#i think it's some kind of collab i saw it on twitter

[splatoonusna]

Scan this QR Code to Redeem a Title for Splatoon 3! This QR Code is from the Mitsui Shopping Park Website

[m4iya]

⋆⭒˚.⋆𝜗𝜚 Order up! Matcha green tea, 100% sugar, 100% ice with black pearls and coconut jelly for @frosted-flakes!

Collab? Kenma Kozume (fluff, post high school, mutual pining + forced proximity)

Your phone had been blowing up with notifications all day since last nights stream. Who knew your viewers would get so heated over a couple jokes? Heck, was it even your viewers? It seemed more like the ones that were freaking out weren’t actually watching for the full context.

Well, that’s what you said every time. It kept them watching, right?

Though, being tagged in rants and comments wasn’t the only thing happening this time. You were receiving an absurd amount of messages from viewers as per usual, but also from other streamers and influencers. The most common words present within all of them being:

“Guess who mentioned you in their stream last night!”

This time, it felt a little different from other controversies you’d been wrapped up in, so you couldn’t help wonder who this mystery person was, and what you had done to earn yourself a mention.

One scroll on your timeline told you just about everything you needed to know. A post sat at the top of your feed; a video captioned “@/mc of all people?’

Clicking on it, a clip of someone’s stream began to play; a QnA of sorts.

“Kodzuken, will we be getting a collab with anyone soon? Can you drop any names?” The streamer read aloud before pausing to think.

“Hmm.. there’s a few things in the works, but I don’t know for sure when they’ll be out.” He replied, absentmindedly flicking through the questions on another monitor.

He paused for a few seconds before continuing to speak. “I’m not the best at reaching out to people, but I’d like to see what kind of content I could make with @/mc. She’s pretty funny.”

Proceeding to continue with other questions, he completely ignored the way the comments blew up at him.

Out of every streamer you knew, he had to be the absolute last person you’d have expected to even have any idea of who you were. You'd been watching his content for a while, having seen him at influencer events and such. Though, you'd never been able to approach him at any of them, often using 'I was talking to my viewers, that's why I couldn't approach him' as an excuse to yourself.

Even though it wasn't exactly your objective as an online personality, you figured that controversies and out of pocket statements would be one way to get his peoples attention. It wasn't like you were exaggerating your personality per se, you were always pretty outspoken, so the only extra steps would be recording or streaming your antics.

Even though it looked like it worked, you had no clue where to go from here. Would you send him an email? Or a message? And what would you even collaborate on? What would happen to his view count if he did make content with you?

You tapped onto his profile on Twitter, scrolling through his recent posts as you wondered what to do. Suddenly, a notification popped up on the top of your screen: A message request.. From him!

Kodzuken hey, this is @/mc, right?

You had a pretty large following, and he had mentioned your name in his stream. Staring at the message for a few seconds, you wondered if he was trying to be funny.

MC u really aren't the best at reaching out to people lol and yeah thats me

Your messages maintained an air of nonchalance, hiding the way your eyes were peeled—waiting for his next response, your heart thumping loud enough for it to reverberate through your ears.

Kodzuken thats a little mean anyways i'm assuming you saw my stream in that case so how does a collab sound?

MC I'm not too busy tbh I should be free next week. u sure u wanna collab with me? ur viewers will probably freak out over it

Kodzuken my channel not theirs 🙄 what do you wanna do for the stream?

MC something simple maybe some type of challenge? are u free to call so we can set it up?

Kodzuken give me a sec ill call you

Your hands shook in place, palms sweaty as you waited for him to call you first.

When your phone eventually rang, you let it sound for a few seconds, clearing your throat. Answering the call, you held the phone up to your ear.

"Hello?" He spoke first, his voice being exactly how it sounded on stream.

"Hey!" You internally sobbed over how that might've sounded.

And so the conversation began to flow, the two of you brainstorming ideas and details about the collab. It would be held on his channel, with you editing the stream into a video for your own channel. Before the two of you hung up, he asked for your number so he could send over his address. You wondered why he couldn't just send it over DMs, but your heart was already racing too fast for you to even bother asking.

You got to work immediately, organising your schedule and allocating time to buy the things you needed. He said he had most of the basic things already, but to make things funnier, you suggested a couple ingredients that you'd buy yourself. The idea was to hold a cake baking challenge with odd ingredients. Without telling each other what flavours you were using, you needed to decorate as nicely as you could, and you'd taste each other’s dessert at the end. One of you will guess incorrectly, and the penalty will be to post something on the other's social media account after the stream.

You both agreed not to do anything rash, but also not to plan or rehearse the ending too much. It had a mix of the chaos that was usually in your content, and the viewer interaction that he'd implement in his own. Preparing things behind the scenes, you both kept each other updated until the day arrived, and you nervously made your way to his place.

Standing in front of his home, you took a deep breath before knocking on the door. You heard the shuffling of slippers from the other side, stopping abruptly at the front door.

"Who is it..?" A voice groaned from the other side.

"Um.. me?" You nervously answered.

A faint gasp sounded from the other side before a flurry of steps took off, leaving you wondering what just happened. Could it be that he forgot that you were coming over today?

He returned around a minute later, opening the door immediately. You noted how crinkled his clothes looked, his voice as though he'd just woken up. The skin of his face was dewy—freshly splashed with water, the evidence visible on the hoodie he wore. It wasn't the one he usually had on in his streams.

"Sorry about that." He muttered, attempting a chuckle. His laughter definitely didn't come off as nonchalant, not with his eyes looking everywhere but at you.

Though, you definitely weren’t feeling too confident yourself. Your hands were clammy as you bent over to pick up the bags that you brought with you which contained the things you'd both be using in the stream.

"I'll help." He quickly offered, taking the things in his own hands with a faint smile tugging at his lips.

Butterflies. Your stomach churned in a way that it hadn't done since high school.

Following him inside, you realised how big his home was, surprised that he seemed to live alone. As you walked to his kitchen, he gave you a haphazard tour, which was limited to the rooms you both passed. He steered you away from the direction of his own room, telling you that it was 'just a little messy right now.' Looks like he really was asleep.

Once you reached the kitchen, it surprised you to see his camera and tripod already prepared. He placed the bags down on the counter, walking towards his setup.

"Should I set up my stuff as well?" You asked as you pulled it out of one of the bags, having brought it just in case.

"It's fine, I'll send you the footage." He replied.

With that, you prepared the materials you'd both be using. He provided the bowls, spoons and mixing tools. You handed him an apron and wore your own, giggling at how he struggled to wear it despite it being so simple. You offered to tie it for him and he did the same, even though you were more than able to do so yourself. You lifted your arms as he took the fabric around your waist to tie it, gently weaving one piece over the other.

"Is that too tight?" He asked. "Want me to loosen it?"

"Yeah, just a little."

You could feel your heart beating in your ears as he spoke from behind, helping you with this short, mundane task. Things were all over the place today, and you weren't sure how you'd get yourself under control.

The two of you went through a few more things, and soon began the stream. You greeted the viewers, and introduced yourself to those who didn’t know you.

And so the stream went on, unfolding much more differently than you had initially expected. It seemed that the people who were criticising you had either stuck around to see what would happen, or had simply left.

You cracked jokes with each other while mixing your ingredients, using the mystery flavours that you had poured into separate bottles last night—so tired that you could barely remember what was in them.

At the end, you both decorated the cakes together in an attempt to make them as appealing as they could be. Yours was coated in red frosting, and you used white buttercream in a thin piping tip to write out his name in cursive on the surface of the cake. His was haphazardly covered in pink frosting, purple polka dots shaped from fondant scattered over the surface and the sides. He had decorated the edges with sugar pearls and rainbow sprinkles, running out of time before being able to write your name on it.

Cutting each other a slice, you both took turns tasting it. You could barely contain your laughter as he cut into his—the centre was so moist that the knife he used was coated in batter as he removed it from the cake. You opted to eat a piece of the edges instead.

Exaggerating your reaction, you coughed, walking off camera to grab a drink of water. The ingredient he had used was chilli, and it wasn't settling well with you at all. His laughter echoed through the room as you drank from the cup of water; probably because of the slightly exaggerated reaction that you had rehearsed with him before the stream in the case that he happened to choose something spicy.

As he took a bite of your slice of cake after you had returned to the stream, his face contorted; confusion? He chewed once, then paused, scrunched his eyebrows, and continued chewing.

"Is that—" He coughed. "Is that coffee?"

You could barely contain your laughter at his reaction. Well, he wasn't completely off. It was coffee, alongside a couple different spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, and.. well, you lost count after the first two.

"Not exactly! Wanna try again?"

He held his nose bridge, 'deep in thought'. You both knew that one of you needed to get it wrong to go through with the penalty. A few obviously wrong guesses later, it was decided that he'd be the loser. After talking to the chat a little, answering some questions and interacting, it was revealed to them that you'd soon upload a video on your channel, which would contain extra content, and that the penalty post would also be up on his account. With that, he concluded the stream, slouching over the table with a sigh as you took a seat on one of the tall stools, picking at the cake he had made.

"At least the frosting tastes good." You laughed, taking a spoon of it.

"Yours wasn't actually too bad," He muttered. "Just.. very flavourful."

The situation suddenly set in; it was now nighttime, and your belongings were scattered everywhere. How were you supposed to just pack up and leave? That same feeling from earlier was now completely overwhelming you as you felt your face warm up. What exactly was going on? Keeping your eyes on the slice of cake, your face began to heat up. In your peripheral, you noticed his head turn.

"You okay?"

“Just a little tired,” You smiled, avoiding his gaze. “I should probably get leaving soon." Reaching behind your back, you fiddled with the knot in an attempt to untie it. The quicker you could pack up, the quicker you'd be out of this mess.

Though, even the apron wouldn’t budge at all no matter how hard you tried to undo it.

"Did you superglue this or something?” You chuckled, exasperated. “It’s so tight!”

"Oh,” His head perked up. “I loosened the first tie, but I double knotted it just in case." He stepped towards you, offering to fix it yet again.

"All done." His hands reached over to the collar, lifting it over your head to which you pulled it down, folding the apron in your lap.

"Guess I'll do yours as well?"

You stood from the chair as he turned his back to face you. This was definitely something he could've done himself. Though as you fiddled with the fabric—in the deafening silence of the room, the way his breath suddenly hitched became overly apparent.

At this point you honestly couldn’t tell whether it was yours or his who’s breathing you were hearing. Your eyes scattered as undoing the fabric of the apron was the last thing you were thinking about right now. It was a little late to be realising this, but he was much taller up close than he seemed online, and given the way the apron wrapped snugly around his body—he was also a little thinner than you imagined. Not to mention the stray hairs at the nape of his neck that had escaped from the bun he’d made.

“..Are you done?”

Shoot. Who knew how long you were standing there with your gaze scattering everywhere? You quickly untied the knot with a single swipe, and he lifted the collar over his head, handing it to you. As you reached out to take it, you noticed how tightly he held it, seemingly not wanting to let go. It did seem a little out character for him to be so forward—having been the one that initially reached out to you first, inviting you over and being completely unlike how you initially perceived him. Not that you had thought he was mean, he just didn’t seem like the type to be so outgoing.

Or maybe it was motivated by something. Maybe the small patches of plush pink painting his cheeks, the way his lips were slightly parted so as to prepare himself to speak, his gaze focused on you for the first time today—maybe things were a little different for him as well. You for one knew yourself, being well aware of what you’d been going through today.

“..Do you have something to say?” You prodded, teasing although your voice was small, shaky, and laced with nerves. You definitely weren’t in any place to be picking on him.

He cleared his throat, gaze leaving yours once more. “..Do you have plans tomorrow?” Your eyes fluttered to his slender hands, their grip loosening as he spoke.

“No,” You replied. “I had nothing planned for this week other than—well, this.” Taking the apron from his hands, you set it on the counter. His hand moved to brush a loose strand of hair out of his face, “Do you live far?”

“A little.” Your car was parked outside, but you weren’t the biggest fan of driving at night, and alone as well? Not happening—not unless it had to. “But I drove here, so i’ll just-”

“You can stay the night.” He interrupted.

“No, I can’t—really-“

“I have space for another person.”

“I don’t even have a change of clothes!”

“I have spares.”

You were surprised that he’d offer something like that, and double down on it as well. Well, his place was huge; but you didn’t i expect him to go around telling random people they can stay over. Especially when he’s only met them once. He was now stacking the dishes in the sink, yawning as he did so.

You couldn’t help tease again, stepping towards him. “So you actually want me to stay over?”

He clicked his tongue, turning on the water. “And if I do?”

That.. wasn’t what you expected to hear. You couldn’t see his face, but the redness glazing the tips of his ears told you that he’d probably been going through the same things as you all day. Well, it was more than just today for you; and you wondered the same for him.

extra:

“Hey, we forgot about the penalty!” You recalled, slipping into one of his spare hoodies.

He sighed, brushing a hand through his hair as he scrolled through his phone, opening the camera. “Sit over there.”

“Here?” You took the seat on a chair in front of his setup, crossing your legs. The two of you giggled as you set up the photo, with him directing you to wear his headphones.

You took the photo of yourself, throwing up a peace sign, and captioned the post ‘get used to this face, ur gonna be seeing it a lot more’.

Watching the replies immediately come rushing in, you laughed together. It definitely wouldn’t be the last time you’d both record something together.

from my 100 followers event ✩ other works

[dysthoepiadaily]

I saw this take the other day on twitter, and it made me kind of annoyed bc... way to miss the point, and to show that Dan was right and that it was too niche for you, LOL.

People do like Dan because of his authenticity and wit, but also... it's not that simple. Dystopia Daily, in many ways, was extremely authentic in the emotion it was trying to convey.

I think dystopia daily was more of a commentary on just youtuber culture in general, the desperate need for youtubers to remain popular at around a time when they were losing relevance. This led to a lot of them desperately collabing with one another, "exposing" more and more of their private lives in hopes that the more they give to the camera, to the audience, the audience won't abandon them (Dan and Phil finally tell the truth, Dan's grandma explains the internet).

