#i understand that some people like to just have private little accounts but idk its disappointing to see it more and more often

[spacedlexi]

as someone who likes to occasionally look through the blogs of the accounts that show up in my notifs it really is sad to see so many blogs now just be personalized empty spaces :(

[bridgertonworld]

Hi, I don't know how big your account is, or how far a reach this will go, but I'm a friend of a friend of the girl on Twitter who reunited with Luke the other day, she doesn't know that I'm doing this but I just can't stand to see her so sad about a day that brought her so much joy. She hasn't been directly contacted or sent any hateful messages, a few people watching her account but nothing sinister, shes just upset at the idea that anyone could angrily hate her so much & doesn't really understand why, when its just two people reconnecting & having a laugh together. I guess I get people's train of thought but I'm not justifying that behaviour, & its weird, & it's upset her, so she's my priority.

She's actually been trying to make friends in the Bridgerton fandom for a while, no-one wanted to interact with her so she just settled to enjoy it in private because none of us watch it & she wanted to talk about it with someone, not to brag or boast, she'd even kept her connection entirely quiet, we didn't even know until a couple years back. She started watching it because she couldn't believe Luke had become part of something so huge & is immensely proud of him, wanting to support him where she could. She'd post about it every season, including his/his characters full name but no-one bothered her or interacted & so she felt she could speak freely since no-one gave her a look in until now.

She saw Luke on Monday but had sent a letter a few days prior because she had some stuff to give him from the job they worked (as she told us, he got a little emotional about it) & everything that happened that day was pure luck. She'd had a horrible time from start to finish with the theatre / show itself, & she was just going to finish her drink & go home because she was so fed up. She text us because she was so upset & then Luke & her saw each other across the bar & he was so happy & excited to see her again that he saved it all. She'd told him everything that happened (there was some harassment from an audience member due to her disability) & he stayed with her the entire time because not only were they old friends, but what with her hearing loss he knew she thrived better with one to one conversations & away from crowds. I'm guessing he knew how odd fans can be around women since she mentioned him hiding her a bit when talking to fans but she spoke to his colleagues & friends. As for the comment about celebrating something together, it was two things in one sentence, one was a job she can't talk online about because of NDA's (not Bridgerton) & the second is that he helped her (through his role of Benedict) to finally come out as bisexual & he was extremely proud of her & wanted to celebrate these for her.

He was really wonderful with my friend, shes overwhelmed & kicking her feet because she doesn't feel like she's worthy of ANYONES time in chatting to her or spending time with her, like good things aren't meant for her, so when he was excited to see her, she asked "Wait you remember me?" And he was in disbelief she'd ask him something like that like they hadn't worked, drank, or laughed together ever when she was at the beginnings of his career. She's a wonderfully radiant, warm, funny, gold hearted woman who makes you belly laugh with her quick wit & makes everyone feel so safe & at ease. I popped round her place once to pick something up & she'd made me an extra helping of food so she knew I'd have food when I got home. She's brilliant & it sucks to see her sad over the idea of people being mean about her friendship/colleague idk what to call it that she supports & celebrates like everyone else but for more good reason. She went private not because she was getting abuse, but because she'd heard about people that didn't like her over this, and didn't have the energy to explain without fear of things getting twisted because she respects him that much, she would rather have people speculate about her than make things worse & reflect poorly.

This is long, & I hope I did her justice. It should be said though that she heard people talking about the rumour of what they both were & she laughed through tears going "Oh fuck off, he's too wonderful" (like most, she has a crush but that's about it.)

Edit:lies number 2.

[hopefully-nightly-doodles]

I don’t really post vent art here but I decided I o post this one cuz well… Honestly it’s mostly cuz I can’t sleep and have a lot of thoughts circling my head right now…

Vent hidden just incase people don’t wanna get depressed reading my wall of text sndbdj

I used to talk a lot in my twitter and I do have a priv that I had posted this vent art on weeks ago but idk- Twitter has become such a toxic space its hard to be active there even in my private account. Well actually its hard to be active anywhere for me, but if you’re a long time follower you probably already know that. I’m a hermit, and very much an introvert with a weird social battery. Every time someone tells me they think I was an extrovert I always get so confused by it-

I don’t even know where I’m going with this or if it will ever see the light of day, but it can’t hurt to try and process feelings right?

Im not going to go into detail on to what made me draw this or the full extent of what’s been happening cuz its complicated as fuck- But I can try and dissect how I’ve been feeling or at least try to. For the past month or maybe more I’ve been tipping back and forth on my mental health, and at the end of May the scales finally tipped over for the worst and I did something so fukin stupid. It was a snap instant regret kinda moment and I knew I fucked up big time. While yes, there were outside things that happened and build up turmoil months prior that got me to that point of mental deterioration before the snap, its on me to have let myself get that bad in the first place.

I should have taken more breaks when I knew I was pushing myself constantly, draining myself constantly. I should have been more firm with my boundaries whenever I mentioned them and should have been better at communicating the hurt and stress and pressure thats been building up before it all came crashing down.

People always say “love yourself before you love others”, and on a logical and fundamental level I always understand why. At least I think I do… But to deeply understand what it actually meant I knew I only had, at best, a foggy grasp of it. And since what’s happened recently I kinda get a little why now. People who are hurt will always end up hurting other people when that hurt is ignored or not properly processed.

And thats what happened to me. I hurt someone I really cared about and I feel gross and unbelievably disappointed in myself for it.

It doesn’t matter how hard you try to be better for others or to be there for people and be kind and supportive to them. Those acts of service and kindness, tho genuine, isn’t going to fill the hole in your heart that you aren’t giving that kind of support to yourself. It’s so self destructive and will leave you to grow bitter from the inside out. And thats why it was so hard to see, and why I didn’t notice till it was too late. Cuz on the outside I look and acted fine, but inside i was deteriorating so much that I got to a point I couldn’t not see it anymore. And in a desperate cry for help I tried to open about it and explain int the worst way possible up but snapped, crossed a boundary I shouldn’t have then ran away.

And I don’t mean snap like get angry, I meant like snap as in I had a mental break that led to the worst tunnel visioned, impulsive fueled action afterwards. Its so hard for me to get genuine angry at people and when I do I walk away to cool down. I at least have some comfort knowing I didn’t unleash burning hot fury on someone cuz I think I might actually puke if I get to that point. That I have become that kind of person. But anger isn’t the only way you can hurt someone and I feel like what I did was kinda worse then plain anger.

Since that happened I just been away from almost everything. I mean I know isolation isn’t the solution so I kept a couple of friends close to have a support system to help me through this. But I did it to think and process everything that happened and has happened before hand that led to that point. And I haven’t just been overthinking and sulking and mopping in the mess I made because honestly who does that help really? I guess that’s what lead me here, to making a tumblr post on my dump account at 7am in the morning. To pick apart my feelings and toss it into the void.

Well that and 2 other reasons… That part where I was talking about being disgusted by myself? Yeh well thoughts of me “erasing myself form the equation” and just snipping connections left and right had pop up in my head more times that in has ever been recently. Cuz you know if ***I’m*** the problem then haha I probably wouldn’t be missed then!

But then two people check up on me and like I shit you not I started crying on the spot. Actually sobbing (but not too loud cuz I can’t cry in this house hold) because oh wow not everyone hates me. Like yes I had my support system and they are doing gods work, they are lovely beautiful human beings and love and adore them! but it’s different when someone you weren’t expecting checks up on you, to know you occupy a space in their head and to hear and see that they cared enough about you to check.

One of them was a friend from a new more recent friend group I had been in when I joined a new fandom. Me and that person hadn’t been particularly close nor talked too much but I loved their company whenever we did get the chance. I wish I talked more to them but time zones and my own social anxiety kinda prevented that so that is something to work on. And the 2nd one was from an old friend I kinda drifted away from a lil, cuz again I moved fandoms, but was very close with. They have absolutely no clue about my current situation but actually checked up on me cuz of uh… The territorial tension between China and the Philippines hdkdbsjsb. It was so out of nowhere and unexpected like they didn’t even have my alt discord to message me but they found a way so I was kinda just super touched-

And those two interactions plus my awesome friends who have been a great support system, that keep me centered and grounded. Im reminded that people do care and that one mistake doesn’t make me scum of the world no matter how loud my toxic thoughts screams it at me. Especially not when I am trying to be better and recognize the mistakes I made and even apologized before taking my break from most my contacts. No one has even called me that but myself cuz Im so quick to be hard on myself for any mistakes.

All I can do now is keep myself centered, allow myself to feel my complicated feelings and process them in a healthy manner, do my best to be better moving forward, and to be patient with myself and move at my own pace.

Hey if you got this far into reading, wow you must have a lot of free time! /lh jdkdjdhdjdhd-

That or you’re just really interested in how I’ve been. I’ve been called mysterious, aloof and hard to read before so maybe you wanted to know what actually goes on upstairs lol.

But either way here’s a little something for reading I guess. The words in the vent art is actually lyrics and this was the song I was listening too when I was making it. Additionally if you’re feeling sad and need a song to listen to try this, it helps me process emotions. Either way if you happen to stumble on this, I hope you get something form this and that you have a nice day.

