#Bees are on some next level shit especially. I love bees please read about bee sexes I can't explain it good enough myself

[solradguy]

You tied weights to my legs and threw me into Furry Penis Lake and now I’ve seen all the wild fish (genitalia) that live on the bottom

WELCOME TO THE WILD WORLD OF HEMIPENES, ANON

[stellarboystyles]

From the Dining Table

hello friends <3 this is my second fic for the HS1 Masterlist that @bfharry​ , @stylesloveclub​ and I have teamed up to write for you, hope you enjoy x

2.9k angst angst angst

For the first time in a long time, Harry was alone. It was a strong contrast to his old schedule, his days were always jam packed with press interviews, meetings, radio interviews, red carpets, appearances, talk show interviews, meet and greets, concerts...He was definitely a busy bee. 

He knows he should be happy. It should be unquestionably irie to simply relax and have some time to himself, but Harry is miserable. Has been ever since her. It’s been too long since he’s seen her eyes, those pretty eyes that he could get lost in for hours gazing back at him, and her smile. God, her smile could cheer him up in his darkest days. He can’t stop thinking about her cheeks and how he used to squish them while he cooed at how adorable she was because they’re the cutest cheeks he’s ever seen and whenever she would blush around him he’d brush his thumb across her cheeks and give her butterfly kisses across her soft skin. 

He loves her sense of humor, and how she could always make him laugh. Even if he thought he was having the worst day of his life, he saw her and nothing else mattered. Thinking about her personality made his heart thump in his chest. She was so sweet and kind, and so selfless. She was always doing things for other people and she was strong, and so supportive of everything. His lifestyle, his busy schedule, his privacy, everything. 

He loves her style, he definitely finds himself wearing things that he thinks she would like. She’s the one who inspired him to jump out of his comfort zone of tight jeans and chelsea boots and explore different colors, patterns, materials, and he’s forever grateful that she showed him that he could be himself, he swears she’s the real reason he truly blossomed into his own style. Not just around her, but that he could show the world who he really was as well. And she cares so much about animals, he loves watching her interact with them, one of his favorite memories being the time that she rescued a family of bunnies from a fox in Harry’s back garden and it was quite literally the sweetest thing his eyes had ever seen. He misses her tender heart and how gentle natured she is. 

He misses how he feels fireworks every time she touches him. He misses how her lips taste, how it feels when they move against his. He misses her soft skin, and how she smells like citron and rose. He misses waking up every morning and seeing her all sleepy as he kisses her all over. He misses how she used to touch him and he feels in his bones that no one could ever make him feel the way that she did. 

He misses all of that, all of her. Every single inch of her skin, every little bit of what makes her who she is. But he doesn’t get any of her. Not anymore. Instead, he’s alone in this random hotel room and awake at four in the morning because he can’t think about sleep. If he does, all he’d dream about is her. Not that being awake is any better because she is the only thing swirling around in his brain. Flashbacks are hell, especially when he can’t stop thinking about her being on top of him right now, looking completely fucked out of her mind as she rides his cock. He’d be pressing the back of his head into the pillows and she’d touch his chest and smooth her hands down to his lower belly and she’d be doing all the things that she knows drives him fucking wild.

He can’t help himself as he starts to lightly tease himself through the white sheet covering the lower half of his body and there’s a hitch in his breath at the feeling of his fingertips stroking his cock under the thin material. His eyes flutter closed and he’s got nothing on underneath and it just makes him think of her more because he thinks of how much she loved barebacking, and Harry really fucking loved it. The feeling was indescribable, feeling her so deeply on such an intimate level was something out of this world. With every thought of her his reflexes added more pressure, his body temperature rising with every moment passing by until he’d had enough and nearly rips the sheet away from his lower torso and he’s fisting himself now, chasing his release and all he can think about now is how much better she is at the act in question, so much so that it blew Harry’s mind. He didn’t last long, but at this point he didn’t give two fucks if he had an orgasm or not, he just needed to feel something. He was left in a daze as he pushed himself off the bed and towards the bathroom.

˙· .° ｡  ˚ ｡  ° . · ˚ ˙ · . ° ｡ ˚ ｡  ° . · ˙ · .° ｡ ˚ ｡ °.  · ˙ ‧̍̊

Long, hot showers were created for the sole purpose of contemplating your life, right? Or are they just for trying to cry away a broken heart. He doesn’t know the answer, nor does he know how long he stood there, before tilting his head back and letting the water splash onto his wet locks. Hot water from the shower head hitting his back. After around twenty minutes his skin was numb to the feeling. 

In the beginning he’d considered it all, but the reality? She left him, without any sort of reason. Harry’s spent weeks and weeks wracking his brain for something, anything he could’ve done so that he can apologize, make it right. Truly, he hadn’t felt that he’d done anything to upset her. So yes, he had every right to be angry. Maybe it was his fault. He’d spent endless sleepless nights staring at the ceiling of a hotel room, mostly because he couldn't bear to be home because everything reminded him of her, and his mind just couldn’t go there. His nights were spent tossing and turning, doing absolutely nothing until his friends finally convinced him to go out with them. 

He didn’t want to admit that it was better than wallowing in self pity all night, but it was. For the next few weeks, all Harry had gotten himself into a cycle. Go out, get drunk, and at the end of the night he’d always be unsatisfied. He kept telling himself he was never going out for the sole purpose to bring a girl that looked like her back to his hotel room, but that’s just what he was telling himself. Deep inside, he was struggling to feel anything. He was angry, sad, and broken.

She didn’t leave her bed for three days. Dejection mercilessly beat up her heart until it felt like there was nothing left. The heartbreak gnawed away at her. She was barely eating, couldn’t sleep and she had no one to blame but herself. She stayed huddled under the covers as she wallowed in self sorrow, knowing all too well that this was all her fault. 

It was a travesty. It should have never happened, especially not like this.

The connection they shared was unbreakable. It was evident that nothing could ever raze the bond that they created together. They made the best team, and they were inseparable. Everything was perfect. Harry was charming, loving and softhearted. 

Their love was like the ocean. It was tranquil and soothing, yet strong and deep. It was so incredibly breathtaking, but also had the intense potential to destroy. To put it simply, she was damaged. Way before she met Harry, and that was it. She thought she had it under control, she thought that they could make it. They did, for a while, but her demons caught up with her eventually. Everything heightened after she was exposed to all of it. The rumors, the paparazzi, the backlash. It triggered all the worst parts of her, the things that she had kept under control for so long. He tried to help her, tried to fix them. They both tried, but it just wasn’t working. 

Now, months later, she was here at the airport. She knew she had to go to him and try to make things right. Clutching her ticket in her hand, she slouched into her chair, staring at all the glowing red words that read “cancelled” across the board. How unlucky was she that she would be stuck at the airport, alone.

“Hi, d’you have any flights t’London for tonight?”

She could hear her heart thumping in her ears when she heard the voice at the desk a few feet away from behind her. It felt like every cell in her body was on fire, she hadn’t mentally prepared herself for what could happen yet! She was supposed to have a six hour flight to coach herself before this.

“A’right, thank you.”

Oh my god, is he gonna say something? Of course he won't, he hates me.

It felt like she didn’t know him anymore, this boy, this charming, sweet boy that she fell in love with. She was afraid of how angry he is, how bitter that she left. 

“Y/N?”

His voice was soft and hesitant, almost shaky.

Her eyes squeeze shut for a moment before looking up at him. He looked dumbfounded, at a loss for words. They couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw each other. He watched the color drain from her face, and he could feel his heart beating out of his chest. There they were, face to face in JFK Airport. Seeing each other for the first time since their downfall. 

The tension couldn’t get any thicker. Her eyes were locked onto his face, watching him give a pained expression before quickly brushing past her. 

“H, wait—”

“You don’t get t’call me tha’ anymore.” 

His voice was cold, biting back at her words over his shoulder. He didn’t stop sauntering across the airport and she struggled to keep up. 

“Please...I know I don’t deserve it, but can we talk?” She implores before pressing her lips together. “Please.”

His teeth clench before stopping in his tracks, turning around to face her. 

“Took y’long enough.” 

There was no hint of humor in his voice, no Styles charm, no cheeky smile, no dimples, nothing. 

“You look good.”

He scoffs, almost rolling his eyes because he know’s that she’s lying. He knows she’s being kind. 

“Looks can be deceiving.”

Shit.

“Right.” she nods, eyes falling down to his shoes. 

“How are you?”

“Miserable.” she answers honestly. 

“S’tha’ supposed t’be my fault?”

She felt her waterline start to sting, but he had every right to be bitter. 

“No,”

“Fuck, shouldn’t have said tha’, m’sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.” she shakes her head dismissively, brushing off his apology. “I deserved that.”

He lets out an exasperated sigh. “Are we really doin’ this right now?”

She gave him a look of desperation, silently begging him to stay. Begging him to listen, even if she didn’t deserve that from him, she knew she didn’t. Harry contemplated whether he should give her any of his time, miss his flight to listen to whatever sorry excuse for an apology she had. But, his heart was still soft for her. 

“Where were y’goin?” 

“I...I was coming to see you. I thought you’d be in London.”

She was going to London? 

“Y’were goin’ t’London?” he quirks, eyebrows furrowing slightly.

She nods. Yeah, to see you.

Harry has the biggest, yet quickest inner battle of his life. He wasn’t sure if letting you back into his house after what happened was the worst decision he’ll ever make or the best one, but he sure as hell  felt that it was the right one. 

“We can’t talk here.” he muttered, fumbling with his phone once it was pulled out of his pocket. “We can go back to mine.”

Her focus falters, eyes looking at anything but him. she hadn’t been there since…since she fucked up, to put it simply. Her nerves were on the verge of snapping into an anxiety attack.

The car ride to Harry’s house was...well, she couldn’t think of anything more awkward. Except the first moment they had stepped inside his house. Neither of them bothered to get their things out of the back of his car, the luggage quickly forgotten. 

It was evident that his energy was extremely low. The discoloration under his eyes was evident and it made her want to cry. She watches in agony as he trudged over to the fireplace mantle, fingertips padding the glass of the frame. Inside was a photo taken when he had taken you on a trip to Norway last October. The two of you were dressed in some cozy pajamas, cuddling on the sofa as Harry took the picture with his camera. 

“They weren’t rumors, if you were wondering.” 

Her heart aches at his words. She remembered the headlines that ripped at her heart. Tears started to well up in her eyes, intently listening to the broken boy in front of her. 

“I was alone, would try and drink ‘til they looked like you.” 

Look at me. I’m right here, look at me.

“Said your name.” he murmurs, eyes focused down to where he’s fumbling with his hands. “Didn’t mean too, slipped out.”

Don’t cry, please don’t cry.

“Please look at me.” she cries, desperately trying to reach him, her Harry. “Look at me.”

“Can’t.” he’s shaking his head, locks flopping in front of his face. “I...I-I can’t-” 

“Why not.” only a mere second passes by and it’s already too deafening for her to bear. “Tell me.”

“Because, you-” he gulps down a cry but tears are still filling his waterline. “You.”

It feels like time is frozen, like the only thing happening in the entire universe is this conversation. 

“What?”

“You.” he looks up and locks his eyes with hers. “It’s you, s’always gonna be you. There’s never gonna be anyone else.” 

She takes a step towards him, but he backs away and she swears he flinches and it breaks her heart.

“No, no, no. Y’don’t get t’do tha’. Don’ touch me.”

His words stung like venom inking through her veins.

“H-”

“No!” his eyes turn cold. “If you touch me, I...I won’t make it, I swear. Just- please.”

Just let me love you.

“I…” It’s too much for her to look at him, but she has to say it. He’s quiet, waiting for her to finish. 

“I’m sorry.” she cries out, squeezing her eyes closed. “I’m so sorry, I fucked up.”

“Look at me.” 

He repeats her previous words. Maybe it’s out of spite, but could she blame him? Not in the slightest. 

“You left me!” he snaps. “Why? What…” his chest is rising and falling faster than he can keep up with. “I’ve barely slept since you left, tryin’ t’think of what I did that was so awful.”

Guilt pangs through her as she watches him run his fingers through his hair in frustration, eyes averting to the floor.

“All I’ve ever done was treat y’like a princess,” he murmurs, kicking at the rug beneath his feet. “Sure, we were apart a lot, but I was starting fresh. We finally had time to do anythin’ we wanted. I thought you, of all people, would’ve wanted that.”

“I did, I-I still do.” 

“You’ve got a funny way of showin’ it.” 

She stayed silent, so he chose to pipe up again.

“Why.”

If she doesn’t say it now, she’ll never say it. This is her once chance to fix things.

“You were talking about things...moving fast, too fast,” she speaks barely above a whisper, the chipped blue polish on her nails suddenly becoming quite interesting. “And with everything that people were saying,”

“Know y’had a hard time, I know tha’. But I thought we worked through it. Then I wake up and you’re gone.”

“I got scared.” he sits down next to her as she’s talking. 

“Y’could’ve bloody told me tha’.” relief washes over him, but the temporary emotion is making him forget that the damage had already been done. “Would’ve understood.”

“I know.” she cried. “I panicked, and once I’d left, I felt like I couldn’t come back. I was so scared.”

“Y’can always come back t’me.” his voice is soft and he resists the urge to brush his thumb across her cheek. “I fuckin’ love you. Y’know that. Fuck’s sake, I was calling you, begging you for something.” he pried, not caring to wipe his eyes, now irritated from crying. “Why? Why didn’t you just talk to me?” 

Tears spilled onto your cheeks as you tried to apologize. “I wanted to. I don’t know why I didn’t, I’m so sorry.” 

“I want you to tell me everything. Tell me what scares you so we can work through those things together. Don’t just...don’t just leave.”

“It never should’ve happened that way.” she admits. “But I think maybe we just found each other at the wrong time.” she offers, and his eyes flicker to her face when he feels her fingertips graze his own. “Maybe someday, the time’ll be right for us.”

He loves her. Regardless of what she’s put him through, he loves her. 

“Tha’ time could be right now.” he speaks softly, moving his hand to hold hers. “For us.”

She looks up into his eyes, filled with hope and she moves her hands ever so slightly into his hold and he’s holding both of them now, and they're looking into each other’s eyes. 

“You think so?”

He nods, squeezing his grip gently. “Know so.” he brings her hands up to his lips, pressing a kiss to them. “We can make it.”

[letspurpletogether]

Out of the Void || BTS

↳ Summary: The one where the boys stumble upon that one fic and they all end up reading. (This is a crack fic inspired by @btssavedmylifeblr’s Void, because my own words are not enough to describe how an amazing story Void it is, and what a outstanding writer Bee is).

⇢ Warnings: BEWARE OF SPOILERS!! This things should be full of them so I suggest you to read all of Void before reading this just in case. Also, for those entitled rude anons: stop demanding updates from the fan fiction writers like they owe you shit, cause they don’t! And stop coming at them to complain about their publishing schedule. This is done for fun and for free, if you can’t be patient and respect their creative process then fuck off!