There's a sort of "giving the people what they want" aspect to it, as well... "This kitten cured my depression", an obviously hyperbolic title, but something the audience wants from him... People want a STORY with youtubers, a sort of triumphant arc, but youtubers aren't actually able to deliver that triumphant arc in the way that the audience wants, because youtubers aren't fictional characters, they're real people.

There's just a brutality in the performer/audience relationship. If the audience doesn't get what they want, they'll just abandon the performer, and the industry is COMPETITIVE, and really unfair. Some of the shittest and laziest content will get a lot of views, while others don't get views when their content is actually interesting and creative! The "literally just reading reddit and monetizing it" and "if I laugh I instantly die" videos have a higher view count than like... "Dan and Dodie do a duet". This is literally modern art, and that's sooo good!!!

The overproduction of it all is by design... It's the point, in many ways, that this guy is being extremely overpaid for content that is objectively bad, but people fall for that kind of thing every time, LOL. It is inauthentic, but it's inauthentic because the personality of Daniel Howell, the host of Dystopia Daily is terrible for youtube views. He's just not the guy he used to be.

Was it the best execution of this concept? I don't know, and I don't really think so (but I am of the belief that art should be easy to understand and this is a VERY debatable point). But, I do think the concept is unique and interesting enough to warrant praise, plus, I think Dan is an ideal person to tell this story... I also think it's hilarious that people were confused about what the fuck it was.

[seungiesz]

‧₊˚.FACE 2 FACE! bang chan x reader smau

4. the wank bank

“holy shit. jeongin i’m actually going to kill you!” you screamed as you shoved him forwards as he was making his way to the couch.

“a boy can’t make a joke on twitter anymore?” he asked, picking up the pace to avoid getting hit by you once again.

“first you’d have to be funny,” felix chimed in from where he was in your kitchen.

“anyways! back to important things,” jeongin said as he rolled his eyes and took his seat on the couch. “i’m gonna connect chris’s stream to the tv”

felix and you walked through your kitchen to join jeongin on your couch. at the same time you all heard the doorknob jiggle, causing you all to look over.

“daddy’s home!” hyunjin announced as he and seungmin walked into the apartment.

“great, now shut up so we can put big daddy chris on the tv,” jeongin responded.

“never call him that again,” seungmin begged as he made his way over to the couch, simply wanting to check out this ‘chris’ guy you were all watching.

and right on cue, jeongin was able to connect the stream to the tv and the five of you were finally able to see the chest of a man on the screen.

“alright guys, i’m gonna get started. today we’re gonna be making some simple spaghetti” chris started, as he moved back from his camera, revealing the apron he was wearing over a black crew neck and a pair of grey sweatpants. 

“ugh he has such a boyfriend fit on, i need him” you say grabbing onto jeongins arm and shaking it.

as chris eventually started to get further on into the cooking process, he began reading and answering questions from the chat.

“what’s my favorite game? i don’t really play any like that. maybe one day ill try it out,” he answers as he strains some pasta.

“y/n look it’s a sign, you should game with him!” jeongin pointed to the screen and looked at you.

“speaking of games, do you know the streamer ‘y/n’?” chan reads from his chat, causing all of you to freeze for a second. “yeah i’ve heard of her, saw some of her streams, she seems sweet, and she’s really funny.”

“holy shit chris actually knows who i am!” you freaked out, bouncing your leg out of anxiousness.

he continues on the stream, “i would love to collab with her, if she ever gave me the chance, she has this presence that kind of draws you in”.

you and jeongin are beyond fangirling at this point. felix and hyunjin just staring in shock, while seungmin is just laughing at the whole situation.

“i mean, it’s not like i’ve gotten the chance to talk to her. i guess i just kind of scare her away. you guys think if i dm her, she’ll just type back ‘ahhhh’?” chris giggles as he jokes around with his viewers.

seungmin just laughs harder, “oh he violated you. this is amazing. he might be my new favorite.”

“min, you’re so close to getting kicked out,” you warn him, causing him to only continue laughing.

from the tv you hear, “if i get 10,000 subs, i’ll dm her and ask to collab,” you freeze again. hopefully no one would actually do it, right?

you see a little animation pop in on the screen:

user jeongINyourmom gifted 10,00 subs

you slowly turn your head to the side, to see the culprit himself holding his phone, “yang jeongin i’ll actually kill you”.

“i’m just tryna help a girl out” jeongin puts his hands up in defense, barely hiding a smile on his face.

before you even got a chance to answer, you feel your phone go off. you look at the tv before checking it, only to see chris holding his phone up to the screen and showing his viewers that he did in fact dm you.

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tags=@atsumiez @camixiez @christ4ls @darling-eos @idiotmaterial @burntbag @iovemeorleaveme @hinanitiram @threevracha @nujeskz @inniesbestie @0sunshinecryptid0 @atinyniki @jiniretsleftear @skz8riley @otterluver05 @strawberry1143 @casewonnie @hannieslovebot @babigriin @yxna-bliss @akindaflora

[dokidokitsuna]

So I was on Twitter a lot during the recent Big Run, and I saw a lot of talk about the 'Save Our Salmons' image and whether that + the giant massacre we just carried out might lead to some kind of consequence down the line. ^^; Like, it feels like the Salmonids kinda want us to stop...and we are clearly not listening...

I'm not gonna sugarcoat it-- Grizzco is obviously an unethical institution in-universe. As in, even if Mr. Grizz/Li'l Judd wasn't a shady bastard and the company was safe and well-run, the thing that it exists to do-- steal resources from sentient beings-- would still be wrong. To the point where it kinda made me uncomfortable to hear Deep Cut collabing with Grizzco's lobby music...like...although the remix is a banger, this feels like a step too far. ^^;; First the Anarchy Splatcast shilling and now this...when Grizzco as a company is inevitably turned into a direct antagonist, is Deep Cut going to regret being so involved with it? Are any of the idols gonna discuss this...? I feel like the type of harm that Grizzco does isn't the kind you can just brush aside with camp-- we're either gonna have to employ some dark humor or just go the sincere route and admit that the cute mascots did a bad...

Anyway, speaking of antagonists: I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone express this idea yet, but I think we're pretty clearly gearing up for a Salmonid villain at this rate. ^^; The Octarians are already getting stale (+ Octavio's basically our friend now~), and the Salmonids are the only established 'evil army'-type force left. I'm calling it now, eventually some Salmonid warlord is gonna decide enough is enough and invade, to take back all the golden eggs that were stolen from them.

And if you think I have brain-worms about Mr. Grizz, you won't wanna be around me when we get an edgy Salmonid dude threatening to blow up the city with a giant Stinger or whatever. (◕ヮ◕)*:･ﾟ✧ Also, I would commit unspeakable acts for a single-player campaign soundtrack by ω-3: despite their relatively miniscule discography, they are far and away my favorite band in the series. Everything they do is always fresh and unique; I really REALLY want more songs in their style. ^^ If anyone can replace Turquoise October/Octoplush, they can.

But wait, there's more to this idea: if we do get a Salmonid villain, they won't be the final boss. ;) I think they'll just oppose us for most of the campaign, before we finally reach an understanding and Li'l Judd, Grizzco's new CEO, emerges as the true big bad, so we can team up and take him down...kinda similar in structure to RotM. And y'know, if that rumor I heard a while back about a Splatoon series spinoff game turns out to be real, I hope ^this is it. Close out the original formula and the story arc of the first three games with a nice sendoff like this, and then emerge with something totally new and different for Splatoon 4.

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/663370772509802496/do-you-know-what-the-origin-of-the-sold-to-one

So I was looking at this old post of yours (in your fandom meta tag) and has anyone else noticed that Hogwarts AU fanfic and meta about if this or that character from another fandom would be Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw has completely disappeared? I assume that this is related to JKR’s transphobia making her (understandably) persona non grata to a lot of online queer people of the kind who dominate fanfic fandom at least on AO3 (I’m less familiar with Wattpad or other corners of fandom that are overwhelmingly cishet and writing het, and the Bridgerton drama has taught me a lot about just how out of pace a lot of them are with even elementary queer stuff, yeesh). but I was wondering if others have noticed that. It did seem to really start to crater around 2019-20 when she stopped being coy and blaming it on “middle aged moments,” and started openly making transphobic tweets and writing essays about it rather than just “liking” others’. Like when I was into Yuri on Ice circa 2016-18, it was still all over that fandom, even though people were already souring on the actual official franchise stuff such as those terrible Fantastic Beasts movies.

So I’m mostly active in anime, JRPG and Western genre TV fandoms so I was curious if this was also happening elsewhere. I’m also wondering if the fact that actual HP fandom seems to be increasingly divorced from canon (like fanon pairings of characters who never interacted in canon being the most popular lately) is related to this too.

Cuz having a Hogwarts AU used to be a sign that a fandom had Arrived. I remember in 2016 you saw people doing house sortings for the people on the frickin 538 political podcast. Now I never see any of that even with huge fandoms.

It’s interesting to me given that it feels like her transphobia hasn’t dented much of her popularity with non online nerd culture. Like the third Fantastic Beasts movie failed but those had never been good and had been declining in box office numbers already. But the Hogwarts Legacy game sold really well. You still see HP in stores all over the place with other nerd culture staples like Star Wars and Marvel. Still constantly see brands doing collabs. I often find non online friends and family, including many who are genuine allies to the trans people in their lives, who have no idea about her transphobia. Or they’ve only heard a little and assume it’s some weird insular online culture thing that is just fans nitpicking, maybe having heard about some other Twitter “canceling” over nothing and figuring it’s like that. They’re always shocked and horrified when I tell them what she’s actually saying and doing.

--

Interesting question.

For me, as an Old, it just feels like Hogwarts AUs are part of my childhood, and why wouldn't they be less common now? But realistically, if they actually are declining, it does mean something.

There's no way for us to know if the "Would X be a Hufflepuff?" posts are really a thing of the past. That could be a question of whom one follows or of fans leaving one's platform. But we can at least poke at some AO3 tags and see if they show a pattern.

The relevant tags are Alternate Universe - Hogwarts and its metatag Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting.

There are 21,426 works in the metatag. Obviously, not everything uses the tag, but it's a starting point. (Some cursory playing with filters on big tags makes me think that maybe around 3/4 of HP AUs are actually tagged with a relevant AU tag.)

If we look at the AU tag itself, the numbers have come down in the last few years. (This year is obviously only half over, so we'd expect those numbers to be smaller.)

But we have to take into account how big the archive itself was. It's been growing significantly since it opened to staff accounts in late 2008 and then more widely in late 2009, so the overall rise doesn't mean much, but the recent drop might.

It does seem like there's a downward trend lately, but it doesn't look like it's falling off a cliff.

[cptngoober]

Hihihi I saw someone else make predictions for 2025 and I feel like I need to make my own :3

- A new social media arises, and it’s not another twitter replacement

-The death of Donald J Trump

-My Chemical Romance releases a new album/single

-Minecraft fans will not be happy with the next update (bonus points if it’s genuinely an incredible addition)

-Some new celebrity will show up out of nowhere but then when you think about it you remember they have always been there but like not recently (ex Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo existing on Disney channel and stuff long ago)

-A billionaire will die at sea (bonus points if it’s Donald, as mentioned earlier)

-Elon Musk will spend ridiculous money on smth really dumb like buying twitter again

-There’s going to be a new like variation of COVID but it doesn’t cause like the same effect at all and just kind of exists still barely

-There will not be a new doctor who season yet (I’m pretty sure this one’s a fact unless I misread tho)

-The Minecraft movie will be postponed

-I will release an album frfr

-There will be a *big* lawsuit against a big social media for privacy violations

-Some people will talk about UFO/UAPs again, but still no one will react how it was expected

-There’s going to be a large movement supporting something. (Including protests, social media campaigns, slogans that will be remembered for a long time)

-Stranger Things 5 won’t be received well, but won’t necessarily be bad

-Brainrot is going to get worse, making it practically incomprehensible to anyone not chronically online

-New FNAF game

-There’s going to be a meme based around a real video a student took of a teacher at a high school acting non professional (yelling at students, swearing or smth) (don’t ask where this came from)

-There’s going to be a cool movie that comes out in October, (original concept) and it gains a cult following

-The internet loves a new funky irl critter not to popular before (ex Axolotl, Capybara)

-Two musicians with completely different followings will collab

-A major generative AI is going to be corrupted by malware in protest, being made completely unusable

-The end of the world /j

[northwest-cryptid]

I will openly admit that to this day my biggest disappointment in indie vtubers and being an indie vtuber was that vtuber teams were not nearly as cool as they could have been because no one knew what made a team good in the first place.

If you don't know, a Vtuber team is essentially a small collective of streamers (roughly 3 - 5) who would work as a sort of "team" or group. They'd collab and promote one another and often had their own discord servers or ways to keep in touch with the various different members.

Now, lets say you're a sane everyday person, who is actually friends with your fellow team members. You wouldn't say; go around bad mouthing them for clout, backstabbing them and trying to assimilate their audience into your own after they prove to be more successful. You likely wouldn't plan "mandatory" meetings and then get mad at them when they refuse to show up because they've not had a day off from their actual paying job in over 5 months and they're literally so sick they can't get up the stairs to their computer and would rather spend their time with their significant other. You certainly wouldn't tell them they should voice their concerns about a big group change to everyone and then immediately double back on what you said when the rest of the group decides to ostracize them for having a bad opinion even though you just told them their thoughts are more in line with the goal of the team.

Right?

If you can't tell, as someone who has been in a handful of teams I've become somewhat jaded by them. They're a great model for actually promoting one another, having constant collabs so you don't need to constantly stream alone, and generally having some kind of group atmosphere which helps raise popularity since I can promote you even when you're not streaming, and you can promote me when I'm not streaming. However this doesn't work in reality because too many people are too focused on their own personal ambitions and are far too willing to jump into the fire of drama and throwing-each-other-under-the-bus bullshittery.

