#but when I say they have monopoly on the apartments I mean it

[wqnwoos]

there’s a familiar knock on your door, and you know without checking that it’s wonwoo. some things don’t change; wonwoo’s patterned knock is one of them.

some things do change. the feeling that swells in your chest when you hear it is one of them.

once upon a time, it was butterflies. swooping stomach, giddy smile barely suppressed as you skidded to the door in sock-covered feet. and now — now you can taste bile on your tongue. there’s a raw and unforgiving lump in your throat, and with every step you take towards the door, it seems to swell.

you don’t bother with the peephole, just open your apartment door, and with no surprise, it’s wonwoo. and he looks a wreck — dark hair sticking in all directions, smudged glasses, soft purple shadows under those eyes. he stands in front of you, awkward and uncertain; it almost reminds you of the first time he came over.

“hey!” you greet, not quite able to bite down the instant grin that spreads when you see your boyfriend. “you’re here!”

“i’m here,” wonwoo echoes softly, eyes a little wider than usual. one hand rubs the back of his neck — the other clutches a bouquet of pale pink and purple. he catches the way your eyes fall towards it, and laughs awkwardly, offering them to you with a sheepish grin. “these are for you.”

something inside you blooms, pink and red and pale blue. “they’re beautiful, wonwoo. thank you.”

his smile brightens a little. “i thought they’d match the blanket,” he explains. “the one you said you keep on your couch. can i — can i come in?”

you laugh at his shyness. “of course you can. you don’t need to ask.”

you snap out of it as quickly as you fall into it. he does need to ask now. and you’re not likely to say yes. you focus back on him, hovering uncertainly in front of you. “you shouldn’t be here,” you state flatly.

hurt flashes in his eyes. you can read him so well, picking out every twist in emotion, every twitch of his finger. you hate that you can’t forget things like that; things like his smile when you kissed him on the cheek; like the scar on the back of his left shoulder; like the smell of jasmine fabric softener and woody cologne.

you studied jeon wonwoo like your life depended on it. somehow you’re surprised that you can’t unlearn him.

somehow you still wish he’d had the time to do the same for you.

“i know,” wonwoo says finally. “i just — i brought food,” he says lamely, holding up a bag of takeout.

you recognise the brand. it’s your favourite — or rather, it was. you’ve found a new favourite, a hole-in-the-wall that delivers super quick, but he doesn’t know that. he doesn’t know you have a new coffee table. he doesn’t know you’ve swapped the cupboards for the plates and the bowls either, and suddenly you realise that two months is both forever and no time at all.

“go home, wonwoo.”

“___, please. i just want to talk.”

“i don’t think i want to listen,” you say quietly. and you don’t intend to be malicious, you don’t intend to hurt his feelings. you’re saying it how it is: plain and simple.

“you know what i like about you?” wonwoo says suddenly from below, where he’s resting his head against your lap. his hands are busy tracing the lines of your right palm, while your left runs through his hair idly.

“hopefully a lot of things,” you say lightly, tugging a little at a lock of brown. his hair is recently dyed, and you’re not quite used to it. “or this is going to be awkward. since we are, you know. dating.”

“you know what i mean,” he says, poking your cheek. “i like how straightforward you are. you don’t play games.”

you do, however, play avoiding compliments. “i play loads of games,” you answer, avoiding his serious gaze. “monopoly, for one. the sims, and stardew valley, and —”

he swats your wrist playfully. “since when do you play stardew valley?”

“for like, two months!”

wonwoo looks desperate now. he says your name again, pleading and soft. you ignore it, and it feels like the twist of a knife. you’re holding the handle.

“go home,” you repeat, rough and scratchy, readying yourself to shut the door.

his voice stops you. “i love you.”

you freeze, hand on the door. there’s a moment that stretches out forever, just like the first time he said it to you.

“i can’t quite say it when you’re awake, not yet,” you whisper, brushing a strand of hair away from wonwoo’s sleeping face in the early hours of the morning. “i love you, jeon wonwoo. like i’ve never loved anyone before.”

and with that off your chest, you lie back down, ready to curl up and sleep, until —

“love you too, baby.”

“oh my god, you were awake?”

it’s been two months since you broke up, but three since you’ve heard those three words from him. how easy they seem to come to him all of a sudden — it’d be funny if it wasn’t so fucking tragic.

“i can’t — we can’t do this.”

“why not?” he presses. he’s heard the crack in your voice, the one that mirrors his: the weak point.

“you know why, wonwoo.” as if it isn’t enough to taste your own bitterness, your mind plays flashes of the last few months. the tears, the late nights, the missed dates and repetitive apologies. the fighting — and then suddenly the lack of fighting. the giving up.

“but you know how i feel about you,” wonwoo insists, stepping closer. and this is where you remember how late it is, how he’s still standing in your hallway, the threshold between in and out. “i love you.”

how fitting, you muse. the cusp of being in or out of your life. “i believe you,” you say. and just as quickly as you put a glimmer of hope in his dark eyes, you crush it. “but you just don’t have time to love me, not properly. not how either of us want. i gave you everything, wonwoo. you know i did. i fucking fought for you — for us. you didn’t. it wasn’t on your fucking schedule.”

the little dregs of anger you have are drained out in only a few sentences. you’re over anger. you’re exhausted.

and you deflate, looking at his wide, guilty eyes. because you know that despite everything that went wrong, there was so much that went right. three years collapsed in three months, but they weren’t outweighed. “you’re a good person, wonwoo. you were a good boyfriend. but it’s time to move on. we don’t fit. not anymore.”

“is that what you’re doing?” he says hoarsely. “moving on?” it doesn’t sound accusatory, not even jealous — it sounds searching. you find the defeat in his eyes, the way they rove across your face like he’s trying to memorise you. like he’s trying to say goodbye.

you exhale, and it’s the most painful thing you’ve ever done.

“i still love you,” you say finally. “but it’ll pass.”

an / i have no idea how many times ive tried to post this . insanity. it won’t show up in the tags so im scheduling this for later while i go to sleep and if it doesn’t work i cannot bring myself to care anymore!!

apologies to everyone who got tagged multiple times!!!!

perm taglist: @n4mj00nvq @eoieopda @som1ig @glowunderthemoon @wondering-out-loud @tokitosun @hannyoontify @sahazzy @dokyeomin @icyminghao @smilehui @nicholasluvbot @lvlystars @immabecreepin @hanniehaee @kokoiinuts @astrozuya @doublasting @yepimthatonequirkyteenager @qaramu @weird-bookworm @phenomenalgirl9 @lightnjng @strnsvt @onlyyjeonghan @athanasiasakura

@iamawkwardandshy @twilghtkoo @yuuyeonie @lllucere

[inkskinned]

one of the things that i think we should pay attention to, socially, about the disney v. desantis thing is that it is really highlighting the importance of remembering nuance.

in a purely neutral sense, if you engage in something problematic, that does not mean you are necessarily agreeing with what makes it problematic. and i am worried that we have become... so afraid of any form of nuance.

disney isn't my friend, they're a corporate monopoly that bastardized copyright laws for their own benefit, ruin the environment, and abuse their workers (... and many other things). this isn't a hypothetical for me - i grew up in florida. i also worked for the actual Walt Disney World; like, in the parks. i am keenly aware of the ways they hurt people, because they hurt me. i fully believe that part of the reason florida is so conservative is because it's been an "open secret" for years now that disney lobbies the government to keep minimum wage down, and i know they worked hard to keep the parks unmasked and open during the worst parts of Covid. they purposefully keep their employees in poverty. they are in part responsible for the way the floridian government works.

desantis is still, by a margin that is frankly daunting, way worse. the alternative here isn't just "republicans win", it's actual fascism.

in a case like this, where the alternative is to allow actual fascism into united states legislation - where, if desantis wins, there are huge and legal ramifications - it's tempting to minimize the harm disney is also doing, because... well, it's not fascism. but disney isn't the good guy, either, which means republicans are having a field day asking activists oh, so you think their treatment of their employees is okay?

we have been trained there is a right answer. you're right! you're in the good group, and you're winning at having an opinion.

except i have the Internet Prophecy that in 2-3 months, even left-wing people will be ripping apart activists for having "taken disney's side". aren't i an anti-capitalist? aren't i pro-union? aren't i one of the good ones? removed from context and nuance (that in this particular situation i am forced to side with disney, until an other option reveals itself), my act of being like "i hope they have goofy rip his throat out onstage, shaking his lifeless body like a dog toy" - how quickly does that seem like i actually do support disney?

and what about you! at home, reading this. are you experiencing the Thought Crime of... actually liking some of the things disney has made? your memories of days at the parks, or of good movies, or of your favorite show growing up. maybe you are also evil, if you ever enjoyed anything, ever, at all.

to some degree, the binary idealization/vilification of individual motive and meaning already exists in the desantis case. i have seen people saying not to go to the disney pride events because they're cash grabs (they are). i've seen people saying you have to go because they're a way to protest. there isn't a lot of internet understanding of nuance. instead it's just "good show of support" or "evil bootlicking."

this binary understanding is how you can become radicalized. when we fear nuance and disorder, we're allowing ourselves the safety of assuming that the world must exist in binary - good or bad, problematic or "not" problematic. and unfortunately, bigots want you to see the world in this binary ideal. they want you to get mad at me because "disney is taking a risk for our community but you won't sing their praises" and they want me to get mad at you for not respecting the legit personal trauma that disney forced me through.

