#as someone who has lived/worked in the uk and still reads uk news every day: ????????? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 1 year

Text

I scan the front page of Chortle every couple of days or so; I realize it’s not the best website in the world, has a bunch of flaws including its genuinely weird number of spelling errors (honestly, at this point I’m more confused about how they get away with that than I am annoyed about it, it’s a professional website, I know my own Tumblr blog is full of typos but it wouldn’t be if someone were paying me to write this shit), but it’s not a bad way to keep up with what major comedy things are going on. Usually there’s nothing interesting, but I’m just often enough alerted to some livestreamed event or some new show or comedy special or interesting bit of news to keep checking. I want to find out about new developments from somewhere, and I’d rather read a weirdly error-ridden website than start looking at Twitter regularly.

Couple of weird ones that jumped out at me today. It was mainly the usual stuff: here are the eight new comedians who’ve started a podcast in the last three days, here’s who’s hosting Have I Got News For You, here’s another update on the plot of The Windsors for some reason, here’s an interview with a guy who wrote a book that doesn’t look interesting.

But one article did catch my eye where I knew I was playing into the attention-grabbing culture war gossip by even clicking on it, but I did it anyway, and that led to something I’ve never expected to happen: I found myself agreeing with Leo Kearse. Who knew that was possible?

And now I’m giving this absolute bullshit further attention by writing about it, which I’m only justifying on the grounds that hardly anyone’s going to see this post and among those people none will care, and I just need to rant somewhere that yes, obviously Leo Kearse is right. Seriously, I believe Leo Kearse is right about something. It is ridiculous to be willing to appear on a Comedy Unleashed show, and then start drawing lines because you think some of the other performers are bigots. Not even because you can’t do one thing wrong and then still have standards – that’s fine. I enjoy some things that could be justifiably criticized as problematic; I reserve the right to dislike other, much worse things for being more problematic. But Comedy Unleashed’s entire ethos is that nothing is too problematic. That any objection to any level of bigotry is an attack on free speech. You can’t sign onto to that ethos and then still try to have principles. You can’t join something that advertises itself as being a safe space for racists and sexists and homophobes and transphobes and just general assholes, and then be surprised that there are bigots in there. For the same reason that you can’t vote for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party and then be surprised when people make fun of you on Reddit.

And her excuse seems to be that she’s only been in the UK for four years and didn’t know what she was getting into, which reminds me of a quote from Alasdair Beckett-King from the final episode of Mock the Week: “What I don’t get about the Kwasi [Kwarteng] thing is, he was flown back from a meeting in America [to be fired], he was talking about the IMF, and I read that he didn’t know why he was being recalled to the UK, which is weird, because I knew.” That’s my answer to that excuse. I have spent zero years living the UK, and zero years being on the comedy circuit in the UK, and I know what Comedy Unleashed is. You can’t not know that before signing up with them.

I don’t even know who this person is and I’m not about to look her up or anything, so I realize I’m writing this post from a place of maybe not really knowing what I’m talking about, but I am agreeing with Leo Kearse so it’s a weird day to be me. And I’m sorry to give this even more attention but I just need to briefly disagree with Leo Kearse, even aside from the obvious bullshit of suggesting that “misogynist” means the same as “working class”, because what the fuck, trying to equate that shit with Frankie Boyle? Claiming that Frankie Boyle’s said bad things in the past so if you don’t forgive the past misdeeds of a guy who’s currently on GB News, you’re a hypocrite if you forgive Frankie Boyle, who’s currently, you know, not on GB News. When actually, now that you bring it up, Leo, shouldn’t the left’s current veneration of Frankie Boyle be evidence that this cancel culture doesn’t exist?

It's complicated with Frankie Boyle. He’s said some absolutely reprehensible things in the past, many of which he’s hasn’t officially apologized for. He’s said he thinks some of the things he used to say were wrong. He’s called them “indefensible”. And he’s stopped saying things like that. He’s talked at length about his thoughts on the responsibility of comedians to think about the harm they cause, and how he tries to do that in ways he didn’t before. But he hasn’t officially apologized.

Personally, I think that’s worth more than an apology; anyone can do the spectacle of an apology, but he skipped the spectacle and just started doing things differently. Having said that, I realize that could be a weak defense for how much I like a guy who said reprehensible things and hasn’t apologized. I’m not 100% confident that it's a good enough defense. But I like him despite not being okay with everything he’s ever said, and doesn’t that knock down all the outrage about cancel culture? If the left were out there canceling anyone who’s ever said anything wrong, Frankie Boyle would be done. In reality, the only people who’ve canceled Frankie Boyle are the conservatives in 2009 who couldn’t handle someone showing insufficient respect to the queen’s pussy, and the BBC in 2023 that, I’m not saying his political views were a factor, but if they were, then that wasn’t leftist outrage doing the cancelling.

You can’t have it both ways, guys. Either the leftists are unforgiving machines that will cancel anyone who’s ever made a mistake, or we’re massive hypocrites who will forgive the past misdeeds of people we like while unfairly condemning the past misdeeds of others. Or, maybe there’s a fucking difference between the past misdeeds of a guy who went on to use his platform for what Frankie Boyle does these days, and a guy who’s currently on GB News.

Fucking hell, this post has now taken up a little over a page in my Word document, I am genuinely sorry for letting terrible people take up this much of my attention (or at least sorry for admitting to it, normally if I’m going to hate read/watch things I have the sense to not post it on a blog), but while I’m already at this I may as well do one more. There’s another article on Chortle’s front page with the headline: Heckler throws pint at comedian's head, to which my first thought was, “Wow, that is damning indictment of the behaviour of post-lockdown audiences, what a terrible thing to do.” Then I read the name of the guy it happened to, and my first thought was, “Oh, that guy probably deserved it.”

In my defense, at the time I was picturing someone keeping the glass in their hand, and just throwing the beer onto him. I then actually watched the video, and yeah, okay, that was really fucking dangerous and not even that guy deserved that. I mean, fuck that guy. Honestly, fuck that guy. He is the absolute worst. This might be the most I have hated someone about whom I know so little. I have heard him talk for two hours in total – one hour on one podcast and one hour on another – and my God, he is the absolute worst. It’s honestly impressive how many different types of the worst he managed to be in only two hours. When I heard him talk to Stuart Goldsmith, he sucked so much that not only did I hate him, I also lost respect for Stuart Goldsmith for the crime of liking him, even though I’d really liked Stuart Goldsmith.

But yeah, don’t throw glassware at people. It occurred to me that he seems like the type of guy who might stage that for publicity, this is the first time I’ve seen his name on the front page of Chortle, but then I watched the video and that would be one hell of a risk if it were staged. It barely missed him, if he’d been a split second slower at dodging he’d have had injuries that were much too severe to be worth getting on the front page of the Chortle website for one day. That’s criminal assault. It’s telling that he cut out of the video of whatever he said to piss the audience member off so much, and I can easily imagine that whatever he said was very bad, but don’t commit criminal assault even if someone is the absolute worst (note: I’m talking about small-time comedians who say shitty things on stage, violent protests against massive corrupt systems and the people who create and run them are a different thing). Don’t make martyrs of terrible people. For the love of God, don’t make me agree with both Leo Kearse and David McSavage in one morning. Come on. Don’t fucking do that to me.

...Thank you for your time, I will now go back to trying not to give my energy or attention to this sort of bullshit, and if I do, at least trying not to admit it too often on a public blog, because I know that only makes it worse.

7 notes · View notes

lizziesblueberries · 2 years

Note

wow such a long answer 💖 I can see you love each other very much!! I just love your replies to the people who flirt w her and I checked her blog and her gifs are so funny. I agree completely with everything your saying! If you dont mind me asking how did you actually meet? How long and how is it. I’m tlaking to a girl from uk too and Im in ohio but we dont get to talk much. Anyway I hope your having a good night or day and all the best to you both !

Hello! 😁 she is very funny! I’m never not smiling or laughing when I’m talking to her. We work very well together in many ways. I’m honestly very lucky to have found her. We met on Ao3 actually 😂 I made my first fic, and I was actually subscribed to Georgia on her fics, and I got a notification that she had made a new one. I read the summary and I was like, ‘No way! We wrote the same plot!’ And I got really excited and commented on her fic. And then she commented back and read my fic too! And then we exchanged a few more comments on her fic and then I was like, girl, if you have a tumblr, follow me and we can talk more. 😁 and she did and we had no intentions of being anything other than mutuals or friends, but we just kept talking to each other constantly and after a few months, with lots of teasing and flirting on my end and her being oblivious to it we finally admitted we had feelings for each other and again, took our time with figure out how we really felt about each other. And now soon, we’ll be having our three month anniversary! 😁 we both don’t actually care about month anniversaries, but we’ll take any excuse to spend time together. So we’ve known each other for about six months. We took our time and patience with each other and I couldn’t be happier with anyone else. If you’re talking to someone and they live far away. Don’t let it stop you. Some people need to be physical with each other, and don’t get me wrong, I definitely want to hold her hand and cuddle and (cough) do other things, but we would still be just as happy if we never did anything physical either. And I think most relationships should be that way. If you like this girl to the extent that you are her best friend first and not just sexually attracted to her, then you are already off to a great start. She lives in the UK and I live in Florida, so I get the distance. But we work so well together, and we are constantly on the phone with each other. If you and this other girl like each other, or think you do, you should ease into it and talk to each other. Communication is all that matters, I promise. Georgia and I literally fall asleep together on the phone every night, and when we aren’t at work, we’re on the phone. Any of our free time really we’re on the phone 😂 in fact because we’re long distance, it has made us be even more honest and communicative with each other. All we do is talk and watch movies or play games together and it’s very nice. Once again, I have gone on a long tangent of talking about Georgia 😂 can’t help it but oh well, you asked. Anyways, thank you for asking and I hope you have a lovely day/night as well. And if you think you could spend the rest of your life with this girl, work for it. It’s worth it 😊

#lizziesblueberriesasks #my G

15 notes · View notes

spicycoffeebean · 2 years

Note

If you don't want to answer that's COMPLETELY fine and you can ignore this entirely, but if your comfort zone permits: I happened across your tag and am. curious how someone could use reddit to try and get someone to detransition. Like, do you mean she made a post about it to get people agreeing with her or??

Hi Anon! I'll be honest and say I'm glad somebody took notice enough to actually ask. Because I still refuse to believe it happened.

No! She did not make a Reddit post. She just sent me several posts from r/detrans to get me to detransition.

More below the cut! Idk how long this will be, but cw for transphobia and all around shitty/questionable behavior

For those who don't know (I can't track down the post, but I commented in tags) my own mother (60) has been very actively against my transition (ftm) since I began taking testosterone in November 2021(I have been openly trans and using he/him prns since 2018, so it's not like any of this was "new" information to her) On top of blatant misinformation, my mom tried to source REDDIT, the detransitioner's subreddit to prove that yes, people do detransition. Never once denied her that. My issue here is that no, she did not make a post, she was ~browsing~ the detransitioner subreddit r/detrans to push me to detransition. She was "sourcing" it (I wanna say she said in the same conversation that she doesn't trust sites that have LGBTQ+ flags despite the statistics being very real and very present. I'm an analytics/statistics student.)

I have a million issues with this, but very simply, she is using people's struggles and real trauma to fuel a transphobic agenda to get me to detransition (I was so much happier when I chose to be openly trans let alone when I actually started T last year.) If you actually read the subreddit, 99% of those stories are OP saying "Transitioning did not work for me" but not once do they denounce transitioning. They make it clear that their experiences with it did not work out.

“I talk to detransitioners all of the time” she said “Why don’t you talk to a real trans person?” I asked her “Because I know their story.” is what she said word for word Bitch I’m trans and I don’t know trans people’s stories. I just am trans?? I made it super easy for her. Talk to a doctor or a real trans person. She makes any excuse to NOT DO THIS. A cisgender doctor in California will tell you that you are out right wrong and doing more harm than any good you might see from it.

