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lulureadsandwrites · 2 months

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Hmmm.... How would Alastor realize he has begun to feel a sort of... affection for a reader? (Basically he's developing feelings and he realizes it).

hii this is my first work for alastor so forgive me if it's a little ooc and if you guys have any tips or requests, please let me know :))

Alastor Falling For the Reader

pairing; alastor x (gender not specified) reader warning; ooc alastor (probably), a little bit of angst if you squint, cannabalism (its alastor what do you expect), blood, no dialogue (is that a warning?) perspective; 2nd person, in the eyes of alastor though if that makes sense?

so you first joined the hotel because of charlie

you weren't a parent per se to charlie, but you stepped up after lilith left to god knows where

(literally, god knows.)

and when lucifer was quite neglectful

so after getting you settled into your own room charlie wanted to introduce you to everyone

she had called a meeting to everyone in the main parlour

the reason alastor was so interested at you at first wasn't your kindness, or charisma, or even your charming smile

as much as he thought it was nice

it was your colour pallet

yes, as weird as it was, you were the only one in the hotel with blues and purples in your hair, outfit and makeup.

since the vision spectrum of a deer was limited to cooler colours and hell was filled with reds, blacks, and pinks it was refreshing for him to see something other than black and white

after a deft introduction from himself and quite a sloppy one from the others should he add, you all were spread around the bar drinking your respected drinks

and after a solid and quite warm welcome, you headed to your room and off to bed

the reason you and alastor grew close was because of your shared love of jazz music

there was no one else in the hotel who enjoyed the genre so it made you a bit more tolerable to him

as the weeks turned into months, you had grown close with most of the original people in the hotel

though, you couldn't find yourself getting close with angel

nothing against him of course, it was just hard to find common interest with him

personally, i don't see alastor falling easily, so it would take a lot, and i mean A LOT so idk what you did but congratulations

as yours and alastors platonic relationship grew, so did the want to be even closer with you

he was very up in your personal space and you couldn't say that you didn't like it

when he realised he wanted a romantic relationship with you he short circuited

let me expand, you two were enjoying dinner in one of the dinning rooms that had come with building up the new hotel

alastor was enjoying his weekly venison heart and you were indulging in some red wine and VERY MUCH COOKED deer

you had told him something about texture issues but he wasn't really paying attention to the words that came out of your mouth

he was more so just watching the way you slightly smiled while talking to him

anyways, as you had finished your meals, you had realised alastor had some blood dribbling from his mouth

you had tried to get him to wipe it off but he couldn't quite get it

so you had walked up in front of him and wiped it off with your thumb

not just that you had licked your thumb clean

in a twisted way, that was just really attractive to him

as soon as he realised his attraction to you he had to quickly excuse himself

after these newfound emotions that he had registered as love he ignored you

yeah, probably not the best move on his end but to be fair, he had never fallen in love before so that was his immediate reaction

he saw his affection for you as a weakness

you tried to talk to him?

oh apologies he has that thing he has to do since he's an overlord

and it was frustrating you, a lot

after a full week of him ignoring you, he decided to get advice from the best person he knew

rosie

when rosie had told him off for ignoring you, he knew he fucked up

not sure why that's would it took

she had told him that love shouldn't be seen as a weakness but a tool that he could utilise to make himself stronger too

basically out for love but in rosie's style lol

so when he came back to the hotel, he went to your room and knocked on the door

you had reluctantly let him in to explain himself

and while he didn't outrightly admit his feelings for you, it was pretty obvious

after a kiss on your hand, and a very long spiel of how sorry he was, (bro is down BAD i swear) you had forgiven him

now the next hurdle was trying to bring himself to ask if he could court you.

AHH FIRST HAZBIN HOTEL POST!!! PLEASE LEAVE MORE REQUESTS I LOVE THEM <3333

#hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel alastor #alastor #alastor x reader #alastor the radio demon #the radio demon #charlie morningstar #hazbin alastor #fanfic #x reader #headcanons #hcs #ooc alastor #alastor hartfelt #the radio demon x reader

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thecherrytarot · 1 year

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𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭.

how will they heal you?

pile 1 → pile 2 → pile 3

Pick the photo you feel the most drawn to and please remember that this is a general reading so take what resonates!!

listen to: love me like that by Sam Kim

𝐩𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝟏:

"you see the world in colours i view it black and white. paint me a picture, out of the lines that i live in all of the time"

They will heal you by letting you shine in your feminine energy, regardless of your gender. With them, you feel in touch with your divine feminine energy and your creative side will shine. They will help you gain strength and for some of you, it could even mean that they give you the strength and confidence to be vulnerable and show emotions. You no longer have to pretend that you are some cold-hearted person that isn't affected by anything. I just saw someone crying alone and then heard a voice say "It is okay, let it out, I am here with you" so take however that resonates. They will help you by showing you the world through a new and better perspective. You will stop looking at life through illusions and negative ways. I feel like in some way or the other they will remind you of your past self, the one that you had to leave behind in order to move forward. They will bring that version of you back and make you believe in a 'magical world' once again.

𝐩𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝟐:

"sunshine left today, got caught in the rain, all alone. can you come and pick me up from my blues? or am I late to ask you?"

This might be someone who is a foreigner and/or a long distance and for some of you, you might meet them when studying abroad (either you or them also could be both) I keep thinking about the movie "Like Crazy" where an American guy falls in love with a British student but yours is with a much happier ending. They will heal you by being there for you, life will feel less complicated and you will feel like all that you have been through was worth and now no matter what happens you will rise because now you have someone that has your back. You will get out of your bubble with them and be more sociable and childlike (i keep imaging a bunch of friends driving in a car late at night, listening to indie/alt songs and singing out loud, laughing and having the time of their lives) also instead of how will they heal, I'm getting the message of the connection feels like. There will be a strong psychic connection between you and them, the moment your eyes meet you will know and they will know that this is the "warmth" that you both have been searching for. Like when Lana Del Rey said it in her poem called The land of 1,000 fires, "I have never really fallen in love but whatever this feeling is i wish everyone could experience it."

𝐩𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝟑:

(this pile has a similar message to pile 1, so make sure to check it out in case you felt drawn to it)

"i get defensive and insecure my own worst critic behind a closing door, i'm fragile and fractured, that's for sure, i burned myself down to the ground. oh, can I ask of you to treat me soft and tender, love me hard and true? keep my heart from building walls so high, you can't get through, treat me soft and tender"

They will heal you by helping you love yourself and how you need to give importance to yourself first and that too in a healing manner instead of selfish (your old pattern) You might have thought that you knew how to take care of yourself by prioritizing yourself but still found yourself being stuck in the same old negative cycles, they will help you understand the true and the raw meaning of self-love. They help you by providing the stability that you always desired. I feel like a lot of you were abandoned in the past and after that, you put your guard up and pushed people away from you but then you come across them, and it takes you by surprise because you didn't expect to catch feelings for someone so fast. You found yourself in a dilemma because you have such strong feelings for them and yet, you feel afraid cause you don't want them to abandon you. Don't worry, they will help you get out of your old and no longer-needed mindset of resisting the change that you know will set you free.

#future spouse tarot reading #fs tarot reading #fs tarot #love tarot reading #love tarot #free tarot reading #pac tarot #pac reading #general tarot reading #tarot reading #pick a card reading #free tarot #love pac #fs pac

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catboybiologist · 10 months

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I'm trans! Here's a way-too-long ramble on my internal thoughts on that!

My other posts on this:

https://www.tumblr.com/catboybiologist/725852054829023232/im-going-to-document-some-things-about-my?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/catboybiologist/725851397783011328/the-short-answer-is-no-but-im-gonna-have-a?source=share

So yay I’m trans! Which like, is neither unexpected nor abnormal for the community I’ve fostered here, so I’m guessing most of y’all’s reactions is just a “hey cool”. But, you see the online side of me, not the irl side, so there’s still a lot of thoughts to sort out on my end. So I’m dumping a lot of thoughts here to sort all that out. And hoooly shit, it got very long, and I still feel like I have more to say… but yeah. If you wanna hear some perspectives on my relation to gender, transness, and femboy culture, read on!

I guess the best way I can think to style this is as an interview with an imaginary third person, sooo…. Bold text is questions I can imagine people having LOL

So what’s my own personal relationship with the term femboy, catboy, and gendered terminology in general? Is the name of your accounts gonna change?

Short answer, no. I like the name CatboyBiologist. “Catboy” itself is a term that is completely untethered from gender at this point to me. Tbqh, the “cat” part feels more wrong than the boy part- as time goes on, I’ve generally ditched the cat ears for most of my outfits as I take them a bit more seriously. Maybe that’ll change when my transition actually starts, but for now, CatboyBiologist stays, and the femboy related language stays in all of my own past posts (keyword, past- more on that in a bit).

I’m not gonna be updating my approach to pronouns. Any pronouns do just fine, I’m sending a vibe into the world and pronouns are my feedback as to what other people interpret that vibe is. Default to they/them if you don’t know what to do with that.

I will be updating my pinned post to link all of these posts, but mostly copy/paste the information from before. That might take a moment cuz I’m lazy, tbh.

And let’s get something else out of the way.

I’m not socially transitioning yet, and probably won’t for a while.

Which, I think leads to a lot of follow up:

Well, why not?

I present fully male and masculine on a day to day basis, and look the part too. Part of it is just this looks insecurity. The mask stays on in my pictures for a reason. Beyond just facial hair (which grows aggressively on me and always shows some shadow), my face looks pretty masculine overall. It takes time to look the way I do in my posts. I wanna give my face and body some time to change so I can look more femme in more casual ways before I present it to the world.

Beyond that, I’m also just worried about being “accepted” as femme straight off the bat. Implicitly, I know this will be easier if I already have some small amounts of physical feminization down my belt.

There’s two main environments that worry me: family, and professionally. Family is a weird hot mess grey area that is too personal to talk about here, but the professional atmosphere is certainly going to be a bit… weird. I live in an accepting geographic region, and around people who are very outspokenly trans supportive…. But most of whom are cishet and simply don’t have a lot of experience seeing or working around trans people. I’m more afraid of being seen as “trans first, biologist second” as far as my career is concerned, than I am about outright transphobia. I know this will never fully go away, and given that I’m 6’2”, I’ll probably never “fully” pass- but I’d at least like people to implicitly read my as femme on a gut level before I start changing how I present that way. One thing my irl femboy experience has shown me is that, even if people can “clock” you intellectually, the way their gut instinct reads you affects whether they treat you as masc or femme. I hope that makes sense on some level. Of course its always going to be an awkward shift, but I hope some time on HRT will make it less awkward.

I’ve come out to one person that doesn’t know about this online persona, or the depths of my queerness. They straight up told me they were shocked. They were incredibly supportive, but they told me they didn’t see it coming at all. And they already knew that I “crossdressed occasionally”. So that’s kinda what I’m working with here.

