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ruibaozha · 1 year

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Li Nezha, Protector of the Queer Youth in Taiwan. Part 1.

Hello Tumblr!

I have been hard at work assembling the first few posts for this blog, but I would like to start with something relatively lighthearted. Our topic for today is modern depictions of Li Nezha, or most specifically, Nezha as a queer icon in Taiwan.

In the interest of maintiaining a somewhat steady flow of posts, the original form of this post has been broken up. The following posts will expand on the points made here and additionally will discuss the impact of Nezha in the Taiwanese Queer Film scene and it's possible influence on Nezha (2019).

This is an unexpected angle, but one I dearly want to share. Please continue under 'keep reading' if this also interests you.

Before reading a handful of discomforting topics arise. There is mention of suicide in relation to the original myth, the concept of filial cannibalism in relation to the original myth, and discussion of the AIDS crisis.

I would first like to state that the cultural differences between Taiwan and Mainland China are not many, in several aspects they are the same - barring current geopolitical factors. Many fled Mainland China during 1949, a great deal settling in Taiwan. Naturally they brought their culture and worshipped deities with them, Nezha among the wide range of gods brought.

In more recent times the widespread popularity of Nezha in Taiwan is fascinating, though he may not have as many statues or dedicated temples, his ability to excite the younger generations is unmatched by the rest of his pantheon. Overall, Nezha ranks seventh most popular when measured by publicly available shrines or temples (1). But if we are to measure popularity based on the amount of statues that exist Nezha is only outnumbered by the earth-deity Tudi Gong (2). Thus it is understandable Nezha himself became a reflection of the interests of the youth, especially if one considers his image to be of someone unafraid to challenge authority and those that oppress you.

The idea of a queer Nezha is a fairly novel thing though. 1971 saw the publishing of 'Nezha in the Investiture of the Gods' or Fengshenbang li de Nezha (封神榜裡的哪吒) by Xi Song which served almost to fill in numerous gaps in his personality as well as add a more psychological aspect to his rebellion against his father. The novel introduces the father as extremely strict, his brothers envious of him, and a mother who loves but cannot understand him; our result is a deeply melancholic Nezha who frequently ponders the meanining of his own life (3).

Any semblance of homosexual tendency is largely absent until the end of the novel which coincides with the killing of Ao Bing in the original Canonization of the Gods. Nezha is bathing in the river here as well, except he sees Ao Bing through the water's surface. Nezha wants to reach through the water and hold him, and the two play together for a while before Nezha accidentally kills Ao Bing (4). Rather than be demanded to repent, the Nezha here punishes himself for the accident.

Many films concerning Nezha to this point focused more on martial arts spectacles rather than his temperament and personality. However 1992 saw the release of the film 'Rebels of the Neon God' by Tsai Mingliang, though not adapted from the Nezha origin story, concerns the problem of self-indulgent youth in modern society. Interestingly the Chinese title Qingshaonian Nezha (青少年哪吒), can be read two ways: Young Nezha or The Youth as Nezha.

His (Nezha's) name is mentioned three times over the course of the film. The first instance is when one of the youthful protagonist's (Xiaokang) mother is explaining to her husband their son is so misbehaved because he is the reincarnation of Nezha. The second is when two of the protagonists (Xiaokang and Ah Ze) enter a dispute, one of their motorbikes defaced with the phrase "Nezha was here". The final time is when these same protagonists are lamenting their poor luck and are instructed to worship Nezha.

Being a gay man himself it isn't surprising that the homoeroticism portrayed by Xiaokang is later elaborated upon in Mingliang's 'Vive l'amour' (1994) where the quiet Xiaokang is attracted hopelessly to the rowdy playboy character of Ah Rong, so much so that Xiaokang kisses Ah Rong without his knowledge. It concludes with Xiaokang and his father participating together in a dubious homoerotic setting together before recognizing each other in 'The River' (1997).

These films were released surrounding Tsai Mingliang's 1995 documentary about how the AIDS crisis was wracking Taiwan, and against the director's wishes, Mingliang focused heavily on the gay men the disease was affecting most in an attempt to dispel the misinformation about the disease itself and the gay men it was affecting. The previously mentioned 'Rebels of the Neon God' (1992) only featured one explicit mention of the AIDS crisis, Xiaokang vandalizes the side of Ah Ze's motorcycle in bright yellow paint "AIDS". This action is arguably an allegory of Xiaokang's repressed homosexual desires towards Ah Ze (5), the use of the HIV virus synonymous with homosexual engagement - despite it being well known in 1990's Taiwan that there were multiple modes of transmission.

Of course other interpretations of this scene exist, but for our purposes today, it is not only Xiaokang's projection of his own desires but a very literal representation of the idea of a 'contagion' - or the circumstances that draw previously unrelated individuals together. The vandalism of the motorcycle may also be seen in this light (6).

Is it worth drawing comparisons in assuming Xiaokang and all of his homoerotic tendencies is meant to be a stand-in for Nezha himself? I think so. The film (Rebels of the Neon God) presents numerous cases that enforce this idea if you are not yet convinced.

As previously mentioned Xiaokang's mother states that he is a reincarnation of Nezha, a conclusion she reached after seeing a fortune-teller and told as much. It is important to state that the original myth features a Nezha slicing his flesh open to return to his mother, and removed his bones to return them to his father. At first glance it appears to be a case of filial cannibalism (a post topic I am drafting) meant to strengthen the bond between parent and child - but the purpose within the myth is to sever that relationship completely. It can be argued this very literal severing helped bring Nezha into the hearts of the youth who were alienated.

Xiaokang's mother explains this to her husband upon arriving home, telling her husband that Nezha was said to hate his father Li Jing more than anything else, briefly mentions his surname to also be Li, and outright blames Nezha for Xiaokang's poor relationship with him. Upon overhearing this, Xiaokang pretends to be posessed by Nezha before his father launches a rice bowl at his head. The ambivalence of Nezha 'returning his flesh' seems to almost mirror the animosity Xiaokang and his father have throughout the film.

Even the English title 'Rebels of the Neon God' can be read as sharing homophonic resemblance to the name Nezha. 'Neon God' can be a rereading of 'Nezha' in that the first character of his name can also be pronounced as '-nai' which becomes an exact homophone for the Chinese term for neon, while the second character '-zha' is a suffix that plainly suggests deification.

To wrap up this post I would like to thank you for joining me on this foray of a more modern take on Nezha's significance, his overwhelming modernity carrying numerous modes of importance depending on where you are looking. He has not shed his origin myth, rather it informs how he is percieved more than ever - his severing of paternal ties no longer a case of an unfilial child but of someone standing up for themselves in the face of oppression. And it is perhaps this that makes him so attractive to both the young and old of Taiwan, all subjected to the terror and violence of the Chinese Communist Party.

Thank you once more, and I hope to see you again in part 2.

Citations:

(1) Li Fengmao, “Cong Nezha taizi dao Zhongtan yuanshuai: zhongyang-sifang siwei xiade hujing xiangzheng,” 41–43.

(2) Tsai Wentin, “Taitzu, the Child God,” 53–55.

(3) Xi Song, “Fengshenbang li de Nezha,” 209. A translated portion of Nezha's monologue here is as follows "Oh, Master, my birth is a mistake with no reason at all. Since my childhood, I have understood that I am reared by an overbearing mother and a father with much too high expectations. They seem to have never cared about my actual existence, but intenselyrestrain me with the correct direction of their thinking."

(4) Xi Song, “Fengshenbang li de Nezha,” 217.

(5) Ji Dawei, "Wo kan gu wo zai: chengzhang dianying yu shenfen rentong," 95-105. Dawei's 1996 examination is as follows. "Perhaps Xiaokang resents the fact that Ah Ze is sleeping with a woman, or perhaps he is cursing Ah Ze as homosexual, and thereby taking the identity he himself dislikes, and displacing it onto the figure of the Other. Xiaokang is not sexually active, and therefore he despises those who are and struggles to reject sex altogether. He is terrified he might become a homosexual, and therefore he first verbally attacks others, and then projects onto them the suspicion of homosexuality."

(6) Carlos Rojas, "Nezha Was Here": Structures of Dis/placement in Tsai Ming-liang's "Rebels of the Neon God", 76.

If timestamps for cinematic moments mentioned through this post are requested, I am happy to provide them.

#li nezha #nezha #lmk nezha #nezha reborn #the legend of nezha #nezha 2019 #dislyte nezha #queer history

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koinotame · 5 months

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\o/

hi! it's me, nana / koinotame!

if you're wondering why i went inactive and then deleted, my mental health kind of (really) tanked... and i ended up deleting my blog in a fit.

it's getting better bit by bit though! and i've been wanting to get back into writing (and talking abt my unhinged/yan ideas i can't really talk to anyone else abt), so. here i am! for now, at least

as for my previously posted writing, there's some good news and some bad news: the bad news is that everything i wrote directly into tumblr (99% of snippets, a lot of ask answers, most exact content warnings, etc) is gone. the slightly less bad news is that iirc there were very very few posts of mine that weren't reblogged by anyone at all, so they're probably still out there? feel free to send them my way if you find any and i'll rb them. @/midnight-remembrance also has reblogged a couple of them! there's a couple snippets i have saved in some places, so i might repost those on my own as i find them, but there's very few of those. the good news is that anything longer (proper writing — oneshots, hcs, yan alphabet responses and so on, prompt responses, etc) is safely backed up where i originally wrote it! some of it is also on my ao3, which is the same username. feel free to send me asks about any you'd like to see again and i'll repost them! i might not post them if i feel too embarrassed about/wish i hadn't posted them, and i might rewrite/heavily edit some of them, but i think there's only a handful that fall into the former category and none of them were particularly popular. either way, no harm in asking!

as for some other updates: i'm a little divided on whether i want to keep posting explicit nsfw or not so we'll see. i might just keep it out of main tags. idk yet. regardless of what decision i make, this blog is still strictly 18+ and that will not be changing. since we can reply from sideblogs now, this is a sideblog and not my main now. why? sometimes i prefer to check up on a blog frequently instead of following them for a couple of reasons, but this felt very awkward when they were following me. so this being a sideblog relieves a bit of that stress. if this makes it sound like i have severe brain worms, it's because i do. to that effect though, if we interact every so often feel free to consider us mutuals regardless of whether or not i'm actually following you =w=b tbh i.............. am not really into genshin anymore. i might post about it here and there but i just Do Not (really) Care about it anymore. scara aside to some degree i also have no clue what's going on post inazuma lol whatever projects or commitments to writing or etc i had made beforehand. i forgot all of them so just pretend that never happened ok? ok i'll also probably be posting more sparsely, but we'll see! and (this is obviously the most important bit) i have no clue where i put the mika edit so we're back to my og classic pfp. the header scales terribly and is temporary, please ignore that too

all that aside, as a treat for anyone who sees this in time,

*roughly 6/22 done, but fairly quick to write. roughly one paragraph per character (sneak peek line: "it's not too hard to be discreet with his unique magic when someone really deserves to fall face down a flight of stairs. or three. oopsie. odd they don't remember it, huh? well, he had nothing to do with that.") **more realistic isn't quite the right word(s)... probably won't post this one to the main tags regardless. won't be doing all of the characters (only important/relevant ones) and won't be writing more about/expanding on, so this one is just like. a one off experiment sort of thing. overall less violent than most takes on the au + leans a bit (or lot, depending on how you look at it) more on the religious aspect of self aware aus. i wrote a couple paragraphs a while ago, then rewrote them, but i'll only finish/post them if there's interest for it (sneak peek line: "aether has deluded himself and cast You aside entirely on his own—and when You finally grace them with Your real presence, zhongli is certain aether will be the first to fall from Your grace.")

i have one other new thing immediately ready for posting that'll get posted in a couple of days but that one's pretty silly

#koinotame #and hi to the three people that found this blog before i posted this o/#long post #i ended up writing a lot. ehem.#<- the type to always have trouble getting essays down to the max word limit #if nobody ends up seeing this. well. it'll be here still when i post some actual writing #q

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mytownhasariddleroad · 2 years

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I love your writing so much! I have another request: So, the Reader is a friendly acquaintance that Eddie has a huge crush on, and they seem fairly normal and ordinary on the outside. But one day, Ed finds out that Reader is secretly a HUGE fan of the Riddler, and that they run a whole bunch of social media platforms dedicated to gushing and fangirling over the Riddler. They got everything from a Riddler fanclub discord server, a twitter page, a tumblr blog, you name it, they've got it.

The best part is, is that they have no idea that their idol is closer than they thought.

...And perhaps The Riddler himself could pay his #1 fan a visit?

Edward’s Number One Fan!

You and Eddie got close after he started to frequent the diner you worked at. He’d already started to have a crush on you but you ended up unknowingly cementing it one night when he came in for a late night snack after one of his streams.

The news had abruptly changed what they were talking about to switch to a story on his stream. You turned up the volume and after a few seconds of wide eyed staring you muttered just loud enough for him to hear “What I’d give to meet that man…”. His eyes went so wide he thought they’d roll out of the sockets.

Edward to decided to do a little more research on you and needless to say, it was well worth it!

You had A LOT of blogs, accounts, videos, and chat rooms… And the best part was, they were all about him! He especially likes the fancams-

He may or may not have made some fake accounts to follow you and see what you post.

There’s one post off your blog that pushes him over the edge.

“It’s probably wrong but I can’t shake this feeling like I know him. And I think, even if I don’t know him, I love him… I’m probably sounding stupid lol. Well, signing off for tonight ✌️”

He knew he had to tell you or at least show up! So he did. He had to. You loved him…

The night was dark and eerily quiet for Gotham. The only light in your apartment coming from the small tv playing reruns of an author and her mysteries. You were half asleep when you heard the slightest click from the other room.

You sat up and slid your legs over the side of your bed and glanced at the hallway outside your door. And there he was…

A tall dark shadow that slowly got closer until it was in the door way. In the darkness you could make out that mask and that question mark. It was him.

You opened your mouth but couldn’t get anything out. He stepped closer until he was right in front of you, looking down at your wide eyes. He brought his hands up to your face and stroked your cheek as he brought his face down close to yours.

You got to see his eyes… His familiar green eyes…

“You’ve got pretty eyes, Eddie.” He smiled and stroked your cheek.

“Smart girl…”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I’m so sorry again for taking forever to get to requests! I hope this was to your liking and that my sentence structure is good. I hope y’all liked it!

#the riddler #paul dano #the batman 2022 #the riddler 2022 #paul dano x reader #riddler x reader #batman #edward nasthon #paul dano x you #edward nashton x reader #edward nashton x y/n #edward nashton x you #paul dano x y/n #the riddler x you #the riddler x y/n #the riddler x reader #riddler x y/n

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ardent-fox · 1 year

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Hey lyds ! Feel like answering some headcanon questions today? (:

Headcanon challenge:

1. Besides “Mick” and “Mickey”, what’s Ian nickname for Mickey? From all the nicknames Mickey calls him , what’s Ian’s favorite?

2. What’s the story behind Mickey’s knuckle tattoos? (When / how / by who) When Ian gets a tattoo for Mickey, what is it / on what occasion?

3. Random turn-on for Mickey and a random turn-on for Ian? (Bonus: something that really shouldn’t be a turn on but is)

4. What’s their Instagram @ ? When did they start following each other?

5. If they get a pet, is it a dog (who walks it more often?) or a cat (who cuddles with it more often) ?

Hello there! 🤗 Ooh, what a fun idea, thanks for including me in these 😍

1. I think Ian keeps it fairly simple with his nicknames for Mickey. "Baby" is obviously a big one and I think he says it quite frequently, I can also see him blurting out "sweetheart" or "love" during some intense, emotional sex and proudly calling Mickey his husband and the love of his life to other people. As for Mickey's nicknames for Ian, "tough guy" is the oldest and therefor Ian's favorite, along with "red" or "freckles", since he adores Mickey loving on the physical attributes that he might have been teased for as a kid, they're like a shot of confidence and serotonin every time. "Sleepyface" is also still a part of their lives, but since their nieces and nephews/possibly their own kids end up liking it so much, Mickey uses it on them later on instead, and Ian doesn't mind one bit.

2. The knuckle tatts were definitely a part of a "you're a Milkovich man now" initiation process that was led by Terry when Mickey was around 13-14 years old, done at home by a family member. I do think Mickey wanted to get them, but for all the wrong reasons. He had his own idea of what a "real man" should act and look like at the time, which was greatly manipulated by his father, and he used them as a part of his defense mechanism to look tough and keep people out for a long time. Once he let go and embraced his sensitivity, he was still okay with the words he picked out, but let them fade away naturally when the time came, symbolizing distancing himself from Terry's influence. As for Ian, I see him getting something symbolic that they can both share, perhaps stargazer lilies for their 10th wedding anniversary, or they both get a shape outline with their kids' initials inside if/when the time comes, and Ian includes Mickey's "M" inside it on his version.

3. Crime/gun kink aside, Mickey loves to see Ian get pissed off once in a while and verbally defend them against random assholes, something about that rough energy sparks the need to get Ian on him while his blood is still boiling. Also, once they move in together and Ian takes on cooking, he surprises Mickey with preparing his favorite meals, and this new love language ends up speaking not only to Mickey's tummy, but also his dick, prompting spicy moments in the kitchen. For Ian, it's the sight of Mickey calculating their finances with his glasses on (we support glasses!mickey on this blog), nibbling on his pen every once in a while, mouthing out the words as he goes over his notes. Ian tries his best not to stare as he hangs around him, handing Mickey the cup of coffee he made and pretending to scroll down his phone while he waits, clothes flying everywhere as soon as Mickey is done.

4. Although my knowledge of Instagram is pretty poor, I don't think Mickey particularly gravitates towards social media, so Ian is the only one who has an Instagram in their home. It's the same one he's had for the last few years, a simple handle with just his name. It used to be a place where he posted hot pics of himself, but now it's mostly artsy photos of his and Mickey's joined hands in bed, his little tomato sprouts and other pretty stuff Mickey would surely tease him for if he knew they were on there.

5. Mickey finally gets the Pitbull he always wanted and 100% names it after a brand/type of gun (I vote for Heckler), thinking it will be the toughest dog in the world, only to realize over time that it's the exact opposite. Ian wants a cat, a sweet, orange kitten so they can be twins, and they end up getting both pets from the local animal shelter. However, since Ian is the early riser and more active outdoors, the dog ends up attaching himself to him more, and the originally not-that-cuddly ginger cat takes a liking to Mickey and starts sleeping on his chest while he watches TV, making it clear that their pets also have a say in the matter. Ian and Mickey just shrug and roll with it, and both of them end up loving the crap out of each of their fur babies in the long run.

