#But in lesser canon. Non canon. AU of the AU. WHATEVER. He is capable of killing someone | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

incarnateirony · 4 years

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"The real Sam and Dean" sure does point to the main world being there *before* Chuck, doesn't it? Interesting. God can't create souls (like the show has told us for YEARS), so, yeah, WTF are the people in the other universes? WHAT ARE SOULS???? (Lesser question, what is Grace? God's attempt at making souls? Since he made the angels? DOES CAS HAVE A SOUL?) 🤯

Wow multi part thing here

1. Not necessarily but I’ll expand on that.

2. Other souls even in similar bodies? Soulless constructs and duplicates like Gabriel’s grace worlds? (seems less likely with AU Bobby and Charlie). I’m going to go with an educated guess of “other souls in identical meatsuits” for now, expanded on more in the post below.

3. There’s also an answer for that, but no, not really souls.

4. IMO yes, and I can expand on why I believe Cas does.

—

So bundling an answer to all of these.

I’m going to need you to break your brain a little on this, dear reader. I know it’s difficult for some people, and some are just now even coming to grips with the idea that Chuck’s world is a simulacrum to the point I’ve seen based people belatedly go, verbatim, through the same existential crisis Dean spewed at Cas in 15.2. It’s gonna take some nonlinear thinking from here.

Let’s talk about, say, The Empty. What is Nothing? I want you to think about that.

Congrats, you’ve already failed.

The second you try to define oblivion, you fail. We can try to speak it as closely as possible, but oblivion before creation is itself a paradox. It is timeless, shapeless, colorless – best depicted, perhaps, by a black screen to communicate the idea to the human mind, or sometimes a white one, but people tend to affiliate that with light, rather than the absence of light; so a starkly lit (on actors) black background is our most efficient way to do it. But realistically? Black doesn’t exist yet. White doesn’t exist yet. Light nor dark exist. Nothing is there.

And yet somehow, Nothing birthed Everything.

This is the paradox humans struggle with eternally. The idea of the Big Bang, for example, still comes down to there being an infinitely dense mass that asplodied at some point and everything just kinda raveled itself together from there. Where did the dot come from in nothing? What is the dot? What is this paradox of Nothing Making Everything?

Hermetics propose, essentially, various grades of creation. Depending on the denomination and thought form this may manifest several ways at the upper levels, “Chicken or the Egg” as SPN death put it. Some will say death itself birthed creation and life, for example. Others say it’s a direct result of the human soul, and others say it’s grace.

Real familiar to our current Atomic Monsters, isn’t it?

So anyway, what I’ve been seeing out of SPN since about S13 is that souls themselves, in our structure, are the paradox of creation. After all, there was a “Before God, or Amara”, so how did God simply come to be? Good question, ain’t it?

So let’s take a look at the Shadow. Hermetics variably address The Inky Man or The Shadow (as Jung himself was part of the art) as a primitive aspect of the self, and also address the concept of a sort of group mind, a collective unconscious from which we all come and go, a First Man, or sometimes addressed as Anthropos, the collective spirit of man.

So The Thing That Rules The Empty, The Shadow, existed before God and Amara. God is Light. Amara is the absence of Light.

But God is also Grace. And The Word.

Does it really matter, respectively, how he branded his stuff? He might call it gak in another world for all we know. But Grace is the essence by which Chuck *does* create.

So let’s do another mental exercise here: If one were to remove all human souls from any of Chuck’s constructs, what makes them any different than the realms Gabriel makes where people mindlessly follow scripts he wrote? What makes them any different than the headspaces archangels have shoved their hosts down into? Or the place Sam went to inside his own head in Man Who Knew Too Much that was an entire expansive world, even with a few random hiccups here or there in it?

Chuck installed the world with aspects of himself to keep it tick tick ticking if he offworlded. I’m going to guess he had an oopsie or two in random worlds before he figured that one out KSJDfksjdf but that’s an aside.

But angels are tied to the divine spheres, and to grace. They were given minds and consciousness, but not souls. He can’t create nor control those, after all. And while in almost any form of study the mind is capable of Doubt and Question with or without a soul, I mean, plugging an angel with an installed soul just seems like a super bad idea.

After all, they are wavelengths of intent. HIS intent. They are the editors of his story that keep it running in lines. They are arbiters and heralds of his messages. They are the programs in the matrix that keep it running, until they corrupt and unplug from the central code and then fuck off into the operating system with the rest of people, even if they can never LEAVE the operating system. Except Cas. Cas can. Which I’ll address below.

“What is grace?” Well, we’ve been using storywriting metaphors in canon this year. Grace is the page on which the ink is set. The Word is the letters etched into it. Collectively, with some imagination, the end product, especially when run through your editors, is a complete and fairly cohesive story, with arguable interpretation of validity or merit.

