just binged all of redstone and skulk in one go. HOLY SHIT!!! i left some comments on ao3 but that wasn't enough. i needed to come to your tumblr too bc this fic has Changed Me A Little. it makes sense- i've been subscribed to you on ao3 for a while (remember hound's tooth? i think that was when i started following your writing. and monsters splitting hairs, although i'm not quite caught up on that one), and that was for a good reason- but tanguish and helsknight are something else! part of why i like fanfiction is because i get to see more of characters i already like- it takes a special fic to get me so invested in characters i've basically just met! and you do it so well! like. the subtle character things! the way i can pick out the hermits' (and martyn's, but i'm calling him a hermit for the sake of convenience) traits in the helsmits, but warped and twisted around like a funhouse mirror? fantastic. i love it. im eating that shit up. the ilttle differences and similarities between tango and tanguish, helsknight and wels (bc he isn't acting very knightly right now), impulse and the demon- it's so cool to see! i also saw the other ask you got where you talked about your process, and how you give your characters a list of traits as a guide to writing them- i'm definitely going to have to borrow that trick. it works! so well! it shows in your writing in the consistency of how the characters behave!

some other thoughts i had while reading:

helsknight being religious probably has a lot more to do with him being a knight than wels being a lutheran irl (which is where his name comes from and i find that hilarious), but still. if it's unintentional it's hilarious and if it's on purpose then it's a fun easter egg!

i relate to and understand tanguish, because i too would want to befriend helsknight, and also because if a bunch of big scary people basically adopted me and tried to teach me how to use a knife i would be so pathetic about it.

i relate to and understand helsknight and tango, because tanguish is the weirdest little cat ever and i too am captivated by his pathetic little freak charms, and i want to be his friend.

i neither relate to nor understand wels, because 1) if i saw my friend's presumably-evil counterpart skulking around the shopping district i would likely call them first (just seems like the polite thing to do, and also bc if helsknight showed up and the ppl who found him didn't call wels about it i feel like he'd probably be more than a little pissed), and 2) look at tanguish. he's just a little guy. he's a little guy and it's his birthday. how could you be mean to him.

tl;dr: redstone and skulk has compelled me to the point that leaving comments on ao3 wasn't enough, i needed to ramble straight into your inbox because it's just so good.

Oh my gosh! Firstly: thank you for all the kind words! I'm glad you're liking my writing so far, and thank you both for the comments and the scurry into the inbox. I love hearing people's thoughts, even if I don't have the spoons to respond to everyone all the time :'D

For your bullet points:

-- I didn't know Wels was Lutheran! I knew he was ex-military, and at least in my family's trends, military and religiosity go hand in hand, so it makes sense. But still! Learning new fun facts! I know nothing about the Lutheran Church [I was raised Baptist.] Probably gonna do some reading later.

-- I feel like Tanguish is going through that phase of "all the biker/military uncles have decided I'm one of them for some reason" and as someone who has gone through that before, for the same baffling non-reasons [used power tools in their presence once, a la Tanguish barely participating in a fight once] I sympathize. Very interesting somewhat scary people. Why did you invite me to sit at your table. Why do you keep slipping me tequila and buying me knives like I'm in on the joke.

-- Tanguish is such a specimen we all just want to look at him under a microscope. He is so scared yet so brave. He thinks knives are scary but he leaps off buildings. He's scared of getting hurt and seeing blood but he has no regard for his personal safety. How do you fit so many oxymorons in such a tiny body---

-- Wels please, he's a little guy and it's his birthday! Stop bullying him!!

Addendum: I agree Jackrabbit is very Tanguish coded. It is now on the playlist.

Want to live like an animal?

By the skin of your teeth?

Put your good face on, you're foolin' no one

You're a jackrabbit underneath

One step forward, step right back

Run for the hills, honey, run for the hills, honey

Run for the hills, don't look back

Have you watched Buddy Daddies? If you have do you like it?

Random ask....Do you think anime like Free, Sk8, Jeweler Richard and Yuri on Ice are queerbaiting or at least have semi canon couples? I mean I love those anime series and my fav otps are from those series, but what do you think?

P.s Love your latest meta, it really made my day and when I read them, I also found answers to my internal questions my self...Thanks for sharing them...( I'm not the anon who asked that)...

💐🌷🥰🤩

Hello! Today's great coincidence that made me chuckle into my morning tea was getting asked about my opinion on queerbaiting by two different people, 1-hour apart 🤣 Thanks a lot, both of you! I'll put my two cents down about queerbaiting discourse in anime and I know it's silly to mention but just to be sure, these are all opinions, and my opinions only. 

Before I start rambling about gays, no I haven't seen Buddy Daddies yet. I've been very excited about it ever since I've seen the PV but as you may know, I decided to review every first episode of the Winter 2023 season so I'm pretty much swamped... I'm saving Buddy Daddies to savor it! If you wait a bit, you'll be reading my first impressions of it soon. 

So. Okay. Queerbait. First of all, definitions because for the love of BL gods, people have been throwing words around without knowing what they mean. 

According to this interesting book that's been sitting on my TBR pile, Queerbating and Fandom: Teasing Fans Through Homoerotic Possibilities, the definition of queerbaiting is as follows: 

Queerbaiting describes an industry tactic where “those officially associated with a media text court viewers interested in LGBT narratives... without the text ever definitely confirming the nonheterosexuality of the relevant characters.” For this reason, the term is seen as exploitative, and when fans use it to describe a series, its marketing, or the actions of producers, they are engaging in a “form of queer activism.”

There are other terms coined by the scholars such as "covert courting" (i.e. targeting gay consumers using subtle elements not intended to be picked up by heterosexual audiences) etc. but in my opinion, these terms are built upon the presupposition that there is a queer audience to bait into consuming your media. And I'm not sure whether there's a group of audience that is acknowledged as queer in the minds of producers and/or creators in Japan. 

What they want to tap into according to yours truly, however, is FujoMoney. No, it's not a new currency, although now I kind of wish it was. There's an interesting video on it that delves deeper into the topic but in short, they are after the buying and creating potential of shippers. Creating fan content is, in itself, a grey area legally but it's overlooked because the franchise profits from it immensely. A similar practice, if you're or have been into K-pop at some point, is the fansites. Normally, they shouldn't be allowed to make merchandise off of the artists and gain profit from it. However, they attend concerts out of their own pockets, take these photographs using their own cameras, and contribute greatly to the group or the individual artist's popularity. Tl;dr: it's free real estate for the companies. 

So I guess the term we're looking for is fujobait, rather than queerbait. What the higher-ups want to attract are shippers who are buyers and/or fancreators. Look at any sports anime and you'll see. There have been multiple times when I got into a series because I've seen a shippy fanart or a video edit of a character. And to be honest, if I was more fortunate economically, they'd be making that kind of monetary profit through merch off of me as well. xD

While queerbait and fujobait might seem like they mean the same thing, they eventually are not because the former capitalizes on real-life stigmatized identity while the latter relies on a consumer's practice of queering the content at hand. I'm personally not as interested in putting the label of "right" or "wrong" on these terms, so I'll leave it at this for now. 

