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tavolgisvist · 8 months ago

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Paul about the breakup of The Beatles in The Lyrics, 2021

The four of us just knew how to fall in with each other and play, and that was our real strength. That made it all the more sorrowful to think that our breaking up was almost inevitable. So there’s a wistful aspect to ‘Get Back’. The idea that you should get back to your roots, that The Beatles should get back to how we were in Liverpool. And the roots are embodied in the style of the song, which is straight-up rock and roll. Because that was definitely what I thought we should do when we broke up – that we should ‘get back to where we once belonged’ and become a little band again. We should just play and do the occasional little gig. The others laughed at that – quite understandably – because by then it was not really a practical solution. John had just met Yoko, and he clearly needed to escape to a new place, whereas I was saying we should escape to an old place. Reviving the old Beatles just wasn’t on the cards. It was too late to be recommending that we not forget who we were and where we once were from. If my dream at the time really was to get back to where we once belonged, John’s dream was to go beyond where we once belonged, to go somewhere we didn’t yet belong. I’ve already mentioned how in September 1969 we were in a meeting and talking about future plans, and John said, ‘Well, I’m not doing it. I’m leaving. Bye.’ In the ensuing moments, he was giggling and saying how this felt really thrilling, like telling someone you’re going to divorce them and then laughing. At the time, obviously, that was wildly hurtful. Talk about a knockout blow. You’re lying on the canvas, and he’s giggling and telling you how good it feels to have just knocked you out. It took a while, but I suppose I eventually got with the programme. This was my best mate from my youth, the collaborator with whom I’d done some of the best work of the twentieth century (he said, modestly). If he fell in love with this woman, what did that have to do with me? Not only did I have to let him do it, but I had to admire him for doing it. That was the position I eventually reached. There was nothing else I could do but be cool with it.

(Paul McCartney about Get Back (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

That was coupled with the business problems at Apple Records, which really were horrible. The business meetings were just soul-destroying. We’d sit around in an office, and it was a place you just didn’t want to be, with people you didn’t want to be with. There’s a great picture that Linda took of Allen Klein, in which he’s got a hammer like Maxwell’s silver hammer. It’s very symbolic. And that’s why we have the little nod and a wink in the middle section to ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’, in the lines ‘I never give you my pillow / I only send you my invitations’. That whole period weighed on me to such an extent that I even began to think it was all tied in with the idea of original sin. Even though my mum had christened me as a Catholic, we weren’t brought up Catholic, so I didn’t buy into the concept of original sin on a day-to-day basis. It’s really very depressing to think that you were born a loser.

(Paul McCartney about Carry That Weight (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

The Beatles stuff all got too heavy, and 'heavy' at that time had a very particular meaning for me. It meant more than oppressive. It meant having to go into meetings and sit in the boardroom with all the other Beatles and with the accountants and with this guy Allen Klein. He was a New York spiv who had come over to London and talked to The Rolling Stones and persuaded them he was the man for them. Prior to that, he had persuaded Sam Cooke he was the man for him. I smelled a rat but the other chaps didn’t, so we had a fight over it and I got voted down. I was trying to be Mr Rational and Mr Sensible, and it all went haywire. It was early 1969, and The Beatles were already beginning to break up. John had said he was leaving, and Allen Klein told us not to tell anyone, as he was in the middle of doing deals with Capitol Records. So, for a few months we had to keep mum. We were living a lie, knowing that John had left the group. Allen Klein and Dick James, who sold our publishing in Northern Songs without giving us a chance to buy the company, were both hanging around in the background of this song. All the people who had screwed us or were still trying to screw us. It’s fascinating how directly we acknowledged this in the song. We’d cottoned on to them, and they must have cottoned on to the fact that we’d cottoned on. We couldn’t have been more direct about it. ...

Contracts were written on funny paper. Lying behind the song is the idea of the contract as a relationship between two people. The negotiations are at once business negotiations and romantic negotiations; I’m thinking of the lines ‘And in the middle of negotiations / You break down’. The breakdown in negotiations is also a kind of nervous breakdown. The problem was that, by this stage, everything was up for negotiation, and miscommunication was the order of the day. We weren’t really writing together anymore. Each person was bringing in little bits of this and little bits of that. And we all knew that phase of our lives, of being The Beatles, was coming to an end. We were working towards an album, knowing it was probably going to be our final fling. Though Let It Be was released later, Abbey Road was indeed the last album we recorded in the studio. There was an upside, however. I’d got married to Linda, and our relationship offered some respite from the dreary infighting and the financial stuff. The lines ‘One sweet dream / Pick up the bags and get in the limousine’ were a reference to how Linda and I were still able to disappear for a weekend in the country. That saved me.

(Paul McCartney about You Never Give Me Your Money (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

This was just after The Beatles broke up, and I was trying to establish myself as a solo artist with a new repertoire. If it was going to work like the Beatles repertoire had worked, I had to have a hit. One in two songs had to be a hit. So, this was a conscious effort to write a hit, and Phil was very helpful. We knew that if we had a hit, it would cement our relationship and we would keep working together, which we did with the RAM album. It would prove that we were both good – he as a producer and I as a singer songwriter. Releasing my first solo song after the breakup felt like a big moment. Thrilling, though tinged with sadness. It also felt like I had something to prove, and that kind of challenge is always exciting. The song went to number two in the UK singles chart and number five in the US Billboard Hot 100, so it did pretty well. Of course, this was still a time when there was a bit of tension between John and me, and this sometimes filtered into our songwriting. John made fun of this song in one of his own, ‘How Do You Sleep?’The only thing you done was yesterday And since you’ve gone you’re just another day One of his little piss takes.

(Paul McCartney about Another Day (1969/1971), The Lyrics, 2021)

This song was written a year or so after The Beatles breakup, at a time when John was firing missiles at me with his songs, and one or two of them were quite cruel. I don’t know what he hoped to gain, other than punching me in the face. The whole thing really annoyed me. I decided to turn my missiles on him too, but I’m not really that kind of a writer, so it was quite veiled. It was the 1970s equivalent of what we might today call a ‘diss track’. Songs like this, where you’re calling someone out on their behaviour, are quite commonplace now, but back then it was a fairly new ‘genre’. The idea of too many people ‘preaching practices’ was definitely aimed at John telling everyone what they ought to do – telling me, for instance, that I ought to go into business with Allen Klein. I just got fed up with being told what to do, so I wrote this song. ‘You took your lucky break and broke it in two’ was me saying basically, ‘You’ve made this break, so good luck with it.’ But it was pretty mild. I didn’t really come out with any savagery, and it’s actually a fairly upbeat song; it doesn’t really sound that vitriolic. If you didn’t know the story, I don’t know that you’d be able to guess at the anger behind its writing. It was all a bit weird and a bit nasty, and I was basically saying, ‘Let’s be sensible. We had a lot going for us in The Beatles, and what actually split us up is the business stuff, and that’s pretty pathetic really, so let’s try and be peaceful. Let’s maybe give peace a chance.’ The first verse and the chorus have pretty much all the anger I could muster, and when I did the vocal on the second line, ‘Too many reaching for a piece of cake’, I remember singing it as ‘Piss off cake’, which you can hear if you really listen to it. Again, I was getting back at John, but my heart wasn’t really in it. This is me saying, ‘Too many people are sharing the party line. Too many people are grabbing for a slice of the cake, a piece of the pie.’ The ‘sleep in late’ thing – whether that was accurate, whether John and Yoko actually slept in late or not, I’m not sure (although John often was a late riser when I would drive out to Weybridge so that we could write together). They were all references to people thinking that their own truth was the only truth, which was certainly what was coming from John. The thing is, so much of what they held to be truth was crap. War is over? Well no, it isn’t. But I get what you’re saying: war is over if you want it to be. So, if enough people want war to be over, it’ll be over. I’m not sure that’s entirely true, but it’s a great sentiment; it’s a nice thing to think and to say.

I’d been able to accept Yoko in the studio, sitting on a blanket in front of my amp. I’d worked hard to come to terms with that. But then when we broke up and everyone was now flailing around, John turned nasty. I don’t really understand why. Maybe because we grew up in Liverpool, where it was always good to get in the first punch of a fight. The whole story in a nutshell is that we were having a meeting in 1969, and John showed up and said he’d met this guy Allen Klein, who had promised Yoko an exhibition in Syracuse, and then matter-of-factly John told us he was leaving the band. That’s basically how it happened. It was three to one because the other two went with John, so it was looking like Allen Klein was going to own our entire Beatles empire. I was not too keen on that idea. John actually had Allen Klein and Yoko in the room, suggesting lyrics during writing sessions. In his song ‘How Do You Sleep?’ the line ‘The only thing you done was yesterday’ was apparently Allen Klein’s suggestion, and John said, ‘Hey, great. Put that in.’ I can see the laughs they had doing it, and I had to work very hard not to take it too seriously, but at the back of my mind I was thinking, ‘Wait a minute, All I ever did was “Yesterday”? I suppose that’s a funny pun, but all I ever did was “Yesterday”, “Let It Be”, “The Long and Winding Road”, “Eleanor Rigby”, “Lady Madonna”, . . . – fuck you, John.’ I had to fight them for my bit of The Beatles and, in fact, for their bit of The Beatles, which many years later they realised and almost thanked me for. Nowadays people get it, but at the time I think the others felt they were the ones who were victims, who were being hurt by my actions. Allen Klein already had a history with The Rolling Stones. I just thought, ‘Oy oy oy, no, this guy’s got such a bad reputation.’ And good old John says, ‘Oh, if he’s that badly talked about, he can’t be all bad.’ John had this kind of distorted thinking, which was amusing sometimes. But not when someone was going to take everything that John and George and Ringo and I owned and had worked really hard to get.

So, I stood up as the sensible one and said, ‘This is not good.’ Klein wanted twenty per cent, and I said, ‘Tell him he can have ten, if you have to go with him.’ ‘Oh no, no, no,’ they came back. ‘No, he wants twenty.’ It seemed to me they were just fucking out of it and making no attempt to do anything sensible. A lot of hurt went down during that period in the early 1970s – them feeling hurt, me feeling hurt – but John being John, he was the one who would write a hurtful song. That was his bag.

(Paul McCartney about Too Many People (1971), The Lyrics, 2021)

Towards the end of 1969, John had quite gleefully told us it was over. There were a few of us in the Apple boardroom at the time. I think George was away visiting family, but Ringo and I were at the meeting, and John was saying no to every suggestion. I thought we should go back to playing smaller gigs again, but the answer came back: ‘No’. Eventually John said, ‘Oh, I’ve been wanting to tell you this, but I’m leaving The Beatles.’ We were all shocked. Relations had been strained, but we sat there saying, ‘What? Why? Why? Why?’ It was like a divorce, and he had just had a divorce from Cynthia the year before. I can remember him saying, ‘Oh, this is quite exciting.’ That was very John, and I had admired this kind of contrarian behaviour about him since we were kids, when I first met him.

He really was a bit loony, in the nicest possible way. But whilst all of us could see what he meant, it was not quite so exciting for those left on the other side.

(Paul McCartney about Dear Friend (1971), The Lyrics, 2021)

This is one of my favourite songs. It's a ballad with a brass section, but it’s always felt Victorian in style to me. It’s very heartfelt. ‘A love so warm and beautiful / Stands when time itself is falling’. I like that idea, instead of just saying, ‘It will go on forever.’ I got a good feeling writing this song, and listening to it now, I still do. ‘Love, faith and hope are beautiful’. The brass solo is lovely for me because it harks back to the brass bands that were so common when I was a kid; there would often be brass bands in the park or in the streets. My dad played trumpet, as I never fail to mention, and he had his own little band – Jim Mac’s Jazz Band. The first instrument he bought me was a trumpet, and he taught me the scale of C which, when you go on the piano, becomes B-flat. It’s all very complicated. That’s why we didn’t even bother learning music. I realised that I wanted to swap the trumpet for a guitar, so I asked his permission, and he said, ‘Yes, okay.’ ‘Warm and Beautiful’ was written well after the demise of The Beatles, and at this time we knew sadness. I knew about delving into your mind to look for help and looking for some sort of solace in a song. I liked the idea of writing a song in a universal way that dispels the sadness. You write about the wonderful things you know in the world, and you try to write so that it will sing well and be well received by people dealing with grief something that inevitably surrounds all of us at one time or another. On a more personal level, the main inspiration for the song was Linda…

(Paul McCartney about Warm and Beautiful (1976), The Lyrics, 2021)

After The Beatles thing became so depressing, Linda and I decided we’d get out of London and start living full-time on our small holding in Scotland. It was quite a difficult period because of the band’s breakup but it allowed me to see another side of myself. First and foremost, we did everything for ourselves, and at this point it was Linda, Heather, Mary – who was still a baby – and me. If we needed something to eat, we’d go into town in the little Land Rover, come back up, and cook it. We didn’t have anyone helping us, except for one guy, the shepherd, because it was a little sheep farm. It was an experience that allowed me to be a man. <…> I’d grown up in Liverpool and gone on the road with The Beatles around the world and then around again, and now here I was on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and it was sensational. <…> This was the kind of thing I’d never done, ever, in my life, and it was amazingly liberating. I got to do all the things I think a lot of young people still dream about today – the famous ‘gap year’. I sense a lot of people want that freedom, escaping the rat race…

(Paul McCartney about When Winter Comes (1992), The Lyrics, 2021)

After the breakup of The Beatles, I wouldoften just sit around a lot. Sometimes I sat in the kitchen while the kids were playing. Maybe they were drawing. Maybe they were doing bits and pieces of homework. In this case, I came across the chords and I just felt optimistic, and I liked the idea of a song saying that help is coming and there’s a bright light on the horizon. I’ve got absolutely no evidence for this, but I like to believe it. It helps to lift my spirits, to move me forward, and hopefully it might help other people move forward too.

