#also while we're on the topic of people I don't archive much for

[magidoggie]

A LOOK INTO SHI/HIR PRONOUNS AND THEIR ORIGINS

So I’ve seen people claim that shi/hir pronouns are intersex exclusive (mostly intersex people), and others say they aren’t (mostly non-intersex people)

As an intersex person, I've been confused about this for a while, so I decided to look into it

THIS POST WILL CONTAIN NSFW TOPICS, FURRIES, TALKS OF FETISHIZATION OF INTERSEX BODIES, AND INTERSEX SLURS!

Most of the users of these pronouns seem to be non-intersex people, but there are also intersex people who use them.

I've seen a decent amount of intersex people say that shi/hir pronouns are only ours to use, as they were used against us (like a shortened version of he-she). This would make them basically slurs that only we can reclaim.

I've even seen some claims that Geoffrey Chaucer himself coined these words?? (The chaucer thing, I haven't been able to find a source for. Even so, it is most likely just an old spelling of "she/her")

I’ve seen people say it originated on 4chan. It'd be hard to verify, as 4chan is known for not keeping threads up for long. There are 4chan archives, but I've tried my hardest to look for any combinations of things like "shi" and different terms that could work with it like "intersex" "freak" or "hermaphrodite" . I don't doubt it's been used on 4chan, but I can't find much, and archival sites don't go back far enough.

Regardless, the pronouns seem quite old. One thing I did find under the search of ""4chan" shi hir" on Google, was a.. descriptive post on a furry porn website called e621.net

Okay, 13 years ago, that's a start. It certainly contains the word "herm" (short for hermaphrodite), and the word intersex used with this pronoun.

Godspeed TheShadowfox42 I hope you found the image.

Using Google's "Before:(date)" feature, I searched "shi herm before:2010", and unsurprisingly, I found a lot of furry porn.

Stories on sofurry.com, a furry website that looks to be from at least 2007, if not older. I'll spare you the details, but indeed, there, they use shi/hir pronouns for their "herm" characters. Did these pronouns originate from.. furries?? I put that though aside for now, to look further into other uses.

As it turns out, the journey does not end at 2007. Urban dictionary has an entry from 2003

No slurs here, it looks like a neutral usage. Again, going back to Google. Now, search terms "hir "gender neutral" before:2004"

Many results show up now, now articles rather than furries. American.edu (seems to be a university), Swarthmore.edu (this is a college), both from 2001. jstor.org with a journal article from 1999. Unfortunately I can't read that one, as I have to pay a whole $63 to purchase it. I even found a PDF file from 1994 by core.ac.uk

But, what I've realized now is this is not usage of shi/hir pronouns. All of these use Ze/hir pronouns. I don't know if there is any link, but the last pronoun looking the same must've obscured the results.

From the american.edu article on these pronouns. You can see the usage of "hir" alongside "ze", and below it, the usage of ze/zir pronouns, which seem to be used more today.

Shit.. Doing the search all over again with the pronoun "shi" yields.. very few results apart from people talking about Chinese words.

Wait what about those furries from earlier? The tvtropes.org article does include this:

Chakona space? Chakats? Pronouns he came up with? Admittedly I kept seeing these centaur feline hybrid characters come up quite consistently during this dive, but I had to look into it further.

Oh buddy what did I get myself into. This is from 2001 best I can tell, so we're getting quite old here. I scroll down on the page.

And lower down.

Now this is all very interesting speculative biology, but what I'm focusing on is again, the usage of "hermaphrodite" together with the pronouns "shi/hir". Did a furry artist named Bernard Doove come up with these pronouns.

It gets yet older.. New search, "chakats "shi" before:2001"

Again, Bernard Doove's art from 2000, 1999, 1998,

I find a website called yerf.metafur.org It has furry art, dating all the way back to the mid 1990's, but here, on December 23 1998, is the first appearance of these pronouns on that site.

This Bernard Doove person has been at this project, with these pronouns for a while.

From what I can tell, many of his art pieces, they seem to be quite sexual beings. Quite fetishistic of hermaphroditism at times. (or intersexuality, take your pick)

The other thing I found with my search was a website, furry.org.au/bosshoss/

My search says it's from September 14 1998.

That's certainly some information, but it might come in handy. So Chakat Goldfur provided this website? Who is that? Looking into it, that seems to be a character created by Bernard Doove, that acts as an alter ego. Further down, the person running this website lists some other websites they enjoy. One being "Proxima Centauri", which seems to be another furry artist.

"I met this one at ConFURence 8. Very interesting. (Did I mention shi is a hermaphrodite uni-centaur?)"

(For context, ConFURence is a furry convention held in 1997)

Again, the usage of hermaphrodite, and the pronoun shi. At this point, the website being linked to is long gone, but the wayback machine provides help. The website, http://www.spots.ab.ca/~unicorn/main.htm has been captured all the way back to October 8th 1997.

At this time, the website was under construction. No images are willing to load and haven't been archived, but the description is intact.

So this person uses shi/hir pronouns for their hermaphroditic character all the way back in 1997. There are links to other places where this person used to host their works, but they are all down and haven't been archived. The thread is running thin..

Back to Bernard Doove, the Chakat creator. There must be something more to this. Turns out, there was. On the "yerf" website, I actually found several art pieces that were not picked up by Google.

Febuary 22 1997. Getting yet older. In some art pieces, Bernard references "Forest Tale" and "forest tales", so I went looking for whatever that was.

1995?? you've got to be kidding. It's an adult story involving these "chakat" beings, and sure enough, down the page

Shi/hir pronouns used over and over again.

With the use of hermaphrodite.

But.. This is kind of where it ends. I couldn't seem to find anything older, and I'm not going to contact Bernard Doove over this. Even something as old as 29 years is impressive to me. Bernard Doove states his characters were inspired by other furry artists' creatures of the time, but since it's 1995, there isn't much left for me to find here. Anything before that time is probably lost.

With all the information I have been able to gather, it looks to shi/hir pronouns were created by Bernard Doove who is a furry author and artist. Shi/hir were made to be a midway between "she" and "him" in some way, to be a gender neutral word for hermaphroditic genetically modified beings called "chakats" in his stories. As an intersex person myself, I don't enjoy the use of "hermaphrodite" in such a way, as it's a slur for us. But these types of characters also seem to be very old, and we, and our struggles, were completely unknown to the vast majority of people, even moreso than nowadays.

If you use those pronouns for an intersex person who doesn't use them, it is indeed intersexist, as you are implying we are hermaphrodites.

But as for whether only intersex people can use them? I'm not sure. The original intent doesn't seem be directly linked to intersex people. You could argue that these hermaphroditic characters are fetishized versions of how many people see us, and have seen us for a long time. Afterall, hermaphrodite was, and still is, a common slur for us.

I don't doubt some people have used these pronouns as slurs against us as well, but I also haven't found anything specifically that supports that. It always seemed to be for specific fictional characters that COULD be based off specific intersex attributes

I'm not going to argue one way or the other. This was just me trying to find what I could about these pronouns and their history. Just be mindful of how you use these pronouns, and the connections they have to fetishes revolving around the common misinterpretation of intersex bodies (as in, "having both parts")

Thank you for reading.

I hope you learned something. I know I did, and I now have a headache.

#shi/hir #pronouns #history #internet #intersex #fetishization #furry #queer history #doggie barks

[whimsikolya]

About Kevin and the dread powers

Just to clarify, this is a post about Welcome to Night Vale and The Magnus Archives because horror podcasts won't let me sleep.

I suffer from the same curse all TMA enthusiasts are well acquainted with, which is to say I've given up on trying to interact with any new piece of media without applying fear entities to everything and everyone involved. With this in mind, I've been asking myself for ages which fear Kevin would serve, and I've come to the conclusion that everyone's favorite prophet is a hundred percent an avatar of the Spiral. I don't usually share my thoughts with the class but I've only had a couple of hours of sleep last night and I've just seen a poll asking this exact question with very, very different results and... well, greetings everyone?

I'll start by saying that I absolutely get why people have completely different opinions on this, because at first glance this man and Desert Bluffs as a whole fit so many of the fears. And sure, the dread powers are colors, everyone is bound to blur a few lines. Kevin's lines are as boiled as a bowl of spaghetti though, we're not talking about blurry spots, there are leaks everywhere.

He's Spiral aligned, sure, but the omnipresence of gore and pain in Desert Bluffs is extremely Slaughter and Flesh coded, his Smiling God sometimes sounds like a manifestation of the Dark, and it's impossible to talk about Kevin without a few dozens mentions of cults and centipedes, so he's a pretty good candidate for the Corruption as well. And then, of course, we also have to talk about the blurry line between the Spiral and the Stranger, which makes it hard to see why he'd fit one more than the other. Conclusion: it's an absolute mess. I'm so sorry for how messy and long this post is inevitably going to be.

But hey, I'm doing my best to make sense here, so let's start by ruling out most of these options in a somewhat orderly fashion.

First of all, I'm automatically going to ignore the fears that didn't make an appearance in that little introduction. I can see the influence that the Beholding or the Buried might have on Kevin, but it's simply insignificant compared to the impact of the ones already mentioned. Again, colors and all that.

The Dark is easy to rule out too, but I couldn't ignore it when Kevin's eyes are black and It Devours describes the Smiling God as "that light that sometimes shines out of cupboards and basements, a cold light". But Mister Pitch already has his cult and I think there's too much focus on sunlight and not enough on what that darkness might hide to really go with it.

The Slaughter and the Flesh are harder to brush off, mostly because of, well, all the barbecue sauce. Violence and pain are, have been and will probably always be omnipresent in Kevin's life, and he's very likely a cannibal as well - with a morning routine that goes "burying what's left of breakfast". However, I think it would be too easy to stop at that. First of all, while the arrival of the boy in recent episodes proves that Kevin has always been somewhat open to violence and bloodshed, I'd argue a lot of it came from Strex. Triptych makes it clear that there was no issue with blood and viscera in Desert Bluffs before StrexCorp. And more importantly, hiding behind these fears specifically... the Spiral does that a lot. I completely believe Es Mentiras would've been equally as able to trigger the apocalypse as the Eye, because it has the same kind of special relationship with the rest of the dread powers, but that thought would be too long and too off topic. The point is, the Spiral served us the confession of a cannibalistic priest and a whole statement about a man forced to hurt himself via eating a computer. I'm really writing too much so long story short, I'd argue it really comes down to this: what's the end goal there? In the case of a Slaughter/Flesh avatar, it would be the gore/meat/pain/violence itself; to draw fear out of these things. For Strex and thus for Kevin, when violence and blood are gratuitous, the point is, most of the time, to keep people guessing. To instill doubt, to play with them. It's a "beat your employees to a pulp the day they start their new job to ensure their self-esteem and trust are never quite there" sort of violence. It's a "trick a whole society into thinking humanity is a food chain and they better bite before being bitten" sort of cannibalism. It's a different fear altogether, and so it doesn't fit either.

The Stranger and the Spiral are not always easy to differentiate, so I get the hesitation between the two. And yet I feel like it's pretty simple in the end. The Stranger, I Do Not Know You, is about concealing - thank you, Michael. It's hiding the truth and leaving you with nothing. The Spiral, It Is Not What It Is, is about lying, about twisting the truth so that you get it wrong. As much as I get the symbolism of masks and skins, and as much as they fit Kevin, he does not.. exactly hide anything. He never lies to Carlos about the blood in his studio, he doesn't hide how horrifying StrexCorp is - but he does say the truth with a big smile on his face and in his voice. He denies nothing, but he twists the reality of what happened to him, of who he is because of it. As the Archivist himself would say, he is the question "what hides behind a smile? Is a friendship true, or is it reaching with hands that cut you?" And you know who Kevin always calls a friend? His dear double, of course. He's once again clearly leaning towards the Spiral here.

The Corruption may just be the most tricky, if only because of the shared imagery. With the Smiling God being a giant centipede, and his little Temple of Joy hosting nothing less than a cult, it's hard not to entertain the possibility of Kevin turning to the Crawling Rot, willingly or not. He seems to have had toxic relationships with both family and friends all throughout his life, too, but he himself sounds like he's doing quite well with his new family. If anything, it means that he is/was a victim of the Corruption rather than a potential avatar to me. He may even have jumped off of his metaphorical tower Mike Crew style, right into the arms of the Spiral.

There would be plenty of examples, but to keep this sweet and short I'll focus on the main thing that the two entities share here, that is to say the cult/faith part. I'm a huge believer (ah) in the idea that the Spiral is equally as fond of religious devotion as the Corruption - not saying that they are the only ones, but they are the only ones that matter here. Father Burroughs and Bethany O'Connor, but also the statement giver of Sculptor's Tools who mentions going to church, are proof of this. Both entities target those who have faith to gain power through it, but again, not for the same reasons. The Corruption targets people whose beliefs betray a lack of and longing for connection to nature/others/etc, like Prentiss or the members of the Divine Chain. The Spiral targets people whose beliefs betray their guilt, doubts and insecurities - say a priest who couldn't save a young girl, or a woman who's quick to judge someone on his appearance. They prey on different concepts entirely and when it comes to Kevin and his faith in the Smiling God, I think it's pretty obvious which side he's leaning towards.

