#and as much as we’ve spoken about the toxicity on this app i think the bad racing is a bigger divider

[apr1lias]

See, I love MotoGP and I don’t think that will ever change but it’s so sad to me that so many people here and beyond are rapidly losing interest because our sport can’t even force a battle between the top two in the championship. Unfortunately, I can completely understand why they choose to show the top 2 when they’re in any kind of proximity over a battle for 7th because as much as I may disagree, there’s always potential for a race/title altering thing to happen, especially with two flops (sorry not sorry).

It’s so clear that people are losing interest and yet the series organisers don’t seem to care that one-team dominance is ruining the sport. It makes me miss the times in 2021 and 2022 (tbh there were even times last year too) where we could all post about this sport because all our faves were shown on screen and doing a reasonable job. At this rate I’m counting on the gala and testing at Valencia to give MotoGPblr a bit of joy or togetherness because everything I see on my dash is just sad fans, or Marc fans having the time of their lives, but at least some of them are!

I feel weird for writing this post but whatever, want to say it etc. because as much as I love this sport, it’s the community that really made me enjoy it the most when I started watching in 2020. And now that’s crumbling it’s making it harder and harder to watch.

[if-i-look-straight-look-again]

About Ed and Izzy;

I don’t think it’s that simple either way.

I don’t think Ed is Izzy’s abuser, and I don’t think Izzy was trying to control Ed.

I think these two trapped themselves (and each other) in a narrative, a toxic, harmful and codependent narrative that was needed at the time for them to survive but which eventually became bad for them both.

When we meet them, it’s true that Ed is the one actively trying to escape it, and Izzy is the one pulling him back, but the second Izzy says “ok, if you say you’re done then you’re done, I’m leaving you to do your thing and I’ll leave and do mine” (he even apologizes for getting angry and insulting Ed earlier), Ed is the one pulling him back by sharing his “plan” to kill Stede. Their codependency is mutual at this point.

A lot of people are upset that Izzy died apologizing to his “abuser”, and while I have my own issues with his death, that is not one of them. I think they both needed Izzy to acknowledge his part in the creation of what we’ve dubbed “the Kraken”. While Ed’s actions are his own, and nobody else can be blamed for them, Izzy did have a responsibility (not as Ed’s minder or carer or any of the other patronizing stuff i’ve seen on this app, but as his friend—his oldest friend) to if not help him out of the hole he was in, at least not kick him while he was down. I’ve already spoken about what I think Izzy’s reasons were for doing what he did, but the fact is that he did it, and he caused Ed more pain when he was already hurting.

Izzy’s apology is him acknowledging his part in the toxic cycle he and Ed were trapped him, and symbolized his acceptance of that cycle breaking (and while I think Izzy should’ve lived, the breaking of said cycle was very much needed), and his acceptance of their need to let go of each other.

Now, while Ed gave a general apology (I call it a corporate apology cause those were the vibes I was getting), and a brief one specifically to Izzy, I did miss a bigger acknowledgment of the pain and sequels his actions would cause Izzy (which, again, can be blamed on no one but him, even though Izzy did play a part in causing them), but I get that Izzy was dying and that was his moment to speak.

What we all keep forgetting, I think, is that at the core of this dynamic (romantic or not) lays love. Ed and Izzy do love each other, by their own admission. They do a horrible job of showing it, but they do. Izzy apologizing to Ed is not him apologizing to the man who hurt him, but to the man he loves, and the man he can plainly see (and has admitted) was hurt by him.

We need to be able to analyze complex dynamics without reducing them to “this one is evil and this one is good”, because it’s rarely that simple.

[anashins]

The Right Kind of Wrong

Title: The Right Kind of Wrong

Pairing: Jaehyun x You

Genre: hate to love, cheating, college!au, friendship, romance, smut

Warnings: smut, cheating, cursing, toxicity

Word Count: 8.454

Summary: There are many reasons for you to hate Jung Jaehyun. Aside from being cocky and selfish, the fact that he is dating your best friend is another one of them. But his mesmerizing smile - to hell with it - just isn't.

____

There were at least a hundred things you hated about Jung Jaehyun.

The fact that he was dating your best friend was just one of them.

Not a single day had passed by in the last year in which she hadn’t complained about her boyfriend having flirted with another woman, having ditched her again, going to a party and ignoring her all night, or simply dragging her mood down by one of his unpredictable and hurtful actions.

Aside from being cocky, selfish, arrogant and reckless, Jung Jaehyun was absolutely incapable of being a decent human being for more than ten seconds, and you were wondering why he was so damn popular despite all his faults.

When you went out with your friend group, he mocked the boys trying to hit on you, telling you they were so desperate for that move. When you were attending the same class, he purposely sat down next to you to distract you from the lesson. When he was at your dorm, he kept moving your things onto high shelves, knowing you couldn’t reach them.

And his smirk everytime he did so… his smirk every time he mocked you was so annoying. But also so hot.

Fuck, you thought whenever his mischievious eyes met yours again, and you had to turn away, at a loss for words and afraid he’d caught you flushing. You were so ashamed, because you actually wanted to hate him.

There were many reasons for you to hate Jung Jaehyun, but his mesmerizing smile wasn't one of them.

You hadn’t hated him from the first moment that you two had officially met as you had gotten introduced to each other through your best friend who was also your dorm mate, though. She had found him on a dating app, and you had found him sitting in your class two days later, talking back to the professor.

Back then, you had started admiring his intelligence and courage. But those were the only two positive things you had spotted so far as you only tried to stay as far away from him as possible, emphasizing his negative character traits over and over again.

But the truth was that staying away from him was a very hard thing to do, and you fought every day for your sanity, trying to be a good friend and suppressing your controversial feelings for a man who was absolutely forbidden to you.

“He went drinking last night and I saw an instagram story of him grinding against another girl on the dancefloor!” your best friend complained in your arms, tears on the verge of flowing. “Who’s doing that even?!”

A few pairs of eyes turned into your direction, but when you threw fierce glances at the people staring at you, they passed by very quickly.

When you had been invited to your friend Johnny’s house party, you hadn’t expected to be spending the evening comforting your best friend, even though that had been your daily routine for the past three weeks.

It had grown toxicly usual for Jaehyun and her to fight in a two to three day rhythm over the smallest things, and although their wonky relationship or whatever it was hadn’t been very steady before with them breaking up nearly monthly, lately it had grown almost obnoxious.

“Why don’t you just break up with him?” you suggested again and immediately felt your heart sink.

It wasn’t like you wanted them to break up because you wanted Jaehyun for yourself. You’d never do that to her.

Your best friend was just constantly hurting, and it hurt you just as much when you saw her suffering so greatly. Jung Jaehyun wasn’t a good guy, and you both knew. Yet, she couldn’t let go of him. You knew exactly how that felt.

Even if they were to break up, he wouldn’t belong to you. Because a friend’s ex was a taboo. So having Jaehyun gone entirely from your lives would kill two birds with one stone.

“Not that again!” your friend whined and retreated from you, sinking into the couch with her arms crossed and no signs of tears anymore. “I can’t! I mean… look at him! He’s so hot, and don’t get me even started about his skills in bed. That’s where we usually make up, you know, so-”

“I’m going to get you something to drink!” you interrupted her and jumped up. “You totally need a cocktail now! To come to your senses!”

You loved your best friend dearly, but you didn’t want to hear about Jaehyun’s skills by all means. At some times, your friend didn’t have a filter, and then, it only spiraled downhill from there. You heard them often enough in the dorm, that was already pushing you to your limits.

When you entered the kitchen, you reached up to get a glass from the shelf, but like most of the times, you were too short for the remaining ones at the very top.

“Here, let me help you.”

A soft voice echoed from behind you, but before you could turn around to follow the tone, the guy had already heaved up his arm and reached over you to the very top of the shelf to get you a glass.

Shifting around, you faced the mischievous expression of the young man you had wanted to avoid and who your best friend was currently crying over.

Without a “thank you”, you reached out your hand to grab the glass from Jaehyun, but he immediately shot his arm up to bring the glass high over his head and far out of your reach.

“You think a simple ‘thank you’ is too much for you?”

“Fuck off, Jaehyun.” You crunched with your teeth and narrowed your eyes. “I’d rather die of thirst!”

“What did I do again?” He rolled his eyes in an annoyed manner as though his high spirits got ruined. “What did she tell you?”

“She told me everything she saw from last night!” you defended your friend. “That’s enough for me to get the picture!”

“Okay, and did the picture somehow include me pushing the girl away after she had grinded on me?”

You gulped.

“Just as I thought.”

He placed the glass on the counter, but somehow, this hadn’t got your both’s attention anymore.

“There are two sides of the same coin, yet all you've ever done was looking only at one.”

He approached you, and the rising hotness in your cheeks made you withdraw until your hips bumped into the kitchen counter.

Jaehyun leaned in and propped his arm against the same spot right next to your hip as he asked, “I know you’re her best friend, but being a friend doesn’t mean supporting your friends delusional, one sided thoughts into oblivion. Being a friend sure means to support, I’m not denying that. But being a true friend means to tell someone when they’re wrong. And I am not the one at fault here, y/n.”

“You were doing many stupid things to hurt her in the past!” you started blabbering just to bridge over the silence you’d get when you would stare at his mesmerizing eyes for a little longer. “How am I supposed to believe you?”

“You aren’t supposed to believe me.” He retreated, with the glass in his hand. “All I’m asking for is a chance to explain myself.”

Again, you were flabbergasted by the way he expressed his thoughts that stood in contrast to his questionable behavior. One of the main things that fascinated you. But you quickly turned this feeling into hate by recalling his wrongdoings from the night before.

Looking at the glass, Jaehyun continued, “Yes, there were many things I did wrong in the past. And I’m not going to pinpoint my finger at my girlfriend to tell that she was doing just as many questionable things as me. But people have reasons for doing the things they do. That’s probably why we’re such a good match.”

You didn’t understand a word. In your eyes, and you only knew about their relationship by what your friend told you and what you observed when you were hanging out, the two weren’t a good match at all.

He was the one constantly hurting her feelings, and she was the one to always get hurt.

