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My Astrology Library

The Embodiment of Sensuality.

➸ Post Information:

This post explores placements in a natal chart that can give someone unmatched, heightened sensuality - or being the embodiment of sensuality itself.

#Astrology #Natal Astrology #Midpoint Astrology #Lilith Astrology #Libra #Taurus #Venus #One of my longest posts ever omg.#Long Form Post

On Kazuki’s feelings about Rei leaving him/going back to his father

I haven’t really seen many people talk about this after episode 11, and most of the discourse I have seen was “so they split up, just like that?” but we’ve been getting a lot of hints that Kazuki was mulling it over and was frustrated about it and decidedly not okay with it for months.

However, they had an arrangement not to ask/tell, so Kazuki didn’t want to pressure Rei by asking questions he knew he wouldn’t get the answers to. He was hoping Rei would tell him on his own, when he felt comfortable about it.

That’s why whenever we see Kazuki thinking about this, both in episode 8 and in episode 11, he never directly challenges Rei about it, even if he’s not okay with the situation.

Episode 8:

Kazuki is sad/distraught thinking about whether Rei would leave him and Miri to go back to his father if their relationship improved. Later in the episode, he’s so frustrated about Rei not opening up, that he grumbles to himself how Rei has never told him anything that matters. He wants to be let in, but he won’t cross that boundary forcefully.

Episode 11:

So in the latest episode, when Rei tells him that he’ll go back to his father in the new year, Kazuki’s first reaction is surprise, followed by resignation.

Rei never tells him anything, so he’s not expecting more. Kazuki takes it as it is, and internalises it, even though he would love to say more and is evidently upset about this.

His line here: “Yeah... not like there’s much reason for us to stay together now.” is his way of reaching out to Rei without openly pressuring him.

“Tell me that’s wrong, deny it, tell me there is still a reason for us to stay together.”

Later in the episode he opens up to Kyuu about it and we see even more evidence that he’s not actually ok with it at all. He tries to get Kyuu’s opinion on it, asking again whether that’s what Rei really wants, hoping, possibly, that Rei doesn’t want them to separate and go back to his ruthless, domineering father.

Kyuu’s answer that that’s just how his family is does nothing to reassure him, instead it pisses him off. The translation here is: “rubs me the wrong way”, his Japanese line being, for further context:

きにくわない (ki ni ku wa nai) - to be unable to stomach, sticking in one's throat

Which in my opinion leads to the later discussion about leaving Miri at an orphanage. Kazuki surely knows what that would do to her, being an orphan himself, lest we forget. But what else can he do when his partner told him that he’s going back to his father, and won’t open up to him? Essentially, Rei left him, just like everyone else in Kazuki’s life (whether intentionally or not, since we have no idea how he was orphaned).

Kazuki can’t fight them alone, he barely survived Ogino. The safest option at that point for Miri’s life and well-being would be to be as far from them as possible, given that the organisation would keep going after her. Kazuki isn’t even processing how he’s a target as well, or maybe thinks that he’ll just end up dead sooner or later because he’d made peace with the fact, thinking that this is just the life he deserves.

Thankfully, Rei does finally open up, and Kazuki finally sees his commitment. So I’m not actually surprised that Rei was the one to insist they take Miri into their care and commit to it. It couldn’t have been Kazuki, because he was the one who wanted it all along.

#buddy daddies #kazuki kurusu #kazurei #rei suwa #long form post #image-heavy post #my thoughts

i said in this post that i have original characters and backstories for neil's extended family. it took me,, a really long time to write it all down. it's been a full month since the original post, and this is still just a run through of things, not full prose, which i might be interested in doing one day but not anytime soon

now, some things to note about what i'm writing, why, and how. methodology, basically. this might not have come through yet in my posts, because i just don't post about my half-finished ideas, but i research a LOT. i like to base what i write about on real life, even if it's just headcanons and fanfic

also, i love helping people with research, so if anyone wants help with research for a fic or just their personal headcanons or anything hit me up!!