So you’re probably realizing I haven’t really explained *how* then God or Amara came to be, yet.

Okay, so let’s think Big Bang, metaphysical edition. There was absolutely jack shit all nothing that defines our reality, be it light, dark, space, time, dimension, much less material or immaterialism. But somehow, at some point, Nothing woke up and went “Dafuq?” and then all kinds of shit happened. For example, it might have even Dafuqed its own paradoxical nature and birthed duality in it, of Presence and Absence. These, then, would be Light and Dark. So now, there’s Nothing Dafuqing and just wanting to go back to napping/not fucking existing alone, and then two ancient things crop up out of nowhere. And with the Shadow all but absent, they only have themselves and each other.

So Chuck builds his toy soldiers and Amara destroys them as his antithesis. But what does he build his stuff from?

Grace as a word even falls into several hermetic constructs as one of these cornerstones. If Grace is the page Chuck writes on, and his thoughts/intent are The Word, the result is that what he imagines is what is to become. Be that good or “evil”, though we find now just like in hermetics that evil isn’t really a thing, as much as the absence of good, and the absence of good comes with the absence of a soul.

So now we’ve got Chuck making a library of things trying to find something okay enough to do in non-eternity. After all, he can hop worlds, revert time, go when and wherever he wants, make whatever place he wants to go to, come up with spiderturtleducks if he gets bored enough, what the fuck ever. I totes have it on good sources that there was a universe somewhere with turtlemonkeys with eight arms. Don’t @ me.

Either way, hopefully that clarifies the idea of “What is Grace?”; the page was first proverbial, but made literal and manifest in the world defined out of the nothing, and by Grace are all things made, and by the Word all is known.

The idea of Anthropos, the Inky Man, or The Shadow – the First Man, the Great Adam, whatever the fuck any given denomination’s term is for it – varies slightly in perennial thought. Our humanistic show, however, and all signs seem to be pointing to an interpretation in which the shadow predates them and yet doesn’t in this ambiguous time space. It is simply a shadow of a place that did and didn’t exist yet at that point.

And that paradox is, very likely – I’d call it a *very educated theory based on the theology that inspires our mytharc* – what defines humanity.

So am I saying humans don’t even exist? Absolutely not. But they are the thing outside of and beyond creation while living in it, from which we do not truly understand the idea of in eternity if you believe in it. But whether it’s gnostic thoughts that say god like threw man into the universe and trapped him in a machine, bodies included; or the hermetic one where the forefather yearned for a meaning to its nonexistence, and by it made the demiurge we call YHVH or Chuck, respectively, in SPN – and by it found a world to fall in love with and fall into, much as angels fall into man – perennial thought aligns with humans being something far and beyond this cage, and the show supports it, as the most sought powersource that could even end God Himself – as the thing he can neither create nor destroy, just shove in boxes – as the thing he can not control.

Humans are a paradox in definition, and that paradox seeks a meaning to life, and in it, it essentially – by a chain of progress, mind you – creates the world. After all, He Who Has The Most Souls Are Become God, am I incorrect on SPN canon here? Be that S6/7 Cas’ Big Mistake (including not making any sort of chambers of contentment to keep them from fighting back, no leviathan mental headbars, no greatest hits of heaven tucked inside of him), or them recalling this in 15.3 /from two directions/ and by which Rowena became the authority in hell even after Cas beat the shit out of Belphegor to stop HIM from becoming that kind of king – if Chuck didn’t have souls, would he even actually have power? And why else throw men, now forgotten of their source and thrown into bodies, into places like heaven and hell? In hell human souls that went against Chuck’s will destroy each other until they lose their light; if Chuck can’t destroy them, let them destroy each other. In heaven, like in MichaelDean’s headbar, they’re given contentment and also cease fighting back. They don’t return to a source, they don’t amass, they’re carefully segregated and processed.

So anyway back to the Shadow. I’ve mentioned the hermetic ideas of Nous I and Nous II. They’re both God in a way, but completely independent beings. Nous II is what people commonly think of with “God.” The christian god, the creator of the universe, but also a spiteful god by his own words, in the bible itself. To many christians it’s even sacrilege to think of there being anything before God, he created the universe so clearly he yelled FIRST and licked it or whatever, and That’s That. But Nous I is the Forefather, the Shadow I’ve spoken of. And while it doesn’t necessarily dictate the world, it also manifests forward as Anthropos to experience the world.