in a grander scheme outside of disney: what happens is a horrific splintering within activist groups. we bicker with each other about minimal-harm minimal-impact ideologies, like which depiction of bisexuality is the most-true. we gratuitously analyze the personal lives of activists for any sign they might be "problematic". we get spooked because someone was in a dog collar at pride. we wring our hands about setting an empty shopping mall on fire. we tell each other what words we may identify ourselves by. we get fuckin steven universe disk horse when in reality it is a waste of our collective time.

the bigots want you to spend all your time focusing on how pristine and pretty you and your interests are. they want us at each other's throats instead of hand in hand. they want to say see? nothing is ever fucking good enough for these people.

and they want their followers to think in binary as well - a binary that's much easier to follow. see, in our spaces, we attack each other over "proper" behavior. but in bigoted groups? they attack outwards. they have someone they hate, and it is us. they hate you, specifically, and you are why they have problems - not the other people in their group. and that's a part of how they fucking keep winning.

some of the things that are beloved to you have a backbone in something terrible. the music industry is a wasteland. the publishing industry is a bastion of white supremacy. video games run off of unpaid labor and abuse.

the point of activism was always to bring to light that abuse and try to stop it from happening, not to condemn those who engage in the content that comes from those industries. "there is no ethical consumption under late capitalism" also applies to media. your childhood (and maybe current!) love of the little mermaid isn't something you should now flinch from, worried you'll be a "disney adult". wanting the music industry to change for the better does not require that you reject all popular music until that change occurs. you can acknowledge the harm something might cause - and celebrate the love that it has brought into your life.

we must detach an acknowledgment of nuance from a sense of shame and disgust. we must. punishing individual people for their harmless passions is not doing good work. encouraging more thoughtful, empathetic consumption does not mean people should feel ashamed of their basic human capacities and desires. it should never have even been about the individual when the corporation is so obviously the actual evil. this sense that we must live in shame and dread of our personal nuances - it just makes people bitter and hopeless. do you have any idea how scared i am to post this? to just acknowledge the idea of nuance? that i might like something nuanced, and engage in it joyfully? and, at the same time, that i'm brutally aware of the harm that they're doing?

"so what do i do?" ... well, often there isn't a right answer. i mean in this case, i hope mickey chops off ron's head and then does a little giggle. but truth be told, often our opinions on nuanced subjects will differ. you might be able to engage in things that i can't because the nuance doesn't sit right with me. i might think taylor swift is a great performer and a lot of fun, and you might be like "raquel, the jet fuel emissions". we are both correct; neither of us have any actual sway in this. and i think it's important to remember that - the actual scope of individual responsibility. like, i also love going to the parks. Thunder Mountain is so fun. you (just a person) are not responsible for the harm that Disney (the billion dollar corporation) caused me. i don't know. i think it's possible to both enjoy your memories and interrogate the current state of their employment policies.

there is no right way to interrogate or engage with nuance - i just hope you embrace it readily.

[biblomaniac]

Supercorp headcanon:

The realization is almost startling. Kara hasn’t called her by her name in what seems to be a long time. They’ve seen each other nearly every day in the months following Alex and Kelly’s wedding, and yet Kara had said her given name only a handful of times, and only out in public.

Once Lena recognizes this curious phenomenon, she decides, as a scientist, that she needs empirical evidence to prove she hasn’t deluded herself into believing a fantasy. Over a two week period, Lena record dates, times, events, situations, and surrounding bystanders, and how each correlates to a different pet names from Kara.

By the end of the fortnite, the brunette has amassed a relatively large amount of data. Lena found that Kara called her:

Baby- 27 times

Babe- 15 times

Sweetheart- 10 times

Honey- 4 times

Lena is astounded to realize that:

1. She and Kara spend A LOT of time together; and

2. Kara has only called her by her name three times (two at The Foundation during a press conference, and one at CatCo when Lena dropped by to bring her favorite new Editor in Chief lunch.

Armed with proof, Lena plans to confront Kara when they meet tonight before game night. Unsurprisingly, Kara has already begun setting up snacks and games when Lena unlocks the door to what has become her shared apartment with Kara. Surprisingly, Lena didn’t have to find any sort of awkward segue to begin the conversation.

“Baby, what last game do you think we should set out for tonight? We played clue last week, but the last time we played monopoly it kind of got out of hand.”

“I wouldn’t say, ‘out of hand,’ Kara.”

“Babe, you bankrupted everyone and refused to end the game until Alex admitted you were the queen of monopoly. We do not need to have a repeat performance of that now that Esme will be coming.”

“Fine, let’s just play Candyland. Esme will enjoy it and she won’t have to struggle to keep up with the adults for this one.”

“Perfect idea, honey. Thanks for helping me pick,” Kara says as she finishes setting up and turns back around to face Lena.

Knowing there is no better opportunity than now, Lena asks if they can talk. If Kara swallows after she agrees, no one has to know. Lena leads Kara to the couch; they sit close enough to grasp hands if necessary but far enough to move their arms or legs without brushing against one another.

“Kara, why have you been calling me all these nicknames?”

“What do you mean? I’ve just been calling you by your name.”

It seems Lena didn’t factor in the possibility that Kara herself hadn’t realized she amassed such a large repertoire of pet names for Lena. A pink tinge crawls slowly up pale cheeks.

“Kar, you haven’t addressed me by my name outside of our jobs in months.”

“Okay, but we see each other every day. What have a been calling you?”

It seems Lena will have to shove her embarrassment in a little box so she can admit her findings to Kara.

“Well, you’ve… you’ve been calling me various terms of endearment.”

Kara chuckles at Lena’s overly formal response.

“Lee, just tell me what I’ve been calling you. It can’t be offensive, or you’d have brought this up ages ago.”

“You’ve been calling me ‘baby,’ and… and ‘babe,’ and ‘sweetheart,’ and—”

“Oh. Okay, did it bother you?”

“Well, no. I just—“

“Because if it has, I can totally stop. I’d hate to cross any boundaries.”

Boundaries. Since what Nia dubbed the “Friendship Breakup of the Century,” boundaries have been blurrier than ever. Even before Lex revealed Kara as Supergirl, boundaries between them were murky, tiptoeing back and forth over the line of friendship and something more. Lena has managed to keep her feelings stuffed into neat little boxes. She has never been certain if Kara felt what she did, never wanted to rock the boat of their relationship by calling to attention just how…intimate some aspects of their relationship are.

“What boundaries are there really left to cross, Kara?”

“What do you mean?”

It seems Lena will have to buck up and spell it out.

“We sleep in the same bed, for gods sake!”

Kara tilts her head, looking a bit like a confused puppy.

“What’s wrong with that? I thought you liked it!”

“I—I do!” Lena runs a hand through her wavy locks, growing increasingly frustrated by Kara’s inability to understand how odd their friendship is.

“So what’s the problem?!”

Lena jumps up, pacing back and forth in the space between the coffee table and the couch. She taps her fingers rhythmically against her crossed arms, trying to calm herself down.

“Friends don’t do this! The nicknames, sharing beds, and lunch dates, and movies nights cuddled up on the couch. Don’t you see how, how romantic this all is?!”

Kara jumps up, standing in Lena’s way, gently grabbing Lena’s shoulders. The blonde slowly uncrossed Lena’s arms, trailing her hands down until she is grasping Lena’s trembling hands. In the most soothing voice she can muster, Kara says,

“I mean, I guess. But we’ve never had a typical friendship, Lee. We’ve always been so much more, it doesn’t seem right to not do any of that. If you aren’t uncomfortable, and you don’t want me to stop, maybe…maybe all we have to do is stop being friends, and start being girlfriends.”

Girlfriends. Girlfriends? Lena can barely believe her ears.

“What did you just say?”

“I said, baby, be my girlfriend.” Kara gives Lena a beaming smile, watching as the brunette flounders to give her an answer.

“Girlfriends, like romantically, or…” Kara chuckles at Lena’s disbelieving tone.

“Yes, romantically! Like you said, there aren’t any boundaries left to cross but this one,” Kara moves her arms to Lena’s waist, leaning down slowly, giving the former CEO time to decline if she wants. Lena stares up at Kara, kryptonite green eyes roving between her lips and crystal blue eyes. With barely centimeters left between their lips, Lena surges forward onto her tiptoes, arms winding around Kara’s neck to pull her downward.

Seconds, minutes, even hours could have gone by before Kara breaks the kiss.

“So, is that a yes?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Lena happily says, moving to hug Kara tightly.

“FINALLY!” A voice exclaims.

Kara looks up, having not noticed her sister peaking her head around the now open apartment door. Lena burrows her head into the crook of Kara’s neck, unwilling to part.

“You owe me $50, Nal!”

“Ugh. You guys couldn’t wait one more week? You just cost me big time,” Nia grumbles, fishing through her purse for Alex’s winnings as the Superfriends pile into the apartment for game night.

Lena finally pulls back from Kara’s neck, moving to welcome their friends, but isn’t able to stray far when the reporter wraps both arms around her waist, pulling the brunettes back flush to her chest.

