#and maybe I shouldn't take it so serious and maybe I should write the silly unfinished story in the leather cover notebook actually

[jennablackmorebooks]

One day I realised that, you know, I wanted to be the type of person who uses an actual leather cover notebook for writing in for a long time, and the bookstore was right there and I could just get a leather cover notebook and be the type of person who uses one of those for real and I'm doing a lot more writing on a daily basis because of it. Ditto for being a pocket watch user and now I finally keep a timepiece on my person every day. Every week I cross off more and more check boxes of things that would make myself from years ago think I'm extremely awesome =)

[joels-shitty-puns]

The Key To Your Heart - Track 4

Pairing: Pedro Pascal x Musician!Reader

Gif by:@sh214

Series Summary: After writing your feelings for Pedro into a song, it gains a lot more popularity than expected. Ultimately it brings both criticism and support, with new possibilities around the corner.

*! New warnings will be listed first !*

Series Warnings: 18+ only (MDNI). Mentions of food, weight loss, weight gain, dieting, weighing, potential eating disorder, food guilt. Potential for puns/dad jokes (name of my blog, and the fic) should give that away. This is my first fic which should be its own warning, lol. Also some cursing. Mentions of masturbation (f) maybe more smut later idk. Sadness, reader is pretty depressed. Poor body image. Rude people. Bullying-ish and just lack of support? Anxiety. Age gap! Reader is in her mid 20's, Pedro is current age (48).

Other stuff: Reader is plus sized. AFAB. Inexperienced. Also has a dog, but you can pretend it is another creature probably. Further, in case it isn't clear, italics almost always are the reader's inner thoughts!

Word Count: ~2.3K

Series List: Here!

Miss last chapter? Here!

Hi there! To those of you who have read and are still with me, THANK YOU! I love you all. I'm sorry that my chapters are taking longer and longer. Work has been a bit more hectic lately and I also just had some serious writer's block with this chapter. That being said, it feels a little rough and I apologize if its awful lol. But either way, thanks for hanging in there with me and please let me know what you think! Your comments make me happy!

__________

You groaned, stepping out of bed and drifting towards the bathroom. Your face was sticky and your eyes stung from crying late into the night. It was silly, naive, and frankly stupid… but sometimes you can't control how hard emotions hit. Seeing that Pedro didn't actually watch your video was a let down - to put it mildly. Obviously he's a popular guy. A star. He has better things to do.

You should be grateful he even responded to your Instagram message before. Even though it hurts, surely he has more interesting things to do than message someone like you. Just because you wrote a song and he said he liked it doesn't mean he owes you anything more.

So after a fitful night's sleep, you were utterly exhausted; physically, mentally, and emotionally. Luckily, it was still your weekend and you could rest today. 

More like spend the day wallowing in your self pity… you think, disdainfully at yourself.

Looking in the mirror, you notice your puffy eyes. There's some new acne, and a mop of frizzy hair on your head. After using the toilet, you step on your bathroom scale before your shower; a morning routine you started during years of dieting. Another 3 pounds. Up again?!

You look in the mirror, pinching your stomach with a sigh. I guess I shouldn't have had those cookies yesterday…

The food guilt creeps up as you think of the goodies you've eaten recently. Cookies yesterday, fast food the day before. You were bitter that you weren't one of those people that could just magically eat whatever they wanted without gaining an ounce. 

But you aren't, and you should know better. 

Frustrated with your appearance, you begin your usual internal debate about how to fix it.

Maybe I should go back on the diet…

But the diet caused you so many problems. Remember the stomach issues? The hunger? The lack of joy? Binge eating on cheat days until you were sick?

But! I lost so much weight!

Yeah, until you started gaining weight…

Maybe I didn't cut enough. People said I looked so good. I was *almost* skinny.

Maybe people would like me more if I was skinny… Maybe Pedro would like me if I were skinny. There's no way he would be with me looking like this.

These were the debates that plagued you for months… years… a lifetime.

You showered, tears beginning to flow again as you tried to push out the thoughts. He was probably just busy, but either way you knew you didn't have a chance. 

Your friends were right. You were an obsessed fan. It was… concerning, as they said. They pitied you when you felt sad about your feelings. Just find someone you actually have a chance with, they pushed. Someone real.

But... he did message you. Maybe he didn't even know you had an interview yesterday? Maybe he watched it later. You were being utterly ridiculous. It didn't matter anyway.

But what you didn't know was that Pedro felt just as disappointed. He wanted to be the one on your list. The one you loved. He went to bed just as mopey as you did and woke up just the same.

_____

Having washed away your bad feelings as best as you could, you gave Skipper a kiss on his little forehead and made some coffee while scrolling Instagram. You were nervous to see what people had to say about your interview, but you had to face the music eventually.

As you could have predicted, people were running through the potential suspects (or prospects, that is) who have brown curly hair and brown eyes. Some supported you and loved your interview. Others criticized you for being too chicken to show yourself. 

You weren't used to this level of attention, and you really weren't sure you enjoyed it. But you were grateful to have your two lives kept separate, your true persona still shaded in privacy.

What you did not predict, was a notification popping up from Pedro, interrupting your scrolling. Forgetting to breathe, you immediately clicked on it. If the message were food from the oven, you would've burnt your hand the way you grabbed it so fast. 

Perhaps I should've been a little more chill about opening this so quickly... Oh well.

Pedro Pascal messaged you: "Hey! I watched your interview yesterday. You did fantastic. I know fame is new to you and you're nervous, but you're a natural."

Your heart swelled. He did watch it!! He must have just been busy during the live stream.

You replied: "Pedro! You watched it!?! Thank you so much. That really means a lot to me."

Pedro read your message immediately, but instead of sharing in your level of excitement, he was hit with a wave of confusion instead. She must just be trying to not hurt my feelings. She already knows I watched it.. unless she didn't even notice my name. Or she didn't care enough to look for it…?

He decided to play along with it anyway. "Absolutely, I did. I've had it marked on my calendar since the day it was announced a couple days ago and watched it as it was streamed live."

His response took you by surprise, and then made you angry. If he really watched it, he would know that they gave you a list of the people who watched it live. Why was he lying to you about it?

You started to plan out your response, maybe even send an accusatory comeback, but then you thought about it again.

Why would he lie about it? What would he gain by lying? He messaged you.

With this in mind, you instead chose to take a different approach. One better designed for fishing. One you had to be very careful about, so as not to reveal the fact that you looked for his name.

"Wait!? You watched it live? I didn't see you on the list. You're one of the few people I've spoken to who actually seem genuinely friendly and interested in having a conversation with me. I had sort of hoped you were listening."

There. That doesn't sound too revealing, right? Totally friendly…

Pedro opened your message and was met with both confusion, and something else he wasn't expecting. Hope. Did you look for his name??

Still, he wanted to address the confusion. "You didn't see me on the list? That's odd.. but I'm sure there were a lot of names to scan through. Maybe my name was just buried in that list."

You knew it wasn't buried. He was the only name you looked for. The only name you cared about seeing on that list, not that you'd admit that to him right now. But you also didn't want him to feel that insignificant either.

"There were a lot of names, I'll give you that. But I swear you weren't there. Were you logged into your account? Maybe your Internet crashed, or you missed part of it?"

Instantly he remembered the ten or so minutes that Oscar interrupted him. 

Oscar!

"Oh shit! That's it. Oscar barged into my house while I was watching it and I slammed my laptop closed."

"Oscar… Isaac? Wait, why did you slam your laptop closed?"

"Yeah, that's the one. And… I don't know. He just surprised me, I guess. It wasn't a planned visit."

Slamming your laptop closed is an odd reaction to your friend visiting, but okay, you thought.

"So you closed your laptop, and missed a few minutes. And that must have been the moment they pulled the list of viewers."

Pedro replied. "It must have. But I was there, more than happy to listen to what you had to say"

If my name had been on the list, would her answer have been different? When asked whether the man she loved was on the list and she said no, would my name have changed anything? Pedro wanted to ask you these questions. But he couldn't. Not only was he scared, but he also didn't want it to come off as some douchey comment that made you uncomfortable. He wanted to get to know you better, even if just as a friend, and he wouldn't let a silly little crush ruin that.

You sent a response that could be deemed as friendly or neutral, still cautious. "Thank you Pedro. I'm really glad you watched it."

He replied without hesitancy. "Of course. But, I am sorry that your guy wasn't on that list."

He sounds genuine. Not like he's fishing for information like everyone else on the internet. In turn, you decide to be playful with your response. Risky, but still not too revealing. "It's okay. It turns out that list wasn't as accurate as I once thought it was" you typed with a smirk.

"So maybe he was watching after all," Pedro answered.

"Maybe he was."