If there was a collective vat of souljuice in oblivion, and those pieces fell into bodies by force or choice, it is the development of the id, ego, superego, and general self that then defines who we become as individuals. Until “The real Sam and Dean” line I was in conflict, wondering how the AU selves sorted out in mechanics. It seemed in conflict with the very nature of individual souls for them to be simultaneously across worlds but pent up in heavens. But then the answer became simple and remained true to form: we are what we make ourselves, and bond with who makes us complete as a great work that help us master ourselves. The very idea of mastering ourselves, however, is one of great relativity as we are, in the end, just trying to find a meaning to our existence, or nonexistence, or whatever else even if it’s by running through a matrix in a million billion parts that become a million billion different people with different stories, experiences, relationships, personalities all subject to it, but in the end, souls find each other, especially partner souls.

I hate the term soulmates, really. In the scale of it, it’s more like a 10000000000000000000000000 (or infinite) piece soul puzzle, but some pieces click together more than others and by it we find better selves.

*takes in a deep breath*

So aNyWaY

I still haven’t answered why I feel Cas has a soul, but it required getting that proposal out of the way first, and it’s simple really: minding what I’ve said, anyone notice anything? The Shadow didn’t reflect Lucifer. It didn’t reflect soulless Jack (though it did try to communicate with a creepy smile which lends me to believe there’s a smol soulspark left in Jack to compliment him touching Mary’s name on the table), it didn’t reflect Death. It only reflected Castiel. And in the end… Why Are You Awake? Nothing in the history of Ever has woken up here. You’re outside of the book. There is no book. Why is this page floating around in my Nothingspace, get the fuck out, stop littering.

The entire construct of this breaks out that existential crisis in fandom as much as Dean – does that mean none of this is real? No. Dean answered that in 5.18 long ago, even if he reflected his own words in his fear, terror, and panic.

You want to know what’s real? People. Families.

Nothing about our lives is real.

We are.

Castiel never forgot the reason he fell for Dean, that fateful day, and that fateful discussion. Chuck’s machinations are nothing new to Cas. Cas used to be part of that machine himself really.

How, exactly, he acquired a soul is a whole other topic for another post which has never been answered overtly, but it was either developed on or before the season 8 finale when Metatron referenced it. This later is augmented by the Shadow and by Cas NOT recognizing what it feels like to lose a soul and instead deferring to Sam for the experience, meaning he probably didn’t entirely lose it which also removes some of the old alien stick-in-assedness. There’s plenty of material that could be read as Cas having a soul, but the one that SCREAMS to me the most is The Big Empty, for entire like… cosmogenic construct reasons.

Hermeticism addresses the idea of three principles that, while they have many names, boil down to Mind, Body, and Soul. Soul is the Prima Materia, the essence by which All Things Come, even Mind and Body, and Mind and Body return to Soul and build them as well in this paradox. But the soul creates the prime material, and the mind perceives the material, which then becomes the body. This can be the literal human body or the idea of physical creation as a whole, eg, body of the world. The soul and mind are beyond these things and exist without them, even if the soul and mind are developed and fostered into individuals by the experiences they gain in this manufactured reality.

After all, Eileen’s ghost wasn’t suddenly Hearing, even though it’s not a matter of blown out eardrums anymore. We can just handwave it and say it’s being politically correct, which it also is, and bless them for it – but also, her mind and by proxy soul never really grew and perceived the idea of Sound as defined by the Created Universe as part of her experience. After all– sight, sound, smell, touch, taste – these are all things defined within our universal bubble. We can enjoy the trip through these worlds and learn from them and make memories and meanings, but … there’s no reason to “fix” that. Eileen was her own complete person as she was, hearing or not. WHY would her ghost even know what it means to Hear?

Why can cas, theoretically just a program, wake up in oblivion? Humanity. For agent smith to leave the matrix he had to corrupt and acquire a human body. But the perennial thought aligned with matrix symbolism makes that synonymous with a soul.

Cas has a soul.

So bigassed long answer but yeah– hopefully that– answered everything?

When it comes to id, ego, superego, etc– or in older hermetics shadow, animus, anima, self – I tried to break down the show’s use of it, and constructed realities, in this video here. Watch it a few times if you have to. It also includes both primitive shadow and individual shadows as well as Animus (the masculine ego, with daddy issues reflected through their designated archangels) or Animus (the more evolved feminine superego, as given to us by Dumah/Sam’s bartendress [same actress–] or Pamela).

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Y’all are probably sick to death of me plugging that but I swear to god if you watch it through and think, even after a few attempts, you’ll start getting it – and what parts you don’t, just send me an ask like this.

