#laura has a shitty day

[teencopandthesourwolf]

He freezes. Doesn't know what the hell else to do. 

He can't picture it: Derek can't remember the last time somebody put their arms around him. 

Was it Laura?

Of course it was Laura. How could he forget that? Derek has gotten pretty good at blocking things out—a little too good, it seems.

She didn't tell him she was going before she left New York. Didn't say a fucking word, just vanished. Derek had woken up one morning and she was gone. She'd known without doubt that Derek would only follow her if she had said a single word to him.

Nobody ever granted Derek’s wishes, no matter who he prayed to. The desperate pleas where he asked to go back and get a chance to fix things, they all went unheard.

Laura left to go back to the place they both wished still existed just as it had; a place they were wanted alive, not dead. It wasn't fair that it was the very same place they would be hunted down if they did return, like the rabid animals the Argent's presumed they were.

Leaving the way they did meant they hadn't gotten the chance to see if anything was left at the house. They couldn't mark graves, or grieve properly. 

That same place also happened to be the place they'd been born, the place they'd grown up and called home.

Derek had never wanted Laura to face all of that alone.

The burnt down house. The nothing where there was once everything.

The thought still haunts him. One of so fucking many. 

Beacon Hills is home—but it's the home Derek had helped raze to the ground with his selfishness and stupidity. Everything he and Laura had ever known, everyone they'd ever loved, it was all gone, now. Derek had taken those things away from his sister and hadn't even had the guts to tell her. Tell Laura they were all gone because of him, tell her that everything that had happened to their family, to them, was all his fault.

In the aftermath of the fire Laura hugged Derek, and had kept hugging him, over and over in those weeks and months and years that followed. She would pull him into her arms hold him tight, whenever she could sense it was all getting to be too much for him again.

Alpha.

Big sister.

But Laura only knew about some of the reasons why it sometimes felt like too much effort for Derek to keep on breathing.

He never told her about Kate.

And Derek, the fucking coward, he'd allowed Laura to hold him, feeling the flames of shame on his cheeks every time, hot as those that took the lives of his parents. His family. His pack. 

Now, he remembers that last time. 

“I'm going out.” 

Laura stood up, walked around the two mismatched armchairs and stopped him by throwing both her arms around his neck, pulling him into her and hugging him, scenting him. 

It always took him a moment to respond these days, but Derek hugged her back. 

“What's this for?”

“You. Because I know whomever's bed you end up in tonight, you won't be asking for one of these.”

Oh, fuck no. Derek couldn't handle that. Did she think he was out sleeping with people? Never again, not after…

He pushed his sister off him, gently; a stark contrast to the harsh words that followed. 

“Don't fucking coddle me. And fuck you, Laura—I don't sleep in anybody's fucking bed but my own.” A single mattress on the floor of the lounge of their shitty one bedroom apartment. Derek had so many shameful memories, and crawling into his sister's bed every night for the first year after the fire was one of them. “Just—leave me alone.”

Laura was the one—the only—person Derek had left in the entire world, yet his guilt was constantly pushing her away. 

“Then where do you go to all these nights, little brother? You might not be clinging to me anymore, night after night, nightmare after nightmare, but you're so rarely in your own bed in the mornings.” She hadn't meant it as a dig. She was his sister and she loved him.

Maybe she thought he was making progress? Seeing people. Moving on.

Derek spent his nights waiting outside of dive bars, hanging around in back alleys and dark places, desperately trying to find scumbags he could taunt who were big enough and hard enough to at least attempt to kick the living shit out of him.

Derek hated being a werewolf, now. He wanted to get hurt and stay hurt.

“Just—out.”

Then Derek turned his back on Laura, leaving her to stand there and watch him walk away as he left her to go out looking for a fight, without looking back. 

That was the last time somebody put their arms around Derek—and the last time he saw his sister alive.

It was two years ago. Derek doesn’t think he has taken a full breath, since. 

Now here he is, standing in his big stupid loft that he bought for his betas—yet another pack he managed to destroy—having given away more than he should, with skinny yet strong arms wrapping themselves as far around his shoulders as they can reach. 

Stiles.

“You don't have to hug back. But you can, if you want to. I won't tell,” the kid jokes. It's his way to connect, his connection to the world. A coping mechanism, Derek thinks.

He knows all about those.

“I…” he doesn't have the first fucking clue of how to handle this. Or how to admit he needs it—to himself, let alone somebody else. He doesn't know how to admit that he wants it. 

But this is Stiles. The one person in Derek's life who seems, for some unfathomable reason, to give a fuck about Derek. To care about him.

Slowly, very slowly, Derek lifts an arm and awkwardly rests a hand on Stiles's upper back, feels the muscles jump slightly under the kid's baggy clothes as he tentatively spreads his fingers and finds the back of Stiles's neck. 

Stiles's voice hitches just a touch as he says, “These can be on tap, you know. If you want them. Stilinski hugs are the best hugs, dude. Believe.”

And Derek finds he does believe. For the first time in forever, Derek believes there could be something good in his life again.

More confidently, now, he brings his other arm up to wrap around Stiles's waist and hugs Stiles tighter, properly, and allows himself to be hugged back.

Derek wonders how he has gone so long without this kind of closeness. Lived without this kindness.

He decides to let the 'dude' pass. Because maybe—maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all, to be somebody's dude? 

Stiles's dude.

It's a fucking ridiculous moniker and yet Derek suddenly couldn't care less. 

“I think I'd like that,” he whispers into the forbidden place where Stiles's jaw meets long, pale neck. "Dude."

Derek can feel Stiles's smile as the kid squeezes him harder. And, ironically, Derek feels as if he can breathe again. 

.

for @greyhavenisback bc i want to hug you in person and can't <3 (unedited, forgive me!)

[scribblesofagoonerr]

Don't give up yet, I'm not letting you | Inner Demons

⟫ Alphabet Challenge, D- Don't give up yet, I'm not letting you.

Pairings: leah williamson x teen reader, arsenal wfc x teen reader

Back again with another part, I've had a really shitty day if I'm honest and so, umm, writing this now has sort of helped, I guess?

Once again nothing has been proof-read so yeah, it won't make any sense maybe and this ones' a bit longer than the rest but once I get carried away I just can't stop so this is definitely going to have a few more parts to this one. I just don't know how many that will be, so I guess we'll see what happens.

Thank you each and every single one of you for the response to this small fic series so far, I'm so glad that people are liking it so much.

The confession you have made leaves the room feeling a tense atmosphere, the girls will not let you give up so easily so they make a decision on your behalf to help you on the right path to get better.

tw: heavy angst, mentions of SH, MH, suicide and death.

"What... What does that even mean?" Katie furrows her eyebrows as she looks at you for a more logical answer.

"I'm tired, I'm so tired and I can't keep on fighting this battle anymore" You speak quietly, afraid to meet their eyes.

Each one of them really did mean so much to you, they all look heart broken with the what you had confessed.

Steph, the Aussie girl that made you feel so loved

Kim, your captain who always talked sense into you

Jen, the brave Scots' woman who you can rely on

Caitlin, the second Aussie that you love despite how annoying she is

Katie, the Irish girl who acts all tough but is a total softie

Beth, the blonde who gives great advice when you need it

Viv, the dutch who you cheers you up when she sneaks you ice cream

Lia, the swiss girl that gives you the best hugs sometimes

& Leah, the one who stuck around and made you feel at home

Your family, you would really miss them all.

However, you knew it was time.

It was the only way, you couldn't do it any longer.

The battle was too hard, it needed to end.

"Y/N, you're awake!" Vic burst into the room and broke the sudden silence before she spins and looks back towards the door. "Less! Kyra! Lotte! Laura! Y/N/N is awake!" she shouts loud enough to get the attention of the three remaining girls not in the room.

As right on queue, the rest of the girls all run in and smile widely when they see you awake and sat up in the hospital bed.

"Y/N/N, you're awake!" Laura says as she grins at you before she walks over and hugs you.

"Hi Y/N/N!" Alessia smiles brightly, glad to see you're awake.

"Y/N/N!" Kyra shouted aloud, right down the blondes' ear beside her.

"Ow, Kyra. That was right down my ear" Alessia grumbles as she glares at the Aussie girl before she shakes her head and walks over to your beside to exchange a hug with you.

"Glad that you're awake, Y/N. You gave us all a scare" Lotte came over and gave you a gentle hug before she ruffles your hair.

None of them 4 girls had caught the glum expressions on the older girls' faces.

"So how long do you think it'll be before your back on the pitch and we can prank everyone?" Kyra questions taking it upon herself to plop herself down on the end of the bed.

"Hopefully not too long" You take the chance to put a front on in front of the girls in the room. "I'll be back before you know it and thrashing you out there!" you give her a grin to hide the deep pain inside.

"How're you feelin' kid?" Lotte glances at you concerned.

"Oh you know, fabulous. Just had the best 24 hour nap" You can't help but joke with the girls even with them all looking so distraught. "Ah come on girls, cheer up. I'm not dead yet, you know?" You tell them.

"I'm sorry no I can't do this. I can't sit here and pretend that everything is okay and fine, when it's not... It's far from okay" Leah spoke up as she goes to move off the bed from where she sat beside you.

