#just generally not liking someone in the context of sports can feel like you hate them cause you're always at odds w them

[fortyfive-forty]

karolina and aryna for the bingo

-fritzes

i wish i could make an amendment to this format because i would like aryna to push ME down the stairs and crush ME like a soda can

aryna:

karo:

[radfemfyodor]

I don’t understand Liberals due to many reasons. One of them is believing that transphobia is comparable to actual bigotry.

For context, I shared my thoughts, that I feel like many, if not most people who are afraid of being accused of being terf are afraid not because they disagree with terfs, but because they fear harassment. As one of the examples I mentioned my own situation and how I was afraid to admit that I’m a RadFem, because I was too scared of how people (both in real life and online) would react to this information.

A Liberal obviously had to compare transphobia to actual bigotry, such as racism. “God, imagine if this person hated literally any other group based on any other dumbfuck reasoning” - Biology is a dumbfuck reasoning? I will try to explain my beliefs again, because Liberals water down my views to “Ugh I hate those troons! 😡 I hate them because I’m a hater and have no actual reasoning! 🤬”

Gender is a social construct based on stereotypes about women and men. Without stereotypes about women and men there is no gender and vice versa.

Let’s first look at trans women/transfems: Transfem to “validate” his “identity” will do activities usually associated with women such as wearing color pink, skirts, dresses, makeup, having long hair and doing nails. These activities don’t involve only physical appearance. Transfems often sexualize themselves on purpose, which isn’t only wearing revealing clothing. For example, many transfems like to use terms (mostly for female genitalia) from pornography, especially in their usernames. What I’m going to say now doesn’t specifically happen only in the transfem community, as it happens in transgender communities in general, but from my own experience it happens in transfem spaces more often - they defend pornography with their life, spread lies that Sex Work is “empowering”, their pages are full of pornographic content. If you tell them about the realities of Sex Work, they call you a swerf and bigot. Trans women’s/transfems’ “identifying” as women is in reality “identifying” with misogynistic stereotypes.

Now let’s look at trans men/transmascs: Transmasc to “validate” her “identity” will basically live comfortably in her body. She will stop shaving, wearing makeup, clothing that makes her uncomfortable such as short skirts and heels. There’s a high chance that she will cut her hair and not care about her clothing at all except the fact that it has to be comfortable to wear. Being “transmasc” is just not fitting patriarchal roles for women - trans men/transmasc are women who don’t fit into the patriarchal norms.

What I’m saying doesn’t come out of nowhere, I was a TRA for almost 4 years. All I have said comes from my and other people’s experiences. What I said about transfems is harsher and longer, because I’m tired of males “identifying” with our oppression, invading female only spaces which also leads to female only spaces getting removed. Almost no lesbian bars, because males who “identify” as women can go there and if you refuse to let them in, you are accused of bigotry. Males take part of women’s sports, which is unfair. Women and men are separated in sports due to differences in our biology. Males going to women’s restrooms and change rooms, often to harass women in these places, and if you don’t let them to go there, you are called a bigot. Notice how transmascs don’t invade male only spaces at all - transmasc don’t demand to go to men’s restrooms and change rooms, aren’t taking part in men’s sports either.

All these genders are just harmful stereotypes, making someone believe that they “were born in wrong body”. You weren’t “born in wrong body” because you don’t fit patriarchal gender norms. Liberals are convinced that I’m against gender, because I “hate” trans people and “I want them dead”. I’m against gender, because I want women to be “masculine” and men to “feminine” without them believing that there is something wrong with their bodies. I don’t want people to take hormones they shouldn’t and mutilate their reproductive organs, because they don’t fit stereotypes about their biological sex.

“Imagine if they were, say, racist and saying how hard it is to be a racist nowadays” How not denying biology is same as racism? HOW? Liberals have the weirdest comparisons, recently I got compared to HITLER… I don’t believe that transgender people aren’t humans, that they’re inferior, that they deserve to be assaulted and killed. Comparing me to actual bigots, because I’m aware that humans can’t change their biological sex is beyond crazy.

“No shit it’s hard and sad and annoying to be a hateful person, we don’t want that type of shit in society, It is unacceptable. It SHOULD be hard and make you afraid to be an out-and-proud bigot” I’m not a “hateful person”, I just don’t deny biology. It’s so… weird and stupid that nowadays being aware of the fact that women are adult human females and men are adult human males is bigotry. It’s regressive to deny these facts, accept them for your own good.

I’m not a “hateful” person, my “hate” is a genuine concern - I don’t want people to suffer mentally and physically, because they don’t fit patriarchal norms. Instead of encouraging people to take hormones they shouldn’t and mutilate their reproductive organs, let’s make them aware that it’s completely okay to not fit patriarchal stereotypes about their biological sex.

[signedmio]

Love the blog theme and colours! Esp the header. Can I get a HH matchup? The description is mostly pasted from another ask I did before, but like, I really don't have a new way do describe myself. Idk if this is as bad as sending the same propmp to two blogs, lmk cause I don't want to be disrespectful here

★Gender and pref: I’m a he/she and choose how I present myself based on the setting bc I’m not that open with ppl (yeah, it’s important to express yourself but realistically that won’t get me far in certain settings in my country); no gender pref but I’m not too fond of some writing choices when it comes to women in Viv’s works, depends on a character though

★Looks: my style has a rockstar gf vibe? Sometimes softer colours too. I'm 5’7, athletic but not ripped, gray eyes and wavy blonde hair. Ironically (in this context) lots of ppl call me an angel/angelic-looking. Not going to lie, that feeds into my ego a little bit but I don't really get what they mean. I wear makeup too, love the fox eye trend

★Personality, hobbies: I’m social and extroverted. Usually that leaves me as a leader of whatever group I’m in. I have a little bit of a hater in me, but I don’t show it if ppl don’t encourage it. I do like when it’s being enabled though. It’s not convenient when you’re in a position where ppl ask you for opinions and actually follow your guide, yk, if I manage an event I’m not going to go around shit talking everything. It feels nice to have someone who does that though, makes it easier to join in and not feel like a jerk (or at least be jerks together I guess??). I write my own songs and am in a band as a backup vocal. Kinda proud that it’s my band but I need to get better until I step up as anything more. I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I like to tease ppl if given the opportunity. Others say I’m flirty. Bold with it at that. I’m ambitious too. Kind of a big thing but I have npd (if you want to look it up without reading scientific papers, go on tumblr, the rest of the internet is filled with ‘demonic narcissism’ bullshit) and it influences the way I am. I care lots about my image and don’t have a ton of empathy. I don’t go kicking puppies, but it’s noticeable how I lack in this department. Sometimes people say I’m ’too nice to have it’ 🙄 cause i do well with kids and do all the youth group volunteering. Also, I do some martial arts and other sports. Kinda sceptical of romance at this point cause I had lots of it and I don’t mix well with a lot of people, but maybe I could do something serious for once if I had the right person. I try to be responsible and respectful but I have no issue finding my place at a wild party or something. I'm pretty chill in general, but I can be soft-er if I want, like with children or if the few ppl I‘m close with (I've got many friend groups but I struggle to make meaningful connections) need me. Usually I just stay my highly analytical, laid back self and say my silly little comments every once in a while. Heard I’m pretty funny if I want to be. My love language is acts of service. I like small things and I do them a lot. I can do words too, but I don't care for them in return. Like, you can be an asshole (up to a limit, I know my worth) and it’s cool with me if I see you have your ways of caring like putting on a song I like in the car

★❤️&💔: love movies like Fight Club (my fav), American Psycho and Donnie Darko; hate sharks, they freak me out; my fav book is The Catcher in the Rye; hate it when people push me to open up and be emotional; love music and I unironically had a few guys play songs AT me and I actually like that too, tho I get why ppl clown on it

★My type: I like people who are more negative than me and aren't afraid to shittalk everything. Just saying whatever, not caring if they offend ppl (up to a point, some issues aren’t debatable ik). They have to be somewhat funny. Just… not serious all the time at least. Don't really care for morality (to a certain point, again) if you're charismatic and fun to be around, I’m along for the ride and happy to support whatever you get yourself into. I think I would get along with someone who had a little npd too, I like to be able to relate to my partner a bit. If they work somewhat similarly, I don't have to struggle with understanding some stuff, bc I already know how to manage an ego or grandiose behavior. As for looks. Idk, I don’t have a set type. I think maybe ppl that are bigger than me? I’m pretty athletic so it’s not hard, but I guess that’s been a pattern? Also, I do enough of leading as is so in relationships, I don’t mind watching from the side and supporting whatever my partner is doing

-★🎶

first of all, thx!! my blog is all lute themed because i love her sm haha, also imo it’s not disrespectful so dw, but if some other blog gives you crap, i gotchu, anyway this was such a hard tie between quite a few characters, but here’s who i decided to pair you with…

Angel Dust !!

I was debating so hard between him, Husk, or Charlie — but decided with Angel cause he’s a happy medium imo

I feel like you and Angel can bond well, but under the correct conditions and circumstances, like you both have been through shit and it sucked — and it probably still has a tight grip on you today, but you guys give each other the boost to keep trucking along, you’re each others reasons to get out of bed each day, each others cheerleaders for lack of a better term

You definitely enjoy Angel because he’s not afraid to talk a bit of shit, but he’s also not as serious as Husk, he can have a good time, he also matches your flirty energy a lot so you guys kinda just bounce comebacks and random shit off eachother

Angel is ALL IN for your “rockstar + angelic partner” look, thinks it’s hot asf, genuinely thinks you were in Heaven at one point or another because of how undeniably beautiful you are

Angel also enjoys the kickass hater in you, you guys could sit and gossip and talk shit for several hours, but you both kinda keep eachother in check from going too far — especially infront of others

Despite Hazbin being a musical, I’d like to think Angel is canonically a good singer, because cmon, how could he not be with a VA like Blake Roman?? So he could easily sing at and/or for you, bitch would serenade you😩😩

Also bro finds the fact that you hate sharks hilarious asf, I could see him deciding to be a little fucker and getting you a shark plush as a gag/joke gift on Christmas or smth (or I guess Hellsmas?? Idfk.)

[possibilistfanfiction]

"the neoliberal rhetoric of the pronoun (ESPECIALLY in english) as the ultimate form of advocacy" -- it's such a relief to hear your take on ava's thoughts on pronouns bc i've always been frustrated by how limiting they are? how much stress they cause? i know pronouns are important for some folks but also we're so much more than that...

whew like ok i work in dei, mostly for youth (sport, schools, etc) but also doing lgbtq 101 workshops for upper level execs who run big sports orgs, school districts, blah blah, & it's like... people really think that getting someone's pronouns right (or even trying to get someone's pronouns right) is like........ you have done it! u are not transphobic! u understand the nuances of everyone's gender if you use the right pronoun!

& like... i get paid a fair amount of money to lowkey sell out & explain what a pronoun is (lol) but at the same time it is the fucking bane of my existence. i personally hate pronouns. i think they are legitimately so stupid lol. like... to distill the vast nuanced experience of both having a gender identity AND being perceived at all times as a gendered being (which sometimes match & sometimes don't) into a PRONOUN is just baffling to me.

i think cis people (especially those who don't really want to do the work needed to understand what abolition means -- how queerness & especially gender expansive trans identities are a crucial part of the intersection of where that ethic is rooted) just see pronouns as a sort of easy way out. like you're cool with trans people if you can remember someone's they/them pronouns. it's so gross & so deeply tried up in representational politics (diverse oppressors are still oppressors, white supremacy can be present in ethic & politic even without a white person in the room, etc).

& of course like you said pronouns are definitely important to some people (it is always nice to feel seen & respected at the most basic level 🤪) & definitely not at all saying that anyone should like get people's pronouns wrong, obviously, but i just really hate the concept of how my entire experience as a dyke & a person in general has to be reflected to the world at all times in a silly word which is so vastly incomplete. & i genuinely (not anyone's fault!) hate how that can get tied up in my writing, especially my writing about queerness. when ppl rly care abt terms & IDs etc i can understand bc the common messaging is all rooted in neoliberalism & "representation" instead of anti-state resistance, etc, so it's like. okay lol. but i am intentional in the way i write queerness bc of my own ethic & politic, so you know

ANYWAY yes. queerness & transness is so deeply expansive, to make it only about (or mostly about) pronouns is, to me, ethically against what queerness & transness really is, especially if those pronouns are mostly talked about in the context of english. & i would be remiss in saying that using non-normative &/or neopronouns is a privilege rooted in safety. often i don't disclose they/them pronouns bc i just don't want to explain myself, & i deeply do not care, but i'm always protected in a lot of ways by my whiteness (& that i'm educated, able-bodied, cis-passing, employed, etc etc etc). for a lot of people, for a lot of reasons, pronouns aren't safe. being out as trans isn't safe. but that doesn't mean their gender identities are any different or less important or less vital.

so yah ur right sorry this is a rant lmfao & once & for all.... ava is the most anti-state anti-institution character lmao. she genuinely would not give a flying fuck about her own pronouns. god doesn't fit into a pronoun anyway :)

[consul-valerius]

Shipping with Damien💀🦇🗡️

The Darling of Vesuvia with too much to prove—and even more to lose.

