#also my best friends as a teenager talked all the time about hating the country and wanting to leave but not for any stated reasons

[wild-at-mind]

A weird thing I've noticed as someone living in England is how often people also living in England seem convinced their lives will improve massively if they just move to Wales or Scotland. Or sometimes further afield.

[streets-in-paradise]

Matured Desire - Achilles x (Fem) Reader

Troy (2004) Oneshot

Requested by Anon

" hiya! I have an Achilles request, what if they’ve both been sort of enemies for the longest time ever since they were kids, and at one point he gets fed up, and kisses her roughly ending up in the roughest kinkiest sex people could think of (tying up, choking, spanking, dirty talk, dom x sub, sort of a hate fuck.) please! "

Hi! I'm a bit nervous because this is my first time writing a full piece of smut, but I did my best and i hope you will enjoy it. The plot for the childhood rivalry is inspired in greek mythology, but adapted to how the story of the film plays out regarding characterzations.

Warnings: Rough hate fuck against a wall - hair pulling -chocking - spanking - lots of dirty talk.

Summary: Your eternal rivalry with Achilles gets you the attention of the mycenaean king In the context of his country wide search for a queen. Bringing up your troubled past together, the myrmidon believes you are seeking an union with Agamemnon to get the power to destroy his life.

As he confronts you about it, your tensions get to a critical point when the warrior concludes he will have to do something out of it. Your hatred remains too close to passion and he can only ruin you for any other man before you could ruin his lifetime's ambitions.

Tags: @thorsslxve

There was nothing Achilles despised more than the cheerfullness of Agamemnon. Not only because it usually meant bad news, but also due to how insufferable he tended to become on a good mood. His arrogance was high up to the sky contesting with his. Since the king felt in constant need to compete with his best warrior, it was important for him to brag on his every achievement.

On that particular moment, it was about the bride he would get for himself. After his brother married the most beautifull woman in the world he started to reconsider the lack of a queen in his palace and commanded every king of Greece to pick one of their unwed daughters so he could pick a wife among the princesses of the region. All the generals of his army were invited to witness the contest, and a handfull of kings he considered friends were there as well.

It was a power display to cause envy. A parade of the most ravishing girls of Greece after Helen circling the King in some sort of reverse parody of what happened when the spartan queen was still a maiden wanted by a multitude of suitors. The myrmidon found it hilarious, but that entertainment came with the price of standing the triumphal bliss of his rival.

In order to avoid an early scandall making fun of him, Achilles tried to distract himself watching the girls. They were all veiled for the future groom, only showing their faces when he commanded each one to introduce themselves. Beauty from all over the country was gathered there and while their faces remained covered he could still have a fun cassually checking their bodies.

He found a personal favorite quite soon. The light clothes of her fancy purple dress allowed him to perfectly picture her shape underneath, occupying his imagination in more pleasant thoughts. One by one her contestants did their thing, but he followed her with expectancy for the big reveal.

All traces of amusement abandoned the warrior's face when he recognized you. From all his many daughters, King Lycomedes had to pick you in representation of Scyros. It was unfortunately true for him that you had become a very desirable woman, so the choice was understandable, but you were one his enemies of longest date. Since he was a kid hidding in your father's court, and when you were teenagers you almost got him kicked out of there.

Everytime you crossed ways, disaster happened.

It was an unspoken theory, but he believed it all started because you were jealous of your sister. She was his first crush, and you told your father about it after you discovered them making out. Lycomedes would have kicked him out if Odysseus wouldn't have discovered his disguise in the first place, but your hatred didn't end with that.

Only a heartbroken girl would react so viscerally, the hate you hoarded for years didn't make sense otherwise. He believed you still despised him because you couldn't have him and once that childhood crush matured into desire things could only escalate. You would never forgive him for being your first love, but the passion of your hate showed your flame never got extinguished.

As soon as circunstancies allowed it, you were mesmerizing the mycenaean king with your disdain for his soldier.

" Achilles! Long time no seen. " You saluted him, with poisonous cordiality. " How are things going in your kingdom of savages? Well, only if that can be called a kingdom. Nowadays it's a military reserve of Mycenae you don't even rule as king. "

The myrmidon was visibly calm, calculating his strike before delivering it.

" How is Deidamia? I remember her with such strong affection."

" She is married. " You responded, with false propriety. " Happyly married, thanks to our protectiveness of her keeping scum away."

The wedding of his teenage crush didn't bother him at all, but he still manage to utilize it against you.

" I always knew she was going to make it before you. Look now where you ended: pleasing an old man that could be your father. "

You showed a tranquilzing smile to the king, mere witness of your altercate that was untill then very amused.

" Don't worry, your majesty. Achilles tends to act like this arround me because my presence reminds him of details that ruin the appeal of his legend. He wants no one to remember he spent his younger years hidding in my palace dressing on girl's clothes so your emisaries wouldn't find him. Have you seen the baby face of his little cousin? He has the same girly features he used to have back then."

Agamemnon was in awe with the slander. Even if it was just for that, you were becoming a strong favorite.

" Well, my dear. I hope you have some good stories for me. "

" She is the only person in the country who is more obsessed with me than you. " Achilles recalled, determined to ruin your plans. " She went as far as turning her father against me saying i was going to sleep with her sister. "

The way in which he twisted the facts to make it sound like a conspiracy against him got out the worst of you.

" I was the onlyone seeing past your charm, and time proved I was ríght now that we all know of your amatory adventures. " You fiercely defended yourself. " You were a reckless boy that had just discovered the thing hanging between his legs and was eager to try it on the first foolish girl available. Deidamia was too naive, but I knew better. By warning my father I protected her and saved our royal house from the shame of being stucked with a fatherless mess like the one you were when we received you. "

It crossed límits, but he wasn't afraid of returning the hatefull gesture.

" I think your boyfriend deserves to know where all that hate for me comes from before taking his choice. " He teased you ríght away. " You are my Phaedra … "

He had just compared you to the most sexually frustrated queen in greek history, whose vengefull spite was rooted on being ignored by the object of her desires.

" You insolent BASTARD!!! " You called him out before you could loose your temper and try to smack him. " Better start praying I won't be crowned queen. "

The warning left a bad taste in his mouth that was stronger than the altercate. Imagining you as Agamemnon's bride was a nightmare on itself because of the implications of a teaming up against him, but there was more that he couldn't simply admit.

He hated you, but couldn't stand the thought of seeing you with him. He still attempted to understand why you were so Interested on giving yourself to that pig of a king. Could your thirst for vengeance have gone that far? Where you capable of tolerating Agamemnon as your husband just so you could get some control over him? It was most likely that you had no idea of where you were stepping in, since your island once sheltered him safely because they didn't have much contact with the mycenaeans.

Figuring out what you were all about was his most inmediate need but, for that, he needed to talk to you in private. All day he awaited untill the oportunity to get lost with you presented itself during a lousy banquet. Following you closely as you intended to leave, he catched you off guard in a hallway.

" You knew this was coming, now follow me. "

Your playfull smirk spoke for you before you did.

" What If I don't? "

He grabbed you harshly, keeping your wrist still.

" We will do it the hard way. "

There was no choice, so you let him guide you through the foreign palace searching for the nearest room he could lock you in. Achilles secured the door behind him, knowing from then you were going to be completely alone.

" After comparing me to the thirsty wife of Theseus, you drag me away like this? " You mocked him ríght away. " Have you no shame? "

The tension was escalating slowly, but consistently.

" I have no time for your games, so you better tell me what I want to know. "

You chuckled lightly, enjoying yourself in this curiosity.

" Go ahead, i'm feeling generous. "

He groaned out of angered frustration, clearly fed up with you already.

" What do you want from Agamemnon? Do you expect me to believe you really are excited to the chance of being his wife? "

You response was calm and you were aware that would provoke him.

" He is the wealthiest, most powerfull man in Greece, and he hates you … Two qualities I find irresistible. "

He pushed you against a wall, barely able to control his rage to continue the interrogation.

" Do you think i'm a fool? You can't possibly wish for anything but the power to destroy me through that marriage. "

His strong hand grabbed your neck and squeezed, cutting off your air with ease. Achilles wanted to force a truth out of you, but couldn't help noticing you were peraphs too on board with that before releasing you so you could speak.

" I want an empty palace where i can sit on a throne. " You began to explain once you catched your breath. " While he will be away with you doing his wars, i can do what I want here. "

It wasn't enough for him.

" … And when he will want to touch you? Are you going to spread your legs for him like a good little wife ? "

His hand was once more arround your neck, quietly threatening with more choking depending of your answer.

" Are you trying to scare me? That's not going to work with me. " You mischievously warned him. " I'll do what it takes, my duty of queen. Agamemnon can have me, I will even fake my moans if i have to just to keep him satisfied. I'm fine with that, he has to get something out of the deal. I will take care of his throne and meet his sexual needs "

The answer awakened something primal on him.

" Not if I ruin you first … "

Sick of pretending to ignore the frustrating tension, he pulled you in for a rough kiss and you responded taking one of your hands to the back of his neck to pull his hair.

There was no way out for you from then.

Achilles ripped off the safety pins of your dress so it would fall on the floor. Once you were naked against him he began to tease you again.

" Look at how easily I destroyed your pride … Yet you dare to deny you are a needy whore. "

You didn't stay behind, iniciating another passionately hatefull kiss while your hands worked in undressing him. The godly shaped hero allowed you to roam his perfectly sculped body and you sank your nails in his hips before replying.

" You are only good at killing or fucking and you loathe me enough for either, so unless you want to spear me … "

The recklessness was paid at high cost when he turned you over so you will be facing the wall, head posicioned firmly to the side.

" I'm going to make you feel as if I was killing you. " He whispered against your ear in a husky tone. " But first, you will learn to respect me. "

You flinched with anticipation, incapable of predicting what he would do. Then, his hand started following the trace of your back all the way down and stopped in the curve of your ass.

A soft squeeze was followed by a hard spank that sounded as strongly as it felt. It send a wave of confusing, pain-stained pleasure all the way to your core, but you tried to keep still. He persisted, untill it became so intense that your knees were failing and you were about to cry.

" Who are you going to spread your legs for now? " He asked in a mock. " Are you going to be my obedient little whore? "

You lost the few shame you had left with one more slap on the mistreated surface of your asscheck.

" YES, YES! " You practically cried out. " I'll be, … I'll be your whore. I want it so badly, please! "

Achilles released a dark chuckle.

" Let's see how bad you really want it. "

He had barely reached the surface of your soaked cunt with his fingertips and you were already buckling your hips in desperation to find friction.