Or... wasn’t it?

Jaehyun then thrusted the glass into your hand. “You’re lucky, y/n, you know that? It must be so great, living that freely, without any burdens… So oblivious to everything.”

With these words, he disappeared from the kitchen, leaving you behind all alone with the glass in your hand.

You looked at the item, your face getting reflected in the crystals to unrecognizability while Jaehyun’s words still kept you occupied. They had such an impact on you that you suddenly started to question whether your hate against him was actually valid.

When you stepped out of the kitchen yourself with a full glass of your best friend’s favorite cocktail in your hand, you found her in Jaehyun’s arms again, wildly kissing, his kind words suddenly vanished from your mind upon spotting them.

Instead, there was a little monster called jealousy sitting right inside your chest.

___

“8am in the morning! Who even places classes that early?!”

With a groan, Jaehyun flopped down in the seat next to you.

“Shut up, class is about to start.”

“Man, you must be really fun at parties,” he replied. “The professor is not even here yet.”

“You’re annoying, Jung Jaehyun, and if you weren’t dating my friend, I wouldn’t actually talk to you at all.”

“What are the odds we’re still connected to each other, huh! Tell me, y/n, what did I ever do to you? How did I ever hurt you? We’ve never even really spoken with each other ever since we’ve gotten introduced.”

“And I am grateful for this every single day.”

“What is it that you hate about me so much?” he questioned further, his eyes challenging.

But with your eyes straight ahead and no words on your lips, you ignored him as the professor entered the room only a short moment after, announcing the class’ start.

Your pen flew over the sheet, noting down the professor’s words when suddenly, goose bumps spread all over your arm.

When your eyes followed the trail to its source, your right elbow touched Jaehyun’s left one as a result of your hectic writing motions as you had moved too far to the side. The spot on your skin was so warm and so…

You withdrew your arm right away, placing it back to where it usually belonged, but Jaehyun’s own limb had moved so far to the left that you had no place to rest it next to your notes anymore without having his skin barely one inch apart from you. You weren’t touching anymore, but he was so close that you still felt him somehow.

Of course you could drop your arm and place it on your lap as the professor had stopped presenting the most important points of this lesson. Of course you could just move further away with your entire belongings, but the fact was that you didn’t. That you couldn’t.

Instead, you were fixating your eyes on the board right in front of you, listening to your professor’s words but not actually understanding a single syllable that he uttered as your heart beat fast against your chest.

You hoped that Jaehyun didn’t notice how desperate you were for him not to shift away right now. That you actually enjoyed it, but felt so much hatred at the same time. Not against him, but against you - for feeling this way.

“Can you answer my question, Miss y/n?”

Your eyes widened in shock as you got addressed by the professor by your surname. You were actually a good student who was always paying attention in class. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t have happened. But now you got caught red handed not listening to him, and he was a very strict lecturer.

“I… um…” you stuttered.

“The answer to my question, Miss.”

“Yes… the answer…” You gulped as you didn’t even know the question. “The answer is…”

From the corner of your eyes, you perceived how a sheet was slowly moving into your direction from Jaehyun’s place. His finger was pointed at a paragraph that you had also noted down only shortly before.

Suddenly, you knew what the question was about and answered formally to the professor’s task.

With your heart having calmed down after the shock, you let yourself sink down on your seat again. You had gotten distracted only once by something that shouldn’t bother you at all.

This wouldn’t happen again, you swore to yourself.

____

“No ‘thank you’ again from you?”

You turned around to Jaehyun who had rosen a brow at you. “Is this becoming your thing now? Asking for ‘thank yous’?”

“Is this becoming your thing now?” he returned. “Not saying ‘thank you’? I saved your ass in class.”

“Well, I haven’t asked for that, so go beg somewhere else for attention.”

You made your way through the crowded club, feelling the bass under your feet and the techno music in your ears. Jaehyun was following suit.

“Do you want some kind of reward from me? Because you’re not going to get it.”

“I don’t want a reward. Hey.”

He reached out and grabbed you by your arm, right there on the dancefloor. The feeling from this morning returned, but in a higher intensity as it spread all over your body.

“All I’m asking for is respect.”

You snorted. “Respect? Do you respect my friend when you destroy her weekend plans to go drinking with your friends instead? Do you respect my friend when you dance ass on ass with another girl? Do you respect my friend when you hurt her feelings with your rude words? I don’t like you, Jung Jaehyun, because you’re a bad person, and respect is the last thing you’ll ever get from me!”

You yanked yourself out from his grip and disappeared in the mass. What was up with him? Why was he bothering so much lately and evoking all these controversial feelings inside you by acting like this? He should just stay away.

With your eyes closed, you started to move with the music, all by yourself there on the dancefloor. You wanted to collect your thoughts, but as the music flooded through your body, you realized that thinking about nothing was probably the best way to cope with your inner struggles right now.

You opened your eyes widely when you suddenly felt a hand on your bum.

Turning around with much anger reflected in your mien, you stared at a boy around your age who grinned at you seductively. Your fierce gaze was probably mistaken for an invitation when he approached you further, grabbed you by your hips from the front and pressed you against him.

With his lips on your ear, he whispered, “I like what I see.”

And you wanted to scream. You probably did, but it got drowned out by the loud music, and his grip was way too hard for you to free yourself that easily as you shuffled in his arms.

“Let me go!”

Yet, his hands roamed around your private areas like they owned it.

“HEY!”

Before you could scream once more, the guy got dragged away from you by the last person you had expected it from.

“She said let go of her, you asshole!”

Jaehyun grabbed him by his collar, and his height and angry expression alone were probably enough for the other guy to nearly piss his pants as he hastily mouthed,

“I’m so sorry!”

When Jaehyun let go of him, he slipped off silently and wasn’t seen again.

You stood there awkwardly with your arms hugging your chest, still digesting the happenings.

“Did he hurt you?” Jaehyun asked when he leaned in for you to understand better.

You shook your head.

“Do you want to go outside?”

You nodded.

Jaehyun took you by your hand to lead you through the dancing crowd, and you didn’t protest.

This gesture was the total opposite to the disgusting one from the guy who had harassed you shortly before. This touch was raw and chaste. Nothing to be ashamed of and fight against, but something you wanted to accept wholeheartedly.

When you stood outside of the club, Jaehyun let go of your hand, and you finally whispered the words that he had been longing to hear for quite a time,

“Thank you.”

Against your expectations, he didn’t mock you or return witty words. With his eyes locked with yours, he sincerely told you,

“You’re welcome.”

That was the moment it dawned on you that Jung Jaehyun had more positive sides to him that you had always wanted to blend out. But perhaps, you had reached a point in which this wasn’t possible anymore.

You couldn’t continue keeping your eyes closed to all the kind sides of him. Because the more he showed you, the more you’d open your heart for him.

To you, Jung Jaehyun had to remain a bad person, otherwise you’d fall for him, and falling for your best friend’s boyfriend was a taboo.

“Hey, what are you two doing outside?!” Speaking of the devil, your best friend jumped out of the club’s door and into your direction. “Isn’t the music fun?”

Jaehyun looked at you, waiting for your reaction. You knew that if you wanted to go home, he’d follow. If you wanted to stay, he’d stay too, not letting you out of his sight. Because - and you couldn’t repeat this often enough - Jaehyun was actually a good person.

“I want to go home,” you decided. “You can stay, though! Please just let me be the party pooper all alone, I don’t want to spoil your night.”

“Oh, what a pity!” your friend said with a pout. “You always leave when the party is about to start!”

You shrugged with a weak smile, tired of fighting. “Yeah, I guess so. But I still have a lot of pages to revise.”

“Shall we take you back to the dorm?” Jaehyun offered in a caring voice that you apparently encountered for the first time, and your friend immediately shot a reproachful glare at him.

“Are you being serious right now?” she complained. “She’s a grown ass woman who can go home alone!”

His eyes hadn’t left yours. “I’m talking to her, not you.”

Had it always been like this? Her caring about herself more than about you? If it were the other way around, you wouldn’t let her go home alone in the middle of the night, no matter if you knew something had happened before or not.

Suddenly, you saw your best friend from a whole other perspective. Suddenly, she was the one having Jaehyun on a leash, and he was the one fighting back for his rights, not against her.

Two sides of the same coin… If you were to flip it, would your entire world view change?

For a moment, you hesitated. But not wanting to disturb your friend’s evening, you gave in with a, “It’s okay, I can go alone. Have a nice night!”

But Jaehyun held you back when he insisted on calling you an uber for which he even paid while your best friend continued pouting on the side.

____

“FUCK YOU, JAEHYUN!” you heard your best friend scream later that night from her room, every syllable of hers clearly to hear in your own room while you laid in bed later that night.

The hours before had passed by in a trance as you had only fallen onto your mattress face forward after having quickly changed into your pj’s, that was how much of a toll the day had taken on you.

You just wanted to forget what had happened in the club, but also the thoughts that had constantly been in your mind all the way home that only revolved around Jaehyun. So sleep was the best solution, and you would have gladly continued doing so if there weren’t your best friend and Jaehyun arguing loudly next to you for an hour already.

Then, Jaehyun seemed to return something to which she screamed again, “I DON’T FUCKING CARE!”

Stomping followed the brief silence, a door getting opened, then shut again, and footsteps moved into the direction of the entry door before it fell close behind Jaehyun.

This was a nearly weekly experience for you lately, and usually, you’d just miss hearing their arguments, but this time you couldn’t help but to wonder what they had been yelling about. You just hoped it wasn’t because of you and what had happened to you earlier, because in your eyes, Jaehyun had done nothing wrong.

He had been so incredibly nice and thoughtful that you started to doubt their relationship.

You turned in your bed, wanting to fight those thoughts so badly. Jaehyun was your best friend’s boyfriend, and hence, forbidden fruit for you. But you just couldn’t stop your imagination from running now.

What it would be like in your best friend’s place and get treated like this every day, and the worst part was that you didn’t even feel bad about betraying her in your mind.

Fuck, you only thought and sat straight up in bed, now surely not being able to grasp a light thought to accompaby you back to lseep anymore.

