#something off of a twitter thread had me thinking

[theviolenttomboy]

Something all the layoffs made me think, another legitimately sad and fucked up thing about the video game industry is at this point, Nintendo's probably the only company left that still has almost all of their OG devs from the 80s and 90s, their version of Disney's Nine Old Men. Almost all the veteran staff from other older, still existing companies, even the Japanese ones like Capcom and Sega, are long gone, either retired or went indie to wildly differing degrees of success. And all the newer companies keep shutting down or get absorbed before they even get a chance.

[sicutpuella]

Twitter Incels | Simon “Ghost” Riley

That phase where you slowly start hating your girlfriend is insane.

That damned Twitter thread. It's been haunting her for a week now. She can't stop opening it, her heart sinking further with every new addition. She reads every disheartening tweet: “I’m waiting for her to catch me cheating so she can break up with me,” “I close my eyes when we kiss because she’s so fuckin’ ugly!” And the horrible comments just keep coming…

She’s somehow semi-grateful Simon doesn’t have Twitter or any social accounts—he thinks social media is stupid; but she can’t help but have that self-doubt of paranoia and overthinking—what if Simon had thought of the same thing?

Simon, on the other hand, had a day filled with boredom and frustration.

He doesn't know what his girlfriend has been going through; instead, he's been preoccupied with his own thoughts. He's been itching to spend some quality time together, but she's been unusually distant lately. It’s been almost two days since they last hung out, and the silence is weighing heavily on him.

He's tried reaching out through text, but her responses have been short and distant. This isn't like her at all. The more he thinks about it, the more irritated he feels. He's starting to wonder what's going through her head.

So… he invites himself back into her house and sees her watching something.

He joins her on the couch, making his presence known with a heavy sigh. Crossing his arms, he turns his attention to the screen.

"Hey," he says, trying to sound neutral. "What are you watching?"

Oh—just… Breaking Bad." She looked sad.

Simon notices the hint of sadness in her voice; it catches him off guard. He turns his gaze to her, studying her expression closely.

"You alright?" he asks, his tone a mix of concern and curiosity. He doesn’t understand why she seems so down.

He knew he did nothing wrong; he double-checked his calendar—he didn’t miss any birthday, any anniversary, or any other silly shenanigans she had for the week. So he wonders.

The more he sits there, the more confused and frustrated he becomes. He can't comprehend why she’s acting this way. He wracks his brain, trying to think of something he might have done or said to upset her. But he comes up empty, only increasing his irritation.

"You've been distant lately," he states bluntly, unable to keep the annoyance out of his voice.

"It's like you've been avoiding me," he continues, his irritation growing with every word. He shifts on the couch, leaning closer to her, his eyes searching her face for any hint of what’s going on in her head.

"What's going on?" he presses, his tone firm but laced with a hint of concern. He can't shake the feeling that something is off, and the silence is only making him more agitated.

“Do you hate me? Do you feel like you’re starting to hate me?” Her tone was soft and vulnerable, he realized— she was overthinking again. 

As she spoke, each question hit him like a punch to the gut. He recoiled, taken aback by the insecurities spilling from her mouth.

He gently placed his hand on her shoulder, his expression softened. “No, never.” he said firmly. “I don’t hate you, I don’t make fun of you, and I definitely don’t think you’re annoying.”

He paused, his eyes locked onto hers. “And you’re goddamn beautiful, you know that.” 

She still had a bit of a pout. He couldn’t help but chuckle at her pout, his irritation completely replaced by affection. 

He shifted on the couch, moving even closer to her. He put his arm around her, pulling her against his side. “Seriously, where’s all this coming from?” he asked again, his tone gentle.

”This…” she shows him the infamous twitter thread— to which he has no knowledge of since he is chronically offline. He scans the Twitter thread, his expression growing more dumbfounded with each new addition. He couldn’t believe that was the reason she was feeling so insecure!

“Really?” he said after finishing reading it. “This is what made you doubt me? A bunch of idiotic tweets from strangers on a screen?”

He shakes his head, his expression a mix of disbelief and annoyance. “You know how stupid Twitter is, right? You can’t trust anything on there. It’s just people spewing nonsense, looking for attention and validation.”

He scrolls some more, “typical boy behavior…” he clicks his tongue with annoyance.

“Look at them… they keep tweeting about how much they hate their girlfriends!” She crosses her arms.

“Yeah, and most of them are probably made by sad and bitter assholes who can’t even find someone who’d put up with them for more than five minutes.” He rolls his eyes, scanning through the thread again, his irritation growing with each tweet.

“Besides…” he glances at her with a smirk, “do I look like one of those morons?”

“No…”

“Exactly,” he said firmly, his gaze fixed on hers. “I'm not one of those dumb, shallow idiots.”

He gently placed his hand on her knee, giving it a comforting squeeze. “You don’t have to listen to any of this bullshit.” He gestured towards the Twitter thread. “None of that matters, not when you have me.”

He paused for a moment, his expression softening. “You’re beautiful, intelligent, and I can’t get enough of you. I’m with you because I want to be, not because some dumbass on Twitter says I should hate you.”

“But… but look at what they’re tweeting, babe!” Her voice pitches up.

“Sounds like a bunch of incels.” He chuckles to himself while scrolling.

He chuckled without humor. “And look at all the dumbass replies. People agreeing with this crap because they’re insecure idiots who can’t appreciate what they have.” He takes her hands in his, gently rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. “But you know who you’re dating, right? A man who adores every part of you. A man who would shoot those basement incels in the face if they spoke about you like that in front of me.”

“Yeah, but they’re like—comparing their girlfriends to… to… their first loves…” she sighs, pulling her knees to her chest. She still felt insecure. He noticed her pulling away, the insecurity still evident in her body language. He pulled her closer to his side, wrapping his arm around her.

“Seriously?” he scoffed, his annoyance evident. “Comparing their girlfriends to first loves? That’s the most shallow and idiotic thing I’ve ever heard.” He let out a frustrated groan. “And who cares about first loves anyway? They’re called ‘first’ for a reason—because they usually end for a reason.”

He gently lifted her chin, making her look at him. “I’m not thinking about my first love— fuck don’t think I even had one… or comparing you to anyone else. I’m here with you, aren’t I?”

“You sure?” She pouts. “No taxi-cab theory or anything?”

He rolls his eyes, letting out a frustrated sigh. “Are you serious? Who even comes up with these shithole theories?” He pauses, trying to compose himself. “First of all, that’s another dumb thing people on the internet say to make themselves feel better. Second, why do you still watch those TikToks when they just make your insecurities flare up?”

She sighs, realizing he had a big point.

He noticed the sigh, realizing she understood what he was saying.

He softened his expression, his annoyance fading into a gentle concern. “Babe, you’ve got to stop listening to random crap on the internet. Especially when it’s making you doubt yourself and us.”

He wraps his arm tighter around her, pulling her closer still. “You’re amazing, you’re beautiful, and you’re the only one I want to be with. Don’t let some dumbass TikTokers and Twitter incels make you think otherwise, alright?”

He saw the corners of her mouth lifting into a small smile, and it brought a sense of relief to him. He knew he was getting through to her, making her see that she had nothing to worry about.

“There’s that smile I love,” he said softly, his thumb caressing her cheek.

She nodded, their eyes locked. She knew he was right; he had never once made her feel unloved. He held her gaze, seeing the realization dawn in her eyes, the understanding that she had nothing to worry about.

“Good,” he said, a small smile forming on his face. “Now, can you please delete that stupid TikTok app before you start questioning the very foundation of our relationship again?”

”It’s Twitter! TikTok and Twitter are different…” She cutely huffed.

He rolled his eyes, sarcasm evident in his voice. “Yeah, yeah, I know. One is full of annoying dances and teenagers, and the other is full of annoying people and their stupid opinions. Big difference.”

He took a deep breath, gathering his thoughts, his struggle to express himself verbally apparent.

“But seriously,” he said earnestly, his hand gently squeezing hers, “You’re the most beautiful woman in my eyes. I love you, and I want to spend my life with you. There’s no one else for me, and I’ll always be here to remind you of that, even if I’m not the best at saying it.”

[thedarkdisgrace]

Random thread from twitter I made about Chuuya, who he is, with quotes from Storm Bringer:

“Don’t act like you’re the good guy here, Verlaine. Yeah, this researcher’s a piece of shit, but you’re the one who killed my friends.” Chuuya smacked himself in the chest. “I can feel their lives burning right here inside me and till those flames die down, I can’t just do whatever I want. I’m gonna do what I need to do. That’s who I am.”

….

“The light in his eyes was determination. It was the powerful brilliance of humankind, something gained only through encounters and partings with other people.”

“You’ve been completely wrong from the very start,” Chuuya spat in disgust. “‘Being born was a mistake’? Sounds like the kind of garbage Dazai would spew, and no way in hell am I ever gonna think the way he does!”

—

Chuuya being brutally tortured by N only minutes before the above quotes take place but all he cares about is avenging his friends.

Chuuya doesn’t let Verlaine push his views onto him. Chuuya knows who he is & he’ll suffer anything to protect those he cares about & he believes people are *worth it all*.

Also Chuuya sacrificing his last chance to confirm he’s human (which we know he is human by the epilogue) to save the city without even giving it that much thought when even *Dazai* thought it was important to consider. Dazai was willing to sacrifice the city if Chuuya chose to find out if he’s human. But it took Chuuya less than 30 seconds to sacrifice his own wants to activate corruption for the first time & save the city.

“Right as he had made his way down three steps, he heard a refreshing clank from behind. It sounded like someone had just leaped off a metal plank. The moment Dazai realized what the sound was, he looked back in surprise. There was nobody on top of the platform anymore.

After staring in mute amazement for a brief moment, his lips eased into a smile.

‘Show-off.’ ”

Chuuya also saved the city again in Dead Apple without any real guarantees (aside the skk soulmateism bond and mind reading) that Dazai wasn’t dead & would be able to nullify corruption. But he used corruption and fought that dragon without a second thought to save the city & Dazai yet again.

He’s also the one who saved the ADA initially from the Hunting Dogs (on orders of course but still) and is the only reason Dazai survived Meursault.

Chuuya will always suffer for & sacrifice himself for the people he cares about & the city he wants to protect.

That’s who he is & I love him for that intense passion, love & care. He deserves nothing less than the same care in return. I love Chuuya Nakahara

(Oh, friendly reminder Chuuya was 16 in Storm Bringer when he went through all that ���)

[friendshiptothemax]

 Hi all! You may have heard there might be a writer’s strike soon. The reason for this is that every three years, the Writer’s Guild (which represents basically every television and movie writer) negotiates with the studios and networks (collectively called the AMPTP) to hash out an agreement of what guidelines the AMPTP have to follow if they want to hire a Writer’s Guild writer. If they can’t make an agreement by the time the contract from three years ago expires, which is on May 1, then no one will be able to employ a Writer’s Guild writer until a new contract is reached. That’s what a strike is. I don’t know if one will happen or not. Everyone, including the writers, deeply hope we’re able to make an agreement before May 1 and everyone will keep working. That being said, our last contract expired right at the start of the pandemic and everyone involved just kind of said “hey everything is weird right now so let’s not fight” so essentially we’ve got six years’ worth of grievances to talk about -- that is why this one seems especially contentious.

So that’s the background. The WGA and the AMPTP started negotiations this week. This is expected to continue throughout April -- no one expects to know either way until the end of April. Something very important I want everyone on Tumblr to know -- while negotiations are happening, the WGA has committed to a complete media blackout. No member of WGA leadership or the negotiating committee will be speaking about how things are going to the media. This means that if you see an article talking about the WGA’s position, whoever gave them that information is not talking for us -- and, since this is a two-sided negotiation we’re talking about, are probably talking directly against us. Use critical thinking on any negotiation-related articles you read -- does what they’re saying make sense? Who benefits from saying this?