#these got kind of long but were tons of fun #headcanon #lyds answers

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daquanshell · 2 months

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Crime Dramas

I’ve been watching a lot of crime dramas lately and I’ve been genuinely inspired by some of the larger than life personas of these characters, amplified by the fact that some of the characters you see in movies and television are largely based on real life individuals.

John Gotti gets bonus points for not only being an actual thug, but for having a reputation of being well dressed and being the kind of person movies are based on (for better or worse).

Fashion and Finance

When I started my most recent blog I assumed it would be all about finance, and I wrote maybe two blog posts before realizing “this is super boring” and pretty much abandoning the project like I was a father who didn’t care if he had to pay child support. That being said, I don’t want to completely abandon financial topics, especially as they relate to insurance, but rather I’d prefer to write about finance in the context of one’s lifestyle, and fashion in the context of business.

Employing a Uniform

I am a huge fan of anyone who wears a suit. I think a suit is a sign of professionalism, and I personally try to wear a suit as often as my lifestyle will permit (I go to the gym pretty often), and if it was up to me, more men in modern society would wear suits, at the very least the men I employ would.

The thing about wearing a suit however, is while you don’t exactly have to be rich to wear one, you can’t exactly do that if you are poor. Wearing a suit, specifically as a uniform requires you to first afford multiple suits that fit, have a selection of shoes, dress shirts, coats and accessories, access to a dry cleaner and or tailor, it requires you to frequently do laundry, pretreat your clothes, use an iron, lint roller, and generally put a higher level of care and attention into your wardrobe.

The few things a person needs to maintain a good wardrobe are the following:

Barber

Personal Trainer

Suppliers, Tailor, or Stylist

Dry Cleaner

Laundry Service

With my birthday coming up, I’d like to raise my standards of attire and start wearing a uniform, especially for my public appearances, whether that be on social media or in person.

On a Personal Note

I’d like to think I’m fairly well dressed, but after looking at my most recent photo I’ve learned I can do better. I realized I probably could have dressed better but chose not to, and I did so subconsciously, and I realize that’s actually a critical error on my part. I’d like to dress my best whenever I can. I realized that is also a flaw I have in general, since my auntie brought that up multiple times when we were playing spades last week.

Speaking of playing spades, game night is this week and I’ll be bringing playing cards! Even if we don’t end up playing it will be a pretty good time.

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lesbianpolar · 3 months

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I've been meaning to make this post for a while, but I haven't because it just feels kind of awkward.

I haven't been on this blog very much in quite some time, and that's mostly because I no longer think that I am Bipolar. After I started being treated for POTS, my mood swings decreased significantly. After several med changes, some new diagnoses (MCAS and hEDS), physical therapies, and starting to use different mobility/disability aids, these mood swings have gone away completely.

It's not unheard of for Bipolar Disorder to become dormant for a period of time, but I just feel like it's too big of a coincidence that my mood disorder would completely disappear not long after starting treatment for my physical conditions; one of which causes diminished blood flow to the brain. When I brought this up to my cardiologist, he told me that POTS frequently causes mood swings that can be mistaken for Bipolar Disorder if left untreated.

It makes so much sense now why I would worsen when I was forced to spend long periods of time on my feet and would improve with bedrest. It makes sense why my psych meds seemed to be so hit-and-miss. On the one hand, I am elated to have figured it out, but on the other, I am furious. I was subjected to so many different awful treatments, all while being treated as subhuman, for a disease which I likely never even had.

I have been completely off all psych meds for over a year now, and I continue to improve. I am fairly convinced that I have autism and adhd (pretty much everyone in my family does), but I don't see the point in getting officially diagnosed if I don't want to be forced to act Less Autistic.

I will be leaving up all the bipolar resources and memes that I have on this blog, but I likely won't post about Bipolar Disorder anymore, at least not in a personal way. I am debating a name change for the blog, but I'm not sure yet what I will be changing it to. I hope none of you feel like I was intentionally misleading anyone by "pretending" to be bipolar. I truly experienced everything that I said I have on this blog, and I honestly believed I was bipolar.

If you would like to keep up to date with my physical disability, as well as see physical disability content in general, you can follow me at @disabled-is-not-a-dirty-word . I have been running that blog for quite some time now, and I'm far more active on there.

As for this blog, I will continue to post and reblog any mental illness content that I come across, but I don't see myself being super active on here. Thanks to all of you who have supported me over the past few years. And if you suspect that something you are experiencing isn't normal, make sure to get it checked out. I had assumed for almost my entire life that not being able to stand still without vomiting was just some kind of quirk. Turns out, nope!

#personal #tw emetophobia

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batfamcraze · 2 years

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Maybe it's me but I think what I like most about Damian is how much I don't like him. You can tell DC Comics is going for a redemption arc for him and we're really beginning to see him grow into a good person and fine young man. And they're doing it right. They're showing his growth rather than telling us. Damian is still making mistakes and still is rather standoffish, but he's getting there.

He's the one you want to root for and he's hard to love but I'm so excited to see where they take him. So glad your blog is heavily dedicated to him. (And thanks for the follow too!)

Damian is my favourite Batkid and my favourite Robin. I like all of the Batkids fairly equally, but Damian is my #1 because his story and character is so appealing to me! (I also acknowledge DC's problematic treatment of him and the Al Ghul family at the same time of course)

I read Damian's comics when I was around 13 years old and I thought he was the coolest bitch. I loved that iconic introduction of him saying "Father, I imagined you taller." He's wished to meet his father his whole life and that's the first thing he says to him? Amazing.

While I understand that you like Damian and I agree with your statement, what a lot of people don’t know is that Damian’s current redemption arc in Robin (2021) already happened in Robin: Son of Batman (2016).

In Robin: Son of Batman (2016), He leaves Gotham for a year to travel, and calls it his “Year of Atonement” (to atone for the crimes he’s committed), it's about Damian not wanting to kill people anymore and become a hero like his father is. (And I recommend you reading it honestly, it has such a strong hold to my heart!)

There are a few comics that include Damian’s redemption arc like Batman and Robin (2011) I think, and more that I'm probably forgetting. (I need to re-read Damian’s comics again honestly, because my memory is a little poor because of how long ago I read them lol!)

From what I remember in the New 52 continuity (It was the current canon at the time I read it, so, yeah I’ve been a Batfam fan for a LONG time lol), Damian was a solid member of the batfamily, and was a good hero/sidekick. At some point he stopped being an assassin and became a new addition to the family.

Now you ask: “So Damian already had a redemption arc, and they’re doing it again?”

And my answer is: “YES! That’s weird isn’t it? Congratulations! You accidentally discovered a problem I have with DC too!”

Please bear with me, I’m going to give context as to why Damian is going through another redemption arc, and share my thoughts on Robin (2021) under the cut lol:

The problem with Robin (2021) imo, is that Damian already went through a redemption arc. The reason why DC is doing it twice, is because DC’s ex-ceo Dan Didio (Whom I greatly detest, caused many problems with multiple DC characters), planned to turn Damian into DC’s newest and biggest villain for their canceled continuity that was planned after Rebirth, and to take place after the Dark Knights Metal event. The new failed continuity was going to be called 5G (Stands for Generation 5). It got cancelled because the executive team had disagreements with directions that multiple characters had, as well as hating the idea of a time jump that would be a part of it (Damian was apparently going to be 18!). You can read more about it here in Article 1 and Article 2. (There are multiple posts that could explain 5G better here on Tumblr but I hope I tried lol)

Didio is also to blame for DC having multiple continuities like New 52, Rebirth, etc. So if you're mad about DC being confusing and having their timelines restart frequently, blame it on this guy lol (Thank god he doesn’t work there anymore). Currently, we’re in the Infinite Frontier continuity, but it’s not actually a reboot like the past two so I let it slide ig, because Infinite Frontier is technically a continuation of Rebirth. (If I'm wrong about Infinite Frontier lmk, but my point still stands because I hate Didio for creating New 52 and Rebirth lol)

While 5G was in the works before it got cancelled and Didio got replaced by Jim Lee, Damian was in multiple comics that was going to explain his new path to villainy for 5G. His fallout with the Teen Titans he led in Teen Titans (2016) because he didn’t have faith in the justice system anymore, dealing with the trauma of Alfred’s death, attempting to kill KGBeast because of the attempted murder of Dick, Dick not remembering Damian and turning into Ric, were some of the reasons for his new path. (Source here and here)(I apologize if some details are wrong)

Because 5G was planning on making Damian a supervillain, DC wanted to give the Robin mantle back to Tim. (Despite Damian being Robin for about 15 years, which means Tim hasn’t been Robin for about the same length)

When 5G was cancelled, Williamson was then given Robin (2021) and he had to write Damian’s redemption arc, which is where we are now. If it weren’t for DC trying to change Damian’s story and ruin his character. *cough* *cough* racism.

And the ideas they had for 5G that they didn’t want to throw away, gave us 5G’s leftovers known as Future State (2021), Death of the Justice League (2022), and the Batman comic with Tim as his Robin that recently got announced (writer Chip Zdarsky). Even though Bruce is supposed to “die” in Death of the justice League? ... 😐

*Apparently, James Tynion IV didn’t like 5G either, so he decided to write DC vs Vampires (2021) instead. Lol the more you know! ✨ (Source here)

To summarize: Tim was going to be be the new Robin for 5G, 5G gets cancelled, now we have both Tim and Damian run around as Robin in Infinite Frontier because of their failed attempts of changing Damian to a supervillain, and have Tim replace him. Now Damian is going through the same arc he already went through because of their idiotic decision. (Side note: If you were wondering why they’re both Robin currently, that's why!) 🙃

*This is not a hate post for Tim. I don't hate Tim, I actually like him! I’m pointing out the fact that DC is racist, and that they’ve been pushing Tim to be Robin recently, because he's white and he hasn’t been Robin for 15-ish years. Don’t misread this post please.

So... After all of that context (which was very much needed), I’m going to finally talk about Damian in Robin (2021) lol.

First of all, I don't have a problem with Robin (2021), I don't fully hate it! There are a few parts that I like, the Lazarus Tournament was a pretty cool idea tbh and the writing is decent. But I don't think I can ever love it, because this comic is a reminder that it wouldn't exist if DC weren’t racist, and that Damian would be on the same path he was on before all of this bs. This comic has elements from Damian’s past comics that, imo, has been handled better.

I’m sorry if you like this comic and that I probably ruined it for you, but it’s completely fine to like this comic and still be aware of the sabotage he went through! If DC sees that Robin (2021) is successful, then they will surely regret their past actions and never attempt to give his villain arc a second try in the future (If DC tries again I will fight them)! I understand why someone would like Robin (2021) because non-Damian readers aren’t aware that he’s no longer that snotty brat that fanon thinks he is. Yea, Damian can be arrogant and childish, those are his flaws after all (and he’s still a child btw, and flaws are very much needed in a character. And I don't like flaw-less characters because they bore me lol), but he's WAY more toned down after Robin: Son of Batman (2016) and Batman and Robin (2011). Damian was already a developed good person before Robin (2021).

Without further ado, here are a few of my fav random panels of Dami’s past redemption arc that I love:

Damian's new friend Maya, helps him realize his potential to become a hero 💚♥️

Maya tells Damian that she forgives him for killing her father Morgan Ducard.

Damian was sent to kill a den of demon bats(?) in a cave, and sees a baby demon bat. When Damian tries to force it to fight back, it licks his nose, and Damian cries. This is how Damian meets Goliath ♥️. This scene represents how Damian saw himself in the demon bat, because he also had no desire to kill when he was young, but was forced to his entire life. Which is why he breaks down (including my own heart). [These pics are from Robin: Son of Batman (2016)]

I apologize if my reply was not at all you were expecting LOL, but I was going to make a post about DC’s failed 5G plan, and I thought why the hell not? I’ll do it now since it affected Damian A LOT!

“He's the one you want to root for and he's hard to love but I'm so excited to see where they take him. So glad your blog is heavily dedicated to him.”

Oh yes I absolutely agree! I’ve rooted for him on Day 1 and there aren't enough people on the Damian Wayne Defence Squad like me lmao. And thank you so much! That really means a lot! 💕 (I’ll also strongly defend the other Batkids too btw, I appreciate all of them lol)

Thank you for sending the ask! 💕

87 notes · View notes

queersatanic · 3 years

Text

For a long time, it’s been known that The Satanic Temple’s co-owner Lucien Greaves once went on an antisemitic rant about how the Nazis ruined the word antisemitism for everyone and that it was “OK to hate Jews” so long as you were hating observant Jews.

He was on a 24-hour radio show celebrating and promoting the release of a new edition of Might Is Right that he’d illustrated, so naturally Greaves' co-hosts and the guest caller then escalated immediately to hatred of all Jews and Holocaust denialism. The famous clip of this conversation cuts off about there.

The following apologia for that rant and subsequent conversation by Satanic blogger Stephen Bradford Long is, uh, creative about its construction of facts.

To be more generous, it is overly credulous toward people who have not earned it, but it’s typical of how TST members continue to utilize willful ignorance to justify their continued support of an organization fundamentally structured to control and extract the free labor of members that its owners can profit off of without those owners having any reciprocal accountability to members, whatsoever, including telling them the truth.

Let's take a look in more detail at what will be a very long post using Long's blog post as a guide to examine this aspect of The Satanic Temple and its history.

I’ve [Stephen Bradford Long] been a member of The Satanic Temple (TST) since December 2017, and in that time there’ve been occasional accusations of crypto-fascism, alt-rightism, and Nazism against TST by both outsiders and former members. This article is about why I choose to remain in the Satanic Temple despite these accusations, and why I find these accusations lacking in credibility.

Long is not really going to address the full context of crypto-fascism and alt-righterism in this piece, but he wants to make you aware that he's aware of it.

Before I continue with this discussion, though, I need to make a few clarifications: I am in no way a leader or spokesperson for TST. I’m not even part of a local chapter – I’m a solo Satanist who identifies with the Satanic Temple. This article is not written from a position of official leadership, but from my limited perspective as a rank-and-file member. It’s likely that, due to my limited perspective, that there are details that I miss.

This disclaimer is probably necessary because The Satanic Temple wraps its actual members up in "definitely not a giant red flag for a supposed religious organization" non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). The latest version of the membership agreement they're rolling out to local chapters congregations is likely why we're starting to see another schism now (July 2021), but which specific NDA Long was operating under—or avoiding—in May 2020 when he wrote this, only TST would know.

That said, I do have a bias: I have a fairly popular Satanic blog, podcast, and a big social media presence in the TST community. I consider myself good friends with Penemue, (Director of Ministry, Executive Producer of TST TV, former International Council Member) and we text regularly. I’ve had quite a few TST leaders on my show. My articles are frequently shared by Lucien Greaves and the official TST twitter account, and while I wouldn’t consider Lucien close enough to be called a friend, I do admire him, and he has guested on my podcast twice so far.

Long's situation has changed. Per his Twitter, as of July 2021, Long is now on the Ordination Council of The Satanic Temple Ministry, so it's possible that he's now wrapped up in an even more restrictive NDA than most people. He may not even be able to respond to this if he wanted to.

Going back to "stuff not talked about", Priest Penemue, who now openly goes by Greg Stevens again, is a one-time Breitbart contributor who was on very familiar terms with Milo Yiannopolous and Mike Cernovich. Cernovich was already a #GamerGate veteran, open misogynist, and rape apologist at that point; Cernovich also utilizes far-right attorney, "anti-antifa" and anti-#BlackLivesMatter opinion-haver, eugenics enthusiast Marc Randazza.

Now, Randazza will come up later in Long's blog for Long's theory of "contagion", but it is notable that Randazza isn't just a piece of shit because he goes out of his way to represent pieces of shit; he's also, himself, very much a piece of shit.

Back to Long.

Finally, nothing in this article means I won’t be compelled to leave in the future. While I think it’s unlikely, it’s possible that TST will make some extraordinary mishap that will require me to follow my conscience and distance myself from the organization. As a Satanist, that option must always be available to me. While I haven’t seen anything in the organization so far that conflicts with my conscience, that doesn’t mean there won’t be something that does in the future. With that out of the way, let’s begin.

So, Doubt.gif, but yeah, let's really begin.

Lucien’s Moment of Cringe

Back in 2003, before he was Lucien Greaves and instead known as Doug Mesner, Lucien had a cringy podcast conversation with Shane Bugbee in which he said some concerning things, and many of the accusations against TST orbit around this moment. Joseph Laycock chronicles the cringiest moments on page 69 in his book Speak of the Devil:

[Book excerpt] The tone of the podcast is sophomoric and intentionally offensive in keeping with Bugbee’s philosophy of Satanism. In the exchange in question, Mesner states, “It’s OK to hate Jews” if this hatred is based in contempt for their supernatural beliefs but that, “It’s not OK to hate Jews” if this hated is based in racism or ideas of eugenics [emphasis added]. Bugbee then asks Mesner, “Do you like Satanic Jews?” Mesner answers, “Satanic Jews are fine.” Bugbee replies, “One drop of Jew blood means you ain’t breaking bread with me, motherfucker.” At this, someone on the podcast can be heard laughing. Mesner starts to respond, at which point Bugbee accuses Mesner of being Jewish himself. In what may have been an attempt to disarm the situation, Mesner then replies, “Look at me, I’m an Aryan king.” This is met with more laughter. This exchange is followed by a more serious discussion by Bugbee’s wife, Amy, about how Jews exaggerated the numbers killed in the Holocaust and have exploited it for political gain, during which Mesner is silent.

“Cringe,” huh?

So, to be clear, Stephen Bradford Long is quoting Joseph Laycock, a researcher of new religious movements who was in the middle of a book about how great neo-Satanism is when news of this broke big again in 2018. Long relies on Laycock to have listened to the clip and lets Laycock characterize an event that Long admits is why so many other accusations "orbit" around TST rather than, apparently, listening to it himself and trying to find out more information.

In lieu of access to any of the primary information for yourself, this would be understandable. But if you read more of that section from the book, it's immediately apparent that Laycock did some pretty shoddy work.

Now, you may think it's nitpicking, but this is not a podcast. This is a 24-hour live Internet radio broadcast. People are calling in while listening. More importantly, it didn't take place Sep. 11, 2002; this was 2003.

You can tell from other things like archived Web posts promoting it and printed materials, but also the other conversations that take place throughout the stream, like arguing about the Democratic presidential primary field and people referring to the current year being "2003".

So let's establish two things:

Shane Bugbee, Lucien Greaves, and Amy Bugbee talked about a ton of stuff in the course of 24 hours

Laycock listened to approximately none of those other things before trying to exculpate Lucien and resorting to "some of Lucien's best friends are Jewish."

The fact that Laycock didn't know which year it was happening might explain why he offers up that little detail in defense of Lucien in regards to eugenics.

