#I’ve accidentally done that in the hashtags

[angelic-ish-phantom]

Danny is the most responsible and focused of the trio. This is not a good thing.

[authenticbunni]

Mini void state success???

So recently I’ve been trying to go to the void state awake, nothings rlly been happening besides ya know my body being being deeply meditative (yoga nidra). I started thinking why not do it when I’m going to go to sleep, even though I have a hard time focusing I can just count when I start drifting off. That failed. Because my headphones were on the charger beside me and I was too sleepy to get them so I never did.

Today I was gonna wait until I felt sleepy (for a nap). So I was scrolling through the void state hashtag because I was bored, and I came across this post talking about how they’ve been going to the void state every single time but haven’t in the past two days but they realized it’s because they were forcing it, like they were too focused and to controlled to let it happen naturally. And they were talking about daydreaming. So I was like waitttttt, I never thought about this before lemme try 😋!

So I point on my 61 points of yoga nidra guided meditation and after he was doing guiding and was letting the music play, I started affirming “I’m in the void state” after it was done play the let go forced void state subliminal thing started playing and I just started daydreaming. But one thing I observed was when I was trying to force myself to daydream (example; I caught myself focusing on my fan and I made myself think about something else) nothing would really happen, same old same old. But when I would just accidentally/naturally (I wasn’t trying to) daydream I would feel myself going into the void state. Mid way through when I realized that I stopped trying to daydream and just let it come naturally but I was focusing on my fan a lot so I stopped.

This time ima actually do it when I’m sleepy but ima make sure I already have my headphones one 💀

[bmpmp3]

i guess “wobbly” isn’t totally the right way to describe what’s going on with my art, a better descriptor might be a sort of “double vision” created through an inevitability turned into an intentionality

(sorry im very sick rn and my sick brain accidentally wrote some barely readable essay about my own artistic techniques orz under da cut)

i think a large part of the reason i gravitate towards drawing analogue vs digital nowadays (ignoring the fact that i have spatial issues and i can keep track of proportions much easier on paper than on a screen) is that like, at least in my experience (growing up on deviantart LOL) traditional art, while being less popular online (at least, growing up on deviantart it was), also allowed way more room for visual mistakes and imperfections than digital art did. i think sometimes, at least for me, having an undo button ended up putting a weird perfectionism on me instead of being a useful tool orz

YOU MAY have noticed my double/triple lines in my linework, especially in long, uninterrupted lines, that’s what i mean by inevitability turned intentionality: its a sort of “line correction” like one would do when doing a rough sketch except for some ungodly reason i do it during my very permanent inking stage LOL jk jk its actually several very good reasons: you know how many artists find their rough sketches look better than their final linework? part of that is because your eyes bring in all the competing sketchy lines together as one cohesive sort of “vibe” of a line, making it look exactly how your brain thinks it should look to be “correct”

another reason is that, going back to the spatial issues, the dysgraphia is inevitable and i will always end up strange, jerky lines no matter the sketch stage or the ink stage, no matter how careful i am no matter how careless, its something that’s stuck with me for 24 years and i can usually write my b’s and d’s without a reference nowadays (the z’s are still questionable) but it’s always present - SO i’ve found, especially in the past couple years, embracing it is vital

hold on, here’s some examples of my double lines:

THIS drawing around the legs is a REALLY clear example lol

you can see what happened, the red lines are what i attempted to draw first, my dysgraphia then caught up to me half way through bringing in those big wobbles, and then i added the blue lines as a sort of corrective buffer

this one had a LOT, the orange lines were likely what were drawn first. you can kind of tell that i tend to ink from the face first because as i get to the body i get more tired and the more corrective lines need to be drawn LOL

of course there’s exceptions: i think with this girl I hadn’t done any warmup sketching (just drawing vague circles and swirls and lines or maybe a blobby creature doodle LOL) and my hands were hashtag unsteady hjdskfjds

of course when i said inevitiability turned intentionality, i do mean that part of it is done intentionally: on purpose. that’s part of embracing it: it really does just look good and feel good to draw like this. like here i can’t remember or tell which lines were drawn first, i just know it felt right where i placed all my doublelines

i think that’s why i had to stop doing digital art for a while, it tends to not be super conducive to this style of drawing, or at least i haven’t quite gotten the hang of it (despite doing digital art since i was 10 LOL). i remember like 90% of the stuff i would draw digitally, instead of letting my doublelines through i would just ctrl+z and redraw the line 3000000 times until it was “perfect” orz a fools errand that created way more work for myself and was nawt great for my drawing health (both physically and mentally very exhausting). i hope someday i can work out some techniques im happy with that make digital art feel as easy as analogue art has become for me

my chosen medium for colouring in traditonal art also helps i think, i originally gravitated towards watercolour because it was faster and easier on the hands than pencil crayons (especially as a person with this many ocs with black and brown hair LOL my pencil crayons were STUBS while the other colours were nearly untouched) but it also allows for you to get SLOPPY with it LOL painting outside the lines feels SO good and right and not painful WOULD RECOMMEND. plus, i think you can see it in my drawing of Su up there with her brown hair, because to build up deeper colours in watercolour i find it easiest to do it in layers + i cant mimic the brushstrokes very easily, i end up with these sort of simple gradations around all my drawings which i think has a similar i-liked-the-rough-sketch-best effect that the doublelines have, the weird aura tricks the brain into filling in the blanks

of course my lineart style is not super conducive for digital art colouring, paintbucket filling this shit is a NIGHTMARE jkgdfldsjhfkds that’s another thing i gotta do a lot of experimentation with..............

anyway WHAT im trying to say is sometimes the best thing you can do for your art is let your arms draw the way they want to. (also im tricking your eyes into seeing the best version of my art with my fuzzy colouring and double-lined inking. bmpmp3′s trick hee hee)

[renatapatata]

UNUS ANNUS GOODBYE LIVESTREAM HIGHLIGHTS;

(From someone that watched it completely despite completely ruining their sleep schedule as a result,, worth it tho ✌)

They rented and set up an Unus Annus themed room and had a laptop between them to directly check out videos on, as well as a timer on a screen to remind us of their impending doom.

Amy (bless her soul) was the true moderator who from a?? Tech spot above them would speak into her mike like God and direct them to looking at out of context screenshots, memes and fanart from over the past year.

They scrolled through the channel from beginning to end and had the time to watch a dozen of them - particularly like a video from each 'era' ish of the channel, like the first ones or Camp Unus Annus as well as fan/their favorites.

All the editors got shout outs + were probably tasked to make a compilation video of the edits they were individually tasked to do and ended up making just absolute masterpiece tributes 😳

They watched videos such as Mark and Ethan Attempt an Escape Room, DIY Chiropractor, DIY Geriatric Simulator and so on...

Mark had never seen one of their last videos, Ethan Kidnaps Mark, which was the pre 'The Truth of Unus Annus' video and was basically Ethan's version of the Mark's Outside Escape Room from Camp Unus Annus.

DJ Burt Blackarach sent them a cake + bottle of champagne and ☠ y'know Ethan doesn't play with baked goods due to his peanut allergy and Mark cant drink alcohol but they appreciated the sentiment (we all did c'mon it was super sweet)

Mark got the bug watch for Amy that he'd accidentally donated in that early on video with Sean about Donating Toys to Charity!!

They almost killed a video that they found mediocre (but that is actually one of my faves ngl) aka How Much Caffeine Can Kill a Man but at the Last Second they realized that they probs shouldn't get rid of a video beforehand fnfnfn with the reasoning being that it could be someone's birthday video and that it deserved to live till the bitter end (that being of like. 5 extra hours)

There was lots of general shenanigans and ramblings/bits from time to time, with Mark and Ethan being pretty content and ready to say goodbye to the channel.

Oh yeah and then like at 2 hours and a half before it ended Ethan got a live tattoo done of the counted down to 0 timer as Mark failed to be normal around the tattoo artist and 'hAd' to mention the Pee Sauna and Pee Soda to her-

On the subject of tattoos they went through some amazing tattoos that fans had gotten and sent pictures of

Hashtags on Twitter were being flooded, with things such as #Unusannusisoverparty, #WeWereHere, #MarksNewHat - which, yeah Amy got him a top hat and I don't think I've ever seen such pure joy on his face than in that moment.

+++ Amy was wearing an epic suit which was their main aesthetic of half white half black...

Mark reiterates how proud he is of Ethan, of Amy... of the whole team!!! I got emo it was starting to get too real

AND THEN MARK HAD SURPRISE CUSTOM UNUS ANNUS POCKET WATCHES FOR AMY AND ETHAN,,,

So then ya they started getting a bit more speechless/emotional near this bitter end, and at an hour ish left I want to say was when they hit 1 million likes on the stream - and they kept pushing to hit that milestone since if they reached it they would reveal what was inside the coffin...

Plottwist!!! The coffin was empty but they decided to test it out and take turns in it (the material inside was apparently very soft).

So then Ethan gets in the coffin which commences a string of eulogies between em which got me way too emotional and was like a part of the stream that was just Being Brutally Honest With Each Other 2.0.

Mark basically talking about how proud he is of Ethan + how he's excited for his future endeavors and knows that despite the goofy exterior he shows he has such potential and then Eef gets out of the coffin crying which then proceeded to make chat (and me) cry fukcC

Mark gets in the coffin and Ethan talks about how hardworking and no bullshit a person Mark is and how he's learned so much from him and how Mark has never given up on him and his constant presence and support has changed him-

Mark gets out of the coffin crying, they hug it out and ya everyone's crying emotions r healthy gang and damn did we go through a rollercoaster of them...

So I'm weepy and dont necessarily remember exactly what was next, but Amy also got in the coffin which prompted Mark to just go off and give her the most well deserved praise ever since she was the one behind so many of their most creative/cursed ideas and was ghaaa Mark obviously could have talked about her for forever it was super sweet and shes just so deserving of all of that 🥺🥺🥺 gosh we really have her to thank for all the hard work that was put in and resulted in such an amazing payoff...

The last video they watched was The Barrel Song by the way with Schmoyoho, which was weirdly??? Really fitting since it was about saying goodbye and destroying something that you'd become fond of.

Evan then ominously says in response to being offered to get in the cry coffin with like. 5 minutes left on the timer that he totally went in it earlier which was him just politely saying No💖

Oops also forgot to mention but in the last hour they slowly deleted/privated the Instagram, Tumblr, Reddit and Twitter accounts.