Why am I saying this now? Well, yesterday, Variety published an article claiming that the Writer’s Guild is advocating for the use of AI. The article was full of twisted facts and confused falsehoods. The article took the WGA’s position that you can’t replace credited writers with AI and touted it as “the WGA is okay with AI as long as writers are credited!” That is an extremely bad-faith twisting of our position.The WGA had to issue a clarification of our position on twitter and now I’ve seen articles taking bits of THAT out of context -- specifically a Gizmodo article that implies that the Guild wants to take advantage of AI because it can’t be copyrighted, but their proof of that is a snippet from a section saying the reason we’re CONCERNED about AI writing is that it can’t be copyrighted.

And just, like....think about this for a second. Why on Earth would the Writer’s Guild WANT to replace writers with AI? Literally the organization whose entire purpose is to protect writing as a job? There’s no organization on Earth who would be opposed to it more. Every meeting I’ve been in has been unequivocally clear. WE ARE AGAINST AI. The second tweet in the thread I linked above says it outright: “AI can’t be used as source material, to create MBA-covered writing or rewrite MBA-covered work...” 

It just seems to me like it would suck if we do head into a strike in May, and everyone is pissed off at us because they believe we are striking for something that is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what we want. 

The WGA is in a media blackout. Be very skeptical of anything you read claiming to represent our position unless it comes from an official WGA source, like the one I linked above.

[andivmg]

speak up andi, I beg of you, you have been mistreated the most here, I know it took shubble a lot of courage but she has helped so many people

i want to start this off by saying it is not a competition and i do not want to compare my experience to anybody else’s. shubble is so fucking strong and i admire her and everyone else who has spoken up about experiencing abuse endlessly.

DISCLAIMER 1

this is way longer than i intended it to be. i did not plan to go into as much depth as i did but the words just kinda kept coming and i kept thinking that if someone else is in a similar situation to the one i was in, it would be good to point out even some of the smaller details so that they can see that these behaviors are not something to be overlooked and could be a symptom of a bigger issue… idk. i apologize for how lengthy and wordy this is but i hope it all makes sense somehow

DISCLAIMER 2

a lot of you know who one of my exes is and i am asking you to please not make this about him. i am simply sharing my experience with some of my past relationships in hopes that they help someone else. i beg of you, do not go on twitter making threads speculating on whatever because it’s just going to cause me a bunch of problems and i don’t want this to be brought to his attention. if you share my story, please do not do it with the intent of starting drama. if you share my story, focus on the behaviors i am talking about instead of trying to figure out if it’s about him.

DISCLAIMER 3

this goes without saying but i’ll put it here anyway: i will be talking about toxic relationships, mention of self harm, mention of sex, implied violence. if any of these topics are triggering to you please scroll away, protect yourself.

I have been in a lot of relationships, but there are 4 that i would truly identify as the ones who had the biggest impact on me. Two of those i would consider emotional mistreatment. I don’t want to say i was abused for reasons that i will be discussing with my therapist this week, but i can certainly say i was mistreated. For the sake of privacy, i will be referring to these two dudes as 1 and 6.

I think the biggest difference between 1 and 6 is that 6 was obsessed with me to the point where i felt like i was being suffocated, whereas i’m not sure if 1 ever cared about me in the first place.

6 and i started out pretty normally. we had a bunch of friends in common and we were around the same people. so eventually, we became friends too. we would text and call all the time until feelings developed into a relationship. in the beginning he was really sweet and caring, saying all the right things that got me falling head over heels. now, something important to note is that i am someone who has always had a lot of guy friends. when i was little and in school, my mom made friends with a bunch of other moms and those moms were boy moms, so i grew up surrounded by boys. i bring this up because 6 didn’t like my guy friends. actually, i think he just didn’t like the fact that i had guy friends at all. so, whenever i would hang out with my friends, it was a problem. so this resulted in me never being able to go out or hang out with my friends unless he was there. then it got worse. before we started dating he had decided to cut back on drinking and to stop smoking. so because of this, i decided that i wouldn’t drink or smoke around him in solidarity. this was not enough for him. i had to stop drinking and smoking altogether. so once, when i was hanging out with my girl friends we decided to stay in and get wine drunk. we posted about it on our private stories on snap and once he saw, 6 called me arguing and yelling at me because i was drinking and posting about it on my story for “attention”. after this incident, i was no longer allowed to hang out with my friends because they were a “bad influence”. he also didn’t like the clothes i wore. sorry, let me reiterate: he didn’t like my clothes when he wasn’t around. it was perfectly fine for me to wear a short dress… if i was with him. i was not allowed to wear “revealing” clothing if he wasn’t around. mind you, none of the clothes i wore were revealing, it’s not my fault i’m hot yk? he took over my life. who i talked to, what i did, what i wore, where i would go, it was all up to him. my life no longer belonged to me. and at the time, i was okay with that. i didn’t realize that he had so much control over everything. i was young and naïve and he convinced me that he knew what was best for me. that he had lived more than i had and experienced more than i had and that he knew better. he was so good at making everything my fault and making him the hero or victim depending on the situation. i got catcalled on the street? “because you were wearing that fucking dress again, andrea you know how that looks. of course you got catcalled. this is why you can’t wear things like that when i’m not around to protect you”. I decided to have a fun night in with my friends and get drunk? “i just don’t understand why you would be posting yourself on your private story like that. you’re drunk and vulnerable. why do you want other people, other guys, to see you like that? and you know i’ve cut back on drinking so how do you think it makes me feel to see that? don’t you love me enough to do this for me?” the worst part is i believed him. because, in the beginning, he helped me so much and i looked up to him so much, surely he had my best interests at heart, right? this relationship went on for way longer than it should have. you may be asking yourself, how did you leave? if you were so in love with him and entranced by him to the point where he consumed you, why did you leave? he raised his hand. that’s what got me to finally leave. a year after we broke up, i found out that he was drinking, smoking, and doing all kinds of shit he told me he wasn’t throughout our entire relationship. he was awful, and i’m really proud of myself for being strong enough to leave when i did. i’m also really grateful for my friends, who stuck out that whole train wreck with me. who i lashed out against in order to protect him and defend him. they stuck by me through it all and i don’t know where i would be without them so shoutout to them lmfao.

1 was a bit more complicated. it started out in a similar way. we had the same friends, hung out around the same people, so it was only a matter of time until we became friends too. we would call and text every day until feelings were developed. at least i developed feelings, i’m still not sure he did. i told him this and i don’t remember how the conversation went but basically we had decided that we were talking as more than friends now. enough time went by where i was ready for it to become a relationship and i communicated that to him. looking back, i think he felt pressured into the relationship by me and by our friends. anyway we started dating and everything was fine. we would hang out and talk all the time but i felt like he was bored or disinterested by me, so i would constantly beg for his attention. i became this needy clingy version of myself that i hated. it felt like when we would hang out, he was always distracted by something else. i basically felt invisible to him. that is, when i wasn’t hanging out with my guy friends. similarly to 6, 1 did not like my guy friends or the fact that i had guy friends in the first place. i had a guy best friend at the time who is one of the most amazing people i have ever met. let’s call him S. S and 1 were acquainted with each other, hung out in the same circles etc. but 1 still didn’t like him. sometimes, whenever 1 was busy doing whatever he did when he wasn’t with me, i would hang out with S, we would watch shows together and just talk. Some days, it felt like i talked to S more than my own boyfriend. this did not sit well with 1. he would ask “why the fuck are you always hanging out with him?” to which i would reply “maybe if you hung out with me more, i wouldn’t have so much free time to spend with him” (toxic ik but what can i say? i was feeling neglected). so you can see what problems this caused. eventually i cut S off. I stopped talking to him completely and i haven’t spoken to him since. Back to 1. even after cutting off my best friend, nothing really changed. He didn’t spend much time with me and whenever we would, i felt like he couldn’t wait to go off and do something else. this got exhausting. at that point i was begging him to love me, to pay attention to me, to care about me. this led to us breaking up. he broke up with me over text. it read, and i quote, “i think we aren’t meant for each other. i think you deserve someone that will treat you better than i do. I don’t think i’m in love with you and i tried to force myself to love you because i thought that’s what i wanted but i really don’t think it is. we started this relationship when i was just tired of being alone and i really just don’t think it is right anymore. i don’t think i am attracted to you. I am sorry, i really didn’t know how to end this and this probably isn’t the best way to do it but it’s time”. The relationship went on for another six months after this. granted, i should have had more self respect and never gotten back together with him but it is what it is. so after he told me that he didn’t love me and that he wasn’t attracted to me, we stayed “friends”. which basically meant that we did everything that a relationship involved. without actually being in a relationship. that is, until one of his friends hit me up. there was some flirtation going on but nothing serious. i was still in love with 1 but, at the time, i was in desperate need for attention and his buddy was there to provide it. when i told 1 about it he flipped out, called me all kinds of crazy and decided he was done with me. his friend and i talked about it and poked fun at the fact that he broke up with me but got mad at someone else paying attention to me. when 1 saw this (he ended up forcing me to show him the screenshots of the conversation) he was even more pissed and even more done with me. the next day he called me and we were basically back together again.

however, this time, i was meant to earn his affection. because i did something so unforgivable and atrocious, he was basically in the clear to treat me like shit. and he did. he would cancel plans to go hang out with his friends. he would only come over late at night, even when i had class the next day. i was basically at his mercy. we only hung out when he decided. we only spoke when he wanted to. i honestly can’t even recall us going on any date after that incident, save for one dinner. in short, i was not a priority to him. this, combined with some other stuff, really took at toll on my mental health. i entered a deep depression and began self-harming after being clean for 3 years. i sought out help and found a wonderful therapist who really helped me. but, 1 only saw this as one more problem. when we hung out he would complain that i was too sad. important note: because of that text he sent me i was incredibly insecure. so, little arguments would always end up escalating because i felt like he literally did not care about me and he would just keep making me feel like shit about being depressed. whenever we argued (which was very often) it would end in me locking myself in the bathroom, sobbing, nearly throwing up, while he was on his phone. i remember one specific argument started because he asked me if i would leave him for harry styles and i jokingly said yes (i am not and have never been attracted to harry styles). that argument escalated to the point where we almost broke up and he said to me “you should warn people before they fall in love with you that you are so mentally ill. because you’re always going to bring down the mental state of who you’re with”. he used my mental health against me like that a lot. whenever i would bring up something i wanted him to do or something that i didn’t like, he would call me needy, clingy, and say that he was trying his best but that i needed too much, that i was too much. all i wanted was reassurance. looking back, that’s all i ever asked for. whenever i would ask him if he loved me he would say “well i’m with you aren’t i?”. this is the same man who decided to go to vegas with his friends on my birthday after he promised he wouldn’t. this is the same man who said that he didn’t love me. the same one who said he wasn’t attracted to me. the same man who i would catch looking at other girl’s (some being his “friends”) provocative pictures on twitter. (this is definitely tmi so i’m just going to put a bunch of asterisks at the end of the tmi so you can skip there if you don’t want to read it) but there was a long period of time in our relationship where we had zero intimacy, and it wasn’t because of me. this fucked with my head a lot because i had this idea that because i was so emotional and needy that i could compensate physically. but when that stopped, my thoughts looked something like “the only thing i was useful for was sex and now he doesn’t even want that from me”.************whenever i remember this, a part of me thinks he might’ve been cheating on me during that time, but i have no proof so i guess we’ll never know. also during that time period, we were arguing over the same things over and over “it feels like you don’t love me” “but i’m hanging out with you” “that’s not the same as loving me” “you’re so fucking needy. and then you wonder why i don’t like coming over”. it was exhausting. we had the same friend group. and even our friends got so sick of us that they would tell me to break up with him. this went on for months until one day, on our one year anniversary, he told me that his plans for the day included playing video games. nothing else. that’s when i broke up with him. that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. i just couldn’t do it anymore.