Certainly, Lucien is not making eugenics-based arguments, right?

Right?

Ascertaining truth directly

Look at me, I'm an Aryan King!

For those who don't know, Lucien Greaves' real name is "Douglas Alexander Misicko," which means when he gets himself added as an intervenor in an ACLU court case, he still does so as "Doug Misicko." Back in 2003 and for some time after, he was using the pseudonym "Doug Mesner", and he has used at least two others online since then, but since TST people mostly know him as "Lucien Greaves", we'll keep using that.

Some caveats: that transcript in the above Wiki link was auto-generated and as of July 2021, has still to be fully manually corrected. While it gets the gist well, please don't take it on faith that it's correct. Also, over the course of the 24-hours, the timestamps stay in order but do drift a bit from the Archive.org audio timer.

However, it’s a roadmap for you to find something and follow along with your own ears. You can hear for yourself what grotesquely racist song they put on to close out that segment. You can hear for yourself how they got into that conversation.

It turns out the caller, a Holocaust-denying metal musician from Vancouver named Gerod Staaf a.k.a. Gzerod Von Staaf brings up Lucien's favorite subject: eugenics.

Lucien agrees that the Nazis ruined the concept for everyone in the Second World War and brings up an apparently practiced phrase: "Threw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak."

We know this is not an off-the-cuff remark or merely sleepless thought because in hour nine, the stream plays a pre-recorded interview that Lucien did with conservative radio host Ken Hamblin, "The Black Avenger", to promote their upcoming stream.

08:07:56 Doug Misicko: Right? Well, I think people kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, after World War Two. 08:08:03 Ken Hamblin: Okay. 08:08:03 Doug Misicko: Ideas like eugenics and social Darwinism. They threw out everything positive that we could have possibly gained from those along with it. 08:08:12 Ken Hamblin: Well, eugenics is, I would think eugenics is a world apart from whatever the philosophy of Might is Right is about. Or does it- Or does it tie in by saying, "Might is right, because I have the power and you're subhuman" or what 08:08:28 Doug Misicko: No... Not exactly, I mean, the book takes an anti-totalitarian stance in place- in places, but I think sometimes you have to choose what your brand of totalitarianism is going to be. I mean, right now, we might live in what you would call a mob rule. And we're becoming overpopulated. There are no rules against breeding. And I don't think there should be rules, perhaps, on real generalized racial grounds like they were doing in Nazi Germany, but perhaps just merely on qualification grounds.

Hamblin asks for clarification: "How about a person with a low IQ, who is not likely to be able to give a child the quality of husbanding that is necessary for the competitiveness of the 21st century?"

"I do believe that that type of person should not be allowed to breed," Lucien answers.

So going back to "this moment of cringe"—the famous one where Lucien talks over the caller to be able to assert that "antisemitism is not a dirty word"—before they get to that moment, they're already having a lovely conversation about how too many stupid people are having kids. The next step is natural.

03:05:33 Gerod Staaf: Now. What about the concept of eugenics? Do we see that being implemented anytime in the US? 03:05:39 Doug Misicko: I don't know. It would have to be- You know, I think eventually there's gonna have to be population control. And that's where it'll start. Then if you're going to start controlling the population, then you can start getting into the argument about in what direction you control the population, why don't you use it towards a eugenics end? Or at least curb dysgenics [emphasis added] which is opposite eugenics. For those who don't know, the concept being that the stupidest people breed the most. It seems axiomatic at this point, it's just, hey, a given truism.

We've talked before about how cheery Lucien is in his conversation with Grand Dragon of the KKK and White Aryan Resistance founder Tom Metzger, and how Lucien tries to convince Metzger that the best way for Metzger to achieve his genocide of all the Black people would be to institute sterilization based on IQ in the name of eugenics.

So this stuff is not incidental to Lucien's philosophy. And it's not something you can pretend was just a "moment" of poor judgment or going along with others.

Five years later for his Process.org blog, Lucien utilizes a facetious counterargument but is still writing about how much he hates that stupid people are allowed to have babies.

He also seems to complain that every time he argues in favor of it, people associate him with all of the fucking things eugenics and forced sterilization have actually been used for in history.

[Lucien Greaves, as Doug Mesner writes] One needs to demonstrate proper cognizance to scrub toilets or pick produce, but nobody is too simple to have a child. Motherhood may be the most important job a person could take, and yet nobody is too incompetent to be denied the task. And it’s a good thing, too – for who would decide who is fit to breed and who is not? Selective breeding of any kind is eugenics all over again, and anybody who even mutters that foul word must be ridiculed from discourse as neo-Nazi swine. Only a fascist could be so vile as to suggest that the laws of heredity could be employed toward the betterment of the gene-pool or – disregarding any such lofty notions of “improvement” – cessation of the propagation of severe dysfunctions from retardations to psychopathy. Anybody who would recommend that parents who are unable to afford housing, food, or clothing – or is otherwise incapable of caring for a child – should thus abstain from having children is nothing more than a megalomaniacal totalitarian. You have merely to point at her and say aloud, “Hitler!” and your argument is won. Breeding restrictions are a slippery slope, and it is absolutely inevitable that if the rapist is sterilized, so too will be all non-Aryans. Consensus means nothing here, because in a democracy “all men are created equal” – except when applying for jobs, or being accepting into schools, or looking for a loan…. But breeding is different. You can’t stratify there. An alcoholic inbred could possibly produce the next Einstein, (Though, I suppose, the alcoholic would be unlikely to be an actual inbred. There are laws against inbreeding. Inbreeding is known to propagate genetic defects, but that’s where we need to draw the line, or it’s head first down that slippery slope.) and infertile couples should care nothing of the background details of their sperm donor.

Yeah, but that's 2008. Surely Lucien changed his mind after that, right?

Well, probably still not by 2013 when Lucien brought in Shane Bugbee to help him launch TST.

[Tweet thread]

That's Lucien Greaves, Shane Bugbee, and TST co-owner "Malcolm Jarry" (real name, Cevin Soling) standing together in mid-2013.

People like Joseph Laycock and Stephen Bradford Long take great pains to excuse Lucien because he's not as bad as Shane Bugbee, and Shane was the real racist, antisemite, and absolutely horrible person, right?

Well, despite moving to different parts of the country, Lucien stayed close with Shane for another 10 years after all of that and tried to get Shane work shaping the media-rollout of TST in the beginning.

By 2013, do you think Lucien and Shane even stopped loving Might Is Right? Do you think they pitched it together to be the foundation of TST?

It's not until mid-2018 that the website Lucien promotes throughout the MIR stream finally goes dark. It was called "dysgenics.com".

This is the main ad they run for it, a recording Lucien himself saying:

Natural selection and modern civilization have ceased to exist. Today we live in a world overpopulated with bottom feeders. The pool is overfilled with the dregs, there is no inherent value on human life. The value is earned and most people are running a deficit. They're worse than worthless. They're counter-productive. What can be done? www.dysgenics.com.

We can't know what's in his heart, but throughout his time as the voice of TST, Lucien has continued to publicly speak about how the problem isn't with "Nazis", and has argued people shouldn't oppose Nazis with force. The problem, according to Lucien, is that certain hapless racists are inbred, stupid rednecks who should be mocked. Stupidity and trashiness are still the problem for him; dapper and well-spoken genocide, eh, not so much.

All right, so that's a pretty deep dive, but we have not gotten to worst yet, so let's jump back into Stephen Bradford Long's blog.

Let me go ahead and get this out of the way: in my opinion, this whole conversation [ed. he means just this particular exchange] – including Lucien’s part in it — is gross and unacceptable. I think it’s reasonable to be concerned by this conversation. While Lucien doesn’t take as hard a stance as Shane Bugbee and his wife, he also doesn’t do much to mitigate the rampant bigotry on display in this public conversation, and I personally see that as a failure. I think that when we see racism on display, we should oppose it. Lucien might have attempted to do that by insisting he doesn’t have a problem with Satanic Jews, but it’s a milquetoast attempt at best. But also, in my opinion, Lucien is not demonstrating deliberate anti-Semitism in this conversation, but poorly articulated anti-theism. It’s all too easy for a broad anti-theist, anti-religion sentiment to be interpreted as anti-specific-ethnic-religious-community. Anti-theists (ideally) don’t object to the ethnic or cultural identity, but to the supernatural beliefs that they deem dangerous. Perhaps I’m being too charitable in my interpretation of Lucien’s words, but I don’t hear him being consciously anti-Jewish, because he clearly specifies that he doesn’t have a problem with Satanic Jews. That suggests it’s the supernatural beliefs he objected to, not the identity. Shane Bugbee and his wife, on the other hand, are unapologetically antisemitic. While Lucien is expressing poorly articulated anti-theism, that doesn’t make it harmless in impact. He might not have intended to come off as anti-Semitic, but the impact of his words is still dismissive and insensitive to a persecuted religious minority. It’s entirely possible to do something racist even when we don’t consciously mean to. That’s what it means to live in a culture of systemic racism and bigotry. So, to recap: 1. I think this whole podcast conversation is gross and unacceptable. 2. I think he’s trying to articulate anti-theism, not anti-Semitism. 3. Regardless of his intent, the impact of his words is still anti-semitic. This entire conversation is made more complicated by the fact that it was recorded to commemorate the release of a new addition of Ragnar Redbeard’s protofascist booklet Might is Right, which Lucien illustrated. I think it’s reasonable to be concerned about this situation. Lucien’s position isn’t exactly clear through this whole episode.

"Complicated", "concerned", "position isn't exactly clear"

They are there. To promote. An antisemitic. White supremacist. Misogynistic. Protofascist. Book.

A book that Lucien Greaves illustrated.

It has a book that has inspired white supremacists for decades, and was cited by name while the 2019 Gilroy Garlic Festival mass shooter stream himself killing people.

This is the context. The position Lucien is taking throughout the entirety of the stream is that Social Darwinism and eugenics is good, and Lucien clearly does not have a problem with literal Neo-Nazis and white nationalists, including those responsible for assaulting and murdering people because those are the people he sought out to bring on and interview.

If you're on a desktop browser, this will be easier, but try searching for "Jew" in this (uncorrected) transcript, and if you don't trust the transcription, listen for yourself.

If you think Lucien's position isn't clear, search for the unredacted versions of "n****r"; "r*t*rd"; or "f*g" and find some clarity.

02:35:32 Doug Misicko: You got n****r sodomites on call 02:35:34 Shane Bugbee: God damn right, motherfucker. They're cheap. Life is cheap bitch. It's about the cost of a fucking nickel bullet. You remember that motherfucker. And I ain't talking any shit. I know people everywhere.

And:

10:14:04 Doug Misicko: I don't want to have a kid if it's gonna be a r*t*rd or anything like that. 10:14:08 Psychic: You don't what?! 10:14:09 Doug Misicko: I don't want to have a kid if it's gonna be a r*t*rd or anything like that. 10:14:13 Psychic: I can't understand what you are saying... 10:14:14 Doug Misicko: Well, you know, if I was gonna have a kid, I wouldn't want to be a r*t*rd or anything. I need some consultation.

And:

11:16:57 Hart Fisher: Been like a little cripple time down here at the RadioFreeSatan.com. 11:17:00 Doug Misicko: Yeah, we love the r*t*rds. 11:17:02 Hart Fisher: Oh, very important. Kids of Whitney High. 11:17:05 Doug Misicko: Right. Make some beautiful music. 11:17:09 Shane Bugbee: First ones in the fuckin showers. First go the r*t*rds and then go the Jews. 11:17:17 Doug Misicko: The r*t*rds are entertaining. 11:17:19 Shane Bugbee: Next is the n****rs and sp*cs and then more Jews.

If your defense is, "At least Lucien didn't talk as coarsely as Shane did", that is an incredibly weird excuse to give someone. Seriously arguing, "We should sterilize all people with low IQs" is actually worse than just the r-slur. But yeah, Lucien did both.

We promise you, no matter how much more context you want to give this stuff, it will make it worse. There is always more, and it's always worse.

A Horseshit Explanation

But back to Long's blog:

I reached out to Lucien for comment and he emailed me an internal TST statement that was sent to chapter heads. The statement is long, but I think the whole thing needs to be read and digested in full:

So, apologies for giving you so much information up to this point. Hopefully, you have taken some breaks if you've needed it. But having done so, it's going to be immediately apparent just how much of this statement that Long quotes in-full is absolute horseshit.

Subtly, because you may miss the history, Long is writing this blog in May 2020, but TST just recycled the statement they put out in Lucien's name back in 2018 as part of that schism, and you can tell by the reference to "15 years", which would be 2003.

Another subtle but actual falsehood they try to sneak in: "I was an ignorant kid" and "still in my early twenties" - in reality, Lucien was 28. This matches public information, but it's also what he says himself while prank calling the suicide hotline - because there's always more and it's always worse.

But without further ado, the recycled 2018 statement (emphasis added in each case):

Dear Chapter Heads, It was recently brought to the attention of The Satanic Temple that a snippet from a 15-year old “Might is Right” radio show featuring our co-founder Lucien Greaves (aka Doug Mesner) is being widely distributed via social media. This is not the first time this audio has been shared within the community as a point of concern and Lucien has spoken on the matter each time but given the expansion of our organization, we feel it necessary to provide a more formal communication to be made available for your own edification as well as a helpful reference for addressing the concerns of your members.

This audio, which was heavily edited out of context, was recorded in 2003, well over a decade before the creation of The Satanic Temple (TST). It was taken from a 24-hour radio show featuring Lucien which covered a broad range of topics, music, and interviews with various subversive personalities of the time. In the clip, Lucien disparages Jewish religious practices in a manner that the organization and Lucien acknowledge as both inappropriate and unfortunate; however, he does clarify that it is reprehensible that people would blame a bloodline for the questionable behavior and supernatural beliefs of a religion and we should be especially cognizant of the fact that what our critics are saying he said isn’t actually the point or content of what’s being communicated.

Lucien wishes to communicate the following:

“Even as I may be defending myself against what that material was NOT, I still must admit that I today do not agree with my opinions expressed then in any way. To me, back then, I was speaking of people who would take, say, Leviticus literally and try to impose its laws upon the world. I grew up as ignorant white trash in a deeply divided and violent area which heavily affected my world view. At the time of this recording, while still in my early twenties, I thought that the triumph of Laveyan Satanism was that it de-racialized a “survival of the fittest” productive, merit-based social darwinism. I used to hold the position that religious superstition shouldn’t be “normalized” as I saw it as such a problematic force in the world. My assumption then was that if we scoffed at such expressions openly, those expressing such things might think about their superstitions more clearly and abandon them. The founding of TST was ultimately a refutation of that viewpoint, a product of my complete removal from that mode of thinking. To me, there were “the religious,” and they were the majority, and then there were the beleaguered nonreligious who suffered from the dogmatic impositions of the religious. I would speak of superstitions in equally dismissive terms with unfortunate lack of concern, due to no real understanding, of familial/cultural attachments, or the effect of such rhetoric upon minority religious groups. I was an ignorant kid with a lot of outrage and a big idiot mouth that received just as many threats to my life by Nazis as I do today. TST will always be for anybody, of any background, who identifies with the values we espouse, and today, you can count on me to vigorously defend any religious group’s right to equal representation and expression anywhere.”

As Satanists who are members of the Satanic Temple, we recognize the relevance of our Sixth Tenet in this matter: “People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one’s best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused.”

We ask you to recognize that people do change their opinions over the course of 15 years, and Lucien is no exception. Our organization, its members, and all levels of leadership remain committed to the spirit of equality and compassion in Satanism and reject all forms of bigotry, hatred, and activity that conflicts with our community values and tenets.

So, end of recycled statement.

And wow, they are really relying on you not knowing jack shit about the rest of that 24-hour broadcast or the circumstances behind it, huh?

But those people that excuse doesn't work on don't stay to tell other people, and those the excuse does work on stick around and keep defending it, like Stephen Bradford Long does.

I think Lucien made a mistake in this whole incident. I also accept his apology as reasonable and sincere. I’m content to move on. Yet, despite Lucien’s continued attempts to clarify his positions, TST’s accusers pull this incident out as proof of Lucien’s depravity, and his apparent antisemitism, fascism, Nazism, or what have you.

"Made a mistake."

It's interesting how similar this language is to abusive pastors or just men in reactionary evangelical communities, regardless of how those men may have hurt people for years as part of a consistent pattern, and despite no real evidence of change or restitution beyond saying tearfully, "I'm really sorry. Please forgive me." Except instead of a Bible verse, Lucien, or someone writing for him, pleads the tenets.

The way TST characterizes the exchange that people know about, it's as though it's just an oversight in 2003, a lapse, and one solitary conversation where Lucien didn't "push back against bigotry enough," or whatever.

But as we've talked about, Lucien has continued to do things in the name of "free speech" that consistently only work in one direction: in support of the far-right and their enablers.

Tracking his mindset, as late as 2016, Lucien still thinks it's terrible for an event to disinvite a violent Neo-Nazi Satanist like Augustus Sol Invictus from a speaking panel they're both on. But he also thinks that civil courts should be used to bankrupt people for truly unacceptable speech (see: the Haute Macabre interview, but also, um, what they're doing to us).

"Free speech" also means Lucien and Cevin "Malcolm Jarry" Soling can, as TST, say whatever the fuck reactionary bullshit about opposing public schools (but never cops or prisons) or supporting the Israel state's violence without asking anybody else. But no one else can say anything without asking them first, including about whether your TST chapter or you as a TST member can apply the seven tenets to oppose white supremacy and police abuse.

[Tweet]

What else do you think this section of the new member code is all about?

Members may not, without prior consent from Executive Ministry [ed. just Lucien Greaves or Malcolm Jarry], engage in activities as agents of TST or participate in any group within TST, where such activities imply or encourage the impression of collaboration or official alliance with non-TST entities, even when the aims and values of those entities appear clearly aligned with those of TST.

A guess: The ex[?]-chapter in Boston got fed up and disregarded TST's directive from May 29, 2020, about not supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, so on June 20, 2020, Boston posted to their Facebook that, yeah, the struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions, and that means full, unequivocal support for Black Lives Matter and opposition to white supremacy.

With the new contract, now you're in violation if you or your chapter speak out in favor of something Cevin and Lucien don't approve of, and if you think it's too ambiguous to conclude that's what it means, the point of the power dynamics is that ambiguity always helps the people who have power and hurts those without it.

If they say you violated it, you violated it. If you want to appeal, you can go through all the proper channels they also control and they can ultimately ignore as it suits them.

"What do the owners of The Satanic Temple care about, and what sort of people do they absolutely not care about?" is actually of critical importance to anyone donating their time, money, and creativity to making Lucien and Cevin's companies more profitable and influential.

