#I always stan the biggest nerds

[monstrousmuse]

Some of my favourite excerpts from the second part of the interview:

“We know psychologically that Ford is not travelling this path alone. He’s travelling it with his Muse, who he has a very complex and fucked up relationship with. And even in Ford’s private thoughts, he would not say ‘I’m alone’, he would say ‘oh, I have a very important relationship in my life with Bill, but I don’t have a friend. (…) Ford is not alone in his mind, even though he is extraordinarily alone.”

…

“The things that Ford said as McGucket left weren't "I value you and I'm sorry we have a difference of opinion," it was "get the hell out of here you hillbilly, you don't understand science!" (…) He was really cruel to McGucket. He was cold to him, and they did not talk for thirty more years after that.(…) But we knew that if McGucket created the memory gun after their break up, there could be no explanation of it in the journal. (…) And he so wants to please Ford. (…) McGucket doesn't really know what's going on, but he's internalizing and thinking, "I just need to be a better partner.’”

…

“To me, the greatest compliment that I can receive as a creator is somebody saying "this resonated with me." Our goal is to make characters that have a human truth in them (…) My feeling is that the customer is always right. Like, if the character is gay to you, they're gay. (…) That's sort of the magic of fiction.. (…) That's the hope. My feeling is that if we do our job, people feel a truth and they connect to it.”

…

“Ford was a very challenging character to conceive. (…) We knew his job narratively was to give Stan the biggest chip on his shoulder that we could think of. (…) He has to be smarter than Stan. He has to be fitter, and better at fighting than Stan too. He's not gonna be some little shrinking nerd. It would be a pretty fair fight between him and Stan (…) Ford has the formal training, and Stan just has the madness.”

“You know the damage someone's family has done to them by all of their weird tics and behaviors. (….) Who is the character who would result in Stan being this hurt and needy and mad and also longing?”

“We came up with this guy who kinda seemed too perfect. He's aloof, and distant, and he's too perfect. And it's like, "oh, I think he's also aloof and distant from himself." (…) I think he is deeply, deeply hiding from his real feelings about things, because at some point early on, he decided that he could run from hurt by achievement and by creation, and has dug that hole so deep that he has no relationships. He doesn't have friendships, he doesn't have romantic relationships, he is someone trapped in a tower of his own mind and estranged.”

“Ford shows none of that. He has sublimated himself romantically so, so deeply. (…) I really thought of Ford kind of like Tesla in that realm.”

-Alex Hirsch, 2023

…

part one

[sweetheartsaku]

(BLLK) wherever u go i won't be far to follow

𝜗𝜚 BLUE LOCK VARIOUS: LILLIES.

a/n: [fem!reader] GAIS GAIS GAIS dew we fw the bllk posts 🤤it seems yes!!!!!! sorry for the tag !!@infpdoll @amelielovess for u<3

— characters: chigiri, rin, bachira

part one ! ♡ isagi, kunigami, nagi, reo

chigiri hyoma ; H.S.K.T - leehi, wonstein

can we imagine him sitting on the bathroom counter as you gently massage the jade roller across his face after a face mask. his hair is freshly washed (you brushed it 100 times on each side) so the room smells like peony and coconut, shower is foggy and little bits of his crimson baby hairs seeping out of his headband (〃´𓎟`〃) don't forget to kiss his forehead!!!!!!!!

gives the best?? massages???? maybe it's because of his high maintenance leg, used to doing it on himself so when you groan in pain after a scenic date, he most definitely wastes no time rubbing all the sore out of your legs

PEAK of his day is when he first wakes up and you guys brush your teeth next to each other, he knows sooner or later he'll be under your grasp as your thumb lightly rubs under his eye, rubbing away all excess sleep while your other hand runs through his hair.

secret kpop stan chigiri... totally not self-projecting HUH WHAT WHO SAID THAT what is a kpop stan uhm ! is a gg stan, gets defensive when someone discredits his faves and most DEFO a kiss of life (julie biased), le serrafim (sakura biased) and itzy (yuna biased) fan. probably owns a twt fan acc, i said what i said 🥰

by the way, don't tell him you notice when blush graces his face when you delicately graze the side of your finger across his lashes.

rin itoshi ; soft spot - keshi

rin itoshi who goes completely quiet when it comes to you. not because he secretly doesn't like you or anything, but quite the opposite (=´∇｀=) ! when he sees you, he's completely speechless and ends up staring at the girl who just stole his heart (for an uncomfortably large amount of time). when he sees almost anybody, he always has some sort of venom to spit but when he sees you, he can barely find any words for love 🥹

FACE MASK VICTIM NO.2 !!!!! lowkey flinches a little (affectionate) because he more used to the hot eye masks he gets at the convenience store, when the cold peach mask makes contact with his face, he gets a lil shiver nd' it's the cutest thing

idc how generic i sound HORROR MOVIE DATES!!!!!!!! i'm so here for horror nerd rin, i find it the cutest thing on earth and i just just just. waiter waiter one glass of rin please ! if you're scared (me), he tells you when there's a jump scare and covers your eyes when there's gore or when there's a freakazoid on screen

loves to sit in silence and play horror games too, whether it be the bathhouse, platform 8, as long as it's with you <3 secret valo/splatoon sweat

face scrunch when you push his bangs back n' give him a peck at the crown of his hair (;´□｀)/! not a physically affectionate guy but with instincts as sharp as his you wonder why he just lets you pepper his face with kisses...

baby face.

bachira meguru ; never ever getting rid of me - waitress, the musical

HUGS FROM BEHIND!!!🥹 puts his hands in front of your eyes and tells you to "guess who!!!" but not in a super senior way but more like a "y/nie y/nie guess who guess who!!!!!" way. he's such a cutie patoot i'm dead

music taste range is INSANNEEE biggest fan of babymetal, knows every lyric to hitorie or 2019 genre gacha sabrina carpenter die-hard, white girl radio enjoyer i don't make the rules (me too bachira, me too.)

LOCKS IN AT THE ARCADE (he hasn't won anything yet. key word YET!!). his attention span per machine is very limited but tries his absolute hardest into getting a plush he noticed your eyes wouldn't stray from and stays there for a while, persuaded he's guaranteed to get it. "look, look y/n!!! it's right there i'm sure i can get it. one more try?" same with gachapons. how can you not love this man

PDA lowkey isn't a thing and tackles you when he feels fit. loves to spin you around and does not give a damn if you have two left feet, an unconditional loverboy and is just the cutest (precious) (ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)ꕤ.ﾟ

i am going to bake him into a cupcake.

matching absolutely everything!!! keychains, exchanged shoe laces, patches, bracelets. on the topic of fashion he love love loves when you wear things that are a little odd (this is for the fashion girlies) like mismatching tights, oddly coloured charms on necklaces and/or chunky glasses :3

finds minion facebook memes and laughs.

[ceaselesswatchersspecialboy]

Do the twins ever get attached to stanfraud? Does bill get attached to them too? what is their relationship like? and what is their immediate reaction to finding out everything was a lie -- first impressions? GAAHH I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS i'm ur biggest fan bro

Thank you so much!! It really means a lot that people are enjoying my madness this much!

It’s funny because earlier I was actually doodling him and the twins!

He absolutely gets attached and they get attached in return. While their initial introduction to him is very rocky, they come to enjoy his quirks and unusual interests, especially once Dipper puts together he was the author, and he regularly supervises them on adventures, mainly because Stan asked him too, but also because it’s strangely fun. He will repeatedly claim he hasn’t gone soft to Stan, but then Stan will find him fast asleep with the twins curled up against him, or he’ll catch him helping the twins in their respective Dipper and Mabel’s guide videos. He also likes Mabel Juice! Mabel won’t take his suggestion of adding eyeballs though. Alas.

His feelings towards them are made complicated by his own denial. He doesn’t like the idea that he’s changed much at all, and these new doubts he’s experiencing about his original plans are not thoughts he’s willing to entertain for long. He gets snappy when Stan tries to reassure him it’s okay that he cares, because he doesn’t care, he’s just… playing a role. That’s all. It’s all one big lie. He can do lies. But that doesn’t really explain the genuine panic he experiences when Dipper and Mabel are in danger, and how quickly he jumps in to protect them nor does it explain the fuzzy feeling in his chest when Mabel knits him a sweater.

He’s not the same as he was thirty years ago. That’s a fact. And thirty years was once just a blip for him, but this has felt like he’s lived a whole new life.

And on the flip side, Dipper and Mabel care a lot too. He’s off-putting and he’s strange and he says some things that imply he may have committed murder and gotten away with it, but they like being around him. It isn’t always perfect, same as it is with Stan, but the rougher patches don’t tend to last, and they reconcile by the end of the day (although, Bill is usually incapable of saying sorry verbally and shows his apology through actions instead).

Dipper for one hasn’t really had anyone he can just ramble about nerd stuff with. Bill can actually keep up with Dipper, and they both find themselves enjoying the debate they have about inter dimensional travel, or what sort of haunting would be the most annoying to deal with. Dipper does sometimes catch his uncle looking at him strangely though, almost as though he’s seeing right through Dipper and looking at someone else, but he blinks and the odd look is gone, so he must have imagined it.

Bill does sometimes push Dipper’s buttons, of course, and never gives him direct answers, usually making him look for the answer himself, or read between the lines, which Dipper comes to appreciate as it, so he claims, trains his mind for mysteries. They have a very fun back and forth, honestly. Dipper thinks Stanfraud is the coolest despite all the annoyances, and he really does try his best to impress him.

Mabel meanwhile is just her usual bundle of energy, and charms her great uncle by involving him in her unhinged hijinks, and showing him the art of glitter bombing. She meets him where he’s at! Even though he can sometimes be a little extreme, even for her, she pushes herself out of her comfort zone, mainly because of what Stan told her, about how Ford lost his mind while alone. Well, she can’t have that! She makes a real effort trying to understand him, and why he thinks the way he does.

He also weirdly gives her some good advice whenever Pacifica tries to bring her down, and Mabel is both comforted and inspired by how weird he is, even in his old age. He never lets anyone shame him out of it, and he encourages Mabel to just “Be weird! Your fleshbag life is short! Why waste it caring what lesser skin puppets think?”

Bill unknowingly allows both Dipper and Mabel to feel more comfortable in themselves because of how unapologetically ‘him’ he is.

Sorry if this is messy, by the way, I’m just writing my thoughts as I go along.

Anywho, I think all of this makes finding out everything was a lie very hard hitting for them. Mabel tries to rationalise it, that sure, maybe he wasn’t really their Grunkle, but he still loved them like he was, and they loved him like a Grunkle, meanwhile Dipper reacts very negatively, because he really thought he had found someone like him, someone he confided a lot in, and now he thinks he made the wrong choice, that he was an idiot.

And Stan lied too. He admits the biggest mistake he made was not telling them, but it’s too late for that now.

The one bright side, if you can call it that, is Stan and Bill do tell them before they get Ford back. They think they’ve finally found the way to do it, and Stan wants the kids to know before they try it, give them time to process.

Okay I’ll end there for now! Thank you so much again!

[hotxcheeto]

Hi, can u write a domestic, fluffy, sweet headcannon about things ellie would do with the reader after coming back from work? I would love that<3

Biggest fan...

━ 𝐃𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐂 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍𝐒 𝐖/ 𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐄

𝙥𝙖𝙞𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜(𝙨) - Ellie Williams x G/N!reader

𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨 - Cursing? It's fluffy

𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙤𝙛𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙 ? - Yeah/Nope

𝙖𝙪𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙧'𝙨 𝙣𝙤𝙩𝙚 - HAPPY HOLIDAYSSSSSS!! THANK YOU SM FOR 4000 FOLLOWERS I LOVE YOU ALL!! even if i post every 2 months <3

Ellie loves her job, she does

She just hates working

She'd rather be at home, with you, her game controller and whatever takeout you both picked for that night

And so when the end of the day rolls around, she gets in her car and drives home

Sometimes she'll surprise you with food if she knows you're having a rough day, or sometimes she'll just get it to get it

Then she's showing up with a bag in hand and a tired face and you know she's ready to eat and sleep

On regular days though, she loves coming home and walking in to you making dinner for the both of you

The smell of coming from the kitchen mixed with your humming?