Less than 1% of people detransition, and the majority of those who detransition ARE STILL UNHAPPY. Even then a handful of people detransition because of society, family, or something simple as healthcare. People are denied healthcare because doctors don't want to provide basic care to a transgender person. (I live in the US where this practice would be illegal) My mother acts like I myself deny that people detransition while she literally won't acknowledge WHY people detransition at all. LGBT clinics are apparently shutting down in the UK, Norway, Sweden etc. Yeah cool cisgender people are losing healthcare too. But apparently that doesn't matter. My brother's(cis) bisexual and he could be denied care if he lived in such a place. I don't think she'd take kindly to that, knowing she was the most supportive when my brother came out well over 10 years ago.

I do not want my story or trauma to be used as fuel for a fire to hurt somebody else. I doubt any of these detransitioners would be happy knowing this either. Their stories are not for my mother to tell

anyway she sends me to college(to study analytics/statistics lol??) and insists I'm brainwashed and need an autism diagnosis(YES, SHE ASKED ME 3 TIMES TO GET ONE. NO I JUST HAVE ADHD. I ASKED DOCTORS FOR 5 YEARS ABT IT LOL)

She's just in denial she spent 1 million usd and 2 years of paperwork on a China doll because "[She] didn't want to try for another son" I was told this my entire childhood and it's haunting me almost every day now.

That's the super dumbed-down version of that Reddit comment. Let alone EVERYTHING ELSE she put me through the last 14 months.

TLDR; She did not make a post to get people to agree with her, she was just taking people's stories and struggles to fuel a hate agenda detransitioners themselves do not agree with (she cannot read.)

#SO YEAH IF YALL WERE WONDERING HOW I WAS DOING LOL #Please feel free to ask more on the matter #I may use all of this to construct an essay explaining to the rest of my family why I'm never going home #ON TOP OF THAT #i asked her 'will you refer to me as a man'#her response was 'no that would be lying'#so if yall wondering why im in a persistently shitty mood its bc my family abandoned me #i couldnt go home for christmas for the last two years #i almost spent this last year of christmas by myself. but i was invited by a coworker bc he knew i would be alone #don't mask or change who you are to please a family that wont love who you truly are #there are people out there who love you.#any fellow lgbtq+ followers youre more than welcome to message me if youre struggling #i will be your new dad #dai's mahjong puns #text #asks #long post /#transphobia #ask to tag #literally none of it felt real #i love my mom. i do. she's not a 'bad' person. shes just FUCKING STUPID #anonymous #anon

3 notes · View notes

megahonestreviews · 2 years

Text

Weight Loss Secrets That No One (Even Experts) Will Tell You About

What would you do if you were told that a lot of things about weight loss are currently hidden from you?

You should know that science is evolving every day. You should also know that every day studies are conducted to help solve the problems of everyday life, right? Today we would like to make you understand that it is not only in the fields of computer science, armament, or automobile that progress is made.

In the field of health, more precisely in the field of weight loss, note that hundreds of researches are conducted by renowned institutions every year throughout the world. Now tell us, how many results of new discoveries or innovative methods have you heard?

You've been hearing the same thing for years, haven't you? Things are hidden from you and in this post you will discover some of the new weight loss findings that have recently leaked.

Did you know that there is a "secret" ingredient that makes people lose weight no matter what they eat - in moderation, of course?

Scientists have finally figured out why some people eat anything and everything and never gain weight. Someone in your life is the perfect example, isn't he?

That's the ingredient that makes it all worthwhile. Those people who live their lives well and never gain 10 pounds have that ingredient in their body.

This is the biggest discovery of this decade - in terms of weight loss of course.

The reason your weight loss is slowed down is because they have more in their body than you do... BUT now with science, you can replenish yours too.

If you do this, you will see astronomical results in weight loss. Some people even estimate that they can easily reach a pound a day with little physical activity.

These people understood this early on and took advantage of it to get ahead of you.

Once you add that last thing, you're done. Your body will take care of maintaining it to ensure permanent weight loss. So set aside five minutes and Watch Video to see what it's all about.

These people have already figured it out and NOW the most rigorous ones are losing even 1.5 pounds a day. It really works!

Here are some of the messages we've received:

"I had a lot of trouble losing 1 kilo because I had an ulcer that prevented me from following most diets and my shock limited my movements. I am really grateful to you, I have just lost my first 10 kilos. Thank you" from Debora, US.

"Ah, it's amazing to lose so much weight in less than a week, now I'm starting to gain confidence every day and I can afford a pizza when the mood strikes." from Ben, Canada.

"Thank you for everything, because of you I was able to lose exactly 18 pounds for my wedding and that in just 3 weeks. Big kiss." from Berta, UK.

You did just read these messages, didn't you? This may sound new to you, but our mailbox gets dozens, if not hundreds, of these messages every day.

Some of them have even asked to meet with us because this post has helped them lose weight in time for their wedding, job, special event, etc.

You can click on this link, if you want, to see if it is still possible to get this ingredient.

Yes, it's unfortunate to know this, but this ingredient is becoming scarce. We really hope that luck will smile on you. If you are too late, there is nothing we can do for you.

You'll only have to stick to your usual diet and exercise and get less than a third of the results you really deserve.

We wish you the best of luck!

1 note · View note

petnews2day · 2 years

Text

"A Tiny Piece Of Masking Tape Over A Coworker's Mouse Laser": 35 People Share Genius Yet Harmless Ways To Prank Others

New Post has been published on https://petnews2day.com/pet-news/small-pet-news/a-tiny-piece-of-masking-tape-over-a-coworkers-mouse-laser-35-people-share-genius-yet-harmless-ways-to-prank-others/

"A Tiny Piece Of Masking Tape Over A Coworker's Mouse Laser": 35 People Share Genius Yet Harmless Ways To Prank Others

If there’s something we’ve learned from the holy grail of television, aka The Office (except from everything about life, work, love and so on!), it’s that a little trick and a tiny troll here and there do no harm. Hands up, everyone who remembers the prank on Dwight’s tape recorder!

Real life is no exception. To make our mundane reality a little more adventurous and somewhat hilarious, people come up with the most ingenious little ways to mess with others. “What are some harmless ways to [mess] with people?” someone asked on Ask Reddit, and oh boy, Pandora’s box was opened.

Read on below for the best responses, and please, don’t try this at home! Or try at your own risk, which should be not only minimal, but basically nonexistent.

My grandpa does this thing where he stops in the busy street and starts staring into the sky as if he’s seen something amazing. It doesn’t take long for other people to stop and stare too, once he’s reaches critical mass he quietly slips away chuckling to himself.

Edit, he’s in his 90’s now but when he was a teenager he was a bit of a young tearaway and had a pet monkey, which is weird considering this was the UK.

Edit 2: holy c**p this blew up overnight. And on my cake day too!

broken-neurons , RODNAE Productions Report

Every other week or so I’d change which side my coworker’s drill’s belt clip was on, 2 screws and 30 seconds for a maddening payout. Idk if he ever caught on, as he sadly passed away last year.

I got a huge kick out of doing it though. Might bring that one back as most of us share the same brand of drill.

He got a great one on me. Every day or two he’d hide a Magic the Gathering card in my toolbox, never the same spot twice. Genuinely made me mad when I’d pick something up only to see another card hidden beneath. Eventually I had enough cards to completely cover his locker door inner and outer, he never took them off. Even cut out cards to fit the vents on the locker. I spent a good hour or two on my day off making it. Proud of that one.

RIP Chris. Pranks haven’t been the same since you left. Your locker still remains covered in Magic cards and nobody has questioned it to this day.

fun_police911 Report

Buy a set of “Voice Activated” or “Motion Activated” stickers from Amazon, and the possibilities are endless

beam_me_up_MFer , amazon Report

Senior prank at my high school a few years ago, they let 3 chickens lose: numbered 1, 2, and 4.

School took forever looking for the 3rd chicken

oat53 , James Wainscoat Report

Occasionally I get Christmas cards sent to my address meant for the previous homeowners, wrong address etc. I take these cards and mail them to my friends and family with their correct names and addresses etc and with their return address. I can imagine them sitting around their table scratching their heads wondering who the hell the O’Reilly family is, in a family picture all dressed up in their Christmas garb sending them a Christmas card. A couple times I than learned that the next year out of courtesy, my relatives would then send the unknown family a Christmas card from them, and than that family is like who the hell are these people.

drgloryboy Report

I put a tiny piece of masking tape over my co-worker’s mouse laser on April fool’s day one year, wrote “April fool’s” on it. He troubleshot every single thing except examining the mouse. He eventually called IT who simply turned the mouse over and pointed it out to him.

Swedish-Butt-Whistle , Charles Williams Report

My grandpa glued a quarter to his driveway near the sidewalk and sits in his living room and watches people try to pick it up. I didn’t know this till I found a quarter in the driveway one time.

LongDogWrinkleBits , DC Lies Report

When in an elavator with strangers (or just walking thru a lobby) casually look down and say “oh wow they really did a good job getting the blood out”.

Sydroky Report

I do this every so often because it’s kind of a game to me to see how long I can keep it up till the person catches on.

I repeat the last word the person says in question form.

Example:

“Hey, me and Jenny are headed to Jim’s Pizza Hut.”

“Jim’s Pizza Hut?”

“Yeah, you know the one on F street.”

“F Street?”

Over there near the harbor with the big carousel.”

“Carousel?”

“Yeah, you know the one you went with me and Jane.”

“Jane?”

“My girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Ok, what the f**k is wrong with you?”

Once they call you out and have caught on the game ends. I’ve carried on a conversation over an hour once doing this. It’s really awesome when the person you are doing it to has gone through this a few times with you.

My daughter has gotten me a few times herself and she’ll laugh on and off for the day at my expense. Her husband has called me an a*s for teaching this to her a few times too.

Kitzinger1 Report

My son can make dolphin sounds to perfection. We were on a dolphin excursion and he would randomly do the sounds. People kept looking over the sides to see the dolphins. He also confused the operator because he kept looking around for dolphins. One of our best family vacation memories.

Aztexan512 Report

When you shake someone’s hand, move yours left to right. As they do the traditional up and down, a hilarious circle ensues.

spinozasrobot Report

My personal favorite is: Sit down on a park bench next to someone. Slide a manila enevlope with a picture of a random person from the net to them and say, “It has to be done by Friday and it has to look like an accident.” Then get up and walk away quickly.

Kawikami99336 Report

When you’re talking to someone, just keep handing them random items. They’ll just keep taking them without realizing it.

Cat_Hoarder0 Report

Edit: For PSA

Hide something around their house. My weapon of choice was tiny rubber ducks.

Open a drawer? Duck.

I need a spoon. Duck.

Lovely picture of their wedding with a nice frame? Duck on top.

Charging box? Duck.

Bubble bath? Duck.

Seldom used shoes? Duck.

Winter coat pocket they won’t use for months? Duck.

Its ducking delightful how much mileage you can get out of tiny ducks.

PSA: Be extremely cautious in the case of households containing animals and small children. Both like putting little things in their mouths and other orifices so might be best to avoid Ducking these individuals/ensuring things are definitely out of reach.

Cursed_Insomniac , epicture’s Report

This one is harmless but occasionally can drive someone mad.

My mom has a bunch of framed family photos hangin on a wall. One day I was visiting I took them all down and scanned them with a little hand scanner. I photoshoped small changes on them, removed some people from some photos, added a couple of celebrities in the background, etc, print them out and replaced them a few days later.

I can’t forget her face when she realized it was me and she was not losing it.