(Paul McCartney about Great Day (1972/1997), The Lyrics, 2021)

Wings, which we began in 1971, was in many ways an experiment to see whether there was life after The Beatles, to see whether that success could be followed. It was the result of asking myself, ‘Am I going to stop now?’ The Beatles were so wonderful and all-encompassing, so successful. Now, should I stop and look for something else to do? But I thought, ‘No. I like music too much, so whatever the something else is, it will be music.’ <…> But it wouldn’t be The Wings, like The Beatles. Just Wings. My problem after The Beatles was, who’s going to be as good as them? I thought, ‘We can’t be as good as The Beatles, but we can be something else.’ I knew that if I were to go ahead with this project I’d have to tough it out, but I had reserves of courage from being part of The Beatles when pennies were thrown at us at the village hall in Stroud, when we were still starting out. <…> Starting off a new band is always a lot of fun, but it’s a lot of hard work too; you have to establish yourself. Following The Beatles was one of the most difficult things for me, just trying to live up to those expectations. It was even more difficult for her [Linda]. I started to write songs for Wings from 1971 onwards, when we got started, and I tried to keep them away from The Beatles’ style. There were avenues I could go down that I wouldn’t have gone down with The Beatles, like bringing in the influence of reggae, which Linda and I got into in Jamaica. I fancied doing something crazy, and Wings allowed me a little bit more freedom. So, this is a love song in which Cupid’s arrow is referenced, but it’s a malevolent arrow. It’s possible I’d seen an illustration of Cupid and thought, ‘Cupid fires a bow, but I’ll switch it. It won’t be love; it will be the opposite.’ The character in the song has been wounded. He’s been cheated on. And it could’ve been a great relationship, could’ve been fantastic. As things stand, you couldn’t ‘have found a more down hero’, because there was nobody more down than me at that moment. So, get it together and bring your love. I have always had a soft spot for this song. There’s a nice horn riff in it, and it’s funky. Sometimes you write to get a sort of feeling rather than a perfectly ‘correct’ lyric. Sometimes the lyric can be secondary to the feeling. This one has as much, or more, to do with the feel of the song, the groove.

(Paul McCartney about Arrow Through Me (1979), The Lyrics, 2021)

John described ‘Coming Up’ somewhere as ‘a good piece of work’. He’d been lying around not doing much, and it sort of shocked him out of inertia. So it was nice to hear that it had struck a chord with him. At first, after the breakup of The Beatles, we had no contact, but there were various things we needed to talk about. Our relationship was a bit fraught sometimes because we were discussing business, and we would sometimes insult each other on the phone. But gradually we got past that, and if I was in New York I would ring up and say, ‘Do you fancy a cup of tea?’

(Paul McCartney about Coming Up (1979), The Lyrics, 2021)

It’s very possible that I’d been feeling down in London. I was back in the solace of family and Liverpool, and what with the Beatles troubles down south, I was likely thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to get home and have that comfortable feeling again?’ So, there may have been some of that in the background. I wouldn’t rule it out. When I wrote the song, I hadn’t been back home to Liverpool for a long time. But now I was at my dad’s house, which wasn’t quite home because it was a house I’d bought him when I got some money – a five-bedroomed mock Tudor place in Heswall near the River Dee. But it was still Liverpool, and it was ‘homeward’. So I added, ‘Once there was a way to get back homeward / Once there was a way to get back home’. The song turned out to be quite soulful, and I think that’s what attracted me to those lyrics in the first place – that notion of consoling a baby or reading kids a bedtime story. ‘Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry / And I will sing a lullaby’. Those are lines – or something with a similar sentiment – that most parents probably say to their children to soothe them when they’re growing up.

(Paul McCartney about Golden Slumbers (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

It became a refuge of sorts, and it was nice to get away from London and everything – both the good and bad – that comes with the city. I would drive a Massey Ferguson 315 tractor and mow the hay, and I loved that because I’d been a nature fiend as a kid, and this freedom just gave me time to think – ‘Down to Junior's Farm where I want to lay low’. It was such a relief to get out of those business meetings with people in suits, who were so serious all the time, and to go off to Scotland and be able just to sit around in a T-shirt and corduroys. I was very much in that mindset when I wrote this song. The basic message is, let’s get out of here. You might say it’s my post-Beatles getting-out-of-town song.

(Paul McCartney about Junior's Farm (1974), The Lyrics, 2021)

The context in which the song was written was one of stress. It was a difficult time because we were heading towards the breakup of The Beatles. It was a period of change partly because John and Yoko had got together, and that had an effect on the dynamics of the group. Yoko was literally in the middle of the recording session, and that was challenging. But it was also something we had to deal with. Unless there was a really serious problem – unless one of us said, ‘I can’t sing with her there’ – we just had to let it be. We weren’t very confrontational, so we just bottled it up and got on with it. We were northern lads, and that was part of our culture. Grin and bear it. One interesting thing about ‘Let It Be’ that I was reminded of only recently is that, while I was studying English literature at the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys with my favourite teacher, Alan Durband, I read Hamlet. In those days you had to learn speeches by heart because you had to be able to carry them into the exam and quote them. There are a couple of lines from late in the play: O, I could tell you But let it be. – Horatio, I am dead I suspect those lines had subconsciously planted themselves in my memory. When I was writing ‘Let It Be’, I’d been doing too much of everything, was run ragged, and this was all taking its toll. The band, me we were all going through times of trouble, as the song goes, and there didn’t seem to be any way out of the mess. <…> Around the time we recorded ‘Let It Be’, I’d been pushing the band to go back out and play some club dates – to get back to basics and just bond again as a band, end the decade like we’d begun it, just playing for the love of it. We didn’t get to do that as The Beatles, but that idea did inform the direction of the Let It Be album. We didn’t want any studio trickery. It was supposed to be an honest, no-overdubbing album. It didn’t exactly end up that way, but that had been the plan.

(Paul McCartney about Let It Be (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

This song is also an analogy for when something goes wrong out of the blue, as I was beginning to find happening around this time in our business dealings. Recording sessions were always good because no matter what our personal troubles were, no matter what was happening on the business front, the minute we sat down to make a song we were in good shape. Right until the end there was always a great joy in working together in the studio. So there we were, recording a song like ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ and knowing we would never have the opportunity to perform it. That possibility was over. It had been knocked on the head like one of Maxwell’s victims. Bang bang.

(Paul McCartney about Maxwell's Silver Hammer (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

In much the way that Linda wanted to flee from New York society– the constrictions of Park Avenue and Scarsdale – I wanted to flee from what The Beatles had become. I was hoping to escape, she was hoping to escape. So we had this feeling that we had each pulled the other ‘out of time’. Though the song was written immediately after The Beatles’ breakup, it was somehow included under the Lennon-McCartney rubric, where it doesn’t belong. It was one of my first solo songs, but because of the deal, it got caught in the publishing net. That was very annoying. <…> …the central idea being that there’s so often a split between the inner and outer. <…> The elements of fear and loneliness are very much to the fore. ‘Maybe I’m afraid of the way I love you’ is itself a troubling idea. While it’s true that Linda is the person I’m addressing, it’s also true that I’m dealing in fiction. Starting with myself, the characters who appear in my songs are imagined. <…> In any event, this song isn’t the conventional way of presenting a relationship, or of some of the contradictions that can arise from being in love. <…> It shows the fragility of love.

(Paul McCartney about Maybe I’m Amazed (1970), The Lyrics, 2021)

John went to the exhibition, and I think that was when he and Yoko met, towards the end of 1966. He climbed up a ladder to see what she’d written on the ceiling, and got close enough to it to read it, and it said, ‘Yes.’ So he thought, ‘That’s a sign; this is it,’ and they fell madly in love. Once they were an item, there was the whole Beatles recording thing, where she would be there too. I think this started at the beginning of the ‘White Album’ sessions – so, around the end of spring in 1968. And at first we all – all of us except John – found it pretty intrusive, but we went along with it and worked around her. And eventually I came to the realisation that, look, if John loves her, we’ve just got to let it be, and we’ve got to support this relationship. That was basically my feeling. Then, a year or two later, The Beatles broke up, and it was a bad period, a real low point, where everyone was taking potshots at everyone. And I felt that John and Yoko were particularly good in the potshot department, saying things in interviews, or comments that would make their way to you. They would say not always very pleasant things, and looking back on it, I sort of think, ‘Why? You’re annoyed, so say something unpleasant?’ Over time, the situation eased off and my relationship with John got better, and I used to see him in New York or speak to him on the phone.

(Paul McCartney about Golden Earth Girl (1993), The Lyrics, 2021)

I’m not sure I thought of it at the time, even though this was well after The Beatles disbanded, but I can’t help connecting the oppressiveness associated with that phrase to the oppressiveness that coincided with the end of The Beatles. Not that The Beatles are over exactly. It’s not like we were some little band that never had another record; even though half of us have died, the phenomenon continues stronger than ever. Everything I do seems to be painted with ‘Beatle’…

(Paul McCartney about Put It There (1988), The Lyrics, 2021)

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lil-shiro · 2 months ago

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Hey Ann! I hope you don't mind another question from this new Fetus Lance fan: How was Esteban and Lance's relationship prior to their F1 career? I found them to be very fascinating since it seems like they never really share feeder series year and I just found out recently about how lance is kind of responsible to esteban not having a seat in 2019, but he seems to be very close to lance even after that meaning that their friendship is stronger than esteban career.

Hello! First of all I never mind, especially this type of question because I have done extensive research on this topic + I fucking love these two.

Before I dive in I will say that: I don't think it's necessarily that "their friendship is stronger than Esteban's career" it's more that they keep their personal relationship and professional career separated very well (I will get into this).

Karting Days

Lance and Este had one year where they karted together (2011). This was Lance's first year of karting in Europe and Este's last year before he went onto single seaters. They had a few overlapping races and even shared a podium together.

WSK MURO LECCESE - Category KF 3 | June 26th 2011 (link) Not pictured but gif-ed here -> ERDF Masters Kart, 10-11 December 2011

This is when they first met and from this interview, Este recounts racing against Lance at that time.

“He was so small, he could barely keep his head upright,” the Frenchman remembers. “He still beat me in some races. He was very quick, but also very dainty, which is why he always had his problems in duels.” (source)

Prema Days

After that, they weren't in the same racing sphere until Lance joined Prema in 2014 for F4 while Esteban was there currently doing his F3 campaign.

(Fun fact Este won the championship that year and when Lance won 2 years later, it was Este who presented him with his trophy)

They had this Ferrari / Merc thing going on and it was cute aha (1) (2)

You can also watch them in a Prema video here (2:30 mark)! They also had a running joke with the engineers, where the engineers would call them monkeys. This is why in 2017 for secret santa (2:40 mark), Este gifted Lance a monkey plushy.

I would say that this is where they really became friends. On a broadcast, (I think it was from an FP session from Bahrain'23), one of the commentators mentioned their relationship and how they were both outcasts in their own right. Lance because he came from a lot of money, and Este because he didn't, so naturally they had each other.

Martin Kodrić, who used to kart with Lance stated on a Croatian podcast in 2021, that Lance wasn't liked during that time. He also said that

"nobody [on the grid] likes lance." well i like him, and este likes him, and checo and seb too. so fuck everyone else they're irrelevant." (source)

(personally I think this statement is somewhat exaggerated but it's what he said)

F1 Era

Like you mentioned, there was a lot of public scrutiny when Este was out of a seat in 2019. However he's never once blamed Lance or badmouthed him. You've probably seen this first pic that Este posted after. (I added the second pic for formatting lol)

He was also asked why he came to Lance's defence and said that

“I did that because Lance is my best mate in the paddock and we have a great relationship since a long time”. (source)

In a 2018 interview Lance was asked about their friendship situation to which he said

"I have my management team, he has his management team, we're both trying to do what's best for our careers, and there's our friendship. "We competed together in karts, we fought wheel-to-wheel in karts, he was in Prema Formula Three, he won the championship, I came in. "We've always had a good friendship and it's good to see that bridge hasn't burned." (source)

This is also a very sweet interview where he says that their friendship is above and beyond racing.

Like I said, they are VERY good at keeping their personal and business relationships separate. They often hang out on and off track, and I think it's very admirable, and not the easiest thing to do- to want to preserve friendship in such a cut throat environment.

It's funny though, because there are times where you can see it blend together.