She's down baddddddd

Astronomically

To the moon and back

She always did want to be an astronaut

But she'll walk in, and you'll know because she throws her shit more than half the time before picking it back up with a sigh

Then she wanders over to you despite definitely needing a shower but you never mind because she'll wrap her arms around your waist and hide her face in your neck

But the moment she cements this, it's impossible to get her off

Like I mean impossible

Sometimes she'll ramble at this stage of the night because she has a lot to say about her day and she doesn't want to forget before she tells you

So she'll just unload, all of it, while you're stirring soup or something

Oh and you love her but this girl can YAP

certified yapper

But you don't mind cause you haven't seen her all day so you just let her go

Then when she decides she's had enough, she'll try to cuddle on you again while you're cooking and you have to make her go and shower

It's sweet until you realize she's sweaty so off you make her go

You can hear her mumbling to herself as she walks away if you listen

More often than not she showers hella fast and is back out in the same koala position as before if the food isn't done

But she doesn't talk anymore

Silence besides your humming or your talking

And she very much prefers it that way because she loves the sound of your voice

And when you both sit down to eat she sits across from you when she's in a chatty mood and next to you when she's that tired she can barely keep her head up

She has those days when she stays up way too late despite you yelling at her

Take her phone, she'll be mad for five minutes then be fine after

the og ipad kid

Anyhow... after y'all eat, depending on how tired you both are, it's couch time

That's when you lay there and contemplate life together <3

It's TV show and movie timeeeeeeee

She's a game of thrones nerd

hated the ending too

Dany stan fr fr

Cause she's hot

Y'all are stuck to that couch until bed time

She cuddles bad, ur practically glued together for the entirety of the night

When it's skincare time she watches you

Same if you wear make up, she stares

0-0

It's just cause she finds you mesmerizing, until you make her wash her face too and put 48938490238 more products after

Then she pouts as you put them on her cause she wants to go to bed

But she gets happier once you're laying down and she's wrapped so far around you, you're sure she could be a contortionist if she decided to quit her day job

But she's a sweetie <3

[utarinho-bonjour]

my tsats 2 expectations!

Nico looking healthier: At the end of tsats1 we see him thinking "how could i not eat when it gives so much pleasure?" or smt like that. I can see him improving significantly his eating habits and at least gaining a bit of muscular mass (is that how we put it?), which will make him more powerful, since normally eating a grape a day might reduce your necromancy powers.

Nico being cute: we can absolutely expect that he will be insufferable next to will in this book. Like, he was already being the cringiest nerd ever at the first book, where he still had a LOT of emotional limitations, he wouldnt let go of will, always touching him and showing absurd amounts of affection through his touch. We can expect him being a little shit even more now that he seems to be getting more and more comfortable with wills touch.

TEENAGER COCOA PUFFS: (god i love this one). I think it could be something like: the more nico grows comfortable with aspects of his trauma, the more the cocoa puffs grow. The more he accepts and deals with shame, the more the little ball of darkness grows until it actually evolves as something with a physical form. I remember seeing something about the cocoapuffs taking animal forms as they grow and i LOVE this concept. Imagine some monster or deity trying to taunt nico with shame or envy and this teenager sized bear shows up from the darkness. God, i cant, nico is the coolest character EVER.

COCOA PUFFS: i like the concept of them also growing independet, as much as the idea of some little balls of darkness following nico is very dear to me, i also like the idea of them exploring the world or evolving as creatures too. They would be independent creatures but as an extention of nico, they have their own personalities, connected with their respective trauma but you can see the action part being similar to nicos.

COCOA PERSONALITIES: Shame being shy but when cornered they get angry and defensive. Envy being full of pride and "comunicative" but when triggered they get quiet and cold.

NICO GETTING HADES' BLESSING: i think one of the things most of the nico stans have in common is an absurd love for his demonstrations of power 🙂‍↕️. The thing with hades' blessing is: we dont know what it is, up to this point we havent seen anyone get it and deal with it yet, which is very cool because we can overpower it on our heads 🤭! I THINK, the hades blessing would act to counter the biggest weakness of most (ig) children of hades, it would waste way less energy. Of course it would seem sick, like making nico actually look and perform as a creature of the underworld, him getting horns, maybe? nico getting black eyes? his skin turning grey? his hair turning white? nico having less form? being completelly engulfed by shadows? God i loooove fanservice, lets go rick and mark yall have one job, and it is to make nico look like a dragon ball transformation, so we can look at it and think "sick". I like to think that his fighting style at this state merges with his powers, going for a kick at his oponents head then suddenly apearing behind them? sick. stealing the life of his oponents? killing them while healing himself from it? sick. getting shadows with venon around him? absolutely sick.

NICO BEING GOOD AT GAMES: i love gamer nico. It matches his personality soo well. That is like the best remedy to insomnia, right? Im not really a gamer myself aside from competitive online games, and i cant really imagine nico playing league (ew), but i could see him ending resident evil 7 in a night. Playing tomb raider? yes! I could see him playing most adventure, suspense and horror games, and the thing is: bitch can play the most gut wrenching games with the scariest jump scares EVER, and he wouldnt even flinch. on the other side, him getting easily scared by anything on this games would also be super funny. Bitch screaming like a prey runing from a lion while playing dbd. He went to tartarus and is dissolving by a jumpscare? funniest concept ever.

NICO LOOKING HANDSOME: and way more intimidating. With some sun, actually being happy for once, better eating habits and accepting himself i think he would look quite good. I see him now with very black hair and very black doe eyes, a full mouth and a very straight and a bit too big nose, a bony face shape and a little bit of eyebags. I like to think he still has these features but his face is really symetrical and his skin makes him look like a doll, his lips and beautifull but his eyes, even though they look beautiful, the look is haunting, and make you need to look away. He looks like he's reading your mind, but he also looks so handsome you want to keep looking. I think he has long lashes too, and his scar only makes him more intimidating, it is the only not symetrical thing on his face and it makes him stand out. He has a cold look in his eyes, you never know what he is thinking (aside from will that reads him like a book), and the fact that he is constantly getting healthier and more handsome is very haunting.

NICO ACCEPTING HIS GOOD PARTS AND WILL ACCEPTING HIS BAD PARTS: I think this one is my favorite so far, Nico being able to sustain himself in a fight, stealing life from oponents (i loooove this one), or simply learning how to heal because he understands that death and life are the same thing. While Will understands that not all lives are meant to be saved, and to save more lives it might take some difficult choices like not saving others. It might make him get the hability of necrosing things just like nico, or (like canon) giving diseases just like he heals.

thats it for now! english is not my first language! be kind.

[headless609]

Christmas List on What I Wish for in SP S:27 next year

1.) I want the focus to be with the boys. I know I am not the only fan that is sick of the Tegridy Farms seasons. Randy is cool but not as the main character. I want to see some school drama such as crushes, the cheese touch game, role playing and more. idk I want the kids to act like kids and have fun (while of course having their games be blown out of proportion) 

2.) While I am not personally a Style shipper I have noticed that Kyle and Stan have been quite distant in the past seasons. In the End Of Obesity special Kyle rarely interacts w/ Stan, instead focusing purely on Cartman’s health and feelings. In the next season I hope Trey and Matt possibly focus on their friendship . I don’t have a clear opinion on what I want as a solution but I think some ideas would either them becoming friends again or distancing even more ( and the two trying to find new super best friends : Stan with either Tolkien, Kenny or Butters and Kyle with Cartman, Tolkien or Kenny(?) While it would be sad it would be an interesting arc for the season.

3.) I want more of the girls. I love Wendy and the other girls. While I do believe they are a little satirized (due to Matt and Trey both being guys) I do hope we could see more of them as regular 4th grade girls rather then being used as plot point for the boys to be crushing on. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the ep Bebes Boobs Destroy Society, but by just looking at the title you can tell where I am coming from. So, more girls being girls that have stories that don’t always have to link back to a crush on a boy. 

4.) OK, this one is is kinda self indulgent but I want to see Cartman be in drag again. I want Bad Irene. Bonus if Bad Irene sings a Lady Gaga song like Bad Romance or Oops I Did It Again by Britney Spears. I love that Cartman canon likes pop music and I want to see more of that in the next season.

5.) Now for this one I have actually read and seen fans have this sick headcannon and I wouldn’t mind it being cannon either. Basically, Liane and Clyde’s dad get together. Then Cartman and Clyde become like brothers. I really like this and I think it would be kewl if they argued on who was the older brother. An alternative is that instead of Clyde, Scott Tenorman starts living with Cartman. The sibling rivalry would be crazy and so funny. I think Trey and Matt could push these two on how far they could go to enact revenge. 

6.) This one may seem very random but I want a Liane Cartman backstory. I want to know what made her into the towns biggest wh*r3. She obviously must have had some traumatic event and I kinda want it to be a tragic love story. Maybe her lover was killed and she soon fell into drug abuse and selling her body. How South Park treated her and just how she started getting her redemption arc in the more recent seasons. If we’re to format this as an episode I would want it to be Liane telling Cartman a bedtime story (this is kinda an excuse to see them getting along but whateva it’s cute so idc) 

7.) I need more Kenny. PLEASE 🙏 Kenny has been sidelined for SOO LONG! Any story will do: him and butters? Awesome! Him and Cartman? Hell yeah! Him and Karen? AAAAASAAAASAAAHSHSJBEBFJDDJJDEJ PLEASE THEY’RE SO CUTEEE 💗

 8.) Sorry for the last one, ok but talking about more focus on character’s, I kinda want a focus on the pets. Y’ know like Sparky, Mr Kitty and Kyle’s Elephant that did it with Cartman’s pig (that ep was … something to say the least) Anyways, I love the pets they are cute and I want more, thank you (and Craig’s Guinea pig  Stripes) 

9.) Lore drops from characters will be awesome. Like, it dosent just have to be Liane (as I mentioned before) I wouldn’t mind an ep on how Gerald and Sheila fell in love, it would be a really cute nerd x girl boss storyline

10.) …jersey kyle. IDK, Kyle being a brash, loud asshole is straight gold. I need him to snap and start calling everyone muff  cabbage (+ jersey kyle meets bad Irene and he falls head over heels… WHO SAID THAT??) 

Anyways that’s my list. I actually really hope other people do this trend to cause I wanna see what good ideas or wants y’all want from season 27 >:)

[jestersprivilegee]

Always

thomas j. x reader

Modern, soulmate au

Warnings: swearing, second hand embarrassment and rushed writing

Soulmates are tied by having the song of whatever they’re listening to written on your wrist. So what happens when you realize your soulmate is the man you deemed ignorant, annoying, and conceited?

Wc: 5.8k

Notes: Stan marsh mentioned??!

No. 1 Party Anthem — Arctic Monkeys

That’s what your soulmate was currently listening to. You’d know because the words were inked on your skin. They’d change in a few minutes, when the song came to an end.

But that’s how it worked with soulmates. Whatever music they were listening to would be written on your left wrist, then erase out into the next song. Sometimes you’d have the emptiness of bare skin, but your soulmate seemed to really be into music. His taste varied from all sorts of genres—country to rock to death metal, and the occasional Chappell Roan or Laufey thrown in there.

Any time you were bored, you’d compile his songs into a Spotify playlist titled “my love” where you’d listen to his songs and dream of him. It was over fifty hours long. Maybe he listened to so much music so that whenever he met you, he’d know. You tried to do the same, but you’re the type of person to listen to the same songs on repeat until you find new ones.

You sighed, gently running your right hand over your left wrist where the words were. It was your first day of college, and you couldn’t help but wonder if this was when you’d meet him.

It was colder than you predicted, so you armored up with an oversized grandpa sweater and leggings. It covered up your soulmate’s song, but you figured you’d know when you met them. People reported feeling a pull to their destined lover.

After trudging through the crowded campus and struggling to find your lecture hall, you eventually entered introduction to philosophy.

Ten minutes late.

Thankfully, the professor didn’t seem to mind (or even notice you for that matter) and you humbly snagged a seat at the top row. The guy next to you gave you a nasty side eye, one-hundred percent judging you for being slightly late.

You gave him a dirty look back and tried to catch up with what Professor Marsh was saying. He seemed to be going on about the syllabus and what his teaching would entail. He yapped a little more, but you were still hung up on the fact you already managed to harbor stares from the curly haired man sitting mere inches from you.

Professor Marsh stopped to pass out a paper you weren’t entirely sure what for, and encouraged the class to talk with those around you. He emphasized becoming acquainted with your neighbors because they’re who you’ll be debating on different philosophical views, and a group discussion would be necessary for your grade in this class.

Begrudgingly, you glanced at the guy next to you. He was the only person sitting near you, save for the person in front of you already in conversation.

“Hello.” You said, forcing a sweet tone. His eyes held amusement as he studied you.

“So you’re just gonna act like you didn’t death stare me earlier?” When he spoke, an unexpected southern accent filled his words.

You scoffed, rolling your eyes. “As if you didn’t side eye me. C’mon, man, I’m just trying to make friendly conversation.”

“Are you always late to your classes?” He tilts his head, a stupid smirk playing on his lips.

“In my defense, this campus is huge and this is the first time I’ve been late to a class ever. I am a rule follower through and through.” You pledge your hand up.

“Ah, okay, so you’re the biggest nerd in here. Got it.”

“Wh—you can’t make impractical assumptions like that. You don’t know anything about me.” You huffed, a frown spreading on your face.

His eyebrows shot up as he gave you a pointed look. “You’re wearin’ a grandpa sweater. I don’t need to know anythin’ to figure you were probably a hall monitor.”

Lucky guess, you deduced. So what if you were that good of a student that admin appointed you a hall monitor? That’s nothing to be ashamed of. And he was wearing an ugly magenta sweater, anyway, so he has no room to talk. Despite that, your cheeks grew warm and you squirmed uncomfortably, glancing at Professor Marsh to see when he would finally reach your row.

“Grandpa sweaters are cute,” you say, “and you seem like the type to be that loser who was always in detention, anyway.”

