#I think lots of love is when I fell in love with this podcast the combination of the crescendoed classical music and absolute a* pettiness

[mintmentos]

Things in Sherlock and co that make me get weird looks on the tube because I can’t contain myself

Lots of love, Sherlock Holmes

Who is called Jonk??

No shit Sherlock

The bag for life debacle

“Lestrade has very kindly sent these on. What she lacks in intelligence and any discernable talent required to be an officer, she’d makes up for in kindness” “She sent these to you for your birthday” “I suspect for two reasons. First, the case makes very little sense to Scotland Yard which isn’t surprising, and second, yes, for my birthday”

John losing it over the cardboard box title

The horse is the fucking masked singer!

According to Watson’s geographical breakdown I live in the bumcheeks of the uk

[mygnolia]

FALLING FOR MY MC! ౨ৎ y. jungwon

୨୧ -› where a music bank mc and leader of the hottest k-pop group meet and fall in love (again)

pair -› idol!yang jungwon x radio/podcast host!!reader | trope -› childhood friends to lovers | wc -› 1.9k | REN SAYS.. i thought this idea was cute when someone requested fanboy won + weekly idol mc reader (i never watch weekly idol so have music bank instead..) and im scared of writing idol x fangirl entirely so have this spinoff! | library

- you and jungwon have been friends for a while even before he went on i-land

- he’s always been into performing, singing, and especially dancing

- sometimes you’d stay behind at school and watch him do taekwondo + dancing

- and while he was student body president, you were the president of broadcasting too!

- you loved to talk to others and be in front of a camera and also wanted to make your own padcast, but never really knew how

- so you two were definitely in communication because of your positions!

- and… drum roll please… jungwon gets a little crush on you

- let’s just say he started thinking about you whenever you started morning broadcast for the school… or when you announced his name and his plans as student body president he went all blush-y

- he thought you were super cool and loved how effortless you were in front of everyone

- like time slows down when he looks at you, his eyes go glittery everyone else disappears..

- HES WHIPPED I FEAR!!!

more under the cut :3

- you two hung out a lot afterschool and sometimes at each others houses, but you also had other friends- friends who would also become idols!!

- you’re friends with chaewon and ningning hehe

- so now that highschools kind of ending, a lot of your friends started seriously pursuing music and the idol life, but you were never quite as devoted as they were

- and unfortunately by senior year, jungwon left for i-land :(

- you tried to be close but they didn’t allow outside communication and summer left you extremely busy

- and you were really sad that you couldn’t hang out with jungwon as much, but you still had other friends and were close to many from your school because of how big your journalism class was (aka where you did your broadcasting duties)

- but watching iland was your pasttime!! you voted jungwon EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. because you knew how much work went into his skills

- and who even cares if it was biased everyone was biased in their voting

- and you loved the drama and all his other members (but god it was heartbreaking and when jungwon stood on that second to elimination stage you cried)

- when enhypen debuted, you stayed a fan not just because of jungwon, but because of his interactions and their music

- enhypen was popular from the get-go because of iland, and you paid attention to their comebacks and texted jungwon every so often

- you two weren’t able to meet because of his busy tour schedule and back to back combacks (FREE MY BOYS)

- but you always supported them wherever whenever, and even trying to get concert tickets to attend whenever they were in your area

- plus you were still a broke college student and busy with your own interests

- but it didn’t stop you from consuming their content

- and if something happened you’d text jungwon, not really expecting a text back since he was so busy, but he’d always try to respond

- “omg not your cactus dying???” and he’d respond with some laughing

- “maeumi is so big now i saw her on your live on your arm” “STOP IT WAS SO EMBARRASSING”

- little things here and there

- and maybe yes… you were a little fangirl…

- ALBUM PULLS WERE HALF JUNGWON SOME SUNOO SOME HEESEUNG BTW!!! you were eating up your pc album

- and you’d always compliment him after a comeback or a show you went to

- “ahh! tamed-dashed is so good i think my fav song from your album is just a little bit! make sure you rest so your pictures turn out cute :)”

- OK BUT THE MOMENT YOU TRULY FELL FOR HIM like actually a ‘wtf omg why is yang jungwon so HOT why do i have a MASSIVE CRUSH ON HIM (again)”

- was…drum roll…l’officiel jungwon with only the blazer and then dicon tw-en-ty years jungwon with the cherry photoshoot (not projecting LOL haha…)

- yeah you were whipped

- but ofc you didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, trying to keep your comments supportive more than fangirl-y

- you and jungwon finally have time to catch up when he’s back home for a bit, and he texts you more often since you were still somewhat busy with school

- and you two reminisce on how he wanted to be an idol pre-iland and how you love to talk on the radio which he’s listened to a few times!!! (yapper y/n agenda!!!)

- and you still loved to do broadcasting even in university

- you were on a few broadcast groups and was a temporary university podcast host for studying encouragement and you shared your struggles as an incoming upperclassman

- many people listened for the tips and fun story submissions to listen to while studying!

- and you’d look for jobs and hoped to find a larger podcast or station

- so much so that you auditioned and reached out to a popular radio show host about love and dating advice called ’Let’s Find You Love!’

- and your station was SUPER popular considering how sweet and sincere your advice was

- you were honest with viewers in toxic relationships and also got popular online

- special valentines day episode! you and your host shared stories about YOUR first crush and love experiences

- your host shared some bad relationships and what not to do! but you…?? you had a crush on yang jungwon. still. ofc he looked good!!!

- “to be honest, there was this boy in highschool who i liked, and i wish i got to ask him out, honestly. he was super sweet every time we talked, and he was always so hardworking.” and with the way you said it, the people who knew you from school couldn’t deduce if it was someone close to you or someone who you pined over from a distance

- agh the mystery!! everyone is hooked on your cute story, telling you to admit your crush to him!

- BUT HELLO?? ITS LEADER OF ENHYPEN JUNGWON YOU CANT DO THAT!!!

- tiktok frl went ‘damn i want someone to talk about me the way y/n from lets find u love talked about her crush’

- but it became a HUGE hit

- so much so that music bank reached out and WOAHHH

- they want you?? as??? an??? mc????

- usually they would pick idols, but the idol that did their music bank performance had an injury, and you were doing it alone since music bank didn’t want to start rumors!

- and woah.. enhypen new comback had you on your KNEES

- plus listening to jungwon is always so satisfying, especially to see him grow and explore different concepts and looks, you were not only loving the face cards being served but also his energy and love for his fans!!

- so yeah, safe to say your feelings for him were still there..

- but then they perform on music bank for xo, and you’re…THERE???

- jungwon’s looking at you, who’s looking super pretty as you rehearse your lines and the stylists are adding to your look before the show

- and he turns to his members like dude.

- and all of them are confused like ?? “jungwon what’s wrong..”

- “DUDE MY CHILDHOOD FRIEND IS HERE AS THE MC AND SHE’S SO PRETTY”

- thankfully camera crew was on break..but when they were back

- yeah fans were defo in their comments like “woah why is jungwonnie so nervous??” literally who’s gonna tell them the girl he hasn’t seen in like 6 years is in front of him pretty like how he remembers??

- and you kind of wanted to surprise jungwon by not telling him, but you also never had the time to speak up with all the media training you needed

- everyone was excited for you to be mc! it was a change of pace but a fun one for the audience

- welp it’s go time!!

- “hello everyone!! woah.. is it time for..my dating advice segment? nono! i’m here as…” you pretend to open a letter and look around “music bank’s emcee?? wow, such an honor!!” and ofc you turn on the dramatics to act

- and what group to walk in but enhypen…

- jungwon smiles IMMEDIATELY. fans analyzed this whole video

- ��dude jungwon is WHIPPED for that mc’ ���jungwon when he meets the pretty mc” “so we’re all seeing jungwon check out the girl on music bank or…”

- you had your own little script related to their new concept, asking a few questions and then moving onto a member specific question

- “jungwonnie! i noticed you wrote the part for hundred broken hearts! can we have you sing it?”

- THING IS…who says ‘jungwonnie’ so freely?? if you guys never met?? yeah speculation was running a little out of hand fr!

Jungwon shakes his head, dimples reappearing as he takes another look at you and nods. He sings his written part into the mic, and unknowingly, you smile too. “Ah- sorry, I’m too nervous to be singing it well.” And you scoff at him, looking around at his members. “He did it great, don’t you agree, Jake? Your voice is like an angel.” You call out to Jake, who originally sings that part.

Jake tells you, “Agh, he might steal my fans if he decides to sing that part live” and you laugh, eyes crinkling as you smile at Jake’s response to move onto the next question.

- and jungwon in that moment remembers why he liked you

- your laugh, your smile, your easy-going nature, and how much you had chased for your passions over the years

- and he’s just super super proud of you for where you are now, being a literal mc

- and he knows you love doing it

- after a bit more talking they went to perform and you went back!

- he’s super nervous after their performance and the members tease him for his little crush saying how he’d get a girlfriend before all of them

- oh yeah engenes were raving abt u

- “jungwonie’ and he doesn’t even look uncomfortable they must be friends”

- it takes a few internet detectives to figure out that it’s him who used to go to school with you and it’s him who you had a huge crush on woahhh

- and then jungwon found out.

- “y/n!! look at this tiktok lolol” “jungwon why is it titled ‘y/nwon confirmed with evidence’”“it’s funny >.<“

- ur freaking out like crazy

- cuz wdym jungwon SAW IT AND FOUND IT FUNNY

- so you’re like “haha yeah so funny…anyways wyd if it’s true.”

- and he’s like freaking out on his end like omfg is it true omg does she know “idk walk over and cuddle and kiss” HE BOLD!!

- anyways ygs do just that!! sooo cute and you two are very very secretive

- until…drum roll pls..one year after the initial valentines day episode on your podcast aka 7 months after you started dating jungwon

- and he’s waiting in your living room with all of your gifts but you have no idea since you’re recording live in your studio

- “for this valentines day episode i had people submit some cute love stories! and yes i will share one of my own”

- and you read all of them and laugh at the cute stories about love because yes love we love love!

- “the moment you were waiting for! so, little one year update, but i listened to you all and the boy i liked in highschool is now my boyfriend and we’ve been together 7 months!”

- yeah the internet freaked out

- because the timeline from xo comeback to valentines day makes sense for the engenes who knew

- but ygs are so cute so who’s complaining

reblogs + interactions are always appreciated :)

[whereforarthur]

Masterlist~

All of my work compiled in one place. Please like and reblog if you enjoy them, feedback is greatly appreciated. Requests are open!

(Updated 11/18/2024) 

(X) = coming soon

ItalianBach~

Fluff: 

You’re The Only Man I Want to Kiss

- Isaac and his girlfriend y/n react to Women Rank Men by Kissing

Smut:

Ménage à trois (Threesome w/ ArthurTv)

- Who knew fan fictions could cause so much pleasure?

Ménage à trois (Part 2)

- Having had a threesome the night before leads to an interesting and revealing podcast episode, leading their friends to question what truly happened?

ArthurTV~

Angst:

Unrequited Love Hurts Like A Bitch

- Being in love with your best friend sucks, especially when he doesn't feel the same way

Unrequited Love Hurts Like A Bitch (Part 2)

- Soulmates are two best friends who fell in love

Fluff: 

Being Stuck in an Elevator Never Looked so Good?

- Getting trapped in an elevator with your favorite YouTuber, was not what you had planned for today

Love At First Podcast

- Falling in love with you was easy

Smut:

"Women weaken legs"

- After your boyfriend Arthur was in boxing training camp and was forced to go 6-8 weeks without distractions and sex, he goes feral for his girlfriend when he gets out

Ménage à trois (Threesome w/ ItalianBach)

- Who knew fan fictions could cause so much pleasure?

Ménage à trois (Part 2)

- Having had a threesome the night before leads to an interesting and revealing podcast episode, leading their friends to question what truly happened?

The Two Arthur’s (with Arthur Hill)

- Virgin!Reader goes to her friends for comfort not expecting them to comfort her in such a way

George Clarkey~

Fluff: 

Musicians want to be the loud voice for so many quiet hearts - Reader is a famous singer and George follows her on tour and fans speculate they’re dating.

Wedding Day Bliss~ - George Clarke marries the love of his life

Dating Headcanons for George Clarke

I'll wear your name on my heart til I die

- The turmoils and happiness that comes with giving birth

Smut:

Tummy Obsessed Much? - George's favorite body part on his girlfriend is her stomach

Wedding Night Bliss~

- A fluffy smut of the events that transpired after your and George's wedding night.

It’s Good to Be Home

- could you do a clarkey version of homecoming?

A Night In

- A perfect night in with your boyfriend is very pleasurable

It's Been Way Too Long

- “I think I'd miss you even if we never met.”

Love and Hate Are Blurred Lines

- “How would it be.. if all my hate disappeared like my youth, if after all this time his very hatred of me turned out to be something gentle, some kind of love.”

Caught Red Handed

- Who knew taking a risk could lead to this much pleasure?

So Much Restraint

ChrisMD~

Angst:

We'll Never Last

- It hurts to be something, it's worse to be nothing with you

Fluff: 

Fate is in The Stars (PlusSize!Reader)

- A chance encounter at a concert leads to more than you expected

Drunk and Touchy

- Chris fluff where he's a bit tipsy and can't keep his hands off his girlfriend

I Didn't Know Punk Girls Blushed

- Golden retriever boy falls for punk grumpy girl

What If We Were More Than Friends?

- Falling in love as best friends was unexpected

Smut:

Arthur Hill~

Angst:

Brother's Flatmate

- George’s sister and Arthur can’t stand each other, right?!?

Fluff: 

Am I a Burden to You?

- Arthur’s been working a lot and y/n misses him, she brings this up and he gets angry and calls her ‘clingy’ before realising he messed up and makes it up to her (angst —> soft)

Piano Nights

- Y/N and Arthur meet at a musician's party, where she spots him and confidently pursues him. They sleep together, and they end up dating, leaving Arthur in awe and a massive simp.

Dating Headcanons for Arthur Hill

Smut:

“Sex is an Emotion in Motion”

- Arthur takes care of you after a rough night in the sheets

It’s painful, loving someone from afar.

- Y/N is on holiday with all of the boys and there’s tension between Arthur hill and her, and everyone can see it and they’re just waiting for something to happen. (Soft Smut)

Homecoming

- When Arthur returns from vacation, he misses his girlfriend greatly causing things to get freaky

The Two Arthur’s (with ArthurTv)

- Virgin!Reader goes to her friends for comfort not expecting them to comfort her in such a way

A Delightful Surprise

All~

Dating Headcanons

George Clarke

Arthur Hill

ArthurTV

ChrisMD (X)

ItalianBach (X)

Featuring more than 2 of the boys~

Poker Night Never Felt So Right

ArthurTv x Reader x George Clarke x Chrismd

A game of strip poker with your friends, goes a little further than anyone expected...

Said She Wanted Five Guys She Ain’t Talking about Burgers

Reader x George, Arthur Hill, Chris, Isaac and ArthurTv

Y/n shares her sexual intentions with five YouTubers. She invites them to join her fantasy, setting no limits on their actions. The group eagerly agrees, indulging in a passionate sexual encounter as they explore Y/n's desires one by one.

A/n: Let me know if anyone would like to be added to a taglist for all imagines or certain people!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

It’s been twenty years since my Microsoft DRM talk

On THURSDAY (June 20) I'm live onstage in LOS ANGELES for a recording of the GO FACT YOURSELF podcast. On FRIDAY (June 21) I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On SATURDAY (June 22) I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel and a keynote at the LOCUS AWARDS.

This week on my podcast,This week on my podcast, I read my June 17, 2004 Microsoft Research speech about DRM, a talk that went viral two decades ago, and reassess its legacy:

https://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt

It's been 20 years (and one day) since I gave that talk. It wasn't my first talk like that, but at the time, it was the most successful talk I'd ever given. I was still learning how to deliver a talk at the time, tinkering with different prose and delivery styles (to my eye, there's a lot of Bruce Sterling in that one, something that's still true today).

