#and I am also very sick and tired of seeing the same adults that bullied minors say stuff like

[renm]

i’m so so so tired of seeing anything related to taylor swift that isn’t pointing out her shallow excuse of white feminism she uses to avoid criticism, her being a huge polluter, or being a bully towards those who threaten her position as “queen” of pop (as vapid as her craft is.) so so sick of seeing lyrics or “quirky” posts when her writing is worse than some high school poetry. it’s tiring to see her detritus and no amount of blocking or “not interested”-ing i do is enough so i’m frustrated about that mainly

i’m very happy that people can appreciate and relate to the mediocrity her music expresses bc hey not everything has to be some grand statement or deep thinking. and we all like some trash art, who doesn’t, but i’m sick of people acting like it’s more advanced than it is. and i’m also sick of how when people say ANYTHING that isn’t sucking her clit and worshiping her it’s a problem! bc let’s get real, the same people who are up in arms about people disliking her music (not even accounting for the dislike of her as a person since that’s a separate discussion) would hear my music taste and think it’s trash… and that’s ok and i don’t care.

art is for dif people and we don’t need to like the same things. if you can’t even handle the opinions and criticism of a stranger and feel the need to defend an adult billionaire that’s a deficit in your character. accept people won’t like your favs and move on. grow up. bc like… are you stupid? are you that emotionally stunted you can’t handle when someone might dislike someone you personally enjoy? can you handle when people don’t like your favorite foods or shows? or do you throw a hissy fit over that too

and the fact i need to even give this caveat of “well, if you don’t mind or make a big deal when people dislike her music or her as a person and think it’s good to criticize celebrities,” then obvi this isn’t about you. and if you feel the need to reply to this and say BUT! BUT! YOU DONT GET IT– then i am talking about you and i would love nothing more than to block you and promptly forget you exist in 10 mins. of course, this is my opinion and has no impact on your life so if that is too much to handle, idk write about it in your journal

[pickinglilahs]

Okay, let's unpack this response here

TL;DR: 'weak and surface' level is exactly how I would describe prevs "obliteration". I'm not convinced THEY read the books. Or maybe they're just another TERF, considering that's how it reads. I completely disagree with Harry naming his kid after Snape. The ONLY explanation I can think for it is that JKR has no idea what love is (which is also cannon, as far as I'm concerned)

First: idk what book this person read, but Snape's obsession with Lily was creepy to the extreme. That their friendship started by him all but stalking her and Petunia should have been red flag #1. I mean, sure, he was a traumatized kid without friends, but that doesn't absolve him of his continued obsession. He literally stood outside the Gryffindor common room, refusing to leave, until she came out to talk.

And yeah, he did switch sides out of guilt. But he canonically didn't give a damn about Harry. If he was actually trying to protect the kid, he would have done more than bully and abuse (occlumency lessons anyone?) the kid. Teaching at Hogwarts was never about redemption. It was about staying out of Azkaban. (And Dumbledore's manipulation, but he's a whole 'nother can of worms)

Second: the books actually say that Snape was 'up to his nose in the dark arts'. He was an active participant. He didn't just 'hang out' with to-be-DE, he WAS one. He joined up of his own free will. He became Voldemort's RIGHT HAND. He didn't regret calling someone a mudbl***. He regretted that it was Lily.

And Snape CANONICALLY attacked the marauders just as much as they went after him. Just because they went after him first in that ONE memory, doesn't mean he didn't instigate too.

And let's talk about the werewolf incident for a minute because i am sick and tired of Snape Apologists using this as an excuse. That was NOT planned. That was a lapse of judgement on Sirius' part alone (yeah, fucked to hell and he is fully responsible for that). At the same time though, NO ONE MADE HIM GO. Snape was given a vague instruction and he was so focused on 'getting back' at the marauders that he put HIMSELF in danger. That is just as much on him as it is on Sirius.

Then the sexual assault? This is another common thing I see and it took me forever to figure out what it was even referring to. The pantsing? You cannot tell me he was the only one that happened to. If the levitating spell was really as popular as it's stated, this incident wasn't special. I'm willing to bet Snape did it to others too.

Third: Lupin not taking the wolfsbane. Yes, serious lapse in judgement. He also just saw Peter and Sirius on the map. The argument of it being criminal and a ticking time bomb is honestly werewolf prejudice and exactly why Remus has such a hard time finding a job in the first place. Way to go. You've discovered discrimination.

Fourth: Get McGonagall's name out of your fucking mouth. She is CANONICALLY shown NOT showing prejudice and treating EVERYONE by the same standards. And, did you forget that 'Moody' here was actually a death eater in disguise? No duh he's using cruel and unusual punishments??? Full of abusive teachers my ass.

Fifth: What do you mean the kids weren't scared for life? I do believe those CHILDREN will carry that trauma with them for the rest of their lives. Saying that it didn't break them is cruel and completely dismisses the VERY REAL pain and suffering that they went through. They are real heroes because they OVERCAME their trials. Not all of us out here in the real world are so lucky.

Lastly: yes, comparing CHILDREN who DID see the error of their ways to an ADULT who had to be CONNED into doing the right thing is laughable.

And saying Regulus accomplished nothing? Disgraceful. Of course it took a catalyst for him to change his ways thats how redemption arcs work.

If you made it this far, I hope you have a good day. Believe whatever you want, obvy I'm not going to change anyone's opinion. You can't MAKE a person understand. Still, it's nice to rant and remind myself how nice it is that I live in my own little corner of the fandom where I don't have to see this bullshit on my dash

okay, hold my drink *hands u cursed ancient goblet full of mead* i gotta talk my shit for a second.

ive been seeing a lot of severus snape love recently. and this is fine, obviously, y'all can love whomever you want. but. i need to rant or i will explode. if we're talking about canon. severus snape spends his adult years, seven books of it in fact, abusing children. and his excuse for this is the girl he loved (tho not enough not to join a group actively trying to exterminate her) fell for the hot jock instead of him (a tragedy indeed, i weep 4 him, i really do). and also she died, which, admittedly is very sad.

it is simply crazy 2 me 2 look at that and think *romance* or *genuine care and affection*. LIKE. fo real. snape calls her a slur in public, apologizes in private, hangs out with dudes who commit hate crimes against her friends (CANONICALLY, she says "you've been hanging out with that douchebag Mulciber, how could you do that after what he did to Mary???" this is not a direct quote but like, it's close enough). lame. loser behaviour.

"Oh but what about regulus" i can hear you say "he loves James potter but snape doesn't love lily???" well. idk. maybe. bit different tho, innit? due to james not being the demographic regulus is attacking (which doesn't make regulus a better person but does make the dynamic between him and james different). ALSO. Regulus chooses to turn against voldemort without hope for anything in return. snape doesn't seem to give a shit about voldemort, he's just sad he's not gonna get to bang lily evans. he switches sides for that reason alone. also doesn't care about what happens to her husband or her son which like. considering lily would be pretty fucking destroyed if they died. once again points to my whole, he doesn't really give a shit about her, theory. lame. loser. behaviour.

also. im sorry. I"M SORRY. but what snape does to neville? to hermione? to harry? gross. a grown ass man out here telling an eleven year old neville he's worthless or hermione she's ugly and annoying. or spilling harry's potion and refusing to grade him for it???????????????

reg and draco are children when we see them at peak suckage and therefore they feel like they can be redeemed much more compellingly (CAN be, not SHOULD be, not HAVE to be, just narratively i think they are easier to turn into interesting, sympathetic characters). but snape? snape grows up into a garbage adult. like he doesn't get better. and again, the only real excuse we're given is his obsession with lily. not very demure. not very cutesy.

ALSO. yall remember that time he got a destitute, struggling Remus Lupin fired from the best job he ever had just because he felt like it? remember that time snape weaponized Remus's lycanthropy and people's prejudice against him just cause. like. literally just cause??? his ego was bruised after the shrieking shack incident so he was like "get wrecked Lupin I'm going to tell everyone your secret so you will be forced back out onto the streets" DO YALL REMEMBER THAT BITCH ASS MOVE????????? THAT HE DID AS A FULL ADULT.

IN CONCLUSION, this is silly and, of course, like i said at the start, everyone can have their own thoughts and feelings about characters, but i simply needed to interject here on behalf of snape haters everywhere because i feel like so much of snape's shitty behaviour as an adult during a time when he was really under no duress and was very safe and cozy, is ignored. and my hater heart just cannot let that stand.

[nyctophilin]

Adults bullying minors

Warning: I went off because this topic makes me so angry and if you are an adult that has bullied, is currently bullying or will bully minors on the internet you might get offended, so read at your own discretion.

Can some adults stop bullying minors out of fandoms please? Can they do that? Can they start acting like actual adults and stop bullying people they do not want to interact with? Are you aware you can coexist while ignoring each other? BECAUSE TO ME IT DOES NOT FUCKING SEEM LIKE THEY KNOW THAT!

I have seen so much hostility towards minors lately. You mean to tell me that GROWN adults do not have anything better to do than bully minors on the internet? Do you get joy out of making someone’s day a living hell?

And before I continue, I do not want to see anyone bring up NSFW under this post. This is not what this post is about. Minors engaging in NSFW activities on the internet is wrong and I am not advocating for that. I do not want to see anyone put this in my mouth. As an adult, you have all the rights to not want a minor to engage in your NSFW businesses, although you have no right to bully them for it. Tell them nicely, educate them on why what they are doing is not right(because some of you consider minors to be chronically stupid until they turn 18) instead of giving them unnecessary trauma and proving that you are an asshole at the same time.

However, what this post is about is hostility towards minors that do not engage in NSFW. If there is no NSFW involved and the minor is just enjoying a fandom while living their minor life, like we all do at some point in our lives, and you decide to bully them for it, then please, leave the fandom! You are not wanted here.

I have seen adults that run 100% SFW blog tell minor to not interact with them in very rude hostile ways. If you do not want to interact with a minor, you can tell them nicely. You do not have to cuss them out or be rude or block them. Both of you are basically enjoying the same type of content and them asking you from time to time how your day has been is not a tragedy. You will not be put in jail for it. Crazy! I know! Just ignore them. It is as easy as that. Just fucking ignore them.

I have also seen some of you hunt minors down. You purposefully look for them and then you start bullying them. Don’t you have a fucking casserole to make instead? Why would you look for them if they make you uncomfortable? Just do not! You could have done so many things in the time you spend looking for minors so you can expose them for just existing. Grow the fuck up! If you can not tolerate minors partaking in fandoms, then your place is clearly not here. 

Now, I am not telling adults to be best friends with minors. This is the last thing I want. At the end of the day, there is still a risk that minors face when engaging in friendships with adults. All I am saying is: Mind your own business! If they approach you through asks/DMs wanting to have a conversation about the fandom, but you feel uncomfortable with that, let them know nicely and I am sure they will understand. However, if the little dude did not bother you in any way, then why would you go out of your way to interact with them and then act like the victim when you clearly are not? And let me just add one more thing here. If you do not think that a friendship between a 25+ years old and a 18-19 years old is just as predatory as a friendship between a minor and a 18-20 years old then you can unfollow me. I do not even need to make an explanation for this one because it speaks for itself.

And I am not telling anyone that they cannot enjoy a fandom. I do not care how old you are, your gender, your sexuality, how many eggs you eat in the morning. I really could not care less, but if you are going to start unnecessary drama and you, as an adult, are going to bully minors, that did not bother nor have they ever interacted with you, into leaving the fandom, then I have a problem with you. I can do the exact same thing to you, Susan, and I will not hold back.

Like, don’t you have kids to raise Susan? A casserole to make or laundry to do? File a report for your office job? Didn’t I just hear your husband call for you? Why are you browsing the world wide web when you are so busy, Susan? As a person that comes from the younger side of the fandom I feel very uncomfortable with you here and I want you to leave or my group of friends and I will bully you until you do and then we will act like the victims.

Some of the fandoms are not even made for you, Susan. I am sure that when John started developing that video game, he thought of little 15 years old Dave that can and will play it 25/8 and not you, that have diapers to change every hour. You cannot enter a teen dominated fandom and then kick out the targeted audience. This is not how life works. If you know that you feel uncomfortable around minors, then do not join a minor predominant fandom with the thought of kicking them out because they are going to kick your ass. 

And I do not want anyone telling me “wAiT uNtIl ShE fInDs OuT wHo WrItEs BoOkS aNd MoViEs, HaHuHe.” because this comeback is not as smart as you think it is. Because Susan, you see, there is a difference between you writing a book about your own adult characters doing whatever the fuck you want them to do and you writing a 10k words smut fic about a real person that is 5+ years younger than you. I can not write a fanfiction for Minho to save my life, and he is just a few years older than me, but you can write that smut about Jeongin that is 10 years younger than you, all while holding your newborn? How do you do that?

The conclusion of this whole post is:

MIND. YOUR OWN. BUSINESS!

Do not bully minor on the internet out of their own fandoms. Fandoms are made for everyone to enjoy and I will welcome you with open arms as long as you are kind and understanding. Bullying someone because you do not agree with their existence is not kind nor is it understanding. If they do not bother you, then do not bother them either. You are not doing anyone a favour!

Thank you for giving me your time! Good night!

[purplebass]

The maturity of The Last Hours characters

I really don’t know how to name this, lmao. But yeah. In this post I will try to rate (?) the level of maturity of the characters from The Last Hours. I’m only analyzing the young people, if you want a post about The Infernal Devices characters or The Mortal Instruments characters (since I still have to read TDA to this day), I can also do that. But this post will focus on the “children”.

I don’t like using the word children for these characters because they are not children so to speak, but there are some characters which are more childish than the others. I tried to outline some characters to also show how they are mirroring each other. You’ll see how funny that most of the characters who share similar storylines may not like each other too much and may also not have the same maturity, but some of them are also each other’s love interests.

I apologize for the length of this essay, but I tried to cover every character.

First, a disclaimer: I don’t consider these groups I made as strict, because of course, you can’t rate a person’s maturity. This is just a way to show you the careful planning behind the characters and I’m just trying to organize them based on logic and observation. 

The first “group” I’ll analyze is the one with the character I believe are the most mature, that we can also divide in “denied childhood” and “happy childhood”. In my opinion, in this group we have Alastair, Ariadne, Anna, Thomas and Jesse. They aren’t just the oldest, they are also the ones who have always acted maturely throughout CoG. What differs between the characters I cited above is their upbringing.

Rejected Children

Alastair and Ariadne always had to fight for their parents’ approval and Alastair also had to take his father’s place whenever he was “sick”. Alastair couldn’t live his childhood the way a normal child usually does. To add fuel to the fire we also have to consider the moment when Cortana rejects Alastair when Elias is also present: that’s the metaphor of Elias rejection of Alastair as his son. This also connects with the theory of Alastair not being Elias’ son and I already think Alastair has found out about this. Ariadne also has similarities with Alastair’s situation and mirrors his situation in the opposite way. Her parents were killed when she was young. She was adopted, yes, but I reckon that the Bridgestock family has also a lot of prejudices? And they also disapprove of Ariadne seeing Anna.

Alastair and Ariadne are the “rejected children” because despite they do everything in order to keep the harmony in their households (Alastair by cleaning after Elias and Ariadne by being a perfect smart lady), they always feel like they do not deserve to be loved, because their parents never make them feel truly loved or if they do, they don’t see it (because it’s evident to me that Cordelia loves Alastair very much and Sona does too, even if she doesn’t openly show it). On the other hand, they did so much as to agree to their family’s requests even if they didn’t want to, because that’s how what they believed they had to do in order to be loved.

Alastair’s first infatuation was Charles, with whom he fell in love but that he also idealized like he probably idealized his father. Alastair, who wanted to get Elias’ attention the most but also protect Cordelia and Sona from his father’s issues, fell for another man with a problematic ego like Charles. Ariadne’s first love was Anna, but Ariadne’s parents don’t approve of her. She is naturally well-liked by shadowhunters and downworlders alike because of her personality, her confidence. Ironic, but also not ironic, that Charles is the “link” between Alastair and Ariadne. Unlike Alastair who continued seeing Charles, Anna refused to keep seeing Ariadne after her engagement with Charles.

Both Alastair and Ariadne are mature people but they also have trust issues. They often see things in a negative way because that’s what they’ve been taught: no matter what you do, you are not valuable. You could know 30 languages but you’d still be useless. In Alastair’s case, I think we’ll soon see how Thomas, who is his love interest, will show him that he is worthy of love but he will also realize that is worthy of love, or he won’t be able to love 360°. In Ariadne’s, we saw at the end of CoG how she is going to show Anna that she’s going to win her back.

Anna and Thomas are the mature characters who had a happy childhood more or less. They grew up in a peaceful environment, with parents who always tried to do their best for them and who also showed them a lot of love. And their brothers and sisters as well are also very protective of both. Plus, they are cousins, which means that they are also protective with each other. But don’t think that they have it easier compared to Alastair and Ariadne, because they also had issues.

When Anna first realized that she didn’t like men and she also didn’t like to dress like a woman, and stole Christopher’s clothes, she tried to hide it. Why? Because as much as your parents seem lovely people and they also accept your wishes (like when Anna didn’t want to go to the Academy and she said she would become a mundane bullfighter if they forced her to go lmao), you never know what they would think about this. Anna, who loved her parents very much, preferred to keep her double life hidden from them. When her parents discovered she was genderqueer, they accepted her. I hope people realize how great this is, because at the beginning of the XX century many people had to lie to their family because they would never accept their daughter or their son going against the “respectability” of the time. Like I wrote on another post, you were considered devious if you were not straight. Anna didn’t want to burden her parents with the fact that she didn’t like men or wear pretty women dresses like society expected her to, but her parents were proud of her regardless. When Cecily discovers Anna’s orientation and gives her a suit as a gift, it’s the moment when Anna can truly be herself and she doesn’t care what the other people think, because that is herself. They either accept it, or they stay away from her. Anna is a very mature also because it’s hard to hear people whisper about you and spread rumors about the life you chose to live. She’s very brave.

Thomas is the last of three children, and his oldest sisters have always tried to protect him because he’s always been a sickly child. Remember that CC posted a cute Christmas story with Gideon and Thomas and Will and James where Gideon is concerned because his son didn’t seem to grow up like a normal child. This is why for years his family tried to protect him. They feared he could die, so Thomas was always under the watchful eyes of someone and he grew tired of this. He appreciated the attention but he also wanted to be alone, and after he got better and went to Spain after the Academy, he became stronger, more mature, and independent. Thomas is quite fatherly in my opinion, as that he is wise and kind, he always tries to see the positive in every situation.