He gave you a bored stare. “That the best you got? Seriously, grandpa, you gotta think quicker than that.”

“Don’t call me grandpa,” you snapped. He barked out an airy laugh.

“Then tell me your name.”

“Why should I?” You frowned deeper. “All you’ve done is belittle me the moment I stepped into class.”

“Because I want to know who I’m gonna be spendin’ the rest of this semester sitting by.” He deadpanned.

“Who said I’ll be sitting here tomorrow?”

“Trust me, sweetheart, you’ll be sitting here. I’m way too charming for anyone not to.” He grinned, causing an extreme eye roll on your behalf.

“How conceited of you,” you scoffed, narrowing your eyes at him.

“If conceited is synonymous with incredibly hot and captivating, sure.” His smirk widened, and you swore in that moment, you could’ve hurt a man. You seriously considered it, but bit those thoughts down since it was the first day.

“Keyword: if.” Your jaw tightened.

He was enjoying this way too much. The boisterous laughter and arrogant smile said so.

“So your name?”

“Up yours, asshole.” You snarled. He didn’t respond. Instead, his triumphant smirk grew wider, his whole face lit up in a beaming glow. You followed where his eyes led, which was to a presence behind you.

“I’m glad you took my advice on becoming acquaintances with your peers,” Professor Marsh said. A small stack of papers was held in his hands. You winced, glaring at the annoying stranger next to you.

“I’m sorry, Professor, he—“

“Don’t apologize. I’m sure you had a perfectly good reason to refer to your classmate as a derogatory name,” he sassed, “next time, please refrain from calling others asshole.”

He handed the paper to you and another to the absolute dickwad sitting next to you. You watched Professor Marsh retreat to his desk, speechless from what the hell just happened.

“So I’m assuming I don’t get to know your name?”

His grating voice brought your attention back to him. You turned sharply, a murderous intent in your eyes.

“You.” A seething glare pierced through him. “You got me in trouble, you motherfu—“

“Ah, you can’t say no-no words,” he teased, holding up a hand. God, you wanted so badly to rip that cocky smirk from him. It genuinely made your blood boil, and your hatred almost pulled you to him. Probably because it wanted you to kick the shit out of him even though he was bigger and stronger than you.

“You are insufferable. And I hope I never have to see or converse with you ever again.”

“Well, someone’s cranky today.”

“Well, someone needs to shut the fuck up.” You bite back in a tone equally as sarcastic, if not more.

He was about to respond when Professor Marsh started speaking again. You gratefully averted your attention back to the subject of philosophy. He droned on for a little while longer about the history of philosophy and asked somebody what the point of taking this class would be.

Before anyone could raise their hand, asshole shot his hand up eagerly. You groaned, closing your eyes slightly.

“You, in the back,” Professor Marsh nodded. Asshole ahemed, straightening up to make his presence louder.

“She knows the answer,” he says, pointing directly at you. Fresh sets of eyes were laid upon you, and you grew hot under all of the attention. You slumped a little in your seat and glared at asshole, observing the satisfied smile he had and the utter joy in his eyes.

“Yes?” Professor Marsh waited patiently for you to respond to his question.

“Uh,” you cleared your throat, “to discuss multiple points of views on questions with no right answer…?” You spoke reluctantly.

The ravenette instructor nodded, “that’s right. Mostly. Philosophy has no right answer, it’s a string of never-ending thoughts pertaining—“

“You dick,” you whispered aggressively to Asshole. He snickered, keeping his voice low.

“I said you knew the answer, didn’t I?”

“At the risk of embarrassing me in front of everybody! Have you not had enough satisfaction from tormenting me already?!”

He gave you a lame shrug, which really did nothing for you. “Guess not.”

You couldn’t wait to get out of this class already.

—

You shoved both AirPods in your ears as you walked across campus, blasting High and Dry by Radiohead. It was a week into your freshman college experience.

So far, it’s been shit.

You’ve already made an enemy with the guy in your into to philosophy class (who you still didn’t know the name of), your favorite sweater got soiled from getting beer spilled on it, which was your fault for wearing a sweater to a frat party anyway, and you hadn’t encountered your soulmate like you hoped.

Safe to say you were completely crushed by the outcome of college. It wasn’t the time-of-your-life party you imagined. No, it was full of copy paste sorority girls and frat bros who talked grossly about women. The food in the dining hall sucked, and you were too broke to afford groceries.

The only positive experience was meeting your dorm mate: Eliza Schuyler.

She was an incredibly sweet girl, and a genius, too. She had an almost mother-like quality to her which drew you in to want to know everything. Thankfully, she seemed to like you as well, and you quickly became close. Mostly because you’re living in a cramped room with little to no privacy, but that’s besides the point.

Lucky for her, she came back on the second day, her heart pouring with excitement. She met her soulmate, a man by the name of Alexander Hamilton, in her English course. You congratulated her and ignored how you felt like the living version of Falling Behind by Laufey.

You glanced down at your wrist. Casual — Chappell Roan.

Ah, it was one of those days.

Sometimes your soulmate had episodes where he listened to nothing but sad, angsty songs about love. Mac DeMarco seemed to be a popular choice with him, and you wished you could hold him in your arms already.

The familiar family-owned coffeehouse came into view. You breathed in the scent of rich coffee and pastries, an instant hunger hitting you, and jumped into line and patiently waited your turn behind all the other caffeine deprived college kids. After placing your order and waiting at a small, two seat table, the sound of a dreaded voice broke your peace.

It took a minute to realize that voice was directed at you.

“—ndpa? Long time no see.”

Your breath hitched and you took out an airpod, coming face to face with Asshole himself.

“Oh great, it’s you,” you grunted, setting your phone on the table. The screen turns on to flash Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, and asshole glances down at it, an immediate unreadable expression crossing his face.

He tugs a little at his left sleeve, his usual cocky demeanor dropping ever so slightly. “Happy to see you, too.” He mumbled.

You quirked an eyebrow but didn’t question it. “I guess I won’t be staying much longer now that you’re here.”

“W-well, you don’t have to leave ‘cause of me,” he stammers almost urgently. This made you pause. He wanted you to stay? “I only just got here. Wanna talk to you.”

“…Why? You hate me,” a scoff escaped your lips. Genuine confusion was plastered on your face. Why is he acting all suddenly nice—wait, you know why. He just wants to find more ways to berate and argue with you as if him countering every word you speak in philosophy isn’t enough.

“Now, I never said I hate you or anythin’.” He reasons, a nervous smile hinting on his full lips.

“Weird. I’d think after you calling me grandpa and blatantly suggesting I’m stupid every day would give off that vibe, but I guess I was wrong.” You deadpan. His shoulders drop, and a small scowl forms on his face.

“I’m bein’ serious. I don’t hate you, and I really do think we should get to know each other.”

You take a moment to stare at him, examining the sincerity on his features to the stubble he had growing to the dark curls that fell over his deep espresso eyes. “Why?” Was all you could manage to blurt.

“Because,” he huffs, “I just do. With us bein’ close in Stan’s class, I figured we should at least know each others names.”

“Okay, first of all, don’t call him Stan you freak, and second of all, you would know my name if you cared enough to pay attention. But you always have a headphone in, so how could you be?” You batted your eyelashes, venom in your tone.

“He doesn’t care if we call him Professor Marsh or Stan! It's not weird to call college professors by their first names. Besides, it’s way easier to say Stan than Professor Marsh. And I wear headphones so my soulmate—“

“Order for Y/n?”

The barista cut him off, her voice dominating the crowded shop before it hurriedly went back to its chattery state. You sighed, standing up and making your way over to the counter. Latte in hand, you start to move out the door, not bothering to say goodbye to Asshole.

But he didn’t seem ready to say goodbye yet. He followed after you, ignoring the fact his coffee was being made and he likely wouldn’t get it.

“Wait! Not even a hug bye?” He jokes. You didn’t laugh.

“Why are you still talking to me?” You groan, clutching the warm liquid in your left hand.

“Y/n, huh? I’m Thomas,” he says, ignoring your question completely. You rolled your eyes, picking up the pace. His long legs easily kept up with you, however, so it didn’t really do all that much.

“Awesome. Now can you leave me alone? You know my name, what else is there?”

“I’m sure there’s a lot else to you if you’d just let us have a nice, civil conversation.” He grunted, falling into step with you.

“And ruin our rivalry?” You give him a sickening smile. He fights back a mocking face.

“Our rivalry is dead. This is the beginning of a friendship,” he declares. You laugh in his face.

“Sure it is.”

“I’m serious! Why don’t we set up a little hang out sesh, hm? Go to the library, finish up that paper Stan assigned?” He suggested.

“Again, calling him Stan,” you sighed. “But I suppose a little time studying in the library wouldn’t hurt. I know I’ll regret this, but if it’ll make you leave me the fuck alone, I’ll agree.”

“Perfect! Just give me your number and I’ll text you when,” he smiles, and for a moment it looks good on him. Then you remember it’s Thomas you’re thinking that about.

“God—you better not annoy me or I’m blocking you.”

“I would never.”

—

Thomas had planned to meet you later that night around 7. The library closes at 10, so it gives you plenty of time to get the paper done. If you worked non-stop without much distraction, that is. But being with Thomas might dismantle that idea.

For the time being, you shuffled into your dorm, greeting Eliza with a smile. She was talking on the phone with Alexander. Must be nice, you thought.

To have met your soulmate already from chance.

You stayed quiet while she finished up the call, telling him she loves him. Fuck, dude, you’ve been waiting your entire life to hear those words. But they were always at someone else, never directed at you.

“Hey.” She grinned, setting her phone down.

“Hey yourself,” you replied. The latte you were previously drinking was nearing emptiness, so you finished it off and tossed the paper cup.

“No luck today?” She tilted her head, sitting on the edge of her crappy mattress. A small frown formed on your face.

“Nah. But that annoying guy in my philosophy was at Café Serenity and somehow got me to agree to study in the library with him.” You moved to sit on the edge of your bed, facing her. “I did finally figure out his name, though. It’s Thomas.”

“Thomas Jefferson?” She asked, eyes going a little wide.

“I don’t know his last name,” you shrugged, “if Thomas Jefferson is an arrogant shithead, then probably.”

“From what I heard he is. Alex keeps ranting about this guy named Thomas Jefferson, so if it’s the same person…yikes.”

You scoffed, “That’s not at all surprising. Thomas always argues with any point I make. It’s irritating as fuck.”

“And you’re going to study with him, why?”

“I don’t know! He wouldn’t hop off so I just agreed to make him shut up.” You slipped your hands up in defense.

It really was a stupid decision to say yes to him, even worse that you gave him your number. His confidence and stubbornness caused you to cave, although you really didn’t want to. You had no desire being around him.

You may not know much, but you do know that Thomas Jefferson is an exasperating, egotistical piece of shit.

“I have to go. Washington locks the door the moment it turns ten, so lord knows if I want to get to actually learn today I have to hurry.” You rolled your eyes, sighing heavily.

Professor Washington was your English professor, a damn good one at that, but he was strict. Not in a mean way, but he did enforce school rules and a rigorous grading policy. Man would not accept work a second late or if it didn’t meet the word requirements.

“Okay. I’ll be out with Alex tonight, so tell me how it goes with Jefferson,” she smiles sadly.

“I will. And make sure to use protection,” you grimaced. She laughed, telling you to knock it off and hurry to your lecture, which you did.

Thankfully, your speed walking did you good and you took your regular seat next to Aaron Burr. He was a quiet man, very respectful and polite, yet held himself with confidence. You knew you’d be friends the moment you first spoke to him about soulmates. He wasn’t listening to music at that time, and when you checked your wrist it had Love Yourz by J. Cole written on it.

So that ruled him out as your soulmate.

You became friends anyway, and shared feelings of excitement on when you’d meet your soulmate and how you wondered what they were like. He said he had a feeling as to who his was, but he needs to talk to her and figure it out for sure. Said he saw a glimpse of her wrist and it had the classical music song on it. Only Burr would be the type to listen to Mozart unironically.

“How’re you liking 1984?” He asks, referring to the book he recommended.

“It’s actually not bad. It’s not what I expected, but I do like it so far.” You reply, giving him a light shrug. He smiles and nods, and shortly after class starts.

—

You didn’t dress for the rain.

You didn’t even know it would rain.

So after pulling up to the library, drenched and miserable, you beelined for the bathroom to dry everything with shitty paper towels.

All they really did was dry your face and hands. The rest of you—your clothes, your hair, your shoes—was soaked and uncomfortable.

Thomas texted you asking if you arrived alright, and you replied with a bitter “give me two seconds.” After that, you inhaled sharply and walked back out. The library was pretty empty, but it was a Friday night so that wasn’t unusual. Aside from the librarian and the burnt out sophomores in the corner, it was just you and Thomas.

His eyes widened when he saw you, and he stifled a laugh. An immediate distaste bubbled inside you.

“Fuck off,” you growled, sitting across from him. He snickered a little more before collecting himself.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Are you okay? You must be cold,” he apologized, leaning forward on the table.

“I’m fine. I won't be staying long, considering I’m cold and wet and really want a hot shower.” You hugged your arms over your chest in a pathetic attempt to warm up.