" Dripping wet, you nasty whore. " He commented and removed the hand to watch you fall apart. " Stop whimpering, i'm not going to keep touching you. Caresses are not what you deserve."

Suddenly, you felt the tip of his hard cock teasing your folds. Arrousal had reduced you to a pathetic mess and he got to hear you sobbing from that contact.

" No mercy, I will be rammering you. " He warned you. " … and you are going to take it. "

With that, he pushed himself inside you. Absolutely careless for your needed time adjusting to his size, he began his mercieless thrusting using you for his pleasure. The animalistic grunts he was making and the exquisite painfull pleasure of being fucked like that were soon going to become to much for you.

Achilles had completed his vengeance to control you before you could control him: you were ruined for any other man.

[nanowrimo]

Black Joy Is Revolutionary or Why Writing Black Doesn't Equal Trauma or Pain

It’s important to talk about what kind of stories get represented in mainstream media. NaNo Participant Kymberlyn Reed tells us why stories centered around Black joy are necessary. As a little Black girl who loved reading, it always saddened me that there was never a Babysitter's Club or Sweet Valley High series in which Black kids were centered (not sidekicks or best friends lacking a backstory) just having fun, going through typical teenage stuff and hanging out with cool friends. The fantasy genre, as much as I loved it, also seemed to have no place for Black people to had amazing adventures in far away worlds.

That's why — as a middle aged Blerd — I have been on an absolute roll with so many wonderful stories about Black people just existing and I think there needs to be MORE of them. There is room for Black joy in a society that devalues Blackness as a whole (while co-opting and/or misappropriating the aspects it finds marketable).

This isn't to say there's no need for stories centered around the very real issues of social justice. There's a reason Angie Thomas' The Hate U Give resonated with so many readers of all races (and why so many school districts are trying to ban it). However, not everything about Blackness is about pain and suffering.

And that's the problem. The idea of a single black experience — mainly centered around our suffering —has far too long dictated what people want to write and/or read about us. If there had been more books about Black mermaids in the past (despite the fact that many African cultures have myths about mermaids), people probably wouldn't be losing their minds over Halle Bailey right now.

Not every book about Black people needs to be a "teachable moment" for non-Black readers. Black people should not have to exist or expend unpaid emotional labor just to "teach." Our historical and current traumas should not be the only way to create "empathy.”

Black joy seems to upset people or has some of them believing it's not "authentic Blackness." One of my all time favorite romance authors — Beverly Jenkins — once received a letter from a white reader who was SHOCKED that Black people actually fell in love and had committed relationships! She long believed that Black people just had indiscriminate sex and children out of wedlock.

It took a historical romance featuring a Black hero and heroine to open this woman's mind.

Reading and writing about Black people doing the mundane (as we do everyday) in made up worlds shows us just being, that our skin in all of its glorious hues, is just a part of who we are. We have many intersecting identities, and limiting us to the "poor downtrodden Black person in need of saving" deprives us of our individuality.

Black LGBTQ have coming-out stories and meet-cutes.

Black girls can be princesses.

Black men can be cowboys (and in fact were some of the original cowboys).

Most importantly, Black people exist in every walk of life, even in places and spaces where the media at large ignores our presence. For example, there are Black surfers who teach free courses at The Inkwell, a historic stretch of beach located in Santa Monica, California.

When you read or write about Black people living fully, you are changing the narrative and in a lot of ways, changing minds. Not only that, but writing Black joy is fun too. It's inclusive and it's telling Black readers our stories matter.

All of them.

Kymberlyn Reed is an author who's been published in two countries--Germany and the U.S.  No, she doesn't speak a bit of German, but her writing "sister" does. 

She's been doing the NaNoWriMo thing for a long time now and will always be a pantser because her characters refuse to behave otherwise. She owns more books than clothes. She's also a lifelong Blerd, fountain pen and Japanese stationery aficionado, lipstick junkie, and an unapologetic metalhead who can do a pretty good death metal growl with enough absinthe in her system. Photo by Junior REIS on Unsplash  

[afra-blueraz]

Did u ever tried to imagine yourself as yui. I think u are similar.

Imagine myself as Yui?

Well NO.

It's a big NO. Because we are really really different. I love Yui from the bottom of my heart and she will be always my favourite character and my comfort character from the all fictional characters ever. But I can't imagine myself as Yui. She is a great personality that I can't be. I'll explain why.

Well, let me start by telling you some of my and Yui's differences that make us very different from each other and I can't be Yui.

1_ Yui is really very strong. Yui is so strong that she was able to survive in very difficult situations with faith and hope in God. Well, I'm not really like that. I can't be as strong as Yui and endure such harsh conditions. Let's not forget that as a teenager I live in a country that is full of problems and a lot of people die every day and it is so hard for me that I sometimes thought of suicide. But Yui was the one who saved me. This is one of the simplest reasons for my love for Yui.

2_ Yui has a very pure heart and can easily forgive someone who has hurt her. But I really can't. I try to be kind and forgive if someone upsets me for a small reason, but sometimes it's really hard for me. Sometimes people hurt me very badly and I can never forget or forgive them. Some people may think that I am very selfish or spiteful. But the truth is that some people can break you by saying the simplest words. I'm sure Yui is more broken than anyone else. But Yui's heart is so pure and kind that she even forgives the people who broke her and loves them, but I can't be as kind as her.

3_ Yui is very simple and attracts people with the smallest kindness. Maybe it's because as a teenage girl she hasn't received much love. But this is opposite for me. I can't trust others easily, which is probably because of my life circumstances.

4_ Yui hates being alone, but I love being alone. I don't like to be social or participate in group activities, which is probably because of my introverted personality, which always makes me nervous. Even though I believe that Yui is an introvert, I feel that unlike me, Yui hates being alone. In my opinion, the reason for Yui's introversion is her poor social connection because she was a church girl and did not have many friends.

5_ Yui loves kids. But me really not. Kids always make me nervous. Even though I work as an English teacher for kids in a kindergarten but sometimes I feel I should leave my job.

All this makes Yui and I very different.

But now that I have said the differences between me and Yui, it is not bad to say one of our similarities. It is true that we are really different, but we have some similarities.

1_ We both love books. Yui likes reading books for her own reasons. I also love books because books have always been my companion when I was alone. I am sure if Yui and I were together, we would spend many hours talking about our favorite books.

2_ Both Yui and I have weak social relations, which makes us have few friends. Of course, I believe Yui has weak social relationships and has few friends due to growing up in the church. I am the same. I have no real friends in the real world because of my introverted and withdrawn personality. Of course, I am very happy that I found many friends in the virtual world, especially in this fandom. Especially a very special friend who was my first friend in this fandom. She will be my best friend forever and no one can take her place for me. Although she left the fandom for some time, I hope she will come back. I love her from the bottom of my heart.

3_We are both introverts. Yui is ISFJ and Me INTJ. The social ties of both of us are weak and we can't find friends in the real world.

4_I have a skinny body like Yui. Maybe even thinner than Yui. And it makes me very angry that some people make fun of Yui because of her body. Let's not forget that there are many people like Yui in the real world. When I see some people call Yui "chichinashi" or "ugly" just because of her body, sometimes I feel that I am also ugly just because I have a thin body. Let me also say that both of us have been mocked by others in the real world because of our body type.

5_ Yui likes doddling in her books. I think it's obvious how much I love drawing arts. 😁

With all these issues that have been said, in one word, we have few similarities, Yui and I are very different in terms of personality. But that doesn't change anything about my love for Yui. Yui is my hero and my favorite character. I love her forever. I love and will love Yui more than any other fictional character.

my beautiful angel. For me, you are more beautiful, kinder, braver and smarter than anyone else. I love you.

This art is a gift from my friend [diabolik_heaven] on Instagram.

[somanyfuckedupiftruebooks]

Mag 31

Fuck yes First Hunt!! All the girlies love First Hunt! <3

It's great that the episode opens by telling you the entire meaning of the Hunt as an Entity; killing was always besides the point. The chase is the thing. This is what separates the Hunt from the Slaughter (in addition to the Hunt being about intimate violence while the Slaughter is about impersonal mass violence). The Slaughter is all about the kill; the Hunt plays with its food.

So the Hunt is one of the Entities that I just enjoy without over analysing it too much (by my standards anyway; I am a person who will be posting a commentary for all 200 episodes of TMA largely for my own amusement). It's not one of the Entities that really terrifies me or that I really emphasise with, in universe I don't think I'd be in any particular danger of being consumed or claimed by it. I just think it's a vibe. I have fun with the Hunt! Like, hunting prey/being hunted by a predator seems a bit too outdoorsy for me, but I get it and if it's your thing then I love that for you.

I guess I'm saying I think I want to be friends with a Hunt avatar? I think we'd get along great. Maybe I just want a werewolf girlfriend?

Anyway I love this statement, it's one of my favourites.

And a big part of why this is a favourite of mine is the statement-giver Lawrence Mortimer. What a guy! He's just such a jolly, cheerful dude. I love all his weird turns of phrase and the way he's so I genuinely excited and enthusiastic about going on his little adventure. As much as I love Jonny's voicework on this one, I really wish we'd gotten to meet him in person. He's got dorky dad energy for me.

Fuck I've just realised how much he reminds me of my actual dad. Two screenshots in and this is becoming and epsiode of Revelations for me.

Amazing. Imagine travelling alone to another country to meet an absolute stranger who you've only ever spoken to via message board, but who is openly a gun nut that wants to take you on a remote hike in the wilderness. Men really do be living in a different world, don't they?

Haha fuck yes Lawrence! I love this guy!! He's a funny little man.

Oh god the mortifying ordeal of realising that you've committed to spending a prolonged period of time alone with an extrovert. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Also I have to assume that the part about being laughed at for his accent is written from either personal or anecdotal experience, because I ran this by one of my best friends who immigrated from England to Australia when we were teenagers and he was like 'Yes, everyone did that to me incessantly for years, especially you Reeah, because you're a bad person and a terrible friend.'

(He loves me. I will be a bridesmaid at his wedding next year. His accent is cringe tho. Imagine being British. 😬)

Okay, BIG YIKES here. This is the only thing about this epsiode that I really dislike. As mentioned above I'm Australian. We have strict gun control here and I generally cannot stand anyone who likes guns or thinks of them as cool fun toys. Massive red flag. Especially if you add the entire premise of the episode; hunting and killing animals for sport, another thing that I absolutely loathe irl!