_Miki_ Report

My friend was logged into his twitter on my tablet so I kept changing his profile picture to a banana.. he thought someone hacked him and tweeted about it.. I replied to the tweet using his profile.. it got so bad he was arguing with himself on twitter.

foroxev346 Report

When I was a corrections officer we had a guy who worked with us who was kind of a d**k to everyone, and he was computer illiterate. We took a screenshot of his desktop and moved all of his icons off of it so it looked legit but nothing worked. It took him an hour before he finally called IT and they figured it out pretty quickly. He wouldn’t talk to any of us for about a week.

justneedadvice87 , David McEachan Report

If I know someone is walking a little ways behind me and I turn a corner with nobody else around I like to run 10-20 steps to widen the gap and then laugh to myself thinking that the person behind me will be confused.

I doubt anyone ever notices but I get a kick out of it every time.

Shea_J , Ketut Subiyanto Report

Whenever I visit my extended family across the country, I bring a bag full of random remotes that I don’t use anymore. Just random remotes that go to old dvrs or anything really. Just hide them around their house, they only recently caught on.

Dfuz3-Flame , Nicolas Nova Report

At work: give them a “While You Were Out” note saying a “Mr. Fox” called for them and write on the note the number for your local zoo.

BonsaiDiver Report

I was talking with a supervisor and I happened to have like 4 hard boiled eggs in my jacket pocket for lunch. So while talking with stuff, I took out an egg, cracked and shelled it and ate it. The conversation kept going so I did it again but I could see he was growing quizzical. I waited a few more minutes, pulled out another and ate that too. By then I could tell he was like WTF. The conversation was wrapping up so I pulled the last one out and he stopped mid conversation and asked me, “how many f$cking eggs do you have?” I just shrugged, shelled, and then ate, the last egg.

The_Real_Evil_Morty Report

Reassure people there’s nothing wrong with the item they are about to use.

Right before they sit down: “there’s nothing wrong with that chair”

UNCLETROUBLE24 Report

When my husband pours his coffee into his mug and turns around to get milk out of the refrigerator, I pour his coffee back into the coffee pot or into my mug. I cackle as I run out of the room.

OutdoorLadyBird Report

A lady in my office wouldn’t stop talking about gas lighting and people who were gaslighting. So we told her it was actually called “gaslamping” and she has the term wrong. Took a bit of convincing but she started using that term and telling everyone else they were wrong too. A week later we changed it back to gaslighting.

DirrtyMikeAndTheBoyz Report

Say “I don’t want to sound racist, but” and then say something completely positive yet irrelevant.

“I don’t want to sound racist, but the sun looks lovely on those flowers”.

Fuzzythought Report

Our neighbour has chickens. About once a week or so we would sneak over and put extra eggs in the lay box, so it looked like the chickens had been on a laying spree. So fun chatting with them, trying to work out why sometimes the chickens were super producers and sometimes not. It ended when we put a chocolate egg in there, they worked it out then 😄😄

Flashy_Information70 Report

Look at their forehead, ear, or chin during the entire conversation.

Call in sick to a place you don’t work.

At the deli, ask for the most human tasting meat they have.

Go to the grocery store and ask for Gomber. “You know, it’s kind of red, and you put it on mayo sandwiches.”

Ask if they like your perfume and get them to smell your neck, wrist, ankle, or other body part. Don’t actually be wearing any perfume.

SirPatrickofMichigan Report

The movie theater in my town is usually mostly empty. There’s been a couple of times when I’ve come in to get seated and there’s literally only one other person in my auditorium.

There’s an evil part of me that wants to just go sit right next to them. Not illegal, but it should be.

matt314159 , Donald Tong Report

Some guy on Quora had this genius idea. Grab a highlighter, and randomly highlight one name on a public list (attendance, lunch money, extracurricular classes, whatever). You won’t get to see it, but some poor fellow will silently lose their mind trying to figure out why their name is highlighted.

Gungcael Report

Note: this post originally had 68 images. It’s been shortened to the top 35 images based on user votes.

#Small Pets News

0 notes

mcmansionhell · 4 years

Text

Coronagrifting: A Design Phenomenon

We now interrupt our regularly scheduled content to bring you a critical essay on the design world. I promise you that this will also be funny.

This morning, the design website Dezeen tweeted a link to one of its articles, depicting a plexiglass coronavirus shield that could be suspended above dining areas, with the caption “Reader comment: ‘Dezeen, please stop promoting this stupidity.’”

This, of course, filled many design people, including myself, with a kind of malicious glee. The tweet seemed to show that the website’s editorial (or at least social media) staff retained within themselves a scintilla of self-awareness regarding the spread a new kind of virus in its own right: cheap mockups of COVID-related design “solutions” filling the endlessly scrollable feeds of PR-beholden design websites such as Dezeen, ArchDaily, and designboom. I call this phenomenon: Coronagrifting.

I’ll go into detail about what I mean by this, but first, I would like to presenet some (highly condensed) history.

From Paper Architecture to PR-chitecture

Back in the headier days of architecture in the 1960s and 70s, a number of architectural avant gardes (such as Superstudio and Archizoom in Italy and Archigram in the UK) ceased producing, well, buildings, in favor of what critics came to regard as “paper architecture.” This “paper architecture” included everything from sprawling diagrams of megastructures, including cities that “walked” or “never stopped” - to playfully erotic collages involving Chicago’s Marina City. Occasionally, these theoretical and aesthetic explorations were accompanied by real-world productions of “anti-design” furniture that may or may not have involved foam fingers.

Archigram’s Walking City (1964). Source.

Paper architecture, of course, still exists, but its original radical, critical, playful, (and, yes, even erotic) elements were shed when the last of the ultra-modernists were swallowed up by the emerging aesthetic hegemony of Postmodernism (which was much less invested in theoretical and aesthetic futurism) in the early 1980s. What remained were merely images, the production and consumption of which has only increased as the design world shifted away from print and towards the rapidly produced, easily digestible content of the internet and social media.

Architect Bjarke Ingels’s “Oceanix” - a mockup of an ecomodernist, luxury city designed in response to rising sea levels from climate change. The city will never be built, and its critical interrogation amounts only to “city with solar panels that floats bc climate change is Serious” - but it did get Ingels and his firm, BIG, a TED talk and circulation on all of the hottest blogs and websites. Meanwhile, Ingels has been in business talks with the right-wing climate change denialist president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro. (Image via designboom)

Design websites are increasingly dominated by text and mockups from the desks of a firm’s public relations departments, facilitating a transition from the paper-architecture-imaginary to what I have begun calling “PR-chitecture.” In short, PR-chitecture is architecture and design content that has been dreamed up from scratch to look good on instagram feeds or, more simply, for clicks. It is only within this substance-less, critically lapsed media landscape that Coronagrifting can prosper.

Coronagrifting: An Evolution

As of this writing, the two greatest offenders of Coronagrifting are Dezeen, which has devoted an entire section of its website to the virus (itself offering twelve pages of content since February alone) and designboom, whose coronavirus tag contains no fewer than 159 articles.

Certainly, a small handful of these stories demonstrate useful solutions to COVID-related problems (such as this one from designboom about a student who created a mask prototype that would allow D/deaf and hard of hearing people to read lips) most of the prototypes and the articles about them are, for a lack of a better word, insipid.

But where, you may ask, did it all start?

One of the easiest (and, therefore, one of the earliest) Coronagrifts involves “new innovative, health-centric designs tackling problems at the intersection of wearables and personal mobility,” which is PR-chitecture speak for “body shields and masks.”

Wearables and Post-ables

The first example came from Chinese architect Sun Dayong, back at the end of February 2020, when the virus was still isolated in China. Dayong submitted to Dezeen a prototype of a full mask and body-shield that “would protect a wearer during a coronavirus outbreak by using UV light to sterilise itself.” The project was titled “Be a Bat Man.” No, I am not making this up.

Screenshot of Dayong’s “Be a Batman” as seen on the Dezeen website.

Soon after, every artist, architect, designer, and sharp-eyed PR rep at firms and companies only tangentially related to design realized that, with the small investment of a Photoshop mockup and some B-minus marketing text, they too could end up on the front page of these websites boasting a large social media following and an air of legitimacy in the field.

By April, companies like Apple and Nike were promising the use of existing facilities for producing or supplying an arms race’s worth of slick-tech face coverings. Starchitecture’s perennial PR-churners like Foster + Partners and Bjarke Ingels were repping “3D-printed face shields”, while other, lesser firms promised wearable vaporware like “grapheme filters,” branded “skincare LED masks for encouraging self-development” and “solar powered bubble shields.”

While the mask Coronagrift continues to this day, the Coronagrifting phenomenon had, by early March, moved to other domains of design.

Consider the barrage of asinine PR fluff that is the “Public Service Announcement” and by Public Service Announcement, I mean “A Designer Has Done Something Cute to Capitalize on Information Meant to Save Lives.”

Some of the earliest offenders include cutesy posters featuring flags in the shape of houses, ostensibly encouraging people to “stay home;” a designer building a pyramid out of pillows ostensibly encouraging people to “stay home”; and Banksy making “lockdown artwork” that involved covering his bathroom in images of rats ostensibly encouraging people to “stay home.”

Lol. Screenshot from Dezeen.

You may be asking, “What’s the harm in all this, really, if it projects a good message?” And the answer is that people are plenty well encouraged to stay home due to the rampant spread of a deadly virus at the urging of the world’s health authorities, and that these tone-deaf art world creeps are using such a crisis for shameless self promotion and the generation of clicks and income, while providing little to no material benefit to those at risk and on the frontlines.

Of course, like the mask coronagrift, the Public Service Announcement coronagrift continues to this very day.

The final iteration of Post-able and Wearable Coronagrifting genres are what I call “Passive Aggressive Social Distancing Initiatives” or PASDIs. Many of the first PASDIs were themselves PSAs and art grifts, my favorite of which being the designboom post titled “social distancing applied to iconic album covers like the beatle’s abbey road.” As you can see, we’re dealing with extremely deep stuff here.

However, an even earlier and, in many ways more prescient and lucrative grift involves “social distancing wearables.” This can easily be summarized by the first example of this phenomenon, published March 19th, 2020 on designboom:

Never wasting a single moment to capitalize on collective despair, all manner of brands have seized on the social distancing wearable trend, which, again, can best be seen in the last example of the phenomenon, published May 22nd, 2020 on designboom:

We truly, truly live in Hell.

Which brings us, of course, to living.

“Architectural Interventions” for a “Post-COVID World”

As soon as it became clear around late March and early April that the coronavirus (and its implications) would be sticking around longer than a few months, the architectural solutions to the problem came pouring in. These, like the virus itself, started at the scale of the individual and have since grown to the scale of the city. (Whether or not they will soon encompass the entire world remains to be seen.)

The architectural Coronagrift began with accessories (like the designboom article about 3D-printed door-openers that enable one to open a door with one’s elbow, and the Dezeen article about a different 3D-printed door-opener that enables one to open a door with one’s elbow) which, in turn, evolved into “work from home” furniture (”Stykka designs cardboard #StayTheF***Home Desk for people working from home during self-isolation”) which, in turn, evolved into pop-up vaporware architecture for first responders (”opposite office proposes to turn berlin's brandenburg airport into COVID-19 'superhospital'”), which, in turn evolved into proposals for entire buildings (”studio prototype designs prefabricated 'vital house' to combat COVID-19″); which, finally, in turn evolved into “urban solutions” aimed at changing the city itself (a great article summarizing and criticizing said urban solutions was recently written by Curbed’s Alissa Walker).

There is something truly chilling about an architecture firm, in order to profit from attention seized by a global pandemic, logging on to their computers, opening photoshop, and drafting up some lazy, ineffectual, unsanitary mockup featuring figures in hazmat suits carrying a dying patient (macabrely set in an unfinished airport construction site) as a real, tangible solution to the problem of overcrowded hospitals; submitting it to their PR desk for copy, and sending it out to blogs and websites for clicks, knowing full well that the sole purpose of doing so consists of the hope that maybe someone with lots of money looking to commission health-related interiors will remember that one time there was a glossy airport hospital rendering on designboom and hire them.