The Conversion Left vs. The Contagion Left

[Stephen Bradford Long writes] This is where shit gets complicated. Let me back up and provide some of my background and thinking on leftist discourse in general. I’m starting to think that the left has two nearly irreconcilable worldviews, and that this rift is causing incalculable upheaval in leftist communities. I will call these two views Contagion and Conversion.

We've arrived at what is actually the crux of Long's whole argument, but after spending a ton of time getting to this point, we're mostly not going to engage with it for the simple reason that his prior assumptions in this specific situation are demonstrably false, and therefore are irrelevant.

Long says that the Left should include "reformed criminals, Nazis, racists, former white supremacists etc."; the problem is Long doesn't seem capable or willing of doing the due diligence to investigate how bad someone was or how much someone has actually changed, and therefore he misunderstands why someone wouldn't want to be around former* racists.

Long admits that he himself used to be a "far right, racist, homophobic, libertarian shitgibbon", and given his stance on this issue, this is not a surprise. He would go on to interview famous transphobe and alt-lite darling Katie Herzog, before coming to the realization thanks to her: "I'm a Satanist, Not A Leftist". So if you are a Leftist, he probably was never a great person to listen to for advice.

Take Long here with as much salt as you feel appropriate:

I don’t believe that Lucien was an ideological fascist, but if he was, I would still celebrate his change of heart demonstrated in the statement above. I would see his obvious leftist sentiments as a victory for the left and for minorities, understanding that his conversion means one less bigoted white man who can exact harm on defenseless minorities. I would welcome him into the fold with open arms.

Citation needed on any of those "obvious leftist sentiments" as opposed to "liberal" tending toward "classically liberal."

It's all very good to say, "I'm different now. I grew up. I've changed" as (paraphrasing) Lucien was quoted in that Breitbart article by TST Director of Ministry Greg Stevens.

But that makes another relevant aspect of the Might Is Right 24-hour stream is they interview George Burdi, who also said he says his ways.

The SPLC had interviewed Burdi in 2001, too, so a lot of people liked this narrative. After being imprisoned in 1997 for the assault of an antiracist activist woman and avoiding more prison by selling off his Neo-Nazi record company, Burdi said he renounced white supremacy. Burdi had a new band and it wasn't a reference to The Church of the Creator's "Racial Holy War" anymore; Burdi had two Black band members and was even engaged to an East Indian woman!

But if you listen to Burdi closely, there's a lot he doesn't say, and it sounds a lot less like he came to a realization that he was fundamentally wrong about the way he looked at the world than it does that he was facing tremendous consequences in his life for openly sharing and pursuing those views.

In 2017, Burdi admitted he had never fully left the white nationalist movement (~8:00 in). He still thought "multiculturalism" was bad, "homogenous societies" would be better, and calmly went through his ethno-nationalist screed that would necessitate tremendous violence visited on millions if not billions of people.

Burdi ends that section of the 2017 interview on a note about how he'd either send his children to a private school in Detroit or homeschool them, which is remarkably similar to the things TST owner Cevin Soling once told Russia Today about when public schools really went downhill.

[Soling says] What I think the transformation that took- happened, was that we went from a homogeneous population in these schools to a heterogeneous one [emphasis added]. And so where you have a common culture in a school, where everyone sort of comes from the same background, it’s easier to suppress and keep people in line, but when people have different cultures, greater efforts have to be made to basically keep people in line and enforce the conformity that is demanded and required in public schools. They’re not good places to learn and they’re not good places to be.

When you wonder why TST is getting involved in weird stuff like the Mahanoy (Pennsylvania) School Board and selling "Fuck The Mahanoy School Board" merch, it basically comes down to "Cevin Soling really hates public schools."

A defender of TST and of Soling might want to point out that just because Soling and George Burdi agree on one thing, and have used similar reasoning, doesn't mean the whole push to end public schools is actually wrong.

But it's more that the entire modern right wing is built on opposition to public school integration, and the sort of people who call for the abolition of schools because they're like prisons while still supporting actual prisons are just giving their hand away about what bothers them.

In fact, Soling also had a very long conversation with Stefan Molyneux, yes, that one, about the benefits of homeschooling when promoting his documentary "The War on Kids". He did an interview with at least one other homeschool right wing libertarian on that extended tour a decade ago, possibly more.

But here's the SPLC summary of home-school aficionado Molyneux:

A libertarian internet commentator and alleged cult leader who amplifies "scientific racism," eugenics and white supremacism to a massive new audience, Stefan Molyneux operates within the racist so-called “alt-right” and pro-Trump ranks.

"That was a long time ago," apologists will say.

Ok, sure.

The Daily Caller quoted Soling about homeschool initiative in April 2020 in his role as "president of Ideological Diversity", "a Student Organization at Harvard Kennedy School", which its description makes clear is about exactly the sort of euphemism you're thinking of.

By the way, the only other media covering that event was the Foundation for Economic Education, a Koch-funded "right-wing libertarian economic think-tank".

Turtles, all the way down.

Approaching the End

So as we get into the home-stretch (finally!), let's look at the sort of things Long has to say in defense of Greaves:

I think that, in Lucien’s case, we see all of the aspects of the Contagion Left at work. We see people assuming he’s a fascist and then expecting that to be disproven, before his fascism was even established as true. Lucien champions diversity and pluralism, yet despite that he is tarnished by some gross comments he made twenty years ago. Even if he was a fascist, I don’t care. In my opinion, his present character speaks for itself. If he was a fascist, I celebrate that he is (clearly) not one any longer. I see his previous attitudes as redeemed by his current convictions, rather than vice-versa. The theory of contagion applies to other accusations against Lucien and TST. When he hired Marc Randazza, Alex Jones’s attourney, pro bono for a free speech suit [emphasis added], he was suddenly tarnished by that association. The Right Wing cooties infected Lucien, despite the fact that, if Marc is right-wing, he is actively working against his own interests by aiding TST. Again, no one celebrates the possibility of Lucien’s leftism rubbing off on Randazza. The contagion only flows in a single direction, rendering us all fearful and ineffective. I think that nearly every attack on Lucien Greaves and TST is an example of Contagion Leftism. It’s not about creating a better Temple, it’s about fear of infection. Are there valid critiques of TST? Of course. Those criticisms, more often then not, come from members and leaders who care deeply about the future of TST.

At this point, it's not clear what there remains to say.

Long minimizes what it was Lucien was actually doing in 2003—because Long never bothered to investigate it for himself, even though it was fairly easy to have done so. Long seems to willfully ignore all of the people who have investigated it and said, "Go read and/or listen to this."

Long says, even if Lucien was a fascist then, clearly he's changed. However, the great schism in 2018 was related to criticism that Lucien had not changed and continued to be friendlier and more forgiving of virulent bigots and their enablers, and has continued to treat people like Andy fucking Ngo as a credible source, reserving his deeper criticism for antifascists who are "the greatest threat to our social stability."

And as for Marc Randazza, again, the problem isn't just that he represents bad clients but that he actively seeks out the likes of Alex Jones, Mike Cernovich, and Andrew Anglin of The Daily Stormer. He is himself actually a piece of shit, and in bad standing with a lot of state bars as well as the US Patent Office. We are supposed to take TST's word that Randazza is working for them pro bono on a "free speech suit" when they don't have open books to demonstrate where money donated to them is and isn't going.

Why? Why would you take them at their word? Their "free speech" lawsuit is specifically about getting Lucien Greaves' Twitter account a blue checkmark so he and other "political figures" like Laura Loomer and Richard Spencer stop being discriminated against.

Why would you believe that Randazza works for them for free when he's also their go-to to threaten a lawsuit about Mississippi changing its flag away from the Confederate design, but also, he's their go-to guy for patent office work. Maybe because Randazza lets clients use pseudonyms on federal documents and still turns in the paperwork.

Long thinks that Leftists believe in "right-wing cooties" as opposed to Leftists being people who have quite a bit of experience dealing with the far right and who know how dangerous they are to the sort of people they want to assault and abuse.

A Thought Experiment

Just, as a thought experiment mind you, imagine that instead of "right wing" people, we're talking about a group whose highest leadership just keeps continually palling around, boosting, and defending pedophiles and the sexual assault of young teenage girls. (note: in the Might Is Right stream, Shane Bugbee does literally, repeatedly comes back to this theme.)

But instead of just talking about it, the group's leaders invite on a bunch of actual, convicted, and unapologetic sexual child abusers to be interviewed, play hours of rambling pre-recorded speeches by people like Jimmy Savile to fill dead air time (in reality, it's Charles Manson and others), and you spend the next decades of your life talking about it, and defending their free speech rights, minimizing the harm they've caused and threat they pose ("The Catholic Church is way worse").

But, weirdly, almost exclusively their free speech rights are what you're interested in and not anyone with any other interests, like say unions, trans people, or folk who criticize police.

Imagine if this hypothetical group utilized a lawyer who disproportionately represented accused pedophiles, but the lawyer himself kept talking about his appreciation for "hot young teens" and such himself, maybe not going all the way to say it, but constantly revealing where his sympathies lay. (In reality, Marc Randazza has argued in favor of legalizing child porn on First Amendment grounds.)

In this hypothetical, exactly how safe do you think people with children would feel leaving their kids alone with leaders or with any organization whose members repeatedly made excuses for their leaders' past behavior, even as similar incidents were ongoing around and within the organization?

Would it actually be an important distinction to make whether the leaders felt a certain way about children or just didn't consider children's safety a priority?

To be clear: The Satanic Temple has figures who have spent 20 years doing something like that; but instead of abusing children, it's people who want to enact genocide, create a white ethnostate, pursue "Western Chauvinism", and so forth.

That was supposed to be the only point to this hypothetical: what's something absolutely indefensible other than genocidal white supremacists no one could possibly defend?

But, there's always more, and it's always worse, so in parallel to this thought experiment, as you saw, there are certain example of literal crossover. It also ends up being literally true that Lucien has been defending the shuttered False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF), and continues to defend it via the Grey Faction and his personal Patreon.

So we're not saying that literally Lucien has a history of defending child sexual abuse and abusers.

But the FMSF has indeed been accused of that, as recently as having key figure Elizabeth Loftus popping up to provide expert testimony for the defense of the likes of Jerry Sandusky, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby but people all the way back to Ted Bundy, too. Their effect for years was to provide yet another excuse—for cops, courts, and various authority figures—to argue that victims of abuse, particularly children, were not to be trusted.

And of course, back in 1993, two of FMSF's board members did give an interview to the Dutch pro-pedophilia magazine Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia kinda hyping up the whole... sexual abuse of children thing.

Still, for the better part of three decades, the FMSF continued to—by default—disbelieve that children were victims of abuse they remembered or understood after the fact, and to believe and welcome in the tens of thousands of adults accused of being abusers. Apparently, Lucien still admins the independent Facebook group "False Memory Syndrome Action Network" that the FMSF newsletter once promoted, under yet another pseudonym of his: "Mikoto Niikura", and as mentioned previously, wrote a response attacking the journalist who reported critically on the FMSF after its closure.

Lucien, and The Grey Faction and The Satanic Temple itself, continue to attack and deride people who experience Disassociate Identity Disorder despite it being in the DSM, but also, as pseudonym "Konrad Josefsson", attack people who claim to have Complex PTSD because it's not in the DSM.

If you have a traumatic sexual experience at, say, a TST-related Lupercalia orgy, but you don't say anything about it immediately, or if you accuse another member of sexual assault, do you think Lucien or Mike Cernovich's friend Greg Stevens or other people they trust as leaders are going to believe you? What if another leader is the one who hurt you?

Every time you dig deeper at something, you find more connections, more demonstrations of certain sympathies, lack of sympathy for others, and absolutely no way for the volunteers who make up the organization to make change or hold those in power accountable except by leaving where internally they will be misrepresented in their absence as just another of "The Outraged" or maybe even publicly, anonymously attacked.

Despite what The Satanic Temple told Hemant Mehta in 2018, there's not really any evidence they ever stopped wrapping people up in Non-Disclosure Agreements and lots of evidence NDAs are still standard operating procedure for their business (or was it religion?), so it is literally impossible to imagine all of the fucked up shit people have experienced and kept quiet about because they fear a rich, financially opaque and utterly unaccountable leadership from going after them with punitive lawsuits.

[Speaking of which, if you've learned anything new about The Satanic Temple or its leadership from reading this, feel free to tip us so we can keep defending ourselves from their lawsuit]

Long asks, "So why do I remain in TST?"

And the answer is pretty clear.

Despite all of the people who have left over the years complaining about how TST leadership doesn't live up to its own values, how the court cases keep going badly, and how actually there are no signs of any improvement but probably just the opposite given how finances are now even more opaque than before, we cannot find reasons to expect positive change.

The issue is that the people who are in TST and have constructed an identity and social network around it don’t want to believe they bet on the wrong horse again, particularly if they already left an abusive religion of their upbringing.

"Why I haven't left The Satanic Temple" - because when your mind is already made up, you don't bother to go looking for any evidence, and it's a lot easier to stick with your priors no matter how much evidence is shown to you that they're wrong.

Hail Satan, hail yourself.

You deserve better than these ghouls. You do.

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kaengyun · 3 years

Text

kaengyun writings

╱╳╲ mod chongyun | mod kaeya

╰► welcome to our frosty writing field!!

︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵

greetings to those who have stumbled upon our icy wonderland to be filled with written works. this is mod chongyun and mod kaeya of kaengyun writings, or grape popsicles and blogs. both moderators are fairly experienced when it comes to writing but are still very open to criticism, corrections and suggestions so please do point out if we have anything to improve on. though we are still getting used to sharing a single account, adjustments can be made sooner or later.

alright, on to our separate information and regulations!

mod chongyun's information ::

hello, welcome to mine and mod kaeya's writing blog. i'm mod chongyun, but you can call me by different names such as ziah, nea, or mod chongyun. i'm open to any nicknames as long as they aren't offensive or insensitive in any way. other people may know me as @autumn-writes , so autumn is also one of my preferred names.

i identify as female, so do refer to me as she/her or they/them. although i do not mind being called he/him, feminine pronouns are my preferred set.

i've been writing for quite a long time. a few years in wattpad and close to a year on tumblr. the account mentioned above, autumn-writes, belongs to me, mod chongyun. my writing schedule as of the moment is still very messy as my school year is still not finished, so there may be times where updates are delayed in my part. nonetheless, i will try to make time for posting here.

mod chongyun can write ::

fluff, angst, sfw alphabets (fluff and angst), love letters, love notes, one shots and headcanons.

x readers

polygamous relationships

mod chongyun writes for the following ::

genshin impact

danganronpa trigger happy havoc

danganronpa goodbye despair

danganronpa killing harmony

mod chongyun will stray from ::

nsfw

ab*se, p*dophilia, inc*st, s*xism, r*cism, g*re, r*pe

character x character

danganronpa ultra despair girls

some clarifications ::

i am alright with writing suggestive things, but full blown nsfw is out of the question.

past mentions of things stated above (ab*se, r*pe, p*dophilia, inc*st) are alright to request. as long as they are only a backstory or past type of thing, i'm okay with writing it.

requesting rules ::

for every headcanon request, there shall be a character limit of 5 as to not make things too overwhelming

if it's not too much to ask, do specify a gender when requesting headcanons or one shots. if a gender is not specified, i shall go with gender neutral as my default

to add onto the specification of gender, do specify as well if you want s/o in the story to have a certain personality or quirk

to add emphasis to love letters, they are basically letters sent by your character of choice to you, the reader. it would be nice if you could specify a context. eg. diluc sending his s/o a letter while he's away

as for the love notes, they're similar to the love letters just shorter and most likely sweeter. here's an example: leaving a love note for their s/o while they're asleep

for sfw alphabets, you can request a few letters that i will put focus on or you can request the complete alphabet. i'm fine with either anyways

extra message :: thank you for reading my part of the introduction! below this shall be mod kaeya's part. please do read till the end as to avoid any possible grave error in the future.

mod kaeya's information ::

heya, and welcome to mine and mod chongyun's blog, kaengyun writings! i'm mod kaeya, but you can also call me summerish or elliot. i strictly go by masculine pronouns such as he/him, but they/them is also acceptable.

similar to mod chongyun, i am experienced in writing as i have been doing so for two years now and i am open to any corrections or criticism when it comes to my writings.

i will be writing for three fandoms, bungou stray dogs, ensemble stars and genshin impact. i'll have to admit that i am not the most diligent when it comes to writing as my motivation comes and goes at random times, but i'll try to post some writings here frequently so don't be shy to request!

mod kaeya can write:

oneshots, headcanons, sfw alphabets and love letters

angst, fluff, slice of life and romance

x readers and character x character

mod kaeya will not write:

nsfw (smut)

ab*se, p*dophilia, inc*st, s*xism, r*cism, g*re, r*pe

requesting rules ::

i will only be taking two requests for oneshots. to add more depth, once two oneshot requests have been sent to the inbox, i shall focus solely on those two before proceeding with the rest of the requests if they are intended for me. i will be using gender neutral if a gender is not specified

specify if the s/o in the oneshot will have a certain characteristic, personality or feature

for sfw alphabets, you can request a full alphabet or just a few letters

i will have no limit to how many characters can be requested in a single headcanon, however, if there is too many to handle or if i cannot think of a headcanon for a specific character, i shall exclude them

for the love letters, i will have the same rules as chongyun. specify if you want the love letter to have a certain context

extra message :: if you have read till this part, thank you for your time! chonyun and i hope bro be able to satisfy you with our future written works!

thank you very much for reading till the very end! we hope to be able to write for you all soon! and if it's not much of a bother, could we ask for a promo? if not, that's cool!

@autumn-writes @ibuki-loves-you @multiplefandomsblog @ourlover @rem-in-wonderland @starsaver94

#introduction #genshin impact #bungou stray dogs #ensemble stars #danganronpa x reader #danganronpa #genshin impact x reader #bungou stray dogs x reader #ensemble stars x reader

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coldmorte · 3 years

Note

So i have some unpopular opinions; i feel like Dutch doesnt sleep around as much as people would like to think. He probably likes the fact that people think that of him, even if its not his style. Also...i dont think Dutch and Molly have any chemistry.

Howdy! (ASK 1 OF 2)

I apologize it took me some time to actually reply to this, especially because it is such a great ask! I definitely agree with both points made here, but I was debating how I wanted to write a response (and how far to take it).

Anyway, I'm open to hearing unpopular opinions! I know I have plenty of my own, so I'm not really one to judge others (as long as there is mutual respect) ☺️

My response is fairly long, and it deals with some sensitive topics. I decided to add a cut to this first ask, just to be safe! 💜💜💜

(Warning: SPOILERS below)

In regard to Dutch sleeping around, there are a few reasons why I don’t think he does it as much as it is often implied/assumed (I’m primarily limiting this to the timeframe of RDR2, Ch. 1-6).

