#I’m coming at it from my perspective specifically so I don’t mind sharing this video idea

[r0semultiverse]

I’m going to make a Black Butler retrospective video essay from the perspective of a queer person thing sometime in the future maybe hopefully before the reboot starts in 2024. Going to be covering the manga-canon anime content as well as maybe the filler parts after I read the manga proper. Something something is this worth watching in 2024. Focusing on how Grell is handled & depicted as well as the other characters. Has it aged well? Is it worth a rewatch? You’ll find out when I make the video.

[heph]

TLDR: Got any drawing exercises to recommend?

I’m in loooove with the way you use lines, shapes and colors/shading to show form in your art. The way you draw bodies shows a lot of understanding of the shapes that go into them, and that’s something I often personally struggle with. I’m familiar with the shapes of a face, but when it comes to connecting them to the shapes of the body and so on, I get frustrated that it’s jumbled instead of cohesive.

I was wondering, when you’re looking to practice, whether that’s anatomy, line-making, still life shapes or whatever, do you have any exercises you’ve done and would be willing to share? I’ve been trying to crawl out of the no-art-depression-hole for a bit and want to start with things that don’t take much willpower but help me improve

I might be the worst person to ask this! My relationship with art is not typical and I do not practice mindfully! (I just draw whatever I want and that's my practice, y'know?

Anyways, here's my progress of how I learnt to draw :3

Step 1 is proportions - breaking up the human body into manageable blocks and pieces. And step 2 is learning the muscles that build up the body, and from there you can simplify as needed... Or do that thing anime art kids do and skip directly to the simplified bit! (You probably shouldn't do that but if it's a hobby who cares!)

For specific tutorials, I find that proko is probably the best mix of entertaining/educational content you can find, but aside from that I watch a lot of speedpaints.

As a sort of get rich quick scheme, I think the absolute easiest way to get stupidly good at art is studying perspective - but you at least need a basic understanding of proportions and anatomy before you can draw someone in a funky perspective.

Everything in life is in perspective, and every piece of work you will ever make will have perspective in it. Perspective is sort of like an all-encompassing thing in our reality that you don't realise is there, and maybe even not realise is missing in your work (just that something feels... Wrong) AND LIKE NOBODY EVER TALKS ABOUT IT! WHAT THE FLIP!!!

I don't really have a specific source for learning perspective, because I've been on-and-off trying to wrap my head around it for a few years (I'm still awful at it but I'm getting there...!) here's a video!

I do think that drawing with progression in mind might help, but I think with art (as a hobby) the most important thing is probably love for a special guy and joy of creation. You have to love what you're drawing and the simple act of creating, or it just won't work out. If you're in a depression hole maybe just try creating for the sake of it, and don't give yourself too many expectations :)

[mommyownsmee]

Hi 🥺 (idk if i can call you mommy, i don’t want to be disrespectful)

Do you have any advice for someone who is mot sure about their sexuality?

i have been always attracted to men mostly, but for few years now i have this feeling that i might be attracted to women too… i’m 23 and well when my friends and colleagues were experimenting with theirs sexualities i was nit a part of this ( strict and overprotective parents) and now that i have a freedom to experiment, theres no one to do it with. And i dint want to lead anyone when im nit sure of my sexuality.

Any advice maybe? you have this aura around yourself that ,made me feel safe enough to ask this, i hope i didn’t push or step over any boundaries.

🥺🙈

Hey sweety! 𝒙𝒙

Of course, you can call me mommy if that feels comfortable for you! I'm honored that you feel safe enough to reach out with such a personal question. Exploring your sexuality can be both exciting and a little daunting, especially if you haven't had the chance to do so until now.

First, it's important to remember that sexuality is a spectrum and can be fluid. It's perfectly normal to be attracted to different genders at different times in your life.

I wrote down some tips for you that helped me too:

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Self-Reflection

Journaling: Write down your thoughts and feelings regularly. Reflect on moments when you felt attraction towards someone, regardless of their gender. This can help you identify patterns and understand your emotions better.

Mindfulness and Meditation: These practices can help you become more in tune with your inner self and feelings. Sometimes, our busy lives make it hard to notice subtle changes in our attractions and desires.

Past Experiences: Reflect on your past crushes, relationships, and attractions. Were there any moments when you felt drawn to someone of the same gender? Understanding your past can provide insights into your current feelings.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Educate Yourself

Books and Articles: There are many excellent resources on sexuality and sexual orientation. Consider reading works by authors like Lisa Diamond ("Sexual Fluidity") or Emily Nagoski ("Come As You Are").

Documentaries and Videos: Visual media can be very powerful. Look for documentaries on LGBTQ+ experiences or TED Talks that discuss sexuality. These can provide diverse perspectives and relatable stories.

Websites and Forums: Websites like Scarleteen and forums like Reddit’s r/bisexual or r/lgbt are full of people sharing their own journeys and advice.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••��•••••••••••••

Join Supportive Communities

Online Communities: Websites and social media groups can offer a sense of belonging and support. Platforms like Reddit, Tumblr, and Facebook have groups dedicated to exploring and discussing sexuality. I also have a Telegram group that you can join at any time.

Local LGBTQ+ Group: Check for local community centers or groups. Attending meetings or events can provide face-to-face support and friendships with people who understand what you’re going through.

Support Groups: Some areas offer support groups specifically for people questioning their sexuality. These can be safe spaces to express your feelings and learn from others.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Take It Slow

No Pressure: Give yourself permission to explore your sexuality at your own pace. There’s no rush to label yourself or come to a definitive conclusion.

Exploration: If you feel comfortable, try going on dates or meeting people from different genders. This doesn’t mean you have to jump into a relationship right away; casual and friendly interactions can be very telling.

Experimentation: Experiment with your sexuality in ways that feel safe and comfortable for you. This could be through fantasizing, watching different kinds of media, or even engaging in conversations with friends.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Communicate Openly

Honesty: When you start dating, be upfront about your journey with potential partners. Most people appreciate honesty and will understand that you’re still figuring things out.

Boundaries: Establish clear boundaries with anyone you’re exploring with. Make sure they understand your situation and respect your pace and comfort level.

Feedback: Ask for feedback from those you trust. Sometimes, friends and close ones can provide perspectives that you might not have considered.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Seek Professional Guidance

Therapists and Counselors: Look for professionals who specialize in LGBTQ+ issues. They can provide a safe space to explore your feelings without judgment.

Sex Educators: Professionals in this field can offer practical advice and information about sexuality, helping you understand your feelings better.

Support Networks: Some areas have networks of professionals who provide counseling and support specifically for those exploring their sexuality.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Personal Tips

Self-Acceptance: Embrace the journey and be kind to yourself. It’s okay to feel uncertain and to take your time in understanding your sexuality.

Stay Informed: Keep learning and stay curious. The more information and perspectives you gather, the more comfortable you might feel with your own sexuality.

Community Resources: Utilize local community resources such as LGBTQ+ centers, hotlines, and support groups. They often offer free or low-cost services for those exploring their sexuality.

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Remember, there's no "right" way to discover your sexuality. It's a personal journey, and it's okay to take your time. You deserve to feel happy and fulfilled, and understanding your sexuality is a part of that.

I'm always here to talk if you need more support or just someone to listen. You didn't push any boundaries, and I'm glad you reached out. Take care of yourself, and trust your feelings—they are valid.

[nayatarot777]

💌✨ what do you need to know about yourself? ✨💌 ~ pac

check out my youtube channel if you’d like! ☺️🤍

• pile 1 •

you guys are so self protective. you really don’t trust anyone and it’s because of a mixture of self-consciousness and trust issues. you don’t trust that people will reciprocate the energy that you give - which is a bunch of love and nurture.

there’s also a message about needing to realise that you need to - and are able to - mother yourself. it’s like you crave love but you also fear opening yourself up to it due to the fear of someone causing you pain.

your boundaries are a bit too strong. again, they’re cemented in place out of fear, and anything created out of fear isn’t created with discernment and rationality. fear causes you to go into survival mode and see everything as a possible threat. your boundaries are a bit too strong. even when it comes to giving out this loving energy, not just receiving it.

you guys could have a fear of giving love to people. you could isolate yourself 24/7, never wanting to be seen and not wanting to be thought about or worried about. it’s like you’re in your own cave, creating a bit of a prison for yourself. you’re stuck in a prison of fear and anxiety. your thoughts have been in a dark space for so long that they’ve begun to develop into more intense rumination and even paranoia for some of you.

you need to self soothe and remind yourself that you are loved whether you’re isolating yourself or not. there could be specific family members or friends who want you to know that although you keep yourself away from them for your own reasons, they still love you and will always be willing to support you. you could even have trust issues with these people. not knowing who to trust. lie down, close your eyes, and think about these people individually. lean into the feeling of being around them, without the interference of your self-consciousness or intrusive thoughts. just imagine calm conversation with them in your mind and take note of how they make you feel. this is how you can discern who you can and can’t trust. if that visualisation leaves you feeling uneasy after thinking about a specific person, question why. if you’re picking up on weird vibes from them, then kick their ass to the curb. they gotta go.

overall message: become more open to love. giving and receiving love. feeling love. observing love (through movies for example, or becoming aware of loving couples that are around you in public). listening to music about love, reading about love, writing about love, dreaming about love. and i’m hearing that it would help if you were to start off thinking about platonic love. like between you and a hypothetical friend. or you and a family member.

• pile 2 •

side note before the actual reading begins: some of y’all be aiding in conflict. you lowkey love drama lmaoo. it’s okay, messiness is fun sometimes but be mindful and try to be the mediator when you can - if you even want to be and if it makes sense to. sometimes you really don’t need to be getting involved in people’s shit to mediate it. just let them argue, you know?

for some reason i feel like a lot of masculines are choosing this pile.

first of all, you guys need to quit playing and admit to yourselves that you are fucking hopeless romantics. you love loving people and giving care to others.

a lot of you have already begun to peel back the veil and peer underneath your usual persona when it comes to stuff like that, and you’ve realised that you’ve fed into a lot of the toxic ways of dealing with relationships. some of you might need to realise that you actually have control issues. or that you try to control situations in unnatural ways. i’m sensing even manipulation of some sort. i believe that this is partly a subconscious thing because it’s like a coping mechanism to you.

for others of you, i’m seeing that you genuinely need to see something or someone from a higher perspective. don’t overlook anything. there could be some love bombing going on with some of you who are in a situation that’s quite intense or full on. i’m literally seeing someone being set up in a situation and led to be trapped. don’t put your rose coloured glasses on now. you need to be paying attention and seeing things objectively. don’t let yourself be swept away with emotion. if you’re not currently in a situation like this, then you could be like this in a lot of situations with crushes or people who you date.

people see you as someone who’s easily manipulated and just full of either curiosity, naivety, or both. playing dumb but actually peeping game is your best fucking friend in the dating scene and relationships that you’re being played as a fool in. you ain’t no fool. the main message with this is that you guys need to discern who to give your love to. and pay attention to the people giving love to you. is it natural? or is there a motive behind all of the compliments and playfulness to get closer to you?

