#[you only need to have a basic understanding of how the industry works to know how little control a screenwriter has over the end product]

[rafeslvbug]

introducing…nba!rafe

back to basics!! (physical)

height: 6”6/6”7 (power forward) second tallest player on his team, uses his height for intimidation over the ball, and in other ways too - outside the court.

build: 220lbs. built, but needs to be agile at the same time. 6”8 wingspan. back muscles you could honestly die for. probably always has some bruises/scratches up his arms and back that no one knows if it’s from training or from you.

age: early to mid twenties. considered one of the most significant power forwards currently in the nba.

looks!! (specific)

tattoos/piercings: has a small tally on his upper arm for nba championship wins. currently set to two. doesn��t wear earrings, though he’s got one piercing from a bet he made. nothing other than that.

signatures: always wearing sports shorts. around the house, out and about in summer, training, etc. unless you actually have to go somewhere, in which case he knows how to dress up. he’d have a thin chain around his neck. silver. small. plain. about the only jewellery he lets himself wear.

personality

jealous: on a scale of 1-10? 11. he can’t help it, if i’m honest. with your popularity, you’ve dated other men who you still see often in your industry. and he knows your quick with relationships, finding something stable is hard. but he wants to be stable. he doesn’t need other people getting in the way of that. arm around your waist at any of your events, showing up to every concert. wouldn’t hide under a hat in the vip section, probably glare down every man who’s staring at you on stage. i’d hate to think of what he’s like with the male dancers.

straightforward: rafe’s clear about what he wants. you. to win. stability. there’s no questioning him, or his intentions. it’s refreshing in a way, no guessing, no wondering if your partner loves you as much as you do. it’s what you need. in other ways it’s often the cause of his stress. when he knows what he wants, and how to get it, and it doesn’t work out for him. he’s too rigid at times, not as flexible or fun as he should be. on the brightside, it fixes arguments quickly.

charismatic: out of a line of men, no doubt wanting to date you, he got you. his biggest brag, but in the end it was how he did it. irresistible charm, didn’t pretend even for a minute that he was only trying to befriend you. made it clear, took what he wanted. flirtiest idiot alive.

supportive: would be at every concert, every show, every event. whenever he can make it, he’s there. no excuses. expects you to do the same, could cause arguments. biggest fan, though. online, in person. never ashamed to say your his, loves when he gets to talk about you.

dislikes

arrogant players. people who think it’s pure talent that got them here. that they’re untouchable. he’ll straighten them out, show them on the pitch that no one is undefeated.

exes. your exes, specifically. hates that you still work with them on occasion. hates how the media is always raving about you and them. always comparing him and them. also hates how people compare you to his exes, when you & him know full well you’re the best gf he’s ever had and vice versa.

small doorways. can’t fit himself through, has to duck his head, will bang it anyways. and if they’re narrow? might just stay outside, doesn’t want to do the awkward sideways step through.

time wasters. in matches, in life. hates doing things without purpose unless it’s actually comforting. walking around aimlessly? unless it’s supposed to be a relaxing walk, it’s just dumb. hates boredom. restless af.

likes

analysing plays. it’s all he does really, studying how to improve himself and get better at the game. if someone is doing better than he is? fine, he’ll learn from them. improve himself. believes he needs to learn from the greats rather than mope around and envy them - that’s how he becomes them.

emotionally intelligent people. people who can understand him, those he can have deep conversations with while still bantering.

someone who has their priorities straight. wants to be with someone who’s resilient. when they set goals, they meet them. where they can support each other.

listening to you talk. at night, when he’s tired, he can lie down on the bed, and just listen to you talk. about anything. your day, stories, song ideas/lyrics and album concepts. he could do it all day long, that is not purposeless.

family & people-specific hcs

nicknames for you: star, pretty girl, baby, missy

nicknames you have for him: baller, my man, cutiepie (as a joke)

- his jersey number is your favourite number

- you guys are most likely engaged. he’d put the biggest rock on your hand and you wouldn’t be private per say. you’re always at his matches, he at your concerts, always out and about together. you’ll record tts from time to time with him in them, or he might post photo dumps with you in them.

- he’d want kids. definitely. all these basketball players he’s surrounded by have the cutest families. he wants it. wants a little boy/girl to take to all his matches, have on his lap during after match conferences, hold on his hip during concerts.

- he’ll do anything you want. star in a music video? sign him up! attend your concert on stage? yes yes. be part of a tiktok? of course.

[alpaca-clouds]

Why the media CEOs will always learn the wrong lessons

Yesterday a friend and I talked about how the entire (AAA) game industrie looked at BG3 being as popular as it is and going: "Oh, we need to produce 100+ hour games, I guess! Those sell!" Which... obviously is not why it is popular. The game is not popular because it has 100+ hours of gameplay, but because it has engaging characters, that are well-acted and that work as good hooks for the players. Like, let's face it: The reason why I so far have sunken 160 hours into this game is, because I wanna spend time with these characters - and because I wanna give them their happy endings.

But the same has happened too, just a bit earlier this year, right? When Barbie broke the 1 billion and every Hollywood CEO went: "Oh, so the people want movies based on toy franchises! Got it!" To which the internet at large replied: "... How is that the lesson you learned from this?"

Well, let me explain to you, why this is the lesson they learn: It is because the CEOs and the boards of directors at large are not artists or even engaged with the medium they produce. They mostly are economists. And their dry little hearts do not understand stuff more complex than numbers and spread sheets.

That sounds evil, I know, but... It is sadly the truth. When they look at a successful movie/series/game/book/comic, they look at it as a product, not a piece of art or narrative. It is just a product that has very clear metrics.

To them Barbie is not a movie with interesting stylistic choices that stand out from the majority of high budget action blockbusters. It is a toy movie with mildly feminist themes.

Or Oppenheimer is not a movie to them with a strong visual language and good acting direction. No, it is a historical blockbuster.

And this is true for basically every form of media. I mean, books are actually a fairly good example. In my life I do remember the big book fads that happened. When Harry Potter was a success, there was at least a dozen other "magical school" book series being released. When Twilight was a big success there was suddenly an endless number of "teen girl falls in love with bad boy, who is [magical creature]" YA. When the Hunger Games was a success, there were hundreds of "YA dystopia" books. Meanwhile in adult reading, we had the big "next Game of Throne" fad.

Of course, the irony is, that within each of those fads there might have been one or two somewhat successful series - but never even one that came even close to whatever started the fad.

Or with movies, we have seen it, too. When Avengers broke the 1 billion (which up to this point only few movies did) the studios went: "Ooooooh, so we need shared universe film series" - and then all went to try and fail to create their own cinematic universe.

Because the people, who call the shots, are just immensely desinterested in the thing they are selling. They do not really care about the content. All they care about is having a supposedly easy avenue of selling it. Just as they do not care about the consumer. All they care about is that the consumer buys it. Why he buys it... Well, they do not care. They could not care less, in fact.

So, yeah, get ready for a 20 overproduced games with a bloated 100+ hours of empty gameplay, but without the engaging characters. And for like at least 15 more moves based on some toy franchise, that nobody actually cares about.

And then get ready for all the CEOs to do the surprised Pikachu face, when all of that ends up not financially successful.

Really, I read some interviews yesterday from some AAA-studio CEOs and their blatant shock and missing understanding on why BG3 works for so many people.

Because, yeah... capitalism does not appreciate art. Capitalism does not understand art. It only understands spread sheets.

[plaidos]

The craziest part of all that Dropout discourse about how they almost never feature transfems outside of drag is that dozens of people were saying shit like “Well, if you don’t have any recommendations of trans feminine comics, then you can’t complain and you’re just looking for something to whinge about and you’re just as bad as them”

like first of all, i don’t live in LA and neither to most Dropout fans — it’s their job to find interesting & exciting talent local to them, not ours. secondarily this complaint & belief basically implies that the reason Dropout barely ever features transfeminine talent is because they just haven’t “come across” any. I saw literally dozens of TME people asking “well how do we know any transfems are applying?” — first of all, transfems who applied for positions at Dropout personally reached out to me to tell me that real world staff members of Dropout agree with me & that all of the transfems who are involved behind the scenes in the company do feel like they are being undervalued and underrepresented.

but secondarily, this just implies that Dropout would’ve definitely had more transfems if only they knew about talented transfeminine performers or if ant had applied — and this betrays such an obviously transphobic understanding of this situation. There are not so few trans women comics in LA that it would not be incredibly easy for Dropout to find one, and the belief that we are is indicative that you see us as some niche incredibly rare minority. there are straight up thousands of trans people in LA. LA famously has an incredibly rich & diverse scene for transfeminine talent.

…but even beyond that, the fact that many Dropout fans can’t name any transfem comics to suggest Dropout hire (which, by the way, that’s not how this works, and the reason most of us weren’t doing this is because it doesn’t make any sense to, it would be ridiculous to demand Dimension 20 hire one specific person?) is not an indicator that they “just want to whinge and don’t actually care” — it’s an indicator that transfems are so underrepresented that many people outside of the industry haven’t seen any big popular transfeminine comedians/etc. like… isn’t that fucking sad? isn’t that tragic??? isn’t that absolute proof that we need more people like us highlighted?

it just seems like a good way to punish transfems for complaining. Like I really don’t understand why so many Dropout fans are so upset at the fact that trans women are saying “hey, it’s really disappointing how little we’re represented, could we have more?” other than because they fundamentally don’t want to see us outside of as a drag queen. Like sorry but us wanting more transfem comedians doesn’t make it our responsibility to name each one. It’s giving “if you’re a fan of this band, name five of their albums” Why? Why should transfems have to name ten counterexamples every time they felt underrepresented? It’s an objectively shitty double standard.

[athenathegoddess13]

Boycott SM

I hope this reaches the right audience, and that bigger creators write something about this to spread and help, even if you're not a Riize fan, please help us.

I want to say something about all this Seunghan's situation. To all the people who say "If you boycott the other 6 members you're not a true briize"

We're not fighting only for seunghan.

We're fighting for ourselves,  because KPOP companys want so badly to have an impact outside of Asia but don't do anything when the international fans ask for something. It took us 10 months to get seunghan back but 2 days for Asian fans to kick him out.

We're fighting for the other 6 members who were so happy to have their friend back in the group and their happiness has been taken away from them.

We're fighting for the other idols as well, Seunghan was wrongly bullied for having a girlfriend and smoking, basically for being human, and SM did nothing to protect him. And now that he left I can't help but wonder, how are other idols feeling now? Are they scared that they might be the next ones this happens to? Knowing that if they get caught even hanging out with someone of the opposite sex might end the career they've been working on for YEARS.

And we're doing this for all the people who suffer from bullying. SM left those funeral wreaths outside their building for idols to see, isn't that wrong? They should have done something. This situation is critical, SM basically proved that by bullying those people can obtain whatever they want, they're giving an example that encourages bullying, which is clearly wrong.

It's time for international fans to raise their voice. SM has been called out for this behaviour for YEARS and yet they've done nothing. I am tired of this agency, I'm not supporting any of its groups till they start protecting their artists.