as a white person who wants to write characters from different ethnic backgrounds, i feel i have a responsibility to really do my due diligence and research as much as possible to consider things from every angle. and part of that for me is making sure that every character of color has a backstory. they don't just appear somewhere, i have to give them a reason for being there and a story for how they got there, even if that's not what i write their STORY about. people, come from places, basically. i follow a lot of demographic census information and population averages, as well as a lot of history, from as general as transatlantic trade in the last 500 years to as specific as the changes in a single city in a certain year

talking to other writers in the fandom i know i'm a little overzealous, but this is what gives me peace of mind to feel like i am putting the effort in to get things right

so anyway, as for what that means here:

i like writing neil as mixed black/jewish. it works well thematically for his character, as well as just what FEELS right for how i visualize him in my head

only, that can't simply come from nowhere. we know who his parents are. they need to also be poc for neil to be one, and they're a complicated pair to handle in that lens

one choice i made about that, for multiple reasons, is that everything about neil's parents' backgrounds should mirror each other. it can't simply be that one if them is black and one is jewish, or even that mary is both and nathan is white, because that says something i don't want to say any way you slice it. additionally, i want both facets of his ethnicity to be important to neil, and i feel as though he would want to ignore the half of himself from his father.

so: they both have to be mixed, giving them a sort of,, ideological equal footing, as it were. that way, i can also write three different experiences, rather than accidentally implying that This is what being black is, or This is what being jewish is, or This is what being mixed is. and that's also important to me, even if it's just in my head or not even directly addressed. it's still a big consideration of mine anytime i write about any of them

now, finally, onto mary and nathan! i'll put it below a cut because this is already long enough, the under-the-cut is much longer, and i don't want to wear out your thumbs if you don't care

#aftg #tfc #neil josten #nathaniel wesninski #mary hatford #nathan wesninski #txt #my fics #my writing #my posts #black neil josten #jewish neil josten #cw gangs #cw organized crime #cw ww11 #cw wwII #long form post

I like your meta and I got to thinking about all the stuff in these books that requires the suspension of disbelief to roll with and tbh the biggest thing Nora ever asked us to overlook is Riko's entire schtick. Tell me who in real life looks at a short, West Virginia college freshman, even the ones who are good athletes, and says 'oh yeah they are definitely the authority on who should be thought of as the best players in the league, the tattoos are normal, he's normal' Like !??? Hello???

yea i personally have a lot of questions about the moriyamas as they’re presented to us in canon. i think they’re a very confusing detail, and also a not-exceptionally well-considered one on account of the unfortunate racial implications

personal take: the moriyamas should have been russian bratva instead of japanese yakuza. it would change absolutely nothing about the story, but would fix a dozen small details that i’ve been leaping through flaming hoops to justify watsonianly in how i flesh out the extended universe

nora is VERY much a character writer, not a world-builder. her characters are SO nuanced and life-like, but her world-building often feels random, disjointed, and unaddressed

that being said though, i don’t think riko’s schtick is really one of these details

calling riko just a “short, West Virginia college freshman” is very uncharitable to exactly what he is. riko is a celebrity, the ward of a celebrity, and he’s been in the media eye since he was born. it would be accurate to compare him (and kevin) to people like blue ivy carter and north west kardashian, children of a-list, instantly-recognizable celebrities who got added to their guardians’ brand as children. blue ivy is nine-years-old and has already won a grammy

(i don’t want to imply that either the knowles-carter or the kardashian-west family, or any other celebrity i might mention here are abusive like the moriyama family. while there are plenty of concerns about the psychology of child stars, i’m not talking about their personal lives or the way these children are being raised, because that’s none of my business. i’m talking about them from the perspective of their media visibility and the legitimacy that gives them with the public)

journalists LOVE celebrity kids. every argument and wardrobe choice is headline news in a-list houses, and why some celebrities (like famously michael jackson) have to go to such extreme measures to give their kids even a modicum of privacy, because they're hounded by reporters and photographers every time they step outside.

