but I wasn’t really coming out of my shell; I was just being obnoxious. After long the facade faded and I realised I was the exact same Elliot I was back in Australia, just with less money and a nicer haircut.

I began to think about my experience. Why was I so confident? Why did it dissipate so quickly? Why was I not the only one that experienced this little phenomenon?

I came to the conclusion that confidence can come from many places. It can come from other people, but then it’s reliant on the praise of others. It’s shallow, fickle and bound to dissipate sooner rather than later. You’re constantly reliant on the praise of others to affirm who you are as a person, you can fool people into giving you praise but that goes away before you know it as well.

It’s a big enough of a struggle to understand yourself, it’s near impossible to understand strangers. Relying on such an unstable form of validation is essentially just inviting mental trauma in the long run.

On the other hand, confidence can also come from within.

After I distanced myself from all that charisma, I began to realise that I felt my best and my most confident when I actually put the work in. I started properly studying, eating well, and writing down my thoughts. It didn’t matter as much if people didn’t say anything, because I went to bed every night knowing that I put in enough work. Nobody said anything about the change, but I felt like I was becoming my own biggest supporter.

It’s both rewarding and daunting when you switch dopamine suppliers. I used past tense in those last few sentences because that particular fountain hasn’t been flowing so well lately. The flip side of not letting other people’s compliments fuel you anymore is that when you’re not doing right by yourself, that confidence tend to dry up pretty quickly.

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myonmukyuu · 4 years

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hot milk tea, thoughts and feelings

I’ve only mentioned it briefly, but I’ve said that I’ll be taking a break from my SetsuAyu series - mainly because of my uni workload though.

But for now, I have a lot of thoughts about the entire thing as a project as well as myself as an artist. So I figured that I’d write a reflection of sorts (warning: it gets kind of personal).

Can you believe it’s been 3-4 months since the series started? I can’t, and I’ve been the one drawing all of these!! If you’ve been reading my work, I’ll say it over and over but I really appreciate it!!! Like I’m dead serious!!! Completely!! Utterly!! Without a doubt!!! I love all of you!!!

When I posted that first comic, I didn’t think it’d get the positive reception that it did get. Like, I’ve been producing basically entirely Muse content for years and suddenly decided to tap into Nijigaku? You could argue that it didn’t get that much attention, but either way, the attention it did get surprised me. I was so happy that people were engaged (and it still makes me stupidly happy, like on a level where I’m almost embarrassed to admit HAHA)

Recently I’ve just uploaded the bonus for the 3rd update which wraps up that part, and it really just clicked - that I really have invested soooo much time into this series. 36 pages now! And we’re only 3/10 main updates in!! I have so much passion for this - like a fire that can’t be put out. Every single update has something that I want to communicate/show so I always feel fired up. Heck, if you’ve spoken to me during the process you’d catch me always saying “I’m excited for the next one!!!” while working on it LMAO. It’s been my longest string of non-stop work. Usually I feel burned out more quickly but I was always so excited that I couldn’t stop! You’d find that I’m usually in a state of conflict bc I alwaaaays want to talk about it but at the same time I don’t want to spoil anything. (THE NEXT UPDATE JUICY)

I think it’s a clear reminder of why I draw actually. The answer between each artist always differs, but I think it’s something important to be aware of. And well, for me? I’ve realised I’m a passion-monster. Passion keeps my blood pumping 100%. As a result... you could say I might be a more selfish kind of artist. Maybe it’s burn-out from running all those ask-blogs/RP when I was like 13-16, but I’ve realised that I’m having the most fun drawing what I genuinely love. It’s kind of why you’d rarely see me do requests and why I no longer do commissions. That isn’t to say that I hate drawing for other people. It can be fulfilling! But it’s more like - I barely have the time to draw for myself, so drawing for others is kind of a lower priority in general. It’s also why I’ve decided against studying graphic design when I graduated highschool. It’s just not happening as a career.

When I ask myself, “what kind of artist do I want to be?” I always think “Somebody who marches to her own beat and works hard to make content that she loves.” It’s also why I never delete anything - even my oldest art that makes me cringe. Because the me from 5 years ago put her love into that too. It’s really cheesy sounding but that’s how I see it LMFAO. I couldn’t do that to her. And also, just because I don’t like something anymore, it doesn’t mean that no one else does. So I’ll continue to never delete my old work. As a bonus, we get to see how far I’ve come too~.

I feel a little vulnerable admitting something like this and I’m pretty sure I’ve only told like 4 humans, but I think my #1 goal as an artist is that I want people to be able to look at my work (that I actually put my heart into) and think “this person loves this” or “this person works hard”. If you can do that, and sincerely feel the feelings I put into my comic, then I’ve already reached my goal. Can people tell how much I love these characters? The series? The concept? Can people tell how much work I’ve been putting into these updates? Can people tell when I’m having fun? It’s something I think about a lot. The idea of that people might think so makes me tear up HAHA - I get really sappy thinking about these kinds of things. And well, if people can’t tell then I’m not working hard enough!

That isn’t to say that I’m always putting my life-blood into everything I make. I’m mainly referring to the stuff where I do. I think it’s pretty clear when I’m pumping a lot of love into something. In general though, there’s always an intention for me to like communicate some idea or feeling and doing something like that requires maybe a bit of love~.

I feel like that as a character, Setsuna really resonates with me a lot. In personality? Not at all LMFAOOOO (she’s such a nice girl!!). More because of her ideals and principles. After typing like everything that I did up until this point, I bet you can guess why. I’ll keep it short and simple though, since this post is getting stupidly long.

Basically, I really resonate with her drive and passion as both an artist, and just in general actually? I’m a believer in that if you’re passionate about something, you can spread that passion. That’s the mentality I have with my art. If my love shows, then maybe other people will understand why I’ve come to love something. And maybe they’ll come to love it too. If I’m having fun, maybe they will have fun too! Very cheesy, I know, but that’s just how I roll!!!

Like rare pair? New fandom? Still applies. It might take awhile, but eventually either the people who love that thing will find me, or I’ll help people come to love something new (or at least see where it’s coming from lolol)!

And as Setsu says:

You tell ‘em girl !!! That devotion is my driving force!!

Of course I know this is idealistic, but I think that’s fine. It’s no bother to me if someone feels indifferent/ negative towards my work because that’s just natural.

I think it’s a form of communication and that’s what drives my art. I’ve been intending on writing a guide/ or talking about my art process for comics for some time now and I think that’d be the first thing I’d mention? I’m always trying to communicate some sort of feeling/tone/idea and that comes from a place of love y’know.

I feel like I’m saying “love” and “passion” a lot - you can really tell I’m vibing with Setsuna huh LMAO. There are other reasons I vibe with her too, but I won’t touch on that.

Coming back to my SetsuAyu series. You can tell why I’m so happy about it right? The story, the pairing dynamic, I feel like that people are understanding what I’m trying to communicate - that people are receiving my feelings of love for it and that makes me smile so widely. I really put a lot into it!!

This series is the first large project I’ve ever taken you see and I’m so so happy that I’ve been able to get this far! It really means a lot to me. But it wasn’t actually the first comic series I’ve tried to do. I actually had a Muse long-running comic planned years ago - a Dancing Stars on Me! AU but it never came to life. I think it was my lack of confidence that held me back. It might be weird of me to pat myself on the back, but I’m proud that I managed to get going this time!! I’ve actually written the SetsuAyu series in a way that for the first half, I could drop the series if I really wanted to at any point (each part is pretty independent, and that description I always copy-and-paste is all the explanation you really need), but now I know for sure that I don’t want to drop it! I wanna keep going!! Even if it gets tough. Although it might be a little early for me to make such bold declarations, I’m only 3/10 through LOOOL. But that’s just the way I feel right now!