Now I'm aware this is a "why Kevin isn't aligned with this or that power" more than a true "why Kevin is Spiral aligned" rant. But this post is so long already that I'm going to stop here before I lose the rest of my sanity and bore all of us to death. I hope a number of points that connect him to Es Mentiras still shines through this whole thing, by contrast at least. I would also be very happy to write another post focusing on each and every single thing that makes Kevin an avatar of the Spiral to me, if anyone happened to be interested in that - and/or to discuss or argue this further, even though I doubt there's an audience for dreadfully long WTNV x TMA rants. But hey, if there is, you know where to find me. My opinion is probably completely off from someone else's perspective which is always fun. I'm just a dedicated listener with a ridiculously strong hyperfixation on both Kevin and the Spiral.

Going off the air until then. Until next time, Desert Bluffs. Until next time!

#the magnus archives meets night vale #the magnus archives #welcome to night vale #wtnv #tma #kevin wtnv #i even made an effort and used capital letters in there! you're spoiled~ #tw sleep deprived author #double checked NOTHING so if there is something inaccurate in there blame my memory #not used to writing and posting stuff like that on here aaah

[notknickers]

aww thank you. I'm still learning to draw scars. I defo need to make time for more studies. (we both gotta buckle down)

oh man. fanart, if done well and a lot can get me to do almost anything. seeing fanart of Ghost back in November 2022 is what got me into this fandom in the first place.

I'm a bit picky with headcanons but yh. im fully aware a lot of them are just watered down to be vessals for our kinks and affection. At the end of the day. they'er our silly made up blurbos U///U but yh theirs defo gaps in these guys's personalities that we can fill in (which is what we're doing now lol from the short bios we're given)

fanart (nsfw) and audio of these blurbos together. I'm waiting on my lounge chair right now to be presented to me.

hey man. Rivals to lovers makes sense. I'm stumped with who would make the first move though. becasue like you said, both of them aren't the most affectionate of people and don't trust too quickly; at least on the battlefield. like they could respect each other on the battlefield and stuff. but to get them vunerable to love hmmmmm. might need to bend like a pretzal for either of them to act on their feelings even in the most subtle ways… unless we have one of them a lil more unhinged in this department. claps hands* What if Konig is the more unhinged one and Ghost just doesn't know how to handle his feelings or Konig, like, does anyone really wanna make the over 6 foot tall batterying ram upset. Anything can happen in delulu land

my fanart is literally made up shit if you were dating Ghost ooc XD

love that the whole fandom are in on the joke of eldritch/ocotpuss/cathulu Konig since the chibi drawings of him look like a cute octopuss and the bio updating and saying His hood hides something more hideous. I'll check out your fic….(hehe heat cycles)

btw. sorry for the late reply. fell asleep after work (¯﹃¯) also I'm bad with writing hehe

hey, don't worry. life outside the machine takes precedence! plus, sleep is gooood, rest to your brain while increasing your chances of dreaming of your blorbos! it's a win-win, but thanks for replying.

now i must absolutely write that eldritch!könig/civilian!ghost fic! i have so many ideas that i left xeno!könig and his tentacles aside for a while, but after i've dealt with the five different colonel!könig/recruit!dommy mummy!reader and colonel!könig/tmale!base medic, perhaps i'll have some time to figure it out!

oh! don't even say it! today i was all excited about a fanart idea i had while at work, then i was confronted with the reality of actually drawing it... what an ice cold shower!!!

i'll get back to it as soon as i get over the trauma! but good luck with your studies, you're already ahead!

pretty pixel vessels!!! i am also very nitpicky. in fact, i've noticed, the more concrete an idea i develop of könig, the less open i am to changing interpretation (even though i still like reading others'!)

the only thing i am glad about entering the fandom when i did is that i initially conceinved this blog as a magnus archives fanblog. if it started as a könig simp blog, i would probably have called myself something like... königsheftyballs or something and i'm so grateful that didn't happen. im' much happier as a jaredhopworthsknickers!

and yes, smutty ghost fanart was my gateway drug.

(i don't know if i remembered linking you the fic in question that sold me over the ghostsoap ship, but it was this one.)

for the audio, it's easy. here's the link and happy listening! (very nsfw, very explicit). it's one hundred percent out of my headcanons: no, könig the forty-plus-year-old colonel is not simon 'ghost' riley who got his mask at a hot topic or halloween costume shop's little bitch.

time to pull ranks on that one!

(still, enjoyable listening and great voice acting, though!)

true, but them being affiliated with opposing factions opens up interesting scenarios: could either be captured by the other? could that mean the the captured is assigned to the capturer for intel extraction or other expedient? could it be that each finds out that the other is way less sadistic and more compassionate and simply human and matter-of-fact than they initially thought, which changes the mutual way they see each other, while still being wary, because of their curcumstantial enmity?

commonalities? they are both masked, they both have something to hide, something that hurts to this day, the need to create someone who can endure interfacing themselves with the world and its demands while their tender cores still reel and recover, but that they can put aside, when they're alone, to catch breath and regain their whole selves or, the opposite, feel incapable to abandon even when no one is around, as they have become too fragmented.

just throwing ideas around, but there is so much to dig up.

their similarities might draw them to one another: could they have finally found someone who gets it? could they afford to be a little vulnerable, to show a little bit of their soft bellies and hope not to be stabbed from side to side?

but, being enemies who work for different factions with different goals surely would stand in the way: if trusting and opening up is harrowing and dreadful, doing so with an enemy operator can be outright fatal... so much at stake, but what if this were the only chance they have at genuine human connection? a friendship? comfort in wach other's bodies? darethey hope for more? are they delusional? is the imprisonment getting to them?

re: your ooc fanart: and that's brilliant all the same! my latest fanart was nothing but an excuse to put könig in a skimpy little outfit and parade him around! if you like ooc ghost dating your insert, do more of it!!!!!!

i always laugh when someone comes along, thinking themselves smart by pointing out that "well, akshually ghost and könig would never date in canon", because you're in the wrong place, luv. go play the game, write/draw your canon-compliant stuff or only interact with fic and fanartists who are as attached to canon as you, but stop yucking in everyone's yum. it's called fandom, not candom.

i will go on a perilous mission to find all the ghost/könig artists i can and report back, sir! yes, sir!

(by which i mean, i will write you in the inbox or leave the links in the dms, so you'll find them when you have time. no hurry!)

n_n

#jazmeanb #asks #cod #call of duty #könig #konig #könig cod #konig cod #könig mw2 #konig mw2 #könig mwii #konig mwii #könig headcanons #konig headcanons #simon 'ghost' riley #ghost headcanons #ghost/könig

[nyctodromist]

Hello, average person here! What do you love most about Cultist Simulator/the Mansus/Glory/Nowhere/Hours-From-Light, Stone, Blood, Flesh, Nowhere/Names/Long/Know/Occultists/Locations?

(What's a Suppression Bureau aha dw pls speak freely and at length we are all I am seated and listening)

hi! oh boy, that is a lot to talk about.

i'm sure i don't know what you mean by a "suppression bureau" either, so let's just take it from the top, shall we?

my favorite things about cultist simulator are easily the writing and the lore. the way this game is written is like nothing else i've ever seen and it is so magical to me. i don't have much to say coherently, i just love the writing style this game has. and the lore! the fucking LORE! this universe is so fucking wild! story and lore are pretty much always the most important thing to me when i'm getting into new media, and cultsim's grabbed me as soon as i started looking into it. it's so interesting!! there's so much to chew on!! i am rolling it around in my brain at all times!! studying the secret histories is not enough i need them injected into my veins

for one thing, i absolutely love the mansus in general. Fucked Up Houses are one of my favorite things in fiction, and i think the mansus definitely qualifies as a Fucked Up House, though it might be more subtle in that status than other ones that come to mind (but still associated with the color blue, huh?). in terms of actual locations, i'm particularly fond of the orchard of lights, the malleary, and the wood! the malleary has one of my favorite quotes in the game:

my favorite door is the spider's door. no particular reason, just vibes

oh, and while not part of the mansus, i'm really interested in the house of the moon! like what the fuck is even going on with that. why is there a mirror realm to the mansus? why is the fucking wheel there? also i love the meniscate forever and ever she is so lovely

(also, what's the meniscate's relationship with the wheel? i was always confused about why the meniscate was the hour who favored you if you balanced heart and moth in dancer since she didn't seem to have anything to do with those principles, until i remembered that the wheel still turns in the house of the moon and the wheel's aspect was probably heart/moth combined, so if you balanced them, in a way you would have the wheel's principle, but the ascension itself doesn't seem to have anything to do with him, so how does the meniscate actually factor into that? but i digress.)

the glory? yes. yesyesyesyesyes! hi. did you know i'm moth-aligned? did you know i'm literally a moth therian? holy shit. yes. please.

base instincts aside, i love all corrupting horrors, but blinding light is definitely up there in my favorite kinds of corrupting horrors. also, gameplay benefits aside (i do not know how to live without a position at the institute), this is why physician is my favorite legacy:

i think this specific description of the glory is what really captivated me and made me fall in love with it. there is so much warmth in these words

i have nothing intelligent to say about nowhere. There's Fucking Worms. i like worms. perhaps not these worms. i imagine them learning to work people from the inside is like what happened to jane prentiss in the magnus archives, except a lot less fun for the person involved, because these worms do not love you. while we're on the topic, though, here's something i've been thinking about:

the applebright has a library!! i want to see her library!! and yes, i understand that doing so is probably an objectively bad idea given that she is a god-from-nowhere, but i want to see her library nonetheless. this seems like the type of thing that could go very wrong very quickly, and i can't wait to see what kind of wrong it is

hours i love, in no particular order: the moth, the mother of ants, the lionsmith, the meniscate, the flowermaker, the forge of days, of course the sun-in-splendor, and most recently the sun-in-rags. i don't know if there's anything about him specifically, i've just been rotating him in my brain lately. say what you will about poppy lascelles, but i think the sun deserves nice things every once in a while, he's been going through it

do the followers fall under the "occultists" category? neville and enid are so so precious to me, i love knock, i love them, i am holding them so gently in my hands. valciane is also one of my favorites and do i honestly have to explain why. look at her. LOOK AT HER. FUCK! and also ysabet because she's moth and she's aro and non-monogamous to me. this woman is never going to have any kind of conventional relationship nor has she ever wanted one. ysabet does whatever ysabet wants. i feel so much solidarity with her. literally me too

my favorite locations in the wake are the ecdysis club and morland's shop (and by extension, rooms behind a bookshop, which is my favorite headquarters). ecdysis was my discord handle for several months just because of the club and i was so mad when the username change hit and someone else got it before me lmao. i don't think i have strong opinions on any of the vaults other than the obligatory Fuck The Boat. port noon is chill but i could never i am so invested in the hours

#bernie talks #asks #cultist simulator #I'M SO SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO ANSWER THIS #THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE QUESTIONS THOUGH!!

[whumptober]

Hi there, I’ve sent in a similar ask before on anon and never received an answer, I’m hoping it got eaten by tumblr, but in the future can you try to avoid making prompts that are heavily tied to disabilities (examples from this year include seizures, crutches, allergic reaction, and panic attack among others)?

The nature of this event means that a lot of the time these topics end up not being handled with the care and respect they deserve, as completionists will often spend a day or two per prompt and don’t factor the time in to properly research the topic in order to be able to handle it respectfully.

I would also advise against promoting prompt fills that are ableist or romanticize/trivialize disabilities in the future as well, an example from this year being the gifsets for the prompt seizures. I am asking you this as someone who has epilepsy and has historically seen a lot of offensive and sometimes potentially dangerously misinformed prompt fills come from Whumptober both this year and in years past where seizures has been a prompt, and from input I’ve gotten when discussing this and conversations I’ve seen and been a part of, while I am not as familiar with ableist tropes that apply to some of the other prompts, I know that other disabilities are similarly poorly handled when they’re given as a prompt by this and similar events.

I don’t think that the mods or most of the community are being intentionally ableist, but there’s a lot of unintentional ableism in the prompt fills and the prompts being chosen. I understand that this event is a lot of work to run and is intended to be fun, but by allowing even unintentional ableism to be as rampant as it is in this event, there are a lot of people who are either being alienated from the event or finding it a lot less fun.

Hi there, thank you very much for this ask and for bringing this issue to our attention. Unfortunately it seems as though Tumblr ate your last ask. Firstly, we would like to sincerely apologise for any harm which is has been caused by these prompts. In creating this prompt list we tried to avoid using ones which could cause offence - and avoid a repeat of the "blindness" issue. But what we're learning is that we didn't go far enough in our efforts. And we apologise for that.

We did make an effort to fix the issue with the prompt "seizures" by changing the tag in order to avoid that tag being filled with fills when it could be used by people to have real life discussions. While that worked to an extent, it is clear that the message didn't reach everyone. We made an announcement post, but it seems like it wasn't seen as much as it could have been. We can't blame people for that - we have a tagging system we use and have encouraged people to use, so of course we couldn't expect every participant to see that we had announced an exception. This was a learning experience for us.