And for the ultimate end which wow really came too fast once the numbers dwindled down to 10 minutes left Amy sat in frame in between Mark and Ethan as they clicked the delete channel button and the stream went dead.

[feralsrock]

Hey so if any of you are on Twitter, feel up to it, and (I cannot emphasize this enough) are ADULTS, could you maybe do Chris Evans a favor and take a few minutes to report any tweets you see sharing images of his leaked nudes? Even if you only do it for like 5-10 minutes it can help.

How to report any tweets with the leaked image:

1.) Search ��Chris Evans” and keep a lookout for photos that have a preview that look like this:

(UPDATE) a reply on this post has also suggested searching “Captain America” too since people have apparently been sharing the image there as well

(UPDATE #2) people have been sharing other search terms and hashtags that people have been sharing the leak with in the notes on this post, so make sure to check there for other searches that might need reporting on

You will unfortunately need to full view the image to double-check that it is truly an image with the nude. (Hence why I’ve emphasized that you shouldn’t do this unless you’re an adult and willing to expose yourself to this)

Some people have turned it into a bit of a meme where they replace the nude image with a non-related, benign image, like so (arrows added by me, image via @ mercyxheaven on Twitter just cause it’s the first one I could find):

2.) Tap the little down arrow thing in the top right corner of the tweet (once you’ve confirmed the picture actually contains the nude) and select the “Report Tweet” option.

3.) Follow these next few images which tell you what to select in order to report the tweet properly (the options you need to select have been highlighted in red):

4.) NOW YOURE DONE! You’ve successfully helped slow down the spread of an innocent man’s accidentally leaked nudes. Repeat as many times as you feel is needed/feel emotionally able to handle.

Reblogs are heavily encouraged!

And again, please DO NOT do this if you are a minor. If you stumble across them on accident, then do please report it as best you can, but please do not seek it out (even if you just intend to report any you find).

Also, this shouldn’t need to be said, but just in case, DO NOT SAVE CHRIS EVAN’S NUDES! I DO NOT GIVE A FUCK IF YOU NEVER PLAN TO SHARE IT AND YOU ONLY WANT IT FOR YOURSELF! It was not something he ever meant to share, and thus he did not give consent for you to have that image. That is illegal possession of nonconsensual pornographic images (terminology might not be accurate, but you get what I mean. You keeping those images is ILLEGAL)! DO NOT SAVE CHRIS EVAN’S NUDES IF YOU FIND THEM! REPORT AND MOVE ON!

[imjeralee]

Admirations! Could I get some Raihan and Leon headcanons of an S/O who likes to make love letters and send those letters to them by a Latios? I wanted to imagine their significant other writing them a love letter and asking their latios a favor to send these to them. Would they write back? Would they keep them? How would they respond? There’s a lot of many questions I have about it. Take your time on the request! 💖

Salutations! thanks for the ask, pls see below:

Leon:

Leon and his S/O would be sending frequent correspondence to each other if they were long distance because Latios can fly quicker than a jet. For eg. S/O would be working somewhere in Hoenn for the summer or something.

Due to Leon’s schedule, there is one window of opportunity where he can meet Latios to retrieve your letter and send one back. Charizard will wait with him too because he’s best friends with your Latios

Leon gets so excited whenever he sees the outline of Latios zooming towards him over the horizon of the lush flowers fields of Postwick/Turffield

Latios would stop in front of him with a little messenger bag and once he arrives, stirring up all the flowers in his wake and sending little petals into the air, would greet Leon cheerfully by doing a little circle in the air and making a little happy noise before he scoops out a letter for our Champion

Leon thanks Latios, grins and opens it whilst Charizard does a claw-bump and friendly headbutt with Latios. Without them seeing, Leon would take a quick sniff of the letter and clutch it to his chest with a big grin on his face

His work can be exhausting and nothing makes him smile than seeing Latios with your heartfelt letter to read after a long day of work!

Your letter would be full of your fancy handwriting complete with stickers of Latios including a nice photo of yourself

Leon keeps all your letters in a nice box somewhere. He writes back to every single letter you send him. He writes all his letters on Charizard print paper, envelopes and even includes stickers of Charizard.

His letter would look something like this: “Dear S/O, I hope you are keeping well. This week, Charizard and I had our most exhilarating match at the stadium but at the very last moment, I thought about you and your beautiful smile and I experienced a powerful surge of strength within me that I had never felt before that enabled me to emerge victorious. I could not have done it without you even though you are not by my side right now, but my love for you keeps you near whenever we are apart. You are the greatest thing to have happened to me, the greatest treasure that life could have given me. I love you from the bottom of my heart and soul and I will cherish you for the rest of my life. I pray to Arceus for your safety every day and cannot wait for the day that we meet again. Love, Leon”

Raihan:

Everyone’s using Rotom message these days so he doesn’t quite understand the appeal of sending love letters via pokemon but he likes the sentiment it carries and also it’s mail by Latios, man

Raihan loves dragon types, especially legendary dragons and knowing that his S/O has one is like the biggest flex

Surprisingly, he can be more eloquent with letters than messages on phone, maybe because he realizes written correspondence actually demands more time and handiwork and needs him to sit down somewhere

Raihan’s handwriting will be a bit choppy and rugged. He will just write a love letter on normal A4 lined paper but will pen in some doodles of Duraludon and his other pokemon for you.

He will also include some photos from his social media or random photoshoots (signed) for laughs

He accidentally wrote a hashtag at the bottom of the letter before scoring it out

He’ll get so happy whenever Latios arrives to meet at the top of the castle walls of Hammerlocke; he will take a selfie with your pokemon and send it to you to confirm he got your letter

Raihan would sometimes forget to write back though and just send you a text message instead. That being said, he may or may not have lost a letter or so in the process.

His letters can be short though and more day-to-day; it may look something along like this: “Hey princess/baby, how are you? You okay? The gym’s getting busy and the gym challengers are getting stronger so I’ve been training a lot recently but at the end of the day I always think about you and what you might be up to. I miss those times when we hung out together, like when we went to Hammerlocke Café and the cinema hehe. Duraludon is getting hungry, I gotta go now. Take care babe. Love you lots, xxxx.”

[sunrisetune]

Concept that I haven’t made an actual-actual thing of and probably won’t, but has arrived in my thoughts in a lot of detail anyway, Pt. 36*: (*No it isn’t, it’s the first and only iteration of this fic, but exaggerating the number of times I’ve written down is funny)

Dragon Age II “Accidental baby acquisition” fic, but the baby is a dragon

(Hashtag #Gen or any pairing, Bittersweet Ending, rated T for gore and fantasy violence,, Dragons)

-Sometime between act II and III, they hear a weird cry in the woods up by the Bone Pit and it turns out it’s a baby dragon that’s gotten its wing run through by a tree branch. It’s really very small, even smaller than the dragonlings who regularly try to eat them -And, listen, it’s been a long day. There’s been a lot of death. Hawke and co. are tired. There’s a 85% chance Merrill has cried a little on the way back and everyone’s done their best not to draw attention to it. And so at first Hawke’s like “Varric can you knock it out?“ and Varric does so, and is about to like, double tap but lethally before Hawke is like “Wait.” She heals its wing “so at least it has a chance”, then leaves with everyone in tow.

-Too Bad Dragons Have An Imprinting Reflex

--The dragon shows up at their campsite and wakes everyone up by rolling in the fire, before sort of cowering when Hawke stumbles out of her tent -The group recognizes her by the scar on her wing-- Hawke can heal without scarring, she’s a spirit healer after all, but damn it she’s doctor not a fantasy veterinarian, and they’d been short on time; plus, dragons are inherently pretty magic so it’d been weird trying to circumvent that-- but it is clear that she’s the same dragon -Overall everyone is baffled when she only crouches down and looks up at Hawke with big eyes, instead of attacking or running away

    --It becomes clear that the baby has imprinted on Hawke, specifically, and follows her outside the city wherever she goes

--She is at least as smart as a mabari, and is sort of trained to only attack people Hawke is attacking; or rather, she does attack people Hawke is attacking, and then Hawke’s like “Only These Ones though okay?” and like, bonks Baby on the nose with her staff when she starts growling at the others

--At first Hawke’s a little worried about the conspicuousness of a Fucking Dragon following them around, but 1. she’s only a little dragon (at first), 2. Varric tells everyone about it, immediately, thus ensuring no one believes it’s true, and 3. Baby still was raised partly by her mother and has fairly strong instincts with re: hiding, hunting (non-sentient species), digging, etc, so on her own devices she is both healthy and hard to find

 --Everyone else is sort of a mixed bag about it: -Varric is equal parts disbelieving of this weirdness and finding it hilarious; -Isabela coos over her and makes jokes about Hawke’s “”animalistic attraction””; -Merrill is thrilled; -Aveline is steadily disapproving of Hawke not killing it to begin with bc they’re a danger to cities, but she doesn’t disagree of Hawke checking on Baby whenever she’s up there, and when in the group will occasionally sneak her treats when she thinks no one is looking; -Anders doesn’t trust the dragon At All and insists on treating her like, at best, a not particularly smart dog. (Varric teases him that he’s just jealous); -Hawke’s mabari, relatedly, has like, Conflicted Dog Feelings; on one paw, big friend, but on the other paw, Mother not giving Dog her full attention?? Illegal???; -They collectively agree not to tell Sebastian; -Fenris is “a healthy amount of skeptical” but doesn’t overly object, esp. with the additional help of slaver murdering

         ---At one point Baby like, flies down to their campsite, walks up to Fenris, and deposits a very dead but only slightly devoured slaver body (Blind Man logo painted on their armour) on the ground at his feet, and then sits in front of him like a proud cat. It’s worth noting she is As Tall as him on her haunches at this point and also still has blood all over her snout. He’s like, “........................... thank you.”

-The most significant problem arises in Act III, with the mine massacre

-At first when Hawke gets there, she’s afraid that it was partially Baby’s doing, until one of the others points out that the damage from claws / one blow of breath was too severe to be from something Baby’s size Which is both relieving and signifiying a bigger problem

-They follow the trail of wreckage and bones into the valley to find the Bigger Problem

--At first the fight goes normally, but in the second wave or so of the High Dragon attacking,, Baby wings her way in and circles the group for a second, flapping to a stop midair as she looks from Hawke’s group to-- Hawke is now realizing--- her grandmother -Hawke yells at her to leave; whether or not Baby hears is up for debate

--After some uncertainty, it looks like she might finally turn away,, but instead as the grandmother rears back she flies down and plants herself in front of Hawke’s group, blocking them with her wings, and then screeches up at the other dragon    ----It doesn’t sound like a challenge; more like a plea? -The high dragon pauses,, her nostrils flaring and her front claws still in the air, and snarls something back --Baby cowers a little but responds again, and doesn’t move --The high dragon goes on all four feet again with a Genuinely Earthquake-like thud, and circles around to Hawke’s other side slowly, her neck low to the ground so they’re effectively eye to eye. --There is one, (1),, opportunity for a dialogue; her oldest remaining granddaughter has spoken out to defend this strange group, and she’d learn why. The high dragon is waiting.