we stayed friends afterwards in order to keep the peace within the friend group. after about a month, he told me he was going to do better. he said he was going to start going to the gym, and maybe even going to therapy, that he was going to eat better and live a better lifestyle for me. he said he was going to plan dates for us and treat me the way i deserved etc. very much vibes from that one euphoria scene. but i was done. maybe i didn’t communicate that well enough to him and that’s my fault. but i was really confused at the time and i didn’t know what i wanted. eventually we had a conversation and that’s when i told him that i was no longer interested in a relationship. i think i just didn’t believe him anymore. i didn’t believe that he would change for me or anyone else for that matter. through the entire relationship he was mean to me, he neglected me, belittled me, and overall made me feel like shit at worst and invisible at best. even when i would offer to plan things or suggest activities for us to do together, he would be disinterested the entire time or just cancel and make plans with his friends instead. and of course it was all my fault for one, flirting with his friend that one time, and two, just not being interesting enough. he made it feel like i wasn’t good enough, and at the same time victimized himself. he would tell me “nothing i do is ever good enough for you” while i was the one putting in all the effort in the relationship. then he would go “well why would i put in effort with you? remember when you were flirting with [redacted]? I still think about that and it fucks me up”. mind you, he would only bring this up whenever i brought up any concerns or issues. anyway, as you can tell it took me a really long time to realize that this relationship was toxic and unhealthy and i’m really proud of myself, again, for having the strength to leave and never look back. i think one of the reasons why it took me so long to realize that i was being mistreated was because everyone around him loved him. and to me it was hard to see how someone that was so well liked could be bad. so i felt like i was the problem. i felt like there was something wrong with me and if i just fixed that, then he would treat me better and love me and care about me. it took a lot of therapy to realize that he just wasn’t that into me. i was like a toy to him that he could just pay attention to when he was bored but ignore me the rest of the time. but then, when someone else showed interest in me he would suddenly care and be like “no she’s mine, you can’t have her”. he didn’t want me but he didn’t want anyone else to have me and that was the bottom line. that was the base off all the problems and toxicity that happened while we were together.

in conclusion, both of these men were awful in their own unique ways. i hope that by sharing this, someone who is in a similar situation will see it and identify these behaviors as something to watch out for. i hope that someone will see it and realize that they are not alone, and that they are not the first person to go through it, and that it gets better. these events all happened over two years ago and now i am in a beautiful and healthy relationship, i’m studying something that i am passionate about, and i am surrounded by people who love, care about, and support me. i am in a much happier place now and you will find that too, whoever you might be <3

[cleolinda]

Threads update so you don’t have to:

I have not followed many people yet. As such, Threads’ algorithm is populating my feed with anything it can lay hands on. I have to assume it is not, in fact, using Instagram data, because if it were, my feed would look A SHIT TON BETTER THAN THIS. If you like American ball-centric sports, you are valid and I am happy for you, but I Do Not, and my feed is football and basketball posts as far as the eye can see. Also, streaming services’ PR accounts. Lotta Disney properties and Netflix. Something called Wasted posts constantly, I don’t know what it is. Someone who has a cooking show on cable. Various actors. Oh God, this is everything I don’t follow on Twitter. Why am I here.

I sat there muting accounts for like five minutes and then I had an existential crisis and stared at the wall for a moment. If all I’m doing is muting, why am I even there? If I weren’t on it to report back, would I just close the thing and never return? Will it get better as more people join? Part of my problem is that I’ve stayed off Twitter so long that I’m not even sure I enjoy the microblogging format, period, anymore. Maybe I’ll get back into the rhythm of it? But apparently I think in paragraphs, not short sentences. I like having room to clarify what I’m saying. I like the (comparatively) slower turnover of my dash.

The worst part is that you’d say, if you want your feed to be calmer, then curate your experience. Unfollow people. But I can’t, because Threads is shoving strangers at me. So is Twitter these days. Maybe Threads will become The Conversation™ the way Twitter used to be, something worth slogging through to feel “in the know,” but right now, from a usability perspective, it’s not.

[project-sekai-facts]

Hey I've been wondering, could you explain Akito and his death symbolism? It's been constantly mentioned or implied in his recent focus songs and VBS covers (getting lines about "death" or "dying" and the likes)

It's just because the fandom is using that to mischaracterize him as an overly depressed and suicidal guy (another Mafuyu copy; pls save him and Tsukasa) and I just don't think that's what the writers mean to say and the point of his whole character!!!

(prefacing this: I'm aware there was a thread about this going round twitter a while ago, I haven't read it specifically because of this ask and if anything is the same that wasn't intentional and I apologise)

A large part of Akito's character arc is his difficulty with improvement and his sheer determination and passion that goes alongside it. He had always viewed his lack of natural talent and unrefined skills as something that made him inferior, which only led to him pushing himself to his extremes, and trying to face things independently and head-on. This is something that's touched on heavily in the STRAY BAD DOG event, where we get to see him learn to rely on his teammates more and realise that he isn't alone. Find A Way Out continues his arc of personal development, with him realising he's actually not so different to the people he looks up to, and finally learning to accept and feel confident with his improvement instead of just pushing forward almost desperately. It's that idea of him finally realising that he won't always be a step behind everyone else and good things are actually coming with his hard work.

Building off that idea, it's like a sort of rebirth. And that's where the links to Kashika come in. Kashika is a song about death and longing which gets horribly misinterpreted and has led people to believe Akito is suicidal which is simply untrue. The thing that's dying in this context is Akito's old self. The child who had no talent and was falling so far behind everyone. The child who worked so, so, so hard to be perfect is dying. And that sounds like a negative thing but it's really not. It's a metaphor for Akito reflecting on himself and moving on from the past and breaking new ground.

The 2DMV adds another layer to this with its marigolds, which not only symbolise death, but also can symbolise a renewal. And in this case, renewal refers to Akito's growth following the events of FAWO. He finally faced up to his past mistakes and overcame them, but even then he won't let himself feel relief. It's only with the help of Taiga's story about Ken that he's finally able to be more satisfied with himself and how far he's managed to come. He's finally able to break out from that belief that he's forever going to be stuck behind, and he's able to have faith in himself. Realising that Ken was just like him and managed to get to such a high level of skill and be so respected by those around him finally lets Akito believe that he too can reach that same light.

The butterflies in the background again symbolise renewal or transformation. It's not about death as per se, it's about change. Change and growth and transformation are recurring themes in prsk's character writing, and Akito is no exception. While on a surface level, Kashika is about death, if you put it next to the story, it's about regeneration. Akito is moving forward and leaving the old him behind, he says as much in the FAWO story.

If you actually read the lyrics to Kashika, it's genuinely kinda shocking to me how much people misinterpret its connection to Akito as a character. Like I get the song talks about death a lot and wanting to die, but particularly in these extracts you can see some of the key points of the FAWO event - Akito's determination, passion and self-acceptance. It's a song about Akito growing up, physically and emotionally, and saying goodbye to his past self.

Now as anon pointed out, the marigolds previously appeared in his card from Light Up The Fire. And while in the case of this event, it was most likely drawn to connect with the story surrounding Nagi's death, but it's worth mentioning that every character had their own flower, so the marigolds are specific to him.

As I mentioned in today's fact, aside from being associated with death, grief, and mourning, marigolds can also have positive connotations of optimism and passion based on their warm and vibrant colors. One of the key elements of LUTF was despair and grief, shown through more ways than one. Whilst the truth of Nagi's death came as a shock to the VBS and the others, the following battle with Taiga crushed their hope to the point that everyone except VBS gave up. VBS decides to keep trying for Nagi, and again there's that idea of a renewal. They know the truth now, and are going to come back and get better. Now while this is more general about VBS, the marigolds are still specific to Akito, considering how he's always been the most determined one who has taught himself that the only way he can succeed is through sheer perseverance. Whilst it applies to all of VBS in this instance, it applies even moreso to him.

Also it leads very nicely into his fes card story, which follows after the events of LUTF from his point of view. Something notable about his fragment sekai is that it's a completely barren wasteland. It's dead. And to top it all off, he gets amnesia. However the whole point of his sekai is to remind him of his determination, remind him that he has never once given up on this dream, how he's fought and fought to hold onto it and shouldn't let what happened with Taiga and the truth behind RW strike him down. Despite the area being dead and barren, and despite the fact he can't even remember who he is at all, he still pushes forwards and keeps walking through the dangerous environment because he knows he can't just sit around, he knows he has to do something. He knows it's not a choice, it's a necessity for him to persevere, even if he can't remember why. In the end he does remember, and finds a single flower that is managing to flourish despite the harsh conditions, and he even compares himself to it because truthfully they're one in the same. Even in a hopeless situation, Akito manages to pull through. In a metaphorical sense, he can't truly die, he still finds a way to thrive even if the world is against him. His determination truly is the core of his character.

And that leads us nicely to BURN MY SOUL, which I would consider to be the end of his first character arc. Despite having learnt a lesson about his true strength and potential in FAWO, he still hasn't reached that full potential, and he still believes that he needs to keep pushing and keep working. Through Ken's advice, he's able to realise that he's been so focused on perfection that he's bottling up all the passion inside of him. Because he's so passionate about music and it's this passion that fuels his resolve that is ultimately his core, his soul. And especially after everything that's happened, the fact that there's still a lingering sense of despair after the incident with Taiga, he needs to truly let that passion burn and realise that his true potential has been inside of him all along. His role as assigned by Ken is to light up a fire amongst the people again, so he let's the fire within him burn freely for the first time, and it works exactly as needed and is able to rekindle hope throughout the town and in one of his teammates.

Back to that idea about how metaphorically Akito cannot die, I really like the symbolism of fire within VBS and Akito in particular because it's framed in such a way that the fire lit by RW is a flame that can't burn out. Even with things such as CRaZY's "I'm so ready to die" and the "I'm going to pry it open like I'm going to die" voiceline that plays when you pull his WL card, it's not meant in such a way that he wants to die, but in a way that he's going to put his all into it as if it is the last thing he'll ever do. Akito doesn't want to die, he wants to live to see things through to the end. He's too determined to let anything snuff out his flame, and even then that makes me think of the original usage of snuffing out a flame, which was actually to trim the wick so the flame could burn brighter. If you care enough about that dumb candle analogy, you could say that Taiga/the events of LUTF tried to extinguish Akito's flame, only for him to come back from the dead (and quite literally considering the wasteland in his fes card), and now he's only burning brighter and stronger.

Akito's death symbolism isn't a negative thing. Akito isn't someone who wants to die, he's too determined to die. No matter how much the universe tells him to give up he'll never stop pushing and never stop breaking down the walls around him until he sees his dreams through. All his death symbolism is equally tied to the idea of rebirth or even just living. Kashika is about him leaving his past behind and moving forward, his fes card is about his passion counteracting despair, and Burn my soul/CRaZY/Break down the wall are all about him being so fired up that he's going to act as if it's his final day. He's learning to be satisfied with his life and where he is. He's ready to live and to say he wants to die is a great injustice to his character arc.

[sterredem]

enough for you

Lando norris x ex!Singer!reader

Face claim Olivia Rodrigo

Warning comparison, angst (not really), not proofread, spelling mistakes (as always)

Summary basically just the song enough for you

A/N no part 2. I really love this one. It’s a bit short but still one of my favs.

Don’t forget to repast and comments. And dead back is also welcome❤️💜

Twitter

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Real life

Y/n was miserable. That was to say the least.

While her relationship with Lando was at the beginning beautiful now it was… not. As the internet has seen she has changed herself. She begin to where make up. That was because she thought if she looked like the people he had dated before he would like her more. All that and all the hundreds of dollars spent on make up only for him to say he wasn’t the ‘compliment type’.

She also began reading his self-help books. That was because she wanted him to think she was smart- she was. That was besides the point, but she wanted her to seem intelligent in the things he read too.

Besides those things she did some things that he would like; she learned his coffee order, and how you can make. And she learned all his favourite songs. She now knew all of them by hard.