In terms of reblogging, we have a team of volunteers who generally run the archive, but for the prompt day including seizures I was in charge of reblogging. I wasn't sure about reblogging gifs, but I realised that I had reblogged some by accident. That was my bad, and apologies for that. One thing we would like to say though is that we can't ask our volunteers to look through every post that they reblog. With how many creations which are made everyday too, we just don't have the resources or capacity to check every piece of work. But we also don't want to get rid of archiving altogether. So in this step at least, there's very little we can do.

We'd like to improve. We're aware of the stretch of Whumptober and the number of participants. We can't tell everyone they must do their research- there's just no way to enforce that. However we can encourage people to be mindful and thoughtful in regards to what they're writing if they're publicising it, and this is something we'll try to do moving forwards. We can't control what people make, but we can encourage thoughtfulness and mindfulness.

I saw in a mention after reading this ask that someone had pulled us up for being more considerate of AI art and the artists participating in Whumptober than we were of this issue. It made me really uncomfortable reading that because I realised it was right. So thank you for pulling us up on this.

We obviously can't stop the unintentional ableism or tell people they cannot participate if they don't have time to research. But we can limit it by being responsible ourselves and working on what we can control.

I hope you can see that we're going to work on this. We'll be more mindful of prompts, we'll encourage our participants to be thoughtful and mindful and we'll try to avoid using tags like seizures in the future. We're also actively discussing what else we can do.

Whumptober is for everyone, and the last thing we want to do is exclude people with our own lack of understanding.

- mod claire

#asks #haikyuupaladin #whumptober2022

[rockybloo]

Serious Rocky Talk Time

I've mentioned this before on Twitter but in all honesty I should actually talk about it here. And that topic is basically people possibly forgetting I'm just some random person on the internet? Like, I'm not a professional, I'm just sharing my OCs and stories on the internet almost as sort of a spot to archive them???

I appreciate all the kind words and people that enjoy my stuff-SINCERELY I do. But I also want to nip in the butt the potential for people to basically form what the kids are callin' a "Parasocial relationship" these days.

Sometimes, people get overly familiar with me because I've responded nicely to them (because I try to keep things nice online). Or I've notice there's been times I've rejected something or posted a boundary in relation to something a person might have recently said or asked. And it's nothing personal...like ever. But people will suddenly apologize profusely because they think I'm mad?

Like-I do not post when I am genuinely angry. That is a recipe for disaster on the internet. Same for when I'm sad. I grew up on the internet and have done my good bit of vent art and journaling during my early years over on Deviantart. I dropped the practice getting older because sharing my personal emotions on the web to a bunch of what are basically strangers weirds me out now.

Me turning something down or posting a boundary is for my own comfort. Because I dislike being uncomfortable to please others. And I know for a fact not everyone reads everything I post. Or sometimes I just forget to post something important just like recently with the "Please do not suggest things" post. Because I sincerely forgot "Oh yeah, more people are following me so I should probably share this since many do not know"

In relation to the whole "no parasocial relationship thing", I'll repeat that I'd prefer not to be private messaged unless we're mutuals. I don't feel comfortable in a small chat with one other person I am not familiar with. This is in no way meant to be me assuming you guys are weirdos or anything negative-it just comes from past experiences of growing up online where I've forced myself to be ok with private messaging and have felt HORRIBLY uncomfortable to entire time.

I know I've stated this before and I know people will still continue to private message me even after this post but I will continue to not respond to said messages. I know it'll come off mean and rude but I prefer more public conversations with followers.

Once again, I share my boundaries so I can be more comfortable while telling stories. And I know some will read this and still think "OH ROCKY IS MAD" but I'm not.

I just know there's a ton of new people around here now and I haven't spoken up much about things I'm okay with.

And if for some reason, any of the things I've said make you go "Oh ew, I don't wanna follow Rocky anymore they seem strict" then you are completely free to do so. My feeling won't be hurt. I just don't like being stepped all over just to seem nicer. I'll continue to share boundaries if something pops up that weirds me out or if I forget one just so people know.

I'd rather someone know what I dislike than never speaking and being too uncomfortable to post anything anymore.

#rocky rambles #important rockypost

[wackywheel]

what is rhsmp??

hi anon! you have invoked the beast with this innocuous ask! thank you :)

rhsmp, or Roughhouse SMP was an smp run by and played on by, as you'd assume, roughhouse! the server started in late october of 2020, and... didn’t really formally conclude? i’m pretty sure the server itself is offline, but it remained playable for nearly a full YEAR after launch. for those unaware, roughhouse is a group of streamers/content creators who mostly met on/during smplive/smpearth. while some friendships predated both servers, the group really only came together during smplive, and finalized being solidified during smpearth. here's their yt channel for their podcast! (their podcast thats sort of on hiatus but its ok its fine its fine we're coping its fine)

while most of the server's run was it simply being a normal minecraft smp for the group, as well as a few friends of the group at the time, such as crumb, sophietexas, a LOT of their s/o's, and fuckin. rav the rapper of all people. yes, as in that rav the one that was on epicsmp.

like most collaborative cc content from 2020 (ie; smpearth, earlier dsmp vods, sbirust) as you'd expect, most of the vods are lost! yipee (derogatory!) the key word there, though, is most. luna and poke have every single one of their vods fully archived! everyone please thank luna and poke. for highlight videos, again, luna and poke are absolutely carrying, especially in luna's case. they have a TON of older rhsmp highlight videos you can find on their main channel! poke also has a few highlight videos, as does james. (...on the topic of james, though, finding those videos may be a bit tricky. the guy privated all of his main channel videos, so the only way to watch his stuff is to either use this archive channel that someone set up (with the downside of the videos being in 360p at best,) or to ermm maybe? maybe join this discord?? and ask for the james archive? and about rhsmp? totally not me shamelessly plugging it?) every other pov, though, has sadly been lost to time. F in chat and the like.

but, enough about vods and lost media, let's talk LORE! rhsmp really didn't start out with intended lore, nor was it ever scripted or acted out, but it very much WAS present, whether it be in the background for the majority of the smp, or right in the forefront right near the end of it.

the two biggest and most noteworthy instances of lore imo were the Console War and The Forbidden Blade of Roughhousia.

let's start with the first one. the Console War was a short, one stream or so long altercation that involved luna building a GIANT XBOX Series X to rival michael's giant and just a little bit ugly PS5 in spawn. it wasn't entirely a "war" in the sense of there being battles, but more in the sense of destruction and petty, low blows. an ingame cat kicks the bucket. an important structure blows up. a god causes problems on purpose. y'know, normal stuff!

speaking of a god, let's talk about The Forbidden Blade of Roughhousia! rhsmp's server admin was the one and only ogbeefstew, and if you're familiar with him already, you likely know what i'm about to describe. for those unfamiliar though, i'll summarize; beef is a silly little quirky fucking unhinged creature. and we love him for that <3 during the server's white elephant gift exchange, beef's gift that he inadvertently submitted by proxy of luna was. uh.

this! the forbidden blade! forged by a god! offered up to mortals as if it were nothing more than a toothpick! i don't think any form of me trying to summarize the impact of this item would do it much justice, so i'll just link poke's vod of the gift exchange to let you watch the carnage yourself. (the sword itself comes into play around the 2:49:00 mark) aside from that though, beef has actually talked about the server's lore in retrospect! a friend and i have been trying to track down the instance in a vod of luna's so obv take this with a grain of "source: dude trust me" flavored salt, but the jist of it is that when the sword was finally broken, the server would either end or reset into a new world. very cool stuff for something as small as a friend group smp!

EDIT: the clip in question has been found! you can watch it here! the jist of the clip is that luna, beef, and dink were discussing how they would theoretically ‘reboot’ the world for a season 2. beef suggested that whoever had ended up with the sword would end up snapping and killing everyone, including beef, the admin. this would then reset the world. how? idk lol

now, with all of that being said, should you watch rhsmp? if you're okay with only having two solid povs at your disposal, then sure!

if you do seriously want to watch this server/series, i would mostly recommend luna's pov of highlights, as its a nice intro into the funny little world that had been built up. if you're dedicated or curious enough about the lore, their vods channel is also the first place i'd recommend you start, before moving on to poke's.

tl;dr- god i love it when minecraft servers accidentally get a crazy compelling storyline that very few people ever know about after the server closes. i love having all of this knowledge trapped in my brain. please watch rhsmp. help me.

#roughhouse smp #rh #pokay #wuna301 #michaelmcchill #michael mcchill #ogbeefstew #beefstew #smplive #smpearth #<- for reach lol

[royalarchivist]

hey, can u not censor swear words in ur transcripts, heres a post explaining why

but in short: its considered ableist and infantilizing to censor anything in transcripts, especially swear words, cause not only are you giving hoh and deaf ppl a different experience from hearing ppl, but ur also infantilizing them by disallowing them from hearing something as simple as the words "fuck" and "shit"

deaf and hoh ppl are not innocent lil pwecious uwu soft beans and have just as much rights to hear swear words as hearing ppl, and by censoring swear words ur just being ableist, infantilizing and disrespectful

so yea, when it comes to transcripts do. not. censor. a. single. word. nobody cares if censoring words its a part of ur typing style or if its uncomfortable to fully type out swear words, accessibility for disabled people should always, always, ALWAYS come first before ur typing style

I've responded to something similar in the past, but I know there are a lot of new folks that have followed recently and things tend to get buried on the blog, so it's worth reiterating.

I do agree that there are a lot of issues with subtitling and transcriptions in media, especially in the past few years, and I'm glad we're seeing more conversations about it, particularly after this disaster started circulating:

Ugh.

But this ask is about my blog and not about film industry stupidity, so let's focus on that.

As I've repeatedly said, I don't leave things out or "censor" things because I think people are too innocent to see a curse word online (because let's be honest, that's stupid). However, I do think it's a bit unfair to assume I have bad intentions, let alone ableist intentions, with my transcripts!

I started this blog mainly because I wanted to share clips with friends, and I didn't want to clog up my main, but the posts started getting more attention than I expected. Every once in a while I started adding quick transcripts here and there, and full transcripts on rare occasions. I started doing subtitled videos after translating a few clips for the KarmaIand community, and then I kept it up because it's fun and good video editing practice. For me, the determining factor for whether or not I do something is ultimately a matter of, "Do I have time?", and I usually don't! Today, I'm using that handful of minutes to respond to this instead of working on video stuff.

I took a quick glance through the blog and I'd say only 70% of posts have any kind of transcription (if I'm being generous), and even less have full transcriptions. This blog isn't meant to eat up my time; it's a side hobby I'm not getting paid for. I'm just sharing goofy clips because they make me smile, and I hope they can make other people smile too. This blog isn't a priority for me, and it's not an official / professional archive, nor do I want people to treat it as such!

As far as the "Nobody cares" part, I care!!! I rely on subtitles for everything I consume, and I'd genuinely love to be able to write full transcripts for every single video every single time and not "censor" things so I can help other people like me. But like I've said before, I can't, and that's a topic I'm not going to get into because it's nobody's business! ¯\(ツ)/¯ I hope you can respect this boundary. It's not a matter of me having a "typing style".

Ultimately, this is my take on the matter: if it's a choice between doing transcripts to the best of my abilities or just posting things with no transcripts or subtitles at all, I'm always going to choose the former.

Even though I'm sad and disappointed that some people are quick to assume the worst of me and my intentions solely because of what I put (or don't put) in the description of a goofy little MCYT video, I do appreciate your passion anon, because this is a big issue! Unfortunately, this is as much as I can help, but I'm of the belief that any effort made in good faith is better than no effort made at all.

For folks who want full transcripts that are very professional, I highly recommend checking out @mcyt-transcribed! They've got a great team, and they've even transcribed a few of my videos, which is nice! I've always appreciated what they do, and I think they deserve a lot more love and recognition.

I know this is a very long post and not what people signed up for when they followed this blog, but I like addressing this stuff because I feel like, in this community especially, people tend to have a habit of letting things fester. And that sucks! We're all just here to watch people make jokes and play block game, after all. I think open communication is key to resolving most issues, and even though people won't agree on everything, I hope they're able to walk away from the conversation without any hard / hurt feelings and with a better understanding of the other person.

