#journal entry in times of crisis

[a-room-of-my-own]

Maggie* could barely believe the words she was reading in her daughter’s diary. But the words were real. And they were the first to finally explain the sudden mental health crisis that had captured her formerly happy, healthy, 12-year-old daughter.

The diary entry referred back to an incident in October 2021, when her daughter Ray*, a 6th grader at ASK Academy charter school in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, was allegedly raped inside the girls’ bathroom by an older biological male student.

(…)

Maggie only discovered what happened to her daughter several months after the alleged assault, when she was reorganizing her daughter’s room and stumbled upon her journal. After confronting her daughter about what it said, Maggie reported the rape to law enforcement, took her daughter for a physical exam, and began looking into the school’s role.

Maggie now believes the main reason a male student was alone with her daughter that day, and had the opportunity to rape her, is because the school had fully embraced gender ideology. Upon reading through school documents and talking with her daughter and fellow parents, Maggie learned that, without her knowledge or consent, ASK Academy had fully embraced radical gender theory into its policies and classrooms.

Ray, who is now 13, said the school fostered an ideologically far-left culture, which left little room for dissent. She said she felt pressured by teachers and faculty to accept the presence of men in women’s spaces, to keep her mouth shut about any feelings of discomfort, and to avoid doing anything that would be construed as “judging” someone who might identify as transgender.

It was these conditions that Maggie believes disarmed her daughter and enabled a male student to take advantage of the school’s “inclusive” bathroom policies.

(…)

According to Ray, ASK Academy had a policy of affirming students who adopted “transgender” identities, and supported their use of whichever bathroom or locker room facilities they preferred. Ray said this meant she was regularly forced to use girls’ bathrooms with boys, which conditioned her to lower her guard.

“A lot of the natural instincts, those emotions, those kinds of barriers or protective like walls that I had up, that school made it feel like those were bad,” she said.

(…)

She explained that she chose not to report the alleged assault and instead suppressed her feelings out of fear of being labeled a “bigot” by her classmates for calling out the “bathroom issue,” or being served detention for “bullying.”

Though she didn’t know the reason at the time, Maggie noticed her daughter beginning to exhibit signs of deep grief, anxiety and depression. She described it as feeling as though there was a stranger in their house. About a month after the alleged attack, Maggie started her daughter in therapy, where Ray insisted she was just being bullied in school. Once her daughter started demonstrating suicidal ideations, Maggie decided to confront ASK Academy and get them involved.

The school, Maggie said, dismissed her concerns. “They treated us like we were a problem when we tried to make them address issues our child was facing in their school,” she said, adding, “The school tried to say we must be doing something wrong at home.”

Watching her daughter become suicidal “for the first time in her life,” Maggie and her husband made the decision to pull their daughter from ASK Academy and enroll her in the local public school.

Several months later, on April 11, 2022, Maggie found her daughter’s journal, where she learned that Ray was not just being bullied in school, but had survived sexual assault.

Maggie and her husband sat down with Ray to ASK about the diary entry. When Ray finally opened up about being raped, Maggie immediately contacted Rio Rancho Police Department and their local Child Protective Services office to document and cross-report the case.

Rio Rancho Police Department began a criminal investigation, assigning a detective to the case who Maggie said was then supposed to work directly with ASK Academy. But to this day, Maggie said she isn’t confident that anyone from the police department or the school has even taken the time to review security footage from the time and location Ray thinks she was attacked.

Maggie was told by police involved in the investigation that progress on the case has been slow due to alleged staffing shortages. Recently, Maggie said the department assigned a new detective to the criminal case who she believes just began reviewing all of the previous detective's work.

It just sucks,” Maggie said. “I've been told in New Mexico, that these types of cases can take years to really come to fruition. I don't know how that's possible, but that's what we keep being told.”

IWF reached out to Captain Joel Holt of the Rio Rancho Police Department for comment, who confirmed that a criminal case is open and active. Cpt. Holt told IWF that while staffing is a factor in delays, there are other things which “potentially take time for an investigation,” but that their detectives are “working to do a thorough and complete investigation.”

In Spring 2022, by the time that Maggie started “raising hell” about her daughter’s alleged rape, she said four staffers from ASK Academy, including two top administrators, had left their positions at the school.

They're afraid of our case,” she said, adding, “They know what's coming.”

In addition to the criminal investigation, Maggie and her husband retained two private attorneys to pursue a civil case against the school, alleging ASK Academy didn’t have enough protections in place to safeguard their students, like Ray. Maggie said it took these attorneys nearly a year just to provide her family with forms to sign, however, so they are now in the process of signing a retainer with a new law firm.

The investigative and legal delays, both on the criminal and civil front, have left an alleged rapist loose at school with more than 550 students, free to strike again. To Maggie’s knowledge, ASK Academy never notified parents or students about the alleged incident or ensuing criminal investigation.

As the investigation continues to drag on, more troubling allegations have come to light.

In one instance dating back to July 2022, a 14-year-old female student at a neighboring public school was allegedly assaulted on her own campus at gunpoint. The girl identified her alleged attacker, whose name the victim’s mother shared with Maggie. After learning his identity, Maggie looked at Ray’s yearbook and discovered the male was a student at ASK Academy, and that her daughter had circled his picture with a big blue marker. When she asked about it, Ray said she recently had a “nightmare” where she remembered her perpetrator’s name.

IWF is not publishing the identity of the alleged perpetrator. However, in May 2022, the same individual’s name appeared in the subject of an email that a female student from ASK Academy sent to all fellow students years 2022 - 2026.

The email read:

"As of late we have had an issue with [REDACTED]. He has sexually harrassed, bullied, cheated off of and threatened people to get his way for his own gain. If you have experienced, witnessed or even had friends who've experienced this please, PLEASE write an incident report. The more proof we have, the better chance we can prevent this from happening to anyone ever again. Please dont hesitate to speak up. Get your parents involved as well, anything helps."

Though she had already left the school, Ray still had access to ASK Academy’s servers and was able to see the email. She and her mother heard from other parents and students that girls were taking it upon themselves to collect information about this student and personally take it to the school board, due to their perceived lack of accountability against a known offender.

Since leaving the school, Maggie and Ray said they’ve also learned of two additional survivors who were allegedly victimized by the same student, but are “too afraid” to come forward.

“We have learned that sexual harassment and assault was a commonly trending issue among the high school students at ASK Academy,” Maggie said.

“I feel extremely betrayed by them,” Ray said of the way ASK Academy responded to her allegations, along with those brought forward by other students. “For the past two years, I've had to accept that there probably won't be any justice.”

IWF reached out to ASK Academy’s Chief Executive Officer Edward Garcia for comment, as well as clarity regarding the school’s bathroom policies. Garcia said that ASK Academy is an “inclusive learning environment for all students,” and added the school does “not discriminate against any student.”

Garcia did not respond when asked to clarify whether girls’ facilities are open to biological boys.

While Garcia denied claims that sexual harassment and assault was commonly trending at ASK Academy, he also did not respond when IWF followed up by sharing a copy of the email sent out by students suggesting otherwise. He also did not respond to our inquiry about the existence of an open and active criminal case regarding an assault that allegedly occurred on ASK Academy school grounds, or offer any explanation as to why ASK Academy chose not to inform parents or students about the existence of such investigation for more than a year.

Instead, Garcia told IWF the school is “not at liberty to disclose confidential student information to a third party” and denied that any staff members left because of an open investigation.

Get Your Own Bathroom’

Today, Ray no longer feels comfortable using public restrooms and facilities by herself. At school, unless she’s with a group of girls, she uses a private bathroom in the nurse’s office, which she got special permission to do. She now needs medication to manage her anxiety and depression, keeps a knife closeby when she’s home alone, and has her family’s large, mixed-breed dog sleep next to her at night.

The entire situation has left Ray with little sympathy for efforts at the local, state and national levels to open women’s sports and private facilities to men who identify as transgender, or for the “trans” community itself.

“By them saying the only thing that matters is how they feel and not how I feel, is very selfish of them,” Ray said. “If they want their own bathroom, then gladly get your own bathroom. If you want your own sports, get your own sports. If you want to be included, be included in your own way that doesn't cause danger to everyone else.”

After a year at her local public school, Maggie and her husband decided their two daughters weren’t safe there, either. What solidified their decision was a law New Mexico passed in March that opened school bathrooms and locker rooms to individuals based on their “gender identity.” Maggie wrote to New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, a Democrat, to express her concerns about the legislation, even sharing the account of what happened to her daughter. Her inquiry, Maggie said, was “met with a complete rejection of the notion that he would support anything that goes against gender affirming legislation.”

He’s all about it, and his letter to me was so appalling,” she said, sharing the correspondence with IWF.

IWF reached out to Sen. Heinrich for comment. As of publication, Sen. Heinrich did not respond to our request.

Homeschooling, Maggie and her husband have now decided, is their only option to keep their daughters safe given the state’s current legislative landscape.

“She’s just a baby,” Maggie said. “No parent, no child, deserves this unimaginable pain and lack of justice. Instead, our legislative session wrapped up with the governor signing numerous bills that remove parents’ rights to protect their own children and allow the schools to put my daughters in danger.”

While the Biden administration ramps up attacks over what it calls “dangerous anti-transgender” legislation moving forward in more conservative-leaning states, Maggie knows first-hand what happens when lawmakers move in the opposite direction, choosing to prioritize the small group of transgender-identifying Americans at the expense of women and girls. It’s for this reason that, despite the ongoing investigations, she and her daughter decided to tell their story.

“I just want people to hear us because it feels like parents aren’t paying attention, aren’t taking action, or don’t want to open their eyes to what’s happening,” Maggie said. “We had a nearly perfect life before this trauma. We grieve the loss of her innocence, safety, and how things were before she was assaulted.”

“We will never be the same,” she added.

#tw rape mention #feminism #gender critical #transgender #radfem please interact

[chaotic-archaeologist]

hey so I've been transcribing/typing up my grandma's line-a-day diaries from 1937-1943. it's mostly for my mom and aunts and so on, and of course they're mostly about teen flings and skating rinks and movies and so on. but I've seen posts on here, including yours, about historians being interested in even very mundane journals. so I guess basically the question is, how can I/my mom get the typed up versions into the hands of someone who would find them useful in a historical sense?

Historians are absolutely interested in seemingly mundane records of the past! However, any interest from an institution is probably going to be in the physical documents themselves, rather than a transcription. I don't doubt that you've done a careful job, but the reality is that the pages your grandmother wrote in will contain vastly more information than you could ever hope to record—penmanship, the paper itself, the kind of pen that was used, residue, etc.

