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lucky-fy · 2 months

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For the Laicion nation (aka, me and three other people)

I had this illustration commissioned (a big thank you to @lunehowls) for my werewolf AU Laicion fic (still a WIP).

The general pitch is as follows :

AU in which Laios never got to meet his sister again, putting his life on a whole other path, a more desperate one. A military deserter with barely a coin to his name, Laios hitches a ride on a boat to one of the elven continents, where he learns about magical tattoos that binds one’s soul to a wolf’s, effectively making them artificial werewolves. Illegal magic be damned, this feels like the answer to… everything.

In the process, he learns about the existence of an illegal fighting ring in one of the elven cities, where beastmen gladiators gather. Freshly tattooed and without anywhere else to go to, Laios decides to head there, where he meets Lycion, an elf and artificial werewolf gladiator. If they first bond over a simple shared meal, by spending time together (sharing the same room in the barracks, maybe the same bed? gasp) they find that they have a lot in common, notably a shared distaste for the body they were born in, a dysphoria partially remedied by becoming a werewolf.

They bond :)

NB: I commissioned another piece, go take a look :D

#dungeon meshi #laios touden #lycion #laicion #I'm heads deep in research regarding Ancient Rome gladiators... and loving it. Really fascinating stuff.#I bemoan the fact that most papers are locked behind a paywall (though I found one that gives a free pdf access)#(and no. Sci-hub is not an option. It's blocked in my country)#I'm also re-reading DunMeshi and taking notes to get a better grasp of Laios and Lycion as characters. Character studies if you will #and I still need to fully outline the fic #I know where I'm starting (struggling to choose a POV for that first chapter LOL) and where I'm ending so there's that #and a bunch of disconnected scenes (as we all do ahaha)#anyway. Doing all of this while studying for veterinary school. It's hard. I feel guilty whenever I'm not studying...#let's just say I don't expect the prep work for the fic to be ready before this summer (+ I need to finish the Kuro cosplay for Japan Expo)#hopefully; once it's done; I'll be able to set a schedule and write smoothly #werewolf #werewolf laios #rarepair #Fy posts

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poorly-drawn-mdzs · 1 year

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Jellyfish Prince 💙

#better drawn mdzs #mdzs #lan wangji #Happy 'It took me a whole month to figure out what Mermay was all about'!#fun fact about me: prior to all this blog stuff I use to be really fascinated by jellyfish.#to the point they were one of the few things I could draw.#when I was trying to practice art before I started making these comics #I was constantly baffled by hair. I did not understand its form or its mysteries.#Then the ghost of my past jelly-loving self suddenly grabbed me by the shoulders and went 'Dude. just like jellyfish'.#cue me going 'Oh my god. Just like Jellyfish'. And then I kinda got the jist of it.#This is all to say that the majority of LWJ's appearances (especially early on) are 100% directly inspired by jellyfish #This idea has been lingering in my mind for months...being able to pull off an idea and translate it onto the page....#nothing beats that feeling B'*)#This is teenji btw. He isn't complete unless he's on the verge of extremely frustrated tears. Sopping wet and biting. Just like...jellyfish #And now that I know mermay is a thing I finally have an excuse to dunk him into the water.

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shallowseeker · 9 months

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My fave thing about Jack on rewatch was realizing how internally unlike Sam he is, despite the symbolic, structural blocks of being a “gifted kid.” Emotionally? Nah.

Not if you’re paying attention.

I feel like @dawg-motif really helped me puzzle that out re: Jack’s valuation of blunt honesty and need for space and processing. And after that, it’s like Jack’s entire arc clicked into place for my brain.

There is such a temptation in fandom to assume he’s a copy-pasta of Sam because of his “doomed child” motif, or that he’s like Cas because of his literal-mindedness and sass. But emotionally? Not even close.

Or worse, there can be as assumption that his “performing!Jack” is how how he actually feels about things... Falling for Jack’s sunshiney ditzy act is like falling for Dean’s mythical Marlboro man act.

#jack stuff #jack + emotions #jack needs space #jack’s emotional interiority #jack mary-dean kline winchester #sam holds a special place in jack’s heart #but honestly they don’t really get each other despite that they love each other!#only sam’s initial pep talk really lands #the more jack grows the less effective sam’s style is for him #which is FASCINATING #jack doesn’t rationalize morality at all #he’s much more likely to get bothered and sharply call out hypocrisy #the cop he killed #jimmy novak in the draft outline #jack can get annoyed with sam and cas if he views them as looking down on his intelligence #no cas i’m not as dumb as everyone seems to think lives rent free in my head #chuck calls him *too stupid* in season 15 #this is a campbell motif #all brawn no brains #this is something dean and mary would understand #this tendency to be underestimated #it affects cas a little bit but cas seems to play it strategically #only a few writers emphasize his lost duck persona the vast majority emphasize his tactician element #mary gets it for class reasons #dean too

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uhbasicallyjustmilex · 1 year

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ways journalists have really described alex turner and miles kane:

"Wearing matching outfits, gazing into each other's eyes, talking about their instant connection… Alex and Miles' claims that they wrote the Shadow Puppets' album about 'a girl' weren't fooling anyone. Quite simply Alex and Miles are hopelessly, madly, enviably in love with each other. Please lads, just be true to yourselves, embrace your feelings, and have a massive snog - we can't bear the tension any more." - NME

“If there’s one sexual dynamic at work tonight at the Usher Hall, it’s homoeroticism. The Last Brokeback Mountaineers are a camp pair of strutting cocks, to be sure.” - The Wee Review

"Speaking to them together feels like interrupting a conversation that's been going on since 2005." - NME

“Looking over at his manspreading counterpart, Kane gleefully points at Turner’s exposed bulge. Not wanting to be rude, I look away.” - SPIN