PLS repost or make your own post, I don't care if you're a small or big creator, your help is needed, even if you're not a fan, please understand our situation and help us. We're trying to make a difference in that industry.

[bitchesgetriches]

Everything You Need to Know about How to Increase Your Income

Make more money at the job you have

One of the simplest ways to increase your income is to just make your current employer pay you more. But while it may be simple, it ain’t always easy.

Santa Isn’t Coming and Neither Is Your Promotion: How To Get Promoted

How I Chessmastered Myself Into a Promotion at Work

The First Time I Asked for a Raise

You Need To Ask for a Fucking Raise

Ask the Bitches: “Can I Quit With Unvested Funds? Or Am I Walking Away From Too Much Money?” 

The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Salary

Make more money at your next job

All that said, you’re statistically more likely to increase your income faster by job hopping! So if your current employer doesn’t want to pay you more, leave that sinking ship behind in pursuit of a higher salary.

Job Hopping vs. Career Loyalty by the Numbers

The Fascinating Results of Our Job Hopping vs. Career Loyalty Poll

How NOT to Determine Your Salary

When It Comes to Salary Negotiations, Are You Asking for Enough?

What To Do When You’re Asked About Your Salary Requirements in a Job Interview

If Your Employer Refuses To Negotiate Salary, Try These 11 Creative Counteroffers

Season 4, Episode 9: “I’m on the Wrong Career Path. How Do I Convince a New Industry To Take a Chance on Me?” 

Invest your way to more money

Of course there are some who say the true path to wealth is passive income: when you stop working for your money and instead let your money work for you. And they’re not wrong! Here’s how we recommend you increase your income passively.

When Money in the Bank Is a Bad Thing: Understanding Inflation and Depreciation

Investing Deathmatch: Investing in the Stock Market vs. Just… Not 

What’s the REAL Rate of Return on the Stock Market?

Dafuq Is a Retirement Plan and Why Do You Need One? 

Procrastinating on Opening a Retirement Account? Here’s 3 Ways That’ll Fuck You Over.

Season 4, Episode 1: “Index Funds Include Unethical Companies. Can I Still Invest in Them, or Does That Make Me a Monster?” 

Small Business Investing: A Kinder, Gentler Alternative to the Stock Market 

The Dark Magic of Financial Horcruxes: How and Why to Diversify Your Assets 

Make more money through side hustles

When it comes to side hustles, we have traditionally advocated caution. The last thing you want to do is burn out in pursuit of a second income stream. But with enough wits and fortitude, a side hustle could help you increase your income by leaps and bounds.

Romanticizing the Side Hustle: When 1 Job Isn’t Enough

Season 2, Episode 9: “I Use My Free Time to Volunteer. Should I Focus on Making Money Instead?”

Stop Undervaluing Your Freelance Work, You Darling Fool

Freelancer, Protect Thyself… With a Fair Contract 

Season 4, Episode 10: “I’m a Freelance Artist. How Do I Price My Work Fairly Without Losing Clients?”

Ask the Bitches: My Boss Won’t Give Me a Contract and I’m Freaking Out 

“Independent Contractor” My Ass: How to Stop Wage Theft Through Worker Misclassification 

Becoming a Millennial Entrepreneur (In the Midst of a Pandemic) With Katelyn Magnuson 

11 Awful Mistakes I Made as a Self-employed Freelancer, and How You Can Avoid Them

The Magic of Unclaimed Property: How I Made $1,900 in 10 Minutes by Being a Disorganized Mess

I Am a Craigslist Samurai and so Can You: How to Sell Used Stuff Online

What to do when you make more money

Once you increase your income, you might find yourself… not quite bored, but finding you have a little more bandwidth to handle the stuff that matters. It can be a jarring transition! Here are our thoughts on the matter.

Season 3, Episode 7: “I’m Finished With the Basic Shit. What Are the Advanced Financial Steps That Only Rich People Know?” 

Season 3, Episode 4: “The More Money I Save, the More I’m Scared To Lose It. Can I Break the Cycle of Financial Anxiety?” 

How to Avoid Lifestyle Inflation … and When to Embrace It

Ask the Bitches: I Know How to Struggle and Fight, but I Don’t Know How to Succeed

Update: I Know How to Struggle and Fight, but I Don’t Know How to Succeed 

The FIRE Movement, Explained 

I Was Happy to Marry a Poor Man. Then Things Changed.

I Have Become the Rich Relative I Always Wanted 

Believing in Miracles: A Conversation with Chris Dane Owens on Money, Creativity, and Self-Funding Art 

I Now Make More Money Than My Husband, and It’s Great for Our Marriage 

Season 2, Episode 1: “I’m Financially Stable, but My Friends Aren’t. The Guilt Is Crushing!”

The Resignation Checklist: 25 Sneaky Ways To Bleed Your Employer Dry Before Quitting

Advocate for systemic change

We don’t endorse an attitude of “I got mine.” So once you increase your income, there are lots of ways to use your newfound financial breathing room for good! Lift as you climb, my friend. Here are a few ways to do so:

Wallet Activism: Using Your Money for Good with Author Tanja Hester 

Woke at Work: How to Inject Your Values into Your Boring, Lame-Ass Job 

Raising the Minimum Wage Would Make All Our Lives Better

Post a Salary Range in the Job Description, You Fucking Cowards

1 Easy Way All Allies Can Help Close the Gender and Racial Pay Gap

The Truth About Unions: What Has Organized Labor Done for You? 

How To Support a Labor Strike with 3 Simple Steps

Everything in moderation

One last thing, my lambs: don’t crush your spirit while chasing the goal of a higher income. Working hard is hard work. If you find these tactics are leaving you exhausted and demoralized, you might be on the road to burnout. And that road leads nowhere good!

That’s why we just released our glorious new Burnout Workshop. Click the button below to take a peek!

Get the Burnout Workshop Here!

[rebeccathenaturalist]

The United States is a large country that--even if you only look at the contiguous 48--covers almost a thousand Level VI ecoregions, each one unique. Many people won't recognize anything beyond basic biomes, like "forest" or "wetland", and even among those who are familiar with old-growth forests, the idea of an old-growth prairie or desert may be surprising.

This is why I get frustrated with bureaucratic attempts to "solve" ecological problems. The most well-known is probably Trump's suggestion that we just "rake" the forest (no, Finland doesn't actually do that.) But the problem with having politicians in general in charge of legislation regarding complex ecosystems and their denizens is that they generally don't have enough knowhow to understand the parameters and needs of a given location, or why it's important to preserve that place as it is.

Moreover, decision-makers have a tendency to place the claims of industry officials from logging and mining companies as being of equivalent authority as scientists who have spent decades studying how a given ecosystem works within a localized ecoregion. Sure, a logging exec knows how to make money from trees, and they may understand something about tree farming, but they rarely know even a fraction of what an ecologist knows about why trees can't just grow in isolation--at least not if you want them to be healthy. And when you put people who have zero experience in a given field in charge of the federal department overlooking management of that field? There should be a requirement that cabinet members have relevant training and experience, as with any other job. (Knowing how to cut down trees or how to sell them does not mean you know how a forest works.)

At a time when our government here in the US is swiftly defunding scientific research, it is more important than ever that those of us who are either professional scientists, citizen scientists, or other advocates educate others on the basics of ecology. We need to ensure that the existing body of research is preserved, and advocate for increased funding. Otherwise we're just going to end up with more and more federal decisions being made in full ignorance of established science, and with profit as the only priority.

[band--psycho]

Vander x Reader - 5 Years Later...(Part 2)

Please be kind, reblogs are always welcome and greatly appreciated!

Requests are still open so if you have any ideas/requests, you're more than welcome to send them over (thank you to everyone who's requested a story so far, I'm working my way through them!)

Part 2 to my Vander x Reader series - Part 1

I hope you all enjoy this! 💛

Thank you all for the continued support!💛

I do not give permission for any of my works to be copied or translated onto this site or other platforms!

Vander Masterlist / Arcane Masterlist / Join My Taglist

Warnings: Mentions of death, mentions of grief, feeling of dega-vu

You knew the Undercity wasn’t the safest of places to go, at least that’s what your father had always told you. 

So why were you down here? 

Because as much as you appreciated your fathers protectiveness, what type of friend would you be if you let one of your closest friends go down there alone? 

A pretty shit one. 

Which is why, despite the risks, you went with Jayce down to the Undercity. 

Besides, seeing as you were training to be an Enforcer and Jayce was just a student at the academy it was basically your job to escort him and make sure that nothing happened to him; that’s at least what you’d tell Greyson if she asked where you’d been…and your parents, if they asked which you hoped they wouldn’t. 

“Remind me where we’re going?” You asked in a slightly hushed tone as the two of you turned a corner walking down a dimly lit alley, before 

“I need to get some supplies for a project I’m working on,” Jayce answered simply; with an optimistic gleam in his eyes. 

“What project?” you inquired, unable to keep your curiosity at bay; it had certainly been a while since you’d seen Jayce this excited about a project.

“It’s best I don’t tell you, until I can get it working,” he replied; his answer only furthering your curiosity, but perhaps it was for the best for you to know as little as possible…especially if the academy wasn’t aware of it, which by the seams of things, they weren’t. The less you knew the better; though it still played on your mind as the two of you continued walking through the Undercity.  

To most people the Undercity was just an underdeveloped land across the river, deep in the canyons,  beneath Piltover, filled with misfits and thugs; but as you walked through the lanes of the Undercity, you couldn’t help but admire the beauty of it. 

The beauty of how vibrant the lights atop of the shops shone in the darkness; the difference of industrial architecture, making each building its own, if only in a little way.

It was different from Piltover, of course, but beautiful nevertheless. 

Since you'd arrived down here you couldn’t shake this feeling of deja-vu…like you’d been here before. 

It was odd. 

You’d never been down here; not once; so why did it feel so familiar?

You were so lost in your own thoughts that you hadn’t realised Jayce had stopped walking until you walked into the back of him. 

“Sorry,” you whispered, hearing a small chuckle fall from his lips. 

“Lost in your own world again?” he teased, turning around to look at you. 

You simply rolled your eyes at his comment and looked at the building you’d stopped outside; a pawn shop. 

You shot Jayce a confused look; you didn’t understand what this place had that any of the shops in Piltover didn’t; except from some anonymity. 

Down here no one knew him. 

But that only caused the curiosity you had about his project to grow. 

“Stay out here, I won’t be long,” he said before disappearing inside the shop. 

You went to follow him, before you heard a song in the distance, that halted your steps. 

You knew it. 

But you were certain you’d never heard it before…

How did you know a song from the Undercity? 

You turned on your heel, following the sound of the song; you knew it was risky, venturing off into the Undercity alone and you knew Jayce would be worried if he came back outside and noticed you gone, but you couldn’t help it. 

It was like your feet had a mind of their own and before you knew it, you’d come to the source of the music, it was a bar, or at least that’s what you assumed it was seeing as it was called ‘The Last Drop’ and had a logo of a tankard in the middle of the name. 