Essentially, I’m not actually truly “transitioning” in a real sense yet. More than that, I feel like I’m getting the ball rolling. If there’s anything I learned in my research, it’s that HRT takes a while, much longer than anyone expects (suppressing my rant about how the media cherrypicks people in early transition for trans representation and the effect that has on public perception). Two years is often cited as the “end” point, but based on both scientific and anecdotal accounts, that is wildly untrue and variable. I also know that the first changes onset quickly (skin and mood, most notably), but that overall body shape changes sometimes take a VERY long time to start and progress. So to be quite honest, I barely feel like I’m transitioning yet, I’m just laying groundwork for the future.

So yeah. I’m gonna be boymoding for a bit. Possibly a year or more. Even for the people who know, I’ve still asked them to address me as he/him or they/them, and use my masculine name for now (haven’t even really decided on a femme name yet, although I have ideas [open to suggestions as well]).

Wait, so why address it online at all?

Put simply, honesty. I’m displaying a lot of selfies and experimentation with my look here, and I want to make it abundantly clear what I’m doing to have an effect on that. People have asked me if I’m on HRT in comments before, and like, I’m not gonna lie about that. Might as well also make a shitpost, a data gathering post, and a too-long ramble about it as well (which you’re reading now!).

There are a LOT of body image issues in femboy spaces (and trans spaces too!), often among very young people. While I have no issue with people on HRT continuing to call themselves a femboy (more on that in a bit), I do think transparency on that matter is helpful for those body image issues.

So to make it abundantly clear: all of my selfies and pictures that I’m labeling and tagging as “femboy” are pre-HRT. In the future, everything I tag with “trans” is post-HRT. I still got 1-2 weeks before actually starting, and I’m still going to use the femboy tag for any outfits I post during that time. The moment an estradiol pill hits my mouth, though, new pics will use trans tags.

Posts that relate to discussion of the interplay of the communities, and how I view myself within them, I’ll tag with both.

Which leads to another follow up question. This one isn’t about me specifically, but it’s my hot take about a certain brand of trans discourse I’ve seen around (mostly on reddit tbh):

Why would someone who knows they’re mtf trans willingly call themselves a femboy and/or request people to “misgender” them?

So this is actually gonna be striking a nerve with me, and I know I’m gonna kinda be strawmanning here by arguing against the ghost of reddit comments past. I’m not gonna try to dig any of them up in the internet archive, but they are sentiments I’ve seen multiple times.

I’ve seen this question almost word for word in the comments of trans subreddits multiple times. Imma be blunt, and it’s maybe gonna sound a little mean. If this thought is going through your head, you’re likely way more sensitive and particular about labels than most people. And that’s okay! Ask people to address you how you want, you deserve that respect! But the real answer to this question is that many people simply don’t mind being called whatever label is most useful or familiar to themselves in various contexts.

The moment that it becomes completely unacceptable is when someone does actually change their pronouns, name, presentation, etc, and people still address them as “male” or “femboy”. That is completely the fuck out of line, and if you don’t agree, fuck off.

Why does this strike a little bit of a nerve with me? Well, the “conclusion” I saw reached in these trans spaces multiple times when the subject was brought up was annoying as hell. That conclusion was that the only or primary reason that people labeled themselves a femboy, even while on HRT… was to sell their onlyfans. My fucking god, seriously? This is just conservative rhetoric. Luckily, on tumblr, it seems that people are a lot more accepting towards people using whatever language they like to describe themselves, which I’ve enjoyed a lot.

I’ve also had a lot of hate towards “fencesitting” directed at me on reddit, from trans people, for calling myself a femboy. I can’t remember it verbatim, but I very distinctly recall getting a DM that went something like “I fucking hate femboys, just transition already. You’re making us (transfemmes) look bad.” So yeah. Bit of a sore spot.

Yadda yadda yadda the personal journey shit

If I can be real for a moment…. In an ideal world, I would still want to be a part time femboy. Even moreso than the sheer utility of it all (eg, enjoy cis male privilege when I want, but still get treated more femme in certain contexts), it feels almost more profound to fuck with gender norms without sitting on one side of the gender line or another. But I can’t really ignore what I’ve described as my “mental resting state”- a baseline crackle of dysphoria that fills the space in my head when there’s nothing else to fill it. It’s easily distracted, but its always there, and I can’t imagine living my life that way anymore.

I’ve pretty much known I was trans since I was about 12, and had a realization that puberty was just starting to hit me, and I hated it. I suppressed it deeply, for many, many reasons that I don’t think I want to share here. But it made a lot of other mental health struggles in my life a lot worse, even if I didn’t consciously acknowledge that’s what was happening. By the time I was willing to consciously acknowledge it, I realized that my dysphoria wasn’t so bad as to dive in right away. But, I made moves to stabilize my life overall, which have been massively beneficial to me in other ways as well.

During the pandemic, I found myself living alone for the first time ever. So during the pandemic, in one last ditch effort to try to convince myself I wasn’t trans, I delved into femboy aesthetics to try and “just be a feminine man”.

That failed.

So yeah, here I am. I have a wonderful queer community both irl and online, a meagre but stable income, health insurance that has great coverage for trans care, and accepting people around me in my life. It’s long overdue. Maybe I’ll beat myself up for waiting so long and masculinizing so much as a result, but I don’t think I really could have done it any other way.

This all said, I don’t actually really consider myself a woman yet. I’m sure many of you are aware of two different ways transfemmes view themselves(and trans people in general, but using a transfemme perspective here):

-Some view themselves as having always been girls or women, but took some time to realize it and make their body more comfortable for themselves with that information.

-Others view themselves as boys or men who made efforts to become women later.

I fall strongly in the second line of thinking for myself. For my own personal experiences, even though I have felt dysphoria for a long time, I don’t really think I’m “actually” a woman yet. I don’t know what my identity as a woman looks like yet. But I deeply want to discover and create who that person is, and there’s no way to do that without transitioning.

B but… BASIC BIOLOGY!!!!!

How many biology degrees do you have? I got a BS and an MS, and I’m working on my PhD. I’m sure you’ve brought a similar level of expertise to this discussion.

But seriously, I could genuinely write an entire fucking essay about how studying biology has influenced my views on this subject, but honestly, that’s an entirely different topic. But tl;dr is that bioessentialism is brainrot, and if someone tries to use essentialist language to “justify” someone’s transness (or gender in general)… well, I think they’re wrong. Plain and simple. We don’t say someone isn’t “really able to see” if they put glasses in front of their eyes.

I’m stopping myself before I write more here, because this warrants another post or even a fucking video essay, to be quite honest. But yeah. Biology based.

Conclusion?

Uhhhh… in conclusion, I’m not particular about language or pronouns you use for me, I’m making posts about it anyways to ensure honesty associated with my selfies, if you’re transphobic jump of the tallest bridge you can find. I think that about covers it.

#femboy #transitioning #trans #transgender #mtf #cross dressing

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adhd-creativity · 1 year

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ADHD and Gender

I've just thought about how possibly gender doesn't necessarily inherently change the way ADHD affects us (for example, articles stating that adhd makes men more hyperactive than women). But society and how we've been socialised from infants to align with our assigned gender most definitely does.

Example- my male colleague, I'll call him Ben, has combined type adhd just like me (innatentive and hyperactive). It's a lot more 'obvious' with him- he talks loudly about his interests, bounces around the room, and today he's left the staffroom distracted by something work-related. He's left a used mug, glass, and a dirty tuppaware out on the shared table.

My other colleagues complain about Ben to me- they feel safe doing this as I pass so easily as 'normal'. They call him inconsiderate and someone calls him gross. And I think privately to myself, I would so easily have done that too, but I'm too hyper-aware of the shame, the gossiping of everyone around me.

I also know- in a public space you can't leave your used things out on the table. Even if it's really hard to keep track of and not do accidentally. I know I am expected to be tidy (especially in public) and consider everyone around me at all times, even if it negatively affects me.

They don't know about when I hid a growing pile of used mugs and plates in my little office space until people started complaining things were missing, how I complained with them (lol). They don't know that I stayed super late one shift and filled a bag with the mugs and plates and sneaked them into the kitchen to wash, clanking guiltily as I went, having to soak and scrub them for more than an hour.

I don't know Ben's personal history, but maybe he grew up not being told to constantly keep on top of his own mess and chores. Maybe that's women's work. Or maybe he had a modern thinking family who encouraged him to take up the space he needed (not shrink yourself down, make room for boys that need that space) and to not care what others thought of him. Maybe they were annoyed by him leaving cups and plates and making a mess, but Ben's a boy, and boys are allowed to be messy.

Maybe Ben has been enouraged to speak loudly and proudly about his interests all his life, so now he tells people about them. Maybe he's never been told to be quiet, to not think so highly of himself, to let others talk first.

I don't know Ben- I just know that he's had a very different experience of the world than I have, even if we both do share ADHD.

And because he's maybe had the chance to be who he is, loud and chatty and chaotic, without society telling him to be quiet, smaller, neater - maybe thats why people like Ben get diagnosed when they are 8 years old. Maybe that's why I didn't get diagnosed until 30- after years of pushing and having to fight my case.

What do people think? I'd love to hear some other perspectives on this

(Disclaimer- this is not meant to be gender essentialist or man-hating. I think gender is a construct and although I've been socialised as a woman, I am non-binary. Also I am not a health care professional these are just my thoughts lol )

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valyrfia · 2 months

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RE: this ask

Sorry about to go off on one, gender studies and online fan culture from an academic standpoint is a special interest of mine because being film and literature student wasn't annoying enough (participatory culture studies my beloved)

From a general standpoint, I think the reason M/M ships in fiction have always been more popular is because male characters are historically more developed and complex. I think it’s only in recent years have their been an influx of popular F/F ships, with the added development of women on screen (e.g Clarke and Lexa, Kara and Lena, Regina and Emma, Nancy and Robin) - I think there is also a point to be made this has coincided with gender expression, genderqueerness and more general knowledge of being outside the typical gender spectrum.

I can’t explicitly say that being in M/M fandom spaces encouraged my personal discovery of being transmasc but it certainly helped to have an avenue where I could project onto these “male” characters and see myself in them. I was so uncomfortable in my own body and what I didn’t know at the time as dysphoria, I can see why I didn’t go for F/F ships.

There are of course a lot of “fandom elders” but young (early to late teens) afab people do make up a large bulk of it and I get why it may be easier for them to fixate on M/M ships as a, sort of method of exploring their own sexuality and gender expression. F/F ships may hit too close to home and F/M ships are what they are trying to escape from so it leaves M/M ships to project onto. Which, unfortunately then can become warped by the persons own comphet and/or binary ideas about gender.

A male character may have more stereotypically “feminine” traits (in terms of interests or emotional reactions) and I can see why people who also have those traits would project there own insecurities onto them, reinforcing the feminisation of the male character but not being comfortable enough in your own gender expression to genderbend the character or write them as trans.

It’s the same reason I think mafia romance, dark romance etc etc is so popular with cishet women because they can read about a fantasy where instead of the very real every day misogyny and violence they face leading to abuse, assault and death, it brings “positives” ; protected, loved, a happy relationship.

Which, side note. I think this has A Lot to do with y/n, self insert fics becoming “cringe”. Because, I think a lot of people just want to fuck/date a character and feel like they can’t write a self insert anymore, so just project massively onto one character, leading to a lot of these issues. I don’t think Tony Stark/Peter Parker would be as popular as it is if people just let young women write their self insert fic about being Tony Stark’s sugar baby and then we wouldn’t have the wildly mischaracterised version of Peter Parker that we do!

