#the discourse is officially explained in the fic
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a lot has happened lately, but so far i haven't made any official statement about my decisions and the path i want to take as a writer. it was a long road of trial and error & detailed examination of conscience in regard of my bad habits, gained experience, and goals and expectations.
there are some massive changes that i need to address, followed by explanation of my decisions. i know i don't need to explain myself but i feel it's only fair to my loyal readers to share at least little insight into the context.
I. One Piece goes on indefinite vacation...
not going to lie, i was falling out of this fandom for years. it's started in 2021 when i fell victim to bullying and stalking, initiated by a widely-known (and still active, as far as i am aware of) x reader writer. it's the biggest reason for my slow withdrawal but not a sole one: pressing discourse around my comfort characters, toxic environment i fell into when looking for a relief from relentless bullying, forcing myself to write for topics and characters i didn't even like, readers overstepping my boundaries over and over again, falling into a trap of purity culture...oh, the list is long. way too long.
i still love one piece but i don't want to create for it en-masse anymore. right now it's just a wound that's far from healing, i need to treat it at my own pace. aside from an occasional poke at sapphic topics and my fav trio, i doubt it will appear in other way than commissions or gifts for friends. and some characters (kid, sanji, marco, katakuri, shanks & a few more) will never return.
II. ...but new fandoms arrive!
jujutsu kaisen is right now the main love of my life & will remain as the main fandom for long. but i found more series and characters i adore enough to feel that creative spark buzzing in my veins. soon you should see fics appearing for: demon slayer, chainsaw man, haikyuu and hell's paradise!
i'm keeping my head low rn when it comes to requests but i want to hold at least a kinktober open for them so you definitely will have an opportunity to see your faves from those series from me!
III. It's a gender neutral & afab Y/N sphere now!
it's something that was inevitably floating over me and my fics (and some of y'all definitely caught the whiff of it already), but i couldn't quite find courage to put a hard limit. we all know how it is in the y/n circles: way too many people expect from writers to cater to everyone, and treat it as a personal offense if you prefer to play in your own sandbox. as if writing y/ns was "activism", not a fandom activity like any other.
so, i won't force myself to write against myself anymore. i feel the most happy and comfortable when i make my y/ns gender neutral and when i'm giving them vaginas (and sometimes boobs) when i'm writing smut with them. i don't want to battle my weirdly-veiled dysphoria to force female reader out of myself. i don't want to stress myself while writing amab y/n, from the sheer biological fact of being unable to relate via lack of penis, to being sick and tired of the toxicity and misogyny that m!reader circles reek of.
so, gender neutral and afab it is. sometimes i will stray towards afab nonbinary or transmasc direction, if i feel like i need some good gender vibes coming from my fics.
it doesn't mean i will never write different y/ns. commissions, gifts for friends, exchanges, random ideas for a plot that requires a specific kind of y/n, sapphics feels, and such will appear here and there. i will also interact lots with f!reader fics, since it's what i see lots around & don't mind reading, if i feel more fem or if it's from a writer i like and trust.
incoming ino x reader (that i hope to publish tomorrow) will be the last non-sapphic f!reader that will appear for a long while. all requests i'm keeping in my drafts right now will be turned into completely gender neutral or from fem to more general afab reader (i don't have any requests for amab readers rn anyway). unless you really don't want to have f!reader taken out of your request - then please, let me know, i will delete it so you can head with it to a different writer.
IV. Never miss a fic again - sign for a tag list!
and now a little treat! if you don't want to miss a fic about the topic that might interest you, you may sign for a tag list by filling a simple form!
V. And what am I going to do now?
write, write, and write even more! i wanna write the in the heat of spring drabbles before the spring is gone, have three fully-fledged multichapter fics outlined and itching to be written and posted, and an interactive event with which we will welcome the summer 💦
in june i want to publish a few sapphic fics that i had in mind for a while now & later towards the second half of summer (think august-september) i'll smile at you again with a kinktober i really want to complete this year!
there might be a few smaller events on the way, depending on how busy i'll be. there's an idea for dilf enjoyers and for a chubby y/n, as well as many others that still didn't take a clear shape.
i also didn't forget about the kiss event and nonsexual acts of intimacy for the fluff enjoyers!
if you survived this wall of text (or just scrolled down here lol understandable) - thank you for your patience, understanding, and support. whether you're here with me since the very beginning or clicked the follow recently, i'm happy to have you here ❤
if you have any questions or just want to talk, my askbox is open for any kind of interaction! and if you want to support a poor writer who has way too many health-related spendings lately, you can buy me a ko-fi ❤
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for WIP Wednesday a little snippet from my Undercover Carlos fic (that I will try to update soon - life has just been A LOT lately) thanks for the tag @meditating-honey-badger
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“Guys, come here we have news.” TK called out as he and Carlos walked into the firehouse kitchen area.
“What’s up?” Judd asked, not bothering to get up from his seat but putting his newspaper down nonetheless.
“Did you finally get Carlos pregnant?” Nancy asked and everyone laughed.
“No, but we’ll keep trying.”
“If it’s a girl you should name her after me. I suffer the most riding with you all day.”
“Oh in that case, Lexi is a great name too.” Mitchell added.
Nancy turned to look at her.
“What? I have to put up with the other one all day.”
“That’s fair. But should it be Lexi Nancy or Nancy Lexi?” Nancy wondered before turning back to Carlos and TK. “You should just have twins guys.”
“Yeah, can we stop talking about this now?” Carlos said, trying to get the conversation back on track. “We have news.”
“So y’all keep saying. Go on, out with it.” Judd pushed.
“We’re getting married!” TK announced happily.
“That’s your news?” Marjan asked, the group looking at each other wondering if they were being pranked.
“Yes, we’re getting married in 8 weeks!” Carlos explained.
“Eight weeks? What happened to 18 months?”
“They had a cancellation and gave us first refusal for the spot.”
“And we took it.” TK told them. “You’ll all get your official invitation by the end of the week but we wanted to tell you right away.”
“I’m happy for you guys.” Nancy said, walking up to them and hugging them both. “But Carlos please tell him to quit his diet because he gets hangry and if I have to ride with him being like that for another eight weeks, your groom is going to have a black eye in the wedding pictures.”
“Diet? What diet?” Carlos asked, looking at TK. “Babe you’re perfect the way you are, you don’t need to diet.”
“It’s not a diet.” TK rolled his eyes. “I was just… trying to eat more healthily. Less carbs and sugar, more fruit and vegetables.”
“Well stop.” Nancy told him and went back to her own lunch.
All of their friends took turns to congratulate them again and indulged them in a lunch hour of wedding planning.
“Has anyone seen my dad?” TK asked after a while. “We should tell him about the change of plan.”
“He took the afternoon off. Left me in charge.” Judd told him. “He said something about an appointment.”
“Appointment? What kind of appointment? Doctor? Dentist?”
“I don’t know, all he said was appointment.”
TK frowned and grabbed his phone and dialled Owen’s number.
“Voicemail.”
“That makes sense… if he’s at an appointment…” Carlos tried. “I’m sure he’s fine. Try not to worry.”
“Yeah… yeah you’re right. He’ll tell me if it’s something serious.” TK said, trying to convince himself.
“Carlos, we have to get going… Our lunch break is almost over.” Lexi reminded him, face apologetic.
“Right. Yeah. Of course.” Carlos turned to TK and kissed him. “See you at home?”
“I have your car, I’ll pick you up after my shift. I finish first.”
“Ok, just come inside. It’s Mackie working the front desk today, he likes you, he’ll let you go through to my desk.”
TK nodded in reply and tilted his head up for another kiss.
“Be safe out there ok? I need you in one piece.”
“I will, I promise.”
----
Idk who's been tagged or not so if you write fic, consider yourself tagged to share a little something!
also I wrote this before the having kids or not discourse hit
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For your choice of violence, 13, 14, 24???
13: worst blorboficiation
I'm not gonna say this is bad, because that's rude. I will say that I don't understand it. Let me make that very clear.
I do not understand Poe De Spell. I do not really like his character in the show for what he represents. I do not understand why his tumblr time to screen time ratio is so skewed. I just don't get it.
Now, Magica De Spell, I appreciate her role as a villain, and I get that she's very well done as a character. But "for some reason" (I know the reason, I just pretend that I don't) I just can't bring myself to like her. She's such a good villain. I hate her. She's so mean to my favorites. She's so good.
Magica absolutely did not need a tragic backstory. I do not care. I will not budge from this. We spent 73 episodes seeing her do nothing except be funny and be horrible. She is an abusive person. This is canon. This is not something I'm headcanoning into the show. It's how they portrayed her over and over and over. We spent literally the whole show on this point. She does not deserve sympathy from anyone for anything.
So why does this all matter? Because that's what Poe De Spell represents to me. He exists in the show solely as Magica's tragic backstory and why she wants to exact her grim revenge on Scrooge McDuck in the first place. We did not need to know this. This did not need to exist. Poe did not need to exist.
Especially when it's literally the penultimate episode of the entire series. This concept would never appear again, and probably never ever will ever be explored in anything official ever. So why does it exist? To make me feel sympathetic for Magica? To make Scrooge look evil for the plot? To put Martin Freeman in the credits?
It's a fan theory that Lena eventually finds Poe and he becomes a sort of new parental figure for her. It's AU stuff. Lovely. Whatever. But I would much much rather her just leave all of that in the past and just enjoy her new life with her new family. That's what's best for her.
Never mind I've decided that it's actually bad and not just that I don't understand it. Sorry for lying on accident earlier.
14: that one thing you see in fics all the time
Characters elaborate way more than is natural in conversations. Tighten up those sentences. If you want to explain to the reader a complex array of emotions, you can do that without having the character say it directly.
Violet is particularly difficult with this in fics. Sure, she speaks differently than most other characters, but not to the degree that writers will make her.
A lot of times, I'll see her portrayed as overly verbose. Fanon Violet is incapable of using a single contraction, let alone saying a full sentence in a way that is simple, snappy, and pleasing to the eye/ear. We've got to remember that she is just a kid, and will talk like a kid.
My workaround is that when I write out her thoughts and feelings outside of dialogue, that's when I break out the verbose stuff. I also like to think that she simplifies her language when speaking for the people around her to ease communication with others, but that's drifting into hc territory.
24: topic that brings up the most rancid discourse
Oh, absolutely the infamous Della and Louie discourse. There are so many people so passionate for their blorbo and it's just augh. I think it's unlike any other conflict in the entire show. I'm tired of it. They were both wrong. They were both misguided. They made up. They're both better off for it. Leave me alone.
Thanks for the ask!
#ask game#choosing violence#i'm sorry poe stans#if we've have gotten that fourth season maybe i would have come around to it#it's nothing personal it's just i don't like it
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I noticed your post on "Tony." Interesting to consider since my preferred take is that Peter calls him "Mr. Stark" forever, lol.
But I thought your character development and insight for this scenario was fascinating. Do you usually prefer that change from "Mr. Stark" to "Tony" as a writer/reader? I'm curious now 🤩
This is a great question! So, Imma preface my answer but saying I love Irondad, and I appreciate all authors and their creative take on Irondad, and there's no wrong answer to how you go about writing your version of Irondad.
That being said...
I hate Peter calling Tony by his first name. 😅 As like, the standard. As in - he calls Tony by his first name all the time and nothing but that. I rarely read a fic where Peter's constantly addressing him as Tony. It just doesn't feel like Irondad to me. 🤷 And that's a personal take, so if you write that or like that, don't take offense. I'm just talking about me, myself, and I here.
Getting Peter to that point in the story was a huge moment because it addresses their relationship's growth, and how Peter IS *able* to call Tony by his first name. It's wrapping up a narrative thread I started way back in Chapter 9 of Identity Theft, as the Narrative Discourse post went on to talk about. But literally a few lines later he's right back to Mr. Stark 😆
Identity Crisis: Chapter 31 │In a Quiet Lagoon, Devils Dwell
“You going to freak out if I call you Tony?” he asked, a little more volume to his voice, with a tug at his lips adding a smile to the touch.
Tony arched an eyebrow, slightly, before warming up to the same smile.
