day 10: love is devotion

I want to buy a sticker from your shop, but shipping (to Canada) is down as $22 before tax. May I ask why it costs so much to ship a single sticker? Is it Etsy being weird, or does it really cost that much to send an envelope over the border?

I'm not trying to be snarky or passive aggressive or anything, I'm genuinely just kind of befuddled atm.

A fair question honestly! USPS sets the rates for international shipping, and shipping to canada really is about that expensive 😭 I considered sending stickers via envelopes, but 1. if I send them with a stamp (less than $2) they don't have tracking, and etsy Does Not Like That. I gotta send packages with shipping to qualify for star seller, plus it covers your ass in case USPS loses it. and 2. apparently it's illegal to send merchandise internationally in envelopes!! so sadly we're all stuck dealing with the super crazy international rates. I don't like it either because as someone who deals in trinkets, people generally do not want to pay $16 for a charm that costs $12, and they especially don't want to pay that for a sticker that costs $4... I would ABSOLUTELY have way more international sales if USPS wasn't fucking us with the prices but it's out of my control dssdjkfjksdf

I give this advice a lot, but if you don't want to pay international shipping (or just live in a country I don't ship to myself), you can borrow the address of a friend that lives in the states and they can forward it to you! I don't actually know if this is cheaper, but some people have said it is. it's def cheaper for stickers though if your friend uses a stamp!

TL;DR yeah etsy and USPS are Both Weird, sorry ; - ; i assure you i hate it even More than you do lmao

Guess who finally made their card! It's taken forever but they're being printed; I'm going to put one in each of the duplicate copies of Trek books that I have before leaving them in little libraries around my area 😄🖖

And I do intend on posting actual book reviews soon!

I need to independently post more about Thorfinn and Einar, because those two are so dang cute, I love them.

for me, they rest in that area where I like them as any kind of relationship you want to attribute to them. I love their bond in the canon story, because I think the way they operate as found family brothers is fitting for the thematic weight that Yukimura intends their relationship to carry.

but also it's so easy to extrapolate their closeness into romance in speculative fiction. especially if they're kind of everything to each other. they share the same brain cell. they bring out the best in how their parents raised them from each other. they are drift compatible. two smart men can be one whole idiot. "brother" as in "man who I need to remain attached to, yet this is a need for which I have no other legitimizing name." but that's before they kiss and figure out that love has as many names as there are poetic comparisons to peace and beauty in this world. Einar's type is pretty blond people with sad eyes, and he loves doing the work of making things better for them. Thorfinn's type is headstrong, stubborn brunettes who are blunt, easy to talk to, and pleasant to be around. Thorfinn said "nothing good has ever happened to me" and Einar took that as a personal challenge. Einar is full of so much morally righteous indignation that Thorfinn both wants and needs to protect him at all costs. they would share the same toothbrush if they only had one to their name.

i just keep underestimating the amount of yarn i need for this damn project argh

doodle :P

wanna do smthin w these colors n the concept again in the future, also when idk what to do w colors right away, I make these little guys to just get the colors down so look at these creatures ig :333

one thing i'm glad for when it comes to capcom is that they never listened to al.yson co.urt about making claire x wes.ker a thing

I personally don't understand why kaveh x alhaitham is currently such a popular ship. haitham torments poor kaveh 😭 they're complete opposites and seem to hate each other. wouldn't they just be pure misery together? 😭 they remind me of straight couples. most straight couples I know hate each other and at least one harasses and torments the other and yet they call it "LOVE" and stay together, barely even tolerating each other, and being insanely miserable. it's usually as if they don't posses the self awareness to recognize it 😭 I don't understand why they do that. is that why that's such a popular shipping trope? because people keep doing it irl and think its goals or normal? i think it should stop personally lmao don't do that to yourselves 😭

Personally, I think we should start making people feel guilty about buying from companies that they KNOW are major players in environmental impact, slave adjacent labor practices and maintenance of social disparities in the global south.

I hate watching a video exposing the bad practices of Shein only to get to that point where they disclaim that you SHOULDN'T feel guilty if you buy from Shein. Like, what is the whole point then? Yes you should! You should feel like shit every time you open their disgusting website. When you open your package and see the Shein bag you should want to vomit. When you finish making your Shein haul tiktok video you should kneel and whip your own back thirty times.