But, all this being said. I’m talking about fiction. Dean Winchester isn’t actually affected if people online only talk about him in a stereotypically “female” way.

RPF is a different kettle of fish (and I’m not going in RPF ethics that’s different - I have no issues with rpf creators/consumers to be clear, I am one) because a real person does become affected. Even if you are keeping your fan works and discussions to private spaces, it can leach over into how you speak about the actual person. That’s where it becomes so incredibly important to remember that your RPF version of celebrities are just as fictional as Dean Winchester is.

sorry I used mr. supernatural as an example, 13 year old me is still alive and kicking in my head somewhere.

I love to hear your perspective on it with a trans worldview (and academic credentials), and I do agree that that might be a big driver of some young people only wanting to engage with MLM fic and feeling uncomfortable with WLW fic. You've brought up so many great points so I'll try and address them all.

I can add the perspective of a lesbian who was closeted for the first two decades of my life, came out less than five years ago, and still struggles on and off with comphet now. MLM fics in my teens were a way to consume queer content and relationships without having to think about the implications of enjoying consuming WLW content, and I think that's true for a lot of young closeted teens so it's no surprise that some comphet/hetnorm/cisnorm stuff bleeds through there because it's a framework the authors haven't managed to detach themselves from yet.

But yeah, I agree the issue lies with people wanting characters to be self-inserts partially so that they can experience sex, sexuality, and romance without any of the hang ups of thinking about patriarchy. And I agree with your solution: make y/n fics cool again! The ability we have to hallucinate while we read is magic! You can put YOURSELF in as a character's love interest, how cool is that?

Ultimately, yeah. There's nothing wrong with RPF as long as it isn't actually affecting the person that the RPF is based off, but I've seen a lot of takes escaping containment so to say (ie. leaving this website) with takes about the actual racers so obviously picked up through RPF. The main culprits are Charles, Lando, Max in my experience.

#You always send the longest and most thought out asks and I really don't know how to answer them because you're so eloquent #thank you for your POV!#enigmabird #asks #charles in makeup and lace discourse #hate it slightly too late to change it now

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boba-beom · 1 year

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ᥫ᭡⋆｡˚⊹ I Like U (sorry, I never meant to) | part 1 — 'don't drop her!'

pairing: beomgyu x gn!reader

genre: fluff, romance | non-idol au, strangers to friends to ???

synopsis: after meeting one of your best friend’s friends, you initially found him attractive and thought he’d be a careless crush that would soon dissipate into nothing. that is, until a series of events proved you wrong and perhaps those feelings lingered longer than they should have. would something become of it?

warning(s): slice of life, slow burn(ish), mentions of food, physical affection, bickering, more mentions of star signs, I will try my best to make it as gender neutral as possible as some parts are based off from my perspective. if there's anything I've missed, let me know!

wc: 3.2k

a/n: this celebration I am referring to is very big in the filipino culture. it's called a philippine 'debut' (deh-boo). it's to celebrate one who is coming of age, entering adulthood as a young woman.

prev || masterlist || next

5 months have passed since your first interaction with Beomgyu. however, it was not the last time you had interacted. after you accepted his follow request and followed him back on instagram, you've been going back and forth liking each other's stories, recommending songs and sharing playlists with each other after you found out he also listens to the same niche artist as you. you may have overreacted, but none of your friends knew the artist until you saw his story with your favourite song posted to it.

to think that this happened over the course of the summer vacation, you were almost unfazed that you would be meeting him again for Tara's birthday. almost. you were extremely excited to visit the island again, after discussing Tara's 18th birthday celebrations, along with receiving her invitations through the post. you told yourself that all thoughts unrelated to Tara's birthday were to be pushed to the back of your head, making sure that this was going to be unforgettable and you wanted to prioritise that.

Tara has always been one to be interested in star-gazing, knowing things about star signs; whether she can guess people's star signs based off of their personality traits, or even upon first or second meeting.

you recall the facetime call you had with your best friend just a couple of days before your trip to the island. she had asked a huge favour from you — which was to help with the decorations. after knowing Tara for more than half of your life you know that they will go above and beyond when it comes to celebrations. be it weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, seasonal holidays; her and her family will do the most and it's their branding at this point.

now that you're back on the island again, you've missed everything about it. the greenery of the fields, trees arching over roads creating beautiful tunnels by nature, the fact that your best friend lives by the beach and how beautiful it would be to watch the sunrise and set with the sound of the waves rolling over the shell beach.

"hey, we've got guests coming over just after lunch. we can decorate later this evening, is that okay with you?" Tara wraps her arms around your shoulders, interrupting your gaze on your phone from the pictures of the sunrise you took earlier that morning.

"yeah that's no problem, need me to help you with anything?" you tilt your head to nudge her temple, responding to her affectionate gesture.

"actually, could you just finish the rest of those centre pieces, please?" you hum in response, "oh, and I heard Beomgyu's going to be on his way soon." she shrugs, walking out of the living room to call her other friends to discuss the time for cotillion practice.

Beomgyu. it's been a while since you've seen the name, let alone hear it. you wonder if it'll be a little awkward seeming as the last time you spoke was mid summer. there's not a lot you know about this guy, really, other than the fact that his texts are completely opposite to how he is in person; pretty dry.

pushing those thoughts aside, you pick up the glue gun and start gluing a small assortment of three to four blue and yellow roses in the small glass, cylindrical centre pieces. each centre piece had table numbers handwritten in pretty cursive handwriting, remembering that it must have been by one of Tara's friends.

each cylinder had mini battery-operated fairy lights, pulling the vision together. though there were several elements left for the remaining decorations. the completed ones were starting to look really pretty altogether.

you gather the completed centre pieces and place them in a brown cardboard box, ready for the next batch until you hear the familiar tone of Tara's voice greeting someone by the front door.

"hey Beomgyu, you're super early." you hear her laugh, "y/n's inside, you remember them, right?"

"of course." he says, walking in and making brief eye contact with you sitting on the carpeted floor.

your eyes widen slightly, brows raised and unexpected to meet him again. his hair has started to grow a little longer compared to the last time you saw him. the front pieces of his hair just about grazing his brows, and the back just touching the bottom of his nape.

"y/n?" he calls out, snapping you out of whatever it was that you were stuck in momentarily, "I asked if you need any help?" now he's sitting in the armchair by the window.

"oh. no I'm good, almost done anyway. Thank you though." you politely smile up at him, watching him take his phone out of his pocket and turning it on.

"suit it yourself." he shrugs nonchalantly, his eyes leaving yours and onto his phone's screen. you scoff a little, ignoring his response.

it was silent in the living room for almost an hour, just the occasional mini conversations between you and Tara, or Tara and Beomgyu talking about certain points of the cotillion. they were partners after all.

once you've finished with the remaining smaller decorations, you stand up to stretch before walking over to start the final decoration — Tara's name decor — which was to be placed by the display near the front inside the venue. it was her first name along with her middle name, and although they weren't long, you were aware that the process would be. having to sketch out her name in cursive, then to paint it in gold and to glue gold glitter all over it.

Beomgyu, on the other hand, started the large '18' cardboard cutout with collage photos of Tara from the photoshoot that she took a couple of months back. the pictures were beautiful, especially the few from the beach. she was standing where the mini waves were just touching her feet while she was wearing a long, black chiffon-layered dress with a spaghetti-strap. the sunset in the background created a pretty silhouette with the layers of the chiffon dress blown in the wind, and you were then starting to realise that your best friend is about to be a young woman. the thought of that was almost enough to make you emotional. almost. there's still two more days until the big day.

you start on the sketching, outlining the letters on the A1 styrofoam board, until you hear Beomgyu playing some songs from what you thought was the playlist he recommended to you. you pause for a second or two, trying to figure out which song it was and it was one of the first songs that you recommended to him months ago. smiling to yourself, you assume he compiled songs from both playlists and created a new one after listening further in the playlist.

"Beomgyu, y/n, I need you here." Tara calls after you both, her brows are scrunched up and eyes narrowed at the screen of her laptop as she watches a cotillion choreography that she's inspired from.

the sandy, blonde-haired male looks over at you, his head tilting towards Tara, essentially letting you get up and go to her first. he follows after, trailing a little behind you as you take the seat beside Tara while Beomgyu stays standing behind the both of you, just about leaning over your head.

"okay so," she starts, "I'm thinking of adding an extra move, but it's just at the very end." you watch the video as she presses play and observe the way the debutant's partner gave her a few twirls before preparing to lift her by the hip, then doing half a turn while the debutant was lifted.

you notice the way Tara pouts as she pauses the video and looks over to you and Beomgyu. your brows almost knit together, thinking that it would add a nice touch to the end of the cotillion, but realistically this was all in Beomgyu's hands. literally.

"personally, I think it would look really nice. and I know for a fact that your dress is going to look beautiful during that turn." you replay the video as the three of you rewatch it and notice the way the debutant's dress flows slightly in the air, almost in slow motion. it also reminds you of that one picture from the photoshoot and you were so sure that they'd regret it if they don't try it out.

"I don't know. the debut is in two days and tomorrow we're literally going to be spending the day to decorate the venue, and then—"

"Beomgyu, calm down, you haven't even tried it yet." you turn around and look up at him rolling his eyes at you. "try it out before the rest arrives for practice."

"y/n, are you being for real right now?" his lips twist, he's not convinced just yet, you think.

"come onnnn, Beomgyu try it out~" you sing song, "for Tara." you put your arm over your best friend's shoulders, bringing her in closer while she pouts at him.

it's always hard for Beomgyu to turn Tara down for anything. you'd think their relationship is pretty tight, but as they grew up together and being only two years apart they have that sibling energy about them. Tara is Beomgyu's weak spot, and this is the first time you've witnessed it.

"okay, fine." he sighs, defeated, but you see him smile over to Tara while ruffling the top of her head. you had no clue that you had been staring at the interaction between them for a second too long until Beomgyu calls out your name again. "you need to make sure I do it properly, I'm doing this for Tara." his voice was a little stern towards you, but it didn't bother you too much. he sounded quite defensive over the fact that he isn't doing this because you convinced him to, but you knew that that was exactly the reason why.

Tara makes her way out the back door into the garden, it was big enough to fit six pairings for the cotillion. to your surprise, she's only just told you that they have been practicing for three weeks and they only managed to remember everything the week that had just passed.

you sit on the stool by the door, facing the garden as you wait for the two to get into position for the ending of the cotillion. the pair face each other for a couple of seconds before Beomgyu twirls Tara twice, preparing for the lift. he lifts her hip onto the side of his leg, attempting to pivot in place for the turn with the other leg, but they stumble a little and Beomgyu lets go of Tara. you stand up as quick as you can to catch Tara from tripping forward and falling over.

"don't drop her!" you shout at Beomgyu. he looks at you with bland eyes, deadpan towards you.

"well, this was your idea, right?" he huffs. "I'd like to see you try."

"am I her partner?" you retort, your hands still holding onto Tara's forearm while she stands properly.

