Xros wars my beloved

My blog #myblog He/him collectively 22 member system here to have fun and also complain a lot

[raphthebirdman]

new New intro post

hiya hello

We are a plural system of 22 call us Raph or by individual names

we are ✨Transgender ✨

we like: digimon xros wars, life series, vsmp, dsmp, infinity train, and uhh pretty much anything we come across

Our ao3 is here

frequent bloggers here

Sometimes we make pjo posts but they usually arent maintagged

[raphthebirdman]

currently in the pain torment nexus if anyone has any suggestions for me to draw i will happily take them ive got No ideas

[prunsel]

if you've ever pet more than a few dogs you'd Know what dog residue is

[computationalcalculator]

[envvik]

Kudou Taiki <3

[ab0masum]

me when i have 'always hurts disease' and then i fucking hurts

[thedeafprophet]

forced immortality is a fun trope. unappreciated. someone/something wants you to remain so it makes you. it will not let you die

[eldr1tch-cr0w]

number one rule! never believe ur thoughts after 10 pm . unless its about The Character then believe all of your thoughts wholeheartedly

[raphthebirdman]

imma be honest one of the things i really really hate about the dsmp fandom is how everyone has handled the wilbur situation

Because it feels like we’re all lying to each other. Lying and saying we never cared, censoring his name, writing him out of fics and posts and the story of the dsmp

it feels wrong, it feels like everyone is choosing to take the moral high ground because thats the Safe option, because this fandom is full to the fucking brim of people who treat morality like it’s black and white

and i could do it too, ive been tempted to. I could say that my first impression of him was that he was a dick, and thats not necessarily a lie

it’s just not what i always thought of him, because i thought he was kind and funny and sweet, a whole fucking lot of us did. i don’t think its wrong to say that i miss the person i thought he was

and i don’t think its wrong to say that i Will support him If he ever makes an effort to change for the better

that ‘if’ carries a lot in that sentence, but it doesn’t make it untrue

I don’t think trying to write someone out of our history is the right choice, understanding and acknowledging that he is/was a bad person is good, but trying to completely remove him? That feels like lying, to ourselves and each other

Edit: i realise i should have made this clear before but i am firmly on shelbys side of this situation, and anyone who is going to be demonising victims on my post will be blocked

i can believe in peoples ability to change and support their victims, those aren’t mutually exclusive

[raphthebirdman]

this post honestly isnt about wilbur anymore, its not about him it’s about the fact that you Have to believe that people can change

you Have to

you dont have to forgive them, you dont have to like them, you dont have to be anywhere near them

but you Cannot believe that bad people don’t change

people can change, people can get better, people can choose to be kinder than they were

and even if that kindness never makes up for the harm they did It Is Always Better That They Be Kind

it will always be better to be kind

you have to believe that

Good things done by bad people are still good things

good things done by people who used to be bad are Still Good Things

you have to believe that people can change for the better because the more people that believe that The More People Will Change

you dont have to forgive them

you just have to believe that people can change

i will say again that anyone demonising victims will still be blocked, in case you didn’t see the previous one

[raphthebirdman]

as time goes on while i Know that like beauty standards exist and its extremely difficult to fight the mindset of it i find it harder and harder to feel any sort of sympathy when people say they wish they were skinny/er like. Shut up you’re fine. Get over it. Half the time they’re skinny already

[buttercupbonfire]

Shelby Is Not Naive, Or: Everyone Cares Too Much About Scott Goldsmith

Shelby fully expects the people of Oakhurst to kill her at the first opportunity. Shelby is so invested in the coven and so willing to excuse the flaws of other vampires because she has bought into the idea that the humans can and will hurt her at the first opportunity. There are many reasons for this, but Scott Goldsmith is not one of them.

Scott is her bestie because he stands still and says nice things while everyone else is running around introducing her to new and exciting forms of torment nexus. It is a “luigi wins by doing nothing” ass situation.

Once Shelby is turned, it becomes nearly impossible for her to talk to a human without being threatened. Many social interactions from the very instant she walks back into town after the fishing trip are shadowed by someone openly planning to hurt or kill vampires. 

Avid tries to test if she’s repelled by silver and then starts building a jail cell in front of her. Apo isn’t directly threatening, but basically comes to Shelby with the hypothetical “what if there was an evil vampire”. And then they emphasize the importance of keeping a stake at hand. 

Shelby asks Ren if they’ll really have to fight each other, and Ren says that it’s just the way of the world. Sausage emphasizes the point by yelling “stab them all until they’re dead!”, which isn’t really a great thing to hear when you are one of the “them” in question.

Eventually, Apo gets turned, and most of the vampires convene at the beacon, where Martyn burns her alive.

Let me repeat that: she burns alive. 