Enough, already.

Frankly, after an endless barrage of cyberpunk mask designs, social distancing burger king crowns, foot-triggered crosswalk beg buttons that completely ignore accessibility concerns such as those of wheelchair users, cutesy “stay home uwu” projects from well-to-do art celebrities (who are certainly not suffering too greatly from the economic ramifications of this pandemic), I, like the reader featured in the Dezeen Tweet at the beginning of this post, have simply had enough of this bullshit.

What’s most astounding to me about all of this (but especially about #brand crap like the burger king crowns) is that it is taken completely seriously by design establishments that, despite being under the purview of PR firms, should frankly know better. I’m sure that Bjarke Ingels and Burger King aren’t nearly as affected by the pandemic as those who have lost money, jobs, stability, homes, and even their lives at the hands of COVID-19 and the criminally inept national and international response to it. On the other hand, I’m sure that architects and designers are hard up for cash at a time when nobody is building and buying anything, and, as a result, many see resulting to PR-chitecture as one of the only solutions to financial problems.

However, I’m also extremely sure that there are interventions that can be made at the social, political, and organizational level, such as campaigning for paid sick leave, organizing against layoffs and for decent severance or an expansion of public assistance, or generally fighting the rapidly accelerating encroachment of work into all aspects of everyday life – that would bring much more good and, dare I say, progress into the world than a cardboard desk captioned with the hashtag #StaytheF***Home.

Hence, I’ve spent most of my Saturday penning this article on my blog, McMansion Hell. I’ve chosen to run this here because I myself have lost work as a freelance writer, and the gutting of publications down to a handful of editors means that, were I to publish this story on another platform, it would have resulted in at least a few more weeks worth of inflatable, wearable, plexiglass-laden Coronagrifting, something my sanity simply can no longer withstand.

So please, Dezeen, designboom, others – I love that you keep daily tabs on what architects and designers are up to, a resource myself and other critics and design writers find invaluable – however, I am begging, begging you to start having some discretion with regards to the proposals submitted to you as “news” or “solutions” by brands and firms, and the cynical, ulterior motives behind them. If you’re looking for a guide on how to screen such content, please scroll up to the beginning of this page.

----

If you enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing to my Patreon, as I didn’t get paid to write it.

#architecture #design #coronavirus #dezeen #designboom #capitalism

5K notes · View notes

ukrfeminism · 2 years

Text

5 minute read

A heavily pregnant woman sits in the corner of the Little Village baby bank in Tooting, south London, carefully folding a pile of baby clothes she’s been given.

She is one of thousands of mothers who will rely on charity this year to give their babies the start to life they deserve.

Like food banks, baby banks provide essential items for parents of young children aged 0-5 years old. Nappies, clothes, pushchairs, cots, breastfeeding equipment and toys fill every bit of floor space at the Little Village HQ.

Since launching in 2016, the charity has helped some 17,000 children. However as more and more people fall on harder times, it is noticing a huge increase in demand.

Tawakalitu Idris, 41, is almost nine months pregnant and visiting the baby bank with her husband and daughter in the hope it will provide her with much-needed supplies for her impending arrival.

It’s quiet when I walk in and Idris is sitting calmly in a chair while a volunteer rushes to and fro collecting items for her – there are the essentials like clothes and nappies, but also a breastfeeding pillow, baby bath, bottle steriliser, cot and pushchair.

Her little girl is choosing some school shoes with her father, and – pleased as punch – promptly bounds over to her mum to show them off. The shoes are secondhand, but in as good as new condition. This is something that really matters to the charity, says a spokesperson. They want those receiving the items to feel like they are gifts, rather than hand-me-downs.

While Idris and her husband both work in NHS hospitals, bringing home roughly £2,700 a month, they simply cannot afford the supplies they need for their new baby on top of mounting living costs.

This woman, who spends her days caring for the elderly on a hospital ward, is now relying on the kindness of others to make sure her baby has the essentials it needs when it is born.

“In terms of our income and the way things are at the moment, we don’t have enough to purchase good [quality], new baby things,” she tells me. “We have the option where we can get it from Little Village and use it, and then return it back when we’ve finished with it.”

It can cost anywhere upwards of £1,000 to buy new baby supplies, especially bulky and expensive essentials like cots and pushchairs, and this is spare cash that many families just don’t have.

With food shops and energy bills rising, alongside crippling housing and childcare costs, more and more parents are having to make impossible decisions as to where their money goes.

For some families, that means their babies are sleeping on the floor because they can’t afford a cot. For others, it means not leaving their homes because they have no money for a pushchair.

A study by the University of York estimates 45 million Brits will be forced into fuel poverty and struggle to pay energy bills this winter. Meanwhile two thirds of all UK households – or 18 million families – will be plunged into financial precarity by January due to soaring inflation, which is already at a 40-year record high.

This is the second time Idris has sought support from Little Village. The first time, she says, their family was “destitute” as both she and her husband were out of work. Someone from their local food bank referred them to get help paying for their gas and bills, and because she was pregnant at the time, she was told about Little Village and how they could support her.

Without such services, Idris says it would’ve caused her “a lot of stress, mentally and physically”.

At 36 weeks pregnant, it’s important for the sake of her health and her baby’s that she doesn’t dwell too much on the rising costs, but worry is still bubbling away in the background. “With the situation with the country at the moment, it’s really challenging and really stressful mentally,” she says, before adding, “but we just need to take it easy.”

She and her husband are always thinking about budgets, she says, with the top priority being able to feed and clothe her family. They’re already had to cut back, for example preserving water when washing up, and they’re teaching their four children that it’s more about “what they need, rather than what they want”.

“Sometimes it’s a struggle but we let them understand why that’s happening,” she says. These can be difficult conversations when they come home from school and reveal their friends are going on holiday. “They ask where are we going for holiday, and we try to let them know that we can’t go because we haven’t got enough money.”

Coping with the costs of bringing one baby into this world is difficult enough, but when life blesses you with two it can mean double the outlay – and when you have no income at all, things can swiftly become unbearable.

Diana* and her husband are out of work and living with relatives. They are visiting the baby bank today with their young twins – two beautiful baby girls – who were born prematurely in January this year.

The couple are getting more supplies for their babies, who have grown out of all of the items they were originally gifted from the baby bank back in January.

All four of them are sleeping in the sitting room of a relative’s home in Stockwell, she tells me, because they have no money to be able to afford their own place.

“Life is easy if you’ve got the money, but if you haven’t got the money, life is hard,” she says.

When her babies were born, the pair relied on food banks, however this support has now stopped and they’re relying on their relatives to keep them fed and provide a roof over their heads. “If it wasn’t for the charity, maybe I would’ve died,” says Diana.

Today they are collecting some more clothes for their daughters, as well as a walker, nappies, bottle-feeding equipment, shoes and toys.

Families are referred to the baby bank for numerous reasons – whether that’s low income, mental health problems, homelessness or fleeing domestic violence. Around 22% of the people helped by Little Village are seeking asylum and 5% are victims of trafficking.

Emma Gibbs, a spokesperson for the charity, says the first five years of a child’s life is the most expensive time for new parents. It’s also the most critical period in a child’s life in terms of development. Baby banks exist to ensure these children get the start in life they deserve.

Many of the families have nothing, she says. “In winter we’ll see children come in who don’t have a coat,” she says. “We see babies who’ve had the feet cut off their sleep suits because their parents can’t afford a new one.”

Some of the families – like Diana’s – are sharing beds to keep warm. Others are rationing nappies down to one or two a day because they can’t afford to use more. “It’s devastating,” says Gibbs.

“Anecdotally we are seeing a lot of families where at least one of the parents is in work and the wages just don’t pay enough to keep up with the cost of living, inflation and childcare costs.”

This year alone, the charity has answered 2,580 requests for support from struggling parents across London – and it predicts this figure is only going to rise come winter, when the worst effects of the cost of living crisis take hold.

A survey conducted earlier this year in February, way before the latest eye-watering energy bill predictions came out, found 98% of UK baby banks expect 2022 to be their busiest year yet, citing rising living costs as the main reason.

Little Village expects to support 1,000 more children this year as a result of the cost of living crisis. It has already supported 2,586 under-fives this year through its baby banks across London.

The charity is now urging people to support them with donations of high quality (not stained, broken or tatty) baby clothing, but especially “big ticket” items like prams and cots. Monetary donations are also appreciated, as the charity needs to buy packs of nappies and new mattresses for the cots.

Despite facing such hardship, Idris remains quietly positive that they’ll get through whatever hurdles they face in the coming months. “There have been a lot of struggles in the past few months but, as someone who believes in God, we just need to be thankful for where you are and what you have,” she says.

“So irrespective of where you are at the moment, at least when you look back you can say ‘ok I was able to push through these hard times.’ I think that’s the most important thing and that is what will keep us going as a family.”

*Some names have been changed to offer anonymity to interviewees

8 notes · View notes

thessalian · 2 years

Text

Thess vs Really Rough Days

Today was rough ... just for different reasons than I was afraid of. Today’s rough was arguably worse.

I mean, nothing changed today, looking at the capital of the UK through a bus window. I mean, apart from every bus stop advert I passed being that bloody woman’s face because apparently we have to have “Rest In Peace, You Colonising Trollop” (or, you know, Elizabeth Regina II, whatever) up just ... everywhere. But beyond that, the rules of ‘respect’ and ‘national mourning’ are weird. Apparently insofar as the BBC goes, we’re not allowed to sound particularly happy, so the programming has to be “appropriately low-key” and basically a bit sombre. And of course, the trade unions are cancelling all strikes out of “respect”. But nobody’s getting official time off work, even for the funeral itself, so apparently this whole thing is about, “Be sad and respectful but work your arses off while you’re doing it, okay?”

(Also, sorry, fuck the whole lot of this upcoming funeral. There are people who can’t even feed themselves, much less decently bury the people who died to Covid or are going to die of complications due to inadequate diet and heating - or, y’know, still Covid - this winter. I resent paying for the funeral of a woman whose family is worth billions. Don’t even talk to me about the fucking coronation.)

Anyway, thankfully no one was talking about it at work. I mean, I guess I’m not surprised: Scruffman considers himself Irish (I think he was born there but hasn’t lived there for, like, ever; Goblin gets irate when he calls himself Irish but he doesn’t do it often in my presence so I don’t give a fuck) and the Irish are ... handling this whole London Bridge Down thing the way I’d personally like to if it didn’t seem like it’d get me pilloried. Goblin never has anything nice to say about anyone so I doubt she’s a rabid monarchist. Temp really doesn’t care much about the news in general. And I didn’t really talk to anybody else today.

This was a relief because today? Was the worst pain day I have ever had. I mean it. Sincerely. Even now, sitting at a desk whose ergonomics are usually good for me, I am not handling it well and will go lie down as soon as I’ve done my update here, at least until the big painkillers kick in. At my shitty-ergonomics desk after the usual commute? Oh gods no. We’re talking constant spasms and two separate occasions where I had to lock myself in a stall in the bathroom no one uses (mostly because it’s gross; if you want to see gross, look at basically any UK hospital’s non-clinical areas) and just cry. Not just a tear here and there either; we’re talking sobbing as quietly as possible, trying to stop because I do not want anyone thinking I’m mourning the Colonising Trollop but literally cannot do so crying. I managed to pull myself together each time but holy hell, seriously. Also, cold water to the face can only repair so much damage, so I was trying not to look anyone in the eye. Again, tears after the death of a monarch to whom I was more or less indifferent and whose death is more of a fucking annoyance than anything else can look like something it’s not. Something I’d have to punch someone for suggesting it was. And I’m in no state to punch anyone right now. Anyway, I just tried to keep my head down and hoped no one’d notice.