"But some people don't have a choice" Yes they do. They do have a choice. And if we keep absolving them of any guilt we discourage them from looking for alternatives.

fun fact: i also have sketchbook stuffs :3c fun fact no. 2: i am insane for this man

masato/aoki has been a hyperfixation of mine for almost 3 years now unfortunately he's a little worm in my brain slowly killing me off. this is half a response to some asks i've seen, a sort of explanation to aoki looking different to masato (which is definitely nonsensical in ways) may be because he's somewhat healthier than when he was as masato, hence he's not deathly pale, tired looking and a bit of weight gain maybe? (personally love his hamster cheeks as aoki). as a disabled person myself i don't think rgg really thought much through in his disability and the shit it can bring?? hoping yakuza 8 brings more context for him though i doubt it. again unfortunately,,, he's important to me regardless and ngl the hate he gets makes me upset sometimes. like he is definitely awful awful, especially aoki. my autism could write a whole deep dive essay about his character that no one wants to hear lmfao. also your masato art is a joy, just to let you know <3 as a fellow daigo enjoyer,, masadai ex boyfriends is the most valid and superior ship for masato lmao. ty for your service in this fandom 💪

damn im honored to be gettin a letter from THE ceo of ryo aoki themselves.. even if its anonymous ill still frame it on my wall hiii ty for writin <3

BUT YEAH that's what i figured in how drastic masato is from aoki- like his eyes notably lose that dark ring and his skin and lips get more color (tho that could be because he's in the sun more but who's to say it can't be both).

i really REALLY wish RGG wasn't so flippant about his disability, i go insane trying to figure out exactly what it is or what it could be so i can approach it better when portraying him and also just thinking about him. 'weak lung syndrome', surprise surprise, can mean a lot of things

it's already p cringe that they just poof it away with a lung transplant and get rid of it all together in ishin when there was no real reason to have him stand at all. like. he's literally in two scenes, one where he is sitting but the other he's just talking to the air while takechi sits in the room.

never mind im curious if he ever had to deal with his body potentially rejecting the new organ for a bit since that is a very real concern when it comes to organ transplants, but i get not really finding the need to dive into it since that transplant would have been 20 years ago and the chance to talk about it is slim. still, they could have at least give his initial illness a proper name or diagnosis if they were just going to make it disappear literally one chapter later

anyway, ty again for writin !!! i'm happy i can feed the worm that lives in your brain 🥰🥰🥰

Hi hi!! I've just hit a follower milestone and I'm super thankful!! It also happens that in a couple months it will have been a year since I made this sideblog (August 4th...), and last month it marked a year since I rewatched the anime, and somewhere in between my obsession with Death Note was born screaming, and I'm really happy !! to have had, overall, such a good experience in the first fandom I've ever been actually invested in. Very cool very awesome thank you all for interacting with me!

Also, I've decided to take tiny short fic requests for a little while as a way to celebrate my milestone!! A couple of you said you'd be interested! If this post is pinned, then requests are still open 💕

Things to keep into account if you want to request:

It is possible that I won't do your request for any series of personal reasons, including that I simply just find it very hard to do simple things sometimes. I'll try my best, but I don't want to stress myself out too much... Thank you sincerely in advance for understanding this.

I'll most likely be most inspired by ｡ﾟ✧Lawlight requests✧｡ﾟ, but you can also request anything Death Note (doesn't have to be shippy at all, but I could also write other ships you may have seen me reblog on here!)

It is cool and encouraged to request a prompt or a trope or something like that to inspire me...

I won't write nsfw!

Thank u all again <3

just hopping into ur inbox to say thanks for actually considering steve's trauma and actual character in your work! i feel like with a lot of stevebucky he's reduced to a walking dildo in order to make room for bucky and his trauma that his own never really gets addressed bc he's the more """"""manly"""""" of the two. i also never got the nec hype and never actually finished the fic LMAO. <33

5 million years late to answering this but 🫂 i love steve so much he will forever me safe with me.