"What's going on?" Vic asks confused, having not been in the room previously.

"Y/N/N is tired of life, she wants to give up on it" Leah tells them as her bottom lip wobbles at she tells the rest of the girls what you had said.

"W... What do you mean?" Laura asks, confused and not understanding what the blonde means.

"Y/N wants to die" Leah drops the bombshell before she presses a kiss that lasts longer than usual and then starts to walk away.

"What?" Alessia gasps as her eyes widen in shock as she looks at you.

"Wait, Le... No!" You shot up as you try and latch onto her arm. "Le, don't leave me... I need you-- Please, come back!" you shout aloud as you thrash your arms around.

"I'll go and find her" Lia is quick to follow her, leaving the rest of the girls all still staring at you.

"Y/N, you need to be careful of your bandages or there'll rip" Steph says gently as she looks concerned about your well-being now while she moves to stand by your beside.

"I don't care, I don't... I don't care! Leah! Don't go, come back!" You continue to put up a fight to get out of the hospital bed. "Please, please, c... come back!" you scream at the top of your voice.

What have you done? You made her so upset.

You've made them all so upset, your a horrible person.

Why did you have to blurt it out like that? Your so stupid.

Stupid, selfish... You're nothing but a huge let down.

The voices inside your head was taunting you, you just needed them to stop.

Watching the one person that's always stuck by your side, walk away, it hurts you more that you realise.

More than any pain you currently feel, why did you go and say that?

"Calm down Y/N/N. You'll make yourself sick if your not careful" Beth tells you as she moves to stand on the other side of the bed as she pulls you into her arms for a hug as you just break down into sobs.

"I... I don't care, I don't... Leah! Come back!" Your now sobbing as you still try and do your best to get out of bed to go after the blonde, although it wasn't any good when you had so many different wires and monitors attached to you. "Le, please... please, don't leave me!"

Why did it hurt so much for her to walk away like that? You really were so selflish.

"Deep breaths, Y/N. Just keep on taking deep breaths" Steph adds in, trying to make it to the point where you didn't get yourself too upset that you were physically hurting yourself again.

"I'll be back" Kim eyes you wearily as she exhales a sigh before she also leaves the room to go and find the two girls.

"Leah?" Lia found Leah sat slouched down against one of the walls outside of your hospital room.

Leah peers up to look at the Swiss women, "I can't be in there right now" she mumbles quietly. " I... I just can't do it, I can't sit there and listen to crack jokes about death and be so optemistic when she... when she said something like that, I just can't" she explains to the older girl.

"I know" Lia replies in agreement and moves sit beside her.

"She said that she wants to die, Wally" Leah states as she stares straight out in front of her.

"I... I know" Lia repeats as she exhales a sigh and wraps her free arm around the blonde.

"She said she wants out of life... I... I-- Why?" Leah asks in disbelief as the tears threaten to spill.

"I don't know, Le" Lia mumbles and bits her bottom slightly.

"S...She said she wants to die, Wally" Leah voice quiviers as she repeats what they heard. "She's a teenage girl, s... she has so much more to achieve, so much more-- H... How can she be so depressed about life that she would rather be dead instead?" she questions distraught.

"She's suffering Le" Lia swallows the lump that forms in her throat as she hugs the blonde in her arms. "She's been suffering for a long time and we just didn't know, but we can help now" she tries to speak positive about it all.

"I... I thought she was doing better, she... she was doing better. I don't get it, what happened that made her do this?" Leah wonders numbly as she roughly wipes the tears away and shakes her head. "We can't let her die, we can't let her give up just so easily. She needs to fight... She has to fight!" she adds in.

"We will help her, we won't let her suffer in silence anymore" Kim speaks up as she joins the two of them as she exhales a shaky breath. "Y/N is one of our own, we'll be there for her and she'll get better" she tells them honestly.

"But how can we do that when she doesn't even want the help?" Leah questions as she shakes her head in disagreement. "You heard her in there, Kim! You heard what she said, she doesn't want to live anymore, she did what she did on purpose. H... How can we help her?" she questions as her voice breaks even more.

"We need to make a plan, we can come up with a way to help her... Even if she doesn't want the help" Kim declares with determination in her voice.

"But how do we do that? We can't keep an eye on her 24/7, when we have training and stuff, can we?" Lia glances at the Scots' woman in confusion.

"We keep her in hospital where she'll be safe" Kim tells the two of them.

"And how do we do that? I imagine as soon as she gets the chance then she'll bolt out of here" Leah scoffs and shakes her head, knowing you all too well and you were stubborn when it come to some things.

"We don't let her have the chance to do that then, still is still a minor remember? Technically that means, that you, Leah, since you're her guardian so too speak, you can make that decision for her and notify the doctors of your concern for her own welfare" Kim explains to the blonde, which was somewhat true now since you had moved in with her.

"Keeping her here against her own will? She'd hate me then for sure" Leah mutters as she rubs her hands down her face, feeling the stress of everything even more when the decision was resting on her shoulders.

"She might do at first, but soon enough she'll realise that you're only doing this to help her because you love her just like we all do" Kim gives the blonde a sympathetic smile.

"Kim is right Leah, this will be the best thing for Y/N" Lia speaks up after she had been quiet for a bit.

Leah glances between the two girls that she is sat with. "Is it, really?" she asks, still unsure about it all.

"You know it is Le" Lia states, knowingly.

Okay, maybe Kim has a point there then.

This would be the best decision to make right now.

"Alright, but how do we get here to stay here?" Leah asks, not knowing how to even go about this.

"First things first, we-- you speak to the doctors, you tell them that she cut herself and has admitted that she intended to do it. That's validation for the doctors to detain her for up to 72 hours at least" Kim explains the logical side of it all.

"That is something that I don't think she will like very much" Lia frowns, shaking her head as she listens to the older women.

Leah frowns and shakes her head. "A psych hold? I don't think she'll like that very much" The Swiss women tells her captain

"No, she won't but she won't have much choice if the doctors believe she's at risk of hurting herself again" Kim confesses to them as she exhales a deep sigh. "The doctors will run further assessment to determine whether they need to keep her in for longer and in the mean time, it gives us chance to talk to Jonas and the medical staff, fill them in what's happened and create a proper plan going forward" she adds in.

"And what if you determine that she needs to stay for longer than 72 hours?" Lia questions the Scots' woman.

"Then we cross that bridge when we come to it" Kim replies to the blonde as she moves to crouch down beside her.

"I know that it'll hurt to walk away and leave her here in the hospital Le, but you know as well that this is the right way, it's the only way for her to get better" Lia says honestly.

"Remember that Y/N is our family and we will always be there for her even if she will be mad at us about this" Kim adds in.

"Oh yeah, she is definitely going to be super mad about this" Leah chuckles in realisation about it.

Sure enough you would probably be mad with her, but Leah wasn't going to let you try and kill yourself again, not on her watch.

You were her family even if you were a complete pain is the ass sometimes, but you were her pain in the ass to deal with.

[christinesficrecs]

I love ALL of these fics but if they are a bit "too classic" for you, definitely read Mating Habits and The Dating Game. 🩷

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But the tenth time . . .

The tenth time is different.

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"I smell blood." Derek draws in a breath through his nose, frowning like it's going out of style. "And ink and--" his voice trails off and his eyes widen slightly. "Let me see it," he demands, crossing the space between them and tugging at the hem of Stiles's shirt.

[targaryen-dynasty]

Fandom can be overwhelming. And a ton of writers surely can agree that it puts an immense pressure on your shoulders you sometimes struggle to take care of.

And it was like that for me quite some time ago. Back when I started writing, I was a half-baked writer and even less experienced with fandom etiquette in general. I just stumbled into fandoms, not really knowing what it all was about. After posting my first fanfic that was based on a role play storyline a former friend and I had, and seeing how well it did, I got lost in the rush of attention and interaction as well in the people asking for a part two and what not. I am wiser now, and things like that don‘t affect me anymore (honestly), but back then, it led me to resort to shitty things to be able to post stuff as quickly as possible.

And that‘s plagiarism.

Many, many (traumatic) things have happened to me in the years before that, and while that‘s no excuse, knowing it might give an insight of what‘s been going on with me.

Just so you understand, it all has happened more than a year ago, I got called out by the original author and very quickly deleted the few things related to it. I have also not done it again since then, but it has still happened. I have lifted a good bit of that writer’s things of a series I truly enjoyed, yet it didn’t help with my anxiety. But I still received recognition for it and should feel good, right? It felt nice, right? No, no it didn’t.

I refused to say it out loud, because I was ashamed and afraid, and should have known better back then (although there was no way for me to know. I was inexperienced in writing, fandom, and some life things in general). But with all the fandom bullshit going on now, and these informations in the hands of the wrong people, I deem it most fitting to admit it now to free myself of that burden and take back my power. There are screenshots where these people admitted they wanted to call me out based on the apology doc I made to inform them, but couldn’t simply because they didn’t have any access to it anymore, and how they made fun of me for it — while they also called me nasty things. And on top of that, these people went around and told my secret to several people. While I trusted them to keep quiet, they always claimed there would be other people I told that would definitely spill the secret, but these people didn’t. It were them.

