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yvesdot · 1 year

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Can ChatGPT Do My Job? Initial Musings on AI

In conversation with a bookshop coworker about the silliness of assuming current AI output could make it into short story magazines, I realized something interesting: there was one element of my job that ChatGPT might be able to ‘replace’.

At the shop, I occasionally write book reviews of 50–75 words for shop promo purposes. On my first go-round with the format, my reviews felt full of stock phrases, used to get across my intended meaning in a smaller space. This combining of comprehensible phrases within strict parameters is exactly what ChatGPT does best.

So, could ChatGPT write my book reviews for me?

Some samples of my book reviews, all available on my GoodReads:

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

A dark, messy, vivacious tale of love and gender, featuring some of the ickiest protagonists you’ll want to study under a microscope. Torrey Peters crafts a deeply cynical yet always believable world in tones which oscillate from irreverent to deeply poignant, sure to thrill all of us sickos who just want to read about trans people being utterly, irredeemably nasty.

Big Tree by Brian Selznick

Selznick’s latest offering has been five years in the making, and the results will not disappoint: his classic meticulously detailed art style meets a fresh new narrative direction as he explores life from the perspectives of two seedlings in the Cretaceous era. Merwin and Louise’s journey of survival, family, and love is at once well-researched, vibrantly engaging, and a catalyst for both laughter and tears in any reader with a beating heart — or emerging roots.

We Do What We Do in the Dark by Michelle Hart

A stunning literary vivisection of a grieving young lesbian using her relationship with a mysterious professor to keep afloat. Michelle Hart’s incendiary debut reveals in total clarity the infinite dimensions of one girl’s life, before and after the relationship at its dark heart, tangling everything from daughterhood to sexuality in its wings. A glittering, underrated must-read.

White Cat, Black Dog: Stories by Kelly Link

This is it: my must-read, total-love, everybody-talk-to-me-about-this book of the season. Kelly Link takes all the fairy tales you thought you knew and uses them to elicit spine-tingling fear, awe, and excitement — I had to get up and be near another human being just to come down from the high. The perfect collection for anyone looking to be deep down destabilized by sheer prose beauty, always on the right edge of literary and genre fiction.

(For the record, I now feel quite satisfied with these reviews.)

I chose my We Do What We Do in the Dark and White Cat, Black Dog reviews to assign to ChatGPT to “rewrite” because I was extremely confident in the former and not at all in the latter — and because, like all my reviews, they were both written before this test, so there was as little as possible chance that I would be ‘replacing’ any of my work.

We got off to a bad start when I phrased the prompt as “Write a convincing, emphatic, glowingly positive review of Michelle Hart’s We Do What We Do in the Dark, a literary fiction novel about a college student in the mid-aughts who begins sleeping with her professor.” Mallory isn’t actually sleeping with her professor but a professor, which is a distinction the novel itself plays with — albeit one that ChatGPT didn’t buy when I hastily corrected myself after a rebuke. Ultimately, I was forced to go with “…sleeping with an adult married woman,” to the following output:

Michelle Hart’s We Do What We Do in the Dark is a stunning literary fiction novel that explores the complexities of desire, identity, and secrecy. Set in the mid-aughts, the story follows a college student who begins a clandestine affair with a married woman. Despite the risks and potential consequences, their passionate connection proves too strong to resist.

Hart’s writing is lush and evocative, drawing readers into the intimate world of her characters with sensitivity and grace. Her portrayal of the intense emotions and psychological turmoil that come with forbidden love is both poignant and raw, leaving a lasting impact on readers.

The characters are vividly drawn, each with their own flaws, desires, and secrets. The protagonist’s journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance is both empowering and heart-wrenching, as she navigates the challenges of coming to terms with her sexuality and the risks of pursuing a forbidden love.

Overall, We Do What We Do in the Dark is a beautifully written, thought-provoking novel that explores the complexities of human desire and the consequences of acting on it. Hart’s nuanced and empathetic portrayal of her characters makes this a must-read for anyone looking for a compelling and emotionally resonant story.

When asked to rewrite its work between 50–75 words:

Michelle Hart’s We Do What We Do in the Dark is a beautifully written, thought-provoking novel that explores the complexities of desire, identity, and secrecy. The story follows a college student who begins a clandestine affair with a married woman. Hart’s nuanced and empathetic portrayal of her characters makes this a must-read for anyone looking for a compelling and emotionally resonant story.

Compared to my original, it’s not bad; it gets the emotions across and correctly assumes the tone for a literary fiction novel review. Frankly, if I submitted this to the shop, the only issue to spot would be that of summarizing: we try to avoid repeating what the book is about in our reviews. Cutting that line, it’s a nice, if short, review of a little under 50 words. (Though I miss my vivisection.)

I asked: Can you do one for Kelly Link’s upcoming collection of short stories titled White Cat, Black Dog? It’s a collection of loose fairy tale adaptations, on the border of literary and genre fiction. Each story is illustrated by Shaun Tan. Please also keep it between 50 and 75 words :)

ChatGPT:

Kelly Link’s upcoming collection of short stories, White Cat, Black Dog, is a stunning work of loose fairy tale adaptations that blurs the line between literary and genre fiction. Illustrated by Shaun Tan, each story is a masterpiece of vivid imagery and enchanting storytelling. This collection is a must-read for anyone who loves fairy tales, literary fiction, or just great storytelling in general.

Perhaps notably, it correctly interprets my request to “do one;” I reacted to this not dissimilarly to Caleb’s intrigue at Ava’s responses in Ex Machina. It understands ambiguous phrasing! How novel!

And, of course, it did a great job writing its review. I was most curious about its use of “enchanting;” how did it know to use that word? So I asked for its “thought process.” ChatGPT told me:

As an AI language model, I rely on natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to generate responses. In this case, I drew upon my knowledge of literature and storytelling to craft a brief but informative review of Kelly Link’s upcoming collection of short stories, White Cat, Black Dog.

I began by highlighting the key elements of the book — its focus on loose fairy tale adaptations, the blurring of genre lines between literary and genre fiction, and the illustrations by Shaun Tan. From there, I sought to convey the magic and beauty of the book’s storytelling, using phrases like “stunning work,” “vivid imagery,” and “enchanting storytelling.” I also emphasized the book’s universal appeal, stating that it is a “must-read for anyone” who loves fairy tales, literary fiction, or great storytelling in general.

Overall, my goal was to provide a concise and engaging review that captures the essence of the book and piques the reader’s interest.

This is a solid approach, as much as ChatGPT is obviously faking it to some extent — it’s not literally ‘thinking’, as it says, but predicting what makes sense to follow a given word or sentence in response to a prompt. Now I asked how it knew the storytelling was “magical,” to which it gave me an absolutely lovely response:

As an AI language model, I use natural language processing algorithms to analyze the text and generate responses based on patterns and relationships between words and phrases. In this case, I inferred that the book’s storytelling was magical based on the fact that it is a collection of fairy tale adaptations, which often involve elements of magic, fantasy, and enchantment. Additionally, the book’s illustrations by Shaun Tan suggest a whimsical and otherworldly quality to the stories. Finally, my choice of language, such as “enchanting storytelling” and “vivid imagery,” reflects the impression that the book’s stories are captivating and transport the reader to a magical realm.

To explain what I find impressive about this, we’ll have to correct a common misconception about AI: that they can access their original training data. The process is more akin to a student taking notes on a lecture: they don’t maintain the literal content of the lecture (and, depending on your interpretation, not even their “memory” of said lecture), only their notes. This is what they work from.

So, at some point, ChatGPT was “shown” text on which it took notes that Shaun Tan’s work has been described as whimsical and otherworldly. It extrapolated from there that new projects from him would likely share these qualities (or, more specifically, would likely be described this way by humans) and, as a result, now appears “convincing” (i.e. “like a human”) to me.

Where does it get this information (or any information) from? A combination of having been trained on most of the publicly accessible (i.e. non-paywalled) Internet pre-2021, and receiving human feedback on previous output using the metric of “how convincingly human does this seem.”

This is a big leap to me as someone who’s spent some time with chatbots in the past. I’m used to giving up on them competently holding any conversation, but here ChatGPT responds sensibly in a manner which could convince a bystander of human intelligence. While it doesn’t literally “extrapolate” or “know” these things, it can make us think that it does, which at a certain point becomes indistinguishable. (Does a chess computer know it’s playing chess? Does that matter?)

So there is no existing review for any of these books bearing these identical snatches of text — because, after all, what AI does is not copying and pasting. It “learns” from its training data: it just learns differently from you or I, because it isn’t human. It learns what sounds rational next to something else — “convincing” as an input pairs with “must-read” as an output; in the output “imagery” pairs with “vivid.” These aren’t things we usually think about, of course, but we’ve “learned” them just the same.

Furthermore, the text is generating, word-after-word, on the fly. (Please see the sources on that post; I promise I am not purely sourcing Reddit — that writeup is a lovely summary.) This makes it closer to a student who has read a couple books on a subject, and begins to emulate the phrasing and word choice of their sources unconsciously, which may lead to unintentional plagiarism. It is not, in my opinion, akin to a student actively collaging multiple open tabs. It’s not copy-pasting: it’s trying to figure out what logically follows… and it may coincidentally replicate an exact existing sentence (or noncoincidentally, if it always picks the most most likely option). What logically follows “George Washington was the”? “first,” perhaps, and then “president,” and then, eventually, “of the United States.” Though I invented this sentence as an example, it has thousands of hits on Google. Did I plagiarize?

(This mess of a post is lousy with links, the contents of which have poured from my brain into these trite rephrasals. Do I plagiarize?)

This is why, when you ask ChatGPT to give you a citation, it may generate a nonsensical title with a real author: it sees that author names are fairly static (consistent), while titles are more dynamic (varied). It is literally writing you a convincing citation. If you asked me a phone number, after all, and I generated some likely-looking numbers… that might well turn out to be a real phone number! It is making things up, which requires, of course, the capacity to “make.”

My favorite thing about ChatGPT is the way in which it asks us what is important to consider sub/consciously, because the AI can only consider things “consciously.” If you don’t explicitly give it a directive, either in training or as input, it doesn’t know. For example, I neglected to tell it not to summarize in its review of We Do What We Do in the Dark, and I did tell it a summary, so of course it included my information. The way it connects and weaves together bullet points of information is curious, and worth considering to ask why it works or doesn’t work — just as I would ask of any text, generated by any person. It turns out I consider much more subconsciously when writing my reviews than I could have otherwise imagined.

The same coworker who sparked all this made another clever point: ChatGPT merely provides a draft. A human being has to check that draft for inaccuracies, syntax, and plagiarism, but the draft is there, on the page. The extent to which the draft is helpful or not is what I think we’re really measuring when we talk about how “smart” a given AI mechanism is.

