#just like the pandemic did when it hit nearly 3 years ago

[noturmuse]

Man idk what they’re putting in these episodes but it’s definitely stronger than coke cuz I am beyond addicted I mean every episode is a masterpiece and I love the little changes they’ve been doing along the way it has made the show so special thus far

[franciskirkland]

Alright to start this ask off I'm just gonna say my interactions w/ you have genuenly been one of the funniest ive had in a long ass time. I've read ur recent post and I empathyse a lot. You seem incredibly funny and genuine. Idk your situation and your background and even your age, but I think you can and are pulling through. Things will get better even if you dont actively want them to. Im not saying this in a vague hope to make the situation you are in better. Im telling you, as a person who from the age of 14 went from therapist to therapist, somehow been on meds that dont fuckin exist yet in croatia, someone who feels trapped in the very /country/ she lives in with no means of escape, someone who is "waiting" for things to finally financially/academicaly/politicaly be better so that I can make something of my life. As it did for me, you will feel joy again in what you do, in what you have, and in what you can achieve. I think it's ok to be down, its ok to feel like "if a bus hit me tomorrow i wouldnt protest" but the thing about people is we adapt rather quickly. So putting yourself out there, going to places you are scared to and believe yourself to be an outcast from is exactly what gets you to meet people and see things that youll remember forever. And after a while the outcast will stop coming to these places, the person there will be someone who belongs. Apathy is a way of saying "fine whatever i dont even care anymore" but youll see how much you care.

I started getting ok after a full decade of *trying* and what I've always found is that for me the saying "don't take anything seriously" is no.1 rule. I get worked up, anxious and overwhelmed with so much so many times.

You may have problems with people at work with friends and whomever, but the main thing you gotta remember is *you cant change anyone but yourself*

And its not a change of personality, hair color, interests, its how much something will get to you, how willing are you to give something up thats not working out and how you will percieve something.

I have no doubt that you know all of this crap but i guess i wanted to say all of that just bc there is no greater pain for me than when i see someone feel like i did regardless of the reason or situation.

Keep on truckin and doing what u love even if its mpregfrance posting. I will always be here to send you to liking-france-jail, mwah <3

hello my sweaty angle <3 i'm sorry i'm just replying to this now. i had to sleep on it because your thoughtfulness deserves a sincere reply.

first of all - thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for being so kind, sweet and insightful and offering your support.

the fact that you would take the precious time out of your day to write this out for me is, in a word, unbelievable. i really appreciate you checking in, it's an incredibly caring thing to do. to be honest i'm a little overwhelmed by the magnitude of this unexpected message and i wish i knew how better to express my appreciation.

i really do love to hear that i made you laugh. i live to shitpost. i've always prided myself on my sense of humor and sometimes i feel as if it's slipping away, so it's reliving to hear i've still got it.

unfortunately i still haven't had the strength to eat. i'm heading to work in a bit. things are pretty rough right now, but when have they not been? obviously my present circumstances aren't the root cause of all my problems. in fact my life has improved since moving here.

extensive bianca lore and vulnerability under the cut, apologies in advance.

basically, in so few words, my current situation is that i'm nearly 25 and have nothing to show for it. i've lived in different cities across the US, had great jobs, apartments, friends, roommates, relationships, etc. i have done a lot of living in a short amount of time. but then, in retrospect, it feels like it stopped.

about 3 years ago i was in a very bad place mentally due to the isolation of the pandemic, and i met my husband online. in early 2022 i gave up everything, saved over $10k for the visa and moving costs, and relocated from the US to australia to live with him. our relationship itself has improved from how it used to be, but since the beginning we've had seemingly endless bad luck and financial setbacks.

last year, not long after our (very disappointing) wedding, i suffered a devastating miscarriage. ruptured ectopic, massive internal bleeding, required emergency surgery etc. not only was that traumatic emotionally, but i wasn't eligible for healthcare at the time bc of my immigration status, so we're still paying off the medical bill.

we share a house with my mother in law who is a domineering, emotionally incestuous single mom and an emotionally abusive narcissist. i don't throw that term around lightly, as so many people do these days, but i honestly believe she's devoid of empathy. she's admitted that she dislikes me and thinks i'm stupid because i don't talk much, and goes out of her way to make me feel unwelcome.

so i'm stuck in an area that feels, to me, like the middle of nowhere. i'm not homesick, i love this country. it's just that i'm not used to suburbs. i feel most comfortable in a city where there's people and places and things, neon lights and background noise and stuff to do.

i'd would be happy to live anywhere as long as it's not with her. it honestly feels like a prison sometimes. that sounds dramatic but she's cultivating an unbelievably hostile environment that causes me to feel on edge whenever she's around.

needless to say we need to move, desperately. it's our #1 priority. more than anything else i want a place of our own and eventually a family. we've been actively househunting for the better part of a year, but the rental market is catastrophically bad right now. it's not even about the money, since we're both working we can afford a decent place. it's just that it's so competitive. every showing i've attended, there's been like 30 other prospective tenants. we've been turned down from every apartment we've applied for.

on top of our living situation i have complex health issues that are just getting worse. my energy is zapped. trying to balance work work and housework leaves me with almost no free time to write.

this barely scratches the surface of why I Am The Way That I Am™. i'm not saying any of this to evoke sympathy or brag about 'having it hard'. simply trying to explain. my upbringing was abusive and dysfunctional in a number of ways. i just barely graduated high school. i never had traditional opportunities, i was raised in a way where there's basically no assumption/expectation that you'll ever be successful or fulfilled. i'm diagnosed with ADHD, PTSD and bipolar 2 - haven't been able to get my proper meds in australia. i've been addicted to hard drugs and alcohol. i'm not pleasant to be around. i will probably always look like and act like the lower class, white trash girl that i am. i have spent my entire life in survival mode.

i'm always in the midst of some identity crisis or running away from something. so yeah, i've been hurt and downtrodden. i've also experienced the beautiful side of life from time to time. i've gained a breadth of knowledge and met incredible individuals who introduced me to new perspectives and i'm forever grateful for them. with the way i've lived, i'm very lucky to not be dead or incarcerated right now.

ok, pity party's over. for real this time.

you're pretty much describing exactly how i feel. you know the struggle. the part about waiting to live my life; that's precisely where i'm at. i don't necessarily have a desire to fit in, i just want to get away into somewhere that i can adjust better to.

my isolation is partially due to a lack of energy but also i don't seek out interaction because i'm afraid no one else can understand me. not because i believe i'm too 'complex' or 'damaged' to be understood. that's a load of self-pitying bullshit. it's just scary to be truly seen. or vulnerable. or genuine. bc the results of such openness are unpredictable and uncomfortable.

it's hard, but i know i have to find it within myself to take that push. what's holding me back right now is mainly my material conditions, circumstances out of my direct control. i have no doubt i'll feel at least 50% better when i stop living with this woman.

i certainly have no problem with starting over if something doesn't work for me. contrary to what i might've described, i believe i'm pretty well adjusted, self aware and rational. as is obvious i don't take many things that seriously lmao. i went from caring wayyy too much about everything, being overly emotional and sensitive, to going entirely with the flow and accepting what i can't control or predict.

also i am well aware that you can't change people, that's never been my goal lmao i've never needed someone to tell me that <3

tl;dr, thank you. so much. this really uplifted and inspired me meli, thank you so much for being so thoughtful and compassionate.

it sounds like you're also stuck between a rock and a hard place in your own environment, and i'm sorry to hear that. it's a wretched feeling but i believe you you will thrive no matter the setting, because in all seriousness, you're incredibly talented. i hope you know you should follow your dreams. hell, it looks like you already are and you're giving us the privilege of witnessing it. your art is stunning, the passion and care you put into your work is obvious. your matthew is absolutely beautiful - like his maman.

from a rabidly devoted france woobifier to the designated france hater, i'm only going to say this once but you are validated in your distaste. i understand. you gotta admit though, he is a MILF.

if one thing is certain i will never stop frussyposting. in fact right now i am thinking about france hetalia big fat juicy boobies mmmm milky squishy. i'm giving her a teensy tiny little slut waist and childbearing hips. i would give him a brazilian butt lift but he doesn't even need it!!!

if that is a crime then lock me up. please. strap on the handcuffs and throw me in the crate for naughty little freaks teeheehee >:3

be careful tho. if you keep sending me gay ass love letters like this they're gonna start shipping toxic yuri melianca even harder <3

[hergan416]

AO3 (& FFN) Stats: My Writing Over Time

Some really really interesting statistics that I just ran for reasons and like.

Holy shit

TLDR: I have written almost as much for the Yuumori fandom in just over a year than in 7 years of writing for the Yugioh fandom and while I knew I had written a lot for yuumori, actually running the numbers was honestly mindblowing. Plus some discussion about why I feel that may be

Ok, so some context re: my fandom history:

I joined the Yugioh fandom in 2015 or so. My first posted fic is from them. While I took breaks and didn't post things every year from then on... I did write pretty regularly from then on out. I didn't post much in 2018, but I updated at least one thing for the last time that year. Even when I joined (up with the ... I had been watching OP since 2015 or so also, but only caught up enough to look at Fanfic or other shit at this point) the One Piece fandom in January of 2020 just before the pandemic, i didn't stop writing Yugioh. I even had a crossover fic. I sort of boomed and busted on One Piece and was still pretty regularly writing Yugioh fanfic (I was at least doing YGOME yearly, except the year of my concussoin) when the Yuumori hyperfixation hit after I watched it in February or so of 2023.

Between FFN and AO3 (YGO brought me to AO3), I have written a grand total of 129,364 words of Yugioh fanfic since 2015. 20,756 of those words are from a One Piece-Yugioh crossover fic that I never finished. Those words span a total of 29 fics (23 only on AO3, 5 only on FFN, and 1 crossposted to both).

In contrast, I have written a total of 27 fics for the yuumori fandom amounting to a total of 111,948 words. Since February or March of 2023. Just over a year ago.

I have nearly written the same amount in 1 fucking year for the yuumori fandom as I did for the entirety of the time I was actively writing Yugioh fanfic, which, if you count 2018 & 2023 and beyond as essentially off years for yugioh, is still 7 years.

Just gonna... sit on that for a second.

Wow.

I know that part of it is just the sheer amount and import of comments/friendship/feedback in the yuumori fandom; its not that I didn't have super important friendships and get amazing comments and feel super motivated by them when I was writing for Yugioh also, but...

I cannot fathom having earned 126 comment threads on a yugioh fanfic without being like. someone. Poison Paradise is essentially one of my first fics for yuumori, i didn't have a following already or anything I just wrote it. Quickly, espeically at first -- I was updating daily for a while, so that certainly didn't hurt. But god. people are so talkative in a good way in the yuumori fandom, and it's honestly a bit intoxicating.

But also I think that part of it is that the characters are just. So. Blorbo shaped? I have SO MANY blorbos in contrast to cast size compared to either Yugioh or One Piece. I relate to many of the characters and want to project on them and make their lives miserable and happy and put them in All The Situations. It's not just a handful of favorite characters. It's a full on cast of blorbos somehow.

And I have so many ideas for them all and then I spitball with you all because we're talkative and friendly and <3 and then there are even more ideas and I go home and I just want to write and I know what I'm writing -- or if I don't it's because I can't decide amongst them all, not because there is no idea motivating me. My brain just collided full force with this media and it got fully absorbed.

It just feels... idk .. special. I would never have believed you if you told me I would write around 100,000 words in a year. That's a massive number. And yet-- I have. I did. It's done.

Wow.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Matt Wuerker

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 2, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

NOV 3, 2023

In a speech yesterday in Northfield, Minnesota, President Joe Biden explained his economic vision to rural Americans. “Over the past 40 years or so, we’ve had a practice in America—an economic practice called trickle-down economics, and it hit rural America especially hard,” he said. “It hollowed out Main Street, telling farmers the only path to success was to get big or get out.” At the same time, he said, “[t]ax cuts for big corporations encouraged companies to grow bigger and bigger, move jobs and production overseas for cheaper labor, and undercut local small businesses. Meat-producing companies and the retail grocery chains consolidated, leaving farmers [and] ranchers with few choices about where to sell their products, reducing their bargaining power. Corporations that sell seed, fertilizer, and even farm equipment used their outsized market power to change farmers and charge them and ranchers unfair prices.”

Biden noted that the U.S. has lost more than 400,000 family farms in the past 40 years, an area of more than 140 million acres of farmland, equivalent to an area the size of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota combined. Family farms have failed, and as they did so, small businesses, hospitals, schools, and communities also suffered. 

Young people feel they have no choice but to leave home “in search of good-paying jobs and a chance at the American Dream.” 

Biden explained that his plan to invest in America would create new and better markets and new income streams to help rural areas thrive. He noted that $20 billion of the Inflation Reduction Act will go to helping farmers and ranchers adjust to climate change by changing cover crops and managing nutrients and grazing, while urging farmers to diversify from single crops and sell in local markets. 