• pile 3 •

not gonna lie, pile 3, you might not like this message at all. it might trigger some egos greatly, and i know that because this is one of my piles and it’s already triggering me (only because i know it’s the truth). if you can’t control the way you behave when triggered, please leave now. i don’t have time for your rant in my replies. have a prayer session with whoever/whatever you believe in and cuss them out if you continue to read and have such a problem with this message.

a lot of us in this pile are sitting in a victim complex of some sort, ngl. i also think that a lot of us are becoming more aware of this slowly, but i just feel somewhat of a “woe is me” energy with this pile. it doesn’t even have to pertain to you in general. it could just be you regarding a specific situation.

either way, we have a lack mindset in this pile. and this isn’t one of those messages that’s just “be more grateful” (although i’m picking up on that as a bit of advice), but i’m seeing us searching for some sort of lost stability or help. and there is help around us but we’re not asking for help. or even realising that help is available to us.

we have a major issue with rumination. such negative thoughts and criticisms that we direct towards ourselves and aspects of our lives, so much to the point where we fail to realise the valuables right in front of our faces. i feel like a lot of us are just so used to disappointment from others and in life in general that we’ve basically started to self sabotage and shut down any possibility of a good/happy existence.

for those of us in a tough financial situation, i’m seeing that we have people who we could ask for help, but our ego gets in the way. not even in a “i’d never borrow money from anyone” type of way, but it’s the fear of being rejected from help and left out in the cold again that gets in the way. or the fear of being judged and criticised.

i would go as far as to say that some of us have the life purpose of learning how to accept help from others. when we do, we have major realisations about humanity, people in general, and understanding that not everyone is a threat and not everyone will just leave us to suffer like certain people have.

i didn’t do this for any other pile, but i’m pulling extra cards for advice for this pile, because lord knows we need it 😭.

the advice cards are literally all linked to family. whether that’s blood family or chosen family. we have select family members in this pile who would really be open to helping us. there’s a main message that we would benefit from learning to gain a sense of control in our lives again. formulating goals and a plan and taking active steps towards them. daily. even if that’s a morning routine. choosing to dress the way that you genuinely want to. eating what you actually want instead of eating what other people would deem as “acceptable”.

a lot of us have literally outgrown our comfort zone. and it’s almost like we’re looking out at the massive world that we’re expected to navigate in and we feel like we have to do it alone. or that we can’t do it. this could also be due to parents who coddled us or sheltered us though? more out of a need to control and not out of genuine love and thinking that they were actually helping us. a lot of our parents were toxic vultures who have hindered our maturity by infantilising us for so long by stripping away our power.

regarding gaining control again, the main message about that is literally to gain control over who you will and won’t speak to in your family group. our parents might be toxic af, but that doesn’t mean that our aunts and uncles have to be, for example. but when your immediate family is dysfunctional, it’s hard to trust extended family members.

these people who reach out to you despite you keeping yourself away from them really do care for you though. this could be a sibling, a cousin, a close family friend. whoever in the family still checks up on you with good intentions are the people who you can ask for help and trust. they want to help you build your life and they’d like you to understand that you don’t have to do it alone. despite having to fend for yourself for so long. most of us are young adults in this pile, and we deserve guidance and help just like everyone else. you just have to take small steps to showing that you’re now more open to their help. even if that means just sending a text message to one of these people and asking how they are, when you usually wouldn’t.

take care of yourself, pile 3. you’re definitely not alone, and you are still very much loved and supported by someone around you. for some of you, this “family” could be a single person. a partner that you have that you’re building a household with. they love and care for you so much. i’m actually feeling my heart chakra activate. that shit’s wild because my heart chakra ain’t felt by me easily lmaooo. this person genuinely loves you. purely. they will literally do anything in their power to help you. let them help you 🥺😪 their love for you has me tearing up over my damn tarot cards. i gotta go 😂

[gacmediadaily]

Ozempic is a huge topic of conversation right now, with many celebrities and others around the country using the drug to help them lose weight. However, along with debates about the benefits and/or risks that come along with that, many are also discussing the ongoing pressure to look a certain way or have a specific body type. Candace Cameron Bure grew up in front of the camera on Full House and has been open about her struggles with Hollywood’s unrealistic body standards. She recently opened up about continuing to feel that pressure amid Ozempic’s rise in popularity.

Candace Cameron Bure was 11 years old when she became known as DJ Tanner to millions upon millions of Full House fans, and with the ABC series running for eight years, Bure’s body went through a lot of natural changes in front of a lot of people over that time. The actress admitted on the Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey podcast that she still feels compelled to conform to certain beauty standards, which is especially hard in the age of Ozempic. Bure said: 

Let’s just talk about the Ozempic craze right now. I’m not going to go on Ozempic. But these are the things that go through my mind, because the standard is so high and I’m in front of the camera all day. And I don’t want to do that. And then it’s like I shake my head and I go, ‘Lord, stop!’ The pressure is so ingrained. A lot of the pressure just comes from myself, because I’ve grown up in it, and I don’t always know how to not feel that pressure.

Candace Cameron Bure loves to share glimpses of her healthy lifestyle with her followers on Instagram, posting frequent videos from her daily workouts. She also claims to have not eaten fast food in more than 20 years. However, she’s also been open about struggling with bulimia after Full House and continuing to fight negativity in her head. She continued: 

I’ve done a lot of work in my life, and I’ve been very public and open about having an eating disorder, which has been really good for the last probably 20 years. But I still mentally battle it all the time, just not as much as I used to. And I have tools in place that help me. But these are, like, the crazy thoughts that still go through my head, and they’re so dumb and they’re so unrealistic, and I hate that I have them, but the fact is I do. But the more I just share it and am open about it, it frees me from it, because I can hear myself say it out loud and realize, like, this is not what life is all about.

Talking about her eating disorder has apparently helped Candace Cameron Bure find perspective on the issue and continue on her fitness journey in a healthy way. The actress talked about starting 2024 off right by adding cardio back into her routine, and she certainly seems to be succeeding in finding the joy in life, as she said watching her son Lev get married in January was “a highlight of [her] entire life.”

[rmkenvs3000w23]

Unit 6: The Importance of History

“There is no peculiar merit in ancient things, but there is merit in integrity, and integrity entails the keeping together of the parts of any whole, and if these parts are scattered throughout time, then the maintenance of integrity entails a knowledge, a memory, of ancient things. …. To think, feel or act as though the past is done with, is equivalent to believing that a railway station through which our train has just passed, only existed for as long as our train was in it.”

I don’t think the importance of learning from and understanding history can be overstated. Possibly because I find history genuinely interesting, possibly because I know the old cliche about those who fail to learn from it, I find that learning about history, either in broad strokes or in specifics, can be a very informative and enlightening, but also humbling experience. A knowledge of history can at once demonstrate humanity’s greatest triumphs as well as our darkest moments, and offers us important insight as we look to the future. 

In this excerpt, Hyams raises an important point about the nature and purpose of the modern study of history - to reveal the truth of events as they happened, from a minimally biased perspective, with proper context for both the contributing factors and runoff effects, so that we can understand the story of history as completely as possible. This is the meaning I am taking from Hyams’ allusion to integrity. He ascribes merit not to individual objects - cups, bowls, bits of cloth, scraps of paper - but to the power they hold as pieces of the truth, pieces of that story. As referenced in the Beck text, and in similar fashion to a Starfleet officer, the first duty of any natural interpreter is to the truth. Maintaining the integrity of the true story of what happened, to the best of our abilities, is vital not only to educating ourselves on the past for its own sake, but also preparing ourselves for the present and the future. 

Of course, the quote makes clear that just because something is old doesn’t necessarily make it valuable, but when seen through this lens, it very much does. The very fact that we are able to look at an artifact, be it 70 or 70 000 years old, represents innumerable coincidences, choices, and conscious efforts that resulted in the object, you, and the two of you coming together. When considering natural history specifically, the implications of that happenstance are increased exponentially, and the accuracy of Hyams’ sentiment is underscored. Our connection to history through the sharing of objects, stories, and experiences is an essential part of the human experience, and allows us perspectives which would otherwise be lost to us. 

The second half of the quote helps to demonstrate a key point in what a lack of understanding of history. It also brings to mind imagery of a part of one of the darkest periods in human history, and one I have a connection to. As the Beck et al. text references, the efforts made to ensure the events of the Holocaust are never repeated and never forgotten. An entire branch of my father’s family was exterminated in concentration camps because they happened to be Jewish. Many like them were packed onto rail cars, as many as could possibly fit, and sent to their deaths. Never forget is what they’ve been saying ever since, but since the Shoah, there have been several genocides across the globe resulting in the deaths of millions more, and an even more recent rise in antisemitism. It is our duty as interpreters and as stewards of the planet in the coming years to be conscious of the past so as we attempt to navigate the future.  I’m choosing to close off with an excerpt from Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot. I first watched this video when I was probably 12 or 13, and it has informed much of my outlook ever since. I highly encourage you to give it a listen if you’re feeling particularly existential, and consider this dot, our home, the setting of every moment in our history.

[nightswithkookmin]

Hi Goldy, it’s been awhile…where have you been? This is an appreciation post for your blog. I love your write ups, thought process and inputs so much because it makes the most sense to me. There are times when I watch a moment and notice some things, i search a lot of blogs but their takes are different from what I perceive because I sometimes view things from a different perspective and then I come here and I’m justified that at least one person is sharing the same brain cells with me. When your predictions becomes reality it gives me joy and I think in order to do that then it means you connected with the boys on a personal level and see them as humans not fictional characters. I enjoyed going through your posts dated way back because I’m a new Army…it gave me the most joy and I connected with the boys more personally and your long write ups are da bombs😍😍.

Ps: Don’t abandon us here 🙏🙏. Visit us once in awhile with a lengthy post so I can grab my peanuts and sip my juice while settling for a long and enjoyable read.

Stuuuhpp! You giving me the Sugas☺☺☺

Believe it or not I come here everyday 🤣🤣🤣🤣

And thank you ☺ my posts are like that. Those who get it get it. Those who don't don't.

I might have to go through my Ask box for prompts. I've been binging old content and so far I haven't come across anything I haven't opined on. If anyone here has a theory, submission, take, Ask, please feel free to leave em in my inbox.

In the mean time, if I do come across anything interesting- by that I mean anything I find exciting- nothings gonna stop me from talking about it 🤣🤙🏾

I'm just at a place where everything Hybe does annoys me and I am not happy with the direction anything is going. I feel this is a make or break moment and they are just messing up big time. Or may be I just have to trust the process but if they don't bombard me with content soon, I might have to break into the vaults at Gybe headquarters and steal some disks.

Forget doing Solo projects one by one, do it all at once, confuse the shit out of me, make it hard for me to choose whom to support first, overwhelm me, squeeze me for all my penny, I wanna go broke and bankrupt, my sell my property and live on the streets.

Do you know how disappointed I was to find out Jungkook going camping was all staged and not as spontaneous and autonomous/ entirely free willed as I thought it would be- when the director asked him to go get food for just content I stopped watching the video. It took me some days to get back to it.

Also yes, we all thought we heard Jimin laugh in there somewhere. It was strange. Didn't know a lot of people sounded like other people. Never mind me.

With this DraKoola project, I think I'm falling in love with Jungkook 😭😭😭😭😭😭

I just might go on a YN self insert spree and edit myself into all and any Jikook intimate moments. If the bimbos can do it, I can do it too.

How sexy is it than when JUNGKOOK SAID THE CONCEPT HE WANTED WAS SPECIFICALLY VAMPIRE THEMED. HOW SELXY IS THAT!!!!!!!!!

Jungkook is legit my guardian angel. My quarterback. Not sure if he was inspired by the seven fate project or the many vampire edits of him or all those prude and stuck up sanctimonious fans who moon walked into my comments and wrote ignorant bigoted disparaging posts about me for making twilight references comparing Jungkook to a vampire- since I'm delusional I'll go with the latter😌

Dude became a vampire- LITERALLY. HOW👏🏾ABOUT👏🏾THAT👏🏾

The bit about the darkening of his soul- WHOAH🤯🤯

Blew my mind to the heavens. HOW DEEP IS THAT!

I hope this is connected to something much bigger than just a simple art concept to sell photos 😐

Jungkook is a creative genius. If he came up with this concept on his own, I promise you it didn't come to him in a vacuum and is intricately and inextricably linked to all arts he is created even if it is on a subconscious level. I can't wait to dissect that shit.

I hate that we have to wait for the others one after the other and wish they released it all at the same time. Going solo means seven things can happen at once in different ways.

Making us wait for their turns feel much like OT7 which is one of the things that frustrated me to begin with with the whole OT7 agenda. I mean if they worked under different labels I don't think they would care who went first or not and they would do things concurrently not consecutively 🤷.

It seems Hybe is trying to eliminate competition amongst them while making sure they each get Army's full and undivided attention- but I think FUCK THAT SHIT. LET THEM COMPETE FOR OUR ATTENTION HUNGER GAMES STYLE.

KEEP THEM ON THEIR TOES. CHALLENGE THEM SO THEY CHALLENGE THEMSELVES.

PAINT THE FANDOM RED WITH THEIR BLOOD. QUIT PLAYING IT SAFE.

This is their youth. With the way they gave us crap about aging these past few years, I don't expect they waste time doing nothing at all. Keep them busy busy busy. If they burn out good. Good. They can rest when they can no longer move their bones.

Anyway, I'm bored. Hybe is boring😴

TOO SLOW 🐌 FOR ME

Thank you for this. You are nice. Keep going.

ALSO, HOW IS JIMIN NOT RELEASING THE YOU ARE NICE KEEP GOING MERCH ALREADY🤕

I REALLY CAN DO BETTER THAN HYBE.

I'm gonna spam Jimin's account until he creates this shirt. And that bracelet 🥲 I've never wanted to commit grand robbery in my life.

Also I think I found Jimin"s secret tiktok account😆

Namjoon needs to come on Vlive often😔

I don't post often these days because all I have is a bunch of complaints and I will just end up bashing and cussing @ HYBE if I opened my mouth🙃

GOLDY

[obviouslygenuinely]

Babygate Analysis/Conclusions: A Non-Larry Perspective

(Image Credit: Hollywood Life)

I'm prefacing this post with a few disclaimers:

After some consideration, I chose to write this without factoring in Larry whatsoever. No Larry-related points, proof, or speculation in any way. This is solely analyzing babygate from an unbiased perspective. 