I know it’s irrational and it’s something I’d rather not admit, but an anxiety that’s always looming over me is the idea that I’m not working hard enough - or that people think I’m not? Each comic update...takes like a month right? And a month is a long time. There’s this part of me that is convinced that people think I’m lazy for working so slowly. And I know it’s not true!! It doesn’t make sense for it to be!!! But like I said it’s irrational.

I’m really proud of this comic y’know. It’s a really big commitment and I’m proud of myself for being able to commit. I work full time 9-5, and I also am in my final year at university. I’m... kind of busy lol. So the huge factor in that month-long update turnaround is just that I don’t have the time to always be drawing. But I try to draw as much as I can! If you have me on discord you might notice me work on it for like 2-5 hours, almost daily before I go to bed (1am). Of course I’m not only drawing, but after I get everything plotted out sometimes that’s all I do. This comic is super time-consuming LMAO - and I try my best to work on it a little at a time.

So yeah, the entire month of comic-production is me drawing every almost every night.

Yeah it, - it’s kind of exhausting. Even though I’m itching to work on my next update, I’ve decided to take a break for uni crunch which is why I say the next one might be two months. It’s really odd though. The other night I was in bed feeling restless. It was so weird not drawing till 1am that I felt like I needed to be doing something. This comic series might have weird effects on my habits...

It makes me anxious thinking that it’d be so long till next update. But I’ll do my best to push that aside ! Hopefully I can get uni done and dusted ASAP! I want them to date dammit...

I've decided that I want to see this series through to the end. It’ll probably be May next year when that happens though LMAO! Please bear with my slow turnaround time. It’s only been 3 updates, but I can already see that I’m improving with each one. With each update I feel like I really learn from the previous and I always feel this sense of excitement with trying out new techniques and trying to create different feelings. I really want to see how the last updates will look compared to the first! Technically we’re 3/10 (10 is an epilogue), but after 6 I actually stop doing bonuses? So teeechnically I’m like 40% of the way through~.

It might be a little over-ambitious, but I kind of want to print it out and make a hard-copy when I’m done. I’m not sure about what the demand would be if I were to sell it, but I definitely want to print it for myself first and foremost (after touching up the earlier updates of course LOL). It’d be like a physical representation of my achievement. I hope I can make it there.

Anyways, I’ve rambled for far too long. I’m not sure why I suddenly felt like talking about uh, everything but yeaaaah. If you’ve read this far, kudos to you! You now have a window into my soul that I’m still not sure if I’m comfortable with revealing (but I’m comfortable enough because I’m posting this so...)!

After reading all of this, can you tell why I always get so so happy after each update? It’s the fruition of what’s usually 2-3 weeks of non-stop hard work! Seeing people connect with it always sends me to another realm of bliss and I always feel soft like putty LOL.

#myon speaks #HOLY MOLY #ITS 2K WORDS #no pressure for anyone to read all of this #its just me rambling into the air~#if you've been keeping up with my series: i just want to say thank you #this series is really important to me (i explain why in the post im not aboutta start rambling again)

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s4mmysbunk3r · 3 years

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Oh, well. Guess I’m going to be stuck thinking about that post and everyone laughing at me all day long, huh? And dealing with vitriol bullies in my DMs all day? I hope that’s what you all wanted. Because the more I. think about what happened to me the. more boiling I get. I was only looking through that blog on behalf of a friend to see if they’d said something weird about their comfort character Benny Lafitte, couldn’t find. it but stumbled across that post with Jared’s face crossed out, and I was so stupid to fucking. reply right on the post but it’s just that I have a habit of doing that cause I thought you know that’s what posts are for! I didn’t think; I just didn’t think! I couldn’t even imagine this would happen but now I’m a labelled “SPN Heritage Post” for being “insane” when it’s the stipud fucking Destielcule who were insane enough not to just answer a question? Like wow. I don’t think I can forgive this if it’s all the same. The shoe is on the other side of the road now. And you know, I understamnd now that Jared isn’t that great a fucking guy and I’m not defending him, but I still don’t understand why you wouldn’t just pick a picture with just Dean on it if that’s what you needed. The red cross out seems so unnecessary unless you’re idk the Mafia? Besides, it’s not Sam Winchester’s fault that he’s played by a shitty guy! The picture is of Dean and his brother in character. There are so many pictures of. Dean if that’s what you wanted or needed. and I think it just lends it’s self to misunderstandings to hatefully cross someone’s whole face out rather than cropping or using a different image. Unless you are the KGB or the post is about how much you hate Sam or want to kill Sam or wish Sam wasn’t in the show or finale, exceopt it wasn’t, it was about Dean missing somebody, I don’t know the full context. But I do know Sam had nothing to do with that post and there’s no need to create extraneous character hate for no reasons especially when there’s no intention for it. I stand by my statement that it’s drastic and hateful inherently. And maybe I was never meant to see that post but if you’re posting things on public blogs it’s bound to be seen, any anti Sam image you make cam be seen by Sam girls who are looking for content of our fave. I don’t understand why this had to happen at all and now I have to keep looking over my shoulder every time I post because the whole fucking Cule has its eyes on my now as the insame Sam girl Satch (Sam x Ketch) shipper who blows her lid at nothing, hahaha laugh it up! It is so unreal what this had turned into when it could have been a nothing interaction. Now I’m suffocating under a dogpile of toxic Destiel shippers who have nothing better to do then point their fingers and laugh because a Sam girl misspoke. or didn’t know what was going on. And I don’t want to delete and remake while I have an ongoing fanfic seris that my readers are waiting for. Why did I ever respond to that post

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ckret2 · 4 years

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Not Quite Exactly Shell Shock

Guess what time it is, it’s time for Prowl Week. Written for @prowlweek day 1 prompt: “Crash”

I’ve been looking for an opportunity to port most of my autistic Prowl headcanons from my RP blog to some actual fic so here’s some “Prowl stims to get through a shutdown caused by sensory overload and his spy friends are trying so hard to be protective of him while he recovers that they almost start punching each other.”

###

"Is he in there?" Jazz asked.

Getaway and Skids, huddled in front of an inconspicuous door, looked up at Jazz warily. "Who?" Skids asked.

"Prowl."

Getaway shrugged languidly. "Don't think so. How would we know?"

Jazz laughed wryly. "C'mon. Spec Ops. You think I don't know about Prowl's hand-picked diplomats?"

They both flinched at that, but did an admirable job of disguising it. Their adjusted their postures—a shift of their footing, a roll of their shoulders—as they stopped pretending that they were casually hanging out in front of this door and revealed they were standing guard in front of it.

"He's occupied," Skids said. "He's not taking visitors right now."

"He can take one," Jazz said. "We just got out of a nasty battle, Prowl missed the officer meeting, Optimus needs somebody to set eyes on him. Gotta confirm he's not bleeding out on the battlefield somewhere."

"You can tell Optimus we set eyes on him," Skids said. "No injuries, just—stressed."

Stressed. Jazz hesitated, processing that; then nodded slowly. "Okay. Got it. And I believe you," Jazz said. "But Optimus isn't gonna buy 'some of the troops said they saw him'—he needs an officer to lay eyes on him and make sure everything's fine."

Skids considered that and nodded. Getaway, though, planted one hand on his hip—covering a little more of the door with his elbow—and said, "He is fine. Sorry, but the big guy's gonna have to take our word for it. Prowl can't take visitors right now."

"I understand what you mean," Jazz said pointedly, "but I'm talking about Optimus. He's gonna insist—"

"Well," Getaway snapped, "I insist—"

Voice lowered, Jazz said, "Look, Prowl's a little overwhelmed right now, right? You wanna protect him, I respect that—I appreciate that—but I can handle it. I won't bug him, you've got my word. I promise."

"We've made a promise to him, and that's worth more to me than some random officer—"

"A random officer," Jazz said coldly, "who's known Prowl longer than you've been alive."