Scruffman noticed. Thankfully, he did not mistake it for anything else - he’s perfectly aware of my political views. Also probably the fact that I was leaning on my cane harder than usual and shuffling because I literally could not pick my feet up off the floor when I walked helped. As did ... well, everything else. Anyway, point is that Scruffman noticed and was good about it in multiple ways:

Scruffman wrote me an email about it to read when I came back from break. This was good because I honestly dislike talking about my health in front of everybody. I think he’s figured that out, which is good.

The email asked if I was okay and told me to go home if I was in pain. Which I took him up on. If he’s noticing, it’s bad and as much as we’re understaffed, I couldn’t make anyone watch me struggle through two hours.

The email also said, in narrative tones of utmost apology, “I will talk to [Head Honcho] about your working from home. I am sorry this is taking so long”.

That third one’s particularly nice. I can more or less picture Scruffman going, “Look, she was crying with pain on Friday. She could barely walk. And she still came in and she still kept trying. If we don’t do something about this work from home thing soon, we will lose her the same way we lost Sid, and we cannot afford to lose her so sort it out.”

(And it would be ‘she’. I haven’t come out to the office yet. This is not a safe country to be out in.)

Of course, the ow wasn’t over yet, because I had to get home. I decided to stop at the big Tesco on the way home to make sure I have enough big painkillers for the entire weekend, some easy-to-cook food and some tasty treats. The bus ride there wasn’t too bad and was rewarded by a sale on ribeye steaks and the presence of miniature marshmallows (which will go in my hot chocolate tonight), among a couple of other necessities. No, the problem was coming out of the big Tesco and finding that while I was missing the rush hour, I was right on time for the schools letting out. The bus was rammed. Thankfully someone did give up their seat for me, which was necessary because it was standing room only and packed to beyond safe capacity. Guess people really did decide that our need to not be squished like a sardine ended with Covid (and that Covid is actually over). In the end, I got away with little more than someone stepping on my foot. OW.

So now I’m home an hour before I normally am, and I am going to go lie down until the painkillers kick in and I’m not a veritable pick n’ mix of pain.

#Thess has a day job #Thess has fibromyalgia #Thess vs the monarchy

7 notes · View notes

cooloddball · 3 years

Text

Someone submitted something in my inbox and they wanted to remain anonymous. Since this is an extremely long essay, I will put it under the cut. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

xxx submitted: hey, i was the one who ask what do you think of Misha and Jensen's current relationship First off all thank you for your answear it means much to me cause im easy to be convice and this person who keep telling me that they are no longer friends can be so convicing, so I'm actully trying to forget what she said 😅 so I'm just writing a few. she said that since they no longer work together, they will forget about each other, and do their common things like the gay jokes, face touches ect. With other people, and neglect each other, don't talk to each other, and then meet new people who will replace the other. And and she talked about the gish thing, she said she sure they didn't talk since the end of the series, because Jensen didn't know where Misha was and Misha didn't know about the Radio Company vol 2 (but i saw people say that, they were just pretending, because Misha liked something about Radio Company Vol 2, before the gish live, so in theory he already knew then or something like that) and She said Misha wrote a poem about Darius not Jensen and now I will write down what she sent me : I saw a post about Jensen's current activities on social media, and I've come to the conclusion the only person he doesn't interact with is mish. Sadly this makes my break up theory even stronger. I feel like this is a goodbye to one of the biggest parts of my life. They've moved on from "uk what I haven't told you today? That i love u"+ from "miss my only jensen" from "i love u misha i mean it from the bottom of my heart" from "jensen has no flaws" from "misha is the funniest thing ever happened to me" from all that love and affection from everything they developed together and now they're apart leaving their lives like nothing happened and call me a dramatic but they both have the same energy now as someone has after a big break up. and Jensen comments on almost every of his friend’s post except Misha’s"+ Jenmish is genuinely the best thing that has ever happened in my entire life. I owe them literally everything. They're the reason i hold on. Unfortunately on this essay i have to start using past tense verbs for them, and i have to continue on that. I don't know for how long y'all been in spn fandom. But even if u joined one year before the show ended you'd know how close and intimate jensen and misha were. Everything about them was unmatched.+ The chemistry and how they just fit eachother. They had always been all over eachother. Like they were holding on eachother for dear life. They completed eachother and were like world's most powerful thing. They were the definition of soulmatism. No matter where, they ALWAYS kept interacting with eachother. Each possible tweet or insta post. On cons that the other wasn't there, the other one would bring up the othere's name for no absolute reason. +The looks and repeated love confessions. How invested they were both into eachother. The family they had built together cuz we know how close dee and mish are (look all the charity work they've been doing together recently). There are youtube videos to proof everything I've said so far.When i say break up, my real intention is that they've grown apart. Everything started in the the third or forth month of pandemic. Before than jensen used to interact +(comment mostly) on almost all of misha's posts. But after a while everything just stopped. At first personally didn't care that much. Bcuz I believed too much in them that I thought not even the gods above could separate them. I told myself maybe they spend long hours chatting or video calling and that's why online public interactions are gone. But as it passed it almost diminished to zero. Except some likes from jackles and eventual ones from misha there weren't anything else.+ We got absolutely no content and the show went off too. We were helpless and were sticking to everything we had Dee had a big social media shot down, so as jensen. Misha was busy with the election. We got some interviews for it with all of them. But we didn't get much.except remember both of them pulling a bff

move. and texted eachother during an online con where everyone else were dead-serious about politics? That flickered something in me. That showed me that+ they can't ever possibly let eachother go. And the times everyone else were talking and these too would just talk random things together (the one jackels had a white hat on with stacy abraham).And then Misha posted that for jensen's bday We really overlooked it. That shit was too intimate. To close. Fav march baby? U just don't go around and called ur bestie baby and when u mean it deeply. Especially not when ur friend is jensen ackles the "I suffered form internalized homophobia my whole life+ but fuck my wife's an angel and i have an angel bf too and another angel which is his wife but I'd rather die than come out cuz my asshole dad pulled a John winchester on me". It doesn't work like that. But uk how mish is. Carefree and open. I believe they got into a fight bcuz of this. He didn't even like the post. AND that was when the tiny bit of interactions we had was gone too. For a while jensen didn't even liked his posts. After a month it started again.What made me finally believe in that they had grown too+ far: I still remember the night misha posted that he and jensen were going to have a con for gish together. I remember how hard I cried. Lile the whole world was given to me. But deep down in my heart I knew that something would definitely happen. It didn't sit right with me and unfortunately my senses never lie to me. Jensen showed up at the wrong time bcuz of misunderstanding the time zones (this was HILARIOUS). That's not even my point.+ I've seen that interview 3 times so far. It always reminds me of when i saw my ex at a party and we were both so thrilled to see eachother and we still loved the other dearly, but we just couldn't work it out. Jensen and Misha's expressions were EXACTLY the same. The genuine smiles and longs pauses were they just stared at eachother. I'm so happy that it was online cuz if they actually gave that looks to eachother standing right next to the other one I would've collapsed. Misha didn't know that jensen's album+ was out. And he got so embarrassed when he found it out. He didn't know that jensen was on set and hadn't been home for 8weeks. Jensen had no idea where misha was. And this means that they hadn't talked in a long long time.When you're that close with someone for more than a decade, i mean THAT close, even if u're separated from eachother you'd at least check on the once a week, or at least once in two weeks. But it was vividly clear that they hadn't. I hate how this world works. They would always be in my heart.+ I would be thankful from them for everything. It hurts, and it won't stop and im so sure I'd be carrying this pain for a long time. They mean too much to a lot of us. Sometimes I think to myself that god i love them so much. Remember in 2019 when we used to get SO many jenmishdee interactions? That was LIT. It was THEE year for us. I hope they're doing good. I really do. I hope we don't get more proofs and I won't have to update this thread. Cuz my heart won't be taking it very+ well.Something i gotta add U may say that Jensen's busy and that's why he doesn't comment. But he comments on a lot of jared and his new costar's posts. So that's no excuse. So yeah that's it. I don't know what am I supposed to think. english isn't my native language, so sorry for the mistakes

Here is my response:

I don't know who this person who has been talking to is but I have to say they seem to be project their previous relationship experience on cockles.

I believe Jensen and Misha are okay and are together. Social media likes and comments don't mean anything. I mean it's not like Jensen or Misha used to comment on each other's posts before. Jensen didn't even wish Dee Happy Mother's Day this year, does that mean they are not together anymore? Nope. He has other best friends he has known for over 20 years like Jason Manns, Steve Carlson etc that he doesn't wish happy birthday, does that mean they are not friends anymore.

Please let's not put value on social media likes. I don't even follow my own family on sm and I don't always like or comment on my bf's or bff's posts on sm. So it doesn't mean anything.

As for the Gish Panel, I have talked about it before, the time Jensen was slotted to attend the panel, he was meant to answer fan questions. I honestly believe they decided to not do it at that time because they knew the questions would be about Destiel and not their new projects. If you watched that panel, Misha knew that Jensen's album was out as I pointed out. He was just trying to promote the album and soldier boy. He knew Jensen had also buffed out. It was all to promote Jensen. Anything else you hear is trolls and antis just being loud. Also don't forget Jensen called him "babe".

If Jensen and Misha weren't okay, he wouldn't have attended or participated all those panels Misha organized especially for Gish. Danneel also posts a lot about RA and likes Misha's posts. I am 100% Misha visited the Ackles when he went to Colorado last month.

Stop listening to trolls and/or antis or just people who are projecting and look at facts.

#submissions #cockles

77 notes · View notes

causeiwanttoandican · 3 years

Text

Harry, Meghan and me: my truth as a royal reporter

I've covered elections and extremism, but nothing compares to the vitriol I've received since I started writing about the Sussexes

By Camilla Tominey, Associate Editor27 March 2021 • 6:00am

It is probably worth mentioning from the outset that I never, ever, planned to become a royal reporter. I mean, who does? It’s one of those ridiculous jobs most people fall into completely by accident.

I certainly wasn’t coveting the position when I first found out how bonkers the beat could be after covering Charles and Camilla’s wedding in 2005. Desperate for ‘a line’ on what went on at the reception, journalists were reduced to flagging down passing cars in Windsor High Street and interrogating the likes of Stephen Fry about whether they’d had the salmon or the chicken.

Watergate, this wasn’t.

Yet when my former editor called me into his office shortly afterwards and offered me the royal job ‘because you’re called Camilla and you dress nicely’, who was I to refuse?

Having planned to get married myself that summer, and start a family soon afterwards, I looked to the likes of Jennie Bond and Penny Junor and figured it would be a good patch for a working mother as well as being one I could grow old with. Unlike show business, when celebrities are ‘in’ one minute and ‘out’ the next, the royals would stay the same, making it easier to build – and keep – contacts.

So if you’d told me that 16 years later, I would find myself at the centre of a media storm over a royal interview with Oprah Winfrey, I’d have probably laughed in your face. First of all, only royals like Fergie do interviews with Oprah. And since when did journalists become the story?

Yet as I have experienced since the arrival of Meghan Markle on the royal scene in 2016 – a move that roughly coincided with Twitter doubling its 140-character limitation to 280 – royal reporters like me now find themselves in the line of fire like never before.

We are used to the likes of Kate Adie coming under attack in the Middle East, but now it is the correspondents who write up events like Trooping the Colour and the Royal Windsor Horse Show having to take cover from the keyboard warriors supposedly defending the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s ‘truth’.

Accusations of racism have long been levelled against anyone who has dared to write less than undiluted praise of Harry and Meghan. But even I have been taken aback by the vitriol on social media in the wake of the couple’s televised two-hour talk-a-thon, in which they branded both the Royal family and the British press racist while complaining about their ‘almost unsurvivable’ multimillionaire lives at the hands of the evil monarchy. And all while the rest of the UK were losing their loved ones and livelihoods in a global pandemic.

