#literally one of my biggest struggles in this fandom

[moonlightdancer26]

Can we just normalise shipping both Romione and Dramione?

#literally one of my biggest struggles in this fandom #why do we have to choose??😭 #I LOVE BOTH OK? #romione #dramione #pro dramione #pro romione #ron weasley #pro ron weasley #ronald weasley #draco malfoy #pro draco malfoy #pro shipping #ship and let ship #harry potter #hp

[a-town-called-hometown]

yippee! apologies if my takes are horrendously bad

my personal take on the matter is that i definitely think the dark worlds can work as a metaphor for escapism without undermining the darkners' personhood. it can be more than one thing, yknow? the darkners are important, their lives matter. and the lightners do go to the dark world as an escape from the problems they face in their own life. but that's not the darkners' whole PURPOSE, yknow? i mean. according to the laws of the universe of deltarune yes darkners' "purpose" is to serve the lightners but like it's not their whole purpose in the STORY.

it's sort of like how, in UNDERTALE, LOVE represents how distant you've become, how easy it is for you to hurt people. but it also literally gives you the power to destroy the world.

i think the biggest reason i believe escapism is at least a part of deltarune's narrative is queen.

queen's whole speech in both of her fights is about how she intends to provide escapism for the lightners (so that they will worship her but also so that they will he happy). she wants to turn the whole world into a dark world, so that everyone can live in bliss and not have to worry about the woes of the light world. she mentions "Staring, Tapping, To Receive Joy. Staring, Tapping, To Avoid Pain." which is like pretty much the definition of escapism

she wants to help Noelle with the problems she faces in the light world ("Noelle. Who Will Be There To Help Her? Her Strange And Sad Searches" and "My One Idea To Help Noelle, Failed") by just... shoving it away for a blissful fantasy world ("Wake? No, She Has Already Awakened Too Much. Let Her Close Her Eyes And Sleep Away, Into A Darker, Darker Dream.")

...i forgot the rest of what i wanted to say!

well first off, thank you for your ask! I'm going to get extremely in depth in my answer, so bear with me here. sorry it took several weeks to write this. the escapism reading of deltarune is pretty deeply entrenched in fandom, and to refute it, I felt it required a full-length essay to completely explain my viewpoint.

yes, "the lightners desire escapism" does not automatically translate to that being the darkners' actual narrative purpose. escapism can be a theme without dehumanizing those who are used in order to escape - in fact, I've read a number of stories that use someone's desire to escape to HIGHLIGHT how they're hurting others in pursuit of that. I believe that toby fox is definitely capable of telling a story about kids having a valid desire to escape, and about them grappling with having inadvertently created a world of real, living people as a result.

(I'll reiterate again that this is not the story arc that generally shows up in fanon. the common consensus is that the game will end in an omori-esque "growing out of" the dark worlds. it's why I have a huge dislike of the fanon escapism reading, given that the darkners are shown as people whose lack of agency parallels kris' own. it would feel cheap if the resolution to that plot was that the darkners were actually never meant to be agents in their own fates. but this is a digression.)

the reason why i DON'T believe that this is a story that toby fox is telling is because of the way the world, themes, and characters are written. put simply, it just doesn't come across as congruent with the story being told.

deltarune's main themes are agency, fate, identity, and control. this is a conflict that shows up in nearly every major character, is baked into the worldbuilding, and is the central struggle involving us, the player. the protagonist of deltarune is literally possessed by us against their will. the darkners are objects that have no choice but to serve and be discarded. over and over again, there is emphasis on roles that characters play - and crucially, roles that are imposed on them.

what would escapism mean, in this thematic context? in real life, escapism can represent any number of things, but in a story, a major narrative theme generally has to dovetail with other major narrative themes in the work. I would argue that escapism in deltarune would likely mean going to a place where characters are able to choose for themselves what roles they embody, or even to discard the notion of roles altogether. a fantasy of control is the only way to escape a reality where you have no agency. and honestly, it's hard to imagine that something could count as an escapist fantasy if you don't even get to choose whether or not you participate in it.

let's talk about kris.

I see a lot of discussions around kris that say that kris goes into the dark worlds to escape. the dark worlds are posited as kris' fantasy of heroism. it's a world where they can seem heroic and cool, a world where they can have friends. this theory makes a decent amount of sense on the surface level, but only until you consider that kris is being controlled in order to go into the dark worlds. and it is not a control that they appear to welcome.

if those worlds represent kris' fantasy, then why don't they get to choose what happens in those fantasies? why are they being controlled by an external force, one that they actively push back against? if it's really an escape, then why does everything about this world reflect their lack of agency? if they really think this world is just a pure fantasy, then why do they care if spamton falls when his strings are cut?

because they're being deliberately obscured to the player, it is hard to say how kris actually feels about many subjects... but I do seriously doubt that they view the dark worlds as an escape. they don't act in a way that is consistent with that. they resist their lack of agency, and what little we do see of their reactions to darkner characters doesn't suggest that they view those characters as part of a disposable fantasy, either. they seem to have complicated feelings on ralsei. and of course, one of their biggest emotional reactions in the game is to the spamton fight. I would argue that that suggests they have empathy for spamton, which is a hard emotional reaction to have if you believe he's just part of a fantasy. not impossible, mind you, but it seems unlikely that kris believes that all this is simply fantasy.

also, considering that snowgrave both actively discredits the idea that the dark worlds are mere fantasy and is actively traumatic for kris... I seriously doubt they'd open another dark world in chapter 3 on a snowgrave run if their motive was purely to escape. on that route, they've seen the damage we can cause in a dark world. they know that berdly has sustained lasting damage due to our actions, assuming he's not outright dead. why would they want to try and "escape" to a place like that again now that they know what can happen?

the only answer is that they have a motive that isn't escapist.

now, as for ralsei... what part does he have to play in all this?

ralsei does play a lot to the fun, fantastical elements of the dark worlds. he delivers the prophecy that kickstarts the adventure. he flatters both kris and susie endlessly when they act appropriately heroic. he welcomes them into the castle and even makes nice rooms for them. he initially seems tailor-made to enable a fantastical experience where no real issues can ever complicate anything, and where the pain of reality can successfully be hidden from. but there's a lot of complications to the idea that he might represent an escapist fantasy.

the first, and what honestly seems the most important to me, is that he doesn't encourage kris and susie to remain in the dark worlds. he is welcoming and kind, but once the adventure is over, he prompts them to return to the light world. he wants them to deal with their more "real" problems like homework. that doesn't feel like he is trying to facilitate escapism in them. a real fantasy would encourage you to stay in it, wouldn't it?

and while ralsei is definitely invested in making sure the lightners are happy, there are always cracks that show. he isn't able to make kris ignore what happened in the spamton fight. he isn't able to convince susie to be peaceful and kind. and in his very essence, he represents a number of uncomfortable ideas. very importantly, he represents a number of uncomfortable ideas to kris.

this probably ain't your first fandom rodeo, so I'm not going to explain all the different ways that ralsei interacts with kris' personal issues. there's plenty of posts on it out there. what i will point out is, once again, it feels odd that a character who seems tailor made to bring up kris' most uncomfortable associations with their lack of agency and their outsider status in their own family would be part of a fantasy of escapism to them. you'd think that they'd prefer something that didn't have an inbuilt hierarchy, a prophecy that denied them autonomy, or especially a person that reminded them how little they fit into hometown.

that doesn't mean kris doesn't care about him at all - it seems very likely that they do. what I mean to say here is that he just seems ill-suited to an escapism reading, both behaviorally and on a conceptual level. it doesn't seem like that's at all part of his servitude towards the lightners.

of course, there is another non-lightner entity that ralsei seems diegetically engineered to serve. but I'll discuss that later.

now as for susie...

yes, susie definitely views the dark worlds as more fun than the light world. and why wouldn't she? the light world sucks for her, and she doesn't seem very aware of the fact that the dark world can also suck. you could definitely make the argument that she views the dark worlds as a fantastical escape from reality... were it not for the fact that she treats her darkner friends with just as much importance as she does kris and noelle.

can someone treat components of an escapist fantasy as real and important? of course. but given deltarune's themes of agency and control, as well as the fact that darkners exist in servitude to the lightners, I feel like you'd have to make escapism tie into forcing others into a lack of agency if you wanted the theme to feel coherent with the rest of the work. this would require susie to be limiting the agency of the darkners around her. and obviously, she doesn't do that. her presence around them might be inherently limiting, just by simple virtue of being a lightner, but she isn't aware of it, and clearly is uncomfortable with the idea of limiting anyone's agency. she encourages ralsei to make choices. and she supports lancer in basically anything he wants to do. her treatment of lancer is integral to chapter 1's narrative, and it seems like that treatment of ralsei is integral to the ongoing narrative as well!

her preference for the dark world feels very rooted in her engagement with it as its own reality. rather than trying to avoid her real-life problems by engaging in a pretense, she seems to simply want to spend time with her friends in a place that isn't cruel to her. she isn't ignoring any of the dark world's problems in service of that, either. she notices when things don't line up. if she thought of it as a fantasy, wouldn't she be inclined to ignore issues that impede the fantasy?

and critically - like kris, she does not intentionally choose her imposed role in the prophecy at first. she steps into the role of bad guy to resist it, but that role is limiting too, and she eventually acquiesces to being a hero. it's never something she's completely on board with, though. she actively pushes back the limitations that the role places on her. I find this important to reiterate when we are discussing the notion of the characters viewing the dark worlds as fantasy.

noelle has a complicated relationship to the dark worlds. susie tells her that it's a dream to make her accept the strange reality she finds herself in, which works well on her. she continues to think of it as a strange dream throughout the chapter. (though, like the others, it is not a 'dream' she entered of her own volition!)

it is also a markedly unpleasant 'dream' at times. she has her agency restricted, is kidnapped, has to evade a controlling monarch, and is even tied up in a weird evangelion cross thing on the hand of a giant robot. it's not purely fun. noelle does like scary things, and while it might be healthy for her to have an experience where she stands up to a controlling adult figure... again, the circumstances make it difficult for me to assume that this is a fantasy she would choose for herself. not impossible, mind you, but it's not the first reading of the situation that comes to mind.

and while she does say she wishes she could dream like this every day in the normal route, that does happen specifically because she was talking to the girl she likes. it makes sense she'd find that pleasant. I don't think that necessarily equates to her finding the dark worlds escapist.

and importantly, this isn't the sentiment that she expresses in every route.

again, there's a lot of analysis on snowgrave, so I won't bother regurgitating it much here. but it's nightmarish for both kris and noelle, and very likely fatal for berdly. noelle needs to believe that the event is a dream, for her own psychological safety, but one of the most important parts of snowgrave...

...is that its events, and the world it took place in, are very, very real.

noelle wants to have the strength to face her problems, both in the regular route and in the snowgrave route. rather than escaping from them, she views the "dream" as a chance to practice dealing with her day-to-day issues. it's just that in the regular route she finds that strength authentically, and in the snowgrave route, that desire is manipulated and pushed until she is forced to kill berdly. she doesn't interpret snowgrave as an escape gone wrong. she views it as a dream that became a nightmare. and those are two extremely different things.

but i haven't even gotten to the biggest thing that undermines the concept that the dark worlds are a metaphor for escapism! which is: this fucking guy is dead wrong about everything.

so full disclaimer - I really love berdly. I think he's slept on a lot in the fandom because he's annoying and weird. which is fair, I suppose, but I think ignoring him hinders a lot of people's understanding of deltarune's overall narrative. because berdly often illustrates a lot of concepts in the game, but his narrative framing as a joke (usually...) prevents the player from taking it completely seriously. he has things to say and ideas to show off, it's just that he's often very loud and kind of dumb in his expression of them. which is kind of the point!

ralsei brings up the idea that the darkners are meant to serve the lightners very seriously in chapter one. by extension, and by way of the literal mechanics involved in a dark world's creation, we can infer that this logic is probably something that also applies to the dark worlds themselves. they are allegedly worlds and characters that only are supposed to fulfill a dream of the lightners. but due to narrative framing and deltarune's themes, we know that that's not the full truth. however dark worlds and darkners are created, they deserve to have their own agency. they can't just exist to fulfill a higher being's wishes.

you know who else undermines that view of the dark worlds? berdly! berdly does!!!!

because berdly is the only lightner in the game so far who does take the dark worlds to be an escapist adventure! he wants to turn cyber world into smartopia. he views this as a chance to be a cool hero. he believes he's going to get the girl, he's going to shape this world to his own liking, and maybe also he's going to get queen to acknowledge him or something so he stops being a forgettable little bluebird. and not only does none of this happen, his steadfast belief that it will happen is continually a joke within the narrative!!

berdly's wishes for uncomplicated escapist fantasy are flat-out denied by the dark worlds themselves. as a lightner, those worlds should be serving him. he should have the power to do whatever he wants within the bounds of an escapist fantasy. these npcs should be singing his praises!

but he doesn't have the power. and this world doesn't sing his praise. because it just isn't an escapist fantasy. he isn't right to view it that way. his wishes for heroism are always going to be thwarted.

so now that I've gotten all that out of the way, let's swing back over to the subject of your original ask. queen.