Man. I did an Amazon Prime free trial to get free shipping on a package, then I cancelled the free trial once I got my package- and later I went and double-checked that I'd remembered to cancel it before it renewed and would cost me money- but it wENT AND CHARGED ME ANYWAY. Now I've got $11 in my bank account and free shipping I don't need. The homophobia of it all,,

So I finished my rewatch of The Dragon Prince, and while I was committing myself to being a normal human being this time around instead of an emotional mess like the first time, I am both pleased and disappointed to report that I am apparently incapable of being normal about this show

Goodnight prompt 39/∞

Today I have a little bit of a different thing. While at first I came up with this idea for a specific fandom and ship (Star Wars, Ezra/Din/Luke), I think it can work on lots of fandoms with lots of ships.

To put it very succinctly, it's a different kind of secondary gender. Think A/B/O but also not, because it isn't necessarily a sex thing, but more of a societal norms & gender roles kind of bullshit.

Extra details: Basically in this AU your secondary gender is also kind of the determination of your role in society. There are four main genders: Protector, Nurturer, Guide, Developer.

The difference between each is not necessarily something tangible or physical, but it could also be, as I'll explain in the actual idea I had at first. In general, though, the concept it's that it's more or less a category in which you are put around puberty based on the way you behave and your attitude for a specific job.

It's also the reason why you can maybe be a Protector with Guide tendencies that show up later in life, and things like that.

But basically the idea is that this secondary identity thing is an entirely made up concept because of something that messed up the world so much that there is a need for people to stick to what they are good at based on their character (or nurtured into having when growing up). For the "greater good of society" kind of bullshit.

So, it works best with a dystopic society, or maybe under a dictatorship, or with races that are on the brink of extinctions, things similar to that. But it can work with just plain old modern AU if you want to focus more on actual societal issues we already have with gender even right now (gender equality, gender norms, gender identity).

But going back to these "genders": Protectors would have jobs like being cops or lawyers; Nurterer would be considered good candidates for working with younger kids or taking care of the sick; Guide would be mostly politicians but also teachers, especially for teens and up; Developer are usually people that build things or inventors.

Like I said, it's somewhat of an arbitrary division that all in all makes very little sense. Also, it's a different kind of sexism, so be aware that I know this is gonna sound like misogynistic bullshit, but the tone for this is something like the Handmaid's Tale. The point of it isn't to romanticize the issues, but to talk about them in a way that makes these issues as something absurd. It has a certain degree of separation from reality that I think would make it a little bit more palatable but still a good way to offer critique (to the secondary genre as well). Just an FYI before this makes someone mad and people start pointing fingers or something.

For anyone interested of where this idea came from, at first I actually was applying this concept to an AU where all of the characters were more or less drangonlike hybrids, a dying species that for each secondary gender actually had different physical attributes.

So it's actually based on the physical attributes, but it's kind of not relevant as well in most cases, because the person grew with people encouraging them to be somewhat more attuned to characteristics that would fit the role better suited to them.

For example, Protectors maybe have sharp claws and very hard skin, but also a good wingspan or a breath weapon; Nurturers have bodies that work best to have successful pregnancies and give birth to healthy kids, but having a hard skin would grant kids a better chance to survive: Guides and Developers have characteristics less obvious than others, like, they are maybe more humanlike than dragonlike, but still have wisdom and smart that come from their dragonic ancestry.

I just liked the idea of Protector (with Nurturer tendencies) Din finding a little Grogu beside their dead mother and taking them back to their tribe. And Nurturer (with Guide tendencies) Luke is the one that is decided will take care of Grogu, but it's the first time Luke has a pup in his care so they assign him a Protector guard (especially because they don't know if the sire of the kid will show up and claim him). And Protector (with Developer tendencies) Ezra is the one that is assigned to guard Luke and Grogu.

Basically they fall in love because Din keeps going to visit Grogu and Luke can't stand watching Ezra just walking around and on edge all the time and honestly Ezra is at his first solo assignment and he enjoys talking to both Din and Luke way more than he should.

ANYWAY, it's such an open to interpretation concept that it can basically be changed to fit multiple AUs and settings (and also different moods, since it doesn't necessarily have to focus on the whole gender critique, even if the potential is always there). So I'm just going to shout this into the void and be done with it.