#I still feel this is a little weird but eh I am content

[sins-of-the-sea]

//Josep smiling is such a rarity for me to draw--not to mention REALLY FUCKING HARD TO DO--I made an edited version an icon.

[runwayrunway]

THE MAN ON THE TAIL: AN ALASKA AIRLINES WHOISIT

Last time on Runway Runway...

The short answer, reiterated: nobody knows.

The long answer: Nobody knows. A lot of people have no idea or have never even thought about it. Many people have a person in mind they think he resembles, but they know that it's probably wrong. A non-negligible number think they know, but they do not necessarily agree with each other. After the research I have done on the topic, I believe that I do know who this face is, but this is not going to be an argument for my position - merely a presentation of this logo's origins and the theories as to who this face represents, a few thoughts about community and feeling like something is part of yours, and the story of an incredible man.

But first, a content warning, and a disclaimer:

This post will discuss use of an outdated term used to refer to Inuit and Yupik peoples which is broadly considered offensive. It is, unfortunately, inseparable from the story of the face on Alaska Airlines' tailfins. While I have discussed somewhat heavy subjects, including racism, on this blog before, it has generally been in reference to statistics or vague allusions to commonly held offensive sentiments, and I think that discussing a specific word which has caused pain to a group of people requires a little bit more of a specific warning.

Below the cut, there will be discussions surrounding Alaska Airlines' use of said word, with a bit on its broader context. This post is not meant to be a downer, and I don't think it ultimately is. But there is a lot to the story of the "happy face", and there is no use telling the warm and fuzzy parts inside the hood of the parka while ignoring the temperature outside of it. There is so much more to this story than outdated language, but it is still a part of it that can't be left out without overlooking the very people who the tail represents.

I imagine the context of that warning, unfortunately, becomes clear immediately.

Indigenous Alaskans make up 15% of the state's population, made up of various groups of what are called 'circumpolar peoples', who historically lived in the very northernmost habitable parts of the planet - Alaska, Siberia, Greenland, and parts of Canada and Scandinavia. While these groups are broadly somewhat related they are distinct in culture and history.

Alaska, specifically, has over 200 federally recognized tribes, around the same number as is present in the entire rest of the country. (That has its own context, but my point here is to illustrate the diversity of indigenous Alaskan background.) These cultures include the Athabaskan, Aleut, Eyak, and the two that those without personal familiarity tend to think of - the Yup'ik and Iñupiaq. All of these terms themselves further comprise multiple communities, and indeed Yup'ik and Iñupiaq refer to specific groups of peoples from the larger groups of Yupik and Inuit peoples - the groups in question being the ones who live in Alaska rather than Siberia or Canada.

The reason this is important is that it is generally agreed that the face on Alaska Airlines' airplanes is an Alaskan Native, and specifically a member of one of these two groups. A few people apparently assume him to be Abraham Lincoln or Bob Marley or some other famous person (in fact, I am editing this to say that one of the replies to my first post was someone saying they'd always thought it was Abraham Lincoln) but I doubt these theories are ever serious. It would be weird to put a representative from Kentucky on a livery for Alaska Airlines (...which admittedly is based in Washington). The reasons for this assumption are fairly straightforward - it's a reasonable leap from a face surrounded by what looks like a fur hood being identified as Alaskan. But I wouldn't be making this post if the answer was just 'eh, some Alaskan Native'. (And I would find using the generic ornament of an indigenous group as branding more than a little tasteless, in all honesty.) It is broadly thought that this logo is based on the likeness of a specific individual. The question is who.

MEET OUR MYSTERY MAN

So, let's start at the obvious place. He's their logo, so...what does Alaska Airlines say about the identity of this mystery man? Let's take a look at the press release for their 2016 rebrand.

I'll be honest, I wasn't keeping up with airline livery news in 2016. Indeed, I wasn't keeping up with much of anything and I can't recall much from that period. So I...did not know about this, and it took the wind out of me a bit when I learned it happened.

So, let's begin with that term. 'Eskimo'. I feel gross even typing it. This is an exonym used to refer broadly to Yupik and Inuit peoples, though many who use it aren't necessarily aware that the term refers to multiple distinct cultures. I've heard it used for the Alaska Airlines man, and I had always assumed this was out of the ignorance of individual people. I live in the United States, where it's still often used casually (as are a few other unfortunate terms other places avoid - the country seems to have perpetually not gotten the memo, so to speak). In Canada, it is more or less universally considered to be offensive, due to the groups in question expressing their opposition to its use, and this seems to be the general trend over time in the US as well. So while, unfortunately, I do hear people casually say it from time to time, that's mostly annoying classmates. I didn't expect to hear it from Alaska Airlines.

The phrasing, however, is just as much of a problem. 'Our' Eskimo, as a probably unintentional consequence of phrasing choices, implies ownership of not just the logo but the man himself. I don't think I particularly need to explain why some might take issue with this.

And take issue they did. There was a petition! The hashtag #notyoureskimo was started on the website formerly known as Twitter. Anchorage Daily News quotes user angelascox making a statement I think really cuts to the quick of it: "No, @AlaskaAir … you don't own an Eskimo."

Alaska Airlines did listen.

Well, that's..........better, I guess. Unfortunately, it does still use the word 'Eskimo'. And I should note that it isn't universally considered offensive and I've found Alaskan Natives who state that they don't mind use of the term, but these seem to be the minority, and as time goes on it's being phased out further and further. In the context of Alaska Airlines' use, the Anchorage Daily News provides a few perspectives:

Maria Shaa Tlaa Williams, director of the Alaska Native Studies program at the University of Alaska Anchorage and Tlingit, said in an email the broader issue is about the use of "a somewhat antiquated word." "(Eskimo) is a colonial term and it should be: Inupiaq, Yup'ik/Cup'ik, Siberian Yupik or even Inuit, or even generic term such as Alaska Native," she said. Bobbie Egan, media relations director for Alaska Airlines, said the company made the decision to keep using the word "Eskimo" after conducting focus groups with Native leaders throughout Alaska, but she did not have details about those focus group results. "Many of our employees and customers commonly refer to themselves as Eskimo and we've always sought the input and counsel of employees and customers," she said.

I do wish those focus group results were made public, but all the same this isn't particularly surprising. Whenever a term begins to be considered offensive this opinion is generally adopted in a bit of a mosaic fashion, with typically younger people first expressing discomfort and those from different walks of life having their own opinions - some more swayed by the distasteful aspects, while others refuse to let that stop them from using a word they've called themselves their whole life. This is broadly true across all sorts of contexts. I do think it's never an outsider's place to critique someone's choice to use whatever language they feel best represents them, but if there is a large portion of the group in question who find it derogatory we should avoid using it ourselves. There are certainly 'outdated' terms I use for myself but would feel a bit unhappy seeing used carelessly by someone who didn't understand what it meant and was using it, bluntly, because they didn't know better or didn't care to know better. If you are from a group which has historically been derided by others you can probably fill in your own example here.

There are a few reasons for the distaste many have for the word 'Eskimo'. To begin with, it's an exonym. This term was not used as an identifier by any of these groups, but by outsiders to refer to them, and particularly by Europeans and settlers who heard these words from other groups they encountered earlier and then never bothered to ask the people in question what they actually called themselves. Beyond the inherent issue of self-determination, the fact that these were the historical users means that it was often pejorative and othering and ought to be left behind with terms like 'oriental'.

The term is generally thought to have originated from a corruption of an exonym used by one or more Algonquian-speaking groups. The most popular conception is that it stems from a Cree term meaning 'raw meat eater', which people understandably find pretty offensive. There are a number of other theories, and recently linguists seem to most support an interpretation that it is derived from an Innu-aimun word meaning 'one who laces a snowshoe'; it could have evolved from both of these terms or neither, and I don't think it matters when it is already widely perceived as meaning something offensive. 'Well, actually'-ing somebody who says a term is offensive to their ethnic group by pointing out a benign linguistic origin is a pretty pointless thing to do - we've had this conversation before about the name Lufthansa. But beyond that, basically every slur I can think of was once a completely innocuous word that just needed someone to invent a hateful enough way to use it. And people have been using this word rather hatefully for centuries. Regardless of origin, it is a dated exonym, and if the groups it refers to don't feel it represents them that's enough reason for me to stop using it.

The other reason that this term is broadly bad to use is that it's just not a good way of conveying which people you're talking about. 'Eskimo' is generally agreed to encompass Yupik and Inuit peoples, which are two large and diverse populations spread across Siberia and North America. These may be closely related and similar cultures but they are not interchangeable. 'Inuit' has recently seen more frequent use as a replacement, which is at least a step away from the language, but is often outright factually incorrect, as it will be used to refer to Yupik people - who are not Inuit, but are the largest indigenous population in Alaska. 'Alaskan Native' and 'circumpolar peoples' exist as umbrella terms which are understood to be umbrella terms by just about everyone, but there is a legitimate misconception that these groups are all the same because of the use of a single term for them.

Maybe Alaska Airlines uses the term because they think 'Alaskan Native' is awkward for a slogan and they don't want to tie themselves into knots by committing to specifying whether the man is Yup'ik or Iñupiaq. That would be a problem, as they don't actually know who he is.

Beyond the term, there is the issue of objectification on a larger scale than phrasing. Annie Wenstrup, the writer of the petition linked earlier, makes an important point - if the Alaska Airlines man is the likeness of a real person, that person has not been paid for its use. Beyond that, Alaska Airlines is using the very concept of an indigenous Alaskan to market itself. There is definitely a dehumanizing element to it. Alaska Airlines is far from the only company to have ever used ethnic groups as branding, and I think that ultimately it's not my place to linger on this topic. It would be wrong to not mention that this is an element of his story, that people do raise this issue, and that this is a discussion that should be had. I, however, don't have a fully developed opinion. This is a conversation for Alaskan Natives to have, I think - I just don't understand the context of their relationship with the airline specifically, and I have no more ownership of the man pictured than Alaska Airlines. Because he was not an object. There is every likelihood that he was a real person.

WHO IS THE MAN ON THE TAIL?

The website mentions a short film. Unfortunately, the Way Back Machine didn't manage to get it, but it did catch the associated article. The thing this article communicates most clearly is that nobody knows who this man is.

Whether the artists were inspired by [a real person] remains a mystery to this day – both within the company and without – as no official documentation has ever been uncovered indicating that [...] the Eskimo [...] was based on a specific person. Even Alaska’s archivists, a team of retirees and long-time employees passionate about preserving the company’s history, can’t agree.

As someone who is myself studying to be an archivist, I am currently tearing my hair out and flinging tables at people mere decades ago for never keeping any records!!! What is wrong with you people?! Why do you never think of me in the future wanting to know the context of things you probably think are obvious?!

Well, anyway, this might indicate that he's just a generic representation of an Alaskan Native. That would not just be a disappointing answer to this mystery, it would also be pretty offensive. I know that the NFL (an organization known for its racial sensitivity, as I think we're all aware) is a bit slow to catch onto this but I think at this point in history we're all on the same page about using indigenous groups as mascots, right? It's weird and dehumanizing. But that's generally in reference to a stock character based on a stereotype of this group, and often one which is an offensive caricature. Given the percentage of Alaskan Natives in the population, some of whom were certainly involved in making Alaska Airlines what it is, isn't there a chance that this is a loving homage to the group native to the land this airline represents? A way of saying 'this is who this airline connects to faraway places'? I think this was certainly at least the intention, and whether this is still tokenizing, whether the phrasing on the website - a warm, welcoming presence and a reminder of commitment - stirs up an uncomfortable feeling is ultimately a question for Alaskan Natives, and one with a far less unanimous answer than that of outdated terminology.

However, I'll say this up front: he is not a generic representation. He is a specific individual. If he weren't I wouldn't have written a whole post about him.

So let's go all the way back to the beginning. If we do this we find our mystery man was actually not created to be a generic literal face of Alaska Airlines. The intention was not an indigenous mascot, but to represent Alaska's heritage...in more than one way. Mr. Alaska Airlines was once a jellybean.

YOU MIGHT AS WELL PUT HIM ON THE TAILS

image: Vic Warren

In 1972 a set of four new "Alaskana" liveries were introduced for Alaska Airlines' relatively small 727 fleet, replacing the older 'Gold Nugget Jet'. (I will definitely be reviewing those one day.) They were designed by Vic Warren and meant to represent the heritage of Alaska's population, and came in four variants:

"The Prospector" - in red, a miner with his pick, representing the people who flocked to Alaska from the lower 48 during the Gold Rush

"The Totem Pole" - in green, a totem pole design representing Southeast Alaskan indigenous groups such as the Eyak, Tlingit, and Haida - I wish I could be more specific but I can't seem to find the specific totem pole this is based off of

"The Onion Dome" - in fuchsia, today I learned that's actually what those are frequently called! They are meant to represent the history of Russians in Alaska.

And, "The....you know. Him." He's in blue. You may notice he looks a little bit less genial here. , and there's a bit of lighter color detail. No elaboration needed.

It does feel distinctly less tokenizing when there's a white prospector right next to him. In fact, the rephrasing in the quote taken from the archivists is actually because they were referring to both our mystery man and the prospector, whose identity is even more lost to history. This feels quite a bit less sinister than naming your football team a racial slur. It's like if an airline representing Massachusetts (keep reading, Cape Air, this is a free idea for you) had a set of jellybeans featuring a Wampanoag person, a furious man in the process of being given a traffic citation, a whale, a large textile workers' strike, a university-aged Dunkin Donuts employee who can just barely cover the rent at the two-bedroom apartment they share with seven roommates, Giles Corey being pressed to death, Paul Revere, the Harvard University logo, and Tom Brady. It goes from feeling exclusively dehumanizing to

Over the years, though, use of the other three designs dropped off. I'm not sure why it did (well, I can hazard a guess about the Onion Dome) but that's just the reality. Maybe the totem I understand being difficult to immediately identify as a totem when it's in monocolor with little detail on a large plane. I do think it's a bit of a shame - I love jellybeans and I love representing more than one culture in a place as large as Alaska - but I get it, their fleet was small.

As for why our mystery man won the deadlock with the Prospector, that's beyond me, but it almost feels like it was destined given he was the initial basis for the concept at all. Again from Vic Warren:

The first time the Eskimo art was used was in a large newspaper ad promoting Arctic Tours. [...] Since it was a newspaper ad, the initial appearance of the Eskimo was as a large, strong black image. The marketing director at Alaska hated it, even though the ad performed well. [...] A few months later, [I was] given the assignment to create a new corporate image for the airline [...] At this time the airline [...] only flew from Seattle to Alaska and within Alaska. They had recently moved their headquarters from Anchorage to Seattle and were taking a lot of political flak for abandoning Alaska. Our direction from the airline was to “create something very distinctive and modern, yet totally Alaskan.” In retrospect, it sounds easy, but I worked for three months on every kind of jet design I could think of. [...] the airline’s account executive was sitting with me in my office. [...] He stood up and stomped out of the room, shouting, “Oh, to hell with it! You might as well put that damned Eskimo on the tails!” Ta-daaaaaa! [...] I looked at the history and culture of Alaska and came up with four designs [...] But it shortly became evident that the Eskimo was the most popular image. And it was expensive to use all those different designs, so the other three left.