And mark my words. Just as Cas figured out both the Empty and Michael were full of shit, the look he had after Rowena declared She Took It tells me he’s going to be key, if not THE key, in their resolution, mirroring her choice. Fight me. Which is one of the many topics I addressed in the new video (including divine masculine vs feminine, paths, lessons, the phases of awakening [black/shadow, white/animus, yellow/anima, red/self], whatever)

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On an aside, I might propose dreamwalkers, born on identical days in different worlds, and able to travel across them, may actually somehow share a soul while living duplicitous lives and sharing experiences, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

But if Chuck built himself into the Body of the World to keep it together, well. It’s his one weakness, sure. But also the world itself on removal. Now the real question is how much of this TFW as parents, Cas especially, is going to let fall on Jack. Because they can’t be like the forebearers that made their cursed paths. chuck may be the key but he does not need to be the answer, these are not the same. So yeah, I’m still stuck on my Goddess/Empress-unbirthing-in-Binah-to-make-the-new-aeon spec. Hell, maybe it really just takes unplugging Chuck and sieging heaven and loosing all the souls in a giant rebellion, sure, but what then retains the balance? I’d stare into the camera, but I’m too busy looking at Cas.

It’s worth noting that depending on denomination, the variables may change in this; eg, Chuck and Amara as thoughts spawned from the Empty also mean a Return To God is completion in some Hot Takes, which would be for example going to heaven, whereas Amara removes them from chuck’s light/creation and theoretically drops them back To Live As One within, say, the Shadow again. But our structure does not seem to be pointing to the read of Joining God In Heaven As The Big Goal as much as I Am Become God.

#supernatural #spn #souls #pagan life #meta #my meta #the shadow #chuck #amara #paradox #long post for ts #amaah #cosmogenesis #shadow #demiurge

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thereluctantinquisitor · 6 years

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Get Into My Oc

So I was tagged by @chaitea09 and @sunshinemage for this delightful meme, and decided to go with one of my lesser known kiddos. So, without further ado:

Cyrus

NAME: Cyrus du Volise

AGE: 25 at the Conclave

GENDER: Male

ORIENTATION: Bisexual

PROFESSION: Soldier

BACKGROUND (TW: child abuse, abuse): Cyrus was raised in south-eastern Orlais, close to the Ferelden border, in the manor estate of his father, former decorated chevalier Joustis du Volise. Accused and acquitted of murder, Joustis was already famous for his quick temper, but became cruel after his disgraced departure from the tournament circuit and lack of patronage following the extended and highly damaging trial. Cyrus’ mother bore the brunt of his abuse, until she finally fled a few months before Cyrus turned two. His only memory of her is of a song she used to hum to him when she put him to sleep, and it is not something he looks back on fondly.

Growing up was painful in many ways, particularly for such a meek child. Shut away in the manor estate, Cyrus made no real friends, and the household staff were too frightened of his father to dare befriend him openly. His father took to blaming Cyrus for his mother leaving, refusing to see fault in himself, and treated Cyrus with cold disdain as a result. It was when he turned thirteen that the physical abuse began, but with little worldly knowledge and no one to lean on, Cyrus found himself trapped in a house that became a prison. As he grew older, his resentment grew with him, not only of his father, but of his mother as well.

He did not blame her for leaving. He blamed her for leaving him behind to suffer the consequences.

When he reached eighteen Cyrus began sneaking out to the nearby town, uncaring of his father’s punishments because he would bear them regardless. Something in him shifted, and the meek, kind child he had been gave way to someone bitter and angry at the world for turning a blind eye. He drank and staggered home, and the numbness made the beatings easier to stomach. He met people, but still made no true friends, sometimes spending nights accompanying other people in their safer beds just to put off the inevitable return home. Cyrus was arrogant. Rude. Cruel and cynical, but he made sure of one thing: he never threw the first punch. That was the realm of his father, and it was a place he never wanted to tread. He was better. Not by much, but he was better. At the end of the day, he decided he might as well earn the beatings.

Just before his twenty-fourth birthday, Cyrus made the decision to leave for good. He packed his bags and whatever possessions he could comfortably carry, but while he was searching for coin one of the servants tipped his father off, revealing his plan. However, to Cyrus’ surprise, his father invited him to dinner instead. One last time, he had claimed. It smelled of a trap, but what choice did Cyrus have? His father was better trained and still much stronger, and Cyrus had inherited his mother’s shorter, leaner stature. In any case, whatever his father put in the wine, Cyrus remembered next to nothing of that dinner.

When he woke, it was on the side of the road with nothing but the clothes on his back and a searing pain that seemed to engulf the entirety of his face. It wasn’t until he found a pool of water still enough to offer reflection that he realised what his father had done. Stunned, Cyrus remembered reaching up with shaky hands, brushing the red, swollen lines that marred his face, not quite believing what he was seeing. In the end, he could only assume it was his father’s parting gift for the son everyone described as a ‘spitting image’ of him when he was young and loved. Just like that, his father took the one thing Cyrus had thought his own – the decision to finally leave – and twisted it. Just like that, Cyrus found himself alone with nothing.