I don't claim to know the entire truth. It is impossible for any of us to know.  What I conclude is based on direct evidence, circumstantial evidence, research, and analysis.

I am willing to discuss opposing views. I’m happy to talk about the topic in a civil, kind, and mature matter. I will dismiss any discourse that is aggressive, immature, and so on.

I did not include every single opinion/conclusion/piece of evidence I found. I condensed my thoughts as much as possible (and this is still a novel-length post). There are so many more points I can think of. However, babygate masterposts cover all of that; I’ll link to some of those at the end.

The conclusion points aren't in a very specific order. I aimed to list related points one after another. Aside from that, it's not in order of "hardest to weakest" evidence.

Please read “Author’s Notes” for additional clarity/input. They interject thoughts/etc. that I feel are necessary to include. 

Lastly, I included links to every source I cited in this post. However, I did not tag the Tumblr users. I’m not sure if they are comfortable with having Babygate questions/comments directed to their blogs. If you are a linked source and want to be tagged, please let me know! 

My Initial Reaction To Babygate

In February of 2020, I received several messages on LateToLarry requesting that I analyze something called “babygate”. I had no idea what babygate meant at the time. 

I learned what it meant, and prior to any research I felt the theory was so absurd. I also felt uncomfortable analyzing it because I believed I’d feel bias as a single mom. The idea of discussing a random child in depth initially bothered me, too. I declined to analyze it last year.

However, I did a LOT of research over time. My opinion has changed significantly. Below, I’ve shared my main conclusions and analysis about babygate. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy my post! 

1. No Paternity Test Was Performed Prior To The Pregnancy Announcement

Louis was/is a prominent celebrity and has a current net worth of $70 million. From legal, financial, and practical standpoints, it makes no sense for him to choose not to get a test. 

It’s unheard of in Hollywood and the entertainment industry. Any sensible team -lawyers, PR reps, managers, advisors, etc. - would not just go along with it. They are employed to protect his career and image. 

The Opposing Views

A. “Briana/Louis didn’t want to risk miscarriage with prenatal testing.”

Non-invasive testing is completely safe for fetuses and pregnant women, so there’s no medical reason for the lack of testing.

B. “Louis chose not to get the test done because he wanted to be a father and was invested in the pregnancy/parenting.”

Time has shown that this is not true. Louis does not have custody; there was a brief custody case in 2016 that led nowhere. He does not have a consistent or prominent role in the child’s life.

Conclusion

There is no logical reason for the lack of paternity testing prior to the announcement unless Louis knew he was not the father and all parties knew this to be true.

2. There Was No Confirmation Of A Paternity Test After The Birth

I’ll keep this section fairly short. A quick Google search returns dozens of conflicting reports. Many of them state that Louis demanded a paternity test shortly after birth. Other reports state that he has never pursued a paternity test. 

Here are a few examples:

“Louis Tomlinson not interested in paternity test” - Business Standard

“EXCLUSIVE: Louis Tomlinson Demanded a DNA Test “As Soon as the Baby Was Born”” - InTouch Weekly

“Louis Tomlinson: No DNA Test Needed ... Positive Freddie's His Son” -TMZ

“Louis Tomlinson & Briana Jungwirth: WhyHe Had DNA Test Done on His Newborn Son” - Hollywood Life

This Twitter thread discusses TMZ reports that - as of 2020 - no DNA test was done.

Conclusion

There is no reliable confirmation that Louis pursued a paternity test. The media cannot come to a general/factual consensus.

Again, there is no reasonable explanation for the lack of paternity testing unless Louis knows he is not the father of the child. 

3. The Conception-To-Birth Timeline Is Inconsistent/Unreliable

Pregnancy and conception as a whole can be rather confusing; timelines from conception to birth are unique to each person. Having said that, Briana’s timeline is full of glaring inconsistencies that don’t add up. 

I’ll begin with this timeline based on bulletprooflarry’s post and my own research. Dates I’ve added myself include linked sources:

May 5th, 2015 - Louis and Briana were first seen together in public.

May 6th to May 31st, 2015 - Briana and her mom followed baby-related social medial accounts.

May 12th, 2015 - Louis and Briana were pictured together in public.

July 3rd, 2015 - Louis is seen with Briana’s brother in Hollywood.

July 14th, 2015 - The first pregnancy report is published.

August 4th, 2015 - Louis confirms pregnancy on GMA.

January 21st, 2016 - The child is reportedly born.

Based on the dates above, these are the possible dates/milestones for her pregnancy:

Scenario A - If conception occurred on May 5th, Briana was 37 weeks and 2 days pregnant on January 21st, 2016. This is considered an early-term birth and about 26% of births occur at 37 weeks.

Scenario B - If conception occurred on May 12th, Briana was 36 weeks and 2 days pregnant on January 21st. This is considered a late-term or late premature birth and about 10% of births occur at 36 weeks.

These dates matter because Briana’s alleged hospital stay was not consistent with a premature or early-term birth. She was pictured in public - healthy and holding a baby carrier - within one week of giving birth. 

(Image Credit: Daily Mail)

(Image Credit: larrysbbrbb28)

If she gave birth based on the dates above, it’s extremely unlikely that she or the baby would be out in public so soon.

Below are screenshots of an additional timeline from an archived Tumblr post. It provides excellent points about more timeline inconsistencies: 

The main inconsistencies and red flags are bolded in the post. It supports the unreliable conception timeline, and it also mentions my next point - the official pregnancy announcement. 

The post above mentions that the Jungwirth family followed baby-related accounts before Briana could possibly know she was pregnant. Here’s one screenshot from skepticallarrie proving it:

I’ve also seen several posts that show inconsistencies with the size of Briana’s baby bump. Unfortunately, the most reliable post no longer exists. You can view a web archive of Briana’s pregnancy photos, but most of the image links are broke. 

The only post I have saved is a web archive of a long babygate post. The beginning of the post contains photos showing discrepancies in the size of Briana’s baby bump. 

The Opposing Views

“Pregnancy looks different on everybody, everyone recovers differently, etc.”

Yes, this is true and a valid point! As a woman who has gone through multiple pregnancies and two live births, I truly understand this argument. 

However, the sheer amount of inconsistencies are what make this a red flag. There are too many unreliable and contradicting points to brush this off. It goes beyond the point of “well, each person has a different experience”.

Conclusion

There are a few conclusions/scenarios I believe you can draw from the information above:

Briana was pregnant prior to meeting Louis.

Briana was never pregnant in the first place. 

Both are valid to consider, but I personally believe she was never pregnant. 

(Author’s note: My calculation for dates are based on the date of alleged conception. Most due date calculators, by default, use the date of a woman’s last mentrual period - LMP - to provide estimations.

I also used Date Duration Calendar for my calculations. Accessible due date calculators only allowed me to input dates from 2019/2020. Depending on the tools and dates you use, your mileage may vary.)

4. The Announcement Itself Was Highly Unusual

This point ties into the first and third points. I don’t consider it a major piece of evidence, but it’s noteworthy due to the other points. 

So, there are a few reasons why the Good Morning America announcement stands out. 

A. If Briana got pregnant on May 5th, then she was approximately 10 weeks pregnant when the first pregnancy report was published. This also means she was approximately 13 weeks pregnant at the time of the GMA announcement.

If Briana got pregnant on May 12th, she was approximately nine weeks pregnant at the time of the first report and approximately 12 weeks pregnant at the time of the GMA announcement.

B. The public announcement on Good Morning America raises a lot of questions. I’ve had multiple issues embedding the video; the bolded link takes you to the GMA announcement on YouTube. 

Anyways, these questions/thoughts - disregarding any Larry theories -  come to mind when watching the video: 

This is a segment for promoting/discussing their album/music.

The baby announcement is the sole non-album/music related topic that is mentioned during the segment.

The announcement is not organically worked into the segment as a natural talking point.

Louis’ reactions - such as bringing the microphone to his lips and not talking - is very unlike his standard interview demeanor.

The male interviewer and the band members have noticeable facial expressions and body language that suggest discomfort, stress, or awkwardness. 

A post by skepticalarrie draws similar conclusions. Her post is much more detailed than mine, and I highly recommend reading/viewing it. 

(Author’s Note: I’ve touched upon this on LateToLarry and will make a post here eventually, but body language and facial expressions are valid. They’re valid to the point that they are used in court cases.) 

Conclusion

My conclusions here are twofold. One is that: 

Announcing a pregnancy - especially a celebrity-related pregnancy - this early is extremely uncommon and unlikely.

The announcement itself seems out of place and very forced. 

This particular point, to me, is not extremely strong evidence. I still think it’s worth keeping in mind and is relevant to other points here. So, I’ve included it either way.

5. Briana Posted Stolen Pregnancy/Baby Photos On Social Media

(EDIT: I wrote this piece before the recent release of Briana’s alleged ultrasound and don’t have time to add it. It’s pretty strong proof and can easily be found in recent babygate posts.)

Babygate posts often point out that Briana and the Jungwirth family used stolen/fake pregnancy and baby photos on social media. It’s a well-known topic that’s often discussed. 

I’m condensing this section to a few examples. I encourage additional research if you’d like to see more. 

A. This Tumblr post shows stolen baby bump photos that Briana’s cousin Ashley posted on Twitter: 

B. This Tumblr post and Twitter post show a stolen baby photo that Briana posted on Instagram:

(Author’s Note: Since I was not active in the fandom at the time, I am relying on information from other blogs and social media posts. I vetted my sources pretty well, but any false information is my own mistake.)

Conclusions

The only word that sums this up is “suspicious”. Using stolen photos of a pregnant woman/baby is not necessary if you are legitimately pregnant. That’s really what it boils down to. It lends to the conclusion that Briana was never pregnant. 

6. Photos And Videos Of The Child Are Heavily Altered And Manipulated

It is indisputable that many photos and videos of the child are heavily manipulated to alter his appearance. This goes beyond filters, lighting, and angles. 

Several detailed posts show the manipulations; here are some examples:

A web archive of all Photoshop evidence from tellmethisisnotlove

An in-depth post from genuineconspiracy that includes detailed photo evidence.

A video post from freefreddiereign that shows Photoshop evidence based on photos the child. 

There is no doubt that his facial features are frequently altered. This is easy to conclude using any free software that detects Photoshop. As a photographer myself, I can easily spot the manipulations.

(Author’s Note: I know that directly discussing the child is controversial. When I first heard of babygate, my initial reaction was discomfort about analyzing a child.

I quickly learned/concluded that his family members are responsible for heavily putting him in the public eye. All content I’ve used for research is based on the family’s posts.

Still, I have personally chosen not post pictures of the child, but the links I am sharing contain photos/videos of him.

Additionally, I used FotoForensics on photos of myself prior to writing this. It was important to me to feel absolutely certain about this point. I’m fine with sharing my own FotoForensics images if anyone is curious.)

The Opposing Views

A. “Freddie looks like Louis in pictures that aren’t Photoshopped.”

Parentage cannot be based on whether or not a child looks like his mother/father. I understand the viewpoint, but it’s simply not evidence. Additionally, thinking the child looks like Louis is a matter of opinion. 

There’s also the fact that appearance means nothing overall. Science backs up this statement very well. Examples and references:

“How can children from the same parents look so different?” by HowStuffWorks

“My Baby Looks Nothing Like Me: A Genetic Explanation” by FamilyEducation

Additionally, here is a personal anecdote. I have two sons close to Freddie’s age. One of them looks exactly like his father and nothing like me. The other looks exactly like me and nothing like his father. Despite how they look, they are both of them are our biological children. 

Conclusion

There is no reasonable explanation for altering the child’s appearance - particularly to make him look more similar to Louis. 

I cannot think of a single argument as to why the Jungwirth family would do this unless they need/want the child to look a specific way. 

7. Johannah Deakin’s Official Obituary Does Not Mention The Child

When looking into babygate, I read the argument that the child is legitimately Louis’ son because he is listed as her grandchild in Internet-based obituaries and announcements. 

I also read the counter-argument that Louis’ mother’s official newspaper/print obituary does not mention the child.  I recall seeing proof, but I did not save it at the time. I did some research and this appears to be true. 

The Doncaster Free Press is a local weekly newspaper in Doncaster, and it published an article about the funeral. The article is NOT an obituary itself, but it does list her obituary details. The publication does not list the child among the surviving family members. 

If a mistake is made regarding these details, it’s typical for newspapers to post a correction addressing a misprint. Upon further research, the Doncaster Free Press did not issue a correction at any time. 

(Author’s Note: I lost my own mother and am personally familiar with how local obituaries are written. Immediate family members - i.e. spouses and adult children - provide information regarding surviving family members.) 

