#Everyday Utopia

[theadmiringbog]

I focused on work, motherhood, leadership, intimacy, and citizenship and suggested that adopting some socialist policies could more effectively promote women’s autonomy and happiness in the twenty-first century.

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skeptics and haters have always scoffed at visions of a better world, especially if they might benefit women.

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the “status quo bias.” People prefer things to stay the same so they don’t have to take responsibility for decisions that might potentially change things for the worse.

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Patrilineality denotes a set of social customs that confer primacy on the father’s family line.

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Patrilineality is why fathers still “give the bride away” to the bridegroom during the traditional Western wedding ceremony, and it’s why about 70 percent of American women in 2015 and 90 percent of British women in 2016 still took their husband’s name after tying the knot.

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Patrilocality means that a new bride must leave her family and move into her husband’s household, usually with or near his family (think of Elizabeth Bennet moving from Longbourn to Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice).

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our deeper history of patrilocality means that men are expected to be breadwinners because a patrilocal culture assumes that the father must be the head of the new household and therefore primarily responsible for its provisioning.

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and passionate friendships,

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the social psychologist Eli Finkel challenges the idea of the “all-or-nothing marriage,” highlighting the importance of having “other significant others” in our lives.

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“Imagination is more important than knowledge,” said Albert Einstein in 1931. “For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”47

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Instead of paying a premium for privacy, what would happen if we chose to reorganize our lives to maximize our social connectedness?

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co-living keeps rents low by increasing shared livable space. Bedrooms and sometimes small bathrooms remain private, but living rooms and dining rooms are communal. Building one large kitchen costs less than building dozens of individual kitchens and these savings get (at least theoretically) passed on to residents.

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in Paris, a group of twenty older women created a néo-béguinage called the Maison des Babayagas,

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In general, American cohousing often retains a more explicit commitment to autonomous, owner-occupied households, with fewer obligations for collective labor, distinguishing itself from the much derided idea of “communes” or “cults” that populate the American imagination of cooperative living.77 As of 2017, more than a hundred and fifty cohousing communities flourished across the United States, many of them like the community at Two Echo in Maine, where people built their own homes on a property that they purchased in common with their neighbors.

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Not everything was rosy; other kids who grew up in American cohousing communities complained about the lack of privacy, the constant gossip, as well as of the racial and economic homogeneity.

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Imagine the advantage if those we lived near agreed beforehand on a set of protocols to handle any future conflicts. In a cohousing community, residents move in knowing the rules and come with a commitment to a more collective ideal of living together.

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Some might find it easier to buy a shared house or property and live together with a group of close friends, Golden Girls style. In

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pairs. A growing number of women now (anonymously) admit that they regret having kids, despite the social outrage they face for challenging pervasive stereotypes about motherhood.

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By making early childcare a socially provided good, we can ensure that children born into all families—no matter what their economic situation—enjoy the education and the emotional attention necessary to build a more harmonious society.

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In my earlier chapter on housing, I looked specifically at various utopian visions for cohabitation with nonconsanguineous others and how living together with larger groups of people can bind us in quasi-familial types of relationships, or what some people call “chosen families.”

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While many of us freely join our finances and intermingle our possessions upon marriage or in order to demonstrate our status as domestic partners, this practice only rarely occurs with our friends, neighbors, classmates, or colleagues with whom we maintain clear boundaries.

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If a wealthy firstborn son died without leaving a male heir, his money and properties automatically transferred to his younger brother, and thereby regularly to the Church. This led the historian Laura Betzig to propose that part of the reason the Catholic Church strictly enforced monogamous marriage was to further its own financial interests.

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non-monogamy still

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For millennia, women and girls—who are not the source of the problem—have been cut off from their kin networks; bartered, traded, or sold; rendered dependent on their fathers and husbands by legal codes and religious injunctions depriving them of opportunities to support themselves; and prevented from exercising basic control over their own bodies, so that one class of men can hoard resources that might otherwise be shared. Once these underlying dynamics are exposed, it is only reasonable to begin wondering whether there might be a better way of doing things. This is why utopians have long considered the nuclear family an important site for challenging the political and economic structures that produce status and resource hierarchies in the first place.