because, like berdly, queen's entire character arc is about how she's completely wrong about what the lightners actually want.

queen would in fact like nothing more to place the lightners into an escapist fantasy. she believes that that's the best way to serve them and make them happy forever. as a darkner, queen has very much internalized the idea that a lack of control is what actually makes people happy. since darkners have no choice in their destinies and are supposed to be happy in it, and since she personally finds her role as a darkner fulfilling, she believes that that's true of all people everywhere. if you want to make people happy, you just have to remove that pesky personal agency!

so she spends the story trying to force the lightners and particularly noelle into situations where she controls them in order to make them ostensibly happier. she does genuinely believe that this is the right thing to do, but as she finds out eventually, she's just wrong. noelle doesn't want that. queen believes that escapism is why the lightners use the internet... but that's totally wrong too.

while there are other searches mixed in, noelle is trying to use the internet to find her sister. instead of trying to hide from whatever happened, noelle wants to figure it out. queen's thesis about noelle and the lightners is proven wrong even before she personally encounters noelle in the dark world. it's just that queen doesn't realize it due to her limited perspective.

the concept of escapism being brought up with both queen and berdly is not there to say that the dark world is escapist. rather, it's there to say that it isn't. despite the dark worlds being a fantastical place, they are extremely real. to view them as a means of escape is foolhardy at best. you cannot act as though you are above consequences within them.

themes and ideas exist within the story for a sake of an audience. so let's get into the final character I need to discuss here. hopefully this will tie my thesis of deltarune together neatly.

that character is of course us. the player.

when creating a piece of fiction, an astute author will often identify and anticipate an audience's reactions to certain things in their work, and write things in such a way that they elicit the desired reactions. in essence, a writer is directing the "character" of the audience. how we feel and how we are anticipated to react to things is an integral part of nearly every fiction.

that effect is far more overt when dealing with metanarrative fiction that diegetically involves the audience. since the fiction is saying a lot of things about the general 'you,' the audience in aggregate, your reactions to certain things in the story have to be finely cued and anticipated by the author, so that the author can thus commentate on the reactions that you have to the story. the "character" you are assumed to inhabit is posited by the author to have certain traits.

to explain what I mean in plainer terms, I'll use the player of undertale's no mercy route as an example. because undertale is commenting on the way rpgs generally work. the player's behaviors in no mercy are attributed by characters in the story to be the result of us acting like a typical gamer. we kill the characters in the game because we want exp. and more than that, it's because we want to see everything the game has to offer. the role we inhabit in this role-playing game is that of a completionist. you could say that that's assumed to be our "character" in no mercy.

deltarune also posits that certain things are true of its audience. by being written to evoke certain cultural ideas, rpg tropes, and references to undertale, it guarantees that its audience will probably have certain traits, and spends a large amount of its conceptual focus commenting on those traits. one of those traits is nostalgia, which is probably an idea that I'll expound upon in a further essay because it's quite integral to my reading of deltarune. but the main one I mean to discuss here, and why I went off on this tangent about how audiences are dealt with in metafiction, is that we are posited as someone who believes in the logic of certain narratives.

deltarune's writing evokes a lot of portal fantasy narratives. alice in wonderland, narnia, pretty much every story where it's revealed at the end to be all a dream... the story of deltarune superficially resembles a lot of those. this, I think, is responsible for the popularity of the escapism theory. because those stories are often at their end about a child learning to put away fantasy and grow up, people tend to believe that deltarune must be about the same thing. but I truly don't think that deltarune is trying to do anything with that aspect of portal fantasy narratives, at least not directly. its main characters aren't involved in that exact type of coming-of-age arc.

instead, deltarune is very concerned with what happens to characters in fantasy, and specifically fantasy rpgs. if your world is deemed to not matter because it's a dream, what does that mean for you, who has no choice but to live in it? if you are an npc whose role has been predetermined for you via script, then can you ever decide for yourself what you want? what if you want to matter? what if you want to be your own person?

as the major controlling force of deltarune, we are initially cued to believe that deltarune is like a dream. it superficially fulfills so much of what we want from undertale fanon. hometown seems like it's a perfect idyllic town, at least until you start noticing the obvious cracks. and remember what I said about ralsei earlier? he is so reminiscent of asriel, and extremely eager to help us. it's not a stretch to say that making us specifically view deltarune as dreamlike and idyllic is probably part of his purpose in the game.

I would not say that we are posited as escapist. but the idea of escapism as brought up with queen and berdly is meant to strike at the heart of a much deeper idea that deltarune is trying to deconstruct. because if we view deltarune as a dream, escapist or otherwise, then we are inclined to write the internal realities of the characters inside off. the dark world can disappear without it mattering. we can control kris without it mattering. if it's all a dream, what does it matter? why should we care to let its characters go free? aren't we supposed to be in control?

if deltarune is an rpg... what is the significance of us interacting with it?

#deltarune #deltarune analysis #BIG big thanks to tvlandofficiall for being my sounding board and providing the flavor images for this essay #this one gets into some big overarching analysis of deltarunes construction and what it deconstructs. hope u enjoy

[itsclydebitches]

Don't mind me, everyone, just gonna slip on my Tedependent conspiracy hat for a bit...

Okay, for real though, can we talk about how Trent's backstory in 3x06 completely re-contextualizes his dinner with Ted in 1x03? Based on my own interpretation, the implied timeline is that Trent was married to a woman, attempted to come out to her and was dismissed (perhaps in large part because they were married: what do you mean you're gay? You can't be. You love me, etc.), either having his daughter forced Trent to become more honest about what he and his family needed, or they had her in an attempt to "fix" the marriage, she gets caught in the crossfire of all this, Trent comes out again, this time his wife believes him, they divorce, are still good friends, and their daughter is happier than ever because she has two loving parents who are now living their best lives.

Given her age - 3 at the start of the series, about 6 now - that means there's a decent possibility that Trent was still married at the beginning of the show.

And that his dinner with Ted is one of the things that pushed him to try coming out again.

As his core Ted is someone who is authentic and that authenticity is what catches Trent's interest. He's dismissive of it at first, literally thinking it's a "fucking joke," only to later end up with the revelation, "You really mean that, don't you?" - that Ted honestly enjoyed spending time with him. AKA, Ted says and does what he means, even when it seems completely unbelievable. How freeing must that be to see? I'm just imagining this interview-turned-dinner through the eyes of a man who is still unhappily married, mostly closeted, and struggling to help his daughter through the stress of that dynamic. Then he meets this sunshine of a coach who is so authentically himself that it initially comes across as an act, an exaggeration, a joke. But Ted never wavers, simply refuses to be anything other than himself. Soon he's doing even more than that, breaking down gender norms by characterizing the masculine, aggressive Roy Kent as the "little girl" from A Wrinkle in Time, burdened with the responsibility of leadership. He turns what should have been the end of a horrific day of shadowing into a dinner date and Trent finds himself answering the hard-hitting questions instead of his interviewee. Ted brushes off his accusation of greed with, "Wait, I'm supposed to be getting paid?" but Trent is completely caught off guard by Ted's "What do you love?"

The textual answer is "writing" and the fun fandom answer is "you," but if this is a Trent who still hasn't fully come out yet that's! A hell! Of a question!!! A closeted, queer individual's mind is going to jump to their biggest secret and, when offered an out, they're going grasp at it, so Trent eagerly agrees with Ted's guess of "writing" the same way Colin eagerly pulls the 'This is a gay bar? Haha, my mistake' card and makes a run for the door. Reading this interaction as Trent not just being gay, but potentially being closeted and unhappily married makes it less about the journalism (this strange coach likes me and thinks I can be a good person despite my invasive career choice) and more about his sexuality. Oh, no big deal, just having an intimate dinner with another good-looking man who's questioning me on love of all things and slowly inspiring me to be the best version of myself, which would require coming out to my wife again. This is a totally normal and not at all life-changing night! I definitely don't need to run away now!!

Via this reading Trent's article feels so loaded. Ted is "out there in the community" either "bravely or stupidly facing the music." That sounds a hell of a lot like a parallel to literally coming out and facing the music of a community's potential rejection, with Ted's American background/inexperience/unique personality acting as a stand-in for sexuality; the reasons he's labeled a "wanker" before anyone actually gets to know him - as the pub trio does while those very words are narrated by Higgins.

And then we have this:

"If the Lasso way is wrong, it's hard to imagine being right.... and though I believe that Ted Lasso will fail here... I can't help but root for him."

There are other elements at play here, like the football's celebration of ego and the threat of the club being relegated, but underneath it really sounds like a still-cynical Trent wanting to see the kind of changed world that those like Ted could bring about, but not really believing that it's possible. Given his history, is he really just talking about football when it comes to "the Lasso way"? I doubt it. Trent is potentially feeling trapped at this point in time, pessimistic to the point where yes, he still thinks that Ted will fail at football and creating a more inclusive, accepting community... but even still, Trent can't help but root for him. Of course he can't. He wants what Ted is offering. He needs it.

But then, of course, Ted succeeds! Not just in doing well by the club, but by the community as a whole. He maintains that inspiration and hope until, potentially, Trent felt like he could do something about his own situation. He found the nerve and strength to try again. So he comes out to his wife, they divorce, their daughter is happy, he goes on a date with a mustached man at the local pub, ditches him to try and 'interview' Ted, blows up his career because he realizes that his job is undermining the very thing he's been rooting for and he can't not give Ted a heads up, begins shadowing Ted as he looks for something "deeper," and then comes out to Colin, gazing wistfully across the water as he imagines being able to kiss a man after a win...

I'm not saying Ted Lasso is going to go there - and I'm DEFINITELY not saying there should be ANY accusations of queer baiting if/when they don't, because we've absolutely built the majority of this ship in fandom spaces - but I AM saying that if Trent's potential intersection of his history with Ted's influence and Ted's desire to shake things up while imagining bisexual triangles actually led to something... it would be a damn well done setup!

#Ted Lasso #Ted Lasso spoilers #Tedependent #Trent Crimm

[versegm]

Coming out of my self-imposed tumblr ban cuz this is the third post I see along the lines of "man we gotta jump ship" so here are some other ways to be social/do fandom/ect. I'm not gonna call them "tumblr alternatives" because I won't lie to you these are gonna be very different experiences from tumblr. But if you use tumblr as a way to meet new people/post your thoughts/do fandom/keep up with folks, then maybe one of these is worth looking into.

COHOST

I don't use Cohost so idk if it's good or not, but all the people who use it tell me it's A Whole Lot Like Tumblr. Got pretty mixed reviews on this one, people seem to either love it or hate it, either way you could check it out it's free.

PILLOWFORT

My main bitch, so I can actually talk about it.

Pros:

Lots of cool privacy features

Porn is allowed

Website has been consistently getting updates and listening to the userbase

No ads because it's user-funded

Cons:

Being user-funded means the website is frequently struggling with money

NEOCITIES

This one isn't really a social media, it's a host for websites.

Pros:

You can do whatever the fuck you want here

Cons:

You have to code it all yourself

If you didn't immediately skip this rolling your eyes, here are some ressources to get a blog running with minimum efforts, and a cool zine to figure out what to put on your blog.

FANLISTING

Ye Old internet way to find new peeps in your fandom. It's a list of fans. I'm listing thefanlisting.org here because it's the biggest hub of fanlistings out there, but there are plenty that aren't listed so if you've got a topic dear to your heart it might be worth googling up "[fandom/ship/character] fanlisting" and see what turns up.

Pros:

It's literally just adding your name to a list of fans. Low spoon effort.

Cons:

If you want to talk to any of the people on the fanlisting you have to actually manually contact them via email or website or whatever they provided for contact. High social anxiety effort.

Anyways that's all I got chief. You probably already heard of half of those and the other half might have made you go "hey wtf that's not at all what I use tumblr for why would I need these" and the answer is it's not my problem. I discovered these when looking for ways for me personally to do social media so if you do social media differently sorry I can't help ya. But hey maybe you'll discover something new who knows.

Preemptive answers to things I am sure will clog my notifications for years to come:

None of these are like tumblr! Look bestie this is like the fifth time people consider abandoning tumblr at this point you have to make your peace with the fact that there is no other website like this one.

The websites you mentioned are nearly empty there's no one in my community here! Bro if you want a website with lots of people you don't need me listing off where you can go you already know where people are going (aka: Bluesky) If you're so scared to be alone then invite your buddies to move there together so you can chat together idk. Be the change you want to be in the world.

I'm not gonna use these. Then you've got my blessing to not use these. I assure you you don't need to reblog this post just to tell me you won't use these. I don't care.

Anyways. Peace. Dunno how many people this is gonna be useful to, but if you wanted to branch out of the usual reddit/bluesky/twitter, hopefully this will help.

Bunch of pillowfort invite codes under the cut since I got a bunch. Sorry I got no cohost as I said I don't use that one.