But mostly I don't mind just letting these things go in this instance. Partially because, as I said, it's the premise of the episode and engaging with a story demands a certain amount of good faith. The other reason I have figured out while typing this; it's because Lawrence's general sense of wonder and enthusiasm about guns reminds me of my dad and his most beloved special interest -- WWI era tanks. The Tiger 1 is his favourite and he is overcome with joy and excitement every time he gets a chnace to talk about it. If I can let go over my objections regarding the military for long enough to allow my dad to re-tell the story of the time he got special permission to go inside the Tiger 1 at the the tank museum, I guess I can let this fictional man enjoy his fictional gun holiday.

More big yikes!! Hate this!! Terrible!!

Geuinely the worst thing I can imagine encountering out in the wilderness is just a guy with bad energy singing a creepy little song. I'd take a bear or something any day of the week. At least I know what a bear's deal is.

Very telling that two grown men (both of whom are down for a days long hike through the wild with an internet stranger) immediately pick up on this dude's terrible vibes and seemingly agree instantly and silently to not help him or offer any information about themselves. Girlies having each other backs in the club energy.

Ahhh! I hate this!! He stopped to get their scents!! What would you even do? Like, obviously they are doomed form this point because he's chosen them as targets and won't let them escape, but if it were me I'd still be tempted to risk a night hike to get the fuck out there.

Attention all creepy strangers in the woods: stay the fuck away from me (unless you are a werewolf and interested in being my girlfriend).

I'd completely forgotten this part! So the Hunter hung around their camp all night making sure they couldn't sleep. Do we think this was because he wanted to make sure that they would be tired and afraid for the big chase tomorrow, or is this just like the murderer's version of edging?

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

When I was in high school, I was affectionately given the nickname “loose cannon” by my friends/teammates. The nickname stuck for years; my best friend gave me a pen engraved with the words “loose cannon” for my 27th birthday. I wore it proudly, I like being the loose cannon. Sometimes the world needs a loose cannon. But also, being a loose cannon is tiring and sometimes a genuinely bad idea.

I was given this nickname as a teenager, when my team was taken over by a coach who was an abusive asshole in many ways, and one of those ways involved sexism. Throughout my first few years in the sport – 2004 to 2010 or so – I went between being the only girl on my coed team, and one of two or three girls. The number of girls in the sport increased significantly about ten years ago, and now it’s still not 50/50, but hovers around 65/45, which is a massive improvement. But not when I was that age.

When I was that age, high school and early university, I was hanging out with my male teammates, struggling through practice and then hanging out afterward to complain about how much we hated our horrible abusive sexist coach. Think the villains in Karate Kid/Cobra Kai, or perhaps Mighty Ducks. Sports movies with cartoonish villains are often less of an exaggeration than one might expect.

We all did different things to rebel against him. Subtle things, mostly, because we were young and had no power and none of us would have been there if he had anything besides this sport in our lives, that would mean we could risk getting kicked off the team. Mainly, we complained about him to each other in cars parked in lots on the way home from practice.

I was the first one to decide I couldn’t keep quiet anymore. I had a huge issue with my coach when I was sixteen years old, involving his treatment of the girls, and first I conducted this feud through vaguely passive-aggressive emails. I read through every single page of the provincial and national code of ethics and code of conduct, and highlighted all the parts he was breaking, because I thought if I just did enough homework and knew enough about what I was talking about then I could win. But he didn’t care. No one actually cares if you do bother to know what you’re talking about. I remember sitting in practice, seething, listening to him tell us how girls were different from boys, digging fingernails into my hands to stop myself from saying anything.

One day after practice, I got into an argument, and I lost it on him. I mean – I remember it as me losing it. I didn’t, really. I never yelled or swore or anything. He yelled. I remember him yelling. I remember me not yelling. But I did tell him what I thought of him, for the first time. I accused him of being the reason my one female teammate had left, moved across the country to a bigger team that was supposed to be really good for girls (since then, the coach of that team has lost his job over sexual abuse of female athletes, after ten years of allegations that didn’t lead to him losing his job until some finally brought enough legal pressure to force his employers’ hands, so, you know, nothing is good anywhere). I told him the methods he was bringing in weren’t okay, none of the athletes were happy, I hated the way he treated me differently from the boys but also those boys were my teammates and I hated the way he treated us all. It was the first time any of us had ever gone off on him this way.

Obviously, it didn’t help. I was ostracized from the team for a long time, he took his anger out on all of us for weeks, nothing got better but things got a little worse. It was a stupid thing to do. I think that incident is actually the first thing that got me nicknamed “loose cannon”. The way my teammates and I saw it, we were in a tactical war against this guy, trying to beat him by legitimate means. And I had just gone off because I couldn’t control my anger, and it made us all look bad.

Ever since then, that’s been my role. My best friend and I stuck around until that guy finally left town, went off to run another team seven hours away and terrorize the athletes down there for a few years (before moving again and then finally losing his coaching certification for a number of reasons). So we took over the team, and have been running it ever since. But there are always new people to fight. Always. People who do fucked up things, which always includes sexism. We’re always getting tangled in the politics and the drama, and of the two of us, I’m the one who risks my reputation by doing what I think is right even if it’s stupid and gets me into trouble and fights, while my friend is the acceptable and respectable face of us, making friends and being charismatic. He’s good at that. He can be friendly and polite and likeable and all the things I’m not. While I go out with my anger and then wonder why it never works out the way I want. We make a good team that way – my friend does acknowledge that we need both sides sometimes to get anything done.

But it’s fucking demoralizing, and I can’t emotionally detach myself. I don’t have any mode besides trying really hard and caring a lot about what happens. I have a letter in my file that gets sent to the principal of any school where I try to coach, because in 2013, some high school girls told me the coach from their school was making them mop the mats but not the boys because it’s women’s work, telling the boys not to work with them because it’s a waste of time working with girls, making vaguely creepy comments about their appearances, and at the championships, they wanted me in their corner instead of him. I looked it up, learned that the official championship rules say any coach from our city can corner any athlete from our city and doesn’t need to be from their school, I printed out the page of the rules that said so in case I got challenged and brought it to the tournament. When we got there, I went into their corner against their high school coach’s instructions. He complained about me to the commissioner, I presented the rule page when challenged, I was told that rules or not, he’s their school coach, and it’s “common courtesy” to let him decide who corners them. Because fuck what they want.

I was told this was the discretion of the entire city’s athletic director, who was back home, five hours away, and would not be on my side, but if I wanted to take this farther I could take it to him, but unless I could change his mind I wouldn’t be allowed to corner them anymore. I thought about how I’d promised those girls I’d be there for them and protect them from this guy, so I said yeah, give me the athletic director’s number. I called that guy, whom I’d never met before, and he shut me down immediately. Said no, I was being disrespectful and impolite to a man who had been a stalwart of the sport since before I’d been born (which is true, the sexist coach they hated was about 60 and I was 22 at the time), and then he very literally said the words “If I hear about you going near any athletes from that school for the rest of this week, I will make sure you never coach in this city again.” Like I said, sports movies are often not far off in their levels of drama.

I now have a letter in my file, warning the principals of any school where I try to coach that I have a history of being disrespectful to other coaches so they should be careful about me. It says that in 2013, I told an athletics commissioner “I don’t care about common courtesy.” Which is true – I did say those words. The letter on covers half the sentence, though. The entire thing I said was “I don’t care about common courtesy, I care about protected high school girls from sexist assholes.” The letter doesn’t say that. By the way, a few years after all this happened, I learned that it’s been one of those “open secrets” for years that the athletics director who threatened me on the phone routinely offers female teachers promotions in exchange for blowjobs. But sure, I was the one being inappropriate. Do I still hold a grudge over some shit that happened in 2013? Yeah, maybe.

That’s what I do, though. It’s a running joke among my friends that I can hold a grudge forever. That I get angry about things and never let them go. That I can’t just let shit go, fucking loose cannon. And it’s exhausting. It’s exhausting being this angry all the time. I had a complete breakdown in 2019, when I resigned from a provincial board spot I’d worked so hard for, because I found out fellow members of the board had spent their own money to legally protect another known predator in the sport, and I couldn’t think of any way to protest except to resign, and of course that didn’t do anything, but being on the board didn’t do anything either, nothing ever does anything, and I got so fucking tired of being so angry all the time that I could barely get out of bed in the morning.

Today, my team look unimaginably different than it did when I was a teenager. We have something close to gender parity, or we did pre-COVID. The ratio has titled away from the female athletes, as they came back in smaller numbers post-lockdowns, but we’re growing it again. There’s one guy really getting in the way right now, though. He’s been coming into practice late, which sounds like not that big a deal, and often isn’t when most people do, but it’s the way he does it. He does it on purpose, to make the point that he’s above all this. He doesn’t listen to anyone, but makes a special point of not listening to the female coaches at all. He won’t work with the girls because it’s a waste of time, apparently. He’s been heard spouting toxic shit in the change rooms. We had problems with him at tournaments, showboating during and after matches, making out team look bad. We’ve heard from the girls that he’s been saying things to make them uncomfortable. He doesn’t treat them like his teammates anymore.

And we know what it is. We know what it fucking is, it’s always the same thing. It’s the fucking podcasts. We had this same problem last year, and earlier this year, with a different guy, who was also into those podcasts. You know the ones. Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson are the gateway drugs, the “acceptable” face of it that people get into and then it leads to the ever worse shit. All these male voices telling younger male people (this guy’s 21, the guy from earlier this year was 24, we’ve been seeing lower levels of the problem in lots of boys for the last few years, aged anywhere from 15 to 25) that they’re better than everyone else, they have to go in and establish themselves as the alpha male. The roommate I had up until mid-2023 was into those podcasts, I know because I heard them from his bedroom. So many people are.

We’re going to have to kick him off the fucking team. We asked his best friend, a guy on the team around his age who’s known him since they were young, what he saw happening, if he thinks his friend is too far gone. And he said yeah, the coming to practice late is bad, but what’s worse is he’s become “and Andrew Tate incel”, and we need to get rid of him to avoid letting him spread the ideology to younger athletes more than he already has. His own friend said that. It’s gone too far.

I loved this guy. I have this memory of when he was fifteen, I drove five hours to pick him up for a camp. Because he had no money, and this camp was for kids with money, but he worked hard and we didn’t want him to miss out. So the team paid for his entry, and I drove him home, which his parents couldn’t do because they had six other kids and no money. I drove five hours in the morning, arrive at three PM, picked up him and his two friends, drove five hours back.

When I picked them up, the receptionist wasn’t sure if she could let them go with me, as I did not appear to be the legal guardian of these three large Middle Eastern teenagers. But then they came in, took one look at me, and shouted “Mama” and jumped on me because they hadn’t seen me in a week and had missed me. That’s what they always called me, because they’re first language is Arabic and “Mama” is the Arabic word for Mom. The receptionist saw this and said I can take them. All the way home, we played music and sang along and talked shit about the other teams. It was great.

