#but my mom and i reference people from past church or school or work

[strangersatellites]

au august day 2: immortals

AU where steve and eddie become immortal but at the ages of like- 70 and 71.

they live in a big, spooky, victorian era home at the end of their street and spend (all of) their days sitting on the porch drinking tea.

they befriend the neighborhood kids and then their kids and then theirs.

it’s one of those situations where all the adults in town say “i swear they’ve been old since i was a kid!”

but this time they’re always right.

[themindarchive]

Stardew Valley Druid

My most recent Stardew Valley Farmer.

Name: Coal Hemlock

Age: 37

Gender: Cis Man

Sexuality: Pansexual

Height: 6'2"

Eyes :Hazel

Appearance: Native Americanish features, dark tan skin, long black hair down past his ribs, fairly muscular but with a not quite full dad bod level of squish. Usually found in a flannel, a plain black t-shirt or a t-shirt with either a band or nerdy reference on it, blue jeans, and well worn in black work boots.

Background: A neurodivergent man who grew up in a supportive family, twice divorced and is a single father of a 14 year old(Jack).

First Divorce was the product of two people realizing they have no romantic chemistry after being married for 3 years and ended thing amicably. Mom(Danny) gave custody to Coal due to her inherating the family buisness that forces her to often travel out of country. However, despite their romantic incompatibility they are kick ass parents and still best friends to this day.

Second divorce was the product of two people that had differeing religious beliefs, Coal being a druid, wife(Sara) being a follower of Yoba, who at first were very open minded and respectul.of the others religion and even shared each others practices until a move for a job and a whole knew church changed it all.

Coal clocked the church as a cult pretty quick and refused to go but allowed Jack because they honestly wanted to go.

After an incident at a church social that nearly made him beat a ten year old boy into thw geoynd for trying to rip off Jack's skirt, followed by Jack coming home from school crying because they were made to believe it was thier fault, he stopped letting his Sara take them.

And despite all attempts to make Sara see what she was getting into and multiple therapy attempts, it became clear that divorce was inevitable.

Right around then was when he ran across the deed to the farm and came up with the idea to divorce Sara and move out there.

A move that was doubly important when Jack comes out to him, not only as presenting as a fellow druid but as a nonbinary aroace person. Something he had no problem with for obvious reasons even if the aroace part had to be explained.

After running the idea by Jack whose response was "Fuck Yes! Get me out of this hell city!" he made plans and began saving money in a seperate account in order to make the move.

However, about a year before everything was ro kick off, he gets a call at work from Jack's favorite game shop, telling him his 13 year old kid is curled up in the corner crying becaaue they were outed at school and instead if calling him as the biological parent they called Sara. And the resulting freak out ended up with her locling up the house and putting a note on the door saying, "I am not letting a demon into my house. Your are no longer welcome." For Jack when she got out of school.

The resulting fight ended with Sara being kicked out(everything was in his name) and forced to go stay with her parents while Coal filed the divorce papers, sold the house, and got some financial and temprary housing help from Danny so they could move out to the farm as soon as possible.

Year 1: Coal and Jack dig into the earth, just go ham on building up the farm, connecting with the community, making friends, and just start really thriving despite the nasty divorce preceedings and the ex's attempts to get back at Coal.

Shane and Coal meet and trauma bond, forming pretty tight friendship that involves a lot of pining on both sides during this time.

Year 2: Divorce finalizes and despite Sara's best efforts is unsucessful in all her attempts to sabatoge Coal and Jacks life, mostly because Danny herself takes time off to put Sara in her place, showing her how what a true momma bear with too much money and a lot of time on thier hands can do.

Once the Divorce finalizes, Coal begins to more actively court Shane, Danny and Jack often wing manning for both.

By the end of the year, Jack has a second dad and a new little sister.

[writingandmore]

Hi!!! May I get a HP, Star Wars, Voltron, and Disney matchup?

𝗕𝗔𝗦𝗜𝗖𝗦 + 𝗔𝗣𝗣𝗘𝗔𝗥𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗘

19, Libra, Neutral Good, enneagram is 4w5, muggleborn Ravenclaw (with Gryffindor tendencies), and my patronus spirit is Hummingbird. Biromantic Pansexual Genderfluid woman using pronouns of She/Her or He/Him. Cherubic-like face, with short height (5'1") plus sized Southeast Asian woman with Spanish descent that has chic messy/wavy brunette medium hair that reaches to my shoulder, oriental skin, slightly upturned eyes, small lashes, chocolate brown irises, cute flat nose, heart shaped face, full cheeks, cupid's bow lips, a small beauty mark on the forehead, and naturally straight teeth with tiny gap in front (just imagine that it's a mixture of Marinette from 𝗠𝗶𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘂𝗹𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗟𝗮𝗱𝘆𝗯𝘂𝗴, Musa from 𝗪𝗶𝗻𝘅 𝗖𝗹𝘂𝗯, and Alexandra Trese from 𝗧𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲---cause' my friend told me that I kinda look like them). My sense of fashion is in between emo and boyish plus korean glam, I sometimes let my hair down or styled like Lara Croft reboot.

𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗢𝗡𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬

Distant, quiet, and timid at first making people thought I'm a demure, modest, and self-effacing that looks "immaculate" or "one of a kind" (due to my protective mom, a reason why I've never been in a relationship) but the truth is, dunno how to initiate a conversation, but a total opposite if I open up---friendly, ambivert, witty, laughing loudly on a daily basis---like my happiness is too shallow, super talkative, eats a lot (yeah I can finish a huge slice of cake or a meal in one sitting), awkward, daydreamer (I got embarrassed from knocking at the door even I'm inside the classroom 😂), EXTREMELY CLUMSY (mostly gets bruises from hitting, bumping my head somewhere, walking into something on my way, and being careless to my belongings), secretly likes affection, easily overwhelmed, prone to melt over wholesomeness, flusters on compliments, lightly blushes on cheesy banters, eager to share what I know (especially about Catholic Church---my past teacher joked that I'll become a saint because of it 🤣), oftenly speaks full of sarcasm with a lowkey crackhead energy citing meme references, and talented girl who can be your no.1 supporter and unashamed to be true to myself but can be awkward to strangers. In terms of leadership, I only educate and guide than being a prefect (I might take the role seriously), will lift my group when there's lacking/incompleteness. About doing projects in school, I become too extra and prepared for efforts, but I'll forget the process in the end.

The extent, I'm expressive, warm-hearted, willig to help, kind, intelligent, supportive, nice, creative, enthusiastic, laid-back, determined, tough, competitive, and feisty outside, but a real softie that can be childish and dramatic that cries so easily (but will enlightened real quick by smallest things that makes me smile) filled with doubts, frustrations, and insecurities with fear of failure that pushes off the limits to to please everyone because they might get dissappointed from expectations---I simply can't stop proving myself too much because I'm a survivor of bullying. But I still managed to be stronger than ever after I stumbled, even it's a slow burn process. I can be blunt, intimidating, harsh, and a douchebag if I receive ends or I got interrupted while doing something. Immature, headstrong, perfectionist, demanding, hesitant, jumpy, forgetful, overthinker, quick-tempered, sensitive, and anxious (no joke, my nervousness makes me think worse scenario will arrive). Though can be procrastinator and arrogant, I raised as a religious 𝖺𝗇𝖽 diplomatic youth, willing to fight what I believe (including my dreams and what's important to me) and what is right. In addition, I have a habit of staying up late and doing sign of the cross to ease nervousness.

Rowdy and feeling-brokenhearted and bitter friend in the group who fangirl a lot, swears like sailor, will call out on people that we loathe, will make fun of your stupidity (in a good way) before helping, and bring gossips, but a hopeless romantic and cheeky (makes banter with sarcasms or pick up lines as an endearment, but gets annoyed if I received sappy or offensive one), Still generous and concerned person in a subtle and different way.

𝗛𝗢𝗕𝗕𝗜𝗘𝗦

My hobbies are singing, drawing, roleplaying, listening to music, chatting/browsing on social media, conceptualizing, writing, and reading some stuffs. I'll include making corniest jokes/puns, sleeping, and dancing when nobody's around or walking like a model if I feel so bold (even I'm terrible at both xD). I also used to learn Italian language a bit.