Biden emphasized that the administration is promoting competition in agricultural markets, noting that currently just four big corporations control more than half the market in beef, pork, and poultry. If just one of their processing plants goes offline, it can cause massive supply chain disruptions (as the closing of a baby formula plant did in 2022). “[T]here’s something wrong,” he said, “when just 7% of the American farms get nearly 90% of the farm income.” 

In addition to the existing national investments in power grids and broadband that will help rural communities, Biden announced $1 billion to fix aging rural infrastructure systems like electricity, water, and waste water systems that haven’t been updated in decades; $2 billion to help farmers fight climate change; $145 million for clean energy technologies like solar panels that will help lower electric bills; and $274 million for rural high-speed internet expansion.

The administration’s vision for rural America appears to be part of a larger vision for restoring competition to the U.S. economy and thus is closely tied to the administration’s push to break up monopolies. In July 2021, Biden promised to interpret antitrust laws in the way they had been understood traditionally, not as the U.S. government began to interpret them in the 1980s. Then, following the argument advanced by the solicitor general of the United States at the time, Robert Bork, the government concluded that economic consolidation was fine so long as it promoted economic efficiencies that, at least in the short term, cut costs for consumers. 

Biden vowed to return to the traditional understanding of antitrust principles championed by presidents all the way back to Theodore Roosevelt at the turn of the last century, arguing that protecting economic competition protects workers, promotes innovation, and keeps consumer prices down. To that, the coronavirus pandemic added an awareness of the need to protect supply chains. 

“Bidenomics is just another way of saying ‘the American Dream,’” Biden said. “Forty years ago, trickle-down economics limited the dream to those at the top. But I believe every American willing to work hard should be able to get a job, no matter where they live—in the heartland, in small towns—to raise their kids on a good paycheck and keep their roots where they grew up.” 

In contrast to Biden’s outreach to farmers, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is facing a dilemma over the nation’s next farm bill, which must be passed by the end of the year. According to Clark Merrefield of The Journalist’s Resource, Congress usually debates and renews the farm bill every five years, and the last one passed in 2018. 

Farm bills include price support for farm products, especially corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, rice, peanuts, dairy, and sugar. It also includes crop insurance, conservation programs, and a wide variety of other agricultural programs, making the farm bill hugely popular in rural areas that focus on farming. 

Also included in the measure are nutritional programs for low-income Americans, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. SNAP serves 41 million low-income Americans, but as a member of the far-right Republican Study Committee, Johnson called for cutting SNAP benefits. Now his far-right colleagues are echoing his position, saying that the need to renew the farm bill is a great opportunity to make significant cuts to SNAP, especially since the farm bill is expected to bear a price tag of more than $1 trillion for the first time in our history. 

“I can’t imagine the Mike Johnson that we know would pass up the opportunity to secure as many conservative wins as possible in this farm bill,” a Republican aide told Meredith Lee Hill of Politico, “[a]nd that means serious SNAP reforms.” 

But even some Republicans—primarily those who hail from agricultural states—object to loading the farm bill up with the poison pill of SNAP cuts, knowing such a tactic would repel Democrats, whose votes will be necessary to pass the measure as far-right Republicans balk. 

It will take a deft hand to get the measure through Congress, and its failure at Johnson’s hands will infuriate hard-hit rural areas. It is one more thing to add to the new speaker’s to-do list, as the deadline for funding the government is looming. The continuing resolution funding the government at 2023 levels, the measure that cost Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) his speakership, expires in just over two weeks, on November 17.

Johnson’s willingness to load bills with poison pills that his conference likes showed today in the House’s passage of Republicans’ aid bill for Israel—Ukraine aid had been cut away—along with dramatic cuts to funding the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), a provision that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office warned would add to the deficit rather than reducing it. Knowing that the measure will not pass the Senate, a number of Democrats voted for it, likely to avoid attacks from conservative opponents. 

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says the Senate won’t even take up the House bill. Instead, the Senate continues to work on its own strongly bipartisan bill that ties together aid to Israel and Ukraine. 

As Kate Riga of Talking Points Memo put it, if the Senate continues to work in this bipartisan way, we will continue to see the same pattern we’ve seen throughout this Congress: “Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans and House Democrats all supporting more or less the same thing, with a chunk of House Republicans out on a branch alone.”

After an angry fight last night over Senator Tommy Tuberville’s (R-AL) holds on military promotions, in which Republican senators joined Democrats in confronting him, the Senate today confirmed General David Allvin to be Air Force chief of staff and Admiral Lisa Franchetti as chief of naval operations, by votes of 95 to 1. Franchetti is the first woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Wednesday’s fight appears to have been prompted by the hospitalization of acting Marines Commandant General Eric Smith after an apparent heart attack. Smith was holding down two high-level positions at once owing to Tuberville’s holds, and he had warned his schedule was “not sustainable.” Although the Pentagon says Tuberville is endangering national security, Tuberville insists that his hold on almost 400 military promotions is not hurting the military. 

The new additions mean there are no vacancies on the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the first time since July. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[jcmarchi]

Siqi Chen, Founder & CEO of Runway – Interview Series

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/siqi-chen-founder-ceo-of-runway-interview-series/

Siqi Chen, Founder & CEO of Runway – Interview Series

Siqi Chen is the founder and CEO of Runway, an a16z and Initialized funded startup enabling operators to understand their business without needing a degree in finance. As an operator and founder, he served as the CEO of Sandbox VR (a16z), VP of Product and Growth at Postmates (later acquired by Uber), CEO of Hey, Inc (Google-funded, acquired by Postmates), Head of Product at Zynga (IPO 2011) and CEO of Serious Business (funded by Lightspeed, acquired by Zynga).

In addition to his operational roles, Siqi is an investor in nearly a hundred companies, including notable names like ElevenLabs, Amplitude, Pipe, and Owner.com. Prior to his entrepreneurial ventures, Siqi made significant contributions at NASA JPL, where he achieved the distinction of being the sole recipient of a Congressional Space Act award while still in school. This recognition was a result of his contributions to machine vision technology on the Mars Exploration Rovers.

Can you explain the concept of ‘ambient intelligence’ and how it differentiates Runway from other AI-driven financial platforms?

Ambient Intelligence is a completely new expression of how AI can be used in products. Most products treat AI as a separate creature right now—it’s either an agent working on its own, or a chat interface you have to talk to. Those are the default experiences, but there’s another way to do it: by making the AI invisible.

If you look at how people actually use AI at work, GitHub Copilot is probably the most widely used tool. It isn’t a separate chatbot or agent. It’s more subtle, and so deeply embedded in GitHub’s platform that it just makes what you’re doing faster and more efficient. With the current capabilities of AI models, that kind of seamless integration is a much better expression of AI.

Apple did the same thing with its latest iOS announcement at WWDC. They didn’t add separate agents or chatbots. They just built AI into their workflows, so it can solve math equations as you type them or summarize text in real-time.

That’s how AI should be expressed: as a tool for thought, working quietly in the background. At Runway, we call it Ambient Intelligence.

We agree with Joel Spolsky, who worked on Microsoft Excel, and once said: “Google uses Bayesian filtering the way Microsoft uses the IF statement.” That’s how deeply ingrained technology should be in a workflow. 

It’s the same with AI. Four years ago, we thought about calling ourselves “CFO.ai.” We were advised against it because calling our product “AI-powered” would soon sound as dated as labeling it “powered by AJAX” or “powered by AWS.” All technology eventually becomes outdated, so the focus should be on enhancing user experience instead. In Runway, AI is deeply embedded in workflows and doesn’t have to be prompted. It automatically explains what your model does or why your actuals are different from your forecast. That’s what we mean by Ambient Intelligence—an expression of AI that’s a native part of your workflow, so it enhances everything you do and makes you go faster.

What inspired you to create Runway, and what key challenges in financial planning are you aiming to address with this platform? In 2020, when I was the CEO of Sandbox VR, our revenue dropped to zero after the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Nobody knew how long the pandemic would last, so we needed to create multiple contingency plans for emergency funding—ranging from 3 months to 2 years. We had to create those scenarios manually in Google Sheets, using email and Slack to collaborate. It was such a clunky and error-prone process, that I asked my CFO if there was a better tool for this task. He said: “No, this is it.” I couldn’t believe it. We had tools like Notion, Figma, and Airtable, but nothing built specifically for finance. Everyone found finance—and by extension, business—difficult to understand. But no one had solved that problem. So I asked myself a simple question: what if everyone could understand how their business actually works? That’s why I started Runway.

Our goal is to make business accessible and understandable to everyone. Runway shows how all functions, from sales and marketing to product and engineering, fit together. It gives teams a clear, shared understanding of the business, so they can align on strategic decisions and create more impact.

Ambient Intelligence goes further. Because it’s deeply embedded in Runway, it makes your work clearer, better, and faster. It automatically gives helpful context, and surfaces deep insights to help you make better decisions effortlessly. 

How does Runway’s Ambient Intelligence proactively support finance teams without being intrusive?

The short answer: by not turning AI into a separate creature—like an agent or a chatbot—that you have to interact with. 

Ambient Intelligence is invisible; it’s part of your everyday experience with Runway. It works quietly in the background, without interrupting. It’s built into the platform, so it can anticipate intent and help you without being prompted. In the same way the GitHub Copilot autocompletes your code, or Apple Intelligence solves formulas as you write them, Runway’s Ambient Intelligence makes your work clearer, faster, and more efficient. 

What that means is you don’t have to trace a driver through your entire model to understand how it connects with everything else—we just tell you that, in plain English. You don’t have to check if your actuals match your forecast—we highlight deviations and help you understand what happened. All of that happens automatically—Ambient Intelligence doesn’t make any changes to your model or scenarios, and doesn’t have to be told which context or insight is most relevant to you in the moment. It just does the job.

Could you elaborate on the ‘Driver Explanations’ feature and how it enhances understanding across the organization? In any business model, the drivers are interconnected and form a complex network. That means you have to trace a driver through the entire model to understand how it’s calculated and what it impacts. The way people do that today is by digging through spreadsheets and tracing everything manually. Understanding a single formula is not enough; you have to know how one driver impacts others, and how the entire network is structured. That’s how you build deep intuition about the business and identify the levers you can pull.

Runway makes that easier. When you hover over a driver, we show you a clear, concise, automatically-generated explanation that helps you understand how it works. You don’t have to ask a chatbot what ‘Gross Margin’ is and how it fits into your model—we explain everything in plain English. That’s how ‘Driver Explanations’ work—seamlessly, invisibly, and automatically, so everyone at your company can understand your model.

Runway claims to turn hours-long tasks into seconds. Can you share specific examples or metrics that highlight this improvement

This was a quote from one of our customers Andrew Maher, Head of Finance at Superhuman. Read the full story here. 

“With Runway, we saw our efficiency skyrocket with a 50X to 100X improvement, turning hours-long tasks into seconds,” said Andrew Maher, Head of Finance, Superhuman. “Complex financial models were distilled into clear, actionable insights, making it easier to respond quickly to key executives. Runway was like adding a touch of magic to our financial strategy, turning data into actionable intelligence—imagine having a co-pilot in finance that brings critical insights alongside number crunching.”

How does Runway’s integration with existing business tools like accounting software and CRM systems enhance its functionality? We give you a holistic understanding of your business by pulling in both data and context. Runway integrates with over 650 of the most common tools, and we go beyond usual integrations like general ledgers and HR systems. We connect with CRMs, databases, spreadsheets, and even project management software like Jira.

We believe that finance isn’t just about finance; it’s about understanding how everything in the company fits and works together. By integrating with project management tools and databases, for example, we connect important context to your business model. This way, different departments work with a single source of truth, and get a shared understanding of your business.

How does Runway position itself against competitors like traditional financial planning tools and other modern AI-driven platforms? Our core belief places us in an entirely different category from other financial solutions.

The main challenge of modern finance is collaboration. But the idea that finance should be collaborative isn’t new; it’s been around forever. And yet, no one has actually built a product that enables real collaboration. Why is that?

Because traditional tools only help you save time or give you more control. That’s where they stop. Our core belief is that these things are table stakes. What modern finance needs is something that helps everyone immediately and intuitively understand how the business works. Real collaboration can only happen once everyone has that shared context. It’s understanding that lies at the center of this problem. That’s what Runway solves for finance, product, sales, marketing, and every other team.

To make business understandable, we start by connecting your data to important business context and your roadmap. We use abstractions that actually map to how people think. And people don’t think of plans in terms of numbers on a spreadsheet—they think of decisions and timelines. So we show plans in a way that’s intuitive, and that everyone can easily play with. Anyone in your team can modify these plans, and see how different decisions would impact your model. That’s how we deliver a shared understanding of how your business works. 

Our deep focus on creating clarity sets us apart. Our customers, like Superhuman, AngelList and ConvertKit (soon to be Kit), are already seeing the difference with Runway.

What strategies are you employing to maintain Runway’s competitive edge and continue its rapid growth in the market? We don’t compete with those who build financial products for finance teams. 

We have customers in finance, but the core value we deliver is this: real collaboration across the entire organization, driven by true understanding. 

We’re uniquely focused on creating deep, intuitive understanding. Our design and engineering efforts are focused on this single goal. No one else in the market shares our level of focus on solving this specific problem. 