I learned to give talks by attending sf conventions and watching keynotes and panel presentations and taking mental notes. I was especially impressed with the oratory style of Harlan Ellison, whom I heard speak on numerous occasions, and by Judith Merril, who was a wonderful mentor to me and many other writers:

https://locusmag.com/2021/09/cory-doctorow-breaking-in/

I was also influenced by the speakers I'd heard at the many political rallies I'd attended and helped organize; from the speakers at the annual Labour Day parade to the anti-nuclear proliferation and pro-abortion rights marches I was very involved with. I also have vivid memories of the speeches that Helen Caldicott gave in Toronto when I was growing up, where I volunteered as an usher:

https://www.helencaldicott.com/

When I helped found a dotcom startup in the late 1990s, my partners and I decided that I'd do the onstage talking; we paid for a couple hours of speaker training from an expensive consultant in San Francisco. The only thing I remember from that session was the advice to look into the audience as much as possible, rather than reading from notes with my head down. Good advice, but kinda obvious.

The impetus for that training was my onstage presentation at the first O'Reilly P2P conference in 2001. I don't quite remember what I said there, but I remember that it made an impression on Tim O'Reilly, which meant a lot to me then (and now):

https://www.oreilly.com/pub/pr/844

I don't remember who invited me to give the talk at Microsoft Research that day, but I think it was probably Marc Smith, who was researching social media at the time by data-mining Usenet archives to understand social graphs. I think I timed the gig so that I could kill three birds with one stone: in addition to that talk, I attended (and maybe spoke at?) that year's Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, and attended an early preview of the soon-to-launch Sci Fi Museum (now the Museum of Pop Culture). I got to meet Nichelle Nichols (and promptly embarrassed myself by getting tongue-tied and telling her how much I loved the vocals she did on her recording of the Star Wars theme, something I'm still hot around the ears over, though she was a pro and gently corrected me, "I think you mean Star *Trek"):

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=4IiJUQSsxNw&list=OLAK5uy_lHUn58fbpceC3PrK2Xu9smBNBjR_-mAHQ

But the start of that trip was the talk at Microsoft Research; I'd been on the Microsoft campus before. That startup I did? Microsoft tried to buy us, which prompted our asshole VCs to cram the founders and steal our equity, which created so much acrimony that the Microsoft deal fell through. I was pretty bitter at the time, but in retrospect, I really dodged a bullet – for one thing, the deal involved my going to work for Microsoft as a DRM evangelist. I mean, talk about the road not taken!

This was my first time back at Microsoft as an EFF employee. There was some pre-show meet-and-greet-type stuff, and then I was shown into a packed conference room where I gave my talk and had a lively (and generally friendly) Q&A. MSR was – and is – the woolier side of Microsoft, where all kinds of interesting people did all kinds of great research.

Indeed, almost every Microsoft employee I've ever met was a good and talented person doing the best work they could. The fact that Microsoft produces such a consistent stream of garbage products and crooked business practices is an important testament to the way that a rotten organization can be so much less than the sum of its parts.

I'm a fully paid up subscriber to Ronald Coase's "Theory of the Firm" (not so much his other views):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm

Coase says the reason institutions exist is to enable people to work together with lowered "coordination costs." In other words, if you and I are going to knit a sweater together, we're going to need to figure out how to make sure that we're not both making the left sleeve. Creating an institution – the Mafia, the Catholic Church, Microsoft, a company, a co-op, a committee that puts on a regional science fiction con – is all about minimizing those costs.

As Yochai Benkler pointed out in 2002, the coolest and most transformative thing about the internet is that it let us do more complex collective work with smaller and less structured institutions:

https://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.PDF

That was the initial prompt for my novel Walkaway, which asked, "What if we could build luxury hotels and even space programs with the kind of (relatively) lightweight institutional overheads associated with Wikipedia and the Linux kernel?"

https://crookedtimber.org/2017/05/10/coases-spectre/

So the structure of institutions is really important. At the same time, I'm skeptical of the idea that there are "good companies" and "bad companies." Small businesses, family businesses, and other firms that aren't exposed to the finance sector can reflect their leaders' personalities, but it's a huge mistake to ascribe personalities to the companies themselves.

That's how you get foolish ideas like "Apple is a good company because they embrace paid service and Google is a bad company because they make money from surveillance." Apple will spy on you, too, if they can:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Disney and Fox weren't Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed lovers making goo-goo eyes at each other across the table at MPA meetings. They were two giant public companies, and any differences between them were irrelevancies and marketing myths:

https://locusmag.com/2021/07/cory-doctorow-tech-monopolies-and-the-insufficient-necessity-of-interoperability/

I think senior management's personalities do matter (see, for example, the destruction of Boeing after it was colonized by sociopaths from McDonnell Douglas), but the influence of those personalities is much less important than the constraints that competition and regulation impose on companies. In other words, an asshole can run a company that delivers good products at fair prices under ethical conditions – provided that failing to do so will cost more in lost business and fines than they stand to make by cheating:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/24/record-scratch/#autoenshittification

Microsoft is a company founded and run by colossal assholes. Bill Gates is a monster and he surrounded himself with monsters, and they hired monsters to fill out the courts of their corporate palaces:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/14/patch-tuesday/#fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again

To the extent that good things come out of Microsoft – some of its games products, the odd piece of hardware, important papers from MSR – it's in spite of the leadership; it's the result of constraints imposed by competition and regulation – and that's why Microsoft pursued such an aggressive program of extinguishing its competitors and capturing its regulators.

In retrospect, I think one of my goals in that talk was to convince those people doing good work for a rotten institution to go elsewhere and do other things. Certainly, that's one of the goals I pursue in the talks I give today. At the time, some of Microsoft's highest-profile technologists were publicly resigning over the company's war on free/open source software, so it wasn't an unrealistic goal:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030214215639/http://synthesist.net/writing/onleavingms.html

What I did not expect what that publishing the talk on my site and blogging it on Boing Boing would spark a wave of public interest that would get its message in front of several orders of magnitude more people than I spoke to at Microsoft that day. Partly, that was because I released the talk into the public domain, using the brand-new Creative Commons Public Domain Declaration (which was later replaced with the CC0 mark, due to legal issues withBu its drafting):

https://web.archive.org/web/20100223035835/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/

Some mix of the content of the speech, the spirit of the moment, and the novelty of that wide open license sparked a ton of interest. Jason Kottke recorded an audio version that Andy Baio hosted:

https://kottke.org/04/06/cory-drm-talk

My brutalist ASCII transcript was quickly converted to beautiful HTML by Matt Haughey and Anil Dash:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040622235333/http://www.dashes.com/anil/stuff/doctorow-drm-ms.html

For people who needed a hardcopy, there was Patrick Berry's printer-friendly stylesheet:

https://patandkat.com/pat/weblog/mirror/cory-drm/doctorow-drm-ms.html

Multiple people recorded (and sold!) audio versions, and then there were all the fan translations, into Danish, French, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (both EU and Brazilian), Spanish and Swedish. I stayed in touch with some of those translators, and they helped me translate the position papers I wrote for UN WIPO meetings. Those papers were so effective that ratfuckers from the copyright lobby started to steal them and hide them in the UN toilets (!):

https://web.archive.org/web/20041119132831/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/002117.php

Re-reading the speech for my podcast on Sunday, I expected to be struck by the anachronisms in it, and there were a few of those to be sure. But far more clear was the common thread running from this talk to other talks I gave that took on a significant life of their own, like my 2011 "War On General Purpose Computing" talk for CCC:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

And my work on Adversarial Interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

And my most recent work, on enshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/27/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse/

In other words, I've been saying the same thing – in different ways – for more than 20 years. That could be depressing, but I actually found it uplifting. Two decades ago, I was radicalized by a fear that the internet would be seized by corporations and governments and transformed into a system of surveillance and control. I found my way into a job at EFF, where I worked with colleagues across multiple disciplines – coders, lawyers and activists – to fight this force.

At the time, this was a fringe cause. Most of the traditional activists I'd come up with in the feminist, antiwar, antiracist, environmental and labour movement viewed digital rights as a distraction and dismissed its partisans as sad, self-obsessed nerds who mistook fights over the management of Star Trek message boards for civil rights struggles:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell

I thought I was right then, and I think history has borne me out. The point of waging these fights – both in the wide public sphere and within political movements – is to get people activated before it's too late. Every day that goes by is a day when the internet becomes more inhospitable to political organizing for a better world – more surveillant, more controlling. I believed then – and believe today – that the internet isn't more important that the other fights I waged as a young activist, but I think that the internet is fundamental to those fights.

Saving the planet, smashing patriarchy, overthrowing tyranny and freeing labor are all fights that will be coordinated – Coase style – on the internet. Without a free, fair and open internet, those fights are infinitely harder to win.

The project of getting people to understand, care about, and fight for digital rights is a marathon, not a sprint. When I joined EFF, it was already 12 years old. There were six people in the org then (I was the seventh). Today, there's more than a hundred of us, and we're stretched so thin! The 30+ year old idea that internet policy will intersect with every part of every fight has been utterly vindicated.

Back in 2004, I asked Microsoft why they were willing to fight the US government to the death over antitrust enforcement, but were such wimps when confronted with the entertainment industry's demands for DRM. 20 years later, I think I know the answer: Microsoft understood that DRM would let them usurp the relationship between creative workers, entertainment industry companies, and audiences. Their perfect instincts for seeking out and capitalizing on opportunities to seize monopoly power drove them to make deliberately defective products, in the belief that their market power would let them cram those products down our throats:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/01/27/protect-your-investment-buy-open/

Here's a link to the podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/news/2024/06/16/my-2004-microsoft-drm-talk/

And here's direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive; they'll host your stuff for free forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_470/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_470_-_My_2004_Microsoft_DRM_Talk.mp3

And here's the RSS feed for my podcast:

https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/18/greetings-fellow-pirates/#arrrrrrrrrr

[imaginespazzi]

I have a head canon where Paige has a realization during the overtime video with Jaden Owens that she wants to be with azzi forever and she’s ready for more commitment. Right when the video cuts off Jaden says “it’s like your sharing your life with your best friend”

Can you write a one shot where Paige has this realization after she says that and then she talks to Azzi about it? I’m obsessed with the way you write pazzi!

This is maybe shorter than you wanted and written in about the span of an hour (so unedited) but I kinda fell in love with this, so hopefully it's at least a little bit like you'd hoped for:

“It’s like you're sharing your life with your best friend”

It's been almost half a day since the podcast had filmed and Jaden's words are still echoing through Paige's head, as she lies on her hotel room bed, staring at the bright lights in the ceiling. That nagging voice in her head, exasperatedly telling her you already do share a life with your best friend, sounds a lot like Caroline, Paige thinks. It's not wrong. In between sharing closets and friends, and hopes and dreams, and spending every second they can together, the lines have merged so much that Paige's life feels a lot like PaigeAndAzzi's life.

All her life, Paige has been just a little bit scared of committing to anything except the ball in her hands and the court underneath her feet. She'd made as much clear in the podcast today too when the topic of marriage had come up. In the moment, she'd stuck to her default, that she needed more time, the same line she's been repeating to Azzi for god knows how long. Then Jaden had said those ten words, like it was the most simple thing in the world, and it had felt like Paige's whole way of thinking had come crushing down.

“It’s like you're sharing your life with your best friend”

And it should scare Paige, the realization that she already has that, something so deep, so powerful and yet so fragile, but instead she feels an unprecedented surge of calmness, her constantly moving body, suddenly finding a sense of stillness. If there was ever a feeling she could capture in a bottle, she thinks it might be this one, this feeling of knowing, she's found forever.

It takes about three rings for Azzi to pick up the facetime call. She's leaning against her headboard, hair pulled into a bun, eyes glimmering with sleep. Despite being clearly tired, the smile she has for Paige, just for Paige, is dazzling. And maybe that's why Paige isn't scared. Because if that's the smile she gets for the rest of her life, really it's all she could ever want.

"I thought you'd be out and about in town," Azzi says with a knowing grin.

"Nah," Paige shakes her head, "that's not the life for me anymore."

Azzi raises a questioning eyebrow at the phrasing, head falling back against her pink pillow, "is that so? No more party P?"

"Think I'm ready to settle down. Two kids, a suburban house with a big yard, all of that stuff you know?" and even if she says it with a joking smile, Paige knows that, that's the truth. Maybe not right now right now, but that's the future she wants and she wants it with Azzi.

"No pets?" Azzi asks, playing along as she squints at Paige through the phone.

"Well, I thought Stewie was a given," Paige says slowly and even through the scratchy connection, she hears Azzi's voice hitch at the meaning behind her words.

"Stewie-," Azzi bites her lip nervously, "you see all of that with Stewie?"

"Duh," Paige rolls her eyes dramatically but her heart is beating rapidly, "I can't imagine a future without Stewie. There's no house or two kids without her. Do you think-," it's the blonde's turn to chew at her lips as she stares intently as the brunette on her phone screen, "do you think Stewie would want that too? A life with me? Forever?"

It's been a long time coming, and Azzi has been ever so patient, maybe more patient than Paige had deserved. Maybe, maybe it deserves better than a long-distance facetime call and a conversation disguised using Azzi's dog's name but something about this moment feels right. And Paige wishes Azzi was here next to her, so she could kiss her feelings into the younger girl's skin, mark her with the words you're my forever.

Something wet shimmers against Azzi's eyelashes as the softest smile adorns her face, "I think Stewie would want that a lot. I think she's wanted it for a really long time actually. She was just waiting for you."

"I'm sorry I made her wait so long," sincerity is etched into every syllabus as something a little bit like guilt pools in Paige's stomach, guilt at having denied both of them the chance to just be happy.

"You were worth the wait."

[sehodreams]

cherry blossom scars

TW and tags: tattoo artist!Wonbin x insecure!reader, surgery scar, pierced nipples, nipple play, mutual masturbation, tons of overthinking and word vomiting, corny as hell, fluff, kind of dom reader but not much.

WC: 9.3k

Comment: hi guys, I made brief descriptions of the scar, to be honest, I don’t have one or ever had surgery, so I’m not exactly sure how one would look, I just saw a couple of pictures on the internet and wanted to write something about it, hope it’s okay. I didn’t sleep at all to finish it because I knew I’d leave it in a draft if I didn’t write it in one go. Probably has mistakes and inconsistencies. I don’t know anything about piercings, tattoos, or early education.

While growing up, as weird as it sounds, summer was your favourite season. You remember a lot of things about it, how your parents would drive to the coast to spend the day at the beach, playing in the water with the friend your parents had agreed to take with you, and eating the most boring sandwich your mother could make in a busy morning that felt like a feast in your mouth after swimming for hours.

It was all good, until you started to grow up. Your parents had no time to take you anymore, your friends had better things to do, and you had entered the phase of your life in which you hated the idea of wearing a swimsuit if you weren’t perfect.

Perfection is, as you thought after a particular summer, simply not you.

Perhaps your mother hadn’t said it with bad intentions, she was your mother after all, and you were sure she loved you, but that little phrase had impregnated your head like the gum on your head one of the boys in class thought it looked good smeared on your hair.

‘’I don’t think you should wear this blouse doll’’ she said, showing you her selection instead.

‘’Why? I like it, and it’s too hot to wear normal shirts’’ you replied, feeling your arms sweat just with the simple action of changing into the clothes you were wearing.

‘’It’s just… the scar is showing’’ she said, pointing at the line that went from the start of your shoulder to the middle of your chest.

It was a long line, thick, slightly red and purple, noticeable from the way it would get deeper into your smooth skin, surrounded with thin little lines that looked like roots expanding to grow. You were just fourteen, not thinking much of it; actually, not even thinking about it until she talked about it.

You spent the summer with short-sleeved shirts, leaving all the dresses with thin straps and anything that showed your cleavage behind. You could, never again, wear anything that did.