“Watching them finish each others’ sentences, agonise over their answers to how well they know each other and embrace when it’s time to leave... well, you’d need a heart made of Hoosiers CDs not to find it incredibly sickly sweet.” - NME

“Alex Turner and Miles Kane turn towards each other with fond looks when we suggest they’re best friends. Like doodle in each other’s notebooks BFF status. After spending 15 minutes with them though, we’re pretty convinced they’re going to grow old together in matching tracksuits.” - Sidewalk Hustle

“Miles Kane looks like he’s gagging for a great big man-hug (and maybe more...) off his buddy. These two have spent overly long admiring themselves and each other.” - The Wee Review

“As soon as I decide to just get started without Kane, Turner accidentally Facetimes him from his pocket, and the two erupt into a fit of giggles, our conversation veering off course for the third time in as many minutes.” - Consequence

“While Turner stares on the ground during his answers, Kane watches him like a lovestruck teenager from the side.” - Musikexpress

“Say this for Lennon and McCartney, or Plant and Page: they never had their own romantic rock ‘n’ roll portmanteau. But “Milex”—Miles Kane and Alex Turner, for the uninitiated—have just that enviable kind of bromance. The two even moved to Los Angeles in tandem a few years ago. No wonder multiple “Milex” pages have cropped up on Tumblr, breathlessly re-posting the duo’s every embrace and droll quip; there is fan fiction, too, the kind that would make a coal miner blush.” - Interview Magazine

'"Alex Turner is like a princess in need of his prince Miles's assistance to get down from a tower." - Dutch Review

"You'd be forgiven for barely noticing anything beyond the front of the stage, though. Like a pair of teenagers egging each other on, Turner and Kane are the most infatuated frontmen since the Pete Doherty and Carl Barat." - Hot Press

"If Miles Kane had a 'hard on' for being a front-man before The Last Shadow Puppets, he's grabbed the opportunity Turner's patronage presented him with both hands. So to speak." - Q Magazine

"The feeling is contagious too, as though we're looking in on star-crossed lovers finally reunited." - Hot Press

#okay this is really just the tip of the iceberg #but i think that's quite enough to be getting on with for now #a couple of details:#i've only quoted stuff from interviews that were actively with them or live reviews of concerts #there are also a couple of interviews in here that... yeah. i very much don't like the tone used or how the journalist has portrayed them #(see: the musikexpress one which is just so insulting to miles)#but they had quotes that were too good not to be included here #so yeah #i just wanted to make clear that just because i've included a quote here does not mean i agree with its source material #i'm really just fascinated by the sheer number of journalists who have described them in this light #also there are sources for almost all of these but a couple of them i couldn't find the links i needed but i know they are legit quotes #milex #alex turner #miles kane #the last shadow puppets #tlsp #milex interview #lulu posts

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chrisrin · 1 year

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Is karkat going to go through a similar arc as peridot?

Karkat's arc is a bit of a mix between Amethyst and Peridot, but both sorts of flipped on their heads!

The idea with Karkat is that he's a Jasper who woke up too early. Unlike Amethyst who woke up too late, Karkat emerges from his hole some hundred years before he's supposed to. The planet is incubating and not being super closely monitored because everything's all set and they're just waiting for the gems to grow. This leaves Karkat pretty much alone on a desolate, dark, dying planet.

He wishes for nothing more than to go back to sleep, he tries to crawl back into his hole multiple times waiting for consciousness to slip, but he can't go back to "keep growing" after he's emerged.

The longer you wait, the more your mind fills. It’d be wrong to call them memories, you didn’t exist before, so they can’t be memories.

Purpose. What your purpose should be. You’re a Jasper, you’re a Quartz, made for war. You’re a soldier, you’re a warrior for Homeworld. You’re supposed to be big and strong, ready to fight for your creators, for your Diamond.

You’re supposed to fit your hole. You can’t.

So he makes a life of wandering the planet. It's cold and boring, so fucking boring, and he thinks a lot about what he could do. He thinks about how he's a failure to the Diamonds, swapping between fear of being discovered here and wanting nothing more than to interact and talk with another sentient being.

Unbeknownst to Karkat, another group of gems nears the Kindergarten. The Alpha Kids are a small group of rebel gems who stole a ship off Homeworld. Upon needing to stock up on supplies, Roxy locates an incubating Kindergarten that is long enough in its cycle for no gems to inhabit the planet, but early enough that they can still retrieve what they need. They land on the Kindergarten and Karkat eavesdrops, stunned to be witnessing actual living real people.

But Karkat realizes what they are, when he listens in and realizes that they're traitors.

He sees this as an opportunity. If he can turn these rebels in, then the Diamonds won't shatter him! He won't be a failure!

So he boards the ship, sneaking on as a stowaway. Roxy almost immediately finds him and it turns into that little scene.

Jane and Roxy convince Dirk to let Karkat live and stay aboard, and Karkat stays locked up in one of the rooms. He's like a little hissy cat, but he's also completely overwhelmed and overstimulated just being around things that aren't the Kindergarten.

With a lot of time and a lot of slowly building trust, Karkat starts to warm up to the Alpha Kids and eventually becomes a proper part of their squad.

#homestuck #hs #gemstuck #chris talks #maybe while he's still on the ship early on #he's like “ok ill play along with their stupid friendship stuff”#“but really!! im still going to sell them out!!!”#and he clings onto that for a long time #in denial that theyre actually starting to endear him #maybe there IS an opportunity he gets to sell them out #some moment where roxy leaves the door to communications open #and karkat could sneak in. set out an SOS signal #and he just....#decides not to.#i have so many karkat thoughts #about how he's so curious about everything #how years and years and years passed on such a desolate awful planet for him that now practically anything that just so much as moves is-#-fascinating to him #how he's the first one to get really comfortable when they all go to earth #because he's learned by that point to be curious #he's the first one that talks to a human #(blood player blood player blood pla

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mkstrigidae · 2 months

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APWH preview snippet!