And still, with all that. He was an asshole. Sure he wasn’t mean but he could surtenly be nicer. Because while y/n did all those nice things, Lando just couldn’t get himself to appreciate it or acknowledge what she did.

And that is how she ended up here. Crying on the bathroom floor after she realised everything he did wrong. She realised it after seeing the comments left on her newest YouTube vlog. After that she also saw some twitter threads and then everything hit her. He was in the wrong, not her.

And she was done.

After a few hours of self pity she decided that it was time to get ready. What was she getting ready for you ask? A date with Lando…

Yeah maybe that wasn’t the best idea.

But she stood up and made herself look presentable. After waiting a few more minutes the doorbell rang and she walked to the door. There he stood. He looked good. But she knew what was to come. They greeted each other kind of awkwardly. They both knew that their relationship wasn’t the same as before.

They walked to his car and got to a restaurant where the date was.

That part of the date was alright. The part where it got wrong was when they both returned to the girls house. She invited him in and he took the invasion.

Once in and seated on the couch Lando began talking “Y/n I am so sorry to do this to you.” He began.

“Can you just get to the point?” The girl cut him off. She already had teary eyes.

“Alright. I want to break up. We just aren’t the same anymore. You are never satisfied with anything I do, and I just don’t love you anymore. I care about you as a friend, but not as a partner.” Lando said. It almost looked like he was trying to fake cry. But that happened more than once. Y/n had just accepted that he didn’t have much emotion for her once the 1 year mark passed. And that was 1 year ago.

Y/n was speechless. Well not really. But all what he had to say was ether insulting him, screaming at him or saying things she will regret. So she just waited till he soos something else. She knew that there will be something else. Thief relationship was more complicated to just leave because he ‘didn’t love her anymore’. She knew that.

“Y/n, say something. Please.” She didn’t. He repeated the sentence a few times. Every time he said it a bit louder. Until he was almost screaming. “Say something dammit! Be mad at me, scream at me, punch me. Anything! Just not silence.” Lando said. She had a suspicion why.

“Why Lando?” She whispered. Lando almost didn’t hear her. But he did. And he had a questioning look on his face.

“Why what?” He asked aloud. His voice a little softer than before.

“Why don’t you love me anymore? What is it? I know these is more to the story than you are saying.” She said. She was now talking aloud.

“I- Y/n. I am so sorry.” He said. He didn’t want to say it out loud. “I-“

“Just say it Lando! I deserve to know. You are breaking up with me. Just let me know why.” The girl said.

“Y/n. I don’t want to hurt you.” The boy said. She gave him a look. “Alright. I just- I haven’t loved you for some time. And so I just began talking to some people. And there was this girl- we didn’t do anything. But I have come to love her. I just- I am so sorry Y/n.”

That was the breaking point for the girl. She had a suspicion about it but him really saying it hurt. “Please just leave.” She said. She was now almost crying.

Lando took the hint and walked out of the room. He walked back with some paper towels for her and placed it on a table. “I will go home. I will bring your things at my house to your friend. Can you maybe packs a box with mine? You can just drop that off at mine when I am away on a racing weekend. I will put the keys of your house on the table by the front door.” Lando explained. With that he walked out of her house and placed the key on the table.

When she heard the door close she broke down. At this point she was filling crying. He found someone more exiting. All the things he had said hurt hear deep down. All she had ever wanted was to be enough for him.

Maybe she just wasn’t as interesting as all the girls before. But still- he couldn’t have cared less. She loved him more than she had ever loved someone else.

After a few more minutes of crying she stared thinking again. She didn’t want his sympathy she just wanted herself back.

She didn’t just broke her hard- he broke so much more.

She needed to think about something else. She first needed to poor her heart out and then get a distraction. But how could she do that best?

She had an idea. So she walked towards her music studio, grabbed her notebook and began writing. She sat there for a few hours. Writing, making melodies, recording voice notes and music notes. Until she almost had a whole song.

After that she called het best friend for a distraction. But not befit she had sent all the notes to her producer.

|———————————<3—————————————|

Instagram

Liked by TaylorSwift and 4.836.836 others

Yourusername ‘Enough for you’ out now! This is a song that is very close to me. I wrote this song a time of my life where it felt like there was no hope. I hope that you will all love this song as much as I do💜

View all 206.835 comments

Taylorswift Amazing song💜

SabrinaCarpenter A real masterpiece

Y/f/n 💜💜

Charles_Leclerc Another banger Y/n!

LewisHamilton Great job Y/n👏

OscarPiastri Always a great song when it is an Y/n y/l/n song

Maxverstappen1 We do love the song as much as you💜

Carlossainz55 Isn’t that good waste?

User1 OMG SO GOOD!!

User2 SO THIS IS ABOUT LANDO??? I am now a Lando hater!

User3 OMG! There are so many drivers in the grid! I think Lando last almost all his on grid friends!

User4 BANGER

User5 💜💜💜💜💜

User6 THIS SONG IS JSYRBYSCEJSGENAUS

User7 WE LOVE IT💜💜

User8 I love how supportive her friends are (the singers and drivers)

User9 AAAAHHHH

User10 Do we maybe get moreee????

User11 YOU FOUND SOMEONE MORE EXITING

User12 THE NEXT SECOND YOU WHERE GONE

User13 This song really hits hard after a break up

|———————————<3—————————————|

[clairegregoryau]

Through the Looking Glass

From fairytale in Season 1 to stark reality in Season 2 of Our Flag Means Death- meta ported across from this Twitter thread by popular demand!

This thread contains spoilers for the entirety of OFMD Season 2

First OFMD S1 rewatch since S2, and holy shit, if you haven't done that yet... do that. A thing that it made instantly clear: they told us *all along* where this was going, but there was a reason we didn't see it. Because we were living in Stede's world then. Now it's Ed's.

I know that a lot of us have felt that the tone shift at the end of S2 was... jarring, compared to what's come before. This felt like a show that wouldn't go there. One where being run through was a temporary hiccup. We've travelled all the way from this to this.

But we haven't jumped there without a journey in between. And from the minute we started hearing about Blackbeard, the show never tried to hide what Ed's world and his specific life was like. Not once. In fact they told us over and over and over.

But Season 1 told us a lot of those things through song and story and fuckery. It blended reality with fiction.

Stede met the Blackbeard he knew through books and tall tales, and the real man was even more wonderful than he'd imagined.

We, along with Stede, were comfortable thinking that all those other tales were exaggerations and misrepresentations, and a lot of them very likely were.

The Ed Stede got to know was a person who was capable of whimsy and silliness and loved soft things and doing something weird. Yep, he was also capable of violence and rage, but when he was with Stede, he didn't feel it so much.

This was a vacation from that life.

To Stede he was absolutely lovely... oh, and also a bloodthirsty killer. And Stede loved (and loves) everything about him, and both of those things can be true. This is a perfect example of a spot where (in watching Season 1 without the benefit of hindsight) I assumed that everyone else in that pub was wrong, and Stede was simply trying to protect Ed's fearsome reputation by agreeing on the bloodthirsty bits. And I think from Stede's perspective that was largely true. I think that's how they wanted us to see Ed, through his eyes. Now, after watching both seasons, I think it wasn't the whole picture.

They told us, we heard it, we saw glimpses of it. But we (and Ed) were in Stede's run-away-to-sea fairytale the whole time. It wasn't until Stede left that we saw the reality- the Ed we knew had been, to a degree, a fictional character all along. I always saw this scene as Ed putting a bit of distance between himself and reality; it always felt like the Blackbeard of Stede's storybooks was the fictional one. But now it feels like the softer Ed that Stede knew was much the same- neither of them the whole story of who Ed was and is.

The one person who refused to live in Stede's fairytale was Izzy. I've seen people say it before, but he always gave off that vibe of the only human in the Muppets movie, or the guy who was in Black Sails while everyone else was in Pirates of the Caribbean. He saw the real risks clearly.

And in that light, the end of S1 has shifted an inch to the left for me, and I'm seeing it at a slightly different angle.

Izzy ripped away the healing Ed was doing, but in some respects he did it by tearing away the fairytale we'd all been living in, shoving Ed back into the Blackbeard story.

And that's where we pick up again in Season 2.

The fairytale reference came back in S2 in two notable places, those being Jim carrying that legacy forward in the darkest times, and in Izzy invoking the wooden boy against Ricky's efforts. Stede's made himself into a real boy. Ricky, nope.

Now that I've watched both seasons together, the tone shift doesn't feel so jarring at all, actually.

It feels like sliding through the looking glass, out of Stede's world, and into Ed's- a world that existed all along; we were just seeing it, la vie en rose, through Stede's eyes.

At the beginning of S2, Stede's gone, and we're seeing it unfiltered through Ed's reality.

But Stede wasn't lying when he said he loved everything about Ed. He made a promise to come back and find him- he went down into Ed's darkest place and reminded him that no matter how bad things got, there WAS someone waiting for him, ready to love him.

The contrast between S1's fantasy and S2's reality (excluding mermaids and actual bird guys and cursed coats) is stark, but it really is that.

We have the same settings, the same people, and very different ideas and outcomes at different times.

But it was always there.

Things do come back to a state of (precarious) balance once they're all together. Apologies are made, whether they're spoken out loud or through actions. Things go right, things go wrong. Healing happens. Izzy continues to have the steadiest, most real through-line in the story as he tracks toward redemption, finds acceptance, and to an extent finds himself.

Once again, I hate that they went here with the ending and I wish they hadn't. But it got a fraction easier for me looking at it not as a continuation of Stede's fairytale, but of the grounded-in-pirate-reality arc Izzy was always on, even while we lived in Stede's world.

Where does that leave us? We're not going back to the fairytale, but we're not going to be living in Black Sails for S3, either. We've hit a fusion point where S1 ended with each of them going to separate, miserable homes, but S2 ended with them in the same place, ready and willing to make a go of it.

Season 3 is going to give us their world, together.

I LOVED the moments in this season where the deep emotions were in balance with the silliness I've always adored about this show. Eps4-6 were wonderful like that. Clearly we're not done with drama, either, but like Ed and Stede, I think we'll find a middle ground.

Anyway in conclusion, a rewatch of S1 after S2 somehow made me love the first season even more, which felt impossible? It's now gained /even more/ layers of depth than it had before. No matter how you feel about S2 I think it's worth that rewatch.

Adding one more bit of clarity for myself: I think we got a bit (intentionally) seduced in S1 by the idea that the Ed of the storybooks, the Vampire Viking Clown with the nine guns, was a version of him that others saw, when Stede saw the REAL person who 'worked' for Blackbeard.

In hindsight I think it's clear the Ed Stede go to know was also not the complete version of himself- the reality is, there's a whole spectrum between the two, and they've landed in the middle of it now. Ed intentionally leaned into the unlovable Kraken image to protect himself.

It very much didn't work, just like being just... Edward hadn't worked to protect himself, either. This season has been very much about pulling those two extremes together and finding all the parts that make up Ed overall (another thread on that here on Twitter, which I'll also shift across to Tumblr soon!)

And I think one of my favourite things in S2 has been seeing the way Stede SEES that- he knows what Ed's done, everyone's told him, but he still loves Ed. sees his trauma and how it affects him, and believes he's a good man regardless. He IS lovable; he's not forever broken.

And together, they can heal.

[hoseoksluna]

A MILLION YEARS AGO | jhs

pairing: idol!boyfriend!hobi x f. reader 

genre: smut, fluff

word count: 4.6k

summary: when your faith in your healing wavers, hobi is there to go the extra mile for you.

taglist: join | playlist: million | cp: wattpad, ao3 | discord: join

warnings: near car accident, confusion in the body, iffy feelings towards an ex, seeing an ex for the first time in million years, being mistreated, religion, praying, oc smokes, hobi is the perfect boyfriend that i wish i had, oral sex (f. receiving), raw sexual intercourse.

note: i'm crying as i'm writing this because i'm so sad, but i promise this healed me more than i expected. as you know, i write little fics whenever something happens to me—and this is based off what happened yesterday. me and my cousin sat down at our smaller family event (not the one we had on friday, if you follow me on twitter), and she asked me if i were healed. and she told me about what she saw. i think it's meant to move me somewhere forward, otherwise i would've never got to see his face. i don't know. i hope you like this little fic, you know i had to write it out like i smoke out my feelings. i'm proud of this work in terms of the way it's written. think i kinda killed that. i love you guys. and i miss you, terribly. i love you.

side note: sorry for my vulnerability. a smaller side note: this is also for my baby @hoseokkie-caeks. i promised i would write a hobi one shot after berries, and here i am. <3 i love you, baby. miss you.