And thus Mr. Alaska Airlines was brought on board properly. And people were very attached to him. The thing mentioned earlier, that the airline was getting flak for losing their Alaskan identity - that comes back later in 1988, when the airline considered replacing him with a logo of a stylized mountain in the shape of the letter A. People hated this new logo so much I cannot even find a picture of it. This attempted replacement was for reasons unrelated to the criticisms I've mentioned earlier - he looked bad when printed small, was difficult to recognize, and might suggest to the people of California that Alaska Airlines only flew to Alaska. People were so incensed about this idea, however, that the state legislature decided this was a problem for them to tackle. From the LA Times:

The Alaska Legislature, which went into session on Monday, will consider a resolution asking the Seattle-based airline not to junk the colorful logo for one featuring a stylized mountain, said state Sen. Tim Kelly of Anchorage. [...] Alaska’s 20 state senators have voiced support for the resolution, he said.

Do they not have anything better to do with their time? No...zoning laws or tax brackets or ordinances? I mean, they've got some experience in aviation, I guess - they did make it illegal to push a moose out of a plane, or to look at moose from a plane. You also can't get a moose drunk. Actually, they have a lot of oddly specific moose-related laws, which I think is a form of environmental storytelling. You also can't wake up a sleeping bear to take a photograph of it. Safety is a priority, though - it's illegal to sell a child a stun gun and you need a concealed-carry permit for slingshots, so their priorities are clearly in important places.

Regardless, one thing Kelly said stood out to me. Emphasis mine:

“It may not be the best representation of an Eskimo, but it’s our Eskimo,” he said. “(Alaskans) feel an affinity with the airline. Alaskans feel it’s their airline.”

Okay, so this could be one of two things: a coincidence (more plausible, I guess, since it's not that weird of a combination of words) or an intentional reference to this statement by the company, which I think I would respect a bit more - a nod to history, all that - but if this is the case it seems quite strange they wouldn't have mentioned it as context for the use of their phrase when apologizing for it. Not important, just wanted to bring it up.

Despite the fact that the airline got a letter of support - “a graphic designer who is related to a pilot thought it was good"- they obviously did not replace him. Vic Warren actually weighed in himself on the topic:

My position was that if the airline’s image was confusing, it was because of the name Alaska Airlines, not the Eskimo logo. If they wanted to be a more amorphous regional carrier they should change their name to a version in the Air West mold or, at any rate, something less specific than Alaska.

And I do think I agree with him. You can choose between being relatable to everyone or having a heritage, making your brand just as much about where you started as where you are. I prefer the latter, but I have the opposite mindset of an airline. I am all about history and expression, and don't remotely care about attracting customers or making money. There is a reason Alaska Airlines doesn't have a tumblr blog.

“The Eskimo is a friendly, human symbol of the north, of the spirit of Alaska,” wrote Satch Carlson, an Anchorage Daily News columnist. “Take him off the Alaska planes in favor of some abstract, hip, meaningless design, you’re taking one step closer to that impersonal austerity that characterizes most other airlines today.”

...wow, so even in '88 they were tired of Eurowhite, it seems.

THAT LOGO THAT LOOKS LIKE MY TIO

So of course they kept the face. He got tweaked over the years - the 'fly with a happy face' campaign adjusted him to look a little bit less stoic, and of course the details were updated as graphics technology improved. But this is The Alaska Airlines Guy now. People are attached to him. An interesting effect of this attachment, though, is that a lot of people are pretty sure they know who he is, and that he's from their town.

People already recognize him as any number of a massive slew of celebrities. I find this extra fascinating because I actually have congenital prosopagnosia - I cannot recognize human faces, and while I can generally identify people in daily life by context like voice, posture, fashion sense, and hair, recognizing people from photographs is far more difficult. Unless I have two pictures next to each other and can compare the individual features it's basically useless - I never get that sort of 'click' of recognition - so it's been really interesting reading all the different associations people had, of which I have seen literally dozens if not hundreds. Reddit user DaBigBird27, in one of my favorite anecdotes, relates an experience where he was told by an LAX employee to look for the logo that looks like "his tio". And isn't it incredibly fascinating how that works? How you can tell someone you've only just met to find the picture that looks like your tio, and they'll know what you mean?

Look, there's something about grandfathers. I don't know what it is. (Uncles too, probably - I don't have any, though.) I hope I'm not insane for saying this, so any other grandfather enjoyers can weigh in, but I feel like grandfathers occupy a certain formative place in everyone's mind. He is one's earliest exposure to an old man and thus becomes their fundamental conception of one. Unless he is phenomenally cruel this ties him together, part and parcel, with the features of old men that can bring you comfort and happiness. I certainly experience this with my grandfather, despite having known him for a really tragically short length of time. If I were able to recognize faces, I think there's a very real chance that I would have thought the Alaska Airlines man was him for a moment.

And this seems extra true for those from Alaska. The Anchorage Daily News continues to provide a lot of anecdotes of locals discussing the universal feeling of proximity to the logo.

Perry Eaton, an Alutiiq artist who is originally from Kodiak Island but now lives in Anchorage, said that some people insist they know the Eskimo's true identity. "It's always been sort of a tongue-in-cheek conversation," Eaton said. "Nobody's gotten emotional over it, it's just sort of interesting. He's very iconic. Some folks are adamant that they know who it is."

“If you’re from Barrow, you think maybe he’s from Barrow. If you’re from Kotzebue, you think maybe he’s from Kotzebue. If you’re from Nome, you think maybe he’s from Nome,” says former mayor Lukin. “I have not met an Eskimo elder who doesn’t sort of smile like that.”

Another piece of writing, although accompanying a story that (as far as I can tell) is fiction, or at least dramatization, contains some context that is definitely not:

By the way, that page also had a lively discussion which included a number of other theories about the origin of the image, a number of people claiming a family relationship with the person depicted [...] Whatever the case, the image has obviously evolved and become less stern over the years. When the image was digitized there were further touch-ups and adjustments made. Most sources agree, though, that a remarkable number of native Alaskan people say that the person: “looks just like my grandfather!”

Even Alaska Airlines' own (archived) website describes this phenomenon.

“When I was a little kid, we all thought it was our own grandfathers,” says former Kotzebue mayor Maija Lukin. “We all thought it was our tata. Even if it didn’t remotely look like our grandfathers.”

Well, let me finally get to the point, because at least some of these people are correct. While he was intended to represent Alaskan Natives as a whole, the man was based on the likeness of a real person. There are two leading theories thought to be plausible. Both were real Alaskan Natives with ties to aviation who lived memorably in the proper timeframe to have inspired the logo.

CHESTER SEVECK

I'll begin with Chester (his full name seems to have been Chester Asagaq Seveck Downey but he is most frequently called Chester Seveck), who is the more common theory. (And indeed the man on the tail is frequently referred to as 'Chester' by people who think this.) The above-quoted Kotzebue mayor, for example, is convinced it's Chester, who was himself a Kotzebue resident. It's a remote place which relies on air travel to provide necessities, and Chester was said to have greeted passengers and crew as they left the airplanes together with his wife. He was often mentioned to be a reindeer herder, but I was afraid that this would be all I could find about this man who clearly was beloved by so many people that to this day he's remembered this widely.

Thankfully, unlike so many people who pass into history with only vague and distant reference to memorialize their full and remarkable lives, Chester Seveck has written a memoir, published by a bush pilot who considered him a close friend. It's called Longest Reindeer Herder and is available in its entirety for free, with the pilot and friend in question, Frank Whaley, including a selection of photographs he himself took of Chester. I really recommend everyone read it. It's not very long but it's extremely dense with information, giving a first-hand account of the development of airborne connections between remote regions from the side that doesn't normally get to tell their story. It also tells a lot about Chester, his family, and the incredible things which happened to him. One that really stuck with me was the time he was shot with a rifle but unharmed, because his parka absorbed the force of an entire bullet! It reads almost like a journal, very matter-of-fact and brief recounting of events which would have at the time been whirlwinds of emotions and little details now lost to the steady flow of history, but all of this was put to paper at once, and it's staggering just how much one life really is, how much we can learn from just some of one man's memories. About him, about the world he lived in, and about reindeer herding.

When it comes to aviation, Chester's experiences are a joy to read. He recounts his first time coming to the US, together with his wife.

Then Jack Whaley take us to Los Angeles. We flew in night time. We saw the lights down under us. I remember when we newly married in the year 1912 July 12th, I was dreaming my wife and I we saw the stars and sky under us. We were above the sky and stars I told my wife. Now my dream come true. 

Eventually Chester, too old to continue his work with massive herds of reindeer, retired and began to work for Wien Airlines, traveling for promotional tours and guiding tours in Kotzebue. He refers to this as 'herding tourists'.

There are stories of the Lower 48, too, of the tours he went on with his wife. He mentions appearing with Steve Allen, Art Linkletter, and even Groucho Marx. He appeared in a minor role in "Ice Palace" (1960), a very poorly reviewed film which also happened to be the motion picture debut of one George Takei.

The final section of his memoir:

For long live and joy life, I believe these things--Keep busy and do good work. Have much good exercise. Eat good food, no waste anything and every day enjoy what it gives and do not spoil this day with much worry of tomorrow. Be happy. I know this way how I be "Longest Reindeer Herder." Start 1908, finish 1954, altogether 46 years herd reindeer.

Chester was undeniably a gregarious person. He seemed to really genuinely enjoy the high profile his partnership with Wien brought him, not for any material gains but because seeing the world and showing it to other people made him happy. He had a high opinion of himself that he wasn't afraid to share but there wasn't an ounce of pompousness in it; he just knew what he was worth. He loved talking about himself and his story - I found at least one other interview he gave. If more people were like Chester I think the world would be a much happier place. I really envy the people who got to have him show them around Kotzebue.

His memoirs were taken down in 1973, and the ending sort of reads as if he's right at the end of his life, but that's not true. He lived until 1981, dying ten days after his ninety-first birthday. He has many living descendants, with 172 grandchildren and great-grandchildren at the time he wrote his memoir. I actually saw a couple of them in the wild while researching, talking about growing up and being told he was the face on the airplanes.

Chester is by far the most common claim for the Alaska Airlines face. People from Kotzebue are proud of this. I saw another Reddit commentor, who has since deleted their account, mentioning their mother telling them about him growing up.

I think Chester is a fantastic person to feature. His connection to aviation and his warmth and kindness, eagerly welcoming tourists into his home village, makes him a fantastic symbol of Alaska. This post has been my favorite to research of any I've written. Reading people's warm memories of BWIA and learning about the incredible history of aviation in Sri Lankan folklore are both things I cherish, but reading Chester's account of his own life was genuinely almost overpowering. I am a history student. Sure, I study public history specifically, but I still study history. I read about history. I read long textbooks, in-depth research documents, and primary sources. I read old newspapers, memoirs, observations by travelers. My sophomore seminar was an in-depth study of remarkably preserved legal documents from one specific witch trial in 17th-century Germany. It's rare that something comes around like Chester's memoir that reminds me how much I adore humans. We have always had so much to give. There is a legitimate debate about the ethics of Alaska Airlines monetizing the likeness of an indigenous group, but I'm happy that they put a face on their tails if only because it means I got to read Chester's writing. I wish more people did.

But there's one other person frequently speculated to be the face of Alaska Airlines, and it would be remiss not to discuss him.

OLIVER AMOUACK

There is less available about Oliver than there is about Chester - at least, less I could find. He appears to have lived from 1895 to 1987, and unlike Chester, who I only ever saw called 'Eskimo', Oliver was known to be Iñupiaq. In the 1950s he was a performer in a travelling show called "It's Alaska!", but that's about all you can find with search engines.

image: Alaska Airlines Corporate Archives This is more or less the only image of Amouack I could find. He's the man on the left. Look familiar? That's not a rhetorical question. I'm face-blind.

That isn't all there is to be found, but what else there is I don't have access to at present. Brenda Ritchey, Oliver's granddaughter, has written a biography of him - "Know the Happy Face: Biography of Oliver Amouak", published 1997. The thing is, this book is crazy hard to get your hands on. Buying a copy is definitely way out of my price range. It's hard to find them for double-digit dollar amounts, and they go up over a thousand. There are several copies held by public libraries but most are in Alaska, which is pretty far away from me. Thankfully, there is one in a collection in New York, and I'm trying to get it on interlibrary loan. If I can get access to it, I'll make a follow-up post, hopefully adding context to Oliver's story like I did for Chester's. Clearly, his granddaughter thought it was worth telling.

Although Oliver is the less frequent claim, a few people are very confident that it's him. And it is impossible to prove conclusively whether it's him or Chester, or neither...or is it?

POINTING THE FINGER

This is where history ends and speculation begins. What you read from here is not fact - it is my own conjecture, made by someone with around a week's worth of research - someone who is literally unable to distinguish human faces, no less - and I encourage questioning it. But I'm going to make my argument: I am loosely convinced that the face on Alaska Airlines' airplanes is, in fact, Oliver Amouack.

The first set of reasons are contextual. Oliver, when he was in "It's Alaska!", was directly employed by Alaska Airlines, while Chester, though he did greet tourists for the airline, seemed to have much closer ties to Wien Air Alaska. If someone was looking for inspiration in Alaska Airlines' archives I think it's far more likely that they would have stumbled on Oliver's likeness than Chester's.

The second is, admittedly, rather weak, but I still feel it's worth mentioning. While the modern "happy face" is smiling, the original Alaskana image was not.

Take a look. This man is very poised, but he's also definitely got a bit of a stern look.

Now, while there do exist images of Chester Seveck where he isn't smiling, they are rare and mostly candid, taken while he's focused on doing something, like herding reindeer or singing, and often faced mostly away from the camera. They also tend to be from when he was younger, which the man in the image is clearly not. Given how frequently he was seen looking overjoyed just to be wherever he was, I find it a little bit unlikely that Chester would inspire an image I would go so far as to describe as 'frowning'.

image: Vic Warren

Now that's a bit more like Chester, but this isn't the original image. Rather, it's a later edit to make him smile, for Alaska's "fly with a happy face" campaign. I find it somewhat hard to believe that, were this Chester, it would have needed editing at all.