A/N: Also, I had so much fun writing this. I wanted to keep adding and adding stuff. However, since english is not my mother language i had some trouble describing the scenes the way I pictured them in my head. Therefore, I decided to leave it like this for now. 

(TT-TT) Im sorry, Bee! I did try my best, I know it doesn’t do Void justice. But I still wanted to write it for you because Void is such an amazing story! 

That’s it! Please,enjoy!

→ 01

[...]

He shouldn’t be doing this.

Hoseok checked over his shoulder again before turning back to the phone in his hands. It wasn’t like if someone were to come into his studio right now and catch him watching porn.

Hell, this was so much worse.

Especially considering how he was supposed to be working on the rap arrangement for the new song, and not checking out a piece of fan-fiction... If Namjoon were to catch him he was going to give him hell for days.

He had strictly advised the six of them against it several times, but to be honest Hoseok was to eager to find out what happened next to actually acknowledge the suggestion. Besides, he was he eldest of the two and it wasn’t like he had to listen to his band member. Joon was only the leader when the cameras were out. Inside their dorms he couldn’t even remember to wash the dishes when he was supposed to or take the clothes out of the dryer so they wouldn’t end up a crumble mess the next morning.

Also, it was all Jimin’s fault.

His dongsaeng had sent him the link without any explanation last week. It was a silly thing they did to each other trying to make the other cringe with whatever weird-ass story they could find, mostly on Twitter. It was all for the laughs but they had stopped doing it when Hoseok had accidentally send Seokjin a rather explicit piece that involved Jimin and Yoongi in a threesome with some kind of catgirl trying to get her pregnant. It was meant for the young boy, of course and that slip of hand had resulted in a hysteric Seokjin exposing them right in front of the others.

Hoseok has been so embarrassed after that he couldn’t even look at Yoongi in the face for a whole ass week. Even though his hyung had said it was fine. It didn’t help that Taehyung and Jungkook wouldn’t let the topic die either. Those rascals, he made sure to make them wore their asses off in the following dance practices.

But anyways, he and Jimin had agreed to stop.

So it was a surprise to receive a new link from him after a couple months. He’d ignored it at first, being too busy with practice and rehearsals to bother with checking it up. But yesterday while waiting for his appointment with the cupping therapist, he’d absentmindedly opened it and was actually surprised with what he’d found. Written in English, it was a space story... and they were astronauts!

At that moment he been too oblivious to care and read the warnings or summary on top of the post. For a moment of innocent wonder he actually got caught up in the first scene. He was a scientist in space, it couldn’t get any cooler than that! But of course, he had soon realized what type of story it was.

The problem was that it didn’t start right off with the porn part like most stories he’s found while browsing the darkest depths of the ARMY’s fandom. He’d read some weird shit himself, demons, half-animal people, male pregnancyㅡHell! even tentacles once. The kind of things his fans could come up with was exhilarating, and it blew his mind that the weirdest and kinkiest were for some reason the best well-written of allㅡ.

But this story was different.

It had a storyline, an actual estructure, inciting incident, clear stakes, the whole pack. Years listening to his father reviewing novels and short-stories had resulted in him developing an appetite for well-written stories. And even though the main character was that Y/N type their fans where so keen about, she wasn’t plain at all. She struggled, and that was nice to read. Besides, all that astronaut stuff sounded so legit that he almost consider the possibility of the author being an astronaut herself. He’d always been a fan of fantasy and sci-fi since he was child and his father brought him the entire collection of Jules Verne’s novels for his eleventh birthday. Stories about voyages to far and unknown places were his guilty pleasure, so of course he got hooked up with this piece faster than he’d ever with any other he’d read so far.

But he couldn’t finished the chapter that time because the masseur was already calling his name. The scrolling bar told him he wasn’t even half way through it, so he’d copied the link for later and went to the therapist office. So now there he was resuming his reading with renewed eagerness.

The main character had just arrived at a green house inside the ship. And there was Yoongi.

Hoseok huffed and raised an eyebrow when he realized this scene focused all on his elder. Wasn’t he supposed to be the main character here? Not that he complained, though. Yoongi’s fingers where indeed nice after all and wouldn’t blame the girl for obsess over them. But in most stories he’d read there was always a lead, and he assumed by the first scene it was going to be himself. Maybe this was a threesome?

He quickly scrolled back up to the story information, searching for the pairing section where he knew his questions would be answered. /OT7 x reader/

He flinched.

“All of us? What...?”. Did that mean everyone was a love interest? Or that the main character was supposed to screw all of them at once? How was that supposed to work if there was just one woman in the whole crew?

Oh wait...

The realization hit him. Of course, that was the whole plot. Seven guys and one girl, and they had to fight for her love? It was something like that for sure, wasn’t it? She would pick one of them and then they’d have sex. He kept reading—

«Your deepest darkest fantasies- the ones you always turned to on your most stressed and anxious nights - were the ones involving the entire crew. The idea of them finding out what a slut you were for them and passing you between them filled you with an embarrassing level of arousal. You would imagine them taking turns filling you until all your thoughts of loneliness and emptiness had been fucked out of you. And you would sleep like a baby.»

—or not...

He scratched his chin, a little confused now. Was this actually going to be gangbang? Or more importantly, was he actually going to read this till the end? He did like threesomes, not that he’d been in one... Yet. Their schedules hardly ever allowed them to properly date someone, and hooking up with a random stranger was way too risky with the level of fame they’d reached at this point. But the idea of threesomes was very appealing, although he’d never actually consider having a gangbang with all his members. However... he wasn’t going to cross off reading about one just yet.

Just as he was about to resume his reading, the door flew open and Jimin‘s face appeared. “Hyung!”

Hoseok jumped in his seat, his phone fell on his lap.

“Shit...!”, he took a deep breath and glared at his band member. “You almost gave me a heart attack, Jimin!”

A sly grin appeared on the youngest face.

“Why? What were you doing?”

Hoseok cleared his throat. Had he been discovered?

“Nothing”, he lied so poorly he wanted to smack himself on the face.

“You were totally reading it, weren’t you?”, Jimin chuckled. “Did you get to the video part already?”

“No, what video part?”

Jimin raised both palms.

“Sorry, not going to give you any spoilers”

Hoseok rolled his eyes. “Anyway... Why did you send it?” He asked, retrieving his phone and unlocking the screen again. “I thought we agreed on not doing that anymore”

“Yeah, but Taehyung send it to me”

“What?” Hoseok frowned, and turned around in his chair to face the boy. That was a surprise. “Why would he...?” He shook his head, sometimes Taehyung needn’t a reason to do the most random things.

Jimin simply shrugged.

“He also sent it to Jungkook and Namjoon-hyung”, Jimin ran his hand through his hair and giggled. “I think everyone is reading it now”

“Wait- What?!” Hoseok chuckled and raised an eyebrow. “Are you for real?”

“Haven’t you checked the group chat?”

“No, I was...” Hoseok pressed his tongue against his cheek. “-reading”.

“Huh”Jimin wiggled his eyebrows. “Is cool isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s ... interesting”, he conceded. Jimin let himself in and plopped down on the spare chair he kept in his studio in case he needed to work with the senior producers.

“Who do you think she’ll choose?”

“For what?”

“Come on, hyung.” Jimin snickered, “You know what I mean”

“Are you sure she is supposed to choose one of us?”

“What-? Obviously...”, Jimin shifted on the sofa, his face stared confused at Hoseok for a moment. But then he gasped, suddenly realizing what he mean. “Do you mean-? All of us?!”

“Why not?” Hoseok shrugged. “It’s just a story, anyways. You know some of our fans like kinky stuff and there’s nothing wrong with that”

“I mean! I know that! Its not-”. Jimin’s face turned a bright shade of red. “W-we shouldn’t be reading about that. What if they get... ideas!” He brought a hand to his forehead and looked back at him with a worried expression. Hoseok spluttered in a laugh, but it soon dwindled when he realized Jimin was actually serious about his concern.

“Jimin...”

“Goddamnit...!” Hoseok observed as his younger member stood up and facepalmed himself “I’m an idiot! I bet that was Taehyung’s plan all along”

“Taehyung’s plan was to have us... read fan-fiction?”

“About a gangbang!”

Hoseok rolled his eyes.

“It’s just fan fiction, Jimin. Not a proposition”, he said, but Jimin wasn’t paying attention to him anymore.

“The others can’t read that. I have to stop them”, and he was about to storm out the door, but Hoseok had to stop him.

“Hey, hey!”, he grabbed him by the elbow. “Now you’re just exaggerating”

“No, I’m not”, Hoseok couldn’t comprehend why Jimin was so scandalized. “We can’t have a gangbang, hyung!”

“No, no, no!”, he “First of all, no one is having a gangbang. Second of all, why does it bother you so much?”

“It doesn’t!”

“Really?”

“I just don’t want to be... I don’t want to share a partner with the six of you”

“Why, you’re worried she might like it too much and dump you?” Hoseok teased. However, upon seeing Jimin getting all self-conscious, the smile was erased from his face.

“Jimin, come on. You don’t really think that would happen”

“I don’t know, you are all good looking and mature, and more talented that-“

“Stop it. You are not less than us, stop beating yourself so much specially over a fictional situation. Do you forget who has the third largest fan base among us?”

“It because ARMY likes when I act all cute and pretty, and want to baby me like a child. I’m the cutie, the tiny one...”, his voiced turned into an almost whisper at the end. “I’m never the big... manly man...”

“Jimin...”

“What?”

“This isn’t about the story, is it?”

“No... yes- well, not this one...”, he paused, looking at his feet, bashfully. “It’s just the other stories...”

“What other stories?”, Hoseok asked, but Jimin just shrugged. “I don’t get it...”

“Ugh- hyung it’s nothing really”, he was quick to reply, standing up again. “You are right, I’m so over-reacting... it’s just a story”

“Okay...”, Hoseok leaned back in his chair and looked again at Jimin who was standing next to the door. Hands behind his back, like a child waiting to be scolded. “You sure that’s all?”

“Yep”, that extra ‘p’ sound at the end was enough evidence that he was lying. But he was also aware of Jimin’s uneasiness so it was probably better to let him off the hook for now.

“Well, then...”, Hoseok rubbed his neck. “I really should get back to work then”

Jimin gave him a short smile and left without saying another word. Hoseok turned around in his chair to face his computer and actually get some work before the day was over.

But maybe...ㅡHe glanced at his phone next to the mouseㅡ, just maybe... one more chapter wouldn’t hurt either.

[...]

It was past three am when he arrived back at the dorm. He usually wasn’t the one to stay overnight at the studio like Joonie and Yoongi-hyung. But time flew from his grasp like an oiled rope after he finished the first chapter and he had to stay late to finish his assignments. He didn’t want Pdogg-hyung to yell at him in their next briefing. However, the pull of the story was too strong for him to resist.

He had gone to sleep right away, and with the first light the next day he was already reaching for his cellphone and logging into the Tumblr account he had created just for this. He needed to know what happened next, story-Jimin had to be out of his mind to give the main character a video of him masturbating. It was a risky move, he wouldn’t think Jimin was capable of it in real life... Maybe Seokjin-hyung was shameless enough to pull that one out, and Taehyung...

“Yeah, probably Taehyung...”, he mused to himself as he propped himself down on his elbows.

“Probably Taehyung what?”, Jimin’s sleepy voice asked from his side of the room.

“Oh! Jiminie, did I wake you?”, Jimin shook his head and asked again what he meant by ‘probably Taehyung’. Hoseok sat on his bed and stretched his arms. “Nothing, it’s just this story...”

“Why do you keep reading it, hyung?”, Jimin groaned and covered his face with both palms in exhaustion. Hoseok simply chuckled, Jimin’s concerns where silly. Plus, he wasn’t going to deny himself the pleasure of a good story just because his roommate thought his best friend was trying to get them to have an orgy.

“We are not having a gangbang, just relax”

Jimin huffed but didn’t argue further.

A sudden nasal shriek shattered the morning’s quietness and reached their ears through the door. Hoseok almost jumped off his bed to Jimin’s, what on earth was that? It sounded like some kind of hysteric bird .

“First you send me that porn thing and then you wanna talk about gangbangs?! Gangbangs!!”

Okay, that hysteric bird sounded like Seokjin now. And by the volume of it, it was coming from the kitchen.

“It’s not like that, hyung! You don’t even listen!” And that was definitely Joon’s.

Hoseok exchanged confused glances with Jimin that soon turned into curious ones. As if on cue, both of them got up their beds and ran into the kitchen to check on their band members.

Namjoon was leaning on the kitchen counter, a cup of coffee in one hand, the other scratching his forehead. Meanwhile Seokjin was beating some eggs in a plastic bowl, ranting about how much porn was acceptable in a household.

“It’s not porn! It’s basically literature!” Namjoon sounded as much fed up as he looked embarrassed. Seokjin let out a sarcastic chuckle.

“It’s porn! And you are a pervert!”

Namjoon rolled his eyes.

“If you could just read it-!”

“I have enough with the viruses that keep popping on the computer because of you shady search historial!” It was hilarious just listening to them arguing back and forth like and old married couple. But Hoseok was more curious about whether they were talking about what he though they were.

“Is this about the space story?”, he chimed in, resting his elbows on the marble island across Seokjin’s cooking station. Jimin climbed on a stool next to him.

“You too, now?”, Seokjin huffed, giving him and Jimin disgusted look. “Not that I’m surprised, considering your fascination with breeding cats”

“It was a cat-girl! And that was a mistake!” Hoseok’s ears suddenly burned. “But whatever...”

“Wait- So did you read it, or not?”, this time Namjoon was the one to speak.

“I am reading it, I’m on chapter two”, he replied and Jimin nodded along.

“Did you get to the video part right?”, Joon asked and before Hoseok had a chance to speak, Seokjin’s loud huff cut him off.

“Can I cook in peace without having to hear about how much you want a gangbang, pleaaaaase?”

“Com’on, hyung! I never said I wanted a gangbang!” Namjoon shot him a glare before turning back to Hoseok. His hands came to fondle with the fruit bowl in front of him.  “What I was trying to explain to this hyung is that I do think it’s an interesting guessing exercise for figuring out the extends of human behaviour in such adverse conditions”

“But you said you wanted to do it!”

“No! I said to explore it as in talk about it! WITH WORDS!”, Namjoon glared at their hyung, as a faint blush covered his cheeks. It was clear that “If you could’ve just listened for a moment instead of acting like a scandalized prude!”

“Yeah, hyung. It’s just a story, you are over reacting”, said Jimin, taking Hoseok by surprise considering all he had to say about it last night.

“Well, forgive me for not wanting a gangbang!”

“No one’s having a gangbang, for God’s sake!”

“I wouldn’t mind”, a fifth voice joined the conversation out of the blue and all the heads turned in the direction of the hallway.

Yoongi-hyung was leaning against the wall, arms crossed and messy bed hair. A slight frown hardening his features. He’d most likely woken up because all of the noise.

Seokjin let out a sarcastic chuckle.

“You too, Yoongi?”

“How long have you been standing there?”, Jimin asked. Yoongi shrugged off a yawn and walked over to grab an apple from the bowl Namjoon was holding. 

