Tumgik
#it's not even me projecting heterosexuality onto the interaction
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
You could drink your whole life away and still never get that taste out of your mouth.
half commission for @salempie half completely self indulgent dreck pieced together from our insane conversations abt franke and elka. told myself id finally write a big explanation for all of the dum shit between these two for context so Thats Under The Cut.
so I already wrote some stuff about elka and franke's relationship back in whispering rock so feel free to look at that too . it goes over elkas blindness/‘seeing’ with clairvoyance and how her and franke started talking & all that good stuff
SO FOR STARTERS. a lot of thsi wont make sense without a big breakdown of elka herself. because elkas potential as a character is like insane to me. like just the idea of her in the long run of her life reads as something so potentially tragic; a young girl whos plagued with visions of doom and destined to be an outcast even in her own home for things she cant control and clings to the One vision of her wedding that she thinks is 'happy' even despite the fact she doesnt really love the person in it. im choosing to take the li-po doc as canon here because its funny shes the only one with backstory-
Tumblr media
but my fucking god even the smallest look into what her parents are like is soo fucked up to me. and i do think elka especially gets a lot of influence from her mother; its funny how easily you can fit mabel doom into a box just from what elka says about her. knees deep in an avon-esque pyramid scheme and leaning into her daughters depressing ass visions & taking her to therapy at age 11 (which would be good if not for the kind of person you can already assume she is & so i doubt the therapist she has really does her any good. i think they share one). she reads as a very I Am My Daughters Best Friend type of mom to me and i can see elka being a centerpiece of the conversation when she has her Amway Girls over for drinks. wine-mom that lets her kid sip from the glass so she can feel like a big girl type deal.
and you can tell that elka is trying to hard to be too mature for her age even in her campster posts. how she writes letters to nils' mom and exchanges baking recipes with her and that feels like she really only interacts with middle aged women and not really many people her own age outside of camp (like her moms friends). which makes sense shed feel the need to ‘grow up’ early when shes probably had to process so many hard things at a young age bc of her visions.
theres a lot of filling the blanks here of course.
elka obsesses over nils to an overbearing degree even despite the fact he treats her like shit ('you promised no talking' and so on) and she treats him bad right back. she leans onto stereotypical heterosexual ideals like taking care of him and overblowing how Manly and Protective JT is and she admires romance stories like pride and prejudice and it feels like she Projects Soooooooo much of what she wants onto boys she barely feels anything for without knowing what its actually supposed to feel like. and clearly she WANTS that ideal future, a happy marriage, an actual romance- but according to nils even when they were dating she ignored him most of the time, which just seems Very Telling
Tumblr media
like shes filling a role, overcompensating for emotions and lacktherof she cant digest quite yet, and it only makes more sense when you know shes had visions of their future together. how could that be bad for her? shouldnt it be like the books and movies? but she doesnt really connect the fact that her visions are only for Doomed futures, and if she does she certainly doesnt show it. Doomed relationships. it's been a part of her family for generations and she isn't turning out much different, is she? i dont think she even realizes thats all she ever sees yet, just that its Going to happen. that it's Her future, and it always will be
and like, her only reference for a real marriage so far has been her own parents, and she already Knows they have an affair, and theyre doomed to split, (and i actually like to think they were in rough waters anyway and elka was a child meant to mend a crumbling marriage but thats a whole other thing) and so without a framework for what an actual healthy relationship is supposed to be like she cant really grasp that her relationship with nils Isnt that and isnt ever going to be. she can only cling to this one happy idea of the future, and thats why she keeps chasing him, self fulfilling the actuality of her situation and creating and fostering the unhappy life they will inevitably live together.
and that bleeds into everything else in her life, of course, because as the years go on, as the visions grow in number it just makes sense for her to fall into the predictability of her life. she always knows whats going to happen, her visions are Never wrong- so why try to change things? shes had time to process tragedies days, weeks, months, years before they happen, shes had time to settle into every crack of her life. her parents divorce, her various break ups, her future with the psychonauts.
“and she's already seen so much of a future with [nils] she feels trapped almost. Like she has to be happy in it or else it just means her life is miserable. And it's a mixture of pride and fear of the unknown that keeps her clinging to the One thing she knows. BUT LIKE!!! She knows what's gonna happen! It's easier to grieve when she's been grieving for years... She wants so badly to be happy, But to do that she has to step into the unfamiliar. And that's more terrifying than staying the same miserable person she's always been.”
and thats where franke comes in— and yeah you Do have to take a lot of liberties for frankes character since it’s basically, like, all the info for her is just that shes a Supreme Baby Dyke but thats enough for me. i think she has protective butch itch in her . on campster shes defensive over other women evidenced in the way she keeps watch over the girls cabins for lili when elton is pursuing her . but shes also eager to please and constantly trying to make kitty laugh and also Very naive. but she tries! and i think it only solidifies more as she gets Older and really gets a hold of her feelings & her powers. this is incredibly franke to me
Tumblr media
and i think as they grow older together— because i think franke and elka Do stay friends, both because elka is just pathetic and needs that positive connection even if she doesnt realize it and because i think franke is a very Loyal person & annoyingly persistent if you let her be . and i am also a kitty/franke truther. because kittys also important in this web we weave
because i think franke and kitty stay together after camp, to a point— theres a falling out facilitated on kittys end and they break up, but reconnect, and franke kind of... saves kitty from herself a little, from her strict military father whos love only extends thru finances , from her own stifling future , she drives all the way to bakersville in her shitty van handmedowned from her dad and they move in together eventually . they get jobs at the motherlobe , because it’s a pipeline to a decent job, because it’s whats easy, because franke doesn’t really have a future, because she’s never really been good at much, because shes never had much sense, because franke doesnt really care as long as she can live and help, sometimes, if she can, and because kitty’s there, and because elka’s there, and shes so used to being elkas eyes now and shes good at it. shes good at being the muscle of the missions when her colleagues lack it, when hypnosis and predictions arent enough. she likes it that way.
and elka appreciates frankes company. she listens, shes sweet, she does little things for her that no ones ever really put the effort for before; she likes her. franke is strong and bold and makes her laugh and shes always there but god elka cant let go of that future, of that box shes put herself in, that her mothers put her in, of being a Good Wife to a Loving Husband, of getting married normally and falling into unfailing familiarity. thats all shes ever wanted and shes not going to jeopardize that . not for franke, who may not be a boy but is handsome like one, whos always held her after every break up with nils and the men that filled empty days inbetween.
and elka is too stubborn to recognize those feelings anyway. too prideful to accept a way out. too set in her cycle no matter how much she hates it, her little self fulfilling tragedy of her own making, wallowing in her own doom. she struggles for control of her own life when she feels like every choice has been made for her anyway, she puts up her walls and carefully constructs what people see. but franke was always harder to trick, because while empathy isnt a particularly useful psychic power it’s certainly an inconvenient one. all franke has to do is get too close and all those carefully crafted walls fall apart, and elkas control is gone, and thats all she really has. and she tries to distance herself, really she does, but franke is also too persistent. and elka wears gloves, keeps contact that would make her walls crumble from happening as best as she can, but she cant really keep herself from the brief moments where she feels like someone actually fucking cares about her.
and that slightest lack of control, the need to wrestle it back is why she proposes to nils the next time theres a falling out— she knows how it happens, she plans every detail. and he accepts, despite everything. gets her a cheap ring and it feels like lead on her finger and its nothing at all like how shed thought it to be when she was a kid, theres no feather light feeling in her chest, only that dreadful reality that she cant turn this back. BUT WHAT CAN U DO LMAO
elka doesnt tell franke about this engagement until later, on their way back from a mission. late at night when neither of them can sleep, and franke invites elka to smoke in her van, because its been so long since theyve been alone like that, because elkas been so strangely absent lately. and because of everything, because frankes always so damn nice, because elka hates the feel of the ring on her finger, because she let herself get high alone with franke fucking athens whos always been so good at pulling her apart— the truth of it all spills out and its messy and emotional and she hates it, she hates the life shes made for herself, but franke makes it easier to bare and now shes here and shes so close and god she wishes she could see her smile again, she wishes she could see franke, thats all she needs right now and she cant but she can touch her and she can hold her and for tonight, she can be known, she can let those walls crumble, she can be something else just for once here with franke . she can kiss her here in this van, touch that happiness for just a moment, and forget the future that waits for her outside of it. franke begs her to forget the wedding, to just let herself be happy— and god, she wants to, but it means turning her back on everything shes known and everything shes saw to be inevitable, and franke has never been in her future, so if it were supposed to work out why hadnt she seen it and she cant, she cant take that risk but she can have this, even if its temporary, she can have it.
and just as soon as she gets a taste of it, its gone. after that night, after the missions over and theyre back at the motherlobe and have to pretend like nothing happened (franke doesnt, of course she tells kitty about it, she tells kitty about everything.) but that brief moment together haunts elka every time she sees franke, sees herself through frankes eyes, sees herself in her wedding dress because god its all franke can think about! of course it is! she knows how much elkas destroying herself she knows how much misery shes wallowing in that kiss in the van felt like an emotional punch to the teeth and she hasnt ever forgotten it and all she can do is sit and watch while elka throws herself into a loveless marriage. she can come to her wedding and see the way the bride and groom kiss with the emotional weight of a wet towel no matter how hard elka tries to hide it under a pretty dress and bouquets of flowers and meticulous planning.
and elka resents nils but she cant really hate him, its not his fault, not really. he feels trapped just like she does and his feelings of misery only cycle back into hers . they fight and gnash and wear away at each other and its a relationship thats crashed and burned a million times before elka even said i do. and its inevitable that she falls into her mothers habits, a sip of wine here and there to loosen up, until it turns to a glass, until it falls into a bottle on nights when whatever work nils does runs late.
but franke’s still there. shes always been there, hasn’t she? always trying to play knight, always trying to save her, dragging her home when shes stumbling over herself because god who else is going to do it but her? who else is left to care? certainly not nils. never nils. because franke knows her. because franke pities her. shes always pitied her. shes always known. and elka hates it, she resents it, but god in the same breath she’s desperate for it, she envies it to her very bones. elka is a mess but after frankes done with her she has someone to go back to that loves her. and god what elka wouldnt do to have that. to take it and keep it for herself because shes never ever got to have that movie romance shes always wanted.
so now comes this.
because elkas particularly miserable and particularly spiteful and she needs to get franke to understand, just for a moment, drink with her and get on her level and she needs her there with her no matter how her pity makes her feel. no matter how much it makes her shake with anger and envy and desperation, but god the way franke looks at her, the way she still tries to salvage what they have, the soft, slurred way she tells her that it’s okay but its not okay, none of this is okay, it never has been and she just wants franke to shut up and see that, and if she cant then she’ll show her, she’ll show her all the raw angry desperation, with too much teeth and hands that claw and grab and she’ll know why everyones always said she’s too much.
and she knows this puts her on nils’ level too. that this makes her a cheater, that shes no better than he is now. no better than her father and his affair. but god, she wants to be selfish. she wants to be in control. just for once. she wants to feel right and she wants to feel happy and she wants to feel loved. thats all shes ever wanted. and franke will let her have that, just for a little while, at the very least.
anyway. sorry. sorry for being crazy . this isnt even getting into the shit after the comic takes place . elkas stupid brainworld thag she has to overcome in order to finally be allowed in the polycule and live happily ever as worlds first lesbian divorceman
sorry for all the shit i make up instead of caring about actual characters with screentime . bye !
673 notes · View notes
michaelmilkers · 9 months
Note
harry styles isn't bisexual he's literally just a gnc cishet white man that youre projecting onto when youre barely even gay bc you dont love men
i didnt say he was bisexual. youre not biphobic bc he’s bisexual. harry styles doesnt label his sexuality. you would be transphobic if someone said they didn’t label their gender and you said they were cis. you’re biphobic for assuming someone with an ambiguous sexuality is straight just because they’ve had relationships with women.
even if harry styles never gave a public indication of an attraction to men, unless he states the contrary, it is biphobic to treat heterosexuality as the default that must be proven false. but luckily harry styles has expressed attraction to men. he literally has a song about sucking dick (called “medicine”) that uses he/him pronouns and addresses the person the song is about as a man, he’s stated in an interview his partner being female is “not important” to him, and. well.
Tumblr media
anyway. (edit: im not using this interaction as evidence alone of him being queer people just say “well then why is he only ever photographed with women” like my brother in christ he isnt)
its incredibly funny to me that you say im “barely gay” because im arospec when i literally have a boyfriend. even if i didnt, im a man, im very sexually attracted to men, i have sex with men, im fucking gay, and youre a weird little freak. get a fucking hobby or like. die i guess. i’m gonna go fuck a guy now bye
20 notes · View notes
pinkeoni · 7 months
Text
And now, for no reason in particular, in no way related to anything on my blog at all, here is a long ramble about sexuality in Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout: 4
So in Fallout: New Vegas there is the option to control your characters sexuality, something that was fairly revolutionary at the time the game came out in 2011. The perks Black Widow and Lady Killer allow +10% damage along with unique dialogue options for the opposite sex, and Cherchez la Femme and Confirmed Bachelor offer the same bonus but for the same sex. The player has to option to chose one or both of these perks, and they both become available fairly early in gameplay. I usually pick both perks for the added damage bonus, although since Fallout is for an intents and purposes a roleplaying game, I like to imagine that my player character is a lesbian and is only flirting with men in order to get ahead.
Along with the fact that you can make your character gay, bisexual, or what have you, there are also a few gay characters within the game. The companions Arcade Ganon and Veronica are a gay man and lesbian respectively. There are a few other NPCs that have dialogue acknowledging their queerness.
The one thing that I wish that NV did have was the ability to romance companions. Imagine me, with my ancient HP laptop burning my lap, exhausting every one of Veronica's dialogue options trying to see if I can date her but to no avail. You can actually flirt with Ganon if you are a male character with the Confirmed Bachelor perk, although the interaction does not go farther than that. You can have sex with same sex prostitutes, but there's no cutscene. If I pay 300 caps for some hanky panky, then I wanna see it!