"guys, it's fine. Beomgyu, let's try again." Tara looks directly into your eyes and then Beomgyu after, her way of getting the both of you to stop arguing.

after a few attempts of the ending routine, it eventually got better to the point Tara wanted to try it out along with the music to make sure they get the timing right. you also suggest to take a video so they can review it after and they both agree. your index finger hovers over the space bar, patiently waiting for Tara to indicate when to press play.

you watch them do the routine once more until the crucial part came about, "okay, and now!" you shout as soon as the music reaches the part where the lift starts.

you watch beomgyu lift Tara steadily with a clean landing — no stumbling over or minor trips in sight. the music fades as it ends and you end the video before applauding them while you make your way toward them.

"see, I knew you could do it." you nudge Beomgyu, passing him the phone and notice the corners of his lips twitch upwards as he watches the successful move.

Tara's pleased to say the least, looking over at the phone at the same time and giving you the biggest smile.

"I know I'm terrible at thinking of things and adding things last minute, but I think that was one of my best ideas." she crosses her arms, proud of the decision she made regardless of the trouble it caused, especially between you and Beomgyu.

"yeah, you're lucky your partner was eventually convinced to do it." you tease.

"okay, okay. I get it. at least we've got that sorted out now." Beomgyu sighs, not amused with you repeating how you were right.

after heading back inside the house, you check the time and it's still early for the rest of Tara's friends to arrive for the practice. thinking of getting food before they arrive was the best idea, but Tara was called to have a dress rehearsal in case of any more altering. so it was down to you and Beomgyu to go and get food.

༺ ༻

you were grateful that the weather was good for a nice walk; the air was mildly warm with the smallest bit of breeze blown through your hair every now and then.

following Beomgyu in silence wasn't as bad as you thought. he walks in front of you, and you notice the wire of his white earphones dangling out of his pocket while he had the other in his ear.

"what song are you listening to?" you spoke up a little quieter than you expected. luckily you were just around the corner to the pizza shop, so you both stop once you cross the narrow, one way road.

"over eighty-five." he glances at you, holding eye contact for what felt like a minute to you and turns around to walk into the pizza shop.

he left you dumbfounded, remembering that that was the song that started the whole exchanging songs ordeal. you mindlessly blink at the shop front a couple of times before following suit, waiting behind him as he orders four boxes of pizzas for the group later on.

his voice is gentle when he talks to the owner of the shop. there's a lot of people in this part of the island, and everyone knows each other, if not, know of each other.

the way they exchange in conversation seems like he comes here often, the middle-aged man laughs at a bit and you see how endearing it was to see the interaction.

nevertheless, you had to set aside that it could potentially be the fact that the leo in Beomgyu is loving the attention, or it could even just be the big heart in him. either way, quietly observing them kept you entertained until he walked toward you, waiting beside you.

"Beomgyu?" your voice a little louder this time compared to earlier. he turns his head towards you, raising his brow with a hum. he isn't as firm as he was earlier, and he could physically see your shoulders relax in the smallest way possible. "can we go see that coffee shop that we walked past on the way here?"

to his surprise, that was not what he was expecting. he can sense that you've been tip-toeing around him since he arrived at Tara's house, but that doesn't mean he doesn't like you.

"yeah, we can do. we'll take the shortcut there, it'll be quicker on the way back too." he flashes you the same gentle smile he gave you the first time you met, and you notice a small dimple that disappeared not even in a fraction of a second. kinda cute.

༺ ༻

as soon as the pizzas were ready, the shop owner bids the both of you goodbye with a polite smile. you and Beomgyu split the pizza boxes to carry them back while you take up a different route, again, leaving it up to the island boy.

"how long are you staying this time anyway?" he asks you, half turning his head to face you but also making sure he watches where he's walking.

"oh, we're leaving the day after Tara's birthday. so not long, really." you reply with a shrug that he wasn't able to see anyway. you had hoped to stay longer than last time, but it was just about the same amount of days.

"I see." you almost miss his response with his quiet voice, along with a car that had driven past the both of you. but you wonder why he asked, though you knew he was probably curious like the others.

"is Soobin coming for the cotillion practice?" you remembered Soobin abruptly, he was more approachable compared to Beomgyu from the first time you met, and you remember everything clearly.

"yeah." there he is with the short responses again. you almost thought you had somewhat managed to get through to him, but it's going to be tricky with someone like him. you can't read him just yet and you're curious whether it's the same for everyone or it's just a 'you thing'.

after walking for a few more silent minutes, you see the cute, rustic coffee shop that caught your eye from earlier. this time, you were able to scan through the menu that's hung up outside on a brown clip board, reading out the set menu and the coffee of the day.

you balance the piled pizza boxes on your hip as you take your phone out to take a quick photo. Beomgyu doesn't hesitate to take the boxes from your hold and pile it on top of his.

your brows raise from the action, looking up at him with a smile followed after. "oh, thanks."

"just so the pizza won't fall. we have people to feed." his response was blunt but you still thanked him for the gesture. he faces to the side while he waits for you to finish taking your pictures, but you couldn't ignore the way the sun shines over him and some shadows from the lamppost lay over him.

you love taking photos in general. some say you're talented and you should be a photographer, but you just find it as a hobby and you don't want to take that fun aspect away.

finding a photogenic subject with a beautiful background was not easy to find, until you turn around to see exactly that. you had no second thoughts to take a picture or two of Beomgyu's side profile — to which you were extremely fascinated by — only capturing from his shoulders and up.

"let's go? I think they'll be there soon." Beomgyu speaks up, eyes meeting the sight of you holding your phone up and facing him, causing you to swiftly tuck your phone back into your pocket and reach out for the two boxes that Beomgyu took from you.

he turns quickly, so you miss and briefly grab nothing but the air where you were initially reaching out for.

"it's okay. I got it." is all he says before he continues walking in the direction of a different shortcut. a smile is twitching upon his lips as he senses you trailing behind him in confusion. if there's something you didn't know about him, it's that he's extremely observant, and his peripheral vision never fails him.

taglist: @bb-eilish @iggynor4 @ericyjun @bluejin0812 @luvsoobs @yeonyeonyeonjun @junniieesbby @kyrkitten @hyuntaena @day6andetcetera @amethysts-1620 @gorechoi-backup @dainsleif-when-playable @choiwrld @yjusei @feyregels @ahnneyong @potaeto-writes-on-wp @wccycc @lizdevorak @fairybin @laylasbunbunny @acaiasahi @ttyunz @cha0thicpisces @fairybinie @vatterie @yunkiwii @aprilisque @baekberrie @ashxxkook (let me know if you want to be added to this series taglist or fill this form to be part of the general taglist!)

#hybenet #kflixnet #beomgyu series #beomgyu fluff #beomgyu x gn reader #beomgyu imagines #beomgyu scenarios #txt series #txt scenarios #txt imagines #txt x gn reader #tomorrow x together fluff #tomorrow x together series #tomorrow x together scenarios #tomorrow x together imagines #tomorrow x together x gn reader

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jack-kellys · 1 year

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west end question: i obviously love my brooklyn girls and would die for them all, but is it bad that it’s taken away the sprace dynamic for me? like i’m still 100% on board with a nowhere near canon ship and it shouldn’t affect me they’ve decided to have spot be a girl, but it lowkey has? and i feel kinda guilty about it? idk i love my proshot boys. but i am 100% here for all the uk newsies cast they are amazing and so talented and it’s definitely my favourite production by far!! idk if i’m making sense

ok part of me feels a litle baited actually because like. i feel like... im vocal abt mlm musical sprace not being a big vibe for me in the first place. so im a funny person to ask if you were looking for relief lmao. anyway here's my thesis below.

wait also if ur a white newsie fan a read-thru+rb of this would be much appreciated thank youuu (also yall have been eating up my character analyses anyway sooooo!)

TL;DR THESIS: if you're feeling genuinely let down that your ship did not see the light of day and a black girlsie spot conlon got to instead, then yes, you should reevaluate that.

followers, if you've been with me long enough, you know that i have quite strong opinions about how this show gets treated when it comes to interpretations and fandom/fanon. mostly, this is because i literally work in theater, and it's extremely backwards in my brain personally when shows get treated more like a movie or tv show than a performance piece.

im also one of the only ppl in this fandom that ever seems to dare speak on race (not the damn character smh). and anon, buddy, kiddo, this does have to do with race, gender, and sexuality.

firstly, what i think needs to be understood about newsies, is that it is theater, which means it is meant to be mutable. there is no one way. there should never be one way. it does not exist. secondly, theater does not exist in a fandom vacuum. its live every night, conceptually. theater is a live performance art.

interpretations change- it's the nature of theater. so i think asks like these really do illuminate the difference between fans of the show's content or fans of... i guess the show's culture's content.

this is a culture content ask.

one thing i really, truly, deeply need you all to understand: from an objective, script- and staging-based perspective, proshot sprace does not exist. they do not speak. they barely see each other. race does not even volunteer to go to brooklyn. the ship originates from the 1992 movie, where they do actually interact, which is why the ship has prevailed through the 90s to today. they're from the movie, not the musical.

of course, this doesn't bash the ship- it has history, and naturally fans want to create new history when they get a new source material (the musical). it's true for like every newsie ship lowkey (but also not lowkey because all the manhattan newsies do interact and sprace literally does not but thats a different post!!), which is something i do admire about the fandom- we do a lot of our own legwork here, we invent relationships and backgrounds from one-liners that could be given to tbh any frickin newsie. i respect the 30 years we have invented ships.

however.

when a huge, publicized, consistently sold out production comes along with spot conlon as not only a woman, but a woman of color (specifically black rn!) as the leader of the most feared group on stage, there becomes something much more important than a "sprace dynamic", which does not canonically exist in the musical anyway bro. you can't miss something that isn't there imo. often the story and casting within a story comes first, and goddamn if this isn't one of those times. lillie-pearl's spot brings bravado, swagger, confidence, and intimidation that is literally....fine maybe i'm being personal but it is slash gen incredible to see in technically a period piece! a black woman in leadership with that kind of assuredness! in such a popular musical! how is that not– automatically surpassing an often obsessed-over (yes i am. hinting at something here, straight girl fans) mlm ship?

and while i'm on the topic of the over-obsessiveness of mlm musical sprace, let me talk about uksies sprace. because what's also wack abt this ask is that sprace is not a hopeless case in this production- it literally has about as much 'evidence' as the proshot imo!!!!!

i got to hop over to 2nd row brooklyn seating for act 2 so i saw once and for all really close up, right. there's a moment when race is upstage letting the newsies in/down from the stairs. spot comes down and she does, in fact, share a look with him. race gives spot a nod and she keeps moving.

and like im gonna see the show again (every day i am counting my mf blessings fr), so if i'm wrong or they don't do it every time i'll correct myself, but that's what i saw with my own dang eyes on saturday. they do acknowledge each other in uksies.

and since they do, i really like. i have to ask. what is bothersome/unpopular abt uksies sprace, other than oh idk.... its not white/white mlm with a twink/manly bf trope? why can't race still love who spot is as a character, this strong and fearless ruler of brooklyn, in uksies? because tbh josh's racer...nahhhh because. this is such a side note now but they'd be so good together oh jesus am i gonna ship uk sprace. and it's not like they're 'taking away' from a queer ship because a) you can headcanon spot as a queer girl and race being trans is consistently popular and b) newsies has ten billion gayass ships bro we've been eatin for literal decades.

anon, i'm sure you didn't mean harm by this ask. i'm sure, honestly, that a lot of fans are feeling the same way as you and weren't quite sure how to put it in words. but, i'm also not surprised you sent an ask like this on anonymous specifically.

should you feel guilty about it? i don't think guilt is the right word. but i believe you should think more about how newsies is not.....static. it does not exist in one form, and it never will. if you're feeling genuinely let down that your ship did not see the light of day and a black girlsie spot conlon got to instead, then yes, you should reevaluate that. in theater, you should always question why something impacted you the way it did- a major point of theater is to discuss and think about it when you leave! i know this because ive spent three years literally studying it, to back up my thesis credentials.

thank you for reading this, newsies fandom. i do honestly say all this with love, and i hope it made u think !! ♥️

#i just. damn dude. im tired #sprace #race x spot #racetrack higgins #spot conlon #newsies #sprace newsies #newsies uk #uksies #newsies the musical #newsies live #livesies #west endsies #west end newsies #race higgins #race newsies #spot newsies #anyway josh's race would fall ridiculously in love with lillie-pearl's spot. like goddamn #i believe in them and you should too!! uk sprace!!!!