Since I'm actively trying to work on getting the next few chapters out, I thought I'd share a little future scene with some hints of Jonsa with all you lovely people! This bit is from like, a few chapters in the future bc it's the in-between that's giving me fits right now :) (Fair warning: this is unedited and subject to change! That being said, it's such a fun scene that I can't imagine ever nixing it :D)

“Does he even know that they have to avoid the press?”

“For the last time-“ Sam sighed, sounding completely exasperated, “Dickon knows what they can and can’t do- he’s got enough practice not being photographed from when our dad was the secretary. Not to mention spending time around you when that exposé on your crazy grandfather came out two years ago.”

“I just-“ Jon sighed, blowing a stray curl out of his face. “You didn’t see how freaked out she was when the press caught us at that performance in White Harbor. I thought she was going to have a full-blown panic attack.”

He was immediately derailed by Gilly plopping little Sam down in his lap and shoving a bottle into his hands.

“What’s this all about?” he raised a brow, adjusting the baby on his lap, allowing him to latch onto the cuff of his flannel shirt and start gnawing at the fabric. “You going somewhere?”

Gilly shot him a withering look, but he saw the amusement in her eyes.

“I-“ she gestured, imperiously, “Have not had time by myself to shower all week-“

“Sorry, love.” Sam winced, looking up from his pile of paperwork. “I can take a break from these-“

“Not your fault, Sam.” she waved him off. “You warned me about this conference at the beginning of the summer.” a grin played at the corners of her mouth. “Besides, it works out well- Jon needs a distraction right now from the fact that Sansa’s on a date with your extremely hot and conventionally attractive brother.”

“Hey!” Sam looked wounded, and Gilly rolled her eyes, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“You know you’re my favorite Tarly.” she wrinkled her nose. “How long have you been working on this presentation? You smell like the baby spit up on you.”

“Guess I’m next in line for showers.” Sam said, mournfully. “Unless-“

“Nope- I need my own time right now, Samwell. Did you even hear what I said about why Jon’s bent out of shape?”

Jon had known Gilly since Sam and she had met up north while the two of them were in college. Sometimes, it was hard to reconcile the timid, scared girl she had been with the woman who was currently devoting all of her remaining energy to busting his balls.

“Don’t tell me you’re worried about Sansa with my brother.” Sam snorted, shotgunning another cup of coffee next to him the way Jon was used to seeing undergrads do with jaeger shots. “I mean, this is Dickon we’re talking about. Used to bring wounded animals home to take care of them Dickon? The same guy who cried when we had movie night and Gilly and Rhae wanted to go see ‘Love, Simon’?” He shook his head. “Look, as far as guys she could be out on a date with right now go, Dickon’s kind of the best case scenario. She’ll have a nice time, and he’ll be a perfect gentleman.”

Jon blinked at him, silently turning to look up at Gilly, who rolled her eyes and sighed.

“You’re hopeless, sweetie.” she kissed him on the forehead again, wrinkling her nose. “He’s not worried that things will go wrong- he’s worried they’ll go a little too well.”

“You’ve been spending way too much time around my sister.” Jon muttered, narrowly avoiding little Sam’s grasping reach for his glasses, managing to get the baby to latch onto the bottle before he destroyed any more of Jon’s eyewear. “You even sounded like her just then.”

Sam blinked for a second, his head whipping between Jon and Gilly.“You’re jealous?” He asked, incredulously. “Of Dickon? Wait- you like Sansa?”

“Got there in the end.” Gilly sighed, affectionately patting him on the shoulder before going to shower, leaving Jon and Sam behind with four cups of coffee, one baby, and approximately five brain cells total between the two of them.

“You like her.” Sam repeated, like it was a giant revelation.

“What are we- in middle school?” Jon hissed, immediately turning his head down to smile and make faces at little Sam while he fed him, before glaring up at big Sam again. “I don’t- I mean-“

Sam was just shaking his head.“Of course you do.” he laughed. “Should have guessed- red hair and a damsel in distress? You were doomed from the outset.”

“Shut up.” Jon muttered, flushing. “It’s not like that.”

“Then why are you worrying about Dickon for fu-“ Sam glanced nervously at the baby, “-god’s sake? When Gill was meeting my family for the first time, I remember you told her not to worry- that my brother was ‘one of the best guys you know’ and ‘practically a golden retriever’.”

Jon could tell that Sam, who could not raise one eyebrow without the other, was desperately trying to do just that.

“I don’t know.” He muttered, moving little Sam to his shoulder to start burping him. “Look- I’m attracted to her, alright? It’s a fu- er, a giant disaster that I’m gonna ignore for the rest of my life.”

“Seriously?”

“Stop trying to do that with your eyebrows.” Jon complained. “It’s giving me motion sickness. And yes, seriously. I’m not even going to consider that- it’s just a stupid crush. Besides,” he sighed, rubbing little Sam’s back comfortingly, “Robb’s already dealing with enough right now with this whole Sansa situation- can’t imagine telling him I think his sister’s attractive while he’s being forced to suddenly confront all of his guilt and self loathing every time he looks at her.”

“That whole bro code thing of never dating your friend’s sisters never really made sense to me.” Sam shook his head, gulping down more coffee. “I mean, I’d be thrilled if you decided to date Talla, because I know you’d be good to her.”

“Yeah, don't think she'd quite go for that, mate.” Jon snorted, standing to bounce little Sam around gently. He was just grateful Sam hadn’t said anything else about Robb.

“Eh, wouldn’t count you out completely.” Sam shrugged, smirking. “With that hair, you’re pretty enough to be a girl- maybe that’d be enough for her.”