Age: 24

Height: 5’3

Favorite Food: Candy—specifically chocolates

Favorite Flower: Roses

Star Sign: Scorpio Sun; Pisces Moon; Aries Rising [October 31st]

Likes/Hobbies etc.

Talking about wine—drinking it is another question 

Parties—to an extent 

Damien is a nerd at heart; art, science, history, local mythology/legends—he gobbles it up like candy and throws it all up on whoever he thinks will listen and not judge him lol

Particularly interested in death, preservation, and anatomy (GEE WHERE DID HE GET THAT FROM?)

Taxidermy—Damien does his own taxidermy and will often try to replicate magical creatures he’s read about

Sports—think horseback riding, shooting (bow and arrow), swimming, etc. This is often surprising to some people, but Damien is very competitive at heart and will use any chance he can to show off his physical prowess lol 

He’s a little pot head but his mama raised him right and he will be surprisingly VERY polite during a smoke sesh lol (he’s a bit of a lightweight though, which is endearing)

Dancing and singing; he often incorporates music into his magical displays at the palace (he’s like a proto-pop star in Renaissance times lol)

Dolls/toys/stuffed animals

Sweets—the best way to initiate a courtship is to get him something sweet, preferably chocolates 

Fiber arts—Damien is very experimental in his art (for Renaissance standards) and often incorporates fibers with traditional 2D mediums. He particularly likes knitting, embroidery, and felt, and he primarily uses oil pants and charcoal  

Dislikes/Potential triggers

Claustrophobic 

Afraid of the dark

Hates feeling like he’s being made fun of/the butt of a joke he isn’t aware of

Cannot stand someone speaking poorly of his parents, especially Donna as typically other nobles are particularly cruel

Anyone bringing up his “disappearance” in any context 

He has a bit of an emetophobia—he hates throwing up (see: ectoplasm boy lol)

Being sick in general and doctors in general 

Has many sensory issues to be mindful of, specifically with regard to touch and sound

Damien has a tendency to disassociate in the middle of a conversation, either for magic reasons, PTSD reasons, or more often some combo of the two 

Hates being touched without his permission—will become violent in response 

While Damien personally compares himself to his father, he hates when others do it to him, especially regarding looks 

Damien is. Complicated. 

Damien is well known throughout Vesuvia, and he has a multitude of suitors and playmates. He is deceptively sweet and charming, which gives people the impression that he is more invested in their relationship than he really is. Truly, Damien is a very shallow person and will sleep with who he needs to in order to rise to the top. Sex and romance are games to him, and he intends on winning (though what that means or looks like, he isn’t quite sure). It is not uncommon for some of his partners to see that he has written nearly identical letters to another person or has sent someone else a nearly identical gift. However, he typically always has an excuse up his sleeve, and if that fails, his crocodile tears are quite convincing to an unsuspecting person. 

With that being said, out of all of my OCs, Damien craves love and genuine connection the most. Someone will be able to tell easily if Damien is genuinely interested in them: he will script less of your conversations, will seek you out first, will open up more easily, etc., etc. He is a bit useless when it comes to people he likes, and it is common for him to withdraw entirely before he ruins things. He needs a long-term partner who is patient but firm with him and won’t just concede to his whining. (And of course, Damien has a laundry list of shit he needs to do before being able to be in a relationship at all lmao)

Damien grew up thinking he was, literally, a monster and still believes this. He doesn't necessarily think he is deserving of genuine love, and in many ways, he is still very much the hurt child he was all those years ago, scared and insecure. These are things that a partner cannot change or make better, which makes romantic ships much harder and more complicated (fun sex is on the table though lmao).

He is prone to very severe breakdowns, and he has a bit of a temper even on a good day. Patience, understanding, and communication are key for him. Once he is calmed down, he is able to self-reflect and apologize properly. He never wants to hurt people he cares about on purpose—he’s truly a big work in progress lmao 

Now let’s talk sex ! :D LMAO

Damien identifies as a dominant and will only take on a dominant role with suitors or new playmates. Sex and kink give him a sense of power and control, and he refuses to give that up to another person he doesn’t trust. However, he’s Donna’s kid at heart, and he deeply understands what it’s like to give up control and the trust that requires at the moment. He is very much inspired by older dominas, and his style and presentation reflect that (I'm still toying with a mentor character for him, but definitely a latex goddess lmao). He loves doling out punishments and just adores humiliating others—especially when he’s given enthusiastic consent to do so. He loves a sub that will lie on their back and beg to be degraded and stepped on lmfao He is not as invested in breaking a sub as much as he is in fulfilling both of their desires willingly. Damien was bullied very severely as a child, so he’s very big on aftercare and reflection after a scene with longer-term partners. He sometimes has a tendency to go overboard, so critique is important to him. 

That being said, if he is with someone he trusts and has feelings for, Damien is actually not that kinky and is much more docile and submissive LOL He can be a bit of a pillow prince with someone he likes, and he can get very whiney and needy. Sometimes he truly just wants to be fucked in the ass until he falls asleep cuddling you, and that’s that lol 110% has a daddy-dom fetish (as a submissive—not as a dominant lol), but it will be like pulling teeth to get him to admit it lmao

The other biggest thing of note with Damien is that he will NEVER do vaginal penetration. You will be bitten, literally, if you try to break this rule, and it won’t be by his mouth either. He is okay with clitoral stimulation once he shows someone how to do it, but more often than not, he will get himself off with his own hands. However, he loves anal and everything about it. Damien also requires that his gloves and stockings stay on during sex, and he will get violent if someone pushes him to take them off lmao

Annnd now here is a full list of his kinks and fetishes; I may be adding more in there as time goes on, but right now these are the core ones lmfao

[nonbinarygamzee]

Dave thoughts? I'm very curious about your hatred for that guy (if that makes sense)

HAHA ok so admittedly maybe my posts about how much i hate him are a bit overblown because i basically think its really funny that he only comes up on my blog if i am being a hater. integral to understand that while i post "fandom" content on here that i dont really think of this as a fandom blog so much as a blog where i come to have conversations with myself and so naturally just bc of who i am a lot of my little posts are full of context and meaning i never bother to externalize because they are for me to reread later and have a little chuckle about.

anyways. theres a lot of reasons i find him grating but i can at least admit it that a lot of my annoyance has more to do with the way i was forced to slog through strider manpain posts endlessly as a teenager any direction i tried to look. when the fandom seemed hyperfocused on him and his woes while actively sending me like graphic gore at like age 14 for saying hey maybe this other character also deserves some sympathy and maybe even analysis that has more to say than why they are an evil irredeemable monster for being unstable as a child. which yknow that isnt daves fault but man even without that part it was tiring to see all of the emotional depth constantly boxed into his corner. and then to repeatedly have the comics itself affirm all of this as valid exploration and then ridicule me for My exploration. for many many years the strider manpainisms made me not bother with dirk just on principle even though today hes one of the more interesting characters to me! so i can admit im not being totally "fair" here but well. as usual i think the fandom darlings can handle a fraction of the disdain ive see thrown my favies ways constantly for over a decade.

and like none of that to say i dont Get why people do this with him or that he deserved anything he got as a kid or it wasnt abuse or whatever. let the records show that i think it is Wrong to terrorize your brotherson with swords and sex puppets. im a feminist.

more rooted in the reality of the comic itself though i just find it grating how often daves sole function in a scene is to be the authors mouthpiece and specifically often in ways where you are meant to implicitly agree with the things he is saying irregardless of whether they are a centrist gen x nightmare opinion because its also the larger opinion of homestuck as an entity. dave is far from the only character to do this and id say any of the characters you could comfortably refer to as the "protagonists" actually end up slipping into this fairly often. that said the other biggest offenders imo are karkat, egbert and terezi and i also have feelings of extreme ambivalence for terezi and to be honest an outright disinterest in egbert. so. i am at least consistent about it! karkats my special guy but i need him hunted for sport and tortured until he stops being this and largely the things he believe that make me feel that way heavily align with the opinions the comic depicts as mostly right and again tend to be moments hussies worldview is bleeding into the narrative especially openly.

anddd ok. i just find daves personality grating on top of it. i cant sit here and pretend ive never laughed at a dave strider dialogue but generally a lot of the parts people find very funny are parts i tend to come away having seen the thousanth iteration of dave having his worldview affirmed and getting to do some #awesome clapback at the person insinuating he even try to think outside of his own preconceived ideas about what things should be like. in general in a story so full of characters doing bad things it just grates on me that, while his offenses are certainly usually "minor" in the grand scheme of things, the lack of willingness to challenge them often just means like dave gets to be right and nobody remembers when he actually massively fucks someone else up or makes them feel worse. like to be clear none of this is a problem in that characters cant "do bad things", i literally like vriska, but it would be cool if we could at least like. acknowledge that theyre anything but entertaining even within the context of the universe where other characters should be allowed to be uncomfortable when hes actively creepy or uses their emotional breaking points as a soapbox for how He feels. but since it would cause this big rift in how homestuck itself presents the opinions it wants you to agree with, those characters just..... not only do not mind most of the time but even if they do its never in a way that allows them agency in the matter. thats the crux of it all for me actually, hes by far one of the most autonomous characters of the bunch and it feels frequently like his agency is at the expense of others because hes a self insert.

um ok tldr hes annoying and him being the Face of homestuck is like..... accurate but in the most painful nightmare way because he kind of just. Is homestuck. to me.

(and i actually do see iterations of him sometimes that i find compelling but they all feel so detached from how hes presented in the comic that it just feels like someones oc. all of this said also i actually kind of have an absurd amount of thoughts on how he would act post game (epilogues ignored here) just i dont bother to do much with em because dave likers would hate it and other dave haters probably wouldnt care enough lol. also always secondary info anyways, hes finally allowed irrelevency in My city)

[n7punk]

oh my god I hate to think you thought people weren't LOVING lmr chapter 4! seems like there really was a universal lag in people not seeing the update, myself included. maybe more of your followers like football than u thought...

i didn't know there was any football stuff going on lol. i know there Are A Lot Of Sports Fans in the world in general but my vibe of the catradora fandom is that our football-viewer percentage is lower than average, unless you're talking about women's soccer 😂 i also think it was influenced by the archive having issues that day (partially down) since i had at least two people tell me they never got an email. I also didn't really mention i posted it on here - which i don't always do for fics, but i had been doing for the previous the chapters. i usually only mention it if im posting something or answering an ask anyway and can tack it on without like, having to make a Whole Post dedicated to it (this is a theme that will return later in this post)

normally when i do fic notes, i include a "what's next" section, but i left it off this time because im not sure, actually! i was initially planning (like, back a month ago when i first started writing) to do an au next but it would be a Lot and my interest is swaying towards canon rn so i thiiiiink it will be some OotW fics since i have a few wips for that and one In Particular that i need to figure out if its a one shot, or multichapter fic, or like two or three fics in a miniseries. i have like a dozen wips rn so its really hard to say.

i actually only realized i was posting on valentines day like two hours ago when i was given someone's milk chocolate haul since they only like dark chocolate lol. honestly im a bad person to ask this because im not one for dates or gifts or any of the stuff valentines is based on. i dont like Special things i just like the little everyday stuff, so valentines seems like a chore to me and its hard to come up with stuff for it. it also depends if you're talking like, in a modern au or for the etherian equivalent of valentines day. my vague answer is just they take it as an excuse to spend an entire day together since they love being around each other, or they go on a fun little adventure they havent found the time for yet. i can see them doing stuff with glimbow "double date" style too.

the answer is both! i go days without messages sometimes (which works for me because i like talking to yall but it also takes energy) and then other times i get a bunch at once. messages naturally gather around talking points (specific posts, fic uploads) so like, ive checked my asks twice tonight and had a decent number of asks both times, but when i posted chapter three i waited a few hours to gather some asks before replying since i knew they would be trickling in for the evening as people read the update.

it's also taken me two hours just to type out the replies in this post (which might give context to my "asks take energy" thing) so during that time more messages can come in and be answered in the same post as long as i remember to check right before i go to post it.

i like putting them all in one post just because it makes my blog and the dashboard experience Neater so i do it when reasonable, but i dont usually wait more than a few hours for the purpose of collection, if i do at all. it also lets me reply to and acknowledge some messages even when i dont have anything to say to them directly (like, i didnt have a reply to that ahhhh anon on its own, but it made me laugh so i wanted to post it, and by putting it in a larger group i can do that).

oh thank you! i feel like its something im actually terrible at since i do have a tendency to ignore/delete messages when im not up to talking (in general, or just dont have anything to say on the topic/in response). i do really love my comments and message tho so thank you to everyone who leaves them! i hope the blanket thank-yous are enough because usually they're the best ive got lol

idk i feel like never figured out the social interaction of thanking people (even/especially irl), so it makes me not reply to comments much because i feel like the best i can do is a canned, one-sentence "thank you!" response (and, of course, that still takes energy as mentioned with spoons, which doesn't feel worth what it "gives back" you know).

actually, ive talked about this for so long, so let me just take a temperature and i can gather responses (or post replies, those are great too!) for a bit: 1) are comments sections usually just [thoughtful comment]["thanks!"] and im otherthinking this because i havent read other author's comment sections, 2) do you Care if an author replies to your comment or not, at least when it's not a question (like, does it influence your decision to leave one if you think they won't reply. i personally don't care at all which is probably where part of my whole thing comes from), and 3) if it does influence you, does a simple "thanks!" really add anything to your decision. im almost certainly not going to change my approach because it's what im comfortable with, but i would like to know if im expending an unwarranted amount of mental effort on this XD

i have before! it's called Let's Get Physical. frankly its just harder to write lol

(also going back to the gathering asks thing, this ask came in while i was writing this post and thus got tacked on right after i posted it)

i have more lmr asks but im waiting until morning because spoilers and i want to put the reply to one in the fic tag so i think that should be in a smaller, more focused post.