‘Why does this place seem so familiar?’ you thought to yourself, your eyes narrowing as you stared at the building in front of you. 

You were about to take another step, before you felt someone grab ahold of your wrist; instinctively your training kicked in and your guard went up, ready to fight. 

That was until you saw that it was Jayce who was holding your wrist; he was panting slightly with a worried look in his eyes, “I thought something had happened to you.”

“I’m sorry,” you apologized, guilt washing over you, “I didn’t mean to worry you,” 

“It’s okay,” he answered softly, tugging on your wrist slightly, leading you away from the bar, “Let’s just get out of here.”

And with that the two of you made your way past the pawn shop Jayce had been in, passing a little boy with white hair leaning against the wall, he had a proud smile on his face that was until he saw you. 

You waved at him politely, confused about why he was staring at you; but the little boy said nothing, he just continued to stare at you, his mouth hanging slightly agape as you vanished out of his view. 

All you could think about as you made your way back to Piltover was how strange today had truly been. 

The deja-vu, the song, the bar, the little boy….none of it was making any sense….

~~~~~~

Vander hated seeing Vi hurt; he also hated that she was a mirror image of how he was when he was younger, so eager to rebel against the topsiders…but it wasn’t that simple. 

That’s what he was trying to get her to understand.

Every action had a consequence. 

He knew that better than anyone. 

He was the one who was too stubborn to call off the uprising, because he wanted to show Piltover that they were worthy of not being left behind on all the grand new ventures Piltover were indulging in; and because of that, he lost so many people that were close to him. 

But no ones ghost was more haunting than yours. 

He just needed Vi to understand that violence wasn’t the way to play this. 

He knew Greyson would probably be paying him a visit soon; the kids, unintentionally, broke an agreement that he’d made with the current sheriff of Piltover, to keep a peace between topside and the Lanes. 

A peace that was now hanging by a thread. 

Once he was sure Vi’s injuries were clean, he rose from the table and began putting away the supplies he’d used to clean her cuts. 

“Vander…there’s something else,” Vi began, halting Vanders movements and making his attention focus back on her. 

“Go on,” he  said calmly, though in his mind he was dreading the next words that were going to come out of her mouth; she’d just been part of blowing up a building in Piltover, what more could there be.

“Ekko said….he said he saw Y/n,” 

Her words short-circuited his mind at the mention of your name.

“What?” he asked; thinking that maybe, somehow, he’d misheard what Vi had said. 

“He said he saw Y/n walking with that topside guy that came into the shop,” she repeated, noticing how Vanders eyebrows furrowed together as he tried to process her words. 

“That was partly why I went up there….to see if she was there,” she continued, rising from her seat, walking over to Vander and placing her hand on his arm. 

She knew how much Vander loved you. 

She knew how much losing you broke him. 

She knew how much losing you hurt both her and Powder; who’d grown so close to you in the few years prior to the uprising. 

That’s why she wanted to be sure that Ekko wasn’t wrong; she’d barely believed him herself when he first told her, but before the explosion happened, she was sure she heard your voice; but without actually seeing you, she couldn't be sure if it was you or if it was just the wishful thinking in her mind.

“She’s dead, Vi,” Vander stated; his voice remaining balanced; although the look in his eyes showed a growing sadness. 

“You’ve never believed that,” 

It wasn’t a lie; he didn’t believe it. 

He might’ve said that you were dead; but Vi knew that deep in his heart, he had never believed it.

He never found your body; and without your body, he could still cling on to the hope that you were alive. 

Vi never really understood why he couldn’t believe your death was real; but now she knew that he was right all along. 

“Ekko got it wrong, it can’t have been her.”

“Vander, he knows what she looks like….” Vi tried to counter, they all knew what you looked like from the photos Vander kept of the two of you; but Vander just went back to putting away the medical supplies before heading to the stairs. 

“He got it wrong,” he answered back, slightly harsher than he’d intended to,before leaving the basement entirely and heading to his own room. 

He all but collapsed onto the side of your bed; his eyes landing on the photo of you he kept on his bedside table. 

You were dead.

That’s what he kept telling himself. 

That’s what he'd had to tell himself for the last five years to keep his own sanity. 

But there was a little voice in the back of his head, a voice that reignited his failing hope…what if you weren’t…what if what Ekko said was true…?

Vander didn’t know what to believe….the memories from that day flooding back into his mind as the pain he’d felt re-entered his heart, tears fell from the Hound Of The Undergrounds eyes, as he tried to work out what to believe. 

What if all these years you’d been alive? 

Why were you in Piltover? 

Why hadn’t you come back to him? 

Did you blame him for what happened on the bridge….did you blame him for the deaths so many people had succumbed to…? 

Is that why you never came home?

So many thoughts were running through his mind; but even if his mind hadn’t settled on a decision, his heart had; he needed to find out the truth. 

And he would; just as soon as he’d smoothed everything out with Greyson about today's incident.

Taglist:

@xacatalepsyx @the-lone-librarian @conretewings @barbersjoy @eternallyvenus @trixiex2 @newlosadventures @eternalgoddessofart @cass-brightwood @fortune-fool02 @arielpanda1 @mothratic @simping-ella @stickyrice5096 @levis-butterfingers @lesbianinyourarea @nagislemontea @dazecrea

I apologise in advance to those who have asked to be on the taglist and aren’t - I’m not ignoring you, I just can’t tag you in it for some reason :(

[seraphont]

are you in school for art? if not, or even if, how did you push yourself to improve? or get past a “wall” where it felt like there was no improvement happening? you’re a big inspiration for me so i wanted to see if there was any advice you have

No I’m not, I’m several years out and I’ve worked in the animation industry!

I find when I’m in this sort of spot I go back to the basics, which for me is usually life drawing/cafe sketching -u can find channels that cater to this on youtube! Doing studies of poses/artists I like as well, always helps out. When I’m struggling with a certain aspect of my art, I look to an artist I know who does it well. I look through their work and I try to break down/study how they do it, so I can try to implement into my own.

If you have a strong understanding of art basics, you’ll know where you can break the rules, and that’s where a lot of growth and fun comes in!

I also think becoming too focused on improvement is sort of a hindrance of its own, for one it can be very demotivating, and it’s a little hard to see how much you’ve improved if you’re only ever looking forward. in this sort of mindset you’re less likely to take risks with your art, which imo is sort of a requirement to improve.

Take a look back at some of your older work every once in a while too, remember where you were when you drew them, appreciate how much you’ve improved/changed!

One last piece of advice, you need moderation. Try to have fun on the side of all the studying. Draw silly on purpose, make stuff ‘ugly’ on purpose, some of my favourite artworks are the ones where I purposefully made them ‘ugly’.

Take risks!!! You’ll be surprised by how wonderful it can turn out! Hope this helps

[coco-loco-nut]

We Can’t Be Friends

Pairing: George Russel x Reader

Summary: George’s girlfriend, a former child actor, is not well liked by the public

TW: mentions of alcohol and drug abuse, implied child exploitation

A/n: going off of the more popular interpretation of the song (ari vs the public)

requests open!🫶 masterlist

———————

You just finished filming a short interview in a docuseries with some of your former colleagues, those who fell into the same trap and downfall as you did. You prefer not to air everything out, but you knew your statement would support the others.

The industry basically forced you into a drug and alcohol addiction, one that you thankfully beat, but you went from someone who was once loved to someone hated, just from how the media spun your name.

You met George at a hospital event -you now work as a biochemist and bioengineer- and he immediately recognized his childhood crush. You dated for a year before feeling strong enough to go public, but ever since he posted a very cute picture of you, the hate has started again.

“I’ll make a statement asking them to leave you alone,” George offers but you shake your head no. He hates seeing you upset, but both of you didn’t expect the backlash on you.

“They won’t understand, they could never even try. They will never know what it was like to grow up like that, even the docuseries won’t help,” you start to dismiss the thought.

“We can’t do nothing,” he tries to reason, wanting to protect you.

“I don’t want to tiptoe around the public, but I don’t want to hide, either way I’m feeding this fire,” you groan, running your hand through your hair as you pace the room. You had to call off of work today, the entrance to your townhome being blocked by paparazzi.

“The story is gonna die, and we’ll be alright,” George stands up and pulls you into a hug. In your mind you picture the public liking you again, waiting for their love again.

A few days later, George drags you out of the house for lunch, you had only been leaving for work. The two of you step out, a reporter immediately coming up to you. You ignore the first few, sitting in your silence.

“It’s just me and you, Baby girl,” George whispers to you, supporting you however you choose to respond.

“Y/n, is it true that you have been in and out of rehab for the past year? You are in and out of hospitals,” one reporter, who always hounds you, asks causing you to whirl around. You don’t want to argue, but you don’t want to bite, so you choose a confusing answer.

“You’ve got me misunderstood, but at least I look this good,” you smirk, watching their face scrunch in confusion, gripping their paper and pen, before continuing your walk.

The next day a clip of one of your short interviews drops, taken while you were in college, as a trailer for the docuseries release the following week.

~-~-~-

I don’t like how this industry painted me, but I’m still here hanging, just not what they made me. It’s almost like a daydream sometimes, finally leaving that world. I feel so seen, I am everything that I defined myself as, not all that the industry made me be. My truth and I may always sit in silence, but one day I hope I am brave enough to say it out loud. For now, it’s only me on the road after recovery, but maybe that’s all I need.

~-~-~-

buzzfeed.com/uk

A list of every child actor we need to apologize to after watching “Drugged: The Truth Behind the Lives of Child Actors”

1. Y/n Y/l/n

~-~-~-

“Are you sure you want to go out there?” George asks, looking at the crowds of journalists. You nod, tired of being silent and waiting for things to be better, not caring about feeding the fire anymore.

“Let’s go,” you release a shaky breath, stepping out behind your boyfriend as he walks you to work.

“Y/n! Anything to comment regarding the documentary that’s been released and the allegations made by your former colleagues?” A journalist asks, the rest hoarding, pens at the ready.

“Actually, I do. You owe us an apology. Villainizing children who needed someone like you to expose how awful our working conditions were, that’s sick and cruel. You wrote lies about us, and instead of apologizing, you want to ask us for statements and exploit our names more? You’re sick. We can’t be friends,” you chem them out before continuing on your way to work. A part of you will always wait for their love, but you are tired of waiting for them to like you.

“You’re a badass. I hope they will see you are the biochemist and bioengineer, not the child actor. You’ve come so far and I’m so proud,” George says once your breathing steadies from the adrenaline.

“Thank you, Georgie,” a small part of you wants to flip them off behind you, just like you would’ve done ten years ago, but you don’t, finally moving forward.

[deramin2]

I've talked before about how Critical Role is highly political because they as people live in the world, think about it deeply, and respond to it in their work all the time, even if it's sideways in subtext.

And so I think it's vital to understand that there is a fundamental divide between the context the characters in the Mighty Nein vs. Bell's Hells, and Campaign 2 vs. Campaign 3 were created in: the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Pandemic started mid way through Campaign 2, but the broad themes, tone, and narrative approach were already set. They'd defined the kind of threats they wanted to face.