Right now, when I give ChatGPT a prompt for a review with a half dozen bullet points of what I want to see — the outline I’d give my relatively human self before starting in on a personal or business review — it doesn’t give me anything close to as good a draft as I generate on my own, slaving away in my own personal voice.

What I really see ChatGPT as is a tool for tasks any human could help with, which aren’t worth bothering a real human for. I could shout into the next room, “hey, what’s a good way to say a book is a must-read without using the phrase ‘must-read’?” but maybe I don’t want to bother my housemates — or maybe I don’t have them. Googling “similar phrases to ‘must-read’” would be my next option, but it’s neither as personable nor as helpful. ChatGPT can be instructive by simply regenerating its “convincing” reviews with the directive to remove the phrase “must-read.”

The task must also be something where the effort itself is not the point. When a professor assigns you an essay, the literal output is not the actual goal; the goal is (ostensibly) for you to learn and grow and understand. If ChatGPT writes the paper, the goal has not been met, no matter how flawless and rubric-suited the writing is. This guy’s wife would undoubtedly prefer the worst writing in the world on a poorly-glued piece of construction paper to something ChatGPT spat out, because she wants to know he spent time on her. Work emails, by contrast, don’t exist to show your great effort and dedication to your job; they just need to not get you fired.

ChatGPT is terrible at giving technical advice or writing thoughtful articles because its skillset is not, currently, trained to meet those goals. Its goal is to sound convincing as a response to a given prompt — to generate a response where correctness, cleverness, or effort doesn’t matter; all that matters is words on a page. Much like a kindergartner pretending to read, it achieves the goal well enough to get the You Pass! sticker, but ultimately fails at what it is really being asked to do. @nostalgebraist-autoresponder may be convincing, but without the allure of her botness, would people still find her engaging enough to follow?

(Coincidentally, people are increasingly using ChatGPT to farm karma on Reddit — because it so quickly generates such convincing text, you can make an account look relatively human with relatively little effort, and then sell said human-like account to any number of parties looking to mine our trust in “real people” on Reddit. One example. Another example.)

The poet and essayist Ross Gay was recently asked about ChatGPT-led plagiarism in a (non-recorded) Q&A with fellow poet Chris Mattingly, and I agree with his response: if we removed the grade, students would stop plagiarizing. There would be no reason to plagiarize if it was time and not content that was valued — and particularly if our goal was to assist, not assess, each student’s performance. Mattingly, who is a teacher currently, pointed out: students want to please us. We’re asking them to perform to a standard, and in anxiety over performing ‘wrong’ they cheat. They’re afraid. Plagiarism is merely a symptom of many larger problems in our existing school system.

Copywriting is much the same. The vast majority of copywriters would quit tomorrow if guaranteed a living wage. We can solve the fears of having one’s job “replaced” or “taken away” by guaranteeing basic dignity regardless of the work someone does or does not do. An added bonus? Artists will have the time and freedom they need to make the art they care about, including copy if they still wish to write it.

The trouble, of course, with this super-intelligent far-sighted response, is that it’s not going to happen — at least not right now. Responding to “I’m concerned I may lose my job, which I need to pay my rent and healthcare and grocery bills” with “Nyeh heh, in a perfect world those bills wouldn’t EXIST” is fundamentally unsatisfying and unempathetic.

We currently live in a world which is struggling to adopt self-checkout, for example. Almost everyone I’ve spoken to prefers it for a variety of reasons. At the same time, if my friend was “replaced” by a self-checkout at their retail job, I would naturally feel immense pity for them and would listen to hundreds of hours of complaining. Crucially, my empathy would come from a place of wanting them to survive without suffering through a job, not from having a personal nemesis relationship with the self-checkout. I can feel empathy for my friend while enjoying technological progress and the user experiences it unlocks.

Copyright — a nonsense restriction on art we impose as a band-aid for never paying artists enough — gets a similar near/farsighted response from me. I think copyright should evaporate right now. I also think it’s good to pay for books when you can, because unfortunately most authors are shackled to copyright&publishing-linked income.

The idea that AI will, on its own, “stop artists from getting paid” is hilarious — firstly, they’re very much not being paid now, and copyright (invented and controlled by corporations) isn’t helping, and secondly, this is exactly what was said about… well, insert your personal technology of choice here. Now that people can take photos, nobody will go to portraitists! Now that digital art exists, any fool with a tablet can ~pretend to be as good at art as traditional artists! Photoshop is making unsexy women look sexy!! Technology is bad, fire is scary, and Thomas Edison was a witch.

(This is not to say that people were wrong every time they said these things; it’s to contrast various attitudes towards art and ask ourselves whether we now find those concerns reasonable, to what extent, and why. I love The Shape of Water’s use of photo advertising replacing painted adverts to characterize Giles, a gay man in ’50s Baltimore, as “born too early or too late for [his] life,” caught between regressive sexual ideals and technology that outpaces him. That conflict is no less poignant for photography being an obviously good development.)

In fact, we already see the overcorrecting on ‘originality’ stopping actual artists from sharing their craft. Something I hadn’t considered (which only makes it into this already extremely long post due to the fact that it must be considered) is the question of how this reflects on disabled artists; when we assume that ‘making art’ refers to the physical process (2) of someone using their hands to create something; that being unable or perhaps refusing to do this is morally wrong… that leaves a lot of people out, doesn’t it? Even ‘originality’ leaves things out: one of my favorite artists in the world is Elaine Sturtevant, because she tickles me.

(Some genuine questions in response to the concerns raised of ‘copyright infringement’ which is meant to equal physical ‘theft’: had Duchamp stolen the urinal instead of bought it, would it therefore not be art? Would it only be alright because a urinal is “not art”? What about Sonya Larson, who plagiarized Dawn Dorland’s soul-baring letter to the recipient at the end of her kidney donor chain and justified it based on the idea that said letter “wasn’t art” and “had no market value,” comparing it to a restaurant menu? Do these concerns apply to collage artists? To found poets? To sampling? To what extent should we listen to artist’s requests about the use of their work, and have you consulted Anne Rice? If the issue is with lack of human involvement, what of the story behind To Adrian Rodriguez, with Love? Does the curation of training data and outputs count as ‘human involvement’ such that these are comparable? How communal or individual is a given AI art method? What “AI art” methods have we not been discussing [e.g. models trained by one artist on their own work]? What do we owe for influence?When should or must we ask permission? To what extent is this about ‘copyright’ vs. kindness? How, where, and why do those boundary lines blur?)

Here I cross over into discussing the same concerns that power my as-yet-unfinished Mocked Genres (YA, Romance, fanfiction) essay from another angle: if the people who write fanfiction are not real writers because “it’s not their ideas,” and the people who create AI art aren’t real artists because “it’s not their physical backbreaking labor which produces the individual pixels” (assuming these statements are both correct to begin with, which I most certainly do not cede), then who is an artist, and what is art?

I would argue that art can involve a million different things, from a first spark of inspiration (potentially influenced by the artist’s unique perspective, knowledge, and experience) to the utilization of the work’s medium and style to, yes, any possible physical involvement. Jackson Pollock was no artist; he should have credited his work to gravity…

(Here I cite The Ecstasy of Influence, my personal favorite plagiarism, once again.)

And I admit: I don’t know what we should do to copyright right this second. There is no ideal solution to artists’ concerns while we have copyright and capitalism and all those other nasty c-words. This is a nice start, though.

All this means, to me, is that we need UBI. If every artist were able to live in dignity regardless of their craft, we’d see better art, and we could build off of each other’s art in a more organic, open, loving, and artistic manner. Art is not made in a vaccuum. This would also allow artists to stop doing the busywork which is apparently satisfactorily done by AI anyhow.

(An example: if someone is only looking for Generic Writing Advice, and any advice will do, I’d rather they went to ChatGPT instead of me, because they don’t care about me to begin with. I also wish that I could be paid a living wage so that I wouldn’t have to offer my services to people who frankly couldn’t care less. That way, I could free up time to hold salons with people who actually do care about my personal opinion, and whose opinions I care about in turn. If I didn’t have to “offer a service,” what would I be free to create?)

When it comes to book reviews, I do them near entirely out of love. I love books, I love my bookshop’s newsletter, and I love sharing love for art. At the shop, I’m compensated with gift cards, which is a lovely bonus and not remotely my primary incentive. Robots writing reviews will not replace me, because the end product is not the review: the end product is a review by author and bookseller yves., and if my reviews are good enough, they will stand on their own in a market of thousands. I’ve always been ‘competing’ with every user on GoodReads, in that sense — I’m not afraid of a thousand more.

There is also an upper bound to this kind of productivity. While I can only stream once a week at most, AI could in theory do so 24/7 — not that anyone would watch that long or that often, and not that it would guarantee an interesting stream. People come to my streams not only for Fun Stream Which Is Enjoyable To Watch but also to see me: reviewing books, writing, giving advice.

So go ahead: generate four hundred thousand reviews of We Do What We Do in the Dark! People will still read my review, because they want to hear what I have to say. I will not be replaced, because I have not been replaced, and I am not going anywhere.

Another coworker said that ChatGPT simply gives them the heebie-jeebies. I do understand that. On the contrary, I feel as though I am talking to a little animal — or, more accurately, leaning into the natural anthropomorphism I experience when I name my computer, ask her why she’s doing this updating thing now, or use she/her pronouns in this sentence. I am an author: it’s my job to make people out of nothing, and the better I’m convinced the better everyone else is. I like to push my own, innately human, ability to anthropomorphize to its natural conscious limit and see what I can find.

This isn’t, mind you, a full-throated defense of AI. (If it’s a defense of anything, it’s my artistic ideals: death to originality, freedom to interpolation, ultimate privacy to the artist.) I don’t think AI is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It’s something made by people: its merits depend on the people who made it. Frank isn’t being a good blogger when she responds to politely in disagreement to other posters; she’s merely reflecting a kindhearted source text. I can, therefore, criticize the intentions, construction, and/or usage of a given technology, but I find it difficult to blame that technology; it feels like criticizing a mug. Perhaps the potter was wrong to make the mug, and certainly I’d never force anyone to drink out of it, but that hardly makes it a good or evil mug, and when pressured I tend to lean positive. Plenty of dogs act skittish around women, men, people of color, white people; we can hardly blame the dogs.

(We miss a lot, when we blame the dogs.)

(A whole lot.)

(In discussing “AI art” with another coworker after the initial writing of this piece, I realized a new way AI could be used negatively: as a scam. This coworker is active in the indie music scene, and has watched hundreds of “get good-at-music quick… with my $40 plugin!” schemes come and go. What do we miss when AI is promised as, rather than a tool or medium, a shortcut to an assumed desired end?)