Such as during the 2020 British GP where Este didn't complain that Lance was moving under breaking a little bit because, "we’ve known each other a long time. He knows he can do that a little bit to me, but at some point I’m going to go for it so he knows that as well".

Or prior to Hungary 2021 (when Este got his first win) Lance gave him advice for the start of the race.

The Frenchman later said he spoke to his friend Stroll about how to make the most of the start in wet conditions. “Yes, we had a chat with Lance before the race because Lance is an awesome starter in races and he loves those conditions as much as I do,” said Ocon. “Normally we always end up closer to the front in those [conditions] and he said when it’s the moment to go..." (source)

Normally I feel like these are things that teammates more often do, so it's really cute haha.

Extra

That's basically the end, but have some culturally relevant photos!!

If you want to see more feel free to go through my Lesteban tag because there's a whole lotta stuff I didn't include!

#asks #anon #lance stroll #esteban ocon #lesteban #f1 lore

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your-blorbo-is-a-dog · 3 months ago

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c!Niki dsmp?

⭐️ c!Niki from the DreamSMP is a Canid Hybrid ( South American Fox / Unknown Dog )

Dogxim, the popularised first recorded Dog-Fox, was run over by an automobile in Rio Grande do Sul in 2021. After being treated for her injuries she moved to the Center for Conservation and Rehabilitation of Wild Animals for full recovery. Scientists recollected that in 2019 biologist Herbert Hasse Junior had observed two strange canids in the same region and they speculated that Dogxim might be one of the two. Dogxim was kept at the animal care centre Mantenedouro São Braz. She refused to eat dog food, but savoured rats. The pupils of her eyes resembled those of dogs and she barked exactly like dogs do. She did not show the behavior of a domestic dog, but neither did she show the aggression generally displayed by wild canids, acting more shy and introverted than violent. When fresh photographs of Dogxim were requested in September 2023, the caretakers reported that she had died six months prior to the request. The time and nature of her death were never reported. Veterinarian and conservationist Ferrari recalled that the canid had "no indications of any health problems" after her recovery, and investigation is still underway in her death.

They gave her a home just to break her. Sounds familiar to me!

#cniki #dsmp niki #dsmp nihachu #cnihachu #dsmp #dream smp

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yamayuandadu · 7 months ago

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Coming clean about an important issue

Back in 2021 or so, I’ve included an offhand comment in Zababa’s wikipedia article, presenting it as fact that he and Inanna and Kish were regarded as a couple prior to the introduction of Bau to Kish in the Old Babylonian period. I assumed this is directly confirmed by primary sources, since multiple authors repeat it as fact, and because Zababa and Inanna of Kish shared the role of the tutelary deity of the Kish agglomeration so some sort of deeper connection didn’t seem implausible. I will admit there might have also been personal bias involved, as in 2021 I was particularly fed up with overblown importance assigned to Dumuzi online, so even taking into account Inanna of Kish was for all purposes her own thing, the evidence for a spouse who is demonstrably not Dumuzi felt like a godsend.

The problem? It turns out Zababa and Inanna of Kish are actually never referred to as a couple. No god list labels them this way; no royal inscription; no literary text. Before Bau pops up in Kish in the Old Babylonian period, Zababa is effectively a bachelor.

The claim that Inanna of Kish was his spouse is repeated in academic literature, though, and it has only been pointed out by Ryan D. Winters in his An = Anum commentary published last year that no actual evidence exists (An = Anum and Related Lists, p. 204). Bau is firmly identified as Zababa’s wife when they appear together, Inanna of Kish never is - and Winters points out that even if they were associated on some deeper level, they might have very well been perceived as siblings, not spouses. While Winters doesn’t bring this up, it might be worth pointing out that the Sippar agglomeration, which is located pretty close to Kish, also had two tutelary deities - Shamash and Annunitum - and they demonstrably were not spouses. And let's not even go into the matter of Inanna and Nanaya in Uruk...

The lesson here is to always heed the advice of Steve Wiggins, I suppose:

#mesopotamian miscellanea

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scalene-4 · 5 months ago

Text

at about 10 or 11pm on the night of december 5, 2021, i arrived home to my house in LA from a show a friend of mine was playing. it had been a relatively small affair but the music was quite interesting and it was a nice opportunity to catch up with someone i hadn’t seen in awhile.

before leaving the venue i’d done something which at that point was an every day thing, using the bathroom and then examining everything about my face and body that looked slightly off in the mirror. my hair was never right, my face was an odd shape, i hated the patchy stubble jutting out of my lip and chin. for the past year and a half i’d thought about this discomfort every single day, and pushed it to the back of my mind. following that rabbit down the hole always lead to inklings of a conclusion that i didn’t feel ready to reckon with just yet.

i got home to find that some of my roommates had taken acid. at the time i lived with my brother alex, his partner, a bandmate of ours and another friend. my brother was not partaking on this particular evening but he had procured it a month earlier in san francisco when we went to go play a gig there. an old drum line coach of his from high school was living there with a much older hippie boyfriend, who gave us a 10 strip of the Real Shit when they pulled up to the show.

i tried half a tab on the drive home and confirmed that it was indeed the real shit. alex and i listened to ween (i highly recommend the entirety of the mollusk on an acid trip) and 100 gecs, laura les’ vocal performances on the latter bringing me very close that afternoon to the aforementioned conclusion i’d been avoiding.

anyways, on the night of december 5 i arrived home and a couple of our roommates were having a great time. although it was late i didn’t have work the next day and it was really good acid, so i decided to join in myself.

i have a pretty good track record with psychedelics — with a couple exceptions i’d always treated the experience with a certain amount of respect and didn’t like to overdo it. i was content to disappear into headphones and let the colors and shapes of my favorite music guide me through seussian landscapes, never really subscribing to the idea of the trip as, well, a trip unless it compelled me to do so against my will.

this time, however, before taking my half tab for some reason i decided to set an intention. i’m not sure where this came from but there had been questions bubbling underneath my ill fitting skin for some time now, and i resolved that if the opportunity arose on this night i would confront whatever it was i hadn’t been confronting. i hadn’t consciously acknowledged this mystery problem yet even though in a funny way i’d thought about it every day for over a year.

a few hours in and i was tripping pretty hard. it was a very warm and safe and colorful feeling; i put on the dijon album that had come out not long before and sank into the redwood tones of mk.gee’s baritone guitar riffs and dijon’s gorgeous voice. to this day big mike’s sounds a little extra crazy every time i hear it.

everything changed when i took my phone and opened up instagram.

death grips was a band i’d been getting heavily into over the past year alongside the presence of my persistent little mystery question, music that to me bristled with raw and determined spirituality and a deep love for the entire spectrum of the human condition. i’d already had a bit of a bizarre experience soundtracked to their music — months prior i was walking around echo park in a skirt and a full beat (for absolutely no reason haha) and saw a group of christian protesters up ahead marching against the sins of the gays and carrying signs explicitly stating this intent. worried they might see me and by proxy see trouble, it possessed me to put airpods in and put on no love, the title track from death grips’ third record. as soon as the first two bars were done i looked up and it was like the mob had despawned from reality itself with no trace. i’m not fully unconvinced i hallucinated them, but the experience tripped me out nonetheless.

death grips had been completely silent since 2018, not posting on social media or releasing any music.

fast forward to december 6 now at around 2am, and i open instagram to immediately find an image of death grips drummer and mastermind zach hill peeking out from behind the wooden door of some kind of medieval tavern, holding a bar of gold out from between the iron bars of the door as if urging me to come and take it. since i was on acid, i absolutely flipped the fuck out. in a rational sense it looked like death grips was back and that was really exciting. in a spiritual sense, i felt this gold bar was the key to the thing i wasn’t confronting.

i sat in bed giggling and writing silly poems in my notes app and marveling at the synchronicity of being alive, an alkaline sensation rising up my body through my spine. something came unprompted but not uninvited, less of a cataclysmic epiphany or revelation and more of a gentle and loving acknowledgment.

i’m trans.

i am a transgender woman.

i have been this whole time. and ive been thinking about it every single day and pushing it back into the depths to deal with later.

looking back now it’s hilarious and obvious and really dumb, but this knowledge was not fully conscious. i’d think to myself that i’d feel a lot more happy and calm and in sync if i was a woman and that there was probably something within that i needed to face head on, but i’d tell myself i’d figure it out when i was 30 and push it back down. this would all happen so fast that i never really was able to pull it to the front and examine it closely until now.

it physically felt like i’d been watching the scene from the land before time where littlefoot’s mother dies for the past 25 years, and now my own mom had materialized to give me a hug.

i will never forget the actual sensation of it, so calm and gentle and loving yet determined. there was no going back from this, no putting it in a box and shoving it into my subconscious like i’d been doing every day. i was gonna have to have some heavy conversations tomorrow, but the prospect of doing so didn’t really scare me. i laid down and pulled my covers up and drifted off to sleep as the acid wore off.

the next morning, i awoke to two things: the knowledge that i needed to tell alex and a text from alex. unprompted he’d sent me the two headed calf by laura gilpin, which to those unfamiliar goes like this:

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this

freak of nature, they will wrap his body

in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north

field with his mother. It is a perfect

summer evening: the moon rising over

the orchard, the wind in the grass. And

as he stares into the sky, there are

twice as many stars as usual.

i read that several times and through a violent barrage of tears asked him to come into my room because i had to tell him something.

i told him i was trans and he said he’d kinda figured and we cried and hugged and marveled at the weird psychic synchronicity of it all. id made my peace with it the night before on my acid trip, but i think it took this sober revelation to somebody i love more than life itself for the weight i’d been carrying to finally lift.

that was, as they say, the first day of the rest of my life.

one of my roommates at the time was my best friend, someone with whom since then i’ve unfortunately had something between a falling out and a loss of contact with. i will not elaborate on that in this post. there was something they said to me once that i’m thinking about right now — i’d shared a meme phrase with them i thought was funny and topical, something about wanting to give your inner child a gun. they countered with the idea that maybe my inner child needed a hug, and that’s probably one of the most important things anyone has ever said to me.

i try to give my inner child a hug every day, but today i think writing this i’m choosing to give that hug to my inner 25 year old. she had a lot to figure out and a long road ahead of her, but the death grips two headed calf acid trip bonanza was certainly a big first step.

over the course of the next year my band would break up, the population of my house would shift around, i’d begin taking hormones and start work on what became music 2. i’d also fall in love and have some even weirder experiences thinning the veil between here and whatever lies beyond, but those are all perhaps for different posts or my own memory.

until coming out as trans i wanted to opt out of living every day. i felt like a walking mistake and my eyes looked sad and my skin hung off of my bones in a really uncanny shape. it was really hard to get up in the morning and i often just wouldn’t.

i would be lying if i said it was all sunshine and daisies from there, but for the past three years and some change i’ve woken up each day having already made the choice to live. and as the country in which i live by that choice shifts further toward the fascist right and seeks to eliminate the very existence of people like me, i cling on to that resolve harder and harder with an iron clawed grip. if they want me dead they’ll have to kill me, because i’ve seen the other side and there is no fucking way i am ever going to do it myself. i like being alive because the world is beautiful, and after viewing that beauty through the kaleidoscopic lens of being trans i am determined to fight for it until my last breath.

thank you for the gold, zach <3 i spent it on magic beans

#transfem #transgender #death grips #hyperpop #acid trip #zach hill #two headed calf

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steelycunt · 3 months ago

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what were your full and complete thoughts on greta and valdin?

oh so many. i think for me a lot of my issues with contemporary fiction more broadly sort of came to a head in this book. for a brief summary the novel follows (with alternating perspectives) two russian-māori twenty-something siblings living in auckland and their extended family and allegedly navigating love and relationships but in reality navigating nothing because nothing happens. i wrote a longer review when i logged it but ill summarise it here:

1. all the characters speak the same, in speech and in thought. they have this sarcastic, self-aware, socially-awkward dry humour which leeches into everything they say and is peppered with niche, hyper-specific cultural references and liberal political signposting because thats meant to make this funnier, which it doesn't. the upshot of this is the book sounds like the author's failed observational stand-up comedy set. every single character in g&v talks like this, regardless of background, age, personality. theres this huge cast of boring characters which was hard enough to track without the fact that every line of dialogue could be spoken by any character, because they all sound the same and are granted extremely scarce physical descriptions. some of them even have the same name. old men who fled the soviet union speak in the same way, with the same cultural references, as their twenty-something queer trendy chronically-online children. a mixture of current twitter discourse threads and the distinct cadence of any tumblr post from 2016-2021 which was frankly embarrassing to read!!

2. it was very boring. i saw other people say that it needed editing, which is true, but also it just shouldn't have been published: there is no story here. there can't be, since no one does anything wrong, because they all speak like they're in a therapy session. there were no conflicts or points of tension and things which are built up as momentous arent even resolved, they just drift past as non-issues. all the characters were competing for the highest grade in therapy-speak and when that wasn't happening they were randomly meeting nondescript auxiliary family members (of which there were far too many? why did we need so many characters to stand around referencing chick flicks from thirty years ago?) who, in response to extremely simple questions, monologued about some exposition-y character backstory for another auxiliary family member until the end of the chapter. it was kinda astonishing to read under the assumption that an editor had actually seen it, because so often there was no logical explanation for shoving that much exposition dialogue at the front of the book within interactions where it makes no sense for that to be happening. there is a scene where greta goes on a first date where she explains the entirety of her older brothers backstory as a teen parent and subsequent custody battle for his child which happened like a decade ago. for several pages.