#replies #anon #I'm genuinely so tired of seeing people fight in this community #I almost didn't start this blog because I was so sure I'd have to watch people picking fights with each other in the notes of my posts #and if I have to see that kind of twitter stupidity here I'm going to lose my mind #but everyone's been polite and funny so I'm inclined to keep on sharing clips #but full disclosure the moment it stops being fun #or the moment I start getting annoyed I'm outta here #miss me with those bad vibes #(also this is 100% not directed at you anon I'm just very sick of Twitter drama and cancel culture it's so dumb) #I'm just here for a laugh. that's it. #also I didn't realize you could add embeded links to asks now that's pretty cool #I could've phrased part of this as ''I'm not going to ignore my wellbeing for the sake of MCYT videos of all things'' #but I also know this community has a habit of villainizing people for setting boundaries or saying no #:/ #FAQ

[menalez]

saw the list of good radblr accounts to follow. Just wanted to point out girlsmoonsandstars got into fights with people on if sexual orientation can change girlsmoonsandstars(.)tumblr(.)com/post/639880227560013824/im-starting-to-have-doubts-about-the-born-this /// girlsmoonsandstars(.)tumblr(.)com/post/639954347157078016/the-linguistic-distinction-between-lesbian /// there are way more you can see it in her archive in january 2021. idk why radfems keep asking lesbians if they can change or not

i really disagree with her statement of "lesbianism is the way you live"-- it's not about the way you live itself. a bisexual polilez can very much live exactly like a lesbian, but if she has been previously (or is currently) into men but chooses not to be with them for political reasons......despite the way she lives aligning with lesbians, her experience is still different from lesbians because it's not really as much of a choice for lesbians. lesbians don't experience attraction to men and then choose not to act on it, lesbians don't face attraction to men to begin with. in a way, we do choose to accept ourselves because we've seen many gay people who lived so much of their lives hiding and hating themselves and trying to change themselves, and we see that we don’t want that for us. so we choose to be true to ourselves instead of forcing ourselves into a miserable life. but the difference is, the "choice" is between: living your authentic truth and being with who you actually are into, or living a lie and essentially harming yourself in hopes of fitting into & being embraced by a homophobic society. for bi women who choose to exclusively be w women & call themselves a lesbian, the choice is more of an actual choice: they choose to pursue women exclusively even though they can be attracted to men and can have a relatively happy and/or passionate relationship with a man. it wouldn't be them fighting against themselves when they choose to pursue men. so i don't think its about the way you live, its about more than that.

i will say i expected the rest of her statements to be a lot worse here, but i think some of it is reasonable in some ways and some does seem, like she said, perhaps fuelled by internalised homophobia. i know many lesbians do worry and think, "ive never been into men and i still am not...but how can i know it'll never happen?" and that way of thinking only harms us and drives us crazy and i agree its not productive. but is that the fault of the "born this way narrative" or is that a product of lesbians being constantly told we will eventually find "the right guy"? because i think its the fault of the latter. it seems she places the blame on the former. if she said anything else on the topic, i haven't found it.

lastly i will agree that i take issue with the argument that lesbians who align themselves with harmful politics are necessarily not really lesbians. this is part of the reason the "lesbianism is the way you live" thing is something i disagree with too. a lesbian that aligns herself with political lesbianism and agrees with it can very much be a lesbian, so can a homophobic religious lesbian convinced she can live a 'traditional' life and fight her homosexuality. they are lesbians despite their beliefs and actions because lesbianism is innate to you and you can't change it through action nor belief. regardless of that, theyre still perpetuating homophobic shit and harming lesbians, and other lesbians have every right to criticise that. but i do think its harmful to jump to the assumptions that women who hold certain beliefs can't possibly be lesbians, because it ironically plays into the political lesbian rhetoric even though it's meant to combat it. it sends the message that political beliefs equals/relates to sexuality and that's exactly the argument we're fighting against to begin with! i feel like she contradicted herself by saying lesbianism is about how you live, while also saying that lesbians can live whichever way while still being lesbians. regardless of what path we choose, whether we choose to accept ourselves or not, whether we believe in a specific ideology or not, our lesbianism remains.

#anonymous

[starlitfunkster]

New Years 2024 Updates List

Hello! It's the first time I am ever doing this. It's because.. well, how do I put this? I got distracted. Very distracted. And also very unmotivated with my writing skills. Which is why there will be updates for EVERY blog. It will go in order of "how big the update is". In order it's "Not that bad" to "Oh god, the blog is on a long ass hiatus". I apologize in advance to Melody, the only other person who's helping work on Objects in Orbit!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

@lonelystarmenagerie - "It's no surprise that we are being ignored now. Obviously. Blogs with OC's that aren't based on the currently trending topic are very unpopular. Especially if they aren't fuckin' mary-sues/gary-stus. It sucks, but that's just how the world of Tumblr is right now. So yeah, that's our update for this year." ~Piko (Oh yeah, my resolution is to actually be out there more. You can figure out the rest.)

@starsoscsonas - "My my! We are also being hard ignored. It makes me very sad, though that's just because we are not truly out there yet either. I think my resolution is to make the blog much more interesting by bringing in some contestants that have been eliminated from my show! (It will uh.. come back eventually, from what Aria has told me.)" ~Star Lamp

@aibmonsterau - "I am.. honestly not surprised. Guys, this is AIB we are talking about. The one the community no longer posts about because the series is most likely dead. I hope it isn't, for the record! My resolution is to be there when Starlight Espresso comes out with the others. We wish you well, Groink." ~Recycling Bin

@pokemon196, and also @eeveelutionsdoingreviews - "I am 100% sure that the review blog is dead. I will go and delete the Discord Server, Application, and Blog. I will still be here on my own blog, and Kuro can do whatever she wants to do with hers! My resolution is for there to be people watching the blog's plot grow!" ~Sunny the Espeon

@askdusknfriends - "God, the images look cringe. Fuck it, we are doing whatever Quint's doing. My resolution is to get Aria to start doing that." ~Sugar (And don't worry, I'll see to it that there's no profile images b/c they look bad. ~Aria)

@asksomerobotmasters - "I think we are just going to stick to doing sketches, and have full-colored refs in the Characters page. I honestly don't want Aria to be stressing herself out. To be honest, I am worried for her. I shouldn't be, but I am. My resolution is to get Aria some therapy of some kind." ~Quick Man (Also I am not the one you should be saying this to. ~Aria)

@towermaidenpiz - "Guys the plot isn't going to start on its own." ~??? "Golly, this blog sure has been inactive, hasn't it? You guys do know I can still answer questions, right? I really want to! It's getting boring here. :(" ~Aria (PT)

@askiireplacements - "We're still here, the blog's just been very inactive without any questions to move the plot along. It's sad, but it is what it is. Also, my resolution is to find out what's in that mansion. No more fear.. I need to." ~Bamboo

@lrgs-tboiau - "Although the askbox is going to be emptied out, we will be accepting new questions! H-Hopefully this gives everyone more to do!" ~Lazarus (If a question gets ignored or deleted, just assume its for plot reasons. And most likely spoilers to that plot. ~Aria)

@asktheshadow - "I think I should just link it to the main blog.. maybe that'll give the poor guy some attention." ~Aria

@objectsinorbit - "Objects in Orbit will be on permanent hiatus until I can get over my writers block and write Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, and Episode 5. Then I can go back to taking a break from there. Until then, stay tuned for the new year." ~Aria

@dailydoseofditto - "…That blog's been dead for a while. It's still going to be up for archival purposes, just like eeveelutionsdoingreviews." ~Vi

#promotion time! ~ promo #dawn of 2024 ~ new years updates #(so many blogs to tag...) #(nah funk it i ain't doing it)

[curedeity]

Being cringe on main and posting a link to this fic again because somehow it has 100 views and not a single comment. And I like promoting my works, especially when I put a lot of effort into them. So hey, if you have the time, please go read (or reread this fic) and let me know what you think. Even get into a discussion with me and lemme know how you think i handled my topic!

For this what I'm actually gonna do is go back and reread this fic (as I type this) and give a bit of a retrospective on this. I find that I often have new thoughts about these sorts of fics when I return, and I just wanna talk about my process. In this part I will also be criticizing my work, which is just something I view as growing as a writer, but I know makes some uncomfortable.

Immediately my focus is on the style of the fic, this isn't my stylistic strong suit but I can really see the growth of my writing. There's some sentences that are a bit clunky and that I'd swap up, but I think it was a good choice for me to keep it simple 3rd person but personable.

"Though Maru was also unsure as to why she’d asked the question, it wasn’t like she knew what she wanted the answer to be." Ahh, one of my biggest struggles as a writer. I want the characters to have the conversation but don't know how to get there. I'm not that bothered by it here, but I know its a problem with my work. Going back, I might've have chosen to write a bit more dialogue between them before reading into this.

...I forgot a quotation mark at some point

"Zyro would battle a burger if it could blade" This is the best thing I've ever written. Gingka Hagane flanderizing Zyro.

Here is where I come into the first problem of this fic, I think cause of my style (and age) I have Maru react a bit too maturely. I really wanted to recapture this feeling you get of first finding out about sexism, and I don't think I manage the exact wealth of reactions.

"Maru wanted to stop thinking about it, lest the acid in the back of her throat keep climbing" Like look at this line? It seems minor, but its very much a bit too mature and clear. Something like "Maru's ears rang, her stomach churning in ways that made her think she'd eaten something rotten earlier. Where was home? Were they close yet?" It illustrates much more her trying to evade the conversation without as much of a sense as to why.

On the flipside, I really enjoy the dialogue between the girls. I think in a lot of writing a critiques, we struggle with the line of self-awareness the character should have. I think this conversation illustrates well a lot of depth. Ren's aware of her treatment, but she doesn't let that all slip to Maru because a) Maru's age and b) this sense of "you can't directly call it what it is, at least not confidently." It's a struggle I've had with a lot of girls I know where we're aware of our treatment but struggle to put a name to it to ourselves, to others, and it can take a while to build up to that.

Ren only starts to spill what she really truly thinks when Maru prompts her enough, I think the conversation is given enough time that finally comes naturally to her.

I think this conversation also highlights the struggle for the rest of the book, which is this very complex dynamic of "how to confront your friends over sexism" its a hard thing to accuse people of. You often feel like you're blowing it out of proportion. And it also identifies this dynamic about how sexism is a systemic version of harm. Maru is, by witnessing and knowing, also experiencing harm. And its a hard topic for them to identify and discuss.

Accidentally had a ; in the place of an ' im fine im fine im FINE

In comparison to Maru and Ren's conversation, Madoka and Hikaru's is immediately more critical of the problem. This is because it was a shorter scene, but also I do think it fits. Madoka and Hikaru are both older, and talking more about a general problem than people they personally know. They are much more confident and comfortable with identifying sexism then. It was also a fun place for to throw in my gripes about a lot of gender segregation in sports, a topic which I want to do more research into.

Not only that, this scene allowed me to quickly identify Maru's internal sexism (even if it may be interpreted as heavy handed). She, too, can;t help but view the "bladers" as "boys".

I think if I rewrote this I'd just do some more research so I could include more specific grips about gender segregated sports. I, in fact, think i should be more blatant and specific.

there is another ; where there should be an ' I WILL NOT BLOW UP I WILL NOT BLOW UP-

I would remove the "Is that also sexism?" joke. Its kinda about Maru becoming intricately aware of gender and suddenly viewing it everywhere, but I don't think its deep enough or serves enough. Its not a line I really like.

THERE IS A THIRD ; IN PLACE OF AN ' THIS FIC IS BEING NUKED FROM THE INTERNET ILL NEVER WRITE AGAIN THIS WAS ALL A MISTAKEEEEEEEEEEEE

Okay but this conversation between Madoka and Maru though... I have a lot of thoughts on it. It was the conversation that changed the most, and the hardest to write. Biggest changes I'd make is to not let Maru identify the issue as sexism (she is not ready for that) and maybe let Madoka talk a bit more about how many differing gendered experiences there can be in beyblade. I feel like this fic still worked a lot better than my first and that I could never be comprehensive, but it still feels like there's ground I want to cover. Also, some of the metaphors don't hold up.

On the other hand, I think this conversation just holds a lot of nice weight. Letting Maru seek out a positive adult influence was something that was important to me, especially with that influence being Madoka. And having Madoka recognize the effects on both of them this situation could have makes that theme more obvious.

I think maybe what this conversation needs the most is Madoka admitting that sometimes, if people aren't treating you right (being discriminatory) you do need to leave them, but Madoka is coming from a place where she also knows the kids Maru is talking about, and is hoping that Maru will let her talk to them on her behalf.

I mistook "role" for "roll" i think i need to actually start editing my fics god fucking dammit.

I think something I did a good job at throughout the fic is highlighting Maru's deteriorating mental state. She really becomes more and more uncomfortable in her own body and with the people around her. Even those she trusts normally she's now questioning, because she's becoming so aware of this systemically.

The other aspect of this scene is Zyro and Shinobu's rivalry and the way the show treats Ren. This is something I hope I recaptured canon from, while actually centering Ren and a feminine perspective. I think I did a pretty good job breaking down all the ways this is messing with Ren's self-confidence, and now, Maru's.

I normally frontload a lot of exposition, but I think waiting until now to do a shorter montage of Maru's thoughts does a better job. At this point in the narrative, it serves as a reflection on all the relationships shes beginning to question.

And now we're at the climax of the story and. oh god. Takanosuke. This might surprise people or they may doubt it, but I genuinely like Takanosuke. He's a very silly character in so many ways, and one of the more likeable on the cast. I genuinely think he and Ren have a good dynamic as friends.

But I really think, on a totally textual reading, he's one of the biggest forms of the show's sexism.