Feeling safe to leave your room ten minutes later as your roommate must have fallen asleep by now, you didn’t think about sleep anymore but wanted to get a glass of water from the kitchen to calm yourself down.

Perhaps, tomorrow, you’d have another look at the entire situation, you tried to convince yourself. After a few more hours of sleep, all these confusing thoughts and feelings might have already been forgotten.

“Cannot sleep yet?”

You turned around and found a half naked Jaehyun only dressed in boxers right in front of you. The empty glass of water in your hands got placed back on the counter with shaky fingers.

“What are you doing here?” you contered.

“Well… she suddenly left.” He shrugged. “We’ve been arguing. You sure haven’t missed that one.”

“I didn’t.”

Still, you were wondering what that was all about, but didn’t want to ask. He lifted the weight off your shoulders himself though.

“It was about you.”

“Oh…?” You gulped.

“When you were gone, I went back to that guy and didn’t let him go that easily. They threw me out of the club and your friend thought I'd ruined the night for her.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

You wanted to make your way around him, but he blocked your way as he didn’t move to make space for you to pass by the door.

“What’s making me a bad person, y/n?” Jaehyun suddenly asked. “ The way I saved you in class? In the club? Tell me.”

“You cannot be serious right now. It’s 5am, draw a number for another day.”

You wanted to slip under his stretched out arm, but he moved his body to block you again. “Number one. Now tell me.”

“Because those have been the only times you were nice to me, Jung Jaehyun!” You clenched your fists, breathing in deeply. “When we go out with our friend group, you mock the boys trying to hit on me, telling them they’re so desperate for that move!”

“Because I heard them speaking about you before,” he declared. “They were not looking for something serious but only fun, one had even placed a bet. I tried to spare you from this embarrassment and eventual lovesickness. Go on.”

“When we’re in the same class, you purposely sit down next to me to distract me from the lesson!”

This one let him smirk. “Because I always saw you sitting there alone. You have no friends in that class, and I thought you might need some company. Besides… I knew you couldn’t afford that book we needed, and I purposely always shoved it into your direction when the professor read from it. Have you never noticed?”

Now you have. And you were flabbergasted.

“Wh… when,” you stuttered, “you’re over here, you always move my stuff onto high shelves, knowing I cannot reach them!”

“Because I love to see the defeated look on your face and your cute pout when you have to ask me to get the things for you.”

You didn’t know what to say further as you stood there, frozen on the spot. You hadn’t seen this answer coming.

“Anything else?”

Yes, there were many things you hated him for, and you wanted to throw them all into his face, but as he was standing there in front of you, not even one more came into your mind.

“I just hate you to the core!” you hissed.

But with calmness in his voice, he only turned, “No, you don’t.”

And then, it was all only a blur.

You wanted to push him away, but instead, you found yourself nudging against his body. You wanted to free yourself from his grip, but instead, you wrapped your arms around him. You wanted to escape from his kiss, but instead, you kissed him back in the same passionate manner he kissed you.

Jaehyun’s hands roamed all over your lightly covered body while his lips moved against yours, touching every spot he had missed out on during the entire time he knew you, because you had always pushed him away.

But now that you had opened up to him, you were scared the time window was about to close very soon, so you had to work fast.

You jumped on him, hooking your thighs around his waist while his hands instantly clung around your buttocks to give you the support he needed to carry you to your bedroom. Your hands remained interlaced on the back of his neck when he placed you onto your bed and laid himself between your legs.

Thrown overboard were all your morals, priorities, and the friendship to the person that meant the world to you. You didn’t want to think about all that, but were longing for him so desperately that you wondered for how long you had been suppressing that desire already.

Jung Jaehyun was hot. But he was a bad person.

Or… wasn’t he?

You desperately ground upwards against him, feeling him growing between your legs, and you brought your hands down to massage his length. Jaehyun interrupted your kiss as he hadn’t expected this move to come, and groaned into your ear.

You smirked triumphantly, your hands kneading muscles until he was pressed hard against your palms. Tucking your fingers into the waistband of his boxers, you slid the garment from his hips, revealing his bum. Your hands glided along his curvy, soft mounds, grabbing into them like you were testing ripe peaches.

Jaehyun was pecking your lips as you slid your hands under his body again and closed around his entire girth. He stopped for a moment, but the second he continued on, you started moving your hands, top on top, along his length.

Not being able to concentrate on the feeling down there and kissing you simultaneously anymore, you perceived how Jaehyun got weak with supporting his body on his own arms that he had rested to the left and right of your head. So you decided to take the lead from here on.

Sitting up yourself, you put your palms on Jaehyun’s chest and pushed him backwards onto the mattress. He watched you with surprised eyes, but didn’t protest as you sat on his thighs, eyeing his member with much anticipation.

You slid further down his legs, nearly close to his ankles, and bowed down. With your fingers wrapped around the base of his dick, you led him to your mouth. First letting the tip pass by your lips, then his entire length up until the very middle.

You only heard him swearing, “fucking shit,” before Jaehyun covered his face with his arm placed over his eyes and his other clasping the sheet by his side. Your hair grazed over the area around his navel while you moved your head up and down, cautiously slow at first to give yourself time to adapt to his length.

Then, you started bobbing your head, increasing the speed with every time you came up and nearly let him slip out, your fingers that had closed around him sliding in the same rhythm, adding to the pleasure. The slurping noises that came along with this act filled the room until they got drowned out by Jaehyun’s moans.

He directed his hand towards your head and grabbed it by the back, ruffling your hair between his fingers while he started to thrust upwards, meeting you halfway in the fast motions. Like this, he was able to reach deep within you, but still not far enough so that he could hurt you.

When you witnessed him twitching his legs, you stopped, held him still by the base and decided to tease him further a bit before you allowed him to release himself. With the tip of your tongue, you touched his glans, trailed along the slip and then circled around the entire top part.

Jaehyun’s swearing words came in a never ending trail like a waterfall that you couldn’t really understand all syllables from, but you were sure you did a good job and rewarded him for being patient with the motions from before again, but this time with added pressure and passion.

Suddenly, he grabbed you by your arm, urging you to stop.

“Or else I’m gonna cum,” he said and sat himself up, flipping you around so that you laid under him again.

Hastily, you got rid of your top while Jaehyun worked on your sleeping shorts until shortly after, you were both lying naked on top of each other. You wanted him desperately inside you, because you just didn’t know when you’ve had had sex the last time, but instead of wanting to get through this fast, Jaehyun took his time.

That was when you realized that this entire joining was probably more to him than just sex to get it off. You had thought that because he hadn’t been able to get it tonight from your best friend, he’d take it from you. But the way he touched you insisted otherwise.

If it wasn’t more than just sex, he wouldn’t trail his fingers over your ribcage in feathery-light motions, admiring every inch of your body. If it wasn’t more than a body-focused act, he wouldn’t place soft kisses not only on your mouth, but also onto your forehead, your cheek, your neck… If it wasn’t more, Jaehyun wouldn’t be so damn thoughtful and tender.

He remained his tenderness and his gaze didn’t leave your eyes as well when he finally nudged between your thighs, pushing forward until he filled you up to the brim.

Restraining himself from starting to move right away, Jaehyun took his time to ask you whether you were okay at first when you let out a quiet “oh” that alarmed him. But you were eager to calm him down when you explained that it was only because you hadn’t been with a man in so long, and somehow, after speaking it out, it made you feel embarrassed.

As the boyfriend of your best friend, he’d surely know when you had been in contact with a man the last time, and you hated yourself for being so pressured by society to feel ashamed of who you were and how you lived your life.

But instead of judging you, Jaehyun only nodded and tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear, and suddenly, you were flooded with such a warm feeling towards him that you nearly cried. Rarely had you encountered a man so considerate and caring.

“Tell me when I can go on.”

You bit your lip and felt the uncomfortable pressure in your nether regions getting replaced by a feeling that you hadn’t encountered in so long. A feeling that made you want more, want him.

Holding onto his shoulders with both of your hands, you nodded back at him with a smile which he then returned. When Jaehyun started thrusting in and out of you, your eye contact didn’t break, and you were sure that right now, you were looking at the real Jaehyun at this very moment.

Not the guy you hated. Not the guy your best friend was dating. But instead the person who wanted to protect you from guys that only wanted to use you. A person who offered you company in class and shared his equipment with you. And a person whose cheekiness and affection he showed through childish acts because he didn’t know how to express his feelings otherwise.

This was not the person you were sure of knowing all along. Probably because you hadn’t even gotten to know him in the first place.

One arm now clung around his neck while with the other, you grabbed the pillow beside you. You threw your head back in excitement, his pushes coming in short intervals one after another, and he was hitting all the right spots with them.

Jaehyun propped his arms up to the left and right of him, lifting his upper body to gather all his strength in his groin area and stopped for a brief moment before he thrusted inside you with such force that it nearly knocked all air out of your lungs, and you couldn’t respond with anything else than moaning.

It felt so good, so… right. But how could something so wrong still feel so right?

Right now, you didn’t hate Jaehyun or your best friend the most, but yourself and the fact that you continued on and on. That you brought your hips up to meet his thrusts with hazy thoughts and his lips all over yours when he slowed down with his movements to dedicate himself to caressing your breasts.

You felt Jaehyun’s hot tongue swirling over your buds, and you shook under him. Not because it felt cold, but because his tender caresses just felt so good. You didn’t have the feeling that he could do anything wrong with whatever he carried out, that was your impression about how well your bodies meshed together.

No, you didn’t hate Jaehyun. You had always only hated how he had presented himself to you. But there was so much more to him.

Sweat droplets showed on his forehead when he continued with the hard thrusts again, the sound of you both breathing heavily mixing together with the sloppy noises of your bodies moving against each other filling the room, but no matter how messy sex was, it was the most romantic thing you had experienced in a long time.

Your eye contact also didn’t break when Jaehyun arose above you, his sweaty chest glistening in the dim light that shone through your windows, and increased his pace even more. When he dropped his head and bit his lip in the process, you wrapped your arms around him and added pressure to your nether regions as you felt him approaching his heights.

