#(it's actually kind of a reversal of how i felt and somewhat still feel about using the term ''patriarchy''

[gendercriticalthinking]

My thoughts:

The main intent of this post is very eye-opening and true. While I think a lot of psychological analyses, including this one, tend to create meaning and complexity where there isn't any (to get an intellectual/detective/solving-a-puzzle "wow" factor), and a lot of "womb envy" analysis seems to be more about comforting and empowering women than accurately analyzing male motivations (most violent men aren't subconsciously* resenting the fact that women can give birth, they just like to hurt people), the overall message does have truth to it. Many, maybe even most, violent men use violence as a way to gain control/power. (But all of them do it because they like to cause suffering.)

My eyes rolled into the back of my skull upon reading this author mention the Columbine shooters played video games. (I can kind of give her a pass since her writing was published in 2004, since I absolutely support questioning new things and investigated them to see if they cause harm. Also I'm only calling this out just because I didn't see anyone else doing so.) I'm sorry but if video games cause/escalate violent urges to the point you just have to kill someone, most people should be dead by now. It is a multi-billion dollar industry. Countless women have played violent video games since their creation and yet we for some reason have never had a sudden uptick in female violent crime in the late 80's or the decades since. It's a male problem. Men who have violent urges come to video games, movies, television, hobbies, schools, malls, grocery stores, life in general, seeking a way to unleash their urges through what is otherwise benign. They come to these things already violent, and saying a piece of media (or clothing) was the/a reason they hurt people is to absolve them of the blame they deserve for their own actions. Again, it's just because they like to hurt people and have control over them. The hypothetical man who used to be pure and kind but got corrupted by an FPS game still would have become a murderer if he had watched a horror movie instead.

I'll close out the compliment sandwich by appreciating the teardown of (popular/organized) religion, and how clearly it's laid out that its invention was by and for men to make a system where they could gain and abuse power and control over others (women especially). Men would not and do not worship a female God because God is meant to be a surrogate for themselves.

*Incidentally, I realized this idea from "womb envy" actually contradicts a belief a lot of women who believe in "womb envy" also seem to hold (or at least flirt with): that men are biologically inferior (usually the reason cited is because of their role for reproduction, which one Google search for how emu parents act should disprove) to the point they're mentally incapable of deep/complex/intellectual/etc thought. If men are so animalistic they can't do anything besides feel carnal/animalistic emotions, then they also can't have subconscious desires, because they wouldn't have a subconscious. And if you instead/then believe "womb envy" is a conscious desire that they just hide from us then the fact that they know to hide it (and are decent enough at it for "womb envy" to be a Feminist Iceberg Tier 4 Concept most people haven't heard of despite its supposed prevalence in causing male behavior) is, again, not something a stupid, purely animalistic being would be able to do well, or possibly at all.

having a good day then thinking about this one quote about no woman ever comparing herself to god after creating life by giving birth but every boy with a gun is a god in his own eyes because he has the power to choose who lives or dies and he uses it to take and destroy lives. coughing up blood right now. i need to be hospitalized.

[solarnomoon]

ice ice baby - park sunghoon

the first time you went ice skating you almost fell. thankfully a taller guy was there to catch you. surprise surprise, of course it had to be sunghoon, king of the school, ice prince, whatever.

pairing >>> sunghoon x male reader

tags >>> college au, fluff, strangers to friends to more than friends (lovers?), ice skating, falling, idfk, sunghoon being a little forward

author's note >>> LOL hello i apologize for dying. i realize how much i miss this account and ive just been itching to come back so here i am

you knew coming to the ice rink was a mistake to begin with. i mean, come on, your ass was a fucking ice skating virgin: you'd never been before, so why would you even bother starting now?

alas, your best friend had stayed up all night watching yuzuru hanyu videos and all of a sudden, he felt the urge to begin ice skating, compelling you that it's "a calling" and if you guys didn't "drive to partake in the artistic media form that is ice skating" then you'd "lose the individuality that the human spirit guides us with."

...whatever that means.

at least he paid for you! a win's a win sometimes.

"c'mon y/n, you have to get off the railing at some point!" sunoo calls to you, skating in reverse to watch you. the edge had become your safety net, allowing you to actually move somewhat on the ice. sunoo on the other hand had somehow become a pro within the 15 minutes since you guys arrived, being able to skate forwards, backwards, eyes closed, anything possible. he even started gaining an understanding of how to spin, and was attempting to learn how to execute an axel.

you were still just trying to walk normally, not knowing how to know the difference between skating and walking. "sunoo, unfortunately i cannot let go of this fucking railing or i will die."

the boy just laughs at you, eyes rolling back. "you're exaggerating, just let go for one second!" you watch as he leaves you, gliding along the ice as if it was simply made for him.

building up the confidence, you finally stray away from the railing, letting go of your one protection spell from you upright and you on the floor. as you float along the ice, you feel that sense of freedom that sunoo was pestering you about, and you speed up, the skates on your feet becoming an outlet for your vitality.

but unfortunately, you were not yuzuru hanyu, nor were you kim sunoo. you misplace one foot, causing an imbalance in your body. you knew this was it. in front of all of these people, atleast 4 500 for sure, you were going to literally eat shit and die.

as you begin to fall, you brace for impact and close your eyes, but the collapse never happens, and instead, you feel someone's body holding yours, catching the impending descent to the ice.

"you okay?" the guy asks, and only after he said it was when you opened your eyes and looked up at him. though it takes you a moment, a flash of recognition eventually appeared in your brain. park sunghoon. king of the ice, king of the school. the renowned ice prince, the ice skater that competed in the olympics. "oh, y/n. are you okay?"

"y-yeah, sorry," you cover your face with your hands, muttering under your breath, "oh my god i almost died."

apparently it was in fact, not under your breath, because this gets a snicker out of the man, responding to you, "you did not almost die. maybe fall, but death is too much." he grabs you by the arm and skates you both toward the edge again, allowing you to grasp onto your lifeline once more.

"thank you, sunghoon. i'm sorry again for... i don't know. maybe it was a good thing, now you know that i'm shit at ice skating, i don't know how you do this." you observe him with your full attention now, noticing how he's dressed in a basic outfit with a beanie and headphones as if he knew that this would be a simple activity for him. not only this, but he has sunglasses on, presumably to hide his demeanor: he's kind of a celebrity around here.

"it's alright y/n, i told you already. plus, you're not that bad. you're just... learning." he seems like the last part was an afterthought, and you assume that he was going to say something more negative before changing his wording. "are you here alone?"

"nah, i'm here with sunoo. what about you?"

he flashes a quick smile, lifting his sunglasses to make eye contact with you. when he does, you look at his face closely, and realize he really is as cute as people say. you never really cared to notice him, as to you, he was just some guy that happened to have an expertise in ice skating. seeing him up close, you understand why people could develop crushes: his face was perfectly symmetrical with the only thing varied was the mole on his nose, but he has an extremely aesthetic face. his body was also perfect, broad shoulders with a smaller waist.

huh.

"just here alone. now i'm with you. so not alone." when he smiles, you could see how cute he really is, his fangs on both sides of his teeth accentuate his cuteness, offering a tinge of fierceness if he was focused. you both stare at each other for seconds too long, neither of you wanting to break the gaze. eventually, he looks away, saying to you, "wanna see something cool?" obviously you nod, and you watch as he skates away, accelerating before jumping right into a double axel, landing gracefully before coming right back to you.

you clap quickly, not wanting to let go of the edge for too long, "wow, impressive! i could do that too probably."

"oh yeah, cause you're like the best skater right? i think i've watched your videos before online." he motions a rectangle in front of him like a screen, "y/n l/n, triple axel, into a hydroblade, ending with two flying spins."

you scoff, flicking your wrist in front of him. "you know it bro, real recognizes real."

"for real." he looks at you with a straight face before bursting into laughter. "you're pretty funny you know, i'm surprised we haven't talked much before."

you scratch your head, "well, it's pretty hard when you're just the coolest, bestest, sexiest, beast of a skater." you joke with him.

"you think that of me?" he asks, one fang turning visible as he smirks.

"i was actually talking about me, thank you very much."

he hits his head in faux stupidity, smile not faltering from his face however. "oh, silly me. i should've known, like you said."

"what did i say?"

"real recognizes real." he removes his gaze from you to check his watch quickly before looking back at you. "you know, it's getting pretty late for a guy like you."

you whip your phone our from your back pocket. "sunghoon, it's literally 5:32 in the p.m. i can literally see the sun still."

he laughs awkwardly, "well, still late for a pretty boy like you."

"p-pretty?" you stare at him, wondering whether or not he meant to tell you that or not. "what are you talking about dude?"

"i said what i said. i meant that it's late, the ring closes at 6 today because of some hockey players wanting to run scrims before their tournament," sunghoon explains, leaning on the railing next to you. "i'm probably gonna leave soon anyway, so maybe you and sunoo can join me in getting dinner? if you want of course, i don't know if you have plans already."

"honestly, me and sunoo are supposed to get dinner with just each other, so maybe-" you begin to tell him, but then you notice sunoo talking to his crush on the other side of the ring, and a second later a text from said boy shows up.

[5:34 PM]

ALERT. CODE BLUE.

OK LOWKEY I REALIZE U DONT KNO WHAT THAT MEANS WEVE NEVER DONE CODES ANYWAY ICU TALKING TO SUNGHOON SO GO HANG OUT WITH HIM I WILL HANG OUT WITH MY MANSSSSSS XOXOXOOXO

"-you know what? let's get dinner. sunoo is actually busy all of a sudden." you roll your eyes when you make eye contact with sunoo, him giving you two thumbs up and a cheeky smile as his crush types something down on his phone.

"perfect. i wanted it to just be us. maybe i'll kidnap you and put you in my basement." the confusion on your face must've been evident, because he immediately follows up with "i was kidding. let's just get dinner." with that, he leaves you once again, skating around the rink with a few more tricks before coming back to you, signaling for you to follow him.

you do, getting out of the rink walking along the edge before sitting down next to him. you reach over to untie your laces, before sunghoon ushers you back, simultaneously getting on his knees in front of you, holding your right skate in front of him. "what are you doing?"

"untying your skate, why?"

"i can do it myself, you know?" you look straight into his eyes, tilting your head slightly.

"pretty boys shouldn't have to do anything," he suggests before giving you a little wink, causing you to turn away, not able to meet his eyes after his stupid flirtatious comment.

"w-well, what about you then!"

he removes your skate before moving on to the next one. "oh, so you think i'm a pretty boy huh? good to know." he unlaces your other skate before sitting down next to you, untying his own with haste. it clearly comes from experience, because it's no less than 15 seconds before he's up again, grabbing his sneakers, along with your own to your surprise. "here. so you don't have to get up."

"how do you know what my sneakers look like?"

"i saw you come in."

you lightly hit his shoulder. "so you were watching me the whole time?"

"cute boys deserve attention, wouldn't you say so?"

he goes back down to your feet and signals to put on your sneakers again. "i mean yeah but... you? finding me cute? hard to believe i guess."

"can't be that hard," you allow him to finish tying both shoes before helping him off the ground. you didn't even notice but he also had switched shoes with dexterity, leading you to wonder how much experience he has with these kind of things. "i've been watching you for a while honestly." he waves with his hands in front of you. "not like that, but more of like you're kinda like my school crush in a way."

you can't believe your ears. park sunghoon, king of the school, ice fucking prince, had a hallway school crush on you? y/n l/n. you didn't even feel like you stood out that much, just wanted to get your degree and leave. "school crush? there's just no way." you begin to walk away, not being able to face him without embarrassment flushing your face.

however, he clearly had other plans. "y/n." he grabs your arm, forcing you to look up at him. his eyes bore into yours, keeping you in a trance as you look at his face. "you're one of the cutest guys i've ever seen in my entire life. and i've seen a lot of people in my life already. please, just trust me when i say this."

and that was all the validation you needed. "oh. okay sunghoon. i trust you."