Getaway lunged a half step toward Jazz before Skids caught him across the chest and held him back.

"We're both on his side," Jazz said. "C'mon. If I don't go in there, Optimus is going to. And he's gonna try to get Prowl to debrief him."

"It's okay," Skids said to Getaway. "Jazz is fine, he knows how Prowl works too. Prowl can handle him."

Getaway remained tense a moment; then shrugged off Skids's grip, leaned on the wall beside the door, and crossed his arms and legs like he'd been casually hanging out there the whole time. Jazz gave him a wan smile and a nod of gratitude before opening the door.

The room was dark except for Prowl's biolights; Prowl flinched at the light from the hall. Jazz quickly slid the door shut and took a seat in front of Prowl's desk.

Prowl wordlessly turned his chair away from Jazz. Jazz bit back a chuckle. He knew why Prowl did it—seeing Jazz moving out of the corner of his optics, even just minute twitches and adjustments that Jazz wasn't even conscious of, would just irritate his processor even more—but it was still a hell of a greeting.

Based on what little Jazz had gotten out of Prowl's door guards, Prowl was in about the condition Jazz had expected: very still, completely unsocial, not a sound except for the extra cooling fans around his brain module loudly whirring at top speed. By what Jazz had seen of his face, his expression was completely blank, completely calm; it usually was whenever he was struggling under a crushing psychological load. He was twisting his hands around some small clicking objects that Jazz couldn't see but knew from experience were magnets. There was a lot of clicking. It seemed serious. So Jazz sat back to wait.

Whenever anyone doubted Prowl's capabilities as a strategist, Prowl was fond of dryly pointing out that he was capable of calculating the trajectory of eight hundred moving objects simultaneously. What Prowl didn't often point out was that he was incapable of calculating eight hundred and one objects (or whatever—he'd often tiredly told Jazz that it wasn't exactly 801, it was just that 800 was the maximum he was programmed to safely handle, anything over that was a risk), and that trying to go over the threshold overwhelmed his processor's capabilities. The problem was, if he saw objects in motion, he was unable to choose not to track and calculate their motion. If he saw it, his brain ran calculations. If his brain ran too many calculations, things started glitching. If too much was moving at once, Prowl's entire processor became unable to do anything but attempt to work through them all—along with the mountain of ever-growing error messages.

When Prowl had too much to process, he needed to hide somewhere until his head could work through all the calculations. Extra light added more calculations, extra motion in his sight added more calculations, trying to hold a conversation massively piled on more calculations. For some reason, calculating magnetic fields—such as the feeling of magnets in Prowl's hands—not only cut to the top of the queue of pending calculations, but rapidly deleted other items off the queue when few other things Prowl did could do so.

Jazz didn't have the faintest idea why magnets worked—Prowl had tried to explain once, got about five minutes into a long explanation about electromagnetic forces and the calculation thereof that Jazz lost track of about a minute into, until finally Prowl had to lamely sum up with "They... fffeel better?"—but if the magnets helped Prowl put his head back together when it was falling apart, that was good enough for Jazz.

Jazz wondered what had gotten Prowl this time. There'd been a lot of missiles flying around. He hadn't counted to see if there were over 800 in the air at once, but then he didn't have a processor that automatically forced him to count. Maybe it was just from trying to run tactical simulations and talk to everyone about them at the same time, sometimes that got him too. There was a reason Prowl was their head strategist instead of head tactician.

While Jazz waited for Prowl to get back to a place where he could talk, he pulled out his comm unit and texted Optimus: "Found Prowl. He's okay, just shellshocked." Optimus had a looser grasp on how Prowl's uncommon operating system worked than those who had known him better and longer did; they'd found shell shock was the closest metaphor that he could grasp. As long as Optimus knew that Prowl didn't want his brain to be doing what it was currently doing any more than Optimus did and that the best way to ensure it would stop doing that was to leave Prowl the hell alone in his office until it was over, they figured he understood enough.

Jazz had let Optimus know that Prowl didn't appear to be injured and that he'd get Prowl the notes on the officer meeting by the time Prowl said sharply, "What?"

"Optimus wanted me to make sure that you're alive." Keeping it simple and short, Jazz found, was the best way to ensure that Prowl actually managed to process the statement without adding to his already overworked processor.

It took several seconds for Prowl to reply: "Yeah."

Jazz gave him another few seconds to recover from sorting through that sentence before throwing a question at him. "Want me to leave?"

Another few seconds: "No."

Jazz nodded, sat back, and waited until Prowl was ready to say more.

###

Also crossposted to AO3, link in the post source. If you enjoyed the fic, I’d appreciate a comment or reblog!

#prowl #transformers #maccadam #jazz #skids #getaway #fanfic #my writing #prowlweek

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lavenderek · 3 years

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i have a thought to express, feel free to scroll past.

i’m gonna discuss rape and sexual abuse in this post. it’s also long because i don’t really have a conclusion, it’s just some thoughts.

so i was looking into that reality show that facilitated shane dawson’s horrible movie “not cool” and i stumbled across a reddit thread posted by someone who was a fan of his as a preteen. the OP alleged that shane’s content contributed to them developing some serious issues including body dysmorphia and the normalization of sexual behavior involving children.

some of the comments were in support and agreement, but a large amount of them were like, “where were your parents? it’s not shane’s job to police what you see online. it’s not his fault you were too young for his content.”

now, shane was well aware from the jump that his fans were mostly kids and teens - he talked about it multiple times - but that’s not what this post is about. this post is about that particular argument, which does not sit well with me.

it reminded me of a couple years ago when i made a very critical post about c*ptive prince.

pause: i want to make it crystal clear that i am not drawing a comparison between people who like cp and shane dawson. i’m not mad anymore, so i am not making this post making a value judgment on cp or fans of it, positive or negative.

specifically, i was really bothered by the way cp content was posted and shared with no mention of or reference to the actual material. people were calling it a queer romance. it was a little-known series by a little-known author, so there were no synopses anywhere online, only the summary you’d see on the back of the book. so people would seek out cp thinking it was a romance and be blindsided by the fact that, spoilers, the story is set in a fantasy world where child rape is a major tenet of society. the scenes are explicit, detailed, and many. it’s not a thing that happens once or twice and is a major plot point, it’s a thing that happens multiple times in every chapter and is just kind of a thing that’s going on. if you’ve ever read twilight, i would compare the presence of rape in cp to the presence of rain in twilight.

like, that’s how often it happened, that’s how it was treated. sometimes with indifference, sometimes with a negative opinion, sometimes it caused problems, bella talks about it every two pages. it is a very rapey series.

and people like, did not want to discuss this. they were like, “the characters decide the rape is bad in the end. and that’s not even what the story is about, it just happens in the story. i don’t know what to tell you.” like... people were not receptive to any kind of conversation about this topic lmfao, it was very touchy. they wanted to acknowledge that rape itself is bad, and then they wanted the subject closed.

now, why is this a problem? i read the books. there were parts i enjoyed, and there were parts i didn’t enjoy. i’m not gonna reread them, but i’m still game to talk about it. ultimately i wanted to be able to talk about books with a friend of mine, and while i was like, “yikes, this is a lot of rape, was not expecting the volume of rape,” it didn’t occur to me this would be a pervasive issue at all until a different friend of mine happened upon it. this other friend was a rape survivor, and i happened to know she would find this content very upsetting. when she said she was thinking of buying the book, i was like, “halt, you know what happens in it, right?”

nope! she didn’t. she saw cute fanart and a ficlet on her dash, somebody told her it was a queer romance. nowhere was there any indicator in summaries online or the posts she was seeing that the book would describe a person being drugged and sexually abused. she was pretty relieved that i’d warned her and shaken that that’s what happens in the books lmao. she would never have guessed. the cp fandom was made up of people who loved the main pairing, and they’d talk about them being in love and draw them being in love, and it felt like everybody was just acting like the rape wasn’t even present in the books lmao.

