#all are real fits that i own btw i'm fashionable like that

[teddybeartoji]

this is yall's favourite narrator??? 🤨🤨🤨 boo! what a loser!

+ bro thinks a couple of bandages make him dazai😒😒😒

everybody go and make ur own one hehehhe

[gojoest]

ai, so thanks for letting me share. honestly, i have been feeling very ugly. although im not interested in guys much, I still feel weird about not getting attention from attractive guys sometimes. Im weird right. And not getting the pretty privilege. It is so real that no one can deny it. Idk makeup. Sometimes, I don't care about my looks, but then I meet with reality being shoved in my face. my sense of dressing is quite old-fashioned. I do not like showing skin, and I feel ethnic wears fit me better. But people look down on me for that. They assume I'm poor and from rural. Not to brag, but ethnic wear costs a shit ton, and I did my schooling in a difficult board. I got professional help but none worked btw. sorry if this is all over the place.

i am sorry you feel this way :( and no, you’re not weird! i think we all feel like this sometimes, there are times when i don’t like myself either and have a very negative image of myself in my head. especially when i compare myself to others all i see is my flaws. this, combined with the very questionable beauty standards that reign in our generation right now, i think, makes all of us struggle sometimes

beauty comes from within but it is a human thing to be affected when met with outside pressure, or when we’re forced to carry ourselves in certain “standardized” ways in order to be accepted. or especially when others look down on us for whatever reason. it impacts us and how we view ourselves, we’re not made out of stone and it’s really hard not to pay mind to that. but i want you to know that this is on them, not on you. i don’t know why we are so bothered by people who aren’t nice obviously, it must have something to do with the way they perceive the parts about ourselves that we feel insecure about

but fuck them honestly. i think ethnic wear is beautiful, i am always fascinated by it and the culture behind it. i think being old-fashioned is beautiful. i think knowing what suits you best is beautiful. if you feel good in certain type of clothes, if that’s what makes you most comfortable in your own skin then you wear that! i think the right people will never judge you based on how you look or dress or your status. and i am really sorry that people are so shitty and their actions weigh on you and not on them :( 🤍🫂

[humanmorph]

PALISADE 28.crazy good this week etc

New radio person for the intro...! This comes at a good moment. I still miss Baldwin Home like. That very first PALISADE intro is genuinely so hard to beat... but this feels good. I'm once again thinking about Austin writing these... The style used for Black Screens intros obviously shines through (she's his protégé) but she does have her own voice already (way more rhyming? I mean, I'd have to doublecheck HIS intros, it's literally just a feeling). Just the tone used and intonation already does a lot. Austin is so good at this fr. I'm still curious how he even approaches that. Also the "watch me unloose 80 Ls on these next lines" I knewwww that's 80 Ls for real as soon as Parti said illogical. I wonder if he wrote that bit first trying to see how many Ls he could fit in there & then finetuned it to get to a good number? I guess that's just how I would do it.

(who knows if we'll ever get a description for Parti. we never did for Black. maybe if she shows up in a conflict turn somehow? so im just fuckin around for now... i haven't sold myself on the clothes. i'm just not a fashion guy. but i do like the braids)

Oh & new guy alert part 2!!! New Keith character! And he has a funny hat. Not even funny as in goofy it just makes me laugh a bit because my dad and maybe every 5th 70+ y/o man I see has a hat like that. Love the sequin poncho.

(btw I am almost certain Keith has posted a picture of that teapot on Cohost before... He posts about tea sometimes so there's at least a chance. I mean the description of the coloring he gives is actually pretty good IMO, you can work with that, but I as an artist I like to have a visual reference. EDIT: someone just asked him. thank you keith and also rosecrest)

I have the. I got Armor Astir & a lot of the playbooks other people made in a bundle a while back and I'm real torn if I should just look at the Investigator because I'm really curious. But. I also love to be surprised. So I probably won't, but it's good to know I COULD, if I wanted to. Anyways, I was pretty sure it'd be another B-Plot character too, just because it makes sense. Brnine COULD go alone on a B-Plot, I guess, but it's more fun with 2 groups to jump between, surely. Though this means the Eclectic-Brnine dynamic is crucial! I hope they can meet up soon... But yeah I just really am gonna miss Phrygian backing them up and cheering and clapping and asking questions. They were so fun together... A great team :' (

ok so I wrote everything else about Eclectic down yesterday & then noted down "vibes?" as break between paragraphs because all I had at that point was the description & I wanted to get back to this. And ooohhh my god the vibes are fucking immaculate right off the bat I'm having a hard time to not Already be obsessed with this guy he's SO funny conceptually and it KEPT getting better... Truly delighted with this new type of guy (& Keith is doing a voice!). And I fucking love the hooks. Truly so great to me. The thought of these getting loosened OR deepened is already really really good. "Leap says"..... oh it's SO funny I keep laughing to myself

And I'm VERY excited it's a delegate like genuinely so happy. I was mourning the loss of a branched onscreen (okay.I still am) but this does make it worth it. Ever since they got introduced basically I so badly wanted to know anything more about them, but especially what Austin mentioned in the episode itself: the delegates relationships to the divines they are made from & of course the divines themselves (who are alive!!! Apparently that was already written in a dossier way back when, but I rarely read those). That has me sooo excited.

Oh and the like... I only thought about this just now but the connection there to Thisbe's new project is. That's gotta be something! "The divine who's being held captive somewhere on this planet, and has been tortured for millennia" hearing a message of... That this can end & rest is possible and it's SO CLOSE? But does that just make it worse... Ohhhhh. Yeah this rules. What a great idea.

That project generally is really... god, I love Thisbe so much. I love how Janine talks about her and what she thinks and why she does what she does. Thisbe's relationship to work and being a tool and of use is so interesting to put here, with the divines wanting to rest. (And Janine saying something like... Thisbe thinks of herself in relation to divines how Mow is to her? Kind of?) And saying it seems so solitary a project... every divine should know about it. Every divine deserves the right to rest. But it's also a call to action of sorts when she talks about like... "shouldn't you want to protect this?" I think her "Fighting is not my purpose, but there is nowhere else for me until the fighting is over." hook could be in conservation here too... Also I'm just looking forward for Thisbe to Broadcast again. It was like, one of her things in PARTIZAN. I really liked her & Cori working on this together with the. Experience they just had behind them. Sylvi & Janine reading the hooks for each others characters kind of sheepishly was soooo funny "I forgot how bitchy this was!". That's good stuff to me. (as an aside: god, Thisbe has always had good as hell hooks/beliefs/whatever else. Remember "Operant Broun lies to me because they believe I am a person."? Banger. ) I also love that she thought of this/about this at the rib(?) of Barricade. Barricade as an axiom who had this close (& good, protective) relationship with another axiom...

btw now that Leap is NOT coming back I do miss him a bit. Mostly out of principle like I am So happy we have Eclectic but Leap is my guy.... shoutout to him... being a bitch bastard pirate out there in space... + shoutout to Figure A too always : ) (speaking of, on the Gathering Information Extra bit from today he talked about if he had played Leap, picking a class that also had like, a crew, and I'm mostly just really curious who that would've been. I would love for Keith to make up some funny guys for Leap to order around. I wonder if Eclectic or an Eclectic type would've been on that?)

(Also Leap investigating Motion. Ok. To ME it's at least partly bc this was so important to Millie. And he has reason to be concerned generally he fought Motion too but. That's MILLIE'S rival! And it doesn't even have to be at the front of his mind when he does this. Maybe it isn't. But it's real & it's something to remember her by through actual action. Because he's not the sentimental type.Do you get me.?)

Brnine talk show. This was sooo good. After they joked about it in PAL25 too. I recognized the hosts name, but wasn't quite sure from where until I read the dossier - of course he's that guy from the podcast. God. I have got to relisten to that sometime... I remember Ali on one of the recent Gathering Information ep (the one w/ Austin on, I think) mentioning a conversation that was like. stressful to do. and then also to listen to? (since she has to for production/editing) and I figured it would be another Gucci-type talk but ooohh my god. This was sooo. EDIT: ACTUALLY what if it wasn't even. What if it's about to be this talk with Rye edit: GALLICA i cant believe noone called me on this. mixing my elects up. rye is the one gur killed (mvp). Austin was sounding a bit ominous about it at the end of this episode! HUGE shoutouts to Ali again she is just absolutely killing it this season for real... And I honestly feel like overall Brnine was, considering the situation, doing very well. Genuinely. You're feverish and hollowblooded and have this fucking. Guy needling you & asking the stupidest questions... & like. "You made Kalmeria. They'd never let you rot in jail." of courseeee they want Brnine working for them. They're so GOOD at what they do. They messed with the parts of A Fucking Divine. . I just had a scary thought and it involved Mustard Red. But. Surely not. Nooo. I'm shaking my head. However Arbitrage? An Arbitrage deal (like they tried to make them take before) would work just perfectly for this, wouldn't it...

some other stuff:

When Austin mentioned Grand Mag in that vision Cori had I thought something like 'man. sucks to be him : (' but like. In a genuine way. "I can't stop it from hurting people a little"........... Hah oh wow I just thought of this but I am so excited for people who haven't listened to TM to meet him now. He's not even my favourite he just makes me crazy in a way almost no other character does? Like there's something so WRONG with him. And there's things wrong with a lot of FatT characters but it's like... Well. Grand Magnificent.