A genuine frown spread on his face, and he stood, shrugging off his jacket. “Here, you need it more than me.” He held out the vintage jacket to you.

You stared at it, blinking, unable to form words. Why was he being sweet? You thought he was supposed to be a self-centered asshole, just like you assumed and like Eliza told you, but he was offering you his jacket.

“I…thank you, but it’s okay. I’ll be fine.” You decline after a prolonged silence.

“I insist,” he replies, circling around the table and draping the jacket over your shoulders. He smiled, staring down at you with a softer intent. You glanced at his wrist to see if his soulmate was listening to anything, but it was empty. “There. Now we can start.”

He retreats to his seat and pulls out a laptop, and you do the same. Fortunately, the laptop was safe from the rain but the rest of your bag was not. He starts up a conversation about the details of the paper, but you couldn’t focus.

How could you when his jacket smells like sandalwood and vanilla? And how could you focus when you liked the feeling of his jacket being around you?

You had to force those thoughts down. He’s not your soulmate. He probably already found his, and he was just doing this to be nice. But still, you had to ask. So you did.

“Have you found your soulmate yet?” You blurt.

A twinkle of amusement shines in his eyes, and he promptly pulls his hands off the keyboard. “No. Have you?”

“Not yet,” you reply dryly.

“Why do you ask?” He tilts his head, crossing his arms, and your gaze trailed to his toned biceps and forearms. Fuck, and his chest did that dip thing where—focus, damnit!

“I was just wondering. You’ve never said anything about her, so…” you shrugged.

He nodded, scanning your features. “Well, do you want to talk about her? You seem interested.”

“What kind of music does she like?” You ask, causing him to look down at his left wrist.

“Right now she’s not listening to anything,” he starts, “but she’s really been obsessed with Radiohead lately. It’s weird, but whenever I see a new song, I add it to a playlist so I can listen to it.” His eyes crinkle into a grin.

“No way, I do that too! It’s not weird.” Despite every urge telling you not to get comfortable with him, you do. A wide smile spreads on your face and you perk up a little.

“Really? What’s he like?” He pulls out his phone, probably to show you the playlist. You retrieve yours as well, scrolling until you found it.

“He listens to so much. It’s actually insane. Nothing right now, I guess,” you frown slightly at the emptiness on your arm.

“My soulmate listens to the same four songs on repeat, I swear. Then when she gets tired of it, she moves on to the next.” He rolls his eyes fondly, scooting his phone across the table for you to see.

Shit, this playlist had like, every song you listened to.

“…She has good taste,” you reluctantly speak, eyebrows furrowing. There’s no way…he can’t be. Right?

You turn your phone over to him, and he scrolls a little, eyes widening with each song. Then, a grin overtakes him.

“I have a lot in common with him.” He said.

“Do you?” You mumble in almost a trance-like state.

“Mhm.” He hums, voice low as he starts again. “Maybe we oughta check to be sure we ain’t each others soulmates.” A deep laugh escapes him, and a breathy one leaves you.

“..Yeah, we should.” You pull out your AirPods, as does he, and you put on Vienna by Billy Joel. He puts in his right airpod and scrolls until he clicks on a song.

Reluctantly, dreadfully, and anxiously, you check your left wrist.

Always by Daniel Caesar.

He checks his then shows you it. Sure enough, it says Vienna on it.

“Holy fuck,” you murmur, showing him your wrist as well. “You’re my soulmate.”

“I knew it,” his grin grew wider.

An almost instantaneous bitter rage overcame you. “What do you mean you knew it? How long have you known?”

“Relax,” he motions his hands for you to calm down, “I had a gut feeling this morning but I wasn’t sure. This is great! I’ve waited—“

“No, it’s not,” you interrupt, abruptly standing.

“What?” His face fell. Literally, you watched the excitement dissolve into confusion then hurt.

“It can’t be you.”

The words left you before you could process what you were saying. Shit, you didn’t want to say that. You didn’t want to watch his heart visibly break. How could you just deny your soulmate like that? He was supposed to be yours from the start. You were literally meant to be together, since the moment you came into this world.

It was supposed to be you and him. And yet here you stood, telling him no.

“What do you mean?” His voice cracks, barely above a whisper. He looks like he just got hit by a truck, like he got stabbed repeatedly in the heart.

“I should go,” you mutter, grabbing your bag and shoving the laptop in it. Tears pricked in your eyes, and you blinked them back. You needed time to process this, to come to terms with the fact that this man you absolutely despised was who you’re expected to spend the rest of your life with.

“Wait, Y/n, please,” he calls, rushing to pack up his belongings before chasing after you.

You ignore his pleads and step back into the storm, shielding your bag from the rainwater. He follows after you, shouting out your name, but you trudged through the rain. Eventually, he sighed, dropped his stuff, then sprinted to catch up.

You gasped when his hand met your arm, swiveling you to face him.

“Thomas! What’re you—“

He cuts you off by smashing his lips to yours. You let out a muffled gasp before your instincts kick in, and you find yourself kissing back.

And now you feel it.

The pull.

What other people described when they met their soulmate for the first time. The immediate attraction that they’re supposed to feel, yet somehow, you didn’t feel it upon interacting with him. But now…now you feel it.

Full force desire. Want.

His hands moved down to your lower back and waist, dragging you closer to him. Rain trickled down from the top of your head to cover every inch of you and Thomas, and yet, it felt like it was only you and him in the world. Nothing else seemed to matter except the heightened awareness of the fact you were pressed against your soulmate. It was bliss.

Then the bliss was over.

“Thomas…” you whispered, pushing off of him.

“Y/n,” he whispered back, his tone low and it made you feel all sorts of things.

“I need time,” you say. He nods, one hand caressing your jaw as he backs up. He didn’t seem mad, instead he seemed at peace with your decision.

“I’ll be waitin’ for you. Whenever you’re ready, sweetheart, I’ll always be waiting for you.”

—

“Eliza, I know who my soulmate is.” You blurted, voice desperate as you paced around the tiny dorm. You knew she was hanging with Alex tonight, and you didn’t plan on needing to call her, but this was an emergency.

“What?! That’s amazing! Who is it?” You can hear her perk up. Alex asks her to put you on speaker, which she does so. Alexander briefly says hello and congratulates you before asking who as well.

“So, funny story actually,” you start, a nervous laugh escaping you. “It’s Thomas.”

“What.” Both Alex and Eliza say, equal amounts of distaste in their voices.

“I know, I know—I wasn’t particularly thrilled either. But he’s not a bad guy,” you defend.

“Wow. I am so, so sorry, Y/n. Are you okay?” Alex sounds, and you roll your eyes. Only you were allowed to talk shit about Jefferson. He was your soulmate, after all.

“I’m fine,” you bite, “I just need to process it all.”

“Of course, girl, I’ll be back later tonight and we can talk about it more,” Eliza said. Her words were comforting and you thanked her before promptly hanging up.

So. What to do now other than reflect on the past 24 hours.

Thomas Jefferson, the man who called you a hall monitor and proceeded to insult your sweater, the man who got you in trouble on the first day, the man you swore to humiliate and destroy, ended up being your soulmate. Karma has a way of getting you, doesn’t it?

You checked your wrist. Watching Him Fade Away, Mac DeMarco. Okay, so he is not okay. Got it. You really need to think faster and make it up to him, because you know that even with his cool and collected, cocky exterior, he was still a person with a heart that you probably just shattered. You checked your phone for the millionth time that night, not at all because you’re anticipating if he was texting you, but to your dismay there was no new notifications.

So you sighed, grabbed your shower caddy and clothes to change into, and headed for the communal bathrooms. Not before realizing you were still in his jacket. It hurt you to have to take it off, but you did so anyway and neatly laid it on your bed.

After a lukewarm shower in a shitty locker room, you changed into pajamas and returned to your room, immediately flopping on your bed.

Still no new notifications. And still sad, slow songs listed on your wrist.

The door swung open, Eliza tumbling in. “I’m here! I’m here, tell me everything,” she rushed to your side.

You sat up, jaw slacked open, then started speaking. Slowly, hesitantly, then you picked up the pace and told her everything. The jacket, the realization, the kiss. Every little detail from the curve of his jaw to the glimmer in his eyes when he said ‘I knew it.’

“He said he would wait for me, Eliza, he said he’d wait for me.” At that point, tears you didn’t want in your eyes formed anyway. Hell, you didn’t even know why you were crying. Maybe because you know you’re so fucked up for rejecting your soulmate.

“As much as Alex and I dislike Jefferson, he’s still your soulmate. And you still need to at least give him an explanation as to why you needed time. Get some sleep tonight, and tomorrow you’ll feel better. I promise, love,” she smiled softly, pulling you in for a comforting hug.

In the week-and-a-half that you’ve known her, she’s been one of the most supportive friends you’ve ever had. Granted, one of the only friends since you’ve always struggled with socialization, but she didn’t seem to mind your slip ups or awkward silences.

“I got so lucky that you’re my roommate,” you mutter into her shoulder, tightening your grip. She squeezes you reassuringly.

“I could say the same for you. Now, get some rest,” she pulls off, standing up and retreating to her side of the room.

There was one last thing you had to do, though. You grabbed your phone from the side table, pulling up Thomas’s contact. You had him saved as Thomas (asshole), and since that’s not exactly appropriate for your soulmate's contact, you changed it to Thomas<3.

You: can we meet tmr at cafe serenity? 9 am?

Thomas<3: I’ll be there.

After that was taken care of, you comply with Eliza’s request and go to sleep, Thomas’s jacket lying next to you.

—

Thomas arrived earlier to the coffee shop than planned.

By the time you arrived, he was already sat in a little corner booth, staring out the window. A cup was snugly in his hands, and there was a latte across from him. You sank into the seat, his face instantly lighting up when he saw you.

“Hi,” you say awkwardly, inwardly cursing at yourself for not knowing what else to say.

“Hey,” he smiled warmly, as if nothing was wrong.

“How’d you know I like lattes?” You picked up the cup in front of you, taking a sip. Your order wasn't exactly complicated, but it was still sweet how he went ahead and ordered for you, somehow knowing what you’d like.

“I saw it on your cup last time.” He shrugged, taking a drink of plain black coffee.

“Awh, thank you. Damn, now I really feel bad for last night,” you chuckle in a pathetic attempt to lighten the mood.

“I know I’m not who you expected or even wanted. But I am yours and I am determined to prove that to you,” he brings his voice down, reaching across the table and putting a hand on yours.

Your heart skipped a beat. “Thomas, you are who I want. No, you’re not what I expected, you’re a million times better. You challenge me and still want to be with me despite my flaws—Thomas, you are perfect and I am so, so sorry for saying what I said yesterday. I was shocked, but that’s no excuse. I really want to make things work between us, even though we’ve had a bitter past.” You finish your rant and he smiles real wide.

“I’m so glad it’s you.”

You couldn’t stop the grin that spread on your face, and you leaned across the table and met in the middle for a short, sweet kiss.

“Hey! Keep the PDA to a minimum, you damn kids!” The old lady behind the counter scolded you, and you broke apart in fits of giggles. He stringed his pinky with yours and tugged you out of the establishment, leading you to wherever felt right.

—

A heavy arm hung loosely around your waist, and the soft snores coming from Thomas awoke you. Your eyes fluttered open and you came face to face with the man you’ve come to love.

Eliza was with Alex, so you invited Thomas to spend the night and ended up cuddling in each other's arms. You smiled, careful not to wake him, and shuffled so you were back in his embrace.

This, you decided, was peace. This is what was meant for you.

[comically-blu]

Welp now I share this night thought I had on twitter: Ford may had spent his high school graduation alone.

Buckle in, this is a Ford-centric analysis in a way!

Ford could’ve known some people, from the social clubs and classes he had. But they could’ve been acquaintances at best for the introverted nerd. Not only Stan is his twin brother, Stan was practically his rock throughout their childhood, his only best friend! He was always by Ford’s side, they were inseparable.

Then, Stan gets kicked out by their own father. At the day of their graduation, their parents could’ve been definitely there so technically Ford wasn’t alone. Maybe a celebration might’ve happened.

In graduations, there are assigned seating, usually arranged by name. Stan could’ve been next to Ford if he actually graduated. Instead, Ford was surrounded by unfamiliar faces he isn’t close to at all. He might’ve been known as one of the weirdos in his class. Imagine him giving his valedictorian speech with so few people, h specifically his parents, that he only recognizes in his audience. For how much he thinks of himself as a freak, there are people in there who made him feel such a way.

Ford must’ve felt so empty. Like sure, Ford was very much deeply hurt and angry at Stan for what he thinks Stan did to sabotage his chance to go one of the considered best colleges for tech. Maybe he did feel some resemblance of freedom, thinking Stan must’ve been holding him back from his future.

But really, Stan was the one he was the closest to, the biggest part of his whole life. Stan was gone.

Maybe that was all what caused Ford to be such a workaholic. To cope with the void he left, Ford invested his time in his own research and studies. Something that he always invested in for his own genius. All to get used to being alone and move on from Stan, his brother. All before and after he met Fiddleford as his first friend.