--Hawke’s ordered everyone not to move; so they Stay Put  (remember when that used to happen  /jk) ----If the sarcastic or aggressive option is taken, canon follows its course, and it’s a fight to the death     ----However, if Hawke chooses the Diplomatic check, she talks territory and important groups: about the place above her being important because her people are there, and she doesn’t want to kill just for sport, but her people need to be defended and she will to fight to do so. --After a long moment, the grandmother heaves herself into the sky and leaves -All her remaining children follow with her, scrambling along paths over the mountains around the pit. (A group dragonlings is called either a thunder or a retreat)

    -But Baby has to stay behind -She and ends up calling after Grandmother, who bays something back but is already far away --She pauses for a moment, staring down at the mess of dead dragonlings from the first wave, but when Hawke tries to talk to her she turns away and takes a running flap into the cave on the far side of the little valley --Hawke and friends go back to the city to deal with Hubert,, taking the “the workers own this company now, Bye” route from the cut content bc I like it,, but after a few days they try to come check on her and it turns out she hasn’t left the cave yet     ---The cave which is, predictably, full of gigantic spiders, but eventually they find her in the back of it. She’s okay, just like. Sitting in the dark, alone, curled up by the nest where her hundred little siblings had hatched and grown.

-For a while after that they just let her be; there’s a lot of shit going on in Kirkwall that needs attending to, anyway

-The next time she shows up is when Hawke and friends are on the way to Sundermont (hopefully before the incident with Pride) -She flies down gives Hawke some stuff she’d scrounged up from Grandmother’s horde, and then nudges her; there’s a moment where they all kind of reckon with How Big She Is Now, and it’s implied that she’s finally going to fledge (if you will)    -She cuddles (cuddles!) Hawke, snoutbutts Fenris and Aveline, and Hawke’s mabari paws at her face in a friendly way and licks her nose (which they regret bc dragons, unlike sharks, are not smooth)

-Then she flies away, in the opposite direction than the others had, above the smoke of the foundries -Kirkwall freaks out about it and her shadow’s sighting gets gossip milled Immediately, but half of the city brushes it off by the next mornings’ news pamphlets as just stress, and / or heavy clouds mixing with the ashes to make strange shapes -The other half thinks of it as an omen of more bad things to come

-EXIT ALL

Thank you for your time, tip your waitstaff

[thefirstknife]

you have a personal vendetta against other blogs bc you keep tagging them asking why they're not talking about this or that issue. essentially, you're policing them about what they should or shouldn't post about. for the record, this isn't a jem defense ask, and you dismissing criticism about your behavior by saying "you sound like someone who only reads jem's blog" is incredibly disrespectful yikes.

I only ever tagged Jem, once. I replied once before to an already existing post, but that's about it. No clue which other blogs you're talking about as being tagged out of the blue by me.

I wondered about Jem in particular because she vagued about the drama and called everyone performative activists who are dogpiling an artist for woke points and I found that very strange because I've seen Jem telling people they're ableist and sexist if they're talking about a theory about Osiris.

No idea how to make this as clear as possible, but I'll give it a try, under the cut because long:

Jem said that certain fandom behaviour is ableist and sexist, which means that Jem understands that fandom behaviour about certain characters can be harmful. She posted about this, called people out as being sexist and ableist and also noted that if Bungie goes with that theory, she will support dogpiling the devs about being sexist and ableist.

Yesterday we discovered whitewashed art and pointed it out, but there's been an incredible amount of backlash saying we're all armchair activists posting for woke points by calling out whitewashing.

What's the difference? Why is Jem acting like her takes are legitimate activism, but other takes are just "hashtage woke"? Why is calling out whitewashing not a legitimate fandom issue to her?

Whitewashing is a legitimate issue in fandom and online spaces in general. It should be pointed out. It should also be noted that it can happen accidentally and that we should give the artist the benefit of the doubt to fix the mistake. Which I've done and I'm still willing to do.

You're absolutely only taking this from Jem's side and her post, which she thought I wouldn't be able to see due to me being blocked, but I can see it. Which is why I can tell that you're coming from her post.

This incident is documented here. As stated, Jem used a derogatory term. Jem was notified about using a derogatory term by another user, she DELETED their warning and made a separate post to apologise for using a derogatory term. I find that pretty hashtag woke (to use Jem's terminology) to appear better in other people's eyes instead of replying directly to the user who pointed a derogatory term out and apologising directly.

Pot calling the kettle black (instead I do actually apologise to people directly, I don't delete their replies to make myself look better). I'm glad she apologised for using the term, that's good no matter what and I respect it. I don't respect framing the apology in this way. I don't respect deleting a comment from the person who pointed the derogatory term out, ignoring that person and making a separate post without crediting someone who called you out.

It doesn't help that the same person is the one who pointed out whitewashing and has been getting transphobic attacks from the very people who are reblogging and supporting Jem's post. Basically, Jem evidently does not want to be called out on her mistakes and does not want to acknowledge them.

I also want to address the following:

Nice gatekeeping language with the "ever since you got here." It seems to me that before I got here, some people in the fandom were never challenged on their posts, or they were and they were promptly dogpiled and blocked. Since the incident I linked above, numerous people came out and said that Jem has been a menace in the Destiny community for a very long time.

I am so eager to find out which blogs I've been digging through looking for dirt and ripping out context. Because the only ones I've ever addressed are people are actively engaging in bigotry in the fandom. Bigotry that makes other people unwilling to engage with the fandom, talk and socialise. Bigotry is making the fandom space unsafe for a large amount of marginalised groups in our community. I will KEEP pointing out bigotry in the fandom. I don't even have to dig, because some people in the fandom keep their dirt on the surface, but if I have to dig to prove that there's bigoted ulterior motives, I will.

I want marginalised groups and minors to feel safe in the community. I want bigots to feel unsafe. Not the other way around. Call it performative all you want.

Already addressed this pile of crap. Jem swung here but ultimately missed by a mile. She gave it a try, but unfortunately she doesn't really understand these things very well, which isn't a surprise considering she picks which battles to take by throwing darts on a board and considering she doesn't care who supports her as long as it's support. Post where I explain mentioning anxiety and original post where I mention it. Please try to read through these on your own and engage critical thinking and then compare it to whatever the hell Jem has going on in this paragraph.

The only liar and truth-twister here is Jem. And according to other people in the community, it's nothing new.

Since people aren't clicking links: I got anon hate telling me to do real life activism instead of posting on my Destiny blog. I explained that this is a tumblr blog about Destiny so you can't tell whether or not I'm doing real life activism based on my tumblr blog. I jokingly added that due to having anxiety, I am capable of caring about multiple issues at once. I did not use it as an excuse in any capacity, but Jem has nothing else to attack me for so she had to scrap the bottom of the barrel to find something.

Please read something other than her horrid takes.

Another tragic miss from Jem, who has worse accuracy than me in Trials. I have so many friends to vent to and I've been venting to them this entire time. They're all sending their regards.

This is like a billionth time that I'm saying that I don't support anon hate and that I do not have physical control over other people's devices and tumblr blogs so I can't stop them from sending anon hate. I said it multiple times: don't send anon hate in my name.

I am not sure how Jem wants me to enforce this. But I also received anon hate and so have other people who participated in this discourse so, pot kettle.

Jem is heavily projecting her own reasons for causing drama and thinks that everyone does it for the same reasons as she does. Weird slip.

Anyway, you can tell Jem that I've seen it and that I say: Bye!

[nightswithkookmin]

I loveeeee the way ur brain works and i like all ur posts and love reading them. Its Jimin day today and i wont lie that i am feeling a bit sad about whole JK not posting on JM bday because he was getting active on Social media again and i thought its because of JM bday coming soon but i hope they are happy and JM had a blast celebrating his bday.. it annoys me how other ship( u know which ship) is happy and making fun about this situation and calling Jikook bond fake and nonexsistant. 1/2

Ahhhhhh this topic!

Also me:

Packing my bags off these shipping streets. Jk don disgrace us. Lol. Kidding. If more than anything today has solidified my faith in JK and Jikook and while y'all are jumping ship imma hold the fort. Hashtag Jikook for life!

I've been receiving a lot of questions about this, about JK not posting for JM's birthday and I haven't answered any of them because- well I passed out. So...

Anywho,

Jk didn't post true, but have you thought about what it would have meant for him and JM if he had posted?

Now I see a lot of people running through the ship streets shouting Jikook broke up, something was off between them, Jikook was never real, jikook this- Jikook that- y'all need to calm your horses or I swear to God!

I mean I am down for all that wild gossip and angst but I think y'all is tripping.

Do I think they are in a bad place, HELL NO. Do I think they are not real? HELL NO! Do I think JK don lost his minds? ABSOLUTELY.

Lol

No but seriously, I'm fascinated by all of this. I'm in pain, can't process shit but when it comes to Jikook I'm always intrigued and fascinated by them.

I'm mostly fascinated by why JK pulled a 5/8, geared up for JM's birthday but then posts crickets on Jimin's birthday as you've said.

Is it me or does this whole thing feel like the tattoo girl scandal all over again? Lmho.

Up until now, I've avoided addressing Asks about Jikook coming out, JK proposing and stuff like that because those territories are a bit tricky for me- to speculate on those, I find I'd have to speculate on whether marriage is something both of Jikook want, whether both of Jikook want to come out but these are conversations I don't think y'all are ready for with me.

Not when I believe one of them, if you've been following my train of thoughts you'd know which, is not ready to make such commitments, joking about marriage and shit- yes, that tiny man. Lol.

I mean the backlash I get for the tamer things I share on here- chilee, y'all is about to eat me up for this. Here goes nothing. Mama pray for me.

I have said, late 2018 to the middle of 2019 is one of the moments I sincerely felt JK was going to 'out' Jikook just based on the way he was moving through that era until that impromptu hiatus and the following scandal.