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we have to ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions: Are we still perpetuating the monogamous nuclear family out of the illusion that biparental care is optimal, out of the fear of potential male violence or the perceived need for male resources, or because our religious traditions and state institutions define it as “normal”? Are we clinging to an outdated model of the family that served specific economic purposes because we are on autopilot? Or because we feel uncomfortable deviating from society’s expectations of how we should or shouldn’t arrange our most intimate lives? And what would a better kind of family look like anyway?

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August Bebel, who also viewed the monogamous nuclear family as a prison that trapped women by making them economically dependent on fathers, husbands, or sons.

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Rather than treating significant others as the sole source of affection, validation, emotional support, and sexual satisfaction, Kollontai hoped that young Soviets would collectively evolve beyond the need for socially imposed monogamy once they lived in a more equitable and cooperative society. Kollontai recognized the ubiquity of jealousy and possessiveness that people felt when they fell in love. Kollontai also accepted that infidelity, abandonment, and unrequited love caused people great emotional distress, and that passionate romantic love could drive people to do outrageous things. But she believed that people would be less wounded by betrayal or rejection if they received affection and support from a wider network of colleagues and friends.

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Kollontai wanted the Soviet state to promote a culture of robust platonic relationships. “Friendship is a more sociable emotion than sexual love,” Kollontai once said. “You can have many friends at a time, because there are different strings which vibrate in contact with different people.”

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In terms of our mating practices, we have a wide variety of potential models to choose from, models that all have long histories: including celibacy, serial monogamy, “complex marriage,” platonic pair bonding, polygamy, polyamory, and open non-monogamy.

consanguine and nonconsanguineous adults.

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An increasing number of single parents are also co-parenting with non-romantic partners, a trend often referred to as “platonic parenting.” Like platonic marriages, platonic parenting can involve two or more adults who agree to legally commit to raise a child together. Co-parents

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Daniela Cutas argues that platonic co-parenting or multi-parenting might actually be better for children because adults will tend to choose their potential co-parents more rationally than they choose their romantic partners.

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Militant Optimism

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“militant optimism,” a social and psychological commitment to imagining a better world and striving to make it real. Rather than thinking that historical processes lie beyond our control—that history happens to us—Bloch’s three-volume rumination on the politics of hope proposes that people actively produce history every day through the collective actions of those living through it as an ever-contingent present.

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In a similar way to how we collectively believe in paper money, many of us also embrace the fiction that the way we organize our private lives is the only way available to us. Even if we understand in the abstract about the pressures parents face, the strain that child-rearing places on romantic relationships, the high divorce rate, the prevalence of child abuse and intimate partner violence, and the very real possibilities of our own or our partner’s long-term unemployment, disability, or death, we replicate the domestic form that makes us the most vulnerable to these problems because it is convenient and because that’s what everyone expects of us.

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what matters most is taking the journey and considering the kinds of changes that might make our domestic lives less isolated, more flexible, and more ecologically sustainable: things like universal childcare, cooperative living, ethical education for self-reliance and critical thinking, shared property, and family expansionism. I’m not saying it’s easy to change these things, but the path to change lies in the continued struggle. As the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano once explained: “Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I’ll never reach it. So what’s the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking.”

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In terms of the architecture of our minds, hope is to the future what memory is to the past. If you have a good memory, you have the ability to remember specific details of events that occurred long ago.

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Hope, on the other hand, is the mental ability to imagine the future; to project forward a perception of what might come to pass and to orient yourself to those contingent possibilities.

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C. R. Snyder, one of the leading psychologists who did research in this area, proposed that “hope is defined as the perceived capability to derive pathways to desired goals, and motivate oneself via agency thinking to use those pathways.”

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people who are good at hoping are those who can set clear goals, can ponder multiple ways of attaining those goals, and muster the willpower to pursue them in the face of obstacles or the specter of disappointment.

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“hope training” can combat depression, anxiety, and stress.12 Most hope therapy originates from C. R. Snyder’s work and includes a variety of mental exercises such as hope mapping, guided daydreaming, hope journaling, and other techniques that allow people to clearly visualize specific goals (both great and small), to consider potential obstacles (both internal and external), and then unleash their imaginations to conjure up multiple pathways to how those obstacles might be overcome, not so different from the blue sky thinking that scientists do when faced with an intractable problem. One

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Hope differs from optimism because the latter is just a belief that everything will work out well, whereas hope is an active thought process that affirms our ability to influence the future course our lives or societies will take.