I am by now way justifying what I did, I don’t want to do that. But it‘s meant to finally show my responsibility for that mistake. I‘m an adult, yes, but that doesn’t mean I am immune to making them. I am still learning, and with this, I‘ll take a step back from writing for I don’t know how long. Could be a few days, weeks, months or until season two airs.

Thank you for reading, I’m sorry, and lots of love,

Laura.

Unfollow me, unlike my stuff, stop supporting me: do whatever feels right for you. I don’t blame you. But it‘s been done, and I’m sorry for it. There‘s nothing more I can do to make it better.

I won‘t shut down my anons. So, if you have something to say to me now — feel free to do it.

[lvrsparadise]

'IVY' - M.S

synopsis - "i thought that i was dreaming when you said you love me"

warnings! - kissing (makeout), profanity, shitty ending bc i didn't know how to end it lmao, i think that's it!

A/N - so, tomorrow is my grandparent's memorial and i have to sit in a car for four hours. i love this, other than most of the ending, was kinda stumped w that one. pink + white is planned but i don't know how to put what i want into words, so if anyone wants to know the plot and help, please dm!! love y'all!

!3rd person! 

-5 years ago-

Matt smiled as he flung the stick into the water, looking to his best friend who stood next to him afterwards.

“How was that one?” The pair was maybe 14 or 15, not quite old enough to be out by themselves, but yet here they were, out at 2 in the morning.

“That one was a little bit better. I think the problem is that you’re throwing a stick.” She laughed and bent down to grab a rock before flinging it into the water, the rock going impressively far.

“Oh. Yeah that might be it.” He chuckles at his own dumb actions but shuts up as he watches her throw the rock in awe.

“That was a really good throw.”

“Thanks.” They turned to each other with huge smiles on their faces for a few seconds before bursting out laughing for no reason, just for the laughs.

After calming down from their laughing fit, the pair lays in the grass next to each other, looking at the stars.

“Are you going to get married one day?” It was such a wide and complex question for a 15 year old, but Matt couldn’t help but ponder at the question as he turned his head to the girl lying next to him.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I’ll marry you one day.” Those were serious words for Matt, but to help the mood, he laughs at it and soon the girl joins him.

“Maybe. Who knows what the future holds.”

----

-Present day-

!Reader’s POV!

I let out a breath and watched as the air left my mouth in the cold air.

I check my phone again.

Maybe he forgot?

I sigh. There’s no way Matt would’ve forgotten to come pick me up, he must be busy then.

I shoot off another text, this time to Chris.

Me: are you guys busy rn? Chris: yeah, we’re stuck in a meeting, and everyone’s phone is dead but mine 🤦🏻‍♂️ Me: oh, okay. Just let me know when you’re out. 

I drop my arm back to my side before looking around, again.

This is not how I planned to spend my afternoon. Waiting for a guy to come pick me up while I wait in the cold.

I mean, I get it. He’s a busy man, but that doesn’t stop a girl from hoping.

And what sucks, is there’s no benches around for miles. And there’s frost everywhere, and it’s cold.

---

!Matt POV!

This sucks. I should be on my way to pick her up. Not stuck in some useless surprise meeting.

I thought about going to the bathroom and just leaving, but then how would Chris and Nick get home?

I sigh and look at the clock, 5:53.

Only 7 more minutes.

Chris’s phone goes off, because he always has to have his ringer on.

“Sorry.” He mumbles as he picks it up and turns off his ringer, but he’s texting someone, that much I can tell.

Chris looks up at me from across the table. Seeming to have known what I was thinking, he mouths her name and it clicks.

I nod and turn my attention back to Laura as she’s wrapping up the meeting, cleaning up, all that fun stuff.

---

!Reader POV!

My phone buzzes in my hand and I’m quick to check it.

Chris: we’ll be out of here by 6, we’ll scoop you up on the way back to ours. Me: that works with me :)

I cross my arms over my chest, this sweatshirt was doing nothing for the cold biting at my skin.

Now, I wait.

--

After about 10-ish more minutes of waiting, I hear the music before I hear the car. 

I roll my eyes and chuckle to myself at Chris’s choice of song before I see the car pull up in front of me.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come get you sooner, we got stuck in a surprise meeting.” Matt apologizes when he rolls down the window.

I just shrug and walk towards the car, going to the passenger side and getting in the backseat.

“It’s fine. I understand.” I smile at Matt through the rearview mirror as Chris turns the music back up and I hear Nick groan.

--

I sigh gratefully when I step inside the boys’ home, the familiar scent and warmth feeling like home.

We all walk into the living room and Nick splits to his room to edit and to shower while Chris goes to his room and Matt walks into the kitchen. I move to sit in my normal spot on the couch, covering myself in one of the blankets next to me.

“Better?” I look up to Matt and take the water bottle from his hands.

“Warmer.”

“Good.” He smiles and sits down next to me, grabbing the remote and turning the TV on, finding something to watch.

I rest my head on his shoulder as he puts on The Sandlot.

--

I faintly hear mumbling, and feel my body shaking softly.

“Hey, hey, wake up.” I lift my head and open my eyes, blinking them a few times before I can see again.

“Huh?” I must’ve fallen asleep, because what?

As if he could read my thoughts, Matt chuckles.

“Yes. You fell asleep.”

“Oh.” I rub my eyes and flip the blanket off of me, my body being warm from the mini, or not so mini, nap.

I hear Matt chuckle.

I re-open my eyes and look at Matt.

“You hungry?” As if on cue, my stomach growls quietly.

“Well now that you mention it.” I chuckle as he stands up from the couch and extends his hands to me. I take them and stand up, stretching as he goes and grabs the car keys.

I slip my shoes back on and we walk to the garage and get in the car.

--

After a bit of driving around, we found a lake like the one we had back home in Boston.

We get our food and we go sit at the picnic table near the water.

“We haven’t really had a lot of time together lately.”

I swallow the bite I was chewing and nod.

“Yeah, but it’s understandable, you know? You guys just got back from tour, a lot of tiredness, jet-lag, catching up on work.” I shrug.

“I know, but I feel like we just aren’t hanging out as much as we used to. And it feels weird.” I furrow my brows and take a sip of my drink.

“What d’you mean?”

“Well… I don’t know. It just feels off not having you around as much.” Then, something in my brain goes off that makes what he’s saying make sense.

“Are you trying to say you miss me?” I chuckle, even though this is a pretty serious thing.

“Well… I-” He sighs and thinks about it.

“I mean, I guess so. Although, I’m not sure how I miss someone who I see practically all the time.” We both laugh at that.

We go silent and just enjoy both our food and each other’s company. 

I will admit, I haven’t really been around, but they did just get back from tour, a tour I couldn’t go on because of college.

“Well, I guess I have been a bit caught up in school work lately.”

“Yeah but that’s not your fault.”

We fall into silence as we finish our food. 

I get up from the picnic table and sit in the grass, pretty close to the water with my knees up. 

I feel his arm around my shoulders as he sits next to me, pulling me closer to him.

“You remember that one time at the lake in Boston when we were dancing and you pushed me in?” I chuckle at the vivid memory of Matt pushing me into the cold water. I did drag him in with me though so I got my vengeance.

“Yeah I do. You made us both sick for like a week.” I rest my head on his shoulder and I feel his head on top of mine.

I wince at the memory of his mom scolding us as she drove our shivering bodies to the hospital.

It’s moments like these that make life happy.

Just sitting in each other’s arms in the cold air.

“I never got to ask, how was tour?” 

“It was good. I may not have won, but I had fun. That’s all that really matters to me.” 

God, this man makes me fall in love with him more and more. 

“That’s all that should matter. Winner or not, at the end of the day it all matters if you had fun. I’m glad you had fun, and I’m sorry I couldn’t go with you guys.”

“That’s understandable though. You had school, I understand that.” He kisses my head, and I can feel the smile on his lips.

“I love you Matt..” It slips out without warning, but I don’t try to correct myself or take it back. Not when I mean it.

---

!Matt’s POV!

My mind blanks when she speaks. I never thought this would happen.

Am I dreaming?

No, I’m not.

“I-” I can’t seem to form words. The words I’ve wanted to hear from her for so damn long finally here, and I don’t know what to say or do.

I love her too. So, so damn much. But my mind can’t make the words to say it.

“I'm sorry. Just pretend I didn't say that.” She shakes her head and pulls away from me as she starts to stand up.

I shake my head and wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her back down to the ground.

“No. No, don't be. I love you. So much more than you can imagine. I just didn’t know what to say, or how to say it. I froze up.”

---

!Readers POV!

“What?”

“I love you. So fucking much. Ever since we were kids.”

My heart flutters. 

I have no other thoughts than him. Everything about him I’ve loved flashing in my mind all at once.

His smile. His hair. His tattoos. His style. His personality. Just, him.

I wrap my hands around his neck, pulling him to me as I plant my lips on his.

I feel his arms tighten around my waist as he deepens the kiss.

The air no longer feels cold, but warm. 

Warm and filled with love.

He pulls back and rests his forehead against mine, smiling.

“I love you.”

Tags ! ♡

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I love you all !