The woes of being the favored golden genius in the family, huh…

Still, he couldn’t help to feel loneliness to eat him up. Enough for a certain triangle to take advantage yet relate to him.

[lovelykil]

─Headcanons─

main 4 older ver

hc; random headcannons

cw; none

note; these were so fun to make so making another 🫶🏾

Whenever you random remind Kyle how much you love him, he looks at you to shut up not because he's annoyed because he can't take the warm confession.

"I know we're dating but I actually have the biggest crush on you."

"This is the 5th time you've told me this in an hour"

"Yeah I know"

Kenny accidentally found this 'sex chocolate' and mistaken it for regular chocolate he was acting hornier than usual, once you found out you were terrified of this horny teenager.

Since cartman is so damn short you like to tease him about it even though you're like 2 inches taller than him.

fruit roll up.

"What?? No you can't wrap a fruit roll up around it."

"PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE KYLE"

Kenny would ecstatic if you ASKED to do that

"Do you think you could put a donut on it??"

"Wanna try?"

"Yes."

You know what I see Kyle being a legend of Zelda fan, it just really makes sense.. (he jst like me) he's a nerd.

You like to watch him play, resting your head on his shoulder.

Stan has a GREAT sense of style, you like to wear his clothes sometimes even match the baggy loser fits together.

You and Kyle helped Stan bleach his hair one random Friday night.

"I look like my dad guys.."

"Let's bleach your hair, babeee"

"Totally, I'll help too."

Cartman likes to take 0.5 of his friends and you, laughing his ass off later.

You always somehow find red/orange curly hairs on your pillow, clothes, and everywhere in your room.

You're always confused because Kyle only comes to your house 2 times a week you usually go over to his.

Kyle got accepted to a university out of South Park, it was hard saying goodbye to him. But he called you anytime he could, keeping you updated and checking on you.

Kyle's hands are always freezing when you guys hold hands, you like to hold both of his hands to help warm him.

Kyle plays mm2 on roblox with you and Stan.

[irokwashere]

CLEARS THROAT

This is Sharon “Sherri” Liane Marsh (Broflovski), the first of the Marsh (Broflovski) lovechildren (context: my qpp and I went with Kyle taking on the Marsh name in the rp we are doing, that’s been going on for 2 years, we can’t go back now lol) Kyle is her biological father and her biological mom is one of my Qpp’s ocs, Grace (unfortunately my Qpp doesn’t have a Tumblr at this time), and Sherri was named after Sharon.

She, like Kyle, is a firecracker, stands strong with what she believes it right, and a force to be reckoned with.

She likes pigeons, sharks, and strawberries, and she was born June 2nd (06/02); she is ADHD

If you have questions about her or the next two ocs by all means, ask away, I’ll answer to the best of my ability, as 2 of them (the Broflovski kids) belong to Laze (my QPP)

Nathan “Nate” Kyle Marsh - When Stan (finally) realized he was gay, that didn’t take away the want of a child of his own (or rather the chance that he could prove to be a better father than Randy ever could); Wendy agreed to be a surrogate, and thus, Nathan was born, a bit prematurely due to Wendy’s stress with her own job (politics) ; he was born December 24th (12/24) and Stan raised him, along with being a part time mechanic, and doing some work with Crimson Dawn here and there; he lived with Sharon though, who helped raise Nate the first few years of his life. Wendy and Stan decided that they would tell Nate how he came to be when he reached an old enough age to understand.

He likes Dinosaurs and Stones and Gems, and he has a bit of a caffeine addiction in his teen years, and suffers from chronic back pain due to a childhood injury from “rail surfing” on the stairs which hinders him from competitively playing his favorite sport (hockey), instead, he usually gathers everyone to play it recreational when Stark Pond freezes over

Stan eventually goes solo, occasionally doing shows with CD here and there, but he spends MOST of his time being a stay at home dad and tinkering here and there (Toolshed’s job is never done); Nate looks up to Stan a lot, and attaches to Kyle once stan and Kyle start dating, affectionately referring to Stan as “Dad” and Kyle as “Papa”. Kyle gave him the nickname “Pup” because sometimes Nate gets animated like an otter pup when exicted .

Nate has a talent for art and has a few web comics going on, though he posts it under an alias, not wanting the attention because he’s the son of south park’s biggest rockstar.

Nate is about a year and a half younger than Sherri and is the middle Marsh (Broflovski) child

Spencer Lee Marsh (Broflovski)

Spencer is the youngest of the Style children. He was 1 when he and Sherri’s mother and Kyle got divorced and 2, going on 3, when Stan came into the picture as more than just a family friend. Sherri was 5, going on 6 at the time, and Nate was 4, going on 5. In fact, Spencer, to this day, refers to Stan as his “Stada”. Spencer is autistic, and for the first chunk of his life, struggled with verbal communication. Luckily, Nate had a friend in school who taught them a little bit of sign language, so Spencer mostly communicated and communicates with his hands; he started trying to talk more in his mid-late teen years, but the family always has sign to fall back on if need be. Spencer likes baseball and frogs, and has a service dog, like Stan (in our au); Stan and Spencer are Star Wars nerds, big time.

Spencer was born October 19th, (10/19)

Spencer also has a talent as a writer and published a book at 15.

All three kids are fiercely protective of one another, and they’re all each others best friends!

If you have questions about these OCs, feel free to ask! We have more where that comes from!

Nate is my oc personally, but I’ll answer to the best of my memory and knowledge for Sherri and Spencer (please remember this roleplay has been going on since January of 2023).

[daemon-in-my-head]

Alright, I just need to share what just happened.

So, my brother is an avid DnD player, he often DMs himself. He's also one of the people that got me into BG3, im a MMO girlie so i never really did the solo RPG thing, socialising and raiding but also having downtime was always my biggest turn on in games. But now a buddy of my brother wants to start a new campaign based on an abandoned BG3 Plotline. Considering I turned into a complete DnD nerd, thanks to BG3 and CR, he recommended that I join the new campaign. Here's the intro he used to recommend me:

She's my sister and used to be a complete Astarion simp but has now become a reformed, down bad Gortash Stan.

I CAN'T EVEN BE MAD AT THIS CALLOUT CUZ ITS TRUE. LITERALLY, HOW DOES HE KNOW THO.

I may just add that this callout came from an unapologetic Minthara simp. I think the durgetash thing may be DNA related. Loving evil bastards may be in your blood. But what I'm really getting at, I guess I'm starting a new DnD campaign, low-key wanna use the durge from fic for that. He do be my lil sweet evil baby boi

[ohmytomorrowisthursday]

AOT Characters As Actors

OKAY I KNOW THIS HAS BEEN DONE A MILLION TIMES BEFORE but I cant help but want to join in because its so fun.

Imagining the characters of AOT as their actor selves after the show is wrapped up. Pls enjoy! <3 LMK if u want a part two

Ymir (Scouts): One of the sweetest people on set, just really good at playing such an asshole, lol. The one during the press tours to make sure that Gabby, Falco and young Ymir are all okay. Making sure that paparazzi aren't bothering everyone and generally getting along with the whole cast. Goes on social media after and does a whole soft-girl rebrand so that people know shes that good at acting.

Jean: THIS MAN WOULD BE OUR PEDRO PASCAL. Absolutely loves the love he gets from his stans and loves watching fan account compilations of him. Wears wild looks on the red carpet because he knows the fans are going to go crazy. Posts photos of himself in costume backstage becuase he knows we'd EAT IT UP. Silly and goofy and generally just loves to say he was a part of the show. Would love to do costumed appearances for late night shows and fan meetings; he just absolutely loves the fans and his role.

Erwin: I feel like as an actor he'd be so funny. He's the star who anchors the show and gives it the original buzz. He's always playing jokes on his co-stars and loves messing with everyone. I feel like him and actor Zeke would get along so well and just mess with people. Not a huge social media guy but I feel like he'd post group pictures of the cast at the premier with the caption "We did it, guys". Does a whole GQ cover and interview to promote the show.

Hange: This is their debut role and I feel like the public just IMMEDIATELY falls in love with them. I feel like actor Hange would be so shy and intimidated by the love for the character they play. But the public would love them even more for that and encourage them soooo much. Levi is like their biggest supporter and always hyping them up during interviews. Would post a long love-letter-goodbye speech to their character on Instagram after the show ends. Would sooo steal looks at award shows. Gets into some really big A24 movies and shows after and is in general, just killing it.

Mikasa: She would be the IT girl after the show was over. Her haircut would be trending on tiktok and people would be photographing her everywhere. I see her being someone who adopts parts of Mikasa into her everyday persona. Becomes really passionate about supporting young women and girls in her spare time. THE RUMOURS ABOUT HER AND EREN ARE FLYING. Like everyone is constantly wondering if they're dating in real life or not. In the end, I feel like they'd both stay friends but people would always wonder. Post a lot on social media and has a ton of followers. Zendaya vibes; gets into everything and does so well and ALWAYS EATS IT UP AT AWARD SHOWS

Armin: By the end of the series, Armin is like the new heartthrob of the whole series. I feel like irl he's actually pretty confident and outgoing. Like, he would try his best to change his brand from sweet inquisitive nerd to bad boy by doing like 'rugged' GQ shoots and generally going for more 'action hero' characters outside of the show. HARD LAUNCHES A PARTNER AT THE FINAL PREMIERE and everyone is like omg ARMIN THEY'RE FINE AS HELL. Really enjoys the action and thriller genres and does a lot of movies of those kinds.

Eren: The character really shapes him as an actor (obvs) and I feel like he gets cast in a lot of similar protagonist roles. Everyone loses their minds for shirtless rebel Eren with long hair, and I feel like he's actually kind of shy about it when he talks about it during press interviews. Super jokey and really into fashion (like cool vintage fashion) and people like to emulate his style. Really gets along with everyone and, like, has absolute eyes for Mikasa during interviews (like their chemistry is flying) and there's all these fan theories that he loves her but they just remain friends. I feel like he goes off the map from acting for awhile after a demanding film schedule to travel the world, and his feed is just cool film pictures of his adventures for a bit. Kind of a private dude, but absolutely adored.

Levi: Okay this show is Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man for Levi. He was like a teen hearthrob and then some kind of drama happened in his early 20's and he fell off the map for a few years. He comes back for this role and everyone is like OH MY GOD HOW DID WE EVER STOP SEEING HIM IN MOVIES HES THE BEST. I feel like his life would be similar to his existence in the fandom now lol; people would absolutely love him. I feel like he's a really down to earth guy (KEANU REEVES TYPE) and during his break from blockbuster hits he was in a bunch of amazing indie movies that get popular after the show, and theres just a million pictures of him back in the 90's/2000's where people are just fawning over Levi in his 20's. Does a lot of magazine and video interviews but isn't particularly active on social media (not his thing) and that makes him even hotter to people. He'd write a book after to tell his life story. And like, you know actor Levi has an absolutely ridiculously hot partner and they've been married for years and he's just THAT GUY.

OKAY THATS IT! I hope you enjoyed this post, lmk if you want another part with more characters! <3

[mooncello]

some kai headcanon...

This is the light, fun version. I have some darker stuff, too, maybe I’ll share those at some point.

Kai is generous with compliments. The other ninja quite literally don’t know how to respond to them all.

Kai likes boba tea. Lloyd got him hooked on it.

When he’s out with friends or running errands, Kai brings back little things he thinks Cole will like. (Lavaaaaa. 😍)

Kai is a secret book nerd and listens to audiobooks. This is easier on his brain, and he loves to read about history and science and Edwardian lit. (The dude stans Jane Austen.) I also like to think that Kai has an obsession with Regency AU and wants to wear all the Bridgerton clothes and sneak kisses in corridors during dance parties. He’s extremely embarrassed by this and has never shared it with anybody.

Kai is an early morning runner.

Kai has the grossest feet. They’re torn up and blistered from running. It’s disgusting.

Kai occasionally sings in the shower. Off-key. But very committed.

Kai is freakishly observant. He tracks details without really thinking about it or realizing he does it. He’s the sort of person who immediately notices your haircut or that your neighbor repainted their door a slightly darker shade of blue.

Terrible at remembering names. But remembers details about a person. Will often come up with his own nicknames or codenames for people based off these details.

Kai paints his nails so much because 1) flair but also 2) he chews down to skin otherwise.

He loves spicy food. Like…there’s a special shelf for all of Kai’s hot sauces because nobody else can handle the level of spice. Cole comes close, as does Nya. Lloyd enjoys 3 out of 5 on the spice scale. Jay is -1. Like…black pepper makes him sneeze. (It’s adorable.)

Kai is meticulous about laundry.

Kai feels kinda manic a lot of the time, so he doesn’t drink all that much coffee. He prefers tea, and he and Zane share a drawer filled with a dozen different types of tea. He also drinks a lot of water. This guy hydrates like it’s an Olympic sport.

Totally loves jewelry. Wears lots of rings. Earrings. The occasional necklace (always more than one and layered).

Kai is a libra. With aries rising. Unsure about moon. What say you?

He cannot keep a houseplant alive. And damnit he’s tried. He’s tried so hard. (Lloyd is the biggest plant parent of the group and holds an astonishing amount of plant knowledge.)