So when I found out that you could romance companions in Fallout: 4, I was beyond excited.
In F:4 you can romance most companions regardless of gender, effectively making any of the romancable companion bisexual by default. You can also romance any number of companions at the same time, meaning you could have one big bisexual polyamorous relationship if you wanted to (the companions cannot date each other and are all connected to you, but the choice to have multiple partners is still there.
Bisexual polyamory sounds very progressive, and I don't think that that shouldn't be acknowledged, but even without the romance options, NV feels like the gayer game.
The thing about the romance options in 4 is that it doesn't seem to address identity. All of these characters are bisexual by default, but (as far I have seen from reviews and from my own experience playing) the characters don't ever acknowledge queerness as an identity. If I'm a female player character romancing a female companion, there isn't any dialogue acknowledging the fact that we are both women (in fact from what I've read, the dialogue is the same regardless if you are a man or woman, with only the pronouns being changed). Furthermore, the perks that you can choose that controls the characters sexuality are not there. Black Widow and Lady Killer are still there, although their same-sex counterpart perks are not available.
What I like about the perks in NV is the fact that player identity is not only something that has to be imagined behind the screen, but it becomes a facet within the game that influences the game and is acknowledged. Not only with sexuality, but gender is a factor in the role play as well. There are a few characters who acknowledge through dialogue that my character is a woman.
In 4 you are given a backstory as a spouse in an opposite-sex marriage with a new baby, superimposed into a heterosexual relationship right off the bat. This is opposed to NV where you play as a glorified mail carrier with amnesia that you can project a backstory onto. In 4 the game starts off with your spouse essentially being literally "fridged" (no literally, they die inside of a cryochamber) and your baby is kidnapped which triggers the main plot of the game. I guess this could be subversive if the player character is a woman, but that's only the player chooses to be a woman. Context clues points to the game assuming that the player is a man, what with the male player character voicing the opening narration of the game, along with being the defaulted gender option in the character creation screen. I think that choosing to play as a woman creates a much more compelling narrative, although the game never acknowledges this so it's mostly up to the player to infer this narrative themselves. (Again, gender is only brought up through pronouns) I would say that maybe the game is trying to offer commentary on the nuclear family household, although the problem doesn't rely on the family itself but the war and outsiders are the ones who destroyed it while the family itself was perfectly healthy.
You would think that being a newly widowed spouse would have some impact on the romance aspect of the game, especially if you are engaging with a same sex partner after previously being with a partner of the opposite-sex. Which isn’t to say that people in heterosexual relationships can’t also be interested in the same-sex or that people in marriages can’t be engaged in a healthy open relationship, and I do like that the game includes this option at all, although (and again, this is to my knowledge) this doesn't seem to get a mention when dealing with the romance. The dead spouse only really makes an impact on the main storyline of the game, and similarly, the romance aspect doesn't seem to effect this aspect at all.
F:4 tries to have an established backstory while also trying to give the player the same freedom of role play that its had in previous games, but these two player identities just end up running parallel to each other rather than working together. You can make choices in the game that seems to contradict your backstory without it ever being addressed. This could maybe make for an interesting story, but (and once again, as much as I have played and seen) there doesn't seem to be any internal conflict between the player character's past and what they decide to do for the run of the game.
While all of the romancable companions are effectively bisexual by the nature of the gameplay, bisexuality or queerness in any capacity isn't recognized as an identity and operates more on just a cosmetic level. Not that a character would have to explicitly state that their label in order for it to be valid, but it doesn't add anything to their character in the same way that it does for Ganon and Veronica from NV. These two never say "I am a gay man" or "I am a lesbian" in that exact way but their identities have an impact on their character and how they interact with the player. Veronica in particular had a girlfriend in her past that wasn't approved of by the strictly conservative Brotherhood of Steel that she belongs to.
"So you want homophobia in your video games? This is a post-apocalyptic society, who cares about who dates who!" and to be fair sexuality in Fallout society does seem to be far more lenient in both NV and 4, which makes sense considering the context. There aren't any marriage laws, and there's even a line suggesting that the male soldiers from the fascist Caesar regime are regularly mounting each other.
But still, Veronica experiencing that bit of homophobia from her past helps queer identity feel more realized rather than just an empty gesture from game devs for a few political correctness points, and can even be found as relatable to some of it's queer players. Veronica's story is about her desperately trying to save her conservative community, but comes to realize that the only way for her to live is to leave them behind. She's heartbroken to leave her family, but recognizes that she has to prioritize herself even if they aren't going to. The Brotherhood of Steel isn't a real organization, but that's definitely a real experience. If the Fallout games aim to offer commentary on real-world politics (which it definitely aims to do) then it isn't going to succeed if it's characters don't reflect real-world experiences.
Sorry if this comes off as me railing on F:4, I actually greatly enjoy the game and have probably sunk more hours into it than NV (which is partially due to my PS4 actually being functional and the laptop I have that plays NV has been on its last legs for years now) and I do greatly enjoy the characterization of the companions, even if I wish that their queer identities made more of an impact. NV, on the other hand, is one of my favorite games of all time.
So that's my whole spiel. Doesn't have anything at all to do with anything else on my blog whatsoever. Completely unrelated.
7 notes · View notes
crypticfandomtrash · 1 year
Text
Misa Headcanons 1
Misa’s sister is older than she is. Her name is Kayuki. She has moved on from their parents’ murders and is worried about Misa’s refusal to seek help.
Unpopular headcanon: Misa is heterosexual. She could be bicurious at most in canon (and even then I personally doubt it). Considering how she outright rejects Rem and that none of her interactions with Kyomi (or any other woman) strike me as romantic or flirty, I do not see her as a lesbian. She might have a passing interest in trying to date another woman (especially if Kira had been a woman instead of Light), but nothing would come of it. She only talks about men in a romantic or sexual context (mostly Light, for that matter).
Regardless of author intent or fanon, she is written in a very specific way in the manga and any analysis of the text as it is must take that into account. I’ve mentioned it before on another post: See casuitor and mikami's posts for pure textual analyses on DN. They’re awesome. I have plenty of headcanons and fanon, but I still keep in mind that the manga does not necessarily reflect what I wish was canon. That is why fanon exists.
In AUs that are not set in DN’s main world, I can easily see her as bisexual and headcanon her as such (like in my Pirate AU).
Misa isn’t stupid at all. She has a successful modeling and idol career, which means she acts in certain ways to please her audience. She manipulates people into doing what she wants. And she manages to threaten Light into dating her via her stronger powers and Rem. Let’s also not forget that she tricked Higuchi into confessing to her. She’s more socially intelligent than academically intelligent, but she did decently in school. There are plenty of hints of this in canon.
She thinks that she’s in love with Light, but it’s actually about what he represents to her. She views him as an ideal hero because he avenged her parents, even though he’s actually a vigilante terrorist who’s very far from morally upright as Kira. She’s put him on a pedestal and deep down she does know that what she feels isn’t really love.
She doesn’t actually care to get to know Light as a person, This is pretty clear in the manga. She constantly ignores his wishes and goes against him, especially during the first half. She projects her own desires onto him, and combined with the fact that she stalks him and forces him into the relationship via death threats, is a pretty toxic person. Their “relationship” is mutually toxic and abusive.
Related to above, I really wish people would stop defending her actions. If being a Light or L apologist is scorned, then why should Misa get a free pass for bad deeds? I much prefer Misa as a villainous character! She’s very interesting. Let there be evil women.
Before she gave up her Death Note, she kept wondering what L looked like during the interrogation because he was just a scrambled voice over an intercom system. Everyone wonders what the world’s greatest detective looks like.
She does remember most of her interrogation. She knows L’s staff could have done far worse to her than withhold food and water for 3 days (they did keep her on an IV for fluids so she wouldn’t actually get dehydrated) and give her a potent truth serum, but she still resents it. She believes she’s innocent without her memories, so all the physical evidence that they have on her makes her think she that was controlled by Kira somehow. It’s something that actually frightens her.
Given that she says that “L is the person in the computer” when talking to L at one point during the Yotusba arc, she does not think that “Ryuzaki” is L. She thinks he’s one of L’s many proxies or agents. She does put the pieces together a while before regaining her memories, though.
As for Misa/Rem shipping, I can see it happening. I can also see it as unrequited or just platonic. I actually prefer platonic. Rem strikes me as very motherly.
Misa notices that Light is into L. Again, she’s not stupid. She is torn between feeling upset and feeling amused at the situation. She easily noticed his disinterest in girls. When Light does admit to being gay at some point, she isn’t even surprised. Only Matsuda and Aizawa were surprised.
She loves being an actress and was secretly upset when Light asked her to quit so they could get married in Part 2 of the manga.
11 notes · View notes
rivetgoth · 2 years
Note
Sorry I didn’t read close enough before asking But damn I didn’t expect so much advice, but like one of my biggest problems is I’m monogamous. Based on talking to my friends and just my interactions in the LGBTQ+ community in general I’d say most gay men are not monogamous and even in committed relationships tend to have a third and participate in group situations that I’m not comfortable with and never will be comfortable with. I already have being trans against me but when you add the dating/hooking up with one person at a time to it it’s so fucked. I’ve been attracted to other transmen but generally I don’t know if my dysphoria could take being with one as well, I know I sound like a bastard but it’s just where I’m at. Not to get pathetic and stuff but while who I am inside has always been masculine and my body generally matches it now I’ve never opened up to polyamory or polycules and I feel like there’s something wrong with me as a man for being that way.
Look dude, I genuinely don't mean this rudely but I seriously am not sure where you are that you think that polyamory or nonmonogamy is like, a default expectation for men because it REALLY isn't. The idea that gay men aren't interested in monogamous committed relationships and are only thinking about sex and hooking up is sort of a stereotype, like obviously many ARE into hookups or just casual sex, as are plenty of women and straight people of both genders as well, but there are sooooo many men with the exact same feelings as you, who are looking to settle down with somebody that they love. If it helps at all I was looking for some statistics to back up my lived experiences and a study from last year suggested about 30% of gay men are in open relationships, which is obviously a minority -- higher than heterosexual couples, yes, but to be blunt, of course a community built from sexual oppression and subjugation meant to celebrate nonnormative sex is going to have a higher amount of people who are into these things, thinking about "relationship anarchy" and reframing the idea of sex and relationship as something meant for pleasure and exploration rather than for the cishetero nuclear family. But it's still not even 50:50. Put into perspective then that if you met 10 gay guys, roughly 3 of them would be into open relationships. And even amongst that 30% there's a wide variety of how that openness actually plays out.
Honestly unless you're in some really specific kinky spaces IRL or actually actively seeking out the gay hookup or cruising scene I would say that in basically all of general society (including the mainstream LGBT community) monogamy is still the standard expectation and anything outside of that is viewed as a deviation from the norm. I also think that the vast, vast majority of men would be kinda puzzled to hear the suggestion that being down with polyamory or polycules is some sort of expectation for masculinity, that's not even true in mainstream cishet society where a man being a good husband to his wife is wayyyy more prioritized than the kinda stereotypical frat guy sleeping around with girls, which stops being cute to like 99% of people the moment he's like, over the age of 21. Idk, man. I do not think you sound like a bastard or pathetic and I've been in spots pretty similar to yours I think, like I said in my last reply it's really fucking hard navigating relationships and self esteem and dysphoria and safety and risk taking as a trans person, and it can feel super hopeless if you haven't had much luck. I definitely have been in places in my life where I would not have been comfortable dating another trans person, because my own insecurities and dysphoria was just too bad and I KNOW I would have projected it onto them and either ended up insecure about myself or bitter towards them. Knowing yourself is important and knowing what would be unhealthy for both you and a potential partner is good. But I think I'd honestly suggest engaging more with IRL gay social spaces in general and talking to more gay men, both trans and cis. Or just engaging more and more with the LGBT community in general IRL. This sounds kinda mean maybe but I think the whole polyamory/multiple partners thing is actually more common to see amongst online gays in part because most people are long distance, so that can also sorta skew your view of these things. You would be surprised to realize how incredibly common it is to find men who are just looking for love and a connection and a committed relationship with someone who they care about, many of whom may even feel equally ostracized from certain LGBT spaces that are more kink or sex oriented.
5 notes · View notes
mariaiscrafting · 3 years
Text
no, you know what, I’m going to stop vague’ing on the dash. my anger is about to get extremely direct and enraged, so fair warning, but I don’t care about anyone’s comfort right now. I’m going to get fucking mad, and you all will fucking deal.
not a single one of us has the right, or should even have the option, to guess about ccs’ sexualities. I’ve kept my mouth shut when it comes to people analyzing george/dream and guessing they’re some kind of queer, but I’m fucking done. I’m going to go into every single reason “truthing” about ccs’ sexualities is just so beyond fucked.
first of all, this is in response specifically to ranboo and tubbo truthing. being a kid and getting thrown into such a massive spotlight, where you will undoubtedly be subject to some fuck shit eventually because the internet is full of thousands upon thousands of people, is already terrifying and anxiety-inducing and damaging enough. but for their own audiencemembers - their own supposed fucking “fans” - to take it one step further and speculate about their sexualities? oh, for the love of god. I can barely believe I even have to explain how fucked that is. it is one thing to be friends with or close to someone in real life and recognize your own queer struggle in them, to approach them with sympathy and support in case they are questioning. it is another thing entirely to speculate about the sexuality of someone you don’t even know, and to then take it a step further and “truth” about your fucking theories. you are not an expert, you are not their friend, and you are not a fucking oracle. you can guess all you want about a cc’s sexuality, you can comment on how their actions or behaviors or words resonate with you when you were questioning or closeted, but to go ahead and take your own speculation as truth is arrogant, presumptous, and damaging as all hell. 