Campaign 3 was created after we'd been living in the Pandemic for years and when it was clear our leaders and society at large had decided to "solve" it by completely ignoring it and denying it's still happening. Public health response in general started to be turned against and then dismantled. All the hope for change in the face of the horrors of 2020 turned to ash. There was no amount of harm the entrenched systems of power could do that would get people to turn against it.

In fact, it got worse. The last few months of Campaign 3 were played out in the shadow of the United States electing a known fascist promising to implement openly oppressive policies to rob everyone but cishet white abled Christian men of their rights and lives. Their city of LA literally burned down in the middle of the finale because these horrible people have prevented even basic climate change responses.

While Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast increased its iron grip on the TTRPG industry and also showed they'd hurt any independent creator for money. As the Pandemic and trade wars made the whole industry more unstable. All the joy and success WotC’s games have brought to Critical Role come with the strings that WotC gets to decide everyone else's fate. Especially if they're seen as a threat to that hegemony. If anything, it's the love and comfort that actually feed that terrible power. While Critical Role established their own TTRPG publishing wing and is increasingly going toe to toe with WotC.

So like, no shit they'd want to explore a whirlwind fight against the gods that came to their world from WotC. And the complexities that good vs. evil is not a useful framework for this fight. Sure you try to stop people you know will be even worse, but that doesn't mean that the existing system is good and that those who have the power to control everything should retain that control.

Politely persuading the Powers That Be to step back and be mortal like everyone else instead of all-powerful overlords is a conflict resolution power fantasy. Not every battle needs to be with swords. Violence can only ever destroy. Words are far more effective at actually rebuilding something worth living in. Even when you can't possibly know what that something is.

Change is necessary, and if it doesn't come soon we're headed for another Calamity. The past checks on that power have not worked, and it's clear that structurally they can't. We have got to do something else. That's terrifying, and maybe it'll fail, but it's unlikely to be worse than the current times we're living through.

[ironunderstands]

Topaz appreciation post because she’s been rotating around my brain like a rotisserie chicken and I need y’all to get her like I do 

Genuinely, I believe her to be the most underrated limited 5 star in the game everything wise, because she is so damn interesting and nobody talks about it ever and it drives me nuts.

So, I’m going to make you understand why exactly I love her and what makes her so amazing in the first place.

Her lore 

Topaz’s lore is rather simple, at least compared to other characters in the game, but simple ≠ bad and her story serves her perfectly.

Long before Topaz was Topaz, she was a girl named Jelena, living in a desolate planet at the edge of the galaxy. The economy of this planet was based around mining and industry, which resulted in her home becoming more and more polluted as time went on. The wildlife almost completely disappeared, people had to wear masks to breathe, and it seemed like her planet was reaching a hopeless, dismal end.

Until the IPC came. They promised to fix everything, and heal her planet of its environment problems, in exchange for every person on the planet signing a contract of indentured servitude to the IPC. Seeing no other way out, Topaz’s home accepted, forever tying her and the rest of the planet to the IPC.

Topaz is was (and still is) incredibly talented and competent, excelling in science, economics, finances, math, etc. Her exceptional talents caused her mentor  and parental figure Dvorski, who works in the Strategic Investment Department to recommend her to Jade, one of his superiors. Presumably, this is how she started her climb up the corporate latter, eventually becoming the Topaz we know and love today. 

Throughout this, she maintained her friendly and headstrong attitude, and never abandoned her love for animals or the people in her life like Dvorski, a trait which will be important for later. 

So, I’ve established the basics, so what makes this interesting?

Topaz’s trauma and how it affects her character 

I feel like a lot of people ignore just how much trauma she really has, and how it affects the way she behaves in the present.

For starters, her love of animals. Sure, Numby is adorable and in general this is a rather fun trait for a character to have, it’s not something you would consider to be a sign of something darker. 

However, remember that Topaz’s planet almost lost all of the life on it, and she witnessed firsthand almost every creature she knew and loved either go extinct or become severely endangered. 

So, when you view her love for animals through this lense, it’s easy to see that she’s so attached to animals because Topaz almost lost them forever, and this trait manifests in a lot of the behavior she exhibits.

According to Topaz herself, her efficiency goes up 27% when Numby is with her, and it seems to be blatantly obvious that being around animals give her at the very least a peace of mind/sense of comfort. I mean in game she is Topaz and Numby for a reason, and her relationship with them is a core part of the way she behaves. When Topaz can��t ground herself, she has Numby to help her with that, which hurts even more considering she is likely going on these missions alone 90% of the time, meaning her literal only friend is a pet/animal. 

Considering Topaz’s biological parents never get mentioned, it’s not hard to assume she is orphaned or at the very least estranged from them, likely due to the disaster on her planet, leaving her only loved ones to be her pets and Dvorski. Losing one half of the only support system she has would be devastating for Topaz, which is likely why she brings Numby everywhere (also considering I don’t think she has mentioned him in the present, her pets might literally be the only things she has left). 

In her own home, Topaz collects a myriad of species from across the galaxy, as if to preserve them so at least even if they disappear on their home planets like hers did, they won’t go extinct entirely. 

Personally, I think her fixation around them cooperating and coexisting also reflects on how she feels about other people. If animals from completely different planets can get along, so can people. If she can convince creatures lacking in intellect work together, then she can do the same for ones that possess it, as ultimately Topaz is a massive people person, and believes what she’s doing is best for the galaxy. 

It’s almost like an experiment, with every little change to their ecosystems, every new organism added, every new abiotic feature taken or removed, Topaz can simulate what that might be like in reality. In a way she wants to take care of humans  like she does her pets, however instead of doing it through her own means, she uses the IPC and her power as a Stoneheart as a vector for that.

But why is she so confident? What makes Topaz wholeheartedly believe that what she’s doing really is the best for the galaxy, even if we know it isn’t perfect, even if only ~80% of the planets she works on are “saved”?

Well, like always, it’s her trauma again.

Imagine you’re living on a planet slowly dying due to its people’s greed and ignorance, in which everything you know and love is falling apart, and absolutely nothing can be done about it. But you don’t need to imagine this, I mean this is a situation we are all going through, as it’s already what’s happening to our planet right now, so perhaps instead picture what it might be like to live here in a few decades if nothing changes. How miserable that would be, how upset you would be at those in power, how disappointed you would be in humanity for doing Nothing when we had so much time and already knew the consequences almost a century in advance (seriously we have known about climate change since like the 50s). 

So you give up hope and accept your fate, accept that everything is going down in flames and the humanity, the planet you know and love is going to be snuffed out forever.

Only to get saved when an outside influence comes to your assistance. Sure, they make everyone sign a contract binding their lives to them, but you wouldn’t have a life to give had they not helped. Besides, you owe it to every other thing that shares your planet with you, every plant, every animal, every organism has been utterly wiped out by human greed, so it’s only fair to pay them back, right? 

I mean it’s your whole world at stake, so how could you say no? How could you deem their terms unreasonable if clearly your own people didn’t deserve the responsibility they had over their own lives? If their situations could only be fixed by giving it to others who could guide them? By giving it to the IPC? The Preservation ?

This is the mindset Topaz grew up on and has known for her entire life. She has seen humanity utterly fail itself and is unwilling to allow that fate to befall others. She doesn’t trust other people to make the right decisions, she doesn’t think they know what’s best for them, because the people she was closest to, her very own people couldn’t do that, so how could she ever expect strangers to do the same? 

How could she ever give the leaders of these planets the benefit of the doubt, knowing that doing that for her own almost caused it to be wiped out completely? How could she see them as anything more than the selfish bastards who ruined everything? How could her heart not ache thinking there were people on the planets she helps who would be doomed to experience the fate that almost fell upon her had Topaz not stepped in. 

How could Topaz feel guilty over the planets that don’t succeed? The ones she can’t save? As after all, she thinks they were lost from the get go? Does it eat her up at night knowing she failed them? That she couldn’t prevent the folly of humanity this time, so the next planet she must work harder, be more stubborn, push back even more, so nobody ever experiences what she did instead?

I mean being an indentured servant hasn’t been that bad for her, she’s succeeded in every endeavor she’s set her mind to after all. Sure, she’s entirely alone, and sure, if the IPC no longer deems her or her people useful, they could cast them aside once again. 

But Topaz is smart, she climbed to the top of the latter, she’s been praised to hell and back, she’s known far and wide through the department for her efficiency and drive, surely she hasn’t done anything wrong?

Sure she’s heard whispers, rumors and projects of other departments, of the deep dark secrets of the company she owes her life too. Inwardly she wonders how those who follow the Preservation would even be willing to commit such atrocities, inwardly she hopes they are just rumors. The IPC saved her planet, so how could they destroy others? 

The Preservation’s power will protect all, will save them from their miserable existences. Nothing else matters in the process, no dissenter understands this as like Topaz does. She will save them, she will protect them, even if it means she is detested by everyone she encounters, it must be done. All for the Amber Lord.

I find it very compelling how despite the fact that Topaz has become a Stoneheart, she is still dressed in the fashion of an average IPC worker. As if she is an equal part of the puzzle as them. Equally useful, equally disposable, equally biased, equally ignorant, and equally foolish. 

I mean, how could she be anyway else?

Her future

Belabog was just as important for Topaz’s development as she was to it.

She was wrong. 

As stubborn as Topaz is, she is not arrogant, and when Bronya proved to her that the people of Belabog can and would fight for their future, Topaz did everything in her power to help them.

As that’s what she really cares about, people. 

I think Topaz the determination she has in Bronya and it shook her to her core. 

Because so far, the only way Topaz has seen real progress is from the hands of the IPC.

But Bronya doesn’t give into them, and she puts everything she has into saving her people. Moreover, Jarilo-VI follows the Preservation as well, but they don’t agree with the IPC’s method of it. 

Is the IPC wrong?

That is the question Topaz is faced with, what is the thing she has to grapple with once she leaves the planet. When they demote her for not getting the debt back immediately, does Topaz wonder why they were so concerned about that in the first place? Shouldn’t they be happy that a world blessed by their very own deity managed to pick itself up without their help? Isn’t that the point?