3. greta and valdin are also boring--everything wrong with the auxiliary characters is also wrong with them. valdin is this tv comedian, which makes no sense: he isn't funny, he is never funny or presented as being funny, all we know about him is he is anxious and quiet and in love with a boring man. his line of work makes no sense. neither of them have any actual problems. like all litfic characters now they seem to enjoy pretending they're poor and then something will happen to demonstrate that these are comfortably middle-class young people complaining about non-issues and obsessing over themselves. like valdin pretending he doesn't have enough money and then on a whim buying himself a car. he is also a physicist while simultaneously being very stupid. there is a whole revelatory moment where he realises that his dad coming to nz from moldova prior to the fall of the iron curtain meant he must have fled rather than just emigrated making him a refugee, which valdin is very shocked and sad about. a grown adult. greta was perhaps even more forgettable since her character arc is over after like 50 pages when she meets someone and thats genuinely, literally all that happens to her. she gets a girlfriend who is nice and talks just like her. thats it.

4. everyone in this massive family is gay. this teetered on the edge of unbelievability to me, especially when there were random distant family members showing up throughout and even to the end, who had no other function or presence in the plot at all other than announcing that they were newly out as gay. none of these announcements were revisited because again these characters did not turn up again and bore no relevance. to be honest its hard to word my issue with this in a way that wont produce objections but as a queer person who is interested in reading about queer characters i find no value or interest in a presentation of it which is so far removed from any actual lived experience as to verge on the fanciful. that is a personal taste thing. im also just sick of characters who are lazily written which authors try to pass off as being complex and interesting just because they are queer and/or a minority. i think its a disservice to the groups ur trying to gain clout for representing. im tired of queerness (and identity politics in general) being used as a crutch to elevate a bad book. books are not good solely off the back of being queer. and thats not to say queer books dont have a right to be bad because they do, but its frustrating when a book that is bad gets praised as if its actually well-written or has anything to say (which this book doesn't, like at all), solely because its queer. i dont know if its because people are less comfortable criticising works which centre around voices that are underrepresented. but that doesnt make the representation good. to me i just feel like if this book was identical in plot but everyone was straight, it would be flagged as being pretty insufferable. i dont think it stops being insufferable because theyre gay. sorry! there is excellent queer literature out there we dont need to spotlight and heap hyperbole onto the stuff that is actually shit.

ya! tldr; nothing happened, the characters were boring and the way they spoke was insufferable and repetitive, and the author had to rely very heavily on their social identities as evidence of their actually being very interesting. they were not and neither was this book. epitome of couldve been a tweet which id see reposted onto instagram and even then not find very funny or clever.

#i promise i dont just want to complain about books all the time or actively seek out books i dont like but i have just not read a good one #in a while..#anon #telegram #reading tag

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mistressemmedi · 5 months ago

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As somebody who is not familiar with them besides the curse and their friendship with Charles can you please give us all the tea in English?

Pop a squat and get some water to stay hydrated, this going to be a long one so I'll post it under the read more

The protagonists

Chiara Ferragni - one of the OG Influencers™. Literally, she started her blogging/influencing career back in 2010(? ish), went on to create a business around her 'The Blond Salad' brand.

Fedez - part time rapper, part time tv presenter, part time... Idk. Something.

Fabrizio Corona - notorious (derogatory) paparazzo in Italy, general nuisance and waste of oxygen. Allegedly team Fedez (?????)

Angelica Montini - fashion designer and influencer (?), Fedez' mistress

Achille Lauro - un gran pezzo di manzo Singer and alleged fling of Chiara. Used to be friends with Fedez, they released a song together.

Important dates:

2016 - Chiara and Fedez start dating

2017 - Fedez proposes in the middle of a concert

March 2018 - their first kid, Leone, is born

September 2018 - they get married (y'all need to look the wedding up, it was insane)

March 2021 - their second kid, Vittoria, is born

March 2022 - Fedez reveals he had been sick for a while and had a pancreatic tumor removed

2023 - Fedez has various health problems, he takes a step back from 'public' life

2023 - Chiara is fined 1.1 mil euros for fraud.

Also in 2023 - Charles Leclerc suffers through Sanremo and watches as his friends marriage crumbles in front of him lmao

2024 - Fedez and Chiara officially separate

2025 - Chiara gets indicted on fraud charges, will have to go to trial in September

2025 - Fabrizio Corona (derogatory) drops the cheating allegation bombshell

2025 - Chiara confirm the cheating allegations are true via Instagram stories

The fraud

Chiara endorsed a pink pandoro made by Balocco - a % of the sales for the pandoro was supposed to go as a donation to a pediatric hospital. Turns out that Balocco made a one time donation of 50k prior to the pandoro going on sale and kept the rest of the €€€ and so did Chiara.

Chiara claims that she didn't know about it, her reputation suffers a bit of a hit, everyone starts eyeing her, things are not good.

Ferragnez

I need y'all to understand that Chiara and Fedez were everywhere in Italy. Brand deals, constant socmed posting, they even had their own tv show ffs (two seasons of these guys, TWO!!). Literally everywhere. The Ferragnez were a brand (a là Brangelina)

The cheating

Turns out that Fedez had been cheating on Chiara for the majority of the relationship. According to Corona, Fedez was in love with Angelica but Angelica was never that into Fedez. He was so down bad for this girl that the day he got married, he called Angelica and said "Just one word from you and I'll walk away from all of this" - clearly she told him "wtf you on bro" because the Ferragnez wedding went ahead as scheduled. Fedez was too chicken shit to actually break off the relationship because of the kid (only one at the time) and the brand/money involved. The cheating continued up until their separation.

The Instagram Story

Auto translate

and original in Italian

Fabrizio Corona never shuts up (unfortunately)

Despite dropping the bombshell and dragging his so called friend through the mud, Corona came out and told Chiara to stop making herself look like a victim because she did her fair share of cheating as well. He said he would drop names in the coming days and started by pointing fingers at Achille Lauro (god, I've seen what you've done for others, when will it be my turn???)

Conclusion (and my thoughts which you didn't ask for lmao)

The saga is not over and we'll have more in the coming weeks. Sanremo is in aprox two weeks (y'all know how crazy that is), and both Fedez and Achille are going to be participating 👀

Fedez had also decided to compete with the song "Bella stronza" (translation: beautiful bitch [idk it's hard to properly explain the connotations of 'stronza' if you don't speak italian]) during the duet/cover night, which... Bro. Tone deaf much?

The timing of everything is very sus. The fact that this whole drama came out now and basically buried all conversations about Chiara's fraud charges, the fact that everyone and their nonna will be watching Achille and Fedez at Sanremo, etc etc.

Again, a bit sus.

But I do feel bad for the kids... Their parents basically have broadcast their lives 24/7 for everyone to see and idk. It's a bit sad 😶

#anon #q&a #chiara ferragni #fedez #idk how to tag this #lmao #anyways it's a very short summary! and it doesn't include everything because otherwise we'd be here until tomorrow #also stuff continues to come out so #it's hard to keep up lmao

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rocketturtle4 · 2 years ago

Text

Only Friends, Shipping Culture, Cross-Generational Differences, Themes and Endgame

Strap in, folks. This is a long one.

What finally pushed me to make this post was a very interesting discourse between @lurkingshan, @waitmyturtles, and @twig-tea here around the way this show has subverted norms to a lesser extent than first hoped and how the fans themselves, and the creator’s interactions with these fans, have impacted the creation and completion of the show, as well as the way themes built through the series may now feel less clear after the latest episode.

I wanted to offer my understanding and perspective because it differs somewhat, but it is also very much informed by this post and the larger Tumblr discourse around Only Friends and shipping culture that this show has sparked. I will note, for the record, that I have been much busier since about episode 5 of OF than I had been for the first episodes (or than I was for BMF), so I have missed a lot more of the fascinating discourse that this show has sparked than I would wish.

Let’s do this.

Shipping Culture

I had never heard of this before joining Tumblr this year (in May) despite watching 50 BLs before that, due to being completely disengaged from the actors as individuals prior to joining Tumblr, and while Tumblr has opened my eyes to how much fanservice is part of these people’s lives and jobs and the problems surrounding that phenomenon. I remain largely disengaged from the actors personally. I do not have Twitter, Tik Tok or Instagram, I rarely watch BTS and even my revelation that First is the most beautiful man ever to exist (and I say that as a person who is both aro and ace) has only got me to watch one First & Khao Armshare interview (The Eclipse one). I have also never purchased merch or event tickets so I am in fact, not a good fan in terms of profit making or engagement.

I do, however, love the shows an awful lot and may engage with BTS more once I have fewer things to watch…

All this to say is that my firsthand knowledge of such things is limited at best, but I am still here to say:

I think Only Friends is doing excellent things here, even if all the ‘couples’ end up together.

Is it burning them to the ground like so many hoped? No, but I have watched 47 Thai BLs at this stage and not many of them explored relationships beyond the pairs in any way, shape or form, and OF HAS DONE THAT.

Of our main six characters, NONE of them have only kissed their “other half.” They’ve literally all at least made out with one other person from the core six, and thus far Mew, Boston and Nick have ALSO kissed other people.

This is, in my humble opinion, A PRETTY BIG DEAL.

I am currently watching Not Me (for the first time, haven’t finished, no spoilers please), and I have been informed somewhat reliably that the original novel included a Gram/Black plotline that was cut/altered (to Gram/Eugene/Black love triangle), and I posit that was due in part because they couldn’t have Gun even KISSING Mond even if he was also kissing Off. Black and White would have been a great way to shift things even a little by having the branded pair be together while ALSO having half the brand with someone else at the SAME TIME. Can you imagine??

And yet as recently as 2021 that didn’t happen.

Sometimes change takes time and patience and I think OF is doing really good work, even if it doesn’t go as far as we might wish.

EVEN IF all our branded pairs end up together unsubverted (which is not what I am hoping for but EVEN IF), this show will have still begun paving the way for more varied storylines and pairings in shows

The Clash of Generational Lenses

Speaking of the end game, lets talk about a little thing called hope.

I had a very interesting discourse back around, hmmm episode 6, with @shouldiusemyname and @plantsarepeopletoo , about the sheer confusion I felt about Tumblr’s idea that every one of these characters should end up apart simply because they’d done bad things or something? (this is extremely generalized. I was missing a lot of nuance from both Tumblr and my own lens hence the unpacking then and now).

Now I went into this show fully prepared for this to end sadly and I largely viewed this expectation of sad as everyone ending up broken up and alone. I don’t normally watch sad by choice, but I was willing to try this one because Jojo’s stories are SO beautifully compelling that I knew it would be worth the journey. I have watched Love of Siam (not Jojo but sad) and Gay Okay Bangkok (complicated), two very different shows reflective of their times and their creators and from the beginning, Only Friends did not feel like those (although the links to Gay Okay Bangkok and the exploration of real queer relationships has been fascinating and I am very glad I watched that one before OF).

So why was there this, almost prescribed hopelessness, being projected onto these very young characters who were just in the process of finding themselves? Why were these young people’s flaws and choices so linked to the idea that they would end up alone?

Now @shouldiusemyname told me the following (in the context of a much wider discourse):

Ahhh I like this cos this is something I take very much for granted and I think it’s a generational gap thing. This is a reaction to the way we were brought up (again generalizing cos sometimes it’s necessary). There was no alternative to monogamy and being queer meant that you can’t have that for 2 reasons: 1. Law doesn’t allow 2. Socially unacceptable cos being gay was seen as what kind of sex you were having as opposed to relationships. If you don’t have the gay sex, you’re not gay. This is also the reason for being anti het norm. We couldn’t have that so we needed to find the alternative and have ALL of it.

We were both generalizing A LOT, but this idea was MIND BLOWING to me at the time.

(For the record I am born late 1990s, Shouldiusemyname is born early 1980s (and Plantsarepeopletoo is born late 80s so we have variety covered lol!))

Because while, (as @waitmyturtles for example has pointed out on multiple occasions) the imposition of purity culture and monogamy on queer culture (and in general) is wrong, the idea that no queer people are desiring commitment or monogamy is also wrong. (I am not here suggesting that even in an ideal world where queer people TRULY HAD equal rights they would magically all want monogamous long-term relationships because that’s just not true. In addition hets regularly oppose the het norm as well, long-term monogamous relationships are unwanted by many of them).

