#because of my internal conflict with home as a concept

[lilacerull0]

do you ever think about the diagram of the door opening as a love confession because i am trying not to think about it and could really use some help

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

By David de Bruijn

Many are shocked, wondering how this could happen in the Netherlands.

To me, their bafflement is what’s shocking.

I grew up in The Hague, where real and abundant antisemitism, from epithets in the street to physical threats to the community’s safety, was part of our daily life. As a young boy, I vividly recall how The Hague's football hooligans—viciously opposed to Ajax, Amsterdam’s “Jewish” team—walked the streets under a banner reading “We’re hunting for Jews.” (Indeed, for my entire life, football stadiums in my home country have been filled with lurid chants like “Hamas, Hamas, all the Jews on gas!” and “My dad was in the commandos, my mom was in the SS, we like to burn Jews, because Jews burn the best.”)  

In high school, second- or third-generation Moroccan kids would point and hiss “Psst, psst, that’s a Jew, that’s a Jew!” as they passed by on their bikes. 

But most impactful were the myriad security measures our community had to undertake. Seen from the front, The Hague synagogue is not recognizable, two thick green doors presenting a closed facade to the street. Behind these doors are glass doors that open only once additional permission is given. All the windows are made of bulletproof glass. A permanent police post guards the synagogue. In Amsterdam, the Jewish primary school has even more dystopian levels of protection, hidden behind several layers of metal spikes and fencing. From the outside, the view of the school is entirely closed off. (Even as I write this, I feel uncomfortably conscious of not revealing any sensitive security details.)

Self-protection was a constant—and to me, natural—part of Jewish life. Leading youngsters to a summer camp in northern Friesland meant bringing a dedicated security team and, when possible, keeping quiet the fact that it was Jewish children gathering here. 

Violent, antisemitic assaults have become increasingly regular occurrences. In May, a student at the University of Amsterdam, a young man, was assaulted by a protester in a keffiyeh, struck in the head with a wooden plank. In August, a statue of Anne Frank was defaced—for the second time—with anti-Israel graffiti. Today, walking around with a kippah in the Netherlands is an act that requires bravery.

As the situation worsened over the years—motivating some, including me, to move, others to adjust, and so many to worry—one of the most painful aspects was the way the Jewish community was gaslit. Dutch society repeatedly told its post-Holocaust Jewish remnant—and itself—that “never again” was not merely a concrete promise, but a core concept of modern Dutch morality. However, the dominant culture of the country’s immigrant communities has proven manifestly hostile to that worldview—and to Jews. 

For the North Africans living in Holland, the dominant Jewish story of the twentieth century is not Auschwitz, it is Israel, which in their distorted conception is an illegitimate, one-directional criminal enterprise directed at an innocent population. Nor—and this is crucial—is this merely an attitude about a conflict. They believe it is the crime of the twentieth century, conferring ultimate guilt on the Jewish people. “Palestine” is a phrase felt to carry the gravity of “Holocaust,” grotesquely inverting the perception of the Jewish experience.

For Holland’s Jewry, this reality has been palpable for decades. Yet nothing—no politician, no policy—has altered this reality. In the aftermath of every single violent attack—as will most likely be the case now—the political answer has been a room-temperature broth of subsidies, youth centers, dialogue forums, visits to Islamic pensioners clubs, and interfaith dialogue.

So it did not surprise me when international media outlets, like The Associated Press and The New York Times, covered this widespread attack as if it was the unfortunate, but perhaps expected, result of the Israeli fans’ conduct before and during the match, such as reportedly taunting Ajax fans with inappropriate slogans. Further, the AP wrote, the attack followed a Palestinian flag being “torn down from a building in Amsterdam on Wednesday,” and the rioters were angry because “authorities banned a pro-Palestinian demonstration near the stadium.” The Times originally pinned the attack on differences over sport and on taunts, as “violence tied to a match between Dutch and Israeli teams,” and reported that “the tensions in the hours leading up to the violence” was in part caused by “one man [being heard] saying in Hebrew, ‘The people of Israel live,’ while others shout[ed] anti-Palestinian chants using expletives.” (The Times has apparently stealth-edited its reporting numerous times since publication.)

In other words, if all you read were the initial reports, you might think that the Israelis started it, or at least had it coming.

What the reporters and media fail to understand is that this was an attack on Israeli football fans, but not one carried out by football hooligans. The Ajax team is itself Jewish friendly—fans of Amsterdam’s Ajax are affectionately (and sometimes not-so affectionately) referred to as “super Jews,” and Ajax is understood as the “Jewish team,” so it would make little sense that Ajax supporters would attack Jews or Israelis for their ethnicity—even if they are fans of an opposing team. 

No, this was straightforward: According to the accounts of witnesses and victims, it was an attack by immigrant, Muslim communities against Israelis and Jews.

[lionhanie]

myung jaehyun ; voodoo doll

academic rivals to... crush?, childhood friends turned frenemies, jaehyun has feelings and in SEVERE denial

word count: ~1.9k

warnings: i curse like twice lmao, reader is shorter than jaehyun, jaehyun goes thru insane internal conflict because he’s coping w/ his newfound crush on u

this work is part of my boynextdoor as old 5sos songs series! ↳ if you want to listen to the song, here u go!

a/n: tbh this is one little self indulgent because i feel like jaehyun + this concept would respectfully Ruin my Life so…. voodoo doll fits the scenario well!

likes ♡ and reblogs ↺ always appreciated!

your families were close, having moved into the neighborhood around the same time. living next to a family with a son the same age as you essentially meant you would be seeing each other often; whether it was leaving the house at the same time to walk to school or being sent next door to return borrowed tupperware, it was safe to say that you were more than familiar with each other. 

it was sweet, really. the picture of you and jaehyun at your kindergarten graduation has been framed in the hallway outside your bedroom for as long as you can remember. jaehyun’s older brother used to treat you guys to ice cream after a test. hell, your families would take weekend trips together over the summer! even when you were young, your mothers always joked that it would be just perfect if the you two started dating, especially when your families trust each other already! and it would be so convenient too, being right next door and all. except, things didn’t work out as they had initially hoped. 

you were almost always competing with each other growing up -- who could get a better test score, who could get the most medals in a certain sport, who would get more votes at a class election; you name it. once, you made a bet on who would be taller than the other by the time you finished middle school; it’s a defeat that jaehyun never let you hear the end of when a routine check-up at the doctor told you that you were done growing. it was friendly competition for a while, until you both started taking the rivalry a bit too seriously. 

the tension at the dinner table was evident every time your families would join together for your monthly dinners. making sneer remarks towards each other, scoffing at the boasting of one’s achievements, ultimately resulting in a one-up battle that would always be shut down by the parents. it was just petty at this point. you really had no reason to feel so… negatively towards each other all of a sudden. 

“everytime you’re near me, suddenly my heart begins to race / every time i leave, i don’t know why my heart begins to break”

until one day, things are different for jaehyun. he catches himself looking at you from across the classroom longer than he normally does, eyes quickly darting away and cheeks slightly flushed when you address his very obvious staring. when it’s time for lunch, he finds himself sitting a little closer to your table of friends, his heart skipping a beat upon hearing your melodious laughter. when he sees you talking to another guy, he grips the notebook in his hand a bit tighter, a pang of jealousy ringing within him-- he dismisses the feeling and goes about the rest of his daily routine.

despite the apparent hostility in your friendship, you’ve never walked home without the other without good reason. making sure he got the both of you home safe was something jaehyun’s father encouraged him to do ever since you guys were in elementary school; it’s practically second nature to him. there’s not as much conversation exchanged nowadays, especially compared to how you two used to talk the entire walk home as kids, oftentimes having trouble stopping your giggles when you part ways to walk into your respective homes. 

he’s sitting on a bench outside of the school’s entrance, earbuds in as he waits for you to walk out the glass doors. a cool breeze flies by while he hums along to the song that had just come on shuffle. it’s a little strange that you weren’t out yet. it’s been over fifteen minutes since all club activities were supposed to end, and you never wanted to stay at school longer than you need to be. jaehyun contemplates going back inside to look for you, even going as far as getting up and throwing his backpack over his shoulder-- oh, there you are. 

“let’s go?” you finally walk out of the doors, fiddling with your tangled pair of earbuds. he feels a wave of relief wash over him, phew. he was worried there for a second. wait. why was he worried? it’s not like something bad could’ve happened to you; you were probably just talking to one of the teachers or something. he’s acting like you’ve never been a little late before. if anything, he’s probably made you wait even longer than he just did, and /you/ never seemed to think twice about it. what is up with him today? 

“give me those,” jaehyun says, referring to the earbuds you were currently struggling to take knots out of. he doesn’t actually wait for you to hand them to him, rather opting to grab them out of your hands, making you roll your eyes. he untangles the stubborn loops with ease, handing them back to you after. “wow, and no thank you? you’re feeling especially cold today, y/n.” he scoffs as he places his hands in his jacket pockets while he walks beside you. 