Does she think back to her previous projects, the planets she saved and the planets she failed, and wonder how it would have worked out without the IPCs involvement? 

Did Aventurine teasing her about “failing” the Jarilo-VI project confuse her, because they were still saved like Topaz wanted them to be in the first place? How could they ever be considered a failure?

She believes debts and payback are what holds planets together, but it only ever seemed to cause Belabog to fall apart.

This is the first time Topaz really is forced to reevaluate her priorities, to question if her methods are justifiable, if she’s really doing the right thing.

Belabog didn’t break her, it didn’t topple her worldview and turn everything on its head, but it did plant some seeds of doubt in her brain, seeds of doubt that will grow into a new mindset. 

HOYOVERSE IF YOU ARE LISTENING HOYOVERSE, GIVE HER THE MENTAL BREAKDOWN + PRIORITY REEVALUATION ARC SHE DESERVES!!! DO THAT AND MY LIFE IS YOURS PLEASE.

Like you don’t get it you don’t get it what do you mean they set all this up and they might not go anywhere with it. Please hoyo please please please let her break away from the IPC’s condition and warped perspective, please let her truly follow the Preservation, please make her turn away from them, please make her an emanator of Preservation after she does this. Topaz stoneheart form, Topaz emanator form. Please please please let her save the crew let her save her subordinates let her save the people she failed previously let her save Aventurine and Ratio let her save Numby let her save herself.

Her instability 

I have already somewhat touched on this in point #3, but Topaz just cannot exist in the state she is now permanently.

Like a radioactive element she’s going to slowly decay over time until she ends up in a more stable form, and who that will hurt in the process, and how long that will take, we will have to see.

Hypocrisy is not something that can exist for long within characters, as due to its inherent contradictions, it messes with the way they are characterized until they are eventually forced to either eliminate it themselves or have the story do it for them.

Topaz is a hypocrite, desiring to do good and help people, but she ends up hurting them in the process. 

However, she has only just begun to realize this, and as more and more of the IPC’s atrocities get revealed, it gets harder and harder for both the audience and her herself to justify her behavior as we witness the extent of their crimes.

So how has she remained this stable for so long?

Well, the IPC has done everything in their power to keep her that way. From a young age she was involved with them, as they not only saved her planet, but her only known parental figure worked in the Strategic Investment Department. Soon, he recommended her to Jade due to Topaz’s exceptional talent, and presumably the other Stoneheart quickly picked her up and took her under her wing, causing Jelena to rise fast within the ranks and become one herself.

The IPC has been Topaz’s only frame of reference for how things should be done, her only perspective on write and wrong for so long. The only hints she gets of other points of view are that of the people who destroyed her planet, her own people. Unintentional or not, Topaz has been made to feel her whole life like the IPC are heroes and the common people are foolish and greedy and evil, and only now has that worldview started to crumble piece by piece.

Sure, we have always known how terrible the IPC was, a perception that has only gotten more and more true over time. However, Topaz is not the audience, and in universe the IPC presents themselves in a very positive light.

Think of the Myriad Celestia trailer and how it portrays the IPC; that’s quite literally how they want to be viewed in game, how they market themselves to other people. If Topaz has only ever known them to be that great, shining, progressive company who vows to follow the Preservation and improve the universe, how could even begin to criticize them? After all, she had never known any other perspective. Even when she did fail in the past, Topaz viewed it as a strike on her own record and an unfortunate situation in general, not as a demonstration of the IPC’s misdeeds. 

The IPC is good, the IPC saves people, the IPC follows the Preservation, Topaz is a good person, Topaz does good things, Topaz helps people, Topaz saves people, there is nothing wrong, there won’t ever be anything wrong.

Until Belabog

They don’t want to cooperate with the IPC. To roll over and let themselves be gutted for all they are worth. 

Well that’s fine, that’s happened before, at least that’s how Topaz justifies it to herself. She thinks of their massive debt, it must be paid after all, otherwise how could the galaxy remain stable?

But the weapons the IPC gave Jarilo-VI were never used in its defense. The thing they owe the IPC for never ended up being valuable. Belabog stood on its own, without the help of IPC in its defense.

They saved themselves.

As if it couldn’t get worse, they did it with the power of the Preservation.

And it didn’t come from the IPC, it came from them.

The Interastral Peace Corporation, who claim to be followers of the Preservation, standing against people who really do have their blessing and being proved wrong.

Do you know how that would feel to Topaz.

She’s wrong, and she’s proven wrong by the very deity she claims to follow, she believes she follows.

So Topaz makes her choice.

Stick with the IPC’s plan, or stand with the people of Belabog 

And she stands with them.

Topaz’s character never changes. I hate when people act like she switched up on them and changed her whole worldview, but in reality that was the most in character thing Topaz has ever done in her entire life.

Because she cares about people, so when the opportunity presents itself, she will always stand with them. 

This is the first time Topaz goes against the IPC’s wishes, and it won’t be the last.

She made her choice, she demonstrated who and what she truly cares about, and that will only drive a wedge between her and the IPC further and further until she snaps.

I find it funny how Topaz is a fire type character, when the song core to Belabog’s themes is “Wildfire” 

However, maybe it isn’t just about them. I think it’s about the Preservation, about what the game in general is trying to tell its players.

How fighting for your right to exist will hurt, but it is not impossible, and that pain will be the only way to enact change.

Well, Topaz,

you made your choice

go fight against your fate 

Thank you so much for reading! I really enjoyed making this and I hope you at least understand why I think Topaz is such a compelling character. I need an arc centered on her in the future and if I don’t get one then trust me things will be dealt with. She will get her just desserts.

[cultkinkcoven]

Genuine Red Flags in Spiritual Books, Grimoires, Occult Teachers or Mentors

Very often I see folks talking about things they consider to be red flags for beginners when entering witchy or occult spaces. Here are a few of the things that I’ve noticed over the years that will immediately make me put down a book or step away from a practitioner.

1. Claiming they know every thing about every sect of spirituality / occultism or witchcraft

Simply put, there is no one person who knows the deep inner workings of every craft, of every philosophy, of every practice. The guru that claims to know everything from Reiki to Jewish Mysticism to Native American Spirituality to Voodoo to Acupuncture to Chakra Healing, Tarot, Herb Wizardy, Alchemy, etc etc etc. No. They are lying. Even the most dedicated and wise practitioners devote years into understanding a philosophy or spiritual practice. And especially in regards to closed practices, it is impossible for one person to have read and done it all. Either they are straight up lying or presenting brief skimming over texts or conversation as “years of experience and practice”. No.

2. Constantly trying to convince the reader that they are a God, deity or some inhuman creature like a cosmic elf, mermaid, or angel

Now I don’t mean to confuse this with the idea that some Luciferian or Satanic spaces may adopt that all humans are gods in their own right, or you are the god of your own existence. I’m talking specifically about books that try to convince you that you’re actually a lost race of alien who has been trapped in a human body, or has been mistaken into believing they are human. I’m not going to get into my opinions on star seeds or deity ancestry, what I will say is that very often, and I mean uncomfortably often, these ideas are intrinsically tied to supremacist or xenophobic rhetoric You do not have to be an angel to be special and cosmically significant. You don’t have to be an elf to explore herbal magic, people who push these ideas are very frequently praying on those with delusions of grandeur or other dissociative mental disorders and that’s not cool.

3. Using pseudoscience to push miracle remedies. This includes denying things that are provable to push a narrative, like the fact medication can help the mentally ill.

My dears, please fact check what you read. Please see what educated people have to say about these authors before you take everything they say at face value. As many problems and rightful distrust as there is in the medical industry, usually, if a concoction is commonly dismissed by 99% of medical professionals, it’s usually not because they’re trying to cover up the holy grail, it’s because they know it’s… probably not that good for you or simply doesn’t do what it claims.

4. Trying to convince the reader that with enough practice, willpower, and a donation of $9.99 per month, you too can obtain some incredible power that will allow you to airbend, waterbend, firebend, and basically defy all the laws of physics in general!

The point of most occultism, spirituality and witchcraft is not to defy the laws of physics or to obtain some godly power. There most certainly exists the belief in many sects of spirituality that one can influence their reality through training, but I promise you, anybody that is promoting that they can walk on water is trying to make a fool out of you

5. Inability to disagree, contest, or dissent from the opinions of the mentor, teacher, high priest(ess) or leader

This is how cults form, guys. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug. If the presentation of different ideas or even questions are met with harsh backlash and censorship, you need to get the fuck out of there.

6. Them automatically making the assumption within a very short time of meeting you, usually presented as psychic intuition, that you are suffering and have a “deep sadness” or energy blockage in your soul that only they can fix.

I understand that damaged people often seek mediums and whatnot for help, and sometimes it genuinely brings them ease, that’s fine and good. But so often I have been approached by people online that claim that “the angels have a really important message for me that they can only give after they’ve received an epayment of just a few dollars”. These are obviously scams, but often people who have been trusted for a reading or service in the past will fabricate these stories to trap a costumer in a loop of service. Some of these claims may be genuine but I guarantee you most are not.

7. Sprinkles of Fascism

No you are not superior to other people because you’re spiritually “enlightened”. No you should not separate groups of people or decide who should and shouldn’t procreate. No mainstream society is not being being deceived by the devil, and the devil is not more prevalent in any one group of people, sex, sexuality, gender, or race. You are not the only enlightened one in a world full of lost people. Mentally ill folks are not demons and trans people aren’t energetically unaligned. You will not inherit the Earth while everyone else dies. Uuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhh shut the fuck up.

8. The claim that ancient societies of people were aliens. Presenting hoaxes and proven scams as evidence of a conspiracy.

This includes things like using documented hoaxes as evidence that aliens built the pyramids. I’m going to be so for real with you guys rn. This is just racism. It’s insane to think the Egyptians were smart enough to build the society they literally lived in, but nobody doubts the validity of the Roman Empire. Crazy concept but maybe Indigenous people of color aren’t savage idiots. And maybe white people aren’t the only ones capable of having societies and interesting architecture. The thing about this that annoys me the most is that… Egyptians still exist today, and the ancestry that dates back to ancient Mesopotamia and Canaan still exist today too. These were human beings, just like us. The alienation of black and brown people proves how little some people see us as normal people.

9. The promotion of practices that are directly harmful. Self mutilation, disorderly eating, or rituals that can induce psychosis or states of mania.