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niuniente · 10 months

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I'm loving all these side stories exploring the DHD universe! Each one so far has been pretty great. I love alrick and his story very much, but it's fun to get to see and focus on these other characters too. Pearl was entertaining and I'm excited to see what's up with Plague

Your art is also always such a treat. I was just thinking to myself today that I kind of wanted to study the way you use background art. The grayscale filtered photos spaced out between white space without feeling empty is really hard to pull off, but I think you do so very well.

While Alrick is the main protagonist, you are right that we need to see other characters, too. It avoids stories being repetitive and gives readers a chance to mirror characters against each other; when character X is like this, and character Y is the opposite, they underline each character's traits. Whether it's their values, looks, age, gender, sex, job, living situation, dreams, fears, past, future etc. We learn about ourselves in relation to others so this same goes to characters, too.

Characters being surrounded by other characters also reveal new things from each other. Miranda can't really talk about how being a Death-Head's girlfriend affects her and the relationship with her coworkers but she can speak about it with Alrick. Joon is very lively and Miranda is super supportive of Joon, but only Alrick will understand how it is to work as a Death-Head. Plague is an ass for everyone but doesn't speak back to Kahamet (so he knows his place). Alrick is considering others but through Dio we see what happens when Alrick (or anyone) considers others above the Death-Head rules.

Also, the easiest way to expand the world or theme is to see it from other character's perspective, from their neighborhood so to say. Alrick doesn't seem to be working as a Death-Head to collect payments but Grimm does and uses this right of his without hesitation or remorse. Ama and Awa view Death-Head work as a luxury service whereas Dio does his dirty job and doesn't view the job as anything to do with luxury. Grimm enjoys being a faction leader, Plague doesn't want it. Lou-Lou is horrified with Death-Heads, Miranda lives and sleeps with one. Society views Death-Heads and their deals as something horrific, but for Pearl meeting Grimm via her deal was a lottery win. Mr. Singer loses his teeth as a payment, Cure loses her life. Rena doesn't make deals but Grimm does and can only do it because Algoth busts his ass off to give Grimm room for deals.

If you ever come up with something with studying my art, please, let me know! We're blind to our own work, can't see them the same way as outsiders too. I think one reason why the space doesn't feel so empty is the colored speech bubbles, which are connected to each character. I think the result would be more hollow if all speech bubbles where just blank white. The characters take more space with their colored speech bubbles. (I originally started this as I hated drawing speech lines to right character. If they are individually character color coded, then it's a lot easier to do speech bubbles!)

Why I went to comics without background was due two things. First, I didn't want to draw them. I don't enjoy them. I hate it. I don't enjoy at all thinking about compositions, perspectives, hues or values, nor about panel placements. Been there, done that, hated every minute of it. I don't want to spend my precious limited free time and limited resources on things I hate. My emphasis is on the characters and the comic is drawn in a way that it doesn't have to put emphasis on the things I hate, like panel placements and directing viewers gaze.

Second thing is that rules in art are human made. Sure, some things do make the viewing more pleasant and carry your story - I went to an art school - but many of the rules you don't need. If you are famous, you're even praised for breaking them!

I had that almost rioting epiphany when I was in the art school. I happened to see from TV news how in the modern art museums, there was a new exhibition by an American painter. He was famous for painting portraits and hanging them upside down. The curator of the exhibition was explaining with shining eyes how amazing this method is! How amazing it is that this painter challenges the viewer by hanging the paintings upside down! How revolutionary!

I thought "He gets praised for hanging paintings upside down, but if I did the same anywhere, even in the art school, I would be scolded for a cheap trick or be even called downright an idiot. So, why it is allowed to him and not for me?"

As I hate injustice like this, I've made my mind to fuck around and find out when it comes to my own art, and remember; if what I do was done by someone famous, it would be praised as something exceptional. If it's allowed to someone, then damned I be, I'm going to take that right for myself, too!

#sorry this is such a long reply!#ask niu

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tabby-shieldmaiden · 4 months

Text

So, in light of recent fandom stuff, I feel like I do have things to add to the convo. (Under a cut because I wrote a lot.)

Criticism of media fundamentally serves a purpose. To me, that purpose is to look at the role media plays in the maintenance of hegemony. Which in turn helps in considering which perspectives might be missing and would be necessary in further understanding the world. Which in turn helps us to deconstruct our current understandings of the world and work towards better systems.

(Not to mention, it can be quite fun to do and read/watch, as least for me personally.)

I think criticising children's media in particular does involve a certain amount of finesse as well. You're working with material targeted at the young. Much of this media would be formative materials for them. And so one will have to operate with a more considerate view on how to navigate criticising the media in question. In my view, for a succinct criticism to be made, you have to understand the target audience it had been made in mind for, which often depends on factors such as age, gender, country of origin, etc. in order to understand why certain decisions were made. Only then can one adequately begin to unpack why certain decisions made within the media were made.

So, let's talk about Skylanders [1].

I think it is worth talking about the ways this franchise does incorporate militaristic imagery into its heroes [2]. The way racialised/orientalist understandings of certain peoples does affect portrayals of certain characters. It is equally worth talking about how this is not unique to this game series. That these are issues widespread among a lot of media of its genre.

I feel like most of the issues of the franchise being the way it is boils down to like, it more or less being produced in a hegemon which permits for the unquestioned use of 'militaristic' imagery, as well as racialised/orientalist tropes and imagery, in a children's game without it being called into question lol. After all, there are children who do frequently, in real life, deal with tanks and fighter jets and border police and similar things on a daily basis. To have a game wherein images of these things are used by the heroes, to have heroes who are named after actual military terms coined in the context of modern warfare (Air Strike comes to mind) is actually indicative of who the target audience of the games are! (Children who do not have to frequently deal with these things in their real lives.)

And I feel like what it is good to question here is the acceptance that audiences did have at, well, more or less having characters who did use these images and who are named after these terms of modern warfare more or less unquestioningly. At least, it is worth considering, if only to be made aware of what perspectives are currently absent from the picture being presented.

Tangentially related from the main point, but a few responses against claims of the Skylanders being a proper armed military have been along the lines of the Skylanders being more 'superheroes' than a military. And that is true; they do follow a model more similar to that of a superhero story.

But I do think that superheroes as a concept are equally worth criticising. If only because the idea of 'innately powerful being who has the power of arbiter of morality and who protects "their community"' is a character trope which can be used as a vessel for reactionary ideology. (Implications of a character being uniquely powerful and what it says about our views on gifts/talents/ability aside [3], unpack 'protect', 'morality' and 'community'.) To paraphrase a tumblr post I can't be arsed to dig up now, 'if the Avengers existed in real life I bet we'd all hate them' [4].

Within the context of Skylanders, I don't really think they fall into as many of these issues which do end up within quite a bit of superhero media. Several characters do avoid the idea of 'innate power' through having been superempowered by something else (magical explosion, tech suit, whatever), and it is worth pointing out how several characters in-universe are also members of peoples who had previously been marginalised, and many Skylanders had made a name for themselves as being freedom fighters in particular [5].

That being said... I find it to be missing the forest for the trees to tie a decade-old dead franchise to an ongoing military conflict using example tropes which are, frankly, not unique to the franchise. The truth of the matter is that a lot of boy-targeted media produced in Western nations for the intent of selling boys more toys have similar issues with their portrayals of military and police forces, 'heroic' figures, structures of power, ideas of 'power' and 'protection' in general. So on and so forth.

Most of these things, in my opinion, need to be criticised within the context of more examples and broader cultural trends. To use the light vs darkness example, one needs to talk about the prevalence of it as a trope in other media, and how it affects the portrayals of characters who are associated with darkness and designed with dark skin in particular, beyond simply one game series. This is so that people can more easily notice how it is a reoccuring pattern in media and it isn't a unique example. Which then lends credence to your argument that darkness' association with evil negatively affects the portrayal of racialised/racially-coded characters and that this trope's prevalence has roots in societal ideas around 'light' features (light skin, blonde hair) being associated with goodness, with darkness serving as a contrast.

Similarly, if one analyses the game within the context of its production, target audience, etc, I don't think it would be accurate to call it propaganda. Rather, I think what it is, is a game produced within a hegemon. Which people who exist within the hegemon take in with varying levels of like, 'being critical of'. I think the severity of the issue needs to be properly assessed in order to most succinctly criticise it. [6] And what it is, fundamentally, is a symptom of a culture.

My final point is that. Everyone. This is the neurodivergent website. A common symptom of neurodivergence is a tendency to phrase things somewhat awkwardly.

Harassment is never warranted.

What if I just moved to Jupiter to get more stupider?

[1] I win at tone shifts.

[2] Worth pointing out: the villains of the game have also employed similar use of militaristic imagery. [See: Glumshanks tank.] Genre is important, and this is a hack n slash. We are going to fight enemies, and hordes of them. (In turn it is worth thinking about the popularity of such games, the implications of this genre's conventions, etc. Blah blah blah ruthless critique of all that exists whatever.)

[3] Insert Jack Saint

[4] Insert Alan Moore

[5] It is worth also pointing out that there are also characters who did make a name for themselves via protecting people from 'bandits' and such, which like yeah. I think these sorts of generic enemies do have some classed implications when you think about them. However, one must also remember that these games were produced one after the other over the course of about seven or so years, and most bios were initially written as throwaway afterthoughts to give the characters a little spice. It would be difficult to therefore give a succinct analysis about many of their actual portrayals in lieu of meatier media (in the form of comics, books etc).

There's something to be said about how the material conditions the games were made under - that being of video game crunch in order to push it out to as many USAmerican [and broader global north] children as possible - did lead to the games being produced and written a certain way. (ie capitalising on normative heroic tropes and ideas without deconstructing them to a greater extent). Of course it did that; they were pushing these games out as fast as possible. Who has the time to construct revolutionary narratives in this context?