𝗟𝗜𝗞𝗘𝗦

Loves kittens, milk tea, singing at the karaoke, cartoons, iced coffee, memes, cute things, watching YouTube videos (mostly pageants, ASMR, edit audios, and mukbangs), also enjoys playing games on my sister's PSP. Sucker for arts, choir, poetry, night sky, makeup, fun/deep/dumb conversations, Christianity, documentaries (about saints, real crime stories, and inspirational people), reading interesting stuffs, talking about social issues, and creative writing, chilling both indoors and outdoors. Beside that, my music taste are like late 90s-2000s songs (mostly rock, pop, and country) sometimes Catholic songs, kpop and ppop, chocoholic, and a sweetooth as well.

𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗟𝗜𝗞𝗘𝗦

Things that I hate are stereotyping, HUGE creepy crawlies (spiders, toads, snakes, and cockroaches), firecracker sounds, thunder and lightning, being left out, loneliness, heart break, blackout, and judgemental people. If I found out that someone hates or backstabbing or being rude to me, I won't hesitate to throw offensive criticisms, leaving them with a "I don't give a f" attitude. One random fact about me is, I 𝗐𝗂𝗅𝗅 vent out EVERYTHING I despise in my entire existence---from bad soap operas to toxicity, worse scenarios in real life, and how terrible is my love life from unrequited feelings that I got, because it's a big deal for me, and I consider forcing me to do what I'm not into and manipulating me as my major pet peeves.

𝗧𝗥𝗜𝗚𝗚𝗘𝗥𝗦

In terms of triggers...I only have two which are ta𝖨king about divorce/annullment/separation because I came from a generational broken family (it sucks that some people I knew assumed that the reason why I'm overly unaware that someone is interested in me in secret, is I have "high standards" looking for a partner, but the truth is I'm strict and I have a personal preferences...I know my worth and I don't want settle for less!) and religion/beliefs discrimination, cause' there are reasonings that doesn't makes sense because some, sounds too hypocritical, like as if you're a morally good person.

𝗥𝗢𝗠𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗘 + 𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘 𝗟𝗔𝗡𝗚𝗨𝗔𝗚𝗘𝗦

My love languages are quality time and gift giving, but I actually swoon over physical touch (especially cuddles and cute kisses) and words of affirmation when it comes to having a partner, though I get attracted so easily, matured but can be a goofy person who's nice, friendly, kind-hearted, loving, faithful, and excels in academics is my cup of tea. Whenever I have a real life crush (which is rare), I act the same but deep inside, my heart is about to explode and will eventually share to my trustful friends how I highly admire that person, however if they spilled the beans out, I'll obviously deny it and will cry if they like someone else, it will take some time for me to move on, now I don't care for them anymore.

Best Friends to Lovers is my ideal trope because I find it very cute since you already knew each other before dating (which happened to my 2nd cousin, she married her best friend!)---perfect balance for romance, laughters, comfort, and tears when it comes to sharing your vibes, being there through thick and thin, safe with embraces, and helping each other to grow.

𝗧𝗥𝗜𝗩𝗜𝗔𝗦

My best assets are smile, eyes, personality, singing voice, artistic skills, writings, intelligence, oratorical skills and I have potential in hosting...so I can consider myself as a singer, artist, orator, speaker, and a top student who's a former active campus ministry member with three roles (choir leader, psalm singer, and reader).

May sounds different but I'm passionate for helping people through my talents and sharing my story to inspire everyone. I may look selfish, but I have a different way on how I show that I actually care also I have a biased sentimental value

Currently a college freshman, learning how to cook. I have so many interests, to the point I don't know what I'm into because of my dreams to become a popular Filipino YouTuber, a novelist, and being part of a successful chorale competing internationally...I also consider joining pageants at school too once the pandemic ends, but maybe.

HP: Remus!

- Remus is also quiet and a bit reserved when he's not in a familiar situation, so your own first impression on him would be a good one, as you'd seem similar to his own personality. He's sweet and is able to start up a conversation if he notices the other person is having a hard time doing so, so hopefully he'd be able to bring out your more extroverted and friendly self after a while so he can be around the more open you. He wouldn't mind you being a bit awkward-he's very much the same way-honestly, the comradery that would come from that would be more positive than anything else. He loves sharing knowledge and learning about new things, so your eagerness to talk about what you know would work really well also! He does a lot better when he knows someone has his back too, so your extra supportive nature would endear him to you as well.

SW: Han!

- Your nicer and more helpful personality would balance out Han's more standoffish vibes when first meeting. You might get on his nerves a bit first, but you'd quickly grown on him and, in turn, make him a bit of a better person. Your ability to be blunt and a bit harsh would serve you well if you ever needed to stand your ground on an issue that two of you have, as he can be quite stubborn.

VLD: Lance!

- Lance can be a bit immature from time to time as well, especially when it comes to trying to be funny or cheering up those around him-he's also headstrong and typically firm in what he wants to do, so your own determined personality would attract him to you a lot as well. He often puts off things he needs to do if they make him anxious too, but if you both recognize that you share that problem, helping each other might be a good solution!

Disney: Flynn!

- Flynn is quite a sarcastic and teasing person, so your own humor would match well with his. He's also quite a hopeless romantic as well, even though he's certainly not one to admit that right off the bat. He enjoys singing, and as he gets closer to someone he feels more comfortable doing so in front of them, so a partner he's been with for a long time would get to see him be more and more open with it. That also applies to activities like dancing.

[collecting-stories]

Hawk’s Nest - John B Routledge

Request: Hii! Can we get prompt 22 (kiss prompts) with John B??  

Request: #22 with John b x reader!

A/N: It’s really just fluff so there’s nothing to warn you about. 

Outer Banks Masterlist

///

“Is this where you take all your girls John B?” You teased, following him up the stairs to the Hawks Nest. He’d promised you what he claimed would be an amazing view.  

“I take all my girls to the lighthouse but I was double booked today so I bought you here instead.” John B replied, not missing a beat. He glanced back at you and smiled.  

“God I’m so lucky you pencilled me in.”  

July in the Outer Banks was Peak tourist season. The beaches were crowded, all the rentals were filled with bratty kids on vacation with their families looking for some ‘summer fun’ while simultaneously rebelling from the all-american summer vacation. You were a crossroads between pogue and touron. You showed up in June and left before school started in September; custody had you spending the summer with your dad and the school year with your mom. It was a routine that you were used too, as was summer on the island. You hung with pogues, sure, but not John B’s crew. They were a whole level above any of the other pogues on the cut. You saw him at parties or around the dock when you stopped by to visit your dad but you hadn’t talked to him before. Not until the party on Saturday night at least.  

A pogue party some of your friends threw together last minute. John B’s crew had brought the keg and as far as meet-cutes went, over a keg at a house party wasn’t the most romantic but you went with it. John B offered you a drink and your friend accepted on your behalf.  

“I’ve seen you around right?” He asked, holding your cup but not giving it to you.

“I’m not sure.”  

Seen you around meant noticed you. There was no other way to interpret that statement. John B had seen you around. You’d obviously seen him around, sometimes, even in the summer, the Outer Banks felt tiny. It was like everyone knew everyone and everyone definitely knew John B.  

John B pursed his lips and squinted, stroking his chin for added dramatic effect. He hummed and you cracked a smile at him, “do you work at the Wreck?”  

“No.”  

“Do you work on the docks?”  

“No.” You shook your head, “I’m not mopping kook boats, sorry.”

“Hey don’t knock it til you try it.”  

“Can I get that beer then?” You asked, reaching for it. John B stepped away, raising his arm above his head to keep it from you.  

“Hold on...if I get this next one wrong, beer’s on me.” He replied.  

“Didn’t realize there was a charge. What if you get it right?”  

“How do you feel about the Summer Movie nights on figure 8?” John B asked.  

“Kooky.” You replied. John B laughed so hard he snorted and you couldn’t help laughing at him. “It wasn’t that funny.”

“No, no it was terrible. Oh my god.” He shook his head, his dramatic, serious, demeanor had been ruined by your joke and he couldn’t get it back now. He’d almost spilled your drink on his shirt from laughing so hard. “But, now I know how I know you. Your Buddy’s daughter.”  

“You knew that from the beginning.” You accused.  

“It’s true, I just really wanted to ensure our date.” John B replied, passing you the red cup.  

You took a sip and cringed, “this is so gross.”  

“That’s some prime all-american beer right there is what it is.” JJ said, coming up beside you and throwing an arm over your shoulders.  