Guess what you actually don’t have to sit on a mountain naked and eat nothing but sunlight to be enlightened. You can definitely do religious or devotional things like fasting within a healthy degree, but I so so often see people promoting things that will very obviously lead to mania and hallucinations just by design. Starving yourself for two weeks while constantly blasting mantras and doing a bunch of psychedelics isn’t enlightenment… it’s a manic episode. While some devotees may feel comfortable offering blood to deities, this should always be in very small ways, a needle poke, not self mutilation.

10. Trying to do business with minors or promote occult topics to children specifically

Just no. I really dislike the idea of selling spells or promoting deity communication to kids still in grade school. They’re trying to manipulate a young mind into believing their dogma or spending their parent’s money. If a parent wants to share their craft with their child, that’s cool, but people who specifically target a younger audience are suspect to me. This isn’t to say spirituality isn’t for kids, it’s just that content that is created for kids is often created to be surface level and profitable in the algorithm.

11. Shitting on New Age Spirituality

Yeah I said it. This to me feels very much like a let’s hate on anything women, especially young women enjoy. Let’s delegitimize their experiences and paint them all as ditzy girls just clanging their crystals together.

There are some things that New Age Spiritualists do that I’m not a fan of, all of the things in this list. However, that doesn’t make this form of spirituality and witchcraft any less legitimate just because it’s somewhat trendy right now. Go fucking howl at the moon and have bon fires with your besties while you do tarot and talk about angel numbers, I don’t give a fuck.

New Age spiritualists aren’t inherently doing anything wrong or different than what ancient cultures have been doing for centuries, it’s just trendy and profitable now. But anything that young women enjoy will inevitably be exploited by the capitalist machine and that is not their fault. Wicca is still a legitimate form of spirituality and witches are not inherently doing anything wrong by being young women. So much of the criticism against NAS is literally just misogyny.

“I’m not into new age spirituality I’m a REAL witch”

omg please shut up

[chaehwa-archives]

friendly rivalry deep dive part 18

Episode 8 is the climax of the first half of Friendly Rivalry, and it feels different from every episode that’s come before. The main characters have been established, and for the first time they’re all gathered in the same place. All the pieces are on the game board.

Our main girls, Jae-yi and Seul-gi, have gone through a whole arc together. After enduring betrayal and heartbreak, they’ve reached a tentative reconciliation. For a few magical hours, Seul-gi sets aside her doubts and reservations, and enjoys the romantic night of her dreams.

At least until she loses her dad’s phone and gets stabbed by a drug addict. Life at Chaehwa sure is a rollercoaster.

I’ve been struggling with how to approach this one. Episode 8 is one of the most iconic in the whole series, and it’s truly a masterpiece of efficiency. How can one episode have more fluff than all the previous episodes combined, and also have the most labyrinthine plot so far? How do they pack so much into thirty minutes? Did the writers sell their souls to Gay Satan?

Well, first, let’s talk about that. I briefly mentioned the queerbaiting debate in my discussion of the Episode 4 dream kiss, and now that we’ve arrived at one of the gayest episodes, I fear it’s time to put on the hazmat suit and wade into the discourse once again.

I’m sympathetic to viewers who go into Friendly Rivalry expecting a GL romance and end up feeling betrayed. It’s true that FR doesn't check every single box if that’s what you’re looking for. There’s no direct verbal confession, no kiss outside of Seul-gi's dream. If you need someone to say “I love you” to consider a relationship canon, you’re going to be disappointed.

But...media literacy y’all. It matters. Friendly Rivalry is a story about hidden motives and buried desires. The characters are emotionally damaged and repressed teenagers. And from the beginning, FR has used symbolism and subtext to express emotional states. This show is begging you to look past the surface and engage on a deeper level.

And yet...when it comes to Jae-yi and Seul-gi’s feelings for each other, Friendly Rivalry does not ask you to work so hard. It’s pretty damn direct! *Crucial plot information* is often conveyed with ten times more subtlety. The only way this episode could be any more romantically coded is, again, if there were a kiss or confession, but that wouldn’t make sense for Jae-yi or Seul-gi at this point.

It’s worth asking: If FR revolved around a het pairing, would there really be any doubt that these characters are in love?

I can still see how someone might view this as bait, though, if the story were about something else. If after this episode Jae-yi and Seul-gi’s relationship were sidelined and never mattered again, I would be upset. And that does threaten to happen for a while, so I can understand some frustration if you’re only here for the gay shit.

But the ending clarifies what FR is about—and the ending also isn’t very subtle about it imo. Friendly Rivalry is about Jae-yi and Seul-gi and their love for each other. Without that, there’s no story.

And that’s ignoring cultural context, because I’m not an expert on the K-drama industry, so I don’t know what restrictions the creators were working within. Personally, whether it’s due to cultural pressures or artistic choice, I kind of like that Jae-yi and Seul-gi don’t just say “I love you.” That would be waaay too basic for these freaks.

Final word on the subject: I know why people want “confirmation” and why they can get turned off by ambiguity in queer stories. They want to know that the creators are actually on their side and not just toying with them for money. But Friendly Rivalry does not scream “cynical cash grab” to me. The director spent years working on the script, it was filmed on a small budget without sponsorships, and at first it only aired on a minor streaming platform. I mean Hye-ri bought her own costumes with her own damn money! No one involved in this project thought it might end up on Netflix one day. Queerbaiting makes art worse because it’s lazy and safe. “Safe” isn’t a word I would ever use to describe Friendly Rivalry.

We don’t expect every straight romance to be a romcom. I don’t want to live in a world where every queer story has to conform to the same standard to be considered “real.” True love is weird. It’s personal. It can be complex and even ambiguous. It’s not always “I love you.” Sometimes it’s “I’ve been imagining your death a lot lately.”

Sorry for the rant. Let’s pick up where we left off.

After her rendezvous with Jae-yi on the rooftop, Seul-gi is sedated for an endoscopy and has a dream. This is the first dream sequence since the kiss in Episode 4. That dream established how Seul-gi was feeling about Jae-yi about the time: ...horny. She was just beginning to process her attraction, fantasizing about Jae-yi coming onto her in a context that was both safe and thrilling.

The tone of this dream is different. On the beach where she was abandoned, Seul-gi’s father is searching for her, passing out flyers. Seul-gi calls to him again and again, but he doesn’t hear her. No one does. The tide rises, and water soaks her feet. Even so, she’s unable to move.

Then Jae-yi appears and offers her hand. Together they walk away from the beach, through the woods, as the princess dress is carried off by the waves.

Not only is this Seul-gi’s first dream since Episode 4, that was also the last time we saw her as a child. In that episode, Seul-gi told the story of her abandonment, and Jae-yi pretended to sympathize. But her false sympathy couldn’t bring true healing.

Conversely, in Episode 2, we saw how Jae-yi’s outstretched hand was able to transcend time, space, and her own scheming. Without realizing it, her gesture extended all the way to that girl abandoned by her bullies on the roof and offered hope: You aren’t alone up here. I see you.

The second time Jae-yi offers her hand on a roof, in Episode 7, it has even greater weight. This time, her sympathy is real, and she doesn’t just feel bad, she does something about it. She gets down off the wall, lifts Seul-gi up, and confesses her feelings and intentions.

When she reaches out the second time, Jae-yi removes her armor first. This gesture says more than I can see you. It says I’m willing to sacrifice for you. I’m willing *to be seen.* And this gesture reaches all the way to the root of Seul-gi’s trauma, to the girl still crying for her father on the beach.

Letting go of trauma is never easy. It becomes a part of you. The princess dress has defined Seul-gi’s life since her abandonment. She’s always been the outcast, the unloved girl people ignore or despise. Without that wound, who is she? If she leaves the beach, where will she go?

The shirt Seul-gi wears in her dream is simple and white. She’s a blank slate. She glances back wistfully at the part of herself she’s leaving behind. But with Jae-yi there, holding her hand, the woods aren’t so scary. Wherever Jae-yi is going, she wants to go, too.

If the first dream was there to confirm Seul-gi’s physical attraction, this dream confirms that Seul-gi is horny for true love. Even in her most private and sensitive memories, Jae-yi is there—and Seul-gi would rather leave everything she knows behind than be separated from her.

Compared to the first half, the second half of Friendly Rivalry is a lot more plot-driven, and that trend starts with Episode 8. This episode has *so* much going on in it. I don’t want these posts to turn into long tedious summaries, so I might have to get more creative in how I approach writing them.

But here’s the speedrun: Jae-yi wakes up after the endoscopy and spies Ye-ri sneaking away to the lockers with Seul-gi’s locker key. Later that night, while everyone is gathered at the school for the big post-midterms festival, Jae-yi figures out with A-ra’s assistance that Ye-ri, working for Tae-joon, has stolen Woo Do-hyeok’s phone. Jae-yi locates the phone while it’s charging and unlocks it using the date of Seul-gi’s disappearance as the passcode. She finds threatening texts from her father, and a very upsetting video of her sister, Je-na, in a sexual situation with Seul-gi’s dad.

Then she bumps into Je-na herself in the flesh.

Meanwhile Beom-su is having the worst night ever. Being knocked out of the top twenty has done a number on her mental health, and she gets more disoriented after chugging a drug cocktail that A-ra sells her off the books. Ye-ri entices Beom-su into helping her find a charger for Do-hyeok’s phone, promising her a turn in the blind date booth in exchange, but when Beom-su actually does what she asks, Ye-ri (who has lost the phone she wanted to charge thanks to Jae-yi) lashes out in frustration. Beom-su’s resentment builds as her grip on reality weakens. Finally she takes out her rage on Seul-gi by stabbing her in the arm with a kitchen knife.

Gyeong is also here! First she’s trying to study like a big nerd, then she has a run-in with Tae-joon, who’s at the festival to work a food stall, then she goes on an awkward blind date with a drug dealer. The dealer, Byeong-jin, is here to uhhhh sell fentanyl to high schoolers? And harass Seul-gi I guess. (Bro get a life. You look 27 years old.) Gyeong tracks down Seul-gi to talk to her about Tae-joon, and maybe why an adult man passing out transdermal patches to teenagers is looking for her, but they both get sidetracked when Seul-gi realizes her dad’s phone is missing. Gyeong suspects that Jae-yi stole it.

Let’s pause to pay tribute once again to Oh Woo-ri’s phenomenal acting. Her awkward gestures, her facial expressions, the stiff way she walks...she truly embodies Gyeong down to the finest detail.

And of course Je-na is here, too, posing as a visiting student from Hoegyeong High School. This is the first time we’ve seen her outside of flashbacks and photographs. I’m not 100% sure I know what she’s doing at the school tbh—does she think the phone is here? It seems pretty clear now that she’s the one calling it. Or is there something else she might be after in the C-Med room?

I’m skipping lots of details, but those are the broad strokes.

Mostly I want to focus on Jae-yi and Seul-gi in this post, because they are my Roman Empire, but I also want to talk a little about Ye-ri. She’s always been a morally gray figure (okay, to be fair, everyone in this show except Tae-joon aka the devil incarnate is morally gray) but she has a sweet side—she would never be mean to Gyeong, not even for a bazillion won. In Episode 8 though we see her at her worst, being downright vicious to a girl who clearly needs help.