I love the thought of them watching Brnines interview at the next movie night (POOR BRNINE.) but I also want to know what Eclectic would pick for movie night. Oh and Partial too. Though he may not be staying I would still really love to know. Partial coming on board for the mission has me intrigued generally.

Oh and Gur talking! Even if just a little. I still feel so bad for them. "I believe in whispers in ears"... and they have reason to now. Figure is a person trying their best to do good & make changes, which is what Gur wants. I just wish they weren't a specter haunting someone elses body & what even happens when Figure rolls a 10+. Is Gur still there and Figure just stops seeing him? oohh it hurts a bit.you can't do this to him you can't (related: I extremely forgot about the other specters and ghosts and ghouls and whatnot that Figure can also see. It's not just my friend Gur Sevraq. Looking forward to hear more about that & how it affects Figure so much as to roll with disadvantage!)

Love to learn just a little more about devotion. I really need to just relisten to that again & think about it a bit harder.

At one point Austin says "Still flanked by guards, you are" and it caught me off guard & made me wheeze. He didn't even do that on purpose . I get him I do this way too often(realize I forgot to say part of a sentence and pack it at the end)

[faebriel]

Super Niki au my absolute beloved.. the more information I get the more crazy I get

(hi sorry this sat in the inbox for like two months anon for some reason i was hoping something more substantial would appear out of thin air. it didn't btw.) regardless of that! fuck yeah anon i'm with you on that

i think a superhero niki story would have to have a real focus on the mundane. like the nitty gritty details of "how do you conceal your identity from people in your superhero costume?" "how do you fit patrols into your week? you can't possibly do them every day." all that! again i think this comes back to me being really attached to the 'everyman' side of c!niki it makes me want to imbue that feeling into everything i write with her. in this au i think she does work at a bakery (good for her) but when the shit starts to hit the fan she disengages from her job, stops taking on the extra duties she usually does at work, stops caring, eventually stops showing up. etc. this is probably related to how she ends up crashing with fundy and hbomb after The Puffychu Divorce (superniki edition)

here are a few other miscellaneous thoughts i've been having:

i've been having more of a think about emerald duo in this au, and i think i know how i picture them being. so phil is wilbur's dad, techno is phil's friend, techno and wilbur define their relationship in vastly different ways, etc etc the standard. oh but they're both supervillains. not for any particular reason they kind of liked mucking around causing mayhem first and then came up with an ideology later. anyway phil's retired and techno Would Like to be retired but he's still looped into the job due to Shenanigans (blood god related mb?). wilbur is fully aware of this and goes to him to be like 🥺 help i need ideas when he decides to go supervillain mode

oh! and wilbur's alter ego name is chekhov ^-^

and so the syndicate in this au is......................... a book club. yes for real

okay look i was thinking about what to do with the syndicate and i didn't really want to have them end up as a Bad Ass Villain Posse because i think niki needs to retire or at least be a superperson part time after everything that happens. so instead, she ends up meeting phil and techno and they help her ease into super semi-retirement ^-^ and ofc phil and techno appreciate having another friend who Gets It around. they are literally just like a book club and a mild support group in this au in a very silly way and i like it

i've spoken a bit about fundy and hbomb in this au... yeah niki lives with them after breaking up with puffy. not 100% sure where jack fits in. maybe he's another low ish level vigilante running around and tries to ally with niki? i can't imagine any allegiances she makes in that mental state (without the history she and jack had as l'manbergians in canon) would last very long. maybe she sees a bit of herself in him. they both call each other out for being emotionally immature idiots and then go and do the exact same thing themself. hypocrites

oh and i think i've mentioned niki making her own costume before!! i imagine as a fire based superhero she buys PPE (like from a tradie joint) and modifies it to be 1. functional and 2. fashionable. this does in fact mean that hi-vis yellow + orange are her colours in this au....

and below the cut is a treat: a snippet i wrote of a scene where after a big fight, wilbur finds himself patching up his wounds in the same safety stash as this city's very own friendly neighbourhood superhero (who wants to beat his ass)......

“Why do you hate me?”

The stubborn rasp in his voice surprises even him. As for the woman on the other side of the room, her shoulders draw tight - like a wild animal arching its back, a show of anger. The question, then – should Wilbur interpret such a motion as defensiveness, or as a threat? “What makes you say that?” she asks. Her voice runs high with the question – a quiet sound, like a flute's soft alto, though it rasps slightly through the sound of a voice changer. Idly, Wilbur wonders whether it is worth asking where she got it. Or how she fashioned it, perhaps. God knows he needs one. Chekhov might manage perfectly fine in the midst of faceless reporters and supervillains – the proper kind – who haven't seen the light of city streets in years, but if Wilbur were to cross paths with someone he knew as himself (god forbid, someone like Tommy) his voice would give him away quick as anything.  (His heart aches, briefly, when he thinks of his brother.) Part of him tries to unpick what her voice would sound like without it. It’s difficult not to fixate on these small things – perhaps because the bigger things provide him with so little in comparison. Her voice is quiet, a little difficult to pick the sounds apart around the staticky rumble of the voice changer, but far from timid. There’s a stubborn timbre to it. (Something in it is familiar. But that thought is patently ridiculous, and Wilbur is impatient, and so it is dismissed.)

[scene continues]

"Am I," Wilbur pauses, wets his lips – it almost feels as if the fire is still flickering beneath his skin, energising and scorching all at once. "Am I that horrible? Is there something – do you see something so inherently terrible in me that you just have to strike it down? Is that it?" Her powder-keg silence sparks, ignites, her scowl a torn-open slash even beneath the planes of her mask, embroiled in sudden fury. "Don't flatter yourself - "  "Ah, and there it is!" To her credit, she doesn't stagger back as he lights up – if anything, her affect is unimpressed. "Show us the blaze, firebug! What – what drives you? What lights your fuse?" "Do you even know what you are?" she retorts. Oh, she's caught on the hook, now. "You know what you are?" What is Wilbur expecting? Proud, arrogant perhaps – delusional wouldn't be anything new, or any of the crueler words from that stock. Wouldn't be the first time he'd been called some variety of son of a bitch bastard, either. Who is he, to this spectre of flame? He's asking honestly, though he doubts she believes in his integrity. "You're a liar," she continues, words stubborn and fierce and almost unwieldy. "You – you are so selfish, and so cruel – you take, and you take and you take and you don't think for a second of the people you're taking from. You don't think anything of them. You're a liar," and when she repeats these words, they sound like smoke – "and you know what? I hate liars. I hate them." The words sink into him like stones. How does she know? he asks himself. How does she know? He doesn't ask her that. Knowing his patience, he'd be lucky for an answer, anyway - instead he just suggests, "you speak like you're familiar on the subject, then?" If it's even possible, her scowl drives itself deeper into her face - like tyre tracks driven into mud, an ugly slash of drawn brows and what he can only assume is teeth bared behind that voice changer of hers. She looks at him like he isn't worth a single thing on this earth. "Yeah, well," she spits. "I've had my fair share, with bastards like you."

[quill-n]

I think Tsu is actually the most unhinged hero. Everyone sees him as this prim and proper hero who takes his image very seriously, and he IS, but he’s also just so CHAOTIC.

Seriously the man was in full nude during a fight In vigilantes because he had to use his own hero costume. And he wasn’t even EMBARRASSED. He has absolutely no shame, and I love him for it

No fr, he's genuinely one of the strangest characters I've ever encountered because every time I learn something new about him, he gets weirder

and I ADORE him for it

I think I'll actually go insane if I don't write it all down, so that's going below the cut

All this information is canon, take that how you will

Let's start with the fighting in the nude thing since you already mentioned it— He was totally naked that scene, he used up his entire costume (which makes sense) but he still actively chose to leave the part covering his face. Not only does he have no shame, he has priorities.

His denim puns... was that something he always did, or did he come up with it to stay on brand??

The fact that he's always adjusting his hair. I would be too, if I also chose to rock that weird side sweep

This one's a little funky, but there's something about the way that he stands— Idk, it just sets off something in my brain (affectionate)

Yeah

I don't think I even need to mention his neck

His proportions in general????