“You are so lucky i’m holding the baby.” Jon muttered, still bouncing little Sam, who picked that moment to spit up spectacularly down Jon’s back.

“Well, that’s three of us who’re gonna need showers now.” Sam grinned, looking thrilled as all get out that it hadn’t been him. “Wow- his aim is getting better.”

“I’m going to remind him of this when he’s a sulky teenager.” Jon grumbled, wiping spit-up off his shoulder as best he could. “Look- no gossiping with Rhae about this, please. She thinks she’s such a good clandestine agent that she doesn’t always realize that Robb is better at sniffing out her plots than she thinks.”

“Alright-“ Sam sighed, looking back down at the massive stack of paperwork in front of him. “I make no promises for Gill, though.”

“Gilly could give some of my Uncle’s colleagues at the WIA a run for their money when it comes to withstanding interrogation.” Jon snorted.

“Probably true.”

“Where did your brother take Sansa?” Still holding onto a now much happier baby with one hand, he reached down the other to take a gulp of his own coffee.

“He said something about going out towards the Tyrell Estate.” Sam shrugged. “They probably drove out there to see the gardens- he’s said it’s a good road to take his bike out on.”

Jon promptly spat out his entire sip of coffee, staining the front of his shirt as well as the back, and frightening little Sam enough that he started to cry.

“He took her on his motorcycle?”

Gilly picked that moment to reappear, completely clean and with wet hair, blinking at the scene in front of her.

Sam, who couldn’t seem to stop laughing, was desperately trying to calm down the baby, who had started wailing, while Jon’s entire front was covered in coffee and his entire back was covered in baby vomit. Not that he seemed to notice, as his face was white and he was making a series of angry looking hand gestures at her husband.

“I really can’t leave you three alone for five minutes, can I?” she sighed. “Do I even want to know?”

#my writing #my wips #writing wips #just APWH things #jonsa #fanfiction wip #God bless Gilly like for real #YES Sansa is on a date with someone else here #muscleman golden retriever McAttractiveness #Aka dickon tarly #unsurprisingly jon is not having a great time about it!#in fairness to sansa the plotline directly preceding this and kicking off her doing some traveling was pretty rough on her #so our poor girl really deserves a giant muscley golden retriever with a motorcycle #and to just have a good time with someone who isn't wrapped up in all the stark drama/disaster/mess etc.#jon can deal with it rn bc it's really a 'you snooze you lose' kind of situation #sam's usually quicker on the draw but he's very sleep deprived here #and working on some stuff for a pathology conference #not at all going to be relevant nope no sir #writing sam and jon interacting vs jon and robb is so fascinating #they're both jon's besties but there's a very different dynamic to the two relationships #in fairness Robb has like SO much complex childhood trauma and is kind of seriously going through it right now #but his scenes with jon always have this sort of darker edge to them #like an 'i've known you my entire life and know everything about you for better or worse' type deal- deeper but darker #it's more akin to a sibling relationship? but also not? they are both going thru it #my headcanon is that anytime jon starts getting too gloomy and angsty gilly just straight up shoves the baby at him #and then waits like twenty minutes #Gilly: 'it's free babysitting!'#generally it works pretty well #jon's like '404 error does not compute' as soon as sam says the word 'motorcycle'#also when sam says 'the secretary' he means randyll tarly was the secretary of defense

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astronomodome · 10 months

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Tumblr Poll Tournaments & MCYT

So a while ago I made a post expressing my frustration with the way a lot of tumblr poll tournaments seem to exclude mcyt characters- or if they are included, people in the notes are rude about it. The first situation of these- the poll organizer including rules against submitting characters from mcyt- is something I can easily quantify. I've crunched some numbers in order to find out two things:

How common is this phenomenon, really?

Why does this happen in the first place?

A note before I start: I'm not blaming the poll organizers for this, and I don't want anyone to get angry at them for excluding mcyt. At the end of the day, it's up to them to curate what they want their poll to be, and if they don't want to deal with the toxicity that often comes with letting mcyt characters run (or if they just don't like it for whatever reason), that's their decision. Trust me- poll organizers have to put up with a lot of shit already, and I don't want to add to it, regardless of their opinions on mcyt. If any poll organizers recognize their own words in the later part of this overview, they can contact me and I'll remove it. This is also why I have chosen not to identify the blogs from which I took the examples- I mean no harm to any poll organizer. They are a symptom of a much larger problem and they haven't done anything wrong except be a little misinformed at worst.

Excluding mcyt characters from poll tournaments really isn't that big of a deal on its own- though it is frustrating- but it does speak to the larger attitude of the general tumblr population towards mcyt. While not without its flaws, this can be used as a metric to measure the extent of this attitude and maybe get a hint of why it exists.

...Please note, also, that most of these polls date back to around March-June 2023, when poll tournaments were a big thing on Tumblr. Not super outdated, but I still should note that opinions might have changed since then.

Also also, be warned that there are examples below of some organizers being pretty toxic! It's not a whole lot, but if you don't want to expose yourself to that, maybe pass on this post!

With that out of the way, let's get started.

Part One: The Numbers

The first thing I decided to do was figure out a rough percentage of how many poll tournaments have a rule that excludes mcyt characters from being submitted. To get a sample batch of poll blogs, I used one of the blogs that pits the winners of tournaments against each other and checked each blog included in that. This ended up being a more tedious process than I had thought, since there's a lot of variation in the way poll organizers, well, organize. I ended up with 123 blogs sorted into three categories.

The first category included tournaments where a rule for or against mcyt characters wouldn't really make sense, for a variety of reasons. Most commonly, the tournament was between letters of the alphabet or animo acids or government agencies, not fictional characters, so I counted them out. There were also a handful of blogs where the contestants were determined by the organizer, not by nomination at all. Combined, blogs that did not fit my criteria made up 60/123 of my samples.