The night was dark. Too, too dark. 

I sensed it swathing my bones long before I glimpsed at something I should and shouldn’t have—or rather someone, to be proper. 

The trees remained unmoving, despite the summer breeze drifting through the macrocosm that unfolded with each and every footfall I shared with my beloved beside me. Hand in hand, we walked leisurely through streets that were prosaic until our energy imbued them with our intimate poetry. White swallowing, little by little, the dark. There was no one and everyone around us, but we didn’t see them; we merely saw each other, for we were in love and we deserved to be so. Hoseok after his hard, agonizing work regime and unfair treatment from his management and… the whole world essentially. Me after the way I had been treated, handled, tossed aside by the person I found inside the screen of a phone—inside a world that once used to be mine, but now is nothing but foreign. 

Million, million years ago. 

The stars were aligned just right, stringing together a shape of the wholeness and the throb of my heart, and we sat down to eat dinner with one of my closest friends that came to town—one me and Hoseok have settled in within the precious, year-long break that burst open in his work life. Hobi didn’t want to see people, at least not those who didn’t bear familiar faces, and I didn’t want to see the city, so it was the most fateful of compromises, most perfect of the kind that was naturally threaded between us; a conjoined idea that blinked within our brains at the same time. And the laughter that followed after we voiced it out at the same time, the long kiss that spread roots inside the pillows of our lips—to this day, it is a fond memory, or perhaps something beyond that, that embraces me at night before I enter the realm of dreamland, tugging me closer into the snug heat of Hoseok’s safe place that I regard his body to be. 

Though before we arrived, I gazed up at that constellation of me through the windscreen as Hoseok’s car began to make a strange noise that unnerved him. I prayed for its rightness to be true and I prayed for our safe travel, as short as it was. According to our previous plan, we were supposed to wait for my friend, Hyun-Ae, and her boyfriend, Do-hyun, outside of the restaurant because she had a strong yearning to jump into my arms upon seeing me. My excitement for that to happen ripped my eyes away from the nightly heavens, searching for her in the dimmed lights of the mutely lively building, in the shadowed greenery surrounding it, near the trees that didn’t move, yet my hair did. 

Strange, that dark energy. 

I hoped she was peeing somewhere, where the light doesn’t reach. She invariably had a tendency to chug everything she drank and her bladder paid for it each time—but this time, she wasn’t squatting by a bush. 

She almost didn’t get to me at all. 

A driver, merely minutes away from entering our town, nearly swerved wrongly into the traffic lane that Do-hyun was driving through, yanking away the stars from the canvas of the heavens. He had to pull over and take deep breaths in order to stabilize his mental state as the thought of almost getting in a car accident with her being in the passenger seat triggered his long-fought panic attack. And because the woods at the beginning of our secluded town doesn’t have any service, we waited for them for half an hour without any knowledge of their whereabouts. 

I bit my cuticles until they bled. Until Do-hyun’s lungs were lifted of its heaviness with Hyun-Ae’s help, his breathing evened out, and he was able to get behind the wheel and cross the distance. 

Upon hearing what obstacles stood before us, I didn’t understand it at first. Hyun-Ae’s yearning was gratified, we hugged until our necks ached and our arms quivered in our stifling, long-coming hug with her legs wrapped around me, ate the food we always ordered when we were together and not apart while she filled me in—but I didn’t perceive the darkness for what it was until that very last detail. 

One she wouldn’t provide until I promised her, a million times, that I was fully healed and ready to hear it. I didn’t know what she was about to uncoil, sitting beside me as she was, with her hands in her lap. But I should’ve known that those obstacles were put in our path for my preparation. 

Hyun-Ae hinted, before she began articulating her discovery, that it was about my ex-love. I stiffened a little, taken aback. I downed a shot of the spirits that we had left. And I was being tugged in two different directions, thrown to and fro, asked by the lawlessness of life to choose. 

Stay back and not go further—not let her tell me because Hobi doesn’t know the specifics about my last situationship. 

Ask her to hold my hand and give her the consent to proceed as my curiosity was piqued and my wound was healed, a million years ago. 

And in the short dwelling of the manhandling, my spirit of inquiry crowned, my fatal flaw. I chose the latter—because why would I not? I carry my heart in my chest for my beloved beside me proudly, for his waters mine with the fulfilling streams of his laughter and sound effects, gentleness and devotion. He has grown and nurtured monsteras within its past mutilated chambers—and the longer he cradled my life and made it his own, made it his endeared responsibility, the more healing flowers of wild, undomesticated origin bloomed against the verdure. The pair of us—Hobi, the elegant leaves with its perforation symbolizing the dimples above his mouth when he smiles; I, the chamomile that has the gift to make better, but everyone mistakes it for a daisy, tossing it aside. 

Everyone but Hobi, the worker who cultivated it in me. 

And caught in the snare of my pride, I wanted to know if my ex-love still remained in the exile of his emotional unavailability, fucking everything that walks on his solitary Pluto planet while I made love to the Sun three times a day, minimally. 

Hyun-Ae gripped my hand with her lukewarm, refreshing touch as she told me that he was dating someone, fundamentally poisoning the girl with his ways like he did to me. That she didn’t understand what I had seen in him as he looked worse than ever before, a characteristic of the unhallowed set deep within his eyes. My lungs refused to inhale any particles of air; they must’ve taken a break from their work in order to process, at their own time, the information that was given to them. The male who pretended to date me while I edged his planet for years, laboring myself in order to heal him with my prayers and words because I believed him after he said he loved me, but he needed to get right first. Needed to unload his baggage and bandage up the slashes across his heart from his previous relationship. 

All sweet nothing without an ounce of genuineness. He took pleasure from the way I stayed around while he hurt me again and again by entertaining other girls, my feet indented in the soft soil of the planet. It was a form of compensation for him. A some sort of merriment—and madness, unmitigated madness for me. 

I lost my mind, standing upon that edge. And I had to get off in order to find it again, my hands outstretched beyond me—held by the invisible fingers of God while he taught me how to walk again, how to walk in a gravity-filled space of greenery, the rainbows of colors, the rain and the sunlight like a baby. 

And I did. 

I walked until my feet stopped in front of Hobi’s.

At first, I felt a sheer wisp of happiness for the guy that he managed to make such an immense step in that direction, however it flickered in me for mere seconds, replaced by a doom of nothingness that began to swim in me. Heavy, heavy nothingness that felt cosmically peculiar—and my body urged me to go outside and smoke it away.  

But my mouth spoke first. 

Who is she? Show me. 

Hyun-Ae narrowed her chocolate pools at me, her brows furrowing until they darkened. Then, they flicked towards Hobi beside me and I followed her gaze—he was preoccupied with a heated conversation with Do-hyun and he didn’t hear a word shared between us. Hyun-Ae lowered her voice, nonetheless. 

So you could compare yourself to her? No fucking way. 

But I pushed. Driven by that nothingness in me, I desired to feel something. Hurt, pride—anything that would stir my body and give it what it asked. It was used to feeling great clouds of negative emotions in terms of the male, and now it was searching for it, in spite of the million years that have flown by since. And to shut me up and distract my mind from wanting the wrong things, she showed me a picture of him. 

And upon seeing that dark characteristic of his eyes, gone, hollow and dead from the laws and the ghosts of the Pluto planet, my stomach clenched and I averted my gaze. My body rejected him—I couldn’t look at him for more than two seconds. 

My good, smart body. 

I fell into quietness, more gravely than the one this town was weaved with. Hyun-Ae’s eyes returned to their original round size, softening on me, and I held her hand tighter. I needed, vehemently, to smoke the descending nothingness away, and when I asked her to go outside with me, Hobi reached the conclusion of his conversation. Wrapped his slender fingers around my arm, tender sound effects, only for my ear to hear, slinking inside as he rubbed his nose against the place right beside it. 

You wanna go smokie smokie? Hobi asked, gliding his fingers down my arm until he reached my wrist, the belly of his index tracing the blue and violet ‘V’ shape of my veins upon my left arm. 

He grounded me. 

I nodded, my smile natural, my love for him abounding, and Hyun-Ae encouraged me to go, gently slapping the side of my bum. And so I went, hand in hand, with him.

Our inherent, pristine characteristic. 

Hobi stole my lighter once I fished it out of my purse. He didn’t smoke, but whenever he joined me, he thought it gentlemanly and proper to light up my cigarette for me. It’s the least I can do, he had explained and I had kissed him so hard for it that he blushed. 

It’s what he does now, flicking his thumb upon the spark wheel until the small flame erupts and bathes us in a delicate, orange tint. I hold the cigarette steady between my lips with my two fingers and Hobi draws closer, appeasing my inner need. Waits for me to take that first drag before he prepares me for the rush of his enormous affection by heating the small of my back with his palm, rubbing the sensitive place. It’s something that I’ve learned he likes to do; take things slow so I open for him like a bud of flower. It gives him pleasure, the laboriousness of the process and the following harvesting, the dampness of my dew the evidence of his success.  

It’s extremely attractive because he does it more for my sake than for his own. 

He lets me take another drag, our visual connection a string stouter than the constellation up above, and I feel myself, nonvocally, giving over that heaviness of the nothingness with each exhale. I decompress and Hobi can see it, joining his other hand to my loins and dipping his head to my neck. He scatters tiny, weightless kisses upon that tenderness of me and I am lulled by his enticement, soothed and sleep-drunk, his pheromones and the cedarwood of his fragrance unfettering me. 

I want to take him to bed. 

And I tell him, innocently, with my hands that clenched the muscles of his arms rounding towards his pecs and lowering to his abdomen, the ivory smoke following my movement, but never touching him. Hobi knows this is my language of sensuality and his mouth parts as he feels the words. 

“We should go.” 

He lifts an arm and brushes a strand of hair away from my cheek, his fingers lingering upon the shell of my ear—his private obsession. His endeared eyes study my features for a fraction of time before he leans in and peppers a singular kiss to the button of my nose. “Why are you sad, muffin?” 

The trees towering behind him move in a daze at last, but it’s a blurred swaying motion that merely divulges to me that the obstacles, the preparation and the dark energy have been conquered. And it helps me to speak a little. 

“Hyun-Ae told me something I didn’t really expect to hear. Can I tell you on our way home?” 

Hobi nods, cradling my cheek, and I melt. 

“I can leave the car here and we can walk home. And in the morning, we can go grocery shopping in the city.” 

I liquefy in his hold and I finish the last of my cigarette, kissing him feverishly and reciprocating the kisses he left upon my neck, sinking our domesticity into the column of his throat while he holds me and I drip into the fullness of him. 

When we return to the restaurant, Do-hyun is by himself, informing us that Hyun-ae has gone to pee. The familiarity solidifies me and I sense upon me a moonlit energy of joy that cleanses me of the past. Hyun-ae perceives it long before I open my mouth and she jumps into my arms, telling me how she’s proud of me. We say our goodbyes, promise that we’ll see each other soon, and Hobi pays for the whole table, calming every inch of me. 

I pray as we watch them drive off. I pray for their safe travel into the city and I pray over our car. 

We walk through our miniature, unlit version of the city, breathing in the purity of the air, listening to the rustling of the leaves being fondled by the breeze. Hobi mimics the act of love, rubbing his thumb over my hand, and I feel at ease when I tell him about my first love, chain-smoking just to help me infuse poetry into my words. 