Pedro soon changed the subject, "I did enjoy hearing about your favorite things, though. You may know this already, but I love movies. Some of the ones you mentioned are a couple of my favorites as well. But as for your favorite books, I haven't read them, but I've been meaning to find a new book to read."

The fact that he was a reader made your heart flutter; the thought of him sitting with a book, his glasses perched on his nose, brow furrowed as he stroked his thumb over his lip in deep concentration. You were overjoyed at the thought of him reading *your* favorite book and potentially having someone to talk to about it. Before you knew it, you had frantically sent multiple excited messages.

You: "Oh! If you read any of my favorite books we HAVE to talk about them!"

Second message: "AGH the first book I mentioned is my favorite, out of all of them. The ending blew my mind. And the characters were just so amazing! Well except for that one guy.. but I won't spoil that…"

Third message: "But my favorite character has the greatest lines!!! Sometimes I like to quote it but nobody else gets it. And the way the author describes the settings is so magical, it makes you want to be there."

Pedro caught himself smiling at his phone, wrapped up in your excitement, as you were finally able to talk to someone about your favorite book. It was adorable how happy you seemed.

He started to type a reply when you sent another message. "Shoot… I'm sorry. I got a little too carried away…"

"Who told you that?"

Huh?

"Who told me what?" You asked.

"Who made you feel like you had to stop talking when you became excited about your interests?"

His question took you aback, but your mind struggled to pinpoint the answer to it. There's been so many people that have told you that over the years. People you assumed were friends. An old crush who didn't like multiple text messages at once. Classmates who would complain or make fun. It was routine.

"Oh. It's not a big deal. It's just something I've heard over the years. But I also know how I get and I don't want to be too much. I'm sorry. I don't want to monopolize the conversation too much either. But hey, you didn't mention, what are your favorite books?" You tried to change the topic.

Pedro felt that protective feeling bubble up in his chest again.

"Over the years!? There have been multiple occasions?" Pedro shook his head, even though you couldn't see through the text. "I'm sorry anyone ever made you feel that way or said anything to imply that your interests weren't worthy of being heard. Fuck them. They should be thankful that you shared your interests."

They should be grateful to hear your beautiful voice get so excited. To get to see your excitement and smile, Pedro thought to himself angrily. He hoped he could someday witness you getting excited over your interests in person too.

"Thank you Pedro. But really, it's okay. I know I get a little… obsessive and crazy, especially with sending multiple texts, so I don't blame them. Haha. :)" you tried to soften the mood.

"I don't want you to ever feel that way with me. I liked hearing you talk about your interests."

You began to type, but Pedro beat you to the punch.

"In fact… if you'd like to talk more," he gave you his phone number. "Feel free to text me, or you can call me too. I like talking on the phone, but I know not everyone does."

Holy shit. Is this real life? Did Pedro Pascal just give me his phone number? And ask me to call him?

Truthfully, your introverted self really didn't like talking on the phone. But the idea of talking to Pedro, hearing his voice on the other end of your phone was too much to handle.

What you didn't realize, was that Pedro wanted it just as bad.

Your fingers danced over your phone keyboard, trying to find the right words for a reply. What do you say when the love of your life (that you didn't think you would ever have a chance with) gives you his phone number?

Pedro watched anxiously as the three dot-dot-dots of typing appeared and disappeared over and over. His heart was racing, and he began to worry he may have overstepped this time. 

Why did you give her your number? She's going to think you like her!!! 

But you do like her, you idiot, Pedro berated himself.

He ran his hand down his face, waiting for your response in agonizing suspense. But instead of hearing the pop of a notification, his phone began to ring instead, an unknown number displayed on the home screen.

Wait… is that her? Is she CALLING me?!

He answered frantically, practically dropping his phone in the process. 

"Hello?"

"Hello? Pedro? It's me.."

You heard him give a breathless laugh before answering with a gentle "Hi."

_____

Thank you for reading!! Let me know your thoughts :) More will be coming soon. I know this is a painfully slow burn lol. Thanks for being patient.

Next chapter! Here

_____

Taglist: (Want in? Let me know!)

@pedrotonin @starcrossed02 @lightupsketchersperson @cartoon-garbage04 @tyferbebe @maryfanson @gwendibley84 @faithfullyyours2000 @brilliantopposite187 @hc-geralt-23 @jenniferpendragon

[murdrdocs]

you should totally write another enemies to lovers w ethan but like fem!reader and him get paired into a project we’re they have to take care of an egg together as if it were a baby? (like those cheesy movies LMFAO) and maybe they constantly argue about it and even try to convince their teacher to get paired into different groups but they’re forced to work together. then one night, reader has been taking care of the egg all day, she decides to go to ethan’s apartment but as soon as she leaves her apartment building she gets a call from ethan!gf (to mess w her) and at that point she’s just running to ethan’s apartment and yeah you can do the rest.

description. you're paired with ethan landry for a silly, 2000s-esque 'baby project', forced to reckon with the troubles of parenthood, and your inconsiderate feelings towards the brown haired boy.

includes. GN!reader, allusions to sex but no smut, reader curses a lot, chad's here :D

word count: 1.6k+

a/n: im so sorry it took me so long to write this but its here now :) also i changed this a bit just bc here we have the fake babies that cry and stuff and it adds drama yk and this was not supposed to be this long but enjoy nonetheless (also x2 this isn't proofread at all and it's written like an extended blurb)

anytime you said your life "was a movie" you were never serious. which is because before ending up in this class, life for you was nothing but usual teenage and young adult endeavors; parties, hanging out, spending entirely too much money.

but now, your life literally is a movie. an early 2000s movie that the production shouldn't have greenlit because it desperately flopped in the theatres and digital release, only to become a cult classic 20 years later.

however, you're stuck in that flopping at box office point, coming in the form of being assigned a project where you had to take care of an egg, then a fake baby, in a class you shouldn't have been in in the first place, and being paired with ethan landry out of all people.

you don't have anything against ethan per se, but you don't like him either. on a scale of dislike, neutral, and like, you're in the lower end of neutral with your feelings towards ethan.

he wasn't a horrible guy, but he just reminded you of the guys back home. the ones that were always unnecessarily rude and help "opinions" that were really just hate speech waiting to be turned into hate crimes. and sure, he hadn't done anything in particular to be compared to those people, but you're better off being safe than sorry.

you're sitting across from him now, a brown egg sitting between you two, and your eyes switching from glaring at the egg to glaring at ethan.

"so ... how do you wanna do the schedule?" ethan asks, fiddling with the sticker on his smoothie cup.

your glare intensifies and you sit back in your seat, crossing your arms over your chest. "i want you to know that i don't wanna do this with you."

ethan looks slightly shocked by your blunt statement, which infuriates you more. and then he says, "...okay?" like he doesn't care. asshole.

you decide to be the bigger person, taking a deep breath before you continue speaking. "okay."

it's silent for a few moments. "now that we have that cleared up, how do you wanna do the schedule?"

you and ethan decide on who should take care of the egg-baby for the first week, until you upgrade to a fake baby. that night when you go home, you send an email that is a mix between begging and demanding your professor to switch your partner.

the week was fine. it could've been better if your professor switched your partner, and if you didn't have to communicate with ethan landry more than you would have ever wanted to. but apparently, people can't always get what they want.

by the first class the following week, 3 groups have broken their egg and failed the first half of the assignment. you sit and listen to your professor lecture each and every one of you about the importance of good child care, and how taking care of the egg was the easy part. as she hands out doll babies in a carrier, and understand how lifelike the not-toy is, you start to realize just how much harder this is going to be.

"who would've known blackmore had this sort of money." chad marvels at the doll in the stroller. he has his hands on his bent knees, his brown eyes shifting to notice every detail about the doll in the stroller.

"it fucking knows how much time each of us spends with it, chad," you complain through a mouthful of burrito bowl contents. you have a little time alone since ethan had class, so you took the time to take yourself, and amelia/janice (you and ethan couldn't agree on a name) to the dining hall for lunch with chad.

"just spend time with ethan. i do it everyday."

your eyes roll so hard that you have to pause and hold a hand to your head. "easier said than done."

chad laughs a bit, sitting down in the seat across from you once again and starting to dig into his own burrito bowl.

"what's your problem with him anyway?"

"oh don't even get me started–" but he did get you started. you detail all of the things that deems ethan to be insufferable in your eyes. his abercrombie model body, his nerdy persona, his "well actually" moments, his need to correct everyone, the way he seems like he actually hates tara and sam, his not-so-subtle superiority complex. chad stops you whenever you start to mention his hair.

"just sounds to me like you're hiding your true feelings behind anger."

you don't have a response, instead opting to check your email to see your professor sending a third denial to switch partners.

you're thinking of a way you can convince her whenever ethan texts you.