“I hate to break it to you but I’ve already staked my claim here JJ.” John B announced.  

“I hate to break it to both of you but this seems suspiciously orchestrated.” You replied, looking between both boys.  

The blond smiled and released you from his hold, “my work here is done, time to go mingle.”

“So...I maybe asked JJ to wingman me.”  

“His idea of wingmaning you is to hit on me?” You teased. As you spoke John B came around the side of the keg, placing a hand on your lower back and nodding his head toward the porch. You let him guide you out onto the screened in room taking a seat on the arm of the only available chair, an old laz-e-boy, while John B sat on the seat. You kicked off your sandals and tucked your feet beneath his thigh, balancing rather expertly. Though the arm he threw around your back helped.  

“So John B, how long have you been concocting this plan to seduce me?” You asked, taking another sip of beer and grimacing at the taste.  

-

There were summer movie nights, days spent surfing or taking the boat out on the marsh, hanging around the Chateau. He took you to the church his dad used to take him to and the lighthouse and all the places on the island that he liked the most. Neither of you talked about the end of the summer even though you both knew it was approaching. In reality you were only three hours inside of the mainland but three hours felt like eternity when you thought about.  

The dates were fun, you loved hanging out with his friends, John B was as close to perfect as they came, but the closer it got to September the more you thought about the possibility of John B breaking up with you. When he invited you to the Kildare Hawk’s Nest you thought that maybe this would be the place. John B seemed like the type to go all out just to break things off.  

“How many steps are there on this thing?” You asked, stopping for a moment to see how far off the ground you already were, “because I’m starting to think you just like to trigger my fear of heights.” You had told him how freaked out you got from heights the first time he took you to the church and told you to climb up the ladder.  

“It’s all an elaborate plan to have you throwing yourself into my arms,” he replied, “I promise the view is worth it.”

“So far it’s just trees.”

“I meant this view,” John B motioned to himself, waving his hand up and down. You rolled your eyes at his antics, walking past him the rest of the way up the stairs.  

Above the trees you had a view of the coastline. Not as clear as the lighthouse view had been but still spectacular. Worth the endless flights of stairs up to the landing. John B came up behind you, wrapping his arms around your waist and leaning down to kiss your shoulder. You leaned back against John B, tilting your head back to look at him.  

“I take back all the snarky things I said, this is really nice.” You said, kissing him. Summer could last forever if it was up to you.  

“So what you’re saying is I’m the best boyfriend ever.”

John B had never used the term boyfriend before. His friends had referred to you as his girlfriend but you weren’t sure exactly what he considered your relationship. You were dating, exclusively, and he wasn’t shy about letting people know that you were together in some capacity but he hadn’t used that term yet.  

“Yes, you are the best boyfriend ever.” You replied.  

“I knew it.” John B squeezed your sides, lifting you off the ground and spinning you around.

“Oh my god! JB, not when we’re up here. You’re gonna kill me.” You yelped, smacking at his arm.  

He laughed, setting you back on the wooden platform. “I’m not gonna kill you! That’s not very ‘best boyfriend ever’ of me.”  

“Remains to be seen.” You twisted and John B loosened his grip to allow you to turn around in his arms. You wrapped your arms around his neck, fingers twisting in the long curls at the base of his neck. “It’s almost the end of August.”

“Is that why you’ve been so quiet lately?” John B asked. He’d picked up on your more contemplative mood recently and had been trying to decide how to ask you what was wrong. He’d been worried, honestly, that it was something terrible like you breaking up with him. Summer ending was low on his list of concerns.

“Yeah...I’ve just been thinking like...what are we gonna do?”  

“What do you mean?” He asked.

“Well, I know I’ll be kinda far away but I really don’t want us to break up.”  

“Good,” John replied, “good, cause I don’t want us to either.”

“Oh, good, okay.” You nodded.  

“Did you think I was gonna break up with you?” He asked.  

“I don’t know, I’ll be on the mainland until Christmas.”  

“I happen to love the ferry.”

You laughed, pulling John B’s hair to guide him into a kiss. He smiled into the kiss, pulling you closer to him. His hands squeezed your hips as his tongue ran over your bottom lip. You opened your mouth, letting him deepen the kiss. Neither of you heard the footsteps on the stairs, or noticed when someone came onto the landing with the two of you.

When a something banged against the railing and you heard a man’s voice shout “hey” you practically jumped away from John B. Both of you turned to see Shoupe standing there, gripping the railing. You darted behind John B, biting your lip as you looked at Shoupe breathing heavy from climbing up the stairs.  

“Did you miss the sign?”  

“What sign?” John B asked.  

“The sign at the bottom of the stairs that said this death trap is closed to the public because of the storm.” Shoupe replied.

“You brought me up here to make out with me and it’s closed? Because of the storm?” You whispered. “You could’ve killed me.”

“It wasn’t gonna collapse.” John B insisted.

“It could have collapsed.” Shoupe said.  

“John B!”  

“Both of you.” Shoupe cut in, getting your attention again, “down, now.”

-

taglist: @maplelattes22 @poguesrforlife  @freckled-and-daydreaming  @calumhoodsbuckethat @millie-753 @fangirlwithme @alex12948 @howdyherron @katherine097 @tangledinsparkles @tragicmisfits @carbonated-beverage @pogue-h

[gay-doodlebug-with-adhd916]

honestly, shoutout to the straight moms with young kids who are honestly still learning a lot about the LGBTQ+ community because they haven’t had very much prior experience with having someone close be in the community but they’re still willing to learn and be kind and accepting and treat queer people with love and like all other people. shoutout to the straight moms like this who choose to do this instead of making an excuse like “I would... but look I have kids and I have to put them first”, shoutout to the straight moms like this who are able to recognize that there are queer kids and teens and young adults who don’t know what it feels like to have a mom who would make any effort to protect them from anyone, or even love them, and they are hurting. Shoutout to the straight moms like this who recognize that there are queer ducklings who have been left by the rest of their family to fend for themselves and in response, go out of their way to gather those who have been left behind and make sure they’re trailing along behind the line of their own biological ducklings.

I have an aunt who I always looked up to and admired because she liked similar activities as I do, and she also would claim that she was an ally and she loved the LGBTQ+ community and gay people. When she found out that my older sister was engaged to her now-wife, my aunt backed away. She said she didn’t want my cousins to know, she didn’t want them to be around my lesbian sister. She didn’t make a big thing out of that, of course, because that would mess up the whole idea that she was such an ally. And I get it, she makes her own choices, whatever. I’m queer as well, but I never came out to her and now I’m glad I didn’t. I haven’t spoken to her since my sisters wedding almost a year ago. She didn’t attend the wedding, of course. I highly doubt that any of my cousins, the oldest now being a teenager, even know that my sister in law exists.

I also have a youth pastor who, before that, was a life group leader for my grade of girls specifically at my church. I’ve been close with her since the beginning of middle school. She is younger than my aunt, and her oldest child is a similar age to my aunt’s youngest child, while her youngest is pre-school aged. I was nervous to come out to her when I was younger because she seemed to have more “traditional views”, and I was afraid that she was homophobic. She had also done things in the past like refer to being gay as a “lifestyle” in very loose terms that felt like definite bad signs. No part of her was openly exclaiming “I’m an ally and I celebrate the LGBTQ+ community!”, so when I started to finally come out to her, I was so convinced that she was going to be angry at me and the close mentor bond we had would break completely. But instead, what really struck me and surprised me, was how willing she was to change her previous views out of love for me. She changed her vocabulary. She changed the way she talked about Christianity and the Bible in its relations to the LGBTQ+ community because she was willing to dig deeper and consider new ideas, for me. She still continues to learn and make mistakes and sometimes she says things that sound like they could be problematic, but she continues to change her entire mindset and put everything into learning how to better herself for the sake of me, and there is never a time when I don’t feel welcome and loved when around her and our group. A month or so ago, she met my sister in law. She knew about her already and she already loved her before meeting her and when she finally got to meet my sister in law her daughter was right there as well, and the both of them loved my sister in law and getting to meet her. My aunt has still yet to meet my sister in law, but my youth pastor met her and she thinks she’s great.