“You get a one time pass,” Tony said, removing his hand from the gravestone to point a finger in the air. “Use it wisely.”
Though Peter hesitated, it didn’t stem from Tony’s false indignance. His smile grew wider at the edges, every pull of his muscles as sincere as the words that followed.
“Thanks, Tony,” Peter said.
Tony smiled back, patting him firmly on the shoulder. “You’re welcome, Mr. Parker.”
The wind blew by, rustling at the trees from above and shaking the branches along the way, dropping leaves in a scattered pattern to the ground below. At the same time, Tony unclenched his grasp on Peter, going to use his shoulder as a foothold when standing up.
“Now come on,” Tony gestured for him to stand as well, happily taking Peter’s arm when the kid offered it for support. He bones were too stiff for sitting that long, let alone in a pretzeled position. “Szechuan Bean Curd wasn’t a suggestion — Pepper’s craving it, and I’ve gotta do my due diligence in keeping the woman happy.”
Peter let out a chuckle as they began their way back to the parked Audi, its bright orange impossible to miss even in the middle of the night.
“I dunno, Mr. Stark,” Peter started to say, wiping the mud off the back of his jeans as they walked side-by-side down the cemetery path. “She didn’t sound too happy about the whole wedding thing.”
------
There'll be a few more times in the future where Peter addresses Tony by his first name, but the moments are reserved for shits-about-to-hit-the-fan or just somber moments in general. I don't have access to my outline at the moment but if I remember correctly, it's less than 3 times in total in the final installment where it happens. Otherwise, he sticks to Mr. Stark.
At this point in my universe, it's more of a nickname than anything else. It's no longer that Peter isn't comfortable calling Tony by his first name. They've officially grown past that, as the narrative thread explains, and how the narrative thread has been concluded. Addressing him as Tony was the big step into starting a new stage of their relationship, and I was very thrilled to reach that point. I ENJOYED writing that "Thanks, Tony," line. It made me smile ear-to-ear. It's a huge step in the character growth for Peter.
But the nickname Mr. Stark stays -- because to me, that's a big part of Irondad. Mr. Stark is like Underoo's/Spiderling/Pete/and most of all..."kid." It's the name that makes them who they are.
#irondad#peter parker#tony stark#fanfic discourse#fanfiction#peter parker & tony stark#irondad & spiderson
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Hey hawk, was just wondering if you see yourself moving on from the N@ruto series/Sasuke eventually? For my case, everytime I thought I've moved on (eg: found other media to invest my free time with), I'd always end back up with Sasuke in my thoughts, exploring more about Sasuke's dynamic with other characters etc.
Yeah for me it's more or less the same. I might be more interested in something else for a while, but I never leave Sasuke completely. My fandom passions last a very long time tbh.
I say Sasuke because I kinda moved on from the series, I mean, when I stumble on manga panels or anime moments I have pleasant feelings, because I really liked the story and many characters others than Sas, and interactions, ofc mostly Sasuke’s interactions with others cause it’s all about him for me. But mostly I’m negative because no matter how cool it was the plot and the characters and interactions it still ended the way it ended. For me the dislike for new shit and for kishi is stronger than my interest so I kinda get pissed off every time I see new official art and bullshit even. I'm so pissed off at it that even if I reblog when I see new stuff I like because it's objectively cute, I hate it deep inside and I am pissed off at ppl who are enthusiastically about it (which I know it's stupid and I would never attack someone for liking them, it's just to show how I feel, cause like I said I reblog some of these).
I'd like the series to just end, no more official art, no more merchandise, no more stuff that is created only to keep fans attention high and not because the author/staff has something new and interesting to show.
Also the fandom kinda ruined some characters and dynamics for me, first of all for the moralistic hypocrite bullshit that pairings and dynamics must be always ‘healthy’ and ‘unproblematic’ when some of them are canonically unhealthy and problematic and it’s what makes them interesting, but some idiots decided that defending the rights of fictional characters who don’t exist is more important than defending the rights of real people so wow. Not funny. On the other hand there’s the different fan view on many characters and dynamics, that it’s just different from mine, so when I see some Itasasu related stuff, which used to me my favourite thing, even if it’s not anti it, I’m either meh or just cringing (especially cause there’s so much of the reverse dynamic everywhere, or Shi-ita-sas which is a no for me), same for N*rusasu which is too positive while I see it darker, and others that I like very much but others just see them in a too different way, so it’s just uninteresting for me, which takes away the fun of sharing what I like. Again, not criticizing anyone, I’m just talking about my own taste and distaste and the reason why I might have headcanons or ideas or smth but don’t feel like sharing, since I don’t feel like I belong in the fandom (and when I shared my last fics they didn’t get appreciation anyway lol).
Lastly right now it’s a shitty period, I’m not able to enjoy most things because of the war in Ukraine that even if it doesn’t affect me directly, it affects me a lot anyway because 1) I’m overwhelmed by the amount of denial and bullshit I hear and by understanding how deep russian propaganda arrived in europe, so much that some of it it’s tailored to different countries and ppl just repeat bullshit without realizing they’re supporting the aggressors 2)my gf is half Ukrainian, from Moldova which is kinda the next target 3)I’m really full of sadness and anger and a lot of different feelings about it. I won’t complain about my feelings in this context because I don’t matter, what matters is only the suffering of Ukrainians. I only mentioned this to explain why atm I’m not exactly interested right now in something that in social media brings ‘discourse’ about genocide and ppl get so worked up on justice for fictional characters when a genocide is happening for real.
#replies &co#fanon and fandom stuff#sorry it became longer than I expected and gloomier#I wanted to just keep it short and say that it's possible to move on for me but usually for some time and then I'd return to Sas#cause it's what has been happening to me since I'm in the fandom. having peaks then getting less interested but always returning and#exploring more of sasuke's dynamics and details and everything else#cause I had very long passions in the past as well and like for Bleach only discovering (late) Nar replaced it#not tagging as anti because it's my fucking blog so if someone gets offended pls unfollow
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I saw your post in response to the @dramioneasks 'update'. Can you please explain? I don't know who I am following that may be a TERF and I no longer want to support them.
Is there anywhere to see these posts? And to share them so others can unfollow?
Thank you I'm advance for your help. [: Thank you (and everyone else who has) for standing up for the LGBTQIA+ community.
Hi anon! Thanks for your concern for our trans community! As you probably know, trans rights and the lives of trans people are currently under great risk, thanks in large parts to JKR and her transphobic activism which has found massive reach amongst the far-right both in the US and the UK (not only ideologically but also in form of legislature). So, I will say with emphasis that to aid the trans community, unfollowing JKR herself and lifting up Trans Creators is the most important thing.
JKR has done a lot of harm and has managed to poison the discourse with misinformation and factual inaccuracies to a point where uninformed people believe this to be an intellectual debate that has "two sides".
It is not.
Specialists, scientists and activists alike are unified in their unequivocal support for Trans Rights and the validity of the lived experience of trans people. Since I am no expert, here's the quintessential response to JKR's talking points (including links to sources and research backing his claim — all of which JKR's essay lacks).
However, to address your concern about transphobia in fandom, these last couple of days, people have discovered, some for the first time, that members of our community are either outright anti-trans or (have) harbour(ed) anti-trans sentiment.
One of those people was Elle Morgan-Black, a former admin of dramioneasks, a mod of the largest Dramione facebook group as well as the largest Lumione group. The comments and posts on dramioneasks were all in relation to her, as was the official announcement that she was let go because of her bigotry, as well as a subsequent contradictory remark under one of the fic asks claiming she'd been bullied off the site.
Understandably, a lot of people were upset that dramioneasks dealt with all this in a manner that altered between dismissing and tone-policing a hurting community, and lack of accountability for their imperfect handling of the situation. They have yet to address that.
In the wake of these discoveries, I made past anti-trans opinions voiced by Pia Bartolini public, so people could make informed decisions about how to engage. She vows to have changed and that she wants to do better going forward.
If you want to know the particulars, you will have to go to twitter. I'm not going to link anything here because a) you will only find one side of the argument (Elle has deactivated her account and Pia has gone on private), and b) I don't want these links circulating on tumblr until all eternity when these matters have reached an erstwhile conclusion.
Dog piling or harassment is not what this should be about; we should encourage positive change if possible.
But our preeminent concern right now should be to support the trans members of our community, stand up for trans rights, and communicate that as a cis-person (if you are), you are a safe space.
If you have the energy, I encourage you to challenge people who still follow JKR; who parrot "gender critical" talking points; or who think this is an intellectual debate that is somehow "complicated" or a matter of opinion. (If someone finds themselves on the other side of this issue, they will have to address some hard truths about themselves.) If you do not have the energy, that is valid, too. Blocking or muting people regurgitating harmful or bigoted views is another way of creating a safe space.
But whether to confront or exclude those with bigoted views is not a decision that I'm comfortable making on your behalf. Both is valid.
Either way, it is important to recognise that cis people such as myself, in order to call ourselves allies, will have to act as such, too. So thanks again for caring about the trans community. They're already in such a tough spot in the HP fandom.
(And bc it's Non-Binary People Day today, who are a crucial part of the trans community, here are 10 Ways to Step Up As an Ally by Stonewall UK!)
Trans Rights are human rights.
Trans Rights are about bodily autonomy.
Trans Rights will benefit people of all genders.
#trans rights#transphobia in fandom#HP and the Battle Against the TERFs#no transphobia on my watch#HP fandom#asks
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In The Darkness Chapter 15 - Diagon Alley
Words: 2,449
Summary: Hiyori bumps into someone familiar in Diagon Alley as she prepares for her second year at Hogwarts.
Previous chapter | First chapter
For the 1st anniversary of the Harry Potter AU!
Thank you to Gio (@themusicalbookworm) for beta-ing me!
A/N: A while ago there was some discourse on my Tumblr over me putting Yato into Slytherin 'because he's evil'. Yato's speech about this in this chapter reflects that stereotype I'm trying to break about Slytherins. It's also an important plot point which I can't talk much about, but trust me, Yato isn't Slytherin because 'it's the evil house'.
Read on AO3
Detached from wizarding life, Hiyori’s summer resulted in long, lazy days of completing assignments and catching up with old friends. Smartly avoiding questions of her ‘private school’, Hiyori recounted stories of what she had been up to, minus the magic and mishaps, to both her old friends and her parents.
Her letters home throughout the school year didn’t include the numerous occasions that would make her mother faint with horror, and her father pull her out of the school altogether. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
Her father was much more relaxed and, unlike her mother, embraced her interest in a break-neck sport where enchanted balls battered players and left them hospitalised. So much so that once she greeted her parents after returning to Kings Cross Station, they had gone to Diagon Alley and gifted Hiyori a Nimbus 2000 – and a lot of protective clothing – for her birthday.
Unable to practice, Hiyori admired the broom which had been propped up in the corner of her bedroom, anticipating the moment she would be able to ride it - and hopefully not smash it into smithereens.
Although she had stayed in contact with Aimi and Yama throughout the summer, Hiyori had no contact with Yukine nor Yato as they hadn’t mentioned any addresses. She wasn’t even sure if they had owls.
It didn't matter now though as the next school year was just around the corner.
Returning to Diagon Alley in late August (through a suspicious looking pub entitled The Leaky Cauldron), Hiyori and her family collected the next load of books she would need for her second year at Hogwarts.
Her parents were sidetracked the moment they left the bookshop by the allure of the other bizarre shops they had been too terrified to step foot in the first time they had collected her school supplies.
Hiyori gave up on trying to drag her mother away from gazing at the array of neon coloured bottles in Madam Primpernelle's Beautifying Potions shop window, whereas her father was opposite reading the strange flavours of Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour.
Hiyori stared down the barren alley. Its lopsided cobbled path trailing down and forking off in different paths. The first years had ransacked the shops the moment they received their acceptance letter, gathering all the equipment they would need to see them through the oncoming term.
Amongst the few pointy-hatted wizards towing children and gatherings of fellow students, Hiyori could see a single figure walking alone, head bowed and carrying a bag over their shoulder.
They barely brushed past Hiyori in the narrow street, not even looking up as she acknowledged them. They seemed familiar, the bag tied shut with string and the dark shock of hair which concealed their face.