Out Jikook as in OUT Jikook- I've told y'all Jikook have been asserting themselves against eachother. JK has been asserting himself and part of that self assertion ties in with his sexuality. He is tired of hiding. He's been tired since 2016- trouble this one.

Do I think JM is ready to come out- No. He doesn't want to come out but he doesn't want to hide hide either. Dude just want to stay in that glass closet.

Throughout my posts, I've speculated this has been a huge part of their on and off dynamics since November last year. Jk coming off too strong, JM asking for space- yall know don't make me repeat myself.

November 2019 up until today is also one such periods I felt JK was going to out Jikook, inspite of all the ups and downs they've experienced this season.

JK scares me to be honest with you. I keep saying people are looking at him wrong. Hell, people are looking at Jikook dynamics wrong I feel.

All the times Jikook have almost been accidentally outed, who's been the most terrified? It's not JK.

Jimin's face when RM said JK sneaks into JM's bed at night, his face when they walked into JK's room on Bon V and saw the cameras. I have an entire dissertation on this on my wall please get with it. Lol

Whatever silent protest JK's been on since JM's birthday last year- Not gonna lie, I felt JK was not posting for the others so he could post on JM's birthday this year as a way of coming out with him? You know, make a bold statement like he's done over the years? I'm delusional but also dead serious.

Each time I feel JK's come close to this pivotal moment, something's happened. I swear Jikook is taking years off my life- I'm exhausted.

Why is he trying to out their relationship on his own and not do that with the consent of Jimin? I'm gonna pray to God, y'all can read my mind with everything I have been saying since my posts because this is cutting it too close for me- and I'm exhausted so maybe another post next time.

Like I've said, I really believe they are in a good place this time around. Y'all know me, I don't shy from angst, I'd say if I felt there's been something off with them since they fixed whatever they were going through early half of the year.

The only tension I've sensed between them lately was on day two of the online concert when JM got a little too excited with trying to sell the sexual tension fantasy in his other ships and JK didn't look like he was happy about.

Later during the curtain call you could see dude cold stoning JM resulting in JM doing what he does best in such instances- clinging on to JK for their life. Lol.

He vanished from Namjoon's side real quick to take the bow next to JK but JK- Y'all check that moment out for yourself, see what I'm talking about.

Is that why he didn't wish Jimin a happy birthday? I don't think so. I think he put a lot of thought and preparation towards this moment to make something like this undo all of that- that is if my suspicions about what he was trying to do this year is right.

Jimin gone wake up married one of these days he won't know what hit him! Lmho.

It is why, I don't buy this whole he didn't post for the others which is why he didn't post for Jimin narrative. When have you known Jk to care about things like these?

The man literally got a birthday present for Jimin gave it to him in the presence of some of the members without doing same for them. Singling JM out like this is nothing new to him. He has done so consistently over the years to let this deter him.

The question y'all should be asking is why he didn't post for the others in the first place. They are all friends and posting for eachother's birthdays is a long standing tradition in BTS so why is he breaking from this culture all of a sudden?

Is he rebelling? Is he protesting? What is he trying to do? Right?

This moment has been building up since last year after JM's birthday and I honestly believed he was going to go through with it- hell I bought a wedding dress and shit- Jikook you son of bish!

I have said the company is giving them much room to be themselves, RM isn't breathing down their necks, JM looked like he was finally committed- everything looked great between them in my opinion except perhaps for the growing tensions between JK, V and Namjoon- If you've been paying any attention to their recent Twitter war.

I hate speculating based on nothing, so I'm just going to point out to you my observations without drawing conclusions- I'll share my thoughts on what these moments means when I've had more content to peruse and analyze from now- but for now you can make of it what you will:

1. JK starts a count down on Twitter, JM responds and continues the countdown.

Now I clocked, the moment JK posted this on the 5th that he had something up his sleeves with regards to Jimin which I shared with y'all. He was going for a 5/8/13 it's not news now.

2. After Jimin posts day 4 for the countdown, who ever was going to post after him was going to have to post day 3 to continue the countdown right? But Tae posts a V-cut instead breaking that chain.

Now I remember joking about this moment with a friend, rolling my eyes exclaiming, here they go again! V is trying to sabotage JK yet again, and he'd turn around and ask why their friendship is dwindling. The pettiness and passive aggressiveness of it all!

That moment reminded me of when he called JK out for attempting to eyefuck JM through the viewfinder in the Dynamite MV reaction video. Remember that? Same energy to me.

They do shit like this and their shippers will not take note but will turn around and act surprised when we say Taekook ain't all that- rolling my eyes.

3. Hobi continues the countdown with day 3 and RM posts something random the next day but I think it was to neutralize the Taekook shenanigans. Neutralizing is what RM does best- we been knew.

4. Jk posts his Savage Love cover on the 8th and equally doesn't partake in the countdown he himself initiated because- Savage.

5. Suga posts day 2. RM and Jin posts day 1 and Tae posts D-Day on the D day to promote the concert. Yadda yadda yadda.

Now I didn't think much of this moment to be honest- i merely took a mental note of it for future reference, and was paying close attention to their interactions at the concert- which we will talk about soon..

I didn't make much of this bit until VJoonKook became a hold out on Jimin's birthday. They were the last three to post, two of whom ended up not posting at all for Jimin"s birthday- fucking traitors.

It was at this point I felt compelled to put on my tinfoil hat. And reevaluate the situation.

Why were these three people the same trio engaged in that little squabble just a few days ago on the timeline? I wondered.

It felt as if Taekook were engaged in a Russian Roulette racing the clock while Joonie stood by waiting to neutralize whatever shit those two were going to pull on the timeline.

Call me delusional but I felt JK was going to post, Tae was going to try to one up him with a ridiculous post or counter his post- V and his fucking VMin agenda! Lmho

RM was going to end up mirroring whatever JK was going to post to neutralize it as per usual- leave me alone. I said I'm delusional. Let me be. Lol.

There's just a lot going on all at once and it's easy to lose sight of subtle moments like these when they happen.

Like Jimin saying he would be on VLive soon, which first of all- yay!

Y'all know I've been keeping my eyes on the app, most especially how the members are going to use it post IPO, post Soop- I have a lot of questions; will they be monitored like they were in May? Will they be able to have intimate interactions with the fans like before?

Y'all know my theory about Jikook and the VLive stuff so I'll leave it there.

Now as for what this moment here means, I think it's a humbling experience for all of us but mostly for Jimin-JK you sonova bish! Lol

Jimin is the one who loves to flex his bond and relationship with JK, he loves to show off their relationship. He is the one who's been called all sorts of names under the sun just because of his relationship with JK- even if they are friends.

None of the members have suffered and paid a price for their relationship with JK the way Jimin has throughout the years. It is why I hate it when people compare the others to him. Even if it placates you and lessens your insecurities please don't.

I'm not pressed about no ship wars. Hell, I often start one myself- what? fun.

I'm worried for Jimin mostly.

I think JK more than anyone knows how this looks. Which is why I really don't think this is what he was aiming for all along. To make Jimin look this way- again not to say JM is better than the others he didn't post for.

I don't know what's going on with JK now but I am not about to tell you this moment is nothing. It is not nothing.

I know people want to console themselves with the whole my partner don't gotta show off on social media on my birthday to show he loves me- please shut up. Or may be don't. Y'all con shippers confound me.

This is Jikook here, showing is an integral part of their dynamics. Isn't that why people call them a fanservice ship? Because they show so much? Because they do so much?

Jikook like to show off their bond, they like claiming eachother, they like reassuring eachother and I'm sorry but Park Jimin's father set such high standards for his son's birthday for anyone who claim they love him to pull stunts like this. Do y'all know Jikook at all?! I have to ask.

Jimin loves to be treated like he is different and special. It's his love language. We know this, BTS knows this, JK knows this- don't make excuses for JK if at the very least you can't see what he was trying to do here.

Even if you don't think they are a couple they are best friends- at the bare minimum. It doesn't take more than a few seconds to login and wish a friend a happy birthday- Hobi made four and he is not dating Jimin. Just saying.

You can't yell Jikook show us a lot hence there's no need for wild theories and assumptions and bully people who come up with wild theories and then in the same breath say they don't have to openly show us they care about eachother for them to be real- Y'all are going to ship by faith now? Chileee.

I have said JK likes to retract and conceal and only shows what he chooses to show and this was his choice. It's as simple as that. He chose not to post.

He didn't do it because of no damn other members.

He occupies a huge space in JMs life to not know what this moment says about him and his highly publicized relationship with Jimin- chileee, whatever did park Jimin do to you, JK?! Jesus Christ!

Havent heard of a betrayal this grand since the birth of Judas Iscariot- Judas is that you? Lmho.

I joke but I don't find this funny at all. Bless them.

It's one thing to not post for the others, but it's different for Jimin. And this is not to say the others don't matter to JK, they do. He's called them all family but then again he hasn't placed any one of them on a pedestal the way he's placed Jimin on a pedestal now has he? So we cannot assume Jimin means the same to him as the others mean to him.

Isn't that why we ship them?

Personally, I'm hurt by all of this. It hurts me that some people are going to use this as an excuse to tease and bully Jimin, call him a liar, call into question the years of friendship between Jikook, call into question any future interactions between them- I don cried my eyes out all day for Jimin but also for JK.

It hurts that I have to defend JK and Jikook to anyone. The task wasn't easy before all of this- not that anybody sent me. Who died and made me their spokesperson. Chileee

But please let's not dismiss this moment or belittle it. It's monumental- to me anyway.

JK was on to something I'm just curious to know what stopped him this time around. I want to know if he plans on not posting at all for anyone in the future. How long is he going to keep at it?

He's tried to out them twice. Will he do it again? How is he going to do it? What is Jimin going to do if indeed this is what JK had been planning, how is this going to affect their dynamics- I'm excited for their journey however it goes.

It's their journey unauthored. I'm just here to observe and report- and may uWu while I'm at it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, we gotta ask ourselves, had JK posted anything at all today knowing full well he hasn't posted at all for anyone in the group all year, that what would that have meant for their relationship? What message would that have sent?

While we lament about this moment, let's also take a minute to ponder over what this moment might have signified if JK had actually posted.

Everything he did in the days leading up to Jimin's birthday pointed to the fact he was definitely going to post. To me it felt he was gonna come out. He was. And if he had done it- my god!

JK isn't my favorite person right about now. He can go ahead and step on leggos. No kithes for him🙄

But I have faith in him. Always. He's consistently shown and proven his love and loyalty for Jimin through out the years. You don't nibble on a man's ear in front of sixty thousand people, to find posting a simple message on his birthday tedious. This is Jikook. If it feels wrong, it is wrong.