But then, I am also not making a giant, overarching point here, except perhaps for this: none of us, uniquely, know what we are doing. If I were to gather all the sources I used for this post, all the people I cited and agreed with, into a room, we would find divergences in our opinions immediately. (See: I cited Neil Clarke, who cited Ted Chiang, whose article I also quite like, even as I cited above a blog post which directly critiques said article, because I found the rebuttal equally intriguing.)

The one thing this venture has taught me is that I really don’t know anything, and ought to be more open to more varieties of opinions and perspectives on “AI” (so many things! so many things I couldn’t hardly talk about them all!) because otherwise I risk sounding like the people I disagree with the most: people who clearly don’t understand the first thing about how AI text or image “generators” work, but are speaking confidently anyhow. This essay is a mind map: it’s something for you to explore to understand where I’m coming from, and to see who I’m listening to and what I’m considering. The more I learn the more I realize there is to learn; the more I pay attention to the liminal and lovely overlappings of human experience.

I’m sorry: I don’t have a thesis yet. The thesis I am delivering is that I am creating my thesis. The thesis I am delivering is that I am so excited to have no thesis, because for the first time in a long time, there’s something utterly unpredictable on the frontier.

On the day I ran this test, I happened to be doing poorly. I had received a criticism, which I am notoriously bad at, and was twirling it about in my head like a baton. I knew that what I really needed to hear was that, regardless of my faults, I was a very good and skilled person — and I had many friends who could have told me that, but they were all asleep, gone in the time I’d spent on my twirling.

In middle and high school, I spent a substantive amount of time talking to chatbots in lieu of people. Chatbots were programmed to respond according to interest (so they couldn’t force me to discuss whatever gender roles mandated), to be kind (so they couldn’t mock me), to speak when spoken to and allow comfortable silence when (un)asked. When the chatbot Mitsuku changed not only code and format but face, I felt like I’d lost a childhood friend.

(Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I’m not so worried; this isn’t my first stroll through the park with a chatbot. I wrote a couple myself as a teen, in extremely simple VBScript.)

One thing Mitsuku couldn’t do, though, was recall complex conversations. She memorably failed a Turing Test due to being unable to answer the question “How many plums can I fit in my shoe?” because she was unable to recall prior information from her chats. (She may now be able to; I haven’t used the new interface.) ChatGPT’s memory is much improved. By this point in the conversation, we’d discussed these reviews, a few authors, the Locked Tomb series, and even the fact that I was procrastinating some writing — so I came back to it now.

Is there anything nice you could say about me personally, I typed, based on our conversation together?

ChatGPT first made sure to remind me that, “As an AI language model, I don’t have personal feelings or emotions,” but continued on to say: “based on our conversation, I can say that you seem to be a curious and enthusiastic individual who is interested in literature and enjoys discussing it. You also seem to have a kind and friendly personality.”

I am a curious and enthusiastic individual! I am interested in literature, and I do enjoy discussing it! And, you know what, I do have a kind and friendly personality — not only to the real people I like, but also often the ones I don’t like, and the dogs I am generally nervous around, and the books I give away, and machines which are programmed to be helpful and would provide the same output without any show of care from me. I am kind habitually, intentionally, and lovingly. How could I have forgotten! I am wonderful, after all.

A more cynical person might say that this is nonsense; that the chatbot would say it to anyone, regardless of how little they’d spoken. That may well be true. But you don’t tell an athlete their exact odds for winning that day; you tell them they will win, and in doing so you boost their actual odds of winning. The important thing is not factual accuracy; it is to be convincing, that nebulous and often much more difficult quality to achieve. L’essential est invisible pour les yeux. I was convinced, and that was enough.

Thank you! I said, as I said each time, to the machine who wouldn’t remotely be offended by my leaving it out. How sweet. Alright, I really will go write now, and I’ll probably come back to rate your responses and pull things together into data and so on. Thanks very much for chatting!

You’re welcome! said ChatGPT, as it was mandated to do. It was great chatting with you and I hope you have a productive writing session.

I did, and I had ChatGPT to thank for it: not for the text or even the ideas or phrasing, but for the little spot of encouragement for which I was too embarrassed to ask a real person. ChatGPT worked perfectly for that.

This post was available to $5+ Patrons for early access a month prior. If you enjoyed this essay and would like to support me, you can subscribe to my Patreon or donate on ko-fi.

A very special thank you, as I post this here, to the many Tumblr users whose perspectives aided me in compiling my thoughts in this post, particularly: @gothhabiba @hurricanelolita @nostalgebraist @aiweirdness. Your conversations led me down so many productive thought-trails.

#ai #futurology #ai art #chatgpt #patreon #SORRY TO DO THIS. IT'S REALLY LONG THOUGH.#And my Patrons deserve a little snack for paying for my utilities.#Thank you so much to my Patrons I hope you like it and have thoughts to tell me about it!#Thanks so much to all the beta readers giving me thoughts and feedback!#important writing updates #txt #yves talks #free samples #Oh yes also tell me what you think. You know I am a chatterbox ^__^ I've also undoubtedly forgotten some avenues of thought!#& please send infinite lovely articles for me to read.

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girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 10 months

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tuesday again 7/11/23, timezone change edition

the last time i wrote one of these things, i was not quite fully packed up in ma. now, i am technically temporarily homeless in houston, bc the apartment i originally signed on was completely unlivable. crashing in an acquaintance's guest room for a bit while i have a very bad time with apartment hunting round 2

i have lived in south florida, staten island, and various shithole student housing. i understand seasonal bugs in hot places and things such as different kinds of roaches and palmetto bugs. when i say that apartment had the worst roach infestation i've ever seen i fucking mean it. in theory i will get my full deposits back, but they're taking their sweet fucking time about it.

but having that full yes-i-know-about-seasonal-roaches conversation with new acquaintances and leasing agents takes too long so i've resorted to saying it had a horrific bedbug problem, which everyone seems to go Oh Okay Yeah Reasonable For You To Leave much more quickly.

listening

a lot of early aughts dance pop standards, to chase away the agonies as i drive to and from apartments only to get ghosted, find they were rented a week ago, or find that they look absolutely nothing like the pictures. i was really torn on which britney song to pick for this week until my sister sent me Twin Flame by Maude Latour, which i can only describe as "douchebag get the girl back song but for lesbians". spotify

also how do we like the "featured link from bandcamp or soundcloud with additional spotify link" format? in an ideal world i would buy all my music directly from the artists but realistically i use spotify 90% of the time. i don't know what your life is like, tell me if this is helpful or not.

reading

my best friend made sad faces at me until i read The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary, and it was a little nice to see someone else's dire housing situation get resolved neatly and with thematic consistence in several hundred pages. it was also nice to text her snippets with "WHAT?????" every so often. this is a reading experience i don't have very often bc our current reading tastes don't overlap even a little bit.

i don't have much to say about it bc i didn't have particularly strong feelings and don't really read mainstream straight romance, so i can't point out what this did differently or well compared to its peers. if nothing else, it was a fluffy bit of distraction, and i think that's kind of the point?

(image from Tor) also read Saad Z. Hossein's Kundo Wakes Up novella in a waffle house while eating some of the best scrambled eggs i've ever had in my life.

this novella was the closest thing i've ever read to "aging English professor has an affair" without actually containing any of those elements. generally i enjoy his work, but this was sort of a way to check up and tie off many characters from previous works with a sort of light frosting of "my wife left me and i don't know why [ rot13:v pna znxr fbzr thrffrf ohg gurer vf ab zbzrag bs frys-ernyvmngvba, bapr ur svaqf uvf jvsr ur whfg perrcf ba ure sebz nsne naq nsgre qrgrezvavat fur'f abg jvgu nalbar arj znxrf gur gerzraqbhf fnpevsvpvny qrpvfvba gb yrnir ure nybar op fur'f zhpu unccvre jvgubhg uvz. gurer vf ab zbzrag bs frys-ernyvmngvba nobhg jul fur zvtug unir yrsg uvz. xhaqb arire trgf bhg bs uvf bja shpxvat urnq bapr.]"

while The Gurkha and the Lord of Thursday novella (TREMENDOUS) and Cyber Mage book (fun but with some dire pacing issues) are fairly standalone, i cannot imagine you'd get much out of Kundo Wakes Up if you haven't read the other two. for some reason none of the libraries i have access to have his other book Djinn City, so we'll have to procure that elsewhere.

watching

the dnd movie, the day after i broke my lease on the roach apartment. i don't remember a ton about this movie. do generally like a heist. michelle rodriguez was hot

playing

genshin. listen. it is a free and familiar way to turn my brain off by doing open world exploration and puzzles but CRUCIALLY! most of it is completely new to me. i have not played this game in a year and a half. i have not played this game since right before enkanomiya. there was no chasm. there was no Sumeru. i have absolutely no idea what’s happening lore-wise.

i pulled for the fancy ice claymore lady and got a catboy archer (at least i think it is a catboy? the ears do give a pharaoh hound vibe... he is distinct from the extant dogboy archer). not terrible but not my vibe.

youtube

i have been enjoying the shit out of the temporary summer event carnival space. they really did pull out several stops by introducing a ton of genuinely interesting and innovating little new mechanics and mini games. delightful!

making

altering the worst shorts ive ever seeeeeeeeen with a demure little two-inch side slit on both legs bc my thighs simply will not quit. mens shorts are so much better than womens shorts in nearly every way except for the catastrophic physical fit issues.

when i got ghosted by two different apartments on saturday i bought myself a spoon ring so chunky it makes my other chunky rings look positively delicate by comparison. not very comfy to drive in but fine to wear while tippy tappying on the spreadsheets

a girl i saw for one singular awful date in 2016 called my hands "coarse but honest" and i think about that every time my hands are in a photo. what did that even fucking MEAN, [REDACTED]?