Someone familiar…
“Yato?”
He stopped abruptly, stiffening under their black robe before slowly turning their head.
His hair was dishevelled, clumps of it sticking up to give him the appearance that a fan of jet black peacock had erupted from his head. Untameable bangs fell over his wide-eyed stare when he caught sight of Hiyori.
“Hiyori?”
Hiyori couldn’t help but notice the blue of his eyes being especially sharp in contrast to the dark circles that had taken hold under his eyes, almost as if he hadn’t slept in a week. Her stare didn’t go unnoticed as Yato quickly patted his hair and forced a smile.
“Are you,” Hiyori began, about to say exactly what she had been thinking, but was cut off by the voice of her mother interrupting their encounter.
“Who’s this?” The question snapped both of their attention to Hiyori’s parents who stared at Yato with the curiosity of a hawk.
“Ah.” Hiyori threw a glance between Yato and her parents. If this was the first time they were meeting a bonafide wizard, they were in for a surprise.
“This is Yato, and these are my parents,” Hiyori said, shuffling nervously. She had left his name out of the letters, mainly because he was the cause of the trouble she got into.
“Oh, a friend of yours, dear?” Mr Iki said with a good-natured smile, unlike his wife who regarded Yato’s disheveled appearance the same way a teacher would with an unruly child.
Hiyori muttered a ‘yes’. I suppose we’re friends, she thought as she cast a glance at Yato who stood unusually quiet on the spot. After a beat of silence only filled by the sounds of the street, her mother spoke.
“What a… curious boy,” Mrs Iki didn’t hide the apprehensiveness in her voice, yet her choice of words was gentler than the ones she would’ve chosen had they just passed in the street.
“Wouldn’t you say, dear…”
Mr Iki’s short attention span had been snatched in this exchange when his wife tried to involve him in the conversation, the sight of a rundown second-hand store window compelling him to distractedly agree. With an idle farewell to Yato he tugged his wife’s hand to follow him to the shop window, perhaps to bicker over buying more padding to ‘protect their daughter’, though Hiyori doubted the dented helmets would do any protecting.
Just as Hiyori repressed a smile upon hearing the first complaints begin. She turned back to Yato, who looked less uncomfortable now they were gone.
“Well I won’t keep you.” Yato bowed his head slightly, gaze travelling as if distracted so that he could go on his way, wherever he was going.
Hiyori’s brow creased again when she looked at his appearance more closely, seeing the grime on his chin and the mud splatters which were almost invisible against the black cloth.
“Yato, is everything ok?” Hiyori asked, stepping in time with him as he took his first steps away.
Yato looked at her levelly, the wide smile that he had given her a few moments ago drastically reduced to a thin line.
“Peachy.” There was a tone of cynicism in his voice as he readjusted his bag on his shoulder, giving her parents another glance before starting to walk again with no farewell.
Hiyori watched him, robes flutter around his feet as quick paces took him up the thoroughfare.
“See you in September!” she called out to him.
Yato raised his hand in acknowledgment but didn’t bother turning, instead vanishing around the corner and out of sight.
~
Just like the first time Hiyori stepped onto Platform 9 ¾, there was a havoc of students sending whirling sparks of red, blue and white which fizzled and banged above her head.
The occasional shower of tattered paper with each collision of flare and paper butterflies which flitted around. Crumpled twists of paper lay scattered on the ground, revealing themselves to be broomsticks when they shuddered back to life and reshaped, only to begin jousting each other overhead and battering what looked like a rusted Knut in the stead of a Quaffle.
The pierced whistle of the Hogwarts Expressed drowned out Hiyori’s shout when she managed to see Yukine through the cluster of students and spilling heaps of luggage that waited to be loaded, but she managed to catch his shoulder in time before he vanished into the near-crowded train. She was met by a confused scowl at the sudden grab, but Yukine’s expression dissolved into a dorky smile the moment he saw Hiyori.
It turned out that Yato was already with him, holding the door of an empty carriage open and beckoning them over the squeals and shrieks of overexcited first years and lairy students who would wreak havoc in what would be their final year at Hogwarts.
Hiyori greeted Yato, deciding not to mention their encounter in Diagon Alley when Yukine exclaimed that they hadn’t seen each other in months. He was much cleaner than he was that day, dressed in his robes already and not as dishevelled as he normally would be. Perhaps she could ask about it in private.
They crashed into the cabin and shut the door to block the new wave of magical dangers, a summer of restricted magic finally crushed by shouts of ‘periculum’ and ‘relashio’ as students sent sparks flying and lit up the train as if it were Bonfire Night.
At exactly 11 o’clock the Hogwarts Express pulled away from the platform, gathering speed as it took its passengers out of London and replaced the stagnant scenery with rolling hills and lochs that carved rivers through the valleys.
Hiyori sat beside Yukine, with Yato opposite him next to the window just like they were when they returned to London. Nostalgia flooded through Hiyori as she remembered her first time on the Hogwarts Express, new friends cramming her head with knowledge and fantasies of the school she was going to. The Sorting seemed like it had only happened a few months ago rather than a year.
“This time last year we were going to get sorted,” Hiyori turned and nudged Yukine, to which he hummed and looked out of the window.
“I don’t remember seeing you, though,” Hiyori continued thoughtfully, undiscouraged by the lack of chat. Before Yukine could reply, Yato cut in.
“He’s like 4ft tall, of course you didn’t see him,” Yato breezed with an idle grin. Yukine didn’t bother turning, instead favouring to flip his middle finger at Yato.
“I thought Hufflepuffs were nice.” Yato grinned, leaning back further in his seat so his back was pressed into the corner, arms folded. “Still, I guess not all houses are like admired like mine.”
“No wonder you’re a Slytherin,” Yukine shot back, “you think you’re the best house.”
“Yes, but I was nearly a Gryffindor,” Yato said simply.
Yukine and Hiyori stared at him. A silence followed this revelation, neither of the pair knowing whether he was serious or not when he gave them a sly grin.
“What?!” Hiyori spluttered.
The very idea that Yato would be put in Gryffindor was alien to her. He certainly didn’t strike her as someone who would fit into her house as well as others. He and Bishamon were polar opposites, and it was clear she was a Gryffindor through and through. Surely that would put him in the house of their main rival?
“I chose Slytherin. The Sorting Hat couldn’t decide if I should go to Gryffindor or Slytherin, so I asked to be in Slytherin.” Yato explained this so plainly as if he were discussing the weather.
“Why the hell did you choose Slytherin?” Yukine asked, still doubtful even though he had heard that some students were given a choice of what house to be in. The Sorting Hat did take their choice into account.
“I want to be great.” He looked Yukine in the eye when he said this, evidently being honest at this proclamation.
Hiyori gave him a quizzical look. Great?
Yato’s eyes slid from Yukine’s to Hiyori, then back to the window. “The most powerful wizards have come from there, so it makes sense.”
“Evil,” Yukine cut in. That word was one of the most used descriptions of any wizard who is put into Slytherin, even if they weren’t necessarily bad.
“Powerful,” Yato corrected sharply. His eyes fixed on some point in the distance through the window when he lowly continued.
“No one is evil unless they’ve done something unforgiveable. I don’t think many eleven-year olds have done something bad enough to make them be put in a house supposedly tailored for those who would become dark wizards.”
The silence that spread over the cabin was infectious, Yato’s reasoning held some truth. How could the Sorting Hat see darkness in the heart of a child and decide that they would flourish in a house which favoured the Dark Arts? It would just be a breeding ground for psychopaths. ‘Evil’ was never stated as a quality that Salazar Slytherin desired, only ambition – which in turn could morph into something crazed and lustful that would make the brightest student turn their resourcefulness to darker means if it meant they could reach their goal.
The cogs in Hiyori’s mind put it all together – what it meant to be a Slytherin, and how Yato would fit into Gryffindor. The more she thought about it, the more traits matched up. Yato was an idiot – but a reckless one. Brave to the point of stupidity when it came to facing off against a mountain troll, daring enough to break into the library past curfew, and nerves to do whatever it takes to catch the Golden Snitch. Godric Gryffindor himself would be proud, but it looked like Yato’s own desire for ambition, and perhaps his cunning traits to meet his own ends, had thrown the Sorting Hat to let Yato choose his own house.
After the prolonged silence, Yato quietly spoke. “You don’t think I’m bad, do you?”
“No.”
Yato hummed quietly at the answer. Of course that was Hiyori’s immediate response, and Yukine’s too as he shook his head. Yato hadn’t done anything bad. Questionable, but not bad, and always to help them, be it facing off bullies, trolls, or helping with homework in his own way.
They were quiet for a long time before the awkwardness was broken by the arrival of the sweet trolley, allowing Yato to set a couple of chocolate frogs and jelly slugs free to make Hiyori shriek whilst Yukine blew multi-coloured bubbles of gum.
Maybe this year Hiyori would get over her fear of sweets.
~
The sun had completely sunk into the hills when the Hogwarts Express groaned to a stop at the small station of Hogsmeade. Like before, Kuraha rounded up the terrified first years and herded them towards the lake where they would make an impressive trek to the impossible castle-topped cliffs.
Unlike first years – who would take the longer scenic route to the castle –, the trio and the rest of the school made their short walk to the wrought iron entrance gate of the school grounds. Guarded by the statues of two winged boars, the same carriages that had taken them away from the castle a few months prior waited to take them back again. Yukine stuck nearly uncomfortably close to Hiyori’s side for the whole walk, only breaking away to clamber onto the nearest carriage and beckon Hiyori up beside him.
Yato looked cautiously at the space where a horse would be tethered to pull their carriage along, as if he could see something the others could not. With a sharp jolt once he had mounted the steep steps onboard, the carriage clattered on the trail towards to the castle.
Rocking and swaying over dry bracken and looking up at the darkened canopy of trees which hid the stars, Yato’s lips tugged into a small smile.
He was home.
#there we go#the discourse is officially explained in the fic#the reason why yato is slytherin and why its not a bias choice based on his past#*jazz hands*#noragami#noragami aragoto#yato#hiyori#yukine#hp au#harry potter au#in the darkness#my writing#also its 2am and im impatient to post cos shits bout to get real in a few chapters get lit
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Meet the Blogger!
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Hello, everyone, and welcome! I should probably tell you a bit about myself.
I am a Puerto Rican/American transmasc/nonbinary person who goes by he/they pronouns, and I’m bisexual. Also disabled and mentally ill. You can call me Alex, or Quinn- or Quinnie, if we’re close.
I’m an artist, writer, photoshopper, violinist, singer, and editor. My main fandoms are Markiplier and Hannibal at the moment.
Adieu!
Carrd
-AE
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Miscellaneous:
Benedict Cumberbatch and Perpetuating Homophobia
Martin Freeman + Losing Who He Loves
My Marriage Certificate
My OTHER Marriage Certificate
A Guide to Sherlockian Vocabulary
Mary Morstan Shitty Saw Traps
As You Wish (Sherlock Comic)
Smaug: A History
Purple Benny Cinematic Universe Timeline
Something Happened…
Bond Fancasting
Do You Love the Colour of the Martin?
Do You Love the Colour of the Benedict?
Barachiki Answered My Ask
Johnlock Top/Bottom Discourse Explained
Cursed Mary Edit
TRANSPHOBES DNI/ BLOCK LIST IN NOTES
La Lista de DILF
How To Kill Someone For Approximately One Minute (and Get Away With It)
Doctor Strange Christmas Edit
Height Chart
Depressing Tarmac Poem
Depressing Destiel Poem
My Fics
Moftiss Being Dense
The Ones You Don’t Think About
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J. Alexandria
Live-Blogging:
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Fulfilled Requests:
Something Quite Unlike Most
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#jalexandria#jalexandria art#jalexandria submissions#jalexandria anons#jalexandria poetry#benaddicted-linfanuel#writing angst to make people suffer#writing fluff to make people happy#writing#benny batch brainrot#sherlock#england’s accidental sex symbol#implied benedict cumberbatch x martin freeman#implied freebatch#honestly the worst post#ryan mckenna core#England’s accidental sex symbol#england's on purpose sex symbol#as you wish#john watson saying ‘i’m not gay’ coded#lexi two strikes again#my friend j#the fantastic moo#icarus intervenes#to write#to draw#i write poetry#jalexandria does something stupid#called the fuck out
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on a totally unrelated discourse note: i've been coming across more of these on ao3 at a worrying rate. ppl are posting works with nothing but a request to help the poster find a specific fic. disclaimer: even tho i was a tag wrangler for a while, that doesn't mean i speak for all tag wranglers.