Kai isn’t really into sports. But he’s been known to watch a football (ahem, soccer for you americans) game from time to time, if it happens to be on.

Kai is a huge texter. Instigates most group chats. (Followed by Jay.) Kai’s textspeech can sometimes be unintelligible. Zane often has to translate, and even then sometimes Zane is stumped.

Matte clay pomade for that hair of his. No gel. No mousse. Maaaybe sometimes a beachy seasalt spray if he’s feeling a little frisky.

His favorite season is winter—it’s the only season he’s not uncomfortably warm all the time.

Kai would totally adopt a cat before a dog. Kai is basically a cat.

okay stopping there!

[euroquision]

"The Fairest of Them All" A EuroQuision Article

Hello everyone! I hope you're ready for the first official EuroQuision article release! This one is a mathematical doozy, but trust me when I say this is worth the read. If you wanna download a PDF of the article, you can do so here!

And if you don't feel like downloading the whole thing, I'll be copying the entire article into this post after the section break so you can read it here! Thanks so much to the Patrons and other supporters that make this work possible!

The Fairest of Them All

By Beatrice Quinn

Quickly: what is the most overrated song of Eurovision 2024?

…got an answer? Ok, now: Prove it.

Today we’re talking about one of the most ambiguous, aimless, misunderstood metrics we use to say whether a song is overrated or not, and that is: Ratings. Literally! Now, we’re familiar with “ranking” Eurovision songs – dragging and re-dragging “Halo” up and down your 2022 scoreboard depending on whether or not you think Pia Maria is a real person or not – and other such activities! Ranking is crucial and emblematic to the existence of Eurovision and its fans, it hardly needs to be said. Developing babies watch the dancing fruits of Cocomelon, we watch a series of rectangles and numbers combine to shift and jump around aimlessly until they eventually settle in place. And once they’ve settled in place, forever to remain unmoving from those results, fans all across the world will continue to exist in a frenzy about how they should have landed instead.

But what’s the difference between ranking and rating? And by extension, why are the phrases “overrated” and “underrated” thrown around so frequently? Well, ranking songs is an action that always exists in and around the context of all competing songs that year. That’s why when the first Eurovision song of the season rolls around – usually courtesy of our lovely Albanians – it’s ridiculous and repeatedly unfunny to see YouTubers upload their “Eurovision 2021: Top 1 Ranking” videos. Rating a song is something you can do whether you’re talking about one song, or 42 songs. You don’t have to judge the songs ranked against each other. You can judge it based on its own merits or whatever frame of reference you have. I’m not here to write an article trying to tell people how they can or can’t rate songs – I would only ever tell that to the WiwiJury. And I would tell them politely, yet firmly, to stop.

No, I’m writing all this to do one thing: To give you a quick math lesson! And by quick, I really mean it, I promise. I swear I’m not a nerd! Well, that’s a lie. I’m a huge nerd. But I’m not a math nerd. It would be more accurate to say I’m a numbers nerd – specifically, Eurovision numbers. That’s the kind of numbers we like! We’ve seen our share of Twitter polls, asking us to choose between anything from Biggest National Final Robberies to “do you think Joker Out read the fanfic?” We just love stats and percentages! So I’m here to put those to the test in the most straight-forward, least-opinionated way possible. And let me be so clear about this: This article is not going to try and definitely prove anyone’s personal tastes right or wrong. This is about the mathematical results of how we rate Eurovision songs and whether or not this provides any accuracy.

Before we get into all the numbers: Let’s say you’re an Albania stan – a type of stan I’m familiar with, fond of, and am deeply frightened by – and you go to EurovisionWorld.com to excitedly check the results of the star ratings left by online visitors from every end of the earth, all coming to rate a song you’re excited to rate and enjoy yourself. You get there and you see: 2 stars – 2,815 ratings. Your heart sinks. “Only two stars? Is this actually a bad song? Do people hate the song? Am I dumb for liking it?” These are all things we’ve all felt about certain songs we hold dear to our heart, but it really doesn’t make sense, right? Why should a number generated by the preferences of 2,815 people sway your feelings towards a song you like? Then, as the season goes on, more songs pop up and get rated as well. As your Albanian gem middles out around 2.3 stars after 5,000 or so people decided to rate it, you see a grinning Dutch lad beating out the majority of the competition in terms of stars. “Wait, that just has so many views and over ten thousand more ratings than Albania has, what gives?” Then: the accusations start. “Joost is overrated!!” “Baby Lasagna’s hype won’t last forever.” “Vidbir said they’ll announce the results after six business days, not counting shipping and handling, but when they do, they’re gonna be so overrated.” And on the flip side: “Everyone is sleeping on Dons.” “Hera shock Q in May.” Various statements that however passionate are sadly not actually provable – at least, not in the moment.

It goes without saying that a Eurovision song’s rating out of 5 stars on EurovisionWorld does not, in any way, affect the results and winners of Eurovision. Instead, these ratings exist as a rare form of communal discussion. While the subjectivity of musical taste varies, we all get to share our opinions. And this process is what leaves us with two sides of the same undefinable coin: Over or Under Rated. 

We all have experiences with people or conversations where a fun song may be chastised for being overrated, or overly praised for being underrated. The attitude for or against a song doesn’t always exist like this – you can love an overrated song and hate an underrated one, I don’t care. But the point here is: these terms are something we relate to being an idea or descriptor, rather than something that can be mathematically determined. In fact, by treating the Eurovision “rating” system in its current state as purely a matter of statistics, we can then use that information to reference other claims against it. It’s quite scientific, if I do say so myself. Now, are both my college degrees in film, music, and writing? Yes. Did I ever get anything higher than a B in any math class I’ve ever taken? No. But allow  me to explain!

If someone were to say “Sweden is overrated,” what if there were a way to actually find out if that’s accurate or not? And once you find that out with some quick math, you can use that as evidence as to why or why not Sweden is overrated. My hope is that once we find out whether a song is mathematically overrated or underrated, we can then discuss possible reasons why or why not. Of course, this kind of question is going to be answered by collecting a LOT of numbers and doing a LOT of organization. Luckily I know someone who personally is sick enough in the head to sit down and pour through all the numbers, make the spreadsheets, make the graph, explain the equation, and write the article about it.

…it’s me. I think the “write the article” part was a giveaway, but here we are! So enough fluff, let’s get rating!

CHAPTER 1: The EuroQuision Equation!

Say that five times fast. And if you choose not to say that five times fast: I respect your decision, but I am disappointed in you.

So, we’re working with numbers. That means I am now tasked with figuring out the best way to observe the information I’m given, find out how it all balances out, and how do we compare all of that together? For context, there are two key components to finding out how over or underrated a Eurovision song is. As you’ll see while scrolling down the songs of any Eurovision year, you’ll see the stars beside them which are a result of ratings given by any IP address that rates the song. So not only do you get to see a song’s star rating, you can also see how many people contributed to that average rating. For anyone who doesn’t know, averages are a mathematical result of adding up the values of a set of inputs, then dividing that total by the amount of inputs. It’s hard to explain averages in a proper sentence, so here’s an example. If you are given the numbers 4, 8, and 3, you would first add up the numbers. 4+8+3 equals 15. Then, you take the sum (15) and divide it by how many numbers you added together. You added 3 numbers, so you divide (15 / 3) and find the average of 4, 8, and 3 is 5.

This is how those star ratings show up the way they do. If a song is rated by 10,000 people, you would add up the total stars given by each person, then divide that by 10,000. However, there’s another statistic we can find out by collecting all of this information. Like I said before in the Albania example, there are songs that only get 10,000 ratings by April, and others have hit over 40,000. You would think it’s as simple as saying “The songs with the most ratings are overrated, case closed.” But I’m here to say: not quite! If you were to rank the songs by most to least amount of ratings, that’s one result to find, sure. But I’m choosing to ask: what’s the average amount of ratings themselves? It’s something we can actually find out, since we have all the information!

Needing only the numbers provided by EurovisionWorld.com, we can find out what the average number of ratings is, and what the average number of stars is. We can’t really say who is over or underrated until we have an idea of how many people have contributed to these ratings. After finding these averages, the next step would be to compare and contrast how close or far each country deviates from those averages. Let’s say, if I were to add up all the star scores and find their average, I get an average of 3 stars. Therefore, any song that scores fewer stars than that is under average, and those scoring higher are above average. The same goes for ratings. After adding up EVERY number of ratings from each country and dividing by 37, we’ll know the average number of times a Eurovision 2024 song is rated. This will matter greatly in comparison to other years because the global attention to Eurovision grows every year. A year like 2014 is going to have a significantly lower average number of ratings simply because not as many people rated the songs in comparison to 2024. Sounds easy enough, right?

Ok, even if it’s not “easy” to understand now, it will be very soon! To help guide us into the numbers of it all, I made some visual aids! Let’s stop talking about the numbers and actually start crunching them!

CHAPTER 2: Playing With Numbers

Before we find out if any country is over or underrated, we gotta find our global averages first! Let’s look at the stars first. As you know, a song can achieve anywhere from 1 to 5 stars on EurovisionWorld.com – a very standard format! While we the voters/raters can only select a whole number of stars (one star, four stars, etc.), the website takes all those scores and calculates the average for us and displays that as a more accurate number often with a decimal point. Another important note is that I know this information doesn’t exist in stasis: songs can continue to be rated long after the contest is over. So for accuracy’s sake, I gathered ALL numerical information for this essay on one day: April 25th! This is to account for a few factors. Like I said, the amount of ratings grows over time and has a recency bias, so I didn’t want to get the ratings in late March. I also didn’t want to wait after the contest, just in case any results of the contest cause a shift in mass ratings from the rest of the world. I chose April 25th to write down every song’s current amount of ratings and current star score so that it reflected nothing but expectation and audience reaction, and without any influence from rehearsals or live shows.

Now, a song’s release day does play a part in how many ratings and stars it gets…most times. We’ll discuss that in the analysis chapter AFTER we go over all the numbers. So, this is all you need to know right now: I collected these numbers on April 25th, 2024. Additionally, there’s something else I did for making the math easier and more score-like, which is that I convert a song’s total amount of ratings into a whole number with one decimal point so that I’m operating with two factors closer to each other in size. For example, if a song has 18,311 ratings, I’m converting that to 18.3 so that I’m working with a star score of, for example, 3.6 and a rating total of 18.3, which are easier to put into the equation and find a Deviation Score that is represented by a small, whole number. The last important detail is that there WILL be more visual aids, and if any of this is still confusing by the end, let me know and I’ll figure out how to make this easier for everyone!

Lastly, you might wonder why I’m looking at both stars and ratings in this big equation. If this is about who is or isn’t fairly rated, why do the star scores matter? Well, I’m factoring both ratings and stars in a song’s Deviation Score because these numbers don’t exist separately from each other. A song only gets a star score after thousands of people leave their opinions, and people share those opinions in this medium by clicking somewhere between one and five stars. Therefore, it isn’t fair to say a song is “overrated” simply because more people have rated that song compared to others. Spam rating exists (as EurovisionWorld has learned the hard way), and there are songs every year that are perceivably more “popular” based on things like YouTube video views or Spotify streams. Those things don’t factor into this because simply watching the video or streaming the song isn’t the same thing as “rating” it. Spotify only has stream counts, and YouTube has a like or dislike button. EurovisionWorld has a conventional 5-star rating system that is determined by people from all around the world and is mathematically calculated. So by giving a song a Deviation Score that’s based on how close/far from average a song is in stars and ratings, we’re acknowledging all the factors that go into this question.

Now onto the numbers! Do you wanna take a guess as to how many ratings were left on EurovisionWorld.com from the start of the season through Apr. 25th? There was a staggering total of 689,968 ratings across 37 songs! Over half a million ratings is a lot of opinions, right? And still that’s barely a fraction of the total people who watch the show itself. Regardless, that’s the information we have to work with! So, if there’s a total of 689,986 ratings given out to 37 different songs, that means our avg. # of ratings is: 689,968 / 37 = 18,647.7838. Obviously, 18,647.7838 is an awfully long, complicated number to use. Therefore, I’m simplifying it to just 18.6 (approx. 18,600 ratings). So, 18.6 is our avg. # of ratings. As for avg. # of stars, there is a grand total of 130.1 stars totalled up between all the songs. This is a really good number, when you consider the math. For example, if every song of 2024 only got on average one (1) star, then we’d have a total of just 37 stars. So with this info, it means our avg. # of stars is: 130.1 / 37 = 3.51621622…… and many more numbers after that. Therefore, I’ll state our avg. # of stars is 3.5. Once again, this is a good number! On a scale of only one to five stars, the average of that would just be 2.5 stars, right in the middle. That means the public thinks that overall, Eurovision 2024 is a bit above an average level of quality. And I would agree! Anyway, just to sum up all the numbers we just found out, I’ll list them here:

Total amount of ratings from all songs: 689,968

Avg. amount of ratings per song: 18.6 (simplified from 18,647)

Total amount of stars from all songs: 130.1

Avg. amount of stars per song: 3.5 (simplified from 3.5162…)

For me, the easy part is over and the hard part begins. Now is when we begin to document every song’s amount of ratings, their star scores, and running the math to see how far above or below the averages they are. For the super hot and cool nerds that like excel sheets, I’ll link the viewable sheet of all the info at the end of the article! For the sake of this article, I’m going to choose a couple key examples, and those are: Sweden, the Netherlands, Iceland, and…sadly, “Israel.”