Moving on to the series you mentioned, they can't all be put into the same box, but can be divided into two groups where Free and Sk8 rely more on fanservice and the intricacies of the relationships are left to the shippers' imaginations while Jeweler Richard and Yuuri!!! on ICE are entirely different. Especially, Yuuri!!! on ICE because there's no room left for discussion or different readings that Yuuri and Victor are a couple. They literally get married, and the only reason some people still to this day question whether they are canon or not is because of eurocentrism/racism. I come across reels of real-life women taking a ring out and putting it on the ring finger of another woman with people cheering in the background and no one is asking to see their marriage registration in the comments. On the contrary, they congratulate them! The exact same scene is there in animated form, so why do we even question its validity? 

In the case of Jeweler Richard, sadly light novels aren't my thing. I have only seen the anime and have read the first volume of the manga. However, I've read an extensive blog post on the light novels comparing them to the anime adaptation. From the blog post, their relationship is evident even though to an anime-only it might come off as implied. I personally didn't think it was implied even in the anime, but if anyone else did, we have our answers in the source material. 

All of this then begs the question: does having things spelled out on screen matter? If yes, to what extent it matters? I mentioned in the previous meta post that the consumers of Asian media are already lucky when it comes to the existence and variety of such content. I'm personally someone who's in favor of having media to consume at hand instead of waiting for the Perfect Representation. I don't even want representation, because what is representation anyway for a non-monolithic community with a deep, rich history? I want portrayal, and while having things openly said is cathartic and something I want to have, I won't discredit the works I enjoy and find meaning in just for the sake of it. Especially content that come from countries with heavy censorship or a high possibility of GP backlash.

Plus, while I'm not in any Chinese BL or BL-adjacent work fandoms, I watched dramas here or there and have a lot of mutuals who are actively in the fandoms of certain series, so through osmosis, I learn a couple of things as well. I've seen people talking about the cultural significance of certain choices in these works that someone who's not well-versed in the codes of the Chinese culture won't be able to pick up, i.e. characters wearing red can be an insinuation on marriage because red is a color worn in weddings. Or there's no way I would pick up that Chinese BL dramas are dubbed over just so they can pass censorship. Would it be better if China were to be supportive of LGBTQA+? 100%. Should people there push for the content they'd like to see or portrayals that they see themselves in? Without a doubt. Should it mean that they should get nothing until they get exactly what they want? A hard no. There must be still works that portray such relationships even if they are implied because I see this attempt as getting a foot in the door. 

To sum everything up: what I want is to enjoy what I read/watch and share it with others while trying to keep a critical eye on as much as I can. My background is in STEM and I'm not formally educated in humanities anyway. What I try to do is to read and discuss questions I have in mind, and writing helps me order and expand my thoughts. I find value in trying to keep an open mind instead of gatekeeping and micro-analyzing every little thing, or at least, I try not to let them take the fun out of it. To quote the great Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts:

I am not interested in hermeneutics, or erotics, or metaphorics, of my anus. I am interested in ass-fucking.

Easily one of the best books I've read in 2022. Pure brilliance.

so if you were a bit of an occasional drama queen, a bit of a 'fuck around' and an absolutely flirt - Rita surely wouldn't have time of day for any games or to pursue anything with you despite your attempts?

*sighs*

Rita is a woman in her forties (minimum), with a very full time job, and it's very clear even in canon she doesn't put up with bullshit. Her partner needs to understand that, understand that she's busy, she brings work home and needs to regularly, that she won't always be able to pick up the phone or come running over when you need her (she still will though). She still has a playful and bit chaotic side to her, but it's in a mature way (if that makes sense, I can't think of how to word it otherwise. similar to Liz Donnelly). She also isn't going to date someone who's super young simply because a lot of the time, they don't have their shit together. she needs someone who she knows has a good head on their shoulders, has their finances sorted and reliable income, steady full time job (doesn't have to be a white collar job, she's not gonna judge if you work retail or at a restaurant, she doesn't care if you work at mcdonalds as long as it's a steady situation). She also wants to be with someone who she can bring to the galas, the work events and the like and who can uphold the right image and her reputation and keep up with the conversation topics. Her partner has to have some similar interests, be able to get along with her friends, she wants to be able to get along with their friends, she's not going to be going to house parties with you on the weekends or anything.

Rita Calhoun absolutely does not have time for games. End of story. If she sees something she likes, she goes and gets it. If she's interested in someone she's not going to beat around the bush, she's going to flirt, and boldly. she's not going to hold back, she's going to straight up ask someone out, and if it's another woman she's making sure to specify it's a date. she also is upfront about what she wants, she's not going to wine and dine you if she just wants a fuck. She's going to walk up to you, or send you a text, or a call and just be all "be at my place in ten." she's gonna be upfront if it's FWB, one night stand, or if she wants romance out of it too. And if you're trying to woo her and you're not specific, or are playing hard to get, or shit like that, she's gonna walk away from it.

if it's a hookup, one night stand, random met at a bar thing, she'll push the boundaries a little bit, let herself go out of her main pool of choices, maybe going for younger than usual, or for someone who may be dramatic some days, but a). she aint gonna see any of that cause she's gonna fuck them and then go home and b). she's straight up that this is a one night stand and that's it, there's probably no last name exchanged, and certainly no phone numbers. if there was, and she thinks "hmm.. maybe this one could workout?" you're on thin ice until she's *sure* and if you start being immature and dramatic she's gonna be all "okay, this was a mistake."

TL;DR: No. she wouldn't

if you wanted me to write something along the lines of the original ask, i will, but it will be angsty.

Can I ask a question about past ex. So Yoki (and Ishawuu to a lesser extent if I recall) speak a rather archaic form of pastex creole. Do they pick up parts of contemporary speech or grammar?

Yeah !! They both do it in different ways tho. Both their first languages are English, and they also know Spanish fluently + snippets of a few others, but Ishawuu speaks in a much more modern way than Yoki.

(Edit: I have a tl;dr at the end if any1 wants to know but doesnt want to read it all)

Ishawuu has a really weird form of speaking tho- she was sorta there for the whole development of the language (Her bug malfunctioned a bit after the bombs, so as doctors were working on fixing her she heard it change from spanish to the creole over time. Then when she was out of the hospital she picked it up more from other ppl). Even tho she speaks it fluently, she still mixes between old and new slang/speech patterns/inflection/etc. It's understandable, just like,,, a bit weird at times for ppl.

A lot of them probably just assume shes just from some weird settlement that has a suuper different dialect. Largely different dialects are rlly common bcs even after pastex creole was commonplace, the geography made it easy for them to diverge- most ppl live on/near the coasts, so since The Andes are Right There, the mountains prohibit easy movement.

(Edit- the next paragraph isn't actually abt the question at all its just me rambling. U can totslly skip it lol)

Actually, thats a major reason South America has so many isolate languages!! If you look up SA isolate languages, the majority of them are from countries that The Andes run through. That, combined with the fact that its harder to travel north or south opposed to east or west (Thats a major reason NA and SA native technology developmeny differ so much/are much more cebtralized in comparison to eurasia or africa- both those places are Really Wide, but since the climate and temperature stays very similar horizontally, they could travel and spread knowledge. The Americas are more vertical, so the more you went north or south the more the climage would change to things you're not accustomed to/have clothes for)

Im getting super off topic. Anyway, as for Yoki, he speaks it like. just really weirdly. He WASN'T there for its development, he was trapped under debris. He might've understood it better within its first hundred or so years while it was still somewhat similar to Spanish, but he was only found abt 150-200 years after lol.

When he first came out he studied it a lot to speak/understand it, but he kinda stopped trying to sound perfect w/ all the different dialects and the chanhes over time. He HAS been around for ~200 years with the language, so he 100% Understands it, but speaking it is like,,,, He COULD speak it with better and much more modern grammer and words, but its wayyy harder to do that if he can still be understood with the way he speaks.