[badedramay]

little bit of a rant but: do you ever have a piece of media you really enjoy within its own bubble but that becomes really hard to enjoy once you're exposed to the fandom for it? i feel like that's what fairy tale is becoming for me lol. i did find it a lot of fun and thought the romance was cute but the fandom's inability to even entertain the idea that the show might have flaws really frustrates me. even moreso when this attitude is used to criticize other dramas (not talking about tere bin here. people can fully have at it with that) that are arguably dealing in way more complex ideas than fairy tale ever will. like not everything is about clear cut choices and forever well presenting characters! i do understand where the hype for either mc comes from (women feeling liberated of "responsible" decision making via umeed vs. women feeling charmed by a man like farjaad who does not resort to misogyny or violence) but i also don't think the expectations that come from that can be imposed onto dramas that are discussing more complex ideas often entrenched in exploring gender biases in our society. does that make sense? like if we're going to discuss some of the harms of society on the behavior of individuals, we are inevitably going to see some of those harmful behaviors portrayed and explored. and not every show goes the right way of actually criticizing those behaviors, but plenty do! and there is a cohesive point to why the harmful behaviors are highlighted, even if we don't like them! idk. maybe it's overly judgmental but i feel like i can't take fairy tale fans seriously half the time lol and i remember you feeling the same way when you initially talked about it way back when

fandoms have a way of either amplifying one's enjoyment of a piece of media or completely ruining it, there's no in between. I have lost count of how many shows that I used to enjoy with all my might, I had to step away from its "main" fandom from to be able to continue to enjoy them. fandom especially on twitter toh is more explosive than other platforms cuz the responses are so quick and there's almost nothing private there. hashtags are open for all of the users to explore. and even if you DON'T hashtag the show, there's still a way of what you're saying coming up for users either via a simple search option or by twt's fucked up algorithm that INSISTS on showing you the posts your mutuals interact with. there's almost no privacy there unless it's a locked account. that level of being public is not available on instagram and definitely not on tumblr where the rules of engagement are completely different and it's easier to tune out the fandom noise. (more under cut)

which is why no matter how much i TRY to, I cannot escape the FT opinions. and yes with time I have become more open to the show and its fandom but I still don't have a lot of respect for either of it. what you say is right, FT is a show has only ONE thing going on for it and that's the main ship. Umeed is apparently a refreshing character and Farjaad a green flag one and somehow just this combination is enough to overpower all of the show's other flaws. somehow their few good interactions in 30 episodes is enough to hail the show as some masterpiece. ya know I find is so funny that FT fandom has so cleanly separated their ship from the rest of the show. any criticism against the show's other characters and events is valid. but any criticism against farmeed is not as if they are an unrelated entity altogether??? how does that make sense??? khair. there's something that I was told ages ago which has influenced much of my perspective about gauging the quality of something. the "good" is not the "absence" of bad but the "denial" of it.

it's like "XYZ is honest" vs "XYZ is not dishonest". both technically mean the same thing. but the second statement first confirms that there's a trait called "dishonesty" that exists and then makes it point to state that XYZ is not that. it's such an important element to be incorporated in stories where the bad/evil first has to be established and identified before its antithesis is introduced. to address your points here...it's like the FT fandom just wants a very sanitized story to indulge in because they do not have either the capacity or just the sheer willingness to indulge in a more complicated story. Farjaad for the most part is a fairly easy character to root for. he's not a bad guy..even his slightly twisted actions are not done out of malice. his selfishness is "cute". one doesn't have to compromise or defend their morals to root for a guy like him and subsequently invest in his romantic endeavors. Umeed, on the other hand, is more twisted but like you said she's a character so liberated from the conventional ties of making the "right decisions for everyone's sake" that for "hardcore feminists" (the self-proclaimed majority of the FT fandom) her flaws are more the reasons to love to her than to criticize her.

Compared to this, the other PakDramas and their stories are more complex than that. unlike FT's sanitized route, these stories HAVE to show the hard to swallow traits in either the main characters or the supporting ones to drive home the point of what's the "good" there. take Yunhi for example. if not for Dadaji's patriarchal mindset, can Dawood's character really shine? Dawood is the antithesis of Dadaji. Dadaji, Razia, Danny, the Phupha..these characters are needed in the narrative to establish why the opinions of Kim and the ones supporting Kim are the "right" one. Kim and Dawood have to "fight" their mindsets to triumph. the existence and acknowledgement of these traits should precede the denial of them.

how the FT fandom makes up for any lack of "wrong" in its narrative is that it then turns to other stories and compares characters/situations from there to fill the gap of existence and acknowledgement of "wrong" that their heroes don't have in its own canon. so the bad guys become the other MCs of other stories who don't have a sanitized enough image. chalo TB is an extreme example, let's take examples of shows that fall in the same Ramazan special light hearted genre that FT is part of. for the fans of Farjaad, even someone like Arsal (Suno Chanda s1 as S2 is a thing that just simply does not exist) is not a good enough guy because of how he occasionally treated Jiya. Arsal has done the unthinkable of raising his hand on Jiya although no strike was landed, it's an offense that's so mighty that he automatically kicks him out of the "good guys" list which Farjaad is topping solo now. never mind that Arsal fucking up and then realizing his mistake and making up for it by supporting Jiya in a way that no one in the family was WAS his entire arc. but nah..it's bordering the grey line. and heroes should only be green.

the irony of the FT fandom then proclaiming to be the sanest and wisest of them all isn't lost on me.

of COURSE i can't take this fandom seriously. contrary to what they think they are doing i.e. sticking to their side by just hyping their fav..the reality is different. they have their noses stuck up in the business of every other fandom. sure the toxicity isn't as huge as the TB fandom but again, TB fandom is humongous. for its size, FT fandom has plenty of fuckery. and I have noticed this in my few interactions with them. it's better to keep distance from them..innka koi bhi opinion itna khaas hai nahin ke usspe dhyaan diya jaye.

[sickkiller]

kinda vent or smth (lowkey long)

I KEEP MAKING MISTAKES BRO. Why cant i think for one second amd stop doing things that just pop into my brain. Idk anymore im so angry at myself why cant i think like a normal person, why cant i think before i do things.

It seems like i do everything just to impress other people and never take my feelings into account like ive gotten into so many weird situations where if i just said no i would be good BUT OF COURSE I CANT BECAUSE WHY WOULD I ACTUALLY LISTEN TO MY BRAIN.

its getting so tiring, why cant i just be normal and say what i want to and idk anymore. Every single time after i make a decision i always end up regreting it in some way like why cant i just make good decisions and not regret them. Like when i broke up with my bf a week ago, i regret it idk why i said what i did but idk how to fix it now cause he hates me and i know that. If i just thought about myself for once and not everyone else i wouldnt be stuck in the pickle im stuck in right now. I actually like him a lot but i was so scared of what my friends were gonna say when i told them its long distance and also the fact that ive been talking with my friend kinda flirty and idk if were a thing or not. Relationships are weird, emotions are even weirder. I hate all of this, i wish i could just sit in my room playing music all day. Instead i go out and make stupid unfixable mistakes thatll take so long to even try to explain. Why cant i just think for myself and not care what other people think, i mean i do that with my looks maybe im not the most alt person youve ever scene (haha funny joke, pls laugh) but im def not basic by any means.

Dont worry thats not where my problems end, i also cant open up to anyone. Like, i know people are gonna read this but it feels much less private and personal than a one on one conversation. Geniuanly it is so hard for me to talk about my feelings so that might be why ive never been to therapy, the therapist would get literally nothing out of me. I feel like it shouldn't be this hard to open up, but like.. it is. My ex said that he didnt understand how people cant talk about their feelings to their partners but like i never told him about that one thing, that one thight that always bothered me. I wonder what he thinka that was, i mean i could be literally anything.. i just hope he doesnt think that it was the fact that i was gonna break up with him, cause its not that. Well idk anything anymore, one day i think i understand myself and than the next day everything crumbles and i feel like a smear of shit on the sidewalk.

Some people say that noone will understand them better than they understand themselves, i wish that was me. I cant get my mind clear for even a second, every second its like a whole train passes my brain and it just keeps doing laps and laps and the loop never ends. It feels like one day im just gonna snap and let all of this out on the wrong person and i dont want that to happened. I care for the people that are near me very much but i always distance myself so i dont say something stupid and i always fucking fail. No matter how much thought i put into a message, im still gonna regret sending it. I cant live like this anymore but i also dont want to end things if that even makes sense. Why cant i just be normal, I have people that love me but it all feels like a little show. It always feels like im not in control of what i say, like its a script or smth. Feels very weird to say that since its not real or anything but sometimes it just feels like that.

I wish i could open up to people and just tell them what i think but even then i never say the truth. The few times i actually told anyone about my feelings i never said the whole truth. I have no idea why im hiding it like that, its like if anyone knows it is just gonna automaticaly hate me and never want to speak with me again.

I dont know what to do anymore, I need help. Im stuck in my head all day long with so many thoughts, its so overwhelming. Im just so tired of everything even tho my problems arent nearly big enough to have thoughts like this. I mean i know its not a competition or anything but so many people have it so much worse than me. Its not right for me to be so sad and stuff about these things, cause like i have a good life other than that.

I keep thinking about him, why did i say what i did. I wont tell him how i feel right now because he hates me and i know that. Ive started to be more active on the server but that doesnt make anything better, i keep making jokes that dig me deeper and deeper into this hole im stuck in now. I feel like all of them hate me, I feel like i need new friends every week cause i fuck things up so fast. I know that this is all my fault but i just cant stop it, its like i dont have control of what i say. Its so shit to feel like this but i also cant talk about it to anyone cause maybe ill say something weird and it makes them question all the fun moments weve had together. I wish my brain was clearer, life would be so much easier if that was the case. If i never met them, i wouldnt be here,, writing this. Maybe i should just separate myself from them. Stop texting in the groupchat and take some days to think, but that might also be a bad idea cause what if they think i hate them. I dont, i promise they mean the world to me. Weve gotten so close over like 3 weeks, its crazy, i dont want to lose them over something like this.