It didn’t matter how many creams your mother bought, or how many treatments in clinics you received, it stayed there with you, like a mark of how fragile your body was, and how easily you could break with a simple fall.

You had gotten hurt after biking with your friends and making a wrong turn. You fell with a strong thud, and you don’t remember much about what happened that day anymore, because when you were conscious again, you already had the scar there. Less to say your parents banned you from riding a bicycle ever again.

So, it’s not difficult to guess why you hate summer now. You can’t wear the clothes you want, you’re a broke college student living alone with no AC, and you have to walk everywhere with the fear of getting a heatstroke.

To your luck, or disgrace, today you run out of clean t-shirts acceptable for the weather, and you simply refuse to wear a long-sleeved one, resolving to grab one of the thin straps that you usually wear when you’re alone in your room.

You don’t think much about it. You’re going to your friend’s place, and she should have a shirt to lend you around there. Still, not even the thought makes the journey bearable.

You’re anxious in your seat, listening to some podcast you had found about old music (you don’t know if to call it old since it’s the 90s, but your friends didn’t even watch programs that weren’t from your century, so to avoid all explanation you simply say you like old music), when you feel weirdly observed.

Looking in front of you, a mother is carrying his child in her arms, who is looking intensely at you. You smile because the kid is cute. He has big eyes, almost black, and chubby cheeks. He must be at least four years old, and when you wave your hand to say hi, he points at your chest. You know what he’s pointing, and you nod as if you explained everything with that move.

When the mother turns at you, directing her eyes at what her son is watching, and sees you, she smiles and then her face falls, almost as abruptly as you did that day from your bicycle, and she apologizes for her son.

‘’He didn’t do anything’’ you say, and she denies it.

‘’He shouldn’t be looking at you like that’’ she answers.

‘’Why?’’ you ask.

‘’Because…’’ she can’t finish her sentence. You kind of know what she refers to. Because you’re hurt, and we can all see it. You almost want to correct the words she didn’t say because the kid doesn’t look at you as if you were a monster, he’s just curious, while she is the one doing it.

‘’He’s cute’’ you say instead.

‘’Thank you’’ she answers.

‘’Be careful when he grows up’’ you say. ‘’Because…’’

Because he could look like me it’s implied, and the mother looks at you horrified, as if you had just cursed his son. She quickly gets up and presses the button to get off the bus with such desperation you feel bad for having talked more than necessary.

When you go back to your own thing, you notice something weird again. You lift your eyes, finding the seat in front of you, in which the mother had been sitting just seconds before, empty, and a man beside you. When you meet his eyes he smiles at you, a big grin with no teeth, he’s obviously older than you, with lines of age on his face, normal looking, almost kind, and then, in front of your face, he moves his eyes down to your chest.

Great, now you didn’t have to deal with people staring at your scar, now you had to deal with old men staring at your tits too.

You feel so creeped out by it that you get up and press the button for the next stop. It’s not your stop, but now you can understand why the mother was so desperate to get off. A creep, as normal as they look, it’s still a creep.

Walking the streets at a fast pace, you try to arrive at your friend’s place as soon as possible. You feel even more observed, perhaps it’s because you’re almost running at 36oC and you’re sweating your ass off, but you think it’s because of your uncovered cleavage.

The minute you arrive you start telling your friend everything, from the cute kid to the disgusting man, and she tells you that people usually act dumb, doesn’t matter how you look, people are just people.

‘’It’s their nature, they’re programmed to act like fools, especially men’’ your friend says.

‘’Well, they’re fucking disgusting’’ you answer, grabbing one of her t-shirts and sliding into it to cover yourself like you usually do.

‘’Boys will be boys’’ she finishes, and then she rushes you to finally leave.

You have to go to a pool party (a private party he has clarified), and you honestly would’ve refused on any other occasion, but Sungchan, the owner of the house and your friend’s boyfriend, was cool enough to not force you to go in when you said you weren’t fond of swimming, nodding in understanding as if you had told him the entire story tale of your life, which was kind of comforting.

Also, since he lives with his parents, he has AC.

At the party, a couple of hours later, when almost everyone is outside enjoying the water, you’re left alone in charge of the snacks and drinks, mixing shit as if you knew what you were doing.

‘’Could I have some of that?’’ one of Sungchan’s friends asks, pointing at the jug you’re holding. You nod, you have no reason to say no, and when he takes a sip of it his eyebrow frowns for a second before he smiles. ‘’Wow, that’s… good.’’

You know it’s not, it’s just rum coke with too much rum and almost no limes, to which you decide to add a bit of sprite to see if it does the gig. It doesn’t, but it could punch anyone into not asking for more and you nod content at the result.

‘’Thanks, I should probably make a career of it’’ you answer.

He flashes you a smile before he grabs a can of Coke to sip it. ‘’Sure, if your goal is to hook more people into going to A.A meetings’’ he says while opening a bag of salt and vinegar chips. ‘’I’m Wonbin’’ he smiles.

You tell him your name and serve yourself a cup too. You try to secretly add more ice to your drink, and he laughs louder when he catches you feigning you were getting ice for the whole jug.

‘’I’ll be honest, I feel like I’ve seen you before’’ he says then.

‘’Well, we’re kind of connected through the couple there, perhaps we crossed each other’’ your finger directs at your friend over Sungchan’s shoulders, laughing and screaming something you can’t understand with the music on out there.

‘’True, but not only that… weren’t you last week at the tattoo shop right next to the bookstore that sells old books no one reads?’’ he takes a sip of the drink with more ice, and he denies, adding the rest of the can of coke he had opened.

‘’Do you mean the Rip Tree? I mean, it’s not Barnes and Noble, but it does the job. I got a nice copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray for four dollars there, and they gave me a bunch of bookmarks for free. Of course, they had the publicity of a nursing home in the back, but I’m sure it’s a completely respectable place to read books at’’ you answer immediately, adding rum to the jug when he laughs so hard his head falls back and his eyes close.

When he leans more to the front and you see his arms flexing, you can’t help but suddenly feel conscious of how much you’re talking to a boy you have just met so freely. Maybe you’ve had too many trial drinks while you were mixing and it had started to get in your head without noticing, it wouldn’t be the first time, and sure wouldn’t be the last time.

He smiles at you with a closed mouth, just like the man you had met on the bus many hours before, but you like this smile. Wonbin, unlike the older man, looks at your face without trailing down.

‘’Well, were you?’’ he asks.

‘’Where?’’ you ask too, because half of the conversation you were having just disappeared from your head when you saw his necklace, almost as pretty as him, glint.

‘’The Ink, the tattoo shop’’ he repeats.

‘’Oh, well yeah, but I just went in because I was curious.’’

You’re lying. You hate lying, but again, you didn’t feel like telling someone you just met your whole life.

You had seen on the internet how some people covered their scars with tattoos, which honestly, seemed like a great solution to your esthetic situation. However, when you crossed the door all your bravery went to hell, especially when the gorgeous admin asked you to see it and then the next time told you that a skin-colour tattoo wouldn’t be possible in your case since the scar was too dark, and that a much better option would be to get one with colours. Obviously, she didn’t know your parents or your career, because who the hell will want to hire a preschool teacher with a colored tattoo? You could already hear the comments, you being so silly to try to cover a scar with a new one, and how improper was for a lady, a teacher, to have one.

He nods at your answer. ‘’Well, was it worth it?’’ he asks.

‘’What? Going in? I guess so, it’s a nice place, a bunch of colours and great walls, they have some interesting draws too’’ you say, also leaning and grabbing a few chips to eat while talking.

Your hand almost meets his when you reach the bag again, and you look at each other’s eyes. He smiles again and you get shy at being that close to him again, pushing your hand into the bag to pretend you didn’t feel your stomach flutter with that silly interaction. He lets you put your hand in first, and then he grabs a couple more, eating them slowly, looking as if he was thinking about something else.

Michael Jackson starts to sound in the background, and you bob your head as instinct to the rhythm.

‘’Didn’t take you for a Thriller girl’’ he says, tilting his head and grinning.

‘’Because I’m not, I’m a Rock with You girl, sometimes a Dirty Diana one too’’ you answer, happy to talk a bit about music you like. Your friends don’t like him that much, but they let you sneak a few songs into the shared playlist, and that’s enough for you.

However, you didn’t choose Thriller for this playlist.

‘’I guess you’re the Thriller guy then’’ you say.

‘’Yeah, I’m a failure’’ he stands, grabbing his cup and sipping before he continues. ‘’But I’d like to hear you teaching me something about him, so I stop being one.’’

Smooth Criminal, you think, letting him guide you to the couch.

While talking, you don’t even realize how much time has passed until you hear the laughs fall and some of Sungchan guests start leaving. The day is well behind, an orange sky out there at 6 pm, and you don’t want to go home.

Your friend had come with Sungchan to say goodbye to some people, and when she asks you if you’re tired, you say that you’re okay, just a little hungry. She nods and orders a couple of pizzas with Sungchan’s phone since hers is connected to the speakers outside.

There are only like 7 people left, including you and Wonbin, who decide to stay on the couch with you when another boy, Sohee, tells him that going to the jacuzzi to submerge his feet should be fine.

You don’t think much about what Sohee says, but you’re too cosy with Wonbin to even think at all.

‘’Won’t you ask why he said that?’’ Wonbin says when you’re alone again.

‘’None of my business’’ you say.

‘’I’m a bit curious though, if you don’t mind me asking why you would prefer to stay here in charge of the bar, because as much as I like your drinks, I don’t think you’re used to staying still in charge of things like this at parties.’’

‘’Well, you’re wrong about that, I enjoy being in charge a lot, and I can do it for many hours’’ you say, not noticing how odd it sounds. He looks a bit shocked at first, and then laughs hard. You can’t go back in time to correct yourself, so you laugh with him.

You start to think that maybe you can tell him, it’s not the end of the world, but you can’t even think about revealing something that deep to him. Well, it’s not that deep, you showed it to your friend literally the day you met her. You were in the cafeteria when you spilt your milkshake over your sweater, so you had no option but to change, and you somehow knew she would be your friend when she laughed and told you to grab her sweater if you were that cold, so you showed it to her.

Still, Wonbin is so pretty, even his teeth when he laughed were pretty, and you couldn’t imagine what he would think if he knew.

You don’t imagine a whole relationship with him to think about his opinion too highly, but there is interest, and you want to keep it there as long as you can.

Being your age and haven’t fucked a boyfriend under the light, you simply couldn’t feel comfortable enough to show it to a boy you barely knew and kind of liked.

‘’Just because’’ you say.

‘’I see’’ he says, knowing there’s something you don’t want to tell him. ‘’Well, a win for me anyways, I’ve learned a lot in just an afternoon’’ he says, making you sigh, glad he changes the subject.

‘’I’m glad I was able to tell you everything Wikipedia has about the most known person in the world’’ you haven’t even stayed on the topic for too long for him to learn something, you just said what songs you liked, then showed him some playlists and laughed when you had songs in common, mentioning little moments you remember while listening to them, like not being able to remember your lines in a school play when they suddenly put Beat It as background music, or playing The Way You Make Me Feel in the speaker when one of your friends wanted to confess to a girl (she rejected them so it’s banned from every shared playlist). You shake your head with a smile, not looking at him when one of his hands gets closer to you, resting behind you on the couch.

Oh, you say in your head. You don’t know how close you’ll let him get, but it feels so right.

You haven’t talked (kind of flirted, but you don’t want to get ahead of yourself) with a boy that long in years. You kind of remember Anton from your Art, Music & Movement course with whom you went on a couple (unofficial) dates until he took an exchange program and had to leave for a whole year. Then you remember talking to Seunghan, a guy who gave you his spot in the queue for the bathroom at a concert and with whom you exchanged numbers after he bought you a really overpriced burrito, but he lived two hours away, and you had no energy or time to really be something. And then, then you got no one else.

The room is quiet, you notice. He’s not talking, and neither are you, so you fall into a comfortable silence. You hope he’s not tired yet, you’re not, but maybe your social battery has just died, so you lean into his side a bit more, letting your body relax and your head touches his arm behind you.

He looks at you with a small smile, and you start to inspect his face like you feel he’s doing with yours. He has dark eyelashes, thin, but they’re enough to mark his eyes, and they go well with his black hair. You also notice that his hair is shorter on the back and longer on the front, letting some locks fall around, creating little shadows over his face and covering the end of his eyes. He looks really good with the haircut, but you’ve seen him in pictures with Sungchan before, and he honestly always looks good.

Your eyes fall to his chest because you don’t want to make the moment awkward.

What he’s wearing is simple, a black shirt without sleeves that shows his well-toned arms, skin smooth, almost too perfect, and you can’t help but remind yourself how you’re not as perfect as him.

You doubt he has any flaw like yours, and you don’t mean a weird-looking mole or a scar that anyone could have from childhood, yours is different, too noticeable, impossible to ignore. His whole body was an uninterrupted harmony you couldn’t relate to.

Wait, you stop yourself from thinking too far away. What’s that?

You notice that there, in his chest, under the fabric of his tank top, there’s a bulge you haven’t noticed before, and it’s not his nipples, you’re completely sure of that.

Boys will be boys, and the words of your friend start to echo in your head.

You always hated that phrase. How could they all be so brute and inconsiderate of everyone else that weren’t themselves? The lack of respect to stare at your chest without a care of you disgusted you just hours ago.

And now, you start to ponder if, perhaps, in the end, you’re as brute as the man you met on the bus.

Poor Wonbin is finally filing the silence with something about how he had found a new band not long ago, giving you the exact same charming smile he’s had the whole afternoon, flirty but respectful, making you feel almost guilty from not being able to concentrate on the conversation, too busy trying to not stare at his chest.

You blink twice, trying to look at his eyes again.

It doesn’t work. You can’t ignore it.

It was impossible. They were there, standing under his shirt, calling for you to look at them.

Coughing, you move from the touch of his hand behind you, almost as if it burned you, and drink the almost pure water from the ice that melted in your cup.

You scold yourself. I’m not better than a man, you say in your mind before finishing the opaque result of water, rum and coke in your hand in one go, and then, not having anything else to distract yourself with, you bite the inside of your cheek to distract yourself with the pain.

‘’Sorry, am I boring you?’’ he says not much later, feeling the change in your behaviour.

‘’Eh?’’ you say, turning your body in his direction again.

You notice that his cheeks have a pretty reddish flush, and he stays still, letting you stare, waiting for you to talk. Without a doubt, he was one of the prettiest boys you’ve ever met, and in that moment, you were too dazed into him and his stupid pierced nipples to talk to him as easily as you’d been doing when you didn’t know about their existence.

‘’No’’ you finally say. ‘’I’m sorry, that was rude of me, I had other things on my mind.’’

‘’Like what?’’

You don’t expect him to lean even more into your space and show more interest in what you’ve been thinking about, making you more nervous for not being able to concentrate on another thing that wasn’t him and his pierced nipples so close.

It’s stupid, you can’t help but think. You’re treating him differently. You’ve changed after finding out he has pierced nipples, and it’s exactly what you don’t want to happen to you when people find out about your scar.

‘’Your cheek’’ his hand moves to your face, startling you since he hadn’t touched you that directly the whole night, and with his thumb he caressed the cheek you were obviously biting from the inside. ‘’Doesn’t it hurt?’’ he asks.

You gulp. ‘’Not really.’’

He hums, smiling even more when you move your eyes from his face to his chest, and then, after awkwardly blinking a couple times, looking down to your lap.

A strand of your hair falls out of the lame excuse of a hairstyle you tried to do (not daring to use a ponytail to a party and loose hair with the hot weather) over your face when you look down, and his hand moves on its own to accommodate it behind your ear, the pad of his finger slowly brushing a spot you didn’t know you like, making you melt with his touch like a popsicle in the street at 2PM.

 ‘’It doesn’t hurt either’’ he says. ‘’If you were curious.’’