If it wasn't extremely clear, everything I mentioned above is shit that ACTUALLY has happened to me. I've never in my life had to say, verbally, aloud; in a call with other adults "I am going to hang up, because I am sick; I have not had a day off in months, and you call me here to yell at me over shit that doesn't even matter. Grow up, and learn that you do not hold power over others; if you want to make mandatory meetings, control my voice and my content, and tell me what I can and cannot do; you can pay me. I will leave my paypal in the general chat." Until I was in a team.

So what goes wrong? It can't just be that people get a taste of being popular and suddenly throw it all away, right?

... I mean. Yea. It sorta can be.

I'm not going to say this is exclusively what always happens all the time, but I will say it was what I saw happen the MAJORITY of the time. Essentially, it becomes fandom bullshit levels of cliche-y real quick.

You will inevitably have some members of the team who are more popular than others, and some who are by proxy less popular. Some might be better at holding a more dedicated and consistent audience while others, despite having more numbers on twitter; can't actually get numbers on their streams.

If you've made it this far, buckle up because I'm going all in here.

To properly explain this whole ordeal I'm going to walk you, yes you; through what it might be like to be part of a Twitter Indie Vtuber Team and you will see exactly why it never worked.

So if we're going to join a Vtuber team we need to be a Vtuber, the fun part here is that it literally doesn't matter who or what you are. You might be someone who cares deeply about lore, plot, and character; you might be more like me and not really think that matters so much as putting on a show for your audience. You might be somewhere in the middle. Maybe you're a sci fi character, maybe you're high fantasy, maybe you're some really generic anime character; guess what? None of that matters because Twitter Indie Vtubers teams fail to understand one huge guiding principle behind Vtuber teams, Classification.

See, I think the biggest issue I saw in the way Twitter's Indie vtuber teams (god that's getting exhausting to type, is it getting exhausting to read yet) ran things, was that they HATED Corporate Vtubers. Like, they HATED them. You couldn't bring up any of them, it doesn't matter how humble or how popular or whatever. Mention Vshojo? You're the devil. Mention Hololive? You're worse than the devil.

So what's so bad about that?

Let me put it like this, what do Vshojo and Hololive have in common that the majority of Indie Vtubers on Twitter do not?

They're successful at earning a living by streaming. Simple as that, they're doing something right. What are they doing right exactly? Well I'd love to find out but I can't discuss it with anyone because if I bring up corporate vtubers it's seen as a horrible very bad no good thing to talk about. We HATE Corporate Vtubers here and if you talk about them at all you're out buster, that's that.

But wait, going back to what I was saying about Classification, why is that important? Well simply put it makes things easier to understand for the audience. It keeps things coherent and it all just makes sense.

Here's a quick example, let's look at some Vtubers and you tell me if you think you know which ones are in a team together;

One of the Vtubers is a Lion. One of the Vtubers is a Crow. One of the Vtubers is an Isekai Protagonist (Generic, no definition) One of the Vtubers is a Harem Anime Protagonist (again, generic) One of the Vtubers is a Demon. One of the Vtubers is an Angel. One of the Vtubers is a Robot. One of the Vtubers is a Starship Captain. Lastly, one of the Vtubers is a Bear.

Now if you look at these Vtubers, and you had to group them into teams; how would you do it?

Logically you might group the Isekai and Harem protagonists together, they could have a Vtuber group for generic anime protagonists and they could actually make a joke out of putting a spin on their respective tropes.

Then you could pair off the Demon and Angel, the Robot and the Captain since they're both sci fi, and lastly you could group the Lion, Crow, and Bear since they're all animals right?

Well to put it super bluntly and not try to dox myself with how much I've said in this already, none of those examples were made up. All of those are actual Vtubers I've met during my time on twitter. Fun fact: they were all in the same team. Yes, all of them. Then they split off into smaller teams because they learned the team was too big and the audience split too thin.

But why does that Classification actually matter? Well it matters for the same reason being a Vtuber in the first place matters.

You see, if you're going to be a Vtuber you need to ask yourself why you're wanting to be a Vtuber over any other type of streamer.

Seriously, give that a thought for a second.

For me it was pretty simple, it started with not wanting to put my face out there. I got generally tired of how many people would comment on how I was dressed or how my hair was that day, or the fact I have a big nose; or just... whatever they felt like saying about ME that day. I'd play a ton of games I wanted to show people, things I actually enjoyed and wanted to bring to others. Yet no one cared about what I was streaming, they were all too caught up on how I look, and how do I look? Well, extremely everyday normal person-looking.

No seriously. I am not really someone who's like, "cool" or "handsome" or whatever. I don't look striking in any noticeable way. This isn't some fishing for compliments attempt either I'm being real, there's nothing about me on a GOOD day that says "I'm worth looking at" and yet people would always comment on SOMETHING and it normally wasn't about me looking good.

However if you turn off your webcam you DO get less engagement. This is just a sort of proven thing, so you need SOMETHING to represent yourself right? For me that was an easy fix, I could use a Vtuber avatar and in doing so I figured maybe I could rep some of my Native culture while I'm at it.

Later down the line I met some cool people who were more character focused, they enjoy the idea of playing a character and ultimately growing and changing that character as they streamed. It was something I felt forced into by the Twitter community at large so I always tried to come up with SOMETHING for the character, but everything felt forced (because it was) and bad (because it was) so I would often quickly drop any characterization before it even hit the stream.

Okay so let's say you personally have the ambition of playing a character, you want something closer to Hololive or Holostars, where your character comes from a place, has an occupation; a goal, a reason for streaming beyond just "I stream because I want to make money as a streamer for whatever reason." Alright cool let's see where that goes right?

Now remember, as Twitter Indie Vtubers we HATE Corporations and we will not be looking at how Hololive does this right at all. Instead we will constantly remind people about our character without ever really doing anything with it.

Yes. This is how it was done.

Say you meet someone who was an Angel. Maybe they were an Angel who was kicked out of heaven because lol they play too many video games XD (please excuse my cringe I'm doing my best to emulate shit I actually ran into here). So okay cool I'm not going to say that's NOT a valid character I guess. Alright so they're streaming because they like playing video games, what does being an Angel have to do with anything exactly? Well they'll tell you their entire lore dump of a backstory, they'll remind you they're an Angel, and they'll likely have some kind of definition of the difference between them as an Angel who got kicked out of heaven and fallen angels who... you know, basically the same thing BUT IT'S NOT.

You might ask again, what does this have to do with ANYTHING. Why does it matter? Why does them having a backstory, having this persona; why does it matter? What are they doing with it? Is it worth all the investment in a backstory and lore; or would it simply be enough to just explain "yea I'm an Angel and that's why I look like this" or whatever?

And Again they'll remind you of their backstory, they'll explain all their lore; and you'll find that this literally DOESN'T MATTER.

But then all the big corporate vtubers have backstories and lore, so we should too right?

Well... about that.

Can we, and now listen; I know... we HATE corpo vtubers here... but can we take just a second to look at WHY they have those backstories and lore and such?

Okay so here's the thing, if we look at the Hololive English branches we can see some specific things, first off Classification is a big one.

HoloMYTH? Grim Reaper, Phoenix, Cthulhu; etc (I'm not going to explain how a Shark or literally just Watson who is somehow a time traveler fit in here ask COVER man.)

HoloCOUNCIL? Warden of Time, Basically Mother Nature, The Embodiment of Chaos; again we have characters who are the COUNCIL of things like Space, Time, Civilization, Nature, Chaos; etc.

Council would later become PROMISE but I digress.

Now I'm not honestly too sure about Advent? But that's mostly because I haven't really looked into them much admittedly they're very hit or miss with me personally, but I got nothing against them and wish them the best.

What I'm saying here is, Classification matters! Everything from theme to color schemes and names comes into play. The one in charge of Nature? Ceres (a planet) Fauna (...yea I don't need to explain how that one ties in). The Warden of Time? Literally named Kronii (obviously meant to be similar to the word Chronos and such).

A lot of this is pretty self explanatory but my point here is everyone is designed to fit together like a D&D party. Everyone feels like they belong in the team. It's not just a random Cyborg, an Angel, some random Bear, and an Isekai Protagonist all bumming out in a discord call going "oh man I have no idea what to do today so we're just chatting lol"

So if you're an Indie Vtuber who understands Classification you're likely going to look for other people who fit your general theme and identity. But this can be difficult because of either one of two reasons.

One being that no one seems to fit your general classification. If you're too unique or too specific to a setting, time period, or general genre it can be hard to find others who fit into that with any level of similarity.

The other being that TOO MANY people seem to fit your classification EXACTLY. If you're a random God of such and such, and you find other god Vtubers, you likely find other people who are literally the same thing you are. Same goes for Angels, Demons, Anything Anime, Most forms of Object Heads or Robots or Cyborgs.

The biggest problem I see with the second is that no one wants to be anything short of "the best" at what they are. You're not just an assassin, you're the best assassin to ever live; well shit now you can't be in the same team as the OTHER best assassin to ever live.

But what if you were?

See this is where I think Indie Vtubers don't have the ability to laugh at themselves nearly as much as they should.

Because I personally think it would be really funny to have two people in a vtuber team who are the same thing, but from different backgrounds. Give us Spy x Family but as a Vtuber Team and I think it would be fucking hilarious.

No seriously, imagine for a moment that there was a 5 person vtuber team, 2 of the members of the team were from different backgrounds, they could be anything; for the sake of generic bullshit let's say one is like the top Angel from heaven, the other is the top Demon from hell. Except they both seek to keep this information secret, "only their chat knows" except the other 3 people in the team are VERY much aware, for literally ANY reason it doesn't matter how they know, it just matters that these two are such stupid idiots that they're constantly showing their hand in such specific ways that the other wouldn't see.

If you have the improv skills necessary, and the ability to laugh at yourself; you suddenly have a very VERY potentially funny team on your hands.

Imagine them playing Phasmophobia, one of them (doesn't matter who) points out the ghost must be a demon, they know all this information about demons, clearly this is a demon; they wouldn't be wrong about this. The other, also knowing this information (either because they're well researched on demons, or because they ARE one) is suspicious of how they know all this and doesn't know how to call them out so they try to one up them by providing MORE information in an attempt to see how much they ACTUALLY know, only now the first person is starting to question how THEY know so much. Meanwhile everyone else in the collab is dying and neither of them acknowledge this until it's brought up as a last ditch effort out by one of the two when asked a particularly difficult to answer question and they just respond with "OH SHIT THEY'RE DYING!" Before running off to save their team members. THAT'S GOOD BANTER BAY-BEE!

But see, this requires classification, an understanding of everyone's characters; and enough similarity to play off each other's characters.

So what about if you can't find anyone? You join into a random Vtuber Team and hope for the best.

Alright so you join into a group with 4 other people, so far things seem fine, everyone is nice enough; you likely sit in a discord call and talk about life; become closer friends, discuss what kind of games you like to play. You know, general normal people stuff.

Then a few days later you get a message about doing a collab, you don't have many viewers at this point; maybe 4 - 5 regulars who show up and actively chat. Good people, you are excited to sort of introduce your audience to your new team, and get to meet their audience. You might even be a little stressed because you only have about 100 followers on twitter and they have well over 1,000 so you expect a much bigger turnout on their end.

The stream collab starts, you notice there's maybe 3 people watching them, you are one; they are another. Which means they only really have 1 viewer. You tell yourself this is because the stream just started.

Then a half hour goes by, the only viewers showing up in their chat are from your team. Mutual friends, other streamers you know; they trickle in now and then but you notice neither of you are particularly popular. That big four digit follower count seems to all be just for show. Likely coming from a basis of follow for follow vtubers and the like. Looking at their twitter you notice they don't get much interaction outside of the team there either.

This sort of puts your mind at ease, it feels more comfortable knowing you're not somehow accidentally jumping ahead to having an audience of hundreds to entertain.

That is until you begin to notice a shift in the way you're treated by your team. It's very likely you'll be asked to do more collabs, they'll absolutely swing this as it being a matter of keeping the team together; or because you're fun to be around. However during streams you'll often be put on the back burner, you'll be brought into collabs but never really engaged with. You'll never be raided by your fellow team members. This is because you have a small, but real following.

You'll find that when you're unavailable it's suddenly a big deal, you'll see words like "mandatory" or "regularly scheduled" popping up to make it seem like you SHOULD be there, it's part of being in a team. You'll be told to "act professional" if you have a disagreement with someone, whether this is over something like gender, sexuality, or even other basic respect issues. You'll be asked to stream with people you don't like.

When it comes down to it, if you show opposition; you'll be told that the majority of the team disagrees with you, but they won't want you gone. They won't oust you from the team, because they know your audience will still most likely follow you out. They don't want that.

So they'll keep you around as long as possible, until you make too much noise; or say something they don't agree with a little too loudly. Once they believe they've done enough collabs, and gotten enough of your followers to follow them; they'll kick you aside and find someone else to do this to.

They will even turn on each other; I've gotten messages from people, months and even sometimes years after leaving a team. These messages all say similar things; they always start with an apology; and then go into talking about how they were either too naive, too scared, or just too confused to understand the manipulation and crowd mentality they were being indoctrinated to.

The key reason behind all of this is because you are never actually a valued friend, you're an additional audience member; you're a viewer, who has more viewers to bring to the table.

But clearly that was just a bad team, they're not all like that; that's true; that's genuine. So you go back to the drawing board and put it out there that you're in the market for another team, probably a bit more picky this time than you were last time to be fair. I couldn't blame anyone for being such after going through something like that.

You'll find another small group of people who don't know each other, who don't have anything in common other than a want to be successful; and likely who are willing to throw the weakest link under the bus to replace them with a fresh set of eyes and a new audience to grow their follower count.