[concerningwolves]

Hey! Do you have any tips for breaking writers block when you're adhd and/or autistic? Be it your own tips or a link to another post? My friend and I need help haha

Ahh sorry you got buried under spam and old ask game asks. (I... really need to sort my ask box >.<' ). But here we go, a month late, and hopefully better late than never:

Quick ideas for beating writer's block when autistic and/or ADHD

I've got this old post I wrote on writer's block and focus troubles. Ironically, this was before my autism diagnosis but the tips still happen to be things I, an autistic person, did to manage writing when faced with executive dysfunction (except I didn't know what executive dysfunction was at that point lol). I'm linking this with one important caveat, though: if you have ADHD, "stepping away" might do more harm than good; struggling to start tasks is a Big Thing with ADHD, so not starting the task at all is entirely counterproductive. (Unless you're in burnout! Here's a post about the differences between block and burnout with some ideas on what to do for each, in case that's at all helpful to you).

And here's something yoinked from another old ask-answer:

sometimes a break from more “serious” writing is what you need. Maybe try and take the characters from your main project and drop them somewhere else for the hell of it. I like to throw my characters into the MCU without warning like “lmao have fun in a strange modern world where there are gods and a guy in an iron flying suit bye.” Or, if fandom cross-overs aren’t your thing, find a writing prompt or take an idea you like and use it to form a short story with your characters instead.

Some other ideas I've seen around for writer's block with ADHD/Autism are:

Try voice recording or text to speech (i.e., absolute stream-of-consciousness unfiltered brain-to-mouth, giving yourself permission to 100% bullshit if you like, and see what rattles loose in the brain box)

Stream of consciousness writing in general, not even necessarily about a particular prompt or particular project. This one can be done in combination with:

Writing sprints! One minute timers, two minute timers, five minutes – set it for as long as you want, but when you're fighting executive dysfunction and/or difficulty focusing, the burst of urgency that comes from a shorter timer is very helpful.

And speaking of the sense of urgency: gamify your writing! There are different ways to do this, with varying elements of risk. I'll link some ways to do this at the end under "resources".

Exercise. I don't necessarily mean hitting the gym, but a quick burst of exercise prior to writing to get the heart rate up can help wake your brain up a bit. (Or, if you find repetitive exercise mind-numbingly boring like I do, the writing sure does start to look appealing lol).

Meditation. Okay, this one is sort of 🤔 for me, because I do often hear from fellow autistics and our ADHD cousins that meditation is literally impossible for us. It is for me. But! Like with exercise above, if meditation bores you instead of helping relax and ""clear your mind"", you can probably use that boredom to your advantage. Or, it might work as intended.

Change your workspace/situation/routine. Sometimes the problem is that you need new sensory input, or that your brain has gotten thoroughly bored and decided not to tell you. Use a different chair. Move to the kitchen table. Write at a different time of day. Have a different snack (or try having a snack while writing...). Basically, look at what you're currently trying, and see how you can do it differently.

It's also really good practise to get comfortable with Being Bad At Writing. Perfectionism and Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria are the biggest, meanest brain weasels with the sharpest teeth. Don't let them bully you. It sucks. It takes a lot of time and effort and internal work, which is why I was loathe to include this on a post of quick solutions, but. It is important.

And getting comfortable with this doesn't necessarily mean learning how to accept critique, or accepting that sometimes you'll write things that suck. It means accepting that sometimes you won't handle critique or feedback well, and also accepting that you won't always manage to beat the writer's block or be productive. Sometimes you have to make peace with the fact that you're going to feel horrible, feel your feelings, and try to remind yourself on the other side that none of it means you're a talentless hack.

Resources

Anything with a 🪙 next to it is paid only (I've tried to limit these and find alternatives).

The resources are split into things that "gameify" writing (i.e., hack your dopamine/serotonin in ways that reaaaaallly help autistic and ADHD folks), writing programs that are designed to help you focus, writing programs that track your habits and appeal to the "ohhhh numbers going up" brain, focus-aiding apps, and some miscellaneous stuff. Under the cut to save your dashes.

"Gamifying" your writing:

The Most Dangerous Writing App – You can't stop typing before your set timer runs out, or you risk losing your work. Excellent for warming up, stream-of-consciousness, or if you're feeling reckless, working on your actual project. I did a lot of the second draft of When Dealing with Wolves on this thing (it was terrifying yet highly effective).

Written? Kitten! – Get rewarded for meeting your set writing wordcount with kitten pictures. Haven't used this one personally, but heard wonderful things about it.

4TheWords 🪙 – This one gamifies writing in the most literal sense. As in, it's an online game where you defeat monsters, explore and level up by writing words. I did the free trial a couple years back, and I've heard there are a lot of different ways you can lower the subscription cost. The only reason I haven't gone back to it is because I feel like I can't justify spending money on it when I'm doing fine with Scrivener and free resources, but maybe one day I will purely for the fun factor...

StimuWrite – similar idea to Written Kitten; the app provides visual/audio stimulation while you write, which is great for many ADHD-ers and autistics. There's a progress bar, soundscape options, typing effects and emoji reactions as rewards, among other features.

Write or Die – This is The Most Dangerous Writing App meets Written Kitten. As far as I can figure out, the basic web version is free to use; you can set the parameters like how how long you want to write for, how many words to reach, and whether you want rewards for meeting goals or punishments for failing to meet them. There's also a stimulus mode, where the nice auditory stimulus goes away if you stop writing.

Minimalist/Focus writing programs:

Focus Writer [Windows] – thoroughly stripped-down minimalist word processor. As far as I know, it has basic functions like find-replace, but mostly it's designed only for writing. Not for formatting, spellchecking or editing.

iA Writer 🪙 [iOS] – Similar to Focus Writer, it's designed to fill your screen with a simple workspace. Allows you to use markdown formatting, and has a feature called Focus Mode that blurs out everything except the sentence you're typing. (If I could find a Windows-friendly alternative to this with that same feature I would be so happy). A cheaper alternative is 1Writer, but that doesn't have the focus mode.

Typewrite Something – Absolutely bare minimum web-based typewriter simulator. Basically just a blank screen that you start typing on, and the words appear in a typewriter font. Great for stream-of-consciousness without the risk level of TMDWA because you can't backspace. If you don't like the clacky sound, turn off your volume.

Focus Apps

Cold Turkey – Block applications and websites on your laptop/computer for a specified period of time. You can even block the entire internet.

Forest – Similar to Cold Turkey in that it stops you from seeking distractions or getting distracted. Set a timer and the app starts growing a tree. If you leave the app, the tree dies. Once you have a tree, you add it to your forest.

Habit-building writing programs:

Novlr – Simple, minimal layout, and tracks your writing goals per month and day, and your daily streak. There are more features in the plus and pro versions, and you can only have five projects in the free version, but otherwise it looks like a good free alternative to the next two programs:

750 Words 🪙 – Made for free writing, but also very useful for drafting. I had it for a month or so a while back on the free trial. It tracks writing streaks and gives you fun graphs and statistics at the end of each session, including number of distractions, actual typing time vs total time and average words per minute. Also, it analyses the mood of what you wrote, which I always found delightful.

Writing Analytics 🪙 – If writing streaks, badges and analytical graphs get your dopamine going, then I really recommend this one. The writing screen itself is very minimalistic, but it still shows your writing speed (I loved watching that go up) and your goal progress. In terms of analytics, it tracks a LOT of different things, including time spent writing vs revising, average wordcounts per day/month/year, and words written vs words deleted. I used this for about a year before I switched to Scrivener, and the switch was purely because I needed something that wasn't subscription-based. (Apparently since I stopped using it there's also a new feature that lets you create private writing rooms and see other writer's progress).

Misc.

WriteTrack – Not a word processor, but it has very good tools for tracking and planning your writing. Again, if graphs going up helps your brain, this is excellent, but you can't see it in real time.

10 ADHD-friendly brain tricks for writers – what it says on the tin: ten tips for writers with ADHD; I'm particularly fond of "Put away one knife", which breaks the nebulous task of "start writing" into something really simple like just... pull out your desk chair.

#autism stuff #adhd #writer's block #writing advice #writing resources

[bougiebutchbinch]

I think I've finally nailed down my biggest issue with the OFMD fandom.

It's important to represent queer joy and a struggle-free queer life in fiction, full of people who accept themselves for who they are. It's great to see queer characters living and loving happily, without self-hate.

Queer struggles are important too, and should be represented.

Those who struggled - often for years, while facing a horrifically repressive society that many of us young'uns cannot appreciate - to come to terms with their queerness have worth. Those who were afraid to come out, for whatever reason, deserve representation too.

Likewise, it's important to represent disabled joy and a struggle-free disabled life in fiction - for all sorts of disabilities, but especially for those who have congenital issues that they may not consider disabilities, as they don't inherently cause deleterious side-effects like chronic pain or fatigue (i.e., many d/Deaf folks and folks with facial differences. Not so much a 'knee brace' that is literally just fanon. Don't give writers credit for creating a disabled main character if they refuse to acknowledge him as such, and his 'aid' was literally a fashion accessory that he gives to his boyfriend at one point to complete his 'look' when they're dressing up as each other. Signed: someone who actually wears knee braces lmaooooo)

But guess what.

Disabled struggles are important to represent, too.

For many of us in the (incredibly diverse and varied) disabled community, disability hit us like a truck of bricks. I went from being an incredibly fit and active young person, to being a young person who often literally cannot move their legs, because they're stuck partially out of socket at the hip and any movement is agony, or because my spinal problems mean they're spasming so hard that walking is impossible, or they're simply unable to hold my (very light) weight. A lot of us are in a significant amount of pain that able-bodied people cannot even imagine, day after day after day. A lot of us were traumatised by our disabilities. A lot of us took a long time to accept and love ourselves.

Our disabilities aren't loved. They're horrific. They're hated. They're something we continuously will be struggling with throughout our lives.

And we deserve rep, too.

And we will be upset, when that rep follows an arc that greatly mirrors what a lot of us go through, only to still say they want to die.

When a show has lots of queer rep and disabled rep, that's great. But you have to ask: what types of queer and disabled rep are they showcasing? What types are they allowing to live? What types of queer/disabled rep do they consider to have 'served their narrative purpose' when they finally attain a stage of queer/disabled joy and self-love that the other characters are on? What message does that send?

Your fave show is not above criticism, especially from the marginalised groups it is trying to represent.

#ofmd #ofmd critical #our flag means death #izzy hands #the izcourse #ed teach #edward teach #ofmd meta #LAST ONE I PROMISE

[writing-havoc]

I'm literally obsessed. I'm sure you've seen my stalking your recent kaz x reader fics and I will not apologize for it! You're amazing!!! Can I request a Kaz x reader with the two prompts (from a post you rebloged):

"You're a little hurt, that's all" (said by Kaz)

and

“You need to distract me. do something, anything.“ (said by Reader)

PS I'm a sucker for hurt/comfort. ;)

But seriously though. You're writing is amazing, and I hope you know that. ❤ Thank you for the extra comfort character content!!!

Dust and Rubble

♡ Summary: A plan goes wrong. You get injured. Kaz tries to help

♡ Fandom: Six of Crows, Grishaverse

♡ Pairing: Kaz Brekker x Reader

♡ Warnings: Vomit, Blood, Description of Injury

♡ WC: 4.7k

♡ Prompts: "You're a little hurt, that's all." // "You need to distract me. Do something, anything."

I seen your comment on my masterlist post but since this is a sideblog, I couldn't reply. But, yes! I will tag you in all my Kaz fics from here on if I remember to :]. Thank you for all the kind words you've been sending me.

Please excuse any grammar and spelling errors. Hope you enjoy <3

Prompts used came from this list by screnwriter

∘₊✧──────────────────✧₊∘

The dress clothes you were wearing were made out of some of the finest exported materials you could get in Ketterdam, stolen from the closet of a high end family a mission was centered around months ago. It was your favorite color, and it was a crime that it wasn't simply named after you with how stunning you looked dressed in it from head to toe under the yellow lights of the ballroom, your skin shinning and teeth glowing from pure euphoria.

You fit in perfectly.

It was truly life's biggest shame that it would most certainly be drenched in dust, rubble, and blood by now.

Kaz sat up, eyes blurry and doubled- no, quadrupled, and ears ringing louder than the screams escaping from the throats of those who just became widows. His head was pounding, entire body begging him to lay down where he sat struggling and just rest for five more minutes.

But he couldn't. He absolutely could not. He had to find you. He had to find the others, and get the fuck out of here.

He rubbed at his eyes, gloves unhelpful as they dragged even more dust on his eye lids. A handkerchief in his dress-pocket was missing, so it was either fumble around with his eyes closed or deal with the consequences of dust filled eyes watering uncontrollably.

The latter was the option he went with.

His bad leg screamed as he pulled himself upright. Every breath was a fight, but nothing seemed to be broken or bloody. Just incredibly sore and leaden with what he's now registering as lifeless bodies thrown on top of him by the blast.

He wants to expel his entire stomach.

Waves clash at his knees, spreading up his thighs as he feels the weight of a severed arm slide off his back and drag down his body, hitting the floor with what should be a thump but is just followed by more ringing.

The only reason he knows he's not completely deaf is because he can heat the higher pitched screams around him, and voices that are running by him sound like they're underwater.

This is, by all means, a good sign.

As the last of the dirt is filtered out of his eyes by tears, he takes a good look around.