[goblinconceivable]

it is vitally important that Sloan and Don exist

And I know that is true for me because I had an overwhelming urge to log in and leave myself a record of my sudden re-obsession. Because it's been 3 days and I already can't remember what reminded me of them in the first place.

Cassaravi's Counting Paths is a fantastic fanvid btw. I'd never heard the song but am growing more and more attached, I can see why it's used in vids a lot. Very much Dead Can Dance around the edges, I'll probably analyze it in a different post. I want to do something with it. And I really just want to write something that I can find the click and follow the beats. Everything I try has been uneven at best for quite a while.

So Sloan and Don. I do't know what the original intentions were for Sloan. I know Don evolved quite quickly from the initial plans. But some of the absolute best of Sorkin comes out of stuff surprising him and him being very wise and running with it. Donna/Josh ftw? I think because once the characters, actors, interactions take on a life of their own, he just writes them and great stuff happens. Otherwise his attempts at (non established relationships) are forced and the characters are defined by that, which is so anti-Sorkin that I'm too disappointed to have bought the thing so I could rewatch at leisure.

That's actually why I meh'd on The Newsroom quite a bit. It followed logically from everything he'd done (I adore Sports Night and The West Wing and have seen both many times), with swearing, and a hard left into a pond with the absurd characters. I actually like Mac, though it's sometimes hard to buy her as a real person. I hate Maggie and Jim because why are they there? Maggie especially, because, hilariously, she seems to serve as Don's girlfriend, when he was supposed to be her boyfriend. She's not great at her job when the hallmark of Sorkin is that everyone IS FANTASTIC AT THEIR JOB, that is the point. If they aren't, there's a reason, and the reason generally is because in his world, if you're inept it's because you are being willfully ignorant.

They're like Sorkin decided to write a different genre and should have tried writing a few shorts.

In this context, Sloan and Don are nicely fleshed out characters who I buy as real people with flaws, who are not written as star crossed lovers because there's no need, they actually fit together. Sorkin writes them as friends and the falling in love happens because sometimes that happens, and leads to the bestest relationships.

Don does a lot of the heavy lifting. I like the lowkey gender reversal, where, despite his fear of commitment, Don is actually a pretty emotional guy who is so straightforwards that intimacy just happens when he really cares about someone, and whose eyes show everything he's feeling. Who learns to trust his gut and shake off his jade armour. Sloan is a nerd lacking human skills, who starts tripping over the curb where intellect abuts emotions, and is comfortable with Don being there to catch her, help her up, or be the thing she lands on.

And the writing uses their relationship to highlight their growth individually and with the rest of the crew, a little sparkle around the edges gives it that littl..e something extra.

When Sloan is having a nutty, it is founded in logic (a logic) and the way she approaches the world. Which is why she doesn't feel ridiculous. And Don is a great foil because his sarcasm and emotionality means that he can bounce back whatever she needs, and what will connect with her.

It's super cute that Sloan asks a stranger (I think) if it would be too forwards to ask a man to coffee. I don't think she's ever asked a man out in her life, which leads to a lot of superficiality, and she likes it that way. But not really because when naked pictures are posted, she hunkers down in Don's office, where she's guaranteed to not be alone - even if she's "used to [it]" Also useful is her statement that you can't tell that bad guys are bad guys - in contrast with her being dead certain that Don isn't a bad guy. Maybe it's like how if you're worried you're crazy, you're probably not. If you think you're a bad guy, you're not. Not really.

Only one set of clips I've found had the scene where post "not a bad guy" speech, Sloan lays down a conversation and eye contact embargo. With, of course, a logical response to Don's fair point that the plan isn't realistic. Sloan demonstrates both self-awareness and also the sense of comfort she has with Don. She lays out her embarrassment, she doesn't immediately avoid him forever. Meanwhile I can very much picture her getting into a mortifying situation (especially if emotions are involved) and spending the rest of her life ducking around corners to avoid them. Yeah, working in the same offices poses a problem, but I don't believe that is what motivated her laying it out for him.

My first impression is that was her tacitly admitting she revealed too much, accepts the rejection, and would like to live pretending that never happened. This despite the fact that her belief they'd never see each other if she quit knocked up against his conviction that they would.

Bedtime but head canon that Don knew it wasn't her who signed the book, because he knows what her handwriting and signature looks like. Which is exactly the sort of irony Sorkin likes. I hope we saw the counterfeit book in his office somewhere - once Sloan found out about the forgery, her obsession with righting the wrong would make it valuable to him beyond making her feel good and not embarrased.

[liftoid]

about

Blake, they/them, 21

Don’t follow or interact if you’re transphobic, homophobic, racist, pro-ana or similar, etc. or a porn blog. Or do, so I can block you! 

More about me and this blog below!

I have a hobbyist interest in powerlifting and bodybuilding primarily (though I might post about other sports from time to time), and I study a lot about training and nutrition just because I find it interesting. I’m not an expert by any means, but I want to have somewhere to talk about this stuff and maybe find other like-minded people :) I find the fitness communities on instagram and tiktok to be toxic and/or full of nonsense and bad content so I’m hoping to find a better community here and only share the good stuff from other platforms.

Currently I’m using this blog as a log for my own current weight loss process. I am starting around 187lbs as a 5′8′‘ female (biologically speaking. I don’t identify with being a woman but my sex does have some importance regarding lifting and fat loss), and my hope is to get to around 165lbs by mid-May. I am expecting to fall short of that (at least in this timeframe), but I’ll be happy as long as I’ve made a substantial change in my body composition. I intend to post other things at some point, but I don’t have the time or energy to do that currently.

There will be information about nutrition and fat loss discussed here. If those things bother you, proceed with caution. For anyone who might see an interest in fat loss as a red flag for fatphobia: to be clear, I don’t “hate fat people” and I absolutely agree the way fat people are treated is horrible. I’m not “pro-ana” or pro-any other eating disorder. I have been obese for essentially my entire life and I’m very intimately familiar with the way the perception of fat people in society fucks you up psychologically, not to mention dismissiveness and mistreatment from medical professionals, and I continue to struggle with managing binge eating. I will say that from my personal experience virtually every aspect of my life has improved/gotten easier as I’ve lost weight and gotten fitter through exercise, both as a result of social consequences as well as the physical reality of no longer carrying as much excess mass. With that all being said, I think a person’s choice to lose weight or not should come from a place of personal conviction, and if someone is content being fat, that is their choice and I have no problem with that. If you see me as fatphobic given this context, please move along and don’t argue with me about it because I will never see eye-to-eye with you. I’ve given this a lot of thought and I don’t see my opinion significantly changing.

if you’re interested in getting into lifting, I recommend checking out Renaissance Periodization/ Mike Israetel, Jeff Nippard, Untamed Strength/ Alan Thrall, and/or Omar Isuf on YouTube. Their channels have quality information in a sea of bullshit, and they all have some videos aimed at beginners. These aren’t the only good channels out there, but they’re the ones that most immediately come to mind.

Stronger by Science (Eric Trexler, Greg Nuckols, and co) also put out phenomenal articles and have a great podcast that I strongly recommend! They focus more on digging into research and presenting practical ways to apply that information to your training and nutrition. They’re generally more “sciencey”, so it may be less approachable for people with less background knowledge. However, they’re by far the source of information I trust most.

I also think the channel Basement Bodybuilding presents valuable information/philosophy on training for bodybuilding in particular; his content is largely based on personal experience, but it aligns with evidence-based perspectives and offers some ideas on mindset that I don’t see as often in other places. 

As I start posting, I’ll update this as I feel appropriate. Thanks for reading!

[blindbeta]

Things I Want to See More of/Less of in Blind Characters

Format borrowed from WritingWithColor]

Note: This is not an excuse to harass blind/visually impaired/low vision writers writing in the ‘Less of’ category. You’ll see I have included several instances where a story should be written by a blind writer. You should also consider that blind writers have a lot more insight and flexibility about what they can write than you do, by nature of being blind themselves and therefore able to portray things in a more nuanced way. They cannot misrepresent themselves.]

Here are some things I personally would like to see in stories about blind characters!

-Characters with varying types of blindness.

I wanted to include more information at the request of my followers who felt confused by some of the wording, so I have edited this post as of 2022.

Types of blindness include: cortical blindness, progressive vision loss, blind spots, total blindness (meaning no light perception), characters with only light and shadow perception (note that some people also refer to themselves as ‘totally blind’ or ‘totally blind but with some light perception’ for ease of communication outside of medical contexts, but totally blind generally refers to people without any light perception at all), eyes with differing kinds of blindness (partial blindness, total blindness in one eye but not the other, etc), characters with low vision in both eyes, characters with prosthetic eyes. Keep in mind that visual acuity is measured through a person’s best eye with best correction.

-Blind main characters. Blind heroes and blind villains. Blind love interests!

-Blind characters who are considered attractive or charismatic

-LGBTQ blind characters! Polyamorous blind characters. Blind characters with additional disabilities. Blind characters of color.

-Active blind characters: in sports, martial arts, theatre, nature-y things, and art. Blind characters doing unexpected things. Playing instruments, being competitive, etc. This also applies to jobs.

-To add to the last point: I want to see them using adaptive technology or skills rather than magic that completely erases their disability. So rather than magic that enables someone to read, magic or technology that reads to them, like real-world technologies, or use of Braille.

-Using technology. Using phones, especially modern phones which have more accessibility options. Too many people don’t believe blind people can use phones and if you perpetuate that idea in your modern styled narrative, you need to fix it. Blind people also have radios, TVs, etc, and they do use them.

-Reading and writing in Braille

-Using canes, guide dogs, or a combination of both. Learn the pros and cons of these and maybe include more than one for different characters

-Stories with more than one blind character. Especially stories with blind characters interacting and having a sense of community, perhaps exploring diversity of opinions and ways of navigating the world. One thing I try to show on this blog is that blind people are diverse even in how they interact with their blindness.

-inventions or magic for blind people being invented/developed BY blind people

-acknowledgment of difficulties that blind people face: economic challenges, ableism from family (although stories focusing on this as a plot/theme just might be best left up to blind writers), barriers in transportation due to being unable to drive, lack of accessibility in entertainment and education

Things I Want To See Less Of:

Blind characters: -being portrayed as sad or broken because of blindness

-wanting to be sighted

-hating their glasses or canes

-being innocent, helpless, or unrealistically kind and selfless only because of their blindness

-being portrayed as ungrateful or rude in general but mostly when refusing help they don’t need. Characters like Toph are fine because her attitude has nothing to do with her blindness when refusing to make strangers feel good.

-being portrayed as rich or overly privileged in order to portray the character as spoiled/ungrateful, particularly for refusing unnecessary help or for asking for accessibility. [This worked with Toph because riches and privilege were used to explore different sides of her, such as a more socially competent/powerful side. It is important to remember that many disabled people struggle with income and finding employment due to various factors such as ableism in hiring, transportation difficulties, lack of accessibility in the workplace, changing vision conditions and other resulting health problems.]

-going blind due to accidents or trauma. I want to see this less often, as the leading causes of blindness today are unrelated to tragic accidents/incidents. The leading causes of blindness worldwide, according to the World Health Organization in 2022, are uncorrected refractive errors and cataracts. Workplace accidents, however, are the exception to this according to my research. In instances where you want to write a character going blind due to accidents, incidents, or other traumatic injury, it is helpful to consider how blindness is often portrayed as tragic. Narratives about traumatic accidents can strengthen the idea that blindness itself is inherently traumatic and tragic, even for those who are born blind. It can also increase the misconception that an accident is the most common cause of blindness. Because this idea is so strong, I usually prefer to avoid characters going blind through one-off traumatic accidents, and instead prefer characters going blind through other ways. However, if someone wishes to write characters going blind this way, such as due to a workplace accident, it is helpful to make an effort to separate trauma from the blindness itself where possible, rather than focusing on blindness as trauma throughout the story. These posts may help: one and two.