The video editing emphasizes this as a big deal.  Shelby’s narration in the aftermath concludes that “if i asked for a chance to talk, they would have just killed me without a second thought.” From Shelby’s perspective, they did just kill her without a second thought. It is the climax of their episode 3, and one of the first things Shelby mentions in episode 4. It is a major turning point for the character, with good reason.

As far as Shelby is concerned, the vampire vs human conflict began with her experiencing a horrific death for the grand crime of crouching next to a beacon. 

From this point forward, non threatening interactions with humans vanish almost entirely. 

The only conversation Shelby has with a human is episode 4 is her face to face with Avid, which has high points and low points. The low points include Avid telling her about staking his partner because she attacked him.

Shelby, does, however, visit the town later, where she finds Avid burning her house down.

And then Legundo reads the cure book in front of the house’s ashes. 

Legundo also scolds Avid for burning down the house, but Shelby misses that part. In fact, Shelby missed all of the pro Shelby comments made in the town around that time. 

According to the post series creator’s commentary, (which i can’t link because twitch deletes old vods so it probably no longer exists aajfas;llllldg) this isn’t even a matter of clever editing- Shubble was legitimately out of range for all of the parts of the story where people agreed that they wanted to help Shelby. 

In episode 5, she is approached by a group of Drift, Cleo, and Pearl. Shelby is surrounded, and asks them to put their swords away. Pearl takes a minute to do so, and when she does she switches to a bottle of holy water. Shelby backs away and Pearl moves forward. 

The start of this conversation very much has shades of an interrogation: “why do you look so different? Did you eat truffle?” 

Shelby tells them about being burnt alive, and the response she gets from Cleo is “but you got better”. Which sucks, and serves as an ironic mirror for the way that Scott and Owen are dismissive about the trauma involved with turning people. Both factions are expecting Shelby to just walk off the wrongs done to them, but the Oakhurst faction is openly threatening future harm to Shelby.  

Of the three of them, Drift is the most supportive. The conversation improves from there, and some nice things are said, but Shelby was still threatened. It was still the preamble to the nice and productive part of the talks. 

Then she has the meeting with Avid where he asks to be turned, which goes fairly well but ends with Avid being decidedly non human. Also Owen replaced one of Avid’s messages to Shelby with a death threat, so Shelby was still threatened over it. 

Episode 6 has the Oakhurst invasion where all of the vampires visit Oakhurst and Pearl gets chased around. Shelby doesn’t really talk to anyone here, but she sure does get to hear Pearl make a generalized threat. Because Shelby can never catch a break.

We also see another instance of Shelby assuming that the townies are after her: her narration says “i thought Pearl was chasing me”

Then there’s a conversation with Sausage. Sausage pulls out a stake because of course he does. 

Then Drift pulls Shelby aside, and they have a lovely chat where there are no threats of bodily harm. However, Drift is a vampire, so it doesn’t count. Rip. 

When Avid starts talking about the cure, Shelby’s immediate assumption is that if Avid asks to be cured, the humans will stake her without a second thought. She also is the one to suggest sabotaging the cure for the sake of protecting herself and the other vampires. 

Episode 7 sees Shelby dealing with humans twice, and both of them are decidedly hostile interactions

The first bit of human contact comes when the vampires burn down the walls of Oakhurst. This is, naturally, open combat. Shelby makes a point of targeting Martyn.

Her second human interaction in episode 7 is running into Abolish, who promptly introduces her to the Veylocke murder box. In other words, Shelby is stunned, rendered immobile and helpless, and executed in cold blood. It is not an easy death.

Abolish even acknowledges that she didn’t do anything, and then kills her anyway. 

episode 8 is the finale, where she fights some humans, hides from humans, eventually has a truce with humans for the first time ever, and then wanders off into the sunset with Drift and Scott.

That’s basically all of Shelby’s major human interactions post episode 3. There is never an instance where speaking to a human is not linked with being threatened by a human after that point. 

For the most part, this is entirely the result of the people of Oakhurst’s own priorities and character choices, but there is one vampire that tries to make sure that Shelby can’t talk to the humans. Someone that tries to isolate her, someone that uses threats, someone that is willing to lie to keep Shelby in the castle and away from town. 

That person is Owen. 

Owen interferes with Shelby speaking to townsfolk three times, to mixed results: he joins the conversation with Apo and successfully diverts them from trying to convince Shelby she’s wanted in town; he replaces Avid’s letter with a threatening message, but Avid manages to set up a meeting with Shelby and clear the air with her anyway; and he appears in the Pearl-Drift-Cleo meeting with Shelby in episode 5, which arguably improves the situation because he took the conversation in a useful direction and Shelby had already felt threatened anyway.

…actually, all three of these things happen in episode 5. Owen has a very brief window of being invested in the coven in this particular way. He does some pretty nasty lying in that window, though. 

