#this is like. verbatim from another post that i cannot for the life of me find </333

[catominor]

lana del rey was actually invented in 88 bce when lucius licinius lucullus hallucinated every lyric in order while he marched on rome with sulla. admittedly the lines about his pussy tasting like pepsi cola were somewhat lost on him due to it not being invented yet but he understood the idea perfectly

[star-anise]

Everyone's got a take, and I've got a take too, about the current Internet Villain: James Somerton, a gay Youtuber who just got exposed (in the back half of a 4-hour video) as massively plagiarizing the work of LGBTQ+ media critics, historians, and memoirists, and then exposed in another 2-hour video as just making up the wildest nonsense about the topics he demonstrably had access to accurate information on.

He achieved a six-figure income on his work by squeezing money out of his audience with claims...

That only he was creating content that preserved queer history and elevated the voices and experiences of the LGBTQ+ community (a lie)

He was in serious financial distress and would have to go out of business if people didn't give him tons of money (a lie)

That he was going to use some of that cash to make definitely good and not-at-all-plagiarized independent movies, a thing he was definitely skilled and experienced enough to do (a lie), and

That those plagiarism allegations were incorrect,, and frankly,,,, hurtful and homophobic. (a GIANT lie)

Like, here's a visualization of the script of one of his videos, "Society and Queer Horror". The highlighted bits were lifted nearly verbatim from the works of others—the 18 authors identified at the time the exposé was posted—and presented as Somerton's own work.

So here's what drives me absolutely up the wall about this:

If he had just ADMITTED that it was the work of other people, THAT WOULD STILL BE COOL. If he had just said, up front, "We are going on a survey of thoughts and insights people have had about this topic", that would still be a good video with a real audience!

Like yes, he studied business in university, he might not have gotten the kinds of research skills and knowledge someone like Kaz Rowe uses to not just report on the history and analysis of others, but evaluate their relative validity and trustworthiness.

But honestly, since watching my niblings (oldest is 13) watch Youtube, I think you honestly can't underestimate the number of viewers who are really hungry for someone saying, "I don't understand this topic! Let's explore it together!"

But NOOOOOOO, Somerton didn't want to be just some schmuck waxing enthusiastic about homoeroticism on film and acknowledging the smartness of other people. He wanted to be HIM, MR. SMARTYBOY, very sophisticated and alluring and thoughtful and deep. Definitely an intellectual heavyweight who just happened to spout off his own personal ideas and analysis that put him at the forefront of all the scholarship on the topic he's come across.

I hate being wrong. Hate being wrong. But blogging for most of my life has forced me to confront constant textual evidence that two or ten or twenty years ago, I said some dumb-ass shit. Honestly, it'd probably keep me up at night sometimes even if I didn't have a written record. I absolutely understand the desire to scan the field, find the coolest people around, and quickly clothe yourself in as perfect an imitation of them as you can manage.

But if you want to be an artist or a scholar who produces something lasting, you can't prioritize coolness over truth all the time. To develop your true, independent voice, you need to find a time and place where it is just you and just the work you're doing, and you have pick up your tools and say, I don't know if I'm doing this right, but this is what feels right to me.

There are a lot of things in life to which we can only truly contribute our presence and our perspectives. Things we can only witness or hold space for. We cannot go back and bleed the pain out of history, or erase the complexity of another person's life. Not honestly, at least.

But those are the times that need our presence, our perspectives, our witness, and our space. When we gather round and tell sad tales about the death of kings, honesty can be the only thing you give that's worth a damn in the large scale of things.

If this dude had owned up to the truth and honestly showed the work of trying to piece together a queer understanding of the world, trying to draw the threads of culture together until he found a place he fit inside them, it would have been so much more valuable to our culture as a whole.

He probably made more money this way, though. While it lasted.

[tauforged]

let's talk about the way we talk about sigma

and i’m not just saying this because i’m a hater or because i find the woobification of characters annoying (although i am, and i do, but that’s neither here nor there) but i AM saying it cuz it’s no longer mildly annoying so much as it is just hurtful and exhausting due to the casual ableism it perpetuates. whether it’s consciously or not, it’s there and i’m pointing it out cuz a lot of people probably don’t even realize what they’re saying (i hope) so i wanna spell it out crystal clear.

*granted, these are sentiments i’ve seen far more often on twitter or tiktok than on here (and i know complaining about stupid takes on either site is like going to the beach and getting mad about all the sand, but bear with me) but it’s ABSOLUTELY something that i see a lot on here too and i'm starting to get incredibly fed up with it all. someone's gotta fuckin say it.

im going to put the majority of this under a readmore because i've got a lot to say on the topic but here's the long and short of it:

you guys have GOT to stop acting like sigma is a poor little helpless confused manipulated innocent little uwu baby. like, for real. stop saying that shit. stop lamenting about “waahhh poor science granpa doesn’t know where he is or what’s happening around himmm 🥺🥺🥺”. stop acting like he’s being held captive or abused by talon despite evidence to the contrary so you can make your little “uwu i can’t wait for overwatch to save him and Fix Him uwuwuw” posts. and for the love of all that’s holy, if i see one more person say or imply that he was better off when he was being forcibly institutionalized than he is now working for talon, i’m going to start fucking attacking people with my teeth like a chimpanzee.

it's incredibly fucking weird and alienating for literally anyone who experiences even a fraction of the things yall are pointing out as proof of his incompetence. and before any of you hit me with the "oh it's not that deep 🙄" im gonna tell you right now that i dont care and im going to be mad about it anyway cuz its my party and i can post whatever i want.

ANYWAY!!

to continue my point, not only is it weird and infantilizing and demeaning and belittling to those of us who deal with literally any of the myriad of things going on with him that i’ve seen people point to as proof that he ‘needs to be fixed’ — memory lapses, time loss, dissociation, auditory hallucinations, disordered thought, just straight up being autistic, hyperfocus and/or complete lack of focus, panic attacks or meltdowns, i cannot overstate how many of the ‘weird’ things he does are just autistic traits so i’m gonna say it a second time for good measure — and those are all just things that i personally have in common with him (which is part of the reason i’m as mad about this as i am to make this post, but i digress).

to single out these things, all of which are completely reasonable for someone who is autistic, who is traumatized, who suffered through a prolonged period of forced confinement, and/or who has literal brain damage, and NONE of which are nearly as tragic and doomed as people are making them out to be, that’s all bad enough on its own!

but to point out these traits and then turn around and use them to color every single interaction he has with another character, every single thing he says, and tie it back to his traaaagic broken mind and how he’s clearly losing his grip on reality just feels… insanely othering in a way that’s really exhausting.

like, for fucks sake, a solid 80% of his character interactions could be lifted near verbatim from conversations i’ve had in real life with my friends, family, coworkers, you name it, all of which were friendly and usually in jest — hell, 9/10 times when i let out a random non sequitur or lose my train of thought or forget what i’m doing, nobody even bats a fucking eye! they sure as hell don't accuse whoever i’m talking to of abusing me because they expressed mild annoyance at my bad joke.

i’ve genuinely seen someone get all worked up and construe his one interaction with sombra where he comments on her tendency to disappear and reappear in odd places as evidence that he’s got dementia and is slipping away from reality altogether… and not, yknow, a nod to her fucking cloaking ability and translocator and the fact that she uses both very frequently just for the hell of it. that one still fucking baffles me i'm sorry. if i hadn't seen it with my own eyes i'd honestly think it was a joke. like. cmon now

another thing that makes it even worse is that most of this is also just…. not even grounded in canon. if this was the way blizz was writing him, it’d be one thing. it would still be shitty and ableist, but blizzard handling their oooh spooky scary mentally ill character badly is about as surprising as the sun rising every morning. i can't say i wouldn't still be upset to see people continuing to perpetuate it, but i wouldn't be AS mad, i guess.

but SO. MANY. of the popular takes on his character are either never concretely stated or outright contradicted by his ingame dialogue and interactions and it drives me insane!!! idk WHERE y’all are getting this shit but so many people are reaching so hard to make him a tragic sad uwuwuw glass bones and paper skin pathetic little meow meow that they’re going out of their way to misinterpret source material so they can shout from the rooftops about how sad and pathetic and unaware they think people like me must be.

i keep seeing people talk about how he probably has no idea that talon is a terrorist group, that he doesn’t know what talon IS, or that he doesn’t even know that he WORKS for talon, and it’s starting to go from mildly annoying to infuriating. this shit has literally no basis in canon aside from conjecture based on the fact that he’s Known to be mentally ill!! i don't see even half as many people getting this all up in arms about widow, who we KNOW FOR A FACT was literally kidnapped and experimented on and brainwashed by talon. like. that's her WHOLE THING. meanwhile sig literally just works there and people are clamoring for ovw to come """""rescue"""""" him as if hes like, a lab animal or something instead of a grown man who happens to not be particularly bothered by the fact that he works for talon.

this is something that's addressed in game MULTIPLE TIMES - he’d far prefer to watch an ant crawl on the ceiling than listen to s76 trying to ‘talk sense into him’, not because he can’t hear him or anything either, it’s pretty clear from his tone and cadence that he’s actively choosing to ignore him. when baptiste points out the fact that he’s fully capable of leaving talon if he wanted to, he doesn’t deny it or act confused or like that’s a strange thing to say, he just seems a little bemused that someone would think he WANTS to leave. yeah, he sure could— but why would he bother?

he's not "totally unaware of what he's doing" in the fucking slightest - hell, i'd argue that his new map-exclusive lines and interactions prove that he's MORE grounded now than he was in ovw1. yes, he gets a little confused on occasion when he can't quite remember the last time he's been somewhere. (memory lapses are just kind of like that. i had several while writing this post, in fact! it just fucking happens sometimes. it's really not the end of the world. frustrating, yeah, but i promise you we can manage just fine).

i guess the question i'm asking is: is it really all that difficult for to fathom that he might just... WANT to be there? that he might just straight up not care what talon is up to, so long as he's able to keep doing his research as he sees fit??

and for the record, before anyone takes this and runs with it and we lose the plot of this post, i am NOT SAYING that the very idea of wanting him to leave talon is #problematic or anything. i dont care, really. do whatever you want. what i do care about is just like.... being mindful about what we're saying and WHY we're saying it. it's reaching a point where people are somehow managing to look at the ass backwards already ableist as hell decisions blizz has already made with him and decided "hey, i bet i can find a way to make that even worse!"

[crazylittlejester]

Heyyyyyy how y’all doiiinnnggg…..

It’s been while, hey siri play “DEAD” by Melanie Martinez -

A) from that old post about what I would want to see in the fic: lwk I’m cool w/ whatever I put in (what I though was at the time) a prompt for like 500 words and did not think this far ahead 😭 lol I trust ur judgement on whatever gets added I’ll eat it up like those rlly yummy life saver mints

B) I’m back babyyyyyy the Ao3 curse works harder but I’m harder >:3

may or may not have almost died but that’s okay it keeps me on my toes. I have new medical insight on how to improve my whump 💪🤩😍

C) I’m abesolutely so sorry about that anon (ik I’m super late to the party) what they said was so out of line and I cannot think of what you could have even possibly done that would (unjustly) cause such a reaction?? People are assholes especially when they can abuse anonymousy online. I’m glad u seem to be doing ok 💜

D) I know i say this every time and blah blah blah but please make sure to not push urself over creating content and pleasing followers. I will (likely) not be dying anytime soon and I can wait as long as necessary for the Cia fic dude I make the prompt with the understanding that with you as the writer I would be meeting your needs/criteria for my silly little mentally ill twink to get sent through the meat grinder. Take as long as you need 💜

On a much less feely note:

E)

(No hate to you or anyone really who has this opinion)

Theory/hot take/opinion/etc:

Echoes of Wisdom (new game coming in sept) Zelda ≠ Fable (from SNES + game boy games)

Like, I get it, on a surface level it makes so much sense because the EOW game is in the same artsyle as the Links Awakening (remastered) game. Nintendo doesn’t really use the same artsyle with games (atleast since the N64) unless they are direct sequels, prequels, or otherwise linked (BOTW & AOC). New game but with the same artsyle as previous game? Obviously linked!

Except, no??? Here’s where that opinion doesn’t hold as strong:

the main peice of evidence here is that the Zelda in the trailers is the Zelda from OOT.

(I really wish I could put pictures as anon 😭)

Verbatim. That is her. She is wearing a pink dress, trapped in a pink crystal, while link fights and eventually cracks open said crystal. It’s hard to see the dress because of the crystal obscuring it, but in another clip (when the staff is first seen i believe) you can see her in the dress and it’s her.

Even if it’s not, it’s definitely not Fable.

There are two (?) versions of the Zelda’s that fall under “Fable”. one is in a blue dress (ALTTP) and one is in a white dress white a pink over apron-thingy. While its arguable that the crystal makes it look pink, or its too dark to see anything, ultimately the tabard is not the same and the top being two parts is not there, so no, its not Fable.

Which is really weird, because the Link is in fact the same link as the SNES + Gameboy (I call it the “Pixel Era”) Link. Brown Longsleeved undershirt + green sleeveless dress-tunic over it. Even weirder, he wield the hylian sheild. WHICH DID NOT EXIST BEFORE OOT. Again, not Pre-3D link.

It does exist in ALBW, meaning if you are into LU then it works with legend being the same person in all those games, but ALBW is canonically the “successor” to ALTTP

BUT GANON IS HERE?????? Hellooo????

(Fun fact: Gannon is what his pig/beast form is called while gannondorf is what his Gerudo form is called! :D)

Gannon only exists in the pixel Era games + ALBW. All of the 3d games use gannondorf. So this is such a weird thing to exist.

EVEN MORE CONFUSING, THE ZORA!?!??!?

If you don’t know what im referring to, for like literally 2-5 seconds there is a clip of the zora of this game. Ok, cool. Zelda game, with water, therefore there’s obviously gonna be zora.

(This is a “duh” moment for older fans but pls stick with me lol)

There are two versions of the zora: pre-OoT and post-OoT. TLDR; pre-OoT they look like horrifying fish monsters and try to kill you, Post-OoT they become hot and even get shipped with link in the later games. Hyrule historia (which is not the most reliable sometimes) explains it better but it has to do with the big Triple Timeline. The difference in zora design depends on which timeline you’re looking at, one of the timelines doesn’t have them at all.

So what’s so confusing? Is does the zora design not fit?

Yes!! You know why? BECAUSE THERE ARE TWO OF THEM. BOTH ZORA DESIGNS. IN THE SAME GAME. CLEARLY INTERACTING IN THE FIVE SECOND CLIP.

Also this was pointed out by my sibling: in the beginning, the hood long wears is eerily similar to the Hylian Hood in totk/botw. Later on in the trailer, my cousin pointed out a canon that looked “like it was zonai tech” but it was just a green cannon so tbh that’s more loose.

The Gaurd designs are also kinda weird to me? I can’t tie them back to any of the games bc of the weird helmet shape, and their uniforms look exactly like link’s first outfit in Hyrule warriors, though that seems unintentional.

Anyways. This game is. Something. I really don’t think it’s related to previous games (I hope not for the sake of lore holes it could tear up) but what we do know is:

- OoT Zelda has been taught Ctrl C + Ctrl V by magic yellow orb and uses a staff.