pause: i didn’t go in the tags. this is not representative of the fandom as a whole. this is just my and my friend’s experience of it as passive internetgoers.

people got uncomfortable and a little defensive if i brought it up. they’d agree to tag for cp, but if you don’t know what cp is about, that isn’t helpful information. like that post that’s like, “waterboarding at guantanamo bay sounds like a lot of fun if you don’t know what either of those things are” lmao. if you don’t know what cp is about, tagging for it just tells you what it’s called. and it very clearly ruined everyone’s fun if i talked about this.

so that’s what i was mad about, i was mad that i felt as though there was no recourse here, and i was mad because i felt like the cp fandom was the emperor’s new clothes. nobody was acting like it even existed and everybody got uncomfortable if i brought it up, like, i legitimately wondered at some point if i had somehow accidentally read a kinky rewrite of it, that the real version did not have rape in it and nobody knew what i was talking about. i felt like i was going crazy and i got shitty in the middle of the night one time, and wrote that post.

i ultimately deleted it, so i do not remember how it was worded; but i do recall that it was a venting post, it was not intended to reach a wider audience. i was not trying to convince anyone in that moment, i was just talking shit. so i can bet that it probably came across as very judgmental and unkind.

i made a bunch of people very angry with that post. somebody got thousands of notes by reblogging with an impassioned smackdown saying basically what those redditors were saying about shane - it’s not their job to police what people see online. it’s not their fault you were unprepared for cp.

i do not think this is a nuanced enough argument because i do not think it acknowledges that not all content is created equal.

i even got an anon ask in good faith saying, well, a huge trigger for me is body horror, and people will draw or reblog stuff with body horror in it, and i can’t hold that against them.

and like, no, you can’t, but body horror is not the same as rape or child sexual abuse. body horror isn’t the same as sex trafficking. right? like those things aren’t comparable in the way that i think the anon was wanting them to be. they were saying that both of these are common triggers that people would want tagged and be unable to move past in media, you know? and i get that, i got what they were saying.

kind of like that cartoonist who wrote a spooky horror comic a while ago and somebody sent them an ask being like, “that was really scary, you usually post fun comics, this was damaging, unfollowed :/” like obviously a stranger’s fear of spooky things is not something he should be expected to take on on his own blog lmao. i am deeply afraid of ghosts, by the way.

but according to rainn.org, 1 in 5 women experience rape in their lifetime. 1 in 5 women are not frightened by literal ghosts in their lifetime. 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 7 boys aren’t body horrored. body horror and ghosts aren’t used on a global scale as tools to control and abuse people and they do not have the same connotations of shame, degradation, and control. the things are not the same.

i don’t have an easy answer. i can’t wave my magic wand and make people not enjoy the rape erotica, nor was that my goal in the first place. i wasn’t clutching my pearls like, “how dare you! do not draw this art! think of the children!” and i don’t know how else i would have solved the problem, aside from having a weird disclaimer under your art of two dudes cuddling that says “warning, these dudes are from a book that’s got several thousand words of explicit rape in it, and i know that, you’re not the only one seeing that,” like that’s a lot and i get it.

i don’t have an easy answer because there isn’t one. i felt like “well, that’s not my problem” was an easy answer.

as i get older, the more responsibility i have as an adult online to maintain boundaries between me and minors, for example. i am not responsible for their internet experience and they can’t get mad at me for cussing or writing about gay werewolves on my blog, but i do have to be mindful of that context if i’m interacting with someone online. that’s where the complexity comes in. you can’t wash your hands of the context of the things you say and do online.

just how to solve these problems, i did not know then and i do not know now. i guess we take it on a case by case basis.

if you’re curious about shane dawson and his horrible movie, by the way, this guy did a few funny videos about the horrible movie and this guy did a not funny but comprehensive breakdown of shane and his career.

and i tried to tint my eyebrows for the first time the other day, i have red hair and my eyebrows are darker than my hair for some reason, so i tried to use an eyebrow tint to lift my brows just like, a shade, so be closer to my hair? but in doing this i discovered that my eyebrows are a mixture of red and brown?

so the red hairs lifted to a sunny orange, and the brown hairs stayed brown. so my eyebrows are fully like, calico right now. boom, orange juice, that’s life

#diary post #long post

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recurring-polynya · 4 years

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Fanfic Weekly Roundup 9/14/2020:

Okay, it’s been, like, 2 months since I did one of these, and I apologize for that, but also, August was like... really dry at the old fanfic well? And I’ve been working my ass off for the last three week (at... what, exactly, Polynya? It is hard to say) Anyway, here’s some fanfics that I liked. Hopefully, it won’t take another 2 months before we have another.

I think I missed this one when it first came out (otherwise, it would have made the last roundup... I write these by going back through my AO3 history), but The Bet, by @lethanwolf was really cute! It was by an author who doesn’t usually go for RenRuki, but wrote it for a friend, and I really respect stretching like that, and they did a great job!

I was here first by tasteoftheforbidden is a Byakuya/Soi Fon story and I cannot imagine why I clicked on it in the first place, but it was really cute??? Like, at first they are really grumpy, and then they are like, “ah, I respect what a grump you are” and then they eat snacks. It worked. I was delighted by it, perhaps you will be as well.

Here We Meet Again by @marlasinger93-blog is just getting started, but the first chapter is really, really cute! It’s a Rukia and Renji awkwardly reconnecting after the Soul Society Arc, which I will openly admit I have an endless appetite for. I helped translate it, and I hope there will be more eventually!

I feel like I mentioned Captivate, by before @kissedbynightshade, but I couldn’t find it, so I will mention it now! It’s a little bit high concept-- it’s a modern AU where Izuru has the power to jump back in time-- usually a few minutes-- to prevent tragedy from occurring. However, after Rangiku is killed, he jumps all the way back to his teenhood, where he has the possibility to prevent deaths of Renji, Momo, and Shuuhei. It’s not actually very hard to follow, and it is an amazing mood piece. Just really chewy, poetic, melancholy Izuru (who is trans in this story; it is just sort of slid in there very naturally and it works), with a heavy dose of mystery. It is, as they say, my jam.

Is it time for the @kazeshini-s section of the roundup? We have two this time!:

Personal Questions features Orihime digging into those burning questions about how shinigami function that we all want the answer to.

Cut a Deal (We’re All Gonna Die Anyway) is Advance Team Arc fic about Orihime going to Soul Society to train with Rukia and I admit I requested it and I don’t care it was SO GOOD. Features both Orihime & Renji bonding AND Orihime & Rukia bonding, what more could you ask for???

These two are not on AO3, but do not sleep on this one where Chad Makes Renji a Burrito or this Karakura Kids Cuddle Puddle.

time in a bottle by atlntyda is a fairly short, Orihime introspection piece, but I really liked it!

Somebody to Someone by @jkrobertson Excuse me, did someone say lieutenant friendship fic? This is my love language.

Squad 4's Pregnancy Guide for the Unwed Shinigami by manonlechat is a very silly fic where Gin is a gremlin and Matsumoto is like “well, this might as well happen.” I got a good laugh out of it.

In Between Days by @spyder-m Renji birthday fic! Renji birthday fic! Renji reflects on 40 years worth of birthdays, with and without Rukia.

the one to someone by @shamelessllamapeanutthing After the Soul Society Arc, Rukia chews over who she wants to be and who she wants to be with. Ugh, I loved this one. Great character work on Rukia, and very good and sexy banter with Renji. I am extremely bad at writing sexual tension, and I am jealous of the chemistry here. (I am very good at two-halves-of-one-idiot, and I am thankful for that, but every once in a while, it would be nice...sigh)

Icy Summits by Chaotic Dreamer was a very cute story about Renji and Rukia going on a mission as lieutenants together, shortly after they start dating. What I liked about this, is that the tension of the story is based on them both trying to do what they think is best, and they talk it out in a really healthy way, and that shit clears my pores and whitens my teeth.