Having covered Brexit, general elections and stories about Islamic extremism, I’ve grown used to being sprayed with viral vomit on a fairly regular basis, but when you’ve got complete strangers trolling your best friend’s Instagram feed by association? That’s Britney Spears levels of toxic.

Having a hind thicker than a rhino’s, it wasn’t the repeated references to my being ‘a total c—’ that particularly bothered me, nor even the suggestion that I should have my three children put up for adoption. At one point someone even said it would be a good idea for me to drink myself to death like my mother, about whose chronic alcoholism I have written extensively.

No, what really got me was the appalling spelling and grammar. I mean, if you’re going to hurl insults, at least have the decency to get my name right.

Yet in order to understand just how it has come to pass that so-called #SussexSquaders think nothing of branding all royal correspondents ‘white supremacists’ regardless of who they write for, or sending hate mail to our email addresses, offices – and in some cases, even our homes – it’s worth briefly going to back to when I first broke the story that Prince Harry was dating an American actor in the Sunday Express on 31 October 2016. Headlined: ‘Royal world exclusive: Harry’s secret romance with TV star’, the splash revealed how the popular prince was ‘secretly dating a stunning US actress, model and human rights campaigner’.

Despite my now apparently being on a par with the Ku Klux Klan for failing to acknowledge Meghan as the next messiah, it was actually not until the fifteenth paragraph of that original article that the ‘confident and intelligent’ Northwestern University graduate was described as ‘the daughter of an African-American mother and a father of Dutch and Irish descent’.

Call me superficial, but I was genuinely far more interested in the fact that Harry ‘I-come-with-baggage’ Wales was dating a former ‘briefcase girl’ from the US version of Deal or No Deal than the colour of her skin. A ginger prince punching well above his weight? This was the stuff of tabloid dreams. Little did I know then that covering the trials and tribulations of these two lovebirds would turn into such a nightmare.

The online hostility began bubbling up about eight days after that first story, when Harry’s then communications secretary Jason Knauf issued an ‘unprecedented’ statement accusing the media of ‘crossing a line’.

‘His girlfriend, Meghan Markle, has been subject to a wave of abuse and harassment’, it read, referencing a ‘smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments’. Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, had apparently been besieged by photographers, while bribes had been offered to Meghan’s ex-boyfriend along with ‘the bombardment of nearly every friend, coworker, and loved one in her life’.

Suffice to say, I did feel a bit guilty. Although I hadn’t written anything remotely racist or sexist, I had started the ball rolling for headlines like the MailOnline’s ‘(Almost) straight outta Compton’ (referencing a song by hip-hop group NWA about gang violence and Meghan’s upbringing in the nearby LA district of Crenshaw), along with her ‘exotic’ DNA (which I subsequently called out, including on This Morning in the wake of ‘Megxit’ in January last year).

Omid Scobie, co-author of Finding Freedom, a highly favourable account of the Sussexes’ departure from the Royal family, written with their cooperation last summer, would later insist that the couple knew the story of their relationship was coming out and were well prepared for it.

I can tell you categorically that they weren’t, since I did not even put a call into Kensington Palace before we went to press for fear of it being leaked. (I did later discuss this with Harry, when I covered his trip to the Caribbean in November 2016, and to be fair he was pretty philosophical, agreeing it would have come out sooner or later. But that was before the former Army Captain decided to well and truly shoot the messenger, latterly telling journalists covering the newly-weds’ tax-payer-funded October 2018 tour of Australia and the south Pacific: ‘Thanks for coming, even though you weren’t invited.’)

The royal press pack is the group of dedicated writers who cover all the official engagements and tours on a rota system, in exchange for not bothering the royals as they go about their private business. It was a shame this ragtag bunch, of which I am an associate member, was never personally introduced to Meghan when the couple got engaged in November 2017.

I still have fond memories of a then Kate Middleton, upon her engagement to Prince William in November 2010, showing me her huge sapphire and diamond ring following a press conference at St James’s Palace with the words, ‘It was William’s mother’s so it is very special.’

I replied that she might want to consider buying ‘one of those expanding accordion style file holders’ to organise all her wedding paperwork. (Reader, I had given birth to my second child less than four months earlier and was still lactating.)

Not meeting Meghan did not stop royal commentators like me writing reams about her being ‘a breath of fresh air’ and telling practically every TV show I appeared on that she was the ‘best thing to have happened to the Royal Family in years’.

As the world followed the joyous news of the Windsors’ resident strip billiards star having finally found ‘the one’, the couple enjoyed overwhelmingly positive press culminating in their fairy-tale wedding in May 2018, which we headlined ‘So in love’ above a picture of the bride and groom kissing. I tweeted the wedding front page, along with the original story breaking the news of their relationship with the words, ‘Job done’. Yet, as Meghan would later point out in a glossy Santa Barbara garden, that was by far the end of the story.

According to the Duchess’s testimony before a global audience of millions, the seeds for their royal departure were actually sown by an article I wrote in November 2018 suggesting she made Kate cry during a bridesmaid’s dress fitting for Princess Charlotte.

Claiming the ‘reverse happened’, the former Suits star railed, ‘A few days before the wedding she was upset about something, pertaining to, yes, the issue was correct, about flower-girl dresses, and it made me cry, and it really hurt my feelings.’

She then went on to criticise the palace for failing to correct the story – suggesting that royal aides had hung her out to dry to protect the Duchess of Cambridge.

All of which left me in a bit of a sticky situation. As I told Phillip Schofield on This Morning the following day, ‘I don’t write things I don’t believe to be true and that haven’t been really well sourced.’

Having seemingly been completely bowled over by Meghan’s version of events, Schofe then went for the jugular: ‘I have to say, though, that’s all addressed in that interview, isn’t it, because she [Meghan] couldn’t understand why nobody stood up for her?’

Yet someone had stood up for her, on that very same This Morning sofa: me.

As I told Phil and Holly on 14 January 2019, as more reports of ‘Duchess Difficult’ started to emerge, ‘I think she [Meghan] is doing really well, she looks amazing, she speaks well. She has played a blinder.’

So you’ll forgive me if I can’t quite understand why Meghan didn’t feel the need to correct this supposedly glaring error once she had her own dedicated head of communications from March 2019 – or indeed when she ‘collaborated’ with Scobie, who concluded in his bestselling hagiography that ‘no one cried’?

Moreover, how did the Duchess know a postnatal Kate wasn’t ‘left in tears’? And if she doesn’t know, what hope has the average troll observing events through the prism of their own deep-rooted insecurities?

It appears the actual truth ceases to matter once sides have been taken in the unedifying Team Meghan versus Team Kate battle that has divided the internet.

Make no mistake, there are abject morons at both extremes spewing the sort of bile that, ironically, makes most of the media coverage of Harry and Meghan look like a 1970s edition of Jackie magazine.

It perhaps didn’t help my case that the day before the interview was aired in the US, I had written a lengthy piece carefully weighing up the evidence behind allegations of ‘outrageous bullying’ that had been levelled against Meghan during what proved to be a miserable 20 months in the Royal family for all concerned.

The messages – to my Twitter feed, my email, my website and official Facebook page – ranged from the threatening, to the typical tropes about media ‘scum’ and the downright bizarre. Some accused me of being in cahoots with Carole Middleton, with whom I have never interacted, unless you count a last-minute Party Pieces purchase in a desperate moment of poor parental planning.

Another frequent barb was questioning why the press wasn’t writing about that ‘pedo’ [sic] Prince Andrew instead – seemingly oblivious to the fact that no one would know about the Duke of York’s links to Jeffrey Epstein if it wasn’t for the acres of coverage devoted to the story by us royal hacks over recent years.

It didn’t matter that I had repeatedly torn the Queen’s second, and, some say, favourite son to pieces for everything from his propensity to take his golf clubs on foreign tours to that disastrous Newsnight interview.

Contrary to the ‘invisible contract’ Harry claims the palace has with the press, royal coverage works roughly like this: good royal deeds = good publicity. Bad royal deeds = bad publicity. We effectively act as a critical friend, working on behalf of a public that rightly expects the royals to take the work – but not themselves – seriously.

So when a royal couple preaches about climate change before taking four private jets in 11 days, it is par for the course for a royal scribe to point out the inconsistency of that message. None of it is ever personal, as evidenced by the fact that practically every member of the monarchy has come in for flak over the years.

If Oprah wasn’t willing to point out the discrepancies in Harry and Meghan’s testimony, surely it is beholden on royal reporters to question how the Duchess had managed to undertake four foreign holidays in the six months after her wedding, in addition to official tours to Italy, Canada, and Amsterdam, as well as embarking on a lengthy honeymoon, if she had ‘turned over’ her passport?

While no one would wish to undermine the extent of her mental health problems, could it really be true that she only left the house twice in four months when she managed to cram in 73 days’ worth of engagements, according to the Court Circular, in the 17 months between her wedding and the couple’s departure to Canada?

And what of the ‘racist’ headlines flashed up during the interview purporting to be from the British press, when more than a third were actually taken from independent blogs and the foreign media? The UK media abides by the Independent Press Standards Organisation’s Code of Conduct ‘to avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s race’, as well as by rigorous defamation laws. And rightly so – the British press doesn’t always get it right. But social media is the Wild West by comparison, publishing vile slurs on a daily basis with impunity.

Some therefore find it strange that such a litigious couple would claim to have been ‘silenced’ when they have made so many complaints, including resorting to legal action, over stories they claim not to have even read. There is something similarly contradictory about a couple accusing the tabloids of lacking self-reflection while refusing to take any blame at all – for anything.

In any normal world, informed writing on such matters would be classed as fair comment, but not, seemingly, on Twitter where those completely lacking any objectivity whatsoever are only too willing to virtue signal and manoeuvre.

As the trolling reached fever pitch in the aftermath of the interview, veteran royal reporter Robert Jobson of the Evening Standard called me. ‘Don’t respond to these freaks,’ he advised. ‘It’s getting nasty out there. Watch your back!’

Yet despite my general sense of bewilderment at the menacing Megbots, I can’t say it didn’t appal me to discover a close friend had received online abuse, purely by dint of being my mate. After discussing the lengths the troll must have gone to to track her down, she asked me, ‘Do you ever worry someone might do something awful to you?’ Er, not until now, no.

Of course it’s upsetting, even for a cynical old-timer like me. Worse still are people who actually know me casting aspersions on my profession on social media. Often these are the same charlatans who would think nothing of sidling up to me for the latest gossip on the Royal family, while publicly pretending that reading any such coverage is completely beneath them.

Most pernicious of all though – not least after Piers Morgan’s departure from Good Morning Britain following a complaint to ITV and Ofcom from the Duchess – is the corrosive effect this whole hullabaloo is having on freedom of speech. When you’ve got a former actor effectively editing a British breakfast show from an £11 million Montecito mansion, what next?

I cannot help but think we are in danger of setting race relations back 30 years if people are seriously suggesting that any criticism of Meghan is racially motivated. It’s the hypocrisy that gets me. When Priti Patel was accused of bullying, the very same people who willingly hung the Home Secretary out to dry are now the ones defending Meghan against such claims, saying they have been levelled at her simply because she is ‘a strong woman of colour’.

Of course journalists should take responsibility for everything they report and be held to account for it – but Harry and Meghan do not have a monopoly on the truth simply because the close friend and neighbour who interviewed them in return for £7 million from CBS took what they said as gospel.

If she isn’t willing to probe the disparity between Meghan saying someone questioned the colour of Archie’s skin when she was pregnant, and Harry suggesting it happened before they were even married, then someone must. There’s a name for such scrutiny. It’s called journalism.