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This brings us to hope as an emotional state that exists on a spectrum from hopefulness to hopelessness. For Ernst Bloch, the opposites of hope are fear and anxiety.

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How many people in unhappy relationships stay because they are afraid of being alone? The fear of not meeting someone else overrides the possibility of meeting someone who might make them happier. Similarly, hopes for changing the world for the better get clobbered by fears of potentially making it worse.

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In a world of real or imagined scarcity, we arrange our domestic lives to protect ourselves against an uncertain future, hoarding as many resources and privileges as possible. In a society with less precarity and with resources more equitably distributed, we will worry less about hustling to make sure we have a bigger slice of the pie than those around us.

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If we lived in wider networks of people who shared their resources, we would become less precarious. Both processes are interdependent. It may be that we will geoengineer our way out of the climate crisis, and that one day we will all share unlimited, free solar power; enjoy universal basic incomes funded by our collective ownership of the robots and algorithms that will do most necessary labor; and live in real democratic societies where “material needs no longer exist,” but none of that is possible without fundamentally rethinking the basis upon which we organize our intimate lives to free us from selfish individualism.41

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This doesn’t mean that we will lose our individualism. It does mean that the ways we mark ourselves as different and interesting will be decoupled from how much those markers increase our value on competitive labor or marriage markets. Personal branding will be a thing of the past.

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Each one of us, right now, has the power to start building a different world, beginning with our own families and communities. There are countless things you can do to cultivate change in your daily life as it is. If you are in a monogamous pair, try to spend more time with your non-couple friends and make sure your partner does the same. Nurture all sorts of lateral relationships by finding novel ways to share with your neighbors and colleagues. Get back in touch with old friends. Chat with people at the grocery store. Daydream.

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If you have kids, let them spend more time with their grandparents, godparents, aunts, uncles, and family friends. Try to swap more childcare with other parents and create long-term parenting pods. Consider different housing arrangements or join a book club or some form of continuing adult education. And if you have the freedom and opportunity to do so, why not shake things up entirely? Start a free store or join an upcycling collective. Uproot and resettle in an intentional community or ecovillage. Explore different forms of cooperative living and working. Adopt a mononym. Try to meet new people way outside of your established circle of acquaintances. Make strangers into kin.

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We must imagine the future that we want, to think of it as a concrete goal, and consider the different pathways available to realize that future, no matter how outlandish or impossible this future might seem to us now.

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As the Dutch historian Rutger Bregman observes, embracing a positive vision for the future usually means “weathering a storm of ridicule. You’ll be called naive. Obtuse. Any weakness in your reasoning will be mercilessly exposed. Basically, it’s easier to be a cynic.”45 That is why we need to hope together: out loud, with each other, every day.

[torgawl]

i'm so in love with wrio. that man is the embodiment of mercy and compassion. he is so... human. despite the deep disdain for atrocious acts that hurt others, especially acts that remind him of his own pain and traumas, he is able to keep himself in check and hold on to his values. despite being so proactive in fixing the wrongdoings of people that actively harm those under his care and assuring that everyone is supported in the best way possible; despite knowing he could have not controlled other people's hearts once they were in too deep in their own sins, he still feels helpless and incompetent. he recognises he cannot fully empathise with those who have been hurt for he has not experienced what they have and he understands that some wounds might not be able to heal even with all the attention and efforts, or at least not that easily. and it pains him. his whole life he's been trying to protect others. all his hard work during his time at the fortress and taking over it's administration has granted him the power and resources to actually change lives in a more restorative way, with a bigger amplitude than just the people who he's close to. yet he's only human. and not everyone wishes to be saved. and he doesn't hold back from breaking his own rules if means he is guaranteeing the best outcome for the greater good, for the well being of all of those he's sworn to protect. and although he earned himself a respectable title and even got used to being referred to in that way, he doesn't see people at the fortress as innmates but as equals. he never stopped being the little boy that was sentenced to live over a decade of his life there. and he is so good at what he does and he is so successful at restoring people's hopes in life, at giving them a second chance to become who they want to be, that there's people who actually want to stay there. he is the literal personification of turning your own pain into goodness, into love. love for community and love for others. he found meaning in making the world a better place and i just think that's really fucking beautiful.