I stylize it as middle english (To my very poor understand of it, at least) since theres no other way to rlly show how hes speaking, but really hes likee. Mixing a bit of spanish grammer + very old pastex creole on a way that has the least effort on his part while still being understood by other ppl.

tl;dr- Ishawuu was there for the language development, so while she speaks pretty well and modern, she sometimes has a little of some older parts mixed in

Yoki only started learning it later and hes also really lazy, so he willingly soeaks very archaicly bcs its a hassle to try and use perfect grammer when it chabhes so much over time and through dialects.

I can’t get over the whedonian take on Michelangelo’s pieta in The Gift. How Giles is closest to her dead body, father near daughter, a sort of inverse of Mary and Christ.

oh man, you really nerd-sniped me with this one. apologies in advance for how long this is, but that ending scene from “the gift” is actually really interesting to me from an art perspective! 

cut for length.

first off, for reference. here’s michelangelo’s pietà and then the shot from “the gift”:

clearly, they’re pretty similar. both feature a parental figure mourning the dead body of a foregrounded martyr. though i also think the differences highlight how the show breaks with traditional christian symbolism. like you pointed out, the genders are inverted, for one. and the visual emphasis on buffy rather than giles means that the scene is as much about buffy’s heroism as it is about parental grief. she’s much further in the foreground and her face is tilted towards the camera. whereas the pietà is very much about mary to me--mary looks almost larger than jesus, and his face is tilted away where hers is straight on. (related, there’s something to the fact that buffy is both a parent and a child in season five...so it wouldn’t make sense for her to be the centerpiece of an image that is purely about a parent mourning a child; perhaps that duality is reflected in the fact that buffy’s expression looks like mary’s). the distance between buffy and her friends also, to me, suggests that slayer isolation that dogs buffy the whole show. she isn’t wrapped in anyone’s arms. more on this in a bit.

but overall, the scene actually reminds more strongly of another, similar genre: the deposition of christ. also known as “the descent from the cross”. instead of focusing on the relationship between jesus and mary, deposition scenes feature the reactions of everyone around jesus as his body is taken off of the cross. do i think that the show was deliberately referencing this genre? no idea. it’s probably more likely that if the show was referencing anything, it was referencing the pietà, since that’s a much more famous image--and the triangular composition of both scenes echo each other. though i wouldn’t say 100% no, since the deposition is famous in its own right. if you know anything about christian art history you’ll have encountered deposition scenes (rogier van der weyden’s deposition in particular is incredibly famous and important in the context of art history. if you take any western art history class from that period, you will most likely learn about it.). and if you looked up pictures of jesus in a reference book, there’s a good chance they’d show up. but regardless of intent the similarity is nonetheless interesting to me.

to see what i mean, here’s are some examples of deposition scenes from three different countries and eras: rogier van der weyden (flemish, 1425), jusepe de ribera, (spanish, 1637), and jean beraud (french, 1892).

again just composition-wise, you can probably see the similarities for yourself. but content-wise, there are really interesting comparisons too. you see the figure behind christ in the first one, that’s taking him off of the cross? that’s nicodemus, who was a pharisee, ie a member of the sanhedrin, a council of jewish leaders. the story goes that the sanhedrin were responsible for arresting jesus, accusing him of various forms of heresy. they handed him over to pontius pilate, who eventually condemned him to death. nicodemus, however, was inclined to believe in jesus and secretly went to visit him at night and ask him about his teachings. you might see where i’m going with this. again, no idea what degree of intent was involved on the part of the writers, but the similarities between giles and nicodemus interest me. like nicodemus, giles is a member of a council of elders who pronounces judgement on buffy. he both goes against that council, and still to some extent belongs to it. and like nicodemus, giles has a central position behind buffy. i like the idea of the deposition being relevant here, because it means that giles has both parental and patriarchal connotations. which fits his role in the show in general.

spike is also interesting to me in light of the deposition genre, because he’s the only character who is shown broken down in tears. and usually, that’s the role of the female subjects in these scenes. i like it because of how it fits with the other ways in which the show sometimes has spike play a conventionally female narrative role relative to buffy. (if i went really crazy, i might say something about how mary’s collapsed posture in the first one echoes jesus’ posture and how spike falls from the tower just like buffy. as in, both jesus/mary and buffy/spike are shown in postures of descent, or deposition, in both works.)

lastly, this genre is interesting to me for how it often portrays jesus as a highlight in a field of mourners. you can see this in the beraud most strongly. in general, any buffy-as-jesus comparisons are difficult to get an exact hold on, given that--and as i discuss in this post--the writers tended to use their martyr imagery subversively. which makes sense, given whedon’s atheism. but the main way in which i think a buffy-jesus comparison is interesting in season five, is if you think of them as examples of having dual natures. jesus is famously both human and divine, just as buffy in season five is both human and heroic. both natural and supernatural. so the thing about jesus’s death, just like buffy’s death, is that it is a kind of triumph of both of his selves. he dies--which is about the most human thing you can do (literally an act of mortality), but he does so for the sake of humanity.

point is, if you see you see buffy and jesus both as figures of duality, then their isolated relationship to the people around them gains some layers. because on the one hand, both of them have been brought to earth, which emphasizes their human mortality. they are of the earth. but they are also apart from it. there’s also the way that they are now apart just by virtue of being dead. this apartness is particularly pronounced in “the gift”, given again, that no one is even touching buffy (just like dawn never quite touched joyce at the end of “the body”). there might be some foreshadowing of the aimlessness of season six, in that all of these characters are cut off from their purpose with buffy’s death.

there’s something also possibly to say, in terms of the buffy-jesus relationship to mortality, about how buffy actively flings herself from the tower to the mortal plane, whereas jesus passively accepts his death and is lowered to earth by others.

at any rate, these are all very much half-thoughts, and like i said i’m unsure whether the comparisons i’m making were deliberate. but at the very least they interest me from the perspective of “two different works with similar subjects converged on similar imagery.” i think in both cases, the point of showing a whole group of people is to show the wider impact of a sacrifice. if “the gift” is playing with the pietà, it might also be doing something with the idea that all of these people are buffy’s “family”, and so it’s necessary for all of them to play roles in the mourning scene, rather than a single mother. regardless, however you cut things, the blurring of the conventional symbolism--while still using the basic sacrifice imagery--definitely seems very in-character for the way that btvs uses tropes.

So out of nowhere I was tagged and quoted by a SR shipper for a blog of mine posted in August of last year. Talk about throwback but, hey, gotta appreciate that level of snooping. 😉

Back in the day I actually used to encourage discourse amongst Inuyasha fans- both shippers and antis alike- but I've since realized that it's a lost cause. But for you, @feministmetalgreymon , I'll grant this exception. Just 'cause it's been a while so why the hell not. haha

I want to assure you, however, that nothing you say will ever convince me that Sesshomaru and Rin are meant to be together romantically or that the story intended it so. Nor will you find any validation here. You can ship them for all I care, but please for all that is good and holy while I have your attention try- I mean really try- to understand why it is so many of us Inuyasha fans are so against this pairing in the first place (newsflash: it's not about ship wars), and why we believe a romance between the two of them is completely and utterly out of character.