And I hope you all have a good day and / or night ♡

[cellard0ors]

I've given this thought and while I'm kind of sick this Xmas Eve ('cause fuck my life) I'm STILL going to make a little naughty...

(cut for NSFW words/ideas - set in The Full Deck series)

Laura thought she hated Travis when he was the sheriff of North Kill.

But then she met Sheriff Malloy.

Malloy is in his late twenties and a complete dick.

He's entitled, he's egotistical, and he bends the law in ways Travis never would and yeah, okay, Travis covered murders and held people hostage, but he didn't outright discriminate and use his authority over people to get what he wanted.

For example, Malloy is the kinda guy who will intimidate a woman into going out for a drink with him - like, ohhhh, I pulled you over for speeding (they weren't), but if you go to Dixie's with me, well, I'll treat you to a Cosmo and we can forget all about it...

...a Cosmo? What year is this? The late nineties? Early two thousands via Sex and the City-gendered-womens-drink-bullshit?

Malloy wasn't even the deputy! He only got promoted to sheriff because his Daddy painted the right palms green. So. Malloy is the sheriff and Travis's boss and a total tool to boot.

He also makes these snide little comments about Laura being a golddigger or Travis a cradle robber and Laura is looking for ways to get back at him when she gets lucky.

...and so, ironically, does Travis.

Because Travis has some sniffles and is told to stay home and work from there and Laura, with the day off, manages to come across him while he's on a conference call.

Sure, he's on mute (right now) and Malloy is droning on and on while other officers and officials listen in, but that's not the point. No. The point is, muted or not, they're on camera.

And Travis's laptop camera is small. And shitty. And pointed directly at his face, making it perfectly easy for Laura to covertly sneak into where he is and then down low and quiet until she can ease around his legs, right between them, and (in fact) beneath his desk.

Travis almost jumps a mile high and hisses at her to go away and Malloy's voice comes across tinny, asking if something is wrong and Travis has to unmute to say no and lie and say that the cat just startled him even as Laura's fingers go for the fly of his jeans.

Travis mutes again so fast and gestures at her to stop and to go, all while appearing casual and unaffected, but Laura has the most evil grin in the world and he knows what this means, because it's her 'I'm getting my way no matter what' look and he's already hardening as she draws him out into the open air.

And he crosses his fingers for erectile dysfunction of all things to hit him and hit him now to save him from this, but no - oh, no - he's already raring to go, like a damn teenager the moment she gets those pretty little lips of hers wrapped around his length.

It doesn't help that she hums like he's the best, most delicious thing she's ever had in her mouth and she's sucking and licking at him like he's a melting popsicle and it's true he is melting and his hands are curled into hard fists and one is pressed against his mouth and he has his eyebrows knitted together like he's thinking hard but he's really not thinking at all as Laura bobs her head smoothly up and down a couple of times.

She's looking up at him - blue eyes glassy and gorgeous and it's a very 'what's wrong, Travis?' teasing look and the hand that's out of sight from the camera, the one balled as a fist on one of his thighs goes to her loose golden hair.

His thick fingers plough through the silky masses, tugs and pulls, until he forms it into a rough, makeshift ponytail, the back of his knuckles scraping her scalp as he starts encouraging her, because his willpower is zip, and he can't fight the strong ocean tides of Laura Kearney.

She openly moans around him now and he's glad he has that one fist to his mouth and that the mute button is on as he groans and his balls pulse and if this baby girl doesn't draw off of his dick soon...

...and he's never ever thought of her that way before, but considering she's going down on him in a very pornographic way he can imagine her by a pornographic title and she lets out a whimper as she squirms beneath him and presses her own thighs tight together and slowly he opens the fist he has over his mouth, resting the heel of his hand against his top lip - mouth still covered - as he asks her roughly if her clit stings.

Laura's mouth is full of his dick and she's doing her valiant best to reach the root even as she shoots him a big doe-eyed sorrowful look and manages something close to a 'mm hmm!' in answer to his question.

Voice deadly soft, he whispers 'Poor sweetheart - I'm sorry it hurts, but you have to wait. Have to be a good girl and swallow me first' and she lets out the most fantastic sound

It's angry yet wanting and excited and he flexes his hips and oh fuck, oh fuck, it's happening soon. It's happening now and it's-!

Travis's head falls back and both hands are cradling her head now, practically crushing it, as he starts cuming in long, hard pulls - ropes of cum painting her throat and the inside of her cheeks and then she sputters and they're on her face and Travis can see the pearly sheen of his release and he feels like it'll never stop-!

...until it does.

It does and his head falls back against the office chair limply and out of the corner of his eyes he can see a red-faced, angry Sheriff Malloy and he pushes the unmute button to ask thickly "What?"

"Hackett! Have you been listening?!? I was asking you about the latest cases of graffiti tagging in Low End Park and I look up and you look like you're having a seizure! Did your old man ticker give out or what?!?"

Travis is about to answer only for Laura to pop her face on screen, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright as she says, "No, his ticker is in great working order! As are his other parts! Gotta go!"

And with that, Laura snaps the laptop shut, ending the call.

And Travis looks at Laura as if she's lost her mind. And as if she's the most perfect, most angelic person in existence. And then she's crawling into his lap and biting her bottom lip and moaning, "My clit still hurts, honey..."

...and what else can Travis do?

He takes care of the situation.

Like he takes care of everything.

And, surprisingly, Travis doesn't lose his job. He does, however, get told video conference calls for him, from now on, are a complete no go. Muted, unseen telephone conference calls from here on and out.

And Travis will take that.

He'll take that and then some...😏

[samueldays]

in the spirit of xkcd's "did you know you can just buy labcoats?" , did you know you can just buy newspapers? some days it feels like any old shitposter can get a journalism job and spew high-velocity misinformation, like Aziah Siid at the Seattle Medium.

You're the ones doing the starving here, fuckwits.

Thanks to food deserts — or as some folks call it, “food apartheid”

Thanks to bad reporting - or as some folks call it, "Nazi-style propaganda"

that's halfway through the first sentence and Siid has very effectively set the tone for an article of race-baiting, blame-shifting, inflammatory, connotation-smuggling, condescendingly ignorant, hyperbolic, partisan hackery.

there are cities across the United States where Black families have to drive several miles to access fresh food at a supermarket.

link does not support claim, link is just tangentially related article using the word "food desert". link says this:

This gives me the impression that someone yelled "CITE SOURCES" at the journalist until the journalist did the malicious minimum of work to give the superficial appearance of a citation. The source "more than a quarter of a mile" does not support the article "drive several miles", and other problems.

Journalism delenda est.

That isn't even the topic yet, just a shitty lead-in. The topic:

But the lack of resources that disproportionately impacts Black communities isn’t limited to food or health care. Access to literature is also often limited in Black neighborhoods.

Interest in literature is also often limited in black neighborhoods. They have less desire for and less interest in books relative to whites.

Nearly half of American children live in a book desert — places that American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten defines as “neighborhoods that lack public libraries and stores that sell books, or in homes where books are an unaffordable or unfamiliar luxury.”

The linked article is by Randi Weingarten, but does not define "book desert" that way, as it does not use the word "desert" anywhere at all. Superficial appearance of citation again, journalism delenda est.

I'd call for Aziah Siid to be "fired" but there is nothing to fire her from. You can just buy newspapers. You can just write shitposts and have them published with fancy headings.

So I'm left reiterating: journalists lie, journalists spread disinformation, newspapers are full of shit, the profession attracts liars and incentivizes lying partly because it's loudly claimed to be fact-checkers, journalists can get away with contradicting someone and calling it a "fact check". It happens up and down the scale across the industry, from relative rando Aziah Siid, to upscale Keith Olbermann who has multiple awards for excellent journalism and he won't stop lying after repeated corrections.

If students don’t have books at home or in their neighborhood, they rely on what’s available in schools — in the classroom and campus library. But good luck finding banned and challenged books like “The Gift of Ramadan” by Rabiah York Lumbard and Laura K. Horton and “Sulwe” by Lupita Nyong’o and Vashti Harrison if students live in a place impacted by censorship.

"impacted" is such a wonderful weasel word that encourages the reader to imagine something maximally inflammatory with minimal commitment on the part of the journalist. There is no rebuttal that can be made here without Siid dodging that that's not what she meant by "impacted" - so I retort instead that it's content-free incitement and demagoguery. Journalism delenda est.

Similarly with "banned and challenged", where all the weighty connotation is being carried by the "banned" part, but all the truth of the sentence resides in the "challenged" part. I tried to find the specifics of the matter and as best I can tell, in one of the three thousand counties in the United States, The Gift of Ramadan was challenged for school review by partisan hacks and then got stuck in bureaucratic limbo in a poorly designed review process to determine whether it should be in schools in that county. Somewhere has to be the most fuckup county of 3000, and Duval County was it that year.

From the viewpoint of people who thought their book should be read by every student as a default, this cherry-picked one-county school-holdup felt like a "ban" despite the fact that the book remained available in bookstores.

What extraordinary entitlement.

The epicenter of these efforts? Florida and the attempts led by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to eliminate the teaching of accurate U.S. history and kill off access to diverse books.