I wish I could tell yall, this moment means nothing, that JK not posting is not a big deal but I can't. This moment is everything.

Signed,

GOLDY

[smartguy18]

Operation: Gather and Collect

Greetings fellow pokeblogs...

It is come to my attention that the blog ask-another-clone isn’t appear anymore... Why? Because the mod accidentally deleted the blog while they trying to delete one of their side blog. The mod already contacted tumblr support but unfortunately, they cannot recover the account...

So here’s my idea, why don’t we help them by collecting all of their posts under a hashtag? That way, if they decided to set up a new blog, they can just reblog it to the new blog. If you guys had interacted, received or send asks, reblog or liked their post before, please put them under the tag “#ask-another-clone”

Or if you guys wanna take a step further, copy all of the texts and pictures and paste it in one file. Then send the file to them if they wanna reopen the blog in the future. I’ll do both of these in order to preserve the contents.

I hope that I’ve done the right thing cause the last thing I wanna do is to make the mod upset. I just want to help them to get back on the track...

I hope you guys will join in to help preserve all of the contents that had been posted here. I really love the blog and it is sad to see it is gone for good. 

@pokecommunityevents @pokeasksending

P/s: I honestly dunno how many blogs have been interacted with the said blog before. Please spread this post as much as you can. 

[misssophiachase]

Putting this here just in case: Celebrity Klaroline, they are co-stars on a super popular show and have been secretly dating for years. They decide to reveal to the public that they are engaged via an Instagram-live during quarantine.

Thank you, luv, this one is so much fun and reminds me of Bob and Eliza my  Bellarke babies : ) So, they are my inspiration. I hope you like it, it got a bit longer than I’d envisaged. 

Do You Want to Know a Secret?

“So, let me get this straight,” she began. “You’re going to announce your engagement via Instagram Live?”

“Didn’t we just say that?” 

“I was repeating myself to emphasise my point not because I didn’t hear you,” Rebekah growled, looking between them. Even via Skype she still had that scary ‘don’t mess with me’ demeanour. “Last time I checked I was your publicist and it’s my job to tell you when you are doing something stupid, today is case in point.”

“And while we appreciate the, uh, services you provide, little sister,” Klaus mumbled. “It really is up to us how we let people know about the engagement.”

“You’ve been secretly dating for years, not one paparazzi shot, not one late-night TMZ ambush, not one Perez Hilton catty headline, not one on-set insider account, not one secret, comic con moment, not…”

“We get the picture, Rebekah,” Caroline interrupted. “We’re stealth as Kol would say.”

“Did he put you up to this? Because on further reflection it seems like one of his immature, ill-conceived ideas.”

“I’ll tell him you send your love, Rebekah,” Klaus teased thinking about his little brother and manager.

Klaus Mikaelson and Caroline Forbes were co-stars of the most popular sci-fi drama on television. Their characters were engaged in an on-again-off-again romance but what the public didn’t know was their favourite on-screen couple were off-screen as well. 

Not that it had started out that way, in fact it was more adversarial

2 years earlier…

“You did not just kick me there!” He growled, rolling around on the floor in pain. The director had just called ‘cut’ and the series leads were fighting, yet again.

The tension between them had been present from the first audition and the producers thought it was exactly what they needed in their two leads Cole Hamilton and Riley James.

As predicted, there was fireworks on-screen but off-screen was another story. The tension bubbling below the surface was threatening to boil over. The cast and crew were taking bets on when they were going to finally relieve the tension.  

“Like I meant to,” Caroline replied, the slight smile tugging at the end of her lips was telling him otherwise.

“Maybe we should get you a stunt person if you’re going to be such a danger on-set, love?” He insisted, eventually standing up fully recovered.

“Maybe we should get you one of those protective cups for your privates, you know just in case the stunt person accidentally does the same?”  

Their mouths were now within inches of each other, their intense gaze showing no signs of faltering.

As it turned out the tension did boil over in her trailer later that day. Bets were won and the couple found ways to relieve the tension, first as a physical arrangement but then they went and fell in love.  

“Keeping our relationship out of the public eye has been amazing because we’ve been able to do things at our pace without any intrusion from the media, but it has also been the most difficult experience,” Caroline explained. “There’s only so many years of Uber Eats and Netflix I can handle.”

“Don’t forget the chill part, love,” Klaus murmured in her ear.

“Way to put me off my breakfast! Even I can hear you, Niklaus,” the familiar sound of his brother-in-law came over the speaker. 

“Well Lorenzo, maybe you two should go and do that and we can….”

“Why can’t you just put up a cute picture and caption it with a ring emoji? I know it has all been done before but…”

“Everyone is doing Instagram Live, especially during the pandemic.”

“So if they all jumped off a bridge would you do that too, Niklaus? Also, don’t forget I have your Instagram password, Nik.”

“Unbelievable! How did you…” he trailed off before Caroline intervened. 

“You don’t know mine. Look, Rebekah, we appreciate your concern but it’s time to go public. And what better time than during a world crisis? If you ask me people need some good news, now more than ever.”

“Fine, I don’t agree but if you’re going to do this you realise there’s no way to control things once you start? People will be going crazy, more so since they’ve been cooped up in isolation and had no idea you were dating let alone engaged.”  

Two hours later

“We ready to do this?” She smiled, placing her hand on his. Yes, it was a completely unusual way to announce their engagement, let alone their secret relationship.

“As much as I’ve loved having this time to get to know you,” he murmured. “I’m excited for this next stage in our lives.”

“I know, it will be nice not to have to sneak around anymore,” she shared. “Although, I’m not looking forward to the hate I’ll get from all your female fans upset you’re off the market.”

“You’re worried about my fans, yours are absolutely rabid, love.”

“Well, at least we have the Ciley fandom,” he chuckled. “What do you think they’ll call our real-life ship?”

“The fact you’re asking that means you have been cooped up in quarantine too long,” she teased.

5 minutes later

Before they’d even started to speak the love hearts were flowing in a bright array of colour and the comments began and not just a couple, thousands within the first couple of minutes.

Turns out their fans didn’t need any words to work out what was happening given their steady stream of comments.  

“Some of you might be wondering…oh looks like many of you have come to that conclusion already given the comment from @mark91,” Klaus began, “And yes, agreed, I’m a lucky dog.”

“What he’s trying to say is that…oh @jazzy39 glad you like my sweater. But…”

“I’m sorry @rayna001 but yes I’m taken,” Klaus read, a  slight chuckle escaping his lips. “Funny you should mention that actually..”

“We wanted to announce that oh @arabella5700 looks like we don’t need to do that anymore.”

They looked at each other briefly before realising their news wasn’t really theirs anymore.

“Yes, we’re engaged,” Caroline murmured feebly, holding up her left hand which keen-eyed fans had already spotted within the first 30 seconds.

“And what better way to announce it than with out fans,” Klaus smiled. “Now, if only we had our own ship name…”

“Looks like @hermione1992 has already offered an option,” Caroline interrupted. “Klaroline, mmm interesting. What do you all think of that?”

After they’d fumbled through quite a few more questions, including what her dress was going to look like and if her co-stars Katherine Pierce and Bonnie Bennett would be bridesmaids, they finished the live stream.

“OMG,” Caroline moaned, flopping onto the couch next to him. “I’m exhausted.”

“It’s like the banks of the dam have given way and…”

“All those questions, it’s like two years worth of them all stored up,” Caroline murmured. “Your sexual prowess was one of my personal favourites.”

“Which you didn’t answer,” he pouted. “People out there are going to think I’m bad.”

“Yeah, because I was going to go into that on an Instagram Live,” she muttered. “I’m sure the parents of our younger fans would love that.”

“And after all that we didn’t get to make our own announcement,” he complained. “They are an observant bunch.”

“Well, give we’re all supposed to be in lock-down I imagine us being in the same place was a dead giveaway. We are now officially hashtag klaroline though,” she giggled. “It kind of has a nice ring to it.”

His phone beeped signalling a new message, Klaus didn’t have to be a genius to realise exactly who it would be. He picked it up lazily and consulted the screen.

“So, how did that go for you?”

“She’s never going to let us live that one down,” Klaus groaned.  

[doodleniella]

My seventh DTIYS entry for 2020 feat. @auxueyi on Instagram, DONE!!! This is, like, the first time I’ve all-out’d while making this, especially in shading her skin via ibisPaint (=´∀｀)

Ah, yes. I forgot to add the taiyaki’s gills on the trad version sorry qwq

Also, I made another mistake regarding the hashtag used—instead of #auxueyi550, I always go by #auxueyi500 as was evident on the trad version (accidentally “losing” 50 of her IG followers)! I humbly apologize for the error... qwq

Mongol no.1, gel pen + fccp, ibisPaint. RIP black fccp (well, close enough tho)

For More, See Also: Ella’s Masterlist

[mayatheamazon]

ur a bad bitch orc legend pls consider sharing ur routine w us

Aw thank you man 🤘🏽😭 ugh I’m so happy rn 💕💖

so I actually made a master post on my fitness IG @mayathefutureamazon (same name as this tumblr) that shows how I eat, what I do in general, and some cool exercises I do WITHOUT A GYM and WITHOUT EQUIPMENT!!!

Take a read if you...

• Are new to a fitness/ diet plan and don’t know where to start

• Need exercise ideas because gyms are closed

• Feel like quarantine is making it very difficult to even make a routine

• Want a post that’s as one-size-fite-all as it gets from someone who isn’t a licensed dietician or trainer lmao these are my personal tips and I feel like these are general guidelines

• Are intimidated by this fitness thing a lil! It’s okay :)

💪🏿(Link to the post is down at the bottom as well if the hyperlink doesn’t work so you can click and have a look).

💪🏾Of course I use hella free weights and machines at the gym alone and sometimes with a spotter, and used to go everyday before lockdown. But now that all the gyms I went to are shut down for a bit I improvise, adapt, and overcome to get this done.

💪🏽Protein shakes/ weight gainers (3-4 scoops) with water, milk, or a dairy substitute are good post-workout, blended or shaken alone or with other ingredients such as oats + bananas in a shaker cup. I do that ONLY if I’m in a bind and don’t have a meal I can eat within the next 2 hours. They’re about $30 for a big ol tub of the powder stuff. Be prepared for chunks if you don’t blend the hell out of it. Like I said I prefer actual protein sources like beef & eggs. My insta post shall explain more.

