I call upon the fan fic writing gods to bless you with the perseverance to finish one of your unfinished drafts.
May your fingers dance along the letters upon your device with ease, may the devil of distraction stay far from you, and may your work not need much editing.
I pass this blessing upon every fan fic writer out there.
I’m feeling this now because I’m going to attempt a multi-chap and I would like to call upon the gods and ancient forces for strength.
“In wondering why Americans are afraid of dragons, I began to realize that a great many Americans are not only anti-fantasy, but altogether anti-fiction. We tend, as a people, to look upon all works of the imagination either as suspect or as contemptible. ‘My wife reads novels. I haven’t got the time.’
‘I used to read that science fiction stuff when I was a teenager, but of course I don’t now.’
‘Fairy stories are for kids. I live in the real world.’ Who speaks so? Who is it that dismisses ‘War and Peace,’ ‘The Time Machine,’ and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ with this perfect self-assurance? It is, I fear, the man in the street – the men who run this country. Such a rejection of the entire art of fiction is related to several American characteristics: our Puritanism, our work ethic, our profit-mindedness, and even our sexual mores. To read ‘War and Peace’ or ‘The Lord of the Rings’ plainly is not ‘work’ – you do it for pleasure. And if it cannot be justified as ‘educational’ or as ‘self-improvement,’ then, in the Puritan value system, it can only be self-indulgence or escapism. For pleasure is not a value, to the Puritan; on the contrary, it is a sin. Equally, in the businessman’s value system, if an act does not bring in an immediate, tangible profit, it has no justification at all. Thus the only person who has an excuse to read Tolstoy or Tolkien is the English teacher, who gets paid for it. But our businessman might allow himself to read a best-seller now and then: not because it is a good book, but because it is a best-seller – it is a success, it has made money. To the strangely mystical mind of the money-changer, this justifies its existence; and by reading it he may participate, a little, in the power and mana of its success. If this is not magic, by the way, I don’t know what it is. The last element, the sexual one, is more complex. I hope I will not be understood as being sexist if I say that, within our culture, I believe that this anti-fiction attitude is basically a male one. The American boy and man is very commonly forced to define his maleness by rejecting certain traits, certain human gifts and potentialities, which our culture defines as ‘womanish’ or ‘childish.’ And one of these traits or potentialities is, in cold sober fact, the absolutely essential human faculty of imagination… But I must narrow the definition to fit our present subject. By ‘imagination,’ then, I personally mean the free play of the mind, both intellectual and sensory. By ‘play’ I mean recreation, re-creation, the recombination of what is known into what is new. By ‘free’ I mean that the action is done without an immediate object of profit – spontaneously. That does not mean, however, that there may not be a purpose behind the free play of the mind, a goal; and the goal may be a very serious object indeed. Children’s imaginative play is clearly a practicing at the acts and emotions of adulthood; a child who did not play would not become mature. As for the free play of an adult mind, its result may be ‘War and Peace,’ or the theory of relativity. To be free, after all, is not to be undisciplined. I should say that the discipline of the imagination may in fact be the essential method or technique of both art and science. It is our Puritanism, insisting that discipline means repression or punishment, which confuses the subject. To discipline something, in the proper sense of the word, does not mean to repress it, but to train it – to encourage it to grow, and act, and be fruitful, whether it is a peach tree or a human mind. I think that a great many American men have been taught just the opposite. They have learned to repress their imagination, to reject it as something childish or effeminate, unprofitable, and probably sinful. They have learned to fear it. But they have never learned to discipline it at all.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin, from Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons? (1974)
In class today, Trump was somehow brought up and someone said that Trump was a neo-nazi and my professor was like, “Trump hasn’t ever said he was a neo-nazi” and another kid said, “I was still gay before I started calling myself gay!” and realized what he said and he looked just mortified but it was the greatest response to anything I’ve ever heard
When trump makes you so angry that you ram down the closet door to call out some bs
Gays coming out of their closet to shame the mankind
Because I’m tired of seeing these characters so grossly mischaracterized in such a small fandom… Planning to make more of these, but I’ll start off with Sloth Pair.