'my shift? '

"gotta go," you tell chad, sliding him your tray to dispose of with a grin, feeding him an excuse about being a "busy parent now" whenever he tries to argue.

okay, truth be told, ethan landry wasn't that bad. he offered to take up shifts whenever you even alluded to being stressed about other things, he offered to buy you meals in return for watching amelia/janice for an extra half hour. he seemed like he both cared about passing this project, and you.

"just so you know, i also tried to switch partners," ethan admits with just a hint of shame in his voice, and a light pink tint to his cheeks. but you don't know if that's from his confession or the alcohol in his system.

it's the end to another grueling week taking care of amelia (ethan let janice go) and you decided to celebrate by opening a bottle of wine. you were feeling oddly good that whole week, so whenever ethan came over to drop amelia off, you invited him in for a drink.

which turned into two. which turned into a late night kitchen makeout session.

the alcohol was obviously hindering your thinking abilities because not only were you pressing ethan landry back against your counter with your body and letting his hands roam all over your figure while he kissed you, you also pulled back and stared at him wildly to ask, "wait, amelia's down for the night right?"

ethan smiles big, playing along, "yeah, she's down for the night".

his hands find the end of your shirt and the slide underneath to feel the warmth of your skin. your room was occupied by your daughter, but your roommates were out for the night and the couch was available.

you let ethan lead you there and decide that yeah, ethan landry isn't that bad.

this, is the climactic point in the film. it's so cliché that you can predict the next moments, and you don't like them.

you were walking from your apartment to ethan's, preparing to drop amelia off for ethan to take care of now that he was out of econ. you've done this same walk safely many times before, so you weren't worried about yourself at all. you had your headphones on, playing music at a low volume just in case, and there were only a few minutes left in your walk. when your phone rang, you didn't think much of it. you answered it without checking your phone, a chirpy "hello?" being your greeting.

the voice on the other hand was unrecognizable. "hello." he said it like a statement, not a question, as if he had an upper hand.

"who is this?"

"i'm ... an admirer."

a chill runs through your body and you quicken your pace. "okay? what's your name?" you're looking around, searching for people on the street to witness something just in case. but there's only 2 to 3 people walking at this late hour. what are the fucking odds.

"i go by many names. some people call me the boogey man, others their worst nightmare." he speaks slowly, methodically, with a smooth tone, a direct contrast from the fast shakiness in your voice.

"oh, yeah? why do they call you that?"

"because ... i'm known for gutting people like a fish."

you don't say anything, going to reach for your phone and hangup instead. which, you do. you hand shakes as you go to call ethan instead, but before you can click on his contact you're getting a call from him.

"ethan? thank god, i was just about to call you. some fucking weirdo called me and he was freaking me the fuck out but i'm almost at your pla–"

"you think i'm a weirdo?" the same voice.

you glance down at ethan's contact, blinking, making sure you didn't read it wrong. but it's right.

"... ethan?" you ask softly, your heart thudding intensely behind your chest.

"yes?"

"is that you?"

"uh-huh."

fucking asshole.

"you fucking asshole." the entrance to ethan's apartment building is in sight now, as is the boy himself, standing in front of the building with his phone held in one hand, and a white object in the other. the closer you get, the bigger his smile gets, and the narrower your glare gets.

you stop in front of him, shoving the stroller into his foot and pushing at his chest for good measure. "you fucking asshole!" you repeat, as if he hadn't heard you the first time.

ethan laughs, he cackles, like he just told the best joke in history. the dial tone of ethan ending the call is barely heard over the blood rushing in your ears.

"c'mon, babe," ethan tilts his head as he pockets his phone and the white object. his hands reach for you, and you flinch away the first time, but the second time you let him rest his hands on your waist and pull you into him. he places a kiss on your forehead, then your nose, before pressing a soft kiss to your lips.

"i fucking hate you." there's no bite behind your bark.

"yet you decided to have a baby with me."

stupid fucking assignment.

[liesmyth]

anon! I see you! same for the other anon I got 3 weeks ago and left on read — I was trying to decide how to phrase this.

I'm not publishing these in full because I'd rather talk about cool fandom theories I like instead of singling out specific takes I don't agree with.

The one thing I really feel like saying publicly re: TLT fandom discourse is that I think we could all benefit from, like, taking a step back from invoking Tamsyn when it comes to discussing theories or interpretations. I think the tone of the discourse and the fandom as a whole would be a lot healthier if we just agreed that we're getting a lil' bit silly with it, which is 100% what Tamsyn wanted when she started writing, anyway.

There are many fandom posts that EYE would find very compelling if they were presented as "This is a cool idea I had and the lenses through which I choose to engage with this story and these characters..." but often take the tone of "This is CLEARLY what the author means to do, listen up..." — with the implications that people who see things differently are getting a bad grade in lockedtomb reading, and then it stops being fun and it starts getting pretty hostile pretty quick.

I think a lot about Tamsyn's quote "I am writing for my younger self and it would be disgusting of me to try to teach her anything." That's the spirit in which I think it's most fun to engage with her writing. She's an excellent author and her books have a lot going on and many angles you can look at... but they aren't flawless, and she can't have accounted for all the theories the fandom is coming up with. I think we should stop trying to look at these books as though they are That Serious, and give ourselves more credit that maybe we're coming up with stuff the creator never considered, and that doesn't mean your stuff is less valid, but it does mean you shouldn't flex on other fans because you see it and they don't. From everything we know about Tamsyn, she'd probably be the first to say "It's not that deep, unless you want it to be."

For comparison, I've been in ASOIAF fandom for 15 years and we haven't had new material for almost as long and silly theories and renewed interpretations are flourishing every month, and nobody gives a fig about what GRRM was really trying to say because maybe the author's intention isn't the ultimate value of a work, and the author is dead anyway.

IDK. I think we should all get a little sillier with it. I've been guilty of some Not Silly in the past, though hopefully not much, but ultimately I'm here to have fun and so are most people. Especially since TLT is still ongoing, and many interpretations WILL get debunked, we're probably just better off now putting less stock on authorial backing to avoid disappointment later on, and to have more fun as a fandom during the #alectopause.

ANYWAY my askbox is always open specifically to get silly with it. I haven't hornyposted about lyctor sex in a while

[sciderman]

The biggest sin of the Deadpool movies is that now everytime anyone talks about them or Deadpool in general, there's always that one prick who's like "C'mon, it's Deadpool, you can't take anything seriously with him, he's purely comedic and a parody" and it's not even because the movie aren't serious at times, but because the fans of those movies usualy have the literacy of a sleepy old cat.

i think a lot of people consuming media have quite poor reading comprehension, but that's just the way the world is in any place you go! we're snobs. not everyone is snobs like us.

buuuut personally i don't think the lens that "you can't take anything seriously" with deadpool is an incorrect one, at all. i think deadpool should be irreverent and playful - and i don't think it's a requirement for deadpool media to take itself seriously. in fact, i kind of wish we had more deadpool media that actually committed to the silliness of a comic book character knowing he's a comic book character. i think maybe gwenpool does it more successfully than deadpool does - but i can't say that with any kind of conviction behind it because i haven't read gwenpool either - i just get the vibe.

i wish the movies were smarter, actually. like, if they wanted to go down the avenue of comedy and parody, man... commit. be smart about it. fact is they kind of want a heartfelt romance and a tragic hero but they keep puncturing it with meta jokes and really, really dumb writing choices that mean you shouldn't take it too seriously. so they kind of don't succeed at either.

i don't think you're meant to take the deadpool movies seriously. i certainly can't enjoy them without switching my brain off entirely –that's not to say it's successful parody. because it's not. the deadpool movies are dumb. they are dumb. they are not clever parody, like... the airplane! of superhero movies. they do very little to subvert the genre at all - nothing clever. just a wink-wink-nudge-nudge joke here or there to say "haha. we played into that trope. it's clever because we're pointing it out."

aaand they're not a meaningful examination on what it means to be a hero or what it means to be in love or the concept of nature vs nurture or overcoming your demons or yadda yadda any of those themes that they kind of flirt over but don't sink teeth into. deadpool movies are dumb. we can't give them too much credit. they don't deserve it.

i think sincerity doesn't have to always suffer at the hands of comedy - no, no. i think good deadpool content balances it somehow. the lego batman movie balanced it too. clever media can do both. the deadpool movies don't (imo), so i think anyone who says "you're not meant to take it seriously" are totally within their right. i say it too. the deadpool movies can't really be enjoyed without turning your brain off. i have to do it too. if i think on it too hard, i'm disappointed. they are not clever movies.

[lalacliffthorne]

why all genres are equal (imo)

allow me to interrupt our regularly scheduled program for a lil rant, bc there's something that's been bugging me.