"good boy. now let's go get dinner, alright?"

and with that, he led you to his car to drive to dinner.

maybe the ice prince wasn't so cold after all.

[ihni]

Of pets, chapter 1/2

For @harringrove-flip-reverse-it day 4, prompt "Collar and leash" (NSFW prompt made SFW)

~~~

“Have you gotten a dog?”

Jim hadn’t meant to startle the kid, but Steve Harrington jumped about a foot in the air and let out a noise that was best described as a squeak at his innocent question. Whirling around so he was face to face with Jim – or, rather, face to chest; Jim was very well aware of his size – he looked even more startled when he saw who was there. Jim nodded meaningfully at the leather collar Steve was still holding.

“Oh,” Steve said, eyes wide and unblinking. “No? I mean, yes. It’s for Billy–“ His eyes widened a bit more and he added, almost shouting, ��–s dog! Billy’s dog!”

“Hargrove?” Jim asked, and watched as Steve’s head bobbed up and down in something akin to a nod. “I didn’t know you were friends.”

“Oh, we are. Friends. The best of friends, nowadays, actually.” Steve pointed to himself with a thumb and grinned somewhat unsteadily. “Yup, all those bygones are … under the bridges.” He made some vague gestures with the hand that was still holding the collar, which brought both of their attention to said collar. Steve let out a little sound that sounded suspiciously like a ‘meep’ and hurried to lower his hand. When he spoke again, his voice was a little strained. “Sooo, what are you doing here?”

Jim sighed. “El wants a hamster.”

“A … hamster.”

“Yeah. Someone’s been telling her stories about the merits of having a pet, and since I’m not letting her start out with a cat or a dog, and she vetoed fish since they’re apparently ‘too boring’, here we are.” He indicated the store around them; shelves upon shelves of pet-related items. “Figures, right? The closest pet store around, and it’s two towns over. Gotta say, I didn’t expect to run into you here.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, his smile just a tad too wide. “What a coincidence.”

“I didn’t know the Hargroves had a dog. I haven’t heard Max mention it, and I’m sure El would have insisted on a pet earlier if she had.”

“It’s … uh, new. And not really, uh, a sure thing, just yet.” At Jim’s look, Steve took a deep breath and continued, “It’s … He found it.”

“Found it?”

“Yeah. It’s a stray, um, he found it out by the … by the junk yard. He’s thinking of maybe … keeping it.” Jim’s mind flashed to images of demodogs and four-legged faceless monsters as Steve obliviously continued, “I offered to help with some, uh, with some things.” The kid held up the collar with a sheepish smile, waving it around a little. Then he took a deep breath and started saying, “Well, I should probably –“

Shaking away the image of monsters, Jim offered, “You know, I used to have a dog when I was younger. A German Shepard, great dog.” Bessie. She’d been Jim’s best friend for a good while. “I could give you guys a few pointers if you want.”

“Oh god.”

“What?”

“I said, ‘oh good’.”

“Oh. Well, first of all, what kind of dog is it?”

Steve’s whole face was looking strained at this point. “We don’t know.”

Jim had to frown at that. “You don’t know?”

“No, it’s a … mutt. Like a wild dog probably.” He grimaced as if he regretted his words, but twisted it into a smile almost seamlessly. “But hey, you know how Billy is! With challenges, I mean. He, uh. Really wants to, um. Help that dog.”

At the mention of a wild dog, Jim’s eyebrows drew together further, because he’d honestly had enough of ‘wild dogs’ to last him a lifetime. He leaned in closer and lowered his voice as he asked, “It’s not some kind of … monster dog, is it?” It probably wasn’t, but kids these days were stupid – proven by the Henderson kid – so he felt he had to ask.

Taken aback at the – honestly valid - question, Steve shook his head. “No! No no. No monster … dog.”

“Hmm,” Hopper said with a nod. “Still, a wild dog can be dangerous. You shouldn’t approach it alone, it can bite you if it feels cornered.”

“Oh, uh,” Steve said, “don’t worry about it. It’s a … good dog. Just an overgrown puppy, really. All he needs is some … love and affection.” He paused a bit, and then added, “And food.” Then, after a beat and under his breath, “And like … someone to play with, I guess.”

“Hm,” Jim said again. He nodded to the collar in Steve’s hand. “Well, if you do catch it, make sure you keep it collared. You should probably invest in a leash as well,” Steve made a choked noise. “You don’t want it running away from you. And I don’t need another feral thing running around town.”

“Yup. Yup. Understood.” Steve yanked down the closest leash and held it up with the collar. “Well, that’s my shopping done. I should really get going, wanna get home before it gets … dark.” He cleared his throat. “So I’m gonna.” Pointing at the front of the store, he nodded again, slightly resembling a bobblehead. “Go. I’m gonna go.” He’d been backing up while he was talking, and when he reached the end of the aisle he threw up a pair of fingerguns. “Good luck with the hamster!”

He’d barely dashed out of sight when Jim called after him, “Get some treats, too! It’ll help with training your mutt.”

Another choked noise was his only answer.

What a weird kid.

(On AO3) (Chapter 2)

[venusloveslobotomies]

HELLO !! it's me again~ (⌒▽⌒)☆

eeeh, sooo...maybe you could write some reverse comfort for kyle, butters and kenny?? i literally have no ideas for plot and all this stuff but i really ENJOY reverse comfort stuff. i mean it makes me happy when i make feel better other people, that's it! (＠＾◡＾) so i would be so happy if you could write something like this !!

so yeah it could be some kind of one shots or something??! just a lot of comfort, a lot of fluff ☆ ～('▽^人)

(oh gosh i LOVE kaomoji so much. no one can blame me for using it wahaha!)

hi my love! i tried my best! i hope you like it <33

Comforting Kyle, Kenny and Butters.

Kyle

"Hi Mrs Broflovski, is Kyle home?" "Oh hi, Y/N! Yes, he's home but he's not feeling well. He's in his room." Sheila opened the door wider for you as you walked in. "Thank you, I won't be too long." You gave her a smile and made your way to Kyle's room.

He hadn't been at class that day, which was rare for Kyle. Something had to be up. You knew that him and Stan weren't on great terms after asking Stan if he'd seen Kyle and he'd seemed almost offended that you'd asked him about Kyle.

Knocking on his door softly, you entered to see Kyle, red-eyed, sitting on his bed, staring at his phone. He quickly looked up and made eye contact with you. It took less than five seconds before his eyes filled with tears again and he turned away. "Kyle, what happened? Are you sick?" No response. You sat down next to him and waited for a moment. You knew he'd start talking once he had a moment to compose himself.

"Stans an asshole." He wiped his eyes quickly, "I keep trying to help but he'd rather wallow in self-pity and drink than actually listen to his best friend." His voice broke slightly when he referred to Stan as his 'best friend'. You softly placed your hand on his. "He'll come around. He always does. You know he's weird about stuff with Wendy." You could only guess that was why Stan was in a bad spot. They were so on-and-off you could barely keep up with when they were together and when they weren't. "But why am I always there for him and he always chooses the alcohol?" He leaned his head closer to your shoulder.

Your relationship with Kyle was somewhat undefined. In moments like these, you felt too close to just be friends but most of the time, he just treated you like any of the guys. In some selfish part of your mind, you always hoped that these moments would finally shatter that glass wall between the friendship and something more.

"And when I'm upset, everyone just expects me to deal with it alone." "Well, you're not alone right now. I'm here, I'll always be here." He looked at you with glossy eyes. You could see how exhausted he was, "You know that you can talk to me, and you know that Stan will work himself out. He's complicated. This is just how he is with the Wendy stuff. He'll probably grow out of it. Boys are dumb, y'know." He laughed a bit at the last part. He continued to watch you carefully before seemingly making a choice. He abruptly threw his arms around you and just started sobbing. You were a bit shocked, he'd never full-on hugged you before, let alone really, properly cried in front of you. You hugged him back, tightly and resolved to stay that way until he was ok.

Almost ten minutes later, his sobs had subsided into soft whimpers. Your fingers traced light patterns into his shoulders and back as you sat silently with him. "Thank you, Y/N. What the fuck would I do without you?" "Probably still be lame." You joked. He sat back slowly. Something in his eyes had changed. He suddenly didn't seem so tired. Arms still around each other, you could feel his breath on your cheeks, gently fanning you. You couldn't help but lean closer. Closer, until your lips were barely brushing. You were paralyzed, waiting for his decision. It took him just a moment to close the gap. When the two of you connected, it felt magical. How long had you been waiting for this? You could taste the tears on his lips but you didn't care. When you finally pulled apart, his cheeks were almost as red as his hair. "Feel better?" You smirked a bit and he pushed you away in a joking way. Despite the joke, you could see that the life in his eyes had returned and he was smiling.

Butters

"Screw you, Eric! And screw the rest of you, too. You all sit there and let him be as mean as he wants!" You looked up from the table you were sat at with Red and Bebe. Butters was standing up and yelling at his friend group. His face was red and he was just barely holding back tears. You watched him storm off. "I'll be right back." You stood and rushed off after him, ignoring the questions from your friends.

You burst through the doors of the canteen, frantically looking around for Butters. You caught his gaze as he was slumped against the wall, tears now falling freely. "What happened?" You quickly moved to him and grabbed his hands. "Nothing, Eric is just a terrible person." "No news there then. Why do you even hang out with him? He's awful to you!" He seemed a bit taken aback but that quickly changed. "He's my friend! I don't have your luxury of choosing whoever I want to hang out with! I'm not good at making friends... I never have been." "Leo, I'm your partner? Why don't you hang out with me and my friends?" You pleaded with him, reaching to wipe his tears with your sweater sleeves. "People will think I'm weird if I'm hanging around a bunch of girls all the time." You snorted a bit. "First of all, that's not the worst thing for people to think. Secondly, it doesn't matter what they think. The only opinions that matter are from people who actually care. Like me... shouldn't my opinion matter?" "Of course, Y/N. Your opinion matters to me more than anyone else." He seemed to have resigned himself to understanding you. You knew he would go back to hanging around Eric but for the moment, you could enjoy having your boyfriend to yourself.

You pulled him off to walk around the block and cool him off. When you finally returned to your original spot, you kissed him softly and ran your fingers through his hair. He smiled, still embarrassed at the affection being so public, but he didn't care. You were a true angel and if he was seen with you, nobody could say anything that would hurt him.

Kenny

Hearing yelling and glass crashing wasn't the most abnormal thing in South Park. However, hearing Kenny's voice was a bit of a shock. You checked the time. 11:37pm. What the hell is Kenny doing out on the street, yelling? Looking out your window, you could see him stumbling, with a broken bottle of whiskey in his hand. You were so confused, but you rushed downstairs anyways and out into the street. "What the fuck are you doing? Come inside!" You grabbed his arm with one hand and twisted the bottle out of his hand with the other, tossing it into the grass as you pulled him back towards your house. Once inside with the lights on, you could tell he'd been crying earlier but now he was angry. "What is going on with you? This area is too sketchy for you to be wandering around... drunk." He gripped your hand as you let go of his arm. "Y/N I'm gonna kill my parents." "Uhm, no. But also, why?" You guided him to sit on the couch. He fell clumsily into the cushions, pulling you with him. "My dad hit Karen again. So, I hit him. And then he started throwing shit at me. And my mom was just screaming at all of us. I hate them so much. My dad pushed me outside and locked me out." Struggling to find a comfortable position to sit without completely untangling yourself from Kenny appeared to be impossible, so you sucked it up and stayed with your legs draped over him and your back arched forward to keep holding his hand. "Okay, I kind of get it, but in terms of murdering someone, we're gonna have to sleep on it." He was still breathing heavily, eyes lit up with rage you'd never seen from your normally laid-back friend. You squeezed his hand, desperately trying to pull him back to reality. He squeezed back and his eyes softened slightly, meeting yours. Suddenly his hands were on your face and his lips on yours. You could feel him almost squishing your cheeks together in his drunken state. You kissed back, trying to be gentle. It didn't take too long for him to pull away, now looking somewhat scared. "Oh god, Y/N. I'm so sorry. I'm just... I'm tired but you're so perfect and I can't even think properly. I've wanted to do that for so long but not like this. You should've had a choice-" "Ken, it's ok. I liked it. I'm just sorry you're upset while this finally happened." You pulled his hood fully off his head and stroked his hair, smiling reassuringly. His eyes spilled tears and he hugged you so hard, your breath seemed to be pushed out of your lungs. "Hey... Ken? I... I can't breathe." He loosened his grip just enough to allow you to breathe again. You moved to sit fully on his lap and hold his head while he silently released all his emotions into your shirt. "I fucking love you. How are you so perfect?" You laughed a bit and felt him finally relax into your arms.

It didn't take too long for you two to pass out on the couch, still tangled together in a comforting embrace.