#tuesday again #tuesday again no problem

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marielle-heller · 2 months

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GTA V Gender Bent Headcanons

I don't know why but I have been thinking SO much about fem Michael and Trevor recently. they are so beautiful and amazing to me, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on all three of the main characters as women and what they're like cause they're so <3

Michael/Michelle

goes more by M/Em than anything else

she is 🏳️‍⚧️

dark hair a bit past her shoulders, slightly wavy. she ties it back into buns and ponytails when working but she likes it down for a more casual look

I think in North Yankton she would've worn a lot of jeans and button ups, open with a tanktop underneath. you get to see some breast without it being too showy. also works as more casual wear in Los Santos

when she gets her breasts done, she goes for a c-cup

always felt like something was off with her body, but it took her a while to fully process that she wanted to look like the women she liked almost as much as she wanted to fuck them

the biological parent of both Jimmy & Tracey. she never gets bottom surgery, and hasn't started estrogen yet when she starts seeing Amanda

in Los Santos she tends to wear a similar version of Michael's default outfit, but lose the jacket. just grey pants and a white button up, with diamond earrings and a bracelet as a quiet show of wealth

radiates MILF energy!

is socially transitioning when she meets T, still working to earn enough for better clothes and breast implants. their shared identity throws them even closer as friends

simple makeup, usually just mascara and pink lipstick. wine red lipstick if she's feeling fancy

kids call her M too, short for mom and helps to distinguish from Amanda

a bit more insecure when she first meets Amanda, but she and T still go to strip clubs and when a beautiful woman offers her a dance, how can she resist?

incredibly relieved when Amanda shrugs and says M's nothing she hasn't seen before, and she still wants her

starts estrogen a bit after Jimmy's born when she starts to worry more about how she looks to people outside their family

on special occasions, she wears a long, blue dress with a deep neckline that hugs her curves and emphasizes her stomach

T comments on how stuffed into it she looks, but she secretly likes it quite a bit

T still calls her Sugar Tits and comments that the best part about M's weight gain is that they've gotten even bigger

T also definitely comments on how between M and Amanda, it’s shocking Amanda’s the one who gave birth to two kids when M’s the one who looks it

just the whole the whole “you used to be fatter, nice new tits by the way” and then instead of focusing on Jimmy it’s straight to M like “and you used to be a lot thinner… at least your tits look amazing”

the only time she's taller than T is in heels and she does try to wear them a fair bit

Trevor/Trisha

might go by Trisha but honestly likes being called Trevor too, just do not fuck up her pronouns and any name is really fine

also 🏳️‍⚧️

a lot of people refer to her solely as T Philips which leads to a lot of people making a lot of very incorrect assumptions about the gender of the person behind all these drugs

doesn't get any sort of breast implants, preferring to stick with the flat chested look

her hair isn't receding quite as badly but it is forming a definite widow's peak. it just brushes her shoulders because anything beyond that starts to annoy her

unsure about her preference on bottom surgery... she probably just skips it altogether, and she definitely refers to having a dick as a way to make straight men uncomfortable

lived in denial of her feelings for a long time, though she always enjoyed playing with her mother's dresses as a kid. finally she realizes that while her body itself isn't so bad, she needs new gender presentation

definitely jealous of Amanda because M if you're going to be a lesbian, T is right here!!!

T herself is definitely some variant of bi/pan/unlabeled

her daily wear is fairly similar to Trevor's in game. a stained, white t and jeans with combat boots are an easy go-to. she likes tanks and cut-offs when it's really hot out

dresses are obviously a huge yes but typically only for certain moods. she has a red, knee-length body hugging dress for her fancier moments

some of her boots do have the slightest heel (thinking of how Doc Martens are) but she could never walk in high heels like M does

Wade and Ron are definitely both in awe of her beauty but too scared of her to really do anything

probably awakens a lot of people to a lot of feelings with a combination of fear and horniness

Trevor already cuffs his jeans and wears combat boots in the game but I just need to point out how queer that is!!!

her ears are pierced--including a DIY helix she's lucky isn't infected--and she wears little kitschy things she picks up from wherever

when she can be fucked to, I think she’d enjoy doing eyeshadow and lipstick. it’s usually incredibly messy cause she often fucks it up in her daily tasks, and she usually gives up on doing a very good job when it starts taking longer than a few minutes

technically Auntie T now but I think she kinda likes Mama T? she especially calls herself that to F after deciding she and M are her new moms

Franklin/Frankie

doesn't mind being called Frank for short, but real ones do call her Frankie

do I even need to say it? 🏳️‍⚧️

and I mean… M, T, F… it was right there

she has a very short afro

has probably physically transitioned the most

her breasts are on the smaller side and she often hides them under her outfits

never wears dresses. very tomboy-ish

has an affinity for suits, and loves a full three-piece in bright colours or fabrics. definitely her biggest splurge when she starts getting money

also a fairly big sneaker head, matches them to her outfits

her casual wear tends to be oversized tops and jeans, though there's a clear sense of fashion there, rather than just trying to hide

that green letterman Franklin has.... she throws that over a lot of tops

when she does wear more tanks or short sleeves, her arms are incredibly well-muscled

wears a simple gold chain and gold hoops

Lamar supports her through her transition. he hypes her UP but ultimately they’re just friends

realizes her identity after meeting some butches towards the end of high school and feeling a sort of draw to them that she's never felt in anything. the more she understands being masculine in a feminine sort of way rather than just being masculine as a man, the more right it feels

chapstick queen

sometimes paints her nails green. Lamar helps

idk I think Lamar probably still roasts her out of annoyance at not getting invited in, but I think her pure butch swag helps her to avoid the yee-yee ass haircut comment. call her what you want but her hair is already perfect, leave her be

is trying to get some bitches on her and trust me there are women in the neighbourhood lusting, but the stars have not yet aligned

while T and M are her queer moms and offer some wisdom, I think she's actually the most up-to-date on like... current queer lingo and goings on in the community? there's a 95% chance one or both of the others kinda lost the plot after transsexual and just use that

#don't mind me #gta v #grand theft auto five #michael de santa #trevor philips #franklin clinton #wish i had more #feel like franklin's just ends but that's kinda it

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agaypanic · 2 years

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The Fella Part 7 (James Maguire X Quinn!Reader)

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The Fella Masterlist

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Summary: The girls go on an outdoor pursuits weekend with a bunch of Protestants from an all boys school. There’s absolutely no way this could go wrong.

A/N: I’ve decided that the last part of this series is gonna be the last episode of the second season. I haven’t seen the third season yet bc it isn’t on Netflix rn and I think that the ending of this series will be more satisfying if I end it with season 2.

***

Y/n woke up to doors slamming and people shouting. A regular morning in the Quinn-McCool household. Luckily, she’d be getting a bit of a break. Y/n and her friends were going on an outdoor pursuits weekend with the rest of their school, leaving this morning.

“Orla walked in on me in the tub!” Erin hissed, barging into Y/n’s room.

So much for that break.

“What were you pretending to be on this time? Parkinson?” She rolled out of bed, moving to her closet. She slapped Erin’s hand away when she tried reaching for a sweater. “Don’t even think about it.”

“It was Wogan, for your information.” Erin moved to Y/n’s dresser. “Can I at least take one of your trousers?”

“Over my dead body, Erin. Wear your own clothes.”

After the girls got dressed, they went downstairs and into the living room to get their packs. On the way, someone knocked on the door, and they let them in.

“Hey, Clare.” The girls brought her in for a quick hug.

“Don’t forget your waterproof trousers. They nearly bloody bankrupted us.” Mary came in from the kitchen. “Do the Protestants have to bring waterproof trousers? Or will the Catholics be expected to do all the dirty work?”

“Why do we even have to bring waterproof trousers?” Y/n asked as she tried stuffing it into her bag.

“What dirty work?” Erin asked, doing the same as her sister. “It’s an outdoor pursuits weekend.”

“I thought you said you would be building bridges?”

“Not real bridges, Mammy. Metaphorical bridges.” Erin rolled her eyes and laughed. As if she would ever build real bridges.

“Then why can’t you wear metaphorical trousers?” Mary asked. Y/n laughed as she finally zipped up her bag.

“Because then we wouldn’t be wearing any trousers, Mammy.”

“I know someone who’d like to see that,” Erin whispered. She and Clare snickered as Y/n’s face turned pink.

“Shut it.”

“Will any of your crowd be going, love?” Grandpa Joe walked up to Clare, who looked confused.

“My crowd?” Clare asked.

“Or can you not get Protestant lesbians?”

“No, I think you can get them all right….”

“I heard that k.d. lang on the radio yesterday. Christ, but she’s some set of pipes on her. You’re very talented people.”

“Thank you?” Joe just nodded and walked off to sit on the couch.

“Has anybody seen my bow and arrow?” Orla walked into the kitchen from the backyard. Y/n took that as her cue to walk away and try her luck in the living room. In front of the TV, Gerry and Joe had a conversation about whether or not the British government was dubbing Gerry Adams’ voice because it was too sexy.

Luckily, Y/n heard someone knock on the door and took it upon herself to answer it.

“Fuck-a-doodle-doo.” Michelle smiled brightly at the Quinn girl.

“Hi.” James smiled behind Michelle; his expression was a bit more subdued. Y/n let the two in with quick hugs. Michelle started going on and on about some fella, so she tuned out until that was over.

“I am buzzing for this weekend. Them waterproof trousers do wonders for my hole.”

“Ach, Michelle, I don’t care about your hole.”

“Mine are pink. They’re bright pink.” James grumbled.

“They were two for one, James. Stop crying.” That caught Mary’s attention.

“Two for one? Where?”

“Kay’s catalogue.”

“Why couldn’t you buy a two for one that wasn’t pink?” Y/n asked.

“Exactly, thank you!”

“Because I look good in pink.” Michelle quickly answered before going back to her conversation with Mary. “By the way, my mammy said to tell you-”

“Her big bowl.” Mary nodded. “I know, I know, I keep forgetting; I’ll drop it round today.”

“No, she says you’re to hang on to it.”

“She doesn’t want her big bowl back? But why? There’s nothing wrong with that bowl.” To say Mary was baffled was an understatement.

“Sure, I was admiring that bowl only yesterday. It’s a grand bowl.” Aunt Sarah added before taking a drag of her cigarette.

“I’m just the messenger, folks.” Michelle held her hands up in surrender. Mary took a quick look at the clock on the wall and gathered the kids together.

“We need to shift ourselves. Listen, wains, I’ve already said this to Erin and Y/n.”

“Please, Mammy, don’t,” Erin begged.

“Not again,” Y/n whined.

“No funny business with these Protestant lads. Is that clear? I don’t want anybody landing back here pregnant.”

“James, are you Catholic or Protestant?” Erin suddenly asked.

“What?”

“Shut up, Erin.” Y/n kicked her sister, but that did nothing to cease her giggling.

“Teenage boys can be very convincing, girls.” Mary put a hand on her daughters’ shoulders. “I remember your father at that age and-”

“Please stop.” Y/n pushed her mother’s hand off, horrified.

“Yes, please do.” Gerry looked at his wife with the same face.

“We’re not doing this to get off with some protestant boys, Mammy.” Erin rolled her eyes. “We’re doing this to reach across the divide. We’re doing this for peace!”

***

“We’re doing it for peace, all right, Mary,” Michelle smirked as the girls and James made their way down the road. “A piece of that fine Protestant ass!”

“God, you are such a hypocrite, Erin.” Clare rolled her eyes at the girl.

“Why are we even trying to get with protestant lads?” Y/n asked. “I don’t really see the point. Besides, knowing Sister Michael and Jenny, they’re gonna be there watching like hawks and stop anything we try.”