Anchor and Vulnerable by squeaker_deaker. Renruki family drabbles. Real, actual-100-words drabbles. I could never. How.

We all know how I feel about ByaRen fic-- I don’t care for the pairing very extremely specific reasons, but I like both characters so much that I will occasionally read one if I think the characterization is gonna be real good (shippers be doin’ characterization, I said it). Anyway, I saw the tags “scenery porn” and “samurai do samurai things” on Heart Tangled by Grizmelder (there is a grizmelder on Tumblr who I think might be the same person, but I am afraid to tag them in case they aren’t although I just followed them because as I was scrolling thru their blog, I found both Brendan Frasier content and the LOTR Volvo meme, so obvs they are cool and I really hope they don’t click on my blog and say “who is this anime weirdo?”). Anyway, look, if you are a Period Drama Slut like me, you gotta read this. Friends, I shipped it. It’s an AU, of course, and it somehow manages to circumvent all my canon ByaRen hangups and I don’t know who I am any more. It’s just... costumes and hair and archery and poetry and longing and sexiness. The latest chapter was epistolary. Oh, right, there is actual porn in it also, you have been warned. (also period-accurate homophobia and suicide refs, it’s a pretty serious and heart-wrenching story)

I know I am always on here, shilling The Thin Red Line. The last few chapters were absolute fire, and it was absolutely the high point of my week when a new one went up. The author, who is A_Fine_Piece on AO3 and Crimson Bttrfly on ff.net, recently announced she is discontinuing it after she got some harsh comments, and also deleted her Tumblr. I am absolutely devastated by this. She wasn’t someone I knew super-well, but we responded to each other’s comments and I really liked her. This was actually the second time this week I heard about someone getting negative fanfic comments, and all I’ll say about that is, if you’re reading a fanfic and you hate everything about it, why don’t you give yourself the gift of closing the tab and not saying anything at all? I can’t even imagine what someone could criticize about this fic, it is so well-crafted and beautifully written. I am so, so mad about this. Please leave a kind comment for an author you love this week, if you can. Writing fanfic is pretty thankless compared to the amount of effort that goes into it, we gotta protect and cherish our authors (and artists, too, for that matter!). My poor, weak heart cannot take any more of my faves quitting.

#bleach fanfic #polynya weekly fanfic roundup #phew this was exhausting #i... should be more on top of things #but that is true generally #thank you to all these fanfic heroes #i cannot imagine what i would do without you

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neshabeingchildish · 4 years

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Road to Dystopia Pt. 3

@sunbeameyes @kiddangers @bitchmilsky @adorkable-blackgirl @chenoahchantel @daintyurbanprincess @ciara-knightly @famousflowermagazine @imma-sensitive-btch @junknstu1f @grymrayven @supercasperprincesslove-blog

The author’s notes were cute the first time. Idk if I can recreate it. Smh. Accidentally deleted the first time. I know that I wanted to thank everyone who read, those who reviewed and those who enjoyed this fic. I’m sorry to anybody to didn’t enjoy, or anybody mad that this is the end, because you enjoyed it that much. And now the conclusion.

Goodbye Swellview

Ray was exhausted, but knew that he needed to address the public and also work on damage control for the incidents that Drex created and there no longer was a line to the Man Cave for the concerned citizens. He had to let them know that the system would return soon, that all of the known criminals were locked away, that jobs would be created in order to fix all of the various damages all over the city, from the majestic mountain of Mount Swellview, to the lowly old junk store, caught up in the wake of destruction. He had to assure the parents of at least four missing children that their children were probably going on Goonies-like adventures to try to search for Kid Danger and would each be returned home as soon as they were found… He had a lot of responsibilities to handle that the Kid would’ve smoothed over. So, he would do it for him.

Getting Henry into the new space and immediately tending to his medical needs, Charlotte and Schwoz worked to make sure that he was stable, giving the others instructions whenever they needed, until he was settled. Once he was hooked up to an IV and resting, Charlotte addressed all of his other injuries as he slept, and Schwoz and Piper went to retrieve the helicopter. Jasper wondered, “Is there anything that I can help with?”

“You can keep me company, if you want.”

He smiled, “Just try and get rid of me.” She smiled and continued. Henry had gotten pretty beaten up by Drex before the crash, because she knew that none of these injuries were likely related to that. Those would have been more serious, but these were pretty ugly, still. “Honestly, I may eff around and just blow off Harberd for a minute to roam Dystopia with you,” he said nonchalantly, but when she looked up at him, he seemed completely serious and pretty expectant.

“Well, a lot of people cancelled their flights after Drex attacked Swellview, so I’ll bet there’s an empty seat on mine, if you’re serious.”

He clenched his fists in excitement and wondered, “You’d really take me with you?”

She looked at him like she immediately regretted it, but he could tell that she was purposefully making that face. There was a little smile in her eyes as she furrowed her eyebrows at him. “I can’t believe that we all have superpowers,” Jasper said. Now, her facial expression was genuinely judgmental. “Don’t look at me like that! You said it yourself that I’m a superhero.”

“I said hero,” she corrected.

“Exactly, and now I’ve joined the ranks of the supers, along with Henry and Ray… and I guess you too, with your… roboticizing brain chip, but turning into a robot isn’t really the same thing as having a superpower.”

“I didn’t turn into a robot. The nanotechnology just goes through my body to where it’s needed to make the chip work properly with my brain. The chip isn’t even in my brain, it’s just in my head, and the technology can travel through my blood stream because there is organic material in the…” She saw from his face that he had no idea what she was talking about, so she concluded, “I’m not a robot. I’m still Charlotte, just… like a Super Charlotte.”

“Super Charlotte,” he repeated. She nodded. “But, not a robot.” She nodded. “Can you control other machines?”

“I can… communicate with other technology. Not so much control as to kind of get in tune with them, maybe jump on their network and sometimes hack effortlessly. I’ve still got a lot of testing out to do with this thing.”

“I don’t understand why you don’t just take it out, now. We’ve found Henry. That’s what you told me that you put it in for.” She didn’t respond to that and when she glanced at him she realized that he was waiting for a response. She still didn’t. He continued, “It’s just dangerous and it’s scary.”

“It’ll be really helpful when I get to Dystopia. It’ll be like a computer that nobody can steal from me on the train! You know that I got one of those robot hand gloves for protection? You can like attach it to the sleeve of your coat and it makes for someone stealing out of your hand very difficult. I was gonna wear it AND latch my computer to it while traveling. This is way safer!”

“For your computer, I guess,” he mumbled. She sighed. In too loud of a voice, he asked, “Well, what about that super strength, then? If you aren’t a robot now?”

Henry’s eyes blinked and she gave Jasper a look. They waited a moment, then she quietly said, “Some years ago, before you were on the team, I was kidnapped and altered to exterminate Ray and Henry.”

“I’ve heard this story. They turned you into a little, tiny Terminator, with a rap song.”

“Right. Well, Schwoz changed the signal and undid the mind control, but apparently there was still some kind of mechanism in me that could still be that way and the cyberchip was able to tap into it because the nanotechnology goes through my bloodstream. Simple explanation.” He opened his mouth and she said, “Still not a robot.”

“But robot enough,” he said.

She rolled her eyes and touched Henry’s hand, “All set.” Charlotte began to go put away the medical supplies and Jasper kept an eye on her. “This new lair is horribly positioned. It’s out in the open, like… everybody who passes by will be able to see it…”

“That’s a power move!” Jasper said. “It’s like, Yeah, I’m Captain Man and this is where I be. And what you gonna do about it?”

She sighed and said, “Captain Man didn’t make the move, but I guess. Of course, that’s awful risky for those of us who are NOT Captain Man. At least with the Man Cave, it was… hidden.”

