#but they didn’t show shit on the site and on twitter everyone is like ‘????????????? where is this???????????’ LOL

[akkivee]

i forgot to say!!!!!! tho i wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly where lol i got my assigned seat for day one!!! i’m somewhere in front reserved seats so i think my death is imminent lmao

[btskitten7]

My Cam Girl

Ship: Idol!Jungkook x Cam girl!Y/n

au/genre: sex cam worker au

rating: M

wc: 2.7k

Chapter warnings: Masturbation, mutual masturbation, sex talk. Vivid wet dreams. Breeding kink.

summary: The members have an odd obsession with you.

tagss: @shadowyjellyfishfest @baechugff @maunosorioh @shelylamc @princess-sunshyn @scuzmunkie @wanceu @coldcoffee2121 @maunosorioh @massivelyfullenthusiast

Jungkook wasn’t new to this type of thing. He had his fair share of experiences with cam girls and porn sites. He wasn’t addicted by any means, his schedule did not allow him the time to. But every once in a while, he would dibble and dab. 

Lately, his hyungs have been occupied. Their eyes were glued to their phone screens as if their lives depended on it. It took what felt like hours to regain their attention again. Jungkook wondered what had their attention so being the curious man he is, he asked. 

“Hyung,” Jungkook walked over to Hoseok and Namjoon occupied with whatever was placed on his screen. 

“Yeah?” they said in unison as they couldn’t even bother to look at him. 

“What are you looking at? You guys have been sitting here for almost an hour. We’re supposed to practice now. “ He asked. 

“We are looking at this cam girl Yoongi came across,” Namjoon said looking up at Jungkook briefly before looking back at Hoseok’s phone. 

“She’s so beautiful and adventurous. She’ll try anything for the right price” Hoseok said enjoying his piping hot noodles and showing his younger brothers a sexy picture of you. “She is one of the most beautiful women known to mankind. It’s a shame she’s in this type of business though. She’d probably make someone pleased.” Joon said, grabbing the phone and looking at your features.

“I was on Twitter and she popped on my timeline. I did some research and found her website” Yoongi said as he walked over, taking Hoseok’s phone from Joon to look at the photo. “Give it to me,” Jungkook asked. 

Jungkook was interested. You were beautiful. He was mesmerized by your body. Your curves were like no other. He wanted to check out your content. Yoongi handed Hoseok his phone back and sent Jungkook your socials. 

That night he spent a few hours just looking at your content. 

Of course, he watched some of your mature content but he also saw a few vlogs, and lifestyle like videos. 

He fell in love with your personality. 

You were sweet and bubbly. You enjoyed painting, cooking, and decorating. 

He enjoyed the vlogs a lot more than your spicy content, so he found himself looking at your vlogs more often. 

Jungkook noticed that much of your wholesome content didn’t have as much attention as your other content. It kind of made him sad. He thought back to what Namjoon said. 

You would make someone very happy. 

Physically, mentally, and sexually. 

~~~~~~~~

As the weeks went on, you became the topic of many discussions. Jungkook engaged with them but he also slowly became disgusted by the way they thought of you. 

The way HE thought of you. 

There was no question. You were amazing at what you did. 

Your sex appeal was out of this world. Even with your wholesome content, you still had Jungkook’s mind running wild. 

Whenever you posted or went live everyone darted to their room, where they stayed for hours at a time. 

And he was no better. 

He wanted to indulge but a part of him couldn’t. Most of the time he would just avoid it. 

But just like his hyungs, he was drawn in by you. 

You weren’t over the top or too animated. 

You didn’t make unnecessary noises or even say corny shit. 

You were able to pull your viewer in. At least you were able to pull Jungkook in. 

It felt really like he was truly the one in there with you. A few moments more of clicking around he heard a cute little chime.

The chime indicated that he had gotten a new message from you. His eyes widened and he clicked the icon that flashed the message. 

“Ah, that must be new” he mumbled to himself. 

He’s been on your website for a few weeks and has never noticed the message feature. 

“Welcome love, I’m (….) what’s your name or what would you like to be called?” He read. He frowned and looked at his pre-registered user.

“TheCockMaster3000” he questioned. He felt so embarrassed, that he quickly typed a response. 

“I didn’t come up with that name... I’m sorry” The three dots appeared letting him know you were responding. 

“I kinda figured sometimes the name generator generates horrible users” 

“But I mean if you want me to call you thecockmaster I have no issues ” you typed sarcastically.

 Jungkook chuckled to himself replying back

“no way, please don’t do that. Just call me JK” He said relaxing a little bit before hitting send.  

“JK? I like it. It’s mysterious, but I feel I’ve heard that before.” You responded. 

Jungkook’s body started to heat up. It was a big risk to his career if the wrong person found out who he was. He didn’t want to end up with a scandal. 

“You probably have, but trust me, I’m not him.”

“Okay! No biggie. Now JK, thank you for subscribing. I hope you enjoy ❤️” you said before getting up to finish getting ready. 

The way you go live is simple, you go live but you turn off all live comments, they can only respond and tip you anonymously. Only you know who’s saying what.

No judgment. No shaming. 

As you embraced the theme of tonight's ASMR vibe, you yearned to captivate your viewers with a touch of sensory play. You desired to be their canvas, a vessel for their imaginative needs. With a radiant smile, you turned on the camera, ready to embark on a sensory journey.

“Hello, my loves. How are you? It’s been awhile hasn’t it?” 

In a hushed whisper, you sent shivers down Jungkook's spine. Your voice was probably the most favoirte thing of Jungkook’s. You could tell him you hated him and wanted to take him out and he’d still fall in love with you.

“Tonight, we’re going to use our imagination. I’m going to help you imagine your personal, alone time with me, tonight you’re going to imagine me any way you want to. Is that alright?” 

Jungkook’s finger typed away a quick

response. “That’ll be great” he sent. Maybe that was too needy. He thought to himself but when you saw “TheCockMaster3000” you damn near busted out laughing. 

"Alright, I'd like you to gradually close your eyes and let go of any worries from today, yesterday, or tomorrow. In this moment, imagine that it's just you and me. You can share with me all the troubles you've encountered during the day as I gently and firmly rub your shoulders. My hands will move softly up and down your back, helping to relieve the stress and tension you've accumulated."

Jungkook’s eyes were closed and his mind slowly drifted away to that very moment. 

He began to feel hands, pressing against his shoulders, massaging them deeply. He groaned softly and looked behind him and there you were, as beautiful as can be. You were behind him in a gorgeous tub

Looking over a breathtaking view. His eyes were literally playing tricks on him but it was feeling amazing. He turned to you. “Is this real?” He asked looking over your features slowly, you giggled and sat on his lap slowly feeding him a strawberry that was dipped in Champagne

“As real as you want it to be” you slowly leaned down and kissed his pouted lips tasting the mixture of strawberries and liquor on his tongue. 

He deepened the kiss, no longer thinking that this was just a dream, he wrapped his arms around your waist slowly kissing down your neck.

Soft moans left your lips as you ran your fingers through his hair. He couldn’t contain himself, he allowed you to sink onto his member, letting out a strong deep groan. Your lips connected again as your hips rotated and bounced on him, causing the water to splash onto the floor. 

It all happened very fast but he accepted it fully. 

Jungkook’s breathing picked up as he now is imagining you fucking him the very first-time “meeting” you.

“F-fuck baby,” you said biting your bottom lip as he now thrust in your deeply between the sheets of the beautiful room he had imagined solely off of your words.

“F-Fuck b-baby, i-im g-gonna c-cum! Fuck-” He hisses laying his whole body onto yours and pushing his member upwards into your drippy core. “F-fuck then cum baby, cum in me, make me full love” you moaned softly in his ear. Exactly how you were talking to your viewers.

As soon as Kook felt himself about to cum he snapped himself out of his daydream and his eyes popped open, meeting yours. 

“Open your eyes, my love” 

You smiled brightly at the camera like you were waiting for him to wake up…

“How was it? Please I wanna know”

Kook slowly looked down at his now cum-stained shorts cursing himself, wondering how the hell you managed to get him like that, through a laptop…

~~~~~~~~~

For the next few weeks, Jungkook was still in shock. He could not believe you had him like that without being there. There’s no way. 

Sure he’s watched plenty of ‘videos’ before but he was never able to purely imagine something so vivid and real like that. 

Longing for a reprise, he yearns to delve even deeper into the realms of imagination evoked by your words. The desire to relive this experience consumes him.

“She’ll do anything for the right price” He repeated Hobi’s words to himself logging in and typing up a message to send you. 

“Um... hey, can I send in a request?” He asked hitting send, hoping he wasn’t overstepping. You felt your phone chime followed by a buzz. You quickly read the message. “Of course, what’s up?”

He felt a tad bit relaxed but still weird about it. “can you do what you did last week, tonight? I really enjoyed it. I hope I don’t sound like a crazy pervert..I’ll pay whatever you want ” he hit send tapping his fingers on the arms of his chair waiting for a response.

“I wasn’t planning on going live tonight sweetheart...but I’ll do it just for you since you’re new 💞” that made his heart drop, ‘duh she’s a real person of course she wouldn’t want to always be on live in a way she’s just like you, dumbass’ he thought quickly typing

 “fuck, no no no I’m so sorry, please don’t. I’m sorry I should have considered the fact that you may be tired or busy, either way I have no rights to demand your time. Whenever you would like to is fine with me” seeing that made you frown a little. 

“No sweetheart it’s okay, I have to provide the service you paid for💞🥺”

Now he felt worse, like he was being too demanding. “Idc, If you need time for yourself take it. I work crazy schedules too so a mental break is always needed. I can wait. Please rest. I can wait. I promise” he typed. 

That made your heart skip a beat. 

“Thank you... so much. You’re the only one that’s ever said that to me. Especially when making a request.. thank you 🥺” you replied. 

He felt bad but he didn’t want to force you to speak more on it. 

“Really? You need your rest.. you’re a real person that has real feelings and real problems if you need a break, we as your customers need to respect that. Your headspace is important” he typed back. You paused and smiled. 

You could cry right now. 

It’s a shame how the bare minimum makes you feel so validated but that’s what it’s like in this business. 

“Thank you.. thank you.. I really needed to hear that.” You paused and typed again. “How about, we do a private live? You can keep your camera off, I’ll just guide you just like last time.” 

You typed back. Kookies eyes widen as he ran to his door and closed it and came back. “Are you sure? Please don’t force yourself” he said. “No no no it’s okay, I’m just talking 💕” you smiled and hit send. 

He quick looked around his room to make sure everything was clean. Then he started messing with his hair. “Okay then... I’m ready” within minutes you had requested a private video chat. 

He took another quick look before answering the call. 

Your eyes widen at the beautiful human in front of you followed by a small chuckle. 

“Wow, Kookie, you’re adorable and you look very nice, I didn’t know we were dressing up. And for the record, you are exactly the JK I was thinking of.” you smiled softly adjusting yourself on your bed. You had your hair in a messy bun and a big black Tshirt on that fell off your shoulder revealing your soft skin. 

“I-I just...wow”

Jungkook was stuck at how beautiful you were, you had makeup on and a cute tight dress on last time, your hair was done and your lips was glossed. You were beautiful then but seeing you without makeup, hair in its natural wild state, 

You were absolutely gorgeous.

“U-uh yeah-” he cleared his throat “I’m sorry about that. I-I” 

“You don’t have to explain anything to me. I’m not here to judge you. I’m probably the last person that can cast judgment.” You snorted causing Jungkook to relax and chuckle. 

“How about we not judge each other?” He smiled and you nodded returning a smile of your own. 

“Deal” 

“Are you ready to begin?” You smiled lowering your voice cooing softly. The same tingling sensation came as you slowly started to directed him again. 

“Yes, pretty” Jungkook whispered sending that same tingling sensation throughout your body. 

You loved being called different pet names. Pretty was your all-time favorite.

“Jungkook, close your eyes and surrender to the present moment. Let go of all the worries that weigh upon your mind today, and don’t burden yourself with the uncertainties of tomorrow. I want you to immerse yourself completely in the sound of my voice and connect with your innermost desires. Is your mind clear and free, my love?” You whispered softly, watching as a sense of calm enveloped him.

Kook carefully opened his eyes to see where his mind has taken him today. 

In a beautiful modern palace everything was aesthetically pleasing to his eye. He wondered why he was here this time and why you weren’t, until The sound of splashing water and joyous giggles caught his attention.

Surrounded by aesthetics and beauty in the modern palace, he was taken back. You swam to the edge where he was and did a “come here” with your finger inviting him to join you in the water.. Disregarding his clothes, he eagerly moved towards you, embracing the refreshing embrace of the water.

Greeting him with open arms, you pulled him in and kissed him deeply. Jungkook wrapped his arms around your naked body and pulled you close to his now-naked body. 

The skin to skin contact drove him wild and it didn’t help that you were playing with his member underneath the water latching your lips underneath his jaw line.

Your hands went to work, touching every part of Jungkook that was available to you, you stroked his shaft, massaged his thighs and balls, listening to how him calling out to you, 

“P-pretty…please.” he moaned wanting to gain control but couldn’t, the hold you had over him was insane. 

No woman has ever had this strong of a hold over Jungkook. He was always in control. This was a unique change. 

And he liked it. 

“What is it baby, you want me to stop?” You purred in his ear listening to his moans and groans. 

“Fuck. Let me fuck you, I want to fuck you please” he begged, which shocked him, cause he never does that. 

Never.

The water slapped against your pussy as he had you bent over the wall of the pool, sending deep and long strokes to your core. Your moans were getting loud and so was his. “FUCK, baby faster faster” you moaned clenching around his hardened member. 

Feeling that familiar feeling

Jungkook eyes shot open, taken back at how you were getting off to him groaning and stroking his member. “Don’t stop baby, you can finish. It’s okay honey” you said looking into his red face... 

“I-I gotta go. T-thank you, pretty,” he said hanging up before you could even reply.

[reticent-fate]

✅ What does the fandom usually get right?

[Ask game]

Heit answering this one, since I’m in front lmao. So, the fun part about being an introject from [redacted] is that... basically no one makes any content for that source, let alone for the character I’m an introject of lmao. So technically there’s not much there for me to say the fandom did or didn’t get wrong.

Doesn’t mean we haven’t had a weird event happen related to headcanons existing in the fandom space, though.

(This got long so I’ll put it under a cut. Brief mention of source death and loose discussion of shipping, but nothing outright negative or explicit.)

Specifically, we had a really funny thing happen a few months ago when we decided to look through what the tumblr side of things has to say about my source. Surprisingly, there are like two people that ship my source with another character. This is not normally a difficult thing for our system in this fandom considering how dead this fandom is most days of the year. So we took like two seconds to glance over what was in the tags and saw shipping of all the damn things njksdnfjksd---

It was content though and we are absolutely the “person shaped thing feeding strange quadruped” meme when it comes to content, so we at least rolled that rock over to see what interesting bugs were hiding under it.

My cohost jokingly said “and watch, we’re going to introject him,” while everyone else in front at the time just kept repeating nonstop “[name], where is that bastard?” (/ref to a game quote).

Fucking.

Two days-ish later.

You know how it is. The beleaguered (/s) pk;m new. The new guy almost exclusively seems to take amusement and joy in holding that shipping headcanon like a dodgeball and throwing it full force into my face. (I kid, actually, he’s not that interested in annoying the hell out of me, but he did essentially show up like a container for that idea and nothing more.)

I live in hell because of the fandom /j

So it’s a little more complicated than something the fandom gets right, but it certainly influenced the shape of our system. It fits right with how I experience my source too, so even if I meme on it I can’t really complain lmao.

Since that incident though, we’ve taken to glancing over what people say about both my source and that other character, and apparently it is way more popular than I thought it would be in certain parts of the fandom to go “and these two totally have some weird chemistry going on.” That makes sense based on what the writing in the game says, though--- my source was up to some stupid villain shit, and [character b] is loyal to the point where the fandom can’t figure out if he’s dead or not after the chaos of everything that happened. That’s not hard to read into, especially when in the English translation, the way [character b] speaks about my source is in such a reverential way. He literally attacks anyone who shows a pint of betrayal towards the cause. That’s shipping bait right there, from what I know about fandom.

Because the fandom is so small though, we also look at the search results for other language groups of it, so actually seeing what people hypothesize about the sparse (and often poorly written) details that the game gives us is just fascinating in and of itself.

The ship, for example, is a lot more popular in English-speaking spheres of the fandom (which is a really large net that I can cast considering one of the Discord servers I’m in for this game has like thousands of folks in it, so I would be a poor observant not to mention that).

I haven’t come across as many people saying that there’s merit to this ship in Korean and Japanese spheres of the fandom (at least on Twitter; my searching is limited by what sites people post on and what sites are public). To my recollection I can think of one person in the Korean-speaking fandom sphere (on Twitter, again) that has at least hinted at the consideration that there is something weird going on in the source’s writing. The Japanese-speaking fandom sphere, meanwhile... Idk I don’t ever find much from that end of things lmao. They’re chilling, ig.

All that said, does this count as the fandom “getting something right?” I’m inclined to say this is one of those “yes and no” kinds of things, because while I’m not going to go into what our brain registers as my exomemories, I will say that there’s the interesting experience of knowing that external headcanons have affected the layout of my system because of my relationship to my source. Nothing distressing, I do want to stress, but really fucking hilarious in one hand imo.

However, it’s kind of led me to explore my exomemories a lot more. I think it’s a common enough fictive experience to write those down, to externalize these things in hopes they stop pestering you quite so badly. A lot of our system’s writing is about this series, and I exist both as my source and as a representative of what my source means to my system: a container, of sorts, of parts of our special interests, while also having a difficult-to-define relationship to that source.

I love this stupid fucking game so much /g

-Heit

[storiesforallfandoms]

stop disrespecting my partner ~  pete davidson

word count: 1897

request?: yes!

“Can you write a genderfluid fic she/they where Pete Davidson and his friends comfort the reader after the media constantly misgenders them? Also can you have it end with Pete and the reader going back home and cuddling.”

description: it’s not hard to respect someone’s pronouns, but it seems like the media has a hard time doing it for his partner, which greatly pisses him off

pairing: pete davidson x genderfluid!reader

warnings: swearing, misgendering

masterlist (one, two)

It’s not that hard to respect someone’s pronouns and gender. It’s not hard to fact check before you publish an article, just to make sure you’re using the right pronouns and not disrespecting someone. A quick Google search, it would take all of maybe ten minutes.

But I guess whoever writes these tabloid articles don’t have the time for a quick Google search, no matter how many times I’ve publicly stated that my pronouns are she/they and that I’m genderfluid.

The first time it happened was after Pete and I were spotted out together for the first time. A paparazzi saw us out on a date and took some pictures, which ended up all over the Internet mere seconds later. The original site that posted them had titled their article, “Pete Davidson spotted with new girlfriend! Check out their adorable breakfast date here!”. Somehow, within that short amount of time, the website had been able to find out my name and spread it throughout the article alongside words such as “she”, “her”, and “girlfriend”.