I can just imagine what it would’ve been like if I’d grown an online platform that ripped me of my privacy when I was a teenager and trying to figure out my own sexuality. if I had a section of my audience analyzing my every social media post, the inflection in my voice and the nature of my laughs, my every interaction with my best friend, you know what I would’ve done? retreated so far into the closet that I would probably have tricked myself into thinking I was heterosexual. I would’ve been so fucking terrified and felt so stripped of any privacy or control I had over my own goddamn thoughts; do you understand how fucking vile that is? have none of you ever been terrified of giving away your own sexuality through your mannerisms and facial expressions and words, while you were closeted? have none of you ever experienced that utter fucking terror when you notice someone start to question your sexuality, the immediate urge to retreat and back up and act and believe the complete opposite just to prove them wrong and go back to the safety and security of them believing you were straight? for fuck’s sake, now imagine that feeling amplified a hundred fold, applied not just to one instance or one person in your life, but to thousands. do y’all not understand just how a) morally fucked it is to inflict this same kind of practice onto someone you supposedly care about and support, and b) potentially psychologically damaging this could be to ccs who are closeted, especially the fucking minors? oh my fucking god.
that isn’t even to point out why people do this shit - which is to project and find solace and derive some kind of enjoyment out of cc’s. that’s what cc’s are there for; they are entertainers, first and foremost, which continues outside of streams and bleeds into fandom culture and the kind of enjoyment fans can make out of interacting with other fans and creating their own fan content. the problem with this fact is that fans take it too far, like 85% of the time. cc’s aren’t just there for our own enjoyment. they are fucking people, oh my lord. they are real people that we will never know, and while we may have our fun with our little theories and talking to other fans and making and watching cute compilations and writing fanfiction and making fanart, we are just deriving entertainment from the parts of themselves they choose to show us. that persona they put on for the stream, that is not 100% them. they are real, rounded, 3-d, full people who we only ever get the privilege of witnessing a small sliver of. and we need to fucking remember that, because we can’t just keep running with the ideas of ccs that we have in our heads and treating them like they’re malleable characters for our own entertainment. 
anyways, specifically about truthing (and mind you, this is the point in the rant where a little of my anger starts to seep out because I’m tired and it’s 1:40 AM and I have class tomorrow): there’s so many things that can be said about gaydar. I’m not here to argue whether or not it exists, or the details of the morality of straight versus non-straight people engaging in the practice of truthing. I’m just here to say that, even if you believe gaydar exists and can be accurate when employed by non-straight people, that still only applies to people you fucking know. what you see of a cc is not “getting to know” them. what you are seeing is one face of a multi-faceted jewel, cut in far more ways that you can ever hope to one day perceive. your theories are just those - theories. whatever you might think of the giggles you heard or the pickup lines you saw uttered or the softness you imagine between x and y, human interaction is far too complex and laced with meaning for some rando on the internet who watches youtube videos and twitch streams to fully grasp from two entertainers working from behind a screen. your gaydar is not going to fucking work through a screen, fuck off with that shit.
another thing that’s fucking bothering me so much is this assumption that comes with being at all open about queerness when you yourself are not queer. ik this is just one of the many factors “truthers” use to justify the findings of their totally infallible, prophetic gaydar, but it’s a factor nonetheless, and it bothers the fuck outta me. someone being willing to express support for lgbt people or donate to lgbt chairities or open to conversations with other lgbt people about lgbt endeavors is not evidence of queerness. to say that it is contributes to the harmful belief that cishets still have that they cannot be any of those things - that is, exceedingly open about and to queerness - without being perceived as queer themselves. 
anyways, and now we are at the bottom line, which is that, this entire conversation wouldn’t even have to be had if people just fucking listened to cc boundaries. ranboo and tubbo do not like being shipped. it is that fucking simple. i know that it is tempting to ship two people you think are cute together. i know it is tempting to indulge in a dynamic you find comforting. but idgaf. temptation is not an excuse. find some fictional characters to ship, and kindly fuck off.
582 notes · View notes
takaraphoenix · 3 years
Note
Ship game!! What about Nico and Will?? It’s pretty popular, but I don’t think I’ve seen you write much of it…
That's an interesting one in that I have vocalized my reasons for disliking it way back when it first became popular but instead of just linking that, it has been years so I think it's time for an updated version.
Firstly: This post is gonna be properly tagged and not crosstagged so if any shipper comes across it and feels the need to bitch about it, just don't; your lack of curating your own tumblr experience is not my problem! ;D
Now, there are three key factors that play into my dislike of this ship: How it was written, what it represents, how the fandom around it acts.
1. It’s rushed and uncomfortable
In BoO, it was incredibly rushed. They had literally five sentences of interactions before they walked into the literal sunset together. Five. It was just entirely born from Riordan's Noah's Ark Complex, where he just can't let people be single. The series was ending and he needed Nico to have an endgame so he rushed into some random romance with zero build-up.
The way their interactions went down was also severely uncomfortable for me. Will was acting so offended by Nico not wanting to go to camp and be friends in an entitled way that he had no right to be, he downright guilt-tripped Nico about how he had wanted to be friends. Nico has been just so severely traumatized at such a young age and his coping mechanism, as unhealthy as it was, was to run away and hide. Will acted like Nico not wanting to form attachments to people who could potentially leave him again was somehow just an Edgy Emo Decision and not a direct reaction to his trauma. His entire approach to Nico was basically all these hippie posts of "Don't have depression!! Just go out into the sun and stop being depressed!", which is already a bad take with non-medical people but he's supposed to be a doctor (and let's not get into the shadiness of him technically being Nico's doctor).
There is also an inherent "I can fix him" angle to this ship and to me, only few ship dynamics are more uncomfortable than that. If you want to fundamentally change a person's behavior and personality, you... don't actually want to be with this person.
Now, here's where my points overlap, because the following parts of their writing that bothers me also stand for what this ship fundamentally represents.
2. Solangelo is a queer ship written by and for straights
I'm a queer woman and as a queer woman, I want queer wish-fulfillment, not what straights want out of queerness. I'm kind of tired of that, I've been sitting through it for enough decades now. That's, of course, not to say that no straight writer can give proper queer representation, but far too often do straight writers - even the most well-meaning ones - project straight desires of queerness into their queer representation.
Let me explain that closer through this ship.
Nico's been in love with Percy for years and I'm going to do my best to not hijack this post with some Percico agenda; that's not what this his about, this isn't some "my ship is better than your ship" ship-war nonsense. It's simply a canonical fact that Nico has had romantic feelings for another character for years.
A character who, in this medium, is heterosexual. And if you're queer, you've been there. In love with your straight best friend. It's a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason.
We have also all been well-meaningly rejected by said straight friend.
And here's the straight desires for you: The queer person who was in love with a straight person just immediately stops having those feelings and will then as quickly as possible fall in love with the next queer person they meet to be happy and no longer uncomfortably in love with a straight person, because that thought makes the straights uncomfortable.
Queer wish-fulfillment would be for Percy to return those feelings, for the queer character to get his first love, to not be rejected. That thing queer teens always dreamed about for themselves.
Aside from the wish-fulfillment angle, the pacing is another problem. Let me repeat, Nico was in love for years. But a five sentence conversation with Will once causes a crush on Will and we see him physically turn away from Percy and toward Will just immediately to rebound and actually fall out of love with Percy and in love with Will. Anyone who's ever been unlucky in love will attest to just how unrealistic and ridiculous the pacing here is.
It's also straight queerness in another respect; Nico has been the first ever queer character we meet in that world. He loves a straight guy - and to get over that, we introduce the second queer character. Because heaven forbid there are multiple queers to pick from. No, in straight-written queer romances, there is always that one main queer and then they introduce a second one and the two just immediately hit it off and develop a romance like all a queer person needs to form attraction to someone is the confirmation that the other person shares your sexuality.
Also the notable gay guy on gay guy ship here, whereas the more queer-wish-fulfillment option would have also included more nuance to the queer experience, because Percy doesn't have to be heterosexual just because he has only been with girls so far. It's a very old-fashioned - think 90s and early 2000s - kind of straight-written queerness that there are only exactly two homosexuals and that those two homosexuals then pair up.
And, listen, I'm not immune to these outdated straight-written queers entirely, I have many such ships that I grew up with that I am still fond of because they were groundbreaking at that time and they weren't outdated yet back when they happened in said 90s and early 2000s. I am however a grown woman now and just like I have grown, so has queer rep so I am not as easily baited into falling onto my knees in gratitude for canon rep. You have to go with the times. And this ship, by all that is given to us, is just entirely outdated straight-written rep.
Which, I mention earlier that even straight-written rep can be good. If the author tries. Riordan doesn't really try though; he does the bare minimum when he writes any of his rep - and there have been many, many more qualified voices being very vocal about his depiction of people of color and, as a woman, I've been vocal about his depiction of women. I don't want to derail this post with all of that, but I do think that it bears mentioning that Riordan doing rep but only doing a bare minimum and not putting in the necessary work to deepen the representation he wants to give is a repeating pattern that has been pointed out many times by now.
(I’d also like to point out that no, it is not just the ship and not just the listed instances that make it straight-written rep for straights. It’s Nico’s entire queer arc, starting with his forced coming out. A severely traumatizing event that is completely brushed over because the straight author doesn’t understand the impact this has on queer people. Not to mention the framework; Nico’s coming out isn’t Nico’s story, it happens in Jason’s POV, it is given to us through the POV of the straight bystander who gets to be Best Ally by assuring Nico that being gay is okay. This kind of coming out is not a queer wish-fulfillment, it’s a straight wish-fulfillment of getting to be the straight savior, the ally to show the gay the light of acceptance. And, additional to the ridiculous pacing of how fast Nico gets over his love for Percy, Nico also gets over years of internalized homophobia just because of, I don’t know, Jason’s few encouraging words and the fact that Will paid attention to him? For a gay kid who was in the closet all his life, the nonchalant way in which he publicly confessed his crush to Percy at the end made absolutely no sense and was written as basically a joke, finished off with Nico literally high-fiving Percy’s girlfriend despite those two never having seen eye to eye before but this is straight wish-fulfillment so all straights are Super Allies, because that’s the way straights want to see themselves, even though Annabeth has shown before just how jealous she can be and she most definitely wouldn’t go around high-fiving people who confess to her boyfriend. Nothing about Nico’s queer arc in HoO felt natural or queer or satisfying.)
Sure, Solangelo on a surface level is big because it's a canon queer couple in a YA book-series and kudos for that and yay for the kids who get to grow up seeing queers in YA books, but I actually do think that kids growing up with books written in the 2010s shouldn't grow up with 1990s levels of representation, because the 2010s overall are actually at a far more nuanced and better level of representation when it comes to queerness. And I do reserve the right to quit on too straight-written and too outdated queer rep in a landscape where I can get more satisfying representation elsewhere; we don’t live in times anymore where you necessarily have to love every bit of rep because it’s the only one you get.
Now that we've gone through my first two gripes, let's wrap this up with the final point, because it also directly ties into this.
3. The new wave of antis hiding behind this ship
A huge part of the fandom is so busy kissing Riordan's ass solely for giving them queer rep at all they think that both the author and the ship are beyond flawless and that kind of attitude is not good. Just because an author includes rep doesn't make either perfect. Absolutely no one is beyond critique - especially not when said critique comes from the very people the author is representing. And even beyond any "valid" critique on the ship, quite frankly, someone should also be allowed to just not like it, without any reasons given at all.
But there is a certain... protective obsessiveness about this ship that doesn't allow a not liking. Very similar to how PJO bore this mindset around Perc/abeth already. It's okay to have OTPs, even OTPs that you have a blindspot for and just don't want to see any flaws in. It is however not okay to then go around attacking people who don't like the thing and mind their own business.
Solangelo's bred a new generation of antis in this fandom. And, particularly with the fact that this post too receives an "anti" tag, I feel like there needs to be a clarification (because tumblr likes to forget what actually makes an anti). Not liking something doesn't make you an anti, venting in properly tagged posts doesn't either; it's the people who harass others, who seek out the content they dislike to then complain that it even exists and who actively try to make others stop creating for it - those are antis.
And with Solangelo's popularity, there was a high rise in Percico antis, who sought it out, were unnecessarily nasty about it, harrassed creators and tried to enforce some kind of "Solangelo supremacy" that won't allow other ships for the characters.
I've been in fandom long enough to be perfectly aware that not all Solangelo shippers count into this category and that there are completely normal and nice Solangelo shippers, but this is a Venn diagram where the overlap between Solangelo shippers and antis is too large to not widely associate the nasty people with the ship itself. (I've been there myself, shipping the very ship behind which a fandom's antis all hid. The second-hand embarrassment of having these people give the ship a bad name is horrendous and I do feel bad for all the normal Solangelo shippers.)
The more often I encountered these people, who made Percico bad (sometimes in wildly ridiculous manners that bent and deliberately misinterpreted canon) and who in the same breath praised Solangelo high, the more tired I grew of that ship. It's a simple game of association, really. You see that linked to the gross and nasty behavior and you start associating the ship itself with that gross and nasty behavior - and with all the things I said before that already weighed into my dislike of the ship, this just was the final tipping point, really.
And that's it. That sums up why I dislike Solangelo. It was hastily rushed, uncomfortable in its execution, it is outdated rep that very much feels as straight-written as it factually is and it does not feel aimed at me as a queer person but rather at the straight audience and it has gathered a cult following of quite uncomfortable people who on their own would be reason enough to avoid it so you can avoid them.
Send me a ship and I will explain why I do or don't ship it
257 notes · View notes
theblackbutterfly02 · 2 years
Text
I platinumed Tales of Arise and here are my thoughts on it
Aaaand, you guessed it, spoiler warning for the whole game, I will cry long and hard about this one
Where do I even begin? Well, at the very beginning I assume. Getting thrown into this game my partner and I immeadiately said: "It looks like a mix between Assassin's Creed, Monster Hunter World and Dark Souls - but definitely not like a Tales game" and playing it, that's exactly what it felt like as well.