- Likely Takes place in the downfall timeline due to artstyle, the fact that the enemy zora exist, and the fact that Gannon is here in beast form

- atleast some inspiration from botw/Totk with the copying and open exploration mechanics

- there is maybe some alternate space/dimension bullshit from that one clip of Zelda moving blocks of water like she’s Moses

- takes place where the Hylian shield exists and therefore likely the story of a hero is still a thing

- takes place where BOTH ZORA meet and interact with eachother

This is driving me crazy. My dad says it’s the Zelda multiverse 😭

Sorry for the word vomit, I rlly needed to info dump ✌️

Your favorite void crawler,

Mandarin Warriors 🍊

OH MY GOD HEY, HI, I WAS GENUINELY WORRIED ABOUT YA

a. alskkddk okay 👍

b. oh my god I really hope that you’re doing okay dude, or at least that you’re feeling a bit better 🫶🫶🫶 sending hugs and love your way my guy

c. people sometimes suck and I considered turning off anons for a bit after that but i have too many wonderful anons and id hate to lose any of em because of one idiot

d. it’s going to be the next thing I put up when I come back from my so called ‘mental health break from writing’ 😭 (i literally can’t seem to stop writing, i am glued to my google docs 💔). Im not sure if you saw the post (and its totally okay if you didn’t, youve clearly been going through a lot and i genuinely hope that you’re okay) where I said part of why it’s takin so long js because I’m writing two separate versions of the fic because it’s heavy enough I feel it should be rated mature, but I’m making a ‘watered down version’ for people who were really waiting for this fic but dont wanna read anything rated higher than teen. I don’t write explicit things, but we’ve crossed the line from ‘implying things’ and into the ‘traumatic past events are being discussed’ zone and if im gonna write about trauma I’m gonna Write About Trauma, an’ yeah

i really hope you don’t die anytime soon anon, i don’t know what it is exactly that you just went through and you do not have to tell me, but i sincerely hope you’re doing okay, and if not okay, at least feeling better. I really was worried about ya 💜

and to yap about EoW:

IM GLAD IM NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO SAW THE HOOD AND THOUGHT OF THE ZONAI STUFF, IT REMINDED ME A LOT OF TOTK

i think itd be really cool if it was a new Link and Zelda. I love the like, art/animation style they chose, and I doubt nintendo is ever gonna tell us which Link this is 💀 but we can always have our theories 💔

NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR YAPPIN, ITS WHAT THE YAP BOX IS FOR! FEEL FREE TO INFODUMP WHENEVER DUDE I LOVE IT HEAR IT, AND YOU SERIOUSLY HAD A LOT OF INTERESTING THINGS TO SAY

i know this is like the fourth time im saying this but again, I hope you’re alright. I missed ya, it’s good to hear from you again 💜

[madonnamadeofasphalt]

What “fascism” means

My controversial belief is that it is actually really fucking important to educate yourself on the basics of, from lack of a better word, “philosophical” foundations of fascism. The fact that most people’s knowledge of it is limited to the aesthetics and crimes of the past fascist regimes is what allows modern fascists to strive and make themselves uncritically tolerated by just changing their name and denying their historical connections. It’s how dudes who are practically quoting Mussolini verbatim can go “you just call anyone you disagree with a fascist”. It’s how a fascist propagandist can be like “how can I be a fascist when I’m Jewish/gay/non-white/whatever?” and be treated seriously. It’s how more moderate right-wingers, conservatives and liberals alike, can genuinely claim that all the talk of a fascist renaissance is just conspiracy theories and fearmongering - after all, fascists are obviously fringe, because where did you last see a bunch of dudes goose-stepping with a swastika banner?

So, here’s a very basic explanation of fascism. It’s based on my own readings of fascist texts, as well as some compromising between the definitions and their boundaries proposed by various experts on the subject (one of which, I cannot emphasize it enough, I am not). I’m not gonna do a full bibliography on a Tumblr post, so I propose treating it as a simplified introduction to doing some of your own reading and developing your own opinions. The usual recommended starting point is Ur-Fascism by Umberto Eco, and even though in my personal opinion it focuses on some aspects of the ideology that are more common propaganda tactics than its actual core, it is a pretty good one. Anyway, point is, take me with a grain of salt, just like you should take anything written in some post on Tumblr (and, frankly, anything written anywhere else as well). That said, I’ll do my best to explain the basics, from one amateur to another, as uncontroversially as I can when talking about such a controversial subject.

Fascism is, above all else, about the cult of power. It’s about punishing and despising weakness, it’s about radical individualism, about survival of the fittest, about social darwinism. A man’s success is proof that he deserves his success. A man’s power is proof that he deserves his power. That is, according to fascists, the natural hierarchy that shapes the society to be healthy and pure.

Why, then, are fascists so keen on overthrowing governments? Because they believe degeneracy, a celebration and acceptance of weakness, has corrupted this natural order and allowed the weak to govern the strong. This degeneracy is usually (though not universally) associated with the industrial revolution, intellectualism, social welfare and the accomplishments of various (especially racial and sexual) civil rights movements, as well as the nebulous, antisemitic construct of a devious international Jewry - and you probably know from your history classes how they intend to combat that.

Since fascism is a cult of power, it emphasizes acting over thinking - as acting is a “stronger” activity. It glorifies violence and decisiveness, ruthlessness and unanimity. This is why a core idea of fascism is totalitarianism. This term was originally created to criticize the first, Italian fascism, but very quickly started to be used by the fascists themselves. In most systems, the state’s functions are supposed to be limited to some areas of social life, while what is known as private life should be untouchable by its power. The fascists do away with those limitations, and believe that the state, personified by a singular Leader (or, less often, collectively by the inner circle of a fascist party), has a right to interfere with whatever it wants to, and pass whatever laws it has the power to enforce, especially if their purpose is combating degeneracy. An important thing to note is that while historically the creation of this fascistic “total state” was often attempted by military dictatorships, that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case - fascists have no problems with using democratic or republican means to push their agenda. A cult of power is a cult of pragmatism, after all. Some fascists (like the Polish “endecja” or certain parts of the American “alt-right”) even genuinely believe in a form of totalitarian republicanism - those types, however, turn out to be really picky when it comes to who gets to vote.

Finally, there is the idea of a perpetual war. Humanity, according to fascists, is inherently divided into some kind of groups, which nature depends on the particular brand of fascism - most common types include races, nations, ethnicities, states, religions, any combination of the above. Sometimes these groups are equal at the starting point and you should be loyal to yours just because its yours, sometimes some of them are naturally superior to others. The important part is, the fascists claim that the primary function and the historical destiny of each of those groups is to destroy or subjugate all the other groups (either globally or in a given territory). Equal and peaceful coexistence is impossible, and any group that genuinely attempts it, will inevitably be backstabbed by the opponents they naively tried to tolerate. That is why militarism and expansionism are often (though not always) an important part of particular fascisms - the state’s purpose is to ensure the ultimate victory of the group it represents in the perpetual war. The people’s purpose is the same - that’s why it is necessary to subjugate them all under totalitarianism, so their private lives don’t distract them from their role in the perpetual war. And regardless of wether one of the groups was superior to all others from the start or not, one of them will prove its superiority when it proves its power and finally emerges victorious from the perpetual war.

As an ending note, I’d like to make clear that not all fascists use the exact words I have used above - in fact, very few of them do. “Totalitarianism” in particular became a dirty word due to the memory of horrific crimes comitted by the 20th century totalitarian regimes; it’s more likely to be implied by the lack of consideration for individual or social rights in fascist demands. You won’t see a lot of fascists talk about a “cult of power” or a “perpetual war”, either, and only the most blatant ones will utter the words like “social degeneracy” or “international Jewry”. They will instead talk about a “strong state”, “protecting our traditions”, “decadent youth”, “overpopulation”, and so on, and so forth. They will approppriate conservative, liberal and even leftist language in order to obfuscate their actual view of the world. And then there’s the fact that “fascist” and “non-fascist” isn’t really a neat binary - few things are when you actually look at them closely. There will be politicians, ideologues and activists, especially (but not exclusively) on the right, who will dip their fingers in fascism, but won’t go all the way down. It especially applies to the ones who do have some basic education on the topic and therefore are aware of how close they are to fascism - you may be a bigoted piece of trash and share most of fascist viewpoints, but still feel uncomfortable to admit to yourself that you’re on the same side as the fuckers who did the Holocaust. Yes, that last sentence is about Jordan Peterson (but not only about him).

And finally, remember that you can make an effort to understand an idea without sympathizing with it or empathizing with its followers. No matter how they justify and rationalize, and decorate their beliefs, if you decide to do some deeper research on the topic (which I, again, really do recommend), for the love of God, remember that this shit always leads in the same direction. It leads to the death camps, to the mustard gas bombings, to the pogroms and invasions, and forced euthanasia, and wholesale slaughter of human beings. It’s inherent to its core ideas. A cult of power means destroying the weak. Totalitarianism means tyranny and enslavement. Perpetual war means perpetual carnage. Death to all fascists. Take care.

[reverse-moon]

I've been reminded of my absolute need to have Fi back in my life, so have this ig-

Zelda paced around the castle, Link following her as closely as he could. The princess - no, she was a queen no - was really draining his stamina.

Both of them recently had been getting dreams of places and people they didn't know... But did. Past lives, as Zelda put it. But one had been a confusing person. A floating girl, blue skin, purple and blue outfit and seemingly connected to the Master Sword.

Apparently, praying to the goddess did nothing. They had repaired any and all damage to the weapon from time many times, in hopes to reawaken the girl. But, Link knew this was getting to Zelda. After all, this could be their one true connection to their original selves.

As he once again dashed to catch up, he noticed a short female being followed by the guards. Zelda was already running off again... At least it was still in the castle. Besides, now as queen, she didn't have to sneak out a back way. She always left through this front gate. So, the guard went up to the young girl.

He sighed a few things to the guards, who were panting as they caught up. "Sorry, sir! She just pushed past us after we told her that Her Majesty was having a small issue!" One said, before both moved to either side behind Link.

The other whispered to him. "By the way, she'll get prickly if you call you kid. Apparently she's almost 28-"

He looked over the girl, before tensing. Her hair was a light yet slightly dull blue, matching the colour of one eye. Her other eye and her dress was a dulled and slightly darker lilac. Her sleeve-lets were both colours, one of each. It almost didn't look like her shoes and tights (leggings?) were separated too. A large red gem hung from her ear as an earring, and she had a matching red gem on her chest as a part of the dress. Her skin was darker than the normal Hylian, though still not quite Gerudo or even Sheikah. And he was fairly sure almost every Yiga was male.

She was eerily like the girl they had been trying to summon from the sword.

"General Link, is it?" She asked, a monotone yet insistent voice coming. "I request to go to the royal library, after offering my assistance to Queen Zelda."

A sigh and the guards were sent back to their posts. Now, Link despised talking. After so long of being a selective mute, then losing consciousness for 100 years, it hurt to talk for long times.

"What is your name?" He asked, raspy and slightly pained voice clearly causing a worry in the shorter one - though only the look of her eyes showed it.

"My name is Fiona. However, I am more commonly known as Fi in my village."

Fi. That was the name in the memories... Dreams?

"Follow me," Link said, walking off after Zelda. If he was right she'd be in...

He glanced back at Fi as he opened the library doors, watching as her eyes lit up in excitement while her face stayed neutral. A smile and he walked in, guiding her to where Zelda was. The ancient history area.

He let out a slight grunt to catch her attention.

"Link, I cannot afford to waver in this. We must get that spirit back... Perhaps she can explain things."

Link looked unamused but grunted again, pulling Fi in front of him.

"Link, I know I am running you ragged, however-"

Another grunt. This time, Zelda looked up from the book in frustration and looked over at him. She was obviously about to snap at him (or apologize in anger) when she saw the other girl. "Who... Is this?"

"My name is Fiona. However, I am more commonly known as Fi in my village," the girl repeated, verbatim, for the queen. "Your Majesty, I came to research a topic my local village library has nothing when I was told about a predicament you seemed to be having. If I may, is this predicament about this spirit you mentioned?"

Zelda looked at Link, the same knowing look on her face. "Yes, it is... The spirit of the Master Sword." The queen turned her gaze to Fi. "Do you know anything about it?"

Fi blinked a little, before speaking. "There is a high probability I have some knowledge. However, I do not think any books here would have anything on it." She closed her eyes. "Most stories as that one are now considered myths and therefore are going to have their stories under the fictional areas of libraries. Might I suggest you look there?"

Maybe I'll make more...

[caninekakashi]

1 16 and 22 djdjsjdjfj <33333

I OWE YOU MY LIFE. im gonna do 22 first because everything else has to go under a cut its SO much

22. how much of your own self/experiences do you believe pours into your projects? if this differs per project, which projects have the most and least of you?

so much! i have to project onto these men or i will go insane. my brain is a big cocktail of disorders so i love seasoning characters with trauma or other issues and just forcing them to go through it, if a fic is lighter ill try to keep it softer but if i really want to write a whump fic, no one is coming out of that without at least 8 years of therapy

ok under cut now <3

give short descriptions of all your current WIPs

ok this is kind of a mess because i have so many

kkgai secret marriage fic: essentially team 7 decides that kk is a lonely sad man and start trying to set him up with literally anyone they can think of, blissfully unaware of the fact that gai and kk have been married for 3-5 years. all of the other shinobi know and do not say anything because this is hilarious to watch play out. this is sadly one of the least done ones </3

heart of a dog: i already have a oneshot up on this for ao3 but its going to be kkgai early years to pre-team7 and then a dif fic for after team7 to the ending. i am exploring youth mental illness and kakashi being a dog. this was mainly an excuse to write a slightly feral wolf kakashi

obkk pwp 1: kakashi's chakra veins get frozen fighting kiri nin while on a mission with obito, obito funnels his fire into a chakra massage to help melt the ice in kakashi, kakashi is half naked for Reasons and obito is pretty much fondling him in a sensory way.

slip your wedding veil over my eyes (leave me mourning, leave me blind.) obkk unknown marriage fic: follows canon events up until ob gives kk the sharingan, uchiha clan traditions dictate that a sharingan is a marriage present (exchanged between 2 clan members or between the clan member and the one being invited). ob does this as a last ditch effort to ensure that kks can NEVER have the sharingan taken away from him. since rin does the procedure she is counted as a witness and its a binding agreement. there WILL be angst in this

“with this eye i curse you, as you curse me. what i feel for you, you will feel through me. to the end of all things, i will fan your flame eternally. <- wip vows

you're here forever 2: this is another gift fic for u actually sdjhgs, obkkrin being in the timeout den all day. kakashi is very zoned out and very dog, obito woke up without a bedspread, rin is the only functional adult in the house that day

currently only at 2k words so its still Coming Along

explosion sound: friend sent me this i laughed about it for a full day. went "wait obkk" and started writing like an insane person. video is nearly verbatim conversation ob and rin have

time of the month: obito confuses the menstrual cycle with the phases of the moon <3 he is 13. rin and kk want 2 kill him and minato is dying

hokage requirments include fucking uchihas: thought about THIS post way too much, and decided that'd be a great post war redemption arc for obito

top surgery:

i genuinely don't know, this is the only thing written in that doc.

16. to what extent do you research for your writing?

for hoad i was googling the gender ratio for wolf litters at 3 in the morning. i don't know. what that necessarily MEANS for me... but it cannot be good.

this was to differentiate between hatake clan and inuzuka clan traits btw. for a throwaway line of topic that may not ever be used in fic, but it IS in my lore bible.

[windandwater]

I haven’t posted about New York being a fully sentient city in a while, but it remains one! I’ve had a string of stressful days and the city took one look at me and went here’s several amazing things for you, including complete strangers you will never meet again but who will brighten your life for the next week.

Rockaways, the day I lost my glasses. I asked a couple people to let me know if they happened to find them, which was a long shot but honestly worth the one in a million chance in hell. I was. Pretty bummed but still trying to enjoy my beach day:

One of the dudes I asked (I think--I couldn’t really see his face) started swimming/bodyboarding next to me a little while later. We had a whole conversation about how much we enjoy the beach and especially the Rockaways for the good good waves. He told me he’s seen sea turtles and dolphins while out on his board there! Had a lovely conversation about the area and got advice on how to use the board in the future (try it with fins) and I think I met my future self?

There were these mysterious jelly-like creatures washed up and I was trying to get pictures which is fun when you can’t see so I asked this couple whether I was taking pictures of something organic or if it was weird beach trash, which started another conversation about trying to identify them (either salphs or moon jellies, I’m not really sure) and it turned out they were so happy to see another bodyboarder out there! Even though I was a complete disaster losing my glasses and getting knocked the fuck over!

Asked someone on the way home what stop we were at (hey guys? hey guys? anyone with blurry vision cannot read those signs or hear what anyone is fucking saying) to make sure we were where I thought I was so I could count stops to where I was getting off. The doors were closing and this man got up and put his arm in them in case I needed to get off and I could have hugged him even while I was going “nonono! it’s just that I can count from here!”