If you are willing to part with the primary source documents, I'm sure than an institution willing to take them would also be happy to get copies of your transcriptions, but I think it is unlikely that they would be interested in solely the typed up versions.

Most institutions have some sort of theme/mission for their collection. Maybe that's 1960s counter-culture, women of 19th century America, immigrant experiences, women's suffrage(political movements, time periods, specific events, etc.).

The best way to find an institution willing to take the diary is to identify themes that come up in your grandmother's writing, and then search for collections that are dedicated to that theme. Then you can reach out to the archivists and/or curators and see if they'd be interested in accessioning the diary. You might need to be prepared for them to say no—the curation crisis is real, and storage space is in constant demand.

There's also no guarantee that giving the diary to a collection will mean it becomes part of research. It would need to be cataloged, and then found by the right person doing the right research. Your transcriptions might help with this.

However, if you'd rather hold on to the diary—which is totally understandable—you could publish the typed entries on your own website. If you go that route, try to do your best to tag/denote any of the themes and events your grandmother wrote about to better the chances of it showing up in an internet search. It's also possible that an institution might be interested in helping with/platforming some sort of internet presence, so it doesn't hurt to ask.

Here are some links to previous posts I've made about keeping a diary. Looking through the notes might also be helpful.

How to write a diary for future historians

What should I write about?

If anyone else has advice, please feel free to chime in! This isn't exactly my area of expertise, so I'm always happy to be corrected.

-Reid

#he speaks #journaling #diary #donating diaries

[dallonwrites]

lover boy - wip (re)intro

How do you navigate love after losing the person you loved the most?

I realised I don't like writing WIP intros where I just list everything super neatly + have a nice official summary so I am just going to infodump!! Lover Boy is an Adult Literary/Historical novel set in the late 1980s that follows a gay man's navigation of love, sexuality, community and grief after losing his best friend to AIDS. It's inspired by my own experiences of grief + caretaking and the dissertation I did on grief in queer AIDS narratives. It follows Beau, my beautiful special boy, and is like patchwork quilt of all of his avenues of love -- romantic, sexual, platonic, familial, communal, self -- that is stitched together with the grief from this one major loss. This is paralleled with chronological flashbacks telling the story of Bobby's illness, and how Beau took care of him.

Beau and Bobby are best friends who were platonically in love with each other, who had to adapt their relationship as Bobby got sicker and Beau became his caretaker, and in the midst of this adversity became closer than ever. Beau is a lover of love in all ways, who thinks the best holidays Halloween and Valentines Day, who loves sex but is bad at not falling in love afterwards, who has a soft heart, who also has a massive crush on George Michael. Bobby loved his life, his friends and going to the club with them, scenic hikes and swimming, his pet snake named Judas, leather and heavy metal and activism and also the Muppets (his fave was Gonzo btw). He was obsessed with volcanoes and wanted to be a volcanologist. And Beau misses him so much!!! He is trying to understand what his life is now after losing such a big part of it. He is trying to understand what kind of love he wants. He also is trying really hard not to fall back in love with his ex boyfriend who is back in the picture. And he is not really doing any of this well!!

Other features of this novel:

Gay + Autistic protagonist who doesn't know he is autistic but his special interest is horror movies and it shows (favourites are anything monstrous + full of bloodsoaked practical effects. Favourite of all time is The Lost Boys). Beau literally looks towards horror movies to try and understand grief and loss

Protagonist is a guy who actively wants to be haunted and is looking for any signs of ghosts

Lesbian + Gay + Bi + Trans + everything solidarity. An honouring of that history. Exploration on how the AIDS crisis shaped and reshaped community and identity because well, I did an entire dissertation on it and I am not putting that to waste!!! It is interesting and important!!

A narrative that is brutally honest about grief and death, and all the ways it is messy and complicated. A narrative that also doesn't always take itself seriously because sadness and joy are always holding hands

Narrative that plays around with form (video transcripts, letters, journal entries, descriptions of art) and POV (past + present tense blended together, third person present that often dips into second)

Exploration of caretaking on a community level and an intimate, one to one level. Look into how love is often all the little ways we help each other hold on.

Exploration of disability and sickness and how it shapes your identity, your relationship with yourself and others, especially when you're young (I also have a novella planned actually exploring this from Bobby's POV, but you didn't hear that from me!!!!)

The idea that grief never gets smaller, just your life grows around it

The idea that you can love your friends!!! You can be in love with them!! And that love is no "lesser" than romantic love, and it is just as beautiful and big and bright. Even when Beau navigates romantic relationships, these aren't put on a pedestal above any other type of love

A golden retriever named Atlas (Beau's own beautiful, special boy)

This is a personal project that I'm not publishing, but it means a lot to me so I will talk about it a lot!!! I've been playing around with it in its current form for about a year now and am finally making a dent in an actual first draft. My want is to share long, in depth pieces about how I navigate writing a story like this somewhere like Substack, and also all the fun of drafting it along the way. Expect infodumps and excerpts!!!

#i still dont know how tf to make a wip intro!!! posting this like ahhh so scary! #i will be honest i am not in a social media mood recently but it is literally beau's favourite day #so i don't know when i will post something for this but hopefully soon!!! #wip intro #what even are the writeblr tags these days #writeblr #amwriting #?? #lover boy #there IS another wip intro for this in that tag but it is mildly outdated!!!

[au-wannabe-the-very-best]

Sounds like Alxi is gearing up for a journey to find himself and figure out what he wants to do, if he wants to stay. Not like he has much of a choice unless he gets tossed back home.

Would he eventually get his own place, once he gets his documents settled, or would the brothers all decide to move to a new place with 3 bedrooms? It would be nice if they all decide they are still family, even if they aren't blood related. He could even still work at a train station if he wanted, since he still has the experience.

Alexi is going through a huge existential crisis, for the second time, and is a little too scared to really. Talk about it with anyone. Instead choosing to try and deal with it himself.

Meanwhile, Emmet is terrified to even talk to Alexi, because he was a major player in Alexi's first existential crisis and somehow convinced the poor guy that he was his missing twin brother.

Alexi is kind of convinced for a while that he'll have to figure out new living arrangements and just. Move out of Emmet's life. Which is something Emmet doesn't want either, because as complicated as things are, Alexi for all intents and purposes was his brother for the past five years, even if he wasn't Ingo. Like, Alexi made him soup when he was sick, scolded him when he overworked himself, play wrestled him, all the works. Emmet can't stop Alexi from wanting to move away, after all, Emmet... Contributed to this guy's brainwashing. But he doesn't want Alexi gone either.

Ingo is actually the one to convince Alexi to stick around. Ingo, for very obvious reasons, has no preconceived notions about who Alexi is and what he should be like. Ingo personally has done nothing to wrong Alexi directly. It's so much easier to interact with Ingo than everybody else, who act so stilted around Alexi. (You know. Because of the guilt and horror.)

Ingo just. Talks with Alexi. About everything and anything. Alexi ends up giving Ingo his "memory journal" where he's kept a record of things from the past five years, because the journal includes stories that Ingo's family told Alexi in hopes of "jogging his memory." Although Ingo remembers Emmet and his home now, he's still got a bad case of amnesia, so Alexi thought this would be helpful for him in the way it wasn't helpful to Alexi.

Ingo finds himself very touched by the entries of Alexi's journal. It's meticulously kept, and Alexi is very clear about what he's feeling in the moments he records. Alexi very obviously loves Emmet. Loves the friends and family Ingo had trouble remembering. Alexi writes about their mannerisms and their ticks, taking special care in these notes because "you should be able to recognize who they are by these traits, even if you were to lose your memories once more."

Alexi thought he had lost his memories and kept a record in the case he ever lost them again, and this proves to be incredibly useful for Ingo. Alexi is more than happy in aiding Ingo's efforts in regaining his memories. The two become close as a result, and Ingo finds himself treating Alexi as a brother.

Ingo is rather honest about wanting Alexi in his life. It immediately makes Alexi reconsider leaving.

They still need to move, of course. Ingo came back with an entire team from Hisui. They kind of need a bigger place to house all these new Pokémon. (And Alexi's Ferroseed. Can't forget the newest addition.)

And as for Alexi's job. He actually needs to get his certification in his own name to continue working at the station. And Ingo's been gone for five years so HE needs to get reexamined as well. They become study buddies for a while.

#Submas #Subway Boss Ingo #Subway Boss Emmet #Ingo #Emmet #Alexi #OC Alexi #Pokemon #Pokémon

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Nintendo-vember Level 3: Dobson and his Toxic Nintendo Nostalgia

Nostalgia can be toxic. Now bear in mind, I did not say that it IS toxic, but that it can be toxic. This assumption that because we have pleasant memories of something, that it was always good all the time. A desire to get that back, ignores all the good that’s come since then. As well as all the bad stuff that was there too. And it poisons you. Making you more suggestible to deception and your own greed. Who is to say that your own past is more important than someone else’s future? And because you want something that may not have been real at all, the farther the goal post gets. Because you can’t really reclaim it. So it just gets worse and worse and you get greedier and more desperate for it, because what you really want is never going to come. Until in the very end, you become the thing you hated in the first place. Lewis Lovhaug – March 2018, Infinite Crisis

Everything I did for this month so far, was going to lead directly into today’s , actually long in the works, post. Cause today we go over the comic, that as far as I see it, may actually be Dobson’s most (in)famous one out there. The one that painted the public’s opinion of him more so than anything he would ever do when starting to draw “political comics” under Trump. The one that defined him for all of deviantart and kiwifarms from 2010 onward. A comic that will always show up, whenever someone online even remotely talks about him. The one that I have seen more times than any other being used for threads on /co/ for Dobson. A comic that is neither about politics, feminism or even part of any of his comic series. A comic that is truly centered around the concept of toxic nostalgia, rather than whatever Andrew Dobson was going for and that fits perfectly to the theme of this month.

Ladies, gentlemen and inbetween… I give you, the Localization one.

Released in 2010, a time when Dobson was still trying (and failing) to sell himself more on the image of just being a quirky nerd and Nintendo fanboy whose work you should support because he only wants to make others happy, this became a comic that genuinely cemented further in the eyes of others, how much of a self-indulgent and extremely manchildish prick with dumb taste he really was.