But what happens if it DOES work out? What about when it's made by friends? What about when the people streaming don't actually hate each other?

Well then you still have to contend with burnout, with setting up times to stream together; with the sheer amount of work it is to work as a singular unit rather than as a "stream whenever you want" solo vtuber.

This can be difficult for some people. I remember having times when we'd plan group collabs and then my chronic pain would act up and I couldn't make it. Some would make it out to be a big deal, others would be understanding; either way it was a bit of a let down. Then you'd have the issue of not just everyone having the same games but the same interest in playing them at the same time. Then you'd have issues with if someone is getting more popular, or if there's a difference in ideas for how the group should be handling things.

At what point is it a team and not just a group of friends?

So alright, what do I think? Personally?

I think if you want to have a success vtuber team you should find some method of Classification; even if it's really weird and out there. Give us something to unify you all to the same group. Then you should decide on whether or not as a whole you're a character driven group or a streamer driven group:

Character Driven = investing in the characterization of your avatars, the in character interactions they may have; the "story" or "plot" that exists around them being a key feature of the streams.

Streamer Driven = investing in the streamer behind the characters, the connections of the individuals, their audiences; and the games they play.

Think Hololive vs Jerma.

Jerma doesn't have an anime he uses to explain his more characteristic properties of himself, because he doesn't really need that in order to come out on a stream and go "hey guys it's me, Jerma; the funny white dude on the internet." He can just do that and you already kinda get it because he's invested a lot in you knowing who JERMA is.

Meanwhile every Hololive stream opens with a catch phrase or a sort of characterized opening. Some more elaborate than others; and some even going so far as to call out their generation/team. They DO have an anime, and various other productions that run alongside the streams that serve to amplify them as characters, and even their inside jokes and developments within streams will loop back around to becoming elements of their anime counterparts.

So, once you've figured that out it's not really too difficult.

As long as you're willing to grow as a unit and pick each other up when someone gets ahead, without feeling a need to stab each other in the back or throw each other under the bus; you're solid.

If you're character focused, I strongly recommend you focus on your extended universe, explain to me who your characters are not by taking time out of the stream to stare me in the eyes and say "my character is blah blah blah" but by SHOWING ME through bumpers, skits, or other media. Make comics, make short video bumpers and tiktoks or something I don't care. Just don't sit there on stream EXPLAINING shit at me, because trust me I will tune out I do not care it is not an interesting way to convey who and what you are.

If you're character focused I need you to prioritize SHOW don't TELL.

If you're Streamer focused then I think you have it a lot easier, because you can prioritize getting to better know your audience, their preferences for streams/collabs, and you can get to know each other and use the information above to best sort out who should be pairing off for the best experiences for both you as a streamer and your audience as viewers.

I do believe these two things can mix well.

If you want a really solid example of EXACTLY what I mean, look no further than my (streamer focused) interaction with Nea (character focused)

A lot of the time our interactions work just fine because she understands that I am a streamer before I'm a character, and meanwhile I'll comment on her being an Ice Cream Lion before ever bringing up who she is outside of streams (at least while on streams, we're good friends outside of streams and I know her as her obviously). We're not in a team together but we collab plenty and consider each other to be good friends. We do our best to help one another get ahead in very casual ways and don't seek to bring each other down because we don't hold jealousy or envy towards one another's followings.

And yes, it REALLY is that simple to get along.

The core problem with Twitter's Indie Vtuber scene is that drama and bullshit gets attention and they crave attention over long-term proper collaboration and friendship. I don't doubt for a second that if Nea ever hit it big time and became a full time streamer she wouldn't hesitate or shy away from streaming with me and collabing with me all the same and you better believe that I'd be the exact same.

I used to often talk about applying to corporate vtuber agencies and I always said that if I was to ever get accepted I'd fight tooth and nail to be able to collab with my friends in hopes of getting them in front of the audience they deserve to have.

But yea that's it, that's the big keys to successful Vtuber team right there;

Classification helps a TON.

Be good to one another, don't allow yourself to succumb to the jealousy and envy of seeing one of your friends and team members gaining popularity faster than you.

Actually being good friends does help a lot too.

Actively support one another.

[miguelsjoy]

so like to those who are interested, I present yall with

🥤POPIPO LORE 🥦

(disclaimer: this was written before I watched the anime so if this is slightly ooc I'm sorry 🙏)

(also this is self ship Todd x Cola stuff so if you don't like that kinda thing, exit stage right pleek)

Ever since Cola had his last break up, he's been pretty unmotivated and unmoved. it took a lot out of him because Cola was so attached to the man, he made him feel human and made him feel alive...just for him to make him feel like THIS

Cola would then decide to try to take some action on these emotions by making a song about it, he put it on soundcloud thinking it wouldn't take off but by a stroke a luck it definitely did.

He got relatively popular, despite him not doing many performances due to his shyness. He'd later hear from twitter that a vegan rockstar and his girlfriend have broken up because he cheated on her with a fellow bandmate. Just for Cola's manager to call him on the phone an hour later.

Colas manager told him that Envy is taking a break from the band, whether it's permanent or temporary is kind of a toss up, but she was gonna focus on her solo career instead of entertaining his ex's bullshit. Cola was confused why he was telling him all this, just to be told that they saw a brilliant business move

The manager told Cola that he could fill in for envy! their band is pretty popular too, and it could get more eyes on Cola's music as well, and the pay would be pretty good.

Cola was hesitant about doing it, but Cola would go through with it, just as a way get more eyes on his music...but he told the manager he was gonna complain about it and be a bitch about it every 5 minutes.

(A few weeks later)

The manager arranged a session with Cola and Todd, they'd meet up and make a song with each other that'd spearhead the collab!

Todd had a big head about it, since his band was pretty popular, he thought that Cola would be excited to work with him, just for Cola to humble the FUCK out of him.

They'd take a selfie with each other, but Cola was fake smiling, after the selfie, he went pretty cold, not wanting to talk or interact with Todd unless it was about the song. Cola was a perfectionist when it came to his work, so he was kind of a dick about re-recording lines, restacking vocals, etc. However, in Cola's mind he wasn't doing anything wrong just because Todd was a dick to envy.

All this dictating kinda got under Todd's skin, after all HE was the rockstar, so why is some random loser controlling him???

He couldn't argue with results tho...when they reached a stopping point, they both listened to the song, it sounded...perfect.

Todd was impressed, and even kept listening to it over and over, while Cola packed his things and got ready to leave. When Todd was getting ready to high five Cola, Cola just blankly stared at Todd and left for the bus. Todd didn't know why Cola was being so distant with him, they needed to work together after all.

While he was on the bus, Cola held true to his promise, he complained like a bitch about working with Todd, The manager would reluctantly listen to every word.

The next few practices, Todd would try to impress Cola, he felt like the reason why Cola hated him was because he wasn't good enough, so Todd would attempt at getting better when it came to his vocals, the way he played, etc. But it'd end up with him falling on his face and flopping.

Cola would see this and would chuckle. This was the first time Todd saw Cola get close to smiling...Cola would notice this and clear his throat trying to focus on pumping out these songs.

As time went on, Cola was slowly starting to complain less and less to the manager...he saw how much Todd was trying to impress him, and while 50% of the time it ended up failing, he couldn't help but laugh at how cute Todd was at times.

A connection was slowly starting to be formed between the two, during practices, now Todd and Cola would start to joke around a bit. They'd tease each other, laugh at each other, and ultimately make some of the best music the two have ever made! The music was helping Todd show that he was still awesome and worthy of respect, while it was helping Cola break out of his shell and become a bit more relaxed.

Todd would start to question Cola about the lyrics he'd propose sometimes. Cola would become a bit timid as he'd say that the lyrics were a bit personal. Todd would read these lyrics and would have a critique, they are all a bit, bummy...not every song has to be something sad. Cola would take it a bit personally, and would argue that these are experiences that he's gone through

Todd would blink and ask Cola why he just, don't have any happy experiences then, why don't he just, write about happy things so they don't bore the audience. Cola would toss a pencil at him and it'd spiral into an argument but todd would get his point across. Cola would say that he can't think of a time where he's been ACTUALLY happy before.

this would puzzle Todd and would decide to do a little something, just because he

a) wants to use this opportunity to get to know Cola better

and b) at least make the man feel better

and c) so they can go back to making good music

After practice, Todd would invite Cola out to get some (vegan) food with him. Cola was a bit hesitant, but he'd decide to go along with it. Cola would still have his walls up, but he'd also get a bit bashful because he's never been included in something in...a long time.

They'd both ask each other a bunch of questions while they went out. Todd did most of the questioning but Cola responded in such long and detailed answers that Todd couldn't help and listen to Cola speak for hours...eventually Todd would start to smile warmly because he was starting to see Cola for who he truly was instead of who he thought he was in his head..

But Cola would decide to take the moment to cut into his relationship with Envy...Todd was a bit hesitant to answer, even trying to deflect the question, but the persistent Cola would be able to press his foot on Todd's enough to get an answer out of him. Todd would confess that he's really bad with communication, they both kinda were...Envy was getting on his nerves and his ego got the better of him (like it tends to do). He broke things off with Lynette after the news got out, and the band moral has been pretty awkward lately. So Todd his primarily been separated from the band, and working with Cola has been the only thing he was kinda able to do without feeling TOO awkward

Cola sat there with a shocked expression on his face. He didn't expect Todd to be so...insightful...A part of him was moved by the way Todd talked. Usually Todd is pretty simple minded, but maybe this break up was what Todd needed to finally see how bad of a person he could be at times.

Cola would sigh and pat Todd's back, reassuring him that in time, Todd will become a better person..he's already doing a good job music wise...and he could see him and Todd becoming good friends..that's if Todd was open to the idea...

Todd lit up like a star, deciding to take a selfie to celebrate this momentous occasion, and this time...Cola was actually smiling.

the next few weeks the songs Cola would propose would be a bit more positive now.

(Later on)

It was finally time for them to perform. This would be pretty important because Cola rarely does any live performances, plus he's performing with an already popular band, so this was gonna be pretty big..

Cola was noticeably quiet this day, Todd was a bit surprised because normally Cola would be talking a lot and moving around a lot...Cola would confess that he's still pretty nervous about performing live...he's worried that he may mess up or even do something dumb.

Todd holds Cola's hands and reassures him that they'll be fine, instead of focusing on everyone else's faces...just worry about his face

"my...handsome ass face"

Todd meant it as a joke but Cola would blush softly and swat Todd away while laughing nervously.

When they got on stage, Cola did just as todd said, and it was a HIT! Todd and Cola's stage presence blended seamlessly with each other, to the point that some even thought THEY were dating.

Once the performance was over, Todd and Cola celebrated, they both acted like frat bros after they made it to the play offs, and for a moment the two of them locked eyes with each other while hugging...and just as they were about to do something...Cola's manager walked in to congratulate the both of them, causing both of them to have red ass faces while looking away from each other

it was safe to say that they were starting to grow pretty fond of each other, even hanging out with each other on days they didn't need to work or practice! Sometimes Cola would invite Todd over to his place to have a "private listening session" and others Todd would take Cola out on a "totally not a date" date.

but things would escalate until the night of new years eve, Todd was standing off to the side drunk as fuck and looking bummed as hell while everyone was partying. Cola decided to see what was going on since Todd wasn't the type to whine and mope at a party. Todd would sluggishly tell Cola that normally at 12 o clock, him and envy would be damn near swapping spit with each other as a tradition...and this was the first year where that kinda doesn't get to happen.

Cola would pat his shoulder and try to console Todd, but to no avail. Soon the clock would start to countdown, and Cola decided to be bold as fuck (maybe it was his mind, maybe it was the drinks) by kissing Todd on the cheek as soon as the clock struck 12. Todd's face turned red as he held Cola's face, taking a second to admire how cute he was before kissing him like he'd kiss envy...but with a bit more passion~ luckily the place was pretty crowded so maybe one or 2 people saw this happen

after the kiss, Cola would hold Todd close and huff trying to catch his breath...Cola told Todd they shouldn't go any further since Todd's love life is pretty messy right now...Todd nodded and agreed to this.

(The next day)

Cola woke up in a room half naked...his clothes were practically all over the floor...and the room he woke up in didn't look like his....there's no red velvet posters, no switch playing splatoon music...as he tried to peice together what happened...he'd turn around to see Todd smiling ear to ear in his sleep. This would make Cola scream his eyes out causing Todd to wake up in a panic, being just as confused as Cola before he figured out what happened between the two of them

....I guess they both figured out what happens after they both have 8 margaritas/ref

Cola would quickly get his clothes on, while Todd would try to calm him down, trying to explain that this is just a "happy accident", but Cola would toss a pillow at him. He was furious at both Todd AND himself for letting this happen...Cola would angrily tell Todd that

a) they can NOT let his manager figure out what happened

and b) the sex they had was MEANINGLESS and was not to happen again

Todd was a bit...heartbroken by this...he sadly nodded his head as he helped Cola get dressed.

While Cola walked back to his place...he was thinking about everything that happened...but he couldn't help but think of Todd's cute ass....Todd would try texting Cola the next couple of weeks but Cola would just ghost him as he tried to regain his peace and peice his emotions together.

He was trying to ignore the signs, but after the past few months...he felt like he may have fell in love with the man...but he was too nervous to actually say so...

So he did what he did best, and write a song about it. it was more somber and raw than anything he's ever wrote...the only thing left to do was to invite Todd over to another private listening session...

Todd listened to the song, blinking before looking softly at Cola. Cola sat next to him with his body curled up in a ball, his face was red as shit at this time...he felt like he was doing this for nothing because Cola assumed that Todd was straight..but Todd would accept Cola's confession, kissing his face before calling him a loser and a geek.

the private listening session got a lil..

steamy afterwards~ and this time it was a lot more fun now that both of them were in love and REAL love this time.

after they got done, Cola laid on the bed, and told Todd that he should probably keep this relationship a secret for now...he didn't want their relationship to become a public affair, because then none of the moments they share would be personal or meaningful anymore. Todd would assure Cola that this relationship is gonna be theirs and theirs alone.

that following week however...Envy would make a public statement saying that she was ready to go back to being in the band as the lead singer, effectively kicking Cola out. And....she was ready to forgive Todd and go back to being boyfriend and girlfriend...