“It’s hard to keep sleeping with this hyung nagging so loud this early in the morning”, he pointed to his eldest and bit on the fruit.

“You know what?!”, Seokjin scoffed, and put aside all his cooking implements. “Y’all can make your own breakfast! Seriously...”

And walked away.

“So noisy...”, Yoongi mumbled as he munched on his apple.

“You read it too, hyung?”, Namjoon asked. Yoongi turned to him, leaning on his elbows. Hoseok’s eyes betrayed him as they followed Yoongi’s movements and the way he arched his back, lifting his ass in the air so subtly.

“Since Tae shared it in the group chat I figured I should give it a try”, he shrugged seemingly desinterestedm, but Hoseok knew him better than that. Yoongi liked to pretende he didn’t care about stuff other that making music, but it was clear to him by the way he was behaving, that the older rapper had enjoyed the story a little bit too much. “It was good”.

“You’re only saying that because you are not the main character”, said Jimin.

“At least I’m not the character that gave the girl a video of me jerking off”

“First of all, she asked! and second, you messed up big time keeping that memory card, hyung!”

Yoongi sneered at the younger boy. 

“I got her off, you didn’t”

“Wait, what are you-?”

Jimin’s face turned a bright red, his nosetrils flared. Namjoon just chocked a laugh, almost knocking off the fruit bowl. For a moment, Hoseok only stared in confussion at them. He couldn’t recall something like that happening in the story yet and he realized they were probably far ahead of him. 

“Hey! Don’t give me any spoilers! I haven’t reached that part yet”.

But Yoongi and Jimin just ignored him, continuing their teasing banter.

“I don’t think she’ll forgive you. EVER!”

“She was thinking of me while fucking you”

“At least I got to- to... be with her!”

“You can’t even say fuck without blushing. Space-Jimin is lightyears ahead of you”, a smug grin appeared in Yoongi’s face, clearly pleased with his joke and Jimin’s fuming face.

“That’s a bit rich coming from you, hyung”, Namjoon said with a smirk. “I mean, last time I checked you couldn’t even look at Halsey in her training clothes without turning red as a beetroot”

“That’s-!”, Yoongi coughed, a bite of the apple going the wrong way. Suddenly matching Jimin with his red cheeks. “That’s different!”

“Neither one of you would ever dare to act like the way the author portraits you. Just admit it”, Namjoon snickered. “You don’t have what it takes”.

“Oh, and you do?”

“I’m just saying if the seven of us where trapped in a spaceship and there’s just one woman for miles and miles...”, He crossed his arms, chin raised proudly. “I’m guessing you’d be too shy to get her attention”.

“It’s not a competition, anyway. It’s a story and it has already been written”, argued Yoongi. “And I was her first choice”.

“Technically it was Hobi”, Jimin pointed out. “She was so ready to throw herself over him in that lab scene”.

“Well Hobi doesn’t count here because he did nothing”

“Excuse me?”, Hoseok scoffed. “Clearly I’m the best character, unlike others I’m actually being professional”.

“Yeah, right. Professional until Yoongi-hyung tells you he screwed the main character”, Taehyung popped up from behind him making Hoseok shriek in surprise, followed closely by a sleepy-faced Jungkook.

“You little-! You almost killed me!”, Taehyung only laughed, joining the his chuckling hyungs.

“And he didn’t screw anything- anyone!”, said Jimin.

“Well, his fingers did”.

“Stop talking!”, Hoseok shoved Taehyung aside and shook his head. “You’ve already spoiled the story for me enough as it is! At least let me finish the chapters before we talk about this”.

“Yeah, maybe we shouldn’t talk about it before breakfast”, Namjoon scratched his chin. “Gguk, go tell Jin-hyung he can come back now”.

“Why, was he here?” asked Jungkook. 

“He left because he didn’t what to have a gangbang”, Yoongi answered, almost offended, like he was telling Jungkook his hyung had turned down some fishing trip.

Jungkook’s eyes where suddendly wide open.

“What-?!”

“It’s the story, nevermind!”, Jimin waved a hand in the air in dismissal.

“Wait, so we can’t have a gangbang?”

“Are you serious right now, hyung?”, Jimin gave Yoongi the side eye. His hyung response was simply shrugging.

“I like to keep my options open”.

“Yeah, maybe one thing you shouldn’t keep open is your mouth”. 

The group erupted in laughter at Jimin’s witty comeback. Yoongi raised the hand that held half an apple and pretended to throw it at Jimin’s head, only to join the laughter when the dancer fell from his chair by his motion.

Hoseok chuckled and shook his head. 

What a way to start the day.

. . . .

[hippomanblog]

Three Houses Characters, Ranked On Their Likelihood To Dab: Part III: Golden Deer and Church

Everyone, I have done it.  They tried to hunt me down, planted explosives in my dab lab and bees in my car, but I escaped the bombs and befriended the bees and now I’m here, here to present you with the final installment in my magnum opus, a comprehensive ranking of how likely each playable character in FE3H is to perform The Dab. Perhaps you thought I would stop at the Leicester Alliance and its students, surely finishing on the upbeat note of lighthearted Claude and pals, but much like von Riegan himself, von Hippoman has a scheme.  Like a [SPOILER REDACTED] fired from [SPOILER REDACTED], I’m gonna blow your minds with all the Church of Seiros aligned characters too.  Because you deserve to know.  Let’s save Fodlan together.

Minor Spoilers For Post-Timeskip Will Follow!

The list, as always, is Canon.  Thank you.

Claude: 14/10: The Master Tactician, the Golden Deer, the Schemer, the Dabmaster.  There are many challengers to the throne, but Claude von Riegan sits comfortably upon it, arm bent, face in elbow, unleashing the one and only God-Shattering Dab.

(gravityemblem314 suggested a ranking of 69/10 for Claude, but please, this is science,not NICE science.  @camelpimp​ mentioned that Claude likely instituted a mandatory pre-battle dab for the Golden Deer, that’s also canon.)

Alois: 12/10: The kids...they love to dab.  Alois wants to be hip and cool with the kids, and if his jokes aren’t enough to do it, surely his sweet dabs will do it!  Especially if he mixes them together.  He can frequently be seen in the dining hall, asking for some extra sauce on his meals.  When the students ask how much, he replies “Oh, just a...DAB” and he JUST FUCKIN’ LETS LOOSE.

Hilda: 10/10: Claude’s faithful (if not dependable) sidekick and friend shares in his affinity for the dab, but not quite to the same degree.  Claude’s sick dabs require a level of effort frankly beyond the Goneril scion, so she’s more into casual usage.  That said, it’s A LOT of usage. Raphael: 9/10: The big man of the Golden Deer loves to dab.  He’s absolutely jacked, so the sheer power contained in those moves could shatter stone, and once did, resulting in a renovation of Raph’s dorm room and a migraine for Seteth.  Despite his enthusiasm, he’s very, very bad at them, but nobody wants to point it out.  He’s just so happy.

Flayn: 8/10: Flayn is absolutely in for this.  She is totally, 100%, definitely a Young Human after all and this is what Young Humans do, they dab. Flayn does it all the time, often in a big circle with Annette, Caspar, and Claude.  Seteth is yearning for the sweet embrace of death.

Catherine: 7/10: She’s usually pretty jazzed about something, and all that excess energy has to go somewhere.  One time she impaled a man with Thunderbrand mid-dab but she doesn’t like to talk about it.

Manuela: 7/10: Manuela is at a crossroads.  On one hand, it’s not the classiest thing in the world, and she’s a pretty classy lady with some standards, you know?  But on the other hand, the students love it and they do say it makes her look younger.  The debate is meaningless because when she gets drunk she just lets loose anyway.

Leonie: 6/10: High energy Leonie is always ready for a challenge, and this counts.  She’d never seen a “dab” before coming to Garreg Mach, but it’s so much more fun than the usual high society shit people try to foist on her so hey, why not?  Plus, she heard from Byleth that Jeralt knows how to hit the dab too.  He was just covering a cough, though.  He can’t convince her of that.

(thanks to kokorikopi for assisting in this fascinating Eisner Family Trivia)

Ignatz: 5/10: Sure, Ignatz never really had any interest in dabbing.  It seemed sorta silly to him.  But Raphael kept begging him to try it, and he wasn’t going to turn down such a pleasant request.  So he did, and wait a minute.  You could do something artsy with this, right?  Ignatz is in search of a dab that is truly effervescent, an aesthetically pleasing pose to delight the senses and advance the culture of Fodlan through its grace.  Godspeed, you young visionary.

(Raphael and Ignatz ideas contributed by gardenvarietyfox!)

Seteth: 5/10: Seteth got caught sneezing by Caspar once and he started chanting “DAB SETETH DAB”.  It became a monastery meme for a while and Seteth could not leave his office without being hounded to perform the accursed dance.  Flayn likes it, though, so he doesn’t mind.  Too much.  Okay he minds a lot.

Lorenz: 4/10: At first Lorenz Hellman Gloucester would rather have been eviscerated by a weedwhacker than do something so base as dab.  However, through his experiences with his classmates, he came to realize that the dab is a powerful diplomatic tool.  It speaks much with little effort and helps to connect with commoners across Fodlan.  He still sucks at it but he’s trying.

Cyril: 4/10: Cyril wasn’t born in Fodlan, and frankly he finds their trends weird and doesn’t really care for them.  But they’ll usually start cheering and get out of his way to let him get to cleaning if he does it, so hey, when in Rome...

Lysithea: 3/10: Lysithea is already extremely short, meaning her arms have little dab power.  Whenever she dabs, someone calls it “cute” and it absolutely infuriates her.  So dabbing is for fools, obviously.  That said...after defeating a certain mounted masked marauder...she may have let herself indulge a little bit.  Don’t tell anyone.

Hanneman: 2/10: Ain’t no Crest of Dabbylad now is there?

Marianne: 2/10: Oh, poor Marianne.  She’s having a bad day, and a bad week, and a pretty crummy year.  She doesn’t feel like she has anything to dab about, and if she does, everyone will probably just laugh at her and point their fingers at the bad dabber.  Thankfully, the other Deer are there for her, and they gave her time.  Eventually, slowly and carefully, she did it.  It was terrible, but only one person told her that.  Hilda Goneril was later seen tossing a mysterious sack into the Garreg Mach pond.

Shamir: 1/10: Catherine won’t stop doing it.  She just will not stop doing it, and she’s so absolutely sick of it.  She’s this close to shooting an arrow through one of her partner’s arms the next time she does it.  Seiros hasn’t done anything about it yet and that’s why Shamir is an atheist.

Gilbert: 1/10: Dab?  What is that?  Does my daughter do that?  Hmm.  Didn’t get it from me.  I ABANDONED HER. And so we reach the end.  Through a comprehensive knowledge of the cast’s dabability, surely they can find a way to put aside their differences and work together to make a brighter future for Fodlan. By reading these posts, you have unlocked the Golden Ending.  I had it all along.  Thank you and goodnight.

[pandawritespoorly]

With Time: Chapter 15 - Bullying

Author’s Note: Saturday, yay! I love updating. You guys were so sweet in the comments last chapter, thank you so much! I really love seeing what you guys have to say.

A slightly shorter chapter today, but that doesn't mean it's safe from a strong language warning! This chapter contains the words 'bitch' (twice), 'shit',  'asshole', 'bullshit', and 'shitty'. Enjoy!

Chapter Summary: Adrien goes to school, and Chloe doesn't hesitate to tell people the cold hard truth.

First |  Previous | Next

Adrien really dreads going to school everyday. To think that just over a year ago it was his biggest wish. It’s not that school is never fun, but with Lila there it’s exhausting. Especially without Marinette.

He misses seeing her everyday.

He arrives before Lila as usual, so there’s that. Alya is sitting in her seat behind him, looking downtrodden. That’s odd. He’s fairly certain it’s her birthday today.

“Hey, Alya.” He greets her as usual, half-heartedly. 

“Hey.” As usual, she doesn’t notice there’s nothing behind his greeting, but today it seems like she isn’t noticing much of anything.

“Happy birthday?”

“Oh, yeah. Thanks.”

Nino walks in mopey, “Hey.”

Was everyone upset today? Was there some news he missed? Maybe Lila had finally left. 

Speak of the devil and she shall appear, Lila walks in, “Hi guys! Happy birthday Alya!”

Well, he could always dream.

Lila manages to get a half-hearted smile out of the journalist, “Hi Lila.”

Lila sits next to Adrien, as is the usual ever since his princess left, “Oh, Alya, is everything alright? You look so sad!”

Alya thinks for a moment then, “Lila, did I do something to upset Ladybug? I think she’s mad at me. What did I do?”

Lila hesitates for a moment, then pulls on a doleful mask, “I don’t know if I should tell you. I’d hate to upset, especially on your birthday…”

Alya and Nino fall for it, hook, line, and sinker. They turn to her and Alya speaks, ”No, no! Tell me! It’s not your fault anyways.”

Crocodile tears come to her eyes, “Oh but it is! I should have done something! I just thought Ladybug knew better…”

Adrien mentally prepares himself for one of those days. It would seem his closest friends - Marinette and Ladybug - were Lila’s favorite targets. Either to hurt or get attention. Ladybug seems to be on Lila’s bad side now.

He hates listening to this nonsense in silence, but there’s little he can do. If he makes any sort of scene at school, Father would pull him out immediately and give him even less freedom than before. He would take it as proof that Adrien had been wrong and the boy would be trapped in his awful room for forever again. 

He tries to shut his mind down at school now. Numbness makes it go by faster, and no one has commented on his quietness. 

“What? What happened?!” 

“It’s… Ladybug and I aren’t friends anymore. She’s been talking with her and now she hates me!” The liar covers her face.

“Who! Who has she been talking to?!”

Oh no. Adrien pretty sure he knows who Lila is pinning this on. Please be wrong. Please don’t be-

“Marinette.”

Alya’s sadness turns to burning fury, “That bitch! She’s not even here anymore and she’s still ruining everything! I can’t believe she was ever my friend. It disgusts me!” 

Nino shakes his head, “Yeah, she really took a turn last year. Kinda’ a shame, she used to be so nice…”

“It’s just, she’s been talking to Ladybug, and she’s convinced her that I’m horrible. She must have talked bad about you guys too! Oh, I should have done something!”

“It’s not your fault. Just tell us what happened.” Alya rests a hand comfortingly on Lila’s shoulder.

“Well, a while ago, Ladybug mentioned she made a new friend - I was so happy for her! But then, Ladybug started being more toxic and she started being mean to me. I found out she had been hanging out with Marinette. They’ve both been bullying me for a while now… Ladybug helped Marinette hurt me that day…”

Oh no. Marinette isn’t even here anymore and Lila still pins everything on her. What is even the point?!

“Ugh! I hate that girl! She ruins everything good! I guess it really was fitting to call her our ‘everyday Ladybug’!” Alya stews for a moment, then pulls out her phone, “You know what? Ladybug clearly sucks. Paris needs to know.”

Lila looks surprised. Adrien sees the moment when she realizes that such a statement could put her web of falsehoods on the line, “No, no! Please, I’m not comfortable telling all of Paris about my failure to help Ladybug!” 