I don’t think we have any competition at all. We’re playing an entirely different game.

How do you envision the role of AI and ambient intelligence evolving in the finance industry over the next five years? As AI capabilities evolve, I think we’ll see a major shift in how work fundamentally gets done. While I don’t think models are quite there yet, it’ll happen very quickly. When it does, we’ll see a significant increase in the amount of leverage people have—one person will do the work of ten, a hundred, or even a thousand people. Enterprises will leverage AI to get more output with the same headcount, and planning will become exponentially more complex. But people will still need to make strategic decisions and understand how the business works—only much faster, and way more efficiently than ever before. We’re going to need radically better tools for thought just to keep up. Ambient Intelligence can enable that by enhancing human capability effortlessly, without getting in the way.

As a CEO and AI influencer, what are your thoughts on the broader implications of AI in business planning and decision-making? Let’s set aside AGI, ASI, and the idea of technological singularity for a moment—because in that world, where AI does everything and we’re all lounging by a pool, it’s a completely different story.

Before we reach that point, though, I think we’ll see an exponential boost in human capability—where one person can do the work of hundreds. Human output will reach unprecedented levels, making businesses and systems much more complex. We’ll need AI to help us understand what’s happening and to make smarter decisions.

It’ll all go hand-in-hand—AI will drive increased leverage, which in turn will add to the complexity of systems. To manage increased complexity, we’ll need even more advanced tools to further enhance human capability.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit Runway.

[biteyjr]

Now that I'm a week in on raising my second little guy, I've found myself drawing a lot of comparisons between when I raised Kafei about 3 years ago (2 years and 11 months, to be precise)

Kafei

He was an exceptionally easy puppy, he did not go in the house save for one time it was pouring and the yard was flooded. He wasn't a huge chewer either, he'd try the legs of my computer chair while he was teething and broke the thumbstick on my pro controller.

I think by the time he was 3 months I let him have full roam of the apartment when he wasn't sleeping, he was that reliable.

He didn't really bite me either and he got along well with Penny pretty much immediately.

That being said he loathed bedtime and it was always a struggle to get him to settle in his crate. He got overtired easy and would hit the witching hour and just go apeshit. He wasn't too food driven so chews, kongs, lick matts did very little. He wanted to play and wanted me to be with him.

I think he wound up sleeping through the night relatively early on? I can't recall, but until he had diarrhea from the giardia medication I think he was sleeping through the night by week 12 or so.

His socialization was hit or miss, it was the pandemic but he started going with me to work and would meet my coworkers often. He allegedly* had giardia and the vet dropped the ball on that, I wasn't informed until 4 weeks later when he was supposed to get his last round of shots so I wound up having to wait until he was nearly 20 weeks to walk him. And then we immediately got run up on by an offleash doberman which shook my confidence.

I also didn't like the puppy classes we wound up going to. It was a lot of rehashing things I knew for the most part and his chance to play with other puppies was limited. They had an odd accidental habit of putting him together with ruder puppies for him to correct or dogs that were so shy they didn't play at all. I think in the six weeks he didn't have a single chance to play with a puppy who matched his energy. I tried their follow up class (puppy....intermediate? Something like that) exactly once and left the class halfway because they were having us practice loose leash walking in a small pen and I wound up going through all the treats I brought (two entire shredded chicken breasts) within the first twenty minutes.

I did really enjoy puppy agility though and to this day I think that course was a lot more helpful for him.

To this day his leash walking is pretty bad and he's hit or miss with strangers and very domineering over male dogs.

I was very 'disinfect the stroller wheels' with him, aside from my office, he went on a socialization trip once to home depot, once to a bougie pet store, and again on a ferry where he was carried. I think he went to a college campus too? I forget if he was already 20+ weeks then or not.

*allegedly in the sense that neither he nor penny and zucchini showed any symptoms, they neglected to tell me until I showed up for his 16 week shots and asked where his 'fresh stool sample' was, and he was not tested again. None of his siblings had it, none of the breeders dogs had it, and he was not given access to any standing water so. Who knows.

Haku

He is quintessential puppy, he'll pee in the house without much thought and I have to be very careful about watching him. He has yet to poop indoors which is a big plus. The breeders warned me Silkens are more difficult to potty train, but I've had a pretty easy time overall.

He is a big chewer, he'll go after cords, furniture, loose wood on the deck, rocks. He doesn't swallow it thankfully, but he will shove anything in his mouth if he thinks he can fit it.

Oddly enough he doesn't care about actual chews too much, he'll chomp on a bully stick for a bit but didn't care much about the benebones or the yak cheese. He liked the carrot I gave him though.

He gets along with the other two dogs, but it becomes a problem when he doesn't accept them saying 'leave me alone'. He pushes buttons and boundaries, and sometimes has to just be removed from the situation. He gets along better outside since the open spaces leaves the other dogs more tolerant. He is very nippy.

He takes to the crate like a champ though. I no longer work from home full time so it's handy to have a puppy who is willing to just sleep while I'm gone. He'll start complaining sometimes when he really has to go, but for the most part he's happy to be alone and sleeping.

I'm planning to be a little less defensive with him, more trips, early neighborhood walks. The 8-16 week period is so important and I don't want to not take full advantage again.

I'm going to puppy socialization meetups instead of classes this time around -- partially because of timing and partially because I just don't feel like I got a lot out of them with Kafei.

[bongaboi]

South Dakota State: 2022 NCAA Division I FCS National Champions

FRISCO, Texas -- A different Dakota is celebrating a national championship nearly two decades after the border-state rivals moved up together to the Division I level.

"I continue to think back in 2004 and wondering how it was going to work out. Well, this is pretty sweet how it's worked out," coach John Stiegelmeier said after South Dakota State won its first Football Championship Subdivision title Sunday.

Mark Gronowski threw three touchdowns and ran 51 yards for another score as the Jackrabbits won 45-21 win over North Dakota State, which lost for the first time in its 10 FCS title game appearances since the move from NCAA Division II.

As a true freshman two seasons ago, Gronowski tore the ACL in his left knee on the opening series of the Football Championship Subdivision title game. Now nearly 20 months after a loss in that unprecedented spring finale, and after the quarterback missed the entire 2021 season, the Jackrabbits (14-1) beat their border-state rival for the biggest prize in coach John Stiegelmeier's 26th season at his alma mater.

"It's really a storybook ending for us,'' Gronowski said.

"We made a memory,'' Stiegelmeier said. "I live through our players and I always will, always have. And so my joy is great today because their joy is great.''

Amar Johnson rushed for 126 yards and Isaiah Davis had 119 for his ninth 100-yard game this season, and both scored touchdowns for South Dakota State. Gronowski, who completed 14 of 21 passes for 223 yards, had his scoring run on the third play of the second half to stretch the lead to 38-14.

"We knew NDSU was going to fight until the end of the game, and we knew that we had to come out in the second half and just start fast, score early,'' Gronowski said. "That's what we did there on that play.''

Cam Miller was 17-of-26 passing for 256 yards with two TDs and two interceptions for the Bison (12-3), who went from Fargo to Frisco for the 10th time in 12 seasons.

"So tough to lose,'' Bison coach Matt Entz said. "Not something we like to do, not something we're going to make a habit of at NDSU. But I'm more concerned about our players right now. … They'll bounce back, I know that.''

The Jackrabbits have won the past four meetings between the Missouri Valley Football Conference rivals, all in less than two years. The previous three had been in regular-season games for the Dakota Marker trophy that wasn't up for grabs in the MLS soccer stadium nearly 1,000 miles from the border of their states. It was their 114th meeting since 1903, but only the fifth in the FCS playoffs and first in the championship game.

South Dakota State's only previous FCS title game appearance was a last-minute loss to Sam Houston State in May 2021 after the lower-division season was pushed back to the spring because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Jackrabbits beat NDSU in that abbreviated regular season, then again later that fall before a 23-21 win last October after overcoming a 21-7 halftime deficit in the Fargodome.

Johnson's 32-yard TD run broke a 7-all tie early in the second quarter. The Jackrabbits got the ball right back when Steven Arrell stripped the ball from running back Kobe Johnson, and Dalys Beanum recovered it at the Bison 34. Gronowski hit wide-open Jaxon Janke for an 18-yard TD four plays later -- Janke also had a 30-yard TD catch in the fourth quarter.

There was an exchange of 44-yard touchdown passes right before halftime. On third-and-1, Gronowski went forward as if he was going to try to run for the first down when he instead stopped for the line and threw to Mike Morgan all alone behind the entire defense.

"It means the world to me. And I've got to thank every single person that has helped me along this journey and the guys who played an awesome game,'' Gronowski said of his comeback from injury to being the game's most outstanding player and winning a championship. "There's no better feeling in the world.''

THE TAKEAWAY

North Dakota State: The Bison have a 44-4 record in the FCS playoffs, and missed a chance to match the record of 45 wins by Georgia Southern, which is now playing at the FBS level. They have only 14 losses overall since 2011, when they won the first of their record nine FCS titles, and six of those losses are to South Dakota State -- no other team has multiple wins over NDSU in that span.

South Dakota State: The Jackrabbits have won a school-record 14 games in a row since opening this season with a 7-3 loss at Big Ten team Iowa.

UP NEXT

North Dakota State opens the 2023 season on Sept. 2 in Minneapolis, one of the school's largest alumni bases, against perennial FCS playoff team Eastern Washington.

South Dakota State still hopes to fill an open slot on its 2023 schedule for Labor Day weekend. As of now, the first set game is Sept. 9 at home against 2021 national runner-up Montana State, which the Jackrabbits beat in this season's national semifinal game.

[flailing-feathers]

I got a stream to do this afternoon so fuckit I’m letting out my negativity demons here now ‘cause they’ve been weighing me down.

Been feeling like shit every time I’ve poked social media lately, idk if it’s because it’s December or what but I’m back in another one of my ‘I’m a loser who can’t make rent with the one thing I’m any good at’ modes. Yeah the economy’s in the shitter but I am thirty four years old, have an art degree from a decade ago, and spent most of last year redoing my portfolio after I quit my day job over their handling of the pandemic (and only because I had a bunch of money saved up to give myself time to restart my art career doing remote work). Spoiler alert, that wasn’t nearly enough. I opened commissions in August 2021. I started job hunting in January 2022. It is now December 2022, and I’ve made less than 3k all year, no job, the feds paying for my food since March and my bf paying my rent since September (we don’t live together, he’s just helping me).

I’m too damned old to suck this hard. I can’t come up with cool ideas people would want to buy, I’m an unhireable schmuck that doesn’t have 3+ years industry experience in anything, and as much as I know part of it is that the market is objectively worse, I still feel like the biggest loser for taking more than twice as long to find work as I did when I graduated college. I’m so much more skilled now but I still don’t know how to make money. There seems to be no light at the end of this tunnel where I can actually make progress in my life.

Maybe it’s cultural programming but I hate having to be propped up financially (though I am equally in favor of UBI, and wish that was even remotely possible in the US). I hate being useless. I hate knowing that I’m intelligent and skilled but not the right kind of intelligent and skilled to not be living in a shitty little cold-ass apartment that I now can’t even pay for by myself. Art is the only thing I’m any good at, and yeah this is privilege talking but I can’t go back to regular dayjobs because nobody around here has trustworthy policies for protecting their minimum wage peons from health risks. I was uninsured even when I had a job.

Back to the whole social media thing - I’ve been a lot less active lately, not because of anything going on with platforms or the AI debacle or any other large scale dramas, it’s just that I look at it, and it makes me feel bad that I’m not posting new art or have cool promos or merch and there’s no demand for my work whatsoever. I’m still the kind of awful little shit that when I see other people posting comms, even though they’re probably just barely scraping by, too (and likely undercharging), I feel like a loser ‘cause I have barely gotten any comms and can’t even come up with merch ideas. I haven’t done anything for Studio 252MYA in ages while other artists are pumping out banger after banger. It’s great for them, of course, they deserve any boost they can get. I guess it just hits me right in the Impostor Syndrome. I don’t feel like I belong there, I’m not one of those paleoartists that are actually cool.

In the fanart world, I have an even stupider problem - I only hyperfixate on one thing at a time, and I’ve drifted away from Star Trek and back to Pokemon. I don’t stop liking a thing if it stops being my fixation, but it is a lot harder to want to choose to work on stuff relating to it over other things. My fixations tend to last around a year, no more than two. It’s fun while it lasts, but objectively ST64 is going to be much slower going now and other things are going to be chosen to be worked on instead more often than not. But there’s a little voice in the back of my head that most of the people who followed my fanart Twitter were in it for the Star Trek and I’m going to disappoint them by having less and less of it.

Lately I haven’t been doing anything for social media at all. Just making stuff for my bf and futzing about with my Neocities. I love how small and focused that community is. No room for expectations and disappointment and feeling like shit, just fucking around with silly ideas and exploring other people’s. A happy little island getaway where I can scratch a creative itch with no stakes.

[lissandela]

It’s 3:30 am and I’m awake as per usual because I never sleep, but if anyone reads this, it might be far later. It’s always after midnight where the introspective thoughts strike as well as the depression, but it’s not depression that is motivating anything.