“Kara!” Lena squeals, a pretty red blush blossoming up her neck and onto her cheeks.

“What, you just agreed to be my girlfriend, I’m never letting you go again,” Kara tells her as she leans down to press a kiss to her cheek.

“Later, when they leave, we can test out all our new boundaries,” Kara whispers quietly, placing a final kiss to the shell of her girlfriends ear before dragging Lena to the couch.

“Let’s play!”

*************

If Lena makes a point to win every game as quickly as possible, nearly shoving their family out the door at the end of the night, it’s no ones business but her own.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

$100 billion later, autonomous vehicles are still a car-wreck

Autonomous vehicles were always a shell-game. The last time I wrote about them was a year ago, when Uber declared massive losses. Uber’s profitability story was always, “Sure, we’re losing money now, but once we create self-driving cars, we can fire our drivers and make a bundle.”

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/30/death-to-all-monopoly/#pogo-stick-problem

But Uber never came close to building an AV. After blowing $2.5b, the company invented a car whose mean-distance-to-fatal-crash was half a mile. Uber had to pay another company — $400 million! — to take the self-driving unit off its hands.

It’s tempting to say that Uber just deluded itself into thinking that AVs were a viable, near-term technology. But $2.5b was a bargain, because it allowed the company’s original investors (notably the Saudi royals) to offload their Uber shares on credulous suckers when the company IPOed.

Likewise Tesla, a company that has promised fully self-driving autonomous vehicles “within two years” for more than a decade. The story that Teslas will someday drive themselves is key to attracting retail investors to the company.

Tesla’s overvaluation isn’t solely a product of the cult of personality around Musk, nor is it just that its investors can’t read a balance-sheet and so miss the fact that the company is reliant upon selling the carbon-credits that allow gas-guzzling SUVs to fill America’s streets.

Key to Tesla’s claims to eventual profitability was that AVs would overcome geometry itself, and end the Red Queen’s Race whereby adding more cars to the road means you need more roads, which means everything gets farther apart, which means you need more cars — lather, rinse, repeat.

Geometry hates cars, but Elon Musk hates public transit (he says you might end up seated next to “a serial killer”). So Musk spun this story where tightly orchestrated AVs would best geometry and create big cities served speedy, individualized private vehicles. You could even make passive income from your Tesla, turning it over to drive strangers (including, presumably, serial killers?) around as a taxicab.

But Teslas are no closer to full self-driving than Ubers. In fact, no one has come close to making an AV. In a characteristically brilliant and scorching article for Bloomberg, Max Chafkin takes stock of the failed AV project:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-06/even-after-100-billion-self-driving-cars-are-going-nowhere

Chafkin calculates that the global R&D budget for AVs has now exceeded $100 billion, and demonstrates that we have next to nothing to show for it, and that whatever you think you know about AV success is just spin, hype and bullshit.

Take the much-vaunted terribleness of human drivers, which the AV industry likes to tout. It’s true that the other dumdums on the road cutting you off and changing lanes without their turn-signals are pretty bad drivers, but actual, professional drivers are amazing. The average school-bus driver clocks up 500 million miles without a fatal crash (but of course, bus drivers are part of the public transit system).

Even dopes like you and me are better than you may think — while cars do kill the shit out of Americans, it’s because Americans drive so goddamned much. US traffic deaths are a mere one per 100 million miles driven, and most of those deaths are due to recklessness, not inability. Drunks, speeders, texters and sleepy drivers cause traffic fatalities — they may be skilled drivers, but they are also reckless.

But even the most reckless driver is safer than a driverless car, which “lasts a few seconds before crapping out.” The best robot drivers are Waymos, which mostly operate in the sunbelt, “because they still can’t handle weather patterns trickier than Partly Cloudy.”

Waymo claims to have driven 20m miles — that is, 4% of the distance we’d expect a human school-bus driver to go before having a fatal wreck. Tesla, meanwhile, has stopped even reporting how many miles its autopilot has mananged on public roads. The last time it disclosed, in 2019, the total was zero.

Using “deep learning” to solve the problems of self-driving cars is a dead-end. As NYU psych prof Gary Marcus told Chafkin, “deep learning is something similar to memorization…It only works if the situations are sufficiently akin.”

Which is why self-driving cars are so useless when they come up against something unexpected — human drivers weaving through traffic, cyclists, an eagle, a drone, a low-flying plane, a deer, even some pigeons on the road.

Self-driving car huxters call this “the pogo-stick problem” — as in “you never can tell when someone will try to cross the road on a pogo-stick.” They propose coming up with strict rules for humans to make life easier for robots.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/3/17530232/self-driving-ai-winter-full-autonomy-waymo-tesla-uber

But as stupid as this is, it’s even stupider than it appears at first blush. It’s not that AVs are confused by pogo sticks — they’re confused by shadowsand clouds and squirrels. They’re confused by left turns that are a little different than the last left turn they tried.

If you’ve been thinking that AVs were right around the corner, don’t feel too foolish. The AV companies have certainly acted like they believed their own bullshit. Chafkin reminds us of the high-stakes litigation when AV engineer Anthony Levandowski left Google for Uber and was sued for stealing trade secrets.

The result was millions in fines (Levandowski declared bankruptcy) and even a prison sentence for Levandowski (Trump pardoned him, seemingly at the behest of Peter Thiel and other Trumpist tech cronies). Why would companies go to all that trouble if they weren’t serious about their own claims?

It’s possible that they are, but that doesn’t mean we have to take those claims at face-value ourselves. Companies often get high on their own supplies. The litigation over Levandowski can be thought of as a species of criti-hype, Lee Vinsel’s extraordinarily useful term for criticism that serves to bolster the claims of its target:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/02/euthanize-rentiers/#dont-believe-the-hype

Another example of criti-hype: the claims about the risks of ubiquitous drone delivery — which, like AVs, is half-bullshit, half self-delusion:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/05/comprehensive-sex-ed/#droned

Today, Levandowski has scaled back his plans to build autonomous vehicles. Instead, he’s built autonomous dump-trucks that never leave a literal sandbox, and trundle back and forth on the same road all day, moving rocks from a pit to a crusher.

$100 billion later, that’s what the AV market has produced.

Image:

Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

Gartner (modified): https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hype-cycle

[Image ID: A chart illustrating the Gartner hype-cycle; racing down the slope from the 'peak of inflated expectations' to the 'trough of disillusionment' is the staring eye of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, chased by speed-lines.]

[utilitycaster]

no d20 spoilers here since i know you know the gist of the drama but the fact that both kipperlilly (and the ratgrinders as a whole) and laudna are sending the their respective fandoms into meltdowns is FASCINATING to me!!! Especially happening at roughly the same time

I am now officially caught up and. not to brag but, called it re: the Rat Grinders, huh, except it's even more stupid. Like. The "but they're literally minors?" argument sort of falls apart given that they're the same age as the Bad Kids, and are actively trying to kill them, the "but redemption" argument doesn't mean shit since at no point did they make any forays towards redemption and indeed sicced a bunch of dragons on the Bad Kids, and so we're left with nothing but an impotent desire to not have a sick-ass battle in the finale of a D20 Campaign. And, perhaps, an uncomfortable realization that they are not unlike the Rat Grinders and the narrative said "lmao yeah you suck".

Laudna's shit? not that different actually. Like there's a lot of reasons why the arguments defending her are bullshit but the biggest one is that the "Laudna has never done anything wrong ever in her life and Imogen is her tether" crowd have painted themselves into a delightfully tiny little corner and they can't hide it anymore. Like, okay, so, is Laudna in control of her actions? Because if so she just attacked Orym in the middle of the night. Is she not? Because if so why hasn't she made the efforts that Chetney and FCG and Imogen (at least sometimes) did to address that? If the issue is trauma why is hers more valid than that of others? If it's abuse tell me how you feel about Caleb, Fjord, Beau, and Percy? Why is Orym shutting down the conversation when he says the Vanguard killed his family but Laudna's not doing the same when she tells Ashton not to speak to her of loneliness and Chetney not to speak to her of loss when she doesn't have a monopoly on either?

Why is it Bells Hells' job to endlessly accomodate Laudna and why are so many people suddenly talking about Bells Hells as an abstract 7-headed entity that didn't deal with Laudna's problems when those same people (if they were around at the time of the gnarlrock airing, and many of them weren't) were like "NO THEY SHOULD MAKE UP AS FAST AS POSSIBLE AND IMOGEN IS A BITCH BECAUSE LAUDNA DIDN'T MEAN IT." Why wasn't it an issue for them when Laudna's ranting about her time in Issylra and how hard it was got shut down by Imogen kissing her because that's why it didn't stay in the spotlight. Why wasn't it an issue for them when Imogen said "if you need her, that's my answer"? Why is it Orym or "Bells Hells" in the abstract who never spent time on Laudna's trauma after months if not years of throwing a fit any time someone (often me) (not always though) pointed out how much Imogen and Laudna were shoving under the rug and not dealing with? What does it say that you can't even expect Laudna's partner to be the one supporting her through this- it has to be Orym? Why doesn't Laudna have any responsibility here? At minimum she could have spoken up about the sword at at least two if not three junctures and she didn't.