Women and men alike are sprinting around the ball room, looking for their loved ones and helping out those who are still looking. Some find eachother across the room and run into eachothers arms, embracing eachother tightly no matter how much pain they were in. Others clutch the lifeless bodies of their deceased or injured partners, begging to the saints and anyone around them to help.

Kaz's heart is pounding. He can feel it now, trying to claw its way out of his chest because he can't fucking see you and his leg hurts so bad it feels like he broke it again. But he forces himself to walk forward, to look up instead of down because if you're anything else but fine then he has to face the reality that he may have to adjust to this stupid saintless world without you in it and he's not sure he could cope with that.

Fuck, where did it go wrong?

The bombs weren't supposed to be anywhere near the inside of this room. They were supposed to be outside on dumpsters and inside crates to create distractions and block off paths in their escape. Were they labeled wrong? Did they bring them inside? But they were old and rotting. There shouldn't have been anything useful in them that would require them to bring them inside for literally any reason.

Did Wylan place them on the wrong crates? Did someone bring them inside in a drunken haze? But, how did parts of the fucking ceiling come crashing down?

The blueprints had to have been wrong. Everything must have been wrong when coming up with this plan and he didn't see it in the entire month it was being fleshed out.

Kaz tripped on a piece of rebar, it's presence covered by the torn dress of a different guest. His foot was sent alight with pain, knees landing awkwardly on palm sized pieces of rocks that made them feel fuzzy.

For fucks sake, where the hell are you?

And in a horribly timed moment, when he's on his stomach and arms feeling like jelly as they hoisted his body up, that is when he saw you.

He will never forget the full body reaction he had when he saw you.

You were laying face first on the ground, your clothes torn and soaked with blood that for a moment he hoped wasn't yours, but instantly knew it was.

Because in a terrible fit of irony, there was two large pieces of stained glass sticking out of your back. And Kaz wanted nothing more than to release the entirety of his stomach contents when he noticed they almost looked like wings.

This was a joke. A horrible, horrible joke.

In that moment, however, he saw your arms move, hand coming to rub at your face and another attempting to roll yourself on your side.

Your movement caused one of the shards to tilt, falling out of your wound and shattering against the ground. He's never heard more clearly than then when you let out a blood curdling scream as it tore your flesh and the other tilted as well.

It, however, didn't fall out, and only hooked itself under your skin, pulling it up and outward.

In an extraordinary display of adrenaline, Kaz lifted his body off the ground and marched on over to you.

"Y/n." He tried, hearing coming back to him in full swing.

It was overwhelming, the amount of people screaming and the sound of rubble falling against eachother. Bodies squelching as people stepped on them in their rush to get out and your cries as you continued to try and hoist yourself up.

He tried to stop you, but couldn't get there in time as the other largest shard slid out of your body and stained the floor with your blood.

"Y/n!" He called. He sank to his knees when he got to you, hardly thinking as he helped to get you on your hands and knees.

The water dragged up to his waist, splashing on his stomach. It jostled his stomach and made it very, very difficult to not regurgitate everything he had eaten.

"Kaz." Your voice was gruff and he watched in horror as blood mixed with your spit and fell to the floor.

He lifted you up, letting you sit on your legs to get a good look at you.

Your hair was filled with dirt and dust, eyelashes caked similarly. Red dripped from your busted bottom lip and down your chin. The gash was sure to scar, but at least the blood wasn't from a chest wound like he thought.

"Kaz." You called again, letting your head loll around. "Kaz my back really hurts. And my head." You tried to bring your arms up but let out a strangled sob when you couldn't.

"You're a little hurt, thats all." He lied, completely betraying his own mantra. Your clothes were becoming soaked in your blood and there was no fucking way he was going to be able to get you out without damn near carrying you and the water was already too high.

Without allowing himself to think about it, he got up and hooked his hands under your arms. You howled with pain, but you at least had the sense to help him as your wobbly legs straightened. Tears streamed down your face and your arms hung limp, but at least you were up.

"Alright, dove." He swallowed his spit, squeezing it past the lump in his throat. "We need to go, okay? We need to get out of here."

"But, the job-"

"Fuck the job." The words sounded wrong coming out of his mouth. "We can attempt it again a different day. But we need to live to see that day, yeah?"

You nodded, and he couldn't help but be a little grateful that you were a little out of it.

He tried his best to encourage you forward, but words of encouragement are the bottom of his list of things he's adept at, especially in situations such as this. So it was mostly limited to "Right there" and "You're okay."

You were no more than forty feet from the Slat when you went still, eyes squeezed shut and arms still hanging limp at your sides. The back of your clothes were soaked and slowly seeping to the sides. It slowed a lot since you began your trek back, but it was still concerning.

"We have to keep going."

"You need to distract me." You blurted, taking a staggering step forward. "Do something. Anything."

"Distraction." He mumbled, mostly to himself, partly to you because what the fuck was he supposed to do? There was nothing around he could use and his leg felt like it was splintering in his calf.

He could say something. Maybe put you into shock somehow. But you don't get shocked easily and you're usually the one spitting out random facts and tidbits of information. He doesn't have random facts and tidbits of information stored in his head outside of the ones you've given him-

Well. Actually...

"Did you know birds have one of the most sophisticated and impressive breathing systems of any animal?"

You lifted your head, peeking your eyes open to look at him with an expression of intrigue underneath the pain.

He went on. "They've got airsacs. Attached to their lungs." He struggled for the information. "They've usually got about nine, three up front and six in the back in their rump."

You chuckled childishly. "Rump."

"Yes, rump." He fought off a smile. "It takes two breathing cycles to complete one breath. If I'm not mistaken, it's called unidirectional breathing. We use bidirectional. In and out. They breathe in while also breathing out."

You trudged forward, nearly there. "Is that why their bones are hollow?"

He stared in slight surprise. "Yes, actually. They've got pneumatic bones with big open crevices that store air, which in turn helps them with flying."

"That's so cool."

"Learned it a while ago while listening to some tourist veterinarian while on a job." He could recall the job nearly perfectly. "He had various picturegraphs and diagrams-"

Kaz took a step forward and hollered in pain with a closed mouth, bad leg completely collapsing underneath him. It was probably fractured again.

He should have told you to shut up and keep walking. Instead he indulged you and got distracted trying to distract you.

Yet, he doesn't regret it.

"You okay?" You leaned down as much as your body would let you, wincing in pain every inch down.

He was about to respond when you seemed to have bent down too far, your entire body collapsing to the ground. You only had enough time to stop your head from cracking against the wet cobblestone ground before you went unconscious, body ragdolling in a pile of limbs.

The entire world seemed to be crashing again. In the back of his mind he knew he should act rationally, pick you up and drag you to the Slat, but he couldn't get his body to move.

'You're dead' he thought. 'You've lost too much blood. You died.'

Those thoughts were only there for a moment before he sprung into action, letting the rational take over and hoisting you up and over his shoulder. He ignored the searing pain in his leg and the waves crashing at his chest and licking up his neck, limping to the door of the Slat and throwing it open.

He was lucky that Nina had made it back some time ago.

Very, very lucky.

"Zenik!" He called out. She responded immediately, her entire face falling as she seen who he was holding. Matthias' name was out of her mouth in an instant, his hulking body coming from around the corner. He stares for no more than a second before running over and taking you from Kaz's back.

"What happened?" She asked as she rushed down the stairs and into the makeshift infirmary, Matthias in front and Kaz taking up the rear.

"Glass shards. Stuck right through about three inches."

She ordered Matthias to set you down on your side. Placing you on your chest posed too much risk to your breathing stopping completely. Nina immediately got to work, tearing the clothes off your shoulders and exposing your back.

Her hands hovered over the gashes on your back, eyes squinted as she felt around for the damage. She cursed and moved her hands, the room watching as your muscles began to flex and more blood poured from your wounds. He nearly yelled at her to demand an explanation when a smaller piece of glass exited the wounds. She took them and dropped them in a bucket next to the table.

"They were moving around as you two were walking, going deeper." She closed her eyes completely now, hands immediately back to the gashes. "One of them nicked an artery."

"Fix it." He ordered.

"Oh really? That's what I should be doing?" Her eyes snapped open, glaring at your back. He knew they were supposed to be directed at him. "I thought I was supposed to be cutting it."

He glared at the side of her face. "Don't get smart with me, Zenik."

"Then don't give me stupid orders."

And he knows it was a stupid order. He knows. But he had to say it. He had to.

He paced around the little amount of open space he had. His skin felt like it was crawling where he slung you over his shoulder and he was drowning, the water covering his nose and nearly covering his eyes. His stomach felt like it was turning inside out, guts twisting at sharp angles. He was absolutely soaking in his own sweat and his fucking leg-

"Kaz if you're going to pace you're going to have to leave. It's distracting."

"Last I checked you don't give orders around here."

"No, I don't. But I'm the one currently fixing your love interest and I need silence and no distractions to achieve that."

He felt his shoulders bristle and cheeks grows warm. "Y/n's not my love interest."

That got a chuckle out of her. "Please, Brekker. Don't lie to yourself. It makes you look daft." He was about to retort, but the door above slammed open, Pim popping her head around the corner once she trekked her way down the stairs.

"Jesper and the rest of the crew are back."

White hot anger surged in his blood. When he got ahold of them he would tear them in half.

His eyes flickered to your body, Matthias holding you on your side with Nina pouring every ounce of her focus into fixing your wounds. And then he thought of himself, pestering her like a gnat to fresh fruit and being of no help at all.

He really wasn't like himself. Not with you.

"I'll be there in a moment." He leveled his voice. "Herd them to my office."

Pim nodded and disappeared up the stairs.

He waited until the footsteps faded until he looked at Nina again. A thin sheen of sweat was plastering to her forehead.

He took a deep breath, and then grabbed a nearby bucket and discarded any and all of his insides into it. Spit collected in his cheeks, making them burn as it coated his teeth. The back of his throat burned. He swished it around, spitting whatever was left into the bucket. He dryheaved for a few moments, cursing all the saints he didn't believe in before putting the bucket back where it came from, wiping trickles of bile from his lips and transferring it to his clothes.

The water was lowering, heavy against his chest but no longer covering his face. He tried to remember your warmth, a stark contrast to the charactered piercing cold of corpses, and walked around the table and up the stairs.

"If she dies, Zenik, so do you." He completely ignored Matthias' protective growl.

She nodded. "Noted."

He held onto the railing, knuckles turning white underneath his gloves. The backs of his cheeks were collecting spit once more, stomach contracting. He begged to his own body to just wait a little longer, and took the last step up and into the main floor of the Slat.

Dregs stared, but he couldn't be bothered with them. All he could see was red and green and feel red and blue, and the only people that could explain this was up several stairs and in his office.

It was a blur all the way up until he reached his door and swung it open. Jesper, Wylan, and Inej were sitting around the room, all staring at him with a look of guilt and mild fear.

He closed the door behind him and grabbed his cane from the umbrella bucket. It wasn't loud, but the sound was firm and noticeably being masked as something it was not.

With gritted teeth and venom in his voice, his question-turned-statement rang clear in the quiet room.

"What. Happened."

-----------

You were dressed in a baggy white button-up shirt and the coziest pair of sleep pants that Kaz could find in Ketterdam. The material wasnt itchy. Rather, it was soft and felt addicting on the pads of his fingers when he dragged them over it, slow and meticulous. They weren't nearly as high end as the clothes you were in before, and they weren't your favorite color by a long shot, but you still looked as attractive as ever.

The chair Kaz was sitting in was old and uncomfortable. Everytime he shifted he felt as if it would break underneath him. The wood bent and groaned no matter what position he took, but he would deal with it as he always does.

He watched your breathing, eyes glued to your chest for any sign that you were going under.

It had been several days since the mishap at the ball, and he was still as angry as he was that day after walking up all those steps to his office for an explanation.

It was stupid. The mistakes that were made were childish at best, completely and utterly rubbish at worst. A child could have done better. A child after downing several pints of beer could have done better.

He took a deep breath, attempting to calm his rapidly beating heart.

He's already gotten too worked up over this several times, a sour mood following him day in and day out.

Nina was able to fix your artery, but it was the loss of blood that truly worried her. She had no idea if you would pull through, but she did her best.

Realistically, Kaz couldn't blame her. He knew that she would do her best and then some to make sure that you would have the best chance of pulling through. But seeing you still unconscious, even if Nina was the one keeping you under, made him resent her a little. A lot. But you being kept unconscious with your healing process sped up was the fastest way for you to recover, so he'll keep his mouth shut and his brooding (for the most part) to himself.

Being down here gave him a lot of time to think. Which usually wasn't a problem. He treasured the time he got to himself, to continue scheming and analyzing blueprints and updating ledgers. Small meticulous tasks to fill his day and cards and dice to fill his night.

But he didn't realize that he treasured the small moments with you even more. Even if you didn't invade his space directly, he enjoyed the subtle ways in which you did.

The tea you brought him late at night would sit on a coaster next to the papers on his desk, the aroma filling his nose as he drunk it slowly, savoring the way you got it right almost every time these days. Little sayings you spewed at random moments would sit in his mind, always just to the left of his current thoughts. Little trinkets you found that you thought he would enjoy would find their place around his office or in a drawer just dedicated to you.

He didn't get those anymore. Not with you down here.