I hope u enjoyed! ive never really written comfort before so i did my best! idk whether yall like the longer oneshots that i accidentally write, so if shorter is better, please tell me!

[thedivineart]

⠀⠀⠀꒰⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⌷ .⠀⠀d i s c l a i m e r⠀⠀✿𝆬

[ 𝒜𝓇𝓉 ✧ ] any events and other things in your life are cannot be accurately predict by me and the tarot cards, do take a note that we are 'still' the creator of our 'future'- what you 'do' now will be the outcome of your future life and this could be either a good or bad, if your doing good and you are good to others expect the bright future ahead but in reverse you might expect the worst.

[ ℰ𝓂𝒾𝓈 ✧ ] to pick a pile, firstly take a good deep breath, second focus on every pile in the photo provided below { pile one: kou, pile two: jelly, pile three: husband, pile four: band aid }, and lastly scroll more down to reveal your reading. if you cannot still pick up any of the pile, do remember the sequence of what is written in the first sentence.

[ 𝒜𝓇𝓉ℯ𝓂𝒾𝓈 ✧ ] grammatical errors ahead, if you're a perfectionist then leave this pac. I do write with so many flaws and I know it's not perfect since my first language isn't english.

-` 𝑇𝐻𝐸𝐷𝐼𝑉𝐼𝑁𝐸𝐴𝑅𝑇 ´- ✰︵ — m a s t e r l i s t ´-

: ･. ﾟ ✧. : ･. ☽˚｡ ･ﾟ ✧: ･. :.

ꕀ ׅ࣪ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ 𝓂𝒾𝓃𝒾 𝓅𝒾𝒸𝓀 𝒶 𝒸𝒶𝓇𝒹 ; messages from your guides...

✿。꒰ pile one ₊ kou ꙳ . ꒱

— either only you or the whole family is on the crisis during this time, you actually want to give up from everything since you think that any of your plan are being fulfill or you felt very unlucky for having the life you've got as of now. however your guides have answer for that, simply why those things are happening to you are because the divine, God and the universe is testing you at some point, you are being tested by how much you can do it; how much committed you are to our God and the spirituality. you maybe questioning yourself "why all your problem comes always most of the time, isn't there a peace and happy life?", do remember if have negative mind, you wouldn't have a peaceful life, if you got negative energy you attract negativity in life. However you may also questioning that " how you can attract positive in life?", well your guides says that you should start nurturing yourself first and then your family or anyone who surrounds you, so life will nurtures you back. you also aren't that kind of person who always think about themselves merely you think others most of the time, I know it somewhat good but please take note that you should focus at yourself, learn to nurture and be gentle for yourself.

﹏ ✿𝆬  for personal readings dm me ⬞ ࣪ ࿀

✿。꒰ pile two ₊ jelly ꙳ . ꒱

— at this point there's some issues regarding to your childhood which causes to leave a massive wound, up until now this wound doesn't still heal and this talks about there is someone who was dishonest to you before which lead you to have trust issues in people around you. also you feel that people are too harsh when comes to you, you've got some advice here from your guides; if they threw you harsh words the better suggestion here do diffuse those upset words with some humour— however if their words are already off limits, discipline them in such a possible good way you know. you got issues about your friends from your childhood (if ever you got one ), you still doesn't forgive them from what they just did to you from the past that already buried in oblivion and maybe you forget or doesn't pay much attention from it. At this time, you got some plan for a new adventure of your life, it likes you want some new beginning or change about your life and your too focus and dedicated for it, maybe you got some plans moving away like relocation or something along with those line and you really want it as fast as you can, as I write I feel that you don't want to live where your living now. However there's some obstacles from your way or you want that plan to be in secret or you want to set boundaries from your plans.

﹏ ✿𝆬  for personal readings dm me ⬞ ࣪ ࿀

✿。꒰ pile three ₊ husband ꙳ . ꒱

— if feel very unlucky about your life then this is your reading, living in this lifetime is what makes you indeed lucky not all people are lucky to live. your path is clear and all you can do is to enjoy this walk and start appreciating what you've got, everything will be easy on you if stop this fears and worrying about yourself and start believing that you can and you have your own good luck. the world is changing every day, hour, minutes, and it's even seconds, doesn't mean you're in below now that will be your place until your end, no, your time to shine wasn't come yet. the first thing you need to do is to think what you really want and what you don't want to be happen, focus more on being positive than having negative outburst in mind. sometimes you force things to happen but the divine timing wasn't yet ready and on set, remember that we can't get easily what we want and we do fall many times before we achieve the dreams, desires and even goals that we want, slow down and keep the real thing to happen according to it is and enjoy the moment. do help others by helping them even in small things however don't do it if you aren't willing too. boost good karma from helping without any heavy ache or even if they don't even say thanks to you, having a willingness is one of the key for positive outcome and success.

﹏ ✿𝆬  for personal readings dm me ⬞ ࣪ ࿀

✿。꒰ pile four ₊ band aid ꙳ . ꒱

— just like the pile one your commitment is being tested however yours are far different from pile one so don't read it ( if you want to read then read ). the universe put you on a test where your loyalty to divine, universe, and our God is being challenge. we know that life isn't fair and we going through different tough situation—still we shouldn't lose our fate from the above. worrying about something isn't a good thing since it wouldn't help you but only cause waste of time and energy you put in there. things will go accordingly to what is pattern and sometimes this called "good things" comes at once in a while, don't focus too much on worrying or else you might miss the good things that may come to you. learn how to balance your emotions and it's situation in reality, be kind and nourish yourself and also other, don't overthink too much that isn't serve you in anyway. focus on yourself, know what you want and need, sometimes we really do need that and we didn't realize we are too focus on others than our selves and worst we also forget those people who are true and loyal to us.

﹏ ✿𝆬  for personal readings dm me ⬞ ࣪ ࿀

— ｅｎｄ —

[ 🧁. ] Hello! Thank You so much for checking out this pac reading, if you ever like it please do follow and reblog for more pac. Next pac will be maybe another messages or how your parents thinks about you? let me know what you think guys...

© thedivineart — do not plagiarize any of my work, translate or repost it on other social media platform , do remember that this is only my official account where all my pac are posted, if you ever see something like mine from word by word kindly report it to me, thank you<3. theme is included

source [ 𝓃 ] layout by: @thedivineart

[violivs]

NMTDaily: And So It Begins

- Beatrice’s first vlog! What an opening line, I love it lol. I remembered the hand wave on “hello, people of the Internet” having a wider arc across the screen than it actually does, funny enough! Glad I didn’t specify the wide wave when I referenced this line in MARRIED, the fic I posted on the 25th.

- “I’m not too old for Halloween”, girl after my own heart!

- Always thought it was interesting that Bea’s mother is American. I wonder how/why they decided that. It’s the kind of super specific detail that makes Bea feel so real, because who would make that up? It’s also interesting that it means Bea and Ben’s families are both somewhat international. Another parallel for them, another thing they have in common.

- I bet the Aunties’ wedding was the cutest thing ever, imagine Hero and Leo standing up with them! That’s probably the last time all of the Dukes were together before the story starts.

- I’m surprised Bea’s parents moved because her dad got a promotion. I would have assumed her mom did, because we get the impression of her as the high-powered businesswoman. But good for Bea’s dad. Is it canon that he’s a university professor? (Promotion = tenure?) Or did I make that up for fanfic and/or confuse him with Ben’s parents being professors in canon? Listening for that. Maybe Bea’s dad was actually also a business person all along and that’s how her parents met. Who knows.

- Bea says Australia like I say Indiana, lol (no hate to anyone from Indiana though! Just another of those inborn rivalries with the neighbor, like the Oz/NZ one.)

- “A great science program” I forgot Bea was a science person!

- I always loved the set decoration in this room, I remember it’s Hero’s room, and it’s so artsy and cozy and pretty. Love the wall art.

- “Leo and I are in charge of the house for the next six months” Excuse me, does this series really only take place over six months? Well, it ends in the first week of November, so that’s seven full months. I think it felt like it lasted a whole year when it was airing though. Time slowed down during a certain arc for sure.

- “in-joke with myself!” Classic. I kind of love that the text on screen saying “good one Beatrice” is Bea talking to herself again in-world, but out-of-world it’s kind of the Candle Wasters talking, interacting both with their own main character and with the audience. Meta.

- “Sorry my life is so boring” are like, THE famous last words for an LIW protagonist. Honey, you got a big storm coming!

- I was always so incredibly impressed with Beatrice’s independence, her comfort with leaving her parents and essentially being on her own before she even finished high school. I was alone in a college dorm hours away from home when I first watched this, second semester of freshman year if I’m not mistaken, and I could barely believe I’d managed it. I couldn’t imagine doing that any earlier than I had. I thought she was so brave and cool. I think Bea actually shows more hesitation and nervousness than I realized she did in this episode, both because she’s not used to vlogging yet and because being in a new place is nerve-wracking, but I still think she’s so brave.

- It’s so interesting that in a reversal of the play, it’s our Beatrice who comes from away to Messina to start the story, instead of Benedick and the other men returning from war. Of course, we’ll see how the boys’ arrival on the scene is modernized soon enough!

- Harriett does such a great job making you care about Bea and like her right from the start. You just want to keep listening to her talk. I can’t wait to do just that over the next seven months.

- The Benedict Cumberbatch crush is a stroke of genius, but what are the odds that there happens to be a super famous guy named Benedict that you can reference who is at peak relevance in the exact year your MAAN modernization premieres? Truly, this series as it exists could only have happened in 2014. It was the perfect time and the perfect people. What luck.

- Oh, this is the wider arc hand wave I was remembering! It’s just at the end of the video and not the beginning. Funny!

- Covering the camera with her hand and ducking out of frame at the end of her first video is a direct parallel to what Bea and Hero do in their final NMTD video, sliding out of frame and all. Love that.

- I can’t believe how much there is to talk about even with these early episodes. These posts are gonna get so long they’ll have to go under a cut for the later episodes!

💖🦩🥭

[ilaosi]

weird question, but since ur a zombie I need some help!

okay, so I'm writing about zombies and such and the actual physical symptoms of zombism are like vague. super vague.

I was wondering what your experience was?

idk wikipedia and all them are uselessssss, and I thought asking a zombie would just be easier than going and looking for 16th century whatevers.

so, if you don't mind what was it like? what sorts of symptoms did you have?

anyway thank you for reading your awesome!!!

omg hi im a bit late but this ask makes me so happy i love talking abt this stuff !!! :D i'd like to preface by saying i experience my kintypes in a way that sounds a lot like a past life but i don't consider that to be the case, i believe my memories are from some version of me in other universes/realities.

soo my response might not be the most helpful because i don't think i experience zombism in the way most ppl think of it? i wasn't infected or anything, i died a (somewhat) natural death & the next thing i knew i was kind of unknowingly digging myself out of my grave. i don't know how or why i was resurrected, if someone else did it, if i did it myself, if it was some kind of divine intervention, no clue. in the world i remember, zombies were a known phenomenon that hadn't yet been explained by science.

living people reacted to us in a lot of different ways, some kind of worshiped us and treated us like we were chosen by the gods or otherwise special, but most just thought it was weird/gross and tried to avoid us. a few ppl wanted to get rid of us because it was "unnatural and contagious" (it couldn't actually be transmitted like a disease, in my world at least), there was even a group of ppl who denied our existence entirely. it was also pretty common for medical students to (consensually, most of the time) practice their skills on zombies, kind of like they do in this world with corpses, but we were more convenient because it was really hard to kill us and we didn't really experience much pain, plus we could heal (to an extent), and we were pretty much immune to infection & other complications/side effects. i think it was also a way of gathering information for research since there wasn't much known about us or how/why we existed.