Conclusion

The conclusion here is straightforward. Louis and his family chose not to include the child in his mother’s official obituary. This strongly suggests that he is not legitimately related to Louis. 

My Opinion-Based Conclusions

Update: After some consideration, I am saving my opinion-based conclusions for a separate post. I originally intended to include them here; transparency is important to me.

Unfortunately, the section became rather long and took away from the main post points. So, I’ll be working on a post that’s just my opinion-based conclusions. In the meantime, feel free to message me with any questions. 

Final Thoughts

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read my post! I appreciate the interest expressed for it, and I hope it lives up to expectations. 

Again, I want to reiterate this is:

Not an all-inclusive post; I narrowed down my findings to seven points.

Not a masterpost on babygate.

Purposely omitting any potential Larry-related points to remove bias. 

I’ve reread this quite a few times, and it’s as error-free as possible. If you spot any mistakes/errors, I’m completely open to making corrections. Just kindly let me know. 

This list contains references/research about babygate that I consider the most reliable. It includes Larry and non-Larry related Babygate content.

Tumblr posts tagged with babygate by Tumblr use genuineconspiracy.

A web archive of babygate posts by Tumblr user tellmethisisnotlove (her account was deactivated by staff).

Tumblr posts tagged with babygate by darkrainbowlouis.

Tumblr posts tagged with babygate by skepticalarrie.

Lastly, if there’s interest in an opinion-related post or Larry-related post, I’ll consider writing them. Feel free to let me know as you all did with this post. 

Thanks!

Amy (obviouslygenuinely/latetolarry)

[zulivaris]

Art Block tips that helped me

 I’ve recently experienced art block after 3 or so months of overcoming my last one. Thankfully this block only lasted a few days thanks to some things I’ve observed and noted down from the previous time. So I’m sharing these few tips in hopes that it might help someone get unstuck :D!

First and foremost if you’re tired, sad or anxious don’t be surprised that you can’t make art, go and take care of yourself by treating yourself with kindness and patience, the sketchbooks and canvases will wait for you :)

The tips are under here:

Separate art studies from the creative time:  When you do art studies you’re there to focus on specific things, learn and understand how things work so you can apply them later in your art. Studies take a lot of energy and focus and are the opposite of the creative "flow” of making your own pieces. If you combine the two the results are either unfocused studies or stiff drawings. When you sit down at your desk ask yourself “Do I want to learn something new or do I want to create something of my own?”

When you have an idea don’t be afraid of being messy: Let’s say you want to make a picture of several cats kolo dancing in the moonlight. How do you go about doing this? Well since you came up with the idea you already have a vague image in your mind, sketch it out with simple shapes, stick figures, circle and spheres etc Don’t worry about cat anatomy, or the dancer’s moves, sketch out the essence of it. This method removes the need to be perfect or accurate. 

Ok after the messy sketch then what? Well now that you have sketched out the essence of your idea (and hopefully had fun doing so) now you go on to look for references! You put the creative process on pause and you can do a few brief studies if you need to: anatomy, color schemes, values, poses. Pick out a few of your favorites but don't obsess over them, they are a guide, a tool.

You know much more than you think. You’ve probably been drawing for a few years now. You’ve probably done some studies and drawn more than one type of subject. Then you have already internalized some of that information. I used to be obsessed with capturing the minute detail of the subject, and not be able to draw ANYTHING without reference. Instead of a useful tool, references became another obstacle to my creativity. That’s perfectionism my friend, and that’s no good. Here is an exercise a good friend of mine offered: Draw a few characters, animals and objects from imagination. Make sure that the subjects have no personal value to you (no ocs for example) so that if you make a mistake you won’t feel bad about it. Make the process relaxed and comfortable, pour a nice cup of joe, listen to your favorite music ... You will notice that you do indeed know how to draw some things without reference, and it’ll help with your confidence. 

The more you do studies the more you understand This seems evident but the more you understand your subject the freer you can be and the easier it’ll be to draw it from imagination in the future. If you really struggle with something to the point of frustration (as in you can’t get it right even with reference) It means you have to study it. Have a study list, for example: hands, perspective, color theory etc. And one of those days you want to study pick something from the list, and look for videos on youtube or useful sites like line of action etc. Only study one thing at the time. You can go from studying hands to studying arms since they’re more immediately connected, but you can’t study hands and then jump to learning perspective right after. Trust me you can learn perfectly fine with the resources online, and I’m sure you’re clever enough to do it :D

Mistakes don’t mean you “suck”  I’ve noticed that the two most common causes for art block are perfectionism and lack of self-confidence.  The two can often go in tandem which is worse :’D But let me remind you of something, you can fix your piece along the whole process. Use erasers, lasso tools, liquify , select, paint it all over etc If something looks off to you then you also know deep inside how to fix it. Useful ways to see what clunks: flip canvas horizontally (helps with placement, proportions), turn the image to grayscale (helps to check values and where your eye tends to look), look at your image in thumbnail size and ask yourself if it’s clear, see the pose’s silhouette and ask yourself if you can tell what the character is doing etc. Don’t fret, everything can always be fixed :)

Perfectionism, sometimes it stops you before you begin Perfectionism causes you to overwork a piece, it makes you draw less, it makes art stressful, it brings insecurity. Let’s remove it with a simple exercise. It can be combined with the “draw things from imagination” once you’ve drawn something you like: dont do line art, don’t shade it, keep it as simple and crude as possible and then...post it. Yes, post it. You’re not at your best? You’re only human, this will help you embrace that very human side of you. You make mistakes. So what? The more mistakes you make the more you know what you need to study and the better at art you become. Mistakes are there to show us what we need to learn. See them as another tool and not a sign of failure.

Make the process as enjoyable as possible: You like art. You love drawing. Never forget this. Otherwise why are you drawing if you don’t enjoy it? It’s easy to fall prey to the mentality of those relatable memes that “art= suffering” or “I can’t even draw the other eye”. No no no my friends, these messages are fueling your insecurities instead of overcoming them. Let me tell you what, art is fun. It is. Art is fun, because I decided to make it fun again. And you should decide on that too. Personally I adore lineart but my hand-eye coordination is lacking to do it digitally, so....I just skipped it. Yes. I skipped it. I do the sketch, I clean it up a bit and then jump onto color which I adore. It allowed me to draw more and more freely. When I draw I listen to music, make strokes with the rhythm, I take breaks often and I drink my favorite iced teas. If you don’t like coloring do it in grayscale, if you love lineart then do that etc It doesn’t mean you won’t learn your weak points in the future with studies and practice, but you won’t let your weaknesses prevent you from drawing at all. No no, you won’t let them. You draw because you want to, despite of them.

Don’t wait for inspiration, provoke it  Inspiration is not a divine and capricious muse. You make inspiration. It’s easy just collect all the things you like, music, artists, objects, characters, animals, patterns, plants etc Make boards on pinterest or similar sites, combine things you like. You like suits? You like birds? You can draw a bird in a suit, or a bird-inspired suit design, there is frankly a lot of ideas that can spring up from little things like these.

When a project stops being enjoyable either pause it for now or move on to the next thing. Pieces aren’t precious. They’re not “the one time I got x right” they are one of many. This advice goes mainly to hobbyists who can afford the luxury of passing to a new project. I have a WIP of a character who is overly complicated (I enjoy a challenge from time to time) sitting for half a month. I sometimes come back to it and add something... but as soon as it starts to create discomfort and insecurity instead of enjoyment I move onto something else. In the meantime I created 3 or 4 new pieces. If I had waited on finishing that piece I would have been severely creatively and physically exhausted. The art comes from you, not inspiration. The more art you make the better you become.

That’s about it :D I know it’s long but I prefer to be thorough and cover all the possibilities. If you have read of this: Thank you so much I hope this helps you at least a bit, if it helps only 1 other person I’d still be very happy. Have a nice one, and kick art block’s butt!

[nitw]

Can you explain what you mean with misinterpreting Chara? I've always been confused about that character and you seem to have a pretty solid read you alluded to in that post about Snowgrave.

of course!!! as your local chara defender since the ripe age of 13 i hope you don't mind me doing a small essay on this. please bear with me tho because i sometimes can't articulate my thoughts well on stories that deal with philosophical themes ;;

UHHH SPOILERS FOR UNDERTALE AND DELTARUNE CHAPTER 2 BELOW

first let me make a few things clear so i don't have to repeat myself a bunch:

only tobias radiation fox himself has The Word of God privilege when it comes to things that haven't been explicitly confirmed in the games yet, EVEN if they're strongly hinted at. don't take anything i say about the plot as more than firm personal interpretation based on the info we have right now!

i cannot stress this one enough: undertale is a game that was never meant to be experienced from a singular perspective/mindset. the genocide route doesn't JUST exist for the sake of "enjoy your personalized edgy fuck-you run for being a serial killer in a video game", every one of the total 93 endings (look it up) in this game exists to reflect the player who achieved it in one way or another. the genocide route is really no different from any of the others, because in the end, no matter what, the player who decided to go through with the things they did will ALWAYS be rewarded for it. the question the player will have to ask THEMSELF afterwards is "is this what i wanted?"

OK MOVING ON-

let's think back to the little but vital amount of info we have on who chara actually was, like, as a person. we know pretty much all of this due to 1) the tapes in the royal lab 2) asriel's additional dialogue at the end of true pacifist.

while we'll never really know why frisk fell into the underground, asriel tells us explicitly about chara's hatred for humanity, and how they jumped from mt. ebott for "not a very happy reason"; supposedly a suicide attempt. chara "never talked about why", it's left intentionally vague because their reasoning isn't really what matters. what DOES matter is how this is relevant to the genocide run, ESPECIALLY with the new obvious parallels in deltarune's snowgrave route. i'll get to that.

when you finish the genocide route, chara will talk directly to the player in person. they talk about your (you AND chara's) success, despite "their plan (having) failed". this "plan" is one they secretly made with asriel when they were both still alive, as revealed from the tapes. chara got terminally poisoned from eating buttercups (whether this was fully intentional or not is still kiiinda up for debate), and while on their deathbed, asriel says that he doesn't like the plan anymore. yet despite his fear, he still fused his soul to chara's when they died.

the actual plan here was to become a monster powerful enough to slaughter humanity, specifically chara's home village by their own dying request - this all ties into their mysterious spite and hatred mentioned before. but due to asriel's resistance against chara, their fused body was killed by the humans - which eventually led to the creation of flowey, and asriel's inner demons after death.

but back to the genocide route. during chara's monologue to the player, they give us a LOT of important exposition. basically:

at the very start of the game, frisk's own determination is literally what brought chara's soul 'back to life'. we know how human and monster souls are different and how "determination" in this universe is something only humans possess, so it makes sense why it awakened them. i won't get into the whole narrator theory because i feel like it's not that relevant to my point (it's fun tho), but chara is always present from the moment frisk falls down, and stays regardless of the player's actions.

if you managed to finish undertale at all you'll already kinda know this (thanks sans), but the EXP and LV you (can) gain throughout your journey aren't just numbers on your screen - they're genuine in-universe manifestations of power that increase when you kill someone. and in genocide, chara explains how they were directly affected every time your stats rose. they could FEEL their spirit growing stronger for every life you decided to take (REMINDER THAT THE GENOCIDE ROUTE CAN BE PERMANENTLY STOPPED AT ANY POINT BEFORE SANS. YOU DID THIS.), so is it really that strange that they felt the desire to grow even stronger?

and once you do reach this point, there's no return. all that excessive time and effort you put into killing off a civilization OBVIOUSLY has some consequences. the consequences HERE being - if you paid attention to chara's life story - you took advantage of a traumatized child who was already at the breaking point and making irrational choices on their own, and you led them to believe that this was what they needed!

this is VERY MUCH SUPPORTED by the snowgrave/weird/pipis/whatever route of deltarune chapter 2 that was discovered about 2 days ago as i'm writing this. i'm gonna go ahead and assume you know what happens in it and i don't care to go into details if you don't, since this post is about chara, but surprise: THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED TO NOELLE, TOO! even in a completely normal run, noelle makes it clear multiple times that she wouldn't mind staying in the dark world; that in spite of how scary and dangerous it seems at times (something something horror movies), she started to feel at home. POSSIBLY even more so than her ACTUAL HOME, with her dying dad and negligent mom. like chara, noelle is a young person with low self esteem and her fair share of trauma, even if it's not as apparent. and like in the genocide run, the player's desire to ruthlessly kill in order to grow stronger affected her already-poor mental state.

someone else already pointed this out specifically, so don't credit me for it, but the main difference between chara and noelle is that noelle managed to break free in the end.

if you're like Most People Who Played The Genocide Route Back In Like 2016 and you played the genocide route with no further knowledge about it than "i have to follow these specific steps to get a harder fucked up version of the game", i don't blame you. you didn't actually know what you were doing in the end, did you? but did the outcome disappoint you, make sense to you, or did it just leave you with an empty/confused feeling? i love undertale because it WILL force you to think about things like that. i mean, if the result wasn't gonna affect you in SOME way, why would you go through all of that trouble in the first place? you had your reasons, as the player of any video game where you know your choices matter. would you have carried out the entire thing if you knew what was coming? the answer to that is only relevant to yourself.