I was thinking about why people get into cosplay and the nature of wanting cosplay fame and what not. There was a twitter thread that I read yesterday and a subsequent conversation that kinda sparked my thoughts a bit. People often wonder why others try to get involved heavily with numbers and guesting and all the trappings of that and try to assign blame.

I don’t really think there’s a person you can *blame*, more like the pandemic. Sure people were monetizing and trying to influence before Covid messed everything up, but it really took off during the lockdown and boy it did it. I say that because I got swept heavily up into it once that initial no con depression hit (which is a whole ‘nother thing for those who know what I’m talking about).

During the pandemic, there were so many new cosplayers which honestly gave me great joy because I love this hobby (but not so much the community (another post for another time)). I also remember how impressionable I was starting out. There wasn’t a lot of people emphasizing important things nearly as much as they do today. Or maybe they did on twitter or other places, I’m not sure.

Anyway, I was heavily influenced by what I saw and what others did and I don’t blame any of the newer cosplayers for feeling like they had to care about numbers or influence others. It was kinda like the one time I had a discussion with a friend about how weird it is for female cosplayers starting out because there’s this underlying pressure to show skin/do more lewd costumes. This was like 4 years ago so I’m sure it’s changed now but it really felt like that’s what you had to do to get big.

Because that’s the dream right? Getting big, getting on the stage, getting paid to travel to cons. It sounds like a ton of fun but I’m sure someone would tell you that it starts out but does not remain that way. Personally I can’t speak to that since I’m as casual it comes these days or always if you ask certain people.

And inevitably when you talk about getting big it’s always going to involve numbers. Whoever tells you that the whole social media cosplay game doesn’t involve numbers in some way is lying. I wish it didn’t come down to that, god I wish. In fact I’m staring into that void as twitter is slowly combusting because thats where my popularity is located. Quite a few cons require you to have a certain amount of followers/social media presence before they even look at you. Others want you to have worked with companies like crunchyroll or viz media or funimation, which that is…an effort in itself because if you don’t have the followers or attract enough attention…well you get it.

This is not the end all to be all, because I have heard that you just have to network (a task daunting enough for us socially awkward people) and build connections, probably teach a few panels etc. So I’m pretty much rambling I guess at this point but I wanted to provide examples of requirements I’ve seen.

God I feel like this has gotten so long already, there’s so much I can say about the subject so maybe there’s gonna be a part 2.

[13uswntimagines]

Ghosted (Emily x Reader)

Request 1: sonnett where reader is really good friends with a goalie(your choice) and sonnett gets jealous because reader and goalie play for the same club and Emily is in Europe. Do she goes to Lindsey and reader thinks Emily is going to breakup with her and pushes her closer to the goalie and it’s a whole shit show

Request 2: Can you do a Emily Sonnett imagines where her and the reader are together but the reader use to date someone else on the team ( you can chose) and the comments gets to Emily. And the Reader shows Emily how much she loves her?

Request 3: Something with Jane Campbell please

Author’s Note: I thought these three would work very well together, so I combined them. Also, this one takes an interesting turn in the end and if you look closely enough there are hints to a very interesting dynamic and why reader and jane wouldn’t work out. Let me know what you think. I live for interactions and stuff. They help to keep me motivated. 

It had been one hell of a year. It had started with both you and your girlfriend getting zero notice when the thorns traded her to Orlando and you to Houston. Then you had been trapped on opposite ends of the country due to the pandemic. That distance only got bigger when she decided to go to Sweden when Orlando pulled out of the challenge cup. 

But the two of you had made it work. Well, at least you thought you had made it work. apparently, Emily thought differently, if the silent treatment you had gotten the second you stepped into camp 3 hours ago was anything to go by. 

Hell, she wouldn’t even look in your direction. All you wanted was to hold your girlfriend (cause you hadn’t seen her in person in almost 6 months) and it felt like she didn’t even give a fuck that you were there. And Lindsey intercepted you every time you tried to get close. 

You smiled as you approached your blond girlfriend, leaning on the squat rack next to her. Normally you’d wrap your arms around her and kiss her neck, but you didn’t want to overstep with this weird tension happening between you. 

“Hey Em, wanna partner?” you asked softly, almost shyly.

Emily didn’t even turn to acknowledge you.

“I’m already with Linds,” She said tensely. Since when had she been so on edge around you? 

You frowned, your eyebrows furrowed as you tried to understand what was happening between you and your girlfriend. You glanced down at your shoes, suddenly finding them very interesting. 

“Oh, maybe-“ You started, poking the squat rack with your shoe. You looked up, only to find that Emily had already walked away and joined Lindsey on the other side of the gym. 

You sighed, finishing your thought into the blank air around you. “we could do dinner or something later. Guess not,” 

You blew out a long breath, willing yourself to hold back the tears. She didn’t even wait to see what you were going to say. Your eyes followed her as she hugged the blond midfielder and laughed loudly at whatever she was saying. It was like a knife in your heart. 

“What’s going on with you and Miss Sweden?” Hands on your shoulders and the voice right next to your ear should have made you jump, but you were too used to Jane’s scare tactics. 

You rolled your eyes and shrugged the keeper off of you, your gaze never leaving Emily. “Honestly, I have no clue,” You sighed deeply. She had never been like this with you before, and you definitely hadn’t expected your reunion to go like this. 

“Maybe it’s just jet lag. You know how she gets when she doesn’t get enough sleep,” Jane shrugged, poking at your dimples, trying to get you to laugh. You batted her hand away. 

“The question is how you know that,” You said, sending her a scathing look. 

She smirked impishly, wiggling her eyebrows. “I live with you, remember?”

You dramatically rolled your eyes, shoving your best friend. “I don’t think You’d ever let me forget,” 

The only good thing about your trade to the dash was that you got to hang out with your best friend every day. You and Jane had known each other since college and instantly hit it off as friends. When you had been traded, Jane also just happened to be looking for a roommate and things had worked out pretty well. 

“Well, if you’re still looking for a dinner date, I’m free tonight,”  Jane hummed, wrapping an arm around you again. 

“Been there, done that,” You scoffed playfully, shoving her again, but she didn’t let go of you this time. 

So maybe the two of you had tried in college. It was more of a fling than anything else, and it had mutually ended on great terms. You loved each other, but you weren’t in love and that was alright. You decided you were way better off as friends than lovers and left it at that. Plus, you had kinda fallen insanely hard for a certain blond cavalier.

“Not that kind of date,” She giggled, letting you shove her ways this time (definitely taking note of how your lips ticked up and patting herself on the back for clearing some of the clouds on your sunny personality away). 

“Whatever you say, now shut up and spot me,” 

The two of you were so caught up that you didn’t see the annoyed blue eyes following you from across the room, or the clenched fists and jaw that would have told you exactly what the issue with your girlfriend was. 

*****

You tried to smile as you entered the dining room, hoping that you would finally have the chance to get to the bottom of whatever was bothering your girlfriend. 

You spotted her from across the room, seated at a table with Rose, Sam, and Mal. You released a breath that you didn’t know you were holding at the absence of a certain blond midfielder. Emily had been attached to her side, and watching them was like a knife in your chest, every interaction a slice at what felt like the tiny thread keeping your relationship together. 

“Hey, is this seat taken?” You asked as you approached the table, stopping short of the seat next to your girlfriend. 

She tensed, and you noted how her jaw clenched with furrowed eyebrows. She opened her mouth, but before she could respond another body slid between the two of you. 

“Yeah, it is,” Lindsey said firmly, setting her plate down right in front of the seat in question. You frowned, and your fingers tightened around your plate. You bit your lip in an attempt to not say the thing that was on your mind. Despite how pissed off you were with the woman, she was your friend too. 

You glanced around the table that was now awkwardly staring at you, your eyes landing on an empty seat next to Mal and across from Emily. 

“Alright, what about that one?” 

“Taken too,” Lindsey said shortly with a shrug. Mal glared at her. “No, it’s not, sit Y/n,”

The team was growing tired of the tension between you, and how sad you looked. 

“Thanks,” You mumbled, sliding in beside Mal. 

Silence fell over the table, and you shifted uncomfortably in your seat. You never felt so unwelcome around your friends before. 

“Well I better get going,” Emily said after a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, shoving the chair back and abruptly standing. Lindsey stood up next to her, wrapping a protective arm around her waist. Your chest ached at the hand placement and how Emily leaned into her. 

You shot up too, clearing your throat and extending your hand. “Wait Em, I thought maybe we could talk after dinner?” You said, desperation clear in your voice. The table had never heard you like this before, had never seen a crack in your typically cool and unfailingly in control exterior. 

“She’s already got plans,” Lindsey said with an eye roll, and Emily seems to tuck herself further into the taller midfielder. You gulped down the defeat and desperation threatening to crawl out of your chest. 

“Oh, um maybe I could join you then?” You asked hopefully. 

“Private plans Y/n.” Lindsey snapped, already beginning to guide Emily out of the room, seemingly careless to what you had to say. The blond defender didn’t even give you the courtesy of eye contact as she left. 

“Sure, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then. I love you, Emily,” You called after their backs, watching them go. 

Everything in you seemed to deflate. It felt like she was leaving with a piece of you like she didn’t even care you were crumbling behind her. You didn’t try to stop the tears as they fell this time, slumping miserably back into your seat. 

A warm presence knelt next to you, and soft but calloused hands gently wiped the tears burning down your face. 

You met the keeper’s concerned blue eyes and allowed her to pull you into her strong embrace, hiding your face in her neck. 

“I don’t know what I did wrong,” You sobbed. Jane rubbed large circles on your back with one hand and squeezed you tight with the otherHands-onother hand was trying to hold your broken pieces together. 

“I don’t know either,” She said, kissing the side of your head. 

You missed Emily pausing at the door to send you one last look, but Jane didn’t. Her eyes bored into the blond defender. If she thought she could just jerk you around like this with no consequences then she had another thing coming. 

Jane wasn’t romantically attracted to you, but you were her best friend and she wasn’t about to let you continue to get hurt. Emily might be able to avoid you, but she wouldn’t be able to avoid Jane, the keeper would make sure of it. 

****

“Alright cut the Bullshit Sweden, you’ve been ignoring Y/n for a week. What the fuck is your problem,” Jane growled, stepping into the nearly empty locker room and glaring at your girlfriend. She knew you could more than take care of yourself, but this had gone on long enough. 

Emily tensed at the new presence, back straightening and eye going wide. She hadn’t bet on the head of the Houston department of defense to get involved. 

“Fuck off Campbell,” Lindsey said back, stepping so she was standing protectively in front of her best friend. 

“I will not because your best friend there is hurting my best friend,” Jane took another step towards the duo, puffing out her chest. 

“Yeah right, she’s barely even noticed,” Emily scoffed, crossing her arms like a petulant child. 

“See, I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that considering she’s cried herself to sleep every night since she’s been here,” Jane said, taking another terrifying step forward, stabbing her finger wildly into the air. 

She had been the one to hold you while you sobbed yourself to sleep because you were sure Emily had fallen out of love with you. The one who watched you agonize over every interaction you had with your girlfriend leading up to camp, trying to find where you had gone wrong. The one who listened to you degrade yourself for apparently driving Emily away and right into Lindsey’s arms. She was watching as you literally ripped yourself apart over this. 

“And what, You didn’t enjoy comforting your new girlfriend?” Lindsey scoffed loudly, shoving Jane’s hand (which was practically touching her chest) away. 

“What?” Jane asked shocked. 

Emily peeked over Lindsey’s shoulder, scowling at the keeper. Anyone with eyes knew what they meant. “Look, I know she’s cheating so you can both drop the friends act,” 

Jane oils to help the laugh that bubbled out of her lips. God, Emily was clueless if she thought you two were anything more than friends. Sure you had tried in college, but there weren’t romantic feelings there. You both wanted such different things out of a partner and agreed that you were better off as friends. Emily was your person, and Jane would be damned if anyone said anything different. 

“You’re out of your fucking mind if you think she wants anyone but you and if you weren’t so far up Horan‘s ass you would know that. If you wanna break up with her to date Miss Portland then grow some balls and do it, but don’t you dare try and ghost the sweetest person in the world,” 

“You would love that wouldn’t you?” Emily spat. 

Jane rolled her eyes. “No, because it would hurt her more than you already have. She loves you, and I thought you loved her. If you do, then you should show it,”

Emily seemed to soften at Jane’s words. She did love you, more than life itself. She really had to talk this whole thing out with you. Jane didn’t give her a chance to respond, deciding that storming off to find you and make sure you were ready for practice was a more productive use of time (she would never admit that it scared her a little to leave you alone these days). 

*****

Emily wasn’t a jealous person. At least she tried not to be. But it was really fucking difficult when it came to you and your friendship with Jane. Well, it was difficult in the beginning, when she had you next to her, but with you so far away it was nearly unbearable. 

She hadn’t minded that the Dash moved you into Jane’s apartment, but then the comments started and they wouldn’t leave her alone. Instead of turning to you, talking it out with you, she had gone running to her own best friend. And in her effort to run from the fear that you wouldn’t choose her, she had hurt you in the process. 