It's a very hard balance, critiquing such a loved and likeable character in a way that doesn't mischaracterize them. I really worked to keep his dialogue likeable and fun to show that he's still the same character. I put a lot of effort into him be the antagonizing force in the piece, but also someone Maru is strawmanning in place of the problem.

It's one of the elements I think has turned people away from the fic, while I find it endlessly cathartic. Having him have to deal with his mistakes and the implications of his character... its honestly the only place I can genuinely like him in.

Also, in this section, I like having Maru act harsher to Takanosuke's mannerisms that aren't things she'd normally mind, or that make her a bit of a hypocrite. I think that's always a good and easy way of showing how close to the brink a character has been pushed.

"What was it she’d heard Director Hikaru say about Ryuga at some point? Maru wanted to take this guy’s intestines and feed them into a garbage disposal. Yeah, that was probably right." Assume that Hikaru said this with like 20 extra expletives.

I honestly forgot that I gave Maru a named bey.

"Feet spread wide, hold your arms steady, Maru had heard all the advice, and given most of it herself" me and my girlfriend (comma splices)

The evolution of this battle, I think, was something that was off the cuff. I knew the two sections of it I wanted, and then just let it flow. I don't really like writing battles, but I find them good structures sometimes for emotional moments. Watching Maru's conceptions unravel as she admits more and more how personally shes taking this is something that I think hits hard in this section. It was also quite fun to write a battle of someone that doesn't have much experience, and the dialogue around that (with Takanosuke being kinda off-kilter having to battle someone in this state).

Something I like doing in writing like this is the slow unraveling about how these girls think of their own interests. Its something I also did a bit in Madoka's piece, but the way we see Maru going from talking about writing mechanics and get hint after hint about how she struggled to gain respect, seeing finally that it was the only place she thought she could go because of the pressure on bladers is something that really speaks to me personally. I used to be very involved in sports, and slowly got less and less into it, and I don't think it was just because I was lazy. Noting all those ways you tried to cover it up as your own choice, or your own preference, but really was because you just felt off in another environment? God I love shit like that.

Listen I love Maru's pov but I also wish i had written from Ren's POV just so you could see her panicked "oh shit oh shit oh shit" mantra when Maru starts crying

This is where the theme of them both being hurt comes to a head, and also a conversation I had to think about a lot and stll have to think about a lot. Its important to note that a lot of people dont bring up stuff like this over safety, and its important to respect other peoples decisions. At the same time, even as an observer, there are always going to be these certain thoughts and emotions you have. Basically, I wanted this piece to be a validation of Maru's emotions without saying that it was wrong for Ren to prioritize herself.

Ren thought of her own struggles as just that. Her own. Stuff she had to handle and go through alone. She thought that she could handle it, because it was just her, because she could be strong enough to handle others dismissing her because she had enough self-assurance. She was almost trying to prove to herself that she could be enough.

But she forgot these actions have systemic consequences, and is now being reminded of that.

(Also, Ren is older than Maru, and that colored some of their interactions, because ofc Ren doesn't expect Maru to be able to handle this)

I don't know if its a moment i did perfectly, but rereading it, I don't think its a moment I did horribly.

"He glanced over, catching her gaze, and immediately looking like a deer she’d run over." Takanosuke dealing with the consequences of being in a shonen anime

"Not some evil villain for Maru to defeat and thus conquer the evil beast of sexism." NOT ME USING EVIL TWICE IN THE SAME SENTENCE

This next part, above all, is what really encouraged me to write this fic. Everything beforehand were my gripes with the show, the handling, all of it, tried to be put through a feminine narrative perspective. After this, its about success, its about what could be, how to reach that point of just cathartic joy. Having Maru and Ren synchrome was the best idea of this project. Synchrome, in itself, is a simple but narratively effective system, and its so nice to have a shortcut like that to developing these themes. It immediately brought to mind images of sisterhood, of group power, and of how women support each other. Having Maru get to be the one entrusted with the bey was also so important to me. It would've been easy to give this moment of success to Ren, but this is still Maru's story, and part of it isn;t just about Ren being better (which i think wouldve been the implication if i gave it to her) but about THEIR success together.

I think if I rewrote this the end battle would be longer, but I was probably ready to murder something by this point in the fic.

All in all, returning to this fic, it holds up much better than its predecessor. The writing is more solid, focused, and I hope Maru's arc is compelling and engaging. I think Ren, Maru, and Takanosuke are all well-characterized in this fic, and they were so much fun to write. Creating this fic was an amazingly cathartic experience, and so was writing this retrospective. I dunno if I expect anyone to read, I hope you will and that you'll read the fic, but in the end, it meant something to me. That's the best type of writing.

#god i love this fic. i love it so much #ive spent an entire hour on this and i dont regret it. momentarily has made me feel honestly really good #beyblade #beyblade metal fight #genuinely noticing how much narrative i worked to put in here. genuinely seeing all my thoughts get unraveled. its really satisfying #its a good fic. im really proud of myself. im glad i wrote this cause it means i get to reread it #i should draw this someday godbless women #i dunno if ive ever seen someone do something like this? but i like sharing my thoughts about my own work. so why not! #beyblade shogun steel #fic

[ferrousseat]

Andrew Tate BBC interview (pt 1?)

Andrew Tate fans have been telling everyone to see the full BBC interview, so I'm trying to transcribe it so you can without giving him extra views

except transcription takes forever when you're a perfectionist especially a perfectionist with an offline life, so I probably won't actually finish until long after the investigation is complete.

BBC: We are doing an interview with you because you're facing some very serious allegations-

AT: Correct

BBC: -rape, human trafficking-

AT: Yep

BBC: -and also because there's a great deal of concern about the things you say and the impacts that they have on young people or women

AT: I don't think the concern's about the things I say, I think the concern is for the level of influence I have and the reach I have. I would argue that a lot of the things that are already out there inside of the "legacy media", "the matrix" as a whole are far more damaging than the things I say

Those who don't know Tate probably will find his word choice odd without not thinking much into it. His followers are going to see this as a cleverly subtle callout, possibly attributing this to a greater plan to use the interview as bait to trap the BBC into proving whatever claims Tate has made about the media, while everyone else will see this statement as a deflective tu quoque.

From this, he's already setting a combative tone, which also helps frame this for his followers as a debate where the interviewer needs to score points to win, not an interview where Tate needs to answer questions.

BBC: Concern about the influence you have being a harmful influence, but let's start with the allegation

Here Williamson acknowledges his initial objection but redirects him back to the allegations.

AT: Not necessarily a harmful influence, the fact that I have, I am massively influential over the youth, and I understand that, but it's my influence as a whole which people are afraid of, not necessarily the things I've said.

He completely ignores the allegations and emphasizes his influence, claiming that it extends beyond youth and is powerful enough to cause fear. I would speculate that he's trying to demonstrate the whole capable-of-violence thing and assert dominance or something. To his community, this is a flex. To regular folks, inspiring misogynistic harassment and violence is not a flex, it's incriminating.

Now Williamson starts to use prompts to get him back on topic.

BBC: Let's start with the allegations. Have you raped anybody?

AT: Absolutely not.

BBC: Have you trafficked anybody?

AT: Absolutely not.

BBC: Exploited any women-

AT: Absolutely not

BBC: -for money?

BBC: But you HAVE admitted using emotional manipulation to get women to work in the webcam industry for you.

AT: No.

Archived copy of his website

AT: Firstly, let's- let's begin at the- Let's start at the beginning. I'm facing charges—the one- the first one you mentioned, the rape one's already thrown out by a judge because of no evidence.

The closest I could get were allegations from 2015 that blame police for mishandling the investigation resulting in the failure to gather sufficient for a case. There's no mention of the case making it far enough into the court process for a judge to throw it out, only that the investigation was delayed and abandoned. This doesn't prove his innocence. Mishandling of rape investigations is pretty common.

AT: Secondly, it's very difficult for me to sit here in a very frank and honest conversation with you while we're in the territory of Romania about a legal case that's going on within Romania. I have to protect myself. I've agreed to do an interview with you, and I want to be as honest with you as possible, but I can't incriminate myself in any way, I have to be very careful what I talk about.

BBC: There are no charges yet

AT: Correct, there are no charges

BBC: A judge has said-

AT: There are no charges

BBC: -that more evidence m(?)-

At: and I've- and I've agreed to speak to you, but I have to be as honest and frank as I can while also protecting myself, AND following my legal counsel.

BBC: So let's talk about what you've said yourself, then. You have said, on the website for your ORIGINAL website for the Hustlers University, that you emotionally manipulated women to fall in love with you, so that you could get them working in the sex industry for your financial gain.

Reminder, archived copy linked above.

AT: As I said, I have to be very careful what I say, but let's put it this way: no women are coming out against me and accusing me of doing it.

BBC: Yes they are,

AT: No they're not,

BBC: Yes they are,

AT: No they're not. Who?

BBC is likely referring to the victims identified by anti-organized crime agency DIICOT.

BBC: This testimony from the current investigation-

AT: The current investigation which I cannot discuss

BBC: -there are other women (?)-

AT: which I know intimately and you don't, I can tell you right now that the la- the women who are in this case file, there are two American women who have been caught already admitting they're lying, and then nobody else is accusing me of anything.

BBC: To begin with, it's very common in cases like this that the alleged victims do not always see themselves as victims.

Referring to Beatrice and Iasmina, who also bear tattoos declaring themselves the property of Tate. BBC could've clarified that declaring yourself not a victim doesn't count because there's Stockholm syndrome / destructive cultism disorder, there's brainwashing, but the most common issue is that most people have a narrow idea of victims as weak, passive people, and have difficulty thinking of the survivor who fought back or continued to function "normally" (on trauma drive) as a victim. The cognitive dissonance between victimhood and one's pride and self-image can cause the brain to reject the victimhood and fill in the gaps with concepts like "I wanted this": this does not erase the trauma, however, because the body keeps the score.

The prosecutors seem to have reason to believe that Tate's messages, even ones exchanged with Beatrice and Iasmina, will speak for themselves so take that how you will, too.

AT /s: Well that's very interesting. It's actually going to be interesting, because if I was… a "matrix"-controlled… organization, my goal was to slander somebody and try to destroy their name, you're telling me that they've chosen a crime which 1) is heinous, of course, because it damages the person's credibility and 2) you're saying that even if everyone else involved, if you have five people and everyone's sitting there saying, "No, nobody's hurt anybody, we like Andrew, we've all worked together, we're friends, etc."-

Only two victims have spoken positively about Tate. I want to note that in the Larry Ray case, the deprogramming of the victims didn't happen overnight, so I don't think he's saying anything particularly gamechanging here.

This is his second attempt at the tu quoque to insinuate the BBC is out to get him. Your impression relies entirely on whether you believe he poses a threat to the news industry. It should be noted that broadcasting opinions in response to news is not the same thing as reporting news.

This is also the point when Williamson starts to interrupt him back (I know she has ignored his interruptions to continue to finish speaking but I don't consider that interrupting). I'm guessing this, and the yes-no-yes-no exchange, is what his fans wanted people to see when they were chanting, "watch the full video," in the comments. I would concede that he got a rise out of her, but also… he didn't exasperate her by being the good guy here exactly.

AT: I'm- No-

BBC: That's not what anybody's saying

BBC: Let me read you some of the testimony from the current investigation (?)-

AT: Can I finish my- Can I finish, please?

BBC: -one of the witnesses said-

AT: Can- Can I finish, please?

BBC: You're not answering the questions I've asked you. You're not answering the question-

AT: I am answering the question. You're saying-

BBC: Let me read you the testimony of one of the witnesses

AT: Y- You're saying- You're saying the people who are involved in this, even if they say they're not victims, that they're still gonna try and attack me, pretending they're victims.

BBC: They are treated as victims by the case, that's ongoing, (let?) and not all of them are saying that. One of the witnesses says-

BBC staff: Lucy, we can't discuss that

AT: We can't- We can't go into the case. The case is open and active.

BBC: Well let's just be clear that not ALL of the witnesses in the case are behaving in the way you describe and even those that are, it doesn't bar them from being treated as victims by the prosecution, by the case.

AT: We have an open criminal investigation. I am absolutely utterly sure I'll be found innocent. I know the case better than you. I know intimately and you don't. I have seen all the criminal files and the evidence against me and you haven't. I know the truth of what happened and you don't. And I'm telling you absolutely and utterly I've never hurt anybody, that the case that's been put against me is completely and utterly fabricated. And I'm never gonna be found guilty of anything. And it's very difficult for me to answer your in-depth questions because we're sitting here inside of the territory of Romania, I'm beholden to the Romanian legal system, and I'm not going to incriminate myself because you're trying to probe me. You are wrong, and we're going to have to accept that for now and ask- and talk about something else.

Here he's claiming innocence but also saying that he has to claim innocence. People may interpret this either, "he must be innocent if he's willing to say all that,' or, "liars usually talk too much or too little and he's talking a lot," it's just how it is.

