the lawrences and nbd parents: we have made a bard

nb, giving both anbd and nbd a hug: you messed up two perfectly good children is what you did. look at them, they’re terrified of and despise crowds!

People sometimes ask me how to do the Internet comedy thing, and the biggest piece of advice I can give -- and the one I see violated or misunderstood most often -- is don’t step on the laugh.

Basically, since you can’t rely on tone or timing to push a punchline in text, you need to avoid making people keep reading after that punchline has been delivered. If there’s still more text, your readers’ natural inclination is going to be to stifle their visceral reaction with the expectation that there’s still more to come -- and when there isn’t, the joke just deflates.

Ideally, the specific word that makes the punchline click into place should be the very last word of the post, or at least the last word of the paragraph. Going even one word beyond that point diminishes its impact.

To pose an example I’ve seen doing the rounds, let’s consider the monkey-with-anxiety meme:

god: i have made Mankind angels: you fucked up a perfectly good monkey is what you did. look at it. it's got anxiety

Here, the word “anxiety” is the punch. When people quote it or do their own variations, I very often see them render it as “it’s got anxiety now” -- and just like that, it’s not even half as funny, because that extraneous “now” dangling off the end is stepping on the laugh.

Obviously, this isn’t always going to be possible without resorting to contrived phrasing, which you also want to avoid because calling attention to the sentence structure is another common laugh-killer, but you should always make your best effort to identify the exact point at which the reader will have enough information for the punchline to snap into focus, and to put that point as close to the end of the post or paragraph as possible.

(This also applies to spoken comedy, albeit to a lesser extent, since you can just pause for the laugh if you need to. Ever wonder why a joke or anecdote isn’t funny when you tell it? Sure, your delivery might just suck, but I find the more common culprit is that you mangled the phrasing and ended up putting the punchline in the middle of a sentence rather than at the end.)

3, 4, 5, 6, 12!

Vanilla “Sunday” Headcanon Ask Meme | accepting 

“Absolutely abhorring how perfectly fine you are disclosing my private details. Goodness, why must you be so open to sharing it?!”

3) Is your muse good at kissing? Are they experienced? 

While she has her fair share of being physically experienced, and having a handful of partners while in secondary school, she happens to be well-versed in initiating and using all of her body to affect a kiss. But, she is very inexperienced with French kissing, for example, and also being on the receiving end of kisses.

She is familiar and, actually, quite good at kissing someone, be it casually or soon-to-be escalating to something else. She begins at locations that are her partners’ preferred or sensitive spots like along the jawline, neck, or cheeks. Though, she isn’t shy from directly kissing someone and working on maneuvering her partner to rely and follow her actions and movement. The intensity would grow at her pace, as she is giving the utmost importance to do what her partner likes, and it can then spill out to making out (if her partner gave the word/the cue for it). 

She also happens to love and tends to give a bonus with her kisses (when they’re a little more heated) like hickeys and bitemarks. 

4 Does your muse initiate a lot of physical contact?

If not always on guard and creating a persona that naturally distances her true self from others, the eldest daughter can be seen as someone that is nervous and hesitant towards any physical contact with most anyone. However, this is true when she is receiving the affection and any form of touch. 

She is majorly reproachful on receiving as her body naturally braces and freezes up/locks up in the moment that someone (who hasn’t forewarned her/may not know) places their hand(s) anywhere on her. Those are mere seconds before she returns to being reactive; she may even squeak (depending on the location) and quickly and quietly distance herself from the person before apologizing. 

That being said, Sophie is usually the partner of the relationship who addresses and approaches her partner for physical contact and quite a lot of it. It will take a while for her not to feel like she’s imposing herself and not consider herself as being a general nuisance to her partner. Being touch starved plus repressed causes quite a bit of hurdles for her.

But, no doubt, Sophie is a very much an initiator that will have passing affection for her partner. Hugging her partner from behind, kissing their neck, cheek, or hand, and resting her hand on top of their hand are a few examples of what she’d do. Never lasting too long, never too close, it is done at her own pace and would soon become more common as she overcomes certain items in her life. 