Not understanding what he’s referring to, you give him a confused look.

‘’What doesn’t hurt?’’ you ask him.

‘’The piercings’’ he answers, laughing when your cheeks get red, and you shake your head to say no.

‘’I-‘’ I wasn’t looking at them, you want to say. It was just untrue, and denying something you’ve clearly been doing since you noticed them would make you look even more pathetic. So, deciding to be different from the shameless man who never apologized to you, you prefer to be honest. ‘’I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have looked at them like that’’.

‘’Why?’’ he asks, and you feel a sense of deja vu.

‘’It’s rude, to stare at your chest’’ you clarify. ’’At least, uninvited.’’

He looks as if he’s enjoying seeing you that embarrassed, almost as pleased as when you bravely talked to him at the bar, when you remember applauding your mind for creating fresh answers. At that moment, your brain seems to have suffered from all the rum you’ve had since you arrived, so it can’t change the subject or give you a quick joke to make the moment less humiliating.

‘’It’s okay, I don’t mind’’ he denies with a breathy laugh, hand moving down from near your face to your arm, sliding until he finds yours, interlocking fingers when he does. ‘’I invite you to do it, then.’’

‘’What?’’ your eyes become bigger and everything around you, mute.

You see his mouth moving and saying something like, I can show them to you, if you want, before he, not waiting for an answer, makes you stand with him. You can’t see what he says after that when he looks back to the crystal door separating you two from the others outside, and then without doubt he makes you follow him.

It wasn’t his place, yet he moved with enough confidence as if it was, dragging you by the hand to the second floor, a place you had never seen even with your constant visits to the place of your friend’s boyfriend. You always stuck to the first floor, not wanting to cross any boundaries with Sungchan, so you feel as if you’re seeing something you shouldn’t when on the second floor, after walking upstairs, you’re received with tons of family portraits showing you his childhood.

You don’t say anything, you let him move you until you both enter a bathroom you’ve never been to. Closing the door, suddenly you can hear again when you recognize the faint sound of music coming from downstairs and some people laughing.

‘’We have to be quick’’ you hear him say after he presses the secure of the door.

The bathroom is smaller than the one on the first floor, almost tiny. There’s only a sink and a WC besides, with a towel hanger under the light and a mirror over the sink. You can hear the vents working when he turns on the light, but you’re too distracted with his whole body trapping you between him and the sink, not giving you opportunity to put any space between you two, to care.

When he shows you a cheeky grin after you lean more into the sink to put a centimetre more between you, nervous of being there with him, close, and obviously about to do something you’re not used to do with people you’ve just met, you don’t care anymore.

His lips are pink and glowing after he licks them, and he’s too pretty for you to say no.

He moves your left hand to his covered chest, and you have to contain the surprised whimper your throat almost lets out when you feel the little thing that has caught your interest since you recognized it.

One of your hands is gripping the marble of the sink with force to maintain you sane, and it works, until he sighs when you flick it.

His face still has that cheekiness that you had understood, from your time talking, characterized him, but it was now mixed with desire, leaving behind the whole courtesy, making him look even better in front of your eyes.

You become needier, if he looks that good with just a flick, you can’t imagine how would he look if you two did more.

‘’Take it off’’ you urge him, not caring that the tone of your voice makes it seem almost an order.

The hand previously glued to the cold surface moves to the border of his shirt, feeling like a punch the warmness of his skin, pushing it up so he does what you asked faster.

‘’Shit’’ he grins, lifting his arms and allowing you to take it off for him. ‘’What happened to the timid girl from before?’’

‘’I’m not usually like this, I swear’’ you say. You want to tell him that no one had made you that eager before, even less with just a look, but again, you had never met anyone, especially a man, with pierced nipples, so he should understand your curiosity when you admire his naked chest and lick your lips before you look at his eyes again.

Growing up as a woman, you have seen firsthand how a good pair of tits could make the smartest and most respectful man a complete asshole. Even the most respectful men that you had gladly called your friends, have been caught by your always wary eyes looking at other women’s chests.

You don’t wear cleavage, so it doesn’t happen to you that much, but just that day a man did it on the bus, like a primitive caveman, a beast, and it’s so embarrassing that you’re acting like one of them in that moment.

Surely, Darwin would be especially disappointed with your regression as a human, but, in your favour, everyone becomes monkeys with the quantity of alcohol you’ve had that afternoon. Also, the weather has a lot to do too, because if it wasn’t that hot, Wonbin wouldn’t have been wearing a tank top, therefore, he wouldn’t have left his ample chest on your eyesight, and that has nothing to do with you. It was all climate change, so perhaps even Darwin would’ve forgiven you for wanting to lick some man’s nipples.

The rum in your system makes your mind babble nonsense and you have to shut your mind for a second. But you want to lick them so bad. You never thought you could fall that low, but there you are, in a bathroom only used to shit at, trying to not moan just from the sight of those pink nipples with little silver beams pointing at you.

‘’I believe you’’ he sighs with a smile, moving further to the wall behind him so you could see his chest better.

You can’t believe your eyes.

You can see the metallic object break through the pink flesh, two tiny spheres on each end of it to not let it move from its place, and you can officially say you have never seen anything that hot in your life.

Hypnotized by the way the object sparkles with the warm light above you two, you timidly move your index fingers to flick them again, making him breathe through his nose and bite his lip to contain himself.

‘’Do they feel good?’’ your curiosity, instead of getting satiated, is growing, and you have tons of questions appearing in your mind.

‘’Per se… sometimes, when I get conscious of them’’ he admits. ‘’But I usually have to touch them if I want to feel something’’.

You flick them again, to then grip them with your index and middle finger and, slightly, almost with fear, twirl them. ‘’Is this okay?’’ you ask, gulping the saliva accumulating in your mouth.

‘’Yeah, that feels good’’ he assures you, both of his hands going to your hips to maintain you in place while his head falls to the wall behind, and he closes his eyes.

You keep doing the same motion, loving the sighs that he leaves out and how a frown of pleasure starts to install on his face. At some point, his own chest is moving with how hard his breath has become, doing the work for you of tugging them while you hold them still.

His eyes are closed and his tongue salutes you when he wets his lips, pressing his hips against you. His boner is appearing there, pressing the mount of your abdomen, but you’re so concentrated on the image in front of you that you can’t care less about him using you to stimulate that area every time his hips push softly into you.

He looks so good like that. You can’t stop yourself from asking when, after twirling them harder, a particular moan leaves his mouth, making you wet. You’re not being touched at all apart from his hands marking your hips with his strength, but your sex was clenching with the pleasure you were giving him, as if those touches were gifted to you too.

‘’Can-Can I lick them?’’ you ask nervously.

‘’Fuck, don’t do that to me’’ his eyelids flutter and you stop all your movements, afraid you’re asking for too much. Shit, perhaps even he thinks I’m crazy, you tell yourself.

‘’Can’t I?’’ you ask, sad of him denying your question, or at least, what you understood as a denial.

‘’Don’t fucking stop’’ he says, one leg going between your thighs and bending it to touch you more. ‘’Do whatever you want honey, I know you’ll do it with care’’.

You don’t need anymore, and moving down your face to his chest, you look up at him with deer eyes, afraid of him stopping you again.

He nods at you, giving you the certainty you want to start doing it.

You’ve never licked another person’s nipples before, so you were unsure of exactly what to do, and remembering what your couple of partners have done before to make you feel good, you press the tip of your tongue over one of them, damping the pink tip and tasting the combination of the flavour of his skin and the metallic object.

Your pussy feels even better with the sensation of it in your mouth, stealing a moan from you.

‘’Shit, you like them that much?’’ he asked, obtaining a nod from you as a response. God, what would your friend say if she found you in that position? You feel sick for a second, but you quickly ignore that thought with the shake of his laugh inside his chest making you look at him instead.

‘’They’re really pretty’’ you say between laps, maintaining eye contact.

‘’Not as pretty as you baby’’, he praises you back.

You moan again with his words, and your eyebrows frown when you feel his knee pressing your cunt, feeling yourself dripping inside your shorts.

‘’You’re doing good baby, keep going’’ he smiles, making you happy with the idea of doing a good job for him.

It’s all so weird. The last thing you expected that day was Wonbin to have pierced nipples, even less, that you would be licking them in a bathroom. However, there you are, moaning while humping his knee and playing with one of the piercings while your mouth continues tasting the other.

Wonbin tastes and smells so good, you’re getting dizzy, as if his whole body was made from the sugar you needed to get completely drunk.

It’s all a bunch of frantic moves, you’re humping his leg while his hands push to the sink behind you, biting his lips hard at the sensation of your mouth drinking his chest.

‘’Fuck- that’s so good’’ his voice sounds in pain, and you bite the little mound in your mouth as you do with your cheek, controlling yourself to not hurt him, to what he shudders before his mouth falls open and a choked sound escapes his swollen lips. ‘’That’s enough, stop’’ he pushes you away, gaining a whine from you because you don’t want to stop, you want to continue, to see his gorgeous face break apart.

‘’Why?’’ you complain. His knee digs into you harder, and you move your hips more to the front as a response. He’s trying to control his breath, and you like how he’s looking at you, as if he was as bad for you as you are for him.

‘’I was about to cum’’ he reveals, and you can’t believe he just told you that, because the idea sounds so good you clench around nothing.

‘’Please, please’’ you beg.

Just minutes before you thought you were crazy for wanting to lick his nipples, but now you realize that you’re insane for wanting to see him cum like that. For needing to see it. You’re sure his cock is fucking pretty as well, and you want to see it spurring with cum so bad you don’t even ask before your hand starts to pull his belt open. He lets you, going to the hem of your shirt, and there’s when your whole euphoric state stops, and panic arises.

‘’No, wait, stop’’ you push his hand away and he lets you go immediately.

‘’What’s wrong? I thought-‘’ he doesn’t finish the sentence, clarity coming back to him too. ‘’Did I read things wrong?’’

He didn’t read anything wrong. You wanted to get even more intimate, but you’re scared. The light is on, and you can see him, which means, he can see you too.

‘’No, it’s just…’’ how could you say, please don’t get scared, or disgusted, I have a huge mark that goes from my shoulder to my chest that will never leave me alone, without sounding odd. You don’t think he’s ever heard or seen anything about surgery scars, from what you can see, he’s perfect in more ways than you can even explain. He’s handsome, yes, but his pierced nipples had added a touch of surprise to him, making him insufferably hot. He wouldn’t understand.

‘’What?’’ he asks, shaking you out of your mind vomiting sentences that make your insides stir with anxiety.

The moment is already awkward, the emotion and lust overpowered by your discomfort.

‘’I shouldn’t’’ you say, your words not making any sense since you can’t force yourself to tell him.

‘’You don’t want to continue?’’ he asks confused. ‘’I mean, you can change your mind, but I don’t get it, did I do something wrong?’’

‘’No, of course not’’ you say. ‘’It’s not you, it’s me.’’

Perfect, now you sound as if you were breaking up with him.

You can’t find the correct words. You’re sure what you’re feeling is perfectible understandable with how your parents had taught you that you shouldn’t just show it around, making you ashamed of it until you reached your vast age. But, you were a grown-up now, and you were about to be a teacher, how could you let your life be controlled by something you couldn’t change, even more, by something as banal as your physique.

You would be in charge of so many little lives in just a couple years, and you would never want one of them to feel ashamed of who they are solely because of their bodies.

You know what your mother did that day was wrong, but you know even more that you should start to change how you feel about it.

Also, you’ve talked the whole night, and if you were about to (probably) fuck him, you should at least make sure he wasn’t an asshole that found you disgusting by a mark.

Looking at him with pleading eyes, he stays silent, letting you take as much time as you need. You grab the hem of your shirt, and you want to sprint out as soon as your head starts playing the exact words you’ve heard every time you’ve gone shopping and tried on something that showed your skin. You shouldn’t.

To be fair, you correct that same voice, you’ve done a lot of things you shouldn’t, like entering a tattoo shop when your whole family and career were conservative as hell, or accepting a burrito from a complete stranger in the middle of the night in a concert, and you’re still alive.

His shoulders become smaller, and one of his hands goes to his shoulder, covering himself while his biceps show more.

‘’If it’s the piercings, I assure you I don’t have one down there, I’m not that brave’’ he laughs.

‘’What?’’ now you’re even more confused.

‘’Well, I know many don’t like them, I thought you did, but I could be wrong’’ he blinks like you do when you’re nervous, and you have to shake your head before you talk again.

‘’Wonbin, I was moaning while licking them just a second ago, I think that’s enough proof of how much I do like them’’ you say suddenly surprised with the way the confident guy you’ve been talking to the whole party has changed to a shy version of himself. You can’t seem to let him feel the problem is him, so you take all the courage you have, pull up your shirt and toss it to the floor, just like Wonbin did.

You’re wearing the top of a swimsuit, because even if you weren’t going to swim, you didn’t want to stay out of the theme. The thin straps don’t hide anything from you, and you leave the insecurity of your life on full display.

He looks at you and blinks.

‘’So, you want to continue?’’ he asks.

You blink, not believing that he’s not making any question about it. Your first boyfriend asked you desperately what had happened to you, expecting a sad story with tears, and you didn’t feel like receiving that pity look again, so you never fucked him, or anyone, in daylight ever again.

You also broke up with him after fucking two times.

‘’I mean, I want to, but don’t you have any question?’’ you ask unconvinced. Was he ignoring the elephant in the room or were you to pretentious to think everything was about your mark and everyone would focus on it your whole life?

‘’About what?’’

You start to feel stupid (which was probably right).

‘’Is my scar… okay to you?’’ you ask then.

‘’Why would it not be? I’ve seen it before’’ he says.

You lift your hand to stop him. You have to stop everything from moving forward in that exact same second.

‘’What do you mean you’ve seen it before?’’ you can’t believe it. You’ve hidden it so well some of your friends have never seen it in years of friendship. You’ve hidden it so well that you have family that has never heard of your fall when you were a dumb child who obliged their parents to take off the training wheels before they learned how to fully drive a bicycle.

‘’I’m a tattoo artist at The Ink. The admin sent me a picture of it to check if I could do the nude tattoo. I told you that I saw you there. I wanted to talk to you to convince you to a coloured one, but you had left when my other appointment ended.’’

He says it with such calm you can’t help but feel calm too, even if incredibly dumb at the same time. He didn’t look like usual tattoo artists, he had his arms empty, like blank canvases waiting to be painted, and you had to be honest, you imagined them all to have no empty space in their bodies.

Where was the tweety you imagined them all to have?

You nod, understanding. You’re such an asshole, you’ve done to him everything you didn’t want people to do to you. You’ve judged his appearance, his career, everything out of the stupid traditionality of your ideas.

 ‘’I see’’ you say, and he smiles.

‘’Did you think I would push you away the second I saw it? As if it was a scarlet letter?’’ he says with a breathy laugh, as if he found funny how dumb you were for thinking it was a problem.

‘’First, I didn’t know you read. Second, well yes, don’t laugh at me, I’m all vulnerable and almost tits on air’’ you say, looking at his chest to distract yourself from the shame. At least, you think, it’s not because of your body anymore.

He laughs louder, getting closer to your body and leaving his head on the space of your neck and putting his hands over yours, which were gripping the surface of the sink. It feels like a hug, but you doubt it could be described as that when he wasn’t wrapping you with his arms. He was just there, close, chest to chest, pressing his hard piercings against your flimsy bikini top.

‘’I have something to admit though’’ he says after a second.

Of course, there was something, everything was too good to be true. You sighed, nodding and giving him permission to say it.

It’s weird. Looks a bit ugly. It’s hard to digest.

‘’I think it’s really pretty, especially the color, it reminds me of cherry blossoms.’’

You swear, Wonbin can’t stop surprising you.

‘’Shut up’’ you smile shyly. He moves apart and when he sees you becoming all timid again, he cups your chin and makes you lift your eyes to him.