[dragpinkman]

Looking at places to live. I either go to Hatecrime, USA and live in an apartment surrounded by people who may want me dead or move to a state with laws that protect me and are safer to be different in and live in a cardboard box I share with a roommate

[lesbianaglaya]

from The Unidentified by Colin Dickey

[mihai-florescu]

Do u think eichi will plan to declare ensemble square as a sovereign state. Will he instate a government into ES so that it will be an independent country just for idols.

Ensemble Square is like the Vatican

[yandere--stuck]

T0uch-T0ne Telephone is a yan!Sn0rpy song send post <3

[driftwork]

This new year, these to be found and read in 2023

[nthflower]

I missed Kavita Rao again bring her back with fall of X. Kavita come back :(

[theyjustadmitthathuh]

If you’re wondering or looking for an excuse to try this out, I will be the first to vouch that radical feminism and living by those beliefs has increased my happiness 10 fold since I started. It was only a couple years ago that I was once again supporting Some Dude and trying to maintain friendships in which I came painfully second.

Within a year of cutting the leaches from my life, not creating any new male relationships, sustaining only those male relationships which were required (such as for work or a friend’s husband), and generally putting women first in every aspect of my life and giving their (and by virtue of theirs, my own) voice more weight than any man’s voice, I achieved more stability and genuine connection than I have ever had in my life.

By living as a model of what I believe, I have led other women to cut men from their lives beyond the truly necessary, and even though none of those women are radical feminists, they have all told me in detail about the remarkable change in their lives and how much happier they are now. Many of them have told me how excited they are to never date again now that they know what life could be like.

I went from the lowest point of my life, to supporting and housing other women as they move towards a better future. It blows my mind everyday.

You dont have to live in a woman only utopia to make pockets of paradise. You just have to put women first.

[ultrasharpy12345stuff]

SUCCESS STORY (manifesting)

OMFG you guys! I did it! I made it to my desired reality! I'm living my desired life!

All I did was decide it's done. More specifically, I just did Angel's fulfillment challenge (which you don't have to do). Everyday I just decided to live like I was in my desired reality right now as often as I could and whenever I wanted to.

If I vented, I vented. If I ranted I ranted. If I sabotaged my manifestation I just decided it wouldn't matter and that nothing would ruin my manifestation and everything was ok and fine.

And this is totally optional but I affirmed sometimes. I just did to remind myself that it was done.

My affirmations were:

-I'm living my desired life

-Nothing can ruin my manifestation

-I'm in my desired reality

-I'm in my desired reality in my penthouse in Tokyo

-I have all my desires

-The 3D conforms instantly

And it worked! And now I'm happy! I woke up today IN my penthouse in Tokyo! The view of the city is amazing. I checked my bank account and it turns out I'm super rich! Like I literally have BILLIONS of dollars. And it's like I always get millions of dollars out of nowhere! So it's like I get paid just to exist!

Also life in this reality is soooooooo different than on Earth. Like the people in the city are nice... but they aren't just humans beings. I'm seeing Japanese monsters walking around wearing uggs! I can also see Godzilla walking around in a place in the city it's so cool! (don't worry, they made a place in the city specifically for her)

I can also enter the void anytime I fall asleep. Like everytime I go to sleep I wake up IN the void state completely aware. I know this because I just decided I would go to sleep and I did! (one of the things I also manifested, to fall asleep instantly)

And guess what? I also revised my ENTIRE life. Like all the shitty, terrible things that happened to me and all the awful things I've done are GONE! They never happened. All the arguments I had with people on Youtube are gone, they never happened. I never met those people. All the people who I argued with on Discord, well I never argued with them. All the problems with my family are gone.

I also have new memories of me being in Highschool. It went great! I made some friends, they never got angry at me, I got to play my videogames, and I never had to deal with any kind of stress. And I also have my college degree even though I never went to college.

Also let me show you what I look like:

This body:

This is my hairstyle (except it's white colored):

This is my face (trigger warning: AI art, also dw I'm black):

And I'm like popular on Twitter. I'm as popular as @rariatoo. People follow my art and they love drawing my OCs and characters, it's so much fun. Plus I have a patreon and a redbubble. I get to make my OCs as plushies and stickers and ship them off.

And the best part is that there's no wars! No covid, no genocide in the Congo or Palestine, no racism, no problems. And there never will be, everything is fine! Its literally a Utopia.