First of all, Molly explicitly says Dutch doesn’t show her a lot of physical attention, even though he is her SO. If he’s not sleeping with her much, I doubt that he is going around with any other women at this time. He seldom leaves camp, outside of doing missions, so it is unlikely that he would meet up with anybody not in the gang. It just doesn’t seem plausible to me, as it would put him in a vulnerable position.

Dutch complains multiple times - including to Molly - that he is under stress and concerned about the Pinkertons closing in on them. Why would he go around outside the camp sleeping with random women? It would put him at the risk of being seen or reported on, and I believe he is smarter than to take on the unnecessary danger. Generally, he doesn’t spend much time in civilized areas, unless he needs to.

Not to mention, stress can be a real inhibitor of sex drive. For the entirety of the game, Dutch exhibits various degrees of anxiety and depression. I believe the gang and his personal safety were of much more concern to him, thus diminishing his interest in sex.

Speaking of the gang, I don’t personally see Dutch as sleeping around with the women in it that much. He did have a relationship with Susan in the past. Whether anything was still going on between them or not is uncertain, but if there was something, it probably was not serious or very frequent. In RDR1, he also suggests that he slept with Abigail, but if this happened, I doubt it would have occurred during the events of RDR2. They hardly ever interacted, and when Abigail did talk about Dutch, it was almost always in a negative manner. Dutch also showed some interest in Mary-Beth. However, I don’t think it went beyond flirting. She didn’t show much interest in him, and I think word would have gotten around if he tried to force anything, especially to Arthur (I am not going to discuss the events of RDR1 in any more detail here because that is a whole different conversation). But other than them, who else in the gang? There were not enough interactions with other women to suggest there was anything between them and Dutch.

Also, sex was considerably more risky in 1899 than it is today, and the means of contraception were not as dependable. For instance, The Pill didn’t go onto the market for another 60 years, and it was more difficult to get ahold of other birth control methods. This was partly because there were not as many technological advancements in this field and because there were a few laws that prevented reliable access to contraceptives (ex: The Comstock Laws). Condoms were arguably one of the easier birth control methods to find, but they still were not as widely available then as they are today (the quality was arguably not as good either). As I understand it, some searching was generally required to get ahold of condoms (usually in more civilized areas, which Dutch tried to avoid).

Dutch is a very contradictory character. My point in bringing up birth control is because although on some level I think Dutch probably would have liked to have actual children, I do not think he was serious enough about it to take any risks that might have led to an unwanted pregnancy during the timeframe of RDR2. As I mentioned, he was under a lot of stress with the gang. A biological child on top of that most likely would have overwhelmed him, and it would have required a long-term commitment to not only the child, but to the mother as well. I believe Dutch was smart enough to recognize this danger, and since birth control methods were not as widely available or reliable, he would not have wanted to sleep around too much (unwanted pregnancies were relatively common during this era).

I’ve written in the past that I believe Dutch had a certain degree of self-consciousness underneath his pride, so I do agree that he probably would have liked people finding him attractive or seductive. These traits emanate a sense of power and confidence, which would have provided a more favorable presentation of himself to others. These perceptions certainly would have helped to conceal his own self-doubts and insecurities, so he would have welcomed them, rather than try to refute them.

Now, in regard to the chemistry between Dutch and Molly, I agree. I think it was a pretty bad relationship all around. I don’t see its flaws as being entirely one-sided.

I will get into this a little more on the next ask, but I will discuss a few things here first.

Starting with Dutch, I will admit that he could have treated Molly a lot better. Even if he wasn’t happy with her or the status of their relationship, he should have seriously talked to her more. She deserved that, at the very minimum. There were a few instances where she tried to get his attention, and he just brushed her off. Again, like I said, even if he wasn’t very keen on the relationship anymore, he should have at least been honest about that. Then, as I already discussed, he had some mildly flirtatious conversations with Mary-Beth. I certainly do not think this helped matters. It was rude the way he insulted Molly for bringing up his interactions with Mary-Beth and how he pretended he had no idea what Molly was talking about.

Onto Molly, I don’t think she was perfect either. I know Dutch didn’t talk with her nearly as much as he should have, but she didn’t seem to show a whole lot of support for him in return. Dutch expressed that he was feeling stressed and not up to much physical activity, to which she got quite upset. She seemed to turn some arguments towards herself and her needs, with little regard for Dutch’s wellbeing. I do think she was selfish for demanding him to give her something he did not want to give/could not provide. Also, she refused to help the gang find leads or assist with chores, even when told to do so by others (ex: Dutch and Arthur). She tended to act above everybody else, claiming she wasn’t a servant to the needs of the gang as a whole. Though I can respect her sense of independence in that regard, it did show a sense of entitlement. Even Dutch donated to the gang funds, and as the leader, he was the one responsible for overseeing the vast majority of missions they engaged in. Molly was the only person who really did not contribute much. (Side note: Even UNCLE - the laziest bastard in the West - helped with leads and contributions!!)

I will get into this more in the following ask, but although I know she loved Dutch to an extent, I think part of her fascination with him was rooted in infatuation. Little is known about her background, but it is canon that she came from a wealthy and influential family in Ireland. I think part of the reason why she liked Dutch so much was because of the powerful position he held. She frequently lashed out at people who she perceived as challenging the reality of her “love” for him, such as Abigail and Karen. In one instance, Molly even went so far as to slap Karen across the face because she thought Karen was talking negatively about her. There was no evidence to prove or disprove Molly’s beliefs, but it did show that she was pretty sensitive about criticism (whether it was perceived or real) in regard to her relationship with Dutch.

Now, Dutch was wrong to use Molly’s fascination with him and his role in the gang to seduce her. But like I said, both of them had their issues. It was just a bad situation from both sides, and I do not think it should have happened in the first place. I don’t necessarily blame one more than the other. To be honest, I think they each deserved someone who fit them better.

And if I am being even MORE honest, I think Dutch should have stayed with Susan. She loved him, and he made a big mistake in ever giving her up. I believe the events of RDR2 would have turned out very differently, had he kept her closer.

(Ending note: Outside of serious posts - like this one - I know I make quite a few jokes about Dutch on my blog in regard to sexuality, but I do not mean for much of what I say in that regard to be taken *too* seriously. I don’t particularly want to discuss my personal life in the text of this post, but I will say that even if Dutch was a person I knew in real life, I’m not sure I would seriously want anything to happen between us. However, that is another matter entirely that has nothing whatsoever to do with him. I absolutely LOVE his character to death, and my blog will remain dedicated to his role in the RDR story for as long as I am around! That is all that should matter!!!)

Also, it is perfectly fine and normal to separate fiction from reality! It is okay to alter interpretations of Dutch (and/or Molly) for the sake of artistic expression, as long as the reasons can be justified. Furthermore, it is fine to disagree with me!!

I just hope this response gave you a thing or two to consider. Thank you again for sending your message in!! 💜💜💜

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hellomynameisbisexual · 3 years

Text

There is no one universal sign of bisexuality in males. All men are different whether they are bisexual, gay, straight, or asexual. There may be a few common traits but these traits may wildly vary from person to person. In this blog post we will briefly summarise sexuality, explore what to do if you, or your partner is bisexual, and then outline a few common signs of bisexuality in males.

What is sexuality?

Sexuality is not about who you have sex with, or how often you have it. Sexuality, or sexual orientation, describes the types of thoughts, and feelings, that an individual has for others.

What is bisexual?

A bisexual person is someone who can be romantically attracted, or sexually attracted to both men and women.

How do I know if I am bisexual?

In 1948, Dr Alfred Kinsey created the world-famous Kinsey Scale. Kinsey believed that sexuality was not binary. Instead, he suggested that sexuality should be viewed as a spectrum with everybody having their own place on the scale. On one end of the scale there is exclusive heterosexuality. On the other end of the scale, there is exclusive homosexuality. People exist somewhere between 0 and 6. The full scale is below.

0 – Exclusively heterosexual

1 – Predominantly heterosexual

2 – Mainly heterosexual but sometimes homosexual

3 – Bisexual

4 – Mainly homosexual but sometimes heterosexual

5 – Predominantly homosexual

6 – Exclusively homosexual

As you can see from Dr Kinsey’s scale, categories 2, 3 and 4 would all be classified as ‘bisexuality’. This means that if you feel as equally attracted to men, as you do women, or mostly attracted to one sex but are occasionally attracted to the other sex, you could still self identity as being bisexual. There is nothing abnormal about not being equally attracted to both sexes. In fact, the massive 2013 Pew Research LGBT Survey found that over 80% of bisexuals in committed relationships were with somebody of the opposite sex. Some bisexual men may have a preference for men whilst other’s might have a stronger preference for women. Both are completely normal!

Should I come out as bisexual?

Coming out as a bisexual man can often be just as challenging as coming out as gay. Insensitive comments about bisexual men being ‘greedy’, ‘indecisive’ or ‘wanting to have their cake, and eat it’ are sometimes made when a bisexual man comes out. Moreover, the depictions of bisexual men in the media are rarely positive. They tend to perpetuate negative stereotypes around promiscuity. Therefore it’s no wonder why Stonewall data shows that just 14% of bisexuals are open to everyone in their family, while 32% say they can’t be open about their sexual orientation with any of their friends.

Despite all of this, coming out can be extremely liberating. For many bisexual men a weight is lifted if their shoulders, and the finally feel able to be themselves after coming out. However, before coming out it’s important to make sure that you are in a safe environment, or can get to one. This is vital if you are young, or in a vulnerable position.

How do I come out as bisexual?

There is no one predefined way to come out. For some men it can be incredibly smooth. For other men, it can be messy. You may feel comfortable being open about your sexual orientation and gender identity with some people, but not with others.

The one common experience all queer men share when coming out is that they have to do it over and over again. LGBT individuals do not come out once. They are constantly ‘coming out’ to new friends, extended family, new co-workers, and sometimes strangers on the internet!

Before actually telling anybody, take a few moments to consider – who you want to tell first, and how. Many bisexual men tell a supportive friend first, and then move onto telling other friends, and family afterwards. However, you may wish to tell a parent first over the phone, or in a letter if you feel that they could be the least receptive upon hearing the news.

Your family might be shocked, worried or find it difficult to accept at first. But remember, their first reaction isn’t necessarily how they will feel forever. In time, most families see beyond their son’s sexuality and continue loving them regardless. They might just need a bit of time to process the revelation.

What are the signs of bisexuality in males?

As mentioned at the start of this blog post, there is no one universal sign of bisexuality in males. All men are different whether they are bisexual, gay, heterosexual , or asexual. However, these are a few of the most common examples as identified by experts and bisexual men who have reflected on their journey to sexual freedom.

Past Behaviour

Past behaviour can be a key indicator of bisexuality. If a man has voluntarily engaged in same-sex sexual experiences at any point in their lifetime it could suggest that they may be bisexual. This could be as small as a passionate kiss at university, or mutual masturbation in the army, or evem anal sex whilst under the influence of alcohol. Despite identifying as ‘straight’ during, and following these acts, this behaviour suggests that there is at least a small degree of same-sex attraction. On the Kinsey Scale, a man like this could be predominantly heterosexual (category 1), or mainly heterosexual but sometimes homosexual (category 2). Remember, the categories on the Kinsey Scale are fluid and can change constantly.

Homophobic Behavior

Modern society is more liberal now that it ever has been. Many men may not understand homosexuality, but they understand that who somebody chooses to sleep with should not matter to them. However, some bisexual men who haven’t come out may be extremely homophobic. This behaviour is directly linked to years of sexual repression. Sometimes closeted bisexual men feel that by being homophobic their friends and family will not realise that they themselves are not completely heterosexual. This homophobia can manifest itself in passive ways through the use of derogatory slang in the presence of others, or become more extreme. Gay bashing, and aggression towards other men who are perceived to be gay are just two examples of this.

Fantasies about other men

Every man wishes that they could be somebody else now and again. Who wouldn’t want to have David Beckham’s right foot, or a body like David Gandy? For bisexual men, these thoughts become sexual fantasies. Not only that, but a bisexual man might even fantasise about men they see on the street, or on the internet. That man with the joggers you just walked past could consume your thoughts for hours!

Tactile with other men

If you’re reading this as a woman, think about whether your partner is tactile with you? Men regularly touch each other when they shake hands, hug, or hi-5. However, a bisexual man may be especially tactile with other men. Some examples are frequent arm touching and leg stroking. Your partner may even offer to massage his male friends’ shoulders. In isolation these actions are fairly innocuous. However, if your partner regularly does this, or seems to find it particularly pleasurable then this could be another sign of bisexuality.

Disinterest in sex

When a man appears increasingly disinterested in heterosexual intimacy, there is a small chance that it could be because they are bisexual. The chance is small because they could also be having an affair, or be in love with another woman.

However, if you are in a relationship with a man that you think could be bisexual, this would be one of the more obvious signs. It’s not uncommon for men who have been in a monogamous relationship with a woman for several years to become dissatisfied over time. Instead, they may yearn to spend time with a man due to their innate sexual desire, or past behaviours.

Spending more time with attractive men at a sports club, at work, or at bars could be a short term fix for them. Pressuring their female spouse into trying pegging, or anal play could also be a short term solution. However, this may not be enough for them moving forwards.

Staring intensely at other men

man doing a workout

Humans can’t help but stare at people. Where do you think the phrase ‘people-watching’ came from? Sometimes people stare out of sheer admiration, or horror. Sometimes people stare out of lust. Either way, if you can’t help but stare at other men and compliment them then it’s a sign that you could be bisexual.

But if you find yourself only staring at men who are more muscular, or taller than you, and you have always had hang-ups about your size, then this staring could purely be linked to insecurities. Only you can tell which scenario applies most accurately to you!

Watching gay porn

gay hot kissing

Conciously choosing to watch gay porn between two consenting men is a sign that you may be bisexual. Porn categories are organised in such a way that you actively have to seek out gay porn videos, as opposed to just coming across them as you woud any other heterosexual category. When watching gay porn if you find yourself getting aroused, or wishing that you could trade places with the actors then it’s quite likely that you could be bisexual.

Sex feels right with men and women

If you have had sex with men and women, and found the experiences to be equally intimate and enjoyable then this could mean that you are bisexual. For most homosexual men (category 5 or 6 on the Kinsey Scale), the thought of sleeping with a woman is inconcievable. The same is true for heterosexual men (category 0 or 1 on the Kinsey Scale) if you asked them to consider sleeping with another man.

These are just 8 of the signs of bisexuality in males. However, as we’ve said previously, there are very few hard and fast signs that make it obvious. Only the man in question can know his true thoughts and feelings – and that’s okay!

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samuraifacts · 3 years

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The Oda Clan After Honnō-ji

As a fan of Japanese history, the owner of a Japanese history blog, and the owner of a samurai themed roleplay website I get asked about Japanese history quite a bit. Aside from “Who is your favorite unifier?” and “Who would you side with at Sekigahara?” I think the question I get asked frequently is “What happened to the Oda after Nobunaga’s death?” so today I want to dive into it. Obviously talking a family’s entire history is difficult and we have to specify what we are talking about here. Now, when some people say Oda Clan they mean Nobunaga’s entire military force. The Oda family, the Maeda, the Shibata, Niwa, Toyotomi, all of the combined forces. We are going to cover those families a bit but not in depth as they all had their own separate fates. Primarily I want to focus on the following list of people 1. Oda Nobunaga - The man himself. He needs no introduction. 2. No/Kicho - Nobunaga’s wife and the daughter of Saito Dosan. 3. Oda Nobutada - Nobunaga’s eldest son. The heir apparent. 4. Oda Nobukatsu - Nobunaga’s second son. The survivor. 5. Oda Nobutaka - Nobunaga’s third son. Full of Oda Pride. 6. Oda Hidekatsu - Nobunaga’s fourth son. A victim of fate. 7. Oda Katsunaga - Nobunaga’s fifth son. We don’t know much about him. 8. Oda Hidenobu - Nobutada’s son. Nobunaga’s grandson. Now, Nobunaga did have daughters but sadly their fates don’t really tie into the fate of the Oda Clan as a whole as they had all been married off so we won’t be discussing them in great detail. We also won’t be discussing the three daughters of Nobunaga’s younger sister Oichi. I will, however, encourage you to look up Nobunaga and his family members. They are fairly interesting people. Since this is focusing on the clan after Honnō-ji let's talk about the event itself and check some of those names off of our list. The Honnō-ji Incident itself happened in 1582 in Kyoto. Nobunaga’s retainer Akechi Mitsuhide surrounded the temple of Honnō-ji that Nobunaga was staying at and his troops burned the temple to the ground causing the death of Nobunaga, several soldiers, and many of Nobunaga’s family and persona guard. Not one to leave his fate in the hands of others it is believed that during the siege of Honnō-ji, instead of letting the enemy take his head Nobunaga instead committed seppuku. Some people that it was his retainer Mori Ranmaru that acted as his second. Next we have his beloved wife lady Kicho. Sadly Japanese history doesn’t keep good account of the fate of women in the Sengoku Period but we can guess at her fate. Some people theorize she may have broken the siege at Honnō-ji and went to Tokugawa Ieyasu, or Toyotomi Hideyoshi, for help. Sadly this is unlikely. As you will discover later in this post if Hideyoshi had Nobunaga’s wife relying on him for protection he would have used that to his advantage and we would have countless records of her presence. Ieyasu would likely be the same. Some theories even say she ran all the way to Mino to hide but again, her ability to move out of the Akechi siege seem unlikely. More than likely she died with her husband. During this battle Nobutada (1st son) and Katsunaga (5th son) would also be killed fighting to protect their father. Nobutada’s death is the important thing here as he was Nobunaga’s eldest son.