With each detail, I forget it has happened to me as I unattach myself from it, consider it an element of the past that no longer has anything to do with me. Hobi lets me speak, doesn’t interrupt me, though I notice that as I venture into the brutality of the pain I waded through, his teeth grit and his jaw clenched, the preceding flush of his cheeks withering and falling beneath his skin, pallidness blanketing it in ashen gray. And it pushes me further into my process of letting go and forgetting for another million years to come. 

He stops in the middle of the road once I finish the story. Gives me a mournful look that penetrates me so deeply that I mourn, too. His hands find my forearms, my shoulders and my clavicles. Prepare me for the treasure of the most sympathetic of hugs I have ever received in my life and I loosen up in his strong hold, bury my face in his black-clothed chest as his palm holds my head to him. And he kisses my crown, kisses my temple; strengthens me when he squeezes me until I can’t breathe and I grasp that he is cleansing the pollution of the monstera leaves and the chamomile petals. 

And then he begins to speak, dampening me with a fresh layer of hydration. 

“You had to walk through hell in order to find me and I shall spend my lifetime bringing heaven to you. I swear on my life, muffin,” he says, for the entirety of the peripheral corn fields and the trees to hear, as he cradles my face and makes me look at him. My vision blears as I regard him more as my savior than I ever have before, nodding my head in agreement as my eyelashes flutter, the finality of calmness settling down in me like we did in this town. “You’re mine. You were mine when you were with him, which is why fate didn’t allow him near you. Mine to find, mine to take care of, mine to love, kiss and dance with. Mine. You’re gonna keep blooming in my hands and you’re no longer gonna pray for him, you’d done enough of that already. You’re only gonna pray for yourself.” 

This, I disagree with, dissolving sugar personified. 

“No, I’m only gonna pray for you.” 

Hobi pouts, his mouth rounding downwards, and his thumbs rub my cheeks, smearing my makeup—and I don’t mind. It’s always been his to ruin. He presses his nose and forehead to mine, breathing with me as the breeze swishes past. I slip my hands beneath the hem of his T-shirt, needing to feel his skin, and Hobi sighs against me. Withdraws a tiny bit and steals the breath he gave me. 

“Teach me how to pray for you.” 

I’m so struck with awe, wonder and my genuine love for him that I cannot speak, my lung failing, though differently this time. They swell up with the essence of my feelings for him, my devotion and my besottedness that my eyes well up before I can halt their rivulets. No one has ever prayed for me, certainly not a male I loved and looked up to. I spent years having my empty prayers echoed back to me and now the love of my life, my eternal beloved one, asks me to teach him how to pray for me. 

Only the omnipotent Listener of my prayers could make this possible for me, and before I know it—my mouth gives my beloved the instructions, the contents of my knowledge that I learned along the trajectory of my somber, otherworldly life and then he’s whispering the voice of his heart into my ear. 

“Dear God, please give my muffin the strength not to be pulled back into the life she had before me. Make sure she’s not influenced by it either. Take her burdens and give them to me because I can bear them. Relieve her heart and make her happy. Use me to do it.” He withdraws and drags his thumbs across my eyelashes, asking me to open them and I do. Once he has my attention, he seeks my guidance. “What do I say now?” 

I huff a soft laugh, endeared. Kiss the edge of his hand. “Say thank you and amen.” 

Hobi grins and the Sun peeks through the night. “Thank you and amen.” 

My laughter gains volume and he wraps his lips around it, shushing me, kissing me madly, and I bury my fingertips into his short hair, reciprocating the different, different madness and expanding it. Weightlessness seizes me and I don’t feel my limbs, stupefaction firing me with enthusiasm and then tongues clash and the kiss gains a verve that forces me to collide my body with his and— 

And then we’re dancing. 

To a slow song he begins to hum with the deep raspiness of his voice. Our bodies are one, singular, intertwined as we move to the rhythm of our unified heart and I weep. 

I weep in my joy. I weep in my contentment—and I weep in my love for him. 

He touches my back all over, cupping my hair as if it was water, leading our bodies in the dance, and there’s no one around us, no cars coming, no animals to watch us—only the trees, the fields, the buzzing of cicadas and the breeze and the moon up above. And then he’s twirling me until I’m dizzy and my soft laughter reverberates through the spaciousness of the road that is ours at this very moment. And the Sun beams at me, my Sun, as he pulls me close and continues to dance with me. I feel the jealous shafts of the light of the moon digging into my back that I soon forget about because his lips pursue mine and I dwindle away into his magnetism. 

His hands, his pheromones and his cedarwood fragrance take me to his bed. 

And he’s feasting on me like the dessert he didn’t get to have at the restaurant, bent over as I am over the foot of the bed, my dress bunched in his fist over my loins and my panties pushed to the side. My hungry beloved, my parched Sun, nuzzling his face in my femininity while I drip my dew and moan his name for him. Sucking my clit, he keeps me hovering on the cusp of my orgasm and I tremble in my vulnerable position—face planted on the bedding while the lower half of my body is raised in the air for him. And once my throat begins to let out whimpers and incoherent pleas, he draws back, closes his body over mine until his lips explore my ear and there, there he teases me. 

“What was that, my little muffin?” 

I whine, grinding my ass into his groin, and he hums. It takes me back to his song and I apperceive that it is the only thing I ever want to be pulled back to. Reminiscent of it, his song is blackened by eroticism, by his enormous arousal, drenched by my dew and I need him. While I feel God, the Listener of my prayers, to be a glaring light in me, I need my beloved Hobi to be interwoven with it. 

“I want you inside me. Please, I need it,” I beg, twirling my hips against his hardness like he twirled me in the middle of the road and Hobi sucks in a breath, exhaling it in the form of a whimper and I stoop in my heady longing. 

Abruptly, he plops me onto my back and yanks my panties away. “I’m gonna marry you, you know that?” 

I can only whisper my overwhelming agreement, my bones and my muscles too overcome with elation to do anything else. I would marry him tomorrow if I could. Go grocery shopping with him in the morning, unload it at home, put on my white silky dress and go to church with him by midday. Spend the rest of the day celebrating our union in bed, round after round until we get so exhausted that we submit to slumber, dreaming of our wedding, reliving it. 

He takes off my dress, kisses my forehead, ruffles my hair around me, his thumb dragging across the skin beneath my lower lip as if he was fixing my smeared lipstick for the special day, getting me ready, and I change my mind. I would marry him right now if I could.  

And I tell him. 

“I would marry you right now.” 

His eyes wet, casting a glimmering light upon my naked form, and a paroxysm of his joy gushes out of him and onto me. Hobi tickles my tummy with butterfly kisses, holding me down with his strong hands that he soon pins above my head, leveling with me, my dew drying on his face—yet he still glistens. Glistens with a gleam of bliss that washes over me. 

“Then, let’s get married,” he murmurs, and seizes my lips with his own, kissing me so roughly that I instinctively open my legs for him, the heated pressure in between unbearable. And then he holds my wrists in one hand while the other unbuckles his pants, fisting his length and tugging on it. My favorite sight. He guides it to my sopping hollowness and with one hard thrust, that he knows I am wholly enraptured by each time, he sheathes himself inside me all the way, completing me. Rests at the delicate touch of our mounds. “I’m gonna fuck you like you deserve and then I’m gonna take you to church.” 

And he gives it to me. Doesn’t pull out fully, but pounds me into the mattress. One hand gripping my wrists together, the other my jaw—ascertaining that my attention doesn’t fluctuate but remain fixed on him, on the twists of his features, on the guttural moans, his pheromones and his fragrance that trickle out of him and dunk into me while I struggle to take it all. 

“Am I hurting you?” he whispers, kissing my cheek and breathing against it, slowing down his strokes that scramble my brain. The tip of his cock grazes my cervix and I lose, I lose my identity. 

My eyes flutter and he pries my mouth open with his thumb, providing me something to focus on as I intuitively suck on it, keeping my head afloat enough to answer. 

“No, it’s just too big.” 

Hobi hums, rewarding me with a peck on the mouth and the gradual speed of his thrusts. “You can take it, muffin. I know you can. You’ve shown me before.” 

The praise, the belief in me—it all crests in lowest part of my sexuality and again, I edge around the cusp of my orgasm. Beads of perspiration line his forehead, soaking his hairline and he’s a sight to die for, the final piece to the fulfillment of my release. Blush reddens his cheeks, his irises enlarged and digging into mine. He doesn’t falter, continuing with his fast rhythm and I moan out poetry lines that make him squeeze his eyes shut. 

“I’m gonna come for you.” 

He groans. “Uh-huh, come for me, muffin. Give it to me. Show me again how well you can come on my cock. Yes, yes—”

Pluto bursts and ceases to exist. I come so vehemently that my spine arches off the mattress, colliding into Hobi’s chest. I shun out all constellations, all planets, the entire universe collapsing under the weight and gravity of my orgasm and our own marble, green, yellow and white with no one around but us, is called to creation with the bloom of Hobi’s own climax. 

He stuffs me full, my hollowness and my mouth, kissing me so hard that I become dizzy all over again. Moans my pet name as he shoots out his ivory love for me, fucking into me sluggishly while the twitching of his cock enamors me even more. I swallow his voice, swallow his grunts and little curses. My iridescent, entranced spasms caused by his exuberance prolong until I don’t know where my head stands, where my legs are wrapped around or what body part of his my hands clench. 

My savior, my beloved, linked to me for all eternity. 

This must have been our wedding because I shall never be the same again, my mind and my heart swept clean and filled with brand new oxygen. I no longer remember what happened prior to our love-making and when I share that with him, Hobi is possessed with the need to do it all over again. 

And he does, a million times over, until he marries me in the church of our town, with Hyun-Ae and Do-hyun present, mine and his parents and his sister with Mickey. 

A wedding most perfectly extraterrestrial, on our own Hope planet, with nothing hurting, with no thoughts resurfacing. 

Me and my beloved, me and my savior, me and my Sun. 

𓂃 ౨ৎ LOVE-KISSED BABIES: @tkslovechild ,  @jjk7k ,  @parkinglot-nights , @bethvar , @Sexytholland , @yoongibaybee , @crystaleah , @fennecnco, @lil-kpopstan , @euphoricmyth , @jungkoock , @cinmongirl , @hoseokkie-caeks , @kam9404 , @fr0ggieth1nk .

© 2024 hoseoksluna, all rights reserved.