Then we have Jesse. Like Thomas, Jesse was also protected by Tatiana and was a sickly child. In the Christmas story I mentioned above, we see how when Gideon sees Jesse, he reminds him of Thomas. Jesse is Charles’ age, but since he’s technically dead, he still has the body of a 17-year-old. From what we saw, it was evident that Jesse is a respectful person and that he is also selfless. He spent a lot of years in solitude and is a person with manners. Remember what Lucie says? “A ghost with a sense of property.” He also enters in the denied childhood group in my opinion, because as much as Tatiana seemed to have taken care of him and we see how she clings on his body to the point of trying to perform necromancy to bring him back, he also didn’t live a normal childhood. His mother never let him become a shadowhunter, she never let him meet his uncles, aunts and cousins. She never let him meet other shadowhunters. She probably never gave him proper education and all that Jesse knows he learnt it by reading books. Jesse is on the opposite side of the spectrum where Alastair and Ariadne are, but he’s also divided between his life (where he was very innocent and sheltered) and his death (where he matured because he could finally explore the world his mother denied him to see).

You see, aside from Jesse, it is no wonder Alastair, Thomas, Ariadne and Anna were paired together. Not only they are the mature characters, they are also mirroring each other’s journey: Alastair had a difficult childhood while Thomas was too protected. Anna had nice parents while Ariadne lost hers when she was little and her adoptive parents are probably racists and homophobes.

In the second “group”, which I called in the middle, there are characters I consider mature but also not. These characters have acted maturely in some occasions, while they were childish during other occasions. I’ll analyze the ones with happy childhoods first.

Unfiltered Childhood, Sheltered Childhood

James is often described as a responsible and shy guy. James hit the jackpot with his parents too, because we see how close he is with them and how they always support him whatever he does and try to protect him at the same time, when they can. But even James has issues, especially after he turned into a shadow in front of everyone when he was 13. This made him not only believe he is damned (“my father was cursed, whereas I am damned”). He was also bullied because he is part-demon, and he didn’t take this lightly, as we see every time, he risks to turn into a shadow he has a sort of panic attack. James is the older son and has the tendency to cover up for Lucie and all of his closest friends. Despite everything, we can say James had a happy childhood. He was wanted, he was loved, he was protected, but his parents also treated him as an adult and let him and Lucie into the rough stuff of their pasts, hence he had un unfiltered childhood. He knew about the gory details of life early on. In a short story Will gives James, who is 1-2 years old, a damn knife in his hands! If this isn’t someone who doesn’t use a filter with his kids, I don’t know what that is. I think that it was Jesse who was shocked to hear from Lucie that she knew about his grandfather turning into a worm. He didn’t think it was a story fit for kids. I believe that James is mature but he still has some things to face to really be mature, that’s why I put him in this group. But among the Merry Thieves, he is the second most mature, imo. He is the big wise brother. You could argue: and Christopher? I’ll explain later why Christopher is on another level of maturity, wait. Lol.

Cordelia is the second mature character from this group and she is opposed to James. Why? Unlike James who was exposed to reality from a young age and knew about things that a teenager probably shouldn’t know; Cordelia was filled with lies because her family wanted to protect her childhood and didn’t think she should know the harshness of life early on. We see when CoG starts how she’s still innocent and how she had a sheltered childhood. Not only because it will be the first time in years that she will be around other guys her age, but also because until Alastair tells her what he had to cover so that she would have a childhood, she was clueless. Literally. She had been treated like a little girl by Alastair and Sona, when Cordelia was probably able to handle the truth. Cordelia didn’t grow up in a bad environment – besides her father’s problems, which Cordelia was mostly left out because Sona and Alastair kept the secret – but we may discover more things in CoI. Anyway, Cordelia is mature for her age, and she stands up for herself even if it hurts, which isn’t an easy feat.

Denied Childhood

The last of this group is Matthew. Alastair gave him the nickname “Mother Hen Fairchild”. You guys don’t know much Alastair understood about Matthew by giving him this nickname. Matthew is wealthy, wealthier than the others, but this doesn’t mean he had a happy life. On the other hand, Matthew’s only lifeline was his father Henry. You can tell Matthew loves his father, tried to protect him, which is a cute thing to do, but at what expense? For one, his childhood. Matthew is a sociable person, loves to be around people, but when he grew up in Idris, the main thing he did was take care of Henry. I don’t think Henry asked him to do it, nor did Charlotte, but he took it upon himself to do so. After all, Henry is disabled, he really needs help and Matthew just wanted to show his father he appreciated him, but I don’t think he or Charlotte understood that as a natural helper, Matthew would also be drained by this activity. He also didn’t want to leave Henry alone when he left for the Academy, which is also a sign he thinks that one of the things he has to do in order to keep his family intact (especially after the rumor about Charlotte and Gideon) is to take care of Henry. He is indeed a “motherly” figure in the Merry Thieves and to his own father, to some degree. Because of this upbringing, it’s like Matthew never truly lived his childhood like a normal child. And now that he is 17 and is using alcohol as a copying mechanism, it’s like he’s already become metaphorically old, because at that time alcohol abuse was something you’d expect from a middle-aged man.

As you see, these three characters are also expected to be in a sort of triangle, even if we don’t know the extents of this relationship yet. But we’ll surely have a lot to see.

Partially Mature (Still Innocent to Some Degree)

I’m finally at the last group!!! YAY me. I hope you read so far. These are the characters I still consider innocent and that in CoI will have a bigger storyline and we’ll also see them become more mature and face more harsh reality.

Happy Childhood

The first person from this group is Lucie. Lucie is 16, just one year younger than her brother and her best friend Cordelia. Like James, Lucie has been exposed to the harshness of life from a young age, since her parents didn’t keep many secrets with her. But Lucie is still innocent to some degree, and adventurous like a child, but we see that she isn’t able to stay calm whenever things get out of hand and people (including herself) get hurt, because one thing is hearing stories, another is actually being part of those gory stories. First, she has never been in love. I know this sounds silly, but a lot of teenagers start seeing the world differently after they fall in love with someone, truly in love. I’m not talking about infatuation here. It’s also the first time after years of dead calm that London is plagued by a new enemy, which means it’s also the very first time for Lucie – unlike James and the Merry Thieves – to finally face the stories she’s heard from her parents and the fantasy stories she’s invented as a writer. Getting to know Jesse has helped, because he is a very mature character who is opposed to her because he had a very sheltered childhood and he learnt about life just when he turned into a ghost. Since Lucie is on the cover of CoI, she’ll definitely mature more in that book.

Christopher is also innocent. He is smart, he is way more intelligent than everyone imo, but he lives in his own world sometimes. He, like Lucie, had a happy childhood and was very protected by his older sister Anna and of course his parents. But he was also let on in the secrets of the Lightwood family (like the Benedict Lightworm story), so we can say to this point that he is innocent but he also is mature because he uses his logic to make decisions. Of the Merry Thieves he's surely the youngest son, because the other guys always look after him – especially Thomas. In CoI we will probably also see his maturity journey, because so far, he appeared very absent-minded, lost in his thoughts, always trying to come up with solutions to save other people, which is admirable. I think that besides as a plot device, the fact that Belial/Tatiana hurt him with demonic poison was also a way to make Christopher aware that he should also be ready to fight as a shadowhunter other than cultivate his passion for science. I mean, he’ll probably have moments where he could use (like Henry in TID) what he invents as a useful tool in battle.

Denied Childhood

Last but not last, we have Grace. Grace is in this part of the spectrum because she is still very innocent, since she’s lived most of her life brainwashed by Tatiana/Belial. The person we see is not probably the real Grace, but a mannequin. She is also smart because her engagement to Charles was a way to escape her mother’s manipulation, but until she came to London, her whole life has been sheltered, Tatiana has told her lies, has molded her the way she wanted Grace to act as a mean to her revenge. Grace has suffered the same gaslighting Tatiana suffered from Benedict Lightwood, except Grace is aware of this and is trying to find ways to escape. Spending time with Ariadne and Lucie will only make her more conscious of who she really is, but it will be a long way because she still seems like a frail flower sometimes. She also seems not to have received training, so she’s even more in danger. CoI will probably feature a new side of Grace, and we’ll see her throw her innocence away (well, not literally, guys) and be more self-aware.

If we were to follow the logic I used so far, we’d see that Christopher and Grace might become love interests. If we look at the structure of the plot and of the couples we have so far, they are opposites but also similar. I know that many people don’t like Grace, but I believe that if she gets an arc where we see how she can give as a character, she may grow on us. Anyway, mine is just an assumption, I can be wrong. As for Lucie and Jesse, it’s only fitting the that the partially mature character and the character who wasn’t mature when he was alive and who became mature when he died, are going to be each other’s love interests. They are half-away. It’s only fitting because Lucie can also “call” ghosts who are still stuck in the living world (in the middle between life and death): understand what I mean?

Ok, I think I can close this essay by saying thank you for reading so far! But also, if you have ideas or comments etc, you can write in my ask box. As you see, I like to discuss about characters and plots, so I’m happy if you shot me a message, even in anon.

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - You're Kidding Me

So we’ve finally come to the last of season two’s filler episodes. Let’s see if we can knock this one out real quick. 

Summary: The front door of the mysterious seashell estate vanishes, trapping the group. They try to find another way out but find a spinning top whose magic regresses Cassandra and Lance into toddlers and Shorty into a baby.  They’ve only have an hour to find the top and reverse the effects or the changes become permanent. Unfortunately neither of Rapunzel’s or Eugene’s parenting methods keep their now childish friends on task. 

So Why Did No One Stand Watch Last Night?

They were all sleeping right next to the entrance, and after the run in with the mirror monsters, you would think that they would have taken turns standing watch. 

But nope, the front door vanishes when no one was looking cause they don't have any foresight. 

A Low Budget Doesn’t Excuse Filler

Like most of season two, this is yet another episode that adds very little to the overall story. It’s slightly better than the Return of Quaid or Curses, but not by much. I put it on the same level as The Forest of No Return, as I do like the mains’ development, but there’s really no reason why such episodes exist to begin with. 

The meta reason for staying in certain places for three episodes, instead of only one or two, is because of budgetary reasons. The crew have to build new sets and models for every new location or person the cast comes across. This costs money to make, so the higher ups wanted to reuse assets. Which is understandable, but not an excuse for utilizing them poorly.  

If you need to stay in one area or have characters reappear, then you need to give story reasons for that. Ones that tie back to the overall narrative and/or the mains’ character arcs. 

The shell house and Matthews should be more important than what they are as they both have connections to the ultimate big bad of the series.Adria shouldn’t be wasted for a whole episode when she’s the only one driving the plot in season two and has limited appearances. Vardaros and its people shouldn’t be a one and done thing if you’re going to spend so much time setting them up. And there’s still one off episodes, locations, and characters who aren’t brought back and add nothing 

Not only does this make for a weaker story, it also undermines the cost saving measures that you tried to implement to begin with.  

This Isn’t Representation! 

Get it?! 

She’s a top! 

She’s totally gay, but like not really, cause this can also be interpreted as a dominatrix joke, and there’s no other real indication of her orientation outside her like smiling at her best friend/crush/sister sometimes and keeping that rose her creepy ex-boyfriend gave her. 

And don't give me any bullshit excuses about Disney not letting the crew make Cassandra canonly gay/bi. 

The Owl House aired just this year, the same year as Tangled’s final season. Also Globby and Carl from Big Hero Six were both confirmed to be a couple on screen a month after this episode came out. Both shows would have been in development at the same time as Tangled was. Both would have been subject to the same regulations and restrictions while writing their stories. 

It isn’t “Disney” that stopped the storyboard artists from having Cass be a confirmed lesbian, it’s Chris and Ben, the head writers themselves, who failed to write it into the story properly, if at all. 

Chris is the one who made Raps and Cass “sisters”. Chris is the one who wouldn’t tell the crew about his ‘twists’. Chris is the one who had Cass crush on Andrew, even after he tried to kill her. Chris is the one who made Cassandra ‘straight’ and has since used gay baiting to keep her fanbase in his pocket. 

Like I am really damn sick and tired of Casspunzel stans defending Chris on twitter, when he’s the very one who sunk thier ship to begin with. I’m also really fed up with certain fans trying to bully others for not accepting their “Cass is a lesbian” headcanons as fact because what the storyboarders say on twitter after the show is over with isn’t gospel and isn’t real rep. 

I don’t care if you ship Cass with Raps or headcanon her as being gay. Ships and headcanons are great and can be a lot of fun. But fuck you if you ever try to shame people for not sharing your ships/headcanons. Not only is it biophobic and acephobic to insist that there’s only ever a binary option when it comes to orientation and shipping, but it also reinforces harmful stereotypes and tropes about people in the queer community. 

Like, yes, I personally may be an introverted angry bitch who’s an LBGTQA member and activist, but that doesn’t mean that every introverted bitchy woman in media is a lesbian. What kind of message does that send people when that’s the only character archetype that’s given representation or is loudly proclaimed as ‘gay’ by the wider audience? Fuck that noise! 

I Know Humor is Subjective but...WHY?

Why did we give the baby a beard? How does that logically work? Did anyone outside of the crew actually find this funny? 

TTS has like this one out of touch dude throwing out jokes that don’t really land with the target audience. Fans have called it ‘boomer humor’ but it’s actually ‘Gen-X’ humor. Not only because Chris and Ben are Gen Xers but because this is the type of crap my older brother would find hilarious. 

Gen Xers are between Boomers and Millennials and so their humor is this weird blend of gross out shock humor, ironic nihilism, and out of date stereotypes that are only mildly better than those of the previous generation before them. They’re the generation who gave us Beavis and Butthead, South Park, and Clerks. 

That’s not a criticism of Gen X as a generation, but rather just an acknowledgment that they’re worlds away from the neo-dada absurdism, more socially conscious, and globalized humor of Gen Z.    

So Why Is the Bad Guy Telling the Heroes How to Foil His Plans? 

Like he not only tells them how to fix their problem and how long they got in order to do so, but he also informs them how it happened in the first place. This goes directly against his plans. Had he simply said nothing and stayed out sight, then Raps and Eugene would have been lost for the full hour and most likely not have saved everyone on time. 

I like to headcanon that Mathews is just “that asshole” that loves to taunt and tease but in a that manner that gives him plausible deniability. He also may just be bored, since he’s a ghost trapped in one place all the time. Yet that still doesn’t change the fact that he shot himself in the foot here. 

Raps and Young Cass’s Relationship Is the Same as Raps and Adult Cass’s, and That Is a Problem. 

Condescending, manipulative, hypocritical, and bossy is the way Rapunzel treats everyone. She doesn’t understand the actual difference between a child and an adult. She only understands who she who she can and can’t boss  around. And those people that she can’t place under her thumb are labeled antagonists by the show. 

Nor does she actually care about what either kid Lance or kid Cass has to say. She’s just being proformative, and young Cass can see through that BS, which why her methods do not work. It’s not because she’s not ‘strict’ enough; it’s because she’s not being honest. 

Meanwhile Child Cassandra is just as combative, rude, bullying, and entitled as Adult Cassandra. In season three she regresses even further and becomes more violent than before.

Unlike Rapunzel, Cassandra wasn’t trapped in a tower for 18 years with zero human contact outside of her abuser. She escaped that fate and was raised in a loving home. That doesn’t mean that there won't be scars, but I still expect her to be more mature than her seven year old self. Just because she’s whining about not being special enough at 24 instead of screaming about the floor being lava doesn’t mean that she’s still not throwing a temper tantrum.  

Like I should not be seeing a replay/foreshadowing of their main conflict here. They aren’t children. They’re dynamic isn’t that of a mother and child. It’s not even a big sister looking out for a little sister type relationship. Its two immature women dragging innocent victims into their bitchy cat fight for dominance over the other.  

If you want me to take their issues seriously then give them real stakes to disagree over, mature behavior that I can root for, and a resolvement that doesn’t reverse any potential development that they could have had.    

Matthews Plan Makes Zero Sense

For starters, half the group being kids isn’t enough of a reason for Rapunzel to stay at the shell house. Even if the effects of the time top became permanent, then Raps and Eugene could just leave and take the kids with them. Either to finish the road trip, or go straight back to Corona. Not that there’s any real reason to get the Dark Kingdom anyways, nor is there a ticking clock stopping Raps from trying again later if she chose to. 

Rapunzel also is not obligated to become anyone’s mother. If she took them back to Corona than Cap would undoubtedly raise Cassandra all over again, and Lance and Shorty could be adopted by someone else. Any of the pub thugs might take them or even perhaps the King and Queen since they missed out on raising their actual daughter. Though for my money I’d get Monty or Xavier to take them in. They seem the most mature and both are shown to be good with kids. 

Then again Rapunzel has been shown twice now to not give a damn about abandoning orphans, so even the ‘dump them at an orphanage’ or ‘leave them alone in the woods to fend for themselves’ isn’t entirely off the table either. I wish I was joking, but I’m not. Sadly, only Eugene’s love for Lance might be the one thing to stop her from doing just so, and even that’s iffy. 

As for the missing door from earlier, if that was all that was stopping them from leaving then the time top shenanigans were fully unnecessary altogether. 

I Actually Like Eugene and Rapunzel’s Conflict Here; I Just Wish It Was In a Better Episode. 

Each of their viewpoints stem from their upbringing. 

Rapunzel is unique in that she was simultaneously emotionally abused and neglected while being physically spoiled. Especially once she found out that she was princess, where she was then handed nearly anything and everything she wanted. She doesn’t recognize that getting your every possible whim come true can be damaging. Nor does she have any comprehension of what living in poverty is like and how this many toys is wasteful to someone like Eugene who had so very little and stole to survive. 

She does however associate limits, boundaries, and orders with abusive behavior because she’s been denied autonomy and respect her whole life. She’s never seen what healthy parenting looks like and how rules can be applied correctly.     

To Rapunzel no orders is ‘freeing’ and ‘validation’ is all that is needed to get a child to listen to you. Which doesn’t work for her because she doesn’t understand that real communication is more than just giving a compliment now and then. 

Meanwhile Eugene lacked any sort of anchor at all. He was left to his own devices at a young age and had no one to rely on for emotional needs and, after leaving the orphanage, no one to provide physical needs either. 

It’s telling that he and Lance latched onto Quaid as the only authority figure in their life, despite Quaid never out right adopting them. He was the only sense of stability that they had who they could trust wouldn’t hurt them, despite being strict with them. 

And now that Eugene has gotten older and is reformed, he can probably understand why Quaid was so harsh on him and Lance. Quaid probably did more to try and help them turn from a life crime than even Rapunzel did. Like meeting Rapunzel was the inciting incident that inspired Eugene to make that leap, but the groundwork was already laid out for him to do so elsewhere. Things like his good communication skills, respect and empathy of others, and understanding of boundaries had to be learned from somewhere, and if not from the Sheriff of Vardaros than who? 

What I’m getting at is that, while Rapunzel rejects her parents methods but then fails to break her learned habits from them anyways, Eugene is the reverse. He’s come to embrace his mentor’s teachings, but he fails to implement them correctly because he’s not Quaid. Being authoritative isn’t his strong suit. It goes against his usual nature as the easy going person that he is and so any attempts to come across as forceful fail as they’re hollow. 

Kids know authenticity and genuineness when they see it. The children reject Rapunzel because she’s not being real with them, yet they also reject Eugene cause he’s not being honest with himself. 

It’s a complex and mature conflict. Neither person is fully right nor wrong, and only by learning from each other and adopting both methods can they achieve their goal. 

