#force of nature zine

[the-temple-of-light]

*clasps hands*

...So do I need to actually introduce this AU or can I just launch right into it-?

#pittooy babbles #tl;dr roleswap-ish AU where the underworld recruits an angel before they can reach skyworld while palutena makes a copy of said angel- #-to help her escape the underworld #I MOSTLY feel the need to explain b/c the underworld angel is. basically pittoo. but named pit. #which I think makes sense when I say it bluntly but IDK how much I'd need to explain it in actual writing #also I know someone else has been working on a roleswap au of sorts but that's more centered on the forces of nature #so I don't THIIINK I'm stepping on any toes? #IDK I've been. honestly hesitant to check out that AU b/c every little bit I see is so interesting and I have a bad feeling that I'll- #-hyperfixate and I have enough projects and IRL things I need to bounce between that I can't really risk getting too wrapped up in a- #-New Cool Thing #I already spent a lotta time I was supposed to spend on. many many things. on an old horror interest I fell back into #which was fun!! but also distracted me from zines I was supposed to work on which was stressful #gaeijfwhnecje sorry for ranting BUT seeing that This is my thought process probably explains why the BTHB series has stalled #this is my brain right now! the antidepressant is working but the ADHD might be slightly more unmanaged #I'm coping as best I can just be patient #I write whatever keeps me from cracking and lately that just hasn't been KI

[27-moons]

DEFEND THE TERRITORY ZINE PDF

Warrior Publications, Spring 2014

Introduction

Communities that are effective in carrying out resistance will inevitably face some form of state repression, most often carried out by police forces. This text is intended as a review of tactics and techniques that have been used in countering police assaults on crowds and communities.

For police, these types of assaults are referred to as “public order” or “crowd control” operations. Communities targeted by such operations may face riot cops as well as armed tactical units, dog teams, armoured vehicles, the use of chemical agents and baton charges.

Native peoples in Canada have seen the deployment of police crowd control units on numerous occasions since the 1980s. Some notable examples include Listiguj/Restigouche in 1981, Kahnawake 1988, Kanesatake and Kahnawake 1990, Ipperwash 1995, Six Nations 2006, Barriere Lake 2008 and 2012, and most recently in Rexton, New Brunswick, in October 2013.

The most common target for police crowd control operations against Native peoples are blockades. This is because the blockade is highly effective as a form of direct action taken by communities defending their land and people.

While Native peoples in North America have a recent history of armed resistance (including Wounded Knee 1973, Oka 1990, and Ts'Peten 1995), most communities do not typically engage in such actions. Most, however, do have the capability of carrying out blockades and other similar types of low-level direct actions. As corporations and government continue to relentlessly exploit and destroy the natural world, it is highly likely that such actions will increase in frequency in the future as communities act to defend themselves and their land.

#indigenous resistance #zine

[beguines]

would you be able to recommend any books/resources that provide a good intro to anti-psychiatry? rlly fascinated by this subject

to be clear, i wouldn't describe myself as explicitly anti-psychiatry. people very close to me rely on psychiatric medication in order to relieve symptoms that aren't just disruptive to their role in capitalist society but cause them immense suffering in general. while i have had particularly negative experiences with psychiatric medication, i have also seen it save people's lives and pull them out of acute crisis. i've been seeing a therapist for four years who has had a very positive effect on my life and has always been respectful of my refusal to take psychiatric medication.

i also think it is necessary to acknowledge that while psychiatry and psychology are disciplines that enforce capitalist hegemony, the alternative to being capable of functioning within capitalist society isn't much of an alternative at all when capitalism's inescapability is part of its very nature. that being said, i think it's extremely important for anyone living with mental illness, being treated for it, or supporting someone who is to be aware of:

the insufficiency of the biomedical/disease model and the very slow speed at which the field is moving away from it

the inability of medical professionals to identify the etiology of any mental illness

the immense risk associated with virtually all psychiatric medications (particularly antipsychotics and mood stabilizers)

the very profitable marriage between psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry

the influence of western (and particularly american) hegemony over how we treat what we call mental illness

the prevalence of coercive/forced treatment

i also think it's extremely important within that context to do your own research and ensure that you're engaging with material from a variety of different sources, maintaining an awareness of any biases they may have and how those affect their research and conclusions, whether they skew towards anti-psychiatry or not. the most important thing to do if you or your loved one has any kind of illness is to be well-informed and capable of advocacy, which is largely why i've been doing a bit of a deep dive on the subject lately.

what i'm reading now:

desperate remedies: psychiatry's turbulent quest to cure mental illness by andrew scull

psychiatric hegemony: a marxist theory of mental illness by bruce m.z. cohen

psychiatry in crisis: at the crossroads of social sciences, the humanities, and neuroscience by vincenzo di nicola and drozdstoj stoyanov

other recommendations:

i think your best bet for more introductory material would be robert whitaker's work, including anatomy of an epidemic: magic bullets, psychiatric drugs, and the astonishing rise of mental illness in america and mad in america: bad science, bad medicine, and the enduring mistreatment of the mentally ill. he started an organization called mad in america which has a lot of resources and information, including a podcast of the same name. there's also a network of associated groups that are based in different areas of the world if you're interested in non-american perspectives.

the medicalization of society: on the transformation of human conditions into treatable disorders by peter conrad

on the heels of ignorance: psychiatry and the politics of not knowing by owen whooley

here is a link to some of the old icarus project zines and pamphlets. i was briefly involved with a small icarus group when i was younger and there were some serious issues with the (dis)organization and some of the principles upon which the local groups operated. i'm sure these still have some useful and/or interesting information, and if nothing else they're interesting relics from the anti-psychiatry movement in the early 2000s. i'm less familiar with some of the newer work they put out before their dissolution in 2020. here is an article on the history of icarus from one of the co-founders, published in 2014.

i would recommend looking into bioethics and biopolitics in general, particularly focault. if you want to get into any of the seminal figures in anti-psychiatry (laing, szasz, etc), i would personally advise a very critical reading of their work. as always, this is not an explicit endorsement of any of these works, authors, or their respective viewpoints.

#ask #psychiatry

[vintagerpg]

Other Magic (2020) is so good! The concept is straight forward: What if traditional folk magic, but translated into vaguely D&D terms for use in RPGs? Jesse Ephraim focuses primarily on American systems — pow-wows, rootwork, brujeria and Ozark magic — but also includes the very intense Russian tradition of Zagovory as a sort of contrast. This might seem odd, especially since all of these speak to a more recent historical era than most fantasy games. Early on, though, Ephraim points out that Manly Wade Wellman’s Silver John is a good example of a folk magician, and the Silver John stories are clear inspirations for D&D, despite being set in America in the 1960s, so this sort of thing can definitely work (see also Lowcountry Crawl).

Ephraim details charms, hexes, enchantments and all sorts of interesting details. At a glance, it might seem like folk magic is vastly underpowered in comparison to pulpy magic like the spells of D&D, but in reading through the zine you can see how naturally fantasy magic, particularly its defensive branches (detection, protection, etc), is rooted in folk traditions. Those aspects that lack a direct connection are clearly complimentary. They offer a kind of magical methodology that could be applied to RPGs for interesting effect — the idea of magic being a back and forth, or magic as the application of secret knowledge. The traditions here are lower key and less flashy than fireballs and lightning bolts, but they also imply new systems of play. One example: there’s a charm that can be used to force a shapeshifter into its natural form — there is no corollary for that in the standard suite of D&D spells, but you can easily image it in the game, and see how it might change a lycanthrope-centric scenario, for instance.

All the illustrations are fantastic woodcuts (I believe by Ephraim) that illustrated effects of spells and strange creatures they can summon, which leads us to tomorrow’s post…

#roleplaying game #tabletop rpg #ttrpg #dungeons & dragons #d&d #rpg #Folk Magic #Woodcut Games #Other Magic #Occult

[frozen10fanzine]

Frozen Through the Years

Yearly Spotlight: 2023

Written by @toriofthetrees

This year marked...

Frozen’s 10th Anniversary

It was wild.

Starting off with a bang, in February Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that Frozen III was in development, later confirmed by Josh Gad. Idina Menzel and Jen Lee confirmed it in June, with Jen Lee going on to say that she would not be directing this installment of the franchise. However, she confirmed that she knew the person who was, she loved their story, and she trusted them completely.

Her enthusiasm did not go unnoticed.

On top of the 10th Anniversary for Frozen (November 27) this year also marked the 100th Anniversary for Disney Studios as a whole (October 16). To commemorate both, much of the activity peaked towards the last three month of the year.

The hashtag #Frozen10 was created to celebrate the anniversary.

On October 11, the Forces of Nature podcast was released over several installments. It was met with mixed reviews; some enjoyed it, some were more critical of it, and most agreed that while it was fun, it did not have the chops to be a major installment of the Frozen franchise.

On October 16, Disney released a short film called Once Upon a Studio to commemorate their centennial celebration. It aired on ABC and showed the hustle and bustle of Disney Studios as everyone (all of our favorite characters) prepared for the big celebration! Elsa, Anna, Kristoff (and technically Hans) were among the many classic Disney characters that appeared!

Two novels were released this year. The first book was the first installment in the Disney Legends trilogy entitled Fixer Upper, written by Jen Calonita. It tells the story of Kristoff’s childhood and life before he met Anna in Frozen. The second novel, an anthology of short stories, was created specifically to celebrate #Frozen10. It is called All is Found, and it brought together 10 authors to write 10 short stories to celebrate the anniversary. It was edited by Heather Knowles and Mari Mancusi, veterans in non-film Frozen lore.

