#I’m still petty I have to go into my dashboard settings every 7 days to snooze tumblr live

[babypop-phantom]

Tumblr is just trying to distract us from complaining about the ✨Tumblr Live✨ feature by rolling out polls.

[harry-sussex]

You're lovely, and I enjoy seeing your blog on my dashboard. I'm sorry this has been such a difficult thing to process. It's always really difficult to rework an image of someone you once thought you knew. However I'd like to just put it out there - sometimes (I think the large majority of the time) news is presented in the most sensationalist way, such that nowadays I make a point of de-sensationalizing any news I read in my head. In the case of the whole Harry's memoir thing- I can sympathize with Harry as a person possibly just wanting to take back some control of the narrative for himself. Not just in the most recent events with family (that I tend to think are less horrifying than the fandom/Twitter sussex squad discusses it anyway), but in all aspects of his life. I do not at all think he's going to put his family on blast. I can easily imagine Meghan reigning that dialogue in; she has the tendency to think before she speaks that he seems to lack. And he loves his family. Similar to The Interview promos, I imagine the publishing house knew to increase the interest by implying it to be a tell all memoir. I think he's just done a lot of growing up that he didn't know he had to do over a short period of time, esp re: implicit bias/racism in the setting of media's blatant attack on someone he loves, and is disappointed by the institution's and his family's response to it. I think he's emerged a more introspective and aware human, albeit a disillusioned one. Yes it breaks my heart to think that Meghan won't get a break from the tabloids any time soon. If I were him I'd counsel him to write it & sit on it for a few yrs. But I don't want to give the media the power to destroy Meghan in my mind, and I pray she & Harry won't either. I think she'll be okay. She's a strong one, and I think he's able to draw that same link for himself and be thoughtful about what he does. No one likes being misunderstood/misinterpreted, and I wouldn't be surprised if Harry's especially triggered by that given his history with the press. Maybe this idea emerged from therapy, idk. I can empathize with that, even if I wouldn't do it myself. I hope and pray Meghan gets the support she needs from him and her loved ones in the meantime. I'm honestly not going to read it. I think the less attention I give the BRF the better off they are, unless they're doing something immoral/illegal (see: Woking pizza alibi). And I think at the end of the day, people will unfairly judge other people, especially public figures that have tragic pasts and are publically fighting with the media. A lot of it is going to be noise and I'm not going to give my energy into figuring it out. I like to think I've got a good sense of who they are as people - flawed but ultimately well meaning and earnest. I'm a huge admirer of Meghan and think Harry got really lucky with this one and I'm proud of him for choosing her in more ways than one. I believe Harry and Meghan are lovely people, and I 100% believe their interview. I believe that there are people in the palace with a lot of unchecked power who deliberately uncovered her and Archie from BRF protection for reasons of believed superiority over Meg & Arch. And they're figuring out how to deal with that as a couple and a family. And it's none of my business past that imo. I pray for them and hope it'll eventually end in peace for them all. Just wanted to add another perspective, and hopefully some levity. xx M

Hi, dear. First thing’s first, I really appreciate that this is off anon lol. I love it when people own their opinions, and it says a lot that you did. So thank you for that.

Second of all, I really appreciate the nuance and perspective that is in this message. I agree that the news is sensationalist, and my initial reaction was based off of that. I did watch the promotional clips of the interview and I believe it did sour my expectations going into it when I watched it nearly a week after it aired. I did my best to stay away from Tumblr because I didn’t want that to hinder my view, but it was impossible to separate the promotions that presented the information one way from what it actually was, and thank you for bringing that up with respect to the memoir because I hadn’t considered it. I will say that my knee jerk reaction is pretty on par with the way I still feel about it 24 hours later, especially since I got the news directly, not from Tumblr or Twitter or anywhere else, but you’re right that it could have soured my view from the very start.

I appreciate that he wants to take back some of the narrative but I think that ship has sailed, tbh. He did that with the interview and now I just think it feels like information overload. At some point, people are going to get tired of hearing the wealthy, privileged, powerful Prince complain about his life while more than 4 million people have died due to a global pandemic in less than 2 years. Not to say that he doesn’t struggle - in the words of Roxane Gay, there is no oppression Olympics (and that can be extended to struggle Olympics) - but people view it that way and will get tired of it, if they haven’t already.

I also agree that Harry’s past with the press has tarnished the way he has handled the media and the public post-exit, when he’s finally in a position to strike back without being somewhat obliged to them as part of the circumstances of his birth. I understand and sympathize with him but I just don’t think the public does, and the public matters much, much more than the perspective of one single American fan, to whom he’s never been obliged, and I simply do not think the public will afford him that same understanding, sympathy, and leniency. The public and the media are critical to his humanitarian work - his mother never realized that towards the end of her life, and I truly don’t think she would have been the martyr/saint she is perceived to be now if she had lived, because she did not know how to meet the media in the middle and eventually that started to piss people off. He’s starting to piss people off now and if it doesn’t bother him personally (which it definitely does), I don’t want it to affect his causes. The Invictus Games, Sentebale, Walking with the Wounded, WellChild, Mayhew, Smartworks, Archewell, etc. deserve better than to suffer the wrath of the media and an apathetic public because their patrons simply will not shut up lol.