I also think that, were he to be the basis for the image, Chester would have brough it up when putting down his story. His memoir is from 1973, and the livery was introduced in 1972 with an even earlier newspaper ad featuring the same image. Chester had the healthiest high self-esteem I've seen in my life and he would definitely have mentioned this with pride. Maybe he was never told, but I suspect if this were the case he would have asked about it. It would be a little hard to not notice your own face on an airplane while greeting its occupants.

There's a major spanner in the works, though. That spanner is Vic Warren, designer of the initial Alaskana liveries, himself. Although it is no longer up, the Way Back Machine has helped me find an old post on his blog, discussing the logo and his design process. When I quoted him earlier, that's where I got it from. And he does kneecap my theory quite a bit - he outright states it's Chester.

Back in 1973, when I designed the Eskimo, an elderly Eskimo gentleman in Kotzebue was working as a greeter for the airline on its Arctic Tours. You got off the plane in Kotzebue and he was one of the folks who came up and helped you into a fur-trimmed parka to protect you from the cold. It was sort of an Eskimo version of the Hawaiian lei. We had photos of him and others during the welcoming procedure. I used one of those photos as the basis for the art. His name was Chester Seveck Downey. Surprisingly, lots of rumors have announced that the art was based on all sorts of people, including Richard Nixon. Once, I heard a story that he was really Bob Marley!

So that should settle it, right? Maybe. Actually, though, I think Vic Warren may be misremembering. I don't mean to gaslight this artist who created an extremely recognizable and enduring logo, but he already states that the design was done in 1973, which is impossible because the liveries were introduced in 1972. He actually gives 1973 as a date throughout the post multiple times, even though I've seen it claimed the design was in the works as early as 1970. The post was first written in 2014, so I think it's perfectly reasonable for your memory to slip over 40 years.

Getting a date slightly wrong and forgetting who you based a logo on are two different levels, but I'd like to further argue my earlier point - if the reference truly was Chester greeting passengers I am absolutely sure he would have been smiling, and I can't imagine why Warren would have changed this in his art. I think it's possible he misremembered, and I also think it's possible he assumed the photograph of Oliver was of Chester somehow. Far be it from me to accuse someone I've never met of racism, but, look, most people fail implicit association tests. I think it is entirely plausible a (presumably) white man contracted by an airline he didn't work for personally could see a photograph of one indigenous man and just assume that it was of a different one he was more familiar with, especially if Oliver and Chester have similar faces, which I assume people who can tell think they do.

I don't think any of that conjecture is particularly convincing. I wouldn't personally be convinced by it. The burden of proof here is a lot higher than 'maybe he was confused'. But what finally swayed me to believing Amouack is most likely our man was a post on, of all sites, the digital sewer pipe known as Quora.

An aside: Quora has introduced a feature where at the top of the page you are given a response by ChatGPT. While this is going to give you an answer of higher quality than many of those provided by the 'human' users of the website, I find the answer it generated for this question both incredibly factually wrong and somewhat disrespectful.

So the most obvious thing is that ChatGPT is misgendering Oliver/Chester. This immediately makes it clear that this answer is fully nonsense to basically anyone sentient, though it still may well fool some Quora users. The 'names' given, Tlingit and Haida, are both those of indigenous Pacific Northwest peoples. As in ethnicities, not individuals. Fred Kabotie was a real person, and a real artist, and accomplished and prolific, and someone you should absolutely learn about, but he was not Tlingit - he was Hopi. As in, from Arizona.

image: Grand Canyon National Park

I am rather confident Fred Kabotie has nothing to do with Alaska Airlines.

What really disturbs me is that, while there is an option to ask more questions in an app, and an option to downvote, there is no place to state that the information given is wrong, never mind to correct it. Even the app formerly known as Twitter has that.

Beyond that, there's no way to give this feedback to the bot. Downvoting isn't the same thing as actual negative reinforcement. This means that there is no way to stop the bot from giving the same answer to the same question in the future, even though it is wrong, and even though in this particular case a major aspect of its wrongness is that it seems to believe all North American indigenous people are one coherent group to the point it considers Hopi the same category as Iñupiaq, which is a bit like lumping together Spain and Norway.

So, not to pontificate, but this is one of the reasons ChatGPT is so potentially dangerous. It can generate text which seems quite a bit like an answer while being completely gibberish, and it could certainly fool people. Deep-learning algorithms, as of right now, are not capable of fact-checking. You should never rely on them for answers.

Besides that, though, there are actual human responses. Most of them are, as you may expect of Quora, total dreck. But sandwiched in between someone who seemed to be under the impression that it's ambiguous if Chester was from Kotzebue or Nome and someone who appeared to believe the term 'prop' didn't encompass turboprops was an answer given by Keith Holmes, whose qualifications are 'knows Dutch'.

That doesn't sound promising, but he actually came with evidence. I'm going to give you the short version, but you should read his answer. Here is his method:

He took the original image of the logo, then flipped it horizontally to match the image of Oliver Amouack from the It's Alaska! poster.

Then he overlaid them and very slowly lowered the opacity. Like, it's torturously slow, so I'll just show some 'keyframes', but that slowness means that even I, faceblind as I am, could clearly see that they line up nearly perfectly.

In the 1970s, this process would have been done with physical paint. But nowadays it's incredibly easy to just up the contrast and lower the saturation on an image. So Holmes (aptly named) did precisely this.

...yeah. I mean, there he is. I think we found him.

AN IDENTITY UNCOVERED

So, there it is. People's opinions vary about who this man is and whether he should be on the tails at all, but I think it's Oliver Amouack. But I want to finish off this post, which has had its ups and downs, on a somewhat open-ended yet positive note.

No matter who this face is, there are people who love him. And I'm not talking about people who love making money off him, or about senators. I mean regular Alaskans. Even Annie Wenstrup, in the original text of her petition, acknowledged that there is a warm fuzzy feeling that people have about him. Though its inclusion is definitely potentially a bit sinister, the Alaska Airlines page discussing the history of the logo released concurrently with the rebrand touches on it.

“When I see that face, I feel proud. I feel like I’m home,” says Sallee Baltierra, a concierge in Alaska’s Anchorage Board Room airport lounge. “I love to see that Eskimo on the tail in other cities that we fly to, from Liberia, Costa Rica to Nashville, Tennessee. It makes me feel like there’s a little piece of home there waiting for me.”

The ethics of how it is done in this particular case are worth discussing, and whether the logo as it stands now should be retired is not something I am in a position to weigh in on. For better or worse the happy face is part of Alaska Airlines' history. The mystery has been put out there for people to solve, and it won't go away if they take him off the planes.

And while there are good reasons, reasons I agree with, that people scoff at the idea of representation being the same thing as justice, particularly when those with no skin in the game are making millions off it, Alaskan Natives are most of the history of Alaska, and they have propped up Alaska Airlines from its earliest days. They have been pilots, cabin crew, ground crew, maintenance, customer service, passengers, and, yes, tour guides. They have been there from the earliest days of McGee Airways, and when Alaska Airlines finally goes under they will be there on its very last flight. There is a difference between acknowledgment and objectification, and that line is not one for me to draw, but it is at least good that the question of who this man is can lead people to the stories of the real people who are so often forgotten.

The fact that I believe the happy face is Oliver doesn't make that reality. It could well be Chester. It could be someone else. It could be your grandfather. It definitely isn't my grandfather, but I showed my mother a picture and she did say that he looks very much like my grandfather...we are not Alaskan Native, I think it goes without saying. I don't think anyone I'm related to has ever even been to Alaska.

But I think there's something positive to be taken from his anonymity to most of the world. There are certainly negatives, the sticking points of profit and objectification, but were it not for the fact that there was a mystery here to dive down I would have never known Chester Seveck existed, never mind read his memoir. I wouldn't have known Oliver Amouack existed either, and I hope I can read his memoir too. If there is any reason for me to 'well, actually' someone who says the face is definitely Chester - and I'm not sure there is - it wouldn't be because it isn't him, but because I want to give Oliver the same recognition.

And I hope other people wonder who the face is, and look for the answer online. My blog isn't very large, and I'm entirely happy with that. I love writing my incredibly niche posts about airlines, and I'm not doing this with any expectation or hope of fame. But given the small amount of articles on the topic I hope that my blog shows up in the search engine results, maybe on the second or third page, and that maybe it can direct someone to Chester's story. I am overjoyed to have read it and I want other people to read it too. His life was a unique and meaningful one and I am grateful that he chose to share it with the world. I am excited to pass it on to all of you.

I set out to find the identity of the man on Alaska Airlines' livery. What I found was the story of a man who touched far more than Alaska Airlines. The happy face could be anyone. He could be your grandfather. He could be (and probably is) Brenda Ritchey's grandfather. In a sense I think, although his literal family should be compensated for use of his likeness, he is your grandfather - not because he is literally your grandfather, but because he carries that poised warmth that so many grandfathers have. I think there is a real benefit to leaving this open-ended - at least enough to keep that mystique that drives people to make that Google search and learn about the overlooked and thought-to-be-nameless indigenous men who make Alaska what it is. Maybe the real happy face was the grandfathers we thought he resembled along the way.

And Alaska Airlines be damned, Chester Seveck herded reindeer for 46 years and had his dream of stars and sky beneath him come true. That's more valuable, to me, than having a famous picture based on you. Pictures reflect reality, but Chester was real, and it is accounts like his which make history human.

[bigsnzstanacct]

Fanfic Writing Ideas / Goals

Fandoms I want to write for that you should ask me about or talk to me about or give me ideas for or pester me about writing for (and I’m not putting the slashes and stuff in so if you stumble across this post while not being a part of my niche fetish community, no you didn’t):

Fellow Travelers: thinking in a context where Hawk has the fetish and Tim indulges him with some of the topping from the bottom/role reversal dynamics from the show. And Hawk sneezes really loud. Bc I want him to. Tim meanwhile just has the woooooooorst allergies and get some satisfaction out of someone being turned on rather than turned off by them for once.

Red White and Royal Blue: kinda thinking it would be fun to do a mutual fetish thing, probably changing some details about how they met and their interactions prior to the Cake Incident, but also I can’t work out the timing. I want one or the other (probably Alex bc how would Henry even do this) to have Very Secretly put some sneeze fetish content out into the internet and the other has been getting off to it since that very day, without realizing who it was. Also really trying to decide how much I can convince myself that Henry has a mental block and/or *always* stifles but actually if you get him to let it out he has a surprisingly big/loud/harsh sneeze. I know Alex sneezes loud and proud and uncovered and with a high-pitched upturn at the end, and is the kind of guy who sneezes just kinda randomly all the time, but it isn’t like intense fits unless he encounters one of his few allergies and then it is Intense Fits, you know what I mean?

Check Please: which I have a whole setup for, definitely a mutual fetish situation for Nursey and Dex where like Dex has The Perfect Big Loud Sneeze for Nurse but he always stifles so Nurse has the hots for a Mystery Loud Sneeze Guy who is later revealed to be Dex. Also something involving Holster also having Big Loud Uncovered Epic Dad Sneezes that echo through the Haus and Nursey and Dex both are like SO into, bc that guy just seems like he’d absolutely holler out his sneezes for real. And that he’d get like Epic Man Flu with Epic Dad Sneezes, etc.

Ted Lasso: specifically giant!sneeze Roy, and more specifically: “sex-linked giant sneezes are common and considered hot and Roy’s are EXTRA BIG and therefore considered Extra Hot but he is grumpy about this as he always is about everything” also he’s in some sort of romantic entanglement with Keeley and/or Jamie. And I still haven’t decided what Jamie’s sneezes should be like but he’s definitely going to have some degree of jealousy-of-Roy-and-the-jealousy-is-also-horny situation going on.

9-1-1: Somebody on here suggested Buck as a possible Big Sneezer character and I was like eh maybe that actor’s hot but THEN they made him Canonically Bi on the show and now I’m like fuck yeah make it happen need it yesterday. And I’m trying to decide if I want to go with the whole Buddie thing and have Eddie be a fetishist and maybe they can do a like “well like I’m Not Into Dudes like you are (yes he is stop lying) but I have this weird like… Thing for Sneezes and your sneezes are I dunno they’re like really big and hot and maybe we should make out about that and definitely not about Feelings” or if I want Buck to have the kink, but actually I think I’m leaning towards the former bc I want Buck’s big loud sneezes to be like A Problem somehow bc he’s such a cute golden retriever guy that I kinda want to whump him a little. Gentle whump. And then comfort bc like “I don’t have a problem with your sneezes and actually I kinda think they’re… hot?” Yeah, that sounds fun. I am deciding this now as I’m writing lmao.

Also possibly interested in Disco Elysium, like y’all make that fandom sound really hot and again one of those characters having the fetish could be suuuuuper hot also Harry definitely has the Dad Sneezes of all Dad Sneezes.

Also also I have the whole Dream Daddy setup that I’ve written about before on here. Really want to do the Hugo and Brian dates that I have plotted out especially, but always feel like once I get out of the Dream Daddy world I lose the voice for that fandom and it really requires a very specific voice. Although maybe I’ll just base it on the fics I’ve already written. Like if I just emulate that voice it’ll be close enough and at least it will be internally consistent.

Also also also I have the King’s New Allergy story that I feel I have basically revealed as a BBC Merlin fanfic, for which I want to write a steamy epilogue involving The King and The Mage huddled up in the King’s chambers while he sneezes out the last of the Big Magic Sneezes and they talk about the fetish and they fuck lmao.

I think that’s all I have on my list fanfic wise but if I’ve mentioned something else or you think something else would be a good idea for me to look into hit me up! In particular I think Ted Lasso and the sorta-kinda-Merlin-ish fic are the only ones that include real giant!sneeze (as opposed to my usual ridiculously loud and borderline unrealistically so sneeze) and perhaps I should also think of more fanfiction contexts that could accommodate that too.

[alun1r]

Rare Alu Rant About Fandoms bc I never say shit:

Sue me, but getting into a fandom just for the intention of becoming popular is so weird to me.

Like sure you want a lot of people to see what you make. Because making something for the fandom should be seen! That’s dope as hell.

But you’re gonna lose inspiration real fast when you find out content creation takes a lotta work but more often than not comes with little reward.

I hold firmly the belief that Fandom is for making content for the pure reason of just because you can.

✨the joy of free will to bring your delusions to life so others can indulge in their delusions as well✨ Kinda vibes? Yanno?

I never started making HL content with the idea in mind that I’d reach 9k followers on tiktok. And I ain’t gonna lie it’s daunting for me. Specially as someone whose always just made shit for whatever reason without even posting it. But The videos that got me views and followers on tiktok, were made because I was high and wanted to laugh. And I’d figured “what the hell, this made me laugh….Maybe it will make someone else laugh.” And I’m glad it did.

And now I float around just making stuff. I still make whatever I want tbh. I do my best to give credit where credit is due in what I make. And yeah I’ve done some fan service videos and writing here and there because hey it’s fun for me.