5 Is your muse comfortable with public displays of affection?

Attentive and ever suspicious and observant of her surroundings, the young woman is in a constant state of surveillance. Being out in public and acting in a way that will create a discrepency and unwanted attention (which, to her, is any) would not sit well with her as she’s already hesitant and nervous when going out by herself. She already created a system for her to navigate through where she lives or common locations she has to travel to outside of her home. This creates both comfort and security to her, despite the creeping anxiety that weighs on her. Whenever she is following this pattern, it ebbs away this feeling and keeps her relatively calm and functional. 

To put herself out there is a little too much on her, but with the addition of a companion (family member, friend, romantic partner, etc.), she is more than on-edge. She wouldn’t be all over someone or genuinely starting anything that could encourage her to make a sound or get face-to-face with someone. 

In the case of the S.O., she would resort to holding hands or hooking arms to keep eachother close and to keep from getting lost in crowds. Depending on the presence of people, and what she could estimate to be there, she can be actually be calmer and even exchange words of affection or teases into her partner’s ears. 

Still, do not expect her to do anything immediately out of her comfort zone or any “loud” displays of affection as she calls it.

6 Does your muse steal clothing from their partner?

Sophie Hatter is very respectful of boundaries and the property of other’s and her taking her partner’s clothes isn’t quite common for her to do at the beginning of a relationship. She wouldn’t ever do that thing with someone, no matter if they’ve been dating for quite a while. 

That is until she starts or has been living with them and/or they’re in a long-distance relationship. (*Or if she has to mend something for them; she doesn’t keep them for long but boy does she enjoy the time).

She may end up and usually taking shirts and jackets that her partner commonly wears. It wouldn’t ever be worn outside of her house (or their house). Not only that, Sophie would rather be sneaky about it and doesn’t fess up when it comes to missing clothing items. She is particular with what she takes and usually doesn’t take anything of “high interest” (meaning, something her partner doesn’t wear daily/not in season for them to wear). 

The thing is, she doesn’t often wear these items. Instead, she ends up balling them up or holding it against her when she’s asleep. While she claims to be someone who’s used to be being alone and states she doesn’t feel lonely, the latter is a far cry from reality. Spending all her time in the workshop and spending most of her life socially separated from her peers (and family) made her believe that she was fit for/meant for/accustomed to that lifestye. 

However, with the addition of a person so intimately close, emotionally and physically, the faults of her logic begin to show. Hence why she is one who’d lie and throw off any suspicion from her -- because she’s quite insecure about this fact she should be accepting. 

12 Is your muse easily flustered? Do they blush, swear, etc.?

No and yes. 

It depends with Sophie, given that she works a lot with her appearance and how she works with concealing herself/keeping up a persona. It is very rare for her to get flustered and taken offguard in situations where she prepared herself and steeled herself for certain locations and events. 

The best example would be how she handles (partial) nudity. If she’s at work tand needs to do measurements, she’s unresponsive to seeing extra skin or any implications of what’s underneath. If she’s having to patch up wounds, she still isn’t that responsive and is cooledheaded to handle the situation. Seeing someone showing off parts of their body won’t rouse something up in her; she just makes a deadpan expression before continuing on with her day. Romantic gestures and flirtations would also receive the same reactions. It would include verbal acknowledgement that conveys her tiredness and uncaring feelings towards it. The most important thing to note is that, through all of this, there is an emotional detachment/distance she places between herself and others.

However, Sophie is not immune to everything; she can get very flustered and it is one that can be either very quiet or very loud. It depends on whether or not she catches herself. If it something that she says and does, something fueled by her stubbornness or her bad habit to jump in action, she would be changing to the darkest shade of red known to mankind in that moment. Eyes averting, shoulders bracing, but she is attempting to keep herself composed over the matter. Though, if that person were to tease her, she will be quick to leave the scene or get away as soon as possible; she refuses to give them the satisfaction of witnessing her being so exposed! Now, she’ll be loud if she is caught off guard -- but it isn’t much of a shout or a scream. She literally squeaks from surprise and shrinks on the spot, drawing her hands to her chest, and is locked in place for some seconds or a minute before her brains starts working again. (In some cases, and it depends on the S.O., like if they have a habit of teasing her, she will stomp her foot right after and sweat quite a bit!)