-avoiding certain words. Blind people do not go out of their way to avoid sight-related expressions unless it is an ironic joke. No one casually says ‘I was listening to a show’ unless it is audio-only. “Listening to a show on TV’ is not a thing unless it was on in the background- ‘watch’ is perfectly acceptable

-blind characters being ‘cured’, at least when they have conditions that cannot be cured completely or at all, such as Retinitis Pigmentosa—and, no, fantasy is not an excuse. The cure narrative is especially common for totally blind characters who have never been able to see, which would require lots of adjustment in real life. Cures also tend to erase blind characters from stories. I feel that stories like this are best left up to blind writers themselves. However, this post may help when writing a blind character’s remaining vision improving, complete with an addition from a person who had visual rehabilitation.

Of course, if you want to try writing some of these things, you are free to do so! I suggest consulting with a few blind people either way. My intention is not to hold anyone back, but to make people think. Many of my readers ask questions I had not considered and it is fantastic to engage with people thinking on this post and how to make some of these things work well in their stories.

[f1notebook]

I watched dts last year before i watched my first f1 race, i know you asked about 2022.. but i was so confused when someone told me seb and charles don’t actually dislike each other lmao cant wait what it will be this time

Hello Anon !

Well my request wasn’t only about this year DTS (as I haven’t seen it) but in general, and drivers rivalry are actually a big issue in the show.

This is going to be long, very long, so take a seat and enjoy my essay.

To understand this issue, we have to go back in time : in the years before (I would say before 2010 but especially in the 70-80-90-2000) F1 drivers were seen as “bad asses” they were “viril” in whatever the words means, though, emotionless. It was actually bad seen for a driver to express his emotions, his struggles or his doubts. A F1 drivers was seen as someone out of common.

In this context, actually they weren’t a lot of friendships between drivers, at least not when they were competing (once they retired they could actually become friends) but a lot were just : “I don’t have friends here” this actually transfers to some drivers now, and they “were used to hear it”, so it’s their response now even if they don’t feel like it.

In the other side, F1 is know as : “you biggest adversary is your teammate” I even believe it’s one of the first sentence we hear in the very first drive to survive season. And well it is partially true, your teammate has exactly the same equipment and resources than you, but we often forget F1 isn’t an “individual” sport.

It seems strange first, but F1 is actually a very strong team sport. You don’t build the car yourself, you don’t win races by been on your own, you need people. And for a long time, there was this mantra that F1 drivers were alone which isn’t true.

If we look back, for example to Ferrari Michael era, he was helped by his teammate, Rubens Barrichello, this is a truth. Even if, talent speaking, Michael was superior to him, I am not sure he would have won 5 championship in a row without the help of his teammate. Same goes for Lewis, especially in 2018, without Valtteri I am not sure he would have won it. And in the other years, he could have won it but not as easily as he did.

Teammates are essencial, even if you want to beat them, you have to work and walk as a team.

Let’s put an example :

Imagine, last year, Lewis had a new teammate, let’s name him Kim, he comes to F1, great talent, in testing, Mercedes is quicker than Red bull (imagine), but, very early, Kim and Lewis don’t get along (imagine a scenario similar to Lewis and Nico in 2016), Red Bull have a slower car but it’s a very marginal difference, but in the other side of the pit lane, Max and Sergio get very well along.

Now, what would possible happen is just Max and Sergio seat down together and just thinking: “These guys have a faster car, they have better strategies but they hate each other, so we have a card to play, because we get well along, so when they are going to battle each other, we are just going to help each other.”

That goes way behind the factory and building the car, yes, the sharing set ups and helping each other with the car behavior is important, but just imagine, Lewis and Kim are in different strategies (like what happened in Paul Ricard with a Red Bull) Kim is asked to let Lewis by, because they aren’t in the same tyre, the target is different, and as they don’t like each other, Kim refuses, slows down Lewis and it’s a potential points lose for Mercedes.

Even if we can argue that race engineer and strategist are there to prevent that, that isn’t actually very true, remember Seb with Mark and the Multi 21, Seb directly disobey an order from the team and I don’t believe he had any really consequences.

Now imagine they just crash each other (Max/Daniel, Lewis/Nico) are the biggest example. A team that is directly fighting with another team don’t have the luxury of just throwing away 25 points, because you don’t score those points ( any really) and you allowed your biggest adversary to score them.

Another factor, is that now, drivers who become F1 drivers, most of the time grew with each other (Pierre/Charles, George/Lando) they are just part of the same generation who are competing in the same categories for years and years, what wasn’t exactly the case back then.

And we all know, when you are a kid, you don’t care about rivalries, you just want to have fun out and in track. You can just crash into each other and play football in the same team 5 minutes later. Children don’t have the same perspective of problems and conflicts than adults. So it creates a scenario for them that is absolutely possible of having a “rivalry” on track and get well along.

If you opponent works 12 hours a day to become better, and you just work 10, you might think “I have to do more” rather than “I hate him”.

So this is the scenario that the new generations grows up with. Charles, Max, George, Alex, Lando, Carlos, Mick, Nicholas and all the new generation are part of this. So, yes this their reality.

Seb as been in the sport for a long way, he know how it works, so he knows my first point of “you have to work as a team to succeed” is true. And Charles knows my second point “You don’t need to hate each other” is true. So in this context, they don’t need to hate each other, and they have personalities that can fit each other. Seb is a very kind and polite man who already prove everything he had to, and in the opposite, Charles is a very genuine guy. They don’t really have personality traits that could make them hate each other.

Whatever to know that you have to follow them since a bit, seeing them in every kind of occasion (up and downs) to see how they react in the heat of the moment.

Of course this isn’t an absolute truth, of course there are teams that just don’t get along, and it’s normal, but from “don’t get along” to the “absolutely hate each other” that Netflix will tell you there is a big difference. They might not been the best friends of the world, but they are adults and know it’s a job, and their teammate is a colleague before anyone else.

Concerning Seb and Charles, at the end of they day you could see Charles ready admired Seb for everything he accomplished, and Seb respected Charles a lot and was very aware that Charles is a pure talent. Most of the drivers really respect each other but of course there is some contradictory examples.

For example de Mick/Mazepin relationship wasn’t healthy, and that is because of the very first point, Mazepin couldn’t understand they needed to be a team, for him there was one part of the garage, Mick’s one that he didn’t needed to be involved with, and the other part was for him, just “colleagues” and a job. It’s very important to understand that people in the garage work with you and not for you, and they have your faith in their hands. Mazepin didn’t got that and when things started to get bad, he just put the fault on Mick and Mick’s side of the garage, without putting himself in question. He wasn’t there to work with Mick but to beat him, that way the relationship wasn’t that.

It was kinda of long but I think is important to realize that teams relationships are of the crucial point in F1, there is not such thing as : wining for a team that hates you. And a healthy relationship is indeed the most important thing in a winning team, I still think is one of the reasons it took Redbull so much time to fight for the championship, indeed Toto Wolff himself said he didn’t want anymore an atmosphere like the one he had with Nico and Lewis, because he knows if the cars wasn’t as dominant that it was (most of the team factory work) he would win that many championship.

You too, send me an ask of points you wanted to be explain about Drive To Survive narratives, points that chocked you, or points that weren’t real, or even situations they turned to fit their narrative. Let’s explain to the new public what is F1 about, and that DTS it’s just a show

[amarimaryllis]

I Do Not Think I Would (Bokuto x Reader)

Pairing: Bokuto/Reader

Prompt/Summary: The rational side of you tells you to leave, but for Bokuto Koutarou, you choose to stay. Alternatively, Bokuto Koutarou’s fangirls are ruthless.

Tags: Angst, Fluff, Haikyuu Timeskip Spoilers

Note: I used she/her pronouns for the reader, Bold Italicized sentences are excerpts from the poem “Love is Not All” by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Warnings: Mild Swearing, Mentions of self-hate, Mentions of insecurity, Bokuto has toxic fans

Part of A Sensitivity to Ephemera

You met Bokuto Koutarou in your 3rd year at Fukurodani, but you had known of his existence for longer. It was hard to not know of Bokuto Koutarou if you studied in Fukurodani. Hell, it was hard to not know of him if you studied in Tokyo in general. Aside from the fact that he was the embodiment of solar energy, Bokuto Koutarou also had a ton of admirers.

Fangirls

Fanboys.

And everything in between and beyond.

However, the first time you ever interacted with him was in Honda-sensei’s room. It was quick, a brief encounter that promised longer ones. Bokuto’s grades had been slipping, and you were his assigned tutor.

“Bokuto-san, this is L/N-san from Class 6.” Honda-sensei introduces you two briefly. “She’ll be tutoring you until your grades are back to… Satisfactory. I trust you to not give her a hard time.”

“Nice to meet you, L/N-san!” Bokuto bows briefly, the grin plastered on his face, unfading. However, there’s a sense of urgency in his stance, vibrating, itching to run off. Probably because he had volleyball training, and nothing in this world could keep Bokuto Koutarou from his beloved sport.

You didn’t know why, but your heart was beating a little bit faster than normal.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;

After a few weeks of tutoring, Bokuto’s grades were slowly getting better. It wasn’t “satisfactory” yet, according to Honda-sensei, but you guys were getting there. As a celebration, right after volleyball practice, Bokuto drags you to the closest cafe and tells you to choose anything you want because it was “on him” as he enthusiastically stated.

“Bokuto-san, you didn’t have to.” You mumble bashfully as Bokuto sets a tray down and seats across from you.

“Don’t worry about it!” Bokuto grins as he slides the food over to you. “It’s the least I can do since you’ve been such a great tutor.”

A small smile makes its way to your face. “I guess I’ll take it then. Thank you for the food!”

As you eat, you can see Bokuto’s eyes continuously flitting back and forth between a spot on your face and away from it. He looked hesitant, but your sudden speaking urges him to reply.

“Is there anything on my face?” You furrow your brows, raising a hand to wipe at your cheek.

“Ah yeah, wait, not there.” Bokuto reaches over the table, a large hand cupping your cheek before he presses his thumb to the corner of your mouth and swipes to remove whatever it was on your face. “You had sauce on your face.”

Fire and ice could co-exist at once, you concluded. Because if it didn’t, then you would like to present yourself as evidence. You were frozen, but inside you, there was an inferno of different emotions swirling, sparked by a single touch on your skin.

That night, after Bokuto had walked you home and you had settled in for the night, you dreamt of black and white streaks paired with the brightest golden eyes. You let yourself dream. You knew that this was the closest you could get to him. The real world wasn’t as kind to you after all.

While you slept soundly, Bokuto walked home. It was raining, but it didn’t matter to him because as the rain drops onto his skin, he wished that it was your touch that fell upon him instead. And for a second as he imagines, it almost felt like it was.

And though he so desperately wished for it as he lied in bed, slumber never came. Instead, in its place, were a hundred different stories, a hundred different futures, a hundred different lifetimes, and they all ended with the sight of a bashful smile, and the prettiest eyes.

Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;

You gripped at your skirt tightly, fighting back the tears that threatened to escape your eyes. Fear gripped your chest as you watched Bokuto’s sleeping figure from your place on the chair beside the bed. There had been a small accident during Fukurodani’s practice match, a small collision, but it was enough to send him to the infirmary and you running after him.

It was stupid, you think to yourself. You had rushed to the clinic the moment your break started, and by the time you reached the room, you were a mess. The nurse only gave you a cheeky smile before she patted your back and said, “Don’t worry about your boyfriend. It’s a minor injury and it was probably just an ant bite for someone like him.”

Ant bites didn’t usually require sleep for recovery.

Also, he wasn’t your boyfriend, but you’d be the biggest liar on earth if you said that you didn’t want him to be. You were just his tutor. Sure you’d been tutoring him for a long time, and that was enough to form a friendship of sorts, but that was all you’ll ever be: a friend. So why were you acting like you were something more? Friends get concerned, they’ll drop by, check on you, go off once they realize it’s minor and you’re in good hands, and then wait for you to recover. They don’t stay, fussing, practically crying, and worrying over something so small.

You’re so caught up in your thoughts that the sudden placement of a heavy palm on your head startles you.

Bokuto chuckles as he takes in your disheveled state. Your eyes are damp, your hair is slightly messed up, and your skirt is still tight in your grip, but even then, he still couldn’t help but be mesmerized by the way you looked. “Hey hey hey, did I make you worry that much?”

You can’t help it. He’s recovering, you know that, but you couldn’t stop yourself from lunging at him and enveloping him in a hug. “I hate you so much. Promise me you’ll never make me worry like that ever again.”

Bokuto chuckles and you could feel the vibrations since you two were practically chest-to-chest. “If making you worry means you’ll hug me like this, then I don’t think I can make any promises.”

“Bokuto-san…” You attempt to pull away, but find yourself unable.

Sturdy arms wrap around your waist, and your frozen figure is pulled tighter against Bokuto’s body as he engulfs you with his larger frame. “Do you like me, Y/N-chan?”

You freeze.

Oh hell no.

Out of all the conversations in this world, this one was the one you did not want to have, especially not when you were emotionally vulnerable. You didn’t know if you had enough control over yourself to give the proper answers.