Summary of what I manifested:

-Desired life & reality

-Freezing Time

-Revising entire life

-Different family (same soul but different looks (slightly) and better personality)

-Entering the void whenever I fall asleep and at will

-A butler friend who I can summon and make disappear at will (he's super nice and never have any problems, perfect personality, kinda shy, and we just had some woopie 🥵🤪)

-Magic (I can do LOTS of crazy stuff)

-Being able to shift realities at will

-Visiting my family through a magic door (my family lives in what I call, "Reality # 3 and I can visit them anytime I want)

-Spawning groceries and food whenever I want (I still go out, dw)

-Friends on discord and some IRL

-Money money monayyyyyyyyyyy

-Perfect health and mental health, no problems with my body

-Never getting yelled at ever again or abused/nobody gets abused/abuse doesn't exist. Yellers don't exist.

& a lot of other personal things

You guys got this! You can get your dream life! Go for it! *I didn't get my dream life yet, that's why the title reads:

"SUCCESS STORY (𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴)" When you put "manifesting in the title it means you haven't gotten your desires yet but you're doing it to help you live in the end. SO please don't be angry or offended.*

[thankskenpenders]

One question that's been haunting me since I binge-read most of the blog whilst doing testing is: in your opinion, what is the primary difference in the worlds of Archie Sonic and IDW Sonic? Obviously part of that is Penders' influence vs. Ian's influence, one's obviously based more on the games than the others, etc... but I feel like more than that, the two comics have a vastly different feel in terms of how their world generally just works in-universe. I'd like to know if this makes any sense, or if I'm just crazy.

I mean, the IDW world literally is the game world now, so yes, there are some pretty huge differences that are immediately apparent.

I'd say that where both incarnations of the Archie universe were much more of an "anything goes" sci-fi/fantasy world with all these different factions and kingdoms and whatnot, the IDW comics depict a more mundane modern/near-future setting that just so happens to have some highly stylized scenery and be inhabited by cartoon furries. (And off-screen humans, now that the two worlds have been reunited, I guess.)

I mean, it's right there in the names of the planet. Archie was set on the fantastical world of Mobius, but the IDW comics are just on a fictional version of Earth. Most of the sci-fi elements are Eggman's creations. There are still plenty of fantasy elements, but they tend to be hidden better. They're a thing for Sonic and his friends and enemies to discover on their adventures, not an everyday fact of life for the normies. In the Archie comics you had people living in medieval kingdoms and underwater societies and Mad Max wastelands and floating utopias and all this other stuff, but in the IDW comics they tend to live in pretty normal modern cities. I'd argue that this makes Sonic feel like more of a larger-than-life hero in the IDW comics, since he's always seeking out adventures in these corners of the world that the average person doesn't know about. Joe from Station Square's never been to somewhere like Sky Sanctuary or Little Planet

I know some Archie fans think this means the worldbuilding in IDW is "bad" or "boring" since there aren't a bunch of high-concept fantasy locations being introduced, but it's just different. The way they did things at Archie was fun, but this matches the vibe of the games much better

[blasphemousclaw]

ok I think I’ve played enough of the dlc where I feel like I can talk about it now and lift my spoilers embargo… overall I had SO much fun!! there’s so much to love about it and only a few things I didn’t like! more detailed thoughts under the cut:

Gameplay-wise, I thought almost every single boss was fun and rewarding to fight… my faves were Divine Beast Dancing Lion (best ost in the entire game by miles), Rellana, and Messmer. I also really loved the exploration?? My favorite kind of games are the ones where you have to sniff out every corner of the map in order to find hidden paths forward… the fact that you have to really poke around to find huge areas of the map, and how the traversal is so layered and non-linear, was THRILLING to me!! so much more interesting than the base game!!

Story-wise, what spoke to me the most was everything about the Hornsent… Belurat was my first legacy dungeon, and I was so wowed by the gorgeous unique architecture and the sheer desolation of the place that it really stayed with me. Both the environment and the Hornsent NPCs do such a great job of conveying the pain and tragedy of what happened to them, while at the same time, not simplifying them into some kind of faultless utopia… their society was proud and harsh and cruel (not just to others, but to their own people), but it was also bursting with art and culture, and it was home to everyday people who made delicious stew for their loved ones:

“Scorpion simmered in a black soup. Traditional meal of the hornsent. Once made with love by a certain elderly woman for the family table. Having long gone cold, this soup gives off a rank, sour smell.”