[herinsectreflection]

Faith, Buffy, Dreams, and Secret Kisses

This is one of my favourite scenes in the series. Partially because it’s just my personal jam - I admit that I am Fuffy trash, and I have a real love for dream sequences. Buffy had great dream sequences, but this is where they take a step up. It’s a precursor to Restless in this regard and others. It feels weighty and meaningful, but also a little off and incongruent with itself, in that way that only dreams are. Lines are exchanged that don’t quite follow as direct responses to each other, clashing in interesting ways. It’s packed with foreshadowing, metaphor, and other juicy things. And beyond that, it’s a conclusion to Buffy’s entire arc this season about dealing with her shadow self, and it leads to what I think is the single most romantic moment in the series. I want to talk about this scene and unpack some of what I think it’s saying.

First of all, let’s talk about the setting. We’re in Faith’s apartment, bought for her by the Mayor. Essentially, the villain’s lair, where the two Big Bads plotted their evil plans against our hero. But it’s also a set where we saw most of the bonding and semi-familial love between Faith and the Mayor. A place of both evil and love. And for Buffy, a place of trauma. This is where she makes the decision and takes the action to kill another human. I don’t think she was unjustified in doing so, but it’s still an immensely traumatic act for her, and I think she loses a little part of herself when she does it. The location is very much a reflection of Faith, and Buffy’s relationship to her. I don’t think Buffy loves Faith romantically at this point, but I think she cares about her, and remains concerned about her, and I think it’s fair to call that a kind of love. Faith is also evil, a figure of betrayal but also temptation to the “dark side”. And she is also a figure of trauma, clear deep-seated trauma that she fails to resolve, and just gets worse over the course of the season. Buffy is essentially inside her own relationship to Faith, inside a stadium of sin, trauma, love, and shattered glass. Faith looks out of the broken window that they fought through, and we are reminded that their relationship too is broken, unrepaired, littered with the detritus of conflict. There’s no going back from this - even in dreams that window remains broken, and their relationship will always have this damage.

The props too are an interesting choice. TPN’s video on Graduation Day pointed out the painting of a giant snake with a man’s head on the wall. More conflicting feelings here - the Mayor is Faith’s closest connection to humanity and love right now, and also the reason for her betrayal of Buffy. Her redemption and damnation. We also see boxes of various things piled up - including the crossbow that Faith stole in Bad Girls. The image of packing up a room into boxes makes me think of moving away as a student. We must remember that Buffy is graduating today, on the verge of packing her life away and taking it somewhere else, and this reminds us of that.

The first thing of real substance we see is the cat, which jumps up on Faith’s bed. This is one of the aspects of this dream in direct conversation with Restless, where a cat symbolises the Slayer - a specifically feminine, solitary predator that stalks the night. In Restless, we cut to Miss Kitty stalking the camera from shots of the First slayer stalking Willow. Here though, the intercut images are between the cat and Faith, lying bruised and helpless in a hospital. The cat (and the Slayer) is, as far as Buffy is concerned, not a danger but a creature in need of help.

Buffy: "Who's going to look after him?" Faith: "It's a she. And aren't these things supposed to take care of themselves?"

They’re very clearly talking about their respective approaches to slaying, and to life in general. Buffy tries to encourage ties to humanity, telling Faith back in Revelations that she is on Faith’s side. Faith retorts that she alone is on her side, and she repeats that sentiment here. But Buffy is obviously proved right - Faith is lying almost dead because she rejected all help and care.

Buffy: "A higher power guiding us?" Faith: "I'm pretty sure that's not what I meant."

If the cat is the Slayer in this conversation, then the “higher power guiding us” could refer to the Watchers. It makes sense that Buffy delivers this line with a little wry smile, given that she’s just resigned herself from the Council. This allows a little bit of ambiguity in their debate - Buffy has taken on a little bit of Faith’s advice in emancipating herself and so making herself as the Slayer more self-reliant. The show agrees that that too is the right move. A little independence is good and healthy. What Faith means when she talks about “taking care of herself” is not self-reliance or independence, but emotional hardness and self-marooning to avoid hurt. This is something that Buffy will continue to struggle with for the rest of the series. Faith is kind of right when she states that the Slayer is alone and must take care of herself, and it’s up to Buffy to find a healthy way of dealing with that.

"Oh yeah. Miles to go - Little Miss Muffet counting down from 7-3-0.”

The scene shifts a little, and we get some foreshadowing for Dawn (Little Miss Muffet), and for Buffy’s death (730 days from now). This is done with the the lighting too, as Faith faces the camera, and the light of the dawn hits her face, in a shot extremely similar to the end of The Gift.

Interestingly, Faith is repeatedly used in this way. In This Year’s Girl, Faith talks about “little sis coming” as she and Buffy make the bed in her first dream. In Restless, that scene gets a callback (”Faith and I just made that bed”), in a scene that ends with the most anvilicious foreshadowing (”Be back before dawn”), as well as a callback to the 7-3-0 line (”Oh, that clock’s all wrong”). In Graduation Day, Faith refers to Buffy as being “dressed up in big sister’s clothes”, however to me Faith has always felt more as being the “little sister” in this relationship. She looks up to Buffy yet is also deeply jealous of her. She wants to be Buffy, to have her friends, her life, the love of her mother. She’s kind of a precursor to Dawn in this respect, so it makes sense that she’s a prophet for her coming.

Slayers having prophetic dreams is well-established, so it makes sense that a dream shared by two slayers would allow them to prophesise a little further ahead in time. Faith hints at this, remarking "Sorry, it's my head. A lot of new stuff.". You have to wonder what other “new stuff” Faith is becoming aware of. Perhaps a new perspective on everything Buffy’s been saying all season. Sharing a mind temporarily is often helpful in seeing another’s point of view. Faith does seem unusually thoughtful as she looks out of the broken window and remarks "They are never going to fix this, are they?".

This is perhaps my favourite line in the scene. It’s a slight mislead, as it comes right as we get a flash of the cat-as-Faith in the foreground. So we assume it’s a reference to her own injuries, which she is expected to never recover from.

But the Faith that’s talking isn’t looking at her own body. She’s looking at the broken window. The symbol for her broken relationship with Buffy. She has become us, the audience, looking at Buffy and Faith and saying “boy, those crazy kids really are never going to work it out, are they?”. It’s true for Faith, it’s true for Faith&Buffy, and it’s true for Buffy herself. When that knife entered Faith’s gut, all three were irrevocably changed forever. You can never put back the life you had before after it’s broken like that. All you can do is take what you can work with, and try to make something new.

Buffy: "What about you?" Faith: "Scar tissue. It fades. It all fades." Buffy confirms that the previous line was not about Faith specifically by asking “what about you”, in a lovely expression of concern. After everything, Buffy does still care about Faith. Faith’s reply of “scar tissue” is an obvious reference to the literal wound she is now carrying (emphasised by the shot of the knife that Buffy sees afterwards), but it’s interesting that she gestures to her face when she says this. It feels like a reference to her entire self. If we accept Faith as Buffy’s shadow self, then “scar tissue” is an accurate description of her. As Buffy herself says, Faith is who she could be if her life was worse (or, perhaps, who she would be if she allowed the tragedies of her life to rule her). She is the part of Buffy’s unconscious self that is revealed after receiving violence. She is the physical proof of trauma. The self that remains after pain. 

Buffy: “Is this your mind or mine?” Again, hitting that note of symbiosis; emphasising how inextricably tied these two characters are. The lines between their psyches are blurred to the point of no longer existing. This is such an intimate moment, almost sexual, with Buffy and Faith unable to tell where their own mind ends and another begins. Imagine the intimacy of that - entering another’s mental space and allowing them into yours, so wholly that they become one and the same. It becomes a mutual recognition of unity and shared pain, and an affirmation of the eternal divisions between them.

I love the ambiguity of the “human weakness” line too. One way we are invited to read it is that Faith is doing a heel-face turn, and intentionally giving Buffy the means to defeat the Mayor. But we’re not allowed anything that easy, to wash away Faith’s sins with a quick redemption before the climax. Faith has miles to go before she can achieve that. It’s just as likely that Faith is talking about herself, and the human weakness that led her down a dark path, or that Buffy is talking about Faith through the Faith in her head, or Buffy is just working it out on her own, etc, etc. This is the information that saves the world, and I like that it remains an unknown. A permanent “maybe”, just as Buffy and Faith’s relationship is. 

Buffy: "How are you going to fit all this stuff?" Faith: "Not gonna. It's yours." Buffy: "I can't use all of this!" Faith: "Just take what you need. You're ready?"

As the scene reaches its climax, we see the most obvious recitation of the season’s themes. S3 is about Buffy coming into conflict with her own shadow self, and here the show tells us how she does that - by taking what she needs. I mentioned earlier that we saw the crossbow from Bad Girls, from the “want/take/have” scene. Here, Faith is telling her the same thing, but in a more healthy way. She cannot just hedonistically consume everything like a crazed id-monster, but she also cannot deny herself things that she needs. 

Most importantly, the “stuff” they are referring to is Faith’s, but as Faith says, it’s also Buffy’s. Everything that Faith is, Buffy is too, because she is her shadow self. Buffy must recognise this, accept it, and incorporate the shadow self into her own identity. She cannot be consumed by the shadow self and simply become Faith, allowing her shadow to consume her conscious personality (”how are you going to fit all this stuff?”). Instead she must recognise her dark mirror, and take the healthy parts, and integrate them into herself as an individual (”take what you need”).

It is at this point of healing and merging between Buffy’s self and shadow self that Faith reaches out, almost touches her in an action that feels so tender, and Buffy becomes conscious. She literally becomes her conscious self by making peace with her dream (unconscious self). She stands up, and walks over to Faith’s bed. This is the moment that their relationship all season has been leading to. She leans over, and places a kiss on her forehead.

This kiss is everything. It’s an act of thanks, as Buffy realises Faith may have given her what she needs to save the day (at the cost of Faith’s one familial figure). It is an act of service, as Buffy literally gives Faith the kiss she asked for when they started to fight in Graduation Day. It could also be an act of forgiveness. We know from I Only Have Eyes For You that forgiveness, Buffy learns, is done not because somebody deserves it, but because they need it. Faith at this point probably does not deserve it, does not want forgiveness (she wants to be punished), nor can she recognise it in her current state, but Buffy gives it anyway, adding another layer of heartbreak. It is given not for any purpose, but for its own sake.

Above all though, this is an act of recognition. We must consider the previous forehead-kiss that these two shared, back in Enemies, and Faith’s words directly before: “What are you gonna do, B, kill me? You become me. You're not ready for that, yet.” And in Graduation Day, just after Buffy stabs her: “You did it. You killed me.” And her words in the dream, just a few seconds ago: “You're ready?"

Now I don’t think that Buffy stabbing Faith to save Angel is morally equivalent to Faith voluntarily killing people to help an evil guy become a big snake. I don’t think the show wants us to think that either. But the line is firmly blurred. Angel says in Consequences that the act of taking a life will change Faith irrevocably, and Faith agrees. She sees herself as tainted from that point on, and if Buffy took her life, she would be tainted too. And though it’s understandable and morally defensible, there’s no doubt that a part of Buffy - her innocence - dies on that balcony when she sticks that knife in. That act is forever. The choice to do violence is permanent. 

So when Faith says “you killed me”, she is saying “you have become me”. She identifies a common nature in them. And when Buffy kisses her, returning it in the exact same way as when Faith first said those words, she is saying “I know”. She recognises and responds to Faith’s mirror by holding up one of her own. She matches similarity with similarity. She is finally “ready” to assimilate her shadow self, and does it by telling her shadow self that she sees her, and that she was right. 

The beautiful part of all this is that it is silent. Faith would’ve been aware of their unification in the dreamscape, since it was happening in both of their heads, but she has no way of knowing about this. I wonder if Buffy would ever tell her. I doubt it. This is the core of the Faith/Buffy tragedy. This is why I find this relationship so compelling. Buffy performs this act of recognition and devotion entirely in secret. It is a stolen kiss and a private confession. A whisper made to a sleeping lover. A letter written, sealed, stamped, and set on fire. It is an act of love and tenderness made entirely for its own sake, without witness or reward. 