[wickedpact]

so netflix just announced the schedule for that fan event on saturdays and now its official: there wont be a tog panel. charlize will make an appearance though, alongside other 5 actress in a panel about action movies. there's a moderator so its most likely gonna be a general discussion about the genre with an emphasis on female protagonists - she's certainly going to talk about andy and nile's characters as well as her experience as a producer - and maybe there will be a comment or two about the sequel, but i feel like nothing too specific or revealing and more like a brief statement. i hope i'm wrong tho! i mean they did kinda hint that there would be new content at the panel? (or maybe it was never gonna to happen and we're just clowns being baited yet again).

anyway, i keep wondering if its a case of netflix not giving a shit about promoting the movie, or if it there's another perfectly reasonable explanation for it and i'm being super extra about it.

because really, netflix has a lot of fucking money and they dont usually spare it on their marketing campaigns. and still we get nothing. not before the film came out (if i didnt have access to the gays from tumblr/twitter i would have never even discover the film - it had me at the joenicky gifs, obvs - and still, i had to introduce it to so many people from inside the community who had never heard of it.) and not even after people started engaging with it, basically begging for some crumbles. not a single photo or video of cast together, not any deletes scenes; we're all starving here!!! in fact, netflix just released the raw footage of an audition/chemestry test featuring the actresses from fear street vs the actual scenes from the film - including some dialogue that was cut from it which reveal some background info about the characters - so clearly they understand the appeal. SO WHY CANT WE HAVE THAT

[nonetheless i'm a fool who still hopes that someday we're gonna get more content of them together (i want behind the scenes footage! i wanna know more about their experiences training and shooting the film! i wanna hear funny stories from the set! i wanna see them teasing each other in several languages! also would sell a lung to watch luca and marwan taking part in back to back chef!). ]

anyhow, i honestly find that even when we take into account the global pandemic and its effects, the publicity was kinda wack; we can basically count on one hand how many interviews were made while they were promoting the film.

and i truly dont get it!!!!!!! im not even speaking as fan here. the old guard has the potential to be a hit among several demographics; now that disney took away what used to be netflix's flagship content the competition has never been more fierce in the superhero/ish genre!!! and its not like we're talking about some low-budget film cmon its a significal production with both experienced and emerging actors. its chiwetel ejofior ITS CHARLIZE FUCKING THERON. anyway my point is that in a time when movie theathers were closed and streaming reached its peak tog could - SHOULD - have been much more popular.

SO LIKE. WHY?????? does it have anything to do with skydance and copyrights? re: interviews, can it be that the cast just didnt sign up for this (is that even a thing? i dont know anything about the film industry, clearly)? unlikely for a movie that big i would guess but who knows??? i mean contrary to some hollywood folks most of the cast is extremely private and discrete people (GOOD FOR THEM) so perhaps they have some reservations about it? or we're really just the poor bastards that end up being obssessed with a media no one gives a fuck about it and thats it? WHYYY

p.s.: sorry for the word vomit! this was not supposed to be an essay i just had to get this off my chest and you're the most welcoming blog around these woods. thank you for the tea (or is it coffee? heh) and the biscuits and for always indulging our passionate rants. HAVE A NICE DAY I LOVE YOU

re: TUDUM, geeked week mentioned there will be a little interview thing for greg & leandro so i have a feeling if anything of tog importance will be discussed itll happen then

but yeah i get what youre saying; sometimes i wonder if the reason that theres like no bts content is bc it just.. .doesnt exist? just people didnt film things like chemistry readings or the like while creating tog and thats why theres been basically no crumbs? (but then again, it was gina who took it upon herself to post the hair & makeup test footage AND theres at least one deleted scene that we know of thats never been posted so maybe not)

and yeah it does seem so bizarre since tog got such a big response from audiences (it was one of netflix's most watched original movies!) and critics did actually like it, unlike some of netflix's most watched originals. PLUS it has that ✨ Franchise Potential ✨that everyone has been searching for as of late and it also gives netflix their sought after Woke Points. idk it just seems like they should be leaning into tog as hard as they can but it feels like theyve been largely ignoring it. i mean i get the holdups in regard to finding a new director but other than that the response from netflix has been so underwhelming

[omegawolverine]

I know you posted it days ago but you said something about wanting to rant about either karl or his fanbase and its been itching at my brain. Ive no clue whats happening or what is happening at all cause no one seems to be making clear points?? Or explaining anything?

Obviously you do NOT have to talk about it im sure it might be a sore point to rant because people can get SO needlessly rude to others over it. But if you want to idk explain? Just rant? Im definetly curious what it was over or about.

The "you dont need to talk about this" is amplified by the fact i am DAYS late and you are probably over it by now.

okay hi yes im happy to talk about this but i think i should preface with two things:

1) even tho it may seem like im biased towards him or being very defensive of him im actually a super casual karl viewer and the only reason i am super defensive of him sometimes is bc we act a lot alike irl and that is mainly because of our neurodivegency. when i say a lot i mean we share traits like "annoying" stimming (jumping around, making loud noises, repeating the same phrases until everyone is sick of hearing them), the difficulty reading situations, the very obvious issues with volume control and not just bouncing from subject to subject to subject as we fucking please. basically anything you've seen karl do on stream that is Very Neurodivergent ive done the same in my own way which is why i get defensive when i see people calling him annoying or saying they dont like him, usually for these types of reasons. that being said, when i say im a very casual karl viewer, i fucking mean it. i usually only watch him when he's streaming with other ccs i like or when he's doing chill alt streams bc even with the annoying donos, he's pretty relaxing and comforting when he's just fucking around by himself and he isnt trying to get as hype as he would on a main channel stream. so yeah, it may seem like im biased and sure, i guess i am on some level, but it's not coming from a place of me hyperfixating on him or me even loving him as a cc, it's coming from me being a neurodivergent who likes him just enough to get upset when i see people basically being casually ableist towards him.

2) i dont have all the facts or even a great understanding on what the fuck has been happening recently with his "drama"...mostly bc he talked about it on his priv, which im not on, and people are gatekeeping the tweets, as they always do, and basically making you "dm to see them" (which is already a problem in and of itself bc apparently in these tweets he said he didnt want them being ss and shared, yet they are being shared thru dms over and over and over again like. at that point just stop withholding the information and post the fucking shit, you clearly dont care that he said "dont share"). additionally, most of the threads ive seen on this situation havent actually explained the initial issue, just talked about his apology (a lot of people have said "it's bad" but havent said why and with no screenshots ((i havent asked for someone to dm me them and i still havent seen them posted, which is mildly surprising, but incredibly frustrating at this point)), i only have a few basic details i can actually assess it on) or they talked about the initial issue in very vague details so um. excuse me trying to explain this now, but ill try and make it make sense with how little ive actually pieced together.

(oh, also, here's my first rant about the ableism in this fandom which is way more broad. this is a pretty different rant from that one, but they're both pretty big reasons why i hate this fandoms treatment of karl)

so basically the problems started with mr beast being apart of a charity stream that donated either to autism speaks or to a similar company, im unsure on that part. im also unsure on if the people participating in the stream actually knew of this or not bc, from what i remember, the money was being donated to a separate organization that was like. under the bad company or some shit like that, idk how stuff like that works and also i read about this shit months ago bc this originally happened months ago and just sorta came to a head recently.

anyways, i think karl was supposed to be apart of this stream but pulled out of it right before (that or these were two separate streams and karl was supposed to participate in the first but pulled out while mr beast did both?? idk. regardless karl did not actually participate, just mr beast). from there people started doing the guilt from association bullshit they always do, this was also doubled by the fact that the chris being racist stuff came out sometime around then and basically he got dragged all over twitter for "being ableist" and "supporting racists" and i cant remember if he actually apologized when this originally happened or not. i vaguely remember him apologizing about something back then but i genuinely dont know if it was this or something else.

basically that died down eventually, a good chunk of people unstanned him but him and honktwt didnt end up getting the lovely lil technotwt treatment and they still havent yet, surprisingly. good for them honestly ajsksk

but now we get to the past few weeks and apparently something happened with him "laughing at someone saying the r slur" (it was mizkif, i believe), specifically when it was directed at other people, which is a big yikes, obviously, but when karl was called out for this a lot of people kind of. made this into a situation that it wasnt bc um. basically karl didnt laugh at it, he gave a few nervous giggles, as people often do when in a situation like that (and karl specifically said he does this in the one part of his apology tweet which i did stumble upon, although it wasnt the important part of the apology thread bc why would it be) and people fucking crucified him for it. they quite literally dragged a neurodivergent man for supposedly "laughing at the r slur" when he can literally reclaim it and also he was just nervous laughing.

and this is where the situation just gets really bad because they. basically forced him to admit that he was autistic on his priv to apologize for this. i havent seen the screenshots of him saying this, but i saw people discussing it and i am frankly so fucking pissed about this because sure, it was a bad situation, and i understand people wanting an explanation, but an apology? for a neurodivergent man nervous laughing at a slur he can reclaim? and then forcing the man to admit something he literally said in that tweet he didnt want people to know which is why people were being so gatekeepy about it while also LOUDLY discussing the situation, as if that wouldnt drive MORE PEOPLE to look for screenshots and ways to get ahold of this information? and then people had the audacity to call it a "bad apology" when they had quite literally just violated his privacy by forcing him to admit something that he shouldnt have needed to share in the first place if he didnt want to, which he didnt.

and this is why im so pissed off. karl is already constantly picked at and made fun of and called annoying for his neurodivergent traits, things which he literally cant help, things which are generally harmless, and now he was forced into a situation where he can now be further picked at and made fun of and called annoying bc they forced him to admit something private instead of just understanding and accepting that he had been nervous laughing at someone using a slur he has definetly been called for his neurodivergency.

tldr of my thoughts: yes i think karl needed to address this situation, it definetly looked bad, but twitter stans have this sense of entitlement with their ccs and because of that, they consistently take it way too far and harm the people they claim to care about so dearly. we've seen it happen time and time again with dream, but this is the first time ive seen them basically force someone to out themselves to make their apology "valid" and most of them still seem to not want to accept it anyways, which just makes me feel bad for him bc now that info is out their and people are just disregarding it to continue "holding him accountable".

anyways, i think that's all i can really say on this topic rn tbh, if anyone else knows this situation better please feel free to lmk clarifications and ill add them in since, like i said, i know fuck all thanks to twitter being so goddamn hush hush about the important details while simultaneously being the loudest mfers about how much they hate karl now instead of just fucking unfollowing and moving on.

thanks for the ask and im sorry if this is confusing!! i just think this is one of those weird situations where like. i think karl deserved some criticism for what happened and how he handled it or at least he shouldve been asked to address it but that just. isnt what happened, at all. he was harrassed. karl got harrassed and because of that he handled this situation even more sloppily than he probably wouldve and exposed private info about himself that he didnt feel comfortable doing and it just. fucking sucks tbh.