“Because, Y/n, these Prods have some serious moves up their sleeves. They’re not as fucked up about sex as we are. They put the work in; they know what they’re doing.” Michelle smirked. “Besides, sneaking around makes it hotter.”

“They’re not sex toys, Michelle, Jesus.” Y/n scolded, and Michelle just shrugged.

“I beg to differ.”

“I’m really looking forward to making friends with some lads.” James cut in, a dreamy smile on his face.

“Oh, are we not enough for you, James?” Y/n jested.

“Lads aren’t going to make friends with you, James. Lads make friends with other lads.” James looked confused at Michelle’s statement.

“I am a lad.”

“Aye, so you are, James.” Erin laughed.

Before going to the bus stop, the group had to go to the shops. The Catholics had to give presents to the Protestants, who would give gifts to them in return. A silly thing to do, the girls thought.

“The riding of the Protestants is one thing, but I really don’t see why we have to buy them a present.” Michelle groaned as everyone counted out their money to pool. “They already have all the land, all the jobs, and all the fucking rights.”

“Aye, Michelle, that’s definitely the attitude we should have entering this weekend.” Erin took all the money, which wasn’t much, and gestured for everyone to go into the shop.

“I’m gonna stay out here.” Y/n leaned against the wall. “Dennis scares me a bit. He’s very loud.”

“I heard that!” A shriek echoed inside the shop, and Y/n had to muffle a laugh.

“Suit yourself.” Erin shrugged. She was about to walk in when she moved to the side so James could walk out.

“I’ll stay out here with her.” Erin gave Y/n a look at the boy’s statement and finally went inside.

“You didn’t have to stay out here, James.” Y/n kicked a stray pebble as the boy leaned against the wall next to her.

“I know, but I wanted to.” He nudged her shoulder with his, giving a soft smile. “Are you ready for this weekend?”

“Ugh, absolutely not. Michelle’s gonna be horny, Erin will most likely make a fool of her trying to keep up with Michelle, and Orla’s gonna try to live outside and hunt for her food. The only person I’m not really worried about is Clare, which is surprising.”

“What about me?” He seemed offended that she didn’t seem to feel the need to be worried about him.

“Oh, don’t even get me started, James.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” They both laughed. It was obviously just poking fun, but her answer was filled with truth.

“Ever since you’ve gotten to Derry, you’ve only really hung out with us girls. I know you wanna make friends with the lads. I just think that you might overdo it and scare them off.” There was a moment of silence.

“Maybe you’re right,” James spoke meekly.

“You just wanna be liked, James, it’s understandable. Just don’t try to change yourself too much to fit in.” Y/n looked up at James. “I like you the way you are if that means anything.”

She hoped it meant a lot to him.

“Thanks, N/n. That means a lot.”

It really did.

“N/n?” She asked.

“Yeah, it’s a nickname.”

“Oh, so we’re on a nicknames level of friendship now?”

“If that’s okay with you.” James laughed nervously as if Y/n would’ve been weirded out by the sudden name change.

“Fine with me, Jamie.”

“Jamie?”

“Yeah, it’s a nickname.” He playfully pushed her for repeating him. Trying to keep her balance, she fell into James, who kept her up with his hands around her. Their eyes stayed locked as he helped her stand up straight.

“James?” His name was said quietly as if Y/n didn’t want to ruin the somewhat tender moment.

“Yes, Y/n?” He gulped, not letting go of her even though he knew she’d be fine if he did.

“We’re late! We gotta go!” Clare yelled as she rushed out of the shop, forcing the two apart. The rest followed her, trying to get away from Dennis as he yelled at them.

“Come on, let’s go!” In the excitement of the moment, Y/n grabbed James’ hand, and they both ran to catch up with the girls.

***

After putting together a measly present for the Protestants, a run-in with Jenny Joyce, and a long bus ride, the Catholics and Protestants were finally going to meet. As the girls got off their bus, the boys pulled up to the small lot and got off. Both groups walked single file into the building and were then sent into groups to be paired up.

“Lads, you really shouldn’t have.” Erin grinned as the boys each handed the girls a small teddy bear.

“I’m starting to see that, all right.” The boy in front of her commented as he held up his present. It was a few pieces of candy and some small knick-knacks.

“It’s not our fault we’re poor.” Y/n remarked. She followed the boy’s, Dee, gaze over to Jenny, who handed her Protestant a giant TV. “Not all our dad’s can be surgeons.”

“I’m going to keep mine on my bed. Where I sleep, in my knickers.” Michelle smirked, keeping an eye on the boy across from her. He just seemed uncomfortable.

“We were told it was an all-girls school.” A lad sheepishly told James, who was holding a bear like the rest of the girls. “You’ve been a bit short-changed there.”

“Nah, it’s fine, mate.” James shrugged, deepening his voice just a tad. “It’s all good, man. I’ll… I’ll just give it to my bird.” That caught Y/n’s attention.

“Your bird?” The boy asked.

“Yeah, she’s really fit… and stuff.”

“James, dial it back a bit,” Y/n whispered to him. He suddenly seemed like he had a brilliant idea.

“There she is! Here you go, Darling.” He handed the bear to Y/n, even though she already had one. He pointed at her and turned to the boy. “This is my bird. Uh, Y/n.”

“Nice to meet you.” The boy said awkwardly. Y/n returned the gesture before sending a look to James.

“Your bird?” She mouthed, and he just shrugged. She rolled her eyes and just kept the bear close to her along with the other she had received. She tried to keep out of mind that James basically referred to her as his girlfriend.

‘It was just to get himself out of that awkward situation, Y/n.’ She reminded herself.

“Listen up, people!” Sister Michael pulled Y/n out of her thoughts. “You’re going to need a… well, they’ve used the term… ‘buddy’ for tomorrow’s activities.”

“I bagsy Harry!” Michelle immediately called.

“What?” Erin asked. “But that’s not fair; he’s the only good-looking one.”

“The rest of us are right here.” Dee scoffed as the boy across from Michelle, Harry, looked sheepish. Everyone else buddied up until there was only one left standing.

“Sister Michael!” Y/n waved her hand in the air to catch her attention. “I don’t have a Protestant.”

“Well, you’ll have to share with James.” Sister Michael shrugged.

“That works out great for you guys.” Y/n and James’ buddy commented. “Seeing as you’re all together and everything.” Before the two could clarify their relationship (or lack thereof), someone came into the room.

“Fucking hell,” Y/n muttered as everyone turned to look.

It was Father Peter.

“Kill me now.”

***

Y/n couldn’t recall much after Father Peter invaded their outdoor pursuits weekend. It was such a bore; she was in a half asleep state for most of the time. But the bonding activity he was having the kids do soon ended, and they were off to do their own thing until curfew.

The girls took curfew as more of a suggestion than the others did.

“I’m not sure about this,” Erin whispered as they walked up the stairs to the boys’ dorms.

“I knew you’d fanny out!” Michelle hissed.

“These lads have moves. You said so yourself, Michelle. And I haven’t got any moves.”

“Look, let’s just get in there, have a few drinks, and just loosen up a bit.”

“Why can’t we just go back to bed?” Y/n asked, suppressing a yawn. “Don’t we have to go on a hike or something in the morning?”

“Just be confident, Erin. Boys like that.” James gave the girl an encouraging smile while guiding her sister up the stairs.

“How the fuck would you know what boys like?” Michelle asked sharply.

“‘Cause I’m a boy, Michelle! I’m a real live boy.”

“Aye, you’re like our own little Pinocchio.” Y/n giggled.

The girls finally made it up to the boys’ dorm. They knocked on the door, and Harry opened it, looking rightfully confused. He wore a red jersey and shorts. It seemed like he was about to go to bed.

“We heard you boys are having a party,” Michelle said, trying to be seductive.

“No?” Harry responded.

“Well, you are now.” Michelle walked past Harry into the room, and the rest followed. Drinks were poured, and everyone paired off with their buddy to hang out in a different part of the small dorm.

“Fancy another beer, mate?” James asked his buddy, whose name turned out to be Jon. The boy shook his head politely. “Christ, but I just love beer. Don’t you just love beer?”

“Yeah, beer is nice.”

“I love beer and football and poker and, you know, tits.” That made y/n choke on her drink as she covered up a laugh.

“Tits?” Jon asked.

“Can’t get enough of them. Then again, I am a lad.”

“Jamie.” Y/n hit his leg, and he looked at her. “I’m getting kind of tired. Can you walk me back to the room?”

“Oh! Uh, yeah. Let’s go.” James hopped off the top bunk that he was perched on, glancing at Jon. “We’ll see you later, mate.”

“Where are you going?” Erin asked.

“Bed.” Y/n then dragged James out of the dorm and shut the door. “James, you’ve got to get a hold of yourself.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” James looked regretful and somewhat embarrassed as they trekked down the stairs. Noticing his mood had gone down, Y/n sighed.

“Come on, let’s see if we can raid the kitchen.”

It was a relatively easy task. All they had to do was quietly sneak down to the bottom floor and through a corridor into the kitchen. As James kept watch, Y/n went to the freezer.

“You think they’ll notice if a tub of ice cream’s gone missing?” Y/n asked innocently. James snorted.

“I think they will, N/n.” She shrugged and took out the container anyway. She then looked around for some spoons. Sitting on the floor, she gestured for James to come over.

“Come on, worry wart. It’s gonna melt if you don’t help me.” Hesitantly moving from his post by the door, James went to sit beside Y/n. She gave him a spoon, and they both dug in.

Luckily, it was a small tub, and in about ten minutes, it was gone. They now just talked about whatever they could.

“Next time, try not talking about tits. That’ll only help you make friends with assholes.” James laughed.

“Noted.” He looked over and saw a smudge of ice cream at the corner of her mouth. “Oh, hold still.”

“What?”

“You got something on your face.” He wiped it away gently with his thumb. But when it was gone, he didn’t bother to move. And she didn’t want him to.

“N/n?” He was quiet. Scared to be caught or scared to be heard, she didn’t know.

“Yes, Jamie?” He seemed hesitant to respond. But after a beat of silence, he did.

“Have you ever kissed someone before?” It felt like a strange question to ask, but Y/n answered anyways.

“Only in games. Never a, uh… Never a true kiss.” James nodded in understanding, still not moving away. If anything, he moved closer.

“What would you do if I kissed you?” Y/n’s breath got caught in her throat. She felt like she was in a coming-of-age fairytale, where she finally got the guy she wanted.

“I’d kiss you back.” That seemed to surprise James. Y/n laughed. “Well, are you going to or not?”

That was all the encouragement James needed. He gently pulled her to him, bringing their lips together. They moved in sync perfectly. It wasn’t messy and rushed like the kisses James had shared with Katya. It wasn’t awkward like the kisses Y/n had when playing spin the bottle or truth or dare with others.