He shifted, internally wincing at the way the chair groaned.

It was loud enough that he missed your own groan. But he didn't miss the way you shifted and the way his name fell from your lips.

"Kaz?" You called into the room.

"To your right." He could attempt to play this cool all he wanted, but the second his own voice made it back to his ears he knew pretending was futile.

You turned your head, and your entire body relaxed when your eyes scanned his virtually unscathed body. He didn't realize the weight that he was carrying on his shoulders until he really processed that you were alive and finally awake. He felt lighter. Lighter in a way he hasn't felt for a long time.

"How much pain?" He asked, getting up from his chair and standing next to the table.

You wiggled around, instantly wincing. "Not too bad." Of course you would say thay. "Just a little sore."

He put his hand next to yours on the table, leather gloves feeling a little hot around his hands.

"What even happened?"

He sighed heavily, annoyance plaguing his body. "Turns out they moved all the rotting crates outside into the building. They didn't want anything outside to sway the professional look they were trying to achieve." He tapped the table. "The bombs were inside, and our blueprints were outdated by nearly a decade. The structural integrity of the building has been shot for years and some drunk civilian decided he was going to have a cigar right next to the bombs and threw his match into the crate, setting off the bomb."

"And that made nearly the entire building collapse." You finished.

"Exactly."

He looked at the space next to your head. It was a horrible miscalculation that nearly cost his crew their lives. He had to do better. This line of work isn't safe and never will be but he had to work harder to eliminate risks as much as-

"Stop." You said, voice suddenly stern. He looked into your eyes, alight with fire. "Don't go down that inane rabbit hole."

"It was a possibility I should have foreseen." He began. "The fact that I didn't shows that I'm falling behind."

"No." You said so simply. You took a deep breath like you were steeling yourself, and then began the painful trek of sitting yourself up.

"Lie back down." He tried to order, hand coming up just inches in front of your chest. You stared at it, then moved your lower body to come below your upper half, effectively sitting up while staying in place. He didn't know whether to be impressed, be annoyed, or chuckle.

"Kaz, you cannot possibly believe that you can foresee every outcome to ever happen."

"Of course not." He agreed, but still felt a little attacked. "But this is one I that I should have. It makes sense."

"Even if you did see it, you cannot control how the building responds- usually!" You shouted the moment he tried to interject. "The blueprints were out of date. There's no way you could have known that the entire thing would collapse."

"I should have double checked the dates. Made sure they were the updated ones."

"And why would you do that?" You pressed on. "When you ask for blueprints as architect, you would automatically assume they would give you the most updated ones. It was a logical assumption."

"I still should have checked." He didn't raise his voice, but it was obvious that he wanted to.

You looked at him, a little shocked, eyes searching for something. He fought everything in him that told him to turn away and walk up those steps. He felt a little bare, and got a grip on his breathing. Sudden understanding spread across your face.

"You know I'm alive, right?" You straightened your back. "I'm here."

He was about to retort, say 'of course I know that. You're sitting right in front of me.' But the reality of the situation truly dawned on him, just like in those frantic moments when he was looking for you, that there was a very good chance that you could have died if Nina didn't arrive back when she did.

This was childish. He gripped the head of his cane. "Of course I do."

You reached your hand out, inches away from his hand. You waited for a sign from him, and grabbed the cuff of his jacket with the pads of your fingers when he gave a subtle nod. The way you moved was slow and deliberate, giving him ample time to pull away. You stopped when his hand was no more than a few inches from your chest and let go.

He kept it there, hovering. Very carefully, you slid his glove off and put it to your side. Your lip was scarred.

"I'm here," you looked him in the eye, "because of you. I'm alive, because of you. Neither I, nor anyone else, expects you to see everything that could be thrown at us. We take the risk everyday when we adorn the Dregs tattoo, and even when we don't." He swallowed the spit in his throat, listening to your voice. "I don't plan to leave you anytime soon, Kaz."

He let your words sink in, feeling the warmth radiating from your chest. The waters lapped at his knees, but that distinctive sick feeling wasn't nearly as bad. You were open, giving him the choice, and he didn't feel pressured to fulfill anything.

He wanted to, he really truly wanted to.

He pulled his hand back, giving a nod. But not today.

"Don't leave." It was both a statement and a request, a plea, even, whispered into the candle lit room.

Silently, you took the glove and passed it to him. "No problem."

With a vulnerable heart and shaking hands, he took the glove and put it on. They didn't feel all that hot anymore.

"Wait here." He said. "I'll get Nina."

You smiled. "Yes, sir." You attempted to salute him, and winced when you moved too quickly. He sighed, a whisper of a smile gracing his lips, and started to make his way up the stairs.

The moment he emerged from the underground, the eyes of his Crows magnetized towards him. It only took them a moment for them to break out in smiles, Nina immediately hopping up and heading down the stairs.

"Told you Y/n would come around soon." Jesper piped up, earning a little shove from Wylan and a shake of the head from Matthias.

Inej stared at Kaz, and he immediately knew he was showing more than he intended. He schooled his expression and walked to the kitchen to prepare himself and you some tea.

The faintest movement alerted him of Inej's presence behind him as he got the cups down.

"It was your eyes." She said, answering a question he didnt ask. A moment of silence passed between them, conversations of little importance invading his space. "I don't think I've ever seen them so bright."

He didn't have it in him to say anything to that. Instead, he gave her a look with relaxed brows and an even more relaxed jaw, hoping that was enough. She smiled before disappearing again, no doubt going to see you.

As he poured the water in a clean pot, checking the temperature is where it needs to be, he leaned against the counter and let out a long sigh, exhaling umtil his lungs begged for air.

So long as you were alive and with him, he would be fine.

And as terrifying as that statement was, it brung him immense comfort.

You wouldn't leave him. Not anytime soon.

#ask #kaz brekker fanfic #kaz brekker imagine #kaz brekker x reader #kaz brekker x y/n #kaz brekker x you #six of crows x reader #request #six of crows fanfic #shadow and bone fanfic #fanfic #b3kk3r-by-br3kk3r

[a-secret-bolton-vampire]

Something has been bugging me lately; why is it that so much of the ASOIAF fandom hates romance? Like, this is a problem I've noticed and it's honestly kind of weird. To be sure, George's view on what is romantic is, uh, dubious at best, but to outright be so against it the way I've seen some people be against it is quite bizarre, to say the least.

Rhaegar and Lyanna? Of course there's no romance there! Rhaegar clearly was just using Lyanna as a baby factory to produce a super prophecy child because that's all there is to his character!

Jon and Daenerys? They won't be getting together like that dumb show! And if they are, it will be purely a political marriage! No lovey dovey stuff there!. After all Dany likes "bad boys" (which somehow translates to "evil men") so why would she like a strong, assertive man like Jon? And why would Jon like her? Not like he likes strong fiery tempered women!

Those are the two biggest examples but there is more. Daemon Blackfyre and Daenerys Targaryen are more ambiguous since they are historical characters, but a lot of people are convinced it was 100% unrequited love.

I've even seen fans complain about the line from Barristan where he thinks about how Bittersteel and Bloodraven's rivalry over the affections of Shiera Seastar caused the Blackfyre Rebellions. Like sure it wasn't the only reason, but to think that jealousy and romance didn't have an effect on those rebellions is a bit weird.

Yes, I am aware these are some problematic pairings, not least of which because most of these are pretty incestuous. However, the complaints about these romances do not stem from a moral quandary. In the case of R+L, you see people calling Rhaegar a groomer and pedophile (see my post on him on my full thoughts there), but the majority of it is simply "well it's stupid because they told no one and caused a whole war, the selfish brats" (bonus points if someone specifically targets Lyanna).

Okay, setting aside the fact that, like with the Blackfyre Rebellions, Robert's Rebellion was caused by far more factors than their elopement, why does making it an abduction Rhaegar did simply for a magic messiah baby make it a better story than the fact these two were in love and desperate to escape situations they felt trapped in, leading to shortsighted decisions that had an unexpected affect on many people?

With Jon and Dany, the backlash is "but that's so cliche! George wouldn't do something as cliche as two of the biggest protagonists falling in love." As if George doesn't constantly engage with cliche storybeats as often or even more than he subverts them. Even when the evidence for the two getting together is literally so overwhelming that you'd need to be willfully ignorant to ignore the foreshadowing (plus the fact George literally said that their union is "the point of the series").

And again, I must ask; why is Jon and Dany marrying to secure a political alliance without any real love between them a better story than an epic, doomed romance between two people who have gone through such similar struggles and have such similar personalities? What does R+L=J even exist for if they are just a couple of convenience using each other?

I'm not saying you have to love and ship all these people together. Because we sometimes forget our little fandom bubble, most people are not okay with even fictional incest ships. That's okay. Sometimes it's not even incest ships, but again, that's okay! We are all different and have our preferences! Some might not even care much for romance.

But the way a lot of this is criticized doesn't read like that. It's always focusing on the negative aspects. Especially with Dany's love interests. I'm not a fan of Daario and Dany, personally, but it is a bit uncomfortable how she is targeted so heavily for thinking and getting horny about him. Like... let a girl be horny and infatuated? Lol, I don't know!

With Rhaegar and Lyanna, Prince Duncan the Small and Jenny of Oldstones, the "problem" is that their disregard for political betrothals and following their hearts makes them stupid monsters who are directly responsible for the deaths of thousands. That is absolutely not the way we should take these romances.

These doomed, tragic affairs aren't about how people are selfish. It's about the power of love. The way love makes people act rashly. The way love consumes someones thoughts and feelings. Love is powerful, it is transformative, transcending. That is the point. Even in spite of the death and chaos occurring around it, the love these people have for each other is something that cannot be broken.

I feel like the fandom has taken the wrong approach to this series tone and themes. I'm not George's biggest personal fan, to be quite honest, but he is a self described romantic. Turning Rhaegar from a lovestruck prince to a selfish crazed maniac is not romantic. Turning romance or potential romance into cold political maneuvers is not romantic.

The point of all this is that, yes, the world is dark. It's scary, it's cruel, unforgiving, and cold. But in that darkness, there are pockets of light that shine and make you feel safe, and warm, and happy. It makes you forget all the troubles around you. That light, that warmth, that love, is worth fighting for, even if it's all that is left, even if it doesn't last.

I am of course, slightly biased in my assessment, lmao. You could say that me, being a bisexual polyamorous transfemme, is maybe a bit of a big fan of romance and love! Yet, it still saddens me that people try to keep romances from just being romances, and try to make the story and world more bleak as a result. We already have Ramsay, Joffrey, Gregor, Euron, Randyll Tarly. We have people who use love against others for their own gain or outright reject it violently. We don't need more of that.

#asoiaf meta #asoiaf #jonerys #rhaegar x lyanna #asoiaf discourse #watch out i might be poking more at the fandom in later posts #i just have a lot of thoughts and need to put them down somewhere otherwise they drive me crazy

[genericpuff]

so, i'd been stalking your blog in silence for the past few days/weeks because i used to be a huge fan of LO (i paid patron, was on the discord, own merch and a volume, spent money on fast past for over FOUR years). but as it happened to most fans, i got frustrated and gave up fastpass, and for a while i was trying to stay away from LO critiques because it just made me mad to realize something that was a comfort thing for me was bad all along (and i didn't wanna go full blown anti-LO) but i just finished reading your analysis on the mid-season finale and oh my god dude.

the retcon on how persephone feels about apollo after over 4 years of seeing her hate him because of what he did nearly pushed me over the edge. i feel sick to my stomach, this has to be among the worst things rachel has done and i just wanna say thank you for bringing it up and talking about it so eloquently. i'm a victim of SA and its comforting to see people in the fandom take it as seriously as it should be.

also LO rekindled is a breath of fresh air, thank you for creating it and putting so much work into it <3

Aw man, it's wild when I see people go through the pipeline of realizing LO has issues, mostly because it's a common attack on the critical community that everyone in it are just a bunch of "trolls and haters", but really, a lot of us started in the same boat as you, myself included. I unfortunately just missed the Patreon era, but I remember when I was a diehard fan of LO, it was one of the biggest facets of my friendship with the person who introduced me to it, I would literally be swiping my app refreshing it over and over again in the last seconds leading up to new updates trying to get the episode to just load, I drew fanart, I even did a tattoo of it once for that same friend who got me into it, and yes, I was really pissed that there was an anti community surrounding it.

It's crazy to think back on those times. I do miss how the comic used to make me feel, but at the same time, I know there's no going back to that time so I try to make the best of what I have now within the critic community, and what I've gained since then in terms of dissecting and discussing literature.

I feel so much for your feelings regarding the SA plot, I'm also a victim of SA so it was one of the biggest plot points that drew me into the comic in the first place, so it was really hard to truly realize what the series had become as the SA plotline took a backseat and the characterizations fell apart. It felt like something that I had gone through - and many others who also related to Persephone's struggles - was being used for cheap drama and that feels especially apparent now with how the series seems to be backpedaling it, or at least, replacing it with different motivations to make Apollo the villain, almost like it's an attempt to distract us from the SA and make us want to see his downfall for reasons that Rachel can quantify in a more black and white "good vs evil" kind of way.