“and it hurts in my head and my heart and my chest and i’m having trouble catching my breath”

“myung jaehyun, thank you so much for helping me just now! what would i do without you?” you respond, very obviously sarcastic. “i’m exhausted, starving, and i’d rather not deal with your attitude again today, okay?” jaehyun watches as you plug your earbuds in and place both of them in your ears; you usually leave the one closest to him out to hear him better with the few sentences of small talk shared on the trip home. if he had puppy ears on his head, you would’ve seen them droop at the way you were completely ignoring him now.  he wanted to brag about the grade he got back on his english paper earlier, but it didn’t seem like a good time to do so. maybe you had a bad day. 

as you walk on the familiar route home from school, all jaehyun wants to do is crack a joke or make a fool out himself by doing something stupid-- anything that would possibly brighten up your mood a bit; except you’re focused only on whatever you’re listening to and the sidewalk in front of you. his mind is all over the place as he walks in silence beside you; what’s got you so upset? the exams coming up? surely not, you always seem to get higher scores than him with ease. is it the school festival? you’ve been stressing out over planning your club’s performance for a while... why does he want to know so badly? whatever it is, it’s hurting him to see you stray from your usual demeanor. 

“i don’t even like you / why’d you want to go and make me feel this way? / i don’t understand what’s happened, i keep saying things i never say” 

after dinner, jaehyun’s doing homework at his desk before he pauses to look out the window that faces yours, noticing your lights are off already. it isn’t too late, maybe around 11pm, but it’s definitely way earlier than your typical bed time, especially when finals are right around the corner. “i guess y/n had a rough week.” he rests his chin against his hand, internally debating whether or not to check in on you. it’s not weird to send you a text right? he’s just concerned, after all. 

to: my y/n sorry about earlier. are you going to sleep now?

“...are you going to sleep now? myung jaehyun, you sound like a freak, god. let’s just get to the point.” he mocks himself as he deletes his previous message.

to: my y/n i wouldn’t have teased u if i knew u were having a bad day :( need to talk about it?

“should i even bother apologizing?” jaehyun puts his phone down on his desk. why is it so hard for him to send you a text right now? picking it back up, he erases his message again.

to: my y/n u ok?  → sent!

“that should be fine, y/n can talk about what’s wrong if they want to. and i didn’t seem too needy… this is good, yeah.” he tries to convince himself that he crafted the perfect message literally 3 letters but okay lmfao, but he regrets making himself sound so nonchalant when, in reality, that is the last word he would use to describe himself right now. maybe he just needs to sleep on it. 

“tell me where you’re hiding your voodoo doll ‘cause i can’t control myself / i don’t wanna stay, wanna run away / but i’m trapped under your spell” 

jaehyun packs up his laptop and notebooks, arranging them haphazardly in his backpack before moving to wash up for bed. he’s a couple steps out his bedroom door, halfway to the bathroom, when he hears his phone chime three times. you’re still awake.  it’s almost embarrassing how fast he finds himself back in his room, eagerly opening his messages. 

3 new messages from “my y/n”! lmao yeah, life kicking my ass lately tell u more tmr if u want details :p  thanks for caring, jaehyun

thanks for caring, jaehyun. what? of course he would care. honestly, he’s offended; why do you think he wouldn’t care about you? he simply reacts with a thumbs up to your second message-- jaehyun hesitates momentarily, but he ends up reacting with a heart to your last message. he thinks you should get some sleep, you need it. 

now, myung jaehyun is having trouble sleeping. which is odd, because he normally knocks out the second he’s under the covers. his heart is practically beating out of his chest thinking back to your texts, even if it was only a couple words. it’s been a while since you two just… talked normally. it’s a sad realization, especially when jaehyun thinks about the years of history you have together. the thought of you laughing at his silly antics and hitting his arm playfully on your walk home, just like how you used to, gives him butterflies. it’s hard to ignore when he’s trying to rest. he’s searching and scanning every possible explanation in his head as to why he started looking at you differently now. he tosses and turns in his bed, even rearranging his pillows numerous times in a sad attempt to push his feelings for you out of his head and finally sleep. 

jaehyun could’ve sworn he hated your guts, but he can’t exactly explain why the “hate” started in the first place. could he have liked you this whole time? no, that doesn’t make sense… you know what, it’s probably some freaky magic manifestation stuff… yeah, that’s it. maybe a voodoo doll or something… because surely there’s no logical reason as to why jaehyun could possibly be falling for you after all this time. 

© lionhanie 2024 ; all rights reserved!

a/n: bye i think its so funny to think that jaehyun is just so unwilling to accept his own feelings that he blames it on LITERAL MAGIC looooooool silly boy i love him :,)

[lilacxquartz]

FIRST IMPRESSIONS / final part

choso × gn!reader

ao3 • masterlist • << previous part

summary: choso promises you safety, but you can’t help but feel like staying behind would invite more danger instead.

The entirety of Shibuya was overrun with chaos at this point.

The closer you got closer to the surface, the more you could hear the screams and cries of what was unfolding in the city and you couldn’t help and yet, you couldn’t help but feel lucky in a bittersweet kind of way.

That could have been you up there; suffering with the rest.

You were never supposed to be here, after all. Just a victim of your own ignorance and caught in the middle of something you still didn’t quite understand. You were just barely grasping the concept of sorcery but it was all too late.

You were dragged into it and unintentionally involved and now, there was no way out.

Except through him.

Choso stood right before you, still not too keen on letting you go. His mind warred with itself internally, trying to seek out the logic and reasoning behind setting you free. Realistically, he knew that this was an unsustainable pipe dream unless you were also entirely on board.

He still saw you as a beacon of hope of some kind; as someone who saw him for beyond what he truly was. Being half curse himself, he hated the idea that he was born partially from human negativity and hatred but especially with how he was, for a lack of better words, developed.

Settling on an idea, the area you were both in was technically secure. If you stayed right where you were, he could come back and collect you when the main danger was gone and you’d hopefully be intact.

“Stay here,” he instructed in a slight murmur. “I…I have to settle something, but you’ll be safe here. I’ll come back for you.”

“Wait,” your replied, feeling confused, “you’re leaving?”

Choso was just as conflicted as you were. He couldn’t take you to where he needed to go; it was too dangerous. At the same time, he couldn’t just let you go completely because the rest of the district was in shambles.

“I have to confront someone from my past,” he repeated again, “then I’ll get you out of here.”

“…Who?” you tried to ask, you wanted nothing more than to understand what was going on.

“A curse user called Kenjaku,” Choso revealed, knowing that you were just barely keeping up with him at all. “He’s the one responsible for all of… this. For me. He made me into this and he’s out there hurting people I still care about.”

You cautiously nodded, trying to understand. It wasn’t quite a world you were familiar with, but you could register the sentiment behind his words. People hurt people in ‘your world’ too. It didn’t surprise you that the people with certain… abilities as he tried to explain them to you, were abusing them.

“Please,” he added, gripping onto your arm as he tried to drive the point home. “Just stay here. You’re the only one who has ever made me feel human and I want you to make it to safety. If you want to leave after…” he paused to strain himself, finding the next words difficult to utter, “then you may.”

There was something unsettling that brewed within his tone, as if there was no room for argument beyond the command he gave you. You could only nod slowly as you parsed his instructions even if you didn’t quite agree with being stashed somewhere for who knows how long.

Before he left too, he pressed his lips against your forehead as a kind gesture. It wasn’t quite a kiss, but something about it felt possessive enough.

“You’ll be safe if you stay here,” he repeated once more, nestling you within the underpass, far away from the action. It wasn’t completely safe but it was highly unlikely that you were going to encounter danger this far away even if the entire district was compromised.

“Okay,” you nodded again, although you were unsure if you could truly mean it. “I’ll stay here.”

You watched on as he disappeared into the city; his figure fading off into a blurring silhouette. A part of you wanted to follow him just to see what he was taking about in the flesh, but you were too terrified to move all at the same time.

Being left behind in the middle of everything that was going on however, felt like torture. Especially as your own anxiety began to slowly overwhelm you. Minutes felt like hours and although he claimed that you would be safe if you stayed put, the distant noises within earshot did very little to comfort you.

You tried to stay hidden, just like Choso had asked you but it was becoming increasingly difficult to stay committed to your promise.

Hearing a noise a little too close, you swallowed down a painful gulp and slipped out of the hiding spot. Just in case. You tried to go towards where there was less bustle and noise, eventually walking yourself back into what seemed to be a woman.

You blinked at the sight of her. She was calm, composed and even looked a little annoyed at the sudden clash. Dark brown hair covered her face, just barely concealing desaturated eye bags, hinting at lacking sleep.

She hummed as her eyes glossed over you. “You’re not a sorcerer.”

You gulped, finding that your voice stuttered a little as you attempted to reply, “I-I am not…”

“What is a non sorcerer doing all the way out here?” she asked both you and herself, her tone of voice carrying a distinct calmness to it.

“I-I don’t know,” you stammered, trying to find the right words, “I just got caught up in all of this. I was going to a party, then I got lost and I met this guy who told me to stay here to keep safe but then I kept hearing things…”

The woman nodded as you talked, her eyes gradually narrowing as she tried to understand your partially incoherent rambling. “Alright. You’re a civilian who got caught up in this. Not to worry, if you follow me, I can get you out of this.”

“A-actually… I’m waiting for someone,” you protested slightly, feeling somewhat tethered to the strange man from before. You felt like you owed it to him to at least be within the vicinity, so he didn’t think you died or something similar.

The woman frowned slightly, not liking the sound of this. “…Who?”

“He called himself… Choso?” you replied.