The second and third categories were the blogs that either had a rule against mcyt characters, or didn't. Most of the blogs I looked through had rules I could find, and some were more thorough about it than others. For my purposes, I counted the blog as a no only if they explicitly had a rule against mcyt characters, or clarified later that they weren't allowed. Most poll blogs didn't mention mcyt at all. (This will become relevant later.)

Of the 63 blogs that fit my criteria, 11 (17.5%) of them had a rule against mcyt characters, while the remaining 52 (82.5%) did not.

To me, this seems like pretty good news! I had honestly expected the percentage of blogs that excluded mcyt to be much higher. This is definitely a good sign! But I wouldn't really jump to assuming that mcyt characters would actually be accepted in all of these blogs. I will explain this in the next part of my research.

Part Two: The Examples

The second thing I wanted to find out with this research was why organizers end up having rules against mcyt in the first place. Is it just the bad reputation the mcyt space has (largely a result of one green man in particular)? Let's look at a few examples of poll rules against mcyt characters. Some of them are from my sample blogs and some of them aren't.

Type 1: Not understanding the difference between real people and characters in mcyt

The majority of the rules against mcyt I saw were of this type, and honestly, it's pretty reasonable. It's a pretty major debate in the mcyt community over whether mcyts' characters are separate enough from their content creators to count as fictional. However, there are a considerable number of mcyt characters who are explicitly stated to be different from their cc in the same way as a character in a movie played by an actor is different from the actor playing them. Excluding all mcyt characters for being 'real people' is just incorrect, though I can kinda understand where the organizers were coming from with this one.

It should also be noted that the vast majority of poll blogs had a rule against submitting real people. There's a possibility that some poll organizers might have lumped mcyt characters as real people even if they didn't specify it explicitly. Therefore, an attempt to actually submit an mcyt character into one of these tournaments might be against the rules based on what the organizer thinks. I have no way to quantify this, which is why I said earlier that the results of my initial test might not be accurate.

Type 2: 'Problematic fandom' (toxicity warning for some of these)

This type of rule is usually broader than just mcyt, but lumps it in with other fandoms known for being associated with bigotry (often hp, which is... yeah i'm definitely not going to argue in favor of harry potter but yikes. really? we're as bad as terfy potter? really.) At least one of them let dsmp characters in with the exception of dream, which is a lot fairer than... some of the others.

If we want to give the organizers benefit of the doubt here, we can say that these rules are made to keep the poll less toxic than it would be otherwise... but to be perfectly honest, some of these might be more about that phenomenon of purity culture that has had a habit of popping up in fandom spaces since forever. That's a whole other conversation I'm not ready to have now, but it comes as no surprise to me that mcyt has become a little taboo in some places (likely to a large extent because of dream and all the drama he's generated). There's also no telling whether the poll organizers in these cases even know that there are other smps besides dsmp... but that's besides the point, since there are other dsmp characters that aren't associated with dream at all. Excluding them reveals a misconception about the mcyt genre anyway. And of course, I think we can all agree that some of these are just pretty rude.

Which brings us to our conclusion.

I feel like a lot of the toxicity towards mcyt as a genre and mcyt characters boils down to people either not really understanding what mcyt is (i.e. mcyt -> minecraft youtubers -> real people) or hearing stuff about dream and assuming the entire mcyt space is reflective of that. Of course, it's a frustrating issue that some people think this way. I think it's nice to be reminded, though, that this sort of thing isn't very widespread. Alongside the bad examples, I saw a lot of organizers confronting their preconceived notions: one organizer let in an mcyt character after admitting their 'unfamiliarity with the source material', another allowed mcyt characters 'on the condition that you can explain how they are a separate character' and a few others fiercely defended mcyt characters against toxicity in their polls. Every day we grow as a community and we can't let a few people with misguided notions of what we are keep us down. Keep watching, keep creating, and as Zedaph once said, It's okay to be silly!

#this ended up being a larger project than i expected. i hope it doesnt ruffle anyone's feathers too much #i don't like dipping my toes into discourse-y stuff but i thought this was pretty fascinating #if anyone has any questions or imput feel free to speak up #i don't bite and i love discussion #mcyt #astro speaks #idk what else to tag this as. i dont want to be spamming fandom tags for this #but i also want people to see it since i worked really hard on it #so uh. i dont like to beg for reblogs but if you find this interesting at all please consider reblogging

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queenlucythevaliant · 9 months

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make your choice

Digory didn’t think much on making choices. The whole world would be over when his mother died anyhow.

Of course, this didn’t keep him from being curious or adventurous. It was exciting to meet new people, exciting to go exploring and to speculate about whatever mischief his Uncle Andrew was up to. Being a lively young boy was perhaps the best distraction from being a boy about to lose his mother.

Going after Polly was so obviously right that it might as well not have been a choice at all. What else could he do? It was easy to be righteous in the face of an evil old magician who said things like "Ours is a high and lonely destiny."

Yet once they were there in that rich, in-between place, with all the worlds there were splayed out before them— ((Make your choice, adventurous stranger)) Well. What sort of lively young boy would he be if he turned back now?

Digory could feel the bell’s magic ((strike the bell and bide the danger)) beginning to work on him. There was no use in resisting. He felt tendrils of magic sinking deep beneath his skin, laying claim to any free will he’d ever had. He said as much to Polly, but she wasn’t listening.

Polly said ((or wonder till it drives you mad)) that he looked exactly like his uncle when he said that.

Jadis’s whole world had ended. Everyone had died, and she’d just gone to sleep. She might have stayed sleeping forever if he hadn’t woken her. Sitting outside his mother’s sickroom, Digory wondered ((what would have followed if you had)) if that was really so shocking. Hadn’t he been preparing for just such an end? Were Charn and Mabel Kirke so different?