Stripped of the bombast: Florida rejected one specific Advanced Placement course on African American Studies. DeSantis claimed this was because the course was a bunch of thrown-together left-wing talking points including queer theory and climate action along with the black blackety blackness.

The College Board released an edited version of the course, and claimed this was nothing to do with Florida because they get feedback from lots of people.

That’s why as part of a larger effort to make books more accessible, and directly combat these anti-history book bans, the national nonprofit Little Free Library and creative marketing agency Venables Bell + Partners have teamed up on the Unbanned Book Club.

Again with the use of "ban" for not using government resources to promote. Journalism delenda est, wordcels delenda est. The books are not banned, as shown by the fact that this project is legal. The vast majority of books in the world are not in any school, let alone every school; curricula change regularly; to call it "banned" that a book was removed from a school is a sort of linguistic robbery that steals the substance of word and leaves us with a confusion of tongues as of Babel.

[shorthaltsjester]

taliesin and laura remain truly so fantastic at making characters who… don’t necessarily have something extremely and inherently in common but do have experiences that were caused by similar sources and that lead them to have quite different opinions/ideas about things but in ways that are typically very reconcilable? which is a lot of qualifiers but it’s a through line of vex/percy with nobility, jester & cad with loneliness (and also god stuff but in a different post maybe someday i’ll talk about how actually their god stuff is intensely related to their different experiences of loneliness), and now imogen & ashton with being left behind.

like vex was this character who technically had a claim to nobility due to her blood but at the same time was burdened because of that same claim. and percy who was born into and raised by nobility but that nobility ended up making his family the targets of a massacre. and then vex who lets down her walls and Do I Look Like I Come From Money? and percy giving her the title grand mistress of the grey hunt because it has nothing to do with blood, or his love for her, or anything aside from the fact that it’s something she can prove herself worthy of simply by virtue of who she Is, not who someone makes her. and percy and vex’s conversation about forgiveness and it’s necessity for growth as probably two of the characters most inclined to hold grudges.

and caduceus clay who gets left behind with nothing but his Belief while his family goes off into the world. and jester lavorre who gets shut inside with no company except her Belief as her mother protects her from the world. and they both get the burden of loneliness and the understanding of love’s nonmalicious imperfection. and caduceus having a panic attack on a ship and jester telling him that the world is a lot bigger than his cemetery and that means he has to break out of his comfort zone to find his path. and caduceus telling jester that he doesn’t think she gets as much credit as she ought to and she deserves more pastries. and jester thanking caduceus for showing her how cool it is to actually heal people and caduceus asking if she wants to use his shield while he doesn’t need it.

and ashton who was left broken and dying on the ground and was given inescapable pain as their means of survival. and imogen who was left behind by the only person who could provide true understanding of the pain she’d one day come to feel. and ashton who’s a barbarian, who wields their rage casually and unapologetically and who sees the Shittiness of the world but is unrelenting in his version of optimism. and imogen who is weighed down by pessimism she doesn’t Want to have but hasn’t cracked how to undo and who doesn’t admit her anger until it comes up again and again and again and carries it like a burden or like guilt, who we only see really Grasp and feel Confidence about her anger being something good in front of others when she has those conversations with ashton. and like. ashton who looks at imogen and sees a superhero. imogen venturing through ashton’s mind and holding his bleeding and exhausted head and saying i’m sorry. i’m sorry. and imogen who looks at ashton and sees someone special. and fucking “we got him killed.” and “no, we didn’t. don’t you dare. […] we are not what fucking killed that man. […] we are his eventual victory. we are his fucking revenge.” and “i’ll be his revenge.” and “i have no fucking doubt.”

and in general rp wise they both tend to make some of my favourite characters (also typically the ones i find most frustrating) because they both tend to make flaws that are easy to hate and they make those flaws very central to their characters but i think that’s also what makes their character interactions so deeply compelling because so frequently it’s like. yes yes these two characters have like. a helix of things they have in common but also things they deeply disagree on but they’re going to spider-man point at the things that are the same and they’re going to honour their differences while doing so. and it’s just. i always enjoy it so much and i was psyched when i heard about an imogen and ashton side pit stop in last nights episode and i was not let down when i watched the episode today.

[2008hondacivic]

I was thinking about what the Yellowjackets would do during a normal (no crash/pre crash) summer vacation. Here’s my thoughts:

Shauna works some shitty retail job at the Wiskayok Mall or something like that. She doesn’t like the job but she likes earning money and having something of her own that makes her different from Jackie in a small way. She’s really easily annoyed by customers, and when she has an especially frustrating shift, she gets in her car and screams to her music as she drives home. Lottie promised not to go in and shoplift while Shauna is working.

Jackie doesn’t work during the summer— her parents have lots of money and don’t push her to get a job— but she goes to the store Shauna works at fairly often to “shop” (talk to Shauna). Sometimes she and Shauna go to the food court together during Shauna’s lunch break. Alternatively, I could see her working just a couple of shifts per week as a hostess at a restaurant. She’s super bubbly and good with customers, but messes up A LOT in other areas of her job. On her first day, she was talking to her customers while navigating the restaurant and walked into a waiter, knocking a tray of drinks everywhere. This happened twice.

Tai and Van would work as lifeguards or maybe even camp counsellors? They have fun working together and all of their coworkers like them. Tai works hard at everything she does, so she’s really good at her job and keeping everyone organized. She’ll probably be Head Counsellor next year. Van would be the chill counsellor that all the kids LOVE. She’d tell them stories around the bonfire and all the younger kids would follow her around all day asking her random questions.

Lottie doesn’t have a job during the summer— her family is so rich there’s really no need for her to work. Even when her friends complain about their shitty jobs, Lottie often wishes she had a part time job because she gets lonely sitting in her big house while everyone else is at work. The bright point in her summer is when she has the Yellowjackets up to her family’s lake house for a weekend every now and then.

Laura Lee does a bit of volunteer work and sings in her Church’s choir. When the Yellowjackets go to Lottie’s lake house, Laura Lee can be persuaded to sing for them at the bonfire, but only if she can throw in a few Jesus songs too.

Nat works at Dairy Queen and HATES it. She tells herself she’ll apply to work at the record shop next summer, even if the manger creeps her out.

Misty takes horseback riding lessons and, during her spare time, visits the other Yellowjackets at work even more often than Jackie visits Shauna. She tells Nat that she just really loves ice cream, but Nat doesn’t buy it.

[queerjesusthelord]

I've been thinking about her

You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened: why did they do what they did, was there some logic in it, were we so furious because of the denial, as we were unable to accept the forlorn finale and why did it hurt that much so nobody could recover from it till now.

It’s been two years, guys. Two years of re-reading Luke Jennings books, writing songs and dedicating them to VillanEve, doom scrolling post about them, about all the anger fans still got for Laura Neal and the shitty ending (as Villanelle would say with a sexy Russian accent). 

I was listening to my beloved Unloved soundtrack of course, all this time. I’ve been on their concert in Paris recently and felt euphoric as I was sinking into Eve and Villanelle love story again and again through their divine music. Every word and sound reflected with my whole body and soul – it was ineffable. Every time I listen to “I’ve been thinking about her” it brings me to tears. I genuinely want this song to play at my funeral one day.

Well, I did my best to remain in this state of equanimity and kinda succeed. But a couple of months ago I decided to re-watch KE from season 1 and here is what happened. I happily binge-watched all three seasons and it felt like home – a perfect comfort zone, a way of my escapism. I even discovered a place where they shoot Villanelle’s apartment (here in Paris), I walked there, secretly got into the courtyard – it was AMAZING – visualizing what happened there in the 1st season, remembering their dialogue with Eve – “I think about you all the time” and stuff. It was comme la presence de Villanelle and I felt so happy and inspired there.

Lately I realised that I’ve been struggling, not wanting to re-watch the goddamn last season. Why the fuck it was so hard? I just can skip the last 5 minutes and et voilà – it would be just perfect. Plus dearest Luke Jennings has been writing and posting his new book about Villanelle and Eve (RESURRECTION) since November 2023, so we know that in his book they got their happy ending and their love story goes on, so it’s good news, right? We have something to rely on “more rock than sand” and it sounds so easy…

But frankly it’s not – I couldn’t pretend I did not see it – the ending they’ve made. I didn’t want to be in this denial any more. I was so angry, I didn’t want to go through it again. But I wanted to see the kiss, to feel their love, to embrace this fucking finale as well. The mixed up feelings were bothering me much so I decided to contemplate on them more, to write this down and here’s what I got.

For me this show, the VillanEve story, was very personal. And it started way long before the book. The book was a cure to find my peace AFTER I watched the ending, so I think it is what it is: the show is one thing and the book is another. I cannot pretend they are the same, like “Villanelle’s death was never meant to be in the book so fuck Laura Neal and her interpretation”. It’s fucking painful but I need to admit it – they ruined my favourite show, something I really loved and I feel so miserable I cannot simply rewatch it from time to time (like Twin Peaks for instance) to feel cheerful and happy KNOWING what awaits me in the end. It’s not a comfort zone anymore, it is a pure Hélène style torture. 

