#and explained basically that people can lie about their sexuality and often do out of pressure to perform heterosexuality

[neofelis----nebulosa]

KInda having some issues with something my friend said last night and i want to move past it but cant stop thinking about it

[astrowithkaro]

❥ 𝐋𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝟏𝟎𝐓𝐇 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐄

This post will explain what it means to have Lilith in the 10th house, I will be assuming that you know the basics of Lilith and won't go into details about her symbolism 🌹

(Black moon) Lilith is named after Adam’s first wife before Eve who was the outcast of the garden of Eden as a demon for asserting her sexuality and independence. Lilith represents our worst flaws, our unconscious mind and repressed desires as well as our hidden sexuality. This dark goddess symbolizes lust and carnal desire; she epitomizes all things taboo.

You can find your Lilith by creating a natal chart for yourself on Astro-seek.com and specify Lilith placement (PS: NOT ASTEROID LILITH 1181, it needs to be BLM/h12 that is usually an option in the extended chart settings).

All credits goes to the writer - @astrowithkaro. Do not steal or repost!

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭

You guys are made to play out the Lilith in your lives. Lilith will point where your hidden powers lie. People with this placement often have the ever-lasting sense that they are meant for something big. They have a higher calling in life and are often determined. They have long-term goals that are bigger than usual. They posses a lucky-girl mentality, but it comes at a cost.

Since the 10th house rules the eye of the public, your hidden extremities might be an invitation for rumours and scandals. Therefore, this placement can often get caught in drama, both at a young age while being in school, and often tend to manifest into their work life as well. You might have people speaking about you behind your back, but these rumours don't always resemble who you really are. As teens, you might develop crushes on teachers, or anyone that you idolise. In order to get their attention, you might try to seduce them or make yourself look as appealing as possible to the other person's deepest fantasies/desires. You often compare yourself to the best students and look up to the most successful people in your life, and even copy those tactics in order to gain those same traits you lack in yourself. On a darker note, you could have issues with your father or have a father figure that is absent. You might be oblivious to the insecurities that other people reflect onto you, and feel like it burdens you without being able to recognise where it stems from. You might fall in love with difficult people, people that are narcissistic or possess antisocial traits. People who do not have clear motives for you, but still lead you on in ways that would trigger a trauma bond between you two - love bombing is a clear example of that.

You might be labeled as a difficult person to work with and have a lot of competition when it comes to job opportunities. The people who are responsible for your job role/recruiters might ask you for sexual favours in return for a better position or a raise. Refusing to do this might lead to people throwing dirt on your name, you have the choice to stand up for yourself and make authority figures responsible for their bullshit. Having this placement also has a higher chance of working job positions that involve anything sex-and identity related.

There will be a certain fixation on shaming your position, or having people try to barber that recognition out of you. You might feel self-conscious around people who are highly successful. Though, you are able to recognise manipulation tactics used and you are not afraid to use it against anyone else if it comes down to it. But this could be a dangerous move since you can sometimes be vulnerable to Machiavellism due to your emotional side. You might also be prone to sexual partners who toy with your emotions, and want to use you for sex, might even try to shame your sexuality. You have a lot of public influence no matter what you get recognised for, two famous examples are Albert Einstein and Vladimir Putin. Therefore, you need to utilise it carefully.

Since there is a certain fixation on the desire for authority, you may sometimes desire darker powers or leadership, especially for those who meet a lot of resistance that lead to social isolation. You are afraid of failure and might be very responsive to any sort of failure or to be seen as vulnerable. You might develop a hyper-independence complex or a play a damsel-in-distress for people of power. You need to put your feelings aside when it comes to business. Your test in life is connected to having a sense of responsibility. There will be a delay in finding your career path.

There might also be a period during which you feel the need to over-sexualise yourself or romanticise parts of your life that are difficult for you to handle. This is rooted in the need for control over something that seems difficult or hard to reach. You might find it difficult to connect to your own deeper goals and ambitions, often due to unresolved resentment towards certain people or situations. You might hold grudges towards people who did you dirty. The path to empowerment is self-acceptance and moderation. If your needs aren't met, you tend to be ice-cold and might even appeared detached and distant - sometimes even "head in the clouds". You need to draw a line between your emotions and have an endurance.

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･

𝕿𝖍𝖆𝖙'𝖘 𝖎𝖙 𝖋𝖔𝖗 𝖓𝖔𝖜 𝖄𝖔𝖚 𝖈𝖆𝖓 𝖋𝖎𝖓𝖉 𝖒𝖞 𝖒𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙 𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖊

[seradyn]

Royal Respite and Midnight Melody!

The two I’m most excited about 🤤🤤

I’m going to start with Midnight Melody cause I wAnT tOO

This is a short one shot I thought of when I reexamined some of Astarion’s lines post Cazador. When the player asks how he feels directly following the event, he explains he feels ‘numb’. From my own experience and what I’ve learned about surviving abuse, often people can struggle coping with a world where their abuser is out of the picture, because so much of their life was consumed by them, either physically or mentally. We see this not only in Astarion, but in Karlach too, who has similar feelings after Gortash’s death, because all the rage she built up around him has nowhere to go. It’s still there, but now it’s trapped inside without an outlet, instead of being healed when her abuser went away like they think it should have.

Astarion is the same way; without Cazador, where is he supposed to direct all his energy, his hatred, his rage over what happened to him? It’s still there, even though he’s dead, and it’s not fair. I wouldn’t be surprised if he struggled with his purpose after Cazador’s death. This happens with real survivors too; their whole world revolved around their abuser for so long, once they’re gone they just feel so empty and lost.

This fic is a take on that, where reader helps reassure Astarion that he doesn’t have to know what he wants right now, and they’re more than happy to help him figure it out. He tells them he doesn’t have a heart to guide him, but that’s not true. Is it not reader’s blood that flows through his veins? Does reader’s heart not beat for him? They remind him, hold his head gently to their chest so he can listen, can hear the heartbeat that is not only theirs, but one they give freely to him, too.

Basically more tooth rotting fluff and non sexual intimacy. Baby boy just needs to be held and I’ll be damned if I don’t smother him in affection. He deserves it.

Here is snippet:

~

“It’s nothing serious, of course…” he said quietly. Another lie, but you didn’t say anything, simply cradling his hand to your chest, a precious and fragile part of him. It gave him time to work up the courage to continue.

“It’s just that…When I was under Cazador,” he hissed the name, fangs poking out over his bottom lip, “every thought I had, everything I did was for him. He dominated us, mind, body and soul, and used that dominance to make our whole world about him.”

His eyes were wild with anger, that grimace back on his face, because it was so much worse to say it out loud, to acknowledge how much of his life belonged to his old master. You squeezed his hand to encourage him to keep going. This needed to come out, lest he push you away to protect you from the rot that did naught but burrow and consume down into his being.

“Even after the nautiloid, he inhabited so much of my thoughts,” he went on, his voice slightly rasped and shaking. “Though instead of fear or obedience, it was anger and determination to kill him. Even when he lost control of me, all I could think about was him. Even with his body rotting in the dirt, I cannot get him out of my head.”

“And now that he’s gone…I can’t help but wonder…what am I supposed to do?” His eyes filled with sorrow then, displeasure with himself. “With Cazador dead…I find myself losing all sense of direction.”

Your heart broke for him, jagged pieces of it left on the floor for you to step on. You cupped Astarion’s cheek, lifting his face to look at you. His eyes were wide, glistening in the dim candlelight as they filled with pain and worse: self loathing. You didn’t need the tadpole to hear that treacherous little voice in his head, one you knew like an old friend that whispered pathetic, worthless, weak. You knew he wanted to protect you, wanted to give you the life you deserved, yet he hadn’t the faintest idea how to do that, where to even start, and it pained him.

Gently, allowing him to pull back if he so desired, you led him into your arms, wrapping them around him so you could rub at the tension in his back. He nearly collapsed into your embrace in relief, immediately wrapping his own arms around you and crushing you to him. You massaged his shoulder blades while he pressed needy, frantic kisses into your hair, afraid you might pull away and leave should he stop.

“It’s okay not to know,” you said into his chest, kissing his sternum. “We can figure it out together. I’ll always be here with you, no matter what future you decide you want.”

He let out a tense breath, burying his face in your neck. “I know,” he mumbled. “I know whatever future awaits, I want you to be a part of it.” He leaned back, just enough that he could meet your eyes, so you could see into the dark abyss where his mind lingered. “The problem is, I don’t know what I want our future to look like. What I want it to look like.”

It was then you fully realized that what Astarion had been feeling since the confrontation with Cazador was lost. So, so lost, in a world without his master to contend with. The hopelessness you heard on his tongue was a knife piercing your tender heart, a sharp pain burning through your chest as it tried to beat around it, blood gushing from the wound and radiating out across your skin. What was freedom to one who didn’t know how to live with it, didn’t know how it felt? Though his chains had been broken, the memory of them still pulled him down and suffocated him. You wished so deeply to spare Astarion this pain, for he lived so long in the shadows of the world, you wanted to shower him in the light until he was blinded.

Abruptly, he shook his head, a growl ripping past his lips as he pulled himself away from you. It should be so easy, to move on and enjoy life now that he was allowed to. His desires could be fulfilled, instead of remaining the desperate wishes of a slave who longed for escape. The world was his for the taking, his life his own once more.

So why did he still feel so broken?

“Now that I’m free, I’m supposed to be able to do whatever I want. Follow my heart, as our companions said.” He spit the words; they tasted foul in his mouth.

“How am I supposed to know what I want without a heart to guide me?”

~

I’ll send you the full version once the first draft is done. Hope you like it 💕

Royal Respite has a similar vibe, and is also pure tooth rotting fluff/non sexual intimacy. It’s a one shot in which reader gives Ardyn a massage after he delivers the peace treaty proposal to the Lucian council. Just letting reader dote on him while he talks about his day, and letting him relax before everything goes to shit, basically. Ardyn has been working to make this plan come true for literally decades. I think he deserves some rest before it fully comes to fruition.

No snippet for this one yet, since I’ve been hyper focused on some of my Astarion fics *cough* see above *cough* but hopefully it doesn’t take too long to get on paper. You’ll be the first to know when there’s a rough draft 💕

[thelostgirl21]

So, I learned something new about "skinny white men" today, and I wasn't ready!

Basically, there's this video of 3 gay men trying to figure out who the secret bottom is in a group of 5 other gay dudes.

And, around the 1:45 mark, one of them goes:

"I'm going to say that he's a top, only because... I don't know if people know this about skinny white men, they tend to..."

While the other guy is like "I was thinking the same thing..."

And the one in the middle is confused going "What?"

And I'm right there with him, because the very moment they said "skinny white men" my mind immediately went to this character:

And now, it's clear that I've absolutely got to know why they think "skinny white men" tend to make especially great top material, apparently. For headcanons science, you know?

And I have no idea what I was expecting (if you want to listen to the episode before I spoil the answer for you, go watch it now)...

...but skinny white men having such long dicks that it's like extra appendages wasn't it!

And then, them appreciatively going "there's something good under there" while more or less hoping that he's a top, so he can put it to use more often, just about killed me!

Later, around the 6:35 mark, when they are asking him about what his favorite positions are, he's also the only one that answers "laying down doggy style" (and actually has to explain what that means).

"Laying down doggy style" (also called "flat doggy style") has a few variations but, in the way he's explaining it (i.e. completely lying down on top of his partner), it reduces the depth of penetration, and apparently some bottoms love it, because the weight of their partner on top of them basically feels like they have this warm, comforting, "heavy blanket" covering them during sex.

So it's... actually a very good choice for someone who enjoys topping, has a really long dick (therefore losing some penetration depth won't be an issue) and who is skinny enough that they can fully lie down on top of their partner without crushing them under their weight!

So... while he never confirmed if what they said about "skinny white men" was true, let's just say that his answer is suspiciously compatible with the stereotype!

And now, I've apparently decided that "Yup! Radovid is going to totally fit that skinny white man stereotype, too!", because I really can't help but think that it would be kind of one of the most perfect sexual positions for Radovid and Jaskier!

Assuming, of course, that Jaskier enjoys bottoming (my headcanon is that he does, although more as a verse than as a strict bottom... I'd tend to really see Radovid as a verse, too), having Radovid's full (or near full) weight on top of him while they are having sex, with Radovid being able to nibble on his ears, kiss his neck, fully embrace him, bodies flush against each others, and being extra cuddly and affectionate is definitely something I could see them both doing and greatly enjoying.

And yeah, it does nicely tie into my "Jaskier has ADHD" headcanon, because as someone with ADHD myself, I'm literally obsessed about the sensation of being "squished", and respond extremely well to deep pressure therapy/stimulation (I recently discovered a 15 lbs open weave knit weighted blanket that I use every night to fall and stay asleep, and wonder how I've ever been able to manage without it!).

This article about ADHD love languages has a very nice way of phrasing it:

Please Crush My Soul Back Into My Body—Physical Touch ‘Please Crush My Soul Back Into My Body’ is often better known as applying deep pressure.  Techniques like deep-pressure hugs can often be incredibly soothing, instilling feelings of security, comfort, and safety in a loved one. What it means to someone neurodivergent: Although deep pressure is not only for neurospicy folks, they tend to enjoy and need it more than neurotypical people. The deep pressure from a tight hug, a weighted blanket, etc., helps produce feel-good hormones, such as oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine, and decreases stress hormones like cortisol.

And with everything they've both been through and seen, I've no doubts that Jaskier and Radovid likely both suffer from some form of PTSD.