I come from a strong biological background (which unequivocally supports more than two sexes and more than two genders, do not come back here and make this about that, got it!) and am currently doing a PhD in Palaeontology so a lot of my relationship understanding is informed by a wider understanding of breeding, monogamy and nonmonogamy in reproduction across the animal and plant kingdoms just by exposure (and yes reproduction in the plant kingdom is very much included, some plants have both male and female parts, it’s fascinating!). And monogamy is present in a hugely wide range of species, it’s not soley something humans came up with just because of religious norms. Addtionally, there is the development of consistent monogamous and/or committed polygamous relationships (historically, most commonly men with multiple wives) across a huge number of cultures throughout history largely for the fostering of children. Most of this influence has been more irrelevant for the queer community because of their inability to produce children in monogamous pairs*, and children are a huge sticking point for the NEED for long-term stable relationships. So, without this sticking point (combined with the aforementioned factors around law and discrimination), relationships are viewed as less permanent. Thus, I had to unpack my own casual assumptions that relationships normally have a long-term goal. (*Generalizing hugely, obviously there are lots of variations that can produce biological children without assistance, but these points most strongly apply to same-sex relationships)

For example, I find the way this plays out in a show like What Did You Eat Yesterday particularly fascinating, and have realized since starting Season 2 that I had missed a lot of this subtext in the first season because, to me, the idea that the central couple would stay and grow old together was a given. PARTLY because of monogamous cultural lenses, but ALSO because they loved each other and wanted to be together, so why wouldn’t they assume they would stay and grow old together?

I also realized that I am further sheltered in this mindset by not just my age but by the acceptance of my wider family of non-marriage as a concept (or even just not having to have children) as normal and okay. My Grandfather (in his 80s) is one of 10 children and has multiple siblings (my great uncles/aunts) who 1 never married or 2 married but chose never to have children. While I am not going to pretend that my uncles/aunts were never judged for such things, that judgment was NEVER part of my upbringing and we visited my single and/or childless great-uncles just as often as those with children.

I seem to have gotten sidetracked…What is the wider point I am making here?

Ah yes

Only Friends is so interesting because it’s shot like it’s set in the 80s & 90s, before the turn of the millennia, with so much homage paid to the queer stories and reality that the youth of this time grew up with. But the generational change that the last two decades or so have brought is inarguably huge, and so these characters, all born after the turn of the century, are not truly from the world that, in some ways, it looks like they’ve been placed into. @wen-kexing-apologist did an extremely comprehensive post about gay cruising culture and Boston that was extremely relevant to his character and the story being told, but it also was a specific throwback to something that is different in the 2020s. Not because people like Boston don’t exist, but because the turn of the century brought with it so many things that make this exact thing more complicated.

And OF has been showing us why! Surveillance, SO MUCH surveillance, every character has been recorded or recorded other characters or shared recordings of other characters, sometimes all of the above, and this surveillance does have a deep impact on the relationships today’s young people engage in! Not just the queer community but all young people of today are under near constant scrutiny and surveillance, and the young people born in the last couple decades have grown up like this, queer or not.

One last thing to mention here is the specific, observable, phenomenon that has been going on in Thailand, it is clear when you look at media like Love of Siam (2008) and compare it to ITSAY (2020) (which I haven’t even seen yet gah but I still know this is a great example). The phenomenon of BL, for all its flaws, has wrought change in the psyche and culture of the people of Thailand, ESPECIALLY the young people, and this is absolutely informing our six main characters views on relationships because they would have gone through high school with this as a major part of their culture.

Themes and Endgame: I Think Hope is the Point

All this draws me back into how I think OF will end, because it’s been at the heart of the show throughout, and that is hopefully, Only Friends will end hopefully.

Jojo has (I believe) stated outright that his primary goal for this show was to represent his community in truth, the messy non-het non-monogamy of queer youths in their 20s has been playing out across our screens, but the thing that has been keeping my attention riveted on Only Friends is the heart of it all.

The journeys of growth and discovery on this show have been magnificent. @thegalwhorants has been pointing out the intentional parallels of language this show has been using to highlight some of that growth, and that is just one very interesting fraction of the way this show has used words, music (@plantsarepeopletoo), colours, styles and more to represent the transformation characters are going through as they grow into themselves before our eyes.

A few very brief examples:

Mew’s switch to wearing Ray’s wardrobe when he is trying not to care but cares so much about Top.

Ray’s changed wardrobe to match the style Sand picked out for him even as he tried to choose Mew and couldn’t, because he’s already moved on, even when he couldn’t accept it.

Nick’s whole makeover to catch Boston’s attention later even catching Dan’s attention and the way that in that scene with Boston outside in ep10, Nick had returned to his shorts and t-shirt because he finally felt seen the way he sees Boston.

One’s sense of self is often built in part, around their relationships (family, friends, sexual and romantic), ESPECIALLY in collectivist cultures, and so much of our 20s involves growing and learning who you are through these relationships. I have seen arguing about toxic friendship groups and how they all need to just let each other go, and maybe that is the best endgame, I don’t know. Sometimes, growing together can be so much stronger, and sometimes, growing apart is the only way to move forward.

But these last two eps in particular (but honestly every moment of this show) have left me with the feeling that hope is the point. Because things HAVE changed, the world is moving and the things possible in 2023 are often utterly unthinkable to the youth of the 1980s, 1990s and before. The world is growing, acceptance and love have always been there but, surveillance or no, it’s so much easier to find now.

To be queer is no longer to be isolated, not in the way it once was, it is not a sentence of aloneness. Nor a stamp of irrevocable pain. Are things good now? HECK NO, you look at any statistic: homelessness, mental health, suicide rate, poverty; Being queer makes your life harder.

No matter how hard you try things might get worse and while that’s true for all people, queerness compounds that and often makes the consequences of your choices harder through isolation.

But the isolation is less now and I think OF wants to show that

You may do many things and sometimes these things will hurt no matter how careful you are, Not caring isn’t the point, Not feeling isn’t the point, God every character on this show feels so MUCH

This episode had moments of complete heartbreak

Complete regret

And complete Joy

And there is much more still to come

So when I think about endgame, I think about hope, and the lessening of isolation for all, and this does not mean 3 perfectly happy couples in perfect monogamous relationships wrapped up with a neat little bow, It means six individuals who have learned and grown through friendship and love, this may mean healed relationships, it may not, this may mean healed friendships, it may not. (It may mean Top, Mew and Boeing in a throuple but maybe I’m the only one hoping for that lol). We’ve clearly got more drama and pain to come but I am confident now that things will end with hope.

I do not know how Jojo and co will show that, but I trust them, and I can’t wait to find out.

#ofts #only friends the series #only friends #onlyft #rturts is wondering #only friends meta #ofts meta #roc goes haywire over only friends

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dearweirdme · 1 year ago

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https://www.tumblr.com/dearweirdme/756624824076468224/there-are-some-places-i-hope-to-never-be-and-one

Couldn’t we say the same thing about Jimin though? Wasn’t he the one who said his favourite thing was waking up to Jungkook? He’s the one who also sat infront of Tae and Jk and said Jk spends almost all his time in his room and he is the same one who has constantly taken his face right infront of Jk’s like he was going to kiss him on the mouth with Tae sitting right there, why do you think he would do things like this if Taekook were together and how would Tae have felt about those things? Jimin has done and said way more suggestive things about himself and Jk than Tae has ever done and that is one of the reasons why some tkkrs hate him so much because they believed he was being a bad friend to Tae. Y’all are just witnessing Jimin in his quiet phase. You needed to hear the things he constantly said and did prior to 2021 because if he was still the way he used to before, it would have been a bloodbath between these two ships because while we have tae dropping bombs, we would have had Jimin dropping even bigger ones lol.

Jk too has done a few things with Jimin that wouldn’t make sense for him to do if he was dating Tae, like that naked bed Live he did inviting himself to shower at Jimin’s place, (if you think Jimin should have a problem with Tae’s captions if he was with Jk then how do you think Tae should feel about Jk openly asking Jimin to let him come over and shower infront of 5 million fans?) or when he made that “thirst trap” birthday video for Jimin (many people interpreted it as one), or him making a blatant sexual innuendo Joke with Jimin on ITS “Do you want ramen? ” This is a conversation I probably shouldn’t be in because I personally don’t think the boys are dating each other but I think this logic works both ways and that is mainly the reason why we have jkkrs hating on Tae and tkkrs hating on Jimin because they feel like Vmin are crossing lines.

Hi @causeilikescience !

Posting this ask in good faith and trusting you are actually neutral in this.. please don't go crazy on me.. I just went through that with another blog last week 🙈.

I'm sure that when you are someone who doesn't believe any of the guys are dating all shipping fandoms look the same. I'm well aware that while I am answering this ask right now, most will look at my answer and say 'she's a Tkkr, she's delusional and not give my words any actual thought. And to be honest, most of my beliefs do stem from how I interpret Tae and Jk's interactions and the way their body's speak. My thoughts on that should not actually matter, because I am a stranger on the internet 😂.

I think for me, the biggest difference between how Tkkrs think and how Jkkrs think is that Jkkrs believe a queer couple from the same band are being allowed so much openness. I mean, Jk and Jm are not limited in their interactions at all. We can beat around the bush, but Jk and Jm are the main focus of Bh when it comes to BTS. They are made use of hugely. That does not undermine that their friendship is real (it's making use of your biggest strenghts really) but it does undermine that they are in a relationship, in my opinion. I do not believe that BH (a SK company) would treat an in band couple the way they treat Jm and JK.

I understand why Jkkrs believe though, at least.. to a certain point. The moments they use, like Rosebowl, like hickey gate, like those times Jm comes close to Jk's face and acting like he's about to kiss him.. those look sus when you isolate them BUt, when you look beyond those isolated moments, you know that that is exactly what they are. Jm has those moments with Hobi and Tae as well for instance. Probably not as often, because Hobi doesn't entertain it as much and Tae actually gets Jm flustered when he goes that way. Jk and Jm though have the same type of banter... they are.. matched in that way I think. They aren't actually flirting, they are play-flirting. And these are my words ofcourse and no-one will value those, because I'm a Taekooker, but I do think that that's what it is. Maybe because you are neutral, you recognize that that's what it is also. I don't see anything actually sus between Jm and Jk. I think everything they do fit easily in the realm of friendship. A friendship that has a lot of banter and is definitely deep, but a platonic friendship nevertheless. I never feel the need to downplay anything Jm and Jk do, because it just is what it is and I love that for them.

Tae and Jk is a whole different story though. And admittingly, you do have to believe in things being hidden and lies having been told. You have to believe that there are ugly parts to their story. I don't even really want to believe those parts, because they are hurtfull and they mean that Tae and Jk (and all members by association) have gone through shit. There will have been many tears and fights, and feelings of shame and insecurity. That's not something I want for them, but I do feel that has been a part of their lives. I think there is no way that a company like BH would allow a queer couple from the same band to freely interact. I think BH would have come up with a way to keep the band from being in a potential scandal. They had big plans for BTS (which they accomplished) and the risk of queer allegations becoming too strong would have been too high in the eyes of those who call the shots. What I see between Tae and Jk fits how I feel a queer idol couple would be treated in SK music industry. It does set us as a fandom up for misunderstandings though, it can't actually be any other way. So our thoughts willl always be hunches and never about having actual proof. A closeted couple can't give us proof. What we do have, is a ton of patterns and a ton of repetitive behavior. It's the shear amount of consistent bahavior that makes us feel strongly about them being together. You can only understand this, if you look into that amount.. it is simply not possible to understand this if you don't. Me explaining this with all the words I have will never do the actual situation justice. So basically this whole ask is just me ranting without actually being able to convey the realness of Takook 😂.

I think many people don't actually realize the amount of times Jk and Tae are holding back movements, and biting away smiles, or are holding back jealousy. It's something Tkkrs know, because we pay attention. It's not something we invent, the moments are there and people can just look them up. You will not find that between any other pairing within BTS. Another thing is that many people also don't realize how much Tae and Jk actually move towards each other. After 2016 they weren't the focus of footage much anymore, so people are quick to miss it. But in the background, when other members are the focus.. they gravitate to each other. Again, not something we make up.. it is all in the footage, people just don't notice.

Without wanting to open this up to Jm hate (and I'm gonna elaborate.. don't worry😁), I think Tae did have a problem with Jk and Jm at times. This is what I mean with the nasty parts that come with this. It's not all pretty, and it probably affected the other members too. It was pretty obvious actually at times. Rolling his eyes and whatnot. I'll do you one better. Jk also had a problem with Tae and other members at times, we can clearly see him annoyed at times when Tae was close with someone else. They were fickle about it though, there's times when they didn't care and there were times when it probably just hit differently. People are fickle in their reactions though. Different situations make for differnt reactions, that are influenced by many different factors. The reason why I don't blame Jm for this is that Jm did nothing wrong. On top of that, Tae, Jk and Jm know each other so much better than that fandom knows them. When Jm and Jk make a joke about ramen in front of Tae, Tae knows how to read that. When Jm goes to flirt with Tae, Jk knows how to read that. These men know each other, they know what each other's intentions are. Tae knows that Jm isn't trying to steal Jk from him.

I'm fully convinced that vminkook had conversations about the shipping wars. I think I see an adjustment in how they deal with it. It is clear to me, that Jm is aware of Tae and Jk. I think these three obviously chose to not let fandom shenanigans stand in the way of them interacting. While Tae was annoyed at Jkk moments at times, he cares about Jk and Jm too much to want them to adjust the way they interact. I can't speak for Jkkrs on this.. but I'd hope it's the same for them.