The battlesystem is completely new, as is the perspective you see your character from on the open map - not that it was bad, it just wasnt't what I was expecting at all.
The story started out so damn dark! Honestly, didn't like that. It made me feel all kinds of things, none of them good - but I suppose that was the point.
It got better over the course of the game, once I started actually getting into it. The story generally had some interesting turns, but...
Jeez, that was some damn interwoven lore there, had to double check all the information the game threw at me to understand it at the end with all the reveals and stuff.
Overall I'm not sure if the story theme really was my piece of cake, but it was a decent story nontheless.
The characters!!
As always - okay I actually really liked the villains. As little screen time as they had, they were really interesting - as villains that is. That doesn't mean I support anything they did, don't hit me please.
My mom really latched onto Vholran and - who can blame her for it? Hot guy with a katana, hello??
The main group though! Okay yeah, these funky little people were awesome!
They're all carying their own kind of baggage, they are your usual group of misfits that we know and love in these games.
Dohalim really had me because I take self-loathing characters and project onto them xD
My mom totally loved Law and we laughed about the fact that he has the same English VA as Asbel from Graces - all while also having red/brown-ish hair, daddy issues and an inferiority complex. "Is that just the kind of character he mains?" - my mom. And honestly, his interactions with Rin were the cutest.
Speaking of which - yeah, I'm not really invested into her but I guess she's okay
The same goes for Kisara - idk, I just didn't like her... design wise, which made it a little hard to get accustomed to her. But she's a good group mom.
Shionne and Alphen just fit together tbh. And like, yeah, they were a good pair of main characters.
But like... ugh, I HATE how this game is so... heterosexual. Like, it just throws the hetero couples at you without any room for interpretation. I mean, Kisara and Dohalim are a sidequest and I guess I can just pretend it didn't happen, but still... ah well.
The playstyle of the game is something I was fairly used to before so I got into it rather easily - but while I perfectly dodged my group didn't which made it a little hard to fight enemies that were a few levels above us.
New way of unlocking ng+ bonuses? Okay I guess, interesting system.
The owls? Cute, had me going hoo-hoo whenever I heard one, as if it was some kind of conversation.
The fishing system was okay once I actually understood it lol
I was just kinda sad I managed to platinum the game in one go *shrugs*
Overall a good game I suppose, but not one of my favourites
6 notes · View notes
Text
I’ll tell you who SOPHIE was - she provided me with the soundtrack to my existence.
SOPHIE - a futuristic goddess, an ingenious music producer, ethereal visionary, a trans icon.... just an icon generally speaking - tragically passed away at the age of 34 in Athens, Greece after falling off a rooftop whilst attempting to capture a picture of the full moon. Her gut wrenching death brought me to tears. This is the first time a famous person’s death has affected me so deeply. Her bold, hyperkinetic approach to producing musical art was so impeccable and refreshing considering so much of modern day’s music tends to sound incredibly predictable. Whilst alive, visionary SOPHIE generated a following of intensely adoring, dedicated fans. Honestly, don’t EVER mess with a SOPHIE fan. Trust me!
She worked with the biggest popstars, rappers, K Pop groups, rappers and upcoming artists but still remained so humble despite her enormous talent. However, she hadn’t reached household name status during her life. Sadly, many people only had heard of SOPHIE after her tragic and unexpected death. This motivated me to write a piece dedicated to this beautiful and timeless mastermind. I do acknowledge that its been exceptionally challenging to summarise how SOPHIE impacted my life onto only a few pieces of paper. However, its the least I can do. Therefore, I present to all of you my written tribute which shall focus on how her extraordinary music has featured during key moments of my lifetime and expanded my initially narrow knowledge of beauty, gender and identity like never before.
Let’s commence this written tribute by travelling back in time to when I had just turned 15. During that time period, my disposition was extremely introverted. In all honesty, like almost all teenagers suffering the displeasing side effects of bloody puberty, I was barely approachable. I adopted the entire persona of a full time punk kid wearing a thick leather jacket whilst applying extremely heavy kohl eyeliner and dying my hair jet black - which looked devastating. I would also scribble quotes associated with the punk ideology and act like some pretentious snob towards anything that was unrelated to punk, industrial or rap music. That was the most rebellion I exuded at the time (trying not to feel complete despair as much as possible for my former teenage self)
That captious mentality caused by teenage angst was erased the minute I listened to a snippet of the musical force of nature named ‘BIPP’ by SOPHIE on a Swiss MTV sponsored advert. The high pitched vocals singing ‘However you’re feeling, I can make you feel better’ provided by Marcella and overall catchy, hyperkinetic production mesmerised me like there’s no tomorrow. Nothing had captivated my imagination like the timeless ‘BIPP’ did so I typed aggressively and rapidly into the Google search engine straight away. I had to know who the mastermind lurking behind this masterpiece was. I had to know of the mastermind who provided me with this pivotal musical epiphany. Then the capitalised name ‘SOPHIE’ popped up right in front of my eyes.  
After listening to ‘BIPP’ in its entirety on repeat, I instantly began to read up on SOPHIE and stumbled upon her 2013 interview on BBC Radio 1 with SOPHIE where she concealed her identity by having her 5 year old niece respond to the host’s questions instead of herself. At the time, I assumed Sophie had implemented a voice changer to project the voice of an infant. SOPHIE’s dry humoured response, namely ,,I’ve got a cough!’’ to the host’s bewilderment over the child sounding voice stood out for me. Earlier in her career, SOPHIE’s anonymity prompted much speculation in the music industry and press. I always perceived this bizarre, hysterical act of Sophie’s as a ‘two middle fingers up’ to our environment fuelled by mainstream culture, especially how so many people obsess over notable figure’s personal business and public image instead of their artistic accomplishments far too often. This has to be the ultimate moment my own curiosity for Sophie’s ingenious musical productivity became insatiable. Later on, I would await the 2015 McDonalds commercial anxiously to have my ears blessed with her gratifying track ,Lemonade’ over and over. The synthesised sounds that fizz like pop rocks. Nabihah’s crisp vocals which repeat ‘Candy boys, c - c - candy boys’. The overall ear worm appeal of the track. Flawless!
In the meantime, I discovered that Sophie happened to be a very well known affiliate of the divisive,unique PC Music label based in London, England. During the time period, I was - to be quite frank - not an avid bubblegum bass or hyper-pop listener in the slightest. I worshipped bands such as The Clash, Dead Kennedys, Rammstein,Tool, The KLF and additionally adored rap music ranging from N.W.A to Eminem. They totally divert  from the hyperkinetic, exaggerated take on the pop genre embraced by the PC Music label. However, my teenage idols and SOPHIE objectively share something fundamental in common - Through their trailblazing musical output, they push every single barrier possible and deconstruct what constitutes as ,normal’ in modern day society. Even just after releasing her first full length album ‘Product’, SOPHIE embodied a bold form of rebellion against society’s conventionality and unforgiving temperament by incorporating lyrics alluding to a mostly genderless nature and sexual fetishes eg BDSM. As an extremely naive, self conscious teenager, all of this completely perplexed but intrigued me. Any glimpse of art connected with an attitude of non conformity resonated with me in practically seconds and continues to even at 22.
This longing for anything unorthodox traces back to my own childhood.  To explain some details about my background, I grew up in a rather small, very conservative village in Switzerland from the age of 9. Even uttering anything LGBT related would illicit responses ranging from loud gasps to shocked faces at my high school. As a non Swiss resident, the educational setting demonstrated to be more than challenging at times. One incident that stands out to me especially is when a classmate ranted about his disapproval of non Swiss inhabitants receiving Swiss pass and then continued with yelling ‘All my family voted for the SVP kick all of (you fucking foreign scum) out!’.Just to clarify, the SVP is the largest party in Switzerland and leans very far right politically.   As you can presume, I was utterly distraught by this disconcerting interaction and confess to losing any fragment of self confidence remaining in that moment. Luckily the Swiss MTV channel existed, which was far more on trend with the times and embraced marginalised communities. I will forever cherish Swiss MTV introducing me to SOPHIE’s impeccable, lawless music and being a form of escapism in my bedroom from the racist, homophobic climate prevailing in my village.
At the age of 17, Graduation finally arrived at the door which was an absolute relief. A few hours later, the celebration party took place in a secluded barn and my boyfriend immersed himself into the role as DJ for the night. Towards the end, he sneakily included Product era classics including ‘Vyzee’ and ‘Hard’. I could barely contain my excitement. We all almost choked on the horrendous party smoke, spilt our cheap beer on each other’s outfits and chanted ‘Shake it up and make it fizz!’ and ‘I get so hard.’ Ironically, I believe my Swiss colleagues didn’t exactly recognise the discernible sexual connotations exhibited throughout the song which causes me to giggle ever so slightly looking back. However, it felt liberating hearing SOPHIE’s fiercely electronic, transparent music and seeing my classmates enjoying it - especially as all you would hear on most music outlets there was either dreary Indie or Luka Haenni - the Swiss equivalent to Justin Bieber. That’s the most I’m able to recollect from that peculiar night - aside from a trampoline burning to the ground due to someone placing a candle on it. After all that jazz, a thrillingly new chapter for myself - and even for SOPHIE - would unfold.
At 17, I returned to my place of birth, England, and enrolled at Sixth Form in the South to complete my A Levels. I initially felt extremely elated to move back to England and finally entering the era of adulthood in my life. However, the atmosphere at Sixth Form and in the South of England seemed ... so unfamiliar to me which was heartbreaking. My mind had totally adjusted to a Swiss and my mind endured unsettling feelings of anxiety during the entire first year at British college. However, SOPHIE’s music once again presented itself as a form of therapy for me. She released the ethereal, stunning ballad ‘It’s Okay To Cry’ during this time period. After watching its music video and deciphering the lyrics I realised... Oh my goodness, SOPHIE just came out as a transgender woman! I recall being touched by the exquisite, idiosyncratic song featuring 80s style synthesised arrangements. SOPHIE’S bravery mesmerised me. I knew in that moment, Sophie would revolutionise the music industry, especially the habitat of music production dominated by cisgender, heterosexual men. She proved my initial predictions right - and on many occasions.
The day after SOPHIE released ‘Its Okay To Cry’, I overheard an energetic conversation carried out by a few of fellow openly gay and trans classmates who I’m still acquainted with to this day. They couldn’t contain their excitement about SOPHIE.
Despite the crippling anxiety having affected me so severely at that point, I intervened and expressed my admiration for everything SOPHIE. I felt blessed attending a sixth form alongside gay, non binary, trans classmates who took pride in their identity and sexuality. It put my mind at ease being surrounded in a more progressive environment compared to the intolerant ambience pervading my village in Switzerland. SOPHIE’s music had connected me with such a progressive, solicitous and just simply amazing group of friends. They agreed with me that SOPHIE’s courageous move will impact the music world in such a striking manner and encourage more LGBT people to pursue their goals no matter how extravagant, especially an acclaimed music producer igniting the music industry like SOPHIE. Then all of a sudden they mentioned the track ‘Yeah Right’ and how it blew their mind away due to SOPHIE’s ‘badass as hell instrumentals.’ With all the shame in the world, I confessed I hadn’t heard it yet. Their facial expressions conveyed so much disappointment. One of my classmates quickly plugged their Bluetooth speaker into his laptop and then pressed the play button. From a personal perspective, ‘Yeah Right’ featuring Vince Staples and Kendrick Lamar perfectly stands out to me despite SOPHIE’s extensive and majestic discography to her name.
I contemplate the masterpiece as a pivotal moment in rap music history. Even during 2017,  Sophie began exhibiting red lipstick, latex gloves, tight clothing corresponding  to a more feminine image which totally distances from the aggressively macho image attached to the rap industry. From the moment Vince Staples commences with his lyrically cutting verses to Kendrick Lamar proceeding with his gripping and more than memorable cameo - I realised that a 3 minute long but significant moment music history in general simply named ‘Yeah Right’, had occurred. Her production on the track astonishes me due to its avant grade and timeless edge. To me, it is a masterpiece that echoes the the extremely distant future of music. I reckon we’ll be dancing to ‘Yeah Right’ at the club in 2137. For 4 consecutive years, ‘Yeah Right’ has been reigning champion of most listened to song on my Spotify account and can express with all certainty... it’s my all time favourite song. In all honesty, it cured me of my severe feelings of apprehension and anxiety at Sixth Form.
After regaining my confidence and FINALLY passing the dreaded driving test - after failing three times in a row - the first song I blasted on my speakers in my cheap, run down car was ‘Yeah Right’ and rather fittingly, Sophie’s live version of the officially unreleased ‘Burn Rubber’ whilst driving to university I was about to attend. I genuinely cried all the lyrics to the song whilst driving on the mundane roads of Southern England and FINALLY felt like a free, independent adult. Even during brief chapters of my life such as passing my driving test, SOPHIE made a crucial and ravishing appearance.
The last three years of my life have played out in a rather turbulent style. Towards the middle of 2018, the year unravelled in a fashion that I certainly hadn’t anticipated. I’ll summarise it to the best of my ability even thought it is extremely difficult to. My longtime best friend, the closest person to me, sadly died to long term chronic illness. I couldn’t articulate my utter grief into words and sadly still struggle to this day. It was a sudden blow to the heart which couldn’t be paralleled to anything else I’ve felt in my short lifetime. A month prior to her untimely passing, SOPHIE had released her acclaimed, gallant debut album ‘Oil Of Every Person’s Un Insides.’ Although OOEPUI is a extravagant, historic work of art, I shall describe how the tracks ‘Is it Cold In the Water’ and ‘Faceshopping’ impacted me.