‘’I have a scar too, although not as pretty as yours’’ he says, moving the locks of hair covering his left eyebrow and showing you the nude line there.

You press your finger there. He’s a bad liar, not because he sounds unconvincing, but because what he said is blatantly not true. His scar is prettier, so much that it looks as if it had been done in purpose to make him look more handsome.

‘’Dumbass’’ you smile, pressing the pad of your thumb over his almost perfect eyebrow. If you’re honest, it looks perfect to you.

He uses your distraction and gives you a quick peck on the lips. You can’t react to it when he’s already away.

‘’What was that?’’ you laugh loudly, finding him adorable.

‘’A kiss, I hope’’ he answers, smiling so wide you see his bunny teeth.

Fuck, I like him, you think.

You kiss him again, this time for longer, so it’s a real kiss.

His hands go play with the straps of your top and you move your hands to your back to undo the knot holding it in place.

When you let it fall, he admires you like you did to him before. His hands, bigger than yours, go to your chest, playing with your nipples, to then go higher and follow the trail of your scar.

‘’I would die to draw flowers over them’’ he comments, index drawing the line. ‘’It would be a good branch’’ he notices. ‘’The flowers would be blossoming, at their best point, full of colour’’ he sighs, eyes dropping as if he was getting hot with the mere idea of tattooing your skin. His middle finger touches the little lines that move outward, like they’re born from the thick, uneven line. ‘’It would be a perfect tree’’ he finishes.

You’re getting wet with the image he plants in your imagination. It blooms in your sex, which is getting more wet with every second that passes. In your ears, he’s singing the hottest song you’ve heard in your life, watering the seed he had buried in your mind.

‘’I want to be a teacher. I’d get fired if they saw it’’ you lament.

‘’Don’t think so, every student would think you’re the coolest person around’’ he whispers. One of his hands goes down your abdomen, cupping you over your denim shorts and pulling a soft whimper from you. ‘’Just like I do right now.’’

 ‘’Welcome to the fan club,’’ you shake your head, opening your legs a little more, unnoticeable, and then punching his chest. ‘’You’re such a simp.’’

He grabs your hand and maintains it over his chest, cupping you harder to feel how wet you’re getting. He’s not touching you directly, but he knows you’re wet under all the clothes, and he smirks proudly. ‘’What can I say baby, you rocked my world.’’

You can’t believe he’s using one of your favourite songs to turn you on. He didn’t need to. You’re so wet you’re sure your bikini bottoms are drenched and it’s probably reaching the hard fabric of your shorts.

‘’Shut up’’ you order, touching his clothed erection and unfastening his belt. The metallic sound of it echoes inside the small room, covering the sound of the vents and your throat gulping the saliva accumulated.

‘’So, you do enjoy being in charge’’ he clicks his tongue, smirking. ‘’Now I just wonder how many hours you can boss me around.’’

‘’You said we have to be quick’’ you remind him, pulling down his zipper and smirking too.

‘’You’re right, sadly we’re not alone’’ he agrees, doing the same action with you. ‘’We’ll take out time the next time.’’

His fingers finally touch you directly, sliding a finger between your lips, gathering the wetness that pools there. You almost roll your eyes, feeling the quick touch over your clit electrifying. Still, you must have the last word. ‘’Bold of you to assume there’ll be a next time’’ you say like you can, hand going inside his trousers too.

He groans when you touch his cock. It jumps inside your grip, making you smile until he talks. ‘’With how wet you are, I’m sure it’ll be soon.’’

You want to say something even more cocky, but you can’t answer when his fingers press your clit again. You’re sure you’re making a mess inside your shorts and that you’ll be fucking uncomfortable downstairs, but if you’re going to go around with your clothes all dirty, he should do it too.

Playing with the head of his cock, you have to contain yourself from pulling down his underwear to catch the sight of it naked. The skin feels soft in your hand, and he’s so hard that, when you press it, you feel what he’s made. You’re sure he has a pink tip, just like his nipples, and that seems to drive you a bit more insane. The picture you create in your head is nearly orgasmic. His hard coke, with its thickness and bloody colour, angrily pointed at you for being the cause of its pain.

This is really something you shouldn’t be doing. You shouldn’t be giving a boy you just talked to that day a handjob. It’s so nasty and improper, much more than your scar or any tattoo you could get done.

When you use those adjectives, you notice, that you’re mostly referring to yourself. Could you see Wonbin as nasty and improper? He has pierced nipples, but you thought they were incredibly hot, not to be described as those words, or to be categorized with you.

‘’Your pussy is dripping so much. I want to lick it until I drown in it’’ he sighs, fingers smearing your juices and making a wet sound. ‘’You’d come in my mouth so good, I’m sure I’d be able to taste you the whole night.’’

Oh no, he is nasty and improper, just like you.

Your hand is a bit dry. The only thing helping you touch him good is the little pre-cum you’re using as lube to slide your hand. You spit in your hand while maintaining eye contact, and his grin gets wider, as if he’s glad he has found someone as sick and perverted as him.

You’re not, you try to convince yourself, but you know there’s no use. You were licking his nipples as if your life depended on it moments ago, and you’re sure you’d do it all over again.

Remembering they’re there, at your whole disposition, your free hand moves to touch one. You play with the beams, flicking it up and down, to then pull them. He groans harder when you do it, and you feel his cock get somehow thicker, but instead of loosening your grip, you tighten it and jerk him faster, touching the tip and the base so fast he hisses.

His hips move when you suddenly stop your hand, and you smile, liking how desperate he looks. He notices it, so to erase that smudgy grin, he plugs two fingers inside you, obliging you to part your lips with the sensation of him filing you and the sound of your pussy squelching. His fingers are long enough to shock you, and the pain of pleasure building is starting to hit you as much as him.

‘’Let it free, please’’ he asks nicely. He’s so polite and looks in so much pain you want to do it, but you’re sure that, if you asked the same, he wouldn’t comply your begs.

A dark spot is appearing in his black underwear. You can see it with the orange light on. He’s also sweating so bad with the temperature of the room that you see a drip fall from his damp hair to his neck and die on the bone of his clavicle.

You want to lick that place too.

‘’Don’t want to’’ you say, doing the fast motion again, making him grunt.

His fingers move faster too, pushing a bit down your shorts so he can finger you better. It sounds almost like a dessert, and you moan when he curls his fingers. Fucking tattoo artist with talented hands.

‘’Don’t be mean or I’ll be even worse’’ he warns you.

You twist his nipple harder, and he whimpers.

His hands are ferociously fucking you, two fingers deep inside you and his palm brushing your clit, making you wish you had the liberty of cumming without consequences.

You do it too, you keep his pace, moving your hand up and down, not thinking much about it, just following him. You’re the one touching him, you’re the one being mean while jerking him off inside his trousers, yet it feels as if he was the one commanding you to do so.

He starts thrusting the hold you have on him, simulating the force and speed he’s using to fuck you with his fingers.

‘’You’re so bad, the next time I’ll make you beg for me to use my tongue on you’’ he painfully says.

You’re getting closer, you feel it coming. Your pussy is already dripping what you feel as your close orgasm, and so is he with the twitching of his cock, you just know it. You frown, mouth open, and you don’t analyze your question when you do it.

‘’Why would I beg?’’ you innocently ask.

He doesn’t have to say anything. He opens his mouth, flashing you the silver ball in his rosy tongue, and you lose yourself, cumming with a silent moan and shaking legs. He does the same. Feeling your orgasm splashing his hand, he shoots his cum, marking with the marbles more than one spot in his underwear.

You finally pull down his underwear when you feel he has finished cumming, and you see, even if not as hard anymore, the prettiest cock you could’ve imagined. To fuck with him, you spread his cum along his softening shaft, and he does the same with you, sliding his fingers a couple more times before he takes his hand out. Watching it glossy and drops sliding down to his wrist, he looks at you and licks them before they get to his forearm.

You’re both a couple of nasty, improper, sick and pervert people.

Not much later, when you’re both getting decent again, he talks. ‘’Come to the studio, I’ll give you the tattoo’’ he says with a drunk voice. You’ve cleaned as much as you could with toilet paper, and you meet his eyes in the mirror. He’s behind you, knotting your bikini top for you, and looking extremely placid for doing it, as if he was still in the haze of the moment. ‘’Of course, after that, we should go on a date too’’ he says more firmly than his previous offer.

He’s perfect and imperfect in so many senses: he has rosy delicate lips, yet he has uttered the nastiest words you’ve ever heard, he has shaped eyebrows, yet a scar interrupts the harmony of them, and he has the beauty to attract anyone with all his odds, yet he chooses you.

No, he is perfect for you, just the way he is.

You’re still in the blissful state of your post-orgasm, kind of there and at the same time far away, so you don’t even think twice before you nod at his proposal.

‘’We should.’’

When you both eat the remaining cold pizza, he rests one of his hands on your shoulder, pulling you closer to his side, nodding when you tell him that cherry blossoms do sound good.

[copperbadge]

I was making breakfast and listening to an episode of Just King Things this morning, which is a podcast I do recommend -- two very smart English teachers are reading the books of Stephen King in publication order and discussing them. This could go extremely awry except they're both highly conscious of his failings as well as his skill, so they do really well handling a lot of his less salutatory content.

They've hit the point in King's ouvre (this episode was about Hearts In Atlantis) that follows his recovery from the car accident that very nearly killed him, where he was struck by a van while out walking. One of them pointed out that it seems as though he came back from nearly dying determined to write the wildest shit imaginable and only write what he wanted, which struck a chord in me this time despite having listened to this episode before. Perhaps because I was thinking about my own writing and where it's going in the short term (there are a couple of short stories I want to do that I don't quite have a way into yet). I generally don't think about the drift of my creativity in the long term because when I do I usually draw the wrong conclusions.

I don't really classify my life, the way some people who've had high-impact injuries do, as before-TBI and after-TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury -- the fairly severe concussion I had in January of 2020). For one thing, given I had to cancel a trip to NYC because of it, it may have saved my life; I almost certainly would have caught COVID as someone with known lung issues in New York at the time. For another, the TBI was way scarier to almost everyone else; for me it was just one more dumb injury I gave myself and I didn't even remember most of it so it hardly registered. I used to open the story of it with a joke about waking up not remembering going to bed the night before, but nobody ever found it funny.

It's true that there are changes it wrought in my life, though. Even practical stuff like making sure my living space doesn't have tripping hazards and continuing to wear a fitbit even though I don't really need to (the fitbit told us, the morning after, exactly when the concussion happened, because it registered a heart-rate spike when I fell). For weeks after, I had to move slowly and put off making important decisions because I couldn't trust my physical or intellectual judgement; I didn't even jaywalk in my own neighborhood because I couldn't be sure I was judging the cars' speeds properly. For about a year after I had periodic post-concussion syndrome which basically just slammed me back into concussion space, which wasn't painful or upsetting but was definitely inconvenient.

And it's also undeniable that my writing shifted after the injury. It's not necessarily because of the injury, since my initial recovery from the TBI and the declaration of quarantine happened at roughly the same time, and anyone who tells you that a years-long global pandemic didn't impact their artistic expression is selling you a line. But the last thing I wrote before the TBI was the first draft of Six Harvests, and aside from the Six Harvests publication draft, which had fairly minimal changes, almost all that I've written has been blue-sky, light-hearted, PG-rated romance. It's been on my mind that I've been writing different subject matter from what I used to, but the timing of it didn't strike me until just recently.

I don't mind, really. I love fandom and I support fanfic in whatever expression it comes, but I'm also happy writing my own stories. While I'm aware it's been years since I've meaningfully written fanfic, it doesn't bother me per se, as long as I'm writing. It bothered me much more when I could write fanfic but not original fic, especially in those last few awful months at my last job. I'm proud of the literary and non-genre fiction I've written in the past, but it's also much more trying and frustrating to write at times, so I'm enjoying having a different sort of challenge that feels more fulfilling in the process. I'm sure at some point I'll go back to literary fiction -- there are ways in which it's hard to avoid turning the later Shivadh novels into literary fiction, being honest -- but for now I like what I'm writing, and I'm writing primarily to please myself and without regard to what's necessarily rational or linear.

Just struck me, is all, that it's by far the most noticeable major shift in my work. I do sort of wonder what will be next.

[forestleavescat]

Took time to think on Moominvalley S4. it still feels bad

I’ve thought about Moominvalley season 4. Seen other people respond to it. I still don’t feel great. There was a great journey from S1-3. But this season sorta fell off. It felt like character development disappeared. And I’ve seen people say it wasn’t queerbaiting and I disagree. I mean, you gotta trust that a lot of people have dealt with it before. We know what it is. And the argument that snufmin never had a chance isn’t true. I was starved for moomin content between seasons and listened to the team discuss moominvalley. There were podcasts where they would chuckle and say that they were a little in love. They know the fanbase. The argument that it would never happen because they never stray from the original story isn’t true. Each version makes changes. And I don’t think that people can argue that they wouldn’t stray from the source material when the finale was what it was. They completely turned that story on its head. I wanted to come back to the topic because I decided to rewatch the earlier seasons. I saw some of the ‘it’s not queerbaiting. They were never more than friends’ posts and I started to think that it was true. That I read too much into it. And then I watched The Spring Tune. And just. no ??? Ain’t no way there wasn’t anything going on there. And previous iterations usually had some level of pining while not committing to a romantic development. There were 100% moments, but it wasn’t like moominvalley. If you don’t care for the ship. That’s fine. If you liked the final season that’s great. But don’t tell fans that they can’t be upset about how this was handled. Don’t tell them ‘well you set yourself up for disappointment’ or ‘did you really think that would happen.’ It’s like you’re telling people who are disappointed in this happening that they were just delusional about it?? A lot of people, whether new to the community or not find a sense of belonging in queer media. It’s something welcoming and friendly. Especially if you’re either trying to figure out your identity or find comfort in media that embraces similar identities. Maybe it’s fans that grew up with it and found a sense of comfort with the close and romantically ambiguous relationship between snufkin and moomin and when you start to watch moominvalley it really does seem like there’s a chance compared to other iterations. The creators seem to support this. They acknowledge it outright. It seems more possible than ever. Or you’re just getting into the moomins. The way this show explores their relationship early on is something that really did help people with their identities. And when a show seems like it’s heading there and then pulls back completely in the final season it sucks. And it makes it so much worse when people say ‘well duh, of course it wouldn’t have happened.’ And moominvalley felt even worse. Because the creators outright acknowledged it on multiple occasions while older examples of queerbaiting didn’t. The creators wrote what seemed to be gay ships but dropped it after securing money and views. But the team didn’t wink and nudge the way this team did. And just look at the Lonely Mountains. That episode was not only the largest step towards it being canon but it didn’t finish what it set up. Snufkin never did finish that chat that got interrupted. Which made it seem like something they’d likely save for the last season. If season 4 handled them exactly like season 3 without their relationship going farther that would still be an improvement. They lose all of that subtle ‘what are we’ closeness. You gotta know moomin fans live throughout the world. Shows that are explicit with that tend to get censored overseas. But it’s easier to get past that when there’s an implicit thing that other members of the lgbtq community would pick up. Then America in a time where laws are censoring gay stuff. I feel like it’s important to consider how important queer media is and to observe past instances of queerbaiting and why that’s as harmful as it is.

S4 felt like the July 1st of moominvalley to me. Just ‘okay we’re done no more gay’

[derangedanomaly]

hello !! If you don't mind could you do a Bad Sanses + Star Sanses x Fem!Model!Reader who cause a pure chaos in her AU caused the end of her world just because she were bored , like , mass murder , brainwashing , abuse , torture , manipulation , world war and a lot of bad thing in this type , if you don't mind of course !

Hello! I do not mind in the slightest! Enjoy! :D

MASTERLIST

BAD SANSES AND STAR SANSES X CHAOTIC MODEL READER

NIGHTMARE:

You sealed your fate, the moment you decided to act the way you do. He could sense your negativity a mile away.