CHAPTER 3: Do We Have a Valid Result?

Let’s actually see this equation in action and find out what we can learn from all of this. The reason we’re going to be looking at these select countries is that each of them exists at a very specific point on the spectrum of overrated or underrated. We’ll begin with the country that receives arguably the most “overrated” accusations thrown at them in a given Eurovision season, and that is: Sweden! Did you find the twins’ song unforgettable? Regardless, let’s run their numbers through our equation and figure out just how “rated” they are.

As you remember from our graphic, the equation we use is shown as (a - x) + (b - y) = z. Let’s take a look at Sweden’s stats, which are documented altogether in the same list as all 37 songs. “a” is Sweden’s star score. Sweden, as of April 25th, has a score of 3.4 stars. “x” is the total average of stars across all songs, which is 3.5. (3.4 - 3.5) = -0.1. This -0.1 means that Sweden is just ever so slightly below the average score, which is something I would agree with (but that part’s just my opinion). The second half of our equation is about ratings. Sweden was rated on EurovisionWorld a total of 18,259 times. We simplify that big number just to 18.2, and we subtract the average number of ratings from that number. (18.2 - 18.6) = -0.4. Now, we can also observe that in its total number of ratings, Sweden is actually still below average, even though not by a whole lot. Now that we have -0.1 and -0.4 reflecting Sweden’s relationship to the global average of stars and ratings respectively, we combine those! (-0.1) + (-0.4) = -0.5. There you go! Sweden got a score of, overall, slightly underrated. Shocking, right? That’s right, in numbers and stats alone, Sweden is very close to the global averages. However, the claim that they’re “underrated” isn’t as true as it sounds once we look at another country through this equation.

Next, let’s take a look at a country that was 1st in the odds…only to fall from those heights down to a last place finish in their semi-final. Iceland’s song “Scared of Heights” is an interesting case. I won’t try and pretend that these ratings exist separately from a song’s public perception – or at times, their public drama. So don’t worry, we’ll address that and much more after we do more fun math activities. Not many people were running around saying “Husavik 2025!” when this got selected, but how was it rated? Iceland has the literal lowest star score out of all 37 songs this year, sitting at 2 whole stars. Since we know the global average is 3.5, that means Iceland is -1.5 stars from the average. However, this is where we can see the ways ratings and stars can differ. When it comes to stars, a song scores anywhere from 1 to 5; it’s not a very wide range. But for ratings, Iceland only has 10,951 ratings (shown as 10.9). Even compared to Sweden, that’s eight thousand fewer ratings, meaning: people either chose not to go out of their way to leave a rating, or it's just not as popular. From the average of 18.6, Iceland’s 10.9 ratings is a whole -7.7 away from the average. Let’s combine those two differences: (-1.5) + (-7.7) = -9.2. In comparison to Sweden, Iceland is actually “underrated” when we look at the numbers. That final score of -9.2 is a culmination of the song not only getting a lower score, but it comes from fewer people deciding to rate it. Would “Scared of Heights” be closer to the average amount of stars if more people had chosen to give it a rating? Or would more ratings just reflect the same sad score of 2 stars? This is something to consider when we have more context about who/which countries have more ratings than our first two examples.

They may have been disqualified for total BS reasons, but they’ll never be disqualified from my heart! The Netherlands’ “Europapa” is a song that has a lot to give it a leg up over a country like Iceland when it comes to public perception: Joost Klein is a more  “established” artist in comparison to most Eurovision competition. “Europapa” contains satirical-yet-universal lyrics that touch on personal and international topics at the same time, and the whole thing is a lot of good fun, even with a touching ending. However, this can all add up to what no sounds like a very reasonable claim of “overrated”-ness. Do the numbers reflect that? Unsurprisingly: yes, yes they do. The Netherlands has a star score of 4.1, which is the average score from a total of 35,557 ratings. Again, we see how the number of ratings can vary much wider than just star scores on their own – I can only imagine how it feels to see someone else’s song get 20,000 more ratings than yours. Let’s run the equation!. (4.1 - 3.5) + (35.5 - 18.6) => (0.6) + (16.9) = 17.5. As you can see, now that we move to the opposite end of the spectrum, the difference in influence is more observable. That score of 17.5 now properly reflects how a star score of 4.1 comes from a severe increase in number of ratings, and Joost’s popularity can very well be a factor in that, all regardless if the song is “good” or “bad.”. Like I promised, we’ll talk about the implications and conclusions these numbers can represent in a moment. We have one more “country” to look at.

“Israel,” as I’m sure you need no reminding, is the reason all of Eurovision 2024 was a complex, un-fun, total mess of a season. All the reasons supporting this can fill up their own article, so we’re going to be focusing on how 2024’s hottest potato fares in terms of stars and ratings. “Israel” and their song “Octo–” sorry, “Hurricane” has the same star score as the Netherlands, which is 4.1 stars out of 5. However, “Hurricane” has almost ten thousand more ratings than “Europapa,” at 45,255 ratings. (4.1 - 3.5) + (45.2 - 18.6) => (0.6) + (26.6) = 27.2. Just for another moment, let’s disregard the implications of this number and just compare it to the 3 other examples we’ve done. At one end of the spectrum, Iceland is underrated with a Deviation Score of -9.2, and Sweden has a Dev. Score of -0.5. As a reminder, if a country is completely and perfectly “average,” they would receive a score of 0; as in, it’s not overrated nor is it underrated. However, the score for songs being underrated are a lot less severe than the others. The Netherlands’ Dev. Score of 17.5 and “Israel’s” 27.2 are up in the double digits, but why?

Well, the first explanation is very easily observable: “Israel,” the Netherlands, and several other countries are simply rated more than other countries are. Therefore, this is evidence to support the claim that more people overrate songs than people who underrate other songs. For context, the country with the lowest number of ratings is Albania, with only 9,094 ratings and a star score of 3.1 stars. The country with the highest number of ratings is actually Croatia, with 47,315 ratings as of April 25th and has the highest “overrated” Dev. Score with 29.5. And now that we have our equation and can actually tell who is statistically over or underrated, let’s actually ask what that “means.”

CHAPTER 4: Take (It) Away

At ten pages (and two visual aids) in, we finally have some concrete numbers to look at and discuss, leading with the question: What are we meant to take away? If being over/underrated is now mathematically observable, what does it all mean? To answer that question, we need to look at the entirety of our data table and apply real-world context to the numbers we’re looking at. As I mentioned near the beginning of this article, this is not about simple labels. Let’s start with the observation I made right before this chapter, “More people are more likely to overrate songs than people are to underrate them.” This is visible in multiple ways. First, as we discovered when we found the global average of each song’s star score, we got a score of 3.5/5 – above average! But it’s not just about the stars; there’s another noticeable trend between the highest star-scoring songs and how many people have rated them. Ten songs from 2024 have a star score of 4 stars or higher – Croatia, Greece, and Serbia were all tied at 4.3 stars. Between all ten songs, they have a total of 292,504 ratings. Now at the other end of the star spectrum, how do the lowest scorers look?

Well, no song this year got less than 2 stars, now matter how much I dislike “Scared of Heights.” However, there are eight songs that scored below 3 stars, in comparison to the ten higher scoring songs. Fun fact: Finland’s “No Rules!” is the lowest-ranking song that qualified for the final (as of April 25th), whereas the highest ranked NQ was Belgium. Anyway, between those eight songs underneath 3 stars, there’s only 129,063 ratings, which is approx. 170 thousand fewer ratings. The numbers don’t lie: if anyone ever claims “Eurofans just like to hate things,” statistically that’s wrong! It’s not impossible, either. On that note, though, one would be allowed to ask “But doesn’t that mean there are songs that are overrated?” And if you’re talking about the literal, specific definition of songs having a greater number of ratings than others, then yes you’re right. But I have a feeling that most people say the word “overrated” more emotionally than logically. Remember how I introduced Sweden as one of the most frequently overrated countries? My guess is that you didn’t disagree with that claim. And I’m not just guessing: I’ve seen every upset Kaarija stan, Mans-hater, and person with ears that dislikes “If I Were Sorry.” Sweden’s no stranger to the overrated accusation, but we just saw how this year that’s statistically untrue. The most perfectly middle-rated song this year is Luxembourg’s “Fighter” with a Deviation Score of -0.4. Sweden, Slovenia, Austria, and Czechia round out the Top 5 Most-Midrated Songs of 2024. And like the title of this article says, these five songs are by all definition “the fairest” of them all. Czechia is actually closest to the average number of ratings (that 18.6 we’ve been using in the equation) with 18,614 ratings. But hey, I like to indulge my own curiosity, so I wondered if these numbers are connected at all to who did or didn’t qualify. In Eurovision 2024, 11 songs did not qualify to the Grand Final. So, let’s look at the 11 most statistically-underrated songs!

They are from lowest to highest (of the low): Albania, Iceland, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Australia, San Marino, Armenia, Portugal, Malta, Latvia, and Cyprus. Now, Denmark and Poland aren’t that much higher than these 11, but they managed to not be in the bottom 11. And of these lowest 11 Dev. Scores, 7 ended up being NQ’s. In fact, it’s more understandable why the few Q’s of the bottom 11 are here. Armenia was the last-revealed song of 2024, and Portugal had the very last National Final of the season. They didn’t have as much time between their selection and April 25th when I collected the numbers like other songs had. And yet, Albania was one of the earliest selections and sits at the very bottom of the list – time may not heal all wounds. 

Cyprus and Latvia are the other two songs from the Bottom 11 of the Underrated’s that qualified, and I genuinely think this is where the legitimate factor of chance plays a part. Cyprus came 6th in its semi, so we can state that the live performance and competition of the semi elevated Cyprus to a better position in the televoters’ preference, despite the odds! Latvia could be a similar case, as it finished 7th in the second semi-final. Then come Saturday, the two songs ended up right next to each other on the scoreboard with Cyprus at 15th and Latvia at 16th. As we keep moving up the list of Deviation Scores, we can spot the four songs that did qualify in the eyes of the raters, but not in the show itself. Denmark is just above Cyprus, and two more spots up is Poland. Four more spots up is Czechia among the most midrated songs of the year, so they were a true “Could go either way” case. Then in the biggest jump to our final non-qualifier, Belgium is 11 spots higher than Czechia and sits at being the 9th Most Overrated of 2024. Here and now, we have finally arrived at the fabled: Shock NQ. Now, a non-qualifier being a “shock” is up to your own opinion. If you’re me, you’re sitting here writing this article knowing damn well you knew Belgium’s Q-streak was over before Mustii hit the stage. This is the honest truth, and only Silia Kapsis has the right to try and say otherwise. But it also can be said that it’s not about asking “Who was the Shock NQ?” and more about asking “Who had the most attention before they NQ’d?” And the answer would be Belgium! Anyway, at this point I’m starting to think to myself “Huh, can using this over/underrated equation be a method to possibly predict a country’s qualification?”

…and then I remembered: Qualifiers are chosen entirely by televote. Therefore, if the Deviation Scores can predict the qualifiers with about 64% accuracy, can it predict the televoting Top Ten?...Let’s find out!

When looking at the Top Ten Most Overrated Songs of 2024, we have:

1st. Croatia

2nd. Israel

3rd. Netherlands

4th. Switzerland

5th. Italy

6th. France

7th. Ukraine

8th. Greece

9th. Belgium

10th. Ireland

(11th: Lithuania)

And for comparison, let’s look at the Top Ten of the 2024 Televote:

1st. Croatia

2nd. Israel

3rd. Ukraine

4th. France

5th. Switzerland

6th. Ireland

7th. Italy

8th. Greece

9th. Armenia

10th. Lithuania

To begin, you’ll notice I included the 11th Most Overrated song in parenthesis, which is Lithuania. I did this to reflect that even though the Netherlands is 3rd Most Overrated, they sadly weren’t able to receive the televotes they deserved the night of the Final. Using the data from this table alone, my conclusion on the Netherlands is that they were easily going to place Top Ten in the Televote, which would then leave who in 11th? Lithuania. All that’s left is to replace Belgium – a poorly-staged pop ballad with a party-harshing climax – with Armenia, which is a song bursting with fun, flawless vocals, and something so Armenian it caused Azerbaijan to get sent to the Doom Dimension. Additionally, mostly out of curiosity, I checked how many more reviews “Jako” has on EurovisionWorld as of May 22nd, and they’re up from ~12,000 ratings to ~18,000 while maintaining their 3.7 star score both times – that’s a show of quality and enjoyment from audiences over time. So other than those cases…I think I just mathematically figured out how to predict the televote? And, I don’t even mean the Top Ten – I mean the whole competition.