So yeah. Shoutout to the moms who try. Shoutout to the ones who maybe werent that great or informed about the LGBTQ+ community in the beginning, but are working their tails off trying to learn and get better than they were before. If you’re one of those moms I speak of reading this right now, you are appreciated so much more than you know. Some allies don’t wear all the fun bling-y colors and dance around at pride marches, and not all grown straight women who wear bling-y colors and fun makeup and do instagram worthy things at Pride marches are allies in the moments when society isn’t watching. So if you’re one who might not be as loud, but you sit with the queer kid who everyone else left behind and make sure they’re safe and being taken care of, in the moments when it’s less likely that you’ll get any praise or spotlight or recognition from it, please know how appreciated you are. Thank you for being there. Thank you for learning. Thank you for being an ally in your own way. You have been so helpful for the queer kids hiding in the corners like myself.

[fmdrorinarchive]

━━━━━━  𝖆 𝖓𝖊𝖜 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖊𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖗 𝖆𝖕𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖆𝖈𝖍𝖊𝖘… 💋 〈  Below the cut is an intro for Michelle Chae of Chroma // Please 𝖑𝖎𝖐𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖕𝖔𝖘𝖙 to plot, and thanks for reading !!  〉

𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖋-𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖗𝖔𝖉𝖚𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓.

Hi again, friends !! This is Boone ( 19+ / MDT / HE & HIM ) and you may recognize me as the typist behind Vive’s maknae, Yoo Rioh. I’ve decided to bring in another muse! Like Rioh, Michelle’s just starting out in her career and I can’t wait to see her grow. ♡ To find out more, please read onwards !! I can’t wait until she gets to meet all of your muses !! Oh, here are a few trigger warnings to look out for if you continue to read: mentions of drug addiction and parental abandonment; mentions of slut-shaming and misogyny.

𝖖𝖚𝖎𝖈𝖐 𝖋𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖘.

MICHELLE RORIN CHAE,  b. 19990620

BORN & RAISED IN VALLEY GLEN, CA

FORMER COMPETITIVE FIGURE SKATER

BC ENT / CHROMA & CHROMA EMBER

SUB VOCALIST, SUB RAPPER, VISUAL

𝖋𝖚𝖗𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖎𝖓𝖋𝖔.

RESEMBLES KIM MINJEONG ( WINTER ) OF ÆSPA

SHE STANDS AT A MODERATE 163 CM ( 5 FT, 3 IN )

CISGENDER FEMALE, USES SHE / HER PRONOUNS

GEMINI CANCER CUSP, YEAR OF EARTH RABBIT

HETEROFLEXIBLE, KINSEY SCALE #2, CURIOUS

𝖉𝖊𝖊𝖕 𝖉𝖎𝖛𝖊.

TRAJECTORY /  Michelle was born in Valley Glen, CA to David and Heesun Chae—the owners of a struggling restaurant in their neck of the woods. As a kid, she trained to become a figure skater, but when her father bailed on her and her mother because of a drug addiction, she couldn’t afford the expenses for coaching, etc. so she retired from it for now.  /  Instead of being able to truly enjoy her youth, she had to pick-up after school jobs in order to help her mom with bills, and for awhile, her only source of comfort was spent with guys that showed her affection. Her relationships with boys grossly gave her the title of a “whore” to her peers, so she sadly didn’t have many friends to lean on in high school.  /  Originally traveled to Korea to earn a nursing degree from SNU, but got scouted by BCE on her first day—prompting her to drop out of school to focus primarily on training. This enraged her mother as the plan was for her to become a nurse so they no longer had to worry about money.  /  After only a few months of training, she’s selected to debut as a member of Chroma. OTHER FACTS /  Not mentioned in her biography is the fact that she grew up in a fairly religious family. Mom and dad were raised Christian, so they raised their daughter the same. She was never into church, though. She always felt as though she was being judged harshly by the others in attendance. Hell, she even thought that of her mother quite often. Her style was never as pristine as her mom would’ve liked and no one understood her interests in the occult, in anime, in video games, and so forth. By the time she was eighteen, she stopped showing up to service altogether—which her mom didn’t like, but respected nevertheless.  /  She still likes to skate in her spare time... but she doesn’t really have any nowadays. You’d think that she’d be in the dance line due to her past in performance, but since she stopped skating, she’s lost a lot of her flexibility and power. She hopes to improve though!  /  She’s never had many close female friends, so she looks forward to hopefully bonding with her members as they grow closer. This is something she wants to change about herself a lot. INSPIRATION /  For Michelle, I pulled a lot of inspiration from a few different characters from television series, mainly Cassie Howard from Euphoria; Manuella “Manny” Santos from Degrassi: The Next Generation; Tessa Campanelli from Degrassi JH / High; and Britney Orton from We Are Who We Are, among others!

𝖕𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖔𝖓𝖆𝖑𝖎𝖙𝖞.

01.  On the surface, Michelle’s reasonably pleasant to be around. She has a deep interest in people, especially those she’s close to, so if you’re a friend of her’s, she genuinely wants to know all about you and deeply cares about how you’re feeling / doing. Some might perceive this high level of intrigue as romantic, and she’s... not ever really going to confirm or deny those types of feelings. She’s a huuuge believer in love and doesn’t want to end up like her parents, but also has no idea what she’s doing when it comes down to it. She didn’t have the best example to look up to, so you know. 02.  Michelle’s really talkative, and she’s witty, and she knows how to charm the pants off of most people, and while that’s loud and present in her character, she also has many faults. For one, her emotions are really strong and her mood is easily affected by others and events that occur in day-to-day life, so she has a tendency of being moody. That, and she also isn’t the best “rule follower” either. Does she care that there’s a dating ban in place for she and Chroma? Absolutely not. Did she experiment with drugs and alcohol in high school when they were forbidden to her? Yes. She’s not the best at making decisions, but she believes that taking risks shape better people... even if that belief’s a little skewed. 03.  Some people say that she might be a little too “sweet” for her own good sometimes and she’s prone to getting her heart stomped on, but she’s not all that innocent. While she’s a huge believer in love, she’s not exactly good at it. She enters in and out of relationships all the time, and she loves the honeymoon phase, but whenever it starts to get too “real,” she gets nervous and bails. Abandonment issues FTW? A very strong possibility. 04.  She’s also empathic to a fault on occasion. It’s easy for her to pick up on the emotions of others and it’s hard for her not to carry them on her shoulders. She’s had a difficult time learning that boundary for herself, and well, at this point, she doesn’t even realize that it’s a thing. Mother taught her how to be kind and nurturing towards loved ones, but she can take it to a degree that isn’t healthy for anyone—especially if love / romance is involved. 05.  Her chattiness can sometimes land her in trouble, but that’s because she has a hard time filtering what she says. Her mind runs a mile a minute and her speaking patterns are similar, so sadly, she can’t control what comes out of her mouth sometimes... pray for her.

𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖉-𝖈𝖆𝖓𝖔𝖓𝖘.

01.  If I were to make any sort of “claim” on what I imagine her voice sounding like, it’d be a lot like J from STAYC, maybe with a little mix of fromis_9′s Seoyeon. There’s a delicate husk there, and it’s a little lower than the others, but it’s extremely recognizable and unique. That is her biggest asset as a singer and rapper. She’s not had enough time to truly make drastic improvements to either skill given her short stint as a trainee, but she’s working really hard to get better and doesn’t want to be seen as just a pretty face forever. 02.  Dance-wise, she’s actually pretty strong—just nowhere near as trained as Chroma’s dance line. Due to her extensive background in figure skating ( and a little bit of ballet ), she’s got a really natural gracefulness to all of her moves; a fluidity that allows for strong body rolls, etc. Additionally, she focuses on clarity and sharpness, angles, as that’s what she’s most familiar with. Michelle also has great control of her hip-area and often adds variations to moves using her hips. If I were to select a reference, I’d say Oh My Girl’s Arin and TWICE’s Mina. Some of her faults are that her movements are often too light and soft, so whenever power is needed, she lacks strength there. She also has a tendency of making choreography look a little “sensual” without necessarily intending to. 03.  Loooves when people call her Mish or Chelle/Shell. Honestly, she adores nicknames—both giving and receiving them. She’s also a heavy user of pet names in conversation, but tries her best to stop if people are uncomfortable with it. 04.  Michelle’s typically not afraid of making her affections known, even early on. She’s the type that’ll definitely hit on you if she thinks you’re handsome / attractive, and goes with the flow if the person responds positively. If she gets really cozy with you, she can come off as clingy in the beginning, but that typically subsides with time. That’s applicable to both her friendships and her romantic relationships. 05.  Her public image is similar to that of Alice in Wonderland and Snow White—beauties with fair skin and wide eyes; imaginative and curious; trapped in purity and sweetness; soft, feminine, and delicate—but with a slight “edge” because of her rapping and quick wit. It’s hard for her to keep up with it all the time—especially when she’s a bit different personally—and she’s barely starting in her career. She hopes it evolves over time. 06.  She’s decided to go by her Korean name as an idol because it made the most sense, to be honest. Though, a few other stage names tossed around were: Chelle, Wooah, Hayan, Rozy, and Baekseol. In the end, she’s happy she’s just Rorin or Michelle to everyone.