November is the month things started reallly picking up. The merchandising train at Disney rolled out a lot of Frozen merch, including limited edition dolls of the sisters specifically for the 10th anniversary. On November 16, Bob Iger announced a fourth installment of the franchise, with multiple voice actors and creators tied to the project confirming it later that same day. This coincided with the Grand Opening ceremony of the World of Frozen at Disneyland Hongkong. Jen Lee joined in this celebration, with the gates to the park opening four days later.

She informed the world on November 22 that Frozen III and Frozen IV were one story across two installments.

The anniversary itself was on November 27. Disney released a press release on their official website commemorating all that had happened in Frozen history (kind of like what we are doing with these blog posts). And, of course, the merchandising train spun out once again to give us all new merch specifically for the #Frozen10 celebration.

Towards the end of the month, the Frozen song playlist was added to Spotify and Season 5 of Disney Speedstorm was released with Frozen characters.

The year ended with exciting activity from the fandom! The Youtuber GeekCritique worked closely with the Arendelle Archives to create a video detailing the history of Arendelle. The video was released on December 23 and managed to make headlines! The other major project was a fanzine celebrating #Frozen10. Inspired by All is Found, several fans came together to create Water Has Memory: A Frozen Decade. Within the zine are the fandom's Frozen memories, presented in the form of Elsa & Anna accessing them together through Ahtohallan.

Needless to say, this year was a major leap forward for all things Frozen. It gave so much to look forward to, and it was a sizable way to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of this beloved story.

Stay Tuned for More

👆🏻 Click above if you want to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Frozen. The due date is April 12, 2024.

4 Days Left

We look forward to seeing your memories ❄️

#frozen #frozen10 #frozen 2 #water has memory #frohana #elsa #sven #kristoff #anna #olaf #frozen 10th anniversary #frozen fever #for you #ofa #olaf's frozen adventure

[hillbillyoracle]

The Algorithm is AI Art

Last year, I used DALL-E to create a series of images for a digital tarot card deck I was making for my personal use. When I shared some of those images here on my blog, I got a massive amount of push back and even threats in my inbox. I'm still putting my thoughts together on that experience but it did make me realize that most people don't seem to realize they're supporting the AI art they hate so much - to the tune of millions and even billions of dollars per year depending on the platform - almost everyday through the algorithms they use.

So if you genuinely hate AI art, I'm here to tell you that you've got to do what you can to get rid of and not use the algorithms in your life. That kind of support is more materially complicit with AI's intrusion on art than someone making a few images for themself ever could be.

Yes It's Possible

For many platforms, especially when they're accessed on desktop, it is possible to greatly reduce your contact with the algorithm. I use browser extensions to cut out the AI curated feeds on YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit. I mostly use Instagram on desktop to answer messages.

I generally do not use Instagram, Facebook, and other apps that do not allow users to control their feed on mobile. I know Instagram is mobile only - when I use it on mobile, I download it, upload what I want, then delete the app again.

I am considering cutting these out entirely again once this phase of my experiment for a zine I'm writing is over because honestly, they're not worth it, but that's a different post...

I also really recommend either making a separate email account or getting ruthlessly organized in your current one, so that you can sign up for artist's newsletters and other forms of human centered curation. RSS readers like Feedly can also be a good alternative.

The point here isn't perfection - the point is doing what you can. Not because it will change companies - but because it's better for you and the artists you care about.

Why?

Algorithms in these spaces determine who's work gets shown and more importantly - who gets paid enough to continue making their art.

AI has consistently been shown to reproduce and even exaggerate biases already present in society. This video by Ann Reardon of How to Cook That talks about YouTube's lack of transparency about the potential for a sexist bias in YouTube's algorithm and shows that in the top views at least, there's a clear slant toward male creators. The only woman in the top 10 does not show her face in her videos - unlike most of the men in the top 10. This discrepancy is even larger the further down the list you go.

Who gets shown is who gets paid enough to keep making their content/art. Less pay means people can afford to put out less content/art and can't scale - meaning less diversity in content/art.

What art gets shown influences what inspires new art and content to be made. You are seeing art directly shaped by AI everyday - and more than that - by continuing to click on what it serves up to you, you support it.

This AI influence on real world art has become so normalized that people consider it as natural a force of nature as wind. It's not. This was designed - and it can be redesigned.

I want to be careful not to overstate the influence of a click either - your clicking on something you choose is not a form of activism. Your clicks cannot retrain the algorithm at scale. A lot of people have the misconception that you can train "your" algorithm but what the algorithm on your feeds is doing is actually comparing your clicks to it's database of similar user profiles and their behaviors to decide what to suggest to you. Your clicks don't retrain the AI as a whole, they just match you with a different user type.

The real reason I think those concerned about AI in art need to find ways to take control of their feeds is because it ensures you're able to support a diverse array of creators through your views and it ensures that what you're taking your inspiration from isn't what the AI decides is worthy of attention.

I realize there are those who are reading this who either might not have been old enough to remember or even weren't born when YouTube basically took your Subscriptions off the front page. It used to be they would pop up at the top of the front page. Then it got knocked down on the front page. When it got shoved into it's own sidebar link and then that link progressively minimized through redesigns - there was actually an outcry about it.

People warned that this would lead to a watering down effect, where smaller channels didn't get the chance to grow like already established ones would. Creators of marginalized identities saw their views drop dramatically. Similar things happened when Facebook and Instagram fully took away a user's ability to have a chronological feed (this was possible in the early days). I know of more than a few creators who fully had to step away from their work because of the change over. I miss their art.

And then the outcry petered out. The companies didn't lose users over it so nothing changed. Eventually people got used to it and the protests went away. These companies now know they're "too big to fail" and can ignore user outcry until people acclimate the new normal that serves them. This normal serves them because it does actually increase engagement and keeps you on the platform for longer - which means less time spent on your own creative activities, yet another way they impact what art gets made.

TL;DR: if you hate AI's impact on artists and their employment opportunities, take control of your feeds. Make your own. Choose what you click. Take back your time and make more art.

#AI #AI Art #social sobiety

[ckret2]

Lord Loveless versus the Arrow Ace

A few years ago I contributed a short story to an asexuality zine:

A showdown between a cruel, heartless villain who wants to destroy the world and all that's good in it—Lord Loveless—and a hero—the Arrow Ace—who's been searching for someone else like herself... and is furious that all she's found is him.

It's a satire/conflicted love letter to cheesy cartoony villains who are "too evil to comprehend good, kindness, and love"—and might be the only approximation of the aro & ace experience a kid sees. ... But it's also as goofy & corny as physically possible. Enjoy.

####

On one side of the chasm dividing the massive stone cavern: Lord Loveless, tattered cape billowing with magic currents, the naked skull beneath his black crown lit green by the starlike spell floating above.

On the other side: Sapphire, gripping her axes; Blair, maintaining the shimmering spherical shield protecting them both; and a half dozen of Lord Loveless's minions, blocking the exits and surrounding the shield.

"You're too late," Lord Loveless crowed. "Even if you weren't trapped, powerless before my superior forces—"

(Blair gave one of the minions a skeptical look, lurched toward them as though to attack, and smirked when they flinched several steps back.)

"—my spell has progressed too far for any lesser a sorcerer than I to reverse it! You can try to put one of your pretty little shields around it, Claire—"

"Blair."

Lord Loveless waved his magic staff dismissively. "But it will pop like the bubble it is. And then, you're all doomed—along with the rest of the world!" He cackled maniacally.

Sapphire blew a raspberry.

Lord Loveless's laughter cut off. Even without a face to speak of, he managed to give her a peevish look. With a tone of mock indulgence, he said, "I take it you'd like to make your last words?"

"Last words before we reduce you to bone toothpicks?" Sapphire hefted one axe threateningly. "Sure, how about this: why?! Why destroy the world? You don't get power, you don't get riches. When there's nothing left, what's left for you?"

"Oh! Hmm." Lord Loveless settled the butt of his staff on the stone floor and thoughtfully tapped a bony finger on its green orb. Finally, he said, "As a general policy I don't explain my dastardly plans to my enemies, but I suppose there's no risk in explaining my dastardly motives, is there?"

A couple of minions shrugged. One nodded encouragingly.

"Very well! In that case: what I get out of this is..." He paused dramatically. "Absolutely nothing! Haa! I don't do this for a purpose! I'm evil, it's what I do! It's this whole thing!"

"Then don't be evil," Blair said.

Lord Loveless turned to stare at her as if she'd grown a second head. "No," he said. "I'm gonna."

"Well, why?"

"It's in my nature," he said, with a scornful tilt of his head as if to stare down his non-existent nose at the two heroes. "I was born an inherently villainous being. I don't have your natural human instincts, you see. Affection." He scoffed. "Love!" He scoffed harder. "The mere intimate, 'pleasurable' touch of flesh disgusts me. So much so, I got rid of the issue completely!" He brandished one bony arm demonstratively. "So you tell me, heroes—how could a creature who scorns the very touch of his 'fellow' humans be anything but evil—"

One of Lord Loveless's minions cried, "Are you kidding me?!"

While Lord Loveless watched in amazement, the minion tossed off her hood and unclasped her robe, revealing light leather armor that matched Sapphire’s.

Sapphire swore quietly under her breath. Blair groaned.

"Oh, you!" Lord Loveless angrily stamped his staff on the ground; acid green sparks fluttered from the orb. "I knew there was supposed to be a third one of you!" He gestured to his remaining minions. “Get h—!”

Before he could finish the order, Blair burst their protective bubble, knocking one minion to the edge of the chasm and sending another running to the edge to help the fallen one back up; Sapphire knocked one unconscious with the butt of an axe and intimidated another into fleeing; and the new arrival drew a bow and arrow from under her cloak and pointed it at the last remaining minion until they too raised their hands in surrender, backed toward the entrance tunnel, and ran.

Then Sapphire turned toward the team’s third member. “Oriana, what happened to the sneak attack? We had a whole plan...”