Pete and I weren’t upset. We figured we’d be going public about our relationship soon enough. I took to my Twitter, which had blown up since the pictures and articles were posted, to share one of the articles and added, “Just a heads up for future journalists, I’m genderfluid and go by she/they. Pete refers to me as his “partner”, not girlfriend. Flattered by the sudden popularity though :)”.

I figured that would set things straight. Of course I didn’t care when people called me “she” or “her”, but I did want to encourage anyone and everyone to also call me “they” and “them”, and preferred to correct the title Pete used for me.

Fast forward a few months and another article was published about Pete and I. This one was after Pete had mentioned me in his most recent interview, where he (in the words of the article’s author) gushed about our relationship and how happy he was to be with me. I would’ve been excited for the article, maybe I would’ve even felt a little excited and fuzzy, if it wasn’t for the headline.

“Pete Davidson gushes about girlfriend, (Y/N), during his appearance on The Late Show”.

The word stared back at me, yet another challenge by another ignorant journalist.

“Girlfriend”.

It was funny cause the quote they used in the article from Pete directly referred to me as “my partner”, and even the host of the talk show had referred to me as such. It was just an intentional misgendering for no reason, just like the rest of the articles written about us.

It was becoming hard to ever go online. Every time something was posted about me, I’d have to see yet another post that included me being misgendered, which just fueled the fire of those who liked to hate on me just because I was dating Pete. It was getting to be mentally draining and I really just didn’t want to deal with it anymore.

Acting on impulse after seeing that article, I deleted all my social media accounts without a second thought. I threw my phone onto the bed next to me and decided to get lost in a new series on Netflix in order to keep my mind off of everything.

I was three episodes deep when my phone rang. I was so invested that I didn’t even look at my caller ID as I answered. “Hello?”

“Hey,” came Pete’s voice.

I smiled to myself and paused the show. “Hey babe. How’s it going?”

“Oh you know, same shit, different day. Got another talk show tonight.”

“Guess I’m staying up all night to watch it again.”

He chuckled. “Listen, it’s probably not a big deal or anything, but why did you delete your social media?”

I cringed to myself. I was hoping he wouldn’t notice since he wasn’t on social media either, but someone must’ve told him. Or it was all over the celebrity news already that I had deleted my accounts.

“I figured I’d distance myself from social media for a while. For my mental health,” I explained. “The same way you did.”

“For the same reason I did?”

I sighed and ran my hands through my hair. “Maybe.”

“Honey, you don’t have to tell me, but you do know I’m here for you no matter what, right?”

“I know you are.” I laid back on the couch and sighed again, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I’m just tired of seeing people misgender me. The tabloids do it all the time whenever they write about me, and it’s just encouraging people who don’t like me to purposely do it knowing I’ll see it. I’m just over it. I want to get as far away from that shit as I possibly can.”

Pete was quiet for a minute. I wished I could be with him to see what his reaction was. I knew he was very protective over me, especially on this topic, but I didn’t want him getting too upset on my behalf. This was my shit, I should be the one to deal with it.

“I’m sorry you have to deal with that,” he finally said.

“You don’t have to be sorry. It’s not your fault. People are just ignorant and shitty. There’s not much I can do besides ignoring it, which is why I deleted social media.”

There was a voice on the other end before Pete said, “Sorry babe, I gotta go get ready for the interview. Are you gonna watch?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course I’ll watch.”

“You’re right, I shouldn’t have even asked.” I could hear the smile on his face and couldn’t help but smile back. “I love you. Call you tomorrow.”