So, he started walking.

PHYSICAL

BODY TYPE: Svelte. Once he begins training with the Inquisition and eating properly, his muscles fill out more, but his overall frame is still relatively lean compared to many of the other soldiers.

EYES: Ice blue

HAIR: Blue-black

SKIN: Light tan

HEIGHT: 5'8”

WEIGHT: 155 LBS / 70.5KG

SKILLS (S.P.E.C.I.A.L + M)

STRENGTH: 6/10; Cyrus is much faster than he is strong, favouring striking swiftly and with sharp precision over getting into contests of strength. He is more likely to break through an opponent’s defence through sheer volley, rather than brute force.

PERCEPTION: 9/10; Cyrus is very perceptive, particularly to people’s moods, from a lifetime spent trying to dodge his father’s foul ones. He seems to always keep one eye open, refusing to fully relax, as though expecting something bad to happen the moment he lets his guard down.

ENDURANCE: 5/10; While fast, Cyrus does tire quickly. The bursts of speed he favours take their toll, and if the fight drags on for too long, he often finds himself in trouble. In training, he dominates in the sprints, but falls back on longer endurance runs.

CHARISMA: 2/10; He is capable of having his moments when he is with someone he trusts, but they come only in short, bright slivers that surprise both Cyrus and the person to whom he is speaking. Majority of the time, he acts like an asshole and goads people into hating him because it is easier for him to handle when he knows he deserves it. It gives him a sense of control over the situation, even if the situation is not a positive one.

INTELLIGENCE: 8/10; Being locked up in the manor had its benefits, given the amount of books his mother had brought with her when she married Cyrus’ father. More often than not, he found comfort in quiet pages. However, Cyrus lacked street smarts, and he learned some very difficult lessons very quickly once his father left him on the side of the road with nothing.

AGILITY: 9/10; He is fast. It is one of the things he prided himself on, and one of the things he could practice without raising suspicion. He learned that when someone is stronger than you, it’s best to just try to avoid their swings, or move with them to lessen the impact.

LUCK: 5/10; A lot of his life could only be defined as unlucky. However, he considered finding the Inquisition and meeting the Dawn Squad one of the luckiest things that could ever happen to anyone.

MAGIC: 0/10; Cyrus is a non-mage, and dislikes healing magic in particular due to one of his father’s servants manifesting and staying on staff to heal the worst of Cyrus’ injuries growing up. In order to stay out of the Circle, the mage-servant agreed to make a blank slate of Cyrus every time he was broken.

LIKES

COLORS: Dark shades that remind him of comfort beneath blankets, warm yellows and oranges (like candlelight), and the blue of the ocean.

SMELLS: The heavy scent before rain, vanilla, wood smoke and parchment.

FOOD: Soft bread and warm butter, cinnamon, salmon, rice, and pork crackling.

FRUITS: Apples, berries, grapes, apricots.

DRINKS: Chai tea, warm water with honey, cool water with lemon and lime, any juice.

ALCOHOLIC DRINKS: Ale, wine, mead, whiskey, brandy… etc. You get the idea. If it’s alcoholic, he’ll drink it.

OTHER

SMOKE: No. His father smokes a pipe, and it is another thing that leaves him feeling queasy just being in the same room and smelling it.

DRUGS: He struggles with an addiction to a sleeping remedy meant for short-term relief after the attack on Haven, but he leans on it for far too long and becomes dependent. The squad eventually finds out and gets him help (in canon, Anacrea finds an alternative and weans him off it).

DRIVER’S LICENSE?: In a modern!AU, he would get his license in his mid to late 20s, having been cooped up for so much of his youth without access to a car.

I will tag... @smolpocketmonstercoffee, @lavellanlove, @the-jade-goblin, @bladeverbena aaaaand @chaitea09 (for one of your other babs) ;D

#get into my oc meme #dragon age oc #cyrus #the dawn squad #dai #tw: child abuse #tw: abuse #he had a really terrible upbringing #which made finding the dawn squad something he desperately needed #and would fight to the death to keep #<3 #thanks for the tag!#reluctant replies #gif #long post #cyrus backstory

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amorremanet · 7 years

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wait so why do you have a problem with "A/B shippers feeling like you're judging them" if the ship you're talking about is keith and shiro aka an underage teenager with an adult???