"No." Oriana slid the arrow back in its quiver and held up a finger to Sapphire. "No, it's personal now."

Sapphire shrugged helplessly. "All right, okay. Have at him."

Oriana nodded and turned a sharp gaze toward Lord Loveless.

Lord Loveless watched in dismay as the last of his minions fled, then snapped, “Oh, you think you’re gonna get me with that? You’re gonna hit me with an arrow?” He somehow made a raspberry sound without lips. He drew a circle in front of him, briefly illuminating the otherwise-invisible magic shield protecting him from attack.

But instead of drawing another arrow, Oriana planted her hands on her hips, jutted her chin out, and said, “Your motive is stupid.”

Lord Loveless canted his head in disbelief. “Excuse you?”

“I’m the same as you! But I’m over here being a hero! What’s your excuse?"

“What?” Electric purple light briefly flickered on in his black sockets. “No. That can’t be right. You, with the do-gooders? You can’t be the same—”

“Do you hate hugs.”

Lord Loveless hesitated. “Yeah,” he said. “What, that’s—isn’t that an automatic evil trait?”

Oriana furiously gestured at herself. “Apparently not,” she said. “Think kissing is gross?”

“I didn’t get rid of my lips because I thought it’d make using a straw easier!"

Oriana paused. “Kind of extreme reaction, but we’re on the same page. When kids your age started flirting, did you use to, like, pick someone to decide you have a crush on?”

He was silent for a long moment. “Huh.”

“Do you hate it when two characters in a play who obviously hate each other suddenly fall into bed? And we’re just supposed to believe they’ve had invisible sexual tension the whole time and that makes up for the constant fighting?”

“Yes!” Lord Loveless pointed emphatically at her. “Yes! Don’t—why don’t people who actually feel attraction think that’s weird? Do they actually work like that?”

Oriana turned toward Sapphire and Blair for their opinions. They shuffled on their feet self-consciously.

Sapphire said, “It does bug me when the guy’s got no redeeming qualities?”

Blair winced sheepishly. “Honestly, it—depends on how hot the actor and actress are.”

Lord Loveless scoffed.

Oriana went on: “Do you ever wonder why people get, like, depressed if they haven’t had a date in a while?”

“Yeah?!” He flung up a hand in bafflement. “What is with that, don’t they have hobbies?”

She made almost the exact same baffled gesture. “I don’t know! Like, hang out with friends, go fly a kite, something!”

“So!” Lord Loveless drew himself up, hefting his staff into the air once more. “You do understand! You, too, have felt that dark emptiness, that brokenness, that wrathful hatred of all others—”

“No?” Oriana cut in. “Literally never? Ever? None of those things? Buddy, you have problems, okay, and literally none of those problems are connected to not wanting to screw.”

“Oh really!” Lord Loveless rolled his non-existent eyes toward the progressing spell above them. “Because they sure seem connected!”

“Why?” Oriana asked, with enough real curiosity in her tone that Lord Loveless looked back down to study her face. “What, did—did people make you feel like that, like you’re empty or broken or whatever? Or did you decide that all on your own? Because both are sad in wildly different ways. Just—who raised you?”

For a moment, he didn’t respond; long enough that Blair started glancing nervously at the spell above again and Sapphire moved to Oriana’s other side, prepared to flank her if they launched an attack.

But then, finally, in a voice small and awkward and human, he said, “I had this... mentor. For seven years. He was all about the power of love. He was all determined to wake up my capacity for love, and when he didn’t...”

Sapphire and Blair’s faces lit up in surprise at the same time Oriana’s fell.

Suspiciously, Lord Loveless said, “You’ve met.”

Sapphire said, “He told us how to find you.”

Blair added, “It’s how I met them. I’ve been training under him the last three years.”

Lord Loveless grunted. “Have you,” he said spiritlessly. “I thought that bubble of yours was familiar.”

“He taught me everything I know. I love him like a second father.” Blair paused. “But...” She glanced at Oriana.

Oriana had been standing there with her face screwed up in distaste while waiting for the other two to finish. “Yeah, he’s kind of a judgy jerkwad, isn’t he.”

Lord Loveless let his staff settle on the ground again. “No one’s ever called my mentor a jerkwad before,” he said. “I... assumed it was just me.”

“I’m sure he’s a great teacher if you wanna learn how to channel love magic or whatever—but if you tell him you don’t have any?” Oriana laughed bitterly. “Ohh, we didn’t get along.”

Blair half reached for Oriana. “He’s not right about everything. You know I don’t think...”

Oriana nodded quickly. “Yeah. You’re fine. We’re cool.”

Lord Loveless silently regarded the conversation, his shoulders sagging beneath his cloak, as if a heavy weight was beginning to slide off of them. “Well—well. Well... Well, why do you fight for good, then? Without love, why bother?”

Oriana laughed in disbelief. “I don’t have to love people to not want the planet to die, holy crap! You really do sound like his student.”

He visibly winced, the joints between his bones creaking together, like of all the accusations that had been flung at him that one hurt the most.

“I can just like people? And want good things to happen to people I like? And—enjoy the planet in one piece? The power of love isn’t necessary, I’ve gotten by just fine with the power of basic compassion! You don’t need to find a soulmate, or—or—” she attempted a crude pantomime with her hands that made Blair bite her lip in silent laughter and Sapphire quickly look away, “—or mash parts to feel a basic connection to other human beings.”

“But it stops others from feeling a connection to you, doesn’t it?” Lord Loveless demanded—an edge of desperation in his tone. “I recognize the uniforms on you two—Lunar Archers, aren’t you?”

“Yeah?” Oriana said, a tad defensive, but not quite sure where he was aiming yet. “Both of us.” She nudged Sapphire. “We met there.”

“A-ha. I know what the sash missing from your uniform means. I can guess why you”—he tipped his staff toward Sapphire—“aren’t still in the archers’ ranks.” Sapphire hefted her axes in a shrug of acknowledgment. “But why aren’t you, o arrow ace?”

Oriana grimaced in irritation. “Okay. Right. Yeah, okay, I signed up because their target audience is all, ‘women who cast aside the duties of marriage to men and take up the mantle of chastity,’ and I was like, ‘hey, my people,’ and then it turned out that was a two-hundred-year-old euphemism for ‘we’re a bunch of lesbians and this is the easiest way to explain that when nobody's talking about that yet.’ So, y’know...” She jerked one shoulder self-consciously. “Didn’t fit in.”

Victorious, Lord Loveless crowed, “So they cast you out!”

“What? No. Phire and I left voluntarily. We’re still both in good standing with the Archers. We’re welcome at the camps. We hang out with them on holidays. They still let me use their magic bows and arrows and everything.” She drew an arrow out of her quiver and pointed at the tip, faintly sparkling yellowish-white. “Check it out. Lightning.”

Lord Loveless took a moment to process that. “They didn’t turn their backs on you,” he said. “Why didn’t they turn their backs on you? What did you do?"

“I—acted like a decent person? And I didn’t peel the skin off my face? And they didn’t turn their backs on me because they’re not jerks—unlike whoever you’ve been hanging out with, you misanthrope! Make some better friends!”

“I don’t believe that,” he snarled. “Nobody would treat you any better than I was treated. Nobody.”

The irritation on Oriana’s face deepened to rage. She shot a quick glance over toward Sapphire—just the nearest of her friends that Lord Loveless was slandering.

“If it was really so fantastic, you wouldn’t have left. There’s not a chance. I wouldn’t have left! So why would you—”

Furiously, Oriana shouted, “I left to find you!”

“What?”

"I went looking for people like me! They were fine, but I wanted to find somebody I could relate to! But all this time I've been looking, there's just—just you!" Oriana gestured furiously toward Lord Loveless. "Is that it?! Are you the best I'll ever find? Is the only one who can understand me—this? You aren't even human anymore!"

“But—”

Lord Loveless fell silent as an arrow sailed by him—far enough not to bounce off his protective wards, near enough to catch his attention. It clattered on the cavern wall with a burst of sparks and a tiny thunderclap. “I deserve better,” Oriana snarled, voice trembling with fury, aiming another arrow at him. “I deserve better than for you to be the only thing I have to look up to! I deserve better than a villain and a monster!”

Lord Loveless’s jaw opened, then clacked shut without his finding anything to say. Blair put a hand on Oriana’s shoulder, whispered something to her; Oriana nodded jerkily, put the arrow away, and slung her bow back over her shoulder; Sapphire lightly punched Oriana’s upper arm and Oriana punched hers back.

“You’re lonely,” Lord Loveless said. Oriana flinched. “Even flanked by your so-called friends, you’re alone.”

“Not ‘so-called,’” Oriana said firmly. “They mean the world to me! We’d do anything for each other! But...”

A world of things Blair and Sapphire would never quite understand hung in the air after that “but.”

Lord Loveless didn’t press. He just nodded understandingly, once more the master of this cavern. "We truly are alike," he murmured. "Probably more alike than even you think." It wasn't a gloat, wasn't a taunt, not like it should have been; his supernaturally strident voice was unusually compassionate. "We're the same, you and I. We shouldn't be enemies. You could have easily ended up like me. You still could. It's not too late for you to join me—"

"No," Oriana snapped. She stomped to the edge of the chasm separating her team from Lord Loveless and held out a hand across it. "You join us."

Sapphire and Blair gaped at her. Lord Loveless reeled back, an offended hand splayed across his ribs. "I beg your pardon?"

She continued stubbornly extending her hand. "I was never going to end up like you. Who does that, who goes ‘oh, I don’t wanna bone the other gross snotty kids in my town, guess I’d better murder people over it’? Nobody does that. You should have ended up like me. So turn that thing off and come on."