I've noticed that recently, in certain bookish corners of the internet, a lot of people are back at the popular game of comparing book genres, describing some as less worthy than others, and talking down on, for example, fantasy as a genre or on books where there's smut involved - and honestly: it's getting old.

where does that need to prove certain genres as "less" come from?? the bashing of others for the silly lil books they write or read and that happen to bring a lot of people joy, the comparing of genres that all hold value, or the talking down on something a lot of people enjoy but others just happen to not like?

shouldn't we be lifting all the other lil weirdos up that are just as passionate about written word as we are? and at the very least accept their preferences as something that has the same value and right to exist, even if maybe it isn't our cup of tea?

cause here's the deal - and this apparently might be an absolute newsflash to some people - it is absolutely normal to not like something. be it a genre, a certain book series everyone else raves about, smut or no smut - if it just isn't your cup of tea, that's totally cool! *mimics mind being blown*

I know. what a revelation.

but - and here's the thing that seems to absolutely not get into some people's noggin -- just because you don't particularly enjoy or understand something, that does not mean that you have any right to belittle the people who do. it also doesn't mean that it is less worthy or valuable than the things you do enjoy.

which leads to my hot take number one: I don't think any kind of writing in a book is worth more or less than another.

so, for example, and since these two seem to be pitted against each other a LOT lately -- there are romantasy books with a whole lot of smut, and there are high fantasy books with a whole lot of world building (and btw; no, they aren't mutually exclusive). but, shocker: neither is better than the other! and neither is less of a valuable book, genre or piece of writing.

there are a lot of people that, in the same breath, like to compare the authors that write the massive books you can basically do weight lifting with, which naturally takes a lot of time, to authors that maybe publish several books a year, for example in the romance section - and then deem the latter as less demanding or valuable.

maybe those people should try writing and publishing about three books a year. maybe then they'll find that doing that - is still a whole lot of writing. a whole lot of plotting, typing, scheming and hustling.

which is basis for hot take number two: all kinds of authors do a lot of work, put a whole lot of heart into their stories and characters and I don't think based on genre, any can be deemed "better" than another.

while we're at it, I'm so over the implication that the people that consume "less demanding" books or books that contain, for example, smut, are "less sophisticated" for enjoying them.

not everyone has the time, capacity or ability to read 500 page long books. and some people just simply prefer a shorter book with differently built stories.

some people enjoy reading serious, dramatic fiction. others sweet, warm, "silly" romcoms.

no, reading smut is not a porn addiction. no, books that contain smut aren't worth less. and no, there is no reason to insult either the people that enjoy reading smut or those that don't.

so, hot take number three: none of the things you enjoy in a book make you less of a reader.

see that there's a theme going on here? good, cause there is.

stop judging. no genre or book or reading habit is worth more or less than others. and guess why.

it's because for every genre, every book, there is very likely at least one person out there who it means a lot to. who finds themselves in a story or genre, who feels seen and represented by it, who was helped through a hard time by it or continues to be able to escape with its help, either by diving into the page long adventures headfirst for hours and hours or by just reading a few pages to breathe.

which makes every single one just as valuable as the others.

so, listen up, people.

there is nothing wrong about enjoying any kind of genre.

there is nothing wrong about reading in any kind of way.

there is nothing wrong about wanting to read smut, there is also nothing wrong about not wanting to read smut.

you're no less of a reader if you enjoy certain genres or tropes, or if you don't.

you're no less of a writer if you publish certain genres.

and - no genre is less worthy of a place on a shelf in the bookstore, no genre is less worthy of being taken serious as a form of writing and expression and art than another. because every single one brings immense joy to a lot of people.

anyway. that's it. rant's over, back to fanfiction. 🖤

[fractualized]

what's your favorite form of batman? meaning, do you prefer the comics, the movies, etc? i'm really curious to know if you like any of the cheesy stuff, like batman and robin... famous nipple costumes... or if you like more of the serious stuff, like the original source material... i know you really like comics but when it comes to the ideal flavor of batman, what kind of story do you most enjoy?

For my favorite, I always go with Batman: the Animated Series, which feels inevitable for anyone who grew up watching it as appointment TV with obligatory commercials, but I've never done a poll. lol Even watching it now and noting its imperfections, it's the gold standard for me. The art deco aesthetic, the storytelling, the characterizations, you can really see how much care went into it and the respect for the lore. Not that I knew much more than the lore basics at that age— but I didn't need to, because it was a well-done show that drew me in on its own. And in terms of serious vs cheesy, it had a good balance.

And really that's my preference! I don't need Batman to be dark and dour all the time, but I also don't want it to be nothing but goofs. I like a story that has stakes and knows when to be serious and also knows when to lighten up. Bruce's costume shouldn't be the only signal of how he was affected by his trauma, but when his behavior turns shitty, it shouldn't amount to him just being a rageaholic. Joker should be a dangerous villain but he should perform and make jokes because he's a friggin' clown, like come on.

Not that I'm against takes that lean harder on comedy. Er, nowadays. Back in the day, I thought going too funny with Batman just didn't fit, and it should be avoided unless it was parody or fanfic. So I enjoyed Batman Forever, but Batman & Robin veered too campy for me, and I wasn't interested in the '66 series. I guess eventually I got a better sense of humor, or maybe it was batmedia as a whole seeming to get too gritty after the Nolan movies, but now I'm all for being silly with it. You can't ignore that you're watching a bat fight a clown forever.

Though I still want a comedic version to be, like, good. I've seen many episodes of Batman '66 now and I think they're great. Hopefully one day I can get around to watching the whole thing. I saw Lego Batman in the theater and was thrilled.

Batman & Robin… I still think is bad. Less because of the camp and more because of the plot and the takes on the characters. Another example is the Harley Quinn animated series. I enjoyed much of it for the first three seasons, but ultimately I had to stop watching because the serious/comedy balance was off for me. Too often it had these serious moments that would affect character growth, and then it would throw them away for a sake of a joke later on rather than… just making a different joke that fits with your plot, I dunno.

It feels hard to say that I "like comics" since they're such a mixed bag by the nature of an 80-year-old franchise. I am certainly not having much of a good time right now. 😂 And as a consequence of Batman being represented so many ways over the decades, if I said I prefer the comics over other iterations, would that really mean anything? … Well, I guess by saying that, it could mean appreciating the fact that there's been so many takes over the years and that the medium allows that flexibility, that it is like fanfic (or exactly fanfic) and lets someone new come in and say, "But what if it happened like this?" That is a conflict I've felt when enjoying and not enjoying comics. It allows for change… but that can lead to a frustrating lack of continuity, change that comes not from where you understood the character to be from previous runs but almost from wholecloth. Which is all to say, my appreciation for comic Batman is in constant flux.

I can't close out without mentioning Telltale Batman, of course. Enemy Within is the game that brought me back into fandom and writing. A fresh new universe with a lot of room for reinterpretation, not as weighed down by the source material as the comics. (And a heartbreaking batjokes relationship that I still haven't gotten over.) Obviously with the choice system, the tenor depends on how you play, but once again it's a story with stakes that takes the time to add some silliness, so it works for me! (And I let BTAS Bruce guide my primary playthroughs. Except for my first go at the end of Enemy Within. I know Bruce would let Alfred leave but I couldn't do it gaaaahhhhhhh)

[anartificialsatellite]

ADHD thoughts incoming:

I used to be (still am, tbh) terrified of forgetting to cite something or citing incorrectly or somehow otherwise inadvertently plagiarizing.

The solution to this fear is to be very thorough and very organized when writing which is something I, as a lifelong sufferer of ADHD who made it through most of my pre-college academic career completely flying by the seat of my pants, Am Not Good At.

So to compensate for a skill that doesn't come naturally and which I deftly avoided learning as a kid, I had to figure something out. One approach that is often taught to people with ADHD is to break tasks up into chunks, and this can sometimes mean breaking them into pieces that feel absurdly small. It actually works pretty darn well!

But it does feel silly, sometimes.

I think there can be a tendency to feel like systems you set up to help you or structures you use to organize yourself as a person with ADHD (or even not!) are a crutch or somehow make what you're doing not as serious or legitimate as someone else, because it feels like other people (whoever they are) don't do that or don't need to.

This isn't true.

Like, aside from the fact that everyone follows some kind of organizational structure when approaching a task, the way in which you've chosen to approach your thing (whether it's a paper or a manual task or whatever) ultimately doesn't matter for the legitimacy of the final product so long as you have done your work ethically and the final result meets the parameters it's supposed to.

Does that make sense? For example, I was given a little worksheet by a professor in undergrad when he was teaching us from the very basics how to properly write a history paper. It breaks part of the process down into really basic elements, and it feels on some level like a very simple and handhold-y system to use, because it was devised to help students who'd never written a real history paper before.