She watched you from across the field, taking in the slight tilt of your head and slump of your shoulders. You smiled tightly at the keeper as she approached you, but Emily could tell that it didn’t reach your eyes, even from across the field. She also knew it wasn’t the blinding smile you saved solely for her. How hadn’t she noticed it before?

 “Jane was a little crude but she’s right you know,” Lindsey said, wrapping an arm around Emily’s shoulder, her eyes easily finding you. 

She felt bad about how Emily was treating you. 

“About which part?” Emily asked, raising her eyebrow and crossing her arms. Jane had said a whole lot, and she couldn’t find it within herself to disagree with them. It was childish to ignore you, and for her to be oblivious to your obvious feelings. 

“Don’t play dumb,” Lindsey scoffed, pinching Emily’s side a little harder than necessary. She didn’t like being the middleman between the two of you. You were her friend too after all. 

Emily sighed crossing her arms a little tighter around herself. “I know. I need to talk to talk to her,”

“I’m sure when she finds out what’s bothering you, there’ll be a whole lot more than talking. Isn’t communication one of those rules between the two of you?” Lindsey asked with a smirk, laughing loudly when Emily shoved her. The team knew about your relationship… dynamic and Lindsey was sure Emily was in for it when you realized exactly why the defender had broken your most sacred agreement. 

“Shut up,”

Emily’s cheeks flavored up at the implication. He was sure you’d come up with a very… creative… way to aid her in expressing her feelings next time and show her how much you loved her when you found out what this whole thing was about. 

*****

You watched Emily very carefully from your perch on the end of the bed. She had dragged you here right after practice, and as soon as the door closed the words were pouring out of her lips. 

You sat quietly, letting her finally get out the emotions she had been keeping from you for so long. She explained how the comments on Houston’s latest photo of you and Jane had started this whole shit show, and how terrified she was that you would decide you didn’t want to deal with the distance. 

You let her pace back and forth as she told you about how she didn’t want to confront the issue, so she thought ignoring you would be a better course of action. It didn’t give you a chance to tell her that you didn’t want to be with her anymore. 

She finally paused, turning to look at you with wide tearful eyes, wringing her hands nervously in front of her. 

“I don’t have romantic feelings for Jane,” You said seriously, looking your girlfriend right in the eyes. You wanted her to know how true those words were. She knew that tone and had this been a different conversation it would have sent a chill down her spine. 

“I know I just-“ She started, but you cut her rambling off an eyebrow raise and your firm voice“Got jealous and thought that cutting your losses was better than coming to me,” 

It was a rule in your relationship- communication was king. The only way things got done was if you talked about them. You talked through every aspect of your relationship, every like and dislike, every limit and desire. This situation broke every rule you had established and that didn’t sit well with you. You couldn’t be the only one initiating (or trying to), she had to do it too (especially if she was uncomfortable with something) for this whole thing to work. It scared you a little that she had just shut down and run off to Lindsey. 

Emily nodded slightly, staring a hole in your shirt. 

“I thought you had moved on already,” She mumbled. 

You stood from the bed, gently using a finger to tilt her head so you could look her in the eyes. You raised an eyebrow. “So you got cozy with Lindsey to make me feel as jealous as you were and then wouldn’t respond to me as punishment?”

“I’m sorry, I just thought it would hurt less,” She mumbled, captivated by your y/e/c eyes and the little swirl of deeper emotion hidden inside. 

You nodded. stepping closer so your noises were almost touching and gently grasping her shoulders. “I love you Emily Ann Sonnett, even when you’re being a dumbass and ghosting me,” 

She could feel your breath fanning over her lips, only adding to the weight of your words. 

“I love you too,” Emily said, and you could see the truth to her words in her blue eyes. 

You smirked. “I know,” 

You leaned down and finally connected your lips. She grabbed your collar and pulled you closer, pouting all of her emotions into the kiss, trying to show you how much she loved you and how sorry she was for hurting you. 

Your lips moved together in a very familiar dance, slow and full of all of the emotions between you. At some point, you had flipped the two of you around so Emily was seated on edge of the bed. You pulled back and began to trail kisses down your girlfriend’s neck. 

She tilted her head to give you more room, sighing and moaning as you trailed your way down her chest, stomach, and thighs, placing kisses as you went until you were kneeling between her legs. Your fingers toyed with the waistband of her pants, an annoying cocky smirk plaster on your face when she whined that you were going too slow. 

“No, no baby girl. We’re going to work on your communication skills, so I’m not going to do anything unless you tell me exactly what you want,” 

[starryevermore]

hey bitch! watch that tiktok you saved that was like "stitch this with something your boyfriend won't let you do" and do a blurb of it with chris! (also drink some water you fucking whore! <3)

the tiktok in question

“That Was, Like, Two Years Ago!”

word count: 702

note: if there’s any couple tiktoks you want me to write about with chris,, please send me some! (just please include a link as an example if you can just in case I’m not familiar with the particular concept!)

“Let’s play a game where we say things that our boyfriends won’t let us do,” the woman on your fyp said. “I’ll go first.”

The video cut to another woman showing off her wonderful man and how he didn’t ever try to control her or her actions. But you paid little attention to the specifics of the video, the gears already turning in your mind. You’d been dating your boyfriend, Chris, for nearly three years now, and he was beyond supportive in everything you did. One such thing was your blossoming TikTok career, an accidental creation during your boredom in the early days of the pandemic. A good chunk of your following was the result of you being the girlfriend of Chris Evans and, from time to time, you’d indulge in them and provide content related to Chris. Usually, it came in the form of you reacting to the various TikToks of people thirsting over your boyfriend, but sometimes you’d post videos that showed a sneak peak into your life with Chris. 

And this? This was perfect. 

You went to the kitchen, hitting the record button and propping your phone up against the toaster before leaning against the counter, trying to act a little bit subtle about your recording so you’d get a more genuine reaction. When it was all set up and ready, you called out, “Hey, Chris?”

“Yeah?” he shouted from the living room.

“Can you come here for a sec?”

You heard Chris grunt slightly as he got off the couch before he padded into the kitchen, asking, “Whatcha need, pretty girl?”

“I was just wondering, like, what won’t you let me do?”

His brows furrowed together as he processed the question. “What I won’t—I don’t know, like heroin? Cocaine?”

You laughed slightly at his thought process. Oh, the fans would die over this. “No, like something I might actually do.”

“Oh!” he said. “I wouldn’t let you murder somebody.” 

You blinked. “You think I'd kill somebody?”

“Well, I see how you get when you’re in traffic—”

“Okay, okay! Okay, no, like something...” you cut him off. You frowned, decided to give up the subtly in your question, and gestured to your phone. “It’s for a TikTok. So, like, what’s something a boyfriend wouldn’t want a girlfriend to do specifically?” 

“I don’t like, what’s...What do guys try to control? I mean, cut your hair? No, you can cut your hair. Get tattoos? No, you can get tattoos. We should go get a tattoo together, actually. I mean, what are other things guys get pissed about?” he muttered to himself. 

You laughed slightly. “But, Chris, baby, is there anything you specifically won’t let me do?”

“Uh, I guess cheat?”

“I mean, yeah that’s obvious—”

“NO!” he shouted and pointed an accusatory finger at you, startling you. “Once you cheated at Clue.”

You couldn’t hold back your laughter now. A few years ago, you and Chris went to a good ole fashioned Evans Family Game Night. During a game of Clue, you and Scott had snuck a look at Chris’s cards while he went to the bathroom. And when he found out? Oh, you haven’t ever been able to live it down. 

“Oh my god!” you laughed. “We’re not having this fight again!”

“No, no, no, we should!” he said, putting his hands on his hips. “I was so angry when you cheated.”

“I said I was sorry!” you tried to defend, but it could barely come out as you were wheezing while you laughed. 

“That was like two years ago and—”

“Yeah, two years ago!”

“—and it still hurts!” He sniffed, pretending to cry. “I can’t believe you’d cheat like that.”

“Oh, bubba!” you said, your tone going a bit softer. You crossed the room and pulled him into your arms, resting your head on his chest. “I promise, I’ll never cheat at Clue again.”

“You better mean it,” he sniffled.

“I do,” you said. “But Uno on the other hand...” 

“Hey! Okay, you know what? That’s the one thing I won’t let you do. You’re not allowed to cheat at any games anymore!”

You laughed again, already knowing that the fans were definitely going to have fun with this. 

[kaile-hultner]

Nihilism is so easy, which is why we need to kill it

(I initially published this here a couple weeks ago.)

So last night it dawned on me that, after over two years of being relatively symptom-free, my depression snuck back up on me and has taken over. It’s still pretty mild in comparison to other times I’ve been stuck in the hole, but after 24 months (and more) of mostly being good to go, I can tell that it’s here for a hot minute again.

How do I know? Well, it might be the fact that I spent more time sleeping during my recent vacation from work than I did just about anything else, and how it’s suddenly really hard for me to stay awake during work hours. I don’t really have an appetite, and in fact nausea hits me frequently. I don’t really have any emotional reactions to things outside of tears, even when tears aren’t super appropriate to the situation (like watching someone play Outer Wilds for the first time). And I’ve been consuming a lot of apocalyptic media, to which the only response, emotional or otherwise, I can really muster is “dude same.”

For a long time I was huge into absurdist philosophy, because it felt to my depressed brain like just the right balance between straight up denying that things are bad (and thus we should fix them, or at least try to do so) and full-blown nihilism. This gives absurdism a lot of credit; mostly it’s just a loose set of spicy existentialist ideas and shit that sounds good on a sticker, like “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

In the last couple years, while outside of my depressive state, I went back to Camus’ work and found a lot of almost full-on abusive shit in it. Not toward anyone specifically, but shit like “nobody and nothing will care if you’re gone, so live out of spite of them all” rubs me the wrong way in retrospect. The philosophy Camus puts out opens the door for living in a very self-destructive fashion; that in fact the good life is living without care for yourself or anyone/anything else. The way Camus describes and derides suicide especially is grim as fuck, and certainly I would never recommend The Myth of Sisyphus to anyone currently struggling with ideation. That “perfect balance” between denial and nihilism is really not that perfect at all, and in fact skews much more heavily towards the latter.

Neon Genesis Evangelion has been a big albatross around my neck in terms of the media products I’ve consumed in my life that I believe have influenced my depression hardcore. It sits in a similar conversational space to Camus’ work, in that it confronts nihilism and at once rejects and facilitates it. A lot of folks remark that Evangelion is pretty unique – or at least uncommon – in its accurate portrayal of depression, especially for mid-90s anime properties. The thing I notice always seems to be missing in these discussions is that along with that accurate portrayal comes a spot-on – to me, at least – depiction of what depression does to resist being treated. This is a disease that uses a person’s rational faculties to suggest that nobody else could possibly understand their pain, and therefore there’s no use in getting better or moving forward. Shinji Ikari is as self-centered as Hideaki Anno is as I am when it comes to confronting the truth: there are paths out of this hole, but nobody else can take that step out but us, and part of our illness is that refusal to do just that. Depression lies, it provides a cold comfort to the sufferer, that there is no existence other than the one where we are in pain and there is no way out, so pull the blanket up over our head and go back to sleep.

Watching Evangelion for the first time corresponded with the onset of one of the worst depressive spirals I’ve ever been in, and so, much like the time I got a stomach virus at the same time that I ate Arby’s curly fries, I kind of can’t associate Evangelion with anything else. No matter what else it might signify, no matter what other meaning there is to derive from it, for me Eva is the Bad Feeling Anime™. Which is why, naturally, I had to binge all four of the Evangelion theatrical releases upon the release of Evangelion 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time last month.

If Neon Genesis Evangelion and End of Evangelion are works produced by someone with untreated depression just fucking rawdogging existence, then the Eva movies are works produced by someone who has gone to therapy even just one fucking time. Whether that therapy is working or not is to be determined, but they have taken that step out of the hole and are able to believe that there is a possibility of living a depression-free life. The first 40 minutes or so of Evangelion 3.0+1.0 are perfect cinema to me. The world is destroyed but there is a way to bring it back. Restoration and existence is possible even when the surface of the planet might as well be the surface of the Moon. The only thing about this is, everyone has to be on board to help. Even though WILLE fired one of its special de-corefication devices into the ground to give the residents of Village 3 a chance at survival, the maintenance of this pocket ecosystem is actively their responsibility. There is no room or time for people who won’t actively contribute, won’t actively participate in making a better world from the ashes of the old.

There are a lot of essentialist claims and assumptions made by the film in this first act about how the body interacts with the social – the concept of disability itself just doesn’t seem to have made it into the ring of safety provided by Misato and the Wunder, which seems frankly wild to me, and women are almost singularly portrayed in traditionalist support roles while men are the doers and the fixers and the makers. I think it’s worth raising a skeptical eyebrow at this trad conservative “back to old ways” expression of the post-apocalypse wherever it comes up, just as it’s important to acknowledge where the movie pushes back on these themes, like when Toji (or possibly Kensuke) is telling Shinji that, despite all the hard work everyone is doing like farming and building, the village is far from self-sufficient and will likely always rely on provisions from the Wunder.