Cola would read about this on twitter and would start to sweat a LOT...because this situation was gonna get MESSY.

(To be continued, or not idrk)

[wyngie]

kpop report february 2025

hello! and welcome once again(?) to my adventures in listening to every single kpop song released in 2025. already i can tell that this project will have serious repercussions on my spotify algorithm, from which i may never recover..... alas! the things we do in the name of journalistic integrity.

anyway, overall i'd say that february was a very funky & groovy month in kpop. great news for people of taste (in general), and especially for me (specifically). happy birthday to me!! anyway:

my top 5 tracks

G-DRAGON - Take Me

god this song rules. the production is incredible, g-dragon's kind of throaty/scratchy vocals rule, and then when the guitar solo hits??? whew! even if every other kpop song i listened to this year was absolute hell, this song alone would have made this whole project worth it, and i'm deadly serious about that. side note - i don't think there's been a single time that i've listened to this song without succumbing to the urge to dance, and that includes the time i was laying flat on my back in bed.

ONE PACT - 100!

another instant, irresistible banger. this song dares to go in some unexpected and borderline corny directions, but it goes there with such unabashed confidence that i can only respect it. thank you boys!!!!!!!

JISOO - earthquake

this song feels deceptively simple, and to be honest if i hadn't been listening to it with headphones the first time i heard it i'm not sure i would have given it a second listen. the mix and panning on this song are seriously so good and compelling - listening with headphones feels like you're wrapped up in it completely.

RESCENE - CRASH

now that's what i call pop music! this is quite simply a great girl group song. i love that most of the song is pretty pared-back as compared to the fuller instrumentation and harmonization in the choruses. it really gives those moments a sweeping, dreamy feeling that makes this song so fun to listen to.

LISA (feat. Doja Cat, RAYE) - Born Again

i'm pretty sure this was the first kpop single released this month, and boy did it set the tone for a whole month of great dance tracks. i don't know the, like, technical terminology to describe this, but there's some cool key/chord progression stuff happening on the lines 'baby to be born, oh baby to be born again' starting at around 3:30 that surprises and delights me every time. just a nice little treat to close out the track. also, looooove to see doja on a track! more kpop collabs please!!

BIBI - Bluebird

beautiful, simple. sounds like a lullaby. i love bibi's vocals.

my top 3 albums

ONE PACT - PINK CRUSH

i didn't discover one pact until i saw a bunch of people on twitter talking about deserved, which is absolutely wild because jay and jongwoo were two of my favorite boys planet boys. like.... i literally follow them both on instagram.... wtf. anyway, all this to say that i was very excited when i saw they had a comeback this month and that excitement was warranted! this album came out on valentine's day and it is a wonderful demonstration of lover boy-ism. at times dreamy and dramatic, at others upbeat and fun, at others just kind of like.... vaguely kpop horny r&b, the boys really brought it all on this album. plus we are treated to the absolute joy of jay chang's beautiful, perfect voice. i said it before and i'll say it again: thank you boys!!!!!!

G-DRAGON - Übermensch

the soundscapes g-dragon created on this album are incredible. there are soooo many surprising and delightful things going on here. i guess for some it could be too much? but not for me.

put simply:

ARrC - nu kidz: out the box

honestly i just think this one's fun. every song kind of feels like it's ripping off an nct song, which sounds like a huge insult. and..... i mean i guess it would be if i didn't love and cherish nct!! i'm sorry arrc! in the future i promise i will try to appreciate you for you.

side notes

listened to plave for the first time ever this month.... normally i would try to be nicer about saying this kind of thing, but plave fans please demand better for yourselves! listening to the full album literally felt like i was being held hostage in the worst possible way. even worse, i only just found out that there are actual men behind the virtual boys and it has me feeling really bad for these guys. do they get to express any real parts of themselves at all? truly wretched stuff.

happy birthday to fellow february pisces wendy shon, kevin moon, and ten!!

sm has debuted a new girl group. despite knowing nothing about this group when i pressed play, it was immediately obvious that they must be an sm group because of how damn polished they are already.

speaking of....... still waiting for you to announce that ten solo comeback, sm!!!

🐈‍⬛✨wooyo moment of the month✨🐈‍⬛

little homie keeps showing off his abs/belly. clearly he is currently in the midst of a serious hot boy/feeling himself era, and honestly i am so happy for him. nobody deserves to have a hot boy era more than jung wooyoung! 🔥🔥

jk, of course the real star of the month is sagittarius!!!! obviously i am always desperate for whatever wooyoung parts kq deigns to give us, so it's fun to get a song (and choreo!!) that was created specifically for him, and that suits him so well. and also.... it's just a good song! i tend to prefer ateez songs that have an electronic, dance-y vibe, and this one is a real earworm - i contemplated putting this song on my top tracks list, but since it's not an official album release and i already knew i would be talking about it here i decided to leave it off..... kind of arbitrary but whatever. i mentioned earlier that i was really digging g-dragon's vocals on his album, and there's that same scratchy/throaty quality to wooyoung's voice on this track that i really love. idk i'm just so proud of him i love him so much!!! jung wooyoung you will always be famous!!!!!!!

and with that, we're officially moving on to a new month of kpop! there's a ton of new releases scheduled for march, and quite a few that i've been looking forward to, so it's looking like it'll be a fun month of listening. see y'all next time! (maybe?)

[kuriboo]

My mental health has been really bad for the past like week or maybe even two to where my anxiety is really high and I keep having flashbacks to like two years ago

And it's. I can't keep myself off twitter as a side effect and it's actually kind of gross. Twitter's gross and toxic and I don't even want to be on there

It's related to accusations against a certain youtuber. And it's like. I was never extremely into the guy's content. He got me into animal crossing and splatoon, and my interest in either waxes and wanes. He's on a collab channel I was more into for a while, but he was my least favorite of the three. I think I saw myself in him a little too much in a bad way. I saw my flaws and flinched away. It didn't help that he was also noticeably really mean to some people, and back then we didn't know what the dynamics were really like off camera or if it was jokingly or what, but even if it was "joking" it could still hurt and I was really sensitive to that.

It's not really so much of me putting the guy on a pedestal that's wounded me. If that's all it was, well, I'm nobody, and talking about it wouldn't matter. I'd get over it. Whether the accusations are true or not isn't really my place to comment on. This is really not what's eating at me

It's the initial allegation and how it was presented

And I feel really guilty over this because yes victims should be listened to and believed. Just because the accused has a lot of fans doesn't make him automatically innocent and yadda yadda.

But if we ignore the shoe rp part of the situation (wild sentence, i know), a lot of it really comes down to boundaries not being established and misunderstandings, which is part of what happened to me a year and a half ago or so

Because the boundary wasn't established then, either. Keep coming to me for help, I was told, I'm here and I'll listen, talk to me. And I did.

There was also the fact that this person who used to talk to me constantly really suddenly pulled away and we barely talked and we used to talk about their aus and ideas and they started talking only to other people instead about that and that, uh, was really painful to adjust to as well. It was on me for putting too much care into that friendship and for thinking I mattered or something, but that's neither here nor there.

Point is, I did go to them to talk when I wasn't doing well because they told me to. There was no boundary established on that so I kept doing it

I crossed a boundary that was never outlined to me and I was yelled at and lashed out at for it during a really low period in my life.

So I, uh, tried to respect what was happening and stopped. We stopped talking altogether for a bit, the other person saying they needed a break, and I respected that. In the meantime, they went behind my back and tried to turn friends against me. Things started gradually getting better, we played a game with some friends together, it was looking up. We stopped playing for the night and they said goodnight, see you tomorrow :)

I thought it was getting better

Next day, I was kicked from several servers we shared and they sent me an essay on why they never wanted to hear from me again. During the middle of my shift at work, I read this during my lunch break and had to work half a shift feeling like that

I've blocked that person on every platform I can think of and made no attempts to communicate with them since. If they want to ever talk again, they have to reach out to me, because they set that boundary and I'm respecting it.

There's a lot of nuance and detail missing from this. I did a lot of things wrong. This is no callout post, I am not naming names, I am just airing my feelings because bottling things up is not healthy and I've been doing that for like a week and I am self destructing. I am not comfortable talking to people one on one on this, and this is my personal blog, so I'm just talking to the void.

So let me relate this back to the topic: initial allegations against youtuber. Ignoring the shoe rp, it boiled down to miscommunication and boundaries that weren't established being crossed and leading to someone lashing out.

Which feels very similar to what happened to me a year ago

And I've been trying to heal from that. I'm trying to do better and be better.

But this whole situation is a huge reminder of all that pain I went through, and just makes me feel like I could be called out at anytime. It wouldn't be undeserved, but it would kill me.

"You're empathizing too much with a sexual groomer" yeah okay whatever

I'm in a lot of pain right now and it hasn't gotten much better in the past week. Knowing now the youtuber is out of the hospital helps a little, but I'm pained and terrified.

I don't want this to cause worry. I'm not, this point on, going to do anything to myself

I'm trying very hard to be kind to myself

I am simply saying words so I'm not bottling this up so much anymore. I don't want to talk about this to anyone, so this is the best I'm getting on that front

It's late so I'm not explaining myself well. I've been so stressed.

If anyone's reading this, please be kind to the people around you. Kindness is a great gift

[natgoodmans]

Thanks for your patience waiting for me to respond to our conversation from a week ago! <3 I just sent a separate happy birthday message but happy birthday again!!

Let's see so since we talked, I actually managed to make a few more bracelets! I'm focusing on making olivia + chappell ones since that's my first concert with bracelets next year. Have you made more since we last talked? Or have you worked on other crafts? I just saw your gorgeous painted vinyl case, which is so nice!

Re concerts - I think bleachers will do a west coat tour leg still! I just can't imagine jack not going to seattle / la at a minimum, but fingers crossed! Like you, I'm going to see olivia/chappell, holly, and taylor. I did get bleachers/samia and noah kahan tickets. And then also haley heynderickx and hozier. I'm more of a casual hozier fan but my best friend who loves fob is also a huge hozier fan so she's going to come visit, which will be so nice. And I'm strongly considering madison beer, which is a bit of a drive + a half day off work, but I absolutely loved her most recent album so leaning towards it. What are your favorite shows you've been to so far?

I have notion bookmarked to explore more soon! The aesthetic over functionality thing is soooooo relatable to me haha I was making a poster at work this week and spent way too long picking out and editing photos before I even thought about the other details. Also yeah omg I think I get a little bit more light here ~4pm or so for sunset but I'm so glad we're almost at winter solstice. Do you have any fun winter plans despite the lack of light?

Thanks so much for the support with post-grad recovery!! I will definitely try to grab some photos of my crafts in the new year (about to travel for the holidays so I'll be away from my final products for a bit). I might also have some decent bracelet photos from eras this year that I can dig up :) I'm glad your voice was (and hopefully still is) getting better! How's it going now? I think baking is kind of crafting! Just crafting with food stuffs.

Totally agree about the holly/muna collab - I'm so happy about it! And also just wanting to see muna live someday. I would also love for holly to do a feature on a muna song too and/or for them to write a fresh song together. Also agreed about both a bfl + 1975 collab for holly too! Fingers crossed! There are a few specific 1975 songs / styles I would love to see for holly (about you would be so good). I'd also love something with charli xcx (or charli + 1975 together since they're connected). Actually maybe bleachers for another collab. I think that could be interesting.

good morning!! 🤍 thank YOU for being patient while i reply as well! hope you're having a good week, friend!

since we last talked, i haven't made any bracelets, but i did work on the vinyl case a little more — realized using acrylic paint pens was much easier than acrylic paint! i actually also got a cake stand for my room (basically, i have a humidifier on my nightstand but i'm worried about water damage, so i got a small cake stand to put my humidifier on) and drew little bows with acrylic paint pens on that too!

i really hope bleachers will do a west coast leg! i'm also a bit shocked and have words with dirty hit about their tour :( i would love to see samia too!! i was catching up on twitter and saw that clairo was at the ally coalition talent show last night and was so incredibly jealous haha. and chappell will be so fun! the seattle opener for olivia is pinkpantheress, and i'm really excited to see her! i started listening to the most recent FOB album and i really like it, so i might make some bracelets for it too! hozier will be so fun! i don't think he's coming anywhere near me this leg which is sad :( i haven't listened to madison beer's new album — i should add it to my evergrowing list of people to check out! i would say sabrina carpenter, maisie peters, taylor swift and the 1975 have put on some of the best shows i've ever been to! what about you?

i had a few fun plans last week! and i went ice skating on monday which was really fun — i haven't been skating since i was like, nine? so it was incredibly humbling and also ridiculously fun. i'm not really sure what i have going on now; probably just seeing extended family and all that — and hopefully catching up on reads + crafts! what about you? safe travels!! 🤍

my voice is still kind of croaky but it's back! i had a facetime call with a friend last night and she was like "oh you're croaky" but at least it's back! and i can talk! thank you for asking 🥺

i would loveeee to see MUNA live too! they were in seattle for cap hill block party but that was the same weekend as eras so obviously i wasn't able to see them :( i would loveeee to see something in the vein of about you with holly — or even something like jesus christ 2005 god bless america; i could totally see her singing phoebe's parts! charli and the 1975 would be fun — i really like spinning which no rome is also on, but would love to see more of them together! bleachers would also be a really fun collab — especially now that bleachers is on dirty hit!