Yesterday. Had to go into the office get my laptop repaired. It was. Kind of frustrating to have to do that--had to go in in the morning and then back in the afternoon, and I ended up running all over New York in the process, and just. I was so tired by the end of the day. My city saw this and was like oh you hate your life? Let’s make up for that a bit:

Lady on the elevator while I’m apologizing sheepishly for going down one floor due to my terrible ankle: “idgaf, hasn’t happened to me in two years!” (not verbatim)

Last time I was there I left a tote bag and a pair of scissors in the copy room (long story). Replaced the scissors but I like that tote bag and didn’t think I would get it back, just assumed someone would chuck it. Even though I would do what actually happened, which is someon nicely set it aside out of the way and put the scissors away assuming they were office supplies. Office culture! So lovely! I forgot!

Floated on the IT floor for a bit waiting for my repair guy and was silently laughing my ass off listening to them bitch about various IT problems that I deeply know the pain of.

My repair guy broke his ankle the same year I did I was. stunned. He only broke one bone and only had to have it set, no surgery, but man. 2020 was really out here fucking everyone over in as many ways as it could think of.

This is mostly me being smug about myself but I also just think it’s sweet and fun: there’s a little book giveaway shelf by my subway station, and since I get way too many a lot of free books from work, including being allowed to pick from a list periodically, sometimes I like to use my free book slots to get books I think it would be fun to put on that shelf.  It happened that this time, I dropped my books off in the morning and was back at the station that afternoon--the books were gone. I was very pleased with myself but also glad that I picked well!

When I came home I ran into the super and he was supposed to make sure the smoke detector was working in my apartment but I was busy when he came by last time so I asked if he wanted to come up. He goes: “I just got off work and you want me to work again? I’m tired.” And I laughed super fucking hard and was like “Good. Me too. Who cares.” And instead we talked about how much we hate the drugstore in our neighborhood, and he bitched about the new students moving in who think they’re living in a hotel and asked after my family. (Me: my brother had to get stitches from slicing his finger to the bone? They’re good tho)

(re: drugstore: if you absolutely must lock everything up because you’re so god damn worried about people stealing 8 dollar lotion can you at least hire more staff so they’re not running around unable to help everyone who needs it?? jesus christ)

(my brother is fine)

Today. Repair guy forgot to give my charger so I had to. yes. Go back in and pick it up. Oh boy was I not happy. And New York gave me a big ol hug:

A store opened up right next door that’s like. A lil mini grocery store with a really nice buffet and coffee shop with pastries? And I guess it’s so new that the customer service people aren’t dead inside so when I bought a pastry to treat myself for hating my existence the lady was like “This is so good!! Have you had it? No?? Oh you’re missing out--well I guess you’re trying it now!” which I adore because you knowww you did good when the service rep loves the thing they give you. When I told her I work next door and decided to check out this fancy new store, she told me to come by if I’m working late (ha!), I said I would come by when I’m in the office again and it just. warmed my heart.

On the train platform, this guy sitting next to me was trying to give directions to a dude (happened to be in a wheelchair) who was very much on the wrong platform and insisting he wasn’t. Guy giving directions was getting frustrated so I jumped in and managed to get across to him that wheelchair dude was very much on the uptown platform and needed to go to the other side (pain in the ass when you’re in a wheelchair, I deeply understand his reluctance honestly).

New bullet point because there’s more to this story. Guy and I started talking. “I had just given up” “haha I get it” and that led to us talking about traveling in Europe (trains, yanno) and we and this continued all the way uptown. This man travels several times a year and loves Amsterdam & France and was telling me all about how the food in America is trash (me: rIGHT?? LEMME TELL YOU ABOUT GREECE--) and the media is lying and racist (he was a black guy and clearly a little bit like hmm do I talk about this?, he was like “I’m just gonna be blunt” while I absolutely knew what he was about to say and was like “oh GO OFF I’m ready” “FUCK YES it’s so bad here lemme tell you some stuff about where I’VE been--”) and I turned another person off Norwegian & Iceland Air (oh you won’t give me a refund after leaving me in the airport, Norwegian? everyone I meet is getting a spiel about how awful you are). I had a fucking great time.

I don’t always meet new people and it’s not always this good! but when it is!!

just. this city will sometimes make up for all the shit it’s putting you through and it’s always the people. every person here who annoys me is outnumbered by 10 other people who are so so kind. shitty inconveniences have the potential to turn into an adventure. eleven years and I’m not over it.

[actual-fucking-clown]

Take your time then.

Aizawa x gender neutral reader

Story under the cut :)

Unedited but like edited but still not properly edited :)

Hope you enjoy!!!

a/n: it’s been a hot min since I’ve written a fic. I think the last time i was 14 and it was shit and on wattpad. Ha. I hate myself. N e way, I was recently writing some shit for an au me and my friend thought up and in the back of my mind I was like, “you should start writing fics again bc this is kinda fun”, soo lo and behold I made a post asking if anyone would be interested, shared a little too much personal shit in it but whatever, and have now decided to write this mother fucker. (3/25/21)

a/n: not sure if anyone will care about this series of a/n’s but I’m just chronicling thoughts ig. rewriting rn bc my first draft was short and ass. Also I’m thinking about opening requests after this is posted, will go into detail in a diff post maybe. (3/28/21)

a/n: deleted everything, rewriting. I just want to make something that might be decent and if I can give that feeling, y’know those chills you get when you read something utterly gorgeous, but I’m bad at writing. sadge (3/28/21, like several hours later)

a/n: ugh (4/1/21)

a/n: ugh pt 2 electric boogaloo. I can’t seem to move forward with the writing. I realized something like this might happen bc to solve a problem feelings need to be discussed and I fucking hate doing that so you can see where I’m fucking up lmaooooo (4/2/21)

a/n: I read angst to fuel my writing brain. So, read some angst, finally writing agian. This first section is probs as long as the story itself LMFAO(4/5/21)

Started: (3/25/21) Finished: (4/5/21)

Warnings: uh angst, curse words, like a lot, (i saw someone else put this as a warning, do I actually need it?), avoiding problems instead of actually facing them, mentions of shit so-so parenting, mentions of not being able to live up to high expectations, y’know, the works

Synopsis: Aizawa takes in Eri without running it by you first and expects you to be okay with it. That’s funny. He was wrong.

Can I preface this with a thought? I’m going to anyway,

all the fics I read paint him as the sweetest partner and I’m sure he is but I think they miss out on how blunt he is and his whole “Mr. Rationality” thing. So as much as I adore him I think there are situations that he’d be a bit more colder towards, a bit more straightforward about. Maybe even like a bit insensitive about but maybe bc he doesn’t have the full picture or something. so I guess this is another warning but aizawa is a little insensitive in the beginning (but like not really but kinda. it’s complicated)

~

Rain pattered softly against the window. The smell of some old random Bath and Bodyworks candle you’d dug out from a box you’d never bothered to unpack smothered the room. Some Netflix show idly played on a low volume on your computer, you’d lost interest in watching tv awhile ago. You needed a break. After the eventful month you’d been having you really needed this. 

Now of course your whole year so far had been eventful. What with all the villain attacks on you and Shouta’s class and the kidnapping of one of your students, to just dealing with the more mundane problems with your students. No. You had no problem with that. The villains, although not easy, were something you were trained to handle. The smaller problems with your students weren’t arduous either, after all you weren’t too much older than them. 

When reflecting on your situation, from and outside perspective it could be seen as the straw the broke the camels back, which sure, makes sense. After all, you’re bound to be stressed out by everything else, so why would this seemingly insignificant thing weigh heavier than a villain attack? Well if that is the situation why does this single straw feel like it weighs a ton? This is not that. This is not culmination of the events of this year draining the life from you. This is something entirely different. A panic inducing life change that completely took you by surprise mixed with your inability to actually face your problems. 

You don’t blame them. You can’t. They’ve done nothing wrong. A child. A small, probably mentally scarred child is your problem. Well not her personally but the fear taking care of her instills in you. Despite working in the field that you do, you cannot for the life of you handle actual children. Sure you’re a little awkward with your class but at least they’re young adults and (vaguely) mature and independent to a certain extent. The fact that your long term boyfriend just came back one day, small child in tow and said “Hey I’ve gotta look after this one now” not verbatim obviously, for a lack of better words, fucked you up. He basically solo adopted a kid and, let’s be honest, he probably expected you to help out. But how could you? How could this man look at you and think “I want this person to help me raise an already fucked up child?” Ok sure, he doesn’t at first give off the “I’m totally father figure material” vibe but in the end he is extremely competent. You on the other hand, not so much.

You’d never been good with children. Tried your best to steer clear of them. Didn’t matter the place, didn’t matter who’s kid, you couldn’t handle them. You would just stand there, awkwardly, not entirely sure of what to do and petrified that there was the possibility of making some mistake which would upset the child and then oh wow look, your head got chopped right of your shoulders. That’s hyperbole of course but it does sum up the insurmountable fear that overcomes you whenever you have to deal with a child. So considering the fact that your long term boyfriend had suddenly decided to adopt and not at least warn you, didn’t sit right with you.

So, the best and most obvious choice, was to avoid your problem. Avoid Shouta, avoid Eri. Avoid the mention of them and you, avoid it all. And honestly you’d done pretty well so far. You were able to have as little contact with them as possible considering the close proximity of your living quarters in the teacher’s dorms. After all they were legally supposed to give you two separate rooms but you never actually used yours, well until now. You were living it up honestly. Did you feel awful? Of course. He is your boyfriend after all and you were sure Eri doesn’t deserve your cold shoulder but this is probably for the best. What could you offer her? You weren’t sure that you were a good role model for her or anyone for that matter. What did you know about raising kids? it’s not like you had parents to set a proper example for you. Of course they might have shown you what not to do but where do you go from there? Is shit like that really avoidable? You don’t want to be like them. You strive to be better but what if you can’t be. There’s also the added bonus of the fact that raising a kid seems taxing on a relationship. Now matter how strong you were sure that the stress of a kid could break a relationship down that then festers into something toxic and unrecognizable. You didn’t want that. God you couldn’t let that happen. No. This was definitely for the better.

Of course Aizawa didn’t feel the same. He was confused on why his partner had been so blatantly avoiding him. Did he do something wrong? He doesn’t remember doing anything that might’ve upset you. So why now? Why pull away now? He had to get down to the bottom of this but catching you was the hard part. You had been taking on more work, offering more assistance to the other teachers, picking up extra patrols, doing everything and anything to stay away from Shouta. It took him a month but he finally caught up to you. You were tired, worn out he knew that. Instead of loading yourself with work you’d decided to hole yourself up in your room. It was now or never.

You were pulled out of your peace at the sound of a few gentle knocks to your door. You really didn’t want to get it. You honestly couldn’t be bothered. 

“(N/n)? Are you in there?” He hadn’t gotten it wrong right? He hadn’t been too distracted earlier and missed you leaving right?

“What’s up?” You hummed from your place by the window, not bothering to actually open the door.

“Can I come in?” Shouta asked, voice soft. You could barely hear him above the patter of the rain and the low humming of your laptop.

“Uh, no, kinda busy. Got loads of work to do. Need to focus, sorry. Maybe later?” You hesitantly spoke. Not sure if you were convincing enough. 

Apparently you weren’t.

He sighed. “It’s been “later” for an entire month. Please (Y/n) just let me in. Whatever this is we can talk it out.” You had predicted that eventually Shouta would start to try to crack down on whatever the issue was but you didn’t expect it so soon. 

“Uh...no?” You tried, hoping that maybe he’d just give up but that wasn’t Shouta.

“No, you don’t get that option, now please, open the door.” Although it was still soft his voice had taken a more stern tone.

“Oh no I’m dead. I guess I can’t open the door. What a shame. I guess the only way to talk with me now is in the pits of hell.” You quipped, trying to lessen the tension that already ran thick.

“(Y/n).” Aizawa sighed.

“Jeez fine. Talk about pushy.” You quipped once more to no avail.

Opening the door you were met with, well exactly what you expected. He stood there, arms crossed, a stern yet gentle look in his eyes, his lips pulled into a slight frown. 

“Come in.” You mumbled as you stepped further into your room.

“So tell me. What’s wrong?” The sentence stirred so much. Of course you wanted to tell him. You wanted to spill your guts to the man you loved in hopes of comfort but you just can’t. You know you’ll just scare him off. You know you’ll make things worse.

So you stay silent.

He says nothing as he grabs your hands gently and leads you over to your bed. He sits the two of you down on the edge, muting the movie on the laptop sitting behind him.

“You know you can tell me if something’s bothering you right?” Shouta sent you a warm smile. 

You weren’t very comfortable with discussing your feelings sometimes, it mostly stemmed from the fact that you never really could discuss them with anyone growing up which made it harder to confide in anyone now, as at this point bottling things up was a habit. But this was also just something that you were sure that you couldn’t talk about.

Silence answered him once again.

Now he took sometime to think about his approach, think about what could’ve happened that made you pull away. What did he do that was different from his norm? He was genuinely stumped and the fact that you weren’t helping him confused him even more.

You decided to take this time to lament the situation too. What was he going to do? Should you actually tell him or play it off? If you play it off will he still insist that something is wrong? If you tell him will he leave you? If you don’t tell him will he leave you? You risked a glance at him, he was still deep in thought.

Why did you have to adopt this fucking kid without at least warning me?

“What?” Your head shot up at the sound of his shocked voice.

“What?” You asked, genuinely confused.

“Eri’s the problem...?” He spoke slowly, not entirely sure if he’d heard you right.

“Did I say that out loud?” You squeaked.

“I’m pretty sure you mumbled something along the lines of “why’d you have to adopt that fucking kid”.” Shouta said, unsure if he’d heard wrong. Wanting to have heard wrong.

“No no no no no no! It’s not like that! I mean it is like that but not like that!” You frantically waved your hands in hopes of defusing the situation.

The way he looked at you made you want to cry. You felt horrible. You felt like the biggest asshole in the world and, at this point you probably were. He looked at you with such a look of heartbreak and disappointment and confusion it made you sick to your stomach. You felt light-headed and started shaking. You were right. You were right. You were always right. God why did you have to be right! Why did you have to be like this? Scared of raising a fucking child! It was asinine and irrational and you could probably move past it  but thanks to your stupid fucking brain you just sealed your fate.

You scooted away from him still waving your hands frantically as no’s tumbled endlessly from your lips. You tried sputtering an apology, anything so that he wouldn’t look at you like that but nothing stuck. Nothing was comprehensible. Nothing worked. Nothing would work. Nothing will work. You were hopeless. It was hopeless. 

“If it isn’t like how it seems then tell it to me straight.” Shouta finally spoke up.

You took a second to come down from your panic. You steeled your nerves as much as possible before you spoke. 

“Um well, I have nothing against her it’s just that a little heads up would’ve been nice? I’m not all that great with kids so this is just kind of weird is all.” You were purposefully being vague in hopes that he’d understand what you meant and also maybe drop it.

“Not great with kids? You’re literally a teacher.” He pointed out.

“Yeah you know but she’s like a kid kid and let’s be honest I’m not too great with the students either.” You awkward laughed. So he wasn’t getting it.

“Wha-you’re fine with the students and I’m sure you’ll be fine with Eri, there was no reason to avoid me over this.” Shouta sighed. As good as he was with dealing with people, he was equally as shit. Or maybe it was just the fact that you gave him very little to work with. It was probably a bit of both. Still his dismissiveness was not helping you right now.

“No, no, no, no. I think I’ll stay here. Uh, good luck with your parenthood escapades and sorry to leave you high and dry like this but that’s going to have to be a no from me.” You rambled. He seemed to be getting a little tired of this.

“(Y/n) stop being irrational. She’s not even our kid I’m just looking after her for now. Why are you being difficult? I told you you were fine with the students and you’ll be fine with Eri, what else do you want to hear?” Shouta grumbled.

“Well uh I don’t know, uh...” You trailed off, this seemed to be going in a direction you really didn’t want it to go. A slight hostility settling in the air.

At your lack of a proper answer he clicked his tongue. He took a moment to reassess the situation. There had to be something he was missing. After all you were getting really worked up but if you weren’t going to talk to him there was nothing he could do. He shook his head before running a frustrated hand through his hair.

“(Y/n), please, please, just be honest with me. Whatever it is that’s bothering you, you can tell me. But I won’t be able to understand if you don’t.” Aizawa sighed, deciding that getting worked up about this was not the way to go, especially when you seemed to be especially distraught.