As idyllic as the setting is, it’s not the ideal. As Shinji emerges from his catatonia, Kensuke takes him around the village perimeter. It’s quiet, rural Japan as far as the eye can see, but everywhere there are contingencies; rationing means Kensuke can only catch one fish a week, all the entry points where flowing water comes into the radius of the de-corefication devices have to be checked for blockages because the water supply will run out. There is a looming possibility that the de-corefication machines could break or shut down at some point, and nobody knows what will happen when that happens. On the perimeter, lumbering, pilot-less and headless Eva units shuffle around; it is unknown whether they’re horrors endlessly biding their time or simply ghosts looking to reconnect to the ember of humanity on the other side of the wall. Survival is always an open question, and mutual aid is the expectation. Still: the apocalypse happened, and we’re still here. The question Village 3 answers is “what now?” We move on, we adapt.

Evangelion is still a work that does its level best to defy easy interpretation, but the modern version of the franchise has largely abandoned the nihilism that was at its core in the 90s version. It’s not just that Shinji no longer denies the world until the last possible second – it’s that he frequently actively reaches out and is frustrated by other people’s denials. He wants to connect, he wants to be social, but he’s also burdened with the idea that he’s only good to others if he’s useful, and he’s only useful if he pilots the Eva unit. This last movie separates him and what he is worth to others (and himself) from his agency in being an Eva pilot, finally. In doing so, he’s able to reconcile with nearly everyone in his life who he has harmed or who has hurt him, and create a world in which there is no Evangelion. While this ending is much more wishful thinking than one more grounded in the reality of the franchise – one that, say, focuses on the existence and possible flourishing of Village 3 and other settlements like it while keeping one eye on the precarious balancing act they’re all playing – it feels better than the ending of End of Eva, and even than the last two episodes of the original series.

I’m glad the nihilism in Evangelion is gone, for the most part. I’m glad that I didn’t spend roughly eight hours watching the Evamovies only to be met yet again with a message of “everything is pointless, fuck off and die.” Because I’ve been absorbing that sentiment a lot lately, from a lot of different sources, and it really just fuckin sucks to hear over and over again.

It is a truth we can’t easily ignore that the confluence of pandemic, climate change, authoritarian surge and capitalist decay has made shit miserable recently. But the spike in lamentations over the intractability of this mix of shit – the inevitability of our destruction, to put it in simpler terms – really is pissing me off. No one person is going to fix the world, that much is absolutely true, but if everyone just goes limp and decides to “123 not it” the apocalypse then everyone crying about how the world is fucked on Twitter will simply be adding to the opening bars of a self-fulfilling prophesy.

We can’t get in a mech to save the world but then, neither realistically could Shinji Ikari. What we can do looks a lot more like what’s being done in Village 3: people helping each other with limited resources wherever they can.

Last week, Hurricane Ida slammed into the Gulf Coast and churned there for hours – decimating Bayou communities in Louisiana and disrupting the supply chain extensively – before powering down and moving inland. Last night the powerful remnants of that storm tore through the Northeast, causing intense flooding. Areas not typically affected by hurricanes suddenly found themselves in a similar boat – pun not intended – to folks for whom hurricanes are simply a fact of life. There’s a once-in-a-millennium drought and heatwave ripping through the West Coast and hey – who can forget back in February when Oklahoma and Texas experienced -20 degree temperatures for several days in a row? All of this against the backdrop of a deadly and terrifying pandemic and worsening political climate. It’s genuinely scary! But there are things we can do.

First, if you’re in a weather disaster-prone area, get to know your local mutual aid organizations. Some of these groups might be official non-profits; one such group in the Louisiana area, for example, is Common Ground Relief. Check their social media accounts for updates on what to do and who needs help. If you’re not sure if there’s one in your area, check out groups like Mutual Aid Disaster Relief for that same information. Even if you’re not in a place that expects to see the immediate effects of climate change, you should still consider linking up with organizing groups in your area. Tenant unions, homeless organizations, safe injection sites and needle exchanges, immigrant rights groups, environmental activist orgs, reproductive health groups – all could use some help right now, in whatever capacity you might be able to provide it.

In none of these scenarios are we going to be the heroes of the story, and we shouldn’t view this kind of work in that way. But neither should we give into the nihilistic impulse to insist upon doing nothing, insist that inaction is the best course of action, and get back under the blankets for our final sleep. Kill that impulse in your head, and fuck, if you have to, simply just fucking wish for that better world. Then get out of bed and help make it happen.

[astranva]

Mustache Dare

Word Count: 1.8k

Warnings: Absolutely none if you can handle how Harry looks with the stache, or a little strong language (F word).

Category: Fluff!

Summary: Y/N loves a good challenge, French toast is involved and so is Harry’s facial hair.

Or

The one where Harry and Y/N are too competitive over French toast and Y/N shaves Harry’s facial hair…except for one place.

Harry and Y/N’s relationship was one their friends enjoyed to watch and be present around. The couple could go from babying everyone around them, to being the lives of every party, to being the couple who’d take care of you when you’re all messed up, to being a couple who were just simply entertaining to watch.

They had met some years ago through mutual friends and instantly hit it off, Harry later swearing up and down that “the chemistry was unreal” whenever he talked about his girlfriend with anyone, telling them that he knew from the moment he met her that they were in it for a ride – together.

She supported him through everything; the One Direction hiatus, family deaths, road to being a solo artist, his experimenting with everything, and all his music and thoughts. Y/N was the whole package for him; a girlfriend, a best friend and his number one fan.

Don’t get them wrong, Harry supported her through thick and thin, too. He supported her during her confusion, the insecurity, the doubting moments, and even every single time she questioned if she chose the right major. He could be in Japan and be one call away from taking the earliest flight back home if she even implied that she wanted him back there.

But the couple didn’t only kiss and lull each other into peaceful sleep at night, they loved a good banter and challenge, too.

Y/N was used to giving her all to win or to at least face a dignified loss ever since she was a child. She had far too many photographs of her engaging in mind-tickling challenges ever since she was 3, and Harry’s personal favorite – which he keeps in his wallet – is a picture of an 8-year-old Y/N sitting in front of a chess board with her gandpa, eyes squinted in concentration and finger on the corner of her mouth.

Harry admired that they both had the same characteristic. He loved how competitive they both were and loved, even more, how they always turned that into fun banter which always made them laugh the hardest.

Harry had been leaving his facial hair grow, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t like it when Y/N would mindlessly poke at it or run her knuckles gently down his cheeks and chin.

“Remember when you couldn’t grow that out?” She said one night, a small smug smile on her face that told him that she was sleepy after a tiring day with work.

He had her seated on the kitchen stool as he made her instant noodles, which she was waiting for to cool. He rolled his eyes with a smile, approaching her to wrap his arms around her waist, “Took me far too long, huh?”

She smiled wider, “Can’t even remember. It’s like I forgot all about that time because of how much I’m getting used to this.” She said as she patted his cheeks.

That night, she ate her noodles and had to stop herself from choking on the soup from laughing at some of the weirdest jokes Harry was reading her off of the internet.

The following morning was when it happened. It was finally the weekend and they both slept in before waking up at 3PM to a dark room – Harry was an angel and had shut the blinds the previous night because he knew they needed to sleep in – and the chirping of birds.

“Can we stay here for the rest of the day?” Y/N asked, cheek pressed against Harry’s chest, not finding it in her to open her eyes for long the moment Harry’s fingers started playing with her hair.

Harry chuckled softly, “We can, but we’re going to need to eat.”

She hummed against his chest, “How do we feel about French toast?”

“I can make that.”

Y/N pulled back, raising an eyebrow at him, “You burn them, baby.”

And while butterflies erupted in Harry’s stomach at the pet name he loved when it fell from his girlfriend’s lips, he still chose to feign shock and look back at her. “I never do.”

She sat up with a jolt as she laughed, “That’s a lie and you know it. You always burn the toasts.”

“I make them extra crunchy!” Harry reasoned, opening his arms, “I never burn them.”

“Bullshit,” she smirked, “How about you prove it?”

He knew where this was going, already feeling the excitement bubble inside him at the slight appearance of his girlfriend’s competitive side. “And then what?”

She thought for a few seconds before pointing at him, “If you don’t burn them, and I mean they’re 100% edible with no big black spots, you get to do whatever you want with me, and vice versa.”

“Like, I can have you work out with me?” Harry edged, watching her cringe before giving him a reluctant nod, “Deal.” Harry sat up, ruffling up his hair as he stared at her, “Get ready to lose.”

Y/N laughed sarcastically as she followed him, linking arms with him as they both walked out their bedroom, “In your dreams, Styles.”

They reached their kitchen and Harry decided to hold her and prop her on the counter, smiling cheekily at her before puckering his lips and pressing them against hers, “for good luck” he said.

Harry liked being in the kitchen, but he loved it when she was around, propped up on the counter with her hands beneath her thighs, swaying softly and gently side to side while humming a song that she had been listening to all damn week.

She was a dream, even when she teased him about losing.

So, he cracked the eggs, added the ingredients, switched the stove on for the pan that had a cube of better ready to melt in, and dipped the toast in the mixture before adding the toast in the pan.

When Y/N said Harry was used to burning toast – especially French toast and she had no idea why – she knew what she was saying, and for proof, the high heat he had set acted as one.

He walked towards her, putting his hands on her knees before spreading her legs, opening the drawer she kept hidden and taking a spatula out before stepping closer to her after closing the drawer. “Think I’ll dress you up for a week.”

She leaned down to have her face closer to his, a smile on her face that made Harry weak in the knees, “You think you’ll win?”

He stood his ground, wrapping his arms around her waist before tilting his head slightly to the side, “You think I won’t?”

Y/N pursed her lips as to stifle her laughter before limply putting her arms around his shoulder, “Harry,” she began before pecking his lips, “The toast is burning.”

Harry’s eyes widened, turning around frantically and groaning loudly at the smoking toast as he quickly turned off the stove before flipping the two toasts – the two charcoal black toasts.

With a bashful smile and a scrunched nose, he slowly turned to look at his girlfriend who had her hands clasped over her mouth to quiet the giggles. She jumped off the counter and walked towards him, eyes a little tearful from how hard she was containing in her laughter and looked at the toast, “Baby, I can’t believe I’m saying this but,” she looked up at him, few giggles escaping as he looked down at her with a fake aggravated face and both arms crossed across his chest, “You’re toast.”

And it was as if she cracked the funniest joke and it was the last straw, she leaned back as she burst out laughing.

“oh, fuck off!” Harry laughed, wrapping both arms around her and playfully and gently biting her cheek as she squealed.

Accepting defeat, Harry and Y/N agreed on eating cereal before Y/N surprised him with what task she chose for him.

She was excited for what she chose for him, trying to visualize it but failing to do so without laughing and imagining Billy Hargrove from Stranger Things.

“Harry Edward Styles, are you intentionally being slow?” She squinted her eyes at him, taking notice of how she finished her breakfast nearly 15 minutes ago but Harry was yet to finish, only milk remaining in his bowl which he slowly sipped on with his spoon.

The childlike smile told him that she was correct, which made her gasp and laugh, “You!”

He laughed along before setting his bowl aside and raising his hands up, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You can’t blame me; you have the worst dares!”

“Oh, you have no idea.” She rubbed her hands together jokingly, “Come on, get up. Let’s get to it.”

“We have to wash the bo-“

“After we’re done.” She held his hand and dragged him off the couch and up to their room.

“Baby, is that all you wanted? You wanted to-Awe, baby, you know you can just ask.” He teased, knowing that even though he can only see her back, that she was rolling her eyes at him.

What had him confused was when she dragged him to the bathroom, put down the toilet seat before telling him to sit.

“What are you doing?” He asked.

“Hush, Styles. You agreed on anything.” Was all she said with a smirk before walking back to their room and going back to him with her panda designed eyepatch, putting it on him.

“Oh God, what did I agree on?” He rhetorically asked, hearing her rummage through stuff.

But then he heard it. The buzzing sound of his shaver.

“Don’t move, yeah? We don’t want a cut.” She said with giggles.

“What the- Y/N!” He laughed, feeling her step between his legs.

Through giggles and careful work, she worked on shaving his beard.

It wasn’t the first time she shaved or trimmed his facial hair, or even just hair. Y/N loved shaving Harry’s facial hair for him and ever since the pandemic, he trusted her enough to learn how to trim his hair and had given him slight hair trimming.

Harry felt it. She went everywhere with the shaver but not his mustache but he tried to deny that she was done working, that was until she turned off the shaver and took off the eyepatch that covered his eyes so that he could see her face; staring at him in pure amusement and pride, as if she was staring at her best work of art.

She brought her fingers together and up to her lips, blowing a chef’s kiss, “Handsome.”

Harry held her waist, standing up and walking around her to stand in front of the mirror. There he stood, with only a mustache on his upper lips and unruly hair. He brought his face closer to the mirror, running his hand over his facial hairless chin and jaw, then over the mustache before turning to look at his girlfriend. “Do I turn you on like that?”

“Why yes, partner!” She exclaimed in a southern accent, wrapping her arms around his waist from the back and laughing against his back.