At first I thought it was a little out of character for her to be this cruel to Beom-su. Then I thought about the circumstances. It’s the school festival—everyone is here. Even if Ye-ri weren’t stressed about trying to extort a powerful and dangerous man for money, she would be on edge. Ye-ri depends on her image for security. In social situations, she’s in survival mode. If she were alone with Beom-su, in a different setting, her good heart might prevail, but here, where she could be seen by anyone? Maintaining her image is top priority. And Beom-su is poison to that image. To be caught hanging out with—or worse, being nice to—the paranoid druggie kid is social suicide.

Notice the way Ye-ri transforms around Gyeong. Gyeong is also an awkward loser—but because she has high social status in the class, Ye-ri doesn’t care at all! I mean, she’s also truly madly deeply in love with Gyeong, so she probably just thinks Gyeong’s dorkiness is cute. By the way, note the colors of the big heart behind Ye-ri on the blind dating booth...green, Gyeong’s color...and pink?? Shippers you have been vindicated.

Okay...it is time. My babies...oh my sweet babies.

On my old blog (rip) I started developing a Grand Unified Theory of Fluff—why sometimes I love it, and other times...I do not (*cough* theloyalpin *cough*). Episode 8 is my platonic ideal. It’s not just a textbook example—it is the Sistine Chapel, the Complete Works of Shakespeare, the Holy Grail of fluff. It is giving us exactly what we want, and it’s almost unbearably cute, but it is always serving the characters and story. Jae-yi and Seul-gi share about six minutes of screentime in this episode altogether, but those six minutes have more impact than the literal hours Pam and Dokrak spend feeding each other in Us. (Okay it’s probably not hours but…)

First of all, it’s just so cathartic. We’ve wanted this for Jae-yi and Seul-gi since the first episode, and you can tell they’ve wanted it for nearly as long. Finally they can relax around each other. Finally they can enjoy each other’s company. Finally they can act like the kids they were never allowed to be growing up.

If these scenes were just about the euphoria of having fun with your crush while recapturing your lost innocence together, that would be enough. I would eat that shit right up. But this wouldn’t be Friendly Rivalry without at least a dozen more layers of emotional complexity on top.

There’s a subtle tension in Jae-yi and Seul-gi’s interactions from the beginning. Look at Jae-yi’s face when she first finds Seul-gi at the festival. She’s not smiling. Her expression is somewhere between concern and determination. She’s worried but driven.

Jae-yi isn’t relaxed at all—she’s on high alert. She knows that Ye-ri is up to something, and that whatever she’s up to has something to do with Seul-gi. The concern in her eyes is for Seul-gi’s safety. But she’s determined to prove (to Seul-gi and to herself) that she wasn’t just messing with Seul-gi’s heart again when she promised to protect her. She wants her girl to have fun tonight. And she’s made it her mission to give this night to Seul-gi as a gift—even if it means keeping her ignorant.

For Seul-gi’s sake, Jae-yi plays another role. She pretends to be silly and carefree so that Seul-gi can be.

But somewhere along the way, the line between performance and reality starts to blur. Jae-yi gets swept up in her own act. She starts to have fun in spite of herself.

In the past we’ve seen how Jae-yi fools herself into thinking she’s in complete control, while in fact it’s Seul-gi pulling her along, making her do things she’d never do otherwise. Most recently we saw this pattern in the Episode 7 rooftop scene. Jae-yi thinks she’s “won” with her sneaky pee scheme—but it’s Seul-gi tugging on her heartstrings, and her love for Seul-gi, that pull her back from the brink of despair.

Now Jae-yi has cast herself in the role of Seul-gi’s protector. She thinks she’s taking control of the situation to ensure that Seul-gi has the time of her life. But little does she know it’s Seul-gi who’s making her forget all her fears, and allowing her, for maybe for the first time in her life, to feel free.

It is so sweet y’all. I’m sobbing rn.

These dynamics are maybe easiest to see in the scene at the food stand, when Tae-joon interrupts their date to mansplain about the health risks of I DONT FUCKING CARE YOU ASSHOLE GO AWAY, LET THEM ENJOY THEIR DATE GODDAMN IT, IF YOU TOUCH A HAIR ON SEUL-GI’S HEAD MOTHERFUCKER I SWEAR TO GOD—

Um. Sorry!

The moment Seul-gi mentions that she wants to eat, Jae-yi glances over at the stand where her father is working. She’s clearly worried and doesn’t want to go. But her woman is hungry. She has no choice. (Notice it’s Seul-gi taking the lead, and Jae-yi following.) Then, when Jae-yi is introducing Seul-gi to Gyeong’s mother, something really interesting happens. Jae-yi takes Seul-gi suddenly by the arm, grinning from ear to ear.

She knows Tae-joon is right there. She knows he’s watching her. He’s always watching her.

Is she deliberately provoking him? Is she telling him stay away, she’s mine? These are things Jae-yi has done before—neither would be out of character for her. But when she steals a glance back at her dad, her expression is strangely distant and reflective.

...I think she just forgot.

For a moment, she was too happy to worry about what her dad would think. She stopped calculating her every movement, and just...did what she wanted to do! Which was touch Seul-gi of couse. (When is that ever not what Jae-yi wants to do.)

It’s interesting that Jae-yi learned fear from her father, a man who is seemingly incapable of fear. Any assault on his power he responds to with a cocky little smirk (an expression we’ve seen Jae-yi wear many times now), as if no threat is worth taking seriously.

But this is a facade just like Jae-yi’s—one he’s spent his whole life perfecting. Behind that smug punchable mask, fear is probably the one emotion that he does feel.

And nothing—nothing in the entire world—makes Tae-joon more terrified than seeing his daughter happy and beyond his control.

This bitch can’t help himself. He has to reassert his dominance. He puts on his authoritative “health expert” persona and starts droning on about phosphates, trying to seize control the way he usually does, by pretending to care about his daughter’s wellbeing. He’s probably done this to Jae-yi a thousand times.

But Seul-gi does not give a fuck. She just ignores his ass! And when he keeps pushing, she pushes back. She says no, you can’t control this situation, or your daughter, or life itself—so fuck off. Your diet advice is not needed. And now that she strongly suspects him of being involved in her father’s death, she even taunts him about it.

Seul-gi, you are a treasure. Jae-yi, never let this girl go.

As Jae-yi opens up more and more, we’re watching her relationship with Seul-gi transform into something more and more reciprocal. Back in Episode 3, Seul-gi confessed to being envious of Jae-yi, who seemed to have everything in the world. But Jae-yi has as much reason or more to be envious of Seul-gi. Seul-gi grew up alone and forged her identity in isolation. She learned early not to care what other people think. Because of that, she has no pretensions. She isn’t trying to seem cool or earn anyone’s favor. Everything she does, she does for herself.

Jae-yi has never been able to live like that. She’s always been at the center of attention, performing for a crowd. And she’s had to define herself in opposition to the people around her—in opposition to her sister first, and then to anyone else who could be a threat. Jae-yi is all pretense. She’s been acting for so long, she’s forgotten how to just be.

In Seul-gi’s dream at the start of this episode, we saw Jae-yi give her the courage to start moving on from her past. Now their roles have reversed. Because Seul-gi is there, Jae-yi has the courage to ignore her father’s gaze, even when he’s standing right there in front of her. Seul-gi gives her the strength to act for herself, without worrying about what other people will think of her.

They are so perfect for each other. I know they’re still in high school but just let them get married already. Please.

I keep thinking to myself, “oh that’s just a cute lil fluff scene, I can’t have that much to say about it,” and then I end up having so much to say about it. Take the ball pit scene. At first, my reaction was simply no thoughts head empty just let them kisisskss already omg. But even this fluffiest of fluff scenes has hidden depths.

We’ve seen a few callbacks to Episode 4 already. The ball pit scene made me think not only of Seul-gi’s dream in Episode 4, but also of Jae-yi’s scuba diving trip story. Remember when Jae-yi tells Seul-gi she felt relaxed under the water, and Seul-gi says, “Like being in your mom’s belly before you were born?”

The ball pit is our symbolic body of water. You could replace it with a pool and this would just be the romantic gaze-into-each-other’s eyes pool scene from dozens of movies. But ball pits are also something we associate with childhood. Playing in a ball pit isn’t something you usually do as an adult, or as a teenager. If you’re self-conscious, it could even be a little embarrassing.

Jae-yi and Seul-gi were both forced to grow up too fast, and for both of them, the past represents comfort, a time before trauma altered their lives. If only Seul-gi could go back to when her parents were still alive, before she was abandoned...If only Jae-yi could go back to a time before she distanced herself from her sister, or even further, back to before she was cursed with consciousness.

The ball pit isn’t real water. It’s one of the most unreal-looking sets in FR—an ice-cream-colored soft pastel dream world. It’s the stage for a fantasy. Jae-yi and Seul-gi can’t really go back in time, but in this alternate reality, they can pretend for a little while.

In some ways this ball pit scene is like the bathtub fantasy come to life. Jae-yi is taking the lead, putting moves on Seul-gi, giving our poor girl a gay panic attack. (I love how you can just *see* her entire interior monologue in her eyes like oh shit oh god is this happening can this really be happening i think it’s happening oh fuck she’s so cute what the fuck i can’t breathe i think i’m dying help?) But the irl version is different from the dream. In her dream Seul-gi had Jae-yi play the role of the confident, dominant, mature one. That Jae-yi wasn’t vulnerable at all, because she wasn’t real.

When this Jae-yi takes the lead, she puts herself in the vulnerable position first. She jumps into the ball pit and beckons Seul-gi: Come on, let’s be stupid and act like little kids! Without Seul-gi’s influence, there’s no way Jae-yi could be this unselfconscious. It’s a two-way fantasy now, one they’re creating together. And for a moment the world fades away and it’s just the two of them. They can’t turn back the clock, but they can almost make time stand still.

Unfortunately they are in a very public place, in a very conservative country, and they are just now starting to feel comfortable enough around each other to start exploring these feelings. It’s not the right time or place for an actual kiss. But you know they both want it.

This scene is also important for GL scholars investigating the most urgent questions of our day, like: When Jae-yi and Seul-gi meet up again post-Episode 16, who’s going to make the first move? (I think Jae-yi will be the first to go in for the kiss, but she’ll panic and start second-guessing if Seul-gi wants it or not, and Seul-gi will have to lean in the rest of the way.)

Okay I swear to god I am almost finished. (This post got sooo much longer than I intended it to be.) The scene after the ball pit is another of my favorites, mostly because SEUL-GI HOW TF ARE YOU SO CUUTE, YOUR SMILE WILL BE THE END OF ME. But no, once again, there’s actually a lot going on here! Look at the way they sit side by side on the bench, Seul-gi sprawled out like she’s hammered out of her mind, missing one sock, while Jae-yi sits prim and proper. Jae-yi takes off her cat ears, too, because the cat ears were her costume, something she wore to help get into the spirit of the role.

She’s thinking, Mission accomplished, my work here is done. Seul-gi had fun! She did it!!

Jae-yi offers to buy Seul-gi new socks, because of course she does. She is slipping out of one role and back into a more familiar one, the Jae-yi who showers the object of her affection with gifts. (Seul-gi is still wearing that scarf btw. She’d probably have ended up wearing it for like a month straight if not for the whole getting stabbed thing.) But before she can go, Seul-gi reaches out and grabs her wrist...

And Jae-yi stops.

The last time this happened, in Episode 6, Jae-yi slipped out of Seul-gi’s grasp, wearing one of those Tae-joon-certified smirks. This time she doesn’t even try to wriggle away. She’s letting someone touch her—and look at her face. She’s stunned.

Is she stunned just because Seul-gi touched her?

Or is it because......she likes it?!

A realization has been dawning slowly on Jae-yi all night long. I don’t know if she’s quite figured it out yet, but that’ll come soon.