"But..." Lord Loveless looked at her, then at the giant green world-ending spell floating over the chasm between them. Then, finally, shoulders sagging, he waved his staff. The light above dissipated, sucked back into the orb. The only light illuminating the cavern was the orb and a flickering blue and pink flame Blair hastily summoned up.

"Hell," Lord Loveless grumbled. He almost absent-mindedly summoned up a pathway of floating stones and trudged across the chasm.  "I don't know what I would've done with myself after ending reality as we know it anyway. But if this is horrible, I'm gonna destroy the world later."

The trio of heroes stepped back from the edge to give him room to stand in front of them. They glared up at him warily. He glared down at them imperiously.

Then Blair wordlessly pointed at his staff.

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t get to keep that,” Blair said. “You destroy things with it.”

“You people go around taking on baddies, don’t you? What if we’re attacked, surely you don’t plan to leave me defenseless.”

“I know you can do enough magic to defend yourself without the orb. Hand it over.”

Lord Loveless sighed noisily, but held it out to Oriana. “I don’t trust you with it,” he muttered to Blair. “You could do stuff with it.”

Blair shrugged. Oriana took the staff.

Sapphire wordlessly pointed at his crown.

“What? No! This is mine.” He clamped a bony hand on the crown. “It’s not even magic, it just looks cool! I’m keeping it.”

Sapphire clicked her tongue in disappointment.

Together, they headed up the tunnel out of the cavern and toward the sunlight.

#aromantic #aromanticism #asexuality #asexual #pride month #my writing #original fiction

[periwinklemoonlight]

I AM VERY INTERESTED I LOVE HEARING THOUGT PROCESSES AND ITS SO CLEAR HOW MUCH PASSION AND CARE WAS PUT INTO YOUR ZINE PIECE

AHH THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! i have so many thoughts i dont know where to begin LMAO ill start with the outfit designs first!!

to start things off, every design has one specific colour in mind to represent that hermit! pearl - blue, gem - green, impulse - yellow, doc - black/gray, and grian - red! (everyone's nails are painted their colour) every design was deliberately punk-inspired, since during the king arc the soup group was a force of resistance against the monarchy's tyranny :P therefore, the soup group are the main focus of the art and their designs are intentionally made so that they stand out more from the other two, though i made sure they were all unique in one aspect or another :] let's go character by character now! (i'm including all my initial design sketches + some inspo photos too)

pearl - she's the lead singer of soup group, along with playing the electric guitar! her design features a double tank top + low rise big pant combo, moon motifs of course, and two distinct shades of blue! The darker one is seen throughout her hair and outfit, while the lighter one in her moth antenna is reflected in her guitar. the main inspiration for her look was avril lavigne, which is also what influenced me to add those fun blue hair streaks :D on her shirt i wanted to have a sort of skeletal moth/butterfly design!!

gem - the keytar! i wanted to make sure that gem and pearl's designs looked very distinct from each other, so i went for a slightly different vibe with gem's! her design is based more off of the plaid skirts, big boots, and fishnet looks i found while looking through early 2000s lip service magazine scans (as well as some hayley williams looks!!) :D additionally, shes got vine tattoos over her body to call back to her nature elf vibe this season!

impulse - the drummer of course!! for his look, i wanted to go a little more anarcho-punk (since its a much older punk style and hes the oldest member of soup group LOL), so his vest jacket has got a bunch of diy additions like patches, pins, paperclips, and chains, along with a bunch of spikes!! in my mind, the back of his jacket has probably got a whole lot more patches, spikes, and studs :] beyond that, i made sure to give him lots of piercings (though my options were limited since s9 impy has a beard lol), and stretched earlobes for fun!! ideally his pants would also have a lot more patches and fun bits, but since his legs would be entirely covered by his drums in the final piece i went for something simpler

doc - an opener and feature on the song! since he's not part of the soup group, his design is quite a bit simpler than the others in terms of both look and concept :] his look is monochrome save for his robotic red parts and green skin, but still looks interesting thanks to that fun leather jacket :D his look is purposefully more reminiscent of a 50's style greaser, i wanted to go for an older fashion style to make him look more intimidating/mature, as well as set him apart from the look of soup group since the perimeter was an independent nation in the king arc!

grian - another feature/opener! design wise? hes literally just green day i can't even lie like the pun was perfect and also the black shirt + red tie combo is iconic and also fits his look so effortlessly it had to be done LMAO also, if you look closely in the final piece you can see he's wearing eyeshadow! this of course is again because hes grian day /silly. but to be real, i think this style also fits him really well since the tie + spikes & studs combo gives the look that sorta rebellious vibe that was all over his videos during the king arc :]

AND NOW FOR THE INSTRUMENTS!! this segment is thankfully much shorter

pearl's guitar is of course a nod to my design for her and her moth wings! butterfly guitars are harder to draw than you'd think LOL

gem's keytar has got a vine design all over it to match her tattoos

impulse's drum set has got the soup group punk band logo! the logo design may honestly be my favourite part of the piece, i feel like i really nailed what i was going for :D

and thats it! i'll edit this post or rb with any details i missed if they come to mind! thank u for reading anyone who has made it this far <3

#elle's design talk

[theresattrpgforthat]

My friend is trying to make Sun and Moon from security breach as a dnd character but it is definitely not the right system. is there a game that would work better with animatronics and stuff like that?

THEME: Dual Personalities

Hello friend, so I have a few routes that I’ve gone with this prompt. Finding a FNAF game is a bit of a tall order, but I think the most important of Sun and Moon’s dynamic is the switch in personality - with Moon being an inverted, terrifying version of Sun’s personality. There are two common tropes that exist in fiction that have that same dynamic - werewolves and the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I took those as leads, but tried to find games where the setting might be flexible - or hackable. I’d also love to hear what other kinds of games other folks suggest!

Eat God by @prokopetz.

Eat God is a game where you take on the role of a small gremlin-like creature. Though you're just as much a person as anybody else, the setting's dominant human culture tends to regard your kind as clever vermin, which means you don't get a lot of respect – but it also means you usually aren't seen as a threat, which may occasionally work to your advantage.

Unfortunately for the people in charge, you're not just any clever vermin: you and your companions are God-eaters, wandering practitioners of an esoteric discipline – part existential philosophy, part martial art – which affords you a limited capacity to bend the laws of reality to your will. As its name suggests, the God-eater's creed also has serious objections to authority in all its forms.

Eat God is still in playtest, but there’s one character option in particular you might be interested in - Polycephalous. This gives your character a second face - and this might be a second personality, a second head, etc. It allows your character to attempt certain things that might usually require two people. Combine this with something like Fast Feet (that help you scuttle very quickly) Languorous Lure (which gives you glowing eyes) and you’re well on the way to having a double-personality.

A Modern Prometheus, by Mitchell Salmon.

A Modern Prometheus is a gothic horror roleplaying game for 2 players based on the Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands framework by D. Vincent Baker and Meguey Baker (Lumpley Games).

Players take on the role of a scientist dabbling with dark forces at the edge of the natural sciences, and the creation that they bring to life as a consequence. Together, you and your partner will discover through play who is human, and who is monstrous.

This is a game where the relationship between the “Sun” character and the “Moon” character is the whole point of the game. The creation of the monstrous is explored through play, and the highlighted themes are vengeance, humanity, and rage. The game itself uses mini-games that you can order in whatever way you like - create a story of horror together one step at a time.

The Monster Within, by Felipemuky.

The Monster Within is a duo RPG where players play a human dealing with their monster within. They must fight for control of their body or cooperate to survive.

One player will be the Human, a person tormented with a monster living in their body, an the other is the Monster, a creature eager to take control of the body to satiate its appetites.

This game brings rules to emphasizes the conflict between the two parts and the tension of losing the control in difficult times. 

This is a game for one game-master and two players, or two players using an oracle to facilitate GM-less play. It’s a one-page zine game, with some simple rules to and a few basic traits to determine for both the Human and the Monster. The players can fight each-other or work together to confront challenges, with the default state being that the human is in control, and the monster is trying to take control of the body. There’s no rules as to what the monster looks like, so if you were to pick this up, you could attach some Moon-like attributes to the monster character, and perhaps change something about the setting to make it make more sense for the kind of characters you want to play.

Cypher System (and Expanded Worlds) , by Monte Cook Games.

The Cypher System is the critically acclaimed game engine that powers any campaign in any genre. You may have heard of it as the system that drives the award-winning Numenera roleplaying game. Lauded for its elegance, ease of use, flexibility, and narrative focus, the Cypher System unleashes the creativity of GMs and players with intuitive character creation, fast-paced gameplay, and a uniquely GM-friendly design.

Cypher System characters are built from the concept up. A descriptive sentence provides not just an easily-understood overview of the character, but also the mechanical basis for skills, abilities, and stats. And the Cypher System gives players amazing narrative engagement, rewarding player-driven subplots and giving players resources to bear on the tasks and situations they most want to succeed at.

The base rulebook for the Cypher System has a character option (dubbed a focus) called Howls at the Moon which is typically a were-creature concept, but I think it could be used to create a threatening-yet-powerful alter-ego that has nefarious motives. There’s also an option in the Expanded Worlds supplement, called Changes Shape, which changes your physical form, without taking away your ability to think for yourself. Even if neither of these foci aren’t exactly what you are looking for, the Cypher system gives you tools to help you create your own custom focus that replicates the dual personality that Sun and Moon embody.

Apocalypse Keys, by Sword Queen Games.

The Doomsday Clock is ticking down and emotions run high as you and your team of DIVISION agents struggle to find the Keys before the villainous Harbingers unlock the Doors of Power and bring about the apocalypse.

As an Omen class monster, you are the only thing capable of holding back the apocalypse. Combat occult threats and investigate supernatural phenomena alongside your team of supernatural agents working for the shadowy DIVISION. But in a world that shuns monsters like you, only your deepest, most heartfelt bonds can grant you the power to stop those who seek to unlock Doom’s Door.