Either way, the source is basically Trust Me Bro. Journalists are held to certain ethical standards and legally liable for disinformation, and their only iron in this fire is public interest and safety. Tate is under house arrest and is legally liable for self-incrimination. He has to lie if the truth makes him look bad. So we're back to square 1.

BBC: Let me read you then what YOU have said about-

AT: Sure

BBC: -what you have done.

AT: Sure

BBC: YOU have said, "My job was to meet a girl, go on a few dates, sleep with her, get her to fall in love with me to the point where she'd do anything I say, and then get her on webcam, so we could become rich together."

AT: I don't think that's what I personally said, I think that's -

BBC: That's exactly what you said (?)

AT: No, that's- that's- that's- No, I've never said that, that's something that you FOUND on the internet, doesn't mean I've said it, and-

Well, even if someone else physically typed up the words on the archived snapshot of his website, he OK'd it, for one.

I don't have time to comb through podcasts, Reddit, TikTok, YouTube, etc. looking for what he may or may not have deleted that can link him physically to saying these things with his own mouth, but for me, the website's enough to make it believable that video/audio proof exists or existed.

BBC: (?)

AT: -AND AND again, once again, if any female on the planet has a problem with me, I strongly recommend her to go to the police and try and pursue me for criminal charges. It's actually very interesting that me, one of the most famous people in the world who's been vilified by the "legacy media" in places all over the internet, while everyone's attacked me from every single angle, while federal agencies from multiple countries have called over 2000 women who know me, we stand here with zero new accusations simce my arrest, ZERO. If you took any famous person, any man of substantial wealth, and you call 2000 women who knew him, they'd find an ex-girlfriend who's upset, somebody wants money who's upset, they called 2000 people who knew me and could not find a single woman to make a new complaint-

Well, these are "2000" people outside of the 2 British women and up to 4 victims that aren't B&I. So "upset girlfriends" have already turned up. Also, narcissists are on good behavior with the majority of people in their network and direct their abuse to select scapegoats under their control (or that they're trying to control), so him not sexually abusing other women and harassing women no more than is socially acceptable doesn't mean anything.

BBC: You're being (?)

AT: The only com- The only complaints they have against me are the initial complaints, which we can prove are lies, AND that's where it stands. So I d- I'm not gonna sit here and allow you to pretend that I'm some kind of evil predator when actually I'd argue the fact- I'D ARGUE the fact that people who've been investigated to the level I've been investigated to, if you take the average man on the street and investigate his entire life for 14 months, call everyone who's ever known him, and vilify him in the media, and encourage people to come forward for money, and you try to contact every ex-girlfriend-

BBC: You think somebody-

AT: -he has ever had

BBC: would come forward and accuse those people of rape, and accuse those people-

AT: I THINK THAT YOU WOULD HAVE A LOT MORE-

BBC: -of manipulation

AT: I THINK THAT YOU WOULD HAVE A LOT MORE FLAK THAN I'VE GOT, I'm actually such a nice person that I've never-

Aand now he's attacking the interviewer while claiming to be nicer than her. I don't think they even included this clip on BBC, at least not on the tiktok version.

BBC: The BBC has spoken to somebody-

AT: -had anyone come at me

BBC: -since your arrest, who says exactly those things, that with you, it's all manipulation, there's an ulterior motive-

AT: Is this Sophie?

BBC: -to everything you've done-

AT /s: Is this "Sophie"? [air quotes]-

BBC: [nodding]

AT /s: -Oh, Sophie, the- the-the fake name, no face, no (?)…

BBC: "I was so intent on wanting-"

AT /s: -STORY that was invented

BBC: "-to please him and wanting him to be happy, that I was just kind of, 'Yeah, OK, do whatever you want.'"

AT: And what is she accus-

BBC: -(?)

AT /s: Has she accused me of a crime, this imaginary Sophie?

BBC: She's making the point that there is-

AT: Has she accused me of a crime.

BBC: -emotional or psychological manipulation-

AT: I'VE ASKED YOU A QUESTION, and I've allowed you into my house-

BBC: I'm asking YOU a question.

AT: CORRECT, BUT YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS HERE. Because I've allowed you into my house-

BBC: I'm asking you the questions.

AT: Correctly, and I'm telling you.

BBC: You get to decide the answers.

AT: No! We are equal here, I've allowed you into my house. You don't come here with a position of authority. I'm doing you the favor as "legacy media" giving you relevance by speaking to you.

Tate is under house arrest. This is an interview of Tate by BBC, so it would be a bit irregular for Tate to be asking questions, especially, as he claimed, he is more intimate with the details of the case. Interviewers don't usually provide information that's new to the interviewee. When they state information or claims, it's to give the interviewee a heads up so they know exactly what is being asked, and to provide the listeners with some context. The interviewer isn't even saying that the statement is true or not (even if it is true), they're just saying, "this is the assertion/situation that my question pertains to, that I will be asking you to address." So it's asinine to try to reverse interrogate a news reporter who's just conducting an interview or accuse them of bossing you around. This is standard operating procedure for interviews.

A couple more thoughts.

Tate keeps talking about "allowing" to posture for his followers. The "relevance" line is part of this, too. I don't think I need to explain why it's delusional to claim that the BBC needs Tate for relevance. Personally, before this week, I only heard him name-dropped once in a blue moon, even while being fairly active on social media. I think I even had him confused with Joe Rogan before this week. But the BBC, I know. They're considered a fairly factual source of current news and are also known for educational documentaries. The comparison is not even close.

They say that to the privileged, equality seems like oppression. A woman telling him how interviews are supposed to work is "bossing him around".

AT: And I'm telling you now. This Sophie which the BBC has invented, which has no face of, nobody knows who she is-

BBC: The BBC did not invent

AT /s: Of course not. And she, because you never invent anything, and she is not fi- she has not filed criminal charges against me, what are we talking about here?

It shouldn't need to be said that anonymization is standard practice with victims of violent crime, especially female victims who traditionally get criticized more heavily than the perpetrators.

I'm actually super tired and have a number of more productive things that need doing so I'm not sure I'll finish transcribing, if I do it will probably be a whiiiile and the case may be long resolved by then LOL but you know what, I tried.

I think I missed a line during one of the parts where they were overlapping each other, where there's 2 BBC lines in a row, but I don't think he really said more than a few words, so if I'm gonna correct it, it'll have to be later.

#misogyny #rape mention #sex trafficking mention #bbc andrew tate #andrew tate bbc #bbc tate #tate bbc

[tryst-art-archive]

Context: 2012, pt. 8? 9?

Turns out a thing I thought happened Later happened in 2012, so we've gotta hit this point, too.

This particular story is a traumatic one for me, but a large piece of it is other people's trauma, so it's going to be a bit more summary than usual, per my "Do no harm to others" policy for the archive.

I'm also going to consolidate events that took place over many years into one story contained in one post, for coherency. So, a lot of this happened before 2012 and some of it happens after.

There's quite a lot in the way of heavy topics, so if emotional abuse, depression, or suicide are topics you're not up to engaging in, then you should probably skip this one.

Background

I mentioned previously that there were three female friends who emotionally abused me. This is about the third, who we're going to call Cat for convenience.

I don't know exactly when the abuse started. I don't think it was immediate, but I do think it was in swing by high school. Most her tactics revolved around manipulating other people into doing what she wanted and undermining self-esteem. When she was having trouble getting her way, she'd grab the other party's wrist and steadily increase her grip until it hurt, sometimes twisting or using both hands if she needed to. She never left marks.

College increased the distance between us, but not right away. At my suggestion Cat and my bestie, Deer, began dating, and that relationship proved to be a tumultuous one. Cat enacted the same controlling, emotionally abusive behaviors on Deer that she had enacted on me. However, in Deer's case, it was more severe and more direct and typically centered around gender, sexuality, and their disparate interests.

By that I mean that Cat was attempting to mold Deer into the partner that Cat wanted. She was adamant that Deer, who at the time identified as a cis girl, present exclusively masculinely, becoming upset whenever Deer showed signs of femininity. She derided Deer's interests while demanding that Deer participate in her interests and hobbies without complaint. She also tended to foist labor onto Deer by pointing to learned helplessness on her own part; for example, getting Deer to make box mac because Cat claimed to not know how to boil water. (Not a joke.) They additionally had recurring disagreements around sex, in which Cat reasonably would express disinterest in it but much less reasonably would make Deer feel disgusting and morally wrong for having sexual desire at all.

All of this occurred without any of us realizing abuse was occurring, although the people in Deer's and my friend group expressed the opinion that Deer should break up with Cat. We could see dysfunction, even if we didn't grasp the scope.

Their breakup arrived early in 2011, which brought with it an aggressive and rebellious performance of femininity on Deer's part and a nearly immediate improvement in their mood and self-esteem. Moreover, Deer became rapidly much more like themselves than they had been for the past couple of years, and it wasn't long before they and Coyote began dating.

As for me, the distance between me and Cat increased by virtue of her being around the places I hung out less frequently, but we remained friends, and I walked the delicate balance of being retaining a certain degree of neutrality.

However, I'd intended to step away from my high school friends since high school itself, and I often viewed get-togethers as an obligation. This wasn't entirely fair to the whole of the group; much of my irritation about school itself was misdirected toward them, and a lot of the rest of my desire to walk away was, unbeknownst to me, about removing myself from the emotional abuse I didn't realize I was experiencing. I took the opportunity of Cat's reduced presence to increase that distance, but I continued to see both her and our larger friend group on a semi-regular basis.

So 2012...

Around the time that my gentleman caller and I broke up, Cat told me that she was feeling suicidal over text. Naturally I sat and talked with her while she grappled with the feeling; suicidal ideation is practically my area of expertise.

As our conversation progressed, she eventually accused Deer, my best friend of a decade at that point, of sexually assaulting her while they were dating.

Let me be clear: Deer never did that. I know this because the event that Cat described was analogous to an event Deer had described to me at the time when it happened, so I had Deer's side of the story already. What had occurred between them was that Deer had attempted to de-escalate and manage a situation by walking away until they had calmed down, rather than snap at Cat. At best what Cat was wrangling with was an unfortunate miscommunication--and if we accept that caliber of miscommunication as assault, then I have never met a single human being in my life who hasn't been assaulted.

This is an incredibly unpleasant thing to talk about, as such. It's absolutely critical to listen to victims, but likewise abusers frequently use the language of progressives and psychologists in order to frame themselves as victims of their abusers. Maybe Cat believed what she told me, maybe she didn't; I'll never know for sure. What I do know is that she brought this to me as an attempt to split me from my best friend of ten years, whom she had a personal grudge against and who threatened Cat's control over me, and she did this at a time when I was exceedingly vulnerable, being recently heartbroken.

It was a situation in which Cat was using white, gender-conforming womanhood to twist the narrative of her victim reacting reasonably to her abuse. I, personally, feel Cat was acting in bad faith based on everything else that happened in our friendship. However, I'd argue that even if you wanted to take Cat's version of events as the truth and assume good faith on her part, then you must also take Deer's version of events as truth given in good faith--in which case we have two victims with no aggressors. You have to accept that two conflicting realities can simultaneously be true.

And this is what Cat's assertion did to me in the moment. It was 2012. It was still five years before I'd go to therapy meaningfully. It was when I still subscribed to the binary morality that Christianity had bred in me. I was in a rough place, and a long-time friend was telling me that a person who I can credit for my ongoing presence in this world had done one of the few things that I find irredeemable.

My worldview and reality fractured instantly.

From that day onward, I began to perceive of reality not as a singular thing that we're all in on, but as a set of loose commonalities shared across and infinitude of realities. Every individual person is a reality unto themselves, and the common "reality" is just the parts the majority of us can agree on--the parts we can measure and attest to as a shared experience, essentially. In understanding this, I understood how there can be multiple truths at once, how there can be no good guy or bad guy in a situation; how "good guys" can hurt other "good guys" and how "bad guys" can do good things. I understood nuance; I understood that moral absolutism is innately foolhardy and more religious than not. I understood that almost nothing can be sorted as categorically always wrong nor can any one punishment be applied as a blanket to all sins.

Unfortunately, none of that told me what to do in the moment, and after muddling my way through the conversation and assuring Cat was stable enough to be left to her own devices, I spent some time thinking over what I'd learned, processing it, and then I shared it with Deer--which didn't exactly help them, but it was their business. They needed to know, from my perspective.

PTSD

The precise order of operations and years these next events occurred in I'm not so sure of, but they are the key points.

Deer demonstrated clear signs of PTSD--particularly around sex and desirability--following their relationship with Cat. This included such trademark signs as panic attacks when presented with a trigger, and fortunately their new partner, Coyote, was able to respond appropriately to the situations when they arose.

After a time, Deer began seeing a therapist about the recurrent breakdowns, and their therapist diagnosed them with PTSD as a result of emotional abuse perpetrated by Cat. As Deer learned about this and began to work through it, they also told me about the things they learned, and it slowly became apparent that it wasn't just Deer that Cat had emotionally abused; it was also me, and it was still happening.