“What? No! I mean yes? You’re my friend, of course I like you.” Your fight or flight response to this conversation seems to have given you ample strength to pull away. You attempt to stand straight and face this problem head on, but your feet are pointing you towards the exit.

Ready to run. From this conversation. From your feelings. From rejection.

Bokuto raises a brow, a teasing grin on his face. “Oh, really?”

Contrary to popular belief (see: Honda-sensei), Bokuto Koutarou was not stupid. Very far from it. While he’s not academically gifted, he’s definitely smart on the people side of things.

You were an open book, and Bokuto was taking his time rereading every page.

“I…” You’re unable to answer, unable to find the words that would make the impending rejection hurt less.

“Well, if it helps—“ Bokuto sits up and sets his feet on the ground, lightly grabbing you to make you stand between his legs. “—I like you a lot.”

Your heart stops. Your world stops. Everything just stops. You’re gaping at Bokuto, mouth closing and opening as you try to find the proper words. You want to reply, eloquently, confidently, to save what’s left of your dignity, but you can only blink back at him.

You weren’t expecting this. Bokuto wasn’t expecting this.

A wave of uncertainty flashes through Bokuto’s eyes, and for a second, he wonders if he misread the situation. “Hey, it’s ok if you don’t feel the same—“

“Wait, no! That’s—“ You take in a deep breath, attempting to calm your racing heart as you try to find your next words. For someone who usually kept a level head, you sure weren’t acting like it. “That’s not it at all. I just… Are you sure?”

Bokuto is confused. He could understand the words individually. He could understand the sentence too, but he couldn’t understand its relevance in this context. What did you mean by ‘are you sure?’. Would he tell you if he wasn’t? Why wouldn’t anyone be sure about you? I mean, it’s you.

“Yes? Why wouldn’t I be?” Bokuto grabs your hand, and he laces his fingers through yours.

You don’t answer as you attempt to arrange your whirlwind of insecurity into one coherent sentence that could sum it all up. You didn’t want to burden him with an entire monologue of self-deprecation, but you couldn’t find a way to express the years of insecurity into one sentence that could do that feeling justice.

Bokuto sees this, and his heart breaks for a second. He was familiar with it. He knew those feelings all too well.

Uncertainty.

Doubt.

Self-Hatred.

“Can I kiss you?” Bokuto blurts out, and as he watches you get flustered, he thinks that this is a much better look on you compared to the one you were previously wearing.

You don’t speak. You just nod.

With that, Bokuto grabs you by the waist and reaches up to press his lips against yours.

It was Bokuto who broke the kiss, breathless as he pressed his forehead to yours. It was almost as if you had taken his breath away to breathe a new life into him with a simple kiss. You can feel his warm breath against your lips, his calloused hands gripping at your waist, and at the same time, you feel nothing. Maybe this is what it felt like to know of everything and nothing all at once. Hyperaware of every feeling, every part of your body that was connected to his, but at the same time you felt weightless, floating on a plane that didn’t seem to exist on earth.

“Can I do that again?” Bokut asks with a grin.

You don’t answer, simply grabbing at his collar and smashing your lips against his.

That was how your love story with Bokuto Koutarou started.

And you wish it ended there.

It well may be that in a difficult hour,

Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,

Bokuto’s fans were ruthless.

Bokuto’s fans are ruthless.

The toxic fangirls? Even more so.

Not all of them are terrible to you, some are kind, but there are enough bad apples that you start wanting to run away the moment you see the tree. His fangirls during highschool only ever went as far as gossipping and making snide remarks, but now that you were older and Bokuto was part of the MSBY Black Jackals, they had gotten worse.

Facebook? You don’t spend time there anyway.

Instagram? You’ve always avoided that place.

Twitter? Ah, good luck.

People are ruthless when they hide behind a screen and a fake name. Anonymity has a way of sparking bravery in even the most sheltered souls. There wasn’t a single tweet on your account that had no comment telling you how you’re not good enough, how Bokuto probably only stayed out of pity, how he’d probably break up with you soon, how they could make him happier than someone like you ever could.

Bokuto doesn’t know. He doesn’t have to know. You don’t want to tell him.

You’re never going to tell him.

It’s pathetic, you think to yourself. You’re afraid that if Bokuto saw these comments, the rose-colored glasses he wore would shatter. You were afraid that these tweets would tip him off the edge and plunge him into the sea of realization. The realization that he could do so much better than someone like you.

You were tired. So tired that you just want to give in to the comments and leave. It’s logical, after all. Bokuto would find someone much better than you. He’d go off, marry a girl deserving of him, and she’ll give him a family, a future, and a life worthy of someone like him. And you? You’d be free. Alone, heart destroyed beyond repair, but free. You could move on, move away, move as far as you could: out of sight, out of mind. It was so easy.

Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,

But you couldn’t.

The only thing you could do was stare at the tweets that dissected each and every single one of your insecurities and laid it bare, waved it around freely for the world to see and judge. You could only let the tears fall as the laptop screen glared back at your face. Everything is numb and you don’t feel like yourself as you scroll through every single comment and find yourself agreeing with each and every single one.

Sobs wrack throughout your body as it all becomes too much.

You’re too weak to stay, too weak to leave. So where do you go? Where the hell are you supposed to place yourself in this world when it feels like everything is going against you? Why was the world doing this to you? Why did it have to be you? You weren’t strong enough for this. You weren’t good enough for this, you never were, never are, and never will be--

“Love?”

You immediately slam the laptop shut and throw the covers over your body as if you had been there the whole time instead of sitting at the edge of the bed and crying over comments.

“Hey…” The side of the bed sinks. “Bad day?”

The fucking worst. You thought to yourself, but you only shook your head before burying your head deeper into the covers of your shared bed.

“Don’t wanna talk about it?” You can hear the worry in Bokuto’s voice as he places his hand on your waist over the blanket, rubbing up and down to soothe you.

Some part of you finds the courage to speak, and the words tumble out of your mouth faster than your brain can process them. “Why are you still with me?”

“Because I love you.” Bokuto doesn’t hesitate as he looks at your still-covered figure.

“What if you stop?” You mumble, but it was loud enough for Bokuto to hear,

“Not possible.” Bokuto gently pries the blankets away from you, uncovering your form that was curled up into a fetal position.

“But— Just—“ You turn the other way, unable to look at him. “What if you do?”

“Like I said—” You can feel the mattress behind you dip lower, sturdy arms moving to wrap around your waist as Bokuto nuzzles his face into your nape. “—not possible.”

With that, the tears start flowing once more.

You bury your face into the pillow, not wanting to show Bokuto because you knew that the sight of you crying wasn’t something he liked. He hated seeing you in distress, and he hated that the only thing he could do was talk you through it and comfort you.

“Hey hey hey…” Bokuto pulls away and makes you sit up straight before he sits against the headboard and pulls you to sob into his chest. “Where’s this coming from? What’s wrong?”

“Everything’s wrong.” You spat angrily, your grip on his shirt tightening. Anger at yourself, anger at the universe, all summed up in a single sentence. “Nothing ever goes right anymore, and I’m just—“

Your speaking is interrupted as another wave of sobs. “I’m so tired.”

You can feel Bokuto freeze, his hand that was rubbing your back stopping as he takes in your words. “Of what?”

“Everything.” You murmur, your grip on Bokuto’s shirt loosening as you press your forehead against his neck. “Just everything.”

“Does that include me?” You can hear Bokuto’s voice waver as his grip around you gets weaker. “Are you… Are you breaking up with me?”

You’re silent for a while. Was this it? Was the universe making the choice for you?

Whatever it was, you take it.

You pull away and look down, unable to stare into Bokuto’s eyes. You didn’t know if you could pull through if you could see the look on his face as you say your next words. “If it means that it will all stop, then maybe I should.”

Bokuto’s heart shatters, and his world follows in its footsteps. He can feel the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. He knew you had been acting off the past few days, but he gave you some space so that you could sort it out until you were ready to finally approach him. But this? He wasn’t prepared for this.

“Why?” There’s a painful tug at your chest as you hear Bokuto speak in such a broken tone. “Did I do something wrong?”

“It’s not you. It’s me.” You cringe inwardly at your statement. Of all the things you could’ve said, you just had to say the most overused line in all of break-up history. “Bokuto, you—“

“It’s Kou.” You can hear Bokuto’s voice crack at the end. “It’s not Bokuto to you, Y/N. It’s Kou. Whatever it is just tell me, please I can fix it—“

“I’m the problem, okay?!” You couldn’t stop yourself from raising your tone, standing up from the bed to distance yourself from Bokuto. “I’m not good enough for you. I don’t deserve you. They’re right when they say that you could do so much better than me—“

You’re cut off as a sob pulls itself from your chest. Your chest is tight, your head is throbbing. Your legs are shaky and you couldn’t stop yourself from falling to your knees as you continue to cry. “I-I just… I know I don’t, but I-I’m so tired of b-being constantly r-reminded that I’m never g-going to be enough.”

“Y/N, none of that is true. Who told you that?” Bokuto’s tone gives away the pain he was feeling, but there was a hint of anger underneath it all.

You don’t answer, shaking your head, continuing to sob as Bokuto moves from the bed to kneel in front of you.

“Love, who told you that?” Bokuto places a comforting hand on your thigh as his other hand lightly grabs you by the chin to make you look at him.

“Everyone.” You wondered how pathetic you looked in his eyes right now. “Not a single day passes by where I’m not reminded by your fans. It’s stupid to keep listening to them, but they’re right—“

Bokuto cuts you off with a brief kiss, just enough to shut you up to give him a chance to speak as he moves to cup your cheek in his palm. “No, they’re not. They never will be.”

You don’t reply. You don’t argue, but you don’t agree either.

“Don’t break up with me, please.” Bokuto cups your face with both of his hands, occasionally brushing his thumb over your cheek as he presses his forehead against yours. “You mean the world to me. You’re absolutely perfect the way you are, and I know you don't believe that.”

You sob at that, and Bokuto is quick to press a kiss against your forehead and pull you into his chest. “If I have to spend my entire life reminding you of that then I will.”

I might be driven to sell your love for peace,

Or trade the memory of this night for food.

Bokuto hovers over you, his arms on either side of your holding him up as he looks at you with the most lovestruck look you’ve ever seen on someone.

“You’re perfect.” Bokuto whispers against your lips before he presses a searing kiss against your lips. “Absolutely perfect.”

Bokuto presses his weight against yours, pulling your bodies closer to each other as he continues to kiss you breathless. You wrap your arms around his neck, an attempt to blur the boundaries of skin, muscle, and bone that separate your soul and his. He pulls you closer against him, his fingers digging deeper into the flesh of your hips as he trails his kisses down your neck and every expanse of skin that was laid bare for him.

“I love you so much.” Bokuto whispers repeatedly against your skin between every kiss he puts on you. “So much.”

As you laid beside Bokuto, his arms wrapped around your waist and your face nuzzling into his bare chest, the thoughts of ever leaving slowly become more distant and fade away into oblivion. His chest rises and falls, and you find your breathing slowly matching his as you observe his sleeping face, peaceful, unbothered by all the troubles of the world beyond your bedroom.

You smile to yourself. All rational thought tells you to leave, but for Bokuto Koutarou...

It well may be. I do not think I would.

A/N: That’s two parts of the collection down, and three more to go! This one was supposed to be the lightest out of the five, but my finger slipped so... Whoops? HAHAHAGDHDHSJHS Anyway, I hope you guys like this one! 💖

[chainofclovers]

Ted Lasso 2x3 thoughts

Brendan Hunt confirmed on Twitter that the writers wrote the first three episodes of the season with the intention of releasing them on the same day, just as they dropped the first three episodes of season one on the same day. Having finally watched the first three over three different weeks, I really wish they’d been able to launch all three on the same day. I really liked the first two episodes of the season, but the third episode really puts a lot of things into context. Between the political storyline, the return of Sassy (and a bit of a level-setting conversation between Sassy, Rebecca, and Ted) and Rebecca’s navigation of her professional life as an all-in club owner and her experience reconnecting to Nora...all of that feels like we’re done setting up the season now. Exposition complete—and to the writers’ credit, all three of these episodes are far more than exposition. A lot of story has happened.

So much so that this week’s installment has categories.

Sassy and Ted and Rebecca

Hahahahahahahahahaha

No, seriously though, I love that they are mature adults about this and I also love that Ted is Uncomfortable and, to be perfectly honest, I like that Sassy’s aggressive unfilteredness becomes an opportunity for the show to venture into more sexual references and humor about characters other than Keeley and Roy. It was a lot of information!

I’ve seen a couple of people express disappointment that Ted seems weirded out by Sassy discussing Nora’s impending first period, but I didn’t get the impression that he was grossed out by periods. There is a lot going on! Nora is right outside the room with the door open and Sassy has run through a lot of very personal topics! I felt like his reaction was more about the proximity issue in specific and the personal nature of the conversation in general more than anything else.