There’s a couple of different ways I think you could replicate Sun and Moon in Apocalypse Keys. One way could be to embody the Hungry, a character who houses a hunger for blood, souls, or something more. You could personify that hunger as an alternate personality, that surfaces every time your character has to feed. I’ve also seen something similar done with the Surge and the Fallen playbooks - with the Surge, the player could create an alternate personality that arises when they use their power, or use the Ruin move My Dark Patron to give their alternate personality more power over your character. With the Fallen, another playbook, the alternate personality was a fallen god, housed in a human shell. I think there’s a lot of untapped possibility in this game, as all of the characters are wrestling with a monstrosity that has great capacity for harm, but also empowers them to solve problems that threaten the world they all live in.

#tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #dnd #game recommendations #asks #dual personalities #welp #didn't meant to suddenly publish this one #congrats folks #you get an extra rec post this week!

[flowers-of-io]

the first knife

My piece for the Final Shapes Zine (@finalityzine) , which you can see in full here <3 // Read on Ao3

It was |supposed to be| a garden world.

All mythologies begin with a utopia. It is a universal condition, perhaps, the wanting to believe the world was, in its unblemished natural state, good—and an indication of the foolish hope it may yet in the end circle back to goodness. A dream of small minds, some would say. But you had never shared their sentiment.

Morality, of course, is subjective, and you’d known as much long before you stopped believing in your own self-created cosmology. No one outcome of a game is more noble or more wicked than any other unless you are one of the players. The propelling force of the universe is the desire to keep on existing—so perhaps, from a certain point of view, it is the drive to live which is the only moral good. Everything wants to exist, and the cessation of one life allows another to exist and thrive; life and death and life and death and life and death, locked in a dance than never ends. But for you it had never been a matter of morality; not in any critical manner, anyway. It was simple and entirely neutral, majestic in its plainness, a sharp needle-point of a compass piercing a way through the mayhem and cruelty you witnessed around you. A universal explanation for a chaotic universe. If there had ever been a tenet you could say you truly admired, it would have been this.

It was supposed to be a garden world, and a garden is no less good or evil whether it is wilted or thriving. Growth without withering is cancerous, festering and crawling out like rats to infect the outside, until it stops being a garden, until it does not resemble anything more than a putrid mass of not-even-life trapped in perpetual limbo.

It was with this thought that you set out on your celestial crusade, back when you still believed the universe had been destined for goodness. You wouldn’t have admitted it—and you certainly wouldn’t admit it now, if you still cared to self-reflect on this—but the fearful anger that would go on to guide your hand had been there already, by then; deep down, eating at your core.

You harboured no ill will toward her. That was what you told yourself.

In truth, the anger was already burning within you, and the fear festered just underneath. Words bubbling on your lips which she offered no response to, accusations you’d hurl at her silent face staring down at you with infinite patience. Her gaze, full of nothing but unalloyed hope, jeering at your questions that would bump off of her surface with a mocking echo, only stoking the fire at your core.

You had grown resentful of her silence. For once, just once, you wanted to make her talk.

You only strived to make things better. You had your great ideals and your beliefs and tenets, your centuries of reasoning and volumes of scientific proof. You wanted to bring back the harmony: to preserve the natural goodness of the world, to tend to the garden. You were noble, and right, and the fate of the universe rested on your shoulders. And you thought you were prepared.

You found it at the edges of the cosmos—a sisterly shape, a vault of answers you had been crying out through the dark after, a perfectly-balanced weight. You brought it home (because you still had a home back then, that deplorable bolthole of spears and walls, do you remember?) and all that time it sang to you, in its strange, resonant voice so unlike the hum of Light you had known. You aligned it, and it snapped into place as if pulled by the magnetism of an opposite charge—and nothing stayed your hand, not a single whisper of doubt slipping past your carefully constructed rationale. You created the link.

The scream that she let out, it threatened to turn your brains into liquid.

In the years to come, you’d rarely concern yourself with that moment. It was what came after that mattered. But at that point of contact, in those few fickle seconds, you had her laid bare like an exposed nerve, screaming blinding-white, cutting through to your core. The closest she had ever been.

In that moment, you met her there.

She was all fear and pain, sharp with a bitter undercurrent of sorrow|betrayal. For once, there was genuine emotion, something you could relate to, something mirroring your own fear. She had not expected that. It felt like victory, then, like pushing a knife into the soft underbelly of a thick-shelled creature, and you told yourself it was necessary.

You saw her eyes, sad and scared. They seemed to be saying, I loved—

The link snapped like an old mooring rope, sending you reeling. Before you could gather your bearings, she ran, a white shape disappearing among nebulas.

The Veil was still there, singing softly just under the lid of your many consciousnesses. You stood, many faces upturned to the sky and many hands flexing in shocked horror, a roar that held no meaning pushing its way past many lips. The weight of absence slowly settled, and with it your rage, stoked by the change of pressure.

In the ages to come, you would go on to learn the inherent power of emotions, these strings of the soul, and the finesse art of playing them. You would go on to learn many things, and the foundations of your philosophy would suffer many a change as you slithered across the universe on your righteous crusade. You would commit acts beautiful and monstrous, and they would each fall at your feet like pruned weeds all the same, because a garden is no less good or evil whether it is wilted or thriving. For now, this was only your first metamorphosis—the first trimming of branches.

The Veil hummed. The sky yawned empty.

You reached for a knife, and discovered you were already holding one.

#my fics #destiny 2 #fszine #the witness #anime eyes #traveler

[necronatural]

Yaoi Essay: It was Ice Age Okay

My friend @tshirt3000 organized a friend zine where we talk about yaoi that was formative to us. It's a sizeable 80 pages, and you can read everyone's formative yaois in the digital copy here.

My essay was written in a single night and primarily primes you to pattern-seek so you can see my vision. My divine truth.

Before I speak, I need to prime you with the knowledge that you understand me. Even if you think you don’t, you actually do. So.

In seminal AO3 fandombait television program Teen Wolf (2011), the main point of fascination is Stiles Stilinski; a doe-eyed ADHD obsessive who chases his every thought with a frenetic intensity that often steals the scene he’s in.

Stiles being a fascinating little creature means that people want to ship him. I’d say he has three main people to do that with, and the big ship on campus was none of them. It was practically mandatory to ship him with Derek, the dark, brooding werewolf anti-hero.

I don’t think the suffocating pervasiveness of this ship is really that deep. Derek is a sexy paranormal tall dark and handsome boytoy. I’ve never seen the Vampire Diaries but I’m sure he wouldn’t be out of place in the cast. And hey, everybody is already obsessed with Stiles. I don’t think people actually care about the text of the show, just the pretty men they’re fixated on. The shit they made in their heads is so obviously just a gay version of every romance ever at the time.

But there is a secret recipe at play. Because in 2011, alongside Teen Wolf, a film was released. It was called Thor. You know, from the MCU? In Thor, the titular character’s treacherous baby brother (adopted) imprisons Thor on earth to steal his position. On Earth, Thor meets the love of his life, her father, and a zany bit character added for comedic relief. 

Now I love Loki an abnormal amount for someone who cares as little about the MCU as I do. I love pathetic men and pathetic villains. As an avid fanfiction reader, I spent a lot of time trawling AO3 for Loki content, realizing they don’t think he’s pathetic, and clicking away. And over the years, I began seeing a weird pattern. Loki/Darcy. The comic relief girl. Her quirky antics were somehow enough to warrant a ship in a fandom that only blows up mandatory Two White Guys couples. And Loki is clearly NOT a brooding paranormal romance boy, but the ship had that Sterek stink on it anyway. A lot of it.

It seemed so mysterious, yet I remember, now, that Sterek wasn’t just popular with paranormal romance swooners, but people who just like funny ships. A zany idiot tormenting that brooding villain. A genderless mass appeal. An Entrapta and Hordak. The raw impulse for Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint readers to pair Kim Dokja and Yoo Joonghyeok before they started developing any chemistry at all, simply by nature of the kinds of characters they are. 

Okay. Listen man. I need to talk to you about Ice Age.

If you’re unfamiliar, Ice Age is about a cynical mammoth named Manford taking a great southern migration as a chance to be alone. When he rescues criminally annoying sloth Sid, he’s forced to share his newfound alone time with him. He is not happy. Meanwhile, a pack of sabertooth tigers is on a vengeance quest against the humans who hunt them by eating their tribe leader’s baby. One of them, Diego, accidentally lets the human mother jump off a waterfall to escape, delivering the baby downriver to Manny and Sid. Diego presents himself as a tracker who can hunt the humans down, and the three of them decide to travel together to bring the baby back to the humans, one way or another.

I will be clear; the homoeroticism exists, and it exists between Manny and Sid. The chemistry exists, and it exists between Manny and Diego. Manny is the heart of the film. And I don’t care. Baby’s First Yaoi, the thing that really boiled my brain, was Diego’s extremely intimate threats to Sid’s life and Sid baiting him like a barking dog. I’m sorry.

The film never really stops insisting that Sid is genuinely annoying — it starts with his entire family leaving him behind and ends with him being kind of a fuckup too — but he’s key to the synergy regardless. There’s no great moment that announces ‘well maybe they weren’t seeing Sid’s true value!’ because he doesn’t have any. He’s a lazy, annoying, unempathetic, impulsive, smug little womanizer. He never learns. The film proposes that well, he doesn’t really have to— Manny is a deeply isolated person (mammoth?) who drives people away, and he needs someone who’s annoying and can’t understand boundaries to teach him to open up again. No matter how much he swats Sid back, Sid is confident in their friendship. Just like how no matter how many times Sid’s family abandoned him, he still went looking for them. They are lonely people, and Sid being an obnoxious little pissant forces them together.