How, some here may ask who are a bit too young? Well, let me give you context…

For starters, by the time Dobson released the comic, he had already quite a bit of a reputation online for being a prick to other nerds. His infamous “West vs East” comic which he created “as a joke” to vent about the popularity of anime in the mid to late 2000s had been published three years prior and had, in combination with a lot of derogative journal entries and posts on deviantart and other pages, earned him the ire of many people. In addition, his failed or outright aborted “original” content had painted him as a quitter, who despite wanting all the fame someone could muster online, was not willing to put the necessary work in it.

Dobson was, for a lack of a better word, a bully among nerds who tried to use his platform to shame people for being “nerdier” than him or enjoying stuff he didn’t, while also playing the victim card for people not interested in purchasing his product or calling him out on his hypocrisies and flaws in opinions.

In that regard, Dobson was pretty much ahead of the curve to some “woke” companies. Insulting your customer and then being surprised when no one wants to buy your shit.

The other thing to be aware of, has to do with the history and popularity of Nintendo characters at least pre-1995 in America.

For the few not quite aware and as a quick reminder to everyone: Videogames back in the 80s and very early 90s (like 1990-92) did on average not necessarily have what we can call “complex” lore when it came to videogame stories and characters. At least not to a degree as we would get later in the mid-90s and onwards. Aside of (J)RPGs most games were simply focused on moving a character from one end of a level to the next and the story as to why we even bothered for Megaman to fight the Robo Masters and who the heck Dr. Wily was, was printed in the manual on a small page.

And Mario and Link were no exception to that. Mostly because they also had only very few genuine main titles under their name. By 1989, The Legend of Zelda had only two NES titles under its name, while Mario had (if we don’t account for non-jump n’run games in which he was shoved into because of his status as Nintendo’s mascot) the three main Mario Bros games for the NES, one game for the Game Boy, Mario Bros and the two Donkey Kong titles.

Lacking quite a bit in characterization game wise, Nintendo of America in order to sell the stuff had to partly make the characters appeal to the audience via localization done through merchandise and non-game related products. And early fans of these characters would obviously crave for it.

Enter The Super Mario Bros Super Show, a cartoon series produced on order of Nintendo of America by Haim Saban and DIC Enterprises (the same ones who would give us “The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog”, “Captain N” and “Inspector Gadget”) that ran from September 1989 till December of 1989. Using the first two Mario Bros games for the NES as basis for the character design of the show, the show itself had otherwise little to do with the games. Ignoring the live action segments, the actual animated episodes would have plots in which Mario, Luigi, Toad and Peach (the later going by the then American official name of Princess Toadstool) traveled into whatever territory and had to deal with Bowser (or King Koopa as he was known) in a plot that had elements of some book, movie or anything else to parody.

In addition the show would later have Legend of Zelda based animated segments, of which 13 were produced. Those featured Link living in Hyrule castle with a more active “power woman” Princess Zelda and a fairy companion named Sprite and the two having to deal with Ganon, who was more of a dark wizard than a warrior based demon.

Overall, the shows were not really all that great compared to other stuff that existed cartoon wise, with some aspects of the characters feeling jarring nowadays. But honestly, for the sake of this article, I watched some of them and frankly they were not that terrible. They were typical 80s cartoon fanfare, which among other things included some animation errors and dumb slapstick. Especially the Mario segments were very slapstick heavy and Mario and Luigi were mostly characterized by Luigi being a bit of a scaredy cat even before the games did show him like that, Mario being rougher than you would think and dumb jokes about Luigi and Mario loving pasta and other Italian dishes. Because you know, Italians are only known for their cuisine!

The Zelda segments also had a bit of an “odd” character dynamic imagined for Zelda and Link. Zelda was a bit of a jerkass commanding bitch and Link could be a horndog trying to always flirt with her or trying to get a kiss.

There is one moment in an episode for example, where Zelda sits on Links bed after just having stopped some condor from stealing a piece of the Triforce guarded in Link’s room. Right then Link enters the room, sees the Princess sitting there and immediately says “smooching time” and tries to jump her to make out.

Minute 3:15 – 3:20 more or less Yeah, I think Pepe le Hyrulian would not really sell well with more modern audiences and sensitivities.

All that said, I can understand people having a soft spot for the show and enjoying it unironically. It is just that I think most of them would also be intelligent and understanding enough to see, that these shows did NOT give the ultimate interpretation of who or what these characters and their games were. Truth be told, even back then those things weren’t really acknowledged by Nintendo. Sure, Nintendo of America may have given the okay to do those things. But in Japan, global headquarters gave more or less a rat’s ass about it. They were busy making the NES and Gameboy profitable and worked on Mario Bros 3.

Truth be told, the most “characterization” Mario even got in Japan at the time was as followed: Shigeru Miyamoto thought he should be Italian and from New York. The former because he “looked” Italian to him (as a result of the mustache), the later because Donkey Kong, the game Mario originated from, was inspired in part by King Kong and King Kong is set in New York. Mario didn’t even have a name originally, having been known by Jumpman once. The origin of his Mario name is, that after Minoru Arakawa (president of Nintendo of America at the time) got into an argument with a real estate developer named Mario Segale, who Arakawa owned rent money, the game developers decided to name the character Mario. Which may or may not have been meant as a “take that” against Mr. Segale. But if so, it’s one that backfired.

But I digress. Point of that entire elongated history lesson is, that Mario and Link were in terms of characterization mostly defined to some 80s kids, by their depiction in the American cartoon, which had however very little in common with what the games were about. It was e.g. the cartoon who popularized heavily the entire idea of the brothers being from Brooklyn and having been transported via a magic pipe into the Mushroom Kingdom, while in the actual games, such a backstory was never really given. As evident by even the actual American instruction manuals for Super Mario Bros 1 and 3 I checked out online for this. Look them up.

And again, most people, even the kids, could accept that the animated show and what the games were, differed.

Then came the 90s, and with more titles under their belt, Nintendo of Japan decided to flesh out their mascots more to increase their popularity, resulting in Mario, Link and others getting “official” personalities as shown by their behavior in games and not just the inofficial ones via non-canon foreign material. And again, most kids and people were okay with that. After all, the games were what really mattered to them in the long run. Plus I think that as long as the games would simply “capture” the spirit of whatever they liked in the characters iand games n the first place, they would be okay with it.

But not Andrew Dobson.

Born in 1981 and likely not owning a NES up until the cartoon aired, he jumped onto the show as an eight year old and became a fan of it. In fact he enjoyed the Zelda cartoon so much, even as an adult he would draw fanart about it

Nothing at all wrong with that in my opinion. You like something, you have the ability to create fan content for it, go for it.

But as we more or less already established via the Howard and Nester comic, Dobson was as a person dead set that only the thing he liked or was first exposed to counts and not whatever others thought. Something that supposedly may explain why he genuine hates Bowser Jr and Yoshi, as evident by these tweets made a few years after the Localization comic was made.

And yeah sorry, but how can one hate Yoshi? Yoshi is an adorable pet dinosaur you can ride. You know how many kids would have loved someone like that in their life? Gues if Yoshi was less into vore and more into inflation, Dobson would have liked him more.

Speaking of the comic -and to finally get back to it- even Dobson admitted years later that the entire point of it is to simply piss all over Nintendo and that he was annoyed that his “beloved” American continuity got erased in favor of the “dirty Japanese” one. Despite the fact that the Japanese one is, as he himself admits, official.

And boy does he take the piss on it. To the point I want to call him R. Kelly.

So lets dissect how his stand is just the typicla strawman affair, unfunny and at times quite frankly outright homophobic, sexist, hypocritical and racist.

First, the art. As always, it is just “great” to see the degree in animation being fully utilized here. No background but skyblue, everyone looking more like a doodle, the use of the fillbucket, the director having 5 fingers on his hand in the second panel, but four in the fifth, getting the numbers of fingers on Mario completely wrong, missing out on Peach in the last panel and so on… brilliant! How come Disney would not hire someone who could draw like that! Oh right, because standards. Though those have gotten quite low over the years

Every single person working on this needs to be blacklisted.

But of course, the true brilliance comes through the writing. Starting with the strawman executive coming off as if what he does is something new. That he is the “evil soulless corporation” who doesn’t care for his employees and creations true personality and forces them to fit into some mold for the audience to enjoy. The “audience” and consumers also being more or less indirectly insulted by the way Dobson presents the entire affair, as he seemingly wants to blame “those damn kids” for ruining his favorite childhood characters.

But Dobson, I thought you loved corporations hating on fans.

Then we come to what the characters are supposedly changed into.

(warning, upload of the comic for the third time, so you cna always see what I refer to)

First, Mario being no longer from Brooklyn and that he is supposedly an Italian stereotype. As a non American, I have to ask: Why is it so important that Mario has to be from Brooklyn? I get the feeling the only reason people like Dobson or Moviebob care about it, is because they want to deep down culturally appropriate the character. Assure he is in some way of American culture and doesn’t belong to some “dirty, foreign country”, even if they have to go for a compromise and make him a dirty half blood Wop. I mean, I will say this: Yes, Mario has an accent that is stereotypical. And? I take a stereotypical accent and being otherwise a determined but friendly everyday hero over him being stereotypically obsessed with pasta and no personality conveyed through his actions aside of being a bit mean and bossy to his brother, as was the case in that dang cartoon.

The thing here is, Dobson was genuinely convinced that Mario’s portrayal as given by Charles Martinet, Mario’s VA from the early 90s up until August of 2023, wasn’t just stereotypical, but also racist, harmful and culturally insensitive. Something he believed even back in 2017 and resulted in a minor twitter meltdown

Look, I will say this here: Yes, Martinet’s voice for Mario is kinda stereotypical. And I did my research. Unlike Martinet, Lou Albano, the original voice of Mario in the Mario Bros Super Show, was actually of Italian heritage. Born in 1933 in Rome, having immigrated to the USA shortly after he got baptized in the Vatican (you can’t get more Italian than that!), he certainly was more authentically Italian than Martinet, who was born in California. Heck, Martinet’s father is actually French and he spend more time in France in his youth than in America or Italy. The story of how Martinet got his gig as Mario is also well known and painted by a rather stereotypical joke involving Italian food.

But to paraphrase the twitter user Dobson argued with, I think that all things considered, Martinet gave Mario and all the other characters he voiced over the years just a certain warmth and fun to their personality with the way he delivered his lines, that he managed to convey and define the cartoonish true nature of Mario and Co for many generations to come. And even now that he has been retired from the role, he is still a name recognized for the character. A character no one, not even freaking nationalistic Italians, seem to have a problem with. So, mangia un cazzo, Dobson. You sound just like the assholes who tried to get rid of Speedy Gonzales and in doing so pissed off all of Mexico.