He has pockets on the back of his. collar? jollar?? They're on the back of his head is my point and they're like the ass pockets of pants and just WHAT DOES HE USE THEM FOR??

(My personal headcanon is that's where he keeps his comb)

The fact that he has an S+ rank in fashion sense, but the way he canonically dresses is... yeah

He just looks so strange (affectionate)

(Ik it's not actually that out of place, but there's something about the four buttons on the pants and the suspenders/scarf (bandana??) combo and the. the bowling shoes. It just throws me off a bit. I feel like he can do better /lh)

SPEAKING OF HIS CLOTHES, we've seen at LEAST three or four different iterations of the same stupid costume. The changes are always so unnoticeable and it drives me a little bit insane

THE FACE BELT.

His taste in interior decor is... on brand

Wow I wonder what his favorite color is (sarcastic, affectionate)

(His home isn't actually that bad imo, but the office.) (There's more scenes of the office interior somewhere out there but they won't fit on this post, apologies.)

(The thread spool table. I can't tell if it's genius or insane.)

He was the president of a crafts club at a school that doesn't allow hero students to join clubs (anymore?) and now he's one of the top heroes of the country and I think that says a lot about him

He won the Best Jeanist award eight years in a row, which for a while SEVERELY confused me because did he name himself after the award, or was the award named after him? Because one of those is a little weird and the other one seems just a little unfair.

(This is how I learned that the Best Jeanist award is a REAL THING in Japan so he named himself after the award and that sent me reeling for a while)

The BJ belt buckle.

This image:

This image:

His hands are bigger than his face, which means that the fact that he's been hospitalized multiple times makes PERFECT sense

(my friend found a whole Stanford article written in the most hilarious way about the hand thing, and it's haunted me ever since) (I'd need to ask for the article again if anyone's curious but it's an... interesting read)

edit: I LIED I LIED THE ARTICLE IS SATIRE IT'S NOT REAL IT'S NOT REAL THE HAND THING (probably) ISN'T TRUE (it's still a hilarious read though so I'm still linking it)

(I'm going to pretend that it's real just because it is absolutely hysterical to me. Sir Nighteye and All Might also have hands bigger than their faces btw. For the record. Which is why I think it's awfully funny.)

Anyways

There's also this from Vigilantes, and I'm not even sure what to make of it

It talks about how he's always so serious even when the situation is........ ridiculous

He's so eccentric I love him

Also that specific image gives fish want me, women fear me vibes /j

He drives the fucking Batmobile except it can shoot out metal wires

(I've never read any DC comics; if the actual Batmobile can also shoot out metal wires, please forgive my oversight)

The fact that he JUMPED OUT OF A PLANE WITHOUT A PARACHUTE and STILL landed on his feet?? gracefully? on a cable???? With not a single hair out of place?????

ALSO the fact that he keeps on having such close encounters with death (he lost a lung, the whole Hawks and Dabi situation...) and yet he's. not dead. yet. somehow. Maybe he has multiple lives.

Is he just a cat?????

New conspiracy theory just dropped /j

Moral of the story is: Best Jeanist is, in fact, unhinged (and we love him for it)

[tuulikannel]

Random Despair Time thoughts

Mainly just notes for myself, I doubt there’s any overly shocking insights in this XD Spoilers ahead...

Firstly, the remaining secrets. I’m pretty sure David lied about Xander’s. (It actually feels pretty obvious, tbh?) What he claimed to be Xander’s secret is most likely Teruko’s… keeping in mind how the game started. He might have done that simply because saying in the middle of the trial that Teruko is the reason behind the killing game… well, it sure would have made a mess of everything. Xander’s real secret probably is the one Min had, about the dead family (there’s the Visiting Graves extra too which very strongly points in that direction). (Now, does David know that that Min had Xander’s secret? Otherwise it’d be a bit risky to claim he had Xander's secret, cause someone else might have the real one.)

Anyway, as for David’s secret… I’m relatively sure it’s the manipulation one. It fits a bit too well… :/ Could be wrong, of course.

As for the other ones, the “harm yourself for fun” thing sure makes one think of Veronika… ^^;;

The murderer… could be Levi. He’s shown he’s got moments when his temper flares. But no remorse, huh? I wonder.

…and would Hu be the poisoner? That’d… be something. But somehow, I don’t find it too unbelievable. This might be about some big music competition, and it might not even be any serious poisoning. Some laxatives would be enough to make sure you’re not on the stage competing.

Oh, I almost forgot the 3 suicide attempts one! Would that be Min, then? Again… I could sort of see it… tho she definitely wasn’t someone wanting to die at the end of ch.1. And thinking about her bonus episode… she had this goal all her life, to be able to become the Ultimate Student. Would she have tried to throw it all away, three times? Though who knows? I mean, it must have been really tough for her, and maybe it got too much, at times? Maybe she thought she’d not be able to do it?

Hmm. Or then I should switch Hu and Min? Maybe there were some study competitions Min was desperate to win? I’m not sure if the suicides really fit Hu, though……. Or then, switching Veronika and Min? Maybe Veronika was the “hopeless child,” and Min didn’t get so focused on becoming the Ultimate Student for her family but instead in order to stop herself from harming herself?

Wait, Veronika had the suicide motive, right? Then it shouldn't be hers, if no one got their own. On the other hand, this is Veronika we're talking about… maybe she lied about that, and she did get her own motive. Maybe that's why she wasn't telling whose it is? That… sounds like something she would do. Besides, you'd think someone ends up with their own motive, if they're distributed randomly. Okay… I might be guessing that that's actually Veronika's secret, and then Min's is the "harming yourself" one?

Okay, so, I’ve no idea. XD Here’s some other random things. But first, I'm gonna put this here so it's easier to find it if I want to take another look at it…

Ok, the other things. Firstly, the MonoTV. Are there at least two people controlling it? First MonoTV gave Teruko new clothes, and a bit later asked her if she has new clothes cause she “looks a bit different” or something like that. Either the computer has some missing memory, or then there are several people involved who might not know all the details of what the other(s) do. And one of them is apparently into fashion (and one definitely not so, barely noticing that Teruko has changed clothes.) (Which I love, btw. Characters actually not wearing the same clothes every single day? Wow. ^^)

Secondly, Xander. Did he pull a Rantaro and somehow leave himself a message about killing Teruko? Does he have some kind of a DID condition or something such? I mean, that thing he said, that he needs to trust himself… sounded quite peculiar. Though he also said, why did you tell me to kill her... So which is it? Someone else, or he himself, who told him to do that? That simple note, “kill Teruko Tawaki” doesn’t quite sound enough to make him do it… but… I wonder, what if it was in his things, written in his handwriting? Well, I’ve no clue, but I’m quite curious about this, and I bet I’m not alone here. XD

Hmm… what else? That redhaired girl who looks like Xander that Teruko remembered? Is she the unnamed classmate in the bonus episodes? But she sure looks a lot like Xander, too much that I could think that it would be a coincidence. But still, if Xander’s family is dead… hmm. I even had the utterly weird idea at one point that what if Xander is trans XD (But then that girl couldn’t have been with him in the train. If it was her, that is.)

…I feel like I had something else in mind too, but… I can’t remember what it was. Oh well. I guess that’s enough for tonight.

[teeny-tiny-revenge]

What bugs me about the discussion is that so many people seem to think being gnc is only a matter of clothes (plus maybe hairstyle and/or makeup), entirely ignoring that behaviour is definitely also a big part of it, and that gender presentation is so much more diverse than masculine and feminine (seriously, a lot of people are reinventing the gender binary; there's two genders, and they're masc and femme - I hate it here).

When people from his old life treat Stede as being gnc, they aren't only mocking his clothes. The Badmintons mock him for crying a lot and picking flowers, aka for being emotionally expressive, aka for behaving not masculinely enough. Which is btw also one of the things that makes Izzy snap at Ed in episode ten: it's not just the silk robe, the final straw is the way Ed expresses his emotions openly with the crew, the way he's pining and crying. These are direct parallels. The homophobic peers in both Ed's and Stede's lives punish their gender-nonconformity, and they punish non-conforming behaviour at least as much as non-conforming fashion choices.

Talking fashion choices, not all of Stede's fashion choices in season two are entirely his own. He has only one shirt to begin his journey with. Then he's given a uniform on Zheng's ship. I feel like the cursed suit is a very important bit to look at when talking about Stede's clothes, because it's the first item of clothing he chooses to wear, and it's flashy, flamboyant, a real statement piece. And he shines in it! Look at him making his coat tails swish. Is the coat feminine? Whatever. Don't care; I'm not the gender police, but what it definitely is is very Stede. Because regardless of where on the gender spectrum he swings with a given outfit, Stede loves a showy look. Stede likes his clothes to stand out. Also the extremely piratey look he dreams up for himself for his dream reunion with dream Ed is showy and flashy, with the sash and all. The least Stede outfits we see him wear in the entire show are the bland and dull outfits he wears back in Barbados, trying to make himself fit back in.