“I haven’t heard of him,” she murmured, feeling some slight concern build within her senses. If it was a sorcerer from the opposite end, then she especially didn’t want a civilian to get involved with the wrong people.

“Oh,” you sighed in a slightly resigned tone.

“You should come with me,” she repeated once more, in the same sort of self assured tone that Choso did. “I’ll get you out of here. Waiting around in this place will only get you killed.”

Gulping once more, you nodded and followed her forward, attempting to ignore the gnawing feeling of unease that twisted in the depths of your stomach. Choso asked you to stay and even though you strayed slightly away, you had no idea who on earth you were supposed to trust out here.

You strayed a little too close to the woman as she navigated you through the quieter streets, meeting with a tan man with thick rimmed glasses and sharp cut hair.

“Got another civilian,” she gestured with the flick of her head towards you.

The man nodded. “I’ll see if I can get a hold of someone to get them out, but it might take a while. It’s hell out there. See them through in the medical bay for now.”

“Got it,” she said before snapping her fingers and getting you to tag along right behind her once more.

This time, she brought you towards a sort of makeshift medical area that seemed to be far away from the main battle. Sorcerers, or what you assumed were such, seemed to be treated for their wounds and you were sat down not too far away, jittering a little as she made sure that you weren’t actually injured anywhere.

“Where were you initially?” she asked, as though trying to gauge just what type of mess that you were caught up in.

“T-the station,” you replied.

Her eyes slightly darkened at the mention. Shoko knew from the briefings from her colleagues that the subway was dealing with transfigured humans as well as unleashed cursed spirits, so the very fact that you, a civilian, had made it out seemingly unscathed was… well, a miracle.

After what seemed to be like hours more, there was a strangely familiar presence within the area. You could feel that you were in trouble somehow and when you saw the man from before closing in on you, you knew why.

“Hold on,” Shoko interjected, as did the tan man from before, Yaga. “Who’s this?”

“Oh,” a teenaged boy with pink hair interjected, seeming oddly cheerful despite the state that he was otherwise in. “That’s my brother apparently, or something. He was misguided before, but now he’s on our side! He’s a death painting so he’s kinda like us but stronger!”

Shoko could only sigh, sensing that this whole incident was getting more and more complicated by the second. “Great…”

You tensed as the pale man closed in on you, his body quickly bridging the gap as he loomed over you. His voice was rough with worry, but he kept his volume confined to just a whisper, “I told you to stay hidden.”

Shoko narrowed her eyes as she watched, leaning slightly towards Yuji. “Hey, kid. What’s his name?”

“Choso, I think,” he replied.

“Huh,” she could only reply, wondering how on earth you got yourself involved with a death painting but chose not to read too much into it for her own sanity.

“I’m sorry,” you murmured out to him, feeling slightly embarrassed. “I heard a noise and got scared but then I found her and it technically worked out, so…”

“Do you have any idea how worried I was when I passed by the area and couldn’t find you?” he replied, not quite listening to you. “You were supposed to trust me.”

“And I do,” you tried to argue back, “but I got scared because I still don’t understand what’s happening.”

Choso’s expression grew taut as his fists clenched at his sides. He could tell that more than a few eyes were on both you and him the longer that he discussed safety matters to someone who clearly didn’t belong. It seemed as though Yaga was close to intervening, but Shoko prevented him from doing so, clearly curious by the turn of events.

“I believe you,” he sighed at last, his shoulders finally sagging. He didn’t want to cause yet another scene, blinded by his own lacking understanding. If he wanted to be more human and even be seen as such by you, then he had to recognise that irrationality in the face of fear was just a part of it.

Despite the slight audience, he pulled you into a hug in an attempt to comfort you, holding you close even in spite of the chaos that could still be heard raging just outside.

Choso knew that this would be an on and off limited thing, since his mission was not yet over but the least he simply couldn’t resist holding onto the very first person who ever saw him for who he wanted himself to be.

“You don’t have to protect me like this though,” you tried to whisper. “I think I’m safe now.”

His expression of serenity however slightly faltered, his eyes boring into yours as he attempted to keep you with him. He didn’t quite understand what you had meant and in his mind, you were close to abandoning him even though it was far from that fact.

“Do you want to go home?” he asked quietly again. “Do you want to leave all of this?”

Of course you did, he thought. Of course you didn’t want to endure this whole mess. How stupid he was to think otherwise—

“—no,” you said instead, catching him by surprise. “I want to know more about what’s truly going on.”

“Then…” he tried to find the right words again, his voice caught in the back of his throat, “would you please let me protect you? Please. If anything happens to you… I-I don’t know what I’ll do—“

“—okay,” you gently interrupted him, trying to calm him down. “I’ll trust you to do so.”

Choso then shuddered out a shaky breath, his body slacking some more as he finally secured a place in your heart, from what it looked like. Pulling slightly back, you felt a little awkward as everyone quickly averted their gazes, pretending as though they weren’t listening in on what to them, was a slightly bizarre exchange.

Choso continued to slightly shake as he took in his newfound responsibility; his body tense with protective need. He wasn’t quite sure what regular human life was like, but he wanted to protect you from the negativity that spawned from within the shadows—to perhaps even learn how to exist amidst the chaos as your hopeful equal—even if it was for just a short moment in time.

After all, how could he even begin to let someone like you go? He was glad that you didn’t want to go straight home, that you wanted to stay, because if he was being truthful to himself; he wouldn’t have let you go.

Oblivious to his spiralling thoughts, you leaned into him as he also did the same, enjoying your company in a rare moment of silence. He would have to let go soon, to carry on with protecting humanity from an ancient evil keen on carrying out its plans, but that didn’t mean that you would be very far.

Choso exhaled slowly, feeling a heavy weight slowly be lifted off of his shoulders as he peeled himself away from the hug you gave him.

It was a brief feeling that he felt from you, but for once, he felt peace within your arms.

Finally, he felt truly human.

And that was enough to keep him going.

And hopefully one day, he would return to you.

[lcandothisallday]

Jeremy concepts: Jeremy sees you at a pickup game and shows off to flirt

A Shot Worth Taking - Jeremy (WMCJ) x f!reader

Part 1 - Meet Cute

note: this started as a concept (that’s why the writing is very unprofessional lol) but the idea has sparked an idea for a series

warnings: none

series masterlist!

no because imagine you and your girl friends are there because your friend vanessa is supporting her man while he plays a different game, and you're just sitting there on the bench slightly bored and scrolling through your phone.

but then jeremy sees you and his breath gets caught in his throat--your beauty just stopping him in his tracks completely. and he glances down at his outfit--specifically at his wacky sandals and its the first time he feels a bit self-conscious so he KNEW he had to step up his ball game if he wanted to impress you even an ounce.

kamal notices jeremy's internal conflict and he follows his line of sight and sees you sitting there which causes him to smirk. "finally considering your god awful outfit choices?" he teases the curly haired man. Jeremy scoffs and shrugs him off nonchalantly. "fuck off" he mutters. "we gotta win this pick up," jeremy mumbled.

kamal begins laughing before he smirked, his intrusive thought winning. "AYO!!!" he yelled out towards you, causing you and your home girls to look up and pay attention to the group. immediately Jeremy's eyes widened and he smacked kamal. "man what the fuck are you doing?!" he exclaimed.

"getting her to pay attention," kamal responded. "now pull up and work your magic," he mused, moving towards the middle of the half-court to begin the game.

jeremy groaned and sluggishly followed, hoping you didn't catch on. but the thing is--you did catch on. after kamal had shouted for your guys' attention, you were intrigued, a playful smile on your lips.

"oh my god," Vanessa exclaimed. "what the hell is the white boy wearing?!" she laughed. you cringe playfully but you can't help your giggle.

"its not...that bad" you laughed. "I wonder if he's any good."

your other friend destiny scoffed. "looks like he was dragged from an organic smoothie shop to play in the pick up...aint no way this white man can jump."

as the game starts, you lean forward, resting your elbows against your knees as you and your girls watch intently. jeremy nervously glances you once more before he laser focuses on the game.

you observe as he runs around the court, effectively working with kamal before he approaches the 3-point line for the first time and easily sinking the ball into the basket. your friends gasp in shock and all you can do is grin. jeremy had a proud and cocky grin evident on his face, before he turned, made direct eye contact with you, and confidently winking your way, causing you to blush madly.

destiny instantly caught on and playfully shoved you in disbelief. “the white boy is into you!” she laughed. you go to deny and she scoffs. “don’t try to deny that shit! own it babes!”

“i cant lie…he’s really cute,” you breath out, feeling your face get hot at the confession. you all continue watching as jeremy puts on a record show. he was unbelievably good and extremely funny just from what you overheard him say to the other team.

“oh he’s definitely showing off to get your attention,” vanessa points out after a while with a smirk. “i say you shoot your shot after the game…maybe you need a white guy after the shit show you experienced with that lebanese guy that did you dirty.”

“ugh don’t remind me,” you shutter.

jeremy and kamal were huffing as they stood in front of the other two guys, effectively waiting for the pay out with smirks on their faces.

“pay up bitch,” jeremy mused cockily, his right hand held out while the other held onto the basketball.

the guy whined as he pulled out the bills and handed them over. “you’re gonna get beat up one day with that strategy,” he muttered sourly.

jeremy could only grin. “pleasure doing business.”