I still use it! I still use it. It works! It's a real basic tool that maybe a lot of people wouldn't need to use, but it's not like it's taking the work out of it for me. I'm still doing it. It's my research, it's my writing, and if I have to chunk out my work like a baby historian to feel confident and satisfied with it, then so fucking be it.

Sometimes the tools other people use work for you and sometimes they don't. Sometimes things you "should" be able to do don't work, or things that are meant to save you time and make your life easier don't. Another example: I manually format all my citations because I'm too lazy to edit the metadata in a lot of my Zotero sources so that it generates them properly, and even when it does I worry that it didn't.

Is it a little weird that I'm "too lazy" to do something that could ultimately save me more time and effort? Yeah, but I've found something that works for me and which I feel confident about, and that is what ultimately matters the most. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try new things, but if they don't work for you, they don't, even if they "should."

There are people who do this shit on the fly and don't need the level of explicit breakdown of a particular task that I need to be successful. But I'm not those people, and maybe you aren't either.

[goldyluna]

I like to mahe my favorite characters suffer not only in art, but also in words! I think it is a talent of mine to write angst...

Here is my take of Mandela Catalyst and Adam's pain. It may or may not be a part of bigger AU that I think about, but it is work in progress still!

Summary:

This was not what he thought would happen when he went down to this damned basement. He should know better.

Now he just wants the pain to stop.

Full chapter below

It hurt. It hurt so much his skin was melting and lungs were burning. Or maybe he was on fire, because it hurt. His body twisting and disintegrating while he screamed.

His mind was a mess. Messier than ever, he couldn't even form a proper thought. Everything ended in pain and fire. He shouldn't have done that. He should have listened to Jonah and maybe he wouldn't be here. Maybe his friend would still be alive. Maybe everything would be okay. But it isn't and won't be and he is in so much pain.

He wants to die, he has to remind himself about it. He wants to die, that's why he tried, that's why his blood is boiling and insides are twisting. He wants to die, but he can't. He can't. A blessing and a curse some would say, but he only sees it as loathesome irony of life. He got what he was searching for, even if he didn't know what he wanted at the time. Ah, how much he would love to stay blind to the evil. To be invincible. He didn't want to know anymore. He didn't want to be anymore.

But he couldn't.

The world is black in this little room he locked himself in, but he could swear that all he sees is red. Be it his imagination, alternates playing mind games or just blood. Anything is better than the mirror next to him that shows him his mutilated body, his long face and unusual blackness in his eyes. He never had a weak stomach, never avoided horror and gore images. But now... he knew, if his body wasn't already in a such distress, if his stomach wasn't already upset, it would be now with such force, he would retch.

He couldn't look at anything more than red and his reflection. Was it even him? Was this body really his? This voice, hair, hands and birthmarks. Should he even still refer to himself as a "he"? He was "it" no matter how it looked at it, how much it wanted to believe it's all only a bad dream. It or he...

He won't ever wake up human with its friends safe and alive next to it, happy and unbothered. He missed those times. It craved them. How much it would give to just look at Evelyn one last time, hold her hand, say he's sorry. How much he wants Jonah to be here with him, to joke and be silly and not serious at all. How much it wants to see Sarah's determined eyes. They all were as good as dead. Except for him. He. It... Fuck it. He was fated to suffer for eternity. Good grief.

Fuck.

He was in such pain. He could only hear his screams, cries and static.

Help me.

Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me! Help me! Help me!!!

He wanted out, but he couldn't move. It hurt.

It hurts... it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS!!

WHY DOES IT HURT SO MUCH?!

Please, make it stop...

He wanted to... end this. So, so, so much.

Why can't I die...

WHY CAN'T I DIE?

He won't ever die.

Was it worth the risk?

[onewomancitadel]

I have read a few posts here and there going around that are to the effect of criticising media literacy and consumption of fanfic, YA novels (read: hyperpalatable works) with the rejection of the canon which I think come close to a good point about the surge of what can only be called anti-intellectualism (a term unfortunately that has been ruined) but are asserted on an assumption that I disagree with. That assumption is chiefly that the way you cultivate your reading journey (especially as teenagers/adults) is on the terms of what is or isn't acceptable to read - which is not a thesis only put forth by (for the sake of this post) the 'pro-canon' crowd, but is similarly put forth by the fanfic/YA/romance/etc. crowd ('It's more diverse and this incentivises you to read it as a civic duty'). Interestingly both sides often fall into the trap of conceiving hyperpalatable genres as the good interesting brain candy books that you must read/or are the junk food you shouldn't eat and then there are the boring ones that require you to argue why the curtains are blue, and there are no emotional truths or stirring sensations - but might also be like green vegetables and should be consumed).

I still think it's coming from an inauthentic position and that is my chief problem with either sides of the debate of good books and bad books (books you should read for political, social, intellectual incentive). Certainly I think that the goal to understand 'literature' and the entire craft of reading and writing goes a little beyond what you yourself really want to seek out, but ultimately the most nourishing and most worthwhile endeavour is going to be discovering things on your own terms (What is your taste? What are your struggles? What do you value aesthetically... romantically... philosophically? What do you find pretentious? Why? Etc.). The false binary of good books/bad books means you may not value what you are reading because of some perceived characteristcs of, say, with fanfic - it's brain candy but not 'intellectual' - or with the classics - it's cerebral and therefore something you emotionally disengage from. This is seriously a sentiment I see on both sides. Fanfic is universally 'dumb', but the classics are 'smart', and the reason you read them is to develop media literacy/awareness, as opposed to something emotionally fundamental to the human condition lol - storytelling. (Side note: Yes, I am aware of the repeated sentiment that Dante's Inferno is fanfic, so there has been an attempt to legitimise the practice of fanfic in the canon. In terms of literary merit, I don't think this is the case).

I can see the security in embracing fanfic/YA/whathaveyou/romance as being 'dumb', or 'light' - 'let people enjoy things' - but I take major issue with the idea that entertainment which is lighthearted, or caters deeply to 'brain candy' or to the heart, does not carry actual craft or maybe deeper profound meaning - and is still on some level secondary to the 'serious stuff'. I'm relying on quotes here to tease out what I think are implicit assumptions I disagree with. What really offends me is the notion that lighthearted entertainment is simply dumb - to me these are low-standards.

In the reverse, the idea that the classics cannot move you in a 'brain candy' way - or that emotional disengagement is necessary in order to understand them, to reach a deeper intellectual engagement and to follow the proper order of literary criticism - is, once again, totally untenable to me. I do truly think there is a real problem in that people try to read 'the classics' and are put off because they simply do not expect to find an emotional world there or expect to be emotionally engaged.

This false dichotomy is very silly. What I think is even more silly is not cultivating your own reading journey by trying to find the things you care about and the things that move you and to understand that literary world you live in. The airs of reading one or the other (yes, nearly all the discourse I've waded through is one or the other) because of buried cultural sentiment or baggage from the annoying fans or that one bad teacher you had in English class or the time you tried to read Tolstoy and found him boring when he's One of the Greats (try Dostoyevsky) is annoying. Because one person proudly saying they refuse to read outside their own narrow world, whether it's fanfic or the canon, is annoying and stupid and makes me want to write a Tumblr post complaining about it. It really is, and almost always comes down to, trying to figure out who you really are and not who you are pretending to be. Lol!

There are really two contending issues here; the false binary of the canon and fanfic/YA/romance/lighthearted literature and the emotional engagement and brain candy or lack thereof and the discovery of reading that I think is more important than what you should be reading.

I really take issue with the idea that the brain candy/emotional engagement is something that is non-intellectual because it does a disservice to literature and also I hate posers!

[insteadofwritingmythesis]

I need to write my thesis so instead of writing my thesis i will write about this song that stuck in my tummy. Song is called "Stuck in a Sports Bra" by Mossy Rock. Before reading my rumbling you should listen it.

After couple of listen, i felt this urge to write about it. In surface the surface this is a silly tiktok song about sports bra. Which is totally cool. I am a huge believer of entartained by shallow things, not everything has to have meanings, we can enjoy things just as they are. And if you please you can just do that. You can listen this silly little song and continue your internet surfing. But i would like to deepdive little bit, risking being cringe. ( The word cringe doesn't exist in my language so using word 'cringe' is also cringe, for your information).

The song starts with an amazing comedic contrast. This girl with obviously classicaly trained voice (maybe she didnt, i don't know) sings about very normal, almost boring, situation with this very emotional piano. So it is already funny. Also it is very relatable; yes indeed, stranger on the internet, i also got stuck in a sports bra. She goes "you might just fit but then you are never getting it off" and in my mind it goes funnier. Actually rest of the song just gets more relateble and more funnier. I can't stop laugh. But the way she sing and the way she plays the piano you can't help feel emotional. I shouldn't feel emotional though, this is a funny song made for views, right ? I think everyone reading this piece already can see where this piece is going. Are you rolling your eyes and yelling me to just get to the point. Okey, i will get to the point.

