#i love me some cunty lashes

[brella-boi]

Someone said bugs with eyelashes is a weird choice

So I drew mors bugs with eyelashes

[respiteresponse]

that snap of chris has had me in a chokehold since i saw it unironically i keep opening my photos just to look at it because like . i have no idea i just LOVE IT. i love it. i already liked chris and the mrbeast prisoners like i like nolan and chandler but like . for some reason i cannot stop thinking about that cunty choker he has on and the delicate lashes like i think i have a disease

[mermaidsirennikita]

ARC Review: King of Wrath by Ana Huang

3.25/5. (Re)-releases 4/25/2023.

For when you're vibing with... Modern arranged marriage, billionaire romance, a very cosmopolitan international feel (complete with jetsetting), and some groveling.

Vivian Lau hails from new money, and her father will do anything to break their family into the upper echelons of society--including arrange her marriage to billionaire Dante Russo. Though Vivian is willing to make the best of it, Dante is hostile from the start. So why did he agree to the marriage in the first place? As the two grow closer, the answer may be something Vivian never expected...

So, mixed feelings on this one. I like Ana's writing style, and I certainly like the way she writes sex, as well as this very opulent and interesting world she's created. But I had some issues on the execution.

Quick Takes:

--I really enjoyed the differentiation between new money and old money, the emphasis on elitism, and the sense of business intermingled with personal. Often, in these billionaire romances, it doesn't feel like the billionaires really live in a weird world. Here, it definitely read as something exclusive and inaccessible, yet at the same time something Vivian was very used to because her parents had been super wealthy since she was a child. I liked, so much, that Vivian didn't hesitate to use Dante's black card, didn't wring her hands over dropping $250K on a couple pieces of jewelry like heroines in billionaire romances often do. Basically, I liked that she was rich, too.

--In general, I appreciated the idea of an Italian billionaire who didn't have mafia connections and came from old money. Did that necessarily ring super true to me (real world aside, because this is a fantasy world)? I don't know. I will say that after reading a series in which I could tell the author put a lot of work into making the heroes feel Italian, Dante didn't super read that way to me. He was very American, but threw in some "mia caras" and in many ways I think it might've been better to just committing to him being fully Americanized, or perhaps delving more into the idea that he has lost connection with his heritage.

--I really enjoyed Dante's family backstory and the family drama (Vivian's included) in general. It felt very real, and it was hurtful and traumatic without being over the top.

--The pacing of this book was a double-edged sword for me. It takes place over an extended period of time... Yet somehow, I really didn't feel that, and in some ways I think it would've been better if they'd fallen in love over a (perhaps unrealistically) compressed period of time. Dante would leave to do business for a month; Vivian and Dante's relationship would skip forward a month. We would know that time passed and the relationship naturally grew, but something about it just felt kind of rushed and artificial to me. I felt like I missed the part where they became ridiculously into each other, or where they fell in love, even though I did believe in their chemistry.

--This felt like it was supposed to be enemies to lovers, but Vivian didn't give me anything on that front. I liked her, and she wasn't a doormat; but she wasn't lashing out at Dante, either. She wasn't really spoiled, she wasn't mean, she was just very mature. It made me feel like Dante really wasn't at her level at all, and it also made me feel like... I don't know. It was just hard to connect with her.

--The Big Secret is something you as the reader know from the jump. Vivian does not. It is obviously a big deal when this gets revealed, but I couldn't help but think... she probably should've... guessed? It was something along those lines? Maybe I'm just being cunty, but it felt a bit obvious? And for that matter, her reaction felt a bit over the top. It added to the main issue I had with the book, which is that I liked the way it was presented in terms of writing, but it felt very paint by numbers. Every beat could be predicted, both in terms of plot and emotion.

The Sex Stuff:

The sex in this was... very good. Probably my favorite thing about the book, if I'm being real. At first, it began a bit typically, with that well-known ramp-up. (But I did really like that these two just started having sex and not talking about it at all; fully having these encounters and being like "WELP".) Gradually, however, it got a bit kinkier, and I... wasn't mad at that. There is a scene in a moving vehicle... that is so good.