That said, those 'fics' drive me up the wall. i'll sometimes politely comment to kindly remind the poster that ao3 is an archive for transformative works and if they would like to engage with the fandom, they have plenty of other avenues-like tumblr-to make the same request. posting this sort request as a fic, unnecessarily adds to tag wranglers workloads who are already struggling to keep up with the sheer volume of work being posted. i'm not smart enough to explain why this is problematic beyond saying it's work and time and volunteers have enough on their plate. so even if it is only one fic with a few tags, more and more ppl doing it: they build up. basically, i think it's inconsiderate behaviour-to other readers searching the tags and to the wranglers who have to sort them.
if you're looking for a fic and want to ask people: please do not post a work on ao3 tagging all your relevant ships, characters etc, to try and find it. please try to search through the extensive, functional and innovative tagging system and search function. there's tutorials on how to do it. try googling. try researching. and if you absolutely cannot find it: please go on fandom socials like tumblr etc to ask the community. ao3 is not built for this kind of interaction yet. i might be wrong and i trust you to correct me if i am.
-
RAGESCREAM
Yeah, I see more of them these days too... though they do get reported pretty fast. I don't think the rate is so high that it really endangers most people's AO3 browsing experience, and ficsearches often use already-wrangled tags, but I do want to finish my personal 2021 AO3 Guide with some power user stuff but also more pointed tips for n00bs from Wattpad.
Some people when confronted are like "Oh shit. I knew it wasn't preferred, but I didn't know it was directly against the rules" and I think they're operating in the paradigm of sites with shitty search still. Like... on Wattpad, there's no index of everything, so you're not as in people's faces with your off topic spam crap. It's also more common to post "discussion books" and to take shit down quickly after it has served its purpose.
I guess what I'm saying is that I would not assume malice. Some people may just need some pointers and context. And while official FAQs and the ToS exist, I don't think that's the format most people absorb the info from best--not to mention the fact that official rules do ban fic searches as works (in that they are not fanworks), but official policy is "tag how you want" without many tips for what your options are.
As for why fic searches are rude to post, AO3 is not a big corporate site with a bajillion paid staff. It has a narrow and specific mission and is paid for by your fellow fandom members out of their own pockets. Posting cruft that is not the target content of fanworks potentially drains resources from your fellow fans due to limited staff time for tag wrangling, for looking at abuse reports on rule-breaking works, etc. It's also rude because AO3's 'show everything in this tag by date' format means your non-fanwork is shoved under everyone's eyeballs constantly. You're being way more intrusive than on sites where things are harder to find and already more ephemeral.
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Queen Marinette
Queen Marinette
Here is a ~2000 word song fic that I wrote in place of working on my ongoing fics hope you guys like it.
I saw a post a while ago where Damian would call Mari Queen/Your Majesty as she was a princess, but i cant find the post anymore but the idea stuck so here we are.
~~~~~~~~~~
The League of Assassins also known as the League of Shadows is one of the Earth's best kept secret society second to Themiscyra home of the Amazons and Atlantis of the Atlantans. However there is one that only a handful know and whispers of their existence are mythical in the cosmos. Only known to the head families, or rulers, of Themiscyra, Atlantis, and the League of Assassins.
That would be the Kingdom at Miraculi.
Marinette is anything but a normal girl. She is the crowned princess of Miraculi as well as being the reincarnation of the goddess Tikki. She is creation herself, but on top of that she was blessed by the other gods as well, meaning she is able to wield their gifts as well. She is Princess Marinette Dawntreader of Miraculi.
But right now she wants to be anywhere but the palace. At the age of eight she just met her betrothed and let's just say he did not make a good first impression.
In front of her stood Damian Al Ghul the heir of Demons and next head of the league of shadows. The league is the guard of Miraculi, ensuring that the existence of the Kingdom remains peaceful and in turn the Kingdom of Miraculi supplies the magic of the Lazarus Pit. The concealment of Themiscyra and Atlantans able to survive under water are other blessings provided by Miraculi. But back to the pain on hand, Damian Al Ghul.
"Tt. you really do look the part of a princess" she was in a long flowing dress with long sleeves as she had finished her classes for the day. "Fragile and helpless."
"Yes and you appear as a demon" she shot back. "self-absorbed and arrogant" she turned on her heel "keep up little Prince" she called over her shoulder.
They got to know each other better but he was always so cold and distant. But they grew to love each other. Damian left to be with his father when they were 10, but they still stayed in contact. Then when they were 13 she got news that broke her heart, Damian was dead.
She couldn't stay in the Kingdom without remembering him. She needed distance and new scenery wouldn’t hurt. So she brought it up to her parents, and they were reluctant, but Diana Princess of Themiscyra brought up the solution Marinette would be staying with Sabine Cheng, an Amazon who was granted leave of Themiscyra , and her husband Tom Dupain.
That was how she found herself in Paris as an 8th year introducing herself as Marinette Dupain-Cheng.
That was how she also met Adrien Agreste. He was kind and sweet. He was new to school life just as she was new to life outside of Miraculi.
But not long afterwards did Lila Rossi enroll at Du Ponte.
With a quick search on google revealed most of her tales to be just that, fiction.
Adrien and Mari dated for two years before he ended the relationship. It was because she
wouldn't stop trying to reveal Lila's lies. That it was hurting his image that he was seen with her. That if only they knew the truth it would be enough. Well, fine, goodbye Adrien was her only thought. Her head held high.
Cross my heart and hope to die
I don't need another guy
To fight my battles, to overshadow me
Don't ya know I'm dangerous?
Fire burnin' in my blood
I got this handled, I don't need rescuin'
Unfortunately for him she didn't stop trying to get her class to see the truth.
A side effect of the liar's influence was that she was ostracized from the rest of the class.
But that wasn't a priority. Miraculi was going to become public. So she had a revealing ceremony to prepare for.
But before that she was asked to join as a joint member of the Teen Titians and Young Justice.
She was to meet with the two teams at Mt. Justice so she was looking for Kaldur, Aqualad, as she exited the building.
She was making her way towards him when she heard it.
"Princess" Adrien called and pulled her to look at him.
You can call me a princess all you like
'Cause you love to keep me helpless by your side
But that ain't what I want, I'ma show you
"Can I do something for you Agreste?" she asked as calmly as she could. "Because if not I am meeting a friend I haven't seen in ages."
"Just make up with Lila" he started "she isn't hurting anyone. And when you do everyone will be your friend again."
She smiled and noticed Kaldur closer than before. "Kaldur good to see you again how was your flight?" Adrien turned to see who she was talking to, and Kaldur after a second of shock responded.
"Uneventful, is everything set?" he asked giving her a way out.
"Yes" Mari answered "Sorry Adrien, another time"
"B- 02 Aqualad, B- 34 Omni"
She was in a black formfitting sleeveless top that rose to form a mask covering her face to her nose. Dark red combat boots that were tucked into black motorbike pants. A red belt with a forest green sash that faintly resembled a skirt just under it. Her gloves and arm guards were black and grey, and all over were golden accents. Her hair was cut short and was pitch black and her eyes were a golden color with flecks of green. (Outfit)
After quick introductions she noticed him, Robin of the Teen Titians, was standoffish but was familiar oh so familiar. Then she saw his hand twitch towards his sword and tapped the butt of the hilt twice before dropping his hand.
That was all the confirmation she needed. As everything fell into place.
That little jerk.
Batman asked for her to spar, to assess her combat skills. As she predicted Robin stepped in to be her partner.
She pulled two red batons from the small of her back and they began. Yes they were evenly matched but then she decided to mess with him. She turned back time to feign a right but ducked and swept his legs from under him. With him distracted she created a Mirage of herself and another to make herself invisible. She snuck up behind him used venom to freeze him and flip his cape over his head while her Mirage took his sword.
"Tt. unfreeze me" he practically growled she noticed almost everyone flinch and took a step back.
"You sure that's what you want, while I have your sword?" she taunted. She noticed a few shot her looks of sympathy. Odd. As Robin stayed quiet. "Fine" she dropped venom and he charged "Have it your way little Prince."
She jumped and he seemed to freeze mid charge but she didn't. She created a shell-ter around him.
Which he crashed into. He stood up and was gaping at her.
She dropped shell-ter and was making a few final decisions with Batman, while Robin still hadn't moved 30 minutes later and his mouth still agape. By this time Nightwing had come over.
"I think you broke little wing" he chuckled.
"You think so." she responded with a slight question. "Close your mouth your going to catch flies Al Ghul."
"Yes, Your Majesty" he finally snapped out of his stupor.
She saw Nightwing and Batman share a look and then look between the two of them.
I'ma show you
How to treat me like a queen (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
(Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Boy, you better bow down on your knees
Can I get a "Yes, your majesty?"
So treat me like a queen (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
(Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Boy, you better bow down on your knees
Can I get a "Yes, your majesty?"
They explained the role of Miraculi in the world. How they had met and knew one another. Their engagement and finally the reopening of the Kingdom to the world. By now she dropped her transformation, meaning her eyes were back to bluebell and her hair was a midnight blue, and the bats had taken off their masks.
Then an idea hit.
"Your plotting something" Damian snapped her out of her planning.
"Plotting makes it seem malicious" she paused "I'm planning."
"I'll bite, what are you planning?" Nightwing, Dick as he introduced, asked.
"How would you like to come to my coronation and be some of the first outsiders in Miraculi?" she responded.
Eyes on me like I'm a prize
But you better recognize
I'm not your angel 'cause I belong to me
You can call me a princess all you like
'Cause you love to keep me helpless by your side
But that ain't what I want, I'ma show you
As she guessed the news of Miraculi opening up was all the news was covering. The hidden Kingdom known only by the Amazons and Atlantans, officially, was all everyone was talking about.
The fact that the opening was set for the coronation of the princess added to the suspense.
About a month before our teacher had news. "Due to a special invitation our class has been invited to attend the Princess’ coronation in Miraculi" that was when the class erupted.
In a week Lila convinced everyone she personally asked the Princess to invite the class as a favor to her. That she grew up in the castle with her and was made a lady in waiting. Two weeks until the coronation, she asked Damian to tweet that 'he can't wait to see his best friend again in Miraculi.’ Which caused a small discourse with a boy called Jon Kent of how he was Damian's best friend. Where he answered with 'female best friend. Better Kent' That Lila used to say it was her, and that he only used best friend instead of girlfriend.
I'ma show you
How to treat me like a queen (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
(Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Boy, you better bow down on your knees
Can I get a "Yes, your majesty?"
So treat me like a queen (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
(Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Boy, you better bow down on your knees
Can I get a "Yes, your majesty?"
The week before they left to Miraculi, in order to show them around. Before landing Mari changed into an emerald green dress with a mandarin collar. A jacket and belt with a duster in a dark silver trimmed with gold and matching gloves. Her hair was in a side braid and a thin golden circlet on her brow. A few of her classmates glared at her but she didn't pay them any attention. (Outfit)
She was the last out of the airport and you could feel the tension in the air. Lila was spouting some nonsense to the guards that were sent to retrieve them. Then they noticed her, every guard formed a straight line to the captain as they dropped onto one knee and bowed their heads. As she passed them they stood up.
"Captain Chase it is good to see you again” she smiled as he also rose.
"The honor is mine Princess" he bowed again.
You can call me a princess all you like
'Cause you love to keep me helpless by your side
But that ain't what I want,
She turned back to face the class. "Welcome to Miraculi, I am Princess Marinette Dawntreader. I hope you enjoy your stay. The guards will escort you in these carriages to the castle for your stay." she mounted Yin (Silver), who Captain Chase brought for her. "I will ride ahead, as they are in capable hands." She smiled and rode off towards home.
