#I'm shit and everything's shit and it's all fucking garbage

[wingedhallows]

a little jealousy; sirius black

pairing: sirius black x reader | 0.9k words plot: fighting is normal but, making up is just as important. authors note: i hope u like this little something

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You hated this, the quiet. His hand would be around you, on your thigh, on your arms, his body flush against you, his voice blurring everything out. You missed him.

He avoided you, you had fought after all, over something stupid, you now realized. 

“That’s ridiculous.” He laughed as he turned his back to you. The surring anger inside your chest rose only further.

“So you think it’s ridiculous that I’m angry because Melanie fucking Primrose was hitting on you while I stood right fuckin’ next to you?!”

He brushed a hand over his face before he pushed a cigarette between his lips. He didn’t look at you, brushed your issue away like it wasn’t one at all.

“Sirius, look at me when I’m speaking to you.” He eyed you, blowing some smoke from his lips, mouth in a scowl.

“Sirius!” Your hand on his upper arm before he shrugged it off, his eyebrows drawn together.

“Back off, Y/N.” He blew some more smoke before he stepped away from you. He took his jacket and shrugged it on.

“Actin’ like my goddamn mother.”

You huffed in disbelief.

“You didn’t just compare me to your abusive, awful mother.” Your chest felt tight, your hands were icy cold.

“Oh please, you’re just like her. I can’t even stand the sight of you right now.”

He took a drag of his cigarette and walked past you, hitting your shoulder in the process.

You were still angry, livid even. He had compared you to his horrible mother, the woman you loathed for treating him like garbage. You’ve fought before, of course you did.

Every couple fights but never has he ever insulted you like this. Was that what he saw you like? As a woman so awful that he has to compare you to the woman who abused him for years on end?

 

“Why won’t you talk to him?” Lily’s hand rested on your arm, drink in hand. Reggie poured some more in your cup.

“Leave him be, he deserves to be miserable, to be honest.” You downed the insides of your cup before holding it out for the younger Black to fill it up again.

“You might want to slow down a bit or you’ll end up shit faced.” He commented before filling up the cup again. “James said he regrets acting like this.” Lily tried again but you shook your head.

“Why won’t he tell me then? If he regrets it so badly?” Reggie sighs and blows some smoke. “You’re acting childish.” You frowned at him, hands now crossed.

“You blew up in his face over something he didn’t even register and he compared you to our awful monster of a mother, I believe you’re kind of even.” 

You didn’t answer, you knew he was right. You watched Sirius glance at you before he took off to the balcony.

“Talk to him, apologize and please make up, I can’t take anymore of your weeping.” 

“Hi.” You tried, a cigarette in your mouth as you searched for a lighter. He was quicker and lit the cigarette for you. “Hello, love.” He said, putting his lighter away.

“I-”I’m” Both of you wanted to apologize, at the same time. A chuckle escaped the both of you as you stared ahead, the music buzzed behind you in a comforting manner.

“I wanted to apologize, I never should’ve said that to you. You’re nothing like my mother.” He paused and placed his hand in yours.

“You’re the most loving, beautiful and kindest woman I’ve ever known. I was angry and I spoke before thinking.” You nodded, taking a drag from your cigarette.

You turned to him, his hair fell over his eyes a bit, his eyes glassy. “I shouldn’t have made it such a big issue. I was jealous and let it out on you. I'm sorry.” He nodded, his thumb stroking your hand lovingly.

“I guess we’re both idiots.” You nodded and flicked your done cigarette off the balcony. Your hand found the back of his neck before you pulled him for a kiss.

“But if you let Melanie touch you like this once again I’m sneaking into your room at night and I’ll strangle you to death, got it?” 

His face stretched into a grin as he nodded, his eyes hooded. “Is that funny to you?” He chuckled as he placed a quick kiss on your lips.

“I kind of like you a little jealous.” You shook your head and grabbed for his cigarette, he let you.

“This is way more than just jealousy, I’m obsessed with you.” He tilted his head and grabbed your waist with his unoccupied arm, lips in a smile.

“I love you.” He whispered. You grabbed his face and placed a kiss on his lips.

“You’re mine, Sirius.” He nodded, your head on his chest. He placed a kiss on top of your head. “All yours, love.”