I perceive ‘Is It Cold In The Water?  as a hauntingly riveting piece of music, with vocals sung Cecile Believe that send shivers down my spine. The lyrics ‘Earth shaking, I feel alone’ encapsulated on a personal level how I couldn’t envision an existence without my best friend by my side mocking my naturally deep, monotone voice, her showing me a piece of clothing she had just designed herself as she was an aspiring designer and hurting with laughter whilst impersonating certain celebrities.  My raging anger against the world intensified. I placed my formerly devoted belief in a higher existence under the microscope - a belief system that I unfortunately haven’t revisited ever since. ,Is It cold in the water’ epitomises the dilemma and hardship of entering unknown depths without any inkling of what overcoming the ‘cold water’ and how its aftermath would materialise, metaphorically speaking. I realised I had to place my feet in the cold water in order to heal and adjust to coping with my best friend’s death despite how petrifying the concept as such seemed at the time.
And then there’s the outstanding ‘Faceshopping.’ I’ll confess... when I originally listened to this track, I was rather, dare I say, baffled afterwards. The experimentally electronic provided by Sophie galvanised me as usual. However, as a cisgender woman who has dated men right up to the present moment, I was initially under the very ill informed assumption that I couldn’t identify with a lot of the album’s content produced by an trans woman. That display of shambolic ignorance was quickly put to rest when I analysed the lyrics of ‘Faceshopping’ with an open eye. It clicked that the song could symbolise more than one meaning. It examines the age of the internet and the lengths modern day go to in order to pass as beautiful, especially in the name of personal branding. Furthermore, the powerful track demonstrates SOPHIE’s mesmerisingly fervent opposition against what traditional values regard as beauty which is unquestionably ingenious. I feel the lyric ‘My shop is the face I front’ denotes a person’s individual freedom of complementing their psychical appearance - whether through simply makeup or plastic surgery - and evolving their true gender identity shouldn’t be shunned. As someone who has been extremely self conscious about my appearance since the tender age of 12 caused by several factors eg bullying at school, ‘Faceshopping’ uplifted my spirits and enlightened me that no influence other than my personal self shall control how I beautify my own body.
Skipping to 2020, the world has been transformed to a severe extent due to the Coronavirus infecting and heartbreakingly taking millions of people’s lives. With this almost dystopian nightmare occurring, I felt extremely poorly - physically speaking -  which had been affecting me since October of the same year. Ultimately I was rushed into hospital in December. After countless physical evaluations and days passing by whilst lying in a lonesome hospital bed, my doctor informed me that due to the severity of my current condition, the likelihood of permanent infertility is extremely high. The news put me into a state of shock. After my doctor left the room, the tears couldn’t stop streaming down my face. I had always envisioned raising my own children. Forgive me for the hyperbolic language but in that moment I felt defeated.
With the prospect of my womanhood being affected forever, I put my headphones to shut out the continuous ambulance sirens blaring outside. I pressed Shuffle Play on my SoundCloud and the first song that appeared was SOPHIE’s ‘Heav3n Suspended Livestream’ version of ‘My Forever’. Cecile Believe reiterating ‘Everbody’s got to own their body’ so ethereally, and the song as a whole proved to be therapeutic in the moment. After pressing the repeat button 20 times - at the very least - I had ANOTHER epiphany: no establishment should dictate what constitutes as femininity or womanhood. Even in the modern day society, childless people continue to be stigmatised, often branded as ‘selfish’ or ‘undesirable’ in many communities. I applaud the progress we’ve made in terms of tackling stereotypes associated with infertility. However, more work still needs to be carried out on this matter.  Although it’s only my individual interpretation of the song given the circumstances of my poorly health at the time, the lyrics reassured me that everybody’s - without a doubt -  GOT to own their body. Gosh that sounds so rhetorical!
After this pivotal awakening, I was rushed into surgery which lasted about two hours. The next day - feeling extremely lethargic - I woke up to the fantastic news that the doctors saved my physical health from infertility. I will always be so grateful for their treatment of me and my painful condition. Two weeks into recuperation post surgery, I had no choice but to exercise to boost my mental state caused by inactivity and to get my blood circulation going. As a lifelong, passionate dancer I conceptualised and performed a dance routine to SOPHIE’s club inspired, sublime ‘Take Me To Dubai’. - in front of my cracked bedroom mirror, ironically. Still, dancing again and no physical illness bringing me down felt like a individual rebirth. I was anticipating how 2021 would spell out for me - despite Covid 19 still permeating globally. 2021 finally arrived and not even a full month into the ‘glorious new year’, SOPHIE died.
I recall waking up to numerous messages and notifications capitalising the words: SOPHIE HAS DIED!’. In all honesty ... I froze. It didn’t register for about an hour. Afterwards, I couldn’t disguise the heartbreak and shock that SOPHIE was no longer with us - especially given the cause of her death. It’s been two weeks and I’ll acknowledge that I haven’t overcome the sentiment of anger and upset yet because of her untimely passing .The soundtrack to my existence is gone.
Whether SOPHIE’s musical stylings resonate with you or not, you can’t underestimate her fearless disposition and overwhelming talent. She inspired so many fans to embrace their true identity even when their environment was striving to silence them. She challenged our establishment’s shallow interpretation of beauty, gender and identity. Despite coming out as an trans woman and transphobia still being prevalent globally, SOPHIE didn’t let this form of prejudice stand in her way of achieving her dreams. Her revolutionary mark she left on the industry shall never be underemphasised by so many of us.
SOPHIE,
Thank you for everything. I will never ever forget you,
ROBS.
17 notes · View notes
lichen-punk · 3 years
Text
my mom thinks every single person i ever interact with is madly in love with me when in fact the only people who have ever expressed any romantic or sexual interest in me have been my fiance and a steady stream of freshly church-traumatized horsegirls to whom i am nonthreatening but just barely rebellious enough to project their repressed heterosexuality onto and my mom didnt even notice my partners interest in me so what does she know
6 notes · View notes
hanbereviews · 3 years
Text
Okazaki Kei Route Review
After an (admittedly long) hiatus we’ve returned to continue this review series and hopefully finish it off! Our third character is Okazaki Kei, my second favorite character in the game. Kei’s a well meaning security specialist who was assigned to protect Yanagi’s team, but you soon learn pretty early on he’s a glorified spy meant to report their movements back to the police. While I loved him as a person, I have a few qualms with his route. Since it’ll be harder and harder to give my honest opinions on a route without putting in spoilers, this review will start to get fairly SPOILER HEAVY. So be aware if you’re looking to play this game and spoilers will diminish your enjoyment. 
Characterization
Tumblr media
Okazaki Kei is an incredibly complex individual that is more than he seems from the get go. Considering the common advice is to play Enomoto, Sasazuka, then Okazaki’s route in that order you can view it as the game ramping up the stakes. He’s a seemingly easy going guy housing dark secrets and a host of issues that would probably be tough for a therapist to work through in real life. 
And I think the game does a very interesting job of portraying them! Kei balances a lot of charming moments with the more intense ones just enough to get you invested in him and wanting more. His infatuation with Ichika, and by consequence the issues of an insane martyr complex and a possessive streak crops up slowly enough and is properly explained enough that you don’t feel like it’s a case of her being a mary sue. Okazaki is insanely affectionate, and it feels natural to his character in such a way that you think he’d behave this way with anyone. Which makes genuinely becoming closer to him in the story so much more satisfying! 
Okay I know I’m seriously gushing about him and his route certainly has its flaws, but I honestly suspended a lot of my disbelief for those flaws. That is to say, the whole way he solves his martyr complex kind of does rest on the power of heterosexual love. But the average otome enjoyer isn’t coming to the genre to see a plotline happen where a man gets six months of therapy. 
Plot Relevance
Tumblr media
Following up on Sasazuka dealing with a member of Adonis, Okazaki does the same thing. While a lot of his conflict is primarily focused inward, the game doesn’t deprive you of a glimpse into the greater narrative and in fact connects the two fairly easily. 
On Ichika’s end, I have to say she did a fair bit of detective work here, most of it actually. Kei is firmly categorized as the brawn, a security guard, so a lot of times Ichika is bouncing ideas off him and taking initiative in the case. A breath of fresh air after dealing with her kind of being made out to be a bumbling idiot in Sasazuka’s route. 
Now the greater plot, is um, a piece of work. Okazaki’s route connects his internal conflict with Adonis. We’re shown a flashback of an assassination attempt on the prime minister, and Okazaki mistakenly attempted to save someone instead of committing himself to the job. The consequences were drastic, his partner dying to keep him safe. Except he finds out soon after that same partner was a mole for Adonis, and had a big hand in the assassination attempt. Kei is so traumatized that he develops the martyr complex that I mentioned just a few paragraphs earlier! He latches onto Ichika, because he projects a standard that she’s worth dying for. The narrative makes it clear it’s not because it’s Ichika, but rather because she was in the right place at the right time. 
So you expect a lot of the plot to be devoted to this right? Well, yes! But also no. Kei’s Adonis pair is a man who’s part of organized crime and was a former police officer. He grew increasingly dissatisfied with his job, being abused by his superior and constantly having his accomplishments stolen from him by said superior. As a result he grew so discontent with the police force he turned to crime. This is a very touchy and nuanced subject don’t you think? Exposing that police as an institution is rife with the ability for cops to be crooked, combined with them lording their authority over others. 
Well the game handles that with all the gentleness of taking a bat to someone’s window. The greater plotline plays out like such a weird pro-cop PSA that I felt kind of disoriented over it. You obviously can’t easily forget that this game is about the police as much as it as about dating guys. But I felt like I was getting slapped in the face over and over with “You NEED cops to protect you. Cops must ALWAYS be there. Corruption is only a few bad apples. Cops are IMPORTANT.” Like, I thought I was playing an otome game. Not debating the police’s general usefulness. And its especially stupid because Kei isn’t even a sterotypical cop! He’s specifically trained in security detail, you know, GUARDING people. Not chasing down criminals! Why was I getting this force fed to me on his route of all places?!
Character Interaction
Tumblr media
This is where no exaggeration, the route was saved for me. Kei was accompanied by a junior officer named Hideaki Yoshinari who is effectively his right hand man, and their interactions are as funny as they are endearing. This also gives Ichika a handy outside character to talk to. This, combined with her speaking to her friends in the police force means she gets a wealth of outside interaction until the narrative closes her off a bit. However there’s actually a good explanation this time! I mean, if you can take Kei effectively being the game’s yandere as a good explanation.
Kei and Ichika’s interactions evolve in such a way that are incredibly interesting and pretty well written to me. Kei starts out infatuated with the idea of her, and with the idea of dying for her. He flirts, he gets touchy feely, and he makes her heart flutter. But it’s all in service to himself, and his inner monologues don’t really shy away from that fact. I mean, eventually they do truly fall in love. But Ichika growing to like him and thus not checking out of their potential relationship when she does catch wind of his freaky martyr complex, instead helping him work through it is super nice. And just to mention, the CG below the plot relevance header is an awesome and tension filled moment. Definitely surprised me a little bit. 
This is a side note, since I have nowhere else to put this but Kei’s um. Incredibly horny. I don’t know how else to put it, but we ramped up from rather vague innuendos and CGs that didn’t amount to much, to Kei openly talking about having sex with Ichika before the route’s climax (joke completely unintentional I swear). I mean this game is for adults, and every character is in their mid to late 20s, but still with how strong he came on I was shocked. I don’t think it helped that I’ve played pretty much every popular game Yuki Kaji has been in, and hearing the voice of the quintessential guy you call when you want him to play either screaming asshole or normal dude talk about how much he wants to have straight sex with you is crazy.  
Final Thoughts
Tumblr media
I am being completely serious when I say even though I am giving this route a low score that Kei is still perhaps one of my favorite characters in the game. It’s too bad that the greater plot that intersected with his internal conflict was 5+ hours of having copaganda shoved down my throat. I indicated when I started this review that I don’t have good opinions of the police due to the aforementioned issue of my being black, and police in every country have a very very dark history of abusing their power. So I’m not going to act like that didn’t severely lower my enjoyment. 
I’m giving this route a 6.5/10. 
But like I said, Kei’s an extremely compelling character. So if you include my completely loving him, maybe you can inflate that rating by about 2 points.