The next week was amazing. Between tours of the Kingdom her classmates were part of an honorary court, to glimpse into the Royal life.
Damian almost cut off Lila's head the first time they met. Most of the class realized that if Lila lied about knowing Marinette, well the Princess but Lila hated Mari, and dating Damian, what else had she lied about. Turns out they can use google and Mari received several apologies and offers to be friends. She accepted the apologies but not their offers.
"Why?" was a consensus of the group.
"You realize that you were deceived, but that does not excuse your actions. As I am also assuming you wish to be friends because of my status." That seemed to force them to think, thank Kwami.
I'ma show you
How to treat me like a queen (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
(Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Boy, you better bow down on your knees
Can I get a "Yes, your majesty?"
So treat me like a queen (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
(Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Boy, you better bow down on your knees
Can I get a "Yes, your majesty?"
But the best part of this week was after the apologies was hearing them all, Lila included, only address her with 'Your Majesty’.
#miraculus ladybug#dc x miraculous#dc x mlb#maribat#mlb x dc#marinette#ml marinette#batfam#miraculous x dc#princess marinette
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it’s past midnight which means it is now officially ace week, so here is a kinda rant-y but ultimately positive post about Ace Stuff(tm) and TMA:
soooo if you’ve been following me for any length of time you probably know I’m ace, because I pretty much never shut up about it, lol. but really, being so vocal about my asexuality on tungle dot org is kind of a recent phenomenon, and it’s basically entirely thanks to tma and the fandom.
there are tons of ace people who have a similar story, I’m sure, so I’ll keep it short. I’ve been “out” as asexual and biromantic since senior year of high school, and I knew I was ace years before that. I say “out” because coming out is never fun and is exhausting and I basically didn’t tell anyone I went to college with about being ace, besides a couple romantic partners, and then only out of necessity. on tumblr, obviously I felt safer being out and a lot of people knew what ace meant so I didn’t have to explain myself. but of course in the background there was always The Discourse(tm) and yeah. if you’re ace you know how shitty that was and is.
but this isn’t a pity party! moving on!! soooo flash forward to summer 2019, I’m neck-deep in the good omens fandom, people are making hella content, and I’m like “hey some cool folks are headcanoning ya boys as asexual, I can get in on that.” I wrote a couple fics, shared a couple headcanons, it was chill. it was nice.
buuuut flash forward again to march of this year, and I’m hearing from my excellent buddy @kirkwallers that The Magnus Archives Is A Podcast, and not only is it good horror, the main character is canonically ace. and I’m like cool cool cool tight tight tight lemme just fuckin. download that real quick--
and y’all have heard this song before. jon is the good good ace rep, delicious, I’m vibing, we’re here for it. tres bon. BUT the thing that really gets me wanting to scream from the rooftops about being ace is the fandom. people are making fanart of jon being ace, fanfic of jon being ace, and most importantly they’re talking about their own ace experiences, both with and without relation to jon. it’s just a whole bunch of cool ace people who have gathered together and built this community within this fandom where we get to have a well-written, canon protagonist who is asexual.
so I get inspired and I write a few fics about jon being ace (and also usually martin as well because Why The Hell Not). and most of those fics involve cathartic experiences that I would want to have as an ace person, that I’ve never really been able to experience before. and some lovely people comment on those fics, and a lot of them are also ace, and a lot of them say things that make me cry. NOT necessarily because they’re saying nice things about my writing but because me writing about ace characters having experiences that I would like to also have gave them some catharsis too.
sometimes if I need a good happy cry I look through the comments on Spectrums in Common or On the Same Page and I’ll just lose it for a while. because the bottom line is that I’ve never really wanted to write about my own ace experiences before being a part of this fandom. sure, I’d headcanon crowley and aziraphale as ace and maybe reference it briefly in a fic, that’s fine. but I’ve never wanted to put my whole ass ace self on a plate before and serve it up in a safehouse fic like “this is me. this is how I feel. this is how I want my happy ending to go, where I can be loved AND happy AND asexual. where I don’t have to compromise. I’m writing about jon, but don’t get it twisted, this is a story about Me.” and other ace people read it and fucking. got it. and they were here for it. I’m getting fuckin misty-eyed right now thinking about it because fuck dude. fuck! that’s like! the best fucking shit in the world. and this fandom made that possible.
this post is getting long but I wanna say real quick that I’ve met some lovely amazing people (shout out to the Avatars of the Whore Discord, y’all know who you are) in this fandom, aces and allies alike, who have made the experience of not just Being Ace but Celebrating Being Ace genuinely a joy during the past few months.
this post is a hot mess lmao but I hope you get what I’m trying to say here. I love y’all. stay safe, stay cool, and most importantly, keep fuckin aceing it. 🖤🤍🤍💜
#idk if i should tag this lol#eh why not#tma#the magnus archives#feel free to rb#although idk why you'd want to lmao#anyway. being ace is fun and cool actually#ace week
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I struggle with figuring out what the expectations are for aristocratic marriage in Gondor and Rohan. One thing I’ve toyed about with in my head is treating LOTR as not just unreliably narrated, but as super unreliably narrated, and taking ‘the Steward and the King’ not as gospel, but essentially as a bit of PR/marketing. Because wow, isn’t it really, really convenient that the Steward of Gondor/second most powerful man in the realm gets married to the most powerful woman of the Riddermark, Gondor’s closest ally? Isn’t that a little too convenient? What if Frodo just copies down the press release given to him by Faramir and instead of being this stunning high romance, he and Éowyn are basically just a run-of-the-mill political marriage?
(Obviously I don’t believe this fully, but it is an interesting thought.)
Here’s where it becomes harder to justify though, and here’s why I’m really confused about how marriage works for both Gondor and Rohan’s nobility.
If political marriage were a thing in either of them, it stands to reason that it’s quite strange that neither Boromir nor Théodred are married with kids. The appendices say that Denethor ‘married late’ for having married Finduilas when he was forty-six, but when Boromir dies he’s forty-one. So he’s not far off at all. Théodred is the same age as Boromir, and we know that Théoden was married to Elfhild at least by the time that he was thirty, though he probably married her before that. So Théodred’s really late.
So not only do neither of the heirs have kids, they’re not even married. Even if they didn’t have kids, you would think that, if political marriages were the norm, they’d be shipped off post-haste, right? Dol Amroth was secured in its loyalty to MT through Denethor marrying Finduilas (and obviously the whole happy go luck proto-nationalism shit that’s going on), and it seems like the rest of the major provinces are mostly in line, so why not use a marriage to secure the alliance with the Mark? I would have Boromir married off to Éowyn ASAP since there are no women to marry off to Théodred. But the fact that that doesn’t happen is interesting, I think. And also really complicates my HC that Éomer/Lothíriel is mostly a political thing, tbh.
It’s all even more interesting in light of Faramir’s line in TTT where he’s explaining why the Kings of Gondor fell apart:
Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry...
Because, like, buddy, you are a childless lord sitting in an aged hall. And not only that, but since his brother was unmarried and childless before his death, he was probably always going to become the Steward at some point anyways, even if only briefly. So it’s not like he gets to claim amnesty via spare-status, because until the moment Boromir had kids (which he never did), he was constantly in secondary heir mode. So??? why wasn’t Faramir married off either? My dude was THIRTY-SIX during the war. He could’ve had fuckin hunners of kids by that point, but you’re telling me everyone was just gucci with him maintaining bachelor status?
Also, Faramir pointing it out does have the effect of politicising marriage somewhat. We know that Faramir’s somewhat out of step politically with the rest of Gondor, at least that in he appears to be very, very obsessed with bringing back the Númenor stuff and criticising Gondor over the last five hundred or so years. So if he’s diagnosed this childless lords problem as a problem that led to Gondor’s decay, he’s probably doing it because others don’t really see it that way. ‘Others’ here could be either Boromir (see the bottom of this post) or it could be Gondorians generally, we can’t know. Either way, Lord Faramir, thirty-six years old and unmarried, seems to think that lords not ensuring there were heirs to their houses was a problem. That contradiction/incidental hypocrisy is noteworthy!
I’ve typically taken this in my fics as an indication that the war was quite an intense and cataclysmic thing even before the official War of the Ring starts, and that all of these guys are way, way too busy dealing with that to consider marrying, but that opens up the question — when did things get so dire that securing the future of the ruling houses got deprioritised? Sauron openly declared himself in TA2951, but twenty-six-ish years later both Denethor and Théoden get married, so marriage is still at play in ~TA2976. Not a huge amount happens between 2976 and 3018 in explicit canon. We know that Elrond recalls Arwen from Lórien in 3009 because everything east of the Misty Mountains is becoming dangerous. By this time Boromir and Théodred are 31 and Faramir is 26, which made me wonder if it would be reasonable to have expected any of them to be married at that point. I did some quick math to see how old the title-holders were when they were married, stopping at the fifth generation back to accommodate Thorondir, who was the first Steward to not crack a century of life. Here’s what I’ve got:
(Where an actual wedding year wasn’t given, I based it on the year their eldest child was born.)
(Worth noting that Denethor’s not that much older than Ecthelion likely was when he married, so the ‘married old’ remark could instead be a reference to when Gondorians got married generally, not specifically to the Númenórean lot.)
There’s a chance all these guys got married way, way earlier and just spent ages childless, but… I sort of doubt that. Also I’m doing this based on what I can access from my laptop, so both HoME and PoME might contradict me or give more specific dates. If that’s the case — sorry!
It is interesting that if we accept HoME’s dating of Faramir and Éowyn’s wedding as TA3020 as canon, then Faramir (married at 37) is actually younger than the average for the previous five generations of Stewards. So is Éomer, because by marrying Lothíriel in 3021 he’s actually just getting in early by a a year or so.
Regardless, it makes statistical sense that neither Boromir nor Faramir are married by 3009, though Théodred is sort of pushing it. Certainly by 3018 when he dies he’s really taking the piss, but Boromir is still sort of in the clear (but getting up there), and Faramir’s kind of fine.
We know, at least, that there’s a canonical acknowledgement of Boromir’s bachelor status, per Appendix A:
Rather he was a man after the sort of King Eärnur of old, taking no wife and delighting chiefly in arms.
No accounting for Théodred, though based on Faramir’s bitching about Rohan and Gondor becoming more alike, you could probably chalk it up to the same thing as Boromir. I note, however, that Théodred’s need is slightly more urgent because in absence of an heir from Théodred, the throne would then pass to Éomer. I think we might reasonably assume that he wouldn’t have a problem with this (Théoden might have, given how effective Wormtongue’s manoeuvring was), but we can’t know for certain.
Worth pointing out as well that Elphir’s son Alphros is born in 3017, so it’s not like nobody is getting it on.
I was interested in what the numbers for the ladies would look like, and obviously this is complicated by the fact that there’s like twenty named human women and even fewer with birth dates/marriage dates, but here’s what the table looks like:
(Because so many of the women we know of are women who crossed between Rohan and Gondor, I put them in columns based on their birth culture, not where they married into.)
Also here’s some fuel for the age gap discourse:
(Can you tell I’m procrastinating my dissertation???)
Anyways, outside of some apparent liberalism towards the ol’ begetting of heirs, there’s not a huge amount of information floating around to help us understand how or if marriage was understood politically in Rohan and Gondor. You get bits and pieces (Aragorn’s ‘no niggard are you, Éomer’ comment at Éowyn and Faramir’s trothplighting, for example, Wormtongue being after Éowyn, for another), but nothing extended or particularly explicit.
Just one of those things, really…
#just having some Thoughts really#lotr#long post#also lmao just realised that alphros being born in 3017 buggers my AFTA timeline for fuck’s sake
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Em’s Year in Review
Hey, guys! It’s been a long time since my last personal post on here, but as it’s officially 2021 (thank God), I wanted to do the cheesy Year in Review thing and give thanks to the friends I’ve made, the communities I’ve joined, and the things that have changed me beyond words this year that I want to share with you all.