[6] For that matter, there is something worth criticising regarding fandom-blogging while trying to tie it to current military conflict. Definitely question the media one consumes. One must also remember that this is a dead game franchise with a small active fanbase, and while criticise it can be a meaningful thought exercise and expose one to a perspective they might not have considered before, this is also just a game. And there are real marginalised people out there who demand to be talked about as themselves, without being tied to fandom.

#tabby says something #skylanders #posting after a billion years #i had been too busy writing yuri to do much skyloser stuff but like. this necessitated discussion.

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oceanic-sunsets · 1 year

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Mike and El's fight: getting each other and not understanding each other at the same time

I was rewatching some s4 scenes last night, and during Mike and El's fight, there's always been something that makes my brain start making desperate alarm noises, and This post portrayed perfectly what the scene always reminds me of.

So let's see:

We know this is true. Mike does know what it's like to be bullied. But despite having seen him confront bullies and almost dying jumping off that cliff in s1, El doesn't feel understood. Mike is trying to connect with her and let her know she's not alone, because yes, he does get it.

And El not feeling understood doesn't only come from Mike's cold attitude toward her when the incident just happened, or Mike not being able to say "I love you". These factors definitely add to it, but that's not all.

For El, there's nothing out of the ordinary with Mike, something that makes him REALLY different, unlike her with her powers and being raised in a lab. From El's perspective, the bullies Mike has come across are wrong in targeting Mike because what they say it's not true, they're just being mean. But they're right about her.

She is actually different, she doesn't fit in society in a conventional way thanks to her powers and her childhood, and she never will. She can't ignore her past and it's not that easy to move on and pretend when you're different from other people who expect you to conform to their vision of how someone should be like.

But the thing is, El is unaware this rings true for Mike too. Inadvertently, she's describing exactly how he feels and why he's a target for bullies. This isn't her fault, as she wasn't raised in society in a conventional way. She probably has no idea homophobia is a thing or how it's a systemic issue, bigger than one or two random bullies.

Mike still tries to connect with El, but their fight starts getting worse from this moment on, and yes, their issues aren't JUST because El told Mike he doesn't understand, but a big part of their crumbling relationship does come from not understanding each other.

Queer kids feel like they don't belong all the time, because that's what society teaches them as they grow up. Love stories are not about them, adventures aren't about them. Songs and art are all about falling in love with the opposite gender. (Yes this is slowly changing, but this is the 80's and homophobia is still a thing in the world in our current era.)

El says "anywhere", and this still applies to queer kids. No matter where in the world you are, homophobia is present in some way or another. Especially in the 80's.

And something funny happens. Because here's Mike not understanding El, despite this applying to his experience with bullying too. This is him not understanding her troublesome, abusive childhood, and how having superpowers doesn't automatically make it better. But Mike is baffled, because in his eyes, El is amazing, a superhero, she has people who care about her and love her (her family, not just him), and she gets to be the hero of the story. The bullies are obviously just dumb and don't get it!

....That's exactly how El perceives Mike's story with bullying, too. She doesn't realize he feels and is different too. She's unaware of the repression, of how society turns against certain groups of people and makes their lives a living hell simply for existing.

Mike has people who care about him and love him. But you never know who is going to turn their backs on you the moment the truth is out. And anywhere you go, homophobia is still present and it's not only emotionally draining and affects your self-perception, but it can also be physically dangerous.

So, in the middle of their discussion and failing to understand each other.... They do get it, but aren't communicating it clearly. El is going to understand once the truth is out, because they aren't so different after all.

So no, they don't understand each other. But they could because their experiences and feelings of self-worth and how they (not)fit into the world aren't that different after all.

#byler #mike wheeler #eleven #el hopper #jane hopper #elmike #platonic elmike #they're my beloveds #if they could just talk to each other #but TRULY talk to each other without the failed romance drama #they could be really good friends #they just dont work out romantically for obvious reasons

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bespokeminutiae · 1 year

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Cassti is my protag and I love her so have some headcanons!!

Disclaimer: I have not finished the game. I've only played through the Cassti's chapter 2.

Please do not put spoilers on my post!!

Honestly I was not expecting to like her as much as I do but from the start she's been so damned compelling. I love her.

Very pragmatic

She's the epitome of "I'm a healer, but."

Like this is a deeply kind and compassionate woman but like. Do no harm take no shit. Some problems can best be solved with rest and fluids and an herbal tincture. Some problems can best be solved with a battle axe.

Extremely smart, like at the top of her field as an apothecary.

The second any of the other travelers realize how much medical knowledge she has they start pressuring her to write books or teach or found a medical school or something. Half of them even have ideas for how to fund it!

...She'll consider it if/when her joints start to go bad and she can't travel anymore.

So pre-amnesia Cassti was probably a lesbian (and in love with Malaya), but I feel like she's still reconstructing her sense of self post-amnesia and is more open than she would have been otherwise because there just. Isn't anything for her to go on.

She ends up poly and bi, in a polycule with Throné, Hikari, and Partitio.

Said polycule was originally just Throne, HIkari, and Cassti, and had not really progressed beyond a mutual acknowledgement of attraction and an understanding that maybe we'll do something about this sexual tension After The War TM, but Partitio is very free with physical affection and eventually broke down the walls between all four of them without meaning to.

For Partitio, Cassti is attracted to his optimism and charm and strong sense of right and wrong, as well as his determination to back up any of the ridiculous moves he made in the name of doing the right thing. He's not just bluster, he always puts in the work to back up his word and she likes that. He's also an easy mark to tease and that's fun.

Hikari was the first companion Cassti met on the road, and Cassti's first close companion post-amnesia. She's attracted to his grace and dignity, as well as his strong sense of duty and strong moral compass. They have similar worldviews and perspectives on a lot of things, despite coming from very different backgrounds.

Cassti's attracted to Throné because I'm a long-time thief/apothecary shipper and I'm not stopping now of Throne's sharp wit and sense of humor, as well as her grace and sense of fashion. She also admires Throné's determination to pursue her goals and is a little jealous of Throné's ability to be selfish, and really wants to see who Throné becomes once she's free of the collar.

...Every one of Cassti's partners made the first move. Cassti's very reserved and pragmatic and in the wake of the amnesia was really not looking for romance (let alone so much of it). She's not really sure how she ended up here, but she's happy.

She's always been somewhat reserved and a bit of a workaholic, but it's only gotten worse since she amnesia because her medical knowledge is all she has left.

Lost what few coping mechanisms she had in the war

Is a good patient as long as she's the only patient. Is a terrible patient the second someone else is also injured

Every time it is suggested that she get a hobby for relaxation purposes, she somehow manages to turn it back into work. Loves gardening! Only grows medicinal plants, etc.

She and Throné have chronic "No, let ME help YOU." at each other.

Gender-wise, Cassti is pretty solidly in the middle of the butch/femme spectrum. She'd probably be actually more butch, except her gender presentation is more about managing other people's expectations first and expressing her own preferences second.

Like seriously. She's designed her entire presentation around "Even if you only catch the hem of her skirt out of the corner of your eye, you know you've seen a member of Eir's apothecaries and can ask for help if you need it."

Like Temenos, she also feels that presenting as the gender she's chosen to present as is the one that grants her the most social benefits on the path she's chosen to walk.

She would not consider herself trans or nonbinary, but she's not at all attached to her femininity. The skirt uniform and long hair and she/her pronouns just contribute to the impression she wants to give off, which is "helpful apothecary."

People who had a hand in Cassti's dancer outfit: Agnea, Partitio, Throné

People who did not have a hand in Cassti's dancer outfit: Cassti

#octopath traveler 2 #octopath castti #castti florenz #octopath meta #meta #hahahaha i complained about temenos' being long and castti's is longer #she's my favorite your honor #I can't help it #this one has a ton of ship info though.#long post #also!!! feel free to talk to me about these headcanons if you want

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2hopatz · 1 year

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Love Belt - Choi Jongho

Genre: fluff, angst, hurt/comfort, happy ending :D

Warnings: Jealousy, Crying, Ghosting, Kissing, College D:, Cursing, Tooth Rotting Fluff

Word Count: 2.3k exactly WE UP!!

Pairing: c. jh x gender non-specified reader

(a/n): hiiii~ I was like, super sad the other day and kept listening to love belt on repeat for hours. so I decided to write this. I recommend listening to Love Belt for this fanfic, but who knows, maybe I'll make a playlist for every fanfic! Enjoy~ Mwah!

“I just don’t understand why he is so angry over me having a new study partner, we don’t even have the same classes anymore!” you rant to your best friend frantically, your hands moving just as fast as your mouth.

“Do you think you’re spending too much time in the studio, and Jongho is jealous or something? I mean, even I’ve noticed your study sessions turning into full-blown study nights,” Mel was trying desperately to calm you down, especially knowing how dramatic you can be at times. She just couldn’t believe that Jongho, of all people, would be the one ignoring you, “ He has been busy lately too, maybe he is just tired, or maybe your schedules don’t match up well.”

“I know his schedule by heart, which is also why I know that he has been ignoring me. I’ve tried to meet up with him every day this week dammit! The thing is, I haven’t done anything new besides study with Hyunjin these days,” the stress from the previous two weeks spills out of your mouth, and your fingers go cold despite the warm drink in your hands.

“It’s only been two weeks, and next week is finals week. He could be studying, take a breath friend. Breaking down in a cafe would make you so embarrassed later,” Mel’s hand rested on your shoulder as you let out a breathy laugh.

“I don’t know Mel. He has never been this distant, not for two weeks at least. Maybe a day, maybe even a week, but he would always come back to talk it out,” the blood rushing in your ears and the lump sitting heavy in your throat made it apparent how affected you were by his absence. Even if you wanted to act unbothered, you couldn’t. It was Jongho after all, how can you be calm when you feel you’ve just lost your home over a damned study partner?

“It just feels absent without him around me for this long. I feel like everything I lay eyes on is tarnished. This is just stressful, and for what?” Mel sighs, her arms wrapping around your shoulders and squeezing you tight. You lean into her touch, chasing the fleeting sense of relief it gives you. Still, your heart wrenches with loneliness as a memory of Jongho’s smile invades your consciousness.

“I know, hun. How about you try again tonight, hm? Ask him to come over.”

“I have to paint with Hyujin tonight. I have my final project due next week and I’m struggling with the perspective view of the buildings. Ughhh and the reflections are absolutely going to kill me on top of my analysis of-” Mel throws you a scathing look, and you take it as your clue to stop spiraling about things you had to do.

“You have time to do those later. Jongho may need you now, so what do I say?”

“Focus first on what matters to me, and everything will fall into place. My finals do matter… but I have all week to study. I need to see Jongho tonight. Thank you Mel.” She smiled, raising a hand perpendicular to your face.

“No need to thank me love, 'cause you’re paying for my coffee! Mwah!”

“I take everything back. Seonghwa likes girls who pay for their own coffee, he told me himself for real.”

“Nice try, I may be drunk in love, but I’m not stupid in love,” giggling, you two went up to the register to pay. You’re day felt a bit brighter now that you had a plan, and a beloved (albeit mischievous) friend to share it with.