[laurelindebear]

Oh good I've hit the 'I hate my characters, I hate my story, I have to change the entire plot because otherwise I'm forcing my character to accept the Christian god, there's no way these people would fall in love, the timelines make no sense, this character can't be French because their worldview is fundamentally different, and the family situation falls apart unless you add a much bigger conflict or rift than you currently have or want' stage of proceedings.

If anyone wants a few garbage paragraphs to try build something even vaguely worthwhile out of, just check my recycling bin before I delete it all.

[girlwiththegreenhat]

you ever hate on something you've never played/watched/read for what are still moderately good reasons given the circumstances, and then decide to go and play/watch/read the thing just to be fair. just to give it a chance

and then you were not only Right but its Worse Somehow and you're actually just more pissed off now

[kenobihater]

the last remaining threads of my sanity are slipping through my fingers rn 🚬 😑

[neverendingford]

.

[arcadequeerz]

HhrHG

[fuckinart]

Just wanted to say I absolutely loved your drawing of the Nightshade prison scene where Freddy is praying for Alex. Nightshade is my most favorite book ever and I want Alex and Freddy's relationship to grow into a beautiful bond. If you have more Nightshade-related work I'd love to see it!

anon, i love you. i loved that scene too & needed to draw it so desperately i subjected my poor laptop to 100-ish layers in Hexels. here’s close-ups of the art in question because there’s little details i love that might not be very... viewable in the big version (like, yes, Nightshade being on the desk xD also the guns & escape plan. i wanted the room to look more lived in despite being really empty). i may go back & “finish” it, since the lighting isn’t what i wanted it to be but i was too tired to fix it at the time. this has honestly inspired me to go back to it <3

also, yes, i will be absolutely drawing more Alex Rider (& Nightshade) stuff because i love it a lot as well. full blown hyperfixation level love. working on my own personal character designs for everyone at the moment. may or may not be working on an animatic too who knows ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

[habits-white-rabbit]

UGHHHH

[mickey-gomez]

chapter 11 pleaseeeeeee 🙏🙏🙏

Does anyone actually read them? 'Cause every time I post they get hardly any notes, and half of the taglist doesn't even interact. Kinda just feels like I'm writing and posting for me atm.

[apocalypticdemon]

you ever just want to cry because you have a shit ton of papers due and absolutely no findings to write about.

it's going great

[bazelgeuce]

:/

[catescribble]

I hate how academia makes me feel about myself

[reserwrekt]

Poor people are allowed to buy things that make them feel good. There's no reason to make someone already struggling, feel fucking guilty for enjoying a steak or something is2g

[vaspider]

Since I just turned off reblogs on another post that quickly went from "let's have fun" to "this is fucking awful, I'm taking away this toy," please read this BlueSky thread from rahaeli, who I don't think is on here.

Most of it I've c/p for ease of readability bc BSky's threading sucks.

Okay, it's time again to talk about what the experience of having a social media account with a bunch of followers (*) is like. (* "a bunch" of followers is platform dependent. I'm getting irritating shit at 2k on Bluesky I didn't get until 10k on Twitter.)

(Ugh, wait, nevermind, I hit 3k while I wasn't looking. Anyway.) Someone who has never had more than 100 followers literally cannot comprehend the sheer volume of the responses you get. Even if individual posts don't get a ton of replies, if you post with any frequency, it accumulates.

Once you hit the first degradation threshold, your experience gets a little bit shittier. It's overwhelming volume, but the people who are following you are mostly ideologically, socially, and culturally aligned to you. You have the same concept of social media manners.

You'll get a few duplicate comments, because nobody reads the comments before they reply, but they're mostly from cool people, so you just roll your eyes a little at the same joke five times. You still make friends. You still have fun and can wind up finding neat new people.

And then those neat new people retweet your stuff, and it starts reaching out to an audience of people who are less aligned with what you think of as social media manners. You start getting some replies you find obnoxious: they're in good faith, you can tell, but they just grate on you sometimes.

And then *those* people start reposting your more viral threads, and you get people following you who are three degrees of separation from the people you are most likely to vibe with. And three degrees of separation is the second degradation threshold.

The second degradation threshold is where you start getting the constant, low-grade sand-in-a-pearl annoyances. The person who wants to argue with everything. The 15 people making the identical shitty "joke" that's actually just doing the exact thing you're complaining about, "ironically".

The people who look at a post that contains no question marks and think "there is an implied question here and I will answer it!" and leap to offer the most basic advice that you already thought of because you have existed for more than three seconds and can, in fact, think of the obvious answers.

