#LIKE JESUS CHRIST I WAS. NOT OFF BASE AT ALL

[altered-intellect]

as someone who has been brought up in The Church there is some nuance to this, or at least in the community I have exposed to. If you go into a Christian Church and the topic of the Jewish people comes up, the vibes will generally be positive. the Jewish people of the bible are often portrayed as "the ultimate chosen people" which on the surface seems like a good thing. The Church comes from the practices of the Jewish faith of the past, so it is often treated with a base level of respect. Sure.

HOWEVER the Jewish practices of TODAY are not. The consensus is that the Jews where just as terrible as the barbaric and backward kingdoms that always wanted the Jews dead, the only saving grace was the bloodline of David who was too birth Jesus and kick off the REAL perfect and holy religion of Christianity. The practices of the Jewish faith are seen as artifacts of Christianities past before the coming of Christ, and thus are subservient to it like all other beliefs. In the Christians minds all of the Jews should have disappeared or assimilated with the coming of Christianity and the growth of The Church.

In the least antisemitic churches these stories will be told with an air of tragedy, "oh how terrible the world was without Our connection to G-d, the poor Jews sacrificing lambs so they can talk to G-d". In the most antisemitic these stories are told with the finality of G-d's wrath, "the Jewish people are to blamed for sin, so the only good Jew is a converted one (or a dead one depending on how open they are with their Nazism)".

this doesn't factor in messianic Jews, and other intersections of the Christian and Jewish faiths (which i have less experience with) but I doubt they are free from this thinking. Either way, when it comes to The Church's doctrine, it will talk and talk about the Jewish faith of the past as if it was like Christianity today while stabbing the living and breathing Jewish communities in the back.

crazy how 2,000 years of being fed "jews are untrustworthy two faced liars" will make people instinctively think jews are liars and have their gut reaction to jews talking about judaism be "assume they're lying." or maybe these are two unrelated phenomena that have no impact on each other and the gentile instinct to distrust the jew has nothing to do with thousands of years of antisemitism they've internalized.

[ceilidhtransing]

I'm extremely done with electionposting but I feel like there's one huge elephant in the room that's barely being talked about vis-à-vis the whole issue of non-voters. I see so many posts to the effect of “does the result really indicate that the people who didn't vote are bad, or that the Democrats simply failed to convince them to vote for Harris?” and I have to talk about that.

Obligatory clarifications because people are understandably very heated at the moment and I know people will jump to take this entire post the wrong way:

I know that the tens of millions of people who did actually vote for Trump are much, much more of a glaring active problem than the people who didn't vote at all.

I know that it is, overall, in most circumstances, bad to assert that a candidate is just “owed” your vote, rather than having to win your vote.

I know that Trump's base is unpersuadable and will vote for him whatever happens. I'm not talking about them; I'm talking about non-voters, particularly anyone who voted Democrat in the past but didn't show up this time.

I know that it's shitty that people should have to settle for a candidate they don't like very much because that's the only way to avoid a much greater evil. It's a rubbish situation to be in, but Harris and Trump were the only viable options presented at this election, and nothing changes that.

I know that some people abstained as a (extremely misguided and counterproductive) “protest” against the situation in Gaza. But if the numbers we're seeing are accurate, Harris lost 15 million voters compared to Biden, and I really can't see all of those being “protest-abstainers”. Some of them will be, but clearly a lot of people simply didn't show up, and if you reply with something like “well not doing a genocide would have helped them!” I will just assume you haven't read this. I'm not actually talking about the “protest-abstainers”, I'm talking about the passive non-voters.

I know that the Democrats are hardly, hardly perfect and that a lot of people do not trust them to deliver the kind of meaningful change that they need. Trust me, whatever criticisms of the Democrats you have, I know. They are tangential to the actual point of this post.

But it is properly mind-boggling to me that we have got to a point where we genuinely talk about people needing to be “convinced” to vote against a candidate so thoroughly, off-the-charts terrible as Trump, and as far as I'm concerned it speaks to the incredible job much of the media has done for the last I don't know how many years at continually normalising and sane-washing him, his ideas, his actions, and his speech.