. . .

‘Jongho, we need to talk. Now, actually.’

tdybear

‘Thought u had to study. With Hyunjin.’

‘Cancelled. I wanted to talk with you.’

tdybear

‘I’m studyin rn. Can we talk later?’

‘U can keep playing the avoidance game Jongho,

but we’ll both end up losing. I’m not trying again,

and I’m not finna reschedule nun.’

tdybear

‘Where r u?’

‘apartment.’

read 20:43

You threw your phone down on the bed with a sigh of frustration. One thing you’d come to learn throughout the years was just how stubborn Jongho could get. In truth, you couldn’t help but be a little frustrated with the fact that this was all over a fucking study buddy. Hyunjin and you had been acquaintances since your freshman year, yet now is when the issue starts? It was all so confusing. Still, there was that part of you that relished in the fact that Jongho was coming, because he didn’t want to lose you. If your heart was a glass, what had been a quarter full for the last two weeks is overflowing. You wanted to see his face.

You keep pacing around the room, swimming in a pool of your disturbances. You are so frustrated, the lump in your throat being a telltale sign of incoming tears. Your heart is beating impossibly fast, and when you hear the doorbell ring out from the living room, it is like seeing the sun rise over the horizon after a lifetime of living in the dark.

When you open the door, all you can see is him. All you can feel is him, and as angry as you want to be; you greet him with a warm smile and a hug that lasts all too long, and he does the same. Just for a moment, everything is normal.

. . .

For all of the affection you had given each other at the door, the tension that filled your living room after was miasmic. You both sat awkwardly on the loveseat, periodically shifting around.

‘I can’t take this anymore. I'M GOING INSANE HERE!’

“So, did you want to talk to me about something? Did something happen?” You could have burst a blood vessel right there.

“Did something happen? Jongho, pray tell. When was the last time you saw me?”

“About… two weeks ago…” The silence that followed was deadly, and all you could do was cross your legs and look at him. Shifting on the couch, he fiddled with his fingers before clearing his throat awkwardly.

“Look… I’ve been… busy. You know how demanding my major is.”

“I’m an artist, and I always have time for you. Art and music are quite close in workload and nature, are they not?”

“You’ve been busy too, with Hyunjin. I didn’t want to interrupt you two.”

“I invited you over when Hyunjin wasn’t even here.”

“He’s been here? I thought you only worked in the studio.”

“He may be my study buddy, but he is also my friend. A friend which I was desperately in need of for the past two weeks.” He huffed at that, his cheeks and ears slowly warming, until even his nose was pink. He was frustrated. You were losing your patience, and he could tell by the glare cutting into the side of his head.

“Look, if you don’t want to talk to me, for whatever reason, tell me. I’m tired of going back and forth with myself about what I did or how you feel. I have my own life, and whether or not you want to be a part of it is your choice,” you said simply getting up from the couch to open the door. Though part of you was sure he would stay, the other part was petrified that he would get up and leave. If that door closes and he isn’t in the room, you think that your heart will stop beating. Or the world will stop turning.

“Wait… do you promise not to think I’m an idiot?”

“No,” you fight a smile as you sat back down beside him, a supernova of hope going off in your heart. He smiles, and you see colors for the first time in two weeks. His laugh invades your senses, and you smell the cologne he always puts on after he showers; for a moment, you are home. Then the room went silent, and all you could do was hold out your pinky.

“I promise.” He sighs when his pinky loops into yours, holding onto it, and putting your hand in his lap. You pray he can’t hear the way your breath hitches, and he hopes you can’t feel how fast his heart is beating.

“Did you miss me at all? When you were with him?”

“I miss you every second my hand isn’t in yours.”

“I feel like an idiot.”

“Why?” His fingers intertwine with yours as he caresses the back of your palm.

“I saw how happy you looked beside him, how similar you guys are. How much he can really help you. I mean, he’s an artist. For the first time in my life, I was scared that you would leave me. I know, we’re just college friends, we may be bound to lose contact in the future. But the thought… I just can’t take it. So, I left first. I wanted to prove that I could live without you.” He is gripping your hand now, his head hung low. His breath hitches loudly, and for the first time in years, you see him cry. Your voice coos out, as your free arm wraps around him.

“Fuck…” You sniffle as the lump in your throat reaches a fever pitch, “well… can you?”

“...No.” When he says that, something in you shatters and rebuilds itself, so many emotions flood you at once, and it wrenches a sob out of you.

“Don’t cry…”

“You’re one to talk…” and suddenly the sobs are mixed with laughter. The world is so much brighter when he is around.

“I’m sorry. I’m too jealous and too headstrong. If you were to be in love with him, I would still want to be in your life. Even if it means I won’t be able to talk to you as much. I swear that if the world ended, I would only need you to survive.”

“In love with him?” you giggled, tears still escaping your eyes, “Why would I be in love with Hyunjin?”

“I don’t know… your similarities. How soft he is around you. He makes affection with you look so easy.”

“That’s just what he is like Jongho. Even if Hyunjin were to have feelings for me, which I guarantee he doesn’t, I still would have to reject him. No one could ever compare to the way you make me feel. The way you make me hurt.” Three words burn in your throat, as you eyed Jongho’s reaction. You want nothing more than to feel his lips on yours. You burn for him.

“You don’t like him?”

“He’s nothing more than a friend to me.”

“What am I to you?” You smiled nervously as silence settled in the air.

“You first,” shifting softly in your arms, he looks at you with confusion.

“What do you mean?”

“I want to hear you say it Jongho. After all, I didn’t avoid you. Write me a song. Tell me how you feel.” You smiled mischievously, leaning into him. Suddenly, his hand is untangling from yours, opting to gently massage the crest of your hip.

“You’re such a bully.” He is inches from you now, you can feel his breath. Was time always this slow? You’re getting too impatient.

“Tell me, Choi Jongho, what am I to you?”

“...You’re the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. I want to make lyrics that only you understand. I want to sing songs that only you can hear. I want to be yours, in every sense. All I want in return is your love, your time, and your patience. Without you, I’m a fish out of water. I need you like the current needs the moon. I want to dress you in the rings of Saturn, I want to form your name from the remnants of stars. The divine was inspired by you. All I’ve ever wanted was you. I’ve needed a lot of things, but none of those things matter without you.” He was pulling you closer now, his hand sliding to your waist, his eyes flickering from your lips to your eyes. Brown had always been your favorite color, it was the color of everything warm. It was home. You had loved him long before you knew him.

“Every painting has been dedicated to you, Jongho. I need the yellows of your warmth, the reds of your anger, the blues of your sadness, the greens of your jealousy. Every color I’ve ever painted has been you, every color I could never imagine is you. You are the sun and the grass. The mystery of the forests and the deepest seas. Paint me with your love. All I want from you is you. Unadulterated, unfiltered, and untethered. I may not be as eloquent as you; my art comes in form of pictures, not words. I could paint you in colors I’ve never seen, but they are so familiar to me. You are so familiar to me. You are my home. Your love is better than any pigment, and I need you just like you need me. I need your lips on mine. I will be your willing canvas.”

Finally, your lips meet, and you feel the universe in his touch. He tastes like chocolate. You are burning in his grasp, yet you are the most comfortable you have ever been. When you pull away for air, he chases you, eyes low, irises painting the world brown. You place a finger to his lips with a laugh, and he sighs, hands cupping your hand, and kisses your finger. You feel red hot. His eyes open fully, taking in the sight of you.

“You are my stars, my asteroids, my planets. You’re my love belt.”

#ssolphite #choi jongho #jongho #ateez fic #ateez #ateez jongho #ateez fluff #fluff #fanfic #fanfiction #jongho fluff

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mageofseven · 1 year

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Hello my friend! Would it be too much trouble to ask me for an Obey Me match??

Name: Mochi

Gender: female (she/her)

Sexuality: pansexual

MBTI: infp

Zodiac: Libra

Personality: Shy at first and generally quiet, but ambiverted and love to be around my chosen family. Naive and gullible but I put up a tough front and I'm very book smart. Love to have philosophical and deep conversations. I'm awkward but charming (at least I like to think so) and while I'm generally cheery and pleasant I can get a bit moody, and tend to be sensitive. Honesty and communication are very important to me. Also, very nerdy and indoorsy

I hope thats enough info!!

Okay first off: Yay!!!! Another INFP Libra 🥰

Secondly, your information is a bit on the small side, but I think I might be able to scrape something up for ya~

Okay so your MBTI: INFP (just like me 🤭)

This means your function stack is FiNeSiTe or more simply, FiNe.

Your primary function is Introverted Feeling. This means you lead your life asking questions like

"How would this make me feel?"

"Does this decision match up with the morals/values that I hold dearly?"

And overall, you are a person who does a lot of reflection, both on yourself and the state of the world.

This is supported by your auxiliary function, Extraverted iNtuition. This helps you find patterns, form connections, and overall see many possibilities. This function serves your Fi and collects information for it to process.

For your sun sign, Libra, it shows you are indecisive, friendly, and fair. You aim to be diplomatic and kind to all you meet, but at your lowest you can be codependent, impatient, and fragile.

We Libras are ruled by Venus, the planet that governs love, beauty, and money; this leads us to generally be artistic and enjoy both creating and admiring art in various forms.

We are a cardinal sign, meaning we can do great at taking initiatives, but our indecision also stops us in our own tracks. We need to learn to trust our own intuition instead of always pausing our efforts to look at other perspectives.

All of this info, including the others you listed above, bring a few things to mind.

You need a s/o who can accept you at your core. You feel deeply and think deeply and you need someone who can appreciate that about you.

You need someone who will respect you and not let anyone take advantage of your gullible nature while also not becoming frustrated with you about it.

There are a few Boys who come to mind for you with this information and with so little, I can't truly say any of them are wrong for you.

However, there is one name that has been extra persistent in my mind for you. Because of this

I pair you with...

Solomon

Honestly, I just think this man checks all of the boxes in the strongest way possible.

He'd love your deep thinking ways, something he wishes he saw in more people.

Soli would find your sensitive and gullible nature to be too tempting and would have plenty of fun in teasing you; never far enough to hurt your feelings, but always enough to bring a cute blush to your cheeks.

Most importantly, he would protect you from those who wish to use those traits to hurt you. This man has been alone for a very long time and therefore is very protective of those he loves. No one would risk taking advantage of these traits of yours that the sorcerer finds so beautiful because they'd have to deal with him if they even thought about it.

Honestly, I don't think Solomon let's other see his philosophical side a lot, but I know he has it; he has lived for thousands of years and has an insatiable curiosity for this world. To me, it would be strange if he never asked or pondered the big questions in life and I truly believe you would find such conversations with him to be fulfilling and mentally stimulating.

I'll admit, Solomon might have an issue opening up to you at first. He's lived for so long, experienced so many terrible things (some that he no longer remembers well, but still feels their affects to this day).

He's not someone who would lie to his little Minx, but I think he would dodge your questions for a while till he truly starts to feel safe with you.

Solomon is someone I can see loving you completely to your core. He has his issues, yes, but you have this magical way of breaking his walls down.

He loves you for your heart, mind, and soul and will appreciate who you are the most out of all of the Boys.