“Uh, god the thing is I don’t know entirely what to say to put the shitshow in my head into perspective.” You mumbled, trying desperately to figure out what to say that could clear the air but nothing seemed to be coherent enough.

“Take your time.” He decided that this was the best approach to things, making sure neither party got too worked up lest this turn into a fight.

The rain continued to patter softly against the window and your candle continued to burn an slightly off floral-ish scent.  A deafening silence hung in the air because even though he was being as patient as possible some of his frustration leaked through, it was bound to though so you couldn’t exactly blame him. After all, you were probably equally as frustrated with yourself too. 

“I’m just not good in a position like this. I’m not good with kids, especially someone like Eri who’s already so broken. You have that nurturing nature, it comes natural to you but I’m not on that level. I  don’t know the first thing about caring for a child let alone one as already traumatized as her. I’d fuck it up and only make things worse. I don’t want you to reassure me that I’ll be okay with her, I want you to understand that I’m not comfortable with this and that it might take me awhile to come around. I’m sure I sound like the biggest asshole ever but please understand that this just isn’t something I’m ready for.” You had rambled a bit, you were aware of that, but it was the only way that you could properly express your feelings without making things too complicated.

Aizawa said nothing. Trying to figure out how to go about things.

Was he upset? Yeah, you two, even after several long years of being together, hadn’t discussed moving forward in your relationship in depth. And if he’d tried you seemed content with the point you two were at so he left it be, no reason to try and move forward when what you had was already fine the way it was. But recently he’d been craving more. Some mornings, when he’d be the first to wake, he’d study your features in the soft light of the sunrise and wonder what it’d be like to properly settle down with you. Get married, start a family, all that jazz. He’d taken in Eri only because it was the most rational decision. His quirk would be good for quelling hers had it ever gotten out of hand. But it also seemed to quell his musings of something more with you. He had imagined you being a good parental figure for the little girl and it made his heart flutter and his stomach explode with butterflies. But now seeing that that wasn’t what you wanted and how you weren’t ready for it, it stung. But in the end, he loved you. He’d easily give his life for you. So, if that meant waiting he’d wait. He’d wait a million years if he had to. He could do it.

Once again he spoke,

“Take your time then. I can wait.”

Tagslist?: @captainchrisstan (I think you said you wanted to be tagged but I’m also just small brained lol If u didn’t want to and I misinterpreted things just let me know :) )

[protectwoc]

why all reylos are racist

y’all can go ahead and cancel me now because some of you are not going to like what i have to say and i am completely okay with that.

this recent gq interview with john boyega has incensed me. hearing all the things he went through, from disney and from “fans” and with no support from anyone… i’m livid. sometimes when i think about it for too long i start shaking, i’m so furious. and the response from the reylo fandom has infuriated me to a degree i honestly didn’t know was possible.

some of you may have seen my recent tumblr rampage. it’s reylo bullying hours here on my blog, and i’m not sorry either. one person threatened to post screenshots of my comments, which like… okay? i know what the fuck i said, it wasn’t that long ago. in fact i was going to include the screenshots in this post right here, but they blocked me before i had the chance. sorry. i’m sure somebody has them. anyway…

over the past two days in the star wars fandom we have seen something unprecedented: an outpouring of support for john boyega. both reylos and anti-reylos have joined forces to voice support for john in the wake of the gq interview (and the blm protests, let’s be real, some of y’all would not have given half a fuck if it wasn’t suddenly cool to be antiracist). and this showing of unity is one of the most rage-inducing things i’ve ever seen in a fandom (which is saying something; i have seen some shit).

reylo fandom, full offense intended, but where the fuck do you get off? you’re supporting john now? where was this support when tfa came out and you couldn’t stand the thought of him next to your white-girl-self-insert? where was it when tlj came out and your boy ryan completely sidelined him? where was it earlier this fucking year when y’all twisted a harmless joke (like yall haven’t spent years writing reylo-throne-room-sex-meta BULLSHIT) and ignored the vile racist shit coming from your own fav’s mouth? but you’re supporting him now? now that being antiracist is trendy? fuck outta here with that bullshit.

your fandom is the reason for the vast majority of the absolutely subhuman treatment john has endured over the last few years. your fandom influenced ryan (yes i know what his name is) to write tlj the way he did, you have behaved indefensibly here on tumblr.hell writing and drawing and fantasizing about all sorts of racist bullshit, and y’all have STAYED in his twitter mentions spewing hatred seven ways to sunday. but NOW, without a shred of self-reflection, you’re supporting him? now his experiences are valid?

the way that your fandom refuses to take accountability for its actions makes me see red. y’all stay on some “not all reylos” nonsense and i am SICK OF IT. i’m only gonna say this once, and i want you to hear me: you cannot be a reylo and be “antiracist”. you cannot participate in a fandom that has behaved the way yours has and say “blm, uwu acab.” you can’t. like do you think black people are dumb? that we can’t see right through you? we can.

“but rae,” i hear you whining. “you’re gonna say just because i like two characters together i’m a racist?” and of course not. that would be ludicrous. i think just because you knowingly engage and participate in a fandom that has racism encoded in its dna, you’re a racist. i think because y’all are in bed with racist harassers, racist trolls, and racist content creators, you’re a racist. that’s what the fuck i think. y’all lost the right to “it’s just a ship” me the instant you dragged john boyega into this.

here’s an example: i watched tfa about three days after it came out. i watched the first half, saw the obvious relationship set up between finn and rey, and thought, “aw, cute.” then i watched kylo and rey fight, watch him offer to teach her, and thought, “... interesting.”

when i got home i checked tumblr for finnrey content, saw the outpouring of love from black fans, all the cute fanart and fics blooming, and smiled. then, slowly, guiltily, i searched “reylo.”

BOOM. racism. the things i saw in the tag that night are tattooed on my brain. reylos rejoicing about the obvious rey/kyle pairing because “sw would never put her with that monkey finn”. calling him an “oaf”, “useless”, “bumbling”, “stupid”. reylos joking about how “when they talked about the Dark side, [they] didn’t think they meant that kind of dark.” “woke” reylos pretending to ship stormpilot in an obvious ploy to get finn away from kylo. and in between all of that, cute ship art. fun fics. talented gif makers. and nobody saying shit about the reprehensible behavior going on in their tag.

reylo is built on a foundation of racism. from that first week, racism has been woven into the fabric of your fandom, and it’s been going unchecked. and i don’t mean calling out other reylos. that’s not enough. i mean taking actual steps. y’all have been sitting in a cesspool of racism for five years, and its time for you to get the fuck out or shut the fuck up about being an “ally”. y’all need to leave this fandom.

don’t agree? here’s another story. in 2017, when i still watched supergirl (before i grew taste) i shipped karamel. for those of you who don’t know, karamel is the ship of kara zor-el (supergirl) and mon-el, her second love interest. when supergirl was moved to the cw for its second season, the decision was made to abruptly end her romance with jimmy olsen, played by mecahd brooks (a black man) and replace him with mon-el, played by chris wood, a white man, who was revealed to be, among other things, an alien slaveowner, as well as a playboy and all-around terrible person. and i shipped them. look, i’m not defending myself, but i never really bought the chemistry between jimmy and kara. even though mon-el’s introduction and the way that they carelessly disregarded kara’s feelings for jimmy made me uncomfortable, i thought the way melissa played her attraction to chris wood was more believable (and again, i’m not defending myself, but they are now married so it’s not like i was wrong). so i shipped them. simple as that, right?

well, no. not really. because the inherent racism in the way the writers wrote out her admittedly sweet romance with a black man in favor of a white slaveowner jerk kept bothering me. and finally i decided that it made me too uncomfortable to participate in. i never really reblogged any karamel fandom stuff, but i completely divorced myself from the fandom. i stopped reading karamel fic, and i switched to reblogging exclusively jimmy/kara content until the fandom died out/i stopped watching. i made a choice that real life racism is more important to me than a fucking fandom or a ship, and then i acted accordingly. simple as that.

and i’m not saying you have to stop liking the reylo dynamic. i still like the chemistry between kara and mon-el. i’ve shipped problematic ships before (bamon comes to mind) and i don’t think there’s anything wrong with that (to a point). but there’s a difference between liking a ship dynamic and engaging and contributing to a fan culture of racism. you have to stop participating in the fandom. y’all are in bed with people indistinguishable from confederate-flag-waving-all-lives-matter-touting racists and you don’t feel the need to get out of that environment? there comes a certain point where you have to decide if fandom bullshit is more important to you than fighting racism, and unfortunately, reylos have chosen wrong. that, ladies and gentlemen, is why all reylos are racist, regardless of what they say. roll credits.

except i have more to say, so i’m gonna say it. first of all, i’m not trying to hold myself up as some kind of paragon of virtue. i’m not holier-than-thou because all my ships are “woke” or whatever. chemistry is subjective, and we’re all going to be attracted to different ship dynamics, and there’s nothing wrong with that in theory. what matters is the execution. i finally had to say one day, “you know, this ship and the racist baggage it carries is actually less important to me than battling systemic racism on every level, including the fandom level”. y’all thought being antiracist was gonna be easy? that you wouldn’t have to make some actual changes, to make some actual sacrifices? sorry not sorry to disappoint. and if i, a normal-ass person with flaws and problematic thinking that i’m still dealing with and the whole ine yards, can make that decision, then other people should be required to as well.

(what really irks me is that the karamel fandom wasn’t even really that bad! i definitely could have gotten away with being a karamel stan in 2017. thankfully the supercat and supercorp shippers were doing the lord’s work and bullying them into submission (don’t think i’m letting y’all off the hook either, y’all have got some racism to deal with as well but that’s an essay for another day) but like most of the racism happened at the writing level; the fandom itself wasn’t engaging in racist clownery on the regular. but like the reylos are. y’all see racist bullshit coming from your neighbor, fav fic writer, artist, gif maker, whatever, and don’t say shit? don’t feel the need to distance yourself from them? gtfoh.)

i made this argument earlier when i was on my rampage (which i’m still on btw so don’t clown in my inbox, you will get your shit rocked) but i’m going to make it again because i feel like its important to note. when i pointed out that existing in the reylo fandom while you are aware of its racism makes you complicit in that racism, a white reylo told me earlier that (paraphrasing, my memory’s not as good as it used to be and i did mention that they’d blocked me) “you don’t solve a problem like systemic racism by ignoring it. leaving the fandom would be allowing it to happen.” when i pointed out that that’s police officer rhetoric almost verbatim, she (a white reylo) admonished me (a black woman) not to compare police brutality to a “ship war.” lmao.

look, clearly y’all need a refresher on what “systemic” means. it means, quite simply, that there are systems, large and small, allow for racism to exist, and it also means that allowing for racism to exist on the small scale means expecting it on a large one. like you think police officers spring fully formed from the head with racist ideals already ingrained? no! they learn it and learn to justify it with “well just because my friend made a racist joke doesn’t make me a racist” and “just because i laughed at my friend’s using a racist term in my video game doesn’t make me a racist” and “just because my friend is a racist doesn’t mean i’m a racist” and then we have people watching their coworkers kneel on a man’s back for 8 minutes with no remorse. i’m not gonna solve police brutality by fighting reylos on tumblr, but fandom racism is real racism with consequences on our world, and i don’t tolerate ANY type of racism. and the fact that you are so willing to not just tolerate it but justify it should say something to you.

and not all reylos are like this. similar to cops, good reylos don’t last. i have seen people grow so disgusted by the racism in the reylo fandom that they publicly turned their backs on it, and those reylos i respect. you’ve heard of “the only good cop is an ex-cop” well get ready for “the only good reylo is an ex-reylo”.

(and also like far be it from me to justify a cop but one could at least say they have their livelihoods to think about (not like they couldn’t just pick a nonmurderous profession but i digress) but you reylos can’t even choose between taking a stance against the hateful and unjustified bullying of a man who had the audacity to… get a job (?)... over a ship? come on now.)

the point of all this is, for all their posturing about “being antiracist” and “fuck 12” and “support john boyega”, reylos have decided that a relationship between two fictional people is more important than all the black and brown people who are hurt by that decision and the consequences of that decision. and before y’all pull some “b-but there are POC reylos!” (stop fucking using poc as an adjective, its a noun, it stands for person of color, please use it as such) internalized racism is a thing. busting out your token “reylo of color” (see how easy that was?) is not going to change my mind. all reylos are complicit in the racism of their peers, and being complicit makes you culpable. full stop.

and that is why the public support of john boyega from the reylo fandom has me seeing red. renounce your fandom or keep that man’s name out of your mouth. anyway, this was long and ranty and entirely stream-of-consciousness and i’m refusing to edit it so it’s probably completely incomprehensible to anyone besides me but if you made it this far thanks for reading ig. all reylos are racist, blm, fuck 12, acab, stan john boyega, don’t clown in my inbox unless you’re coming to bully me for being a karamel shipper, which i deserve (or do, i couldn’t give less of a fuck). good night.

[smallfrost]

MFSRI: The Burning of Scylla Ramshorn Comprehensive Analysis; Scylla as Ovid’s Phoenix

A while back I proposed the Burning of Scylla Ramshorn  as a theme for our Sexy Weird Necro (now re-branded, Sassy Sexy Weird Murder Nugget Necro). This was primarily about how she may have been burned in the past, either literally (her family was burned) or figuratively (Porter turned in her dodger parents). This evolved to include the fact that Scylla is literally wreathed in fire throughout the season, with actual flames and with more vague references to burning dancing around her. After having separate posts about this (here and here) in addition to my original theory, I figured I would first make a comprehensive list of all the times Scylla has referenced burning or is surrounded by actual flames throughout the season and then propose several options for what this might mean. Including, how the use of fire imagery combined with “nothing ever really dies” parallels to Ovid’s Metamorphosis and the Phoenix.

This one is a long one but come with me on this ride...

To start, we have all of the times she has used fire for Spree Glamour. (Note: Faux Raelle burning is still Scylla’s motif because she represents someone she cares about and loves, and the flames are reflected in Scylla’s eyes). 

Then we have Scylla and Raelle in Memorial Hall discussing if the Burning Times are really over, followed directly by a shot with a fireplace in the background and Scylla in the foreground. The same fireplace Porter is standing next to a few seconds later (re: Porter burned Scylla).

And we have Scylla saying she has been burned before and tends to burn. 

She also mentions the recent burnings of witches, even as recent as last year while she’s in the dungeon. 

--

So, what does this all mean? The strength of this theme for Scylla is ominous. Is it possible foreshadowing of a literal burning? Could be. Perhaps Scylla is terrified that she herself will be burned at the stake since a witch had been burned as recently as last year. She is terrified she will be executed. 

Perhaps this theme is referencing something that happened in the past, such as witnessing her parents being burned or being betrayed by someone she cared about as previously proposed. The parallels to Greek mythology in MFS have been a favorite topic of discussion amongst the theorist community and at the Research Institute, leading to many posts including analyses done by @captainjeclid​ and @trash-deluxe​. We know that Scylla is a Greek monster. We know that Odysseus, whom Raelle parallels, encounters Scylla on his journey home (after having visited the underworld). Could the Burning of Scylla be referring to her own personal Odyssey through the underworld; her own inferno? Would be quite fitting, seeing that she is a Necro. But I think there is yet another possibility… and that is fire as a form of rebirth; that which has died, transforms into the living - shedding a previous nature for a new one.

After seeing how Scylla and Raelle parallel the Odyssey, I hope to convince you of yet another series of mythological parallels, this time as it relates to balance, resurrection, and life becoming death, over and over again, all while linking Scylla to the phoenix as a symbol of rebirth [through fire].

Ovid’s Metamorphosis is an epic poem thematically contemplating transformation. Here we get stories like that of Narcissus, the man doomed to love himself, and Arachne being transformed into a spider. Over 15 ‘books’, the Roman poet, Ovid weaves his tales and ends on one containing the teachings of Pythagoras. And what do we learn? To quote directly, “All things are always changing, but nothing dies. The spirit comes and goes, is housed wherever it wills, it shifts residence from beasts to men, from men to beasts, but always it keeps on living”. Sound familiar?