Comparing Tkk and Jkk is not something that I actually do when consuming BTS content. I know I've done it on here, because I literally get asked to do it 😂. But Jkk isn't a factor for me. Jm is their best friend. Obviously he plays a role in their lives, but I don't go and think.. wait Jm did this with Jk how does that affect Tae? I'm sure Jkkrs want to do the same, but yet everytime one of them comes here they hit me with the comparisons. I do wish that things were different. I think this is very unpleasant for Jm, Jk and Tae. Those men love each other to bits and I think large parts of fandom make it really hard for them to keep loving us.

Well, I'm sure this has been hugely unsatisfactory and I made no difference in your understanding of Tkk fandom😂 . I'm also a very small part in all this, I'm fully aware that there is madness going on everywhere.. Tkkrs are not excluded from that at all.

#taekook #fandom shenanigans #straws

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alloveydovey · 8 months ago

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Okay dramas watched these past months... (i actually have more like no gain no love and mr. plankton but I'll put them up later he)

Hometown Cha Cha Cha, 2021 (kdrama) (rewatch!) 10 ⭐️

(Yes this is here in one of this posts, once again) A city girl moves to a coastal town and clashes with the local do-it-all whose views on life are the complete opposite from hers. Despite it all, love is born lol.

Literally never show me an edit or a gif or anything of homecha cause even if I watched it a week prior I’m going to be like ‘I want to watch it again 😭’ This is how serious I am about this drama. This time I rewatched it because my grandma was watching it for the first time and I HAD TO join. Obligatory. It means so much to me, it’s my favorite ever and literally a hug for the heart.

A Romance of The Little Forest, 2022 (cdrama) What I was expecting: 8.5 / What I gave: 7.5

A smart beauty blogger (I think?) clashes with a former brainiac classmate from school and college who apparently rejected her, saying he wouldn't date someone as dumb as her. She decides to make him fall in love with the dumb version of herself to prove a point

I don't really know how to explain this drama, but the premise and Esther Yu and Zhang Binbin together seemed enough for me to watch. For a moment, it was good, but then it just turned zZzzZZZ. It was a bit of a letdown and a waste of actors.

Melody of Golden Age, 2024 (cdrama) What I was expecting: 7.5 / What I gave: 8

The Empress Dowager bestows a marriage between the third daughter of a family and the head of the imperial guard. When the third daughter runs away, the sixth daughter (the daughter of a concubine) takes her place as the bride.

Enemies to lovers with this premise? Chef kiss. Ding Yu Xi nails roles like this, and even at her young age, Ancy Deng is an incredibly charming female lead. I admit the drama might get a bit tiresome with the cases they have to solve (some of which confused me a bit lol), but the characters are interesting enough, and in general, it's a good drama to watch when there's nothing else.

Love Next Door, 2024 (kdrama) What I was expecting: 10 / What I gave: 8.5 :(

Two friends meet again after one of them comes back from the US.

This will be long because this was my most anticipated drama of the year. So, yeah, friends-to-lovers is not my thing at all. I never get into it. I went in with good expectations, though, because it had Jung Hae In (forever favorite K-actor), Jung So Min (one of my favorite K-actresses), and the same writer of Hometown Cha Cha Cha (like I said before, my favorite drama) This had everything to become a 10 in my books and a favorite drama. That being said, it disappointed me big time.

So yeah, I'm not a big fan of childhood-friends-to-lovers, but even less, when it's the type of friendship they portrayed here. The charm of their initial relationship is supposed to be that they don't want to admit they're friends and spend the whole time bickering. If they didn't know each other, I'd call it flirting, but it's kinda meh when this is just their entire thing. I'm not really into that type of relationship in dramas. Generally speaking, I can handle loud characters well in kdramas, no matter the age they are. I know they tend to be childish, and that's usually fine, but for some reason, here, it just bothered me big time. I just couldn't find the appeal of the leads dynamic.

Hae In and So Min were extremely cute together, and I loved that. But the writing?... I guess that was what disappointed me the most. The cancer trope was a huge eye-rolling moment for me, and I didn't like how they dealt with it at all. They ended up using it for Seok Ryu's family to finally be decent to her when they should have been like that without her medical condition. They presented a good problem (her parents expectations being way higher on her, the older sister and a woman, than on her younger brother) and dealt with it rather poorly. On another note, Making Seung Hyo's mother have symptoms of something but then not following through? Making Seun Hyo suddenly move back in with his parents without any reason (I assume it was because he wanted to live next to Seok Ryu, still...) The mothers and their dramas. Oh my god. I loved all the actresses, but I can't even compliment their friendship because it was low-key annoying how they'd constantly fight as well.

I don't know, I feel like they were a lot of little things accumulating that just made me question everything.

Things to rescue: I was really happy to see Jung Hae In in such a comedic role, and the second leads were absolutely everything to me.

Miss Day and Night, 2024 (kdrama) What I was expecting: Honestly, I don't know. What I gave: 8

FL keeps failing at public servant exams, but mostly, just life. At her most desperate moment, a mystic cat curses her (or does he?) and makes FL turn into an elderly lady as soon as the sun is up. Aside from all this, she meets ML, a cold prosecutor who she gets tangled up within a case that could connect both his dead mother and her missing aunt.

I started obsessed with this. Premise? Fun! Lee Jung Eun is the best! Chemistry? 100% there! Jung Eun Ji and Choi Jin Hyunk had such a sweet and tender dynamic, I absolutely loved it. My problem with this, as usuaaaaal, is the murder mystery. The mix of this premise with the FL turning into an old lady is a bit weird. They make up for it with fun moments, but ultimately, as the story progresses, they discard them in favor of more serious issues. It took me months to finish it, and I skipped a bit. The ending is cute, but, generally speaking, it was those kinds of endings where the drama should've been twelve episodes, and still, somehow, the ending felt rushed.

Didn't finish oops ⬇️

Serendipity's Embrace, 2024 (kdrama) What8.5

FL and ML meet again by accident. Both were classmates. Her best friend was in love with him, and he obviously was in love with FL. FL, on the other hand, was in love with a famous writer whom she then got to meet, date, and tragically break up with. Now, in the present, ML is not willing to let his first love get away.

Like I said before, I'm not the biggest fan of the (childhood) friends-to-lovers trope, but this one got me in the feels a bit (maybe because it's not so much a friendship but more of a high school crush). There's good chemistry here, cute moments, and a great OST. I don't know why I stopped watching, but I might return to it at some point.

My Sweet Mobster, 2024 (kdrama) 8

A kid’s content creator and an ex-mobster get entangled. But wait... did they know each other when they were kids? Duh, this is a kdrama.

This was one of the dramas I had been waiting for since I saw the amazing posters and the interesting premise. It was overall okay, though? I wouldn’t say it blew my mind, but I enjoyed watching most of it. It’s both cute and really funny. I didn't finish it because aside from the cute characters and the romance, the story was a bit meh. And even the romance, once they got together, it felt a bit flat.

#dovey watches #hometown cha cha cha #love next door #my sweet mobster #serendipity's embrace #miss day and night #melody of golden age #a romance of the little forest #cdrama #cdramsource #kdramadaily

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lattedecoffee · 7 months ago

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Finished Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club aka FMC3 or just Emio and holy shit that was a roller coaster.

Gameplay definitely feels updated from the 2021 remakes but not so much that it feels like a different game.

Those characters holy shit. Kamihara had frat boy vibes during his first scene but his voice actor was so good I started growing attached anyway and eventually started shipping him with the protag (Taro Ninten is the closest we have to a default name).

Taro has two hands: one for Ayumi and one for Kamihara. Anyway here's a break before I do spoilers.

Okay before I talk about the climax and especially the epilogue I want to call out Junko Kuze for trying to murder me and then stealing my fucking boyfriend. I love her and she's a fascinating character but she married Taro's boyfriend and I'm salty about it.

Okay so that ending. I had figured out that Makoto thought he was Minoru but I wasn't sure if he had some amount of amnesia or if Emio had fucked with his mind. Turns out it was mostly the amnesia but Emio certainly didn't help matters. Although it wasn't as intentionally malicious of a thing as I originally thought given...

When the game basically had Utsugi go "yeah the epilogue's gonna be real fucked up so make sure you're ready before you start it" I was concerned. The game hadn't provided a content warning before this point so I wondered what could be so severe that they'd provide one now. Watching it basically right before bed was probably a bad idea but somehow I had no nightmares (I did have an irrational "what if Emio's in the dark hallway" that made me use my phone flashlight more than I usually would but that's typical for me with horror games. Happened when I watched Markiplier play FNAF all those years ago but I handled it much better as an adult than as a child).

It was tragic and certainly extreme but the things that happened to Minoru never felt unrealistic. A child drowning as part of her effort to escape her abusive father, her older brother killing their father, and said older brother delusionally believing she was somehow still alive all feels like it could be a real story. The key here is that nobody ever stepped in to help Minoru. People recognized there was a problem all the way back when the father's abuse ramped up but nobody ever stepped in. The juvenile detention center heard him talk about Emiko as if she was still alive and did nothing. The Todorokis never pried into his personal life, which is generally a good and respectful thing to do, but we know he will open to people he trusts given he told Ayaka everything about his past. Ayaka was really the only person who tried but she was 17 and already going through a lot herself. She did seem to be helping him open up but once he saw she was being physically abused he projected Emiko onto her and only spiraled downward from there.

And yet despite all of this Utsugi reminds you what this guy actually did. He killed Ayaka after she freaked out at seeing him kill her abusive father (she also hated the guy but seeing your older brother figure kill someone with no remorse is understandably terrifying). He killed two more girls the same way simply because they were scared of him. He kidnapped a now amnesiac Makoto and told him they were both Minoru Tsuzuki and needed to find Emiko. He almost killed again 18 years later only to have his head bashed in by Makoto who had finally remembered who he was thanks to Junko's bookmark. I'm skipping over a lot of things but suffice to say the man ruined a lot of lives. His backstory is not an excuse nor does it mean he should be forgiven. It explains why he did these things and shows us how to avoid similar events.

As for Junko, I love her story. You can understand why she said she knew nothing even though it was in her and her brother's best interest for her not to lie. You understand why she makes Eisuke's suicide look like the murders from 18 years prior. You understand why she goes to the abandoned village alone. You understand why she claims to have killed Minoru. You understand why she threatens Taro's life for Makoto's sake. And yet all of those choices were awful. Had she not lied, her brother's disappearance would have been looked into for much longer as it was now a kidnapping. She stole a suicide note and hid it from everyone, including the victim's family and friends. She shuts Kami out of her investigation and leaves both him with doubts he doesn't want to acknowledge (hence why he lashes out at Taro for pointing out all the reasons Junko's behavior is suspicious). She threatens to kill someone who only showed up because he believed she was in danger. She knows all of this was wrong and it's clear the guilt has been eating her alive, especially after what she did to Eisuke's death. She apologizes through tears while holding Taro at gunpoint and after explaining herself to him still can't go through with pulling the trigger. She just wants her older brother back and was doing anything she could. And while she does have him back, he's going to need a lot of support through physical rehab, hopefully intensive therapy, and a reintroduction to society (he was going into town but pretty much only to do construction work and then leave). And she has to apologize to Eisuke's family and friends. And to Taro, though he doesn't seem to be holding a grudge. Also "I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience I may have brought to your lives" is the funniest way to genuinely apologize for almost murdering someone.

Many characters in the game have been through some sort of childhood trauma. Our protagonist, Ayumi, Junko, Makoto, Minoru, Ayaka, Megumi, Eisuke, Kohei, Mama Shoko, and more. Only Minoru ends up being a serial killer. Only Junko and Makoto do terrible non-murder things. All the rest of these characters do nothing of the sort. Some acquire the supports of both peers and the adults around them, others manage to pull through largely on their own, and some we will never know how their story would have gone as it ended far too soon (either of their own volition or not). The game never says that childhood trauma = doing awful things. The game warns that ignoring signs that someone, especially a child, is not okay will often end in tragedy. Someone has to step in. Only a few people are obligated to intervene, but if the people who are supposed to intervene don't or are part of the problem then someone else must.

Eisuke's friends believe he committed suicide until they're told the crime scene doesn't match that. And yet they were right. They were the only ones who noticed something was wrong, but neither of them were able to do anything besides ask him if he was okay (he'd lie and say he was).

One last thing before I stop writing because wow this post is long: I love how Fukuyama was genuinely just a good guy with negative people skills. I was so worried he was doing something to Megumi and finding out that his response to her confession was to try to turn her down gently while clarifying that he did care about her as a teacher is supposed to care about their students. He didn't succeed in explaining that to her and she ended up assuming the harshest possible interpretation, but she seemed to already have a very concerning view on love (someone doesn't return her romantic feelings and her next question is "do you hate me?") so I'm not sure even the best possible wording could've helped there. As for him and Ayumi, it's up to interpretation whether he's interested in her romantically or not, but I choose to see it as him seeing her as his first student to grow up. He never formally taught her, but he was her upperclassman in naginata club. So she's the first person who he helped teach that he gets to see thriving as an adult. And now they're functionally peers, with her being able to comfort him about how Eisuke's death is not his fault as he had no way of knowing how things would go and made the best choices he could (he also literally saves Megumi + the whole case about midway through the game).