#matchup requests #t: misssakuramochi #mochi #obey me solomon #twinsie!#glad to meet another INFP Libra!#thank you for requesting a match up~

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yr-obedt-cicero · 2 years

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Why exactly do you think that Jefferson is not a good person personality-wise? We know of his actions, but what of just how he is?

Correction; I don't think he's a hero, or a villain. Due to my lack of interest of learning about him - which isn't deep or anything, he just genuinely does not interest me - I can come across as being harsher towards him than how I do with many of the other founders. The ideology someone could be a saint, or pure evil; is kind of a childish fairytale view. When judging historical figures, you need to see them as the people that they are, not statues of fictional heroes upon a pedestal. And in almost every case with a founder; they are just morally gray people. On one hand; Jefferson was the author of the Declaration Of Independence, a ballsy job not many were willing to commit to and do. And on the other; he was an asshole, manipulative politician, pedophile, etc. People often times seem conscripted to choose between seeing controversial historical figures as heroes, or villains. With the downfall being missing the reasonable answer that is the ambiguity and complexity of humanity. It's a common side affect to trying to objectify these real human people as saints, or sinister people to either only condone or condem. Because the end result is; the polarization. There isn't going to be a completely terrible or completely great person.

Anyway, in many cases; it's subjective wether someone's shortcomings outweigh their accomplishments. And I'm not here to personally countdown every misdeed in Jefferson's life to give an answer. But I will say that; from most of what I've heard, I am not fond of Jefferson in any aspect. I'll spare the details about his relationship with slavery and the Hemming's case — not out of the intent to dismiss those disgusting acts, but because I don't feel like repeating what has already be told repeatedly. And we are really judging on his “personality” here, so let's just take from the perspective of his own time.

He was a sexist, and supported rapists.

Jefferson believed that;

“More so than most founders, Thomas Jefferson dwelled on disorderly women. He noted that his good-hearted male assistant “loses all power over himself and becomes almost frenzied” when in the company of women. Jefferson was against imposing harsh penalties on rapists lest disorderly women use the rape charge as “an instrument of vengeance against an inconstant lover and of disappointment to a rival.” He condemned French women who engaged in public petitioning and protests for abandoning their families and nourishing “all our bad passions.” He blamed France's Queen Marie Antoinette for an “inflexible perverseness and dauntless spirit," manipulation of the king, and the violence of the French Revolution. He commented, “I should have shut the Queen in a convent, putting harm out of her power.” Jefferson's misogynist tendency to blame women for all public problems was simply an extreme example of the founders' deep distrust of public women.

Not surprisingly, many founders joined fraternal organizations where men could escape from women to enjoy male camaraderie. Social groups like the Freemasons, martial institutions such as the Society of the Cincinnati, and political clubs like Democratic Societies were male-only organizations that invited members to congregate, socialize, network, deliberate, plan, and make decisions regarding their families, businesses, communities, and nation without women's presence, intervention, or interference.”

(source — The Gendering of American Politics: Founding Mothers, Founding Fathers, and Political Patriarchy, by Mark E. Kann)

He was super racist, even for his day.

Granted, throughout Jefferson's life, he was always publicly disagreeing towards slavery, despite enslaving 600 people. Jefferson called slavery a “moral depravity”, and he believed that slavery was a great threat to their new nation. And he also thought that slavery was a terrible contradiction to the laws of nature, which was that everyone had a right to personal liberty.

But that is all severely less applauding when Jefferson's belief in the necessity of abolition was intertwined with his racist beliefs — as in, Jefferson didn't care if slaves were freed or not, he still thought they were inferior and didn't deserve to be in America with white folks. He thought that white Americans and enslaved black people constituted two separate nations, and that they could never live together peacefully, or even in the same country, abolishment or not.

Jefferson also believed that black people were racially inferior, and even had the capability of children;

“for, men, probably of any colour, but of this color we know, brought up from their infancy without necessity for thought or forecast, are by their habits rendered as incapable as children of taking care of themselves, and are extinguished promptly wherever industry is necessary for raising the young. in the mean time they are pests in society by their idleness, and the depredations to which this leads them. their amalgamation with the other colour produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character can innocently consent.”

(source — from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Coles, [August 25, 1814])

And he was actually terrified what freed slaves might do to their previous owners, that he supported deporting black people out of the United States ( Freed or not ) in favor of protecting planation owners.

Which is the whole meaning behind Jefferson's well-known quote; “we have a wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go”

All of which, was pretty racist even by his day-in-age. Trust me, there are plenty more admirable abolitionists that did not agree with this same sickening ideology.

He was a shitty person and friend.

So, I'm not going to bring up his rivalry with Adams because they were both petty and ridiculous.

Thaddeus - also known as Tadeusz - Kosciuszko ( 1746-1817 ), was a Polish engineer, and firm believer in liberty. Kosciuszko traveled to America during the American Revolution and even fought in the war, and later gained even greater recognition in defense of his native Poland. And he was also an abolitionist, and hated slavery.

Yet, he was also great friends with Jefferson. Who had called him; “as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known.” The major difference between Kosciuszko and Jefferson as abolitionists, was that Kosciuszko was actually willing to act on his word.

In 1798, Kodciuszko left the United States and returned to the Russian-controlled sector of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Jefferson had helpfully provided him with a passport in a false name and arranged for his secret departure to France. But before leaving that same year, Kodciuszko wrote out a will and entrusted Jefferson to be the executor. In the document, Kosciuszko - long before the American Civil War - pleaded for the emancipation of America's black slaves. His plan was to leave his American estate to buy the freedom of the enslaved, including Jefferson's own, and to educate them for independent life and work as to help supply them after they would be freed from the planations.

“I Thaddeus Kosciuszko being just in my departure from America do hereby declare and direct that should I make no other testamentory disposition of my property in the United States I hereby authorise my friend Thomas Jefferson to employ the whole thereof in purchasing Negroes from among his own or any others and giving them Liberty in my name, in giving them en education in trades or othervise and in having them instructed for their new condition in the duties of morality which may make them good neigh bours good fathers or moders, husbands or vives and in their duties as citisens teeching them to be defenders of their Liberty and Country and of the good order of Society and in whatsoever may Make them happy and useful, and I make the said Thomas Jefferson my executor of this”

(source — Will of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, [May 5, 1798])

In October 1817, Kosciuszko passed. But even before such, in September, he wrote a letter to Jefferson reminding him of the deal; “—of which money, after my death, you know the fixed destination.” And yet, Jefferson waited until he was of age 77, to claim that he was too old to fill in the request, and that it was too complicated legally. After the case was passed around through a couple of other men who all refused to fullfil it; and I don't believe it was ever completed.

He was a manipulative politician.

He did that imperious, artificial sympathy shit of dressing poor to make himself appear more relatable and humanizing to people. Which in the end; is just insulting and arrogant, but even politicians ( And celebrities ) do things like that today and get away with objectifying others simply because of class differences.

And also, he was such a rich coward that half the rumors and slander he had spread around weren't even by himself — but he had instead just paid many journalists to do his dirty work for him, all while he could appear innocent and too sensible to get into the crossfire of political slander.

#amrev #american history #thomas jefferson #founding fathers #queries #sincerely anonymous #Cicero's history lessons #history

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captainheartless · 10 months

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I got talked into writing again for this months carnival of aces. Let's see if I can figure out how to work Tumblr through this app! No promises that I'll check responses on any app anywhere, ever. Cross post.

For this month's carnival of aces, I wanted to reflect on how our use of the concept of sexual orientation has changed over the past couple decades, and how that's affected my view of orientation as a concept.

First, it's worth noting that sexual orientation, as a concept, has always been shifting. The model of 4 exclusive identities of heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and asexual has it's origins as psychological diagnoses. These identities, even before asexuality was widely known, were meant to capture the entirety of logical space with regards to what gender someone could be attracted to. Asexuality was the last of these gender-focused labels, basically an afterthought we had to invent because the previous model (again, due to originating from psychology) assumed everyone was sexual (or, alternatively, asexuality was previously theorized as a lack of sexual orientation).

But because asexuality is a null answer to the "what gender?" question, it quickly lead us to develop other terms to describe our internal experiences that didn't revolve around sexual attraction to gender - after all, we didn't want people to think that because we're asexual we have no feelings at all! There were a couple ways to do this: 1) develop other types of attraction (romantic attraction, aesthetic attraction, etc.), and 2) develop models of sexual orientation that aren't based on gender (i.e., demisexual, sapiosexual, some types of kink, etc.).

I don't know about everyone else, but I know I eventually felt unsatisfied with our attempts to develop newer and more inclusive models. In my younger years I still had a desire for totalizing systems, for a complete model to explain everything. It was also based on a desire to be seen and understood. But this was doomed to failure for two reasons. First, it's impossible to ever have a complete model. We've seen this demonstrated in the split attraction model.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, even coming up with a model to explain myself personally was always doomed to failure because I've come to realize we are all enigmas. We all have elaborate histories and are constantly carving and recarving that uncarved block of raw experience to create and define ourselves. But no set of concepts or identities will ever capture all of the nuance and complexity in those histories. As soon as we moved away from a simple (and generally useless) gender based diagnostic model of sexuality towards trying to use identity as a form of expression, we were doomed to failure. At best I can express bits and pieces of myself through long stories and bursts of character, but lists of identities will always feel like a taxidermied version of myself.

So how did I end up so disappointed? It was the desire to be seen or recognized in some complete sense, and the appeal to authority of a clinical/medical/scientific standpoint to achieve that. It was the sense that those authorities are the most "valid" perspectives. It was the desire to have a set of terms I could put on a profile - or in a medical record - to be "known" or "seen." And when I put it like that, it seems silly! The medical (and especially psychology) community has a long history of seeking to "cure" and "fix" sexuality. If they reject us, why should I care about appealing to their authority? And if they (or for that matter anyone else) doesn't have the concepts to see and understand me, why should I care? That's their loss; I can't write my life as a story for every single audience, nor can I expect every audience to get the same thing out of that story.

There's a different path here, which I've seen a lot of us travel over the years. Alongside this reorganization of identities is decades of queer theory and queer community organizing. Instead of trying to use identities as diagnostic, complete, and often exclusive descriptors we can recognize them as serving social functions. Identity can be an act. Identities can be signals of compatibility. They can be a way of trying to create a community with new norms, or with political goals. They can be signals for what kind of culture, community, and frameworks we are familiar with. Combining contradictory identities - or refusing to reveal or use specific identities - can be a way of speaking through contradictions and lacunas to try and capture the enigmatic nature of ourselves that escapes all the concepts we (currently) have.

So this is a long way of saying that perhaps my disappointment with the shifting use of orientation came precisely from the fact I had still internalized the norms they were shifting against: the idea that identities are diagnostic categories meant to capture and express non-social facts, the kind of neat homogenizing tools that algorithms thrive on, which also appeal to elite authority. What I hope we end up doing is something different: egalitarian, bottom up creations of communities, full of shifting and ambiguous borders, and comfortable with the messy and undefinable nature of existence. And I think whether we intend it or not, that's what we've been witnessing.

#carnival of aces #asexuality

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