Scylla teaches us the same lesson in the graveyard when she shows Raelle the Death Cap. Death is not so cut and dry. Nothing ever really dies. Life becomes death which becomes life again. Over and over. Scylla is almost quoting Ovid verbatim here, “Nothing remains the same: the great renewer, Nature, makes form from form, and, oh, believe me that nothing ever dies.”

Pythagoras really says nearly these exact words several times. He explains that death is not what it seems and not to fear it, but to understand that our souls are deathless, and that when they leave our bodies, they will find new dwelling places. Things are not static. They are always changing. The soul, the life force, is recycled in a never ending and eternal circle… That which once was, is no longer the same but still present. It is a process of renewal… In other terms, while Necros cannot bring the dead back to life, the cycle of souls shifting residence is itself, a form of resurrection. So, even if Willa Collar is death, her soul is not gone. Just… repurposed. It’s going to be up to our little Necro to find it.  

Aside: I just want to point out that this portion of Metamorphosis is riddled with examples of duality (day and night, fire and water, life and death), one of our favorite themes throughout MFS. And the never ending, harmonious cycle of renewal fits perfectly into a magic system built on the foundation of maintaining balance. 

So besides quoting Ovid almost verbatim, giving us our MFS Necro “religion”, why else is this portion of Metamorphoses relevant? Because immediately following discussions on how the life of one creature can come from the death of another, we learn that while “all of these things have their beginning in some other creature, there is one bird which renews itself, out of itself. [They] call it the phoenix.”

Now, Pythagoras does not necessarily say that the phoenix is born out of its own ashes. In fact, the historical association of the phoenix with fire is hard to trace and I had difficulty finding anything related to the exact origin of flames. But the symbolism of the phoenix throughout its mythology associates with the sun and fire. In Egyptian mythology, the phoenix flies to Heliopolis, the “City of the Sun” and builds its nest atop the Temple of the Sun, or brings its remains there after rebirth. In various versions of this myth, the nest catches fire from the rays of the sun. I’m not about to make this a thesis on the origins of fire being associated with the phoenix, but for now, let’s fall back on our western mythology of being reborn in flames and connect them to the theme of “nothing ever dies” in Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Indeed, Pythagoras discusses fire several times throughout Book 15 and how fire itself is part of these changing cycles. Including one instance where he literally states that “[They] set wood on fire by pouring water on it in the dark of the moon.” Considering @theycallmestephlee​ established that Scylla is Fire and Raelle is Water … the parallels are hard to ignore. 

The Phoenix from the Aberdeen Bestiary could lead us down another rabbit hole of parallels with Christianity and Lesbian Jesus Christ, Raelle Collar as @likethefoximalwayschanging​ has established. 

Ovid’s use of fire imagery throughout this portion of the poem, and the eventual association of the Phoenix with fire as a form of rebirth that is rooted in western legend, strongly suggests that Scylla is going through her own transformation by being wreathed in flames. She has lived her life by one set of values up until now, but her current nature is dying. Through that death, she will be renewed with a new moral compass. Scylla is questioning the foundations of her morality. She still believes that the Army is evil but knows that what the Spree asked her to do was equally horrendous (she has regret, she did not hand over Raelle). She has been through fire and brimstone, her own inferno. Her motivations were driven by that. She committed horrible acts. But now we’ve seen her begin strip away her old nature. Because Raelle, like water, found the cracks and flowed her way into Scylla’s fiery heart.

So even if there is a literal Burning of Scylla Ramshorn, she won’t die. She will be saved and “reborn” in a new light with a new nature. She has been scorched by fire in her past; what she has been through has led her to commit things which she regrets. There used to be no room for attachments, for love. But through her journey and through meeting and loving Raelle, her perspectives have changed. “That which has been, is not; that which was not, begins to be…”

Quotes from Rolfe Humphries’ translation of Metamorphoses.

[mprjanedoe]

Hi there folks. I really did not intend to make this blog a regular update situation. I intended for the information to be out there for those to read and that really be the end of it. But a number of noteworthy things have happened and I feel they are worth talking about.

Please repost this if you see this.

Nothing in this post is legal advice directed to anyone or from anyone. I am not a lawyer. I know lawyers, I have spoken with lawyers, I am reading what lawyers have to say – but this is not legal advice.

I am here expressing my opinion on this situation and how it has been handled.

At no point in talking about this, in any correspondence on this blog, my twitter, or my Instagram, has my intent been malicious. I am not talking about all of this with the intention of saying any of it to harm Michael, or any members of Steam Powered Giraffe. And I would venture to say that Bunny and David, when they’ve spoken about what Michael’s done, also had no intention of harming Michael by speaking about this. It is a pervasive and toxic myth that the vast majority of people who would ever speak out about abuse have something to gain from doing so. I have absolutely nothing to gain from this. Even in my personal life – non-anonymously, I have nothing to gain from this. I am putting myself at risk of retaliation in various forms. I am doing this because I care about the people Michael harmed, myself included – and they all, we all, deserve the respect and dignity of people knowing what happened in our path to healing and recovery from the lasting harm caused by Michael.

I was informed by multiple people, publicly, and privately/anonymously that Michael has threatened legal action against Steam Powered Giraffe LLC and has used the word “libel” to describe what legal action he may choose to take. This is likely the reason Bunny chose to delete her tweets about Michael. I have been asked to remove the public conversation around this. I am not going to do so. The person who publicly mentioned this to me deserves no negative attention for doing so. The access fans and supporters get to SPG when becoming patrons is merely a paywall.

So let’s talk about Michael’s response, and let’s talk about libel. Libel is the legal term for written defamation of character. The legal definition of defamation is as such: “Generally, defamation is a false and unprivileged statement of fact that is harmful to someone's reputation, and published "with fault," meaning as a result of negligence or malice. Libel is a written defamation.”

Steam Powered Giraffe has mentioned on public posts on Patreon that Michael has “denied everything”. Steam Powered Giraffe has mentioned on public posts on Patreon, verbatim: “The evidence is far from unfounded. It's all damning and there is no ifs, ands, or buts about it. The evidence is overwhelming.” (sic)

I do not know who all has reached out to Steam Powered Giraffe’s members and what they have all come forward with about what Michael has done. I only know what I have experienced, what I have personally witnessed (in person, and online/over the phone), and what I have been told (and shown, in photos, texts, chatlogs, etc) from other victims. I have no reason to believe Steam Powered Giraffe is hyperbolizing, exaggerating, or making anything up about the situation. I also have made no hyperbole or exaggeration. To my knowledge, there is a significant amount of evidence and a significant number of victims to prove that Michael has caused the harm that has been spoken about. There is no indication that Steam Powered Giraffe has posted anything that is not true about him in this situation. That in and of itself, nullifies the idea that there is libel occurring.

In addition to this – as I said earlier, I have nothing to gain from this. I am at risk of more harm in this. Steam Powered Giraffe as an entity also has nothing to gain from this. From what they’ve said, it appears they have not been working with Michael for a while, and while I imagine some sort of legal residual financial situation for royalties will have to remain in place, what I cannot imagine is that Steam Powered Giraffe is paying Michael so much in royalties that they would lie or seek to tarnish his image just to find a way not to pay him. Steam Powered Giraffe is also at risk for talking about him, and it is a financial risk to put their reputation on the line for being associated with him for a number of years to talk about this.

In my opinion, Michael’s threat is at best, an empty one, and at worst, a foolish one. Legal action of any kind is expensive. From what I’ve read, a libel/defamation lawsuit can cost on average $15,000, over a process of at the least $1,000 a month to pursue. Not to mention Michael is not in the US anymore, and we’re in the middle of a pandemic where legal cases are not as easy to just initiate and process. In addition to this, much of what Michael has done, that I can personally state I know there is proof of, was and is illegal. Statutory rape, possession and distribution of illegal drugs, providing alcohol to minors – all of these things were and are illegal. To initiate a process where Steam Powered Giraffe would be in a position to present the burden of proof of what he’s done, would be a significant risk to “open up a can of worms”, so to speak. It would not be in Michael’s best interest financially or personally to pursue legal action against Steam Powered Giraffe LLC or anyone talking about the things he has done.

It is not uncommon for perpetrators of abuse to threaten legal action in an attempt to silence victims and those who would bring their actions to light. In the case of directly attempting to silence victims, there are laws called Anti SLAPP laws. SLAPP stands for “A strategic lawsuit against public participation is a lawsuit intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition. In the typical SLAPP, the plaintiff does not normally expect to win the lawsuit. “ These laws and these types of lawsuits typically are talking about domestic violence cases wherein an abusive spouse threatens legal action to try to prevent a victim from seeking help and talking about the abuse they’ve experienced or are experiencing. This does not apply directly here, but it is an indicator that these behaviors from abusive people are not necessarily a rare occurrence.

I have some grievances about how Steam Powered Giraffe – namely David and Bunny, are handling this situation. Is it reasonable for the Bennetts to make sure to cover their brand and their *assets*? Absolutely. But not everything is black and white. I believe that not enough is being done by David and Bunny to appropriately make it known the harm Michael has caused. This is a morality issue, and I know not everyone has the same morals as I do, but I would hope with the things David and Bunny appear to stand for, that they would care more about Michael’s victims than Michael’s threats or the potential at Steam Powered Giraffe being looked at negatively by being associated with Michael. Here’s the thing – Michael’s harm cannot be divorced from his associated with Steam Powered Giraffe, and Steam Powered Giraffe handling this appropriate and respectfully would make people who care about things like this respect and admire SPG more. Currently, it feels as though SPG is more committed to doing the absolute bare minimum and focusing the rest of their attention on protecting themselves from a perceived threat as opposed to caring about the severity of the situation and doing their part to help the victims.

David said, in a tweet on July 3rd: (I have not checked to see if this tweet is still up) “I’d trade everything with Steam Powered. Giraffe if it meant I could go back in time and stop Mike from joining the band in 2009, so he might not hurt anyone”

David said on a tweet on June 30th “I feel sick having hired him for gigs in 2017, knowing this all now” and in another tweet “To know what he was actually doing sickens me”

Bunny has also stated a number of emotional and remorseful things which have mostly since been deleted:

She stated that she “almost couldn’t” love him anymore (in the past) because of “the sheer panic attacks” she got “around him and fans”

She said “I know the band wasn’t harboring an abuser knowingly or anything like that, but it’s hard not to feel like I was. I will be asking myself that for. The rest of my life. I should’ve said something. I should of stood my ground. We had nothing to go off of except an irate fan and a girl who didn’t want to press charges or do anything about it”

Bunny also said – presumably on behalf of SPG as a whole: “We’re talking, we’re listening, and we’re horrified at the accusations against Mike”

She also said “I can’t express my disgust. I can’t express the rage and hurt I have inside of me boiling up” and “I will fucking tear down this band and burn it to the ground if that gets the fucking bile out of my mouth” and “I’m watching this bastion of hope we created be sordid by someone we let in… gave the benefit of doubt to… MULTIPLE TIMES. I don’t know if SPF will ever be the same for me – every guitar lick… every phat beat he wrote. Tainted.”

David said in a tweet “We stand with the victims who have come forward to us privately, publicly, and those that haven’t.”

Bunny said “This is something that will haunt for years. I’m personally energized to spend the remainder of my life contrary to what Mike and people like Mike do. When the world heals and touring begins again, know that if you take advantage of our audience, we will be there with other performers like us to hold you accountable. And our audience. And your audience.”

On July 12th, Bunny said “The best part of this is that Steve and Mike get away scot free. They don’t get their comeuppance. I dunno if “vengeance” is the way to live life, but I know for a fact the next decade is going to be spent finding my own happiness in truth and loyalty.” “Mike has denied it all, even in the fact of damning evidence. We gave him the benefit of doubt too, and we contacted his family. No regrets, no justice in the slightest. And there are still people singing his praises”. She goes on: “Trying to describe my feelings on Steve and Mike’s behavior and how for years I’ve defended them… all the while being lied to is… heartbreaking to say the least. I know things are confusing, but you can’t make this shit up”

On the specifics of Michael’s behavior: “Mike’s stuff is so much worse. I was afraid Mike’s underage grooming habits would be somehow lessened or forgotten in the wake of Steve’s behavior back in the day… which while deplorable, have at least been owned up to.” “Stringing together tweets is the worst way to address all this, but I suppose a video about it or something down the line is called for. Right now I’m far too upset and rattled to reflect on it all. I don’t know how SPG will be salvaged from all this”.

Why am I repeating all of this? I want it to be cleared that David and Bunny expressed remorse, disgust, regret, anger, grief, shame in all of this. I see that. I acknowledge that. And in seeing these statements, I trusted them to handle this in the best way they could manage. But it also needs to be acknowledged that there has been a harmful failure on their part in how they’ve responded beyond these tweets. I am not the expert on how best to handle horrible situations like this, but as both a victim and an ally to other victims and a person who has been a fan of SPG before, I think I know enough to say that not enough has been done, and inaction in and of itself causes harm as well.

I’d also like to address the unfortunate situation that David and Bunny maintain they had no prior knowledge of Michael’s behavior. Here’s the thing: while I 100% believe they did not know all of the details of all of the harm Michael caused, there were definitive patterns and red flags and there needs to be actual accountability around this. Bunny said that the band gave Michael the benefit of doubt multiple times. She also said that Michael was caught and reprimanded for kissing a teenage fan in 2011. If my math is correct, at the time Michael would’ve been 25 and the fan was 17. That’s nearly a decade of difference, despite the fan being almost 18. On top of this, this was a fan and a minor and not only is there a power dynamic at play with age but also setting and influence. Bunny also mentioned Michael had been reprimanded for being “too friendly” around fans as young as 14. As an adult in my 20s, if I had a peer and friend my age who had a pattern of getting friendly with teenagers and minors of any age, that would be a huge red flag. Let ALONE a bandmate, a coworker or sorts – or technically a contractor level employee. I would see anyone like that as a liability I could not take the risk of associating with, and as a likely dangerous man to be around. That was an entire decade ago, and nothing was done beyond a slap of the wrist. On top of this, as someone who was Michael’s friend, I went to multiple Steam Powered Giraffe shows to support him. I also was apart of online fan communities as well. I saw how visible he was with his predatory “friendliness” towards young fans, and I saw fans gossip about his friends and give them a sort of adjacent celebrity status as well. While I was young and being manipulated myself and not in a position to prevent harm – I am saying this to state that I witnessed the public visibility of Michael’s predatory behavior. I take issue with the claim that there were no signs and that no one could’ve prevented this sooner. I’ve seen some fans say that Michael would’ve “always been this way” and found ways to harm other people had he not been in Steam Powered Giraffe. While this could be true, it cannot be denied that being apart of a successful band like Steam Powered Giraffe that gained a cult status online and in the local scene and had a significant YEARS of DAILY exposure in a family setting to minors, cultivating a fandom of a significant amount of younger fans, giving Michael the upper hand of minor celebrity and influence, travel, etc, cannot be divorced from this situation. This is not inherently Bunny or David’s fault. But it is a factor in the breadth of harm Michael was able to do, and it is a factor in knowing there were opportunities for him to have had the resources he gained and used to cause harm pulled from him much sooner than now, when he has already removed himself from the band as it stands.

The past is the past. It cannot be changed. As David and Bunny both lamented that they’d go back and stop things if they could’ve, well yes, to a degree, there were opportunities to prevent further harm, but it’s too late now. Now is the time to make things right, and to prevent the potential for further harm.

Currently – there is absolutely not enough publicly visible and available information on the harm Michael has caused on Steam Powered Giraffe’s social media presence. This is made worse by the fact that consistent promo and every day band stuff creates a wider and wider gap between the leftover posts about Michael’s abuse on Twitter, Facebook, and Patreon. It is now becoming a game of chance whether a fan of Steam Powered Giraffe will know what Michael has done. I have seen numerous posts and tweets from fans asking what happened, saying they are confused and in the dark. It has been less than 3 weeks since Bunny first tweeted about this, and it cannot fade to memory.

It is unfair and grotesque for fans of all ages, including children and parents of children, to unknowingly hold Michael dear in their hearts as an admirable, safe, kindhearted person – without knowing what he has done. It is unfair to not let people decide for themselves whether they still look up to him, whether they still admire him, whether they still support him. Michael’s victims cannot safely have a platform to speak openly about his violence without harming themselves by being exposed to backlash and being triggered by repeated exposure to their traumas out in the open. However, Michael’s victims deserve to have their voices heard, their grievances aired, and deserve to get some slight respite after years of abuse at least knowing that what they suffered is no longer a secret and people are not *unknowingly* offering praise and fame to someone who has done such disgusting and lastingly harmful things.