Now, Sophie is easier flustered when it comes to her partner or someone she has romantic interest in. My goodness! She still has the similar habits as described before when she gets embarrassed/caught off-guard if her partner would scare her (she’ll squeak and hop a bit in her spot) or when her partner overloads their direct affection and attention on her (blush hard, trying to look away or keep up appearances). 

Depending on what the dynamic is too, she can be quite reserved on the receiving end of affection or even adamant to decline it unless she gives some in turn! I consider many of Sophie’s reactions to be her being unused to having affection reciprocated (or having any her way). It still remains the same that she does get very reactive underneath that facade she’s built for herself. 

So I Wrote An Essay about Pathfinder for a University Class

I’m in a creative non-fiction writing class and our essay topic was “a person who has impacted your life” and me being a smart ass not only asked my prof if I could do someone fictional but a robot as well. Here are the results.

I don’t know what it is about happy robots with sad backstories. They always seem to find a way to captivate my attention. I’m always finding a way to obsess over these funky little robots in one way or another. Take the Mars rover, Oppy. Its last transmission was along the lines of, “my batteries are low and it’s getting dark.” I read that and cried. I’m not talking a tear or two. I was straight up bawling. So, when I ran into a video game which featured one of these robots with a sad backstory, I decided that I needed to invest literal weeks of my life into this game. Pathfinder is a robot on a simple mission. Find his creator. A task that sounds so seemingly simple, but keeps proving very hard for a robot as naive as Pathfinder.

While playing the game, seeing an enemy playing as Pathfinder is a terrifying experience, however, the character himself is perhaps one of the cutest things to ever be seen in a video game. Despite participating in a literal bloodsport in order to become famous enough that his creator will reach out, the tall, lanky blue robot is the definition of a ball of sunshine. Whether he is telling his teammates that he loves them in almost all of his lines, to trying or giving high fives to people he is just about to murder, the robot doesn’t really have a sense for what a bloodsport is. On the other hand, perhaps he is well aware of what the dire circumstances are of the games he plays for money and fame and still uses this chipper personality to keep the others happy as well. Either way, it’s clear that being around Pathfinder will always put a smile on your face, even if he doesn’t have a face himself. Technically he has a screen on his chest that is capable of displaying different emoticons that change based on his mood, and this furthers the idea of him as a happy individual. By having a smiley face on his chest ninety percent of the time, only switching to a red angry face when he battles, it’s clear that the robot is capable of expressing  different human emotions almost as good as we are. It’s always really interesting to see a character with such a sad backstory being so optimistic about life, as it is not a trope that is seen often in any form of media, as these characters are usually written as depressed and cold to anyone around them. Pathfinder booted up one day with not a single living soul in sight and decided to set out to find who created him. Now, being a robot rather than a human, in his search, Pathfinder found his niaevity used against him. Humans would lie and take advantage of his willingness to help in exchange for answers and have him do all the work for nothing. However, even after constantly getting used, Pathfinder is still a character who chooses to be bright, happy, and optimistic in everything he does rather than form a hatred for mankind. Because of this happy personality that I needed so badly in my life, I decided that I needed to play as Pathfinder more often. Hearing a positive voice talking to me I found has started putting me in better moods, something much needed when you are a university student with six essays due all the time. 

Video games have always been a way for me to destress, however a while back I started realizing that even those were making me feel worse rather than better as I was too focused on wanting to do well in the game that I would begin to get frustrated when I lost. Because I knew these feelings would not benefit me in any way, and my interest in video games, which had once been one of my best strategies for relieving stress and anxiety, started to fade, leaving me only with my unhealthy coping habits. However, once this game came out, I was instantly drawn in by the diverse cast of characters. Any game that has cannon LGBT+ characters is enough for me to want to give it a try. This one just had the added perk of having a happy robot character as well. The more I began to play with Pathfinder as my character the more I started realizing he had started reshaping how I played video games. Instead of becoming frustrated or angry when a game didn’t go the way I wanted it to, Pathfinder was always there to remind me how much fun he was having, thus making me realize once again that these video games were indeed, just games. My frustrations in video games had soon gone back down and once again I was at a point where they were a stress reliever rather than an inducer. 