I guess my point is that they will be unfairly judged (regardless, but especially due to the way they’re handling things), and I think it would suit them better in the long run if they adopted a different strategy. I really sympathize with the fact that he feels frustrated with the narrative that has been manufactured but I really, really think the narrative will only get worse and worse as he continues to go on and on about how badly his life sucks, basically. Again, I don’t deny that he struggles - we all do, some more than others, especially when there are mental health issues - but the public, to me, simply does not care. My own therapist has told me to simply stop caring about the things that I discuss with him. Not to say that they’re not relevant, important, or worthy of discussion - they absolutely are - but his point is that you cannot change people and you are wasting your energy and struggling yourself because you want to change them so, so, so badly that you’re neglecting your own self care in the process. I hate that I do it to myself and I also hate that he appears to be doing it to himself. I’m sure a lot of this conversation has been brought up in his own therapy, and I’m no professional, but I’m doing my best to heed the advice of my own therapist - which is the opposite of what Harry is doing - and it’s done wonders for me, when I actually can do it.

If there’s anything I know from this whole thing, it’s that Harry is absolutely punching above his weight, love him as I may, and that he adores, adores, adores his wife. He has chosen her from the very second she came into his life and I couldn’t want anything more for him or from her. I’m not going to lie, I would have been in this thing for any wife that Harry chose, because I was here long before Meghan specifically came into his life. However, I am glad every day that he chose her, that he loves her, that he wants to protect her, that she loves him back, that he lives the life with her that he’s wanted as long as I (and I’m sure he) can remember. I love her because he loves her, and I would have no matter what, because at the end of the day, it’s his happiness and comfort that matters to me, that has mattered to me since I discovered him and how wonderful he can be more than 7 years ago. What more could I ask of Meghan? What more, as his fan to the end (annoy me as he may), could I want for him? Who could say anything about her in that regard? If there’s anything that has come of this mess, to me, it’s that Harry loves, loves, loves his wife. I will always be happy for him and I will always be proud of him for choosing her, even if I don’t always agree with the way he goes about it.

I’m looking forward to peace, too. I cannot wait for things to just die out, for them to work things out as a couple and as a family, and for everyone to move on. The family will still do their thing and the Sussexes can do theirs, but I cannot deal with this back and forth, tit for tat, petty nonsense anymore. They’re wonderful and flawed, like the rest of them (except Andrew), and I just hope that they can all come to some kind of agreement or terms that lets this die down. It’s exhausting for everyone - themselves included. If I’m this tired, I can only imagine how tired they all are.

Thanks for stopping by, and sorry for the essay (essays, these past 24 hours lol). I really appreciate your kindness in this message, your presence in my notifications (I do see them!), your nuanced perspective and like I said before, I really, really appreciate that you own it!

[mutantsrisingrpg]

Congratulations ABBY! You’ve been accepted as MARS with a FC change to HUNTER SCHAFER.

Abby, we’re excited to have you back, and we’re excited to have you gracing the dashboard with Yvette! Her life’s story flowed so well, I felt as if I could envision it like a movie - of course, it’d probably be one that I cry during, but that’s besides the point. I’m a sucker for the little things, and those headcanons, from her favorite things to her laughter, just made me envision her that much more clearer and really makes you see her as a person, not just a character. Welcome back!

Welcome to Mutants Rising! Please read the checklist and submit your account within 24 hours.

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME / ALIAS: abby

PRONOUNS: she/her

AGE: 22

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: EST, 6-7/10 – What is time these days? I’m still a full time grad student, but with everything the way it is i’m pretty much on my computer all the time, which means I can be better involved in the gc ( hopefully ! ). In terms of replies, I’ll either be cranking things out on the dash in the mornings or at night after dinner (8-9pm onwards)

IN CHARACTER INFORMATION

DESIRED ROLE: Yvette Diandra

GENDER/PRONOUNS: trans woman & she/her

DETAILS & ANALYSIS: 

Calm like a bomb. The only tick tick you’ll get out of Yvette is her heart thrumming when her hands lift off the handlebars; when her smile splits for a second – all teeth. There’s nothing overtly dangerous about her: a young woman grown upright into adulthood, all legs and elbows and big eyes, searching for soft spots between your ribs. Mischievous, maybe – up to no good, certainly. She smiles like she’s got a secret tucked under her lip, more than just the tattoo she got drunk on her 21st birthday reading PUSSY in blurred out ink ( you are what you eat, right? ). 