Bunny expressed that Steve and Michael got off “scot free” and that there was “no justice”. I am not advocating that SPG or myself or any of Michael’s victims be the ones to make any attempt at giving Michael consequences for his actions or enacting justice. However, Bunny and David can do things to make the burden of harm lighter.

Here is what I believe can and should be done, at the least, to do the right thing in this situation:

-SPG needs to make public statement(s) about Michael’s harmful actions on ALL public social media. Not just Patreon and not just the statements that have already been made. These statements should not be deleted.

-Michael’s likeness should be removed from all SPG’s media, within the realm of whatever royalties or residual contractual obligations will allow

-SPG should take a moratorium on normal fandom posts: promotion posts, art prompts, casual band updates on band specific pages. Every promo post, every art prompt, every band announcement will detract further and bury the information if not given the space and respect to allow the information to be seen and processed. The moratorium should at the very least last a week, if not more.

-I and Michael’s victims that I know would appreciate the original statement of harm reposted on Steam Powered Giraffe’s social media.  I remind David and Bunny that doing so does not make them legally liable for MY statement, and some fans who have read this statement have also directly encouraged SPG to repost. David and Bunny’s words cannot properly convey the direct harm caused to Michael’s victims. The victims deserve to be heard directly. Using Steam Powered Giraffe’s platform to make this known, the same platform that helped enable Michael to cause harm, is a respectful course of action.

-I also encourage David and Bunny to reflect on their role in allowing Michael to “get away scot free” in this. I have no specifics of personal accountability to ask of them, but I do encourage them to not focus on guilt or shame that cannot be fixed, but to really process this and do what they can to learn and grow from this and not allow the chance of letting harm occur again.

I know this was an extremely long post, and if you stuck through it all, thank you.

I hope that actions are taken in the right direction, and I hope I will have less commentary to offer on the situation in the future so I can focus on healing.  

[erasethedarkness]

The Cat and the Key

Summary: The most wanted woman in town has announced that she'll only marry the one who can open her front door with the key around her cat's neck. Many men try to hunt the cat down, chase and trap it, but to no avail. The cat is simply too quick, smart and clever, and always finds a way to evade and avoid them. He was the first one to figure out the obvious, even with no intention of going for the prize: do not chase the cat. The cat is befriendable. Get the cat to trust you, to genuinely enjoy your company, and you can hang out with the cat. You may eventually be allowed to touch the cat. The cat will freely let you take the key.

Reader: Female

Words: 4644

Pairing: Aizawa x Reader

Note: The summary is, almost verbatim, taken from this tumblr post that inspired the story. Bonus inspiration: Please don't knock, the cat has the key.

“Ugh, another?” you sighed, vexed by the marriage proposal brought to your attention. Your parents received an offer for your hand that, like the others before it, outlined how beautifully your family names would mesh, and how lovely a woman like you would look on some rich man’s arm. As always, they emptily promised you would want for nothing- but how could they be so sure? People you didn’t even know were sending you offers, and it seemed like everywhere you turned, someone was trying to- how did they used to say it?- wife you up .

“I’m over it. I’m so over it. I’m just gonna fake a husband so no one thinks I’m available.”

“(Y/N), that’s such a dumb idea,” your brother ridiculed.

“Oh, come off it,” you groaned, rolling your eyes as you leaned back in your chair. You placed your fork down, sighing deeply and taking a sip of wine.

“Hey, I’m just saying… What’s gonna happen when you meet someone and actually do want to get married? Are you gonna fake a divorce, too? Bit more effort than it’s worth, don’tcha think?”

Your lips tightened in a frown as he made a point you couldn’t refute, the family dinner carrying on as the topic changed to something much less antagonizing for you: pets.

“God, she’s awful right now since she’s not potty trained. I swear, I come home to a mess every day,” your brother complained, his new puppy a mess of a sweetheart. “And her favorite game? Guess it. Anyone, guess it.”

“Fetch?” your father gandered.

“Fetch?! I wish! No. It’s Keep Away. Keep. Away. She takes my keys and then I have to chase her around the house because she likes to play Keep Away. The pup doesn’t even go for the decoy set anymore.”

As your parents chuckled over your brother’s misery, your eyes widened for a moment as an idea blossomed in your head, a content and mischievous smile following afterward.

The following week, you made a public announcement that was first published on your “personal” blog beneath a picture of a cat with a key around its neck:

Words cannot describe how fortunate and honored I am to receive the number of proposals and requests for my affections that I have. Everyone has made such tempting offers and promises, shown an eloquence with words and feeling, and in the end, I find it difficult to choose someone to walk this life with. The number of wonderful people inquiring on my behalf is almost overwhelming, so I have come up with a simple task:

Tied to my beloved cat is my house key. Let it be known that whosoever retrieves the key and returns it to me will have my undivided attention and romantic interest to pursue a relationship.

I know, what a wild idea, right? But animals have the best judgement in people, and it’s just as crazy as marrying someone who’s sent a letter to my parents asking for their blessings to marry me. :)

Good luck.~

It didn’t take long for your crazy idea to headline the local newspaper and station. While the letters persisted, you instructed your parents to simply throw them away- after all, you weren’t interested in someone who couldn’t be bothered to be invested in your life and follow a misleadingly simple instruction. Whoever wanted to win your heart would have to get the key, and you’d give no one else a chance

All throughout town, cat traps were set up, waiting for the unsuspecting housecat to fall into them. Food, water, and even the occasional bowl of milk was left out in hopes of attracting the sweet little feline. But the cat wasn’t so easily swayed- after all, it was a housecat and knew the luxuries that people tried to bribe it with. The strays, however, loved it, and overnight seemed to double in numbers.

Aizawa, for one, seemed to be all the happier for the influx in cats. After all, it wasn’t like he didn’t already provide for the strays around his neighborhood. Before your announcement, he always saw the same few: a tabby with mix matched eyes, a black longhair, and a calico. They were an odd bunch, but they seemed to get along, sometimes coming together to his door as he set out food for them. Gradually, more and more would pass by his door- and he wasn’t certain, but he thought he saw a glint of silver as a new cat crossed his path now and then.

The soft clink of something hitting the ceramic bowl outside his window woke the pro hero all too soon from his slumber. Still in his hero’s garb from last night’s patrol, Aizawa got up from his bed and spread two plastic lines of his blinds as he looked for the source of the noise. Outside his window, a cat sat at the bowl of water, and around its neck was a single key that bounced off the bowl as the cat drank, making the clinking sound a few times over. Next to the bowl was an empty plate, all the food eaten by strays that came before the wandering housecat.

He quietly and slowly opened the door, not wanting to scare the cat away. It stopped drinking and backed away from the bowl, staring at him distrustfully. This wasn’t the first time someone tried to approach the key-bearer to steal from it. Seeing the defensiveness, Aizawa showed his palm to the cat, a can of wet food in his other hand. Slowly he came to the plate, still more than an arm’s reach from the housecat, and placed the open can down. As soon as he set it down, he backed away and went back inside, giving it plenty of space.

From his bedroom, Aizawa pulled up the blinds, watching the housecat from afar. It was sitting in the same spot it backed away to, staring at the hero with its tail flicking at the tip. He studied the cat, discerning from its finer details that it was likely a fully grown female- and she was probably spoiled, considering the fact that she had absolutely no interest in the food he put out just for her. The cat stayed for a moment longer before something caught it’s attention, fleeing with the key around her neck still.

Nights later, Aizawa stopped beneath the streetlight across from his back door. He sucked on the tube of his fruit pouch, listening to the soft clinking the cat’s key made as she drank with her back towards him. Slowly and quietly he began to walk towards her. “Hey, kitty,” he spoke lowly, not quite a whisper but still lower than his usual tone. The cat’s ears perked up and she defensively turned around with a hiss, her back arched and tail puffed. He stopped, holding his hands up at chest level. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to go home. That okay?”

She stared him down, moving away from and around the hero, never turning her back to him.

“You hungry? It’s late; I’m surprised you’re not home with your owner,” he mumbled as he got to the door, unlocking it. To his surprise, the cat meowed softly at him and was sitting down when he glanced back at her. “Huh. Stay there, I’ll get you some food.”

Aizawa returned with a fully cooked and butterflied shrimp. He stopped just outside his door, watching the cat who sat still and returned his stare. A soft smile curled onto his lips as he placed the shrimp on the plate.

“You must be a spoiled one since you didn’t even touch the canned food,” he mumbled, talking more to himself than to the cat. He moved back to the door and squatted down, hands in plain view as he studied her. For about a solid minute, he watched, until speaking again. “Am I still too close?” he asked, standing back up and leaning back against his door with his arms crossed.

As if challenged by his words, the cat stood and took a step forward, watching him to see if he moved in response. When he didn’t, she took another, then another, until she was at the plate and just barely out of arm’s reach. The gentle smile returned to Aizawa’s lips as he saw her bow her head and sniff the shrimp, and grew when she took the shrimp and then bolted away into the night. He chuckled to himself, shaking his head as he went inside.

After treating the housecat to a piece of shrimp, Aizawa started to see her around his place more often. Every now and then, he’d wake up to the sound of her key bumping against the water bowl in the morning, or come home to see her sitting by the plate. Each time, he’d give her a little shrimp and watch her disappear with it delicately in her mouth. Eventually, he was able to pinch the tail and hold the piece of shrimp out to her, letting her take it from him instead of placing it on the plate. The strays seemed to warm up more to him as well, hardly moving when he walked near them on his way in or out.

Returning from U.A. one afternoon, Aizawa stopped as he heard a fuss. Looking in its direction, he saw a man bolting at him and chasing the key-bearing cat. Without hesitance, he threw out his capture weapon and apprehended the man, who immediately started yelling at him and causing a scene. The cat ran right between his legs and kept going as he pulled the person towards him.

“Hey, what the hell gives, dude?! I was just about to catch that fucking cat and get the key!”

“No, you weren’t,” Aizawa grumbled, staring at the captive with glowing red eyes, his hair standing on edge and out of his face. “In fact, you’re going to turn around and leave her alone if you ever see her again. I won’t hesitate to subdue someone terrorizing a cat.”

“Tch, whatever man. I bet you just want that key for yourself so you can marry (Y/N).”

“Hardly,” Aizawa grunted at the thought, “but anyone who has to forcibly take that key isn’t worthy of marrying her.” He unwrapped his capture weapon from the man, letting his hair fall and eyes return to normal. “Get out of here.”

With a deep sigh, he headed home for a nap before his patrol.

A few days passed without a trace of the housecat. He would never admit it, but he was actually a bit worried for her. Did someone catch her? Did they hurt her to get the key? Maybe she started exploring a different part of Tokyo? Absentmindedly, he started looking at your blog to see updates on the cat to make sure she was well, and soon enough, he was checking daily, since you posted a new picture of her with the key around her neck every day. He didn’t give a damn about the key- he was just happy that the cat was alright, and enjoyed seeing pictures of her.

The soft clatter of metal on glass caught his attention as Aizawa returned home from a late patrol. Even with his trained eyes, he couldn’t spot the cause until he crossed the street and got closer. As he squinted, he saw the familiar silhouette of a cat lost in the night’s shadows. It was on his window ledge, standing with its front paws against the glass and moving its head as it tried to look into the darkness. A soft smile pressed to his lips as he took the end of his capture weapon and tossed it close to the cat, giving the scarf playful little flicks to catch its attention.

“Here, kitty. There’s nothing inside, but you can play with this,” he offered, squatting down and moving the scarf around.

The cat stopped pawing at the glass, the clinking coming to an end as it turned and looked at the man keeping his distance. It hopped off the ledge and pounced at the gray fabric, coming into the outskirts of the streetlight. The smile on Aizawa’s lips grew wider as he recognized the housecat, her key still safely attached to her collar.

“Hey… It’s been a while. You’re full of energy right now, aren’t you?” He chuckled softly and reached out his hand, offering the back of if his knuckles to her as she played with his capture weapon. Immediately as she noticed his hand, she backed away from him, leaving the scarf with small divots where her teeth pinched it.

“You’re okay; I’m not gonna hurt you, little one…” Other than rubbing his thumb and index finger together, Aizawa remained still. “Don’t you remember me?”

She meowed softly in response and took cautious steps to the hero in black, and for the first time approached him close enough that he could just barely feel her whiskers on his calloused hands. The housecat sniffed him for a short moment before deciding to jump on his capture weapon again, catching it between her front paws and rolling over with it so that she could chew on the end while her back paws kicked at the remaining length that eventually went up to his neck. Aizawa laughed softly and gave her more slack to play with, watching the way she twisted her body as she laid on her back, and soon introduced the other end of the scarf to her. He dangled it just within reach and pulled it away as her claws came out to catch it, watching in amusement as she quickly rolled back onto her paws and swiped at the fabric that was always just out of reach.

When she finally caught the end Aizawa dangled at her, he let the scarf go, the length of the capture weapon tangled in a mess around the cat. He laughed as she began to play freely with it all again, and left her to roll around in the gray fabric while he went inside and boiled a single shrimp for her.

To his surprise, the cat followed, dragging his scarf with in her mouth. She paused at the door, sitting in front of it with the capture weapon leading from her mouth back to the spot she played in. Her soft meow greeted him as he came back with the shrimp on a plate, making him pause in the hallway leading to the door. The house cat stayed at the door as he took slow steps toward her, and placed the plate down right in front of her. As usual, she sniffed the shrimp before delicately picking it up in her mouth and turning to walk away.

After a few steps, however, she stopped and turned back around as Aizawa was pulling in his scarf. He finished wrapping it up, holding it in his hand as he turned away. Just as he was about to shut the door, he noticed a metallic gleam and paused to look back outside. As he did, the cat came up to his doorstep with the shrimp still in her mouth, and sat down looking up at him. Her eyes shifted to look inside, and then back at him.

“What’s this..?” he murmured to himself as he crouched down, offering his hand to the cat again. “It’s.. odd. Are you asking to come inside? That’s not very like you.”

The cat placed the shrimp in his hand and looked back at him, and he could have sworn it was like she was trying to answer him.

“Alright, fine, come on,” Aizawa grumbled despite the smile on his lips. He stood back up and gestured to let her in, closing the door behind her. The cat stopped and looked back at the door as her host retrieved a plate for the shrimp. His footsteps caught her attention and she looked back up at him with an inquisitive meow.

“It’s alright, kitty. I’m sure you’re trained to ask for out, aren’t you? Just wake me up and I’ll let you out. Simple as that,” he explained despite his doubt that she could understand him.

The hero set the plate on his desk, pulling out his chair so that she could jump up to it with ease. Beside it, he placed a bowl of water and his capture weapon. Without an extra pillow, Aizawa went to his closet and pulled out one of his sweaters, folding it and putting it inside the ring his scarf made, turning it into a makeshift bed for the little housecat.

“I doubt it’s anything like what you have at home, but… well, it’s the best I’ve got for a cat right now.” He smiled at her as she hopped up onto the desk, watching as she sniffed at the bed. As she sat down to eat her shrimp, he left the room to shower.

When Aizawa returned, half dressed and half dried, he looked around for the cat before noticing that she was curled up in a resting loaf on his singular pillow- right in the center with no space to share. She had already fallen asleep, and rather than wake her up, he smiled and finished towel drying his hair before getting the lights. Carefully, he sat down on the bed and pulled the pillow down and to the side, slowly and trying not to wake his visitor. The soft touch of her tail against his wrist made him pause as she meowed and stretched, and even in the darkness, the two shared a look. He smiled at her and laid down on his side, resting his head on his arm and spooning the stolen pillow. A soft, rumbling purr created a strange kind of white noise in the room, and Aizawa fell asleep much sooner than he usually did listening to it.

A few short hours later, the hero woke with the rising sun. Only half awake, he looked down to his arms where he hugged the pillow to his chest and stomach- and much to his surprise, was alone. Aizawa bolted up and flung the blanket off, looking around for the late night guest.