To all of your suprise i actually think this song has deeper meanings. I don't know if this was the artist's intention. I go and check her spotify she has other songs in this style. I guess she likes making silly songs with emotional melody.

You can check her out if you want. Or don't, ireally don't care. Only thing i care is how this song makes me feel as a girl and then as a woman. As a girl you always feel stuck. Boys are also very welcome to feel like this but as a girl i only know me and the girls, so i would very like to talk about from girl point of view. So as i said as a girl you always feel like got stuck and you cam't get out. And the reason you are stuck in this tiny disgusting bathrom called life is because you are a girl. For fucks sake ( İ dpnt know what does this mean, i only used becasue saying fuck is cool) if i were not a girl i wouldn't have to wear this tiny bra.

When i was younger i would associate being weak, dumb snd everything bad. I was always a petite weak girl that no one take serious (me not having anything serious to say is not related). I hated being weak, being dumb, being slow so i hated being a woman. But i was a woman. Or worse i was a girl. So i was stuck in my worst fears. Like that girl stuck in toilet. She didn't chose to have boobs, i didn't chose to be girl. You might say well, she shouldn't have been fat. Then i might say having an annoying boobs is not related to being fat, and also being fat is not a crime you little shit. Having boobs are very intresting thing, once you are a little who wants to have boobs ( because being a adult girl is better than being a little girl no one listens. Everyone listens adults, no doubt) and second you have some fat tissue hanging out of your chest out og nowhere. Suddenly you can't run, you can't jump rope, rou can't wear clothes you like, you can't lay down, you get pain out of blue and you are just ashamed to exist. You feel like everyone is looking at you but you also feel like a narcissist to think anyone would bother to look at you. But lets say this girl in the bathrom is just fat. I would like to point out the only reason she is trying to wear sports bra is she wants to exercise. She is trying to lose some weight but she is getting punished. From the "this is what happens when i exercise " part we can understand this is not the first time she exercised nor the first time she got punished for it. She is ashamed and stuck in this disgusting toilet and she will never exercise anymore. She would rather sit on a couch and eat crisps. Because it is easy, comforting and sometimes the only thing you can do without hurting yourself or your pride. And it is such a shame because she enjoys exercising, especially cardio because it is good for her and it makes her demons go away temporarily. But she will never exercise aanymore because whenever she is got punished with pain and humiliation. A humilliation that is so big that you would rather dislocate you elbow and die here sweating on the bathroom floor. Humiliation of being a girl. She could have easily ask for help, cut the bra. But first of all this bra belongs to someone and they are kind of expensive. Also you are in such a vulnerable position right know, both physically and mentally.First of aşş your boobs are haning , you don't want antone to see that and second of all am is just gonna admit i failed being a basic human. No, no one wants that. I don't want that. I was already weak all my life. But as a girl you can't help it. This world didn't designed for you, and nobody informed how you should function. So you just try, try and try like fish stuck in a shore. So either you can die or sea can show mercy and some waves to save you. But do you want to be saved like that ? There is Turkish song by Teoman, it goes like this "Aşk kırıntısıyla doymaktansa tek başıma aç kalırım bu hayatta". It means; I would rather stay hungry all alone than survive with love crumbs. Even tough this lyric is fully about romantic love it fis for so many things.

To conclude this song reminds me girlhood and how much you misplaced you feel even though how much you try to fit. Maybe everything is so on the nose and it didn't need explanation. But i don't care because as like Sait Faik "Yazmasam deli olacaktım". This all i got to say about this song, for now. Have a nice day. At least better than that girl stuck in tiny bathroom.

[lightning-arias]

🍪 my favorite roleplay memory

🍷 a character i want to write but never made a blog for

🔥 my hot take about the roleplaying community

takes on the rp community as found here

🍪 Oh god, there's been so many, I've been rping for over 15 years now so it's really hard to choose. Honestly most of them have been those moments when I've just clicked with an rp partner and we've gone "are we bffs now???" and most of them I still talk to to this day!

🍷 There's quite a few actually! Polaris from X-Men(comics) Tsunade from Naruto Ahsoka Tano from Star Wars(specifically post clone wars and pre rebels) Raph from ROTTMNT Barbara Gordan from DC(Comics or Young Justice) J'onn J'onnz from Justice League(comics or show) and then a few of my original characters.

Some of the OCs were on my old MuMu that I didn't get a chance to rp much, but there's also a few that I haven't made blogs for. Also rping canon characters on main stresses me out lol I tend to want to rp them on Discord.

🔥 honestly I think a some people take themselves too seriously. They're snotty about people who don't format certain ways and they also don't allow themselves to be silly.

It certainly is fun to write really serious and dramatic threads, don't get me wrong, but it's fun to write out ridiculous scenarios and I shouldn't be seen as less of a writer for it. And like. I get that I as a person am more comedically inclined(gestures to years of improv comedy experience and the 2 recent comedy theater shows I was in) than some people, and other people are more dramatically inclined. And that's great! I love seeing people's different takes in writing. But I should not be seen as less of a writer because I like to be funny sometimes. I mean look at Sir Terry Pratchett.

Is this preachy and long winded? Maybe lol.

[theghostpinesmusic]

On Reading In Circles

So, I'm on sabbatical during the upcoming academic year. Technically speaking, this sabbatical runs from this coming September until September 2024. Accordingly, I'd originally planned to take this summer as a "normal" summer break, maybe spend a little of my free time formulating ideas (mostly while sitting in tents during rainstorms or taking afternoon hiking breaks perched on this or that high rock) and then dive into "properly" working on my sabbatical project starting in September. If you're a frequent reader of my word-dumps, though, you know that at least for the last few weeks, the wildfires, the smoke from the wildfires, the general weather, and now my own health have not really cooperated with this plan (the month before this one was AWESOME, though, it bears repeating). I have this fragile hope that September will be better for hiking, and that maybe I can take advantage of not having to teach in the fall to do some September/October/November backpacking trips, but that remains to be seen. In the meantime, I made a promise to myself that if I work now, during the time of year when I'm supposed to be taking a break, I can play later. We'll see how that pans out in the end.

What it means for now is that over the last two weeks I've dove (maybe we should change this to "diven"?) into a huge initial reading list of texts and essays relevant to the project as a way of getting my feet back under me as a researcher (the last time I really did serious research in the field was 2013) with the idea being that these texts will be the foundation that guides how I write over the next year and beyond.

Mostly by chance (though partially because I already own them and it's expensive to buy theory books), I've started by reading through a lot of the same books I read during my dissertation research, back in 2010-2012. In most cases, these are even the same literal books: I've found a ton of my old notes in the margins, brackets around relevant passages, complaints about the quality of coffee shop sandwiches, etc.

At first, honestly, this felt a bit silly to me. These books are not, generally speaking, short reads. They're extremely complex and time-consuming, and, in theory at least, I've already read them and internalized the core concepts (albeit a decade-plus ago): shouldn't I by reading new stuff?

The process, though, has actually been fascinating: many of my old notes are on concepts that I have significantly developed (and hopefully improved) my thinking on since the 2010s, if not exactly through new research, through conversations with my friends, colleagues, and students, and through just living my life (which tends to be filled with a significant amount of self-reflection, for better and worse). Lots of quotes I emphasized before now show symptoms of that sink-or-swim way you learn to read in grad school: plowing through 500-1000 pages of reading assignments a week necessarily forces you to speed-read, digging for quotable quotes instead of trying to (or being allowed to take the time to) understand the whole argument. It feels like I'm actually reading and understanding many of these books for the first time, in spite of my essentially being granted a Ph.D. for having read them "well" the first time.

And this brings me to the point of this latest of word-dumps, which only still requires an (incredibly brief) description of my current project as a setup.

So, in addition to some pedagogical/class development work, the main purpose of my proposed sabbatical is for me to have time to research and write a book proposal. What's the book about? Well, I'm not glad you asked! In (very very) short, the idea is to use the heuristic (nerd alert!) of summits and circumnavigations to explore how the humanities can contribute to the discourse around global warming. There are about a million topics that get caught up in this currently in my head, but essentially the idea is that summiting a mountain requires a series of epistemological assumptions about one's place in the world (experiences are linear, the point of life is progression and/or accomplishment, the natural world exists to be conquered and understood by man), as does circumnavigating a mountain (experiences are circular, the point of life is to learn through that circularity, things don't really massively change, but sustainability is possible, and natural world is a cycle or series of cycles that inescapably includes humans, etc.).