I have another memory of this kid. When he was maybe seventeen, we picked him up at his house to drive him to a tournament. My best friend dropped me off at a nearby gas station, then went by the kid’s house, picked him up, went back to the gas station and got me. Because if the kid’s dad saw there was a woman on this trip, he wouldn’t let his son go. Because he was a conservative Muslim who believes his son shouldn’t mix with girls.

This kid overcame that! He was raised from birth in a conservative Muslim household, learned not to interact with girls, ignored that, developed a close enough coach/athlete bond with me to call me a name that said I was like a mother to him, had years of taking my advice in the sport, and being a good teammate to the girls and the boys. He overcame religious-based brainwashing, which is supposed to be the most powerful type of brainwashing. But now, a couple of years of Jordan Peterson-style podcast brainwashing, and it’s turned him into an unrecognizable person. A person we have to get off our team for the sake of everyone.

I can’t fucking tolerate it. You can get by in my sport without doing a bit of “Oh yeah, that guy has some backwards views on women, you know he listens to some of those podcasts, but his heart’s in the right place really, he’s okay.” If you hated every person you could say that about, you wouldn’t be able to tolerate almost anyone in the sport. And the thing is, I’m getting closer and closer to the point where I can’t tolerate almost anyone in the sport. I feel like a teenager again, talking to my male friends, seeing that they’re on the right side but being smart and picking their battles, and I just can’t. I can’t be okay with any of it. I want to say fuck them all. I understand that they’re right, that the people who aren’t loose cannons are right, the people who don’t hold a grudge forever, who can be in a room with these fucking people and not either desperately want to yell at them or actually yell at them, who can compromise and let go of stuff and get along. They’re right. But I’m still angry.

This post was incoherent, and I’m posting it unedited because I can’t bring myself to read this vent/rant back so sorry that it’ll be even more error-ridden than most things on this blog, but there is one overarching message to this post. And that message is, I’m tired of being the only girl and also the only person who can’t ignore this shit.

So, I have to say, if there were a male person who went off on someone for being into Jordan Peterson, to argue with him pointlessly and angrily and in a way that made another man who witnessed it say “What’s wrong with you?”, not because the witnessing man thinks Jordan Peterson is fine, just because he’s a reasonable person who knows that picking fights with people doesn’t help. But he doesn’t care, because he’s too angry about sexism to let shit go. If there were a man who did that, rather than it always being the women’s job to do it, then that man might earn my undying loyalty.

[honoviadakai]

Feliks Łukasiewicz: The hidden nonbinary/gender fluid icon

So Poland from Hetalia...is a character...

In all seriousness, Felik’s wasn’t my fav character back when 13 year old me saw them for the first time but I also didn’t hate the guy. They just confused the hell outta me because even with the limited worldly knowledge my preteen brain had, I was trying to understand what part of this character was inherently Polish.

Honestly even adult me is struggling to understand how Felik’s is the personification of Poland. It really feels like Himaruya made a character that just vaguely looks polish and has a polish accent and called it a day. And for a while I thought maybe he wrote Feliks that way because the country he represents is super progressive! Upon farther research…I was very wrong.

Here’s a very quick, simplified list of what you can expect in terms of “rights” for the lgbtq+ in Poland

Gay marriage isn’t legal

Discrimination is legal in some contexts

If you wanna adopt, you can only do so if you’re single(if you’re not hetero, if you are and in a couple, you’ll have less issues)

Conversion therapy is not banned

Military rights are ambiguous at best

Non-binary gender is not recognized(this one might have to do more with the language and their naming system than discrimination….but…)

You actually can legally change your gender and surgery is not required. They only recognize male and female though, nothing else. Getting surgery might require either a crap ton of money and/or going to a different country

…yeah…so Feliks makes even less sense and that’s not even taking into account how religious the country they represent is known to be.

However, upon further research, Poland does have quite the history on LGBT activism so that got me thinking that Feliks is not as superficial as I initially thought.

Firstly, I believe Feliks is gender fluid and demisexual and they’re just so casual about it around people they’ve probably forgotten to come out to some of their friends when they realized their gender orientation. Like I can absolutely see this conversation happening.

Tolys:….Feliks…we need to have a talk…now…

Feliks: yeah? Why? What’s wrong? You look, like, really stressed out.

Tolys: Look…I’ve been able to handle the other baltics, Ivan and Gilbert, sometimes all at the same time…but I’m gonna have an aneurism if you don’t explain to me why you’re dressed up like one of those teenage E-girls Alfred has talked to me about, right now…are you that broke or something???

Feliks:…

Tolys:…

Feliks:…I haven’t come out of the closet to you have I?

Tolys:….I’ll be back

Feliks: where are you going???

Tolys: knowing you…I’m gonna need some snacks, some tea…and a lot of free time…so I’m off to cancel some plans and order some food…

Tolys would genuinely be more annoyed at Feliks about the decades long lack of context and taking so damn long to remember to come out to him more than anything else tbh xD

Jokes aside, I genuinely think they started realizing his gender identity around the time Hungary was starting to discover herself. Watching her go through her issues probably made them start to question themselves a bit. I can see them being pretty religious before this and having a struck “there are only 2 genders mentality” for a long time but slowly starting to have a shift in ideals as time went on and their knowledge of the world started to grow. They might even have an internal crisis about their religious faith and how they feel but I can see them getting over it quickly since God is weirdly a cannon character in the series and seems very nonchalant. Feliks definitely had a conversation with God about this and straight up be told “do what makes you happy, I’m not gonna punish you for doing what you love.”

Eventually they’d fully discover themselves and just accept who they are because, if nothing else, Feliks is a simple person with simple needs. They just wanna be happy and if putting on a frilly skirt one day and slacks the next makes them happy then by golly they’re gonna do so. Outside their home country.

I don’t think Feliks expresses themselves often, if ever, in they homeland for safety reasons. If they go to Alfred’s place though? They’re going all out and no one can stop them. Periot 💅

That being said…because they’re very outspoken around people they trust…they kinda just…expect their friends and in some situations, complete strangers, to just pick up on their sexuality and gender identity. Feliks just kinda forgets people like Tolys exist. People like him who NEED to be told straight up “hey, this is my situation” because otherwise they’re just never gonna come to any conclusion on their own. Tolys can’t even pick up when someone is trying to tell him a joke, let alone when someone is trying to come out to him, discreetly.

Feliks is a disaster in this regard because of this. Because they’re assuming people picked up on their brand of fruitiness, to them they’ve already come out to people. In reality they haven’t and it takes them a hot minute to realize this because SURELY they would’ve come out to Feliciano by now…right???

Nope. They forgot. Italy didn’t get the news till late 2017, he still won’t let it go btw.

[thebroccolination]

I saw you mentioned Queer As Folks recently. OMG how I missed Brian and Justin. When they went angst, they reeeeeaaaally served angst. I seriously don't have access to watch the entire series in my country, I can only watch snippets from youtube. I'm so sad 😭 Can you share with me what you like most about QaF and maybe if you have your favorite Ao3 fics about them. Thank you so much, Key ❤

Aaahhh, Anon!

You've unsurfaced some deep memories.

Okay, I just finished writing the thesis below. I'm back from the future. A lot of what you're about to read is pure emotion, so I apologize that it's not, uh. Well structured or especially rational. Queer as Folk was very formative for me, so my thoughts on it are very formless. \:D/

•

I watched Queer as Folk in high school, and it was a core experience. I vaguely remember writing Brian/Justin fic, but I think I mainly just read, and unfortunately, all of the fic I read was on LiveJournal, so I have no idea how to find it anymore. I'm really, really bad with names and titles, so I'd really only know them if I saw them again. :')

I have hot takes, though!

As far as fandom goes, the US version was phenomenal. So much fic. So much fic, and I loved it so much. The fanvids, the art, the meta, etc. It was such a great fandom.

BUT as a show, I preferred the UK version. I thought it was better crafted, the story and characters felt a lot stronger, and the dialogue was fantastic. It felt more inclusive in every way, and it had this…cozy warmth to it. Even at his worst, Stuart is nowhere near as much of a menace as Brian, and I think that's because he has Vince, and Brian has Michael.

(I didn't like Michael. At all. \:D/ The actor is lovely! I just regularly pined for the character to be pushed through a nineteenth floor window and then get stepped on by an elephant tourist visiting family at the Pittsburgh Zoo.)

The US version also screamed Written by White Cis Gay Men Who Held a Weird Grudge Against Lesbians and Didn't Believe Bisexuality Is Real. I was a "definitely straight except for that one time and that other time and that other other time I had suspiciously queer thoughts and also argued a shade too passionately about queer rights at the dinner table" teenager, and while I loved Brian and Justin as a ship, the UK version made me feel like I could find friends who'd feel like family one day. (And it came true, and they're queer, too.)

I think of the US version of Queer as Folk as fandom fodder. After every episode, I'd dive into LiveJournal, read fics, meta, look up fanvids, etc. I learned so much from Elder Queers who talked about safe sex and the importance of getting tested and all the things either referenced in the show or totally ignored that Elder Queers were like, "This was ignored but if you're ever in Justin's situation, here is what you do, please promise you'll do this."

The UK version is the one I rewatch when I want to revisit that warm, safe feeling.

And it'll always fuck my brain up that the US showrunners of Queer as Folk watched Stuart fuck a fifteen-year-old that was blatantly framed as "this is a bad thing, Stuart is doing a bad thing, everyone is aware that this is a bad thing, this is very bad, Stuart" and thought, "Okay, the bad thing is that he's fifteen, so let's age him up to seventeen and make him the love interest instead of the best friend who's the same age."

MIND. BLOWN.

I mean, it explains why Michael's all [evocative hand gestures]. His English counterpart actually ended up with his hot Irish best friend. And, like, Vince is obsessed with Dr. Who, so they gave Michael comic books? Like? Why not Star Trek? And he's obsessed with Brian and has the same soul-destroying crush that Vince has on Stuart, but there's a point to Vince's crush on Stuart the point is that they end up together and Nathan is a high school boy who is genuinely meant to be a blip on the radar in the background of their story.

It's been long enough that I don't hate Michael anymore, I'm just still fascinated by CowLip's bizarre story decisions.

Here's how I'll summarize my complicated relationship with the US version of Queer as Folk:

Season five was an insult to me personally, and I never watched the last episode. That stupid ending reversed all five seasons of Brian's character arc and landed him exactly where he was in the first episode, only multiple years older. And CowLip talked about it like it was brilliant and not a pathological misunderstanding of how storytelling is meant to operate to connect with audiences.

But.