“I swear, if I wasn’t so fucking in love with you, woman.”

 1,093,214 likes

yninstagram: I regret doing this because now this lunatic has been telling me he “mustache me a question” but he’ll “shave it for later”🤦‍♀️

[thingsgotwyrd]

I'm feeling rather contemplative today. This blog was started 11? years ago July when I first felt called by Loki. I was very active for the first couple years and then drifted away. I WOULD have come back when the pandemic first hit but other T platforms sucked me into their realm (tiktok and twitch)

So a quick recap. I finally got my Associate degree (2 year degree) and am now working on the last few courses for my Bachelor's in photography. My kids are teenagers now and I work for a digital marketing company. I've been diagnosed ADHD and learned about object permance (oh boy did that explain a lot) I've also been collecting books and blogs on Hekate for the past year so I was pretty shocked by what happened next.

Late July I suddenly remembered Spongecakegate. I dont remember if something triggered this. For the next 3 days I started seeing social media posts from Lokeans - in places that Loki had not been before. I took these as signs. One was an untagged tiktok that literally said "if you see this, Loki is contacting you" Anyone who knows me or has read this blog before knows that I've been asking for a obvious sign for years

I accepted that I was being god bothered by the new moon and thought that would be it. Now that I think of it the week was full of Loki (and then of course I started a cookie trail by posting/tagging/liking Lokean content so now it's just the algorithm at work.) This though was my 3rd sign and I shouted NO COINCIDENCES when it was published. I posted my freakout on Twitter and changed my username to the same one as my blog to symbolize my paradigm shift.

Umm anyway. I'm rereading posts here because I had accumulated a lot of good information and I've been giving offerings on Fridays. I just think it's really wild that 11ish years nearly to the day I'm back and that I was just in time for the 10th anniversary of Spongecakegate too. 😆

Happy 10th Spongecake Day.

[melodyalanaroster]

Dear @chinomiko,

When I first started playing My Candy Love on New Year’s Day in 2013, I was simply a 17 year old girl who was starting the second half of my Senior Year in High School. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and I certainly had no idea where I’d end up. At the time, I was just looking for a new anime style site to call my internet home after the destruction of TinierMe. In my search, I stumbled upon your site. I had never played a dating simulator before, and I fell for your art style, so I decided to give the site a shot. It didn’t take me long to bond with Nathaniel... He was a kind young man, who loved to read, and had a tortured home life... Even though the torture at home was different between him and me, I still felt like I had found a character I could recognize... Hell, I did the same thing with Ken... My bond with Nathaniel was just so much deeper... 

Then I graduated High School... I had no college prospects, and no idea what I even wanted to go to college for (still entirely don’t know).... My issues at home were getting worse, my love life was far from perfect, and living in Texas can be kind of ruthless on those who aren’t following the status quo... Even with going to the United Kingdom for 5 weeks, things still didn’t get better... And of course, the death of my childhood cat, Luna, in 2014 made things worse... So, I started focusing my free time on the game.... Working like crazy to get up to date with the episodes and bonus episodes, editing pics, and even writing fanfics... It became my escape from real life.

That did not change when I met the love of my real life in 2015. Despite entering into a relationship that is still going strong, I needed an escape from the hell my abuser was putting my family and me through, from the shitty job that I had gotten (and still have as of this letter), and from the hell that a really rare disease that had kicked on in my mother’s immune system had begun to put her and my family through. No amount of talking to people in my inner circle in real life helped... And there were times where it felt like the only emotions I knew were anger, sadness, and fear... It was during this time that my main MCL OC, Melody Alana Roster, came to life as what she is today... A strong, smart, beautiful, powerful, woman who goes through some of the worst hell imaginable and ends up living a life of peace with the man she loves (Nathaniel).... When my abuser’s time in my family’s and my life was ending and she was going “all out” on me? I thought of what Alana and Nathaniel would be doing during the newest episode of the game. My job putting me through mental and physical hell (it’s a very demanding job)? I daydreamed about Nathaniel and Alana. My mother’s disease progressing and making my mother put my grandmother and me through hell? I would go in my room and write a section of my story or edit a pic when I could. Hell, My Candy Love became so prominent in my life as an escape that when my abuser’s daughter came back at me (this time with my boyfriend’s ex friend), one of the things she’d say to me was “All you do is sit in your room and write fanfiction.”... I needed something and My Candy Love and it’s fandom was something I enjoyed that kept me in my room (where I felt safe)... To this day, my boyfriend understands why I’ve put so much time and effort into it... Why I’ve spent so much money on it (AP, Gold, commissioned pics, and items)... It was a light in what felt like a sea of darkness in my life...

Now, I’m going to clarify something here... What is written in the last paragraph took place over the course of 5 years... Of course, when I get to the point of 2020, its easy to guess some of the reasons why I continued to focus on My Candy Love... However, I have an added reason.... Not only did the pandemic bitch slap Texas mid March, but about a week before that happened, on March 10th, my mother succumbed to the secondary infection brought on by her disease... And I had to grieve... Of course, when the pandemic hit about week later, I was told by society that I didn’t have time to grieve... As I am a grocery store worker... Which, I still tried to use My Candy Love as a means of escape... It felt like life was going “Yeah, you’re free from your mom’s disease, now here’s one that YOU could bring home to your grandparents and kill them with simply by going to work!”... Because, I’m sure even you know how poorly America has handled the pandemic... And Texas is one of the worst states when it comes to that...

I’m not saying this to make you feel sorry for me... Not in the slightest... I’ve leaned on my family, friends, and boyfriend for everything, so it’s not JUST My Candy Love that got me through all of this... I’m telling you this because My Candy Love and what I’ve done for it has helped me with it all immensely. I thought I had lost my passion for writing while I was still in school, even though my favorite teacher was encouraging me to continue... And here I am still writing my MCL fanfiction... Not only am I still writing my fanfic, I’m getting it turned into 1 copy of an actual book for my shelf when I’m done... When I took photography in High School and wasn’t good at photoshop, I thought it would never be a skill I’d use... And, yet, over the course of my time with MCL, my photo editing skills have improved DRASTICALLY... Sure, I can’t really edit real life photos... But I can make stuff for MCL avatars and such...

I mean, if someone had told me 8 years ago that I’d be so invested in this game that I’d have a body pillow of my favorite love interest, a folder of commissioned art, a blog with over 1,300 followers, an Instagram with nearly 300 followers, a custom plushie of my favorite love interest, a Discord Server with around 200 people in it... That I’d be the Vice President/Club Photographer of the US version of a fan club... That I’d make friends throughout the world in the fandom... That my editing skills would become as good as they are now... That I’d be working on the biggest writing project I’ve EVER worked on... And that I’d cry at the last episode the same way I cried during the Season 8 finale of Scrubs, the series finale of iCarly, Matt Smith’s regeneration in Doctor Who and the ending of Deathly Hallows Part 2... I would have told them that they’re crazy....

Yet... Here I am... I’m turning 26 years old in July... And all of that has happened... In real life, I’m still dealing with the pandemic, I’ve celebrated my 5 year anniversary with my boyfriend, and I’m even preparing to move in with him... Yet, online, I’m still VERY invested in your game. I’m still a long way from finishing my OC’s story... I still want to edit pics for Nathaniel and Alana... And I’m going to be contemplating playing the new game for a while... I’ll still play events... As long as Nathaniel is around, I’ll be there to greet him with a smile... But I don’t know about your new project...

All that being said.... There’s one MAJOR thing I’d like to say to you, Chino....

THANK YOU!

Thank you for everything! For all your hard work in this story... It’s far from perfect, but I still enjoyed the majority of it... For creating Nathaniel, the holder of my 2D heart.... Seriously, thank you for creating him... I have anime crushes, but I don’t love them as deeply as I love Nath.... Thank you for your art! Its amazing! You’re in my top 3 favorite digital artists... The others being Drachea Rannak and Marco Albiero... Thank you for all the work you continue to put into the game that a lot of us have, kind of, grown up with.... I wasn’t really a kid when I started playing, but I do consider myself to have “grown up” with it... Thank you for all of the other love interests... For Castiel, Kentin, Armin, Lysander, Priya, Rayan and Hyun... They’re not the ones I love most, but they’re all interesting characters... Thank you for Candy... While she and Alana greatly differ from each other, Candy was the heroine in a story that gave birth to Alana... Candy is far from perfect, but I’m glad her story ended well.... Thank you for creating the game that brought this fandom into existence... While the fandom can be VERY toxic at times, there are a lot of amazing people in it... They have become some of my dearest friends...

While the entire My Candy Love team at Beemoov deserves my gratitude... I feel like you are the most deserving of it... Because, without you, My Candy Love would not exist.

I look forward to seeing My Candy Love’s future... Either from the sidelines, or from the middle of it... I will see it’s future...

Thank you ChiNoMiko.

All my love and respect,

Melody Alana Roster

[suituuup]

pandemic shenanigans

Chloe discovers TikTok and decides to do a bunch of pranks on her girlfriend

rated: T

word count: 3k

ao3 link

*

It’s the pandemic’s fault. 

Chloe was bored af one day at the start of quarantine, and decided to download TikTok, the app Gen Z has been raving about. Little did she know five minutes on the app could turn into four hours without her being aware and brought procrastination to another level. 

She quickly becomes addicted to cute animal videos (duh) and couple pranks. So addicted that the temptation of trying a few on her girlfriend is too great. 

i. Did you forget what today was

“Morning,” Beca mumbles, rubbing her eye with the heel of her palm as she shuffles towards the coffee pot. While Chloe’s an early bird, Beca rarely makes it out of bed before ten on the weekends, and Chloe is usually already showered and dressed by the time she does. 

She and Beca live in that same studio which they used to share with Amy, until their Australian friend inherited some serious money and moved out. 

It’s been really nice to have an actual bed instead of that crappy pull-out couch. 

“Good morning,” Chloe chirps, craning her neck to accept the kiss Beca brushes to her lips. Beca slides in the chair across hers, pouring some milk in the bowl Chloe’s set out for her, followed by cereals.

(yes, she’s that weirdo who puts the milk first.)

“What?” Beca pauses with her first spoonful halfway to her mouth, finally noticing Chloe staring at her. 

“Did you forget what today was?” She asks with a raised eyebrow, cradling her mug in her hands.

Beca blinks, and Chloe can nearly see the fuck popping up in her brain as panic flashes in her eyes. “Uh, Saturday?” 

Chloe purses her lips, both to appear annoyed and to keep her bubbling laughter in. “Beca.” 

Beca’s nose scrunches up. “I know, I know, gimme a sec. This is not our anniversary, or your birthday, you’re not working today so there’s nothing important regarding your job,” she lists off, her eyes lighting up a beat later. “Oh! Is it this weekend Aubrey’s coming up?” 

“No,” Chloe sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I can’t believe you forgot.”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Beca rushes out, standing up and crossing the distance between them to sit across Chloe’s lap. She kisses her softly, looping her arms around her neck. “I’m sorry. What’s going on today? I promise I’ll make time for it. And I’ll give you a massage tonight to make up for being a bad girlfriend. And we can eat whatever you like.” Smirking mischievously, she adds in a lower tone, “And, I’ll let you do whatever you wanna do to me later.” 

Chloe grins, unable to hold it any longer. “Nothing’s going on, babe. I was just messing with you.” 

Beca’s jaw falls open as she pulls back, glaring. “Not cool, dude!”

Chloe simply giggles, nuzzling her neck and pressing an apologetic kiss to Beca’s skin. “You’re cute when you’re panicking.”

A huffs puffs free and Beca pouts. “Whatever.”

Chloe tightens her hold around Beca’s waist so she can’t get away. “Can I still do whatever I want to you tonight?” 

The whimper that rises from Beca’s throat shoots a chill down her spine. Beca’s cheeks redden and she squirms a little in Chloe’s lap. “Yeah--yes.” 

Safe to say Chloe won’t be uploading that video on TikTok. She also won’t tell Beca this was a Tiktok prank, because this turned out to be a lot of fun and she’s got more up her sleeve.

ii. climb on their lap while they’re busy doing something else

Friday nights are Chloe’s favorite. As none of them work during the weekends, it means they get two whole days of quality time with each other. Tonight though, her highly professional girlfriend needs to take care of a few work things to make sure she can spend a stress free weekend, but it’s been hours, and Chloe is kind of craving some attention. 

Beca’s working on her laptop while sitting on the couch, and after changing into her PJ’s, Chloe unceremoniously curls up sideways on her lap, looping her arms around her shoulders and resting her forehead against the side of Beca’s neck. 

“Oh,” Beca breathes out, setting her computer aside before her arms loosely wrap around Chloe’s body. “Hello.” 

“Hi,” Chloe murmurs back, brushing a kiss to Beca’s neck and releasing a soft sigh of contentment. 

Beca’s hand runs up and down her thigh as she pushes a kiss to Chloe’s hair. “You alright?” 

Chloe hums, forgetting all about her phone propped against one of the shelves capturing the moment to make a TikTok, instead basking in the instant comfort being in Beca’s arms provides. 