And maybe there are nights where Jaskier has a particularly hard time falling asleep, and/or keeps waking up because he's having nightmares, and they've discovered that having Radovid affectionately make love to him in that position really helps soothe Jaskier's nervous system, helps him relax, and simply floods his body with "love" and "feel good" hormones, so he's then able to actually fall asleep and spend a good night.

Of course, they likely wouldn't know the whole science behind why it's working, but they'd be able to observe the effects it has on Jaskier.

And given how Jaskier's body looks physically "cushier" than Radovid's, I'm guessing that Radovid would be much more comfortable and happier being the one lying down on top of him in those moments, too.

Like if the boys are going to go for the suspended congress position, I'd fully expect Jaskier to do the lifting and topping!

But if they're going flat doggy style, Radovid just might be Jaskier's perfect top!

[dearweirdme]

jkkrs are about to be reaaaal mad at me but watching this show, jkk act like besties and even siblings, like so much of that behaviour is so similiar to how I am with my sister and before anyone gets weird yes jkk aren't actual siblings so there are some things that they do that siblings wouldn't, like they are more touchy (although not the way jkkrs portray it tbh, like a lot of people sexualize all of their touches and most of the time it's weird and unneccessary) but that's literally such best friends behaviour too and the constant bickering, the way they tease each other, play fighting, doing the most random shit, the way they talk to each other, like it's clearly a close bond and it's very sweet

sorry english isn't my first language so idk if I explained myself well, anyway I know people see different dynamics in the same pair but to me most of the tannies display a clear siblings/besties bond, like they can go on days and months without seeing each other but once they together they fall right back into these dynamics just like family really and I can't wait for the rest of the show, the first two episodes were really fun

Hi anon!

Ah, jkkrs are quite often really mad at us. I can’t lie, it’s kinda funny to see how we were basically right about everything. Jm and Jk did not see each other much. The show was made for content. It was planned. There was plenty of staff around. Some of us even expected this show to have debunking moments in it.. and well.. here we are!

I truly enjoyed watching it. Made me uwu, made me laugh out loud. They are so funny and cute. But definitely bro dudes.. I seriously expect some jkkrs to un-jkk silently over this.

[moodbroads]

gettin used to tumblr so i may mess up- mini intro (feel free to ask questions!): hihi! u can call me nine/sketch/mikko/milo/whatever u wanna call me (yes even mcquackthedumbestofseven)

i go any/all pronouns!

ive been an elk (wapiti) therian for about 6ish years i think? idk i dont remember when i awakened i wasnt as online as much as i am now- i have been questioning some sort of other kintype though

i love vulture culture and have a few bones i found myself!

im into wings of fire, watership down, helluva boss/hazbin Hotel, warriors (duh lmao), worldbuilding in general tbh, speculative biology, nostalgic things, red dead and harry potter! (i prob have more but rn im running at 2 hours of sleep)

i are the pro in bad grammar B)

games i like rn (changes alot-): clangen, wolfquest, spore, red dead 2, planet zoo and hogwarts legacy lolol

roblox games i like rn XD: lake territory reborn, skyven, canine odyssey, a lions pride, wild horse islands, prehistoria, catalog avatar creator and creatures of sonaria!

small fun facts:

i wanna film animals/photograph them one day!

im on the autism spectrum and hypersexual but i dont like to mention it often due to my mental stuff being well- my mental stuff

i get way too many ideas in my head xdd

im very much queer and wanting to try everything in the book cuz like WOMEN YESSS but also MEN YESSS but also PEOPLE NOOOO soooo-

THERES A BIRD JUST CALLED BRANT..THATS IT..WHY BRANT?!?

i have 2 dogs! :)

dni: basically nobody cuz like..you can just lie or scroll on..its the internet do ya boogers not know what your on rn-

(AAAAA SORRY BIG TEXT WALL COMIN IN I JUST ACTUALLY WANTED TO GET A DNI IN) actual dni if people care: fictionkin-explained in a post factkin-explained in a post terfs or any kind of that shit (im lookin at you homophobes, cuz most are terfs too) jk rowling supporters (just the person and what they did, not the community/harry potter itself) anti-alterhuman, pro 'p-shifters' or 'p-shifters' art critiquers (WITHOUT PERMISSON) sexualizers of basically anything, no i dont wanna 'hear you out' that is a dog on 2 legs with an obvious dog dong hanging out-get help pro-PETA (vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians and animal cruelty people that are ACTUALLY HELPING are totally fine- love yall <3) pedos pedos and more pedos im gen z, i basically grew up on the internet, i know your intentions so no, fuck you who are you even tryna trick- not even 2 year olds can read your creepy ass pm cuz its all like 'hEy 11M wAnNa ShArE NUdS' like who even says 'numbergender' anymore other then omegle users (rip omegle but also horray cuz that site was horrid)

[donnerpartyofone]

People can surprise you with how mature they seem in some ways, and how held back they are in others. This can be kind of charming if it isn't a big problem. Last night we ran into the rich crazy finance guy at the brewery; he's always so loud and hyper and anxious to say something that it can be hard to finish a sentence around him, and it drives us all nuts, but he also seems sort of naive, so we tolerate him. But anyway, at some point I started talking about my tinnitus, and how it makes my depression and anxiety way worse, while at the same time all medications make my ear ring so much louder that there's no point in taking them--and while I was talking about this, he listened to me, and calmly asked me questions in a normal tone of voice, and waited for the answers, and didn't make assumptions or give unsolicited advice, and was being totally sympathetic and respectful, it really impressed me.

On the other side of things, there was a guy there who I relate to more directly just because we're closer in age and class and everything, and I think of him as decent and educated, but I started realizing that he's one of these "why doesn't she just leave" dudes who doesn't understand anything about intimate partner abuse or any of the degrees of sexual violence that lie below the level of like full-on forcing yourself on someone. I saw this as a big opportunity to explain how these kinds of relationships work psychologically, how sexual violence is rarely just some random surprise, it often comes out of a systematic attack on your self-esteem, along with this programming that says you have to prove that you love your partner by enduring any terrible thing they do to you, because if you don't then you're a liar and you're abandoning them and like YOU'RE the abusive one somehow. In the end you're convinced that not only do you deserve to be abused, but it is your solemn duty to let them do it (is the somewhat simplistic, reductive explainer I gave this guy in public in 5 minutes). He seemed to get that, but he still had questions about relationships where violence is consented to--basically he appeared to be conflating domestic violence with BDSM, because he just doesn't have any point of reference for either of those things in his own life. And like I knew I wasn't going to be able to clarify consensual sadomasochism for this person, but he goes,

"Like, you know, uh...what are those movies? You know, um, the ones where the two people beat each other up or something?"

"...Are you talking about FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY?"

"Yeah, those ones!"

And while I think those movies show a dangerously immature and dysfunctional version of "the lifestyle" and shouldn't be viewed as documentary material of some kind, I still found this extremely funny. The movies where the two people beat each other up, yes, perfect.

[jackjackattacks]

jack parr is based on jack-jack from the incredibles. they are a 26-year-old superhuman and temp. they use they/them pronouns. they have the power of polymorphing, telekinesis, teleportation, laser-vision and self-duplication. they are portrayed by liv hewson.

BASICS.

full name: jack j. parr.

nicknames: jack-jack, jj.

age: twenty-six.

gender: non-binary.

pronouns: they/them.

sexuality: (vague hand-wavey gesture).

occupation: temp @ the chronicle.

date of birth: tba.

face claim: liv hewson.

parents: bob parr (father), helen parr (mother).

siblings: violet parr (older sister), dash parr (older brother).

powers: polymorphing, telekinesis, teleportation, laser-vision, self-duplication.

SUMMARY.

jack was last to the party that is the parr family and is therefore the perpetual baby of the family, for better or worse.

on the one hand, it gets annoying feeling like you have to catch up on everything that happened when you didn't exist - or were learning to walk and talk - and feeling like you're always going to be seen as a child who needs to be taken care of or managed.

on the other hand, they love the attention and being able to get away with things if they play it right. they had the waterworks down when they wanted to get someone in trouble (usually dash), at least until they got old enough for that to stop working.

their powers came a little late, but they made up for lost time with variety and quantity - though, luckily for their parents' sanity, the list was not as endless as it first seemed. more than anything, they were full of potential - bursting with it.

as they grew up, they grew into their powers and themself. the chaotic mess settled into something they could control, even though all that energy is still waiting under their skin.

they figured out the gender thing around the end of middle school. dash was the first to have any indication, mostly because he was jack's authority on "boy things". then violet (the authority on "girl things"). their parents were the last to know, mostly because they wanted to be able to explain it properly.

despite feeling there were some things they'd missed out on, they still know they belong in their family. and the older they got, the more they got right in the middle of things and ensured they wouldn't miss out on any more. they only got more confident as they got more comfortable with their powers and themself. they grew into someone who could light up the room, who could help people, and who would follow their big brother into trouble (it's not their fault if he's a bad influence).

then came evermore.

they might as well have always been here. it's the only home they remember. they kept their memories of their family - thank god - but the control over their powers took a hit and that was... well.

they've done their best to avoid their family finding out their power struggles. they aren't hiding it exactly... well, okay, they are but they try not to actively lie about it. they just keep thinking about the stories they've been told about the chaos they caused when they were little. they don't want their family to worry, and they don't want to be a problem. they're not a kid anymore, they don't need to be managed. they'll be fine. it's not like they're thrown into emotional turmoil too often, anyway, right? they'll figure it out.

TIDBITS.

they stopped going by jack-jack a while ago. or tried to. that's never really stopped their family, no matter how much they insist it sounds childish. (they don't actually mind, but they've gotta put up some protest.)

they listen to music when they're working if they can get away with it. it's a habit picked up from their auntie edna, and helps them focus. when they're practising their powers, they tend to listen to mozart.

they like watching old movies from the fifties and sixties.

they're a mediocre cook but make a killer mac and cheese.

they collect fashion magazines and fabric samples. if they have a free weekend and don't know what to do, they'll make a fashion mood board.

the smoke alarms at their place are all switched off. don't worry about it, though. it's fine. (if anything catches fire it'll be them and they'll be very aware of it without any loud beeping noises, thank you very much).

skater kid. can still do all the cool tricks. no, it is not cheating to use telekinesis to make yourself look cooler, shut up.

they shamelessly steal clothes from both their siblings' wardrobes. they are not subtle and they are not sorry. if anything, they are judgmental.

they like reading comics. partly just because they think they're cool, but partly out of an almost morbid fascination with what other people think the deal is with superheroes.

they have an eclectic collection of stuff left over from hobbies they started and then forgot about. yoga, origami, jewelry making, who knows what else. they'll circle back around to it all eventually.

they are more of an ambivert than most people would assume based on first impression - they are energetic and friendly, yeah, but sometimes they need to slow down and breathe before they explode. on their quiet days they curl up with a book or a project, sometimes wordlessly crashing on a friend's (or sibling's) couch if they don't want to be entirely alone.

they keep their hair short, but still long enough that they can ask violet to braid it. maybe they're too old for that now, but it helps them calm down and feel close to violet without making her talk to them.

they were homeschooled for a little bit during elementary school. it seemed like the safer option - both for jack and the other kids. and better safe than sorry seems best when your kid can burst into flames.

they tend to feel things with their whole body, especially now their control of their powers is messed up. if they let it, their feelings can become a self-perpetuating cycle; getting upset, their powers getting volatile, getting upset about their powers, and so on. bottling things up never works well for them, so they try not to.

it's not that jack wishes they were normal, exactly. they just wish, sometimes, that things were easier. that their powers were only ever exciting, rather than a responsibility. that the world could take care of itself for a little bit. it's almost a guilty pleasure, not having the weight of the world on their shoulders at evermore.

their powers - especially their polymorphing - work intuitively, which is both a blessing and a curse. relying on instincts and feelings is good when it turns your body to steel when someone tries to punch you. the real problems are in everyday life, when you don't want to burst into flames because you got excited or shoot laser beams when you glare at something. the trick they're trying to relearn is balancing instinct with caution and, you know, thinking. and making sure they don't let their powers build up so much that they explode.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

So this is going to be somewhat inflammatory though it's not meant to be. It's me trying to make sence of the things around me.

If rates of T in men and rates of E in women were stable as to what they should be, rather than the rates we are seeing now, And you had two loving parents, who were married. As well as a strong figure of the opposite sex assuming you had 2 same sex parents growing up.....How many people would actually end up trans, NB or GNC?

I ask this not because I'm being hateful but because prior to the 2010's this stuff really just was not happening. And the reason I ask this is because there is a really weird trend I've noticed in my life and it's......difficult to discuss without being labeled awful names for it, or just dismissed outright.

I've noticed throughout my life, there has been a propensity of gay men, (seemingly a lot), who end up being sexually assaulted by men early in their lives. Now let me get through this. I have a friend who died not long ago. He committed suicide. He had a sexual experience with a gay camp counselor early on. However, he later off'd himself. His note explained that he lied to himself for years that the only way he felt like he had a choice in what happened, is if he was gay. And that he fought with himself forever over whether or not he was or was not. At the end of it all he found himself to be living a lie, and more or less as a monster. And it drove him off the edge.

I think that at the end he hated himself so much for having been taken advantage of like he had been. What's more I had to be around him during a phase where he thought that the only way gay young men would find out if they were or not would be to be basically sexually assaulted by an adult. But I drilled it into his head for almost a year until he gave up. Kids can't consent. And just because it happened to him, does not mean he can take advantage of vulnerable and often hormone driven horny that is young men.