TTS can be deep when it wants to be. There’s a good foundation here for mature themes and complex characterization. It’s just the series doesn’t ever commit to it. 

Whatever personal drama going on here about two young adults trying to cope with their past traumas and how that affects their current life and future goals is completely lost in the magical goofy antics and low stakes situation. Even the stuff about Eugene and his relationship with Quaid is reduced to nothing but a one off joke rather than being genuinely explored as a point of development.  

Imagine how much more powerful things would have been if Angry and Red were brought along on the trip. If this argument was over them and whether or not they should adopt the two girls themselves or consider other options. That would be something with real weight. Something with a choice that had actual consequences attached to it. Something that would permanently affect all involved parties. Something that wouldn’t make the two leads look like outright dicks for abandoning two children for a second damn time in a row.    

You Have 70 Feet of Magical, Indestructible Hair! Why Are You Afraid of a Bunch of Dogs!?

You’ve fought off giant monsters, killer robots, and supernatural beings with magical powers. What do you mean you can’t hold off a pack of guard dogs while busting down a stuck door? Why is Eugene the shield for everyone and not the actual unbreakable hair that you use as a shield all the damn time? And Why did we have to rely on Shorty again to be the deus ex machina of the episode? 

At this point the writers should have just made him Demantius instead of the monkey.   

What Happened To This New Dream? Where Did It Go In Season Three?

Most fans who do enjoy season two happen to be big New Dream fans as this is by far and away the best season for them. I’ll admit that the series, up to this point, had me actively liking them together, despite being originally lukewarm to the pairing in the movie. 

Their conflicts were for the the most part mature and real. They learned from one another equally and had open communication when it didn't involve ‘marriage is a trap’ BS. Things, like compromising on differentiating future goals, honesty and communication, and making time for one another and extending effort into a relationship while being true to yourself are all relatable issues. 

Even today's episode featured the topic of having kids and parenting. Which is a discussion you absolutely need to have with your prospective spouse before entering into any long term commitments and signing any legal contracts. For real, I’ve seen marriages fall apart because they didn’t agree on whether or not they wanted children. 

I don’t know what went down between writing season two and season three, but things quickly took a sharp turn away from this dynamic and nosedived into a pit of uncomfortable bullying and gross sexist implications here after. 

Matthews Plan Goes Against Zhan Tiri’s Plan 

Yeah so Matthews is one of Zhan Tiri’s disciples, but he apparently doesn’t know of her goals/plans, cause she needs Rapunzel and company to reach the moonstone, not stay stuck here. 

The meta reason for this that the Zhan Tiri’s story was altered at the last minute and the writers failed to make sure there was any sort of consistency between what they already set up and where they actually wound to actually taking the plot.  

The in universe reason is that Zhan Tiri is an impotent moron, but that’s not what the writers were going for so it’s a fail. 

Conclusion  

I like the New Dream stuff, and Matthews is at least entertaining despite being incompetent. Everything else about the episode is ‘meh’ tho. 

[heatherclowndler]

An Open Letter To the Six Fandom

I'm gonna be real with you guys: I’m getting really tired of the moral superiority of some people in the Six fandom. Six is a barely historically accurate concert-musical where the queens fight about their trauma for an hour, but it’s about white women, so I guess that means that its #girlpower is so much more respectable than Hamilton being representation to POC.

If you think I'm not talking about you, I am, @historemix / @ghostheather . I’m fucking sick of your bullshit. How come every time you get called out for being a hypocritical bully, you have a little meltdown, say you'll be better, and then go back to the same bullshit as before?

Before I actually get into the reasons that you’re a hypocrite and a bully, I want to thank everyone that sent me the screenshots and testimonials used in this post. It’s good to know that multiple people are as fed up and disturbed by this behavior as I am, and it wouldn’t have been possible without you.

Anyways, back to the matter at hand. First and foremost, your obsession with being on a fucking high horse is embarrassing. Your self-congratulatory posts about the Six fandom being so much better than the Hamilton fandom is fucking laughable coming from you, and here's why.

Before you get on about the Hamilton fandom being toxic, and the major reason why you can't fuck with the musical, remember that much of the fandom are people of color: most of whom are also minors. And they’re often the first to be driven out of it– not by harmless headcanons and fanfics or kids being "cringy”, but racist, toxic ass adults, colorism, whitewashing and constant harassment. Black fans, minors especially, would be the first to tell you this, since there’s been multiple incidents on Tumblr and Twitter where Black fans have been harassed, called slurs, etc. just for liking the musical, and that isn’t even getting into the amount of shit that’s been sent to the Black cast members for being a part of it. But clearly you haven't been fucking bothered to read the posts of how Black people in this fandom and in the cast have been treated, because maybe if you did, you’d be quiet and think before you start spouting shit, instead of constantly putting Hamilton’s name in your mouth to say shit that you think will give you woke points with the funnymen crowd.

Do you really think that the same bloggers that make fun of Hamilton would see any difference between those fans and you, the adult stanning a musical where Real Life Catherine of Aragon, a character played by a black woman, owned slaves, and was the person that introduced slavery into England is portrayed as a strong, feminist Queen? Or how Catherine Parr, a woman who was complicit in child molesation and later got upset with said child for being a victim of sexual abuse, is portrayed as the ultimate feminist and hero of the musical? Or is it okay for you to talk about how these child-molesting slaveowners were oh so admirable and honorable because you "respect the history,” whatever the fuck that means.

Yes.. I'm sure white women from the 1500s would be so pleased about the fact that their history is being told by women that they thought were inferior to them based on the color of their skin.

Also sidenote, you may want to reconsider your definition of what is a respectable Six fan when you're writing a literal AU for your favorite dead queens. Sis, just say that you want to write Six fanfiction. There’s no shame in it– especially because the people that write Six fanfiction are more respectable than you are.

But speaking of history, you need to take off your clown mask and realize how ridiculous the notion that “respectable Six fans” are ones that have a genuine respect for Tudor history, because despite the fact that you say this, Six completely disregards the actual Tudor history.

Take the example of Boleyn. Anne Boleyn – a woman who was judicially murdered on false charges including incest with her brother, witchcraft, and adultery in part because she couldn’t give birth to a son and wouldn’t be a submissive wife to her husband – is reduced to a three minute comic relief song that makes light of her murder and states that yes, she actually was guilty of adultery, but she only flirted with those guys to make Henry jealous! Writing an entire song about a woman whose name has been dragged through the mud for nearly 500 years after she was murdered on false charges and then saying that she actually did do the thing that caused her to be executed is just peak #Feminism, am I right? And so is making light of her unjust execution by calling the song “Don’t Lose Your Head” and continuously making joking references to her being beheaded, I guess. Never mind the fact that Boleyn was reportedly near-suicidal and “ready to be done with life” by the time she was executed. Never mind the fact that the six fingers rumor – something that’s also repeated in the musical and presented as a fact – was started by Catholics attempting to quell people’s sympathies over Boleyn’s execution by attempting to make it seem like she actually was a witch and therefore deserved to die. None of that matters because Six is about feminism and it does the Queens justice, right?

And let’s not even get started on Catherine of Aragon. You know, the person who you've reblogged posts about that claim she was “a remarkable woman”, and that you’re apparently so sad about the fact that she died that you’ve made memorial posts about her knowing good and well that she was a garbage person who owned human beings? The same Catherine of Aragon that was reduced in the musical to only being angry that her husband cheated on her and wanted to divorce her, as well as bickering with Boleyn? The same Catherine of Aragon that also was reduced to constantly talking in the musical about how she was forced to move to a country where she didn’t know anyone? On that note, isn’t it funny how that works? Especially since she and her garbage family owned slaves, forced them to convert to Christianity and change their names to Spanish ones, and then forced them to come to England with Catherine when she moved there to marry Arthur Tudor!

All of the queens are dumbed down for the sake of the musical and it isn't until the very, VERY end of the musical that they all realize that fighting over who got the worse abuse from their husband is fucking stupid. And, even then, it’s still incredibly fucking problematic and gross because the Queen that makes them realize that the fight is stupid, and ultimately the Queen that’s praised for being the most feminist in the musical and by its creators, is the Queen that literally held her stepdaughter down while her husband molested her. If you’re really so damn upset about how much Hamilton and its creator glorify the Founders that it ruined your ability to enjoy the musical when that musical at least still acknowledges the fact that Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Madison owned slaves (and its creator acknowledging that none of the Founders were good people), why aren’t you upset about how Six portrays Catherine Parr and Catherine of Aragon as feminists when they were a child molester and a slave owner, respectively, and it's never acknowledged in the musical? Why isn’t your enjoyment of Six ruined by the fact that the Six creators praise Child Molester Parr and Slaveowner of Aragon for being strong feminists, or the Six Instagram calling Ferdinand and Isabella (you know, the people that committed genocide against Black people in Spain, had others tortured and executed for their race&religious beliefs, and literally caused Columbus’s colonization of the Americas [and by extension, the Transatlantic Slave Trade] to begin) a “power couple”?

The entire premise of Six is flawed, arguably even more so than Hamilton’s, because at least Hamilton actually did what it sets out to do throughout the entire musical, and not just the last five minutes. But even so, the basic plot idea remains– fictionalized (heavy emphasis on the fictionalized, Heather!) versions of real people fighting to tell their story. So, if the creators of Six cast aside historical accuracy for the sake of creating a diverse and modern take on the Queens’s lives and you eat it up as much as you do, why should we give a shit when Hamilton does the same thing? Since you love Six so much, you clearly fucking don't, because otherwise you’d be shitting on Six just as much as you like to shit on Hamilton. It really just goes to show how much of a hypocrite and a pick-me ass bitch you are, because the fact that you love Six makes it really obvious that you only care about hating Hamilton so much because it’s a stance that you think will give you more street cred with the Tumblr and Twitter crowds.

^^ The absolute hypocrisy of you reblogging this when you regularly make posts and reblog posts of you and other people doing the same thing with Hamilton and its fandom. Embarrassing.

I'm saying this as someone who enjoys Six’s songs and also has common sense and brain cells– they're fictionalized versions of real people, and those real people were shitty. And that’s okay. But you need to stop embarrassing yourself and acting like you’re morally superior to people that enjoy Hamilton when your core arguments for enjoying Six literally could also be said for Hamilton, and your core arguments for hating Hamilton could be said (and would definitely apply better) to Six. I see you all the time making the argument about how important it is for Six fans to see an all-woman cast, do you think Hamilton fans of color can't make the argument that they feel it's important to see a cast with over 95% POC? How for those teens, it brought them into giving musicals a try in the first place (this is just one of many examples)? How Hamilton's overwhelming success brought jobs to so many actors of color, including helping some of them (most prominently, Daveed Diggs) make a stable enough income to give them a place to live and rest their head? When it paved the way for musicals like Six to gain popularity, too? Cognitive dissonance isn't a good fucking look on you, luv.

And don’t even try the "creator is problematic argument", bitch. You're all over Mean Girls, where the creator (Tina Fey) is shitty for a multitude of reasons, blackface and saying the n word included. Not to mention the Heathers musical, where the creators turn JD into a sympathetic villain and apologise for him when the director and writer of the original movie made it clear that JD wasn’t a character that people are supposed to sympathize with. It's a fucking joke that you go "I can't get behind a musical with a bad creator!" when you base your whole blog around a musical whose creator that's transphobic and antiblack, as well as a musical whose creators apologise for an attempted school shooter and use their musical to make him sympathetic. We know LMM is a piece of trash, but that doesn't give you the right to steamroll over fans (again, most of whom are minors of color) who just want to mind their business and enjoy a fucking show, like a pick-me ass theater kid you are.

And while we're talking about your hypocrisy, let's talk about your incessant harassment of a teenage Six fan for fucking months. You’ve instigated wave after wave of bullying towards a fan who was only 15 at the time when it started, for various reasons. I don’t give a fuck if you were just trying to “spread awareness” about their actions, or get them to change their ways, or whatever. You’re a grown ass fucking adult. If you see a minor in fandom – especially one that’s 3+ years younger than you – doing cringy/problematic stuff, let other minors be the ones to say something about it. Your harassment and creepy behavior around minors isn’t justified by the fact that you think that you’re doing something good.

This is just one of the many examples of you vaguing/posting about the teenage Six fan under the guise of trying to “spread awareness” about their reaction. This one is just fucking rude, especially because they’re a minor with ADHD/ADD that projects traits that they have onto fictional characters and vice versa. I’d expect you to know a lot about projecting onto characters and picking up traits from them, since you channel Heather Chandler and Regina George’s bitchiness and their consistent harassment of teenagers that they consider to be lesser than them into your internet persona and identity, am I right?

The potential end result doesn’t justify the means; but clearly you think it does since you never say shit about this teenager getting harassed until you get called out for your complicity in it, say that you never sent them any asks, promise you’ll do better about the way you interact with minors in fandom, repeat.

Not to mention the complete hypocrisy of this statement in the tags of one of the below posts– especially considering that you were the one that made it open season on this girl in the first place with your consistent vaguing about her and making joke posts about her with your friends when she was only fifteen. And on top of that, denying that you ever harassed Lizzie, claiming that your only crime was vague posting her – when you and your shitty friends posted memes about stuff that she had been doing and making it really clear in your vagues that it was about Lizzie. Just because you didn’t name her directly doesn’t mean that it wasn’t harassment, asshole.

Oh, and here you are, months earlier, admitting that you did cause her to get harassed and acknowledging that you named her? Interesting.

The fact that you say that you have to take responsibility for it, but you never fucking do? [Narrator Voice] Heather would not take responsibility for that.

And let’s not forget how after almost driving the girl to the point of suicide and after getting called out multiple times for it, you promised to be a better person, before running to Twitter and continuing to vague about her. And in addition to that, you making memes and joke posts about Jay, the black teenager who was also bullied almost to the point of suicide for minding his own fucking business and making some fucking fanart and quirky headcanons, is fucking nasty. To further stick your nose up at him and go “not my fandom” at him for drawing Trans!Jefferson art when your Tumblr icon is Anne Boleyn with a lesbian flag behind it and your Twitter icon is the same thing with Katherine Howard... the joke writes itself. Do I have to repeat my point?

Not to mention the fact that you fucking lied in your apology on your viral post about him, because you said that you only became aware of the fact that he was a Black teenager that was harassed after the post whent viral.. when someone told you months before (in the replies to the above post) that he was a Black teenager that was harassed relentlessly for his fanart and asked you to leave Hamilton fans of color alone. But clearly you still stand by your point about Hamilton fans. Who’s surprised?

And then after receiving a 22-anon thread where anon presumably called you out on your hypocrisy of this, you still went to Twitter and started bitching about the fact that you were called out despite saying that you were deeply ashamed and that you would do better. Yet another example of Heather the Hypocrite, am I right or am I right?

You really switch up from “I feel incredibly ashamed and I want to reassess where to go forward from here” on Tumblr to “I hate Tumblr purity culture” when you’re on the safety of your Twitter account like clockwork. And it’s awfully bold of you to mention Tumblr purity culture like you didn’t cause waves of harassment to be sent to a 15/16 year old girl to the point where she felt paranoid that someone was going to come to her house and attack her, and later make memes/joke posts about a Black minor who was harassed to the point where he tried to commit suicide and later had to get rid of his online presence altogether for his own safety.

Also, you posted the IP address of the anon who called you out, and tagged them as “asshole” on the website that you use to track IP addresses. But you genuinely felt ashamed, right? You wanted to change and reassess yourself, right? (The anon’s IP address has been blocked out by me to protect their privacy, because the person who sent in this screenshot didn’t black it out, either.)

And even then, aside from all that, your actions have caused multiple minors in the Six fandom to feel uncomfortable. Below are testimonials about your behavior, and how it’s made minors in the Six fandom feel. One of these is also a reply on a post that called out your behavior. (URLs and icons on both Tumblr and Discord are blacked out to protect their privacy.)

Take in what these testimonials are saying. The fact that your behavior with harassing minors has grown so much that people are afraid to post in the Six tags and express their love for the musical because they don’t want to get harassed by you and your group of friends is concerning.

You, a grown adult, have made minors scared to be themselves and do things their way. You’ve created a culture of fear in a fandom where over 80% of its active fans are minors. You should have been leading by example, showing Six fans how the message of uplifting women should be implemented, but instead? You caused a floodgate of harassment to be sent to a then-15 year old girl that got so bad that she was suicidal and paranoid that people would come to her house, and it ended with even more minors afraid to post in the fandom’s tag because they’re afraid that you and your shitty friends will come for them, too. Shit, I was a follower for a while! I had only unfollowed due to your moral high horse, but it wasn't long before I was made aware about your history of bullshit.

You shouldn’t just be ashamed of yourself– you should be mortified with yourself. And your little friend group should be, too: not only because of their part in all of this, participating in harassing and making fun of that poor girl with you, but because of the fact that they keep enabling you to do this harmful shit by not properly shutting you down or calling you out. But it's not like you care anyways, because you’ve made fun of people voicing their concerns about your behavior and calling you out for making the fandom an unsafe space.

"But I said I'm sorry-" Yeah, we know. We saw a series of half-assed “I'm sorry” posts, paired with you not taking real responsibility for any of the harm you’ve caused. And clearly you didn't actually mean anything you said, because you kept doing it again. And again, and again, and again.

By the way, Heather, the implication that you would be indicted for murder if Lizzie committed suicide despite never speaking to her isn’t just an implication: it’s a literal fact that people can be prosecuted for manslaughter/murder without ever laying a finger on the suicide victim. This includes cyberbullying.

It means nothing to admit you're a hypocrite and do nothing to improve, especially because you’ve said this same exact “apology” multiple times, almost word from word. You're a grown fucking adult that vicariously lives out her dream of being a highschool bully through Tumblr by harassing teenage girls on the internet, and it gives me secondhand embarrassment. Grow the fuck up already, Heather. You’re 20 years old.

You're always harping about how the Six fandom is becoming toxic and embarrassing without considering the fact that you’re one of the toxic ass adults that make children embarrassed and ashamed to be a part of their fandoms. Whenever they do something even slightly cringy, and not even genuinely problematic like some of the other shit in the Six fandom, you’re quick to be like “This isn’t respectable,” “The Six fandom is going to be the next Hamilton fandom,” or whatever the fuck else you say. Teenage girls calling Boleyn a gremlin and making headcanons about the queens siblings/children is not the end of the world, and the fact that you act like it is when you’ve actively created a culture of fear in a fandom that’s mostly made up of teenage girls is embarrassing and disgusting.

I don’t care about whatever apology or sob story you’re going to say after you see this post, because in the end, it’ll just be an empty promise as long as you stay on here. At best, you’ll say that you’re going to do better and leave Tumblr for what, a month? Only to bitch on your Twitter account for the entire month, then come back to Tumblr and do the same exact thing that I’m calling you out for.

You need to stay away from minors in fandom. As a matter of fact — stay out of fandoms that are mostly made up of minors as a whole. You’ve proven time and time again that you don’t care about the safety or feelings of minors, nor do you care about actually “improving” or reassessing yourself every time you get called out. The fact that you’ve been called out for the same things via being indirected on a Tumblr post (linked here), being sent multiple anons by different people (shown above), and being sent a 22-anon thread by one single person calling you out (stated by you above), and you still haven’t changed? Is all of the proof that I need that you won’t change.