While this could be an interesting plot thread, Owen’s contributions are something of a cigarette in a burning warehouse. Shelby got killed twice as collateral damage, and both deaths were exceptionally traumatic. No amount of intercession on Owen’s part is going to speak louder than the wrongs done to Shelby by the humans themselves. No amount of lying on Oakhurst’s behalf is more damning then Oakhurst’s own failure to address the damage they’ve done in any way. He’s burying a relationship so far underground it is already in hell. 

Even seemingly minor things like Pearl’s tendency to casually arm herself do more to damage Oakhurst’s reputation then Owen is really capable of- there is a direct line of cause and effect between Pearl saying she has a stake and Shelby assuming that Pearl is chasing her down. Shelby is rightfully skeptical of the claims Owen makes about other people, but when someone else is making those kinds of statements, she tends to believe them. 

And then there’s Shelby’s backstory. 

Shelby’s backstory, where she is isolated from her entire community growing up. Where people she considered friends and neighbors didn’t care about her in turn. Where nobody had even done something as basic as telling her that she’s fun to be around. 

 Of course Shelby thinks that Oakhurst is willing to write her off at the drop of a hat. That’s what her hometown did. 

In conclusion

1: the town is not blameless in the Oakhurst vs Castle conflict. They have done real harm to the Coven, and most of it has fallen on their friendliest and least aggressive member.

2: Shelby is indeed afraid and isolated, but the bulk of that fear and isolation is generated and maintained by the people of Oakhurst themselves. The one time Scott had an opportunity to sabotage one of Shelby’s outside relationships, he chooses not to.

3: Scott is Shelby’s first friend, ever, and the feeling is mutual. This is a key component of why Shelby is Like That. 

4: The answer to most gripes regarding vsmp’s story arc and ending is Shelby. Why did Scott live and Pyro die? Shelby. Why did Scott suddenly pivot to pacifism? Shelby. Why can’t the humans just wipe out the coven and call it a day? Shelby. Why was the coven a legitimate social structure in the first place? That’s also Shelby. It’s Shelby all the way down.

In Shelby’s story, Scott is the prize she wins for her kindness and Pyro becomes the avatar of all of the senseless violence she has suffered. 

Shelby’s character arc is one of being the collateral damage of other people’s agendas so frequently that she becomes convinced that she must use violence herself. This culminates in her killing the most direct and personal threat to her physical safety, which is Pyro. Shelby’s other character arc is about seeking peace and companionship despite the bloodshed around her. This culminates in her turning her closest companion from the path of violence, and that companion happens to be Scott. Scott and Pyro’s conclusions are mirrored halves of Shelby’s finale, and reflect Shelby’s greatest triumph and lowest low.

The outcomes they get make sense if you position Shelby as the central character, and her choices were the ones that decided their fates. 

[real-fragments]

I am officially one blood lesser and also have been making doll clothes :)

How has your 🫵 day been

One Blood Lesser would make a killer band title

Doll clothes?

My day has been. Bad. Urgh I'm frustrated. Need to get over myself.

Hmmmm what's something you're looking forward to?

[raphthebirdman]

it wouldd..

doll clothes! Ive been making them since i was like eight and finally have the time to get back into it, i like getting dolls secondhand and fixing them up so they look nice again

same tbh :( i hope you feel better soon

Im planning to hang out with a friend from college sometime soon! (Unfortunately the weather is getting in the way a bit)

Do You have anything you’re looking forwards to?

[raphthebirdman]

hate that a ‘normal’ pain day means i mostly stare at walls and lay down all day and do nothing at all

[knightbymidnight]

ATTACK ON @fromwindtosea ON AF!!!

+ TIMELAPSE!!!!!

[mystic-dahlias]

flowers (part 2)

[foxalotlposts]

We are totally normal over totally not panicking over Sunday yeah haha yeah

I was very heavily inspired by @ringtiledlemurder 's style, and they gave me a few process examples of their works and stuff!! :D (their art is really good and cool you should go check it out btw)

screen shot of process!!

[thegremlininyourcloset]

“average person experiences 40 unrequited loves every year” factoid actually just statistical error. Lovergirl Apo, who is betrayed by literally everyone and experiences 50,000 unrequited loves every month, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

[real-fragments]

I am officially one blood lesser and also have been making doll clothes :)

How has your 🫵 day been

One Blood Lesser would make a killer band title

Doll clothes?

My day has been. Bad. Urgh I'm frustrated. Need to get over myself.

Hmmmm what's something you're looking forward to?

[raphthebirdman]

it wouldd..

doll clothes! Ive been making them since i was like eight and finally have the time to get back into it, i like getting dolls secondhand and fixing them up so they look nice again

same tbh :( i hope you feel better soon

Im planning to hang out with a friend from college sometime soon! (Unfortunately the weather is getting in the way a bit)

Do You have anything you’re looking forwards to?