After a few months of playing the game I began to realize that not only was this robot helping me while I played games, but that I had started to pick up some of his mannerisms. From calling every person I met my friend to offering high fives all the time, it was clear to me that Pathfinder had begun to impact more parts of my life. Because of this, I had even started making more friends as I played the video game more and more. If you would have told me a couple of months ago that I would meet some of my best friends while playing a video game that I only played because I liked the robot character, I would have laughed in your face. Now however, I play this game with three other people who mean the world to me. Like me, they were drawn into the game by the diversity of the characters, as the game has both a canon gay character as well as a canon non-binary character, leaving the four of us with a rather unlikely gaming squad. The gaming community is made up of mostly cishet males, so seeing just one of our squad mates playing a video game is already defying gaming standards, as we are a Canadian lesbian, an American bisexual, a Swedish trans man, and a German non-binary person. When the four of us group together, though, everything just seems to click. It no longer feels like we don’t belong in the gaming community as we have created our own community. A community I never would have found if I didn’t have an obsession with happy robots with sad backstories. 

Even though the four of us don’t live anywhere remotely close to one another, friends that you know only through the power of the internet are friends nonetheless. In the past few months I’ve had my gaming friends ask me more about my mental health than my friends who I’ve known for years, even though we hardly even know what each other looks like. Sure we’ve all sent the odd selfie but still I have a better idea of what their pets look like then what they do. However there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t need to see someone’s face in order to know that they are my friends, not when I can hear the tone in their voices that can show their emotions. From a concerned voice telling another to go to bed as we are all in different timezones, to playful jabs at one another about the events that go on in the game. None of us even call each other by our real names! Not that we don’t know each other’s real names, that would be weird if we didn’t, but after calling all of them by their usernames since we first started playing if I were to call Biff, Axel or DrowZ, Lynkoln, it just doesn’t sound right. One of them were to call me Renee instead of Fire, I would be genuinely concerned and wonder what I did to piss them off, almost like that feeling you get when your mom calls you by your full name, you know you did something wrong. But so far, the only things these friends have done wrong is occasionally getting me killed in our video game, or stealing loot from my kills, thank you very much Wolfy.

Getting to know people from all around the world is also a fun experience I wouldn’t have gotten if it weren’t for this video game. Just the other day we spent a few minutes trying to explain to our Swedish friend what a tonsil was as he didn’t know the word for it in English, which resulted in a lot of laughter from all ends. Our obsession of the video game goes well with each other and makes it so we all have someone to talk about our thoughts on the game as well as the characters. From sharing different ideas we think the characters would do and how they would interact with each other to thirsting over the attractiveness of others, even though if these characters were real none of us would stand a chance with any of them, especially the one they all seem to have a very strong interest in despite how terrifying he would be in real life, the four of us do things that all friend groups would do. Our group chat is full of memes, we discuss how school is going, the people in real life we are interested in, and so on. A lot of people have tried to tell me in the past that people you meet online can’t be your friends but I beg to differ. Even though all of us are all poor and couldn’t afford one plane ticket between the four of us, we know we don’t need to be in the same room to hangout. Especially when just being in a voice chat with them makes it feel like they are here with me and that I’ve known them for longer than the span of a couple months. 

It’s crazy to think that something positive came out of my video game obsession. I know my mom can’t believe that I’ve gotten more out of video games than a rotted brain and sore eyes. It’s even weirder to think that it all stemmed from a fictional robot, a robot that I now can say has actually changed my life, for without him I would be missing three of my best friends. If I never would have found an interest in this video game it’s safe to say I still would not be playing any games and instead watching Netflix alone on my couch rather than spending time with my new friends. I would only have my mom left encouraging me to attend class every day but only really because she helped pay for them and not three other people yelling at me to stop playing games with them to go write an essay about the robot from the video game we were playing, even if I was doing really good this morning. Hell, without this fictional robot in my life I would probably be writing some boring essay about a real life person, who we all know are less exciting than fictional ones. Because of this I think it’s really important to take stock of not only the real people in your life but the fictional ones, as they can be just as, if not more, inspiring than someone who is really out there. We don’t often think about characters as having a way to affect our lives, but as shown by Pathfinder, my life has become a whole lot happier because of this funky little robot.

ye s, well

it basically came to me like a prophet receiving a vision from an angry god. you know. like brian david gilberts video ideas but with more slow burn.

no really i wrote all this down in my phone’s note app because some nearly coherent things popped up in my head every time i was on the train or bus these last few days.