First off, full disclosure: I could see Keith having a crush on Shiro, but ultimately, I see the whole thing as loving and very intensely devoted on both sides, but still ultimately familial or platonic. I can also see Lance and Keith having crushes on each other, I agree that they have a fun dynamic, and I could see them maybe working out as a romantic couple, but… eh, they’re just not my favorite VLD ship.

I’m also in favor of things like tagging, trigger/content warnings, trying to be more responsible and aware of ourselves as content-creators, and so on — but part of this means that you also have to be okay with the fact that people are going to make things that you don’t like, personally, and may even be triggered by or find abhorrent because people are not always going to be at the same place on the learning curve, people won’t always have the same opinions about what does or doesn’t constitute something, “hurtful” or offensive, and different people get different things out of the same fanworks

(e.g., most people apparently feel heartwarmed and happy when reading domestic fic about their OTPS, and that’s fine…… but for the most part, those fics do nothing for me, at best, and at worst, make me feel like there is just something wrong with me because I understand why other people want that life, but I don’t see myself ever having anything like that, and then I end up feeling like maybe I should just not even bother trying to go be part of LGBTQ spaces — not just in fandom but any and all LGBTQ spaces — because I’m probably ruining everything for everyone else).

There’s value in being open to critically discussing these things, and it’s true that tags/warnings are not always functional (e.g., a lot of people in the past have written non-con fic and tagged it as dub-con, or just not tagged it at all, because of how rape culture has made it so they don’t understand that some situations are not as consensual as they might think) — but this goes all ways. Everyone needs to be self-reflective and open to critical discussion, not just people who ship certain things or like certain tropes. Everyone needs to recognize that they are capable of doing things that hurt other people, and everyone needs to acknowledge that we are all deeply flawed beings and not always right, no matter how much we feel like we might be.

And part of that self-reflection/self-awareness needs to be accepting a degree of personal responsibility, recognizing that not everyone who likes a ship that you don’t is being irresponsible about it, being aware of things that might trigger you and staying away from them (which is never going to be a perfect system, because things like the, “Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings” option are vague, tags are imperfect, blacklisting shit doesn’t always work, etc. — but that doesn’t mean that anyone on any side is right while anyone else is wrong; it means that the situation is more complicated than most of us on all sides want to make it, and that nobody is helping anyone by throwing out ad hominem attacks, reductionistic arguments, and worse)

and (this is going to be a BIG point for me in here, and if it seems like I’m harping on it kind of a lot, that’s because I am) not harassing or suicide-baiting people because they ship a thing that you personally dislike or (gasp, shock, horrors) wrote a fanfic about it.

With the preamble out of the way, now it’s time for the really fun part (which will ideally be all that I have to say on the subject because, as you’ll see in here, this touches on a lot of personal shit for me that I’m much happier NOT shoving my face in all over again)

If you don’t agree with my take on things when I’m done, that’s fine. We don’t have to agree as long as we can respect each other while disagreeing — but you know what would be the best for my mental health, in terms of talking about anything, Voltron-wise? Dealing with these arguments as little as possible because I would rather not relapse into active suicidal ideation again.

Want to talk Voltron with me? Cool. All I ask is that you ask me about, for instance, my dumb college AU headcanons — which have, among other things, Hunk/Keith/Lance, Matt/Shiro, Allura/Shay, a lot of Keith & Shiro brother feels, Pidge being 15 and usually some degree of Done with everybody, and Lotor the preening douchebag fratbro — or my “#someone please help takashi shirogane” tag, or how Keith is autistic as Hell and Lance and Hunk have ADHD, not about the latest round of fans being complete assholes to each other.

Anyway, anon is speaking in reference to this post that I made while I was barely awake last night.

cw for discussion of abuse, harassment, suicide-baiting, and suicidal ideation underneath the read more.

1. Those ages are not actually canon.

Yes, they are a fair interpretation of canon, but until they are actually said in the show itself, they’re not fully fledged canon and you can’t expect everyone in the fandom to agree on them OR to know what you’re talking about when you treat them as if they’re canon

Also, not everyone keeps up with every single panel, every single interview, every single thing that TPTB say or post on social media, etc., and no one should ever *NEED* to keep up with absolutely every single piece of anything that is even remotely related to the thing they like in order to be part of the fandom — especially not when statements made by TPTB are often vague and/or self-contradictory, as statements made by TPTB often are (not specifically VLD’s TPTB, but TPTB for every fandom I have ever been in, even when there was just one creator, like JKR)

Like, if you understand that someone isn’t, “less of a fan” of Marvel or DC just because they haven’t read absolutely every story even remotely involving their faves, can’t tell you everything about the weird period where Wolverine’s backstory involved him being not a mutant in the usual sense but an actual facts wolverine who had been turned into a humanoid shape by “genetic engineering” magic, like [the movies, the Teen Titans cartoon or Young Justice or X-Men: Evolution, or whatever] more than the comics, and so on