The people who are spoiling for a fight no matter what, because you used one word in the post that is their particular berserk button and they're going to scream at you for hating waffles because you said you like pancakes even though you never mentioned waffles.

It is constant. It is never-ending. You cannot escape it. Every time you post anything at all, opening the app means wading through twenty garbage replies for every reply from someone who is actually cool and you'd vibe with just fine if you chatted with them.

You want to bitch about a minor annoyance? There will be 40 people all giving you the same useless advice. You want to squee about something you're enjoying that's making you happy? There will be 40 people coming to scold you because that thing isn't morally pure enough.

Every post. Every day. About 75% of the time you compose a post, you will get halfway through writing it and think "I can't deal with the replies this will get today" and delete it. You stop talking about things you enjoy, because you're tired of people shitting on them.

You stop complaining about the tiny annoyances in your life that you want to bitch about, because weirdly enough you already HAVE tried the first fifteen obvious suggestions you're going to get, and you don't want to spend an hour explaining why they won't work to everyone who's "helping".

(But you can't just ignore the "helpful" posts and not engage with them, because then you start getting accusations of being "elitist" and "standoffish" and jesus, lady, we're just trying to help here, why do you have to be so fucking rude and stuck-up, you full of yourself bitch.)

If you are any less gracious to the 40th person than that person thinks they deserve, there is a very good chance they're going to call you a cunt and drag allot their friends in to dogpile you and make the site unusable for at least three days.

The third degradation threshold is when you start needing to regularly call your local police department and politely remind them there are people who get very mad at you online and will try very hard to have you murdered by armed agents of the state and you'd appreciate it if they didn't do that.

I first had that conversation with my local police department in 2003. It's gotten faster now, at least? You usually don't have to start by explaining what social media even is.

Bluesky has tighter thresholds than Twitter did. On Twitter it was nicely exponential: the breakpoints were around 1k, 10k, 100k. Bluesky is running faster. I'm getting Twitter 10k annoyances at a Bluesky 3k. I am trying very, very hard not to switch over into Twitter 10k defensive posting.

I want to leave the defensive posting back on Twitter. I really do. I want to be able to bitch about a thing without having to wade through 20 "go try [extremely obvious thing]". I want to post about a thing I enjoy without 20 people yelling at me I'm bad for enjoyjng it.

There's a difference between arguing about an idea (which I love) and the onslaught of constantly infuriating replies plucking at your last goddamn nerve. And the more "last goddamn nerve" replies you get, the crankier you are, and then people lose their shit at you because you snapped at them.

So maybe let's all start keeping a few principles in mind: 1) if there's more than one reply, check to see if your point has already been covered. If it has, you don't need to repeat it.

2) Even the funniest joke gets old after the 20th time you hear it in 3 hours.

3) "I'm going to jokingly do the exact thing you just were complaining about because ha ha the real joke is I would never do that asshole thing" is never funny, and it is indistinguishable from you actually doing the asshole thing.

4) If there is no question mark in the tweet, think twice about offering "helpful" advice unless you and the poster know each other *mutually*, not just parasocially, you know it's likely to be new info for them, and you ask "do you want to hear how I handle this?" first and get an affirmative.

5) If you are going to ignore 4, ask yourself "is this a suggestion that someone with a reasonable level of generalized adult knowledge would think of trying within the first 15 minutes of approaching the problem?" If so, do not suggest it.

6) Do you really need to nitpick that grammar, spelling, or word choice? Did you understand what they were trying to say before autocorrect mangled it or they blanked on the exact word they wanted and found a close one? If you understood the meaning, don't be their volunteer copyeditor.

7) Is someone excited about a thing you hate? Are they having fun with the thing? Is the thing a front for white supremacist recruiting or organizing the overthrow of the US government? If the answers are yes, yes, and no, respectively, shut the fuck up and let people enjoy things.

8) We are all occasionally That Commenter. If someone you have a pre-existing relationship with replies to you and lets you know you're being That Commenter, it's because they have a positive enough impression of you they don't want to go straight to block. Treat this like the warning sign it is.

9) It deserves repeating: remember the Law of Large Numbers. Even if you only commented once, you may be the hundredth irritating comment that person got that day. Bluesky's terrible threading makes this worse: people don't keep a single thread of mounting crankiness the way they did on Twitter.

9a) If someone's top tweet sounds really annoyed at something, maybe check their timeline or follow back their nested self-QTs to see what level of irritable they're at and over what so you don't step straight on the same rakes they've been dodging all day.