[syubub]

NAMJOON SOULMATE READING

Disclaimer~ tarot is interpretation and it is in no way fact. Take it with a grain of salt and lets continue

Oki. Let me just say some words. I forgot to take a picture of the cards BUT I made a video? You might be wondering, "why a vid?" And I'd say, "idk, nan mola." I might post it (I'd definitely have to make a YouTube channel for that and I'm not really intrested in doing videos that often but I honestly thought, "hey I should record so its faster to write it down and make sense of my thoughts" and then I was like, "well, if I do a video then I won't have to type" and that was intriguing but the video was over an hour long and I go on so many tangents its nuts (also editing who? Don't know her) I think its also nice to have written out version that just gets to the point (I personally prefer written ones because I have the attention span of a fucking goldfish) So long story short. Maybe I'll upload it for those who want to watch but if I do, don't wate your time if you dont want to. All the key info is written here. blah blah blah let's get to Joonie.

Right off the bat I just want to say that both him and his soulmate have the same energy color. It's like a silver-white color? (This is just how I personally perceive energy) Through the process of connecting with Nams and his Soulmate, I envisioned him putting his hand up to mine as a way to I guess channel his energy to me? It was like a stringy thing on my palm and then I mirrored him putting his hand over his heart and then to his forehead and then he was gone? It was like he gave me a tether to his energy which hasn't really happened before. It still felt kinda distant but still like I was trustworthy enough to have a line to him? Idk if that makes any sense or not but there. Now onto the soulmate.

I got some messages from his soulmate. I feel like we had a weak connection that was only there because Namjoons energy let me into it. So the first message was, "You need to leave her" wut. I asked my guides like, "hey, do I need to write that down?" And they were like yeah fam you gotta. Okay. I have no clue. Part of me thinks it was more of a warning to joon. Maybe his soulmate is cautious of people poking around his energy idk. It could be anything. So there's that.

For the other messages I got, "open your mind more", "You're strong, don't be taken for granted" and "ones own soul" that last one makes no sense to me but maybe you need to have iq 148 or be the soulmate of Namoo to get it. I think the others make sense. They are pretty self explanatory.

Now, onto the cards. So knight of cups fell out and I was like ?? And I asked like, "what do I do with this?" And it was v clear that this is his soulmates personality. Like this card represents the soulmate. Now. This is VERY romantic. Romantic af is all over my notes. Also, Joon knows his soulmate. I'm pretty sure. That might come in handy later. This person is in touch with their intuition and emotions. They are compassionate and understanding as fuck. Also I touch with their more feminine energy. I also made a note for a possible career in the art field. V v v loving. Also a possible Taurus, Virgo or Air sign. (I lean towards virgo) personality cards are damsel, warrior, judge, gossip and destroyer. This person is very strong and helps to bring perspective. They have a way of making you think in a way you never had before. I wrote down, "its like panning for gold, you bring up a bunch of shit. Stir up the riverbed, to find pieces of gold". Its constructive and organized chaos. (Art???) They make you consider things with a more critical and objective eye.

Okay, so the next cards are kind what his Soulmate brings out in him/what they help joon with. Justice rev. King of swords rev. And queen of wands. So Justice rev. Represents a lack of accountability, unfairness, dishonesty and favoritism. So I think his soulmate essentially checks him when he gets to close to any of these things. Like his soulmate is all, "hey, you made a mistake. I trust you'll do the right thing and right your wrongs"like this person essentially helps to point out what he might be too close to see. King of swords rev. Represents quiet power, inner truth, misuse of power, manipulation. So with this, his soulmate helps him to discover his inner truth and quiet power but also when he gets too... into it... it can turn toxic and become manipulative and he can maybe use his power in a not so healthy way. I don't think its conscious but its there. And for queen of wands, it represents courage, confidence, independence, determination. This is so cute. His soulmate amplifies all of these amazing qualities that he already has in himself. His soulmate encourages and fosters these amazing qualities. Its so cute. Its hard to really convey the feeling but damn. Its cute as fuck.

As far as the relationship goes we had the world, 10 of coins, 9 of coins and 8 of wands rev. So. They rich. They are so abundant and this is in a sense of self sustainability and stability as well as in a family sense. Now now now. Everyone is curious about joon and if hes married with kids and what not. Idk. Thats my answer. Idk. But he and his soulmate will def have luck in the family department (child or no). Now. With the world and 8 of wands rev. There is a sense that they might be on pause or that they are waiting for something to end before the relationship reaches its full potential. Now. With the 8 of wands rev. It can mean rushing into something (like kids and marriage) and I think that joon and his soulmate are smart enough to know that it might not be responsible right now. OR they have already rushed into it and are now keeping everything private until BTS enlist and go on hiatus. The world symbolizes a completing of a cycle (successfully) so that drives home that they are haulted where they are until they can start a new chapter. There is also a chance that they are acquaintances or something but won't pursue a relationship until later on.

Now we have Play, Boundries and Protection. This is also about the relationship. They have a very strong respect for eachother so they have very strong boundaries and they protect themselves and eachother. It's very healthy.

Now we have progress not perfection, ready to love and prosperity. They are so so so supportive of eachother and encourage eachother to grow and be better people. They both also have gone through a period of learning that they are worthy of love. They also have a prosperity mindset. Its about abundance and being like, "wow, I have everything I ever could have asked for" and they are truly greatful for all that they have. Theres also a feeling of money guilt from Namoo but I'll not go on a tangent for that.

Now we have stop obsessing, stop whining, and stand by your commitment. essentially the world is scary and these cards are to Nams from his soulmate. They essentially mean, stop obsessing about what you can't change and don't wallow in it. It doesn't serve you. All you can do is move forward. Also, making good on your promises. Seeing shit to the end and not leaving unfinished business.

Now now now we have the physical qualities: serious, long hair, gifts, physical touch, feminine, music, music (again), introvert, romantic, sweet, playful (I think its intresting bc I have a lot of physical descriptions in my little cards but pulled more personality...)

And for little cards that soulmate wants Joo to know: faith, Fate, seek, healthy, selfless

Now now now now. We have the finishing oracle cards. Dream a beautiful dream and going beyond normal. These essentially talk about seeing beauty in chaos, letting things not go according to plan and being okay with it, seeing beauty as it is instead of trying to fit it into a box. One of my favorite sentiments is along the lines of not trying to fit the ocean in a teacup but rather learning to swim and not confining something so vast into a small vessel. Don't confine yourself to please others. Live on the fringe of normality and push boundries.

TLDR: Namoo has a sweet soulmate who wants him to grow and become a better person. Its super great and supportive and he and his soulmate probably read books together and have museum dates. Soft af. A subtle domestic love.

[whetstonefires]

mcu ethics bad

The thing is that, while I was angry at Tony during Age of Ultron, particularly when he rode over Bruce’s compunctions about building a giant combat super-robot and pressured him into the project like a very very bad friend who happened to also be wrong...

...and when he equipped Hulkbuster armor and fought the Hulk in the middle of a city rather than attempting de-escalation or attempting to haul the Hulk out into the giant adjacent desert....

(And my suspension of disbelief snapped like a frayed cable when he brought down a skyscraper that had had no time to be evacuated on a street full of fleeing people and the only reason we were given to believe he hadn’t just cold-bloodedly created massive civilian casualties was that he told his AI to find the impossible magic angle where doing this wouldn’t kill anyone...)

While I was angry with him then, and unspeakably relieved that he recognized his own damage and retired at the end, haha psych, I was revolted by him during Civil War.

It’s supposed to make us sympathize with a character more, spending so much time with them, getting into their heads, being shown their emotional drives and reactions to things, and we spent so much time with Tony during that film, understanding his point of view. And...I did understand him. He’s not complicated. I even sympathized with his emotional state.

But in the context of his actions, throughout the film, I gazed into that understanding the way I did into Kylo Ren’s face in the seconds after he first unmasked. I see you, I know you, everything you are is written here, and the lines of your shame and self-revulsion are so thick upon you, and you should be ashamed but your self-destruction does not expiate or justify one jot of the harm you do.

Because everything Tony did in Civil War came from a place of selfishness. He was selfish all throughout that movie down to his very spine.

And selfishness isn’t itself necessarily bad--you need a little, to get through life, you have the right to your own portion of it. Your boundaries and your needs. But the type of selfishness that is forcing other people pay dearly for your emotional comfort and sense of control: no.

That is tyranny. That is not acceptable.

And you know how I know he was being selfish? Because his motive for pushing the Sokovia Accords was his personal guilt for the destruction of Sokovia.

But the Accords didn’t address that at all! They were tangential to the issue! None of the terms of the Accords would have saved Sokovia--in fact, the existence of them could easily have prevented the evacuation and harm-reduction the Avengers managed there, without saving a single soul.

The Ultron crisis was something Tony did, not as Iron Man but as Tony Stark, with Bruce Banner’s help, and which Wanda as criminal fugitive later helped exacerbate, and which all the other Avengers were involved in only to mitigate harm.

Legislation, or...treaties, idk, the UN isn’t actually empowered to pass laws so who knows what this thing was...aimed at preventing another Sokovia would mandate constant ethical oversight of billionaire science man’s mad science. At the very least! He never has to run things by ethics boards because he’s self-funded, at the very least let’s invent a mechanism to make up for that.

That would address the actual Sokovia issue, both in terms of risks and in terms of Tony’s personal guilt feelings.

But no one suggests that! It’s not even on the table! Because no one, certainly not any government, can tell Tony Stark what to do unless he lets them, that’s been a clear matter of record since Iron Man 2.

And because no one writing this legal instrument of whatever description was actually motivated by wanting to avoid another Sokovia, or even another ‘Wanda tries to neutralize a suicide bomber but merely gives him a different, smaller victim pool’ incident.

They didn’t care! They blatantly didn’t care! The entire thing was a ghoulish use of the dead to gain enough political leverage over the Avengers to put a leash on them!

(Which might not be a bad thing in principle, everything needs its checks, but when the last quasi-governmental organization you worked for turned out to be Nazis who were only prevented from staging a mass slaughter of undesireables by the skin of your teeth, I think you’re well within your rights to be very choosy about who you agree to obey, and to be firmly against pledging your honor to follow people whose first move was dishonest coercive tactics.

Actually you’re well within your rights to demand to negotiate the terms of even a much less sweeping contract, even without the Nazis. The whole approach to this thing stank to high heaven.