I remember watching the Babylon bombing episode. Viscerally. I was staying at my sister's house, and I waited until everyone fell asleep. I snuck into their home office to watch the episode on their computer because I kept all queer media I watched secret from everyone in my very conservative family. I turned the volume down to one bar, kept the lights off, and held my shallow breath whenever the house made any kind of noise. Because Brian had never said "I love you" before, and this was it, because he thought Justin would be one of those corpses rolled out on a gurney from the club where they met, where their friends and family all gathered, the only place they felt safe being gay.

And many years later, when something similar happened far, far away at Pulse in Orlando, a memory surfaced of secretly watching an episode about love and desperation and grief. Of feeling caged inside a sexuality prescribed to me. And it was the first time I came out on social media.

Because it was a ridiculous show in some ways, and a terribly written one sometimes, but I think it also cut to the quick for many of us who just…didn't have anything else. We didn't have many options back then, and the fandom was massive, and it nudged me a little closer to understanding who I am and who I love.

[zindagi-jhandwa-firbhi-ghamandwa]

So, I quit Mensa today morning.

I had joined back when I was a teenager and thought that having a high IQ actually meant something.

I envisioned Mensa would be something like that episode from The Simpsons, but I clearly didn't imbibe its lesson because my utopia was a fruitopia.

Lately the WhatsApp group for Mensa Mumbai was starting to irritate me with the constant stream of forwards and posts that spanned every flavour of bigoted Indian uncle spectrum, with a particular focus on casteism.

But today I just lost my shit and sarcastically said that perhaps all the smug, self-satisfied high castes in the group can suck Hitler's dick and proceed with the final solution to the Dalit problem, but I'm gone.

And with a final admonishment that they can go fuck their fascist selves, I bailed. It was just a molotov cocktail of a message to burn all those bridges.

The thing I want to note is that no-one, not person on that group, had ever called out the constant stream of hate that had been spewing out of it every day.

And these people are all India's so-called educated so-called elites. They're from the country's best universities and technical colleges and business schools and occupy senior positions in the government and in leading multinational corporations.

That's how insidious casteism is in this country, even among people who should know better. And don't think it's not there abroad. Hoo-boy!

If you're an American and if you have a Hindu Indian friend, odds are that they're probably casteist. To check, ask them to talk about caste and mentally replace all mentions of Dalits with black people and high castes with white people. You'll soon see that their casteism is at times worse than the racism of a Trump-supporting Proud Boy.

But also, fuck Mensa.

I was young and stupid when I joined and the only thing I learned there is that IQ is a meaningless number that measures how good you are at IQ tests.

[idiotlittleme]

Who's having a good/bad esc year (compared to the last few years):

Good

Finland

Okay so obviously, yes, Finland is having a great esc year. But we should also keep in mind - Finland average place in the last 10 years is 25 (for comparison, Sweden's is 6). They didn't qualify for 4 of them. They were in the top 10 only one time out of these in 2021 with Dark Side.

Croatia

I've already talked about how this is Croatia's glow-up year. I really believe they have a good chance at reaching the top 10. This country average score in the last 10 years is 28 - i.e. - not qualifying. Which makes sense since they qualified only twice during this time with the highest score of 13 at 2017 with My Friend.

Israel

It's not really talked about since there's always this vibe that Israel is good at esc but even with their win at 2018 with Toy, they still didn't qualify 3 times in the last 10 years and even when they did it wasn't always in the higher rankings. This year they have a chance for the third top 10 placement in the last decade.

Serbia

Another country that it always feels like they are succeeding but in reality it's not always the case. Would you believe that last year was their 2ed time in the top 10 in the last 10 years? Not surprisingly their strongest act during this time was In Corpore Sano last year that took the 5th place. And may I even dare to say that I believe Luke can go even further and take the 4th.

Austria

Like Israel they still hold their winning from 2014 with Rise Like A Phoenix, but after 3 years in a row of not qualifying, it's not really like their head is up in the clouds. And yes I think Who The Hell Is Edgar? is straight out top 10 material that can give them the 3ed top 10 spot in the last 10 since that said win.

Btw - the reason Sweden is not here, although Loreen will probably win is that it's rare that Sweden are not having a good year, they are literally the best at it without any doubt whatsoever.

Bad

Azerbaijan

Cute but oh so forgettable. And I know most people don't see Azerbaijan as a strong esc country but - the last time they didn't qualify was in 2018, and that was the ONLY time that happened in the last 10 years. And I still remember Hold Me that got the 2ed place in 2013 and was such a GREAT entry. Better luck next year I guess?

Netherlands

I honestly don't think they will qualify. Sorry. And it's a bummer since the last time that happened was in 2015. Their song is cute and all but when looking at the others in that semi, I just don't see it happening.

Denmark

I seriously hate this song. It has some nice lyrics and this boy's androgynous look has something in it, but omg it's so fucking annoying to listen to. And I'm not the only one thinking that. After two years of not qualifying I expected them to want to do better? Idk, I still hold onto their 2013 winner Only Teardrops.

Poland

What can I say that hasn't already been said about this thing? I guess it's supposed to be empowering but is it really? She just looks and sings like any other bully from high school trying to "make it big" with every means necessary (did someone say curroption in the national selection?). It's annoying, her videoclip looks like she's trying to include horny men to get more votes somehow and it's the overall vibe is mechanic as hell. Like they told AI to make them a winning act and it wrote - take hot girl, add a feminist message, have her dancing, etc. Downright horrible. Won't qualify (luckily).

If you're trying to make some top 10 material why not take a look at Color Of Your Life from 2016? Just saying.

Greece

You're a sweet boy but that ain't happening, sorry. Too forgetable, too unclear, too teenage mood song to actually make a good act out of it. Please can we have another Alchohol Is Free type of act that showed something Greek in it again?

[selfcarecap]

73 Questions

Thanks for the tag @kenniteaa and @silkholland 🫶💖

Hello Vogue !

on a scale of 1-10, how excited are you about life right now? 6-7 I feel like stuff is actually going well for me for once and like I’m actively trying to make my life better

describe yourself in a hashtag? #crybaby

if you could do a love scene with anyone, who would it be? Andrew Garfield maybe

if your life was a musical, what would the marquee say? Idk what a marquee is the only musical I know is hsm

what’s one thing people don’t know about you? that i write fanfic

what’s your wake up ritual? Sleep as long as possible, go take my morning **** (no one’s reading this anyway), brush my teeth, put on clothes and go to uni

what’s your go to bed ritual? Take a melatonin gummybear, brush my teeth (actually usually i brush my teeth and then remember the melatonin), complete any fanfic ideas that i put into my notes app and couldn’t completely write down when i got the idea, then i 👀, and sleep

what’s your favorite time of day? Depends on what I’m doing the next day but I’d say evening/night

your go to for having a good laugh? TikTok

dream country to visit? Japan would be cool but also maybe some Scandinavian country or Iceland or something warm with a beach <3

what’s the biggest surprise you’ve ever had? I can’t think of anything rn lmao

heels or flats/sneakers? Sneakers but platform ones/platform boots

vintage or new? New

who do you want to write your obituary? Idc lmao but ig just not someone who hates me

style icon? Some girls off tiktok tbh

what are three things you cannot live without? Music, writing, my friends/family (I consider true friends family so that counts as one)

what’s one ingredient you put in everything? Ig salt or onion

what 3 people living or dead would you want to make dinner for? First of all I don’t. But Chris Evans, Jon Bernthal and Andrew Garfield cause I think a night with them would be fun👀

what’s your biggest fear in life? Never getting over/learning how to deal w my anxiety

window or aisle seat? Window for short flight, aisle for a long one

what’s your current tv obsession? Love death and robots and himym

favorite app? Tumblr or my notes app

secret talent? I’ve never had an answer to this idk. I guess most people in my life don’t know that I write so maybe that? Idk if I’d say I’m super talented at it tho, oh or maybe a german accent (when speaking english) but it would be weird if i couldn’t do one bc it’s my first language lol but i don’t naturally have a german accent but i can intentionally do one very very well

most adventurous thing you’ve ever done in your life? I’m sure I’ve done some adventurous things but I can’t think of anything rn shsjk actually maybe having an org*sm in semi(okay, quarter lol)-public situations (okay not really public but like outside)

how would you define yourself in three words? Kind, sensitive, cute

favorite piece of clothing you own? Black buffalo platform boots but they broke after three years 🥲

a must have clothing item that everyone should have? Good quality black oversized hoodie

a superpower you would want? Flying

what’s inspiring you in life right now? The fact that it kind of feels like I’m on my way to actually being happy possibly for a bit

best piece of advice you’ve received? It’s nothing specific but like.. nothing matters? But not in a nihilistic way (i wouldn’t mind that tho) more in a don’t overthink life way idk i kind of forced this answer out of me dhsjsj

best advice you’d give your teenage self? It’ll be okay & enjoy the journey

a book everyone should read? Women don’t owe you pretty by Florence Given

what would you like to be remembered for? My kindness

how do you define beauty? I don’t think I have a definition, it’s just a feeling. and if we’re talking about beauty in people then it’s also all just dependent on how they make you feel

what do you love most about your body? My brain and my heart lool but also my eyes, my legs, my boobs, my 🐱 dhsjjs

best way to take a rest/decompress? Go out into nature and breathe some fresh air (unless it’s hot cause then I’ll want to die)

favorite place to view art? A museum probably..

if your life was a song, what would the title be? Whatever the song is where Beyonce says my aspiration in life would be to be happy (ik they want me to make a title up myself but idk)

if you could master one instrument, what would it be? Piano

if you had a tattoo, where would it be? All over my arms and maybe a big back piece

dolphins or koalas? Umm dolphins ig?

what’s your spirit animal? I really don’t know

best gift you’ve ever received? A photo album my cousin made for me

best gift you’ve given? A picture I painted of me and my cousin but i actually think i’m a good gift giver like there are loads of things

what’s your favorite board game? I don’t think I can play it anymore but when I was like 10 I really got into chess?