So I ask you this: What do we do when we are suddenly given information about the ways the results of Eurovision can be reflected in data before the fact? The answer is not “try and make a profit.” No, that’s not how EuroQuision works. Instead: we use it as mathematical evidence that propaganda fucking works.

CHAPTER 5: Couldn’t See It Comin’

Except: now we know we did see it coming.

Before we dive into the serious stuff, you might be thinking that what I’ve presented is an attempt or desire to “break Eurovision” or take advantage of this information for personal gain. I won’t deny that bets play a huge role in Eurovision – it’s how we get the odds in the first place. But if you know me, you know I’m not in this for the money, even though that may differ from the EBU’s intentions. The truth is that I don’t have any practical means to try and “profit” from any way this information could be used. Part of journalism and sharing of information is the inability I have to control how it’s used despite my best intention.

My intention with this article is to provide evidence that “Israel’s” attempts at utilizing Eurovision to get a good result and repaint their global image was nearly perfect, and the numbers said it was going to happen the whole time. Even without the numbers from EurovisionWorld, we knew how desperate “Israel’s” pleas for votes from the world were. From Duolingo’ing her way across the internet to coordinated efforts to vote en masse in various countries, Eden Golan was gunning for a televote win that she nearly reached, and that’s assuming every single one of those votes were completely legitimate. This is not said to try and accuse anyone of fraudulent voting when I don’t have evidence to support that. I mention it because vote buying is a practice that has been done in the past and actual delegations received punishment for doing so. Given the context of every other effort “Israel” put into their campaign for votes – and I mean everything: begging other artists/teams for positive press and harassing them to the point of retaliation – doesn’t make fraudulent voting seem out of the question. 

Unfortunately, I am no expert on voter fraud – ironic, me being an American and all, but I digress. This is something that, if proven true, will be revealed in the time post-Eurovision 2024. And if it’s true, I will happily discuss it! But for now, I can only  talk about what we do know, which is the newfound connection between EurovisionWorld’s sample of public ratings indicating a song’s predicted success or failure in the contest. This connection is reflective of the greatest tool a Eurovision song has: public perception. Or as some countries treat it: propaganda. Even though “Israel” is a country being sued by the ICJ for genocide, actively commit acts of violence to Palestinians as well as fellow-EBU member countries Lebanon, Jordan, and Egpyt, and were told multiple times by the EBU reference group to rewrite their political song lyrics, they still performed and qualified and finished Top Ten. Truly, did we even need my equation to prove “Hurricane” was overrated? Not really. Instead, “Hurricane” being so statistically overrated was a symptom of the larger effect of a successful PR campaign. When you consider that “Israel’s” mere existence inside of Eurovision is in itself a PR campaign, none of this is surprising. “Israeli” media took every possible moment to try and tell the world that their Eurovision participation was a good thing and truly represented being “united by music.” They did this in commercials and even in what “Israel” calls a sketch comedy show. 

All of these factors had me worried that despite my best hopes and efforts, somehow “Israel” would pull off a good result when they should have been removed months ago. However, the numbers were there the whole time. As we can see, the numbers don’t only apply to solely to “Israel.” Just as they came 2nd in my list and 2nd in the televote, Croatia was 1st in both, and the accuracy of the Top Ten as well as the bottom eleven/NQ’s can’t be ignored either. Truly think about that for a moment: on April 25th – several days before we saw any rehearsal footage or official performance – we knew with 80-90% accuracy the Grand Final televote results and who wasn’t going to qualify with 64% accuracy. And before you suggest that this was a Eurovision 2024-exclusive phenomenon, I thought of that too! So as a surprise fun addition, I ran my equation with the 2023 songs as well!

Since I can’t travel back in time to April 25th 2023, there’s no way I could collect all the ratings and stars with the same accuracy as I did for 2024, Thankfully, using the Wayback Machine Internet Archive. I managed to “go back in time” to a window of time spanning from mid-April to early-May and collect all the numbers. Even with a wider window of information, the 2023 Deviation Scores proved to be almost identical in accuracy – even more accurate in some cases. Starting with the Bottom 11 Most Underrated according to my equation, 9 of those countries turned out to be NQ’s. At the other end with the Top 10 Most Overrated, 7 out of those 10 did in fact finish in the Televote Top 10. And who was the most “overrated” of 2023? Not Finland, not Sweden, but “Israel” and “Unicorn.” This shows that for two years in a row, despite the drastic shift in public opinion and discussion concerning Israel’s participation, their songs that directly correlate to geopolitical aggression and self-victimization proved effective in the realm of Eurovision. So once again, I ask you, the reader: What do we do? CONCLUSION

Since I’m aware that a 20-page article is a bit long, I will go ahead and just list out the most important bits of information I covered and discussed:

Using the information from EurovisionWorld.com, we created an equation that figures out how close or far a song is from the global average of both stars and number of ratings.

Comparing these Deviation Scores reflects a somewhat-accurate correlation between how much the public “rates” a song and whether that song qualifies or potentially comes Top Ten in the Televote

Once these connections can be observed, we can discuss what factors or influences play a part in these connections (Is a song more popular? Is it less popular? Is it representing a country committing war crimes and hopes no one notices? Etc etc.)

Finally, here in the conclusion of all of this, we can answer that third point. As I mentioned, cases like Joost and “Europapa” being overrated are fairly easy to explain; well-known artist, extremely radio-friendly banger song, the list goes on. It also reflects why Iceland and “Scared of Heights” is near the bottom; a more “generic” paint-by-numbers pop song with simple English lyrics, a very unambitious composition, etc etc. However, there’s a difference between a song being over/underrated based on merit, and those with scores based on skewed public opinion one way or another.

I won’t pretend for a moment that spam-liking or spam-disliking doesn’t exist. For example, I’m aware of how Bashar Murad was the clear favorite to win over Hera Bjork, but sadly finished 2nd in what felt like a very devastating blow to the potential of Palestinian representation at Eurovision when it’s needed most. Anyone who rated Iceland poorly because of this is able to do so just as fairly as those who rate it low based on song quality alone. I cannot control the reasons as to why people choose to rate a song high vs. low.

Conversely, you might reasonably be saying “If ‘Israel’ is continuing to treat this as one big PR stunt, wouldn’t that mean all those positive ratings and their televote score are a result of artificially inflating the numbers and/or buying votes?” And as much as that’s one possible explanation, I’ll remind you that there are people who genuinely just enjoy “Hurricane” and dislike having to engage in contextualizing “Israel’s” Eurovision participation. For example, Worldvishawn is a Eurovision TikTok creator with over 300,000 followers, and on multiple occasions has published videos voicing his enjoyment and support of “Hurricane” this year. In a video discussing “Hurricane’s” rehearsals, he notes that the song is a “9/10” and is a case where “the live vocals are better than the studio version.” The issue here is not the fact that a fan of Eurovision has a positive opinion of a song that a lot of people dislike, that’s never a problem with me. The issue is that people with large platforms are able to give their opinions to hundreds of thousands of people with the click of a button and provides a space where people can attempt to remove any context of “Hurricane” and “Israel” whatsoever and just say the song is good. This is what indicates to me that all the positive numbers surrounding this song aren’t all completely fabricated and this should not conclude in a baseless accusation of buying or faking votes.

Eurovision 2024 was a year where at every level of control, nearly everyone chose to do nothing rather than doing something. At the tippy top of the ranks, it was up to the EBU to remove “Israel” because of their own previously-established actions and morals concerning geopolitical violence during Eurovision, specifically in the case of Russia. After they refused to do that, it was the responsibility of participating broadcasters to withdraw and refuse to participate. After all 37 broadcasters refused to actually do anything, it was up to the artists to put their career aside and take a stand in the public eye. And then, none of the artists did that! Some showed and voiced their advocacy, but none of them showed solidarity. If you aren’t familiar with the difference between advocacy and solidarity, advocacy is when you “advocate” your morals and beliefs in your words and attitude. Solidarity is when you put those words to action and actually do something actionable to disrupt the status quo to be in solidarity with those who are suffering and against a system of power that is ignoring them. And since none of the artists’ advocacy led to solidarity, there we were with a Grand Final with “Israel” coming 2nd in the televote and no one doing anything about it.

Now, I could go down the entire chain of responsibility of “Who needs to do something about this?” and eventually land where I and many others have been for months, which is the fun destination of Boycottville, but a lot of people hear the B-word and think its an invitation to start arguing and calling me a hypocrite. What I will state is this: boycotting is not something asked of us to try and simply prove our morals for show or optics, and it is not something we ask people do to in order to shame them should they choose not to. Boycotting is what we do when every level of command above us refuses to do anything about a system that is completely broken and exploitable. The numbers were there from the beginning and even I can admit I was foolish when I stated in my own video essay that “‘Israel’ isn’t going to get an enormous televote score.” That is something I said based on optimism and my own reasoning, before I actually came up with this equation and ran all the numbers. I was proven very wrong and I think I’m not the only one.

In the end, I need to remind us all that this was never about the results, it was never about “making sure ‘Israel’ doesn’t win.” If this were truly about making sure “Israel” didn’t win, then we would all have had to agree on one (1) artist to mass-vote for AND hope the juries liked as well, but that would be literally impossible. Whereas Eurofans could argue “Let’s mass-vote Croatia!” or “Mass-vote Ukraine again,” that is nowhere as easily and streamlined as it is for Zionists, “fake” votes, and “Israeli” fans to just spend all their money on voting for “Hurricane.” So once again: THIS IS NOT ABOUT RESULTS. The numbers sadly reflected “Israel” succeeding in their campaign nearly the entire way, and because they know that Eurovision is a system where everyone from the broadcasters to the fans don’t actually want to do anything that poses a threat to this silly contest, they’ll get the numbers they want. Trying to beat “Israel” at the game of Eurovision is a mathematical impossibility as things currently stand, and if EVERYONE continues to not want to change their behavior (the EBU, the broadcasters, the artists, the news websites, even the fans themselves), then “Israel” will keep playing this game successfully for years to come.

“The Fairest of Them All”

Researched and Written by Beatrice Quinn

Research Data Links:

Eurovision 2024: Deviation Scores

Eurovision 2023: Deviation Scores

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3. Biggest self-insert OC?

4. What kind of music do your OCs listen to?

5. What are some of your OCs biggest fears?

6. Do you have any OCs without stories? Will you ever create one for them?

7. What are your favourite relationships between your OCs? (romantic or platonic!)

8. Do you have any OC family trees?

9. Favourite OC?

Please and thank you!

3. Biggest self-insert OC?

Sarah started out as a self-insert OC in a Xavier's School RP on the Ctrl+Alt+Del forums, in the eaaaarly 2010s. Since then, she's absolutely developed to be her own character, but she's sort of the person I would like to be now, regarding her chosen family, love of cooking/baking, and being creative. Meanwhile Oz has all of the money I wish I had and more, and Angie is as confident and cool as I want to be.

4. What kind of music do your OCs listen to?

I definitely can't list them all, just because I have so many OCs, so I will focus on my favorites for the rest of the questions, haha. Sarah loves artists like BABYMETAL and Paramore, her older sister Angie has a giant range of likes from Halestorm to Gary Allan, Oz is a big Britney Spears and general pop music/Top 40 fan.

5. What are some of your OCs biggest fears?

Oz hates all bugs, snakes, and lizards - it gets a tiny bit better when Doyle starts showing an interest in herpetology, but not much. Sarah has had to go to therapy to stop being anxious anytime she starts to get hungry, but she still carries snacks with her everywhere. Neither of them are a fan of men being loud and aggressive. Most of Angie's fears involve Sarah getting hurt in any way, shape, or form. (He is not okay when she goes through her one pregnancy - especially when he finds out about pregnancy psychosis.)

6. Do you have any OCs without stories? Will you ever create one for them?

Angie's wife, Rayne, and one of Oz's relationships, Andy, don't get written about enough. I really hope to change it someday.

7. What are your favorite relationships between your OCs? (Romantic or platonic!)

I love Oz and Calum's relationship, and how they are basically childhood sweethearts. They also have a third partner later in their life--a sweet, scholarly astrology nerd named Jakob that I haven't posted anything about on AO3, but have plenty of old WIPs with him. I also love that Oz has so much love in his life - not just from his family and partners, but he has so many friends. He considers Nic, Andy's wife, to be his platonic partner as well as best friend - they are married in a Bridgerton AU to save both of them from a life of misery.

8. Do you have any OC family trees?

Most of my OCs have fleshed out parents and siblings, though there are a few only children. Sarah and Angie are siblings, with Sarah four years younger. Oz has a sister that is two years younger than he is. There is a Gravity Falls AU that I like to think about, but idk if I will ever write, where Angie and Jakob are twins/stand-ins for Stan and Ford, and Sarah's grandkids are stand-ins for Dipper and Mabel.

9. Favorite OC?

Angie. He's such an asshole and has done and gone through so much, but he also made the decision to be better, and worked so hard to do it. He earned the relationships he has with his wife and Sarah, (they lost touch for a few years, Angie was in a bad place and acted like a dick to drive Sarah away 'for her own good') and beat his own mental health and cancer, and has a life he never thought he would have. (He always thought he would be a Very Unimportant Member of the 27 Club.)