The fact that it was written by the UN like a treaty, expected to be signed by private individuals like a contract, and then enforced like a law except not because 1) laws are for everyone 2) if you break a law you get a trial not extrajudicial incarceration and 3) being pressured to consent to a restriction and then punished for refusing consent is hypocritical circular logic and in fact police corruption at its finest, all continues to show it was a bullshit nonsense franken-document.)

The whole movie is people ghoulishly using the dead to manipulate Tony into making bad decisions in response to his emotional pain. That’s. The plot of the film.

Then Zemo staged T’Chaka’s assassination and framed Bucky for it to raise the tension, ramp up the pressure, and prevent any sitting-down and talking reasonably through this, which might have allowed for the recognition of how extremely bullshit the entire concept was.

Tony was being used. Tony was a tool of bad people for most of that movie, and while Zemo banked on using his wrath for it, the politicos were leaning on his guilt.

And there’s honestly little I hold in deeper scorn than going out and hurting other people to assuage your own guilt and treating this as having the moral high ground. No. You don’t have the moral high ground on account of your guilt motivation. You have it if the actions you took were just, or at least could reasonably be assumed to have been so at the time.

And Tony fucking knew they weren’t. He didn’t even last to the end of the movie before recognizing that he’d been manipulated and fucked up, and doubling back.

That he then walked into a different manipulation, turned on a dime, and had to be stopped from doing a murder doesn’t unwrite that.

And it drives me nuts that people will say Tony was acting out of principle while Steve was acting out of personal attachment. Because sure, the Bucky thing was important, was the reason he was walking forward against all opposition instead of standing still to argue, but it wasn’t the reason Steve said no, while...

Tony wasn’t acting out of principle. Tony isn’t...very good at having principles. That’s not even a criticism or condemnation, it’s just how he functions. Since Iron Man he’s been substituting good intentions and emotional investment, which has worked out to varying degrees. It works best for huge, difficult, very straightforward decisions like ‘ride the nuke through the portal and save my hometown.’ It works less well for nuanced situations.

Tony was, as usual, acting out of emotion. And some awful shitheads who’d figured out where his levers were had calculated how to jiggle his emotion switches in the right places to make him do exactly what they wanted.

And you can tell he wasn’t acting out of principle because, for example, someone who was trying to get the superhero community under outside control for the sake of harm mitigation...

...well, firstly wouldn’t have chosen to stage a massive battle? But it’s possible someone in the UN specifically told him to do that, and in theory they at the very least signed off on it, presumably for its PR value of making Captain America look deranged and violent since it’s a deranged decision from every other angle, so yay, he can pass that responsibility up the chain and not have to angst about it, as promised.

But I was going to say would not have approached a minor who (this timeline takes pains to show us) had no prior experience of battle or even, somehow, serious violent crime, to recruit him to go be a government child soldier on another continent, without his guardian’s knowledge or consent. There were overtones of blackmail in Tony’s approach, before it turned out Peter was such a big fan he didn’t need that. What the fuck frankly.

That is not the action of someone who wants to start doing things by the letter, scaling the violence down, keeping within the law and putting the power of decisionmaking in other people’s hands because he’s realized he can’t trust his own.

And frankly even if he did act like that I wouldn’t necessarily support his choices, in particular his snap decision to behave coercively toward other Avengers with vastly less social power and security than he has.

And that’s the other thing! Everything about ‘Tony + Accords BFFs’ rings so hollow because he has never thought rules applied to him, and he knows perfectly well the entire time he’s fighting to force this surrender of agency down other people’s throats that he is going to be practically immune.

This man was technically a terrorist, proabably the most prolific single terrorist in world history until his rogue android exceeded his body count, but he was immune to prosecution because he was in tight with the United States military-industrial complex and basically untouchable due to his status within capitalism, and pursuing their international goals anyway. In the time between Iron Man and Iron Man II he was basically a one-man upgrade of the US drone program, and so good at it that the crest of blood he carved through the Middle East allowed him to announce he had ‘privatized world peace.’

(You are never going to get a world peace worth anything on the basis of a giant flying gun, okay.)

He went to war as a private individual, against non-state actors who were not directly threatening him, which is very much defined as ‘mass murder’ in all domestic and international law, and the US army in response sued him for control of his weapon. And lost! Lost.

No one attempted to press charges. No one. Because Tony Stark is above all that. And he knows it.

And like. I’m willing to accept the mass murder under the heading of ‘superheroing’ within the terms of this setting! Even if, after his vengeance rampage on his specific kidnappers, this violence was kept strictly off-screen for a reason. I did that! I bent that far! Genre convention!

But this history is kind of vitally important to any analysis of what he thought he was doing, and what he actually was doing, when he decided to become the iron gauntlet of the Sokovia Accords.

The currently active member of the Avengers who needed muzzling most was very manifestly Iron Man, and he knew even as he jammed the muzzle on all his comrades to make himself feel better that it would affect him the least, even if he didn’t finally retire for real this time. You don’t force Tony Stark. Not if you want anything out of it but blown up. You persuade him.

And once you have...oh, look at what he can do.

[cupidlakes]

hii so karl said he's more comfortable streaming to a small audience and wants to keep it as small as possible. he asked to not livetweet and talk about it. sapnap said he knows its gonna spread eventually so it's fine. he also said karl wants to keep it lowkey.

sorry to answer both of these in one thank you first anon for the heads up i’m not saying i don’t believe you but i really wish i got to hear for myself what he said because i’m seeing a lot of people inferring/assuming stuff on his behalf and telling people off and getting genuinely hostile for even mentioning the streams (after he ended) when i don’t think that’s fair

especially because i’ve seen people say he’s gonna be uploading the vod which is nice it means people aren’t missing out on content but it’s also literally not gonna be a secret he’s doing this

what i took this whole thing to be is that they want smaller streams and numbers live i didn’t liveblog what i did watch because he said he doesn’t want people doing that and his stream was sitting comfortably at 5/6k because of it

again, i think he just wants to avoid things like livetweeting and update accounts tweeting it out so that when he’s live on his alt he’s with a smaller audience

rest of my answer below the cut

i do wish i wish he made it more clear what he’s okay with people saying/not saying right now even as a tweet or something because the vod is gone

like this is on his alt and afaik it’s all he’s said publicly about it that’s still avaliable for people to see, “please don’t livetweet” is valid and easy to understand

but this? is it a joke? is it a half joke? some are citing this as a comment from him to not talk about this at all and i’m seeing people split between thinking it’s okay to just not say the @‘s publically, lessening the spread by privately dming them to people and others who are taking it very seriously and dissuading anyone from talking about it or the contents of the stream afterwards at all

this is like the karl private twitter debacle all over again when people were infighting about whether or not it was okay to screenshot his tweets with some people seriously saying if you got in you shouldn’t when the only reason people got in was because they followed in time before he locked

all these secretive things the boys have been doing only rely on and benefit people who were awake at the time and some people think that anyone who finds out about these things later because idk? people have lives or they were sleeping should just not be in the know and it’s stupid

and back to this, people were obviously gonna ask questions when they woke up and saw that everyone was talking about not sharing @‘s and stuff and it’s not understandable to me how anyone can be all “don’t snitch” “ don’t talk about it” “sorry i cant tell you”

i understand respecting his wishes and i like the idea of him being more comfortable streaming to less people i like the idea of smaller streams but waking up with more clarity i wish he would’ve went about this a different way if he genuinely wanted to keep it a small thing doesn’t he have a discord? idk

edit: posting this is a little anxiety inducing because i don’t want people to misconstrue what i say because that always seems to happen this is just what i think

and i hope i got my pov across i’m just not fond of some of the reactions i’m seeing on twitter especially to all of this and i feel like clarity on karls behalf in a not now deleted vod would help

[noassallclass]

I really do connect with BigJoel’s decision to be more aware of the affect dunking on people’s bad takes on the internet has on people after he became twitter villain of the day once (He was dog piled on and called a p*do because he was arguing for kink at pride, which kink at pride is the correct stance to take)

Like seeing a whole swath of anonymous accounts dog pilling on you and you have no control over the situation is like...it sticks with you...Like I was the villain of the day for the CR fandom, though indirectly because it was my words but someone more popular (to hate) posted it on twitter  and took the brunt of the heat for agreeing with my words, and it really got to me and I wasn’t even at the face of it, I am thankful everyday that Losebetter chose to not disclose the original post to people knowing they would dog pile me as well

And its just like no one deserves that cruelty, not even those that are in the wrong if its just a poor opinion and not directly harmful or inciting, it is always much better to let it lie than to dunk on that person, especially since community wide dunking on a person has become such a spectacle on the internet these days

And sometimes bigJoel has a lapse in judgement says a funny dunk, but ultimately he retracts it and regrets it when he sees it becoming popular. And I cannot say I have a perfect track record either, sometimes too direct with my call outs on posters i disagree with (especially if its a post about me, I get too defensive, especially when they widely mischaracterize my argument to paint me as a villain, its something I have to work on, I just really do not like being misrepresented out of my control that I give in to the need of wanting that control back)

But luckily I have the perspective and the sympathy of not wanting to have done to others what happened to me (and again i didn’t even take the brunt of the situation, and you can disagree with losebetter all you want but the constant hate they get is abhorrent) and an understanding that alot of these callout posts, especially ones with little evidence and usually greatly exaggerated to make the other person out to be an irredeemable person.

Its also one of the reasons I have restricted the visibility of my blog because even if i do slip up I have the grace of my posts only being seen by like 5 people and also hopeful evade the gaze of people who would choose to attack my character over some statement, that in the grand scheme of things, is ultimately benign even if a bit critical (though on occasion I feel like there are some that hate follow/watch me for whatever reason)

At the very least if you see a take you don’t like I feel its better to speak of it in general and vague terms  if you actually think an opinion or statement is worth criticism.

Idk just wish more people on the internet had more empathy for others and understand there are people on the other side of the screen and like if you really want to vent or dunk on someone just do it privately so the wrong eyes dont land upon it

[aaronhart93]

text || aaromtin

Discord text thread featuring: Aaron & @romanbeckett & @quentindelancret​​

When: March 7, 2020 and March 8, 2020

Mentions: @jamisonhq @codyhq @jayceelynd​

Description: Quentin gets upset at what Jamison said in the group chat, they just fight a lot. the next day he tells Roman and Aaron that he sexted with Troye Sivan. 