“nice game,” he hears someone say, causing him to swing around to face the person, coming face to face with you. he grinned even wider if possible.

“hey,” he breathed out.

“hi,” you smile. “you were really impressive…i cant lie—me and my girls didn’t think you’d play that good,” you admit shyly.

jeremy licked his lips and looked at you with amusement. how the fuck did you manage to be even prettier up close? “i played at gonzaga—”

“yeah i figured with your knees,” you replied, causing him to smirk. “so you paying attention huh?”

you scoff playfully. “how can i not when you’re so obviously trying to impress me,” you flirt back confidently.

Jeremy grinned. “how can i not when such a pretty girl is in the stands watching me?” his comment makes you blush. “im jeremy by the way.”

“im y/n…”

“would you maybe wanna grab dinner sometime?”

[imperiuswrecked]

Here lies Namor. Invader. Avenger. International Terrorist. - Namor (2024) #1

I am Namor. The Terrorist Propaganda says I have issues. Don't trust the Terrorist Propaganda. - Bucky Barnes: Winter Solider (2014) #1

You know what annoys me about Aaron's writing, where is Defender? Namor is part of and actually is the instigator in creating Marvel's The Defenders, the first trio called Titians Three consisted of him recruiting Hulk & Silver Surfer to aid him in stopping humans from hurting the Natural World in The Sub-Mariner (1968) #34. This would later spin out into Doctor Strange recruiting Namor, Silver Surfer, Hulk, and later joining them Valkyrie for the main and first wave of The Defenders. A team made up of outsiders who defended the world from supernatural threats. Namor is literally a founding member of (in my very strong opinion) the best modern team he's ever been on.

Yes, he's Namor the Avenging Son, but he was only ever called Terrorist by his enemies. Namor wouldn't think of himself in that way, he'd call himself a Defender, a Protector of his people, of the seas, his home. If Aaron means Invader as in he was part of the Invaders team then that also is a defense because he and the Invaders were fighting in WWll.

Namor knows the humans see him as a threat and for the most part he doesn't care if they label him as a monster because he's always had this strong belief of defending his home and people, he worked past his hatred of humans to help them all the way back in the golden age, but time and time again the humans do something that he has to respond to.

If you ask me for 2 panels to understand Namor in a nutshell then it would have to be;

The Defenders (1972) #53

Sub-Mariner (2007) #4

He's actually so easy to understand if people actually took the time to read his freaking comics. He's complex yeah, but that's what makes him so interesting as the first comic Anti-Hero!

Aaron focusing on Namor's outsider status isn't something new, it's been explored in his comics a lot of times. What really frustrated me was back in Avengers (2018) #9 Aaron had the chance to set up Namor to combat Captain America in terms of ideology of what is right and wrong, how is the defense of his homeland wrong? how is resistance against oil drillers, and poachers, and corporate greed, and polluters, and giant space robots falling and crushing his city and people wrong???

Human Laws have always been in favor of Humans, not the Atlanteans, not the Sea. Instead of exploring the concept of Namor being a Defender of his home and his people, Aaron constantly labels Namor a Terrorist. The he makes Namor want to atone for the wrongs he's done (never specifying exactly which ones, just a general "crimes against surface humanity") while never addressing or exploring the wrongs done to him by the humans/surface world!

Even now Aaron sets up Namor for conflict under the sea, and states it's for the best interest of the human world that their shipping lines and cruises be uninterrupted by the "shrieking blue skinned warriors who've invaded their coasts". Basically it's "We humans don't care if the Atlanteans are suffering so long as they suffer in silence and don't bother us or disrupt our money & lives".

Aaron writes in Avengers that Captain America offered aid to help the Atlanteans, but it's Namor who's rejected it, why would he accept help from the people who constantly hurt his people? Why would Namor ever trust them when they've broken his trust so many times in the past? Humans make promises and then break them all the time. Why should Namor ever accept the crumbs they deign to give him in return for obedience and silence so the humans can keep doing whatever they think is right? Why is the Surface World more moral and more right than the Undersea World? It's Namor's land, it's his home, they broke his laws, they broke his home, his people, his seas.

I've always said the biggest obstacle and mistake writers often encounter when writing Namor is they come at him from a very surface world mindset, where the humans are right and Namor isn't. Namor was never meant to be a champion of humans, but of the Atlanteans, the Seas, and all it's creatures.

I could not care less that you are breaking the Laws of Man. What you do here violates the Law of Namor. And thus you shall now endure Namor's Justice. - Defenders (2012) #1

Namor being seen as a Invader/Terrorist began back with his first fight against The Human Torch in Marvel Mystery Comics (1939) #8, Jim was championed as the Hero of Humanity, while Namor was labeled as Public Enemy No. 1. and even now 85+ years later Namor faces persecution for doing what he was raised to do all his life, be a king, be a protector of his people, take justice and vengeance for the wrongs done against his home and people.

Aaron wants to focus on Namor's outsider status of being born half human/half atlantean. He's already shown Namor being bullied and nearly killed as a child for being born different by his people, but that isn't anything new, that's been canon that Namor is an outsider among humans and atlanteans, it's canon that the Atlanteans are just as racist as the humans, but often they're framed as worse than the humans.

One comic reviewer questioned if Aaron is making statements about the current political climate but honestly anyone who reads Namor comics can see these themes, the tensions among atlanteans and humans, have always been there. What remains to be seen is if Aaron can actually deliver on some good writing.

[kn-1013]

i know i've been on my anti-modern AU propaganda lately and it's just because i've been delving deeper into the sally face ao3 tags and i just keep finding them over and over. it's frustrating because there are a lot of really interesting concepts out there that would fit really well and make for a genuinely really interesting story in the 90s, but they get thrown off because the author doesn't know enough about the 90s to write for that time period, so they make it into a modern au instead. there's nothing inherently wrong with that, and i think there's room for modern aus to be done well here, i even have my own half-serious modern au, but i do think you often lose part of what makes sally face special when you turn the story into any other kind of contemporary love story/horror story/etc where all the characters just have ~iphones~ and use ~snapchat~ and all these things.

like, the 90s was not some kind of alien planet, and a vast number of the problems that you're solving with smartphones can be worked around very easily with just a bit of research or thought. long distance walkie-talkies, pagers, and PDAs were all (though sometimes expensive) perfectly capable contemporary technologies for talking to people when you are not physically with them. in fact, a lot of the abbreviations and slang we use over text right now was developed by young people in the 90s using pagers to talk to their friends. PDAs were a bit more out there in the 90s than they were in the aughts, but it's still completely plausible for henry in particular to have one, considering he already owns a home computer, which was not at all ubiquitous in the 90s. considering the apparent financial limitations that he and sal live under (it's never stated explicitly, but i mean, they live at addison's, they can't be in a great financial situation) and how insanely expensive computers were back then, it's more than likely that henry's job requires a home computer of some sort, meaning that a PDA would probably be incredibly useful to him if he were away from it, because there's no way in hell he's getting himself a luggable or another kind of early laptop to bring with him, that would've been too expensive.

and that's ignoring the fact that so many situations where two characters are apart form each other but need to communicate could just be fixed by rewriting the plot so that they can meet in person. i know that's not what people wanna hear because rewriting sucks, but you can find a lot of reasons for characters to meet each other randomly or to have reasons to meet up later if you give it a bit of problem-solving. part of what makes the pre-smartphone era interesting to write for and so optimized for horror, and probably a big reason that gabry chose this time period for the story in the first place, is the level of disconnection between each character in the story BECAUSE they don't have things like smartphones. having to work around this technological limitation is part of the fun, because you get a very enjoyable push and pull of closeness vs. disconnection between each character.

this is great for alienating ash, the only one who doesn't live in the apartments (except for neil), and causing her internal conflict about her relationships with the rest of her friends, especially as the story progresses and they start discovering more shit about the cult, and her instincts are to call the cops because she's a lot more normal than her friends are. or, it's good for alienating travis, who also doesn't live there and is far more isolated than everyone else (more on that next), or for creating an unhealthy and codependent relationship between sal and larry, who, with the walkies, are the only two in the friend group who DO have semi-instant access to each other all the time--all of which are plot points i put into my writing.

and if that's not enough, think about the implications for travis's character in particular. his father is a preacher, and a huge talking point of christian extremists in the 90s was that things like television were evil and demonic in some way. they campaigned against these things heavily. with the kind of person that we know kenneth phelps to be and the way many technologies we take for granted today, including TVs, were still being adopted by older generations, it's not out of the question at all that travis doesn't own something like a TV or a VCR, putting him even more out of the loop with what other people his age are doing than he already would be, having approximately 0 friends. he doesn't know what DND is, and he doesn't know how to look it up because he's not familiar with computers or the internet, he just knows his dad thinks it's demonic, so he steers clear of it.

the intention of cult leaders like kenneth is to keep their victims as isolated as possible, and not owning a TV, VCR, home computer, etc, is a great way to keep travis and his sisters isolated and disconnected from their peers, and therefore more connected to the cult, and it's a lot easier to justify not owning these things in the 90s, where the story already takes place, than it is if you're writing a modern au. a modern au for this situation would require all kinds of technological workarounds to make sure that travis owned a phone but couldn't do anything his father didn't want him doing on it. he's the kind of father who would go through and monitor his kid's texts, he wouldn't just let travis have snapchat or whatever, but i digress.

i know i'm just doing my petty bitching and people can do whatever they want however they want to, but i really do feel like there's a huge piece of the story that is lost in turning the sally face story as it is into some kind of modern au, and it's pretty unfortunate to me that people seem to think that the 90s was such a primitive alien world of incomprehensible technology that they don't want to write for that time period at all. it's really not as terrifying as it seems, genuinely. a surface level understanding of the era's technologies would be straightforward enough for anyone who wasn't there to write something perfectly coherent, if lacking in specific cultural/technological details that nobody but me cares about because i have autism.

if you're a sally face fan reading this and you struggle with writing for the american 90s because you weren't there, go look up pagers (also called beepers) and PDAs (which are basically early pocket computers) and how they work. ask older family members if or how they used them. go look at the different kinds of home computers of the era from companies like packard-bell and IBM. learn what a pentium III is/was, or what it means to be X86 compatible. look at the history of the CD-ROM, and how when it was invented, it could contain so much data that consumers had absolutely no idea what to do with them until people started putting video games on them. go watch cathode ray dude, LGR or techmoan on youtube.

go learn things about this era, it's good for you and you will have a lot of fun, even if you're not like me, i promise, and your fanfiction will be better for it. please learn about this era. take my hand. we can go to beautiful places together.