I see so many posts or peoples bios saying that they’re working towards being popular in fandom and then their posts are what other people said or made on Twitter or tiktok or Vice versa and there’s often times there’s no real credit to original creators.

Don’t get me wrong, if it’s properly credited, AWESOME. Usually it’s not though, and that’s just wild to me. Because how are you expecting to get popular under your own name when you’re just reposting stuff.

That doesn’t make you a content creator.

A historical collector guess?? Because you’re like idk collecting all the stuff people made and what not onto a new page.

Idk dude. I just miss authenticity I guess. People making stuff and just being excited to show it.

Don’t get me wrong though it’s not all terrible on here and everywhere on the internet for fandoms. I’ve made close friends with other creators who feel and see fandom much the same. Just here to vibe and escape.

I’m not saying I don’t think views and followers and likes and notes or what have you, matter. I know they do. I get a lil confidence boost when something I make pops off. I feel proud.

But man it’s the intention of “ Im trying to be a popular creator” that rubs me the wrong way. Make stuff because you like it. Not because other people will. Doing whatever to get you likes wont bring the same satisfaction. And in more cases than not I see it backfiring and causing drama because, like I said it’s usually shit that’s copied or reposted.

Who knows maybe I’m just old and don’t understand bc I also see fandom and the work I’ve contributed as something I wouldn’t like boast about in real life. Because the reaction wouldn’t be positive. Like just for enjoying Hogwarts legacy I get teased in my daily life from acquaintances. It’s not totally negative. Buts it’s enough for me to know that YEAH 9k followers on tiktok don’t mean anything in the real world LMAO because at the end of the day, offline, I am still just a nerd whose daydreaming in her bedroom to escape reality.

I’m 24 dude. And I work in news. Shit is exhausting. Read a headline and you’ll see what I mean. And I just wanted to rant about it because it’s been bugging me since I joined fandom again last year.

But due to, idk my follower count and whatnot I always felt like I can’t or rather I shouldn’t speak my mind so much for fear of SOMEONE coming for me for something. And man I hate that feeling bc this bitch has opinions and I dislike the idea of feeling like others have control over it. But tbh eh. I wanted to rant. Just speaking into the void of the internet.

If you decide to send anon hate for my opinionated rant be ready for a meme bc I don’t have the mental capacity to take anything other than my IRL life responsibilities seriously lmao.

[sundragon]

We've been in a weird place regarding...us? our life? as a system. It's probably something a lot of systems go through, at least it seems that way to me. As you get older, you think about what the rest of your life will look like more seriously. For us that means being 40, 50, 60, maybe older, and still plural.

Origin discourse takes such a backseat. It's practically thrown out the window. I think it got shoved in the trunk at some point. Of more interest is where are we going with this? We're not hung up on the lives/sources we miss, we're here in the present and mostly okay with it. Now what? Who are we going to be?

And the scary question - can we be content with just us for the rest of this life? Is that what would be best for us, or should we make ourselves uncomfortable and find another physical bodied companion?

But I recognize that shit for what it is, plain amatonormativity. It's gotten to us before. This insidious idea that we have to meet some physical person, and anything else is lesser. It's nonsense. The cognitive dissonance is very real. In our various forms and parts, I've been with Nate for 14 years - that is significant, more than any theoretical significant other.

This came to a fore recently because I just, reminded myself that we do not like people in our space. Doesn't matter if they're friends, and if we invite them. I don't feel like a whole person when I can't be alone in my den each day. Sure, finding a person I can be myself around sounds like a solution, but that's the thing - there is no person who can understand me the way they do, so to try is to fail.

This is the complicated area of the aroace spectrum that we inhabit. It's not a storybook situation. Some parts of it are kinda sad, and by design it means we'll always be longing for each other just a little bit, but that's preferable to forcing ourself to settle. We don't deserve that, and neither would the other party.

Part of that is the fact that for us, a partner is nothing less than another half. If I'm with you, you're half of my whole life. I can be complete without you, but if I'm in a partnership it takes as much priority as my own life does. Dating and hookups are meaningless to me and I'll never bother; entwine our souls or get lost lmao. They can come apart later if they must, but yknow. Point is I don't do casual or halves, your identity matters to me like my own.

That's a tall order, and so far, my brain had to split itself into pieces to make it work. If you want to get mystical about it, you can theorize that I am this way *because* my mate existed beside me once upon a time, and now we're forced into the same get-along sweater. I dunno man, we just work here.

We didn't try to get involved with anyone recently, but everything else just brought these thoughts forward in a way I couldn't keep ignoring, eh.

[anisecandy]

So, eh... The economy, am I right?

Summary: Peter isn't sure how to ask his partners to move in with him.

Rating: G

Words count: 3k

Genre: Domestic Fluff

Parings: Peter Parker/Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote

Author's note: Mindless domestic bliss. Enjoy.

(link to the work on ao3)

Peter wakes up to the feeling of warmth, relaxation and horrid stickiness of drying sweat on his back and sides. Which is weird, since he clearly remembers washing himself before going to sleep. Then he hears a content purr, realizes the presence of muscular arms hugging his waist and the mystery solves itself on its own.

“Eddie…” he mumbles, channeling into it all the frustration he can muster this early in the day. “For the- thousandth time, either shower after jogging, or stay away from the bed once you’re back.”

He gets no reply, so he turns to face the menace currently ignoring his hygienic needs for the sake of prolonging morning cuddles. Eddie just grins at him and Peter hates how much he wants to kiss those absurdly blue eyes and this awful, awful arrogant smile.

Instead, he pushes Eddie off the mattress and hears him hit the floor with an offended groan.

“How typical of you, to restore to violence,” the blonde grumbles, as he climbs back up and Peter gets out of the sheets.

“How typical of you, to smell rancid,” he says, because it’s 7 am and expecting him to come up with witty and intellectually stimulating ripostes just wouldn’t be fair.

When he disappears in the bathroom, the pans are already clanging in the kitchen, no doubt picked about by the Symbiote reaching straight from the bedroom to start the preparations for the breakfast. He hopes Eddie will make some eggs benedicts. After some initial cooking disasters, he’s been getting pretty amazing at achieving what was essentially perfection in the form of neat little egg-pillows filled with runny goodness. His stomach grumbles just at the very thought of them.

But once Peter finishes freshening himself up, the whole flat smells of cinnamon and vanilla. Or at least, that’s how it feels for his enhanced senses. By the table he’s greeted with the sight of a platte tightly stuffed with french toasts and a little bowl of raspberries.

“Did we have those…?” he questions, crossing the room to put the coffee pot on and a cup of water into the microwave, for Eddie’s tea. He’s been meaning to buy an electric kettle for a month now, but it just keeps on slipping his mind.

Reaching for the time can with the tea, he pauses to dwell for a moment on that "we" he used without thinking. Eddie and the Symbiote don't live here. They don't have a shared pantry or grocery lists.

"We've bought them after visiting the gym," they reply casually, setting the plates for both of them.

Right. In theory they don't, in practice they do. They might not even have a toothbrush here, but nowadays the only times when they don't wake up in Peter's bed, are the ones when he wakes up in theirs. Peter doesn't remember when was the last time he had to make breakfast for himself. A month ago? Two? Eddie is way better at cooking, so most of the time he is redelegated to dishes duties. It is obvious, it is the routine and as such, trying to do anything about it feels awkward and out of place.

Because what is the point of asking them to move in, if they basically already sneaked their way into the status of the residents?

Peter finishes making the beverages and sits down after handing Eddie his tea - black and strong, with three sugars. In exchange he gets a peck on the cheek and a rumbling "thank you". They've been together for too long for this to make his heart skip, but it's still so nice. While they eat, the Symbiote comes out for a bit, to tie itself around Peter's hand and that's nice too, just as is occasionally rubbing and poking his legs against Eddie's, until he huffs and glares at him, but completely melts when seeing Peter's smile. It's nice, it's all so nice and the more he thinks about it, the less he knows what to do with himself.

The breakfast goes on quietly, since Peter is caught up in his thoughts, Eddie in his newspaper and the Symbiote doesn't speak unless it's an absolute necessity. The silence stretches like a cat, lazily and comfortably. It's only when Peter collects the dishes and pours soap on the sponge that it's broken.

"You didn't mention you were fighting Tumbler yesterday," Eddie calls out to him over the paper.

"It's not a big deal."

"You know we worry."

Peter sighs, scrubbing the pan out of the oil. It was just a small squabble, given that the criminal was still sore since their last encounter and as such completely slipped his mind.

"Jealous, because I'm kicking other villains' butts now...? Come on Eddie, it's time to move on."

"We just wish you'd inform us when the A and B-listers are involved," Eddie rolled his eyes.

"Oh please, Tumbler is barely an F-lister," he scoffed.

"Yes, but Hobgoblin isn’t and he might come knocking when he hears you've put one of his goons into jail again. We'd just like to know in advance when we might lose an afternoon to playing a damsel in distress."

Strangely enough, that did happen once. But they both agreed that Kraven was always a somewhat kooky fellow and Eddie basically agreed to being the bait out of the sheer appreciation of the hilarity this particular scheme of his jump-started.

"Just say you want to chip me with a tracker," Peter quips, drying the cutlery.

"We might have brought that up to dr Steven once or twice," Eddie says with a sparkle in his eyes and as always Peter isn't sure if he's joking or not. On one hand, it does sound like a joke. On the other, with his track record regarding stalking, Peter wouldn't put it past him.

They have no plan for the day and spend the rest of the morning in the living room. Despite how cramped and shabby it feels when Peter's on his own, it's nothing but cozy once he stretches himself all over their lap, in the position that is the most comfortable (to him) and annoying (to Eddie). That results in Eddie first crooking an eyebrow at him and then using his legs as a mini table for his, that is - Peter's - laptop. He snatches it whenever he has some article to finish but doesn't want to go home yet, and Peter stopped being bothered by it long ago. Plus, the cutouts of the gossip papers and Daily Bugle libeling Spider-man he sets as his wallpaper every time he does so are usually too funny to get mad over. Since Peter for the most part doesn't even need a computer when he's marking his students' tests, which he decides to do at the moment, each of them can focus on their own work. (Although what the Symbiote claims to be “researching human culture” is in fact just watching reruns of some twenty years old sitcoms on the TV.) Eddie puts on some slow song by Sinatra and Peter drifts off, carried by the soft tune.

He checks his students' answers on auto-pilot, which he luckily can afford to do this time since a larger portion of the test were closed-ended questions. His thoughts wander from topic to topic. Still, they keep on circling back to the matter of their, well, living situation.

It has been on his mind for a while now, although he wouldn't be able to tell for how long while. A month? A few? Long enough that he had time to change his decision on what he should do at least fifty times. He doesn't know if Eddie and his Other would want to move in with him. What he does know though, is that he would have to hurry up and ask them before they would have the chance to do so, because if they asked him to move in he knows he would say yes. And he can't afford to do that, because their tiny flat is somehow even worse than his. Which he isn't sure if they are aware of or not.

The problem is that he has no idea how to go about this, the “asking” part, that is. He feels like it should be something special. After all, it would mean, sort of, solidifying their relationship, right? Taking it to... A new level? If they took the initiative, he is certain that they would make it special. With a big dinner date or- a- stargazing picnic or something. They are good with this kind of romantic gestures. Peter on the other hand, isn't. Romantic gestures done by him mean saving his significant others from the grabs of murderous lunatics or proposing after three months of dating. Most murderous lunatics steer clear of Venom. And they have been together for a few years already. Plus, for once in his life Peter isn't sure if he's ready to propose? Sure, usually he would pop the question before he would see leaves change with his partner twice, but this is a special case-

He flinches slightly, roused from his meditations by a gentle pat on his knee.

"Sheesh, are this year's sophomores really this bad?" Eddie asks, confusing him.

"What?"

"You're making a face as if you were dealt a class of intellectually stunted troglodytes."

Peter blinks, before finally understanding what Eddie was getting at and shakes his head.

"Naah, it's just-" he pauses, but since the muse of romance and emotional intelligence doesn't decide to strike him with inspiration in the next five to ten seconds, in the end he just shrugs. "...Eh, you know what... Yeah, they're awful. Just thinking about it keeps me awake at night."

The sigh he ends this speech with must have made it sound somewhat credible, because Eddie gives him a sympathetic look. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, given that it has been the only part he hasn't had to act. He really feels tired and somewhat at loss.

"Maybe you're just bad with kids," Eddie prompts, but it's hardly a serious tease with how he follows it by pecking his forehead.

That makes him feel a bit bad about lying, especially since the Symbiote reaches to tie itself around his shoulders in an encouraging manner, and he internally apologizes to the students whose good names he's been slandering.

"Maybe I am..." He sighs again and the tendrils near his face blend together to form a little tongue that leaves a wet streak along his cheek.

Eddie puts the laptop on the table and instead pulls Peter in their lap.

"I doubt it, honey," he says, softly now and while it's such a mundane thing to be in their embrace, Peter's heart nearly folds in half. "Give yourself some credits. Look, this one for example... They have, what? A 'B+'? That's pretty good-"

Before he can finish, Peter pushes himself upward and captures their lips, still tasting of cinnamon and butter. It's sweet, in both the figurative and literal sense and he finds himself getting lost in how simple it is, at last, how good and how natural it is. He feels them sigh into his lips and then smile against them. They kiss, and Peter’s thoughts smooth out, resting like hounds calming down by the fire. They kiss, and he’s certain everything will work out in the end, because after all they’ve been through they deserve this kind of mundane, everyday hopes. The little faith of buying a kettle to share between two. The little miracle in the form of another hand to hold through the breakfast. They kiss, and they kiss, and they kiss, until he falls on the couch, pulling Eddie on top of himself.

But once his fingers brush on the edge of Eddie's shirt with the intention of slipping under it, the material flows away and clings to the skin. He has no time to react to this, as the very next second he feels a massive bubble of goo swell between them, separating their torsos. It sprouts a bunch of tentacles that promptly drag Eddie away and seat him on the opposite side of the couch. Peter watches this in bafflement, before exploding into laughter. Eddie easily joins him, causing one of the tentacles to turn into a tiny dismayed face, glaring daggers at them.

"No, no, I know love, I'm sorry we interrupted your show," Eddie chuckles, petting the huffing head. "Please don't mind us."

"Seriously? I'm losing to the reruns of Friends too?" Peter tries to appear offended, but his lips stretch into a smile, indifferent to his efforts. Big Bang Theory I could kinda get, but Friends? Really?"

The Symbiote seems to want to sink back into Eddie, but before it has the chance to do so, he puts an arm around its biomass, stroking it affectionately. It settles in his embrace and its big hollow eyes narrow into thin crescents. Soon, Peter absentmindedly joins him as well, playing with the tendrils, lazily sweeping the air like grass in the breeze.