Jasper shrugged his shoulders, “Is your assignment in Dystopia gonna be hidden?” It was a fair point. She shook her head, then he looked worried. “What exactly is your charity work? I forgot to ask.”

“Well, I actually told you a few times, but I guess it wasn’t that important to you,” she said, semi playfully. It was really frustrating to have to repeat stuff to her friends because they didn’t care enough about her life to retain anything.

“One more time, please, and I promise it won’t happen again,” Jasper said.

She nodded. He’d been pretty attentive all day, so she believed that promise from him. “In Dystopia, there are a lot of oppressive laws. The charity that I’m going to be working with is one that moves to try to educate little girls, in order to help them to not have to be child brides, or be obtained for human trafficking by Dystopia’s crime lords. There is a base of operations, which is kind of like a camp, and there is a settlement nearby - it has a shelter for some of the girls that they don’t necessarily have the resources to teach, but still have had to rescue from one of the terrible fates that happen to little girls there.”

“It is complete and utter bullshit that I didn’t remember you telling me this!” Jasper said, disgusted with himself.

“Yeah,” she agreed.

“Well… I mean… I’m not good at teaching, so is there other stuff I can do? Like… I don’t know… punch somebody if they try to steal our girls and sell them?”

“Yes, you can do that… OR… You know, you’ve got that fancy camera that I bought you for Christmas last year… You could document some of the conditions to share with the world.” She felt pretty bad for sicking a swarm of moths on him, so she made sure that she got him a really good gift. It killed her guilt whenever he opened it up.

“See? You are really great with ideas!” Jasper cheered. “Man, I’m gonna definitely start listening to you again.”

She was going to ask him when did he ever listen to her, but someone cut into their conversation with, “And what the heck am I gonna do in Dystopia?” Charlotte and Jasper both gasped and rushed to give Henry a triple hug. They both spoke at the same time about how they thought he was dead and they couldn’t believe he was alive, they were so glad, etc. He smiled in their arms and they all stayed there for a long time, eventually quieting down and just… resting, for the first time in the past few days, really.

After they were able to finally let go, Henry noted that Jasper and Charlotte were holding hands. He was just about to ask what was up with that, but each of them took one of his free hands and they sort of… were just chilling, just like that. “Are we friends that hold hands, now?” Henry asked, laughing a little.

“SUPER friends that hold hands!” Jasper corrected him. “We’ve got superpowers! I can fight and speak Spanish, ‘That’s not a-’(Henry tried, but Jasper kept going), Charlotte turns into a robot, ‘Not a robot…’ (She also attempted), and YOU HAVE A FORCEFIELD!”

Henry nodded, “Yeah, I DO have a forcefield… Wait, Charlotte, you turned into a robot? How long was I trapped in that crash site?”

“I am not a robot,” she said. They were quiet for a little bit longer and then she wondered, “Do… do you really wanna come with us to Dystopia?”

“Like he has a choice!” Jasper said.

“He does. He has plenty of choices. He could go to Neighborville as their hero. He could stay in Swellview with Ray and help him with the fallout of what happened. He could resign from hero life, hide his power and finish his high school education…” She listed.

Henry nodded at all of those unsavory ideas. Well, they were okay, but… they would include him being too far away from his two best friends, who he didn’t even want to leave before he had a severely traumatic near death experience. “Yeah… But… What could I do in Dystopia?” He asked her. He and Jasper looked at her attentively, actually waiting for her advice.

“You… could… work on your GED online, or even probably sit in on some higher level classes at the charity base, work in the community garden, maybe even do security for the shelter… You could… be a hero there. Rebrand yourself and become a new hero and a new kind of hope for Dystopia…”

“Can… I do all of that, or I gotta choose one? Because the community garden sounds awesome, but I feel like with a superpower, I should probably say that last one, or at least security…”

“You can do whatever you want, Henry. You’ll have backup,” she said and she and Jasper smiled at each other and then at him.

“I want to take a shower. I am super musty.” They all acknowledged the same. Nobody had washed up. But, also… Nobody knew where a shower might be in this place, either.

After they found it, Charlotte told them that they could go first, she was going to try to get them something to change into. She’d seen the gumball maker and she knew how to work it. Hell, she knew how to make an Omega weapon.. She looked up and Jasper was in the doorway while Henry showered, but keeping an eye on her. “Jasper, what are you…?”

“I’m just… leery about leaving either of you alone right now. Is that dumb?” he asked.

She shook her head. It wasn’t. She got it.

Captain Man announced that Kid Danger died saving a baby hospital, and if Henry wanted to remain a hero, he could always just be someone else. He had a different power, and everything. But… also… He knew that Henry didn’t want to stick around. While he was out working on getting the city calmed down, Schwoz made sure that the kids got home. And, he didn’t really hear from them while they were recovering. He could guess why.

To keep up appearances, they kept their social media active. Charlotte and Jasper replaced their phones and were posting hella photos of them mourning Kid Danger, but grateful for the chance to graduate and move on. Henry was with Piper a lot, showing up in her social media - mostly because SHE was so grateful that he actually wasn’t dead, but she was never going to admit that. Instead, she said stuff like, “Spending my last Swellview days with my biggest fan, my reckless brother” or some other version. “This idiot” and so on.

But, they were together, mostly. Piper had several graduation parties to attend and was requested at every Kid Danger memorial, as President of the Man Fans, so whenever she did those things, she left Henry at Charlotte’s. Jasper had only been home to grab his things and spent the rest of the time there, too. Charlotte was working on building a portable gumball maker, because it would be so much easier for them if they DIDN’T have to pack a lot of clothes, and also, Henry would need something for hero stuff. Then, Jasper wondered if she could make him something for hero stuff too, “Since I have superpowers now,” he said. She put it on her list.

Henry came in while she was working on that and Jasper was playing on his phone with his head in her lap. “Yo, yo, yiggety yo yo yo!” Henry cheered.

Jasper gasped and said, “BOOK CHECK!” He picked up one of Charlotte’s books from the workstation and threw it at Henry, who reflexively and defensively blocked it with a forcefield. “Amazing,” Jasper observed.

While Charlotte yelled, “Hey!” Because he threw one of her books. Henry picked it up and set it back where it went. “Hey, how are you, Hen?” Charlotte asked.

“Not as good as Jasper, with the best seat in the house,” he teased, then took his own seat, next to Jasper and leaned back onto Charlotte’s lap, as well.

“I’m not furniture,” she reminded them.

“We’re idiot doggies. We don’t know the difference,” Henry said. She rolled her eyes and continued working. “Are we sitting together at the city wide service?”

“Don’t you think you should sit with your family, after what happened to you and what almost happened to you?” Charlotte asked.

“You… two… are my family,” Henry said. Jasper reached over and took his hand. Charlotte strummed his hair. They continued with their plan of action for attending the service and making it to the airport…

Henry was confused whenever the bird hurt itself flying into him, but that was short lived. It was short lived, because the moment that he saw the blimp connecting with the mountain, and he watched in slow motion as what he believed to be his last few moments alive took place, he wished for something else. He tried to focus on why he did this. It was because he loved Ray, but also… because Swellview did need Captain Man. But Kid Danger?

Swellview couldn’t have needed him. His friends didn’t even need him. They had planned futures. They had decided to move on without him. But… Charlotte’s last cry. Hearing her scream his name, then all of the noise of the Man Cave crumbling… Did they make it out? Would they be free to leave Swellview? Would they… still want to… after this? Because the fire, the wreckage and the explosions that he was witnessing… there was no way that he was going to be alive for much longer. He jumped off of the blimp, hoping that at least if he wasn’t incinerated in the explosion, they would have something to confirm what happened to him. The babies were safe, so he no longer had to steer the blimp. A Swellview block was safe. Swellview was safe, thanks to him. Ray was safe. Knowing how dedicated Jasper was to doing what he said, Jasper and Charlotte were safe. He could die, knowing that the people that he loved were able to live on.