Next the way he talks about Peach. Okay first, the Popeye arms are again just something from the cartoons. Or at least he believes it cause…. Well

Does that look like Popeye arms?

Second, he is essentially saying that Princess Peach, unlike the cartoon version, is a bimbo. Why, because she is blonde and you have some sort of deep seated hatred for blond people? Also, Peach hasn’t fought with Mario together in really any NES videogame either, Dobson. Oh what, Mario Bros 2? Aka the reskinned version of Doki Doki Panic? The way he talks here about Princess Peach is just utterly sexist, as he essentially devalues Peach as a character, just because she plays a damsel in distress often times. Which doesn’t even necessarily mean, that she isn’t a badass in her own way, even in that role. I mean, she is still the sovereign ruler of an entire nation and in Super Princess Peach -which seems to be the game he references when it comes to her being “over emotionally”- she saves the day all on her own. Sure, she is emotional in the game, but the entire premise of the game is centered around everyone’s emotions going haywire along Vibe Island, including the villains. Bet Dobson hasn’t even played the game back in 2006 and just went off on some shitty rumor. Not to forget that this statement is utterly false. Peach has also been a great supporting character and fighter in games such as Super Mario RPG and Super Paper Mario, which were released BEFORE that comic. And nowadays she is also known as a great character in stuff like the Mario + Rabbids games plus she will get her own upcoming Princess Peach: Showtime game for the Switch. Lastly, let us not forget every game where, even if she played a damsel, was still important to the plot by defying the villain as best as she could. Not to forget the current movie, in which she still kicked ass while going out all in pink.

So, after he has been racist towards Italians indirectly as well as sexist towards women embracing their brand feminity (boy, don’t want to know how 2011 Dobson would have then reacted to the Barbie movie of 2023), let Dobson be judgmental about anime fangirls and also rather homophobic, by the way how he tries to tear down “modern” Link.

There are four things I hate the most about the Link panel, which make it frankly in my eyes the one where Dobson’s hatred and own nastiness really shine through.

First, the accusation that the “changes” to Link’s design past “Link’s Awakening” can be attributed to anime fangirls. Showing both his true hatred for women when they don’t fall in line with his views and his stuck up shitty opinion about anime fans and combining it with latent misogyny. Look, I have seen thirst anime fangirls myself a lot over my lifetime. But they were not the demographic to “ruin” Link. If anything, I think that the popularity of Cloud Strife in general with others may have slightly influenced Link’s design for Ocarina of Time. Which in itself also had been in development at least since spring of 1996, till its release in November of 1998. And even then, that is a stretch I came up with, cause in my opinion someone in the development team likely just thought “Hey, what if we move on from the more cartoony look of the late 80s and early 90s and try some “darker” fantasy elements, without going full Berserk?” And that is how we got Link in that game. Because of some developers trying to appeal design wise to a general audience, not just a random group of made up strawmen. You want to see games pandering to actual Yaoi fangirls aesthetically? Play Enzai or Twisted Wonderland.

Second, again his hatred towards blond people. I really would like to know where that comes from, because I doubt it was only related to some random bully in school being blond.

Third, the way he uses the word effeminate and describes post Ocarina of Time Link essentially as “nonthreatening”.

For starters, considering Link rams his sword into Ganon’s skull in Ocarina of Time and slashes away at many of his enemies, which is way more threatening and violent than just poking them with a stick in 2D overhead view, I wouldn’t really consider him “non threatening”. I like to call him and many of his future incarnations, badass as fuck. Even the cartoonish, childlike Link from the Wind Waker continuity, who didn’t just stab Ganon in the head, but put his sword in there for good. It also is kinda laughable how Dobson uses the word “non threatening” in a negative manner, seeing how over the years ever since he sucked off Steven Universe, he would whine on twitter and other social plattforms again and again how males in media are always resolving conflict only via violence and are not in tune with their emotions. In other words, he once considered being more or less pacifistic a negative trait.

Also, “effeminate”? Okay first, Link looks like this in Ocarina of Time…

What exactly looks “effeminate” about male Link here, or at least let’s say more “effeminate” than for example in a character like this?

Second, we all know that if Link all off sudden looked more like Guts from Berserk or the protagonist of DarkSoul (you know, more “manly”), Dobson would throw enough of a hissy fit, he would likely come back from his sabbath and whine how Nintendo is embracing toxic masculine traits in his characters. All while also blaming PS3 games for some reason for that.

Third, how exactly would Dobson define effeminate here? I mean, the term is already defined as being derogatory, the most common definition I found by Merriam-Webter online being as followed

Effeminate: having feminine qualities untypical of a man : not manly in appearance or manner

Effeminate: marked by an unbecoming delicacy or overrefinement

So, Andrew “I hate all men” Dobson, has a problem with a character not being “typical” or stereotypical manly male? The same guy who praised the She-Ra reboot for its portrayal of Bow and fucking worships that fat fuck below as one of the best protagonists in a cartoon of the last decade…

Has actually deep down a problem with people embracing more female interests, qualities or just looking more feminine in appearance, even though the later may not be by choice but rather genetics? All while also having the audacity to say then this years later?

I find this just genuinely hate- and hurtful. Not just a simple complaint about a design choice regarding his supposed favorite fantasy game hero, but a “deep cut” towards people who just enjoy things not considered “stereotypically manly” or may feel not comfortable falling in line with gender expectations. I mean, what? Is a man now supposedly not manly in Dobson’s eyes because they like musicals, sweets are capable of showing empathy and other emotions or like to dress up in certain ways or take care of their appearance?

It is just disgusting to me, because I know people, both male and female, who had to deal with bullying and name calling a lot simple because they didn’t quite fall in line with expectations by others or struggle with their own identity partly because of expectations vs reality. And as evident by THIS comment TheHypocrisyofAndrewDobson received once it isn’t just “a joke” to people genuinely affected by that sort of mentality. And again, this derogatory use of the world and complaint towards “modern” Link comes from someone who years later would whine about toxic masculinity, put women on pedestals even if they are abusive, likely jerked it off to Link in Gerudo gear following Breath of the Wild and in the biggest ironic “twist”, loves the cartoon incarnation of Link, whose catchphrase is “Excuse me, Princess” and needs a restraining order as much as Warner Bros gave Pepe lePew.

And to finish this panel off (yes, we are still not at Samus), of course the next complain is how Zelda and Link are “no longer love interests” … now I apologize in advance towards any moderate shipper out here, but I am going full snarker mode now for this part. Okay?

Dobson… the fact that you cared so much about shipping two fictional characters in a series of children games, for a console primarily played by kids, while you were being in your 20s and above is pathetic as shit. I know that you have no one in life who genuinely loves you, because among other things you are incapable of either feeling or identifying true love while also being a selfish little shit, but to be so thirsty for affection that you project that need on some pieces of data or lines of color, makes you a bigger loser in my book than any republican who lost the primary against Donald Trump in 2015. The fact that you look at a piece of fiction and your immediate thought is “oohh, these two characters together would look very cute hugging, kissing and doing things I touch myself to at night”, while things such as plot progression and character development likely play second, third or fourth fiddle, only confirms to me that shippers (at least the once acting like you in that regard and other fields) are a fucking blight on any fandom and the world at large.

Now with that shit vented, I once again apologize for going that far, even for “comedic purpose” towards the people who actually can recognize when they go just a bit too far with shipping. But this isn’t just annoying in regard to this comic, it is annoying with Dobson in general. If you are even remotely aware of how he treats the LGBT subject for real as well as what he truly enjoys about Legend of Korra and Miraculous Ladybug, you know he is thirstier than someone stranded in the Gobi desert. Just look at his pic of Zelda and Linkle he made in honour of Hyrule Warriors.

I can kinda taste his urge to touch himself there.

To me it is just dumb to define any story out there and the characters in it by simply “are they getting together or not” because romance to me in storytelling is an additional flavor, not the main ingredient. It is one reason I really do not like Miraculous Ladybug for example. And the fact that Dobson seems to define Legend of Zelda a lot as a franchise by the “shipping potential” of Link and Zelda as implied by that panel, irks me in all the wrong ways.

I mean, for the most part the appeal of the Zelda games isn’t the “romance” between the two, it is traversing the land of Hyrule and saving it from evil while going on a big adventure. And let us be real here, Link and Zelda weren’t really an item pre-Ocarina of Time either. In the NES and SNES games they were essentially strangers to each other, with one filling the role of damsel in distress even a bit harder than Peach did. After all, Peach may be a princess, but she actually rules her kingdom. Zelda on the other hand is daddy’s little girl in those and other games post 1998. And the relationship they had in the cartoon, the one Dobson likes to call a “may they, won’t they” thing is in my opinion not cute, but toxic. She is a demanding bitch that calls him names at times, he is a horndog who needs a lecture by Sexual Harassment Panda and none of them improves character wise over the show.

What a misogynistic piece of shit

There is a reason I consider Tetra, Zelda from Skyward Sword and the “Wild” Zelda the better interests, because not only do Link and Zelda here have better chemistry and are both nicer and more respectful to each other in a manner, they also support each other in very heroic ways. I mean, Zelda in Tears of the Kingdom willingly sacrificed her own conscious just so Link can have a shot at defeating Ganon and saving Hyrule in the future, while Link wants to do everything to save his friend. If that isn’t impactful, tragic and has so much romantic potential, I don’t know what else would count.

But hey, supposedly the cartoon is better. And the 365 Days Trilogy is a great love story with no unfortunate implications involving sexual relationships and abuse. *snark*

And then it is Samus turn. And I really have to wonder, if Dobson ever even played a Metroid Game before Other M anyway, as he hates games with scary elements and FPS.

Aside of once again whining about changing the hair color (Dobson seems to be something of a reverse Aryan enthusiast), he acts as if the addition of the Zero Suit in Metroid was a cardinal sin and “sexist crap”, to entice more men to playing her game.

Okay… for starters, the Metroid games were already enjoyed by a huge male demographic long before that or before even Metroid Prime. Samus wasn’t a “played by females thirsty for representation” only character, as that comic seems to imply. She was considered a female badass hero from the moment she first appeared and her design is deliberately inspired by Ripley from Alien. And skimpy? Again, Dobson doesn’t seem to know what certain words mean. Skimpy would be when the outfit would show more off her skin or was barely there. This is a skintight jumpsuit, that also has a function in the game as a less movement restricting suit compared to Samus armor. Heck, just watch this video, that guy gives some decent explanation on the suit itself.