[ninjapotatohead]

Let's say you were taken back in time to redo Sonic Prime. You have to keep the same theme (Sonic in multiverses where he never existed, has to remake his reality) but aside from that you have a relatively large amount of leeway to do what you want, keeping things in a TV format of course. What is your plotline through the series and the character arcs you'd do?

Well, obviously, make Sonic... well, not a childish jackass. Lol

But as far as what else I'd do or what direction I'd take the show? Well...

• While I'd still have the Paradox Prism shatter in the ensuing battle between Sonic and Eggman (it is the inciting incident after all), I would instead have Sonic breaking it be an accident; having it shatter as a side effect of him and Eggman fighting over it.

• I'd also downsize the Chaos Council immensely, mainly because it never made sense to me why Sonic's friends had Shatterverse counterparts in each dimension, but all of Eggman's are just confined to New Yoke. You know, make it so that each Shatterspace has an Eggman to go with it as well. This may tie into my next point, but I'd have the Chaos Council start off with just one version of Eggman, and MAYBE have the other hypothetical Shatterverse Eggmen come together and join forces so they become the big bad later in the show. I always found Nine uninteresting as the main antagonist of the entire show, tbh

• If I were absolutely required to keep the narrative theme of Sonic learning to value his friends a bit more, I guess I would run with the idea of each of the Shatterspaces having a version of one of the main cast as its antagonist, so that if and when Sonic goes to get a better understanding of their problems, he's one step closer to understanding the friends he has back in his home world. And I think the show was going that route initially (Thorn Rose for the Boscage Maze, Dread Knux for No Place, Nine Tails for New Yoke), but I feel they didn't really go all the way with that concept; I mean, there aren't even Shatterspaces where a version of Rouge or Big are the antagonists, so I'd also formulate new Shatterspaces centered around them and what problems they might have.

• Shadow, for the most part, I'd keep unchanged. However, I'd change his and Sonic's conflict to revolving around something else entirely (since I'd be rewriting Sonic's character here).

• I would stay true to Sonic's character and have him realize through the time he's spent in the Shatterverse that the Shatterspace counterparts of his friends... simply aren't the friends he has back home; sure, they may functionally be manifestations of the sort of internal struggles and various problems they themselves face, but they're ultimately completely different people (complete with their own personalities and wildly different histories).

That's about all I can think of off the top of my head.

[astrologicalsstuff]

Best parts about the worst placements

Signs in their debilitation:(

Sun in libra

These people can be so social. You are the mediators. I don’t know a lot of libras but from my experience they always seem to better the lives of the people around them. These people really put their all into fostering their connections with people. They can be so funny and truly caring.

Moon in scorpio

These people are great listeners. People who ask questions and genuinely want to know the answer. Attentive and determined. This placement wants to know everything about the people in their life and will know when somethings up just because they know you and nothing gets passed them. Scorpio moon can also be protective over their loved ones. Will stand up for you. They won’t shy away from the ugly stuff either, they want to know the depths of you and can be completely non-judgemental.

Mercury in Pisces

These people can be geniuses. These people are known for the way they think outside of the box for better and worse. True visionaries, people who come up with abstract concepts that nobodies ever thought of. Can be artists and poets but also see the world in a unique way and can be good at maths and sciences. Open minded in a way where they don’t deny anything off of not knowing the full context. The pace of these individuals minds tends to be different than the people around them which may often times make them feel like they’re incapable but these people can be so witty.

Venus in Virgo

This placement can know their worth and makes a great friend. Eventhough this placement usually indicates low self esteem they tirelessly work to better themselves and want a partner that reflects this development. This placement can make for the most beautiful people because of the amount of detail they use when taking care of themselves. This sign won’t settle for less but won’t take you for granted either. They may not be the most openly affectionate but will literally do anything for the person they love. These people can easily stay out of drama because they most likely think way too much about it before they get with someone. This usually goes one of two ways. These people can be very innocent and care very much about sex and embody the virgin archetype or the complete opposite and be total sex addicts who are quite freaky. Best gift givers because they know people so well. They really focus on their partners and remember details. They genuinely seek to improve the lives of the people in their life and don’t ask for a lot in return.

Mars in cancer

Mars here can make a very non confrontational person. Mars can also show the strength of your enemies so with this placement is honestly pretty trusting in people. They love to take care of people and will always support the underdog. These people can almost always see your side of the argument as well which makes it harder for them. Arguments are rarely diminished as this placement can depict a lot of devils advocates, but their frustration probably comes from their internal conflict. I think this placement normally gets frustrated with other peoples inability to give them the same respect. Cancer mars understands why your mad and takes that to heart but hides their feelings so it doesn’t invalidate yours. People don’t understand how much patients this sign actually has. They are known for their emotional outbreaks because it builds up a lot over time. This is where the build up happens they can feel unheard or unappreciated. This placement has a nurturing instinct and really cares about your feelings. And their biggest enemy is probably in the home life probably the mother. I’ve seen a lot with this placement a significant care taker(mother) who would just get more mad with any kind of response so these natives learned to respond with silence. Sometimes instead of getting mad these placements will just cut people out of their life. Can be very conflict avoidant.

[lostyesterday]

In honor of finishing my first rewatch of Voyager, here’s a list of my favorite episodes (more below the cut because this got incredibly long):

Eye of the Needle: I love how this episode captures the early-Voyager optimism and hope that a lot of the crew feel, and the dashing of their hopes – made more devastating than in later episodes because it’s one of the first times there’s a chance of getting home.

Dreadnought: Both an incredibly tense, heart-pounding episode and a great B’Elanna character study. I love B’Elanna’s interactions with the AI so much and her desperation to undo the mistakes she made in the past.

Deadlock: This is such a fun sci-fi concept, while also being surprisingly emotional. I love Janeway interacting with herself so much, and the terrible decision she has to make.

Resolutions: Everyone talks about this episode for the Janeway and Chakotay interactions, which I absolutely do enjoy, but for me, the real strength of this episode is how it also provides a lot of depth to other characters – particularly Harry and Tuvok. This is probably the episode that cemented the Voyager crew as my favorite crew in Star Trek.

Worst Case Scenario: I just find this episode so fun, and I think it’s genuinely really well-structured narratively. I love the alternate-reality story within a story idea. Mostly, all of the character dynamics are incredibly fun – especially those with Tuvok.

Scorpion: Obligatory inclusion as the Seven introduction episode, but I genuinely think Scorpion is one of the best Borg episodes in Star Trek, and a great way to introduce the Borg to Voyager. The plot is incredibly engaging, and the central conflict between Janeway and Chakotay is compelling.

The Gift: A more character-focused continuation of Scorpion, so obviously I love it. Both the Seven and Kes storylines in this episode make me very emotional, and the contrasting between the two throughout is so interesting. I also love the incredibly turbulent beginning of Janeway and Seven’s relationship.

Year of Hell: I’m sorry to be boring, but this is probably my overall favorite episode of Voyager. It’s fundamentally just an excellent story, and I always love to see the darker and more desperate side of Janeway, and of the rest of the crew too.

One: I have a weakness for stories about characters stranded alone and having to fix problems by themselves while struggling with their own inner fears. This is a great exploration of Seven’s perspective, and a very engaging story.

Hope and Fear: A pivotal episode for Seven, and for Janeway and Seven’s relationship. Seeing Seven finally turn away from the collective and admit that she never wants to go back is so good.

Night: This is the episode that, to me, most deeply captures the common feelings of despair and hopelessness that pervade the middle seasons of Voyager. I love how this episode truly captures the emotions of the crew. It’s also a pivotal episode for Janeway – all of the internal doubt and guilt finally coming to the surface.

Timeless: Just a truly iconic episode – as close to perfect as a Star Trek episode can get. I stand by my opinion that the opening scene of the episode is the single best intro to any piece of Star Trek content. The whole episode is terrifically paced, each scene engaging and filled with emotional weight. It’s without question the best Harry episode – I love older, jaded harry so much.

Counterpoint: This is another episode that I find incredibly fun. The mounting stakes and the manipulation games – the constant question of who trusts who and who is lying. The ending is one of Janeway’s most iconic moments.