Narnia was not an end. It was a beginning.

And face to face with the Lion, Digory was forced to admit that the bell had not been magic. Nothing had caused him to strike it. Make your choice, the writing had said. Digory had chosen.

I’ve spoiled everything. There’s no chance of getting anything for mother now.

The enormous Lion asked him, "Son of Adam, are you ready to undo the wrong that you have done?" and Digory sputtered his maybes.

"I asked, are you ready?" the Lion said again.

At that very moment, an ultimatum flashed through Digory’s mind. If I salvage your beginning, will you prevent my end? If make amends, will you save my mother? He thought of refusing, of holding his choice hostage until his future was secure. Could the Lion be bargained with? Could Digory twist his arm, as he'd twisted Polly's?

But what Digory said was, "Yes."

Jadis conjured such lovely visions of the future. His mother's face would lose its gray sheen and she would say, Why, I'm beginning to feel stronger. There would be no more morphia, no more of the terrible drawn look about her when she slept. She would rise from her sickbed, vibrant and whole ((Come in by the gold gates or not at all)) rise and walk to the door and fling it open and then Digory would go running into her arms.

He gasped as though he'd been mortally wounded. Perhaps he had been in a way. After all, had the gate not said ((take my fruit for others or forbear))?

Jadis ((for those who steal and those who climb my wall)) called Digory the Lion's slave. Years later, he would think back over all that those words implied. The Witch seemed to think that Digory had no will, if he was willing to subordinate himself to Aslan.

But was it not Aslan who made Digory realize his own culpability ((shall find their heart's desire and find despair)), and in the same breath gave him a way to repair it? Had not Aslan given his will back to him?

And at the foot of the tree, Aslan gave Digory his future back as well.

He was old, but now he is young again, watching as the stars fall headlong across the black of the world-that-was. The world is ending at last, but Digory does not fear such things any longer.

#'let's get some half-finished stuff done and posted before the Inklings Challenge' challenge #i'm not 100% satisfied with this but I quite like all the concepts. we'll see #i actually have a bunch of these type of character study things from back in the day that i'd like to keep revisiting #anyway. i have always always always been fascinated by the writing on the bell #curiosity would totally be MY fatal flaw in a fairytale/myth so i can absolutely see where Digory is coming from #like of course he has to strike the bell. of course #but the way it gets frames in relation to Choice and Will and Responsibility is just really cool #a neat counterpoint to all the stories of those overcome by curiosity whom the narrative justifies #it was your fault. you need to own that #curiosity for its own sake is not inherantly a good thing #and then of course i can't write about Digory without pulling in the dymanic with his mom's impending death #that is by far the most compelling aspect of MN it is the linchpin of the whole thing #so yeah #founded in song #the magician's nephew no longer #narnia #leah stories #pontifications and creations

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corpsentry · 9 months

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#hoo boy i really gotta sleep #my thyroid won’t let me though. or is it the anxiety. who is to say #2)3& whoflwkxkwk #no fascinating tags for the floor this evening. send me an ask and i’ll tell u absurd things #good night all #writing #my stuff #my writing #poems #poem

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dootznbootz · 4 months

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I think some folks MAY have gotten the wrong idea about how I feel about Circe with some of my posts. So, to clear the air...

Homies, I love that fucked up sorceress.

I love how we're never given a reason why she turns people into animals. That's so funny and so awful. And another potion-making magic gal?!?! I love that she's just basically vibing on an island doing whatever she wants. I even love the fact that she scares Odysseus shitless! She's morally gray and that's why she's FUN.

I just sincerely hate when people try to girlboss her or have her be a victim of SA when she never was Looking at you, Miller. Especially when she was actually the one who coerced Odysseus in exchange for his men being transformed back into humans. And even then, while he was clearly afraid of her, (it's in the language of the Odyssey) she likely meant him no harm after a certain point. He just didn't know that.

Why does she need a reason to do awful things? Why can't she just be a goddess who does whatever she wants? That's the reason why I love her!!! She's fucked up!!! :D

I hate what the Telegony did to her as well! >:( You're telling me, this sorceress goddess, who makes potions (!!!) wouldn't have magic contraceptives??? Would WANT CHILDREN?!?! WITH THE PATHETIC WIFEMAN?! No. Fuck no. Eugammon of Cyrene, I have beef with you 🤬

Anyways!!! Understand all the "#anti circe" I have is simply Anti "Girlboss Circe" or the book. I genuinely think she's neat af as her morally gray, fucked up sorceress self and just get frustrated with...everything :'D

#I have these same feelings with Medea and Medusa and so many others. Penelope too. Let them do something fucked up just to be fucked up #I'm a “god forbid women do anything” in the sense of 'she did a fucked up thing. That's why she's fascinating. Don't take her awfulness #away from her!!! please! I wanna study her under a microscope!'😭#PLEASE #...I actually kind of don't like the idea of her actually caring about her nymphs :P maybe she “protects them” but like...#I see her as a “Why are all of you dancing? Oh. it's a birthday? hm okay. Just make sure your duties are done.” while not caring #whose birthday it is. She's not really shown to be close to them during the Odyssey and idk just seems in character for her to not give af #save me morally gray circe #<-making that a tag now because...yeah. She absolutely wouldn't save me though.#Mad rambles #shot by odysseus #anti madeline miller #anti circe #<-THE BOOK! I HATE THE BOOK! LET HER BE AWFUL YOU COWARDS #Why do women need to be SA'ed to be strong Miller?! >:(#...Ima say it. The pathetic wifeman is more relatable to me than Hot Snake Monster Lady when it comes to this stuff.😤#I just sincerely hate the fact that people erase what happened to him you know? It's silly but it means a lot to me.#Also I think she got bored of him immediately and simply let him chill at her place.#She's a goddess. She's got better things to do and she absolutely doesn't love him and he absolutely doesn't want her.#I don't have with Eugammon btw. He's dead and I'm exaggerating but I STILL hate the Telegony >:(#tw sa #kind of??? idk #barely mentioned but yeah #Calypso though?? Yeah. I hate her in practically everything except Pirates of the Caribbean because that's not Odyssey Calypso

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wuffgang-ameowdeus-moozart · 10 months

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The truth is that Aaron Stewart is a liar.