It felt very good to you too, but you were by any means not as far as him yet, so you didn’t blame him when he came only a short moment after with a groan that sounded sexy as hell to you.

You held him tightly when he fell limply onto your chest, still breathing heavily from the orgasm that slowly faded. Staring at the ceiling, you smiled with him in your arms, just enjoying the moment when Jaehyun moved away from you.

“We’re not done here yet,” you saw him grin as he laid himself next to you, rolled onto the side and placed his head in his palms as he propped his elbow against the mattress.

You wondered what was to come when you felt his finger tips dragging from your thighs to your navel, then lower again and stopped right at your most sensitive spot.

“Oh!” you let out as he placed two fingers on your folds and started moving them up and down with your remaining juices as lube that made the intense feeling kick in almost immediately.

You screamed when he added pressure and now directed circling motions around the sensitive bundle of nerves. From your half-closed eyes, you witnessed him looking at you with such admiration but also cheekiness as you writhed and wreathed under him, yet spread your legs even wider as release was so close.

Jaehyun leaned in to you, his fingers not letting go of the continuity as he half covered your body with his and just kissed you passionately. Like this, he encountered first hand how the orgasm took over you, and you moaned into his mouth, riding it out against his hand.

It felt like the most natural thing in the world when he wrapped his arms around you right after and pulled you onto his chest, and you drifted off into a slumber shortly after.

Even though the first tendencies of your bad consciousness set in before you closed your eyes, you decided that this would be the problem of tomorrow.

No, you didn’t hate Jung Jaehyun.

If anything, you should probably hate yourself.

___

“YES… YES… YESYESYES, OHMYGOD!”

You heard your friend from the other side of the wall, having rudely awakened you in the early morning hours. At least you thought so. But a glimpse at your phone through sleepy eyes told you that it was past 11am already.

Within a second, you were wide awake.

You were still naked, but the clothes on your floor only belonged to you, and the spot next to you in the bed was empty.

“OH!MY!GOD!.... YES! OH… OH.... AAAAH… OHOHOH… YES!!”

Jaehyun was gone. At least from your room.

Your best friend’s headboard constantly bumped against the wall, and you grabbed your pillow to cover your ears with it. You didn’t want to hear the sounds. Not because they stole your sleep, but because somehow, for the first time, you didn’t feel disturbed by the noise, but actually hurt.

In your mind, you imagined Jaehyun’s mesmerizing smile, the witty expression he was constantly wearing and his deep voice that had showed you for the first time last night that there was a certain softness within it.

You felt hurt, because you knew all the things from last night had been real between you two, yet he was still fucking your best friend mere hours later. What you had shared and felt had been special, yet he was still with her.

And suddenly, you felt hate again. But towards yourself. For betraying your best friend with him. But first and foremost, for betraying yourself.

You had never hated Jung Jaehyun.

You had always felt some certain kind of attraction towards him, but kept telling yourself you hated him to push him as far away from you as possible. If this wouldn’t be so wrong under these circumstances, this attraction would feel right and could blossom. But like this, you could never come to enjoy this feeling entirely.

Your relationship had been doomed from the very start, because given the wicked circumstances, you would never be able to form a healthy relationship. It was like a stain that would never vanish on a white sheet.

So you just decided to continue as usual. To keep this a secret between the both of you and just to carry on with your life.

And to hate Jung Jaehyun just a little more.

You just didn’t know how to feel and act towards your best friend without feeling so much… regret.

“Good morning.”

But the young man stepping out of your best friend’s room wasn’t Jaehyun. But Johnny.

You sat there in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, your mouth agape. And then it started to rattle in your head.

Lately, there were times when your best friend had screamed the name “Jaehyun!” loudly during the act. Those were the times you had actually seen him the next morning. But the nights she hadn’t screamed a certain name, no one had ever come out. And those times, you had counted more than the ones with Jaehyun in the past weeks, just when their loud arguments started on a nearly daily basis.

“Where’s Jaehyun?” you asked without greeting her good morning as you walked into her room.

“Oh, we had a fight last night,” she explained to you while getting herself dressed casually. “And then we broke up. I went away to be with Johnny after throwing him out, and we’ve only gotten back this morning. I hope he left last night already and didn’t stay here.”

“What?” you wondered.

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I’ll get over it.”

“You actually already got over it as I’ve seen!”

“Oh, Johnny?”

“You’ve been fucking him for weeks already?” you provoked.

She shrugged again. “Perhaps a month… So what?”

You stood there, totally lost for words. “You’ve been crying about Jaehyun to me ever since you got together! That he flirted with other women, ditched you, went to parties and ignored you! And now you’re telling me you’ve been cheating on him for quite a while?! And this instagram story drama from last week?”

She sighed and flopped down onto the bed. “Okay, admittedly, I’m not an angel in this story, but he is by far neither! He was not. There were many things he has done wrong in the past. But then he actually started… doing nothing wrong. Being the picture perfect boyfriend without all these flaws and drama. And perhaps, this is not something that I want, so I started to look around elsewhere.”

“So…” You paused, still processing the shock. “Was it all an act? All the times you’ve cried to me over him lately while cheating behind his back?”

“Not an act, precisely,” she said reluctantly. “Yes, he explained every situation to me. And I was being dramatic over it for nothing, perhaps. I don’t know… I still enjoyed being with him though, but it just didn’t feel right anymore. I want to have men just… telling me I’m right, always coming back to me… what’s a relationship without fire? But Jaehyun didn’t want to do this anymore.”

In your head, you recalled everything that Jaehyun had told you. About there being two sides of the same coin, about you being so oblivious. All this time, he knew that she had cheated on him. He knew what you thought of him, yet he had never made a move to ever explain it to you.

But why?

“As he should,” you then stated. “How you treated him was awful!”

“Only because I cheated on him a few times?” she chuckled. “Come on!”

“I’m your best friend, and yet you lied to me! You twisted and turned stories so that you’d always be the one at right! But the truth is, you’re the bad person here. Not him.”

“Now what? He’s gone from our lives. Don’t care about him.”

But the truth was, you did. Now more than about her.

That was why, an hour later, you found yourself in front of his dorm. When he opened shortly after you had knocked, you stared at him, still gasping for air as you had run the entire way here, with all the memories from last night coming back with each step.

“She’s been cheating on you,” were the only words you brought out.

“I know.”

“For how long?” you asked.

“I assume for just as long.”

You breathed in heavily, not understanding a word. “But why did you stay with her?”

Jaehyun smiled meekly. “Because I don’t think I deserve a good person like you are.”

It ran hot and cold down your back. “I… I don’t understand.”

He leaned against the door frame with crossed arms, and even though he seemed uncomfortable talking about his feelings, he still did.

“I haven’t been the best boyfriend for her most times in this relationship, I admit this openly. We weren’t really good for each other and it destroyed me to the point that I wanted to change. But when I started being the boyfriend she had wished for, it wasn’t right either and she started cheating. So I just settled with it. Because I thought I screwed up to that point where I won’t be able to make anyone happy anymore and also don’t deserve the same in return. Even though I only wanted you...”

“You douche!” You stomped with your feet on the ground.

“What?” he returned perplexed with furrowed brows.

“Everyone deserves love and to love! And you’re not different from anyone else!”

His confusion got replaced with a mild smile. “You’re so kind, y/n. That’s one of the things I like the most about you. But you’re also oblivious.”

Jaehyun pulled out his phone, scrolled through his messenger and started playing a voice message from a very familiar person.

“Why do you even care about this bitch, Jaehyun?!” In the background, you heard music and other people talking. “She’s a stupid nerd, and I’ve only befriended her because she helps me studying and listens to my complains since we’re dorm mates, so don’t even waste a single thought about this party pooper!”

You stood there as though you had been rendered motionless. Your heart had dropped to your feet.

“This is from last night when I quickly went outside again to check whether you rode away safely with your uber and she couldn’t find me directly. That’s why we argued and broke up. No, it’s not the first time she’s talked about you like this.” He put his phone away. “I thought letting you hate me would make it easier for a kind person like you to keep their distance from someone like me. Because, in the end, I will only hurt you too. But the more I started to genuinely like you, the more I felt protective towards you. I couldn’t see her speaking about you like this anymore.”

Your breathing came in hitches as your whole world suddenly crashed over you. Your best friend wasn’t your best friend. She had probably never been.

You stumbled backwards, and Jaehyun stepped forward to grab you by your arm, but you pulled it away.

“I…. I just…” you stuttered. “I have to… talk to her.”

“Sure.”

The whole way home, you only cried.

Not over Jaehyun, but over the betrayal of someone you had considered your best friend, yet had hurt you in the most painful way like no man ever could. And the fact that you had been an asshole to her to the same extent after having slept with her boyfriend the same night they had broken up was probably the final straw.

You were no saint here. You had added to your both’s downfall just as much. And it hurt much more than any heartbreak you had experienced so far.

You had to sort your life out and right now, and amongst this chaos there was no place for Jaehyun in your life.

____

You put the last vase with dried flowers on your shelf, stepped backwards to your room’s door and inspected the final set up.

“Finished!” you praised yourself.

It had taken you three months to move to a new dorm, but this was your last step to a new chapter in your life.

You hadn’t had contact with your former best friend ever since your final conversation in which you had handed the keys over to her. The many conversations before had only consisted of screams, accusations and tears.

She had admitted to saying all those things about you, but also to genuinely have come like you. You weren’t so sure whether that was real or one of her lies again. You had admitted to sleeping with Jaehyun, and she would have forgiven you for that as she hadn’t been really in love with him anymore at this point, but you were sure you didn’t want either in your life anymore.

Your best friend because she had hurt you deeply, and Jaehyun because of your burdensome history. All of you had done so many wrong things, and you were only a bundle of toxic people together, so chaotic that you were better off apart from each other.

But you didn’t want to be this toxic kind of person anymore. So you moved out and left your old life behind.

You didn’t go to that class with Jaehyun anymore, and although you missed him, the touches of your joint night still present on your skin sometimes, you wanted to move on from even the mere imaginations of him as well. You were sure that you’d find a guy just like him, but you missed him wherever you went and couldn’t help but ask yourself “what if?”