as for the symptoms & what it felt like - i remember when i first crawled out of the dirt the main thing i noticed was that my body was completely still. my heart didn't beat, the blood didn't flow in my veins, i didn't particularly feel the need to breathe or blink. i was just as disabled in that world as i am in this one, but after i died some of my disabilities didn't really affect me anymore. i wasn't in horrible pain in the way i usually am, i just felt like all of my skin was slightly bruised and there was a dull ache all over my body but it was easy to ignore, and my bones felt,, empty? my brainfog/dissociation got a lot worse though. all of my senses felt much more dull but i definitely still had them. it took more pressure for me to feel things touching my skin, my vision was cloudy and less colorful, i couldn't really smell or taste most things other than meat, blood, decay, dirt, mildew, etc. other smells/tastes would have to be really strong/intense for me to pick up on it at all. i was dead for about 3? days before i emerged, and i was buried in winter, so decomposition hadn't totally taken over yet. i did continue to decompose after that, but eventually i figured out that keeping myself fed (primarily with non-human brain matter & insects) would stop that process and sometimes even reverse the effects of it to an extent. if i went too long without feeding or if i fed on the wrong things too often i would feel really sick and my skin would get even more flaky. sometimes huge chunks of skin or even small body parts would fall off, but they could be successfully reattached by any doctor who was willing to work with zombies.

visually/appearance wise - i was more pale and my skin had a kind of light-grey-green-ish tint to it. the parts of me that fell off and had to be reattached ended up looking more purple-pink-ish for a while, but usually they'd go back to the grey-green color eventually. the whites of my eyes were more blue & my irises were dark grey. my veins were more visible through my skin and they were a lot darker, almost black. my natural hair color is brown and before i died i had my hair dyed black, afterwards the color just never faded and my hair didn't grow anymore so it didn't change much, but the areas where my roots were showing turned grey.

i can't rly think of any other specific things to talk about but if u have more questions or if u want more clarification on something i said here feel free to send another ask!!!

[zhoras-bitch]

Chiming into the UT/UB discussion with my two cents.

The reason I didn't like UT is because its whole conflict felt so very artificial. They push these ideas, but the story gives me no reason to believe them.

The story tries to push MC and Kit's relationship as a forbidden romance, but the only thing that makes it forbidden is that Austin will throw a temper tantrum when he finds out about MC and Kit. As trashy as affair books like TNA, FCL, and TBB are, at least the MC and LIs' relationships actually feel forbidden.

They try to say MC and Kit's relationship affects the ranch, but the story gave me no reason to believe that.

They try to push Kit as a heartbreaker and a player, hence Austin trying to "protect" MC from them, but all we ever get is two scenes of fangirls/fanboys flocking around Kit, with Kit being totally unresponsive (on that note, I personally found Kit to be textbook definition of a personality-less customizable LI).

They try to give MC and Austin this backstory about their parents passing away when they were young, hence Austin's overprotectiveness and infantilization of MC, but it felt very poorly set up compared to MC backstories/traumas like the ones in ACOR and ILITW. They just kind of throw the background details at you and expect you to roll with it. Also, was MC being set with having a business major even all that important?

Heck, it didn't even feel all that sexually charged to me outside of the CGs, despite being a "17+ sexy" book. I generally hate PB's style of smut writing but at least books like TNA and Surrender and Witness are interesting in that their smut is fun to mock. UT just had me either bored out of my mind or frustratedly yelling at my phone.

There's also a point that a lot of people have brought up, where the whole "older brother protects younger sibling from their player friend" is supposedly meant for wlm and doesn't make sense otherwise. In a mlw route, that attitude would come off as slut-shamey; and in a mlm or wlw route, it'd come off as homophobic. These can be interesting concepts to explore, but the story doesn't acknowledge them. Though I'm not fully sure how I feel about that aspect, so do with it what you will. Though even as someone who likes to see gender-reversals of typical cisheteronormative relationship tropes (hence why I generally play GOC LI stories with a mlw route when I can), this book still felt incredibly flat to me.

Now I haven't started UB yet, but I do think that part of what appeals to me is Mandy being a LI. And not just in the aspect of having two non-GOC LIs. Despite Mandy veering dangerously close into the stereotypical "girly girl talk best friend that only exists to validate your feelings for LI and be your walking wardrobe" back in UT, she was actually the only prominent character I found remotely likeable. Like, the only one I felt was able to bring some degree of common sense to the table while Austin was acting like Caillou over MC and Kit's relationship.

So seeing her return as a LI is pretty awesome. Buuuuuuut like someone else said, it is weird that they did this despite hinting towards Mandy/Austin at the end of UT. Like, why not a throuple relationship between MC and Mandy and Austin? I mean, as much as I hated Austin, that still would have been pretty interesting.

One last thing I will say though. Outside of Mandy... I'm not sure what connection UB and UT are even meant to have with each other. IIRC, PB even admitted that they couldn't be bothered to include the option to transfer data from UT to UB, hence why people were getting Kits and MCs in UB that didn't match the ones they chose. I'm gonna hazard a guess that even HSS:CA has more to do with OG HSS than UB has to do with UT. Not that UT had a lot going for it anyways, but you get the idea.

Sorry for the long post, but yeah these are pretty much my thoughts.

I somewhat agree. I think that UT conflict works in theory, but there are a bunch of issues with the book's implementation that make it hard for some readers to feel invested and even plot points that seem to work against it, thus lowering the stakes. I'll try to keep it as short as possible, but here are my thoughts:

The story would work better if MC was in high school. I understand that they wanted to write smut, and that's why they couldn't do it. But narratively, 'My parental figure doesn't approve of my crush' is 1) very juvenile 2) works better when the parental figure actually has legal power and authority over MC. But when MC is a 20 something adult it's like. Girl (gn) you can do whatever you want, what's Austin gonna do about it? Get mad?

Austin and MC’s relationship should've been a bigger focus since it's essentially the main conflict of the book. Specifically I wish we saw more of Austin's loving side, saw how much he did for MC and grown to care about him the way MC does. That's another reason to set the story earlier too. That way we could've seen more of the aftermath of their parents dying, MC relying on Austin more as their caregiver and their only living relative and him fighting tooth and nail to protect his sibling. Without that emotional investment Austin is just some asshole, and it's really unclear as to why I as a reader should care about hurting his feelings.

Kit should've been more problematic. I agree with your point about how them being a player is stated but never really shown. I guess they were too afraid to make them unlikeable, but you have to give Austin a legitimate reason to be against their relationship with MC. Give them and Austin a sour past. Or make them wear a leather jacket. Just something that would scream 'trouble' to an overprotective older brother.

Finally, the resolution of the whole Austin and MC's conflict felt a little too... easy to me? I wish MC could call out the problematic side of Austin's behaviour more overtly, Austin reflect and meaningfully change, and them both come together as a family again.

(Typing this all out, I now honestly want a retelling of UT with highschooler MC, which is set shortly after their parent's death and centers largely around MC's relationship with Austin and his struggle to keep custody of their sibling without letting the family ranch completely fall apart.)

As for Unbridled, I think it's pretty obvious what they were trying to do. They saw UT was successful, so they wanted to capture that audience again with a sequel. But UT had no more story to tell, hence the spin-off. So to answer your question, the connection between UB and UT is literally just smut+cowboys+grumpy ML. Mandy is really only there to tie these books together so that they can market it under the same brand and (hopefully) pull in the same audience again. Which makes it doubly funny that UT fans seem to hate UB and vice versa.

Maybe they did plan to make UB about Mandy and Austin initially and then back paddled when they saw that a lot of people didn't really like Austin all that much? It's kind of a conspiracy theory, but it is funny to think about. It does make the entire Austin and Mandy plot line in UT essentially irrelevant, which is objectively not very good writing. But I didn't like Austin, so I'll take it.

[bcofl0ve]

I’m just curious about ur opinion re. age gaps. Cause obv Austin and Kaia are 10 years apart so. I think they started dating when she was 20 and he was 30? I’ve always felt that age gaps are sort of weirder for “normal” people lol. But I don’t know if that’s a double standard. Kaia is Cindy Crawford’s daughter, she started modelling at a young age so I’m sure she grew up around certain crowds and I feel like. Industry babies just are exposed to more at a younger age and sort of grow up faster. And cause of her parents and stuff I don’t think there’s like. A power imbalance there. But if she wasn’t who she is and she was just an undergrad in uni and Austin was a 30 year old with a house and a job… I might find the relationship weird. Just curious what you think. They also started dating BEFORE Elvis came out and Austin gained a lot of popularity so I almost feel like, within their respective crowds, Kaia honestly might’ve had more influence. I don’t know.

i made a long post with my take it the age gap of it all once but i do not feel like going through my archive for it rn so. will restate it for new followers and what not <3

i actually am realllly wary re the "well if you grew up under xyz circumstances and grew up fast you're more mature" defense of age gap relationships. this isn't a knock at you to be clear! i know you aren't bringing it up in a weird way. i just feel like that line of reasoning is weaponized by men defending being predatory towards younger love interests in the sense of "well yeah he/she's *insert younger age* but he/she's sooo mature!". and i even think kaia seems somewhat self-aware of how much it's a two-sided coin it is re: things she's said about it more recently (i forgot the exact book club episode where she talked about being with older guys as a teen, if someone does remember pop me a message and i'll edit this w/ the episode link). yes, she grew up fast. *and* at the end of the day, under all the grew up fast maturity and thick skin she still was/is young. i feel like i grew up really fast too- for completely different reasons (grew up in a household with a high support needs special needs sibling)- and it's a weird fickle thing in that i feel older than my age and like- 11 years old at the same time. my groomer used the whole you're sooo ahead of your years thing to get their teeth into me- and it's another reason that line of thinking makes me pause.

BUT that to say: obviously- i run a fan blog for the man- i do not view austin as any sort of predatory in the slightest. my hot take on him going younger after v that i might end up editing out of this post (lmao) is that after things with v were over he never wanted to be in a power dynamic like that ever again, and skewing younger was somewhat of a fool proof way to see that through.

i do like what you say about the power imbalance thing though. like- finically at least the power imbalance goes the other way! obv austin isn't some normie living paycheck to paycheck and is well off himself now. but one of them grew up making dinner for their divorced dad as a kid in a garage apartment and one of them grew up as cindy crawford's child. kaia has financial "resources" as a nepo baby to a supermodel and a wildly successful ceo that all the fame in the world won't give austin. i could see people being wary of it all if those roles were reversed, but they are not!

and, i've said this before- i think if kaia was going to end up with someone 10 years her senior in hollywood that austin was the best guy she could've wound up with. ik we don't actually know these people parasocial blah blah blah. but i believe in my heart of hearts that austin is a good, kind and caring person that treats her well. i also think it speaks to how good austin is for her that rande seems to like him so much. i'm not rande's number 1 fan in the world- but he is very clearly protective of his daughter. he (rightfully) hated pete davidson and as we know went full boots on the ground mode to try and get her out of that relationship. if austin was bad news, rande would not like him as much as he appears to. point blank.

hell- rande and cindy let him *live in their house* when their relationship was very new. i think about that and chuckle sometimes bc it's just like. crazy and funny to think about. but i mention it here to say if he had had any sort of weirdo intent i somehow think her folks would've clocked that when he was spending as much time around them as he was when they'd just started dating. they let him borrow their *vehicles* like. lmao. (if you're confused as to where this is coming from- it was something jeff millburn the bike training guy for the bikeriders mentioned in a podcast he did. he started training with austin not that long after he got back to the states after filming elvis and mota back to back and mentions that austin was coming from the crawford's when they were first meeting up).