You wouldn't think so, at first glance. He makes sure of that. He is always wearing a genuine smile and is quick to double down if challenged. He has years of practice of walking without a sound and can make a meal last longer than it should. He is friendly, but not enough for people to feel the urge to get to know him. He is inobtrusive, but not enough to be deemed "antisocial" or "weird". It is a very slippery rope to walk on, and he has fallen down both sides more than once. It hurt every time. So he learnt to be better.

Aaron Stewart is a liar. He may not look like one, but that is what makes him so good at it. Because in truth he is sad and he is hurt and he is angry. He is so unbearably angry all the fucking time. He is angry when he sees another homeless person on the streets and he is angry when he sees a kid his age holding the hands of both their parents and he is angry when he sees more and more unpaid bills mounting on the kitchen table and knows that he will be losing the temporary roof over his head soon. (Again.)

(Sometimes he gets so angry he hears the wind howling in his ears and feels the pavement crack beneath him. He quickly learns to hide that, too.)

He learns to hide it, but he doesn't learn it fast enough.

Someone in the orphanage found his hidden stash. Someone found the food he has been hiding away for months, and they stole it. Aaron does not know who it was, but it is probably better if it stays that way. He already can feel the hot ugly anger rising inside of him and he knows he won't be able to hold it down this time.

So he does the other thing he has learnt to be good in. He runs.

He runs behind the orphanage and leans against the grey concrete wall and - for a single moment - allows himself to be honest.

It happens without his say. He has as much control over the flying dirt and thundering air as he has over his feelings. The ugly ones. (Anger against his father who abandoned him and hatred against the families who never take care of him like they are supposed to and defiance against the universe for daring to take away his mother from him before he ever got the chance to know her and-)

He doesn't notice the girl until she is shaking his shoulder. He slowly turns his head towards her and she takes a nervous step back. She knows Aaron in the same manner most other orphans do: friendly enough, keeps to himself, always docile and obedient. Seeing how his features contort themselves into a mask of hatred and fire seems almost obscene in comparison. Like something she wasn't supposed to see. (She probably wasn't).

He takes a deep breath and everything stops. The air is silent, almost eerily so. When he turns to her again, the deep-seated fury is gone. For a moment she wonders if the cracks she can see behind his smile are only in her imagination, or if they've always been there and no one's ever bothered to look. She wonders if her memories are exaggerating the deep-seated sadness she saw in his eyes.

So she tells him about the Magisterium. And for the first time she realizes that the smile he is always wearing isn't as genuine as everyone liked to believe. For the first time she realized how beautiful his eyes were when he laughed.

@ashpkat hope you like it?? never wrote for magisterium before but Aaron is so fascinating, so have some pre-canon <3

#magisterium #aaron stewart #this dude just fascinates me ok #he has all the character traits that tickle my silly little blorbo brain #so i actually wanted to do the whole first year. like condensing it to the most important stuff #but i really dont have the attention span rn #so have this mini something thingie #maybe itll turn into a series??#calron #did you see what i did here #'docile' like you would describe a dog #and later he becomes the 'dog' of the presidium

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bright-and-burning · 2 months

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really neat article i enjoyed today about polyamory with a banger of an opening line: “Too often these days I find myself in the position of defending someone I think is annoying from someone I know is dangerous.”

#also learned recently abt how somerville of all places is like.#really polyamory friendly. like they have anti-discrimination laws #fascinating stuff! and the opening line made me laugh lol #words

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didsomeonesayventus · 8 months

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thinking about how I saw someone say "I wish alcryst stayed badass like in his intro scene" and like.

idk how to tell u that i thought the appeal was this lil fella at odds with himself on every level. He is FIGHTING himself at every level at two extremes, almost literally tearing himself apart from it, self destructive as he tries to build something "worthy" of himself. He's capable of such devastating brutality in battle (high Dex trend making for good crit chances and the only unit in the game who can learn Luna) and unbelievable compassion in the same small vessel (a keen eye for details, his talent being finding the best in others) with a judgment hot as a glowing white knife and capable of forgiving as easily as it would bend should new information present itself.

He hates himself he loves his world he is idealistic and in awe of everything around him but also able to see the bitterness of reality not always being so kind. He feels he's worthless and yet plunges into any course with everything he has and only the slightest hesitation and a bold- perhaps at times concerning -recklessness and courage to send himself, a ranged fighter, straight to the front lines.

He actually loves people, despite his every attempt to stay out of their way and not take up too much space of his own. He presents as timid and with a worthless confidence and yet when you get down to it or threaten his loved ones his spine is forged from steel and will not yield until the threat has passed. He is passionate and emotional, quiet and thoughtful. He aspires to be a strategist. He loves reading fairy tales.

Alcryst is a storm of a person, forever at war with who he wants to be. The whole appeal in is his wildly different sides u fool.