Alya softens, “Lila you didn’t fail, but I guess I won’t post something if it makes you uncomfortable. If that’s too much then maybe I’ll just delete the Ladyblog instead. It’s supposed to be a place for Ladybug fans, but no one should give a shit about that kind of person and the self-absorbed asshole that goes by ‘Marinette’.” 

“Woah, Alya, are you actually deleting your blog?” Adrien did not see this coming. The anger he feels at everything she just said slips into his voice despite his efforts to keep it level.

Alya looks at him sympathetically, “Oh my precious sunshine boy. I know you were a huge a Ladybug fan. It must be such a shock. I know it is to me. I am deleting my blog. Ladybug deserves worse for the kind of stunt she’s pulled. Lila is such a sweetheart, and to think Ladybug left her for Marinette of all people.”

Adrien can feel Plagg shifting angrily in his pocket and it takes every ounce of self-control he has to just turn away and focus on the front of the classroom. He thought school was a nightmare before, he’d forgotten he’s bad luck - it can always get worse.

Marinette’s lucky charm hasn’t done him much good recently.

Maybe she was the good luck charm in his life.

---

It’s lunch period and by some miracle no one’s been akumatized yet. Alya’s phone dings and he sees her look at the notification in shock. She opens her phone and starts texting quickly and furiously, mumbling to herself.

He sighs, at least she found a way to distract herself from hating his favorite people. 

“Come on Adrikins, let’s have lunch somewhere that people aren’t ridiculous!” Chloe hooks an arm through his, dragging him away. Sabrina walks beside them as well. They’re out of the school and on the street. They’ve been waiting for a minute or so for Chloe’s driver to arrive.

Adrien’s phone dings, it’s Claude.

  Kid Mime: i know you know alya. If you’re near her you need to get her to stop texting mari. now.

 Adrien’s heart drops. When Alya starting text a few minutes ago, had she really…? He didn’t stop to wonder how, he just turns and rushes back into the school. Chloe looks up in surprise and she and Sabrina follow in confusion.

He hurries into the cafeteria and sure enough, Alya is still furiously typing away at her phone.

He puts a hand on the table harshly, drawing her attention, “Alya, you need to stop.”

“Stop?! Do even know what I’m doing?! That bitch had the nerve to text me! I’m just giving her a piece of my mind!” “Adrien, are you really on Marinette’s side?” Lila makes her voice sound full of hurt shock.

“Bro…”

Adrien pauses. He wants to tear into them so bad. Marinette deserves better and so does Ladybug. Neither girl deserves all this hate, but he can’t cause a scene. Father would pull him out and he’d be isolated again. 

Alone.

Unable to see either of them.

Chloe shoves past him, “Really Césaire? Cyber-bullying? Leave Dupain-Cheng alone and listen to more of Lie-la’s nonsense.”

“Excuse me? I’m not bullying anyone! Marinette is the bully here! Her and Ladybug! I finally understand why she chose you - birds of a feather flock together!”

Chloe glares down at her, “Are you blind or just plain stupid? Dupain-Cheng hasn’t texted you back at all from the looks of it. Are you even reading what you’re sending? That’s bullying Césaire.”

“Oh, you would know.”

“I would.” Chloe’s voice is hard, “But at least I know my faults. You’re just some self-absorbed wanna-be journalist who can’t see what’s right in front of her.” “Leave her alone Chloe.” Nino glares at the blonde.

“Shut it Lahiffe. You had a crush on Dupain-Cheng and knew her as long as I did. You should know better than to believe this faker’s bullshit. I do find it interesting that you finally grew a spine and decided you should speak up to me. Where was that back-bone all those years I went after Marinette?”

Nino just looks at her. Lila speaks up, “Oh Chloe, there’s no need to take your anger out on us. Just because Ladybug hasn’t called on Queen Bee for so long…”

“And she won’t be again. She told me so last night. I get it, it’s her decision and I’m just glad she ever considered me. That’s not what this is about.”

Alya slams her phone down on the table, standing to get in Chloe’s face, “Listen up Chloe, you don’t get to pretend you’re better than us-”

“I don’t have to pretend. It’s just the facts.” She flips her ponytail airily.

“Just because your dad’s the mayor doesn’t mean anything. I worked for what I got.”

“And then you threw it all away for some fake stories. Some journalist.”

“Lila would never lie to us!”

“And Dupain-Cheng would?”

“Yes! She’s a bully!”

“Since when have you been so protective of Marinette, Chloe?” Lila adds in.

“Because she’s a better person than everyone here. Haven’t you noticed how much her absence has messed the class up? Sheesh!”

“She’s one of the worst people alive! Her absence has only made things better!” Alya is shaking in fury.

Chloe wrinkles her nose, “Let me know when you wake-up and look around yourself. Adrikins, Sabrina and I have places to be.” The trio walks out. As soon as they’re out of earshot, Chloe turns to her friend, “Did you get it Sabrina?”

“Yup!” She holds up her own phone triumphantly.

“Get what?” Adrien didn’t see what Sabrina had been up to during the yelling match.

“I took screenshots of what she sent to Marinette. I sent them to myself then I deleted the pictures so Alya wouldn’t know. I also deleted Marinette’s contact from her phone.

Chloe nods approvingly, “Good thinking. Now she can’t text her, because I doubt she put in the effort to remember her number.”

“Why’d you take screenshots?” He doesn’t understand the point of documenting whatever horrible stuff Alya said to Marinette.

“To report her for bullying, duh! Of course nothing will probably happen until Lila’s gone, seeing as even the school’s administration has their heads in the ground!”

Sabrina nods seriously, “That’s true.” Adrien isn’t experienced in how schools are supposed to work, “Is the school really so bad?”

“Adrikins, why do you think I go here? This place’ll let anyone get away with anything. It’s ridiculous! Utterly ridiculous!” She thinks, “Maybe when I finally go to another school I should have Daddy do something about that.”

Adrien looks at her in surprise, “You’re transferring too?!”

“Not until the end of the year, obviously. Sabrina and I are out of here, this much of a stressful environment is bad for my hair.” At his look she says, “Oh don’t worry, we’ll get you out too. It won’t be too hard to convince your shitty father that a school with a more prestigious reputation would be better for his legacy. Maybe you can join your precious Marinette.”

He flushes slightly at that, then frowns thinking of the texts she must have seen. He really hopes she’s okay.

Chloe’s driver pulls up, and they all pile in. He sends Mari a quick text before turning back to those in the car with him. There’s nothing he can really do now

He trusts her new friends will take care of her, at least until he can be there too.

---

Author’s Note: Don't worry, we're seeing Mari's perspective next week. By 'next week' I actually mean Thursday! I try to post bonus chapters for holidays, and Thanksgiving is already here!

I have the google doc that I write this on shared with one of my friends. We were sitting nearby when she opened it up to read this chapter. She read the title and strong language warnings and turned to me in a panic asking what I did to Marinette this time. I just smiled.

I usually try to prepare chapters to be posted the night before I post them, to make it quicker in the morning. If this one is a little late, it's probably because I slept in. I'm sick and it's finally the weekend, so apologies if that does happen. I doubt I'll sleep past my usual post time, but we'll see. On a similar note, I feel like I've forgotten something I typically put in the notes, but I'm not sure what. If you notice something, please let me know. It could be nothing, I've been feeling like that all day. I blame my cold.

Thanks for reading, and constructive criticism is welcomed in the comments below! Feel free to just tell me your thoughts too!

Actually, I really need to change my tumblr sign off - all I do is delete the link to my tumblr. Constructive criticism, thoughts, comments, or anything really are welcomed in my ask box or through reblogs. I’ll have to come up with a better way to phrase that.

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[psychefm]

talk to the hand [ TIMOTHEE CHALAMET ], [ REED ‘NEWT’ NEWTON ] is the new kid on the block around here. at [ TWENTY ], the [ CIS BOY] works at [ BABBAGE’S ] in the mall and, like, [ HE ] totally reminds us of [ CHANDLER BING ]. oh snap! what? their favorite movie is [ HOME ALONE ]???? so is mine!

ABOUT THE MUN.  i used to lie to y’all, my mom didn’t say no, i did

i hate this site man. and that’s it, that’s all you gotta know about me. 

BIO. good news!!!! i’ve successfully replaced all my emotions with jokes !!!! tw bullying

reed newton was born in london england to sylvia anne bixby and cornelius otis newton and honestly, he’s regretted it ever since.

newt was an accident. he was the product of one of his mother and father’s first ever lustful encounters, and their subsequent shotgun wedding so honestly they both spent most of newt’s formative years in the honeymoon period. some of newt’s earlier memories are of him walking in on his parents doing the devil’s tango in the broom closet and his nanny rushing to cover his eyes. good times. 

honestly newt walked in on his parents doing the do more times than any kid should have before the age of nine. and then he walked in on a parent doing the do with a non parent. in other words newt got an eyeful of his father and the pool boy and it wasn’t long after that that his parents went through a long and messy divorce. once again, good times. 

his mother decided to pack up their things and move herself and her nine year old very impressionable son to nebraska, because fuck that kid amiright. newt was quickly designated as the skinny weird nerdy kid with glasses and a funny little accent, and so as you can guess he was pretty mercilessly bullied from age nine to eighteen. he really never stood a chance.

i feel like this is a good time to mention that newt’s mother was a sex therapist, which is not the same as a regular therapist but still, therapist is in the name. he should have been able to talk to his parent in this time of strife and get some level of support right? nope. sylvia bixby is well known for writing a men are from mars, women are from venus like book on communication and dating and all that, so his mom was generally on book tour after book tour. but maybe she would have been supportive if she was ever actually around, right? again, nope. 

unbeknownst to newt whenever his mother was around she was not only just casually psycho analyzing her only child for shits and giggles, no, she as also writing about it. newt’s mother wrote an entire book about raising a highly repressed teenage son with newt as the star, and you can only guess what that did for newt’s stellar high social status in high school. nothing great. 

did newt ask her not to publish it once he realized she had wrote it? yes. did she still publish it? also yes. so newt and his mother no longer have the greatest relationship. holidays are awkward.

things were not better on his fathers end, but it wasn’t because his father particularly did anything nearly as tone deaf as his mother. yes, his father was a famous erotica novelist and yes that made newt’s life a living hell, but newt luckily wasn’t the subject of those books. neil transitioned from writing fabio like novels to writing some lgbt fiction which, great for representation, horrible for your teenage son who is now known around school for having a dad who writes porn. to top it off, neil ended up starting a long term relationship with the pool boy and gaining a pseudo step son from it. benjamin caley was not only more athletic than newt, not only more attractive than newt, but also better than newt in every single way imaginable which was a real self esteem booster. his father actively prefers benji and every time newt visits him in england over the summers he comes home hating himself a bit more.

which works out because after the book being published, most people kind of hated newt too so at the very least he was on trend. there was a lot of classic nineties bullying you know, wedgies, swirlies, shoving newt into lockers. all very cliche. newt would tell his bullies as much, but it never really went over that well. 

but then finally newt graduated. he was free from the hell that was the public education system and his childhood household. he graduated with honours, moved out of his mother’s house, and got himself his own apartment with a roommate near the mall where he got his first real job. 

goes to university for software engineering. has an internship at apple that he’s absolutely terrified to mess up. has an old beat up car that was like the first big purchase he ever made with his own money, so he loves it to death even though it’s a piece of shit. 

PERSONALITY.  do you fear me? don’t feel so special now. i have social anxiety. i fear everybody.

this is my first time playing newt so all of this is subject to change BUT

INSECURE. newt is a weird mix of cripplingly insecure and weirdly confident and there is no in between ever.

WITTY.  humour is and always will be the only defense newt has against anything, so he makes a lot of jokes especially when he feels uncomfortable.

EMPATHETIC. newt is a big push over when it comes to emotions like he would never do anything to hurt someone unless it was by accident or he was provoked or you’re his step brother benji or either of his parents in which case he will run you over with his car on sight. but no really, if newt is in a position where he has to hurt somebody he will do absolutely everything in his power to either not or avoid the situation completely. 

AWKWARD. sometimes honestly, although it depends on the day. v clumsy though. usually he can try to make his awkwardness funny but does he always succeed? the answer is no. 

HEADCANNONS.  actually all of my systems are nervous.

has to drink like six cups of coffee or tea a day. very serious about his tea because english. also has vegemite on his toast. 

can actually cook pretty well even though he prefers to eat takeout. cooks because it’s cheaper and he’s a broke ass student yk. won’t take money from his parents ever, and will straight up give it away if it’s forced upon him. 

writes star trek fanfic for fun and has a kind of weird relationship with writing because of his parents honestly?? but he enjoys it so, maybe the apple in fact does not fall from the tree. 

has commitment issues because of his parents divorce but don’t we all. 

developed a stutter after all the divorce drama because he thought it was his fault. he later had to see a speech therapist. his mother later had a fwb relationship with this same speech therapist. newt wanted to die. 

traded his glasses for contacts and you will literally only see newt in glasses if he rips or loses his contacts or if he’s at home. 

in love with all things sci fi, will rent and see every sci movie ever made if he can 

accidentally knocks down at least one display in babbages per day so there’s that.

speaking of newt runs a small side gig out of babbages where he fixes up tech because paying for university, rent, and car insurance out of pocket gets up there. so if you need someone to fix your desktop newt is your guy. 

is actually a pretty good flirt when he’s drunk or feels comfortable. is constantly teetering between painfully insecure and confident. 

is very bi and very hesitant about it because of his father and all his feelings towards that, but he will eventually stop fighting it so much soon hopefully. has probably had a few drunken hookups with guys but tries to convince himself that is just a drunk thing yk. 

is allergic to bees so death has a kiss just for him i guess. 

loves video games but that goes without saying

has anxiety and takes medication for it, one of the few healthy things his mother has ever done for him. 

speaking of his mother if newt ever sees her book about him in a book display he will spend as much time as needed taking each book and hiding them in obscure places so that no one will ever be able to find them and buy them. he read the whole thing because he had to know and yep he absolutely hates it. 

goes by newt and only newt so that no one can make the connection between him and his mother or his father upon first meeting him or hopefully ever. a lot of the kids he went to high school with still know though and with the accent and everything, he’s not fooling anyone who has at least heard a rumour 

idk what else y’all imma fite tumblr for making me write this twice

WANTED CONNECTIONS.  actually wait, i take that self deprecation back, i’m great.

ROOMMATE. because newt can’t afford his place on his own between all his expenses. please. think of the shenanigans. 

ON AGAIN OFF AGAIN THING. kind of inspired by chandler and janice tbh. these two are pretty incompatible and whenever they’re together all they talk about is breaking up with each other but whenever they’re broken up and they see each other they somehow always find themselves waking up in bed together the next morning. it’s a mess.

NERD SQUAD. give me newt’s friends from high school please and thanks. just a crew of absolutely dweebs and misfits. 

FWB/EWB. self explanatory considering newt’s big commitment issues but i just imagine like making out in the back room and like hooking up in the break room and someone leaving like a damning article of clothing in there and the two of them scrambling to get it before anyone notices. just fun. 