After Honnō-ji the traitor general Akechi Mitsuhide would be killed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. At this point Nobunaga’s forces would stop trying to expand his area of control and the Oda lands and retainers split between Oda Nobukatsu (2nd son) and Oda Nobutaka (3rd son). It was during this split that Toyotomi Hideyoshi summoned Nobunaga’s sons and retainers together. At this meeting, now known as “The Kiyosu Kaigi” or “The Kiyosu Accords”, Hideyoshi declared that neither son would control the Oda. Instead the Oda clan’s lands would be split among it’s retainers and the Oda clan heir would actually be the young baby Oda Hidenobu, the son of Nobunaga’s first son Nobutada. Of course, since he was just a baby, Hideyoshi would then appoint himself as young Hidenobu’s regent and thus now be in control of the Oda clan. This made Shibata Katsuie, Nobunaga’s prized general and husband of his sister Oichi, declare war on Hideyoshi while backing Nobutaka (3rd son) to be the next ruler of the Oda. Nobukatsu chose to back Hideyoshi in exchange for keeping some of the Oda Clan lands. Hideyoshi would end up winning this war and Katsuie, as well as Nobunaga’s beloved sister Oichi, would die. His only backing Oda Elder now dead Nobunaga’s third son Nobutaka would be forced to live the rest of his life in exile and history would lose track of him. This leaves only a few people left on our list. Nobukatsu (2nd son), Hidekatsu (4th son), and Hidenobu (grandson). Since we haven’t brought him up yet let's talk about Hidekatsu. I have named him Oda HIdekatsu here to show his relation to Nobunaga but actually his name was Hashiba Hidekatsu! The young man who held Oda Nobunaga’s memorial tablet at his funeral was actually Hideyoshi’s adopted son. He sided with Hideyosh to defeat Mitsuhide, and even joined Hideyoshi in defeating Katsuie. Sadly we don’t know much about him. Though we do believe he died only a few years after Nobunaga. Many rumors say that he may have been killed by Hideyoshi himself in an attempt to solidify his control over the remnants of the Oda Clan and to make sure the boy wouldn’t be a challenge. This leave us with two Oda men left. The Second Son Nobukatsu and the Grandson Hidenobu. As Hideyoshi took complete control of what was once the Oda domain Nobukatsu turned to Ieasyu to aid him in regaining the Oda Clan’s lost glory. Sadly Ieyasu lost at the great battle of Komaki and Nagakute. This forced the Tokugawa to become subservient to the Toyotomi and after a complete souring of their relations Nobukatsu was forced to become a monk. Near the end of his life, however, Hideyoshi seemed to forgive Hidekatsu and restored some of the Oda’s lands to him. Meanwhile the infant Hidenobu stayed with Hideyoshi. However, soon after this Hideyoshi would pass away and Tokugawa Ieyasu rose up to claim Japan as his own. This would cause the battle of Sekighara in 1600. At this time Nobukatsu became the Guardian of Hideyoshi’s son Hideyori while Hidenobu was put in charge of protecting Gifu Castle. Gifu was the home castle of the Oda Clan and startioned near the Tokugawa’s territory. At the Tokugawa forced advanced on Toyotomi lands Gifu fell easily to Ieyasu and all of Hidenobu’s retainers committed suicide. However, Hidenobu himself was not killed nor told to commit sepuku. Things get a bit fuzzy here for the young man but it is believed he died five years later in 1605. This leaves Oda Nobukatsu, Nobunaga’s second son, as the final survivor on our list. After everything Hideyoshi had done in order to take over the Oda clan and it’s territories I’m sure some people find it strange that after their falling out Nobukatsu would come back, serve the Toyotomi, and even be the guardian of Hideyoshi’s son. In many ways Oda Hidenobu’s life was the life of a survivor who did what he felt he needed to in order to live through the time period. This would hold true at the final clash of the Toyotomi and Tokugawa forces at the Siege of Osaka in 1615. in 1615, he would betray the Toyotomi clan and surrender to Tokugawa Ieyasu. Because of this betrayal he would end up doing better than most of the Toyotomi clan and it’s loyalists. Nobukatsu was allowed to be a provincial lord during the Edo period. Not only would he live the rest of his life in relative comfort in a Japan no longer at war but would make sure that the Oda clan continued on through the generations. In fact, Nobukatsu’s bloodline goes all the way up to modern times! His descendant Oda Nobutoshi, and Nobutoshi’s son, Oda Suemaru actually acted as provincial lords at the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1868! Today, many people can be found in Japan who can trace their family lines directly back to Oda Nobunaga through Nobukatsu’s family line. While Oda Nobukatsu is seen as kind of a bad general, a coward, and an opportunist. However, it isn’t a stretch to say that through the efforts of Nobukatsu the Oda Clan survive to this very day! I covered a lot of time with this post and several major meetings, figures, and battles. I really hope you guys will check out the hyperlinks I’ve put in this post and take it upon yourselves to learn more about these amazing topics! While Wikipedia certainly isn’t the best source for verified academic info it is a great place to start and to get general ideas of people, events, etc. so go ahead and check them out! Have a great night everyone, and stay safe!

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sidercal · 3 years

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* & ASK MEME ( ACCEPTING )!

@ofmusingsxandmayhem pinged: Mun Questions - 10, 20, 30,40 ,50 ,60

10. What’s the hardest thing for you to write?

very canon intensive things & smnut. once upon a time I thought I could write fairly well in regards to the latter, but I just stopped and then lost all skill lmao. as for canon things... i’ve always had this thing about being a stickler with knowing every single detail of the original lore. if it’s my own creation then pft– easy peasy. but it’s based on someone else’s imagination then um.. i’m a ball of anxiety.

20. How much time do you spend roleplaying on average a week?

oh boy.. a good amount I feel like since I take some time out to rp during work. but I don’t really write on the weekends anymore so it’s not an exhaustive amount.

30. What do you like about roleplaying fluff?

it’s nice, easy, and i’m simply a sucker for soft romance at heart. and while angst and dumb things are equally as great, sometimes it’s a nice change of pace to write some fluff every now and then. also, there’s a sense / reveal of how a character can be when vulnerable in a safe space, etc.

40. Do you like to plot or improv?

a bit of both! though I do like to plot a little bit with new writing partners. just so I can get a basis of how their character is / how we might vibe, y’know? after we’re pals of some sort, it’s a roundtrip to random town.

50. What’s something you like about FCs/Play-Bys?

helps give structure to specific muses / ideas for me. that’s.. about it though.

60. Who’s a roleplayer (or writer) you think you have learned a lot from?

Eh heh heh heh hehhhhhh IT’S MY TIME TO SHINE BOIS. THE FOLLOWING FOLKS HAVE MADE THE BIGGEST IMPACT ON MY WRITING, IDEAS, ETC.

@amelorates from the get go. longest mutual ( i think ) that i’ve been frequently(ish) writing with for... x amount of years. first person i made private muses for, responsible for a good chunk of my muses over the years ( all across x amount of blogs ), and highly influential with the way my writing’s changed overtime. also? definitely helped me overcome that weird fear of writing canon characters, and is a genuinely great friend.

@riastracl you’re next, bud. talk about a lore king. always insightful with potential dumb ideas, helped my dumb of ass with forming muses especially with the sea goons. also very influenced by the way he writes ( like hello???? all of that prose?? how can I Not? ). also a seriously great friend to have over the year(s) ( i lost track of time oops ).

@moonwoken where do i even start. the easiest would be how amazing your writing is. simply put, it’s always been jaw dropping. i vividly remember how inspired i was to follow along when we first started writing – not to mention how nice of a challenge it proved to be! also? the overall kindness you show to others is aspiring, and i’m truly grateful to have gotten to write with you thus far!

@huntershowl `taps mic` HELLO? IS THIS THING ON?? IT’S A CRIME TO NOT MENTION RAINE. the sheer thought and time put into hellhound actually inspired me to give dnd a try. i was also given the incentive to actually y’know draw my own dang muses, because before that i just.. never thought to do that??? but also, also i can say for a fact that you’ve brought so much additional life to some muses that i honestly wouldn’t have been able to do without that wonderful brain of yours ( like specifically litho and oryn ).

@conorbyrne hi, yes, hello i have always greatly admired your skill in writing from both afar and up close ( whenever i didn’t fall off the face of the earth oops ). also? those hc posts always blow me away, because wow the D E P T H is astounding.

@gothamicarus another pause because you are the sole reason joel and so many others have grown so much – hands down. not to mention, your writing has always been so beautifully constructed. also, i actually gained some interest in dc simply because your characterization of jason makes it impossible not to be.

@womanlives and HELLO YOU. i know we haven’t been mutuals for a horribly long time, but i just had to say how a) your writing and muses are striking and b) you are a mastermind when it comes to plots. like?? the ideas never stop and it’s never not interesting!

@godbanes i’m going to be 2000% honest here. i seriously didn’t know a whole lot about greek mythology until i started following / interacting with you. like the amount of knowledge you have blows me away – like at least 2 planets worth. and while it’s still a lil’ intimidating, i’m extremely happy to be able to interact with you and your muses!

@gentledeaths never have i ever come across a writer that has created so much inspiration and awe in me. like your portrayal of thanatos genuinely had me deep dive into hades and gather the courage to extent the few demigod muses i have with existing mythology. not to mention that your writing is simply flawless!

#* & answered .#* & ooc .#// ilu ALL #// and there are def others that i've learned from but the post was getting Long

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scottspack · 4 years

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SO YOU JUST FINISHED THE UNTAMED AND YOU WANT TO READ SOME FIC

Congratulations Jen @jlf23tumble on finishing The Untamed (tomorrow)! Now that you’re done with the show (tomorrow), you can finally dive into the wide and wonderful world of untamed fic!!! I’m ecstatic to be personally curating your reading experience! LET’S BEGIN!

I’ve started off with a list of 5 fics I think you should read in this specific order to 1. get some resolution from the end of the show and 2. get you acclimated to untamed fics! Then, I’ve listed a bunch of fics in different categories for your perusal to read at your leisure! This is an unbelievably long post holy shit brace yourself.

I’m like fairly certain that all of these follow the tv show canon BUT also its very typical for authors to combine many aspects of all of the different forms of canons to their liking. Therefore, I feel like I need to give a quick explanation of a couple things from the novel that show up frequently in fics that idk if you know already or not:

In the book, when Wei Wuxian is resurrected, he is brought back in Mo Xuanyu’s actual body and has his face and everything. Mo Xuanyu was pretty young when he died, I wanna say maybe 17 or 18??? and he was also short and pretty and flamboyantly gay. This is where the references to their crazy height difference come from, but again, I think I tried to include mostly fics that skew more heavily to the tv version where WWX keeps his same body and he and LWJ are more evenly matched physically.

Its novel canon that LWJ smells like sandalwood incense and has golden colored eyes. This is mentioned in like almost every single wangxian fic ive ever read, even if the author said they were strictly adhering to show canon lol

At the end of the novel wangxian run away together and elope! Obviously in the show that’s not how it goes down, but I think a couple of the fics I’ve recced might mention it in passing. (Oh also when they elope they make a pact to fuck “everyday,” a concept that might be mentioned as well.

Obviously, we have to kick it off with some fics that both reunite wangxian and give more resolution to the actual show. If you’re like me, it both took you a while to get all the way through the show AND took 100% of your brain power to remember all of the characters and plot lines. If that’s that case: these fics should be helpful in serving as a kind of emotional refresher for the show to wrap up some loose ends and to dive deeper into some of the things the show glosses over for one reason or another!

1. A Lot of Edges Called Perhaps by hansbekhart (Wangxian, E, 21k)

The funny part is - and it is a little funny, even if Wei Wuxian has no one left to share the joke with - they never have. Not anything. He has never kissed any part of Lan Zhan besides his slim hands; never been even partially undressed with him anywhere besides a miserable, xuanwu-infested cave. It’s always been like this between them, this simmering need, this desperate understanding: a knowledge so deep that it lives somewhere in his bones, that if he wanted to have Lan Zhan he could have him, and if Lan Zhan wanted Wei Wuxian he could have that too. But they never have.

I found this fic on someone’s blog when they said that it was the definitive fic to read directly after finishing the series so i saved it, read it directly after finishing the series, and felt COMPLETE. Beautifully written, seamlessly fits with canon, and has a super fulfilling resolution. The perfect way to kick off reading untamed fic!

2. One Rogue Spark In My Direction by hansbekhart (Lan Wangji/Xiao Xingchen/Song Lan, E, 5k)

He’d thought, in Yueyang, that they’d seen something in each other, something familiar. That maybe they’d recognized something in him. But it’s been many years, and many things have happened since, and he’s guessed wrongly at other people’s hearts before. Lan Wangji looks back down at the table, at his steaming, bitter tea. He’ll beg if he has to.

In “A Lot Of Edges Called Perhaps” Wangji mentions that he has had sex before and this is the in-universe story of that time and WHEW BABY!!!! AHHHHHH!!! While this fic is like, almost pure smut, I think there is a ton of value to it in terms of emotional perspective on how fucked up LWJ was after WWX’s death. Also, it’s very hot.

3. Gathered Herbs & Sweet Grasses by hansbekhart (Laz Sizhui & Lan Wangji, G, 19k)

Later, when he’s older, it’s this that A-Yuan will remember most: the stretch of silence, the two of them both dirty and shaking with fever, as he looked at Brother Rich, and Brother Rich looked back at him.

This is a fic about Lan Wangji raising Sizhui from when he rescues Sizhui from the Burial Mounds until they bring WWX back to the Cloud Recesses after he’s resurrected. It made me cry about 18 times and I consider it fully canon in relation to the show. I think this gives a lot of emotional depth to the Wangji/Sizhui family relationship that is very important in most fics, so this acts as a good base since the show doesn’t really talk about it too much.

4. Your Name, Safe In Their Mouth by astrolesbian (Lan Sizhui & Wei Wuxian, G, 10k)

“You’ve got a fever,” Wei Wuxian says soothingly. “You just keep still as well as you can. We’ll have you fixed up soon.”

Lan Sizhui recognizes his tone—this is the voice that Wei Wuxian uses on hurt people and young children, a very calm and no-nonsense voice that has none of the mischief and cheer of the way he sounds the rest of the time. Lan Sizhui looks up and meets his eyes, and they are dark, stormy gray, muddled and concerned.

“I’m all right,” he croaks.

“Hush,” Wei Wuxian says, in a low croon, like someone quieting a baby. Then he blinks, and looks away, awkward. “I mean—you shouldn’t speak. You’re tired. Rest if you need to.”

or: lan sizhui gets sick on a night hunt. wei wuxian comforts him. they both have a lot of feelings about it.

The Wei Wuxian and Sizhui bonding fic that I so desperately desperately needed to read. Since we got the emotional depth to Wangji/Sizhui in the last fic, here’s some emotional resolution for Sizhui and his other dad!!!!!!!!!! Scratched the very particular itch of “but have they REALLY talked about what it means that they’re reunited after 16 years???”

5. climbing up that coastal shelf by Sour_Idealist (Jin Ling, Jiang Cheng, & Wei Wuxian, T, 15k)

Jin Ling had begun to suspect years ago that there were parts of his family history that had been crossed out; long streaks of black where Wei Wuxian had been. The truth is more like whole books being brought up from their hiding places again.

Or: Jin Ling tries to figure out what family means, now.

OKAY!!!! Last emotional resolution before I send you on your way to explore! This is the emotional resolution for the other half of WWX’s family. Featuring just a FUCK TON of family feels and a lot of TALKING that this fucked up family needs so damn bad. *chefs kiss* muy delicioso! ALSO i think this is a good introduction to a lot of the naming conventions that are used frequently in untamed fic that took me a while to pick up on!

WHEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now that you’ve gotten some post-show catharsis in the form of a few extremely well-written fics, it’s time for a full rec! I’ve divided it up into seven categories: long fics, smutty one-shots, 3zun (lan xichen/nie mingjue/meng yao) fics, fics about the juniors, family fun fics, some miscellaneous fics, and then some yizhan RPF! I wouldn’t have put any of these fics on here if I didn’t think they were worth reading, BUT! I did mark my particular favorites with asterisks to demark the crème de la crème of the bunch. SO! LET’S DIVE IN!

EPIC TALES (LONG AND/OR IMMERSIVE)

My Age Has Never Made Me Wise by idrilka (Wangxian, E, 63k) ***

“We hear that His Excellency might be married by summer’s end,” the merchant’s wife says and Wei Wuxian freezes, his heart in his throat. “The Gusu Lan sect has been buying enough red silk and brocade that the merchants in Caiyi can’t satisfy the demand.”

He feels himself grow brittle inside, like a flick of a finger to his temple might make him shatter. His ears are ringing.

“Who’s the lucky bride?” he asks despite himself. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth.

Or: The story of a marriage.

I LOVE THIS FIC. YOU MUST PROMISE ME YOU’LL READ THIS FIC. The absolute best kind of slow burn and I think such an extremely accurate representation of the canon material. I’m always surprised by the authors in this fandom’s ability to write shit that is so concretely grounded in the universe. This could and should be a real companion novel. Amazing. I love it. (Also I know you said you’re not into fics that are long just to be long and I think this fic is the exact opposite of that, it’s long but for good reason and has such an insanely satisfying payoff that it’s completely worth dedicating a few hours to!)

The Year of Drought by idrilka (Wangxian, E, 24k)

Wei Ying could not be contained by the walls of the Cloud Recesses, alive again and overflowing with it, bursting like a dam in spring with the force of two lives unspent. And so he had to go. Lan Wangji understands that—he understood it when Wei Ying told him of his plans, looking at Lan Wangji above the rim of his cup with an apologetic smile, like craving freedom was something to apologize for.

Wei Ying would go, and Lan Wangji would see him off; this has always been the only way it could be.

Or: In the absence of Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji waits.

The previous fic but from Wangji’s perspective. Absolutely required reading if you read the other one. Wangji baby.......i love you.....

further than the grave by idrilka (Wangxian, E, 32k)

There is something about grief that turns Lan Wangji numb. He cannot be certain if it is not some kind of defect inside him that makes him so. But just as he grieved his mother’s passing with dry eyes and a stone in his chest, so he grieves Wei Ying: quietly, frozen inside, without tears. Beyond the Jingshi window it might be spring, but Lan Wangji’s body and mind are still held within the winter’s grasp.

As the anniversary of his leaving seclusion approaches, Lan Wangji ponders the nature of grief and healing.

One last fic from the same verse as the previous two, this talks about Wangji post-WWX’s death and then them dealing with the past post-marriage. Its just as good and immersive and amazing as the previous two parts, but this is the only untamed fic that actually made me gasp out loud and if you read this and can guess what it was we will be best friends forever. (There are two other fics in this verse that are also good but these three in particular are god-tier in my eyes.)

Vagabond by xantissa (Wangxian, E, 66k)

Wei Wuxian comes back to Cloud Recesses after a year of wandering the world, hoping to start a relationship with Lan Zhan. He doesn’t expect to come into the middle of a case of sleeping sickness mysteriously killing people, nor does he expect what follows, putting everything he holds dear on the line once again.

OOOWEE CASE FIC! CASE FIC! This is truly the twisty turny intense and INTERESTING type of fic from this fandom that blows my mind. This could fully be a stand alone novel its that good and there’s that much to it. Another one that isn’t long just to be long, it has so much PLOT!!!!! REAL GOOD SHIT!