Overall, I can't say that I loved King of Wrath, but I did like parts of it quite a bit, and I do want to read more of Ana Huang. I feel like she could have gone further with this one, but she's clearly a talented writer. I'll probably read the next book in the series, and check out other books of hers. This novel is a re-release, and I see a great response to it, so clearly, this works for many! And that's great.

Thanks to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Bloom Books for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[ah-woo-ga]

I was such an arsehole when I was younger.

The worst part is, I don’t know why. I bullied and was so horrid to the people who were the nicest. I messed with the people who were there for me, put em down, made em feel worthless.

All I want now, now I’m older and smarter and that version of me is almost 5 years dead. All I want now is to see those very same people, the ones who hate me for how I was then, even to this day.

I want to see them succeed. Succeed knowing I destroyed and changed them, for the worse.

I could apologise a million times, it’s never gonna be enough for my horrible, vile actions.

I just want to see Henna succeed. She deserved success and I destroyed part of her. I destroyed her kindness and compassion. Someone who was open, could talk about anything for hours, someone who actively cared about a lot of things.

I bullied and pushed and pretended until she gave up, and then when I started to realise after almost 3 years how much damage I was doing. It was too late, I’d destroyed not just our friendship but also our relationship, the relationships with those around me.

I craved control and power, and I tried anything to take it. I wanted to cause that damage. I wanted to see how far I could go knowing I could fix it at the time.

Turns out I couldn’t. Couldn’t fix it. Couldn’t change how I was acting and I got addicted to being angry and a wreck.

It’s only now I realise I hated my life, and those few good things I had, good friends, an amazing partner who really did love me.

I remember her trying to convince me to fly up to see her, how desperately, and how happily she would tell me “you could pay us back over time! I just want to see you.”

Imagine having someone willing to pay hundreds just to see you, to fly you across the world and see you because they really did love you.

I smoked weed heavily, and she’d worry. Ask me to stop, she’d say I need to quit because she genuinely worried what was happening in my head. To my health.

That’s someone who loves you.

But instead, here I am after waking up years later, still dreaming about my fuck ups years later.

It’s actually because of these events that I changed so much. I worked so hard to not be that person now. I was a dumb kid, 18-20. Literally a kid who knew better but it was like drugs, getting to lash out, getting to fuck my life up. Idk how to describe it, but it was genuinely so hard to just be nice.

I was addicted to this thought process that I’m constantly at war with people around me, I hated them for no reason because I believed they all hated me. I’d hate you as soon as I saw you.

I think somehow my brain just collapsed on itself one day. One day, randomly, I just started being a horrible person. I hated people forvtheir differences. For who they were, kind of for no reason.

Trans? I hate you. non-binary? I hated you more.

Gay? I’d bully you. Slightly Asian? I’d make racism jokes. Anything I’d turn into ammo to hurt you. Because, for some twisted reason, I found it funny to do that, as a joke to me.

But now? Now I work hard to put good back in the world. I hate hearing and seeing those same things I used to hurt others.

I refuse to talk down to others in any capacity. Not even as a joke because I don’t want to hurt anyone else like I hurt her.

I was a kid, I made mistakes, big huge crappy fuck ups. I was a kid. A kid who apparently was okay with hurting and destroying the few good relationships they had.

If I could turn back time, I’d fix everything. Change who I was and I’d have been kind. I’d have loved harder and been less of a jerk.

In my head, I destroyed that girl. That poor, amazing and kind girl got buried by a teenage me for fun and if I could I’d kill him for it.

So I did, I buried that bastard version of me and spent time making up for my Cuntiness because I wanted to respect that memory of the person I had, who I still care about.

I know full well I can’t take back what I did, so I am working towards what she wanted for me when she cared.

She wanted me to be kind. How do I know?

She asked me what happened to me when it started. I never gave her a straight answer when she asked why I was turning into that person.

So, I want to be like she wanted me to be: loving, kind, compassionate. Non-judgy and understanding and patient.

I truly believe right up until I cheated on her with her best friend, despite all my cuntiness. I believe she loved me still, even despite my horrible, disgusting, sick behaviour.