EX. self explanatory but yes, an ex gf or bf, an ex fwb or ewb, give me all the exes please. 

REPEAT CUSTOMER. this person is always paying newt to come fix their computer and other tech and newt just doesn’t understand how they mess it up so badly. like he doesn’t get how or why technology hates them as much as it does, but he’ll take the money.

HATESHIP. just good old fashion animosity. could be hate from school or the fresh hate upon working in the mall together or they can just be newt’s least favourite customer and he can hate them for that. 

CRUSH. maybe newt had a crush on them in school. maybe they had a crush on newt in school. maybe newt has a crush on them now. maybe they have a crush on newt now. 

and anything else tbh. i’d love a smoking buddy for newt, a friend who he can never get any work done around like when they’re together they’re just like !!!, someone who used to be one of the popular kids who he is now getting along with or still holding a grudge against, his big gay awakening in school maybe like the first masc person he had a crush on, someone who tries to get newt to party and come out of his shell, someone who idk steals from babbages skjsdj idk man i am open to anything at all so just like this and we can brain storm if anything!

[homenum-revelio-hq]

Welcome to the Order of the Phoenix, Bee!

You have been accepted for the role of MARLENE MCKINNON! I really enjoyed reading your application! I particularly like the way you incorporated the family farm and the winged horses throughout! It’s so important to Marlene’s character where she came from. I am so excited to have you as part of this roleplay!

Please take a look at the new member checklist and send in your account within 24 hours!Thank you for joining the fight against Voldemort!

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME: Bee

AGE: 21

TIMEZONE: EST

ACTIVITY LEVEL: I’m a college student, so my activity tends to revolve around my schedule, though I tend to be online at some point every day (unless there’s a big paper to write or a project or a test or something the next day, in which case maybe not… but still probably because I am a disaster). If I had to give it a number? 7.5, 8.

ANYTHING ELSE: HELLO AGAIN

CHARACTER DETAILS:

NAME: Marlene Elspeth McKinnon

AGE: 24

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Cis Female, She/Her… as for sexuality, Marlene really couldn’t give a shit less what people decided to call what her sexuality is. Love happens, life happens, and she isn’t going to limit the possibilities by slapping a label on herself. That, and she’s not exactly certain how her parents would react to their only daughter being anything BUT straight, and she isn’t in a rush to find out. But if I, the writer of this app, had to label Marlene’s sexuality, she’d be pansexual.

BLOOD STATUS: Pureblood

HOUSE ALUMNI: Ravenclaw

ANY CHANGES: Nope.

CHARACTER BACKGROUND:

PERSONALITY:

Marlene was raised with expectations, and those expectations molded her personality in more ways than she’d care to admit.

What was expected of her as a kid was that she was to be a good little witch. That she took care of the winged horses and didn’t pull out their feathers. That she didn’t steal her older brother’s toy broom and fly it around the house like she was a seeker for the Holyhead Harpies. That she knew how to say please and thank you, and how to read all the old, beautiful, dusty books that lined the shelves in their library. That she knew what Hogwarts is, and knew what house she would inevitably get sorted into- because what was a McKinnon if not a Ravenclaw, if not being the most clever person in the room. There were rules, there were standards, there were shouldn’t’s and should’s- and Marlene simply took them all. She didn’t question it- she just was the daughter that Maeve and Malcolm McKinnon needed. She had always been a perfect little witch growing up, her dresses and cloaks in the latest fashions, her wild curls always tamed- picture perfect. That is the Marlene that her parents knew and wanted, the one that would make her grandparents proud. Perfect… and they would have expected nothing less.

They didn’t know, nor would they likely want to know (at least, in Marlene’s mind), the wildfire that roared just beneath the surface. The fire that they thought they’d put out when it had been nothing but a little spark. Friends know that Marlene leads with her heart first. You know exactly where she stands on everything because she wears her heart on her sleeve. She lives in a world where she’s genuine with those she cares about, and therefore expects that everyone is being genuine with her. She hates secrets and lies (which can bother her, especially when it comes to Order things, but that’s a whole other story…). Because she’s so set in her own mind- that what she has to say is important, is right, is good, and should be listened to, it makes other views very hard to swallow. Having someone tell her she’s wrong can send her reeling.

She’s used to being the one who knows what to do. She’s used to being the one who knows all the answers to every stupid question you could possibly ask her- not that there were any stupid questions out there, just more obvious and less obvious. She’s the smart one, the one who knows what she’s doing… right? But there’s always that seed of self doubt. The one that tells her that she’s just faking it, that she’s not good enough for what her family wants of her. She’s not the perfect daughter. No, she’s just very good at pretending. Because, if she were perfect, someone would be listening to her.

There’s a piece of Marlene that feels rather lost, more like she’s screaming into the void than anything else. Like, somehow, in all of her doing what was expected of her, she became invisible. She wants to be heard for once in her life. Rather than holding a hand over her mouth and swallowing words because of expectations. Her opinion should matter, but it doesn’t- she’s in this war too, and she’s fighting for the right side. But how come she feels like she’s somehow the enemy in all this, and why does that make her feel so guilty?

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY:

The McKinnons were pureblood, yes, but they weren’t old blood. There’s a difference- if you come from old blood families, you know. No, Caelan and Maeve (Marlene’s grandparents) made an investment in the flying horse ranching business, raising the finest winged equines in England, if not all of Europe. But really, what would you expect from two Ravenclaws who graduated at the top of their class. Their business became their son’s business, and after their son, their grandchildren. As it was supposed to be. As the generations would pass on, the McKinnon name would gain respect. It would prosper, with many witches and wizards filling up the family tree. But that didn’t exactly change the fact that in the eyes of the Sacred 28, the McKinnons were nothing more than New Money.

And so, as these things go in the pureblood world, Holly Shafiq and Malcolm McKinnon met at some high society function, as they were supposed to, and got married, as they were supposed to, and a whole lot of ‘supposed to’s later, Marlene came into the mix. The last ‘supposed to’, the youngest of the mix. Her mother fawned all over the little Marlene- her darling baby of the bunch- while her father always seemed a bit too busy with the winged horse business, though he did read her Tales of Beedle the Bard every night.

She was a curious and wild little girl- not exactly what her mother had expected when she envisioned her ‘darling baby’ growing up. The vision in frills and bows with perfect little curls did not last long when Marlene was about four or five. She’d sneak off when she was supposed to be taking a nap and go on epic, self made adventures. She’d go romping in mud puddles with her older siblings, she’d go visit the flying horses in their stable and kiss their big fuzzy noses and stay sitting their until someone found her and dragged her off. There was an insatiable curiosity that ran in the little girls veins. She wanted to know why brooms flew. She wanted to know the name of every single flying horse in the stable (and if they didn’t have names, could she name them?). She wanted to know what a Hogwarts was, how floo powder worked- anything and everything was a question that needed answering.

The one who really encouraged this sort of ‘question everything’ mentality was her grandfather. A pureblood who had built his own fortune from the ground up, he didn’t believe in the frills and fanciness of high society that his wife, son, and daughter-in-law were so desperate to be a part of. Why be a part of something that wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with him when he had been a poor young man with aspirations? He was the one to really teach Marlene the ways of the world- the difference between good and bad, the need to question everything, the need to be set in one’s beliefs. Caelan McKinnon was such an important figure in his granddaughter’s life, she felt she was closer to him than her actual father. He passed away before Marlene joined the Order, but she’d like to think that if he’d still been around, he would have ruffled her hair and given her a kiss on the forehead as he’d always done when he was proud of her.

Her relationship with her siblings has always been very close. As she was the youngest, they were always a little protective of her. They taught her the important things. Like how to ride a broomstick or a winged horse. Which quidditch players were the best. How not to get a disgusting flavor of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans. Where the best hiding places were on the ranch. Which flying horses were the friendliest and which would try and kick you if you got too close. When they were young, they were all practically inseparable. But time, as well as sticky situations, pull people apart. Some of her siblings don’t exactly appreciate the fact that their family’s estate has all but been filled with strangers. This puts a bit of a strain on their relationships.

OCCUPATION:

Technically speaking, the ranch is her occupation. She helps take care of the winged horses, helps with finding good owners for her winged friends, helps clean out their stalls… anything that the family business might need help with, she does. She doesn’t exactly get paid for it though- she has access to the family bank account, and money has never really been a problem in Marlene’s family. There’s always been enough for whatever she wanted or needed, and her mother made it a habit of making sure her children had literally everything they ever wanted, ever. This has put a bit of a disconnect on actual jobs for Marlene, as she’s only ever known a world where she could take a day off no questions asked, and she had everything she needed.

ROLE WITHIN THE ORDER/THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ORDER:

The Order was Marlene’s opportunity to work with the good guys. Yes, it was under the law, which sometimes ruffled her parent’s feathers (after all, their daughter working with a bunch of radicals wasn’t necessarily the safest thing for her or for their family). But they didn’t disagree with her motives. Voldemort and his pure-blooded societal fantasies were wrong. Magic was magic. Killing and hating people for who they’re related to was something that needed to be stopped. Yes, the McKinnons were purebloods, but they weren’t those sort of purebloods. Her siblings were a little bit more in line with where Marlene stood- fighting back to protect the innocent was a lot better than doing nothing. Her parents were less actively involved, offering Marlene whatever she might need. Eventually, what she needed became their estate to hide targets of the Death Eaters.

The Dissendium Task Force offered her a place to help protect people who really needed it, whilst working with some of her closest friends. She’d been so excited to work with Lily and Remus, Emmeline- they all were so dedicated to fighting back by helping those who needed protection and hiding. Everything started with the best intentions. But the number of targets began to increase the longer and worse the war became, and Lily’s motivation became less of helping targets- the people who really, truly needed to escape, lest they be killed- and more of helping muggleborns. It drove her crazy. She felt bad about it, sure, but she couldn’t house every muggleborn in the whole of Britain and expect that Voldemort and the Death Eaters wouldn’t catch on and come and kill them all. It wasn’t logical. It was putting her, her family, and every single one of the poor people who were hiding at the McKinnon Estate at a ridiculous amount of risk. Not to mention the werewolf population living in the woods off the estate. The worry from the whole situation was enough to make Marlene sick. If they got caught by Death Eaters, they were dead. By the Order, they’d likely be thrown into Azkaban. And the more people she was asked to hide, the more likely it was that the whole operation could blow up in their faces.

SURVIVAL:

This is something Marlene is growing increasingly worried about. At the start of the Dissendium Task Force, she felt relatively safe. Sure, it was risky to smuggle Death Eater targets out of the country for their own safety. But hiding one or two people at a time was a MUCH different situation from hiding several people, not all of whom are targets, plus werewolves, all on her family estate. It’s almost like holding a giant, flashing sign that reads ‘We’re here! Come kill us!’. She’s survived by being stealthy and by being a pureblood- no one’s going to expect the new money pureblood family of jeopardizing their social position. But she’s sure that it’s suspicious to the pureblood families who were donning the eerie masks of the Death Eaters as to why the McKinnons hadn’t joined their ranks yet. She wonders if she’ll even survive the year at the rate the Task Force is going. She keeps looking over her shoulder and wondering when the day is going to come where she’s the next name rattled off on a Missing or Dead list.

RELATIONSHIPS:

Once upon a time, Marlene had seen Lily Evans as the little sister she’d wanted but hadn’t gotten. She’d grown fond of the younger Gryffindor through her time at Hogwarts, and had thought the world of her. When the Dissendium Task Force was started, she was thrilled to be working so closely with someone she cared about so much. And at first, things were great. They worked so well together, and both believed so strongly in taking targets, making them feel safe and secure, and getting them to safety. It was important- not everyone could fight to protect themselves in the war. But as the war has gotten worse and the Death Eaters get more power, Lily has seemed to veer off in a new direction: save every single muggleborn in Britain, regardless of the consequences. Marlene has tried speaking up, talking reason on how trying to save people who weren’t targets along with actual targets put everyone at risk. But no one seems interested in listening to Marlene, even though it’s about their safety. It’s her home, and it feels like her opinion on the safety of the people inside of it (stranger, friend, or family) means absolutely in the eyes of someone she once called one of her best friends.

Poor Remus has ended up hearing the brunt of her screams into the void and grumbles over the whole situation. She’s grateful that he’s on the task force- he knows how to talk to werewolves, and he knows how to deal with Lily when Marlene just can’t. He’s also great at dealing with the half-breed population, and always seems to know just what to say to them. He’s made her life a little bit easier in these strained times. A piece of her feels bad that the half-breeds need to live out in the woods, but a bigger piece of her knows that it is way too much of a risk to have a bunch of werewolves in the house. Besides, her parents wouldn’t dream of having those sort of ‘people’ in the house.

The only person who really seems to be listening to Marlene is Emmeline, and Marlene is definitely listening and watching Emmeline. The witch deserves more credit where credit is due. She’s more than just a healer, which is unfortunately what she’s being treated like. She’s intelligent, she’s talented, she listens to others. Marlene doesn’t feel invisible when Emmeline is around because she knows that Emmeline actually cares about what Marlene has to say about the task force.

OOC EXPLORATION:

SHIPS/ANTI-SHIPS:

I will always ship chemistry. There’s no real anti-ship here. Where there is chemistry, there is the possibility for amazing threads. THIS GOES FOR RELATIONSHIPS OF THE PLATONIC AND ROMANTIC KIND.

WHAT PRIVILEGES AND BIASES DOES YOUR CHARACTER HAVE?

Marlene lives in a world of privilege. She grew up in a pureblood household where she’s wanted for nothing. She doesn’t know a world where people look down on you- not really. She’s experienced people looking down on her for being new money. She’s only ever gotten a glimpse of what it feels like to be in a muggleborn’s shoes, and that was in the muggle world. In the muggle world, she’s a woman of color, and she’s not exactly ‘straight’, so she’s discriminated against. It put knots in her stomach the first time she experienced it, and she wasn’t exactly sure why until she realized that that was what it must be like for Lily and other muggleborns in the wizarding world.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO?  

You’re group looks absolutely amazing, also, you’re amazing (thank you for talking to me and letting me reapply <3) I really want to write, and this group reminds me so much of old tumblr rpgs, which I miss terribly, so I’m really excited for this!

PLOT DROP IDEAS:

Marlene finding out about Remus being a werewolf is a possibility? Losing a muggleborn or a target the task force was supposed to be protecting? Something happening to one of Marlene’s siblings (also, I’d love to have some actual Marlene siblings if that was okay? IDK if that would be a possibility, but if it is, that’d be cool.

ANYTHING ELSE? DOBBY’S SOCK!  … Have a nice day lovely admin.