tetsuji, however, took much more of the joe jackson approach and turned his nephew and ward into a public brand and set them loose on the media circuit as soon as he was able

you have to think about exy as a global movement, one with two distinct figureheads at the helm. it came out of nowhere and completely reshaped the world of sports in an extremely short amount of time. think of kayleigh and tetsuji as being like mark zuckerberg or steve jobs: innovators and figureheads

and even if they’re “just” sports celebrities, they’re sports celebrities on a tier with people like babe ruth, michael phelps, tom brady, serena williams, usain bolt, lance armstrong, the rock, muhammed ali, john cena. people whose sports celebrity is SO great their names enter the mainsteam. that’s the MINIMUM level of fame and influence they have

it's no stretch of the imagination for me to think that the Princes of Exy brand was inextricable with the rapid growth and popularity of the sport. kevin and riko were mascots, ambassadors, and symbols, not just for the ravens but for exy itself. the sport viewed as coming of age alongside them

even if it seems ridiculous to us from outside their universe, inside it people have been hearing about the Perfect Court for over ten years. it’s something their sportscasters and news anchors talk about. you’ve heard it on every early-morning and late-night talk show. it’s a tagline on the covers of magazines and up on billboards. every little league kid who picks up an exy racket dreams that they’ll be the next pick and wear that three or four on their jersey

riko and kevin may have been two of the most famous children in the world

and with celebrity comes extensive forgiveness of... “eccentricity.” remember when jared leto started a cult and everyone just,,, let that happen? gwyneth paltrow’s new age wellness pseudoscience brand? tom cruise is literally a scientologist? even if it’s absolutely ridiculous, it’s okay if a celebrity does it

in-universe, riko isn’t just a “good athlete,” he’s a house-hold name with a consistent vision, every tool at his disposal to get it done, a massive platform of people listening to his every word, and the mainstream media spreading it for free

some tattoos at 16? that’s nothing. ESPECIALLY if they’d been drawing them on for years before

once you think about these things in the context of things that are familiar to us, rather than strange and random and contextless the way they (admittedly) come across in canon, riko starts to make a little more sense

also, while i think it could have been pushed more, i think that nora actually did a pretty decent job of conveying this idea of Celebrity as a theme in the books. there are a lot of very consistent references to kevin and riko’s fame and influence. however, because of how much of an unreliable narrator with such a narrow scope of interest neil is, it’s a detail that can slide past you especially if you haven’t read the books in a while and you mostly engage in the fandom. fandoms tend to be character driven, not theme driven, so a lot of the recurring themes and imagery of a work tend to get lost over time

however i try to keep in touch with the canon. the last time i fully read the books was less than a year ago (and i’ve been in the fandom for like,, 5 years?) and i fact check it often for posts, meta, and fic beta-ing. at some point i’d really like to do a series of scene breakdowns and literary analysis of the lesser-acknowledged themes bc ideas like Celebrities In The Public vs Private are interestingly approached and i think we’re missing out a bit by only talking about them from a character-first perspective

i think one thing i would LOVE about getting some kind of visual-media adaptation of aftg (animated series or visual novel preferred) would be all the passive worldbuilding we could get that neil declines to describe to us. things like billboards and magazine covers and t-shirts and commercials for exy and the Princes of Exy in particular. i really think it would push so much more dimension and context into the story for us to really SEE these things

#aftg #tfc #kevin day #riko moriyama #kayleigh day #tetsuji moriyama #meta #my posts #my meta #im talkin #long form post #ask

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L here, i reblog a lot on this page, but i try to keep it relatively organized in the tags, especially for my own posts: jokes, headcanons, metas, discussions, etc. so here's a breakdown of how i use my tags and (hopefully, website-permitting) where to find things

edit/warning (3/17/2020): the links don't seem to be working for tags with more than one word in them. i'll figure that out eventually. till then use the search function for multi-word tags ig