10) However, remember that BSky also doesn't show replies made by people the OP has blocked in a thread. If they post about a pattern that's making them cranky and you look and don't see anything, they probably already blocked the worst of it. They still saw it in their mentions in order to block.

I really cannot overstate how absolutely exhausting and soul-destroying the experience of having a large account can be. It's also somehow still rewarding, or we wouldn't do it. But especially if you're a woman or a person of color or a female POC, that balance is really, really close most days.

And of course, the ones who stay are the ones who do find it still rewarding enough to keep doing it despite the constant irritations.

From here, the thread moves into a conversation about stuff specific to BlueSky, but the majority of the thread is truly applicable to Tumblr as well.

You may be the first person to comment "op lives on a planet without music," or "op has never heard of [thing OP didn't mention for whatever reason]," but you're probably not, and at a certain point, it becomes like someone tapping a sunburn.

So yeah.

[inkskinned]

actually, i love you, so you cannot be ugly to me. sometimes i think i have no idea what you actually look like. i know we've been friends for like a while but if someone asked oh who's that i'd talk about how funny you are, how charming. about how i have watched you grow as a person, about how you often choose kindness where i would honestly choose a feral violence. i know you keep a tally of your mistakes and they run around your brain - but in mine? i think they never even make it past the front gate. when i think of you my heart swells up with all the weird shit we've done together and how you've talked me through heartbreak and how i've held your hair back and how we both are like, in therapy, and totally above gossiping, but also like, are going to spill the work tea.

i know! i know you feel ugly. i know you hate that you show symptoms, that you're not normal. you said once - i'm afraid to show others the real me. but i see the other things - about these little quirks that are so, so endearing to me. how you are gentle to strangers. how you stand by your friends. how comfortable you make everybody. how you say hey, did you get home safe? even when it's like 6 feet i'm walking.

i love you. yesterday you spent an hour liveblogging the episode of owl house that you're on and i was like - this person is so fucking amazing. last night you said sorry for infodumping. as if you have anything to apologize for. as if part of the reason we're friends is because i love it when you do this, i love listening. i love you, idiot. i love you so fucking much. i want to stick you in a cage so you stop getting random injuries. i want to throw you into a garbage disposal every time you send me that one specific meme. i love you, i love you, i love you. you mean absolutely everything to me.

[fixyourwritinghabits]

Checking In

Good day my fellow exhausted creatives, it sure does be A Time we're going through. There is certainly a lot of things happening at once, and like many of you I'm struggling to stay afloat while desperately playing catch-up. I'll be honest, shit's pretty damn fucked up. Sometimes it helps to take a step back and reflect on some reminders.

Don't panic.

People are facing a lot of hard choices when it comes to what platforms to use, and I know it's pretty tempting to burn everything down. Take a deep breath and think about your options. Nightshade and Glaze aren't perfect, true, but they're open about their limitations and are still tools you can use. Look into alternative word processors beyond Google Docs that won't have AI-scraping. Take your time deciding what to do with your creative output and where to share it. I am Old, and I have seen several social media websites crash and burn. You will always have more options.

Take care of yourself first.

I've seen a lot of people burning themselves out hard over things they can't control. Gaza, anti-LGBTQ issues, American politics, it's a whole lot and it's all overwhelming. You cannot accomplish anything if you don't take the time to put your oxygen mask first. Eat, sleep, turn your phone off when you feel yourself being sucked in. This seems obvious, but it's often the hardest thing to do, believe me I know. You gotta keep yourself going before you can help others.

Small things still matter.

There's a lot of things you can still do even when you feel like you can't. You can sign petitions, you can promote the activism of others. Vote in local elections. Keep yourself informed without drowning - check your news sources once a day rather than all the time. Talk to your friends, spend time with your pets, find ways to help in your local community (a great place to find resources is your library!). Go for a walk with a trash picking tool and a garbage bag. A small difference is still a difference.

Recharge Creatively.

It can be hard to do creative things when you feel like there's so many other important things to do. But being creative - creating art, writing a story, doing a hobby - IS important to yourself and others. Sometimes you have to force yourself to do so - I have to put "watch a movie" on my to do list, or I'll never make time for it. Go to a coffee shop and make art. Play that new video game. Write that silly coffee shop AU. These things are important to you, and they will carry through with what you want to do for others.

Do what you can when you can and you will make it through.