𝖕𝖑𝖔𝖙-𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖘.

This section will be updated when her plots page is complete. Please look forward to it !! I’m getting it done as fast as I can. In the meantime, I’m happy to brainstorm and look over your muses’ plots pages too !! ♡

[cptsdstudyblr]

Cults & Religious Abuse PART 2: So you’re in a cult?

If you don’t want to see this series, you can block #cptsdstudyblrreligion

tw// cults, religion, religious abuse, religious trauma, mentions of other types of abuse

PART 1: Q & A

In this post I will be speaking somewhat specifically about my experiences that led to religious trauma, so please be cautious when reading this post. The tips and resources are at the bottom and are bullet points, so feel free to skip to there if you aren’t comfy with the post itself.

Maybe you were raised in a religion, maybe you or your family joined a religion later in your life, or maybe you’ve gotten involved in a cult in some other way. But one day you wake up and you realize that you need to get out. But how? In this I’ll be sharing the basics of my experiences in a cult-like fundamentalist religion, how I got out, and some resources I think are helpful for people in similar situations.

Before I get into the details, I want to make one thing clear: I am not a woman. I am non-binary. However, I was raised a woman and that was a huge part of the way these experiences affected me, so I will be including that perspective in this post.

I also want to make it clear that I am not against religion in general or against people practicing religion. This post is not intended to attack religion as a concept, but to shed light on specific extremely harmful religious practices.

My family’s relationship with religion is on the complicated side, but I’ll briefly explain it for context. Both of my parents were raised fairly generically Catholic. My grandparents on my dad’s side are now loosely Catholic, but don’t explicitly practice religion. My grandmother on my mom’s side has since converted to protestant Christianity at my mom’s suggestion. My dad has been either apathetic or even hostile towards religion for as long as I can remember and rarely attended church with me and my mom, but my mom has always been religious. These are the primary influences in my life, as I’m not close enough to any other family members for their religious beliefs to have had significant impact on me. 

My mom is where it gets complicated. Although she was raised Catholic, she explored protestant Christianity starting a few years before my birth and quickly converted. For most of my actual childhood my mom was a pretty average protestant Christian. We moved a lot, so we attended churches in a variety of denominations, including several more charismatic and prosperity-gospel based megachurches, but when I was around 9 years old, my mom fell down a rabbit hole of Messianic Christianity through one of these churches, which I believe is where it all started to fall apart. Just to clarify, although this group of beliefs is technically referred to as Messianic Judaism, I refer to my experience with it as Messianic Christianity as I am in no way Jewish (and thus feel uncomfortable calling my religious experiences Judaism) and the messianic movement is harmful to actual Jewish people.

This move into Messianic Christianity pushed my mom to start rereading and reinterpreting the Bible and she consequently decided that she was not enamored with the teachings of the church we attended at the time. I strongly believe that her understanding of that study was also heavily influenced by the domestic violence and instability going on in our home at the time, as she was unable to connect to the overwhelmingly positive messages that our church preached. So, she moved us to another church. This was a church we had attended some in the past while trying to find a home church after a move, but hadn’t really stuck with, so it wasn’t an entirely new church. Because of this, I generally say that I attended this church from the age of 9 although we did not attend this church consistently until I was around 11. This church was a nondenominational Bible church closely associated with Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, CA, which is pastored by John MacArthur. I’d encourage you to take a look at the basic teachings of John MacArthur and of this church in some depth as they are already quite problematic. The linked article is really just one example of the kind of teachings that are prevalent here, and I’d encourage you to follow this rabbit hole as far as it takes you because it’s fascinating. 

The church that we moved to was extremely fundamentalist. Unfortunately, I’m not comfortable linking the actual church for fear of doxxing myself, but the teachings of this church are pretty much exactly in line with those Grace Community Church and the other organizations I will mention soon. This church also unofficially followed the teachings of the Institute for Basic Life Principles (IBLP). When I say unofficially, I mean that my church was not publically associated with IBLP, but they were definitely associated with IBLP in reality. And again, I’d really encourage you to browse through their website to get a feel for their teachings. However, as a basic summary, if you’re familiar with the Duggar family from the TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting, they are members of IBLP and everything they teach was taught fairly similarly at my church. I won’t go into the details of what the teachings were, but they were about as fundamentalist Christian as you could come up with. Sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, abuse, etc. but turned up to 11/10. And it was a very closed circle. So how did I get out and end up where I am now - a bi-romantic asexual non-binary university student studying STEM at an incredibly liberal university?

It wasn’t easy. But I did get somewhat lucky. Unlike 90% of the kids at my church, I was not homeschooled after 8th grade. Instead, I went to a private Christian school - this was definitely still harmful and contributed to my trauma but it did give me opportunities to be exposed to people and ideas outside my fundamentalist Christian bubble. It also encouraged me to attend university, as it was expected of all graduates from that school. My dad wasn’t religious, and he and my mom divorced right before I graduated from high school. Additionally, my mom did encourage me to continue my education despite the teachings at our church. I’m not sure why she encouraged this, but she did. So I got lucky that things in my life pointed me in a direction of further education. And I got further lucky that the main school in my state is the school it is. It’s a school that is incredibly left-leaning and secular, and ultimately it pushed me extremely far outside my comfort zone.

I am extremely grateful for the opportunities that made it easier for me to get out of this situation, but I did still have to work for it. Here are my suggestions for surviving a cult-like environment and for eventually getting out:

Do everything you can to expose yourself to other ideas and beliefs. I assume that if you recognize you’re in this type of situation and want to escape, you already know that you disagree with the beliefs that are being forced on you at some level. But it’s important to further educate yourself where possible and figure out your beliefs. Figuring out what you believe and being committed to it is key in being able to stick to leaving your environment. If you know you disagree, but you can’t articulate why you disagree or what you believe and you aren’t committed to your beliefs, you will be very easy to convince that you are wrong and you will be very easy to manipulate. 

If you’re on tumblr reading this, you probably have access to the internet, so use that to your advantage. Research things, read articles, and involve yourself in discussions. If you struggle with internet access, you can read books, magazines, and newspapers at your local library and potentially even join clubs through your library or school. Not everything you learn has to be political or about religion. Reading and learning will broaden your horizons, give you concrete interests outside religion, encourage you to learn about things that make you uncomfortable, etc. 

If you are involved in a religion that has a text, read it critically and read nonreligious analyses of it. You don’t necessarily have to agree with these analyses, but thinking critically about the text you’ve been raised to take as complete fact will help you realize what you actually believe.

Find others who agree with you. In high school, I had a couple of friends at church who were “rebels” too, and we’re still friends to this day. We moved on together, and it really helped me be able to get out because I wasn’t doing it alone.

If you have to physically leave to get away, make sure you have enough money and have a backup plan. If you leave and are forced to come back for any reason, leaving again will be infinitely harder. If you leave, make sure it can be for good. It doesn’t necessarily have to be permanent, but if you come back it has to be on your own terms and not out of necessity.

Don’t get yourself kicked out and be safe no matter what.

Some resources I think are helpful:

Find an LGBT Center (US only) - LGBT centers are incredibly helpful for issues that go beyond being LGBT+, and if you’re eligible to use them they can be a great resource

The Trevor Project - LGBT+ resources and crisis lines

Tumblr post describing what to do if you’re homeless - It’s from Tumblr, so take it with a grain of salt, but it seems like pretty solid advice.

How to leave a cult - Very basic guide, but has some good advice.

Quiz to help you figure out your political beliefs (US based, but has some other countries as well) - I’d suggest taking this a few times as you develop your beliefs, and I’d also suggest clicking “more questions” as many times as possible in every category to ensure that you cover a broad range of topics.

How Ideology Colors Morality - about how morality frames US politics

Ethics - a good place to start when looking at different ways of analyzing ethics. My high school ethics class is a huge component in why I questioned my own beliefs. Ethics is an eye-opening topic.