For those of you interested in reading this, the blog of mine in question that the above shipper mentions in their counter-argument is here for reference. It's titled "Jaken = Rin's Dad?" I'm going to try and keep this short, but I'm also making no such promises. After all, I'm not exactly known for my brevity. haha Now let's get crackin'!

Like you, feministmetalgreymon, did for your recent blog here where you took screenshots of mine to address certain parts, I will be doing the same and dissecting yours accordingly.

[Snippet 1]

I worked with kids for many years as a teacher, and many people in my family have too or still do. Two of them happen to be just over 5 feet which is quite short for the average adult woman living here. I've also worked alongside many a women of short stature, and never did I hear any of them complaining of issues with their students having difficulty differentiating them from their own peers just because they were short as well. I'm sorry but that's just ridiculous. Kids are quite smart and pick up on a lot more than you seem to give them credit for. Height is not the only characteristic they look at to determine who's an adult and who's not, and it's foolish to suggest otherwise. So unless you're a babysitter who's still in their teens and/or who has very childlike features or behavior then I'm afraid what you're getting at is total hogwash. This is just another example of how you shippers offer nothing of real substance to your reasoning, it's only ever cherry-picking or strawmanning from you guys. Stop deflecting from the real issues please, because this certainly isn't one and only winds up being a complete waste of time for all parties involved.

[Snippet 2]

Okay, calm down now. I wasn't insinuating that relationships between parents and children can't change over time in terms of how they get along. Of course that's possible, as all families experience their fair share of estrangement and abuse. What I was speaking about was in reference to the overall dynamic between the two. Because a bad mother or father can still be viewed as a parental figure to their child even if say they're not in said child's life anymore. Since Sesshomaru and Rin share a healthy bond- and just a friendly reminder that in my blog I even said that he doesn't have to necessarily be labeled her father but that a romantic relationship later would still be inappropriate- I didn't deem it necessary to address what you brought up. Plus, it kinda, umm, misses the point?? Please, let's stay on topic. And it's not captured in the screenshot, but stop acting like there isn't a small part of them that idolizes their parents at some point during childhood. Just like you mention later on how it's normal for kids to have innocent crushes on adults that they eventually grow out of? Well, guess what, the same concept applies here. Kids eventually learn that their parents are far from perfect and make mistakes too. Rin is so damn young in the OG series though that we never even get to see her reach that maturity level.

[Snippet 3]

LOL! Alright, okay, so the "unbreakable bond" bit you're mentioning was actually me quoting you sessrinners. Did you not catch that? I literally spelled it out. *sigh* The whole point I was making is that shippers like yourself make hypocritical and contradictory statements all.the.goddamn.time. One moment you guys claim that Sesshomaru and Rin were essentially strangers and meant very little to each other, only to say in the same breath a few seconds later that they were destined to be together and their bond is like no other. I agree, their bond is special, but why must that mean they're going to fall in love?

That is the root of the matter here. Too many animes/mangas have romanticized this older adult man & young girl growing up falling in love trope that it's become way too normalized and widely accepted across the world- and yes, in some cultures more than others. Sadly, you lack the awareness to recognize how this all works. You know how we know that? When we see that you shippers are so desensitized to sexualized images of girls in the media that you share posts like this one below which *subtly* imply a future romance although one half of that pairing is still just a child in the pic and then try and pass it off as cute. That's like super fucking problematic and it scares me that you can't see that (or deny you do). 🤢

After all that's said and done, Sesshomaru leaving Rin in the village with Kaede is to me the strongest indicator more than pretty much anything else he's done for Rin that proves he is her adoptive father. It's so funny to me how you somehow see the exact opposite though. 🤔 What I think is happening is that you got yourself on some squeaky clean ass shipper goggles fresh out of your little echo chamber. Because I hate to tell you, but what you're fantasizing is what you want to see and not what's actually there on screen or was written into the story. I'm strictly talking about Inuyasha and the manga of course. [For the TL; DR version skip to the last paragraph.]

Parents looking after their kids is what parents are supposed to do. A good parent will do anything to keep their child safe and ensure they are cared for, so what he did for her by leaving her there was in her best interests clearly. Besides, as a babysitter, you more than most people should understand that parents aren't always able to be there for their kids so sometimes others gotta step in to help. Haven't you heard of the saying, "it takes a village to raise a child?" Which in Rin's case is literally true! 😂 Sometimes kids are even sent off to stay with grandparents and that's who raises them instead. Or maybe they have to temporarily live with an aunt or uncle because their single parent's job requires they work out of town 4-5 days of the week so they're hardly home. But that doesn't mean that the parents care or love their kids any less, and it's foolish to assume that Sesshomaru must have thought very little of Rin simply due to the fact that he made the decision to leave her in the village. Come on, y'all are acting like he abandoned her there!!

It's just given the circumstances Sesshomaru finally came to learn that Rin traveling with him was no longer safe. I also like to think it's because he wished for her to live a more normal life and to learn how to fully trust humans again. Plus, continuing to travel with him as young as she was would have proven dangerous and unwise. Now for you to know all this and still manage to turn his past actions towards her while she was just a child into a romantic gesture is what boggles my mind. Regardless of how you look at it, from my perspective or your own, Sesshomaru is in the wrong. Either he's a father figure who impregnates his daughter at the young age of approximately 14. OR he's this man she used to travel with who maybe isn't a father to her but who nonetheless basically rapes her since kids her age can't consent to sex with an adult. Idk about you but it sounds to me like nobody here wins with either scenario we're given. In other words, you should be just as mad as we are. If only one side didn't choose to forsake their morals they know we both have in common for the sake of a ship. Welp. 🤷‍♀️

I agree, incest is disgusting but that's not the only problem we have with this pairing. A romantic bond forming between Sesshomaru and Rin would also constitute as grooming.

You realize that over the years he visited her in the village that he brought her gifts too and essentially watched her grow up right before his very eyes, right? I mean, I know you do, but I really shouldn't have to explain further why pursuing a romantic/sexual relationship with each other is plain and simple wrong. And before you say it's not because he didn't have any malintent, please understand that considering their history and power dynamic up to then that yes this is still considered grooming even if Rin supposedly "wanted it" or "made the first move." Whether you consider him her father or not, as the adult who took on a role resembling that of a caretaker in her early life- a critical developmental time for a child- Sesshomaru is obligated to turn down any advances by Rin and most definitely should not initiate any himself. As the first close adult figure she's had in her life since her parents died, it's unfathomable to imagine how Sesshomaru could go through with taking advantage of this young girl who was under his care and supervision since they met. To think he could be capable of betraying that trust sickens me to the core.

This. Now THIS is how a parent/guardian or a similar adult caretaker (babysitter, teacher, etc.) talks to a child. And, in turn, this is how some young children talk to adults. You'd be insane and delusional to deny it! We see it in our everyday lives, do we not? From where else do you think our stories draw most of their inspiration? Yes, obviously these fictional universes have aspects of fantasy that don't exist in the real world, but so how then do you suppose we're able to relate to them? The reason for that being is because these stories are written by people for people, so naturally there are going to be real life aspects embedded throughout. Sure, a little escapism doesn't hurt as we don't need to take everything so seriously, but ultimately we all need to recognize that the messages in the stories we tell matter. Most stories possess a combination of both light and dark themes, but when it specifically comes to the latter we gotta be careful with how we tackle this in children's media since kids are far more impressionable.