Seldom All They Seem by Fahye (Wangxian, E, 25k)

or, one hundred and thirty-three principles of the Gusu Lan, pertaining to the state of marriage

***

He bows to Wei Wuxian, sword in hand, sleeves falling properly. Wei Wuxian bows in return, and the sect leaders begin the opening courtesies, and for all of ten minutes Lan Wangji is under the impression that he is betrothed to a boy who is perfectly normal and acceptable apart from an unfortunate tendency to fidget with his clothes.

That impression does not last.

A canon-divergent fic exploring “what if Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian were betrothed from when they were young like Yanli and Jin Zixuan?” It’s extremely good and very compelling and also made me cry multiple times. (The confrontation in the rain doesn’t get any easier even if they’re betrothed!)

Half Cloak & Half Dagger by Fahye (Lan Xichen/Meng Yao, E, 13k)

Jin Guangyao lifts his head and smiles. "I'm considering a problem."

"Can I be of any assistance with it?"

He drops a kiss on Lan Xichen's chest. With the nail of one finger he lightly traces the characters for irony on Lan Xichen's side. "Not this one, er-ge."

A follow-up fic set in the “Seldom All They Seem” universe but focused on xiyao. Has hands down the best written characterization of meng yao in any fic ive read so far. I continuously come back to this fic just to read the absolutely genius way this author writes the Head Bitch In Control of the cultivation world.

The Absolutely True Story of the Yiling Patriarch: A Manifesto in Many Parts by aubreyli (Wangxian, T, 20k)

Wei Wuxian’s hand jolts, spilling a drop of wine onto the tabletop. “Love?” he croaks, then clears his throat and tries again. “Lan Zh— uh, Hanguang-jun, in love?”

“Have you not heard the story?” the other young woman asks, looking pitying. “You must, it is a truly heartrending tale of star-crossed romance and mutual pining — go to any storyhouse in town, everyone has been requesting a reading of this book.”

“There’s a book?” Wei Wuxian says blankly.

In which the junior disciples (namely, Lan Jingyi, Ouyang Zizhen, and a reluctant Lan Sizhui) turn to RPF in an attempt to rehabilitate Wei Wuxian's reputation so that he and Hanguang-jun can get together and get married and live happily ever after. It's... surprisingly effective.

I kept avoiding this fic, even though it was really high up on the list of most popular fics in the fandom, bc the premise sounded pretty goofy BUT I finally bit the bullet one day and AHHHHHHHH!!!!! Very very very cute and fun, made me smile like an idiot throughout the entire thing. Heartwarming and very well written!!!

never let me go by yiqie (Wangxian, E, 69k)

Wei Wuxian has certainly hoped so ardently in his two lifetimes, for so many different things, in so many different ways, that he could have summoned the demon to his front door with his bare hands. His eyes wander to Lan Zhan, settle on the back of his head, the blue-black curtain of his hair. Oh, how he has hoped.

Another extremely good and super immersive case fic. If you ever just want to sink really deep into an untamed fic, this is a great one for it.

hunters seeking solid ground by Attila (Wangxian, E, 24k)

“Hanguang-jun,” Wei Wuxian repeats. His heart clenches. He wants—but he’d really meant to have this nightmare stuff down before they met again, so he wouldn’t find himself relying on Lan Wangji’s nearness. He’s not supposed to go back yet. But he’s so tired, and his will crumbles. “Yeah,” he says. “All right. Take me back to Gusu with you.”

You want hurt/comfort? I gotcha hurt/comfort RIGHT HERE!

shadows in the sun rise by Yuu_chi (Wangxian, E, 25k) ***

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, voice slow and a pitch too quiet. A second later Wei Wuxian understands why. “I cannot hear.”

Or; Lan Wangji is cursed into internal isolation. Their ability to understand one another remains as unwavering as ever.

OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD. I have been thinking about this fic nonstop since I read it. It is…..fucking incredible. One of the best qualities of wangxian is that they’re so in tune with each other and able to work so cohesively with little communication and this fic is like “what if we take that and DIAL IT UP TO ELEVEN” and i was like AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

I hope that you will come and meet me by feyburner (Wangxian, M, 28k) ***

The second time Lan Zhan said Wei Ying, come back, Wei Wuxian did.

okay so this is literally getting added to the fic rec one day before i send it to you because i just finished it and WHEW BABY!!!!! YES it is just another wangxian post-canon reunion get-together fic, BUT 1. i cant get enough of that specific brand of fic and 2. ITS SO GOOD. ITS. SO. GOOD. achingly tender and incredibly soft but also funny and sweet and very in-character! i love it!

THE BONE ZONE (WANGXIAN SMUT)

Sweet Night by corteae (Wangxian, E, 10k)

It was like coming back to life again, like being restitched into existence, cell by cell, nerve by nerve. From the surface of his skin to the marrow of his bones, everything new and purposeful. Like being pulled back from oblivion into an embrace of pure light. A feeling of absolute asylum.

That’s what it felt like, to realize Lan Wangji was in love with him.

An in-show au of “what if they just admitted they’re in love and fucked during episode 43?” Soft and romantic and hot!

the crucial point by dissembler (Wangxian, E, 7k) ***

Months after parting on the mountain, Lan Wangji makes up his mind, plots his course on a map, and has faith.

I LOVE THIS FIC! Very realistic and sweet wangxian reunion fic from wangji’s perspective. Has so many good little details and is very true to their characters. Good shit. Great.

Stainless by Fahye (Wangxian, E, 6k)

"I'm starting to feel," says Lan Xichen, "that this was a counterproductive suggestion."

Wei Wuxian looks down onto the pristine, tranquil cold springs of the Cloud Recesses. Sitting in the water, their bare shoulders rising like dumplings carefully spaced in a steaming-basket, are a large number of Lan disciples.

"They seem to be doing better," he says, encouragingly. "If they--oh, no, I see what you mean."

At the near bank, someone has pressed someone else against the rocks and is kissing them frantically.

What is getting into a new pairing if not an excuse to read sex pollen in new and exciting ways!

To Recklessly Confess by la_dissonance (Wangxian, E, 8k)

Lan Wangji has a fantasy. Wei Wuxian gets several clues.

The “what if they just fucked in episode 43” au but from a different angle.

all the depths of me, real by northofallmusic (Wangxian, E, 15k)

Wei Wuxian is dealing with a curse a little worse than he'd like to let on, and Lan Zhan is a little less than willing to let it slide.

Another “what if they just fucked in the show” fic, this time set when WWX has the curse on his leg and Wangji has to carry him back to the inn.

Every Day, Learning More by phnelt (Wangxian, E, 6k)

The pink was high on Wei Wuxian’s cheeks. “I mean I haven’t been able to… that I can’t. Not without you.”

Lan Wangji stared. “In this body, the whole time you’ve had it -- you’ve never…”

Wei Wuxian kicked his heels into Lan Wangji’s back. “I just said that!”

I knew at least one of these was more book verse than show! WWX hasn’t been able to jerk off in his new body, LWJ helps him out :-)

the meaning of the ritual by newamsterdam (Wangxian, E, 8k)

“Lan Zhan… wants to bed me?”

The hand on his chest is shaking, slightly. “Mn.”

“Oh,” Wei Wuxian breaths out.

There’s something— something powerful, about that. Lan Wangji wants to bed him. Lan Wangji wants to sleep with him. Lan Wangji wants to touch him, and kiss him. The immovable, implacable Second Master of Lan, with a face and principles both carved from jade, wants him.

“Is this a fantasy of yours?” Wei Wuxian asks. “Forcing all the demonic energy out of me with your—”

Lan Wangji claps a hand over his mouth. “Silence, now.”

When the entire cultivation world turns against the Yiling Patriarch, Wei Wuxian makes a risky gamble— he'll agree to participate in an ancient ritual for cleansing the spirit, so that his character can no longer be called into question. The catch? He has no idea who his partner for the ritual will be.

This is also book-verse! As the tag says “Let Lan Wangji Fuck the Yiling Patriarch”!!!!!!!!!!!

Hurricane by gdgdbaby (Wangxian, E, 6k) ***

"Haven't you heard?" Nie Huaisang replied, clicking his tongue, though he was clearly pleased that he could be the one to break the news. He leaned in to announce with a dramatic flourish: "Lan Wangji just took emergency family leave this past weekend."

WANGXIAN AS SPIRK STAR TREK PON FAR AU!!!!!!!!!!!!! WEEWOO WEEWOO WEEWOO!!!!!!!! This was actually recced to ME by CHI and I have not stopped thinking about this fic for a full month. It’s like author gdgdbaby sat down one day and was like “Tumblr user Liv Scottspack deserves everything she wants in this life.” and then wrote this fic. Thank you author gdgdbaby, I love you.

WORLD’S WORST THROUPLE (3ZUN)

The body is a blade by rheawrites (3zun, E, 2k) ***

In which Lan Xichen is taken by surprise, Nie Mingjue takes what he can get, and Meng Yao gets what he wants.

This was the first 3zun fic I ever read and whew baby, got it in one! It’s actually a slight AU but it gets their characterization so right and is a very fun read. One of those fics I go back to frequently because it does so much with so few words.

shang tiantang by fuckwarlock (3zun, E, 4k)

They wanted so much, and with the way A-Yao gasps at the saber-calloused hand unfastening his belts, he does, too. The night air twirls with the scents of osmanthus and cinnamon and melon. Lan Xichen smiles, leans in, and ghosts his lips over the crook of A-Yao’s neck. What kind of brother would he be if he didn’t give A-Yao what he wanted? “I think it’s your turn to ascend, A-Yao.”

The Venerated Triad celebrates the Mid-Autumn Festival the best way they know how.

Truly the only way the venerated triad works is if meng yao gets Destroyed :-)

Favour and Fate by soulgusttheguardian (3zun, E, 8k)

There have been times in Meng Yao’s life when he couldn’t help but wonder how he came to be in his current situation. Found himself reflecting on the choices leading up to whatever misfortune had befallen him that day, and pondering why fate hated him so.

Granted, there had also been times when he couldn't help but wonder just what he had done to earn the favour necessary to be rewarded with certain things...

The current situation he found himself to be in, however, was definitely the latter.

More of the same! Truly I personally can never get enough of the 3zun dynamic in smut fics its just too goddamn motherfucking GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!

the stars do not take sides by everyearning (3zun, E, 4k)

Mingjue isn’t sure he’s ever seen Xichen do anything other than treat the boy like a porcelain doll and it’s laughable to him, to think of Meng Yao as something breakable, instead of the sharp, deadly object he is.

Okay one last “Destroy Meng Yao” 3zun fic! Enjoy!

never as alive as we are right now by ThirtySixSaveFiles (3zun, E, 12k)

Three perspectives on three sworn brothers, at three different times in their relationship.

(Or, three times 3zun got it on and some of the feelings they had along the way.)

Wait actually I want to end the 3zun fics on this one because it has true Emotional Resolution at the end and I think they deserve a little healing.

BABY BOYS. BABIES. (THE JUNIORS)

A Civil Combpaign by Ariaste (Jin Ling/Lan Sizhui, T, 20k) ***

“And,” said one of the pompous ministers, “there’s the matter of a marriage to consider as well!”

Jin Ling, who at the beginning of that sentence had expected to slam into the very last wall of his patience and lose his temper entirely, paused. “A what?”

Thing was… it wasn’t such a bad idea.

A MUST-FUCKING-READ!!! Jin Ling gets it in his head that as sect leader he should get married and sets his sights on Lan Sizhui. I cannot stress enough how FUCKING CUTE this fic is!!! Sizhui being the best boy! Jin Ling having more uncles than he knows what to do with! Jiang Cheng being the worst at relationship advice! It’s so fucking good it love it so much.

Anyway, Here’s Wuji by kakikaeru (Lan Jingyi/Lan Sizhui, T, 18k)

The melody gets a little clearer when he breaks out of the trees, and Jingyi changes course with certainty, barreling down the back hill and through the Cloud Recesses, dodging scandalized disciples left and right. He throws open the doors to the Receiving Hall without announcement and bows nearly double, eyes on the floor instead of on the shocked faces of the Mei delegation and the impenetrable gaze of the Chief Cultivator.

"Forgive this disciple," Jingyi shouts, because he's going to get punished for rule breaking regardless. "From the back hill, Hanguang-jun, there is a song in the wind!"

Lan Jingyi comes of age.

A Jingyi-central fic about Jingyi growing up and falling in love and being a hero and being the second best boy of my heart right after Sizhui. Not only is this fic sweet and romantic but it’s another one that explores a lot of interesting things within canon and all of the supporting characters are written very well and are just as interesting as second best boy Jingyi.

Ok, JiuJiu by kakikaeru (Jin Ling/Ouyang Zizhen, T, 16k)

Uncle's jaw works in the way that suggests he's about to say something irredeemable. Jin Ling, in a move of diplomacy he hopes the Chief Cultivator appreciates, distracts him with spicy food and his favourite subject: the incompetence of his own officials.

"I hear the lakes in the south east are having drainage problems?" he asks nonchalantly, sticking three big slices of braised pork belly into his Uncle's bowl.

Jin Ling just wants to get through the Discussion Conference with his Sect, his dignity, and his heart intact.

A follow up fic to “Anyways, Here’s Wuji.” I LOVE the Jin Ling/Ouyang Zizhen dynamic of Jin Ling having been raised by Jiang “I keep all my emotions right here and then one day I’ll die” Cheng AND being hopelessly charmed and smitten with Ouyang “President of the I Love Love Romance Novel Book Club” Zizhen! I LOVE IT! EXTREMELY CUTE!

Lan Sizhui's Guide to Courtship by Kimblydot (Lan Sizhui/Lan Jingyi, T, 23k)

In which Jingyi is a little oblivious, Sizhui is patient (and should have said something in the beginning), and everyone else is resigned to watching them dance around each other for far longer than necessary.

(Or: five things Sizhui tries to do in his courtship, and the one time Jingyi realizes there was one happening in the first place.)

I’ll stop describing fics about the juniors as being “cute” when they stop being SO FUCKING CUUUUUUUUUUTTTTTTTEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!

His Merit All My Fear by violettressed (Lan Sizhui/Lan Jingyi, G, 16k)

It’s too late for any of Hanguang-Jun’s rabbits to be awake -- one of the sundown chores for young disciples is to herd them back into their hutch -- but the rabbit field is as good a spot as any for quality sulking, so Lan Jingyi makes his way there.

Someone has beat him to it.

Lan Jingyi stares at Hanguang-Jun. Hanguang-Jun stares passively back.

When Lan Sizhui is swept away with the Ghost General, off on a new adventure, Lan Jingyi is the one who returns to Cloud Recesses alone.

Not only another extremely cute Sizhui/Jingyi fic BUT one that includes a Wangji/Jingyi friendship??? Incroyable! *chefs kiss*

spirit running wild by idrilka (Lan Sizhui/Lan Jingyi, E, 17k)

He doesn’t know, exactly, when the friendship he shared with Sizhui over the years has changed into something that’s made Jingyi finally understand why Hanguang-Jun always wears that expression whenever he looks at Senior Wei. There hasn’t been one single moment that he can point to and say, yes, this is where it started, because the thing about falling in love with your best friend is that it happens gradually, until it’s impossible to tell which step has been the deciding one.

Jingyi goes to Baling with a crush.

Written by the same genius that wrote the first three fics I made you read so you know it’s good. Its truly the childhood best friends to lovers of it all! Sizhui is adorable and Jingyi is a mess! *muah!*

FAMILY FUN TIME (NO ROMANCE, JUST FEELS)

Grow by cafecliche (Lan Sizhui & Wei Wuxian, T, 14k)

“Okay,” Jingyi says, as Sizhui puzzles this out aloud. “Okay! So the demon has been turning its victims into children.”

“I think so,” Sizhui says.

“To make them easier prey,” Jingyi says.

“Yes,” Sizhui says.

“So—” Jingyi’s voice cracks here, “this kid is Senior Wei.”

Wei Wuxian, still tangled in his own massive robes, blinks politely at them.

(Or: Wei Wuxian is cursed on a night-hunt, and the junior quartet rapidly finds themselves in over their heads.)

What I expected to be a goofy, silly fic turned out to be extremely emotional and made me FULLY CRY! It’s a very moving fic about Sizhui coming to understand himself and Wei Wuxian a lot better AND features all of the juniors arguing over who’s turn it is to hold 6 year old Wei Wuxian. A true win/win of a fic.

To The Act of Making Noise by words-writ-in-starlight (Lan Sizhui & Lan Wangji, G, 19k)

His father in white plays the song late into the night, and when A-Yuan wakes up confused and afraid, the guqin lulls him back to sleep.

Lan Sizhui hears his father play the same song every night for his whole life, and never, ever get an answer.

Another very moving and heartwarming fic about Lan Wangji raising Sizhui and Sizhui figuring out Wangji’s past and then eventually reconnecting with Wei Wuxian. It’s cute and soft and Sizhui is my best boy!

History (Proud To Call Your Own) by words-writ-in-starlight (Wen Ning, G, 5k)

“A-Yuan? Um—Lan-gongzi,” Wen Ning corrects, trying to set a good example. The children are young, seven and eight, exactly a dozen of them lined up in two crisp lines of tiny blue and white robes. Wen Ning can feel them staring at him, even though most of them have already mastered that Lan trick of neutrality. The smallest, a little girl with liquid dark eyes, is clinging to her nearest shijie’s sleeve and half-hiding. “Can I—what can I do for you?”

Wen Ning gets himself recruited for services, while he and Sizhui are visiting Cloud Recesses. Wei Wuxian gets a fan club.

Set in the same universe as “To The Act of Making Noise,” a very cute fic about Wen Ning finding his place in the post-canon world and being proud of Sizhui and being the world’s best substitute teacher. As the official Wen Ning Fan Club President, I had to include this.

the stone-filled sea by yukla (Lan Sizhui & Wei Wuxian, T, 9k) ***

He forgets how quickly Wei-qianbei changes faces, sometimes. Like pulling a theater mask over a bruise—color over color, a diversion with the swipe of his hand.

Lan Sizhui navigates a world that hates his father, one endless wave at a time.

Oh man oh man. I will never get enough of the fics where Sizhui (and the rest of the juniors) get ANGRY on Wei Wuxian’s behalf!! That’s their dad and their teacher and their friend and they will DEFEND HIM!!! YEAH BAYBEEEEEEEEEE!!!

PICK & MIX (MISCELLANEOUS)

This Side of Paradise by greenfionn (Wei Wuxian/Wen Qing, E, 3k)

Wei Wuxian does some very quick math in his head that goes something like this: He is pretty sure he’s in love with Lan Zhan - Lan Zhan is not here and likely never will be here - Wen Qing is here, not to mention very hot and let us not forget, actually interested in sex with him - there’s a solid chance he goes genuinely crazy or dies, or both, in the next few months and really, who wants to die a virgin?