The fact that he hadn’t reached out to you either made it easier, and as summer break came and passed, and the new semester started, you had kissed two news guys already, made a new friend group and were just overall happy.

But you still missed Jaehyun dearly and all the possibilities of what could have happened if only your timing had been right in life. Even if he wasn’t the right one for you.

“Is this seat taken?”

And then, one day, there he was again. Taking the seat next to you as though no time had ever passed between the two of you, smiling that mesmerizing smile you didn’t hate.

You only stared at him, and his kind expression didn’t break. When you moved your head to the front again where the professor introduced himself, you couldn’t help but to smile too. Because this wasn’t the expression of a bad person.

People changed, and just like good traits could turn into bad traits, a bad person could turn into a good one also. And they all deserved a second chance.

You had only known the Jaehyun from your best friend’s perspective, and then also his body. But even though you had gotten a glimpse of the real Jaehyun here and there, you didn’t quite know him entirely yet.

But you wanted to. The good, the bad, the real. Jaehyun wasn’t the right one for you, but such a thing didn’t exist. What mattered were only your feelings.

Because in fact, you didn’t hate Jung Jaehyun. At all.

[dreamescapeswriting]

The Collaboration ~ OT7 [Request]

WORD COUNT: 2.1K

GENRE: Fluffy, platonic, established friendship,

PAIRING: Platonic ot7 x Fem!Reader

A/N: I hope this is okay for you sweetheart! It’s been a while since I’ve tried to write ot7 so I hope you enjoy this

The friendship that you had with the BTS boys was no secret, it had been public knowledge since the moment you meant them backstage at an award ceremony almost two years ago. One of your stylists had been recording you getting your hair and makeup done when there was a knock at the door and your manager walked in with them. It was hands down one of the best days of your life, even better than the day you signed your contract to become a singer and actress. The whole video consisted of you freaking out a little before finally coming down from the excitement and just talking with them. You'd been an ARMY for years so getting to meet them in person had been so surreal and then getting to call them all your friends was even more surreal to you. 

But the friendship was hugely publicised since you and BTS were both huge artists within the industry which meant a lot of articles were written about you and the boys together. Not all of the articles written about you both had been the nicest, some were and others were a lot worse. Some writing about how you were a nobody until it came to BTS. Some claiming you were dating one of the boys while others claimed that you were dating them all, which would be nearly impossible since you saw them as brothers and they saw you as a sister. Those ones happened to be your favourite to read but mostly because your fans and ARMY would be in the comments defending you or going along with it just to try and troll some people. There had been thousands of edits made to make it look as though you were dating which at first creeped you out and you made a statement about it which lead to less and less being made. It was nice to have that sort of vibe with your fans when they would actually listen to what was going on and what you did and did not like to see.

"The latest articles on us, have you read them?" You questioned Yoongi as you walked into his studio carrying two cups, one with your hot chocolate and another with coffee inside for Yoongi. You'd flown out to Korea for a break from your latest acting gig and decided to visit the boys while you had the chance to see them and actually spend some time together. Most of the boys were still working while you waited for them to go out to lunch with you, 

"What is it?" Yoongi chuckled taking the drink you were holding out for him as you brought up the article on your phone and sat down on the sofa behind you, the articles had begun the moment you touched down in Korea. It was going to take you a minute to be able to translate it all into Korean for him but you did your best, the Korean lessons with Namjoon and Jin were paying off really well.

"According to this one I'm using you guys for your fame, I'm only around you whenever I need to go up in fame points," You let out a small laugh at the thought of it. Were fame points even a thing? You continued to scroll through the website when went to the next one which instantly made you want to scream, Jimin walked into the room ready to tell you that he was ready for lunch when he saw the look on your face. It sent shivers up and down his back and made him feel like he was in trouble with you.

"You've got that murderous look on your face, Yoongi...What did you say?" Jimin questioned looking between you and Yoongi as he tried to figure out what could have been said to make you look this angry at something.

"Nothing...He didn't-" You mumbled as you scrolled through the article that was claiming that both of the fandoms were toxic together when it couldn't be further from the truth. Both fandoms were the sweetest you'd seen, ARMY had been so welcoming to you and your fans as well as vice versa. It honestly felt as though they were more like family members to one another than just random fans. You regularly found them defending one another whenever you went onto your personal Twitter account t update your fandom on things.

"A writer is claiming that our fandoms are the most toxic ones out there..." You mumbled as you brought up your keyboard and began getting ready to type out something on your page, you knew you were supposed to rise above things and if it had been about you you would have done. But since it was about people you scared about you had to take the matter into your own hands, 

@Y/NOfficial: Thank you to all of you that are always trying to be kind and treat everyone nicely. It's refreshing to see all of you act on behalf of me and other people on this app. You're always so kind and caring and I love to see it.

Along with it, you attached a photo of you with the boys from the night you arrived in Korea so that people would know what you were indirectly tweeting about and just like that people were coming to add smirking emojis or to start laughing about what it was you were actually talking about. 

"We should do something..." You muttered as you looked back at Yoongi and Jimin ideas filling your head within seconds. A collabortation between you and the boys had been in talk for a while but neither of your managers had come together to put the plan into action.

"What are you thinking?" Jimin quizzed as he sat himself down next to you looking over at your phone to see what you had just sent out.  

"We've spoken about it, Yoongi and I both have song ideas we've been working on..." Yoongi turned to look at you from his chair as he nodded along to what you were saying instantly knowing what you were talking about. There was a huge folder on his laptop dedicated to the work you'd both been doing together both long-distance and in person.

"I still have it all saved on my laptop if you want to take a look at it all." The statement was directed in Jimin's direction as you both waited for him to say something to it,

"Sure...What have you been working on?" He moved closer to Yoongi to take a look over everything and you smiled. The things you and Yoongi had been putting together were a backing track with some melodies and adlibs you'd both been doing overtime. It was far from being done but it was better than having nothing to go off, all you needed to do was get the okay from both of your managers and the rest of the boys. 

"I've been working on a rap part for Hoseok and Namjoon and Y/n has been writing her own lyrics for her parts," Yoongi mumbled as you grabbed a spare chair to sit down next to him with. Hitting play he let the melody and your rough lyrics fill the air of his small studio.

The collaboration had been amazing, the song was one of your best works in your opinion and the videos were shot and ready to be released at a moments notice. Teasers had been being released all month between your account and the BTS one but neither of the fandoms had put it together that this would be some kind of collaboration. The teasers for the songs had been dramatically different from one another, Yoongi changing the melodies on his and yours just so that nobody would be able to place that they were the same track. Your Twitter had been focussing on releasing your parts in the video with your words and then the boy's parts only being theirs. The fans had no idea but there were a select few that had pieced it together bit by bit and were starting to realise what was happening but no one else seemed to piece it together. 

"It's almost midnight," You said over the call to the boys, all of them were sitting on skype with you as they waited inside Hoseok's studio this time. They were all sitting on the sofa in his room watching the countdown on one of the monitors, the plan was to release the music videos at the same time and wait to see what would happen with the fandoms.

"We've worked so hard for this," Namjoon chuckled as he handed all of the boys a small drink each to celebrate with, you had your own glass of wine to drink while you waited as well. Jungkook cleared his throat as he got up to give a small speech about how much he'd enjoyed working with you.

"You guys worked so great, I don't know how I'll thank you enough." You whispered as you looked at each of them through the screen feeling an overwhelming urge to cry as you thought about how close you'd all grown as a friendship group. This time it was your turn to get a sappy speech but the countdowns began and you smirked looking at the titles, both the same song and video on each channel but the boys had their title while yours was left as. Y/n Y/L/N ???? For a little extra surprise to the fans. Taehyung began counting down from one minute and thirty seconds and the rest of you began to join in with him.

"5...4...3...2...1," The iconic BigHit entertainment logo and intro filled the speakers in your room and you let out a small squeal at the thought of it finally being live after the months of working on it. The boys cheered as the music started and Jin opened up the song for you all walking around their dorms on the screen.  

"I'm going to check Twitter!" You yelled out as you brought out your phone to see all of the different reactions that were coming out from the video. Mostly people freaking out thinking Youtube had crashed and placed both videos onto the channel until your line came up. In the music video, you walked onto the set and began singing through your part of the song as if it was casual. The video idea had been that it was just supposed to be a casual setting at the dorms and you randomly walked through the front door and sat with them while singing. The song was about friendship, which wasn't like a lot of songs any of you had written before but it felt like it needed to be said. That people could be friends or more like family members without having to hate one another or have everyone assume that they were dating. It was mostly a huge slap in the face to all the media outlets claiming that you couldn't be friends with the guys because they were...well guys.

"THE COLLAB OF A LIFETIME!" Someone had tweeted out with your retweet of the music video link, you smirked reading through everything that was on the screen, your whole dash refreshing itself every two seconds. Everyone seemed to be loving the fact that you had decided to finally collaborate with the boys, 

"They love it," You giggled as you sipped on your glass of wine in celebration of the song coming out, cheering along with the boys.

The night continued on as you waited for people to react to it until you decided to go live on Instagram. The boys were all gone now so you wanted to see what everyone was thinking of it now so you set your phone up on your desk and got ready to read through everything.

"I can't wait to see your reaction videos tomorrow, you guys know I watch all of them." You laughed softly as you stared into the small screen of your phone reading through the thousands of comments that were flying through. Play with your hair if this was because of the article about you using the boys for fame. #Y/nandBTSTakeOver You smirked to yourself before playing with the ends of your hair and winking into the camera, going back to answering more questions from your fans and ARMY wanting them to know how the collaboration had come to be and if there would be more work with them in the future.

Tagline: @lyoongx​ @mitzwinchester​ @fan-ati--c​ @kneel-begyourpardon​ @taestannie​ @rjsmochii​ @bisexualmess007​ @innersooya​ @sw33tnight​ @sweeneyblue1​ @jin-from-the-block​

[queerlytical]

Unpacking my aversion to cis-het men - 08/12/2020

This is going to be a long one.  One I’m quite nervous about posting about even when I’m here anonymously!