So if at the center of a story we have two of the main protagonists whose mom is basically their same age and to top it off she knew their dad when she was just a girl and who just so happened to help raise her, wouldn't you say that's beyond fucked up or at the very least so fucking weird? Like why would we think it's even remotely okay for our children to watch this garbage?? Really think about it. Try and be objective for once and think about how it would sound explaining this storyline to an outsider who's never watched IY or HNY. Well, antis have tried this before many times and we always get the same reaction: Ewww!

Like I said earlier, if you wanna ship it then fine, but 1) please stop seeking our approval or trying to change our minds - your ship wish came true didn't it, so why do you need us to validate it? 2) even though it's not canon, respect that we don't support this sequel portraying pedophilia in a positive light. It's harmful af to not only allow but glorify the continuation of sexualized images of young girls everywhere. And I shouldn't have to say this, but just because this trope is popular as you say does not make it right. Lolicon themes in the media have been an issue forever and it needs to stop. Yes, even some people in Japan or "the East" would agree. Shocker!

We're pissed off and rightfully so because Yashahime's TV rating is 14, not to mention it airs at the prime time kids in Japan watch TV after getting home from school. That's Towa and Setsuna's age, true, but if Rin being the mom when she's like only a year older than them (please don't argue w/ me about the math- antis have so far been right every time with it) is straight-up disgusting and not something we should be supporting or endorsing. Rin's a whole ass child!! Please don't start with the "but times were different then so her having kids at 15 is acceptable" argument either, because we've already debunked that and every other single excuse you guys throw at us. Besides, how or why would you expect young viewers to know these historical "facts" anyway, especially if as you suggest fiction doesn't affect reality so what does it matter? Yet here we are, arguing over a fictional show in real life almost a year and a half into the "Sesshomaru fucks?" sequel being announced. My ass, your ass, hell all our asses fiction doesn't affect reality!

Look, I do apologize if the tone of this blog came off as snippy or condescending at times. I do not wish you any ill will, it's just I'm not really sure what you expected to get out of all this besides maybe getting on my nerves perhaps. haha A lot of you shippers have been desperately scrambling to interact with us, lurking in our tags, jumping onto our posts screaming canon and getting so defensive even though you sought us out first. We've been sticking to our tags, so how about you stay in your lane too. By the way since we're on the topic, have you seen Twitter or Reddit?! SR shippers there are the actual worst and many Inuyasha fans (not just antis) have complained of not feeling welcomed to engage in fandom spaces anymore. Shippers swarm them and scare them off simply because fans don't like your ship and refuse to accept it. It's pathetic, really. No one should ever be bullied or harassed just because they don't like something you might. We're all fans of Inuyasha, aren't we? So let's act like it. Yashahime on the other hand, you guys are welcome to that pungent heap of trash. Fans have a right to criticize it too, but if you like it then good for you, so keep on liking it and don't mind us.

I'm almost done, but real quick back to Jaken! Let's not forget about how the official Yashahime website- which came out after my blog, mind you- described Jaken. This translation isn't the best one available but it's the only version a fellow anti friend could track down. They do recall a better one done by a native Japanese speaker who was also an anti, and that member confirmed that Jaken is indeed called Rin's babysitter. So you see, I was right in my interpretation. In the original post I did compare Jaken to a brother, but after talking to others (some comments can be found under said post) I did acknowledge that he's more of a reluctant babysitter who's not related. And if he's not at least a brother to Rin, then he's definitely not her father.

At the end of the day, the creator Rumiko Takahashi has the final word. Which is guess what? Hogosha. 💖 Probably should've just started out with that and saved us all the trouble, huh? Good day/night to you.

Papamaru bids you adieu now. 🤞

MILGRAM theory time: Haruka!

This isn't going to go super in depth (famous last words) but there's a few heavily debated parts of Haruka's MV I want to share my findings/thoughts on because I think this is my new special interest and during my quest to get best boy's song to 1 million views I have been looking over his first MV with a fine tooth comb so to speak.

Disclaimer: As the Jackalope said in the "This is the MILGRAM" trailer, we don't necessarily know everyone's crime from just the first video, its possible that a lot of things will be re-contextualized in the second MV, however I am not psychic or bilingual and thus will only be working with content released before August 20th 2021 and translated into English (which could cause some language/cultural details to be lost on me as translation is not a 1 to 1 process).

TW for discussions of ableism, child abuse, murder and animal death. Also this is really long so sorry to all the people that follow me for non-MILGRAM stuff

Firstly, I want to start on the topic of Haruka as a person. He is disabled. He does not have 'the mind of a child' (although he is 17, making him legally a minor in both North America and Japan). He is not just 'child-like'. And he is not mentally ill (well he might be, in the sense that many disabilities like Haruka's have strong comorbidities [where a person has two or more conditions but neither directly causes the other] with anxiety, depression and PTSD, but usually when I see people talk about him 'struggling with mental illness' they go on to refer to aspects of his disability). Sometimes on tumblr, people like myself, will see canonical traits written into a character and identify them as being traits associated with our disabilities/mental illness and headcanon them as such. Sometimes this even involves saying things like "It's basically canon!" Although we understand that these characters were probably not the result of a writer intending to write a disabled person. When I say that Haruka is being written as a person with a neurodevelopmental disability, I mean the writer intended to write a disabled character and wrote them in a way that they wanted the audience to pick up on. As an autistic person (which is one of many neurodevelopmental disorders and also something I probably didn't have to specify because who else would be writing an essay about a series they got into a few days ago at 11 o'clock at night) I really like how Haruka has been written so far. There's definitely some parts of him that have been exaggerated so abled normies can pick up on his disability (namely how his MV 's main motif is really child-like drawings) but the writers also included a lot of smaller details I appreciate like how it is noted he avoids eye contact when talking to other people and is depicted as nervously pulling at his sleeves in official artwork, or how he says he finds his prison uniform (which has tight straps) 'relaxing' and when he gets nervous/tense, he will dig his fingernails into the palm of his hands. (These last two potential being examples of 'self stimulation' [aka stimming] where a person seeks out specific sensory stimuli in order to help regulate their nervous system/emotions, in this case the tight uniform creates a comforting, secure feeling [you may have heard about some people preferring to sleep under weighted blankets for this reason] and digging nails into his palms sounds uncomfortable/painful but is done in an attempt to deal with a greater sensory discomfort caused by the situation/environment) I also appreciate the depth he is written with, he struggles to communicate verbally but in his MV and interactions with other inmates is shown to have insecurities, opinions and a consistent thought process (this is all basic character stuff but unfortunately not always present in disabled characters)

Also I want to add that (in terms of what we've been shown so far) Haruka did not kill anyone because of his disability/mental illness. Disabled people are not inherently more innocent than abled people. But there is no disability/mental illness where a symptom is that you kill people and real people have to live with the stigma when you speak carelessly and suggest things like "Haruka is the kind of mentally ill person who kills people as a cry for help" 🧂 (or at the very least real people have to read BS like that and cringe). TL;DR Haruka is less child-like and more onion-like (as in, he has layers) 🧅🧅🧅

Now is the actual theory stuff, oops:

Every prisoner in MILGRAM is supposed to have committed murder in some way, obviously considering Yuno just had an abortion (which i personally do not consider an act of murder) whilst Mu literally stabbed someone to death, this definition is stretched a bit. But it is not agreed upon yet who Haruka killed/how many people he killed or why he killed.

In his MV he is shown to have chased after his dog into a forest, seen something off-screen, then beaten something into a messy pulp with a rock. Some people think the dog is a red herring and that Haruka actually killed his mother/the girl from the fireworks show/his brother. I do not agree.