(after-actually-writing-this disclaimer/note: this is 2000 words of slightly edited rambling about Bagginshield in the Afterlife. i had to put it in a read more.)

so the gist of it

the botfa goes just as in the movie with minor details altered. like bilbo kissing thorin just before he dies which inadvertently causes a ripple in time and space that makes the valar curious of them both. you know. minor stuff.

so bilbo goes back to the shire, the war of the ring goes down, and the hobbit/elf gang sails to valinor at the end. classic stuff, not much alternating of universes here.

but here’s where things turn into the “my city now” meme because DUDE DO I HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS ABOUT VALINOR AND HOW THE AFTERLIFE WORKS

like, I’m sorry mister jolkien rolkien tolkien, but just putting people into a hall to await being judged like a hospital waiting room? snooze, that’s boring!

so first of all, and you can fight me on this, Yavanna Made The Hobbits And You Can’t Change My Mind.

it just makes sense for her to have been very saddened by the destruction of literally all her work on arda through melkor’s poison, so she made living, growing things that could protect themselves from harm. as opposed to the ents, by the way, which were made by Eru to protect all the other living, growing things. it was a nice gesture of Eru to make those, but not quite what Yavanna wanted or had in mind, i imagine.

as with the dwarves, Eru wasn’t all happy about the existence of another race he didn’t make but you know, whatever, ‘I’ll just let this married couple have their own kids aside from mine, it’s okay’.

so he hands both the dwarves and the hobbits independent thought and free will, but under the condition (and here is where the afterlife stuff comes into play) that Aule and Yavanna be responsible for their mortal creations after their death. meaning that both races have seperate afterlives from the halls of mandos, MEANING THAT ITS COMPLETELY FINE FOR AULE AND YAVANNA TO BE LIKE “oh look honey, these two are so very in love and remind me of us, shan’t we do something about that?”

so. they do something about that. more precisely, they rearrange their afterlife-realms so they’re next to each other and someone with enough willpower could cross through the barrier. because listen, they’re valar, they can do whatever they want just for kicks.

okay so after that tangent lets get back to the meat of the matter: gay dwarves. I know not everyone has read Sansukh, a 500k word mammoth of a fic, and I don’t really intend to copy any of det’s canon, but their version of The Halls of Mahal really inspired me. basically the dwarven afterlife is one big hunk of a mountain/underground city where they’re free to live their days until dagor dagorath doing what they do best in the company of their families and friends; like smithing, crafting, building and other JustDwarrowThings.

meanwhile the hobbit afterlife is Basically The Shire and instead of being given the materials to build things, all the hobbits who go there get to grow plants and do their gardening. they don’t have to- just like none of the dwarves have to craft stuff- since there’s always enough food for everyone, but they are just allowed to do what they do best if they so desire.

now when Bilbo arrived in the undying lands he was still Old As Hell and im sorry to put it this way, he definitely kicked the can after like, a week of living there. not really so undying, them lands, huh. anyway Bilbo bites the dust and LOOK AT THAT he’s suddenly young again, and another LOOK AT THAT he’s standing in a very comfy, but Not Quite Bag End hobbit hole that has a note hung up on the front door. you wouldn’t think gods could have handwriting but hey, again, they’re gods they can do whatever. the note just tells him that yavannah made this place special and just for Bilbo but that there’s another home waiting for him. very cryptic there, lady. he doesn’t leave at first because hey, his family is here. there’s a lot of reunions and celebrating and food because its the fucking hobbit afterlife, what else would you expect

it takes him a few days of Regular Hobbit Life in his new home to realise ‘holy shit, this is so boring’ so what does a Fool of a Took do when things get boring and there’s a note urging him to do something?