“I love you, too.”

~~~~~~

I was half asleep when the alarm I set to remind me about Pete’s interview went off, startling me back to consciousness. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and switched to the channel that was playing the talk show. Pete wouldn’t be on it for a while, so I took this as my opportunity to get a glass of water and a snack while the intro stuff played.

When he finally came out, he was all smiles and waving to the cheering audience. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt with a blazer over it; classic Pete fashion, but he still looked adorable none the less.

He sat down across from the host, who thanked him for being on the show.

“Thanks for having me, man,” Pete responded.

They went on to talk about Pete’s newest project, showing a clip from the movie before going on to talk about it for a while. He talked about SNL and how he was excited to get back to working on that, even though he was equally as excited to be working on his own solo projects. The crowd cheered when he teased a potential new stand up special, which was totally in the works but he couldn’t talk about it yet.

“I won’t spend half the set joking about my ex-fiancée this time,” he joked. “I’m actually in a happy, long lasting relationship.”

“Good for you, man. You seem really happy with (Y/N),” the host said.

“I am,” Pete said with a wide smile. The smile slowly fell, however, as he added, “But I’m not too happy with the people who write about them, or us.”

The host’s eyebrows furrowed together. “What do you mean?”

Pete sighed and shifted in his seat. “Well you see, before I came out here, it was brought to my attention that an article was written about me from the last late night show I was on when I talked about (Y/N), and the author of that article decided to misgender (Y/N), and to seemingly use the wrong terminology about them on purpose.”

I had my glass of water half raised to my lips and froze at the mention of me. I put my glass down and moved to sit at the very edge of my seat, my eyes glued to the screen as if I were watching the most important thing in my entire life.

“I’ve talked about it before, and they have too on their Twitter, but (Y/N) is genderfluid,” Pete explained. “Usually goes by she/they pronouns, which means that when talking about them you can use “she” and “her”, but sometimes they prefer “they” and “them”, which is what I usually call them. And they prefer the term “partner” over “girlfriend”, so I call them my partner.”

“Yeah, makes sense,” the host said, gesturing for Pete to continue.

“In the time that the two of us have been together, every time there’s an article written or paparazzi photos taken, they misgender (Y/N). They use she/her pronouns and they constantly call her my girlfriend, despite the times both of us have spoken out about it. And now it’s gotten so bad that (Y/N) deleted their social media accounts today because it was getting to them mentally. So, I just wanna say, here on national TV, that anyone who thinks it’s okay to purposely misgender my partner and not respect their wishes is disrespectful as hell and an absolute asshole, and I hope you lose your jobs because if you can’t even respect someone’s pronouns you don’t deserve to have a writing job.”

The crowd started cheering for Pete as the host clapped as well and told him his speech was incredible. I zoned out the rest of the interview as I just thought about what Pete had said. I was so shocked I didn’t even notice that they had moved on from his segment into something else.

I grabbed my phone and dialed Pete’s number. It rang a few times before he answered with a groggy, “Hello?”

“Oh shit,” I said. “I forgot about time differences, did I wake you?”

“No,” he said. “Well, you did, but it’s not late here or anything. I was just feeling tired so I decided to try and nap. What’s up? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I just...I was just watching your interview.”

“Oh.” He sounded more awake now. “Are you...you’re not upset with me, right?”

“Oh my God, no! Of course not! What you said in that interview was honestly the most amazing thing anyone has done for me.”

He chuckled a little. “It can’t have been that amazing.”

“You’d be surprised. Not everyone I’ve dated has been as understanding with my gender identity as you are. Most the people I’ve been with would prefer to call me she/her and call me their girlfriend even if I wasn’t comfortable with that, and others just didn’t really understand all that much.”

“See, that’s just shitty. You don’t deserve people like that in your life.”

“I know,” I said, a small smile tugging at the corners of my lips. “They’re not in my life anymore. You are.”

I could hear his smile as he responded, “That’s true, and I’m forever grateful that you’re mine.”

“Come home soon, will you? I really miss you. The bed is too empty when I’m alone.”

“I promise I’ll be home as soon as possible.”

“I love you, you know.”

“I know, and I love you too.”

[itscominghome]

Hey bestie , I love what you write . Can you do one with mason , where they are dating and she gets negative comments and like she feels very bad but didn’t tell him . At the end he finds out and he takes her defens .💕💕

thank you for your request :) sorry it took so long x

Summary: Since you and Mason made your relationship public three months ago, you have received negative and abusive messages from fans. But when everything takes a drastic turn, Mason is there to protect you and takes to social media afterwards to shut down all the abuse and threats.

Warnings: Derogatory language

I'll Always Protect You

"Mason deserves better"

"Slut"

"You're not even that pretty"

"What does Mount see in you"

"I wish he'd just hurry up and break up with you"

"Lets be honest, you wouldn't look twice at him if he wasn't who he was"

"You're just with him for the money"

"I know where you live"

"Break up with him, we know where you live"

These were just some of the many Instagram messages I would receive daily. Some were just calling me names or making me out to be a gold-digger and the sorts. But those on the worse end of the spectrum, those threatening me made me feel sick in the stomach. They had started just over three months ago after Mason and I had gone public with our relationship and they hadn't stopped, only gotten worse. I hadn't told Mason about any of them, I mean surely all of the threats were empty, just a series of words strung together to try and scare me. But part of me was scared that if Mason saw them, he'd start to believe them himself.

"What you looking at, baby," Mason asks from beside me on the bed, sounding concerned. I realised that there must've been a shift in my emotions and immediately plastered a smile onto my face.

"Nothing, Mase," I reply, my voice unsteady. I hate lying to him.

"Tell me you're not reading one of those stupid articles about us again," he says, looking at me, a look of sadness on his face. On top of the private messages I had been receiving, there were a few articles online from gossip sites and even big newspaper companies slating our relationship. Of course, Mason knew about those, there was no way to keep them quiet.

"I don't care what they say, I love you," he would affirm every time he saw one or caught me reading one.

Mason had stayed over at my house last night, not yet moved in with each other, but today wasn't one of the days we could have a lazy day. A day spent cuddling up to each other in bed, doing nothing but watch films, or catch up on the latest episode of 'Married at Frist Sight', which Mason would repeatedly remind me he hated (he loved it really). But, unfortunately, Mason did have training on my day off. I felt him press a kiss to the top of my head before the bed dipped beneath me as he started getting ready.

"I'll come and pick you up later and we can go out for a meal or something," he promised as he opened the door thirty minutes later, pecking my lips lightly.

"Sounds good," I smile, "I love you,"

"I love you too," he says before closing the door and making his way to his car.

Tap. Tap. I looked up from the TV to look around for the source of the tapping noise. I noticed it almost straight away and my heart skipped a beat. There was someone outside my window, tapping on the glass, wearing a black balaclava. I froze in my seat, my hands shaking. He continued tapping for a few more seconds before moving to another window and continuing. Then he moved to the door, jiggling the handle in an attempt to open it. At this point, I start to panic, even more, rushing around looking for my phone.

"Where is it..? Where the fuck did I leave it..?" I whisper to myself as I rush upstairs, extremely distressed. I find it on my bedside table in my room and immediately dial Mason. Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring ring.

"Come on, pick up, pick up, Mase." Ring ring. Ring r-.

"Baby, you can't be missing me that much already, I've only been gone for ten minutes," he jokes light-heartedly.

"Mase..." I say, unable to form a coherent sentence.

"Baby, what's wrong? What's happening? Talk to me," he says, concern evident in his voice.

"Someone's outside, they... they were at the window... tapping it. And... And then they... they started trying to open the door. I can hear them shouting through the letterbox and hitting the door. Mase, I don't know what to do," I say, tears streaking down my face.

"Shit... I'm turning around right now, I'll be back as quick as I can, lock yourself in the bathroom or something, just in case they get in. Stay on the phone," I nod, trying to steady my breathing. On my way to the bathroom across the hall, I can hear the abusive muffled shouts. I pray to God that Mason can't hear what is being said through the phone.

I hear Mason's car pull up in the driveway and his car door slam shut. I unlock the bathroom door and race downstairs where I can see him attempting to confront my perpetrator before he runs away. I open the door, tears of terror still staining my cheeks. Mason sees me and runs over, pulling me into a hug

"Hey, hey it's okay, they're gone, I'm here now. I've got you," he comforts, taking me back into the house and sitting me down to calm me down.

"I didn't think they were being serious..." I say under my breath.

"Baby, what are you on about?" I try my best to play it off as nothing, but Mason won't listen.

"It was just a few messages, it doesn't matter,"

"Show me them," I reluctantly pass him my unlocked phone and he scrolls through my message requests.

"Why didn't you tell me..." he says with a frown, clearly upset that I had not confided in him.

"I thought that if you saw them, you'd start to believe what everyone was saying,"

"Oh, baby..." he whispers, pulling me into his chest, "Nothing anyone says will ever change how I feel about you. Go and get yourself a bag packed and you can come to training with me,"

"It has recently come to light the amount of hate, abuse and downright threats have been hurled at my girlfriend, Y/N. And to tell you the truth, I'm disgusted. So, I've come to Instagram to address it.

I was unaware of how much abuse had been projected onto her until earlier today when I read some of the messages she has been receiving on both Instagram and Twitter. Most accounts claimed to be Chelsea fans, but as I'm sure all of my teammates would agree, to verbally abuse one of our partners, someone that I LOVE, does not qualify you as a Chelsea fan.

I had obviously seen all of the news articles, those I could look past, but the threats became very real today. I am sure that those of you who messaged threats like "We know where you live, break up with him," were all just empty words. But today, I had to drive back to Y/N's house after leaving for training after receiving a phone call from her, telling me that someone was tormenting her in her own home. If this happens again, it WILL become a matter that will need to be treated more seriously.

Finally, I would like to say that no online abuse of anyone should be tolerated. People in the public eye have feelings too, they are human too. It is never okay to attack someone for loving who they love. I know that this message will not stomp out all of the abuse, but I hope that the majority of you are mature enough to take what I have said into account and will consider what you say before you send it.

M19" I read aloud to myself when I see that Mason has posted. I feel a pair of arms snake their way around my waist, pulling me closer into his body. Mason.

"Thank you for protecting me today,"

"I'll always protect you,"

Sorry I'm taking ages to write requests, I have been so busy with coursework and homework as of late. That, and posting about 30 things about the match today. So, sorry for the spam, but I hope you enjoyed this request! <33

[blurglesmurfklaine]

What picture are people on Twitter getting mad at Darren for??

this is beneath the cut because it got really long (sorry) and there are also trigger warnings for mentions of police brutality.

I honestly couldn’t find it if I tried because I deleted Twitter a while ago, and wouldn’t know how to Google it, but it’s basically a picture of him pretending to having sex with one of his friends who looks like he may or may not be sleeping? I saw the picture once, and I honestly couldn't tell, but it looked like he could be awake??? and Twitter is losing its fucking mind calling him a “rapist” and shit like that and demanding he apologize for a picture he didn’t even post! (His friend posted it)

Is it his most tasteful picture? No, but from what I understand it’s like seven years old and also clearly a joke??

I have a lot of qualms with cancel culture (it’s the reason Jenna Marbles left YouTube so I’m mad about that lol) but the biggest thing is that on Twitter, it never seems to be about actually educating people for the better, or a real pursuit of social justice. It’s always this race to be the most visibly “holier than thou” “politically correct” (which, if you ask me, sometimes goes so far left they make a circle and come around back to the right. Looking at you, misogynists who want to police what content (queer) women can and cannot consume). Their political justice pursuits never seem to be based on actually caring. And if it is, it’s just for attention.

For example, Darren recently apologized for a tweet some (and I will also say, most of the people demanding the apology were not black.) thought was racist or racially insensitive. When he replied to one of the loudest voices on Twitter who called for an apology, the person running the account subsequently tweeted shit like “omg he knows I’m alive” and talked about being in their “Darren notice” era.

Something similar happened yesterday and days before, when Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all charges for the murder of George Floyd. (Which even then, people would say things like “I’m so glad he was convicted” and assholes would reply: “so you’re glad a black man died?”)

Darren tweeted: “✊🏼”

That’s it, that’s the fucking tweet. And then people started demanding he delete it, and the other half demanding he apologize for it and calling him a “white supremacist”. (Which pisses me off even more because... Despite the fact that. He’s not fucking entirely white?? BUT I DIGRESS!!!)

Apparently, a white fist in the air is a symbol of white supremacy, and people were tweeting shit like “I’m so disappointed in you” “how can you stan him after something like this?” “I’m so disgusted” blah blah fucking blah.

First off, if you don’t know enough about Darren to know that he’s not a fucking white supremacist? God I don’t even know how to finish that lmao.

Second, if your breaking point is a god damn emoji, you need to get the fuck off the internet. Whenever I use the fist in the air emoji to show my solidarity for the BLM movement, I don’t use a black fist. Because I’m not fucking black. I use this one: ✊🏽 because I’m mexican. I’m brown (okay so I’m a little less brown since quarantine but give me a day in the sun and the melanin will come back my dudes). Darren is not black, he’s tan, so he used a tan fist to show his solidarity and I think the reaction from glee Twitter was honestly gross and disgusting and awful because guess what: you are taking attention away from the fact that Derek Chauvin, the murderer of a black man, was convicted, AND that a black child was murdered by the police, to yell at a Filipino-Irish man that he’s a white supremacist.

(I beleive he deleted the tweet and then people were calling him a coward for not owning up to it. so he truly cannot win lmao)

That’s where the fucking picture comes in. I could be wrong, because I only get bits and pieces from a group chat I’m in and I’m not actually on the site anymore, but after the emoji tweet is when the picture was dug up. A years old picture that he didn’t even post, just to incite more hate and pretentiousness and senseless polarization???

If you're so "dissapointed" and "disgusted" in him, then fucking leave. Go. Don't stan someone whose morals you so vocally don't agree with. You no NOT have to be a fan of someone who supposedly causes you so much distress.

I also never thought of it before a friend I met this summer pointed it out, but why do we act like celebrities have to be held to a higher moral standard than everyone else? Why are they not allowed to make mistakes, and learn and grow like the rest of us? Because they act or sing??? Lord knows I was ignorant as fuck in 2011 and it fucking SHOWS in my old posts and shit. The only difference is that I didn't have thousands of people watching my every move.

Like fuck. No wonder he never goes on social media anymore. I wouldn't either. i can't imagine how fucking overwhelming and anxiety inducing that is. Let him fucking breathe.

It’s stupid. It’s all stupid. I actually felt like I was having my brain fried on that app. No thank you, I’ll leave it to slow cook like a roast in crock pot here on tumblr thank you very much.

TL;DR: Twitter is up in arms about an old picture of Darren pretending to have sex with his friend and I don’t trust anything Twitter says anymore because everything on there is for clout.

[anarcho-smarmyism]

How would prison abolition deal with murderers, serial killers, paedophiles, torturers,kkk members,neo-Nazis and terrorists? Some people are a legit danger and cannot be allowed to roam society.

So I didn’t answer this at the time, because the anon who sent it is almost definitely the racist troll sending me shit I’m not going to publish (so like uhhh bear that in mind lmao), but I’ve blocked them now and it’s been a few days, so hopefully they’ve fucked off by now. Plus, I’ve been thinking about this question a LOT since before I received it. It’s a question that I think most people have about the concept of prison abolition and reparative justice, and not everyone with these concerns is asking in bad faith. Besides which, with the recent attempted coup and the way it looks like people who participated are actually going to face legal consequences for it (which alone was somewhat surprising to me tbh), I’ve been seeing a lot of leftists discoursing over whether it’s morally okay and intellectually consistent to be happy about cops beating up, killing, and arresting KKK members and Neo-Nazis, so it is now actually topical! Under the cut due to long response~

So the first thing I want to point out, is that literally every single one of the groups of “legit dangers who cannot be allowed to roam society”, are already out there right now. In our current “justice” system, it’s common knowledge that monsters often get off on a technicality, or because they just have the money to throw lawyer after lawyer at the charges, or because they outright bribe someone, or countless other ways to get around the law. You can look on my own literal tumblr blog and watch me argue with grown ass adults who will bold faced admit to consuming child porn with half-assed excuses, and you’ll find more open pedophiles on sites like twitter, reddit, or 4chan, or porn sites where “teen” is usually one of the most popular categories. Besides which, have you ever looked at the average sentences for convicted rapists, wife beaters, or pedophiles, as compared with the sentences for getting caught selling drugs? In middle school I had to walk a mile or two to get to school through a neighborhood we’d been warned had a convicted pedophile in it, who had just been released after less than 15 years. In that same city, I heard a story about a woman shooting and killing her rapist, and prosecutors were discussing giving her the death penalty for it (she was bragging and laughing about it on video, it was definitely premeditated, but still). Have you ever looked at the statistics of how many rapists and abusers aren’t reported, or if they are reported aren’t prosecuted, or if they are are prosecuted with a slap on the wrist (remember Brock Turner????) Also I notice how you didn’t even mention domestic abusers or rapists in your list of people who need to be locked up lolololol shows where your priorities vis a vis “public safety are I’m sorry, but the system just does not work the way you think it does, the we are taught it does.

People who make this argument always act like the systems we have now are efficient and nigh on flawless when it comes to “not letting dangerous people roam society”, but it isn’t and it can’t be and it never will be. That very fact ought to be enough to shake your faith in the idea that society will become a nonstop Purge of indiscriminate violence if everyone who’s committed a sufficiently despicable act of violence isn’t locked up for the rest of their lives -but you might say, “okay, but those are flukes, the system still works because most of the people who are “a danger to society” are usually locked up.” I’m not completely sold that that’s even true (have you ever heard of the opportunities cops had to bring in serial killers and murderers, who just didn’t care enough to try? Jeffrey Dahmer is a good example of this), but I’ll assume it is to move on to my next point.

Even if we assumed that the system as we have it, worked flawlessly as designed, that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of the categories mentioned here are people that are actively running the very systems that this rhetoric is defending. It’s well-documented that American white supremacists of various stripes have infiltrated law enforcement and the military for the express purpose of not just “roaming free”, but getting to exert the power of the State over people of color. Cops and soldiers kill people all the time, and not only are they not penalized, they’re celebrated for it. Agents of the State fucking torture people all the time, and I don’t just mean Guantanamo Bay or war crimes by soldiers; cops have been caught on camera spraying protesters with pepper spray and beating them once they’ve already been handcuffed or while they’re chained to trees or whatever -not because they think they “need” to, because they want to, and they know they’ll get away with it. Cops also systematically torture people in prison with solitary confinement. Heads of state drop bombs on civilians for “politically motivated reasons”, they do all kinds of shit that would be called “terrorism” if anybody but a State did it; and people might disapprove, but they don’t (generally) claim that the politicians and generals who made that call are “a danger to society” that need to get life in prison. If you genuinely believe that whether these acts of violence are “legal” or not changes whether they’re okay, or that a person who engages in illegal violence is “dangerous” but people who engage in legal violence aren’t... I’m honestly not even going to try to refute that here lol, prison abolition is level 5 shit and you’re at level -1, study how authoritarianism in general works before trying to understand prison abolition (not trying to be a dick here, it’s what i would tell my younger self when I believed the same thing). 

It simply does not hold up to rational scrutiny to believe that society will collapse into an orgy of violence and mayhem if we abolish prison (or that we’ll have to resort to medieval punishments instead??? lol funny take i remember from some racist troll or other over the years), when those dangers are already present (and in some cases widely celebrated as “heroes” and given the power to indiscriminately brutalize “acceptable targets” with the State’s monopoly on violence) under the current system.

The next thing people need to understand is that contrary to popular belief and despite how counterintuitive it sounds, even the brutality of our current prison system is not an effective deterrent to crime (linked a Guardian article that looks like it has some good info on this, but I recommend a book called Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice by Adam Benforado for more information). Let me say that again: the threat of prison has been empirically shown to be INEFFECTIVE as a deterrent to crime. Do you really think that a serial killer or someone who wants to blow up a building full of people is going to be more likely to follow the law for fear of prison, than regular people doing regular people crimes like selling drugs or getting into drunk fights that go too far? 

I don’t think anyone is actually willing to argue that prison “rehabilitates” anyone, or does anything besides make regular criminals into angrier, more antisocial, more desperate criminals with more criminal connections and less options for any kind of a legitimate living, so I’m just going to point out that having such a large prison population arguably creates more people who have shitty lives of poverty and are surrounded by people who are in and out of prison. It’s not like that “makes” anybody into a serial killer, but I feel like you’d have to willfully ignorant to act like it’s not a factor in increasing violent crime in affected community.