Dark Frontier: Voyager’s second spectacular Borg episode, and the only time that Star Trek ever used the Borg Queen perfectly, in my opinion. I love the way Seven’s backstory is juxtaposed with the events of the episode. I love the parallels throughout – the repetition of lines spoken by different characters giving events a disturbing feeling of inevitability. I love how Seven has so clearly and fundamentally changed from the person she was in the beginning of season 4.

Relativity: This is another episode that I find to be so well-structured and paced. What could have easily been a deeply convoluted plot flows in a way that’s incredibly engaging, and every plot twist is delightful.

Equinox: Like I said, I really love when Janeway gets dark. Janeway’s cold rage in this episode is my favorite thing, and the plot is really engaging as well.

Survival Instinct: This is a highly underrated Borg episode, in my opinion. It establishes so many fascinating details about the Borg, and the storyline with Seven and the other drones from her unimatrix is heartbreaking.

Barge of the Dead: This is my absolute favorite B’Elanna episode. I love the ambiguity of reality and unreality here, from B’Elanna’s perspective and that of the audience. This is also in my opinion the episode that most clearly grasps B’Elanna as a character – her deepest struggles and doubts. It’s also probably my favorite Klingon episode in all of Star Trek.

[alaskan-wallflower]

in regards to my au…

okay so i am SO making a comic for this once i finish my tattoo concepts and my mini comic but what i was thinking was

everyone has the ability to change sizes. think ant man? (i based it off ant man actually since its a fav movie of mine and i love the concept of giants and humans living together and the comfort aspect is just mmmm-anyway)

but everyone from the ways side can grow. and i mean GROW. like they can become just about any size they want. they can only shrink back to normal size but the reason they live in the east is because people think that ability is useless and destructive when it comes to work, and thus the east side is more rowdy and they’re alleged to go on rampages a lot and the town can’t fund them anymore. also it kinda sticks to the idea that “greasers are stuck as greasers forever” and i have a concept about pony dealing with this internal conflict that comes with said power

everyone from the west side can shrink. it’s not destructive and it’s not “useless” like the east side’s abilities are. they’re able to fix cars by shrinking down and actually getting inside of it, they’re able to clear out infestations, stuff like that. so they obviously get more funding because they aren’t as “destructive” as the east side.

anyway. i like to think it’s kind of a thing that starts at a certain age (i’m leaning towards 13 but also maybe 16 since 16 is technically when a childhood ends-but i’m not sure, anyway) and the first time shrinking and growing can be INTENSE-but also if an extreme emotion is felt it can cause powers to go out of whack (like when darry is yelling at pony for being home late that’s probably an instance where he would not be able to hold on and he’d grow a bit) and so on.

i don’t know exactly what the comic would follow but i do love the idea of greasers being stuck as greasers because you can’t get rid of the ability and pony having to deal with it like that. i’m also kinda thinking about there being some sort of force that doesn’t let people who have grown or shrunk in any capacity to be let into the letter side (this applies either solely or mostly to the east side) and there would obviously be some limits because idk how you’d be able to jump a giant so y’know-

also i think there could be a lot of fluff with the gang, like johnny growing out of control one day and having to be consoled by the gang, or curtis brother fluff-

im dying to talk about this au but i feel like its too weird so lmk haha-

[creekfiend]

Re: my tags on the plurality post I just reblogged. I realize this may not be well known information so. Here is the You're Wrong About ep about "multiple personality disorder"

There is a very good transcript available on that page if you are not able to listen to the podcast.

The tl;dr is that the entire phenomenon of "MPD" as we conceptualize it popularly is extraordinarily closely linked to both the phenomena of "repressed childhood abuse memories" and, necessarily, the satanic panic. There is this idea of like, certain types of abuse which somehow cause the "self" to "shatter" in some objective way that can itself be used as concrete evidence OF that abuse... and that's pretty much from 1 book in the 70s that became a huge cultural phenomenon. There's a citation in the podcast transcript here for a book which picks that apart called Sybil Exposed by Debbie Nathan where you can learn more about that specific case. It's also worth mentioning that the "MPD as a result of childhood abuse/repressed memories of childhood abuse" thing actually became a significant issue in legal matters where psychologists were coercing people into inventing repressed abuse memories in order to provide "evidence" to incarcerate people. It was a whole thing.

Here is an excerpt from the transcript that I like:

Sarah: Yeah. And immediately, it becomes just a cultural phenomenon. The author gets bushels of letters, almost all of them from American women and girls. And a lot of them write about feeling like they don't have multiple personality disorder, but they feel like they have all these different selves and different people they are at different times. And it's like, yeah, because being a woman in 1973 means that you in a very obvious way, sociologically are being torn between all of these positions in society. It's like, you want to be a good daughter, but you want to have sex and you want to maybe have a job or stay home and iron a little, I don't know.  Mike: And probably a lot of unaddressed traumas too. I mean, probably a lot of the people had seen terrible things and we're still dealing with the trauma of it. And this gave them somewhat of a voice to their trauma or a lens through which to view their trauma that, you know, something happened to you that day and I'm still dealing with it because it's not like in 1973, society was great at being like, let's listen to people who say that they have trauma.

So like, none of this is to say that DID "isn't real" or that any way of framing having a lot of conflicting parts of oneself or different internal selves or whatever is bad or not useful. It is self evidently very useful for many people.

However. Our cultural understanding of what it means to have "other personalities" specifically AS A RESULT OF TRAUMA, as like, this objective THING that takes place inside your brain when something is DONE to you... is like a VERY culturally specific concept.

And obviously DID/plural/system stuff is often quite distinct from "MPD" style framing of multiple selves. Specifically the psychologist obsession with MPD often revolves around the "solving" or integration of selves, whereas plural/system people I know tend to decry that. Theres many other differences also. HOWEVER I think that learning about the history of how this has been framed and who invented a lot of the commonly accepted "facts" about it is like... really important. In terms of being able to control your own experience of conceptualizing your internal state. Regardless of what framing and models you find to be useful or true. Like... as people whose brains are constantly being pathologized and moralized we should ABSOLUTELY know about & be concerned about patterns of psychological abuse which may play into concepts we have of how our brains work. You know?

And because people are not good at taking posts like this in good faith: I know that people describing having multiple selves has been a thing in many places over many time periods, I think the experience of having more than one 'self' is real (I mean what is a self anyway, per my last reblog, right) and I have friends who are plural/systems/etc. I myself absolutely feel that I have many facets to my "self" which I do often find it helpful to conceptualize as discrete entities when I'm working through stuff. I don't personally find the framing of plurality or systemhood useful *for my self* but you know if you read this blog that means nothing in terms of whether I think it's useful or real for other people.

I just.

As a psych abuse survivor I really want us to be intentional and precise about these things and make sure we have all the information we need to make sure we aren't reinforcing some really narsty shit that's been used to hurt a lot of people.

And also to be like, whose word am I taking for this? What rules do I think this phenomenon follows and why do I think that has to be true? Like it is one thing to put words to an experience or a framework, right, and it is another to go "well the system blog I read says that one self has to be fronting at a given time so now I have to figure out which of my selves is doing that" or whatever like... with ALL frameworks for internal experiences ("diagnoses" lol) I think it's important to be like, am I taxonomizing this by describing how it is for me, or am I trying to sort my experiences into these boxes as described by someone else? And like, the latter is not good for people in general I don't think. And of course in any group or community you will get people who are prescriptive about who belongs in what categories and how your experience has to look in order to belong there or use whatever terminology. And that's not true. You can use whatever frameworks you want and if they don't fit later you can modify or discard them!

Wow I hope this is coherent. Anyway going to go ahead and make this puppy unrebloggable because lmao but I am happy to talk about it with people so please feel free to leave replies or asks as long as no one is yelling at me and accusing me of like, denying experiences. Because I am extremely not doing that. Ty

[thestupidhelmet]

Brown from your ask game please

🤎 Brown: How did you decide to write (or why are you writing) a certain fanfic?

Answering a variation of this question. 😁

One, I'm creatively curious. I ask myself questions about what would happen if X were different -- like if Hyde had gone to Kelso's uncle's ice shack with everyone else. Then I imagine the characters' interactions and plot arising from them. If it's interesting and creatively inspiring enough, I write the story. Those are the One Difference stories.

Two, I fall in creative love with a non-T7S show or movie and wonder how the T7S characters would react under these circumstances and stressors. How they might change the T7S characters. The plot is affected by the T7S characters and their choices, too, and changes accordingly -- and I try to put as much originally into the story as possible.

Reflections Through the Glass was my first T7S fanfic, and its plot hews closely to the source material (The 10th Kingdom) while still having plenty of original elements because the T7S characters' internal and relationship conflicts are different than the characters from the source material.

Then I wrote a sequel, Beneath a Shattered Sky, and the plot is original to me. The fantastical elements are original to me but exist in the world of the source material. I have a deep knowledge of fairy tales and folklore, so that helps. I also came up with completely original fantastical elements, one of which I'm particularly fond of. 😊

Hyde's Long Way Home takes Groundhog Day's time loop concept and sticks Hyde into it. Except for the time loop and the why of it (Hyde must grow and change), the story is original to me. (I wrote this fic before time loop stories became a trope in fanfic, traditionally published novels, and derivative movies.)