And yeah, I can agree that in certain cutscenes more so than the actual game, it does put quite a bit of emphasize on Samus “attributes” so to speak. But are we really trying to insinuate that the Zero Jumpsuit is more sexist than the character stripping off to her underwear as was the bonus ending content of the initial Metroid games?

And if the issue is that the skinsuit makes Samus more “sexy” and that Dobson does not want to see sexy characters in Nintendo games…

He should reevaluate the fact that he enjoyed the above later.

There is also this little tweet I found after the fact, Dosbon would make later in 2015, where he actually more or less confirms the idea, that he thinks the Japanese only care for Samus in a “sexy skintight” manner, by making this dumbass “joke” comparison

Ignoring the fact btw, that the pic on the left was drawn by Samus original designer Hiroji Kiyotake. Again, Dobson trying to discredit the Japanese. And don't get me even started that he enjoys Other M or takes more offense to the shoedesign of Samus in Smash Bros than anything

Finally, and to wrap this thing up, we reach the final panel, showing the executive declaring that the “old” stuff shall from now on be brushed off like Dobson tried to brush off his fetish artist days, all while the “new and improved, but truly despicable” pretenders of his favorite childhood heroes are behind him. Mario lobotomized to say MAMA MIA while his eyes look like he is possessed by the retardation of Talus, Link being a “silly girl who makes silly movements with her hands and likely just wants to hang out with cute boys”, while Samus looks pissed and just wishes she was in something less degrading for her than this comic. Like Other M.

Honestly, this comic just stinks of loser entitlement and as stated prior, toxic nostalgia. Dobson has never really been a creator of decent stuff, only a consumer who demands the next product as soon as he hungers for it and will be utterly judgemental to petty and spiteful degrees, when he doesn’t get what he wants or suddenly thinks he sees something “problematic” to it. And to him, already the fact that stylistic choices and aesthetics changed over time, a natural progression of things if you ask me, is “problematic” in his eyes. Dobson would have rather had for Zelda, Link, Mario, Samus and Co to be undefined postholders he could have projected himself on, or outdated 80s stereotypes and toxic men, because that is the first thing he was ever exposed to when it came to those characters. Why not go even further, Dobson? Erase the Switch, the Wii and any other game console post 1989 from history, so that gaming itself never evolves past the 8-Bit era. Let’s destroy Pokemon, God of War, Kirby, Sonic and many other franchises and characters, because they are not the “true heroes of the Golden Age of gaming”. Let’s see how you will like that, when they come for your beloved Skyrim.

Bottom line, Dobson is a nostalgic pig, stuck in a past he looks at through rose tainted, grease covered glasses and this comic more than anything written before and after that embodies the mentality quite as well. And even though he tried to play it off as a joke, anyone with half a brain saw through what it was really about. And they made Dobson know, partly through less words than I used here, why they thought his opinion and by extension he, sucked.

Dobson wasn’t just playing the overzealous Nintendo fan for shit and giggles. He was, this overzealous, almost destructive and utterly disrespectful fan, who believed in the superiority of his favorite childhood toy over the consoles of others, even if that included pissing off his own “kin” or accussing Nintendo of being problematic dirty foreigners. Just look at anything he would type in regard of Super Smash Bros for the Switch, like how pissed he was at the fact he had to put effort into getting his favorite character to play as. Essentially insinuating, the game and people enjoying it were crap, just because he was biased towards fighting games to begin with. And look, being critical of aspects of a game, is one thing. But some of the things Dobson found to complain about? Pathetic, childish and utterly irrelevant in the bigger picture of anything

I want to punch him in the throat for this voice alone...

And if you think Dobson being an opinionated Nintendo fanboy is cringe, wait till we get to him being an opinionated PS3 hater.

But before that, I want to tear at least one of his shitty Zelda opinions a new one…

#andrew dobson #syac #so you are a cartoonist #tom preston #adobsonartwork #webcomic #youtube #adobsoncomic #nintendo #super mario #legend of zelda #link #samus aran #metroid #nintendo vember #Youtube

[splashinkling]

writeblr re-intro.

hi friends! this intro is partially because there's a lot of new people around and partially because I wanted to refresh a little bit.

so who am I?

call me splash or ink or some other nickname!

unfortunately, unequivocally both a writer and a gamer

and therefore I run my gaming blog (@splashink-games), where I post reviews, devlogs, and (sometimes) reblog other works

sometimes I'll reblog something from there by accident (or on purpose)

you'll also find me reblogging art or memes here.

I write basically just fantasy, but want to try my hand at sci-fi

tag/ask game/DM friendly! talk to me about stuff!

I'm actually very bad at reading things without a dedicated time to do so, so if I reblog your work with tags like "cool stuff" or something real short or general, I do actually really really love your work

meet my wips below the cut!

Shining Shadows. (title's a work in progress)

His target was only ever the Hero of Cyreth. The others didn’t matter. And what happened after didn’t matter either.

newest wip. intro coming soon-ish (whenever I get to it)

Progress: first draft

uhhhh. revenge gone wrong. revenge also gone right?

Memories with the Witch.

"Family... I'm not sure. I know I have one, but it's fuzzy. I don't know if they're even still alive."

you can find the intro here!

Progress: who knows really

(it's actually 46 chapters in progress, 18 to edit, 5 to check, 1 otherwise ready to post but I don't)

originally planned as a non-linear weekly webnovel, it's the most disorganized little thing I've got

if you like D&D, this wip is based on it!

Lyzandir regains his memories with Eryn, then found family vibes.

first-person narration along with diary/journal entries

two POV main characters across generations

Demons in the Den.

Demons have always run amok. For as long as I can remember and even before then.

the OG, my first wip I posted here.

Progress: second draft of book one, first draft of book two

supposed to be a trilogy but I was bad at planning

so what if the two leads liked each other but one's a demon and triggers bad memories?

and then they're dragged into a continental crisis?

#writeblr #writeblr intro #wip intros #ink rambles

[internetgremlin-writes]

We need no. 8 and 143 for Sebastian Vettel x reader 😍

8 - "Looks like we'll be trapped for a while,"

143 - "Are you trying to turn me on or are you really just that oblivious?"

SEB REQ SEB REQ SEB REQ!! Very excited about this one because I ADORE Seb and I was secretly worried no one would want to hear about him. Entirely based on Seb's flirting with anything that moves era

Also, this is my 100th post on this blog woo

Warnings: Yeah this is getting smutty. NSFW!

Prompt night info and list for requesting your own ficlet/HCs here!

Also entered an entire crisis over picking a gif because Seb is a YES for me in all of his eras

"Looks like we'll be trapped for a while," you sighed, slumping back against the elevator and sinking to the floor.

Only you could get yourself stuck in an elevator in the middle of the track stadium with Sebastian fucking Vettel. Sebastian was very calm about the whole thing. Thank god, you thought, that the race had finished and it was only post-race interviews left. If you'd held up the race you would have had to change your identity and move to Peru out of embarrassment.

"I'm so sorry," you apologised again, because it was the only thing you could think of doing. Sebastian gave you a fairly blank look from where he was examining the control panel, trying to kick start the buttons to life.

"Not your fault," it wasn't the first time he'd said that either.

"I shouldn't have jammed the buttons," you were running late. You were still new to the whole journalism thing, and if you were being honest you'd been late because you'd gotten stuck in your tech belt with a wire crossed where it definitely shouldn't and you couldn't get it undone alone. You'd rushed into the elevator and repeatedly stabbed the button for the floor you were supposed to be on in your rush. He shrugged simply, giving the blank buttons another slap.

"I don't think it's the buttons, we called for help before they died," he was right; the elevator had started moving before it had ground to a halt, and you'd been able to get through to the help desk, which was entirely unhelpful and had promised help wouldn't be able to get to you until after the interviews when security would be able to safely clear the mechanics for entry.

"In an arena full of mechanics?" Sebastian had questioned, sounding almost amused at the situation. But apparently being able to build a supercar and fix an elevator required two entirely different skillsets.

Sebastian, as it turned out, was an incredibly nice person. You'd crossed paths with him twice before, both for interviews lasting only a couple of minutes long. He'd remembered you, and the second the elevator had shuddered he was more concerned about making sure that you didn't start to panic than anything else. He gave up trying to spark some life into the button panel and sank down opposite you.

"I knew I should have brought my flask," you mumbled because not being sober in this situation sounded a whole lot better. Sebastian raised an eyebrow at you, a little smirk tugging at his lips.

"Do you normally drink before interviewing us? Are we that scary?" He was teasing you, but you could see there was a genuine interest in the way his blue eyes held yours.

"No, but a shot or two for dutch courage sometimes helps," he broke out into a toothy grin, nodding along in understanding.

"Yes well, some of these young drivers are very attractive. It must be distracting," was he teasing you?

"Not really my type," you said without thinking, your response bluntly honest. Sebastian didn't miss a trick, a gleam in his eye letting you know he was keeping hold of that piece of information.

"So you like the older guys?" There was nothing but simple curiosity in his tone, even so, you couldn't quite look him in the eye when you gave your next answer.

"Well, not total grandpas," you said. Your age you meant. More experienced, sensible, mature, but still young enough to have a sense of humour, to know how to show you a good time. You liked gentlemen. "Aren't I supposed to be interviewing you anyway?"

"Ha, please," he opened his hand in invitation and you mimed a microphone in the air, asking him a few stupid questions about the race and his performance, to which he answered with equally silly responses.

Seb, as you learnt he liked to be called by friends, was fascinating. Even his silly answers gave a little bit of himself to you. Every look he gave you was charged, every raise of his eyebrow or quirk of his lips perfectly calculated. And it was working, because you knew it wasn't just the confined space that was making the German increasingly more attractive.

An hour had passed. There was no phone service, you still couldn't get through to the help desk, and even your pocket radio wouldn't tune in. It was like you were stuck in a void. You groaned in frustration as the batteries on your radio stuttered out.

"This stupid thing," you grumbled as you pulled at the random straps and attachments in attempt to free yourself from the equipment. How Ted Kravitz was happy to walk around all day in his was beyond you. Seb was watching you struggle and slowly got to his feet, stepping closer to you.

"Hey, let me," he was very softly spoken as he stilled you.