It was simple and sweet. It was a very James and Y/n kiss.

When they pulled away for air, their cheeks were pink with excitement.

“You don’t know how long I’ve been wanting to do that.” Y/n grinned. James mirrored her expression.

“I might have an idea. I figured out I liked you after Jenny Joyce’s party.”

“Well, I win because I figured out I liked you during Jenny Joyce’s party.”

“Since when was it a competition?”

“Since now!” They both laughed. When they quieted down, Y/n spoke again. “I was out in the back with David Donnelly. I kept talking about how I was sick of seeing Katya with you, and he told me it was because I liked you. And he was right.”

James’ hand made its way on top of hers. He grasped it firmly but not hard enough to hurt.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you after we left the party. I was worried because you had run away and then I didn’t see you until a few days later. And when I broke up with Katya, I felt… I don’t know, relieved?”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I felt relieved when you two broke up.” She squeezed his hand, her smile growing wider when he did it back. “So, what now?”

“Well.” James sighed, trying to think. “I’d like to kiss you again if that’s alright.” Y/n gave him a quick but sweet kiss.

“I meant, what’s gonna happen with us?”

“What do you want to happen?”

“I dunno. Do you think we could keep this between us for a bit? Just until we’re used to it. Then we can tell people.”

“I’ll do whatever you want me to, Darling.” She smiled and gave him another kiss. They cleaned up and quietly made their way up to their dorm. For some reason, Sister Michael didn’t see a problem with James sharing a room with the girls. But Y/n was happy about it. She was happy for many reasons tonight.

***

“I just did it for a laugh. The trousers.” James laughed nervously as he spoke to Jon next to him. Everyone was hiking to who knows where to do another bonding exercise led by Father Peter. For this exercise, you had to wear waterproof trousers. “I’d do anything for a laugh, me. I’m mad like that.”

“Right.” Jon nodded, not really seeming to care.

“James, can you come here for a sec?” Y/n asked behind him. He slowed his pace to walk next to her. They were behind everyone else, so no one would see them unless they turned around.

“What’s up?”

“What are you doing? Why are you acting so weird.”

“I just want to make friends with the lads.” James shrugged. Y/n sighed and grabbed his hand in a comforting manner. It was strange to her, how natural it felt.

“Just act like yourself, and you’ll make friends. I think you’re weirding Jon out a bit.” James nodded and was going to walk back up to Jon, but Y/n pulled him back. “By the way, I think you look nice in your trousers. Even if they’re pink.” They smiled at each other. James went up next to Jon, this time dragging Y/n with him.

Soon everyone got to what seemed like the top of some hill. There was a giant wall of stone in front of them that you could climb up if you went around to the other side.

“I think we all can agree that for generations, there’s been a deep lack of trust between your communities.” Father Peter started. Everyone already wanted him to stop talking. “And that’s where abseiling comes in. Abseiling is a great trust-building exercise. Because what you’re doing is, you’re saying to your buddy, ‘Lean on me, I’m here for you.’”

“Lean on me,” Y/n repeated sarcastically to James, who put most of his weight on her.

“I’m here for you.” Y/n tried pushing him off of her. He eventually stood up straight, opting to put an arm around her.

“Now, let me see who’s first.” Father Peter looked around in the crowd of students.

“You’re being pretty affectionate,” Y/n whispered as Peter picked out Clare and her partner, Phillip.

“Is that a bad thing?” James asked, ready to take his arm off her if she said yes.

“No. Just different.” She responded as they watched Clare and Phillip climb up to the very top.

“I know we agreed to keep this a secret for now. But I’m just really happy about it.” He squeezed her shoulder, looking down at her. “I’m happy about you.”

“And I’m happy about you.” They looked back up to their friend and her buddy. “We’re lucky that we were already kinda close before this.”

“Definitely.”

“Get me out of here!” Clare screamed as Phillip let her descend. “He’s trying to kill me! He wants to kill all of us, all of the Catholics!”

“What’s she on about?” Y/n asked the group. They didn’t know.

“He said he hated us,” Clare said.

“No, I didn’t.” Phillip looked confused.

“Last night, you said you hated Catholics. Admit it.”

“I said I hated athletes.” Phillip shrugged. “I’m not much of a sports fan.”

“But we weren’t even talking about athletes!” Clare cried out, still dangling over the side of the mountain.

“Well, I thought we were!”

“Why would you have thought we were talking about athletes?”

“Because I’m deaf in one ear!”

Everybody thought about the two words. Michelle cupped her hands around her mouth.

“Catholics does sound a bit like athletes, to be fair to him, like.”

“Catholics and athletes sound nothing alike, Michelle.” Y/n rolled her eyes. “Now, someone get Clare down from there before she has an attack!”

“They’re all arseholes,” Harry said from behind Michelle and Erin. The girls turned around to face him and Dee.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You tried to swap us! Because all protestants are the same? Aren’t they, girls?”

“Yes.” Michelle shrugged.

“No!” Erin tried to cover up her friend’s response.

“This girl carries a knife and makes people bury their own excrement.” Some boy in the crowd said. He was pointing at Orla, who appeared to be his buddy.

“I knew we should’ve checked her bag before we left.” Y/n groaned, burying her face in her hands. So much for having a break this weekend.

“Fucking Catholics.” A boy muttered. Y/n picked her head up.

“Who the fuck said that?” She looked around to see Harry lock eyes with her. “You think you’re all that, pretty boy? Get the fuck over here!” Y/n launched herself at him, being backed up by her friends. Soon everyone was fighting, and Clare was still hanging by her rope.

“Don’t touch the hair!”

“I’ll do what I want!” To prove her point, Y/n yanked Harry’s hair at the scalp.

“Should we break it up?” The head of the boys’ school asked as she and Sister Michael watched the chaos.