💪 Preworkout is pretty awesome for if you feel rly tired and woke up on the wrong side of bed but still wanna have an awesome workout. I don’t take it right before cardio because it kinda scares me to have my heart beat so fast. Black coffee is a known bodybuilder favorite (I have a mug or 5 everyday) but be prepared to uh 💩. I’m not rly into laxatives at all besides the accidental ones I drink like coffee or green tea (which naturally keeps ya lean) and fit teas can be freakin’ dangerous. I know Kardashians and influencers really like to advertise those but I’m gonna just say STAY AWAY from those if your goals are to lose weight or stay lean. Cardio by itself is the way, I don’t believe in any “easy” ways out because you never know the complications, I’ve heard that shit burns your fucken intestines. Since I’m bulking and putting on muscle and fat efficiently as possible anyways I stay away from any “shredded” or “lean” preworkouts at the supplement store. Anything to that effect. So what do I use besides caffeine?

Optimum Nutrition’s GOLD STANDARD preworkout is awesome, tastes like super sweet pineapple, and I take it 25-40 minutes before I exercise. Or right before. 1/2 scoop is good if you’re 4’10 like me or 1 scoop goes a long way.

💪🏼TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR THE IG POST:

Slide 1. TITLE PAGE

Slide 2. WATER & DIET

Slide 3. SETTING YOUR OWN ROUTINE & EXERCISE SPLIT

Slide 4. AT-HOME EXERCISES

Slide 5. TIPS TO MAINTAIN ROUTINE & GET BACK ON TRACK (because getting off track happens, we’re human)

💪🏻NOTA BENE: the Internet is fantastic for other exercises. I do those because I love to always have something new and get bored super easily (& so does your body!!) and especially when you don’t have a gym full of machines. @gymsharktrain on IG is an account I refer to with plenty of people’s at-Home workout ideas (such as tips for perfecting a handstand if you’re wanting to work on a new skill). #athomeworkouts is a fabulous hashtag to check out on insta.

LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED A MORE IN-DEPTH EXPLANATION I TRIED TO MAKE THE INFOGRAPHICS STRAIGHTFORWARD AND WORKED 5 HOURS ON IT !!!!

BEST OF LUCK AND GET SWOLE MY LOVE!!!!!!!!!

Xx- Maya

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A post shared by ⚡️ 𝙼𝙰𝚈𝙰 𝙳𝙰𝚅𝙸𝚂 ⚡️ (@mayathefutureamazon) on May 1, 2020 at 5:55pm PDT

[ironwoman359]

U for the fanfic author asks.

It is the next day, and I want to get a lot of writing done today, so once again, help me write! Send me some asks from the list, and I can’t answer until I’ve written three sentences in my wip! We’ll start with this one:

U. when did you start writing fanfic?

I started writing fanfic in 2016. I had joined tumblr so I could follow Udertale comics such as Aftertale and the Crayon Queen’s other work, Handplates, and some askblogs and AUs that I don’t even remember anymore. I was happily consuming content but not really interacting with anything (I’d never been in an online fandom before), and then @teffyjeffy created a week of fluffy sans prompts under the hashtag Cheer Up the Skeleton. Most people took the prompts as art prompts, but I decided that I was going to write something for them, and some of those little bits got upwards of 60 notes, which for a new blog with practically NO followers? Was pretty dang cool! (You can read those stories on my AO3 here if you want)

I only ended up writing two other stories for Undertale, a oneshot in second person and a chaptered fic with an oc that I will NEVER finish (and it’s what I cringe at the most when I look back on it), and then I kinda stopped using tumblr for awhile as I lost my Undertale hyperfixation, but that was the seed that got me started in fanfic. I’d gotten that taste of having people actually read your work, and around a year later after the release of Markiplier TV, decided to try and write an ego fanfic. I never finished that fic either (though you can still find it on my AO3 if you feel like it), but then something happened later that year that changed everything....Who Killed Markiplier came out. 

All of a sudden I was dusting off my barely used tumblr account to participate in the mystery. I wrote theory posts that gained real traction in the markiplier fandom, getting thousands of notes and granting me a sudden influx of new followers. I changed my url from an undertale one (I used to be @nabstablook-22....yes, really) to what it is now, and my blog became entirely focused on WKM and Mark’s other content. I started writing fanfic again, mostly about darkiplier and wilford warfstache (you can read the markiplier stuff I wrote here), and I realized “hey...I’m actually good at this.”

Then, when trying to delete a sideblog, I accidentally deleted my tumblr account. 

I had just passed 200 followers, and was devestated...not only by the loss of followers but by the lost of posts that I’d made on the blog! All my theory posts, all my fic, gone! But I’m nothing if not stubborn, and I made a new account as fast as I could so I could keep this url, and then I got to work. I messaged friends and mutuals to try and get as many followers back as I could, and I made posts calling for people who had reblogged my fics to send me links to those reblogs so that I could save them. I think there was maybe one story that didn’t get recovered, but I was able to find most of it again. And then, of course, some of my mutuals started reblogging....sanders sides content. 

The rest is history, lol, I caved just before Thanksgiving and binged the entire series, and I was instantly hooked. Before long I was writing Sanders Sides stories, and found that these characters were much more fun and interesting to write with than the egos I’d been writing.  I started Our Own Villain that December, wrote Burdens in January 2018, and around that time phased out of the markiplier community altogether. 

So yeah, TL;DR, I started in 2016 with Undertale, and I’m beyond grateful that you guys have stuck around with me to read what I have to share with you!

Make me write: writer asks

[znaeb]

Heyyyy girl .... I love your imagines sooo much . I was wondering can you make a nick imagine where you accompany him to a meet and greet and have cute moments when he’s not taking pics with the fans and interaction with the other boys

Over the rough patch | N.M.

Thank you for the request! I hope you enjoy this! I think it went in kind of an odd direction seeing as there isn’t a ton of dialogue, but I kind of like it ? :)) It’s a little short, but this is the first request I’ve ever done so I didn’t want to attempt anything too lengthy yet.

****

You’d been fighting a lot recently. Neither of you were at fault, the stress of the tour had just been getting to you. So when Nick said he wanted you to come to the meet and greet with him you were worried that it would just devolve into another argument, but since he seemed so set on it you agreed and ended up being delighted by the outcome.

He paid special attention to you the entire time, being intentionally over the top with affection. His hand was glued to your knee under the table during the little Q&A portion of the meet up, and during pictures he’d check up on you by making eye contact and mouthing a ‘love you’ or something else sweet.

The other boys obviously noticed and rolled their eyes or pretended to gag every time he’d say something a little cheesy, but they were really glad to see that you guys were getting over the rough patch you’d been stuck in.

A little after the event’s halfway mark the boys got a break to go eat some food and chill before they went back to do a small acoustic performance for the fans.

In the green-room type area Nick was all over you. Not in a particularly sexual way, but just ultra clingy.

“Babyyy come here.” He called from the couch as you stood a few feet away talking to one of the coordinators, “C’mere.” He kept nagging until you came over to him.

He laid his head in your lap and whined for you to play with his hair, then he laid his entire body on top of you and almost took an accidental nap until you noticed that he was falling asleep and woke him up— he was not pleased about that.

“Three minutes is enough time for a nap though, baby.” He whined as he stood up and rubbed his eyes before grabbing your hands to help you stand up from the couch, “I got up too early this morning to be this productive.”

“Oh poor you.” You rolled your eyes and exaggerated a pouty face before pecking him on the lips, holding his hand as you walked back into the main area where the fans were now set up for the performance.

During their acoustic set he kept saying cute things about you over the microphone and making the fans swoon at how cute you two were.

“Aw my baby brought me water. Hashtag goals amirite?” He joked when you tossed him a water bottle from the little cooler in the back, “Guys she takes care of me. I’d be so dehydrated without her, like, I forget water exists until she reminds me. She literally gives me life.”

After the lil show a few fans came up and asked to take pictures with just you. Nick, behind the camera for once, was so elated that everyone was so kind and accepting of you and your relationship.

“Okay on the count of three...” he held a girl’s phone to snap a picture, “one, two, three! No baby on three, not after three. It’s count of three, not count of four. Who even does it like that?”

The day went amazing, both of you on cloud nine. Being all lovey dovey for the rest of the night after you got home.

****

Thanks again for the request anon! This was fun to write!

[fishxx]

Se Qing and the Naked Truth

February 24th, 2017

Below the rooftop of a Beijing building that shudders against a glaucous sky of factory moans is an unextraordinary office building. In it, perhaps on the sixth floor, sits a man in a suit at a desk. The phone on his desk rings. He probably picks it up. Maybe he shifts his weight in his seat, undoing the buttons on his cuffs. Maybe he texts his wife, tells her not to wait up, a client needs this or that document tonight.

It’s 11 degrees Celsius, and a pair of broad-boned feet rest on the ledge of the rooftop above the office building. The owner of the feet crouches over them, back bent round as if in a snail shell. He looks down to the street below, speckled with pedestrians bundled in scarves and cars blaring their horns. He thinks about what kind of people might be in the office building.

Seven months prior, he’d written in a series of diaries published online:

           我总是能听到开枪的声音，开始的时候我有点害怕，时间久了���也就习惯了，那声

           音也像有人在用槌子往我脑袋里钉钉子，好像有一个建筑工地，有人要盖摩天大楼

           ，盖了这么多年也没盖好，好多无家可归的人在我的脑袋里面哭啊闹啊，我要被吵

           死了，他们不让我睡觉，也不让我出门。不睡觉也好，不出门也好，反正每天出门

           前，穿上精心挑选好的衣服，照着镜子怎么看都觉得像要去参加自己的葬礼

           I am always hearing gunshots. In the beginning it scared me a little, but over time I’ve

           grown used to it. Someone has taken up a hammer and is knocking nails into my head,

           it’s a construction site where someone is erecting a monstrous skyscraper, they’ve been

           building it for years and it still isn’t done yet. The many homeless people in my head are

           crying and jibing, they won’t let me sleep, won’t let me out the door. Staying home and

           awake suits me just fine, because every day before heading out, after putting on the

           clothes I’ve selected so meticulously for myself, and looking into the mirror, it looks to

           me as if I’ve dressed to attend my own funeral.

It had always felt this way. For much of his life, since his childhood in a suburb of Changchun, the capital of China’s northeastern province of Jilin, Ren Hang had felt as if he was stumbling through a shadowy psychosis, a jammed film reel in disparate shades of gray.