So, I’ve so far argued that prison is an ineffective solution to the problems it claims to exist in order to solve, and that in many cases, it actually makes the problems that lead to these sorts of dangerous people (”regular” murderers and the radicalization of Neo-Nazis and KKK members in particular, I think) becoming dangerous, or at least more dangerous, in the first place. What I haven’t done, is talk about what I believe is the real core of the issue when it comes to prison abolition: nobody wants to fucking peacefully rehabilitate these people. I am arguing for a system that would handle these people basically as gently as possible, with the goal of releasing them back into society eventually, and I still believe these things mostly intellectually, not emotionally. I don’t want the men who sexually assaulted me and/or my loved ones to get off scot free (they did, of course, but that’s beside the point), much less serial killers or Nazis, and I’m not about to get on my high horse about wanting revenge on people who’ve committed these kinds of atrocities. The reason I’m a prison abolitionist in spite of these feelings is that I do not believe the desire for revenge, for punishment for punishment’s own sake, is an impulse we should indulge when creating social and political infrastructures that have ultimate power over millions of lives. In the words of someone talking about abolishing the death penalty, the question isn’t “do they deserve to die”, the question is “do we deserve to kill”; and here, the question is not “does anyone deserve to be imprisoned in this system”, the question is “do we deserve to brutalize people in this way for virtually zero practical benefits to our society”. What any person “deserves” is a subjective moral and philosophical question, one that no conceivable human justice system could ever actually answer. We as a society need to build alternatives to prison (and police!) that can actually address these problems, actually prevent the conditions that create and enable monsters, and actually rehabilitate (to whatever extent that is possible) criminals -even the ones we, personally, despise. Any long-term incarceration that may end up being 100% required should be designed to reduce the suffering of the person in it, no matter how despicable of a person they are. Trying to solve “the problem of evil” instead of trying to create a more functional and just society is a fool’s errand that can only lead to more evil existing, in the end.

At the end of the day, the “irredeemable” people you listed off as justifications for the continuing existence of prison, are only a tiny fraction of the people in prison, even the ones with life sentences. A full understanding of the horror and oppression the prison industrial complex enacts on the people in it and their communities (and how the system is designed to make a profit off of human suffering and death) is something you’ll have to read some actual books about in order to acquire. However, I don’t think it’s controversial to say that any horror we as a society deem “acceptable” to do to the worst of the worst, will also be done to regular criminals, as well as to innocent people who are wrongly imprisoned. Any brutality you design with a serial killer in mind WILL eventually be a punishment for a petty thief or drug dealer or sex worker, or a person who didn’t commit the crime they were incarcerated for. Is it really worth it? Is it really, really worth all the misery and oppression prison causes, to satiate our sense of justice? I don’t believe that it is. I believe that we have a responsibility both to the incarcerated and to their communities to base our policies and institutions on actually solving these societal problems however we can, and leaving our “eye for an eye” mentality in the dark ages where it belongs.

If you are interested in prison abolition as a concept, I can recommend some good books on it. You also need to understand that concept of “reparative justice”, which I’ve alluded to here but not really explained because OH MY GOD THIS POST IS TOO LONG ALREADY. Short explanation of it is that it aims to repair the harm done by the crime and rehabilitate the criminal through through therapy and trying to get them to actually understand what they’ve done and empathize with who they’ve hurt, while also providing therapy and resources to the victim of the crime (when it’s something violent and the reparation can’t just be “give them their money back plus extra for damages” or something). The point is not to satiate anybody’s sense of justice or revenge, but to proactively try to solve the problem the crime has caused and prevent the offender from doing it again. It would need to work in conjunction with the abolition of police (and replacement with better infrastructure for the few things cops do that we actually need done) and various other social programs and measures to prevent the circumstances that lead to crime. This sounds like a long shot because it is, but just because it hasn’t been done on a wide scale before doesn’t mean it can’t be, and just because it will be difficult doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.

[mittensmorgul]

I wanted to thank you for your response to the anon. Your phrase, "NOBODY should be made to feel like shit when engaging with something that is supposed to be fun." resonated with me in a way that "don't feel guilty about unfollowing" never did. I'm not seeing drama, but 80% of my dash is fandoms that I have no interest in. Thank you for the push I needed!

Oh gosh! Well I'm glad I could be helpful in any way! :D

I do have to confess that I follow a few people who I haven't shared fandoms with in years, but most of them don't even post on here all that often so it's more like occasionally seeing an old friend and having a wave across the street at them before going our separate ways again for a few months, and not a daily deluge of content I just have to J key my way through.

It's hard unfollowing people you like, but that you've just grown away from as far as the content you're each here for. Maybe someday you'll find them again, find you have fandoms in common again, and will happily reunite to share your mutual love of something new! But until then, most of us have a limited amount of time to engage with our hobbies and interests, and I'd rather spend it on the content I'm personally interested in than in feeling frustrated that everything I actually had time to scroll through was about fandoms I know almost nothing about.

I expected a lot of people who focused mainly on spn to begin drifting into other fandoms when the series ended. And that's happened, to an extent. I've seen more Untamed stuff on my dash (I keep meaning to watch that lol), Marvel stuff with the new Loki show on, etc. But Supernatural apparently will not give us peace, either. :'D

I'd been hoping we would all have an evergreen ending to the main story of Supernatural to rest on, and a relatively chill post-canon fandom to explore and have fun with. People still create for the original Star Trek series, you know? That fandom is still alive (partly due to the additional franchises in the series, partly just because of the fandom elders there that refused to let it die). I think Supernatural will eventually settle into something like that, but even with 16 years of fandom, we're barely getting our driver's licenses here as a fandom, too, compared to ST :'D

In the meantime, like everyone else, it was cathartic to vent after the finale we did get, but even with last night's drama and what it potentially holds in store for ongoing future drama, I'd hope that folks remember that nobody's experience of this site is the same as anyone else's, and it doesn't have to be all drama or stuff you're not really interested in.

I had this same experience during the last few years, when the term "doomscrolling" was coined to define the experience of looking at twitter. I realized I would spend five minutes looking at my dash (I don't even really do much fandom over there... my TL is mostly authors and publishing professionals), and my jaw would be clenched and I'd just want to start yelling. I culled a lot of the political stuff from my feed, because honestly I did not need to get my news from social media, where I was supposed to be spending that five minutes forgetting the world was on fire. Sometimes *literally* on fire. I didn't want to be angry ~all of the time~ and I was losing my personal outlets for actually trying to feel happy about anything at all.

The same is even more true of tumblr. This is supposed to be fun. Some people use this site for news or PSA's or the like, but the counterpoint is that if this *is* your escape from the horror of the "real world," then by all means actually make it function that way! It's not ALL drama ALL the time, unless you curate your dash to be that!

(well, except on nights like last night... it's impossible to escape that sort of drama without logging off for a day or two :'D)

But I'm happy you're finding more happiness on your own dash! :)

[thejudgingtrash]

would you class percy as a morally grey character? i’m really interested to hear your input

Anon 2: Would u class percy as an Morally Gray character?

Hey there! Let me write that essay for you about morally gray Percy ^^

It’s not about whether Percy is a morally gray character or not, it’s about he has to be otherwise the story doesn’t make any sense. At least for me it wouldn’t.

Ashley (@gr33kg0ds) said in the tags of my dark!Percy post something along the line of people diminishing Percy’s character because they need him to be pure and fluffy and I wholeheartedly agree with that!

Just because Percy’s twelve doesn’t mean he’s pure and didn’t do unproblematic things. I’ll mostly refer to The Lightning Thief because that book is the Magnus Opus for Riordan and perfectly stands for Percy as a morally gray character from the very beginning of the saga. (Also the only book I’ve recently re-read)

As much as I love fanon with all the amazing artworks, debates, memes and jokes, analysis, cool edits and wonderful fanfics, projecting your version of Percy doesn’t make the image in your head real. Percy in canon is not the fun and fluffy boy you imagine him to be or which social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, Instagram and yes, also Tumblr) tend to make him to be. He’s a scrawny little sarcastic twerp that was the unpopular kid. He isn’t that cringy dude Tony Lopez doing that fucking weird TikTok dance (side note: I don’t even know who this person is and I don't care, I saw the video and immediately wanted to delete every social media app on my phone, so thanks Tony?), kissing his Yeezys goodnight, vibing to our lord and gay icon Taylord “T. Swizzle” Swift song and flexing them iPhone 11 Max Pros. Percy literally said that going to Burger King with his mother once in a while would be considered a luxury. He’s a poor bastard in literal sense.

Part of the problem with the distinction of Percy’s character and his motives stem from the fact that Percy is a sneaky unreliable narrator and we as the audience (especially if you’re younger) don’t question most of his behavior if you even question some (pretty sure that most of us only picked up weird stuff as adults). Everything seems plausible to you. But does it mean that his behavior is necessarily good? Something that would paint his character as good?

Like I’ve said, let’s take a look at TLT. The very beginning of everything and the wonderful line that gets quoted everywhere: “Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood”. 

The very first line that quoted everywhere or used as in moodboard and edits but its meaning and significance get brushed off for the most part. It immediately sets the tone and the atmosphere for the book and for Percy as a character. A(n in my opinion) morally gray character. The very first thing we hear from Percy is that he doesn’t want to be in this world. He’s an involuntary participant who has been (upon further reading) blackmailed and forced into this world and is only cooperating to get his mother back and said in regards to his father (who also stands for the Greek pantheon) ”well yeah, would be nice to know about my dad but I’ve survived without him the past twelve years so I don’t know, he wouldn’t be missed necessarily I guess?“ That pretty much tells you, it foreshadows, that we will be dealing with someone with grit, someone that fights back, someone that went through shit, someone that isn’t a goody two-shoed character. Does it mean he’s a terrible (in the sense of evil or bad) character from the get go? Not really, but it tells you in nuances that he won’t be the white shining knight you might expect from a fairy tale.

There is so much that little Perseus Jackson has to offer you directly in the first book. So much that paints him as a morally gray character. From the illegal candy stash all the way to tricking Procrustes into his own trap. He knows right from wrong and isn’t innocent by any means. He wants you to think he’s innocent. Yes, he hunts monsters and the book also tells you that some adults (Gabe) can also be monsters, but Percy’s personality is so interesting and full of facets which I love! He’s misleading you on purpose. Deflects, plays events down. He lies in front of you to others but you don’t really doubt it. Instead of questioning it, you understand it.

What distinguishes Percy from other male protagonists in that notion that the author doesn’t try to paint him as particularly good (the reader connects the dots, in reality) is pretty much that. Percy is neither inherently good or bad. He’s in the middle. He does lots of questionable things and his personality adds to it. Something that immediately comes to my mind is his lack of fear of consequences. He thinks in the short term and not in the long term. Of course, he’s caring about those that are close and important to him (Grover, Annabeth and his mother of course. And well. The world not getting destroyed by his weird father and fucking crazy uncle would be a plus). But Percy isn’t really a strategist (yet). Look at the Medusa head thingy. Annabeth and Grover warn him, that he’s gonna get his ass beat and he doesn’t care. That these gods could squish him in the end didn’t matter to him.

The Olympian gods are painted as these unpenetrable huge mighty force and some fuzzy annoyed twelve year old dipshit sends them the severed head of a monster - but not any monster, the monster his father had a role in creating (well, Athena for the most part, but you know what I mean). (Also, I know this kinda reckless behavior gets sorta rewarded but at first, everyone was like ‘NO, NO, NO!’ before Percy was glorious with his attempt). Percy essentially tells these ancient forces that drive the way of his new cosmos how shit‘s gonna work from now on.

Percy isn’t fear riddled and doesn’t think about the possible outcome. He manipulates, he lies, he persuades and all of this as soon as he hits twelve. But probably earlier. Pretty sure he had to become a believable lier in order to trick (survive being around) Gabe. Perseus is angry, he’s agitated. Had Riordan written Percy as a soft spoken, frightened, goody two-shoed kid, almost nothing in TLT and the follow-ups would have made sense. He’s the outcast, but slowly blossoms into the strength and muscles of the group. Of the entire camp. Someone that outsmarts opponents and wins battles. But he didn’t do that by playing nice and being a bootlicker.

TLT would’ve been a perfect standalone book that would have emphasized that Percy is an involuntary person sive) if you skip Kronos, leave a little bit foreshadowing with the prophecy out, tweak the talks with the gods and Annabeth’s first meeting and skip Luke and the scorpion at the end. The ending would’ve been “and so Percy had a first awesome summer vacation and found a group of friends for life” or so (aka PJO movie 1 in less shitty and more cohesive).

The morally gray character shrinks a little bit in the SOM because there lie straighter dangers ahead which dive more into the bigger picture and Percy grows more into the character who takes care of friends and but he does come back with TTC, and definitely BOTL and the St. Helens explosion.

Consequences of Percy’s interactions had people partially dying. There is doubt, there is guilt. But the show must go on. There are battles that have to be won. There is no big giving up, no big overturn for the bad guys.

Also... isn’t it interesting that we start with Percy saying ”look, I don’t want to be in this world“ in TLT and it ends with TLO where he says ”for once I didn’t look back“? The full circle? The way that accepting his fate took five books? To change Percy from being an involuntary participant to becoming voluntary? He didn’t want to be a half-blood, he didn’t want to be the kid in the prophecy, but he actively chose to be in the end. He went from a darker shade of gray to a mayhaps lighter, if you want to say so.

To conclude, I repeat myself again: it’s not about whether Percy is a morally gray character or not, it’s that he has to be.

Thanks for asking me about some meta stuff I really do like diving into these things here and there. Tumblr’s sorta glitchy, I do get notifications but I really don’t see asks, so I’m sorry if my response is mad late ^^

[wannaliveattheholidayinn]

Alright, now that I've been given a few hours to stew and think and cry and have several breakdowns over the cancellation,,, let's talk about how I found this show, my relationship to it, and why I love this show

Anyone who's interacted with me in this fandom, be it over tumblr or in the discord know I started watching because my dance teacher was an extra in the Help! scene (bc I never shut the fuck up about it). But it did start a little earlier.

I had seen a few ads, on NBC and on YouTube. I thought it looked interesting, but I was in sophomore year, having breakdowns just about every other day, the homework was hard, and there were also reports of the virus. At the time it seemed so far away, but I had a feeling it would arrive soon. So it didn't seem like something I could add to my plate. I thought it would simply become another Good Girls to me (aka a show I really wanted to watch, and still kinda do, but I never really got around to it.) So, watching it kind of fell to the back of my mind. And then... that fateful day.

It was a big deal when the teacher would put on the TV in the main studio. It didn't happen often, and when it did, it always had to do with dance in some way. But my teacher was on YouTube and googling Zoey's. We sat down, I even grabbed my glasses so I could see what we were watching. We picked up at the ladies singing "Whatta Man" which the owner of my studio was howling at. I'm lucky enough that two of my teachers have been involved in Smuin Ballet in San Francisco, one still currently in the company (although she just had a baby and... y'know professional dance is hard in the pandemic.) I'm also lucky enough to have met another former Smuin dancer who was also an extra in the Help! scene. So, my teacher pointed himself and the other former Smuin dancer out, funnily enough, they were similarly dressed. So, the scene ended and we went on with our class. I went home and put on the first episode.

And then... well we all know what happened next. The US went into lockdown, and there wasn't much to do.

And yeah, I had school. I went into the two five pm history classes I had, I still had homework,,, but other than those two history classes and the occasion english class there was nothing... dance had stopped, homework, class, and the workload changed. Suddenly, I was left with a lot of free time. So, continued to watch Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist. For a while, it was Killing Eve and Zoey's Playlist, but then that went away, and it was just Zoey.

(also, yes, I'm aware this isn't linear and in chronological order, but give me a break, my memory is already shit and this pandemic just made it worse.)

In April, I wrote my first fanfiction for the show. It was this small, little piece of fluff that showed a future Zimon and their four kids (four kids, Jesus Christ, what was I onnnnnn). It's already outdated bc of my use of Eddie and not Perry but I still hold it very dear to my heart. It was posted on ao3 on Jun 13, 2020, and was my first fanfic on the site. I've posted more since then, but it's still overwhelmingly zep there, and I currently have two ongoing fanfics. My goal is to become that person in the zep fandom who is known for her works where people perceive Zimon's relationship, in a funny but wrong way (and when I say people, I (mostly) mean Tobin.)

I love Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist. It's made me laugh, made me cry, made me sing along with it, and made me actually fully enter a fandom. I've considered myself in fandom long before Zoey's, but Zoey's actually had me interacting with others. It's technically not my first fandom. I'd say that was Mighty Med, all the way back in sixth grade. But it's the first where I've actively interacted with others and even made an acquaintance (Isabella ily 💗).

Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist had moments that made it hard for me to love it the way I do. There have been some bad writing decisions. I personally don't ship cl*arkeman, even though it's clear they are endgame.

But, I still love it. It was a coping mechanism in a hard time, and I love that it helped me. And I know it helped others as well.

I know not everyone is going to understand my comparison to Cloak and Dagger. They are vastly different shows. But the cancellation... that's what gets me the most about both. They were both canceled in a way where the fandom was going to feel like crap. Both were canceled after two seasons when they had more story to tell. It was done quietly, and there was backlash. Different programs eyed them. The difference is we don't know how this one will end yet. Cloak and Dagger was canceled, and I'll never be the same. I'll never truly be over it. And while I know I'm not in the right headspace to process this cancellation, I think I may be able to find a way. It'll be really, really fucking hard. But I'm slowly getting there with Anne with an E, and I think I could with Zoey's. It was an incredible show while it lasted, and if it's its time to go... I'm glad for the time I had with it and will help keep it going along with others in the fandom. All that being said...

Save Zoey's Playlist

Start petitions (ig, idrk how change.org works), keep it trending on Twitter, let NBC know it made a mistake, and let other streaming services know we're interested in seeing the show go on. It deserves a clean resolution that's not a cliffhanger. Just let these characters be happy in the end.

This doesn't have to be another Cloak and Dagger, or Timeless, or whatever show anyone has felt never got a proper chance to tell its story and end in a satisfying way. It can be another Brooklyn Nine-Nine, or Lucifer, or Friday Night Lights (me, side-eyeing NBC for that one). This doesn't have to be the end. And maybe I'm too late to writing this, maybe it's not trending anymore and it won't trend again, and it won't get picked up. But at least we can say we tried.

This was long as fuck to write, and I could've put that time towards... idk homework ig, or writing the fanfiction I just started, or any of my ongoing two. But it felt it necessary to write this. I don't know why, maybe I just needed to get this shit off my chest. If no one in the fandom reads this... eh, I really can't blame you, it's long as all fuck.

If you did, and you got this far, I love you, I love this fandom, I don't regret my time here, and I hope you don't either. It means the world to me that you read this.

I love you all, and I'll shut up now 💖💗💖💗

[retrievablememories]

a strange love | yuta (m)

title: a strange love pairing: alien!yuta x black!reader genre: sci-fi/fantasy, fluff, angst, smut request: “I read a good chunk of your NCT work and really liked them. Would I be able to request a fic where a black female reader meets an alien (can be Yuta or Jungwoo) and they're both coming to terms that they're attracted to each other and have to come to terms with being attracted to someone of a different species? Can be smutty and don't be afraid to give the alien a less human biology if you don't mind.” word count: 13.1k warnings: alcohol use, cursing, near drowning experience, lots of mentions of water so this one might not mesh well with people w/ aquaphobia, non-human biology/body horror, extraterrestrial sex, lots of cum, oral sex (female receiving), tentacle dick, unprotected sex, creampie, please heed the warnings because this is an alien smutfic lmao a/n: giving the shape of water teas. i’ve actually never seen that movie 😕 but i will at some point. forgive me in advance for the nerdy references in here.

It’s funny how things happen when you least expect it. You never would’ve thought you’d be sound asleep when your entire world changed.

The night the UFO crashes in your city, you’re awoken by the tremors of its landing. The vibrations feel akin to an earthquake, and they make picture frames and other trinkets fall off your shelves and hit the floor in a clatter of noise. You jump up from your pillow at the racket, your heart pounding. You glance at the things lying on your floor and quickly register that the room—your entire home—is trembling.

There’s not much you can do at this point but ride it out, so you huddle down in your covers and hope the roof doesn’t cave in on your head. To your knowledge, your particular area isn’t known for earthquakes, which makes all of this even stranger. What could be causing one now? Is the world finally ending?

Eventually, the tremors stop. By now, your shelves have been emptied of nearly all their contents, but you’re still alive, which you’re grateful for. You wait a few more minutes to see if the shakes will begin again, but they don’t, so you climb out from the warmth of your covers to clean up your floor.

Police and ambulance sirens start blaring through the city not long after you get out of bed. That’s nothing unusual; there are usually injuries and casualties with natural disasters like these, and you expect many poor souls will be needing rescue tonight. You sigh and look at your closed blinds, watching them be sporadically illuminated by the lights of the emergency vehicles rushing past.