Listen.......the fic premise is “Wei Wuxian and Wen Qing, noted bisexuals, figure life sucks enough at the Burial Mounds, they might as well have any fun they can before they die” and........I Am Looking Directly At It. It features Wen Qing bossing Wei Wuxian around and Wei Wuxian’s canon he-wants-to-be-pregnant kink. It’s........I liked it.

palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss by iodhadh (Song Lan/Xiao Xingchen, M, 15k) ***

The realization strikes Song Lan like a bolt of lightning: Xiao Xingchen laughs, and he wants with a sudden, stunning desperation to kiss the mirth from his beautiful mouth. How, precisely, he is meant to manage that—that, he has no idea at all.

Or: introspective meditations on touch, trust, and the problem of desire.

I Am Baby and for some reason cannot handle how sad the entire Song Lan/Xiao Xingchen storyline ended up so I rarely read songchen fics, and when I do they’re always soft pre-canon fics like this one. Luckily there are some very beautiful and moving pre-canon songchen fics!!! I love you fandom!!

purpose and ritual by iodhadh (Song Lan/Xiao Xingchen, E, 8k)

Song Zichen has beautiful hands. He's a powerful swordsman, strong and skilled, unfairly impressive and unreasonably handsome. He is devoted and self-disciplined and he takes direction like a dream. And he doesn't touch people—no one at all, if he can help it, except for Xiao Xingchen.

The poets might call him a saint, but Xiao Xingchen is so very, very human.

More of the same :-)

born to sweet delight by la_dissonance (Song Lan/Xiao Xingchen, E, 10k)

Xiao Xingchen lightly jumps into the center of the pool, the water a shock that cools his sticky, heated skin, and does nothing for the heat building inside him. When he surfaces, pushing the hair out of his face, he finds Song Lan's gaze and meets it. Between them, everything goes both ways. What Song Lan will offer, Xiao Xingchen will freely give too.

Or, Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan meet, pledge their lives to each other, and then fall in love.

This is about the angstiest I will go for songchen and its still absolutely Baby Soft lmfao!!!!!!

Pin it down by rheawrites (Jiang Yanli/Jin Zixuan, Jin Zixuan/Nie Mingjue, E, 2k)

“Yanli, I did not lie on our wedding night. You are the only woman I have gone to bed with. But… there was a man.”

“Oh?” Yanli blinks up at him. She does not appear horrified, or betrayed, which is surely a good sign.

Jin Zixuan swallows. “It was Sect Leader Nie,” he says quickly, as though that will make it easier.

“…Oh,” says Yanli, and her eyes are dark.

Jin Zixuan tells his wife a war story. Or, two thousand words of Jin Zixuan getting railed.

Have you ever looked at Jin Zixuan and been like “I bet that mf likes getting PEGGED!!!!!!!!” Well here’s the fic for you.

*YIBO VOICE* DIDI LOVES YOU! (YIZHAN RPF)

never really over by gdgdbaby (Yizhan, E, 10k)

The thing is: it would be good to see Xiao Zhan again — if Yibo could just trust himself to be normal.

Author gdgdbaby is the yizhan master, so here are five of my personal favorites of their fics, starting with this post-filming reunion fic that was the first yizhan fic I ever read and HIT real good after having just finished the show myself.

pedagogy by gdgdbaby (Yizhan, E, 17k) ***

Yibo opens his mouth and says, "I want to learn," barreling past the rapid rise of Xiao Zhan's eyebrows. "To last longer. Will you teach me?"

Quick-fire Yibo comes too easily and Xiao Zhan helps train him to last longer :-)

you’re the reason that i just can’t concentrate by gdgdbaby (Yizhan, E, 10k)

Xiao Zhan hears about it from Yu Bin, which probably should've been the first warning sign.

Yibo was only 20 when they filmed the untamed, which lends itself perfectly to fics like this.

a truth so loud you can’t ignore by gdgdbaby (Yizhan, E, 5k)

It's their last day of filming in Hengdian when the secret comes out.

If yibo has to be a fictional virgin than SO DOES XIAO ZHAN!

if you would only let you by gdgdbaby (Yizhan, E, 32k) ***

"Well?" Yibo demands. Past the severe frown tugging at the corners of his mouth, a flicker of the old him slips through, the persistent boy who shoved his way into Xiao Zhan's space without a second thought and made a home for himself there. "Are you coming or not?"

Xiao Zhan's heart twists. He forcibly settles it back in his chest. He's only told Yibo no once in his entire life, and it was already the hardest thing he's ever had to do. "Okay," Xiao Zhan murmurs, quiet but decisive, and thumbs his phone off. "Let's go."

Like I said, all gdgdbaby fics are incredibly good, super well written, and very hot, but this one does stand out from the bunch for being a Full Epic Romance! This is one of Chi’s favorite fics so that should speak to it’s quality!

baby, who’s counting by nobirdstofly (Yizhan, E, 12k)

Xiao Zhan gasps, trying to rein in another peal of giggles. “What do I owe you anyway?”

Yibo shrugs one shoulder, and his smirk deepens. “Haven’t decided.”

Xiao Zhan’s still staring at him, laughter gone in his dry throat, when he hears someone yell for a reset. Yibo’s eyes are so, so dark, and he hasn’t stopped watching Xiao Zhan this whole time. Xiao Zhan swallows, nods, and pushes every dirty thought out of his head.

(Or: Yibo bets Xiao Zhan he'll break first during a take, Xiao Zhan loses, and it's all downhill from there.)

Ah sex bets, who doesn’t love sex bets!

Mystery Dance by mrsronweasley (Yizhan, E, 16k)

"That? That's your confession?" Yibo's toppled onto Xiao Zhan's side and is clutching his shoulder, trying not to fall over. "That's pathetic!"

"Oh, what, you can do better?" Zhuocheng is pretty flushed and there's a challenge in his voice that Yibo just can't walk away from.

"Hell yeah, I can. Hit me, Yu Bin." Yu Bin cheers and refills Yibo's shot glass. "All right!" Yibo downs the shot, gags only slightly, and says, "Everyone! I'm a fucking virgin!"

WHAT’S better than a Yibo virgin fic? A SECOND YIBO VIRGIN FIC!

This author also writes extremely good yizhan threesomes so here’s three of them!

Some Nights by mrsronweasley (Yizhan/Xuan Lu (Jiang Yanli), E, 2k)

Xuan Lu opened her legs to him and Xiao Zhan wasted no time diving in. He pressed his mouth against her pussy, licking her out steadily as her thighs trembled around him. She was nestled between Yibo's legs and if Xiao Zhan looked up, not only could he see the planes of her body, her small breasts going up and down with her breathing, ribs expanding, her tipped back head and open mouth, but Yibo, gaze boring into Xiao Zhan's as he ate Xuan Lu out.

The entire cast is hot and there is no reason they shouldn’t ALL fuck! Not one reason!!!!!!

gege loves you by mrsronweasley (Yizhan/Wang Zhuocheng (Jiang Cheng)), E, 7k)

"We are very sorry," Xiao Zhan murmured as he unbuttoned Zhuocheng's jeans while Yibo kissed his ear, "for how we've been acting."

"Is this how you apologize to everyone," Zhuocheng panted, hands already going for his zipper to help Xiao Zhan along, "or am I special?"

WHEW LORD!!!!!!!!! WHEW!!!!!!!

Talking in the Dark by mrsronweasley (Yizhan (Side Xiao Zhan/M/F), E, 14k)

Xiao Zhan has a light-hearted romp of a threeway with some friends, then makes the mistake of telling Yibo. It goes down.

A non-yizhan threesome BUT features jealous!yibo which is a ton of fun.

Finally, a couple AUs!

With Joy and Purpose by feenwitch (Yizhan, E, 30k) ***

Yibo has been alone for approximately five Earth years when Xiao Zhan crash lands on his planet.

YIZHAN ANDROID AU!!!!!!!! This is a very star trek-esque universe which is fun, but the fic itself is also CRAZY interesting and moving and beautiful!!!!!!!!! It’s A LOT! This was a rec from Nina, so thank you Nina!

Bound With a Same-Heart Knot by mrsronweasley (Yizhan, E, 59k)

London, 1892. Xiao Zhan, a promising young attache at the Chinese embassy is tasked with showing the new ambassador's son Wang Yibo around London. The inevitable happens.

Victorian AU! I actually think you already read this, but included for posterity.

AND SCENE! This is the result of two months of daily fic reading, having 50 tabs of fic open at any given time, reading truly anything and everything, and Loving The Untamed. I’m SO EXCITED you’re diving into fic for this show and I can’t wait to talk to you about all of them and to have someone to scream with! WOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

#the untamed #fic #the untamed fic rec #holy gosh diddly darn moly #this is long as hell and has approximately 950k words of fic in it #my magnum opus!!!!#what's even more wild is that this literally doesnt even scratch the surface #i am constantly reading more #from the time i started putting this rec together until now #i added two new fics that i read and thought were amazing #there is no dearth of good shit to read in this fandom #ANYWAYS congrats on finishing (tomorrow)!#i cant wait to talk fic!#i hope you enjoy this list!#sorry it is genuinely absurdly long!

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marvel-download-tutorial · 4 years

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How to Download Marvel comics for free!

I’ve been thinking about writing this for a while especially since we’re all stick inside but last week Marvel made the shitty decision to transition various print titles to digital only, meaning they’re directly taking revenue away from local shops rather than delay the titles, so since Marvel thinks digital comics is such a cool idea I’m gonna show you how to download as many as you’d like! (oh also this is for windows only, idk how to do it if you own a mac but also you’re rich anyways so who cares buy the comics richie)

I don’t want to take money away from the people that need it, not the actual companies of Marvel and DC fuck them they’re dying and they deserve it, but for my own rationalizing I want to take a minute to plug the Hero Initiative, basically what it is an organization that provides for comic creators that are having hard times, comics are a rough industry and you don’t get into it to get rich, I won’t go into it too much you can read for yourself but it’s been endorsed by Stan Lee, Justin Ponsor, Mike Grell, Skottie Young, Rags Morales, a lot of big names, so I’d ask if you do follow this guide and download some comics for free please consider donating to the Hero Initiative (they also sell autographed prints and you can commission some really famous artists)

anyways onto the good stuff! I’m going to be doing a fairly brief but easy to follow guide, there will be links at the bottom of the post so look for those, I’ll probably be making a few other posts with some more info so also check back for those if my blog is still here

What do I need?

You’re going to need 4 basic things if you want to do this as easily and safely as you can

1) a good anti-virus

2) anonymous web browser (Tor)

4) a safe and reliable source for the comics

4) a torrent program to download the comics

Also optional: VPN

Anti-Virus

it’s good to remember when torrenting that no one is your friend, everyone is out to trick you and no one cares, honestly you should also have a good anti-virus though, I’m not really gonna tell you which one you should have but Norton 360 is pretty good but say that in a room of CS majors is the quickest way to start a fist fight, honestly just google it, you’re gonna have to do some research, but really you’re good as long as you don’t go with Avast or Kaspersky, I’m going to go over typical tricks and traps later to ensure safety, this is just basic overall security thing

Anonymous Web Browser (Tor)

next we’re gonna download Tor (you can do this before getting a VPN, like I said either one is going to put you on a list but using one to cover you getting the other at least mitigates it lol) Tor is a great open source project that allows for basically complete anonymous web browsing, it’s a project dedicated to privacy and disruption of corporations ability to control every aspect of our lives, also a friend of mine bought K off silk road with it once in highschool, really not too much you need to know about it before using it, just download it, let it configure and you’re good, also use Duck Duck go that it comes with, don’t switch it to chrome or anything, Duck Duck go is anonymous search service which better lends to Tor’s protection

Where to get the torrents

Now this is really important because you can have everything else set up but without a safe reliable source none of this is gonna do any good, but this is the dangerous part, torrent sites are notorious traps (I bricked more than on family PC on limewire) and this is why I said earlier to remember these people are not your friends and are out to hurt you, don’t click banner ads, don’t believe pop ups, make sure your virus protection is on and it’s a very good idea to have an adblocker on, also look out for another post I’ll be making on what download buttons to trust for different popular torrent sites

when talking comics (and remember specifically only Marvel comics) there’s no other name out there than Nemesis43, he is a god and he’s going to be your new best friend, there are groups and sites out there that do comic scans that you have to pay to join or like apply to join, that shit’s dumb as hell and I’ve never used them once and I’ve got more comic than I can read in my lifetime, you don’t need em and you especially don’t need to give them money, donate to the Hero Initiative instead

Nemesis has moved around a bit in the past (if you remember the WWT debacle) right now the main site for him is ettv (there will be a link at the end of the post) sites a bit barren but he’s there, he also has a reddit he gives updates on very rarely, generally if he moves he adds where his new home is in a text doc in his recent uploads, I fully trust him and his uploads, he’s been doing this for years and I’d never have a second thought downloading from him, also because he uploads so much he’s often very highly rated and verified on whatever site he’s on

The second place I’d recommend is getcomic (again there will be a link at the end), now this is very important, never donate to them, they kinda suck, basically they’re plugged into a bunch of different scanner groups and just steal those scans and put them up and then ask for donations, basically they’re just an aggregate (Nem kinda is too but he doesn’t ask for donations and stuff), they usually use browser downloads which are a complete pain so I’d really recommend Nemesis over them but they do have TheComicGuy on torrent galaxy for larger files but that updates a lot less frequently then the main site, again I trust these guys (as long as you’re on the actual site) but don’t trust any banner ads or pop ups, also for downloading they give multiple options, a lot are very sketchy, just use the main server

also there’s other sites like readcomics or newcomics, never used em, don’t like em, use at your own behest

On sites like ettv you’re gonna want to use the magnet, someone years ago told me it was safer and I just believed them and have always used em, not sure if it’s true but it’s worked so whatever, really you shouldn’t be too worried about this stuff and if you follow this guide you’re going to be way over prepared to download comics, really no one cares about comic torrenting, movies, video games, tv shows that’s the stuff people really get caught on, this is just nerd shit

I’m going to be making another post showing how to use these sites, and other sites comic can be found on so look back at my blog for that

Torrent program

This is pretty basic, just get utorrent, it’s what I’ve always used, it works, whatever, definitely look this up with a VPN on or on Tor, it’s simple to use, I’ll be doing a short tutorial on how to make it even safer

Lastly this one is optional but a pretty good idea, for more than just this

VPN aka Virtual Privacy Network

honestly you can get the anonymous web browser (Tor) or the VPN first, their both going to help cover you downloading the other and honestly both are going to put you on a list for googling them (which is why I suggest looking for someone who just already has the .exes ((I always keep them on a thumbdrive for when I have to reset one of my computers)), I might try to make a google drive with em but also I might not bc that sounds like work and I’m already typing all this up), anyways I’m not really gonna explain what a VPN is, there’s a lot of resources that can explain it better than I can but basically it masks what you do on the internet, there’s a lot of choices when picking a VPN but the big thing I looked for when choosing mine was 1) non-US based so it’s harder for US investigation agencies to request stuff for them or get anything from them 2) one that doesn’t keep logs, honestly they all do even if they say they don’t, but you wanna look for one that hasn’t turned over many logs to US agencies and 3) unlimited peer 2 peer connections which is complicated but basically means you can torrent stuff anonymously and with decent speed. Like Anti-Virus there are a ton of different VPN’s out there, you really have to do research because there are actual accounts of FBI agencies crating VPN’s telling people they’re anonymous when really they had direct access to all the info, I haven’t done any research but NordVPN seems kinda like one of these, really the more they advertise the more suspicious I am, Just google “best vpn 2020″ and look at like 5 lists and read the the stuff, personally I use IPvanish which unfortunately is US based and while it gave over logs in 2016 even thought they said they didn’t keep any but now they’re owned by a new company that super double promises they don’t (again who cares they all do) but they’ve allow P2P and use 256-bit AES encryption

I wanna take a second to mention that this isn’t going to be free, this is the only place you’re going to be spending money (besides donating to Heroe Initative of course), a good VPN is about $100 a year which all in all isn’t terrible, technically you can just get by on the anonymous browser but this gives you an extra layer of security to pretty much ensure you won’t get caught and plus in the ever worsening internet hell world a VPN is becoming more and more important, I’m sure you can find articles about it but yea you don’t technically need a VPN but it’s useful for more than just this

How to work it all

Ok so this is gonna be a little stream of consciousness, as this all kinda has been, so sorry but I’m gonna try and explain it as best I can and also feel free to ask any questions on this blog, I’ll check back eventually I’m sure

So first thing first, make sure you’re virus protection is on and you’re connected on your VPN if you’re using it (you can google “what is my IP” to double check it’s working) then load up Tor, let it load and connect up and whatever, then go to https://www.ettvdl.com/user/Nemesis43 (I’m just gonna show this with Nemesis43, maybe I’ll make another one for getcomics but that’s pretty straight forward, also nem is better)

now remember we’re only here for Marvel comics, so scroll past all those thousands of other comics this would work exactly the same for, I’m gonna go for Ant-Man #4 which was released on the 13 as a digital only comic despite the first three issues being physical copies and now sit on my shelf forever unfinished making me look like a complete penis

it may take a while but it’s going to look like this, click on the blue words, it’s gonna take you to a page that looks like this

now from here we’re going to get the magnet link, right click and select copy link address, I like doing this because it limits my interactions with the page, note the advertisement at the top telling me I need a VPN despite thinking I’m in Guadalajara (which for legal reasons I am)

just copy that and then go to utorrent and click the add link

it’ll open a little box, it should add the link automatically, if it doesn’t just hit ctrl+V

hit ok and it’ll load it up, it might need to download some metadata but after that it should be good, oh also it might bring up a window basically asking where you want to save it and what to name it, you can set all that up in preferences, I did so I just turned that window off and can’t be assed to turn it back on, just hit ok if you don’t wanna bother with that stuff, it’ll go into your downloads by default

and that’s it really, it’s that easy, I might make another thing talking about how to make utorrent more anonymous or whatever so look for that, but stock it’s fine, also when it’s finished downloading it’s gonna start seeding (like uploading to someone else) I’ve always been a scumbag and I never seed but Nemesis seeds stuff so much you really don’t need to anyways, just select it and hit the stop button (the black square on the tool bar)

here are all the links I could think of

Hero Initiative

download Tor

here’s a guide for VPNs

download utorrent

song I found recently that I like

getcomics

Nemesis

so yea that’s pretty much the basics, be smart, be safe, any viruses you get are on you but I hope you found this helpful and feel free to ask any questions

oh and also this is all parody and I’ve never actually torrented anything, I don’t even own a computer

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