And it's a question I've always had. Why is it that most of the gay men I know, all seem to have 1 common trait which is that they were sexually assaulted. Often by older men. Now, I don't know much towards the other side of that. I just know what I know. However, now a days, one of the oddest trends is instead of being gay, now young people that are sexually assaulted, end up coming out as NB or trans. And I very much wonder if the root of that is in fact trauma. It's one of the reasons I'm a huge advocate for therapy. And not just "Therapy" but actually talking to a proper, non affirming therapist. Not one that will DENY the possibility you are in fact what you say you are. But one that will DO THEIR JOBS RIGHT.

Idk, this is a hard one to type out for me. I know there are gay people and Bi people etc that I follow. Even friends of mine. And it's always a hard topic to discuss. Is it possible that a lot of gay men are only gay because they were conditioned? Was it needing to feel like they had a choice having been assaulted sexually? And mind you, this question is not to say, infer, or even suggest that gay men ONLY exist for this reason. I just have questions is all. And I don't know how to ask it or have a civil conversation about it with people that are not going to bite my head off. None of this is me in bad faith.

[flightfoot]

As someone who hasn't engaged much with the Tumblr Side of the miraculous fandom for a long time can you explain to me this place's reputation for salt fics? Every social media platform seems to hate certain characters more than others and I'm aware of Tumblr's preference for certain characters over others. It seems the salt fics and authors have died down since the heights it had in season 3, I try not to pay attention to that stuff cause it seems really dumb. If you could perhaps explain it to someone that's not familiar I'd appreciate it.

The Tumblr crowd tends to be heavily associated with AO3, so there's a lot of similarities between what's popular on AO3 and what's popular on tumblr. The salt fics and authors have massively died down on say, FFN, where they've mostly died out, but they're still going strong on AO3. The saltdom is more quarantined (especially compared to season 3, when it was pretty much unavoidable while still participating in the fandom at all), but it's still pretty strong in the places where it's still around.

Tvtropes has a decent run-down of some of the common Saltfic plots on its Fandom Specific Plots page, so if you want more information, that's a good start.

Basically, the idea is that the author projects onto Marinette, and doesn't really care about most of the other characters, and the other (canonically good) characters tend to be made into horrible people for not being sufficiently loyal to her, in order to justify giving her new friends who worship the ground she walks in and will freely hurt anyone who "mistreated" Marinette.

Luka's often used as her new Love Interest since Adrien's declared to be a sexual harasser and lazy and useless as Chat Noir, and to be a spineless useless doormat for not teaming up with Marinette to try to expose Lila in Chameleon (his later efforts to help Marinette in Ladybug, once he knows that Lila's actually malicious, is usually ignored). Luka basically just revolved around Marinette and never pushed her or seemed to have any desires or baggage of his own in seasons 2 and 3, so he was often used as a partially blank slate who could be altered to be whatever the author thought Marinette's ideal boyfriend should be like, who would care about Marinette's point of view and wellbeing, and ONLY that, with no consideration for anyone else's perspective or feelings, making him the perfect defender for her.

Chloe's particularly popular with the saltdom, especially post-season 3, since a lot of fans feel like she got a raw deal. Though she was popular among the saltdom even back when Chameleon aired, and... honestly for pretty fair reasons? A lot of the earliest Chameleon fics ran with the idea of Lila making good on the threats she'd made, turning Marinette's friends against her. Since Alya and the class in general had shown a susceptibility to Lila's manipulation and lies, it was often assumed that Lila could sufficiently lie and manufacture evidence to fool them into thinking that Marinette wasn't a good person, while Lila wouldn't put in that effort to trick Chloe, who wasn't Marinette's friend, and who also wasn't doing much of anything in Chameleon, so it was unknown whether she was fooled by Lila's lies.

Problem was, that somewhat reasonable plotline kept on being flanderized into making Chloe into being the one person who cared about Marinette and could tell she wouldn't do the things she was accused of, and Alya and the class in general kept on being warped into being horrific bullies who'd physically hurt Marinette, destroy her property, and suicide bait her. And even when that plotline was both thoroughly exhausted AND was proven wrong by canon with "Ladybug" acting as "Chameleon's" follow-up, they still kept going.

A lot of people really like "the main character is horribly mistreated by the people who should always have their back no matter what, so the people who supposedly should be their enemies recognize how horribly they've been mistreated and team up with them instead, inflicting horrific vengeance and punishment on those who didn't treat them the way they deserved" plotlines. You see it commonly in Harry Potter, Pokemon, and more recently, Encanto fics, for example. (the "teaming up with enemies" part is optional. Sometimes the other party is just considered "better" because they're more unquestioningly loyal to the main character).

Anyway, I'm not totally sure if this explanation was what you were looking for, but I tried my best.

[onekmaway]

" 𝙈𝙊𝙍𝙀 𝙏𝙃𝘼𝙉 𝙁𝙍𝙄𝙀𝙉𝘿𝙎 "

Rafe Cameron x FWB! Male! Reader

A/N: Was listening to more than friends and eyes don't lie by Isabel LaRosa while writing this :3 Just remember, english is not my first language, so sorry for spelling mistakes and bad wording! also, sorry that it's a bit short :(

CW!: Based on my bot I made! (just click on the word 'bot' for the link <3), this is merely headcanons and brabbles and not a full fic (unfortunately), both SFW and NSFW headcanons/brabbles, this Rafe is heavily based on my bot, not the Rafe in the series, same character, just not personality, do not come for me if his personality is wrong or that he won't do these things. Rafe is 20 years old in this. In public you and Rafe are close friends, in private you are fuck buddies, and in Rafe's head you two are dating (you don't know that though) Rafe is hella possessive and clingy (like badly), slight somnophilia!, mention of violence, Rafe is slightly pervy, Rafe is a bit too much into you, Bottom! Rafe x Top! Reader, reader is a male at birth (AMAB) but otherwise, the gender of reader is not explicitly explained, so can be read as transfem reader (who still has a penis) Words to describe reader: you, your, you're, [name]

‎ ‎‎" 𝙁𝙀𝙀𝙇 𝙐𝙎 𝘾𝙃𝘼𝙉𝙂𝙄𝙉', 𝘾𝙊𝙈𝙄𝙉' 𝙐𝙉𝘿𝙊𝙉𝙀 "

SFW

・☆・ He definitely acts like a jealous girlfriend and an insecure one around you even though he knows the both of you are just 'friends' ・☆・ You were his first friend in kindergarten, and now you're still his closest friend even to today ・☆・ You're basically his first contact in his phone, oh, he needs something? He calls you if you have it. Oh, he done something? You're the first to hear about it, he barely even hides things from you now, you two have known each other your whole lives basically ・☆・ He laughs at your jokes often (even if they're not funny), seeing you happy makes him happy ・☆・ Rafe definitely gets jealous often, especially when another person tries to be in your life ・☆・ Be prepared for Rafe to give someone the meanest and nastiest stare if they try to flirt with you (you're his)

・☆・ Rafe definitely buys you things, clothes and accessories mostly, it makes him smile when he sees even one item he bought you on your body ・☆・ Rafe wears a necklace you bought him, and you wear a necklace he bought you, it's of course matching necklaces (one be barely takes off) ・☆・ When the both of you were younger, he definitely slept over at your house a lot and went to school with you like that, a few days a week at least, barely even in his own house during that time ・☆・ Rafe def likes to cuddle you when ever he comes to sleep over (he still does it even though he's 20 now), he doesn't care if he's the big spoon or little spoon, he just wants to hold you while he falls asleep ・☆・ When he gets hurt, expect him to be already at your doorstep, asking you to patch him up, and while you do it, he just smiles at you, asking if you can also kiss it better ・☆・ Oh, but when you get hurt? Even just a bit? He's already hunting down the person who did it, probably carrying a bat with him too, ready to teach the person a lesson to not touch his friend ・☆・ He has a shit ton of things of you, some he stole, and some you bought him or gave to him, he never even threw the things away you gave him when you two were younger, he still has everything, he would rather die then throw those things away ・☆・ Rafe isn't bisexual, or gay or straight, he's [name]sexual, he's basically only attracted to you, yeah he slept with other people before, but why should he when he has you? He just needs you, all he needs is you ・☆・ He acts like your personal bodyguard sometimes ・☆・ Follows you around like a lost puppy, you're the only one he hangs out with almost everyday (he gets pissed if you're gone for too long, and I mean a literal day, he gets pissed if he doesn't see you or gets to hang out with you for a day)

" 𝙉𝙀𝙀𝘿 𝙔𝙊𝙐𝙍 𝙃𝘼𝙉𝘿𝙎 𝙊𝙉 𝙈𝙔 𝙒𝘼𝙄𝙎𝙏 𝙋𝙇𝙀𝘼𝙎𝙀 "

NSFW

・★・ You were his first wet dream, and you were the first person to take his anal virginity and the last (now he won't let you go) ・★・ Has put some innocent person in the hospital just because they touched your arm and tried to flirt with you

・★・ Has wrapped the necklace you bought him around his cock, stroking himself with it wrapped around his cock, watching it glistening with lube, knowing that your hands was on the necklace at one point before you gave it to him. ・★・ Thinks about you when he hooks up with a girl, you can't leave his head- and it's the only way he'll even cum during sex with the random girl ・★・ Often masturbates to pictures of you ・★・ Did I mention that Rafe just loves to stare at you? Thoughts going inside of his head, some innocent... some not so innocent, imagining you naked, his eyes going over the bulge between your legs, or going over you hands, imagining your hands wrapping around his neck while you fuck him ・★・ His favorite part of your body is your hands obviously, he always imagines that his hand stroking his cock is yours, or that your fingering him when he fingers himself (it's never the same feeling) ・★・ When Rafe sleeps over, be prepared to wake up with either his hand or mouth wrapped around your cock, and when he sees that you're awake, he'll only claim that you were "hard" when he woke up so he decided to help you out ・★・ Rafe loves to ride your cock, it's his favorite position, his other favorite position is probably prone bone, he loves to stuff his face into his pillow while you pound him from behind- hell, wrap your arm around his neck and choke him like that, he absolutely loves it ・★・ Rafe definitely hints that he wants to wake up to you fucking him, since you woke up so many times with him pleasuring you, he wants you to do it back to him, as almost like payback ・★・ Rafe doesn't really care where the two of you fuck, just not visibly in public, maybe in bathrooms, or secretly grinding against each other in the library, but he does not want to be caught, scared that it'll ruin the Cameron name

・★・ Would suck the soul out of your body through your dick, especially when you're trying to game or on a call, he likes to tease you like that ・★・ Oh, but if you do it to him? If you suck him off like it's his last day on earth? God, he is whiny, he wouldn't even be able to talk with anyone while you suck his cock, not even if he tries to block the noises with his hand, you'll still hear him whimpering and whining about how good it feels ・★・ Loves it when you cum on his face, he'll even stick out his tongue while you paint his face white with your cum (don't get it in his hair though, or he won't talk to you for 10 minutes straight) ・★・ Only watches porn if one of the people in the video looks like you, even if just slightly, or if they don't show their face, but he'll still watch it if the person's body matches yours ・★・ He probably wouldn't leave the business to be your househusband (one day, he prays, he seriously does), he'll want YOU to stay at home while he works, one he can come home to, eat some of your delicious food and then get all the stress pounded out of him <3

★☆ all works belong to @onekmaway, do NOT steal, copy or repost anywhere without permission from ME personally. ☆★

[empty-movement]

We sure as hell wouldn’t have the kind of shows we do now if Revolutionary Girl Utena didn’t exist. Even back in the 90’s, it was revolutionizing the face of animation-- and now it’s come around in a ton of influential western animation that references it. My Little Pony did it, Steven Universe drew heavily from its themes, She-Ra pulled on the queer and relationship elements, Owl House referenced it, there are others I don’t even know about, and what about that highly suspicious hands scene DuckTales did in “Nightmare on Killmotor Hill?” At this point, it’s basically the hidden Godmother of modern western animation. And every time something new gives it a shoutout, a ton of people ask, “Should I watch Utena?”

Now, that’s a pretty fraught question, because when I said Utena was the Godmother of these shows, I didn’t mean the fairy type with the dreams being fulfilled and all-- I meant the “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse” type with a gun in hand and a lot of pain to inflict. It’s hard enough to boil Utena down to the basics as it is, let alone avoiding spoilers and trying to make sure triggers are respected. It takes forever, it’s hard to do, it’s really easy to miss things, and it ends up confusing people more often than not. So, here’s my shot at an answer-- it is not a list of triggers, there are a couple purposely vague spoilers, but nothing that you won’t figure out from watching the first episode. I’m not going to concern myself about specific plot points or items. Instead, I’m gonna explain just enough for people to get the idea and judge for themselves.

Utena starts as your typical school drama/enemy of the week series, plunges into a navel-gazing deconstruction of its own pieces, then further beckons you on to deconstruct your pieces. The core of it is about gender roles, abuse, and the harm the systems around us inflict on us. The first scene starts out with a fairytale-- once upon a time, a girl was sad and a Prince gave her a ring and told her someday the ring would lead her to him. Then she decided SHE would become a Prince. But, the show literally asks the viewer, was that really such a good idea?

Then it illustrates and tears that fairytale apart. Our main character, Utena, sees a girl named Anthy being abused and traded around by sword duels, and attempts to win the duels to protect Anthy; she loses Anthy at some point, then regains her, as you would expect. You would think the story ends there and she would be rewarded for that-- buuuuuuut you’re nowhere near the end of the series yet. And that's where I have to stop summarizing, because the longer it goes on the stranger and darker it gets.