I believe she cared. She’d ask me to come see her, offer to pay when I was flat broke, she’d try and clean up my anxiety, which is partially what made me so messed up was that I was scared my whole life, and I didn’t want to be anymore. I thought making others scared, by being horrible was a fix. A fix for me, and it was for a time, but it destroyed me like a virus.

No, I shouldn’t blame my emotions. It was me, being weak and wanting to feel in control, I’ve never been more OUT of control in my life.

That’s why I spend my life now, every day, trying to love humans, others and myself healthily and with passion. Because nobody deserves to be treated like a dog like that.

She gave up so much to save me, tried so hard and I spat in henna’s face. So even to this day, years when I don’t think about it for months.

Every now and then I hope that she’s good, I think about who I am and what I did and I will never forget the horrors I put to that poor girl.

Apparently, me being this way is me being a pussy. No, I was extremely violent then, now I’m so anti-violence. I’m the opposite, now I just want to talk. Now, I just want to talk, apologise, express and figure out why I was the way I was because that behaviour didn’t just appear.

I was damaged, scared, in pain and weak both mentally and physically. I felt I had no place. I pushed that pain onto others who deserved only the best, like Henna and Stina.

People who cared and were there for me.

So this is for them, the people who tried when I wouldn’t.

I am genuinely thankful. I didn’t understand then, but I see now. I’m sorry it took years for me to become better, and fix myself. But I am infinitely better because of it.

It is unfair, I caused you both magnitudes of pain and upset. And now I get to be okay, so I hope you know that your sacrifice, even if you hate me, you gave me hope years after I threw it back at you.

A part of me wants you to know I might be a pussy if that’s what you want to call me, but you’d be proud.

You’d be so proud of me because although it’s too late to stop what I did and said to all of you. It was still those words and actions that I cast aside that pulled me back together, years later but still.

I truly hold love in my heart for you and all those I damaged along the way, you did not deserve the pain and hurt I gave you, and I would offer my apologies to you. But instead I offer the same words and help you offered to me:

I will always be here if you ever need me, even to shout at me for the pain and things that I did to you. I can’t make up for the pain I caused you, I can’t take it away. But I can make up for it, I can be there for you, I can stand beside you and tell you that despite how hard I tried to bring you down, hurt you, crush you into nothing. You have made me so proud, you have taught me so much from the past and I truly love you for saving me from myself.

I was an ignorant, horrid kid. this was my journey to becoming and understanding how to be better.

[bellamygateoldblog]

abby littman stans are either thirteen year olds or have the maturity of one. yeah, i get that the girl is going through it, but the extent that some people will go to defend her is ridiculous

oh say that!

don't get me wrong i love mang's toxic dynamic and find abby and ginny's strained hostile relationship really interesting. the tense back and forth had me hooked. abby is so jealous and threatened by ginny, she's so cunty, and i love that. her antagonising ginny is literally the best part of her character for me and is why i genuinely love her. like i hate her but im absolutely thrilled she's here and i wouldn't change her for the world. im a fan of her, shew not my #1 but i like her presence on the show.

i get fandoms scrambling to defend flawed characters and alieviate them of their Sins so they can feel like good people for liking them is In right now, but it's my opinion that insight into abby's life isn't there to make us sympathise with her and excuse her targetting ginny but understand her better and humanise her. her illness and home life are motivations for her to displace her anger onto ginny, her anger is displaced onto ginny because max really took to her and she's threatened, it ties into her own insecurities about how she sees herself and feels in her own skin versus how beloved ginny is. they're all reasons, not excuses.

some fans of her essentially make out like because ginny is annoying and messy and maybe everything abby sees in her has some truth to it she deserves the way abby treats her which is wrong to me. and if they genuinely think that then yes they've got the emotional and mental age of a 13 year old.

i was extremely taken aback by how loved abby seems to be by fandom in contrast to how hated ginny is simultaneously, when abby is only interesting because of ginny jdskrjsjrhsj. ginny made her special. away from her dynamic with mang she's bland.

abby is bitchy and mean but they sympathise because of her home life, but ginny's struggles don't overrule her flaws the same way, she doesn't garner the same reaction. she gets the opposite because people tend to be witnessing her from their preference for georgia from what i can see.