Will probably refer to cis-het men as men/guys generally in this post btw. & the ex I refer to here is a guy I was with for 5 years which was an emotionally abusive relationship. 

I’ve recently started to challenge my feelings towards cis-het men.  Accepting that I have the judgement that all men are basically weak minded by not challenging society as it is (and therefore accepting of all the oppression), and are desperately affected by toxic masculinity.  

A small part of my brain knows that’s not true.  I have a couple of cis-het male friends who I love and are clearly not like that.  But when I think “what would be the problem if I ended up with a man in the future?” the other part of my brain immediately shuts the idea down like “why would you do such a thing?! you only like women, end of story”.  Thinking that the guys  who are open minded and unpacking their own priveleges/opinions etc. are so few and far between there is probably none left out there for me to meet.  

So I decided to challenge this notion.  And perhaps there is some underlying internal homophobia conflicting with these thoughts at the same time like “if I just gave men a chance.” or “it would be so much easier to just find a guy who is interested in me” (there is a lot underlying that quote tho - not that many wlw in my area, my personal feelings towards myself as to how cis-het men perceive me).

Along with challenging this notion, I have basically been craving to be dominated and penetrated in the bedroom, with no particular strings attached.  The people I’ve slept with this year weren’t great experiences and I just wanted someone to push me around and top me.  I know there are women who would gladly do that but the women I tend to date haven’t been like that and I’ve always been more of the top than the bottom.  I have never entertained a guy for sex where I have decided for myself that this is what’s going to happen, I’ve always been pursuaded into it (I didn’t learn about consent until the last couple of years, clearly). I wanted to feel that control.  I wanted to be the one to say, I’ve decided this this time.  And to see, how I would actually feel given that this was something I wanted and not sort of forced onto me.

I changed my Bumble search to include “everyone”.  Note that I had also ran out of women in my search radius by this stage so it was just men coming up now.  It was interesting.  I noticed that there are a lot of guy profiles that are basically the same - “where can you be found after work? the gym” or “what do you quote too much from? the office, US”.  Literally after swiping for about 10 minutes I could have written the exact same profile as like 40% of these profiles I was now faced with.  

I obviously ended up swiping left for the majority of guy profiles.  I paid more attention to the men who had kind eyes, nice smiles, beards (I love a beard strangely enough), and anything interesting in their profile.  I struggled to swipe right on white men in particular. I think this makes sense due to:

 my ex being white and racist (and I have a tendency to want to get as far as possible from this particular ex), 

a close friend who was my only white cis-het friend who then turned out to be a racist tory

my dad who is white, racist and homophobic (not terribly but enough to make me uncomfortable to discuss anything with him).  

Plus the general consensus that white cis-het men are the most priveleged in society and they can never understand someone like me, right?  Let alone have done any of the unpacking and learning about their own privilege..  

I matched with a few guys and had brief conversations with them before getting overwhelmed about messaging people on dating apps (happens whenever I can’t keep on top of messaging like more than one person at a time).  There were some okay chats, nothing overly flirty.  Some voicenotes which freaked me out a little, not 100% sure why hearing men’s voices so early after speaking to someone online scares me, but it’s probably because I’m not as comfortable sending voicenotes myself.  

There was a lot of me saying to myself “what am I doing?! LOLOLOL”

I’m going to talk about one of the guys in particular now.  We’ll call him Z.  Z’s profile was very minimal, basically just said “ask if you want to know more”.  But he had a nice face, lovely smile, and his first picture even looked quite feminine in the face - he has super long eyelashes and due to the lockdown hair he was wearing a hairband.  He’s Asian (Sikh) like my two closest friends.  I have spoken to him more than any of the other matches from Bumble.  We don’t really talk much of substance.  I told him I’m “basically a lesbian” quite early on  and he told me he’d been healing from a long relationship and was now “ready to have some fun”.  He didn’t seem particularly phased that I was into women, didn’t say anything cringey like “don’t worry, I’ll turn you” (which is what I used to get when I was younger).  This pushed the conversations in a direction where it was kind of agreed that this was all a bit of fun - flirty, sexual.  

My first experience with a guy being interested me back in high school eventually turned into a FWB situation so this type of relationship I am used to and basically expect from men..  I’m not particularly bother by this atm but might unpack this some more at some point.   

Anyway, as me and Z are just having some fun, I’ve not been vulnerable or told him much about things I care about - I don’t even think he knows my full name. It has actually been a breath of fresh air when I’ve been with people who are too intense for me throughout my dating life.  He is very much the kind of person I would never usually interact with too- likes and plays football, hangs with a group of “lads”.  I don’t think we have anything in common yet we still manage to chat (albeit with gaps of many hours in between some messages).

What did interest me about Z quite early on in our conversations is that he never said the word “girls”, always “women”.  I pointed this out to him and he confirmed he did that on purpose because he wouldn’t want to be referred to as a “boy” and that women deserve the same language used when referencing grown ass women.  This sticks in my mind as it definitely broke down one of my mental barriers around men not being able to understand “what’s the big deal”.  I think that’s probably why I’ve managed to speak to him for as long as we have.  Later on he also mentioned that people “can’t be fat shaming” which surprised me even more.  (Does my brain think cis-het men live under a rock or something?!).

We’ve been speaking 3 weeks at this stage.  We agreed to meet this weekend.  We ended up delaying it from Sunday to last night (Monday) because he was tired from a busy weekend and “wanted to give me the full experience”.  Surprisingly this didn’t make me super cringe.  I think I was probably more relieved to delay it another day as I was pretty nervous about how it would go, my head overthinking like - what if we have nothing to talk about? what if he comes all this way and I change my mind (as I am of course allowed to)? what if he’s a catfish and hurts me? etc. etc.  I don’t overthink this much when I date women.

So he was on his way.  I was running in circles getting ready like “WHAT AM I DOING?!!!”.  I had some rum to take the edge off and played the piano anxiously while he was on the way as something to take my mind off thinking about what was about to happen.

He arrived.  He was who he said he was.  He was the person who was in his pictures.  He was slightly slimmer than I expected but that was just the angles that his pictures were taken in.  It wasn’t awkward.  I poured us a drink and we sat on the sofa and chatted for a couple of hours.  He talked a lot, I hardly got a word in edgeways.  I didn’t mind as it put me at ease that there was no awkward silences. 

We finished our drinks.  I hadn’t left the heating on in my lounge so it had gotten quite cold..  I got closer to him.  Then we kissed.  It was nice.  I love kissing anyone who’s a good kisser no matter their gender. The excitement of the whole situation turned me on and we took it to my bedroom.

I struggled to look at him naked although when I did, I didn’t feel strange like I thought I would.  Obviously there is nothing wrong with the male form, I just haven’t seen a dude naked in my bedroom for years and when I was younger I used to tell myself I had phallophobia..  The sex was pretty much what I was looking for.  He didn’t bring a condom though which didn’t annoy me loads in the moment, despite him saying “I prefer without but ok” to which I replied “I don’t know where you’ve been” *eye roll*.  I thankfully had my own condoms (my stash usually for making dental dams, yno) but after I was kind of thinking to myself like “who the fuck goes to have casual sex with someone and doesn’t bring a condom when they have a penis?!”. I didn’t even let my ex bare-back me let alone some random dude.  

Anyway, I did it.  Consensual sex was better than any sex I had with my ex (not surprising).  He didn’t make me climax but it felt good (sex isn’t goal orientated for me but I know it was for him, as I assume it is with most men).  We held each other and chatted naked for a while after.  I think he wanted round 2 but I’m not sure I could have handled it.  He left relatively promptly after and I felt.. content.

I think I got what I wanted out of the experience.  It definitely boosted my confidence.  I’m not sure if I’ll see him again yet.  I definitely still feel very queer and mostly into women, I missed boobs a lot (like what do het-women hold onto?).

Part of me is like “okay next step is to see what it would be like to go on a romantic date with a guy” - something I have never ever done.  I don’t think I’ve been interested in it in the past (since growing up that is).  I can’t even imagine what it would be like because I would probably just treat them as my friend and have no clue how to flirt (if I even wanted to flirt).  But there are many conflicting thoughts about dating men romantically - what if it’s a success?  I’d end up feeling disowned by my new queer friends or judged by them, or what if I hurt someone?  how will dating guys impact how I feel about my own queerness??  I just settled back into my queer identity and now it feels I’m going backwards again.

I am definitely enjoying this new side to me that doesn’t take dating seriously and being comfortable that I don’t want a relationship right now and that’s okay!  I am continually learning about myself and trying to breakdown my own barriers so I can be my most true authentic self.  I’m having fun, and doing what’s best for me.  Which is a complete u-turn on the person I was less than a few years ago who just wanted to please everyone and was so depressed and burnt out doing so.

[lilycollinsnews]

Lily Collins Gets Candid: GLAMOUR’s December cover star on Les Misérables and success on HER terms

2018 was the year of fearless female performances but THE TV Christmas blockbuster, Les Misérables, saves the best for last with Lily Collins’ star turn as Fantine. Here she navigates the minefield of millennial dating, -13°C locations and a late-twenties crisis with GLAMOUR’S Josh Newis-Smith.

“I’ve been ghosted more times than I care to admit,” Lily confesses, as we discuss the minefield that is millennial dating. Adorned in a slouchy black hoodie with her hair scraped back into a care-free ponytail and barely a lick of make-up, Lily could be any twenty-something in debrief mode.

In fact, the only indication that this is a Golden Globe nominee who since starting to act at the age of two, has carved a place for herself as a go-to starlet in such varied roles in Rules Don’t Apply, Mirror Mirror and Love, Rosie- is the vast Hollywood home that plays backdrop to our interview and her GLAMOUR cover shoot.

I’ve been ghosted more times than I care to admit… I would prefer people to be honest with me, as I live like that. I don’t think it will be something I can ever figure out. The good thing is that we all have the same issues 

ON DATING

About to hit our screens in her career-defining role as Fantine, who is dumped unceremoniously by her lover - Victorian ghosting if you will - and left to fend for her child alone, we are musing on how, just like the iconic character, Lily has navigated her own fair share of heart ache. 