The clatter of something small and metal falling onto his floor caught his attention, and on the ground laid a key- it’s bearer nowhere to be seen. Aizawa picked it up and began to look around the rest of his home, calling for her- checking the kitchen, bathroom, underneath the futon, and even in a few cupboards- but she wasn’t there, and no meows responded to his voice.

That afternoon, gossip was especially rampant as people gasped and griped over the fact that you had posted a new picture that morning of your cat- without her key. A few of his students were distracted with the celebrity news, wondering and speculating on the type of person who got the key.

“I hope he’s handsome-”

“What if it’s a woman??-”

“Do you think they’ll really date and get married?”

In their distraction, they didn’t notice their instructor come up behind them, and in a blink of their eyes, they were all tied up with useless quirks.

“Do you really think a villain will care?” he asked them harshly as they squirmed and protested.

“Well… maybe? Villains have lives too, don’t they?”

“DUDE! Dude, what if a villain got the key and (Y/N) has to marry a villain??!”

The students’ excitement was getting out of hand and Aizawa squeezed them both in his capture weapon. “That cat’s not dumb enough to lose a key to a villain,” he grumbled before letting them go. “Worry about it later and focus on becoming a hero- unless this isn’t important to you anymore and you want to be cut from the class.”

His threat reeled the students back in as they knew he was fully serious- he was notorious for expelling people he deemed unfit for the hero course, and they didn’t want to be next. For the rest of the week, he seemed somehow less tolerant and more severe, as if to prevent his students from bringing you or your cat up.

Two weeks went by, allowing news of the lost key to calm down. An occasional article went out wondering why the keyholder hasn’t come forward yet, speculating that maybe the key was genuinely lost somewhere in a park or lake, or suggesting that you took the key off the cat. In truth, you were starting to become a bit concerned, so after the third week, you decided to take matters into your own hands.

Three weeks had gone by since Aizawa last saw the housecat. She never returned after staying the night with him and losing her key. He was certain that it must have come off in her sleep, and- because she was a cat- she had no way of putting it back around her neck. Once or twice he thought that maybe she left it- after all, she could have picked it up in her mouth- but why would she? That put too much stock into an animal’s actions- and no matter how smart she might have been, there was no way she was like Nezu and had a higher intelligence than a normal cat. Since the key chase was over, there was no reason for you to let your cat out at night anymore, and he assumed that’s why she no longer came around.

Aizawa stopped in his doorway as he returned from patrol, hearing a familiar meow. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw the housecat sitting underneath the streetlight, watching him. As he turned around, she daintily pranced over with soft, silent pawsteps until she was looking up at him right outside his door. He squatted down and offered his hand to her, smiling broadly when she pressed her cheek against his knuckles and passed her chin over his hand. She meowed again and reared up, placing her little paws on his knees and presenting her face to him. The hero chuckled and bowed his head to her, closing his eyes as he felt her whiskers tickle his face

“You wanna come in again, kitty?” he asked, standing back up and looking down to the cat. She meowed at him again and stepped through his legs, pressing her side against his pants in the process. Without delay, the man- long exhausted by teaching and protecting- went into the kitchen to boil up a shrimp for his visitor as she wandered through his home. Once again, he placed it on his desk beside a bowl of water, then left her to take a shower.

When he returned, Aizawa dropped the towel he was using to dry his hair. The shrimp was untouched and the cat was nowhere to be found-

Instead, you sat on his bed, one leg crossed over the other, waiting for him. A light blush dusted your cheeks as you closed your eyes and looked away.

“You… wore pants back the last time.”

“... and you must have been a cat the last time,” he mumbled as he pulled on his sweatpants. The bright pink surprised you more than his nudity when you looked back at him, and you looked away again- at anything but him.

“You’re not surprised?” you asked after taking a deep breath and forcing yourself to look up at the hero. He held your eyes for a moment before leaning against the doorframe.

“... Y’know, it’s been three weeks. I figured.. If you don’t want my key, I would just ask for it back.” Your words came softly, with a fragility that caught you both by surprise. A silence settled between you as neither looked at the other.

“I thought it was an accident-”

“I guess you don’t- wait what?”

The words came out together, and you both caught yourselves as one interrupted the other. For a few awkward seconds, you continued to cut each other off trying to insist the other continue speaking, until Aizawa finally just kept talking.

“I thought it was an accident, and that the key fell off while she- er, you- were sleeping. I didn’t want to approach you and have you think I was just another person trying to marry you.”

You pressed a polite smile onto your lips and nodded at his explanation.

“I see. Um… Well, it was intentional, but if you’re not interested then that’s okay and I’ll just get my key back.” The words came flatly and awkwardly for you, but you kept yourself together. It was uncommon for you to be rejected- it’d been years, really- but the feeling was the same. Your heart sunk a little, while your lips lifted into a forced smile. You watched as Aizawa took the key from a drawer in his desk, and took it when he handed it back to you.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” you just barely mustered as your fingers closed around the key, looking down at your hand to avoid his gaze.

“It’s alright. You're… erm," he sighed softly. "You're a cute cat, but I'm … not keen on dating one, so…” he trailed off, awkwardly bringing his hand to the back of his neck.

“Oh- uh, that’s fine- I underst-”

“Wait- no, that's- I-" Aizawa sighed in exasperation as you two started talking over each other again, and sat down beside you. "Just wait a second, (Y/N).

What I meant is… You're a cute cat- a damn cute one, honestly- but I don’t want to date the cat I met, I want to know what you as a person are like. And I want to find that out without the pressure of what having the key meant.”

You glanced to the side at him, brows slightly furrowed as you tried to make heads or tails out of what he was trying to say. When your eyes met, he saw the perplexity in your expression and gave you a soft smile- the first one you’d seen exposing yourself as the cat.

“I appreciate that you trust me with your key, but I’m afraid you got to know me better than I got to know you. So why don’t we try this again on a proper date, and not 4:00am at my place?”

The hero gave you a soft and even sweet smile that brought a blush to your cheeks, and you couldn’t look away from him as you nodded in agreement. He put on a sweater and offered his hand to help you from his bed, and escorted you home despite the hour and his fatigue. With each step, you two got to know each other just a little better and more sincerely- words no longer a barrier between a cat and a human now that you shared a common tongue as man and woman.

“Aizawa?” Your voice stopped him at your doorway before he turned away. He reacted just like he did when he heard your little meows at first, and you smiled to yourself in seeing the similarity.

“What is it?”

His eyes followed you as you walked back to him, and for a moment, he looked even kinder and sweeter. You stepped in front of him, your chest nearly pressing against his, and slowly brought your hands to his cheeks. One of his hands followed yours and held your hand to his cheek as the other came to your waist. He leaned down as you drew his face to yours, and allowed your lips to meet his in a soft kiss.

“I’m glad I met you,” you whispered as he straightened back up, smiling at him before you disappeared inside.

I am, too.

[michelle4417]

PLEASE READ!! YOU WILL BE GLAD YOU DID...

Hello to everyone out there... I hope all of you are doing well, as always. I really want to reach out to you and talk to you from the heart. I posted about the President of Ghana and something major he had to say to the world yesterday morning and no one paid any attention to it. It is so frustrating!!

This is hard because there is a short video that lasts for 12 minutes that is on Telegram right now but I can't share it here at all due to tumble and their Communist censoring nonsense. I was absolutely insane to even try to share the actual video here but I always give everything a try at least once... Anyway, IT IS SOOO INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO LISTEN TO WHAT I HAVE TO SAY HERE NOW... I AM GOING TO JUST TYPE OUT WHAT HE SAYS ON HERE FOR YOU... I went through and listened to every word and wrote it all down for you all almost verbatim. He is kind of hard to understand due to his accent but I did my best. It took me a couple of hours to transcribe this so PLEASE READ THIS IMPORTANT INFORMATION!!! IT IS THE HONEST TO GOD TRUTH!!! IF YOU WANT MORE CONFIRMATION OF THIS, YOU WILL HAVE TO GO AND LISTEN TO THE AUDIO YOURSELF THAT I TOLD YOU ABOUT ON THE LAST POST...

The President Ghana reveals the entire Rockefeller's Lockstep Plan and it explains everything about *OVID and the vaccine. First off, in case you don't know, *OVID stands for CERTIFICATION OF VACCINATION IDENTIFICATION. The actual true name of the vaccine is Luciphase (might be spelled wrong) after Lucifer). The pandemic was planned many years in advance.

They literally call it a Plandemic (accident according to plan) themselves. This virus was created and patented and we were purposely, globally infected. They started way back as early as 2008-2013 and had a weaponized version of the strain by 2015. They had the strain they planned on using to kick this off literally stolen on purpose from a lab in Winnepeg, Canada and then taken to a class 4 lab in Wuhan, China, for plausible deniability and to cement the "wanted" public script as something to fall back on, if needed. The Primary script was that China created it by accident. Release the virus at the Wuhan lab itself and then blame it on a natural scapegoat-the Wuhan wet market. Roll out on a global scale, then the global vaccination identification action plan-digital ID.

Mystery of iniquity and wickedness cast in secrecy.

Next, downplay the human to human transmission as long as possible to allow the strain to spread on a global scale before any country can lockdown to respond before any infection. Once a country has seen and experience infection and it is in place, lockdown incoming/outgoing travel but keep the transmission spreading within the country as long as possible. Once enough people in a country are infected, quarantine starts and slowly lockdown overtime and expand the region.

Overhype the mortality rate by tying the strain to deaths that have little or nothing to do with the actual virus - with fear and compliance at the maximum.

If anyone dies, whether it is *OVID or not - it is to be considered as *OVID. If they have any symptoms of *OVID - it is to be considered *OVID no matter what. This is why the Americans are challenging the Chinese. They were not wrong. They were quoting the right figures. But this thing was bred and brewed in the U.S. - as the personal agenda of Fauci, Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation. The deaths - in the U.S.-a lot have absolutely zero to do with *OVID-many have some of the symptoms but are not really *OVID at all. This is why Fauci speaks with such confidence and why he did when he said we would have 200,000 deaths and so on...

Next... Keep the public quarantined as long as possible to destroy the regions economy. Create unrest, break down the supply chain, create the start of mass food shortages as well as cause people's immune systems to weaken due to lack of interaction with others, bacteria, the outside world. Making us susceptible to diseases. Downplay and attack any potential treatments (HCQ) and continue to echo that only a CURE is the answer to this virus a/k/a: a vaccine.

Continue to drag out the quarantine over and over and over again over two week intervals, causing people to finally stand up and protest or defy them.

Eventually, end Phase 1 quarantine after is enough public push back (approx. June 2020) and publicly say it's too early to end isolation but are willing to do it anyways... Once they go back to normal, wait a few weeks, then over-hype the virus mortality rate (approx. Sept. 2020). Combine it with increase of people dying from standard illnesses at a higher rate than normal due to having highly weakened immune systems from weeks of being in isolation to further pad the virus mortality rate and have the Phase 2 Lockdown set in motion.

Oct.-Nov.-make it much more extreme level of lockdown/isolation/quarantine/restriction/masking, etc. - Blame the protesters - they are the ones who do not trust the government already-the cause of the even larger 2nd Wave. - We told you... It was too early but we let you anyway... see what happened now? You should have listened to the government who is here to help you and knows best... Now it is all your fault - now, all because you needed a haircut, your freedoms have consequences.

Now - Enforce official quarantine at much more extreme level - increasing penalty for defense. Deem all travels as non-essential. Increase check-points, including Military assistance. Increase tracking/tracing of the people. Takeover control of food, gas - cause large scale shortages so that people can only get access to essential products/services if they are 1st given permission. Keep the Phase 2 Lockdown in place much longer than the Phase 1 Lockdown.

Continue to destroy the global economy. Further degrade the supply chain. Amplify the food shortages and the like. Quell any public outrage using extreme force and make anyone who defies them as public enemy number one.

To those who are willing to submit after a long Phase 2 Lockdown for at least 6 months or longer, roll out the vaccination certification program and then make it mandatory for everyone - giving priority access to those who have submitted from the start and then have those that are fooled attack those that are against the program - saying they are a threat and the cause for all of the problems - The whole reason why we cannot go back normal and we can't until everyone takes the vaccine. People that defy are the enemy. They are hindering our way of life. The "New Normal". And all the while - limiting the people that defied the agenda... Their ability to work and travel. And for this minority of people left that are going against the agenda - there will be a release of a weaponized hybrid strain of the virus with at least a 30% real mortality rate as a final scare tactic to push them into finally becoming the majority - a final "I TOLD YOU SO"-for those that wouldn't listen.

Next, ignite the new economy model Microsoft Patent 060606 Crypto Currency System USING BODY ACTIVITY DATA BASED ON HUMAN BEHAVIOR AND WILLINGNESS TO SUMBIT. Black bureau's 15 Million Merits. This will use water, food, shelter and other essentials as a form of enforcement of the new economic system. Do what we want and then you will get rewarded and gain credit and access to the things to survive/go against what we want and you will get penalized.

Well, this is the end of the information that was given for now from this brave and amazing man, the President of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. He is a strong Christian believer and at the end of giving the information to this diabolical plan, he prayed an amazing prayer to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then declared and decreed that this plan will NOT succeed! This man is part of the Alliance with us. Trump is fighting against these deep state criminals and talking heads to keep this from coming to fruition. That is another reason they hate him so much and have done everything in their power to try and stop him. If you stayed with me and read all of this, I want to truly thank you so much. You are truly a Patriot if you did and you love this GREAT country and our world as much as I do. Please PRAY!!! God bless every one of you and your families!! Thank you. God bless America.

[violetsystems]

#personal

I can’t really tell if my mood is better or worse on Sunday mornings rather than the typical Saturday.  Things have reached a point where it’s just not worth explaining how awful life can be.  My life story at this point is slightly more convoluted than a side job in Cyberpunk 2077.  It’s also seemingly just as insignificant.  That is until I realize I’ve been writing here weekly for over two years at this point.  I’ve been posting on this platform for what seems like over a decade.  The value of this kind of journaling has been impossible to gauge.  I just paid a full year for LinkedIn to keep my career contacts alive.  I post in the hashtag cybersecurity almost every day.  I have a solid list of five contacts that follow my company.  I post the zero day news as it happens.  I promote my brand and employability.  As if this is the only thing that is valuable.  A twenty year resume with management experience that gets picked over by AI and human just the same.  I also forget sometimes I’m a musician.  I was reminded last night when I posted the RP Boo “Bangin’ on King Drive” video.  I was at that video shoot.  Years ago I would just run into Bu in the street with his wife randomly.  I appear nowhere in that video as I was edited out much like I was the only artist edited out of a Pitchfork review for a footwork compilation from Japan that protested Nuclear proliferation.  If there were any more alarming trend for me it’s that most of what I try to succeed at is locked beyond a brick wall.  I sit here from week to week trying to figure out ways to keep myself from disappearing.  I worry about where I can actually pivot and when.  I lay awake at night alone in my bed calculating what my runway for cash positivity is before I have to leave this city altogether.  It sometimes feels completely futile and useless.  Everybody in America is winner take all when there’s nothing left to take.  It’s cutthroat and we’re all in this together at the same time.  The amount of bullying I have to process per day has left me broken down and angry ninety percent of the time.  And yet angry is a shitty look for me.  I lose at video games all the time.  And lately I feel as if I’m living in one.  To explain that any further gets into some territory of oversharing.  I’ve written paragraphs upon paragraphs about my life here.  And yet nobody seems to acknowledge I exist other than here.  Which leads me to believe a very few amount of people actually have the reading comprehension over 140 characters to look deeper into someone’s life, liberty and value therein.  I think sometimes that it shouldn’t be this hard.  That something is very wrong and deeply troubled about it all.  And there’s not much I can really do about the things I’m up against when it’s only me fighting it from day to day out here.  So I’ve fallen back to what I know.  We are still very much in the middle of a pandemic.  I’m happy the relief bill has passed.  I’m waiting to pay my taxes until it’s official.  Which puts me back in the same mood I’ve been in the last eight months.  A complete state of abandon.  This nefarious field of people watching you every day waiting to pin something on you.  It never comes because I know better than to fall back into that trap as much as I can these days.  