Trigger Warnings: mental illness, arguing, cheating if you consider sexting cheating ig

Quentin.

I’m just gonna go back to my place.

𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧.

wait why?

Quentin.

I need to go back to my place

I’ll text you guys later

Aaron.

is it about what Jamison said in the group? ignore him, Q

Quentin.

don’t worry about it. It’s fine

Aaron.

its not. i texted him on the side and told him to cool it

im sorry he said that to you

Quentin.

of course you did

I can’t do this anymore

𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧.

do what??

Quentin.

deal with this

𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧.

deal with what Q

Aaron.

Quentin, I'm making myself look like an ass to defend you in front of him. Don't take this out on us babe. Don't prove him right

Quentin.

being talked down to by all of Aaron’s ex’s who apparently think I’m just his pet now

just go deal with him I’m fine

I didn’t even do anything so I don’t know how I’m proving him right of anything

Aaron.

he's dealt with. it won't happen again

Quentin.

you just don’t even get it

Aaron.

maybe i don't, but come to bed and help me understand

Quentin.

no

I’m tired of it. Your little toys never do this shit to Roman or anyone else and I’m fuckin sick of it

Aaron.

i dont know how that's our fault

Quentin.

it’s not. I guess I’m just not worthy so I’ll step down

𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧.

what have we done to ever make you feel that way

Quentin

You haven’t done anything. I just said it’s not your fault

𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧.

then why are we being punished

Quentin.

you know what, never mind. I’ll just continue to be talked down to so that all of Aaron’s ex’s can pretend like he still feels some type of way about them and I’m just the flavor of the week

𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧.

who cares what they fucking think. It’s not about them.

Quentin.

it’s not about what they think. I don’t care what they think. I care about the way they treat me. Only me

Aaron.

and you need to let me take care of that

Quentin.

yeah okay

maybe you can give him a job too

Aaron.

but don't treat us like this.

that's uncalled for Q

Quentin.

or my bad.. he probably already works for you

it is uncalled for Aaron. It is

Aaron.

cryptic

Quentin.

just let me step aside so you have have your toys close

Aaron.

text us when you cool off. then come back home to bed

Quentin.

yeah, I’m good. Just leave me alone

𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧

I’m staying at the apartment.

Quentin.

that’s fine

Aaron.

great ill just sleep alone.

Quentin.

maybe text Jamison or Cody I’m sure they would love to keep you company

Aaron.

or maybe half of my other employees

Quentin.

yeah maybe

𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧.

Jesus, can you all just stop

Quentin.

I just wish you would even try to see it from my side. Like what if Stas was saying that shit to me? And I worked with him and saw him every day and when he attacked you I ran to text him privately

is that okay? Or maybe if I went to Hawaii would that be okay?

Aaron.

Quentin, I'm on your side. I am seeing it that way. I'm just confused as to why you're getting upset at us.

Quentin.

I’m not upset at Roman

Aaron.

and why are you mad at me?

Quentin.

because Aaron. You tell me all this shit and then turn around and pet their heads

I just don’t get it. How you can just act like, oh I told them to stop and just want me to drop it

Aaron.

I just told you I’m making an ass of myself defending you to him

Quentin.

well, don’t go making an ass of yourself on my account

the only ass I saw was him

Aaron.

okay quentin. Reset. What can I do to make this better

Quentin.

leave me alone. That’s what you can do.

I don’t want to do this anymore

𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧.

Q don’t make any rash decisions right now. Just cool off.

Quentin.

I shouldn’t have to dread going into the town chat or have to watch what I say or else I’m gonna be attacked by Aaron’s thots.

it’s bullshit

Aaron.

read

Quentin.

I’m sorry, I do love you Aaron. I’m just so tired of fighting everyone just to be with you

Aaron.

Quentin. Cool off. Please

Quentin

I am cool

Aaron.

I love you

Quentin.

yeah

𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧.

:(

Quentin.

the thing is. I’m not mad at either of you

I’m just so tired of it

𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧.

nothing in life is ever easy Q, but what we have is worth it.

Quentin.

yeah okay

I’ve been belittled my entire life. I just don’t want to have to deal with it in order to have a boyfriend

especially when said boyfriend just talks them down and doesn’t really care enough to cut it off

Aaron

but cut what off?

Quentin.

all these ex’s you are so determined to stay friends with even though they make me feel this way

Aaron.

you just told me about Cody today and Jamo wasn’t an issue until now

Cody is going to raise my best friend’s child and Jamison is my business partner. It is not that easy

Quentin.

okay well, that’s why I’m making it easy

Aaron.

don’t talk like that

Quentin.

Jay is my best friend too ya know? I’ve tried so hard to be friendly with Cody. But every time I turn around he’s being an asshat to me

it’s fine. It’ll all be fine

Aaron.

I’m sorry

I’m so sorry

Quentin.

don’t be

I guess I just need to start being more of an asshole myself

Quentin.

anyway, have a good night

the next morning

Aaron.

can we promise never to let other people affect our relationship

𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧.

I can definitely promise that

Aaron.

me too

♛ 𝕽𝖔𝖒𝖆𝖓 ♛

I don’t wanna lose either one of you.

Aaron.

and you won’t.

Quentin.

hello

Aaron.

morning sleepyhead

Quentin.

morning.

Quentin.

Troye and I messed around last night over text after you and Aaron fell asleep. I was rolling in molly and I wasn’t thinking straight and I swear I wasn’t getting off with him. I just didn’t think it was serious and I don’t even remember doing it. But I wanted you to know. I’d never keep that from either of you and I hope you know I don’t want him. It was a stupid crush and I’m so sorry. I’m so so so sorry

Aaron.

read

Quentin.

I just want to add that I don’t want him. I swear I don’t want him and I don’t even wanna go see him now. He’s been flirting with me for days now, which Roman I told you about that. But idk what happened. I’m not a cheater. I don’t wanna be a cheater. I’m so sorry I can’t even breath. Please don’t hate me. I love you both so much. With every ounce of my existence

Aaron.

read

I love you too

𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧

read

Quentin.

I love you both.

𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧.

I love you too.

Aaron.

read

[orange-positivity]

Hi, I'm an Asian with very little background of Slovenian politics - could you please help me understand the situation on the ground and how's it come about?

Hi! I'm not the best with politics but I'll try my best

I'll first do a run through and then I'll put in bold what's happening right now but before I start, the main thing right now is that they want to shut down independent media

Just putting this first because it's the most important, okay now for the run through

Pretty much our former prime minister, Marjan Šarec resigned and so Janez Janša was elected by the National assembly in March, which is also when the coronavirus outbreak started in Slovenia. Now a lot of shit went on while we were in lockdown and I honestly can't tell you much about that because I wasn't really following politics at the time, but there was a thing with ordering unsuitable masks and respirators and also during the whole corona crisis, they tried to pass laws completely unrelated to the epidemic (because they knew all media attention was on the virus). Janez Janša and his political party (SDS) are also very right wing and corrupt (Janša actually went to jail for corruption a few years back)(he's also good friends with Orban, the Hungarian prime minister and I think he [Janša] owes him [Orban] some money?) and there were just a lot of allegations of corruption flying around during that time as well as bribing other parties into teaming up SDS to form the government (members of the parties who connected with SDS got promotions and raises). The government also gave themselves the highest paycheck possible, but they offered very little financial support to small businesses during the lockdown (as far as I know, the only thing small businesses got was that they can pay their taxes with a delay or something?). They also passed an amendment against the conservation of nature, but thankfully that's been put on hold by the constitutional court.

That was lockdown and the protests started in early April with people banging their pots and pans on the balcony. In late April, the bike protests started. So every Friday, people would ride their bikes on the streets around the parliament. There was a lot of shit with the police at the beginning, putting up fences on our protesting space for no good reason and writing people up or arresting them for BS. At this point I'd like to say that the protesters have never gotten violent. The most "violent" thing they did was throw massive paper airplanes across the fence.

But I feel like shit really hit the fan on the 24th of June. For context, 25th of June is Slovenian independence day.

So Slovenian Antifa organized an anti celebration on Prešeren square in Ljubljana (Slovenian capital) on the 24th, as to say "we don't support this government and what it's doing to our country". That's when the Nazis roll in. They saw what the antifa was trying to do and they said "okay, we'll go to Prešeren square as well as to show our support to the government". There were about 50 of them and they were all wearing neon yellow vests (no correlation with the Yellow Vests movement in France btw - they just stole their symbolism). Some (I think 11) of those "Yellow Vests" had Nazi tattoos and some of them were identified by other people as active members of the Slovenian neonazi group called Blood&Honour.

On the 24th, the police also put fences around half of Ljubljana city centre. People couldn't get to their homes, cars, bikes because the police wouldn't let them through... They [the police] did that so that the government officials could have their own private independence day celebration (on the Congress square which is about 200m from Prešeren square) without having to listen or look at the protesters.

After that, the nazis came to three more protests before deciding to "leave us alone" by mixing into our crowd (their words not mine), taking pictures of us and trying to expose us on their twitter account (@/RJopici). They call this "yellow monitoring" and they said they specifically target middle aged people employed in the public sector, NGOs and or on RTV (RTV is radio television Slovenia basically like the BBC)

What's happening right now

Janša is pushing to shut down RTV (the biggest independent media house in Slovenia). He says it's a leech to the Slovenian budget and not even necessary (because most of his voters watch Nova 24 TV anyway which is Janša's TV company and it's basically like the Fox news). Shutting down independent media is simply unacceptable. Hungary and Serbia already shut down most (if not all?) independent media and idk about Poland? But Janša looks up to those countries and wants Slovenia to be like them. So yeah, Janša and SDS are pushing to shut RTV down entirely or at least cut its funding. This on it's own is a bad thing, but it's really put in perspective when you see just how shitty and biased the reporting of politically owned media like Nova 24 or Planet TV is. They lie and turn everything around to cater to their agenda.