"What can we say? It likes the relationship drama," Eddie shrugs, leaning against him and resting a cheek on the top of his head. "Plus it's the one series you can't complain about on the grounds of realism."

Humming thoughtfully Peter squints up at the other man.

"Wait, is this why we don't watch medical dramas together anymore?"

The Symbiote swipes a tongue at him, which feels meaningful enough that he decides to interpret it as "yes". He blows a raspberry in the response.

"I don't complain that much."

"Sure you don't."

Despite having previously prepared a detailed lecture on the gross misrepresentation of the usage of defibrillators, Peter rolls his eyes. Still, as he picks up the rest of the tests he has yet to mark, he can’t stop himself from making one more remark, glancing at the screen.

“...The fact they have such big square footage with this kind of income is unrealistic though.”

While the way Eddie dramatically throws his arms into the air is something he expected, the exasperation with which the Other collapses over their laps is a bit upsetting. He crosses his arms.

“What? There’s no way they are paying their rent on time. Or like, at all.” He crooks a brow and eyes the show doubtfully. “Thirty years ago to own an apartment this big you’d have to be like- I don’t know, a family of surgeons? And now? For any of those guys to be able to pay due, they’d have to be splitting it between seven, heck, ten people?”

Eddie ostentatiously shakes his head.

“Ah, those scientific mind types… Am I right, darling?” Then, he ruffles Peter’s hair into a bird nest.

“Hey!”

Peter’s shout is nothing but encouragement for more noogies.

“Relax, A. J. Ayer, not everything has to operate on the perfect rules of logic,” Eddie says, finally letting him go.

“I’m just saying that the real estate market is a nightmare,” Peter mumbles, hugging himself into a tight pillar of indignation.

Apparently though his body language isn’t explicit enough, because when Eddie settles back on the couch, he still puts an arm over his shoulders.

“It’s a sitcom, Pete,” he reminds him, reaching for his laptop. “Although we’re not gonna lie and say you’re wrong if we’re talking about objective reality. How anybody’s supposed to keep a roof over their head in this economy is a mystery beyond the scoop of our understanding.”

“Tell me about it,” Peter says, scrunching his nose. “Two thirds of my salary for this dump. And the landlord hasn’t done anything about the faulty boiler in years. I mean, imagine.”

The mood goes sour for a moment and he feels the Symbiote crawling up to form a blanket over their torsos. He sighs and buries the lower part of his face into it.

“Not the best time for the single income households, we’ve got to say,” Eddie agrees distractedly, already returning to his article.

Those words make Peter stiffen. He clenches his fingers before stretching them and wringing them around. While he does so, his mind returns to the topic he's been worrying for the better portion of the morning. What he says next is almost automatic, really. After all, he was never a „thinking before speaking” kind of guy.

“Yeah, right now it's much better to have a roommate... or two.”

He only registers what he's saying when Eddie shoots him a quick glance.

“...Yeah, we suppose so,” they reply, sounding hundred percent casual and Peter catches himself freezing because of the implications.

This would be a bad moment, and a bad way of putting his idea forward. He doesn't even have flowers to go along with the proposal and he didn't even wash his teeth yet, since he sat down to work as soon as they finished eating. So he knows he should just tiptoe around and away from this for now and bring the matter of living together once he'll prepare some sort of romantic date. But let's be fair... Impulse control isn't his strongest suit.

„You know... I was thinking, if we'd move the book stands together and push the table to the left, I think a weight-set would fit over there, no?”

The Symbiote enveloping his body grows hard and stiff for a second and Eddie’s fingers stop above the keyboard. Then, he turns to face him, eyes a bit narrowed, searching. Another second. Two. Their lips tug up, revealing just the tips of fangs.

“Sure,” they say.

And that’s it. By the end of the week the weight set does find its way into the corner of (not-anymore-just)Peter’s studio apartment. After one week more Eddie, the Symbiote and their scarce belongings are fully moved in. There’s no proper fancy dinner to celebrate that because that’s not really something they can’t afford. Instead, they eat takeout Chinese on the top of Central Park Tower. And the city panorama, prettier than any view a restaurant could provide? It’s nice. It’s nothing special. Peter has seen it over a million times already, soaring through the New York City night. It’s mundane, the same way sunsets and sunrises are mundane. Mundane, like the smell of ozone after the storm or a rainbow accompanying it. Like the taste of still warm bread and the first lick of ice cream in the summer.

When Peter falls asleep tonight, in the bed which was his and is now theirs, nothing really changes. It’s mundane and it’s nice.

And he wouldn’t change it for anything else in the world.

(By the way, I've never watched Friends or Bing Bang Theory. Just in case you want to say Symby/Peter would hate it etc. This gal is Polish and knows like 3 American sitcoms. If you have better suggestions - please share.)

[hotasfahrenheit]

So you wanna get into NCT, eh?

Part 3 - NCT 127 - More MVs and Social Media Links

Oh hey I'm finally back. It's been more than a day but life happens and it's only been like two days... or so? (it's been three) but let's get back into this!

So last time we covered a little bit about the members of the group and then I linked some MVs. I realised something I could have done there was link some social media accounts so let's do that!

There are general accounts for NCT on most of the big social media services such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. There are also accounts for all of the subgroups, so NCT 127 does have their own accounts on all of those as well. I feel like the Youtube content deserves its own post so I'll get to that but 127 does have a Youtube channel as well.

The individual members share things like the Twitter and Instagram accounts on and off, taking turns sometimes to post on there, tho most posts are from the company. Facebook gets posts from the company and not from individuals very often. The boys do all have their own Instagram accounts tho, and they also all use Bubble to varying degrees, which is an app which a lot of kpop groups use where fans can pay to access special posts from idols that include text posts, pictures, voice recordings, etc. I have never been a Bubble user, but I follow everyone on Instagram so here's all of those:

Taeil | Taeyong | Johnny | Yuta | Doyoung | Jaehyun | Winwin | Jungwoo | Mark | Haechan

You can use those to become more familiar with the members and see some of the nonsense they get up to. Some of them post often and some post almost never so your mileage may vary with them as a tool, but I'm a sucker for personal social media accounts so I'm clearly following those all.

It's also worth throwing out there since I skipped talking about positions last time that Taeyong is the leader of both NCT 127 and also of NCT in general. He's also a main rapper, main dancer, visual, center, helps write and produce music and has since The 7th Sense was released, etc etc, you name it, he's probably done the thing. He's ridiculously talented, basically. (They all are.) I could list everyone's positions but there's tons of wiki pages and etc with those kinds of lists and I find them to be less helpful when you have a group like NCT where everyone kinda does everything a lot of the time and has multiple talents and jobs since the rappers might be singing or the vocalists might be rapping depending on the song and literally everyone is a visual etc. But that's part of why you might be noticing that Taeyong is front and center like... a lot. Very often. He's recognisable and has a distinctive voice and being the leader is a good extra excuse to focus on him.

Anyway, let's get back to the music! I somehow managed to come up with ten more videos to link to hit the max per post so you're getting another full variety tasting of 127's style and range with a special treat at the end.

Favorite (Oct 25, 2021) was the lead single from the repackage of Sticker and was not quite as divisive as Sticker but still a bit weird. Released right before Halloween, there's a whole vampire concept going on (GREAT) and the MV and live stage performances all have a weird electronic dance break 2 1/2 minutes in (BAD) that I am PLEASED TO TELL YOU is not part of the song on the actual album. The first time I watched the MV it threw me for such a hard loop that I almost hated disliked the song but when I listened to the album later on spotify I was like "wait it's gone!!!! it was all just a bad dream!!!" and I try to forget it until I do something like watch the MV to make a post like this.

We're gonna mix in some of 127's Japanese releases today starting with their first one, Chain (May 8, 2018) off their first Japanese mini album. Despite NCT's initial plan to have groups based in different countries and markets, they are still now in early 2024 only ABOUT to have their first Japan-centric subunit debut, which means that they've just been having 127 (and Dream) release some stuff in Japanese in the meantime. It helps that they have a Japanese member. Anyway Chain is just a great song so here it is.

gimme gimme (Feb 15, 2021) suffers a little from the eternal problem of kpop songs even in primarily Japanese having some.... wild? English lyrics (spicy disease? dead clowns? who wrote these lyrics? why did their native English speakers go along with this?) but despite the nonsense it's a catchy, mesmerizing earworm of a song with a tight MV with a lot of neat cuts and transitions and I have watched it VERY MANY times. I love it. Spicy disease and all.

In the first main NCT intro post I included WayV's version of Regular (October 8, 2018) and linked both this and the Korean version. I was going to include the Korean version and just link the English here since the Korean one is the one that I personally listen to the most, but then I noticed that the English version has like 66 million more views so I decided to reverse that and you get the English one. Anyway. All versions of Regular are great and the English version has some great weird lyrics too ("I be walking with the cheese that's the queso" is like... ultimate. Incredible. A+. How did Jaehyun record that without laughing? Legendary.). It's also, with Simon Says, one of the only MVs that has all ten members of NCT 127. It also has a CGI tiger, shiny cars, rockets going off, Winwin jumping off a building, there's just a lot going on.

Sliding back to Japan for a minute, I feel like I should include Wakey Wakey (March 18, 2019). I almost forget this song exists sometimes and I think it's because I just want to block out having seen the absolutely terrible wig they put on Johnny for this MV. Seriously why? The song itself is solidly in the weird but also very catchy lane that 127 does so well but I just keep thinking about the wig. Johnny had some long extensions for NCT 2020 that looked great on him, but this wig was just not it. My eyes are drawn to it every time he's on screen. I need to put this into my regular listening-only playlists and let my brain block that wig out the way I forget the dance break in Favorite exists.

127 started 2023 off with Ay-Yo (Jan 30, 2023) which was the (somewhat delayed) repackage of 2 Baddies, which we'll get to in a moment. I wasn't sure what to think of Ay-Yo at first but it has definitely grown on me despite having veered back into some questionable hair territory mainly for Taeyong (and I say that as a grown up late 90s punk kid who thought giant hair spikes were cool). The MV has some absolutely wild visuals mixed in, and the song is definitely outside of the realm of standard kpop releases even if it's not as weird as some others like Sticker. It's solid.

Okay so. Like. I honestly didn't really pay enough attention to the general reactions to 2 Baddies (Sep 15, 2022) to tell you how divisive this song was to most people, but it split one of my group chats VERY strongly and one of my friends has refused to listen to any 127 releases since then because she hates this song so much. I tried to get her with Fact Check at the very least and she's so anti this song that she still refused and I may have lost her on 127 altogether 🤣 It's mainly the chorus that she dislikes, and I'm a little back and forth on it myself sometimes honestly but also I have absolutely BLASTED this song while driving down the highway so it feels kinda like a guilty pleasure song sometimes. If you ignore the chorus the other parts of the song are so goooooooood and no one can deny that the last part of the bridge slaps. Plus there's a whole lot of shirtless Johnny and Yuta which you can never go wrong with.

Touch (Mar 13, 2018) is a little off from the style of kpop that I listen to regularly since it's a bit more in the bubbly poppy side of things that I don't always go for but the vibes are immaculate and everyone looks so happy in the MV and there's fuzzy sweaters and everyone smiles so much? It's hard to not love it. It's fluff and cheery and delightful.

I don't know if SM actually started the "track video" trend (short MVs that have an edited, cut down version of a song so they cost less to produce than a full MV- Lemonade is 3:10 on the Sticker/Favorite album, but this track video is 2:01 for instance) but they love doing them with NCT, and despite Lemonade (Sep 9, 2021) definitely deserving a full MV, since it wasn't the lead single it didn't get one but it did at least get a track video and was performed a lot on the music shows when they were promoting Sticker. It's catchy and has some clever work in the full version lyrics that involve titles of other NCT 127 songs and I've listened to it as much as or possibly more than Sticker.

I've covered all of the lead singles and there ARE some other track videos or special release songs like the recent Be There For Me that I could be using the last slot for but you know what? We're gonna go fully off the expected path and include Let's Shut Up & Dance (Feb 21, 2019) instead because it's wild and fun. 127 doesn't do much besides sing part of the chorus and do a bunch of dancing in this (on the ceiling? on the walls? in an alley?) but like. Lay is here too and the song is SO fun and an absolute bop so that's what we're closing this post out with.

So that wraps the NCT 127 music videos! I'm thinking the next post and the last of the 127 centric ones will be a guide to some of their Youtube content, since there's a whole lot, and that'll kinda set up expectations for the posts about Dream and WayV as well when we get to them. I think after I get through the main posts of MVs and content for all of the sub-units that I might do some special posts of performance videos for songs that don't have MVs just to get some of those out there, or I might just post a bunch of links to them. We'll see how I'm feeling and if my audience of like two or three people has any kind of preference (that's you, hey, yeah you, lemme know what you want from me).

This post is the third in a series of posts introducing new fans to NCT in a way that makes sense, by getting familiar with one subgroup at a time before moving on to the next. Linked down at the bottom is the intro post, and the rest will be linked as they're added.

Dedicated as ever to @catatonicrainbow and @poetry-protest-pornography 💖

[So you wanna get into NCT eh? 1 | 2 | 3]

[megmischief]

Sebastian x Aya (@potatoaiisle )(AFAB Reader) - Up on Fire

E RATED - Major content warning for Vampire Seb and Explicit Sexual Content!!!

Notes: Prewarning, this is the longest one-parter I've written 😅 For this reason, I will not be proofreading 💀

"Aya. Look, I can explain!" Sebastian spoke softly, trying to calm her down, but to no avail. Blood drips down his chin from his soft, pink lips, leaving crimson stains over his white t-shirt.

Aya cowered in fear as Sebastian's fangs peeked through his mouth with each word he spoke. "What are you...Sebastian? Do I even know the real you? Were you lying to me...all this time?"

Her shaking body was apparent, breaking Sebastian's heart one tiny piece at a time. "Aya...I'm sorry...I-..." Placing a hand on her should for reassurance, she pulls away rapidly.

"Sebastian. I need to know now. Tell me. No more lies." Tears streamed down her small face like the first monsoon of rainy season.

Sebastian wipes his face clean with his shirt, leaving his toned stomach exposed for a brief moment. "Aya..." Sebastian edges closer.

"Stop." Aya cowers; edging back.

"Aya..." An almost evil glint filled Sebastian's eyes as he edged closer and closer, pushing her against the wall of his house.

"Sebastian...stop... You're making me uncomfortable..." She managed to whimper.

Sebastian smirks as he pushes her against the wall, looking deeply into her eyes. His own eyes were full of hunger. "No more lies?" He licks his lips, smirking. "Okay." Sebastian backs off slightly, opening his mouth to reveal his pointed fangs.