Whenever he landed, back first, he braced himself, but he bounced, then stopped moving. Was it so painful that he couldn’t feel it? Was it so bad that he had dissociated? He checked himself. He was still glowing green and he appeared unharmed… But… wreckage from the mountain and the blimp soon came tumbling down and he braced himself yet again to be killed… He wasn’t, though. Just… trapped. “Okay, so it’s slow starvation instead of instantaneous impact or at least a torturous few moments of burning?” He sighed and tried to shove the flaming wreckage off of himself. Not only was it not working, but more and more kept falling onto him. “Or suffocation?” He said, noting that it was very difficult to breathe under all of this. He started to try to see if this… protective glow could maybe push off some of this stuff like it deflected that bird and like it padded his fall. He was able to get himself a little more breathing room, but he was pretty buried. All that was left to do now was wait - either for this forcefield to fail and these rocks to crush him to death, to succumb to hunger, or maybe something else horrific could happen.

He tried to see if his phone was still on him. Maybe he could call someone. Maybe he could call Charlotte or Jasper… He recalled her voice screaming his name as presumably, she got out of the Man Cave? But… what if she didn’t? What if she and Jasper only made it as far as the elevator and everything collapsed, making it plunge right back down into the explosions? He shouldn’t think like that! He should try to have some hope… But… that was enough to scare him away from trying to call either of them. He tried to press the buttons by memory. Maybe he could contact Piper. She was out of dodge, so she was definitely safe and sound, somewhere… But his phone must’ve had bad coverage, because nothing happened. No connection… He was on his own, just the way that he figured he’d be whenever Team Danger left him in Swellview. “I’m gonna die here, in this place,” he announced miserably, to himself. “Alone…” He whispered and shut his eyes. Nobody was around, so it was okay for him to cry.

Time was lost on him. He almost passed out a few times, but immediately jumped awake whenever he felt the force field slip and the wreckage get heavier against him. His jump scare wake ups always push it out a little more, but not enough to free himself.

He thought about Jasper. The way he used to always try to be affectionate and it would make Henry slightly uncomfortable and try to avoid him for a moment… If he had Jasper here right now, he would hug him so tightly and apologize and tell him that he loved him and kiss him right on the lips. As friends, or whatever. It didn’t matter. He didn’t tell Jasper how much he appreciated him and his love and now, he was going to die alone and Jasper was going to maybe light a candle before he left for college, hopefully mourn accordingly and then move on with his life.

Charlotte… she was gonna go… what was she doing out there? Dystopia… was she working in one of their food deserts? If he had Charlotte here right now, he’d tell her to start from the beginning and tell him EVERYTHING on her mind. He wouldn’t cut her off, or tune her out, or make fun of her for how boring or nerdy whatever she was talking about was… Had he been that person? A person that doesn’t show his friends that he cared? A person who didn’t let his best friend love him? Didn’t listen to his other best friend? Would they even care to lose him? Kid Danger, sure… but… had he been a good enough Henry to them?

His brain was exhausted. His muscles hurt from the strain of staying alive inside of that force field, and his heart was broken by all of the regrets of being the kind of friend that friends and even his sister could just move on and leave behind. Maybe they were somewhere beating themselves up too. I mean… they WERE just gonna graduate and leave me… He felt bad for even thinking that way about them. They shouldn’t put their lives on hold just because HE had wasted his, and now, he had sacrificed it. He was probably always meant to be here. To fall, a hero, but die alone. He hated his mindset right now. He had been so sure whenever he sent Ray away. He had been so sure when the babies were safe. But, now, in this aftermath… He just wanted the death he deserved, a hero’s death… not this hell that he was putting himself through while he fought to stay alive, for what? Because starving, dehydration, and exhaustion were better than rock crushing?

He heard helicopters nearby and he tried to move. Maybe if he shifted a rock and knocked some down, they’d at least check this pile of rubbish. Rubbish? Weird. I must be delirious… One thing he wasn’t… moving those rocks. And it was hours before they began to move. He was about ready to throw in the towel. He was so out of it, he could’ve sworn that he heard Ray’s voice ask where he was. He answered. He’d been talking to himself and his ghosts all of this time. Might as well continue… Then, the rocks began to move and he saw their faces. Charlotte and Jasper! FINALLY. The death he deserved. Peaceful, with images that brought him joy and not anguish. He dropped the forcefield and he let himself find rest.

He hadn’t expected to wake up to find them there. He hadn’t expected to wake up at all, but he heard chatter about Dystopia and he knew those voices and he simply followed them until he was conscious again… and there they were - his friends. His loves. Of course, he wanted to be with them. He never wanted to have to be alone again, hero or not…

After a little bit, it became clear that they were going to have to do a little more than just help and watch after the girls in the program - people were always in need of help in Dystopia. They would wake up in the morning. Charlotte, wrapped up in two dudes and squirm her way out of them. She got better and better at putting their arms on each other so that she could stretch and have some tea before they got up. If Henry woke up first, he left a paper flower that he folded and a note that he went for a jog - he could do that, because he had a force field. Whenever Jasper woke up first, he would either stay where he was until somebody else got up, just cuddled up and watching them sleep.

No matter the order, they got up, took the train to the base. Charlotte taught classes, Jasper took photos and did maintenance work, and Henry helped with the community garden and security.

Any time that there was an alert for them to spring into action, Jasper and Henry were able to go more easily than she was, but the times when she DID get to go, those criminals had better watch out. She had a tap on mask programmed into her cyberchip, so she didn’t need to blow a bubble… she wasn’t big on gum, anyway, and she made sure that she kept Henry and Jasper’s gum supplied. Jasper needed two, they soon found out, after watching him be thrown around like a ragdoll, because he had not been able to sleep as easily with a pill. Charlotte’s sleeping gum recipe though? Put him right out and he was up and fighting in no time.

Henry had a hero complex with them. He still jumped in front of them and potential danger with his force fields, despite that they probably would be fine 9 times out of 10 if he hadn’t. He still asked Charlotte if she was going to go back to the base. He still felt like he was the one who had to protect them, sometimes. They were slowly getting him out of that habit every time they had to get out there and fight. Charlotte with her extensive gifts from the cyberchip. Jasper with his unique fighting style. And now, for however long they wanted to, the three of them would be as close… no… they were definitely already closer, than he and Ray had been when they were a team. Things worked out just as they were meant to! He wasn’t going to die alone. He smiled to himself as he popped the gumball into his mouth and rushed to catch up with his friends.

#Road to Dystopia #Nesha HD Fics #Dystopia #HD Dystopia #henry danger #hd ot3 #ot3 #Chensper

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staliaqueen · 4 years

Text

bittersweet | 20

pairing: stiles stilinski x oc a/n: part 20 y’all! I can’t believe I’ve actually written this far. until bittersweet my longest wip was literally 4 chapters long. thank you so much for loving and supporting my work, you’ve helped me come so far! warnings: swearing, mentions of death and murder. wordcount: 1723

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Stiles

The ride to the Sheriff’s Station was silent. It was a very particular silence that I didn’t know how I felt about. It wasn’t awkward, but not comfortable either. I guess there was just a lot of tension in the air. Or rather a lot of tension between us. Neither of us knew how to resolve it so we just sort of sat there in silence.

I guess just telling her would release some of it, but for some reason, this felt like a very awkward time to do it. Though maybe there wasn’t a non-awkward time to do something like this. I had no idea how to start, and it wasn’t like there existed a handbook of ‘How To Tell Your Former Enemy and Still Not Really Friend That Werewolves Are a Thing’ out there.