—then you should damn well understand that someone is not, “less of a fan” for not keeping up on absolutely every single thing that TPTB say in any context ever, and that someone isn’t “wrong” or a “lesser fan” coming to an interpretation of the characters’ respective ages based solely on the show because that is the only thing they watch related to the fandom

Speaking of JKR, though: frankly, I see this age thing as being a very similar situation to how JKR “confirmed” that Dumbledore is gay…… in a special thing at Carnegie Hall, a few months after DH first came out (she made those statements in October 2007. I was a freshman in college, and everyone in the grindeldore comm on LJ absolutely lost our shit over it).

Sure, it spread like wildfire, but a ton of people at the time decided that it didn’t count as canon because it wasn’t in the books (so they were allowed to keep acting like Dumbledore/McGonagall had been canon when it hadn’t been), and someone who is just reading the books without knowing about that interview would not necessarily know that Dumbledore is gay (which is entirely why JKR does not get Good Ally Cookies™ for just going, “lol he’s gay” only after all the books had been published and she’d inked all the future movie deals)

Likewise: someone who only watches the show would have no way of knowing all of the things that have been said or not about the characters’ ages (I am literally only vaguely aware of it because of having friends on all sides of the debate and hearing about different parts of everything from them)

Until the ages that some people assign to Shiro and Keith (and everyone else, besides) are actual facts, in the show canon, treating them as if they are isn’t fair or accurate, and you can’t hold people accountable for it when it’s not in the show and the extra-canonical statements don’t actually agree with each other

and 2. (way more importantly) Because I have seen the receipts on people harassing, suicide-baiting, abusing, etc. people over shipping Keith/Shiro romantically, and aside from the fact that the ages people are using to justify said behavior are not hard-facts, full truth canon, I don’t believe that it is ever right or acceptable to tell other human beings to kill themselves, that they deserve to die, or similar just because they have a different read on canon and/or like a different ship than you do.

Don’t tell me that nobody does that, because I’ve seen the receipts about how they very much have.

To be fair, I have also seen receipts about bad behavior from the Keith/Shiro shippers and I’m not saying that it doesn’t happen.

I’m saying that I’ve seen a lot more of it from the people bashing the Keith/Shiro shippers and I understand why Keith/Shiro shippers might feel uncomfortable or judged or like I’m going to attack them just because I love the Keith and Shiro relationship as much as they do, I just don’t ship it romantically.

I’m also not saying that there aren’t good points on all sides… but all sides ALSO have a lot of points that are, frankly, full of shit.

Don’t tell me that it’s only a vocal minority who does this, because that might be true (in my experience, it almost certainly is), but until the silent majority stands up and tells said “vocal minority” that suicide-baiting people is not okay, then the relative sizes of their contingents does not fucking matter — because the people doing the suicide-baiting are still allowed to continue doing it.

Look. On one hand, I am sensitive to this, because I have personally been harassed, cyberstalked, suicide-baited, and worse in other fandoms — all because I didn’t ship one thing, I did ship others, and I tried to go, “Hey, the way that you guys are treating other fans isn’t cool and you really shouldn’t do that” when some fans treated others like shit for not liking their OTP and wanting to have some kind of space in the fandom where they could like their faves and ship their ships without every single thing being turned into S//terek some other ship

Maybe it’s just me? But as someone who has found themself needing to get put on new anxiety meds and a higher dose of their antidepressants because of people on the Internet refusing to give me peace and telling me to kill myself (or similar) over not shipping their ship and saying that they shouldn’t harass other fans — and then still found myself, at one point, counting out my anxiety meds to figure out if I could overdose on what I had, and only realized how bad this was because my head was too muddled to do the fucking math?

Yeah, you could say that I have a bias in favor of, “Don’t fucking suicide-bait people” and can understand why the behavior of some people who bash Keith/Shiro might make the people who ship it romantically feel like they’d be in danger of bashing or personal attacks from me just because I don’t personally read their relationship as one that is or could be romantic

On the other hand: I’m sensitive to this because I have also done a lot of shit that I’m not proud of while trying to go, “Hey, guys, this pattern or this behavior in the fandom is pretty racist, ableist, misogynistic, abusive, or whatever, otherwise gross; it’s not cool and we should stop enabling it.”

I understand where a lot of the intensity comes from, on the parts of the people who believe that they’re trying to make their fandoms of choice into better and/or safer spaces, more accessible to more people and more fun for more people — and in theory, I support the move to make fandoms safer…… but I can’t support a practice of doing this that repeats so many of the same mistakes that have hurt people before, have hurt me personally before, and/or that I personally did that hurt other people before.