To start, perhaps the biggest and best change of the year was when I joined the Shadowhunters fandom. Not to mention the friends I’ve made along the way and the support I’ve received and the amazing community I found my home in, Shadowhunters managed to rejuvenate my love for this site and fandom in general. Shadowhunters transformed this blog from an occasional place that I would visit to kill time into a means of expression that I am extremely proud of. Shadowhunters transformed my AO3 from a practically extinct account with three fics posted to an up-and-running, 80-fics-and-still-going-strong profile that is, truly, one of my biggest accomplishments.
Shadowhunters also led to several friendships that I know I will cherish for the rest of my life. I would like to take this time to give thanks to some of them, and I apologise deeply if you deserve to be on this list and you aren’t; I know there are probably some people that I’m forgetting. You’re all important to me, and you’re all a part of the reason I am writing this right now.
To start off, @arialerendeair has been an incredible source of support, friendship, and love for me throughout my journey into the Shadowhunters fandom, and she means more to me than words can say. She is a forever friend, a wonderful person, the best kind of enthusiastic and encouraging, and she is one of the most amazing people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
Before I joined the @malecdiscordserver and met a myriad of people that I gladly call my friends, I existed in the Shadowhunters fandom solely on Tumblr, and I would like to give thanks to my very first Shadowhunters fandom friend, @lightwormsiblings, for making me feel at home here and generally being an amazing person.
@sugarandspace is a wonderful author and an even better person, and my friendship with her has led to many amazing fics, conversations, and sweet words. Her mental health fics and her response to mine are what inspired me to really start writing for this fandom, and as I’m sure you can imagine, that is something that I am very grateful for. <3
I would also like to give a shout-out to my fluffy counterpart, @bidnezz, who created the Fluff vs. Angst Battle 2020 with me, an AO3 collection that has made me smile countless times. Likewise, @aceon-ice deserves a shout-out, as well, for being an amazing person and supporting me despite my angsty tendencies.
I have @eternallysilvermagnusandalec and @emma-arthur to thank for my love of Autistic Alec, and I want to give them the biggest of virtual hugs for screaming with me, bouncing headcanons with me, and generally being my biggest Autistic Alec supporters. They are wonderful friends, and I’m so lucky to have them both in my life.
As for friends that aren’t actively on Tumblr, I would like to give thanks to Val, one of my favourite sprinting buddies and an amazing friend, Hannah, my favourite dinosaur-obsessed Among Us murderer and the source of endless support, and Evi, my recently-found friend, writing support extraordinaire, and fellow Team Angst comrade.
I am extremely grateful for every single friend I’ve made in the Shadowhunters fandom, and every person who helped me feel at home in this community and showed me that this is a place where I can belong. You are all amazing, and I wish I had the words to express my gratitude for you.
Another thing that the Shadowhunters fandom brought me was a means of self-expression, through a character like no other I’ve ever encountered before. Alec Lightwood and his place in Shadowhunters has brought me endless joy, validation, and hope for the future. Alec Lightwood is a character that I love dearly and relate to strongly, and his happy-ever-after as a gay man in love with a bisexual warlock truly lifted me up when I needed it. His character helped me to start writing things that I love, things that I enjoy, and things that benefit me to put on paper. For that, I am forever grateful.
This year has brought a lot of changes to my life, but I can say without a shadow of a doubt that Shadowhunters & the friends it’s made me are by far my favourites.
Other than Shadowhunters, there are a few other things that have shaped my year in large ways that I would like to give mention to.
To start things off, as most of you know, I’ve been a fan of Supernatural since before I even knew fandom was a thing - hell, before fandom really was a thing. Supernatural and the SPN family and the AKF campaign got me through some of my toughest times, and I will always be grateful to that show for giving me everything that it did.
Despite the discourse and despite everything that took over Tumblr with the finale and Cas’s confession, I am so happy that I made it to see that finale. It gives me a lot of joy to know that I’ve been here for fifteen seasons of a show that changed my life, and everything that comes in between. I love Sam and Dean and Castiel and all of the other characters that captured my heart in Supernatural, and I’m so grateful that I got to be a part of a family like this one. My experience in and with the Supernatural fandom will always be important and special to me, and I want to thank my first ever fandom friend (you know who you are), who encouraged me to post my first ever fanfiction back when I was younger and taught me what it means to be a part of a fandom community. She is the reason I’m fandom-ing it up today, and I’ll forever be grateful to her for that.
I’ve already mentioned them once before, but I want to give another shout-out to @eternallysilvermagnusandalec, @emma-arthur, and @arialerendeair for being truly amazing, wonderful people when it comes to a certain aspect of my identity that I’ve just started becoming okay with.
For any of you who may not know: I am autistic. ...damn, that felt good to say. At this time last year, I was still very much “in the closet” about having autism and I was masking so much that I panicked at the slightest hint that I was “different”. I did not like who I was, and I had been conditioned to believe that I had to hide my differences if I wanted to have any chance of being accepted by others.
These three made me see that that isn’t the case.
Constantly being told “Quiet hands!” and to just look at somebody when I was talking to them and that it was irrational & dumb to be too overwhelmed to speak took its toll, but the Shadowhunters fandom and Silver, Emma, and Aria helped me realise that my hands can be as loud as they need to be, it’s okay if I stare at the wall while I talk to someone, and sometimes not being able to speak is just the way the cookie crumbles. Their acceptance of me and their incredible support has helped me become so much more comfortable with myself, to the point where I’m unmasking when I’m alone and letting myself stim without fear of repercussions or the feeling that I’m doing something wrong. They are the best kind of people, wonderful friends, and truly incredible.
It is largely thanks to them that I am even fighting this ongoing battle against my own internalized ableism, and it’s important to me that all three of them know that. <3
For more information on autistic masking and what it looks like and why some of us do it, I recommend checking out this video, made by an autistic creator!
If you’d like to know the true, harsh meaning of “Quiet Hands”, I recommend checking out this post, which explains the phrase & its connotations better than I ever could.
Thank you to everyone who has read this far, and I hope you all have a wonderful 2021! This year was hard, but we survived. There have been times when I wanted to give up, and there have been times when you wanted to give up, I’m sure. But we are both still here, and that counts for something. That counts for a lot, actually. It’s everything. I did it. You did it. We did it. That’s something to be proud of.
Going into 2021, I hope that everyone will be kind, do their best to be understanding of other people’s differences, and treat others with the amount of respect they deserve.
I love you all, and thank you for making this year, despite all of its challenges, one that I will remember and cherish for the rest of my life.
#year in review#long post#em rambles too much#my friends#shadowhunters#supernatural#autism#neurodiversity#positive mental attitude#Fandoms#what i'm thankful for#happy new year
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It’s Time to Talk about a Bespectacled Elephant in the Room
I’ve been in the Beatles fandom for 8 and a half years. I have had a Beatles blog for the entirety of those 8 and a half years, and I have watched as discourse about these four men evolve. The discourse inside and outside the fandom has become so toxic that I don’t think I can engage with it in the same way that I could before. Let me explain.
When I entered this fandom 8 and a half years ago, it was in 2012, quite an infamous year in tumblr history. That was the pique of “”cringey”” fandom culture. The Beatles fandom was as steeped in fandom culture as any other fandom. I know this because I was part of two of the top of fandoms at the time, Doctor Who and Sherlock. Believe me, I have seen cringe.
The fandom at the time was totally aware of the John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s flaws as individuals, but most fans tended to simply enjoy Beatles fandom as if it were the 60s. Some might call it ignorant bliss. If you asked me at the time, I’d have said it was self-aware ignorant bliss--if that even makes sense. At the time, there wasn’t a person with a Beatles icon who hadn’t heard the line “John Lennon beat his wife.” Everyone knew it, but everyone also knew the real story, and so everyone just made peace with it. As a result, people didn’t think about every bad thing the Beatles ever did on a daily basis. It was more like a once-a-month kind of thing. Otherwise, fandom discourse was quite fun and relaxed. There were no shipping wars, no one fought over who was the best Beatle, everyone gushed over the Beatles wives, and we all just had fun with fics and fan art.
Of course, in this period, people engaged in conversations about one bespectacled Beatles problematic behavior. These conversations usually came from outside of the fandom. It was usually randos coming into the tags or into someone’s ask box and ranting about John Lennon’s violent behavior. Some of it came from within the fandom. Some people really didn’t like John and gave others shit if they listed John as their favorite Beatle. A lot of the discourse boiled down to: ‘hey, I see you like John Lennon. You should know that he beat his wife. And now that you know that, you should feel bad about ever liking him in the first place.’ And the response was often, ‘Actually, John Lennon didn’t beat his wife. They weren’t even married at the time. And also he didn’t beat her, he slapped her once in the face, and then never did it again.’ No one’s minds were changed. The fans had made their peace, and the antis came off as cynical and pretentious.
When Dashcon happened, and Tumblr took a hard look at its cringey fandom culture, the Beatles fandom evolved as well. The fandom became, frankly, less fun. It no longer felt like a group of people who found the Beatles decades after the 60s and were fangirling like it was 1965. There was still some of that left, but a lot of it kind of faded. So, most fandom interactions were reblogging pictures of the Beatles from the 60s and various interview clips and quotes. But the barrage of antis never really went away, and the response didn’t evolve.
Then, the advent of cancel culture came on. I always waited for the Beatles to get, like, officially canceled, but I also felt they were uncancel-able at the same time. Let me explain. I have been a Beatles fan primarily in an online space, rarely engaging with fans in real life. But I have met fans who are life-long Beatles fans, people who are a lot older than us and who’s fandom isn’t tied to the internet. They don’t give a shit about any of our discourse. They may or may not have heard it before, but they seem totally indifferent to all of it. I’m sure most of them have never heard ‘Mclennon’ before. These are the people that flock to see Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in concert (and pay astronomical prices for it). These are the people who go to record shops and buy vinyl. These are the people I run into at flea markets who buy up all the Beatles merch before I can even arrive (true story). So, the Beatles will never be canceled because there will always be people who love the Beatles and don’t engage with online discourse. Rarely said, but thank god for Gen-X.
As cancel culture took over the internet, fandoms changed. It’s not as noticeable in fandoms without problematic favs. For instance, I’m also steeped in the Tom Holland fandom, and that boy is a little angel who has done no wrong. No one has discourse about the unproblematic boy who plays an equally unproblematic character. But in fandoms with ‘problematic favs’ the mood has shifted. I’m also in the Taron Egerton fandom. Taron Egerton, for those who only follow me for my Beatles stuff, is a genuinely sweet and kind person who has had zero scandals in his six year career. There were some rumblings when he was cast as Elton John, and some people took issue with the fact that he’s a straight man playing a gay man. This discourse seemed to die quickly as a whole lot of straight people played gay people in that same year (Olivia Coleman as queer Queen Anne, Emma Stone as her queer lover, Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury). Why jump on this boy who at the time was still technically on the rise. He’s not exactly the same target as someone like Scarlett Johansson who has her pick of roles. Taron doesn’t have quite that some power in Hollywood, and I think most people made peace with the fact that this was a big role for him, and it’s not really fair to take that away from him. So, all in all, the closest thing to a scandal was something that died pretty much on arrival.
That was until this summer when everything changed. When George Floyd was murdered, celebrities flocked to social media to mourn his loss. Taron’s social media account was silent. For weeks, Taron said nothing about Black Lives Matter or Floyd’s death. This caused outrage in the fandom. Many raced to defend him, starting a hashtage #IstandwithTaron. Others sought to tear him down and anyone who supported him. The kind of mania this one incident caused tore through an otherwise peaceful fandom. What I saw was two sides in a total panic. The antis were people who once had faith that Taron was a good person and were now questioning that. Andthe defenders were people who desperately wanted him to be a good person and were afraid that he wasn’t. In essence, both sides could feel Taron about to get canceled. The defenders wanted to stop it, the antis wanted to ride that wave.
What this long drawn out Taron example is meant to convey: is that cancel culture has put fandoms on edge. One’s fav has to be perfect, otherwise it can jeopardize the existence of the entire fandom. I’ll admit, I was afraid that I’d be some kind of pariah for standing by Taron through all of this. My actions were to basically reason with the antis but still defend Taron. I defend him mostly because I felt that his silence was the result of a needed social media absence and that trying to shame him back onto social media was an invasion of privacy. But I was genuinely afraid that he would get canceled, and the fun of the Taron fandom would be lost.