[athousandbyeol]

stray thoughts on forcebook's acting

honestly, i'm not an OG forcebook fan. i wasn't there from their enchante days. in fact, i started liking forcebook's acting three weeks after a boss and a babe aired. so, i don't know if i'm qualified to state my opinion (because i once posted this on my now-deactivated twitter, and the discourse wasn't pretty), but here goes nothing.

forcebook's commendable acting in a boss and a babe

so, after episode 9 of a boss and a babe, i now believe forcebook are capable of carrying heavy roles. they're dynamic actors, and now it's clear how many facades both gun and cher are wearing. even though i don't watch enchante, from the clips i saw here and there, they've improved tremendously. and kudos to them for their hard work.

gun gungawin, at the beginning of the series, is very stoic, strict and unfriendly. he shuts people down with his signature cold stare. he doesn't have a close friend. he's alone, and he prefers it that way. he overthinks but doesn't show. i personally think gun doesn't like skinship because it creates this bond, and he can't bear the thought of losing that someday (like how he lost thyme). yet, when he meets cher, his walls crumble. he becomes friendlier and happier. he doesn't care about what others think (contrary to how he was before cher). p'force portrayed him really well.

then comes the sunshine, cher saran, the bright and kind of idiotic intern (sorry, cher T_T). he's the mood maker. he's everyone's helper. very selfless because he has a gigantic heart. he ducks every conflict and traumatising emotion like a pro gamer. he cares so much about gun, but doesn't know how to show it with words. he's goofy and silly. and he keeps all the pain to himself. he hides them in the deepest part of his heart because he doesn't want anyone to know. he doesn't like talking about his struggles because that's who cher saran is. but you see the pain in his eyes when the light goes dark. and p'book's ability to distinguish the happy cher and sad cher so smoothly blows me away every single time.

episode 9 is a whiplash of pain, heartbreak, sadness, confusion, betrayal, loyalty, trust, disappointment, true love and sacrifice. i just want to say kudos to forcebook for bringing guncher to life. i shed so many litres of tears last night. i still will cry if i rewatch ep 9.

my bias towards p'aof's works

i'm a huge fan of p'aof (the director/screenwriter of he's coming to me, 1000 stars, bad buddy and moonlight chicken). i adore his works because of his precision in crafting the characters, choosing the most suitable bgms, his vision, the cinematography, the richness of symbolism and metaphor in his works, and his ability to bring out the best in his actors.

i'm beyond excited knowing my beloved jimmysea is now under p'aof's wings with another potentially heartbreaking series, last twilight, soon-to-be-aired this year (or early next year). i know p'aof will trigger all these emotions and potential in jimmysea, and i'm just ecstatic to see them nailing mork and day.

so, i posted this thought on twitter, and some didn't agree. i do understand that p'aof's works can be quite conventional and old school, but hear me out; even though it is, he's so good at it.

and it's funny how when i look at forcebook, i'm like— damn, p'aof really needs to give them a script. i've been manifesting a forcebook + p'aof collab ever since.

perhaps, i am biased. because i like p'aof's style, and i'm confident he has that freaking good script for forcebook somewhere in his stash (or his galaxy brain), and i hope god listens to my prayers. but as always, it's ok to disagree. this post doesn't intend to impose my thoughts on anyone.

so, yes. i just hope one day, forcebook will get a very good script to match their abilities, because god damn it, please don't waste their talents. i'll be furious.

and i hope only friends will be the beginning of forcebook's reign because these men know how to act, and they're nailing it.

[marycecilyy]

Hey could you do headcanons for the mcl guys (or if not all of them castiel, armin, and kentin) when their S/O is a famous singer? Thank you❤

Oh god this turned out so longer than I expected huahahushaushu

First of all, these are too long to be headcanons, all three of them have more than 1k words each. Also, I changed a bit the prompt. It's more like "Candy has the dream of becoming a famous singer". The rest you'll see... I'll only say that I'm very proud of this one ;)

Castiel, Armin and Kentin with a Candy that wishes to be a famous singer

Castiel

Castiel wasn’t one to be friendly to new students, but he knew you weren’t like any other when you came to him and asked if Winged Skull was one of his favorite bands too. He was shocked to know that there was another person at Sweet Amoris who enjoyed the same bands as him. Yes, bands (in plural). After he answered that, yes, Winged Skull was his favorite band of all times, you started talking about your common interests and discovered that there were many.

He was a very closed off guy, but somehow you managed to break into his skull in a short time and, in a few months, you turned into best friends.

When Debrah came back and that whole situation happened, your fight with Castiel had a lot of impact over you. In your head, you had just lost your best friend forever. Fortunately. Lysander not only helped you recover from the blow and gave you energy to gather your friends and expose Debrah, but also helped you admit to yourself that, you did have feelings for Castiel.

Once she was unmasked and ran away like a coward, things quickly came back to normal. In less than one week, you had restored your reputation, your friends apologized for misjudging you, Castiel and you were once again friends. The only difference was that you knew that you were in love with him.

You didn’t tell him about your feelings right away, you decided to keep your friendship and focus a bit on your lifelong goal: become a music star. You started learning how to sing properly and doubled the days of your guitar lessons. Castiel even helped you get into the music club (they were full when you got into Sweet Amoris, but he found a way to enroll you).

You knew that your chances of actually becoming famous were pretty low, the market was difficult and depended a lot on having the right contacts. That was why, while you tried putting your name out there, your plan was to get a degree in music as soon as you finished high school. Antheros Academy offered a good education and was close, it was your best option.

As you channeled your energies towards your goal, Castiel started to acknowledge his own sentiment towards you. He liked to watch your focused face as you tuned your guitar and your singing voice earned a sweet accent all of the sudden. He always considered you a special girl, but, to his surprise, feelings were starting to develop inside his closed off chest.

That was why, as soon as he won those concert tickets on a raffle, he knew he’d take you there as your first date. Luckily for him, you accepted right away. Castiel had a feeling that night would be something else.

And it really was, as he kissed you, without even thinking it through, when the vocalist sung what he knew was your favorite tune. When you kissed him back, he wrapped his hands over your waist and lifted you up, feeling your warm lips open up for him.

The months that followed were full of bliss. With you and Castiel officially dating, the school had a lot to talk about. Amber pestered you quite a bunch of times, but that didn’t mess with your relationship at all. Everything was perfect, as it was supposed to be.

But that didn’t last long. Right after you finished high school, your dad had to move to another town because of his job and you had no choice but to go too. You were sure that your relationship would survive the distance, after all, you were in love. This situation would be worked out.

Castiel came to your new house a couple of times and you two called frequently, but in the end distance started to grow between the both of you… and it hurt. Knowing that Castiel was sad made you miserable and you decided to break up before it became unbearable.

You lost your count of how many nights you cried thinking about him.

4 years later.

You were zipping your jeans up when you heard a knock on your dressing room’s door. Who could it be? Your parents had already congratulated you over the phone, there was no one supposed to come that night. Did your manager schedule a press interview for after the show?

You put on your shirt and told whoever was on the other side to wait. When you finally opened the door, your jaw almost fell. You couldn’t believe he was there.

He looked exactly like in the magazines, (a bit less photoshopped, but that was to expect. You went through that as well and it sucked). His hair was shoulder-length and he wore a black shirt that showed off the tattoos up to the middle of his arm. He wore some light makeup, most on his skin, which you deduced his manager made him put on. Castiel looked like you expected him to after all those years, but one thing about him surprised you.

His eyes, although more mature and serious, had the same brightness as before.

"Are ya going to keep staring like that?” He asked and you noticed you had just been looking at him for a solid minute.

“Sorry. Come in.” You said and made space for him to enter the room. For your luck, there was nothing private to be seen, you had the habit of leaving your clothes and personal belongings messy and only cleaning up the second you had to go.

Castiel cleared his throat. An awkward silence hung between you. You hadn’t been alone with each other ever since the breakup. You two were two of the biggest stars of nowadays rock music, but you barely had any opportunity to talk. Not that you haven’t tried, it was the opposite. You avoided contact. Your fans knew you had dated in high school (you used to have pictures on your personal instagrams and fans were quick to dig over old accounts to find information about their idols), so they never expected a feat or any kind of collab. Everyone knew that you weren’t on best terms.

You remembered just a couple of days ago, when you were interviewed for one of those talk shows. The host made a lot of personal questions about Castiel and even asked if you would get back with him if you had the chance. You tried to avoid answering, but the public instantly read your unconscious signs: yes, you would.

That was why, you assumed, he was there. To make things clear. After all, because of you yours and his fans started shipping you two and got you on twitter’s trending topics. He probably was pissed. There was also a possibility of him wanting to take advantage of the situation, maybe propose a fake relationship? No, that wasn’t like him. Or was it? You barely knew him anymore.

“So… you probably guessed why I’m here. I saw your interview” You were right, then. “And I want to make things clear.” Ouch. You should prepare for the blow. “Look, we both know time has passed and we’re not the same as before. You broke up to avoid more suffering, and I get that. I really do.”

Castiel crossed his arms and glared at you. You looked back at him with fear, fear of knowing what his next words would be. “But...?” You asked.

“Tsk.” He huffed. This would be more difficult than he thought. “Look, little girl…” You felt a shiver run through your spine at the sound of the old nickname he gave you. You had always loved it, even though you didn’t say it out loud. After what felt like hours, he continued. “I don’t want to be cheesy, that’s not like me. So I’ll just say that if what all of the fans are theorizing is true.... If you do want to try again....”

Castiel took your hand and you jumped in surprise. He turned your palm to him and grabbed a pen from his back pocket. He wrote down a phone number on your hand and let go of it, capped the pen and turned around to go.

"That's my personal number. It’s pretty useful if you wanna call me without having to schedule an appointment with my manager.” You managed to laugh. You knew exactly how these things were annoying.

Inside, you were bursting with excitement. However, you answered playfully “Hm…. I’ll think about it, mr. Rockstar” Castiel chuckled and excused himself, saying that his manager would get pissed at him if he took too long. You smiled.

Maybe it was not over, after all.

Armin

When you told Armin, very early on your friendship, that your dream was to become a famous singer, he got so excited for you. He already knew that you played the guitar and was good at singing, but he had no idea that you wanted to make this your career path.

You couldn’t have chosen a better partner. Being the tech nerd that Armin was, he helped you a lot in recording your covers with the best quality possible considering the amateur camera and microphone you had.

However, the times that his presence most comforted you was when you showed him your new songs. He was always eager to see your composing progress and gave you pure honesty in his feedback, keeping in mind that he was no expert but still wanted to help you.

You always asked him for a way to return his favors, but he always said that it was his duty as your best friend to support you and that it was more than enough having you to talk about all his geek interests.

As time passed, you started to notice that you liked him way more as a friend. Without an idea of what to do, you asked Rosa and Alexy for advice. They were your closest friends apart from your crush (and you couldn’t run to him in that situation, duh)

After a dozen pro tips and date ideas from them, you decided to take Armin to the movies (basic, you knew, but couldn’t go wrong).

When you asked him if he was available Saturday night, you didn’t say properly “Hey, we’re going on a date”. Actually, you didn’t mention the word “date” at all, hoping that he would read between the lines.

And he did, because as soon as you sat and the film started, Armin grabbed your hand that was resting in the armrest and entwined your fingers. You couldn’t pay attention to what was going on screen at all and your attention was completely drawn from the movie when the boy grabbed your chin and brought your lips to his.

You only stopped kissing when the lights went on and the credits started scrolling.

“Hey…” You asked as soon as you two left the place, holding hands with him. “What was the movie about again?”

Armin laughed out loud. He teased you about it a lot before you made him confess that he didn’t know either.

A few days later, it was him who asked you out. You kept going on dates for the next week, all of them simple but interesting at the same time. However, you two weren’t dating. The whole school knew there was something going on between you two by the chuckles and timid kisses when you thought nobody saw them, but you didn’t make things official… yet. But that was about to change.

It was friday and you invited Armin over to “study” (he was sure that the afternoon would be spent between videogames and kisses, but if you wanted to call it a study session, it was okay for him).

As he comfortably sat on your bed as if it were his own, you told him to wait as you brought him some juice. When you came back, he was already grabbing his nintendo switch from his bag.

“What makes you think that we’re here to game?” You teased, handing him the glass.

“Come on, Candy, we both know that none of us are interested in learning orbital hybridization…”

“Maybe I am. I really need a good grade on those tests.” You approached him and held his jaw up so your foreheads touched. With a trailed voice, you continued. “Unless you have something more interesting to do in mind...”

Armin opened up that playful smile of his. “Oh, I do, actually.” In a quick movement that caught you off guard, he threw you in bed and started pampering you with kisses all over your face. You couldn’t stop laughing from how his hands tickled your belly, but you managed to stop him. “W-Wait, Armin!”

He looked at you, confused. “What?”

As you caught your breath, you explained that there was something you wanted to show him first. You got off the bed and went to grab your guitar that was hung up on the free wall of your bedroom.

“Did you compose a new song?” Armin deducted as you sat in front of him again, this time with your guitar in hands.

“You’ll see.” You tuned your instrument under his curious gaze. When you felt satisfied with the sound, you looked back at him. Armin didn’t miss the blush that coloured your cheeks. “I know you’d never do it, but I have to ask even so: promise you won’t laugh.”

You started playing the first chords of the song you had finished composing just a few days before. Usually, you composed simple songs that anyone could identify with, songs about friendship, inspiration, changing the world. You never wrote about your personal feelings. The notes never made you cry.

This song was special, though, because it was about him.

The day it hit you that you had feelings for him, you had the idea of writing random verses that could one day fit into a new song. After your first date, you felt so overwhelmed that, looking at the words, you decided to turn them into a song. You didn’t think it would turn into something so personal and emotional. Every note, every word, everything was clearly about him, that dorky geek you had fallen in love with.

Falling deeper every time

I can’t help but think, oh my

I’m through, but I don’t mind

Would you trade you 2D girls

For this hopeless lover

That just wants your heart?

I’ll just say that he got the message very clearly and, as soon as you finished playing, he practically jumped on you, kissing your lips with such tenderness that you almost teared up.