That’s all I have to say to you.

People in the Six fandom, I’m heavily urging you not to continue giving this person a platform. I can’t force you to do anything, but you all deserve the right to know what’s been going on. Aside from her hypocrisy about Six, it’s historical figures, and its fandom as a whole, she’s been involved in harassing a minor to the point where she felt paranoid and wanted to leave the fandom on separate occasions, made jokes about another minor in a different fandom that was harassed to the point of attempting suicide on multiple occasions (then lying and claiming that she was never told he was a Black minor who was harassed after she was called out due to a post she made about him going viral when someone told her months before that he was all of those things in the notes of another post she made about him), and other minors have posted/stated that they feel her behavior went too fair, and that because of it they feel unsafe posting stuff in the fandom.

She’s been called out on her behavior on multiple different occasions, and each time she said that she would reassess her behavior and discuss how her actions were toxic. People have given her multiple chances, and each time, she’s gone back to the same toxic behavior and done the very things that she claimed she would stop doing. It’s getting ridiculous at this point, and her actions have gotten to the point where it seems like the only course of action is to call her out publicly.

Like Heather herself said, and I will now brilliantly quote because karma is a bitch: “If you keep making the same “mistake” MULTIPLE TIMES, people aren’t gonna be happy about it.” She isn’t exempt from criticism, especially when this stuff has happened multiple times and she hasn’t done anything to change her behavior. Listen to what she said, and hold her accountable.

Again, I can’t force you to do anything, but I hope that everyone in the Six fandom keeps what was said in this post in mind the next time they consider interacting with her or her content. Take care.

[jean----ralphio]

IT’S BoB LIVEBLOG TIME

Episode 1 is under the cut!

Warning, I swear a lot... and am very in love with RSJ so a lot of this was just me pointing at the screen and screaming RICH and then remembering you can’t see me so writing it down...

Episode 1: Curahee! Curaahhee? Curraahhee? I can’t spell so I’m renaming it Ross is a punk bitch

Buckle up my babies, this will be a carcrash!

00:01 Here we fucking go aw yis

00:11 Aw who’s this? I wish they named the gentlemen at the start of the episodes, I wanna know who is who :s

00:25 Shifty, is that you my angel son?

00:41 OMG you guys… these men are breaking my heart </3

01:06 Lord, men were committing suicide because they couldn’t go to fight? That mentality… man. Oh my God, you angels. Babies.

01:36 No jokes allowed, every man is <3

01:40 Now that I’m humbled and we’re all well and truly miserable…the credits, ugh, my heart. The score is amaziiiing. Some of the footage is actual war-time footage, I read, which is a brilliant touch.

02:01 DICK <3

02:13 DICK’S HUSBAND <3

02:18 RSJ’S NAAAAAME

02:27 JFC this music makes me so emotional. Look there’s Matthew Settle’s face. That makes me emotional too

02:48 Ah it’s Roe <3

03:48 I’m trying to pick them all out in the line-up but I can’t tell who is who. Are we supposed to be able to? There’s a short one in the middle, is that Harry?

03:49 I’m not drunk enough to handle this

04:10 Upottery? Ah it’s so English I love it. That’s not a name! Wtf is up with English place-names, you guys have the weirdest names. Upottery? Seriously? Is it only potters that live there? I’m so confused

04:22 Close up of Roe! Perfect. I approve.

04:32 Is that the guy from Line of Duty? I think it is

04:39 Lip <3

04:44 Ew. GTFO Cobb. He doesn’t even go here

04:47 IS THAT RICH? RICH. ILY. ILY RICH. Please note that 94% of this will be a Rich-watch

04:53 Lieb stop. I am sure you are not a certified hairdresser

04:56 RICH. SMOKING. SMOKING RICH. More like smoking hot do you see what I did there?

05:20 I can categorically say that I love Joe Toye. I do. I love him. But every time I see Kirk Acevedo, all I think of is Charlie my baby from Fringe (awesome show, please watch it). And I just. Charlieee <3

05:39 Aw. They’re so sad

05:55 They’re so despondent. Guys. It’s fine

06:05 Fassy?? FASSY!!

06:18 God Damien is pretty

06:25 Nix that’s not how you flirt

06:57 Lol at Dick noting its happy hour. Thinking about taking Nix on a date, are we? I bet you are. Now THAT is how you flirt!

07:24 OMG the fucking flirting! GUYS. “And give up all this?” NIX SAYS AS HE CHECKS HIM OUT

07:37 Yeah, Nix, you’ll take him ‘to Chicago’ huh? Is that what they call it nowadays.

07:44 Do you want to be that cigarette? ‘Cos there is nothing heterosexual about that lingering look, Dick

08:18 ‘Murica time

08:25 Ross, fuck off. Nice jacket though. “You PEOPLE are at the position of attention” ugh GTFO. Dick’s sideye tho lol

08:52 NGL Ross does a great job at being super unlikeable

09:05 Noooo you don’t want it with Johnny Martin. You wont win. Yeah, walk away Ross

09:15 Careful around Lip too, or Speirs will materialize out of thin air and snap your neck

09:33 RICH. Don’t be scared of that douchebag, baby

09:43 What kind of question is that, there is nothing Lieb wants more!

09:50 It’s weird hearing Ross swear tho

10:26 Don’t argue with Johnny, baby. Also Roe OMG <3 Shane is freaking fit

10:43 Wow Lip is ripped

10:48 Oh no, poor baby. Lip leave him be ☹ </3

11:10 LOL I just noticed the drum by the door. It says ‘butts’ and it took me a seconds to realise it was for cigarettes. I am an adult (31-year-old married woman). I’ll laugh at the word butts if I want.

11:11 RICH

11:18 Lieb omg lol

11:39 RICH BABY NO! FUCK OFF ROSS! LEAVE HIM ALONE OR I WILL HAVE SPEIRS CUT YOU

11:52 I can’t take Ross seriously in those shorts. Hi-ho GTFO

12:07 Ew fuck off running up that, I’d just nope out like nah babe imma go chill with that sweet baby back in the butts cabin

12:18 Aw Dick <3 The juxtaposition of Dick as a leader compared to Sobel who sure he might be honing them into something formidable and skilled but he’s an asshole. He’s not a leader. He’s a bullying, abusive scumbag. Dick is an actual leader who protects them and supports them and encourages them and IHAVEALOTOFFEELINGSOK

12:43 You don’t deserve that sick jacket, Ross. Seriously. That is a boss jacket, I want it

13:04 Have they not stopped fucking working out all this time? Ugh

13:23 Oh good, Dick gets a boss jacket too. He deserves it.

13:30 I wish people had to ask me for permission to speak.

13:53 I just. He. I can’t with Dick Winters, you guys. I cannot. I have lost the ability to can. Like they’re so upset and tired and low and just with that little joke he boosts their morale back up from where Sobel fucking beat it down into the mud and makes everything lighter and they laugh and are less tense and I just. Fucking love you, Dick.

14:00 Is that my angel son? I see you Shifty, love you baby

14:03 RICH. DON’T TOUCH MY RICH.

14:07 Oh my God, address them yourself you weirdo, Ross. They’re right there, you’re right there! I had a colleague that used to do the same, would get me to speak to my employees for her when they were right there in front of her like… ‘can you tell x to do y for me pls…’ … I was like wtf you know you CAN talk to them… you won’t catch poor just by speaking to people lower down the pecking order

14:22 Fassy! Wtf they’re not supposed to drink? Dehydration is legit one of the most dangerous things, how tf can you turn them into high-key supersoldiers if they’re dehydrated? How is this man so dumb? The guy in front of Fassy tho omg. I bet Fassy’s boss wife Alicia Vikander won’t like her husband being treated that way… she’s so badass tho right?

14:26 He’s so dramatic! Ugh

15:11 Piss off omg

15:24 oh my DVD flipped its shit here, only picked back up at 16:30 don’t @ me

16:52 RICH WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO YOU RICH

17:21 Shifty my angel son

17:46 so sweet

18:04 Sink, babe, no he is the worst, stop

18:20 LOL no, he’s jel as fuck babe

18:32 NO FUN ALLOWED. Im sorry, that tie is so ugly

18:44 Simon Pegg??!!

18:51 Ross is so dramatic God shut up. it’s not a conspiracy, weirdo

19:10 “It’s a can of peaces, sir.” Iconic.

19:11 Dick’s tiny smile is equally iconic.

19:17 SHUT UP ROSS

19:44 He wants to be punched, I think, like he’s goading them. The sick fuck.

20:47 DON’T TRUST HIM, DICK!

21:02 ROE <3

21:31 Hoobler, aw <3

21:37 I warned you not to trust him, boys

21:54 Ah boys, oh no

22:04 RICH. Kick him, baby

22:17 Bull, punch him, seriously

22:24 Oh Luz <3

22:26 Yeah GTFO, suck it, bitch

23:06 Who is this? Fella’s hot

23:40 RICH. FASSY. WEB. TAB.

24:19 Suck it, Ross

24:30 Real footage?

24:41 Lol you suck Ross

25:23 RICH. SMOKING RICH.

25:26 Bill omg

25:45 Perco, baby, no. don’t talk to Johnny Martin. Don’t look at Johnny Martin. Don’t so much as think about Johnny Martin. He will fuck you up with his gaze alone, baby

25:56 Ah Luz

26:06 OK. That’s hot. Joe/Charlie don’t be hot. It confuses me

26:42 Winnix being husbands in the corner

27:42 YOU’RE in the wrong position, dumbass, it’s no one else’s fault

27:46 Dick’s come to save the day

27:56 Ross knows nothing omg

28:05 RICH. Even my Rich is confused, Ross, you dweeb

28:20 Lol at Dick dropping down ready for a fight

28:36 Fassy isn’t happy. That means Alicia Vikander is coming for you. Joe/Charlie is definitely not happy. Lip is upset. Think about your life, Ross, think about your choices. You know you’ve failed when Roe is judging you

28:57 Nix is like lol where tf is the alcohol tho

28:59 Harry! Harry is here! But yes, baby, you’re interrupting the husband’s foreplay, leave immediately

30:00 Lol at the Nix vs Ross staredown. Nix won

30:17 RICH. GUYS IT’S RICH

30:33 Do it, Lieb. Drop the grenade. Just don’t upset my angel son Shifty

30:40 He is a literal angel. Don’t corrupt him Lieb

30:59 Nix is having another crack at flirting. “Going my way” so suave omg. Omg stop. No wait don’t

31:09 “I’m not the intelligence officer.” Neither is Nix half the time babe let’s be fair

31:14 “If I told you I’d have to kill you.” Nix is getting better at flirting! He’s been attending flirting 101 classes it seems

31:40 They’re legit such husbands prove me wrong

32:00 He’s not joking, Dick

32:06 Harry’s like oh yay yes please

32:11 Lol Nix

33:03 Ugh. Men. I feel like that hold smells so bad.

33:09 RICH. Naw, Rich is sad he’s missing out on the flamingos.

33:32 Joe/Charlie you deserve a day to commemorate you tbh. I love you.

33:46 “My brother’s in North Africa, he says it’s hot.” Bill is iconic.

34:34 Lieb, honey, don’t, please

34:49 I feel you, random hot guy. Tipper?

35:05 Eyyy this place is nice, let’s all move there.

35:17 Shifty, my angel son, my baby <3

35:26 Yay, Harry gets a boss jacket too!

36:22 Mum and Dad of Easy. I’m low-key living for Lip’s little worried faces.

36:33 THAT JACKET IS SICK AS FUCK I WANT 20

36:38 The fence is there, Ross, because you’re so fucking dumb

36:51 Guys, look, cows

37:06 He’s fucking useless. Hi Simon Pegg.

37:22 RICH

37:25 This whole scene gives me life and waters my crop

37:31 RICH <3. YOU GUYS. I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH. RICH RICH RICCCCHHHH

37:42 Poor Tip is so done

37:58 Simon Pegg is so confused

38:04 Good job, Tipper, I’m proud of you and your pretty face

38:10 Iconic

38:15 Keep it together Tip

38:54 The hand signals, no, I’d be like BABY. WHAT. I CAN’T UNDERSTAND YOU WTF. I’d last like a millisecond in the military lmao. Does my country even have one? Tbh probably not. Us Kiwis are too chill, cbf’ed with anything. Too busy watching rugby, drinking, and sulking that we can’t afford houses cos our housing market is fucked. But at least we beat Covid *shrugs*

39:06 ILY, old guy. You are the best thing in this episode, aside from Rich

39:22 But wait, there’s more weird Americans hopping out yo’ bushes

39:26 “Bloody hell!” Mood

39:47 “You’ve done it now, yanks, you’ve captured me!” He is such a mood. I love him.

39:54 FUCK OFF ROSS. “Would that be the enemy?” “As a matter of fact, yes.” DICK IS SO VALID I LOVE HIM THIS IS ICONIC.

40:25 Be free, moo-cows

40:40 LAMO GET WRECKED

41:00 Guys imma be straight with you. I’m on my third whiskey lmao.

41:10 Simon Pegg, please refrain from being a douchebag. Leave Dick and his husband to flirt in peace.

41:23 I love how Nix is like instantly suspicious. He knows.

41:39 Worried husband

41:45 “Misspelled court-marital.” Iconic

42:14 Ross, why you lying? So threatened and jel that you gotta lie omg.

42:50 God Damien is freaking hot. Guys.

42:57 Punk bitch Ross.

43:22 Dick is so BDE. It’s fucking hot.

43:30 Ross is shooketh tbh. Punk bitch.

43:36 AH! IT IS HIM! THE GUY FROM LINE OF DUTY S5!

43:50 That underbite must have hurt FJH a lot omg so committed.

44:02 Hey Lip <3

44:09 Johnny Martin has absolute BDE

44:22 God they’re willing to be killed just to not follow Ross. Same tbh.

44:57 This whole scene is BDE.

46:00 But Sink has the most BDE let’s be honest

46:44 The respect for Dick. Even after what they just went through. I AM EMOTIONAL.

46:58 He’s so worried like omg what have my troublesome sons done now

47:09 ROSS WHY YOU ALWAYS LYING??

48:09 Weak

48:24 Yeah, fuck off back to ‘Murica

48:34 Legit, can we acknowledge Ross did a great job (the actor). Really really well done, one of the best performances on the series tbh.

49:48 LMAO GET WRECKED PUNK BITCH

50:06 Dick just wanders about a lot on his own, huh?

50:50 What? What? I understand nothing of what the cockney guy is saying.

50:55 Me too, Hoob, the fuck.

51:00 RICH I SAW YOU

52:19 “Never put yourself in a position where you can take from these men.” Don’t omg I can’t, Dick, I’m weak, I can’t deal with these fucking feelings.

52:36 DAFUQ

52:40 OHHHH I get it. Right. Dick, you’re so smart. It’s a little sad they have to do all that just to get some answers and guidance but tbh it’s probably fair? Gotta be top secret so punk bitches like Ross can’t screw things up.

53:30 Hey Nix. Speak French to me any day.

53:48 Unf.

54:08 LMAO Lieb, how many cigarettes do you need!

54:10 NGL I paused here for a little while.

55:05 We could ALL use some brass knuckles, Joe/Charlie. Mood.

55:25 LOL Lieb is so nosy.

56:15 Oh no

57:00 Luz LMAO

57:10 Oh babies

57:13 Bill LMAO that’s not ice cream, yuck it looks like soup

57:28 God. All that effort. Not just logistically but emotionally, mentally, psychologically, to prepare, just to have it put off. Fuck.

57:38 That movie again. Poor boys.

57:47 That’s actually a really smart move, Johnny.

58:41 Oh no. I would lose it completely. Oh Bill </3

59:11 Naw, Dick dawdling around again

59:49 RICH I SEE YOU

1:00:08 AAAHHHH IT’S TOO CONFRONTING DON’T

1:00:48 NOOO I CAN’T aw Bill

1:01:09 Naww

1:01:16 RIIIIICH

1:01:20 It’s like they’re kiddies on a field trip and Dick is the teacher wrangling them lol

1:01:47 Lol their crap is so heavy Dick has to help pull them up. That’s actually really sweet.

1:01:51 I wish I could hold Rich’s hand

1:02:08 Oh God. I can’t. Like he’s helping them up BUT IT’S ALSO HIS WAY OF SAYING GOOD LUCK AND GOODBYE AND HAVING LIKE A MOMENT TO CONNECT WITH EACH OF THEM I CAN’T LIKE THE EYE CONTACT NO DICK STOP

1:02:19 LMAO at them having to shove each other into the plane

1:02:23 That look between him and Roe. Ugh. Like. You two gotta take care of your boys together. Brotp

1:03:22 Can someone explain the block on that guy’s helmet to me?

1:03:55 I’m sad. And scared. This series is so confronting. I’ve watched in annually since I was like 16 and I’m still so nervous for them.

1:05:37 Rich, I see you! I recognized his chin lmao

1:06:16 God, Dick be careful

1:10:00 This show. The feels. Every time.

[calypsoff]

Forty Seven. Part 2

Slowly opening my eyes, the sun is shining all in my face and interrupted my sleep. Lifting my head up seeing Robyn stood at the balcony doors just looking out from them, she could have actually just stepped out, but I guess it is time to wake up for me. Clearing my throat as I stretched out, Robyn turned away from the balcony to look at me “morning” Robyn’ sweet little voice, she sounds so cute “morning” I sound bad “did you purposely leave the curtains open so the sun could wake me? I think you did” Robyn made her way over to the bed “erm, maybe. Well I want to enjoy Jamaica, so I don’t want us to sleep in even though I am so tired” she sat down on the edge of the bed, placing my arm behind my head “I’m tired too, that is down to sex” placing my other arm just on Robyn’ lap “you naked under this?” She nodded her head, which made me grin “I mean I’m not going to tell you that we going to have sex now but I’m just smiling, how are you feeling?” Playing on the ties of the robe, she is making me so happy right now “erm, ok. Well I am not sick I guess but I am ok I would say, but I haven’t ate. I did read into it and they say it’s the first trimester that this happens, but it will get better eventually, I think this baby is a pain in the ass already. But this baby is very different from the first time around, I feel like the first baby was a different sex, they say boys are the weaker sex so it may have been a boy. I am just guessing now” nodding my head “don’t say that what if this is a boy again and he can hear you” I shushed her “you’re so annoying, get up so we can have breakfast, dramatic as hell” Robyn got up from the bed, I smiled so wide just watching Robyn walk off, she is really the love of my life.