Once you’ve cleaned up your room and gotten back in bed, you think about checking social media for what people have been saying about the quake. There’s no doubt that the city’s residents have taken to Twitter and Instagram to document it. However, your eyelids are already starting to droop, and you’d probably fall asleep in the middle of scrolling, so you decide to tuck in and wait until morning.

Waking up the next day almost seems like a normal Sunday until you look at your blinds again and are suddenly reminded of last night’s flashing lights. Right. The earthquake. Throwing the covers back, you stumble out of bed to turn on your TV. You flip through the channels until you find a news station for your local area. You go to open the blinds, keeping your ears open for reports on the earthquake.

“Last night, we experienced unprecedented seismic activity throughout the majority of the city, caused by what appears to be an unidentified flying object, otherwise known as a UFO—”

Huh?

You turn to the TV, thinking this must be some kind of ridiculous hoax. You get ready to reach for the remote, thinking you must have turned it to one of those parody news channels by accident, but you freeze at what you see. Video footage of the city center—or what used to be the city center—plays on the screen. In place of the large historical monument that used to stand there, there’s a huge...silver and black spaceship. Or at least you think it’s a ship. It apparently sustained major damage in the landing, and now it looks more like a hunk of melted metal. The area around it has been blasted clear in every direction. Instead of green grass and pavement, there’s nothing but dirt.

The area is blocked off with yellow tape, though hundreds of people have gathered at the location to check out the object and take pictures and videos of it.

“What the fuck…” you whisper to yourself.

“We’re currently unsure where this UFO originated from, though we can confirm that it is not affiliated with any aircraft fleets owned by the U.S. military. Researchers and scientists from top universities across the country are being called in to assist in identifying this craft…”

“There’s no just way,” you mutter, grabbing your shower cap and pulling clothes out of your closet for your morning shower. “A UFO...guess that alien invasion is coming sooner than we thought.” You would like to believe it’s all just someone playing a terrible prank, but pulling off this level of theatrics is impossible.

After you get out of the shower and start making breakfast for yourself, you get a text from one of your coworkers, Alex.

10:30 A.M. Alex🍸 You seeing this shit on the news right now?

10:31 A.M. Obviously! It’s fucking wild. Do you really think it’s true? OR some elaborate government hoax? Anything’s possible. I’m betting “true,” but...

10:33 A.M. Alex🍸 I honestly don’t know. that’s why me and some of the others from work are about to head over there now. Wanna come?

10:34 A.M. The hell! I’ll pass. There could be all types of radiation n shit, I’m not tryna turn into the Green Lantern or the Hulk or somebody.

10:35 A.M. Alex🍸 lmFAO. Suit ypurself. If I gain superpowers don’t be surprised if I fly over to your house today.

10:35 A.M. You’re a mess. 💀

You spend breakfast watching more news reports and scrolling through Twitter feeds for firsthand information. People who visited the site, including your coworkers, have uploaded pictures of the UFO from various angles, inciting a frenzy of conspiracy theories and warnings that the world is about to end.

You don’t know what to make of the situation, but it stays on your mind throughout the day as you leave the house and go about completing your usual errands. The city center has been blocked off to all vehicles other than those belonging to people who’ve been called in to help, which means that traffic is sky-high everywhere else—even for a Sunday.

Sitting in a mishmash of cars, you roll down your window and sigh, looking out at the red traffic lights, and beyond that to the horizon. Things are about to get very weird for the next few weeks. Maybe months. You can only hope you’re prepared for it.

You don’t know why, but the air seems strange tonight.

It’s been 2 days since the UFO crashed. There haven’t been many more answers apart from what everyone already knows due to the ship’s destroyed state. The city has professionals out for that sort of thing, but they’re taking their sweet time analyzing the ship—though you can’t really blame them. Jumping straight into unknown alien tech seems like a death wish.

Your life has been pretty much the same as usual, though you know a few people at work who have been more directly affected by the events. One girl, Sooyoung, who lives in the neighborhood near the crash site claims the officials are thinking about having that entire area evacuate, though you don’t know why they’re beating around the bush about it if it’s true. Whatever radiation or chemicals they’re worried about has probably already leached into all the surrounding homes, and now you’re just waiting for someone to walk into your workplace with antlers or purple skin.

Admittedly, you’re morbidly curious about the case and what all of this could mean for Earth’s future, but you keep your fascination lowkey. You don’t need any of your coworkers thinking you’re the next alien-obsessed Mulder from X-Files. But then again, you’re not curious enough to visit the actual scene, so maybe you’re not the crazy one here.

You feel fine when you get home from work that day, but as you get washed up and settle into your usual evening routine, you can’t shake the eeriness gripping your subconscious. It’s not necessarily a bad feeling, either, just...foreign. Like an emotion you’ve never felt before, though you didn’t know there were even still new emotions to discover. Shaking your head, you figure maybe you should lay off the alien stuff for the rest of the week.

Before you head to bed that night, you go around the house making sure all the doors and windows are locked as you normally do. You pause at the backdoor for a reason you can’t explain, and the strange feeling grows stronger. At this point, you’re a bit frightened about what this is all about, but you can’t go to sleep without knowing. Curiosity takes over as you open the blinds and stare into the darkness of your backyard.

You don’t see anything right away. There are trees, bushes, your potted plants, and lawn chairs...everything looks normal. It’s only when you lean closer to the glass to squint that you see a figure lying in the grass. You jump once you catch sight of it, terrified that some monster or murderer has found their way onto your property. There was nothing there earlier when you closed the blinds, so whoever or whatever it is must’ve recently showed up.

You’re about ready to dial 911 when you realize the figure is curled in the fetal position and unmoving...almost like they’re unconscious. Or dead.

This is ridiculous. You feel like one of those people who always dies first in the horror movies because they went into the room the killer was obviously hiding in, but you’re overcome with the strong impulse to step outside. You grip the doorknob tightly, debating whether you should unlock it or not.

“...Fuck. Don’t let me regret this.”

You open the door with your phone in hand, the device serving as your flashlight. There’s still the screen door to get through, which you pause at for a moment. The figure remains unmoving even with the sound of the door opening.

“Hello?!” You call out to the individual, but there’s no response. Your phone’s light can’t reach them from there, which forces you to open the screen door and step out onto the porch. They’re still feet away, but from this closer distance, it seems like they’re wearing a sort of armor or full-body suit...maybe like a cosplay?

“Hope this isn’t some weirdo weeb passed out on my lawn…” you mutter, cautiously stepping onto the grass. As you approach, you can see now that the figure is likely male, though their back is to you so you can’t be totally sure. “Um, hello there? Can you hear me?” No response.

By now, you are only a few feet away from them. The person looks to be an Asian guy, with long blonde hair haloing his face. His features are angular and smooth, and he is indeed wearing some kind of body armor, its color unlike anything you’ve seen. Instead of being all one hue or even a few, it reflects the light from your phone and glows with a rainbow-like phosphorescence. The material itself looks translucent, but you can’t see through it; it creates a mind-bending optical illusion.

Your stomach suddenly drops to your feet. Is this who was in that UFO in the city center? It seems too out-there to be true, but your intuition is telling you otherwise. This can’t be fucking real.

You kneel on the wet grass next to the man and try to look for signs of life. You can hear his breathing, so he’s thankfully not dead. But he doesn’t look to be in good shape, either. He definitely won’t be able to get up on his own; he probably used the last of his energy to drag himself into your yard.

“Damn.” You turn the flashlight off and slip your phone into your sweatpants pocket. It seems like there’s no other options right now. You could call the police, but they’d probably accuse you of being in cahoots with this weird dude and drag you off to jail. Or they could cart him off for government experimentation, which sounds equally terrible. So with those things in mind, you gently maneuver his upper body until you’re able to hook your arms under his armpits and drag him towards your house.

You just really hope none of your nosy neighbors are seeing this right now.

He’s surprisingly light, and you get him inside the house fairly quickly. Once you’ve locked the door again, you pull him over to the living room so he’s propped against your couch. He still isn’t fully conscious, but his head and lips move as if he’s dreaming about something.

“What was that…?” You lean closer, trying to read his lips for some sort of clue. Surprisingly, you can make out the word water, which he mouths over and over again. “Water…” You run into the kitchen to pour a glass and bring it back to him, making sure not to spill any on the way over.

You press it to his lips, unsure if he’ll be able to drink, but to your amazement his muscles respond and he drinks quickly as you tip the glass. Soon, the water is all gone. You set the glass to the side with your palms sweating and watch as his face flutters even more. 

“Can you...hear me?”

His eyes open only slightly. This movement seems to cause him some pain, though you aren’t sure why. Maybe he has a headache since he was dehydrated? You scramble to turn the overhead light off, not wanting to make matters worse. He still doesn’t try to open his eyes any wider, though.

“Who are you? Were you...did you crash here?” You feel a little bad about asking so many questions, but you’re dying for answers as to what the hell is going on.

The man licks his lips, and his mouth parts like he’s going to answer. But his throat is still dry, and it hurts to talk.

“...Shit.” You get him another glass of water and let him drink until it’s gone again. He seems a little better after that.

“Th-this...” He clears his throat a couple times and tries again. “This is E-Earth, right?”

Now you’re the one lost for words. Although you already figured he couldn’t be from here, hearing it out loud makes your blood rush and your heart race. “Um, yes...this is Earth. Was...the UFO yours?”

He sighs, and his head falls back against the couch arm. “Yes.”

“It’s destroyed,” you say, and then feel silly about it. “But you already know that.” 

He doesn’t answer that. He just slowly glances around your living room instead, looking as if he’s never seen a stranger setup. The quietness is awkward, and you almost feel like he must be judging your taste for interior design. “Do you have a name?”

More silence. You decide he probably won’t answer until he finally says, “You can call me Yuta.”

“Yuta.” You tell him your name too, and he just nods, almost imperceptibly. He doesn’t say much without prompting, which makes it hard for you to know how to approach the situation. You don’t want to overwhelm him with questions, but it doesn’t look like he’s going to speak unless you do. “How did you end up here? I mean, in my—uh, my yard?”

Yuta shakes his head and then winces. “I crashed, and then...I just ran. The ship was melting. I just ran. I hid...I went from place to place, hiding. Don’t know how I got here.”

You wonder how he made it all the way from the city center to your home without being spotted, especially with that armor. You can only conclude that he must be stealth at hiding. Or maybe someone did spot him and the feds are about to bust down your door any minute. You take a shaky breath and try to push that anxious thought to the back of your mind.

Suddenly Yuta fixes you with a suspicious glare. “Will you reveal that I’m here?”

You try not to get offended, because you’d honestly be thinking the same if you were a newly-landed alien in a foreign land. “No. I don’t have any reason to do that. I just want to help. I’m not looking to be on anyone’s 6 o’clock news or cheap tabloid. You probably don’t believe me, but you can have my word for it...if that means anything to you.”

He’s quiet again, though you can tell he’s still skeptical.

“Um, do you need anything? More water?”

He sits up straighter at the mention of that. “Water.” You reach for the glass again, but he frowns. “Not that. I need…something more than that.” He looks around again, but when he doesn't see what he’s searching for, he attempts to stand only to slump down again.

“Slow down there, I don’t think you’re gonna make it like that. Can I help?”

You end up slinging his arm across your shoulder and letting him lean his body against you while you lead him to the bathroom. That’s the biggest source of water in the house, and you assume he must be wanting a bath or shower or something. Even aliens have their hygiene needs, you guess.

You turn the bathroom light on and have Yuta sit on the toilet lid as you turn the bathtub faucet. “Is...this what you meant?” He nods, and you put the plug in and let the tub fill up.

“Just water. Nothing else. I need to recharge,” he says, and before you can ask what he means by that, he starts undressing in front of you. 

At first, your reaction is delayed; you’re struck with surprise when you realize the armor isn’t actually a whole bodysuit, but more like...connected panels of material that can be taken off. You don’t understand the material at all, it doesn’t resemble anything on Earth you can think of—but of course, it’s alien tech. It conforms to his body as he’s wearing it but takes on a more rigid form once it’s peeled off, like actual armor.

Then, he gets ready to take the bottoms off and something finally clicks in your brain that oh my God he’s about to get naked in front of me.

“Whoa!” You spin around and cover your eyes for good measure, glad that your brown skin hides the way your face is burning right now. You step towards the open door. “Uh, I’ll just leave, sorry—”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Um, what?”

“Doesn’t really matter to me,” Yuta says, pulling the last of his suit off. He steps into the tub and sits down in it, putting his hands underneath the stream of water rushing out of the faucet. The skin on his hands seems to ripple, like it’s readjusting itself, and the hairs stand up on the back of your neck at that. You forget to be embarrassed at his unclothed state as you watch it happen.

“What’s going on with that? And why did you need the water?”

Yuta splashes his face before answering, and he turns to look at you, the droplets of water sliding off the ends of his hair. “I’m part of a Water Race. Water is my home. Our bodies have adapted to be built for living in water, and it’s dangerous to be without it for too long.”

“Adaptation? But you look like a regular human.”

“It’s just a skin.”

“A skin?” You echo in horror, a sudden flashback to Silence of the Lambs popping into your mind. “Someone else’s skin?” 

Yuta gives you a look that seems to say he can’t believe you’re asking such a stupid question. “No, it’s my skin. It’s just not my natural form.” To prove his point, he holds his hand out, and right before your eyes his human skin pulls back and morphs into something much more scaly and green. His fingers are actually more like talons, with long black nails on the ends, and there’s translucent webbing between each one.

You gasp and step back, trying to catch your breath at the sight of something so very not human. The skin reforms around his hand—you assume he has to be willing it with his mind somehow, because he doesn’t even move—and his digits look just as human as ever.

“How the hell do you hide your nails under there? Isn’t it just like...wearing a bodysuit?”

Yuta shakes his head. “No. Once the skin is on, it becomes...part of me. My hand becomes a human hand. I’m not hiding anything, it just is. It’s hard to explain.”

“Have you been to Earth before? Is that why you have a human skin, because...adaptation or some shit? This is all so wild.”

“I can shift into different skins if I want, if I gather enough genetic information on certain species’ inhabitants...but there are limitations.” That doesn’t exactly answer your question, but you figure maybe it’s best if you didn’t know. You can at least assume he’s been in contact with humans before.

“I see…” You fidget for a few seconds before speaking what’s on your mind. “Okay, one last thing...you said there are limitations. Does that mean you can’t transform into, like...a dung beetle or something?”

Yuta gives you another are you serious look and you put your hands up. “Just wondering. It was worth a try.”

You feel awkward just standing there, and you feel like maybe you should give him some privacy even if he doesn’t care much, so you leave the bathroom to find something for him to wear.

You’re not sure if you’ll find anything that fits him, so you end up settling on a light pink bathrobe and decide he’ll have to work with that for now. You slip back into the bathroom to leave it on the sink, averting your eyes from his nude form in your bathtub. “Um, here’s something to wear...not sure if anything else will fit, this is all I have for now. Sorry.” You don’t wait for him to respond— he probably won’t anyway—before slipping back out.

It’s nearing 1 A.M. at this point, which is late considering you still have work tomorrow. You sigh and curl yourself up on the couch, hoping you won’t have to stay up for very much longer.

You’re not sure when you drifted off or how long you were out, but you wake up to the sound of footsteps and see Yuta coming out of the bathroom wearing the robe you’ve given him. You have to laugh a little at the sight of him in the light pink material, though you think it suits him in a way.

“Yeah, you’re gonna need some clothes.”

Yuta raises his eyebrow. “I still have my suit.”

“Yeah, but...don’t you want something else to wear? Your ship is pretty much gone, so you’ll probably be on Earth for a while...and if you don’t want anyone realizing you’re not from here, you’ll have to wear regular clothes.”

Yuta visibly upsets at the idea of his ship’s destroyed state, even though he knows there’s not much he can do about it. “I guess. I shared which planet I was heading to before I left, but...Earth is a very big place. And my trackers were destroyed with my ship, so…”

“I’m sorry,” you say, though you don’t know how much comfort that can be. “We can look for some clothes tomorrow. It’s probably better for you not to leave the house right now, but...that’s what online shopping is for.”

“Online shopping…?” Yuta seems puzzled by the concept, but he doesn’t ask any further. Then he looks around the room again. “Is there somewhere I can rest?”

“Oh, yeah, follow me.” You get up from the couch to head upstairs where the guest bedroom is. The house isn’t huge—it was your grandmother’s before she passed it on to you—but it’s more than enough for you alone, and it should fit one more just fine. You open the door and turn on the light, illuminating the small room. “It hasn’t been used in a while, so excuse any dust. I can fix that tomorrow, but it’s getting late...” you stifle a yawn, “...so we should probably go to sleep now.”

Yuta looks at you and nods. 

“Um, well...goodnight.” You wave at him from the doorway before closing it.

As you make your way down the stairs, a sudden weariness and apprehension comes over you. An alien in your home? Escaped from a recently crashed UFO? Wearing one of your bathrobes? You’re almost positive you haven’t thought this through deeply enough, but you’re in it now. Might as well see where the rabbit hole leads to.

The next morning, you prepare yourself to go to work like you usually do. For a while, the house is so quiet that you almost forget Yuta is there until you see him standing in the kitchen entryway, still wearing his pink robe, and you almost jump through the ceiling.

“Jesus, you came out of nowhere,” you gasp, holding your heart.

“Where are you going?” Yuta asks. He steps into the kitchen and tentatively sits down in one of the dining table chairs.

“To work,” you say, and then pause. Maybe it isn’t such a good idea to leave a freshly-landed alien at home alone. “Will you be okay here by yourself? I could come over on my lunch break…”

“What am I supposed to do here the whole time?” Yuta asks, sounding displeased at the thought of being abandoned for hours.

“Well...you could watch TV? There’s the on-demand channel...the fridge is available for you too, just try not to clean out my—wait, do you even eat human food?”

Yuta shrugs, crossing his arms. “Not really. It’s not a big source of nutrients for us.” 

You nod awkwardly. “Huh. Well, that’s...interesting.” The stress of the situation is already making your head pound and you haven’t even left for work yet. “Uh, yeah—I think I’ll just come over later and check in...come on, I’ll at least show you how to work the remote before I leave.”

You bid Yuta goodbye once you’re about to go, though you feel more than a little hesitant about leaving him there. There isn’t much other choice, though; you can’t afford to take a day off on such short notice.

The extraterrestrial sighs, sprawling across the couch and looking at the ceiling. The TV is already playing the channel you left it on, and Yuta turns to the screen and watches as a group of humans make weird food dishes he’s never seen before.

“This is stupid.”

The rest of the week with Yuta manages to be an adventure even though he never steps foot outside the house. 

Yuta doesn’t take a liking to human food, which means he opts for spending most of his time in the guest bathtub instead, claiming that the water gives him more nourishment than meals can. You don’t know how true that is, but you’re not going to fight him on it. Less food you have to prepare, you reason...although you often end up making extra anyway and getting him to try a few bites. It feels odd to not see him eat.

Living with someone from outer space is not really as weird as you expected it might be, which surprises you. Yuta stays in his human skin whenever he’s around you, and you steer clear of the guest bathroom when it’s occupied lest you walk in on something crazy. 

You’ve taught Yuta about new concepts he didn’t know before or wasn’t overly familiar with. He’s particularly intrigued with online shopping, and you ended up buying him a bunch of outfits that you both thought he’d look nice in. He doesn’t seem to be big on technology, which surprises you considering how advanced his UFO looked even its ruined state, but maybe human tech is more primitive than what he’s used to. He’s quite fascinated with the microwave, though, and how it can heat anything up in minutes.

With you uncovering new bits of information each day, you continually wonder how different his homeworld must be from the Earth. You can’t pull much out of him about it, for whatever reasons he has for keeping the information close, but you try to let him talk about it at his pace without pressuring him.

You could probably get used to living like this. 

Maybe not your wallet, though. You’re definitely not loving how your water bill is going to look once it comes in the mail.

None of your coworkers or neighbors know—not that it’s any of their business anyway. You don’t know how long Yuta is going to stay, or what the hell you’re going to do when his people finally catch wind of his whereabouts and land a UFO in your backyard, but you figure you’ll get to that part when it comes.

On one Saturday morning, you wake up to the sound of tapping on your door. You try to ignore it, thinking it’s just some woodpecker setting up shop outside your window, but you’re proven wrong when the door swings open.

You pull the covers away from your face for a moment to see Yuta standing there looking at you. You stare at him for a few seconds before sighing.

“Why are you up so early? It’s the weekend,” you groan, pulling the covers back over your head. 

“Why do you sleep so late?” Yuta retorts, still standing in your doorway. You don’t know whether he expects you to get up and do a trick, but it’s not happening. You peel the blanket away so it’s just below your eyes and look at him.

“What?”

“It’s not fun being here alone all day, you know,” he says, crossing his arms.

“So...what? Do you want me to play with you or something?” You can’t stop your sudden laugh, but you feel bad about once it’s out. He has just lost his ride home and has no foreseeable way back until someone notices his absence. Plus, needing to stay hidden and cooped up like a criminal can’t be enjoyable.

Yuta rolls his eyes at your response and starts down the hallway again, but you jump out of the bed and follow him. “Wait, Yuta, I’m sorry. That was stupid. I know it can’t be easy living like this. I’m not sure if I can make it better, but I’m willing to try.”

Yuta pauses in the hall and turns back to look at you. “I’m tired of being in here all the time....no offense. But there’s only so much I can take. I know I’m supposed to be in hiding, but it’s not like anyone can tell the difference. Even you couldn’t. Can’t we go out for one day?”