HE’S GOING ON AN ADVENTURE

so Bilbo runs through the whole not-shire, meeting all sorts of people he outlived on the way (looking at you, Lobelia), as well as some elves. because elves can definitely just waltz through all the afterlives. they can walk on top of snow, you think they wouldn’t walk around wherever they please in valinor? rip to mankind, but they’re different.

he gets to the furthest reaches of it eventually, and lo and behold, what awaits him but the view of a tall mountain, an invisible barrier and a very flustered Thorin who is at his wits end as to how Bilbo even got here.

now for thorin’s part of the story we’ll have to start after the botfa again. he basically woke up in the darkness like an episode of naked and afraid, and started talking to Aule. his maker, who loves him to bits by the way since he made thorin, just tells him he’s free to go wherever his heart takes him. again with the cryptic messages from the gods.

so thorin, still very self-loathing and bitter because of his actions right before his death, sees this as Mahal’s way of saying ‘please don’t step foot in my halls u disgusting litle creacher’, when really he just meant ‘please do some well deserved self reflecting and then come inside to be with your family, they all miss you terribly’.

after his chat with the maker thorin just spawns in right at the front gate of the mountain and he has a choice to make. go inside or stay outside. and we all know Thorin’s proclivity for drama so he basically spends LITERAL YEARS just living in self imposed solitary confinement.

oh also tiny hc here, thorin was said to have taken “any work offered to him in the towns of men”, and they showed him in a smithy, but personally I believe they meant it when they said “any kind of work”. so basically thorin is a jack of all trades, master of some. he definitely has master-level skills in certain areas though, enough to build a vaguely hobbit-hole shaped house. why is it hobbit hole shaped?

oh right, the part where Thorin is absolutely enamoured with Bilbo.

"Go back to your books and your armchair, plant your trees, watch them grow. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”- HELLO? GAY POLICE? I’D LIKE TO REPORT A CASE OF ‘DWARF KING REALISING THAT THE HOBBIT WAY OF LIVING IS A REALLY GREAT ONE IN CONCEPT / WISHING HE COULD HAVE HAD THAT KIND OF LIFE WITH BILBO’

anyway it’s a long 80 years until Thorin does get to meet Bilbo again, and in the meantime we have one of my favorite additions to any Hobbit fanfic ever: Frerin

For the uninitiated, Frerin is Thorin’s brother. They also have a sister, Dís, but Tolkien never specified when she died and she was a bit younger than Thorin and Frerin so I reckon she’d still be alive as an old dwarf lady somewhere?

Anyway, Frerin. Oh boy. Sansukh, again, does an excellent job at turning Frerin into a character with a level of authenticity that gets real fucking close to Genuine Tolkien™, so most of my own characterisation of Frerin is based on that in Sansukh. With the important omission of the dwarves not being able to see the present/their still alive loved ones in middle earth through a magic mirror pool.

so Frerin takes it upon himself to leave the mountain in search of his brother because he really does want him back. but also because Mahal has had it with Thorin’s antics and suggests Frerin fetch him so he can finally reunite with his family. Mahal doesn’t talk to the dwarves a lot because he’s like an awkward and distant dad, but he does actually speak to them.

so Thorin is supposed to go see his family, which he does, but not immediately. it takes like, a solid year of just brotherly (and sister-sonly) companionship for him to open up about all his anxieties and regrets and THEN he goes into the mountain to cry in his mother’s lap. as you do.

however Thorin still feels like he doesn’t 100% belong with the other dwarves in there, so he frequently spends long stretches of time outside, building away at his house, thinking about Bilbo. the company goes out to visit him sometimes.

more details on the house tho, cuz it’s Important; it’s built halfway into a hill near the mountain, like a proper hobbit hole would be, but the lower levels are built into stone. look, he’s had 80 years to work on constructing this. it’s near perfect in every way for both hobbit and dwarf standards and could definitely fit the entire company and more inside.

now about the barrier. elves can pass through without a second thought because they’re shiny little bastards who just get to do all the cool stuff, but the other races can’t just hop between realms like that; they really have to muster up the willpower. which usually means they can’t do it because a drawback for both dwarves and hobbits is that they favor isolation from other races even in death, and as such don’t want to mingle with each other.