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[myoddessy]

out with the old, in with the new | w2s/harry lewis

summary —new accounts, new lifestyle, new clubs every night. an insight into just what—and who—youtube's non-youtuber it girl got up to during her split from harry

*once again following the lead of @whoetoshaw and her bog universe's iconic breakup era ALSO, one of the twitter threads is rlly grainy and I'm sorry abt that, i couldn't properly fix it so you have to just zoom in on it 😭

2023, January

2018, July.

liked by zoeleonards, taliamar, masonmount, and 11, 824 others

yourusername lay all your love on me 🌻🍹☀️

tagged: zoeleonards, chloemitchells

zoeleonards london reality, greece fantasy 💔😞

yourusername ibiza couldn't come sooner!

wroetominter OMGOMG IVE DREAMED ABOUT YOU RETURNING TO SOCIAL MEDIA

ynfan omg shes glowing 🤩🤩

chloemitchells mykonos has never looked better 🤤😍😘

yourusername love u, lover girl 😘😘 ❤️❤️

2018, August.

liked by chloemitchells, tobjizzle, leahwilliamson, and 20,349 others

yourusername snuck behind a dj booth and had a blast, had a few more shots than I should've, fell more in love with my girls. ibiza, you will forever be famous 🍾✨️

zoeleonards it was nice having the hotel room to just myself and Chloe for a bit x 🤣🤭

ynfangirl DOES THIS MEAN THE MASON MOUNT RUMOURS ARE TRUE??

chloemitchells @ynfangirl who's that? never heard of him 🤷‍♀️

ynloverrrr it HAS to be true

freyanightingale beautiful girl ❤️

yourusername ❤️❤️❤️

sidemenfav the way that her, freya, and talia still like each others posts and support each other 💔

liked by yourusername, taliamar, and freyanightingale

ynandharry tobi likes every one of her posts, too. they really are family no matter what 😭

2019, January

liked by pierregasly, zerkaa, mabel, and 30,568 others

yourusername we're able to have semi-classy girls trips, who knew?

tagged: zoeleonards

chloemitchells gutted I couldn't make it, I miss u two beautiful girls 😭❤️

yourusername CHLO!!! it wasn't the same without you, babe xx

zoeleonards I missed placing bets on who y/n was gonna make a move on 💔

yourusername IM NOT THAT BAD ZOË JESUS

chloemitchells yeah, give her some slack... it's usually placing bets on who's gonna make a move on her 😉

ynfanpage queen we need tips on how to live our best lives because you are teaching us all rn

yourusername 1) the only long term relationship you need to focus on is the one with yourself. 2) surround yourself with people you love and support & who will love and support you. 3) learn to not give a fuck what anyone else things because everyone's too busy in their own heads to care ❤️❤️

taliaminterr how is your life so aesthetic?? irl gossip girl vibes!!

yourusername babe trust my life doesn't look like this day to day, I only show the fun bits. rn it's 4am and I've got four day old greasy hair, dried mascara under my eyes (I watched UP without taking off my makeup first), and I'm eating cereal and drinking flat coke zero. I am not the standard you should aim for 😭😭

ynslover I love how open and honest she is about her content. she's actually such a good role model

liked by taliamar, freyanightingale, chloemitchells, and 19,519 others

yourusername apparently people think the party life in my photo dumps is my day-to-day? babes, if I can teach any of you one thing in life, it's that half the shit you see online is fake. half the 'candid' moments are staged, same goes for almost every picture you see. so here's a little dump of my actual reality

zoeleonards yeah guys she's actually so messy it's insane. it makes me want to move out

yourusername SHUT IT. zoë has about three different vases of dead flowers in her room because she forgets to take them out.

zoeleonards that's nothing on the old cups in your room

yourusername BLOCKING U

ynslover how does it feel to be the most relatable influencer ever even though you're not an influencer?

taliamar omg you've still got the vinyls!!

yourusername ofc, babe! I needed something to remember our days of charity shop hopping

2023, January

[cinnabutcringy]

[ just a small cw; i'm gonna be talking abt racist stereotypes, not very in depth but still ]

i said this on twitter but i'll say it here too: reverse1999 is NOT a perfect game and i think people should stop acting like it's "the exception" because of the devs doing the bare minimum when it comes to some of the representation.

like, it's okay to like these characters. hell, if you're part of the groups that they represent (indians, for example) then i'm not gonna tell you that you can't like them or find them decent representation. i also understand the feeling of "i take what i can get" when it comes to representation in media of marginalized groups.

but at the same time, i think it's important to acknowledge that there is genuinely criticisms to be had of this game and its way of handling non-east asian poc.

for one, there's only about 4 characters that have dark skin (i would not personally consider joe to be one of them but i'm counting him just bc i forgot to in my twt thread and also to just cover my bases.) kaalaa baunaa and kanjira do not have dark skin. has no one considered why this is???? at all???

and on the topic of kanjira, she also is a character full of orientalist stereotypes. i like kanjira, i think she's a sweet kid, but aside from that, she's written to be a thief, con artist and is illiterate and homeless. i'm not saying that that's not a reality for some kids, but the fact that she was deliberately written this way is kind of a red flag.

there's also some smaller things that people have pointed out like most of the representation in this game of those cultures being things like the characters naming off foods, or just saying small phrases (i.e. centurion talking about burritos and enchiladas, and leilani saying "aloha!") and not actually having many cultural references nor speaking a lot in their language

don't even get me STARTED on the lack of african or african american representation in this fuckin game.

again. i don't want to say that no one can like these characters. i don't want to say that people cannot relate to these characters, or that people can't think they're good representation. that's not my call especially not if you're part of the groups of ppl they're representing (i.e. latin americans, hawaiians, indians, etc.) but i think it is important to realize that like

well, for one, no group is a monolith. there are probably ppl who feel this way but either don't get heard or are too scared to say so.

and two, even if you're not a part of these groups, you can still recognize the flaws in something and acknowledge that, most likely, it's part of a bigger problem in society--colorism, orientalism, whatever. it's in many gacha games and will continue to be, and r1999 is not an exception that should be justified or ignored because "it's better than genshin impact"

[bri-the-nautilus]

Come To the Dark Side, We Have Hot Guys: A Star Wars Story

Spoilers below for S1 of Ahsoka and the first six episodes of The Acolyte.

I'm writing this with The Acolyte most of the way through airing its first season, with episode 6 having released earlier today. Say what you will about the show, but it's really brought out a lot of the uglier sides of the Star Wars fandom. Everyone and their mother has seen videos or Reddit threads dunking on the Critical Drinker or SWT and their mouth-breathing misogynist audiences at this point, so I don't feel particularly compelled to retread that ground. Instead, I want to talk about the... other side of the fandom, the hypocrisy therein, and how we're all being played for absolute fools by the creative team at Disney Lucasfilm.

Yes, this post is about Qimir.

Now I want to say that I have no problem with villain simping/shipping. Far from it. Most of my posts on this account are me simping for Shin Hati (we'll talk more about her later) or various Soulsborne bosses. Hell, my mutuals and I have a running joke about me having a weakness for evil blonde women. While I personally am too gay for my own good and couldn't care less about men as a concept, I absolutely see the appeal of characters like Qimir and Kylo Ren. I absolutely get why people thirst over them and love making fandom content for them. I think Qimir/Osha has the potential to be a really fun ship, actually. The point I'm making here is not "simping for these characters is wrong and bad," and I want to make that crystal clear before we continue.

That said, let's talk about Qimir, and how the landscape of the show and its surrounding discourse has changed since his reveal. Again, I'm ignoring the chud sphere here, partly because their little corner of the Internet has remained remarkably stagnant since then. The podcast bros still think it's woke, fucking Shadiversity is still whining about fight choreography (which as someone who actually has done HEMA/stage combat, Shad annoys me to no end, but that's an entirely separate can of worms), and it all seems to be business as usual over there. No, the most marked changes have been on the Acolyte-positive end of the fandom space. Here's what the top posts in "hashtag TheAcolyte" on Twitter look like tonight:

You get the idea.

Again, no hate to any of these people. This is tumblr ffs, we've all engaged in a little simping for a morally dubious hot person. I love seeing fans having fun engaging with something, and again I kinda dig the Osha/Qimir ship.

Anyways, if you were around for the Acolyte-positive discourse before the Qimir reveal, and especially the show's marketing and the reponse to that, you'll have noticed a marked difference.

Fans quickly began to see The Acolyte as " the gayest Star Wars ever." Showrunner Leslye Headland is an out lesbian, and her wife was cast as Master Vernestra Rwoh. Archetypical girlboss Carrie-Anne Moss was cast as Master Indara, immediately drawing comparisons to her role in the Matrix movies. Leads Osha and Mae Aniseya are played by the nonbinary Amandla Stenberg. The lesbian witches of Brendok were talked about in press releases before the show aired. Dafne Keen (Jecki Lon) stated in an interview that she portrayed the short-haired, serious Theelin as having a crush on Osha, something that fans were picking up on in their first interactions in the premiere before Keen even gave that interview. While Headland said in a post-premiere interview that she didn't set out specifically to make "a capital Q Queer show," it's an objective fact that no Star Wars movie/show has had as much potential in that area, and fans (especially the queer community) took notice. (For what it's worth, in the same interview Headland commented that she was proud of creating something that so many queer fans identified with.)

The show came out, and Master Indara was killed off in the first sequence, which I'm honestly fine with. It was a good scene and works on a lot of levels. Headland's aforementioned interview came and went. Episode three aired. The lesbian witches turned out to be even gayer than was previously thought possible, and people ate that shit up while the Critical Drinker's brain suffered a major cascade failure. Jecki became a runaway favorite in the premiere and episode four, as did lovable himbo Yord Fandar and the wise, paternalistic Master Sol. In Acolyte-positive circles, this was basically how it went. People thought Brendok was cool, the Yord Horde became the show's biggest social media sensation, Jecki and Sol cultivated devoted followings alongside Osha and Mae, there were a wealth of different ships involving various combinations of Jecki, Yord, and the twins... you get the idea.

Then episode 5 happened.

The writing was really on the wall when the Brendok coven was abruptly wiped out. Introducting such an interesting (and queer) Force-wielding culture only to exterminate them in the same episode was certainly a choice that somebody made. But episode 5 was a shock to the system for many fans, as the show's resident Sith revealed himself and killed Jecki and Yord in some of the most brutal recent onscreen deaths in Star Wars. To be clear, I think this was a great sequence. Two beloved main characters being suddenly and gruesomely killed off was a masterfully executed shock to the system, especially after viewers were lulled into a false sense of security by all the redshirt deaths in the previous scene.

This, understandably, completely changed the landscape of the Acolyte fandom. Virtually overnight, much of the simping and shipping involving Jecki and Yord dried up, and once the dust had settled as far as the "rip blorbo, gone too soon" posts went, what remained were the usual Sol/twins offerings and a wave of Qimir hype. Which is understandable. He's a badass emo Sith boy with a cool helmet who brutally murdered fan favorite characters in front of us and has palpable tension with the female lead. Who wouldn't love... wait a minute.

This feels familiar somehow.

But if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing's changed at all?

And just like that, "the gayest Star Wars" is all about the (straight) sexual tension between an edgy, murderous Sith boy and a light-side girl plagued by dark thoughts whose friends said boy just killed. This is all eerily similar to how the Sequel Trilogy focused on Rey and Kylo while abruptly dropping Finn and Poe's character arcs. Even the fandom discourse is the same. I mean Reylo was so ubiquitous back in the day that it became a derogatory catch-all for good girl/evil boy shipping. Multiple authors now have either gotten their initial start/fame writing Reylo fics, or straight up published legally distinct Reylo fiction after the fashion of Netflix's After. You had the occasional person piping up to say "hey they kind of just left Finn and Poe hanging after TFA, it would've been cool if they got together but at the very least don't relegate them to being side characters/comic relief in separate story threads," and that was it. The same thing is going on with The Acolyte now, only the sequel trilogy wasn't marketed on the strength of being a queer story by a queer creative team. The Acolyte is, which makes it all the more baffling that by the midway point of the first season, all the gays have been buried and the show seems to be heading straight for Reylo 2: High Republic Boogaloo. And the fans are eating it up.

As an interesting aside, I think it's an interesting exercise to contrast the Kylo/Qimir pattern with the broader fandom's treatment of Shin Hati (told you we'd circle back to that), and the ship between her and Sabine Wren. On paper, Shin is very similar to Kylo and Qimir. Villain? Check. Edgy-looking armor? Totes. Emotionally damaged/stunted in some way? Sure looks like it. Tension with the heroine? You betcha. If anything, the only major difference is that Shin isn't as evil as the others. Compare her actions in Ahsoka (clearing out part of a light cruiser with Baylan and making repeated attempts on Sabine's life) to Kylo (oversees multiple war crimes, kills his fan-favorite dad) or Qimir (orchestrates the murders of several Jedi before brutally executing two fan-favorite characters). She's definitely bad, but I struggle to see her as on par with Qimir, let alone fucking Kylo, in terms of evilness.

Which makes it all the more interesting to me that the Shin/Sabine ship has received so much more mainstream skepticism/criticism than the Osha/Qimir or Rey/Kylo ships. "They have no chemistry!" "She's an evil murderer!" "She's a blank slate!" "Sabine is taken!" I may be a touch biased, but from where I sit a large part of the fandom, even the ostensibly progressive side, seems to look down upon Shin/Sabine shippers while swooning for heterosexual variants with far more evil villains.