My mind was so clouded with thoughts of what had just happened at Marcel’s anyway that I couldn’t concentrate. At the forefront of these thoughts was Colin. What was his deal, really? I wanted to ask Valerie about him, but I knew I shouldn’t. I didn’t even have the right to feel this way. Who was I to barge into her life and start asking questions just because I didn’t like something?

Before I knew it, I was pulling into the parking lot of the Sheriff’s station. Scott and Kira were, of course, there already. When the jeep was all parked and done I rolled down the window and leaned out, cards ready, to talk to them.

“Okay, this one will get you into all of the perimeter doors, this one to the evidence room, and this one’s for my father’s office.”

Scott looked down at the cards and raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t steal this, did you?”

I shook my head. “No. I just cloned them using the RFID emulator.”

“Is that worse than stealing?”

I shrugged. “It’s smarter.”

The, by now, pretty scared looking Kira asked Scott if she could ask him a question and they walked out of earshot, leaving me alone with Valerie again.

“An RFID emulator huh?”

I turned to look at her, not expecting her to speak, much less smirk at me.

“Yeah.”

“That’s pretty impressive, Stilinski. You just gained a good amount of your respect back. Congratulations, you’re no longer in the negative numbers.”

A smile pulled at my lips at Valerie’s callback to the first good moment we shared together. “I’m glad to hear that.”

Just then Scott and Kira returned outside my window.

“Okay. So, now almost everybody’s out dealing with the blackout, but there’s always somebody at the front desk. There’s dispatch and usually a night shifter or two. You guys are gonna use the service door entrance by the dumpster, all right? Nobody uses it. Now, we’ll stay watch and I’ll text you if anyone comes out, but, Scott, if you get caught, I can’t help you. My dad’s under investigation for impeachment, ‘cause of your dad, so, if anything happens I will run and leave you both for dead.”

Kira looked a bit frightened at my bluntness, and her eyes traveled over to Valerie in the passenger seat. Knowing what she was thinking, I decided to shoot down her hopes as quickly as possible.

“Sorry Kira, but she’s in the car with me. I go she goes.”

A snort escaped Valerie’s mouth and she gave Kira an apologetic shrug as if to say ‘what can you do’.

“Got it,” said Scott. “Thanks. Seriously, dude.”

“I’d ask my dad, you know..”

“No, I know. I get it.”

“Alright, just, uh, hurry up.”

Scott and Kira nodded before setting foot for the service entrance, and just like that, the tension in the air was back. It felt sad to counter the fleeting nice moment we’d just had with something this tragic, but I knew it had to be done.

“So I guess this is when I tell you everything,” I said quietly, keeping my eyes on the steering wheel.

“I guess it is.”

I took a deep sigh to gather my thoughts. So my had happened lately that I didn’t know where to begin. I figured it was best to start at the beginning, just to give some background info, then go onto what I wanted to clear up most.

“Scott is a werewolf.” I gathered enough courage to look over at Valerie to gauge her reaction, but there wasn’t much to see. She didn’t seem all that surprised, which was understandable. Her brain had probably made that conclusion a while ago, she just needed someone to confirm it.

“So was Erica, and Boyd. So is Isaac, and so are Ethan and Aiden.”

Nothing changed in Valerie’s expression, she just kept her steady gaze straight ahead, barely even blinking. Her face was extremely tense, probably from the strain of keeping all of her emotions inside.

“You know Derek Hale?” Valerie gave a very small nod, like she was afraid she was going to break if she moved too much. “Erica, Isaac, and Boyd used to be part of his pack.” I threw in a quick explanation of alphas, betas, and omegas. “Now Isaac has shifted alliances to our pack.”

I took a deep breath once again as I finally arrived at the thing I wanted to clear up most. But it was also the part that would be the hardest for her to hear – yet I knew that she needed to know the truth.

“The reason I told Ethan to stay away from you, is because he and Aiden used to be a part of this pack of just alphas. Really evil alphas. It was they who killed Erica... and later Boyd.”

Valerie fought hard to keep her neutral expression, her jaw clenching even harder as she forced the tears to remain in her eyes, not willing to let them fall down.

I gave her a minute to think about the information she’d just learned, before I went on to explain how Lydia was a banshee and what had happened with Allison and her family of hunters.

Once I was finished, I settled back in my seat and let the silence wash over us once again. I kept my eyes on my hands as I played with my keys, trying to give her as much privacy as possible, when I noticed that key I didn’t recognize once again. My eyes narrowed as I held it up, examining it closely, trying to figure out where it came from. But alas, I was prevented from doing so again when a sudden light blinded my eyes.

I looked out the front window and my gaze settled on the car that had just pulled into the parking lot. My eyes widened when I saw who the driver was. Agent McCall.

“Ah, hell,” I muttered, reaching into my pocket for my phone. In the corner of my eye, I could see that my words had alerted Valerie to the situation. When my phone was in my hands I typed a text to Scott as quickly as possible.

“Come on, Scott,” I muttered, eyes shifting between my phone-screen and Agent McCall, who had stepped out of his car and was making his way towards the station. Scott still hadn’t seen the text.

Fuck it, I thought as I shoved my phone back in my pocket and placed my hand on the door handle. “I’m so going to regret this.”

I pulled the door handle down, but before I could open it a firm hand was placed on my shoulder.

“No,” said Valerie strictly. “You can’t get your dad in trouble. Wait here, I’ll handle it.” With that said she stepped out of the jeep and hurried down the street. Before she disappeared out of sight, she cast me one final warning glance as an extra precaution to make sure I wouldn’t follow her.

Thinking it was in my best interest to do as she said, I leaned back in my seat, tapping my fingers on my leg, waiting for her to return.

After a while (I couldn’t tell you how long it took even if I tried) Valerie walked out of the Sheriff’s Station, and I hurried out of the jeep to meet her.

“How’d it go? What happened?”

She stopped in front of me, running a hand through her hair and casting a quick glance back at the Station. “Good, I think. I distracted him for as long as I could. I’m pretty sure I bought them enough time.” Her eyes met mine and suddenly I found myself looking away from her. My hand flew up to scratch the back of my head as I pretended to look for Scott and Kira while wondering why the hell I felt so awkward around her all of a sudden.

“Stilinski.”

The call of my last name made me look at her again, mainly because of how soft her voice was when she said it. I found myself being trapped in her beautiful eyes again, as if the faint blue flames were hypnotizing me. Valerie’s stare on me got heavier as well, and the tension in the air shifted immensely, only I didn’t know to what.

Valerie’s mouth fell open, but only a faint sound could escape before she was cut off by the sound of footsteps. She turned her head to Scott and Kira who were running toward us, and just like that, our moment was broken.

“We did it,” said Scott, grinning. “All the pics are deleted.”

“God that was awesome!” exclaimed Kira, bouncing around as she was still high on the adrenaline rush from breaking into the Sheriff’s Station. “I mean, terrifying, completely terrifying, but – kind of awesome. I’ve never done anything like that before. Have you?”

Scott’s mouth opened, and we exchanged a glance, wondering how exactly to answer that question.

“Yeah, once or twice,” I said.

Kira nodded, exchanging a look with Valerie and looking impressed.

“So I guess I should take you home,” said Scott, turning to Kira.

Kira’s face fell a bit, but she nodded, and she and Scott walked towards his bike.

Valerie turned to me, a look on her face very similar to Kira’s and said, “I’d rather you just take me back to Marcel’s.”

“Actually – would you wanna go to a party?”

(not my gif)

taglist: @idontgiveahufflefuck64 @woyee

bittersweet taglist: @stiles-o-dylan24 @theholydestiny @1967-chevy-impala-called-roscoe @cherry-sweet-cherry @kingidols-blog @xceafh @purple286 @bilesxbilinskixlahey @chipster-21 @profoundscissorshandsdiplomat @michellebarista @mey-rapp @nicole-lynne @lostinwonderland314

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