This is the single most romantic moment of the show for me. In this show that in many ways about how when nothing you do matters, all that matters is what you do, what could be more romantic than this gentle kiss that changes nothing against this aching hole of violence and betrayal between them, but exists anyway, just because Buffy felt it needed to be done. It’s a silent moment that nobody but Buffy and us are privy to. Neither Faith nor the rest of the world will ever know it happened, but I know I for one will never forget.

[nolongerapileofashprobably]

Okay SO trailer dropped here are first thoughts

-Like we’ve theorized before, it looks like Link’s hand gets turned into ancient tech where we can use the old runes during this gameplay poor bby can’t get any rest

-GADGET ARM ATTACHMENTS TO FIGHT (dungeon) BOSSES ???

-can’t climb??? Just casually shoot yourself up through the ground and act like you’re Mirio from BNHA

-permeation y’all permeation

-paragliding is still a thing thank the good lord almighty but I wonder if we’ll be able to paraglide back down to the mainland?? Or if we’ll have specific points of entry and fall to our deaths like we did when we boarded the Divine Beasts and fell if it’s not the right area??

-speaking of falling and dying… loftwings? Can we please get loftwings again?

-I just want my loft wing back 🥺

-I REALLY want my loft wing Nintendo GIVE THEM BACK

-YES it is in the SKY and we HAVE ISLANDS TO EXPLORE

-skyward sword vibes but you can actually see the ground

-no thoughts just admire how amazing the ground looks I mean cmon Seres Scablands is honestly one of my LEAST favorite places in BOTW but it looks fabulous from up above :)

-Funny how Zelly falls deeper into the earth and we don’t see anymore of it besides Ganon’s corpse also dramatically falling, cuz the man can’t stand sharing the spotlight but whatevs

-now I’m not saying we’ll get to play as Zelly, it’s totally up in the air and at this point I dunno 🤷🏻‍♀️ HOWEVER not seeing Zelly again, the two being separated, the two being in two drastically different places… something seems sus

-(heaven and hell, really Nintendo? Because you can’t give my over analyzing fan girl mind a break huh? Do you KNOW how long I’m going to theorize about THAT SYMBOLISM???)

-Master Sword is conveniently gone. For both Ancient Link and Ground Link. What a shocker

To summarize this first part— a few new tricks with the runes, gADGET ATTACHMENTS LKKE THE CONCEPT ART, becoming Mirio 101, no Zelly gameplay that we have seen (keeping hope tho), and no Master Sword!

And now the VISUALS

The SKY THE SKY THE SKY

We have ISLANDS PEOPLE

But the real question is where these islands came from. It SUCKS because from the perspective we are given (see photo above) we’d be looking southwest from above Ludfo’s Bog. We see the edge of Seres Scablands and can see Illumeni Plateau&Washa’s Bluff in the distance. Both are elevated pieces of land and they are boxed in my Tamio River and Tabagar Canyon

Please ignore quality I get it but I couldn’t get the screenshots to upload from my switch leave me BE

So we don’t see the ground itself in the trailer because it’s at such a low level :/ I don’t think the islands in the sky are from the main land at all which begs the question of HIW THE HELL ARE THERE ISLANDS

— the answer is Zonai and Zonai don’t play by the rules

-side note, I’ve just noticed the lamp thing on the island Link lands on in the first picture. Specific points of entry? Confirmed.

- continuing the analysis, let’s just note the stark differences between Sky Link and Ground Link.

—Ground Link has his ponytail, he is wearing the champion/Hylian tunic (blessed be)

— Ancient Link has markings on the right side of his torso/shoulder, Ground Link … doesn’t? Unconfirmed need more data

—both do have ancient arm tho so… same Link?

-is it like a clash between ages??? And Link must travel both the sky and land to bring peace back to Hyrule and stop the spread of malice? But he also changes w the terrain?

— I have so many questions literally just on the nature of the islands and Link’s changed appearance between the two like I want SS lore and connections people I want to KNOW

-Hyrule Castle being lifted by straight malice and being set in the sky with the sunset behind it was so visually appealing that I’ve rewatched it at least seventeen times in the hour ish I’ve been analyzing the video

-Oh let me just say that there are 0 islands when Hyrule Castle is first lifted which tells us that the islands come from whatever Link does after

- The Talus w a Bokoblin encampment on its head. Nuff said.

Additional notes—

Ancient Link’s hair 🥺🥺 isn’t in his ponytail and I just want to thank Hylia and Nintendo for this decision. I love em both

Zelly and Link get separated… how did we know

The Sky and Ground have Skyward Sword vibes but the cave/underground has majors mask vibes. Ganon and Zelly give off Twilight Princess vibes.

The piece of Hyrule Castle that falls off as it starts to lift into the sky is the same part I paraglide to during speed runs and I’m honestly a little hurt by that fact

This gameplay trailer really gives us Skyward Sword vibes and I’m HERE FOR IT!! Y’all should know I absolutely adore Skyward Sword and seeing all the little parallels and things in Botw 2 makes me SO HAPPY and I just want to put skyward sword back into my Wii and play again (but alas imma wait for the switch version). I want to see connections!! I want to see if the Zonai were perhaps a race thAT HAS ALWAYS BEEN ON THE GROUND oh my Hylia

I’m just. So. Excited. Thank you Nintendo for reinvigorating my soul. Just. Thank you.

[addictedtostorytelling]

Do you think Grissom expected the relationship to last? I was watching a YouTube video with an interview with Billy and he said what they were having in season 7 was an affair. I don’t like thinking that it was an affair, but maybe he thinks that Grissom thought it wouldn’t actually last. Do you think Grissom and Sara had different ideas about the longevity of the relationship initially?

hi, anon!

i'll tackle this question from two angles: the doylist (or "outside-the-universe-of-the-show") angle and the watsonian (or "inside-the-universe-of-the-show") one, okay?

discussion after the "keep reading," if you're interested.

__

first, the doylist perspective:

without having seen the video myself, i can't speak to billy's specific comments in this instance.

however.

i have in the past heard both him and jorja use the words "affair" or even "fling" to describe grissom and sara's relationship during the secret dating phase (s5-s7) in other contexts, and my take has always been that they did so more as a reflection of the secret nature of the relationship at that time than as a comment on the relationship's durability, depth, committedness, or potential viability.

to me, it seems like in their minds it wasn't an "affair" because it was temporary but rather because it had to be kept a secret—a kind of liaison dangereuse that was against the rules and had to be conducted covertly.

the word had nothing to do with the level of investment of the characters.

of course, that said, the fact of the matter is that for as incredibly intuitive as both billy and jorja are as actors about portraying grissom and sara (and their relationship), we have to keep in mind that back in the day when the original series was still airing, they didn't necessarily have any special insight into how their storylines were going to go; they were, as all actors are, beholden to creative decisions made by other people. consequently, they sometimes guessed wrong about what would befall their characters or how certain dynamics would play out. they sometimes even had interpretations of the textual material that didn’t ultimately turn out to be correct.

for example, there are certain interviews from the earlier seasons of the show before gsr got together where billy said he thought that grissom would eventually end up with heather or from the later seasons after the divorce where jorja expressed her belief that maybe sara would start dating again, both of which things we know never ended up happening on the show.

so honestly?

it's possible billy did think that grissom and sara's relationship wouldn't last.

maybe he was flat-out wrong.

but even if he was, it doesn't invalidate the ship in any way.

and it also doesn't change the facts from inside the universe of the show.

as fans, we often want to have the actors who bring our favorite ships to life share all of our opinions about the ships and validate our interpretations of them through their extratextual comments in interviews and bts material because it feels nice to be able to say, “see? the people behind this work understand it in the exact same way that we do.” 

but the fact is that sometimes the actors’ views end up being different than ours, and it’s okay when they are. them seeing things differently doesn’t necessarily invalidate our interpretations because acting choices represent just one small part of what makes a live-action television show come to life.

so even if billy had spent all of s7 thinking of grissom and sara’s relationship as just some temporary affair—and i’m not necessarily saying that he did; just saying that even if such were the case—it doesn’t mean that grissom  necessarily felt the same way himself, because there’s more to grissom (and to grissom and sara’s love story) than just what billy brought to the table.

all sorts of other production factors, from the writing to the directing to the editing to the narratology, all contribute to our final view of what grissom and sara’s relationship is and how grissom and sara conceptualize of it at various points throughout the story.     

so.

to our watsonian perspective:

let us be clear up front: grissom never thinks of what he and sara have as potentially temporary because that’s what he wants.

like.

it’s not a deal where he goes into their relationship thinking, “all right. i’m gonna have some fun for a while, and then once this thing runs its course, i’ll bail.”

just the opposite, in fact.

the whole thing with grissom is that when he first meets sara sidle at the forensic academy conference in 1998, he falls head-over-heels in love with her at first sight. falling in love with her is a revelatory experience for him, unlike anything he’s ever experienced before—and especially considering that to this point in his life, he’s never even really been attracted to another person—and it absolutely spins him off his axis.

he wants to be with sara from the moment he meets her.

he wants to marry her way earlier on than is strictly sensible.

he wants, always, nothing more than to spend the rest of his life at her side, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, as long as they both shall live.

—but for as much as he wants these things, he’s also scared to death to pursue them, mainly because he doubts that there’s any way that someone as perfect as sara is could ever love someone as flawed as he is forever.

he knows on his side of the equation that what he feels for sara is a once-in-a-lifetime, for-a-lifetime kind of deal; that he’s always, always going to want and need her, until the day he dies.

but he has such a poor view of himself, he just can’t believe that sara would ever feel the same way about him as he does her.

like.

maybe she loves him now, but he can’t imagine that her love for him will last once she’s seen all of his broken parts and pieces up close and realized what a (in his view) misanthropic, unyielding, selfish, dark-hearted, obtuse old man he is, inexperienced in love and in so many ways insufficiently human.

he believes that one day she’ll realize how unsatisfactory he is, and that when that day comes, she’ll likely leave him.

—which, in his opinion, will be only as much as he deserves.

now.

these fears on grissom’s part for a long time prevent him from pursuing a relationship with sara. however, eventually (circa s5) he conquers them enough to be able to take the risk of being with her, despite his feelings of inadequacy.

still.

it’s not as if said fears 100% go away, even once he’s with her. though most of the time, he's okay, he does still carry with him some latent concerns that he’s not good enough for her and that she deserves more than he can really offer her. 

at times when his and sara’s relationship is solid, he’s largely able to submerge said concerns, not paying them much mind. however, during periods of crisis, such as when sara leaves vegas in s8 and s9 or during the decline of their marriage in s13, they sometimes do rear their heads, causing him to doubt the viability of the relationship (and to sometimes act on said doubts by electing to remove himself from sara so as to “set her free,” per what he erroneously believes she wants or needs). 

so.

while grissom in no way wants for his and sara’s relationship to be a temporary thing, are there times he worries that it will be?

yes.

but it’s not because he’s not himself committed to the relationship.

like.

his m.o. is to stay with sara for as long as she’ll allow him to.

he wants the whole beautiful life.

he’s not bailing.

—he just, in his worst moments, worries that maybe she will (or even that maybe she should given his inadequacies, even if she’s not personally inclined to).

and, of course, the ironic thing is that sara is basically going through the same thought processes on her side.

she, like grissom, falls in love at first sight and immediately wants to be with him forever, but she also, like grissom, feels like maybe she is herself not “lasting relationship material” (considering how “broken” she is from her childhood), and so fears that maybe someday grissom will tire of her and their relationship and leave her, even though that outcome would be the last thing in the world from what she wants.

like him, she is eventually able to submerge these fears enough to be in a relationship with him, and while she’s in said relationship with him she is able to largely believe that it’s built to last. however, also like him, in times of strain, like during her mental health crisis of s8 and s9, she does worry that maybe she’s unworthy of him and so attempts the same “set him free” routine that he later pulls on her during the divorce.

so.

while sara in no way wants for her and grissom’s relationship to be a temporary thing, are there times she worries that it will be?

yes.

but it’s not because she’s not herself committed to the relationship.

like.

she wants to be with grissom forever.

she just sometimes, in her worst moments, finds it impossible believe that something that good could ever happen to her.

now.

if grissom and sara both allowed these fears and doubts to completely overcome them forever, then their relationship would, in the long term, be unviable. but the thing is, their love for each other is always, at the end of the day, stronger than their doubts about themselves, and because it is, they inevitably manage, even after periods of separation, to make their ways back to each other.

though certainly their relationship has had more than its fair share of ups and downs, ultimately, it endures for over twenty years because they are just stubbornly, unfailing attached to each other.

for all of their ridiculous, self-loathing, “for who could ever learn to love a beast?” antics, the truth is that they have both absolutely wanted the same thing since day #1, which is to spend their lives together, and because they have that desire in common, everything else is just background noise.

they eventually do fully overcome their fears of inadequacy and build upon that really solid foundation to make their bond lasting.

hence what we see in the reboot: two people that fully believe in each other and in their marriage.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

[thebestsandiever]

Regarding the chaos and aftermath of the Verstappen crash at the 2021 British GP

Before I begin, this is solely my own thoughts on the crash and aftermath of it, resources and intel being from various news reports, articles, interviews, social media reactions/on track fans reactions, commentators, careers etc. Also important, this post was made around 11 PM CEST, so other news after that or in the midst of this, I haven’t considered.