If we were to teleport back to some time significantly before the Trump Era - before US politics got quite so wild, before it became in any way “normal” for a president to rack up an uncountable number of the kind of scandals that individually would have sunk any previous president but which are apparently just the way things are now - and comprehensively describe Trump to the average voter, and then say that he's in an election against a very standard middle-of-the-road don't-rock-the-boat Democrat, and ask “one of these is going to be the president; how are you voting?” the response is very likely to be “fuck me, the Democrat obviously! jesus christ just don't put that guy back in charge!”

Trump is such an appallingly bad candidate on literally every front that I can hardly believe the conversation focuses on whether Harris did enough to convince people to vote for her rather than the fact that Trump himself has spent most of the last decade doing what should be an incredible job at convincing people to vote for her.

And I know the general adage about “people need to be convinced to vote for a candidate, not just against another candidate!” but fucking hell, when one of the candidates is THAT GUY, it really should not take much at all to convince you to vote for whoever isn't him. Where's that meme about Any Statewide Election in North Carolina that has “Adolf Fucking Hitler” winning against “Bland Normiedem” 49% to 48%? Because that's what it feels like when people talk about voters just not being hyped enough by the Harris campaign to vote for her. “Yeah, I know Adolf Fucking Hitler is pretty terrible, but Bland Normiedem just hasn't done a good enough job at winning my vote, and really both sides are bad, you know?”

The thing is that all of the things people say about “you need to run a positive campaign, not just a negative one” and “you need to earn people's vote, not just take them for granted” and “you need to have a good reason to vote for you, not just that you're not the other guy” etc I totally, absolutely agree with - in a normal election with normal politics and normal candidates! None of what we're seeing with Trump is, or should be, normal! “You won't need to vote again” isn't normal, “dictator on day one” isn't normal, running with the intimate support of a bunch of christofascists who are open about their desire to turn America into an authoritarian hellscape isn't normal, and it has been utterly maddening to see people treat this as just another standard uninspiring election and not a code red “for the love of god stop this guy” situation! To use that reference again, it is an absurdity to frame things in terms of Bland Normiedem needing to run a great campaign to convince people to vote for him when his opponent is Adolf Fucking Hitler!

There are many questions to be asked about this election, but re: people not showing up to vote for Harris, a major one that needs to be asked far more often is “how the fuck did Trump and his whole campaign become so normalised to voters that “whether you're persuaded enough by Harris's campaign” is even a serious question? how is Trump Being Trump not persuasive enough for most people?” And this post is long already, but the media has a lot to answer for regarding how they have consistently sane-washed what he's said, normalised his positions, hell, normalised the fact that he's even running in the first place given his many crimes and the way he responded to losing the last election. Trump's enormous base is absolutely the most pressing problem, but this time around that base has been directly enabled to trample everyone else by millions and millions of people apparently just not being “motivated enough” to stop him. That is also a problem.

In no sane circumstances should Trump be a candidate that you have to be extensively, enthusiastically persuaded to keep out of office, and yet here we are, talking about how well or badly Harris convinced people to vote for her when literally everything about Trump ought to have been doing a good enough job of that anyway. How the fuck did any of this become normal? How the fuck did we reach a point where anyone - especially previous Democrat voters - is looking at these two candidates and going “eh, I'll just sit this one out, Harris hasn't done enough to earn my vote”?

(And in case I haven't been sufficiently clear, please don't reply to this with any variation of “she should have done xyz!” or “maybe if she hadn't done xyz!” This is not about debating her strategies or the merits of her campaign. A different discussion is the place for that. My point is that Trump is so out-of-this-galaxy leagues worse than her in every conceivable way that she shouldn't have had to “run a brilliant campaign” in order to sweep votes from the tens of millions of Americans who aren't Trump's base. Anyone like her running against Trump should have won in a fucking landslide and the fact that she didn't is not just an indictment of “a campaign that didn't do enough to persuade people” but also an indictment of the electorate and of the media's continual normalisation of Trump. To place blame entirely on “well she didn't run a good enough campaign” - as if in a race between Bland Normiedem and Adolf Fucking Hitler the whole focus should be on the merits or demerits of Bland Normiedem's campaign rather than the fact that Adolf Fucking Hitler is Adolf Fucking Hitler - is to miss an enormous part of the picture and also to reinforce the normalisation of Trump as just any other standard reasonable candidate. It's to buy into the whole deeply false “both sides” thing that the media loves to do, where we go “well Candidate A here is a near-octogenarian quasi-fascist wannabe dictator and convicted felon running on a platform infused with Christian nationalism and hardcore authoritarianism, who refuses to accept he lost the last election and essentially tried to hold onto power by force, and who has spent the last four years in countless trials regarding all the insane crimes he got up to both during and outwith his presidency, but on the other side, how watertight really are Candidate B's policies?” and pretend the two candidates are even remotely equivalent or comparable, and this very approach is a huge part of the problem.)