Of course, he asked you to be his girlfriend XD

Kentin

The first time he heard about your dream, he was still little Ken. It was one of your first days at Sweet Amoris and you two were eating cookies in the staircase. You were ranting about how sad you were that the music club was already full and you couldn’t join. Ken asked you the reason why you were so upset.

“Well… There weren’t those kind of classes in our old school. Learning how to play an instrument and sing, even during extra classes would be so cool! If I went well, maybe I’d be able to convince my dad to pay me for some private classes and then I’d be one step closer to my dream!”

“Your dream?” Ken muttered.

“Yeah! I want to become a famous singer in the future! I know that it’s impossible and even kinda silly, but-”

“No, Candy! It’s not silly at all!” Ken said. Learning more about you made him happy and he didn’t want you to think for even a second that your dream was worthless. “You shouldn't be ashamed of dreaming big. You’ll have a long, difficult path to walk through, but when you get there - and you have my word on that - I’ll be cheering for you!”

“Ken... “ You flashed your best smile at him. It meant a lot to you to have his support, he was a kind person and a very good friend (he did cross a few limits with his adoration for you, but you weren’t bothered by it). You liked being around him a lot.

-x-

“Kentin!” You threw yourself in his arms and gave him a tender kiss. “Good morning.”

Your boyfriend chuckled and held your hand, walking with you through the hallway. You talked about how your weekend had been and, between light smiles and sweet kisses, you thought of how quickly things changed between you two.

When he came back from military school, a lot of things had changed in him, including his nickname. You were facing a new person and it had been a challenge discovering Kentin and building a new relationship with him.

Even though he was a different person from before, one thing didn’t change at all and you noticed it clearly: he still liked you. Obviously he was no longer that guy who professed his feelings to everyone and followed you everywhere, he had found new ways to show you his love. You enjoyed that more mature version of him, but wished he had the opportunity to grow into a man without all the trauma he went through. You knew that most of his growth had been through suffering, and that upset you.

You didn’t know when, but somewhere into your friendship you started to grow feelings for him too. After some coaxing from Rosa and Alexy, you managed to ask him out on an official date.

The whole school already knew that Kentin was head over heels for you, but everyone was shocked to know that you loved him back as your relationship became official.

“Hey, love.”

“What?” You asked your boyfriend back as soon as you got in front of your lockers. You started looking for your books, checking that day’s classes.

“I really liked that video you posted on youtube yesterday. I never heard that song before, did you compose it yourself?”

The book you held in your hand fell to the ground. “What video?” You whispered, eyes wide.

“What do you mean, babe? That video of you singing and playing the guitar. You uploaded it yesterday night. I saw right away, you know I have my notifications turned on to all your videos. I got surprised that you decided to finally show your face and sing something of your own and- Candy? Is everything okay?”

Kentin noticed your face and got worried for you. You looked absolutely terrified.

“That video… How did you see it? I posted it as private”

“No, you didn't. It was public.” Kentin was starting to understand why you were so surprised. He put one hand on your back as you blushed and hid your face on his chest in embarrassment.

“Oh god, I can’t believe I did that! I’m so stupid! The first time I record something like that, I accidentally post it for everyone to see! Dumb, dumb Candy! Dang, now everyone’s gonna know I’m bad!”

“First of all.” Your boyfriend frowned, bringing you close to him. “You’re not dumb, you just made a mistake. And it’s okay, probably just a few people saw it. Last time I checked was before I went to sleep and it only had 20 views. But why are you so upset, Candy? Didn’t you tell me a few days ago that you were finally ready to show your face along with the covers. Did something happen to change your mind?”

“Well, I was not ready to show right away, especially not in a video that I looked terrible in. And it’s not just that. It was my first original song. I never showed it to anyone, what if it sucks?”

Kentin held your chin up and looked you in the eyes. “Candy, it doesn’t suck and you look great in the video!” You closed your eyes and snuggled close to him. “But I understand your concerns. Luckily, that can be solved if you delete the video. You’ll have other opportunities to get famous, and with better videos.”

“Yeah, I can do that.” You reached for your phone and went to your youtube page. “Fu... No way…!”

Your hands trembled. Kentin was right, the video had few views (which was good). Only 50 people had seen it, but the problem wasn’t that. For your bad luck, one of those people had been Amber. You knew that because she had left three comments on your video.

AmberOfficial: lmaooooo

AmberOfficial: Thank you for the laughs. That’s hilarious

AmberOfficial: Just give up already, looser

“That girl....” Kentin grunted, looking at your phone screen. “I swear to you, Candy, I’ll make her regret this. I’ll-”

“You don’t need to, I’m fine.”

You untangled your arms from his torso and started walking away, trying your best to hide how upset you really were. Amber was right, your music sucked. You should give up on your dream of becoming a famous singer, not only because you were bad, but also because you could barely show your face to a few people without feeling like shit. You wouldn’t be able to deal with fame.

Kentin tried to call you, but you didn’t answer. He figured you needed some time alone. He could use that time to think of something to support you and get back at Amber.

-x-

You walked out of the bathroom, your eyes red and swollen from crying. You had already deleted the video, but you couldn’t stop feeling stupid for getting so upset by a few bad comments. And feeling stupid made you even more upset.

When you got to the hallway, it was empty due to classes having already started. You probably spent half an hour locked up, but at least no one would mess with you.

You went to the garden to get some fresh air and wait until the next class started. You sat at the bench, breathed in and finally calmed down a bit.

“Candy.”

You turned around, surprised to see your boyfriend. “Kentin! What are you doing here? Classes have already started.”

He just waved his hand in a “don’t worry about that” way and sat beside you. He kissed your cheek and took your hand, checking how you were. Seeing that you seemed to be more calm, he smiled lightly at you. “So… I talked to Armin. He already found out Amber’s password and he’ll hack into Amber’s youtube account. He’ll just mess with it for a bit, delete some videos and upload some random stuff. Nothing too bad, I promise, just some memes and rickrolls.”

“Hmm…” You muttered, thinking about what he said. It wasn’t right, for sure, but you didn’t feel like stopping them. You were still hurt. “Okay. Just promise you two won’t do something serious, okay?”

He agreed. You felt a bit better, but that wasn’t enough to lift your mood and Kentin knew that. That was why he also had something else prepared. "That 's not all. I did some quick search for places where you could record that music of yours with its deserved quality. You are a good composer, Candy, believe it. Your talent doesn’t have to stay hidden in a dark room with only you, a guitar and your cellphone recording it.”

“Kentin…”

“If you want to, I’ll help you rent a studio and record your song. That would be very useful for your portfolio. I know that’s expensive, but we can find ways to-” You cut him off with a kiss. He cared about you so much, to the point of skipping classes to think of ways to make you feel better. You loved your boyfriend so much…

Lucky. You felt lucky to have him.

“I love you. Thank you for taking care of me... “ You kissed his cheek, happy to have his support. That was more than enough at that moment, Amber’s words were far behind you. All that mattered was that you could go through this.

You had Kentin, and when you had him, you had your whole world holding you so you wouldn’t fall.

[fantomette22]

Hey I really love your blog and blogs of your friends' too. Makes me nostalgic for the times when people here interacted more and had whole conversations through reblogs. Discord era really took that fun away and now all fans do is just gather in small groups and fandoms no longer feel like communities. Imagine if the fun regular event where everyone walks and talks to each other and has fun turned into wide open empty area where people only gather around the stands they like and hardly gave a word to people that are near other stands. In this world, you and your friends feel like people that fill the empty spade that once used to be cluttered by people that just liked to see everything by just running around and being silly and playing music and popping confetti petards. Rare events like MAP collabs or fanzines won't fill the emptiness, we need more people like you.

Ouah... thank you a lot anon. I'm not sure what to say. I'm truly touched by what you said.

I completely get and like your metaphor XD. It's really interesting.

A few years ago I didn't really interact with communities. I just watched in the shadows and just look at content I liked (I didn't had some accounts and all). I know smt there's a lot of drama and I try to stay really far away from it too. Even if I really dislike something I just move on. Sometimes you still take lost bullet for no reason like wtf-

But since hm 2 years ago ? and especially dear kingdom hearts I really needed to share, talk with people and create content. Same with Bloodborne now. I began on twitter on meet awesome friends who share their discord after XD. I really made great and close friends. (some are small YouTubers and some did translation from Japanese so it's sharing to everyone!).

About discord I may not be aware of everything. I use it with my high school friends mostly. And my friends for kh. Basically the entire community or at least a big part without drama of all my country (3 differents server with hundred of members we're talking here). I really needed to talk vocally (in my birth language that is French) with people. We still talks for hours and hours about lore and crazy theories XD

Also I think small groups of friends that talk about smt on private is great sometimes too! But I agree it's important to share some things publicly as well. This is like throwing a bottle in the sea. Maybe no one will ever saw it or give feedback. Maybe someone will answered and you can make friend ! Or maybe someone can't answered but will find it much later and is going to be a lot happy. And that means a lot. I believe it's important.

I'm genuinely happy (with people I meet & things I created. even if sometimes I'm like... hm that's not so great...) Without all media life would be really boring. Imagination is an amazing thing. And without it + (the medias game, book, series whatever) & without the fan contents that widen it my life would be really sad and miserable. it did help me a lot too (maybe the day I finally played nier automata I would talk about it). So yeah if nothing is legally reprehensible just be chilled and kind towards others if they at least kinda behave correctly. Diversity and different views are really importants.

[9w1ft]

good day everyone 😌 another year, another classic and chic eye theory update for you and yours for this holiday season.

once more, the link demarcation for your browsing pleasure, just to help visually represent how many things are new things that happened versus the discussion surrounding it in general:

and a programming note that one of the distinct pleasures of 2023 was seeing the eye theory gain so many new fans via tiktok and twitter (which i think helped culminate in the eye theory being mentioned in print in new york times magazine) and accordingly, many treasures this year are community highlights, in celebration of the fun times we all had this year collectively 😌 just wanted to acknowledge that.

without further ado… i give unto you..

the 2023 year in review

JANUARY

- i mentioned an eye theory taymoji connection

★ taylor highlighted the back of another midnights variation that covered an eye (and several people saw eye shapes in the bedpost)

- kristine posted from the eye sculpture in st. louis

★ i got emotional thinking about the potential of the burlesque scene from the bejeweled mv potentially being an eye theory homage a-sec

★ karlie covered an eye with a rose for the good girl blush campaign

★ and showed bts footage from carolina herrera where she covered an eye with her hair

★ the lavender haze music video was released and it looks like there’s a huge eye on the retro camcorder from the party scene 😆 and celebrations commenced

- we eventually identified the camcorder, also there was some speculation about a ring from that scene as well

- thus completing the induction of all midnights music videos (up to that point) into the eye theory hall of fame

- the eye theory kind of had a moment on twitter and tiktok so i created a handy dandy link package

★ karlie visited japan in december and i was in a position to have known where she visited, so i went to where she took a picture from and she had been sitting on a bridge of this house that had a giant agate obelisk that looked like it had eyes all over it 🙈

FEBRUARY

- someone aided and abetted me in my obelisk freakout

- martha posted from the whitney museum with lily aldridge and ashley graham with a picture of a jacket with a sun that had an eye blocked out, and vigilante shit was the background music for her posts

★ karlie brought the evil eye necklace back!

- eye theory continued having a moment on twitter

- i quietly pretended not to care about the CBS logo 😌

★ taylor wore a blue and white crystal ring to the grammys that was giving evil eye 🧿 and i found out a little bit about it

☆ it’s so hard to explain but karlie’s musa met earrings and taylor’s grammy earrings were both giving similar energy

☆ we spent a few moments thinking about the lover heart shaped vinyls and the lover song lyrics

☆ a demonstration of how the eye from the rep photo fits well with a photo of karlie when you flip it and add it in

- my “draw the cat eye sharp enough to kill a man” gold eye hoodie arrived 🥴

☆ i reshared a little bit about the lover era apple music playlist music videos

- someone started selling eye theory merch on etsy 😆

★ karlie did a collab with resident artist ethan james green that had several notable eye moments and karlie concurred with our observations

- i started work on my eras tour sign

MARCH

★ karlie posted from paris with several photos hiding an eye

- i heard more news of the eye theory spreading to twitter

★ the eras tour collection promo began and it had a lot of isolated eyes on the promo graphic

★ right before the start of tour, taylor released eyes open tv 🥴

☆ i had the chance to watch a certain taylor movie on a plane and uh… it’s full of surrealist eyeball art

★★ i went to the opening night of the eras tour and had the pleasure of observing all of the eye moments for the first time..

the huge eye during my tears ricochet

the mastermind stage from the side

bejeweled visuals with diamonds in her eyes

delicate visuals showed eyes in cracks of glass

another pic of that

look what you made me do visuals with monocled cobras slithering around

illicit affairs choreography pointing at her eye

we had floor seats right by the main stage and i had on a big eyeball sign with my costume and taylor came over and waved hi during anti hero

here’s the obligatory cringepost about that

there were more moments in tour that i will continue touching on chronologically as they were discovered

★ karlie went to disneyworld and got a shake with a straw that had eyeballs all over it

- someone sent me a video someone made (for tiktok? instagram?) training their guy friend on all the taylor lore to be prepared for eras tour and one of the theories on the training board was the eye theory

- tangentially eye theory related yes but.. the sesame street twitter accounts started referencing the eras tour and eras and such in their character tweets and bert miraculously tweeted “i am in my tea era” and as a tea drinking bert meme loving person… it instantly became my entire personality (and my knew blog layout theme 😌)

APRIL

★ karlie gave a prominent wink on socials

☆ the eye theory was making its way through tiktok and people were all a-frenzy making connections. like how one of the photos on niceboy ed’s website lines up nicely with the eye theory photo 😆