First: I believe Haruka when he says he doesn't have a brother. The MV literally starts by Haruka looking in the mirror and then switching between the him now

and a really similar looking younger child who just so happened to be a key feature of his memories (I don't have the vocabulary to explain it but its like cinematic parallels that establish this is the same person at different points of their life)

Its not impossible that this is Haruka's secret younger brother, but i think its unlikely. I saw someone saying they had to be different people because Haruka looks less happy than the child but like, most 17 year olds are less visibly happy than when they were 7 (or however old the child is meant to be). Life happens.

So when Haruka is shown pushing the child around and eventually strangling him, this isn't meant to be literal (homicide or suicide), but a representation of how conflicted Haruka feels about his younger self, who may have committed the murder (if you've ever been kept awake cringing at memories of something you said in the past and wishing you could go slap some sense into your former self, this is like that but 10 times more self loathing). The lyric "I am always repeating yesterday," implies he might think about this specific past event a lot.

Moving on, its pretty well accepted that Haruka's parents were abusive in some way and Haruka internalised a lot of it: he constantly apologises, he says in his interrogation questions that his one wish come true is that "[he] want[s] to be loved" and describes in his MV how when he couldn't find the words he was looking for ("you're unfair") one of his parents "would get angry at me and say “You’re hopeless.”". He seems to know its unfair but also still says he 'loves' his family, possibly mistakenly believing it is his fault, but also showing an awareness of his situation (and how his parents might behave).

Now, the MV is stylised in a way that makes certain details unclear, but there is one clear detail showing that Haruka's dog was killed

This is the first close up of Haruka and the dog. Haruka's mother is just out of frame supervising, but they look pretty happy. Notice how the puppy has a silvery chain for a collar. Somehow, this dog gets out of the house but only Haruka is shown chasing after it (whether his mother was searching elsewhere or didn't bother following her disabled son into the forest is unclear). Either way, young Haruka is now in the forest, unsupervised.

By the time he finds the dog, there is already blood, suggesting it was initally attacked by something else.

is this a sigh of relief from a boy whose finally found his beloved pet or a jealous weakling glad that nature took its course and he is finally free of that meddling mutt stealing all his mummy's attention? /j

I think this shock at the discovery that 'there is blood on his hands' could imply that rather than literally getting the blood from his dog, Haruka has seen his already injured dog and realises that if the dog got out because of him (he is previously shown to be aware his parents seem to blame him for everything) then he is the reason his dog is injured/dying and will be blamed for it. (this scene plays over the lyrics "It’s fine, though it’s really not It’s really fine, though I don’t really think so When I tried to understand it, You’ll make that disappointed face again" suggesting he is trying to avoid making his parents disappointed and letting the family pet escape into danger is something that could make them very disappointed)

now we get into rock murder (this is present-day Haruka implying that this is either: not how the scene really played out; the writers really wanting the audience to know that this was Haruka's doing and not someone else's; or this turns into a separate incident that happened much later [although note that the red sky and blue moon is the same as when young Haruka first appears at the start])

b the corpse is beyond mangled now, but its clearly the dog because the silver chain collar is still there, to the right of the body. (circled in red for your convenience :3)

My hypothesis is: Haruka didn't set out to kill his dog, but upon finding it injured (we don't know the severity aside from bleeding and also it not being able to run away from Haruka kneeling down above it w/ a big rock so it could range from treatable with a lot of vet help to already on death's door, TBH I don't think Haruka would know the difference) He knew he'd be blamed for this; made into a villain who let the poor puppy come to harm. He panicked and killed the dog out of some idea that it would make him the victim here (since he'd be found crying over a dog corpse, which might make a parent go comfort him rather than getting angry about what could've happened to the dog). This is over the lyrics: "I cried, I screamed I wanted to be a pitied and loved weakling I was in denial, I was in denial I just had to make sure I’ve become a victim, I’ve become a victim" (there's another theory that he was also jealous of the dog, which could work here too, since this is not some calculated plot; rather its a rash decision) This ties in with his Japanese song title (translated as Weakness) which is a play on a phrase sort of like "The strong eat, the weak do not" to become "The weak are eaten by society" or "The weak eat each other to survive" [once again I am reminding everyone this is based on second hand information from the youtube comments section (from users mitchki and Alphaistic) because I do not speak Japanese] This second meaning (The weak eat each other to survive) makes sense under the reading that Haruka killed his dog in order to 'survive' making his parents disappointed for the dog escaping.

Miscellaneous points:

We don't know where Haruka's necklace came from yet, it must be a gift since the most expensive thing he's ever bought was cotton candy. The younger child in the video isn't wearing it and neither is his mother or the girl in the purple dress.

Haruka's home seems quite big, at the start we can see a large flower garden outside the window and there's a forest in walking distance. This might suggest his family is quite wealthy

Haruka probably did go to school at some point as homeschooling is not a legally accepted as an alternative to public schools in Japan. (However it is estimated that up to 5000 families homeschool, this is uncommon) A lot (about 62%) of Japanese schools apparently have a 'special needs' classes and there are about 505 schools focused on educating intellectually disabled students (although I do not know which sort Haruka would've needed as whilst intellectual and development disabilities can be comorbid they aren't the same). Now, if children aged 7-14 don't go to school, their parents receive a fine, but its possible that if Haruka's parents are wealthy, they just paid it to avoid sending him to school. (This might imply they wanted to hide him or were generally ashamed of him in some way) However high school education (for students over 14) is not legally required and its likely that even if Haruka went to elementary/middle school, he hasn't been around people his own age in at least 3 years. As he seems quite lonely and glad that the other prisoners give him attention.

I don't think Haruka's parents are divorced and if they are, its not his father who left. Haruka mentions in the 30 questions that he thinks he disappointed his father. But still includes him as part of his family ("My father and mother and me"). A theory I've seen is that his father was disappointed by his son being disabled and left. but developmental disabilities (especially in non verbal and semi verbal children like Haruka) can be diagnosed before the age of 3, so I feel it is unlikely that Haruka would bring up his father if he left that early in Haruka's life

All MILGRAM prisoners have covered one of DECO*27's older vocaloid songs (DECO*27 is a well known producer who composes the music for MILGRAM) Haruka covered 'Two Breaths Walking' (https://youtu.be/puXLfVWrz2Q) which is about a boy's first relationship and how his mother's jealousy set him up for failure as the relationship becomes toxic (specifically it has some very funny out of context lines like "Whose breasts are you sucking on now?") so yeah, mommy issues: the song (Also: some people say in the song, the boy kills the girl at the end, but this isn't literal, TBW is the first of a trilogy of songs about the same relationship, it is followed by Android girl then Two Breaths Walking: Reloaded and the story resolves with the couple reuniting as adults and getting in the relationship again, although its not necessarily as abusive as before, its still implied to be codependant ending on the line 'We should live like oxygen tanks, sucking breathe from the words each of us exhale, until our last breathe')

In all seriousness, the scene where younger Haruka is walking through the city with his mother but it keeps repeating until older Haruka pulls the younger one away might indicate an attempt to focus the happier memories of his parents (since this is also over the lyrics "Why is it breaking? Tell me why? Please don’t change If I tried and couldn’t say it, You would get angry at me and say “You’re hopeless.”" which depict a worse scene) I think both his parents are still physically present but have become far more emotionally distant, not giving him as much attention, which exacerbates his loneliness from not having any friends his own age to talk to

And if one of his parents did leave? I think its likely his mother since she is shown disappearing out of his reach after the dog-incident (inferring she got angry/disappointed in Haruka anyway) This could also be where he got his necklace from: Its something his mother used to wear (although this is 100% a guess) and that's why its shown to be important to him

This one is just me, but i didn't realise until a rewatch that when Haruka is watching the younger him and the girl running together, the background has fireworks. Haruka mentions fireworks being a key memory to him so I wonder if this was one of the first/last times he got to make a friend...