I have been to some beautiful places thanks to Robyn of course, I have many more places to visit but I am experiencing such beauty in the morning in Jamaica “better than Barbados this” I knew to say it because Robyn is about to get her flag out “don’t make me get you kicked out of my country” I snorted laughing “you took the bait, I am joking of course. But it’s beautiful right? You have to admit to that at least, you can’t just front like that and say it ain’t beautiful when it is” Robyn is not happy that I said that “Barbados is better and you’re not allowed back in my hometown now” I snorted laughing “you’re unbelievable, but if we talking this is my roots though, Jamaican and I have Irish” Robyn is not interested, cannot say anything bad about Barbados “you a whole white man Chris, so now you Irish. But is this the first time here for you, I mean if this is my hometown well where my heritage is from, I would be here. I am so glad I was bought up on the island, imagine having to live that life in America” now she is being petty “imagine being an exchange student” staring at Robyn and she just stared at me “you are an asshole” she laughed “but my mother never really bothered with it, well my dad so we just left it alone. And yeah, I am so light skinned but I’m black and people struggled with that, I’m sure you probably felt the same, because you’re light skinned as hell too” me and Robyn both are “I did get bullied for things you wouldn’t think, like my skin colour, my forehead. My nose and it was stupid, but it happened and now I think back to it these bitches just wanted to be me, you know. And now I’m working with puma, I am working with fashion designers, I am being called beautiful for things I did get bullied for, I wish no child gets that because I could have been depressed and you know, killed myself about it and it didn’t help when I got to your ugly ass school, but you were there. I am so glad you came late that day, I was your punishment” Robyn giggled “I hated it, I was like I have to walk around with you. I was so mad but then I got to know you, life is good” I grinned, I am happy “be honest, like we are adults now. Did you actually like me when you first time saw me?” I know I did, I was shook “when I first time saw you Chris, you’re eyes just lit up seeing me. I think at first with your attitude because you was so moody with me I was like oh god no, this boy is not going to be nice to me so I just followed behind you like a lost child and then after you loosened up I fell for you because you was so kind to me” rubbing my chest smiling “I was an asshole, I don’t blame you on that” I don’t know how she could like me.

Drinking champagne for breakfast is what kings do, because that is what I’m doing “what? You’re jealous because you can’t” pouring the champagne in the glass, noticing Robyn recording me so I drank from the bottle. Moving the bottle back “this is how kings drink in the morning” holding the bottle up to the camera “you’re stupid” Robyn moved the phone down “you posting that? You know you can see my ring in that, or don’t you care?” Robyn shrugged so that means she don’t care “I am putting it on my story, mornings in Jamaica. That is what I put, I mean I wouldn’t post me, I look terrible without makeup” placing the bottle on the table “also no more drinking, I am not dealing with you drunk” Robyn pointed at me, I saluted her “gotchu, alcohol hits hard in the morning” not even going to front, I feel it. I let out a burp “no more” she said again “I won’t, relax. So I was looking because we need to do pregnant friendly things right? So I set up a few things for us to do, private of course” I won’t say it to Robyn, but Jamaica is better than Barbados, the views here are amazing and the hotel is so much better too. I won’t say it again because she will ban me from her country altogether “that’s cute, and Dennis sent me a link. He’s already processed the photos and selected ones he thinks we should post, he says that these are magazine worthy, but I said I am not selling them, it’s not what I want. I will post these because I want too” she has a point; I agree with her with that but if she can make money out of it, why not.

Stood behind Robyn as she is scrolling through the pictures, these some cute ass pictures right here “you seen them all?” Putting my tee on “kind of, getting there anyways. You know what, since putting that video of you being a fool I have had people ask me are we married, I haven’t confirmed or denied it though, I just feel like I want to keep it a secret. I feel like when people see you happy they want to bring you down and I don’t like that feeling. I just want to keep us quiet, I don’t know, what you think?” She asked for my advice “why do you care if nobody is happy for you? Talk to me, what is going to upset you the most?” Walking around Robyn, pulling the chair out and sitting down “I do care when it upsets you, they will attack you and say things, I mean you have felt the shit with just dating me but marrying me, I just feel like people will attack my bubble. I mean there will be more happy people than anything, but I don’t know, what do you think? I will listen to you, please tell what to do?” Turning the laptop to me, seeing the picture of Robyn and I sat together at the evening event, so much love in Robyn’ eyes and I love that about our pictures, flicking through to the ones where we are walking down the hall “Dennis wasn’t lying about these pictures, these look like they come from a wedding magazine, I mean I for one look so good” Robyn grinned at me “how about I post your face for Puma, get you modelling” shaking my head “I am just saying, I think let us enjoy our honeymoon and then we will think about posting it. I think we should do it, but let’s forget this and go and have some fun yeah?” I think Robyn is really in two minds with this “ok, we will wait it out, but I want these pictures framed at our house, they are beautiful” nodding my head agreeing, she is right, they are beautiful.

We finally left the hotel; I mean after ages we finally left the hotel room and are in the car to go to my little adventure I did for us “why does your dick look big in the shorts” lifting my butt up and pulling my shorts down “better? These are baggy as hell actually” Robyn placed her hand on my thigh “I better enjoy wearing my bikinis because I won’t be able too soon” Robyn poked her lips out at me “I know, but it’s all for a good cause. Do you feel your body changing?” I asked, I mean she may feel it “I do, I feel it a lot. You like my bikini though, you like the clear swim wear I got on over my bikini” nodding my head “I do, of course I do. I mean I am always going to say yes” I chuckled “I would hope you would tell me the truth, oh we here?” Robyn pointed out “we are, you feel nervous yet?” Robyn turned away from me to look outside the window “we are rafting!?” nodding my head “I mean not us but someone is going to do it for us” Robyn looks so excited “oh my gosh, this is amazing, so quiet around here too” the car came to a halt “that is because I booked it off, I said I want it to be private for us from this time, I paid extra for this. You excited?” she seems it “I am, this is amazing. I can already imagine how beautiful the scenery is going to be. Can I leave my bag in the car? I can yes, I mean I don’t want to drop my things in the water. You have your phone?” nodding my head “yeah, he is waiting here for us” I pointed out.

I feel like all the workers came out for us which is funny to me “welcome, I am your raft captain miss Rihanna” he shook her hand first, I mean who am I, the spare part of course “thank you” she shook his hand “and you sir, welcome” he gestured for us to get on the raft “I am about break my ass with these slides on aren’t I” I didn’t think this through “you want to get on first” I gestured “no, you get on first and you help me on, you hold it steady” the guy is just watching us go back and forth “I step on first, hold it still. Don’t be scared” he laughed, I could do it but I want to be careful with Robyn. She is sensitive and I don’t want anything happening to her, he waved us on. It was nothing for him, he just jumped on the raft. Stepping on the raft “oh this moves” the guy got his hand out to me “come friend” grabbing his hand as I stepped on it “see, you’re ok. Just be easy” turning around “I do not trust you oh my god, get the fuck outta here Chris” Robyn laughed “I trust the captain more then you” I feel offended now “Robyn quit playing, come” holding my hands out to her, this guy just come up to Robyn “hold my hand, I won’t let you fall” she is such a pain for this, she held the guy’ hand and then mine as she came onto the raft “shake this thing I will scream” shaking my head knowing damn well I will not be doing that, helping her to sit down on the raft.

Placing my arm behind Robyn, this river is so beautiful. I made the right choice in this because it’s so beautiful and peaceful “I am still annoyed that you didn’t trust me, if like I would let anything happen to you” Robyn shushed me “I was thinking what if there is crocodiles in this water” side eyeing Robyn “now why would you say that? Stupid, there won’t be” there is rafts coming back down the river slowly approaching and are going by us, there is a little girl on the raft with her parents, her parents stared so hard and then realised “Rihanna, oh my god” the lady said ever so loud, Robyn’ fault she is busy waving at the little girl “hey baby” the little waved back as the raft went by “well this is fun” there other rafts going by us have clocked on now “why couldn’t you just not wave at the girl” I questioned “she was too cute, she waved at me first Chris, oh my gosh. How adorable was she” she was cute “but still, you got your fans wanting to swim over to us now” I pointed at them “we love you Rihanna, oh my god” licking my lips just watching them just take pictures, Robyn did respond by waving “quit it now, it’s about us” this was really her fault in this, she caused the drama.

We reached the end, which is a nice meal out here, it’s actually very peaceful here with nobody around besides the workers “please picture together with your wife” I looked dumbfounded “how did you know?” I questioned “your honeymoon, see you forgot. But we want to put you on the wall with all the famous friends” letting out an oh, he is right I did say honeymoon “Robyn, come. Take a picture for the nice man here” I pointed, Robyn is busy looking at souvenirs “I want some things, you got money on you. I left my bag” digging into my pockets “I do twin, let’s just take a picture for him” Robyn made her way over “of course, Captain has been so good and I felt more safe with him then my husband” she playfully rolled her eyes “whatever” placing my arm around Robyn and held her close as he took the picture “you want a picture with her too” I asked, I think he did “oh please” I knew that, moving away from Robyn. Taking the camera from him “thank you” holding the camera up “smile” taking the picture of them “thank you and I wish you both all the blessings on your new journey for the three of you” he took the camera from me, Robyn and I just stared at each other confused “what?” I said confused “how?” he smiled “I sense things, her aura. You both will have a happy and blissful marriage. I see the future; it will be a girl you both have. And I see you both having three kids, maybe four or maybe that forth is because you lost one, but I sense four but it’s vague with the fourth. Happy memories for you both, thank you for these pictures please sit and eat, I will wait for you at the bar” he smiled walking off, this guy has took me out, what the hell just happened.

[pcudoodoo]

PCU and Argent Dawn

Obvious throwaway account. I’ve been debating on making something like this for a while, because this is an issue that has been growing increasingly concerning every single time that something new happens in game. However I’ve been hesitant to actually post something about the topic I’m about to delve into. Why? There are several reasons. First and foremost, I’m not a person who lives for drama. I’m a very secluded person, who suffers from mental issues that I really won’t get into. I do not say this for sympathy points, I say this to make the point clear that drama is the very last thing that I want to get involved with. Secondly as this title suggests this is going to be about the PCU - a group that is very notorious for going to extreme lengths to harass and shit talk people that they deem as enemies. And lastly, well, this is all happening on EU servers. I was hesitant to bring up this topic because let’s face it, it won’t get as much attention as it would if this was happening on American servers. People generally do not care enough over here to do anything about this, and while it is extremely disheartening to see I figured I may as well speak my mind.

Apologies in advance for my rambling nature and the length of this post.

What is the PCU? This question has come up quite a lot on the Alliance side of the server, but for anyone who plays Horde even the mere mention of the name will get you nothing but praise from the people that align with them. To put it bluntly, the PCU (Perroy’s Cinematic Universe) is a collective group of people that follow an individual named Perroy, and as the name suggests, go around making guilds following this guy’s “guidelines” to roleplay on the server of Argent Dawn. And when I say they go around making guilds, I mean quite literally that as of the date of this posting they have 11 Horde guilds and 11 Alliance guilds that have the tag [PCU] in their guild names or descriptions. Every single time a new thing is introduced to the game you can bet that the PCU will make a guild about it. You want a guild full of Zandalari Trolls? Well of course they have a guild for that. Vulpera? Have to be the first guild on the server to have one of those too. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing mind you, they just also seem to have a monopoly of guilds that all sing about providing “quality roleplay to the server of Argent Dawn.” But don’t take my word for it. Take Perroy’s word for it yourself: https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/the-pcu-now-recruiting-updated-op-server/54704

What’s the issue there you might ask? What’s so bad about wanting to provide a server full of people with quality roleplay?

The issue isn’t the goal that the PCU claims to strive towards, like I stated previously it isn’t necessarily a bad thing to have a guild full of trolls or vulpera or knight roleplayers. But the monopoly itself is one of the biggest issues of the server. Let’s say for example that for some reason you’ve done something to upset a member of the PCU. That member goes to complain to the rest of the guild, who then complains to the leader Perroy, and then suddenly your character is shunned from roleplaying with 20 - 30 other people in that guild. No big deal, you just go on to roleplay with someone else, right?

However, as one might have taken from the scenario, there is a major issue that stands out. Anyone who speaks out against the PCU are labeled as “Anti PCU” and are vilified in their community. A quick search on the EU Argent Dawn forums brings up plenty of PCU labeled topics, a majority of them promoting their army of guilds and going through the comments any one that has a problem with them are very quickly jumped on and are harassed there. And while that behaviour could be limited to the forums, unfortunately it is not. PCU members frequently go around in game “infiltrating” other guilds with their own members, spreading rumours and falsehoods about people that they do not like. And lord forbid you happen to enjoy ERP in the comfort OUTSIDE OF THE GAME. If a member even catches a whiff of you enjoying adult orientated content in roleplay in general, not just wow related, you are blacklisted. Period. Suddenly that character who was shunned just by one guild is shunned by two. Or three. Or five. And soon they find it difficult to find anything other than random walk up city roleplay.

Which in itself lies another issue. Since the PCU strives to make the entire server roleplay their way or the highway, they have frequent ‘raids’ on the two faction capitals of Stormwind and Orgrimmar. Long time server roleplayers know about the infamous raid when the Void Elves were announced - there were mobs and in character lynchings against other player’s will, all for the sake of causing havoc and to express their disdain for the new race. These raids continue to this day, and while the PCU’s side of the argument is that “if you don’t like the roleplay then don’t show up to it”, their argument is impossible to accommodate to. There is simply no way for someone to ignore a massive faction wide roleplay in a major city hub when people are /y typing curse words and emotes. Even if you ignore one person doing it, two more will pop up doing the same thing. The only way to “not show up” is to avoid a major rp hub, which is one of the -only- rp hubs on the server.

Argent Dawn, known for being a roleplaying server, is one of the most difficult servers to roleplay on. People whom I’ve talked to simply do not wish to deal with the PCU so they either don’t RP anymore, or they leave to go somewhere else. And my main issue that I personally have with the PCU isn’t their vile comments, the reports on members being homophobic and racist, the complete narcissistic nature of Perroy or even the bullying and harassment the members do to players. It’s the complete and total lack of empathy from them. Every single argument made against them will be counter argued with “Just don’t ERP”, or “Just go somewhere else if you don’t like what we do.” Their complete lack of self awareness and self righteous gatekeeping on a game that they themselves have no rights to nor do any of them own is what gets to me. Again, I do not wish for drama. I don’t type all of this out to start shit with the PCU or to bring harassment upon their users. I type this because I, as a very tired almost thirty year old, am so sick of seeing the same shit over and over again while I’m in Stormwind or Orgrimmar. For anyone wondering why I didn’t provide any screenshots or “proof” of my claims, the tumblr page https://consequencesofargentdawn.tumblr.com/ has more information than a single person can provide. I suggest looking there.

And with that, thank you for those who read through my ramblings and stuck around. I wish you all nothing but the best and remember. At the end of the day it’s all just a game. And a game is supposed to be about fun.

[dancingkirby]

Azula Week Day 5: Smiles

Summary: Zuko decides to invite all of his and Azula’s illegitimate half-siblings to the brunch on his and Mai’s wedding day.  It goes less badly than Azula had feared.

Warnings/Notes: Multiple non-graphic references to past sexual abuse of multiple underage girls, leading to one death and one near-death in childbirth.  (Don’t worry, it has a happy ending!).  Classism, internalized misogyny, etc. on Azula’s part.  OC-heavy.  One GoT reference that sort of wormed its way in there under its own volition.  

Word count: 2667 (longer than I had been anticipating!)

After many, many delays, the day of Zuko and Mai’s wedding was finally imminent.  There, would, of course, be intense media coverage and a general holiday for the populace, as well as thousands of guests. However, Zuko had also come up with the idea to have a pre-wedding brunch for family and close friends only. This wouldn’t be so outlandish, except that to him, “family” included Ozai’s bastards…every single one that he could find.

“Even the commoners, Zuzu?” she had sighed when he broke the news.  “It’s not a good image.  People at court are already talking.  We ought not to remind everyone of our baggage.”

“They’re not baggage, Azula,” he retorted.  “They’re our siblings.”

“Half-siblings,” she corrected as she brushed a cherry blossom from her shoulder; they were sitting in the courtyard watching the decorations being put up.  

Azula,” her brother admonished.  He spent what seemed like an absurd length of time trying to figure out what to say next, looked to make sure the decorators weren’t eavesdropping, then added, “I’ve been to their houses, you know that.  I’ve spoken with them personally, and I know all of their names and their stories.  You don’t want to know what I found out.”

“Don’t I, brother?” Azula inquired in faux innocent tones.  Zuko rubbed a knuckle against his forehead.

“Fine.” He conceded. “Here’s just one of the stories. There was a girl.  Lian.  Her father died suddenly, and her mother was sick a lot.  So she and her older siblings had to find jobs in the palace so the family wouldn’t starve.  She wasn’t even old enough to legally be hired, but they found work for her in the laundry under the table.  Her job was to go from room to room, gathering the dirty clothes.  I think you can see where this is going.  And…she died giving birth.  She was just a child.”  Sparks flew out of his nose as he exhaled forcefully.

“You’re rambling, Zuzu.  And watch the volume,” Azula stated almost without thinking.  Internally, however, her mind was spinning.  As much as she hated to admit it, Azula had not been prepared for that last part.  Died? Five years ago, she would have dismissed Lian as not fit to live anyway.  But now…she knew that she herself had been near death in that same situation, no matter how much the doctors had tried to sugarcoat it.

She was able to remain expressionless, however, and asked, “And the baby?”

“His name is Chun. The youngest of the bunch; just turned four.  Cute kid.”

That would place his conception sometime in the weeks after the Day of Black Sun, during which Ozai had lost his last vestiges of self-control and everyone else in the palace suffered.  For all she knew, Lian could have been one of the ones Azula herself had witnessed; she’d never bothered to find out any of their names.

“Any other dead?” she queried.

“No, thankfully.  Many of the mothers have permanent medical problems, though.  Some have turned to alcohol.  A few of the kids were adopted out.  Acknowledging and welcoming them and their children...well, it’s the least we can do.  It’s the…”

Wait for it.

“honorable thing to do.”

And that was that.  Once the h-word was added to the equation, there was no changing her brother’s mind.

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It was the morning of the big day.  Zuko had decided to get the inevitable family photos done at the brunch, since Fire Nation weddings were lengthy and the smaller children would probably be tired after a long day of ceremonies.  Currently, he and Mai were standing at the entrance to the courtyard, greeting the guests as they walked in.  

There were twenty-one acknowledged bastards; everyone at court knew that.  Zuko had managed to track down an additional twenty-three, and he wasn’t even certain that he’d found them all.  This meant that their lord father had sired at least forty-six children…well, technically forty-seven, Azula thought as she fingered the footprint pendant on her necklace.  Twenty-eight of those had been born during his not quite six-year reign as Fire Lord.  Had she not known for herself how insatiable Ozai had been, she may have found the number mind-boggling.

What was more, their heretofore unacknowledged half-siblings tended to skew younger than the acknowledged ones.  The noblemen of the court who were actually decent people (or at least concerned about marriage prospects) had started keeping their young daughters home a couple of years into Ozai’s reign.  That meant a veritable flood of children ten and under, most of them having never come anywhere near the palace prior to this.

She nibbled on a green onion tartlet as she stood on a slight rise, surveying the goings-on in the courtyard.  Some children were wandering around, looking at their surroundings with big eyes.  A sizable group had been attracted by Ty Lee’s impromptu acrobatics performance.  Ursa was sitting by the pond, commiserating with some of the young mothers.  Kiyi had taken it upon herself to give people tours of the grounds whether they asked for it or not.