2 notes · View notes
witchofrvnswood · 4 years
Text
tedros’ sister headcanons
okay okayyy i know this has been done many times before but hear me out:
what if when tedros was two or three, gwen got pregnant with lance’s baby and gave birth to a daughter who she had to pretend was arthur’s child
the girl is a solid mix of her mother and father - she has thick, curly brunette hair and blue eyes and since lance is like,,, muscular and beefy, she’s on the bigger side and is basically viewed as drop dead gorgeous when she grows up by anyone who sees her
these features cause suspicion in the court but arthur dismisses them as he’s sure it’s just his wife’s bloodline showing up in their daughter’s features or something, but he’s only trying to squash his own fears
she and tedros are such a cute sibling duo, he’s a protective older brother, she’s a sassy and cute younger sister, they bicker a LOT over little things (where she hid his training sword, who gets the last slice of cake) and they’re both super emotional and cute and end up crying together at the end of their fights and go back to normal a second later
she and arthur are also super close, he’s wary of her appearance not matching his save for the eye color, which is really just gwen’s shade of blue but darker so it looks like arthur’s, and she’s also very charming and admires her dad a lot so he can’t help but love and spoil her.
lance is careful not to give her any extra attention because of the court rumors especially since people were already speculating that he fathered tedros after seeing him give him piggyback rides and lots of people know he had a fling with gwen, but sometimes he gives the little girl advice or talks to her when no one’s around or takes her places around the kingdom (away from the castle, where rumors could spread if they were seen) and buys her whatever she wants
eventually, when it comes time for gwen and lance to run off, the girl is 7 and tedros is 9, and gwen almost took her but she knew it was one thing to flee the kingdom as its queen but to take a princess with her, the offspring of the current king, would cause arthur and his court to go to any length to find her. she and lance couldn’t risk it and hoped they might meet their daughter again some day
arthur is crushed and during this time, the mistral sisters reveal they knew about her true parentage and tell arthur this and he believes them, not trusting gwen anymore and already suspecting it. this turns into neglect and abuse towards the girl because she reminds him of her mother’s infidelity and he starts shutting her out completely and when she gets in the way, he screams at her and curses her
whenever arthur takes his temper out on his daughter, tedros always takes her away and tries to comfort her. at this point. they stick together during arthur’s downfall and become super close. but when he died, arthur told him the truth and to find a girl who would never cheat on him the way his mother did
this causes tedros to become distant to her and start viewing her as his mother and lance’s child too. he can’t bear to be near her and starts avoiding her and dealing with his grief on her own. this makes her depressed as she’s now emotionally abandoned by everyone she was close to.
a few years pass by with them going about their own duties, watching their kingdom fall apart but being able to do nothing about it. when tedros finally leaves for school, he’s 14 and she’s 12 and they haven’t had much interaction in four years.
before he leaves, tedros makes the mistral sisters swear not to tell her the truth, he now knows that they told his father to put him in misery and leave the kingdom in their hands and hates them for it, especially as they persist to mock him about it. of course, they pretend to agree so he’ll leave, but they don’t hold true to their promise.
once he’s gone, they start tormenting the princess too and in a turn of events of some sort, they tell her the truth and she doesn’t want to believe them, but the way her father and brother turned against her was the only evidence she needed
she started getting angry and hopeless about any sort of love in this world, her mother abandoned her, her father was never hers, her brother emotionally abandoned her right after their father died, leaving her, an eight year old, to get through it on her own. no matter how hard she tried to fix her relationship with her brother, he would never relent and would often make excuses to not be around her or just tell her to leave him alone.
she starts seeing people as some sort of tool to get what she wants since she doesn’t expect any sort of love from them anymore. she uses her status and the importance it comes with to get attention, she starts showing up at public events, and soon people start to adore her even more. she has flings with sons of nobles only to cut them off with no reason except that they bored her (also that she’s only interested in girls but no one knows yet shh)
it goes on like this until tedros comes back from the school to take his kingdom back. over the years, she heard stories of him, leading the war against girls and boys, how his ex girlfriend went psycho, how he had supposedly single handedly defeated the school master. she said she didn’t care about him but pored through the tale of sophie and agatha at night, imagining every detail to experience his journey with him
when he finally came back, she acted nice and helpful enough but detached. she had also gained a lot of sarcasm while he was gone and didn’t hesitate to tease him every chance she could get. also, his experiences in school humbled him and he once again started treating her kindly, and their relationship is cordial, but it still couldn’t erase years worth of pain
at some point, she confronts him for what he did for the past six years and she usually acts like she doesn’t care, but this is one of the first times in six years where she expresses genuine and raw emotion. she tells him about how it felt to be eight and lose your parents only to lose your brother too and what it was like to have no one and be alone in a castle for your entire childhood. he feels terrible and realizes he never really understood what she had gone through and was blinded by his own pain and fury towards his mother and had projected it onto her. he apologizes and it takes some time as she definitely does not forgive easily but they make up eventually and slowly return to their childhood relationship although it isn’t the same as they’ve grown apart from each other for a long time.
when she reunited with gwen and lance, she was displeased to see them and despised her mother for abandoning her. they do get a chance to talk though and they make peace, even though she will never truly forgive her for what she did. she and lance talk too a little and they find they have the same urge to roast tedros over everything, but besides that, she isn’t really interested in a relationship with him as she never saw him as her father and continues to address him formally.
she got along really well with agatha and they became friends soon. her big ego and tendency to throw her status around irked agatha at first and made her wary of how she’d be received by her but she soon realized it was just a front and that she was actually a really kind person. they had lots of fun teasing tedros together.
when she and sophie met, they clashed due to their very similar personalites and experiences, emotionally abandoned by family, mother left them some way or another, neither have had luck in love due to their manipulative behavior and compulsory heterosexuality. y’all can see where this is going,,, i haven’t worked out their story yet but i know i want them to end up together lol siblings marry siblings, tedros once wanted sophie far away from him but now she’s his sister in law in two ways lmao
if anyone wants, i can expand her and sophie’s story, but for now this is all i have to post for now (it took me 40 minutes to type out you better appreciate it x)
24 notes · View notes
molusca · 3 years
Note
she apologized for how she handled the situation and apologized for brushing off someone's honest criticisms as hate. what more is she meant to do? throw herself onto a pyre? is she not allowed to feel lousy that this whole thing blew up in her face? because she's an adult and she made a mistake, she's not allowed to be sad or stressed? she's still an imperfect human. apologizing immediately usually means people are still sensitive to their own hurt of being called out because it's fresh and on their mind so it tends to slip into their apology, but if she had waited any longer to compose herself, you guys would probably have an issue with how long she took. also, in aaaaaallll of this, I've have yet to once see what exactly about her work is so problematic? I've read her fic and I personally can't see anything wrong, although I will admit that yes, I'm a white ciswoman but I'd like to think I'm aware of negative tropes. but the only thing touted is "it made an mlm uncomfortable" but HOW??? honestly, I want to know! if anything so I can avoid doing the same thing! how is anyone meant to learn when you're not bringing up these points as often as you're explicitly laying out the problems in her apology and whatnot. I've seen 6 posts about how shit the apology was and for why and I've not once seen the original comment detailing why the fic was problematic, and I've been looking on twit, tumblr, insta, and ao3. if it's been deleted, why isn't anyone stating again and again what's wrong? also, if someone is making fic/art you don't like, don't. interact. with. it. there's tons of stuff on ao3 and twit that I don't like, some of it that I think is disgusting (do you know how many fics there are with keith/kosmos?) and I just scroll past it cause it can't hurt me if I don't read it. there's one artist that's pretty popular on Twitter and I personally really hate they way they draw klance but it's all over my tl. I respect that person's art style and creativeness and keep on moving. other people enjoy it, good for them. and if I start reading something and get surprised with something I dont like, I leave! find people who write things you like and stop engaging with creators who's things you don't like, as far as I know no one is holding a gun to your head making you read problematic fic. also for as much as you rag on her for the words she used to apologize, you don't seem to be considering your own words when offering criticism. if Taylor mistook the person's words as hate, couldn't it have been because the way he worded the complaint was done hatefully? lastly, no one, absolutely no one, is required to talk about world issues when they're running a fandom account,no matter how "big" they are. we all know what's going on in the world, we're surrounded by sad and stressful stories practically 24/7 and if someone isn't, they're probably curating their social feeds to be that way (like you should do when it come to kl content creators you don't like). people sending hate in Taylor's defense are in the wrong I agree, and this isn't hate its critism its a discussion, but Taylor isn't responsible for, how many people did you say? 16k on twit? even if she said hey guys stop, you think they would? she's can't control all those people and expecting her to is nonsense. I see so many younger fans expecting perfection in their fandoms and that just isn't going to happen. yes we should be striving to be better but no one is ever going to be perfect. not you, not me, not the mlm person, not Taylor, not anyone on any side of this argument. the only way to avoid this kind of circular dog piling and hate sending is to better curate your fandom experience by ignore those you have issues with.- 🦛
she apologized for how she handled the situation and apologized for brushing off someone's honest criticisms as hate. what more is she meant to do?
im pretty sure i said its good that she realizes she handled it poorly. but she makes the whole apology about this, doesnt directly talk about the issues and i know someone went to her to talk about it. also, it took her a day to say something about it so it wasnt exactly immediate (in the sense people had already stopped talking about it but that doesnt mean they werent still bothered). the apology was directed at mlm, and i havent seen one saying it felt genuine. of couse she can be hurt but when you apologize to a marginalized group the focus shouldnt be your feelings, but the feelings of the ones you have hurt.
I've have yet to once see what exactly about her work is so problematic?
she admits to be projecting on lance. so she makes him very femine and keith very masculine. and ok, gay couples like that do exist, but she is a woman projecting in this situation so this bothers people. putting mlm in this position is a harmful steriotype, bc it feels very heterosexual. this is a trope, it unfortunately happens a lot and its harmful. women need to be aware of what they are representing when drawing/writing mlm because well, real mlm are going to see it, and no one likes to feel like a fetish to others. and its not our place to question if the criticism is right or wrong when we are not mlm, so if you read this and think “but thats not a problem thats not a fetish etc” well, its not your place to judge that. theres more to it and you probably could get a better answer from a mlm sorry.
if someone is making fic/art you don't like, don't. interact. with. it. there's tons of stuff on ao3 and twit that I don't like, some of it that I think is disgusting (do you know how many fics there are with keith/kosmos?) and I just scroll past it cause it can't hurt me if I don't read it.
please, lets not compare a minority pointing out harmful tropes with. something fucking illegal.
as you said, you are a cis woman, of course its not going to hurt you in this case. but if people are making harmful content its not a simple matter of “dont interact with it” because they will still be promoting it, other people are going to read it, and media influences how we see minorities so of course people will not like when they see bad portrayal of them. also, tumblr sucks so even if you want to just “dont interact with it” its hard because even after blocking you can still cross the content of someone. not sure how it works on twitter but anyway this discussion started on tumblr and tumblr doesnt stop people who were bothered by her to avoid her by blocking.
if Taylor mistook the person's words as hate, couldn't it have been because the way he worded the complaint was done hatefully?
i think she deleted the ask by now, but i dont remember the ask being hateful. i remember someone asking if she was a fujoshi, and another person mentioned that mlm didnt like the way she portrayals klance. i dont remember it being hateful. but again, she apologized for handling it badly. its just that she stops there.
no one, absolutely no one, is required to talk about world issues when they're running a fandom account,no matter how "big" they are. we all know what's going on in the world, we're surrounded by sad and stressful stories practically 24/7 and if someone isn't, they're probably curating their social feeds to be that way
ignoring world issues is a privilege. if someone is able to turn off from all the problems in the world, its a privilige. yes no one should talk aobut it all the time thats not even healthy, but to never talk about it is a privilege. thats what black people are saying, they cant just turn off from racism, so yes they are going to expect white people to do something. online honestly i cant do shit, i dont think anything i reblog here does a difference and i do what i can in my own country, but she has a plataform that could help bring awareness. again, its a privilege to be able to curate your social media to be a perfect happy place.
even if she said hey guys stop, you think they would? she's can't control all those people and expecting her to is nonsense.
maybe they wouldnt, but if people were doing this type of thing in my name, in my defense, i would at least say something about it idk. she cant control them but she makes nothing to show that she disagrees or look for the people being harassed to say something about it.
the only way to avoid this kind of circular dog piling and hate sending is to better curate your fandom experience by ignore those you have issues with.
when it comes to simple things like “i prefer taller lance and i dont like taller keith” yeah, its fine to ignore people who draw taller keith and move on with your life or something like that. but we are talking about mlm, a real group of people, being upset for being portrayed in a harmful and steriotype way. its everywhere in fandom, and in real life. they cant escape from real life, and then they come to fandom where everyone wants some escapism and have to deal with more issues. its tiring
6 notes · View notes
steponmepinkjun · 3 years
Note
I NEVER FINISHED MY STORY OMG. ok so i left off at being too proud to tell my friend she was right and kpop fucked hard. the difference between u and me is that i’m too good of a liar. too good. i kept up the “i hate kpop it’s cringe” facade for ALMOST TWO WHOLE YEARS, I SHIT YOU NOT. why? bc my dumb ass, extra ass, dramatic ass self thought “ok if i’m gonna have to deal with the embarrassment of admitting i’m wrong, i better do it in such an extra ass way it’ll knock ur socks off so hard that YOULL be the one embarrassed not me.” the original plan was to learn the entire choreography to bts dope, bc it’s the song that she told me to listen to and inevitably the song that got me into them, but later switched to bts fire bc i saw too many of those “choreo matches w any song” videos, and then her birthday party came up. and here’s the real kicker. her birthday is April Motherfuckin Fools. so it would be So Perfect for me to reveal my kpopism as a birthday present And a april fools prank in one. so i was Set on the Reveal being on april 1st, but the day rolls around and god that choreo is so fucking hard and i am Not a dancer. never have been. so i abandon that and go ykno what… i’ll do it Next Year. BC MY BITCHASS WAS LIKE NO THE MOMENT IS TOO PERFECT TO DO IT ON A NORMAL ASS DAY ITS GONNA BE ON APRIL FOOLS ON HER GODDAMN BIRTHDAY OR NOT AT ALL. a year rolls by, i’ve told most of our friends except her and they’re all in on it, i’d made so many subtle kpop references to her without her realising they were fully intentional and had too many scares where she almost figured me out but i lied my way out of it, and i’d given up on showing off with choreography bc i couldn’t make that shit look good. i’m not a dancer. i am, however, a rapper, and a damn good one, so i inhaled the agust d mixtape and decided i’d just rap the eminem of kpop’s anthem at her face. in korean. and change the lyrics at the end (if u haven’t listened to agust d, the bridge repeats “i’m sorry” a lot) to “i’m sorry i kept this from u for so long” and “i’m sorry i actually ult got7 not bts” (this was like the april after skz debuted ok i was holding onto got7 for dear life knowing full well skz we’re going to convert me smh) and the best part? she never saw it coming. her official present was a cd with a bunch of kpop on it but she thought it was just a personalised mixtape for her so i told her to play the first song out loud and she knew the song Instantly. it has a long intro so she was like “i guess u did listen when i recommended u this song!! i knew you’d like it since u like rap so much!!” and then i started rapping and i shit u not. she started SCREAMING. like the initial reaction was her jaw dropping and then instinctively covering her mouth but when i kept going and she realised i wasn’t fucking around she just fucking screamed like a banshee. at the end during the sorry bit i threw off my jacket to reveal a got7 shirt on the inside and she fell off her chair and started rolling around on the floor. needless to say it was every bit as satisfying as i thought it’d be LMAOOOO afterwards her ass was like “I CANT BELIEVE U HID THIS FROM ME FOR OVER A YEAR” and when i tried to explain my ego couldn’t take the “i told u so” she was like “you know i wouldn’t have made fun of you for it right? i would just be glad you’re not hating on my boys anymore” so basically i’m a big dramatic fool and she was always too good for me.
don’t mind the weird spaces here my ipad is being all fucky wucky w me rn. damn sad to hear ur sideblog experience didn’t go so well, i’d have shown u the cool side of the fandom if i knew 😤😤 leading u thru the cursed halls of kpop stan tumblr like a sketchy tour guide that’s actually 3 small raccoons stacked on top of each other like a trench coat, like “over here we have the fanfic writers that honestly need to publish a book, over here we have the gif makers that are responsible for my entire camera roll, if we take a quick swerve past the death threat anons and the twt fanwar screenshots - mind ur feet bub the 14 year olds were tryna make a grab for ur ankles - ah here’s the holy grail of shitposts, you might be here for hours, to the right we have the weird aussie side of the fandom that projects our childhoods onto chanlix but also all the members as we decide what their life in australia would’ve been like, and down there is a secret trapdoor to the blogs w endless random headcanons that will make you laugh, cry or blush depending on if the author woke up and decided to choose violence today. enjoy your Stay!” but then again i’m not so active on tumblr anymore (ngl you’ve become the highlight of my tumblr experience these days, interaction wise,) so maybe all my Local Hotspots are inactive now. i know a bunch of them are, it’s sad. “i don’t fw stan twitter for the same reason i don’t hang out in meth dens” oop. guess i’m a meth addict. no but i get u i rly do, it’s a hellhole out there, but the fact that things get shared and spread a lot easier than on tumblr and how short most things have to be (therefor keeping up w my adhd attention span without having to resort to the mental torture that is tiktok, with the added bonus of not always needing headphones.) that i just. couldn’t leave if i tried. maybe i should try being active on tumblr again but it’s a dying site in comparison.