  Comments and discussions are welcome, though remember to keep the tone guys. I rarely comment on anything on Tumblr, but looking at this chaos, I felt like sharing a bit.

  Starting on the incident that happened, I don’t believe that I can clearly decide what happened and who caused, and the only comments I have is that I believe it was a racing incident that has no bad intention. We hear in conclusion from sources (there was an after analysis) (e.g. also Lewis’ Sky Sports interview) that both could have given each other space. Lewis trying to get in, and Max defending his position. People who think Lewis did it intentionally clearly have no common sense, no one wants Max to end up going to the hospital (but he is fine so no worries). Of course, nothing excuses that a crash happened, and it’s a big shame.

  All the hate Lewis is getting should tone down, I think it’s fair to be critical in perspective of racing which consists of the crash and his comments regarding it, but anything that comments on something other than that with negativity, shouldn’t be.

  Something that many F1 fans have brought up and Horner I believe (slightly) is Lewis 15+ years of experience in Formula one and numerous of championships. Which I think in any sport or topic isn’t a fair argument, because mistakes happen to anyone, no one is immune to that, though this is not me calling the crash a mistake, because I don’t believe that is the right word. It’s more Lewis knowing the danger of closing in and Max of course defending himself on track, and this is the end result. And if anyone was a viewer of the Euro 2020 Football Cup Finals, it’s a bit like the Southgate criticism on the penalties.

  This also applies to all the fans who bring up Max’ aggressive and old nickname “crashstappen” from his early F1 career. Whether you have your impression from Netflix’ Drive to Survive or the fact that you’re new, anyone will agree that Max has matured greatly both on and off track, in my opinion one of the calmest drivers on the grid considering the amount of criticism, hate and burden that he gets/has. The fact is that there have been some people on Twitter (when I now and later comment on fans and reactions, it’s usually the very chaotic Twitter), that mentions Verstappen’s past, the infamous Baku and this season’s races where Lewis is the one who, in their words, “has backed up and gave space” (the reason I say their words is because I can’t quite remember so I won’t say that I know for sure). But again, as I mentioned, this is not valid, because it doesn’t excuse what happened today. Every track is a title fight, and previous races and tactics doesn’t apply to this. What I mean is that because Lewis gave space previous races, does it mean that Verstappen should crash? Or worded differently, because Max didn’t give space like he has previous times, that “it was coming” or that he should crash? Biggest takeaway from this is that past and future shouldn’t mean more than what happened in the present. This leading me on to a bit of the hate Max got which I think was quite undeserving, especially under his circumstances, which is f1 fans (mostly Twitter) calling it “karma” and using his young past to somehow “justify” the crash.

Also I really disliked the videos of “British fans” (we can’t actually determine that all were British, but it was home track) cheering when the crash happened, but in general I think cheering on a crash will always be awful even if you’re favourite driver gains position. Gladly though, it quickly died down on the stands as they realized it was hard impact. Very Euro 2020 vibes, though a much better English crowd- Just kidding, maybe you can see I’m not happy when any kind of fans act out of order (also I don’t hate English football fans, but sadly, the ones who make stupid actions overshadow the rest).

  Now I also want to comment a bit on the drivers and teams’ comments and the PR.

  So regarding Max’ social media post about the race. I honestly think it’s fair for him to be upset, no one wants to be taken out on the first lap considering that he is leading while a VERY good and competitive Lewis is trailing behind. My first reaction was that it was quite an aggressive post and the part about him unfollowing Lewis (if that is correct, I haven’t seen it myself yet) was obviously implying that he isn’t happy. Though, emotions run high as well does Lewis’ celebration reaction. I know his mind is to win on track and he has always been outspoken about that fact. Also I don’t quite believe that Max’ comments were full heartedly himself, but the PR team considering he’s just been at the hospital. I’m not happy with his post at all, but I understand both from a PR perspective and a driver’s. I believe almost any driver on the track would have said something like that in an interview if it happened to them. This just happened to be online because of health circumstances.

  Regarding Marko and Horner, I must disagree with their aggressiveness or at least the way they decide to comment on it. I do understand the anger, considering the championship but also concern for Max (anyone who knows their relationship knows that they care about him.) Again, I have to say emotions run high and if anything, managers are good at, and this is not specifically only attacking Horner, but it’s stirring up tension. I would say it’s fair for him to say, and quite expected, not saying I think it’s fair for Lewis to receive though (hopefully you get what I mean).

  Commenting a bit on Lewis’ Sky Sports F1 interview, we can confirm he didn’t know about Max going to the hospital before celebrating. Anyone who wins has the right to celebrate, especially at home, so props for his win, though unfortunately through a crash (this meaning Verstappen was his biggest threat on track). Though I wasn’t pleased about the commenting on Max. This leads further into the interview.

  We get Lewis’ insight on the incident and where he sees Max as the aggressive one, both not giving each other space and having the crash as end result. So in conclusion, Max trying to defend his position and Lewis trying to get in, fair. Please watch the interview, because it clears up a lot of what is spoken about in the media.  

My thoughts on Lewis’ response both before and after hearing about Max going to the hospital in the Sky Sports interview, is that he probably could’ve/should’ve toned down on Max being the aggressor, as they were both considering what the crash led to, and him saying that it was just about who was going to give space until it was too late. It kind of goes against what he just said. But I do agree that Lewis has the right to celebrate because he simply won. I also liked that he had championship spirit saying that considering what happened, it didn’t take the shine away from his win. It may sound disrespectful, and I do still kind of think it is, but on the other side, it’s him being competitive, and both drivers have each other’s respect on being able to fight on track. So he’s got the spirit, just maybe not the right interview to show the most competitive spirit (I think the most competitive spirit/response he’s shown this 2021 season)

  A bit more on his spirit and fighting on track is seen from Lawrence Barreto who tells us that Lewis has the “game on” spirit and is ready for attacks on track but there needs to be respect on track “and if not this will happen more often I guess.” - Lewis. Just a bit more closure from another source, I like that he is more responsive, but this does make it sound like he blames Max for it. I think any driver who are up against each other have the right or it makes sense to give the majority of the blame to the other, they have their own rear mirrors (see it from their own perspective when they drive, quite literally), but it isn’t the best comment to be honest. Since he says himself, both could’ve given space.

  My biggest disagreement that I must mention is the penalty Lewis got, which was the 10 second penalty. Assessing the severity of the crash with high speed, 51G impact, first lap etc. I think the penalty didn’t really serve much of a penalty, but this is also me being critical of the penalty system. These 10 second penalties don’t really make you lose that much of position (depends on car), also this is not a blow at Lewis but just the system. Afterwards, he was also given 2 penalty points. I think compared to someone like Yuki who also got 2 penalty points for crossing the white line twice while entering the pits and George yesterday at the Sprint Race (1 penalty point + 3 place grid penalty) are quite different but looking at the number, there isn’t a big difference in what’s given. But all of this penalty talk is on the stewards and system, so nothing against Lewis and he did take his penalty that was given.

  I did not comment much on the actual incident as I have a hard time really deciding (I can admit I see Lewis unintentionally drift a bit in + this being a very fast turn, I believe just a misjudgment but so many fans think it was intentional), so therefore do read and watch the current and coming interviews and articles to get some racing perspective. It keeps updating and even drivers like Riccardo, Leclerc, Alonso etc. have given their comments, and who better to listen to than professionals themselves. So I encourage you to get perspective there, because I know not all of us are the most technical fans, and we tend to comment by being led through a bias and crowd.

  But if we’re feeling a bit tired from today, so far the drivers are leaning towards a racing incident. They speak of it as quite unclear to determine, basically saying that both drivers could’ve done and were doing something --> could’ve given space.

  We all have to remember this situation is a big deal since it’s the only two to be fair at the moment, who are competing for the championship. Both mad talented and on each other every track. Media blows it out more than them and before we know it, they’re back to what they do best, which is drive.

  Heart goes out to Max, it was quite an impact and if not his worst crash so far in his career. His team radio was quite scary to listen to, I’ve never heard him so shook, but he is doing quite fine at the moment, and he will hopefully recover well enough for the next race.

  As well for Lewis, emotions are running high and people are quick to assume and accuse without using common sense that Lewis wouldn’t endanger Max or himself. He has every right to celebrate a win and props for him winning.

  In conclusion to those who has taken the time to read, don’t let my thoughts be any decider, but more so a way to understand and be a bit more open minded. We are all subjective in the end and I try to see from both perspectives and to be critical as well, not being led by others’ opinions. I’ve stated my sources, and this is only my overall thoughts at the very moment, so remember, as drivers evolve and move on, we do too.

  I again encourage you to watch and research with an open mind so not being led on bias, especially if you’re willing to spread anything on the topic. It serves a greater outcome than sprouting from emotions and lack of information, as we have well seen from this sport. Because media does influence and we as an audience is a part of it. So I must remind again, that this is simply my thoughts.

[codename-adler]

Dear Tumblr toxicity,

Hi. Adler here. We need to talk.

- TW: mental health issues, depression, bipolar disorder, self-harm, homophobia, transphobia, coming out, xenophobia, islamophobia, racism, implied sexual content, rape, non-con, addictions, abuse, parental negligence, depictions of violence, swearing (please message me kindly if I forget anything)

- What prompted this message: The release of Skam France S7 teaser (emphasis on teaser, will get into that below)

- Where I’m coming from: I will talk from the pov of a white, cis and queer 22-years-old woman (she/her); this is the pov that affects my experiences and the opinions I will share below; but my message comes from a place of deep hurt, and love

- What this is about: My goal is to share a recurring experience that has hurt me in order to spread a message of awareness, maturity, peace and love

- Central content: Skam France, Skam Wtfock, and Skam/remakes in general

From now on I will assume people have enough information for me to talk about the topics without explaining every plotline/character. There are plenty of wiki pages to help you out and I will gladly answer any (respectful) questions asked if a plothole bothers your comprehension of my message. I’m only making these assumptions in order to alleviate the text.

January 9th, 2021.

The francetv slash YouTube channel releases an unexpected teaser video for an equally unexpected seventh season Skam France. The video features Tiffany, a white, cis female teenager, going into labour from denial pregnancy just after winning what appears to be a gymnastics championship. Overall, the video and its release are very dramatic.

The character of Tiffany, also called Tiff, was previously seen on season 6 of Skam France as a bully who persecuted the main character, Lola, both at school and on social media. Outside of this characterization, nothing is known about her. It is majorly accepted that Tiff is not a liked character; she rather poses as one of the antagonists of Lola’s arc.

Now you know the details of what happened, in the most objectively possible way. 

Now I’ll speak for myself.

Before I went digging around for people’s reaction, here is what I initially thought of this video.

1) Shock: I thought Skam France was over, so... Big, big shock.

2) Excitement: I hold this web series very close to my heart. It has gotten me through depressive episodes, anxiety attacks, coming out to my best friend. To see this new development? It couldn’t bring me more joy.

3) Curiosity: I recognized Tiff immediately. I was intrigued as to what would happen to her to set off a new season in true Skam Fr fashion. As soon as she started gripping her stomach, I knew she was pregnant and wasn’t aware of it. Big, big surprise here again.

4) Numbness/Overthinking: As I stared at my screen, motionless, my mind went off. What did it mean? How did she not know? Who is the father? Do we know him? Will the baby survive? Where are the other characters? Will Lamifex be present? What? How? When? Why? Who?

5) Disappointment: No, I did not like Tiff one bit in S6. Yes, I sincerely wished for a season on either Jo (ambiguous and funny teenage girl, cis + white), Sekou (seemingly neurodivergent teenage boy, cis + black), and my favorite, Max (mysterious and grave teenage boy, trans + white) So why Tiff? It felt to me like a missed opportunity, but I did not lose hope.

So, these were the five stages of my emotional process. And then I made the terrible mistake to go look for the fans’ reaction. I didn’t even look at the YT comments, I didn’t go on Instagram, I went directly here on Tumblr. Why? I’m still asking myself that. From S1 to S6 of Skam Fr, I kept my love for the show to myself and only looked at ig and video edits. I tried once, and only once, to look it up on Tumblr, and was greeted by fervent agressivity, disrespect and hate. Why did I ever forget that after watching the S7 teaser? I still don’t know.