The Understudy was inspired by a favorite film, but my story is so different that it would be difficult for someone to guess which movie inspired it (and I'm not telling 😂).

Those Who Play with Demons is inspired by both a TV show and an unrelated movie. I combined the two and created something new.

Three, a story idea pops into my head. Either from the soup of my subconscious or interests I'm conscious of. Or both.

Jackie Stargazer is the epitome of the above -- although the original, scrapped idea (baaad) was inspired by several T7S fics by heatherlea75. The story I ultimately wrote (over the course of a decade) is all from me own noggin'. I'd seen too many T7S fics use trauma as angst porn. I chose to write a story that explores trauma and its aftermath realistically and -- crucially -- how the healing process works.

Writing is wonderful, but an author has a responsibility to do research (sometimes extensive) -- even on subjects the author has experience with (despite how much or how little). A mundane example from Hyde's Long Way Home: Hyde learns how to horseback ride. I had horseback riding lessons for many years in my childhood, both English and Western style. I still did research to make sure I got the details right in the story. ... And I have yet to correct the French in that story. 🤦 I have the corrections, but I haven't made them.

To end this detailed answer on a positive note, the character arcs, overall plot, and the plots feeding into the overall plot of Those Who Play with Demons bring me so much joy to write that I've stuck with the story for a decade; my excitement to continue writing it helped me through a major, traumatic life change I had no control over, during which I had to put the story aside; and the moment I regained enough muscle strength after almost losing my life last year (unrelated to the aforementioned life change), I continued to write the story until I finished the first draft.

Inspiration, passion, internal and external mental-emotional exploration, curiosity, joy, and a desire to give readers some kind of healing or peace or happiness is why I write the stories I write. ♥️

[radellama]

1, 8, 14, and 24!

1. Do you prefer writing one-shots or multi-chaptered fics?

Definitely a huge preference towards multi chaptered fics, as I tend to get long winded and my works become expansive. My one shots end up pretty long anyway, but I'll just write what feels applicable to the fic...

And since I'm mostly thinking about really big stories, chapters just work best for me. Plus, when I'm putting more effort into the chapters, I love to organise all the little details and developments I want for everything, micro and macro 😏

8. Do you prefer the beginning, middle, or end of a story?

Middle. It's where the meat of it is, where most the scenes I'm imagining as concepts will go... I enjoy beginnings and ends too, but to me a beginning or end being so memorable is due to remembering it with the context of the middle parts. If the middle isn't worth reading, why would I put effort into opening and closing it either, yknow?

14. how do you write emotional scenes? Do you ever feel what the characters feel? Do you draw from personal experiences?

Man. This is tricky to answer... I keep writing and rewriting my answer to this, but I don't think there's a way to keep it brief.

I'm autistic, so the way I approach and understand emotions is inherently different. I can understand what causes emotions, and I can understand actions informed by emotions, but there's something about emotional behaviour as a whole that I struggle with- for myself and when observing others. Writing emotional scenes in fiction is like a sandbox at times, I can do whatever I want; change the stakes, change the characters response, put limits on their behaviour in context... Anything. And this can make it easier, and harder. What I value the most when writing characters is that they feel authentic and driven. I want THEIR lived context up until that scene to inform the way they'd behave, and often I'll have character outlines for myself when writing bigger and more complex stuff to help with this. I don't really approach writing an emotional scene with the emotions at the forefront, I think I focus on the objective of that scene first, and then break it down into what characters will present internally and externally. Any emotions present will make themselves known, the same way the vibe of a house becomes a home as you start to live in it.

A lot of people are emotionally immature, too, so I don't find it very authentic (or interesting) to write scene upon scene of characters doing corporate therapy talk as they work through things. I don't mind the challenge of trying to construct something emotionally charged, I think I did a pretty good job in the first chapter of my star trek au to demonstrate the emotions of each character and how that conflicted and contrasted with everyone (and hope that it does it's intended job of outlining the characters and providing a base for how far they'll develop later in the story...) I usually know what I want and will spend time figuring out how it's going to happen, and fill in the emotional responses as I'm 'reading the room' of the scene. There have been times where I've written something emotional, and while understanding that it is emotional and putting effort into conveying it, I'm still very surprised when people tell me that it made them emotional. Idk, it's hard to really articulate this clearly, but in the same way I spend ages writing and rewriting dialogue for my characters so that it feels authentic and flows in the way I want, I do that with the emotions of the scene and how I want to demonstrate the characters reacting and processing the emotion. It's iteration upon iteration, built up over a lot of agonising over certain word choices.

I don't think I ever feel what my characters feel as I write them, I have a bit more of a detached feeling because I'm the author. I can feel sympathetic towards the characters, and understand or feel similarly, but I'm not them, so I won't feel it to the full extent... All stories are inherently voyeuristic, to varying degrees, and that sense of peering into a curated version of events and certain characters mindsets can be quite intimate. I'm just relaying that intimacy with the characters and story, and I feel my own way about it, which is different to the characters I'm writing, and probably very different to people who read what I wrote.

And as for personal experiences... I draw on them in a sense of 'write what you know.' And this isn't a literal 'only write what you yourself have experienced,' cause let's be real, even in biographical media, it's dramatised and you haven't literally experienced the exact same. Instead, talking more broadly, I know how I live my life as a person, and have been keenly watching, observing and joining others in their lives too. When you're writing creatively, you have to use that creative muscle to figure out how characters will react. Unlike my OC Harland, I haven't gone through a heartbreak and betrayal so great that it is a deciding factor in a war I want no part in- but, I have had to cut ties with people I used to call friends because they're acting in ways I can't understand or condone, I've felt stressed over when friend groups split and there's a background assumption that you need to pick sides, and I've felt the weight of knowing certain decisions I make will be responsible for more than just myself. I'm not Harland, dealing with the emotional climax of his story, but I am me, and I can use my lived/observed experiences to inform how he would act as a base, and construct him in all his complexity by comparing his reactions to mine. It's easy to go 'I wouldn't have done that;' so you gotta take the time to think on why you wouldn't have, and why that person did.

Anyway, you see why this is tricky for me to answer lol. I think there's some weird internal logic I have that makes me approach this kinda stuff from a more detached and critical view, so I have to put effort into understanding all aspects of what's going on. And that's just in my day to day, so at least when writing I can put those skills to use for something entertaining!

24. Worst writing advice anyone ever gave you?

This is hard, cause I try to ignore advice that I don't think is applicable, and promptly forget once I've moved on.

I guess I'll say something that I heard discussed a lot when I was studying film, and what I heard people parroting when I mentioned them, which was to 'not get tropey.'

I HATE that trope means the same thing as cliche to everyone, cause they're not the same. A trope is simply how you describe the particulars of a situation in fiction, and you can use them to help figure out what sort of genre your work belongs to and what your target audience will be. Trying to avoid tropes is like trying to build a brick house without bricks. Cliches, on the other hand, are when a certain trope has become so overdone that you know exactly how something will play out, and it's become stale due to seeing it too much. And in my observation, tropes become cliche when the writers are just copying what works without thinking about WHY it works, or how it applies to the narrative. You absolutely should get tropey with it, cause how else will you have a story? The important part is that you're not just going through the motions of what's commonly used in the type of story you're writing, and instead working on purposefully including what you put to page.

Idk if that's clear enough to those who haven't studied film/narrative in some capacity, so I'll say what my response was when students would ask for help avoiding tropes in their screenplays in our mentoring sessions: don't worry about the hypothetical audience reaction before you've finished writing the story. Don't think about tropes and cliches and whatever else we use when deconstructing a narrative to analyse it, you haven't got a finished story to analyse. Just write the story you want to tell, and be deliberate about it. Everything's been done before, but this story hasn't been done your way yet, so just focus on your writing first.

Send some asks from here

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

It's the underdog/victim complex. They think they're being oppressed/harassed/attacked by everyone else for liking their fave when no one really cares. Plus purity culture sorta screwed the fandom perceptions where now you apparently can't like a character or be a fan of them if they do bad/problematic things. This isn't just a FE thing either, there was an article that basically said that people can enjoy villains for being villains and requested everyone to not woobify or justify their actions. Guess what happened? People got salty over it and started attacking the article. And yeah it's not just a bunch of teenagers sadly, there are people in their 30s doing this kind of nonsense behavior and it's really sad and pathetic. And fwiw I'm not implying nor intending that people 30 or above can't be in fandoms or anything like that, it's just..you expect them to know or be better than to act like they're half their age with this nonsense.

Yeah, that's so wild to me when they do exactly that - attack others for their faves (especially Dimitri). Like yeah, I hate their fave but I don't go out of my way to attack them for liking her.

Purity culture really, REALLY pisses me off. Not only do people who like EdeIgard erase her wrongdoings, but they only like the version of her they created and not her canon self (i.e. the self that did wrong, but they can't handle the concept of that and their waifu has to be perfect and have her hands clean). Following that, they get aggressive toward Dimitri and his fans for liking him because uwu he did so many bad things. Like, yes, we are aware of that and he actively addresses that fact on a regular basis. He doesn't hide behind "uwu I did it for Fodlan", he doesn't make excuses, and his fans accept his faults for what they are. For some reason the stans seem to think we're just like them and that we erase any faults of our fave and pretend he's a perfect, clean handed individual.