The other thing that's happening is we have an increased number of corona cases. We were down to only 6 active cases so the borders opened and a lot of Slovenians went to Croatia (which is a popular tourist destination for like most of Slovenians). So people brought in new cases from abroad and as of 25.7. we have 241 active cases (which isn't a lot compared to other countries but we are pretty small). Despite that, the government still doesn't want to shut down the borders again or at least put Croatia on the red list because putting Croatia on the red list would mean people returning from there would have to go into a two week self isolation period and that would mean people would be discouraged to travel to Croatia, obviously. But I'm pretty sure our government gets a share of the money Croatia makes from Slovenian tourists, which is why they don't want to restrict travel to Croatia just yet. Probably once the tourist season is over, they will restrict travel immediately.

Instead Nova 24 TV is blaming the protesters for the rise of infection numbers, which isn't true. If the new infections were in fact caused by the protesters, then Ljubljana would be the epicenter of the epidemic (since that's where the biggest protests are), but as of right now, Hrastnik is actually the epicenter and Hrastnik is in a whole different region than Ljubljana.

There's also now talk about stepping away from the Istanbul convention (just like Poland did) - but right now it's just some of the right wing politicians tweeting about it. As far as I know, Janša's government is also looking to privatize healthcare (rn we have free public healthcare). Obviously they won't do that in the middle of the epidemic, but it's one of their interests.

That's not even counting all the racists, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic and misogynistic comments our politicians make on twitter daily.

Oh and if you're wondering where our president (Borut Pahor) is amidst all of this, he's posting selfies on Instagram and refusing to acknowledge the situation at all.

TLDR: our government is corrupt and wants to shut down independent media and just all in all make our country more like Poland or Hungary and people aren't happy with that

If anyone is from Slovenia, feel free to fill this in if I've missed anything or got anything wrong

[lmr-lea]

idk whats the real purpose behind this text but i feel like there are some things that i just have to say in order to not fall apart rn. yesterday i cried, at some point it just hit me out of the blue and i started crying - unconditionally and without a reason. afterwards i cried some more - stayed up until 4 am and cried even more after that. everything crashed down at once, job, university, me manipulating all my relationships until i pushed everyone away. i never really gave myself time to process and to think about everything that happened during this, or even last year, i‘ve always been a rly private person (outside of this acc🤣).

i’ve always loved love - because i love so deeply, because i care so mutch abt people who care so little. my expectations of people fucked me up over and over again. i held people up while i was at my lowest.

last night i prayed, i turned all the lights down and kneeled in front of my bed. eyes closed. i enjoyed the 20 minutes of silence. and after i finished i came to the conclusion that its me. even tho its hard to really let shit like this sink in, its always been me. i manipulate every relationship i have / have had over the past years because i always felt like i haven’t been enough. whenever someone treated me right i got scared and ran away. whenever someone cared about me i thought their unloyal to me out of my toxic experiences during the past.

the fact that im going to be alone for the next 4 weeks (work usw. is shut down due to corona issues) scares the fuck out of me.

i dont even know what is going on right now but ist so fucking much that i dont even know what im crying abt no more.

its the guy thats not texting back, its the feeling that nobody gives a fuck abt me, its me not knowing whether i can or cant aford another month at my university. right now its everything.

last night i deleted every fake account on instagram (i dont even know why i had them in the first place), and im going to delete snapchat and twitter too- which might sound stupid to some of you is the only possibility for me to stay sane right now. there is so much grief and pain in my heart right now and i dont know where its coming from. im trying to give love everyday but it feels like the barrel has finally overflowed. right now should be about me and about me only. i know what i want. i just dont know how to get it rn - everyone teaches you how to love but nowbody teaches you how to let go. thats where my focused should be at right now.about letting go. about finding myself in all the places people left me in during the past years. everybody knows that my mental healt never been the most stable thing in the world. thats why im so scared. im scared to let go. im scared to leave the things behind that i love because if we dont have love, what do we have? i love oversharing because i wanted to be seen, i wanted to be noticed. right now all i want is peace and it seems like i lost it- i cant find it in my books, my paintings or crafting no more. i cant find it in my music or poetry anymore. i crave the deepest connections with people but im to scared to let anyone in. i want to be loved but i can’t accept love when i receive it. as i said i dont know what the purpose of this was. big thanks to everyone who took the time to read this nonsense. even bigger thank to those of you who took the time to understand my words. you are incredibly loved. please dont ever forget that. may you protect ur peace at all costs. may god keep all of you safe. love always

[warwaged-archive]

I’ll just make a list or I’ll never get this done, but this is about divergences in how I write lor’themar. I am canon based (but as always also very reliant on my own headcanons to expand stuff and fill in blanks) up to Legion. 

he was friends with sylvanas once upon a time, but to make a call back to that after it has literally been ignored most of the time is lazy and the way it’s done just makes it seems like he didn’t care. his relationship with her is complicated, both because of what it was in life and because of their interactions after she died, with lor’themar not being able to trust her and the other dark rangers in silvermoon and sylvanas extending a hand then wanting more of his people to die on a battle they weren’t ready to fight. I don’t think there’s been trust from either side for a long time, but sylvanas is his oldest ally amidst the other leaders, in spite of how sketchy an ally she is.

honor, as a concept, is not in his top five priorities probably. honor helped them very little in fighting arthas, or dealing with kael’thas, or restoring their kingdom, and while lor’themar understands its value, he doesn’t place it above the well being of his people (see also: would switch factions in the blink of an eye if it guaranteed it’d best for the sin’dorei). 

he does have limits though, and burning teldrassil, murdering most kaldorei and making them undead afterwards just hits too close for comfort

like, deceiving the kaldorei so teldrassil would have a smaller defense force, then marching on it and taking it for the horde? sure. that’s all fine and good. but blowing up the entire thing and killing everyone and making the ones left undead is just. Too Much.

with all of that what I mean to say is: from that moment he has 0 allegiance to sylvanas. he doesn’t like night elves but what she’s doing would bother him enough I can’t see him not confronting her about it. it was different with garrosh, who he not only didn’t know on a personal level and had no ties to, but who he knew enough to be wary of from the start (and to know voicing his issues to would only make things worse). he knew sylvanas, he has some tie to her still, and even if he didn’t, there’d be the emotional reaction of seeing someone who was dear to him and who he chooses to remember fondly for what she was in life suddenly appear to be following on the footsteps of the very monster she gave her life to fight.

how she’d deal with it is ofc up to sylvanas. for the most part, it doesn’t change things heavily because in spite of that lor’themar wouldn’t withdraw from the horde. he has negative levels of trust in humans, thinks the alliance is in fact rather stupid to be following a child and is very aware that between the kaldorei and jaina there wouldn’t be much of a welcome to his people either. 

that’s all to establish this is the important thing when he switches sides. couldn’t give a single fuck about sylvanas raising humans against their will, she’s been doing that for a while.

still! given he voices his opposition at the beginning, wouldn’t it make a lot of sense sylv sends him to nazjatar, given she was sending people to die? so yeah! sends him on the boat with nathanos to fight the alliance

he ends up in nazjatar, as he canonically does. ends up leading the horde forces there when nathanos fucks off to do his thing. gets to befriend thalyssra somewhat while there. 

lor’themar’s decision to work with the alliance is one he does solely out of need. he won’t ever be truly friendly to jaina until she’s at least been held accountable for murdering his people in dalaran. walking away is a fine lesson and all ty taran zhu, but it’s not fair to his people that he let it go while jaina faced no consequences whatsoever. 

on that note, vereesa can choke he’s never making amends with her ever

windrunners stop fucking things up challenge

anyways! back to bfa! he respects baine, but his imprisonment is really just the last drop, not what prompts switching sides on its own. 

I just think it’s more fitting with him, as a character, to make this less about the horde and honor, given those are not the things that drive him as a character or even a leader.

ultimately it does lead him to the same realization that they can’t fight azshara and n’zoth or whatever while also still fighting the alliance, a goddamn lot of people already died in this war and keep it going will only make things worse, but sylv doesn’t care and is sending them to die and imprisoning those who oppose her so it’s time to switch sides ig

I know in canon he’s all like ‘I had hoped my old friend would see reason’ while talking to the PC but I think it’s also important to note that I don’t write lor’themar as being genuinely open towards anyone he doesn’t have some degree of trust towards. his feelings are private (and he often pushes them to second place when it comes to how he feels vs what must be done or just his job so). it’s not something he would speak of in general tbh unless prompted to, and even then it’d be more ‘I had hoped she’d never go that far’ more so than ‘hoped she’d see reason’

he really doesn’t feel guilty for saurfang dying idk what that was about

I maintain he’d very much be like ‘will you be warchief again, thrall?’ as soon as that was being discussed, because he won’t be warchief thanks but no thanks

is ok with signing the truce. keeping the war going is of no benefit to quel’thalas or the horde so

rip talanji but sometimes it be like that

he is very on board with the council idea. the sin’dorei have already suffered plenty under shitty warchiefs and the idea of a council making decisions instead is a big improvement on his opinion

thalyssra is a tentative friend at most. lor’themar doesn’t trust people easily to be quick in considering anyone friends fast. back in legion, he did not interact with her, liadrin did --- his friendship with her only begun after legion/early bfa, and while he does see her in a friendly manner, that’s it tbh

so like, I do not write him being in a relationship with her as canon has it

a moment in verse never happened

during what would be the shadows rising timeline he’d be very concerned with finding out what sylvanas is up to because she could be a threat to all of them and they have 0 clue what is her goal. 

anything that happens in the book in regards to him specifically, too, I do not follow. he wouldn’t be the one to suggest open negotiations with kul’tiras (did I mention jaina never faced any consequences for what she did and that’s unfair to his people)

he’d take a very personal interest in the council to guarantee the best for the blood elves always. 

the only way I can accept shaw’s spies catch him writing something like “My dusk lily bends more each day toward the sun.” is if he was aware he was being spied on and did that purposefully to give the alliance useless information tbh (and had a moment of lol what if I write some shitty poetry and make them think that’s how I spend my time)

other than that yeah no he’d not do that unironically 

lor’themar can be very diplomatic if he wishes to be, and he’s not prone to being open with his thoughts/emotions when he’s acting as regent lord, and by extension as a member of the council. he can also be a bitch when he doesn’t think diplomacy is necessary. 

he’s learned a lot being part of the horde, and definitely grew with it too. he certainly is a much more tolerant person he was in the past, and has come to see many of the other races in a different way than he used to. I do think he doesn’t want to leave the horde as he may have once, but his loyalty will always be first and foremost to the sin’dorei. his morals are not orc or tauren morals, and like, when it comes to do the honorable thing or what benefits his people, he’ll do what benefits his people. what I mean with all of this is: don’t expect my lor’themar to be crying about saurfang and yelling honor and holding hands with jaina kasndfkjsdfn

he also doesn’t look 5 thousands years old. let lor’themar be pretty like he deserves to be.