I'm so glad you like Rekindled, I made it for people like you and I who loved LO once upon a time but mourn for what it once was before it turned into what it is now. It's been such a cathartic project for me and I'm so happy that others enjoy it too <3

#lore olympus critical #lo critical #ask me anything #ama #anon ama #anon ask me anything

[morgana96]

Trying to Debunk Things the FFXIV Fandom Keeps Making Up About Lyse Hext

(Warning: Stormblood MSQ Spoilers Under the Cut)

I’ve been playing FFXIV for a few years now. It was my first time every playing a Final Fantasy game, and I was nervous I wouldn’t be any good at it. But FFXIV has been a huge comfort and highlight in my life. It’s gotten me through some very tough times and has really inspired me creatively. Not to mention I've met some really great people through the game, and that the community has so many nice and talented people.

But just like any other fandom, things are far from always perfect. There are fans who engage in offensive and gross behavior, fans who are toxic about how to best play - there are plenty of issues this fandom has that most of us are already aware of. But one thing that I think about a lot - although it's far from the only thing - is the strange amount of malice certain fans display when talking about the character Lyse Hext.

I couldn't understand for the longest time why some players hated Lyse so much. Personally, I enjoyed Stormblood, and I like her character. I enjoyed seeing her learn to step out of her sister's shadow and start to become her own person, and I consider her to be one of many characters who my WoL happily considers a good friend.

So it baffled me that people hated her so intensely. I get that not every character clicks with everyone, and that people have varied tastes. But the absolute vitriol some people treat her with has always confused me. That is, until I eventually realized what part of the problem is.

You see, I'm convinced that a good number of Lyse haters weren’t paying thorough attention to Stormblood’s plot. That, or they’ve simply forgotten certain details with time. Because most of the things they accuse her of or site as reasons for their hatred LITERALLY NEVER HAPPENED IN THE GAME.

There are so many accusations I've seen thrown around about her, and nearly all of them are something taken out of context, misremembered, or just straight up made up.

So what I want to do is go over some of the biggest accusations this fandom has perpetuated about Lyse and debunk those that are untrue or based on misunderstanding.

People who've followed me for a while probably know I used to do this all the time back in my Naruto fandom days. I’ve seen some really wild takes from that fandom, and still do occasionally even though the original manga ended nearly a decade ago.

But while I had to wade through a lot of nonsense back then, I really enjoy breaking down stories and characters in order to prove my perspectives. So I’d like to get back into it (especially since I’ve been struggling with focus issues, and this gives me interesting subjects to focus on!)

So let's get started:

“Yda was better than Lyse.”

Let's get something straight right of the bat. The “Yda” these players claim is “better”? That person's not real.

In the game’s timeline, the original 1.0 takes place in 1572, and the true Yda died in 1571. In other words, the “Yda” with Papalymo in 1.0 is Lyse. Apparently, legacy WoLs do encounter the real Yda via Echo visions from before 1.0, but the “Yda” they are with during 1.0 and beyond has always been Lyse. (I am not a legacy/1.0 player, so I'm using resources like the lore books and short stories to get this information.)

So what this means is that unless you are a legacy WoL, you never even knew or saw anything of the real Yda. It was always Lyse.

Everyone in the Circle of Knowing already knew this. Remember, it was Papalymo who asked them not to say anything; he recognized it as a coping mechanism for Yda's death, and he wanted Lyse to figure out for herself that she should not hide herself in her sister's shadow and legacy.

And deep down, Lyse had a feeling the others knew. She just didn't voice this, which is described as her “deciding not to know” that they knew. She even admits that she wasn't trying to truly “become” Yda, so it’s unlikely that she was really changing her personality all that much from what it usually is.

So I can't help but be annoyed when people insist they “liked Yda better”. Not only because I don't think Lyse's personality changed much from when she was “Yda”, but also because people who make this claim fail to see how ridiculous they sound.

The lie was a better character?

You see Lyse’s grief response to losing her older sister as a better character?

You hate that Lyse finally chose to let Yda go and try to become her own person? And preferred the lie?

What a weird hill to die on.

“Lyse didn’t do anything for the Resistance before my WoL showed up”

This is what I’m talking about when I say there are definitely players who just weren’t paying attention and instead make up whatever best fits their own biases.

Lyse and Papalymo were working with the Ala Mhigan Resistance since the end of A Realm Reborn. With a great deal of effort, Conrad managed to get them to Rhalgr’s Reach after the events of the Bloody Banquet, and the two of them pretty much spend the whole time after that working directly with Conrad’s faction of the Resistance until you finally manage to find them again towards the end of Heavensward and right before Stormblood begins

Lyse is not some stranger to them by the time your WoL crosses Baelsar’s Wall. By the time you get there, she’s already become close with Conrad, M’naago, and Meffrid. She’s already gone on countless dangerous missions with the Resistance and engaged directly in conflicts with imperials on their behalf. All of this is made clear in both the MSQ and the extra stories online.

I get so frustrated when blatant misinformation like this gets passed off as canon. How are you going to accurately criticize a character when you don’t even remember major parts of the story you’re criticizing? It makes no sense.

“Lyse stole the credit for saving Ala Mhigo from my WoL!!”

Yeah, no. She didn’t.

I’m not even going to pretend to humor this one. It doesn’t deserve it. It’s a lie. A straight up lie. It literally never happened.

But you know what the most annoying and sad thing about it is? This stupid claim is the exact opposite of how Lyse actually behaves throughout the game.

Lyse is seen regularly talking about how much she looks up to the WoL. She talks so much about how they inspire her, whether directly to them or to others when they’re not around. One of the biggest parts of her arc is getting over her fear of not living up to “true heroes”, including her family and the WoL. Hell, when people rightfully thank her for her efforts, she downplays it as simply doing the right thing and not something anyone needs to thank her for.

And when the WoL finally beats Zenos and Ala Mhigo finally becomes free, do you know what she says?

“You beat [Zenos], after all. You’re the real hero of this story. So run along and take your plaudits!”

How media illiterate does someone have to be to think that THIS is a character who’s “stealing credit”?

So no, Lyse Hext did not “steal credit” from your WoL. In fact, your WoL honestly just sounds like a delusional, self-important prick.

“Lyse didn't earn being the leader of Ala Mhigo/ the Resistance! It should have been Raubahn or M'naago!”

There are quite a few big issues with this one:

1 - Lyse is NOT the leader of Ala Mhigo, nor is she the leader of the entire Resistance.

Raubahn is.

Raubahn is Ala Mhigo's acting head of state. He's the one who is now the main head of the Resistance, which is the city-state's official military now that the Empire has lost control there.

I can’t even count how many people I’ve seen shouting about how “Raubahn should have been in charge!”, when he already IS in charge. And basically almost NO ONE ever fact checks anyone else on this.

These players are literally accusing Lyse of stealing a position she doesn’t have from a man who is, in fact, already in said position.

It’s wild.

2 - Lyse is currently the commander of the Resistance troops at Rhalgr’s Reach in the Fringes. That’s it.

The story makes it very clear that the Resistance was originally not headed by any one leader. There were multiple factions with different leaders, and they didn’t always get along and often had different perspectives on how best to free Ala Mhigo.

For instance, it was the Griffin specific faction of the Resistance, led by Ilberd, that attacked Baelsar's Wall. This branch of the Resistance was not affiliated with Conrad, and in fact, some of Conrad's group and fighters from other groups went to join the Griffin after being taken in by his words.

And because of the slaughter Ilberd purposely led those people into to summon Shinryu, many Ala Mhigans became wary of all factions of the Resistance for a time, even though they weren't necessarily affiliated with the Griffin’s faction.

The Resistance only recently began transitioning into an official military unit, rather that countless factions doing their own thing. Lyse is specifically in command of the group at Rhalgr’s Reach, because that was Conrad’s group. She’s NOT in charge of anyone else’s faction.

My guess as to the current chain of command is that the other factions are still being led by their respective leaders, and that since Raubahn now leads them as a whole, they (including Lyse) fall under his command and answer to him.

And as I said before, The Rhalgr’s Reach Resistance are not strangers to her, nor is she a stranger to them; she’s been working with and helping them since the end of ARR. It’s only because so many people refuse to acknowledge this that they’re convinced she’d done “nothing”, or that they somehow would see her as unfit.

3 - There are few things as universally annoying in fandom spaces than fans pitting women who are canon friends against each other. And unfortunately, this is exactly what I see happen most of the time with Lyse and M’naago.

Now unlike some of the other things I talk about in this post, I can at least understand some of the frustration regarding these two. After all, M’naago has been with the Resistance for a longer time.

But once again, this ends up tainted by people’s weird obsession with outright vilifying Lyse and everything she does. She’s not some evil schemer trying to usurp M’naago, and M’naago isn’t her bitter rival or victim. They are clearly very close - Lyse referring to her as “Naago” is a big deal in Seeker culture - and their stories on the lodestone makes it pretty clear to me that they care far more about each other and working to save their homeland than titles and mantles of leadership.

Honestly, I think a lot of people like to forget how much Lyse tried to reject becoming a leader. She was constantly comparing herself to others, and as a result, she considered herself unworthy of such a role and convinced herself it was something you needed a natural talent for. She was the one who insisted that being related to Curtis and Yda wasn’t enough to make her a good leader. It was only when she accepted her own limitations and imperfections that she finally accepted that role. She had to sort her own personal feelings out before she was ready to take on that responsibility.

One of the things I love about Lyse is that she’s a wonderfully flawed character; she has a lot of doubts, but she is trying her best to improve herself, instead of constantly wondering if she’s living up to someone else’s legacy. She’s not a Warrior of Light, or a decorated Archon. But she’s passionate, determined, and always willing to learn from others while she tries to become who she wants to be. In my eyes, that’s what Conrad’s talking about when he tells her she can become a leader. And regardless of what anyone else says, I enjoyed watching her start to come into her own.

“Lyse is a White Savior.”

This issue is much more complex than the other things I’ve brought up here. So I want to start out by making some things clear from the start.

As a black woman, I think one of the only well-founded criticisms regarding Lyse is her pale completion compared to her father Curtis, whose skin is much darker. Colorism is a serious and ongoing issue in entertainment media industries. It’s my belief that Lyse’s character design is a perfect example of that issue. And we as a fandom should absolutely acknowledge and criticize it.

However, I also disagree strongly with anyone who refers to Lyse as “a white savior”.

To provide some background information, “white savior” is a term connected to the long history of white people colonizing, oppressing, and denying agency to non-white people. Its concept originates from the racist ideology known as “The White Man's Burden” (named after a pro-imperialism poem), which falsely claims that white people are morally obligated to "save" people of color from themselves and their "savagery", thus justifying their colonization and cultural genocide. It’s also recognized as a common trope in media, where a white person - usually a white man displaced from white society - is made into the leader or liberator of a group of people of color, thus making said white person the focus of a story that doesn’t actually affect them the way it affects the marginalized.

There are two main reasons why I disagree with calling Lyse a white savior:

1 - Like I’ve already said, I 100% think Lyse’s character design is flawed. But something that’s very important to note here is that Ala Mhigo/Gyr Abania is not a homogeneous society some players seem to think it is.

Like a lot of the other regions in Eorzea, Gyr Abania has a diverse mixture of the world's fantasy races, including Hellsguard Roes, Seeker of the Sun Miqo'te, and both Highlander and Midlander Hyurs. But Gyr Abania is also not homogeneous when it comes to skin color. There are characters and NPCs throughout the Gyr Albania areas with varying skin tones. Some are fair, some are dark, and some are somewhere in between.

The problem with Lyse’s character design is that she’s suspiciously fair skinned despite being the daughter of a clearly dark-skinned man.

But what I tend to see people turn that into is “Lyse is too fair skinned to be Ala Mhigan”.

Fordola is fair skinned. M’hahtoa, M’naago’s mother, and several other members of the M Tribe are fair skinned. There are multiple NPCs across the Gyr Abanian maps that have fairer skin (some are named/can be spoken to, while others are unnamed/background NPCs).

I don’t think I’ve ever seen these characters brought up when people start talking about Ala Mhigan ethnicities. Maybe someone out there has and I simply missed it. But as far as I can remember, I’ve only seen Ala Mhigan skin tones brought up when someone is calling Lyse, and no one else, “too pale to be Ala Mhigan”. It doesn’t work to make this claim because Ala Mhigan is not a race; it's a nationality which is made up of multiple races, and those races seem to have varied skin tones based on what we see in the actual game.

Now remember, this is in no way a recant of my stance. I think Lyse should be closer in skin tone to her father. But the white savior label doesn’t work in this context because despite the problems with her design, Lyse is an Ala Mhigan refugee; not some random foreigner coming into Gyr Abania with no understanding of their history and plight. It’s not enough to claim she’s “too pale to be Ala Mhigan”, because Ala Mhigo/Gyr Abania isn’t homogeneous like that.

2 - When it comes to white saviorism, there’s a very specific privilege and ignorance that comes with it. The reason why it’s offensive is because it makes a white person the focus of a situation that they can’t and don’t truly understand. A story’s white savior - whether consciously or unconsciously - symbolizes white ego and narcissism. And frankly, I do not think that was ever the intention of Lyse’s story.

