#daphneblakess

[papenathys]

❤️ if it's not too much trouble, could i possibly request a mb for whatever vibes you get from me saying that the mc of my sapphic dark academia wip is like if lady macbeth was an early 20-something lesbian from 1989?

sorry for the long wait!!! here is your moodboard, hope you enjoy it! I'm sorry, I really got carried away by the witchy 90s aesthetic, it's not very strictly dark academia, but I'm very excited to read your WIP!

[dingdongyouarewrong]

I feel so humiliated, I referenced eeby deeby to my coworker while we were closing and had to ride the building's cursed elevator up from the maintenance level and she didn't get it

NOOOOOOO SHE’S UNCULTURED

[writingwithcolor]

One of my main characters of my NaNo project is a Korean-Japanese girl who has been in the modeling industry ever since she was a child. A large part of what informs her character is her coming to terms with her being nonbinary and how that conflicts with the beauty standards she feels bound to. While I am also nonbinary, I want to make sure that her relationship with those beauty standards doesn't just seem like I'm attacking a whole culture.

Nonbinary Korean Japanese model and beauty standards

Assuming you’re not Japanese-Korean: Feels like it should be an Ownvoices thing to me. If the plot/character arc weren’t so tied to her cultural relationship with gender & beauty, and it’s just her kicking ass in the modeling world, then I’d say yes, write that nonbinary Korean-Japanese character! Awesome rep! However, because you make the cultural conflict the focus of her character arc, I feel as though this is a topic that needs to be explored by nonbinary East Asian authors, not you. 

No one except a nonbinary East Asian person experiences the nuanced unpacking of their country’s gender norms with their identity; no one except a Korean-Japanese person knows what the specific intersections of Korean and Japanese culture (which both deal with gender differently!) are like. Check out the Can I Write About X tag and read WWC: Why Insiders Can Write Their Experience on why insiders can—and are best equipped to—write their own story. 

If you’re willing to pull away from the conflict narrative and make the story a bit more positive rep, Marika has some advice for research/realism. 

~Mod Rina

I don’t necessarily know if I would put this in the OwnStories category, but it just sounds like a bummer story. The modeling world is very well known for fatphobia exploitation, fetishization, colorism and racism. I remember reading memoirs like “Everything About Me is Fake, and I’m Perfect” and “The Beauty and the Biz” and thinking “Wow, sounds like a crappy job.” Your character would have to be able to compartmentalize very well to deal with constantly being scrutinized and having little control over their appearance. There’s enough articles out there on the abuses of the model/ idol industries in Korea and Japan (And how both feed into each other), so there’s no shortage of material for you to read.

With regards to your character’s Japanese side, I think the bigger problem will be figuring out how to cope with the strict gender binary that covers so much of Japanese life: 

How to speak

Physical appearance

Hair length

Uniforms

The color of clothes

How one is supposed to carry themselves

Both because Japan doesn’t have many legal protections for LGBTQIA+ individuals and because resisting social norms is frowned upon, I suspect your character would find the virtual world of social media to be an easier space to inhabit as they explore aspects of their identity that can be more easily discussed anonymously. I don’t think it’s easier to be trans than nb in Japan, but I think people “get it” more if a person visibly presents as or transitions to the most gendered version of their identity, while nb (aka “X-gender”) people are often asked “But you’re really [insert gender], right?”

The irony is androgyny is highly idealized in Japanese culture and the Japanese beauty industry. Our current beauty standards center more around certain body types and facial features rather than whether the person looks male or female. However, what we might put on a billboard and what is expected from a person from Japanese society are very different things. 

- Marika.

[aredhels]

@sixofcrowsnet gift exchange » genya & zoya for @daphneblakess ♥︎

“Be safe,” Zoya whispered. Be safe. As if those words could cast some kind of spell. -- She drew back, and Zoya was both horrified and touched to see tears in Genya’s amber eye.

[saintdollyparton]

unpopular opinion: the killing eve fandom is extremely white and it shows in how much more content villanelle gets than eve

You're supposed to send opinions, not facts.

(I love Killing Eve but I admit the fandom can be shitty and I don't even venture into the mess on Twitter. We all need to be better and more mindful about this.)

[wingsofhcpe]

Till Death Do Us Part (Abigail & Magnus- Gideon the Ninth)

[Giveaway drabble for @daphneblakess ]

Magnus saw Abigail bleed.

It had been easy to unlock the hatch and climb down the ladder. Maybe too easy. He should have been suspicious of it.

But he hadn't been, and Abigail had paid for it.

He had been her cavalier, her husband and above all, her best friend. And he had failed her spectacularly, at the one task he was supposed to fulfill with his very life, if needed be.

What cruel irony; for it was his necromancer lying battered and broken in a pool of blood, her beloved eyes staring vacantly and accusingly at him as he drew his rapier, but he was too late, too late. No cavalier should have to watch their necromancer die, least of all like that, least of all when they were bound to each other by more than just duty. And yet here Magnus was, staring at the corpse of his wife. He fell on his knees next to her, rapier clattering emptily on the metal grate beside him. Magnus made a keening noise as he bent over Abigail's body as if trying to shield her with his own. Too little, too late.

When whatever had killed Abigail came for him, too, he welcomed death with grateful, open arms.

[batekush]

🎁 lady dimitrescu

[blockberrycreative]

okay you joke but I actually got into a fight with someone in one of my college class discords over the fact that every generation of the queer community has reclaimed different slurs and it was not at all uncommon for 'fag' to be casually thrown around in the 70s and 80s

you’re stronger than i am i would’ve killed myself in front of everyone out of spite