You think about it for a moment and figure he’s right. You both were trying to be overly cautious at first, but there’s no real way anyone would notice anything unless he shifted. “I guess we could...as long as we don’t go anywhere with a lot of water.”

“I have more self-control than that,” Yuta scoffs, though his words trail off as he’s already heading back to his room to get dressed.

You and Yuta walk around downtown for a little while, although you can’t shake the lingering nervousness you feel. You both decided not to head back to the city center any time soon; there’s not much left of the broken ship anyway, with scientists carting off pieces of it for research. Just as you thought. It’s too big to transport all at once, but you’re sure the remaining parts will be gone within the next couple weeks.

Yuta is continually surprised by how many new and unfamiliar things he spots along the way—things he actually gets to see up close and in detail. Kinda hard to focus when you’re running and hiding for your life.

Eventually, Yuta slows down as you walk past a small and colorful restaurant. “What’s that?” he asks, pointing up at the sign. You stop to turn around and see what he’s gesturing to.

“That’s just a hamburger joint...you won’t wanna go in there,” you say, raising your eyebrows. Because you don’t eat food. Despite that, Yuta still seems curious about the restaurant and he hesitates to walk away. Realizing that you aren’t going to get anywhere, you go to stand next to him and peer inside. There are a few people already inside, sitting at scattered tables and eating their food. “Do you want to go in, or…? ‘Cause you have to eat something if we do. This is your idea.”

“I’ll eat, let’s just go,” Yuta says, grasping your hand and pulling you into the restaurant.

You wave at the person behind the counter who greets you as you walk in, while Yuta is busy scanning every inch of the place. You let him look over the menu for a little while, but with so many options available he isn’t sure what to get—especially when he’s not sure if he’ll like any of them—so you end up picking for the both of you.

When you finally get your food, you take it to one of the tables. You watch attentively as Yuta takes the first bite of his hamburger, and you try to stifle your giggles as you watch his face go from nonchalance to bewilderment to shock.

“This is actually...good.”

“Wait, this is really the first meal you’ve liked? Are you saying my cooking is bad? Damn.” You chuckle, shaking your head. 

“I’m not answering that.” Yuta laughs along with you, which is probably the first genuinely happy expression he’s shown since he’s been here.

Yuta has a very pretty smile, you realize. You’re a little taken aback by it. You haven’t seen much of it since you met him, but it’s here now and striking in its genuine quality. It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside...which you mainly attribute to the satisfaction of doing something nice for someone else. Of course. Who wouldn’t enjoy a nice meal they didn’t have to pay for?

Things go smoothly for a while as you both eat and pretend to make boring small talk since you can’t talk about him being an alien in public. However, you feel sweat on the back of your neck when you see your coworker Alex walk through the door with his boyfriend. This city is too small for its own good sometimes. 

You try not to call attention to yourself and Yuta, keeping your gaze on your food, but he spots you anyway and waves enthusiastically. Alex gestures for his partner to go ahead and order while he comes over to your table.

“Hey, Y/N! It’s great to see you! Too bad we missed you at the UFO wreck today, though; we went out again one last time before they take the whole thing away,” he rushes out in one breath. Yuta’s eye twitches at the mention of his ship, and you’re suddenly on edge, hoping the situation doesn’t turn sour.

“Oh, uh, wow, that’s...cool!” you choke out, pinching your straw between your fingers. Before you can think of a way to divert the subject, Alex turns to Yuta.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Alex! Who’s this? Your boyfriend?” The last few words are directed at you. Alex gives you a playful grin, and you toss him an embarrassed smile back.

“Uh, no, he’s my friend! Yuta.”

“Nice to meet you,” Yuta says, though you can recognize his tone is a bit dry.

“Pleasure’s all mine!” Alex’s boyfriend calls him from the other side of the restaurant, and he turns to respond before taking his leave. “Ah well, looks like we’ll have to cut it short, but it was so great to see you guys. Enjoy your lunch!”

You let out the breath you were subconsciously holding once he leaves.

“Boyfriend…” Yuta murmurs.

“What?”

“That would be really weird. Wouldn’t it? We’re not even the same species,” he says, lowering his voice. It’s not like you don’t agree, but you admittedly don’t appreciate the way Yuta screws his face up at the thought. You prickle with embarrassment.

You scoff, taking a sip of your drink. “Well I’m not exactly eager to date an overgrown fish, so…” You almost expect Yuta to fall into another one of his moods at your words, but he actually chuckles a bit, which surprises you.

“Then it’s mutual!” Yuta sticks his tongue out and you roll your eyes.

The warm and fuzzy feeling, you soon find out, is not a one-time thing.

You don’t quite know what to make of that. You wouldn’t like for Yuta to go back to his initial broody state, of course, but you’re starting to believe this feeling can’t just be attributed to your charitable actions. You can’t stop thinking about the more playful side of Yuta you saw at the burger place that day, and the way he’s been gradually more open with you since then.

Yuta usually spends his nights splashing around in the guest bathtub, but one night he wanders into the living room and sees you putting your afro in plaits. He becomes weirdly fascinated with the process, watching you carefully and asking occasional questions. Amused by his interest, you answer all his questions and even offer to let him do one section. 

“It’s probably not the same, but I used to braid my friend’s hair often…” he says wistfully as he settles in behind you. “We did a lot of things together.”

Your ears perk up. “Oh? You sound like you were very close,” you say, resting your chin on your knees.

“Really close,” he affirms. His hands are gentle in your hair, as testament to his words. You close your eyes and relax into the sensation, and before you know it, that warmth is spreading through your chest again. You even allow yourself to wonder what it’d be like for him to do this all the time, tending to your hair and telling you about his homeworld, before you open your eyes again and quickly pull yourself out of that reverie. You probably shouldn’t get too used to this, you reason with yourself. “I think she’s what you’d call a mermaid...except the look is a bit...different.”

“Different?” you echo, wondering if you’ll get an explanation.

“They don’t have human arms or anything like that...it’s more like tentacles.”

“Ah,” you try to imagine that, though it’s hard. “That’s certainly unique.”

“Maybe you’d like it...my planet, I mean.”

“You think I would? Why?”

“I dunno, just a feeling…”

“If only I could breathe underwater,” you laugh. “You’d take me back, though? Hypothetically, of course. I’m not too human for you?”

“Will you ever let that one go? It’s probably the least I could do after setting up residence here. Maybe we’ll get you an alien costume, though, so you’ll fit in.”

“How nice of you to think of me in all my humanness. God, the universe is something else…”

You start when Yuta’s hands leave your hair. “I think I’m done?” he says, sitting back on his feet. You grab the mirror from the coffee table and look at the braid you let him do.

“Oh wow, it looks good.” You purse your lips to hide the grin about to break across your face. “Do you wanna do the rest?”

“If you’ll let me.”

“Go ahead then, my hands needed a break anyway.”

You sit back and let Yuta finish the rest of your hair, listening quietly as he tells you more about his friend from his homeworld. Her name is unpronounceable to you, but it sounds pretty all the same. They grew up together, he says, and have been on lots of adventures over the years, though he still keeps that same vagueness he always has when describing his life. He ends up getting you to tell him more about your life, which you do; you figure he probably doesn’t know a whole lot about you, either.

Yuta hands you the mirror when he’s done, and his head pops up next to yours in the reflection. “Good?”

“It’s great!” you say, and you really mean it.

You discover that, strangely enough, Yuta has an affinity for sci-fi movies. Go figure. He especially seems to like the campiness of alien films; then again, everything is campy to him because of how different it is from how extraterrestrials actually live.

You are in the middle of watching The Fly when it comes to one of sex scenes, and you try not to sweat. It’s always a little awkward to watch sex scenes with other people, but doing it with an alien gives the whole thing an extra layer of weirdness.

“Human sex is so funny,” Yuta says out of nowhere. You just barely avoid choking on your drink.

“Uh, o-okay. Do I want to know what that means?”

Yuta only shrugs and leans farther back onto the couch, looking completely unbothered about what he’s just said. “It just is.”

“...I’m sure your people must procreate some kinda way?”

“Yeah, but it’s not quite this. But when I’m in this form, I can do it as humans do.”

That makes you pause, and you’re not sure what to do with that information. Actually, your mind has already decided for itself and is trying to go to a place you don’t want it to, and you’re mildly horrified by that revelation. There’s no real reason why you should be curious about it. And yet...

“Hummm...have you done it before? In this form?” You keep your eyes glued to the screen, which is now showing a shirtless Jeff Goldblum doing acrobatics—but that’s still less awkward than looking over at Yuta right now.

“There was one time.”

There is a twinge of something in your chest. Fascination? Sure. Revulsion? Maybe not that. Dare you call it anything close to jealousy? You immediately throw that one out the door, sink further into your seat, and try not to think about what your life has come to.

“Okay, since you still won’t tell me directly if you’ve been here before, at least tell me this; did it happen here on Earth? With a human?”

Yuta shakes his head. “Some other aliens have weird fetishes. I only did it because she asked and was really adamant about it.”

“Ooookay, you know what…” You get up from the couch and walk to the kitchen, laughing awkwardly all the way. You don’t have any particular reason to go in there, but you have to do something with the nervous energy that’s about to make you jump out of your skin. You pretend to shuffle around in the fridge for a minute so you don’t look too silly getting up for no reason.

After taking a moment to calm down, you turn back to Yuta. “Okay. Hypothetically, if you wanted, could you actually…? With a human? In your natural form? Or would the parts be incompatible, or...”

“Maybe...I’m not sure. It’s not like I’ve ever tried. Why?” Yuta gives you a look that’s partway between curiosity and incredulity, and you wave your hand in dismissal.

“It’s just a question.”

Yuta leans forward on the couch, barely concealing his own amusement at whatever he’s cooking up in his mind. “Are you saying you want to try it with me?”

“You’re not funny,” you sigh, trying to ignore the way your skin is burning at that suggestion. “Remind me not to ask you anything like that again.”

When you get home from work one weeknight, you roll your eyes at the mass text sitting in your inbox, forwarded to you from Alex. Another after-work party, which means another event where someone will run through the sprinklers naked and everyone will pretend like they don’t remember it the next workday.

You don’t know how you’re going to get out of this one, especially with Yuta, who will likely want to go if he finds out, so you decide to just come out and say it and see what happens.

“Hey Yuta…” You slide up behind him where he’s sitting on the couch. “I just wanted to let you know I won’t be at home for a few hours on Saturday. I’m going to a party this weekend. It’s a friend’s party, someone from work.”

Yuta looks at you forlornly. “The same person we met at the restaurant?”

“No, but he’s gonna be there too. Look, I know what you’re thinking, but I really don’t know if it’s safe for you to go…”

“That’s not fair, the last time at the restaurant went well,” Yuta argues.

“Yes, but this guy has a pool and he’s a dickhead who likes to push people in and what if you get caught off guard and change unexpectedly?”

Yuta’s response is as straightforward as you expected it to be. “Then I’ll punch him in the face.”

You laugh at that and shake your head, coming to sit beside him on the couch. “Ugh. As satisfying as that sounds, I don’t need the extra stress of dealing with the aftermath. I don’t know, Yuta...do you think you’ll be okay? God, I feel like an overprotective mom or some shit.”

“Y/N, it’ll be fine, stop worrying. I can take care of myself,” Yuta insists, putting his hand on your shoulder and looking into your eyes. He’s a little closer than you anticipated, which makes your heart rate increase a little. You chalk that reaction up to his invasion of your personal space and shift away, groaning.

“Fine, I’ll bring you. But if shit goes down, I can’t promise an easy way out. Let’s just keep things lowkey, alright?”

“Of course I can do that! I’ve been doing it so far haven’t I?” he says, but somehow you’re not entirely convinced.

The party is filled with people you know from work and a slew of unfamiliar faces, probably your coworkers’ friends. It’s mostly a backyard party, like you already knew, although there are some people mingling within the house.

There are already a few people lounging in the pool. In any other scenario, it might be inviting to you, but now you just look at all that water with a looming sense of anxiety. Yuta sticks close to your side, saying nothing but studying everyone around him.

“Y/N!” your coworker David shouts from the backdoor of his house. He holds up his beer in salutation and you wave back at him, mildly annoyed that he’s brought everyone’s attention to you both. He hustles over to you and claps you on the back strong enough to make your bones rattle, and you wince. “Hey dude!” He reaches across you to pull Yuta into a handshake, and Yuta also winces when he grips his hand a little too tight. “Make yourselves at home, I’ve got everything you could ever need—including the booze and babes!” You both nod awkwardly before David goes off to greet someone else who’s just pulled up. You roll your eyes once he’s gone.

Yuta’s eyebrows draw together. “That was…”

“Annoying,” you finish for him.

“You don’t seem to like him. Why did you decide to come?”

“Workplace politics, if you’re the only one who doesn’t come it’s awkward, ugh. It’s just bullshit. Let’s not get into it.” You walk towards the house and Yuta follows, and you nod at a few people you know along the way.

You find Alex in the kitchen, where he offers to make drinks for you and Yuta. You cast a glance at Yuta, wondering if he’ll take up the offer; you have no idea how he’ll react to alcohol, or if they drink any equivalent of it on his homeworld.

“Um, I think I’ll pass.”

“Oh okay, straight-edge guy! That’s cool too,” Alex grins, making just the one drink for you. As you and Alex talk, the girl from your department whose neighborhood was about to be evacuated sidles up to your little group.

“I’ve never seen you before. What’s your name?”

“Oh...it’s Yuta.”

“Yuta? How cool, I’m Sooyoung.”

Little did you know that that one introduction would expand into them having a half-hour long conversation right there in the kitchen. You really don’t know how Yuta is pulling this off without spilling the beans, but then again, you do; he’s good enough at manipulating the conversation to make it seem like he’s sharing personal info when he’s really not. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that he throws in things you taught him every so often.

Alex notices your changing demeanor and follows you as you walk into the living room, finally exhausted with playing third wheel. “Hm, someone seems a little spicy.”

You cough. “I’m fine, it’s just cramped in there, David should really invest in a bigger house..this place could use a remodel.” You throw a glance around the living room, not wanting to see the mischievous look in Alex’s eyes.

“Well, remodel aside, it’s not really my business, but you certainly seem to have a little green monster brewing here.”

You give Alex a long look. “Don’t. He’s my friend. He’s not even—” You have to stop yourself before you expose anything, and you shift nervously on your feet.

“Not even what? Your type? I don’t know, he’s handsome enough to me. You can’t go wrong with a pretty boy. Don’t tell Xavier I said that, though.”

“Lord, let me get the hell out of here…” You leave Alex to cackle to himself while you go out into the backyard again, holding your drink and mulling around the edges of the activity. Too busy wrestling with your own emotions, you don’t realize how close you’ve drifted towards the pool.

“Hey, Y/N?” David says from behind you.

“Yeah?” You go to turn towards him, but before you can, you feel a huge shove from behind and the next thing you know your feet are off the ground and you’re in the pool. It all happens so fast that you can barely catch your bearings, and for a terrifying moment you’re convinced you’re about to drown.

The seconds feel like minutes, and you can’t even open your eyes to tell up from down. The next thing you register is an arm around your waist, and somehow you’re being pulled up even though you’re too panicked to even control your limbs. Your head pops above the water and you cough and sputter loudly, trying to take in air. You try to blink the water out of your eyes, though it drips off your hair and makes it even harder to see.

You’re still not sure what the hell is going on until you’re hauled out of the water and sitting on the ground. Someone hands you a towel, and you hear a female voice saying you’re such an asshole, David.

You wipe the water off of your face and then you’re finally able to see; Yuta is crouching in front of you, just as soaked as you are and staring at you with a worried expression. You look back at him, disoriented and a little dumbfounded at his still-human state.

“You didn’t…”

Even though you’re still trembling with the fear of almost drowning, you’re unable to look anywhere but at Yuta for that moment—at the pure concern on his face.

“Nice going, David,” someone else says sarcastically.

“It was just a bit of a prank! No hard feelings guys, come on. Y/N?” You realize David is standing on your left, and he tries to come closer, his hands open in an apologetic gesture. You jerk away from him, holding the towel to your shaking form.

“Get the fuck away from me. You’re a fucking idiot!” you shout. “All you do is ‘play pranks’ and then you wonder why no one likes you!” That draws a few barely concealed laughs out of the people standing nearby, though you don’t think any of it is funny. David steps back, unsure how to respond and looking truly embarrassed for once in his life.

Filled with anger, you try to get to your feet but you’re still unsteady. Yuta puts his arm around you again, lifting you up and encouraging you to lean your weight on him.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

You don’t have much to say on the way back home. You insist on leaving right away even though Yuta suggests you sit and wait until the tremors subside. He obviously can’t drive you back home, so it’s all he can offer, though it doesn’t make you feel much better.

The silence itself isn’t particularly awkward to Yuta, but he is uncomfortable anyway because he knows it stems from your own discomfort. At a red light, he turns to you.

“Are you okay?”

“Not really.”

He’s quiet for a few moments, and then he speaks again. “I know you’re mad about the pool, but...it seems like there’s more than that. Did...you not like me spending so much time with Sooyoung?”

You scoff. “You can’t be serious. I don’t care what you and that girl do.”

“You’re not a very good liar.” You’re too worn out to argue, so you merely give him a sidelong glance. Yuta sits back in his seat and watches a few cars zip past, their tail lights looking like clashing stars against the night. He’s not used to so much...manmade stuff. There was his ship and his trackers, of course, but he still has a hard time adjusting to be surrounded by so much iron and steel. His own planet is ruled by nature, by the vast oceans in all their unpolluted original essence, but Earth—or at least this portion of it—is much, much different.

He means to glance back at you, but his eyes linger for a while longer than intended. He’s not sure why. Maybe it’s because your outfit is a pretty color, or because the coils of your hair look shiny reflecting the light. He’s never put much thought into human beings before, and his limited experiences with them were mostly better left unremembered. Taking a human form was no huge deal for him; just a move that was necessary at the time.

But now, he’s seeing humanity—and most specifically, you—in a different light, and he’s uncertain what to do with this realization. People have feelings, thoughts, and dreams, like his own species, or like any other. He’s beginning to care what you think of him, how you react to him, even though he doesn’t know why this matters.

“You look pretty,” Yuta says. The compliment is the last thing you expected from him. It seems especially random after what happened at the party; here you are, soaking wet and incredibly uncomfortable. You’re a little late to put your foot on the gas pedal once the light turns green, and someone behind you honks.

“Pretty? I thought humans were weird to you.” Your mind goes back to The Fly and the subsequent conversation you had, and your hands tighten minutely around the steering wheel.

“You are. That hasn’t changed.”

“Good to know.” You don’t want to laugh, but this does make you crack a smile. “But...thanks. And...thanks for that, at the pool, you know. I should...probably trust you more.”

The rest of the ride is a little more talkative after that, and Yuta is happy that he could lighten your mood if even a little bit. Although he wouldn’t tell you, he’s becoming accustomed to your smile, and he’s more displeased than he thought he could be when it’s absent.

The thunder booms so loudly that it makes your window frames shake. It almost reminds you of the day Yuta’s ship fell out of the sky. You pull the covers tighter around yourself as if they alone could protect you from the storm’s fierceness. Storm clouds have been brewing all day, but the skies didn’t open until you and Yuta went to bed. Now, the rain and lightning is in full force. The rain pounds against your window, sounding more like hail or even bullets.

You’re startled for a second time when there’s a knock on your bedroom door.

“Come in?”

The door opens slightly and Yuta appears in the small sliver of space. “Sorry, but...can I sleep here? The storm...” He gestures to the window, where a crack of lightning strikes right after. He’s wearing a sleep shirt and loose pants, and his blonde hair is disheveled. 

“Uh, sure.” You shuffle over to make room for him. “I guess this isn’t your type of water, is it?” He huddles underneath the covers with you, facing you with his arm tucked under the unoccupied pillow.

“Not when it’s so intense like this.”

You hum in acknowledgment. “It’s scary. Does rainy weather make you think of your homeworld often?”

“Often,” he repeats. “But...I think I’d be worse off if I weren’t here.”

“Here...on Earth?”

“I mean, here with you.”

“Oh,” is all you can think to say. It’s a surprisingly personal confession, though you are grateful you’ve become someone so important in his life already, even if it’s only because you’ve given him shelter. That familiar warmth spreads through you again. 

Warm and fuzzies = gratefulness to a friend, the feeling you get when you pet a cute puppy. Right. It’s not the sensation you get when you think you might have feelings for your extraterrestrial friend, you try to convince yourself. “I’m...glad you’re here. Maybe not under these circumstances, but still.”

Yuta nods without speaking, but he doesn’t take his eyes away from you. You think he must be waiting on you to say something else.

“What?” you ask quietly when he keeps staring at you. “Take a picture, it will last longer.” Your joke does little to clear the air, and the tension keeps rising. You should probably be the first one to look away, to end whatever weird game this is and go to sleep, but you can’t. It’s unexplainable.

Yuta props himself up on his elbow, and you’re about to ask him where he’s going when he slips his hand onto your bare shoulder. You’re already covered by the blankets, but you suddenly feel even hotter with his hand on you, sliding up from your shoulder to the side of your face. “Y-Yuta…?”

You don’t know what to say or do, but you don’t object when he leans closer. Your faces are only inches apart now, like he’s hesitating and wondering if he should cross the line. The thunderstorm is intense, but this moment feels much more suspenseful than that could ever be. And then, it’s suddenly satisfying when his lips are on yours.

The kiss starts gentle. He’s careful as if he’s afraid to hurt you or make you feel uncomfortable. It’s soft and sweet. Things get more heated when his tongue prods against your lower lip and enters your mouth. You don’t know when his hand made it from your face to your side, but he pulls you close with his fingers pressing into the flesh just below your breasts, and you tremble at the proximity.

When you pull away, both of you are breathing harder and unable to look each other in the eye.

“Should we be doing this?” you whisper.

Yuta shakes his head. “I don’t know. But it feels good.”

At those words, you pause for a moment before moving to kiss him again. His lips respond deftly to yours, his body crowding you in and making you feel hot and enraptured with desire from where you still lie under the covers.