I’ve never felt so attached to the heroes before. I mean, I watch a lot of tv shows and movies, and I easily emphathysise to every story I love. But THIS was different. It was a mind-blowing love-journey, irrational, psychotic, driven, crazy, fun, epic, passionate, surreal, iridescent and QUEER. I NEVER felt so seen and understood on the deepest level by just WATCHING the show. VillanEve resonates with my personal life and fantasies and I was glad that I found it. I’m more of a visual person, so it was crucial for me to be able to WATCH it, to see the performance of Sandra and Jodie and their desperate game with unresolved sexual tension where should, no, MUST have been the glorious end game. The happy ending for them and for all of us. Not just us queers, but all the people.

This show was twisted, sexy and fun from the very beginning – thanks to ingenious Phoebe Waller-Bridge. And it should have stayed like that and ended like that. It shouldn’t have to be a torture. It’s not Game of Thrones for christ sake. Besides, the story of The Twelve was screwed up too, and I will explain why.

We have a lot of this political shit in life already. Right parties, fucked up capitalism, like Russian government and its dictature. It’s no fun guys, this is really frightful and disastrous. So I believe we people do need some kind of an inspiration, a hope in the shows we watch – so we can take this hope to our lives and keep it, lean on it. In dark times like this it would be really helpful and right – so they should have caught the The Twelve gang and crush it, end it for good. But they (producers) fucked it all up so it’s quite impossible to be unfucked. 

They ruined the VillanEve AND the fiction fantasy itself. It was the Author and the Twink death at once. Why not choosing an open ending if you had no idea how to end the show? The open final is always a good way, for me it’s all about respecting your audience. Think David Lynch way. Open endings give you a possibility to rewatch the show and come up with new ideas and interpretations. But they screw this one too.

So no, I think will never accept the finale. I will be grieving for a long long time. Until some director or a show runner who loves VillanEve as much as I do, makes a come-back to fix this shit.

[martyfromgiant]

thinking about how pretty much every single show with lesbian representation has been cancelled or ended by the network in the last year. it hurts so fucking much to see shows being cancelled that have a huge fan base or killing off lesbian characters without a second thought. it’s not gay shows that are being canceled, no, it is wlw shows. mlm shows have continued to go on getting praise and renewals where shows like first kill, even though they’re cheesy and shitty, that have lesbian main characters one being a black woman and having a half black cast are cancelled. it had twice the viewing of shows like heartstopper, a show with two white gay men leads, that got renewed in the first few weeks of its release. even with netflix setting first kill up to fail by releasing it at the same time as huge shows like stranger things and umbrella academy, it still was a huge hit and had such a loving fan base.

the wilds with a lesbian main couple and diverse female cast literally centered around the concept of girl power. huge and dedicated fan base. cancelled. killing eve lesbian main characters one of them being sandra fucking oh that explores the dark side of ourselves while giving really good rep. one of the most dedicated fan bases i’ve seen. cancelled. and not just that, what could have so easily been a happy ending for the couple was ripped from us in the last five minutes right after the characters finally admitted feelings after four fucking seasons. one of them is murdered right in front of the other.

i can’t speak much to shows like everything sucks and the society because i haven’t bothered to watch them knowing they get cancelled. i don’t want to get attached to beautifully written and relatable characters for some big rich homophobic network to tell me no, no you can’t have this anymore. that’s happened too many times to me. right as the couple is happy and things are okay, one of them dies in front of the other like clexa, villaneve, dani and jamie from bly manor. some don’t even really get the opportunity to get to that point and others are just left with their relationship unfinished, with things left unsaid. and don’t even get me started on queer baiting.

yeah gay shows in general with good representation are fucking hard to come by but i’m sorry. mlm don’t face the same kind of hardships that wlw do. there’s a reason burying your lesbians became such a well known trope. because lesbians in shows die all of the fucking time for no good reason. i wish companies like netflix, hbo, and prime would stop fucking being cowards and admit the real reason they’re cancelling these shows. it’s not because they’re not being viewed enough or don’t have a strong fan base. it’s because they’re fucking lesbophobic i don’t want to hear anything else about it or any bullshit that it wasn’t a big enough hit. it may be the 21st century but lesbians aren’t magically equal even within the lgbtq community. the only place to get good representation these days is from fan made sources like fan fiction and fan art. made by people who understand how hard it is.

it’s where we get to see what we’ve always wanted to see, the characters we love, loving each other and being happy. we don’t have big writers scratching ideas because it “wouldn’t look good or be good for ratings”. we get a world where villanelle and eve lived happily ever after instead of villanelle dying in front of eves eyes and and floating into the abyss. not some bullshit from laura fucking neal who knows absolutely nothing about the characters we know telling us it’s what they felt was right. glad burying your lesbians feels right to people. but in our fan spaces we get to see villanelle make it out alive, we get to see them have a normal life and watch movies together. we also get to see and express what we feel is right with the fuck ton of queer coding in media. we get to see nancy and robin fall in love, emma and regina confess their feelings for one another, and any of the endless amount of amazing ships that we desire. there is a reason we flock to those spaces, it’s where we feel safe, seen, and where we feel like maybe one day we can have a relationship like that, to be loved like that. but it sometimes doesn’t make up for seeing it all play out endorsed by a company and written by people that actually care about representation and their viewers instead of just money. we all want to be loved and feel accepted and seen but sadly, because of the events of the last year, i’m not gonna hold my fucking breath.

sorry this is a lot, i’m just so fucking pissed

[analogskullerosis]

Also, Timothy Dalton truly just knocks it out of the park every time he appears on the show. He's such a magnificent bastard who knows how to play Niles Caulder as an irredeemable piece of shit, but also endearing and charming enough that I do care about the guy and just love whenever he shows up. He's a great example of how to do an imperfect but still morally decent character. His talk with Old!Jane to help her solve her puzzle and his genuinely trying to understand why this hulking robot is pissed off at him showed that he isn't always the giant bastard the characters are haunted by and make him out to be. Even though he has shitty and smug moments (berating Laura at the bureau, calling himself a goddamn genius after getting a good look at Cliff) Dalton plays it so well that he's simply captivating regardless of which Niles he is at the moment. He always found a good balance with his version of Caulder and I think the comics sometimes tended to lean too far into making him and "apathetic asshole." He's just as flawed and fucked up as the Doom Patrol can be, he just had more power/connections/desire to be MORE than all of them combined. But much like the Doom Patrol, he did spend his last days with them trying to help and make up for the terrible things he had done. Shitheel or not, he at least owned up to his actions and did his best to help his victims find peace. A guy who lets you eat his disembodied head to cure your zombieism can't be all bad, right?

He's a wonderfully flawed character and I think it's Dalton's performance that was a key factor in why it was hard to fully hate him throughout the series. It's easy to play a straight villain and easy to play a straight hero, but a complicated, morally grey character is a taller order. He's so important to how the show develops past the first season that I think if he wasn't as good as he was, the entire show would've fallen apart. You needed him to be this really complicated guy with tough relationships to the main characters so that he can somehow still haunt the Doom Patrol even long after he's gone.

I was so happy to see Dalton in the role one more time before the final episode.

[chrashley]

What piece of media do you think each of the counselors would be really annoying about wanting other people to consume and enjoy? Could be a movie, TV show, musical, album/song/artist, video game, whatever.

laura - stardew valley

max - saved! (2004)

emma - rabid swiftie

abi - her childhood fantasy book series. probably a warrior cats kid

jacob - some shitty football movie he grew up with and thinks about at least once a day

nick - an australian children's show nobody else has seen

kaitlyn - a tiny indie band she goes to random basements to see

dylan - twilight

ryan - knows the fnaf lore inside out and tells everyone about it when he gets the chance

[fuck-you-upmusicbracket]

Searching For Former Clarity (Against Me!)

And in the journal you kept by the side of your bed/You wrote nightly an aspiration of developing as an author/Confessing childhood secrets of dressing up in women's clothes/Compulsions you never knew the reasons to/Will everyone you ever meet or love/Be just a relationship based on a false presumption?/Despite everyone you ever meet or ever love/In the end, will you be all alone?

"Searching for a Former Clarity is about the process of dying. It's the closing track to the album, and it shares a theme with the opening track, but while Miami uses disease and dying as a way to talk about the city metaphorically, Searching for a Former Clarity is much more personal. It's also partly autobiographical. Laura Jane Grace wouldn't come out for another seven years, although if I'm remembering right she was convinced that this song would immediately out her to everyone. (I could be thinking of a different song from the same era. It's kind of a running theme in her music.) A while back I saw an old video of her performing this song, when it was still new and she still wasn't out. It felt wrong to see that version of her, honestly (I'm old enough that I should have been a fan in the 2000s but I'd never heard of Against Me until a couple years ago), but it also amazes me just how much *better* she looks now. She looked so much older then, and unbelievably more miserable, than she does now. I hate that she had to live like that for so long, but I think about that contrast every time I hear the song now. Honestly, with that in mind, I never want to hear anyone saying shit about how they are glad someone suffered so that they could Make Art(TM) about it. Fuck that. Don't get me wrong, I love this song and most of Against Me's discography, but I'd willingly give all of it up if it could somehow retroactively mean that Laura Jane Grace didn't have to have the shitty life experiences that led to it. Yes, a lot of art comes from suffering, but people shouldn't have to fucking suffer for art. I've had some experiences lately that forced me to think about my mortality a bit more seriously than usual. If I died today, there would be an extensive record of my gender, and my complex feelings about gender, on various mostly anonymous twitter and tumblr and reddit accounts. If I died today, nobody who knows me would know the name I chose for myself. Not that I'm a historical figure (I'd probably be entirely forgotten in a decade tbh) but speculation about my gender would be *at most* someone's conspiracy theory based on poorly-sourced and badly-interpreted speculation. I'd be buried as a man, I'd be remembered as a man, I'd be forgotten as a man. That was my choice. I have my reasons for making it. I don't know if it is right or wrong or even if the concepts of "right" and "wrong" are the right ones to use when thinking about it. I'm still going to have feelings about it every chance I get. Searching for a Former Clarity is a pretty good way to get them. Emma. That is the name that I chose."