“their music doesn’t consistently hit for me as much as skz” i’m sorry we can’t be friends anymore. what. what. you don’t dramama ramama ramama hey? you don’t feel a little jealousyyyyyy, naega anin? you don’t shoot out, shoot out, shoot out, or aremdaeun love killa love killa? you can’t be your hero du du du du du du du du du dududu? u disappoint me. literally like everyone i know who likes skz music likes mx music like it’s a rite of Passage. they’re kindred spirits, monsta x music is like skz’s music’s cool but mildly heterosexual older brother. neither of them know what a bad song is it runs in the family. and both their music runs in my VEINS. whenever i describe my music taste they’re always the first two that come to mind, skz being my number 1 bc they are my best boys but mx bc of the Flavour. pls listen to the entire the code album then get back to me 😤🙌 ok but fr ur so right they are 7 of the finest men i ever seen (yes i say 7 bc i’m including wonho cause he deserved better and i’ll die on my ot7 bullshit.) like don’t get me started on them either LOL i LITERALLY downloaded that one insta video of changkyun working out his back n arm muscles w his tattoo showing bc i needed that shit saved for Science. they could do Anything w me like frfr. yes vixx is the bdsm contract group i’m telling ya they wildin. or at least they were. it’s been years since their last comeback idk what they’re doing anymore tbh. and yeah that makes sense, savouring the hyperfixation i feel it, but also i’m so attached to skz that i never let it die. like i hyperfixate on other things and other groups but i will Always go back to skz cause they’re my homeboys. hell, they’re my home. being a predebut stay i’ve spent more time w skz than most of my actual family members at this point. but that’s just me you do u boo xx just know that if ur anything like me ur never letting go once skz it’s been my longest lasting fixation cause they hit like Nothing Else Do. ik i’ve already said that but i cannot stress it enough. they’re really special. i’m gonna stop here before i get all sappy and emotional bc i really love those boys so fucking much and i don’t drop the L bomb often. SIDE NOTE I WOULD LIKE TO SEE UR LIST OF GROUPS RANKED BY THORSt. i need to judge ur Taste. and omg cat&dog is such a guilty pleasure song bc the lyrics make me cringe so much bc while pet play can be fun they be doing it in more of an “i’m an innocent soft dogboy uwu” kinda way that just Does Not Sit Right with me. it comes back to the objectifying of asians that asians themselves don’t help in industries like these and maybe i’m looking too far into it when rly it is just wholesome n cute or maybe they are into some pet play shit idk idc i will bop to the song regardless but i will not acknowledge the lyrics nope.
YOURE RIGHT THO SKZ’S OPENNESS IS IN FACT, A BIG DEAL, i’ll grab them for u if u want but i found these twt threads of skz supporting the lgbt community and i just felt a special kind of happiness man like sure the delusional part of me likes going “haha they’re gay” bc my brain likes to imagine them as my polycule of mlm boyfriends bc sometimes thats what gives me the serotonin to get me thru the day ok don’t judge but also bc it’s nice knowing that yes i’ll never know them personally, but at least i can support them knowing they’d respect my gender identity and my pronouns, they’d respect who i choose to love, and that’s already more than the general public can say so shit, it is special! it’s special that they don’t treat being cishet like the norm - they constantly remove gender from their songs and speech entirely, they don’t assume all stays are female anymore, we don’t talk abt the babygirls incident cause we got babystays in the end outta that ok, and it’s just. so refreshing and important to me bc i can’t get that anywhere else!! like my semi ults are the boyz and while i love them very much and there’s no way all 11 of them are straight i refuse, i do get just a little bit sad whenever they she/her their fandom by default and call them their girlfriends n shit even tho i do still identify as a girl, i’m also genderfluid/nonbinary/transmasc, and i have a very love/hate relationship w my womanhood and rarely use she/her pronouns, cause it’s like, do you not see me? see us? the ones who aren’t cishet women? i mean i know kevin does bc he congratulated a fan who came out as nb but it’s just not the same as the openness we get w skz. like how do i trust cishets i could be supporting them as a queer person when in reality they’d call me a slur. what would i know, behind the screen? so it’s so good that skz go the extra mile to make it a safe space for everyone. this is already long enough i will reply to the second half of that ask in another message… tomorrow cause it’s 1am and i’m tired gn -felix bi anon
I'mma have to start putting these under a readmore so that i don't absolutely make everything who is still following me for some reason go totally fucking insane 😂
NDJDHWJJAHFNAKBSJSBFBHHDBDNAJD YOU HAVE NO IDEA THE FACES I WAS MAKING READING THIS, I WAS FUCKING CACKLING AND GASPING EVERY OTHER SENTENCE SO HARD THAT I SCARED THE CATS NDJWHSHSB the fact that you went "oh you want me to get into kpop? Give me a hot minute, and I'll give you a whole ass private concert for free" biduehsjdbd biiiiiiiiiiitch you're a fucking ICON, I stg I could NEVER 😂 (and not just because I couldn't find a tune if you gave me a printed set of Google maps directions and that I embody the steriotype that white people can't dance, like my sister kept sensing me tiktoks of the whole "dance like a white girl" trend going lmfao look it's you and eventually I was like "sis please this trend has me feeling like being white is a disability and these mothafuckers are being ableist 😭 also I could NEVER be that on beat so yall ain't even doin it right 😭😭😭😭"). Tbh if I told one of my friends (lol what friends, i got jokes) to get into Skz and they showed up at my bday and performed the entirety of I Got It I would simply shower them in money and go "aight everyone else go home, you are no longer needed, you are being laid off, your position has been eliminated, we're downsizing, the company is moving up and you're moving out, you are not qualified for this role any longer, best of luck with future endeavors" 😊
I think part of the reason I can't deal w Twitter is the exact reason I refuse to leave tumblr, in that I've been on tumblr since 2006 and twt since 2008, and tumblr literally has not changed at all, not even a little, whereas going from the early days of twt where there were no corporate sponsorships or ads and you had to manually copy and paste someone's tweet and @ them to retweet it, to how it is now, like 90% ads and showing me shit from the timelines of people I don't even fuckin follow n whatnot, it's just not enjoyable. Idk how anyone finds anything on twt, it confuses and frustrates me because I am old and have not adapted well to technology changing 😂 But arguably, the skz fanbase doesn't want me on skztwt anyways so like it works for both of us lmfaooo. I am old and cringey, and also still think of twt as stream of consciousness whereas tumblr is your teenage bedroom where you can decorate the walls with anything that interests you. I do really love the nonsensical kpoptwt shitposts tho fhshsbdjjss like it is a very specific flavor of mental instability that I enjoy immensely 😂 OH and also I initially misread part of that and thought you were saying you actually irl do meth and I was like 😳 WHAT DO I SAY TO THAT. HOW DO I HANDLE THIS. Like how do I express like "I wasn't being judgy of people who use substances cause I've been there but I was just being insensitive 😳" And then went back and reread it and was like WHEW, IM JUST AN ILLITERATE FOOL 😂😂😂😂 ejeywhdhrhjwbfbdjshdhdhd I spent like an hour bwign like "IS THE REASON WE GET ALONG BECAUSE THEY'RE ON METH???? WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS INFORMATION??????" hrhehshe I am literally a fuckin idiot it's fine
It's not that I don't fw them, it's more like... Okay so like there is no situation in which I am going to skip a skz song if it comes on shuffle. You will not ever catch me NOT in the mood to listen to Sunshine, if God's Menu comes on we are THROWIN the meager amount of booty meat I got hither and thither, I could be in the happiest mood of my life but if Ex comes on I will stop to SOB. And I'm not like that with most music, so mx just falls into the category of "there is a time and place." Idk why but it just doesn't forcibly grab hold of my heart and ass the way skz always does. I really don't WANT my skz fixation to ever end, but I know that eventually it'll stop giving me dopamine bevause my brain is my worst fucking enemy 🙃 like my arcana fixation is to date the longest running hyperfixation I've ever had, going on almost three years, and I used to not be able to spend every single second of every day thinking about Asra, but now... I just feel nothing when I look at arcana stuff. As you can probz tell by the fact that I hardly post arcana anymore 😂 So I know that eventually all my happiness will end, it always does, I can never stay just as obsessed with something as I was for long. I CANT SHARE THE LIST BECAUSE I DONT *HAVE* TASTE YET 😭 I'm basically just compiling a list of any group someone tells me I should look into, ranked by how strong the kitty purred upon googling pics of them 😂 My mom read my ass to FILTH over txt lmfao she was like "they're not that adorable. Maybe your standard for adorableness has gone down with You Know Who still on hiatus 🤔" bfjwhdhd like MOMMAAAAA THE LIBRARY IS CLOSED 😂 she attacks me any time I even hint at stanning other groups, she is a skz purist and stans skz only, unofficial Momma Stay of All Stays keeping me in check lmfao.
I feel like skz really do follow thru on their promise that they're a safe space for stays, it's nice to see that they hold space for anyone and everyone in their fanbase and do it in a really simple and elegant way, I feel. Like they never make it seem like "okay here are the fans and here are the token weirdos that were only recognizing to make a buck off of them" the way a lot of artists make it feel like 😑 like they don't go out of their way to act like it's some revolutionary act to do the bare minimum of not shitting on certain parts of the fandom, if that makes sense. They feel very "yeah, of course we love all our stays, this is a welcoming space for literally anyone, that's how it should be, that should be normal," instead of like "Hi fans we love you 😊 and special shoutout to you ell gee bee tee folk, make sure to buy my rainbow merch after the show!!!" you know? Like, they're the friends who would never make you feel weird or different for some shit, the friends that take the attention off you if something they know ur sensitive about comes up, instead of weirdly snapping at whoever brought the unfomfy thing up which ruins the mood and makes you feel tiwce as bad, yk? They just give off this vibe that they, and the space they create with their music, is just a genuine and chill place to be and hang out and relax and bond. I feel like they'd be the friend group that is so goofy and sweet and silly and accepting and lovely and always makes you feel loved and excited to be alive 🥺 They are all good noodles 🥺🥺🥺
5 notes · View notes
gayregis · 4 years
Note
I'm majorly afraid that the "unrequited romance" part actually refers to Cahir, seeing as she's a C*hiri shipper
oh yeah that’s another part of lauren’s horrifically bad taste that i can roast her for - she went all gung-ho on twitter about grown ass men dating underaged girls. that’s fun
i just thought it was about geralt immediately because i have seen the take before (on reddit) that milva had unrequited feelings for geralt (based upon the interaction of “she needs me, maria...” “not just her”) so that’s what i thought it was referring to... but i have also seen the take before that milva had feelings for cahir too, and honestly it just seems like so unrealistic and like the heterosexual agenda to me. i dont know why straight people can’t just stop making characters straight and projecting their sexuality onto everything. also cahir’s a bit young for milva imo even though they’re only separated by a few years, they’re separated by a lot in independence and experience. everyone in the company basically thinks cahir is super young so it’s always gonna be gross to ship him with anyone in the hansa.
but god i just. lauren has the most cishet wealthy white woman takes ive ever fucking seen and it shows in the writing of twn, which is bad, bland, and milquetoast
12 notes · View notes
theofm · 4 years
Text
𝐰𝐨𝐰  𝐢'𝐦  𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐥𝐲  beyond  excited  for  this  !  to  say  i’m  rusty  is  a  total  understatement  ,  but  we  here  to  survive  (  not  thrive  )  in  this  house  while  i  get  reacquainted  ..  my  theme  is  also  a  work  in  progress  because  tumblr  decided  to  ATTACK  me  with  an  invalid  html  error  ,  but  we’re  pushing  through  .  anyway  ,  all  that  aside  ?  i  go  by  leesh  &  i’m  living  it  up  in  the  pacific  tz  (  pst  )  .  my  pronouns  are  she  /  her  &  if  you  want  to  find  me  on  discord  i’m  at  𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 🥳#9405  .