Also Stede wearing more masculine looks in season two have a flavour of trying to fit in to them. He wants to become a part of pirate society, and he's bending himself out of shape to do so. We see it in his behaviour in episode seven, and it might be worth considering if some of his presentation isn't part of an attempt to conform, yeah, but that's not where he is at all times, and it's not where he ends up by the time the plot has concluded. (And the conclusion is important, because that's where he ends up after all.)

Stede is experimenting with his presentation, in a variety of ways. He tries to find his middle ground. The way I see it, his more flashy and colourful, and yes, gnc look in season one is him trying to be true to himself at least this one way. He has little control over his own life. He is married off to a woman he doesn't love. He is forced into a family life he didn't want. He follows a career he doesn't enjoy. None of the big things in his life are him, at all. Fashion is his one way to express his own personality in his restricted, repressed life. That's his one bit of freedom. Then he leaves this life behind, and doesn't need that anymore, because he's a pirate now, he's free, and that includes being free to live his queer identity outside of choosing his own clothes. He can now express other queer parts of himself openly. He's in love with Ed, and he can say that, and live that. And I think for a while he is so focused on the goal of reuniting with Ed that he doesn't really pay much thought to himself and his own identity and what he wants outside of Ed. He has other priorities! It's only when he and Ed are together again and they are beginning to mend things between them that Stede really starts exploring his identity again. I think it's no coincidence that the captain voice and pirate training with Izzy bits and the red suit of looking absolutely fabulous happen in the same episode.

An interesting thing about Stede (and Ed!) and gender expression in the entire show is that they lose when they try to conform. Things go bad for them when they try to conform to gender norms. The whole Kraken arc is Ed violently throwing himself back into conformity, and it makes him hurt everyone around him as well as himself and it nearly kills him. Stede tries to be the man that society wants him to be after returning to Bridgetown, and it makes him hurt everyone around him and it ends with him getting nearly stabbed. Then Stede tries to conform to pirate society gender standards, with the drinking and the setting people on fire, and it hurts Ed, the crew, Stede himself, and nearly makes Zheng kill him. Conformity is punished by the narrative.

Both Ed and Stede win when they find ways to be true to themselves and live their queer identities and find their own balance. Stede, after his attempt at being not gnc, goes back to talking about feelings (instead of drinking too much and setting people on fire). He goes back to being a captain in his original way - talking it through and offering kindness to the people around him (which are mockable traits if you think being a manly man who survives by stabbing all his enemies before they stab him is the way to be).

So, is Stede less gnc in season two? I don't think so. I think it just shows in different ways, and some of it is down to circumstance rather than choice, and he abandons his most extreme attempt at confirming to masculinity after it turns out to be harmful. I feel like if (when) we get season three, we'll see both Stede and Ed being gnc in their own ways, neither actually masculine or feminine, but just picking things that work for them as individuals, because that's clearly where both their arcs have been heading across both seasons IMO.

Throwing my hat into the "is Stede really gender-noncomforming" ring because I've seen some discussion around it recently.

I think it's true that we can see in the show that Stede's style of dress in s1 isn't that different from other men of his class. He likes to wear much brighter colors, though, and I'd argue that he wears these clothes differently. Stede likes clothes, he likes dressing up, and he's often noticably more showy and flamboyant with them than others who wear similar suits (his all-white suit is a nice example). But sure, I'll concede that his clothing style isn't especially gnc if we're just talking about the style of clothes he wears in s1.

However, I think we're still supposed to understand that Stede is gnc, and that's because other characters treat him like he is. Multiple times in s1, we get other characters pretending to mistake him for a woman to mock him. This happens first in the pilot, by someone on Nigel's ship saying he "appears to be a heavyset woman in a dressing gown," so it's not just people from outside Stede's social class saying these things.

Maybe it's because I'm also a feminine gay man, but the fact that Stede wears more "masculine" clothing in s2 doesn't stop me from seeing him as gnc, either. It's about the way he wears the clothes, in a way that's kind of difficult to explain. I don't think he stops being a gnc gay man just because he's not wearing frills anymore. I think he's a gnc gay man throughout the show because that's just who he is, and it's less about what he wears and more about how he wears it.

[acewithapaintbrush]

Okay, first, I need to say the latest chapter of "A Place for Crows" is amazing! Second, how do you think the ROTMNT family would get along with the Madrigals?

Ah thank you so much ❤️🦋

I think they would all be a little bit weirded out by each other, the Madrigals more so of course since the turtles are already used to more mystic stuff than just themselves. But they'd get over it quickly.

Mikey and Donatello would be obsessed with Casita. Mikey of course cause it's fun to play around, slide down the stairs together with Camilo and Mirabel and Antonio and stuff. Donatello cause he wants to know how it all works or rather how he can replicate it with his tech. His smart lair kinda backfired but he never stopped dreaming of trying again and succeeding. Maybe Casita's 'functions' can give him some inspiration.

Also, Donnie would be so dismissive of Mirabel's sheepish explanation of "I don't have a gift"

"Scoff!" he would say. "Who needs gifts if you have a big brain and science! I know tech is not quite a thing here yet but let me show you the beautiful world of physics and Newtons three laws of motion"

The Madrigals are all like "awwwww" while the turtles just go "Oh shit".

The Madrigals find it cute until Mirabel gets a gleam in her eyes and almost breaks Camilo's nose with a trap she invented for when he enters her room without asking.

("Needs some adjusting" Donnie mutters while his big brother chews him out)

(Camilo forgives her very quickly when her next invention, a hot air balloon, fulfills his dream of flying)

For Leo I'm gonna indulge all my headcanons: he is the teams medic and so he would be all over Julieta and her cooking. He can't make magic food but some pointers for delicious chicken soup are very appreciated. But he is still a teenager and hanging around an adult all the time is so not his vibe (no matter how motherly she is and how warm and fuzzy her attention makes him feel inside) so I also imagine him spending lots of time with all the kids but especially Dolores. The gossip that girl can tell him! Hell yeah! And he can Portal the two of them right to the gossip so they can see it first hand, hehe.

Raph is a no brainer. He takes one look at Luisa and sees a kindred spirit. They both drink tea and lament over little siblings and their antics and even more over their own strength and how hard it is to be careful all the time. I think both of them will greatly benefit from each other and from giving each other tips. They will become attached at the hip.

April hears how Isabela changed her appearance and is still looking for her true self and goes full fashion and life style coach on her. April knows a thing or two about trying to be normal and fit in only to realize that the only thing you need to be is yourself. Isa is just fascinated with this confident girl who takes no shit and embraces her own self. She wants that too.

I don't have a real reason for this except that I really want to see Casey and Bruno just sitting a bit outside of the chaos and relaxing with some nice arts and crafts. They are both happy that they are back with family but it can all get a little bit overwhelming at times so it's nice to have someone who understands and has no problem just sitting side by side in silence and enjoy their families laughter and joy until the batteries are refilled and they are ready to rejoin the madness.

Alma doesn't know what to make of this little rat man (who btw fascinates and freaks Bruno out a little) but when they get to finally talking (being the family heads that they are) they realize that they have a lot in common. Splinter knows how it is to be overwhelmed by a legacy that was thrust onto you and that you didn't really want. How you'd rather have your beloved mother/husband back and how you feel that you can't let them down but go about it in all the wrong ways, almost alienating your family in the process instead of holding them close. The crushing weight of it all and how it makes you lose sight of what is important.

Splinter knows a thing or two about that and realizing that gives Alma some peace. They often sit side by side and watch their families, thankful for the second chance they were given.

[femsolid]

Can you recommend any accounts or resources for someone who wants to sort of "reset" her brain's expectations to include hair on women's legs, no make-up, women dressing in ways that honor the occasion as well as their own bodies? (Like whatever a healthy, non-performative woman would wear to a wedding, for example?) I have never had what anyone would call any sense of fashion or style, and frankly friends and family are excited when I refresh my t-shirt supply. But I would like to figure out clothes that I can rely on for special occasions that aren't propping up these bizarre expectations of women.