Utena is weird, guys. It’s a classic, and for some really fucking good reasons, but there are a lot of psychedelic visuals, references to literature, psychological breakdowns, references to its own damn self, and just… it’s just so much. I’m not gonna lie, it can be offputting, because you never get what you expect. It’s shoujo as hell, but backwards and run through a shredder. It’s magical girl anime, but only if by “magical” you mean “traumatized.” It’s yuri-- yes there are queer relationships-- but it's actually a story about abuse and how hard it is to build an honest relationship in the midst of abuse. I’m not saying it��s not yuri, but I am saying that holy shit it’s NOT the soft, fluffy, lesbian love you imagine when you think of the yuri genre. Anyone who just says “It’s yuri, watch it!” and won’t explain anything else is, like, probably out to get you or something-- especially if they mean the other kind of yuri. It is, absolutely, not porn.

On top of all that, it's longer than modern anime (39 whole episodes!), it seems at first to be just a “rah-rah girls can be awesome too” kinda show, and then later on it depicts trauma in ways that can be very hard to watch and that you might not expect. Are you up for extremely relatable or totally unflinching or uniquely painful scenes of abusive interactions, both sexual and nonsexual? Are you okay with explicitly depicted abuse, are you able to take care of yourself if you get triggered, and are you still gonna want to watch after seeing something that really hurts? If you are, Utena might be for you. Are you okay with surreal bullshitting and trippy imagery? Do you like that feeling of your brain melting because you’re not sure what’s real? If you do, you’re gonna like Utena.

And how about the core themes? Do you care about abuse and systemic harm, are you interested in gender at all? You don’t have to be, but if those things don’t bore you or actively put you off, you’ll get some good brain food out of Utena.

And if you aren’t up for any of that-- no worries, okay? You take care of yourself, watch the things you enjoy, tackle the ideas you’re interested in. It’s not a judgment; this is not a good show for everyone to watch. I see it all the time, where people don’t enjoy the show and get nothing out of it, and that’s why I’m writing this. For the wrong person, this show is just boring surreal bullshit with bad things happening to people for no reason, and I want to prevent that.

But for the right person, this show can be life-changing-- more than half of the people I speak to about Utena say “my life is so different because I watched it” and they really mean it. Hell, I left an abusive relationship and married my wife because of this show-- we run Empty Movement, the biggest and oldest Utena site there is, and our community is full of amazing people with equally amazing stories.

So, should you watch Utena? I mean, yeah, I’d love it if you did, but I’m mega biased cause I wanna talk about it! Utena seems to attract that type-- once we sink our proverbial teeth in, we just keep chewing on those ideas until they revolutionize our lives. Or until we have to start shitposting in self-defense. Maybe that’s why we’ve lasted so long as a community. Maybe Utena would make you think about the things it said, maybe you would enjoy it, maybe you’d like the characters and wanna mercilessly drag on them. That’s all there in the community, and I’m so glad it is. 

Let me lay it on the line for you: if you think you can handle the abusive scenes, if you’re interested in the themes, if you like Dali and Frida Kahlo and think symbolism is cool, this might just be your jam. If you’re queer, questioning, or on a gender/sexuality journey, this has a lot of food for you. Same if you’re a feminist, or if you’re looking at the structures of power in the world and wondering how they work-- Utena’s got your back on that. And if you’re dealing with some shit-- and feel up to exploring it, painfully, I cannot stress that enough-- or you’re just interested in how people work, you might wanna take a look at this. Over the last couple decades in this fandom, I’ve noticed that the three biggest indicators of whether someone will enjoy Utena are whether you’re curious about how people work, whether you like metaphorical and symbolic art, and whether you can empathize with trauma without being too overloaded by it. You don’t need all three, but you need at least one to have a chance at a good time.

You have to decide, though, because only you know if this is your kind of deal.

If you can’t refuse the offer this Godmother has for you, come and join the Revolutionary Girl Utena mafia family. Nozomi has been generous enough to put it all up on Youtube, so if you’re American, you can give it a shot right now– and if you have Crunchyroll, you’re in luck, because it’s there as well! For the rest of you, I trust you’ll go through the appropriate channels to support the work :)

~Yasha<3

[saturnsstufff]

Awsamdude/Technoblade- Rumor Has It

For my beloved @sugarandspicebutnonice

Warnings: sexual innuendo

    Techno was a great Prince. He worked hard to keep his family's name in good graces. All of Phil's boys worked hard to keep their names held high with respect. Tommy was known around for keeping sprits high, any ball or formality with Tommy was always known as the best to attend.

   His older brother Wilbur was a skilled artisan with music. Always teaching and making new sounds like it wasn't any struggle. Anyone could find him out in the court yard with a guitar in hand. Humming and singing a casual song.

   The eldest, Technoblade was a skilled swordsman and statists. Anytime he was called into a meeting, the others shuddered knowing he would trump them all. He made swinging a sword look like art. Trust me, you would know.

   You had a wonderful relationship with techno for a long time. But sadly, you both had parted away from each other. Of course, it was on all good terms, He was more concerned with the kingdom rather than establishing a strong and sturdy relationship.

   You, being a knight- fully understood. But you also choose to be a bit selfish about it. You truly wished for him to give you a bit of attention at least when together. He could be such a ladies man when he choose to in public, yet when it came to the two of you he just became closed off and anything but warm. Even behind closed doors it was lacking some spark of passion.

   So you both agreed it was best to let things lie.

  But what left you with a sour taste was how quickly he moved on.

   You would give him the benefit of the doubt of course, he was a well known man. She could have been someone he had met previously, and during your break off she was there to talk it out with him.

She, she ain't real

   But something about her screamed fake, her smile and movements seemed too thought through. Her words all laced with a sickening sweet hum, it also didn't help she giggled at basically anything techno said.

    Plenty of times you sat with the general and talked about how dense she came off. Respectfully, you had assumed Tech would have went for a well educated woman such as yourself. But after seeing her- you wondered if that type was in short supply.

   Anything she did, she would just bat her eyes and he was wrapped around his finger.

   It honestly made Sam and you laugh.

She ain't gonna be able to love you like I will

   As much as you started to loathe the woman, techno wasn't yours anymore. Thus you started getting closer to Sam. Both of you connecting on how your past relationships had been. Well you were casted aside, Sam was flatly cheated on.

   Of course knowing that, your heart ached for him. Sam was a well educated and handsome man with a heart of gold. Respectfully his whole job was centered on protecting and serving the people.

   Jumping into a relationship was Sam was like practically nothing. You promised him all the love in the world, and just like you, he promised to give you the same.

   And love each other you did.

She is a stranger

   Techno did see you grow close to his general, and honestly it didn't set well with him.

   He liked the woman he was with, but he also had known you since childhood. You both had played within the court yard plenty of times to claim it as your own.

   Sam didn't do that with you. Sam had only started to know you when you joined the ranks.

   Techno would often catch himself watching you and Sam spar. His eyes would watch as Sam's hand grabbed at your waist, gripping your hips and using his own to throw you off balance. He hated how close your bodies were.

   At one point he couldn't help but pull you aside and ask why you let him touch you. But that conversation drove spikes through his heart. "How can you just let him touch you like that?! He’s practically all over your body! You wouldn't let me touch you like that- and You and I have history" he yelled not believing what he saw.

   When your face twisted in front of him into disgust, he thought you were almost joking. "The hell is with you?! I'm not your girlfriend! Or don't you remember!?" You yelled at him. Lightly shoving him back from you. "Don't tell me where he can, and cannot touch me" You sneered. In all his years he never saw you so heated.

Sure, she's got it all

   Truthfully you saw techno leave you as a drop to his pride. He dropped a knight for a soft noble girl. A girl babied all her life. You knew as soon as she was exposed to blood she would have fainted like a goat in pasture. But in the end of the day, you weren't sleeping with her so what did it matter?

But, baby, is that really what you want

   Arguments between Technoblade and you had become more frequent. Sam let you duke it out, he knew he had no place to tell you to leave it be. Sam also didn't appreciate how fast Techno jumped onto your case about finding someone else.

   Although he knew it irked you about Techno moving on, you never got in his face about it like he would. Sam viewed this as your way of showing you were the bigger person.

   On one particular day he found the arguments amusing. Techno had started up again when Sam was publicly teasing you. Well techno found your back talking distasteful, Sam relished with how powerful you were.

   Listening to techno ramble off on his pathetic reasonings left you a laughing mess, even to the point you cut his argument off. "Bless your soul, you've got you're head in the clouds, she's going to use you like a fool!" You laughed in his face.

   His jaw tightened as he spat at your words, pointing at Sam. "You made a fool out of you General. She doesn't even love you- Your wasting your time on a-" at Tech's words you couldn't help but push back even harder for him targeting Sam.

   "How dare you say that. Your common penny is getting around more than I- And, boy, she's bringing you down!" You called out. Putting a finger to his chest. "She made your heart melt- But its all a lie!" You didn't stop their, you had more to say to him. "She thinks your all that- a fairy tale prince to save her dreams! But you're cold to the core" you said to him. Causing him to back off.

   "Besides. Now rumor has it she ain't got your love anymore"

Rumor has it, ooh, Rumor has it, ooh, Rumor has it, ooh

   You weren't lying. Their were plenty of rumors going around saying she was sleeping with others besides Techno. Although Sam and you had no proof to this. Your hunches seemed right.

   On one day, Sam had left for a out of village meeting. You really didn't mind, you trusted him enough and knew he wouldn't do anything behind your back.

   But sadly you wished to go with him. Techno had asked for you to join him for a round of chess. Something you both greatly enjoyed when together. But now you knew there was meaning to the game.

   Sure enough when you sat with in in the court yard, he brought up Sam.

   "You know he is much older than you..." he said as he moved his knight across the board.

   "And She is half your age" you said flatly. Picking your pawn up. "But I'm guessing that's the reason that you stayed" you said moving it to where you pleased. His brows drew together in slight anger. But he did try and keep his calm.

   "I heard you've been missing me" he said, a small smirk growing on his lips. He found pride within those rumors. Knowing that you still supposedly whined and withered about for him.

   Of course, you knew he was gravely mistaken.

   "You've been telling people things that you shouldn't be" you said carefully. Knowing he was probably behind the rumors somehow.

   Techno took this moment to see if he still had a effect on you. Usually during chess you both would flirt a bit. So naturally, he took the chance. "Like when we creep out and she ain't around" he said bemused, your face twisting into disgust again.

   "I sneak out to see Sam... besides Haven't you heard the rumors" you said moving your queen. When he didn't respond you laughed. He didn't even under stand. "Bless your soul, you've got your head in the clouds" you said, fully amused within the moment.

   "C'mon darlin... I know you fell hard for me when we started dating..." he cooed to you. Your eyes darting up like daggers.

   "You made a fool out of me" you said to him. Wanting to get your point across. Well he moved his pawns about you took your moment to explain how you felt. "You make me sick to my stomach.. And, boy, you're bringing me down" you said softly. Smiling to yourself slowly. "You made my heart melt, yet I'm cold to the core" You said, moving your queen to take his knight. Your eyes slyly skimmed over his. His lost knight now within your fingers.

   "But rumor has it I'm the one you're leaving her for"

   After that game, rumors and tensions soared wildly. Sam at one point thought you were back and evolved with Techno again. Of course you explained to him the situation, which thankfully he understood and apologized for trusting second hand mouths.

Rumor has it, ooh, Rumor has it, ooh, Rumor has it, ooh

All of these words whispered in my ear

   But Techno's mood plummeted fast...

Tell a story that I cannot bear to hear

   A engagement, specifically Sam and yours. Oh how his blood boiled at the news. He thought his hands all over you was bad, but now... now you would take Sam's name in law. You would he his wife. Not Techno's.

Just 'cause I said it, it don't mean that I meant it

   Because of this news he didn't hesitate to run and find you. More than hell-bent on giving you a piece of his mind. He wanted to make it clear you couldn't marry him.

People say crazy things

   He didn't care what people would say, he wanted to claim you again. Techno didn't want anyone else touching you. He especially didn't want Him touching you.

Just 'cause I said it, don't mean that I meant it

   Even if within the past week he yelled hurtful things to you, he hoped you would understand he just wanted to protect you from unworthy suitors. Sam couldn't provide for you like Techno could. Sam was a general born from a farmer. Technoblade was to be crowned king.

Just 'cause you heard it

   So their he stormed. Heading to the stables, knowing full well that's where you were. His anger was fuming. He couldn't wait to shove it in Sam's face that Techno wouldn't let you marry him.

   But lets just say Technoblade was the one left speechless in the end.

Rumor has it, ooh, Rumor has it, ooh Rumor has it, ooh,

   Especially when he slammed the door open to the stables and saw Sam's body covering yours, your legs around his waist in a tight hold well he was buried deep inside you.

But rumor has it he's the one I'm leaving you for

[impostoradult]

Media Market Research (and why its undermining all the things you love)

Trying to understand what is dysfunctional about Hollywood is an epic task, and the answers are like the stars – arguably infinite. Hollywood is dysfunctional for literally more reasons than I could count.

But market research plays a fairly heavy role in its dysfunction (IMO) and the time has finally come for me to add my professional two cents about this issue. (This rant of mine has been building for a while, FYI. Hence why it is so...comprehensive. There is a tl;dr section towards the bottom, if you want the high level summary)

*** For the last 4+ years I’ve worked in the field of market research, almost exclusively with major media makers like Warner Bros., NBCU, AMC/BBCA, Viacom, FOX (before Disney acquired them), A+E, etc. (this past year I quit the job where I was doing this work for a variety of reasons, many of which will become clear as you keep reading, but I am still listed as a consultant on the company website):   https://www.kresnickaresearch.com/who/ (Rachel)

And just for comparison, here is a Halloween selfie I took 4 years ago and posted on my blog, so you can see I am who I say I am. 