List of all the religions - exploring different religions and belief systems helped open my mind to new ideas and ways of thinking about the world

If you want me to help you research something or find resources for a specific situation, feel free to message me or send me an ask and I’m happy to help (you can also ask me other questions, my asks and DMs are always open!)

And as always, if I made a mistake or linked a bad resource, please feel free to let me know so that I can correct the issue ASAP. I always try to do my research thoroughly, but things can slip by since I am but a human. Thank you!

[tiriansjewel]

find it here on Spotify!

lyric explanations below the cut! (click images for better quality)

~~

~~

1. The 1 by Taylor Swift

“But it would've been fun

If you would've been the one”

As we start the playlist, Luke and Alex are taking a wistful look back on their relationship in the 90s now that they’ve moved on to other people.

2. Coming Clean by Green Day

“Seventeen and strung out on confusion

Trapped inside a roll of disillusion

I found out what it takes to be a man

Now mom and dad will never understand”

Back in the 90s, both Luke and Alex are coming to terms with their sexualities.

3. Smells Like Teen Spirit

“With the lights out, it's less dangerous

Here we are now, entertain us”

Sunset Curve were working towards popularity right at the height of the grunge scene, and I would assume that both Luke and Alex heard quite a bit of this song as teenagers.

4. Now or Never by Sunset Curve

“Keep dreaming like we'll live forever

But live it like it's now or never”

How could I not include Sunset Curve’s own song? They like living in the moment, and that includes their love lives.

5. Everlong by the Foo Fighters

“And I wonder

If everything could ever feel this real forever

If anything could ever be this good again

The only thing I'll ever ask of you

You've got to promise not to stop when I say when”

When you go through adolescence, you crave intimacy with other people. This song exemplifies what Luke and Alex want from each other- to be able to feel, and to be able to experience those feelings on a deeper level.

6. Ocean Size by Jane’s Addiction

“Wish I was ocean size

They cannot move you, man

No one tries

No one pulls you

Out from your hole

Like a tooth aching a jawbone”

Jane’s Addiction was another LA rock band of this time period, and these lyrics about wanting to be powerful like the ocean and having to leave your home really remind me of Luke.

7. All Apologies by Nirvana

“What else should I be?

All apologies

What else should I say?

Everyone is gay”

This song is Kurt Cobain ironically apologizing for his cynical attitude, including the line “everyone is gay” to mock homophobes. It reminds me of Alex- he doesn’t want to be “married and buried”; he is rebelling against his parents’ definition of a correct lifestyle.

8. Freaking Out The Neighborhood by Max DeMarco

“And I know it's no fun

When your first son

Gets up to no good

Starts freaking out the neighborhood”

Emily Patterson and Alex’s mom were probably both pretty appalled by their sons effectively joining the counterculture. At this point, both Luke and Alex are starting to express themselves more, comfortable in who they are and what they want.

9. Hangout With You by Diners

“All I want

Is to talk with you now

And I know that you've got time

You are constantly on my mind

Yes I know that you've got time

To hang out with me

Tonight”

Luke has begun to realize that he likes Alex, and in true Luke fashion, can’t stop thinking about it.

10. Affection by Between Friends

“I'm laying on the floor

We're drinking 'cause we're bored

Oh, I'm looking for affection in all the wrong places

And we'll keep falling on each other to fill the empty spaces”

One night, it all comes out- their feelings and desires- and they decide to begin some kind of friends with benefits type of situation. This song feels like it’s from Luke’s perspective to me.

11. gold rush by Taylor Swift

“What must it be like

To grow up that beautiful?

With your hair falling into place like dominos

I see me padding 'cross your wooden floors

With my Eagles t-shirt hanging from the door

At dinner parties

I call you out on your contrarian shit

And the coastal town

We wandered 'round had never

Seen a love as pure as it

And then it fades into the gray of my day old tea

'Cause you know it could never be”

Luke is a magnetic person, attracting everyone, and Alex finds him beautiful. He is in awe of him, but he’s also scared about having feelings he doesn’t know how to handle. This song kind of shows Alex’s internal monologue.

12. Can We Kiss Forever? by Kina

“I tried to reach you, I can't hide

How strong's the feeling when we dive

I crossed the ocean of my mind

My wounds are healing with the salt

All my senses intensified

Whenever you and I, we dive”

This song describes their first kiss, obscured from the world, in my mind. Plus, there’s ocean metaphors. You can’t go wrong with that.

13. 18 by Anarbor

“So if you wanna piss off your parents

Date me to scare them

Show them you're all grown up

If long hair and tattoos are what attract you

Baby, then you're in luck

And I know it's just a phase

You're not in love with me

You wanna piss off your parents, baby

That's alright with me”

Luke knows Alex isn’t in love with him, but they both want to try new things. Bonus points for this song having references to frayed parent-child relationships.

14. Boys Will Be Boys by Miles McKenna

“That graduation day, it never came for you and me

Couple drop-out kids, a shotgun wedding's all we need

Sorry, Mom, Sorry, Dad

Better luck next time

A couple packs a day, pierced nose and tattoos on our legs

No strangers to pretend, we've always been too proud to beg

Sorry, Mom, Sorry, Dad

Better luck next time

Boys will be boys”

This song referencing a “couple of drop out kids” just going with the flow made me think of how Sunset Curve probably never would have finished high school.

15. Just Like You by Three Days Grace

“You thought you were there to guide me, you were only in my way

You're wrong if you think that I'll be just like you

I could be mean

I could be angry

You know I could be just like you.”

Both Luke and Alex have tons of resentment for their parents, obviously.

16. Sunstroke by Less Than Jake

“We've all been living proof

That time won't wait or choose

We know it ticks on without me and you

And I can't have both sides

Letting go or holding tight

I'm burning bright tonight”

This song about being stubborn and time not waiting really reminded me of Luke, plus the foreshadowing of them becoming ghosts and adapting to a whole new world.

17. Saint Bernard by Lincoln

“Saint Calvin told me not to worry about you

But he's got his own things to deal with

There's really just one thing that we have in common

Neither of us will be missed”

This song just made me think about Alex and his Catholic guilt.

18. Bedroom Hymns by Florence and the Machine

“This is a good a place to fall as any

We'll build our altar here

Make me your Maria

I'm already on my knees

You had Jesus on your breath

And I caught Him in mine

Sweating out confessions

The undone and the divine

This is his body, this is his love

Such selfish prayers and I can't get enough, oh”

Part 2 of Alex and his Catholic guilt. Their relationship has become more carnal, and this song maybe gives a little of Alex’s perspective into that time.

19. Church by Fall Out Boy

“And if death is the last appointment

Then we're all just sitting in the waiting room

I am just a human trying to avoid my certain doom

If you were church, yeah

I'd get on my knees”

Here ends the trilogy of songs with religious references. This song is heady and sensual and also includes some nice foreshadowing of their deaths.

20. Bros by Wolf Alice

“Shake your hair, have some fun

Forget our mothers and past lovers, forget everyone

Oh, I'm so lucky, you are my best friend

Oh, there's no one, there's no one who knows me like you do

Are your lights still on?

I'll keep you safe

If you keep me strong”

Here’s another song from Luke’s perspective- talking about forgetting mothers, being best friends, and keeping Alex safe, as long as Alex keeps him strong.

21. Slip Away by Perfume Genius

“Don't look back, I want to break free

If you'll never see 'em coming
You'll never have to hide

Take my hand, take my everything

If we only got a moment

Give it to me now

They'll never break the shape we take

Baby, let all them voices slip away”

Alex struggles with losing his family over his sexuality, and Luke helps him through it.

22. Make Out In My Car by Sufjan Stevens

“I'm not trying to

Go to bed with you

I just wanna make out in my car

And though I'm dying to

Fall in love with you

I just wanna make out in my car”

Another great song about just wanting to exist with someone, about wanting touch and feel and create. They don’t want to fall in love, they just want to be.

23. I Exist I Exist I Exist by Flatsound

“I remember the way you shook

Its a shame that we're not soul mates

Because if i didn't know better

I'd say this feels pretty good

How could i be scared?