I have a body image category on my blog with lots of posts about letting go of shaving, make-up and general feminine discomfort and also a gnc tag, I find butch lesbians to be very inspirational. Personally I stick to a rule regarding all this: don't do anything that a man doesn't feel obliged to do. This works in most situations. I got rid of all uncomfortable clothing, all things tight, revealing, that put me on display. I rarely shop but when I do I go through both the female section and the male section. Comfort is my primary focus (fun is my second one), it has to be something I can move in, bend over, raise my arms, walk without feeling any pain, something that fits with my wardrobe so I don't have to waste time picking an outfit every day and I avoid clothes that show my breasts or the shape of my butt. When buying a shirt from the woman's section you can buy a size bigger than your real size. I avoid "skinny" jeans and all that crap that makes me feel naked. Just look at what men wear really. It's always based on comfort and practicality.

I stopped shaving and wearing make-up from one day to the next. Much to my surprise, the world didn't end. It's been 8 years now that I think of it! Because I'm gender non conforming my body hair doesn't clash with artificial femininity so people don't really pay attention to it. I haven't been harassed about it the way I had been in the past when I was trying to be feminine. I've been thinking of making a blog collecting imagery of unaltered women actually. I agree with you that it's important to be exposed to it, to create a counter culture if you wish. It has certainly worked on me to the point that I now look at women with make up or shaved legs and it all seems really strange and absurd to me.

We did a fun little thread where we all posted pictures of our unshaved legs once btw :) I hope this can help you feel more comfortable with yourself too.

Anyway in terms of more formal gender non conforming outfits I would again advise you to look at what men are doing and not doing. A nice shirt and an elegant jacket with flat shoes usually suffice.

[seravph]

Hi, I didn't really know who to reach out for this question, but do you have any tips on how to find your own unique fashion style? I'm not really looking to hop on popular clothing trends on social media e.g. eboy/girl or cottagecore, so I'm not exactly sure where to start! I come to consult you because I've seen some of your posts and you look very well versed in fashion and you seem to know your own personal style. My wardrobe is very outdated and I would like to update it to reflect the truest expression of myself. Thank you 😊 You don't have to answer this if you don't feel like doing so btw 😅

EEEE more fashion asks i love these thank you!!!! warning this got a lil (very) long so its under the cut :^)

so first and foremost the most important part about curating your own style is to learn more about your body and what flatters/doesnt flatter it. it's learning some basic fashion 'rules' pertaining to proportions, cuts, etc. there are plenty of resources on this if you dont know where to start (kibbe body test, video, video) but keep in mind this step has nothing to do with your weight!!!! i could talk wayyy more about this but at the end of the day, some clothing is just more flattering for specific body shapes - that doesnt mean you cant wear something that isnt perfectly flattering, but knowing your body and knowing what flatters it will make you understand your own style and help guide the pieces you buy. fashion 'rules' arent necessarily meant to be followed, but just understood so that 'breaking' them is a conscious choice. (it also really helped with my insecurities???? like this step is basically recognizing that its not your body thats unflattering, its the clothing, if that makes sense???)

also remember that every 'style' works for every body type. i.e if you want to be a 60s vibe but youre too curvy for shift dresses, there are plenty of clothes in a similar style that would look great on you <3 basically, if you dont like the way a piece looks on you, you can still achieve the same vibe with a different article of clothing thats more flattering. but also umm.... you can just wear the unflattering thing if you want LOL if it makes you happy... then it becomes your own controlled decision <3 live love laugh follow your heart

okay. now that you have that out of the way. there are a million ways to develop a sense of style, and no particular order in which i recommend them. what i love doing is creating pinterest boards for the spring/summer or fall/winter seasons and just filling them with pieces i would wear in a perfect world. i dont mean like cottagecore aesthetic boards, just boards full of runway looks and clothing pngs that i like. i also love making little outfits for characters which can influence my own style. everyone thinks of their style differently; i think of my own outfits as little vignettes with narratives behind them, but other people are more concerned with just wearing things they think are pretty, other people view it as an expression of art or their identity, and other people just want to feel comfortable!!! its all up to you and what youre drawn to!!

one thing that tan france mentioned once was to go online window shopping by going onto the website for a brand you like (regardless of whether its affordable or realistic!) and just adding things to your cart that youre interested in. dont worry about how expensive they are or anything, and when youre done, remove all the items you like the least. and then keep reviewing and removing until you have just a handful of really nice items you really like, and keep doing this with other brands until you can identify common threads between the pieces you like. you dont have to buy them!! in fact maybe its better if you dont!!! and the websites dont have to be like zara or h&m ... go on balmain or chanel if you want, play pretend and have fun!!

re: the last bullet point, i think a big turn off for people in terms of fashion is the idea that you need to wear something palatable and 'appropriate.' its like looking at a runway and thinking "its nice, but i would never wear that in real life." but honestly????? in a perfect world i would be wearing full gowns to the supermarket!!!! if your ideal style is imaginative but unattainable, your style in practice will be a microcosm of it. basically... dream big... dont be afraid to 'overdress' if its what you like!! one of the best pieces of advice i ever got was from my aunt, who offered to by me a plastic tiara. i asked her when i was ever going to wear it irl, and she just looked at me and said "??? you can wear it whenever you want to!!" so true!!! wear a tutu to mcdonalds. wear a bedazzled tux to prom. who cares

accessories, nail polish, hair, jewelry, perfume and makeup goes a long way in developing style. i dont wear a ton of makeup, but just putting some color on my cheeks achieves a kind of sunkissed lovestruck vibe that i strive for. i paint my nails red because i think its chic or bright colors so they contrast with a toned down outfit. even wearing no accessories is an accessory in itself. accessorizing (or specifically not accessorizing) is like adding texture to an outfit imo

anything that advises you about 'absolutely necessary essentials everyone needs' is entirely wrong. there is no one size fits all; i.e everyone says you need one good pair of denim jeans, but i havent worn jeans in two years!!! an essential for ME is a pair of neutral wool shorts, but an essential for another person could be a thick knit sweater or for another person, a flannel. the idea that everyone needs a 'little black dress' or a 'basic white t shirt' is preposterous. YOUR essentials depend entirely on YOUR style. a pair of denim jeans is useless if you hate wearing jeans!!!!

as for my personal style, im mostly influenced by movies, books, songs, characters, feelings, colors, high fashion, and costumes. ultimately, you should worry less about what you want to be and worry more about what you already like. every piece i have kind of plays into some narrative ive constructed, or otherwise theyre all special to me :) if you want to update your wardrobe, dont feel the need to over consume fast fashion (or any fashion for that matter) to do so. if you take it slow and buy pieces you really love, every item will have a story and you'll begin to develop a more stable internal style and they'll last longer :)

let me know if you have questions or want me to talk more about any of this because i really love answering these kinds of questions!!!!!! especially the body type thing because thats such an important but long winded thing i couldnt really fit it all LOL

some more videos + resources about style and fashion i think are interesting:

deep dive into kibbe body types

pinterest aesthetics, fatphobia, and white washing

lies about clothes to unlearn in your twenties

studio ghibli: how clothing shapes identity

breakfast at tiffanys style analysis: the reinvention of onself with fashion

will the millennial aesthetic ever end?

go viral, post #spon, get canceled: how social media transformed fashion in the 2010s

analyzing the "is it a cute outfit or is she just skinny?" meme

[sus-amogus]

Yeah lol I got hit with stupid beam when I wrote that last tag.

Anyway, while I get that it can come across as weird and off-putting for MSP to make such items, I just can't help but point out that these things don't *have* to be read in such context.

Around 2012 (?) chokers became a really big thing, to the point where you could find them in any souvenir shop or any store, especially those ones:

And I was really young then and had only a vague idea what sex is and had no context that those evolved from more extreme, actual kink chokers, mainly those for pet play. I just thought they looked very neat and wanted one DESPERATELY.

It was my parents who forbade me from getting one, saying it looks whorish and unsuitable for someone my age: that even the name "choker" implies it's sexual and I can't have one. It made me really sad because I didn't want one to be sexy, I wanted one because it was really really cool and I liked how I looked in it.