“There are times when I’ve [been on dates and] thought we had a great time and then I’ve never heard from the guy again,” she continues. With this level of ‘gal pal’ magnetism it’s no wonder she has garnered 11 million Instagram followers, and counting. “Sometimes that happens after one date, a couple of dates or one month. I would prefer people to be honest with me, as I live like that. I don’t think it will be something I can ever figure out. The good thing is that we all have the same issues.” Alexa, play Thank U, Next by Ariana Grande...

Both 29 years old, we quickly bond over that late-twenties crisis, too. “Everyone in their late twenties goes through it a bit, because we’re heading to the big 3-0,” she reassures me. 

“But I think I had a quarter-life crisis at 25 where I kept asking, ‘Am I at where I wish to be at?’ I never really set out as a kid with markers of when I want to get married or have kids. But I got to the age where you constantly compare yourself to your friends or other people in your industry.”

It’s this level of realism that makes her performance as the ultimate fallen female, Fantine, so damn relatable, despite the fact it was shot in inconceivable sub-zero conditions in Brussels over a grueling five-month period. One scene, in the opening episode, sees a thoroughly modern-feeling Fantine squatting in the bushes alongside her wing women, discussing the gents on offer. 

“When our director, Tom (Shankland) was describing it as, ‘You are going to be squatting, having a chat,’ I thought, ‘Well, I can’t say I haven’t done that,’” Lily laughs. “People have been doing this for centuries – that camaraderie between women and men going to the bathroom and having chats, where it’s all about the subtext and the looks.”

Growing up I never wanted that to be a part of my story… People assume it’s a lot easier when you have that name, but if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want to use it, it’s a lot harder.

ON HER FAMOUS SURNAME

Alas, poor Fantine didn’t have a rival nightclub to the local tavern, or Tinder, in her weaponry to help find a knight in shining armour to rescue her from her inevitable fall. Swiping right isn’t something that interests Lily, either. “I’ve never tried a dating app,” she exclaims with her trademark eyebrows alive with energy. “Lots of my friends have, but it’s just that I don’t know how I would. LA is very much where I spent most of my time growing up, so I know the places I am not going to go to meet somebody and I also realise that when you’re not looking, you find it.”

Lily is grounded, which is no mean feat given that she grew up surrounded by fame as the daughter of the Easy Lover hitmaker, Phil Collins. There’s no name-checking of famous faces, only her closest pals, a pool of Californian friends from Harvard-Westlake School who have enabled her to achieve that much-lauded term: balance. She has worked hard to have her Destiny’s Child ‘Independent Woman’ moment.

Why we've got such a style crush on Lily Collins

LILY COLLINS

Why we've got such a style crush on Lily Collins

“Growing up I never wanted that to be a part of my story,” Lily confides. “Obviously I’m super-proud of my dad; I love my dad, I’m grateful for all the things I’ve learned, but it’s also something I wanted to define as my own. I always wanted to do it myself and for myself. There are so many people who want to do what I do, a name is not going to get you a job, and it shouldn’t. I can look back and be so proud I did it on my own. People assume it’s a lot easier when you have that name, but if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want to use it, it’s a lot harder.”

When you dig the deepest and talk about the most uncomfortable things, that’s the time you’ll connect with most people because that’s when you’re being the ‘realest’. The hardest things to talk about will always be the most relatable because no one wants to show them; they’re awkward.

ON SHARING HER PERSONAL STRUGGLES

Part of Lily taking control of her own narrative involved her penning her memoir, Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Mejust under two years ago, something that she regards as the “most cathartic, therapeutic experience, in a way I didn’t anticipate”. In the emotional read, Lily confesses to hacking away at those eyebrows to fit in with the skinny-browed girls at school, details an unnamed emotionally abusive relationship, discusses a long and winding journey with eating disorders, and contains an open letter, forgiving her father, “for not always being there,” during her childhood after moving from Surrey to LA with her mother, Jill Tavelman following her parents’ divorce. For an industry in which personal lives are hidden by a velvet curtain, it was beyond brave.

Reminiscing, Lily details how the book’s direction took an unexpected turn, “I realised I was carrying so much baggage that, when it came to work, I couldn’t take on the baggage of my character. I felt a bit like a fraud to myself if I didn’t unleash – or at least get off my chest – these things, to move on and go into the next phase of my life. In life, when you dig the deepest and talk about the most uncomfortable things, that’s the time you’ll connect with most people because that’s when you’re being the ‘realest’. The hardest things to talk about will always be the most relatable, because no one wants to show them; they’re awkward.”

At one point it was -13°C in Austria… dressed in little material towards the end, it was about pushing through mentally. I dive in 110%. If I’m freezing, tired and bruised from shooting, I lean into that with the character.

ON PLAYING FANTINE

Used to shedding excess baggage, Lily had to leave everything at the French border to play what is set to become a career-defining role as Fantine. As she proudly scrolls through her phone to show her transformation from debutante darling to shaven-haired dishevelled wench, her enthusiasm is as big as her brows as she details the most testing part of taking on this role. “The material, the location, the temperature,” she admits were the biggest challenges. But it’s clear she relished getting gritty. “It was so perfect, but at one point it was -13°C in Brussels. It was mental preparation of not just understanding the psychology of what she’s going through, but also the gruelling shooting experience that we were all in. Dressed in little material towards the end, it was about pushing through mentally. Obviously, I saw the end in sight. I dive in 110%. If I’m freezing, tired and bruised from shooting, I lean into that with the character.”

In a year where toxic masculinity has led to outpourings of female empowerment, it seems an ideal time to revisit the treatment of this infamous female character; something that isn’t lost on Lily. “When she falls, she falls so hard. But she’s willing to stay down there if it means providing for her child. It’s very poignant over what’s happening in today’s world. When we’re at our lowest, we still have our sense of self and are willing to fight back and use our voice. That really resonated with me.”

I’m attracted so strongly to people who are brave and outspoken and very much themselves, so I thought, ‘Why can’t I be that?’ It takes practice and I’m not fully there yet, but I’m doing my best to take those steps.ON 2018’S CRUSADERS

How does she feel in the wake of the year where Hollywood finally got woke on the abuse of power? “It’s great to see the camaraderie that’s come from it. Women coming forward with these issues are being embraced. Whether it’s in the pay gap or having more female directors, writers, and making sure there are just as many women and men on movie sets – hopefully one day this won’t even have to be a conversation. That’s my hope that we won’t have to say, ‘’I’m so glad you’re hired because you’re a female. It should be that you are known for your skill level… Right now, it’s fantastic, but it shouldn’t be why a woman is defined as amazing.”

As a result, Lily is feeling more empowered than ever before. “Yeah, I am, 100%,” she says. “I’ve realised that I can’t control what other people think of what I have to say, but I can control how I say it and where it’s coming from. So many women have come out and spoken about things that people would have assumed would have been the end of them. Now it is embraced for us to speak out. I’m attracted so strongly to people who are brave and outspoken and very much themselves, so I thought, ‘Why can’t I be that?’ It takes practice and I’m not fully there yet, but I’m doing my best to take those steps.”

This self-crafted confidence is exactly why Lily was attracted to the challenge of creating and directing her own GLAMOUR shoot, shot on a mobile phone during a fitting with super-stylists Rob Zangardi and Mariel Haenn. “I love expressing different sides of myself,” she exclaims, referencing her Giambattista Valli gown she wore for her cover. “It’s a process that allows me to constantly surprise myself, rediscover and push myself in ways I wouldn’t have felt comfortable with a couple of years ago.” One thing is for certain, you shouldn’t underestimate this ultimate Hollywood ‘doer’; she curled her own hair and specifically asked for the pictures not to be retouched, too.

That’s my hope that we won’t have to say, ‘’I’m so glad you’re hired because you’re a female. It should be that you are known for your skill level… Right now, it’s fantastic, but it shouldn’t be why a woman is defined as amazing. 

ON HOPES FOR FUTURE FEMALES

Away from Hollywood and couture, Lily will be living her best Cameron Diaz lyf circa The Holiday this Christmas. “It’s my time to switch off from my job, sleep in and be British – I love holing myself away where no one can bother me. I love being in the countryside, outside London, with my mum. We get our tree, we have decorations from when I’m younger. We cook. We have fires and watch old movies,” Lily shares in a manner of an over-excited elf.

It’s safe to say the Christmas cracker that will really bring a bang to your festivities is Lily Collins in Les Misérables. Plus, dear wise men and women, this star with her rare empowering gifts is well worth following, far and wide.

Les Misérables will start on the BBC on 30th December.

[suzanneshannon]

What the web still is

Being a pessimist is an easy thing to fall back on, and I’m trying to be better about it. As we close the year out, I thought it would be a good exercise to take stock of the state of the web and count our blessings.

Versatile

We don't use the internet to do just one thing. With more than two decades of globally interconnected computers, the web allows us to use it for all manner of activity.

This includes platforms, processes, and products that existed before the web came into being, and also previously unimagined concepts and behaviors. Thanks to the web, we can all order takeout the same way we can all watch two women repair a space station in realtime.

Decentralized

There is still no one single arbiter you need to petition to sign off on the validity of your idea, or one accepted path for going about to make it happen. Any website can link out to, or be linked to, without having to pay a tax or file pre-approval paperwork.

While we have seen a consolidation of the services needed to run more sophisticated web apps, you can still put your ideas out for the entire world to see with nothing more than a static HTML page. This fact was, and still is, historically unprecedented.

Resilient

The internet has been called the most hostile environment to develop for. Someone who works on the web has to consider multiple browsers, the operating systems they are installed on, and all the popular release versions of both. They also need to consider screen size and quality, variable network conditions, different form factors and input modes, third party scripts, etc. This is to say nothing about serving an unknown amount of unknown users, each with their own thoughts, feelings, goals, abilities, motivations, proficiencies, and device modifications.

If you do it right, you can build a website or a web app so that it can survive a lot of damage before it is rendered completely inoperable. Frankly, the fact that the web works at all is nothing short of miraculous.

The failsafes, guardrails, redundancies, and other considerations built into the platform from the packet level on up allow this to happen. Honoring them honors the thought, care, and planning that went into the web's foundational principles.