His hair is very soft when you slide your hands through it, though you can’t push away the thought that suddenly manifests in the back of your mind. This isn’t really his hair, or his lips, is it? It’s all a mask to cover whatever is underneath, which is something you still don’t entirely know, yet are increasingly curious about.

Yuta’s hand drifts up just high enough to caress the underside of your breast—all still over the cover of your clothes. Abruptly, that thought forces its way to the front of your mind, making itself unavoidable, and you have no idea how to reconcile it. This is all so...very unfamiliar. And undeniably scary.

You pull away from him, your face creased with conflict, and his hand stills on your body. “S-sorry, I…um...this is...”

Subsequently, he pulls his hand away from you, though some part of you doesn’t really want that to happen. “I-it’s fine.”

You both settle back into the sheets, the tense aura from before replaced with one that’s thick with unease. The storm continues on outside, unknowing and uncaring of anything else but its own nature.

Though you would like to pretend it isn’t so, things become strained after the night of the storm.

You and Yuta don’t talk about the kiss. You expected him to say something about it that morning after, but he didn’t acknowledge it, and so you figured you just forget about it, too. What are you thinking, anyway? You’re literally from two different worlds. You don’t have the first clue about what a connection would look like between you, whether it be just sex or a relationship.

Why couldn’t you just fall for a coworker and have a bit of office drama like everyone else? Even that would be simpler.

Why did you have to let your thoughts get the best of you? You don’t have any answer for that, except for maybe your own need to come to terms with your attraction. People have never been very skilled at accepting others different from themselves, you know that much. But that usually counts for people of different ethnicities or cultural backgrounds, not two entirely different species.

You spend the whole week afterwards tearing your mind up with this monologue and trying to figure out what you should do next, because you’re quickly growing weary of coming home to a tense atmosphere. Alex can only give so much advice—not that you’d really tell him the entire situation—without knowing just how complicated everything is.

Where he used to hang out with you and help you with your hair, Yuta spends more time up in the guest bathroom again. You wonder if he thinks you’re disgusted by him. You’d probably think the same if he reacted the way you did.

Unbeknownst to you, Yuta is facing the situation with a similar amount of inner turmoil as you, wondering if he’s gone too far. He’s done many silly things in his life, but he doesn’t know how to undo this mistake. The mistake of kissing you? The mistake of seeing you as more than just another human? The mistake of knowingly flying in a faulty ship? Maybe all of it.

He feels guilty about freezing you out and pretending as if nothing happened, especially with all you’ve done to make him safe and comfortable in your home. But, at the same time, he is equally frightened to face you and discover the real reasoning for why you pulled away that night. Because you’ll never see him as someone you could like? Or maybe even love?

If that’s your truth, he’d rather leave it unsaid.

There aren’t many choices left but to face it. Whether this idea is smart or not is yet to be seen, but you suppose you don’t have many solutions left. And you are sick of being cooped up in the house.

“You sure this is safe?” Yuta asks as he stares at the scenery whizzing past. “You were all freaked out about me being near water before...now you want to go to a lake?”

You glance over at him. “Yes, it’s my parents’ lake property. It’s private, Yuta. No one will be there but us. I think we could both use a mini vacation this weekend, yeah?” 

“I guess, sure.” Yuta shrugs. His demeanor is more closed off than it was before that dreaded kiss, but you can still tell that he’s interested in the idea of getting access to a bigger body of water, even if he doesn’t outwardly express it.

The lake house is two hours out of your city. It hasn’t been used much in the past few years with both you and your parents being busy with work and life, but if there was ever a good time to use it, it’s probably now. You just hope there aren’t any squatters of the furry variety; the last thing you need is to be fighting raccoons or squirrels after stepping through the door.

Luckily, there’s really no one but you two once you reach your destination. The lake is big and pretty like you last remembered it, sparkling under the sun and throwing the rays back in your eyes. Yuta is automatically captivated by it.

“Here it is!” you say, walking along the sand and spreading your arms out towards the body of water. “It might not be much compared to your homeworld, but I hope it’s enough.” You carry your bag up the stairs to the house and turn back to Yuta, who’s still standing by the shore gazing across the water. “You can go in, you know? Get comfortable!”

That seems to snap him out of his trance, and he turns back to you, following you up the steps. “Not right now...I’ll go later.” You’re a little disappointed at that, but you simply nod and open the door to go in.

You spend the day getting increasingly more restless as you and Yuta hang out together. You go on the pier, walk around the entirety of the lake, and even take your dad’s boat out on the water, but he still doesn’t get in.

You eat dinner together later that night, although you’re the one doing most of the eating, and there isn’t much conversation to be had. You’ve both run out of things to say that don’t center around the kiss or why he refuses to get in the water.

Yuta spends a few more moments watching you push your food around your plate before leaning forward. “Why did you bring me here?” he asks.

You sigh heavily. “Do you not like it?”

“No, I do, but…” he hesitates. “Can you answer my question first?

You raise your eyebrows. “Okay, well. I brought you here because...I don’t know. I figure you deserve to have somewhere bigger to swim around in than my guest bathtub.” You laugh nervously.

He seems unconvinced. “Is that it?”

“I’d say so! Why won’t you even take one swim, is the better question? I want you to relax and be yourself.”

He furrows his eyebrows as if he doesn’t know how to reply. “You...aren’t you...repulsed by it? I just figured you wouldn’t want to see me in my natural form. Especially since…” He trails off at the end, and your palms sweat a little.

“No! I know I was weirded out at first, but...I-I guess that was the point of this whole trip, to show you that…” You grapple with your words for a moment, unsure if now is the time to fully confess what you’re feeling. “Look, I want to try, alright? I want to see it at least once. I want to accept you as a whole being, and that means, you know...all of you.”

Yuta smiles gradually at that, and you feel swept up with a sudden wave of affection you weren’t expecting. You are still a bit scared, but you don’t want to turn back now. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” you reply, clasping your shaking hands together.

Yuta nods and stands up from the dining table, gesturing for you to follow him. It’s late now, with the moon shining brightly and the last vestiges of dark blue sky giving way to black. The air outside is cool, but not uncomfortably so. You follow Yuta to the pier and watch timidly, your stomach flip-flopping, as he sheds his clothes, leaving them on the wooden deck. Then he slips into the water, disappearing underneath its still surface.

You crouch down, looking intently at the rippling water and anticipating whoever is going to resurface. The sounds of croaking frogs and crickets press in from every side, ringing in your ears so loudly that it’s hard to think straight.

You gasp when Yuta lifts from the water, his human skin gone and completely transformed into something that’s more...amphibian, if that’s any accurate way to describe his appearance. His skin is still scaly and green like you saw that first day, but in the moonlight it seems to glitter and reflect a spectrum of colors like his armor did. There are two fins on the either side of his face, translucent and shining a pale green. They slowly move back and forth as he treads on the water, as if they’re conveying an emotion to match whatever he’s thinking, and you watch them in fascination.

Yuta floats on his back in the water, the long gills on either of his sides catching the moonlight. You watch in fascination as they move with his breaths. Using the pier post to keep yourself stable, you reach out to touch them. They’re slick under your fingers, but not in a slimy or gross way. Your hand drifts to the rest of his skin, across his torso and along his sides, and every portion has a strikingly smooth texture. His alien eyes stare at you silently as you do, glittering big in the moonlight.

“What do you think?” his voice is quieter than you expected, as if he’s afraid of your reaction. He doesn’t break his gaze, though, studying your face carefully.

“You’re...amazing,” you say breathlessly. “Incredible.” 

His lips, which are green like the rest of him, form a small smile, and then he dives underneath the water. He does a few laps as if he means to impress you, his lithe marine form sparkling just below the surface of the water. You keep your hand suspended over the pier as you watch him, your fingers sliding against his body every time he passes by. You smile at his display, a laugh coming out of you at his impromptu performance.

When he’s finished, Yuta climbs up onto the pier with you and kneels in front of you, much like he did that day he saved you from David’s swimming pool. His feet are webbed like his hands. Droplets of water slide off of them onto the wooden boardwalk while others linger on the clear webbing like tiny jewels. Your hand is magnetized to his face, drawing across the scaly skin and tracing over his lips, which are just as smooth as the rest of him.

Before you can think twice about it, you lean forward and capture his lips with yours. Did you expect it to be fishy? Maybe. But it’s not that at all. He still manages to taste distinctly like Yuta, even though you’re not sure what that taste is. It’s a flavor that makes you feel...held. Yuta is surprised for a moment, but he responds to your kiss, one of his webbed hands inching close to your face. He doesn’t touch you at first, a little reluctant and yet wanting to let you lead the pace so he doesn’t scare you off.

You welcome his touch, carefully brushing your fingertips across his hand and bringing it to make contact with your skin. His own skin is still a bit cold from the water’s temperature, but it doesn’t bother you much.

The kiss soon grows more intense, and a mounting desire makes itself known in you. You won’t pretend like you’re 100% confident about all of this, but you don’t want to shun it anymore, either.

Yuta’s hand drifts to your neck, his long nails pressing into your skin ever so slightly. You dare to explore his body more, sliding your hands across his chest and over his side gills, feeling the way they contract under your hands, and farther down still. You haven’t looked down there yet, and you’re nervous over what you’ll find. But you keep going until your fingers meet something slick and hot and throbbing, seeming vaguely like a regular penis, though you quickly realize it’s more of a tentacle.

Yuta shudders and draws away from the kiss, and you feel alarmed, wondering if you’ve gone too far without thinking.

“If we’re going to do this, I should...probably shift back—”

“Don’t,” you blurt out. Yuta looks at you questioningly. “I...you should if it makes you comfortable. But...I don’t mind.” He’s quiet for a few seconds—seconds that feel much longer than they really are. You’re apprehensive of what he’ll say, but you keep your eyes on his face.

“Okay,” he agrees. “If you’ll accept me like this...okay.” 

Neither of you bother with moving to somewhere more comfortable like the lake house or even the sandy shore. Instead, Yuta peels your clothes away right there on the pier, covering every new bit of flesh with his strange and lovely mouth, his head fins ghosting across your collarbones and breasts like moths’ wings.

You tremble and grow wetter under his soft caresses, which are much gentler than you’d initially expect with his sharp black nails. His hands leave streaks of water across your body, which cools your burning hot skin.

Yuta carefully maneuvers your lower body at the same time as he bends his graceful head, bringing your sex close to his mouth and licking deeply into you. Your back presses hard against the pier, the wood scratching your skin as you cry out into the night air.

“Oh God, Yuta!” You soon realize that his tongue is much longer than any human one, and it reaches to a spot deep inside of you that makes you twist around in his grasp, your fingernails scrambling for purchase on the surface below you. He uses his tongue to pleasure that spot continuously, drawing moans and ever more wetness out of you as if he were controlling the waves in the ocean.

You find yourself coming apart on his extraordinarily long tongue, your legs shaking and then going limp with the pleasure flooding through your body. Your breaths come fast and hard. Yuta lifts his head from between your legs and pulls you carefully into his lap so his slick tentacle is pressing against you. It’s not hard like a dick would be, though it is clearly responsive to your body, and you momentarily wonder if it can even go inside you.

“Is this gonna work?” you ask, a tremor in your voice.

“It will work,” Yuta replies, and you’re not sure how, but you decide to trust him on it. 

It does, to your surprise. With your legs crossed tightly over his lower back, Yuta presses into you, wet and warm and very unexpectedly soft. It doesn’t feel like anything you’ve ever experienced before. It’s not a bad sensation, though—far from it. His tentacle is similar to his tongue in how it flexes and throbs inside you, pressing tight against that spot again and making you shiver in his arms.

You both quickly find a rhythm that works, your bodies moving together in an otherworldly combination of two beings, two species, two souls.

Yuta’s long nails scrape gently against your skin as he holds your back, guiding you on his sex and pushing his hips up into you. You sigh into the juncture of his neck and shoulder, feeling the cool scales underneath your lips. You seek a firm grip on his slick skin, bringing your body as close to his as possible.

“Yuta…” You moan his name. His hand slides to the back of your neck so he can bring your face to his again, kissing you deeply. There’s a wet squelching sound as your bodies connect, Yuta’s tentacle slipping in and out of you and pleasurably stroking your walls.

“Y/N…” Yuta whispers into your soft hair, pushing into your spot repeatedly, his thighs tensing under you as his pace increases. You grip his arms as you feel your orgasm swelling up in your abdomen. You tip your head back and Yuta’s mouth goes to your neck and farther down, his heavy breaths warming your skin and making you overheat from the inside out.

You tighten and cum around him, your voice stuttering out of you in broken gasps as he keeps thrusting into you, drawing your climax out. He pulses inside of you, which sends little shockwaves up your spine; you know he’s probably close, too.

When Yuta comes, there’s a lot more of it than you expected. His cum overflows and drips out of you with a consistency like syrup and a transparent color like precum. It makes the inside of your thighs sticky and shiny.

Yuta pulls out, and more of his cum spills out of you, leaking onto his lap and staining the pier underneath you.

“That’s not gonna get me pregnant, is it?” you say quietly, half-jokingly.

“Probably not,” Yuta chuckles.

“Probably!?”

Yuta carefully gathers you in his arms and stands to his feet, walking you off the pier and back towards the lake house. Your clothes are still on the pier, but you’re quickly getting sleepy and aren’t very worried about it; you’ll get them in the morning.

“What happens now?” Yuta murmurs as he walks up the front steps. You already know he’s referring not just to your relationship in this present moment, but to every event that will make up your future. Does he need to continue hiding, or is it really safe? How long will this last?

You close your eyes, resting your head against his chest. “We stay together.”

Yuta’s arms tighten around you as a silent affirmation of your words.

[xplrvibes]

Sprung | Sam and Colby Story

Title: Sprung

Summary: They had never been torn apart like that before.  Nobody had ever dared try it. 

Pairing: None 

Warnings: Sam and Colby’s arrest rehashed, brief talk of the jail system, mentions of anxiety 

Author’s Note: This is based on an ask someone sent me last night, about how Sam being one who bottles his emotions up until they explode in these sweeping declarations of love and tears.  Also, since it’s the jailaversary, and I always wanted to hear more about that saga from Sam’s POV, I just went ahead and did...this. I’m not a writer, so don’t judge me too harshly-but I’d love to know if you liked!

A/N 2: Now on AO3!

***

Sam has never seen a better sight than a disheveled, tired Colby Brock waiting for him outside of the police station.

The preceding 14 hours since Sam had last watched Colby disappear behind an ominous steel door with a painful smirk forced across his face and a tremor in his handcuffed hands had been some of the worst he had ever experienced in his life.  He had stood outside the police station in the muggy Florida air with no cell phone, no car, no idea of where he was or how to get to where he needed to be.

No Colby at his side.

They had never been torn apart like that before.  Nobody had ever dared try it.  Sam felt like a piece of him had been taken; a fundamental piece, like his liver or some shit.  He felt wrong in his skin without Colby by his side; especially knowing where he had left him, and that all of the responsibility of getting him out of there rested on his shoulders.

To say Sam was stressed, would be an understatement.

But Sam was nothing if not determined, and he made it work.  He sucked in a breath, steeled his spine, and made his way to a gas station pay phone to call the Irelands.

He had work to do.

***

Fourteen hours and multiple phone calls to worried parents and terrified friends and one extremely exasperated lawyer (”On a construction site in Florida? Sam...”) and management team later, Sam was finally told that Colby’s bail had been posted and he was being released.  Sam could go and get him.

He was never planning on letting anyone separate them like that again.

“Hey,” Colby muttered as Sam walked up to where he sat with a couple of fans outside the doors to the precinct, bail paperwork and a bag of his possessions in his shaking hand.  He looked distinctly un-Colby like at the moment; rattled, definitely and it showed.  He was pale, his hair was in a state of disarray, his Justin Bieber shirt-and God, who else but Colby would go to jail in a Justin Bieber fit?-was wrinkled and stretched at the collar.  He had a smile plastered to his face, but his eyes were shining bright with barely concealed anxiety.  He wanted out of this place, asap.

Sam let out the breath he had been holding since Colby had first been walked away from him by those damn guards.  He felt the missing piece of his soul settle back in to place.  His world realigned itself. 

Colby was back with him.

“Hey,” he responded back, and held out a hand to take Colby’s possession bag for him.  “Ready to head out?”

“Totally.”

***

After saying goodbye and taking a photo with the fans who had waited outside the police station with Colby, they got back in the rental car that Sam had gone to pick up from the abandoned school a few hours earlier and headed back towards the hotel.

“So, the fans said that everyone knows?” Colby asked quietly from the passenger seat.  His ring-less hands were flexing in his lap.  His voice was shaking.

Sam gripped the steering wheel a little tighter and cleared his throat.  “Um, yea,” he responded slowly.  “Yea, they found out and made it trend on twitter for like, a whole day.  Number one trending topic,” he added.

Colby whistled.  “Shit.”  He reached up to play with his earring-a nervous habit he had developed since getting his ears pierced the year prior-and winced when he realized the earring was no longer there.  His hand fell back to his lap, trembling.

“Yea,” Sam replied.  “By the time I got out last night, word was already everywhere.”  He swallowed and briefly glanced over at Colby.  “Our parents already knew.”

Colby glanced back.  “Did you talk to them?” He whispered.

Sam nodded.  “I talked to your mom, too.  Told her I wasn’t gonna let you rot in a jail cell.  She made me promise to get you out,” he smiled.  Colby didn’t smile back. “Dude, she’s ok, I promise.  Just worried about you.”

“She’s not mad?” Colby asked in a small voice.

“I mean, probably, but...” Sam shrugged.  Colby said nothing else.  What else was there to say?

The rest of the drive was in silence.

***

Although Sam had stayed with the Irelands while working tirelessly on getting Colby back, he didn’t think Colby would be up to going there and seeing everyone right now.  So, he took them back to their original hotel, which had thankfully been paid up for another day before the arrest.

Colby hadn’t questioned it.  He walked into their room and looked around at the mess they had left behind 30 hours prior before dropping his jail paperwork in a heap on the hotel table and heading over to his bed.  He slumped down on the bed with a tired sigh, turning to lean himself against the headboard and drawing his knees up in front of him. 

Sam sighed, and came to sit down next to Colby.  He bumped his shoulder into Colby’s in solidarity, and Colby huffed and leaned his head onto Sam’s shoulder.

The silence stretched out between them for a moment, comfortable and sure.  They didn’t need words.  They both always just knew.  It was a thing that their friends and even family would tease them for sometimes, their ability to just sit and be together, with no words, and draw some kind of silent strength from one another.  They didn’t care what anyone had to say about it, really.  It gave them both peace and reassurance, and that was what mattered.

“What do we do now?” Colby asked after a moment, exhaustion threaded in his voice.

Sam shifted slightly, and bumped his knee again Colby’s.  “Our lawyer’s working on it,” he replied quietly.  “She yelled at me for a while, but she’s gonna make it so we can go back home until the court date.”

“Oh, good,” Colby responded.  “Cause like, I don’t wanna be here anymore.”

Sam reached out a hand, and clasped Colby’s shaking one in his.  “You’re ok, though...right?” He asked in a quiet voice.

Colby nodded.  “Just like, it was scary, you know?” He responded.  “I didn’t like being alone, and everyone in there was nice to me and shit, but...”

Sam smiled.  Trust Colby to declare that everyone he shared jail space with was nice.  

“Dude, you are never allowed to go to jail without me again,” Sam declared, squeezing Colby’s hand.

Colby squeezed back.  “Don’t pay your bail next time, and join me,” he responded.  

He was joking, Sam knew, but he felt the panic and fear and guilt of the last 14 hours bubble up his throat anyway, and tears began to prick at his eyes. “Dude,” he gasped, “I’m never going to let anyone separate us like that ever again.”

Colby lifted his head to look in Sam’s eyes.  “I know, brother,” he replied slowly.

Sam shook his head.  The tears were brimming now, he could feel it.  The dam was bursting.  “No,” he sniffled, “Like, they walked you into the back and I saw how scared you were, brother, like I felt it and there was nothing I could do about it!  And then I had to go out there, alone, and leave you there!  Like, I never wanted that-”

“I know, Sam-”

“-Like, leaving you behind, or losing you, is my worst nightmare, dude!  Like, I can’t do it again, I don’t ever want anyone to do that to us again-”

“-Sam, they won’t-”

“-And like, I just love you so much, brother, you know that, right?”  Sam’s mini-tirade ended on a sob, as Sam turned and pulled Colby into his arms.  He didn’t hug Colby near enough, or articulate into words how much he loved him.  It wasn’t Sam’s style; he was never good with outward displays of emotions.  Of the two of them, Colby was always the one who wore his heart on his sleeve, and did so effortlessly.  Sam struggled with displays of affection and emotion.

He knew, in his more rational moments, that Colby knew him better than anyone else on the planet.  That Colby understand how much he meant to Sam, that Colby knew how much Sam loved him.  That words weren’t needed between them; that his actions were felt and deciphered and understood. 

But sometimes, it all just came bubbling out, spilling all over the place like a volcano.  When Sam got emotional, he went all in with said emotion, and Colby understood that, too.

Colby understood everything, when it came to Sam.

“I know, Sam,” Colby responded, arms wrapped tightly around Sam’s shoulders.  Sam turned his head into Colby’s neck and breathed deep.  He smelled like sweat, and jail, and fear...but underneath all of that was the distinctive smell of Colby Brock.  The smell Sam had come to associate with home, many years ago.

“They’ll never take you away from me again,” Sam whispered, and Colby chuckled.

“I’d like to see ‘em try,” He responded.

[isitandwonder]

I’ve seen so much shit go down these past few days and I really don’t need stuff  like that at the end of this fucked year. I’ve been talking back and forth with mutuals over the last several days, I’ve seen the mess unfold on Twitter, people came to my inbox to ask what was happening.

Yet I didn’t want to give this unsubstantiated, rather silly and exaggerated accusations room on my blog. I hoped it would die down. I’m also only lurking on Twitter and IG and would never get involved with fandom there cause those sites stress me out.