Beca peppers her face with soft, featherlight kisses that make Chloe warm from the inside out. She really is a slut for Beca’s affection. “M’sorry I had to work tonight.” 

Chloe smiles. “It’s okay.” She pecks Beca’s lips and brushes her nose against hers. “I’m heading to bed. Don’t work too late, babe.” 

Beca nods, winking softly. “Right behind you.” 

True to her word, Beca slides under the covers less than five minutes later and tugs Chloe’s body against her own. Chloe releases another happy sigh, which is cut-off by a yelp when Beca runs her freezing toes along Chloe’s bare calf. 

“Becs!” She cries, moving away and slapping her arm. “Your feet are freaking icicles!” 

Beca snickers like a teenager, seemingly very proud of her act. 

“Put some socks on.” 

Beca’s nose scrunches up adorably. “Ew. No way.” 

“Then stay on your side,” Chloe grumbles, tugging the covers higher around her as she rolls away from Beca, settling on her opposite side. 

“Sorry,” Beca whispers into the dark, shuffling closer. “I won’t do it again.” 

She feels her resolve break as Beca’s lips trace a trail from her exposed shoulder blade to the side of her neck. She hates her traitorous body for not having any willpower when it comes to Beca’s ministrations. “You better not, or I’ll kick you,” she half-jokes. 

“Kinky,” Beca breathes along with a soft laugh, pressing one final kiss to Chloe’s cheek as she drapes her arm around her middle. “I love you.” 

Chloe laces their fingers and squeezes. “I love you too, weirdo.” 

iii. walking out naked while they’re in a zoom meeting 

“Well what doesn’t he like about it?” Beca’s voice carries from the living-room as Chloe stands in their bedroom, a towel wrapped around her naked frame. 

That video of her and Beca cuddling on the couch blew up, hitting 3 millions views and about 400k likes. The few homophobic comments that popped up were quickly drowned out by thousands of people gushing over their relationship or crying about wanting the same kind of relationship. 

Beca was of course aware Chloe would post that video on the internet and weirdly wasn’t opposed to it. 

“Again?” She hears her girlfriend sigh and steps out, losing the towel as she rounds the corner. “I mean, yeah, sure. I’ll see what I--” 

Beca’s words die on her tongue the second her eyes flicker up from her computer screen. Her jaw drops and her mouth gapes wordlessly for a few seconds. 

Chloe is briefly concerned she might have broken her girlfriend.

“Beca?”  Her boss’ voice carries through the speakers, snapping Beca back to her meeting. 

“Yes, yeah-- um-- sorry, I…” She stammers as her cheeks burn, and clears her throat. Her eyes quickly glance back to Chloe, who is fighting against a string of giggles. “I’ll-- I’ll work on something else, no problem.” 

“Alright, keep me posted.”

Beca nods. “See ya.” She shuts her computer so fast Chloe’s concerned she might have damaged it. “You’re evil,” she mutters, shaking her head. 

“Are you complaining?” Chloe husks, strutting over in her birthday suit and tossing her phone on the couch.

Beca visibly swallows, bracing on Chloe’s waist as she settles down her lap. “Never. But next time try not to give me a heart attack?” 

“Deal,” Chloe murmurs, bending down to capture Beca’s lips in a searing kiss. 

iv. Ask them what they would do if they were at a party and a hot girl came up to them

“Hey Bec?” 

“Mm?” 

It’s a rainy rainy afternoon, the ones Chloe loves as they don’t have anywhere to be, and she gets to chill on the couch with her favorite person while listening to the rain pelting against the window. 

Chloe’s head is on Beca’s lap as she lies on the couch, reading a book while Beca messes around on her phone. Beca has absentmindedly been scratching her scalp, and Chloe was about to fall asleep when she got a prank idea. She discreetly propped up her phone against her mug on the coffee table a minute ago, pressing record. 

“What would you do if you were at a party and a hot girl came up to you?” 

Beca lowers her phone, peering at Chloe over it. “What do you mean?” 

Bending her knees, Chloe shifts to sit up and faces Beca. “What would you do if a hot girl flirted with you?” 

“You know I don’t know when people flirt with me, right?” 

Yes, Chloe does know. She lost count of how many times she’s flirted with Beca over their four years of friendship pre-getting together without Beca having a freaking clue. 

“Okay, but still,” Chloe clears her throat and straightens a bit from her slouched position, tucking her legs underneath her. “Let’s say you’re at a party, and I’m a random girl, not your girlfriend, alright?” 

Beca rolls her eyes but nods anyway, setting her phone down and angling her body towards Chloe a bit more. 

Chloe props her elbow on the back of the couch and cradles the side of her head in her palm as she smiles softly, getting into character. She reaches out to run the tip of her pointer finger along Beca’s forearm while keeping her gaze locked on hers, her teeth racking over her bottom lip in an over-the-top flirty move. “Hi.” 

“Hey you,” Beca murmurs with a small smirk, leaning closer a little. Chloe swats the back of her head. “Ow! What was that for??” 

“It’s not me,” she reminds Beca as the brunette rubs the spot with a glare. 

“Sorry, it’s just hard to remember that with those eyes of yours,” Beca laughs. “I can’t focus, they’re pulling me in.” 

“Aw,” Chloe beams. She leans in to peck Beca’s lips, raising an eyebrow when Beca pushes her away. 

“Dude, I’ve got a girlfriend.” 

Chloe rolls her eyes, shoving her as Beca laughs. “Touché.” 

v. ask them if they still get butterflies

“Bec?” 

“Mmm.” 

Spring morphed into summer. A hot, sticky and humid summer. The pandemic is still very much a thing, and Chloe can’t even tell you what day of the week it is anymore. To make things worse, their AC is down, which is why they find themselves on the rooftop of their apartment building that evening, laying on a couple blankets as they stare up at the night sky. Chloe misses the hundreds of stars she would gaze at when she was a kid in Oregon, but she sort of finds the steady sound of cars passing by in the street below them soothing. 

Or you know, maybe it’s the joint she smoked twenty minutes ago with her girlfriend that is finally hitting her. 

“Do you still get butterflies?” 

Beca’s head rolls to the side so she can look at her. “Still?” She asks, smirking softly. “They never left.” 

Chloe giggles, shoving her lightly. Beca is known to grow sappy and affectionate when she’s high, and Chloe absolutely loves it. “Dork.” 

“Felt them just this morning when you were singing in the kitchen while making breakfast and almost pinched myself because I still have to wrap my head around the fact that I get to marry you.” 

Chloe does a double-take as she registers Beca’s words. “What?” Her voice is barely there, hidden under the layers of emotions seizing her throat. 

“Well… yeah,” Beca shrugs, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You’re like, it for me, you know?” 

Moments where Beca splits herself open like that are rare, and they never fail to make Chloe’s heart soar. 

“Are you going to say something Beale or keep staring at me like a weirdo?” Beca eventually quips, chuckling softly. 

Chloe shakes her head a little, then leans forward to push a lingering kiss against Beca’s lips. “I love you, future wife.” 

She feels Beca sigh contentedly as she curls up against her side, her arm wounding around Chloe’s back. “I love you, too.”

vi. sigh loudly in front of them

“What’s wrong?” 

It’s day two hundred something of quarantine. Chloe is bored out of her mind. 

“Nothing,” she whispers, keeping her tone unconvincing on purpose. She’s lying on the couch while Beca sits at the end working on her computer, a Friends rerun playing low on the TV. 

Beca shuts her computer and sets it on the coffee table before crawling up Chloe’s body and settling on top of her. She presses a light kiss to the side of Chloe’s neck. “You sure?” 

“Mhm,” Chloe hums, looping her arms around her girlfriend’s waist. 

“I can stop working,” Beca suggests softly, placing another kiss to her chin, then to the tip of her nose. “Wanna go grab some Chick-fil-A? Then we can watch one of those cheesy rom coms that you like.” 

“M’okay,” Chloe agrees quietly. “Can we just cuddle for a bit?” 

“Yeah,” Beca breathes. “Course we can.” She settles her head on Chloe’s chest, lifting it a second later. “Wait, is this a TikTok thing?” Upon Chloe nodding, she groans. “My reputation is taking a blow with each one of those, you know that right?” 

A giggle bursts past Chloe’s lips. “I’m sorry, your what?” 

That earns her a glare. “Bite me, Beale.” 

vii. wipe their kiss away

“I hate this fucking pandemic,” Beca grumbles as she makes it inside, kicking the door shut with a little more force than necessary. “I hate those Karens who don’t wear masks,” she continues as she hoists her two grocery bags on the kitchen counter. “Scratch that, I just hate people in general.” Beca eventually takes off her mask, heaving out a sigh as she drops it onto the counter. “Finally.” 

Chloe smiles in amusement, walking over to start putting the groceries away. “Thanks for going out, babe.” 

“No problem.” She pecks Chloe’s lips on her way to store the yogurt in the fridge, doing a double-take when Chloe wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Did you just… wipe my kiss away?” 

“What? No I didn’t,” Chloe replies innocently. 

Beca stares at her, cocking an eyebrow. “Was it not up to your standards or something?” 

“I mean…” Chloe shrugs nonchalantly. “It was just a peck.” 

“Mmm.” She resumes her task, closing the door to the fridge behind her before making her way over to where Chloe is standing, setting her hands on her hips from behind and coaxing her to turn around. 

“What are you--” the rest of her sentence is cut off by a moan as Beca’s lips capture her own. Chloe’s knees wobble from the heat of the kiss, its intensity sending shockwaves throughout her body, all the way down to her toes. She’s left in a daze by the time Beca pulls away, blinking twice in slow succession as she rolls her swollen lips together. “Holy shit.” 

Beca puffs out her chest a little, smirking. “That’s better.” 

Groceries forgotten, Chloe slides her hand into hers and drags her to the bedroom. 

viii. call them your spouse during a phone conversation

“I’m home,” Chloe calls out as she steps inside their studio apartment. She pauses in the doorway, taking in her surroundings. 

Their small kitchen table is beautifully set, two candles lit on each side and a gorgeous bouquet of flowers sitting in the center. Soft acoustic music is playing through Beca’s portable speaker. “Hey, you.” 

“What’s all this?” Chloe asks, smiling brightly as she slings her purse off her shoulder, setting it down. 

Beca approaches, a sheepish smile spreading across her features. “Well… because of this freaking pandemic, we haven’t been out in months, so I thought we could just do a home-date. I ordered from your favorite sushi place, should be here any minute.” 

“Aww.” Shrugging off her jacket, Chloe steps up to place a soft kiss to Beca’s lips. “You’re sweet. And very sexy,” she adds with an eyebrow waggle, taking in Beca’s fancy jumpsuit and hairdo. “I’m gonna go change real quick.” 

Chloe hurries to the bedroom and opens her closet to pick something; she can’t remember the last time she wore a dress, her main outfit having consisted of a hoodie and sweatpants for the better part of the year. Plucking her navy blue, knee length dress out, she changes into it and takes ten minutes to arrange her hair and put on light make-up. 

Beca is on the phone as she steps back out into the kitchen, grinning when Chloe appears. “Yep, got it. Listen, I gotta go, my wife and I are about to eat dinner.” 

Chloe freezes mid-step, her heart stuttering as she registers the term Beca used. 

“Sorry about that,” Beca says once she’s hung up, casting Chloe a smile as she sets her phone down. 

“You just called me your wife,” Chloe murmurs, her eyes shrinking suspiciously a beat later. A gasp follows when it hits her. “Wait, are you TikTok pranking me??” Her gaze quickly sweeps the room. “Where’s the camera, Mitchell?” 

Beca simply grins, shaking her head as she reaches for something in her pocket. “Not a prank, babe.” 

Shocked eyes lifting from the square velvet box nestled in Beca’s palm, Chloe watches as Beca steps closer and lowers herself on one knee. Her heart trips dangerously and she stops breathing altogether. “Bec, you better not be lying.” 

The way she seems nervous all of the sudden tells Chloe this is definitely not a prank. “Chloe--” 

“Yes,” Chloe croaks out, tears pooling in her eyes as her head bobs up and down in a frantic nod. 

Beca’s chuckle comes out strained as she blinks back the moisture in her own eyes. “Dude, let me ask the question at least.” 

“Sorry.” Chloe clamps her lips together and squeezes Beca’s hand to wordlessly let her know she may keep going. 

“Chloe,” Beca repeats, her voice wavering slightly. “This year has been weird as fuck, and the most challenging one yet, but despite everything, I had a near constant smile on my face because of you. You’re my best friend, and the most beautiful person I know, inside and out.” She sucks in a deep breath through her nose, letting go of Chloe’s hand to open the box. Chloe gasps softly at the sight of a simple, yet elegant oval cut diamond set on a rose gold band. “Will you make me the happiest person on earth by accepting to become my wife?” 

“Yes.” She tugs on Beca’s hand, capturing her lips in a searing kiss as soon as she straightens. “I love you so much.” 

Beca grins against her mouth, backing away just enough to seek out Chloe’s eyes. “I love you, too.” 

As she stands there basking in this new, overwhelming wave of feelings, Chloe decides that 2020 wasn’t that bad, after all.