Some of my very favorite NPCS were the Hornsent Grandam and Hornsent (the guy); I thought their quests told such poignant stories about loss and the meaning of justice and revenge (I especially think Hornsent’s quest complements Marika’s story so well!!). The way they portrayed this civilization’s downfall was so beautiful and tragic!

Also the fact that the NPCs talk during combat is SO GOOD??? At first I was kind of annoyed that I had to summon Hornsent for Messmer’s boss fight to do his quest, but in the end I was so glad I did because his dialogue during and after the fight is incredible!! plus the NPCs talking to EACH OTHER during the Leda invasions?? and need I mention IGON… this is the real best new addition they made to the game

Now for the one big fat thing I didn’t like….

so I had actually heard about the leaks before playing the game and was like ok. if this is true theyre gonna have to really justify this to me because my initial impression is uhhh. lol??? And now that I can confidently say that I’ve combed the game top to bottom for pieces of this story, I really dont think the game succeeds at justifying Radahn’s appearance?

What I mean by “justify” is that, in my opinion, if you’re gonna bring back a fan-favorite character who was previously dead, and not have it come off as cheap fanservice, it needs to feel like this character’s presence matters — that they have the necessary buildup, that their appearance has a significant weight to it, and that their screentime fleshes them out as a person in a meaningful way. I don’t think the dlc achieves this at all with Radahn. Yes, his appearance is directly foreshadowed if you do Freyja and Ansbach’s quests, but it isn’t enough to just state in advance that he’ll show up… my problem is that, even with these NPCs’ dialogue, Radahn feels like a total non-person. We hear almost nothing about what his thoughts or feelings about this situation might’ve been (just Freyja’s assertion that he would have approved of “endless war, to invigorate the soul”). We get plenty of insight into Miquella’s character because there’s so much material about him, but there just isn’t the same investment into Radahn’s character, which makes his triumphant return fall really flat for me.

I think for me what would’ve appropriately justified Radahn returning is if Freyja gave us more details about who Radahn was as a commander during the Shattering… like, some jumping-off point to really get a sense of what his motivations might’ve been… OR, they could’ve even added another Redmane NPC with views on Radahn that conflict with Freyja’s (there is literally a minor boss, the Red Bear, who was stated to have been a Redmane!!!)… what’s still a mystery is why Malenia tried to kill Radahn, and why he resisted, and the DLC doesn’t give us any concrete information about Radahn’s actions or goals during the Shattering that would have caused this. They don’t have to spell it out for us!! I just needed SOME attempt to engage with Radahn’s character in the DLC material if they’re literally gonna bring him back from the dead!! Because as it stands, he shows up and fights us without a word or even an expression, like a glorified action figure!!! it’s LAME!!!!!

totally loved the DLC except for that part. anyway stan Elder Inquisitor Jori

[max1461]

I guess one of my original disagreements with rationalism is that I'm a proponent of a strong "nothing ever happens" heuristic, where like... ok, yeah, sometimes something changes. Sometimes they invent, you know, antibiotics. Or the internet. And that's great! But like, the everyday texture of human life I think stays mostly the same. Maybe the internet is a bigger shift than antibiotics were, but even then, people are still doing all the same old shit they've always been doing, seeking status, seeking approval from their peers, trying to make money, etc. It's just that now they're doing it on the internet. I think the average person, who is inclined to believe that climate change is literally about to kill everybody or that kids being on their phones will bring down civilization or whatever, is far too "anything could be happen"-brained. No! Not anything could happen! Nothing ever happens, everything is always the same as it's always been!

But like. A big thing in rationalism is that maybe superintelligent AI will be invented in the next decade or so and the world as we know it will be completely transformed. Maybe humanity will die out or it will be a post-singularity utopia or whatever, but crucially: everything will change and anything could happen. And, well, I'm not interested in getting into debates about this specific topic here. But my point is that this general "anything could happen" heuristic is bad for reasoning about the world. Nothing ever happens. Nothing ever changes. Everything is the same as it's always been.

[freshloveee]

𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒐𝒅𝒖𝒄𝒊𝒏𝒈…

𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒓!𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓

'hey alexa, play short n sweet'

portrayed as sabrina carpenter. bare vanilla by victoria's secret. cat lover. sweetest girl ever. lover girl. definition of adorable. pink bows everywhere. dirty humor. "that's what she said", "your weird for that", "pauseee". funny asf. aesthetic changes everyday.