In the Beatles fandom, it often feels like the Beatles, mainly John, have already been canceled. I see this coming from two different sources: antis from outside of the fandom and antis within the fandom. The outside antis are just the same as the ones from 2012. These are people who like to drop in that John Lennon beat his wife, posting this in the tag (which violates an ancient tumblr real by the way--no hate in the tags).
The antis outside the fandom speak to a larger anti-John Lennon sentiment online. I see references to John Lennon ‘beating his wife’ on Tiktok and twitter. The tone of anti-John Lennon posts has shifted. Before, it felt like the antis were being smug but also argumentative. They wanted to have a conversation about this bit of info they read on Reddit with no context. Now, “John Lennon beating his wife” is practically a meme. It’s a running joke online that John Lennon was a wife beater. I can’t look on my instagram explore page because every so often a John Lennon beats his wife meme will pop up amongst the other, normal, memes.
This change in discourse suggests that the internet has just accepted this as fact now. I should note that back in 2012, it seemed as if few people knew this fact. The fandom knew it, and these random antis knew it, but few others did. Now, because of how common these memes are, it seems to be widespread knowledge.
Consequently, the Beatles fandom, who used to ward off attacks from antis, seems to have given in. I recently saw a post from a Beatles blog (had the URL and icon and everything) that confessed they felt guilty for listening to the Beatles, and I’ve seen similar sentiments expressed in the fandom. People tend to put disclaimers in posts about John or even all four that John is an ‘awful man.’ It seems like the self-aware ignorant bliss has completely gone away. Occasionally, I still see posts joyously talking about Mclennon or reblogs of old photos from the 60s. But the culture has shifted.
Online, it no longer feels comfortable to be a Beatles fan. It feels like you have to own up to 8 decades of mistakes by four men you’ve never met. And, I should note, this is kind of how it feels to be a fan of anything right now. Taron is not canceled today, but he could be tomorrow. It’s this pervasive feeling of guilt that the person you’re supporting may or definitely has or is doing something wrong.
I’ll admit this uncomfortable feeling has expanded into other parts of my fandom life. I listen to their music, and I feel elated--the way I always have. Then, I get these intrusive thoughts which sound like all the worst parts of Twitter combined. It wasn’t always like this. Back in 2012, when I knew almost nothing about them, I saw them as four young men who were full of happiness, love for another, and talent. Back then, listening to their music was exciting and joyous. Sometimes, I fear that I can never feel that way again. Next year, when I finally go to Liverpool, will I be filled with excitement or guilt?
I say all this for a few reasons. One, I love John Lennon. I appreciate all the good he did for the world not just as a musician and an artist but also his advocacy and charity work. I love him, and a part of me will always love him, but observing the change in discourse has enlightened me as a historian. Part of my job is to observe people’s legacies, and John’s is perhaps the most interesting legacy I’ve ever observed. When he died, he was hailed as a saint. But tall poppy syndrome set in, and the antis started. This culture grew and grew to the point where it seems to, at least among the younger generation, taken over the sainthood.
But as a historian and a fan, I have never seen the saint or the devil. I’ve only seen the man, the incredibly flawed man. The thing that these antis never understand is that John Lennon was painfully aware of his own flaws to the point where it made him all the more self-destructive. In essence, his past mistakes caused him to make additional mistakes. But John, aware of his own flaws, always tried to change and was often successful. I’ve talked about this before, but John demonstrated that he was capable of being a good person, like properly so, again and again. After he struck Cynthia, he never hit her again. His shortcomings as a father to Julian weren’t repeated with Sean. He worked on his drinking, his drug addiction, and his anger, trying to overcome those demons till the day he died. By all accounts, the John Lennon that died in 1980 is not the John Lennon who struck Cynthia Powell at school. That John Lennon was living a cleaner, healthier life. He was a better father to both his sons by that point, and was trying to repair his relationship with Julian. He was a good husband to Yoko and saw himself living a long and happy life.
John Lennon cannot and should not be boiled down to just his flaws. It’s one thing as a fan to acknowledge that John is a flawed human being (news flash: they all are), but he is also much bigger than that.
So once again, why am I writing this long, rambling post, once again talking about John Lennon’s virtues? Because if I can’t engage with healthy discourse about the Beatles and John Lennon, then I can’t engage with discourse on the topic at all. So, I probably will post less Beatles stuff because I find it hard to go through the tags or even my dash (well, I can’t really go through my dash anymore for other reasons I’m not going to get into right now). If any of my followers have noticed a lot of Taron posts lately, it’s not just because I love Taron, it’s because Taron’s tag is pretty much the only location on tumblr I feel 100% comfortable in. Any foray into John or the Beatles tags becomes uncomfortable and guilt-ridden quickly.
So, I probably will post less about the Beatles until I can find a blog or a tag that doesn’t give me bad vibes. My fandom will likely outgrow tumblr and the internet. I have a ton of Beatles books; maybe I’ll rely on those. I am doing official scholarly research on them now. Maybe that will be my outlet. I’m sorry if I post less about them now, but it’s really for my own well-being.
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Twenty-First Century
A fic for @tiny--spock about James getting stuck in modern times. I decided to include a little personal stuff, like the setting of the story. I lived next to Seattle for a while (I don’t anymore), but I loved it. Forgive me this indulgence.
@emdrabbles @tesserphantom @paljonkaikenlaista @viper-official @wordsinwinters
~3150 words
~~~~~~~
The rain flowed over your umbrella in rivulettes, dropping off the edges to plunk onto the ground. It was a peaceful rain, but cold, so there were few people outside. You made your way to the bus stop, returning from the library. The forecast predicted rain for the next few days. You figured it was as good a time as any to pick up the books you’d been meaning to read.
You picked out a lone figure at the end of the street. You might not have given him a second glance, but he had no umbrella. It rained often where you lived; everyone knew to keep an umbrella on them. You watched him turn around a couple of times, looking hopelessly lost. You’d have to pass him, and figured you might as well take him to the covered area of the bus stop. He was probably soaked already, and your effort would make no difference, but you figured it was the thought that counted.
As you drew closer, you noticed his strange clothing. From a distance, his long coat hadn’t been out of the ordinary, but up close, you could see the brass buttons and golden epaulettes. His pants, too, looked more like breeches out of a Jane Austen novel than anything someone would normally wear.
He paid you no mind, hardly noticing your approach. It was only when you were directly next to him that he seemed to see you.
“Would you like to share my umbrella?” You asked. “There’s a covered space not far from here, if you’d like me to…” Your words died in your throat as the man turned to you.
“I’d appreciate it.” He gave you a tight smile that you were only used to seeing from the screen of a TV. “Thank you.”
You wondered for a moment if you’d slipped and hit your head, and if you were trapped in some sort of hallucination. It would explain a lot. Otherwise, you had a fictional character standing right next to you. You almost pinched yourself, but thought it might be rude, so you decided against it. You reminded yourself at the last minute not to stare.
In a daze, you held up your umbrella, sharing it with him. Then you turned and walked to the bus stop, thankful your feet had memorized the way. This is fine, you thought. I’m just going crazy, is all.
You weren’t sure if you should be thankful for the emptiness of the bus stop or not. With nobody there, you had to try talking to your companion.
Thankfully, he started the conversation for you. “I’m afraid I’m a bit lost.” The look of embarrassed confusion on his face made him look, to you, a little like a lost puppy.
“I’d say that’s probably true, Mr…” You let him fill in the blank. It would probably be creepy if you told him you already knew who he was.
“Norrington.”
“Where are you looking to go?”
Norrington looked around, staring at the streets and buildings. “I’m not quite sure, if truth be told. Ah, perhaps it might help me to know where exactly I am?”
The look of mortification on his face was complemented by the awkwardness on yours. “You’re in Seattle, Washington.”
“Right,” he said, though he clearly had no concept of where either Seattle, nor Washington, was.
Oh god, you thought. America wasn’t even around in his time-period. We were still a colony. “And,” you continued, “if it would interest you, we’re in the twenty-first century.”
You were sure you’d never seen a person so pale before. He looked, for a frightening moment, like he was going to be sick.
The bus pulled into view, catching the attention of both of you. James looked confused, and might have asked you what a bus was if you hadn’t spoken first.
“If anyone asks, we were at a convention,” you said. This earned you another look, but you pulled Norrington onto the bus before he could ask.
The bus had blissfully few people in it, and nobody gave you or Norrington a second glance. This was Seattle, after all. It was best not to wonder, sometimes. With nobody talking to you, you and James sat next to each other in awkward silence, dripping little puddles of water onto the floor.
You led him off at your stop, hurrying him to your apartment before your neighbors could see you with a strange man. It was difficult to keep the umbrella in the right place; James was considerably taller than you were, and it proved hard not to hit the top of his head. You struggled with your ring of keys for a moment, desperately trying to find the one to your apartment as quickly as possible. Once inside, you ushered him in and shut the door firmly behind you.
You stared at him blankly before remembering any sort of hospitality. The rules had changed since his age, and you hoped taking his coat and hanging it in a closet would be close enough to what he was used to.
This still meant that you had a dripping wet man in your house who probably wouldn’t dry out very soon. Wordlessly, you led him to the bathroom, handing him a towel. He understood well enough, so you stepped out to give him some privacy. Then, you realized that you had no clothes for him to change into. Damn.
By a miracle of god, or whatever divine power was out there (most people in Seattle considered Bigfoot the local deity), you found a sweatshirt and pants your dad had left at your apartment ages ago. You’d stuffed them in the back of your closet, a gift to the void, and had thoroughly forgotten about them.
You knocked on the door to the bathroom, told James you were setting some clothes outside, and you made your way to the kitchen, where you decided to wait. Then, you pinched yourself for real. This is a character from a movie. I’ve read fanfiction about him! It was an awful realization. You’d read lots of things about him, and held discourse over his character. You’d fantasized about him, even. I. Am. Insane. It’s official.
You were torn from your thoughts by James entering the room. The pants were a little short, but the sweatshirt seemed to fit, which you were thankful for. He looked awkward, standing in the doorway, and you motioned for him to sit.
“Hungry?” You asked. Even if he wasn’t, food was a great way to hide awkwardness, so you would make some anyway. You ended up making bagels, and James nearly fell out of his chair when the toaster went off. You had to smile at that; it was too cute not to.
You both hid behind your food, and you observed the surprised look of someone who had just discovered refrigerated cream cheese. When you were done eating, you set the dishes in the sink. You and James made awkward eye contact, and you couldn’t help but ask what was on your mind.
“How did you end up here?” You asked. In the movies, he had died, of course, so how he ended up by your bus stop baffled you.
“I don’t particularly know, actually. There was a hurricane, and I was knocked unconscious, and the next thing I knew, I was standing in the rain.”
“Right.” That solves that, then. The hurricane James had chased Jack through somehow transported him here, to you. “We’ll find a way to get you back home.” You had no idea how, though. The chances of your being able to return him to his own universe were next to zero. You just didn’t have the heart to tell him.
“While you’re stuck here, though, we have to set some rules,” you continued. “I have a job. I’ll be gone for most of the day. If you leave the apartment, people are going to notice that you’re… a little odd. You’re going to have to stay inside.” You showed him the pantry, and all the things he could make for himself for food. “I’ll teach you to use the stove later,” you promised.
You showed him around, teaching him how to work things. He was fascinated by the most basic appliances; he switched the lights on and off a few times before believing they were real.
“You’ve come a long way.” He looked around in awe. The shower, the stove, and electricity were all new to him. “I wish we had some of this where I came from.”
You wished he had more clothes. You vowed to find some the next day.
There was the dilemma of sleeping arrangements. You lived by yourself, and thus owned one bed. You had a couch, but you figured it would be rude to offer it to him. You found yourself throwing out the awkward suggestion of sleeping together. Norrington looked appalled.
“I can build a wall of pillows between us,” you suggested half-heartedly. “Though I’m afraid the bed might be too small for that.”
Though James insisted that he sleep on the floor, you finally managed to convince him otherwise. You found your back pressed against his, hardly daring to breathe. You both lay perfectly still, trying not to disturb the other. You could feel the heat of his back through the T-shirt you were wearing to bed. No doubt he could feel you just as acutely.