There's a lot of things I hold in contempt, and after the obvious things like bigotry, two I really detest are hypocrisy and dereliction of responsibility. It's been extremely telling with both the D20 and CR discourse that people do not like seeing the story and the fandom say "hey actually you need to take responsibility for your actions, you only get redemption if you work for it, and if you leave a room hoping someone will follow you without saying that's what you want? Don't be surprised if no one does." The reason everyone was preparing to stop Laudna was because she was, in every action and decision, showing herself to be a person in need of being stopped. Can you describe this perfect balance of gentleness in which she's never pushed too hard but she does talk about her trauma and work through it and in doing so leaves Delilah? Have you demanded any other member of Bells Hells be granted that same gentleness and patience and kindness or do you think Orym should get over his grief because it's inconvenient to your arguments.

Just as the Rat Grinders show the narrative saying "being an entitled, resentful, jealous person who hurts others from jealousy makes you an easy tool to be manipulated into cruelty and you need to deal with that," I think Laudna shows the narrative (and certainly the fandom) saying "you do have an obligation to deal with your trauma, especially if it causes you to hurt others, and you can ask for help but you can't just sit on your ass waiting for someone else to initiate the process for you" as well as "if you do hurt people because of your trauma they may be angry with you, this may shape how they see you, and they are justified in that because you hurt them" and I think people in both fandoms hate being told that because I think a lot of the people sparking the discourse really do think that you can shield yourself from criticism over your hurtful actions by claiming trauma or neurodivergence or mental illness or whatever and it's like, no, you do still suck, you just also had sucky things happen to you as well.

[nvrsaidiwasinurcloset]

If I'm Lucky - Ethan Landry x Fem!Reader

Ethan Landry x Fem!Reader

Summary: Everything came crumbling down when you saw Ethan with another girl, but after a few months, you decide to hear him out.

A/N: Hiiii this is based on the song If I'm Lucky by State Champs. If you want to give it a listen, it's acoustic and I tried to capture the strong points of that song in this. :) If a part 2 is asked for, I'll probably write it. I apparently love to leave things on a cliffhanger💀

You couldn’t believe your eyes when you saw Ethan with another girl. You two weren’t official, but you still felt hurt. How is he going to have you in his bed one night, then the very next day, he’s holding hands with someone else.

“What the fuck?” you said to Mindy, her eyes searching to find what you’re looking at.

When she saw Ethan, she saw red. She knew how hard it was for you to trust after your last boyfriend cheated, and here he is, pretty much doing the same thing. She started to walk towards him, but you stopped her before she was able to confront him.

“He’s such an asshole,” she said, looking back over in their direction.

When you saw him kiss her cheek, your eyes started to water.

“I think I need to go,” you said.

“Let’s go to Sam and Tara’s,” she said, linking arms with you as you headed towards their apartment.

“What the fuck do you mean he was with another girl?” Tara asked, pacing the floor.

“I can only be so mad though, right? I’m the one that told him at the beginning that I wasn’t ready for a relationship yet,” you said, the stray tears running down your face.

“No, he’s treated you like his girlfriend for months,” Mindy said, rubbing your back as you leaned over to put your face in your hands.

As you sat there, Chad walked in.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, walking towards you.

Mindy jumped up, treating him like the enemy.

“Did you know that your roommate had another girl?” she asked, staring him down.

“What are you talking about? She’s the only girl that ever comes over,” he said, gesturing towards you.

“Well, she’s not the only one he’s been spending time with,” Tara said. The irritation for the situation was evident in her voice.

“I’ll kill him,” Chad said, before walking back out the door.

It’s been two months since that day. Ethan messaged you several times, but you ignored it. The friend group was no longer cool with him, and you were thankful to not have to see his face. Chad was the only one that spoke to him, but with them living in the same place, he didn’t have much of a choice.

As you arrived at Sam and Tara’s for a game night, you could tell that Chad wanted to talk to you about something. He never told you what happened when he confronted Ethan, just that he was unhappy that he did what he did. Ethan has been like Voldemort, no one wants to mention his name, so when Chad brought him up to you for the first time in months, you didn’t know how to feel. You used to be angry, you used to be sad, but now all you feel is hurt.

“I know you hate him, but Ethan asked me to ask you to unblock his number,” he said, as the two of you sat at the table after a heated game of Monopoly.

You scoffed at his words, before looking at him like he was crazy.

“Why would I do that?” you asked, your tone laced with annoyance.

“He knows he fucked up. He wants to talk,” he said, looking down after the stare down you were giving him made him nervous.

You thought about it for a minute, before pulling out your phone and unblocking his number.

“Done,” you said, placing your phone down on the table.

“He fucked up, but the dude really cares about you,” he said, meeting your gaze again.

As everyone started to leave, you felt your phone vibrate in your pocket. You opened your messages to see not a text, but what looks like an entire novel from Ethan. The message was so long that you had to click to open it so you could read the whole thing.

Ethan: I’m sorry that this is going to be a long message, but I don’t want you to block me again before I say everything I need to say. I’m sorry that I was seeing someone else when I was seeing you. I was scared because I was really getting caught up in my feelings for you, but I didn’t know if you’d ever want a relationship. I was so hung up on you that I couldn’t think straight. I was terrified of getting my heart broken. I made a horrible mistake; I should’ve told you that I wanted to be with you. I wanted the commitment. I wanted to be the one that you would be with. You talked about that guy from your writing class so much that I thought there was something going on there. I’ve learned that there wasn’t, but I just felt all this jealousy. I thought you didn’t want to be with me, but you were open to other people. I know all of this is no excuse for what I did, I should’ve talked to you. I can’t stop thinking about you, and I’d really like to take you out for coffee if you’d be willing to talk. If you don’t want to, I understand. I don’t think I could ever just let you go, but if you want me to, I’ll try.

Tears welled up in your eyes as you read the message. Part of you wanted to tell Ethan to go fuck himself, but another part of you felt like he did what he did because he thought you were doing the same thing. You wish he would’ve just talked to you. You wish there wouldn’t have been any confusion about where either of you stood. You decided to text him back after thinking it over on your walk back home.

You: When do you want to go for coffee?

[asegunda]

Lots of Sparks

PJO

Pairing: PLATONIC! Jackson Family (Paul and Tyson inculded) x Mortal! GN!Reader

Words: 1222

Summary: This is supposed to be a Part 2, of my other work "A Little Spark", since I'm making this a timeskip it will be at the final of Book 4, in Percy's 15th Birthday Party, and the Start of Book 5, before he is with Rachel. The Jackson family receives 2 guests in the party, one we know who they are, but what about the 2nd?

Warnings: Timeline: End of Book 4: The Battle of the Labyrinth and Start of Book 5: The Last Olymlian. English is not my 1st language! And you are older than in Part 1. Canon change.

Notes: Thank you so much for liking so much Part 1! I tried to do my best since I didn't really have something to do. Most of this is fluff because Gabe (🤢) is finally gone! And family bonding. I hope you like this part as the first, but Idk..

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨☆୧⋆ ˚｡⋆

While preparing the party you and Percy were talking of what Paul calls 'Girl affairs'.

"...And then she KISSED ME." Percy says looking at you.

"Wait. She kissed you? And you are just telling me now dumbass!" You whisper to him.

"I didn't know how to bring that up and believe me when I say that I'm still trying to believe it." He says while taking napkins out of the drawer.

"...And you two are dating now right?" You ask.

"No.."

"What do you mean no?...You guys kissed and like eachother what more do you need to start dating?" You say taking plastic cups and putting them in the table.

"I don't know..it's just.." He says, don't knowing what to say more.

"Is it because of your new friend Rachel?" You ask.

"What? Why would it be?"

"It's just that you remembered her number after seeing it one time, ...and since you came back from the mission you are either talking about dying, Annabeth or her." You say looking at the sides and eating a bit of a chocolate from the blue cake.

"Hey! That's not true! And stop eating the chocolate! Mom will think it was me." He says blushing.

"Okay, but you three look like a love triangle or something. Like Katniss, Peeta and Gale." You say nodding to yourself.

"Since when did you read the Hunger Games?"

"1 month ago, but that's not the important, the important is that you are in a love triangle." You say laughing.

"I'm not!" He says getting out of the room, heat in his ears.

"Why are you running baby?" You tease but he doesn't respond back and goes to his room.

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨☆୧⋆ ˚｡⋆

You and Sally were eating the cake while Paul talked with Tyson, his eyes shining while Paul talks about how good at Monopoly he is, Tyson makes a big smile as he hears the compliments leave the other man's mout.

Percy was talking to his father, he looked like a fisherman to you, not the mighty God of the Seas, but you guess that was his human form.. when he saw you he gave you a quick, but genuine smile, while he smiled you thought how much his green eyes represented Percy's, they were certainly family, but he was Tyson's dad too, and Tyson loved him as you saw with his 'Daddy' the moment Poseidon enetred the apartment. You still can't understand why the gods are always having children, don't they have more mighty things to do? Like protect they're land or the Olympus? You couldn't really understand.

You get out of these thoughts when Tyson asks if you want to play Uno, you can't say no right? So you two play.

As you are playing Percy comes back from his conversation with Poseidon, looking happy but at the same time kinda shaken up.

"Are you okay Perc?" You ask, not wanting to know how the hell Poseidon dissapeard, problaly god stuff, and he looks at you and smiles.