But…where was…?

Azula was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t even fully register the timid tug on her sleeve until it was repeated a few seconds later.  She looked down for the source, and saw a small boy, wearing what must have passed for finery in whatever tiny village he came from.

“Bathrooms are that way,” she said for about the tenth time today as she pointed with her finger. But apparently that wasn’t the reason this child had sought her out.

“Are you the Princess?” he asked.  Except the “r” sounded more like a “w.”

“I am,” she confirmed. Then she watched, bemused, as the kid sank into a kowtow with surprisingly good form for a child of that age…not to mention a peasant.

Azula would not smile. She would not smile.

“You may rise,” she told him automatically, with all the solemnity she would give to an adult.  He sprang back up.

“Aunty said we have to do that if we see the Fire Lord or Fire Lady or Princess,” he explained in a rush.  “I saw the Fire Lord and he said don’t do it, but I wanted to do it because I practiced!”

Pwacticed.

She…was smiling, wasn’t she?  Damn.

“What is your name?” she asked him.

“Chun,” he answered. Azula had already had her suspicions when he had mentioned an aunt instead of a mother, and this confirmed them. This was the one Zuko had mentioned, whose mother had died.

“Well, Chun,” she said, “Your aunt was correct, generally speaking.  However, Zuzu does have his hangups about etiquette.  If you really want to pay obeisance, I would suggest a bow instead.  Would you like to learn the correct form for that?”

“Yeah!” he cheered.  Azula was quite sure that in the entire history of the world, no four-year-old had ever been as enthused about learning courtly manners.  

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Chun had the three different depths of bowing down in about five minutes.  Azula had always considered herself good at sniffing out potential, and this child had heaps of it.  Perhaps one day he could find work as a palace bureaucrat, and even ultimately be appointed to a seat on the Fire Lord’s council.  She supposed that Zuko’s incorrigible stubbornness had had some merit for once; otherwise, Chun’s talents would have been wasted among the riffraff.  He was also tremendously eager to please, and refused to leave her side.  Azula got the feeling that nobody paid much attention to him at home.  

It almost made her wish that she hadn’t been so harsh toward Mai’s younger brother a few weeks ago. For someone who continued to know nothing about children except that they liked gross stories, she sure seemed to attract a lot of children.  

As the two of them wandered back to where the main crowd was, Azula provided a running commentary about their various half-siblings.

“That woman in the glasses is Anshi, the oldest,” she informed Chun.  “Great with numbers, and even beat Iroh at Pai Sho once.  Very boring conversationalist, though.  The lady in that hideous gown next to her is Zhilan.  She can lightning bend, yet refuses to actually learn how to use it effectively because she prefers to spend her days arranging flowers and playing the erhu like a proper lady.”  She shook her head.  

“She’s fat!” Chun exclaimed brightly.  Azula chuckled.

“Sssh.  Well, to be fair, she doesn’t have my flawless physique, but actually she’s expecting her third child.  Perhaps she thought that people would be so blinded by that monstrosity of an outfit that they wouldn’t notice?” She pulled Chun along before her vision was permanently ruined by what even Ty Lee would likely reject as too over-the-top.  Although it was unclear how much of her gossip the child actually understood, he didn’t appear bored.

“There’s Ichiro; he’s skilled at archery and so aloof that he makes Mai seem warm and inviting. And…ugh, that’s Eri, stuck-up as ever. Do not go near her,” Azula cautioned. The girl apparently ruled over the Royal Fire Academy for Girls just as Azula herself had done a decade earlier, but unfortunately lacked the intellect to be anything more than a common bully. Best to give her a wide berth like Kiyi did.

“Who’s that?” Chun piped up while pointing at a pair of children dressed in bright red from head to toe.

“Those are Akane and Akemi.  Twins. They’re the youngest of the Acknowledged, and they’re…”

Azula never got to say exactly what it was that Akane and Akemi were, since just then, there was a commotion at the courtyard entrance.

“Sorry I’m late!” yelled the new arrival.  As she turned to greet the soon-to-be newlyweds, her face was somewhat obscured. However, Azula had no difficulty recognizing her.  She’d know that short haircut anywhere.

Ruanyu.  Azula’s breath caught in her throat.  They hadn’t seen each other in nearly five years.  After so long without any contact, she’d been starting to think that her half-sister was dead.

“How about you run over to the Fire Lord and show him your bow?” she asked Chun.  He scampered off happily enough.

Azula was not anticipating that this would be a happy reunion.  Once, they had been close, and Azula had even allowed Ruanyu to call her by her given name.  However, she really had treated the girl more like a pampered yet disposable pet than anything else, and had all but forgotten her in the events leading up to Sozin’s Comet.  In fact, she hadn’t remembered that she had left the girl to her own devices until months later, when she was in the hospital.  

Then Ruanyu looked her way, paused for a split second, and began running toward Azula at top speed. Azula steeled herself, her heart racing. She remembered that the feisty little girl had held her own in sparring matches, and she was prepared to repel any firebending that might come her way.

What she was not prepared for was being nearly knocked off her feet by the sheer enthusiasm of her half-sister’s embrace.  When they pulled apart, Azula attempted to remain stoic, but the sheer magnetism of Ruanyu’s famous ear-to-ear grin was too much for her to resist.

“I see you managed to escape,” she commented dryly.

“Yeah.  My mom smuggled us out after the whole Phoenix King thing,” Ruanyu answered while shrugging, as if it were of no great importance.

Azula became painfully aware that everyone in the courtyard was watching them.  In fact, Zuko was leading the spectators in some applause, Ty Lee ran over to get her hug, and Mai made a cough that sounded a lot like the word “Finally.”

“You knew about this, didn’t you?” Azula accused Zuko.

“We wanted it to be a surprise,” was all he said in response.

“It seems that you succeeded in something for once,” Azula remarked in as deadpan a tone as she could manage.  Then, to Ruanyu, “Let’s go talk somewhere more private.”  Ruanyu agreed, and they retreated to Azula’s favorite shady little enclave.  Once they were out of earshot, Azula decided to cut right to the chase, as she looked at the face that was almost like looking in a mirror.

“If you’re angry at me, then say so.  Don’t hold back on my regard.”

Ruanyu bit her lip as she considered.

“I was angry at you.  Really angry for a while,” she commented.  “But I decided to forgive you.  Zuko told me about what Ozai did to you.”  Her eyes hardened.  

“Did he do anything to you?”   Azula had to know.

“Nah.  Well, he kept saying all this creepy stuff, but I was always faster than him,” Ruanyu replied.  She was obviously trying to be casual, but not quite succeeding.  She was sixteen; old enough to know that she had only just dodged a lightning bolt, and that others had not been as fortunate.

“And just what have you been doing these past years?” she inquired.

“Mom took us back to the village where she grew up.  She wanted me to settle down with some boring man and raise a family.  But that’s…not me.  So I’ve been doing a lot of traveling, seeing the world,” Ruanyu explained. Yes, Azula remembered her half-sister’s thirst for adventure well.  In fact, she had briefly considered taking the girl to the Earth Kingdom, but had decided against it since she knew that Ruanyu would never have gone along with taking Zuko and Iroh prisoner.  

She asked, “Any plans for after the wedding?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Ruanyu answered.  “I think I might stay at the palace again for a bit, then set off again.  I’m interested in seeing that new city that Zuko and his friends are building; he told me that they’re looking for settlers.”

Someone cleared their throat behind them.  “Did someone say my name?”  Azula turned to see that Zuko was indeed present, with one twin hanging off each arm.

“Yeah, I was just telling Azula that I wanted to see Republic City.”

“Well, we’d be glad to have you there.  But, uh, anyway, I came up here to tell you two that the photographer’s setting up.  He has a prototype model of a new kind of camera; one that can take the picture instantly.  I thought the younger kids might find it harder to stand still.”

“Don’t get him started on that special camera,” Mai chimed in as she walked up with Chun trailing behind her.  “He’ll probably spend our entire wedding night talking about it.”

“Not the entire night,” Zuko protested.

“Oh, really?  I suppose I will just have to make sure that you keep your word.”

Azula said, “There are children here, you two!” in almost perfect synchrony with Ruanyu’s “I don’t think I wanna hear this…”  They must have pulled identical faces, since Akane exclaimed, “More twins!”

“Oops.  Forgot about the kids,” mumbled Zuko. “So…yeah.  Picture time.”

And so the soon-to-be-wed couple kissed as they temporarily parted; Mai had to leave to undergo the ordeal of getting dressed in her many-layered wedding outfit.  (“If I’m really lucky, maybe it’ll actually get done sometime this decade,” she said.)  Zuko eventually got the whole group of Ozai’s progeny rounded up.  As her brother enlisted Sokka’s help to explain how the camera worked to those children who had never been photographed before, and Azula snuck appraising glances at the latter, she felt oddly at peace. They made for an odd collection of individuals indeed, but Zuko had been right just this once.  That awful trial was behind them, and they were all stuck in this same recovery boat together.  

After some time, they were all arranged in a more or less organized manner, and Azula made sure that her necklace would be clearly visible in the picture.

“Smile!” the photographer ordered.

And, as they saw weeks later when the developed pictures were sent to them, nearly everyone had.  Even Azula.

[hearthandhomemagick]

The Cottage Witches Journey Journal 18+ Trigger Warning (discusses adult situations and mentions abuse, assault & suicidal thoughts)

I would like to start this journal entry with who I am. My name is Carly, and my spiritual practice is focused on my Hearth and Home. I am writing this to kind of freely express myself, my experiences, and even speculations I may have. Feel free to follow me through this journey, or even offer conversation if you have a thought. I’m open for human connection and communication!

So, I’d say my journey started at a very young age. I grew up along side a river in Florida, where my family has owned land next to the water for quite a few generations. I grew up with a sizeable family and a lot of spiritual survival practices, including identifying plants and herbs for healing purposes, learning to read the land in front of me, and cleansing my heart in the current of the river when I am hurting. These were a part of my nature, and the tree bent by Native Americans, directing the flow of the water, was an asset to the land that felt like magical anytime I touched it. I was raised under the Christian faith and followed it for many many years, until I reached college. But, before I get fully into my religious transition, let me describe the woman I used to be.

As a young woman entering the world on her own for the very first time, I felt as though I had to prove my morals to the world. I felt a longing to prove to everyone why my approach to life was the best approach, and often fought with no thought to the other person in order to get my point across. I used to be fierce in my beliefs and would argue my corner until my lungs gave out. While this is admirable as a trait in defense, it is not admirable in a trait of happiness.

You see, I was learning that fighting for what I thought was right was more important than anything else, including myself. But if I am not fighting for myself, then who am I truly fighting for? The fight for “justice” took precedent over the fight for my own sanity. This was a reoccurring contemplation that passed through my mind effortlessly one day, creating an immediate explosion of, “What is Justice to me, for me?” Now, I am still no where near knowing exactly what Justice means to me. I don’t believe I will ever have a clear answer for that question, either, because it will be forever changing and growing as my understanding expands and grows. With that urge to fight my corner, I was also very extroverted with people in general. Being bullied as a kid, I never wanted anyone to feel the way I felt, so I never held back from giving positive compliments or speaking my truth. This saved and hindered me all at once because while I loved human interaction and never met a stranger, I never truly picked up on negative gut feelings for people and gave so much of my energy to everyone that I had no energy for myself. Throughout that stage of my life, I was selfish and insecure all at the same time. My roommates were from India and China in college, and were smarter than me on paper because they had better educational opportunities than I did. I say this not because I’m jealous or envious, but because they pointed it out frequently. I could feel the insecurity of my own intelligence washing over me and their comments about me being overweight didn’t make me feel any better. These insecurities caused a heavy layer of selfishness, where I wanted to only worry about my own feelings & thoughts. While a fun period I am happy to have lived in my life, it was also a side of me that should have been put into check much earlier. 

At some point, I couldn’t go back to college due to finances and was thrusted back into my hometown in Florida. This sent me into an anxiety filled depression which rocketed me into fits of self hatred, lack of motivation, lack of confidence, and staring at the pill bottle sitting on my bed side table. Through this time, I was forcing myself to pray to God that everything would be okay, & that I wouldn’t hurt anymore. I prayed, and knew I didn’t believe the words I spoke.

Let me repeat that. I prayed, knew it wouldn’t work, and still I prayed. This feeling of disconnect from my beliefs and religion rocked everything I had imagined, and yet forced me to fix my problems myself. Because I didn’t believe some magic man in the sky would magically fix all of my issues, I started contemplating whether I was connected to any spirituality at all. 

Now, when I had moved back to my hometown, I started looking for friendship and found drama. I would go to karaoke at a bar with my older sister, singing is something I breathe for, and grew tired of the criticism given to people who enjoyed what they were doing, but never met the standards of professionals. My sister started talking shit about people, and I wasn’t for that energy or drama so I stopped going. I started hanging with my friend Raven, but she moved to Jacksonville shortly after I moved back. I then started hanging with a high school friend named Jordan, whom took me different places to interact with people every once in a while. Jordan knew an old high school friend, Logan, and invited me to smoke cannabis every once in a while on the weekends. While hanging out with Jordan and Logan, Logan and I started getting closer. While my mind felt as though it was packed full of passing negative thoughts and deterioration, Logan was teaching me my morals again. 

At this point, my faith had been falling apart, but I had not vocalized it until I told Logan. The moment I went over to his apartment and started expressing that I felt religion was beautiful and yet not for me, his eyes lit up and a spark flew. We talked for hours that night, and for hours the nights after. He taught me to be an individual and made me feel as though I was smart again, he made me feel worth it. We eventually got into a relationship together and started working together to build a heathy foundation of trust, understanding, communication & sustainability. He is my equal, and I started my spiritual journey with him by my side. 

Fast forward to the end of 2019, I’m in Gainesville (Florida) with my best friend, Tiana, for Christmas shopping. We had stopped in a few stores prior and decided that going into a spiritual store would be cool, so we sought out the Bodhi Tree. This shop was a sizeable metaphysical store that I had been in every so often when in town. Once we got there, I was immediately pulled to the back of the store where the divination tools & books were located. I had always found interest in magic and the elements, especially as a child, and caught myself eyeing the oracle cards in front of me. I could feel an energy pushing me towards a specific deck, but I couldn’t figure out which it was. So I stood for a moment, contemplating why I was attracted to that area with no interest in the decks presented to me. That’s when I noticed a blue box sticking out from behind a different deck. I picked it up & observed the lovely Angels & Ancestors Oracle box in front of me, and knew from that moment on that they were meant to be mine. 

As they called to me, I found myself taking them to the check out counter and purchasing them without a second thought. I had no preface of what to expect from this, nor did I know whether this was even something I would be capable of committing to. All I knew was that my body and mind owned them before I even paid for them. The Universe confirmed the connection was meant to be when we then went to a book store and discovered an array of tarot and oracle decks & books. I bought a purple velvet tarot bag, and everything started falling into place. 

After a month of playing with the cards, connecting with and enjoying their messages and images, I proceeded to buy my first ever tarot deck, The Herbcrafter’s Tarot. I fell in love with this deck, even though it was hard to read. It was my learning deck and I started recognizing what my spirituality meant to me. 

Over time, I remained Agnostic in terms of Religion, and focused on the energy I held & self expansion. I didn’t know what to believe, think or even how far or long I was going to venture this path. Eventually, though, I recognized why I put a besom over my door and felt protective of my home and its comfortability. I started seeking more spiritual energy in my home and was beginning my path to becoming a Hearth Witch. I got with my cousin and at the beginning of 2020, I started my spiritual awakening journey. 

It started when Logan didn’t have a job to go to. I was working as a Sexual Violence Outreach Advocate and, after a few months of struggling financially, got a second job as a CBD Store Associate on the weekends. I worked harder than I ever have in my life and learned my own independence in the process. Spiritually, my vibes were low and I was experiencing anxiety, depression and PTSD from the re-traumatization of counseling Sexual Violence Survivors. I even went through a horrible time where for months on end I would wake up throwing up non stop. The doctors couldn’t figure out what it was and I lost 50 pounds from the malnutrition. I was at my lowest, and felt like focusing on myself was destroying me more than it was helping. I took shadow-work as self hatred and criticism, and forgot to put honey on my tongue before looking in the mirror. I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out why I was as sick mentally and physically as I was. 

Then, something happened. After a terrible event between my cousin and nieces, where my cousin told my nieces that chopped up dead children were in the walls of their brand new home, I recognized the importance of boundaries with everyone. Now, a lot more happened between my cousin and I prior to this, including her assuming my boyfriend was abusive because she received a reading that she felt was meant for me, but never was. So, after the drama settled, I ghosted.

I left everyone’s problems to themselves and started worrying about the things in my life I can change. This resulted in actual self reflection, self awareness & peace of mind. My tarot card readings became more clear and precise, and tarot decks started being given to me as gifts. Eventually, I noticed that my job as an Advocate was a huge problem in my life.

I experienced Sexual Violence in the past, and in my year as an Advocate, I had been paid $11 an hour to counsel up to 7-12 different Survivors in a week. I was asked to do everything, including my Supervisors job, and went above and beyond with little to no credit going towards my work. I didn’t even feel safe making a mistake or two, simply because I watched Advocates get fired for having a quiet personality or making mistakes and asking too many questions. The days leading up to my final day at that job, I was throwing up everything in my stomach every morning until 5 minutes before I had to leave, so I was late for work everyday. 

The day after my last day as an Advocate was my first time not throwing up in months. And I haven’t thrown up since I left. 

Logan started a new job that gave him ample finances, and I was making more in a week at my new job than I was as an Advocate. This is where my healing started. I started giving my mental more attention, speaking softer to myself, and appreciating the people around me. Logan even started showing me more affection, and being nicer to himself. 

Spiritually we were growing together. 

Ugh, I have so much I want to discuss and talk about with others!!!! There will definitely be more thoughts and entries as time goes on. Especially with the end of 2020.

So, this is where my journey begins. I am here because I like to talk, to speculate & even debate certain things and ideas. I love energy, and the energy people bring forward is always fascinating. So please, drop an ask, message me, or let me know your thoughts!

[nyctophilin]

PSA

Looks like I am back at it again a few days later. Lately it has been the day and the PSA, the day and the PSA around here. Isn’t it lovely? It is like people are trying to piss me off. Let’s get into this, shall we?

Warning: In this post I will be discussing pedophilia, minor bullying, disclosing of personal information without consent, minors engaging in nsfw and adults. If any of those make you uncomfortable, please proceed with caution.

If my last post was not discussing minors engaging in NSFW, this one does. It is wrong, I know this. We all know this. So then, why aren’t we treating everyone equally? Why is it bad when some minors do it, but when others do it, it is good? Why doesn’t everyone get the same amount of hate or support? Why is that? Please, someone help me understand!