Still, through the fog of voices and visions clouding his consciousness, in Ren’s pulsing circuit board of veins, he has always felt a deep connection to his family, to his hometown, to China.

And this has never wavered, even as he moved what seemed continents away to study marketing at 17, to live in the 4-to-a-room cramped quarters of Beijing’s university housing, high from the ground, amidst the haze and cancers and pollution of a city of chaos.

–

Fragmented light splashes across the bare thighs and torso of a man whose face cannot be seen. Each hand holds a disco ball, whose mosaicked faces refract the flash’s exposure. Between the disco balls, an erect penis. In another photograph, from the last series Ren published, two nude men sit curled atop one other on the ledge of a building, pasted against a jumbled, silver skyline. Their eyes meet the camera’s gaze steadily.

As Ren crouches on the windowsill, many of these photos are already on exhibition at Foam Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam. Museum curator Mirjam Kooiman says of the work, “It’s visual poetry. It’s without limits.”

Ren is not without limits.

The man in the office shuffles a stack of paper, maybe. He sighs when the phone rings again. Perhaps he stares at the minute hand on the wall clock.

Ren, some days, can’t tell wall clock from whiskey.

He rises slowly in the frame of the window. Stands, looks. Maybe he is naked, like so many of his subjects are. Maybe, as always, he’s meticulously selected what he believes to be the proper attire for the occasion. In one month he’ll be 30. He is always hearing gunshots.

He steps into the air.

–

January 15th, 2010

           我只会注意那些病态，结巴，物质，2维思维，单亲家庭的男孩。有一种男孩是我

           在涨潮几个小时之后会打电话给他，听到他的声音我知道虽然我还在水底，但是我

           还没有溺亡。

           I will only pay attention to those morbid, stuttering, material, two-dimensional- thinking

           boys in single-parent families. There is a kind of boy who calls me after hours of high

           tide. Hearing his voice, I know that although I am still underwater, I am still not dead.

Huang Jiaqi has the broad, hopeful eyes of youth and lips full as if they’d been stung by honeybees.

It’s been nearly a year since he ran away from home, leaving his university entrance examinations unfinished, his childhood tucked somewhere in diaries with thick-pulp pages, like those still made by tired men in the Qinling mountains.

At only 18, Jiaqi is slight of build, and can often afford nothing more to eat than a box of fried rice with a cucumber for five yuan. He devours the meal shoulder-to-shoulder with his lover, beneath the opaque and oppressive Beijing sky.

Jiaqi and Ren sleep in a house with five or six others who pad silently through the space like apparitions, also hungry.

Ren takes Jiaqi to rooftops. He snaps his shutter.

And with friends pitted naked against mosaicked Moroccan-style floors, between red curtains backlit by pale light, in reeds and bushes, amidst the haze of cigarettes in dingy apartments, Ren snaps his shutter. Boys and boys, girls and boys, girls and more girls mingle, mangled in limb and wire and branch.

Ren graduates from his compact analogue camera to a $29 Minolta X-700 film model. He is not interested in digital cameras. He says, “I like film. It’s exciting to wait.”

His work is featured in small group shows in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Nanjing.

Still, it seems no one in the art world knows Ren Hang’s name.

Jiaqi knows Ren Hang’s name, his mother’s name, the pock-marks of his left cheek, the sound of his heartbeat. In and out and in and out like the tide.

Jiaqi is Ren’s greatest muse, the reason for all things.

In eight years, an image of his face will splash the cover of an international art book published by Taschen and Ren Hang will be dead.

–

June 8th, 2008

           写给周耀辉的信

           每个人都是同性恋，每个人都是霸权者，每张脸都打上马赛克，每颗心都穿上防弹

           衣。所有的亲吻都是一味毒药，所有的拥抱都是一个牢房。

           Letter to Zhou Yaohui:

           Everyone is homosexual. Everyone is a hegemonic person. Each face is marked with a

           mosaic. Each heart is wearing a bulletproof vest. All the kisses are blind poisons, and all

           the hugs are a jail cell.

Ren books his first solo show in 2010. It opens in July under the name “Eat Naked Lunch!” at Yuyintang, a cozy underground live house in Shanghai.

One photograph features a young woman lying on her back, her knees drawn against her bare chest. Between her legs sprouts a tangled bouquet of leaves and red wildflowers. No genitalia can be exposed in the photographs on display, though the work Ren produces is often explicit, featuring cigarettes with seething red heads protruding from vaginas and lilies with their stems tucked into anuses.

He begins to exhibit quietly in other galleries and live houses.

And gradually, like a moonflower unfurling, Ren Hang’s work begins to bloom in the art world. The influence of boundary-pushing erotic photographer Robert Mapplethorpe becomes increasingly apparent, yet curators and collectors insist they have never seen anything like it before.

They are eager to comment on its starkness, its unapologetic sensuality, its balance and color, and its function as a bold fuck you to the Chinese government.

–

In the spring of 2018, Chinese social media platform Weibo announces a three-month “cleanup” effort of its site, a censorship initiative launched on the heels of President Xi Jinping’s new cybersecurity jurisdiction. Weibo quietly begins removing all content related to homosexuality. In response, social media users storm the platform with the hashtag #Iamgaynotapervert.

Though homosexual sex was decriminalized in China in 1997, members of the LGBTQIA+ community continue to face prejudice and a dearth of political discourse about their rights. Today, gay marriage is still not legally recognized in a single continental Asian country.

The Dream of the Red Chamber, the Qing dynasty-era novel oft considered the peak of Chinese literature features a number of steamy same-sex relationships, and passages of dialogue brazen enough to make even the most indiscreet of patrons blush: “What’s it to you if we fuck asses! It’s not like we fucked your dad,” says one character. Hand scrolls of the same time period depict what appears to be recreational sex between male friends, one colorful panel portraying a man hiking up his robes, sitting upon another man’s lap while they enjoy a cup of tea.

So whence came the disdain for homosexuality in China? Anthropologists argue that the influence of Western socio-cultural norms and exposure to foreign media rendered the subject taboo, casting shame over same-same relationships as the perverted product of delinquency or mental disorders. Others assert that the filial values of traditional China that have dominated social life since the era of Confucius are to blame.

Ren says, “We hide the body in our culture,” because it is “a demoralization to show what they think should be private.” But instead of hiding, Ren rebels—worshipping both the sacred and the sacrilegious in the human form, twisting and contorting it into geometry and shadow.

Everything about Ren’s photography is charged with the electric current of sexuality. Much of it is homoerotic. Much of it is not. As one curator puts it, “There’s no hierarchy between the female and the male model in his work. It’s very telling about these tendencies of sexuality and queerness in Chinese society and how his generation is dealing with it.”

What does this one represent?, they ask. It must be a commentary on the political state of modern China, they whisper.

When asked whether his pictures are meant to inspire or incite a sexual liberation in China, Ren responds flatly, “A sexual liberation? No.” He says, “Nudes have always been around. We were born nude. So I don’t think there’s anything to revolutionize. I just photograph things in their more natural conditions.”

Ren Hang didn’t intend to become a photographer. He became one accidentally, toying with a compact camera in the ennui of his days at the Communication University of China, snapping photographs of his roommates here and there, often naked, scuttling to the showers from their room with four bunks like narrow coffins stacked atop one another.

Perhaps he didn’t intend to become a poet either, although after his death, Tim Crowley of the KWM Art Center in Beijing says, “He was, in a way, a poet who just happened to be a great photographer.”

At times, he writes:

           "My cock"

           When soft, it’s like a piece of meat

           When hard, like a knife

           I give you soft when you eat

           Wait for you to eat hard

           Use it to kill you

And, at other times:

           "Real desperation"

           I found

           My breasts are bigger every day

           My vagina is wider day-by-day

           I can be ashamed

           I can hold hundreds of rivers

           My time is finally coming

           But I also felt for the first time

           What real despair is

           I stand in the highest place

           But I dare not take a look below

And as Ren Hang comes barreling into the world of contemporary Chinese art with images that incite gasps, fury, and arrests, he perplexes and enchants by straddling, unapologetically, the worlds of straightness and gayness, of kink and custom, of truth and deception, of masochism and tantrism, of woman and man.

–

May 9th, 2013

           还有一次连续几天晚上我都觉得我的隔壁睡了两匹马，我能听到他们的喘息，还有

           那种马的“突突”的鼻音，我每天回到家都小心翼翼地怕吵醒了他们，有一天我的朋

           友来家里住，我跟他说，我的邻居是两匹马，他们一直在睡觉，你今晚还是不要洗

           澡了，洗澡的声音太大了，我们说话走路也小声一点，不然会吵醒他们的，我已经

           三天没洗澡了。我朋友说我疯了。我说，他们不是一般的马，他们会说人话，会躺

           着睡觉。开始他以为我在开玩笑，但是我的表情越来越严肃，他说你真是疯了。后

           来我也不知道该怎么跟他解释，他再也没有住过我家。

           For a few days in a row, I felt like there were two horses sleeping next to each other. I

           was very careful not to wake them. One day, my friend came to stay at my place. I told

           him that my neighbors are two horses. They have been sleeping. You shouldn't take a

           shower tonight. The bathing sound is too loud. We can only speak quietly. Or I will wake

           them up. I haven't bathed for three days. My friend said I was crazy. I said that they are

           not ordinary horses. They speak ‘people’ and lie down to sleep. At first he thought I was

           joking, but my expression became more and more serious. He said that I was crazy.

           Later, I didn't know how to explain to him. He never stayed at my house again.

In China, mental illness is like homosexuality. It exists. We don’t talk about it.

–

April 5th, 2016

           我适应了逆来顺受，就像掷骰子，每次都掷到同一个点数，后来你发现，其实每一

           个面的点数都是一样的。这个房间里我最熟���的就是头顶的那块天花板，它就像我

           的天空，白色的天空，没有任何阴晴变化的天空，我幻想过楼上的邻居就是住在天

           上的神仙

           I have adapted to obey just like a die that is rolled over and shows the same number every

           time. In the end you realize that each side of the die is exactly the same. I am most

           familiar with the ceiling from my room. It’s like my sky, a white sky. There is no

           pleasant change in my sky. I imagine that my neighbor from upstairs is an angel living in

           heaven with the gods.

“I love China, and I like shooting Chinese people,” Ren tells Vice Japan. “The more I’m limited by my country, the more I want my country to take me in and accept me for who I am and what I do.”