(3/19/2020): tags are working? tags are working sometimes? tags are only not working for me? please leave something in the notes telling me whether or not this post works bc i genuinely have no idea

general tags that every post gets

format tags: #txt, #art, and #pic (used in memes to differentiate from fan art) are most common. there is also #fic and #vid

character tags: i try to tag every character that appears in a post (#andrew minyard, #neil josten, #kevin day, #dan wilds, #matt boyd, #aaron minyard, #seth gordon, #allison reynolds, #nicky hemmick, #renee walker, #wymack). other characters have been tagged but these are the most common, try searching other characters by full name. however, if it's more than say 6 characters in a post, i use the general tag #the foxes, with the most important characters to the post tagged separately. #andreil, being one of my most common tags, often doesn't necessarily have #andrew minyard, and #neil josten, tagged separately. #the upperclassmen, also have their own tag because i have made several posts addressing them in particular

post content tags: #lol, which is for jokes and things i find funny. i will tag things as #meta sometimes, but the application is spotty and random. #scene is for content of scenes from canon

ships: #andreil is far and away my favorite and most-blogged-about ship. there’s also #kateaaron and #danmatt. keep an eye out for #denee even though there’s not much there yet. i choose to ignore ships i don’t like and won’t tag or reblog them. use your discretion to figure out which ones i’m talking about

#not sfw is my,,, not,,, sfw tag. i dont use n s f w bc im afraid of the algorithm after the purge

content warnings: i’m kind of inconsistent using these. i’m best at using them for fanart and for my own posts, but err on the side of caution. the format i use is ‘cw _’. some that i have used: #cw blood, #cw injury, #cw violence, #cw bruises, #cw scars, #cw drug use, #cw sexual assault, #cw sexual assault mention, #cw abuse, #cw abuse mention, #cw self harm, #cw ableism, #cw racism. i also tag #cw fat word usage which was a request. if you need something tagged just send me an ask or a message

how i tag my own posts

almost all of my own posts get tagged with either #my posts or #im talkin and often both. #my posts means it’s aftg content and #im talkin means it’s more informed by my own opinions, perceptions, and experiences

#clown town is my tag for the memes and shitposts i make

#my meta is a newer tag for well,, my metas that i write. not used much yet. same with #character analysis

trying to start tagging things with either #long form post for things like metas and in-depth stuff and #short form post for one-offs and jokes

#fandom, #fandom analysis, and #fandom racism are all recurring tags where i well,, discuss and analyze the fandom

#ask, #anon, and #anonymous are all for asks i respond to

#rb is a reblog, often that i added something onto. recently added #not my post but i added something on

#personal things about me only is for any post i might make that’s strictly about me and not aftg. #gaze upon me is for any pictures or picrews of me

recurring headcanons

Neil: #adhd neil josten, #jewish neil josten

Andrew: #fat andrew minyard, #dyslexic andrew minyard, #autistic andrew minyard

additional: #fat twinyards

appearance

there are several things about the way i write the foxes that differ from fandom at large, especially regarding their ethnicities. i don’t write any of the foxes as white, and that’s a very deliberate choice for me, but the way i write their ethnicities also differs from the general fanon

this is my post about how i write each of the foxes' ethnicities

the tag #picrew has a number of lineups for the foxes bc i love making picrews

this is my artbreeder lineup

This is the opinion piece of The Bad Plus' rendition of Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky.

Your TLDR is: I prefer the orchestra version :(

#she's a blogger #long form post #opinion piece #music blogging #bloggin' in my boggin'#igor stravinsky

The biggest problem with syscourse is that each side is speaking about different things. I honestly believe it would be in everyone's best interest if we all deconstructed how we view CDDs and plurality.

In the most simple explanation I can provide:

Plurality is a non-pathological label people can use to describe feeling like more than one person. CDDs are completex dissociative disorders characterised by the presence of multiple identity states. One is an identity, one is a disorder.* (Also, see here for a post about differences in terms. It may help clear up some things if what I am saying feels very far from your definition.)