On three separate occasions in the interrogation, Haruka mentions not liking animals. Despite this, he is depicted as sleeping with a rabbit plush and on his birthday art (I'd include that too but tumblr only allows 10 pictures per post, so here's a link) he is standing next to a giant blueberry and strawberry cake with two bunny themed biscuits at the side. Through my experiences of seeing Japanese fandom art on pixiv, sometimes rabbits are used to insinuate a character is cute and timid in fanart.

Meaningless details: Haruka sleeps with his necklace on; he sleeps on a bed and not a futon; at first I thought he woke up holding his plush's hand but his hand is merely next to the toy; and considering the state of the pillow and blanket, I wonder if he moves a lot in his sleep or if the is just because in this case he seems to be waking up from a nightmare about the dog incident...

Final note: I've spent so many hours writing this I don't remember if i was building up to any big finale or not but I hope you enjoyed reading this! Feel free to add on in the comments/reblogs.

Hewwo I really love your writing and I want to improve my own to a form similar to yours. If it's okay, can I ask what your writing process is or if you have any writing tips? Sorry if you already answered questions like this. I am not a native speaker by the way, can i also ask about how you built your vocabulary as well? Thank you very much in advance and I hope you're having a great day/night! Drink lots of water and don't forget to eat three meals a day.~

hello, anon! you’re actually the first to ask about something like this and i’m honored you think my writing is good enough for me to give advice on (and honored that you think it’s good enough to take inspiration from!).

i have two different writing methods, which are as follows:

long fics (10k+ words)

i write an outline and have my friends look over it to make sure that the scenes are both impactful and enjoyable, along with being organized. the most important part of writing a long story is making sure the timeline is coherent and that you have proper buildup to the climax of the story.

before i write a scene that contains foreshadowing to a future event, i write down what themes i wish to convey with this scene, along with any future information that will be relevant later in the story. this is helpful because you never write something all at once if it’s this long! you might forget important details, so having notes is always nice.

if i’m hesitant on writing a scene, i’ll talk it out with some of my friends and see if i’m still comfortable with writing it.

one of the biggest things i can recommend is being adaptable! being willing to change your story plans is crucial, because (typically) the first idea you think of isn’t always the best one. in my own experience, i change my ideas a lot as i write something. this is because i will get bored writing otherwise.

this is from my own experience, other writers may disagree, but i NEVER set word count goals for myself. i write when i want to write, otherwise i will get discouraged when i do not meet said goals.

take breaks or you will hit burnout fast!

have a glass of water and set a timer every 15 minutes to relax your eyes from your screen and drink some of it. it gives your mind a chance to soothe itself from the bright lights of a screen and also gives you a short break. and you stay hydrated!

short fics (<10k words)

when i write short fics, i typically don’t have an outline (unless if it’s a series) and i just go with my gut

if i don’t really like where a story’s going and i know it’s short, i finish it anyways because a finished product is better than giving up in my eyes? at least i know what not to do next time!

sorry a lot of these tips don’t pertain to actual writing! they relate more to planning. :( i’ve been writing stories for fun since i was 6 or 7 (i have journals upon journals of my first stories in my basement!) so most of what i do is just... gut instinct at this point? i apologize if that’s not very helpful of me to say. ;.; i don’t think of myself as very talented but like... i wish to say this in case it happens: please don’t compare your writing to mine! i’m sure your writing is lovely in its own right.

now that that’s said, here’s some stuff i can actually help with, which is under the cut because this is getting long:

word choice / vocabulary

first off, the best thing you can do for yourself is read something complex. like... the type of book where you have to pull out your phone and look up what words mean. if you’re not exposing yourself to new words, even if it is annoying to have to pause, you won’t learn new words.

this typically means ditching the fanfics and looking for actual published novels, typically older ones. i love fanfics (i write them lol), but the word choice in fanfics is typically limited to casual conversational language as they are written for fun, not necessarily to challenge the mind.

next, the best thing you can do is use a thesaurus. i personally use thesaurus.com but it’s different for everyone! but this is dangerous. using a thesaurus can be one of the worst things you can do for your writing if you don’t use it properly. you use a thesaurus to get synonyms for words that are commonly used, but may have a lot of other alternatives (i.e. happy, sad, etc.) and NOT super specific words.

ONLY use words listed as synonyms in a thesaurus if you know them and it’s safe to assume your readers likely know them as well! for example, i used the word ‘insouciant’ as a joke in my last fic. however, if i used that seriously, that probably would’ve been bad as it’s a SUPER rare word. nothing will ruin a reader’s experience faster than a story that blatantly uses too many words from a thesaurus and, worst of all, uses them improperly.

let me give an example:

starting text: “she was happy to see that he had returned safely. she could see relief in his eyes that she was safe as well. he smiled happily at her as she ran into his arms.” this is good enough, but it’s rather plain. it’s an easy read, but nothing about it is super engrossing.

good thesaurus example: “she was overjoyed to see that he had returned without harm. she identified relief in his eyes that she had stayed out of harm’s way as well. he smiled enthusiastically at her as she sprinted into his embrace.” it sounds a lot nicer before and definitely more polished, but nothing about this requires someone to whip out their phone in frustration to google a word. the point of typical writing is not to challenge your reader’s intelligence but to entertain them.

bad thesaurus example: “she was jocular to perceive that he had reappeared in an unharmed manner. she prognosticated solace in his blue orbs that she was guarded as well. he smiled jovially at her as she charged into his forelimbs.” this is a bit of an exaggerated example, but this is actually how i feel some authors tend to write. it’s very blatantly using a thesaurus, it uses words incorrectly, and it overcomplicated things to where it feels like the reader has to do a mental exercise to read it.

tl;dr for this section: if you don’t know a word, do not use it. if you are familiar with a word, it’s probably good to use as long as your writing still seems natural. thesauruses are your friend but can be your enemy.

i would like to clarify that i am a native speaker and it’s not necessary to read books forever in order to keep your grammar and word choice up to date. i have not picked up an actual published book within the last 4 years (don’t laugh at me i know this is bad). however, in learning to expand your grammar, reading books is essential.

some miscellaneous writing tips i have include:

you don’t have to take every request that comes within your inbox if you do decide to do tumblr writing. i probably, much to the behest of the people that submit, throw a good chunk of my requests out. write what you’re passionate about and your writing will improve and your followers will be happier.

if someone criticizes your writing, this does not mean they’re trying to criticize you (usually. don’t go on twitter if you want this to remain true). they are providing something most people don’t want to offer: advice. many times you will find yourself surrounded by people who will applaud you for writing nearly anything. this is not good. living in an echo chamber will ensure that your writing never improves. you want to ask people for advice and find those who will give you genuine advice, even if it may hurt to hear.

try to discern what authors you like do with their writing versus authors you don’t like. consciously making these comparisons will allow you to directly apply them to your own writing and help you emulate someone’s style as well.

please don’t write meme references into your work. it will get outdated fast. try to write something you can look back on within a few years and not cringe at. :) this is just my personal opinion lol, someone might disagree.