You're forced against your own will to work for him. (Much like all the others)

You two don't really have much "bonding" time, so the start of your relationship is kinda rocky.

You're actually proving to be very useful for him and the team, so he'll promote you.

Congratulations! You're now working alongside him! How lucky.

(He definitely didn't paired the two of you on purpose. Noo, that's ridiculous!)

He probably won't care that you're a model, at first. After he'll get to know you better though- oh he'll buy every magazine you're on, every single thing that has your face on it, he'll own it.

He's actually proud of you. And he'll even say it out loud! (NOW YOU KNOW THIS MF IS IN LOVE, HE NEVER ADMITS TO BE ACTUALLY PROUD OF SOMEONE)

Will give you anything you ask for. In need of money? Sure. You want to buy this? He's got it covered babe.

KILLER:

Killer knew you way before he even met you. He's a fan lmao.

He seriously owns EVERY magazine you're in, and listened to every podcast you did. He's obsessed.

It's his guilty pleasure to stalk you online-

Imagine his surprise when he met you while he was on his mission. He was supposed to destroy an AU, along with Horror and Dust helping him, but after he saw you?? His idol? His favorite model?? THE ONE HE YEARNED SO MUCH FOR-

He got completely distracted, not fulfilling the mission, and instead asking you for an autograph.

He's so shocked when he sees you doing all that chaotic shit. You killed people? Brainwashed them? Manipulated them? DESTROYED A WHOLE UNIVERSE?! Wait...YOU DID THAT JUST BECAUSE YOI WERE BORED?!? You just became even more cooler.

Killer fell more obsessed in love with you.

DUST:

Lmao, he hates you. And not because you're a model, but because you're so chaotic.

Seriously, one Nightmare is enough 🙄

He's one of the "quiet but could kill you if wanted" types. So he'll just silently give you a side eye, all while glaring at you, when you're yapping next to him.

You try to get closer to him, and he's all like "Take one more step closer, I dare you"

And then you still get closer to him... And then he finds himself slowly falling into the deep pit you call love.

Even if your relationship had a rocky start, Dust will warm up to you after getting closer to you.

Now, he actually finds himself wanting your closure.

Will still shake his head whenever you do something chaotic, but if you payed closer attention, you could see a blush and a smile covering his hidden face.

HORROR:

Horror doesn't really understand the whole concept of modelling, but he'll like it, because you look so pretty while doing it! ^^

Likes your chaotic side. He watches you with a wide smile whenever you're doing something chaotic.

He's often encouraging you to even do them!

Will support anything you do, much like Nightmare, he'll give you anything you ask for.

Except he doesn't have near as much money as Nightmare, so he'll be a little limited.

But if you want something really bad, he'll save up some money for you to buy the thing you want, or if it's an item, he'll try to handmade it.

HC that Horror likes to do wood carving :)

Please tell him about your chaotic adventures, he'll thrive in them!

DREAM

You're a menace to society, and he's determined to change you.

He'll try to change the way you do certain things, or the way you think. Basically just nullify your chaotic side.

You're probably not listening to his scolding or tips most of the time though. 🤷‍♀️

Oh god...if you ever tell this man just WHAT you did... He'll destroy you right there.(In what way though ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°))

He sees you as a potential threat. Seeing as you destroyed a universe, and just because you were bored too!

As for your modelling career, Dream won't pay attention to what you do, his whole attention is on how chaotic you are.

INK:

The gossip king right here folks.

He also, much like Killer, already knows about your modelling career.

Why? He lives off of the drama. (There's quite a lot involving you, because you're so chaotic 💀)

He'll also ask for your autograph the moment he sees you.

He'll always laugh out of glee whenever you tell him about something chaotic you did.

There's no way to really "shock" him, unless you tell him that you know the purpose of his vials... No one was supposed to know what use the vials have for him, and you actually knowing?? He's feral.. and I don't mean it in a good way...

Other than his vials, there is really NO way of ticking him off. He's just unbreakable. 🤷‍♀️ (Probably cause he doesn't have real emotions-)

SWAP:

HE WANTS TO BE YOUR BODYGUARD!! (Say yes, or you'll never get rid of him..)

He likes to assist you in every way, anything you need, and he's up and ready to get it to you.

Swap sees the good in everyone, so when you tell him how chaotic you are, he won't give up on you! He's not like Dream, who'll want to change you, instead.. he'll want to understand why you're acting the way you do, and try to connect with you through that.

You and Swap probably get along really well, he really knows how to befriend people- I guess that's why he's called THE MAGNIFICENT SANS!

He'll be happy to protect you from any creeps that make you too uncomfortable, in fact- he'll probably protect you even before you could tell him.

Swap isn't one to brag, but he'll be happy to show off how strong he is. Carrying you around, holding your heavy bags, anything that requires extra strength- he's there. :)

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Greta Garbo (Camille, Anna Karenina, Queen Christina)—Enigmatic and alluring and made me bisexual. The perfect example of the eroticism in silent films that literally transcends text. Could literally not change anything about her expression but you knew by looking at her eyes what she was thinking. She’s so gorgeous.

Kay Francis (Jewel Robbery, I Loved A Woman, British Agent)— kay francis was an icon of glamor in her time and a top star of the 30s - she was the highest-paid actress at warner bros from 1930 to 1936. she tended to play characters who were charming, sophisticated, and elegantly dressed, and starred in at least one legitimate masterpiece, the sublime 1932 comedy trouble in paradise. her first big role was in the marx brothers movie the cocoanuts in 1929, and she and william powell made seven movies together between 1930 and 1932. even in her sillier movies she always elevates the material with her charm and presence - she never phones it in and there’s a sort of warm, knowing wittiness about her. a really good short promo from a retrospective of her movies that i think really gets her Vibe across

This is round 3 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Kay Francis:

Jewel Robbery clip

"From 1932 through 1936, Francis was the queen of the Warner Bros. lot, and, increasingly, her films were developed as star vehicles. By 1935, Francis was one of the highest-paid actors, earning a yearly salary of $115,000, dwarfing the $18,000 Bette Davis – who would one day occupy Francis's dressing room – made. From 1930 to 1937, Francis appeared on the covers of 38 film magazines, second only to child sensation Shirley Temple's 138." Source: Wikipedia. Kay Francis is like the MOST FAMOUS Actress from the 1930s you've never heard of--and it was her and Norma Shearer who wore and made classic the 1930s tall, slim, bias cut silhouette. She ALSO has a WHOLE PODCAST episode devoted to her life and career in Hollywood--it's fascinating! She is both tough and a total wet cat.

One of the TALLEST Warner Brother stars at 5’9” and known as a “clothes horse” for her glamorous roles wearing the height of 1930s fashion. She fell out of popularity in the 40s, but her 30s work sizzles. The scene with her and Herbert Marshall in Trouble in Paradise where she says she doesn’t care about his reputation (because she’d rather sleep with him?) HAWOOGA

melted my gay heart with her butch look in stolen holiday

"My life? Well, I get up at a quarter to six in the morning if I'm going to wear an evening dress on camera. That sentence sounds a little ga-ga, doesn't it? But never mind, that's my life ... As long as they pay me my salary, they can give me a broom and I'll sweep the stage. I don't give a damn. I want the money ... When I die, I want to be cremated so that no sign of my existence is left on this earth. I can't wait to be forgotten." —From Kay Francis's private diaries, c. 1938

Garbo:

A cold-ass Swedish WLW Sphinx. Had plans to murder Hitler that she never got around to. "She will remain always a child of vikings, moved about by a snowy dream."

First of all, she's on the money; that's how much of a treasure she is. She's beautiful in such a distinct way you need very few lines to draw her. (Drawing by Einar Nerman) She managed to be mesmerizing in both silent and sound films. She kissed a woman in Queen Christina (and probably several more in real life). She was super dry and really funny in Ninotchka. She got the hell out of Hollywood and stayed out, living for almost 50 years after her retirement.

Garbo is one of the many reasons why I'm gay. If you haven't seen Queen Christina please do, She is so gender in that film. Also her accent makes it sound like she's always talking in cursive and it's so hypnotic (or at least I think so).

She's a gay introvert, like all of us here on Tumblr.

Mysterious and aloof, charismatic and enigmatic, with beautiful androgynous characteristics, Garbo is undoubtedly the most eccentric and unique Hollywood vintage star. Her aversion to fame and stardom makes her even more desirable to the audience, and her insane chemistry with the camera, an actress one of a kind! Her particularity and her oddity is what discerns her strongly from her hollywood co workers at the time, noone was like her and would never be like her. I think, to the utmost extent, that she deserves the title of the hottest vintage star, even though that would be an understatement of what she is!

SO gorgeous, her thick Swedish accent makes will turn your brain into pudding

Probabaly a lesbian, absolutely a mood when she retired

[knickynoo]

You know, as I listened to the BTTF Minute podcast before, they got into a discussion about George and Lorraine's relationship in the Twin Pines timeline that I really liked.

In the episode, they're breaking down the McFly dinner scene and focusing in on when Lorraine is telling the story of how she and George met. And this is a scene I've mentioned in a post or two before, because it's just so sad. You can tell that Lorraine is still so in love with George—or at least in love with the version of him who kissed her on the dance floor that night. Her face brightens as she talks, and you can just hear the fondness in her voice. She's that young girl again, hopeful and in love and smitten with this guy who she helped care for when he was hurt.

But then the tone changes. She's brought back to reality—to a husband who is so wrapped in his own world that he doesn't even acknowledge her. He's facing away from her, eyes glued to the TV, unaware of the loving glance being directed his way. He doesn't even respond when she asks him if he remembers the night of that terrible thunderstorm.

All of a sudden, Lorraine is slapped in the face with reality. She's drained of that hope, and in its place is the realization that she's stuck with George. Stuck in a lonely marriage. Stuck in a life that young girl never would have pictured for herself.

Anyway, this is where I really liked the commentary the podcast hosts, Nick and Scott, gave regarding the scene.

In talking about George, they point out, "He never had to try. He never had to fight for her," and, "Literally, he got run over by love."

Which I think condenses the situation very well. George was hit by a car, carried into the Baines house, and all the groundwork was instantly laid for him. Lorraine fell head over heels for this poor, injured, awkward guy and established their relationship herself. George didn't have to fight; his dream girl was handed to him. And for someone like George, who is already very much a wallflower and doesn't stand up for himself or anyone else, it made it all that much easier to let his marriage go stale. Take Lorraine for granted, in a way.

Then, Scott got to talking about how George and Lorraine were brought together on accident and by an accident. It was George accidentally falling from the tree and then the literal being hit with a car accident that led him to Lorraine. And he goes on to say,

"Which, in a lot of ways, that's kind of what the movie's about, in that they fell in love with an accident, and it's just like, oh, love shouldn't be an accident. Love should be something that you earn and work for."

And like. Idk, I've been thinking about that all afternoon. Just. About the trilogy's whole message (to me, at least) boiling down to love, which I've made many a post about on this blog. But it's so true. Everything in these movies comes down to and is directed by love.

Marty's love for his parents. His love then helping to shape George and Lorraine's love. Marty's love for Doc, and Doc's love for Marty, and the way they are constantly saving each other and willing to sacrifice themselves. Doc's love for Clara. Marty's love for Jennifer. Marty's love for his siblings. The movie's "theme song" being "The Power of Love."

The movies wouldn't work if all these characters took the more passive approach. If they all grew comfortable and complacent like Twin Pines George is shown to be.

I dunno, it's just been ringing in my head for hours. Love shouldn't be an accident.

[scary-grace]

Opposites Attract (Chapter 2) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Your quirk lets you capture almost anyone with ease, and you can't believe you let Shigaraki Tomura escape. Shigaraki can't believe it, either, and according to the League, there's only one possible explanation -- you let him go because you've fallen in love with him. He decides to find out if it's true. You decide you won't fail to capture him again. You both get a lot more than you bargained for. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapters: 1 2 3

Chapter 2

It’s been two weeks since the League of Villains vs Kamino Ward: Round 2, and there hasn’t been a single day that somebody hasn’t read you the riot act. It wasn’t enough that Miruko did it on-scene, well within microphone range of every single news crew who swarmed the park – every senior hero in Yokohama got in on it, too. And as if it wasn’t already your worst week ever, the HPSC called you in for a formal review of your pro hero license. You didn’t sleep at all the night before, and when you got to the hearing half an hour early with sweat stains already oozing through your one nice blouse, you found out that they’d done the review already, and the hearing was just to present the findings. One of the members of the committee mentioned that you looked a little pale. In hindsight, you’re amazed you didn’t have a heart attack.

You found out that the review of your license was a PR thing more than anything else – although your choices weren’t popular or flashy, nothing about how you handled the incident fell outside the hero code. Not that it matters to the general public. If you had an agency, they’d be booking you on podcasts and talk shows so you could explain yourself, but you’re underground, so you’re stuck listening to TV presenters who’ve never met a villain and podcasters who’d piss themselves if they came face to face with even the pettiest of criminals, all talking about how badly you blew it. There was even a petition circling demanding that you make a public apology for what happened to the All Might statue – one apology to the sculptor who made the statue, and one to All Might himself. When that one started making the rounds, you set your social media accounts to private and hid from your phone for the next three days.

Things are starting to die down, you think, but you’ve still got one stop left on your humiliation tour, and it’s the one you’re dreading the most. Your alma mater is always looking for learning experiences to offer their students, so you’re spending this afternoon at UA, listening while the first-year hero students pick apart every action you took in Kamino Park.

It’s an open forum, so everyone who wants to run their mouth gets a chance to do it, and you sit stonefaced in your chair, praying for your composure to hold. Eraserhead said he’d give you chances to respond, and he does, every time a student sits down. But you don’t want to get into a back-and-forth with a bunch of kids. You did what you did. You can’t go back. Maybe they can learn from what you did wrong.

What did you do wrong, actually? The HPSC cleared you. You’re so unpopular right now that they’d seize any chance they got to strip your licenses, but they cleared you – and you’re still here, listening to a bunch of teenagers take shots at you. The unfairness boils up inside you all at once, and when the next kid sits down, you stand up before Eraser invites you to.

“You all think you could have done better than me out there,” you start. “Maybe you’re right. There are always things that could be done better. What did I do wrong?”

It’s quiet for a second. “Are you stupid or something?” Bakugou asks you. “They got away! That’s what you did wrong!”

“Is it? Kurogiri and Shigaraki got away at USJ, and again at Kamino the first time. I don’t see you lighting All Might’s ass up,” you shoot back. Bakugou makes an affronted sound. “Answer me for real this time. What was my actual, quantifiable mistake?”

It’s quiet for another beat. Eraser opens his mouth, but Class B’s teacher speaks up first. “That’s the more interesting question,” he says. “We’ve talked about how Skynet could have done better. What actual mistake did Skynet make that led to the final outcome of the incident?”

You know what it was, deep in your heart, and you also know that the only person who could call you on it is somebody you hope you never see again. A hand creeps up, and Vlad calls on the student – one of Eraser’s. “Yes, Midoriya?”

“I don’t know if I would call it a mistake,” Midoriya says, “but I was wondering – why didn’t you use more of your quirk?”

That’s a new one. You wait quietly, and Midoriya elaborates. “I mean, Magnetism has dozens of applications. You’re sort of known for being creative with how you use it. And r/herojapan did a power ranking of every active hero and you ranked the highest out of all non-charted heroes.”

That’s news to you. “So I guess that’s what I want to know,” Midoriya concludes. “If you have a quirk with a lot of applications and a lot of power to work with, how could the League of Villains escape?”

“Uh –” You glance at Vlad King, then at Eraserhead. They both gesture for you to go on. “What you said about my quirk – you’re right. I can go big with it. But the bigger I go with it, the less control I have, and I’m not creating magnetic fields out of thin air. I’m enhancing and altering what already exists. Every magnetic field I alter is touching another one, and my alterations affect those fields, too. If I want to use my quirk safely on a large scale, I have to alter some magnetic fields while stabilizing others simultaneously, and I have to do that while protecting civilians and assisting my fellow heroes and trying not to get killed. Using my quirk on the scale I would have needed at Kamino just isn’t possible.”