The public reserves the right to make up its own mind – with the help of the watchful eye of a free and fair press. But that press can never be free or fair if journalists do not feel they can report without fear or favour. I’m lucky that a lot of the criticism I face is more than balanced out by hugely supportive members of the public and online community who either agree – or respect the right to disagree. Along with the hate mail, I have had many thoughtful and eloquent missives, including those that good naturedly challenge what I have written in the paper or said on TV, which have genuinely given me pause for thought.

I am more than happy to enter into constructive discourse with these correspondents, who are frankly sometimes the only people who keep me on Twitter. I mean, let’s face it, I wouldn’t be anywhere near the bloody thing if this wasn’t my day job.

With the National Union of Journalists this month declaring that harassment and abuse had ‘become normalised’ within the industry, never have members of Britain’s press needed more courage. As Winston Churchill famously said, ‘You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.’

Who would have thought that the preservation of the fundamental freedoms that we hold so dear should partially rest on the shoulders of those who follow around a 94-year-old woman and her family for a living?

If I’d known then what I know now, would I still have written the bridesmaid’s dress story?

Yes – doubtlessly reflecting sisterly sobs all round. But after two decades in this business, I am clear-eyed enough to know this for certain: whatever I had written, it would still have ended in tears.

227 notes · View notes

watchmegetobsessed · 4 years

Text

Locked up Christmas - Harry Styles

❄️ FANFICmas 2020 ❄️

Read more about FANFICmas here!

happy holidays everyone!! this is the first one of my two christmas fics, the second one coming tomorrow, giving you well enough content to keep you busy when you’re not stuffing your belly or enjoying your time with the fam haha. let me know what you think!

word count: 5k

masterlist

Fishing your keys out of your purse you curse a little as your eyes fall on the big double doors. This is not how you planned to spend your Christmas evening, but you are desperate to earn that promotion in January so now you have to make sacrifices, such as leaving your family home, come into the office and smooth out some things your boss emailed you about a few hours prior.

“Who the fuck is working on Christmas?” you mumble to yourself as you try to find the right keys on the chain. The woman is completely nuts, you’re not even sure how she was able to score a husband because the woman lives in the office.

“Think about the money, Y/N,” you tell yourself. It just gonna be a solid two hours in here, you’ll be out of the building by nine and make it back home to watch Home Alone with your nieces. They begged you to stay and your heart was breaking when you had to leave instead of playing board games with them, so now you are desperate to get it done as fast as possible.

Unlocking the double doors you walk through every damn morning, you walk inside and lock them back up behind you, not wanting any creeps to scare the shit out of you, entering the building while you are in here.

You are so busy cursing your boss out that you almost don’t even notice the lights on upstairs in one of the offices, but when you do, you stop in your track, knowing well whose office it is. Taking a few steps closer you see the tall guy walking around, searching through his shelves with his hands on his hips.

Harry Styles has been working two offices down from yours this past year and you’ve had the fattest crush on the dude ever since he smiled at you on his first day, introducing himself. From his magical green eyes, through his several tattoos he tries to hide under his shirts, to his luscious curls, the guy is a walking, talking perfectness, making you turn into a stuttering teenage girl every time he even looks in your way, let alone when he comes up to you to talk about anything.

Standing in the open area of the cubbies, you debate whether you should say hi or go straight to your office, and though your nerves would appreciate the second option, you know it would be rude to just ignore his presence when it is literally just the two of you. So shoving your keys into your bag you head towards his open door, hoping you won’t make a fool out of yourself.

Just as you are approaching the entrance of his office, his eyes fall on you and you can’t just not notice how adorable he looks as he raises his eyebrows at your arrival.

“Y/N? What are you doing here on Christmas?” he questions, a stack of paper in his hands as he stares at you, a slight smile playing on his pink lips you’ve daydreamed about way too many times at work. You notice how he is wearing a simple white t-shirt, a brown, knitted cardigan and jeans, something you have never seen him in, he is always wearing stylish suits and crispy looking shirts, making sure his appearance is spotless. But you kind of digging this loose, casual version of him.

“I could ask you the same,” you chuckle tilting your head to the side. “I uhh—Samantha emailed me about one of my cases, so I have a few things to go over.”

“But couldn’t it wait?”

“I’m really hoping to get the promotion in January, so it couldn’t.” Harry nods in understanding as he glances down at the papers in his hands. “What about you?”

“Oh, I came in this afternoon, but I kind of got stuck, so now I think I’ll just finish it anyway.”

“You’ve been here all afternoon? Didn’t you want to spend the day with your family?”

“Well, my family lives in the UK. My mum got a cruise from her boyfriend so she is on the Caribbean sea right now and my sister is working through the holidays as well, so we agreed to have Christmas a little later this year.”

“Oh, I see,” you softly say, feeling a little bad for the guy to be stuck here at Christmas even though you know he is gonna see his family, just a little later. “Alright. I’ll just—I’ll be in my office then,” you mumble motioning down the hallway and he nods with a soft smile.

“Sure, sure!”

You jump right into work, eager to finish as soon as possible, and for your biggest surprise, you find yourself breezing through the case faster than you expected. Maybe it’s the emptiness of the whole building, the complete silence or just the will to leave finally, but you manage to finish everything before half past eight, putting you half an hour earlier than you expected to be done. You quickly pack everything up and shut your computer down before grabbing your coat and bag to head out. Just as you step out of your office, Harry emerges from his, wearing his black coat and a backpack hanging from his shoulder. Your eyes meet and he chuckles softly, waiting for you to catch up with him so you can head down together.

“Finished everything?” he asks, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“Yeah, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. How about you?”

“I think I’m like two weeks ahead now, but at least I’ll have a breather after the holidays.” He politely lets you ahead as you step out of the office area, into the stairwell, the two of you walking down the stairs shoulder by shoulder. “Heading back to the family?”

“Yeah, promised my nieces to watch Home Alone with them.”

“Classic.”

“Uhuh, very fascinated when you’ve seen it a thousand times, but it’s their first time,” you chuckle shaking your head.

“I feel like everyone is complaining about seeing it so many times, but deep down, we all know we’ll keep watching it till the end of times,” Harry smirks and you nod in agreement.

You step to the exit and push your keys into the lock, trying to turn it, but it doesn’t want to move, just stays stuck in it. Wiggling it a little you start to feel nervous, thinking how Harry will see you as a complete idiot who can’t even open a damn door, but no matter what you try, the key stays stuck.

“I uhh—It’s not opening?” you anxiously say, glancing over at Harry. Furrowing his eyebrows he asks if he could try, so you step aside and let him make an attempt to unlock the door.

However, the key stubbornly stays the same, as if it was cemented into the lock. His grip tightens around the metal, his other hand holding onto the handle of the door, shaking it in hopes it’ll magically open up, but that’s not the case at all.

And then you hear the snap. Your eyes widen when you see that the top part of the key stays on the chain and Harry holds it up just as shocked as you are, the other part still in the lock, broken and totally ruined.

“Please say we didn’t just lock ourselves in and broke the key into the lock on Christmas,” you mumble, shutting your eyes, hoping that when you open them it’ll all just go away and Harry will be holding the door open for you. But then your eyelids flutter open and your gaze is met with Harry’s anxious eyes.

“I uhh—I wish I could say that we didn’t, but we did.”

Letting your head fall back for a moment you take a deep breath, contemplating what you did that made the universe turn against you, but you don’t remember killing babies to earn this, so you are left with your boiling rage.

After a moment of mess you realize it’s time to pull your shit together and figure out the fastest possible to get out of this building as fast as possible.

“Alright, we-we need to call someone,” you breathe out, pulling your phone out of your pocket, trying to figure out who you should be calling in this very specific situation.

“Should we call Samantha?” Harry asks, still holding your keys in his hands.

“It’s not that we need another key, she wouldn’t be able to get us out. We need a professional, right?”

“Yeah, good idea.” Harry is quick to pull his phone out as well, opening up Google to find a locksmith that could free the two of you.

A few minutes later the both of you are frantically calling numbers of businesses you found online, but most doesn’t even answer and though you know it’s reasonable, since it’s Christmas, but you’re mad that with each passing moment the feeling that you’ll be stuck in here all night grows. The two of you are pacing around in the hall as all calls go to voicemail or just simply stay ignored, making you desperate.

When you are about to give up to find just one locksmith in the area who could help you out, the ringing finally stops and a voice answers your call. The old man doesn’t seem delighted to be disturbed at such time, but as you describe the situation on your hand, he quickly realizes his help is much needed.

“Now, Miss, I have some bad news,” he tells you and you feel your stomach drop to the floor.

“And what would that be?”

“The soonest I can get there is around midnight. I’m out of town, but I could leave right now.”

Closing your eyes you inhale sharply. It’s not that bad, you tell yourself. At least he can come, that’s all that matters.

“Alright. It’s fine, we really need you, Sir. And again, I’m really sorry to bother you on Christmas.”

“I’ll pack up and leave now. Will contact you when I’m there,” the man tells you before you hang up and meet Harry’s anticipating eyes.

“He is coming, but he’ll get here around midnight,” you tell him and he immediately checks the time on his phone.

“So… we are stuck here for three more hours?” You nod, pressing your lips together. “Alright,” he sighs, hands on his hips. “Could be worse, right?”

“Yeah, definitely,” you nod, trying your best to see the best side of the situation. You might be missing Christmas with your family, but you are stuck with your work crush for three entire hours, so yes, it definitely could be worse.

Harry runs a hand through his hair, nodding to himself as if he is acknowledging the situation, and the turning to you, he smiles softly.

“There are some leftovers from the Christmas party on Wednesday. You hungry?”

Soon enough the two of you are seated in the kitchen, roaming through everything Harry found in the fridges, from saggy fries to fried chickens and veggies, you are sure you won’t starve to death until the locksmith arrives to rescue you.

At first, you both are just eating in silence, kind of still processing that this is how you have to spend the evening. Harry reaches over to get some more peas onto his plate and his cardigan rides up on his arm, your eyes falling to the several tattoos and before you could stop yourself, you speak up.

“How many tattoos do you have?”

His eyes flicker to you, then follow your gaze on his arm and he smiles softly. You can feel the heat crawling up your neck for a moment, his smile is so enchanting. He has to know the effect he has on females for sure.

“A lot. Don’t even remember the exact number if I’m being honest.”

“Really? Can I ask where else you have? I mean other than your arm.”

“Well, I have the most on this arm, then just one on the other. Some on my chest, my upper stomach, above my hips and a couple on my feet and leg,” he explains and your eyebrows raise at the amount. You figured he had quite a few, but it really sounds like a lot. You push down the urge to ask if you could see them, though your imagination is soaring right now, thinking about all the different inks splattered across his body.

“All planned or were some impulsive?”

“Most of them were random,” he chuckles shaking his head. “Do you have any?”

“I do,” you shyly smile, glancing down at the plate. “I have… well, I have one, but it consists of three parts.”

“Oh!” he breathes out and waits for you to elaborate.

“I have the sun, the moon and a few little stars on my back along my spine. It’s not big either, so you won in the tattoo game,” you chuckle.

“But I’m sure yours is way more sophisticated and planned out.”

“That I’m sure of,” you nod laughing and he joins you. “Would have never though you have so many under your suits,” you admit and his eyes jump up to you, a playful smirk tugging on his lips.

“Well, I didn’t think you had any under your pretty dresses, if I’m being honest.”

Now you are sure you are blushing hard, something in the way he said it making your hormones act up in a blink of an eye. Has he been thinking about what’s under your dress or did he just phrase it weirdly?

“What else is there you think is unlike me?” you find yourself asking and though Harry seems slightly surprised by the question, he leans back in his chair, looking at your intently, as if he is trying to read you like a book.

“I think that… the way you dress at work is far away from your real style,” he states, eyes glaring down at your current outfit that doesn’t give a lot away about your style. You were already in your pj’s when you decided to come into the office, so you just threw on a black t-shirt and a pair of boyfriend jeans. You can’t hide the smile that curls up your lips at his statement. “Am I right?”