There’s an uptick to her brow to tell you she’s unimpressed; a shrug in her shoulders that says she couldn’t give a shit what you say, really, but a nod and another nod until she can roll away from one palm-flanked street to the next. She’ll keep it that way – a slow blink like a cat’s to say, i trust you, a hand extended with a joint between her fingers. You know she’s whispering about you when she turns to giggle in her friend’s dark hair, but – come on. She looks like she’ll bowl over with a strong wave; how much damage can she really do?

She doesn’t use her powers often, a clean and tidy life that comes at the expense of control. She’ll say it’s because her powers are messy. The truth is she’s never been terrified of anything like she is of herself. She knows what her blast radius is, knows how easy it is to crush things, like a petal in her fist. She knows the shrapnel never really comes out; you can’t get unfucked, you can’t put all that toothpaste back in the tube. You sure as shit can’t walk across the bridge, on fire while you hold the blown-out match. It’s fine. It’s all fucking fine. Yvette clamps a bear trap on her own foot – not because she likes it, not because it’s convenient. Because the alternative, is, frankly, a lot of fucking work. Yvette is good at breaking herself apart, less so at putting herself together. The drop is always easier than getting back up.

The fearlessness – as congenital as the atoms in her body, shivering to split and reshape like waves on the surf – comes out in other ways. No helmet on the on the hill that drives straight down to the beach. Sketchy deals with friends of a friend of a cousin of a diagonal neighbor. Nights lost to glitter and the burn of liquor on her tongue, unsure of the time between the club and the beach and her bed. Mornings split like a snowcone in the sky, and the rest of the day lost to sleep. Petty theft. Cruel giggles poorly stifled in the back of her hand. Fun that’s really only fun when you aren’t at the receiving end of it. Testing the edges of control like dipping your toes into a riptide.

BIO: 

Trigger warnings for: still birth, abuse, drug use

Yvette is born screaming. Peals of it, unfurling from her tiny, toothless mouth. Despondent – no nurse’s finger or nipple in her mouth would quiet her. Eight years or so later, over three fingers of bottom-shelf whiskey and a chain of cigarettes that should’ve put her in a grave, her mother mentions offhand it was just Yvette overcompensating, as usual. It’s the first time she hears about her brother, pushed out between her desperate wails; born sleeping. Yvette swallows this like she does all her mother’s bitter commentary – wide-eyed, slim fingers wrapped around her blue plastic cup, knees drawn up and chin nestled between them. 

Things were easy, then – on the bicycle of their lives; two wheels holding up the frame in equal measure. At least – that’s how Yvette remembers them, and refuses to remember further. Texas was honey-sweet and bourbon-rich; Yvette was raised between their dry front lawn and the neighbors, the block a kingdom for her bare feet to conquer. She was a wild thing, then, wiggling in her mother’s hands and in a furious race with the sun. The problem with the sun is that it goes down. The clock stops ticking at midnight, and the candles blow out. The screen door swings shut. 

Yvette makes no secret of her dislike for Mom’s boyfriend. He’s tall and broad, with mean eyes like Mom taught her to look for. His hands are cracked and he smells more of cigarettes than her, too; reeks of them, and maybe that’s why Mom likes him so much – she thinks she can smoke him down, too. Yvette’s never had a taste for tobacco, not since she went to school on the first day of fourth grade and all the kids next to her held her nose. The only time Mom’s ever slapped her was when Yvette crushed all the unused packs under her boot. 

So the first boyfriend is a bust, but it doesn’t stop Mom from bringing home the second or the third. By the fourth Yvette’s on the cusp of something she can’t quite reach, and she knows enough from her skimmed physics book to understand insanity. This time, she shuts the bedroom door and says nothing. Doesn’t stop Mom from falling back into the pendulum swing, though, and this time the speed picks up. Boyfriend Five nearly kicks her door down when all their friends go home and Six takes a fist full of her hair before Mom can stop him. She doesn’t wait to see what special brand of asshole Seven is – peel back the label and it’s all the same dented can. 

Miami was an inside joke – another liquor-based confession Mom made on the couch with a smoke in her hand. It was a place to pin all their secret wants and wishes. You could be something, in Miami, something warm and pink and sun-dusted, a place where the sun doesn’t set and the sand is warm between their toes. A pipe-dream, Yvette echoed back and Mom nodded. Now, with Boyfriend Seven’s cash in her pocket, a bag on her back, and the rest of her life literally up in flames – why the fuck not? Everyone was always telling her to stop letting the world happen to her.

There wasn’t a lot Mom was right about – not Yvette’s dad, or her name, or any of those shitbags she ever brought home. She was maybe a little bit right about Miami, though. It was flamingo-pink and glittering. And no one gave a single shit. Not when Yvette grew her hair long, or rolled up her skirts, or walked into Planned Parenthood with her heart in her throat. 