[dillydedalus]

what i read in july

THAT’S MORE LIKE IT aka i’m finally out of the (relative) reading slump for good & my bro james joyce was there

men explain things to me, rebecca solnit the original mansplaining essay is great, and still scarily relevant; the others in this collection (most on feminist issues) are also quite good; some aspects are a bit dated & problematic so be aware of that. 2.5/5

erschlagt die armen!, shumona sinha (tr. from french, not available in english) short but very impactful novella about a young french woman, originally from india, who works as an interpreter in the asylum system and becomes more & more broken by this system of inhumane bureaucracy and suffering, until she snaps and hits a migrant over the head with a wine bottle. full of alienation and misery and beautiful but disturbing language - the title translates to ‘beat the poor to death’ so like. yeah. 3.5/5

fire & blood: a history of the targaryen family I, george r r martin look, it’s a 700-page-long fake history book about a fictional ruling dynasty in a fictional world, and i’m just That Obsessed & Desperate about asoiaf (and i don’t even care about the targs That Much). anyway, now i know more about the targs than any ruling family from, you know, real history, which is like, whatever. this is pretty enjoyable if you are That Obsessed, although i will say that some bits are much better than others (there are some dry dull years even in everyone’s fav overly dramatic dragon-riding incest-loving family) and the misogyny really is. a lot. too much. way too much. BUT i did really like Good Best Queen Alysanne (her husband king joe harris is alright too i guess) and i found my new westerosi otp, cregan stark/aly blackwood, who both have Big Dick Energy off the fucking charts. 3.5/5 (+0.5 points for cregan and aly’s combined BDE)

the old drift, namwali serpell hugely ambitious sprawling postcolonial nation-building novel about zambia, told thru three generations of three families, as well as a chorus of mosquitoes (consistently the best & smartest parts). there is A LOT going on, in terms of characters, of plot points, of references to history (the zambian space programme) and literature (finally my knowledge of heart of darkness paid off) and thematically, and honestly it was a bit too much, a bit too tangled & fragmented & drifty, and in the end i probably admire this book more than i liked it, but serpell’s writing is incredibly smart and funny and full of electrical sparks 3.5/5

a severed head, iris murdoch the original love dodecahedron (not that i counted). iris murdoch is fucking WILD and i love her for it. this is a strange darkly funny little farce about some rich well-educated londoners and their bizarre & rather convoluted love lives. not as grandiosely wild as the sea the sea, but fun nevertheless. 3/5

midnight in chernobyl, adam higginbotham jumping on the hype bandwagon caused by the hbo series (very weird to call the current fascination with chernobyl a hype bandwagon but you know). interesting & well-written & accessible (tho the science is still totally beyond me) & gets you to care about the people involved. lots of human failure, lots of human greatness, set against the background of the almost eldritch threat of radioactivity (look up the elephant foot & see if you don’t get chills), and acute radiation syndrome which is THE MOST TERRIFYING THING ON EARTH . 3.5/5

normal people, sally rooney honestly this is incredibly engrossing & absorbing once you get used to how rooney completely ignores ‘show don’t tell’ (it works!), i pretty much read the whole thing in one slow workday (boss makes a dollar, i make a dime so i read books on my phone on company time, also i genuinely had nothing to do). i also think rooney is really good at precisely capturing the ~millenial experience in a way that feels very true, especially the transition from school to uni. BUT i really disliked the ending, the book never engages with the political themes it introduces (esp. class and gender) as deeply as it could and the bdsm stuff never really gets TIED UP LOL. so overall idk: 3.5/5

störfall: nachrichten eines tages, christa wolf quiet reflective undramatic little book narrated by a woman waiting to hear about the outcome of her brother’s brain surgery on the day of the catastrophe at chernobyl - throughout the day she puts down her thoughts about her brother and the events unfolding at chernobyl, as well as the double uncertainty she is trying to cope with. really interesting to read such an immediate reaction to chernobyl (the book came out less than a year after chernobyl). 2.5/5

the man in the high castle, philip k dick it was fine? quick & entertaining alternative history where the axis powers win the war, some interesting bits of worldbuilding (like the draining of the mediterranean which was apparently a real idea in the early 20th century?) but overall it’s just felt a bit disjointed & unsatisfying to me. 2.5/5

fugitive pieces, anne michaels very poetic & thoughtful novel about the holocaust, grief, remembrance & the difference between history and memory, intergenerational trauma, love, geology and the weather. i’m not sure how much this comes together as a novel, but it is absolutely beautifully written (the author is a poet as well) and very affective. 3.5/5

american innovations, rivka galchen short collection of bizarre & often funny short stories about neurotic women whose furniture flies away, or who grow an extra breast, or who are maybe too occupied with financial details. very vague & very precise at once, which seems to be the thing with these sort of collections. 3/5

fool’s assassin (fitz & the fool #1), robin hobb YAASS i’m back in the realm of the elderlings!!! i thought this was one of the weaker installments in the series - i still enjoyed it a lot, and Feelings were had, but it just doesn’t quite fit together pacing-wise & some of the characterisation struck me as off (can i get some nuance for shun & lant please?) and tbh fitz is at peak Selfcentred Dumbass Levels & it drove me up the fucking wall. molly, nettle & bee deserve better. still, completely HYPE for the rest of the trilogy. 3.5/5

JAMES JOYCE JULY

note: i decided not to read dubliners bc it’s my least fav of joyce’s major works & too bleak & repetitive for my mood right now AND while i planned not to reread finnegans wake bc……. it’s finnegans wake…. i kinda do want to read it now (but i also. really don’t.) so idk yet.

a portrait of the artist as a young man, james joyce y’all. i read this book at least once a year between the ages of 15 and 19, it’s beyond formative, it is burnt into my brain, and reading it now several years later it is still everything, soaring and searing (that searing clarity of truth, thanks burgess) and poetic and dirty, and stephen is baby, and a pretentious self-important little prick and i love him & i am him (or was him as only a pretentious self-important teenage girl reading joyce can be him - because this truly is a book that should be read in your late teens when you feel everything as intensely and world-endingly and severely as my boy stephen does and every new experience feels like the world changing). anyway i love this book & i love stephen dedalus, bird-like, hawk-like, knife-blade, aloof, alienated, severe and stern, a poet-priest-prophet if he could ever get over himself, baby baby baby. 5/5

exiles, james joyce well. there’s a reason joyce is known as a novelist. this is….. a failed experiment, maybe. a fairly boring play about an adulterous love-square and uh… love beyond morality and possession maybe??? about how much it would suck for joyce to return to ireland??? and tbh it’s not terribly interesting. 2/5

travesties, tom stoppard a wild funny irreverent & smart antic comedy inspired by the fact that during ww1, james joyce, lenin, and dadaist tristan tzara were all in neutral zurich, more or less simultaneously; they probably never met, but in this play they do, as dadaist poetry, socialist art critique, and a james joyce high on his own genius & in desperate need of some cash while writing ulysses, AND the importance of being earnest (joyce is putting on a production of it) all collide in the memories of henry carr, who played algernon & later sued joyce over money (tru facts). not my fav stoppard (that’s arcadia) but it’s funny & fizzy & smart & combines many many things that i love. 4/5 

ulysses, james joyce look i’m not really going to tell y’all anything new about ulysses, but it really has everything, it’s warm & human(e) & cerebral & difficult & funny & sad & healing & i always get a lot out of it even tho there’s bits (a lot of them) i’ll never wrap my head around. ultimate affirmation of humanity or whatever. also stephen dedalus is baby. 5/5

dedalus, chris mccabe the fact that this book (sequel to ulysses about what stephen dedalus might have done the next day) exists and was published ON MY BIRTHDAY is proof that the universe loves me. 

anyway this is very very good, very very clever, extremely good at stephen (less good at bloom but his parts are still good), engages w/ ulysses, portrait & hamlet (& others) very cleverly & does some cool meta and experimental shit. y’all it has stephen talking to a contemporary therapist about how he’s stuck in joyce’s text which is all about joyce & very little about whoever stephen is when he’s not joyce’s alter ego/affectionate but slightly amused look at younger self and ithaca is an interview w/ the author about how his relationship to his dad influenced his response to ulysses and I’M INTO IT. the oxen of the sun chapter replaces the whole ‘gestation of english prose’ w/ just slightly rewriting the first pages of about 10 novels published between ulysses and now & it does lolita w/ “bloom, thorn of stephen’s sleep, light in his eyes. his sire, his son’ and i lit. screamed. anyway i don’t want to give this 5 stars (yet) bc i think some of the experimental stuff ended up a bit gimmicky & didn’t add that much to the text but fuck. that’s my boy & i want to reread it right now. 4.5/5 ALSO it’s a crime no literary weirdo woman has written ‘a portrait of the artist’s sister’ about delia ‘dilly’ dedalus, shadow of stephen’s mind, quick far & daring, teaching herself french from a 3rd hand primer while her father drinks the nonexistent family fortune away and her older brother is getting drunk on a beach & starting fights w/ soldiers bc he’s a smartarse

[ganymedesclock]

ALL RIGHTY, onto them TFA people. since these take a lot more out of me than I was expecting, I’m gonna close this particular meme for now and not take any more asks.

Bear in mind these reads are only as far as SUV: Society of Ultimate Villainy and I would really prefer to avoid any spoilers! I’ve already seen some and it’s not fun. And yes, I do read the tags/replies on this post so watch y’alls spoilery mouths, people.

@numinousbones said:prowl and shiro for the ask meme!

Shiro was last masterpost, so, Prowl!

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life

Prowl is my absolute favorite out of the main crew so far and that’s pretty darn hot competition since most of the TFA main cast won me over fast and hard. I mostly love how deeply expressive he is with his noticeably flat affect and how this isn’t met with a “ha ha but what is Prowl feeling or thinking??? he’s such an impossibly unreadable enigma.” Prowl does have his enigmatic qualities but they are not tied to his autistic traits.

Also when he grinned really big in Megatron Rising Part 2 that absolutely melted my heart. Prowl, you are like almost definitely a child soldier career assassin with deep personal issues where do you get off being that cute.

hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang

Evaluating the attractiveness of robots is. weird. I like Prowl’s color scheme and also him being a delicate-built lanky motorcycle man.

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

This was a tough one. I almost went with Ravenclaw or Slytherin, and excluded the former because while Prowl is smart and observant, he doesn’t particularly value knowledge for its own sake- his curiosity and fascination is saved for specific things that capture his interest. 

And Slytherin is right out- Prowl might be ambitious, but the other side of Slytherin is interpersonal loyalty, maintenance of a trusted circle, and while Prowl heavily benefits from that, he relies on others to build it for him, and often doesn’t really think to reach out to it.

Thus, Gryffindor remains- because if there’s one thing to be said about Prowl, he’s very headstrong- about what he believes in, about what he thinks needs to be done. He pushes tenacity further and further to the point that in Fistful of Energon in particular, “whatever it takes” is practically his mantra.

best quality:

His empathetic side is pretty prominent, especially when that’s the thing that reigns him in during Fistful of Energon. Where his mind can justify almost anything with the urgent, hand-to-mouth way he seems used to operating, he sets his compass to his heart to figure out if he’s going too far. Also, he loves cats, and that’s adorable.

worst quality:

Prowl. Prowl for the love of fuck I don’t know what your backstory is yet but these implications are incredibly viciously unhappy please just. pursue journaling. Get a cat. Talking to your teammates might be too uncomfortable and you’re afraid of the only friends you’ve had in a while judging you and that’s understandable but please talk to someone, and, of course, you won’t, not until this becomes an informative but upsetting episode plot. :/

ship them with:

I have no Prowl ships at present. Mostly I’m trying to figure out what exactly his approximate age ‘in human years’ is. 

brotp them with:

Honestly Ratchet loaning him the EMP generator in Fistful of Energon was a pretty deep statement of trust, which makes me really want to see the two of them interacting more in positive situations. As far as relationships we’ve actually seen, I really like his interactions with Bulkhead and Optimus.

needs to stay away from:

I Still Don’t Know Prowl’s Backstory disclaimer but nobody gets like that without someone else setting things up and I have three guesses who and all of them start with “fucking” and end with “Megatron.”

misc. thoughts:

I have a Prowl backstory theory and it’s one part the entire way he relates to Grimlock and one part “so anybody, at any point, gonna call Prowl on his ability to fly and noticeably dark, murky color scheme compared to literally every other autobot we have clapped eyeballs on”

@theicombaticon​ said:  Hi! Since you're doing the character asks and I haven't seen you say as much about her.....what are your thoughts on Sari?

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life 

So Sari is one of the few details I knew about Transformers Animated before watching it (specifically her having some sort of relationship with Cybertron/ not being all human) but I didn’t have that many assumptions about her character, but whoa nelly does she deliver.

I would seriously point to Sari as a case study in how to attach a Kid Sidekick to any kind of long-running franchise. Because she’s narratively, perfect- has a well-defined niche, conflicts and problems, unique and reasonable relationships with multiple characters, she’s cute, endearing, has character flaws and conflicts, has nicely diversified interests and is proactive in a way that’s both realistic and effective. 

hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang

She Is An Eight Year Old.

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

In like... the third damn episode Sari basically told the gods to fuck off and brought Optimus back from the dead because what’s the point of gaming the system if you can’t punch the world hard enough to make it cough your friend back up and that is like the most Slytherin possible exercise in heroism I have ever seen, ever.

best quality:

Honestly I love this scheming eight-year-old. I love her heroics and equally obvious inclination to break the rules because. what are you gonna do??? stop her?

worst quality: 

I mean she has character flaws but a lot of them are related to her debilitating loneliness and the growing horrified realization that a lot of her life was living in a kind of narrow protected bubble that her father made for her because the possibility for magic destiny aside, the Allspark itself pretty clearly implied that her story isn’t one that she particularly is gonna enjoy hearing.

And that just feels... mean to criticize. She’s eight. She’s doing the best she can. That’s only so much. 

ship them with: 

This Is An Entire Child.

brotp them with: 

Her sibling relationship with Bee and Bulkhead is adorable, and I would LOVE to see more out of her interactions with Ratchet but this is because I want to see Ratchet interact more with everyone because I love Ambulance Dad from the bottom of my heart.

But y’know what I really, really want? I honestly want Arachnia and Sari to take their grudging mutual same-hat to the next level. I want Arachnia to become Sari’s terrible decisions big sister. By their powers combined they would be literally unstoppable. Optimus gets to find out second hand what sort of shit his sorta surrogate niece and his Significant It’s Complicated have been up to when Arachnia rolls up an hour past midnight like “guess who’s officially a wanted criminal in Botswana?” 

There is at least one (1) heist in which Arachnia gets Sari to climb in the vents to infiltrate a place, which she complains about the entire time but is mollified when someone corners her and tauntingly asks what a Little Girl can possibly threaten him with and then Sari’s just like “oh, y’know” and a giant spider crashes through the wall.

needs to stay away from:

Fuck you, Powell.

misc. thoughts:

Literally my only qualm with Sari is why the hell doesn’t she take her pigtails and hairclips off to sleep. What’s up with that Sari. I know you’re some manner of bizarre cyborg child but what.

Anonymous said: TFA Optimus Prime

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life 

So I’ve been very aware of Transformers for a long time because it’s pretty impossible not to be, but I’ve also been obstinately indifferent to it for a long time. Watched the first episode of Prime ages ago, really didn’t get into it, haven’t really felt compelled to look further until friends of mine whose cartoon tastes I trust talked me into TFA.