If you've read this far, you might see where I'm going with this.

If not, here goes: it popped into my head today, at the peak (get it?) of my existential crisis about whether or not I should be spending weeks rereading old books, that the circumnavigation metaphor applies here, too. That is, returning to texts after ten years can't be a waste of time and is, in fact, almost mandatory because of how much I've changed since then (since the last "circle," if you want to beat the horse to death). Of course there's more to learn. And skipping past these texts because I've been there once before would actually be against the basic spirit of the thing I'm reading them to be able to write (an argument for circularity and sustainability).

Whew. So, I'm sure that wasn't as fun for you as it was for me, but thanks for reading this far if you did. Expect more of these in the future as my brain slowly grows/dies from reading THE TOMES.

In the meantime, here's some music from today's reading session. If, by some weird chance, you're a fan of Outer Wilds, there might be some thematic overlaps here with what I was just writing about. Otherwise, it's just a nice song you can enjoy.

[bemylord]

ꜱ/ᴏ ʙᴇɪɴɢ ᴄʟɪɴɢʏ │ᴀᴘᴏʟᴏɢɪᴇꜱ

↳ characters: satoru, itadori, megumi, toji, nanamin, sukuna.

↳ warnings: it's fluff part, so there's no angst or hurtful things [some parts might be spicy].

↳ butler's remark: finally have dropped the last part of this angst theme.i don't know what kind of dr#gs i used when i was writing the last three.

↳ part one;

ɪᴛᴀᴅᴏʀɪ ʏᴜᴜᴊɪ:

he'd be very sad and angry at himself for screamed at you. he didn't mean to push you away because of his fatigue. as he recalled the phrase you dropped before leaving: 'i'm gonna cuddle with megumi-kun' this phrase goes on and on in his head as he runs into your room. he knocked first, hoping you're alone. he knocked again, but there's no response.

'my baby, i'm so-so-so sorry, baby.' he just jump to the bed, wrapping arms around your waist, pulling you closer to his body. 'no, don't cry because of me, i'm the worst boyfriend ever.' he kisses the top of your head.

yuuji will cry with you if you'd continue to sob your nose, burying your face as deep as it's possible in itadori's chest, unable to deny his necessity. he's comforting you in his arms, whispering praising phrases about you.

'i was a fool, y/n, please forgive me.'

'promise me you'll never scream at me like that.'

instead of words, but kissed your lips, nodded his head. yuuji will show his love and affection by kisses and hugs, holding you tight to keep you from running away.

'y/n, i love you.'

ꜰᴜꜱʜɪɢᴜʀᴏ ᴍᴇɢᴜᴍɪ:

you've decided not to leave but stay home, waiting as long as his malice calm down. you were waiting for him in the bedroom, still grieved by the last words. you know megumi wasn't serious - he hates being beaten up by todo or satoru, you also know that he'll be a puppy right after a bath.

he showed up in the room in the home shorts, aimlessly rubbing the back of the neck, breathing out what caught your attention.

'i shouldn't have let the anger gets the best of me, y/n.'

bruises and abrasions are coaxed on his upper body and face as it brings the pain when he sits on the bed. he again rubs the skin, nervous to ask you to heal him.

'i-i would like..'

'i'll heal you, 'gumi.'

he smiles, seeing you tenderly how you treat wounds. he thought you were going to kill him after the acuteness, but here you are, helping your lover.

'i don't deserve you y/n, you always have been so kind to me. i'm sorry for being a moron, my angel, i didn't mean it.'

you took him of guard by a quick, yet lovely kiss on the lips.

'i will make it up to you, i will change.'

ꜰᴜꜱʜɪɢᴜʀᴏ ᴛᴏᴊɪ:

you may think it'll take days or weeks for him to the realization of what did he do. you were a naive one by leaving the gold wedding ring on the table, thought he won't notice.

'i am not a servant or errand girl, i'm his wife!'

perhaps, you thought he won't sniff as you're leaving the house, silly. he has a perfect hearing to hear where you're going and what you left.

'what a jerk i fell in love for, had the misfortune to marry that...'

'to marry that?'

he finished your sentences, turning your body by your arm.

'need a woman to meet your needs, toji? i've had enough.'

his strong arm didn't let you a chance to leave the place you stand, only pulling you by the chin to look into the loving eyes.

'fool, you're my woman, my wife, and the mother of my future children.'

'regret?' he gasped into your lips before kissing them, nibbling lightly on your lower lip.

'i'll do anything to make you forgive me. should i ea-?'

'home, toji, home!'

'by the way, if you ever take the ring off, ohh. doll~'

ꜱᴀᴛᴏʀᴜ ɢᴏᴊᴏᴜ: [i think i was h1gh, no hate on me after]

i heard about the woman that have called her boyfriend about thosand or more times, so.. it's satoru. satoru has been calling you since you've left the house, maybe, you'd pick up the phone if you weren't be fury at your boyfriend.

you were walking in the park where gojo first confessed his love. your first kiss and something more than a kiss. that place you will always remember is the tallest and oldest tree in the park. noticeable and stately. as you came to the tree you heard someone behind you.

'you knew it's my place, y/n!' what? is that a touchy voice?

'whatever i'm leaving.'

'where do ya goinnng~~'

'home.'

'fine, i'm walking home too. take you home?'

'we live in the same house.'

'that's better! wanna watch netflix and chill?'

i'd say you're mad at him, but i'll lie. he's so funny and cute, how can you resist?

'don't act like a clingy, gojo.'

'you began first. ok-ok, i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i'm sorry.'

you had to gag him with a kiss because he would have continued talking nonsense. acting like a child. he lifted you by the waist, kissing you and whispering sweet phrases.

'i love when you're clingy, my baby, i was- i feel so bad due to the work, my angel. soon we'll be going on the mission.'

he lowered you to the ground, kissing you on the tip of your nose.

'let's pick some flowers and make a wreath, shall we?'

'we'll get arrested.'

'you can run, y/n.'

ɴᴀɴᴀᴍɪ ᴋᴇɴᴛᴏ:

you were taking a bath on your own, drowning in the tears - as you've mentioned you're overly clingy and vulnerable and nanami had had known this. he knew you could be sticky when you haven't seen him in a few hours - but does it badly? he knocked twice on the door, waiting for your response.

'darling, mm-' he hesitated as if you'll reject him. 'may i come in?' you only made a quiet mumbling sound, but it was enough for him to enter the bathtub.

he took off his suit, joining you. no matter how much you try, he will see your weeping eyes.

'i shouldn't have yelled at you over a hard day. darling, come to me, tell me how your day went.'

'not before you tell me about yours.'

you sat on his lap, massaging his sturdy, tired shoulders, helping him relax.

'taking a bath like that with you after a day's work is what i like best.'

he kisses your lips as your palms still find themselves on his shoulders. anyway, nanami doesn't want his future wife to cry over him - he'll be the best husband.

ʀʏᴏᴍᴇɴ ꜱᴜᴋᴜɴᴀ:

it has been weeks since you didn't interact with the king: neither you didn't come to his domain nor answer on his questions. when his sudden mouth appeared on yuuji's cheek, asking you to immediately come to his domain, you didn't feel the need to respond sukuna, irritating him.

you were waiting 'till the king will utterly be pissed off by your behavior, taking the possession of the vessel body to finally have a conversation with you.

'y/n, do something! sukuna has been so furious that i can hardly restrain him.'

'the king wants to see the stupid girl?' you crossed arms over the chest, letting out a sigh of relief - finally. 'i'm coming, sukuna.' you touches yuuji's chest to find yourself being instantly on sukuna's lap.

'you've been ignoring me for weeks, woman.'

'i wonder why? because i'm stupid and clingy?'

sukuna pulled the loose strands of hair out of your face carefully, so as not to hurt you with a claw. he cups your cheeks, making you stare directly at him in the eyes.

'i won't say it twice, so hear me out.' he kissed your lips with fondness, which was not characteristic of him. 'i'm sorry, okay?'

from now on, you can show off that the king of curses said sorry to you. be proud of yourself, 'till his eyes are cast dark hue, palms found themselves on your hips.

'i've been alone for days and days, y/n,' you could feel something raising underneath you. 'and why through all bastards you've chosen satoru?'

someone is jealous..

however, i have a feeling that there will be some sort of sequel...

tag my cuties <3

@monisi @herhappyplace @h3artfiilia @din0plushie @giaduuh @schleepyflocci @creammy0 @rmjace @whogonprayformee @wwholesome-vibes @blacckkwiddow @sivaneeee @deepcowboywerewolf @royaltyofwinterfell @bakugo1819 @electroniclightjudgeghost @alexganes @tonks221 @spn-obession @superbheropeachtrash @strwbrry-lia @sterieshinso @daynada @butyfigers @lonely-dreamer @adorenoya @fluffymarshmellowcat @cloudsinthecosmos @itsonyxpected @itspastellemons @kingdomblvck @lovliecs @doodledee-png @neo-lucien @fl4mepillar @musichime07

↳ back to the main master list.