Canon Kuro:
Depressed af
“Mamahiru I want McDonald’s”
Really bad at people-ing
Can be a little shit when he wants
Shifts between shell-shocked Vietnam veteran and actual child on a dime
“Look at how cute I am”
Super Duper Not Okay
Fucking dork
Probably makes suicide jokes about himself tbh
Probably only taking care of himself for Mahiru at this point
HATES conflict
Fanon Kuro:
Suave
Way too possessive of Mahiru
Edgy and cool
That’s it. That’s literally it.
Canon Mahiru:
Abnormally strong for a human
Athlete
Uses housework as a coping mechanism
Also because he basically grew up alone like of course you’re gonna have to learn to cook??
The Mom Friend who will not hesitate to throw a shoe at you
Stubborn little shit
Good at making friends but will throw hands if you piss him off
Also Super Duper Not Okay but is really good at hiding it
I wish people would stop saying “It’s July. Well done for wasting half a year.” Did you make someone smile in the past six months? Did you stroke a cat or throw a stick for a dog? Did you learn a new fact or teach someone a new joke? Did you laugh, cry, scream or sing in the past six months? Because if so, congratulations for not wasting your time at all.
I really needed this
I’m bringing this back for December to remind everyone.
You did not waste your year.
If you made it this far, that’s already not wasting your year.
You made it through the year, you laughed, you cried, you smiled, you saw the sun and felt the rain, and most importantly, you’re still here.
You did not waste your year.
You mad it this far, and I’m proud of you.
Bringing this back for 2020 to tell you:
DUDE.
YOU SURVIVED A MOTHERFUCKING
PANDEMIC.
You lived through what is, and I’m not exaggerating, a fucking apocalyptic event. DURING a major political crisis to boot! This year, still having a pulse is a major accomplishment, and I’m so glad you’re here.
Bitch Ive never even seen this shit in new jersey don’t lump us in w your HELL IS REAL billboard ass states
Bro I’m in Ireland which is arguably one of the most Catholic nations in the world and I have never seen this shit in my entire god damn life this is bizarre what the fuck
#the depressingly real intersection of capitalism and religion #welcome to america
Someone stubborn as a brick, fiery, caring and who can and will drag his ass kicking and screaming into doing things he’s afraid to do. AKA: Gear and Mahiru
Lmao you’re an adult, you shouldn’t be using the word squick. Use trigger. Use your grown up adult words to explain how you feel instead of leaning on a cutesy uwu term that no one outside of tumblr uses. It’s embarrassing.
An essay on Kuro and Gear’s relationship-- aka a Kurogear essay
A self-indulgent post examining some context clues and dialogue and the potential closeness of Kuro and Gear’s relationship, because I’m like this. I got the guts to post this after seeing posts like @katzkinder ’s post about Kuro and Gear , and i wanted to gush a bit I guess.
First:
Kuro and Gear have known each other a long, long time, at least since the 1800s. They know each other’s hobbies, likes and dislikes, quirks and personalities. You can clearly see from this photo that Gear’s taking it while Kuro isn’t quite sure about it. Probably excited to try out his new camera, while Kuro is grumpy about being the test subject because he’s shy.
Meeting Gear answers a lot of questions about Kuro: Mainly, what was he doing before he met Mahiru? He was living with Gear, possibly for several hundred years or so. Neither of them are good with people, but likewise neither of them are good with loneliness.
Gear, it seems, wanted to teach Kuro something– Something important. Kuro when he first meets Gear clearly wants to die, wants an end to the confusing and lonely existence that is immortality. I think Gear’s been trying for a very long time to teach Kuro how to handle being immortal: By being his friend, his companion, his teacher. By giving him someone to hold onto in an endless existence.
Because Gear was lonely too. Werewolves are rare according to what we’ve seen in canon: Kuro was probably one of the only people he could befriend he knew wouldn’t die on him. And then he left. And it hurt. Gear waited for years for Kuro to return, even went to Japan to try and find him– Where he met Youtarou. And as angry as he is, he still offers help and shelters Kuro and Mahiru. He cares still, even if so much time has passed, so much that they’ve both changed as people.
And here’s where I go into the ‘they’re Exes’ thing. The sheer amount of anger and regret tied up in their relationship at their reunion? That’s heavy. Gear’s continued research into the Servamps, the hole in the roof, the fact that he’s been thinking about Kuro this entire time– There’s weight in that. And of course, both Kuro and Gear are terrible with people and emotions.