You can tell Midoriya doesn’t get it. Nobody else does, either. “Maybe you should demonstrate,” the girl from Class B who can make her hands enormous says. “Show us what would have happened if you used your quirk the way Midoriya is talking about at Kamino.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Vlad says. “Ground Beta should be open right now. Let’s go.”

Vlad was your homeroom teacher in your first year at UA. You’ve been struggling not to call him sensei since you set foot on campus, and you know he knows how much you’ve struggled with your quirk. You also knew he was going to support you, but you’re not sure you like how he’s doing it – proving that you’re right, sure, but proving it by proving that you can’t handle your quirk at even partial strength, when the way you were using your quirk wasn’t even the real problem. If you had reacted faster, gotten a solid grip on Shigaraki through other means instead of getting distracted by how not-okay he is, you’d have held all the cards by the time the warp villain came to play. You’d like to see the warp villain try to back you into a corner when you’ve got a piece of rebar wrapped around Shigaraki’s throat.

But you didn’t have your shit together, because you were too stuck on just how shocked Shigaraki looked when you asked if he was okay. Not fake-shocked, not mocking-shocked, not look-at-the-hypocritical-hero-pretending-to-care shocked – truly, honestly shocked, like you’re the first person who’s asked him that question in a while. You flatly refuse to entertain the thought that you’re the first person who’s ever asked him that, because that would be too goddamn sad and you’re not into woobifying villains. You know more than a few heroes who have those romance novels about getting captured and ravished by a not-bad-just-misunderstood villain hanging out on their e-readers, and that’s not your style at all. So why did it bother you, seeing that look on Shigaraki’s face? Why are you still thinking about it two weeks later?

You shake it off as you, Eraser, Vlad, and the students reach Ground Beta. If you don’t want anybody to guess how you actually messed up, you need to do a good job proving that their idea of your mistake is the right one.

Vlad sets up a target a quarter of a mile down Ground Beta’s main street – the distance from one end of Kamino Park to the other – then makes his way back to you and the others. Eraserhead ushers everybody away from you. “Okay,” you say, projecting your voice, “I’m going to show you what it would have looked like for me to use my quirk to drag the League of Villains to me from across Kamino Park.”

Part of you is tempted to just blow it. Use your quirk recklessly, without worrying about consequences or property damage or anything but how it feels to finally let loose. But you’re a hero. You need to set a good example, not give the students even more reasons to question why you still have your license, and even here, there’s a chance that using your quirk at full strength isn’t safe. You get set, feeling the stabilizers in your boots anchor you to the ground. You tap into your metal sense, identifying the target a quarter mile away. Then you extend your hand, activate your quirk as precisely as you can manage, and pull.

The practice target starts moving. Unfortunately, so does everything else. No matter how hard you try to keep your focus on the target and only the target, metal fragments in the concrete lurch upwards, responding to your shift in the magnetic fields, pulling the street apart. The buildings on either side crumple inwards as their steel frameworks tear free. Lightposts bend into impossible shapes. Manhole covers lift from the street and fly towards you, forcing you to employ your other hand to stop them from striking the students behind you. The air vibrates. And sure, the practice target is flying towards you at high speed – but the destruction you’re wreaking on everything in between you and it is worse than what anyone but Shigaraki could have done to Kamino Memorial Park.

You let your grip on the magnetic fields fall when the target’s within thirty feet or so, and let momentum do the rest. Then you turn back towards the students. “This looks bad, right? If I’d done this at Kamino, it would be even worse. Anybody want to guess why?”

“Water mains,” the girl from 1-A with the Creation quirk says at once. You nod. “Cities are full of underground infrastructure, and most of that is made of metal. If your quirk is hard to focus narrowly at a distance from the target, you could do billions of yen worth of property damage.”

“What about people?” the electricity kid from 1-A says – the electricity kid who, if you remember right, also has a wide-range quirk. “Do they get caught when you do that?”

“No,” you say. “I have to be at close range to manipulate the iron in someone’s body. And they have to have enough iron in their bloodstream to make it possible.”

You say that, cringe, and brace yourself for what must be coming – one of the students, probably Midoriya, realizing that Shigaraki’s weapons-grade anemia is what kept him out of your reach at first. Followed by one of the students, probably Midoriya, asking why you didn’t use any of the other means at your disposal to capture him. “Oh,” the electricity kid says instead. “I get it now.”

“I have a question, Skynet,” Bakugou says loudly. “Couldn’t you do all that without destroying everything if you trained your quirk harder?”

You asked yourself that question a lot when you were a student at UA. The theoretical answer was always yes. “No,” you say, without getting into all the reasons why. “Does anyone else have a question?”

A Class B student named Honenuki has a question about what types of property you should avoid damaging if possible, and a Class B student named Monoma wants to know whether you were in Class A or Class B when you were at UA. He looks pretty happy when you say Class B, which is weird. You’re persona non grata among heroes right now. It doesn’t make a ton of sense that he’s excited that you were in the same class as he is. Vlad doesn’t ask you how things have been going; he just pats your shoulder and walks off. You try to escape before Eraserhead can talk to you, and make it exactly five steps before he calls out. “Skynet.”

You grit your teeth. “Do you want me to apologize, too?”

“For what?” Eraser looks irritated. “I asked you to look after my students. You looked after them. I’d be asking you to apologize if you’d let them fight.”

“Oh.” You weren’t looking forward to making that apology. “Then, um – what did you want to talk to me about?”

“My students are used to having their quirks temporarily canceled, but my quirk is unique. They’re much more likely to run into villains whose powers serve to restrain them,” Eraser says. You get where he’s going with this and try to interrupt, but he talks right over you. “I want you to come back for at least one of our basic training sessions. It’s rational to give them a chance to practice against a power set like yours, and it’ll also allow you the chance to work on fine-tuning your quirk.”

You knew there was a backhand somewhere in there. “My quirk’s as fine-tuned as it’s going to get.”

“We’ll see,” Eraser says. “The next basic training where all my students will be present is next Thursday. Come in.”

You recall making a promise to yourself, one which included telling Eraser to go to hell if he asked any more favors. But you still need to rehab your image. A lot. “Yeah. Sounds good.”

You change out of your costume before you leave campus – everything except your boots, which you wear almost all the time – and while you’re waiting for the train, you get a text from the group chat you have with the three other female pros who debuted in the same year as you. That’s about the only thing the four of you have in common, but that’s not stopping Yue from messaging in all caps. I MISSED MY ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY! WE NEED TO CELEBRATE <3 <3 <3

Yue was the last one of the four of you to debut. Her agency held her back for maximum press impact, whereas you just picked a day at random to quit working as a sidekick and strike out for yourself. Kagura, another member of the debut class, texts back before you can. Spa night?

That sounds good to you, but it’s not Yue’s speed at all. GOING OUT! I CAN GET US INTO CLUB 100 IN TOKYO!

Right – Yue’s number 25, as of the most recent billboard chart update. Mayuko, the member of the class you get along with best, texts next. It might be nice to see what it’s like?

Kagura gives a thumbs-up, and Yue sets the celebration date for tonight – and orders you all to come to her apartment to get ready. She has a special message for you. NO BOOTS, SKY. THEY’RE TOO CLUNKY FOR DANCING.

You send back a frowny face, and Mayuko chimes in. You can borrow my shoes. It’s been so long since we got together! I can’t wait!

That’s true, and you’ve missed them – but right now you’re a liability. Are you sure you want to be seen in public with me? I’m sort of radioactive right now.

Nobody will recognize you out of costume, Yue says, instead of what you were hoping she’d say, which is that it doesn’t matter and she has your back. Be at my place at 6!

There goes your quiet night. You board your train and lean back in your seat. If you have to go dancing tonight, you’d better catch some rest now.

Shigaraki refreshes the page, frowning. Then he refreshes it again, getting the same message. What the hell does ‘set to private’ mean? He googles it, learns that only approved followers can see an Instagram account that’s set to private, and feels a surge of annoyance. It figures. He spent two weeks debating whether or not to look you up, and by the time he’s finally decided it’s not creepy to look up the weird hero who has a crush on him, you locked all of your stupid social media accounts.

Part of Shigaraki still thinks everybody’s messing with him – everybody except Toga, who’s delusional, and Twice, who’s probably never touched a girl who wasn’t in the process of arresting him. But something about it keeps bothering Shigaraki. Something about you keeps bothering him. Thinking about it makes him itch, and not thinking about it isn’t working. After two weeks of trying both, Shigaraki decided to look you up and find out what you’ve said about him and the League of Villains, so he can finally delete the mental save file with you in it.

But you haven’t said much about the League of Villains. Shigaraki can’t tell if that’s because no one’s asked you or because you don’t have anything to say – or at least not anything you’d say publicly, which is why he went looking for your personal social media accounts and found them all locked. Shigaraki scratches with one hand and looks you up on Reddit with the other. He has to be pretty specific in his search query. Just looking up “Skynet” brings up a lot of stuff about movies.

The Reddit threads about you are a mix of obsessive hero fans and people who think you’re hot. The latter group spends a lot of time bitching about the fact that you don’t post enough thirst traps. It doesn’t seem like you go for fanservice. Good. Shigaraki hates heroes on principle, but he hates the ones who don’t showboat ever so slightly less.

You used to work with Eraserhead, which is probably why he let you supervise his class. You went to UA. There are links to all your Sports Festival performances, and Shigaraki bookmarks them for later, in case you’ve got skills you didn’t show in the fight at Kamino. You’re not very well-known, and none of your arrests have been of big-time villains. And as far as Shigaraki can find, you’ve never said a word about the League.

It’s not like Shigaraki was expecting to find a whole essay about why you don’t hate the League and why you have a crush on him. He wouldn’t have liked that. But he also doesn’t like the fact that you apparently didn’t think about the League at all before you fought him at Kamino. Maybe you did and you were just keeping quiet about it. Or maybe you didn’t care at all until you met Shigaraki in person, and then you – what? Worried about him? Cared about him? Wanted him to live? Do people actually fall in love at first sight?

Toga would say yes, but Toga’s seventeen, and also insane. Shigaraki can’t take anything Toga says at face value.

There’s one other spot on Reddit where Shigaraki finds you – in a thread on the weirdest hero names. He remembers the movies that kept popping up in his earlier search results and finds one of them on his favorite pirating site. He’s bored. There’s nothing to do right now. He’s decided not to do anything else until the dust has settled. He has time for a movie.

The hideout is quiet right now. Dabi’s been gone all day. Toga and Twice left this afternoon, either to scout things out or to steal more supplies, and Spinner, Compress, and Magne are all napping in the next room. This afternoon, Shigaraki sent Kurogiri to ask the doctor for help. He didn’t want to do that, but with Sensei gone – gone, and it’s Shigaraki’s fault, because it was his stupid plan – the League is out of Nomus and running out of money. They need backup, and Kurogiri’s better at convincing the doctor to do things than Shigaraki is. A scarecrow with a paper bag over its head is better at convincing people to do things than Shigaraki is. If Shigaraki was convincing at all, he would have won Bakugou over, and none of this would have happened.

The movie is sci-fi, or maybe horror. It’s also really old, from some time period where all the movies were set in a world where quirks don’t exist. If quirks existed, this movie would be over before it even started. Probably. Shigaraki wonders if you’ve seen this movie. If you liked it. What other things do you like, in addition to him?

A few minutes later, he gets an answer to at least one of his questions. You’ve definitely seen this movie, and you must have liked it, or you wouldn’t have named yourself after the evil supercomputer that nuked humanity and started building killer robots to take out anybody who survived. Now Shigaraki gets why you were on the list of heroes with weird names, and he’s pretty sure you should be at the top of it. You must have at least a couple screws loose. That’s probably why you took one look at Shigaraki and decided to fall in love with him. If you have fallen in love with him. Have you?

Shigaraki needs to stop thinking about this. He presses play on the movie again. Now that he’s got at least an answer or two, maybe he can focus on something else. Something other than the fact that he’s tired and hungry and has a headache and will probably get dizzy if he stands up too fast, just like he always has. And the fact that none of those things were a problem until you asked if he was okay.

He must fall asleep or something, because the next thing he knows, the screen of his phone’s gone dark, and someone is hollering at him from the other room. “What?” Shigaraki shouts back.

“Get in here,” Dabi says. Dabi’s back. “Your girlfriend’s on the news.”

“All over the news,” Toga adds gleefully, before Shigaraki can argue back that a) you’re not his girlfriend because b) he doesn’t even like you. “She’s even cuter when she’s covered in blood!”

What? Shigaraki stands up too fast, comes close to blacking out, and scrambles unsteadily into the other room. Magne has the TV on, and Shigaraki elbows his way past Compress and Dabi for a look at the screen. It’s the national news, a special report. Something about speed brakes failing on a Shinkansen headed through Tokyo and a catastrophic derailment. Or what would have been a catastrophic derailment, if it wasn’t for you. Before Shigaraki can tell somebody to look up what happened on their phone – his is dead – the news broadcast plays a video of the incident. All Shigaraki and the others can do is stare.

“Damn,” Spinner says into the silence that falls afterwards. “If she’d done that at Kamino, you all would have been toast.”

No kidding. Shigaraki didn’t go to school past kindergarten, but every idiot knows that trains are heavy, and knows that the faster something is going, the harder it is to stop. In the video, you’re on the tracks behind the speeding train, hand outstretched. Shigaraki sees the train shudder when your quirk catches it. It yanks you off your feet about three seconds later, and you get dragged out of the frame facedown, one hand still extended, still hanging on. Whoever’s holding the camera pans left, following the train, and it’s pretty obvious that the train is slowing down. Shigaraki thought your quirk was good for paralyzing people and pulling wires out of the ground. He’d never have guessed you were capable of this.

“Why didn’t she do that at Kamino?” Dabi asks, baffled. “She could have made it big as the hero who took down the League of Villains instead of getting dragged by the press for letting us go.”

“Which do you think dragged her harder, the press or the train?” Magne cackles, and Dabi snorts. “She looks like roadkill –”

“Don’t be dumb,” Toga says to Magne. “She’s got blood all over her. It’s cute! And she let us go at Kamino because she loves Tomura-kun.”

“Oh, right.” Magne nods. Dabi’s still snickering. “The train isn’t half as cute as the boss is!”

Dabi’s snickering gets worse, and Twice is guffawing in the background. Shigaraki yanks the remote out of Magne’s hand and turns up the volume on the TV to drown them out. “ – pleased to report a lack of severe injuries to the passengers, courtesy of the gradual stop achieved by what was first believed to be a civilian acting without authorization,” the newscaster is saying. They’re on the scene. There’s an ambulance in the background. “We’ve since confirmed that the individual responsible for the save is an off-duty hero by the name of Skynet. We have her right here –”

The camera zooms in on you, just in time for you to spit a mouthful of blood into the gutter. Magne was right – you look like shit – and Toga was right – you’re covered in blood. You’re not wearing your costume, and your clothes are pretty shredded. You wipe your mouth on the back of your hand and stand up straight, grimacing. Shigaraki’s taken his share of hits in battle before. He’s impressed against his will.

The interviewer is asking you a bunch of questions, and Shigaraki listens carefully. Now that he knows how powerful your quirk actually is, he needs as many clues as possible about how it works. He picks up things here and there, but he keeps getting distracted by you. By the blood dripping from the corner of your mouth. By the big, bloody scrapes across your torso. By the way one of your shoulders is pretty obviously dislocated, and the fact that you’re standing there doing an interview when you should be getting help. Shigaraki doesn’t need to ask a stupid question about whether or not you’re okay. He knows you’re not. Why does he care?