[1toreyouapart]

What It Cost

****THIS IS A FICTIONAL STORY BASED ON REAL PEOPLE. 18+ ONLY. I DO NOT OWN THE RIGHTS TO THE PEOPLE OR MUSIC MENTIONED IN THIS STORY OUTSIDE OF LILITH AND SADIE AND MAYBE A COUPLE OTHERS. DO NOT READ IF YOU’RE NOT UP FOR FANFIC INVOLVING REAL PEOPLE***

Terrible summary: Five years since she last spoke to him. Since she last saw him. Now his face and his voice is everywhere. She can't escape him.

Five years ago Noah destroyed her and the life they had built. Now he’s back and seeking to make amends. As much as she wants to say that it's too little too late, is it?

CW/TW: Angst, mention of addiction, cheating. Mention of character death. Language. Smut (later on). PinV, unprotected PinV (wrap it before you tap it, friends), oral (f&m receiving). All smutty warnings happen later on, so I’ll update TW/CW warning labels as those parts are written and posted. If I forget anything, please let me know so I can fix it! Thank you!

Part 5 - Noah

Noah laid there in his bed, the only light coming from the screen of his phone. The only sound in the room the old videos he kept watching. It was all that kept him going when sobriety got to be a little too difficult. And right now, it was hard as fuck. Until the other night nobody outside of his therapist had known just how much he despised himself for the shit he had put Lilith through in the end. And now he had gone and blurted it out like a fucking idiot. Such a fucking idiot. So, rather than relapse he was going to watch these old videos as many times as it took until the anxiety passed.

Listening to her laughter, seeing the way her eyes crinkled just a bit at the corners when she smiled, in and of itself was its own form of mental torture, but God, did it help keep the urge to drink away. A reminder of what life was like before the one or two drinks every so often turned into three or four most nights of the week. Then getting blackout drunk most nights of the week. Soon it was steady drinking from the moment he woke up until he passed out later that night. Rinse and repeat.

"Noah, I swear to all that is unholy. If you don't stop recording me right now I'm cutting your hair in your sleep!"

Noah chuckled to himself as Lilly in the video stopped doing her hair to run from him, laughing uncontrollably at his feeble attempt to stop her without dropping his phone. He had been obsessed with recording every moment with her when he wasn't on tour. Some excuse of watching them when he missed her, which he did do, but honestly it was because he just couldn't get enough of her. Even when they bickered he hated not being near her, always finding a reason just be around her while she tried to ignore his presence. Which she inevitably failed at, every time. Because as much as she refused to admit it at first, she needed to be near him just as much as he did her. Once upon a time, anyway.

Heaving a weary sigh he scrolled to the next video, immediately being greeted by her and Danny dressing up a skeleton Halloween decoration. Noah outright laughed as he watched the two of them dressing the skeleton up, neither understanding the directions the other was giving. It was their first Halloween in this house, and Lilly had insisted on going all out for the kids in the neighborhood. She'd had the bright idea of dressing skeletons up as Bring Me The Horizon members to put in the yard as a skeleton band.

Just then Matt walked in, flipping the light on, blinding him.

"Jesus Christ, Matt!" He yelled, covering his eyes. "The fuck do you want?"

"You've been hiding in here too long. Get your ass up and meet me downstairs in five."

"Fuck off."

"See you in five."

Matt left, leaving the door wide open. Fucking asshole. He loved Matt, he did, but he was a fucking asshole sometimes. Couldn't he just be left to rot in fucking peace?