As for Seul-gi, she’s just had the greatest night of her entire life, and she wants to return the favor. But she has nothing to give—nothing that Jae-yi doesn’t already have—except honesty. If Jae-yi is finally being sincere, Seul-gi wants to pay her back with sincerity.

So she admits how she feels. She doesn’t trust Jae-yi—the damage can’t be undone in a single day—but despite that, Jae-yi is special to her. She wasn’t upset about tying for first place. She was also over the moon.

This...this isn’t a story about rivalry at all! And those gazes sure don’t seem very friendly!!

One last thing, about the gazes. Throughout the evening, we’ve seen Jae-yi sneak little glances at Seul-gi whenever Seul-gi isn’t looking. She’s monitoring her mission progress, making sure Operation Best Date Night Ever goes off without a hitch. At least, that’s probably what she tells herself she’s doing.

Then comes the fireworks scene, the last moment Jae-yi and Seul-gi share in this episode before being separated. The world is cruel. In a very short time, Jae-yi is going to discover a terrible secret about her sister, and Seul-gi is going to get shanked.

Jae-yi looks over at Seul-gi as she’s watching fireworks for the first time in her life. And something clicks. Not just “this girl is the most beautiful precious loveliest thing I have ever laid eyes on” although yes probably that too. But ever since midterms, when she first saw the test results, Jae-yi has been working toward a discovery.

Seul-gi makes her happy.

Not buzzed or electrified. This feeling is different from the chemical rush of competition. It has nothing to do with winning. Seul-gi could beat her, and she still wouldn’t care.

Jae-yi doesn’t need the game, doesn’t need victory, doesn’t need to be the best. These things might have made her forget her despair for a little while, but they only made her hate herself more in the end.

*This* is all she needs.

Through Seul-gi, Jae-yi is starting to realize that there is more to life than her father’s curse. There is more to life than his kill-or-be-killed nightmare. It’s possible to find joy in little things. It’s possible to find joy in someone else’s success. It’s possible to find joy in someone else’s joy.

Jae-yi has never been enchanted by anything more than by Seul-gi’s enchantment. And being a witness to Seul-gi’s happiest night is the happiest she’s ever been.

Love didn’t free Jae-yi from fear. But by actively choosing love, and letting love guide her, she’s starting to see the possibility of another way. Maybe, if she follows these instincts, she can find the key to her liberation.

[maxdibert]

Feelings around Snape now are so, so different to how they were in 2007 when the final book was released (though there was a fair amount of infuriating sexual assault apologia on LiveJournal back then too). I do think that the predominant factor in the baffling online discourse around Snape over the last decade is the American cultural disconnect with Britain. Anglophone countries, but totally different societies. Current American dominance wins out on the internet platforms used for fandom. The unwillingness to consider the nuances in a ostracised boy who flirts with a fascist cult while looking for purpose definitely seems rooted in America’s extraordinarily polarised political environment. The ‘incel’ label incorrectly applied to Snape is based entirely on American archetypes of the male school shooter who couldn’t get a girlfriend.

I saw infinite dismayed reactions to the rumoured casting along the lines of ‘but if they cast Snape as a black man I’ll have to sympathise with him!’ which basically sums the disconnect up. The industrial history of 1970s Britain isn’t on mainstream fandom’s radar, everything is seen through the prism of America’s particular flavour of identity politics.

I completely agree, and in fact, this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. It’s not at all a coincidence that the most fervent Snape haters I encounter online—or at least those who fail to understand how class dynamics work—are primarily from the States. And I say from the States because this doesn’t seem to be the case with people from Latin America, whose societies were colonized under a strong framework of social classes and strata due to the influence of Spanish imperialism at the time, in addition to being victims of multiple dictatorships, authoritarian regimes, and narco-governments. This gives people in Latin America a broader social perspective.

The States' people ones (because United States is not America, America is a whole continent and as a spanish person with a lot of Latin American friends i find quite disrespectful to call United States people Americans as if they where the only americans in the world lol) operate under a neoliberal worldview that is very different from this and also very different from Europe’s perspective on class struggle. Europe experienced fascism, and it’s Europeans who understand how fascism rose to power—not as something driven purely by economic elites suddenly deciding to start killing people, but as deeply populist political movements widely accepted by the social majority and even by much of the working class. These movements used propaganda to push rhetoric that fed into people’s needs and promised to address their economic and social problems.

This provides an objective perspective on how voting for Hitler or joining the Hitler Youth didn’t automatically make someone an inhuman monster. It was something that regular people, everyday individuals, did—people who didn’t necessarily have a vile or ruthless intent toward anyone but believed in a particular discourse and rhetoric. Understanding this is crucial for grasping how a character like Snape could end up joining the Death Eaters. But if you’re, I don’t know, living in a small town in Wisconsin and all you know is that it’s trendy to call any Trump supporter a Nazi and that everything is “Nazi” without having the slightest idea of what a Nazi really is, then you end up buying into a ridiculously simplistic narrative without any critical thinking or thorough analysis of the social and economic contexts that drive a society toward far-right ideologies.

I’m sorry, but they’re living in parallel realities. At the end of the day, the Harry Potter series, no matter how politically clueless Rowling is or how much her worldview is utterly bourgeois and biased, is still British. Britain is in Europe, and fascism was experienced in Britain just as it was in the rest of Europe. Similarly, Britain remains a parliamentary monarchy with a class system that isn’t based solely on economics and where a person’s value isn’t measured solely by their wealth but also by their lineage. It’s an aristocratic society, and aristocracy will always rank above the bourgeoisie. These people truly don’t understand this, nor do they make the slightest effort to try. And if they don’t do their homework, honestly, their opinions are worthless garbage.

[fairestwriting]

*KICKS YOUR DOOR DOWN*

IT'S 8 AM AND I HAVENT SLEPT. I FOUND THE WORD DOCUMENT SO HERE HAVE THE FIRST ONE IT'S THE SIMPLEST ONE I'VE GOT I'M GOING TO BED

Maybe Vil finding out MC is basically his equal in their world? A famous actor/actress, model, makeup artist, etc? Maybe they're super casual in this world so it's not obvious until it gets bright up what they did in their world?

MAYBE i am really simple maybe i will see a vil request and black out and go crazy.......anon please go to bed at regular times (<- guy who does not do this either)

Vil Schoenheit

He's not completely clueless, he does put in the effort to keep up with trends after all-- But it's exactly because of this that he ends up not really recognizing you.

The entertainment industry has no shortage of people, and in the end, Vil is still only human, no matter how much of an eye for detail he has. It's hard to remember other artists' names.

He does get a feeling that he might have seen you before, but he can't really figure out where. It sort of gets on his nerves for a bit. If you pay attention you can catch on to this hint of odd curiosity every time you talk to each other.

There's no way he misses your charisma, either. Still assuming you're not in the position you actually are, Vil is genuinely surprised at how good you are at dealing with people. Even when you seem tired or out of it, you still keep a smile on your face and a pleasant tone to your voice.

Of course, though, he'll still be stern sometimes, even as you grow closer. Maybe he ends up even being a little bit harsher than usual because he sees all that potential in you. At the same time, though, he's a lot more gentle outside of things like school projects. If you show that you know a thing or two about fashion or performing, he's absolutely willing to discuss.

Then, he eventually finds out. Maybe he stumbles upon one of your posts in social media. Maybe you straight up run into each other when he's doing a photoshoot. Later he'll think he should have seen this coming, but in the moment, you're getting the privilege of being one of the few people who really shocked this man.

He'll keep it together if you're both in public, but the second you're not, he's kind of a mess? He doesn't want it to show, but obviously now there's this whole new concern about your relationship hurting his or your career, and wondering if anyone's seen you two together already, and just how the hell did you fly under the radar for so long, he's not mad, he just really needs to know--

Of course, you talk, calm down, and it works out. And deep down, he's happy about being with someone who can really understand the specific struggles he goes through, besides being able to trade work tips and share stories. It feels comfortable.

Honestly though? He's not getting over how you just did that. He's too proud to say it, but he's forever baffled at how insanely good you are at blending. Sometimes you catch him staring. Mostly it's just out of fondness. Other times he's trying to figure out how to pull off your totally-not-a-celebrity aura so he can go to the mall in peace.

if you wanna support my work, you can buy me a ko-fi or commission me!

[bitchesgetriches]

{ MASTERPOST } Everything You Need to Know about Investing for Beginners

Fundamentals of investing:

What’s the REAL Rate of Return on the Stock Market?

Do NOT Make This Disastrous Beginner Mistake With Your Retirement Funds

The Dark Magic of Financial Horcruxes: How and Why to Diversify Your Assets

Dafuq Is Interest? And How Does It Work for the Forces of Darkness?

Booms, Busts, Bubbles, and Beanie Babies: How Economic Cycles Work

When Money in the Bank Is a Bad Thing: Understanding Inflation and Depreciation

Investing Deathmatch series:

Investing Deathmatch: Managed Funds vs. Index Funds 

Investing Deathmatch: Traditional IRA vs. Roth IRA 

Investing Deathmatch: Investing in the Stock Market vs. Just… Not 

Investing Deathmatch: Stocks vs. Bonds 

Investing Deathmatch: Timing the Market vs. Time IN the Market

Investing Deathmatch: Paying off Debt vs. Investing in the Stock Market 

Investing Deathmatch: What Happens in a Bull Market vs. a Bear Market 

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Alternative investments:

Small Business Investing: A Kinder, Gentler Alternative to the Stock Market 

Bullshit Reasons Not to Buy a House: Refuted

Investing in Cryptocurrency is Bad and Stupid

So I Got Chickens, Part 1: Return on Investment

Twelve Reasons Senior Pets Are an Awesome Investment 

How To Save for Retirement When You Make Less Than $30,000 a Year

Understanding the stock market:

Ask the Bitches Pandemic Lightning Round: “Did Congress Really Give $1.5 Trillion to Wall Street?”

Season 3, Episode 2: “I Inherited Money. Should I Pay Off Debt, Invest It, or Blow It All on a Car?” 

Money Is Fake and GameStop Is King: What Happened When Reddit and a Meme Stock Tanked Hedge Funds

Season 3, Episode 7: “I’m Finished With the Basic Shit. What Are the Advanced Financial Steps That Only Rich People Know?”

Wait… Did I Just Lose All My Money Investing in the Stock Market?

Season 4, Episode 1: “Index Funds Include Unethical Companies. Can I Still Invest in Them, or Does That Make Me a Monster?” 

Retirement plans:

Dafuq Is a Retirement Plan and Why Do You Need One?

Procrastinating on Opening a Retirement Account? Here’s 3 Ways That’ll Fuck You Over

How to Painlessly Run the Gauntlet of a 401k Rollover

Ask the Bitches: “Can I Quit With Unvested Funds? Or Am I Walking Away From Too Much Money?”

Workplace Benefits and Other Cool Side Effects of Employment

You Need to Talk to Your Parents About Their Retirement Plan

Season 4, Episode 5: “401(k)s Aren’t Offered in My Industry. How Do I Save for Retirement if My Employer Won’t Help?” 

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Recessions:

Season 1, Episode 12: “Should I Believe the Fear-Mongering about Another Recession?”

There’s a Storm a’Comin’: What We Know About the Next Recession

Ask the Bitches: How Do I Prepare for a Recession?

A Brief History of the 2008 Crash and Recession: We Were All So Fucked

Ask the Bitches Pandemic Lightning Round: “Is This the Right Time To Start Investing?”