When you woke, you were stiff as a board. You hadn’t changed positions all night. Neither, as it seemed, had James. He was just as stiff, and looked just as tired, too.
“Good morning,” you said, rolling over.
“Morning.” He had rolled onto his side, too, so you were facing each other. He blushed a little, being so close to you, and you found yourself doing the same.
You introduced him to cereal not long after, and left him with a few books to choose from to keep himself occupied while you were away. You had to work, and you figured books would keep him entertained.
The day was made longer with the knowledge that James was waiting for you at home. You worried about him; everything was new to him, and you hoped curiosity wouldn’t get the better of him. You doubted it would, knowing how he was, but you couldn’t help the feeling that someone would see him, even if just through the window.
Stopping by a store, you picked up some clothes on your way home. James needed more to wear than the single outfit your dad had left behind. You managed to get some variance, trying to appeal to a style that James might like, though you had no idea what he’d think of modern clothes.
You came home to your neighbor, and elderly lady, watering the small potted plants at your doorstep. She smiled and straightened up as you walked by. “That’s a nice young man you have in there! I think you’d better keep him,” she said cheekily.
You couldn’t help your blush, and you fumbled for words, nearly dropping the stack of clothes you carried. “You met him?”
“Oh, he came out to help me water the hanging baskets. You know I can’t reach them well anymore.” She waved a hand dismissively. “That boy saw me through the window and came out to help me.”
“How nice of him.” You were internally mortified, but you tried keeping that to yourself. You only hoped the woman hadn’t told any of your other neighbors about James.
You pushed the door to your apartment open with a hip. James awaited you inside, sitting on the couch with a book in hand, a glass of water on the little table next to him. He looked up, smiling softly. “Literature has changed.”
He was reading Dickens. It’s changed a lot more than that. “And are you enjoying it?”
“Immensely. I love Shakespeare, but I can only read a play so many times.” He set the book down, stood, and offered to take the clothes from you. “Although, I’m afraid I don’t know the background to these books. I take it that the people of France were unhappy with the government?”
“Are you reading A Tale of Two Cities?”
“I am.”
“You are correct. France spent too much money supporting other countries; it finally couldn’t support itself.”
“Ah.”
He set the clothes on the table. They were in bags, and you told him to peek through them to see what he liked. He thanked you as you prepared to make dinner. “I hear you met my neighbor today,” you said.
“I did. A nice woman, though she asked a few questions I didn’t understand.”
Of course. “And they were?”
“She asked if we were ‘dating’, though I was unfamiliar with the term.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I said I was unsure.”
You tried to stifle a laugh and failed. Glancing over your shoulder, you found James looking uneasy. “You might have given her the wrong idea of our relationship. Don’t be surprised if she tries convincing you to ask me out.”
He blushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know….”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“What is dating, exactly? And she said something about a needle from space.”
You saw that your evening would be full of explaining. “Dating is quite a lot like courting, where you come from, but it’s less formal. Typically, a person dates multiple people before finding the person they’re going to marry.” James understood that, at least. “The Space Needle is a building downtown. It’s a quirky part of Seattle, and a good place for going on dates. Probably why she mentioned it.”
James continued to look flustered as you cooked. You finished and set the table, eating in awkward silence. James seemed to enjoy his meal, which resolved some of your anxiety.
“I can show you around tomorrow after work,” you offered. “Seattle is lovely. There’s a lot here, but I can give you the general tour.”
“I think I’d enjoy that, thank you.”
When you arrived home the next day after a long day of work, you found James trying to communicate with your Alexa. He was failing horribly, and you couldn’t help but laugh. He tapped it to see if it would turn on.
“Having trouble?” You asked.
“It started talking earlier. I was a bit afraid to touch the buttons, in case they did something odd,” he admitted.
“Don’t worry. Alexa,” you called out, “play Vivaldi.”
James took in a startled breath as the music started. He stared down at the device in fascination, and you explained how it worked.
“Brilliant,” he said.
You took him out to the car. As awful as it was to drive in Seattle, you didn’t live far from the downtown area, so it would be easy enough to get around. You climbed into the car, motioning for James to do the same. He braced himself against the dashboard when you started pulling out of your parking spot.
“Think of it as a carriage with no horses.”
He nodded, looking around at the car’s interior. He changed his focus to the surrounding area. Skyscrapers surrounded you as you drove into the city, some made almost entirely from glass. Advertisements were plastered across the fronts of buildings, and trees dotted the sidewalks next to you. Eventually, you came into view of the Space Needle, towering six hundred feet above you. James stared out the window like a child, enraptured. You thought it was adorable.
You parked and walked around the space beneath the structure. The Space Needle looked a little like the Eiffel Tower, with three legs holding up a disc that sat at the top. A central scaffolding acted as an elevator shaft. The top held an observation deck from which a person could see the entire city. You thought of taking James up, but decided against it. No doubt it would scare him; it had scared you the first time you’d gone up.
Instead, you took him down to the waterfront, a bustling area with lots to see. A giant ferris wheel was decked out in neon lights of all different colors. James gaped at the massive cargo ships passing by. A hundred shops dotted the piers, and the two of you windowshopped as you walked.
You eventually grabbed a bite to eat in the public market. It was always full of people, and food of every sort could be found within its multiple levels. You settled on crepes, which James was vaguely familiar with. After dinner, you pulled out a package of gum, handing a piece to James.
“Chew it,” you told him.
Tentatively, he popped it in his mouth, chewing for a moment. “What exactly is the purpose of this?”
“Enjoyment. But there’s a reason I gave it to you. You’ll see.” You led him out of the market and up into the street. A few blocks later, you found yourself at your destination. The alley was narrow, and there was seemingly nothing special about. At first glance, it looked like any other; brick walls, cobbles, and papers advertising a thousand different events plastered across the walls.
As you walked to the end of the alley, the popularity of the spot became evident. The walls were covered in hundreds of thousands of pieces of gum. They were delightfully colorful, and gum stuck to every centimeter of space. Happily, you walked up to the wall, took your gum out of your mouth, and stuck it to a brick.
James looked both disgusted and intrigued, and you couldn’t blame him. “It’s tradition, really,” you told him. “People have been putting gum here for years. Gross, yes, but also pretty cool.”
James carefully stuck his piece to the wall, making sure not to touch anything else. “It’s very interesting to see the sorts of traditions you come up with. The future is an curious place.”
“We say the same about the past.”
He smiled. Looking at the wall again, he said, “People chew this just for the flavor?”
“Yes, though it has other uses. It makes you concentrate harder. And some people chew it before a kiss, though the actual impact it has is debatable.”
James flushed, and you did the same. The thought of kissing him was certainly attractive. It had been, for years.
“Well,” he said bashfully, “there’s only one way to find out.”
He took a step towards you, leaving little space between you. Then, slowly, he placed a careful kiss to your lips.
“I hope I haven’t overstepped myself,” he breathed, stepping back.
“No, you haven’t.” With that, you pulled him closer again, kissing him with a little more fervor.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad, having him around. He was a quick learner, after all. And a good kisser.
And for those of you wanting to see what the gum wall looks like:
#potc#pirates#pirate#pirates of the caribbean#norrington#James Norrington#commodore norrington#norrington x reader#writings#writing#drabble#request#requests#drabbles
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Hi! Sorry to be bothering you, but I just want answers. So, I’m an anti, however recently I have begun to question anti ideology (especially considering how disgusting anti’s can be to pro-shippers), so I was wondering if you would be willing to explain why dark fiction is okay to consume? It’s alright if you don’t want to ^^
I'm always willing to explain! I'll try not to make this so long that you'll want to throw your device out the window, but chances are that's what's going to happen.
First off, thinking dark fiction is gross is okay and not what I'm against. I really don't like bloodplay, for example, and if someone asked me what I thought of that kink I'd say "bleh gross nty". It's the making judgements on people for not also finding it gross that I have an issue with. So if you "switched sides", so to speak, anyone who would expect you to magically like problematic shit is misunderstanding the point.
Anyway. To the real stuff! Psychology is a relatively new field, I admit, so there haven't been hundreds of years of official studies run on the effects of dark fiction on the human brain. But so far they show a correlation in increased aggressive behaviour in some people. So, definitely some people will not do well with it. However, this discounts some important other factors. Let's get into those:
Aggressive behaviour ≠ violent behaviour in psychological terms. There isn't any proof that aggressive behaviour transfers over to violent behaviour automatically, and in most cases we can safely assume it doesn't, because other things correlated with increased aggression (sleep deprivation, high temperatures, etc) happen often without violence. This makes a very small sliver of the population vulnerable to this risk factor. Good news! Risk factors can be mitigated with protective factors. This includes education, especially programs (called primary prevention programs) designed to promote communication, problem solving, and anger management. The basics of education are really up to parents and school faculty, not fanfiction authors. But tagging and trigger warnings are a good way to bridge that gap as much as we can, as labeling behaviour specifically with a "this is abuse" sticker in bold letters teaches people to recognise what abusive behaviour looks like. You can frame it romantically, but if you read the warning labels, which you always should, you can see through the romantic framing and into the true nature of the actions. For example, a Bakudeku fic labeled "unhealthy relationship", "abusive behaviour", "Bakugou has issues to work through", etc, acknowledges the nature of Bakugou's bullying. If there's fluff, it's still in a sense overwritten by the warning labels. And real life abusive relationships can have fluffy moments, too. Mine did. That's part of what makes them insidious, because you get used to the black and white "if they do bad things they can't also be shown to do good things, so if my abuser does good things, is that really a bad relationship?" kind of mentality that's common here. It is a bad relationship. Fluff doesn't discount abuse.
Next of course is that violent people can be attracted to violent media. So when antis draw causation from the correlation of aggression and media violence, they're not viewing the whole picture, which is vital in all statistical analyses.
Okay, you say. Right. But if we encourage problematic stuff, that means all fanfic will be problematic stuff, and that will normalise these awful things. Well, no. Not really. Underage tagged works (a tag that also includes teenager/teenager relationships) on AO3 are something like 1 percent of all works. That implies it's not going to be written about too often, and also shows that it doesn't have a great reach. The most popular fic of all time has, what, 600k hits? 600k people is a lot of people, but it's still not enough to normalise something as horrific as child abuse or rape. That's a societal moral. Changing something like that is a top-down process that requires A LOT of reach. And frankly, for the average person with the average moral compass, normalising that would be very, very difficult. People can definitely experience deindividuation and a sudden disregard for morals, but it doesn't usually come from the media they consume. It's usually a sense of freedom from reprimand and encouragement by a higher authority. And take again that it's only 1 percent of the fics on AO3, and therefore has halved traffic. It's not a significant threat.
Okay, but why would you want to write it in the first place? If it could be used to hurt someone else why even bother? A lot of things can be used to hurt someone else. It's about proportions. How much hurt vs how much good. Most predators are going to be using some other tool instead, so banning those fics and art that's disgusting doesn't make a significant dent in predation, and also limits the good effects that can happen (which include freedom from censorship, which is hugely important in maintaining a democracy). Another good effect is cope shipping and catharsis. Sure, this isn't always going to work. Hell, a lot of therepuetic techniques themselves don't work on everyone. But it's a legitimate method that, using the principles of exposure therapy, doesn't automatically mean retraumatisation. Whether the technique is helpful to a particular survivor should be up to them and their therapist. A random stranger on the internet doesn't know them well enough to make that kind of judgement.
And finally, even the most repulsive of fictional content doesn't depict things that have directly happened IRL. You can make fictional characters suffer and nobody IRL suffers instead. This is good for exploring things that can't be explored IRL. It can help curb impulses. When antis compare the suffering of fictional characters to real people, they're implying real people and fictional characters have equal rights. Real people always matter more than fictional ones. Fictional characters aren't people in the first place. No real person suffers as a direct result of dark fiction being written. Implying that the suffering they cause is equal trivialises the true gravity of real abuse. Real abuse always harms someone as a direct result. Always.
Anyway. Those are the most common discourse points. Hope that helped. Sorry it was long.
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