"Yeah..it's nothing that I'm not used to." He says and sits.

While he sits Paul calls in the kitchen.

'Problaly to talk about the wedding proposal.' You think.

He already told you that he wants to marry Sally, for you it's all good, he is already the person who takes you to school and you see the way Sally looks at him and he looks at her. You know that Percy is gonna accept it too. Paul is a really cool and swett guy.

You scream Uno while Tyson still has 5 cards and you smile proud of yourself.

After that you hear a knock at the door, Sally goes open it.

As she opens a man in a suit talks to her and after the talk she looks at you.

"Y/N, dear, can you come here?" You nod and come to the door.

Sally passes her arms around you while you look at the man.

"I'm sorry to interrupt but..this is complicated to say..well.. you're biological mother entered in contact with us. She says she wants to take care of you." He tells and both you and Sally look tense.

"But why would she want something with Y/N, she never showed interest in your life until now." Sally asks while looking at you.

You tense up.

"Well, I have a guess.." He sighs. "After Mr. Ugliano death all of his debts passed to her. Maybe taking care of her would be a indirect revenge with the person with the most connections with Mr. Ugliano. That is you, Y/N."

"No, that can't be!" Sally yells alerting the rest of the family that were in the living room (Percy was on is room.)

"I'm sorry Mrs. Jackson but Y/N isn't still legally your child." He says to her and looks at you. "If your mother wants to take your full care of you, she can even go to court."

"She isn't my mother, Sally is, I don't want to see her. Or be with her." You say your eyes starting to go red, Sally hugs you.

"If those adoption files didn't took that long.." She whispers that only the man can hear, he nods.

"Im sorry Mrs. Jackson, the best you can do is go to the court against her, maybe if you win the judges acelarate the adoption process."

Sally smiles to him and nods

"Thank you Sir for alerting us."

"It's nothing Mrs. Jackson, have a rest of a good party." He smiles at you and gets out of the apartment.

"Well looks like I'm going to court." She says as she closes the door and looks at Paul.

"...What?" He asks and while he is explaining you go to Percy's room to explain the situation.

When you open the door Percy is with another boy, who looks like a zombie, and emo, really emo.

"I can come back latter, bye Perc and Perc emo friend." You close the door again and go back to the living room, hearing a laugh after that, problaly Percy's.

Paul tells you that you don't need to worry when you get at the living room.

"When the time comes everything will be solved." He says.

You nod and hug him, he smiles at you.

The rest of the night you all play card games and after some hours Percy comes back from talking with his emo friend, looking again shaken up.

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨☆୧⋆ ˚｡⋆

All of your family is taking another party from the court win. Your mom didn't even have the conditions to take you in, and even if she had you weren't coming.

In some days Percy is also taking a vacation with is friend Rachel family.

Every time he talked about it to you, you made a knowing look, his love problems were as good as a reality show, you don't even want to know Annabeth face when she finds out. You could laugh with that.

But now not even Percy is thinking about that vacation he is thinking of how much you grew up since he met you, still in the control of Smelly Gabe, and how much more happy you were in these years after taking you with them.

He hugs you. Now that doesn't matter,

you are officialy Y/N Jackson.

[landing-amongst-the-planets]

After seeing Season 5 and the way Miguel beat up three different guys to protect Robby in the fight at the Cobra Kai dojo, I need more of protective Miguel over Robby, so here! It’s not a fic, more an outline xD

4 Times Miguel’s Protective Of Robby And 1 Time He Realises Why

1: Robby and a former Cobra Kai are sparring and the ex-Cobra gets way too aggressive and nearly crushes Robby’s leg. Miguel immediately intervenes and knocks him to the ground and really digs into him until Robby has to tell him to cool it and the guy apologises. Tory and Sam snicker in the background and Demetri hands Eli money. Robby spends the rest of the week thinking about that because no one’s ever protected him like that before, except Miguel. For Miguel it’s just another Tuesday xD

2: Miguel finds out Johnny didn’t tell Robby the purpose of the Mexico trip until they were already there and that leads to the loudest fight the entire apartment complex has heard, and that’s saying something. Miguel thinks it’s unfair to Robby that Johnny put him in that position without even telling him and yet again made him feel second to Miguel. Eventually he calms down after Robby pacifies him and Johnny’s impressed and kinda proud that his two sons are getting along so well that Miguel is even protecting Robby from JOHNNY. Yaya gives Miguel a knowing look and Robby a wink and they don’t know what she means but they oddly feel like they’ve been found out.

3: One of the guys from school asks Robby out and he’s so far removed from karate and Carmen tells him it’ll be nice to have a break from the constant training for the Sekai Taikai, so he accepts. Miguel doesn’t know why but he feels weirdly betrayed by his mom. He ends up recruiting Eli and Demetri to follow Robby on the date “just in case”, citing their newly formed friendship and brotherhood meaning he wants to keep him safe. Eli and Demetri exchange that look they always do when they’re communicating in their own way that no one else understands, but Miguel’s one-track mind lets it go. The date does end up going badly cuz the guy is really disrespectful and too touchy and the next day Miguel’s on TikTok for beating the guy within an inch of his life before Robby, Eli, AND Demetri all had to hold him back. The video shows up on Daniel’s For You page on his newly made TikTok and he can’t help but be glad that someone’s looking out for his mentee, because if anyone knows how rough Robby had it it’s Daniel.

4: It’s movie night at the Diaz-Lawrence household and, after an exhausting game of Monopoly where Johnny nearly throws the board out the window when he starts losing, Miguel and Robby end up on the kitchen table together once everyone’s gone to sleep. They start talking about their childhoods and Miguel learns things about Robby’s that he half-figured but never wanted to think about when he was supposed to hate him. But now, seeing the kid who spent his childhood cooking for himself in dingy apartments and having to sweep up broken shards of the bottles of beer his mom or her newest boyfriend would leave on the ratty carpets, the kid who fell in with the wrong crowd too many times and got taken advantage of, the kid who was alone and didn’t have Johnny around…Miguel can’t help himself, he hugs Robby, a full-body hug, for the first time, and says he won’t let anything or anyone hurt him again. And Robby’s pretty sure he forgets how to breathe.

+1: Of course they don’t figure it out on their own. It takes separate interventions from their friends AND their senseis (yes, even Johnny figured it out eventually….ok, Daniel may have had to give him an intervention first) for Miguel to figure out he has feelings for Robby. And maybe that overprotectiveness wasn’t just brotherly love and friendship. And when he comes to this epiphany, it takes another full week for him to stop babbling nonsense when he sees Robby and finally ask him out. Fortunately for him, Robby likes him back, and fortunately for everyone else, they can finally exchange their money for the bets for when they’ll start dating😌

[before-it-felt-like-a-sin]

could you write for lottie x reader where they're playing a game like monopoly or uno and it's getting really heated, so lottie kisses reader to distract them and secretly steals money/hides one of her cards and reader catches her?

Word Games

Plot: Lottie hated losing, and you chose the one game she couldn't win.

Warnings: Lottie being a dirty cheater at scrabble. (Anon I know you wanted Monopoly or Uno but I thought scrabble would be fun), pretending that scrabble doesn't only let players have 7 letters at a time.

Notes: a bit shorter than usual so bear that in mind <3

-----------------------------------------------------

"Lottie, you can't play 'byd' and say it means 'bid'. That's not how Scrabble works. You know that." You looked at the Scrabble board where little put down her so-called 'word'.

"That isn't fair. You literally played the word 'exclusionary' last turn. I'll never beat you. You're not even giving me the chance to." She pouted at you, her brown eyes wide. It almost made you let her play her 'word'.

Almost.

"That sounds like a you issue, babe. Simply get better. I don't make you bend the rules when we play your games."

"My games don't require this much brainpower."

"I'm sorry, since when does Monopoly not require tons of strategy? Or when you make me play chess? You're just mad because you suck at word games." You smirked at her.

She just glared back at you and tried to come up with a real word to play. She ended up with the word 'bed'.

"So you're telling me that you forgot 'bed' was a word? Wow Lot, you're kinda falling apart over there."

"Oh shut up, y/n. Y's have more points," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Mm. Keep telling yourself that, honey." While you were talking, you came up with your next word. You'd chosen 'stranger'.

As you put down your letters, Lottie groaned. You just grinned up at her.

"Sorry Lots. I know how much it sucks to be a loser."

"Y/n, I swear to God. Please. What the Hell."

"Awww, is Lottie sad because she sucks at Scrabble? Do you want a kiss to make it better?" You taunted.

"Yeah, I do." With that, she leaned across the table, and met your lips with hers. You were like that for a few seconds when you heard rustling.

"Lottie, are you taking different letters from the bag? Are you that desperate?" You gave her a slightly condescending look.

"What. I don't know what you're talking about. I would never."

"Lottie." You raised your eyebrow at her.

"Fine. Yes. Okay. Maybe I was. It's not my fault that you're unnaturally good at this game." She pouted again.

"That doesn't mean you have to cheat!"

She was still staring at you with those gigantic puppy eyes. Unable to resist this tome, you scooted next to her and rested your head in her lap. She brought her head down to yours and gave you another soft kiss on the lips.

"We don't have to play any more if you don't want."