Aya's tears abruptly come to a stop as shock becomes the only emotion present. "Sebastian...a vampire? Those exist...?"

Sebastian nods, weakly smiling. "Yeah...and you're the only one that knows about me. Don't even entertain the thought of telling anyone." He snarls.

Shaking her head and hands rapily, she replies. "No, no! I wouldn't think of it..."

Sebastian nods, sitting down on a large boulder. "I'm not like normal vampires, Aya...I haven't drank human blood in decades. It's actually killing me slowly." He chuckles weakly. "It's weird. An eternal being dying because he's too weak to kill. Not the sort of predator they make us out to be, eh?"

Aya sits next to him, still mainting a distance. "Uh... yeah... What do you plan on doing? Surely there's other ways that you can get human blood? Maybe a blood bank?"

"Too risky." He mumbles.

Aya pauses for thought, her palms sweating profusely. "What about me...?" She whispers.

Sebastian is taken aback and leaps up. "Not in hell froze over. No. Im not hurting you, Aya. I care about you too much... "

"You... care about me?" She whispers under her breath.

Nodding, he crouches down before Aya, taking her hands in his own softly. "Mm. I care about you a lot. I...uh...I love you, Aya. I have for a while. I just never said anything because I thought you would be scared of me."

"Sebastian... I am scared. But... you're still you. Just a little different from what I initially thought..." She slowly raises her head, looking deeply into his eyes. "And... I love you too. So... please..."

Sebastian leans his head on Aya's knee, feeling completely helpless. "There's only one way I'm doing this."

Aya squeezes Sebastian's hands, feeling a little confused.

"I am an eternal being, Aya. If I drink your blood, it will kill you. However... if you truly love me... I can turn you too. But you have to be certain because I will not do this otherwise.

Without hesitation, Aya nods. "I want this. Please, Seb."

A sudden hunder takes over Sebastian as he picks Aya up, throwing her over his shoulder and heads inside. Throwing her onto the bed, he quickly climbs on top of her.

"You're still certain you want this...? That you want me...?" He whispers into her ear softly.

Aya gives him a small nod. "Mm. I'm sure..." Her hands reach into his hair, playing with it gently.

"Okay..." He mumbles, kissing her passionately.

His fangs gently scrape against her lip through the kiss, causing shivers to travel down her spine. Sebastian's hands begin exploring Aya's petite figure, travelling up her shirt.

Aya moans, her breaths deepening with every touch. "Sebby..."

"Yes, my love?" He whispers into her ear, nibbling and biting at it.

Aya gasps, and her breath hitches as he travels down to her neck, lightly scraping her soft skin with his razor-sharp fangs. Sebastian pulls away for a brief moment to remove his bloodstained shirt. Aya's fingers trace his toned, pale torso as he swiftly removes her shirt and bra.

"You're so beautiful, my love." He smiles down at her, his hands roaming across her body once more. Sebastian begins to leave delicate kisses down her torso until he reaches her waist, pulling off her trousers and panties as he reaches her thighs. He begins to leave small bites down the inside of her thighs, causing the volume of her gasps and moans to increase.

"Sebastian, I need you..." Aya whimpers.

Sebastian gives her a knowing nod as he removes the rest of his clothes, towering back over her fragile body. "Okay...I'm going to start now..." He lines himself up at her entrance, slowly pushing himself inside.

Aya whimpers, her back arching with a mixture of pain and pleasure. Her hands reach up, wrapping around Sebastian's neck to pull him in closer. "I love you..."

Sebastian warmly smiles down at her, moving his hips at a slow and steady pace. "I love you too, Aya...I'll remember this moment for as long as I live..." Leaning down, his continues to kiss her passionately before trailing small kisses back down to her neck. He lingers there for a while before plunging his teeth in.

Aya's walls tighten around Sebastian, causing him to push his teeth in deeper. Aya's hands pull tightly on his hair as he continues to move his hips, drinking her blood as he does so.

"Se-...bas-..." She manages to croack out, the pain and pleasure mixing themselves into one entity.

After having his fill, Sebastian pulls away, his chin once again dripping. "Aya... you taste divine..." He licks his lips and increases the speed of his thrusts while gently rubbing her clit.

Aya's moans begin to turn into cries of pleasure as she feels herself growing closer and closer to the edge. Her back begins to arch as she tightens herself around his member.

"That's it, my dear... Let go and allow yourself to experience our forever..." Sebastian smiled, continuing to rub circles into her clit as he thrusts.

As Aya reaches her climax, so too does Sebastian. They continue riding out their high until it comes to a slow end.

Sebastian slowly pulls himself out, laying beside Aya. "Thank you, my love..." He places a delicate kiss on her lips as he moves a lock of her hair behind her ear. "And... welcome to our forever together." Sebastian giggles as he sees Aya's own fangs now fully grown in.

They continue to enjoy each other's company for the rest of the evening. Talking about their future together and whispering sweet nothings. Sebastian finally found someone to call home after a millennia alone.

[aleprouswitch]

INTJ Stereotypes Survey

Just for the fun of it. I've seen this going around a few places and decided to throw my answers into the mix. This is a long post, so read under the cut:

Socially Awkward - Yes. Horribly. Even around people I know decently well, I tend to fumble my words and have weird bodily cues. I've been asked on more than one occasion at in-person jobs why I "do that". It's somewhat embarrassing and makes the social awkwardness even worse.

Really Good at One or Two Oddly-Specific Things - Yep. Those two things would probably be writing and music.

STEM Nerd - I wish. I've always been fascinated by science and would have chosen a career in a scientific field had I not been cursed with dyscalculia.

Morbid Fascinations - Hey, only I know the contents of my browser history and I'm going to keep it that way 😏

Lots of Alone Time - Definitely. I wear out easily if I have to be around people or talk on the phone for too long.

Good at School - Yes and no. There was a time in my life when my grades were suffering and that was largely due to depression, and as mentioned, I have dyscalculia so my GPA suffered as an undergrad due to having to repeat so many math courses. Concerning the last math class I had to take in college, I went to the math lab every day for tutoring and to study a week before finals. The final still took me 2 1/2 hours to complete and I was crying throughout. I barely passed the course with a D.

Unemotional - Somewhat, I guess? I have emotions, but they're not dramatic or overexaggerated like a lot of peoples', and definitely not fitting to the female/non-male stereotype.

High IQ - I took the IQ test twice - the first time gave me 123 and the second time gave me 117. I don't think either of those numbers are too shabby.

Very Strong Political Opinions - Hoooo boy, yes. This is doubly so if you get a few drinks in me. I nearly derailed a work party once for ranting about a Conservative coworker's idiotic scare tactic posts about Syrian refugees. So many visibly uncomfortable people.

Very Strong Religious Opinions - Somewhat. I'm mostly agnostic but I'm definitely not a fan of organized religion dictating what others can and can't do with their lives.

Facts Over Feelings - Yes, very much so. The truth is more important than sugar-coating something.

Plans Ahead for Everything - I try to, but we live in a very unpredictable world right now that is centered on temporary fixes and intentional instability. Being a Type A person in a Type B societal system can be tiring.

Very Organized - When it comes to my work spaces, 100% yes. Everything else? I'm a little sloppy because it doesn't concern anything immediate or urgent.

Has an Existential Crisis Like Every Other Day - Hahahahahahaha....that's what a Ni-Fi loop will do to you, kids.

Nihilistic - To a degree, yes. I don't exactly gargle Nietzsche's cum or anything, but we share similar outlooks.

Money Matters - True, although I'm not super stingy like my ISTJ/ESTJ mom is. I allow more wiggle room for (responsible) fun.

Narcissistic - I don't' think I am at all, but an ex-coworker did call me a narcissist in an argument once. I told our manager and she just laughed and said "Dora, he probably doesn't even know what the word means".

Brutally Honest - Yes, and it's cost me a lot of friendships in my life. Once again, I believe in telling the truth even if it hurts.

Not Open With Romantic Feelings - I think this is one way in which I deviate most from the INTJ stereotype. When I have feelings for somebody, I play it cool, but I let the other person know that I'm interested. Having been in a relationship for 11 years, I understand the importance of romantic feelings and try to make time for my partner and I to keep those feelings alive.

Arrogant - I've been accused of being arrogant many times in the past, so maybe I am. Eh.

Black-and-White Thinking/Bad at Accepting Other Opinions - I've struggled with this in the past, but I think I'm getting better at being more open with age.

Never Smiles - I do smile, but only if I feel like it.

Hates Parties - I like parties if it's a small get-together with good friends. I'm not too big on the ones with tons of people, super loud music, drugs everywhere, etc. No ragers for me.

Self-Centered - This is a heated one for me, because my mom always called me self-centered when I was growing up as an insult. I probably am, but it's due to the fact that at times in my life, I've felt like I'm all that I have.

Offensive Memes - Yes, back when I was in my little edgelord phase. God forbid any of those ever resurface.

Aloof - I suppose? I don't know.

Probably Wants to Take Over the World - Nah. I just want to have control over my own life and my immediate surroundings.

Good With Technology - Yes, for the most part.

Good at Math - As mentioned twice before, I have dyscalculia, so no.

Good at Written Communication but Bad at Talking to People - Why the hell do you think I'm on this website so much? I've always asserted that the words I write are much louder than the words I speak.

Bad at Expressing Emotions - I can be, but once again, I think I'm getting better about it with age.

Pessimistic - I consider myself a realist, not a pessimist, although so many people tend to think someone is being pessimistic when they're just seeing the reality of a situation.

[dandylovesturtles]

Maybe this is a stupid question but for your fanfics, do you have a proofreader or is it all you? If it’s all you are there specific things you look for or do before deciding a chapter is finished?

Not a stupid question at all!

For the most part it's all me! I do have a betareader for one of my current projects (a big bang thing I'm working on) since it's for an event but outside of that I'm kinda just too impatient for betareading haha, I just want to get the thing out fast.

NOT SAYING THIS IS GOOD PRACTICE honestly there's a lot that could be improved by having a reader (also a lot that could have been improved if I wrote the whole fic and then edited and then posted but eh whatever I do this for fun not to publish).

I do do a lot of proofreading on my own, and I use a few tricks like changing the font of the work when I look back over it (it tricks your brain into thinking you're looking at something new), and I usually read the chapter aloud, too (this is especially helpful for catching things like wordy sentences or weird syntax, if it feels weird to say out loud it probably needs to be rewritten). I also have a lot of things I look for specifically as I read over my own work, mainly things like:

crutch words (mine are things like "just", "apparently", "basically", "a bit", "a little", "even", "still" - words that usually aren't needed and just fill space and overly complicate sentences without adding content)

word smell (repeating a word too quickly after you last used it)

head-hopping (moving the perspective out of the view of the main POV character)

filter words (anything that filters through the senses of the character rather than the reader - "He felt the wind blowing hard" vs "The wind was blowing hard")

unnecessary adverbs ("ran quickly" vs "sprinted")

I also just try to feel out the pacing for the chapter: is it too long, too short*, does it hit everything I needed to accomplish, does it end in the place I want to for dramatic tension, etc. If I feel good about that I post, if I don't then I need to add something or cut something out.

*btw when I say "too long/short," I don't mean in word count. Word counts are going to vary dramatically based on author writing styles; I tend toward longer chapters that tend to run between 5K and 10K words long but there's definitely something to be said for shorter, punchier chapter lengths. I mean more, are events moving too quickly (usually because of too much narration) or are things dragging too much (usually because of too much dramatization).

And then I post it, go to sleep (usually because I'm posting at like 1 AM), wake up, reread it, and notice 50 mistakes ;)

That's my process in a nutshell lol

Thanks for the ask!

[kissmyspaceace]

The Lost and the Lascivious

CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 Pairing: Cardinal Copia/Reader Warnings/Contents: just some awkward Cardi C Word count: 2.278 AO3 link Taglist: @chaos-in-person ________________________

Standing in the park, you had your eyes fixed on the small church. A little more than 2 weeks had passed, since you had first entered that godforsaken place. You had hoped that it would take a little more to break you, honestly. But you were out of options.

The repetitive dreams only stopped once I stopped running away, so perhaps this is the way to go, you thought.

You approached the building with a determined strut, ready to face anything and anyone. You walked up the steps and shoved the heavy wooden door open. Your own force surprised you this time, since the door swung open almost to full extent, banging into the door stopper. Said noise revealed a flinching man wearing a cardinal’s robe at the altar. The loud noise had seemingly caught him off guard. Looking at his face, there was no doubt. It was him.

Your intense gaze was fixed on him, and made it pretty clear that it was him you were looking for.

His eyes nervously shifted from side to side, before he regained his composure and straightened his back, turning towards you.

“Good, eh, good day”, he said.

His voice almost made you stop in your tracks. It sounded different. However, you kept walking towards him. Getting closer, you were able to clearly see a pair of mismatched eyes looking at you with interest. There was no way it couldn’t be him.

You stopped about 4 feet away from him, never breaking eye contact. Scanning his face, there was yet again no doubt. No-one else looked like that.

A few seconds of awkward silence passed, before he cleared his throat.

“So… you have returned, I see”, he said. His voice was a little clearer and more stable now, sounding more like what you remembered.

You answered with a slow nod. You decided to be careful with your words for now, still not knowing how much of your whole experience had actually been real.

“How long has it been now? About, eh…”, he trailed off, scratching the back of his head.

“Two weeks”, you answered sternly. Let’s just hope for him, that he did not have anything to do with the weird dreams, you thought.

“Oh, two weeks, yes. Time flies, no?”

The corners of his mouth twitched upwards slightly, in some sort of weird attempt at a smile. He was behaving painfully awkward. It just confused you even more. If he tried playing dumb, you would make sure that he wouldn’t get away with it.

You relaxed your gaze. “Yes, it does”, you said, slowly starting to walk around by the altar, looking away from the man. From the corner of your eye, you saw his tense shoulders drop, implying a hint of relief. Someone’s not feeling too comfortable here.

“So yes, I am back”, you picked back up on the conversation, “and it occured to me that I have no name to call you by, since you missed out on introducing yourself properly before.” 

You nervously clenched your jaw and hoped that you weren’t getting too rude or sassy. The past two weeks had eaten away at your patience and given you a pretty foul mood.

“Oh- oh, yes, that is true. And I am very sorry”, he started stuttering behind you. “Please allow me to correct that.”

You started hearing steps behind you, and you spun back around to face him. He stopped directly in front of you and reached out to grab one of your hands. His movement was quick, yet gentle, and before you could react, he was gently holding your right hand in his.

“I am Cardinal Copia”, he said, giving you a deep bow, in which he placed a gentle, lingering kiss on the back of your hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, (Y/N). Well, officially, now.”