Tumblr media
*  𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐠𝐨𝐬  here  and  do  i  have  the  tea  for  you  .  theo  is  back  in  bridgehampton  for  the  summer  ,  living  off  the  richards’  family  $758 million  net  worth  .  must  be  nice  to  come  back  home  to  the  hamptons  ,  i  wonder  what  his  fellow  class  of  2017  grads  think  of  his  return  .  you  know  ,  he  was  known  around  town  as  the  conciliatory  and  for  bhs  senior  superlatives  he  was  crowned  as  most  likely  to  become  a  motivational  speaker  .  i  wonder  if  that  still  holds  true  today  ,  a  lot  can  change  when  you  go  off  to  the  university  of  california  —  los angeles and  study  political  science  &  international  relations  .  either  way  ,  i  bet  he  is  still  very  venturesome  ,  debonair  ,  heedless  and  boisterous  .  hopefully  this  time  next  year  the  plans  to  get  a  master’s  degree  &  get  accepted  into  the  pathways  internship  program  come  true  .  in  the  meantime  ,  i  look  forward  to  seeing  him  blast  3005  -  childish gambino  at  every  hamptons  function  .  it’s  going  to  be  a  wild  summer  home  ,  welcome  back  .  (  jacob  elordi  )  .
.  *     ›     statistics  .
𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞  :  theodore  richards 𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬  :  theo 𝐚𝐠𝐞  +  𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞  𝐨𝐟  𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡  : august 29th ,  1999  . 𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥  𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧  : virgo 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫  +  𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐬  :  cis  male  +  he  /  him  𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞  𝐨𝐟  𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡  : new york , new york 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞  𝐨𝐟  𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞  :  bridgehampton  ,  new  york 𝐬𝐞𝐱𝐮𝐚𝐥  𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧  :  heterosexual 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐜  𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧  :  heteroromantic 𝐨𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧  :  student 𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲  :  american 𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲  :  caucasian 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬  𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧  :  english 
.  *     ›     background  . 
—  born  to  jacob  &  marissa  richards  ,  the  former  a  composer  &  the  latter  to  become  a  u.s.  ambassador  ,  theo  was  the  product  of  a  love  story  for  the  ages  .  originally  marissa  cardiff  ,  his  mother  was  born  into  a  wealthy  and  politically  tied  family  .  the  high-status  claim  that  theo  is  so  accustomed  to  originated  here  ,  privileged  having  been  an  understatement  .  so  when  she'd  fallen  in  love  with  an  aspiring  musician  &  composer  ,  her  family  was  far  from  happy  .  her  &  jacob  hardly  cared  ,  believing  that  they  could  live  a  happy  life  without  the  wealth  and  support  of  the  cardiff  name  .
—  insert  theo  ,  the  pride  &  joy  of  their  marriage  &  for  a  while  ..  the  glue  keeping  them  together  .  co-parenting  was  the  first  of  many  faults  for  the  older  richards  ,  disagreeing  on  matters  constantly  &  beginning  to  struggle  financially  without  the  support  of  marissa's  parents  .  for  the  lifestyle  his  mother  wanted  him  to  have  ,  primed  &  proper  with  the  best  brands  to  his  name  ,  she  realized  she  hadn't  set  him  up  for  success  in  this  way  .  the  household  began  to  erupt  in  constant  fighting  ,  a  battle  that  a  toddler  was  painstakingly  unaware  of  .  jacob's  anger  issues  were  becoming  more  &  more  prominent  ,  continuing  on  until  marissa  eventually  deemed  her  current  situation  no  longer  ideal  for  herself  nor  for  theo  .  she'd  gathered  their  belongings  in  the  middle  of  the  night  &  vanished  without  a  trace  ,  knowing  that  the  cardiff  name  &  the  power  attached  to  it  would  be  enough  to  protect  them  both  from  any  repercussions  .
—  of  course  ,  theo's  grandparents  welcomed  them  into  their  home  with  open  arms  .  they  were  simply  thankful  that  their  daughter  was  finished  chasing  what  they  saw  to  be  a  wild  fantasy  ,  a  romeo  &  juliet  plot  destined  for  failure  from  the  beginning  .  from  then  on  ,  they  both  lived  at  the  cardiff  estate  .  theo  ,  shoved  into  a  private  school  uniform  &  sent  to  become  exposed  to  a  world  of  money  &  power  ,  his  mother  rising  in  the  ranks  to  eventually  earn  her  spot  as  a  successful  u.s.  ambassador  for  the  country  .
—  theo  was  primed  and  polished  to  follow  in  his  mother’s  footsteps  in  politics  ,  the  expectations  in  his  life  having  been  clear  from  a  very  young  age  .  follow  the  sought-after  path  of  the  his  family  ,  or  suffer  the  consequences  .  his  grandparents  ,  though  loving  ,  pushed  obligations  onto  their  grandson  to  make  a  name  for  himself  .  they  ensured  that  his  father  was  kept  out  of  his  life  ,  battling  &  paying  him  off  until  he  had  eventually  stopped  trying  to  reconnect  with  his  son  .  they  told  him  not  to  make  the  same  mistake  as  his  mother  ,  bolstered  him  on  a  path  to  becoming  notorious  in  the  field  of  politics  .  this  came  with  immense  pressures  ,  especially  with  his  own  mother's  absence  due  to  work  (  among  other  things  )  &  wholly  believing  that  there  was  no  other  path  that  he  was  fitted  to  pursue  .
—  however  ,  it  wasn’t  as  if  his  path  of  politics  was  unwilling  in  any  way  ,  his  participation  in  various  policy  projects  throughout  high  school  &  extra-circulars  such  as  model  un  had  piqued  theo's  interests  in  a  different  area  ––  politics  .  as  with  most  things  ,  he’s  motivated  by  doing  what  he  can  to  please  &  earn  the  affection  of  the  people  around  him  .  with  that  being  said  ,  working  in  politics  would  allow  him  to  accomplish  that  goal  .  as  incentivized  as  he  is  by  the  notion  of  making  a  direct  difference  on  the  people  around  him  &  his  country  ,  with  such  a  line  of  work  comes  great  pressure  . 
—  while  theo  was  completing  school  &  living  with  his  grandparents  ,  his  mother  was  either  away  for  work  or  entertaining  the  likes  of  what  theo  had  come  to  know  as  many  different  men  .  following  her  failed  marriage  ,  she  became  a  serial  dater  of  only  the  most  elite  &  wealthiest  that  bridgehampton  had  to  offer  .  eventually  ,  she  settled  down  once  again  ..  but  only  after  theo  had  grown  up  for  practically  his  whole  life  disapproving  of  the  men  she  was  with  .  his  step-father  &  step-sister  joined  their  family  in  theo's  early  high  school  years  ,  &  the  four  of  them  packed  up  &  moved  from  the  cardiff  estate  to  a  mansion  of  their  own  .
—  moving  across  the  country  to  attend  school  at  ucla  absolutely  changed  his  life  .  being  exposed  to  a  whole  new  sea  of  people  did  wonders  for  the  boy’s  social  life  ,  &  being  away  from  the  pressures  of  his  family  made  theo  feel  like  he  could  finally  breathe  for  once  .  he’s  coming  back  to  bridgehampton  with  loads  of  new  memories  &  stories  to  share  .  still  ,  something  about  high  school  resonates  with  him  —  he  holds  the  connections  he  made  there  closer  to  his  heart  ,  &  there  was  no  denying  his  excitement  when  it  came  time  to  return  home  .  he  still  holds  out  hope  that  maybe  one  day  he’ll  be  reunited  with  his  dad  ,  but  he  seemed  to  have  vanished  off  the  planet  .
.  *     ›     personality  . 
—  the  need  to  fight  for  attention  &  acknowledgement  from  his  own  family  remained  strong  .  from  this  ,  a  desire  to  be  liked  above  all  quickly  emerged  .  displaying  an  agreeable  personality  has  always  been  theo's  way  of  life  —  partially  because  the  extrovert  within  him  prefers  it  ,  but  also  because  of  the  male's  constant  seeking  of  approval  from  those  around  him  . theo  struggles  to  always  be  the  guy  that  everyone  expects  him  to  be  &  never  stumble  or  make  a  public  mistake  .
—  high  school  was  certainly  a  whirlwind  for  theo  .  he  was  one  of  those  individuals  that  knew  practically  EVERYONE  ,  &  he  exerted  effort  to  make  himself  particularly  likeable  to  all  .  he  was  rarely  home  ,  either  hitting  after-school  spots  with  friends  or  attending  parties  whenever  they  were  thrown  .  he  was  also  involved  in  various  clubs  ,  teams  &  associations  ,  taking  any  opportunity  to  meet  people  .  undoubtedly  ,  he  managed  to  receive  quite  a  bit  of  romantic  attention  in  high  school  too  ,  &  i  would  have  expected  him  to  date  during  those  years  .
—  paired  with  his  sociability  is  a  certain  level  of  carelessness  that  tends  to  get  him  in  trouble  .  when  he's  out  of  the  watchful  eye  of  those  around  him  ,  he  is  more  than  likely  to  conjure  up  a  few  schemes  despite  the  risk  .  he'll  jump  at  any  opportunity  to  follow  someone  into  complete  darkness  ,  i  really  don't  know  how  i  produced  such  an  idiot  .  but  ,  to  touch  on  another  side  to  him  ––  the  hopeless  romantic  energy  is  strong  in  this  one  .  he  falls  hard  &  fast  ,  is  loyal  to  a  fault  &  is  absolutely  a  relationship  type  of  guy  —  even  if  he’s  had  his  fair  share  of  hookups  in  high  school  &  at  ucla  .  always  being  surrounded  by  people  has  caused  theo  to  develop  a  fear  of  being  alone  ,  the  root  cause  behind  his  attachments  to  others  regardless  of  the  relationship  .
—  it’s  not  always  easy  maintaining  his  composure  .  there  are  many  days  where  theo  naturally  exudes  his  personality  ,  genuinely  enjoying  the  company  of  others  &  wanting  to  earn  approval  from  the  people  he  cares  about  .  other  times  ,  it  proves  to  be  more  difficult  ..  particularly  when  it  comes  to  controlling  his  anger  &  other  impulses  that  can  arise  when  he’s  rubbed  the  wrong  way  .  though  his  mother  &  grandparents  influence  most  aspects  of  his  life  ,  his  temper  is  one  thing  that  he  inherited  from  his  father  .  sometimes  the  thought  of  bringing  dishonour  to  his  family  or  the  repercussions  he  could  face  as  a  result  of  his  actions  are  enough  to  settle  his  irrationality  ,  but  every  once  in a  while  he  loses  control  .  i  wouldn't  put  it  past  him  to  have  gotten  in  physical  fights  or  developed  some  enemies  along  the  way  ,  &  his  temper  could  easily  lead  him  to  end  up  in  a  sticky  situation  .
—  when  theo  is  alone  &  quiet  strikes  him  ,  he  has  a  tendency  to  become  buried  in  the  worries  &  pressures  that  could  very  well  consume  him  at  any  moment  .  the  less  he’s  by  himself  ,  the  less  he  has  to  think  about  the  future  or  his  fears  ..  like  the  possibility  of  ending  up  alone  .  he’ll  take  any  opportunity  to  be  surrounded  by  people  ,  receiving  the  social  interaction  he  craves  &  keeping  his  mind  off  of  the  more  negative  aspects  in  his  life  .  if  that  isn’t  an  option  ,  theo  will  turn  to  spotify  or  his  guitar  instead  —  he’s  always  played  &  has  found  music  to  help  him  drown  out  what  he  otherwise  considers  to  be  the  deafening  silence  that  welcomes  his  deepest  &  darkest  thoughts  .  once  he’s  had  a  night  out  with  those  closest  to  him  or  he  takes  time  to  indulge  in  his  music  ,  he  finds  it  much  easier  to  keep  up  the  demeanour  that  is  always  expected  of  him  .
—  despite  his  distaste  towards  his  mother's  marriage  ,  the  male  is  rather  protective  over  his  step-sister  &  others  that  he  considers  himself  closest  to  .  fierce  loyalty  &  protectiveness  mixed  with  his  anger  are  sometimes  a  recipe  for  disaster  ,  so  i’d  watch  out  for  that  one  .
.  *     ›     headcanons  . 
—  aesthetics  :  blasting  music  while  driving  around  the  city  at  3am  ,  setting  5+  alarms  and  ignoring  them  all  ,  leather  jackets  ,  sneaking  out  ,  empty  beer  bottles  ,  profanity  ,  ray  bans  ,  parties  ,  holes  in  walls  ,  restless  nights  ,  takeaway  coffee  cups  .
.  *     ›     connections  .
if  you  managed  to  make  it  through  my  rambling  mess  ,  i  have  to  thank  you  .  now  we  get  onto  the  good  stuff  ,  huh  ?  i'm  just  going  to  list  some  of  my  most  wanted  connections  ,  but  i  also  love  plotting  based  off  chem  so  you  can  fully  expect  me  to  want  to  learn  everything  about  your  muse  in  order  to  do  so  .  without  further  ado  ..  here  we  go  !
ex(es)  :  like  i  said  ,  theo  falls  hard  &  fast  &  definitely  exudes  simp  energy  sometimes  .  i  could  see  him  having  dated  quite  a  bit  ,  &  i’d  be  open  to  ex  connections  that  ended  on  good  terms  ..  bad  terms  ..  anything  at  all  .
fwb(s)  :  could  be  past  or  present  ,  i  mean  ?  a  man  has  needs  DSKJSDNJKSD  your  muse  or  him  could’ve  caught  feels  which  caused  them  to  end  it  ,  it  could’ve  been  because  he  attends  school  all  the  way  in  cali  ,  maybe  it’s  a  new  thing  now  that  he’s  back  in  bridgehampton  .  just  gimme  ..
bro(s)  :  theo  is  honestly  SUCH  a  bro  .  give  me  his  best  guy  friends  from  guy  school  who  he  always  hung  out  with  ..  give  me  them  treating  each  other’s  houses  like  their  own  ,  all  the  late  night  shenanigans  but  the  occasional  emo  talk  when  things  get  deep  .  the  more  bros  the  merrier  ,  maybe  even  a  guy  squad  ?
idk  i’m  so  bad  at  these  ,  just  give  me  chem  based  things  thanks  !
20 notes · View notes