I remember hearing or seeing once in this old Tumblr RP group that they banned Miklan from even being selected as a written character. Like bruh, if you're gonna write roleplays, don't you... want conflict? When I write I find it boring when there's no conflict whatsoever. Even in my dmcl writing, there's still a sort of internal conflict, like Dimitri having doubts about himself and thinking he's not worth being with someone he loves. No matter what I write, I prefer to have some sort of conflict because it helps to strengthen the positive result.

It's funny, too, because these are always the same people who like Hopes Claude more but yet don't think doing anything wrong is okay. They defend his actions instead like with their waifu because it's okay to invade a country and murder its people!

Reminds me of the stan that showed up in my inbox once trying to defend Claude, saying "what innocents did Claude even kill, he only killed soldiers" as if to say soldiers automatically lose all their innocence and rights as human beings for signing up to defend their country. That anon should probably stop and think about what they said and how that applies to real life, because they basically told me my sister deserves to die because she used to serve in the military. Oh no, how dare she be a soldier! She's no longer innocent and it's okay if she dies! Forget the fact that she has three children at home who are very young and need their mother! Forget that her parents and sisters are still alive and would grieve for her! She's a soldier, so it's fine if she dies!

That anon needs a real good look in the mirror and a smack in the face by reality. These people say a whole lot of shit to defend their fictional pixelated waifu without considering how that reflects on them in real life and the fact that what they say does have a reflection on their real life values. Anyone who tells me it would've been okay if my sister died simply because she was in the military is trash and I wish on them what they would wish on her.

I heard about that article! It's pathetic. There is literally nothing wrong with enjoying media and concepts. I have a section I decided to put at the end of this ask explaining how I feel about particular antagonists (Ashnard, Zelgius, Sephiran and Miklan), but since it's a biiiit off course here I wanted to avoid it splitting up my more direct reply to this ask.

Yeah, I know it's not only teenagers and that's also pathetic. While I wouldn't say I just forgive teenagers for being like that (they're old enough and there's no excuse imo, as I mentioned before), it's a lot more understandable that they might be like that and just eventually grow out of it. The fact there are people my age or older acting like angry babies who had their binky taken away is honestly so ridiculous that the term "pathetic" is not even strong enough to explain how ridiculous it is. They act like they're a little kid who had their favorite sticker stolen by some random kid in their class. These are people who should be looking for or having a job, being at least somewhat damn mature online and being a reasonable, mature person.

I was hoping "karens" would die out with the older generations (let's face it, a good chunk of today's karens are bored, angry old/older people with nothing to do and are just miserable people), but evidently we're never getting rid of that lot! It's okay to invade a country and murder its people, just like it's okay to harass and bully people off of social media, didn't you know?! 🙄🙄🙄 Really, how did some of these people get like this? And no, I'm not asking for their uwu backstories to redeem them LOL.

Some of these people are so insufferable that it's disgusting.

Regarding the villain discussion:

It's like I always say and you're about to hear it again: I love Ashnard as a villain because he's a villain, and he's a villain who fully embraces his actions and behavior. He doesn't think he's morally just. He's fighting for the world he believes in. He believes the strong should be on top and should rule the weak. However, he's extremely fair about that viewpoint and if he's defeated by someone because they were stronger than him, that is fair to him and he accepts his defeat. Since he believes the strong should be on top, he believes he should be on top... until someone comes along who can slay him, in which he believes they do deserve to be on top. If he's bested, he no longer deserves to be on top. He's a fantastic villain who never makes excuses and doesn't go back on what he says he believes. There's no "the strong should be on top but only as long as I'm the strongest and will be ruling". Plain and simple, the strongest should be on top whether it's him or not, and he's not, I guess you could say, "fake" about it.

Then you have Hopes Miklan who turns out to be a better person than people gave him credit for. He's someone I always had headcanons about based on Dimitri's take on him being disowned. I felt that he could've been a better person if pointed in the right direction and being told and shown that he was capable as a person even without a crest and that having a crest doesn't dictate whether he's useful or not. Dimitri put him in charge of a massively important, and arguably the most important, area of defense in the entire country. He proved he believed that Miklan had the strength to handle that and proved that he believed if Miklan had a better life and situation in front of him that he wouldn't resort to banditry. The thing is, he was right. Miklan not only started becoming a better person, but he even gets a line where he basically says he liked helping the people in a place that got destroyed in the war. He liked helping them rebuild.

Both of those are fantastic stories and characters. One of them had a redemption arc while nobody ever let any bullshit slide. He wasn't allowed to slip up or get away with any tiny "mistakes". It was literally do or die, but being forced into that situation did genuinely make him a better person. Even if he had to be forced to help them, it's not like he didn't come out on the other side and be better for it. Being forced to do those things didn't mean it just stayed that way and that he was hateful and angry that entire time.

Then one of them is just... a villain. A perfectly written villain who lived and died as a villain. Nobody made excuses for him and he didn't make excuses for himself. There's a reason I don't like Zelgius, and it's not that I think his character itself is terribly written, but it's the forced redemption that he didn't earn that makes me not enjoy his final arc. In contrast, what does Sephiran get? No redemption allowed from Ike until he gets up and proves he's willing to redeem himself. Zelgius could've easily been a character made to earn his redemption, such as being a playable character and having supports to flesh out his new arc, or even just being a story only character who protects and saves the main characters (besides Just Micaiah tee em) and maybe even guides them safely to the Tower of Guidance (no pun intended). Instead he just gets to say he admired his teacher and had a sad backstory so suddenly... nobody is mad anymore. Certainly not Tibarn, who had like 50+ percent of his nation wiped out, that being any able bodied man who could fight besides the ones who were lucky enough to be with Tibarn's fighting force at the time all that happened. 🙄

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🦇 Courting Samira Book Review 🦇

❝ I didn’t want my existence to rest on what everyone else thought about me or wanted for me. I wondered how long I had been this way: not really moving forward but sideways. ❞

❓ #QOTD What trait (personality-wise or physical) is a hard No during first dates? ❓ 🦇 As a 27-year-old Muslim girl living at home, Samira Abdel-Aziz is no stranger to arranged matches; first dates under the supervision of both sets of parents. As a fan of rom-coms, Samira knows it's unlike that her very own Palestinian Muslim Westley will come and sweep her off her feet, but a girl can dream. At least, it was dreaming until she meets Menem; gorgeous, charming, sweet...and the brother of her cousin's husband-to-be. Between work at a bridal magazine, helping her borderline Bridezilla cousin with the wedding, and officially courting Menem, it all feels like too much. Can Samira find her personal happily ever...and the truth about herself in the process?

💜 Subhan Allah, a book that finally speaks to the realities of growing up in a moderately traditional Muslim household (let alone a Palestinian one!!). I've read quite a few books featuring Muslim main characters, but this is the first that captured the authenticity. Samira endures arranged matches, the pressures of meeting parental expectations, and the stressors of singledom (as if our stories aren't complete until we're married). All my favorite, delicious Palestinian delicacies are mentioned (Samira, I feel you, wrapping warak dawali / stuffed grape leaves is HARD). I adored the comparison between Jane Austen / regency era England courtships and Samira's courtships to make the concept easy to understand (I've seen a few people tag this with the "arranged marriage" trope, and that's inaccurate). Much of Samira's internal dialogue is witty and fun, making her easy to empathize with. I'm also grateful for the RANGE of female Muslim characters portrayed in this book, from pious to less traditional to a little bit wild (mild by usual standards, trust me). It was also a joy to see a few familiar names (my mother's, brothers, aunt's...to name a few). I hope this story is a glimpse into Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab cultures to those who read it!

🦇 Unfortunately, the pacing really dragged. None of the plot points felt fully fleshed out. Samira's internal dialogue contains too many fleeting or repetitive thoughts to really give the story juice. A lot of the internal conflict she experiences lacks emotional depth. Is she feeling the pressure to meet potential matches because she's getting older (her cousin is getting married, which usually encourages family members to put pressure on the singles)? Does marrying a friend, even for a minute, seem like a good idea because it's easy; because she knows him? Despite her mixed emotions, we don't really feel the tension or stress she's experiencing. There's no real spark of chemistry between the man she's courting (or Samira and her friend) either, which is perhaps the most frustrating. Without that chemistry, the "love triangle" trope falls flat. The subplot of Samira realizing she wants to become a photographer, not a writer, is the only piece of her character that exists outside anything wedding-related, but there's no real payout there. I thought, and hoped, that would be the meat of the story; that Samira would realize she doesn't need to get engaged or married in any rush when she can focus on her own growth instead. The ending feels rushed and unnatural when Samira could have done the unexpected. Despite inching toward 30, Samira also comes off as juvenile (which I've seen some people say "perhaps that has to do with the culture" in reviews, which HURTS).

🦇 Recommended to anyone looking for a light rom-com (with a few dashes of friends-to-lovers potential and meddling besties). Definitely ideal for fans of Bridget Jones's Diary.

✨ The Vibes ✨ ☪️ Contemporary Romance ☪️ Muslim & Palestinian MC ☪️ Love Triangle ☪️ Jane Austen / The Princess Bride References ☪️ Arranged Matches (NOT Marriage)

🦇 Major thanks to the author @amalmdawad and publisher @harperviabooks for providing an ARC of this book via Netgalley. 🥰 This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.