this They also started dating BEFORE Elvis came out and Austin gained a lot of popularity so I almost feel like, within their respective crowds, Kaia honestly might’ve had more influence. i agree with ONE HUNDRED MILLION percent and it is my biggest sticking point with the people who insist until they're blue in the face that she sought him out to use him. baz, austin, and others involved with elvis (2022) have all talked on multiple occasions about how nerve wracking going to cannes was because they had no idea how the film would be recieved. i think it's fair to say that baz nor austin were expecting it to be the massive success it was- in any way shape or form. i actually find this really endearing esp on baz's part- because i think you could see it in his face through the release and awards season that it was a wildest dream for his project coming true moment for him. i gen like- make myself a little upset when i think about his super dry vague post after the oscars because it makes me truly sad for him that such a career high for him ended the way it did, and i think it hurt his own heart too. esp with lisa marie dying, and her so badly wanting that oscar for austin. *anyways* i'm getting sidetracked lmao.

to my actual point- unless kaia had some secret future seeing power that austin and baz didn't- she also had no clue that elvis 2022 and with it austin's career would take off the way it did. if she was seeking out a new famous boyfriend to use, it quite frankly seems idiotic to go with "guy who is going to be in a baz luhrmann elvis presley biopic". i really like how baz puts it re his "the miracle of austin butler" spiel, because it really was a miracle. i love elvis presley- but i think as an elvis fan *especially* i can say that an elvis biopic doing All That was a g-d dmn miracle.

tldr: if i hypothetically had a 20-year-old daughter and she brought a 30-year-old home i would have some qualms, yes. but every situation is different, and i think both the anti-austin narrative of him being predatory and the anti-kaia narrative of her being a scheming mastermind are wrong.

[rezonan]

Cool new blog you're starting here, really liked your Red Hood post. So wanted to ask, what you would do with Tim Drake? Since your whole but about ways for Jason to move as a character interested me

How i would move Tim Drake as a character

I have no idea.

First question on this blog and I don't have a concrete answer for it, so I'll do what I do best and ramble.

My thoughts on Tim and why he's stuck in the first place

This might be a long section. There's a TLDR at the end if you want a summary of all this and just wanna know what I would do with him

So here's the thing, while I have been keeping up with comic lore and stories through wikis and the like for years since 2016 back when I was 10, I never actually read comics consistently at least as a hobby untill about a year and a half ago. In all those comics, I've only just seen the appeal of tim as a character, I just made a blog post talking about that not too long ago. Not to say I don't like him, I definitely do now, that's for sure. (Also wanna say to bare in mind I don't have universal knowledge of the character so give me some slack.)

So thing is, DC is stuck with him as a character, from what I can get from interviews and the older robin stuff, Tim was supposed to be the 'normal one', unlike Jason or Dick he wasn't brought into this life through tragedy, he went into the life because he wanted to and got into Into a lot of tragedies in a kind of reverse way. Which like I said before, is a beautiful piece.

He also was supposed to BE robin, as in he is THE robin, a lot of comics I've read of him so far before Damian (who we'll get to in a bit), he just seemed to feel like he would always be Robin, he was in universe from what I can see the best one to the point an out of character batman used bus girlfriend to get him back, Dick even said it once I think that he was the best robin, it kinda felt like he was always gonna be Robin and kinda grow the role past the sidekick status, I mean the man actually made the costume cool for the first time.

Then Damian showed up.

Now I don't have a definitive ranking of the robins but I wouldn't be surprised Damian is on top, he fits the asshole trying to be better archetype that I am a sucker for, I liked his stuff with Dick even if I haven't read a lot of it and bus arrogance while annoying to some with the good writers is just plain funny to me and like most of the Batfamily is badass. It also helps I grew up with the DCAMU movies where he was basically the main character.

But he kinda screwed Tim over. All that stuff I said about Tim growing the Robin role or any of that. GONE, I wouldn't say it was intentional on anyone's parts but it still happened.

In Red Robin #1, Tim’s Storyline following the Battle for the Cowl, Tim sees Damian in the Robin costume and that Dick has chosen him to be Robin. And you can really feel what I mean when I say Damian basically took what Tim had going for him at the time.

(lol early Damian was a dick)

Doesn't help that said DCAMU movies I mentioned basically omitted Tim meaning an entire generation of people (like me) didn't even know the dude existed. So now his identity as Robin was basically taken from him in the public eye, Dick had Nightwing and Jason has Red Hood, Damian is Robin now. And Tim is ... Red Robin? I'll get to that name but I wanna make another point.

Coming back to him being the 'Normal one' I meant not only that he was the dude who wanted to get into the hero life without tragedy or anything (which I'm now realizing is kinda a rehash of Barbara Gordon but whatever, I like Damian and his basically a male Cassandra at times) but it was also the fact he wasn't a orphan, yeah again Barbara again did this somewhat but her dad was Commissioner Gordon, Tim(forgive me if I make a mistake guys) had a normal dad and school life and everything. He was just a normal high school kid like you and me who just happened to be a crime fighting badass, kinda like Spider-Man.

Untill multiple tragedies struck and he did become an orphan

Now while in my ramblings I should have mentioned this before the Damian post, DC has taken another thing that set Tim apart from the rest of the robins away. So DC gets Bruce to adopt him, which I love but again, the uniqueness is gone a bit.

So now with have a Robin-less, orphan Tim. (Not sure if he's currently Robin or not, the costume confuses me).

So DC just has nowhere to go with him, they can't make him robin and bringing his dad back would be reductant. So that's where sigh... Red Robin comes along.

So at this point, Tim takes on a new identity and series written by Yost (one of my favorite writers) and it's awesome so far, Tim's smart and detective-like and god that costume just great.

(yes I know that's Jason in the costume but that's a point I'm gonna bring up)

But it also drops another issue with DC and it's direction with him.

I'm sure you've heard of the whole 'All the other robins graduated into better names, even his girlfriend but Tim still has robin in his name's and honestly I freaking agree. It just doesn't separate hum from robin enough for it to really catch on or make him look like he's a new entity. The costume is great but here's the thing.

Tim is the 3rd person to use it. It was originally created in Kingdom come for that universes Dick to use and then by Jason in countdown. So now we have Tim inheriting another costume from his two brothers and it just doesn't work for me

So over the years especially post New 52, DC has been making multiple attempts to go with the character from a costume change to naming him..... Drake??? Who did that anyway?? Dumb

They also made him come out as bisexual which I think is a cool change(I didn't 2 years ago but I was a shit person back then), it makes him more diverse and basically opened his character to a new market. The results and execution of this change has been... Interesting (WHY DID THEY BREAK HIM UP WITH STEPH AND WHY DOES BERNARD EXIST SO BORING!!)

So Tldr: DC got rid of what of what made his character orginally unique for the most part and removed his brand as the current Robin from him and haven't come up with a convincing replacement for a name and direction to take him.

What I would do with Tim

Again not sure since I still haven't read enough to make good judgement calls but there has been this idea in my head for a while now.

Tim Post-Red Robin was interesting mentally, I've talk about how he was so screwed by god at that point in my Tim Drake post. His friends and family even wanting to get him to have therapy.

I read a cool fic called 'New 52 redux' where the new 52 doesn't happen and he attempts suicide, he certainly feels suicidal or at least depressed in this comic, at least I think so, hope I'm not projecting on him there.

He feels like he thinks no one is on his side anymore in his mind, getting paranoid, cold Aka like Bruce, he was acting like Bruce in this run to me. Which was an interesting development since if you read the comics around the early 2000s you would think he would grow into the opposite.

So here's my idea, they lean into this identity Crisis and slow degrade into Bruce at his worst and take him to Hub City, the worst city in DC, yes even worse than Gotham. The question's orginal city that was so bad he quit for his own sanity.

A city so bad that homeless people used dead babies to beg for cash.

I would also give him a new name. Some of the fanon ones I see are pretty cool, Cardinal, Grey Ghost, Gotham Knight etc love em and any would be fine.

So the idea here is that Tim in his Post-Crisis Red Robin mental state, basically tries to singlehandedly take the city from crime, just like Bruce, leaning into how close they were acting but also wanting to prove to everyone else that he can be just as good as Bruce was. Get him to start a business hw would grow as the city moved on and use to profits to improve the city, would be incredibly depressing and brooding.

From there you can either show he's fighting a losing battle and make Tim fall more into his hole of mental issues and Bruce like behavior of pushing others away or let him actually start to win and feel better about himself and start to open up with his family and accept help. Then do the usually status quo stories in hub city.

Of course as usual I have another idea, If most of young justice are dead like I think they were at this time(Retcons and all that make this hard), try and set up a new hero team somewhere, in which he leads the next set of young heroes to avoid all the mistakes he faced as a hero.

Welp that was longer than I thought, hope that satisfied tour question.

[chloesolace]

Book Review: "The Scarlet Veil" by Shelby Mahurin

Spoiler-free

Genre: young adult, fantasy • Triggers: trauma, death, graphic descriptions of corpses, kidnapping, blood, misogyny, murder • Year of Publication: 2023

Plot: ★★★★

Characters: ★★★★

Writing Style: ★★

Re-Readability: ★★★

all my reviews - blog navigation - Discord Server

General Thoughts

During the first half of this book I thought I would end up disliking it, and was very disappointed because I have been looking for an aristocratic vampire romance for ages. Not reverse-harm, not vampire warrior, no, the actual aristocratic-long-hair-wine-glass-in-hand-elegant vampire one might associate with figures like Carmilla and Dracula. This is also the main reason I did not DNF this, and I'm really glad I gave it a chance, because it ended up getting better the further I got and had me at the edge of my seat toward the ending.

I do wanna say that I have not read Serpent & Dove and although this is a spin-off with the same characters (just a different one taking on the role as MC), I understood everything I needed to. So, in my opinion, reading the Serpent & Dove trilogy is not necessary in order to read this. Sure, you might not have as much of a connection with the characters when you begin to read, but everything that's relevant to the story is explained quite nicely in my opinion. Now, moving on to the actual review.

Plot

The plot is a murder mystery. Bodies of supernatural beings turn up with two puncture wounds in their throats. Without getting into spoiler territory, I can say that the plot is very interesting and has some nice twists in there, too. You will definitely be entertained by it if you enjoy this sort of thing.

Celie being kidnapped and brought to the vampire castle is a scenario I also enjoyed reading. There was a bit of an enemies-to-lovers dynamic going on at times, since Celie, our MC, justifiably disliked Michal, the vampire king, in the beginning. Yes, I know that being kidnapped and then falling for your kidnapper is somewhat problematic but really, this is fiction and YA (not a dark romance). Celie was not actually treated like a real prisoner, and that only progressed further as the story went on; she was dressed in beautiful gowns, walked around the castle grounds and island, and even went on an undercover mission with Michal at a brothel *ahem*.

Also, if authors tried making every fictional scenario inherently healthy and unproblematic I'd die of boredom. I want that in real life, not my books x). But I digress.

Characters

I really disliked Celie in the beginning. Her actions and internal monologue felt juvenile, to the point where I seriously struggled to believe she was 19 and not, say, 15. I understand that she was supposed to be this soft, feminine and lady-like character and this is actually a character type I'd like to see more of, as feminity is often demonized and seen as weak by readers. However, it wasn't Celie's "lady-like" personality I had an issue with, but how she felt infantilized sometimes. The other characters kept her entirely separate from any plans they made, even if she was directly involved in one of the murders since she found the body. This is a good idea, but the execution made it feel like "go away, the adults are talking" instead of "she is too traumatized to take part in this", which is what I believe Mahurin was going for. It is also easier to believe the former due to Célie's often childish behavior and reactions. You can be soft and feminine but still behave a bit more maturely, which is what I would have hoped for her. Still, her character development was fairly satisfying. She still has a long way to go, I think, and I am looking forward to hopefully seeing that develop in book two.