His deft hands made short work of your belt. He carefully unplugged wires and removed clips and placed them slowly, one by one onto the floor beside you. Your mic and radio pack were the last things removed, so you thought Seb would step away but his hands were back on your waist. His hands were constantly brushing at the skin of your waist, only covered by the thin fabric of the summery dress you'd decided to wear that day. He undid the final buckle, his hands feather-light as he leant around behind you and you could feel his fingers drag across every centimetre of your skin as he finally pulled the belt off you.

Sebastian dropped the belt, but his blue eyes were fixed on yours as he rolled his bottom lip between his teeth. You weren't sure if you were breathing or not.

"Are you trying to turn me on, or are you really that oblivious?" The words rushed from you in a breathless whisper. You froze for a moment, the fear that you'd made a mistake and were about to make the next god-knows-how-long incredibly awkward. Sebastian was painfully neutral in his expression as he regarded you, but he still hadn't stepped back and the smell of his cologne was fogging your mind,

"Oh, I'm trying," how he sounded so casual, just a hint of playfulness about him. You had no idea how to respond, was he teasing you? This man was a world champion, he could do whatever he wanted. There was an edge to that, the idea of the power he held, he was almost untouchable in the paddock. And it wasn't like he was a golden boy who kept himself out of trouble, Vettel had been handed his fair share of fines over the years.

"Right," you could see his back in the mirror opposite you, he was taller than you, shoulders stretching the fabric of his own polo. You looked helpless, backed up against the wall by him. He was looking at you now, eyes a little darker, trained more on your chest than your face.

"Do you want me to stop?"

"No,"

The second the word left your lips Seb stepped forward, his body pressing against yours as he pinned you against the second mirrored wall. One hand was gripping your hip, with enough pressure to hold you in place. His other hand was already tangled in your hair, pulling you towards him as he captured you in a searing kiss.

Whatever kind, sweet, gentle nature you thought Seb had when he was interviewed had completely vanished. The man in front of you was kissing you like the world was ending. There was nothing gentle about him as he caught your bottom lip between his teeth and bit down. The was nothing gentle about the way his hands were roaming and grabbing at your body as if he was trying to mould you to his shape. There was certainly nothing gentle about the way he was rolling his hips against your thigh.

"Jesus," he managed to hiss as your mouth fell off his and you started attacking his neck, careful to toe the line just before you'd leave a mark on his skin. You decided to throw caution to the wind, because how many times do you find yourself stuck in a lift with a sporting legend, let alone such a handsome one? And besides, part of you wanted to be in that special club of people who'd known him like this.

You dropped to your knees in front of him, your dress providing a perfect view of your cleavage as you made quick work of unbuttoning the shorts he was wearing.

Sebastian groaned loudly as you took him in your mouth, the feeling alone enough to go straight through you. His hand tangled through your hair again, but he let you control the rhythm as he simply watched you bob your head through the mirror. The noises he made were addictive, and hearing him cursing in German was enough to make you want to finish him off like this.

But he was calling your name and asking you to wait so you pulled back oh so slowly, earning yourself another heavy hiss as you released him.

"I have to fuck you in that dress,"

It wasn't a request. But you didn't mind, you liked being told what to do. He pushed you back against the mirror again, lifting your legs and encouraging you to wrap them around his waist. Seb wasn't particularly tall but you always forgot just how strong the drivers were. He held you like you didn't weigh a thing.

His pace was bruising, and you were actually glad you were trapped in the elevator because there was nothing you could do to stop the near-constant stream of noise slipping from you, and he was equally loud. It was almost, almost, embarrassing at how quickly you were approaching your orgasm, but when Seb, oh so confident, let go of you with one hand and slipped it between you to start toying with your clit you were done.

"Seb-" you whined, his name so natural in your mouth. He was moving at a relentless pace, the pleasure almost overwhelming.

"You can do it," he forced the words out through gritted teeth as he watched you scream, your head falling back against the glass as your hips moved forcefully with him, your walls clenching deliciously around him as wave after wave of pleasure shot through you. You felt him twitch and he bit down on your shoulder as he came with a shudder of his own.

You stayed in his arms for a second, the pair of you breathing raggedly and trying to recover when something crackled behind you making you jump. The buttons on the panel were glowing again.

"Hi, it's reception, can you guys hear me? We're sending someone up now,"

#1.3k prompt night #sebastian vettel #seb vettel #sebastian vettel x reader #sebastian vettel imagine #stuck in an elevator #a classic for a reason hehe #formula one #F1 #sebastian vettel smut

[an-t-hiho]

It's been a while since everybody realized that I'm Second Coming's Creator.

..Needless to say, plenty changed.

"Hello?" Came somebody's muffled voice, at least three knocks sounding from the other side of Alan's room. He was writing in a Book & Quill he deemed as his journal, but as the stick figure on the other side interrupted unknowingly, Alan shut the book and hid it in its usual secret compartment.

"Red?" Alan called out, a more questioning tone in his voice. Although he's been living in his sleeping PC for quite the while, it's still a bit difficult to recognize everybody's voice. They all kinda sound like his own, in a way, and it felt rather odd to listen to a version of his own voice talking even though his own mouth is zipped shut in a straight line.

"C-Can I..." Alan gave a sigh, "How many times do I have to say this?" He gave an awkward chuckle, "You're welcome anytime. Come in."

The stick figure came in.

Oh, Alan thought. It was Blue. ..That's just embarrassing.

Blue was carrying a block-made tray (it doesn't seem to come from Minecraft's normal database, Alan gave a silent hum as his eyebrow ridges raised slightly, did they figure out how to use mods?) that held a mushroom stew and some steak. Judging from the way it was shaking slightly, to which Alan frowned internally at once he noticed, the ex-human could tell that Blue was nervous.

Alan, externally this time, gave a frown. "Why so nervous? I'm still Alan, y'know?" He tried to joke with a faltering smile, but it slowly contorted to a worried sigh when his words didn't seem to do anything to console the other.

Silence fell into the room, the muffled noises of whatever was going on upstairs serving as white noise. As it too came to a stop, Alan bit back his lip and gave a sigh, standing up from his seat and shooting Blue a grateful smile. "Thanks for the food, Blue. ..Uh, tell Sec I said hi."

Without a word, Blue left.

Alan groaned and fell back onto his bed, exhaustion and annoyance biting deeply into his muscles (do they even exist anymore in stick-figure bodies?) after the exchange from earlier. His right hand sprawled to the side in search for something, anything, to distract his untreated anger, and found himself hugging a pillow tightly against his face. If I died in the PC, would I wake up and finally be back outside?

Alas, he was too afraid of death, so he sat back up and gave an annoyed groan. Alan's eyes wandered around his lavender-painted room (or, rather, it had a custom texture pack). Other than the fact that it's oddly colored, nothing else seemed to stand out. It was still somewhat empty. There was just a bed somewhere on the left, a desk next to it, and a nightstand to the south of the bed (he started using the map-y directions out of boredom).

...Although, now that he's focusing on his lack of furniture, Alan could tell that the so-called "secret compartment" isn't exactly secret since it's just inside a drawer under the desk. With his unfinished entry in mind, Alan got up and sat on his desk's chair, taking out the Book & Quill, going back to writing with his purple ink.

Purple...

..Sometimes, I miss the days where I was just "Purple" in their eyes. I remember going on adventures with them all, not having to worry about my true identity. Although I had to get the real Purple to comply to not show their face near them ever again...

Alan stopped, hesitating ever-so-slightly with his next choice of words. With a few thumps, he shook his head, scribbling over a few letters he started writing.

...No, they should know that I'm Alan Becker. I've always been Alan Becker. Purple.. The true Purple shouldn't have been dragged into my mess of an identity crisis.

Another pause.

Then, a melancholy sigh.

..I just wish they treated me the same.

[Entry End, see you tomorrow, PC]

#avm fanfic #animation vs animator #animation vs minecraft #ava #ava shorts #stick!alan #ava blue #alan becker #avm #stick!alan angst #because i said so

[souryogurt64]

wait what’s the grey abortion thing

I'm literally never posting the actual text because no one is mature enough to handle this, but there's this one alleged journal entry that's very like. Well. It's not clear what's happening but it's certainly something. And then in the same general vicinity there's some stuff from a girl's POV and when I first saw both I was very confused as to what all of that was about.

Anyway in the b**k it is explained that The Disaster dipped out on his pregnant girlfriend and she has a miscarriage, so he drops out of school and gets arrested. This comes up three more times and is always referred to as a "dead baby," which is certainly a choice. (Of course it was supposed to be a boy.)

Every time this happens, it's during the narrator's internal monologue during extreme points of crisis. The first time is when he's having a manic episode and goes to wait outside his ex girlfriend's apartment all night. The second time is the mental breakdown at a train station right before he starts hallucinating he's seeing God. The last time is after his girlfriend goes into a coma and they know she's going to die.

Anyway, I always thought (like many, many, many things about this book) it was kind of weird.

Like yes, The Disaster was involved and The Disaster is the narrator's best friend. But speaking incredibly technically here, this miscarriage happens offscreen to an unnamed character we never meet a year prior to the events of the book, it is then relayed by her to The Disaster, who then relays it to the narrator the 2nd time they ever interact. Pretty much all of the details are unclear too (point of book). Then they never talk about it again, but for some reason the narrator fixates on it whenever he's having a major episode for the 2 years the book takes place over. Certainly some literary choices happening here

Anyway, so then when I was writing the essay I noticed there were a lot of early drafts in Pete's journals, including one that's in the same general vicinity as the weird entry and the stuff from a girl's POV. After I wrote the dissertation I noticed there's like weird pronoun stuff and a sentence that basically states the theme/meaning of the book in one of the entries in this area that solidified the early draft theory

And then when the Gray going for 5 trillion dollars on Amazon drama was happening (It's $41 now, I guess Pete's been slacking on burning copies) I noticed there was a reference to High Fidelity suspiciously high in the Amazon description so I watched High Fidelity and a plot point in High Fidelity is that the main character (played by John Cusack who is namedropped in a Fall Out Boy song and stars in a lot of other movies referenced) cheated on his girlfriend while she was pregnant so she got an abortion and he freaks out because "it's my baby too."