So many thoughts about the intersection between the biscuits and this conversation that it had to go in its own post.

Nora!

I LOVE Nora. I want every episode of this show to be about her. I want this sitcom to be called Nora Collins.

I love that Nora’s a little bit sassy (pun on her mother’s nickname only lazily intended) in the way a thirteen-year-old can be, but also enthusiastic about spending time with Rebecca and genuinely interested in meeting everyone her godmother knows. Rebecca genuinely hurt Nora, but Nora can clearly see that Rebecca is all-in on their mended relationship, and that gives her the space to be a bit teasing. She knows Rebecca’s weaknesses and has a little fun (the cooking joke when Rebecca offers to make popcorn?!) but also isn’t going to manipulate her or take advantage.

The British doll company and all the riffs on American Girl dolls, OMG. So good.

Like literally everyone, I am extremely into Rebecca and Roy actually being friends and exchanging words with each other this season. Now everyone in the group of four mains have had some great conversational moments with each other this season (I count Ted and Keeley being into Sharon’s bike as a great conversational moment, OK?!), with the exception of Roy and Ted. Cannot wait for that.

During the photo op with the team, Sassy and Rebecca remark on how Nora is loving and hating having her picture taken with Sam and the rest of the players, and that is THE experience of being thirteen years old, and Kiki May does an incredible job infusing all of Nora’s moments with the right proportions of enthusiasm to cringe. Thirteen years olds are constantly cringing but still full of spirit and life, and at constantly changing ratios, and Nora is the perfect embodiment of that.

My heart melted during the email-writing scene. Rebecca’s writing the email on Nora’s computer! In the guest room where her goddaughter is staying! They’re wearing pajamas! And Rebecca’s smile is so genuinely huge and delighted when she signs it “boss ass bitch.”

Led Tasso and Jamie’s Redemption

This was so stupid and I loved it so much. I love that Ted’s angry alter ego is absurd rather than scary, kind of like a parody of how worked up some men get over sports. I wonder if Led Tasso’s appearance in some way foreshadows a more uncontrolled, genuine anger from Ted in a later episode, because this Led Tasso dude is ridiculous.

Tentative kudos to Led Tasso for being able to point out the, ahem, clit of the soccer ball even from within a fugue state.

The entire Chuck E. Cheese exchange with Sharon was so hilarious and wonderful.

When Ted has the idea to bring out Led Tasso, Nate assumes he’s going to suggest that Jamie talk to Sharon. I absolutely adore the implication that Jamie’s growth over this episode is attributable to both Led Tasso and Sharon Fieldstone. Because while some players are still unmoved by Jamie’s willingness to stand up to Led, it didn’t go unnoticed! And then I was so proud of Keeley for refusing to take on the emotional labor of listening to Jamie when she was too busy with her actual job, and I felt that Jamie’s pretty immediate willingness to see what the therapy thing was all about was extremely in line with his character. He’s always seeking out Keeley to talk, and sometimes he actually means “talking” when he asks to talk with her! Jamie feels like someone who’s standing at a wall of doors, knocking on each one, trying to see what sticks. He really lacks foundation. I’m curious to know what he and Sharon spoke about in their session, but I like that the writers left the session private. The knowledge that he’s started seeing a psychologist is valuable information in and of itself, and Jamie’s decision to act in solidarity with Sam and the other Nigerian players is the perfect evidence that he’s thinking in new ways.

Sam and Dubai Air

Toheeb Jimoh is always great, but he’s so great in this episode. It’s cool to see his demeanor, pacing, and confidence shift as he becomes more at home with the team—and it’s also lovely to see that he, unlike Jamie, very much has a strong foundation in his home country, his supportive parents, his own moral center.

I like that Sam didn’t spend a bunch of time and emotional labor on teaching Jamie why caring about other people (and the environment!) matters, because that would’ve undercut the other political messages in this episode. Sam’s leading by example and everyone can either catch up or stay out, and it’s really great.

I really like the way they handled the press conference with Ted and Sam. I like that Ted gave the floor to Sam but prefaced that with very brief (for once!) remarks of his own. And I appreciated that Ted acknowledged his position of privilege, and that the angle isn’t that bad things never happen to white dudes but rather that when bad things do happen to people like Ted, it gets attention with so much less effort than when bad things happen to people who aren’t white men. Because that’s how privilege works—it’s not a shield that prevents bad things from happening to you, but it’s a safety net that ensures people will notice and address and even pitch in to take care of your bad things, often at the expense of the people who lack that privilege.

There’s probably lots of other stuff I could talk about, like the hilariously and realistically bad usernames on Bantr and Keeley brushing her snacks off the desk and into her purse and how things between Beard and Jane are clearly very, very bad and I’m worried about Beard and how it was soooo fun and lovely to see Shannon teasing Ted again (little coffee and football rituals before work are the kinds of details I absolutely live for) and HIGGINS PRETENDING REBECCA SENT HIM A BRILLIANT AND HEROIC EMAIL (which she does for real with Nora’s help just a couple scenes later!) and how delighted I was to feel that by this episode this season has really hit its stride and feels like a fully lived-in portrayal of the energized, loving, imperfect, busy, full place that is the whole AFC Richmond community. Honestly, Higgins pretending Rebecca sent that email because he wants to make her look good in front of her granddaughter is kind of the perfect encapsulation of what this episode felt like. This is a show about a bunch of imperfect people who want each other to succeed.

Edited to add: I was delighted to find out Ashley Nicole Black was writing for the show and the writing here did the opposite of disappoint! ❤️

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Recommendation engines and "lean-back" media

In William Gibson’s 1992 novel “Idoru,” a media executive describes her company’s core audience:

“Best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth…no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”

It’s an astonishingly great passage, not just for the image it evokes, but for how it captures the character of the speaker and her contempt for the people who made her fortune.

It’s also a beautiful distillation of the 1990s anxiety about TV’s role in a societal “dumbing down,” that had brewed for a long time, at least since the Nixon-JFK televised debates, whose outcome was widely attributed not to JFK’s ideas, but to Nixon’s terrible TV manner.

Neil Postman’s 1985 “Amusing Ourselves To Death” was a watershed here, comparing the soundbitey Reagan-Dukakis debates with the long, rhetorically complex Lincoln-Douglas debates of the previous century.

(Incidentally, when I finally experienced those debates for myself, courtesy of the 2009 BBC America audiobook, I was more surprised by Lincoln’s unequivocal, forceful repudiations of slavery abolition than by the rhetoric’s nuance)

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/01/20/lincoln-douglas-debate-audiobook-civics-history-and-rhetoric-lesson-in-16-hours/

“Media literacy” scholarship entered the spotlight, and its left flank — epitomized by Chomsky’s 1988 “Manufacturing Consent” — claimed that an increasingly oligarchic media industry was steering society, rather than reflecting it.

Thus, when the internet was demilitarized and the general public started trickling — and then rushing — to use it, there was a widespread hope that we might break free of the tyranny of concentrated, linear programming (in the sense of “what’s on,” and “what it does to you”).

Much of the excitement over Napster wasn’t about getting music for free — it was about the mix-tapification of all music, where your custom playlists would replace the linear album.

Likewise Tivo, whose ad-skipping was ultimately less important than the ability to watch the shows you liked, rather than the shows that were on.

Blogging, too: the promise was that a community of reader-writers could assemble a daily “newsfeed” that reflected their idiosyncratic interests across a variety of sources, surfacing ideas from other places and even other times.

The heady feeling of the time is hard to recall, honestly, but there was a thrill to getting up and reading the news that you chose, listening to a playlist you created, then watching a show you picked.

And while there were those who fretted about the “Daily Me” (what we later came to call the “filter bubble”) the truth was that this kind of active media creation/consumption ranged far more widely than the monopolistic media did.

The real “bubble” wasn’t choosing your own programming — it was everyone turning on their TV on Thursday nights to Friends, Seinfeld and The Simpsons.

The optimism of the era is best summarized in a taxonomy that grouped media into two categories: “lean back” (turn it on and passively consume it) and “lean forward” (steer your media consumption with a series of conscious decisions that explores a vast landscape).

Lean-forward media was intensely sociable: not just because of the distributed conversation that consisted of blog-reblog-reply, but also thanks to user reviews and fannish message-board analysis and recommendations.

I remember the thrill of being in a hotel room years after I’d left my hometown, using Napster to grab rare live recordings of a band I’d grown up seeing in clubs, and striking up a chat with the node’s proprietor that ranged fondly and widely over the shows we’d both seen.

But that sociability was markedly different from the “social” in social media. From the earliest days of Myspace and Facebook, it was clear that this was a sea-change, though it was hard to say exactly what was changing and how.

Around the time Rupert Murdoch bought Myspace, a close friend a blazing argument with a TV executive who insisted that the internet was just a passing fad: that the day would come when all these online kids grew up, got beaten down by work and just wanted to lean back.

To collapse on the sofa and consume media that someone else had programmed for them, anaesthetizing themselves with passive media that didn’t make them think too hard.

This guy was obviously wrong — the internet didn’t disappear — but he was also right about the resurgence of passive, linear media.

But this passive media wasn’t the “must-see TV” of the 80s and 90s.

Rather, it was the passivity of the recommendation algorithm, which created a per-user linear media feed, coupled with mechanisms like “endless scroll” and “autoplay,” that incinerated any trace of an active role for the “consumer” (a very apt term here).

It took me a long time to figure out exactly what I disliked about algorithmic recommendation/autoplay, but I knew I hated it. The reason my 2008 novel LITTLE BROTHER doesn’t have any social media? Wishful thinking. I was hoping it would all die in a fire.

Today, active media is viewed with suspicion, considered synonymous with Qanon-addled boomers who flee Facebook for Parler so they can stan their favorite insurrectionists in peace, freed from the tyranny of the dread shadowban.

But I’m still on team active media. I would rather people actively choose their media diets, in a truly sociable mode of consumption and production, than leaning back and getting fed whatever is served up by the feed.

Today on Wired, Duke public policy scholar Philip M Napoli writes about lean forward and lean back in the context of Trump’s catastrophic failure to launch an independent blog, “From the Desk of Donald J Trump.”

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-trumps-failed-blog-proves-he-was-just-howling-into-the-void/

In a nutshell, Trump started a blog which he grandiosely characterized as a replacement for the social media monopolists who’d kicked him off their platforms. Within a month, he shut it down.

While Trump claimed the shut-down was all part of the plan, it’s painfully obvious that the real reason was that no one was visiting his website.

Now, there are many possible, non-exclusive explanations for this.

For starters, it was a very bad social media website. It lacked even rudimentary social tools. The Washington Post called it “a primitive one-way loudspeaker,” noting its lack of per-post comments, a decades old commonplace.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/21/trump-online-traffic-plunge/

Trump paid (or more likely, stiffed) a grifter crony to build the site for him, and it shows: the “Like” buttons didn’t do anything, the video-sharing buttons created links to nowhere, etc. From the Desk… was cursed at birth.

But Napoli’s argument is that even if Trump had built a good blog, it would have failed. Trump has a highly motivated cult of tens of millions of people — people who deliberately risked death to follow him, some even ingesting fish-tank cleaner and bleach at his urging.

The fact that these cult-members were willing to risk their lives, but not endure poor web design, says a lot about the nature of the Trump cult, and its relationship to passive media.

The Trump cult is a “push media” cult, simultaneously completely committed to Trump but unwilling to do much to follow him.

That’s the common thread between Fox News (and its successors like OANN) and MAGA Facebook.

And it echoes the despairing testimony of the children of Fox cultists, that their boomer parents consume endless linear TV, turning on Fox from the moment they arise and leaving it on until they fall asleep in front of it (also, reportedly, how Trump spent his presidency).

Napoli says that Trump’s success on monopoly social media platforms and his failure as a blogger reveals the role that algorithmically derived, per-user, endless scroll linear media played in the ascendancy of his views.

It makes me think of that TV exec and his prediction of the internet’s imminent disappearance (which, come to think of it, is not so far off from my own wishful thinking about social media’s disappearance in Little Brother).

He was absolutely right that this century has left so many of us exhausted, wanting nothing more than the numbness of lean-back, linear feeds.

But up against that is another phenomenon: the resurgence of active political movements.

After a 12-month period that saw widescale civil unrest, from last summer’s BLM uprising to the bizarre storming of the capital, you can’t really call this the golden age of passivity.

While Fox and OANN consumption might be the passive daily round of one of Idoru’s “vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organisms craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed,” that is in no way true of Qanon.

Qanon is an active pastime, a form of collaborative storytelling with all the mechanics of the Alternate Reality Games that the lean-forward media advocates who came out of the blogging era love so fiercely:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/06/no-vitiated-air/#other-hon

Meanwhile, the “clicktivism” that progressive cynics decried as useless performance a decade ago has become an active contact sport, welding together global movements from Occupy to BLM that use the digital to organize the highly physical.

That’s the paradox of lean-forward and lean-back: sometimes, the things you learn while leaning back make you lean forward — in fact, they might just get you off the couch altogether.