"Fucking asshole," he grumbled, rolling out of bed. If he didn't get down there Matt would be back, likely with a bucket of water to dump on him or something stupid like that.

Noah caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror as he walked past it, and outwardly cringed. He looked like shit. Hair stuck up in every which way, four days worth of stubble on his face. Well, what little bit he could grow, anyway. He reached for the hoodie he'd flung on the back of his chair, pulling it over his head as he stomped out his bedroom door and to the stairs. This better be good.

***

"If you really want to make amends, hiding after having a panic attack in her kitchen isn't the way to do it."

Matt's words swam around in his head, circling over and over again. He was still an asshole, but he meant well. Of course, he was right. But how would he even go about making amends? Would she even be open to allowing him to? The way she had looked at him that night, he wasn't so sure. However, she had done everything she could in that moment to help him. Shit, it had worked better than anything anyone else did after he got home.

Carefully he leaned forward, inspecting his now shaven face. Couldn't miss any spots or it would drive him nuts. He had always been that way, but since getting sober he was more meticulous about it. Everything had to be just so or he couldn't function properly until it was fixed. Satisfied he had gotten everything he stood back up, pulling a plain white shirt over his head.

First order of business was to get cleaned up. Second was to at least attempt to get a hold of her. If she didn't answer he would just show up. Well, maybe not unannounced. That hadn't exactly gone well last time. A repeat sounded like an absolutely terrible idea if he was honest. One panic attack she might forgive, but a second one? Hardly. He was surprised she even answered her phone the last time.

Speaking of, he picked his phone up off the counter, freezing over her name. Was this a call or text situation? Maybe he should have asked one of the guys first. Jolly would probably be the one to know. He knew her best these days. Unfortunately, Jolly was out with Sadie.

Fuck it. He would text her, and if she didn't get back to him after a while then he would call. For all he knew she was at work, anyway. Heart pounding in his chest he hit the button to text her, freezing at the last message he had received from her. The night he had fucked everything up beyond repair.

"Where are you? Noah, you're worrying me."

Tags: @collisionofyourkissmakesitsohard

[essektheylyss]

I JOKED IN DMS EARLIER ABOUT THE THALAMUS

REGARDING MY MADE-UP GENESIS WARD AEORIAN LORE AND HOW FUNNY IT WOULD BE IF I WAS VINDICATED ABOUT IT

AND YOU ARE TELLING ME

THE AEORIANS WERE STRAIGHT UP RUNNING THEIR ENGINE VIA SOMETHING'S LIFE FORCE BOUND TO IT???

ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

[roses-red-and-pink]

Lolol sometimes it’s so funny reading peoples posts about “Mormon” theology that is based on Exmo stories, tradition/culture but not doctrine, and like random statements by some church leader 200 years ago that was not put into doctrine/canonized, or that he was corrected/reprimanded on, and all of us look back on like “well that guy was racist/sexist. Anyways moving on…” like tbh it just makes me laugh. Like I know our theology is a bit different than mainstream Christianity but y’all don’t need to make it sound like we are out here truly believing half the stuff you say about us.

[catboy-cabin]

sleeptober day 5 - symmetry

yet in reverse you were all my symmetry / a parallel i would lay my life on

on today's installment of Lyrics That Make Me Fucking Insane

yes i know this isn't actually symmetrical but if you mention sleep token and symmetry to me i will immediately think of these two. sorry i don't make the rules

this isn't gay but it could be

alt version bc the colored line art makes some parts hard to see:

[oflgtfol]

i think the whole discourse around whether or not cishet aro men are queer stems specifically from the idea of allo aros being hypersexual - and so the idea of an allo aro, specifically a straight aro man, draws to mind the idea of like, fuckboys, or sexist men who only view women as sex objects, etc. And that is likely why the idea of cishet aro men leaves such a bad taste in apparently so many peoples mouths

now, i’ve spoken before about how attraction =/= libido. i’ve mostly spoken about this in the context of being ace, where asexuals can still have a libido despite not experiencing sexual attraction. the confusion and conflation between attraction and behavior has been a huge source of frustration for me with regards to the popular idea of asexuality and how it has confused me on my path to figuring out my own sexual identity over the years