“I guess you are.”

“So what are you like when you are not wearing your colorful blazers?”

You choose not to comment on how he noticed that you have a collection of blazers in basically all existing colors, so you always have something to put on with your dresses and pencil skirts at work.

“What do you think my style is like?” you challenge him tilting your head to the side. Pursing his lips he takes a few moments to think over his answer.

“I think it’s a lot of vintage jeans and shirts, oversized jumpers, tiny hoop earrings… maybe some turtlenecks, but the funky types, nothing serious. You seem like the type of person who likes to be cozy but also fashionable.”

“That was very specific,” you chuckle softly, but you are also impressed by how spot on his description was.

“Was I right?”

“Yeah,” you nod. “But add some loose maxi dresses. I love them too, especially with sneakers.”

“Fits the picture perfectly,” he smirks as you both continue your feast.

You have never been alone with Harry for this long and you feel like you cracked the code to stop feeling nervous around him. Yes, you are still quite anxious about doing or saying something stupid, but the more you talk, the easier you find it to be around him. He is great company, an amazing listener and an even better story teller. Once you start sharing tales about your childhood and teenage years, Harry opens up about what it was like growing up back in the UK and he tells you all about the little pranks he and his mates did through high school.

“You had such a baby face!” you beam when he shows you a picture of himself when he was just fifteen. He is definitely recognizable, but he was lacking that hint of manliness back then, a rounder face and smoother lines made him appear very youthful, while now he is definitely a charming, mature man.

“I know, worked hard to lose that,” he chuckles leaning onto his arms on the table. “Alright, now you have to show me one too,” he says locking his phone once you give it back to him. Chuckling you unlock your own phone, looking for a photo you could show him, though you don’t have many to choose from.

“This one was taken on my sixteenth birthday,” you comment sliding the phone over to him, a picture of you shown on the screen from your birthday where you are sitting on the couch, hugging the puppy your parents surprised you with as a gift. Back then you had longer hair and a bare face, free of any makeup since you didn’t start wearing any until you were eighteen. You had a few pimples and spots on your forehead, but overall it’s not a disastrous photo.

Harry takes his time examining the photo and you see his smile grow wider with each passing moment.

“What?” you question him.

“Nothing, it’s just that… If we knew each other back then I just know I would have crushed on you hard.”

Your lips part at his blunt answer, you were definitely not expecting him to say that and it’s making you feel some kind of way for sure.

The two of you pack up everything left from the food, cleaning up after yourselves and as Harry washes the plates you two used, you check the time, seeing that it’s only quarter to eleven, leaving plenty of time still until the locksmith arrives.

“It’s so damn quiet in here, I’m not used to hear… nothing,” you tell him as you follow him out of the kitchen. Harry turns to you with a sly smirk.

“Wanna have a private party? I know for a fact Jim has a Bluetooth speaker somewhere in his office.”

“I’m absolutely in,” you grin as the two of you head towards the corner office.

Harry was right, the Bluetooth speaker sits lonely on Jim’s desk and you don’t hesitate to borrow it for your entertainment in this absurd situation. He connects his phone and sets it down on a random desk outside where the cubbies are.

“Alright, what’s your song request?” he asks opening up Spotify.

“Guess what kind of music I listen to,” you challenge him arching an eyebrow and as his eyes meet yours, he smirks back confidently before he turns his attention back at the phone in his hand. You watch him scroll for a while before his finger stops on a song and after a moment of hesitation he taps on it at last.

“Don’t come at me if you don’t like it,” he warns as the song starts playing through the speaker and you immediately recognize it. I Feel It Coming by The Weeknd and Daft Punk flows through the empty office area and you can’t push down the smile that tugs on your lips. “Did I do good? You like it?” he asks with bright eyes.

“You did. I do like The Weeknd and it’s a fun song,” you nod and Harry throws a fist into the air in victory.

“Yes! Alright, you guess next,” he tells you handing you the phone and you need a moment to think about what he might like. A specific song pops into your mind and though you know you’re taking a risk with choosing it, but something is telling you he is the kind of guy who appreciates this kind of music. You patiently wait for your song to end before starting the one you chose for him.

You intently watch his reaction as Juice by Lizzo starts playing through the speaker and the moment you see the corners of his mouth curl up, you know you guessed right.

“It’s one of my guilty pleasures,” he admits, his head immediately bopping to the rhythm.

“No need to call it guilty pleasure. It’s a great song,” you tell him handing back his phone and with each passing moment his body gets into the rhythm more and more until he is full on dancing.

You let out a laugh, watching him sway and move around, enjoying the song and you can’t stop yourself from joining him. Jumping around, the two of you make the whole place your dance floor, moving around between the desks and cubbies, letting loose as the song fills the whole place.

“It ain’t my fault!” you hear Harry sing from across the room and you can’t hold back your laugh. Seeing how funny you find it, he makes his way towards you, swirling and moving his hops around. He is not a bad dancer, in fact, he is perfectly on beat with his movements, but he is definitely not a professional, though you find it quite adorable, while the way he doesn’t care to dance carefree is making him incredibly hot.

He dances around you, relentlessly singing the lyrics that he seems to know by heart. It’s quite the sight to see him like this, so unlike but still… very much like him. This version is even more attractive and you wish you could see him like this more often.

One song follows the other and the two of you absolutely let loose, putting on the show of your life, forgetting about everything else, it’s just the music, Harry and you. He shows you his favorite songs and you do the same, feeling a special connection through the process, because in a way, he is baring his true self to you through the music that’s closest to his heart and you are happy to be the person to see him like this.

“What’s a song that turns you into a rockstar?” Harry asks, panting a little from all the dancing you two have been doing in the past hour. You stop in motion thinking about what he just asked.

��A rockstar?”

“Yeah, you know, one that makes you sing and dance and perform like you are in the middle of your sold-out show at Wembley.”

You love his specific descriptions of feelings. Smiling to yourself you don’t have to think long about what song it is for you. After searching it you add to the queue and put the phone down to the nearest desk as you turn to Harry.

The starting beats of Plastic Hearts by Miley Cyrus start playing and you immediately feel the adrenaline rushing through your veins. You’re ready to completely change right in front of his eyes. Grabbing a chair you push him down to sit as you walk away from him, snatching an abandoned bottle of water from one of the desks, using it as your microphone before starting your performance. Hooking a finger into the elastic in your hair you pull it out and let your hair fall to your shoulders as you start singing along the song, sending him a seductive look over your shoulder.

“Hello, the sunny place for shady people, a crowded room where nobody goes…”

You know every line by heart and the fact that you’ve been listening to it on repeat the past few weeks just helps your case. You are able to put on quite the show for Harry.

Dancing around the desks, even hopping on one and lying down as you sing into your pretend microphone, you truly make yourself believe there are thousands of people watching your performance.

“I’ve been California dreaming, plastic hearts are bleeding!” you shout the chorus, completely letting loose, dancing towards Harry who is watching you in awe, lips parted, eyes bright as they follow your every move. “Keep me up all night! Keep me up all night!”

Right in front of Harry, you drop to your knees, whipping your head around, your hair flying with it before you straighten up and look straight into his eyes. Hunger fills his eyes, raw passion and you see how his knuckles are turning white as he is gripping the sides of the chair he is sitting in. You can’t push down the satisfied smirk that tugs on your lips.

He stays put as you live out your wildest rockstar dreams, turning the whole office into your stage. With a heaving chest and heavy pants, the song ends and nothing follows. Turning to face Harry you see that he turned the music off so no other song started after your performance. Now he is standing, eyes burning down on you and the tension is thicker than ever.

It’s about to happen, you feel it. He wants you just as much as you want him. Is he gonna act up about it? Will he finally break what’s been building up between the two of you?

All your questions get answered as soon as you see him leap towards you, your body starts moving at the same time and just when you are about to meet in the middle in the hottest kiss you’ve ever gotten, you jump back hearing your phone’s ringtone on a desk near you.

“Fucking—“ you hear him mumble under his breath as you rush over, seeing that the locksmith is calling.

“Hi!” you pant into the phone and immediately realize how ambiguous you must have sounded.

“Miss? I think I’m here. Can you come to the door in question?” you hear the man.

“Yeah! We’ll be down in a sec! It’s the front door.”

Ending the call you turn to see Harry standing behind you, his green eyes burning a hole into your head and you can tell he shares the same thoughts as you and though you’d love nothing more than to continue what was about to start, but you can’t make the locksmith wait.

“Come on, we are getting rescued,” you chuckle grabbing your stuff and Harry follows you downstairs.

The old man is standing with a bag of tools at the entrance, he sends you a small smile when he notices you.

“This one right here?” he asks through the glass and you nod. Harry stands beside you as the two of you watch him get down to work. Though the tension is still there, you can feel it radiating from the both of you, you still manage to hold yourself back.

It doesn’t take long for the man to get rid of the ruined lock and the door finally opens up, letting you and Harry out of your prison. He quickly fixes up a new one and gives you the keys. You already know Samantha won’t be happy about having to copy a new set of keys for everyone, but there was not much you could do.

You obviously pay a fortune for the guy for everything he did tonight, he surely was a hero. It’s way past midnight by the time you say goodbye to the man and watch him drive away, leaving you and Harry standing in the parking lot.

The sexual aspect of the tension between the two of you has definitely fallen back, but something is still there and you really don’t want to ignore what was about to happen before the locksmith called. Luckily, it seems like Harry thinks the exact same thing.

He runs two fingers over his lips, clearly trying to come up with something to say, and then he finally speaks up.

“Listen, about what happened in there—“

“Want to come over to mine?” you blurt out before you could stop yourself, clearly surprising him. Then you feel a wave of awkwardness about how blunt that was, so the urge to fix it a little takes over. “I-I mean you could come over to my place for the night if you want, and since you-you don’t have family here now, you could just come to my family tomorrow for lunch, it’s always so much fun, we play board games and stuff. B-But I get it if you don’t want to.”

Harry smiles widely at you, finding your word vomiting quite amusing and cute if he is being honest.

“You sure I wouldn’t disturb if I joined for lunch?”

“Of course not,” you smile warmly. You already know your nieces would be all over Harry if he came, wouldn’t even let him alone for a second for sure.

“Then… I would love to go. And… to your place as well,” he adds, a soft blush appearing on his cheeks.

“Okay, then follow me?” you chuckle nodding towards your and his car parking near to the other.

“Yeah,” he nods, smiling wide as you both head to your own cars. You have to bite into your bottom lip to stop the excited squeal when you unlock the doors. Right as you are about to open up the door on the driver’s side, someone grips your wrist and turns you back around. You gasp a little, but immediately melt into Harry’s arms when his lips press to yours, holding you tight in his embrace.

His lips taste like French salad dressing and mint after the feast you had earlier and the gum he chewed on afterwards. They fit so perfectly with yours, moving in sync as you let your hands wander over his upper arms and broad shoulders until they come to a halt at the base of his neck. He is such an amazing kisser and you just know that whatever happens between you and him after this, you’ll surely have a hard time looking at him at work and not think about how he tastes on your lips.

When he pulls away, he pecks your lips one more time before his arms fall from around you.

“Sorry,” he smiles nervously, even though he has no reason to be. “I just… had to do it before we leave.”

“Glad you did,” you smirk and kiss his soft lips one last time before sending him away to his own car. He shoots you one last charming smile before you both get into your cars and head straight to your place.

Thank you for reading, let me know what you thought about it!

#harry #styles #harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles au #harry styles fanfic #harry styles oneshot #harry styles one shot #harry styles x you #harry styles x reader #harry styles x y/n #fanficmas2020 #fanficmas 2020 #watchmegetobsessed fanficmas #watchmegetobsessed fanficmas 2020

499 notes · View notes