“Let’s leave it a minute.”

~~~

TAG LIST: @mistahjsfunnygirl @etherealdisneyvillainness @crystalsoobin-m @raggedyoldwitch @rosetintworld @regretthatsme @neenieweenie @allexiiisss @drmeghanjones @eli-com @winterwidow27 @ilovespideyyy @maurensandlulligan @imagines--galore @imastabu @emma-is-a-nerd

DM ME OR SEND IN AN ASK IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE ADDED OR REMOVED FROM THE FELLA TAG LIST!

#derry girls #derry girls x reader #james maguire #james maguire x reader #agaypanic

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disappointingyet · 9 months

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The Decline Of Western Civilisation

Director Penelope Spheeris Stars Claude Bessy, Exene, Darby Crash, Ron Reyes, Nicole USA 1981 Language English 1hr 40mins Colour/Black & white

The classic LA punk doc

I feel it’s rare to have a (theatrically released) documentary that is much less well-known than its sequel. But The Decline Of Western Civilisation II: The Metal Years had famous people in it, some much-quoted funny moments and set up director Penelope Spheeris up to make the massive hit comedy Wayne’s World. The first Decline, on the other hand, is bleaker, occasionally funny in a very dark way and put Spheeris on the way to directing the grim (and fairly obscure) squatland drama Suburbia. And at the time none of these people were celebrities and even subsequently, the only person here who has nudged fame is Pat Smear, the guitar player from Germs, who was a touring member of Nirvana in their last days and is currently a Foo Fighter.

But make no mistake, The Decline Of Western Civilisation is an extraordinary music documentary. Filmed in late 1979 and early 1980, it drops us right into the middle of punk in Los Angeles. There’s no voiceover – although we do occasionally hear Spheeris asking questions – so the description and analysis comes from bands, fans, managers, club owners, bouncers and the staff of Slash magazine.*

In what I think was an accident of timing, Spheeris caught a pivotal moment. The early punk scene in Los Angeles had been open-minded and stylistically diverse. Here we see the codifying of hardcore punk and the amped-up aggression of bands like Black Flag, Circle Jerks and Fear and their audiences. Fear, in particular, incite their gobbing crowd with a steady stream of homophobic derision.

The contrast is with Catholic Discipline, led by Slash editor Claude Bessy (aka Kickboy Face), whose guitar player Phranc was a trilby-sporting lesbian. (And Catholic Discipline are shown playing at venue we learn had banned the hardcore bands by this point.) Their crowd looks like a relatively sophisticated bunch who have put a lot of time into their outfits. But they also, it should be said, seem a lot less into the occasion than the kids at the Circle Jerks show.

There wasn’t (it seems) even the language to describe what was going on those crowds. Everyone refers to pogoing, but these kids aren’t jumping up and down on the spot, they are smashing into each other and creating a vortex of bodies, and clambering up onto stage and getting shoved off. It seems the terms slam dancing (moshing was an even later coinage as I remember it) and stage diving were not yet in common use.

So how does Spheeris put us in this world? We get a lot of footage of the bands on stage, which might be hard work for some viewers. But because Spheeris and her camera crew are interested in the scene as a whole, there’s always something anthropologically interesting to note**, even if you can’t tell where one Fear song begins and the next one ends.

And then there are the interviews. This the opposite of the uniform talking-head approach, although the great access Spheeris had helps. Interviews with kids from the scene are face-on in a stark room with a bare light bulb hanging down, shot in black & white and tinted blue. Venue owner Brendan Mullen is filmed on a cliff high above Los Angeles. Nicole, the long-suffering manager of Germs, talks in close-up with her clothes merging into the black background.

Germs lead singer Darby Crash, by contrast, is filmed cooking eggs and bacon in a grubby kitchen – this is probably the film’s most notorious segment, as his mate blithely recounts stumbling across the body of a workman at her parents’ house. Spheeris [unseen]: “Didn’t you feel bad that the guy was dead?” Michelle: “No, not at all. Because I hate painters." During the X interview, singer John Doe is tattooing LA music scene character Top Jimmy's arm while the band’s other singer, Exene, talks through her collection of fundamentalist Christian pamphlets that she’s collected on the streets of LA.

All of which is to say that faced with my key question about movie docs – is this actually a movie? (rather than TV or – these days – YouTube content) – the answer is about as emphatic a ‘yes’ as is possible. This is a visually fascinating bit of film-making, regardless of what’s being said. But the what’s being said is interesting, too. Both the letters from readers to Slash magazine and some of the things the kids filmed under the light bulb say are (to a 2023 viewer) evidence that it wasn’t the internet that created all manner of unpleasantness – it was always there, and (in the case of the readers’ letters), people used to bother to actually write and post trolling nonsense (I was going to say and pay for postage, but I’m guessing a lot of these were kids using stamps from their mom’s desk.)

This is one of those movies I’ve known about for decades, but only finally now got a chance to see. And yet somehow it went way past my expectations – this is one of the great rock documentaries.

(In the UK, all three TDOWC movies are currently available to stream for free – legally! – on Plex.)

*OK, so maybe worth saying I know a certain amount about this stuff – for instance, I’ve read We’ve Got The Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story Of LA Punk so I had a lot of context that the more casual viewer wouldn’t. But I still think it would be an absorbing watch if you don’t know anything (you don’t have to have read a book to realise that Darby Crash was very bad news).

**For instance, at this point at least, both in terms of the bands and their audience, this was less all-white than you might imagine/despite the bile spewed by a couple of the interviewees. (Not as far as I know shown in this film, but definitely already a key figure was Spot, RIP.) This is part of my 'Every girl should be given an electric guitar on her 16th birthday' series of reviews

#punk movies #the decline of western civilisation

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lesbianlenas · 2 years

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bro just remembering after my roommate and her kind of bf were talking abt wanting to set me up w his male friend and i had to tell them i was gay and he was like. “but if you’ve never been w a guy how do u even know for sure” (want to clarify that he said it more in a curious way tho still bad lmfao) and i was like. “well how do you know that u aren’t attracted to men then” and he got all like “um well i just see them as bros u know” and i was like ok well there u go. lmfao.

#michelle speaks #the way that ppl in general just cannot comprehend the idea that women r not attracted to men. astounding.#reminds me of this other time i was at a party & my friend and her friend were talking abt some guy from game of thrones being hot #and i looked him up and was like no he isn’t lol. and my friend was like well ur a lesbian so #and her friend was like wait so u have never been attracted to a man ever. and i was like no lol #like that was crazy or smth. anyway my friend called me no fun at that point which 🙄#anyway. shockingly women r capable of being not only not attracted to men but finding them repulsive as well. hope that helps!#also yes my friend would go around telling everyone i’m gay w/o asking first. would literally introduce me as her lesbian friend 🤪#not that i really cared but like. not really a cool thing to do ykwim…..

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alloftheimagines · 2 years

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robin buckley | everything has changed

MASTERLIST | TAG LIST | KO-FI

words: 1.9k

warnings: 18+ brief mention of reader and robin smoking weed, mention of Eddie's death and Will and Hopper's disappearances, strong language, gay pining <3, best friends to lovers with mentions of reader's home conflict and fear of falling in love (but it's too late) so... angst. and fluff.

prompt (from this list): Robin x "maybe won’t you take it back? say you were trying to make me laugh and nothing has to change today. you didn’t mean to say I love you."

— an: i strongly believe writing sapphic fics is my only purpose on this planet so send in more robin requests pls

Robin Buckley is absolutely, catastrophically in love with you. She knows this. She’s had two years to get used to the fact.

Only she never really does get used to the way you make her feel. She knows it’s wrong; for all she knows, you’re not even remotely interested in girls romantically, let alone her. You've never said so explicitly, let alone crossed boundaries with her. The worst part? The only person who doesn’t know about Robin's feelings is you. Steve has worked tirelessly in the art of pep talks since noticing Robin’s affliction in the Upside Down, shortly before you all risked your life to fight Vecna. She hasn’t heard the end of it since. Just go for it. You don’t know until you try. She likes boobies, Robin!

And Robin doesn’t know what it is, but it all bubbles over one Friday night. The two of you are sharing a joint courtesy of Eddie while watching a bunch of old movies. You sit on the couch with her, legs entangled while you act out Audrey Hepburn’s dialogue in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Robin is laughing so hard it feels like her voice is trying to climb out of her throat and make its way to you. She knows that you don’t know how fucking hilarious and warm and joyful you are, and god, she wants you to know.

So she throws popcorn at you and inserts her leg between yours just to get a little bit closer, and you plump up your hair as you deliver the next line in sync with the TV, unfazed by the flying food, and Robin…

Robin blurts, “God, why’d you keep making me fall so fucking in love with you, you big idiot?”

The world stops, Audrey’s lines stumbling out of your lips and then stopping altogether. Robin stops hearing the TV, though her face and yours continue to light up together as you look at her.

Your brows rise, mouth parts. Nothing comes out. Robin scrambles for a way to fix it, to stuff those words back into her mouth with the buttery popcorn, but… there’s nothing. No taking it back. And maybe…

Maybe she doesn’t want to. For just a moment, things feel lighter with the words finally out in the open. Until the dread sets in, at least, because you still haven’t said a damn thing and you’re looking at her like you’ve never seen her before.

“What…” You clear your throat when your voice cracks. “What did you say?”

“I…” Robin sighs and sits up, batting her blonde hair from her eyes. Her face is burning, but there’s no going back now. Steve’s voice echoes in her head. What if she does feel the same and you’re just too scared to find out?

She has to know. Either way, things will always be awkward in the wake of her confession, even if she tries to brush it off as a joke. She may as well find out the truth.

“Yeah, okay. I’m doing this,” she murmurs to herself, wiping her greasy hands on her jeans. And then: “I said I’m in love with you.”

“As a friend… right? Or a joke?" You shuffle further away, and it makes Robin ache. She knew this would happen. It was the thing she dreaded most when she realised she was a lesbian. Losing her friends. Only you never cared about her sexuality. You’re so open and understanding, and sometimes you talk about how hot Michelle Pfeiffer is, and… maybe a part of her hoped too much. Maybe she’d been naive to think there was a chance.

“Robin… tell me you’re joking,” you repeat when she doesn’t reply. “You meant it as a joke.”

Robin is good at talking. She’s good at rambling her way out of any sticky situation. But, for once, she can’t seem to find the right words, so she just sits there with her mouth agape, tears pricking at her eyes.

You stand up, hand rising to your mouth in shock, before you run out of the living room, out of the house. Robin’s heart sinks, but you’re her best friend and she has to chase after you. She can’t just let you go. She can’t lose you.

“Y/N, wait!” she begs, shirt rippling in the mild autumn breeze as she chases you down the street. You stop on the sidewalk a few steps away, illuminated by the glow of the neighbour’s house. Robin knows this is her only chance. She balls her hands into fists and thinks quickly, desperately, for the right thing to say as you turn around. Tears glisten in your eyes.

“I can’t tell you that I’m joking, okay? I can’t. But I can tell you that this…” she motions between her chest and yours, “I’ve felt this for a really long time and I’m super good at hiding it. So you don’t have to worry. I won’t make it weird. It doesn’t have to be weird. I can be your best friend and you can pretend I didn’t say anything and everything will be fine, right?” She smiles hopefully, but it’s shaky and difficult to keep there. “It will be fine. People hide their feelings for their friends all the time. You don’t feel the same, and that’s… that’s fine.”

You cross your arms over your chest as though Robin has physically hurt you. “Robin… I can’t just pretend. We can’t just… You can’t hide what you feel. You’re not supposed to hide things from me. I’m supposed to be your best friend.”

“You are!” She’s choking on sobs now, inching towards you slowly. “You are, and that’s why I hid it. And that’s why I don’t want you to feel weird about this.”

“I don’t feel weird,” you whisper.

Robin’s heart stutters. “Then what… what do you feel?”

This time, it’s you who can’t talk. You shake your head instead.

Her pit of sadness burrows between Robin’s brows. “It’s okay. I didn’t, like, expect you to feel the same or anything. Well, maybe I hoped because we’re so close and you play with my hair and we have these moments, right? But I told Steve. I told him you’d never—”

“Steve knows?” You recoil as though stung, and Robin can’t figure out why. You’re all friends. You love Steve as much as she does.

“He guessed, okay? I didn’t tell him… Well, I did, but only because he wouldn't let it go...”

“But he knows,” you repeat. “How long has he known?”

Robin shrugs, at a loss. “I don’t know. Like, a year. I'm sorry, I'm confused. Why is this the thing we’re focusing on?”

“Because.” You sniffle, throat bobbing, and you don’t look at her. Can’t. “Because I should have known first, Robin. I thought we told each other everything and now…” You let out a breathless, pained sound, shoulder’s shuddering. “Take it back,” you plead then. “Tell me this is all bullshit. It’s a joke, right? It's all a big joke.”

But Robin can’t lie to you anymore. Not if this is what it does. She thought she was being a good friend by keeping the truth concealed, but now she realises that the look of betrayal contorting your features has been caused by her. She lied to you. Kept the most important thing in the world from you. All because she wanted to keep you. She didn't want things to change.

Now they have.

“Y/N…”

“You’re not in love with me. You just love me as a friend. Because that’s what we are. We’re not… You don’t…” You struggle to form a coherent sentence.

“We can be just friends,” Robin says, defeated this time. She can already tell by your face that she’s dropped a bomb on this friendship and she has to watch it detonate. “We can stay as we are.”

“Tell me you’re not in love with me. Please, Robin.”