#I was reacting to it on discord to friends who had never played the games #and there's some quality bits there that I might post #THE PARALLELS THO #I DIDN'T EVEN TALK ABOUT THE PARALLELS IN THIS POST #the ways that minoru+emiko and makoto+junko and minoru+ayaka have a lot of simlarities but also so many differences #and wow i didn't even talk about the shears scene #as I said once the scene was done: oh fuck that’s way worse than any of my original theories [for why that apartment was so bloody]#famicom detective club #emio #emio nintendo #who is emio #emio the smiling man

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sophieinwonderland · 2 years ago

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It turns out, I'm still not done venting about the SN's smear document and the grievances with my November posts they used to defend contextualize the fakeclaiming and misgendering posts from the admin about me.

A recent post from Lunastus reminded me of this bullet point.

This threw me for a loop because this quote isn't even mine.

It was from the Lunastus Collective who coined the term.

Sure, I reblogged it and defended it, but it wasn't my quote and it's so weird to see this attributed to me.

But with this latest round of drama SAS started, I also want to talk about the drama surrounding the word endogenic and its coiner.

Recap for those who missed that ridiculous drama: The LC coined the term in 2014. In 2021, SAS found a 2015 article that loosely associated the word "endogenic" with Freud supporting the fantasy model. SAS specifically claimed that "the term 'endogenic' can be traced all the way back to Freud's work in 1956!"

But on further investigation, every paper prior to that used a similar but different term, endogenous.

In the end, "endogenic system" is a term 100% coined by the Lunastus Collective.

Endogenic was never used to refer to systems before that.

Now, rather than admit they were wrong, SAS and their entitled cronies doubled down and claimed the words were still too similar, then had the gall to demand an apology from the LC for the baseless made-up manufactured drama.

I've seen some argue that their issue was less with the term and more with the response. That they felt their feelings were being dismissed. (And that part, yeah, was mostly me.)

The problem is that not all feelings deserve to be validated. Not everyone who feels they're in the right actually is. Sometimes in life, you're just on the wrong side, and humoring your feelings will do more harm than good.

Personally, I think The Lunastus Collective deserves an apology for the harassment they received over SAS's smear campaign.

Now, coming back to the latest round of manufactured drama today... let me tell you what these experiences have taught me.

These people don't have "morals." They have friends and enemies.

If you're lucky enough to find yourself on the former list, expect them to loyally turn a blind eye to your wrongdoings for as long as they reasonably can. And when they can't, you can depend on them to make a 20-bullet-point list of things your victim did to deserve it. (Much of which will be fabricated, twisted or taken out of context.)

If you're an enemy, expect them to comb over every word you say. Expect them to twist your words and outright lie about you. Anything to justify their hate of you and manipulate others to feel the same.

This is, unfortunately, their modus operandi.

The thing is, I think they overplayed their hand this time.

I don't think people are really buying the whole "wanting anti-endos to be ostracized is literally worse than death threats or suibait" talking point they have going on.

It's comically overdramatic and, frankly, minimizes the real harm of death threats and suibait in favor of a cheap talking point.

Obviously, people who hate me will continue to hate me and the usual suspects are jumping on it hard as always.

But their posts about this aren't generating much engagement, which SAS's usually do. Usually a couple days into one of SAS's smears, I might have lost a few followers that will take me a whole day or two to regain or I'll get a couple hate anons relating to it.

This feels different. Especially if people were buying the severity of the allegations SAS and pals are trying to push. I have no doubt everyone would be rightly enraged if I were sending actual threats of violence.

But I'm not seeing that here.

I hope this means people are waking up to the lies and manipulation tactics they use, and will start thinking critically about SAS's past smears of both myself and other systems. Admittedly, this might be too much to hope for.

Anyway, you can all can go home now.

This one's a bust.

But maybe you'll get me next time. 🤷‍♀️

#syscourse #pro endo #pro endogenic #survivor's network #survivors network #survivors' network

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atsoine · 5 months ago

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My OSDD Medical Recognition Process

I've had this on my mind a lot lately so I figured I'd yap about it. I was medically recognized with OSDD in 2022*, when I was 15 years old. By this point, I'd been on/off seeing a therapist via my school's partnership with multiple licensed therapists for a few years. This therapist was the same one that diagnosed me with gender dysphoria and persistant depression when I was 12-13, in 8th grade.

"That's such an early age to get such severe diagnoses!!" I was forcibly put in therapy multiple times against my mom's will because my teachers could see how troubled I was. I was a problem child and displayed severe mental illness symptoms from a young age. I'm kinda that "exception rare case" people talk about offhandedly like those people don't actually exist. I was in special ed for 5 years for behavior issues, I went to an alternative school for a while, I'm not just some random average student recieving multiple diagnoses at a young age for no reason.

*Anyway. Retelling this story actually made me realize my timeline was off about when I discovered my system. I originally remembered it being 2021 that I was med. recog. but it was actually early 2022, same school year though hence my confusion. It was a little bit before Spring Break, which will become relevant.

I began suspecting I was a system in mid 2021, the earliest record I have of labelling myself plural in any way being from August 2021 specifically. So I waited around half a year to bring it up to my therapist. I don't have an exact month of early 2022 where I mentioned it, but I know it was prior to Spring Break by a bit.

Most of my memories of this time are fuzzy and missing, but the short of it is that I disclosed to my therapist that I was suspecting some sort of dissociative disorder and I described my alter Nick. This was when I (Toby) was the most dominant alter, so I was doing a lot of this talking. My therapist believed me and said he wanted to assess me officially for OSDD, but that he would need to inform my mother, and we both knew that was unsafe for me. So we talked about it for a few sessions, many of which I fully don't remember so I can't get specific.

I remember the lead-up to one session though, and I'll mention it because fucking hell. It was over Spring Break, told ya that'd be relevant. Because we didn't have school, and I normally saw my therapist during school hours, we set up to meet at the local library for our session. This was the one where we ended up planning to get me assessed for OSDD, hopefully during my next session, but that next session never happened for reasons I'll get into later.

When my mom was dropping me off for the Spring Break session, she was drunk. Yes yes, drunk driving, I'm very used to her doing that. She kept talking shit about how I was only so adament about seeing my therapist over break because I wanted to "fuck him." Mind you, I was 15, and he's an old man who has never made me uncomfortable in any way. He's my licensed therapist. But my mom can't keep it in her pants, so I can't be too surprised that she thinks everyone else is like her.

My mom's comments made me so fucking uncomfortable, but I got through the session feeling hopeful about the next one. I knew the plan was to assess me the next session. Around this same time, I'd been talking to my therapist about my tics. When I was 15, I started experiencing motor and vocal tics. It started as just one motor tic, but over a few months it got a lot worse. My therapist agreed that I clearly display tics, but he wanted to see about having my mom take me to a medical doctor before assessing me for Tourette's, in case it was a physical issue he wasn't aware of.

Well, sometime between the Spring Break session and when I was supposed to have my next one, my mom caught wind of me wanting to be assessed for why I'm having tics, and she freaked the everliving fuck out. She immediately pulled me out of therapy and blew up my phone while I was in school, about how I'm a liar and faking it for attention, all the classic bs. Because she pulled me out of therapy, I never got to have those assessments. Even when I was 16 and got back into therapy with a different therapist, I never pursued assessments again, because I knew it was unsafe and impossible while my mom still had custody over me.

So for years, I've been recognized with OSDD and tics/Tourette's, but never formally assessed to be diagnosed. If I'd been able to, I would have gotten the full assessments and appropriate diagnoses, but that was out of my control.

- Toby (He/They/Nym)

#actually did #did system #plurality #did osdd #pro endo #endo safe #osdd #osdd1b #<- what i originally thought i had #before i learned more about amnesia and realized i have DID

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catbearexe · 6 months ago

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BACK FROM LONG HIATUS! IF YOU ARE NOSY OR NEW, PLEASE READ!!!

WOW it has been such a long time since i've used this platform. I used to use this website to religiously to feed my anime and video game fan art addiction as well as share my artworks. Here's what I've been up to since!

My mental health took a massive nosedive into the void. I didn't think I was going to even make it through college at all. Though, I think that is pretty common during the COVID era, but my mental health as always been a problem wayyy before the pandemic.

I attempted to delete myself permanently on New Year's Eve of 2021, but I woke up to DIY surgery on arms, multiple bottles of empty liters of vodka, and unfortunately...still alive. When I came to around 5:00AM, I figured that I needed to leave my toxic environment and ended up staying at a friend's house for a few weeks before I started my first day at my first internship in the co-op program. I made a few drawings here and there and posted on my Instagram, but they never really made rounds and I had a long pause in drawing overall for a good couple of years due to being under an immense amount of stress, school, athletics, and working multiple jobs to stay afloat. I was eventually able to stay in a dorm. But, when the bill came around for the semester, all of my internship money went down the drain to pay for just staying on campus at my University despite not taking any classes. It was over $5000 dollars by the time the spring semester ended, and my university doesn't tell you the cost of dormitory until the last week of the semester.

I did get my first partner around 3-4 months of going no-contact with my family in 2022, and then ended it around New Years of 2023 due to their family having strong bigoted beliefs based on their faith in Christianity. It came to a great disdain to me that they never even knew what I looked like, or knew what my name was until 3 months after we separated despite being together for about 9 months prior. It also didn't help that I went cold-turkey on zoloft as it began to be too expensive (my psychiatrist was also very judgmental and made me feel ashamed and each 10-15 minute session was over $200 co-pay).

I decided (last second) to obtain my graduate degree in my university's accelerated program, allowing me to obtain my master's in engineering within a year instead of 2. During my final spring semester for my undergraduate program, I was taking classes for my bachelors, masters, and physics minor at the same time. Yet, I had a massive improvement in my performances athletic-wise despite the busy schedule and stress I amassed.

When I graduated with my bachelors degree, my mother decided to show up to my graduation unannounced and made a scene, screaming at the top of her lungs that she always supported me and tried kissing my face in front of my class and my beloved friends that I actually invited. For context, my family were my first and only bully. Before I was able to have my own bank account, any money that I made went straight to them and I would have to beg them to give me my money to buy anything. Additionally, they ripped through my mail and got very upset that I got into school at all. It was like I was expected to fail so hard to give them an excuse to get rid of me. It also happened to solidify that my parents now know that I am a transman as my university outted me unintentionally. The looks of disgust spread around me while I was trying to shove her off of me, and she never apologized due to her thought that "that is my DAUGHTER! I can do whatever I want!"

(I am a transman, and have been out for almost 8+ years at this point)

During my summer master classes, I was able to obtain another internship that was flexible to maintain during my time in the master's program and fit with my athletic schedule. That internship ended up becoming the most flexible and fun job I ever had and solidified the reason why I chose mechanical engineering as my career path.

However, during that summer I ended contact with a 10+ year group friendship. I knew that there had to be a time for work-life balance, but it felt impossible with the things I had on my plate. The immense guilt in having to prioritize my studies and survival over my long-term friends picked at me for years. I had to choose pulling irritated all-nighters with sleep problems or miss payments of over $550/MONTH for student loans as well as my schooling, rent, bills, etc. I had to sacrificed meals because of the cost and time to even eat.

A few weeks later, my grandfather on my mother's side passed away, and my mother broke down after the first mass how "I NEED you to forgive me" because she missed me and everybody kept asking her about me, making her look bad because of how I was just cut out of the entire family. She never calculated that people in real life actually cared about me, and it took everything inside of me to not blow up in her face. She is grieving, yet she only cared about how she was perceived by other people.

Regardless of the scholarship, which I was awarded in exchange for becoming a graduate assistant for the undergraduate courses, I ended up having to reach out to my father that I cut contact with to sign off on my loan as I had nobody. As much as I did not want to having not contacted them in almost 2.5 years, I didn't want to drop out of school and had no where else to turn to. So I did. My younger sister notified me that our beloved grandmother may not make it past 2024. It devastated me. I decided to break no-contact after years of estrangement and began to cautiously come back to visiting my grandmother's household where my parents resided. It was no surprise that their treatment wasn't any different than when I had left, and tried my best to keep it together for the sake of the only family member that treated me like a person.

On a random side note, I decided to try to put myself out in the dating field again about 8 months after my ex-partner and I separated. However, it has come to a disdain from my now ex-friendships that I went on dates with men instead of getting responses back from women (the street works both ways, I can't force women to go on dates with me). I eventually found myself in a confusing relationship with an infantry officer that lasted for about 3 months until he messaged if we were just friends and apologized if he is being confusing. A month later, a close friend of mine messaged me the Tiktok account of said-situationship obtaining a boyfriend shortly after he sent me that message. They also showed the demographic of their audience being creepy old men thirsting over an online thirst trap of someone who is in twink-death denial. When they texted me 9 months after we saw each other, I made sure I made them sweat by telling them that I knew about their secret account. As it turns out, their family is not only extremely Christian, but he and all of his siblings were homeschooled. His family does not even accept his current partner. Despite the whole fiasco he pulled, I couldn't help but still feel sorry for him as I was in the same position once.