Michal is a character I hope to see Mahurin elaborate on more. We don't know that much about him yet, so it is really hard to judge. He states at some point, and this is no way a spoiler (honestly, it felt kind of random for him to say it), that he is afraid of love. Why? What happened for him to develop that fear? So far I can say that I love how he has a very ruthless and violent side, but can also be extremely caring and sweet at the same time.

I also loved the side characters, at least the vampire ones, Odessa and Dimitri. Especially Odessa. I cannot say much for the Serpent & Dove characters because they mostly appear in the first section of the book, which is exactly the section I disliked.

In general, I enjoyed the characters. I'm giving four out of five stars, though, because as I said before, I think Célie's character could have handled a bit more maturely in the beginning, especially since she was supposed to be 19.

Writing Style

As always, this is entirely subjective but I include this part in my reviews since writing styles have made or broken books for me, and I would like to offer those interested in the books insights into the style before buying it, so you can decide for yourself if this is something you'd enjoy reading.

Oh boy. I didn't really like it, I fear. Firstly, the narrator is a first-person present tense which is already not my favorite combination, but it is easy to overlook really. The main issues I had were t-t-the c-c-onstant s-stuttering l-like this. It was wholly unnecessary in my opinion and widely overused. I also think we have been past this in publishing and established that there are better ways to write stuttering t-than t-t-this. There are stuttering writing guides online. I actually loved the fact Celie stuttered, since it showed her character development very well, I just wish the stuttering had been written differently.

Secondly, the constant italicization of words for emphasis got on my nerves, too. Using it sometimes is totally valid, but I swear there was not one page without at least four or five italicized words for emphasis, and that's not even counting the constant repetition of sentences that had already been said at some point before, just so the reader doesn't forget anything. Those were also in italics, of course.

Overall, this improved toward the end of the book, though. Celie's stuttering ceased and so did the italicization for emphasis (mostly). Still, this is something that annoyed me a tremendous amount and one of the reasons why it was so hard for me to get through the first part of the book, hence the two stars.

Re-Readability

I think this book can definitely be re-read. Especially if you enjoyed the romance scenes between Michal and Celie, like I did. However, keep in mind this book has about 620 pages so it is not short by any means. Also, I would probably skip the first part of the book if I ever re-read it and jump straight into Celie arriving in Requiem.

Conclusion

In essence, I enjoyed this book. It was exactly what I was looking for in terms of vampire romance, but it also pulled me right into the story and I am very excited to see what will happen in book two, especially after that ending. I don't think I will pick up Serpent & Dove, however, since the story of that trilogy doesn't peak my interest as much.

[the-void-writes]

Happy Blursday, sweetpea! Can you please tell me about Will’s relarionship to all of his father figures? :3

Oh absolutely, thank you so much!!! It’s funny because Will has a lot more father figures than I realized, though some of them are just guys that he feels somewhat safe around without an actual familial bond. Either way, this boy keeps adopting dads lol.

Will and His Fathers

Isaiah Shapiro - He’s his father only by legal name and nothing more. Will has never felt safe around him, not even as a young child, because of his father’s hatred for Freaks. Isaiah was the starting point for Will’s downward mental spiral, and the abuse he had to endure for years.

Jason Rhodes - His real, beautiful, loving father. Jason would make time reverse for this boy if that’s what he wanted. They share music, they go exploring, they train to help each other get stronger, they take care of each other when they’re sick, they just love each other like pure family. Their bond is completely unbreakable, and they understand each other better than anyone else on Earth.

Henry Prescott - The second most amazing father Will has ever had. He’s been calling Will his son since he met the family, always treating him like his own because the poor boy could never find sympathy from other people. He doesn’t care that the boy is different, he loves him all the same. And when they both thought they had lost Jason, they were each other’s biggest support system, helping the other stay afloat in their darkest time.

Rio Manuel - He’s more of a father by association to Jason, but that doesn’t mean he won’t care for Will just as much. He sees how unshakeable this kid’s devotion to his family is, and he wants to help him however he can. They actually trained together a lot because they knew the other would give them a fair fight with no holding back. Rio also can’t help but be protective of any kid who’s nice to his daughter, anyway.

Gabriel Vesely - This is a completely one-sided father-figure scenario, because Vesely sees this boy as his wonder child, while Will would love nothing more than to chuck him in a river. Vesely just has this idea that Will is gonna be his prodigy and do everything that he had ever wanted for his family, somehow forgetting how much of both Will and Jason’s lives that he’s ruined.

Atticus Wells - He’s a doctor from Bluebrook who took pity on Will when his mind was slipping away. He treated him with respect when everyone else wanted to ignore him. The problem was, Atticus is a Vesely-devotee, and he ran right back to Vesely’s side the minute the opportunity came up. So he has to fight Will’s friends, but he can’t bring himself to hurt this boy who had been ostracized for so long, a boy that Atticus saw a bit of himself in. (He also might have known Jason pretty well, so that only adds to his guilt.)

Honorable Mention: King Gazali becomes important to Will as a friend and confidant and somewhat of an older-brother figure (and an actual father figure in a few AUs).

There’s also an older gentleman in Paradise named Bailey, he’s a fisherman and a really nice and funny guy that Will gets along with. He’s more of a grandfather figure than a father figure, but the idea is still kind of the same.

[vro0m]

vro0m’s rewatch - 135/310

2014 Monaco GP

Good morning! Here we go for another episode of the worst GP ever... With extra extra spice. 👀

(aka important lore)

Nico is on pole. It seems it was controversial but I don't have the build up so I don't know why. Let me check Wikipedia. Oh so Rosberg set the fastest lap and then locked up in his second hot lap and had to reverse on the track. It brought up yellow flags that forced Lewis to slow down and he couldn't challenge him for the pole. Nico was investigated because the stewards suspected he might have done it on purpose but they concluded there was no evidence of wrongdoing. Mmmh. 

The journalists say there's a lot of tension now between them and generally that weekend. Johnny, who is on the grid, says Lewis came up to Nico to shake his hand before getting in the car. 

Alright so, actually, same thing happened with this review than with the last one: I watched while that website was down and now it's back up so here's the full build up content. 

They talked about some controversy that happened back in Spain that I actually explain in detail in the end of the review as I've read about it on Wikipedia after watching the race when I didn’t have the build up 👀 Brundle says he doesn't believe Nico fucked up the quali intentionally but he also says he's a minority in the paddock to believe so. Although Damon Hill agrees with him.

Here's the complete incident report. Nico was ahead by 0.05 only after the first hot laps. He started his last attempt half a lap ahead of Lewis. Oh. Yeah. That incident looks way more shady than I thought.

You can see Nico starting to swerve around for seemingly no reason at all? Like he's hesitating. Then his wheel locks up. Weird. In the post quali interviews Lewis is… I'd say… in a state of calm rage? He says : "I was on a pole lap. I was on a pole lap."

When asked "there isn't any feeling that there's anything cynical (sic) about it, is there?", he makes a face. "Who knows?"

The journalist asks, kind of surprised, if he thinks he could have done it deliberately. He says that's not what he said. (But then what did you say, love?)

Of course Niki says it wasn't deliberate. Mika Hakkinen said he always felt like the racing had to be fair, "you can always do some little tricks out there". I don't know what that means as far as the incident goes. Briatore says teammates are "number one enemies". Gerhard Berger says you could see the wheels were locked (were they? He was going left right left right on the track that wouldn't be possible with locked wheels would it?). Barrichello also thinks he didn't do it on purpose (lmao thinking back to Brundle who said he was a minority thinking so, everybody is defending Nico so wtf are you talking about?). 

Natalie Pinkham asks Lewis how he's feeling today. He says good. He's smiling. She asks "feeling strong?" he says as always. She says Nico apologised to him, how's their relationship now? He hums, shakes his head, and answers "same as ever" . (Not very convincing.) She says he's been able to go over the data and does he feel calmer about the situation now. He looks aside while she asks the question. He's uncomfortable. He still smiles though. He says no, and he chuckles.

She repeats "no? Has it made you feel any better to see the data?", he's still chuckling and he's moving around like he's trying to avoid her somewhat. He repeats "no".

She decides to turn their attention back to the race. He won for P2 in Bahrain, can he do it again? He says it's not so easy here. But still it's gonna be an interesting race and they'll push as hard as they can. She says "so barring unreliability, the start is everything." He hums. "That and the strategy." The circuit is incredible and he's fortunate to be in front of all these people and represent for the UK. He's very blessed, he's going to enjoy it and try to put on a good show for everyone. Of course it's difficult but that's what they're paid to do. 

Johnny and Anthony have spent a good part of the night going over the images and debating it. Johnny thinks it was deliberate. Let's see. Johnny argues that "he goes all squiggly" which shows that the braking lock up doesn't happen until much much later. Anthony says they'll agree to disagree because they've been debating it all night and all morning and although it's smiles all around you can tell he's had more than enough of it. 

Nico is calm and smiling and happy to be home. 

Johnny did an interview with Lewis in a car driving around Monaco. It's from earlier in the week. They play rock paper scissors for the right to drive the car.

He says he loves it here : he's left alone, he's relaxed, the air is clean and he likes living next to the water, as he likes water sports. He says he doesn't like cycling though, at least road cycling, "I'm not shaving my legs and all that stuff," he jokes. Johnny says he likes what he sees with him now, he truly does seem relaxed and in control. He asks if he feels that. (But I see him rubbing his ear so I don't think so, that's a tell of his.) And indeed, he laughs and says he's just a good actor. 

"You get a good car and then everyone's opinion changes of you, you know?" he says. Johnny jokes, he says he feels the opinions of him have always been positive. (My man have you been living under a rock?) Lewis says "nnnnooo…" He says people have been saying he's not focused, "even 2012 when I was doing well" people still had negative things to say. And now that he has 4 wins, everyone's all happy. "It's just funny you know" he adds. He says every year he tries to unclutter his life, and he feels every year he's getting closer to– he doesn't finish his sentence. He says just like everyone he still has a lot of… for a sec I think he's about to say baggage lol but he says "stuff going on that you would like not to be going on". "You still have bills to pay" (rolling my eyes rn) "same things everyone has" so he's always trying to clear these things out but he feels this year with management, family, friends, where he lives, he's in a great place and enjoying it. 

A little bit later he says there was this old lady waving at him and he jokes "she's obviously a racing fan!" Johnny jokes back "I think she was waving at me actually" and Lewis claps back : "She probably was, yeah, more your age".

(why is he holding the security belt away from his body lol he does that pretty much the whole time)

He asks what he'd be happy with that weekend. He says of course he's here to win. "However you can't win everything and I've won the last four races so this weekend, I'm gonna be open, you know? I'm here to win, I want to win and I'll do absolutely everything in my power to make sure I get my car right and I'm on point throughout the whole weekend." He says Nico was very fast there last year so he has to be more on his game this year. He says he heard "some really funny things the other day", he thinks it was Jenson and Nico talking about mind games. He says if you ask his engineers you'll see he never plays mind games, "any mind game I play is on the circuit, I get on the circuit and I do my time and that's the game that I play". Of course he says Anthony always told him to do his talking on the circuit. "I like to win on pure ability". 

You know, I wonder if he truly believes what he says there. He can’t be that naive, can he? When he wins and then says he was slower than Nico (but he still won, so he’s a better driver), that’s gonna get in Nico’s head. When he wins and he says Nico is so, so good (but he still won, so he’s a better driver) that’s gonna get in his head. And that’s not saying he intends to play games but it’s the same result. And I think he’s smarter than that, so to some extent I believe he knows. I still think he’s sincere in what he says, he doesn’t lie when he says he thinks Nico was faster or that he’s a good driver, but he must know that Nico might interpret it a certain way. Or he is indeed extremely naive there.

Formation lap. 

And they're racing! 