BUT. the idea holds true not only for aces who have high libidos - but also for allosexuals who have low libidos. the idea that to be allo aro is to immediately be some hypersexual fuckboy is just, so warped? just because you experience sexual attraction but not romantic attraction does not mean you immediately become some sexist pig who always needs your dick wet. like idk it’s just beyond fucking frustrating to see the way that people sexualize alloaros when they’re just - they’re just people. you would not assume what another person’s sex life or libido is if they were otherwise alloromantic allosexual, because your orientation describes the way you experience attraction, not your behavior and sex life, nor your libido. in the same way, being alloaro has literally nothing to do with what your actual libido is. so why are allo aros the exception? to try to divide the community and exclude them based on your assumption of their sex lives is just so fucked

[kinnoth]

Man. I am so disinterested in the way every live action media adaptation takes powerful backstories, Eldritch abominations, high fantasy conceptual character designs and just turns everyone into some normal looking white guy

[red-wop]

Right but as I am writing the Wall E AU I keep finding plotholes in both the film and in my interpretation and god its driving me up the bend

Like- yk how all of earths population is living in space at that point? Thats alot of bloody ships and now I've gotta come up with an explanation for it because they dont properly explain it in the film but then I was doing some research on it and then I found out that in film canon there was a climate disaster which wiped out over half of the worlds population and thats why theres not as many ships,

BUT I CANT BLOODY WRITE THAT PLOTPOINT BECAUSE THE WALL E'S IN MY FIC ARE HUMAN SO THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN WIPED OUT TOO IF THERE WAS A CLIMATE DISASTER

godddd why've I decided to make this fic more complicated than it needs to be its literally Silly Red dwarf guys but Silly Wall E robots, I dont know why ive done this to myself wtf

Anyway I'm probably gonna try and ignore that plothole and let it sit in a corner while I continue to write lolll

[pine-arten]

something just happened to me today. I just spent 12 hours on a drawing

[smute]

made a phone case that can hold my headphone amp ✌️😙

[leezuhh]

the xenophobia in genshin is crazyyy 😭

[superectojazzmage]

Knives Out/Glass Onion really is the prime example of how terrible Tumblr is at advertising things or at least just getting me specifically to watch them because I’m absolutely certain that these must be very good or at least enjoyable movies, but the way Tumblr describes them just makes them sound like the most fucking insufferable and pretentious films on planet Earth, the movie equivalent of getting lectured for several hours by your douchey neoliberal college professor who thinks he’s God’s gift to discourse, to the point it genuinely kills any interest I’d have in watching them.

[sammygender]

some of my most random fucking original characters from half-baked story ideas i have yet to fully develop are the most tragic ones to ever exist. like yeah the people from my current work are pretty fucked up but they don’t inspire as much pain in me as when i think about citydale characters. min truly and genuinely makes me want to cry

[stormyrainyday]

Am mostly on board with this post but I have a bone to pick with the BMI section. The cited BMI article is not a reputable source; it is an opinion piece that does not cite any sources, is titled "Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus" (and includes "it embarrasses the US" as a reason), is from 2009, and was written by a mathematician and not a doctor. Being from NPR doesn't automatically make it correct or reputable. Misinformation and inflammatory comments like "it hangs around because of fatphobia and insurance companies" just enable people to ignore their weight as an important indicator of health. (Note that I said important; not sole. Any medical professional worth their salt knows better than to take weight in a vacuum. However this does not mean that it should be ignored entirely either).

I will start by saying both being too fat and too skinny are bad for you. However since the post specifically pins the longevity of the BMI on fatphobia, I will address that more.

Nobody wants to hear this but being obese is in fact bad for you. Not just in terms of added risk of acquiring other diseases (though you definitely ARE at increased risk for cancers, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, and more-- it is even a well known cause of infertility and other reproductive disorders), but obesity itself is a state of chronic inflammation and a disease process in its own right.

Of course, there are still issues with the BMI; as the above poster said, it was not originally intended to be used as a measure of health, and the original study overwhelming featured Caucasian men and no women. Different races have different levels of body fat at the same BMI-- and it's more widely agreed that percent body fat is the important indicator of the diseases listed above, not necessarily your exact weight or BMI. Additionally, it's widely known that women need a higher body fat percentage than men, and that BMI misclassifies people who are pregnant, very athletic, etc because, as we know, BMI measures weight, not fat.