On the other hand, I can’t imagine a film with just Manny and Diego. They get along well and have a great rapport, with Diego’s bad boy fun uncle attitude and Manny’s asshole with a heart of gold routine. But the thing is that they are two dudes who mind their own business. They are only casually uniting, and Diego is only doing it so his pack of evil sabertooths can eat the baby. The warmth of friendship doesn’t exist, and it has to bleed from Sid terrorizing them. They need their idiot to unite against. And since they don’t actually dislike Sid, it can only become camaraderie.

Diego is aware Manny is a smart guy and will take any threat extremely seriously, but he acts like himself from the beginning with Sid. After a while, it becomes clear Manny doesn’t care if he threatens Sid — because Sid is annoying, and he himself has threatened Sid plenty of times — but he also doesn’t intend to leave Sid alone where he can get hurt. Diego is 100% serious, but after a certain point he finds his own threats also becoming empty teasing. By the end of the movie, he’s openly endeared and friendly. He gives death threats like he gives a noogie. 

There is something so unreal, to be honest, about forcing a born killer to hold you in his teeth after he repeatedly threatened to kill you, and him holding you there against your will because he thinks it is so funny.

Diego’s heel-face turn is obviously inspired by Manny, but over the course of the film, it’s clear that he, too, was lonely, and he, too, benefits from an extremely annoying person filling his loner life. His pack is dog-eat-dog, ready to abandon him if he doesn’t do his job, but Manny is willing to die for him, and — this is key to my childhood brain — Sid trusts him unconditionally despite doing nothing to earn it. Sid would follow Diego all year if he suddenly abandoned him for migration. He is just that kind of person.

That’s the secret recipe. What made Sterek mandatory even for people who have no interest in paranormal romance hunks. Why Darcy was thrown at Loki. This underlying vein of True Yaoi, of a dynamic based less on actual relationship and more on the core of the kind of people they are, and the kind of synthesis that is possible between those two ingredients. The zany idiot and the villain have this chemical reaction you could see from space. TO ME!

You need a zany person to do a whole lot of impulsive shit, and you need that zany person to be stupid enough to not notice they’re unwanted, or in danger, or that their dynamic is shifting, or the subtext of anyone’s behaviour. You need the person tormented to be a genuine threat, and they need to not melt, but be worn down. The simple pleasures of having your day-to-day life filled with life and noise, your every interaction with the world commented on, to the point you allow yourself to be defanged.

Sid does this to Manny, sure but it didn’t click even with the gay jokes because Manny is a kind, caring Dad Friend kind of guy who would fold for anyone. Diego is a fucking baby-eating tiger. But he trusts Manny, and Manny is endeared and receptive to Sid’s constant noise because he is lonely, and because of that, Diego, who is also lonely, allows himself to be endeared too. He had Sid’s throat in his mouth, and all he thought was that it was a funny thing to do.

My friend Hyde tagged me in this post.

#yaoi zine #wheeeeeeeee

[t1meslayer]

Busy with important family events over the next couple of days, and so I thought it would be good to get a day-and-date release for this Debrief on the latest entry in my Sapphic Valley series, "How You Get The Girl." Be sure to read the story before jumping in!

Did you do it? Did you read the story?

Alright, I'm trusting you. Go ahead and hit that 'Keep Reading' button you scamp.

It only seems appropriate to start this Debrief off by addressing the elephant in the room. I haven't posted anything in over a month, and "By Moonlight" came about a month after its predecessor, the conclusion to "Stone-Cold Lovers."

Work, naturally, has been a major factor.

You can see me talk about that almost two weeks ago in this Tumblr post I made about writing in a coffee shop, which came weeks after I actually started writing during a trip to a friend's house.

===

Side note:

Just wanted to take a moment and acknowledge my beautiful Haley and Emily keychains. My friend who's responsible for the affairs of one ghostly farmer named Jizzabelle (Gisabelle to the laymen) got them for me! Only appropriate after I commissioned some art of her and Abigail.

Emily was my first Stardew wife, and Haley currently holds the biggest place in my heart. They make a lovely duo!

And I'll avoid any sister-wife jokes

===

While I've had some other projects like Zine writing to take care of, work and life can't explain the full absence.

The best way I can think to explain things is that:

I had the general writer's block, and

Despite the best intentions and advice of my irl friends and online pals like @alchemicallymoon and @duelbraids, I couldn't force myself to "break" that block by just... Writing something else.

This is entirely the result of my own psychosis. I have a tendency to carefully plot things out and impose a timetable that really doesn't need to exist. When I feel the cause is righteous enough, it's hard to get around that. In this case, I knew I needed to get my poll-winning idea out after dawdling for holidays like Valentine's Day, and then I knew I only wanted to post one more story before jumping on a very special event for my upcoming 30th AO3 post.

Thus, here we are: arbitrarily forcing myself into a spiral of writer's block misery because of a silly promise on Tumblr and my own sense of ordered chaos.

At the very least, this meant it's coming out not long after my AO3 pal InsertACatchyPennameHere also emerged from the woodwork to tell me they're working on something INSPIRED by my four-person friend group farm adaptations.

Much love to them, wherever they may be.

I'll probably start writing more eclectically now that my shoulders are unweighed, but don't expect my next publication to hit until I'm finished working on teasing the big event. All you Pokemon fans better get hype!

And oh how sweet this publication feels. Between my great set of recent ceramics, the figure drawing class I've been attending, and creative writing, I've felt more fulfilled than ever.

You're here to talk about Stardew, though. So let us talk.

This idea began less with any one event as it did a desire to advance the Alexis/Haley relationship, and Haley's characterization in particular. It was always going to end with watercolor painting reference, but 2 Willow Lane was what I really wanted to dig into.

As I see it, a lot of what keeps people invested in Stardew when its comfy vibes becoming routine is the air of mystery in Eric Barone's worldbuilding. Haley and Emily's parents being some world-traveling duo who left their home in the siblings' care for who knows how long (and who knows how many times over their lifetime) really piqued my interest. So much so that the new writing challenge I set for myself in "How You Get The Girl" was crafting a particularly long set of descriptions that emphasize how overwhelming the parents' influence feels — without creating an impenetrable wall of text.

Hopefully I succeeded in that. Let me know!

I tried to include some vaguely real world-adjacent references into that description of the house, as happens with the magical-realism world of Stardew Valley. For example:

The computer sitting next to their bonsai tree is an iMac G3, the kind of old 'futuristic' tech that my dad loves!

A Speedwell refrigerator is based on even more vintage tech, the Mayflower fridge, but named after a different ship ridden by Pilgrims coming to America.

That city that the family visited in an old photograph with a "monument of arching, interlocking steel" is, of course, Paris — with the statue bookends referencing any number of statues in the Louvre.

Haley's FAD magazine could be referencing any number of publications, but Vogue is probably the closest analogue to what I imagine her reading.

Furthermore, I took some notes on describing the home's layout off of my sister's apartment building, and I asked my bestie @trybard for input on what kind of hanging plant should be used in the transitional hallway. Hanging pothos, philodendron, and spider plants were the three options provided, and my response was appropriate:

They know so much about plants.

Go bug them about it.

I drew on other friends' knowledge to help decorate the house. Specifically, I asked one of my witchiest friends what kinds of protective wards someone like Emily would leave around doorways and windows. She had... A lot of reference material.

I picked Hazel given it purportedly "protects against evil; encourages abundance and inspiration." I also picked Amethyst as one of Emily's loved gifts, one that purportedly "absorbs negative energy, promotes harmony."

My witchy friend is the same one who provided the TikTok that I referenced in my advertisement post:

Perhaps the most important thing about 2 Willow Lane was the recurring motif of Barbie's Dream House.

As a surface-level reference, I think the groundwork is clear. Blondie's love of fashion and general queen bee demeanor fits comparisons to Barbie well, and she lives in a big ol' house full of stuff. We all saw Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie last year. It's still in the cultural zeitgeist.

I'm hip with the kids.

Yet, early on I also tried to make it clear that if this is a "dream" house, it's neither Haley's nor Emily's dream. Haley is a Barbie in that stereotypical sense, but also there's much to be mined from the analogy of a sort of powerless doll in an immutable house, constrained by social obligation to her family rather than literal plastic and stickers.

The cold open of Jodi and Sam was meant to stand alone, but in execution I also think drawing Kent's absence into the conversation makes for a more thematically rich comparison to these sisters who appear to have themselves more put together.

My beta reader said this wound up being one of my stronger stories because of how all of that intertwined, which I appreciated given how down on myself I was following the whole writer's block thing.

But also.

Also.

Alexis gets to be horny. She's hitting on lonely MILFs and watching girls shake their asses to the tune of bad reality TV.

We love a buff dommy mommy farm girl in this house.

Haley is probably horny too, she just doesn't realize it yet. For now I think it's fun enough to play into her being coy about building excuses for Alexis to come over, and then getting incensed when Emily barges in on their private time meant to learn more about this farm girl she just can't get out of her head.

===

Fun fact:

Every story in this series is named after a Taylor Swift song, but I know next-to nothing about her discography. All of them are suggestions by my friend whose house I was at when starting this story — the same one who controls Gardenia on the farm.

While I went with "How You Get The Girl," her alternative suggestion was "The Man."

===

All that w|w talk aside, I also want to give Sam the loveable idiot a shoutout. Had to do a fair bit of research into how skateboards are constructed for his failed ollie, and I slipped in a reference to shitty old technology that's exclusively for my beta reader to enjoy.

I also tried doing some agricultural research to figure out how the folks at Kevin Farm could have grown cucumbers so there'd be a jar of legitimate pickles... But that was getting too in the weeds.

Insert laugh track here

Decided to just go with pickled artichoke hearts to save everyone a lot of trouble.