unless you’re Bilbo Badass Baggins though, who simply runs through the barrier to yell at Thorin for leaving him sad and alone for 80 years. he is that bitch.

there’s gonna be some legolas and gimli shenanigans if i can fit them in (cuz i dont know when exactly they sailed west together), possibly a mention of tauriel because bruh peter jackson did us dirty by not giving her any closure besides ‘lol i guess she’s banished from mirkwood??’ and Mairon. because. I also have some thoughts about him.

also Fili and Kili as pseudo matchmakers because every fic needs that

and did I mention there’s gonna be hozier lyrics for chapter titles

i said this was the gist of it but i somehow ended up at ~1900 words. well, more power to me.

Alright, going to address what happened last night:

I didn’t want to, but it really upsets me (still, 24 hrs later) because it concerns tumblr culture of finding offense in everything. This is a meme blog. Not a s*ocial j*ustice w**arrior platform. 

This isn’t a free-for-all for everyone to come running at me requesting changes for triggers and worries regarding something “isn’t labeled quite right.” I will NOT be taking every request to retag or categorize every little thing that offends or upsets you, because that is an exercise of madness. That is 1984 George Orwell BIG BROTHER bullshit. Something that a great deal of people on here have come to embrace as the norm. It’s not healthy, and it’s more frightening to mankind than simply using the most precise label to address something.

Tumblr culture has conditioned and nurtured the premise that if everything isn’t perfectly censored or labeled AS SUCH to the standards of every soul that sees a post, that the world will end. And, worse, all parties that deny the request need to be eradicated and bullied off the planet for not rolling over and complying to groupthink.

I assure you all, I am not privy to that childish and unrealistic mentality of entitlement. If a problem is real, I will fix it. If it gets into obsessive compulsive labeling territory, I will IGNORE IT. You can always unfollow and take your issues up elsewhere. Constantly looking for offense and prejudice where there is NONE is a sickness, it IS OCD. I myself have clinical anxiety and OCD, and as someone that is a bit older than the majority here, (I’m in my 30′s) I assure you all, it is not that serious in the grand scheme of things. You have to learn to cope and find productive tools to move past it and tunnel through it. You can’t let this obsessive need to find fault and prejudice in everything in life cripple you and hinder your existence. PICK YOUR BATTLES. Life is not meant to be controlled and put into neat little boxes, that only makes the problems and issues worse.

This is entitlement and weakness in its zenith. It’s the mentality that everything hurts your feelings and therefore, evil. The world is not black and white, it is a spectrum of ideas, observations, and genres. Sometimes a word is just a word, and nothing is meant by it. YOU find the individual offense in something, that is between you and the situation. I find hurtful offensive things before me all the time, but I carry on and grow past it.

You will never see blatant hate on anything I produce, but fictional content is a reflection of everything in life. Pleasant and unpleasant. A word or subject will not/cannot be erased simply because it possibly maybe somehow in the smallest fragment MAY or may not indicate an offensive “thing.” Words and subjects exist, and we cannot change that. Something may truly be “Psychotic” and that’s that. It’s not meant to be a personal attack on the reader that may clinically be psychotic. Just because a horror meme has that as a word within its contents does not mean it is a personal attack on you. If a meme was nothing but misconstrued untrue facts on mental illnesses, and the post was made by someone making fun of mental illnesses, then we would have a problem. THAT person SHOULD be educated and corrected. Let’s face it, the entire horror genre was created as a way to describe and cope with the real life traumas in life on terms that the writer, actor, and artist can control. And analyze at a safe distance. By making it partially entertaining, it is making a safe bubble for humans to observe their own faults, fears, and violent acts and face it. Horror itself is meant to be cathartic. Even exploitive horror has a sense of social commentary on how we treat one another. And yes, some subjects of horror ARE focused on mentally ill antagonists that have obviously slipped through the cracks and haven’t been helped or isolated. It’s a cold hard fact in criminal psychology and pathology as well. 

If you are not a threat to society in your illness, then you are NOT the subject being spoken about. It doesn’t describe or concern you. Negative labels only have power when you give them that power.