The reactions on this platform were wild. People are furious (I get that). People are disappointed (I get that). People are anxious (I get that). People are also verbally agressive, insensitive, hateful, disrespectful and bullies. I don’t get that.

Comments along the lines of “What she gonna do with a fucking baby?”, “Are we gonna watch the baby do nothing all fucking season?”, “Wowwww, teenage pregnancy, so new and relatable!” (note the sarcasm made in the comment here), “Who gives a shit about Tiff?”, etc. 

And then all the mistakes Skam Fr ever made flooded back onto the feed. The wlw misrepresentation, the whitewashing, the overdramatization, the dubious sex scenes between minors, all of it.

Let’s take a break here. Do I condone these mistakes? Nope. Am I a white-bully apologist? Nope. Did I forget every horrible action Tiff has made in the past? Nope. She manipulated a whole school against Lola, she profited from Lola’s mother’s death, she bullied her, harrassed her, pushed her deeper into mental distress. Tiff was a despicable character that I never once liked. The way she was played by the actress made it clear that Tiff was not intended to be a good guy. If I could replace her as the main of S7, I would, in a heartbeat. I’d choose, as I said, Jo, Sekou or Max.

Skam France deeply lacks diversity and made mistakes when attempting to diverse the issues represented. This is not an opinion, it’s a fact. 

Poc representation is very, very low. Only one season has a woc of Islam beliefs as mc (Imane, S4) with poc entourage/family. Only 2 other characters not related to Imane were poc (Sekou and Sarah, S1-S2). These 2 characters were very in the background and served to further the mc’s plotline, they had no real content. (I am not a poc, and so my opinion does not matter here. If you are not poc, your “opinions” don’t matter here, this point is not for you to debate. These are facts.)

While I do not particularly find the wlw representation bad, I do understand how it hurts/bothers other queer women. From my perspective, the bar was very low regarding my expectations of the Lola/Maya pair (none of them died *yay* they had a happy ending *yay* they were not typically overfeminized or overmasculinized *yay* Lola  and Maya were respectful of each other, understood each other, accepted each other with all their flaws and their beauty *yay* I truly believed in their love and it gave me confidence and hope *yay* I ould really go on but this is not my main point so I’ll stop here) Regardless of my opinion on Mayla, I understand that to some queer women, it was bothering/hurtful. (If you are anything other than a woman / wlw, this point is not for you to debate. Keep your “opinions” to yourself, it does not matter here. These are facts.)

Like every remake of the original Skam where the S4 was given to Sana/Imane, the Muslim community was not represented at its best, at its most beautiful and respectfully. The character of Imane, although she is my favorite girl of the series, was not portrayed in a way that respected the majority of the Muslim community. (If you are anything other than Muslim, this point is not for you to debate. Our opinions do not matter here. These are facts.)

And so the same goes for the portrayal of sexual assault and child pronography in S2, of mental illness and homophobia in S3, of disabilities in S5, of addiction, transphobia, self-harm and neurodivergence in S6. Again, if you are not part of these communities, your opinions do not matter on these issues. These are facts that are not up for debate.

In other words, Skam France, as well as the original Skam, Skam Wtfock, Skam España, and probably all the others I haven’t watched in their entirety, are NOT perfect shows. They (maybe) tried their best to portray issues of the younger generations that are ugly, shameful, taboo, hard-to-swallow-pills. Of course they made mistakes. Of course they have to be held accountable. Of course they can and should do better. Of course it must be spoken about.

Here is my problem.

The so-called “fans” shamelessly SHITTING on the WHOLE show because of ONE TEASER TRAILER. (btw, this is where I get angry)

I am not talking about the fans making fun of the show and this season’s premise like “Better MCs than Tiff for S7: a romance between the car that almost hit Lucas S3 and the car that hit Arthur S5, or the school’s nurse, or Imane’s dad, or Elu’s rabbit” (that shit’s funny and I’d watch all of these).Or the joke about Wtfock and Skam Fr shaking hands while signing the same contract to disappoint the fans with white MCs (it’s funny cuz it’s trueeeee).

I am not talking about the fans criticizing the producers’ choice of Tiff as MC. There is a difference between shitting on issues and adressing/discussing them. I WANT to talk about how this season’s issue would have been so much better if a woc, specifically a black woman, had been the MC, because black women and doctors are a whole different level of issue than white women and doctors. Add on top of that an unplanned teenage pregnancy? It would have been IMMACULATE. I WANT to talk which wlw couple was better represented, Mayla or Croana/Crisana, and why is that. I WANT to talk about disabilities in black and poc communities. I WANT to talk about headcanons, AUs, to rectify the missed marks. I WANT to talk about our takes on seasons about Max, Sekou and Jo, instead of Tiff’s.

I DO NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT YOUR SHITTY, NEGATIVE, UNHELPFUL, HURTFUL COMMENTS.

Just because the protagonist is white, doesn’t give you ANY right to dismiss the issue that is unplanned teenage pregnancy. This is a problem that affects countries WORLDWIDE. Do you know how many deaths are related to minors giving birth? Do you know how many babies die at birth from these pregnancies? Do you have any idea the trauma it puts you through, to go into labor without even knowing you were pregnant in the first place, and then giving birth, and then having to care for a defensless human being? The dilemma of keeping it, or giving it away? The fear that lives in every person able to give birth, that one day they’ll become pregnant, because society turns sych a shameful look to that? No matter your ethnicity, your gender identity, your sexuality, your political stance or whatever shit you bring up to justify your disgraceful and downright degrading comments, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SAY THAT A MINOR GIVING BIRTH IS NOT AN ISSUE. 

You think the topic has been covered plenty before? Yeah, because shows like “16 and pregnant” and “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant!” are such good examples and show the reality with such an objective point of view! 

Bullshit. Teenage pregnancy is still a taboo, it still kills, and people are still morons about it. 

“Well I guess everybody is secretly pregnant now!” No, Jessica, but you wouldn’t know about it, would you? Because I wouldn’t tell you shit if you were my “friend” and I was going through it. The whole message of all the Skams is not that it presents super relatable issues of teenagers, although it is a big topic of the show. They present some issues that affect the youth in an authentic light, but that’s not it.

Tous les gens que tu rencontres mènent un combat dont tu ignores tout. 

Sois indulgente. Toujours. x x x

//

Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.

Be kind. Always. x x x

THAT’S THE MESSAGE. THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT OF THE SHOW.

And you all missed it.

All of you making dead baby jokes and death threats, degrading people who give birth, shaming teenagers for their pregnancies... Listen to yourselves.

“Well she deserves it, she was such a bitch!” No, Michael, you shit stick. Let’s rewind a bit for you, yeah? It was a GOD DAMN TEASER. We literally know nothing! Nothing at all! Why are y’all getting mad when we saw 3:25 minutes representing a whole ass season! Listen to yourselves. Y’all judge so fast for people pretending to love Skam and its authenticity and its motto.

You say Tiff is irredeemable?

Emma cheated on her boyfriend.

Manon lied and manipulated her friends.

Lucas was homophobic and prejudiced agaisnt mentally ill people.

Imane was homophobic too and went behind her friends’ back to get what she wanted.

Arthur cheated on his girlfriend too.

Lola dragged Elliot down with her in her addiction, lied, was verbally abusive, etc.

ALL THE MAINS ARE PROBLEMATIC.

Any guess why?

BECAUSE THEY ARE TEENAGERS. THEY ARE STILL GROWING AND LEARNING.

Yet we still loved them all. 

So don’t you dare tell me that Tiff deserves this, that her baby deserves to die, that teenage motherhood is irrelevant. Motherhood is not a curse in the first place, nor is it something to wish to inflict upon anyone. Motherhood is different for every single person and nobody except the person living with it can have an opinion on that. We don’t even know if the baby survived, for God’s sake!

There is no excuse for this kind of behavior..

It makes me so angry. Women are discriminated against in a fandom I thought was safe, again and again and again. 

I have to stop here because, well, this is just too much. There is much wrong with Skam (the original AND all the remakes), but there is even more wrong with the fans. I’m done.

You don’t support the show anymore? Fine, then don’t watch it! If I really am wrong, the number of viewers will go down and the show will die, just like you wished. There is no need to be vicious about it. 

I hope y’all are proud of your misogyny. 

Sincerely,

Adler.

[sidras-tak]

Please write that Caleb/Veth friends with benefits meta, I would LOVE to read that!

I’ve talked about this before in the widobrave server, and it’s not so much “friends with benefits” as it is “not quite exes”, in my mind. So I’m basing this whole thing off two moments: Keg assuming Caleb and Nott are together, and how Caleb reacted when Nott kissed him right before the failed Widogast’s Transmorgification spell. Also, this is less meta and more speculation.

Let’s assume this: Nott and Caleb, in their time traveling together pre-stream, had a sexual relationship. At the very least, they cuddled and gave each other physical comfort (this part is canon actually). Sometime before the stream began, or shortly after it began, one of the two broke it off. Maybe Nott started falling for Caleb and felt guilty about Yeza. Maybe Caleb’s internalized guilt and shame about being worthy of love caused him to break it off. Either way, they decided to end it while still being friends, devoted to each other. This leaves them on a weird footing. When canon begins, they still are physically comfortable with each other (Nott climbs all over Caleb, he holds her frequently, they sleep in the same bed, hugs all the time) and this is untrue with any other member of the MN and Caleb, who is usually bad at receiving or giving affection. However, they are not romantically together. What are they? Exes? Taking a break? No longer friends with benefits? Pining? Who knows! Not them! Not us!

On to the canon.

Moment one: Keg assumes Caleb and Nott are together. Caleb rolls with her assumption, clearly unbothered by her thinking they might be together. In almost the same breath, Nott denies it, and Caleb looks confused and concerned. Nott berates herself (“he could do much better than a little freakshow like myself”), Caleb shushes her and gets an inn room specifically for the two of them, doubling down that he doesn’t care if people think they’re together. If you view this from the not-quite-exes perspective, it shows that Caleb isn’t ashamed of being with Nott and is willing to take it back up again at some point, while Nott is firmly trying to put it in the past. Given that she has a secret husband, not surprising. It also shows that Caleb isn’t convinced what they have is over. It’s a gray area for him. “Are you together?” Keg asks, and Caleb says, “Sure,” because fuck if he actually knows what they are. Anyway, “together” is close enough.

Moment two: the kiss. It’s hard to separate the actor and the character, especially with Liam, who tends to be in-character as much as possible. When Nott leans in and kisses him sweetly on the lips, Liam/Caleb moves back slightly in surprise and blinks rapidly for a second, then focuses all his attention on Nott while she speaks. He does not appear distressed or confused by the kiss, though he was taken off-guard by it initially. When she’s done speaking, he cups her face in his hand and says, “this will be our best trick yet.” No reference to the kiss, no question as to what she did or how she feels about him, and then they never fucking talk about it again. If one assumes this is their first kiss, that’s odd. Most people would react somehow if their best friend kissed them on the lips, no matter if their feelings were romantic or platonic. If you approach it with the idea that they used to be together and still care deeply about each other, it’s not a confession of feelings, it’s a callback to their shared past. Nott isn’t startling Caleb with the confession that she’s attracted to him, she’s simply reminding him where they started and who they are and were to each other. It fits in perfectly with her speech, thanking him for being devoted to her and spending all this time with her.

The meta angle: we know, almost certainly, that Sam and Liam did not plan for romantic widobrave since the beginning of the campaign. But as early as episode 25′s talks, Sam addresses that Nott’s feelings for Caleb are liable to change and morph as the show progresses (I direct you to this excellent video about nuance), so it’s possible this is around when he and Liam start considering pre-stream widobrave as a possibility--and it falls right before Keg’s assumption and all that it entails. Liam has said that during the course of the game, it’s not unusual for a player to come up with a bit of backstory that they hadn’t considered before and share it with Matt to be used later, so it’s entirely possible from a meta level. 

Caleb and Veth being in a former relationship would fit in with how they struggle to define their relationship in canon. (“he’s my boy and i protect him” “I don’t know what our family is” and “you’re not my....hmm....” all come to mind)

And really, wouldn’t it be exactly like Sam “no metagaming unless it’s funny” Riegel and Liam “this backstory is gonna hurt you so much” O’Brien to make widobrave retroactively canon and not tell anyone for as long as they can manage it.

(As a side note, I am not looking for a debate on the nature of Veth’s feelings towards Caleb. If you believe that Veth views Caleb as her son, you are free to do so, but please leave my post out of it, thanks).