It's a clean start for Nico but Lewis is right behind him and there's very very close racing behind them. It's truly a miracle everybody came out of it unscathed. 

Oh my god 

78 fucking laps?!?!?!

I HATE MONACO. 

And here you go, there's a crash. Right on the way down to the hair pin. There's a Force India stuck in a barrier in Mirabeau, it's a safety car. The one stuck before the hairpin is Perez. Several people pit. Not important ones. Lewis complains of his brakes temperature. Bono reassures him that "they're cool but they're not cold". 

On lap 4, we go again. Seb has issues, he's being overtaken left and right. He has no power… Rosberg sets the fastest lap and Seb pits. Seb leaves the pit after a, what, a minute long pitstop, probably? Lewis sets the fastest lap, he's only half a second behind Nico. Seb says he's stuck in first gear. That's not gonna end well is it? Rosberg sets the fastest lap. Seb is called to retire the car. Rosberg goes quicker still. Lewis is still under a second behind him. The others are falling back already. Nico's engineer tells him his tyres are doing better than his team-mate. Lewis is slowing down a tad indeed. 

It's lap 10, 68 to go 🤪 Weirdly the stewards decided they would investigate the incident between Perez and Jenson that saw Perez DNF after the race. What are they paid for. Chilton, Bianchi and Gutierrez are being investigated for being out of position on the grid. Kvyat retires. Lewis is now 1.4 seconds behind Nico. He must have destroyed his tyres following him so closely for so long. He says he's already feeling his rear going. Chilton gets a 5 second stop and go penalty for being out of position on the grid, so does Bianchi, and so does Gutierrez. 

It's lap 20. I'm barely paying attention already. I'm bored out of my mind. Lewis has been told he's in the pitstop window and he's picked up the pace again. The gap that was 1.8 is now 1.2 already. Behind them, Daniel is also closing on Raikkonen. These two's times are now matching the Mercs. They're not gonna be able to stay out for much longer without losing their advantage. Anthony thinks Lewis wasn't told he was in the pitstop window but the safety car window. Rosberg locked up slightly again. Daniel is just half a second behind Raikkonen now. There's yellow flags? Someone lost a piece of front wing… oh. There's a Sauber stopped off track at the exit of the tunnel. Oooofff yeah. He lost it coming out of the tunnel, lost all grip and went to hit the barriers on the opposite side of the track which launched him straight into the run off area beside the chicane. There's debris everywhere, that's surely gonna be another safety car… so that yeah, the safety car is out. 

Jenson made a very late decision to pit and his mechanics are all over the place. So what now, is Lewis gonna pit or does Nico take precedence because he's in front? Yep. Rosberg pits. Lewis pits. He didn't have to wait too long but he was slowed down by other people pitting… ooooh there's almost been a collision there. That man's reaction says it all.

Lewis asks : "What is the reason you didn't box the lap before?" We don't hear the answer. A bit later here he is again. "I can't believe that we just had to pit, " he says. "Please inform me of what is the next option I have." (I think). Bono answers, very calmly as always : "So Lewis this is gonna be a race to the end so it'll be all down to tyre deg or either weather conditions." There's still 50 laps to go. The chance of rain is 20%. So that's a bit of a desperate answer tbh. Half a lap later, he's at it again. "We should have pitted on that lap I know I should've." Then he says something like "you wouldn't call me in, guys". 

Now that's too much complaining for me. I know he's pissed to begin with because he thinks he would have been on pole if it wasn't for that incident with Nico, but the attitude is not it. Where's the perseverance, boy? Where's the fighting spirit? 

Raikkonen pits now?! Super weird. Did he have a puncture? He's out in 14th… catastrophic. The unsafe release between JEV and Magnussen is being investigated. If you remember, the penalty supposedly should be a grid penalty for the next race, that's what the new rule says. Crofty says that Nico and Lewis were just behind Sutil when his accident happened and that's why Lewis is pissed because he saw it and it was clear it would be a safety car. But as we're reminded, the driver who's ahead gets first call on the pit stop, and from the team perspective they still have a 1-2. It was safer for them to wait to see if there truly was a safety car.

The safety car comes in at the end of lap 30. I can't fucking believe there's still 48 laps to go. Monaco seems to last for days. Here we go. There's been an overtake. Unbelievable. Who would have thought. Hulkenberg on JEV I think. The gap between the two Mercs is 0.9. JEV actually gets a drive through. Okay. Another backmarker overtake. Literally nothing is happening. 

It's lap 40. Nico is warned to be careful with fuel I think. Lewis is 0.7 behind. Nothing nothing nothing. Lewis has been told to switch some specs to "save the battery". Nico is told again that using certain gears increases the fuel consumption. Bono tells Lewis where Nico has been told to lift and coast. 

It's lap 50 and I can't wait for this to be over I'm so fucking bored. The gap is now 1.6. So even the fuel saving hasn't helped Lewis. JEV's engine has blown up. He retires. The gap is 1.1. Nico is told the fuel situation has stabilised and to keep doing what he's doing. Valtteri's engine has blown up. He's stopped just at the exit of the hairpin corner. Oh god. They're recovering him without any safety car… the crane is off track but like. The marshals are in front of the barriers rather than behind them. Terrifying. 

Lap 60, the gap is 2.1. Bored bored bored. Gutierrez spins and is facing the wrong way. He's getting out. The car is not in the racing line but it's not a good place to be stuck at. Marshals on track again, I'd say at most a couple of metres away from the other cars going by. I hate this shit. It allowed Lewis to close the gap again. 0.6. Bianchi gets another 5 second stop and go penalty for taking the first one while the SC was deployed. For some reason the Merc mechanics are in the pitlane? Bono says "OK Lewis just get back to us, mate, let us know what's up?" I think? What? Oh dear. Yeah so the gap is over 4 seconds now and Lewis says he can't see out of his left eye?! What the fuck? The mechanics are back in. Daniel is 9 seconds behind him, lapping one second faster. 

70 laps in. We're almost free. Lewis asks for updates. Bono gives him the gap to Daniel. Lewis says he doesn't care about him, he wants to know the gap to Nico. Currently it's 5.7. And Daniel is only 5.3 behind. So he should care. 5 laps to the end, Daniel is indeed only 1.4 behind. Tbh the whole weekend must be infuriating for Lewis because of how little luck he's had but it's also a good humbling moment to remind him that he and Nico aren't the only ones on track. 0.8. Lewis is stuck in traffic. 0.4. Oh dear. Raikkonen tried to overtake Magnussen and they both got stuck in the hairpin. Raikkonen's nose is resting against the barrier and Magnussen is stuck right behind him as Raikkonen went too wide in the corner and couldn't make the turn. Unbelievable. Yellow flags. 0.4. Both cars in the hairpin have managed to go again. 4 laps to go. Green flags. Raikkonen is in the pits once again. 0.6. 3 laps to go. 0.4. 2 laps to go. So many backmarkers to go through. 0.5. 0.4. Final lap… 

And it's the end of the race. 

Nico wins. Lewis keeps P2. Daniel P3. It's the same podium as the last race. 

The marshals are working as barriers here to keep the team workers out of the way of the drivers. They're standing in a line holding hands in front of them. They get smooched between Nico and his team mechanics as they hug.

Lewis gets out of the car very slowly. He touches hands with the team members. The journalists are eyeing the reaction between these two. Oh. Lewis took off his helmet and the energy isn't good.

Oh. Now Brundle says Niki confirmed to him on the grid that Lewis apologised to Nico after Spain for using a power setting he wasn't supposed to use to stay ahead. Mmh. Shady.

Lewis is not too happy receiving his trophy. They still haven't talked or interacted at all.

Side note but Charlène just. Casually kissing everybody is so funny to me for some reason. (Don't explain to me what la bise is, I'm from Switzerland, where I’m from it's three kisses instead of two, I know all about it). 

The vibe is horrible. They're not looking at each other. Not getting close for the photo. I didn't expect it to go to shit so early on. It's champagne time. They're not even in the same area. Now for the interviews. Why. Why is it Benedict Cumberbatch interviewing them again? 

Nico says Lewis drove very well and pushed him massively. But he stayed cool and was able to pull a gap with his fresher tyres. The team has built an amazing car. 

Cumberbatch asks Lewis "Did you get something in your eye?" and Lewis starts to answer "yes through the visor some…" but then he shrugs it off "but anyway it's not important." He says it was really good for the team to get a 1-2.

The camera colours are really weird now, sorry if the gifs are looking bad I did whatever I could. Very yellowy.

He says he had great pace but it's a very difficult circuit to overtake.

So that's Rosberg back on the lead of the WDC. Also Bianchi scored Marussia's first ever points by finishing P9. It was helped in part by the 8 DNFs. 

So I know it comes a bit late but now I'm reading about that race setting Lewis used in Spain. He was required by the senior members of his team to apologise to the team. OH MY GOD. Wait a fucking minute. Actually Nico did the same fucking thing in Bahrain?! So Toto banned them both from selecting their own engine settings from then on. Oooh that's so shady? I was a bit disappointed with Lewis for that (still am) but actually Nico started first then? Tsssk. That was not mentioned in the Wikipedia article about Bahrain, I'll tell you that much. 

Also apparently Lewis didn't accept Nico's apology for the quali incident which. Okay so first of all if it was an accident why is he apologising and also not accepting it is very childish imo. Niki basically said he didn't like that vibe and he'd talk to them before the next race. Toto said such an incident wouldn't be allowed to happen again and the drivers would keep their autonomy as long as they did nothing "deceitful". Lewis said he was surprised at how quickly the situation escalated (so am I, as I said, I truly thought their relationship had started degrading later than that). 

Then both of them spoke and Lewis tweeted a picture of them when they were young to defuse the tension with the caption "We've been friends a long time, and as friends we have our ups and downs" and then "Today we spoke and were cool, still friends, no problem." Very convincing /s. 

There was no penalty for Jenson for his contact with Perez in the first lap. Raikkonen was reprimanded for a contact with Magnussen late in the race.

I ended up finding the post race interview, so here we go. He says his eye is better and kind of brushes it off but Natalie says it really impacted his race and he says he thinks it wouldn't really have changed anything. Asked about Daniel he says while he was closing the gap it was a serious concern because he was driving with one eye and he knew he'd get him until that dirt cleared up from his eye. But it did with 2 or 3 laps to go so he was able to stay ahead. 

"Can you tell us about communication you had with Nico since the race, have you talked directly to each other?"

"No." 

"Do you not think communication is important if you're gonna kinda clear up any bad feeling?"

"No."

"You don't think it's important?"

"Well I mean he spoke, he– he, he says things I mean I– (he fumbles with his collar) we had a meeting with Toto and Niki and I said what I needed to say in there and he said what he needed to say and that was… that's as far as we need to ever go really," he finishes with a slight awkward smile.

She changes the subject. He apparently said that he knew that they wouldn't bring him in but they should have. He hums. He says it's his opinion. He explains that when he was at McLaren each driver had a strategist whose job was to get each driver individually the best possible result. But here "unfortunately" they only have one strategist "who's amazing, he's absolutely amazing" but that means he looks out for whoever is ahead and the second one comes second so he knew from the get go that he had less of an opportunity to win. So he needed a miracle and that's what he was thinking, an opportunity came and if he was still at McLaren he'd have been pulled in on that lap and that might have given him the slightest advantage. "But anyway that doesn't really matter" (Lol, nobody believes you, love.) "I'll work it out with the team".

Natalie jumps right in. "It does matter though, doesn't it, because it means that you came second in this race so ultimately it matters very much." He acquiesces "but ultimately they always make great decisions and I have to go, you know, by what the team does." In these races you have to grab every opportunity and the start was gone and he was in the pit stop window when the SC came out and after that there was no other opportunity. 

"So where do you go from here with Nico and going into Canada, that's gonna be a circuit that does suit the raw pace of the Mercedes so it's a great opportunity for you guys, but what about in terms of mending bridges with your friend?"

"Oh well we're not friends." (fumbling with the collar again) "Erm, you know, we're colleagues and we'll work to get the team" (touches his ear) "as many 1-2s and points as possible."

"Does the– does the fact that you've known each other for a very long time not count for anything in terms of friendship?" 

He hums, then looks aside, thinking, for 3 whole seconds.

And then looks back to her, smiles slightly, uncomfortable, and shrugs.

"Maybe."

Next step, Canada. 

[oraclekleo]

Kleooooo I did my first official reading last night 😭🥳