And where does "Kevin Farm" come from, you may be asking yourself. Or the fabulous "Kevin's Special" with its definitely not innuendo tagline.

That story will have to wait for another day, my friends.

#I really went in on this one #Moreso than I was expecting #But I guess that's what happens when you get very anxious about how people on the internet are judging your ability to do things well #And in a timely manner #Not that I think any of you are judging me #My fans are great <3 #Anyway thanks so much for reading! #I promise the Kevin Farm story isn't all that interesting but one day I'll make it relevant to a piece #Fanfiction Debrief #fanfiction #fanfic #companion piece #author's commentary #ao3 #stardew valley #stardew haley #writing #creative writing #struggle #macintosh #vintage technology #paris france #louvre #vogue #plants #tiktok #witchcraft #protection #barbie #metaphors

[beesmygod]

look: the only arguments in favor of webtoons ive ever heard hinge greatly on the idea that the vastness of the audience on webtoons is crucial to one’s success in the “webcomic business” nowadays. people need money to live. to make money quickly in the entertainment business (and i would like to stress that this is the first time the artist makes a choice: when they decide to pursue art as a career. deciding to do this is not a choice that should be made lightly. additionally, i do not believe that people are being forced to turn to webcomics in order to make a living lol. can you even imagine), they turn toward the algorithmically curated and inflated numbers offered by webtoons.

i’ll start this off with my bone fides so i have to clarify any of this in follow up posts: i started workshopping my webcomic on tumblr in 2012 with doodles and by answering asks people would send me. i would also just post lore dumps for funsies. they are so barely related to the comic now, but they created interest and people asked me cool questions that made me think about the world i was creating. i started the comic in 2013. holy shit i really am coming up on a decade of webcomics. hold on i have to stand up and walk around for a second. picture to break up all these words so your eyes dont slide off the page:

i made enough money on patreon (as a very early adopter) to live in beaverton, oregon (with first 3, then 1 other roommate[s]) living the most spartan lifestyle a person could manage in order to avoid having to go back to my hometown. now i live in confusing moderate comfort in a house my bf and i bought in a burst of sheer market based luck right before everything exploded. we used all of my savings i earned working from age 15-30 as a down payment.

i still try to take care of myself entirely and contribute a proportional amt of my income to the bills. i use government aid and use(d) it get a lot of medical help that i would not have been able to afford otherwise (medicare for all btw its unconscionable that this isnt the norm). i sincerely enjoyed my poverty and i felt like i understood how to live under those parameters with ease and comfort. i was poor but i was free. i do not like that i have to disclose this in order for people not to immediately dismiss me as coming from a place of monetary privilege. this shit is none of your business. im not interested being assigned a perception to my work and character that does not come from my words and deeds. i do not want “poverty artist” to be the signifier attached to me, forever, that people can scrutinize and obsess over whether or not i deserve the adjective i dislike.

but for things i do like: i like my audience very much, and i hope that they understand that they are under no obligation to care for me, keep me alive, finance me, etc. that is entirely my responsibility. but it is through their continued donations and support that i am able to draw my comic full time in a lifestyle i found comfortable, something that i sincerely imagined would not be possible while i was still working and in college. my audience of ~1.5k (i think, google analytics is kinda whack. lotta bots. this is with all that shit i could find filtered out) has been built up gradually over the past near decade and is comprised of funny, lighthearted freaks of nature who make me laugh very frequently. i just cant let them know that or they will become too powerful and use jokes to destroy me. i dont think i have a single bad thing to say about AGS readers. you guys are a hoot lol.

i do not have a discord dedicated to my work because i find the idea pretty unappealing and have had moderator experience in the past on other websites that i did not enjoy. i did not have comments on my comic until this year. previously the only way to contact me was via twitter, tumblr ask or email. i advertise my comic twice on update days, once in the morning and once at night, so i dont flood dashboards. i do not sign up for zines or jobs. i do not promote my work otherwise. well, there’s a link in my sa avatar, but let’s be real. no one’s clicking that.

WITH ALL THAT SAID:

i cannot empathize with the people who pursue the webtoons line of monetization and i find parts of (what must be) their reasoning morally abhorrent. im not even going to get into the predatory and laughable “pay per page” concept, an idea so blatantly evil that if it were pitched in any other medium it would get you laughed out of the room at best. im not going to talk about the ridiculous audacity of a comic host demanding you produce a minimum number of panels “per page” (im old lol bear with me) in order to be granted the golden laurels of “publication” (another choice the artist makes is the choice to pursue becoming a “webtoons original” as a financial goal. i think this is wildly unreasonable for every reason. but whatever. you might as well bet on winning the lottery). im going to talk about the bizarre mentality i cannot wrap my head around when it comes to what people are expecting when they sign up for a website that openly flaunts how disinterested it is in anything other wringing its user base financially dry.

if webtoons is not interested in anything other than financial gain and their purpose is to make more money every quarter at any cost, then why would that mentality not directly impact and poison the relationship between you and your audience, as well as your relationship with your art?

but lets put even THAT aside. god there’s so much i could hammer on. i will just focus on audience right now.

1. the quantity of an audience is not proportional to the quality of the audience. i dont think anyone is going to debate with me that the webtoons audience is good lol. this is because the webtoons userbase is comprised almost entirely of random teenagers and adults under 25. this age range is permitted to act like insane hooligans (to an extent) because that’s what the vast majority of us were like in some capacity or another at that age. i frequently hear complaints from creators about how their webtoons audience are frequently ungrateful, irrational, and impatient to them. this is the obvious outcome when two parties, especially parties that are doing business with each other, are shoved together due to algorithmic decisions and not by their own volition. both parties have been robbed of the opportunity of building up a relationship of trust and respect between the artist and the audience. however, building up this relationship takes time. and people want to be be making money as artists right now. presumably.

2. the primary purpose of an audience is not to obtain money from them. at least, dear god, i really hope this is not the idea driving people’s desire to do webcomics as a career. the creators entering the field with this mindset are DOA, straight up. even if you were capable of hiding your odious motivations, whose money are you willing to pursue? would you change your comic if it meant making more money from the audience? do the highest bidders influence the artistic choices being made? is that the relationship you want with your audience? in that case, why not just take furry porn commissions, a field which makes fucking stacks upon stacks of cash? why bother with webcomics and all this extra work?

3. why would an audience of teens and young adults have money to spare? lol for real tho. teens dont often have unfettered access to cash. college age adults are famously deeply in debt to the nightmare state we live in. to jump into this audience with your hands held open is going to result in disappointment when they’ve already prioritized giving what little they have to artists they already know. i dont know what people are expecting with this one. it’s like panning for gold in a swimming pool.

this doesnt even touch on the uglier stuff. but the choice to go all in with webtoon is foolish, selfish, motivated by greed and childish false promises of fame. i do not have any respect for the artists that line up in the hopes that they can simply “jump the line” and skip one of the most, if not the single most, important aspects of a career in art, as though it’s a tutorial mission they are simply too advanced and skilled to sit through. i am not going to feel bad for or comfort the people who saw a company strangling and smothering everything it touches, a company that is subjecting its customers into increasingly more incremental means of payment, a company that has objectively unreasonable demands for the art they host compared to what they pay out, AND WILLINGLY SIGNED ON TO SECURE THEIR OWN BAG.

so that they didnt have to build an audience! the fuck!

my assessment is that to use webtoons is to have a vast amount of disrespect for your audience.

#webtoons #long post/

[abczine]

The final (in more than one meaning of the word) Horseperson of the Apocalypse, Death is both the oldest and most powerful of the Horsepeople. He is neither good nor evil, a force of nature which neither man nor beast can seek to destroy. His role in the Apocalypse can almost be described as janitorial, in a sense, as the collector of souls after the other Horsepeople have enacted their own will upon the Earth. It might be possible to slow him down, but this particular entity can never be truly stopped. Can he?

If you’d like to see more of these characters, consider subscribing to the Above, Below, and the Common Ground Zine, and click here to fill out our interest check!

#good omens #supporting characters #above below and the common ground #abcg zine #four horsepeople of the apocalypse #death #good omens death #discworld death #abc zine #good omens zine

[i-am-a--lionheart]

Gravity

@sunorweek2023 Day 5 - Kalmar Union (with delay, obvi)

Originally written for @sunor-hq Zine in 2018, with minor alterations (ever asked yourself why some nations need glasses? Here is a possible explanation and it is eh, no fun)

Names:

Kjetil - Norway

Björn - Sweden

Christian - Denmark

TW: abuse, hinted SA, post torture

R: T+

Everything was dark in this chamber; the air was as cold as ice and still so full of humidity that breathing had become a terrible exercise for him. Breathing in, breathing out, and in again.

This was nearly the only thing he could do, the only thing he could do except from experiencing this terrible pain in his whole body.

There was something cold dripping on his surely bruised cheek, something even colder than the air and the cold floor made of stones in his back. If Björn hadn’t been able to hear just the softest, the faintest of sobs, he would have thought those cold drops were plain water from the ceiling and nothing else.

The dark that surrounded him was so deep without even the slightest source of light and he was not sure anymore if it was the natural dark of the cellar he knew so well by now or if he had been blinded. He had tried to open his eyes a couple of times already since he had awoken from his painful slumber, but it was absolutely useless. His head ached so much while he tried to remember what had happened yesterday. Yesterday? The day before? He was not even sure when exactly Christian had locked him in here after another violent fight that the Swede had lost against his elder. Björn had lost his sense of time and not only this sense – the only thing he could smell was dried up blood and the fould scent of a cell that was all moldy and cold, the only thing he could feel were the cold stones in his back and the chill metal around his wrists and, of course, those cold drops that fell so steadily on his face. His mouth tasted like death to him – what differed this from death anyways?