I know a fair amount about how market research on major media franchises is conducted and how it influences production, and a lot of these choices can also be at least somewhat tied back to the massive flaws in the market research industry and its impact. *** First, at the highest level, you need to understand market research in general is not well-conducted much of the time. Even the people doing a reasonably good job at it are VERY limited in doing it well because of financial constraints (clients don’t want to spend more than they have to), time constraints (clients want everything done as fast as humanely possible) and just the inherent problems within the industry that are decades old and difficult to fix. For example, all market research ‘screens’ participants to make sure they qualify to participate (whether it is a mass survey, a focus group, a one-on-one interview, etc.). So, we screen people based on demographics like race, gender, age, household income, to get representative samples. But people are also screened based on their consumption habits. You don’t want to bring someone into a focus group about reality TV if they don’t watch reality TV. They aren’t going to have anything useful to say. 

However, a lot of the people who participate in market research have made a ‘side-gig’ out of it and they know how to finesse the process. Basically, they’ve learned how to lie to get into studies that they aren’t a good match for because most market research is paid, and they want the money. So, a lot of TV and film market research is being done on people who don’t actually (or at least don’t regularly) watch those shows or movies or whatever but have learned how to lie well enough in these screening processes to make it through. And because of the aforementioned time and money issue, clients don’t want to spend the time or money to actually find GOOD participants. They just accept that as an inevitable part of the market research process and decide not to let it bother them too much. So, a fair number of the people representing YOU as a media consumer are people who may not be watching Supernatural (for example) at all or who watch a rerun occasionally on TNT but haven’t been watching consistently or with ANY amount of investment whatsoever. You can see why that creates very skewed data. But that’s just the tip of the skewed iceberg. *** Second, media market research is conducted in line with the norms of market research more broadly, and this is a huge problem because media is a very atypical product. How people engage with media is far more complex and in depth than how they engage with a pair of jeans, a car, or a coffee maker. There are only so many things that matter to people when it comes to liking or not liking a coffee maker, for example. Is it easy/intuitive to use? How much space does it take it on my counter? How expensive is it? Does it brew the coffee well? Maybe does it match my décor/kitchen aesthetic? Can I make my preferred brand of coffee in it? The things you as a consumer are going to care about when it comes to a coffee maker are limited, fairly easy to anticipate in advance, and also easy to interpret (usually). How people mentally and emotionally approach MEDIA? Whole other universe of thing. Infinitely more complex. And yet it is studied (more or less) as if it is also a coffee maker. This is one of the many reasons I decided to leave the media market research field despite my desire to have some ability to positively influence the process. As so often seems to be the case, I fought the law and the law won. I could never make the other people I worked with in the industry understand that the questions they were asking were not all that useful a lot of the time and they weren’t getting to the heart of the matter. They were just following industry standards because they didn’t know any better and none of them want to admit they don’t REALLY know what they’re doing. Which leads me to point 3. *** Most of the people doing this research don’t have any expertise in media or storytelling specifically. They are typically trained as social scientists in the fields of psychology, anthropology, sociology, or math/statistics. And many of them do not have any kind of specialization or education in media/storytelling beyond the English classes they took in high school and the one Media Studies course they took as an elective in college. Most of them have a very unsophisticated understanding of narrative structure, thematics, tropes, subtext, etc. They mainly think in terms of genres at the VERY broadest level. Also, not infrequently, they don’t watch or have much knowledge of the shows they are supposed to be doing research on, beyond what they’ve read on IMDb or Wikipedia or what is generally common knowledge. Unless they by chance happen to watch the shows themselves (which often they don’t) they often know very little about the shows they are crafting these questions about. Again, partly because they think it is like the coffee maker, and you don’t need to understand it in any depth to research it. (I know this must sound insane to you as avid media consumers, but that is the general attitude among those who do market research) There is such a lack of sophistication in how people in the business side of the industry understand media and storytelling. Most of them are either MBAs or social scientists and their training has not prepared them to examine fictional works with the kind of depth that people in the Humanities (who are specifically trained to study texts) have. Somehow, despite the fact that the Humanities is all about understanding texts, that is the one discipline they make almost no use of in the business side of Hollywood. And boy howdy does it show. *** Point 4 – average consumers CANNOT ARTICULATE WHY THEY LIKE THINGS. Particularly media things. I know this sounds condescending, but it is my honest observation. It is unbelievably hard to get people to have enough self-awareness to explain why they actually like things, especially things as mentally and emotionally complex as media. What typically happens when you ask people why they like a TV show or movie, for example? They will tell you what they most NOTICE about the TV show or movie, or what is distinctive to them about it (which may or may not have anything to do with what they actually LIKE about it). They will say things like “I like the genre”, “I think it’s funny”, “The car chases are exciting”, “I want to see the detective solve the puzzle.” Sometimes you can get them to talk about what they find relatable about it, if you push them a little. But often they leave it at either the level of literal identity (young black woman), basic personality traits (she’s a social butterfly and so am I) or situations they’ve personally experienced (I relate to this story of a man losing his father to cancer because I lost a close family member to cancer). But the vast, vast, vast majority of them can’t go to the deeper level of: a) Why X representation of a young black woman feels accurate/authentic/relatable and Y representation doesn’t b) Why it matters to me that X,Y,Z aspects of my personality, identity, experience get reflected in media whereas I don’t really care about seeing A,B,C aspects of my personality, identity, or experience reflected in media c) How and why they are relating to characters when they can’t see the literal connection between their identity/experience and the character’s identity/experience. (For example, many people have argued that women often relate to Dean Winchester because a lot of his struggles and past negative experiences are more stereotypical of women – being forced to raise a younger sibling on behalf of an actual parent, being seen and treated as beautiful/sexually desirable but vacuous/unintelligent, his body being treated as an instrument for a more powerful group to quite literally possess, etc. Part of the reason Supernatural has always been such a mystery/problem for the CW and Warner Bros is they could never crack the code at this level. Never.) Part of the reason they can’t crack these codes is average people CANNOT give you that kind of feedback in a survey or a focus group, or even an in-depth interview (much of the time). They just don’t have the self-awareness or the vocabulary to get it at that level. Let alone asking them to articulate why Game of Thrones is compelling to them in an era where wealth disparity is creating a ruling class that is fundamentally incompetent at maintaining a just/functional society, which is especially concerning at this particular moment, given the existential threat we face due to climate change. And the truth is, that IS part of what people – even average people – are responding to in Game of Thrones. But what they’ll tell you when you do market research on it is: they like the dragons, they like the violence, they relate to Tyrion Lannister being a smart mouth, maybe they’ll say they like the moral ambiguity of many of the conflicts (if they are more sophisticated than average). But the ‘Dean Winchester is heavily female coded despite his veneer of ultra-masculinity’ or the ‘Game of Thrones is a prescient metaphor for the current political dynamics and fissures of modern western society’ is the level you ACTUALLY need to get to. And most market research can’t get you that because the people ASKING the questions don’t know what to ask to get to this level, and most of the respondents couldn’t give you the answers even IF you were asking them the right questions (which usually you are not) And I’m not saying average people are dumb because they can’t do this. But it requires practice, it requires giving the matter a great deal of in-depth thought, and most people just don’t care enough about it to do that while taking a market research survey. (I know this is going to feel counter-intuitive to people on Tumblr. But you have to remember, you are NOT average media consumers. You are highly atypical media consumers who have far more self-awareness and a much more sophisticated engagement with media than the average person watching TV. If you didn’t, you probably wouldn’t be here talking about it in the first place) Point 4.1 – People also lie/misrepresent their own experiences to market researchers because they want to maintain certain self-narratives. You have no idea how many people would get disqualified from our surveys for saying they watched less than 5 hours of TV a week. And sure, that might actually be true for a few of them. But if you watch TV with any regularity at all (which most people in modern America do) you probably watch more than 5 hours a week. The problem is, people think it makes them sound lazy to say they watch 15-20 hours a week, even though that’s about 2-3 hours a day (which actually isn’t THAT high). People lie and misrepresent their behaviors, thoughts and feelings because it can be socially uncomfortable to admit you do what you actually do or feel how you actually feel, even in the context of an anonymous survey, let alone a focus group or a one-on-one interview. People want to make themselves look good to THEMSELVES and to the researchers asking them questions. But that makes the market research data on media (and lots of other things) very questionable. For example, one finding we saw more than once in the surveys I was involved in conducting was people would radically downplay how much the romance elements of a story mattered to them, even large portions of female respondents. When we would ask people in surveys what parts of the story they were most invested in, romances ALWAYS came out among the lowest ranked elements. And yet, any passing familiarity with fandom would tell you that finding is just WRONG. It’s wrong. People are just flat out lying about how much that matters to them because of the negative connotations we have around being invested in romance. And never mind the issue of erotic/sexual content. (I don’t mean sexual identity here, I mean sexy content). The only people who will occasionally cop to wanting the erotic fan service is young men (and even they are hesitant to do so in market research) and women frequently REFUSE to admit that stuff in market research, or they radically downplay how much it matters to them and in what ways. There is still so much stigma towards women expressing sexuality in that way. Not to mention, you have to fight tooth and nail to even include question about erotic/sexual content because oftentimes the clients don’t even want to go there at all, partly because it is awkward for everyone involved to sit around crafting market research questions to interrogate what makes people hot and bothered. That’s socially awkward for the researchers doing the research and the businesspeople who have to sit in rooms and listen to presentations about why more women find Spock sexier than Kirk. (Which was a real thing that happened with the original Star Trek, and the network couldn’t figure out why) Aside from people not have enough deeper level self-awareness to get at what they really like about media content, they also will lie or misrepresent certain things to you because they are trying to maintain certain self-narratives and are socially performing that version of themselves to researchers. *** Point 5 – Qualitative data is way more useful for understanding people’s relationships to media. However, quantitative data is way more valued and relied upon both due to larger market research industry standards and because quantitative data is just seen as harder/more factual than qualitative data. A lot of media market research involves gathering both qualitative and quantitative data and reporting jointly on both. (Sometimes you only do one or the other, depending on your objectives, but doing both is considered ‘standard’ and higher quality). However, quantitative data is heavily prioritized in reporting and when there is a conflict between what they see in qualitative versus quantitative data, the quant data is usually relied upon to be the more accurate of the two. This is understandable to an extent, because quantitative surveys usually involve responses from a couple thousand participants, whereas qualitative data involves typically a few dozen participants at most, depending on whether you did focus groups, individual interviews, or ‘diaries’/ethnography. The larger sample is considered more reliable and more reflective of ‘the audience’ as a whole. However, quantitative surveys usually have the flattest, least nuanced data, and they can only ever reflect what questions and choices people in the survey were given. In something like focus groups or individual interviews or ethnographies, you still structure what you ask people, but they can go “off script.” They can say things you never anticipated (as a researcher) and can explain themselves and their answers with more depth. In a survey, participants can only “say” what they survey lets them say based on the questions and question responses that are pre-baked for them. And as I’ve already explained, a lot of times these quantitative surveys are written by people with no expertise in media, fiction, or textual analysis, and so they often are asking very basic, not very useful questions. In sum, the data that is the most relied upon is the least informative, least nuanced data. It is also the MOST likely to reflect the responses of people who don’t actually qualify for the research but have become good at scamming the system to make extra money. With qualitative research, they are usually a little more careful screening people (poorly qualified participants still make it through, but not as often as with mass surveys, where I suspect a good 35% of participants, at least, probably do not actually qualify for the research and are just working the system). 