When i stretch and feel that you're there

So shut your mouth

Because these words will speak themselves

I can feel them in these blankets

And they're surrounding your figure

Embraced in the quilts

And i cant help but think

You're my missing puzzle piece”

This song is so beautiful- with references to helping a partner through anxiety, and being just like ones mother... a lot of this dynamic in my mind is Luke and Alex reminding each other that they exist, that life is wide and bright, that they’re alive. This gives a window into Luke’s inner feelings as well.

24. Come on, Mess Me Up by Cub Sport

“I found comfort, I fell in love with avoiding problems

But I want this, you know I want this

So come on, mess me up

And you can break me, if you'll still take me

Ruin me, if you'll let me be one of the ones you say you won't forget”

At some point, they become more reckless about their feelings, a little less level headed about their arrangement. Intimacy is an escape.

25. Please Never Fall In Love Again by Ollie MN

“This is what it's like to be lovers

You and me need never be lonely again

Spin with me endlessly or at least until the end

Please never fall in love again”

As usually happens with these arrangements, feelings are caught. Luke and Alex consider making things more serious.

26. Can I Call You Tonight? by Dayglow

“Batteries drain, I get the memo

I think that I might have to let you go

So can I call you tonight?

I'm trying to make up my mind

Just how I feel

Could you tell me what's real?”

The end of their relationship is near, and Alex is unsure. You can decide if this takes place before or after they die.

27. Wicked Game by Chris Isaak

“I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you

And I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you

No, I don't wanna fall in love with you”

Eventually these relationships all start to feel like games, don’t they?

28. Perfect by The Smashing Pumpkins

“So far I still know who you are

But now I wonder who I was

Angel, you know it's not the end

We'll always be good friends”

Another song about the end of a relationship, and finding yourself again. There’s a bit of resentment there, but they are learning to be friends again.

29. Miss Missing You by Fall Out Boy

“Maybe I'll burn a little brighter tonight

Let the fire breathe me back to life

Baby you were my picket fence

I miss missing you, now and then”

They’ve gotten over each other and become friends again, but are still nostalgic for the past. Bonus points for references about coming back to life.

30. Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) by Green Day

“For what it's worth

It was worth all the while

It's something unpredictable

But in the end it's right

I hope you had the time of your life”

Ah yes, the song everyone uses to commemorate bittersweet ends- it’s the perfect clincher for this playlist.

I hope you all enjoy listening!

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #384

“watch your tongue or have it cut from your head”

Do you post to say happy birthday on other people’s walls? Sometimes. Depends on my mood and the person. When was the last time you saw a rainbow? Idr. What’s your favorite television commercial? I don't watch TV enough at all to have one. And who has a favorite commercial, anyway? Do you trip a lot? I don't really trip a lot, but kinda fumble over my footing and stray a bit. I'm horrible at walking straight, and it's gotten worse as my legs have. How old is your television? The one in the living room is god knows how old. My parents were still together when they bought it. When did you last talk on the phone with someone? A couple days ago for my appointment with my psychiatrist. Are you currently sleepy? I'm quite convinced I'm permanently tired. Are you hot or cold natured? I am ALWAYS fucking hot, ugh. Do you take any advanced classes? I took mostly Honors classes in school. Do you have weak upper body strength? My body is just weak as a whole. What is the worst insult someone can call you? Emotionally weak. Are you good at sketching? If we're talking meerkats, haha. They're the only complex thing that I can freehand no problem without needing a reference, honestly. Ever play Angry Birds? Nah. I thought the movie was cute, though. Have you ever been to the zoo before? Yeah. Has anyone ever been weirdly obsessed with you? No. Are you afraid someone might steal your identity someday? It's not something I actively worry about at all. Like, you don't want my identity, I promise. Do you have any talents that come naturally? Growing up, adults always told me I was a "gifted" artist and writer. Also that I seem to have an unnaturally strong connection with animals. I've always been that person where a pet's owner is like "omg ____ never lets people do that" and whatnot. Have you ever had plastic surgery before? I haven't. It's funny though, how opposed to it I used to be... Like goddamn, I was such a fucking stupid and honestly judgmental teenager, regarding many things. I look back on her and cringe. Like damn dude, if you have a safe surgical procedure to help you enjoy the body you're stuck with the rest of your life, you go for it, boo. Are you afraid of airplane rides? Not really. What’s the best Valentine’s Day gift you’ve gotten? There was this one year where Jason had to go to work on Valentine's Day and I was super bummed, yet he still surprised me with a heart-shaped box of chocolates, roses, and a game I really wanted, Heavy Rain. I thought it was the sweetest. What is something you lose often? My phone. ;-; Do you enter a lot of sweepstakes? I don't enter any. Do you consider yourself physically active? *chuckles nervously* Do you have Netflix? Yeah. Favorite salad dressing? That Olive Garden replica you can buy at the store. Do you enjoy dancing? Once upon a time I did. My body could never handle it now. Have you ever considered writing a novel? Many times. Snow or sand? Snow, by twenty thousand miles. It is VERY hard for me to walk through sand, and I also hate hate hate hate HATE the sensation. Do you like sour candy? Heeeeeell yeah man. Have you gotten any injuries lately? If so, what & how? Nothing notable. Are you a clumsy person? Like you would not fucking believe. Last male you talked to in person? I think my primary physician's nurse. Are you thinking about asking anyone out? No. Pink lemonade or regular lemonade? Pink lemonade, for sure. But I love both. Chocolate or strawberry milk? CHOCOLATE. Strawberry milk is disgusting. Have you ever won a contest on the radio?No. Is there a song that reminds you of your best friend? There's quite a few. Has a book ever made you cry? Yes. Do you automatically check your phone when you wake up? Yes, for the time. Do you know anyone who has a pet bunny? Not that I'm aware. What store or website would you most like a gift card for? Rebel's Market. How do you feel about wolves? I adore wolves. Beautiful, majestic creatures with very interesting social dynamics. Name your top 3 favorite musical instruments. Electric guitar, violin, piano. What was the last book(s) you bought at a bookstore? At an actual bookstore, I think it was The Fault In Our Stars, which I never actually read. Do you use Pinterest? Yes. Do you know any sign language? No. Do you have a favorite poem? No. Do you have a dog? No. The one we were pretty much stuck with has a home now. Have you ever read The Little House on the Prairie series? I haven't. Have you ever gone on a service trip to an underprivileged country? No. Have you ever performed in front of more than 100 people? Yes, for dance. When (if ever) was the last time you went to church? Forever ago, I don't even remember the last time. What's a quote you think is really powerful? There's a whole lot. The first one that came to mind was, "An eye for an eye will leave the world blind," which I do believe has great depth in it. Have you ever had to do your laundry at a laundromat? Yes. Are you the oldest person who lives in your household? No. My mom is turning 60 (... I think?) this year. If you have tattoos, how long have you had them? I got my first the day I turned 18. Do you and your dad have similar personalities? We're alike in some ways, imo most notably in that we have NO fucking common sense, embarrassing as that is to admit. We're both kinda slow at understanding things, too. What were the last three things you had to drink? Mountain Lightning, milk, and water. What did your family usually do for Easter when you were a kid? Us three kids all got Easter baskets full of stuff, and we'd go egg-hunting when we were all awake. My little sister Nicole would always wake our parents up in excitement, haha. My parents hid plenty throughout the house, and there was always this one "special" egg that was actually from Mom's childhood and was extremely intricate and beautiful. You basically "won" the hunt if you found it, and it was extremely well-hidden. When you have house guests over, where do they sleep? Historically since living here, my two half-sisters and their spouses (the only people who've stayed over) slept in what is *technically* Mom's room, but for whatever reason this woman still insists on sleeping on the couch in the living room, I guess because she's used to it after all the years she didn't have her own room and bed. Are you emotionally stable? LOLOOLOLOOLLOLOOLOOLOLLOOLOLLLLLLLLLLL Do you still talk to the very first person you had sex with? No. Are you an atheist? No. I don't quite know how to define what I am, but since I believe there's SOME higher power, I don't think it's fitting to call me an atheist. What’s the largest bug you’ve ever found in your house? Hm... I'm unsure. Probably a male mosquito, 'cuz them bitches are big'ins. Would it annoy you if a stranger called you "sweetie?" If it was a man, I'd be creeped out. Are you into fashion design? Not really. What’s the worst thing you’ve gone through in the past year? My leg muscles continuing to degrade, honestly. I have to do something about this shit. How did you get your last bruise? I fell when stepping over the stupid dog gate. Have your parents ever forgotten your birthday? Yikes, no. Would you rather have some bacon or beef jerky? Bacon. Do you like your orange juice with lots or no pulp? NONE. Do you wear skinny jeans? Back when I wore jeans, they were the only kind I wore. What projects are you doing now for school? I'm outta school. What’s the most number of comments you have on a Facebook picture? What is the picture of? I have no idea. Do you like coconut flavored things? No. Have you ever met a famous author before? No. Do you know anybody who has been raped before? No, thank god. I know someone who might've almost been, though. I don't know what the fucking pig was going to do to her if my sister and I weren't there. Have you ever wished for bigger boobs? No. Being overweight, I just want smaller ones now, haha. Have you ever gone a full day without interacting with another person? I've gone many days without it. How many relationships have you been in that lasted less than a year? Four, if you're counting everyone that had the "boyfriend" title. Where were you going the last time you were on a plane? Home from Illinois. Where were you going the last time you were on a train? I've never been on one. Have you ever been significantly more physically fit than you are now? Holy fuck, yes. You would never guess now that I was perfectly healthy in high school especially, yet I still thought I was kinda fat. It hurts so much to look back on. When growing up, did you parents keep the house very tidy? I mean not excessively, but Mom was pretty dedicated to keeping the house in decent condition. With three kids though, of course the house was somewhat messy with toys and all. When you shop at IKEA, do you always stop to eat a snack/meal in the cafeteria? ... There's a fucking cafeteria in a furniture store? o_o I've never been there before. How many watches do you own? None, save for one in my "treasure box" from when I was a kid. I was SO SO SO obsessed with Finding Nemo that I kept my broken one. I did the same with my horribly aged sneakers, like the soles were coming off and Mom finally made me stop wearing them, ha. Are there any ways in which you greatly differ from everyone else in your family? I do fucking nothing and am useless to society. Should teenagers be allowed to have their cell phones with them in class? Yes, because emergencies happen. I personally think it's best to maybe have your cell phone flipped over on the corner of your desk or something and on vibrate, that way the noise isn't too disruptive and the teacher can see you're not just using it for other purposes. Do you have any gay relatives? Yes. Have you ever had to have a pet put down? Sigh, multiple. Have you unfollowed, deleted, or blocked anyone on social media recently? If so, what was the reason? Not recently. How many cups of coffee do you typically drink per day? None. Do you know what your vocal range is? No, but it's not very broad. What’s the biggest financial mistake you’ve ever made? I haven't been in this position before. Have you ever been in a relationship where there was a large difference in maturity levels? No. What’s the longest you’ve ever stayed as a guest at someone’s house? I wanna say over a month while we were technically homeless. How bad was your acne when you were a teenager? Oh dear, it was rough. Like there were people who had it worse than me, but ya girl was lookin preeeetty rough lmao.