#katie rambles #alcryst #fe17 #elaborating on a dm sent to a friend earlier today like #you really think he would be as interesting as he is if he was just combat mode alcryst all the time #the interest is in the conflict u fool. the duality.#how every second he is fighting some aspect of himself to see which prince comes out on top #he is soft and he is hard he is war and he is peace #and he drives me so insane and i just can't help but just. rotate him so thoroughly and constantly.#he's my 2nd engage fave behind alear because he is simply so! fascinating.#he's also much easier to ramble about because most of his stuff is mild spoilers #(unlike Walking Spoiler Protagonist Alear)#anyways this is just. alcryst appreciation hours I think he's soooo neat

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bumblingbabooshka · 5 months

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Tuvix Memes

#Tuvok/Neelix #Tuvix #Neelix #Tuvok #st voyager #st voy #star trek voyager memes #Tuvok carrying several grocery bags: Do you require assistance?#Neelix: (carrying exactly one more than him) No no not at all!! You know I'm made of (can barely walk) tougher stuff than you'd think!#Tuvok: If you say so.#Neelix DOES make it but Tuvok doesn't really think much of the moment v_v #I believe in Neelix 'I did in depth research on Vulcan songs and holidays for you' Lastname's ability to send a fascinating article

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thefirstknife · 11 months

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So I’m listening to a Destiny lore podcast (Destiny 2 - Myths and Ztories) and they’re talking about Cayde-6, his whole life up until his death. They read a lore card from Book: Ghost Stories called A Hero’s Requiem, which is the story of how Cayde was Risen.

I thought I had misheard the podcasters, but Cayde says:

“My brain works, but I don't remember a thing 'cept that I seem to be a functioning life form—I'm human, I'm a man.”

And I’m a bit confused by that. Was Cayde not Risen as an Exo? Or is this just Cayde being Cayde?

He was Risen as an Exo, yes! Cayde was turned into an Exo in the Golden Age, after being basically coerced into it by owing a debt to Clovis. He went through his resets and eventually died as Cayde-6 which is what he was rezed at. It appears he died during the Collapse and had fragmented memories of it happening.

The thing is that Exos are human. An Exo should feel and think of themselves as human; it was a huge part of how they were made. An Exo is a human mind uploaded into a robot body. At first, Clovis wanted to make Exos as far removed from humanity as possible so he didn't make them capable of "humanisms": original Exos didn't breathe or eat or do anything human. Clovis wanted them to be perfect, better than human.

But the problem was that they were still human minds in a robot body and those human minds could not handle having a body that doesn't breathe or eat. They started suffering severe consequences where they would become convinced that they have died. Clovis' logbook details the process of this in the section "-045- Note on D.E.R." Warning for some gruesome medical descriptions. The term "Cotard delusion" mentioned here is a real phenomenon btw (again, warning for medical stuff that might be upsetting).

DER is Dissociative Exomind Rejection. It's a condition that Exos go through where their mind rejects their body and they essentially go mad. It's most easily explained in this old Ghost scan from Mars from back in Warmind; it's explained in a way that isn't gruesome like in Clovis' log. Here it is from him with some extra details. Basically, this is the crux of the problem. The Exos have to feel human and have to be able to do human actions in order to survive.

It was obvious to them that the root of the problem lay in the deficient exobodies I had supplied. Deficient how, I demanded to know. They did not suffer human weakness. They never needed to eat, drink, breathe, sleep, micturate, or dream. Apparently, this was the problem. I had assumed that the need for these irritations would pass since there would be no shortage or accumulation of poisons to trigger them. But evolution's tangled ways cannot be so easily rationalized. I was wrong. Their brains concluded that all of their internal processes failed. No digestion, no breath, no heartbeat, no sense of interoceptive health... all signs of death.

Both of these also mention how resets help to stave off the DER. It's something that helps them acclimate to a new body (this is why they're reset upon upload and why they have no memories of who they were), but also it turned out to be convenient for Clovis so he didn't have to bother helping them in other ways as well as to be able to hide information from them. You can see how this is explained for the public in that scan. Meanwhile here's how Clovis talks about it:

I am much more interested in the surprising success of memory wipes. I became so tired of answering the questions asked by new exos—what had happened to the scanning clinic, how long had it been, would I let them see their families—that I began inducing retrograde amnesia before spin-up. Interestingly, this seems to have improved their resilience against exomind rejection! I theorize the lack of any episodic memories eases the transition into the new body. And the loss of emotional ties prevents grief and stress, which could interfere with healthy function.

Specifically, how he was tired of them asking questions and how the reset basically allows them to circumvent actually providing psychiatric help to people. If they suffer some trauma, you can just reset them to erase it. Cayde is actually a really good case study for all of these issues as he suffered with adjustment to the Exo body and struggled with memories. He had frequent flashbacks to random events from his previous resets and fragmented memories which he tried really hard to put into some logical sense and ended up pretty much inventing a possible life he had. When he talks about his "wife and son," these are fabrications constructed from his fragmented memories of unrelated events. He constructed them in order to feel more human.

The kid. The woman. I do not know them. They are not real. But I wish I did. And I wish they were. They're just the two best cards I could find to keep up my sleeve when the odds were stacked against me. I made them real in my mind and in my heart. I fell in love with the idea of them, and I crafted a truth that allowed me to feel.

So yeah! The way he reacts to being rezed and thinks of himself as "human" is because he is. He had to be, in order to be a successful Exo upload, otherwise he would've just torn himself apart eventually. Exos have to feel human and act human and think of themselves as human. They're still Exo and have clear differences, but at the end of the day, they're humans. It depends on the individual if they would align more with being human or being an Exo; in Cayde's case, he would definitely lean more to seeing himself as primarily human. He was not a fan of the whole Exo thing and had some insight into all the atrocities done by Clovis in order to create the Exos. He was also famously terrified of going through another reset.

#destiny 2 #cayde-6 #ask #long post #really wanted to add some extra context to this for exos in general #it makes more sense i think #the exo stuff is really fascinating #clovis' logbook is for sure in my top 5 of all lore ever (if you can stomach the medical atrocities)

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