And it was actually a deck interview! I had such a hard time I swear... Like, right off the bat I asked "what's your vibe" and got The Star reversed and panicked thinking how the fuck I should interpret that I mean is my deck depressed??? 🙃 and the whole thing took me like an hour and a half for 9 questions?? I wrote everything down on a notebook and it was like 4 pages long 😂 But it was also very fun and interesting 🤭 I still have a long way to go (that came up on the reading too), but it's definitely a good introspection tool! I can definitely say that I respect readers so much more now that I faced my first reading 🛐

Do you have any ideas of other readings I could do to practice?

I also saw you want to do another game, so that reminded me I had yet to thank you for your answer for the last one! I have, indeed, been feeling very Knight of Wands-ish these past few days... Not only on the spicy side, but in general? Like, I've been much more motivated and inspired than usual and I'm actually doing stuff, which is great 🤭

And finally, I was looking through my email inbox because I wanted to gather all the readings I've gotten for future reference, and I found one by you! I'd forgotten you'd done a soulmate reading for me, so even though it was a while ago, I'm working on feedback for that one because I know it must've been a lot of work, since that's not a kind of reading you usually do 🥹

But I can say, I've gotten 4 or 5 soulmate and Future spouse related readings done over the course of 2 years, all by different readers, and it's insane how they all have the same vibe! And there's specific things that keep coming up so yes I'm definitely a believer (and it's why I think your reading is very statistically solid 🕵️‍♀️)

Anyways, hope you have a great afternoon? Evening? And let me know if you want to read my deck interview! I'm open to opinions about the interpretation I gave to the cards 🤓

Hello!

Aww! Wow! Well done!

Yeah, first readings can be hard and confusing but it genuinely gets better with time. Honestly I have never read reversals. It really depends on how you feel about it. I tried to do reversals but it just instinctively felt somewhat off. Maybe try a reading without them if it feels easier and smoother? Not that you have to, it's just a suggestion. 😊

Deck interview is one of the harder readings for the first time. Like logically you would want to do it first but when you think about it, the questions are pretty hard to interpret for a newbie so I'm proud you pulled through it. I'd love to see the result if you want to share it. You can send in email if it's private or longer.

I would suggest you to do readings where you don't care about the outcome, like where you are open to anything the cards might tell you. If you start with readings like future spouse where you already have some pre-reading idea in your head, it might cloud or confuse the outcome. So pick a tarot spread or question where you are fine with any outcome. That way you can be sure that the answer is unbiased. I personally searched Tarot spreads on Pinterest before, there are so many of them, some really fun to do. So you can give it a go. You can even try any of my spreads if there's some you particularly like.

I'm always happy when my readings sound accurate. And great for you to be more active and taking charge these days. Carry on. It feels good to actually roll the sleeves up and do things, right? 😂

I don't even remember I did a soulmate reading 🤣 I might need to revisit it myself. But no problem. There's no rush.

My afternoon is slowly turning into evening and it's all pretty good. I'm in a sociable mood at the moment, so I might start with some tiny game. I saw I received some suggestions into my inbox, I'm gonna check them out. 😁

Enjoy your time! Have fun with your tarot deck! 💖

[chellyfishing]

i had coffee this morning so here have my personal ranking of the four seasons of channel zero

before i start i should say i have some criticisms that apply to all seasons, which is mostly that they struggled with focus and had some extraneous subplots or concepts that didn’t really tie in with the whole as well as they could or should have. i will also add however that i liked all the seasons and found them all watchable! so even last place isn’t bad.

4. season 1, candle cove

umm you know i swear going into this i had a lengthy explanation for why i put this last. it’s actually somewhat interchangeable with #3, i think they have different strengths and weaknesses and atm i feel like the latter’s strengths are more meaningful. as for this season, i’m still a little bit, why teeth, like it felt a little more like someone had an idea for a horrifying image (which it is, very gross) and went with it without REALLY doing a good job of bringing it full circle. even so this season has some good twists and some fair pathos. i didn’t super love the characters, except like, the mom, who was great, really felt for her. the story was sort of propelled forward by its own “wtf is happening”-ness. it’s also just kind of a silly idea (i’m so sorry kris straub local58 is a masterwork) and it never really quite reconciles that.

3. season 2, noend house

like i said this is soooorta interchangeable with the above for me but today this is the order I’m going with. i think this is the slowest-paced of the seasons. it was hard to stay invested for a fair bit of it. most of the characters aside from the main girl felt like they didn’t matter and their subplots didn’t necessarily have much to do with the overall ideas of the story. however, the themes of grief and the use of metaphor was really well-done and the ending that brought it all together really stuck the landing. i got what it was doing and it finished in a way that felt meaningful and cathartic.

2. season 3, butcher’s block

okay i just realized that i kind of just went in reverse order and also this might be a controversial pick. i had some problems with this season, like its muddled messages about mental health (what was it trying to say? i still don’t know). but why it ranks so high is that i actually really cared about the characters and how things would turn out for them. i got really invested in them. also the main themes were about family and being loved and belonging which i’m a slut for. so, problems aside, it just really hit for me.

1. season 4, the dream door

i think this is a commonly-held opinion and it is a correct one. hands-down the best season, even though it gets a bit weird at the end? iykyk. the themes and metaphors were good, things connected well and made sense, and of course… pretzel jack. what a character, and what a performance. i don’t really know what else to say, i just… love him. anyway the series ending on such a strong note is a bit of a downer because i bet if it had kept going it would have continued to get stronger but we were denied. bummer.

[violettelueur]

FUSHIGURO MEGUMI + GOJO SATORU + RYŌMEN SUKUNA || HIDING YOUR WOUNDS FROM THEM

| featuring : fushiguro megumi + gojo satoru + ryomen sukuna from jujutsu kaisen

| warnings : grammar errors but other than that n/a

| form : headcanons

| published : 28 december

| request : hi!!｜ω・）i was wondering if you could do a headcanon with gojo/megumi/sukuna with a fem!s/o who got hurt pretty bad on their last mission but tried to hide it away from them because they felt ashamed about it, but they finally find out when they catch the s/o trying to attend to a wound they have? hope this is okay✨

| barista’s notes : hi hi! barista violettelueur is back and ready to post! right now at this moment in time, i am writing up the first imagine for the day and it is for inumaki toge ╲ʕ·ᴥ·　╲ʔ and i am also on episode 115 of Black Clover, I’M NEARLY UP TO DATE GUYS ʕ≧ᴥ≦ʔ but moving on from that, i hope you enjoy your order of a cup of classic black coffee (jujutsu kaisen request!) and come again soon when we are open!

FUSHIGURO MEGUMI:

I know for a fact that Fushiguro knew you were acting a bit off the second you have gotten back from your mission - probably because you didn’t greet him like you usually do..didn’t get the kiss of the cheek you wanted, did you, ha Megumi?

But Fushiguro being Fushiguro, he would give you your own space first since he thinks you are just tired from your mission but when he sees you try to cover your arm from him, he knows something is up.

Now that he knows something is wrong, he would still give you space….but will also follow you to wherever you are going - Megumi, that’s not giving space….that’s just being a whole stalker.

And the second you enter Ieiri office, Fushiguro would be surprised since you didn’t tell him that you were injured before he completely forgets about his hiding spot and runs into the infirmary.

Once he enters the infirmary, he would find you with your school jacket off with a huge gash on your arm while Ieiri is using her reverse curse energy to heal your large wound.

Even though he wants to confront you from hiding this from him, he would just sit down somewhere and wait for the whole recovering process to finish before he would talk to you - and from the look you are giving off from your face, you seem to be deep in thought about something.

Once the healing process is finished and Iriei wraps up your arm, she would leave you and Fushiuguro alone since she doesn’t want to be in or in the way this little relationship business - girl, I wouldn’t want to be as well, like imagine just standing in the middle of it.

Once she leaves, Fushiguro would just get up, walk up to you and place his forehead against yours as a way to comfort you as well as to help him calm down since he was extremely worried about you.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Did you know how worried I was when you came back?”

He would say this while grabbing your hands and gripping them tightly - it’s not like he is mad at you (on the low he is) but he is mad at himself for not being there to protect you.

“I’m sorry, I just didn’t want you to worry,” 

“I’m supposed to worry, you idiot, I am your boyfriend you know,” 

Of course, you would tell him the whole story and once again he would call you an idiot for you feeling ashamed when you shouldn’t be - it was a difficult curse after all.

But after a little telling off from your boyfriend, Fushiguro will take care of you (baby you) every second on every day until you are fully healed.

GOJO SATORU:

There is no point in trying to hide your wounds from him because the man already knows that you are injured before you even come back to the school.

So the second you walk through the entrance with you trying to cover your wounds, he is already there waiting for you with a frown upon his face.

This is because 1. You are injured 2. Like Fushiguro, he wasn’t there to help you so you could avoid this and 3. Because you were planning to hide it from him when you came back.

He wouldn’t even say anything to you, he would just walk up to you and wrap an arm around your waist to guide you to Ieiri’s infirmary for you to tend to your wounds.

And when you are there, he would just watch from the side - probably leaning against the wall - and wait for the whole process to finish.

Once everything is done and Iriei leaves - because we both hate standing in the middle of something that isn’t our business - he would come up to you and flick your forehead to wake you up from both your daze as well as him telling you off a bit.

“What was that for, Satoru?” you would ask before rubbing the spot that he flicked because damn it actually hurts.

“For planning to hide this nasty gash from me, honey~” he would reply with a pout before asking why you would try - he probably knows the answer but he wants to hear it from you.

“It was a stupid injury, I was distracted by another curse and the other one managed to cut me, ahh it was such a stupid mistake for a sorcerer like me,”

Once again, he would flick your forehead and call you an “idiot honey~” while explaining to you that mistakes can happen during battle when you are too concentrated - but the man would just HAVE TO ADD THE “except for me though,” after his cute little explanation and that would just piss you off.

However, you know that Gojo is just trying to make you realise that you shouldn’t be ashamed to be injured and that you had actually won the whole thing - he is just being sweet with you in his own way I guess.

After this whole conversation, Gojo will help you with everything when you are recovering but will tease you a whole lot - for example, if you can’t lift your arm, this man will grab the item you are trying to get and will stretch his arm to make sure it is out your reach.

RYOMEN SUKUNA:

Sukuna? To be honest with you this one is sort of a hard one for me to think, but I will try my best.

Sort of like Gojo, he knows that you are injured and unlike Gojo, he knows that you are going to try to hide your injuries from him.

So when you get back from whatever you were doing from before, Sukuna is already there with a smug look on his face ready to insult you in any way possible.

In the beginning, he would and will mock you for not being strong enough for defending yourself from a ‘weak’ curse - and of course, since you are already ashamed of your injuries, the fact that he is saying this to you makes you feel worse but you sort of already expected this from him.

‘Foolish’, ‘idiot’, ‘ignorant’, ‘brat’, ‘stupid’ and many other names he would call you under the sun, there is no escaping from it.

After having his fair share of amusement and you not responding the way he expects you to, he would suddenly have a ‘worried’ expression on his face and will pull your arm to make you go towards him - he will probably pull your injured arm and will make it hurt more (idiot….)

Once he took a good look at your wound - he probably didn’t realise how bad it was - he would somewhat feel guilty for mocking you before using his reverse curse energy to heal you with a nonchalant expression on his face.

There would be no words exchanged between both you and Sukune - just pure silence and somewhat comfort between your guy’s presence.

“Don’t get hurt again, brat” - this is kind of between a demand and somewhat a promise that he wants you to make.

“Okay Sukuna,” and that response is somewhat enough for him because he knows that you know that you ain’t joking at all.

After healing your wound, he would uncharacteristically place a few kisses on your arms as if he’s asking for you to forgive him as well as help with the pain somehow.

Overall, he is mocking but also worried about you - but he doesn’t understand the feeling of ‘worrying’ but he is willing to act upon his emotion for you.