The worst of this mindfuck is over for me.  I don’t actually really care too deeply about how wrong things are.  Mostly because I’ve done my best to make due under impossible circumstances.  You’d think someone like me after all these years would have something to celebrate.  I kind of do.  My birthday didn’t matter to anyone really out here much last month.  It was a clear indicator that I had no real peers out here anymore.  As evidenced as how everyone in footwork I helped back in 2014 has literally just ghosted like the rest of my professional network.  I had a couple of things to fall back on.  But it’s impossible to fall back onto anything when people would rather pretend you didn’t exist.  I’m always supposed to read into these psychotic projections by society because somehow I’m supposed to realize more is expected out of me.  I can’t figure this out completely.  Like I brought all this upon myself.  That’s the vibe I get from day to day.  That because I don’t share my plans, agenda, or strategy with the real world I’m shit out of luck.  The irony is that I do share it verbatim.  Week to week.  In a very coy, oblique way this is true.  But I am also a writer.  This is another talent I’ve been taught by society that has no value.  I wrote emails for my bosses for years on my days off.  On my birthday even.  This doesn’t mean it is worthless.  The audience is out there.  If it weren’t I would have quit sharing my feelings a long time ago.  I’m fairly aware at some point I’m going to have to put this all behind me.  Hopefully when the world wakes up and returns to normal like nothing ever happened.  That’s going on as we speak and I don’t even have a vaccine in my arm.  It’s a constant state of fear and missing out projected back at you.  That the reason I’m not happy is totally because of what I choose to take on in my life.  And I’m supposed to get the message when people don’t actually communicate.  I had this strange realization yesterday when I discovered all my videos were closed captioned.  I watch movies with subtitles all the time simply because I love to read.  My videos barely get ten views if that.  I often think content is content.  If you put it out there someone will eventually find it and wonder about it’s value.  In the age of semi-spiritual machines it’s true that the algorithms seem to be the only curators out there listening.  Everything I say out loud is transcribed and mothballed somewhere on Siri’s or Alexa’s servers.  When I take a screen shot of the things I say off the top of my head, I’m often aware that something acknowledges I actually said them.  It’s just nobody human really wants to pay attention. They are hardcoded over my videos as proof of the value of my words.  Not like you can sell the speculative value of it yet.  The first tweet is being auctioned off as a NFT and you wonder how worthless I have to feel at this point.  I’m sure we all feel a little of this deep down.  Disconnected and in some sort of weird emotional exile.  I think it just makes me realize more of what I am connected to.  A history of authenticity.  A life that trades the catwalk for the streets as brutal and unforgiving as they are.  Nobody can stop talking shit about me.  But it’s almost always a hallucination.  For a person who puts it all out there, I must be a shitty fucking writer.  I can spend week to week writing the same thing.  That I’m completely abandoned and ghosted out here on my own.  And how it’s less unsafe and more simply a degraded quality of life when it comes to my rights as a human being to be happy.  I’m supposed to get the message when nobody can bother to read mine.  The writing is on the wall I guess.

So instead of pining on and on about it which I just did for two paragraphs, I still look for solutions.  I still broadcast weekly to let people know I’m still alive.  I make funny jokes to myself and screencap them to mask deep emotional scarring that is no fault of my own.  I literally feel trapped and under duress almost all of the time.  And yet, I don’t really have the luxury of taking the shit when I’ve had the hope choked out of me until I can’t breathe.  If the answer is to keep ignoring the problem, it’s hard to be me.  Because nobody can leave me alone.  No one seems to have any sense of dignity as to what I’ve been through.  I never claimed to be a victim.  That’s not really me.  I’ve survived and been resilient.  I can see that working a six figure corporate job in New York or China is probably more worth my time in the not so distant future.  I can also see that I’m worth more than what people sell me short for.  I know we are in a dangerous time of confidence tricks.  I don’t really have much to lose other than cash positivity.  I can wait this out until the end of the summer for sure.  And then I start to think about spending another winter being hunted and shunned at the same time.  Mentally I can’t fuck with this city after what it’s done to me alone.  I can’t keep being a superhero for people who can’t be bothered to understand how painful it is to be taken for granted after all these years.  I just give up on everything in the past that isn’t working and move forward as best as I can.  Just like they threw the entire contents of my office in the trash I can let it go.  There is a very real emotional exhaustion I have to deal with from day to day.  The level of psychological torture and abuse I’ve witnessed first hand in this city is at a level that is unlawful and unhealthy.  I know too much about what it’s all connected to.  And I know I’m better than all of this.  I don’t know how to proceed.  And this is a very real and dangerous situation that I am stuck in the middle of a shark tank feeding frenzy of well meaning but rabid idiots and the pricks that prod them with a sharp stick.  I don’t have a future here in this city.  I don’t have a future in this state or country if you wanted me to be real about.  And yet I have so much potential if I just hold on for one more year.  For one more decade.  For another forty years when they turn my blog into a NFT after my death like I’m the next Van Gogh.  Everybody will talk about how they knew me and how tortured an artist I was.  I was so misunderstood and it was beautiful.  They’ll fund a school with the proceeds that kicked me out the door because I was a blight on their payroll and budget.  And I’ll be a digital ghost just the same.  I feel like that very ghost now every waking fucking moment.  It is a pain I cannot describe in words.  It is a suffering that is goaded on in the worst syndicate driven way.  I have nothing good to say about any of this shit anymore.  I have no more room to break down and make things worse for myself.  I just have to adjust my schedule and manage my emotions with it all because it’s my fault.  This is the message I keep hearing in my head projected by silent looks as I picked up my prescriptions on foot avoiding everyone who wants to see if it’s true.  If I really am the bogeyman.  The source of the problem.  Someone to blame.  The scapegoat for everything that is wrong with the world.  Convenient but ultimately not worth my time to humor.  Which is why I don’t really know what to do anymore other than to stay inside and wait for justice.  If there’s anything poetic about it, it’s that it runs pretty seamlessly at 1440p.  Much clearer resolution than what this city wants to offer me after what it’s put me through.  <3 Tim

[sophrosinn]

the (un)lucky ones

story description:

“the story’s great, but I think it would be better if the story ended like this”

Affronted at the audacity of the comment, she furiously replies, “then write your own story, asshole!”

word count: 2,048

a/n: happiest solar anniversary to one of my best girls @vanaera! thank you for being the bestest friend a girl could ever ask for. this short story, which is loosely based irl, serves as my gift to you. i hope you’ll like it! 

shout-out to @senfleurs for being the best gal and helping me out with this. she even stepped up and edited this omg, and i cannot stress how much I’m thankful, lol especially she made sure that I get to finish this on time

—

3.

In retrospect, she knows better than to let some dumb comment, especially from someone on the Internet, rile her up this much. Even her followers tell her as much: it’s unwarranted, insensitive even. One of her followers, hippopopo tries to take it a step further, justifying by saying, verbatim: It’s her story anyway!!! So only she knows how the story should end best, okay! 😤😠💢

(in actuality, she has qualms about that, mostly because she had read some books which she thought didn’t end well. but that would take time to unpack and this story isn’t about that, no. she’s flattered at the support, nonetheless.)

And yet, there she is at 8 in the morning, her fingers furiously gliding across her keyboard as she writes a spite-filled story in response. Oftentimes, her muse for writing comes from movies she watched with her family, or from songs she heard on Korean dramas, or those meet-cute scenarios she gushed about with her best friends. This time, however, spite’s her main gal.

She finishes at 10. Later at 4 in the afternoon, she posts it. About an hour later, she doesn’t even try to contain the smirk lighting up her face when a familiar notification pops up.

—

1.

The story starts with an inconspicuous like from a user named agust-d five months ago. Back then, she thought nothing of it. A day later, agust-d comments on a story from her drabble series. Since then, every day without fail, agust-d leaves a small token of their appreciation for her works; brief, concise comments such as, “nice job on the flower descriptions,” or “i liked it.” 

Belatedly, she wonders if agust-d is a person of few words, because why else would they leave comments with only six words or less, even on her works with over 30k words? Don’t get her wrong, of course she’s eternally grateful for all the support she receives from her affectionate dears. But sometimes, especially on days her self-confidence plummets and she’s in need of reassurance, she ponders if all her efforts are for naught. (of course not, never, she gently reminds herself.)

And each day, she resists the growing urge to reply: don’t you have anything more to say!!! (but alas, she isn’t a rude person—unless provoked—she can’t so she settles with letting her mind wander.)

Three months of this and she finally caves in. With her interest piqued, she browses through agust-d’s posts. After two hours, she learns that agust-d goes by suga online. Coincidentally, Suga is a male student at the same university she’s currently attending. For a moment, she briefly considers a possibility—what are the chances that they’ve met, have fallen into step alongside each other, have passed by him in the large hallways, or have shared her table with him at the library during exam season? The possibility of knowing someone without actually knowing them? 

(that’s the funny thing about the online world, she supposes. you may know all that matters about someone: their likes, dislikes, kinks, fears, and horrid taste in music, absolutely everything except that one thing that matters the most: their names.)

Suga, she eventually learns, is not a man of few words. In truth, he’s got a few words too many to say about a diverse range of controversial topics. In his words, his passion burns bright and clear, but for her, he doesn’t shine any brighter than when he talks about music. It shows in his blog, which consists of a myriad of album reviews across different genres (fascinating, she notes, their music interests align as well).

Occasionally, he posts his renditions of some popular rap music, and as sporadic as this happens, she admits that his covers are her favorite part of his blog. And naturally, she refuses to acknowledge that it has everything to do with her fascination with deep, raspy voices, which, (un)fortunately for her, Suga undoubtedly has.

After some serious debating with herself, she decides to not follow him back. But she makes sure to check his profile every other day for no real reason, really, her soul wallowing in denial. In her defense, when did anyone need a reason to stalk someone?

And so, it begins, her fascination with this stranger on the other side of the screen. Never in her whole life did she imagine herself harboring a (teeny-tiny, infinitesimal) crush towards someone on the Internet. Certainly, she knows there’s always a one-in-a-thousand chance that it happens in real life, it’s just that out of all the 7 billion people in the world, she wasn’t expecting herself to be the (un)lucky one.

—

2.

The fateful day begins like any other. She wakes up to a brand new day, at 7 am, and like clockwork, she begins to stretch atop her pink yoga mat. Halfway through her workout, her phone pings with a new notification. Immediately, her phone screen lights up: agust-d has left a comment on your work!

Her traitorous heart skips a beat in the utmost display of betrayal. It’s Suga!

Ever since she scrolled through his blog two months ago, she has been exchanging messages with Suga. Her covert mission to surreptitiously listen to his song covers ends miserably when she accidentally double-clicks on a post he made two years ago. A string of expletives followed as she stared agonizingly at the post. She attempts to remove her blunder, but soon accepts defeat as it doesn’t even take a full minute until she receives a message notification from Suga. The internal debate resumes as her finger clumsily hovers on the computer mouse and she hesitantly clicks. From thereon, the rest, as they say, is history.

She ends up following his account the day after.

Although, if she were being truthful, all they’ve been sending back and forth are pleasantries. Suga seems hellbent on keeping the conversations polite and distant. She doesn’t understand, it’s not like she’s flirting with him! All she just wants is a compelling conversation with someone (because the Lord knows how much she needs an intellectual to talk to; and suga seems like an intellectual, if his posts are anything to go by).

She unlocks her phone and throws herself onto her bed. Normally, her lips quirk up automatically in response to seeing his name pop on her notifications, but it is not the case for this time. Instead, a frown mars her forehead as she reads his comment.

agust-d: the story’s great, but I think it would be better if the story ended like this

For a moment, she can’t believe her eyes. She blinks a few more times in the hope that her eyes were just playing tricks on her. Nada, it remains the same. 

If there’s one thing to know about her, it’s that she meticulously plans out every detail in her stories. She even spends weeks to outline a draft, and even then, it must be decent enough before she puts it in writing. Publishing her works online, for all the world to see, still intimidates her even after all this time. Not knowing how people will respond to her works frightens her, but what is life without a little fear?

In addition, she’s receptive to constructive criticisms, but criticisms that come from those she looks up to? It’s a bitter pill to swallow sometimes. Suga—he’s become one of those people, and seeing his comment really hurt. She turns her phone off and does her chores for the time being. The moment she logs back in, she is taken aback by the multitude of comments expressing the same sentiment. 

bubbleboy: “Yeah, I agree, I think it would be best if the story ended in this manner.” 

She can’t help but feel the bubble of anger gradually rising. Another even started with, 

orange-gloss: “No offense, but the ending being suggested by others is kinda good.” 

The audacity and the entitlement in this comment! Asking her to not be offended when it is within her right to take offense is absolutely laughable. Furthermore, who are you to even tell me how I should react? 

When she reaches the 20th comment, she explodes. The next two hours find her furiously typing out a decent response disguised as a story, albeit with passive-aggressiveness, addressed to all of the comments, but primarily to the one left by Suga. She talks to the rude commenters with the sweet addition of a phrasing 101 lesson. In her contained rage, she ends with the note: remember, it doesn’t hurt to be nice, and if you have qualms about how I ended my own story, do me and yourself a favor and write your own story!

She makes up her mind to take some time off her blog for a while. But after a familiar notification pops up at 5 PM, she resists the urge to run away and instead, opts to open the messages he sent.

agust-d: i’ll admit, the way I said it was rude

agust-d: but I stand with what I said

agust-d: you should consider the possibility as well

seen

(In hindsight, she realizes that, for once, Suga’s comment surpasses 25 words.)

—

4. 

After the whole debacle with the barrage of rude comments and her consequent outburst, everything has never been the same. Understandably, some of her fans have left since then, but the majority stayed with her and for that, she’s eternally grateful. Although she still publishes her stories and interacts with her followers, a certain emptiness fills her at times. 

A part of her thinks it has a lot to do with Suga, who she doesn’t talk to anymore. She… doesn’t know how to respond to him after her outburst. In a span of a moment, she manages to both defend her honor and drag agust-d through the mud, which was never her intention to begin with. Okay, well, maybe just a little bit. But she’s hurt, so it only makes sense to retaliate.

If only she could easily strike back in her current situation. 

Unbeknownst to her, someone with the handle void-mayo tags her on a malicious post the night before, calling her out for being fake. Apparently, she’s a ‘copycat writer wanna-be with no real ideas of her own.’

She only discovers it when her followers start sending her messages of reassurance and appreciation. Of course, she checks the post at once, reading carefully and taking in everything that was written. (Shit, at least I have a better username, she muses). And not for the first time, she feels hurt, uneasy, and anxious at the same time. Void-mayo is already an established writer, with years of exposure under her belt and a large army of rabid fans at her disposal. Meanwhile, she’s just started her writing blog. And although she’s diligent, thorough, and ensures that each of her stories has its own personality and flavor, most of void-mayo’s fans wouldn’t care. She can’t risk losing her credibility over a baseless accusation such as this! 

And with that, she feels anger bubbling from the pit of her stomach. She doesn’t get the purpose behind the destructive post. She gets humiliated, her reputation tarnished, and worse just because she had written a similar scene with an ice cream . It certainly doesn’t help that others are quick to join in calling her names and ‘cancelling her’ without even bothering to check the facts. 

And as she contemplates on how to proceed with such a delicate situation, her dashboard refreshes. At the top, she notices that agust-d reblogs void-mayo’s post with the addition of his response and for once, the word count exceeds 100.

—

5. 

In a roundabout way of saying sorry and expressing her gratitude, she proceeds to write the ending Suga requested. And illuminated by the dim light of her laptop screen, she can begrudgingly admit that he does have a point; his version of the ending does make sense.

—

fin.

—

omake

agust-d: so am i forgiven yet?

you: i don’t know

you: maybe you’ll have to make it up to me

you: and get me some coffee first?

you: 😉

—

a/n pt. 2: happiest birthday to you again! i’m so grateful to have met you in this lifetime. truly, like you’re the best. even if your internet connection’s always shitty, you always find ways to join our chats and discord parties. just thank you, for all the countless laughs that i’ve had with (and because of) you, for the counsel with my writing, and for the stories and advice you’ve willingly shared with us. here’s to our three years of friendship and counting! i love you so much! enjoy this day and stay safe! 

p.s. keep rocking and keep writing! we’ll always be here with you! muah! ❤️❤️❤️

p.p.s. hihi 🦆🍄