Years later, when I was still a teenager (like 15?) I got myself a collar, again, not because I wanted to be sexy (I was actually incredibly dysmorphic and hated myself, but that's just closeted trans stuff), I wanted one because it was cool and made me think of cool punk people and how dangerous and alt they looked like. And I wore it to school a couple of times! No one said a thing, my friends thought it was cute, I thought I looked really nice in it, and no teacher pulled my to the side about it (honestly dress code in my high school was quite lax). It was when I got home when I got bombarded by my father that I look like a slut and it's inappropriate and I CAN'T ever wear it again (he even took it away and hid it from me). It made me furious and sad because while I *knew* that collars are used for kink and that leather puppies are a thing, I didn't want to be seen in it in this context. I wanted to keep wearing it because it looked really amazing and I felt confident with it!! (btw for the same reason I was always putting a spiky collar on my Sims lol. they just looked so cool)

When I saw this muzzle in the game, it made me think how it will fit to all different spooky items on MSP: there have always been scary demon grins, morphing faces, stitches, wings, tails, collars, etc., so I read it more as a "my scary, feral demon princess oc who can't control her powers and needs to wear a muzzle so she doesn't kill everyone" kind of item instead of pure kink item. Sure, other people can see and interpret it differently, but maybe the kid who buys it in the game doesn't see it as sexual. Or they might, but then again, every mundane object can be seen in a sexual way. I bet this game has some pillory-style object for your room and no one bats an eye, while it can be very much used in kink spaces. Some people still believe mini skirts are the bane of our existence and aren't appropriate for tweens and teens to wear, but again, this game is really... just a game. A game that tries to follow what's currently trendy in the fashion world (and they do a pretty good job with it) and gives players ample opportunities to dress in stylize their characters in the most absurd clothing, which more often than not is not reflective of how those players dress in real life. I swear, I played MSP for most of my childhood, put my character in crop tops, knee high boots, spiky collars and super heavy, goth makeup, while my own fashion sense was jumper and jeans and zero makeup. I was not interested in wearing makeup, but I loved how much of it my character can wear and how cool she looked.

When it comes to harnesses, again, they just became really popular, even in more mainstream spaces. I sometimes pass teens who have them, usually similar to the first model you've shown, because it's really trendy, and I'm seething with envy. If not for the chest dysphoria, I would wear one myself at their age, just as much I wanted to wear a corset. Those things just look really esthetically pleasing to me, and I'm sure to some of those teens they look just as cool. Maybe some of them wear it to look more provocative, but I'm really far from slutshaming teens: I've done it when I was like 12 and I did it only because I mirrored the sentiments I've seen from adults. I just think we should all let others have a little more freedom in their clothing and not always read into it as sexual.

Now, I'm not writing this horribly long rant to call you out or to stir drama or anything like that, because I can see where you're coming from. I just think it's the nature of the game: following fashion trends and apply them on the fictional moviestars. A lot from their clothing doesn't pass school dress code, sure, some of it may be slightly provocative, absolutely: but it's really just an outlet for kids to dress up their fictional dolls in things they've seen on Instagram or TikTok (lol, or Eurovision, Hatari my beloved, changed my teenage life and made my head explode from their coolness). I find the muzzle or the harnesses to be nothing more than a reflection of how things resembling kink gear become more and more fashionable over the years, either for sexual liberation movement or because of it's intrinsic aesthetic factor. I would definitely put that muzzle on my moviestar, dress her as a demon princess or a scary vampire or a werewolf and have a time of my life thinking up her super edgy story.

how can you not be able to say something like "ass" on moviestarplanet2 but this is something your avatar can wear (if you give them money anyways)

[bourbon-ontherocks]

(Previously, on Season 4 (re)watch...)

Long time no see, huh? I'm back from my own personal hiatus! Let's get smurfed y'all!

Dean's fluffy robe is literally the first character that appeared on screen I'm so happy!

Is junkfood for breakfast and waking up your brood pretending that you're Hannibal Lecter this show's idea of good parenting??? Does anybody have kids on this show???

I seriously can't wrap my head over the fact that they couldn't bother to give Rio fake scars but they consistently went on with the blackeye. It's just...

The way Beth and Rio are exasperating and exasperated with each other is objectively hilarious and stinks of offscreen fucking tbh.

Oh wait, Kenny's alive and doing games but he's just... no longer living in Detroit anymore????

Wait wait wait, hold on. The Paper Porcupine is within range???? While after biking three blocks it wasn't??? Do they live in the PP??? That would actually explain so much. Also, we as a fandom deserve more Rio x Dean scenes

You know what I think I liked it better when Annie was pining after Dr. Cohen. Chris/Kevin is the most forgettable character in this entire show. Also why does everyone on that show have a weird relationship with whipped cream?

Honestly, Beth has been so terrible at every job we've seen her doing for four seasons, I'm just extremely satisfied that she eventually gets fired by Dorothy, like, finally someone on this show has a faint idea of how real life works lol

OMG they're watching Love is Blind!!! Finally some trash TV that I actually know... I was very invested in the Amber x Barnett x Jessica storyline btw. Also in terms of advertising, it's quite interesting that they switched from NBC reality shows to a Netflix one this season.

Beth realizing that she owes Stan an apology but being so entitled she actually manages to make a non-apology for it is actually one of the most in-character things she's ever done. And it also reminds me Ruby's "I'm sorry" speech to sizzling-plate-prick in season 2, and not in a good way.

THE. SKINCARE/MRA/KEY JANGLERS. CULT

Honestly the best part of this episode is these random men who kneel in front of each other and grab/stroke their thighs in a very pre-blowjob fashion...

Dean pulled solid numbers this week? WHO did he sell this crap to? Like, the Bolands barely have any friends, he doesn't benefit Beth's PTA network, and who would buy skincare products from a stranger with an ankle monitor? I have SO MANY questions

The way the skincare cult leader is totally hitting on Dean just fills me with joy. Dean x being gay when???

Bleugh, Kevin blackmailing Annie into staying just made him the worst love interest this show's ever given her, and there's competition

While I saw it coming right from the start that the moving guys were saying the press couldn't fit the doorframe, I can't help thinking that it's actually miraculous that Beth is still alive and free since it apparently takes her 30 seconds to start explaining her criming to everyone. Like... wtf?

I find it very intriguing that season 1 insisted on Beth's gained independance by learning how to make the DVR work without Dean's help and generally being like "I don't need a man to do my handywork" (no pun intended) while we're witnessing the exact opposite here. Our girl couldn't pick a screwdriver herself to dismount the press, no, it has to involve freaking Dean...

This whole "let's crime happily" with the girls + Dean instead of Rio feels extremely odd tbh. Especially Dean staring at Beth making pulp, it feels like a disgusting parallel with 3.04

But also I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE Dean's realization that Beth gets off on crime and him calling her out about this and no longer holding Rio accountable for Beth's nature.

"All this time I thought he was the problem. He's just the excuse"

Pardon me while I pass out, I don't know which ship Dean's the captain of now, but I love that bit

Annie's sarcastic "Really sucks to be you this week" is absolutely hilarious

No but seriously, everybody in this family confesses crime without even being asked to...

Every instant of this thighs ritual/keys ceremony was just priceless

Oooooh, I really like how Beth's "I can't promise you I won't miss crime but at least I'll try" is kinda foreshadowing of her eventual decision to stay in Detroit and keep criming

"Just business" she said, making sure her tits were in full display

Bonus 1: Smurf!Dean getting his MRA initiation

Bonus 2: this episode's bingo card. WE WERE SO CLOSE

[spaceorphan18]

I've been (slowly) gathering and writing about songs I'd like to hear the glee kids sing (trying to keep in mind voice, theme, story arc), and after making two posts already (songs for Kurt,and songs for Blaine), I found myself wondering what your thoughts would be on this - if there are any specific songs you think would fit well in their story arc/voice/theme for Kurt and Blaine? I'm writing about the songs I'd give to Rachel now, and it's been nice to see your latest posts about their voices

First of all, thank you! I’m glad you’ve enjoyed the post about voices! 

Secondly, I always feel bad when people ask me this question because I never have a great answer -- I’m terrible at keeping up with pop music.  But... I’ll scroll through my iTunes and see if anything stands out to me! 

Okay! I have gone through my entire list of iTunes music (which isn’t a whole lot, let’s be real).  And these are songs that I think would be interesting for the characters to sing.  I hope you enjoy! 

Blaine

Bad Day - Daniel Powter: This would have been a really interesting Warblers song, actually. 

MmmBop - Hanson: Let’s be real, this is Blaine’s drunk karaoke go to. 

On Top of the World - Imagine Dragons: I think there are a lot of songs in the Imagine Dragons catalogue that Blaine could sing, but this is the happiest that comes to mind.  I don’t have a specific reason for when he’d sign it, but I think he’d do well with it.  

Wash Away - Joe Purdy: I love this song, and it’s another one that I think Darren’s voice would work on.  I love a lot of acoustic for Blaine whatever the song.   

Love Today - Mika: I actually kind of see this as a flirty Klaine duet.  

What am I To You - Norah Jones: Blaine angsting about Kurt in the middle of the night.  

An Old Fashioned Love Song - Three Dog Night: This is another one that might have been a fascinating Klaine duet for the hell of it.  (Btw - I think Blaine would have fun singing any Three Dog Night song.  I think ‘One’ a happier Blaine would sing almost satirically.)  

Kurt

Sort Of - Ingrid Michaelson: Let me be clear, I do not think he’d sing this about Blaine.  Actually, I’d think he’d sing it about his career in the performing arts.  Also I love this song, and think he’d sound great on it. 

Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher - Jackie Wilson: Another Klaine duet.

I Try - Macy Gray: This is Kurt’s drunken karaoke song

Grace Kelly - Mika: Mika is a missed opportunity.  I love idea that Kurt would be able to be provocative and alluring in some compacity with this one. 

I Shall Believe - Sheryl Crow: An angsty Kurt song

He Plays the Violin - 1776 Soundtrack: Okay, so hear me out.  This song is about Martha Jefferson alluding what her sex life is like.  It’s very suggestive.  I would have loved to hear (and see) Kurt do this one. 

Only You - Yaz: This one’s another Klaine-ish duet.  It’s their drunken karaoke song to each other

Santana

Apparently, I had some Santana feels while doing this, and found a few songs I think she’d sound really good on.  

KT Turnstall - Suddenly I See

Trouble - Pink

Angel of the Morning - Pretenders

Finn

With Finn’s penchant for doing classic rock, I’m surprised they never had him sing this. 

Brown Eyed Girl Van Morrison

Mercedes

This is just a gorgeous song that made me think of Mercedes. 

Never Gonna Break My Faith - Aretha Franklin

Sam

I had this on my list, it made me laugh and think of Sam. 

Take Me Home Country Roads

Tina

I started to laugh thinking about Tina hitting her head again, and this time they wake up in some kind of Dawson’s Creek Teen Drama fantasy

I Don’t Want to Wait - Paul Cole

Group

Because some songs you have to sing with a lot of people. 

With a Little Help From My Friends - Beatles 

Make Your Own King of Music - Mamas and the Papas

I’ll Be There For You - The Rembrants

Closing Time - Semisonic (Really, this should have been the last song.) 

All Star - Smash Mouth (Totally the male new directions drunken karaoke song.) 

The Lion Sleeps Tonight - The Tokens

YMCA - The Village People

Shut Up and Dance - Walk the Moon

This was an interesting exercise! Thanks Nonny! 

[muselin]

I lived in Germany for just half a year, first near Frankfurt and then in Berlin.

Yk, all I have is a couple theories. One of them is that guys who have that natural inverted triangle body shape also have a natural talent with their hips.

I didn’t found any pattern or type yet. If I think about it, there are some physical features that attract me a little bit more, but if I think about real life, the guys that attract me and the ones I dated are SO different. Like from a chubby bald guy 2cm shorter than me but with amazing green eyes to a blond 5’11 tall slim fit guy who is my ex.

Here comes another theory: I grew up in Brazil - a multicultural racial mixed country - and close to art, so experiencing it and studying both of these, especially after experiencing portrait and fashion photography in studios, there are so many features that attract me in so many ways that I’m lost.

At the moment, I’m broke, dreary and fuming. I’m looking for jobs all day, digging old projects, doing interviews, trying to do something creative for mental health, and using some time to understand who I am now, after more than 10 years in a monogamous relationship and in the same career. Yeah, life sucks sometimes.

Psychology careers must be equally gratifying and tiring. How do you deal with emotional worn outs? Do you have some breaks? Writing helps you? Btw, how did you end up writing fics?

It's so cool to have another worldly friend :) I'm an expat, I'm from Southern Europe and have lived in the US for 1 year and now in the UK for 9 years. What are your best and worst memories of Germany?

I can see how living in such a multicultural and racially diverse country like Brazil would make it less likely to have a "type". What sort of features attract you in people? For me I've found that I don't have a "type" either, but things like a prominent nose and prominent lips make me notice a guy more. Regardless of whether he's white, black, latino or mixed. And actually I've dated all of those lol.

It sounds like you're making the best of a bad situation! It's so hard to not have secure employment. At the same, like you said, using the time to figure out who you are is just about the btst thing you can do, it can be comforting when you can't control much else in your life at the moment. What's one thing you've realised about yourself?

On my pinned post I have something called Muselin 101. At the bottom of that post it says how I got into writing. It definitely helps me, yes. I can't feel happy without having something creative in my life, even when my career is not in a creative field and I don't view myself as a particularly artistic person. It's still very important and adds meaning to my life.

At least for me, a psychology career has been challenging and tiring. It is definitely rewarding on a very high moral level, but the day-to-day often sucks. Or at least it does when you're still my age, where you're considered too young and too idealistic and ambitious for your own good. After 9 years of working towards it I haven't got tired of it. The thing I've found is that it's never the patients or clients that wear me out, it's all the red tape and operational stuff. The system around the clients is what is hard to deal with. I've had two low points, once in my previous job and once in my current one (so far). They weren't serious breakdowns but it was a very cynical time where I was thinking "Does anything I do really matter?" And that's even if I've literally stopped a suicidal person from ending their life the previous day. It didn't last long though and I stayed true to myself and the people I was looking after, so I consider myself lucky

[hueningkai]

So not sure if I can still send in an ask about toys BUT IF YES CAN I SHARE!?

So my big thing as a kid, it depended haha. Based on my memory, doll wise I was more into bratz dolls? Like legit the fact they had bobble sized heads and they didn't have feet when taking off their "shoes" was so hilarious to me as a kid that made me love them but also the fashion? Amazing, still holds up to this day. Gosh I had so many bratz dolls lol. I had a bratz rock angelz one (it was Sasha, she was my fav) that I lowkey got salty because my friend stole her from me and denied it she ever did :') i had the bratz snow lodge house along with those skating dolls (best doll house ever btw) then I had two sleepover ones. One was cloe and she had the cutest piggy slippers and comfy pj's (it was plaid sweats and a simple white top with a fluffy bathrobe and a matching sleep mask) and another was Sasha again and she was my fancy sleepover one. She came with these fantastic silk floral robes and pj's, she even had the "normal feet" switch so you could have these rose heels or her actual feet. The best part was this cushion that acted as the sparkly powder for you to use and this (overly musky scented) mini perfume like I loved them. I think I may still have them(?) The rest of my collection i sadly sold because I was "too old for dolls" and I kinda regret that because oof. I also had barbie dolls, those ranged from all kinds like I had one that had a washing machine (which fun fact i put actual soap thinking it would make the experience more real. Not a smart idea but lil me was happy lol) and I remember those fashion design line? I wish I could remember the name but it had like a more fancier option of clothes that you could buy to your barbie doll as a whole so it was a clothing line for your dolls. I have to double check this online lol. I also had a few my scene dolls! Also anyone remember soda pop girls? Yeah my shiz. Polly pocket as well! I had so many and even had those tiny ones that were of magnet? (Random side not but anyone else liked chewing on the polly pocket outfits or pretending you had a lip ring using a dolls bracelet or was that just me?)

Outside of dolls, I had quite the my little pony collection. Heck I even had a few playsets! One was a giant castle that was fantastic and another was I belive a bakery? I remember there was this oven that if you out the metal part of the pony a cake would pop up lol. Also sold those. My proudest collection? My littles pet shop lol. I STILL have my original toys (not the playsets sadly) and even own some of the limited figures where you and to send in stickers to get it? One was a ladybug and a Kola if I remember! Other toys included some pokemon ones and I had a very interesting phase of collecting hot wheel cars? Man I had a good collection as well lol.

OF COURSEEEE!! I just hope you see this anon bc I absolutely love the detail here and appreciate you sending it <3333

agreeeeeed. to this day bratz are iconic and had some of the best fashion in the doll market. the detail & accessories... mga know how to accessorise. you had some amazing ones! the rock angelz line is insanely good, I also really loved the pretty in punk line! omg the sleepover ones were adorable. yasmin was my fav btw! the smells yes! gosh they really did so well with bratz. that is sad :( I actually owned a few recently in my collection but sold them for extra money but I am always tempted to collect again. the collector dolls were gorgeous. side note did you ever watch the live action movie?? bc I love it lmao it may not be the best movie ever but it is a guilty pleasure for me for sure

hmmmmm I'm not sure! there's been so many fashion lines and such that I can't think rn what this is !! I might be able to figure it out if you can give me more detail <3 YES SODA POP GIRLS!! very obscure but sooo good, what a fun line !! I used to chew polly pocket clothes but omg wait I think I did that with the bracelets too, they fit perfectly as a ring hahahahaa!!

oooooo sounds like you had either gen 2 or 3? gen 2 and 3 were based around magnetic play a lot of the time !! I have lady cupcake from gen 2 who has a metal magnetic nose which sticks to a cake and makes it pop up. as a child I had the gen 3 bakery and it had the oven with a magnetic piece that popped open to reveal the cake (I have the oven now!) these are my fav gens (gen 2 being my favourite) and I looooved the magnetic play features. I always wanted to own the castle so I am jealous !!

anon I would love to see anything you have esp your littlest pet shops omg! the fact you had the mail in limited ones too ... so cool! wow you've had so many good collections <3

here's a few of my fav g3s that I own in mib packaging. I had star catcher as a child and she was my favourite so I was glad when I got hold of her new in the box hehe!