The whole year of 2023 had me feeling like I was on top of the world. When Christmas came around, I was just stuck in another depressive episode for another 9 months. My athletic performance went on a massive decline, I was stuck in my room isolating myself, and I was struggling academically and was terrified that I would lose my scholarship. Despite all of this, I still passed, I got my degree, I got a full-time high paying job right out of graduate school, and moved into my apartment.

To put the nail in the coffin, my partner and I rekindled our relationship and now live together happily. I was terrified that I was going to lose him again after he moved in as I started testosterone the day after running in my last collegiate NCAA event of my life. The irritation, the mood swings, the h0rnY definitely put our relationship to the test. I even asked him if he even loved me at all. Even after me lashing out, being a terrible person, seeing me at my worst, he sat me down and talked to me. He communicated that if I have a problem with anything, I need to tell him directly. He assured me that we can be mad at things, but we will get through it and we will figure it out. In the first time of my life, I felt okay with accepting parts of me that are hard to deal with and never even knew about. The anger of everything eventually went away within about 3-4 months. We now happily live together, go on dates, and are now hoping to go on an out-of-country trip to Japan at some point.

While our relationships has solidified, my health had other plans. After 5 years of not seeing a doctor, I finally had the time and funds to seek help again. I found that the sarcoma, that I was diagnosed with all throughout high school, is in my right lung an grew 6 times the size in comparison to my last scan. My wisdom teeth in my right upper and lower jaw will need an evaluation from an oral surgeon because it seems to be fused to my skull and packed in, my lazy eye has gotten significantly worse and will need 10-12 days of no work from surgery. I used up most of my PTO to go to all of these appointments, only to find that I will need more than 2 sessions of surgeries because of neglecting my health for so long. Gotta thank the American healthcare system am I right?

When I got in touch with a therapist, they explained that my brain has been under excessive survival mode for too long that my window of tolerance is so miniscule. Wrong turn, spilling a cup of jawn, any minor mistakes could result in a massive meltdown as I am not used to being in an environment where there is little to no stress. Thankfully it has gotten A LOT better.

I also got in touch with a lot of schoolmates I have been meaning to hang out with. Turns out they had the same thought and were afraid that I didn't like them anymore because of their focus on schoolwork. This phenomenon of my friends in STEM losing friends due to academics was sadly a common theme, and I am so thankful that they understood that we both have stressful lives we are living. What a time to be in to laugh at each other having the same thought when it turned out we were in the same boat.

When my ex-friend reached out to me again about a year later, I felt the utter guilt of having to turn down their offer to reconvene as I had a LOT of oncology appointments and getting used to moving into a new apartment as well as my job while taking care of my sick grandmother. I had no furniture for 3-4 months, and was in great disdain when they guilt tripped me that I made them a low priority over my lung having another growing sarcoma along with spending my time with the only family member that treated me like a person.

Another downside I have found is that I may have girl-bossed too hard all of my life. I used to over-extend myself in social situations and use unfortunate coping mechanism to last over an hour. Now, it takes everything in me to go out in public, especially to my Muay Thai classes. I can't help but feel my arms tremble and heartbeat racing when I leave my little apartment space.

It is now 2025, my partner and I live happily together, I have reconnected with my hobbies, and can finally relax and enjoy myself without feeling the insane amount of dread of what is coming next. I am also currently figuring out where to get tested for autism and ADHD as my brother exhibited almost the same symptoms I did with the exception that my parents actually cared about him to get him therapy and medication (his meds barely hold him back).

Life is great, and I am so glad to be back!

#life update #update #blog #catbear.exe blogs #life #life is good #life can be bad #it gets better #mental health #mental illness #autism #adhd #add #auadhd #living

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bigskydreaming · 2 years ago

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Bit of a vent post, bit of a housekeeping post, bit of a 'so that's what's been happening in Kalen-land' post:

So I have officially done everything that can be done to prepare for our relocation to a different site while they do construction on this one for the next year, which should be....any day now. Since it was originally supposed to happen on October 2nd, lol. Oh, bureaucracy.

If I wrote a memoir of the last two years specifically, 'Oh, Bureaucracy' would be the title, actually. So obviously its no secret that Moukie & I have been struggling for a long time, even after my surgery back in December 2021. But pretty much all of that has to do with our struggles to hack through bureaucracy to secure some actual stability and longterm living situation, since....oh, January 2022. We've finally secured a five year lease to stay in this place (with the exception of the next year, at a different site during construction, as I mentioned), but like....we only JUST got that agreement officially in writing, signed & notarized & all that...last week.

After being told it was basically a done deal but they couldn't finalize anything or put anything in writing until the building sold and the property changed hands and one city service took over oversight of this particular property from another one....pretty much every month since November of last year. They changed dates and timelines on us so many times it was like every three week we'd have a completely new timeline we were looking at for when we could expect to have everything finalized or for the relocation to happen, etc. Most recently, we were told with complete certainty that everyone HAD to be out October 2nd, that construction would be starting immediately after that, nobody would be allowed to stay in the building.

October 31st, and we're still here, lol.

So that's been a fun non-stop rollercoaster ride of stress, lol. The problem, of course, is that before my surgery (12/2021), I'd quite literally been homeless for at least the five years prior to that. Fortunately I never quite made it to the point of having to sleep outside, though there were plenty of times it got close, and spent most of that time living out of cheap motels & extended stay housing while working towards getting enough money together for my surgery, but as far as any landlord or potential renter is concerned, I was for all intents & purposes homeless during that time, and that's....not great when trying to secure housing in the middle of a pandemic right after basically starting your life over from scratch after the surgery to fix the problem that basically derailed your entire life, lol. Not to mention my credit score was practically nonexistent, all my credit cards were maxed out to pay for the surgery & insurance, my driver's license had been expired for years due to not being even able to drive while I had my issues w/my jaw & everything related to that, and getting it back was easier said than done because I'd had like, two unpaid parking tickets at the time of my medical issues beginning & they kinda completely dropped out of sight, out of mind, only to multiply w/fees that were fucking ridiculous to contemplate & going down to the DMV or traffic court to try and argue them down, while my medical issues were still ongoing, was a nonstarter due to how little travel I was capable of in that state....

LOL. Not a great starting point when rebooting for Kalen 2.0 - and of course I'm not going to get into why we had to use my ID & everything for renting & all that, instead of Moukie's, just trust that there were Reasons.

And of course there are programs to help people out with these kinds of circumstances, which is basically what we've been doing since January 2022....navigating that labyrinth of red tape, because actually ACCESSING those programs, proving eligibility, meeting all requirements, keeping consistent with all requirements throughout the months of waiting on a verdict from higher-ups your file's been passed up the chain to....MUCH easier said than done. The hoops are just. The stuff of legends. Especially when you're still having trouble consistently staying stocked on the meds you need to be productive & functional, or even just keeping your phone active. Oof. All of that was very Not Fun.

Which segues into a bit of that venting I was talking about, because over & over the past couple years we've had well-meaning (and not so well-meaning & largely just obnoxious) people asking us in response to our donation posts like, well why don't we just move to a cheaper city? LOL. I just. I wish people would stop to think that maybe if there's such an obvious solution that someone hasn't availed themselves to yet, there's probably a REASON for that.

We actually had several. For starters, there's the fact that I still have stuff related to my jaw to deal with....I still have no teeth, lol, and haven't really been able to even START getting the bone grafts I need to be able to get implants at some point, so I'm not stuck with dentures for the next fifty years....and it took me literal years to find dentists familiar with my situation, willing to work with me on payment plans & longterm strategizing, etc.....not that easy to just start over with all of that in another, smaller city. Not to mention if I do have any problems with my prosthetic, LA's one of the only places that has ANY surgeons that deal with this specific kind of jaw replacement surgery, so I'd always have to come back here for any further medical related stuff.

But then there's additionally the fact that all those programs meant to help people like us who are literally trying to restart their lives after medical issues, homelessness, etc.....they're pretty much all specific to their own city. They're all contingent on each individual city's resources, services, populations and a million other details.....so moving to a different city basically means having to start all over again with applying to THAT city's housing aid programs & navigating THAT city's bureaucracy from its beginning & forfeiting however much time or progress you've put in already in the city you're currently in. And frankly, most cities don't HAVE as good of aid programs as LA does....its just...it takes fucking forever to actually make full USE of such programs, as evident from the fact that after almost two years, we're only FINALLY to the point where one of those programs has been able to actionably help us secure longterm housing.

(And also there's the fact that when we don't even have enough money for groceries, how cheap do people thinking picking up and moving to another city actually IS? Like. You need starter money to even GET there & get on your feet or you wind up in an even worse situation than we were in).

But honestly, we didn't have it so bad, we have been able to stay housed & working various odd jobs for the past two years....its just been long, and stressful, never actually knowing when or even IF we'd get to the point where we stopped worrying about being kicked out at any given moment, and there were times that looking for housing or trying to deal with bureaucratic red tape was the equivalent of a full time job, in terms of hours required.

All of which is to say....be aware when assuming the worst of various donation posts & their posters, that except in the case of actual scammers, no matter what you may think of how a particular donation request was worded or described their situation, its almost always VASTLY more complicated than can be summed up in a couple of easy to read paragraphs that might actually get people to help. I promise you, if super obvious solutions seem evident to you, they've occurred to the people living with that situation 24/7, and there's a reason that they haven't tried that solution or maybe they even did & for whatever reason it didn't actually work out.

And that said, all of this is also to say just....thank you again for everyone who's helped us out over the years. I know it often seems unending or like we're never getting our acts together, lol, but trust me, it feels that way to us too, times a million, and like....we're working on it. Its just. Much easier said than done. For every hurdle cleared, there's usually another one waiting to pop up like a fucking whack-a-mole game from Hell. Since January 2022 we've been consistently working towards a longterm, stable housing situation and this is it, this is what we were working towards.....we've been fully approved for relocation to the other site for the next year & then returning to this one after construction/renovation, w/a lease agreement for the next five years.....and that's the dream, honestly.

Genuine stability, not having to worry about whether we'll have to move at any given moment, actual housing security....allowing us to FINALLY focus on building our lives back up, instead of constantly grinding just to keep a roof over our head & make sure nobody's about to kick us out....and having the room to breathe & for the first time in literal years (in my case, almost seven at this point) actually prioritize something OTHER than figuring out where we stand on paperwork, filing, tracking down various liaisons to bug them yet again about an accurate timeline for when we'd be notified of whether or not we'd been approved for this program or that one, when we'd actually be relocating, when we had to make x payment by to ensure we didn't lose our qualified status, etc.

And I, for one, definitely can not WAIT to give more of a shit about the absolute stupidest shit imaginable instead of like....warily checking the hall to see if new eviction notices popped up overnight. LMAO.

Anyway. Like I said, we finally have our agreement in writing, we know where we're relocating to, and as soon as that actually happens - which they keep insisting should be any day now, sigh - we'll finally be in a much better place. As part of the relocation program we landed in, our rent at the other site is covered during the year this site is under construction, so already just from that alone we'll be much better off financially.

Moukie's been sending around a donation post this month, and we'll probably keep it circulating up until the day the movers arrive and they finally pull the trigger on us leaving this site, because for the last three months they've been insisting that October 2nd was absolutely going to be our last day here, and we planned around that timetable....meaning that since October 2nd came and went with us still here, our only jobs at the moment are whatever freelance ones we can scrounge up, since the new place is far enough away a commute to & from a workplace around HERE wouldn't be viable, so I can't even go look for a new one to replace the last one until we're actually in the area we'll be spending next year in, lol. So in the meanwhile we've basically been surviving off donations since freelance work is painfully dry at the moment, and as it is, the company Moukie does editing work for still hasn't paid them for their last job yet, which was back in September, I believe? Its ridiculous, but it is what it is.

So yeah, we'll keep that post circulating a bit longer til we're out of here for good, basically just for food money until we're settled in the new place & can grab a new 9-5 and I would say something about that damn patreon I'm always claiming I'll make except I am a Proven Liar Not To Be Trusted On That Subject at this point, but hey, once we're in the new place, maybe that will finally change.

That's basically everything I set out to ramble about, I think, so....I'm done. Wait. Lemme check - yeah, no, that's it, I'm good. I've said it before but it'll never stop being true: we would not have survived if it weren't for the kindness of strangers & the help of mutuals & followers & we really are so much more appreciative of it than I can ever adequately express. I know that can come across as lip service, but genuinely, people here have done more for us and to help us and to see us succeed than our families ever did and we've been reduced to ugly-crying more than once as a result. Its gotten bad, guys. Like. When I go all out, it's not a pretty sight. I've got that pale Irish skin that gets all splotchy when I'm emotional, my nose gets all stopped up, I make scrunchy faces like a baby that KNOWS its not as pretty as its parents keep trying to pretend and is out to prove it....its a whole mess.

And on that note - and imagery - I'm officially done here. Thanks for reading!

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