i do not proofread my writing. it makes me second guess everything. everything on my blog, as you see it, lacks proofreading, aside from inheritance, in which i had a beta reader glance over it. for beginner writers, this is probably shit advice if you’re not used to grammar BUT that’s just how i roll and i wished to share that.

the most important thing i do for my writing is have a good music playlist in the background. NOTHING will make you write better than listening to music that fits the mood of what you’re writing. find a premade youtube playlist or slap together a spotify playlist of songs you think fit the mood and get grooving to it. you’ll find that you’ll write better and you’ll enjoy the process of writing much more with the mental stimulus.

don’t write jokes in which you have to overexplain them. if you have to explain to the reader what the joke is, it won’t be funny. humor is difficult to write, but no jokes involved are better than a bunch of failed ones.

don’t worry about pinpointing fanfic characterization of a specific character perfectly. i get praises for my characterization of diluc and kaeya within inheritance a lot, even though i specifically altered them from canon (??????? this confuses me a lot that i get praised for this but anyways) and haven’t even read the webtoon. as long as it’s within reasonable expectation, you should be fine. zhongli shouldn’t be written as going off the walls crazy with excitement just like venti shouldn’t be written as super serious about frivolous matters. as long as you get the general gist of a character, people will enjoy it.

try to find some writer friends. they don’t necessarily have to be in the fandom, but being able to shoot off ideas with other people is amazing at improving both your plot and your writing overall. (shoutout to @shannara because for as much as i annoy him, he’s always willing to listen to me blab about any story and any idea, even though he doesn’t read reader-inserts nor should he care about my dumb OCs, but he cares about mine because he’s a cool dude)

don’t get discouraged if a fic doesn’t get good reception. in fact, it’s probably better if your first few fics don’t blow up in popularity if you do post them because it’s humbling and you can decide if you’re actually writing because you enjoy it or if you’re just doing it for clout.

i hope this made sense and if you (or any other people reading this!) need any more writing advice, my ask box and DMs are always open. if you ever want me to beta read something, please send a DM and i’ll see if i can as long as it’s like... not super long and i have spare time.

sorry this turned out to be so long but it turns out i had far more to say than i thought! good luck writing and i believe in you!

what's your favorite (few) islands in wind waker? as a fellow link kin, the great fairy's island has always felt like home to me <3

as a similar question, are there any surface locations in skyward sword that you're particularly fond of?

i know you aren't super fond of twilight princess as a game, which is fully understandable, but what parts of it have you either found yourself liking or at least enjoyed watching your friend play?

do you have any fond memories of either meeting your loftwing or any sweet moments you had with them? i always love hearing about other people's memories, and you always speak so fondly of yours! ~🍄

thank you for these asks they are all so good and make me so happy. i love when people ask about kin stuff and you just touched all the sweetest spots of my heart. it really means a lot to me.

what's your favorite (few) islands in wind waker? as a fellow link kin, the great fairy's island has always felt like home to me <3

if u can believe it i actually answered this one recently hehe! tl;dr: samesies

as a similar question, are there any surface locations in skyward sword that you're particularly fond of?

like all of faron but lake floria & the floria waterfall specifically! i feel like its unfair to compare any part of faron to eldin & lanayru because faron is... much less inhabitable than the other two, but i truly loved it there. lots of picnics in the isolated little spot outside the cistern with zel =w=

i know you aren't super fond of twilight princess as a game, which is fully understandable, but what parts of it have you either found yourself liking or at least enjoyed watching your friend play?

WAS ANYONE GONNA TELL ME HOW MUCH SNOWPEAK SLAPS????

also the entire forgotten village or whatever its called. the atmosphere sucks because its twilight princess but the idea of it and the MUSIC!!!!!!!!! KITTIES!!!!!!

uhhh i like that lanayru is a snake, i like snakes. i really like agitha and illia and malo. morpheel is just as stupid and edgy as everything else in tp but i have debilitating thalassophobia so i kinda love how horrifying it is because i’m already scared of fairly lighthearted sea monsters

the city in the sky was an experience. i dont know if i like it yet but i like the experience of it. my twi kinnie friend is the one playing and she was just collecting runes like ‘kinda cool how i’m just discovering ur culture’ and then we got there and i was like ‘uhhhh. wheres all my shit?’ and she just kept wandering around while i screamed ‘WHERE IS MY HOUSE???’

it was funny. anyways when did the birds take my house

do you have any fond memories of either meeting your loftwing or any sweet moments you had with them? i always love hearing about other people's memories, and you always speak so fondly of yours!

YEAH. my loftwing had a name but it’s a name that a fanfic author got right so i always feel weird saying it online because i’m always worried abt internet creators finding me and not having a good reception to kinnies lol. 

i met him when i was 10 and he was the last bird of everyone my age to come. i had always been the weird kid and my only friend was zelda and my self-worth was kind of abysmal because of it. i only really remember flashes of that day, i slept in and she pulled me out of my house with my unbrushed bedhead, yelling all the way about me sleeping in on the day i was supposed to get my wings. its a big milestone obviously so she was pretty mad lol.

me being last was like being picked last for kickball but in a kickball game that decides the course of ur entire life. i was pretty dissociated in all the pain i was feeling but zelda was a hair away from angry crying and cursing the goddess’s name in my stead. when my loftwing came he eclipsed the sun, though, looking black until he touched down, and i still remember every adult on the isle in complete uproar about the colour of his feathers. everything was white noise outside where our eyes met.

loftwings talk to you, in a headspace you share, but there’s a language barrier. from what i have heard, it’s all just feelings and impulses and body language in the beginning, but after time you start to hear their voice. it transitions into broken sentences, ‘feeling’ words your bird might send you like hungry or danger, before eventually you hear them as they are, crystal clear. the thing is, he spoke in complete sentences to me from day one. the first thing i heard when i looked at him was a voice that said i’ve waited so long to meet you.

the other thing is.......... you’re not supposed to fly right away. it is normalized but it is still an incredibly dangerous activity, even with the knights patrolling. it takes months of dedicated, supervised flying before you’re allowed to fly on your own. but when i saw my bird, it was like nothing existed but him and i. my life, my memories, my friends, my family, my identity, it all just melted away and all that mattered in that moment was the oneness with him i felt in my heart. like i existed to do nothing else but be a single entity with him, like the idea of not being one this long was absurd.

so i leapt on his back and we tore off into the skies. and i was terrified and alive. he took me far above skyloft, so far i was sure we were going to the sun itself. it felt like i was put on earth for that moment and that moment alone, to leave everything behind and run away with him.

and then we landed after about 5 minutes and zelda was crying and threatened me w violence. i think groose was probably gonna pass out from rage, jealousy, disbelief, maybe a combo of all. it earned me a reputation as a wildcard for the rest of my life, no one could really pin me down after that so they all stopped trying, except groose who was still very convinced i was just a ditzy weirdo who got lucky. 

my dad grounded me for a week. literally grounded me. grounded. cause, cause i wasn’t--anyways.

general memories, i have some here and there. he was rowdy and reckless, brave to a fault. he loved the rare thunderstorm, always begged me to fly with him in them, which was a very tempting offer (until i had a Bad Experience, and it become significantly less funny to entertain)

we liked to find an empty island in the sun and curl up there for naps. not one in particular just, whatever we saw first. i don’t remember having a favourite colour before i met him but afterwards it was easily red.