Which brings me to
You don’t say this about someone who’s just a casual friend. 'Pastime’ is more often used when referring to a casual lover. Which implies to me there was physical affection there as well as emotional, but they probably never actually talked about feelings.
Because Kuro has no self-esteem and can’t view himself as deserving of love, Gear is terrible at talking about feelings, and the combination is that they were probably some degree of a romantic item without ever actually talking about feelings or acknowledging it, up until Kuro left without a word, because he’s both oblivious and kind of an asshole in his self-depreciation, as we saw in the earlier chapters of the manga.
Kuro underestimated how much Gear cared, while also being ashamed of facing anyone after everything had finished with the creator.
I just love their dynamic. It’s so interesting, finally giving us a fascinating glimpse into Kuro’s life, which he’s always been tight lipped about. There’s so much subtext here, and I feel like Tanaka Strike definitely intended it to seem this way, to give us knowledge of Kuro’s character development and who he is as a person.
This is the simplest explination ever and people still don’t wanna hear it.
Close up video of a black man with glasses and a red t-shirt
“I hate when discussing police brutality people like to say ‘but there are good cops too,’ there are good cops too?
Fam, there’s clean water. If I live in a house where the tap water is coming out dirty sometimes I don’t just say ‘well, it’s not always dirty so it’s okay, nothing wrong.’ No! I need to replace the system, I need to examine the system at the source so my water is clean and acting like water every single time.
The idea of a police man is to be good so if he’s not acting like that and if more policeman aren’t acting like that we got a system to examine. Cause see tap water systems in houses- tap water systems have filters that are supposed to stop, uh, the dirt from coming through, when the water comes out of our sink and into my cup I’m supposed to be able to trust that that water is safe for me to drink on sight, I’m not supposed to have to, to test it at all. Same thing with a police man– I’m supposed to see a man with a badge and trust him on sight and know justice and nothing but pure things is supposed to come from him.
So when there is a possibility of that not being done there’s crap getting through the filter—we gotta fix this filter! So if that water in my house is coming out dirty sometimes and clean sometimes, when I pour a cup of water I have a reason to be worried until I fix that system, until something changes I have a reason to be nervous when I pour a cup of water from the sink and I look at it am I like ‘is this gonna be a dirty glass of water or is it gonna be clean? Is this gonna be a bad cop or a good cop? ‘I shouldn’t even have to worry about that, I should see a cop and know for a fact that’s gonna be a clean cup of water, everytime I see him.”
Pieces of Viking pottery with traces of cat and dog paws, seen at the Musée de Normandie in Caen Castle
“So back in the day pets already ruined their owner’s artwork.” - My sis who took the photo
“ruined”? made better
It’s very humanizing to imagine some poor potter in the past screaming “nnnnooooooo bad kitty” somewhere in Scandinavia
If it was ruined, the artisan wouldn’t have baked it.
That’s… that’s a delightful point you just made.
This person chose to bake and keep their cat’s artistic contribution.
i was in spain once and there was a building with a tile that had been laid down in roman times: it had a dog’s paw print. and the thing was that after the dog did that print, the wet tile was dried, and then fired, and then shipped, and then laid, and for two thousand years every person who encountered that tile thought ‘aw! paw print!’ and kept it. this vast agreement by thousands of people over all these centuries, in memory of a dog only one of us could have met.
okay you cannot tell me Kuro and Gear aren’t a valid ship after THAT chapter. The fact that Gear went looking for him and waited all that time hoping he’d come back… my heart…
#servamp #Also so many KuroMahi and GearYoutarou feels #i ship EVERYTHING IN THIS BAR #but man tmw two guys have a cottage in the countryside together #super gay fellas
Starting to reach a point where i am just blocking people who post pages long walls of text without a text cut, this is getting ridiculous in the servamp tag rn.
Sometimes I’m so confused by fandom…. like, where do people get aggressive, flirty, suave or ‘top/dom’ kuro from anyway? He’s not like that at all in canon, if anything Mahiru takes charge in their relationship. He’s awkward as hell and downright passive, even with all the growth he’s had.
#Servamp#Kuro#Sleepy Ash #I'm saying everyone's flirty/possessive kuro portrayals aren't legit at all sorry #It's okay to fantasize I guess but #Kuro's not like that #Kuromahi fans: Mahiru tops here it's plain as day
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