Most commonly, when market research gets reported to business decision-makers, it highlights the quantitative data, and uses the qualitative data to simply ‘color in’ the quantitative data. Give it a face, so to speak. Qualitative data is usually supplemental to quant data and used more to make the reports ‘fun’ and ‘warm’ because graphs and charts and stats by themselves are boring to look at in a meeting. (I’m not making this up, I can’t tell you how many times I was told to make adjustments on how things were reported on because they didn’t want to bore people in the meeting). (Sub-point – it is also worth noting that you can’t report on anything that doesn’t fit easily on a power point slide and isn’t easily digestible to any random person who might pick it up and read it. The amount of times I was told to simplify points and dumb things down so it could be made ‘digestible’ for a business audience, I can’t even tell you. It was soul crushing and another reason I stopped doing this job full time. I had to make things VERY dumb for these business audiences, which often meant losing a lot of the point I was actually trying to make) Point 5.1 – Because of the way that representative sampling works, quantitative data can be very misleading, particularly in understanding audience/fandom sentiments about media. As I’m sure most of you know, sampling is typically designed to be representative of the population, broadly speaking. So, unless a media company is specifically out to understand LGBTQ consumers or Hispanic/Latinx consumers, it will typically sample using census data as a template and represent populations that way. Roughly 50/50 male/female. Roughly even numbers in different age brackets, roughly representative samplings of the racial make-up of the country, etc. (FYI, they do often include a non-binary option in the gender category these days, but it usually ends up being like 5 people out of 2000, which is not enough of a sample to get statistical significance for them as a distinct group)   There is a good reason to do this, even when a show or movie has a disproportionately female audience, or young audience. Because they need enough sample in all of the “breaks” (gender, race, age, household income, etc.) to be able to make statistically sound statements about each subgroup. If you only have 35 African American people in your sample of 1000, you can’t make any statistically sound statements about that African American cohort. The sample is just too small. So, they force minimums/quotas in a lot of the samples, to ensure they can make statistically sound statements about all the subgroups they care about. They use ratings data to understand what their audience make up actually is. (Which also has major failings, but I’ll leave that alone for the minute) With market research, they are not usually looking to proportionately represent their audience, or their fandom; they are looking to have data they can break in the ways they want to break it and still have statistically significant subgroups represented. But that means that when you report on the data as a whole sample – which you often do – it can be very skewed towards groups who don’t make up as large a portion of the show’s actual audience, or even if they do, they don’t tend to be the most invested, loyal, active fans. Men get weighted equally to women, even when women make up 65% of the audience, and 80% of the active fandom. Granted, they DO break the data by gender, and race, and age, etc. and if there are major differences in how women versus men respond, or younger people versus older people, they want to know that...sometimes. But here’s where things get complex. So, if you are doing a sample of Supernatural viewers. And you do the standard (US census-based) sampling on a group of 2000 respondents (a pretty normal sample size in market research). ~1000 are going to be female. But with something they call “interlocking quotas” the female sample is going to be representative of the other groupings to a degree. So, the female sample will have roughly equal numbers of all the age brackets (13-17, 18-24, 25-34, etc.). And it will have roughly 10% non-heterosexual respondents, and so on. They do this to ensure that these breaks aren’t too conflated with each other. (For example, if your female sample is mostly younger and your male sample is mostly older, how do you know whether it is the gender or the age that is creating differences in their responses? You don’t. So, you have to make sure that all the individual breaks (gender, race, age) have a good mix of the other breaks within them, so groups aren’t getting conflated) But what that means is, Supernatural, whose core fandom is (at a conservative guess) 65% younger, queer, women, gets represented in a lot of statistical market research sampling as maybe 50-100 people, in a 2000-person survey. 50-100 people can barely move the needle on anything in a 2000-person survey. Furthermore, usually in the analysis of data like this, you don’t go beyond looking at 2 breaks simultaneously. So you may look at young female respondents as a group, or high income male respondents, or older white respondents, but you rarely do more than 2 breaks combined. And the reason for that is, by the time you get down to 3 breaks or more (young, Hispanic, women) you usually don’t have enough sample to make statistically significant claims. (It also just takes longer to do those analyses and as I explained in the beginning, they are always rushing this stuff). To do several breaks at a time you’d have to get MUCH larger samples, and that’s too expensive for them. And again, I want to stress, this type of sampling isn’t intended to sinisterly erase anyone. Kind of the opposite. It is intended to make sure most groups have enough representation in the data that you can make sound claims about them on the subgroup level. The problem is that it can create a very skewed sense of their overall audience sentiment when they take the data at ‘face value’ so to speak, and don’t weight segments based on viewership proportion, or fandom engagement, etc. Point 5.2 – Which leads me to my next point, which is that fandom activity that doesn’t have a dollar amount attached to it doesn’t make you a ‘valuable’ segment in their minds. One of the breaks they ALWAYS ask for in data like this is high income people, and people who spend a lot of MONEY on their media consumption. And they do prioritize those people’s responses and data quite a bit.   And guess what – young women aren’t usually high-income earners, and although some of them are high spenders on media, high spending on media and media related merch skews toward higher income people just because they HAVE more disposable income. Older white men are usually the highest income earners (absolutely no surprise) and they are more likely in a lot of cases to report spending a lot on the media they care about. Having expendable income makes you more important in the eyes of people doing market research than if you’ve spent every day for the last 10 years blogging excessively about Supernatural. They don’t (really) care about how much you care. They care about how much money you can generate for them. And given that young audiences don’t watch TV live anymore, and they give all their (minimal) expendable income to Netflix and Hulu, you with your Supernatural blog and your 101 essays about Destiel is all but meaningless to many of them (from a business standpoint) Now, some of them kind of understand that online fandom matters to the degree that fandom spreads. Fandom creates fandom. But if the fandom you are helping to create is other young, queer women with minimal income who only watch Supernatural via Netflix, well, that’s of very limited value to them as well. I don’t want to suggest they don’t care about you at ALL. Nor do I want to suggest that the “they” we are talking about is even a cohesive “they.” Different people in the industry have different approaches to thinking about fandom, consumer engagement and strategy, market research and how it ought to be understood/used, and so on. They aren’t a monolith. BUT, they are, at the end of the day, a business trying to make money. And they are never going to place the value of your blogging ahead of the concrete income you can generate for them. (Also, highly related to my point about people lying, men are more likely to SAY they have higher incomes than they do, because it’s an ego thing for them. And women are more likely to downplay how much money they spend on ‘frivolous’ things like fandom because of the social judgement involved. Some of the money gender disparity you see in media market research is real, but some of it is being generated by the gender norms people are falsely enacting in market research– men being breadwinners, women wanting to avoid the stereotype of being frivolous with money) *** In sum/tl;dr: Point 1 – Market research in general is not well conducted because of a variety of constraints including time, money, and the historical norms of how the industry operates (e.g., there being a large subsection of almost professionalized respondents who know how to game the system for the financial incentives) Point 2 – Media is a highly atypical kind of product being studied more or less as if it were equivalent to a coffeemaker or a pair of jeans. Point 3 – Most of the people studying media consumption in the market research field have no expertise or background in media, film, narrative, storytelling, etc. They are primarily people who were trained as social scientists and statisticians, and they aren’t well equipped to research media properties and people’s deeper emotional attachment and meaning-making processes related to media properties. Point 4(etc.) – Average consumers typically don’t have enough self-awareness or the vocabulary to explain the deep, underlying reasons they like pieces of media. Furthermore, when participating in market research, people lie and misrepresent their thoughts, behaviors, and emotional responses for a variety of reasons including social awkwardness and preserving certain self-narratives like “I’m above caring about dumb, low-brow things like romance.” Point 5 (etc.) – Quantitative data is treated as way more meaningful, valuable, and ‘accurate’ than qualitative data, and this is a particular problem with media market research because of how varied and complex people’s reactions to media can be. Also, the nature of statistical sampling, and how it is done, can massively misrepresent audience sentiments toward media and fail to apprehend deeper fandom sentiments and dynamics. There is also a strong bias towards the responses of high income/high spending segments, which tend to be older and male and white. Side but important point – Research reports are written to be as entertaining and digestible as possible, which sounds nice in theory, but in practice it often means you lose much of the substance you are trying to communicate for the sake of not boring people or making them feel stupid/out of their depth. (Because god forbid you make some high-level corporate suit feel stupid) *** What can be done about this? Well, the most primary thing I would recommend is for you to participate in market research, particularly if you are American (there’s a lot of American bias in researching these properties, even when they have large international fanbases). However, some international market research is done and I recommend looking into local resources for participation, where ever you are. If you are American, there are now several market research apps you can download to your smart phone and participate in paid market research through (typically paid via PayPal). Things like dscout and Surveys On the Go. And I know there are more. You should also look into becoming panelists for focus groups, particularly if you live near a large metropolitan area (another bias in market research). Just Google it and you should be able to figure it out fairly easily. Again, it is PAID, and your perspective will carry a lot more weight when it is communicated via a focus group or a dscout project, versus when it is shouted on Twitter. However, that’s merely a Band-Aid on the bigger issue, which I consider to be the fact that businesspeople think the Humanities is garbage, even when they make their living off it. There is virtually no respect for the expertise of fictional textual analysis, or how it could help Hollywood make better content. And I don’t know what the fix is for that. I spent 4 years of my life trying to get these people to understand what the Humanities has to offer them, and I got shouted down and dismissed so many times I stopped banging my head against that wall. I gave up. They don’t listen, mostly because conceding to the value of deep-reading textual analysis as a way to make better content would threaten the whole system of how they do business. And I mean that literally. So many people’s jobs, from the market researchers to the corporate strategists to the marketing departments to the writers/creatives to the C-level executives, would have to radically shift both their thinking and their modes of business operation and the inertia of ‘that’s the way it’s always been done’ is JUST SO POWERFUL. I have no earthly idea how to stop that train, let alone shift it to an entirely different track. BTW, if you want the deeper level of analysis of why I can’t stop rewatching Moneyball now that it’s been added to Netflix, the above paragraph should give you a good hint

[jjkpls]

first love (m)

genre : fluff, angst, light smut

pairing : kim seokjin x reader (f)

word count : 4.6k

warnings/content : mentions of sexual intercourse, mature language, infidelity, separated parents, unresolved past relationship, dad!seokjin, mom!reader

Seokjin doesn't mean to overreact. He knows he shouldn't. Knows you hate it. Knows, because he's been told enough times, that these types of reactions are unnecessary and possibly harmful for a child.

He can't really help it when deep down he knows he was meant to be an actor. Right before his actual birthday, his mother had dreamt of giving birth on a theatre stage, for God's sake.

But his father wasn't into it, given his ambitions, his own growing company and all the promising opportunities he envisioned both for him and for his only son. Therefore Seokjin went to law school, graduated with excellent mentions, followed an accelerated program in business development and managing and joined his father exactly where he was expected.

He isn't exactly complaining.

He likes his job, most of the time, likes the money and luxury that come with it especially and appreciates the work safety.

Now, you can't blame him for being quite the drama queen in his everyday life. All that pent up, buried alive passion for the arts of acting need to express, somehow.

That's what he'd say to you when you used to yell at him for starting weeping loudly in your ear when he'd call you to cancel a date last minute because he couldn't come, instead of just, cancelling it, aplogize, get over it like a normal person.

Or when you'd kick him in the ribs because he'd be all wild gestures and screeching screams when he'd teach your son to ride a bike and he would fall, as he should to learn, making the boy cry even when he wasn't hurt, solely from the projection of his dad's fear.

You're not here to tell him yourself but the glazed, annoyed roll of his son's eyes tells him precisely what you would. Those eyes are the worst. The prettiest he's ever seen. The ones he loves the most. The ones you also wear on your own pretty face.

"Since when?" He has a hand pressed to his chest, preventing a heart attack it seems, gaze wide and alarmed. Timothy sighs.

"A while. They were already together for Valentine's Day-" He explains patiently. That kid is sweet. The way he's slumped over, obviously annoyed to have to be the one telling his dad and having to deal with the consequences but still, he's watching over him with a soft eye, mouth torn in a sympathetic pout. He wouldn't mind his parents to get back together even though he is almost sure it wouldn't be a good idea for the both of you. He's heard tales of dysfunctional families, of parents hurting each other and their children and doesn't want that for any of you. He can't imagine it happen. You two are too good for that. That's probably why you had decided to separate in the first place.

Seokjin is quickly making maths in his head. Not really counting the time but situating himself in that time frame. Where was he at when she was out with this guy? What was he doing?

He may have been in Japan when it started. He remembers a call from you, you were asking him to take Timothy for a couple of days. You sounded embarrassed and he didn't know why but couldn't take the time to investigate, he had a flight expecting him and a conference call waiting to start in a couple of minutes. Important stuff. None of it would have mattered if he had known what you were up to.

"You okay, dad?" Timothy asks, awkward but kind. His mom basically.

"Devastated." Seokjin says with the widest grin on his face. He's not devastated. It'd be ridiculous to be for something absolutely predictable, fair and normal. He's not mad, nor disappointed. You deserve to be seeing people, have them desire you and make you feel good. He wishes it were him but if he can't do that, if you won't let him, he's glad you still can allow someone else to do it.

He's surprised though, he can't lie about that.

Honestly. That's stupid. But he didn't expect one second that you were seeing someone. You never mentioned anything and you didn't look like it. If there's a way you look when you're dating.

He remembers rosy cheeks and short skirts. You were younger.

"You think it's serious?" He asks casually, surprising even himself. His heart is in a turmoil but he showed enough to Timothy, acting like he was half dying, gasping for air and all.

"I don't know. She doesn't want to bring him home yet. Like, introduce him to me. I asked." Timothy, not only is he nice, he is smart. He's thirteen, shouldn't know much about Love and adults' matters yet. He's supposed to still be at that stage when one believes children and adults are two very distinctive race of humans, one that depends on the other and the other having it all figured it out, having reached a certain knowledge and expertise on all things and can't really be wrong on accident.

Timothy knows precisely what his dad would love to hear. And he gives it to him. Not to feed him vain hopes. Not even for this tiny hidden greed to have you back together. Simply because it's the truth and if for once the truth is pleasant to hear, then he should give it. Seokjin's smile only gets brighter. He shares a glance with his son, a glint winking his way and Timothy rolls his eyes, unable to hide the lift of the corners of his lips.

"Anyway, I heard you won that science fair at school?" Seokjin has already left his seat on Timothy's bed. He's rummaging through his leather bag and Timothy knows what it means. He has a present for him. Seokjin always has a present for him. Most of the time, he can justify it by some event or some success Timothy had encountered. The thing is they don't see each other that often, therefore, almost systematically, something new has come about and Seokjin can explain why he's brought a brand new console, a new laptop, a TV for his room or that one limited edition of this way too expensive branded pair of sneakers.

You used to get really mad at that. You'd say that he shouldn't, that he didn't need to bring him all these expensive stuff because what he'd like (it was a long time ago when Timothy was too young to have his own opinion and you would speak for him) is for his dad to be here more often. You'd say he wouldn't have to buy him shit for any other times than Christmas and his birthday if only he could be here for him. His dad would be his present.

It caused a lot of drama, a lot of crying. You had made sure not to scream, not to be too angry but Timothy felt from the way you squeezed him hard against your bosom that you were very upset. His dad had apologized, had said the most with his eyes only for you to understand. Timothy was staring, trying to get it too because he was involved, wasn't he? But that was one of those adults moments he wasn't allowed to participate in yet.

From then on, his dad wasn't late anymore when he'd set dates with him, his phone would be turned off when they were together and he would text him more often.