★★ we got more eras tour moments

in the eras tour preshow footage there is an interview with laura dern where she talks about her character and how all the rings on her hands are from all her marriages. since we have identified the lover’s eye ring on her hand, we can see it look’s like a woman’s eye. so by process of deduction, laura is saying that one of her lovers is a woman

cardigan choreography during “linger like a tattoo kiss”

speak now surprise song when she sang “all eyes on me”

heart hands over eye during the fearless set

☆ we discussed the rep album photoshoot again

- for the 4th anniversareye of the eye theory op, i started archiving all of these posts in hopes of making a more comprehensive compendium (hopefully will whip that all up at some point)

☆ i got an anon asking about a lover era promo clip she did for apple music where she does a hand heart over her eye and then pulls her hands apart, asking if it was a sign that they had broken up then

★ then karlie tweeted her “thrills 💙🎧🔁” post and was covering an eye

★ and right after that, for the first time on eras tour taylor prominently made the heart hands over her eye 🫶

- so it felt like a very festive eye theory anniversary week 😌

☆ people on twitter were learning the eye theory lore and the kelsey montague mural was discussed

- which led to a little bit of backlash of trying to get into the nitty gritty photoshoppy details of the eye theory photo. but i figure, if you’re reading this right now then you probably agree that this multiverse is so much bigger than that 🫣

☆ people on tiktok noticed the delicate eyes visual and it kinda went viral there for a moment

☆ i pulled up the bible quote and i’ll just link to it again here because i think it’s so perfect

☆ i forget if i’ve mentioned this before in this masterpost but anyways i revisited the photo of joe and taylor getting ready to go clubbing in the bathroom, where you can see in the mirror a toothbrush stand in the shape of a smiley face with a toothbrush piercing one of the eyes

☆ it was brought to my attention that in the …ready for it? mv, in the hallway, “all eyes on us” is tagged on the wall on the right side of the hallway

MAY

★ karlie posted from the mark hotel on the morning of the met gala, blocking her eye with a therabody tool

★ and did a classic looking camp right in the eye moment to commemorate the day

★ and added several takes of this to her socials

★ speak now tv release, this is a hill i will die on, there is an eye hidden in her curls on the speak now tv cover (but at any rate it was terribly funny seeing people complain how this one part of her hair isn’t curled the same as the rest)

☆☆ after all these years i noticed that there’s a jacket with an eye on it in the end game mv

- amid a resurgence of interest in the eye theory on twitter, there was another attempt at forensics on the eye theory photo and saw someone with a nice take about that on twitter

★ karlie wore schiaparelli again to be named Fashion Icon at FIT, a look which had gilded eyeballs on her shoulders 😌 too good.

☆ following the met gala announcement, i went back through the archives and made a post about all the times karlie had worn the golden evil eye necklace and what it might have meant

- kristine posted an eye 😌

★★ more eras tour observations:

we noticed the blank space eras tour visuals get a little eyeballish at one point

taylor started making a 😜 face as a part of the midnight rain choreography

★ karlie did one of her signature eye zooms and again at the cannes film festival

★ karma mv was released and the coffee foam at the end of video looked like an eye and more specifically it kinda looked a lot like the reputation album cover and there was some discussion about the adornments on taylor’s underworld costume, and i had fun thinking about the opening shot, also the part where her canoe paddle cuts through the water’s surface in between the reflection of her face

JUNE

★ karlie blocked an eye while promoting prada

- we considered the similarities between the shattered glass aspects of the delicate stage visuals and the cracked glass of the rep cd skin

★ taylor held the speak now vinyl up to her eye

★ taylor wore an “eyelet” top out on the street

JULY

- on twitter several swifties in an attempt to make fun of gaylors accidentally recited the eye theory 😆

★ karlie positioned her eye out of frame in a clip

- more than several people were incorporating eye theory lyrics into their eras tour friendship bracelets and other crafts 🥺

- the wind was an eye theory truther and blew taylor’s hair into kamilah’s eyelashes 😆

★ one speak now tv vault track, track 19, was revealed to be named I Can See You

★ the vault in the i can see you music video looks like a big eyeball and i had my fun thinking about some puns from inside the vault

- we had a little fun enjoying all of this i can see you nonsense

★ taylor posted about voting and placed the i voted sticker over her eye and it turned out that tennessee’s special election day was august 3rd

***well well well, this year as well it would seem tumblr only allows a max 100 inline links at a time per reblog 🥴 and so i will do the same as last year and add with mid jul-eye through december moments later. until then~ 🥴🥴😭😭😮‍💨😴***

alright all that’s left now is to hit post and

*record scratch*

oh wait, what? whats that? i can't reblog with more content on the main post? it’s technically too big?!

oh well well well then okay. hey :leans in close: did i… ever crash your app with the op post? i wanted to apologize for that. truly sorry. the truth is, the original post also crashes my app! wild! yes, well, as big of a fan of push media as i am i’m going to have to break away from the original post to get the job done this year but if you’re new here and don’t know about the eye theory please for the love of god click the below link to read through the original. it’s required reading.

(click for the op)

…

…

yes ok. welcome back! did i make you dizzy? jeepers my eyes do hurt, just after putting together this update! but i come bearing gifts…! frankincense, myrrh, gold, and a *plump* 2021 eye theory update for the remaining bakers dozen or so of us left hanging in this manger… because apparently that’s just the way things will be 😘 again, i’m far past proving this thing and more into sharing, yeah, sharing the fun memories over the past year living with this theory so that’s what i’ll do. and this requires more than the ten picture limit so in lieu of that i will be updating only once but with links to each finding. my demarcation is the same as last year:

so without further ado, here comes our…

2021 year in review

JANUARY

★ kimby posting the eye mirror thing at the beginning of the year (which i posted about at the end of the last update)

★karlie liked a tweet (a rarity at the time) from henry hall promoting his new album… that had an eye and the number 13 on the album cover.

-we found another great photo match example

☆ we noticed something up with a new carolina herrera ad that ended up showing up again later in the year

☆ we noticed taylor covering her eye during rep tour while singing even in my worst lies you saw the truth in me

-we noticed an oft forgotten appearance of the evil eye ring in the rep promo material, photos of her on the beach

FEBRUARY

☆ we found a potential easter egg in the end game mv

★ one of the lyric videos for fearless TV had a fun synching moment ..that taylor then put in her instagram stories

★ taylor posted a bleachella era pic of her and the haim sisters that had the sisters covering eyes with their hoodies, and then honest to god this is just one of those thing i can’t quite conscionably explain but there are two boxes of pizzas being held and the cheese only pizza looks like the “blank” of the two pizzas and it’s to the right of the picture

★ kayda and kai did some eye funny business

MARCH

★ the grammys… so, taylor’s performance included choreography that covers her right side eye along with the line “guess i should have known from the look on your face” and i know this is one of the things people particularly do not like but i’m such a sucker for prop comedy: i think the shape of the lean-to cabin itself is the shape of an eye and also the belted waist part of her dress looks like an eye, i said what i said

-and this can’t help but feel like chance, but, we got this red carpet press photo of her grammy covering her eye

-something also feeling serendipitous, karlie got papped by some eye graffiti

APRIL

-The Vault reveal left me wanting to get my eyes checked 😂

☆ we realized one could make the argument that there’s a eye isolated by the mask on her male counterpart in willow, and that the mask has a drooping daisy embroidered on it

-i got the chance to talk a little bit more about my thoughts on the editing that went on with the mert and marcus rep photoshoot photos, and my thoughts on computer graphic manipulation as it relates to other things, in particular lead time

★ taylor seemed to have more fun with synching up the fearless tv clip to music 🙈

★ taylor’s mother’s day merch included a postcard with a daisy and the lyric “i love you for giving me your eyes”

MAY

-not for nothing, austin posted a picture of him at the Oculus building in NYC (oculus being a word that means eye, austin being someone who rarely updates his instagram these days)

★ karlie got back in the saddle with posting an eye out of frame

★ some preview photos of karlie’s green adidas collection were released, and they included this amazing shot

and wouldnt ya know it she made it her profile pic after the collection release

JUNE

★ more kayda funny business (i feel like there were a lot more of these but i wasn’t able to keep track)

★ karlie got papped wearing a prada jacket with a print of a one eyed beach babe

-taylor mixed up her words during a thank you speech while accepting an award and said “she helped me to edit my eyes” which i mean i don’t think it was intentional but it certainly made my year 🙈

★ karlie wore this versace blazer that inexplicably has a hole cut out of it to the right?? which was made even more meaningful given the fact that i had been spiraling over the tie with the hole in it in the lwymmd video a few months prior idk 😆

★ the how long do you think it’s gonna last album was announced with an… eye collage… 🙈🙈 and kept the promo coming into july with eye cutout moments like this

JULY

★ then the Renegade music video was released and it was just chock a block with eye manipulation! singled out eyes, taylor covering her right side eye with her hands, with her hair, the eyes on her face cut out and zoomed in on. like, i’m sorry, it’s 2021 and we are really doing this ladies???

-and i came up with a funny (/emotional)

-karlie met with schiaparelli in paris, who had just come out with a collection full of gilded eyes among other body parts

★ karlie blocked an eye for estée lauder —a true pastime— and thus began the formalization of the tradition of me waking up to karlie having posted something ocular to instagram

AUGUST

☆ adam rippon posted a little ode to karlie’s “looking camp right in the eye 👁 ” moment, which normally id just chalk up to it having become a meme but at the same time, bobby berk liked the post and they were both in the yntcd mv, so it’s sorta amusing

★ karlie posts “filed under baking inspo” moodboard which included a pic of a face made of food with one eye 🥴🥴🥴 like i’m sorry, is this not proof of acknowledgement 😆

★ karlie posts a photoset of her in workout clothes and she’s covering the left side eye in a lot of the pics

★ karlie wore some eye-like rain and sunshine earrings from two jewelers that also make custom lover’s eye jewelry

SEPTEMBER

★ taylor covered an eye on the tiktok

-i noticed that each of karlie’s adidas collections had their own moments

-also like this is simply an act of god but somehow taylor and karlie got a photo taken at the 2014 met gala where karlie is standing to the right next to a woman with an eye purse…?

☆we noticed two things about the UPS commercial she did during rep era

★ karlie hid an eye while getting ready for the met gala which was the start to a crazy crazy day here on kaylor tumblr

☆ someone kindly pointed out to me that birch feat. taylor swift just as names of trees goes is also sus 🥴

-we listed up some of the possibly eye theory -aligned taymoji

★ karlie posted a promo clip of her designing her met dress at carolina herrera and it had an eye moment

-taylor has sort of established winks as a Taylor’s Version easter egg gesture so i don’t really count things like this in the grand scheme of things but i can’t help but feel this wink was exaggerated in post which would mean the eye could have been edited, and for that i’ll mention it

-this is just an it’s a small world moment having to do with researching the band of outsiders brand

★ taylor using an eye covered pic of shania twain on her tiktok

★ karlie blocking eyes again in a photoshoot make that two

OCTOBER

✦★✶ karlie went to mert alas’ gin release party in paris I REPEAT she went to the party being held by the guy who took the rep album photoshoot photos aka the guy who took the actual eye theory photo and not only did she get a pic with him, she drank out of the gin glasses that had an eye like pattern cut into them???

★ karlie woke me up again and chose violence

-i forget how i ran into this but it’s this old photoshoot of karlie in a daisy full body suit with her arms and head in the shape of an eye idk lol

★ karlie posted a photoset with some eye blocking moments going on

NOVEMBER

-in a moment of meta, karlie got the chance to post a pic of bert and ernie to her instagram stories as she was also a part of the WSJ innovators issue

☆ taylor’s grammy dresses went on display and the waist fabric looked even more like an eye so sue me!

★ karlie really made it christmas morning every morning 🥴

★ RED TV lyric videos also got a moment

★ the IBYTAM video had us all reeling for plenty of reasons but i made sure to have my fun …kinda cool how it fits though 😂 this stood out to a lot of us and this too

-it’s the little things

-blame it on the vault crest and red dresses but i allowed myself to lean in to the crazy a bit more than usual and tbh i had the best time with it

☆ i had a thought about So It Goes as it relates to rep tour

-The Missing Eye Puzzle Piece it turned out that the missing capital one red bundle puzzle piece was simply missing, and it has been found, **but** i had an amazing couple of weeks imagining the ARG possibilities. oh and i still love that the right side eye is the 11th puzzle piece across, 8 rows down (karlie numbers)

DECEMBER

★ karlie posted again blockin an eye 😂

★ shes so good at finding an opportunity

★ karlie wearing a sweatshirt with an eye on it because why not i guess 🙈

-surely coincidental but i did laugh at where her music choice in this post led me

★ and it turned out the eye glassware at the mert alas gin release party ended up being used in the promo photos for the stuff

★karlie did a ‘comeback’ -esque spread for WSJ and she delivered

-add this to the list of potential cross-media tie in opportunities that surely weren’t intentional but i would point to in terms of what she could potentially do should she want to bring back this level of easter egging for reputation TV

★ waking up again to some uncanny carolina herrera hijinks

★ karlie blocking an eye again 🙈

-i talked a little bit about the evil eye ring making it’s appearances with the angel wing ring

★ like i said, this karlie post waiting for me when i woke up thing, it became a morning ritual

-there was a red tv album print mishap… istg the way i moved (is this what the kids say)

★ taylor blocked an eye in her new years reel

so there you have it, folks! 2021, a kaylor year that had me throwing my hands up and deciding to bend with the wind and roll with the punches… paid dividends?! i included the ephemera (the winks and out of frames) just because i see them as a sustainable avenue for the dreary new parent, but all these aside it still blows my mind how many distinctly significant things happened in conjunction with the theory this year and i hope very very deeply and earnestly that each and every one of you may have had the chance to crack a smile or two as well 😌

its weird… seeing karlie and mert photographed gave me this lavish sense of… coming full circle! but 🥰 who knows what next year will bring. what can i say, as if it was my greco-roman destiny, i know i will always beat the drum for this theory if they will have me. eye can’t help myself!

have a happy new year🥳