#2) i didn't make anything last year i'm p sure. yeah it was bc of back pain so fair but! getting back on track with our little tradition!

[jabeur]

ONE WORD TO DESCRIBE SONNY according to his teammates 🤍

for rahul @lee-kangin 💛💙

happy f o u r years of friendship rahul mio caro!!! i think i've said it all in my answer to your ask yesterday, but i just... love you so much and am so so so grateful to have met you and become your friend and to be able to call you my best friend! you're the most supportive, kindest, funniest, most talented, hard working, brilliant, sweetest, smartest person and it's always a pleasure and a fun time and so easy to talk with you. about anything, really. i feel like we've been through so much together, and i hope we're gonna be by each other's side for a lot more milestones, joys, (hopefully few) struggles, successes, spurs matches, interests and everything! you make my days better, you make the world a better, more fun place to live in. i will always be in your corner cheering you on and sending you cursed gifs and silly thoughts. love you, caro!! 🫶💛💙

[sapphicscholar]

the high school au posts aren't anything major, just people broadly saying that they're only for younger readers cause as you get further away it looses interest, but i tend to use it as a way to explore what i didn't get in high school cause of closeted and depressed and other factors (p sure i'm a bit younger than you, but the obgerfell case was after i graduated college so i'm decently removed from high school now) - hsau anon

Pt. 2: but i'm also very both/and with them, mostly depending on the writer, which, as i think about it, people further removed from high school tend to write the better ones i've read, cause they have the distance and growth to actually write high schoolers in a way younger people (myself included, i wrote so many as a kid) don't get cause they're in the midst of it and can't see the broader picture? idk what i'm trying to say now so imma stop - hsau anon

No, no, you're great! And I think that makes total sense - perspective is one hell of a writing aid haha! I suspect we're probably quite close to the same age, given Obgerfell timing, and yeah, it was a WEIRD time to be growing up as a gay kid bc we were still young-ish enough to see and appreciate (and even benefit from) some rapid legal changes right around college and young adulthood, but also we grew into something like political consciousness during the Bush era and all the reactionary christian right shit that accompanied the post-2001 moment, too.

And sometimes there is something really nice, cathartic even, about sinking into a high school or college AU where some of the pervasive homophobic shit that was in the air when I was that age (though particularly the more conservative area where I grew up and in the very catholic environment of my schools) doesn't have to be there even as all the heightened emotions and sense of self-discovery still are! Like...I'm so curious what I'd have been like if I was able to google "am I gay" without being fucking terrified or ask a girl out as casually as I hear my gay little cousin talk about doing these days! (Also, I realize in the brevity of my comments last post I made it sound like I kinda had my shit together in high school and wasn't a total disaster, when in actuality it took another 3 years for me to actually admit I was gay out loud and to myself, and I can see the ways that along the way I hurt a lot of women who I'd only see behind closed doors while denying that what we were doing was a real relationship)