To provide a more expansive look at plurality, it is important to understand what I mean when I say 'label' and 'feeling like'. I am going to make an analogy about gender identity. I loathe to compare anything plurality related to anything LGBTQ+ related due to people consistently using poor analogies between the two, but it is the best I have to explain how I view the terms in this context.

Being transgender is just something that I am. The reason I know I am that label is because of how I feel about things and how I interact with the world. I use the label to describe these experiences I have, these feelings I have. These feelings will not be identical to any other transgender person. The reason I use the label will not be identical to any other transgender person. It is trying to describe the vastness of human experiences, and there is a lot of variety in that.

It is similar when it comes to plurality. Plurality is a label to describe the experiences of people. It is solely about what people feel is right or wrong, not necessarily some medically provable phenomenon.

I feel as though this is the biggest way the conflation of CDDs and plurality hurts non-CDD plurals. There is conversation that either they have this provable brain difference, or they are claiming to have a CDD. Plurals are plural because that is what describes their experience, not because those experiences have any measurable differences to the experiences of non-plurals.

Which brings me to CDDs. CDDs are medical disorders *just like every other disorder*. They are not unique or special or inherently different to other disorders. When it comes to speaking about CDDs, alters are just symptoms of a disorder in the same way that my special interests are just symptoms of my autism.

If this feels like a difficult to swallow, please consider if perhaps you have some ableist biases you need to deconstruct. Something resulting from a disorder or a disability is not inherently negative. This is actually what neurodivergency is supposed to be about, correcting the idea that non-harmful symptoms of disorders are bad and wrong and need to be fixed.

CDDs are not plurality. Having a CDD does not make you plural. Plurality is an identity, it is a label you can opt into if you feel as though it matches your experiences. CDDs are disorders that you either do or do not have based on your symptoms. There is no opting in or out of it.

You can treat any and all of your disabilities or disorders as an identity. Even an identity you are proud of. The idea that you cannot is, once again, that ableist idea that something resulting from a disorder makes it bad and wrong. But, at its core, the disorder itself is it an identity. And having a CDD does not inherently make you plural.

We have a CDD. We do not identify as plural. We hate having it applied to us and our experiences. All of our experiences are because of DID. It is inherently pathological and we really dislike having a non-pathological term applied to it. Because that is what plural as a label is, nonpathological. But just because the label is nonpathological does not mean it cannot be used to describe pwCDDs.

*Which brings me to what I wanted to clarify from earlier. Just because I believe it is incredibly beneficial for us to make distinction between the two does not mean that there is no overlap. In the same way everyone else can identify as plural if they feel it matches their experiences, so can pwCDDs.

Just because plurality is a non-pathological label does not mean it cannot be applied to pathological experiences. Even in pwCDDs who feel similar to how we do, that their system is just symptoms of their CDD and unable to be seperated from that, they can still identify as plural.

Plurality is a vast, vast label that includes literally everyone who feels it fits. There is no right or wrong way to be plural. However, the narrative that CDDs and plurality are one group/one group within another is so detrimental to so many people. They are two seperate overlapping groups.

I just think we would all really benefit from creating that disctinction. It would clear up the vast majority of confusion in the community.

#Mod Tim (He/Him)#Syscourse Subsection #Long Form Post

So, about a week ago, my little brother Nicolas went to consult a doctor about a lump on his upper next just under his ear. Turns out, he had a swollen lymph node. The doctor said it was nothing to worry about, as he has had his tonsils and adenoids removed, and any viral infection would consequently affect his lymph nodes first. He started taking antibiotics, but it only irritated the node.

Now, it is this huge Frankenstein lump on his neck. He was admitted to the Medical Center Wednesday night, and they put him on an IV, took some blood for tests, and gave him stronger antibiotics. Nothing is working, and his CAT scan results indicate that there may be a growth on the node or it may be abscessed. He has to have surgery today and all I can think is I haven't made it to the hospital to see him until today. Granted, I don't have a car, let alone a license, but I feel like I should have done more - maybe asked someone to take me. I don't know.

Well, I'm off now to see him. I hope it all goes well.

#long form post