Optimus... won me over a lot. It’s really nice to see energy and color breathed into a character who’s such an archetypal cornerstone hero- he feels fleshed out and this allows me to actually connect with him as a character.

hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang

I know all the autobots have pretty baby blues but like... Optimus in particular. They are nice. I also like the curvature of his mouth because especially in his more snide expressions (e.g. The Headmaster Returns) it means that Optimus Prime, Headliner Hero of the Transformers Franchise, goes >:3 sometimes. Also when he’s sorta miffed about something, it makes him look like he’s pouting.

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

See the interesting thing here is Optimus is exactly the kind of person who’d get incredibly snippy at the Hufflepuff House reputation, but, what mostly sticks with me is that fitting with his fireman’s motif, Optimus’s primary weapon in this setting is a fire axe- which is not a weapon meant for fighting. It’s a tool- meant for clearing obstructions in the way of rescuing people. 

This is both a rather powerful statement of confidence- it implies that the enemies he faces down are obstacles, rather than rivals, reflecting both his formidable skill as a combatant and the certain degree of unforgiving pressure he brings to bear on people he sees as obstructing what needs to be done- and it heavily suggests that to Optimus, combat is a labor of necessity, not something particularly glorious or to be reveled in.

Optimus is a hard worker. His morals are stated repeatedly in someone willing to put his nose to the grind and who would rather be doing meaningful work with people he finds honorable than reveling in glory. In a meta sense in Garbage In, Garbage Out, an episode partially about being a hero and what that makes, the first thing we see Optimus doing is personally hauling waste because it’s a job that needs to be done- and it’s Prowl that comments on the indignity of it all, not Optimus who was actively covered in other people’s trash.

best quality:

Optimus has an impressive tenacity of personal character. He’s, I think, one of the big archetypal Lawful Good characters out there, and his willingness to do things like take Sentinel out in Mission Accomplished is contrasted by his willingness to calmly walk right up to Ultra Magnus and state that he accomplished his objective- if Optimus appears to rebel from the system, it’s because, in his eyes, he’s not the one turning away from the ideal of what should be- it’s Sentinel, it’s Magnus, it’s Cybertron that turns away and leaves him to chase what he’s sure is the right course of action, and, as a Lawful Good, he is also willing to quietly turn himself in and face the consequences of his actions as long as he feels his point has been made.

worst quality: 

He feels pretty overly responsible for other people. This can lead him to sink deep into personal grief (see Along Came A Spider and the way he parsed Elita’s fate before reuniting with Arachnia), it can make him a little pushy and intrusive (see the way he needles Ratchet about opening up to him about his history in Transform And Roll Out part 1 and again in Thrill Of The Hunt, the latter only acknowledging there’s a reason Ratchet might not want to discuss it after something similar happened to him) and, at his absolute worst, it can make him incredibly snappy and controlling when he feels like every minor thing counts (several occasions, but Megatron Rising part 1 is the cleanest example)

ship them with: 

Arachnia. It’s pretty clear they both miss each other terribly, though, they’ve still got a lot of work to do.

brotp them with: 

BRIDGE CREW! BRIDGE CREW! I particularly like his interactions with Ratchet (surprise there, huh) and Prowl.

I’d like to invite Sentinel to this party but Sentinel has a lot of emotional shit he needs to sort out first, because, while Sentinel is clearly at least awkwardly trying to patch their friendship, he’s still not... listening to Optimus about what’s important to him.

needs to stay away from:

Nobody in particular that’s not a general hazard to all autobots.

misc. thoughts:

For the longest time I thought Optimus was the equivalent of a twentysomething but now I am genuinely wondering if he’s actually like. basically eighteen. The bridge crew is just Ratchet shepherding a bunch of teenagers around.

@sepublic asked: General opinion on Lugnut?

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life 

Lugnut’s honestly got me really intrigued. From his appearance to the sheer raw firepower he’s capable of to the way he is absolutely, to the bottom of his soul terrified of Megatron and at the same time snarls at the idea of anyone so much as suggesting Megatron is less than a grand and benevolent god resplendent on the planet raises some deeply upsetting questions. There’s clearly something to him we haven’t heard, yet.

hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang

Not necessarily in the conventional sense but he’s got a really appealing monsterish design that makes him stand out a lot visually.

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

Fervent, unyielding loyalty, personal ferocity in the face of battle. Lugnut never abdicates unless it’s in the face of Megatron- if anything, we’ve never seen him afraid of anything except his beloved lord.

best quality:

Loyalty and tenacity, definitely. 

worst quality: 

Like Sari, it feels a little mean to criticize Lugnut because I think it’s pretty obvious a lot of his flaws aren’t really of his own crafting outside of stubbornness. He’s pretty obviously profoundly indoctrinated, and the purr to Megatron’s voice in Lost And Found when he calls Lugnut “truly loyal” is deeply disquieting when we know thanks to Soundwave and Grimlock both that Megatron is quite fond of child soldiers... and Lugnut looks almost nothing like a conventional cybertronian.

ship them with: 

I’m not convinced he’s not a child given cybertronians basically pupate directly to their adult size and then stay there so I consider him off the shipping table.’

brotp them with: 

None of his current canon connections seem super appealing to me. I mean, in an AUish sense I really like the idea of after Megatron’s defeated or driven off Earth, Isaac Sumdac taking in Lugnut and helping rehabilitate him. The guy just... really deserves better than to fling himself reverently at the feet of an abusive person who actively finds his worship either obligatory or annoying.

needs to stay away from:

Megatron, child protection services has a sniper on the roof.

misc. thoughts:

Lugnut’s really not a guy I expected to care about this much, which is kinda the story of TFA. If I didn’t go in expecting to love the character, I was proven wrong.

[iamhowardbrown]

i am greta

I Am Greta "I don't care about being popular. I care about climate justice." Please comment on this quote by Greta. How does it differ from the priorities of many teens? Do you see any irony in how popular Greta has become worldwide? This Quote by Greta is intriguing because she is not looking for empathy for herself, yet empathy for the planet. Many teens today are growing up in a world where narcissism is socially acceptable among all ages. Many people try very hard to share their life views with the world in hopes of some grand recognition or payout. Almost to the point where it is abnormal to not post about your life. In fact to the point that you have no life if your not posting in some sort of way. Many people are falling in to the’ look at me look at me’ ‘look what i can do’ category of life and just desire to be seen. Although this has positive qualities in some instances like during a quarantine, it is the reverse for someone like Greta. Whereas shes saying listen to my words and think about your actions. She has become no more popular than any activist making strides. She just happens to be young. Did you attend the #ClimateStrike just one year ago in Foley Square in NYC? If yes, what was your experience first hand? If you tuned in virtually were you surprised how many people across the world were galvanized by her message? I did not tune in or attend the climate strike. Personally I work every day to reduce my carbon footprint. I also express the same passion to my peers and encourage them to do so. I feel that many of the strikes and protests that are happening around the world are designed for a different audience and have been effective. The youth are often forced to sit by and watch as adults put in the backbreaking gut-wrenching work. It is phenomenal that a young girl not even of voting age can inspire so many to pay more attention to something they should already be doing. I love that people have recognized her worlds and are rallying together in an effort to create a larger voice around climate justice as well as social justice as a whole. Most people don't realize the impact of climate change, or the importance of bees and pollination and these are issues that shouldn't make us uncomfortable yet more curious about how we can live differently together. Greta is doing that by the impact she's having on the youth of the world. Why do you think a girl with Asperger's syndrome has inspired a generation of young people to rise up for climate? It's easy to sit by and watch. Its always harder to get out and do something and i think that Greta is helping people wake up. Particularly when it comes to the current youth generations who are spoiled and lazy. She is classified as having a syndrome yet does not let that define her. There are many youths in standard good health who are slowly realizing that they have no excuse and should be doing more. She is also showing how important it is to apply yourself to what you believe in and is reminding people that if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything. I believe that many youths have been waiting for a superhero/heroin type of figure or an underdog if you will to actually have an impact so they can see that confidence is a state of mind and that coupled with the accessibility of media and narcissistic culture has ushered in a passive-aggressive guilt trip era. Almost to the point your not cool if your not doing something about the issues we face. Its almost as if Greta has made the challenge to everyone to take your pick whether it be climate change or injustice around the world, if your not constantly educating yourself and acting then you may not be as cool as you think you are. Do you think the pandemic has dampened or amplified the climate situation? How can we innovate beyond the limitations imposed by the pandemic to create new strategies for activism? Please provide specific examples. I do feel the pandemic has affected climate change. For a while, there were fewer people traveling, which in turn reduced pollution from the burning of fuels. Factories were closed etc., I would like to think that had some environmental impact although I'm not certain. Additionally, it reduced surface pollution as well because people were managing their garbage from home, and most likely creating less waste globally due to the lack of availability to goods. We shifted online which I believe affected tree farming and paper production, however brief it was id also like to believe this had some impact of some sort. The same goes for water pollution, less people in the water or on beaches should have had some impact even if minuscule. This Pandemic has created a new platform for digital activism. Whereas more people are reading and creating messages that can be seen around the world and taking time to look closely at global issues and personal behavior choices that can have a more positive and efficient impact. "...if a few girls can get headlines all over the world just by not going to school for a few weeks, imagine what we could do together if we wanted to." --Greta Thunberg, 2018  What are your thoughts on this quote? I absolutely agree. There is strength in numbers.  That is a known fact, and that it can be used for good or bad. Women are finally catching the rhythm of social recognition. This is past due, and it has been to often the women who have the most positive impacts are overshadowed by anything you can think of. To that fact the idea of the issue becomes more important than gender I suppose, however, I feel it is also a common thread in social history that not all women get along. I feel that its past time to undo this reality for some and misconceptions for others because it does affect how we get things done. Yes, we must all work together, but an organized group of women young or old can have major impacts on how the world responds to an issue. I think this quite by Greta is important because it points out the fact that we will easily pay attention to something simple like education but not the planet. It is important for girls to go to school especially after such a long history of oppression related to education and all the women that suffered for trying to learn. I also feel the fact of the matter is girls need to stand by one another and lead the world into the next phase problem solving and troubleshooting, and Greta is challenging girls to imagine what that could be and to not be afraid to be more than they are expected to be. Choose one favorite quote from the "Our House is on Fire" speech included in No One is Too Small to Make a Difference and comment. Why do you think this speech inspired so many memes? Find a meme to include on your blog. No one is too small to make a difference. “Greta Thunberg is the Spark but we are the Wildfire.” this quote reminds me of the impact of what's going on now with wildfires in actuality. Then if you couple that with metaphor look how many people's lives have drastically been impacted, look at how bad the air is, look at how widespread the damages are. This idea or metaphor is the level of impact we can have if we work together to start focusing all efforts on saving the planet. It is true government and big oil are a leading cause, but it's only because we allow them to be. We arent striking fuel-based cars, and machines. We aren't limiting our elected officials to those who only have plans to save the world. It is up to us to make the choice to raise our standard for the global quality of living. The rich and the poor will perish all the same if the world goes to shit. There will be no rich if there's no one to do the work that puts them in the high chair, and greed will soon be overshadowed by the desire to sustain basic needs for survival. No one is too big to make a difference either. It's just a matter of making the choice to do something. There were so many memes because we live in a time where humor is interchangeable with sarcasm and naivety. These issues are not funny however if making a joke about it brings awareness and change then maybe it should be welcomed, however, I don't feel that it should be at the expense of someone or something sad. “Greta Thunberg is the spark but we are the wildfire.”--Naomi Klein. Please comment. Has Greta's activism lit a fire inside you? What actions have you been inspired to take? How have your habits changed? I would say Greta has lit a fire in me too when it comes to activism, making me want to get out to some of the protests to take more photography if I ever get a chance to. I am proud of what she's doing and very happy about it. When I was 16 I was a freshman at Parsons and had no interest in activism, yet now, I definitely feel more passionate about climate change and take action every day even with the simplest tasks. I also believe I experience the effects of climate change every day as well. So it's important to me that young people keep making strides, working together, and sharing awareness. Teen Girls are Leading Climate Strikes Helping to Change the Face of Environmentalism

(Washington Post) "“We have a new wave of contention in society that’s being led by women. … And the youth climate movement is leading this generational shift." 46% of girls consider climate issues extremely important compared to 23% of boys. Why do you think this gender disparity exists? Why are girls stepping up to helm the movement? Varshini Prakash is a 26-year-old activist and the co-founder of the Sunrise Movement. They are facilitating conversations with lawmakers like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senator Diane Feinstein to take the lead on saving the planet and influencing political change that will support this effort. Varshini was exposed to the impacts of climate change at age 11 and by the time she was in college she was already involved in activism. With support from elected officials like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, she has been able to expand her voice on issues and become an even bigger role model. This is great for influencing other women and young girls to be active and vocal. When you see someone that looks like you doing something and making a difference, that can have a huge impact on the choices you make in some cases. I believe society is getting more in the habit of glorifying heroins across the world and particularly as it relates to social injustice. I believe that this trend of recognition will do the world a lot of good by undoing the warped barbie images that have long been portrayed and used to facilitate control. On the other hand, when it comes to boys it is often the case where there are so many male figures, whether it be in public policy, sports, media, or service, that get recognition for the most minuscule of deeds that it clouds the idea of what should be recognized or what is ‘doing good’, and this has been the case for many years. For instance, men work hard and get dirty, women do the dirty work and stay behind, this has been a reality for many generations. Although much has changed I feel boys are taking a back seat in many cases simply because they are not raised to make noise. Whereas women's voices have been repressed for so long that shouting and speaking out is an understatement. Therefore the call to action is inherent in women of today with more figures in the light and leading the conversation, there is an opportunity to be involved that didn't exist for many years on this level. I also feel that it's important for us to unassign the gender association when it comes to fighting for the planet compared to fighting for national security, they are one and the same. Fighting for the planet has to become a ‘tough guy/gal’ thing, and killing people should/could be viewed as weak. We need each other to persevere and it's only these types of disparities that will hold us back from saving the world.

[artificialqueens]

Driven Away - Pharon - Part 1 - Cece

Hello my lovelies, everyones asking for Pharon including me so i figured i’d save you guys from the drought even if it doesnt help me :( becuz i’d be the happiest ever if someone did this for me!

Quick little thing though, this Pharon is not for everyone and by that i mean TW!

We have a MAJOR trigger warning on Alcoholism and Alcohol in general, a very present and main topic to the story, so be safe!

It will also involve some forms of violence, sorta kinda hit and run, cuss words, hospital, and i can’t think of anything else that would need a TW, maybe i’ll including smoking but not yet.

a few things: this AU is in a universe in which The world saw Sharon as the bad guy in the whole Phi/Sharon fight, and Phi Phi as the good part of it.

Female pronouns used but they are very much men, and things will evenutally switch up names and pronouns.

enjoy, leave feedback, and no i am not sure how many parts will be made of this <3 toodles - cece

“Call me back, please Sharon, I wanna talk.” Phi Phi begged into the phone as she made her way to her car. “actually, we need to talk."