"Oh, and just let you win by default? No thanks," she said, smiling down at you. "I might lose, but I'm going to lose with dignity."

"Whatever you say, Lottie. Just no more cheating," you responded, getting up from her lap.

"No promises."

[florsial]

Slytherin Skittles (aka Hogwarts' Pantheon) Incorrect quotes!

(+others)

. . . . .

Evan: We’ve been conducting an ongoing study to see what Barty will and will not eat. Pandora: Grass? Yes! Evan: Moss? Yes!! Pandora: Leaves? Ohh, yes! Evan: Shoelaces? Strange but true! Pandora: Worms? Sometimes! Evan: Rocks? Usually nah. Pandora: Twigs? Usually! Evan: Dorcas's cooking? Inconclusive! Regulus: How did you… test this? Evan: You just hand them stuff and say ‘eat this’ and if they eat it, they eat it. Regulus: ... I don’t know how to feel about this. Dorcas: IS THAT WHERE ALL MY SPARE SHOELACES WENT?

. . . .

Regulus: Where's Evan, Dorcas, and Pandora?

Barty: They're playing hide and seek. Regulus: Where? Barty: I don't think you get how this game works.

. . . .

Pandora: Regulus's first detention, I'm so proud. Evan: Whoa, back up. Why did they get detention? Dorcas: Because they're an idiot. Barty, terrified: They can do that??

. . . .

Regulus: I swear to god I'm the only one here with a braincell. Evan and Barty: ALL HAIL the keeper of the sacred braincell!

. . . .

Regulus: What did you guys get in your yearbook? Dorcas: 'Prettiest Smile' Pandora: 'Nicest Personality' Barty: 'Most likely to start a bar fight' Evan: 'Least likely to start a bar fight, but most likely to win one'

. . . .

Regulus: You're a lying piece of shit! Barty: Oh yeah? You're the idiot that thinks you can get away with everything you do, WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD! Evan: I'm leaving and I'm taking Pandora with me! Dorcas, gathering cards: Aaaaand that's enough Monopoly for today.

. . . .

Pandora: Why isn’t the statue smirking at me? Dorcas: It isn’t smirking at anyone, they’re all just imagining it. Barty: Three of us saw it, Dorcas. How do you explain that? Dorcas: *points at Evan* Sleep deprivation. *points at Regulus* Paranoia. *points at Barty* Delusional personality disorder.

. . . .

Pandora: You really put aside everything and came all this way for me? How did you even get here so fast? Dorcas: Several traffic violations. Evan: Three counts of resisting arrest. Barty: Roughly thirteen cans of energy drinks. Regulus: Also, that’s not our car.

. . . .

Barty: How do you connect with a fictional character? Evan: What? Dorcas: What? Pandora: What? Regulus: *pulls up a 500 slide presentation* I'm glad you asked.

. . . .

Regulus: Ah, yes. Here we have a beautiful couple... Pandora: I really care about your feelings! Lily: I really care about YOUR feelings! Regulus, turning their head: ...and then there's the disaster couple... Barty: YOU NEED TO PAY MORE ATTENTION TO ME INSTEAD OF BEING AT THE HOSPITAL! Evan: I WOULDN'T HAVE TO SPEND SO MUCH TIME AT THE HOSPITAL IF YOU STOPPED INSISTING ON FIGHTING EVERYONE WHO COMES WITHIN A FIVE FOOT RADIUS OF YOU!

. . . .

James: What did you get Regulus for their birthday? Pandora: I got them a kitten. Barty: Really? Me too! Dorcas: I also got them a cat. Evan: Looks like we had the same idea. Pandora: James, please tell me you didn't get Regulus a cat as well! James: ...I got them a kitten. *later* Regulus, in their apartment surrounded by cats and kittens: This is the best birthday ever!

. . . .

Pandora: What do rainbows mean to you? Barty: Gay rights. Dorcas: There's money. Evan: The sign of God's promise to never destroy the whole Earth with a flood. Regulus: It is an optical phenomenon that separates sunlight into its continuous spectrum when the sun shines on raindrops.

. . . .

Regulus: Poison is a magic transmutation potion that turns people into corpses. Barty: This knife is actually a magic wand. Evan: Meet me in the Denny's parking lot for a wizard duel. Pandora: * cocks gun* Magic missile. Dorcas: What the fuck is wrong with you people.

[p1xe1sd34d]

Miguel o'Hara sfw headcannons!

Some platonic, some romantic, some angsty a bit of everything if you will :}

Miguel does not know how to cook for his life, he will somehow make simple things like eggs burst in flames

On the contrary he's very good at preparing meals that don't need to be cooked like salads, sushi, fruit platters he would bring tea and fruits every morning

He is very and I mean very clingy he would be distant at first but once you're close he won't let go he would probably track you with his cameras if you stayed out for too long, he's incredibly afraid of losing you like Gabriella so he would do anything to protect in a way that doesn't destroy the canon

If you are from an earlier time period then he is, he would show you all the tech his dimension has and would love coming to your dimension to see the "primitive" technology

He would let you be the first to try on his new prototypes(if they're safe) and always uses your feedback to make them better! He even makes personalised versions for you based on the things you like

He is a very traditional guy, he would bring you flowers and make sure to get you in best wedding attire he could possibly find, the honey moon phase would last forever with him♡♡♡

If you don't understand Spanish he would try to teach you it, wanting to show his love to you in ways English couldn't convey

Miguel is AMAZING with kids, he would help Mayday with anything and keep her entertained however he doesn't this way Infront of people apart from Mayday since he gets embarrassed easily

At the start of your relationship, Miguel was a stay at home person, he'd rarely leave his apartment unless it was for a mission or he's being forced out by you or Peter

However when you became closer he developed a love for travelling and he started taking you out to restaurants, shops, nature walks wherever you like every month or so as he doesn't want to neglect you since when he became Spider-Man he became more distant with most of his loved ones and he holds you too dearly to not bring you to places with him

Miguel may accidentally become your sugar daddy, due to being the leader of spider society and constantly fighting anomalies he is often away and to compensate for his absence he will spend lots of money on you and bombard you with gifts since he doesn't want you to think he doesn't love you anymore

Miguel tears his bedsheets and other fabrics on a regular basis once there was an ice cream van outside and he was looking out the window and the music started playing and he ripped the curtains apart from being startled ���ຶ⁠‿⁠༎ຶ

He likes almost all music genres due to living in 2099 it's very common to hear music inspired by cultural music around the world that uses different scores, scales e.t.c as a result he will listen to practically every genre but he particularly likes ranchera, bossa nova and blues

Miguel created replicas of everything Gabriella owned since all the things such as drawings plushies clothes all disappeared along with her when the dimension collapsed and he sleeps with her plushie replicas every night (if he can even sleep) and placed her football on her offrenda (⁠༎ຶ⁠ ⁠෴⁠ ⁠༎ຶ⁠)

Dude is a sore loser whether it's monopoly, uno or Scrabble he will start flipping tables and shouting if he loses if not that he will huff for an hour and refuses to talk to anyone

He LOVES massages due to not being able to stick to walls and instead pulls his body weight up via crawling his back muscles be burning and sore after every mission and releasing all that tension in his back is incredibly relaxing and enjoyable for him

When he first got his DNA spliced and became 50% spider he didn't have any shots to suppress the spider DNA so often he would hiss and growl at people instead of telling them to go away like a normal person he doesn't do it anymore but he gets so embarrassed when he says someone on the street who he growled at and they look at him weird

When he first entered Gabriella's dimension he needed an excuse for having red coloured eyes, claws and fangs compared to the 'real' miguel having brown eyes and no non human features so he told Gabriella he was having a vampire transformation and Gabriella was gonna have one when she's older and she was really excited for when her fangs grew in

[krikeymate]

Please except this as my random fic title “For the love of God… Put. It. Down!”

Sam was having... the worst time. She honestly thought this night couldn't have gotten any worse... and then Tara took out the knife.

She thinks she must be losing her mind.

She's not crazy, right? This was not how the board game was supposed to go, right? There were rules... right?

Not according to anyone else, apparently.

Sam had been wary when Mindy barged into the apartment with a Monopoly box earlier in the day. She'd thought she was going to have to spend all evening joining them in an extremely boring and unfun game.

It turns out that her kids don't know the meaning of boring and unfun, and had their own methods to... liven it up a bit.

They forgot to warn Sam about how they play, however.

She'd spent the game so far irritated and horrified as she watched Chad - the banker - continuously miscount the cash in a way that she's now getting the suspicion may have been deliberate.

Her sister had proven herself to be the world's worst decision maker, which... tracks actually.

She can never repeat that.

The twins had been taking advantage of her sister the entire time, convincing her with silver tongues to make subpar trades or purchases. Sam had thought about intervening, but she's been trying to coddle Tara less, and besides, it's just a game.

It's. Just. A. Game.

Or, it was, up until Tara whips the kitchen knife out of nowhere - prepared and ready to be used - and holds it to Chad's throat.

"This is a robbery," she says, smirking.

Chad, to his credit, looks surprised, but not scared. He slowly raises his hands, plastic money slipping from his fingers and fluttering down.

"Please," he whispers, "I have a family. Take what you want, take it all, just don't hurt me. I'll do anything!"