There’s a big difference between a white savior’s intrusion into a foreign country and a refugee returning to their homeland after many years. While only Lyse’s early years were spent in Ala Mhigo, she is not completely removed from it like people seem to think she is. It’s very clear she remembers her time there, and has clear memories of life with her father and sister.

She was only five when Yda got her out - right at the start of the Garlean occupation - and because of this, she initially doesn’t know how to convince other Ala Mhigans that the fight for their home is still worth it. Her love and hope for a better Ala Mhigo is mistaken for ignorance, because many have been so worn down by the loss and bloodshed that it’s considered suicide to fight back anymore.

Stormblood does a great job of showing how imperialism wears down its victims. The hopelessness felt by many in Ala Mhigo and Doma is the result of years of violence, abuse, and cruelty, and that’s exactly the imperials’ intention; an oppressor wants to break the will and spirit of the oppressed as much as they can, conditioning them to normalize their mistreatment in order to diminish threats to their control.

Characters like Fordola also help show how imperialists manipulate the oppressed to work against their own best interests. All of Fordola’s actions are driven by the misguided idea that working with the Empire would “free” Ala Mhigo. She was convinced that as long as she fought and killed for them, she’d eventually prove that Ala Mhigans are worthy of the Garleans’ respect. But that was never going to happen. It was a tactic to indoctrinate young Ala Mhigans and maintain the imperial status quo. And sadly, Fordola fell deep into that trap.

This is the real cause for Lyse’s initial disconnect. It’s not because of privilege or bias, or a lack of personal connection to Ala Mhigo. It’s founded on the fact that she simply hasn’t experienced the Empire’s relentless tyrannical tactics the same way those who remained in Gyr Abania have.

But this doesn’t mean she hasn’t dealt with loss and fear. Both her father and sister were killed by the Garleans. She’s experienced displacement and having to flee from your home to survive. She’s lost comrades and close friends while with the Scions. This isn’t some naive little girl who doesn’t know the pain that comes with battles and war.

The biggest challenge for the main cast of Stormblood wasn’t just physically fighting the Garleans. It was about a shared sense of pain and loss, and trying to break through the hopelessness the people of Ala Mhigo and Doma were feeling.

Lyse, the WoL, and the other characters aren’t doing what they do for glory. They’re not claiming to know better than the Ala Mhigans and Domans. They’re not trying to take their agency away. They’re trying to convince them to take back their own agency and futures from the Garleans. It’s about understanding their pain, their loss, and their fear, and trying to help them rediscover the strength to keep fighting for themselves. At least that’s what it was to me.

And speaking of the Garleans, it’s wild how I don’t see more people bring up their similarities to white saviorism.

So many Garleans refer to non-Garleans as “savages” and treat them as second class citizens in the provinces.

They insist that their societies and faiths are “primitive”, and that this justifies their invasions and conquests.

They outlaw cultural and religious practices and force their own practices in their place, all under the guise of “civilizing” conquered people and saving them from themselves.

They propagandize themselves as selfless heroes, and people like the WoL as the monstrous villains. “We’re simply trying to rescue these poor, deluded “savages” from themselves and their eikons. Why are you mad?”

And when people fight back and reject them, the Empire plays victim. Take Varis for instance; during that meeting with the Alliance, he targets the very valid issues the Eorzean nations have. But that’s not because he actually cares about fixing those problems; he’s literally just gaslighting them and trying to justify Garlemald’s false sense of supremacy.

It’s all right there. It’s literally a perfect fictional example of the racism, narcissism, and backwards logic of imperialism.

Yet somehow, I’ve see Lyse, an Ala Mhigan refugee, called a “white savior” more often than Garlean imperials.