( tell me about your childhood toys )

[fapangel]

> It’s not like it’s a desktop plugged into a normal ISP | No, but it runs software written by people who think "just reboot your airplane mid-flight if you cross the international date border" (F-22) and "remember to reboot your missile battery every day or you will murder your own people" (Patriot) are acceptable workarounds. They won't catch cryptolockers (probably), but I'm not that optimistic about their resilience to targeted attacks.

Those are both good examples of why cyberattacks on weapon systems are so hard - even something as simple as a date or time tracking bug (like with the Patriot) can lead to people dying. (Rebooting the system was not considered an “acceptable workaround,” by the way; that was a temporary remedy until they could get the updated software rolled out.) This is one big reason that upgrading old ships and combat systems can be so expensive - the software is not trivial. Perhaps no other software on Earth is more extensively proofed, tested, and examined - and for damn good reason. COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) has reduced the other big cost; which was the (essentially) custom-built mainframe computers most warplanes/ships used up till the 90s, but the coding is still very expensive and time-consuming to do. Hell, the baseline upgrade that allowed Aegis ships to operate in anti-BMD and anti-air modes at the same time was 90% a matter of improved software, as I recall. Compromising such systems is a hell of a lot harder than you might think, especially because you can’t just install a copy on your own boxen to start looking for zero-days - some of this software is allegedly based on Windows Version Whatever, but that short-sells the sheer extent of the custom modifications. Same for Linux/UNIX based systems. 

But this is all completely aside from the bigger issue - attack surface. How the hell do you communicate remotely with the target? You can’t just “ping the carrier’s IP address.” You’re not Jeff Goldblum hacking the Alien mothership on his fucking PowerBook 5300. How do you access those systems in the first place? You either need to engineer physical access - such as putting a poisoned USB drive into circulation “upstream” and hoping either the drive - or its payload - can then percolate downstream till some contractor plugs it into a computer on the target ship (this is how the NSA nailed the Iranian uranium centrifuges; via Siemens engineers in Germany,) or you have to access the enemy’s military communications network - which is a fucking colossal challenge in and of itself. That’d entail getting into the MILSTARs network - which is routed through our geo-synch satellites - and THEN gaining so much control over that system that you can then pass arbitrary signals down the links to receiving combat platforms, and get past their verification checks and encryption challenges as well. 

It’s far easier to target the enemy’s C3 network itself, and deny the combat platforms the greater benefits of networked communication - or to outright jam the links between the combat platforms themselves (or their C3 assets, for that matter.) Or you could just shoot down the satellites. Geosynch satellites are well out of reach of anything short of an ICBM-sized weapon, you usually have to send a kill-sat after them... and that miiight just be why the Air Force has already launched a pair of geo-synch inspection satellites to keep a very, very close eye on anything suspicious that might start matching orbit phases with our geo-synch MILSTARs assets. 

Anon, there is a fucking reason 8/10ths of hacking these days is done via old-fashioned, pre-computer style “Social engineering” (i.e. send some fuckwit an e-mail to trick him into just giving you his password and username,) and most if not all of the serious successful hacking attacks on the US were against contractor computer systems, not hardened weapons-crucial systems. 

While we’re at it, a similar comment sitting in my inbox: 

You don’t just “hack a carrier,” // What, did you forget about Wiki leaks dump about CIA's vault 7? All those nice cyber attack systems could well be used against us fapangel. That and an inside agent that got payed off or other wise compromised by outside forces. BTW, just how many contract workers does the Navy have they can't be sure of? Government contractors seems to be the source of a lot of leaks and weak points these days. 

The lesson you’ve failed to learn from the many WikiLeaks revelations is just how goddamned good US cyber war capability is. You must understand that all this shit coming out in the Wikileaks files is years old. Yes, even the WannaCry exploits? Years old. Just a zero-day nobody else had found in the meantime. The NSA does not sit still, and even a few years is an eternity in the cyber realm. I promise you that the NSA is currently using shit that was barely a whitepaper when Snowden was swiping files on currently active systems and tools. 

And while we’re at it - trying to use our own fucking code against us is like trying to drown a fish in water. We fucking invented this shit, bro - we know it backwards and forwards. The first thing the NSA did when Snowden walked out was conduct a very thorough review and cataloging of all the shit he compromised, and then the second thing they did was assume that every single fucking byte would be in the Russians fucking hands ten seconds after he touched down. Sure, Snowden has all that shit super encrypted and he’s a good guy who was looking to Save America, not hand the fucking Russians the intelligence coup of the century, but:

The spooks might fuck up royally sometimes, but they’re not that fucking stupid. They’ve been expecting these weapons to be turned against us since the day Snowden left and been reacting accordingly. The real problem is that hand-me-down cyberweapons are still dangerous even when the Big Boys aren’t playing with them anymore - just like any other weapon, once they’re tossed into the playpen, it’s what every other fuck is going to do with them against civilians, governments, economies in general that is going to cause mayhem. Such as, say, Russian mafia cyber-criminals using them to propagate new ransomware strains or build new botnets. 

Seriously, read up on this shit, and you’ll notice how little actual military systems are mentioned. They are targeted, mind you, and there is a danger there, but it’s many orders of magnitude harder to attack a very limited, well-defined system that’s made redundant and paranoid by base design, because it controls weapons - with extensive security then overlaid on that. Yes, you can attempt it, but the returns on investment are massively better when you can take down the power grid of entire fucking cities by tricking one fuckwit civvie into sending you his fucking username and password. Assuming you don’t just sneak into the building at night and leave a pinhole camera somewhere it can watch a fuckin keyboard, at that! 

The damage these attacks can wreak is incalculable. And also military significant. One thing the US was criticized for - by the likes of Pierre and other shitbirds - was how many targets in Serbia (Operation Allied Force/Resolve) were strategic in nature, rather than tactical. They were whining about how the ChairFarce still has the Strategic Bomber Mafia mindset from WWII instead of the MODERN WARFIGHTA idea of killing each tank itself, (buy more A-10 plox F-whatever a turkey visual awareness > radars blah blah). But they did illuminate something - the US tends to target critical infrastructure as a way of punishing nations without threatening their ability to resist invasion, which might panic them into doing something stupid, or killing lots of soldiers or civilians. When your people are screaming blue murder because half the nation is without power and all the bridges are blown and they can’t get food shipments to local supermarkets, that tends to generate, ah, pressure. And of course power plants and such are the first thing targeted in a full-out, no-holds-barred war like the Gulf Wars, too - knock out a powerplant and you make life much harder for the enemy in that area. Every military invests in backup diesel generators, but they’re backups - you can force them to rely mostly or exclusively on their own communication networks and supply lines. What fucking good is a jamming aircraft in the air, if the assholes can just pick up an old-fashioned copper landline and call HQ? And everyone uses the same roads and bridges! 

Now, consider - America’s domestic infrastructure was completely invulnerable to attack during WWI and WWII, despite some elaborate attempts to change that fact by our enemies - and it was a huge contributor to our victories in those wars. In a modern conflict, our very cyberattack-vulnerable civilian infrastructure offers China and Russia a way to strike at our homeland - either for purposes of morale/pressure or direct military goals - in a way that they literally CANNOT do kinetically, even if they were insane enough to try. For return-on-investment, it makes damn little sense to attack our military networks directly - especially when even if everything broke their way, they’d still be fighting a war they simply could not win, based on industrial output, tech base, and above all, current force disparities. The non-kinetic but very painful domestic option fits the “hybrid warfare” schematic perfectly, and make no mistake, China would have to use this just like Russia is now - any armed conflict will include efforts to seek a cease-fire fast. China’s position is much like Japan’s in 1941; they cannot win an extended clash, but they can hope to win a sharp initial clash, and then push to “win the peace” to use diplomacy to solidify their gains. Or at least, they think they can. 

This isn’t academic, either. I’ve been reading about this on Slashdot for years. One honeypot - set up to look like the web interface of a local city’s water-treatment plant - recorded the intruders gaining access, twiddling the levers just long enough to check that the virtual dials were responding - and then quietly installed a backdoor, covered their tracks, and logged out. The Chinese and Russians are actively building a catalog of pre-compromised civilian targets in the domestic US to be attacked en-masse should it be required. 

And you’re worried about them somehow magically hacking away our crushing technological and weaponry advantage with some kind of Hollywood Hacker gee-whiz plot excuse bullshit? Motherfucker, you don’t even know.