Sam doesn't have time to digest the weird display or Chad's suddenly southern accent - and not a good one - before Mindy is groaning beside her.

"EUGH. Please keep your weird roleplaying to the bedroom!"

Sam snaps her head between Mindy and Tara, the implication making the room feel stuffy and her chest feel tight.

"ALRIGHT," she says - louder than intended - as she climbs to her feet. "I think that's enough for tonight." She needs to bleach her brain, maybe read a rule book.

"Aww what, but I was finally making money," Tara whines, knife held sloppily in one hand, the other bursting with fake cash.

"Yeah!" Chad agrees, despite being the one with a fucking knife to his throat.

Sam cannot be the only adult in this room right now. She looks down at Mindy and gestures to the scene, a silent beg for her to do something.

She does not.

"Nah," Mindy says, leaning back on her hands, "I want to see where this goes."

"No! No you don't- I don't- This is... the game is done," Sam stutters.

"But who won?" her sister asks, blinking up at her as if that's what's important right now.

Sam stares back at her for a moment, trying to determine if she's fucking serious. She is. Of course she is.

"Nobody won, you're all going to jail. Robbery, embezzlement, insider trading. You're all going down for it," she says dryly, wishing she could get the last four hours of her life back.

Mindy sniggers and Sam only has a second to be filled with regret before she says "Yeah, horny ja-"

Sam cuts her off with a box lid to the face.

With a heavy sigh, she turns back to the other two. "For the love of God... Put! It! Down!" she demands, gesturing at the knife.

Tara gets a look on her face, the one that says Sam's being unreasonable again.

She watches her roll her eyes and slowly put the knife on the floor with so much attitude that Sam feels the overwhelming urge to tell her that she's grounded.

Sam's too young to be a parent, look what they've reduced her to.

Bending down to snatch the knife from the carpet, she holds it up to her sister.

"Your knifework is sloppy and you could have easily been disarmed in a real combat situation, I'm disappointed in you."

The indignation on Tara's face kind of makes it worth it.

[freakshowtwopointoh]

Limoreau playing videogames or boardgames and Jordan is shocked at how good Marie is at them, so much they stop trying to go easy, but she still beats them. (I'll let you decide the game, lol). Could be a group thing as well.

After trying to teach Marie a few video games, Jordan was a little wary of how board game night was going to go. She had a pretty rough time with both Baldur's Gate and Fortnite - hours spent bribing her to keep trying only to watch her full on rage quit after dying one too many times, insisting that she would never play again.

She seemed confident today, however. This should have made them more nervous, but when it came to Marie, they never seemed to learn their lesson: don't underestimate her.

"You know, we can totally do teams if you're nervous." They hedged, side eyeing her as they made their way up the stairs to Luke's apartment.

"You sure you're not nervous, babe?" She teased, squeezing his hand. They rolled their eyes and pulled her into the apartment.

The setting was welcoming enough - colorful bowls of snacks, a variety of liquor bottles lined up haphazardly on a card table. And a variety of games, stacking on Luke's secondhand dining room table.

"Ready to go down, Li?" Emma came bounding into the room, nearly colliding into him before throwing her arms around their body. "Also, hi."

"Hi to you too, Blondie." They mumbled, hugging her back awkwardly.

More hugs were had and taunts were shared as everyone made their way into the main room, sipping drinks and debating which game to play.

"If we try playing Pandemic again, I will riot." Andre said defiantly. "I'm so fucking tired of losing that game."

"Let's play monopoly." Jordan said dryly, earning confused looks from everyone but Cate and Marie. "I'm fucking with you guys, obviously. No one likes monopoly."

"What about Catan?" Cate suggests innocently, but her eyes shine playfully.

"You're just saying that because you always win." Andre complained, but he was already pulling the box out.

"I can't help being the best. It's a good game!" She retorted playfully, tossing her hair back.

"Is that the one with the castles?" Emma whispered loudly to Sam.

"No, that's Carcassonne. This is the one with the sheep and the little guy who steals stuff." Jordan and Luke both stifled a laugh as Emma nodded in understanding.

"Right! Ok I don't remember how to play this one." As Sam explained the rules to Emma, Jordan turned to Marie.

"Have you played this before?" He whispered softly in her ear, resting their hand on her thigh. She nodded, a soft smile playing on her full lips.

"Yeah, I played it a few times at Red River. They said it would help encourage 'nonviolent competition'." She chuckled slightly, resting her hand over theirs.

"Ok so... Luke, you go first." Sam concluded, after explaining the game to Emma (very patiently) for the third time. Luke rolled the dice, and the game began.

Now, the thing that Jordan loved and hated about Catan was that you can't always tell who is winning. It makes for a more interesting game, yes, but it also means that it is very easy to get overly confident. Especially when they could see the confusion on Emma's face throughout the game, as she slowly became drunker and more interested in making towers with her pieces than actually playing.

Marie's hand inched slightly up their thigh as they were rolling the dice, a clear attempt at distracting them. They shifted, unwilling to let her know it was working. The smirk on her lips revealed that she already knew. Damned blood powers. They shook their head slightly, trying to stay on task.

"Dude, I'm like, about to win," Andre said, slurring slightly as he continued to refuse to give Jordan a sheep.

"If you're 'like about to win' then it doesn't matter and you should give me the sheep!" She retorted, pushing their slightly longer hair from their eyes as she tried to figure out how to build their next city.

"It doesn't matter if he's about to win, because I win." Marie said calmly, placing a road piece at a key intersection and extracting the longest road card from in front of Cate.

They turned to her in shock, double checking her math.

"I'm offended that you don't trust me." She teased, watching their jaw work as they realize how easily she snuck up on them. "I told you I've played this game before." Cate was equally dumbfounded, trying to ascertain how she missed Marie's slow and steady climb to victory.

"Did Marie actually beat Cate at Catan? I was beginning to believe her reign would never end." Sam said, chuckling.

"I always knew you could do it." Emma slurred, smiling at her friend.

"You were barely paying attention. I watched you rebuild that tiny log cabin at least three times." Jordan retorted, her ego slightly bruised after losing to their girlfriend.

"Yeah, well, I didn't have to pay attention to know that she'd kick ass."

"Sure." Jordan said, rolling their eyes playfully before turning back to her girlfriend.

"One of these days you'll learn not to underestimate me, baby." Marie murmured in their ear, watching with satisfaction as they squirmed in their seat. "You can make it up to me later."

And that's when Marie finally wins the actual game she's been playing all night long: a blush creeps up Jordan's neck and onto their cheeks. Their night is just getting started.

[saltygilmores]

THOUGHTS WHILE WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS: S3/EP4/ONE’S GOT CLASS THE OTHER ONE DYES (PART 5)

Parts 1-4 and all other episodes are linked in my pinned post.

OMG. PHRASING, LUCAS. PHRASING!! IT'S OKAY EVERYBODY! HE MEANT METAPHORICALLY, PEOPLE.

I mean, your affair with Dean Forrester should already have you on some kind of registry.

Luke is giddy with delight over Lorelai's humilation at the school and is giggling up a storm, a gigglestorm the likes of which I've never heard before from him. Let's alll point and laugh at Lorelai! It's fun.

The KarenDebbies are descending upon us. I can't wait to hear Lorelai say the word "condoms"!

I've never seen him this happy before?

Sadly with no context I wouldn't be able to tell if this was 2023 or 2002. Karens: Why were you discussing your pregnancy, why didn't you change the subject? Lorelai: I tried but they kept coming at me like I was poland and they were Nazis. Urrrp.

In my unrated Gilmore Girls rewrite titled The Hollow, I promise to rewrite this episode so that we see Lorelai throwing condoms at high school students.

Well as long it's just a banana and you don't bring Dean for the subject of your demonstration. KarenDebbie: What kind of mother are you?! Lorelai: The kind that doesn't just gloss over uncomfortable topics!

My ass you don't. She spends a good 75% of season 3 moving heaven and earth to interfere in Jess and Rory's relationship and cockblocking them to make sure these two legal adults don't fuck each other instead of giving Rory any sort of useful information about sex and you should know better than anyone that that's a solid recipe for teen pregnancy, Miss GlossyPants. Speaking of. Guess who else is about to get a fumbling attempt at Awkward Parental Sex Talk? This li'l guy.

We don't want Shane to get pregnant. It would make her already tragic impending death even more tragic.

So, what's up with Luke's apartment? There's a guitar, bongos, and maracas (plus a sign he stole from a bus stop). Does he have a secret past in some kind of salsa band?

Luke referring to a human being as something you can "stash in a closet" like an old box of Monopoly is fucking hilarious. The delivery is also very "Jess are you a gigolo?" and "What are you, a drug dealer now?" Like he knows it's a ridiculous question but he's also mildly concerned that the answer is going to be Yes. And now, for all time favorite exchange in the entire Gilly Girls World:

Jess and Rory are cool and all. But Luke and Jess are it for me. These two are the reason I keep watching. Their dynamic is so perfect and things were never the same after Milo left, not only because of the breakup of Literati but because I desperately miss these two guys playing off each other.

I don't know. I feel like Shane wouldn't give a flying cupcake about getting caught. She had no problem repeatedly barging into the diner to hump Jess' leg while Luke and Lorelai were watching and Luke had to part them like Moses parting the sea to wait tables, and she had no problem playing tonsil hockey with Jess against a tree for hours in view of hundreds of people. More evidence that this little dude is lying and that Closet Girl wasn't actually Shane.