(As an aside, it's commonly cited that a mortality is lowest at an borderline overweight BMI of 25, but the study reporting this notes that smoking and diseases that cause severe weight loss such as cancers had a large effect mortality in lower weight ranges).

So why still use BMI? In short: it's a good starting point.

Height and weight of an individual are exceedingly easy to attain in any doctor's visit. The formula is simple and calculators are easily available, and it is easy to plot changes over time. At the population level, BMI correlates with levels of body fat and obesity related diseases; combined with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of attaining it, that makes it a good initial screening for obesity. Furthermore, there have been race-adjusted BMI cutoffs created to help make screenings for said diseases more accurate. It's also very useful in a research setting, again because of its easy attainability, but do note that research done on a population does not apply to every single individual and therefore it's important for doctors to be educated about such limitations and use their clinical judgement. Treat the patient, not the disease, if you will.

Some articles (including ones I have cited above) do say that because of its limitations it might be better to forgo BMI altogether in favor of more accurate assessments, like waist circumference or body composition measures. These measures have their own respective pros and cons that you can read about here and therefore also require clinical judgement and patient and physician education on how to implement them appropriately.

My personal opinion remains that these should be used alongside BMI, especially the simple ones such as waist to height ratio, and use all as needed to make a complete clinical picture. Both patient and physician education is important when doing any medical testing or screening-- I'd advocate for doctors to be better educated on the strengths and limits of the BMI so they can inform their patients as to why it is being used at all, and to better use it critically when providing care. But I don't believe that it should be discounted entirely.

I can't keep having the same conversations about love languages, mbti, iq, bmi, "brain fully formed at 25" and shit over and over again...

[mrsstarkey1]

getting rafe hooked on dress to impress

my fav thing i’ve ever written i can’t even lie

word count: 1.2k

obx masterlist

you yawned loudly and abnoxiously as you walked into rafe’s bedroom. you kicked your shoes off, grabbing one of rafe’s t-shirts from his drawer, changing out of your uncomfortable clothes. “didn’t think you were coming back, it’s late as fuck.” rafe said, looking at you oddly as he sat up on the bed against the headboard.

“longest fucking day of my life. need to unwind.”

rafe smirked, reaching his whole body over the bed to grab your forearm. "like the sound of that," he mumbles.

you let yourself move toward him, but you groan, “not like that.” rafe momentarily pouts, but doesn’t let go of your arm. in fact, he pulls you closer onto the bed with him urging you to cuddle up into him.

he snakes his arm around you, soft fingers tracing circles into your side. "wanna talk about it?"

you yawn and shake your head, "nah, can we just watch a movie or something?"

rafe nods, grabbing the TV remote from the nightstand. "you don't wanna watch some chick-flick do you?" he asks, grimacing already.

you sigh dramatically, “i guess not. fast and furious?”

rafe obligies, satisfied with your suggestion. you get comfortable on the bed, your head rested on rafe's shoulder and your phone rested on his chest as you scroll through tiktok.

about 20 minutes later, you see a video about the new halloween update on dress to impress and gasp before you can stop yourself. rafe jumps slightly, eyes wide. “jesus christ, what’s wrong?”

"sorry, nothing," you grin apologetically, "can I borrow your laptop though?"

he looks at you like you've lost your mind, but he still grabs his macbook from the nightstand, handing it over to you. you sit up excitedly, leaning up against the headboard.

you open the laptop and sign into your roblox account, side eyeing rafe as he gives you an odd look. "the fuck are you doing?"

"playing a game," you respond innocently.

he raises his eyebrows, "roblox? wheezie used to play that shit.. when she was 8," he says, judging you hardcore.

you glare at him, "you don't understand," you sigh. "just watch me play, it's genuinely fun."

he watches you click on dress to impress, making a disgusted face. "yeah I can't defend you on this one," he says and you shove his shoulder.

"well have you ever played dress to impress?" you ask him.

"obviously not," he says, his sassy side on full display.

"well don't judge then. just watch and i'll let you play a round when i'm done," you say with a smile, patting his cheek softly.