In conclusion, I have literally no other choice to believe this was a similar plot point in the book and at some point someone was (correctly) like "You cannot fucking print this" so instead it became something that happened offscreen to someone else and then the original plan was communicated via signals I guess. Literally deranged

[one0p1nk]

// Ehhhh dumping some silly Horrocalist HCs made out of self-indulgence <333 {+ silly doodles}

Like what I said before, they’re both autists (probably even different types of autists individually/ih) it’s sometimes funny to imagine autists interact sometimes. It can be either wholesome or a secret recipe to disaster./lh

Even if Horropedia categorizes Philocalist as the sweet empathetic Asian girl, he also wonder if her Hispanic side of her roots might say otherwise or just a different kind of charm. In reality, Philocalist is just a sweetheart who for some reasons thinks romance and horror can go hand in hand as her favorites. No matter how cheesy romance is, and no matter how disturbing and spine chilling the thrills of horror can be;;;

Philocalist is a good girl!!! She loves kids, and finds beauty in many things. Just like what her alias means. Sometimes, Horropedia kinda is a bad influence to her like encouraging her to go all nighters watching horror movies or play horror games with him/ih. Ofc, the gal doesn’t let it slide at times. Even if she doesn’t even sleep.

Joshua would tease her when he finds out Philocalist’s drew him a couple of times before- When she quietly explains that she tends to draw whatever she cherishes on her drawing pad, that’s when brunette felt some butterflies on his stomach/ih

“Wait a minute, who’s this man?” *points at a blonde guy with glasses, Journo(my nonfandom OC)

“He’s my friend, Journo.”

“…”

“Horropedia…?”

*scrolls the drawing away before taking out his journal entry with an empty page shown* “Draw something here instead-“/ih/j

Horropedia wouldn’t be the jealous type, I’m sure he’s quite observant and tries to analyze things before assuming. But of course, it sometimes wouldn’t stop making him feel this small bitter feeling on his chest;;; (why his babe has so many male and female friendssss??? <//3/ih/pos)

I can imagine Horropedia being a strange but sweet boyfriend… he gifts Philocalist dream catcher earrings, a ghost hunting pistol, and even a crucifix and talismans for some reasons.

“Is to keep you safe, Boo.” He would always answer to Philocalist’s light skepticism with those single words.

I’m going silly and having Horropedia calling Philocalist her name in general is just good enough. And when he’s so happy and just has this emotional moment, he would call her “Boo” or even “Babe”…-

Even before they established their relationship, he still calls her “Wife” as a joke. Since Philocalist kinda first resembles him as a cute 90s anime girl/waifu by the moment he first heard her speak Japanese- finds it quite fascinating that she’s programmed to learn multiple languages.

Horropedia still tends to sound pretty strange and insensitive with his humor. Philocalist sometimes can’t take his words lightly. But tolerates a decent amount because she can tell that half of the things he say may be just for funny shows/ih

If Horropedia calls her baby girl, what if Philocalist calls him babyboy (cues Horropedia spilling his coffee HAHA-)

He’s quite happy the fact that Philocalist doesn’t get easily scared with horror stories, as she’s more fascinated than disturbed,..-

Joshua first wondered what’s behind Philocalist’s mask. But it turns out there is no secret behind it, she just happens to have this pandemic experience crisis from the 2020’s that she tries to prevent herself from getting contact to smelly, stinky, and yucky germs and it kinda benefits her that it keeps her face warm at cold maps. Horropedia, on the other hand, probably would find it interesting that Philocalist has a special case when it comes to belonging in a specific timeline.. when she doesn’t even belong to anywhere. She’s out of this world!

Horropedia often gives Philocalist forehead kisses, and even cheeks. Sometimes on the lips indirectly or directly either because he may be in a hurry that Philocalist can’t remove her masks quickly or when he really wants to feel her lips/ih/gets bonked.

I will write soon about how they both have first met in my writing blog! It’s still in progress atm.

Mawan(Klai’s oc) is like a father-figure to Philocalist. According to Klai, Mawan would be calm about the pair’s bond (but also would lightly threaten Horropedia to not break her heart is funny djjddjjd-) Meanwhile Philocalist is just standing there not certain about what’s going on in front of her.

#pins’ art #oc// hana dyanthus #reverse 1999 #reverse: 1999 #r1999 fanart #r1999 #reverse 1999 oc #reverse 1999 horropedia #horropedia #horropedia x oc

[septiccoffeefreak]

watching Rachel and Jun, an old channel our mom tells us we used to watch, and hearing Rachel describe my EXACT unisexual/uniromantic crisis experience was so insane

"I'd never been physically attracted to anyone in my entire life before and haven't since but for some fucking reason I saw this one guy, one time, and only this one time, and was like "OH" and then because I had zero romance experience ended up being so flustered and awkward it was on anime character levels. like no human should be fucking acting like this. but here i am. acting like this. running down the hall so we don't make eye contact for too long while everyone who sees me is like "damn your face is so red it's crazy. what the fuck is wrong with you you're like. you're so smitten it's WEIRD. lmao loser this is pathetic" and then i just died inside. but they liked me back so it's okay :D and again i have never felt sexual/romantic attraction since then except for this one person. BUT at least I am NOW functional, instead of an absolute mess on parody levels of crush behaviour, because I've gotten used to the feeling :)"

HELLO????? MY LIFE STORY?????? BITCH SAME FUCKING HAT WHAT THE FUCK???? She didn't even use the word unisexual so I assume she either doesn't ID that way or doesn't know the microlabel exists but I felt so called out it was criminal. targeting me like this should be illegal. I was dragged out and shot in my own home by a redhead and her asian husband with their cats as accomplices to the crime. I had my Spotify put on blast, my ip address leaked, and my journal entries read out loud on those giant concert speakers Metallica used when they performed the largest concert of all time. I was exposed and stalked and confronted with photos they took while they were stalking me. I was fucking GOT.

((/hyperbole /metaphor /I was not literally stalked or doxxed))

#original posts #tommy #unisexual #uniromantic #uniattraction #aroacespec #aspec #arospec #acespec

[kusanagi-nene-official]

I've been through all of hell, what makes you think I can change that?

//doing a reboot for fun wooo. I will not be removing old posts but will tag the one for the start of the reboot

About this Nene: She's been living alone since an apocalyptic event the separated her from those she's known. She hasn't made contact with those of her universe for a long time.

Other info:

The most contact she's been in is with other universes.

She does still have Robo-Nene with her, but she can't perform maintenance but she doesn't know how.

The first person she made contact with was Toya

They resent the others for "abandoning" them.

They don't remember Tsukasa too well.

Nene doesn't think the others are alive.

Enby but doesn't realize.

Nene technically blows up a printer with a flare gun but in their journal, only the flare is mentioned.

They have no filter, so they unintentionally insult people harshly

They talk about Wandasho lots but doesn't remember the members or name

WARNING: THIS BLOG FEATURES SENSITIVE TOPICS SUCH AS:

ATTEMPTED SU1C1DE

SU1C1DE IMPLICATIONS

LANGUAGE

ETC

I will try to remember to tag these, but I might forget

(Hell's Anarchists is free to join, also beneath the cut) About the mod: (beneath the cut)

Mod is dex, they run this blog alone

About dex: Name will mainly be lowercase, also uppercase at times Trans! Biromantic Asks for it are fine Other names that work:

Mod

KNO-Mod

KNO

Nenemod

Nene

and mod loves akito isnt he so silly

Other socials: discord: ask (also you can send me messages from tumbly, i don't mind)

Tumblr: i don't know, definitely not this one also if you tag this blog, response will come from @kusanagi-nene-official-mod rp blog masterlist

basic dni criteria like no racist, trans/homophobe, etc

special request, no trypophobia, mod is trypophobic and it bothers it.

tags:

#new-beginning - marker i told about at the top

#an-apocalyptic-survivor's-entry - in character posts

#all-hells-loose - Nene having a crisis

#hell's-anarchists - oops. (also the name of the universe)

#journals-through-anarchy - nenepov

#aside-from-the-apocalypse - pre-apocalypse stuff, or just past stuff

About Hell's Anarchists (H'sA): The storyline takes place in the normal PJSK settings. With Nene's perspectives: After an apocalyptic event (referred to by Nene as "some type of Thanos snap thing), Nene finds herself completely alone. As of current, there's no telling of what happened to the others, all of which Nene assumes are dead.

Open: H'sA is free to join fun right? just either tag me, dm me, or send an ask to be added to the masterlist hell's anarchists masterlist

Lore Posts:

1

2

3

4

#//woosh.

[journalsoftheworld]

November 10, 2022 x March 11, 2023. Southern California.

Coming to the end of my 19th journal and the longest I've ever done at 300 pages. I have been writing in this journal for nearly seven months through a time of personal crisis and extreme transitions. I'm ready to close the covers on this one. I am ready to set down my autumn, winter, spring selves, with the greatest of tenderness for their wounds. I wish to return to documenting my journal entries more consistently with this blog. There is too much pain involved to give each spread new attentiveness so I have taken 19 out onto my clover lawn and photographed all of the pages I intend to share. Most of them are ones I've added sketches to as I find that more visually appealing. That speaks more to my aesthetic than it does to the quality of the writing on any given page. I am rambling now because this journal has been my companion through pain and exhaustion. I honor it to the best of my ability in these last days.

#mine #journal #journalsoftheworld #sketchbook #traditional art #traditional illustration #pen scribbles #pen and ink #thejournalclub #writerscommunity #queer writers #women writers #writing #creative writing #writerblr

[icedmetaltea]

Sorry for being gone a long time... again.

(tw self-harm, tw suicidal thoughts, general anxiety/depression stuff)

I made a post explaining stuff before I went on break but deleted it like an hour later cause I realized wow nobody cares but fuck it amirite? Consider it a journal entry or something. I tagged everything as best I could, you have been warned.

I've been getting back into a habit of self-harming, something I haven't dealt with since I was a teen.

Back then, I had elastic bands and needles, so it wasn't rlly anything to worry about, but then I found this tiny box cutter that cuts really easily and doesn't hurt much strangely enough... just enough to draw my attention away from the anxiety or depression when it's too crippling to function.

Obviously a band aid solution (no pun intended) but what else can I do? I've done everything right. I have friends and family who care. I've been eating decently, I've been sleeping 7-8 hrs per night. I've tried meds, I've tried natural supplements, I've tried everything I can reasonably do and yet here I am, wanting to do die again. I was doing really well this week, exercising a little, eating healthier, cooking, thought maybe I was finally improving... but last night everything went to shit again, I had that feeling like darkness was physically coming over me, disconnecting me from others, and now I'm currently having a panic attack and I did it again. It's not deep, but I can still see the scars from the other times I did it in recent weeks, and I'm like... wow, you're really this weak, huh?