Also? Because I have been there, done that, and gotten approximately twenty-seven t-shirts, I know how easy it is to lose sight of what you think you are doing, how easy it is to lose perspective on what you’re doing, and how easy it is to start doing shit that actively hurts people (and not to any constructive end), while you are nominally trying not to hurt people

So, I’m not unsympathetic to the people who’ve been bashing Keith/Shiro shippers and I don’t think that most of them are bad people — but I still know, from having been on both sides of this, that what I have seen of a lot of their behavior is doing more harm than good (and fun fact, it was the biggest reason why I didn’t watch VLD at all until my goddaughters [who are 12 and 14] watched it, fell in love, and I wanted to know what they were talking about)

TL;DR: I’m concerned about the feelings and comfort of Keith/Shiro shippers, and not making them feel uncomfortable or like they are going to be attacked if I want to venture out into their fan-spaces, because I understand that they have been targeted and hurt before, in ways that I consider to be completely unacceptable because I’ve hurt people in the same ways before and been hurt by similar behaviors

—and if you can understand that someone might not feel comfortable being friends with someone because they romantically ship a couple that you interpret as being an adult and a teenager, despite the fact that this IS NOT hard-facts canon? then you should damn well understand why someone might not feel entirely safe or comfortable being friends with someone who doesn’t romo-ship their OTP, when not romo-shipping their OTP tends to be directly correlated to shit like stalking, harassment, abusive anon comments, and fucking suicide-baiting

—and I really cannot stress enough how much the suicide-baiting point shits me, okay.

Like, I have dealt with suicidal ideation and attempts since I was eight years old. I hate and am deeply ashamed of the fact that I have ever made other people feel as low as I have when I’ve wanted to die. I still struggle a LOT with blaming myself for, “letting other people [online and offline] make me feel like that,” despite knowing that I shouldn’t blame myself and despite the fact that I have told other people NOT to blame themselves for this kind of thing before.

If I’m an irredeemably terrible person for feeling like nobody ever deserves to be suicide-baited over what they ship or don’t ship, and that, even if they don’t tag as responsibly as they could, they deserve to be treated with the bare minimum of interpersonal decency and not attacked until such point as they start actively attacking someone else in the same ways that everyone who sends harassment, suicide-baiting, etc. has done and continues to do?

—then fine, I guess I’ll be an irredeemably terrible person.

I’d rather need to have difficult discussions, try to have them in the most constructive way possible for as many people as possible, accept a flawed system in the hopes of making it better, accept that (unfortunately) there is no such thing as a perfectly safe space for everyone and that trying to make any given space safer is always going to be an incredibly difficult task that involves some degree of compromise and some kind of Choices by all involved, and try my best to treat people with empathy, compassion, and understanding

It’s not an easy solution, it’s not always a particularly comforting way to approach things, and in my experience, it will demand a LOT from anyone who wants to go this route

But I’ve made people feel terrible over things that were not nearly as “pure” or ideologically righteous or important as I thought they were, and I have been suicide-baited more than enough for one lifetime (I’ve been suicide-baited by my own mother more than enough for one lifetime, never mind having it happen in fandom spaces too), and I hope that you’ll understand if I have no desire to go back to either of those places — especially not the one where I make people feel like shit, and especially when I’m trying to be a better person and not do things like that to people

This is rambling and repetitive and has really stopped being a TL;DR summary

I’m sorry, I stand by what I’ve said but I haven’t gotten more than 5 hours of sleep a night in the past three days and it’s doing a number on my attention span

I’m done talking now

Here’s a picture of my family’s dog as a reward for making it this far (unless you’ve decided to flame me while reading, in which case this is still a picture of our dog but it’s not a reward for you, I just can’t stop you from looking at it)

(okay, I couldn’t pick just one picture of our dog, so here she is being lazy and dressed as a lobster for Halloween, respectively)

#tangentially since i brought it up: happy 10th birthday to harry potter & the deathly hallows #but in all seriousness: i would appreciate it if this is all that i need to say on this subject #there's a reason why i generally don't talk about this shit in public anymore #and the reason is that i don't like being in a suicidal headspace #so i'm taking personal responsibility and trying to stop doing things that put me there #like for instance engaging with debates where people have been suicide baited #when man i just want to have sad headcanons & know how i'm supposed to tag them #so that i don't end up unwittingly hurting someone else (and preferably do not get suicide-baited again but in a new fandom)#ask box tag #opinions for ts #wank for ts #fandom shenanigans #mine: fandom blah blah blah #kassie hush #kassie watches netflix voltron #suicide baiting cw #suicidal ideation cw #Anonymous

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