It was really nice. Because at first, Timothy felt that maybe if his dad wasn't so present it was because he didn't want to. For some reasons. He thought maybe he was too much of a coward or too nice possibly, to leave you two altogether, to disappear from your lives and start another one somewhere else, one he would have chosen and shaped as he'd want. Turns out Seokjin really appreciated his son and the time he got to spend with him. The more time they spend together, the more Timothy is met with awed eyes and whistling lips, impressed as his dad is by his smartness, his humour and hidden talents. He just was very busy. You explained that to him. That he was passionate by his work, that it required a sacrificial amount of time in one's life, and that he shouldn't ever take it personally because even he loved you and couldn't give you that time.

It's the conversation that led him to think that maybe his parents are meant to be, except they won't because... circumstances.

In any case, no matter how often they meet now, Seokjin still brings him gifts each and every time. The difference is that he has to think of a reason, sometimes make one up to not be struck down by your fury.

"Yes, I did."

"Of course, you did! Cause my son is the smartest." Timothy waits for the moment he says that his brain and the magic fuel filling it all come from him. It doesn't come. Instead, a neat white box is held in front of his face. There's a pretty tie made of ribbons glued in the middle, to hide the picture of what's inside, but there's no doubt that this is an iPhone. He rips the tie off and surprise surprise it's the iPhone 12.

"Mom is going to kill you." Timothy says first, before even thanking him, heart pounding from excitement and face split in two by the wide banana grin.

"Probably." He shrugs, unapologetic.

"Thanks, dad!" Timothy doesn't forget to add, eyes shiny and toothy grin even shinier.

He hopes so. That you're going to be mad. You two are too old to have petty fights now. You don't waste your energy in screaming and finding the worst things to say to hurt his feelings. You just cross your arms under your tits, clench your jaws and adopt that pout on your mouth, eyelids low and eyebrows high, the embodiment of condescendence and you look sexy as hell. He smiles and winks at you, calls you by an old pet name and you're swooning even though you try to hide it. No one is charming like he is, and no one charms you as he does therefore he's not too worried.

His son was just going around with this prehistorical device you dared to call a smartphone. With the broken screen, and the non-functioning selfie cam and the safari app needing a good ten minutes to charge one fucking page -this was deliberate as you wanted him to have a phone to call and text you and not go and lose himself on the internet or whatever. He's almost fourteen though and he's doing a great job at school and is such a good kid at home, he deserves it.

"I know and I don't care. I don't need you to tell me my son is good." You are infuriated. The perfect picture of you he had imagined, the only difference is that, you've just walked out of work, you seem to have had a rough day and your hair is a mess. With the wild locks hanging off of your bun, framing your pretty face, you look even better. "I don't want him to have something so expensive on him, first of all."

"His dad is richer than Cresus, what do you expect?" The cockiness dripping from every pore should suffice to make you explode. Of course, it doesn't. He has that stupid side grin. The one he's got you with in the first place.

"And what about- internet and even just the darn AppStore? He's too young to-"

"Are you worried about porn?" He frowns, you flush. That's precisely one of the things you think about. You don't want him to fall upon stuff he doesn't need to see -in your opinion for a good ten years at least- or start taking interest in social medias where creepy fuckers could hang out.

You flush because apparently, it's a word complicated still to hear from him. "I've made a parental software installed in it. And a localisation too. Not that we really need it with him but you know."

"Oh." All tension escapes from your torn face and tensed shoulders.

"Oh, wow, my first love is such a good dad." He mocks, voice high, hardly resembling yours, barely biting back a smirk. He even goes as far as swiping the right side of his bangs back, eyes closed, mannerism insufferable.

"Shut up." More flush. A fist to his chest for punishment. Bad idea. Apparently, he went back to the gym.

"You should be nicer because I have something for you too." He says, eyes glancing mischievously as his hand dips in the pocket of his trench coat. "Well. I don't want it." You cross your arms on your chest again which only serves to push your tits forward to him and he wonders what you're playing at. Probably the same game he plays when he winks and smiles and lifts his eyebrow to you.

"Wait 'til you see it." He sees the moment you realize it's a jewellery box. He reads the instant wild excitement, he catches also the gloomy shadow you try to paint over it because you don't want to accept it. How many times does he need to be told to stop? He won't ever stop.

"You can't buy me, Seokjin." You're eyeing the velour box in his hand, a tiny beautiful red in this large pearly white palm. You want it. You always do. You don't dare uncross your arms though because you know that if you even do something as reckless as taking it in your hand, just to have a look at it, you won't be able to refuse it.

"Of course, I can." More of that smirk. You glare, it makes him wheeze as he does.

You have never ever been able to refuse any of his shiny presents. You're not a gold digger, that's precisely why you felt so guilty all the time, accepting to receive from him things you could never afford for him -or yourself. He's born richer than you'll ever be, he loves to spend it on his loved ones -and on cars and designer clothes- and amongst everything else he loves, he adores covering you in shiny little rocks.

No one has ever worn diamonds the way you do. You look beautiful without them, magnificent with them. They were made to enhance your beauty and you were made to give them sense.

"You're such a dick." You say, tone way too monotonous to still have been in total control of your free will. Your eyes are glued to the shine of the two dainty clear earrings nested in the case. He's holding it open in front of your nose, like a hypnotizing stick. He sees your determination wavers. Your arms have just untied. Your hand is getting close. He smiles already savouring his victory.

"Take them, petal, I don't think your new boy could ever afford them." Your hand freezes mid-track, face falling you look up. He's a bit surprised to see guilt in those eyes. Shame and guilt. Even though, you have the right to see whoever you want. Obviously.

"How-" His head tilts slightly towards the hallway, where the bedrooms and the one Timothy is in, probably playing with his new phone. "Great. Bribing our son into giving you off my personal information."

"I gave him the iPhone after he told me." Seokjin feels the need to precise. His son loves him and he confided for this very reason. He wants to believe. He hopes that it's not because he's worried his dad would have a mental breakdown if he were to learn the news the day his mom would invite him to their wedding or something.

You sigh. You don't know what to say it seems. He doesn't want you to feel upset. He's not going to congratulate you either. He can't.

"Take them."

"He could- he's a doctor, you know." You sound like a petty little girl saying that, fingers aiming for the box but mouth reshaped by contempt.

Thankfully, the mesmerizing glee on your lovely face makes up for this last information.

A doctor.

He snorts, huffs and rolls his eyes.

"Are you really being disdainful over the noblest of all professions?"

"I bet he's not as handsome as I am." Seokjin says, staring away into space in a very Vogue kind of pose.

"And it's relevant because your face saves lives too, right?" You add to his clownery, biting on the smile wanting to take over your face.

"Precisely." You're already putting them on, watching your fingers work in the reflection on the microwave door. He's loving it. One is on, reflecting the light coming from the window, bringing a new sense to your whole stance. You don't look tired anymore. You look very fancy. Sexier than before. Your butt sways a little in excitement when you take a new look at yourself, now beautifully decorated and he's reminded of an idea he once had but never got to realize.

He wanted to have a fashion designer make a garter holder made of tiny diamonds. Solely diamonds. It would fit you just right, maybe a bit tight on you, would dig slightly in the meat of your thighs, enough to look fucking sinful and not too much so it doesn't hurt. He was quite young when he had the idea first and was probably not rich enough to make it happen.

He now owns a few palaces perched on the last stage of skyscrapers in three of the most expensive cities in the world and he would sell one in a beat if it meant he could get that for you and see you wear it for him.

You'd probably end up accepting it and then wear it for your new boy so that's out the question.

He doesn't hesitate when he reaches a hand forward, slip his fingers through the tie holding your hair in a bun and slide it off. You don't even flinch, he's still allowed to do that.

"You look beautiful."

"Thank you." You whisper with a smile, both for the compliment and for the present.

"You went to the hair salon." You nod, forcing yourself not to show your surprise. He doesn't need it to throw himself some flowers, "See? I noticed." He adds with way too much pride for so little.

"Your lenses work, congratulations." Sarcasm is the only answer to his stupidity, you both have figured this out long ago. "Is he nice?" Seokjin can't help but ask. He doesn't want to know too much about him. Kind of hopes that it won't be necessary as the guy won't last too long. But he can't resist his curiosity.

"Yes." You say without much of a hesitation. "Last week, he took me to this nice French restaurant in Songpa." You tell, eyes looking away, a bit pensive, mindlessly playing with one strand of your hair. Your face is taken over by that air. Seokjin realizes then that you really like him.

"I used to take you to very nice restaurants all the time, remember?" He's just messing around now. He knows it's not that relevant. Knows it won't get him higher in your regard,

"And I would spend half the date with the waiter while you'll have yours with your phone. I do remember." Especially given you don't recall your common past the same.

He does remember now that you mention it. His memory has been awfully selective and mainly, what he could picture when he thought about those times, is how beautiful you looked, how much he wanted you and felt like even sitting right next to you, he couldn't satisfy that need, was missing you even if you were right there, and the mind-blowing sex too. The later probably happening because he owed to make it up to you because indeed, his job was on the dates too and you hated that. He remembers the late mornings, the lazy ones, you'd make him carry you on his back because your legs and your hips hurt too badly.

"Ouch!" Toppling over, hand on his bosom where it actually really hurts, he yelps in agony, pretending to have been shot. You giggle and slap his shoulder, pester him to stop when you both hear Timothy ask from his room if everything's okay. You'd think he would know by now that his dad is just a clown whose shenanigans shouldn't be taken seriously.

"Are you seeing someone these days?" What a shame, Seokjin really thought for once he'd be solely cool and collected and handsome. Instead, he can feel his ears start to burn in embarrassment, walks a few steps back, pretending to want to throw a glance through the window when really, he'd do anything to not have see you notice.

"Someone?" He huffs. "Some three, actually some four or five. You know how the ladies get with me-" He sounds dumb as hell. It suffices to make you laugh. You've always laughed at his antics. Even when you were going through complicated times, like the pregnancy and the soon to follow break up, he'd try to dry your cheeks and lighten your gaze, heartbroken as he was to see you like that, and it would always work.

"And I know how bad you are with maths." He nods, doesn't look at you, simply stares at the shiny tip of his italian shoes. "You should call me sometimes, Jin." You don't need to tell him, he knows. You say that to him almost every single time. It's just you being kindhearted, the way you've always been. But first, he hates the idea that somehow, to some degree, it's a pity hand you're holding out for him. And secondly, he knows he'll fuck up if he calls.

He won't be able to talk about his job or politics or what's on the dumb tv these days. He'd probably start by asking what you're wearing and end it all by serenading you. What a bad idea. "You don't ever call, only Tim. Which is fine but-" He is lonely, he does miss you, but he's not that stupid. "I miss you too, you know." You look awfully sincere when you say this. There's still a sad shade to your eyes and he suspects it comes from you worrying about him rather than you simply wanting him more in your life. Maybe it's there for both reasons. He can't be mad at you for caring about him still, can he? Ultimately, it's sweet. It's not your fault he tends to be a loser in his very personal life.

He wouldn't know who he is trying to comfort when he strides forward and place a kiss on your cheek. The other one he's cradling in his palm feels warmer the longer he touches it. He doesn't let it go once he backs up and away. You're looking up to him with your eyes looking all round and childish. Quiet and in expectancy. You look like you do when you would wait for him to kiss you. His thumb brushes over your bottom lip and he smirks.

"Expecting me to kiss you?" He asks with an eyebrow raised high. Pretend judgment in his tone, even remonstrance. As if. "How scandalous, when you already have a boyfriend." You know he's just kidding and he can tell that. He wouldn't play with that if he wasn't sure. He doesn't want to hurt your feelings, make you feel wrong or bad in any way. He loves you too much for that. You could let him kiss you and he wouldn't hold you accountable for it. Therefore he does. Because he's dying to since the last time it happened a couple of weeks back. And when your own lips welcome his, with that much willing and tenderness, he suspects you've had too.

He doesn't allow it to go too far. He thought you would stop him, at some point, but you don't. He's the one pulling away when his tongue, instinctively, means to reach out for your own. He knows what comes after that, and what comes after that and after and after. And even if you transpire guilt and shame, he can sense in the way your eyes stare into his that you would have let it all happen.

He's not lacking in desire, he hopes you know that. Honestly, since earlier, and that random flash of the diamond garter holder, his brain is half clouded by the thought of your thighs and his face buried in between them. You used to make the most delicious sounds, pulling at the root of his hair and chasing your high with your hips. Also now that he's met your mouth again and he envisioned what could happen if he just let go, he can't help but think about that dresser in your room. The gigantic thing you wanted him and Timothy to put together as sort of a father and son enterprise to bound or whatever - he ended up paying a guy to do it for them and they played Mario Kart instead but you don't need to know that. Point of the matter is, that massive dresser has a massive mirror on its door and that massive mirror sits perfectly in front of your bed. And all he can think about is how bad he'd like to fuck you on your bed while you'd watch yourself in it. He'd pull back your hair, hold in tight in his fist like he knows you love so you could see your own cute face while his cock would reshape your cunt to its fitting, all this with the pretty little shiny earrings adorning your ears.

Fuck, what a concept.

And it is to say that right now, he knows, you'd let him. He's not that wicked though. He feels your too weak to resist him today therefore he's not even going to chance it. He doesn't want you to do something you'd hate yourself for afterwards.

"I should go, I still have documents to send for a new contract before-" He takes a look at the expensive watch heavy on his wrist, you roll your eyes. "Half an hour ago, great." He offers you a smile that doesn't reach his eyes no matter how hard he tries before he's off to the hallway, giving you his broad back. "I'm going to say bye to Tim."

"It's just- like that, Seokjin." The words are pretty badly chosen. They don't mean much. Seokjin still gets it though. He can picture you behind him, shrugging your shoulders and tilting your head to the side. It doesn't mean much.