This whole mess also made me enormously angry so I needed time to calm down.

Now I only like to say a few things and then I hope I can be done with this.

I think this whole shit show is a perfect example for the dark side of social media, how things get inflated, facts messed up and allegations thrown around. It shows that for a lot of people it’s all about performative behavior. I doubt these accusations would’ve been aired if it had been John Smith from next door who behaved badly. I’m also shocked by a culture that completely disregards facts and proof and judges entirely emotional. Where’s your brain, people?

Of course, you never know with celebs, but the balance of probability still applies to them as well. Someone against no other complains have ever surfaced, who loves his mum and sis, talks very respectful of female colleagues and even donated his salary to an anti-sexual violence charity must truly be rather cunning to be a secret abuser.

When there are allegations of sexual misconduct, you should believe the ‘victim’. Okay, I’m totally with that. But that ‘victim’ doesn’t have to give you any proof for anything they accuse another person off, probably destroying their livelyhood with just a few words? Not even a coherent account of what they’re accusing someone off? Like, what the fuck??? Are people out of their minds?

If you choose to go public with heavy allegations, of course you have to give some facts of what happened to you. Not sordid details but facts that can confirm and explain what you’re hinting at. Like a date, proof you were where you said you were, or a general outline of what happened so other people can comprehed and consider if your allegations are believable. Because we’re all aware of false allegations esp against celebs. We’re also all aware that this is usually no fun for the alleged ‘victim’. So it’s for their own safety and integrity that they have to share some facts. Esp in a case where the allegations started vague with ‘bad experience’, then morphed into ‘sexual assault’, to end up as ‘harassment’ or ‘attempted sexual misconduct’. If you accuse someone of these offences you have to give at least some facts as to what transpired. Otherwise those big words are baseless which doesn’t mean they won’t do harm to both the accuser and the accused.

I believe a ‘victim’ if they have some sort of proof for what they say they were subjected to or can at least give a consistent account of what happened. To describe yourself as a ‘victim’, something objectively harming has had to have happened to you. Sorry, but otherwise it all frays out into a subjective feeling of discomfort, which then is on you and on no one else.

Without some details, simply nothing happened and all this is a storm in a tea cup.

No one forced the people who brought these allegations up to post on social media. They said nothing physical happened and they don’t want to press charges. Why did they even post it then? To warn other women? But to warn someone you have to tell them what you’re warning them about. Did they want to cut Tim down a nodge? Did they want attention and clout? Were they still angry and just wanted to vent? Whatever, social media is not the best place to work through trauma. Get a therapist or a councelor or a lawyer. But just putting unsubstantiated accusations out there is the worst way for everyone involved.

There is no proof this person ever even met Tim. There is no proof anything happened between them. Not that I don’t believe them that he acted like a douche, but if it’s just their word and no proof for anything or details are needed even I could claim the same this woman does (and I have proof I ‘met’ him twice). So you see where this ‘believe the victim’ leads us. Nowhere. The ‘victim’ has at least to proof that there was possible victimisation.

I get it, the girl who met Tim presumably at a party during HSN filming had experienced some form of sexual abuse in high school (her post from 2018 was not about any celebrity afaik but about a guy she went to high school with. I’ve also never seen proof that she accused any other celeb. This was Twitter running amok imo). As nothing physical happened between her and Tim, I assume he said something to her that made her uncomfortable.

He was 19, maybe drunk/high. She was a bit older. He chatted her up, she said no. He backed off but might have said something nasty.

I’m not denying this could’ve happened. But that is life, not assault. It can make you angry and you might post about this incident to show he’s a douche. But label this sexual assault or sexual misconduct? We don’t live in a perfect world. She didn’t feel threatened or violated, just uncomfortable. But of course sexual assault gives you more clout than telling the story of a 19yo wannabe Hollywood star hitting on you and then getting pissy when you turned him down. I mean, water is wet, right? But assault? Misconduct? Harassment? Now you’re talking...

Maybe the incident was more traumatizing to her than it would have been to other people because of her previous experience in high school. We don’t know. As she doesn’t say what happened, we can’t make up our minds. Which doesn’t stop people from throwing all kinds of shit around.

But, please, a guy saying some shit to you isn’t the same as a guy raping you. Is there no awareness of nuance anymore? Have you all gone mad? Yes, trauma differs for everyone, but come on. Men shouldn’t behave vile against women, but there’s still a difference between verbal insults and physical assault. Nobody is perfect and those without sin cast the first stone.

I’m sure this wasn’t Tim’s finest hour. If she’d just said what happened we could all have handled this better.

But Tim’s not a Kevin Spacey ffs.

I know we’re all bored out of our minds. But can we please keep a sense of proportion here? Stop leveling everything to look woke. It’s insulting to real survivors.

Tim is not a predatory rapist and that woman is not a pathological liar out to destroy celebs. The truth lies in between and for sure is much more pathetic, petty and boring.

[g30citiesexe]

The Story Of Darwin's Yearbook, A Content-Starved Fanbase, and how it all connects to the DHMIS "Titles"

Introduction

So. Yesterday the news came out, that, according to IMDB (movie wiki basically, a site that is able to be completely edited regardless if the info is fake or not, like Wikipedia is (hint hint) ), the upcoming DHMIS tv show's...interesting, and a tad bit suspicious titles had been revealed. Naturally, everyone freaked out. Including myself. But as I stepped back from my own dopamine-induced rush, I realized this was eerily similar to another incident involving a show i was fixated on.

The Context

So TAWOG. I'm a big fan of the show. And there was a period in my life where me, and the rest of the fandom were all waiting for something. Something...very important. And that something was confirmation of a Gumball Movie. Not the movie coming out, mind you, but the Announcement That It Would Be Happening. Now why were we so...desperate for this movie? Simple. The cartoon had ended on a Cliffhanger. And one of the best ways to resolve it, to give it a proper finale...? A movie. Now, the creator had stated several times before that there were ideas for a movie. But there was no definite confirmation. A few years passed...and nothing.

Enter Darwin's Yearbook. In 2019-ish, it was announced that there would be More Gumball. Holy Shit. Some believed it was a hoax. But as time went on, it was revealed that yeah, it was Real. And then began..

The Utterly Insane Theories I Somehow Believed.

Ok, so the fandom was kiiiinda grasping at straws at this point. Understandable. You give us something and We Would Find a Way to connect it to our Movie Hopes. And that came in the form of the Darwin's Yearbook (DY) Is Connected to/Is a cover-up for the Movie Theories.

Now this was a minority of people, of course. Most believed it was a cash-grab by CN to keep the show on oxygen.

But it must've been a very Vocal One.

Because I believed these theories.

They started out simple.

"What if DY ends with a movie tease?"

And somehow, snowballed into the crazy theory I ended up believing.

"It's Actually Going to Be the Full Movie In Disguise and it's just a cool marketing trick."

....I have no clue where that came from. Most likely my own head.

Now most people were skeptical. They didn't have much hope for this.

And they were right. DY turned out to be a clipshow. This left all of disappointed. Especially me, and the group of people who ended up falling for the Crazy Ass Theories. It was just simple clipshow fun. Nothing else. No movie hints. I will admit, DY was...okay. Especially as the clipshow events went on.

Now does this story have a bummer ending?

Well. No.

A while later, the "Person posts fake movie logo to reddit, Show creator comments on it and the fandom is sent into a craze" thing happened.

And the biggest part...

After years of waiting, in February 2021, we Got It. The Movie Was Happening CN had confirmed it on their twitter let's fuuucking gooooo!

So how does this connect to the DHMIS IMDB Thing?

Let's do some Comparing and Contrasting.

Both the DHMIS Titles and DY started off as, well...a highly likely lie.

DY had no signs of being a movie tease. However, mine and other's content starved-ness had led us to believe it.

The DHMIS IMDB titles are...very odd, to say the least. However, our content-starved-ness had led us to believe it as well.

Now the DHMIS IMDB title incident, if it is fake like I believe, is definitely more questionable than a theory that snowballed out of control.

Because for DY, the theories were just that. Theories.

IMDB is, despite being crowdsourced, a source most easily believe. Making a prank like that would be...pretty darn bad, even if it doesn't hurt anyone.

I'm not trying to rain on y'all's parade. Believe me. I want the TV show too.

But we have to admit the IMDB titles are likely fake.

After all, we are a very desperate fanbase, and some prankster is most likely taking advantage of us.

Now I do believe the show may be airing this year. There's more than one source I saw stating that.

But I don't believe the titles are bonafide real titles. They just don't make sense.

But like with DY, there's still hope. I'm not saying to Give Up all Hope Now. Just be cautious, don't believe crowdsourced sites, and don't get your hopes up.

After all, we know the show is still in production. It's still happening. I mean, the show just got licensed for merch a few months ago.

Hell, just a few days ago the creators confirmed they were still going. It's no release date, but it's Something at least.

What i'm saying is you Shouldn't give up hope.

But also, don't believe things too easily. It will only disappoint you in the long run. Trust me. I know.

But there's hope. All we can do for now is (and it's cliche, I know) is to stay patient. Best case-scenario, we do get it this year.

User N3kodoodles out. Thank you for listening.+

[pixelsandpins]

I Get to Be in Anime Sometimes and That STILL Freaks Me Out a Little

Be me, circa early 2000’s. Young teenager, staying up late on a school night, keeping my television as low as possible so my mom doesn’t come in and yell at me to go to sleep. We’re through all the preliminary adult animated cartoons that I saw on Fox, like, a year ago at that point. And then it’s time. The introductory bars of “Ready, Steady, Go” or “I Am” or “Tank” or “Dream Island Obsessional Park” or the opening of whatever show or season was first in the lineup at the moment. Anime. This weird, Japan-based form of animation that, for a long time, I could not get some people I knew to understand past Pokemon or Speed Racer.

“Okay, so they’re alchemists, alright? And they’re brothers and one of them had his soul bound to a suit of armor…are you following?”

And I was in that weird sweet spot of anime fan. Too poor and lacking in the right social connections to import, so I hadn’t memorized all of Final Fantasy: Advent Children like one of my friends in band. Stuck with dial-up way later than everyone else kept my access to online communities limited. Pre-YouTube meant fansubs and video sharing as a whole were more…complicated. But I had Adult Swim. I had Toonami.

And they beamed that sick anime goodness right into my impressionable eyeballs.

As the years went on, the fascination faded. That time that was previously set aside for watching was transformed into studying and marathoning Super Smash Brothers as I aged into college. Then, on my own, I couldn’t afford cable, and the new anime I had access to eventually shifted to the very new Netflix streaming service or whatever I could find broken into pieces on YouTube. By the time Crunchyroll and Funimation streaming arrived, I was an adult. Like…a real one. The kind of adult that has so many adult things to do just to survive that keeping up with new anime gets harder and harder.

Then an incredible thing happened in January of 2019.

I walked into a studio in north Texas and recorded my first ever line as an English dub voice actor for an anime. Now, this wasn’t some overnight thing. I had been busting my butt in indie games and web animation for a handful of years, at that point. I wasn’t even specifically looking to get into anime when I had started voice work, but moved it into my goalposts as I realized it might actually be accessible to me. But that moment? That instant of old and new, past and present and future coalescing? Completely incomparable.

Then something else would happen within the next year. I had started working in earnest, getting my punches in with bit parts and crowds, the essential background matter of anime. I get called in for this new show I had never heard of. First episode. Just some adult women fussing over the main character, explaining his terrible, horrible backstory. Great stuff. The usual. Was happy to be there working with amazing people.

Fire Force would go on to have a a huge premiere event at Anime Expo. Oh wow! Cool!

Coming this summer to Toonami: Fire Force!

Oh! Cool!

…

Wait…

Oh…OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT?!

Has something ever happened to you where you didn’t realize it had always secretly been dream of yours until it actually happened?

But you see…then it gets…weirder.

A year later, middle of 2020. I get called in for a “dub from home,” the thing that’s kept simul-dubbed anime going through the pandemic. It’s Fire Force, again.

What would proceed to occur over the next couple of hours was one of the most physically demanding voice acting sessions I had had at the time.

That episode would stream on Funimation’s site a few weeks later.

That episode would go on to air on Toonami a few months later.

So, there’s exactly one thing weirder (so far) than suddenly finding out your voice is going to be on Toonami. That your dulcet tones will appear on Cartoon Network, a channel you were basically raised on.

And that’s when a character you voice appears on that selfsame channel getting the ever loving crap beat out of him for three minutes straight and watching the reactions to it in real time on Twitter.

Now I’m most assuredly in the “do the work” part of the anime aspect of my voice acting career. I’ve been very lucky to get a few great parts and do some really great work. And I generally don’t freak out about it. It’s a job. A job I love doing every single day I get to do it and take very very seriously but a job nonetheless.

But then there’s that twelve year old.

That twelve year old that tuned in every week to see what would happen to Inuyasha and Kagome.

And I think about who that’s going to be in fifteen to twenty years. Who that kid is now.

And I hope whoever that kid is, that when the time comes they will also call every single one of their friends to find out who has cable so that they can get a picture of their name in the credits.

[adorpheus]

on fujoshi and fetishization

Lately, more and more, both here on tumblr and on other sites, I keep seeing people spew unfiltered hatred at fujoshi - that is, women who like mlm content such as gay fanfic and fanart featuring men with other men. And I don’t mean like a specific type of fujoshi, like the ones who are genuinely being weird about it, but just like a general hatred for girls (but especially straight identifying girls) who express love for gay romance.

I hate to break this to you all, but women (including straight women!) actually are allowed to like mlm fanfiction and fanart, even enthusiastically so. A woman simply expressing her love of gay fanfic, even if it is in kind of a cringey way or a way that you personally don’t like, is NOT automatically fetishization.

I’ve been on the receiving end of fetishization for my entire life, from a very young age, as many black and brown folx have, so I consider myself pretty well acquainted with how it works. Fetishization isn’t just like, being really into drawings of boys kissing, or whatever the fuck y’all are trying to imply on this god forsaken site. 

Fetishization is complicated imo, and can encompass a lot of things, such as (but not limited to):

1 - dehumanization, e.g. viewing a group of people as sexual objects who exist purely for entertainment purposes, rather than acknowledging them as actual people who deserve respect and rights

and

2 - projecting certain assumptions onto said people based on their race/sexuality/whatever is being fetishized. These assumptions are often, but not always, sexual in nature (like the idea that black people in general are more sexual than other races, etc etc etc).

I’m going to use myself as an example to illustrate my point. Please note this isn’t the best or most nuanced example, but it is the most simplistic. A white person finding me attractive and respectfully appreciating my black features as part of what makes me beautiful is not, on its own, fetishization. A white person finding me attractive solely or mostly because I’m a PoC is now in fetishization territory. Similarly, assuming I’m dominant because of my blackness (like saying “step on me mommy” and shit like that) is hella fetishistic. 

That being said, theres definitely a difference between how fetishization works in real life with real people, and how it shows up in fandom. 

Fetishization manifests in many different ways in fandom, but most commonly on the mlm side of things, I personally see it appear as conservative (or centrist) women who love the idea of two men together, but don’t actually like gay people, and don’t necessarily think LGBT+ people deserve rights (or “special treatment” as its sometimes dog whistled). These women view queer men as sexual objects for entertainment rather than an actual group of people who deserve to be protected from systemic oppression. I’ve noticed that they often don’t even think of the men they “ship” together as actually being gay, and may even express disgust at the idea of a character in an mlm ship being headcanon’d gay. In case its not obvious, this is pretty much exactly the same way a lot of cishet men fetishize lesbians (they see “lesbian” as a porn category, rather than like, what actual LGBT people think of when we read the word lesbian). There’s a pretty popular viral tweet thread going around where someone explains seeing this trend of conservative women who like mlm stuff, and I have also personally witnessed this phenomenon myself in more than one fandom. 

The funny thing is, maybe its just me buuuut.... The place I see this particular kind of fetishization happen most is not in the anime/BL fandom, from which the term fujoshi originates - I actually see these type of women way way more in western fandom spaces like Supernatural, Harry Potter, and Hannibal. I can’t stress this enough, there’s a shocking amount of people who are like, straight up trump supporters in these fandoms. If you want to experience it, try joining a Hannigram or Destiel group on facebook and you will probably encounter one eventually especially if you happen to be living through a major historical event. Like these women probably wouldn’t even be considered “fujoshi”, because that term doesn’t really apply to them given they aren’t in the BL/anime fandom, yet they’re the ones I personally see actually doing the most harm.

Of course this isn’t the ONLY kind of fetishizing woman in the mlm/BL world, there are other ways fetishization shows up, but this is the most toxic kind that I see.

A girl just being really into BL or whatever may be “cringe” to you, or she may be expressing her love for BL in a “cringey” way, but a straight woman really enjoying BL is not, on its own, somehow inherently fetishization. Yes, sometimes teenage girls act kind of cringe about how much they like BL and that might be annoying to you, but its not necessarily ~problematic~. 

That being said, IT NEEDS BE REMARKED that a lot of the “fujoshi” that you all hate so deeply, are actually closeted trans men or nonbinary people who haven’t yet come to terms with their gender identity, or are otherwise just NOT cishet. I know because I was one of these closeted people for years, and I honestly think tumblr and the cultural obsession around purity is one of the many reasons I was closeted so deeply for so long. STORYTIME LOL!!! In my early adolescence, I was a sort of proto “fujoshi”. I identified as a bi girl who was mostly attracted to men, or as most (biphobic) people called it, “practically straight”. I wrote and read “slash” fanfic and looked at as well as drew my own fanart. We didn’t use the term fujoshi back then, but that’s definitely how I could have been described. I was obsessed with yaoi, BL, whatever you want to call it, to a cringe-inducing degree. I really struggled to relate to most het romances, so when I first discovered yaoi fanfics (as we called them at the time), I fell in love and felt like I finally found the type of romance content that was made for me. I didn’t know exactly why, I just knew it hit different. LGBT+ fanart and fanfiction brought me an immense amount of joy, and I didn’t really think too hard about why.

At some point, in my early 20s, after reading lots of discourse™ here on tumblr and other places like twitter, I started to get the sinking feeling that my passion for gay fanfiction was ~problematic~. I had always felt a sense of guilt for being into mlm content, because literally anyone who found out I liked BL (especially the men I dated) shamed me for liking it all the fucking time (which btw is literally just homophobic, like can we talk about that?). In addition to THAT bullshit, now I’m seeing posts telling me that girls who like BL are cringey gross fetishists who inspire rage and should go die? 

Let me tell you, I internalized the fuck out of messages like this. I desperately wanted to avoid being ~problematic~. At the time, I thought being problematic was like the worst thing you could be. I was terrified of being “cancelled”, before canceling was even really a thing. I thought to myself, “oh my god, I’m gross for liking this stuff? I should stop.” I beat myself up over this. I wanted so badly to be accepted, and to be deemed a Good Person by the internet and society at large.

I tried to shape up and become a good ally (lmfao). I stopped writing fanfic and deleted all the ones I was working on at the time. I made a concerted effort to assimilate into cishet culture, including trying to indulge myself more deeply in the few fandoms I could find that had het content I did enjoy (Buffy, True Blood, Pretty Little Liars, etc). I would occasionally look at BL/fanfic/etc in private, but then I would repress my interest in it and not look for a while. Instead I would look at women in straight relationships, and create extremely heterosexual Couple Goals pinterest boards, and try to figure out how I could become more like these women, so I, too, could be loved someday. 

This cycle of repression lasted like eight years. Throughout it all, I was performing womanhood to the best of my ability and trying to become a woman that was worthy of being in a relationship. I went in and out of several “straight” relationships, wondering why they didn’t make me feel the way reading fanfic did. Most of all, I couldn’t figure out why straight intimacy didn’t work for me. I just didn’t enjoy it. I always preferred looking at or making gay fanfiction/fanart over actual intimacy with men in real life. 

Eventually, I stumbled upon a trans coming out video that someone I was following posted online, my egg started to crack, and to make an extremely long story short, after like 3 years of introspection and many gender panic attacks that I still experience to this day, I realized that I’m uh... MAYBE... NOT CIS..!? :|

I truly believe if I had just been ALLOWED TO LIKE GAY STUFF WITHOUT BEING SHAMED FOR IT, I probably would have realized I was trans way way sooner. Because for me, indulging in my love of gay romance and writing gay fanfic wasn’t me being a weirdo fetishist, it was actually me exploring my own gender identity. It is what helped me come to terms with being a nonbinary trans boy.

Not everyone realizes they are trans at age 2 or whatever the fuck. Sometimes you have to go through a cringey fujoshi phase and multiple existential crises to realize how fucking gay you are AND THATS FINE.

And one more thing - can we just be real here? 

A lot of anti-fujoshi sentiment is literally just misogyny. omg please realize this. Its “women aren’t allowed to enjoy things” but, like... with gay fanfics. Some of the anti-fujoshi posts I see come across my dash are clearly ppl projecting a caricature they invented in their head of a demonic fujoshi fetishist onto any woman who expresses what they consider to be a little too much enthusiasm for gay content and then using their perception of that individual as an excuse to justify their disdain for any women, especially straight women, ‘invading’ their ~oh so exclusive~ queer fandom spaces.

 god get over yrselfs this is gatekeeping by another name

idk why i spent so long writing this no one is even going to read it, does anyone even still use this site

*EDIT: HOLY SHIT WHEN DOING RESEARCH FOR THIS POST I FOUND OUT THAT Y-GALLERY IS BACK OMG!!!