𝒃𝒐𝒚𝒇𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒅!𝒄𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒔 𝒔𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒐𝒍𝒐

'hey alexa, play utopia'

portrayed as chris sturniolo (duh). dior sauvage. og fan of y/n. sweetest boy to exist. physical touch 24/7. literally dating his celeb crush. fresh love. wears y/n's merch all the time. "my girl", "hi babyyyy", "im so proud of you". a goofy guy. unhinged asf.

[yanderes-galore]

Hello! I'd like a Dredge (DBD) concept, please!

This is another case where the pairing is dubious as... this is yet another eldritch entity?

Yandere! The Dredge Concept

Pairing: Dubious

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Stalking, Violence, Blood, Murder, Cults, Dubious intentions towards Darling.

In its lore, The Dredge is considered an entity that feeds off dark thoughts.

So much so a cult was secretly dedicated to it, under the guise of Utopia.

The intentions this being would have towards you is... unreadable.

It is a being no one can quite comprehend.

Death by it may be a mercy.

But catching its attention? Having it follow you around like a bad omen?

An entirely new hell.

Perhaps you were once part of the Ottomarian cult due to a family member or maybe you went there alone.

This could be where you first encounter the creature.

You were once such an impressionable sheep, one that wanted to get away from the stresses of everyday life.

Instead, your fate was sealed in blood and rot.

Your time in the cult was fine at first, blindly listening to the teachings of Otto.

But it wasn't long before the creature, The Dredge... "The Druanee"... reared its ugly head before you.

Its presence always brings darkness.

When near you, it messes with your senses.

It lurks, it stalks, it watches you with unknown interest.

You are a member its taken special interest in.

Its presence always lingers before going back into the foggy swamp of the island.

You swear you're conjuring it.

Maybe you're thinking bad thoughts?

You need to be happy just as Otto says.

All smiles.

Yet fellow members keep disappearing.

There isn't much you can do to deny it.

Otto keeps you and other members up, punishing you all for conjuring such a beast.

You're not allowed to sleep, your head hurts, you feel guilt.

Yet things never stop... people keep dying....

The Dredge keeps following you as though you're attached.

You're so scared.

You're so tired.

Your feelings never go away, its like the being enjoys them.

You stay in your hut, scared to go outside.

But you know it's out there.

Things hit a peak when Otto kills a reporter in front of you all, only for the reporter to tell you and everyone it's all a lie.

Then everyone started killing each other.

You had run so fast away from the carnage.

The stench of blood and screams of violence make you ill.

You run into the woods, subconsciously fleeing to that damn swamp.

Only for The Dredge, the damned beast, to manifest from the mud.

Its form is incomprehensible, being an amalgamation of body parts, both human and animal.

Its glazed over eyes stare down at you, taking in your rapid breaths and tears.

It's covered in blood, it's the very thing that's been hunting you all down.

You're tired, so tired, you can't even bring yourself to scream anymore....

The beast comes closer, you find yourself laying in the mud to accept your death.

Weren't you brought here to die...?

You want it to be quick....

....

....

You aren't dead.

In fact, you aren't even tired anymore.

... are you dead?

You wake up in a realm that you couldn't even dream of.

A realm of darkness, a twisted house of many lockers and strange rooms in an even stranger land of red clouds.

You swear you hear footsteps, children laughing as you explore.

It's an amalgamation of locations....

Just like that damn beast.

Speaking of said beast, in this place, you feel a familiar feeling of darkness.

Was this its domain?

Or something else?

Regardless, your senses, your instincts...

They tell you to run.

You don't ignore such a call, running through the warped garden like your life depended on it.

Far as you know, it does.

There's times you catch glimpses of the beast.

Its malformed appearance stalks you through the darkness.

When you think you're safe, lockers burst open with many tiny hands.

You're in your own personal hell.

Is this a punishment?

Do you deserve this?

You can only run so far before the beast corners you.

Its gaping mouth drools, its bloodshot eyes trained on you.

You swear you hear screams.

Giggles...

Hellish sounds.

Then you wake up beside a campfire.

You pant in fear, only to see many other faces staring at you.

This cycle, this pattern, you get used to it.

You grow used to this realm, seeing all sorts of areas within it.

You pray you never see that creature ever again.

But nevertheless, you're sent back to that Garden of Joy...

More often than you should, really.

It's like some being forces you to encounter the monster.