Ren is arrested a number of times—for shooting nude models in public places, where indecency is punishable by up to six months’ jail time, and, perhaps more scandalously, for self-publishing.

The Chinese government exercises nearly complete control over the press, and the country’s commitment to extensive media censorship is a well-documented phenomenon. Self-publishing, while technically legal, is a highly regulated procedure requiring an ISSN number and authors’ compliance with mandatory censorship policies.

Ren begins publishing his work underground in 2011 with the help of a friend who works in printing, knowing that he will never be able to publish his work otherwise, as the distribution of explicit photo or video content in China is illegal. The Communist Party once dubbed pornography “spiritual pollution.”

In 2015, in the vindictive heat of a Beijing summer, when asked about if he considers his pictures erotica, Ren tells a magazine intern, “I don’t like the word ‘erotica’ (in Chinese, qing se). I prefer ‘pornographic’ (se qing). I think it’s more direct.”

In China, a lifetime behind bars may await anyone who produces, disseminates, or sells “obscene materials.”

Naturally, Ren sets out to do all three.

Within five years, he produces 16 of his own zines and monographs, filled with glossy pages of penises urinating into corded telephone receivers, bodies twisted into fantastical shapes, vaginas splayed open like raw wounds. Many of the earliest of these books were sold underground in small shops whose owners knew his work.

A posterboy millennial, Ren has generated cult followings on his Weibo, Tumblr, and Instagram profiles. He publishes his photography freely on his website, alongside collections of poetry and an unassuming tab on the sidebar menu bar labelled “My Depression.”

His website is shut down unexpectedly. Once. Twice. Again. Law enforcement officers swarm Beijing galleries in wailing Volkswagen Passats, calling for the stop to his exhibitions. A man attends an exhibition and spits on one of the photographs.

He is arrested, but never imprisoned. While Ren operates as an anomaly, a dark creature inhabiting the fringes of Chinese society, authorities seem ambiguous about his status as a criminal. Is he a political rebel? Is he subverting the zhengfu?

They hesitate further because the mind of China is evolving. The economy, taking new shapes.

Chinese citizens born in the 1980s were taught that the country’s “pillar industries” included the automotive, construction, mechanical, electrical, and petrochemical sectors. But these categories are not static. In recent years, biotechnology, advanced energy, and IT have made their way to the forefront of the economy. These new pillars are China’s loyal heed to the call of science. Yet—more than anything—they’ve become the cherubim upholding the god that is capitalism to this country of atheists.

What is largely unexpected is the State Council’s 2009 announcement to make “culture” one of its pillar industries by 2020. In 2016, the Ministry of Finance earmarks nearly four and a half billion yuan in funding for cultural development initiatives. Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen are booming. The art world, rising.

“The market in China has greatly matured, and this has enabled us to present exciting, emerging artists from China and across the Asia-Pacific region,” says Alexander Montague-Sparey, the Artistic Director of Photofairs Shanghai.

It’s no wonder that authorities cannot put their thumb on Ren Hang with enough accuracy to stamp him out like a cigarette butt. Instead, they fumble with his burning edges.

–

May 19th, 2011

           这几年你一直在寻找一张失踪的桌子，生活在一只倾塌的杯子里，逐步进化成愤怒

           的杯底。这世界就是离你这么近，却摸不着，又看不清楚。就像一束光要和影子做

           爱，那么难，我活得像一个影子。却只能再黑夜里出没。

           In the past few years you have been looking for a missing table, living in a falling cup,

           and gradually evolving into an angry cup. This world is so close to you, but it can't be

           touched. Just like a beam of light to make love with a shadow, so difficult, I live like a

           shadow. Only to haunt the night.

Ai WeiWei is China’s most beloved and most despised political dissident. The irreverent artist is known for designing the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics and for his controversial visual arts challenging the institutions of modern Chinese society. In 2014, he exhibits an entire collection featuring only photographs of his left hand pitted against the background of famous global monuments and religious buildings, his middle finger raised in bullish protest.

The state media deem him a “deviant and a plagiarist.” He’s arrested in April of 2011 and held for 81 days by authorities. Officials allude vaguely to his “economic crimes” without filing specific charges. His assistant, Wen Tao, mysteriously disappears and is never seen again.

In the consistent spirit of controversy, he champions the work of underground photographer Ren Hang.

In 2013, he curates an exhibition called “FUCK OFF II” at the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands, featuring the works of Ren and 36 other contemporary Chinese artists, many of whom are pioneering a neo-avant-garde driven by a need to challenge the sociological, environmental, and political climates of modern China. It contributes to a burgeoning, global Ren Hang following.

Ren always maintains that he is simply making pictures the way he wants to make them.

“Politics is interested in me,” he tells the press at the OstLicht Austrian photography gallery in 2015, “but I am not interested in politics.”

–

March 23rd, 2015

           我昨天在超市

           偷了一管牙膏

           前天把邻居的锁孔

           用口香糖堵住

           上周把小区门口的

           一排垃圾桶

           全都踢翻

           每次我做了坏事

           都觉得生活好像

           又变得美好了一些

           I was in the supermarket yesterday,

           I stole some toothpaste

           The day before yesterday,

           I blocked the neighbor’s keyhole with chewing gum

           Last week, at the neighborhood entrance,

           I kicked over

           A row of trash cans

           Every time I do bad things

           I feel like life

           Is getting better again

Ren hasn’t spoken much to his family since he left Changchun at the age of 17.

He calls his mother. He paces the length of his apartment slowly, watching one foot move in front of the other, the pattern in the floor’s wood grain rendered into clusters of tiny faces.

“I’m wondering if you’d like to model for me in a photo shoot.”

His voice hangs in the air like a bird riding a current of wind.

“Do you want me to take off all my clothes?” she finally laughs.

He is jarred by the realization that his parents must know everything. Here, all along, he believed they couldn’t have suspected a thing.

Of course he doesn’t want her to take off her clothes—she’s his mother, for goodness sake.

She doesn’t mind.

He insists that a bra and underwear will do just fine.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

She smokes a cigarette. Ren snaps his shutter.

Expressionless, she holds a pig’s severed head. Ren snaps his shutter.

–

February 2nd, 2010

           《我爱你》

           想在你身后，

           看你走路的姿势，

           盯着你并不丰满的屁股看。

           想去你家。

           想跟你睡一张拥挤的铁床，

           在半夜突然醒来，

           舔你的眼睫毛，

           摸你冻裂的嘴唇。

           想在早上抢着穿你的内裤，

           让你穿我的，

           看你站着小便，

           拍下你用过没冲的厕所。

           "I Love You"

           Want to be behind you,

           Look at your walking posture,

           Stare at your not-so-plump butt.

           Want to go to your home.

           Want to sleep with you on a crowded iron bed,

           Wake up suddenly in the middle of the night

           Lick your eyelashes,

           Touch your cracked lips.

           Rush to wear your underwear in the morning,

           Let you wear mine,

           Watch you standing, urinating,

           Photograph the toilet you used without flushing.

Sometimes Ren darts into traffic, or lunges himself ahead of an encroaching bus, only to leap backward at the last moment. Sometimes he stands too close to the platform’s edge in Beijing’s swollen subway stations. When he swims in the chlorine-blue pools of hotels around the world—places where his work is championed, where he receives bottles of wine and dinners of black caviar and foie gras from museum directors—he keeps his eyes closed, lets his body sink to the bottom of the basin, listens to the muted sparkling of the water.

He feels most at peace when he is close to death.

“Since I was seventeen,” says Jiaqi, “the most important thing for me has never changed—to protect you and to protect our love.”

Jiaqi is well on his way to establishing himself as a leading fashion stylist, editor, and model. He makes his own pictures, too. In 2018, his photography glosses the cover of Tatler Hong Kong.

He snaps an iPhone photo of Ren. Beneath the glow of a red umbrella amidst geometries of sunlight, Ren stands in a blue Umbro soccer tank top. He looks into the distance blankly, his broad and elegant cheekbones lending to his perpetual appearance as gaunt, as exceedingly gentle, as older than he is. It seems so far removed from the world of art that they both have learned to inhabit in different ways.

–

January 10th, 2013

           《最亮的光太快》

           我从来不想变成最亮的光

           最亮的光太快

           比流星还快

           我愿意变成黑夜

           我愿意缓慢得就像静止

           我愿意经常被你遗忘

           偶尔被你仰望

           即使在那仰望里

           我只是一张背景

           “The Brightest Light is Too Fast”

           I never want to become the brightest light

           The brightest light is too fast

           Faster than meteors

           I would like to turn into night

           I am willing to be slow like static

           I am willing to be forgotten by you often

           Occasionally you look up

           Even in that gaze,

           I'm just a background

Ren Hang steps into the sky.

The gray of Beijing’s carbonate heavens flashes against fragment of glass, of skyscraper, of silver branch. Perhaps a bird darts past, cutting through the air careless—careless as one must be to have been given the great gift of flight without cognition of one’s privilege.

Perhaps before peace,

He sees his mother’s face. Her harsh mouth in a line, a stream of smoke curling around her.

Perhaps

He sees a boy with bee-stung lips.

The boy says: “I didn’t even know about this thing called depression the first time I saw you crying and telling me you wanted to set the flat on fire so we could die together.”

Maybe he hears the boy’s voice ringing in his ears, a kind of private, radiant sonar.

“You said you were my home, and I was yours.”

These words are true.

But these ideas are all simulation, are all romantic projection.

The BBC runs the headline: Ren Hang: Death of China’s Hotshot Erotic Photographer.

It is all romantic projection.

He is not an erotic photographer. He is, unapologetically, a se qing photographer, an artist of the bizarre and the beautiful, unmarried to any creed or movement, an artist brazenly throwing forth pictures of a violent peace, an artist, an artist, an artist. A mere observer of his world.

And he is, by no means, a hotshot. He is simply a student of the human condition—what his lover calls, “a kid who loves life, but lacks the skills to live it.” He is only human, diseased and obsessed, incurable and in love.

So more than likely,

When Ren Hang steps into the sky,

He does not take note of the clouds reflected in the windows of the office building tearing through space, or the dusky thrush floating above him. He does not see his mother’s stern face or hear the voice of Huang Jiaqi.

More than likely,

He thinks of nothing.

When Ren Hang steps into the sky,

He refuses to become the brightest light.

The brightest light is too fast.

Kendra Clark is a New York-based editorial content creator and part-time residential student in the creative writing master’s program at the University of Cambridge. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in or are forthcoming in Into the Void magazine, The Evansville Review, Emrys Journal, and more.