We know, Jesstopher. We know. You little freakazoid.

Amen, brother.

Bolt the doors Lucas he's gonna run! Luke should be pulling a Lorelai and throwing bags of condoms at Jess. Stars Hollow called an emergency town meeting after he drew on a sidewalk with chalk. I can't imagine the fate of both Jess and Luke if it were discovered that Jess planted his demon seed in anyone but especially precious Rory.

I love it when Luke tells Jess to shut up. Fantastic stuff. Luke: If you care about this Shane girl you have to treat her better. Jess: I don't care about her. I don't know her last name. She mentioned it once, didn't stick. We're just "hangin out." Staaahp. Jess is so deliciously blunt and nonchalant about her. Anyone fellow Millenials here? Does anyone else remember that in high school in the late 90's and early 2000's "hooking up" (or in Jess' case, "hanging out") meant literally anything you wanted it to mean and so one of your friends could say "I hooked up with Jason last night" but that could mean they either made out for a few minutes or they were full on bumping uglies or something in between and you often had to ask uncomfortable questions. It was a very confusing time. It kept us all on our toes.

Luke, you have a pair of eyes. You've seen what they do in your diner. There should not exist any doubt that they're not convening in your apartment to play checkers.

I'm telling you, the dynamic of the entire Danes-Mariano family is so complex and interesting and I would twist my nipple for this show to delve into it as much as humanly possible at the expense of pushing Rory and Lorelai to the side (Lorelai off a cliff). I've hit the ceiling for screen shots here on Tumblr.com so here's the last three minutes of the episode: Luke: You need to find a girl you actually care about. Jess: Yah like it's that easy. Luke: Ya huh it's that easy if you try Jess: The girls I like don't give a damn about me. I'm not just gonna sit around hoping they change their minds and notice me, unlike SOME PEOPLE. Luke: Da fuq does that mean Jess: ya fixed any neighbor's porshes *porches lately? Luke: Shut up Jess: I've got a little self esteem Luke: Shut up Jess: Gotta go, Shane's horny again Well, that attempt at the Birds and Bees talk certainly went off the rails. Luke was able to impart to Jess that teenage boys have raging hormones and they tend to like girls and Jess don't be an idiot. It's okay Luke, at least you tried.

[lexygabe]

northquido headcanons

disclaimer: i was bored af lately so i decided to write down all of my thought about this stupid assholes

tw: use of slurs (it's fucking liquido and north come on you know they would) and nsfw content but this is under a cut

• this one is for the veterans that followed me on wattpad, the 🎀💋🤩💌👯‍♀️bread 💌❤️‍🔥❤️❤️, to be more specific brioche bread is liquido's equivalent of giving someone chocolate box,

• their relationship doesn't get in the way when it comes to their rivalry,

• their love language is using the most fucked-up insults you've ever heard of. liquido calls north 'dirty dumb blonde fag' and north tells liquido that he is the biggest stupid cunt he ever dated. they love each other 🥰🥰,

• to everybody's surprise this relationship is good for them. since they are dating, both north and liquido spend more time on training,

• liquido is much of an attention seeker so it's very hard to see them being apart,

• when they are in the same room with other people and liquido starts to acting up, north is like: "oh my god, sit the fuck down🙄🙄". at first liquido haven't listen to what north was telling him but over time as north was telling liquido, for example, to shut up: liquido shut up. "hold it": liquido holds it. "tell him": liquido tells him,

• when it comes to north, liquido always mocks him. when something happens liquido says things like that to north: "say you are sorry", "thank me now", "😜😜say: please liquido😵‍💫 i can't live 🥺🤭 without you". unfortunately, north knows he needs to say all of these things because otherwise liquido will be offended at him a whole day,

• type of couple that was shipped by fans long before they started dating,

• when it comes to being romantic, they are romantic on the level of a third grade student. north gives liquido some 'awesome, diabolical, fun as hell rocks' he found on the beach and liquido sends him pictures of drawings that he made on some documents or nda's (del aqua was pissed off) (those drawing looked like if they were made by preschooler),

• the most romantic thing they've done was placing receipt with written love confession into an empty alcohol bottle and they throw it to the ocean. soon after that beach guard reported them to police and they have to pay a fine💀💀,

• north sends liquido every "blue haired girl" meme,

• another easter egg for my wattpad followers: north teaches liquido how to ice skate (it ended up horrible),

• liquido is the master of making the scene in public. he is sitting on north's lap in the most random moments and places, he gives north a slap on the ass when there are cameras everywhere, etc.,

• north on the other hand, hits liquido in the shoulder, elbows him in the stomach or pokes him between the ribs with his fingers.

"it wasn't funny😐😐😦😬"

"good😠😤"

• north is crocs and liquido is flip-flops,

• they don't care about privacy in the bathroom. when one of them is washing their teeth - the other is peeing, etc.,

• don't let them play uno or monopoly,

• btw they are playing a lot of traditional games when they have lazy days,

• the couple that wouldn't marry each other til their 60s

• they are drawing dicks on a cast if one of them broke any bone.

nsfw:

• when they are making out there is a lot of saliva, teeth and blood (because they bite each others lips every time),

• if you see them during a quickie, you didn't predict. just go away,

• someone already mentioned it but breath play, liquido likes it especially. yeah it also applies to swallowing,

• dirty talk and i mean a lot,

• tbh liquido is the one that is doing blow jobs and giving hand jobs to north, this is my man's cup of tea,

• north is one wild mf, my man is searching for that g spot inside those hydra cheeks (im sorry, pls forgive me),

• THEY ARE LOUD AS FUCK, OMG SHUT THE FUCK UP,

• hickeys💋💋💋.

[kitonmitons]

It really is incredible how quickly the world of freely-accessible social media is dwindling— either falling apart internally or squeezed under the weight of tech monopolies. Or both.

Tumblr’s decision to remove nsfw posts to avoid strikes from Apple’s app store was what tossed the snowball down the mountain. Its demise was connected to internal mismanagement and the need to compete with other huge social media sites at the time they banned nsfw, which are all now under new management and/or owned by massive tech corporations.

That in particular is a point I would like everyone to think about. Every major social media site that we use is part of a larger billion-dollar corporation. Many of them started humbly— Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Reddit were all created by average people. It goes without saying now that Facebook has become a monopoly itself, and we all know the shitstorm twitter is under, which has left us with two primary platforms for free social media: Tumblr and Reddit. We know what is happening to Tumblr, but what of Reddit?

Reddit is owned by Advanced Publications, who also own or have majority shares in companies like Charter Communications (the company behind Spectrum internet, as well as Vogue and The New Yorker) and Warner Bros. Discovery. With funding like that, obviously the intention is not to make Reddit a place of information and socialization— the real intent is to turn it into a money-making machine.

To ensure this, Reddit is in talks of making their company public, meaning they would have to answer to shareholders when making decisions for the website. Shareholders want to see continuous profit, and that cannot be done only through ad revenue, such that Reddit has primarily profited from for years. People can subscribe to Reddit to remove the ads, but subscription services alone don’t see the profits they want to make. The solution to this problem is to push Reddit competitors out.

Some of their biggest competitors, ironically, were their own userbase. Reddit has a slurry of third-party applications made by Reddit users themselves, using Reddit’s API which until recently has been free. Third-party apps such as Apollo gave users a way to use Reddit WITHOUT advertisements, which was lost revenue for Reddit all while using the site’s base code. As a result, this year (2023) Reddit began charging to use its API, resulting in all of these third-party apps shutting down. With no more internal competitors, it’s time to go public and see how much can be made by shareholders— they might even decide to use their new funds to buy out more social media sites, or further integrate failing ones into their system, just as they are with Snapchat.

All this talk about Reddit in a post that is supposed to be about Tumblr. But, the two are related. As Tumblr begins to fall into disrepair and demoderation, we will begin to witness the fall of free social media as we know it. Big tech has dug its fingers in what has quickly become an important piece to our social fabric. The platforms that give us news, connect us with friends and family, connects us to the world, and spreads information is in the hands of just a few tech companies. Tumblr is failing because Yahoo! is failing. Tumblr is failing because WordPress is failing.

It is incredibly easy to blame staff for their stupid decisions, and it should still be mentioned. However, my main concern is the accessibility to free social media itself. The fall of Tumblr is an example of a social media website whose poor decisions— namely the removal of nsfw posts, poor automated moderation and failures to adjust to an aging userbase— cost it everything, but what really resulted in its demise was competition. Tumblr could never compete with giants like Facebook or TikTok. Nowadays, the only site Tumblr could really compete with was Twitter, which will be under a subscription service come January. And as people flock to sites like BlueSky and Threads, the diversity of the online world will only continue to decline. It is exactly the lack of competition that will make it hard for any Tumblr-like to take off, especially since a site like this has always run on user participation, not profit.

My point is, look at the overarching bullshit that is taking away from online life and question whether it’s worth participating in. Find ways to protest online monopolies that are squeezing out competitor sites and making it harder for people to use social media, especially if they aren’t influencers. And take a step back from the staff drama to look at what hostile monopolies and an undemocratic internet is doing to communities like ours.