To see it and its many hands.

To force you to lock lockers, just so it can break free.

Something likes to see you suffer.

Something likes to see the beast pleased.

You are its favorite prey.

You are its favorite to hunt.

The Dredge likes to see you suffer, it likes to see your pain.

It likes to see your fear.

It likes to see you beg.

You may be getting better at evading it, but that dreaded darkness consumes your senses.

There's no escape, ever since you came to that island with Otto your fate was sealed.

You are prey...

You are meant to be hunted... You belong to the beast... Forced into damnnation in this Garden of Joy.

[flowerprincesscherryblossom]

morning

pairing: Min Yoongi x Female Reader word count: 863 warnings: fluff AO3 A/N: Hope you like it and that you have a wonderful day wherever you are💜

The sun was slipping into the room through the blinds, the sound of birds chirping and everyday life being heard from outside, the clock on the nightstand ticking by - all the signs that you should probably get up and start the day where there, handed to you on a silver platter.

But in the moment, you didn't care, because the sight you had woken up to was something worth delaying everything.

Yoongi was laying on his back with you curled up to him, your arms wrapped around his waist and his hand on your hip, your legs tangled with his thigh pressing against your center.

His expression was one of peace with little snores escaping him, almost like he hadn't come home at almost two in the morning and hadn't to leave in a few short hours.

You stood there motionless, almost scared that the smallest movement from you would disturb this image of utopia, simply staring at him wishing you could see this side of him more often.

You knew you had to get up eventually, you had nothing to do and nowhere to be today but he did, and even if sometimes all you wanted was for him to stay, you knew he would never give up on his dream, especially for you.

Sometimes, when alone, you would wonder if you were being as selfish as you thought you were, demanding just a speck of his attention and probably adding more stress to an already stressful life. You were scared that one day he would leave you because of that, a girl like you wouldn't be hard to find when compared to his job - thoughts like this were hard to quiet down when he wasn't there to assure you of his love.

With a sigh you took one last look at him before slowly and carefully unwrapping your arms and getting up, fixing the covers on your side and making sure he was still sleeping before exiting your bedroom and heading towards the kitchen to start breakfast.

You started making coffee for the both of you, black for him and yours with milk and sugar, taking both of your mugs from the cabinets. Normally coffee was the only meal shared between the two of you before he left for work and came back when you were already asleep. Good thing too, because there were some days where you couldn't stomach anything in the morning and you didn't want Yoongi to worry about you skipping meals.

You didn't even hear him get up until you felt arms wrap around your waist, pulling you towards his chest and his lips pressing pecks on your shoulder.

You turned around to give him a proper good morning but before you could utter a single word he lifted you up and put you on his shoulder and started walking back to the bedroom. You tried to wiggle out of his grip but that only resulted in his hand smacking your left cheek.

He dropped you onto the bed, got on it pulling the covers over the both of you and pulled your body against his before you got a chance to complain. You were facing each other, his eyes closed and a pout on his face and you passing your fingers through his hair.

"What was that about?" you said trying to contain your laughter, you loved seeing this side of him so much.

"My cuddle toy disappeared and I couldn't sleep." his brows furrowed and you couldn't help but let out a couple of giggles. He looked like such a cold and unreachable person but in reality, he was just a big soft baby. At your reaction, his brows furrowed even more if that was possible, but he still kept his eyes closed."It's not funny, I need my sleep."

You chuckled for a couple more minutes before letting the room fall into silence, his expression falling back into calmness. You stayed like that for a while, your hand on his hair and his on your hips, appreciating the rare occasion where Yoongi belonged to you and there was nothing else to take him away.

But unfortunately, nothing lasts forever.

"Baby," you wrapped your arms around him, laying your head on his shoulder and nuzzling his neck with your nose, he would never admit it but you knew he loved waking up like that. "You need to get up or you're gonna be late."

"Day off," he mumbled sleepily but opening his eyes and putting a few strands of hair behind your ear. "I just want to sleep right now and for that, I need you here with me."

You lifted your head to stare at him, surprise could be read in your eyes. He found your expression quite amusing and proceeded to press his lips against yours. It took a few seconds for the shock of this new information to pass but eventually, you reciprocated, your lips molding against one another. Your hands traveled to his neck, pulling him closer and deepening the kiss, his tongue intertwining with yours and tightening the grip on your hips.

You missed this. You missed him so much.