I think that Napoli is onto something. The fact that Trump’s cultists didn’t follow him to his crummy blog tells us that Trump was an effect, not a cause (something many of us suspected all along, as he’s clearly neither bright nor competent enough to inspire a movement).

But the fact that “cyberspace keeps everting” (to paraphrase “Spook Country,” another William Gibson novel) tells us that passive media consumption isn’t a guarantee of passivity in the rest of your life (and sometimes, it’s a guarantee of the opposite).

And it clarifies the role that social media plays in our discourse — not so much a “radicalizer” as a means to corral likeminded people together without them having to do much. Within those groups are those who are poised for action, or who can be moved to it.

The ease with which these people find one another doesn’t produce a deterministic outcome. Sometimes, the feed satisfies your urge for change (“clicktivism”). Sometimes, it fuels it (“radicalizing”).

Notwithstanding smug media execs, the digital realm equips us to “express our mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire” by doing much more than “changing the channels on a universal remote” — for better and for worse.

Image: Ian Burt (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/oddsock/267206444

CC BY: https://creativecommo

ns.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[floating-mid-air]

The Princess of All Saiyans

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Masterlist

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Chapter 10 is finally here. Something I noticed while working on this chapter is when I'm writing as the narrator. I use Goku and Kakarot interchangeably. I looked back into the other chapters and noticed I've been doing that the entire time. I honestly just write whichever name feels natural in the context. I think I'll continue writing like that. I think it's more fun switching up Goku's name every once in a while. As always, if you have any comments or questions, feel free to let me know.

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Chapter 10

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You and Goku sit on opposite ends of the ditch. The choice to sit as far away from him as possible was strictly for your own sanity. You can feel his scolding gaze on you, burning holes through the entirety of your body, making your skin crawl. 

You've been desperately attempting to evade eye contact with the defective Saiyan, which is becoming significantly more strenuous with each second that passes. Goku lets out an exaggerated sigh. "Can we at least sit closer together?"

You turn your head at him, narrowing your eyes. "No, Kakarot."

Goku presses his thumb and index finger together, leaving a tiny hole. He brings the flexed hand up to his eye, looking at you through the minuscule opening. "What about this much closer?"

"No." Your gaze remains locked on him, with a deadpan look on your face.

"But why not?" He wines as you begin to massage your temples. If he keeps this up, the two of you won't survive down here together for much longer. You're ninety-nine percent sure that being stuck with Kakarot will somehow be the greatest adversity of your life. Okay, so maybe you're being just a tad bit overdramatic. 

"Because I don't trust myself not to kill you." You snarl at him. Your composure is dangling by a thin thread, and Goku is an extremely sharp pair of scissors.

Your words seem to have shut Goku up, well, at least for a little while. "Hey Y/N?"

You ball your hands into fists, clenching your jaw as your right eye begins to spasm. You're developing an eye twitch. How lovely. "What is it now, Kakarot?"

"How did you do that thing with your eyes?"

You furrow your brows at the younger Saiyan. "What the hell are you talking about?" You're really starting to get fed up with him, and you've only been trapped down here for around fifteen minutes.

"Your eyes turned red when you were fighting that guy." Your eyes widen before you quickly cover up your shock with a scowl. Fuck. You knew you should've kept your temper under control. How could you have been so stupid?

Lucky for you, Kakarot is a moron. He lacks understanding regarding body language and various emotion cues. It shouldn't be difficult for you to get out of this at all. "Your eyes were just playing tricks on you. Your vision was probably strained from traveling for such an extended amount of time. My eyes did not, nor have they ever changed color."

"But, I saw---" 

"Well, you saw wrong!" You take several deep breaths, attempting to regain your composure. Spoiler alert, it doesn't work. "I can't take this anymore!" You've finally snapped, but to be fair. You lasted much longer than you expected. "Stop asking me a million questions! No, you know what. Stop speaking to me in general! You are the most infuriating---"

Amidst your screaming, Goku jumps up, pulling you into a far corner of the trench. One of his hands is placed over your lips. And his other arm is tightly wrapped around your waist, his hand ghosting over the base of your tail. Your back is pressed up against the rocky wall, and you feel like his larger body is engulfing your form entirely. You glare at him in irritation as an oddly serious expression crosses Goku's face. 

"I'm gonna take my hand away. Be quiet and focus for a minute." He moves his hand, resting it comfortably on your side. It's placed directly on your wound, courtesy of your battle with Burter. You bite your lip, preventing yourself from wincing. Even the smallest amount of pressure is causing you severe pain. Maybe your injury is worse than you presumed. 

You shut your eyes partly to distract yourself from the pain, but the main objective is to focus on the energy around you. There's someone out there, and they're powerful too. That has to be Ginyu. Shit, your explosive outburst could have just gotten you both killed. What is wrong with you today? 

Where you're standing in the pit. There's still a patch of grass over the top. Providing a shield from anything or anyone from the outside. You hate to admit it, but this was actually a wise decision on Goku's part. Never did you think that Kakarot would be the one to remain collective while you're the one behaving recklessly.  

The two of you remain pressed up against each other. Frankly, you're too close for comfort. You can feel every fall and rise of his chest. You can even hear his heartbeat, which is thumping just as rapidly as your own. The sound of Ginyu's faint murmuring invades your ears, though you can't hear anything he says clearly. He must be too far away.

You try to keep your erratic breathing under control, which stems from both pain and nerves. Your surroundings grow quiet, and Ginyu's energy disappears altogether. He must have left. You finally have room to breathe as Goku takes a few steps back, distancing himself from you. His eyes scan your face before quickly darting down to one of his hands. Specifically, the one that's now covered in your blood. His eyes go-round as he moves closer, invading your personal space once again. "Are you hurt?"

His tone lacks his typical cheery nature, causing you to tilt your head upward, your brain desperately attempting to form a contingency plan to get you out of this mess. "I'm fine." Goku makes you uneasy. He's nothing like a Saiyan should be. His behavior is all over the place, and not a single one of his actions adds up in your realm of logic. Out of all the ruthless and sadistic Saiyan's that could've survived, never in a million years did you expect one as pathetic as Kakarot to live.

"But, you're bleeding." This timid side of Goku is somehow worse than his typical cheerful self. You didn't think he could disgust you further, but once again, that defect proves you wrong.

You suppress an eye roll, keeping your piercing gaze locked on him. If you were to look away now, it would appear like you were backing down. And you refuse to let a fool like Kakarot win. "It's not my blood, Kakarot." Hopefully, he'll fall for your lies and drop this pointless conversation here.

"If it's not your blood, then let me see." He moves his hands to your hips, clawing at the bottom of your chest plate.

You grab his wrist, pushing them away. The two of you continue going back and forth, gripping and pushing at each other. It's been a while since someone challenged you like this, one on one. No one back on the Frieza Force would have dared to go against your wishes. Goku's different from them. He's not afraid of you, and it doesn't seem that he'll give up anytime soon. You would've never pegged Kakarot for the stubborn type. Maybe there's still a bit of true Saiyan nature in him, after all. And as infuriating as he is, you can't say you're disappointed. "Knock it off, Kakarot!" 

"Stop being such a baby, and let me help you." If you were in a public setting, those passing by might have believed you were a couple. Having one of those sweet but sicking play fights. While in reality, that was far from the truth. This proves just how thin the line between love and hate truly is. 

"I don't want your help!" You stop fighting him, crossing your arms over your chest, denying him access to your upper half. 

You thought you had outsmarted him, that was until his hands landed on the sides of your top. "Fine. I'll just tear your armor off then."

You stare at him in disbelief. "Do you have no boundaries?" He has to be bluffing, right? No one could be this shameless. However, the look on his face, mixed with his grip on your top tightening, tells you a whole different story. He's serious about this. "Wait---" You place one of your hands on his chest. "If you back off, and shut up. I'll take it off."

He complies with your terms, stepping back, pressing his lips into a thin line. Your hands are violently shaking as you slowly move them to the corners of your chest piece. You've stripped your armor off in front of Raditz, Nappa, and Cado a million times before. So why does this feel so different?

You steadily pull your tunic above your head, slipping your chest piece off your body, leaving you in your nylon blue sports bra. And it really doesn't leave much to the imagination. You turn your head, finally getting to see the wound yourself. It's much deeper than you thought, but due to your Saiyan genetics, it's already healing quite nicely. "Are you pleased? Now, will you finally shut up?"

Feeling self-conscious from his gaze, you cross your arms over your chest again. "No. Why would I be happy about this? It looks, really, bad Y/N." Why does he care about your physical condition? At the end of the day, you're enemies, and your nauseating alliance is only temporary. You just don't understand him. You can't read him either, so you have no clue what he'll do next. And it's driving you mad. 

"Wait." He grins. "I brought Senzu Beans with me." A Senzu what now? Those must be those healing beans he gave Krillin and Gohan back on Earth. He searches his pockets, only to come up empty-handed. He grabs his head as a look of realization crosses his features. "I'm so stupid. I left them on the ship."

Well, there's one thing you both agree on, Kakarot does have a moronic nature. "Hey, relax. I'm fine, Kakarot." You wrap your tail around your waist, applying pressure to your wound. "This is all I need to do. I've done this several times before, and look, I'm still standing, aren't I?"

Your assurance doesn't seem to be enough for Goku. "Please--- just let me help you." He's pleading with you. Does he really have no ulterior motives? Does he really just want to help you? You'd typically laugh at someone pleading with you, but when it's from him. It makes you uncharacteristically sad.

Those puppy dog eyes should be illegal. You swear Goku would be able to make you do anything just with that one look. "O-Ok." Did you seriously just agree? How can a simple glance make you so weak? An expression like that would typically make you sick. Maybe the amount of blood you've lost has made you delirious. That's a plausible explanation. You're clearly doing everything under Namek's three suns to evade the possibility that these new strange feelings could be your own mind's fabrication. 

He removes the cord holding his gi together, causing the orange fabric to hang loose. You now have a clear view of his torso, revealing the blue undershirt that was once hidden under his gi. He slips the shirt off, ripping the bottom of his shirt into strips. "You know I might not be the smartest guy in the world. But I do know that you have to keep wounds clean to avoid infection." He kneels in front of you, giving himself easier access to your side. You don't mind. Him leaning down to help you would've probably made you even more flustered. 

His hand brushes against your tail, causing you to jump. He stares at you in alarm. "Sorry, I forgot that hurts you."

"I-It didn't hurt. I trained myself out of that weakness a long time ago. It's just a sensitive area still." He nods as you uncoil your tail, giving him direct access to your injury. He wraps the strips of cloth around your torso. The fabric is in replacement of a bandage, not bad for a makeshift patch-up at all. You've seen Nappa and Raditz do much worse.

Goku stands back up, tying his gi back together. "See. Good as new." That dopey smile on his face really makes you want to punch him. His facial expression may be causing you mild irritation, and his words had no humor to them, but you can no longer hold back your fit of laughter that is now escaping your lips. "What's so funny?"

"You are."

He pouts, which only makes you laugh more. "I'm not funny."

"Oh, yes you are, Kakarot. Everything about your existence is either. A. amusing or B. irritating." You're about to berate him even further, but you stop yourself. Someone is standing directly above you, and It isn't Ginyu this time. Their power level is far too low. It's not anyone you're currently aligned with either. By now, you know Vegeta's power level by heart, and you were able to memorize the other's energy levels during your previous encounter with them. So it's best to assume that above you is one of Frieza's minions. 

You do have a weapon at your disposal. No one knows that Goku is here except for you. And you intend to use that piece of knowledge to your advantage. You grab his wrist, pulling Goku back to the wall, successfully switching positions with him.

 You look up, getting a good look at the figure above you. Just your luck, it's Jeice. What's next? Will a scorned, old flame of yours show up in an attempt to win you back? Or will Frieza show up for a tea party?

Sadly, it's too late for you to duck back into the corner. That prick already saw you. You move out into the open, keeping Jeice off Kakarot's scent. A self-satisfied grin appears on Jeice lips as he admires your practically bare torso. "Hello, love. You having fun down there?"

"Oh, it's a real party, Jeice." His gaze makes your skin crawl differently. Kakarot's makes you nervous, but Jeice's makes you want to hurl.  

"I have to say, Y/N. I am surprised you'd fall for something so simple-minded."

You turn your head, subtly glaring at Goku. "You're right. That's not like me at all. I must have had a severe lapse in judgment."

"Well, gorgeous. Looks like today's your lucky day. I'll pull you up, but under one condition." You wouldn't accept his aid even if there wasn't a catch. You'd rather spend an eternity in the pit with Kakarot than owe Jeice any favors. "All you have to do is betray Vegeta, re-pledge your allegiance to Lord Frieza, and of course, become my wife."

You scoff, shaking your head. "Ya, no chance in hell I'm doing any of that."

"Oh, come on, Y/N. You'd rather be stuck down there, all alone. Then be with me."

"I wish I was alone right now." You mutter to yourself. Whether this statement was directed at Jeice of Goku is unclear, but it's most likely the latter.