You were somewhat weirded out by his strange ways. He was very formal now, it seemed unfitting for this day and age, and yet it had a certain charm to it. He was still holding your hand. His thumb absentmindedly rubbed the back of your hand in circular motions. He seemed gentle in nature; however, you felt that there was something else lingering in the shadows of his mind.

“Uhm, thank you. It’s nice to meet you, too”, you murmured.

He smiled and nodded, gently dropping your hand. “Now that we’ve got that covered - you came back! Yay”, he said gleefully, “But I do have to ask. How come you decided to return?”

Is he serious?, you thought. What does he even want to hear?

You were looking for any sort of indication of the nature of his intent in his eyes, but they were merely giving you a curious, honest look.

“If I’m being honest, I… could not get this place out of my head”, you summarized. You weren’t lying. That was quite literally what had been happening.

“In what way, child?”, he asked in a low voice. It sent shivers down your spine to hear him call you that again. His face had not changed, neither had his soft expression. You started to feel your pulse throb in your throat.

“Oh, just as in, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I really liked the looks and the feel of this place”, you replied, fully intending to not reveal the extent of your psychological 2-week-torment. For a moment, you averted your gaze.

“(Y/N)”, he spoke, making your eyes snap back to his face, “I have a feeling that you are not answering me truthfully. I would ask you to be honest with me, dear.” The hair on your neck stood up, as you were fearing punishment for your careless lie. He continued to speak.

“I am well aware that in many cases people lie, because they fear the reaction to their truth. And maybe, sometimes, people choose to simply leave out important elements of said truth”, he explained, while slowly walking around you and stopping right behind you, putting his hands onto your shoulders. “I want you to know that however ridiculous it might seem, I will not judge. I can see you are unwell, cara. Let me help, let me listen.”

The way he already knew too much made your skin crawl. There was no way he wasn’t in on this whole ordeal, somehow. You swallowed. I can’t break down now. I have to keep going.

“I’m afraid I can’t, Cardinal Copia. It’s not that easy”, you said.

“I understand, I do. I will not force you, eh. But my offer stands.”

He walked back around you and faced the altar. “Until you feel ready, I would love to welcome you here anytime. We can talk about everything and nothing, sun or rain, day or night, good or bad.”

“I’m thankful for your offer. But why are you doing this?”, you asked.

He smiled softly. “Let us make a deal, cara. You tell me your secrets when you are ready, and I will tell you mine.”

You nodded. “Sure.”

He clapped his hands together. "Perfect! It’s a deal, then.”

A few seconds of awkward silence passed, before his eyes lit up suddenly. “Ah, cara, there is something I wanted to ask you about - wait for a moment, right here”, he said and hurried away, into some sort of back room.

About 30 seconds later, he returned holding two small flower bouquets. 

“I have been wanting to bring a little bit of, eh, fresh life into the church. I thought flowers would be a nice start. Which ones do you think would fit best?”, he asked, extending his arms towards you. In his left hand, he held a bouquet of deep, red flowers. You were able to make out deep burgundy roses, red carnations, crimson lilies and a few specks of white - if your knowledge didn’t fail you, you recognized them as gypsophila. In his right hand, there was a very dark collection of flowers - black roses, black lilies, black tulips and some deep violet irises, accompanied by decorative greens.

“Oh, uhm…”, you said, eyes moving from one bouquet to the other and back. “That’s tough, actually. I adore both of them.”

You couldn’t lie, both arrangements were very beautiful, each in their own right. The red assortment was like deep cascades of blood and passion, and the black assortment was like the beauty of the darkest night compiled into one bouquet.

Eyes shifting from side to side, you started to get nervous. “I really can’t decide! Ah, could we maybe- maybe combine them?”

The Cardinal’s eyes sparked with interest. “Combine you say?”, he asked, looking at the bouquets. Then, he nodded. “Yes, yes, I think that would make a wonderful sight.”

He quickly started fumbling with the bouquets, spread them out on the altar, and quickly started re-arranging them. It took him a few minutes, and spotting thick thorns on the roses made you hold your breath a few times. Luckily, his gloves seemed to protect his hands just fine.

After his work had been done, he proudly put his hands onto his hips. “There!” He looked at you with sparkling eyes and went to grab the bouquet, after which he proudly held it out to you. “Tada! What do you say?”

You carefully inspected the newly bound flower arrangement. He had done a nice job, the colours were distributed evenly and matched incredibly well. Now it looked like a blood-drunken night underneath the stars. A testament of sin. The small, white blooming heads of the gypsophila set excellent, tiny highlights - thus making them appear like stars. You smiled and gave one sharp nod. "Perfect. Seems like the career option of becoming a florist is still open to you”, you jokingly complimented.

He bowed to you slightly. “Why thank you very much. But I’m afraid I will not be striving for a different career in this lifetime. At least I sure hope I won’t have to.”

Your eyes were still fixed on the bouquet of flowers, attempting to take in every detail. It didn’t go unnoticed.

“Tell me, cara”, the Cardinal said, “What do these flowers look like to you? What would you compare them to? Creative approaches are appreciated.”

Your thoughts snapped back to your previous analogy. Maybe it would be fitting.

“I feel that this arrangement looks like, uhm…”, you started, looking at him hesitantly. He encouraged you with a nod.

“When I look at this bouquet”, you continued with a deep breath, “I see a dark night, doused in blood. Underneath the stars. It feels sinister, and yet…” You paused, trying to find the right words. “...alluring? Passionate? Powerful?”, he finished.

“Yes. All of these guesses are pretty accurate, actually. You get the idea”, you replied with a polite chuckle. You felt sort of relieved. He didn’t seem appalled at your grotesque interpretation. 

“Ah, I see you have an exquisite eye and taste for the deeper things in life, cara. I think it will be more than interesting to get to know you.”

You gave him a small smile. “I hope so.”

He reached over to the altar and wrapped some protective paper around the large bouquet. Then, he stepped closer. So close, almost, that your bodies were only separated by the bouquet he held in front of his chest. “Now, seeing as you can barely take your eyes off of these flowers - maybe you should take them home, no?”

Your eyes widened. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stare that much. I don’t- I mean, you don’t have to-”

Cardinal Copia shook his head. “Ts, ts, ts. No resisting now. It is a gift. A thank you, so to say. For visiting me, and helping me out with the flower arrangement choice”, he said with a small wink and held the flowers out to you. Gently, you took the large bouquet into your hands. “Thank you, then. I will take good care of them.”

“I know you will, child”, he said in low, breathy voice. “And next time you return, I will have this place decorated a little.”

He then turned his head and looked up at the stained glass window. You followed his gaze, to see what exactly had caught his eye and you were not disappointed. 

The fiery rays of the setting sun were starting to trickle through the colourful glass mosaic, slowly setting the ceiling of the church ablaze in warm light, announcing the end of the day with their luminous dance. A truly breathtaking sight.

“The day is coming to an end, eh. Hurry home now, cara. Give those flowers a lovely home and some water. Feel free to return whenever you wish”, he said, smiling at you softly.

“I will, Cardinal Copia. Thank you”, you said and smiled, while bowing slightly as an act of gratitude.

As you approached the door of the church, he called back at you one last time. “Take care of yourself, now. And get a good night’s sleep, eh?”

You turned around and gave him a sarcastic, half-hearted smile. “Good night, Cardinal.” With that you left the church, and returned home. You prepared a vase with water for the flowers, and set them down on a small table in your bedroom, since it looked best there. It would also allow you to look at them before falling asleep. A part of you hoped that their smell may bring you good sleep, another part of you was gnawing on the Cardinal’s comment. ‘Get a good night’s sleep’, my arse. I bet you have something to hide, you thought to yourself. And I will get behind that, one way or another.

[myymi]

dni list

>proshippers (sibling x sibling {includes adopted, found family, etc.}, adult x child, etc)

>anyone against human rights (racists, homophobes, etc.)

>people who start drama for no reason (im a sonic blog,, drama does not need to be here, i just want to talk about the dumb speedy hedgehog and his smart little fox brother ok)

>”ai art is real art” supporters. leave, this is not the blog for you

>those who purposefully misuse tone tags (/j, /lh, etc. {if you ave questions abt tone tags, you’re more than welcome to ask!! but if you’re knowingly using them wrong, leave.})

>anyone who hates tails (everyone is entitled to like/dislike any character they want, but i am a very tails-centric blog. you will not find content you enjoy here if you don’t like tails lol)

>anyone who says sonic and tails aren’t “real” siblings just because they aren’t related.

>SONAILS SHIPPERS. DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT INTERACTING, YOU WILL BE BLOCKED IMMEDIATELY.

thin ice / you’re okay but don’t push it

>people who are a lot older than i am ({25+} you can chill but don’t be weird or i will block you)

>shippers ({and this one kinda goes especially for child shippers. really don’t care to hear about 5-12yos being in relationships, even if aged up.} don’t talk about ships on my blog. just about every relationship is platonic here, unless canonically stated others {ex: tom and maddie wachowski})

>those who still watch problematic creators (what you do is up to you, but don’t bring up anyone here unless i specifically talk about it. if you see me talking about someone who’s problematic and it seems like I don’t know that, PLEASE tell me.)

>religious people (again, what you do is entirely up to you but don’t bring any sort of religion onto my blog unless it’s a canonical character trait.)

please interact <33

>anyone who’s favorite character is tails / is a tails-centric blog !!

>non-toxic writers / artists <3

>anyone who is willing to scream w/ me abt tails / tails and his siblings

>maria/tails parallel enjoyers

>kitsune tails believers

>anyone who headcanons aroace and/or non binary tails

if you’d like to be mutuals, feel free to msg me!! ^^

under the cut is a few more little “rules” for my blog!

{you don’t have to follow them to be here, but not doing so could possibly lead to me blocking you}

as i stated before, i don’t want ships mentioned on my blog besides cannon ones like tom and maddie. especially if its tails, charmy, cream, etc. in the ship.

though, there are a few cannon ships i don’t want mentioned either;

>tails x cosmo (nothing wrong with it, i just don’t really care for it. i really don’t like tails ships)

>tails x mina (that whole thing was,, eh. i hate it so much)

>tails x zooey (she looks like she could be his sister. she’s literally just a genderbend of tails without the second tail)

>sonic x amy (i know sonamy is SUPER one-sided, but i still want to mention it here because sonamy fans can be wild)

>sonic x sally (i don’t know much about satam cause i just kinda skimmed through it, but this relationship felt weird to me)

>sonic x elise (not a fan of the human x mobian thing,, and also the whole “kissing to save his life” deal was weird, i hate that trope)

and here are a few ships I REALLY don’t want to hear about, cannon or not;

>kit x tails (they’re both really not in good spots mentally to be in a relationship tbh. also, kit is 11 while tails is 8, which is only a 3 year gap but it’s still weird to me. like, kit would be 18 while tails is only 15 which is just uncomfortable. at 17 i wouldn’t date a 14yo, y’know?) {if you actually know me and we talk on a regular basis, i am okay with hearing abt this ship btw!! just,, not on tumblr please, and same goes for tails x cosmo}

>silver x sonic/shadow/espio/anyone from the current timeline (these ships have always been weid to me cause like,, silver is from the future?? everyone else is, like, dead or just really old in silver’s time while he’s 14. it’s just weird to me ahhhwoiefoeiw)

>sonic x blaze (sorryyy sonaze shippers, but i don’t really like the “dating someone who’s you from another dimension trope” or really just any sort of thing that’s slightly selfcest. {nothing wrong with it, it’s just really not for me} this kinda goes with kit x tails, since kit was made to be a better version of tails)

i know some of these aren’t technically cannon ships, but everything that’s considered cannon in sonic lore can just be so confusing, and i don’t care enough to go into detail about it so they’re mentioned here

but generally, just stay away from mentioning any ships on my blog. it’s the safer bet ^^

also, please don’t talk about sonic x on my blog. there’s nothing inherently wrong with it, but i just,, do not like it. i physically cannot bring myself to finish even the first season of it, so i’d rather just stay clear of it.

and please don’t try to move the topic of my blog from tails to another character. i’m more than happy to discuss tails WITH another character, but without him it’s just,, i will not enjoy that, and i won’t do that to myself. please stay tails-centric on this blog :]

and you ever want to discuss something that contains spoilers PLEASE mark it as spoilers or ask if i’ve seen what you’re wanting to talk abt before you start discussing it. i’d like to keep this blog as spoiler free as possible, for others and myself, so i want to mark everything that could be spoilers.

{and, this probably goes without saying, but if i tell you i haven’t seen the subject, please don’t talk about it with me. doing that will absolutely get you blocked. just be considerate :]}

i would also appreciate it if y’all don’t try to convince me to watch/read a certain piece of media, like sonic x for example. if i want to, i will look into it on my own time. but if i don’t want to, and people try to pressure me into it, i will just end up hating whatever it is you’re wanting me to see. {this does include trying to make me get into it any sooner than i plan to}

i am a human with my own schedule, interests, and dislikes. i will not have time to see every piece of media out there, nor will i like all of them. that’s just how it is, nobody can change that.

it is possible i’ll come back to edit/extend this later on, but for now that’s everything i want to mention.

thanks for reading!! <33

[27emailsicantsend]

Season 3 Episode 6 Thoughts

WOW this episode was as Ricky put it “heart wrenching”

Like I know he’s been feeling it all season but I’ve been so well fed with the content. This episode I genuinely felt what Ricky felt. That was hard

But before we get too into rina I’ll make some other notes first

Ashlyn feeling the fireworks and pw not??? Oh sorry pw you’re bones but that was so sweet for Ashlyn

I have really enjoyed watching her discover herself and her sexuality this season. I remember season one thinking she was not super straight and so it’s cool really seeing her find her full identity this season (something she stated she had a hard time with). Which is an interesting insight to who she is at EH because she always has loads of clubs she’s in and stuff right? It’s like she could never settle on being one thing because maybe she actually didn’t totally know herself but now she does.

I also appreciate the Maddox and Jet storyline. I was team blue but very happy yellow won. It seemed like a really sweet victory for them and it was nice watching Jet try to restore that relationship

I kind of expected that storyline to resolve this episode so it was interesting seeing that Maddox still doesn’t feel totally resolved. I wonder what else will happen

I’m SO excited for Sebby to come back for prom 🥹 I miss him so much and I’m sure Carlos does too ❤️

The scene of Miss Jenn teaching EJ her directing tips 😭😭 pls it was so funny. When she talked about angrily shoving the papers in the binder. I NEED someone to gif Ej doing that so I can use it as a reaction meme lmao

I also LOVED her referring to herself as mommy or that they were her children, her son, etc. anyone else it is kinda weird but idk it works for her?