what’s your favorite color? Pink

least favorite color? Somehow I don’t really like red (but it’s def not my least fav colour but that’s the only thing i can think about.. actually noo red is pretty but idk)

diamond or pearls? Diamonds

drugstore makeup or designer? Fenty for lipgloss but other than that mainly drugstore

blow-dry or air-dry? Air-dry

pilates or yoga? Yoga but I was never quite sure what pilates is

coffee or tea? Tea

what’s the weirdest word in the english language? Betrothed

dark chocolate or milk chocolate? Milk

stairs or elevators? Stairs even though they kill me every time 😭 (but that’s exactly why i choose them)

summer or winter? Winter forever ❄️

you are stuck on an island, you can pick one food to eat forever without getting tired of it, what would you eat? Pasta orrr Schnitzel (I don’t think there is any food that I would want on its own tho)

a dessert you don’t like? I don’t like fruit cake

a skill you’re working on mastering? (Fiction) Writing and like literary analysis lmaoo

best thing to happen to you today? I feel asleep quickly (that was after midnight so I’m counting it as today)

worst thing to happen to you today? I accidentally slept til 1 pm :/

best compliment you’ve ever received? ‘I love your weirdness. It’s so extraordinary and that’s what I love about it.’ and also loads of stuff about my writing, mainly when people have said i’m their fav writer or my fic is their fav fic

favorite smell? Chlorine and also my skin? Sgsjaka

hugs or kisses? Hugssss

if you made a documentary, would it be about? Feminism and the effect of gender in german language (i think i’m thinking more of a bachelor thesis than a documentary but anyway)

last piece of content you consumed that made you cry? I mean probably just random sad/super happy and kind stuff on Instagram or something but either an episode of love death and robots or himym

lipstick or lipgloss? Glosss

sweet or savory? Sweet

girl crush?  Like.. all women ever?

how do you know you’re in love? You just do ykwim likee if you have to ask yourself if you are then you’re not and if you are in love you just know

a song you can listen to on repeat? Ladbroke Grove lol or Stay (Michael Schulte— or Mac Miller lol), most (not too recent) Nicki songs

if you could switch lives with someone for a day, who would it be? Future me (unless that ends up affecting the timeline lol but yeah future me at a time where everything is okay <3)

what are you most excited for about this time in your life? Looking forward to going to the beach sometime in August hopefully

No pressure tags: @t-lostinworlds @aniqua @asonofpeter why is my brain absolutely empty lmaooo anyone who wants to do this just say i tagged you and i will tag you (and pls make your own post thank you mwah)

[itssideria]

13 and 16!! -kai

hello kai!!

13 - Which season do you feel at home in?

oh this is such a weird one for me actually?

as a child, i would have said winter in a heartbeat. i grew up in a desert country where the summers were Fucking Hot (like. we're talking highs of 50C+ here) and winter was pretty much the only time of the year the sky was vivid blue and cloudy and not bleached by the sun, the only time you could do anything outdoors because the weather was tolerable. but now that i'm a teenager who has experienced School Stress™ and who has also moved to a cold western country now... i think, shockingly enough, it's actually summer. i don't have to study or worry about exams or deal with uni problems. i don't have to rushrushrush every outing or event so i can get back to work later. summer is long and sunny and free and i spend it right by the beach and it's gone from being something i hated to something i adore. even if i still can't go outside that much LMAO

16 - How do you organize your music playlists?

LOVE THIS ONE!!! i do have a few playlists made for characters/ocs/media i enjoy (@ wylan van eck ily), but most of my playlists i make for like. very very specific emotions. i've got i'm a teenager and this is a highway and it's midnight and i'm so young and free and what if the trees whispered to me at night and the lowlights are on let's forget the world exists outside my room and it's a summer morning and i'm so energetic and it's a summer night and i have all these memories of my best friends and it just. keeps going, really. i make new ones like that whenever i find i've been experiencing a specific feeling for just a little too long, and it works really really well :)

[ghhswolrd]

how to survive

or what the beach deos to me

live your teenage years in your early twenties because you have been mentally ill since childhood, never had a calm moment, an lived trough a pandemic when you finally found friends and started to rebell against your mother.

life didnt end when youz were 17. and now you finally live in an aparment where you never got hit, never got yelled at, never had to hide in the bathroom. life didnt end when you were 17. so now you´re able to finally be alive instead of only surviving.

sit at the beach with your best friend. recreate the scenens of teh dramas you watched. sit there, drink your tea, watch the sun set, watch the sun rise, stare at the beach, stare at the stars, stare at her, fall in love, with her, with the ocean, with yourself, with being alive

allow yourself to be calm, nobody is hunting you anymore. youre free, youre you, your life didnt end when you were 17.

make a pinky promise at the beach.

talk about the old times, hiding at each otehrs houses to get away from our own parents. always have been obsessed with the noght bc it was the only time we were allowed to be just us. not the child of our parents, not a falure, a mistake. night means existing by yourself finally in peace.

smoke a cigarette, dont smoke a cigarette, swear you will never smoke again, count your money for the pack you will buy tomorrow, your dont need it, youre calm, you need it, its so calm, stop, never stop,

we are one. trauma. nights. wishing to die at 12. wishing to die at 16. wishing to die at 17. wihsing to die at 20. its us. always and never dead. ready to go and never ready.

i hate going home. can i stay with you here? we dont have to go back. never again. leave. far far away. leave. dont come back. leave. die. dont die. be alive. finally alive. finally free. get away. leave. leave with me. take my hand. run trough teh streets. we dont stop. lungs burn. we´re nowhere and everywhere. we´re nothing and whole at the same time. run. keep running. look back and see all you leaing behind. msile for the first time in years, because you feel real happiness and freesom. teh weight is falling. we are leaving. keep running. we are gonna get away. away from all of them and ourself. here on the tsreet, in the forest, in the car, at the beach, at the playground, in the supermarket, here we are away. it feels so good ot be away. i wish we could stay away for ever, never return, never talk, never go back. only away, always away

sitting on skateboards a few streets away from my parents house. its summer. its warm. its never truly dark. in the rich white neighboorhood where people walk their dog at 1 am without being scared. an we sit there, talking, laying on the street. we sit there, anotehr night, painting. anotehr night, wine. another night, confesisng my love to you.

another night, different friend, kissing. anotehr night, different country, making out, holding hands, letting go out of fear, watching the stars on the mountain, what are we? talk, friendship.

we sit at the beach, snuggled in our blankets, its cold and also not, maybe its drak, maybe its still ight, amybe the sun is rising. we just sit there, just finished a talk about our lives, escpaes, fun, love, who we truly are, who we are not, what is life?, future, and the past. now we sit in silence. comforting. its peaceful. we said everything ever on our mind. now we sit here, heavy and light at the same time. evrything was said. we already knew it all. calm and filled with peace, we feel teh weight of the world and adulthood and expectations, but together here its far away and not our problem. for now we are

loosing myself. comforting dissociation. not being really here. totally being in the moment. nothing else has ever existed. nothing else will ecver exist. total disconnact and total awarness of the moment.

eighth sense beach scene.

bad buddies beach escape, running away. being okay.

semantic error, running away from the bar.

the perks of being a wallflower tunnel scene.

all the bright places watching the stars on the tower.

run by bts.

ribs by lord.

2020 again.

libellen, schmetterlinge, sonne mond und sterne

chaos, calmness, silence

budapest.

a silent voice fireworks

given.

matilda. family line. mitski. 134340. mono. amygdala. 42. so perfekt. B.L.U.E. SYRE. dat adam.

existentialism nihilism absurdism at the same time. its all possible at the beach.

talk about mini ice cubes

everything will be fine

[ahungeringknife]

Repostober 2

Me, a certified robot fucker taking a semi horror prompt and writing some robot fucker shit about it instead? Couldn't be! There is no actual robot fucking in this so sorry but Josh and Ryan def got up to some shit in my daydreams oops

The first patchwork Josh met was named Alan when he was twelve. He’d been assigned to his family by the government same as most families and he was Josh’s best friend. Alan looked like an older teenager with one brown and one pink eye and clearly mechanical hands. His hair was the same color as his pink eye and was styled in the fashion of the decade. Despite being a patchwork Josh thought Alan was the coolest guy ever and Alan was around all the time always ready to do whatever Josh wanted to do and talk about what worried him. A constant companion for the difficult task of being a teenager in a country without a lot of teenagers.

By the time Josh graduated college he’d aged out of needing Alan. He had other friends and Alan was returned to the government. Josh missed him but knew it was always coming. Like when his dog had died. His family had had a mock funeral for Alan when Josh had been on winter break as a sophomore in college and his parents had returned him. It made the feelings easier to deal with that Alan was dead and not just somewhere else.

The next patchwork Josh met was in his late thirties. He’d never married and his social worker was concerned he didn’t have a partner and wasn’t really looking. Josh never claimed to be asexual and his lack of contribution made Jenna worried about him. He just liked being by himself mostly and other humans could be so exhausting. Especially in his work. Retail was hell. So Jenna had had him fill out a form for a patchwork and one day after work there was a knock at the door.

He wasn’t expecting anything really. Usually patchworks were reserved for families or people trying to start families like his own parents. They weren’t sent out to single people. Especially not queer men. So he was surprised when he answered the door to green and blue eyes and a blue fringe. “Hello, I’m Ryan,” the patchwork said and offered Josh his hand to shake. Josh just stared at him for a second before good manners kicked in and he shook Ryan’s hand. He was handsome and Josh realized was exactly his type. He’d fucking filled out a form about it of course he was Josh’s type!

“Josh Natter,” he said.

“It’s so great to finally meet you. Can I come in?”

“Oh- of course,” Josh opened the door further and looked at Ryan’s hands. Alan had been a family unit so was allowed to look more like a robot. Ryan’s hands were perfectly people like.

“Did no one call ahead?”

Josh thought about the calls he’d screened the last few days with a grimace. “They did, I just didn’t pick up. I was busy,” he lied.

“No problem. Here, this is for you,” and he pulled a folder out of the satchel he had and handed it to Josh. “Take a look at it, please.”

Josh took it and sat on the couch. Ryan made himself comfortably in the lounge chair. He made an appropriate surprised sound of delight when the leg part kicked out so he could recline. Josh hated to admit it was pretty endearing. He read over the documents while some talk show played on the TV. It was basically telling him what was expected with Ryan and if he didn’t participate within five years he’d be fined a not insignificant amount. If he no longer wished to participate Ryan would leave and Josh’s BLI would be reduced to that of a college student. He couldn’t afford his current home with his part time retail job and that rate of basic income. It also outlined what he could and couldn’t do to Ryan and if he was found to have damaged Ryan he’d be fined or face jail time.

He rubbed the back of his neck as he finished reading. He shouldn’t have let Jenna convince him to fill out the form. Of course, contribution didn’t include raising. He was friends with plenty of people who’d been raised by the state. It hadn’t been torture and no one came out any less fucked up than those raised by actual parents. If anything having patchwork parents was probably better. Patchworks couldn’t make mistakes.

Josh put the papers down and just looked at the TV. “Need to talk about it?” Ryan said in a way that was very similar to how Alan used to ask when Josh was having some Very Big feelings as a teenager.

Josh looked over at Ryan and he was so pretty. He was sure some government intern had had to investigate his porn history to go with him filling out the questionnaire to make Ryan his Type. “You’re real cute,” he said.