He moves his hand to his scouter. "I didn't quite catch that Y/N. Was that your native tongue? Or were you just whispering?"

"I said I'd rather rot down here! And by the way, the only thing less appealing than death on this shitty planet would be marrying you."

He scowls at you. "I was trying to play nice, but now I see that's not a viable option. So if you insist you'd rather die down there, I won't be the one to stop you. Just know, you lost your only chance of leaving this damn rock alive." He takes off, now in an irritable mood. Maybe you should've played nice and asked him about Vegeta and the others. It probably doesn't matter either way. Who's to say Jeice would've told the truth.

Goku walks over to you, sheepishly handing you your chest piece. You find him much less irritating now. It turns out Kakarot isn't the worst being you could've been trapped with. It could've been much worse. You could be stuck down here with Jeice instead.

-

The group of four has covered a lot of ground, considering what terrible shape they're in. Recoome really did a number on them, especially Vegeta. He's limping while the others are still able to walk with only mild discomfort. After Vegeta was down for the count, it took Gohan, Krillin, and Raditz all together to finish Recoome off. Raditz is by far in the best shape of the group. Since he jumped in last, getting the KO. The other three would've been executed without the intervention of the largest Saiyan. And lady luck appeared to be on their side because Jeice fled shortly after Recoome fell. A few weeks ago, this group teaming up would've been unimaginable, former allies, enemies, and friends alike, with the lines between each category, quickly blurring together.

The issue with you suppressing your power level is now more prominent than ever. They can't easily locate you, so a search party is sadly the best they can do. Vegeta knew he should've gotten you chipped when he had the chance. He'd be able to locate you anywhere, anytime he wanted. So what if it violated your privacy. If it was up to Vegeta, you'd be one leash by now.

Gohan turns to his uncle. "Do you think Y/N's alright?"

"She's fine. Y/N's incredibly resourceful. If she couldn't surpass him in strength, she'd be able to easily outwit him. Y/N's always done as she's pleased, so it's not surprising if she got a bit carried away." Raditz knows you're alive. He can feel it. A creature as brain-dead as Burter wouldn't be the one to take you out. You'd definitely go out with a bigger bang.

"Stop the chit-chat, and stay focused!" Vegeta snarls at the uncle-nephew duo.

Raditz lowers his voice to a whisper. "Don't mind him. Vegeta's just worried."

"Shut your damn mouth, Raditz! Before I shut it for you, permanently." Raditz's eyes widen in terror as he frantically restarts his search. Pissing off Vegeta right now would not be an intelligent choice.

They explore another good portion of the planet. The only downside is they haven't found any sign of life. The group was about to pause and rest until a strange ship entered their field of vision. Krillin's eyes widen, a grin spreading across his lips. As he reads the words located on the side of the vessel. He begins sprinting toward the machine with Gohan not far behind. "Capsule Corp! We're saved!" 

Vegeta and Raditz observe the two in bewilderment. Vegeta never thought that Raditz could ever be the second smartest person in his vicinity. Today is just full of surprises. "Slow down, you neanderthals!" Vegeta shouts. "It could be a trap." The two Saiayn's have obviously seen more of the world. Even a fool like Raditz understands protocol about behavior on a foreign planet.

The pair ignore their Saiyan allies. With Krillin entering the ship first. "Goku?" He shouts.

"Dad?" Gohan enters the ship, only to find no sign of his father. The pair begin searching the aircraft, looking for clues to where Goku's whereabouts may be. The two Saiyan's tread carefully into the ship. Nothing seems dangerous at the moment. And they wouldn't put it past Kakarot to abandon the only source of transportation off this damn planet. Gohan furrows his brows. "Where could he have gone?"

"Do you guys think he could've been captured? Krillin's question was directed toward the Saiyan's. Vegeta and Raditz both know what the Frieza Force can do while he and Gohan are basically fish out of water.

"Relax." Raditz is the one to break the silence. "If Kakarot was captured, we'd all already know."

"There would be signs of a struggle. And extreme damage to the outside terrain. Kakarot left on his own accord, now let's go, we now have two fools to find."

Krillin was about to follow Vegeta's orders until his eyes land on a small bag. "Wait." He grabs the bag from the table. "If this is what I think it is--- it is. Leave it to Goku to forget an entire bag of Senzu beans." He pulls one of the green beans out of the bag, tossing it to Gohan and grabbing another for himself. 

He throws the bag at Raditz, who catches it with ease. The Saiyan watches the earthling and half-breed eat them first. Their injuries heal instantly, so it isn't poison. That small fact seems to be enough for Raditz, as he eats one of the beans himself. 

After he heals, he hands the bag to Vegeta. "Wait! Raditz!" Krillin shrieks. He's aware that their alliance is quite temporary and will probably end once they successfully disband the Ginyu Force.

Krillin charges at Vegeta, only to be stopped by Raidtz's hand. Which is placed firmly against his forehead, the Saiyan can hold him back with ease. "Stop. You know we can't do this on our own, even with Kakarot's help. Take it from someone who personally knows Frieza and the Ginyu Force. We need him."

Vegeta holds the Senzu bean in his hand, eyeing it skeptically. Before tossing it in his mouth, chewing it slowly. His eyes flash in amazement as his substantial injuries heal instantly. Even though he's seen the bean work wonders before, he still can't believe its capabilities. 

"Do you guys think that Goku and Y/N could be together?" Krillin's question makes a lot of sense, and unknowingly to him, very accurate. 

Vegeta sighs. "It's a possibility." The idea alone makes Vegeta cringe. Just the possibility of you being alone with Kakarot makes him irritable. 

"Well, if they're together, that's a good thing, right?" Gohan's cheerful voice cuts in. "It should be easier to find them, then."

Raditz snickers. "But, will they both be alive? That's the million-dollar question."

Krillin's eyes widen. It wouldn't surprise him if Goku's personality pushed you over the realm of sanity. He sometimes even feels like he's losing his mind when he's with his childhood friend. "Good point. If that's the case, we better step up our game."

The group of four exits the ship, continuing their search. And it doesn't take long for them to discover something else that stops them in their tracks. They located Burter's corpse, more specifically a headless Burter. Decapitation seems to be your go-to method of execution today. It's good to mix things up once in a while.

"Well, it looks like we know what happened here." You jump up in the pit. You'd recognize that voice anywhere. As always, your big brother, Vegeta, comes to your rescue.

"Vegeta! Get me the hell out of here!" Vegeta furrows his brows, desperately looking in all directions. He flys up to get a birds-eye view of the landscape. A higher altitude should be beneficial in tracking you down.

As soon as you hear Vegeta's obnoxious laughter, you know he's found you. He lands on the side of the dip in the ground. "Looks like you're in quite the predicament there, baby sister!" You've never been happier to see that arrogant smirk before in your life. 

"Vegeta, come on, get me out of here! I can't take another second of this torture."

"I don't know." Vegeta rubs his chin. "You did leave me alone, with those three idiots. Maybe I should leave you down there with Kakarot so you can learn a lesson."

"Come on, Vegeta. You know we don't have time for this." Raditz places a large branch in the pit. You should easily be able to climb up it. The barrier is only activated for those inside the hole. So it should cause a rift when something is poking out of it.

You place your hands on the wood as you start shimming upwards. You wince in pain, stumbling a bit. Your injury must be affecting you more than you thought. Goku quickly grabs you, placing his hands on your hips holding you in place.

"D- Don't touch me!"

Goku sighs. Your hot and cold behavior is really confusing to him. "I was just trying to help you. You were gonna fall."

"As we discussed before. I don't want your help." You pull yourself up the rest of the way up, rushing to Raditz. You wrap your arms around the giant, desperately clinging to him. "I take back every bad thing I've ever said about you."

Raditz furrows his brows, looking over your head at his brother, who had just climbed back to the surface. "God, Kakarot. What did you do to her?"

"Relax, you drama queen. You were only down there for about an hour or so." Vegeta pulls you off Raditz as your hand quickly lands over the sight of your wound. There's no need to worry Vegeta about this. It's just a minor scratch, that's all. He scans his eyes over your from, checking for any irregularities. "No injuries. All your limbs are intact. I'm surprised."

"Well, actually---" You slap Goku's leg with your tail, causing him to yelp out in pain. 

"Yep, I'm all good." You plaster an ingenuine smile on your face.

Gohan, Krillin, and Goku all have a little reunion. The rest of you will not take any part in that conversation. Kakarot's arrival isn't something to celebrate. He won't be your saving grace. "So, what's our next move?" Raditz turns to Vegeta. It's almost like nothing has changed. Like you've stepped into a time machine and went back to a much simpler time. Back when things were much less complicated.

"We go find Ginyu and Jeice too." Vegeta turns to you. "That red menace got away."

"I know. Jeice paid Kakarot and me a visit. Putting it simply, he's not gonna be in very high spirits."

Raditz chuckles. "Well, getting turned down so many times can't be good for his ego. Especially by the ice princess."

"She's far from an ice princess. Saiyan-wise, my sister is actually quite friendly. Out of our entire bloodline, I'd say she has the best people skills. She knows how to work a crowd. That's why our father wanted to put her in charge of foreign affairs."

"Was that a compliment, Vegeta?"

"I wouldn't dare." He pauses, turning to the other three. "Alright, let's get this over with. I don't want to spend any more time with you fools than necessary."

-

The group is finally reunited. But what does Captain Ginyu have in store for our heroes? And will Jeice ever get Y/N's attention? Find out in the next chapter of The Princess of All Saiyans..

[accio-victuuri]

Hello Anon! ❤️ it feels like you are witnessing a great love story, cause you really are. lol. Welcome! I try my best to explain things just so people don’t get lost and end up getting information from pretty shady sources which is what I think happened to you here. I cut all the parts on the rumors about that person cause that’s just anti garbage. Your ask had your answer already, he seems so in love with zhan ge. There you go. If it feels right to you, then it almost always is. Tho I understand the doubt cause these hetero agendas are pretty strong + blame it on how we were all thought that this type of relationship is right.

Now let me address those rumors as quickly as possible cause i’m not a clarification account. & I feel like i’m losing brain cells when I look at posts from antis. Help!!!! 😭🤣

Let me start by saying that there are rumors that I expect to come out, and these are from his co-stars. Those are a given. One is to generate traffic for their project and so on. But what you can observe is that those girls who he literally worked with? None of the rumors about them stayed. Because it’s just work for him + mild publicity. Plus they all have one thing they are saying, he doesn’t talk much. He’s not so sweet with them.

There are very thorough posts on Wb from Yeebo’s ST debunking every single evidence. I will try and find it but no promises. I just skim those cause I don’t really believe this type of rumors so I don’t save it.

• Now moving on to QMH. This is a touchy subject for me cause I just hate that he keeps getting dragged into this. How many clarifications does his team have to give out regarding this person? Well of course Antis will tell you, ‘ he is just doing that to keep it a secret.’ LOL. Web literally sued accounts that talk about this. Here is a post that debunks some of the points and more. Plus this one where Web is just so done with all the rumors from last year. And why is it always a blurry picture? A ‘hint’ post and they are never photographed clearly. lol. The one time paps followed him on a date, what they got was a pic of him and GG. I remember seeing a vague pic of a girl, who is allegedly her and someone who they say is Yeebooo. Which is — sorry, that’s not him. THAT MAN they are pointing at had a whole entourage with him. You know Yeebo only goes out with his bodyguards and not an entourage of what looks like early 20s men on a vacation. lol. Also the only thing he had in common with that MAN is he was wearing a cap. 💀 There is so much more and I wish I had that link to the clarification post. 🥲

• Here is a good one debunking those photos of him with MMQ who is in the same company as him. the lengths people would go. really.

• the pretty recent one with him allegedly riding a red sports car with a girl, which is later on found to be a still from a movie. lol. See how stupid this is? They will literally do anything to get the clicks at the expense of Web and his team’s time.

• this one that he also recently put out a statement for, the girl also did. So one point yxh were saying is the girl had the same dog Web cared for in this 👇🏼episode of TTXS. They are saying it’s a shared pet. but we all know that dog is not his but the staff’s whose son he spent time with. but the general public don’t know that. esp those who don’t watch TTXS.

there’s a whole thread with that girl and it’s just insane. BJYX type clowning but with no context. they were comparing their houses. them having the same pose on ONE FREAKIN photo. even the douyin Web posted of him dancing— which is like, a viral tiktok dance. Excuse me? lol.

• and a random one just to give an example of how baseless these rumors are and how anyone can literally say they dated Web for clout. This is coming from a person who he’s never been seen in the same room with —- so i’m not sure why people gobble it all up. much less a fan of Yibo.

Is there any other random girl I missed?

I mean no shade to those women, especially the ones that were just innocently dragged into this. At this point, I just laugh (tiredly) every time he has to clarify stuff like this. Wasting his resources and time.

I hope this helped Anon! 💚

Note : This post and the links I provided made me miss @jcisthebestfightme who was the best in debunking Web related dating issues. 😭 they were always so much more patient in looking at things like this than any of us. 💀