She ducked as she got into the drivers seat of her car and plopped her cellphone down in the cup holder to her side. She slammed the car door, getting some of the frustration she had with Sharon go.

The fourth episode had just aired and not only were the editors harsh on the spooky queen, but so was all of social media. People just gagging over the fight but 99% being on the side of Phi Phi and sending Sharon a big fuck you in the form of "Go back to Party city, for real bitch”

When her and Sharon had agreed to do the tiff between them to get to the top two and become iconic, it was never done in plans that one would receive all the hate, but here she was feeling sick to her stomach over the hate she saw pouring in for Sharon.

She wasn’t truly at fault, they had made the pact together and editors just decided to side with Phi Phi for it. Why, she wondered, why could they not make it a both side thing, but then she remembered it was reality tv and instead just wished it on her.

As she drove her car aimlessly, wondering where on earth to go she had to pull over after ten minutes of driving. Her mind couldn’t let this go, as she opened up the twitter app to see thousands of more things pouring it. Ignoring all the positive and Sharon bashing tweets she personally got, she went straight to see a hashtag had been started.

#Sharonthehate had been started and holy crap did it already have a good amount of entries for being such a lame ass pun.

She looked through a few, not believing that these words could come out of people to post cowardlessly on twitter because of a show.

One tweet caught her attention however, it read: “Just saw the bitch in the flesh @ Gene’s bar, hope she drives herself home #sharonthehate”

Phi Phi not only grimaced at how awful the thought was, but then she thought of the fact she knew exactly where Genes bar was. Not only was she not gonna let that tweet come true and find Sharon dead behind the wheel of a car, alcohol still on her breathe even in death, but she would finally get to talk to her.

She started her car back up and took the familiar roads to get to the establishment, only taking a few short mineuetes to pull in the parking lot and hop out of her car. She made her way up to the front doors of the place, and swung open the door, making a bell ring.

She looked around as she placed her hands in her pockets, the cold from the metal of the door handle still stung at her skin. She finally spotted a person, sitting up at the bar, who’s back of the head resembled her fellow queen.

The place was low key empty she noticed seeing as the only other person sitting on one of the actual stools at the bar and not a booth or table was someone all the way on the other side.

“Sharon.” Phi Phi said as she walked up behind the girl, who spun around from hearing her name. The spinning of the chair was a lot looser than she thought it’d be as she spilled some of her clear drink (no doubt vodka) onto the other queen as she struggled to not fall off her seat.

She gave Phi Phi a glare who was picking up some napkins to dry at her shirt which now smelled just like the heavy substance. She spun back around catching herself by smacking her hands down on the bar, and also using it to signal the bartender.

“Double shot again, keep them coming.” She told him, watching him nod as she just let her head fall onto the cool top of the bar.

Phi Phi went to the stool next to the spooky queen and got up on it, now on the same level as her friend and able to get her attention better (especially with how short she was).

“Goooo the fuck awayyyy.” Sharon mumbled, something Phi Phi just could understand between the slur in the talk and how her mouth was covered.

“I was hoping you’d just had your phone turned off before but clearly my fear is right and you are mad at me.” She said which made Sharon come out from where she hid her face in her arms.

“Mad?” Sharon asked before bursting into hysterical laughter, no doubt the alcohol was already getting to her. “You’re the reason everyone hates me, and i’m gonna do something like thank you for it? Hell nooooo!"

The bartender walked over with the double shot about to hand it to Sharon when Phi Phi cut in "isn’t over serving something you could get a fine for, or i don’t know, your alcohol license revoked?"

She gave the man a glare until he back off and took the glorious liquid away from Sharon making her grow madder as she stared desperately at the stuff in the shot glass be taken away.

"You BITCH!” She screamed, getting the people in the joint to look, but grow disinterested shortly after. “You take away my fans and now your taking away my drink, in what hell is that something you think you can do."

"You’re drunk Sharon, you know why I told him not to serve you.” She muttered

“I can handle some drinks, you don’t own me.” Sharon screamed out as she picked her coat up from the stool on the other side of her.

“Thats not what I’ve heard,” She said before lowering her voice. “I know you’ve previously had alcohol issues, i’m being a helpful friend, whether you see it now or not.”

"You are not my friend! You are nothing to meeee, I want you out of my life you career wrecker-er!“

The illiterate words spat out at Phi Phi hurt, a lot, but she knew a mad Sharon was better than a dead one, so as her heart broke and Sharon made a bee line for the door she decided to follow.

"You don’t have to like me but let me drive you home!” She yelled out into the cold as she sprinted outside after her.

“Go to hell.” She said as she fiddled with her keys.

“Sharon you cannot drive while drunk, not only for your safety but others too!” She said as she got right up to sharon who was now in her car, closing the door on Phi Phi.

“I can drive, i’ll be fine, as fine a s i can be!” She said as she gripped the wheel of her car and closed her eyes. She was upset, frustrated and didn’t need the voice of phi phi to tell her what to do. She would never admit it but she was a little dazed like phi phi suspected.

“I’m not letting you leave here and kill yourself!” Phi Phi said as she stood arms crossed in from the the vehicle blocking the girl from going forward.

‘idiot’ Sharon thought as she looked at her and began to press her foot down on the petal. 'i can still go backwards’ .

Her foot goes down and goes back up straight away after hearing a sound that made her mouth drop. She swore- okay she SWORE, the car was in reverse but nope, she’d just managed to hit Phi Phi O'Hara with her car.

“Shit, Shit, Shit..” she repeated as she hoped out of her car to go to the girl who was laid on the pavement.

She bent down to the girl and moved her hand to push away some hair revealing blood that got onto Sharon’s fingers as well.

“Phi Phi wake up, tell me i’m a drunk or anything just wake the fuck up!” Sharon begged as she shook the girl. no response.

She quickly placed her ear down onto the chest of the fellow queen and was relieve to hear it’s still beating, faint but there.

She picked up the phone out of phi Phi’s pocket, thanking everything that it was still working as she dialed the 3 numbers of 9-1-1.

“Ambulance to Gene’s bar.” She just spat before dropping the phone and scurrying off to her car to get out of there.

She didn’t want Phi Phi dead, god no she didn’t, and she wanted to stay to make sure that she wasn’t but she knew hitting Phi Phi was the cherry on top to get her all the hate and death threats in the world.

So Sharon drove off, guilty, and red handed as she wondered if her co star was okay, another part forgetting any hate she had in her stubborn little heart for the girl who was in a puddle of blood thanks to her and her intake of alcohol.

She didn’t know what was worse, Phi phi could be dead, fans could think she did it and destory her, or the fact that she wanted another drink to soothe herself when that was the reason she was in the situation in the first place.

[gaiatheorist]

“Reintroduction of apex predators.”

(My head is playing the 2am game again, there are dozens of things I should be concentrating on, but I’m busy going mad. It’s fine, I usually come back eventually.) 

2am-ish. “Bleurgh. Ick. Cold. Timesit?”

Yes, ‘Bleurgh’, and yes ‘Ick’, that’ll be the wine. Yes, ‘Cold’, because I’d fallen asleep on the sofa again. ‘Timesit?’, bollocks, I didn’t put my phone on charge, so there’s an on-screen reminder that a pending update couldn’t be installed overnight. I hate phone updates, I always worry that something will go wrong, which is ridiculous, because I haven’t ‘always’ had a mobile phone, and there must, logically, be a way to un-install an update if something does cock up. It’s just after half past three now, so it’s taken me about an hour and a half to convince myself that ‘nothing bad will happen’ if I update my phone. Not that updating my phone would stop OTHER bad things from happening, I’m not THAT mad.

The sensible thing to do if you wake up at 2am on the sofa would be to go to bed. I’m not sensible, and, since the brain haemorrhage, there’s been even more of the “Ping! Wide awake!” malarkey. It is a behaviour I need to change, and, yet again, I failed to do so. (Side-thought about setting up a GO TO BED screen-saver on my phone?) I’m differently-mad to my friend, who called around for a cup of tea after his eye test this week, we share some similar traits, and we’re open-ish with each other. He wakes up every single morning crippled by confusion, processing the fact that he’s one of billions of bipedal beings on the surface of a spinning rock, and, every day, it takes him ‘hours’ to shake off that confusion, and regain some semblance of functionality. In a way, I’m glad I just wake up in the middle of the night, with hundreds of fragments of nonsense-thought running through my head, because his existential anxiety every morning sounds awful. (Waking up at 2am, knowing it’s going to knock-on my sleep pattern again, and immediately checking the internet to see if anything has happened is awful, too, but I’ve normalised it to an extent. It’s my awful, I’m used to it.)

We’re similar in that I knew where his post-vasectomy anecdote was going as soon as he started it, I guessed the ‘masturbating with a bag of frozen peas clamped to his testicles’ part, but the ‘while the police raided the house next door for cannabis’ twist was a surprise. We talked non-stop for an hour, about what utter chaotic twats we were two decades ago, about the times he’d driven the ex and I home out-of-his-mind drunk, bouncing off kerbs, that I couldn’t remember, because I was also out-of-my-mind. He couldn’t remember the time he’d stayed at our old house, and put his foot THROUGH one of the stairs. We both remembered disgusting days of just not going to work, and arsing about. We both remembered the Ouija board, his unflattering nickname for one of my friends, and how unpredictable-unstable our weird little pre-bubble group was. We’ve concluded that we were twats, and we’re trying not to be any more.

Part of his twattery was multiple affairs, his wife is an absolute stoic, and keeps taking him back, they’ve divorced twice. He’s married her 3 times, and she was his third wife, I think. Other people’s business, isn’t it? After one of the affairs, she banned him from associating with us, like she was a grown-up, and we were teenagers, leading him astray. I became ‘Her!’, and the focus of her hate, more so than the ‘other women’ he was having affairs with. (To clarify, there was never any of that between us.) I’d forgotten about being ‘Her!’, but, apparently she hasn’t, and still resents me. I’ll live, but now sort-of-understand why I don’t have his actual mobile number, he only ever contacts me on Fakebook, AND he deletes the chat-messages. “She’d go mad if she knew I was here.” For fuck’s sake, unwittingly duplicitous-complicit in a married man’s sneaking-about.

I went the long way around that, didn’t I? There are several escaped crickets having a little adventure on my living room carpet, I really ought to pick them up.

OK, I woke up at an unreasonable time, and did what I shouldn’t have done, in checking the news, to see if anything had happened. With me, that’s a hang-up from September 11th, I’d been ill with a migraine, and missed the news, I plunged into obsessive-panic about not missing ‘The News’, which, back then, was on the TV, there was one computer in the house, which took about a century to boot up, and then the rest of your life to connect to the dial-up. How times have changed. I’m not the only one doing it these days, logging on, and hoping for the best, but acknowledging that there is the possibility that something catastrophically ominous is on the horizon. Please, please, let me find something in the news that’s not Him, or Her, like the lovely nun yesterday. 

Lettuce? I don’t buy it as a matter of course, the father-in-law used to plant millions of the ‘butterhead’ bastards on the allotment, horrible, floppy-limp things, full of mud and slugs, for years my fridge was guaranteed to contain mud and slugs. “Here, lass, I’ve fetched you a lettuce!” I don’t like lettuce all that much.

Wikipedia? OK, it’s a side-swipe at people telling huge great big massive lies, but the ‘many hands make light work’ approach is encouraging. A chain is only ever as strong as its weakest link, but so many links could effectively knit truth-chain-mail. Too relevant, though, too linked to real-time events.

Bullshit Barbie? No thanks, I read that yesterday.

I flicked through, looking for something that wasn’t ‘that’, ready to be witty, or engaging, or insightful before some knobhead invariably weighs in with “How is this news?” That’s the fucking point, knobheads, we’re aware of the news, which is why we’re also looking at “10 ways to tuck in a shirt.”, or whatever, with courses as heavy as these ones, we absolutely need palate-cleansers as well. The ‘breaking’ banner will pop up if something happens, in the meantime, we’ll read the fluff, and the filler.

It would appear that it’s not working, though, the distraction-method. I clicked on an article about a proposal to reintroduce lynx in Northumbria, thinking that couldn’t possibly have any “We’re all fucked!” connotations. (Except if you’re a roe deer, apologies to any roe deer reading this...) I can see the logic, the lynx would be brought in to control the roe deer population. The deer haven’t done anything ‘wrong’, they’re just being deer, you know, making more deer, eating leaves, making more deer to eat more leaves, when the tree really needed those leaves, to photosynthesise, and keep us all breathing, and such. The local farmers don’t want the lynx, because they worry for their livestock, and I’m relatively certain there’s probably some knobhead setting up Fakebook pages that say lynx eat babies. (Note ‘relatively’, and ‘probably’, I talk shit, but I’m not Bullshit Barbie.) 

It’s not the ‘people refusing to accept science, because it threatens their lambs’ thing, it was one phrase, used repeatedly. ‘Apex predator’ (Food-chain, chain-mail, my head is misbehaving, but that’s why I’m rattling it all out here, to purge my cranium of these thought-snippets.) Apex predator, top of the food-chain, it’s nature’s way, because most creatures on this revolving rock don’t have access to family planning. Oh. The thing at the top of the food-chain, or food-pyramid, or food-web, depending on how they’re teaching it now eats the things below it. (Fucking hell, woman, park THAT Gaia Theory, this potential catastrophe for the planet ISN’T a global phone-update, move away from the rats-and-cockroaches ideation.) 

Nature does its thing, or, at least it did, until we started trying to boss it. We’re twats, some more so than others, we kill things we have no intention of eating. We kill each other. We bugger about with the environment, and then complain about lettuce. We, in the UK have eradicated most of our apex predators, what chance do a handful of nappy-eating foxes have of controlling the rabbit population? (Especially if people in silly clothes carry on with their ‘sport’.) We ate all the dodos, and all of that particular kind of turtle, we’re killing the fucking BEES, and we all know how that ends. (Removes tinfoil hat.) 

We have new apex predators, and we need to figure out how to keep ourselves as safe as we can, because these new apex predators don’t behave in exactly the same way as the ones we’re used to. The ‘bubbles’ are electronic versions of stone-age tribes’ perimeter-spikes against sabre-toothed tigers. (I don’t know, I’ve already told you I never paid attention in History, sometimes I used to pick my ear until it bled, so I could get out of class to see matron for a plaster.) I’m dithering around a vague notion that our greatest weapon is the truth, but also dabbling with the idea that our strength is our number,  not in the same way as animals produce ‘spare’ young, because they know some will be eaten, though. We are little, but there are lots of us, aside from good guys always coming last, we DO need to remember that we’re human, in the face of this inhumanity, the first big collection of little things that stoops to the level of the new predators is on a very shaky foundation. 

This thing will run its course, as all things do, we just need to remember to show our arses to bears, and punch sharks on the nose, not the other way around. Personally, I’d prefer this fuckpuddle to be mopped up with paper rather than projectiles, and soon, because this limbo-uncertainty is exhausting us, and sending us mad. Nobody’s going to pop out from behind the sofa with a hidden camera crew and shout “Fooled you, you’ve been part of the biggest reality TV experiment ever!” We need to watch and wait, keep ourselves and each other safe.