Because you were off-duty. Because this wasn’t your job. Because you got in trouble for letting Shigaraki go at Kamino and still jumped onto the tracks to get dragged four hundred yards behind an out-of-control train. The heroic system is bullshit, and there’s nothing defensible about it, but that train probably had hundreds of people on it, and they’d be dead if it wasn’t for you. Being a hero is idiotic at best. But if it’s possible to do an idiotic thing the right way, you’re doing it.

The interviewer is asking you why you stepped in when you weren’t on duty, and you’re getting pretty visibly annoyed. Spinner is the only person other than Shigaraki who’s still watching. “She’s underground, right?” he asks. Shigaraki nods without looking away from the screen. “She acts like a true hero. Stain would approve.”

Shigaraki doesn’t give a shit what the Hero Killer thinks about anything. But he has a really bad feeling that he’s starting to give a shit about you. What the hell is he supposed to do about it?

Turn you, obviously. The League could use a quirk like yours, and it would be a serious blow to hero society for an established hero to join forces with Shigaraki. You probably weren’t trying to get Shigaraki’s attention by stopping a speeding train, but you’ve got his attention now, for a good reason instead of a stupid one. The thought of your feelings for him is a lot less uncomfortable now that they’re something he can use.

Kurogiri gets back from the doctor with bad news – the doctor can’t help them right now, because they’re taking too much heat. It sounds like bullshit to Shigaraki, but he has something else on his mind. He talks to Kurogiri away from the others. “Find out where Skynet lives.”

Kurogiri looks surprised. “Why?”

“She’s stronger than I thought. We can use her.”

“I see,” Kurogiri says, but he’s giving Shigaraki a weird look. “Why do you need to know where she lives?”

“So I can let her know I’m interested,” Shigaraki says. Kurogiri’s expression doesn’t shift. “I don’t have to tell her what I’m interested in.”

Kurogiri’s still making a weird face. As much as Kurogiri can make any kind of face. “Right?” Shigaraki prompts, and Kurogiri nods. “Right. Once we know where she is, what should I do?”

“Something subtle,” Kurogiri suggests. “Consider it while I seek the information you requested.”

Something subtle. Easy enough. Shigaraki feels better about the whole thing than he has since he ran into you for the first time. You’re in love with him? That’s fine. If you love him so much, you can help him destroy the world.

[theresattrpgforthat]

How do you know so many games to recommend? I feel like I’m always scrambling to find games on a certain topic, and itchio’s search function is tricky at best.

Hello friend! I have a few methods, and I think they all tie back to my pretty big obsession with games. Let's take a trip through my indie RPG journey, because this is kind of the result of approximately 5 years of interest.

DriveThru RPG

When I first got into TTRPGs, I didn't have a lot of money (let's be real, even right now I don't really have that much spending money) but I did have a little more time, so I combed the net for free tabletop games. I got acquainted with DriveThruRPG first, and I took everything I could that was free and put it into little folders on my computer. Since then I've realized that I can access my folders through the DriveThru App, so there's much less on my computer and more just waiting to be downloaded and perused.

I also get notifications from DriveThru about deals of the day, and occasionally I just browse the storefront to see if anything catches my eye. DriveThru's navigation system is not great either, but one of my friends does some of his own sifting and has directed me to some real gems. I learned about Pandora London, Swords of the Serpentine, and Savage Worlds this way.

Podcasts

I love TTRPG podcasts but I didn't want to listen to D&D podcasts. I found Fandible first, when I was looking for a play through of Changeling: The Lost. I walk to work and I also like to listen to podcasts when I clean my house, so I usually get through one episode a day. I usually look for podcasts that play in multiple systems, although you'll see a number of podcasts here that focus on just one non-D&D system. Here's a few that I recommend:

Fandible: Just a group of friends who love playing games together. All of them are GMs, and they all GM different games. Jesus is the most adventurous, and is constantly bringing new games to the table. I found Slugblaster, Numenera, and Unhallowed Metropolis through them!

Character Creation Cast: I started listening to CCC last year, thanks to a recommendation from a friend, but I fell in love quick. The hosts focus only on the character creation aspect of games, and they also spend time talking to other gamers about the parts of play that each guest feels is important. I found out about Descent into Midnight, Nova, and Blue Planet this way.

The Gauntlet Podcast: This Podcast no longer releases episodes but I learned so much about safe game play through this podcast. Once a month the hosts would sit down with guests and highlight a game of the month for each of them. Often they would talk about games that they adored even before those games made it to publication. I found out about Brinkwood, Apocalypse Keys, and Poutine through this podcast. I miss it so very much.

I would also recommend My First Dungeon, Party of One Podcast, The Eternity Archives, One Shot, and +1 Forward for exposure to many indie games.

Itch.io

I didn't interact much with Itch.io at first - I thought it was mostly for indie video games and generators - but when the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality came out I went feral. I sorted through each and every page of games in that bundle and put all of the TTRPGs into folders - which I am still refining to this day. As you can see, I get very excited whenever a big bundle comes out, as it gives me a lot of exposure to games that people have made.

I also sort through the most recent additions on Itch every one or two days. I usually categorize my folders via genre and rules system, but I'm currently in the process of curating folders for duet and epistolary games. If I think a tag will help me, I usually use https://itch.io/physical-games/tag-[tag] and then insert what I'm looking for in the [tag]. It doesn't get everything but it gets me started.

Often if a game was entered in a Game Jam, there's a tab that you can click to see other entries in that same Jam. So occasionally I'll browse Game Jams for other games that I might find interesting. And for games that I know that I'm personally passionate about, I have a Games that Intrigue Me folder to flip through for when I'm choosing which game to play, or if I want to spotlight a game that I've been itching to put on a rec post.

Other Avenues

I am actually subscribed to you on Youtube, along with a number of other great reviewers!

The Gaming Table is a wonderful Aussie creator who reviews copies of indie ttrpgs. She started a year ago and already has a truly delightful backlog. I recently listened to her review of Bluebeard's Bride and it was wonderful!

I found 11dragonkid when I was looking for Lancer content and was pleasantly surprised to find other ttrpg reviews for games such as ARC and Gubat Banwa.

I watch A.A. Voigt's and Talen Lee's (@talenlee) mini-essays about games and the pieces of those games that speak to them not just to learn about new games but also to learn about what makes those games matter. I found the videos on Capitalites and Girl By Moonlight very informative!

I also watch Dave Thaumvore for reviews for big-print games (Vaesen, Symbaroum), and Questing Beast for updates on what's happening in the OSR scene (Vaults of Vaarn, Mothership).

I'm also subscribed to a number of newsletters and RSS feeds! Bundle of Holding has a blog announcing new bundles, the Indie RPG Newsletter has some great indie rpg coverage in their monthly updates and associated links, and I have an RSS feed on Feedly for game musings on whatever blogs I can find.

In Conclusion...

Much of my TTRPG knowledge comes from constant osmosis. I talk to friends about games, spend a lot of time on Itch.io, and I'm also finding new games here on Tumblr. I have an RPG server where me and a bunch of my friends play pretty regularly, and I'm constantly introducing them to new games. We finished up our Monster Squad Arc a month or two ago, and we're currently getting geared up for a Galaxy Games arc - this time with games that other players are bringing to the table!

I started sorting games for my own enjoyment - I love having all of my little boxes that I can go back to when I am hankering for my own game. I started this blog because I found there were too many games that I was excited about and I was never going to get through all of them just gaming with my friends.

[righteous-r0de0]

surprise surprise i have more useless headcanons :)

vincent plays a lot of different instruments at varying skill levels (french horn and cello are his favorites). william made him learn in an effort to reinvigorate his zest for life after being turned

after ivan’s memories were changed he fell into a really deep depression and always felt guilty and he just didn’t know why

angel got david hooked on jane the virgin. he was team michael but his favorite character is alma (jane’s grandmother)

caelum’s favorite food his spaghetti. he always makes a huge mess, so gav and freelancer circumvent this (kinda) by doing that thing where you wrap the table in cling wrap or tinfoil and forgo plates and silverware

gavin trip sits for the rest of the damn crew when they smoke. he only messes with damien a little bit

lasko is NOT a lightweight but he is a weepy drunk (ie “i just love you guys so much” absolutely sobbing)

damien gets so silly when he’s sleep deprived, laughing at everything, making dirty jokes etc

kody bleached his hair and freelancer didn’t recognize him until they were practically right next to him

huxley gets very grumpy when he’s sleep deprived, whining, crossing his arms, frowning. he doesn’t yell or anything but you just KNOW when he’s tired

if you put anything green apple flavored in front of asher, he’s absolutely tearing it up

james loves indian food. his local place always asks after him whenever his spouse orders when they miss him a lot

marcus majored in game design, but later switched to computer science and programming. he also really liked geology

anton really likes half and half (iced tea/lemonade)

ollie looks like he listens to classic white girl pop or something similar but you pull his airpods out and he’s actually listening to either heavy metal or very disturbing true crime podcasts

elliot can swing dance

brachium erased even the memories of him from sunshine, elliot, aaron, and smartass

avior loves soups and stews any kind of food he can drink

milo loves hot chip (takis, hot cheetos, doritos) they make his nose run but he can’t stop

camelopardalis is a cat person

blake wanted to be a firefighter when he was a kid, but it changed when he met bestie. after that his only aspiration was to be theirs.

if aaron is given the option of sausage or bacon, he’s choosing bacon

sam can sew a little bit like mending seams and patching holes

vega doesn’t like human food. he thinks it’s strange. but he does like cheesecake.

regulus used to really enjoy cereal

geordi’s favorite fruit is bananas

guy LOVES bo burnham

morgan is really good at point and shoot games. it’s nothing to do with the sight or anything, they’re just his favorite

hush really likes chocolate and chocolate flavored things

porter’s favorite candy is reese’s peanut butter cups dude is a fiend for them

[azuphere]

Okay but you still haven’t explained what the glitch theory is, like what does it mean??

omgg lore dump time this is so exciting, more under the cut but the glitch theory basically revolves around this merch from phil from november 2019 !

(re: this ask)

so like at the time, this piece of merch had ppl like 👀👀 bc the concept and the graphic novel vibe and the way it said ‘to be continued’ had ppl thinking this might be a hint at a secret project!

and over the years, phil would keep hinting at wanting to channel his creative energies into a project, and how he'd love to do smth interactive like bandersnatch ! esp in 2019/early-2020:

in 'The Scary Reason I Didn't Buy A House' (april 2019), he said: "I do actually have a story in my head, I'm just not quite sure how I wanna tell it yet. So it could be a book, it could be like a TV series-style screenplay, it could be a movie script. I just need to consolidate all these ideas in my head and turn them into the thing. But I have been thinking about it for about five years, so it's just when the right time is to actually release the ideas."

in 'draw my life: part 2' (august 2019), he said: "maybe for the next secret big project, it's time for Philly to think about the big dreams he's always had! [...] What I've always dreamed of doing is writing stories and directing films to take what's in my mind and share it with the world on your screen, maybe even a bigger screen. Now remember the rule of secret projects! Who knows what's going on and if it'll ever be real, but let's just say some writing is happening."

in an interview from february 2020, he said that his plans for 2020 included: "a few projects on the burn which I'm not ready to announce fully yet. They all involve writing. There are some stories I'd like to tell, so with some hard work and a bit of luck I might be able to share these with you on-screen on in print next year."

in the TalentWorks podcast from vidcon london (february 2020) at about 29:35 (youtube link), he said: "I think I've reached a point where I'm ready to sink my teeth into a new big project [...] I'm ready to do something new that's also very Phil and very my own thing, so I've been looking into- I'm really obsessed with interactivity. I think there's been a big boom of it since Bandersnatch [...]. I already pitched one interactive thing which didn't work out, but I got a lot of other ideas that I'm thinking of."

and in one of the stereo shows, dnp also confirmed that they tried pitching an interactive show to netflix but it fell through cause of covid ! and there was this insta story of dan being in LA in january 2020, which aligns with the timeline mentioned in the podcast. a transcription of that stereo moment is here

so it was never confirmed whether the glitch hoodie was actually supposed to be smth greater or if it was just a fun merch idea, but it was a common fan theory that glitch was supposed to be one of phil's projects!

and i think one of the most notable theories that supported the glitch concept was that a couple weeks after the merch release, phil tweeted this:

bc the suspicious thing is that it's nearly identical to smth he tweeted 4 years prior on literally the same day and almost the same exact time ! so we’d joke about how it was like a glitch (!!) in the simulation and he even responded to a tweet about it. and he also talks about it in this liveshow (at 24:39), where he just jokes about how he's living in the matrix

so yea! tldr: glitch is just one theory about what (one of) phil's secret projects is <3

[fleeglefazbeagle]

Here's a random thought I had the other day regarding the debate involving SH Tails:

WARNING: I get kinda angry and I WILL rant since that's what this is, you've been warned and please, no fighting for the love of God.

You know how this got started because of that Real or Cake vid with the Opera GX promo?

Well, I bet ya if they did this with Man vs Train or Luigi's Lament, there wouldn't be as big as an uproar.

However, since this involves SH Tails who's one of the most popular characters on Mashed's channel and given how he's a bit different animation and personality wise, well...

Speaking of which, time for a rant, yippee./neg

I find it funny how long before TSAA part 3 came out, a lot of people were wishing that SH Tails came back in a video but when he returned in that video, a lot of people were happy, sure but there were a small few folks that weren't as happy.

Considering this was during the time when Friday Night Funkin exists and especially considering that SH Tails was supposed to appear in VS Sonic.exe mod(which was cancelled) and actually appeared in the FNF: Secret Histories mod demo, a few folks were not happy with how SH Tails was drawn considering how he now has claws and is a lanky bastard.

(Way to insult the current animator for the series...😒)

The other thing was he sounded a bit different and some came to the conclusion that it's a different voice actor(it was NOT, it's still Mick) mainly because the tone and the slight softness.

Here's the thing about that, Mick is in his 40's, you can't expect him to constantly scream in a shrill voice, think about his poor throat!

Some folks went on to say that the current version and the OG version are not the same person which is bullshit because they are.

That's like saying that the OG Goku and the current Goku are not the same person or saying that classic SpongeBob and modern SpongeBob are not the same person. :(

Come to think of it, this whole thing gives "Classic SpongeBob vs Modern SpongeBob", technically.

Lemme explain: The OG SpongeBob was well loved, OG Secret History Tails was well loved, modern SpongeBob while it does have its fans, it's not as liked because it's "not the same", TSA version of SH Tails while it does have its fans, it's not as liked because it's "not the same".

In terms of Opera GX is concerned, you don't HAVE to use it, you can easily wait for the YouTube upload of part 5, don't worry.

The reason why SH Tails is seemingly calmer is because he grew and matured plus, this part is a bit of a stretch on my end, he probably doesn't wanna scare Amy off.

Animation wise, it actually improved overtime and while it's not the same as Zeurel's style, it's still memorable.

You guys are straight up nitpicking with these complaints, you CAN criticize it if ya want, just give ACTUAL criticism rather than just saying "they fell off" or "they're milking it" which, by the way, it's THEIR story, not yours, let them do what they want.

As far as why they didn't get Zeurel to animate the series, well, as the man himself said in a stream, he doesn't work with Mashed anymore since he has his own series called "Monkey Wrench" which you should check out if you like, it's good. :)

Folks would say SH Tails' return was "forced" or "only came back because of Friday Night Funkin" when in reality according to Mashed themselves on a podcast they did, the said that they've been planning on bringing him back since 2018, aka, BEFORE Friday Night Funkin even existed!

Here's the link to the short:

It's perfectly fine if you don't like the current version of SH Tails, just don't be a dick about it and don't act like you know better than Mashed.

To think this whole thing happened again but worse was because of a fucking YouTube short involving the "Real or Cake" trend that promotes the EARLY upload on Opera GX.🤦🏻‍♀️

Anyways, enough of me ranting.

Remember to drink water, take your meds, eat a balanced diet, take care of yourself, stay safe and don't be a jerk.👍🏻