the gng fandom can't exactly cope with conflict between characters. they simply have to pick a side instead of comprehending the nuance of it and both parties involved and realising the show never asked you to bet on either of them nor did it tell you which one was right if there was a right. it just showed you something. you did the rest. most of the time they BOTH have a Point, or at the very least you Get why they're on the side they are and that's what made it so engaging for me.

something i find especially fascinating is her reaction to herself slapping ginny. her real feelings leaked through in the moment before as more than just a catty or passive aggressive comment. the "screw you ginny" is dripping with vitriol and pushed down bitterness and you can see she really does feel strongly about ginny. now ginny wasn't wrong. she wasn't right either but she wasn't wrong. we saw it ourselves how completely off the fucking rails ginny's home life is all season, abby isn't the only one with family troubles, abby calling them "bad friends" was a little harsh and entirely hypocritical considering the way she treated ginny from the start, ginny was then hypocritical back to her saying "it's not always about you" when ginny does tend to think everything is about her and abby KNOWS THIS. and that was the final straw. that's been bothering her since DAY ONE. that in her eyes everything's ALWAYS about GINNY. so she literally shocks herself by lashing out. then she punishes herself and makes it 'even'. and that's what abby does. punishes herself. projects onto ginny, takes it out on ginny who represents her insecurities and fears but it's herself who isn't good enough. it's ginny's fault for being better, but she knows it's her own for letting her. that's how i inferred abby's internal monologue through some of their interactions. i think it would be really fun to see ginny return more unapologetic and push back against abby this time. might spice things up between them.

i personally would love to see more of nora tbh.

[smpsm]

paste

 smpsm

My head is trying to kill me from the inside, with its shock-start migraines and its constant alcoholic desires. Where did I learn these things and how can I make them stop? How can I keep from sinking my fingernails into the flesh on my forearms, and does it matter that I spend my days wondering if I’m helping people less crazy than myself? I should have checked in long ago, no doubt, back when my face felt concrete with a frown and my eyes felt fogged with fatigue and indecision; back when every minute brought thoughts of death and my brain told me that no one cared. I should have sought help, more than not, for the years following, for the crying jags and the constant worthless attempts at being loved. But what drove me to the doctor was sheer panic more than anything, that uncontrollable ability my body had to keep me from taking a breath. Nowadays I just pick at my hair and drink to fall asleep, miserable in every intervening hour and lying to my mother that I’m fine. She wouldn’t understand anyway, she who called me evil and abusive ad cruel and fed the fire with the gasoline that my sick heart didn’t need. I tell people there are cures besides pill bottles but truth be told I want the sudden cleansing cool that comes from a benzo fix—I don’t want to be drunk so much as dead calm. The road to hell is paved with half-moon indentations in my flesh and bruises I beg other people to give me. I ask for the paddle so I can avoid hurting myself for one more day, one more week, while I press the fading marks that dot my body. I can sustain physicals hurts I had never dreamed possible, many more than I can emotional blows—love lost is much worse than a caning or a whip’s lash, somehow. I am defensive because I know how vulnerable I am, because I am constantly open to attack and must therefore cover myself constantly—but no one can hate me as much as I hate myself. The idea is absurd.

 I suffer from a raging sense of superiority based solely on intellect and the shape of my lips; somewhere along the line I learned I’d better have a personality if I couldn’t at least be normal. And it seems I can’t be, with my propensity to talk myself into a tizzy and my desire to get beaten by strangers. These things aren’t normal, are they? I thought not. Deep down I wonder if I think I deserve it or if I’ve always been like this, and I think back to age five when I laid in the dark, titillated by the idea of public humiliation and the wearing of metal cuffs in childhood cartoons. I wasn’t abused but I feared it, feared that dirty old men would unzip their flies at the least provocation and I could do nothing to protect myself. Being a young girl during the 1990s had its downsides; assault was disparaged yet somehow normalized by its presence on every magazine cover alongside pictures of pretty blonde-haired pageant girls found dead in neighbors’ basements. People are disgusting, I quickly learned, and I can do nothing to fix it. All I can do is rage and secretly quail at any threat to my humanity.