This isn't a monolith, and I can't stress that enough. I'm not trying to start shit here. Villain shipping is awesome. We support women's wrongs in this house. You do see the occasional person decrying Reylo or Osha/Qimir as toxic, which I think is fairly unnecessary. Like yeah, maybe it's a toxic dynamic, but these are fictional characters. For these specific characters, part of the crowd appeal is the toxic badboy side of things. I don't think we should really spend much energy attacking any fictional ship (between adults, mind you) as toxic, which is why it puzzles me that an as-yet-unconfirmed lesbian ship in a niche show receives such a large proportion of this sort of criticism compared to the canon relationship between two main characters of a blockbuster trilogy.

At the end of the day, this whole affair has been rather sobering for me on both Disney Lucasfilm and the Star Wars fandom. For all the support the Shin/Sabine ship has received from Ahsoka cast members Ivanna Sakhno (Shin), Natasha Liu Bordizzo (Sabine), Eman Esfandi (Ezra Bridger, the other character people like to ship with Sabine), and Rosario Dawson (Ahsoka), I'm rather sour on the prospects of it becoming canon. The sequel trilogy dropped the ball on what many saw as a promising chance for an MLM romance between Finn and Poe in favor of trotting out the "why do good girls like bad boys" dynamic, and The Acolyte, "the gay show" overseen by a lesbian, has seemingly shifted to center a similar dynamic after killing off most of its prospects for a queer relationship among the main cast. Simply put, I think that Disney as an international company based in the frighteningly divided United States is reluctant to commit to anything beyond lipservice in terms of LGBT representation in their movies/shows, which again doesn't leave me feeling optimistic about WolfWren's canon potential. And the fandom takes the bait. People love the damaged evil badboy/good girl dynamic, and when the queer fandom suggests the possibility of a queer ship taking center stage in a show with no other extant relationships, even the more progressive side of the fandom tends to either ignore it or actively push back on its basis in reality until Disney Lucasfilm inevitably puts the kibosh on it. The amount of times I've heard people dismiss WolfWren for the same reasons they now like Osha/Qimir and liked Reylo (before that ship was fleshed out/canonicalized, anyway) is ridiculous, but at the end of the day you kinda feel stupid for expecting anything else. Again, I think Qimir is a cool character and I'm as much of a sucker for villain romances as the next girlie, but seeing how easily the fandom lets dangling heterosexual carrots lead it away from Disney Lucasfilm's broken promises of queer rep is a sobering ordeal.

[kedikatzen]

Remember, folks, if you point out to a SpindleHorse crew member where their boss needs to apologize for condoning and defending another crew-member sexually harassing a minor, you'll get blocked and told that it was the minor's fault.

These people seriously think that is a 16 year old sneaks into a club and get SH'd/SA'd while in there, "it's their fault for being in an 18+ place." They'll ignore the fact that the abuser SH'd them in any way they can. Next, they'll be asked "Well what was she wearing??"

If y'all don't keep up with my Twitter, let me get you up to date, because I'm tired of these people pushing a narrative that victims are at fault for the situations they're put in.

A storyboard artist for Spindle, R2, sexually harassed a minor on Twitter. The minor, now a year older but still a minor, then reached out to Viv over threads about getting an apology, and Viv victim blamed with with "I'm sorry if you were uncomfortable, but it was your fault for engaging and it was a joke so get over it" in so many words. I went and reached out to R2 about the incident, about getting an apology for the victim, because this has affected them for the last year and they're still living with the negative consequences of what R2 put them through. R2 doesn't deny the SH, claims he apologized only for "mistaking their age" before immediately deleting his account, and then followed up with a post captioned "Stay mad about it" when asked for an upfront apology. R2 never apologized for the SH, he claims to have apologized for the mistake about their age - but again, neither denies the SH nor apologizes for it, and when prompted to, posts a "Stay mad about it" post immediately. SH is wrong against anyone, especially minors but it's not limited to only being wrong when it's against them. Viv's "apology" is "Sorry you got uncomfortable BUT it's your fault and it was a joke and get over yourself", that's not an apology especially for something as serious as SH. "I don't know what else you want them to do," I just want a genuine apology, that's all the minor wants, what's so hard to wrap your minds around about a genuine apology??

I'm getting really tired of SpindleHorse employees not only avoiding culpability and common decency, but outright defending heinous things and trying to hide the evidence of it. I was specifically asked by this employee, "do you have proof of that??" and when I posted proof they panicked and tried to cover it up immediately by hiding my replies. You guys cannot claim to stand up for victims, against victimization, or even stand beside victims when you actively go out of your way to hide the evidence of the victims of your boss and peers.

Regarding the Brock thing, you can see here that Viv's stance on whether or not to bring him back depends entirely on how his response "plays out". This was after she already took his role away, so she had already decided that there was enough flak or evidence or warrant kicking him off in the first place, but she was still open to inviting him back despite what she calls "his misconduct".

I wasn't going to make a bigger post about this because I hate cluttering up my feed with it, but I'm getting really tired of these people excusing the worst sort of behaviour and having the audacity to sit on a high horse about it. All I've ever asked for his accountability, I want to see Viv apologize to her victims, but I don't know how feasible that is with the list of victims growing constantly. An apology is up to the victim themself to accept, and while I might be willing to accept one and the minor R2 victimized might be willing to accept one, I can't speak for every single person and I don't know how feasible that even is with the list constantly growing.

[mister-a-z-fell]

People often say to me ‘Aziraphale, what exactly is Firmament?’

And by ‘often’, I mean ‘twice’, and they don’t so much say it as send me little enquiries on the Twitters and the Tumbler, along with inexplicable demands to know whether Crowley or I go ‘on top’.

I’ll get to the point in a moment, but, since you’re here, I would like to make it clear that our sleeping arrangements are nobody’s business but our own.

In any case, we don’t own a bunk bed, so the point is moot.

The subject of Firmament first came up on a clear night a few hundred years after I followed Adam and Eve out from Eden. Seth — their third child — was lying on a stone outcrop near the settlement, watching the sky, and I was sitting a little way off, keeping an eye out for scorpions.

‘Ol-ah-kwa*?’ The boy was usually full of questions, but that night he’d been uncharacteristically quiet. ‘What are they called, the lights above?’ It wasn’t the first time he’d asked and he already knew the answer perfectly well, but that was his way.

‘Those are stars. Has your father shown you how to find your path by them?’ He shook his head, and I resolved to talk to Eve in the morning.

‘How are they there? Are they like flowers on a bush? Or spots on a lizard? How many there are.’

I wished Crowley had been there, just then. He could have explained it so much better. I did my best, although I think I left him with the impression that every star hovered high in the heavens like a hummingbird, and he took some convincing that they wouldn’t eventually grow tired, having nowhere to perch, and come crashing down around us.

‘But why are they like fires? If they were made to fly up there forever, why don’t they grow feathers and just be birds?’

‘Well, that would rather defeat the purpose, B-qa-lyl**.’ And that might have been the end of the matter, but the boy had long since learned my weakness.

‘Don’t you know?’

And this is what I told him:

‘They are stars, because God told them to be stars. If She ever decides that they should be birds, then birds they will become. She told your father and mother to be human, because there was a place made in the world for humanity. Your purpose in this life is to discover what it means to be human.’

‘What about the next life?’

‘Wait and see.’

And this is what I didn’t tell him:

In the Beginning was the Void. And God spoke into the Nothing -That-Was, and that word was the first Firmament.

Firmament exists without mass, without substance. It is the Almighty’s intent, Her design, Her love; it is a blueprint for reality, pure potential and the Universe is spun with its threads. In the hands of the Virtues, it takes on form, accretes matter — becomes Material, a mechanism turned with a key that sounds like ‘LET THERE BE’.

Firmament can only be seen by the shadows that it casts. Gravity. The way that particles converse. Electromagnetism. Slood. It moves in mysterious ways and it reaches everywhere that is not Void. One day, scholars will glimpse the outer edges of ‘omnipresence’, and call it ‘quantum entanglement’.

I should have found a way to explain that — while stars aren’t birds — they share their firmament as all the brush stokes of a masterpiece share their canvas, as the individual notes of a melody are carried on the same breath. Everything touches everything. ‘Look what ye have done unto one of the least of these my brethren, the same have ye done unto me.’

Perhaps if I’d taught Seth that all that lies between each of us and the furthest, strangest star is a triviality called ‘distance’, which only really has meaning inside the preserve of mortal dimensions, he might have understood. I tried to explain it to his descendants, but perhaps they were too old, too certain of themselves, to listen. I was never much of a teacher.

Later, in all the confusion of Babel, rāqīa (something beaten thin to form a surface) and rakhmyn (love) went their separate ways, and whenever I encountered the subject of… celestial scaffolding — for want of a better word — it came in the context of the former. A shell to support the stars, to hold back the upper waters. They forgot about the ‘love’ part.

Later still, Crowley got volubly drunk with a fellow named Copernicus and made some progress, but even his controversial model couldn’t let go of firmament as the pastry around the universal profiterole.

Then there was Giordano Bruno… but we don’t talk about him.

So, here I am, trying again. Hoping that I’ve explained myself better this time, because, after all, that’s what an angel is: Firmament imbued with mind, and grace, willed into life by words of purpose unique to each one of us. Wearing atomic fancy-dress so that we can speak to you in words you can comprehend (ideally without falling down and giggling while your hair smoulders gently).

We are, at base, figments of Her imagination, which is so powerful that it was necessary that She invent free will to stop all things yielding unfailingly to Her whim. As a consequence, reality tends to become malleable in our immediate vicinity.

What is Firmament? It’s everything. It’s Creation. It’s humans, and demons, and angels. It’s stars, and it’s the walls of Eden. It’s the bullet, and the finger pulling the trigger, the magician and the audience, and the shocked air expanding in ripples from the burning powder. It’s the scalpel, and the flesh. And inside, beneath the dancing atoms, it’s love.

Try to remember that part, because sometimes it seems very well hidden.

It’s love.

*Brother

**Something small

[kiwiana-writes]

An AU in which Henry and Alex are exes, also Alex is a rockstar who puts a lot of himself into his songwriting. And there’s a happy ending

...every time I play a game like this you come in with something that desperately wants to be a gamefail. I see you.

ONE: The breakup isn't anybody's fault, and that makes it so much worse. If Henry could blame Alex—if Alex had cheated, if he'd let fame get to his head, if he'd started holding the money he was earning over Henry—it would be a lot easier to move on. The pressure of trying to maintain privacy just got to be too much.

TWO: They don't text. They don't call. Clean break. Sometimes, when it's late and Henry's drunk, he pulls up their text thread and just reads through it. Once or twice he could swear he sees the typing indicator flash up for a moment, but it's always gone before he can figure out if it's just his imagination.

THREE: The first time Henry hears Can't Seem To Shake You he's on his knees in a club bathroom, Alex's voice barely discernible through the walls and over the throbbing bass. He almost thinks he can tune it out, but the start of the chorus knocks him straight through the solar plexus, and he ends up leaving the stranger unsatisfied and pissed off, walking home to try to sober up and with the lyrics circling around in his head: But you tell me I'm good and you laugh when you come, and you kiss the taste of yourself off my tongue

FOUR: The obsession with the subject of Alex's latest album reaches a frenzy most commonly associated with Taylor Swift's discography. There are thinkpieces and Buzzfeed quizzes and deep-dive Twitter threads analysing Alex's body language with every semi-famous person he's ever been photographed with.

(Henry appears in exactly one, but it's enough for him to see a noticeable bump in book sales.)

FIVE: It's Pez who first messages Henry when Storm Your Castle is released on streaming. Henry listens to it fourteen times, crying on the floor of his bedroom, and then he picks up his phone, scrolls down to Alex's contact, and hits Call.

[Send me a potential AU and I’ll tell you five fun facts that would happen in a story.]