Although it didn’t work for Miss Jenn last season when Ricky got mad at her 😶 but I didn’t say that

I also wonder what the Miss Jenn and Mike agenda is? This cruise feels kind of out of left field for their relationship? It doesn’t seem like they were together that long for her to just hop on a boat with someone? But also what happened to Mozzarella Stick? Tbh I’m indifferent as of right now to both couples. I would be happy with her with either guy… I’m just confused because S2 left her relationships sooo up in the air so I’m curious to see if that gets more resolved S4

It was SO healing for my childhood to see Corbin perform again. I am actually sad he didn’t do the wildcats cheer too. It was a nice rina moment that came from it but I’m like 🥺

I also appreciate the implications of Corbin reliving his Disney games days. And then mixing dancing and basketball together after Chad made such a big deal about dance and baseball/basketball not mixing. Just loads of nostalgia 🥲

Carlos kept mentioning something about wanting a dressing room?? And they showed miss Jenn giving a little face that seemed like she was up to something with that? I wonder what that was about? What if she made him his own little dressing room before the rehearsal? 😭 she showed ashlyn how important her part is and she might do the same for Carlos 😭😭 oh that’s cute

Also miss Jenn finding the licorice at some random store was a shout out to the “big summer blowout” in frozen. I love 🥰

I made a separate post about this on my page but I think the pw canoe scene was very on the nose to The Little Mermaid? I kind of think it might be a hint at next seasons musical

I’ve been so-so about the jetney agenda but watching him cheer her on and the parallels of them having stuffed animals + some of the looks have been cute I’m ngl

I kinda got annoyed at Val this episode. She was very… pushy? Like pushy with Kourt, pushy with Ashlyn understanding “who she is”… idk something about this episode rubbed me the wrong way with her

Ok now for the best part RINA

MY SWEET BABIES I MISSED YOU (lmao am I miss Jenn coded??)

The HUG AND HAVING ONE EVERY EPISODE 6. So now they have massive parallels for each 5th and 6th episode of the seasons? Tim you better keep this up for future seasons

But really the hug was so sweet and watching Gina go to him first because she was proud of herself 🥲

ALSO the troyella basketball parallels??? Hello?????? That was so cute. I wanted to see him go behind her and help her shoot.

Also I wanted ricky to be the only one who helped her up after she fell but we can’t always win 😭

Isn’t it interesting that EJ ONCE AGAIN points out to Ricky something he can’t figure out as ginas boyfriend? (Why she hasn’t laughed at his jokes but is laughing at Ricky’s) oof the jealousy is strong in this one

But also Ricky made gina laugh 🥹

I LET COLOR WARS SLIP THROUGH MY FINGERS

Also watching Ricky’s crying was HARD. He hasn’t cried that hard for anything else, including his break up with Nini. (I pointed this out in another post). Like this REALLY affected him

AND THEY DID THE RINA CUE WHILE HE CRIED BECAUSE TIM IS EVIL AND LIKES TO WATCH RINAS SUFFER

Ngl I was a teeny bit disappointed with that scene in the cabin. I thought that we would get the flashback or even a little more around why Ricky was so upset but jet made things about him then Ricky had an idea and the scene was over. I just feel like the dialogue got cut really short and there could have been even a couple more sentences to make the scene feel a little more whole. I would have LOVED the flashback here too but we can’t always win

I will say though, I’ve had this theory that the characters that the kids are playing not on stage is Ricky being Kristoff and jet being Sven and this scene amplified that. Remember how annoyed in frozen Kristoff got at Sven when he tried to make Kristoff go back to Anna or keep going through the woods with her? Kristoff got snappy. Me thinks Mr Bowen is portraying that same quality

I loved watching Ricky cheer Gina on in all the events 🥹 you can even hear him in the scene where she is rock climbing. It’s just such supportive boyfriend material unlike SOMEONE 🫥👀

Also did you notice when Ej was telling gina all the reasons he needed the show to go perfect she was the LAST reason? It was like he was explaining all of his anxieties and stress and then it was like “oh yeah and you too so I don’t have to stress over that either”. It was just.. yikes

(I still really would love a Kourtney and Ej scene where they talk to each other about the anxieties they’ve been facing)

I would love to see some sort of parallel where Gina feels or hears the words or something about the fireworks when she’s with Ricky. It’s interesting how miss Jenn pointed that out and we clearly saw them with Ashlyn and we also clearly saw how pw waited and waited for them to show. It was very in your face that they wanted these fireworks to happen so badly and they were never going to come. Instead of showing pw watching the fireworks to show they came we just got Ricky crying to the rina cue. I think having some sort of parallel to the fireworks with rina is going to be our way of knowing rina are finally on the same page. Ricky knows his feelings and whatever feelings gina has swallowed or push to the side have resurfaced and she acknowledges them too. Their love will feel like fireworks 🎆

ALSO (someone on Twitter pointed this out can’t remember who so if you know pls comment so they get credit) the scene where ricky takes Ej to gina parallels the scene heavily where Kristoff takes gina to hans. It’s not what he wants but it’s putting the other person first which shows you love someone. (Which I pointed out was a direct quote from frozen)

And sorry not sorry I’m gonna say it: I don’t think Ricky is just crushing on Gina or just likes her. He even made this a point “on accident” last episode. Ricky is IN LOVE with Gina. His feelings are so much deeper than he or others may be willing to admit

Ok friends I’m sure I have more thoughts but it’s 3am so my brain is VERY tired. I will post more throughout the week because it’s going to be tough waiting to get to episode 7 😅

Please send asks talking to me about theories, questions, etc through the week. I would love them! I have one in my inbox right now I’ll get to tomorrow but I’d love to discuss more with ya’ll :)

Ok have a good night! ❤️ rina endgame

[coffeebanana]

7

... this one is targeted /lh Thanks for the ask!! (From Fanfic Asks For The New Year)

7. Will you change anything about the way you interact with other writers?

Ha! okay so. yes and no. No, because realistically I will not just magically become chill about all things overnight. Yes, because adnfksjfbd. Did y'all know that we writers sometimes do this silly little thing where we actually fangirl over each other's work but are convinced we'll make a fool of ourselves if we try to interact with the other writer? We think, oh no, they won't want to hear from me. They're just commenting to be nice they don't mean it even though it's literally a page of gushing over my words haha they're just being silly goofy 😝 And it's hilarious, because I've seen that happening to other people and it's so silly to hear about? Like...of course you are two talented writers who enjoy each other's content! Why wouldn't you want to be friends? And then I get trapped in the middle of it like a giant hypocrite 😂 I have this really weird quality of having pretty good self-confidence but assuming that other people don't feel the same appreciation for me/my talents/etc... I'm not sure that makes sense but it's like... I think I'm great, I just don't expect other people to feel the same about me because...maybe that's hubris? It's applicable to a lot of things in my life but this is specifically about writing. So there have been people who've been reading my fics for a long time, who frequently leave kudos/comments/etc..., and I'm still like "eh, but they probably don't like my writing that much". AND THAT'S STUPID THINKING IT'S RIDICULOUS WHY AM I LIKE THIS. There are like a bazillion different reasons people don't comment on fics but I think more often than not it comes down to one of three things. - 1. Sometimes you just don't have the mental energy, and that's 100% valid. - 2. People are nervous about commenting in general. They don't know what to say or maybe are socially anxious. I don't really have tips on the anxiety front except to say that even a keyboard smash or an emoji are valid and very much appreciated comments. And also that commenting is a skill like anything else. You can start small and learn to be better. - 3. People literally just don't think their words are going to mean anything significant to the writer so they don't bother. The old, "oh, why would they want to hear from me?"

I'm absolutely guilty of number 3, and I've gotten a lot better at it but it's hard sometimes. The funny thing is though...like any sort of relationship in life, someone just has to make the first move? I've gone and read people's fics because I remembered seeing their username in my comments and have a positive connotation with it and I want to support them too. I've also noticed the opposite thing happen, where people start to comment more on my fics once I've started interacting with their works. And I think that's actually really lovely and says something beautiful about humanity. Like...we want to make people feel good because they made us feel good. We appreciate each other and sometimes we don't say it enough but DAMN IT we are trying. Anyways askdfjbsk this got a little rambly because some of this is stuff I've been trying to work into a post about commenting for a while and this seemed like a good opportunity 😂 Hope that answered your question, "anon"...

[msviolacea]

A few very random thoughts about 6.4 - I only got to play the MSQ last night, so no raid stuff or anything else here.

Aside, though - I am curious about how many patches we'll get this cycle. No cycle has gone past X.5x yet, but the fact that Japan's Fanfest isn't until January 2024, I don't expect to see 7.0 until at least February-March. On the current cycle, 6.5 would come out in October ... which, now that I count months, would make it about right for an expansion in February-ish. It just seems longer because they've been stretching out the patch cycle this time around. I don't begrudge them that, even if it feels like content has been waning. Pandemic plus avoiding crunch plus giving YoshiP and Soken and Koji and whoever else is working on FFXVI some breathing room are all things that deserve grace.

I've been taking a break from the game this year, though I might go back and start catching up casually now. But breaks are good, and it still feels like coming home to come back and see everyone in a patch.

Anyway. 6.4 MSQ thoughts!

First of all, a big fuck you to the tank who forced us to abandon my first attempt at Voidcast Dais because we wiped three times - progressing farther each time, I mighta dd. On the first fucking day, my dude. You're an asshole.

I am currently underwhelmed with the story as a whole, though sleeping on it makes me view it slightly more favorably. The whole sequence on the 13th moon seemed very poorly thought out. Though, I do think/hope the parallels between that and the Fandaniel-releases-Zodiark sequence in Endwalker are deliberate. What it's saying in a story sense, I don't know yet, but I'd like to think the FFXIV writing crew are better than to write two completely separate "hahaha, by defeating me in a trial you fell right into my trap and released a terrible evil from this crater on the moon!" sequences without knowing exactly what they're doing. Still, I would have liked a nod to that in dialogue; a simple "well this feels familiar" from Y'shtola or Estinien would have done.

Golbez still feels "eh," but I'm also aware I felt this way about the Warriors of Darkness in the 3.X patches, and they brought it back to gleefully stomp on my heart with them later, so I'm reserving the right to come back and revisit the whole patch story after 7.0 or later. But the FFIV inserts feel less natural than other FF references in this game. I don't know if it's because I know exactly what they're referencing this time around, or if it's genuinely just weird.

Mostly though, I want to know about all the little nods to future story they dropped here. Erenville's "homecoming" (is he from Meracydia? they keep name dropping it, that's almost certainly where we're going in 7.0 at this point), Krile's envelope, Thancred and Urianger's new "client" who wants Archons ... maybe some of it is from side stories from this patch I haven't gotten to yet, but I'm sure some of it is setting up for later.

I still have to do the Pandaemonium tier, and Tataru's quests, and I guess Hildebrand, though he's not my favorite - if I want to get any relic weapons, I guess I should catch up there. But I also really really need to go back and do alliance raids weekly. I had to spend like 2mil gil to get to the minimum IL for the trial last night, which thankfully I have plenty, but still. I'm so behind on gear, it's embarrassing.

I do miss having a group of people to be excited about FFXIV with. Maybe I'll figure that out this summer.

[dykeyote]

for the chnt 'choose violence' ask game :-)

7,8,9,10,21

YIPPEE i love games like this

7: character i hate not bc of canon but bc of how the fandom treats them ..... UP AND ADAM . i actually really liked adam i thought his aesthetic was really fun and i was excited for him but the way he overshadows other characters who are way more promiinent despite having no speaking lines and no personality yet and not having had literally anything to go off annoyed me . give me salem content!!!!!!!! no more of him!!!!!!!!!! ive seen enough!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (no hate to my adam loving mutuals i dont shut up abt jedidiah and he takes up a lot of space too its just a certain kind of adam fans that grate on me)

8: common fandom opinion everyone is wrong about . taptap . usually how people kind of take away elijahs agency in his own actions? people tend to favor a portrayal of elijah that suggests that while his Actions were bad, his Intent was not bad . that he didnt know what he was doing somehow and was trying to do the right thing . which i think is pretty blatantly disproven by the fact that he was still weird towards sydney before the ritual ever happened and by how malicious his manipulation of sydneys disabilities is but eh . i also find people dont tend to understand what jedidiahs arc as a privileged individual .... Means? (this isnt gonna be femidiah discourse i swear pls pls) which is on two sides of the spectrum theres the spectrum that just decides hes a completely bad person without any rigorous analysis of his character that treat privilege as an unnuanced thing . OR people who refuse to analyze that many Many interactions jedidiah and sydney have automatically have an underlying of ableism to them and that most plot poitns in their arc you can look at and say this is about disability bc they like jedidiah and again, cant see privilege as nuanced, and feel like they hvae to avoid the everpresent fact of his ableism and privilege to be able to like him . both of which come from a lack of understanding of how privilege like . works . ppl struggle to be nuanced about jedidiah i find . and as a whole like to take the characters and decide if theyre good or bad based on how much they like them

9: "worst part of canon ..... oh thats hard i really like chnt its hard to pick out a Worst Part . most of the things i dont like are characters i want to see more of or things that are really well written but that *I* dont like cough cough elijah . hmmmmmm . this is hard . uhhhh . what do i DISLIKE in chnt thats not fanon . like id say i dislike that so far the main antags appear to be both young attractive sexymanny types and i hope they vary that later on? but thats like HEAVILY influenced by how annoyed i am with the treatment of adam and elijah in the fandom so idk how fair of a critique that is and we've also seem so little of adam and the show as a whole that it seems in poor faith to judge him absed on what is about 80% fanon . so my only gripe that i can think of immediately isnt really good media criticism .... maybe ill have more complaints as the show goes on" answer from another post (:(:

10: "worst part of fanon . may be predictable based on the above response but oh my god i hate fanon elijah so much . i HAATEEEE him more than i hate canon elijah and i HATE canon elijah . i hate him!!!!!! i hate him when hes sexyified i hate him when hes goofy and silly i hate him when hes just a little guy i hate him i hate him i hate him!!!!!!!!!!! it takes an incredibly interesting villain who is absolutely vile and it makes him boring as hell!!!!!!!!!!! add that to the fact that fanon elijah overwhelms literally any content for just abt any character you might actually care about especially the women and i am frothing at the mouth" also from another post >:)

21: part i think is overhyped . LET ME CLARIFY THAT I DONT MEAN THAT ITS BAD . i can think something is overrated and still like it . but VERY easily rowaniper..... i love rowaniper i think theyre very cute and all but people seem to forget that they interact in like ..... one episode ......... and its a cute episode!! but people act like theyr The Main Romance or something and its like can we calm down . and i wouldnt even mind so much but people tend to ignore like ...... everything interesting about their relationship? bc to ME . the sweetest thing about rowaniper is how juniper Tries for rowan how he acknowledges his own flaws and how he harms rowan and tries his best to improve tings . but people like to pretend that junipers done nothing wrong ever so you dont even get that most interesting part of their relationsihp </3