Am I Awake (They Might Be Giants)

When I get through this part/Will the next one be the same/Will I be wondering/If I'm awake?/These are not the clothes I had on when I went to bed/And something else besides my hair is growing from my head/And when I close my eyes it looks the same as when I open them again/Am I awake?

"Man I don't know what exactly about this song gets me so hard but it just makes me wanna get up and stim and think about my blorbos and their trauma. it also just speaks to me as a person with memory and identity issues, it really outlines the dissociation and confusion i feel when i don't remember something and/or can't grasp what i'm feeling. it also has a sort of inception vibe to it? or maybe groundhog day? The strange vocal samples and frantic drums and fast bpm with the really slow vocals on top is just soooo good. really really good song"

[lindszeppelin]

curiosity- at what point do you accept a PR relationship involves the PR teams of both people? where does austin and his team/kate factor in? you do a lot of talking about kaia and her team being sinister mastermind plotters but seem hesitant to be critical of your stake in it in regards to austin and his team. i can personally see the argument for it being set up for PR, but not in the sense that he’s “trapped” which seems to be the main narrative on here. they’re too much net benefit on his end for that to be the case: the business connections he now has access to through rande, even more so bc rande seems to love him and is probably “grooming” him for casamigos involvement. connections through cindy and kaia such as laura dern, the general privilege of being plus-oned into a million, probably billion dollar dynasty family when while i’m sure he’s well off, he doesn’t come from money. more paparazzi opportunities that give him just as much PR as they do her. and to be a bit crass, a young, thin (not saying to be fatphobic and hoping you know what i mean), pretty model to get him off at the end of the day. he hasn’t exactly gotten nothing but pain out of this deal.

you got pretty close with all the ‘they’s in the part of your post calling *them* hypocritical for how they talk about privacy. but i’m curious for your brutally honest take on austin and his team’s involvement. understandable that you might be wary to upset other fans, but i think being critical of your faves is healthier than constantly falling on the sword for them. 

slow your roll, cowboy. this needs to be addressed and then we move on.

i have never not said that PR relationships DON'T involve both PR teams. It seems like you are maybe new here to my blog. I have said so much over the span of probably a year discussing all of this ad nauseum. i call out her team predominately because her team has done most of the heavy lifting. his team only seems to step in when the record needs to be corrected.

so with that being said, do you hear yourself? what planet are you living on where you truly think rande is grooming austin to take over casamigos? also, a billion dollar dynasty family? what is this, Downton Abbey? sanity has left the chat.

austin has made connections, money, and fantastic career choices without the Gerbers throughout his entire career spanning a decade and he will continue to do so without them. while he was working the field going to auditions and working on critically acclaimed shows, she was playing hopscotch with her friends in a malibu elementary school. he does not need their help, he has done it by himself very well and is managing his new level of fame in his own way.

you wanna talk about grooming? kaia has been groomed since she was little by her own family in the ways of Hollywood and how to move through it via the nepotism she has. you think that they don't give their daughter the hardest hitting PR team in LA? they play this Hollywood game for breakfast. there are two people in this situationship...one comes from humble beginnings living with his divorced parents in their family's garage, and the other one was bred into hollywood culture since birth. we are not even on the same galaxy, let alone the same planet when it comes to these two and how they move through life and their values.

we can be critical, but austin has not done anything to warrant us as fans being critical of him in regards to his PR. he doesn't care about externals like money or the glitz of hollywood. he is clearly not tempted by that shit. yes he didn't come from money, but it's shitty of you to presume that just because he has been with the Gerber's that he is this changed guy who all of a sudden cares about materialistic bullshit.. do you see this guy driving an Escalade drinking boxed water and going out to parties and rubbing elbows with the elites every weekend? no. and do you see this guy calling the paps on himself and enjoying the paps attention? no. are you blind? did you sleep through all of the last Cabo vacation and literally every single time he is papped with her? incredible selective memory.

being with kaia has made him worse off and he has not gained any benefit from this situationship. austin is not this Machiavellian schemer that rubs his hands together and plots "how can i use the gerbers to benefit my career?" like you think he does. and it's sad that you do.

in conclusion, im not here to be well liked and play to people's feelings. i don't give a damn. i am here to support austin and his career, period.

[utilitycaster]

I’m I the only one who finds it alarming that most of this fandom who ship Imogen and Laudna (especially on twitter) don’t realize the unhealthyness thats going on in their relationship? They literally see two women to are affectionate with each other and say “ENDGAME!” “GIRLFRIENDS!” “MARRIED!” “KISS KISS KISS!” Then they focus on quotes that are kinda alarming, and Imogen’s Jealousy is pretty fucking Alarming! Saying that they are in love and just haven’t realized it yet. (Don’t get me started on that one blog on here counting down the days “till imodna realizes their in love.” I find it so fucking annoying.) Loving someone and being IN love with someone is two different things. Also another thing! I HATE THAT PEOPLE CALL THEM LESBIANS! THE BOTH HAVE EXPRESSED FEELINGS FOR MALE PERSENTING PEOPLE! I dread the day when the campaign ends and they don’t end up together or during the campaign fall IN love with someone that’s not each other. Especially if it’s a male persenting person, because the Laura and Marisha will be harassed and the shippers will yell Queerbait, also the men hating/haters will be in full force. 

Hi anon,

I agree with most of this; I'm answering under a cut in the hopes that people who will be upset by an answer will be able to avoid it, without me having to explicitly discourse tag it and in doing so throw it to people who troll that tag to get mad at things. Also this is SUPER long and covers a lot of the thoughts I've had percolating on the CR fandom/shipping culture in general.

I think I and a lot of people who primarily deal in meta/analysis in this fandom have been inching ever closer to a lot of the points you've made here, and I am generally very willing to be the one who snaps and says "yeah has anyone noticed the emperor has literally no clothes on like what the fuck".

Let's start with the end and work backwards: It's happened before, it will happen again if Laura and Marisha's characters do not get together, and it's irritating, but like, I will take a good story and the consequences of a shitty segment of the fandom rather than the path of least resistance every time. I almost said something to this effect on the positive vibes ask last night, but like...there will always be people who are hateful and stupid on the internet, so you may as well stand in your own truth rather than fear their consequences. (Not that I don't respect the choice to quietly avoid harassment; I am the way I am because I know at this point I can take a pretty hard hit and shut it down, but that has not always been the case.) Anyway, people called an actual canon ship between lesbian characters queerbaiting last campaign, so it's not like those accusations hold any weight or need to be taken seriously; outside of their tiny circle, everyone thinks those people are idiots.

I do, as a bi woman, hate the tendency among hardcore shippers to erase bisexuality. They do it because a bi character's competing ships cannot be as easily dismissed as 'obviously can't happen, they're gay or lesbian', and they don't care how biphobic they look doing it. You are absolutely correct: Imogen and Laudna have both indicated interest in men or masc nb people. (Others have also pointed out that people tend to exclusively use he/him pronouns about Ashton when they are being critical of them, so they don't care how transphobic they look doing it either, apparently; also I don't think Ashton identifies as a he/they lesbian but there are in fact people who do identify as such so like...if your goal is to eliminate Ashton/Laudna as an option by saying Laudna is a lesbian, against all evidence to the contrary, you also need to make a number of presumptions about Ashton's sexuality and gender identity as well.)

This brings me to a tricky section about fandom in general but I think it's worth saying. In the real world, homophobia and transphobia are very real. They negatively impact our lives in heartbreaking and deadly ways. It is still the norm in most US media for the bulk of relationships shown to be between a cis man and a cis woman, and for protagonists to be cis and straight (note: also often able-bodied, male, white, etc but the focus of this discussion is queerness so I'm not covering all axes of oppression). However, in many fandom spaces, queer characters and ships are the fan favorites. Tumblr's userbase does skew heavily queer, and additionally, tends to skew towards women. In other words, a lot of things that are very true in real life do not hold in fandom spaces.