"hell nah," he says, directing his attention back to the movie.

you shake your head, giving up on getting him to play. you start a round, looking around at all the new pieces they added. the theme is holiday for your first round, so of course you do halloween.

you notice rafe's eyes on the computer screen as his curiosity clearly starts to creep back in despite himself. he watches as you piece together combination of a witch hat, spiderweb dress, and dark boots.

“what even is this shit?” he asks, trying to sound nonchalant but clearly intrigued.

you grin, not taking your eyes off the screen since you only have a minute left. “you compete with other people to make the best outfit based on a theme. you'd be pretty good at it, you've got great style," you say, trying to persuade him.

he gives you a look, shaking his head, "sounds dumb as fuck," he says, and you just laugh. he's silent for a moment before turning slightly to have a better view of the screen, "so what you just like... dress them up and shit?"

you nod, watching the time run out. "yes, then everyone votes on each outfit and the top 3 get on the podium. see," you point to the screen, "the voting's starting now."

an outfit that's completely off theme struts down the runway and you grimace, "see like that one's ugly as fuck so i give it a 1. oooh look, this ones mine," you say with a proud smile. "doesn't she look great?"

rafe shrugs, "i guess."

you ended up getting third place, losing to two terrible outfits. you curse under your breath, before turning to him. “you wanna try a round?” you smile, looking up at him.

rafe scoffs, glancing back at the movie, but curiosity gets the better of him. “alright, fine, hand it over.” he takes the laptop.

"okay the theme is beach day," you tell him.

he hums in response, looking around at the clothes aimlessly. "rafe, you gotta pick something that actually matches,” you say, stifling a laugh as he pairs a yellow bikini top with neon green shorts.

"shh, I have a vision," he says, dismissing your words. "wait why the fuck doesn't she have a face?"

"you gotta go to the makeup and hair room, over there," you point at the screen.

he scrolls through the makeup options, finally decided on one. "mhm, she bad ain't she?" you chuckle, knowing rafe is secretly loving this.

time runs out just as he adds the coconut drink, and you see him watching the screen eagerly, waiting for the voting to end. one girl dressed in long pants and a jacket walks out and he looks over at you, disgusted, "this bitch didn't even look at the theme." all you can do is laugh and nod your head in agreement.

when rafe places second, he smirks, looking way too pleased with himself. "ha," he says, "i did better than you."

you roll your eyes. "yeah you're done playing," you say, snatching the laptop back.

the next night, you texted rafe that you were gonna come over after your morning shift and you didn't get a response, which was odd. you let yourself into his house with the key he'd given you. "rafe?" you called out, walking into the living room. "you here?" no response.

you furrowed your eyebrows, walking up the stairs. maybe he was just in his room, you thought, taking a nap or something. you creak open his bedroom door, met with the scene of him sitting on his bed, looking intently at his laptop.

his eyes shoot up to look at you and he slams his laptop closed, guilty look in his eye. you raise your eyebrows, "what were you doing?" you question him, walking toward the bed.

he rubs the back of his neck with his hand, shaking his head. "nothin.'"

your eyes narrow, "were you watching porn?" you joke, sitting down next to him.

he sighs, "worse.." he trails off. he mentally debates for a minute, before pulling his laptop back into his lap, opening it slowly to reveal dress to impress on full display.

your hand shoots to cover your mouth, laugh escaping your lips anyway. all he does is glare at you, "this is your fucking fault."

you lean into him with a laugh, "I know I know, sorry. don't be embarrassed, rafe." you press a kiss to his lips.

as you kiss him, you can’t help but laugh again, glancing at his screen. "okay wait that's actually a cute outfit. you're getting good," you nudge him, "fashionista," you add quietly with a chuckle.

he looks at you straight-faced, "I'm only playing this dumbass game because you dragged me into it. i was just bored so,” he gestures to the screen.

“sure, rafe, whatever you say,” you tease, cuddling up beside him. "feel free to keep playing, don't stop at my expense."

he scoffs, but gives in and restarts the game.

you wrap your arm around his middle and watch as he puts together outfit after outfit, the grin rarely leaving your face.

you just love your little fashionista.

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requests are OPEN 💌