Some minors on here write smut and engage in NSFW role playing and also interact with adults a lot older than them and this is totally wrong! First of all, it is illegal and second of all, it can get them in problems and the adults they are interacting with, as well. If there are minors engaging in the NSFW part of the community, they should sit themselves down, think about what they are doing and stop doing it. There are so many more things that you could be doing at your age than put yourself in such danger. Please, seriously think about this!

Now, the problem here lies, especially for me, when adults know who are minors around here and pick and choose who to hate. They will be bullying a minor smut writer on the dash while engaging in NSFW role playing with another one in DMs. I feel like if you are going to advocate for minors not engaging in NSFW activities, you should apply it to everyone. You don’t get to pick your favourite minors and give them special treatment. So if you are going to bully this one minor that is not your friend, then you should bully the one that is your friend as well. Because remember, the law is the same for everyone and so should be your behaviour.

So stop the favouritism regarding this matter! I know for a fact that there are adult on this site that know who the minors around here are and they are protecting some, while throwing the others to the lions(aka other adults). You either support them all, or hate them all. There should not be an in between here. Because not all the minors you decided to hate will be afraid of you(as I am sure that you hope) and some of them will expose you for the pedophile that you are.

Now, I am not advocating for hating minors, like I stated in my previous post. It doesn’t matter if they engage in NSFW or not, you should not send them hate. I know that this might be a foreign subject to some of you, but you can solve most problems by respectfully talking to the person. Crazy, am I right? I feel like some of you are trying to villainize minors engaging in NSFW when you haven’t ever talked to that person. Most of them really do not realize the consequences of their actions and again, I feel like you don’t understand that! Most adults like to picture minors as brainless creatures walking around doing useless shit until they turn 18 and yet, you refuse to understand that they make mistakes too.

BREAKING NEWS: Minors make mistakes! Who would have thought? And they make the same mistakes as you did when you were their age. I am sure that none of you can watch me in the eyes and tell me that they have never interacted with NSFW content when they were a minor. Unless you were living at the edge of the world with only water and food. So this being said, some of you have NO RIGHT to judge minors as hard as you do. You were exactly the same, Susan. Don’t act so innocent!

You, as an adult, really don’t have to cuss a minor out, insult them, bully them, put them in danger in order to get your points across. I am sick and tired of “call-out” posts, “exposing” posts, “spilling the tea” posts! STOP! Have some of you ever tried talking to the minor? Have you ever slid into a person’s DMs and said “Hey! I heard that you are a minor writing smut. Let’s talk about this because this is not okay.”. Have you? I bet not! When most of you find out that someone is a minor engaging in NSFW, you go “They are trying to get ME in jail? I think not! Blocked! Exposed! Your mom is stupid!”. Get the fuck out of here with this! Not everything is about you Susan! Get your head out of your own ass!

And can you, pleeeease, stop posting PERSONAL INFORMATION in your call-out posts, if you decide to go on with them? “I aS aN AdUlT tHiNk ThAt If i KnOw SoMeOnE iS a MiNoR, i ShOuLd LeT oThEr AdUlTs KnOw!”. Okay Susan, but you know you can do it without posting personal information about the minor? You don’t need to expose their age or other type of personal information you know about them in that post. You can just say that they are a minor and call it a day. First of all, minor engaging in NSFW or not, that person trusted you with this kind of information, you trust breaking asshole, and second of all, you are exposing the personal information to all the pedophiles out there. I know that some of you have never thought of this like that, but let’s think about it like that together.

You expose that minor’s personal information. You expose their age and name and location and a pedophile sees it. Since all the non-pedophiles here are ganging up against them and basically bullying them, the pedophile will step in. They will befriend the minor and support them engaging in NSFW. “You can continue writing this! They are just overreacting.”, “I really like your posts! Don’t listen to them.”, “I will always be by your side. You can trust me!” and the minor won’t listen to you, who are attacking them and they will listen to their new friend. And this is how they will end up being groomed and maybe worse.

I know that some of you will think that what I just said is fiction. When will that ever happen, am I right? But it does happen. You need to understand that those call-out posts put minors in very bad places mentally and a pedophile will take advantage of that. While it is better to not make this kind of posts at all, if you end up making them, you say that they are a minor period. You end your sentence there. You know that you can be put in jail for revealing a minor’s personal information without their parents’ consent, right?

Also, why THE FUCK, do some of you make this kind of posts when the person you are targeting is in a hiatus/inactive? This is how big of a coward you are? You don’t even leave them the chance to defend themselves? And not at how you make this kind of posts, that will make them look like a “hero” in the eyes of other adults right before hitting a milestone. How convenient!

Now, as you can see, I have mentioned pedophiles quite a few times in this post and I am about to discuss more behaviours perpetuated by adults, that can be considered threatening to minors. There are a few, what I like to consider threats, living around us. They are writers, just like us, but they protect minors engaging in NSFW from getting exposed. You can take my words for it or not, that is your choice. Personally, I consider an adult interacting with people they know are minors and protecting them from getting expose, very suspicious as it is. If you do not, that’s a you problem!

A lot of those people will make posts about how they don’t want to interact with minors and how they feel uncomfortable around them as a cover up. However, those posts don’t mean that they don’t engage in NSFW with minors. It’s the same way minors will make/reblog posts how they don’t want minors interacting with them to mask the fact that they are minors. Those two go hand in hand.

First of all, you don’t need to necessarily engage in NSFW role playing with a minor for you to be a threat. You can also just make sexual innuendos and jokes towards them. They are not harmless! A 20 something years old adult telling a 16 years old that “They make them feel subby.” is not funny, nor is it a harmless joke. A 20 something years old telling a 15 years old to “Fuck them into the mattress.” it’s again not funny, nor harmless. You as an adult should not be interacting in this way with a minor even as a joke.

When someone tells you that they are in high school, you shouldn’t be saying “I don’t know how old that is, but don’t tell me because that means that I cannot approve of you interacting with my works or with me after that.”. You should be asking for their age and kicking them the fuck out of your blog if they are a minor. If you are so hard on minors not interacting with you, then why would you let a possible minor still interact with you?

The age of consent is not the age of adulthood and you made that very clear. Then why would you say that it’s okay for some minors to write smut if they reached the age of consent? Don’t you stand by your own principles? Or are those minors special?

Also, not talking about adults that knew that some writers were minors for a few months, interacted with them in NSFW ways then probably realized they can be put in jail for that so they exposed them themselves. But of course that they let the part where they knew about their age for months and the NSFW interactions out of that. They acted like they were so shocked by that, when in reality they weren’t because they knew all along.

But in conclusion, every adult that knows that a minor is engaging in NSFW and they are covering up for them and even getting involved with the minor, is a threat. If you don’t think that, then you are part of the problem as well.

Now, something I want to address to the readers. If the owner of a smut blog that you follow has been accused of being a minor, you shouldn’t believe that it’s just a hater spewing lies. You don’t actually know the person behind the blog. They could have lied about everything. It’s not healthy to put some people on a high pedestal and worship every thing they do and say. I know that for some of you it’s hard to let go of your masturbation material providers, but you have to look at things from a rational perspective.

They haven’t been accused of pushing their sibling out of their way and you wouldn’t believe that because they are such a nice person. They have been accused of being a minor that writes smut, engages in NSFW and so on. This is a serious accusation and you should take it as it. You don’t just casually throw this kind of accusations because you are bored. The person that did that must have a reason. Maybe they are wrong and the person is not a minor and the whole thing was just a misunderstanding, but you can’t just dismiss it completely. You have to take into account that that person might actually be a minor.

So next time something like this happens, you should probably give it more thought. And you should also pay attention to the way the author handles the whole thing. You’ll get all the answers you need from that without anyone having to confirm whether they are a minor or not. Remember that worshiping content creators is not good, is not healthy. For both parts. Be more self aware. Also, I want to state that I am not making any claims or assumptions. This is just to make everyone have a more realistic view towards the whole situation.

And with that I have finished this whole post. I hope everyone read it carefully and are actually giving some thought to everything that I just said. Minors engaging in NSFW is a bad thing, but we should handle it properly. Stop with the blatant hate and handle the situation like an adult. 

Thank you for reading this! I hope everyone stays safe and healthy.

[tara-l-blackmore]

Double-Edged

To whom it concerns, I've been lying to you. All along, since day one, no matter who you are, if we’re spoken, I’ve lied to you. I have always lied to you. What's the lie? Easy: I'm a good person. It's the truth. I'm not a good person. I'm not nice. I'm not selfless and altruistic. I'm nothing more than a piece of shit. Anything that stated otherwise was me lying to you. I'm a bad person. I'm not at all what I’ve made you believe. I'm not nice. I'm not good. I'm a mean, bad person. I'm not being a bully to myself: I’m being honest with you. I'm immature and irresponsible, and I'm childish and pathetic. The truth is that I’m a very lonely person during the day. Because I am disabled, it means I’m a housewife. But I can't even do housework, so I’m barely even that. I'm a 35-year-old child. I'm spoilt rotten. I love getting presents. I love being the centre of attention. I love being loved. I'm so lonely that I forget about my age, about how to behave, what it means to be a friend. All I want is to be loved and love back without it being an embarrassment or burden upon anyone. But I am an embarrassing burden. I lose every friend I make, because I barely do the bare minimum of what it takes to be a good friend. I expect people to fawn over me, all while never doing anything of the sort in return. Whatever anyone has said about me is true, especially if they were especially close to me (you know who you are; I’m not wasting time and putting names in, nobody cares). I start out the perfect friend, but the first time I start to show my true self is usually when things begin to fall apart. I forget that nobody wants to know about that side, nobody cares enough about me to want to try, and even when they do, the reward is barely a grain of salt within a bag of poison powder. It's not worth it. I have been offline for most of the past month. I received – and continue to receive – bad news from my doctors, and I’m losing hope. I know people don't hang out with me to be my free therapist, so I’ve been keeping things to myself. I've noticed that, though it's said often, the fact is is that nobody wants to know about my problems. I serve as a sort of advice columnist, and I forget my place. My neediness makes me stupid and blind, and when people show me even a whiff of kindness, I’m ass-over-teakettle from their affection, eager for more and more. I start to lose focus, and I start to use people. A lot. I'm never gross – love in this context is always familial or friendly, never romantic – but especially because I attract a younger audience with my scribbles, I forget that age sometimes isn't just a number, and no teenager or young adult wants to spend their free time listening to some disabled middle-aged-housewife bitch about her problems. So what I’m trying to say is: I’m sorry. I'm sorry I lied to all of you, and I’m sorry I hurt all of you while doing so. In full honesty, that was and never will be my intention. My true intention is to serve as a kind of mentor, an adult friend to ask questions you for some reason cannot ask your parents but need answers to, and urgently. I again refer to the advice columnist part above. It's something I love to do and if I could get paid to do it, I would. But the truth remains, and it simply states that I am not qualified to help people that way. I'm not able to properly give that kind of advice, because I am uneducated and no professional. Hell, I’m not even an amateur. What is truth is the fact that I care about every person in my life who is kind to me. That is real. That is not part of my two-faced life. I truly care, and if I say so, I truly love. But I know that it's not enough, especially once I become comfortable enough to start sharing back. People often ask me to share, and lately, I’ve been refusing. I've discovered a pattern, one easy to see with hindsight, one I perhaps refused to see in that need to feel loved and special. When I do share, and people begin to discover the real me, save the rarest of cases, they all start to freeze me out. I think things are going great, I feel happy to have a new friend… and I lose them, almost right after. Because my shit sucks. But I need someone to listen to me. I can't do this, anymore. I can't be the perfect friend, anymore, the nice, sweet person who will drop everything to help you. I want to be. I yearn to remain as such. But without that ability – the ability to share in return, to ask instead of offer the advice – I cannot remain in that kind of friendship, anymore. I'm very sick. It's getting worse. I don't know how much longer I have. And I know that one of the worst feeling in the world is to be forced to watch someone you care about die – or maybe the whining and complaining will get old, and you can't take the sadness, anymore. I can't guarantee that I’ll be able to be as supportive for you as you are for me, because I’m losing the battle against death and suicide. I certainly don’t want to drag anyone else down with me, let alone make anyone falsely assume – should it happen – that my suicide is anyone else's fault but my own. I just… want to be loved and cared for, and I want to be able to love and care for you in return, the way we both want. If you've outgrown any need for me, and haven't had the chance to say so, I’m telling you that it's okay to go, now. You don't have to keep me as a contact out of some kind of old loyalty to me. I hate that. I don't want that. I want a real friend, not a person who dangles friendship in front of me but never lowers their hand. I'm tired, I'm sick, and I’m lonely. I need help, and I need love. I need a lot of both. And I’m so very tired of chasing after it, of chasing you down, dragging you to me, screaming at you for attention, while you scream back for your freedom. And I’m not saying that nobody already does this. I can think of several people who do not need to know any of this, who do support me back, and who go out of their way to contact me. If you do that, this isn't for you. But this is about a lot of you. So please, if you feel this way, I understand, and you can cut that last tie, okay? I'm not saying these things because I want to be alone. I'm saying them so that, when I need someone to remind me that I'm not alone, someone will actually be there to do it. And so that I can do the very same for them – you. I've been offline and isolated for a while, now, and it's given me a lot of time to soul-search and think over my life's decisions, and what they've amounted to be. One of the first things I became aware of was how unhappy I make people feel, and how terrified I am to trust them as a result. I've spoken to perhaps two people throughout this entire time, and one of them I told to leave me, because of the abuse I’ve been heaping upon them – and how even they don't realise how miserable I make people. I'm aware there are exceptions. But at the same time, this also goes out to those exceptions. I'm giving everyone a “Get out of jail free” card, here, and I mean it. There's a chance I will be going away for a while, soon, and I won't be able to speak to people online for fuck knows how long – a week at least. I don't know how many of you will still be here if/when I come back. So instead of waiting for that to happen while I’m away, I’m inviting you to leave now. As always, I will say nothing, even if we've known each other for a decade. That has already happened, and as promised, because they terminated the friendship, I have not spoken to them or bothered them since. Because when I say it, I mean it. I may be a two-faced asshole, but I have some honour. I have to go to bed, now. I don't know what I will wake up to. No, this doesn't mean I’m killing myself – I’m absolutely not. It also doesn't mean I’m going to delete my entire internet fingerprints, either. I will still write, still interact with readers, and still chat with people who aren't afraid of my bleak sides, or whom have the patience to put up with my bullshit. I can't act, anymore. I can't keep pretending that I have no problems, no hopes and dreams, and no need for comfort and support. I do. I'm desperate for them. And that's why I’m a garbage friend. I'm not ending friendships with anyone. What I am doing is offering you the chance to walk away, and blame me for ending it. It's the only thing I can give you: the satisfaction of knowing you have hurt me deeply, and the ability to claim that I did it to myself, alone. And you wouldn't be wrong. But if I do wake up tomorrow, and some of you are still here… Then talk to me. Prove it. Show me. I'm fine with different kinds of friendships (once-a-month chatters, daily talkers, yearly updates); I just want us both to agree on the level and type of closeness or intimacy we reach (platonic and familial, remember. I'm not interested in romance at all. Zero per cent). I have not been feeling like we are on equal ground with a lot of you, lately. All I want to know is where I stand in your life, so that I know what to expect – and what not to expect. I don't think that's too much to ask. It's late; I need to sleep. I'm done, anyway. I'll probably regret this tomorrow morning, but it's too late to think about it, now. You have the key. Use it or don't – just tell me if I need to lock it behind you. That's all.

[shanie-the-toyaddict]

This is a story about Childhood in the early 90s

OK, STORY TIME yinz. When I was in, oh I’d say about 3rd grade (which I believe would have been in 1990 or 1991) I was absolutely HOOKED on an author, Caroline B. Cooney I believe her name was (though I might not be spelling that right and I am too tired to look her up). She wrote young adult books about disasters and tragedy and general wildness. My all time favorite book when I was young was her book “Flight #116 Is Down” which was about a plane crash where, surprisingly, everyone didn’t die instantly and it was a race to rescue the survivors. It simultaneously fed into a massive “disaster thing” I had growing inside me and also made me terrified to fly in a plane. Anyway, we will get back to her. My VERY FIRST exposure to the concept of ANYTHING LGBTQ was naturally, schoolyard bullying. The mean kids called the good kids “Homo” and “R*tard”. Now, I knew what the “R” word meant, mainly because we were a private school with special needs kids and someone specifically pointed them out as that. It’s cruel, but it is how I learned what Mental Retardation meant. However, there was nobody in school you could point to and say “That’s a homo”. If I tried to ask a classmate what “Homo” meant, they invariably told me “If you don’t know, I’m not telling”. More than likely THEY DIDN’T KNOW EITHER. Occasionally, I tried to ask an adult, and they would tell me to go and play and ignore the question. So I spent those early years knowing the WORD but not the MEANING. Cut back to Caroline B Cooney. She wrote a book that I read, I think in 4th grade. It was about a wildfire in California. In it, there was a couple of characters. Two of them were a father and son. NOW, it was made very clear early on that the “Son” wasn’t the only original son. There had been an OLDER son. However, HE had committed suicide before the events of the book. The reason given was that he “came out’ to his parents and they disowned him. Now, I didn’t know what that term (”came out”) meant. However, the book further explained that the older son was a “homosexual’. I was curious. Was THAT what “homo” meant? I had no idea what a ‘Homo” itself was, other than it was ‘bad’. Perhaps “Homosexual” and “Homo” were the same thing.  So, naturally I ask my mom. “What’s a Homosexual”. If I recall she choked on her water and sent me outside to play. I tried asking other adults... same basic response. Note: I read the ENTIRE book, and nowhere in this book did it DEFINE HOMOSEXUAL as the fact that the older son prefered men. It just used the terms and left it at that. Remember, this is 1991. There IS no internet to look the term up in. I suppose I could have looked it up in the dictionary, but I never thought of THAT. Dictionaries are scary to a 4th grader. They’re too big for our hands to hold and the size is imposing. I tried looking it up in the library, but, SURPRISE SURPRISE, there were no hits in the CARD CATALOGUE for that word in my school library. Now, just a small aside about Cooney’s writing. In each of her books that I read, she killed EXACTLY ONE CHARACTER. Yes, there were frequently other deaths, but they were all nameless. Whatever book of hers I read, precisely ONE named character would ALWAYS DIE. It got to the point that I began expecting it and tried to figure out in chapter one which character was gonna bite it. Well, in this wildfire book, that character was the younger son. See, all that the family had remaining of the older son was a single box of belongings on the mantle. They never spoke of him or touched the box. But the younger son had adored his brother and greatly treasured that box for what it represented. When the fire hit the house, the younger brother rushed into the burning house to rescue the box. He escaped the house, but not the wildfire and was found once the fire burned through, on a hillside next to the remains of the box. It was portrayed as a horribly tragic fate, but the true tragedy of it was lost on me. I couldn’t understand (at age 9) why this “homosexuality” was something to disown a child over. And worse, why you would kill yourself (I understood suicide at 9) over it. Interestingly enough, I wouldn’t come to recognize what homosexuality was or what it meant truly until about 7th grade when Sex Ed taught us that “Being Homosexual means you prefer your own gender”, immediately followed by “Which is bad because gay people have AIDS”. (Yes that is really what 90s sex ed was like). They did also teach us that you could get AIDS from blood transfusions and sharing needles, but they made it very clear that “all gay people have AIDS” I guess the point I’m trying to make by sharing this story is that, no, teaching your children about sexuality will NOT turn them queer. It may give them some insight into themselves and help them come to terms with their own sexuality struggles. But it won’t “TURN” them gay. I look back on my childhood, and how (as I’ve stated several times on here previously) I thought I was BROKEN for finding both men and women attractive. It may have saved me a great deal of teenage angst to know that I wasn’t broken and there is more than two options when it comes to the spectrum of sexuality. I doubt it would have done anything to make the concept more acceptable to my parents, who, to this day feel that the only thing worse than me bringing home someone non-white is someone non-male. Neither is acceptable in their eyes. Who knows, perhaps if I HAD embraced my sexuality as a teen, and tried to come out to them, maybe that “Runaway Kit” I kept under my bed would have gotten used. In some ways, perhaps I was lucky that, by the time I got my shit straight, I was legally an adult and no longer a member of their household that they could eject. More than likely considering the fact that when I DID come out to my dad, his EXACT response was “They should lock you up and throw away the key. You’re sick. You need to be put away forever. Get out of my sight, you pervert!” (Note: This is the same father that when I confessed to him that I had had pre-marital sex with my THEN FIANCE called me a “Godless Whore” and a “Fucking Slut”. That’s right, I had sex with ONE GUY and was deemed a slut. See how broken the system is?) So if by some chance you got to the end of this story, congrats. You know a bit more about what it was like growing up in the early 90s. Note: I’m not TECHNICALLY a Millennial. Millennials MAY identify with this story somewhat, and feel free to reblog this (or like or whatever), but really my story is much closer to the experiences of Gen X than anything. Being a Gen Y member, I don’t quite fit in with either generation completely, but my young childhood is closer to the experiences of a Gen X-er while my teenage and young adult years are closer to the experiences of a Millennial.