Ryan’s lips moved in a shy smile. “Thanks.”

“But I’m not attracted to you at all,” Josh got up and Ryan frowned at him. He put the folder on the coffee table. “It’s late. Come help me make dinner,” and he went into the kitchen. Ryan followed slowly behind him, unsure how to handle this. Josh didn’t know what he expected. He had enough sense of self worth to not just fuck a stranger as soon as he met him. Josh didn’t call himself asexual but he wasn’t really interested in people until he got to know them. Then the horny thoughts were constant and distracting just like any allosexual.

“You want me to help you make dinner?” Ryan asked, confused, standing on the edge of the kitchen.

“Yeap,” Josh said taking stuff out of the fridge. He wanted something for comfort. Box mac and cheese with spicy sausage and spinach. Maybe some biscuits out of a tin. Yeah. That sounded great. He looked over when Ryan didn’t move, his mismatched eyes looked so confused. Josh had never seen a patchwork so out of their element. “Well?”

“This is not… how I expected it to go,” Ryan said slowly.

Josh grimaced. “So what I’m hearing is other men are more desperate than I am,” he put everything in the fridge on the counter and went digging for a pan to wilt the spinach and another to boil the macaroni.

“Most people without families want to complete their contribution to society quickly. So yes,” Ryan said.

Josh shrugged. “I’m just not interested. So make yourself interesting,” he said.

Ryan blinked at him. “Huh. Okay I guess,” and he stepped into the kitchen to help Josh with dinner.

[servin-up-surveys]

survey #130

Is there a person you talk to everyday? Mom and Girt without fail. I'd say most days some messages go between me, Mazzy, and Tez.

Does one of your parents ever complain to you about the other parent? My mother will take any opportunity to talk shit about my dad, yes, meanwhile Dad NEVER has while I've been with him. As a matter of fact, all my dad ever has to say about her around us kids is that she did a damn good job raising us/is a wonderful mother. I honestly would not be surprised if Mom, meanwhile, would prefer him dead with how she handles the topic of him. I know I don't know everything about why they split, but how she is about Dad nearly a whole decade after they split is kinda ridiculous. It's uncomfortable showing in any way that we care about him in her presence because she VERY obviously hates it.

If you have a webcam, do you take more pictures or make more videos with it? I've never used this webcam and historically have also avoided using them at all costs. I only ever really have for virtual appointments.

Who was the last person you wished a “Happy Birthday” to? Actually Kelsee today; she's the daughter of my favorite teacher. Basically an impossibly sweet human being.

Last person you kissed, are they into any type of sports? Which ones? No.

Does your best friend have a job? Yeah, he's worked at the same place for very nearly a decade.

Do you ever visit people at work? Thus far I've brought lunch to Girt at work once, and I plan to keep doing that occasionally forever. I just don't do it a lot now because his work is rather far and Mom has a super shitty car that doesn't need to drive that far, but also I don't have my own income and am not having Mom pay for it. The one time I did do it was with gifted money.

When you move out your house (or if you already have moved out) do you plan on still visiting your parents' house? I fully intend to invite Mom over for dinner like once a week, and I'd absolutely come back here if she wanted me to for something. It breaks my mom's fucking heart how Ashley and Nicole are, generally acting like she's no longer important, and I'll fucking die before I let her feel like I've left her behind, too. I'd still visit Dad too, probably occasionally invite him over. It's a hard situation to imagine just because I already very rarely see him.

What is one thing you hope never changes about you? How much I care about people.

Who was the last person you were mad at? Me.

Why did you break your last promise? Honestly, I feel like the only real promise I HAVE broken (that I remember, I'm sure it's happened more than just once, realistically) is the one I made with Sara, to keep her straight-up diabolical political stance a secret. I broke it because I don't protect the feelings of Nazis/very literal Hitler fangirls. I never should have kept it secret in the first place.

Has anyone ever told you that you were really pretty? Yeah, somehow.

Do you listen to a wide variety of music? Not really, but I've been more open to pop music in recent times... granted, they're primarily songs I grew up with lmao, but still.

What holiday are you looking forward to next? So I'm not very big on the 4th of July just because I'm not this country's biggest fan, but it's more appealing knowing I'll probably spend it with Girt's family, like last year.

Did you ever go through a phase when you didn’t want to take medicine? My problems have always been just being upset over how many medications I've been prescribed during certain periods. There have been many occasions in the past where I've gotten verbally pissed off and even cried over just how many medications I was waking up to and having to take before bed. 100% convinced my memory and focus problems hold DEEP roots in just being so grossly overmedicated by the time I was just a young teenager, and it remained that way for a very, very long time. Thankfully, I'm more at peace with the number I take now; I'm not happy about it, but it's absolutely nothing like it used to be.

Do you love popsicles? They're fine.

Do you like your smile? No, entirely convinced I look high as shit and I know I have a lazy eye when I do smile.

Was the last book you read good? Yup, it was. Jesus, I need to start reading more again... I've been on the same book for SO fucking long.

Does sunlight make you feel happier? Yes, it absolutely does. This was something I learned around the time I started recovering from the breakup and my worst level of depression: I used to be the person who kept the shades closed, lights off always, and just live in the dark. Then I started keeping my shades open and just in general stay in decently-lit rooms, and it made a pretty profound impact on my happiness, eventually. It's why I'm not even big on rainy days anymore; they used to be my favorite, but nowadays I will absolutely feel a difference if it's gloomy outside.

What helps you fall asleep? Fucking nothing. I finally almost cried last night over just how atrocious my ability to fall asleep has been lately; I'm regularly not falling asleep until early morning hours. I just lay in bed for hours on end tossing and turning and being completely fucking miserable. Thankfully I'm starting a new medication tonight that is meant to help me fall asleep... I just hope it works, because historically, meds meant to assist in good sleep have had zero effect on me. I'm one of those people that isn't even knocked out by Benadryl, and you always hear about how that'll knock you flat on your ass.

Do you have stomach problems? Yes.

Do you enjoy editing photos? Yeah, that's basically mandatory to be a notably successful photographer lol, as much as many people don't like to admit.

What was the last photo filter you used? I think it was this one called "Honey" that's on my phone for a picture I took of Girt's sister's dog Onyx.

Do you live a simple life? I'm sure it looks like it on the very surface to people who don't know me well whatsoever, but you realize pretty fucking quickly it's astronomically far from "simple."

What was the last song you listened to on repeat? "Rein raus" by Rammstein.

What are three of your favorite toppings for a pizza? Pepperoni, sausage, and jalapeno are all good.

What are three of your favorite ingredients for a salad? Besides the lettuce, I'm assuming? Cucumbers, bacon bits, and uh... that's it lmao I am MEGA basic with salad. WELL I will say I do absolutely love the jalapenos that are in Olive Garden's salads, like that's my favorite part of the whole thing haha, but idk if I'd enjoy them in every salad.

Do you express yourself better out loud or in writing? Oh there is ZERO competition here, my ability to express myself in writing is indisputably WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better than my capability to do so verbally. I can barely make a normal sentence when speaking.

Do you sing in the shower? No.

What are three random things you are good at? Writing, taking pictures I'd hope, and understanding animal body language, generally.

What is one thing you’ve been waiting patiently for for quite some time? Finding a job, I guess. Though I've been less patient about it lately. I've been doing daily (and I do mean daily) checks online for around three months now for various job titles I feel I could realistically do, and I'm just not getting lucky at all.

What are three of the most painful things you have ever stepped on? Uh idk, honestly.

If you could choose three US states to visit, which three states would you pick? Alaska, Arizona, and one of the states Yellowstone is part of; I'd have to research more about each state.

What color is your camera case (if you have one)? It's black.

What are three things you like that start with the same letter as your middle name? MEERKATS (are you even remotely surprised), music, and mountains.

Which do you use more: Facebook or Instagram? Facebook.

When was the last time you swam in a pool? Today actually; I did hydrotherapy today at PT because there were no land slots for this week when we were scheduling. Well, I guess I didn't really swim because I couldn't get my tattoo wet (it's a saltwater pool), like both my feet never completely left the bottom, but still.

Who or what do you worship? Nothing; I'm not even really a "hail thyself" person just because I think it puts too much divine worth on just us insignificant humans. We're nothing special in the grand scheme of the universe and I think that mentality feeds the ego too much.

Do you know a Ted? Yeah, that's the name of one of my childhood friend's dad.

Have you ever swam in one of the Great Lakes? No.

What is one thing you wish were more easily accessible? ADEQUATE FUCKING HEALTHCARE.

Have you ever chopped something with an axe? No.

What is one mistake you’ve made that you hope to never repeat? Hand my entire identity and worth over to another person.

What was the last thing that kept you awake? My brain doesn't know how to shut the fuck up whenever I try to sleep; that's the primary problem, and it's been that way since I was a literal child. My brain is just always, ALWAYS going, even when I try to tell myself to just concentrate on sleeping. Then there's also the fact my tattoo is starting to scab, and just because of the location, I can really feel the scabbing pull when I roll around in bed, and that obviously hurts.

If you have pets, do they sleep in your bedroom at night? Roman generally does, and sometimes Cookie decides to sleep in my bed instead of Mom's. Venus' terrarium is also in my bedroom.

Can you sleep with background noise or does it keep you up? Only if it's something on the quieter side and monotonous, like a fan. I definitely struggle with like, a TV being on.

Who was the last person to cook you a meal? What did they make? Mom made popcorn shrimp and white rice tonight.

Who was the last person you cooked a meal for? What did you make? I made eggs once when Sara was here.

Who is your female celeb crush? (If applicable) Y'ALL I fucking hate wrestling and find the acting cringy as shit, including whom's I'm about to mention (I know because my niece and nephew like watching????), but Rhea Ripley could RUIN ME and I would thank her

Who is your male celeb crush? (If applicable) I don't think I'll ever be able to explain my level of attraction towards Richard Kruspe even though he could literally be my dad h e l p

Do you have a favorite Marvel character? Probably Deadpool.

Favorite DC character? Harley Quinn.

Who has been your favorite actor to play Batman (live-action)? No opinion, I haven't even seen them all.

Who has been your favorite live-action Joker? Heath Ledger was MADE for the role imo, even if it did cause him a lot of harm. I probably also just have a bias because Heath Ledger's Joker was Jason's favorite thing on the face of the planet.

Has a horror film ever actually scared you? Which one(s)? [TW: RAPE MENTION] There's only been one that has, and that's only because it fed off my pregnancy phobia: The Rite. Doubt it's spoiler material with just being a big part of the plot and it's an old movie now, but a woman is raped by either a demon or just straight-up the devil and it's EXTREMELY fucking gross, like I could not handle it. I still wouldn't watch it to this day, I'm pretty sure I didn't even finish watching it when Nicole had it on. Like obviously I don't believe in supernatural impregnation but I still couldn't handle it.