"I know, petal. Don't worry." He throws over his shoulder, faux lightness in his tone even though his heart feels raw. It doesn't mean enough, is more accurate. This kiss like every single one of your shared looks and words and bickering and touches, they all mean that you still fit perfectly good together. However, it's not enough because somehow, someday, you came to the conclusion that you were not meant to be. He's confused as to why and how he agreed with you then. Here's the main reason why he never calls you.

When Timothy looks up from his new phone, wearing your eyes and his smile, he feels a whole new range of pain affected to his sensitized heart. How can you not see that you're meant to be?

A/N: Happy Lunar New Year :) this little thingy was inspired by Arsène Lupin and the relationship between Assane and Claire for those who watched it! I don’t know if i translated well the alchimy and unfightable attraction and connection they still have even after having seperated. ANYWAY, hope you all are doing fine, hope you liked this, LET ME KNOW what you thought, tell me about your day, your resolutions if you have any, what’s the weather like where you at etc lmao xoxo

PS: stay tuned for a new upcoming series i’m quite excited about ~~

[medusinestories]

Onwards to the episode in which we get to see Flint and Silver each having a very bad day (as well as two literal dicks that nobody had asked to see).

Black Sails VII (s1 ep07)

- We open on Pastor Lambrick's sweaty face as he intensely rehearses the Easter sermon and he’s obviously eaten up by what he did with Miranda. His sermon, unsurprisingly, focuses on sin, keeping sin hidden, and the hell that awaits the sinner. Which leads us nicely onto Flint, who’s distracted (by his own sin? by thoughts of Miranda? both?) during a meeting with Eleanor. Eleanor is pissed that Miranda let Richard Guthrie send a message to the Andromache and then waltz into town to close up his business; Flint tries to take the heat off Miranda, once again protecting her (at this point, he may not know the contents of the letter).

- During this meeting, Flint is startled when Silver first speaks up to say that the mob in the street was bad - clearly Silver is a sort of intruder in this meeting. But Eleanor, after Silver reminds her by unsubtly clearing his throat, tells Flint that he’s not to harm Silver because he was instrumental in setting up the Consortium. Silver looks so pleased with himself in these scenes, and Flint quite defeated when he tells Silver to follow him back to their camp. I love it.

- To parallel Flint/Miranda’s Sulky Sex scene from ep4, we have Anne/Rackham’s frustrating/disconnected sex scene. It shows us a few things about them mainly that Anne wants to keep a lot of control over what happens, hence Rackham being tied up (though of course this might also be his kink), her wearing a shirt that covers up most of her body, and the reverse cowgirl position that means that she’s both in control of what happens and completely avoids eye contact. The position reminds us of the Flint/Miranda scene, where Miranda was also on top, but their scene involved more eye contact (yes glaring counts, he’s still intensely focused on Miranda), gentle touching (on Miranda’s side) and her being naked and open to him. Another parallel is that both Flint and Rackham aren’t in the right frame of mind for sex, Flint being angry and Rackham lost in a sea of worries (and probably also somewhat angry/disappointed at Anne for forcing him into the plot to kill their crewmates). The difference between Flint and Rackham is that while Flint doesn’t seem to have any trouble performing, Rackham is miles away and doesn’t even notice that he’s lost his erection - again. Anne is frustrated by this, and apparently knows him well enough that she offers to put something up his arse, but he’s clearly not in the mood, and she leaves in a huff, abandoning him all tied up as a sort of revenge for his performance problems. Whatever the problem is between them isn’t put into words (because Anne can’t yet, for starters), unlike the one between Flint and Miranda. The intimacy between Rackham and Anne, so often described as close partners, seems much more distant to me than the one shown between Flint and Miranda. I’m not sure whether it’s because of anyone’s sexual orientation, or just the fact that they’re fucking but they’ve never discussed the big important things, such as Anne’s identity/feelings/etc.

- In this episode, Dufresne gains a lot of power: with a freshly (and badly) shaved head and a new tattoo, he’s been promoted to Quartermaster on the Walrus in Billy’s place. And very quickly he has a problem to deal with: Randall revealing that Silver stole the page. Gates had actually already told this to Dufresne, as is revealed at the end of the episode, which might explain why Dufresne is relatively calm during the whole conversation, while DeGroot wants Silver and Flint hanged and Howell is surprisingly ruthless: he brings up the idea that it may be better to kill off Randall in order to get to the treasure, if they can’t make sure he’ll keep quiet about Silver being the thief. Dufresne is actually quite kind towards Silver in the scene where he puts Silver’s memory to the test - a test that could result in his death if he fails it and that Silver constantly grumbles against (I love his grumbling!). Basically, at this point Dufresne remains quite a sympathetic character, which will change a lot as the show goes on, especially after Jannes Eiselen had to leave the show (such a sad story, RIP Jannes).

- In the meantime, the Flint and Gates relationship is crumbling. It's sad to see, especially since they're shown sharing chuckles as they talk about Dufresne's appointment in the beginning of the episode. But then Gates brings up the subject of Miranda and demands explanations about the letter Billy found. We're not shown exactly what Flint answers, but it's clear that he's actually trying his best to give him an explanation without incriminating Miranda too badly. The sad thing is that Flint is actually telling the truth: he actually wasn't involved in any betrayal of his crew and and can only guess at Miranda's motivations. But the fact that he's lied time and again in previous situations, including on the Maria Aleyne where he claimed Lord Alfred drew a weapon on him (and Gates secretly verified that this was a lie), and used men as pawns to advance his and Miranda's plans, is now catching up to him. Flint seems truly hurt when Gates accuses him of using the men for his own purposes, and turns spiteful, telling Gates that he should have been "a better father" to Billy and helped him "understand the world he was living in" (suggesting that such a forthright character as Billy can't really survive in a world of pirates who are all ready to stab each other in the back). After that slap in the face, Gates says he's exhausted from Flint and threatens to take it to the crew. Somehow, this pushes Flint to bare all: he tells Gates about his plan to keep a part of the treasure and use it to build up Nassau, depicting himself as a sort of saviour, doing it for the men's good: they'd rather be rich men in a safe place than dead thieves hanging from a noose. Gates sees this as delusions of grandeur, and tells him that while he'll see the Urca plot through, after that they're done. I actually think he sees Flint’s point, since he doesn’t just throw him to the crew, but won’t admit that out loud. The whole of this scene hurts bad, because you can tell that Flint is desperate and sad to be losing his closest ally and friend, and that Gates is hurting from the loss of Billy and exhausted from the toxic relationship he has with Flint, where he's played enabler to his manipulations for years.

- While Flint and Gates’ alliance is breaking, Silver has to forge one with Randall or die. Randall finds out in the beginning of the episode that he’s been voted out of the crew. This is apparently due to DeGroot’s fears that Randall could be a fire hazard, which the crew took disproportionately to heart. Randall is furious with Silver, who smugly tells him that in these situations, a setback often comes with a new or unexpected opportunity. He’s right, but at this point he doesn’t know that he is the opportunity Randall’s going to latch on. Randall reveals that Silver is a thief, and Silver denies it, saying that Randall is both a halfwit and was in a haze of opium when he heard what he thought he heard; he even tries to convince Randall that he was mistaken (this, my friends, is gaslighting). However, by revealing that Silver was the thief, Randall sets a chain of events into motion which could either end with his death (if Howell has his way, since Randall is an inconvenient witness) or Silver’s (if DeGroot tips the balance, not trusting Silver to remember the coordinates and not wanting to sacrifice Randall for nothing). Silver figures out that these are the outcomes, and tries to talk sense into Randall by making a deal with him: he’ll care for Randall and make sure he can stay on the ship. But it’s only when Silver finally admits that he is the thief and that Randall was right, that Randall accepts the deal. Later, Silver realises that Randall might have orchestrated the whole thing: he’s now got Silver to serve him, doesn’t have to take any risks on the ship, and gets to remain with the crew. Silver wonders if Randall is a genius rather than a halfwit (a word thrown about a lot to describe him). And it seems quite obvious, considering what happened, that Randall still has strong survival skills (an amputee with impaired cognitive skills doesn’t stand a chance of survival outside a crew and he must be aware of it), that he still has a good memory and an ability to pick out useful information and that he’s aware enough of what’s going on to be upset by the crew’s rejection and Silver’s attempt to gaslight him. I think it’s important to recognise that Randall is more than a comic relief or a grotesque character: he’s a disabled man who's lost parts of his cognitive ability and is struggling to survive.

- This episode focuses on Vane facing his past. He seeks out the island where he grew up and its master, Albinus. I’d forgotten or never really registered that Albinus was a pirate and that the men who work for him were mostly his crew - and likely slaves (or children, hence Vane?) that he managed to capture/press into service. He’s retired from pirating and set up a system where his men cut down trees for timber all day, without wages. It’s not clear exactly how he holds so much power over these men, although it seems that everyone is terrified of him. He’s extremely strong physically, seems shrewd, speaks rather well, and his tattoos suggest that maybe he’s involved in some kind of ritual (truly religious or just for show?) which would make him all the more scary to superstitious people. Vane is clearly still frightened: he barely makes eye contact and practically stutters when he first tries to make the deal with Albinus, which is that he’ll take some of Albinus’ men as crew and send Albinus part of their earnings as tribute. It says a lot about Albinus that Vane, after years of having run away, is still so scares that he’s willing to pay him a tribute. But he changes his mind as he stares at a boy bearing the same brand as he does: he tries to persuade the men that Nassau is a pace of pleasures rather than hard labour, and confronts Albinus. The fight is brutal and ends with Vane buried naked, just after Albinus tells him that he’s proud of him. But of course Vane wouldn’t be Vane if he didn’t rise from the dead at the last minute and kill Albinus, goaded on by his inner Eleanor voice.

- In the meantime, Mr Scott returns to Eleanor, apologising for what he did, telling her he betrayed her out of love. However he also reminds her of his slave status: technically, he belongs to her. The argument upsets her, and he quite cleverly uses this moment to ask her to free the slaves who were on the Andromache. And it works: by the end of the episode, she’s made arrangements for the men to work on ships and has bought the women’s freedom and found them jobs in her tavern. But Mr Scott has still decided to leave Eleanor to join Hornigold’s crew, to refrain from meddling with Eleanor’s affairs, since he disagrees with her so strongly re: the Urca. Hornigold approached him earlier in the episode, and the introduction to that scene is quite interesting: Hornigold says to Mr Scott “I’ll need to know your secret” and Mr Scott looks startled and frightened. It seems that he’s startled because he’d been giving food to the slaves, but in light of S3, it could be a much greater secret that’s being referred to. Mr Scott is relieved when he realises that Hornigold is simply talking about tolerating Eleanor, who he clearly can’t stand.

- Flint’s bad day continues, of course, with the big confrontation he has with Miranda. He’s furious about the letter (of which he now knows the contents thanks to Gates), telling her that it could have got him killed, or destroyed the plans they’d made and asking her whether she was trying to embarrass him. This sounds so weirdly petty, and yet it also sounds exactly like the kind of argument that would come up in a bickering couple. Miranda answers that she was trying to help him out of that life, because she wants to move on. This is where Miranda utters the famous “there is no life here, there is no joy here, there is no love here”. I noticed that, covered by Flint yelling at her, and distorted because her voice has gone very shrill, Miranda says another line, which sounds like “you used to love, then”. If that really is what she says, it’s extra-extra-extra heartbreaking to hear (if someone wants to check it for me, it’s around 35:40). It’s obvious that Flint and Miranda’s views on life are very different, and I can’t help but think back to the fact that, as a carpenter’s son from the country, Flint has had to struggle all his life to become who he is. So when he says that you can’t get a life without having a war, and Miranda tells him he’s wrong, she’s speaking entirely from the point of view of her privilege. She’s never needed to fight as hard as he has to be happy, because she got extremely lucky in marrying Thomas. And when she says that Thomas would agree with her, I’m certain she’s right. But life has never been like that for Flint, and there’s no way he’ll ever entirely agree with their point of view. Rewatching this scene is tough, btw, because they both have great points, they’re both hurting so much, and there’s so much to take in between the body language, the facial expressions, the tones of voice and the actual words that it’s a whole whirlwind. And it feels very, very real.

- It’s absolutely hilarious to see Rackham get robbed by the whores taking advantage of his lack of knowledge (and research). He should absolutely have done a better job and has no clue how to run a brothel. He’s lucky Max takes things in hand after having heard from Idelle that the girls were taking advantage.

- Then we have the beautiful Drunk Flint scene. Eleanor notices him feeling very sorry for himself after Gates has pretty much broken up with him and he’s still reeling from fighting with by Miranda. I think Flint feels very misunderstood here. He thought that he was doing something good, to save Nassau and avenge Thomas, and doesn’t understand why they can’t see it, why they only see the terrible methods he uses to reach his goals. So he’s full of doubt, clearly wondering if he’s the villain of the story, and puts the question to Eleanor: is their plan worth it? Eleanor is the only person who still believes in him, which leads us to the only scene that I would ever call straight-baiting. Flint hovers near Eleanor, breathing heavily, and a variety of emotions play over her face during this moment of tension, as she seems to think this is leading to a kiss. It does, he gives her a chaste little forehead kiss and leaves. All the elements are in place to make your average viewer start shipping these two. I actually find it hilarious that the ship barely exists in the fandom (though I wasn’t there in the beginning of the fandom and I guess the viewership changed a lot between S1 and S4).

- The scene with Flint and Gates glaring at each other from their respective ships and Parson’s Farewell playing in the background... epic! We know this is the beginning of a big struggle between them, especially since we find out that Gates has pretty much decided that he’ll hand Flint over to the crew once they get the money. But nnnnggh that scene! The ships leaving on their hunt! Awesome and heartbreaking!