Mom finds her, eventually. It’s hard not to when Yvette made no secret of it and tended to implode her life every six months or so. It was all very dramatic – lots of wet mascara, tears, hands clasped in front of her like she was about to mutter six Hail Mary’s. The last boyfriend – was it Ten, now? Eleven? – finally put his hands on Mom and apparently that was something of a wakeup call. Not Yvette, gone in the night, with their cash and the garage like ground zero. Not all the times the kitchen vibrated like the base of a volcano, seconds from exploding. Still, Yvette opens her door. Mom sleeps on the couch now, goes to work with few words while Yvette sleeps in. They don’t say the M word. They don’t say the F or the H word either. This isn’t home and they aren’t really family. Yvette’s control is thin like fishing line. These days, to be honest, they don’t say much at all.

EXPANDED CONNECTIONS:

Hana Mercado: There is nothing about Yvette and Hana that will ever be calm and peaceful. From their first collision, like flintrock to tinder, Yvette knew she was going to love this stupid bitch forever. They’re like a tanner, taller Team Rocket – or Thelma & Louise, though Yvette doesn’t give herself too much time to contemplate which side of the hero/sidekick coin she falls on between the two of them. The honest to god truth is that there wasn’t much Yvette had before Hana – her mom, maybe, and 20 hours of week at the gas station where she could do fuck all and still get paid for it.  It wasn’t even the power she wanted. She could feel it – maybe, buzzing at the base of her spine, but it wasn’t why, when Hana held their hand out, Yvette took it.

It was balance, restored. Yvette spent her life since eight reaching for it, open hands unmet. She thought she needed quiet, like a vacuum to suck out all the noise and rage vibrating inside her. She was so fucking fixated on it. But a counterbalance can never be empty space. Hana stepped on the other side of the scale – lightning to Yvette’s thunder; there, bright and flashing, for Yvette’s low rumble to follow. And that’s what they are – aren’t they? Storms for girls; blowing through the bay, darkening the sky and roughing up the surf; spitting out dunes like chewed gum.

But Yvette sees the way Hana’s been nudging her, pressing their foot down on Yvette’s side of the scale. They want to cut the wires, watch the clock tick down to zero, and Yvette can’t for the life of her understand why. Her whole life she’s ripped things out from the inside, ruined things to show herself she could; decided it was what she deserved. She doesn’t need Hana to do it for her, too. Yvette knows fully fuckin’ well what she’s capable of – and it scares her. The fear of it chokes her up, mangles her insides until she can’t breathe. The problem is, of course, that it’s Hana. Anyone else Yvette would’ve told to fuck right off by now – and shit, she probably already has. But Hana’s hand in hers is a grounding weight, and even without that she’s at risk of detonation.

EXTRA: 

Headcanons:

-Yvette’s transportation of choice is her mom’s old roller skates that she rehabbed. She’s a frequent loiterer on the counters of her favorite skate shops, juggling wheels or messing with knuts and washes. As a result of both her hobby and general lack of care for her own wellbeing, she’s often sporting bruised knees and hands and a fair amount of road rash.

-As a natural consequence of her lack of experience and control, Yvette has set fire to a number of various buildings and infrastructure, including but not limited to: her mom’s garage, three gas stations, the neighbor’s yard, a playground swingset, herself (once, technically), two jetties, and some of Tatiana’s plants. She’s never been charged with arson.

-She has a habit of laughing in grossly inappropriate situations, and despite literally everything else about her that says otherwise – it’s almost never on purpose. It’s an anxious habit Yvette doesn’t know the origin of or how to stamp it out, but regardless: nervous, angry, scared, or frustrated, Yvette is going to laugh. Probably in your face. She might even feel sorry about it, but usually only if it gets her in trouble ( which, as one might expect, it very often does )

-The quickest way to Yvette’s heart is between her ribs and under her breastbone, but also: vaporwave edits of pop songs, alaskan thunder fuck, sour apple jolly ranchers, holo stickers, Bombay Sapphire gin, karaoke on acid, 80’s night at the roller rink, fresh blackberries, retro movies with running commentary, white samoyeds on walks down the boardwalk, really really dumb fucking puns, and the occasional baseball bat to an old tv screen. 

Character parallels: Amma Crellin ( Sharp Objects ), Effy Stonem ( Skins ), Jules Vaughn ( Euphoria ), Ilyana Rasputina ( X-men ), Amy Elliot Dunne ( Gone Girl ), Lemony Snicket

This is so dumb but I basically see Yvette’s mom as an older Dakota Johnson? But when she was younger she was very much Dakota in A Bigger Splash ( see here ). Alternatively, an older Yvette? 

Playlist / Pinterest / Moodboard

ANYTHING ELSE: 

Magneto did nothing wrong; also,