 My head hurts nearly all the time and “psychosomatic” does not begin to cover it. Psycho fucking soma, my body is betraying me daily by longing for things I shouldn’t want and by falling to pieces when I misstep on a curb. My bruises have been magnificent, to tell the truth, but perhaps I should not get so much joy from them. Then again perhaps I should not get so much joy from office supplies, jalapenos, and spinny chairs, but there you go. I used to pretend I was not one of those girls, before I realized it was a cunty thing to say, that it was horrible to separate myself from half the population of the world simply because I longed to be different and therefore loved. I don’t know what kind of girl I am, to be sure, but I am probably one of “those,” one of those too big for her britches with a fat head. One of those who could easily be called a bitch. It’s something I can abide.

 What I cannot abide is my own weakness, my lingering sadness and constant worry and the thought that I am absolutely crazy, nothing for it. I want meds and I want them all the time, please, even if they solve nothing. They help in the moment and isn’t that what mindfulness is about? The now and now and oh yes now, the constant, continuing crawl of time. Death sounds comforting most days, if only to stop the exhaustion. You don’t have to be depressed to be suicidal—sometimes you can simply be too exhausted to keep moving. Yet somehow you chug down your drink and keep moving, telling yourself things will doubtless look much better tomorrow. So you read dark comedies and you tell yourself that life could surely be worse—trying not to tempt fate and jinx your already miserable life—and you try so hard to focused on the small rays of sunlight shining through the window that splash brightly on the dust-motes floating in the air. You focus on sunlight and the fact that you could certainly be much crazier than you are, and that’s something at least.

 You revel in small things, like being loud and drunk with people as miserable and possibly hilarious as you; like stealing things you definitely don’t need. Like stomping roughly on dying leaves after they fall into your path. You try not to focus on the fact that you can barely sleep at night without a steadying drink, or the fact that you always feel like a fuck-up. You try to pretend you don’t feel fat and disgusting every day. You focus on the fact that you have perky tits until you remember how many man-boys have leered and talked about coming on them. This doesn’t please you. Nor does the second-person treatment you adopt half the time, trying to sound literary and artistic when really you’re just sad and exhausted. You think that someone must have to have a personality before having a personality disorder, and you marvel at your own delicious wit and then call yourself a cunt silently. You feel a horrible bitch and a pathetic loser grasping at adoration for something other than her grabbable ass.

 Half the things you suffer, you seem to have brought on yourself. You are exhausted because for some ungodly reason you decided to go to graduate school, and you hate yourself for it. But you know you’d hate yourself more if you were living in your parents’ ever-changing homes (east, west, Midwest) arguing over petty things like waking up before noon. You still cringe over the fact that you cried to your father over your GRE scores, that his opinion matters more to you than, in some cases, your mother’s—she didn’t finish college, after all, while he has his fucking MBA. He is one of the smartest men you’ve ever met and he’s miserable just like you. What hope does that leave for anyone, really? You wonder why your parents never got divorced and wonder if they should have. You know their meet-cute is much cuter than anyone else’s you’re likely to meet, and it pisses you off—particularly when your mother begs for grandchildren, saying you’ll be a great single mother. You think she means it as a compliment.

 You wonder if she even actually likes you anymore or whether she just needs your presence like hand-salve on chapped knuckles.  She needs you for therapy, to back her up when she’s pissed at your father, to perform the quiet role of fixing her in all the ways you can. You know she’s a person unto her own but you have never seen her as independent. You think she mostly hates you. You have no idea what your father thinks 88% of the time but you think it has to occasionally be about running her over with the car. You two discuss books and movies because he disdains your politics, yet you think you have more in common with him than with anyone else in your family. Misery breeds a lot of things, it seems.

 Not everyone gets the happy ending even if they deserve it; hard work and determination only get you so far. You wonder what psychosis feels like and why everyone thinks drugs are the worst things in the world. Genocide and blood diamonds are worse than petty theft and graffiti I guess but then they bemoan slippery slopes and the point is lost. Instead of brooding I try to force-feed other people baked goods to make them love me.

 I am long-winded, darling, you, me, I, she, we. I suck back water each morning and pretend my head’s not pounding through fuzz. “I hate myself,” I mutter in tempo with my heartbeat and sink my knees in lockstep. I can make it through the day, I can.