Responsive

Most websites now make use of media queries to ensure their content reads and works well across a staggeringly large amount of devices. This efficient technology choice is fault-tolerant, has a low barrier of entry, and neatly side-steps the myriad problems you get with approaches such as device-sniffing and/or conditionally serving massive piles of JavaScript.

Responsive Design was, and still is revolutionary. It was the right answer, at the right place and time. It elegantly handled the compounding problem of viewport fragmentation as the web transformed from something new and novel into something that is woven into our everyday lives.

Adaptable

In addition to being responsive, the web works across a huge range of form factors, device capabilities, and specialized browsing modes. The post you are currently reading can show up on a laptop, a phone, a Kindle, a TV, a gas station pump, a video game console, a refrigerator, a car, a billboard, an oscilloscope—heck, even a space shuttle (if you’re reading this from space, please, please, please let me know).

It will work with a reading mode that helps a person focus, dark and high contrast modes that will help a person see, and any number of specialized browser extensions that help people get what they need. I have a friend who inverts her entire display to help prevent triggering migraines, and the web just rolls with it. How great is that?

Web content can be read, translated, spoken aloud, copied, clipped, piped into your terminal, forked, remixed, scraped by a robot, output as Braille, and even played as music. You can increase the size of its text, change its font and color, and block parts you don't want to deal with—all in the service of making it easier for you to consume. That is revolutionary when compared to the media that came before it.

Furthermore, thanks to things like Progressive Web Apps and Web Platform Features, the web now blends seamlessly into desktops and home screens. These features allow web content to behave like traditional apps and are treated as first-class citizens by the operating systems that support them. You don’t even necessarily need to be online for them to work!

Accessible

The current landscape of accessibility compliance is a depressing state of affairs. WebAIM’s Million report, and subsequent update, highlights this with a sobering level of detail.

Out of the top one million websites sampled, ~98% of home pages had programmatically detectable Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors. This represents a complete, categorical failure of our industry on every conceivable level, from developers and designers, to framework maintainers, all the way up to those who help steer the future of the platform.

And yet.

In that last stubborn two percent lives a promise of the web. Web accessibility—the ability for someone to use a website or web app regardless of their ability or circumstance—grants autonomy. It represents a rare space where a disabled individual may operate free from the immense amount of bias, misunderstanding, and outright hate that is pervasive throughout much of society. This autonomy represents not only freedom for social activities but also employment opportunities for a population that is routinely discriminated against.

There is a ton of work to do, and we do not have the luxury of defeatism. I’m actually optimistic about digital accessibility’s future. Things like Inclusive Design have shifted the conversation away from remediation into a more holistic, proactive approach to product design.

Accessibility, long viewed as an unglamorous topic, has started to appear as a mainstream, top-level theme in conference and workshop circuits, as well as popular industry blogs. Sophisticated automated accessibility checkers can help prevent you from shipping inaccessible code. Design systems are helping to normalize the practice at scale. And most importantly, accessibility practitioners are speaking openly about ableism.

Inexpensive

While the average size of a website continues to rise, the fact remains that you can achieve an incredible amount of functionality with a small amount of code. That’s an important thing to keep in mind.

It has never been more affordable to use the web. In the United States, you can buy an internet-ready smartphone for ~$40. Emerging markets are adopting feature phones such as the JioPhone (~$15 USD) at an incredible rate. This means that access to the world’s information is available to more people—people who traditionally may have never been able to have such a privilege.

Think about it: owning a desktop computer represented having enough steady income to be able to support permanent housing, as well as consistent power and phone service. This created an implicit barrier to entry during the web’s infancy.

The weakening of this barrier opens up unimaginable amounts of opportunity, and is an excellent reminder that the web really is for everyone. With that in mind, it remains vital to keep our payload sizes down. What might be a reflexive CMD + R for you might be an entire week’s worth of data for someone else.

Diverse

There are more browsers available than I have fingers and toes to count on. This is a good thing. Like any other category of software, each browser is an app that does the same general thing in the same general way, but with specific design decisions made to prioritize different needs and goals.

My favorite browser, Firefox, puts a lot of its attention towards maintaining the privacy and security of its users. Brave is similar in that regard. Both Edge and Safari are bundled with their respective operating systems, and have interfaces geared towards helping the widest range of users browse web content. Browsers like Opera and Vivaldi are geared towards tinkerers, people who like a highly customized browsing experience. Samsung Internet is an alternative browser for Android devices that can integrate with their proprietary hardware. KaiOS and UC browsers provide access to millions of feature phones, helping them to have smartphone-esque functionality. Chrome helps you receive more personalized ads efficiently debug JavaScript.

Browser engine diversity is important as well, although the ecosystem has been getting disturbingly small as of late. The healthy competition multiple engines generates translates directly to the experience becoming better for the most important people in the room: Those who rely on the web to live their everyday lives.

Speaking of people, let’s discuss the web’s quality of diversity and how it applies to them: Our industry, like many others, has historically been plagued by ills such as misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and classism. However, the fact remains that the ability to solve problems in the digital space represents a rare form of leverage that allows minoritized groups to have upward economic mobility.

If you can't be motivated by human decency, it’s no secret that more diverse teams perform better. We’ve made good strides in the past few years towards better representation, but there’s still a lot of work to be done.

Listen to, and signal boost the triumphs, frustrations, and fears of the underrepresented in our industry. Internalize their observations and challenge your preconceived notions and biases. Advocate for their right to be in this space. Educate yourself on our industry’s history. Support things like codes of conduct, which do the hard work of modeling and codifying expectations for behavior. All of this helps to push against a toxic status quo and makes the industry better for everyone.

Standardized

The web is built by consensus, enabling a radical kind of functionality. This interoperability—the ability for different computer systems to be able to exchange information—is built from a set of standards we have all collectively agreed on.

Chances are good that a web document written two decades ago will still work with the latest version of any major browser. Any web document written by someone else—even someone on the opposite side of the globe—will also work. It will also continue to work on browsers and devices that have yet to be invented. I challenge you to name another file format that supports this level of functionality that has an equivalent lifespan.

This futureproofing by way of standardization also allows for a solid foundation of support for whatever comes next. Remember the principle of versatile: It is important to remember that these standards are also not prescriptive. We’re free to take these building blocks use arrange them in a near-infinite number of ways.

Open

Furthermore, this consensus is transparent. While the process may seem slow sometimes, it is worth highlighting the fact that the process is highly transparent. Anyone who is invested may follow, and contribute to web standards, warts and all.

It’s this openness that helps to prevent things like hidden agendas, privatization, lock-in, and disproportionate influence from consolidating power. Open-source software and protocols and, most importantly, large-scale cooperation also sustain the web platform’s long-term growth and health. Think of web technologies that didn’t make it: Flash, Silverlight, ActiveX, etc. All closed, for-profit, brittle, and private.

It also helps to disincentive more abstract threats, things like adversarial interoperability and failure to disclose vulnerabilities. These kinds of hazards are a good thing to remember any time you find yourself frustrated with the platform.

Make no mistake: I feel a lot of what makes the web great is actively being dismantled, either inadvertently or deliberately. But as I mentioned earlier, cynicism is easy. My wish for next year? That all the qualities mentioned here are still present. My New Year’s resolution? To help ensure it.

The post What the web still is appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

What the web still is published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

[chaos2go]

Did you know those particular people were in the group before you guys joined?

Excuse me as I make this a read more XD because why not?

If you’re talking about a certain someone I’ve had issues with in the past and her friends, yes I did. I submitted my ‘test’ the same day that they submitted their apps. Which in all honesty could be looked at as me trying to ruin their time. However I had been tossing around the idea the prior opening of joining and didn’t join then. I joined out of my own interest and hope to use either Ime, Orrla, or Dryst (I decided against Dryst as Ime was easier to draw and Orrla I would have had to do more thinking about) in a way I hadn’t before.  As it is I’m somewhat annoyed that they are jumping on me when they are on for silly little things. Like bringing up that dA has a chat app. They aren’t the problem here however. They can have their own fun and trash me if they so desire. No skin off my back XD

The problem comes from people I don’t know. Like literally excusing problem child and her other three friends that joined, there are literally two people who I get along with and don’t tick me off on the discord. One I’m currently rping with and the other is just more laid back in general. Some members I have not had the luck to get to know but the loudest ones at the moment are the most annoying and immature. Which sucks because in a group of 30 individuals, I only like 2. There are 5 mods and I only see 1 doing their job beyond just having fun. And it’s not that I don’t want people to have fun with their characters but the character talk mostly comes down to joking and what I said before. “Make them tsundre”, “make them roll down a hill”, “aww what a poor sad baby. make him smile”, etc etc.

And something that just occurred with the ‘group event rp’ is one of the mods saying you get points for being active? Like what points? How do these systems even work? There is little to no explanation for anything but apparently Discord is a big part of it. You literally cannot get anywhere without it. I know in LoH we pretty much moved to Skype but a member can still do things without having to have it. And we gladly explain things. I feel jumped on even if I have a tiny question in this group and often feel shoved off. And I don’t want to express that as I’ll be seen to be having a fit. It just feels like a toxic community to me honestly. Which is sad to say because I’m sure most people beyond my impressions of them so far aren’t bad people.

The person I have spoken to over Skype is kinda shy but she’s very nice. And we’re getting along pretty good. We’ve yet to roleplay but i’m learning a bit about her. And she’s kinda fun. I hope if I do quit she’ll still want to talk but I feel like the others won’t care. Not that I care if they do but it just kinda sucks that there’s maybe three people beyond Fera in the group that give a fuck about anyone else.

I do want to say a lot of this has to do with my own insecurity. I am partly worried that no one will like me and I am partly worried that a bad name has already spread about me given my first part of this answer. At least with the latter I hope people would take the time to talk to me before taking sides because it really doesn’t involve them. Needless to say it might just be a stress I don’t want to deal with. I was hoping to have fun but the group itself is making me angry beyond discord. Systems making me angry, the mods not doing jobs makes me angry, and the obvious favoritism makes me angry.