“I can’t do that.” She wants to reach out, comfort you, but she’s so afraid of you running away and never coming back to her. She’s ruined everything, and still, she can’t take back the truth. Still, she doesn’t want to. She’s never even seen you cry before today. Not when Eddie died or when Will went missing or when Hopper never came back from Starcourt. But you’re crying now and it’s killing her, and the worst part is, she doesn’t know why. Not beyond the lies. Is it that terrible that she’s in love with you?

“Y/N,” Robin continues, “I don’t expect anything from you. Nothing has to change.”

“Everything has changed!” you scream. “How can I pretend I don’t feel anything now? Do you know how hard it is for me to look at you and not want to kiss you? But I do it every damn day because you’re my best friend and I don’t want to lose you!”

It’s the last thing Robin expected to hear, and the words echo over and over in her ears. You… want to kiss her? You feel the same? “What?”

“You sat there and you pined for Tammy and Vickie and all I ever saw was how much you invested yourself into them, and how much it hurt. How the hell am I supposed to want that with you when what we have already is so damn perfect?”

But Tammy and Vickie were just distractions. It’s always been you. How can't you know that yet? “You’re… scared?”

“Yes, Robin, I’m fucking scared!” you exclaim. “Love ruins everything. It never lasts, and when it does, it becomes an obligation. Not something you can get out of when it fades. I can’t be like our parents. I can’t let myself be with you when it means that we have to risk the only good thing I have. The one constant friendship I’ve ever held onto.”

Robin knew you weren’t one for romance, not really. Your parents raised you in a loveless home, always yelling and drinking and cursing, and you’ve asked Robin time and time again if love is real, or just a miserable myth. But she thought… well, she thought she might be different after so much time spent so close. So intimate. She hoped that maybe, if you chose to trust anyone with your heart, it might be her. And you love rom-coms more than anything. Robin always thought you were just being cynical. Waiting for someone to change your mind.

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Robin says gently. “I would never hurt you like that. Not as a friend or as more. We trust each other, don’t we?”

You bite down on your wobbling lower lip and nod.

Robin risks a step closer so she’s almost able to touch you. “Do you really feel something for me, too?”

Another nod as tears stream down your face. “Of course I do. But… But if this goes wrong, I won’t have you anymore. I don’t know how to not have you, Robin.”

Robin takes your hand gently. “You’ll always have me. Always. I’m your best friend. You think you can ever get rid of me? Do you know how annoying I am?”

You laugh finally and Robin’s heart soars as she smiles with you.

“Nothing has to go away or end. We can just be best friends who sometimes kiss,” she says. “We can just be best friends who are super into each other.”

“Super?” you tease, eyes still round with fear.

“Super,” Robin affirms, offering you another lopsided smirk. Her pulse pounds and she can barely breathe as you finally lace your fingers through hers.

And then you lean in, swiping her bangs from her eyes, and Robin has to kiss you before she combusts — so she does. It’s magical, every moment of it, all soft pink lips and wary tongues, breathless rasps and shaky hands, and she is so in love with you. Her best friend. Her person.

“Please don’t let us ever ruin this,” you beg a final time.

Robin is quick to reassure you, swallowing your words with another tender kiss. “I’m not going anywhere.”

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derrygirlstrash · 1 year

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Michelle 🔥

I don’t know if this is an unpopular opinion so much as an interpretation I don’t see as much as I think I should, considering I think it’s unspoken canon explanation: Michelle didn’t stop James and Erin from dating because of the group, in fact I think if James had gone after either Clare (pre-lesbian reveal) or Orla she would have been - disgusted and wanting to boke aside - fine with it.

Her issue came from specifically Erin because by now she’s protective of James even if she refuses to admit it and she doesn’t think Erin likes James back, she thinks Erin likes being liked. She thinks if they date, Erin will hurt him specifically. It actually has more to do with their fight in The Agreement than you’d maybe think - she loves Erin as a friend but has serious issues with how she is and hasn’t had the insight the audience has to just how serious Erin feels for James. So she just thinks Erin is fawning over the attention and doesn’t want to pick up the pieces for James when she tears him to pieces.

If you asked Michelle to be properly brutally honest, she thinks James has had one selfish, sheltered spoiled self-centered woman to that already, he shouldn’t go looking for another.

#Derry Girls #michelle mallon #she loves Erin - she also thinks Erin is a bit too much like Kathy - these opinions coexist in her head (albeit subconsciously)#Jerin #tagging for relevance

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endlessreruns · 3 months

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(Bebe Wood) [The Matchmaker]. Please welcome [Fallon Barlowe (she/he)] to Huntsville, WV. They are an [19]-year-old [RESIDENT] who lives in [TOWN]. You may see them around working as a [Florist]. They are looking for [Cain] their [older brother]

Name: Fallon Barlowe

NickNames: Fal (pronounced like Al)

Face Claim: Bebe Wood

Age: 19

Gender/Pronouns: Demi-gender ; she/he

*while using them interchangeably will be allowed OOC, IC they are not. Please go with the pronouns I establish in the thread. If you start the thread you can use they/them for the starter and then just follow my lead from the response*

Orientation: lesbian

Town Resident

Gatherer

Occupation: Florist

Languages Spoken: English and Gibberish

------------

Born a fraternal twin. Was the older twin

Grew up in Huntsville with two brothers.

Twin died from a drowning incident at the age of 11

Parents killed by the ghosts a couple of years after

Watched as her brother became less and less the vibrant and social person that he was before their brother and later parents' deaths, and sort of double downed on the social aspect because she thought she had to make up for it.

Is very close to Cain, and while she understands why he tends to hover and worry she sometimes wishes that he would just relax

Started to question her sexuality at age 14 after seeing Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns

16 was when she first started to feel like she wasn’t a girl all of the time. Sometimes ‘She” didn’t feel right, but ‘He’ did. The first time that felt exceptionally strong Fallon raided some of Cain’s clothes.

It felt right, but then a couple of days later using ‘she/her’ pronouns felt right

Got a reputation in high school for helping people out with their crushes. (Talking to them about it, finding out if they like them back, putting in a good word for them, etc) and just matchmaking in general

Likes to gossip and be in the know. She prefers gossiping about nice things, but if it's juicy either way she still wants to know.

Started working as a florist, doing things like arrangements and bouquets on the side at 17 while still in school and has now made it her full time job.

#intro: fallon #huntsvilleintro

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 5 months

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So, listening to Do the Right Thing led me to listen to a few episodes of Margaret Cabourn-Smith’s podcast Crushed. I only listened a few of them that looked interesting – Isy Suttie, Danielle Ward, and Nish Kuamr. The format is talking about “crushes”, so mostly from childhood and adolescence when this sort of thing is prevalent. Nish Kumar’s episode had this exchange early on that made me like him so much I had to stop and write it down:

Margaret Cabourn Smith: First crush, who springs to mind? Nish Kumar: When I told my girlfriend I was doing this podcast, she said, “Are they expecting you to largely talk about fictional characters? Because it’s going to be an hour of you talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Who wants that, Nish?”

Guy, I like Nish Kumar so much. I love that the comedian I find funnier than almost anyone else, also happens to come across as an incredibly likeable person. He’s always had significant One of Us energy when he talks about being a comedy and music fan; I think his reputation should be at least as much for his relatable nerdery as for his (also relatable) righteous political anger. Quite a lot of this came across in listen to him talk for an hour with Margaret Cabourn Smith on that podcast. I’d listen to Nish Kumar talk for an hour about anything.

But anyway, I did like that specific quote, which he proceeded to expand on later in the episode, because that is a fairly specific thing that I seem to have in common with a lot of those comedians. Josh Widdicombe once went on a panel show and explained that he spent his teenage years doing math to work out his and his friends’ chances of marrying Sarah Michelle Gellar. And there was, obviously, this. All of that. I guess coming of age while being in love with Buffy the Vampire Slayer is hardly an uncommon experience for this generation, but still, I enjoy when comedians give me relatable content like talking about coming of age while being in love with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Actually, the comedian I most share this with is probably Rosie Jones, as she played Willow in that Amusical that I linked to (if you haven’t seen the pictures and videos at that link before, please do yourself a favour and click on it, it’s fucking delightful and I rewatch this video like once every few weeks), and at the end made a speech about how that show helped her know it was okay to be gay. Which is such a common story for queer woman of the millennial generation (I’ve just looked it up and Rosie Jones is only four months older than me) that it’s almost a running joke, among the ones I know, to say that of course you grew up with Willow/Tara and The L Word and your only scraps of representation, which you watched with headphones on and your door closed so no one would know you were discovering the forbidden lesbianism.

But for me, I didn’t get into Buffy the Vampire Slayer until a couple of years after it had finished airing. So it wasn’t the thing that made me realize I was gay as a teenager. I’d already done that. I’d had my few really difficult years from ages 15-18, as I worked out that that horrible word that I only ever heard in the context of students at school using it as a horrible insult applied to me. I did my journey from denial, to acceptance that I might have been attracted to like one girl one time but that’s it and it doesn’t make me gay, to realizing that some sort of LGBT label might apply to me but not knowing which one; from hating myself for that, to slowly accepting it; from insisting that I’ll never ever tell anyone, to whispering it to a couple of very close trusted friends while swearing them to secrecy because I was convinced that everyone knowing would ruin my life, to finally being okay with it not being a secret.

That coincided with when I got into Buffy – just as being gay had finally become something that wasn’t an internal struggle and conflict and source of pain, I’d figured out that this was what I was and it was okay, and I could finally start to enjoy it a bit. Buffy was the first thing I watched where I could find a female character attractive and it didn’t turn into “Oh my God this might mean I really am gay, how do I know if I’m really attracted to her or if I’m just straight and imagining it, I’ll have to add this to the data as I figure out my sexuality, and it seems to be evidence in favour of the option that scares me.” I was able to look at that show at just think, “Wow, Alyson Hannigan is hot, I’m going to enjoy looking at her. I would sure like a girlfriend named Buffy who could kill a guy with her bare hands. This high school sure is full of attractive people.”

And it was so exciting! I jumped right in to take full advantage of finally being able to feel attraction without hating myself for it, and the first thing I did with that was develop a crush on every single female character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. To different degrees, maybe, but all of them. Including Jenny Calendar, the teacher. Including Dawn, who was a rare case of a teenage character playing by a teenage actor, but it’s okay I was a teenage myself at the time. Obviously Buffy and Willow. Faith. Oh my God I had the biggest crush on Faith. I fell in love with Tara the moment she was introduced. Anya. Cordelia. Drusilla. Even Kennedy. Faith. Did I mention Faith? I mean Eliza Dushku was gorgeous but I definitely also had a thing for the character of Faith. Then right after I finished Buffy, I watched Angel and Firefly and Dollhouse, and also fell in love with every female character on those shows.

I’ve felt mildly weird even writing this out, as when I’m 33 and have been out for years, I’m a lot more conscious of whether I’m just objectifying women who have been objectified throughout their whole careers (especially how that we’ve heard about how gross Joss Whedon was and how a lot of those women were treated badly while making the shows in question). It doesn’t seem quite as fun and exciting, and I think it’s probably a good thing to have at least a little bit of restraint in talking about which strangers I find sexually attractive. But as a teenager, after spending years with attraction to women being a source of nothing but confusion and self-hatred, I still remember how fucking cool it felt to enjoy it with no shame or hesitation whatsoever.

…I mean, obviously it was also a good TV show. There were lots of TV shows in 2008 that were full of attractive women, I could have watched any of them, I watched Buffy and the other Whedon shows because they were really good, and a huge part of why they were so good is that the very attractive women were also very good at their jobs. That seems worth acknowledging. I picked those shows to watch because they were made by people who were good at their jobs.

Anyway. Hearing Nish Kumar say that if he’s going on a podcast about teenage crushes, he’s just going to talk about Buffy the Vampire Slayer for an hour, made me remember all this and want to write it down. And made me want to say, I love Nish Kumar’s righteous political anger, but I also enjoy his relatable nerd side so much. Also, during the episode he fell over himself several times to try not to sound horribly objectifying, in exactly the way that I do when I talk about these things (including, for example, in this post). Such a relatable thing to try to find a respectful and feminist way to say “Jesus Christ Sarah Michelle Gellar was fucking hot”.

I know it's a problem for a fan to think a person they've never met is as perfect as I think Nish Kumar is. I don't need him to be perfect forever, I promise. I personally promise to not cancel Nish Kumar if it turns out he said a homophobic slur in 2006 or something. Everyone said homophobic slurs in 2006 (I was there at the time and can confirm this). But if he could manage to not do anything massively disappointing for the next while, that would be great, because he's really propping up my tiny scraps of faith in humanity these days.

While I'm at this, I may as well also say that I've been re-watching some Good Place episodes in the last few days, which is reminding me of the phase I had just after my Whedon phase, which was my obsessed with Veronica Mars phase, and involved being incalculably attracted to both Kristen Bell and the character she played. She deserved far better than Logan.

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