[july-19th-club]

about to just start inventing picard episodes

star trek picard episode whatever “Electric Sheep”: Cris, Raffi, and the gang beam down to pick up supplies for malfunctioning holograms. Soji and Geordi conduct an experiment on lucid dreaming. (geordi’s here because i love him and the experiment they’re doing is ‘if soji puts enough parts of her brain in sleep mode can she or geordi talk to a remnant of her dad in there’ and the result is ‘yes and there are seventeen individual lines of dialogue that will have you bawling like a baby’. then they have to pilot la sirena out of a contested patch of space together because they accidentally let her drift while they were doing weird science and everybody else is planetside having wacky market haggling shenanigans and emmett & enoch are still not online. do they sit in The Correct Spots On The Bridge? brother, it’s the only reason the scene exists)

star trek picard episode whatever 2 electric boogaloo “Dinner and a Holonovel”: Raffi and Seven go on their first official date. Meanwhile, La Sirena receives a coded message from one of Raffi’s mysterious contacts. (in this one Raf and Sev get dressed up but they’re both sort of uncomfortable doing so and they try to have a date but neither of them are enjoying themselves trying to be normal, because Raf’s an old reprobate who’s definitely forgotten how to Have Fun With Others and Sev never learned because it wasn’t relevant to her interests. but then they wind up in some trouble(maybe they deliberately seek it out sort of unconsciously bc they’re bored) and it becomes a fun bar fight date that they really enjoy. everybody else is playing twenty questions trying to figure out this weirdly-encoded message for her bc she’s busy. they come back all bruised and grinning and the whole gang looks up at them with this half-decoded message and is like what kind of life do you lead).

star trek picard episode whatever 2 the sequel “Dr. and Mr. Smith”: Raffi’s contact has asked the crew for their help in a...discreet political matter. (it’s a reverse heist episode starring everyone’s two favorite sort-of-semi-retired-?-spies (if we are spies no we are not. yes we are. no <3). julian and raffi have a very good rapport and sev and garak don’t understand each other AT ALL. yes they are together in this one. no i dont think we need much backstory on when or how it happened i will leave that to the experts and their fucking youtube plays. keep up the good work. what are they reverse-stealing? idk yet it’s just a vehicle for character dynamics anyway).

star trek picard episode we cry a lot “The Daughters”: Soji confronts her legacy when an old friend of her fathers hails La Sirena, eager to repay a debt. (although to be honest, when is our sweet girl NOT confronting her legacy? that bitch is all legacy; she’s got legacy frankly oozing out of her positronic pores. this is partly a story about soji, but it takes a while to get there. first it’s the story of Sarge, who had an imaginary friend when she was six...

she can’t pinpoint exactly when she came up with him, and she doesn’t even remember what she named him - but she knows it happened sometime around the evacuations, and when they all moved back home and the world started growing again - lush and fast from the rich volcanic soil - she used to spend hours playing around with her birthday-gift radio set, ‘talking’ to her imaginary friend. of course, she never got actual replies, but as she aged out of the phase she retained an interest in radio and communications, and her parents indulged it and bought her more and better equipment, enrolled her in science programs, fed her curiosity. until one day as a young adult doing a school project on theoretical outer space transmissions, she arrived at a theory which (she later describes it as a CLICK, like something is settling into place in her brain) could account for the existence of extraterrestrial life, just out of reach. and perhaps, she posits in her presentation, the reason no aliens had yet contacted her world had little to do with them not being there and much to do with them choosing not to respond. the goal, she concluded, was to continue reaching out - to close the gap. she wrapped up the presentation with a nod to nostalgia. “And maybe someday, those friends will be imaginary no more.”

she wins an award for the project, and begins work in her chosen field that’s extremely rewarding, but it is still years before she reaches her second conclusion: the logical leap that if future alien contact was not only possible but likely, her imaginary friend might have been a real person after all. she brings this idea up with her mother one night over dinner, and her mother is somewhat alarmed - what do you mean you think you were talking to aliens, you couldn’t do that on a child’s transmitter kit, adults??? adult aliens? what are you saying they said to you? - but she can’t answer. she doesn’t have clear memories of that time, only an unshakeable conviction that the life she may have contacted is closer than anyone could possibly imagine. and so she starts a new project. she digs out the old childhood kit, fiddles with the dials, finds the frequency she used to tune it to. in her mind’s eye there’s the impression of a clear, frank voice, but no words. she tunes her own, more modern and complex instruments, to the same frequency, and keeps listening.

one day, she hears something. this time, she doesn’t talk first. the next few months are a whirlwind of information-gathering. there are people out there. whole societies. she pieces together the basics of what she’ll eventually learn is the prime directive; enough ships pass by the atmosphere of her world that she’s able to form a working conclusion as to why the come close but never hail. they know we’re down here, she thinks, they just think we’re not ready.

and maybe they don’t have the kind of boats that could get you that far into the sky. but she’s always been resourceful. she picks up a new frequency, and starts listening to starfleet. and after a few months of listening and planning, she starts packing. she takes the kiddie transmitter kit, she takes clothing designed for all-weather wilderness exposure, she takes the kind of emergency preserved food that people used to keep by the pallet in case of earthquake, and she takes a few other trinkets she can’t live without. and when the time is right, she hails. it might be a combination of luck or goodwill, but she manages to convince a passing freighter that she is the stranded comms officer of a downed private ship, the only survivor of the wreck hiding out on a pre-warp world. they beam her up and the first few weeks are very touch-and-go, but she manages to convince them she belongs up here, that the people who look like her are very far away and not just under their feet, darting around her green little world like a hill of bugs under the eyes of giant birds. she gets off at the nearest starbase, and she starts exploring.

she takes numerous vessels to numerous worlds, gathering information all the time. she starts calling herself Sarge, instead of Sarjenka, and it makes people think she’s a military type and nobody bothers her. she stops at a library planet for a month and researches everything she can about the major governing systems in the galaxy. without much to go on - no name, only a vague physical description (tall? pale? humanoid?) - it’s hard to determine exactly what kind of vessel the Friend would have been on, if indeed he existed. the yellow clothes, one of her few clear recollections, lead her to guess starfleet, but starfleet is a massive organization and so many of its vessels have come near her homeworld that it seems unlikely she’ll be able to narrow it down like that. so she tries a different tack, searching for the other two vague faces that she can bring to mind. one is a middle-aged woman, humanoid, but the search turns up nothing; the woman is a doctor who has retired from the organization and now works at a teaching hospital near vulcan. the other is a bald man with a deep voice, humanoid, and his record turns up an absolute deluge of information. she skips past most of it; she’s inpatient now, if anyone knows about the Friend he will, and so she checks his last known location. on board the private supply-class ship La Sirena, captained by ex-starfleet officer Cristobal Rios. Rios is tall, dark-haired, and humanoid, but absolutely nothing about him rings that little mental bell. she checks his last docking location. the ship visited a reclamation site briefly, and then disappears from the record.

but Sarge is nothing if not a searcher, so she adjusts her frequencies and tries again. it’s months before they’re in proximity to one another, months in which she’s taken the opportunity to secure her own vessel, a little rented, dented passenger bucket that’s probably worth more in repairs than the price she got it for. but she trades radio repairs for ship repairs at the port where she buys it, looks up its name (Avis) and finds it acceptable, and then she’s in the sky. she tools around exploring new bases and stations, and keeps the hail open. and one day, it’s answered. a human voice answers. “Avis, we read you. What can we do for you?” they go on-screen with each other, and she sees first the captain - the bearded guy - and then...him. the old man. he is an old man, the bald guy, and his eyebrows raise when he sees her come on the viewer.

“Permission to come on board?” she asks. “I have something which might belong to one of you.”

the old man looks wary for a moment, but then he turns to someone behind him, they exchange some quiet words, and he nods. “Permission granted.”

there’s a young woman waiting for her at the transport platform. shorter than her by a good half meter, humanoid. pale. “Dr. Soji Asha,” she says, “You look...”

and Sarge could swear she’s about to say ‘familiar.’

“Sarge,” she says, and the woman’s small hand grasps her long one in a firm shake, and then waits patiently while Sarge performs greeting, letting her fingers just-not-rest on the woman’s shoulders and arms. “I’m actually looking for an old friend of mine, and I thought you might have his whereabouts. Tall, pale, starfleet officer? Ops gold. I know that’s not much to go on, but if it helps, he would have once contacted and established a rapport with pre-warp Drema IV? Humanoid, but not human. He...” It’s weird. standing here, explaining herself to this quietly-held young woman, Sarge is able to articulate better than ever before her half-formed memories. “He told me once he was a machine.” and then, like another CLICK is settling, she has a name. At last. “Data.” I knew he’d had a name.

the woman’s face lights up and falls in such swift motion it is hard to tell which comes first - the recognition or the sorrow. but they’re both there, clear and present. “Dad died almost twenty years ago,” she says. “But if it helps, I have a positronic clone of his brain.”

Sarge starts laughing; she doesn’t mean to, but the way the woman - Soji - says it, so matter-of-fact, so frank...she stops herself before it’s rude, but Soji’s laughing too. “Sorry, I -”

“No, don’t - how do you - how did you know Dad? Come on, come with me -”

“What happened? I didn’t know him for long, I barely remembered him, but I knew he existed -”

“That’s a long story. Do you want to meet the crew?”

Soji reaches for her hand, and with a feeling of mechanisms interlocking as they properly should, she takes it. they start walking. “Oh.” She’s almost forgotten. “If...if he’s not around to take it back, then this might belong to you.” She reaches in her pocket and holds it out: a small, ceramic singing bird.)