His heartbeat was slow and shallow, his lungs were ripped, his breathing rigged, his body torn – now what was different? Everything was cold, everything felt meaningless except for the warmth he could suddenly feel on his broken arms. And those quiet sobs that echoed so loudly between these walls of stone, those sobs gave all of this a meaning. If even always-not-caring Kjetil was crying, Christian must had beaten him to the very verge of dying.

Strangely the sadness, the desperation and fear that he could sense in Kjetils behaviour made him angrier than the fact he had been abused and locked away again.

Honestly, by now Björn was used to it, was used to the weekly arguments, the fights – he had always known that a union between the three of them would destroy their bonds rather than strengthen them. It had been tough during the Viking ages once they had drifted apart and what started as the idea of a united, strong North, had ended in violence and anger.

Those arguments would always star slowly, but exploded within mere minutes into unfair fights, first with insults and accusation. But since a few months it never stayed verbal at all.

They were nations – that was the reason his weak, hurt heart kept beating – they were nations and they were bound to be brutal, merciless creatures.

His hopeless thoughts were suddenly ripped into pieces by a sharp pain coming from his eye sockets – the warmth of Kjetils hands was gone and instead he could sense a cold liquid pouring on his face and into his opened, bloody eyes. The sobs hadn’t stopped completely but they were disrupted by chanted words uttered by a shivering voice. Björn had opened his cracked lips, probably in an attempt to scream because the pain was worse than anything, but a soft hand was clenched onto his mouth while a second pressed his jaw back with gentle force.

“Quiet.”, the Norwegian’s voice was back to his usual cool tone as far as Björn was able to hear it with the exploding pain in the back of his head. If he had listened more closely, however, Björn could have heard that the fear still stained his heavy, melodious tone. But the only thing that kept the Swede busy was pain, pain, and even more pain.

Was that even Kjetil? Why would he hurt him like that? Especially in this state?! Especially even when he always proclaimed that he loved him even though he behaved so cold most of the times.

His anger got worse, filling his veins with burning blood, but a small voice inside of him told him that it was probably just a way to quicken his healing progress. Kjetil was a healer after all.

And it was just this.

When the explosions in his brain finally had stopped, his vision had begun to clear up. Björn wondered if his eyes had ever been closed at all or if they had been bloody sockets with a mess of flesh inside of them. He still wasn’t able to see the lines of the stones at the ceiling, but the face of his companion appeared in front of his now restored, sea blue eyes.

Kjetil looked sick, his face even paler as usual, his dark blue eyes held a shade so red that they stood out like drops of blood on fresh snow. On the left side the red, puffy eyes were accompanied by a deep purplish greed spreading around it. Unshed tears still filled the deep orbs of the younger, whose face was stained by those he had shed and his whole figure was shaking, from fear or cold, Björn couldn’t tell.

He felt the need to sit up and pull him into his arms but a hand on his chest stopped him from doing so.

Just now he realised the soft blue light radiating from the places that the younger one had touched.

His arms didn’t feel as cracked as before and even though his clothes were still stained by his dried blood, he could imagine that his ribcage was closed again, with fresh, sensitive skin stretching over healed bones. Björn didn’t want to imagine what amount of energy sick, sick Kjetil had used to repair him like that. And even though he tried to raise his voice to tell him to stop, it was as if Kjetil controlled every movement of him.

It took hours and hours for him to heal, even with the energy and the chants of the Norwegian and after a while the both of them could hear hard and heavy steps coming down the stairs. Kjetils eyes – now even more tired looking than before, shifted from his patient to the metal door that separated the cell from the hallway. He froze for a second – of course he should have thought about this more closely, the sleeping potion did not last as long in Christian’s body than it did in Emil’s. The Norwegian wanted to stand up but a hand around his wrist kept him on the ground – even though Björn had looked so weak and destroyed during those hours he had spent by his side – he still was far stronger than he himself war. The Swede had finally managed to free his tongue from whatever Kjetil had used to keep him quiet. “Stay.” He could not even bear the thought of Kjetil going out there, having to face this monstrosity of a nation alone. “Please.”

Kjetil turned his gaze downwards to him again, his face softer than it had been in a very long time. He looked him with a mixture of warmth, desperation and the quietest love while his lips had curled into half of a smile. “I can’t. I am sorry.”, the younger one reached down with his free hand and loosened the grip of his elder, intertwining their fingers for the shortest of moments. “I can’t.”

The sounds had become louder, and Kjetil stood up, his eyes gleaming as he tried to pull all of his courage together. For little Emil, for Björn, even for little Tino. Then he went to the door once he knew that Christian had stepped onto the last stair, opened it and locked it behind him, very well knowing that once his mostly muffled screams had reached the inside of this cell, Björn could break his chains.

#aph #hetalia #aph norway #aph sweden #sunor #hws norway #hws #sunorweek2023 #yes i am still proud of this #fuck history is dark

[smimon]

The other promised personal post, this one about my self-discovery that I completed last year and in the result gained a weirdly powerful feel, like when Eragon found his true name if you know what I mean

Three main paths: art, brain training, isolation.

1. Art

Art was something I always loved, of course all kids do art but I never stopped. I kept making up characters and settings and stories and theme songs and game designs. I did my first zine at like 6 years old lol.

Living in capitalism meant that the most attractive stories were beyond my reach for financial reasons, so out of disappointment I decided to start telling my own stories, as if that was hard. This was all very early in my life and I believe I was always meant to be an artist and storyteller, and the skills I gained only helped me later.

Like when things started to get more difficult around middle school. When family started demanding and gave nothing back anymore. When the only protector I had left me alone to pursue a career, repeating that if they can handle it, I can too - but I was still a child.

When it was forbidden to talk, feel and hurt, I kept creating. Losing myself in fiction, which years later turned out to be much less fictional than it seemed. Most of my writing was about myself this whole time. I was scared someone might find out so I concealed the message so deep that I alone couldn't see it anymore.

And new stories kept coming, I kept drawing, the XP I gained brought improvement. Never completing anything but always creating something new, finding endless joy in rotating the blorbos in my head. And this continues until today.

Many many times I had doubts if it's all worth anything, a devil telling me I should drop art. And always some inner force pushing me back to the drawing desk. So many times I had to ask myself the question: why do I keep making art? And finally, very recently, I have found the answer.

I am an artist. Artists make art. It's that simple.

2. Brain training

Similar to other body parts, brain can be trained. Solving puzzles, finding patterns, learning, math, there are many ways.

For me it was trying to understand my family.

Recognizing patterns level hard. Predicting what will happen. Inventing ways to protect myself. Teaching myself to do things no one would explain to me but everyone demanded me to know.

School was easy compared to this. Studying gave results in a short term, sometimes it was even fun. Teachers noticed and behaved as if it was their success. Other kids' parents noticed and started bullying their children to get the same results, because if I can do it, why can't they? They were not abusive enough to trigger a similar mechanism, but abusive enough to make their children hate me.

But I haven't noticed. I had a few friends and did not even notice everyone else was against me. This was my elementary and middle school, and then at high school the level was much more even so I could be more invisible.

All the time I tried to figure out my family, and they kept surprising me. All the time I could get good grades, and felt like this is the only thing I am good at.

But as Master's degree approached, I had to accept this can't continue forever, that I am not smart enough to get a PhD. That after graduating I will have to start a job, live a normal life, do things I never learned. I was sure I will die within months, but hey, it's been years already and it only gets easier!

My true victory came just a few years after. I have finally realized there is no way to understand my family because they are simply irrational.

That's it! I am free now! High-fiving all the mathematicians who proved a problem to be unsolvable because hey, that's an accomplishment too!!!

3. Isolation

Introverted by nature, I don't like to spend too much time with people, especially the same people over and over again. Especially my family. Three days is my limit.

And I was tied to them all my life. So when I finally moved out, the sudden experience of freedom overwhelmed me. I did not want to give it away until I get saturated with how good it feels to be alone. Also, gaining distance feom my abusers allowed healing to start. But before that, long hours of remembering and understanding and grieving. Gaining courage to finally meet myself, discover who I am. Forget who I was supposed to be. A journey of self-discovery that brought peace and hope and skill and confidence.

But I am still human. Humans are social animals. I need some contact every now or then or I go insane.

For a few years, I used pokemon go. Going to raid hour every week. But everyone was busy playing so the contact was very shallow.

I started going to fandom conventions trying to relive the same kind of wonder I felt as a teenager. It is different this time, of course. I got used to the fun parts. Nothing seems as impressive as earlier. But even then, I felt like this is my place, and my kind if people. I only needed a way to connect.

Then Käärijä happened, of course. Suddenly I had a thought: the biggest fandom convention in the country doesn't have much to offer for me, but maybe I can do something crazy, maybe I can make this event a bit more me-friendly. I returned to fb after years of break to ask on groups if there are any Käärijä fans willing to meet up.

And they were. It only gets crazier from there.

I started talking to some of them. One suggested a Frank fanclub because we all had some Frank gadgets. I designed a sticker. I designed another one. I organized three meetups, day after day. People came. I made friends. A group chat was founded. Was it me who did it?

Then another crazy idea. Make more stickers. Repeat this at other conventions. And so my convention tour started. With many many stickers.

And then I start a daily Käärijä sketchbook. And then I find friends through the stickers. And then I find friends throught the art. And then the friends warm my heart and break it open and put a foot inside so it doesn't close back too soon.

And I realize I am not alone.

Okay?

So I am an artist, I stubbornly forced my way through my early years and ended up with a pretty cool job, and now I get just enough money and independence to decide how to spend time with people who are in general pretty amazing after all ✌️ still no idea what I want next but I am really happy I made it to here

#diary post #vent post #yeah it's. it's all connected #my biggest accomplishment is figuring it all out #truth does hurt but in the end gives freedom #semira origin story