It’s frustrating, to say the least.

~~~

Well, these are pretty much all the main accusations I’ve seen thrown at Lyse since I’ve started the game. If I think of anything else, or if someone gives me something else to look at, I will add on to this.

I don’t know if I’m changing any minds with this, or even if anyone even has the time or patience to read through this whole post. But it’s feels good to finally write out a lot of my thoughts on this subject after so long. I’d like to do this on more subjects relating to FFXIV, including ways I think certain parts of story could have been improved.

But that’s or another day. Thanks so much for reading ~

#Final Fantasy XIV #FFXIV #Lyse Hext #Character Discussion #Fandom Things #Long Post #like stupidly long lmao #if you make it through this congrats #this is the longest thing I've written in a long time #considering how much i struggle with focusing #this is a big achievement for me

[zukkaoru]

could you tell me more about why you dislike femskk?

okay disclaimer before i begin: this is not meant to be a dig on every person who enjoys femskk. the biggest reason i don't like it is honestly because it's just not my cup of tea and honestly it really makes no difference to me if other people like it. but beyond that my biggest issues with it are

1. the phenomenon of fans "yuri-ifying" the most popular m/m ship and then using that to prove they like female characters and f/f ships. this is not a bsd-exclusive thing; it happens with stsg too and i don't like femstsg for the same reason. but there's a big difference between actually liking female characters and just genderbending (or even making transfem) the big m/m ship. i literally went to the f/f category in bsd on ao3 the other day looking for fics and about half of them are skk fics instead of fics about like. the actual female characters in bsd. who i was looking for fics of. similarly, there have been some redraw trends going around twitter - specifically the i prefer girls cover redraw - and i have seen. i don't even know how many femskk redraws of that (along with a couple femfyolais and a femrimlaine) but only one redraw with actual female characters from bsd. same with the scene 14 redraw that was going around, and while that one wasn't originally two female characters, i have still seen significantly more femskk (and femsigzai, femsigchuu, femfyolai, etc) than i have ships with even one character who is female in the source material.

and imo this phenomenon is made even worse in the bsd fandom bc so many fans just see bsd as the skk show. so of course they're writing off the actual female characters; they literally don't care about anything besides skk. and obviously i can't do anything to force anyone to care about other characters but like.... bsd has so many other wonderful characters and dynamics (both romantic and platonic) that a good half of the fanbase won't even glance at because they're not skk. i do like skk, but bsd is about so much more than just them. they are, objectively, only one small part of it. like if you only care about skk, then just be outright about it and don't pretend you're "proving" you like female characters and sapphic ships bc you like femskk too

2. of the fans who only like skk and nothing else about bsd, most of them. don't even characterize dazai and chuuya correctly? i think the some of the best skk characterizations i've seen have been from people who actually like other characters and ships too, and some of the worst skk characterization i've seen has come from people who literally don't care about any other ships or characters. this isn't a hard and fast rule obviously but even with 30k skk fics on ao3, i have struggled to find ones that actually feel true to their characters. and the characterization seems to only get worse when it's femskk. if you're just going to turn femdazai and femchuuya into two completely different people, what's the point in it even being skk? why not write k.ousano or h.igugin or even a ship with one canonically female character? if you have to change the core characteristics of both dazai and chuuya... do you even really like them?

3. about femdazai: i actually don't mind the transfem dazai headcanon in general but most fans get her wrong. i made a post about it here but basically so many times i see femdazais that are just. completely unrecognizable as dazai. you can't strip away core aspects of dazai like idk the fact that dazai doesn't show any skin from neck to toe just because you made her a girl. i have seen some femdazai that's good! but i have seen so much that is just fundamentally wrong for dazai's character as a whole. mostly on twitter.

4. about femchuuya: i really truly just don't get femchuuya. i THINK the hype here is probably bc lesbians seem to get attached to chuuya (which. valid. i am also a lesbian chuuya fan.) and so they want to draw a chuuya they can be attracted to (i.e. femchuuya) which like. cool whatever i'm not here to judge. but looking at it from a "would this character actually identify as female" perspective, i don't actually think i can picture that for chuuya. maybe it's just because i so strongly hc them as nonbinary? idk. this one is honestly just a neutral "i don't see that but you do you"

tl;dr: from what i've seen, femskk is often mischaracterized, and genderbending the big m/m ships in a fandom is often a way fans "prove" they like the female characters and f/f ships while not actually caring about anything other than their main m/m ship

#the first point is also why i don't particularly care for fem any m/m ship in any fandom. that's not exclusive to femskk #femskk is just. there is a LOT of it that i see and i would much rather see more art/fics/etc. for the canonically female characters #i don't like k.ousano but i would prefer they have more fics in the bsd f/f tag on ao3 than a ship that. isn't canonically f/f #like it's already hard to find f/f content (and just stuff for female characters in general) in ANY fandom #so to have to filter through not only femskk fics but also other canonically m/m ships made fem #while i'm specifically looking for fics with yosano lucy higuchi lucy louisa margaret gin etc etc is. frustrating #i'm not saying femskk shouldn't be a thing or that they shouldn't be in the f/f tag but #i wish they weren't the number 1 f/f ship in the fandom #i wish there was more of a balance and the canonically female characters got more appreciation from the fandom in general #so anyway this isn't me trying to sway people out of writing/drawing femskk bc i know that's never going to happen #it's just a wish for more bsd fans to appreciate other characters too #also sorry if this doesn't make a lot of sense; i had to pause halfway through to go pick up my sister sfdghjkjl #and once again this is not an attack on femskk enjoyers or anyone specific!!! just me having opinions abt the fandom in general #asks #anon asks

[rosekasa]

🦉🌷🔮 for the fanfic writers game!

HANAA, JAANEMAN!!! I LOVE YOU!!!!!

🦉Is there another author that helped inspire you to write?

omg so many come to mind and im actually afraid that im going to miss people out because i feel like the only reason i write is because of the people i admire. between 2021-2023 i really struggled with writing for a bit, i dont know why, someone gave me nazar probably, but there are some writers who i would read COPIOUS amounts of and think, this, THIS love i feel while reading is the love i want to feel about my own work

@jattendschaton , obviously, has been one of my biggest inspirations since i was a BABY. their writing is so descriptive and evocative. so insanely detailed. studying their writing was what got me into the habit of trying to find different ways to express a sentence to see if i could get a more accurate representation of the feeling i wanted to convey

@frostedpuffs and @lnc2 were the first ml writers i ever read <3 i didnt even know i wanted to write fic at the time! honestly a lot of my earlier characterisations/ways of writing are heavily inspired by their works because i was so obsessed with them! they made me want to start posting on ml ao3 in the first place

@xiueryn , i downloaded a bunch of yilena's fics onto my kindle in late 2022 and fucking DEVOURED them. i hadn't really been reading longer ml fics at all at the time but yilena's... i could not stop. their worldbuilding, their pacing, the way they make writing 40k+ word fics seem almost effortless? it became a joke with my irl best friend because i would literally randomly say "oh yilena you legend" while readingsdjkfhsd

@miabrown007, i read seven is a lucky number and it RUINED me for life. i dont know why this is what keeps coming to mind, but in her a/ns she mentioned that she HAD to end the word count on a multiple of seven, and i was like, oh my god, she puts so much structural thought into her stories. meeting her irl and hearing her talk about her writing process in detail was an out of body experience. that day itself i wanted to finish a multichapter

@asukiess, if loving ao3 user asukiess was a cult i would run it. i read tbsym and it really slapped me in the face because, having encountered it at a time where i felt like i ran out of any and all ability to be unique and creative with ml, i was like, oh my god, this person just wrote 10k+ words about. kuro neko?? a twenty minute episode? and she got SO MUCH out of it? and it hit me that like. if you love something enough you WILL find a way to create more out of it.

🌷What's one of your fics that isn't as popular, but you hold dear?

i have all my stats turned off on ao3 so i havent actually had that feeling of "aw i love this fic i wrote but it didnt really get popular" in like. three years sdjfhdsjkfds but checking my stats now, hmm. maybe ya'aburnee? which is funny because although it has fewer kudos than my other fics it's also the fic that people who i meet in the fandom yell at me for the most. at the mcm ml meetup a friend who came was like "HOW ARE U COMPLAINING ABOUT MCD YOU LITERALLY WROTE IT" and i so vehemently was like NO I LITERALLY DIDNT WHEN and they were like??? are u fucking stupid. it was great

🔮What's your favorite plot twist you've ever written?

the plot twist to ya'aburnee was a banger in the outlines but i feel like i didnt execute it that well in the actual fic. but lpoam i think was my FAVOURITE favourite. i even cried while writing the death scenesfdjshd

#ask

[mdhwrites]

Honestly It's quite disrespectful and insulting, how Dana cared more about her beef with Disney than making a good show for the fans who supported her, some even financially. I've had it with her extreme fans raging to people when she's criticized for her obvious lack of care on S3 (the story in general), spamming and blaming on Disney and the shortening. Now that's revealed it wasn't Disney's fault for "ruining S3" since there was no S3 to begin with, that just puts more salt on the wound.

And lying about having plans for S3, what was that about? Stirring more hate on Disney? I find that pitiful and pathetic. If fans are gonna get mad at her from this revelation they have the right to do so. Toh should've stayed in the drafts or be written as a freelanche comic

Edit: I do think this person is too harsh on Dana as a person. I'm curious even what they mean by financial support from her fans (her charity livestreams? Unless she does those more often for personal gain but those people would likely donate anyways as just fans of the show) but as I go into below, I do agree that her unprofessionalism is a real problem and that with the fandom she somewhat helped rile up, it makes it frustrating to learn that a lot of this was on vapor. Not lies, but just... Not nearly as much solid foundation as we were led to believe. There is a lot to be said about how Dana, from my understanding, has been one of the most available leads on a show... Period? At bare minimum, for modern cartoons. Like others will talk but Dana was extremely candid. In fact, it feels like she probably learned some lessons from it because the blaming Disney stuff actually went DOWN as the show progressed. Like at least now it's "I wish I could have done more things," rather than, I dunno, just straight up trying to say they're why episodes you're not proud/ of aren't as well regarded didn't turn out.

Which she did.

With S1A.

Before SEASON TWO was out.

Like... You just shit talked literally half of the content that is out for your show and threw your publisher under the process. Why do I think that might not have been received well?

And when I was biggest in the fandom, around the time the news of the shortening happened, you heard a LOT of different explanations from Dana, like it was one executive who made the call or how TOH wasn't a 'part of Disney's brand' or the like. When the Florida stuff came out with Disney, she pretty explicitly called Disney out for it (which is fine and I approve) but then went on to insinuate that it was hard for her to believe that the show had been cancelled for any reason besides representation, a move I DON'T approve of and makes ZERO sense with how they got to do so much more gay shit in S2B and even add new elements like confirming Masha was they/them or confirming Luz being Bi on screen in Thanks to Them. It's not a great look for a director, especially during the times these statements were coming out.

Being unprofessional admittedly doesn't make her a bad person but like... Yeah, I get upset thinking about the contradictions here too. That even in the same post Hoot that she has to admit that the shortening pushed them creatively and they had no real plans, she's still talking like she had plans. Like there was something to be missed when... No. Not for the STORY. Just your bucket of ideas for a perpetual series.

It leans into the idea that saying you were going to do X means you would have done it perfectly. That Dana doesn't understand that the only perfect work is the one never done. She's fine with being remembered for what wasn't there if it means being remembered better. As a creator myself who struggles with putting things to the page... I don't know. It hurts to some extent.

Which just a small update: I've been having real trouble focusing the past couple days. My head is not on well right now. It's why these are being a bit more emotional and late night rather than my normal posts in the morning because that's just how I've felt like doing it. Hope you're all taking care of yourselves and see you next tale.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

#the owl house criticism #toh critical #toh #the owl house

[messymindofmine]

How long is this Owen hate thing going to go on? It's honestly kind of funny how people seem to just look for reasons to hate on him. I feel like 404 just gave them even more reason to do so while simultaneously deifying the Reyes'. The thing is, my problem isn't even with the characters, I like them all. My problem is with the double standards. The Reyes' are obviously not perfect either. And even though Carlos’s relationship with them seems to be better, the fact that he didn't feel like he could go to them after him and TK broke up shows that things are still not great between them. Not to mention Gabriel's comment about how Carlos should have corrected Andrea's mistake in 211 rather than think about why their son wouldn't feel comfortable introducing his boyfriend to them in the first place.

I think Carlos’s face says it all here. Mind you, this was after Bad Call yet apparently Gabriel still doesn't recognize his mistakes with Carlos. Not only that but now apparently we need do add the fact that he felt like such a disappointment to them that he married a woman and they just let him go through with it despite knowing he was gay. I love the scenes we got with Gabriel in 404 but I don't like how it seems that even those have been weaponized against Owen. Yes, Gabriel saved his son and it was beautiful but Owen has done the same more than once. I mean, the episode is meant to be a parallel of Bad Call where Owen and Carlos were the ones that teamed up. Not to mention when TK got shot in 108, Owen sat with him the whole time stroking his face and talking to him. He apparently didn't even leave the hospital for a shower. When TK woke up, it was his dad he called for before he even opened his eyes and Owen was right there. And then Owen saved him again in 110.

Even the scene where TK revives Carlos is a parallel to Owen reviving TK in the pilot

Look, there's no denying that Owen is flawed and to be fair it is easier to focus on Owen's flaws since he's the main character and we see more of him but that still doesn't make the double standard any less unfair. Owen didn't ignore TK at all in 404. He picked up the phone despite the FBI lady not wanting him too. He looked at her like she was crazy for even thinking that he wouldn't pick up the phone bc "it's my son" and gave TK the best advice he could with what he knew. And he did this while the FBI lady badgered him and almost took the phone out of his hand. Yet there's literally people saying that it would be a good thing if Owen died and cheering on the FBI lady for making that comment.

I also don't buy the argument that Owen hasn't been apologetic about his mistakes. Out of all three parents, Owen is the one that is actually seen reflecting on his mistakes and and apologizing. People go after him for the "about to be a father" comment yet Owen himself expressed regret for it unprompted. He did it again in 316 when in the midst of his own struggles and dealing with his trauma, he called TK up just to tell TK that he loved him and that he was proud of him. He apologized for the distance between them and promised to do better. And we know they're going to be talking in 408. That closeness they had that we all were so charmed by in s1 existed for a reason. And we now know that the reason we haven't seen it in a while is going to be addressed.

Look, I love all three of the parents plus Gwyn but at the end of the day parents are human and all humans make mistakes and have flaws. I like how the show reminds us of that. What I don't like is the double standard and the way people look for reasons to hate on Owen. It's gotten to the point where I have to filter tags and be very careful what fics I read bc I'm not interested in anything that just makes Owen out to be this awful parent when that's very far from what he actually is. My biggest pet peeve with fandoms in general is double standards and the ones people have for Owen compared to the Reyes' and even Gwyn are too glaring for me to just ignore

#911 on fox #911 lone star #tk strand #carlos reyes #tarlos #owen strand #gwyn morgan #gabriel reyes #andrea reyes

[julietsbb]

that moment when your brain has the biggest explosion because you just realised the emotional resonance, relevance and symbolism for the characters of that ‘Yok’s seduction plan’ scene.

Porsche is first and foremost a caretaker and protector (older brother, guardian, financial provider of the family, literal bodyguard). Since his parents died and until he joined Mafialand, his entire existence has been For Chay (‘you’re not allowed to die before Chay finish college’). Only after his entrance into Mafialand releases him from his financial responsibilities towards Chay, he’s suddenly in a place where he can grow into learning to live and want things for himself, even if he struggles with it a lot at first (‘to hell with happiness’, his no fucks given attitude throughout ep2). All this has been well established and discussed by this lovely fandom.

Throughout the episodes so far, see him visibly struggle with both knowing what he wants, figuring that out, how to even want things for himself, etc., and he never ever asks for it. He’s a giver. He even wants to give Kinn the perfect date. As one of my friends put it, he knows how to be Kinn’s, but he struggles with the concept of Kinn being his in return. Porsche is living with the internalised concept of being FOR other people (mostly Chay, now including Kinn), but they are not For Him.

What we see in episode 9 is that Porsche is put in a situation, where he desperately craves reassurance as a threat to his newfound happiness emerges. He just: a) doesn’t really know that’s what he’s craving, b) doesn’t know how to ask for it and c) is just feeling very confused and conflicted about his place at Kinn’s side, poor baby :(

So what does he do? He goes to Yok, because that worked last time :D

So that whole magnificent scene with the two of them is an extremely transparent front for a way Porsche gets to ask for care and reassurance, but still hide behind the elaborateness of the ~plan. He pretends he isn’t feeling well, so Kinn coming running, proving he cares. He asks Kinn to do something for him, to take care of him, to get a little taste of what he so clearly craves. And then he goes straight to their go-to device for reassuring each other of their mutual feelings: sex.

And Kinn immediately clocks that this is a-typical Porsche behaviour. Straight up calls him out on acting weird. And this is why I think it’s so important we get the little [‘you’re acting weird’ / ‘do you like it?’ / Kinn confirms he does indeed like it] exchange. Because this is Porsche stepping out of his comfort zone (we even get the dancing scene of him trying to ‘pump himself up’ for it) and asking for something - and he very much needs that to not be rejected. He needs to know that him asking for something, even if in an extremely elaborate manner, is actually okay.

and this has been another long rambling post by yours truly, tl;dr the silly couch scene is actually extremely emotionally resonant for where the characters are in that moment [steps off soap box]

#kinnporsche #analysis #? #kinn x porsche #yok #kinnporshe the series #porsche pachara

[mochiwrites]

ALWAYS FEELIN' A BIT INSANE ABOUT SONGBIRD!! 💥💥💥💥

Currently very invested in the Scar character development, he's very silly and I am obsessed with how you write him. Eating ur writing, I literally never shut up about it heryehur

He has so much depth to his personality. His struggle with identity, hiding the truth, opening up to others, traumatic experiences, etc. His complicated relationship with Mumbo as they walk on their tip-toes wondering what happened to get them to this point... His love for Tubbo and his hate for humanity. His conflicting emotions about death. His ever-changing view of Grian and what made him so worth it when nobody else caught his eye. The fragile concept of simply being himself and not the monster people think he is. He's so WONDERFUL AAAA!! *shakes you*

EEEEEEEEE YAY :D

scar has easily become one of my favorite songbird characters. he's definitely rounded out a lot since the start of songbird and I'm so !!!!!! about him -- and now that arc 2 is finished, I can actually talk about scar's character arc because GOD DOES IT MAKE ME INSANE. OKAY.

I remember being kinda nervous about introducing scar way back when in welcome to the circus, because I wasn't sure how he'd be received -- I mean, he's basically introduced as an antagonist right away, and he feels so different from his typical characterization. well. he's not that different, but I certainly lean wayyy more into the intimidating, scary image. and when you don't know a character's motivations for that... depending on the writer executes the writing, you could either be Incredibly interested, or you could write it off as out of character/bad writing. so welcome to the circus was absolutely a HUGE gamble. hell, everything that followed was a big gamble!

but I am so happy with how scar's development went. I think I could've added maybe one or two more one shots right before enchante to add a bit more pacing of scar's development, but overall I really am pleased with it.

arc 2 was heavily focused on scar and his betrayal (which like,,, yeah, obviously @ myself GJFHJFG) my biggest goal when writing arc 2 was showing the readers that there was more to scar than just his cold personality. that there was a reason for his behavior. it's kinda similar to how mumbo was first introduced. mumbo was off as well, though granted his true personality came about a lot quicker than scar's did.

so this arc was about exploring scar's character (and his understanding of/warming up to grian) and his growing internal conflict between betraying grian and mumbo and keeping tubbo safe. I really wanted to get across that at first scar had no remorse for what he was doing. but when he started getting to know grian, being given his kindness, when scar started to let down the walls around his heart, that's when the guilt kicked in.

I love scar's whole battle with his identity -- it's one of my favorite pieces of his character, and something that'll be explored a TON more in arc 3 (and perhaps the reason why that battle is there to begin with 👀) the way I've always looked at is: scar isn't human, but he's not quite fae either. so he's had to carve out an identity for himself; the grim reaper, a monster, it's all the same to him. he's not just standing at the cross between two worlds. he's carving a path between these two worlds -- he's creating a third world, specifically for himself

and I think scar's struggle with his identity is something the fandom as a whole doesn't touch on nearly enough as we should. scar is a man who's constantly wearing a mask, and that mask is everchanging. there's some seriously fun concepts to be played with there! which is exactly what I want to explore in songbird and this upcoming arc.

I also feel really insane about all of the backstory crumbs I've left in arc 2 for him. this one in particular drives me crazy:

( it's from the weight of living chapter three in case anyone is wondering :3 )

if you've ever seen in anime where a character has like. some ominous shadow figure looming over them and they look really afraid or panicked, that's exactly the kind of image I was picturing when writing this scene. and that's kinda what happens here! (one day when mumbo and scar's backstories are revealed, I would love to like. comb through songbird for all of the crumbs I've dropped and explain them)

but scar's character is so complex, and I think that's what makes him so fun. he doesn't operate on human morals, but he very much does have human emotions and a human heart that he buries and AUGH!!!

and I can't talk about scar's character without mentioning enchante, because C'MON. IT'S LIKE. THE SONGBIRD SCARIAN FIC HFGJDFGHJ

enchante is SUCH an interesting turning point for scar and grian's dynamic. mumbo and the boys have been kidnapped, scarian are forced to work together and they don't entirely trust one another, and they're running on limited time. and it's through this situation that they're forced to learn about each other. scar learns just how far grian's kindness goes, how he views the world. and grian starts to get some insight into why scar behaves the way that he does.

we see scar step in to defend grian against taurtis the first time under the guise of being offended at taurtis' bad negotiation skills, and not even knowing himself why he steps in! it's the first time scar sees the depth of grian's humanity and his guilt and his care for the ones that he loves. and then in turn, grian learns why scar is so apathetic and uncaring and there's some sort of understanding the two of them reach. it drives me SO insane fae. I cannot express.

AND THE GRIM REAPER STUFF MMMMMMMMM WE'RE GONNA COME BACK TO THAT. IT'S GONNA BE GLORIOUS. I've got some scar story that are gonna make people go INSANE when I drop it. it makes me want to gnaw on my arm man

songbird!scar is just so delightful to me, and I really love writing him a lot. his relationship to mumbo and then to grian is SO fun to examine, and we'll definitely be doing more of that in arc 3. I'm really glad that people love him as much as I do because <3333

#mochi speaks #songbird’s blood au #friend moment