It took me a very long time to reach a state in which I fully accepted that the emotional abuse had occurred and began pushing back against it, but the realization did sink in, and as I became more certain--more able to see what was happening--I got angry, and I little by little withdrew from Cat, even knowing it would cost me the rest of that friend group to do, with the intent to simply disappear like a ghost, as I'd done successfully in both prior instance of emotional abuse from a friend.

But Cat was not going to let me go without a fight.

How Dare You

One day, Cat called me out of the blue and told me she intended to kill herself.

I was, immediately, furious. I had by this time grown to loathe her, was trying to wriggle away from her, and what i saw when she said this was that she probably wouldn't follow through but if she did and I did nothing, I would be culpable for her death. In other words, she had made me responsible for her life--and the audacity made me see red.

Still, I completed the phone call successfully, obtaining reassurance that she'd do her best to not act on the impulse, and then we hung up. I stood where I was for a moment, thinking, and then made some phone calls; I looped Cat's best friend and parents in.

Here's the thing about that: Cat was in a different state than most of her support network. None of us could get to where she was in less than 2 hours, if memory serves. I therefore knew that involving people besides myself had very high odds of getting her hospitalized; I knew, from my own experience as a suicidal person, that hospitalization would be the last thing she'd want.

This was always the real struggle when talking to a fellow suicidal: do you bring in the big guns in case they make an attempt, saving their life in a literal sense, or do you protect them by managing the situation one-on-one, thereby saving their life in a practical sense? Choosing the former could lead to the person cutting you out of their life in fury, in retaliation for their messing things up for you, but choosing the latter might leave you with a dead friend.

Just this once, the decision wasn't hard: if she disowned me for sending her to the hospital, then that was a bonus.

She did, in fact, get put into inpatient for a time. I'd estimate maybe a month, during which period she called me a couple of times. One of those she did call me out for making the call, but then thanked/forgave me. Her parents sent me a thank you gift that I always felt guilty about.

The abuse resumed as normal on her return, but I had reached a breaking point. The clock was ticking.

The "Cat" Box

One of the curious things about my friendship with Cat was that we had a way of communicating tacitly that didn't align with the near-telepathic communication Deer and I were capable of nor the silent, deductive communication I'd shared with my former gentleman caller.

No, this was entirely different and unique; it was an understanding of certain similarities we shared that we shared with no one else. Qualities that we both kept quietly under wraps but which guided our actions more often than not. I suspect that we'd learned them in the same way: as a defensive mechanism against our own, original abusers.

These were, universally, our worst qualities. They were the things that made us manipulative, the things that made her emotional abusive, the things that made me act like a jealous, crazy partner.

When I became consciously aware of this--which I remember explicitly occurring on an occasion when we met up at a Panera--I mentally took all of those qualities and put them in a little white box which I called The [Cat] Box, and I resolved to never behave in those ways again.

This was shockingly effective. It turns out having direct examples of what to do or not is a really useful learning method for me; any time I saw myself behaving in a slightly dubious way, I would weigh the action I wanted to take or the thought I was having or the thing I wanted to say against The Cat Box and ask myself, "Is this something Cat would do?" If the answer was "Yes," then I didn't do that thing.

It made me, unequivocally, a much better person.

It also moved me closer to getting away from Cat.

The Escape

The end of my friendship with Cat felt somewhat abrupt. We'd been on a couple of outings on which she'd suggested I move in with her and some high school friends rather than staying with Deer and Coyote, and I'd turned her down repeatedly. At the time, I had some frustrations with my living arrangement (which I no longer remember the details of), but they weren't anything major. She seized on those complaint with an eagerness that gave away her ongoing intention to drive a wedge between me and Deer.

There came a day on which a text conversation between us led to her asserting very incorrect and insulting things about Deer and Coyote, particularly asserting that they were bad for me and responsible for my mental ills. I became immediately furious and told her off directly--which I don't think I'd really done directly before--pointing to how Deer's presence in my life was one of the only truly good things I had going for me, and Cat was way, way out of line trying to insinuate otherwise.

The conversation ended there, and that was the end of it. I was finally free.

Aftermath

But... I did have trauma about the whole thing. I never received a formal diagnosis, but I had obvious triggers and could be put into a panicked fight-or-flight response if something reminded me of Cat. I was terrified of her for a very long time, would react with panic if I saw women with hair similar to hers, and was constantly worrying about whether she'd try to retaliate against me and Deer for escaping her.

I functionally cut ties with all of my former high school classmates, to avoid the inevitable drama that would arise from trying to explain why I was no longer willing to spend time with Cat, and accepted that they'd likely always have an incorrect impression of me. It wasn't what I wanted, really, but it was a necessary sacrifice to be safe from Cat.

Over time, the sore spots healed, and on one occasion years later I accepted an invite to spend some time with a subset of the high school friend group that didn't include her. At that meeting, I observed that most of the girls attending, some of whom were roommates of Cat's last I'd heard, were behaving largely condescendingly toward me. This wasn't for class or stature reasons, but rather it was apparent that they didn't want me there. I concluded that, at some point, Cat had spoken poorly of me, and so they saw my being present as crossing a line.

I ignored it. By that time (much closer to now than not), I'd grown into my own and developed a strength of character that wasn't easily bruised the way it once was. They were exhibiting a childish, "mean girls" behavior, which only showed me that they weren't people I wanted to connect with. Likewise, even among the people who were friendly, there was only one I had any interest in reconnecting with. These, I saw, were not my people; my teenage self had been right about that. The things that mattered to me, that I found value in, they looked down on, and the method of socializing for many of them was predicated on belittling others to bolster one's own ego. I didn't need that kind of energy around.

Following the event, I got a text from Cat--the first since the disagreement years ago--looking to reconnect. I told her in polite but certain terms that I wasn't interested. I heard nothing back, but I felt proud to have come far enough to set a boundary like that. It wasn't something the old me had been able to do.

#emotional abuse #suicide #10s #2012 #Age 21 #context #info #me #healing

[sub-k-pop-archive]

just so u know jeno never said he didn't want to sexualized it was a big lie started by a person in twt that made a sexual tweet abt jeno when he was just 13! u have any proof for when jeno said it?

Hi! This answer got a bit long, so I’ve put it under the cut :)

Soo, if I understand correctly, a person who sexualized Jeno when he was a minor also made up that he doesn't want to be sexualized? Could you send me a link or anything about that? I'm not saying that I don't believe you, I'm just not sure I completely understand what you mean haha

And as for proof? Idk, lol. I just heard that he doesn't like to be sexualized, and then I saw other blogs not writing for him because of that same reason. So I just decided to play it safe for my own conscience. If you or anyone else wants to read smut about him, that's up to you. But even if the Jeno thing wasn't true, I don't think I'd be comfortable reading smut about him, as I've never really viewed him that way. The same thing goes for Jisung and Chenle, for example. Even though they haven't said anywhere that they don't like it, I'm just not into reading smut about them, lol.

#also while we're on the topic of people I don't archive much for #can someone tell me if the kris wu accusations are real or not? #because I've heard about them #and if they're true #then fuck him and I'm never reading/archiving anything about him ever again

[lightrises]

"Only in allowing her to pass..." — Hornet, The Radiance, and the means by which Hallownest turned its victims against each other

A quick note: I read Hollow Knight as an anti-colonialist text. As such I'll be touching on topics related to colonialism as it's depicted in the world of the game, and said analysis will reflect both a sympathetic take on The Radiance and a critique of The Pale King that won't pull its punches. If this sounds up your alley, hello and thank you for the read! Let us be sad about these bugs together.

———

So!! A while back I realized something about pre-canon that felt rather... "curious" is one way to put it, I think. To wit: for all the effort and scheming and determination The Pale King poured into trying to get rid of The Radiance, neither of his plans involved directly killing her.

Was that his long game? Well, sure, that seems clear enough. His tack changed from luring the moths away from their god and creator to a more literal form of incarceration once the infection became a factor, but at its core the end goal never really changed—The Pale King very sincerely wished to destroy Radiance via obsolescence. The Seer lends us foreshadowing to confirm as much:

[Image descriptions: Two screenshots from Hollow Knight, showing the Seer and Ghost in the Seer's alcove at the Resting Grounds. Across both screenshots, the Seer tells Ghost the following: "None of us can live forever, and so we ask those who survive to remember us. Hold something in your mind and it lives on with you, but forget it and you seal it away forever. That is the only death that matters." End description.]

(Which, by the way and given the context, talk about an extremely unsubtle allusion to cultural genocide huh!!! Whew.)

In any case, we're left with a whole bunch of machinations which build up to... well, two very roundabout attempts at committing deicide. That's kind of weird, all things considered! Why not just do the deed in one fell swoop and get it over with?

This could be for any number of reasons. Maybe the king was devoid of the means to instantly kill another higher being. Maybe his personal sense of scruples stopped him short of signing off on MURDER murder (although, y'know, the aforementioned genocide + eternal imprisonment = still cool and copasectic apparently!). Maybe the long drawn-out cruelty was the point. Maybe the idea of playing fuckign 4D chess with the circumstances was too delicious for him to pass up—that man did love to tinker and stick his claws where they sure as hell didn't belong—or maybe it was a little bit of All The Things. Who knows!!

But interrogating The Pale King's methodology on this count isn't what I'm here for, at least not really. The main reason I raise this question at all is that in her own way, Hornet did too.

"I'd urge you to take that harder path... "

See, going by The Pale King's actions and what The White Lady explicitly says, they both foresaw two outcomes wrt the infection: it can be allowed to spread, or it can be contained. At Teacher's Archives, Quirrel acknowledges the fact that Ghost is expected to do... something about this, but he doesn't elaborate on what HE thinks that's supposed to be apart from the obvious "Gotta bust into Black Egg Temple first". Hornet is the one person who presents to us—to Ghost—what's framed as a third option: confront and destroy the infection at its source.

And she doesn't bring it up like it's just another tactic for Ghost to consider, prim and indifferent to what they would do. She nudges them towards it, actively, up to the point where she throws herself into the fray against Hollow at a juncture that's uniquely dangerous to her and her alone just to make that option feasible.

Even when she's couching it in disclaimers that this is still Ghost's decision to make (and let's be fair, she's extremely not wrong about that lol), no one can pretend Hornet is unbiased. It's obvious in that buttoned-down Hornet kind of way that she is way the hell done with the increasingly tenuous stalemate that's kept Hallownest's desiccated corpse from collapsing in on itself. Personally it's hard for me not to read some Toriel Undertale-esque "My father was too entrenched in his own foolishness to pursue any course of action that would have DEFINITIVELY ended this" shade into her stance here, regardless of whether that's strictly true in canon.

And that bit—Hornet's hopes for an end to Hallownest's stasis, moreover her grim calculation of what needs to be done to get there—that's the bit I find super interesting but likewise tragic and depressing as shit, on multiple levels. In no small part because a) canon itself gestures towards Hornet feeling conflicted about the very plan she's pushing, and moreover b) she has at least two (2) damn good reasons to feel that way.

So, what do I mean by that? Let's look here first:

[Image description: A screenshot from Hollow Knight, of Hornet and Ghost inside the Temple of the Black Egg, standing in front of the unsealed egg itself. Hornet has been struck by the Dream Nail and her dialogue is displayed as follows: "... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?" End description.]

As the curtain is about to drop on things one way or another, Hornet thinks,

... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?

Now, looking at that last bit it's easy to go "Oh no, Hornet's worried that Ghost won't survive killing The Radiance!" And I do think that's part of it: Hornet is, categorically, not her father. By endgame it's clear she's not content to view her Void-borne siblings as tools to be used then disposed of. She's also well aware that as a healthy autonomous Vessel amongst the countless dead, Ghost is the only person left alive who has a fighting chance against The Radiance. Knowing someone is the only qualified candidate for the job doesn't make encouraging them to embrace a probable death sentence any less of a bitter pill to swallow, though. And odds are on that this sentiment extends to Hollow too, who IS going to die no matter what happens here. To put it bluntly, it's more than reasonable to conclude that Hornet hates the absolute fuck out of this.

But I don't think that's all there is to it either. Remember what I said earlier about The Pale King's bids for genocide? Well, it's not like the man deigned to limit his efforts to just the moth tribe.

"We do not choose our mothers... "

On top of everything else—an infected Hallownest being all she's ever known, the fact that she only exists because of the infection, the list goes on—Hornet has spent her life wedged into a position that's been uncomfortable and terminally unglamorous at best: she is both a daughter of her father's kingdom and of Deepnest.

Deepnest, which like the moths and many others was here long before the wyrm and his lady wife swanned onto the scene and the God Become Bug laid claim to everything the Light touched plus a considerable amount of change. THAT Deepnest, which has fought claw and thread to retain its sovereignty against same-said settler king, and for which Herrah not only surrendered her life but also agreed to bed her worst enemy, all in hopes of securing a viable future for her people (put a pin in that last part by the way, I'll come back to it soon).

Two Worlds, One Family (Ft. An Indigenous Woman Trying Her Damndest To Work With What She's Got Versus An Imperialist Who Only Signed Up For This Because He Needed The Political Favor THAT Badly, So It's The Height Of Dysfunctional Actually). Fun times!!!!