Anyway, this concludes story time. Perhaps now I can get some sleep.

[woozi]

henlo yza <3 ,

hdjdkd i don't really have much knowledge abt different techniques & kind of dances so when the steps match the lyrics i'm like '!!! wow yes i love it' fhdjdjskks also bc i've grown up watching these kind of dances only so my that's what i tend to notice first hdjdjddk it is also one of the reason why i decided to stan svt dwc, oh my, thanks & our dawn is hotter than day's choreo details really impressed me.

maybe vincenzo is your svt club & ur so valid for that <3 hddjdjekek also pls don't say sorry!! you can talk abt it as much as you want i like knowing what you think. i'll let you know how was it for me when i complete it. & no homecha hasn't ended yet (idk if there are 16 or 14 eps i haven't checked) it does come on weekends, counting this sunday's ep, we're at 12th rn.

i get that fjdjdkkd i used to be the same 😭 always waiting for dramas to end so i can binge watch because not knowing what happens next would kill me. but idk when this happened, my will to watch anything died down bc the eps are just there, available for me to watch anytime. im like 'i'll watch it next time' but next time never comes 💀. this year i've watched no-air ones only hdjssj very surprising for me ( also my wack memory & svt content supports me by forgetting abt it after weekend ends dhdjdkkd) anyway i'm very excited to see how you like homecha!

CHURCH BOY JOSH HDHDJDDKKSLSDJ church boy josh, cringe domestic boy, joshua numbers. we've come up with so many nicknames for him in few asks only 😭😭 dbdjksksk deserve actually. BUT SO TRUE I STILL HAVE NO WORDS FOR HIM. THAT WAS- JUST- WOW OKAY WE SEE YOU 😭😭and dino lip piercing and hoshi eyebrow slit..... so sexy of them. cb concept pictures haven't come out yet & they're already shinning!! love to see that. also now we have gyu and hoshi's wedding reception pictures & cottagecore hannie (with that collarbone picture right in middle >:( wth mister but also hbd ig <3) being added in the equation.

IM CRYINGGGGGG THEY LOOK SO CUTE THEY ARE SO CUTE NOO 😭😭💔 HOW HAVE I NEVER SEEN THESE COVERS WTH (being the ex-directioner and all dhdjkdsksk). I SMILED SO WIDE WATCHING THEM <///3 it's been so long since i heard one thing wow lol. but! this means they know who zayn is. thank you for this jdjssk this is going to keep me happy for some time hdjdke. SUNDAY MORNING EHJEJEKE 😭 thank you <3 dndjdj

IKR???? IM SO EXCITED FOR THIS CB I'M ALSO EXCITED TO EXPERIENCE IT WITH YOU. agreee truly bless svt for helping keeping us from losing it over life (by making us lose it over them) tbh sometimes it worries me too with the way contents keep dropping but just now in these unit interviews being released, perf unit shared how they have ppl who encourage them to be okay with their tiredness. things like that put me at ease. hope they rest well from time to time too. honestly just looking at their tour schedules i used to get tired because these dudes used to have more shows and less day offs and some of them being used to just move from one city to another. i hope in coming years pledis changes that lol.

sameee for the poster release hdjdkeek. also even though there was scheduler, i forgot abt the concept trailer 😭 it was raining & bcoz of that power was out as well & i don't use data dhdjdkdk. i think 5 minutes after 12 kst power came back (you can say joshu's sparkler brought it back hdjdjdks) it literally left me speechless. yk that meme ' everyone remembers what they were doing & where they were when it happened ' that's me & you with this cb hfjdkd honestly that's everyone with this cb me thinks.

seventeenies bringing the grass to you w their posts djdjkd ( btw you can always tell me if silly little jokes get out of hand i wouldn't ever like to make you uncomfy) but seriously i hope uni doesn't give you hard time. don't worry much just keep moving forward, at some point whatever is making you feel stuck will move away eventually.

is it that obvious? 😭😭😭😭 no i don't like rain at all dhjddk (i actually didn't dislike it as much during teens) mostly because road drainage system sucks here & we live in lower area so even moderate rain causes water logging. i'd give you some rain but this one's bad so i won't </3 ( as if i could if it were the good one 💀) stay hydrated!!! drink two sips of water everytime you hear dino laugh, i hope it cools a little soon.

that's what being on tumblr since 2012 does to you 😭 ALSO UR SO FUNNY PLS, SO ARE THE MEMES YOU USE FOR ASKS DJDJDKD. *hands you bunny headband dino* it's dangerous outside take this, you too stay safe out there 😭😭😭😭 love you too <3 and thank YOU for hanging out w me hehe :3, also dw tbh these asks have become one of the highlights for me now & i'm only using my free time excluding resting time, i hope you are too, no pressure at all! dw about being late - 🪂

ps - did i tell you i actually followed your svt blog around the time everyone was guessing your biases hddjkddj i sent mingyu & jeonghan dhdjdj that was my first ask :3 - 🪂

henlo, 🪂!! <3 <3 <3

honestly it doesnt matter to me tbh <3 if people enjoy the dance its all that matters!! and omg i can see that!! i love the svteenies always bring something fresh to the table

omg that means you're near the end 😭😭😭 i keep seeing gifs of it on my dash and it makes me feel a lil lovesick ngl HJFHJFHD why is it so TENDER????????????????

ok but that's so valid too bc that's me rn with in the soop.... i literally have not watched the 6th ep yet 😭 and i'm getting the feeling youre mentioning w swf now because i literally always look forward to tuesdays just for the next ep HJDHJDS also i am dumb what are no-airs HJDHJDHHD and ur not alone tbh <3 i have also been super forgetful lately and that is not like me fdhjdfjhdfhjdfhj we're rotting in this hellsite ig

love bullying him i just wanna know how he'd react if he gets upset <3 i dont think we've ever seen angry josh and i wanna make him angry sm HSDHJSDJ im glossing over dino lip piercing to directly go over hOSHI EYEBROW SLIT BC HELLO??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ive never really liked eyebrow slits but he makes them look so- i want him to hurt me HJDSHJDHJDS ALSO THE LATEST SET OF PHOTOS OH MY GODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD they're giving me what i've been asking for i love being here sm <3 soonyoung's so chummy w everyone have u seen his photos w jihoon last night 😭 he's literally tamed the actual tiger icb this. and no oh my god i do not Know what Collarbone Jeonghan is i have erased him from my memories thank u

HDSHDSJDSHJDS the ex-directioner is so funny to me 😭 i think we have all been there one way or another <3 and ofc omg <3 i'm glad my core svt memories make u happy HSDJHJDFHJHJDSF

they literally said escapism hELP ME 😭😭😭😭😭 i think they're also just workaholics in general. i would be too if i actually enjoyed what i did for a living 😭 and are we even gonna get tours in the near future.... this is so sad i havent even seen them irl </3

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OMG that's terrible, i hope u guys were okay though :/ AND NOT THE JOSH SPARKLER FDDHJFHDFHJFDHFDH now i have to think about him oh my god i think i passed out a little when eyebrow piercing josh came on screen and just full on blacked out when the match scene came on tbh 😭 JKSDJKDSKDS ITS LIKE THE PANDEMIC!!!!!!! WE WILL RMB!!!!!!!!!

ALSOO NOOO OMG i dont feel uncomf at all and u should also tell me if i do make u feel so <3 thank u for even mentioning that!! also love that they're Doing It All for us we dont even have to go out to touch grass anymore HJDSHJSDJ i've actually been v happy w uni omg!! just that i often feel stressed bc they give us sm things to do </3 thank u for ur kind words!!

that's the price of being an adult JDJSJKD now we gotta think of things like.. idk the effects of rain 😭😭😭 i used to even love it when it flooded as a kid HJDSHJSDHJ now i get anxious too!! i love all kinds of rain though so i wont mind JKKSDKJSDKJD just that other people might be affected </3 wish i had my own rain cloud on some kind of leash lmao. ALSO IF I DRINK WATER EVERY TIME I HEAR DINO LAUGH FDHFDHJDFHD gonna be bloated but hydrated af ngl

oh my gOD YOU WERE HERE SINCE 2012???? we're literally sick bestie <3 i genuinely think tumblr has changed something fundamental in me and my way of thinking has not been The Same as idk.. regular people ig JDSHJSDHJSD THE OFFLINE PEOPLE!! smth about tumblr is so <3 sick but also i love this hellsite so 😗 AND NOOO NOT THE MEMES FDHDFHJDF its my broken sense of humor and inability to convey emotions properly HHSDHJDSHJ

BUNNY HEADBAND DINO?????????????????????????????????????? honestly he'd bring me more harm than protection i'll say that much 😭

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 that genuinely made me feel so warm & fuzzy, i always look forward to your messages too <3 <3 <3 i hope u always have good days u deserve it for being such a sweetheart

WAIT HELLO???????????????????????? YOU'VE BEEN HERE FOR SO LONG THEN 😭😭😭😭😭 and im so impressed you didnt get weeded out ngl HFDHJFDHJFD icb you've been witnessing me going more ill everyday <3 ur a soldier

and u are partially correct abt mingyu & jh <3 at least during the time JSDJDSJKSDJK i think i've been desensitized to mingyu now but i still love him sm <3 he's just so cute and cutesy boys kinda infuriate me in an affectionate way so HJSDHJDSHJDSH

[4626songs]

Everyone deserves a great love story. This one is mine.

So. Here’s the thing.

Is it even appropriate for a 38-year-old guy to obsess over a major studio teenage rom-com flick? People my age who saw it usually say they wish they had something like that when they were that age – like, 20 years ago? I probably should behave like a proper adult, too: just love the movie and wish I had it back then when I was seventeen.

The problem is that after watching the movie and reading the original book, I feel seventeen once again. In all the right and wrong ways.

The case in point: Love, Simon.

I mean, yes. I’m done keeping my story straight.

When it comes to the emotional intellect – i.e., empathy and ability to recognize others’ as well as my own emotions – I am a certified piece of dumb and voiceless deadwood. I mean, I even officially have it in my DNA. But it also did not help that I grew up with emotionally detached parents and had very few friends during childhood. I’ve been struggling with the lack of emotional intellect all my life.

But when I hit adolescence and started to feel something big, it was the worst. I could not recognize and understand what the fuck was going on. And definitely I could not talk about it with anyone. Not even because I was scared. Simply because I literally did not have the words to describe it.

Eventually, it was music, movies and, ahem, slash fanfics that helped me find those right words that explained me to me. That big thing was me being helplessly and hopelessly in love with my best friend.

Curiously, I did not have any struggles with my sexuality or identity after this revelation. I sort of accepted me being gay as a matter of fact and moved on.

Telling anyone – and especially my best friend – about this was a completely different matter. Obviously, I was scared. As Simon says in the movie, announcing who you are to the world is pretty terrifying. But it was not just this fear. Once again, I did not have the words to tell my story. My go to sources of emotional cognition – music, movies and books – were failing me. You know, there was not a lot of coming-out, coming-of-age films or songs or books quarter of a century ago. Except maybe for Smalltown Boy. The most beautiful song. But do you remember the video? One more reason to be terrified and NOT come out.

So, I was silent. It also did not help that I knew for sure from our conversations that if I told my friend about me being gay and my feelings for him, pretty much everything good in my life would end.

I was correct. After suffering for several long years feeling increasingly cold inside from not being able to speak up and express what I feel, I finally managed to confess to him somehow. And yes, it went almost as bad as I expected. I was told that I was a misguided fool, and that I should never speak up about it again. Never speak up.

See. My first coming out experience was pretty bad. But not something objectively bad. I was not beaten up or bullied or outed, thank god. That was out of question, I knew him too well for that. But still. Somehow I was left even more dead and frozen on the inside than I was before. Not something to look for in the future.

But eventually, things got better. I found new funny and geeky hobbies, through which I met great new friends-for-life. I got three university degrees, including a PhD, and became a scientist. I started a music blog, and eventually freelanced as a music journalist. Finally being able to talk about what music meant for me was a liberation.

On a personal front, things were also moving somewhere somehow. There were other unrequited loves. Deeply engaging epistolary relationships with anonymous penpals. (Hi, Blue!) Casual sex. Proper offline boyfriends, and even serious long-term relationships. Some drama along the way, of course. But, until recently, no great love stories coming along with that. Somehow, deep inside, I ached for a great love story to happen in my life.

And then there were those other coming outs. Nothing objectively bad. Always insanely awkward. When I told my mother, she said that I had an irrevocable right to ruin my life and do whatever I want, and we hadn’t talked about me being gay for the next twelve years. A roommate did not believe I was gay at first, and then, when I insisted that I was not joking, he cussed and stopped talking to me for two weeks. A girl who had a crush on me laughed with relief that there’s something wrong with me and not her as I didn’t return her feelings. But there were other friends, who accepted me unconditionally, sometimes even without fully understanding what I was talking about and what it meant for me. I am so grateful to them. But in the end, it was not enough for me to shake that feeling of permanent awkwardness and fear of being me. I chose to remain in the closet for the rest of the world.

But you know what’s (not really) funny? That the same happened with all other important things in my life. It’s like I was permanently living in a giant ball of awkwardness. I had to keep mostly silent about my geeky hobbies at my wonderful science job, even though these hobbies were the main source of my creativity and inspiration. In turn, my wonderful geek friends could not care less about my music tastes. My music friends kind of respected me as a science guy, but I could never talk with them about actual science. And beneath all of that was this big-ass gay secret. It’s like I was living at least four parallel lives, but never a complete one.

I guess once you decide to remain in the closet about one thing, you cannot fully be yourself about other stuff. I became so used to self-editing. Self-censorship. Strategic omissions. And, worst of all, being mute about most important things with most important people.

There are all those reasons why you should continue doing so. It’s dangerous to come out in my home country. It could harm me. It could cause collateral damage to my colleagues, students, professional networks, projects I worked on. It could hurt my family.

But the truth is, people can get no less hurt when you choose to be mute. I know I hurt people by not speaking up about something important to them and choosing silence instead. But there is even a bigger danger. Once you start to pile up silences, little white lies, and strategic omissions, they may grow up to the size of a mountain, and one day simply crumble under their own weight. There will be a lot of pain and harm involved. And I wonder: what if there was no mountain from the very beginning?

Still, the worst is what you are doing to yourself. When you cannot make yourself talk about things that are important to you, you either become a pressure cooker and explode one day – or they slowly die within you, freezing you in the process. And these may be too precious things to lose.

I have thought that eventually, I became better at talking. I have a group of wonderful friends with whom, I thought, I could be more or less myself in every sense, including gay stuff. But somehow, even after all these years, I still cannot do it all, even with them. I cannot even reply to a Facebook challenge about 10 favorite albums, because, like, at least 3 of them would be too gay. I cannot make myself talk about my favorite movies that made an impact on me, because, again: gay. I mumble something unintelligible about my career goals in science, because, in truth, what I mostly care about is how to solve not a grand scientific challenge, but a classic academic “two-body problem” further complicated by a gay twist.

Then one day I saw Love, Simon. That same night, I immediately bought Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda, devoured it in two sleepless nights, and re-read it twice since then. I went to see the movie, like, another seven times. And have listened to the wonderful soundtrack and the score, like, a hundred times already, and don’t plan on stopping any time soon. I simply cannot get enough of this movie and of the Simonverse. And all the time I’ve been trying to sort out why did it hit me so hard and sweet? Why have I suddenly turned into an obsessed teenage fanboy?

Then I realized, I am just so fucking sick and tired of not speaking. I simply cannot stand it anymore. I need to speak. I have to speak. I must speak. Somehow, Simon and his story made it so obvious. Why I was so stupid not realizing it before?

But there’s another twist to that. Everyone deserves a great love story.

I’ve never seen a movie in my life to which I could relate so strongly. Yes, I was that “just like you” kid back then. Living a normal life without any really big problems. Obsessed with music and friendships. Awkward and unable to speak about important things. Alone.

(Oh god. Do you even realize how lonely Simon should have felt if his favorite song is Waltz #2??)

Unfortunately, my great first love story never happened. Instead, I shut myself up for decades to come. But somehow, Love, Simon movie and incredible writing by Becky Albertalli put me right there, back into my seventeen year old me, and finally showed how that first love story could have happened differently, retroactively replacing those long-buried feelings of sadness and despair with joy about the things to come.

And, boy, they did come. Who knew that you can finally get your own very personal great love story when you are at 34, almost ready to give up on happiness? It was wild, it was unpredictable, it was fateful, it was insane, it was unbearably romantic. It was – and, four years later, still is – love.

This story also physically moved me across oceans and continents to, out of all places, the city of Atlanta, Georgia. So, imagine this extra little level of relatability in Love, Simon / Simon vs. (That damn Radiohead, April 2 concert that I did not get to! That gay bar scene!) And now I’m dying to tell my story. Because that’s the most important and amazing thing that happened in my life. Because it is about hope. Because it is about breaking through. Because it is about believing that you deserve everything you want. Because love is a game we deserve to play out loud.

The problem is that I still haven’t quite figured out how to tell my story. Old habits die hard. But I will try. As I said, I cannot stay silent anymore. I need to come out. And I’ll start here.