What was the last horror movie you saw? Well Girt and I startedThe Black Phone but didn't finish it, I've told this story enough.

What was the first horror movie you remember seeing? What did you think of it? Hmmmm... it might have been the OG Paranormal Activity movie. At least, that's the first I remember. I liked it; I tend to like "paranormal evidence" horror films, the ones that seem like they actually happened and can't be explained. I find those much easier to put yourself into/imagine them happening to you.

Name a few historical figures you find interesting. Why? I don't care enough about history for this lmao.

What is your favorite historical film and why? The Boy in the Striped Pajamas because it tears my fucking heart ENTIRELY open every time I see it. I'm crying without fail.

Do you usually enjoy historical films? Not usually, or at least they're not the sort of movies that I seek out.

Name a sequel film (any franchise) you like better than the first film. Why is that? Shrek 2 lmao, the first movie is absolutely legendary and I love it but the second is just more fun to me.

Which do you find most interesting: Greek, Roman, or Norse mythology? Why? Greek. I think it's just because that's what I know most about, though. I will say what I know of Norse is awesome too; it has total potential to be my favorite if I actually knew more about it. All I do know comes from the two most recent God of War games, and while I'm quite sure it is a rather accurate representation of key roles and events, I'm definitely not sure.

Which tale from whichever mythology you listed above do you find most interesting? ... You're making me realize I actually don't remember a lot of Greek mythos lmao, it's been too long since I was in mythology class. With Norse though, I think Jörmungandr as well as Sköll and Hati's lore are very cool.

Do you collect anything? What was the last item you added to that collection? Meerkat stuff is my primary collection; I think the last thing I got relating to meerkats was a shirt. I also collect Silent Hill merch, but I can't recall what the last thing I added on was.

What is your favorite vampire movie? I don't really have one.

Your favorite fictional couple? This is BASICALLY impossible, but I thiiiink I can pick one: Woo Young-Woo and Lee Jung-Ho from Extraordinary Attorney Woo, like that is just a STRAIGHT-UP wholesome, genuine relationship that warms my fucking heart to mush.

Do you have a favorite historical couple? Nope. Again, just don't know enough about history or care enough to dig into their personal lives, especially.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #576

Top Ten Years for Music

Yeah I’m doing it again, and this was the hardest one to do. Because generally speaking I don’t really associate music with the year it came out. Almost all of the time I come to it a lot later – which is why there are hardly any recent years on this list. I’ll probably be into a half-dozen songs from 2022 in fifteen years.

Music, to me, was always a background thing. I never had a desire to seek it out or find out what I was into in the same way I’ve always wanted to know more about film. And as such, when I became a bit older, I felt very out of touch and ill-informed by what music was around. The first CDs I ever bought were soundtrack albums because I just didn’t know what bands I liked, and by then I was also infected by the teenage need to like the right bands. What if I accidentally bought something by someone who wasn’t cool? Or if I mentioned liking them but then exposed how I only liked them because I liked that one song of theirs that was in a Curly Wurly ad or something?

Despite this, we’re still going to see a whole lot of nostalgia on this list. Is it always the case that the music that really resonates is the music you listen to in your teenage years? Even if – like me – you weren’t going to concerts or buying tons of CDs, the music permeates your social consciousness from the radio, from hearing it played in stores, from seeing the artists on TV, and from your friends talking about it. I didn’t own a Blur CD until 1999 and I don’t think I’ve owned one by Oasis, but I could have explained the broad strokes of their music and their rivalry back when Country House and Roll With It released in the same week. So it all sticks and it becomes part of your DNA, the soundtrack to whatever dumb crap you were doing at the time.

Anyway, enough wallowing in the Our Price of history: let’s just look at the years of my life that I thought had the best music. And, yes, this is the most subjective because I think of all things, maybe music is the most subjective? So it’s stuff I liked. You don’t like it? Get your own blog, they’re free!

1984: yes! Seriously! 1984 continues to be one of the best years of all time. If it’s not enough that films like Terminator and shows like Transformers and comics like Turtles all came out, you’ve got the debut albums of both Bon Jovi and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – I mean, come on. Queen’s The Works gave us songs like Radio Ga Ga and I Want to Break Free. Prince made Purple Rain. Springsteen released Born in the U.S.A., for cryin’ out loud! Dancing in the Dark, people! We had Spinal Tap! And speaking of movies, Ghostbusters! I mean, can you imagine? Flippin’ ‘eck, what a year.

1997: it’s tough to single out one year from the nineties, because there’s a period – ’93-’98 really – that’s just chock-full of absolute iconic bangers for me. But this is probably tip-top. We’ve got one of Nick Cave’s best, most soulful albums, in Boatman’s Call, which features possibly my favourite song – Into My Arms. Foo Fighters’ The Colour and the Shape, Radiohead’s OK Computer, Savage Garden’s, er, Savage Garden. Robbie Williams – love him or hate him – did release two of his best songs, Let Me Entertain You and Angels. And a personal favourite of mine was Del Amitri’s Don’t Come Home Too Soon, the best song ever about football.

2016: woah, we’re getting right up to date here! Can you believe it?! But it was a cracker, despite Trump and Brexit and everything else that was happening. Both Bowie and Leonard Cohen released their final albums, and in a way delivered their own epitaphs with Blackstar and especially You Want it Darker, the latter of which is an absolute masterpiece. “I’m leaving the table, I’m out of the game”, for goodness’ sake. If you really want it dark, Nick Cave’s Skeleton Tree was haunting beautiful but also a wail of absolute grief; “They told us our gods would outlive us but they lied”. Slightly cheerier was Foreverland by Divine Comedy, with its propulsive revolutionary undertones and superheroic love songs. And rocketing right to the other end of the scale from all the mournful ballads was Lonely Island’s soundtrack to Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. Is Finest Girl the funniest song of all time?

1996: yep, back to the nineties, and back to the Bad Seeds (Murder Ballads, which includes Cave’s famous duet with Kylie) and back to Divine Comedy (Casanova). Almost defnining my mid-teens, we had the Manics’ Everything Must Go and Spiders by Space, as well as the debut album from the Aquabats. Probably one of the most seminal releases – certainly for me at the time – was the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, featuring possibly my favourite song of the year, the Cardigans’ Lovefool. What else? Well we had two other big debuts: the Spice Girls and Eminem. What more could you want?

1993: still in the nineties and it’s back to another perennial year for me: ’93, the year of Jurassic Park and, well, tons of other stuff. Check out m other lists. Anyway, musically we had Bat out of Hell 2, which was nice as I wasn’t born when the first one came out. He’d do anything for love, y’know, but he won’t do that. Radiohead’s Pablo Honey gave us Creep, my favourite of theirs, because I’m basic. Crash Test Dummies released Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm, a weird delight. We also got 500 Miles, Loser by Beck, Insane in the Brain – which everyone my age was singing in 1993 – and sort of Whitney’s I Will Always Love You, which technically released at the end of ’92 but dominated the early part of the year and was ‘93’s biggest song.

1995: sticking with the mid-nineties and it’s another belter. Alright by Supergrass; These Days by Bon Jovi; the Foo Fighters’ eponymous debut; The Bends by Radiohead. I could go on. And I shall! One of my favourite albums, Different Class by Pulp, gave us some corking class-warfare ballads like Common People. And, yes, it was Britpop’s holy year, with the Blur/Oasis clash and the release of both What’s the Story (Morning Glory) and The Great Escape. Quite possibly my favourite song of the year – sorry, Jarvis – was Alanis Morrisette’s You Oughta Know from Jagged Little Pill, one hell of an angry tune and my generation’s equivalent to The Winner Takes it All. But with a bit more swearing.

1982: right back as far as we can go in my lifetime, really, and it all starts off so well. Madonna’s first album! Bloody hell! And Jacko’s Thriller! Scary stuff. That alone could get it rocketing up the charts, but we also have one of my favourite Bruce Springsteen songs, Highway Patrolman, even if (whisper it) I kinda prefer the Johnny Cash version. Also there was Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast (spoiler alert: it’s 666), and Billy Joel’s Nylon Curtain, giving us tracks like Allentown and the phenomenal Goodnight Saigon. And – yes – Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger.

1998: another all-round classic year – Half-Life came out and I started going out with my wife – and the music wasn’t bad either. Space’s Tin Planet featured The Ballad of Tom Jones; we had Torn, Bittersweet Symphony, and You’re Still the One, just a bunch of stone-cold hits. Evanescence’s debt album provided turn-of-the-millennium action movies with great songs to cut scenes to. The Divine Comedy’s Fin de Siècle had some of the tracks that really drew my attention to the band. The hilarious One Week was a fast-paced good-natured highlight of a song, but let’s wrap up by lifting a glass to a genius movie ballad, Aerosmith’s I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing. I could stay awake just to hear them singing.

2002: another good year for Robbie, with probably – aw hell, definitely – his best album, Escapology, which has his two best songs (for me): Monsoon and Come Undone. Flight of the Conchords’ first album had so many all-time hilarious songs I don’t know where to begin. A Rush of Blood to the Head is my favourite Coldplay album, largely because of The Scientist. Avril Lavigne’s debut album was released, giving us both Complicated and Sk8ter Boi, and holy cats, can you get more millennial? But musically I have to say the year belongs to Johnny Cash and The Man Comes Around, an album full of incredible, emotional, resonant songs – including, of course, his cover of Hurt. 

1994: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Let Love In gave us a lot of tremendous songs (including the haunting and disturbing two-part Do You Love Me) but really it should be known most for Red Right Hand, one of the biggest and most important songs of my life (I first heard in The X-Files!). Also there’s Green Day’s Basket Case, Blur’s Parklife (in both cases the first albums I had from both bands), and the biggest song of the year, Wet Wet Wet’s Love is All Around. It really was everywhere I go in ’94. Sticking with movies for a bit, two of the best soundtracks of my life: Pulp Fiction and The Lion King. Yes, musicals absolutely do count; maybe I should have tried to look them up in a bit more detail. Too late now!

I very, very nearly had 2006 in there at the end instead of another nineties number, but despite a few good tracks that year I ultimately decided I was letting the sheer cosmic weight of Arctic Monkeys’ debut lift the year up too high. I’ve always tried to find a good balanced spread when doing this and not stick a year in there just because there’s one or even two things I like, and ultimately the epoch-shifting excellence of I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor was not enough to champion the whole year. But I’m mentioning it now, in dispatches, so to speak, because it’s still probably the most exciting and impressive debut of my life.