Which is to say: we're in a situation where an F/F ship is the massive juggernaut for the fandom right now. It does not mean that lesbians (or bi women who enter into relationships with other women) are not oppressed in the real world; it does mean that within the highly specific space of the Critical Role fandom, people are more likely to be in favor of this ship than not. It also means that a lot of the people who aren't into it are not homophobes, but are queer people - often even wlw - who are saying "I would like F/F ships! I would like them to actually be good." Like, to me, the only difference between Imogen and Laudna and every M/F canon relationship on network TV that's made me go "you're telling me they should be together, but I don't see it" is that they're both women (and I would bet a large sum that for a lot of people, this isn't about the dynamic, but purely about the gender of the people involved, ie, if Imogen were a man played by one of the men in the cast people wouldn't ship it, where as I personally can comfortably say I'd ship any of the canon ships from past campaigns regardless of character gender. This also admits that biological essentialism is fake and that Exandria is pretty gender equalthough, which some people don't want to do.)

Part of why I've been so frustrated is that, at least from my perspective, the overwhelming majority of hate and harassment I've seen within the fandom in Campaign 3 - and in Campaign 2 - has been from people who have shipped Marisha and Laura's characters. There has, in fact, been pretty considerable hate as well as measured criticism levied towards M/F ships (we're seeing some with Ashton/Laudna here, but both Fjord/Jester and Caleb/Jester, the latter of which I actively dislike and have openly criticized, received pretty vehement hate last campaign and most of it came from people who shipped Jester with Beau) and M/M ships (less harassment per se but people who shipped Caleb with Jester said some truly awful things about Caleb/Essek; also while I have not, you know, harassed people, I have said essentially the same things about how Taliesin and Liam's characters are shipped every campaign despite often having little connection as I have about Marisha and Laura's. I just don't talk about it as much because while I think and have said that Ashton/Orym is basically nothing - and that Widomauk, which most people vaguely classify as M/M, and for that matter, Percy/Vax, all are basically nothing - no one who ships those has called me a cunt or reblogged my posts in an abusive manner or called me out for the grave sin of preferring canon to fanon, so I respect the ship and let ship of it all.) For that matter, the bulk of hate towards Beauyasha came from people who shipped Beau and Jester. Like...I am confident there are people who dislike this ship specifically because it's between two women, and they are homophobic, but that is not the quarter where I think most of the criticism on Tumblr or Twitter is coming from.

So let's get to the last point. Why do people ship two women simply because they're standing next to each other? Why do they ignore countless red flags - and I am specifically talking about treating Imogen and Laudna's relationship as healthy and loving; not about shipping it in general. I cannot stress enough that if you treat Imogen/Laudna as some kind of toxic Briarwoods situation and are into that, I support that entirely.

There are a few reasons. First and foremost, I think a lot of people project onto characters rather than letting the characters provide them with differing perspectives. I find this deeply sad. It's not that you can't draw parallels between your own life and that of fictional characters or see yourself in them - you're supposed to! But it says something depressing about your empathy if your qualifications for which characters speak to you are only those who match your demographics. Like, I've said before, but my favorite characters from past campaigns are Vex and Fjord, and they have a lot in common! If you relate to one based on their themes of Who You Are In The Dark and the mask you present to the world over a face you don't particularly like, you will probably relate to the other! But also...I am a cis bi woman, I am not a person of color as both those characters are often considered coded to be (though am an ethnic minority), nor did I personally experience extensive emotional abuse and poverty as a child. I think there's value in wanting to see people like you! But also...representation is not just "I want to see people like me"; it's also "I want to humanize people who are not like me". If you cannot relate to someone simply because they don't match your gender or sexuality, then that's a really shallow and cold way to interact with the world. And, specifically in relation to queerness within Critical Role: this is a world that has consistently been depicted as not having homophobia or transphobia. I understand wanting to explore these themes and seeing characters who have experienced them, but like...this is not the media that will reasonably have a one-to-one portrayal of homophobia or transphobia, and you often will need to bend over backwards and project a lot of stuff that simply isn't in the canon to read that into them because the worldbuilding simply doesn't support it. And, to be clear, you can do that; but at that point you're applying a lens that only you can obtain, so you shouldn't be surprised if few people come along with you. (I also think it's kind of dumb to watch a show with 5 cis men on it, four of whom are married to women, and be mad that the story has men in it and that those men sometimes are attracted to women; unpacking this would easily double the length of this already incredibly long post though.)

So: this sets a stage for people coming into the show saying "who looks like me, or can I make to look like me" rather than engaging with what's actually going on. Part of why I've been hesitant on Imogen and Laudna the whole time, though started out much more open to it, is in fact that it was heavily shipped from quite literally the moment that Laura and Marisha were indicated to be playing two women who knew each other from before. We knew nothing about their dynamic other than "existing friendship". So I think a lot of people put the cart before the horse and started shipping, and I do think - and I could be entirely wrong - a lot of them, deep down in their hearts, know that they are twisting their interpretations to match an idea of these two characters that has increasingly been proven not to be true onscreen. Like, I think a lot of people kind of realize that Imogen is putting Laudna in a horrible position here; I think a lot of people realize that their so-called 'unconditional' love that transcends words means there's no room to resolve or even express conflict. Perhaps they don't, but like, I'd like to give people the benefit of the doubt. It's just...I think that because this ship is so all-consuming within the fandom, and because so many people have staked their identities within the fandom on it, they don't know how to leave it and are scared of retaliation if they do.

This is backed up by the slow shift I've described - Imodna started out with "they're already girlfriends" or "they're already in love but just haven't said it" or "what could ever happen other than they become ever closer and eventually kiss" (as witnessed by these questions) to "they realized they were in love during the campaign" to "Imogen is in love with Laudna but Laudna isn't aware" to "god remember how they used to talk, I'd give anything for it" to "I guess a QPR is okay" (which is itself bizarre, like, the issues I see in their relationship are still just as much issues in a nonsexual partnership as a sexual one; honestly, it's not a healthy friendship though it is an interesting one and the problem's I have are not going to be fixed by kissing.) Like, it's not the normal evolution of feelings one might have about a ship as the show goes on and more information is revealed, or rather, it's a ship that's becoming less and less confident as time goes on which is the opposite of how canon ships tend to go. (Which, I need to stress, does not discount that it could not be canon; it's just that I think it would require a pretty profound shakeup and conflict to do so). The signs and signals are becoming more and more tenuous and the shippers keep lowering and lowering the bar.

Since I've already brought up past campaigns and ships, let's do it again for the sake of illustration; this feels like how people who shipped Caleb and Jester went from ENDGAME to "Caleb is pushing away Jester to protect her" to "I think Laura is biting her lip when she's looking at Liam! This is a SIGN" even in episodes where Jester was like, actively making out with Fjord, to, and I am not making this up, posting pictures of the CR shop showing Laura in Caleb merch as evidence. Or how the bulk of Vex/Keyleth shipping in TLOVM rested on a scene in the trailer where Keyleth was staring dreamily and drunkenly into space while Vex was across the table only for the show to reveal Keyleth was staring at Vax. Like, all shipping does require a certain degree of cherrypicking, but there is a point where you are focused only on subtext and never text, and while that was how one had to interact with queer stories in the past, it's ridiculous to be doing it on a show where Marisha has openly RP-ed Beau eating Yasha out. Like, if they wanted to show two women being romantically involved, they will. (There's been a lot of Xena comparisons thrown around, and like...not that Xena isn't an important part of the history of depicting F/F relationships in media, but it is also a syndicated show from the 90s and couldn't show an explicitly lesbian relationship, and Critical Role very much can and has.)

I do think there are a subset of people who don't realize how unhealthy this is. Like...this is a whole psychological thing that I am unequipped to unpack, but I do think there are people for whatever reasons genuinely do believe that love means never having to say you're sorry. I am hoping this is because of youth and inexperience, because being able to communicate and advocate for yourself is a crucial part of relationships, as is the ability to express and resolve conflict. As you've noticed, the people who ship this have all said "well, obviously, Imogen won't betray Laudna" - but we don't know that. Honestly I think it could go either way. But they have to make that assumption to keep shipping it, because if Imogen might betray Laudna, then that does mean that there would have been more meaning and value in Laudna speaking up and that conversation was deeply flawed.

I also think some of this comes from unconditional love being an unreasonable expectation foisted upon us all at large. There are always conditions, or rather, you might always in some way love someone, but there are conditions under which you'd leave or boundaries you will draw. You can love someone who (for example) is dealing with an addiction but still refuse to let them drive while intoxicated or steal your stuff to pay for drugs. You can love someone who cheats on you but still want to end that relationship. I mean, while fear, self-doubt, and resources/logistics are all factors in people leaving abusive relationships, it's also true that a lot of people have some affection for the good times and that is a factor as well. Love is not a simple on/off switch. You can feel multiple things at once - honestly, that's what Ashton basically says this past episode, that they both love and hate the party! I think Imogen and Laudna do genuinely love each other, though I don't interpret it as romantic; I just also think that there's a lot of stuff they don't like about each other but are unable to express, and which will only become more and more of a threat to a potential romantic (or queerplatonic) relationship if left to fester unresolve. And, to be honest, I suspect real-world homophobia and fandom purity issues are part of why people are so unwilling to discuss why Imogen and Laudna's relationship is unhealthy; because it means admitting that queer relationships can have most of the same problems as straight ones, and possibly admitting that you still find an unhealthy relationship interesting and want to see it played out.