[rivertalesien]

I need something new about Lexa. I need someone to talk about her. What's something we never talked about? Something we could have seen? Anything please give me anything.

I never really saw people talk much about the consequences of having the Flame.

Lexa was a cyborg with access to several people's lifetimes of experience and knowledge, including Becca's. There is no way she was ignorant of her people's history or the history of the world prior to Alie. She would have known about Alie, even possible she knew that she still existed. She should have known about the Ark, about anything Becca knew. Including (though this wasn't thought up till later seasons) the anomaly stone and wherever Becca went when she traveled through it. It's possible she or a previous Commander had the stone hidden away.

It's messy because the so-called "Dark Commander" would have known about it as well and would likely have used it. So another possibility is it was hidden by someone not connected to the Flame, maybe by Cassie.

JR wanted to make this epic scifi series but didn't even know how to use the material he already had.

Making Lexa seem ignorant about things like how leadership worked on the Ark (thinking they would have had a conclave-like system similar to their own) was silly and a waste: having Lexa "mysteriously" understand things the Arkers would think she shouldn't (because Grounders are all "ignorant savages"), up to and including Clarke's condescending behavior in season 2, would have been a nice toy to play with.

Instead of being shot, Lexa learning that Titus held Murphy and learning where Murphy (and Jaha) had gone and knowing exactly what it meant, that could have built up the story to something bigger, including the possibility of communicating with other communities around the world. No need to take off on impossible voyages to improbable planets and introduce a mountain of new characters who are just copies of all the other characters we've met.

Imagine Clarke discovering what makes Lexa different as they learn about another community that has survived, with technology, etc. Imagine Skykru deciding they'd rather go be with that group instead of hanging around Lexa's people. Lexa desperate for this not to happen as she knows those people and she wanted the Arkers help in educating and bring her people up and out of their dark ages.

I kind of hated the "royalty" aspect of the Commander's position. What if Lexa had never held with it and she's constantly trying to organize a more democratic system? Again, she has the benefit of the most amazing history book/AI in her head and has a lot of insight. What if she was constantly writing down these ideas?

What if Clarke catches her talking to "herself" in a serious argument or several, and everyone else is like, oh she does that, and no one knows she's conversing with the other Commanders (or the AI)? Maybe Clarke slowly catches on?

What if she had gone to Becca's home w/the others and was able to deactivate the drones (having a built-in wifi) and knew the passcode to the door?

Nightbloods should have been able to withstand intense electrical shock: would have been fun to see someone try to use a shock baton on her and she just shrugs it off before kicking their ass.

And what if Becca had brought more people back to Earth with her? What if she'd had time to pass around her nightblood serum to a few others and they joined her on the ground, maybe going off to find other survivors and that was how it got around?

What if, during the ceremony where the Arkers joined the coalition, when Bellamy and Pike and co burst in, Lexa learns they were led there by Echo (who has conveniently disappeared). Lexa would have ordered her hunted down. How did Echo know a way in? Maybe from that one time she used to work there and kidnapped a woman named Costia and brought her head to her queen? Would have been interesting to see *that* story in full, instead of following Pike on a path to settler violence and genocide.

Some people get put in charge of these shows and they have no idea where to go with them. And they get years of time to keep messing up.

Meanwhile queer artists like Eliot Laurence can't get three full seasons or a budget for what could have been a masterwork (Motherland: Fort Salem), but has to rush his massive story into 30 short episodes.

Someone like Laurence could have transformed the 100 into something bigger and bolder and much brighter. It's a shame how the CW just kept supporting trash.

[just-miru]

[Blueycapsules]

Phil Guy x reader (for @jinglesk0 :D)

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i searched some fluffy prompts and stumbled over this prompt generator - it has really adorable and wholesome prompts!!! :DD

i've got the idea for this one-shot from there :D

this is my first time writing third person point of view (or second, i have no idea - i am stupid), so i am sorry if it sucks ^^"

[tw: possible typos and/or other small mistakes | Phil might be a bit ooc since it's my first time writing something for him | fluff | one-shot]

[word count: 864 words | 4,645 characters]

[first published: 27.02.2022]

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morning kiss

it's a regular saturday morning here in Hurricane. the sun barely took its turn on the sky, yet it is shining brighter and brighter by the second. some birds can be already heard singing their cheerful tunes as the people of the town start leaving their houses to start the day.

on a beautiful day like this (kids like you should be burning in hell-), somewhere in a small yet cozy room, two people are sleeping soundly. who are these people?

well, no one else but you, Y/N L/N, and your wonderful boyfriend, Phil Guy, of course!

you've been together for quite some time, yet this is barely the second time you two sleep together in each other's embrace. it's ok to take things a bit slower tho.

shifting lazily under the covers, Phil is the first to wake up. opening his eyes, his still very sleepy gaze lands instantly on you, a sweet smile appearing on that usually serious face.

he's just so happy to have you. meeting you did change his life - even if just a bit, it did. you are the reason he wakes up with a smile every morning. his mood has improved as well! he's not as stressed as he usually is since he knows you're always by his side, ready to help him whenever you can - the thought of having someone capable that you can count on to be by your side anytime is, in a way, really comforting for this man.

he continues to stare respectfully at your sleeping form, gaze focusing on the small rays of sun coming through the window, gracefully dancing on your peaceful face. he blinks slowly a few times - ya know, just like cats do when they are comfortable around you!

he's just so content right now. Phil would give anything to wake up like this every morning, with you next to him.

as he follows the sun rays dance, his eyes fall on your lips - they just look so pretty and soft. still looking at them, a scene much too common in all his rom-coms suddenly pops up in his mind.

what if he woke you up with a kiss?

that would be pretty romantic, wouldn't it be?

he moves closer to you, trying not to accidentally wake you up. the bed is making small cracking noises under his shifting weight, but even so, he successfully got closer to you without disturbing your sleep or so he thought-

he quickly glances up at your eyes which are still closed, then back to your lips. taking a small breath in, he slowly lets it out, hot breath hitting your skin. his cheeks are redder than his weird hair horns at this point.

'come on Phil! you can do it!'

closing his eyes shut, kissy mouth on, he leans in closer and closer and then- he stops... gripping the blanket in his now sweaty hands. he starts trembling a little.

he tries to urge the courage to do it, but his mind is only filled with doubts and 'what ifs'

'what if they get mad?'

'not to mention the usual morning breath- it may not be very pleasant-'

'what if they want to sleep in just a bit more? i shouldn't wake them up just because of this silly little thought.'

'maybe i should just let them sleep... yeah.'

'there's time for kisses after they wake up.'

'...but what if it isn't?'

'what if-'

his anxious set of thoughts dies out as soon as he feels a warm hand on his cheek. finally opening his eyes, he looks at you - with your loving gaze accompanied by a sweet smile, you look into his reddish eyes. he calms down a bit, cheek hot under your touch.

giggling quietly your voice starts ringing sweetly into his ears.

"well, if you won't do it..." you lean closer, lips barely brushing over his now. Phil just gulps, a bit too much flustered. "then i will." and just like that you close the gap between the two of you.

Phil's eyes widen.

'oh my, oh my, ohmyohmyohmy-'

congratulations! PhilGuy.exe has stopped working!

he doesn't kiss back. he is just frozen in place. he feels you smiling against his lips. the poor man is so flustered-

as you're about to pull away, you feel him shyly kissing you back. one of his hands slowly lets go of the blanket, resting on top of your own (the one that's on Phil's cheek) - he gently caresses it with his thumb.

pulling away from the kiss, a blushy Phil is looking up at you, smiling shyly.

you peck his lips quickly before getting out of bed.

"what would you like to have for breakfast?"

"anything is fine. thank you, Y/N."

his gaze remains on you until you are out of sight. he waits a few seconds just to be sure before grabbing a pillow and screaming like a schoolgirl into it.

'this is way more better than any rom-com i have ever seen! ' he sighs dreamily as his gaze is now on the ceiling, the small event that has just happened playing over and over again in his head.

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it's pretty short, but i hope you like it! :D

i kinda start seeing a small improvement in my writing skills which is just aaaahhh!! :DD it makes me very happy! :D

what i don't like is that all of them seem to follow the same scenario :0 i mean, i am a sucker for cuddles and kisses in fiction when it comes to 'x readers' :D but it may get boring for those of you who are reading my works, and i am sorry ^^''