The baggage this entails for Hornet is gnarly enough without implications made by The White Lady and the pre-canon timeline of events and even Team Cherry's dev notes that the king may well have looked at baby Hornet, gone "YOINK", then ensured she spent the lion's share of her childhood reared within the pearly auspices of his Pale Court*. That would be rather advantageous for Him Specifically after all, the potential to mold a born foe into a future ally and even have her trained in combat under the same tutelage as her doomed sibling. And far be it from him to stop a grown Hornet—his own flesh and blood too!—from making Deepnest her forever home if she so pleased. He totally wouldn't be reneging on his "fair bargain made" by doing this one simple thing until Hornet came of age, not t e c h nic c a l l y.

If that is indeed the case, there's a non-zero chance Hornet's formative years were a hot mess of cultural alienation and being a good deal more privy than most to just how much of a bastard her father could be. There's an equally non-zero chance that at some point she stood or sat within earshot as The Pale King finally, finally dropped all pretense and euphemism to name the Light for precisely what (for who) it was.

See, in conjunction with the question that started this whole dang train of thought I've been asking this one too: Does Hornet know? When she speaks of confronting "the heart of [the] infection" does she know she's talking about not just a literal person but someone very specific? The Radiance, who god though she may be shares skin in the game alongside Hornet as a native woman screwed over by the same settler king, likewise deprived of her kin and saddled with a life gone horrendously pear-shaped?

I'll assume for the sake of exploring the possibility and because I think it's a likely one anyway that yes, Hornet does know. She knows, and despite everything can't help empathizing. She might even look at Radiance and see bits and pieces both reflected and slightly inversed in her own mother: Radiance was forced to the sidelines while her people—her children, the brood she was meant to lead and care for—died out under The Pale King's rule, and it's no stretch to assume she's at least as upset about that as she has been about everything else; Herrah too took drastic measures for her people's sake, trying to head off annihilation by relegating herself to the sidelines in an act that was as much calculated risk as an attempt to find wiggle room and leverage in the face of a nasty proposition.

A calculated risk that, if things continue as they are, might well amount to nothing as the rest of Deepnest gets eaten alive by the infection. It survived The Pale King's advances for so so long, only to fall here. Herrah's sacrifice would be for naught; the other tribes—themselves the king's victims—would keep succumbing to the infection too.

And this is where things fall apart.

"... or the circumstance into which we are born."

Let's be clear: I think Hornet is wise enough to know what's what here, that all the carnage and suffering falls on her father's head for starting this slow-motion trainwreck in the first place. Hallownest wasn't always Hallownest. This domain was Radiance's home first, along with many others. It was the worm-turned-king who rolled up on the scene unsolicited and decided this was a ""'problem""" that had to be """solved""".

But the fact of the matter is that he's gone and The Radiance is here, raging, seemingly inconsolable. Above and beyond being Deepnest's rightful heir, Hornet isn't in a position to countenance more splash damage even if the grief and fury fueling it makes perfect sense. She can understand without ever bringing herself to love Radiance, and she can bend her knee to practicality even if she hates the everloving shit out of it because the fact that it "has" to end this way isn't fair.

This lends itself to one last awful conclusion: that Hornet has probably considered and (rightly or wrongly) discarded the possibility that Radiance can be saved, at least not without dragging more collateral along for the ride. If even her mother and every other enemy to the king seemed to dismiss talking Radiance down as an option way back when... well. Why should Hornet hope for any better after things have escalated so far?

Again, it's practical. A practical net good is what Hornet strives for. And again, it fucking sucks.

For extra tragedy points, this makes Hornet's extended crypticness around Ghost followed by her last minute casting about for a reason to tell them "Wait, don't; not just yet" that she never voices even more of a gut punch. She can't bring herself to burden Ghost with the context that haunts her so, least of all when it might weaken their resolve to go through with what (she thinks) needs doing.

It's the "same song, different verse" which led to the mantis tribe and Deepnest being pitted against each other: Hallownest rigged the game so that two women who could have been powerful allies—who have a mutual vested interest in driving out settler rule—wound up poised as enemies instead. And how awful is that? The king for all his being extremely fucking dead still gets the last laugh, because outside of a miracle the game never manifests Hornet can salvage what her mother started and look forward to a future where Deepnest pulls itself back from the brink if and only if The Radiance dies.

Resolution comes at the price of a completed genocide. Add two more dead siblings to the unconscionable pile thereof, while we're at it. That's what it boils down to whether or not Hornet can bear to articulate it as such, and there's no grace or even a properly bittersweet ending to wring from this clusterfuck. And that is rough.

———

* This has been better explained elsewhere, but a quick rundown: The White Lady tells Ghost that Hornet and Herrah "were permitted little time together." On its surface this can be taken to mean that Hornet was still very young when Herrah was shipped off to Eternal Dreamland—except this doesn't jive with the fact that we meet Hornet as an adult. If the stasis kicked in once the Dreamers went to their rest, which in turn halted the aging process for every living bug in Hallownest, AND before all this Hornet experienced little by the way of quality time with her birth mother... I think you can see where I'm going with this.

To top it off we've got Team Cherry weighing in ominously from their dev notes on Herrah: "As part of the agreement for her alliance and her role as a dreamer, King gave her a child (Hornet). Was she allowed to keep this child or was she taken away?" This isn't confirmation by itself of course, but given additional canon details (see above): Can I get a "yikes" in the chat fellas.

#hollow knight #hornet (hollow knight) #hornet hollow knight #hk hornet #the radiance #hk radiance #herrah #hk herrah #hollow knight meta #sup folks it's been a minute since i dropped a whole dang essay but Here We Go!!!!!!

[damejanai]

Dameraji

2020.12.16

S: It's here

K: It has come

S: It's here. And did you know? Around the world now, there have been monoliths sighted?

K: As expected huh

S: And? The first one was in America or something, Utah huh?

K: Hmm

S: And then in Romania, Holand, and England

K: Those are the things that appear, disappear, and then appear somewhere else right?

S: Yeah, what, are they?

K: That, was me

S: Eh? You?

K: That was me

S: That was your, YouTube project?

K: That was for promotion

S: HAHAHAA Well well if you think about it sensibly it's probably it right

K: It's promotion for outer space

S: Ahhh for outer space. If people are behind it, it's probably not just one person right

K: Well yes, it's controlled by organisation by me

S: Hehehe, for you

K: HHAHAA

S: You are quick to reveal it then, if that's the case

K: I thought it was quite about time i reveal the information

S: This is, unexpectedly, my friends from university were also going on about it

K: Oh i see, they were helping to promote it?

S: Eh? You're still continuing that? Ahahaha

K: Coz, you casually brought the topic away, so i didn't know how long should i continue this

S: You know I like occult stuff, and many things happened in 2020 so, i was thinking, what, at the very last part there's something this mysterious happening too?

K: Me too, you know what shocked me most about this monolith talk was that, Yasumoto san was here before our recording, and I was talking to him. We talked about Hosoya san

S: Right

K: and how he is in ascension now. Of course he loves occult stuff and.... what? myths

S: Uh huh, yes

K: And Yasumoto san said, "Isn't Soma getting into that phase soon too?"

S: Hahhaa

K: We were talking about that and here you have it

S: HAHAHAA

K: I thought, whoa as expected you talked about Monoliths

S: First ascension after a few years break. But truthfully, like at one of the previous Damerajis, I said, "Ahh i feel like I'm going to go through ascension again". And honestly I think our moods for these few episodes were weird. Weren't we in rather high spirits?

K: Really?

S: Yeah so, it is starting

K: Just as expected huh

S: It's baddd eh?

K: We'll be going over together

S: You know it's the age where we can share our brains so

K: I know right, our databases are connected, by 5G

S: Totally....Can, we start?

K: Shall we

S: Saito Soma

K: Ishikawa Kaito's

S/K: Damejanai Radio

----

"in bloom"

S: We're gonna play one song later so it's not a bad radio

K: WooHOOOO Wowoowowow

S: You're reacting like that?

K: Hahhahaa

S: I've never even seen that on TV

K: Really? But isn't it common in anime?

S: No!

K: DoHYAAA!

S: What is that?

K: Album's out next week, DoHYAAAAA

S: AHHHH Ohooooi!

K: Such a happy thing~ happy~

S: So one song will be played here~

K: Come on if it isn't played here, where else would it be played?

S: Right? Dameraji has really been promoting it a lot for me

K: Amazing right

S: More than me promoting it myself

K: If i knew Dameraji was promoting this much I would think about it more.... Well I'll only THINK but that doesn't necessary convert into actions~~~ ahhaa So today we will be playing a song, and hearing some insights... but for the song, it won't be available in the archives

S: Yes, just that

K: So please just enjoy the insights

S: Yes~~

K: Only today guys~~ that you will be hearing the insights of the song while listening to it~

S: Well I've not really talked a lot about the songs.... well I have in interviews but in my own natural voice

K: Natural voice...

S: That doesn't mean anything... really.. it hasn't started (ascension)

K: Monoliths and natural voice....

S: HAHAHAA

---

~"Carpool"~

S: Ah yes, thank you, many have mentioned that, No Licence Driving

K: That's true right?

S: No no, all I did was sit in the driver's seat

K: Uh huh uh huh

S: I wasn't driving

K: But you know, those with no licence have no right to sit there

S: I was properly sitting in the driver's seat, not driving, but reading a book

K: Hahhahaha

S: Very properly

K: Seriously?

S: Uh huhhh. But this MV has been released and I've received quite a lot of comments.... many were saying that, " Isn't this a song about Kaito kun?"

K: Ohhhhh

S: I want to say it loud and clear, NO

K: Oh it's not a song from my point of view?

S: No no no, totally not

K: Hmmm

S: One thing was that, when i was writing the lyrics, i was thinking that i wouldn't like it but people might think that way

K: Don't say you wouldn't like it

S: wwwww

K: Whatever happened to the things you said last last episode?

S: www Well but you know, whenever i write songs, i don't really want to decide what kind of song it is about, and would like it to be interpreted differently

K: True

S: This "carpool" to me, is about youth. But it may be youth in your teens, or youth like us, before 30

K: Ho ho ho

S: So i think that hearing that the theme is "youth", you could still have different ways of interpreting it

K: Makes me want to hear the different interpretations

S: Yeah yeah yeah, at this point, it has one chorus and a little bit of the second part. But if you listen to the second part of the song, you'll probably think of it differently

K: Ohhhhh

S: Yes yes

K: That's interesting, so afterwards when we're not on air, you'll be telling me, "Actually I wrote it with this meaning in mind" (soma voice)

S: What, me secretly telling you stuff, sounds like that?

K: Huh?

S: No no

K: You don't realise it?

S: Nooo, "I wrote it with this meaning in mind"

K: "You know, I don't know how many people will get it though"

S: Don't do that your hair like that

K: That's what you do

S: That's true i tend to do that, well thank you, my album will be out next week

Song played: Carpool

K: I understand now, you know, when i was searching my name on Twitter, there were a lot of stuff that came up that made me go, "ah!"

S: Hahahaa, Like?

K: Isn't it about Kaito kun?

S: No

K: Ehhh!!

S: It's not a song about Ishikawa san

K: But you know, I don't mention it a lot but, my car is an open car, you know?

S: AHHAHAHAa..No.. STOPPP!! Doing what i'm good at

K: Screaming

S: STOPPPPP!

K: Ahhh that's when you really hate it, when your life's at stake

S: This song... when I wrote the song, the lyrics came to mind at the same time. It's true since I don't have a driver's licence, so the driver's seat is "your special spot"

K: Yes, my special spot

S: Hahaha! But if you listen to what comes after, the last chorus, you'll have a different interpretation of it

K: Don't tell me.. it's death?

S: Ohhhhhhh

K: Ohhhhh?

S: Kaito kun, how do you always know?

K: AHHAHHAA

S: It has begun huh

K: Right? Ahhh... is that it.... is that it...

S: That'll become like Kaito kun dies

K: So I actually recorded all of this before I died

S: You're a hologram? ( O.o! Just like one of the Mangas that Soma recommended on his daily recommendations)

K: I was told to record myself talking as if i was talking to Soma san

S: If that's the case then our conversations complement so well. Well rather than dying, well, I welcome everyone to have different interpretations but it's like singing about something you lost

K: Uh huh uh huh, I see

S: But youth, like what i mentioned earlier, at our age, we're still continuing to be youths but in a different form

K: I see

S: There's something you lost, but there's also things that are continuing, it's just singing it from a unique point of view

K: In "Date", you also went to the sea right

S: wwwww Right? I personally don't go to the beach at all

K: Because you get all sticky , you said

S: So, am I really going to the beach?

K: Oooooh

S: Well well, you can interpret it in many ways

K: This is scary....

S: Rightt www

~Dameraji Photo Studio~

Pose like a present box

Guests next week:

Nakajima Yoshiki

Sakakihara Yuki

81!

#saito soma #dameraji #ishikawa kaito #dame janai radio