I'm tired of my chest and throat feeling tight, I'm tired of feeling like I'm struggling to breathe, I'm tired of staying up till 5+ am due to anxiety, I'm tired of people in my life not understanding, I'm tired of the nausea, I'm tired of the disassociation, I'm tired of feeling lost, I'm tired of feeling useless, I'm tired of feeling like I'm not enough, I'm tired, I'm so fucking tired, and no amount of sleep will help.

That coupled with the fact that like, even if I do get to an amazing state mentally, the world is still fucked. My country's education system is fucked, its healthcare is fucked, its political system is fucked, its law enforcement system is fucked, everything is just based on money and greed and I am powerless to stop any of it. It's all just... bigger than I'll ever be. So why change? Why live? I have no passions nor dreams, and I'm sure my friends and family wouldn't miss me soon enough. Plus, with all the wars on the horizon and the climate crisis, they'll probably follow soon enough.

Just, wow, it feels like there is genuinely no good in this world anymore. Every system is corrupt, every power concentrated on gain, every dream bashed in the face of a machine that doesn't run in their favor. TLDR; Rant aside, I promise I'm not dead and I am working on DCA stuff but I am just yep

#May or may not get into college this fall #cause my GPA sucked ass last semester from med stuff #that plus current events just... #makes a bitch not wanna live #life update #self harm #tw self harm #tw suicide #tw vent #mental health #cw relapse

[vacantgodling]

THE LIMINAL SPACE SERIES…

… is a series of 5 interconnecting stories + 1 story in the same universe but completely separate from the main storyline. what they all have in common is they center on death, Reapers, Witches, magic, possession, and horror, but above all liminal spaces.

Liminal Spaces are defined as the place a person is in during a transitional period. this can be emotionally, physically, metaphysically or all of the above. in this series liminal spaces are more akin to separate planes of existence where death and horror reign supreme and magic is in the air. nothing is impossible and your worst nightmares usually come true.

if this sounds like your cup of tea, keep reading as i’ll give a synopsis and general details/warnings for all of the books in the series:

DONUT WIP (real title a secret, shh)

I woke up to a shriek so horrible that it shook me out of my slumber, my dreams, and almost half way out of my skin.

After deciding against going home for the holiday season, Julissa Vaughn decides she’ll be spending her winter break at her dorm; on an undisclosed college campus on the East Coast. She plans to spend her time with her best friend Andres Seymour, ogling her crush, the R.A. Joaquin Kelley, maybe making a few new friends in René Edwards, Daisy Kennedy, and Saul Carson—others who decided to stay the winter as well. Most importantly however, Juls plans to sleep and finally compose some music after one hell of a draining semester. Unfortunately, all of these plans are thrown bodily out of the window when mysterious and unexplained happenings rock the six of them to their core. With an incoming blizzard, and no answers, it’s as though they’re locked in their own personal hell(s).

POV: first person ; from the perspective of Julissa Vaughn

Warnings: explicit violence and graphic depictions of death, unreality, horror & body horror, unexplained supernatural phenomena, childhood trauma, near death experiences, phobias, “suicide”, nightmares, hopelessness, nothing is explained :)

Tropes & Vibes: love webs, goofy college antics, old school horror movies, low fi, best friends til the end, tragedy brings us closer together, warm blankets, isolation, fear

Specific Tag: s: donut wip

NOI, ALONE

A plan was beginning to brew in their mind, one that they unfortunately wouldn’t be able to do on their own. They’d need help, at least two others… ladders… a lock pick...

Noi Randiche, in their final year of their journalism major, has been stuck on what story they should cover for their thesis. That is, until they return back to school to a tight lipped staff, an entire dorm building shut down with no entry—no exceptions, and a crisis that seemed to happen over winter break that no one wants to talk about. Inspiration strikes, and Noi vows to get to the bottom of it; supported by their best friend Likitha Singh, and newcomer Seph Sparrow. It’s just… what Noi uncovers, is far more sinister than they could have ever imagined. Coupled with being stalked by an eerie presence that they cannot explain, things will get worse… but the likelihood they will get better is far off.

POV: third person limited ; following Noi Randiche

Warnings: explicit violence and graphic depictions of death, unreality, horror & body horror, supernatural phenomena, childhood trauma, near death experiences, grief & profound misery, possession

Tropes & Vibes: the truth doesn’t set you free it’s worse actually, college noir, breaking and entering, empathy is hard but sympathy is overwhelming, it’s not your fault but you’ll still pay the consequences, the good die young, friendship, platonic bonds can’t be broken, love that never could be

Specific Tag: s: noi alone

JENNA THE REAPER (pt. 1 & 2)

Vision-Jenna held out her hand, palm opened and outstretched. Black matter began to gather in her hands, taking shape and materializing into the form of a scythe.

“Through her I purge all things.” The second voice said through Jenna alone. “You cannot save.”

Jenna Magboo spends much of her time with her best friend Carlos Carvalho documenting and looking for the supernatural creatures and happenings around their small hometown of Braebrooke. While happenings are scarce and usually benign, Jenna’s fascination with the supernatural world is only understandable; after all she is the daughter of two powerful witches, Adunni and Kashmira. However, after coming upon a vengeful basilisk, the supernatural occurrences around them take a turn for the horrifying, for the deadly. And despite all common sense (Carlos), Jenna is determined to get to the bottom of it.

What she doesn’t realize is that a Reaper’s spirit is manifesting high in the mountains of Braebrooke’s backyard, looking for a suitable host and unfortunately Jenna fits the bill; a prophecy Kashmira was praying wouldn’t come true. But when the Reaper strips away Jenna’s connection to her senses and occupies her body… there’s a problem. A catch, if you will. It hadn’t been able to fully annihilate Jenna’s sense of self, and now the two share a body. And Jenna only has one year to figure out how to separate Yehna and herself, or else Yehna will become powerful enough to swallow her spirit for good.

POV: third person omniscient ; usually follows Carlos

Warnings: explicit violence and graphic depictions of death, unreality, horror & body horror, supernatural phenomena, possession, near death experiences, supernatural horror, supernatural flora & fauna, body snatching gone wrong lol?

Tropes & Vibes: small town gothic, the closest city is thirty minutes away, queer platonic relationships, the power of friendship family and love baby, teenagers amiright?, autistic protag (Jenna), skipping school, milkshakes and late night drives

Specific Tag: s: jenna the reaper

JENNA THE WITCH KING

“When I become a witch, I want Carlos to be my familiar.”

Several years after Jenna and Yehna are separated, Jenna decides it’s finally time to leave the nest and to embark on her own journey to become a full-fledged witch. In order to do that, she must hunt down the elusive Witch King—Creator of Witches. It is a journey all witches who wish to have their powers manifested must take. The first test is to find them. The second test to prove their prowess is decided upon by the Witch King themself. With Carlos in tow, she sets off to become just like her mothers… oh and to make sure Carlos gains extended life as her familiar, of course.

POV: third person omniscient

Warnings: supernatural phenomena, supernatural horror, supernatural flora & fauna, light horror elements

Tropes & Vibes: road trips, witches, old tarot card spreads under the night sky, red convertibles, dust, trust, fun, exploration, light hearted humor, coming full circle

Specific Tag: s: jenna the witch king

MASON AT THE AIRPORT (the +1)

Airports are notoriously hectic, but this airport seemed surprisingly quiet after Mason wakes up from a short nap between layover flights. In fact, between himself, and a few others who also seemed to have fallen asleep, there doesn’t seem to be anyone else there. Curious about when he’ll next be able to depart and where everyone has gone, this small group makes their way around looking for help. But things quickly go awry.

POV: third person limited ; following Mason

Warnings: plant horror, body horror, implied death, unreality, supernatural phenomena, nothing is explained

Tropes & Vibes: alice in wonderland, don’t eat the food, don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to, keep looking forward, airports, long distance relationships, tired but wired, ready to go the fuck home

Specific Tag: s: mason at the airport

#wip intro #wip intros plural #writeblr #s: the liminal space series #s: donut wip #s: noi alone #s: jenna the reaper #s: jenna the witch king #s: mason at the airport

[smilestrawbunny]

Hello. I apologize if this message is unwanted and I want to warn that it contains mentions of suicide. So if you’re not in the headspace, maybe stop here. Also please don’t feel pressured to post this if you don’t want to!

I just wanted to thank you for all of your hard work and art. Especially when it comes to the creation and execution of Strawberry.

I’m a Crisis Counselor and have been for five years now. I wear a lot of hats in the mental healthcare and social work world, but my primary job is to help people who are suicidal or who have just attempted suicide.

However, one of the drawbacks of this is that there are times when we can tell that suicide is inevitable in a person we work with and there is nothing we can do. After a point, a choice has been made due the the insurmountable amount of trauma held in that person’s life, and if someone knows the garbage system enough, they can skirt around it. Sure, in some places you can force hospitalization to keep someone safe temporarily, but this doesn’t always work and isn’t always ethical. Also unlike most US states, in my state the laws heavily value client autonomy in most cases, which I think is overall a very good thing. Pushing anyone to do anything that they aren’t comfortable with is rarely, if ever, going to help them in the long run. However, this can lead to feelings of helplessness when you feel like you can’t protect clients from themselves or the terrible situations they’re going through. And we do lose people. Good people, who we grow attached to.

Caring deeply about someone that you’ve just met and barely know so much and then watching them die is traumatizing. And it happens more often than we like to admit. Sometimes you pour as much into yourself as you can into another person, and it doesn’t matter. You couldn’t be what they needed and now they’re gone. You think about them forever. You remember every single person. And though it’s not about you, it never was, it still hurts very much.

I don’t think I have ever encountered a character in any media that captures that feeling the way that Strawberry does. Her journal entries and the way she reacts to player choices in Berrywitched just hit so close to home in ways that I find it difficult to describe. She also shows in the one endings, however, that it’s worth while to care, even if you don’t help everyone. Even if you only help one person.

I know this message is bleak. We actually do have more success that failures. If my work didn’t help anyone I wouldn’t be doing it because the system is terrible. But I really wanted to thank you for creating a character that means so much to me. I’m very much anticipating your new projects and I hope you have love, light, and success in your future!

Aw gee reading this made me so emotional…! Thank you so much for taking the time to share this with me. Strawberry is a character who really means a lot to me so knowing that there’s people out there who understand and empathize with her really touches my heart. Thank you for doing all that you do <33