[honestlyhufflepuff]

Here are 20 reasons I am leaving the caregiver job with the client I've had since 2008: a list of unprofessional behavior and abuse by my client's guardian.

1. She said I wasn't Christian anymore, and said I was disrespecting my mother, for leaving the church I was raised in.

2. During the first year of employment, she would yell at me multiple times a week over things like leaving a lamp on (this is while I was caring for her medically fragile, high needs adult daughter). She would accuse me of being incompetent or trying to get fired for unemployment.

3. She told me I was not approved off for my honeymoon, less than a month beforehand, when I gave her over 5 months notice with consistent reminders. She harassed me over several texts while I was on my honeymoon saying I would be fired if I did not return a week earlier than I was supposed to.

4. She told me I still had to come in when I was sick and vomiting because she did not believe me. I became dehydrated and was vomiting so much that I had uncontrollable dry heaving and was unable to drive home. She refused to come home early when I told her of my symptoms, and when she did come home to see me retching into her trash can, she started handing me cleaning supplies to disinfect the trash can and the entire bathroom before I went to the emergency room...

5. ...there was no apology or ownership in forcing a sick employee to work to the point of needing to be hospitalized. She would not accept that I could not come into work for the next 3 days until my husband delivered the doctor's note.

6. I worked there throughout college, and would present my new school schedule each semester. For one class, I made the mistake of scheduling it after work. She said the schedule worked with her, but then consistently got home 30 min to and hour late. I missed so many classes that I had to withdraw.

7. Even after the hospitalization mentioned in #3, she would continue to be skeptical of any time I called in sick over the years (which wasn't often). I had no PTO or sick leave to use even when I was full time, so when I took off I didn't get paid. I was never approved to take off for any reason, and when I did take off it was accompanied by a massive guilt trip about how I was putting her family in a bind. It did not matter if it was a vacation, an illness, a doctor's appointment, or a family emergency. It also did not matter how much or little notice I gave; the guilt trips and emotional manipulation still accompanied any time I needed off. To this day, with every job I've had, I am always incredibly anxious about asking off, but it's never been a problem anywhere else I've worked.

8. Emotionally manipulative things she has said to get me to stay:

-"We don't have anyone else. I have to go to my job in order to care for [client's name]. You would be jeopardizing my job by leaving, and her well being." (If pressed she eventually admits to not looking for anyone else)

-"[Client's name] loves you like a sister, and her quality of life would go down significantly without you..." continues to tell me that if I don't do what she wants then I don't love or care for the client, even if it is because I need a job with higher pay and benefits to support my own family.

-"I thought the two of us were friends. This is very selfish of you." (Any time I don't do what she wants, like continuing to go to school full time).

-"God has put her in your life for a reason. You are called as spiritual sisters. It's your responsibility to care for her."

-"In the real world-the business world- other people won't be ok with you just taking off without approval. It's insubordinate and unprofessional." I was only 18 when she told me this, and young enough to believe her. Once again, I've literally never had a problem taking off with any other client or job because I often had PTO, and was always able to obtain leave approval easily. Even when it meant the client parent had to take off from work, they understood that the onus was on them to find the needed staff to account for people needing sick days and vacation.

9. She puts me in the middle of personal drama, constantly bad-mouthing the client's father and other attendants (who all inevitably leave after a year or two at most).

10. Told me, after a decade of infertility, that God told her I would become pregnant and have a son I was to name Amos. She said it would only become true if I prayed about it, so now when I most likely don't become pregnant, I feel it will be blamed on my lack of faith- or the fact that I am a different faith from her. I feel this instance was truly out of good intention, but ultimately unprofessional and something I would have preferred she keep to herself.

11. For years, she never got home when she said she would. I could never make plans after work because she would agree to come home at 7 and sometimes not make it home until 8:30. She always blamed traffic, needing to run an errand, or her boss keeping her. Then, when I had my own child I had to pick up from an after school program, she consitently got home on time. This showed me that she did have the executive functioning skills to be on time, but did not respect my personal time or work with other clients enough to do so before I was a parent.

12. I bent over backwards trying to help her. I scheduled less time with higher paying clients that were lower need. I sometimes worked 60 hour weeks while I was also in school. It never felt like it was enough. Even for the time I was working there 6 hours a week it was always "Why can't you stay later? Where do you have to be?" The more I gave, the more was expected, and then I was guilted for not meeting that higher expectation.

13. She refused to take the time to have team meetings with other service providers and caregivers, despite the fact all my other client families do this, and keep staff much more consistently as a result. Because of this, information and instructions were always inconsistent. With the client being significantly behaviorally challenged and medically fragile, this was at everyone's detriment.

14. Over the years, I referred 3 friends to work for her because she insisted she could not find caregivers on her own. All 3 of them lasted less than a year due to her behavior. She would then blame them and trash talk them to me, despite knowing I was still friends with them.

15. She expected caregivers to also deep clean the house. We are talking hours worth of work, that there just was not time for within the shift while also meeting the needs of the client.

16. She is openly homophobic, xenophobic, and although she thinks of herself as "not racist," she was extremely weird towards my besf friend's African fiancé. She refused to shake his hand and told me she didn't think he was with her for the "right reasons." Maybe thought he was in it for a green card? She seemed skeptical when I told her that he became a citizen 2 years prior, and that they'd been dating 6 years.

17. She has systematically isolated my adult client more and more over the years. We used to share many interests in things like Harry Potter, early 2000's pop, anime, Harajuku fashion, Adventure Time, Steven Universe, etc. One by one, everything we bonded over was off limits, due to being a "bad influence" or "demonic." She is no longer allowed to engage in any age-expected media unless it is explicitly Christian, and it breaks my heart to see how sad she gets about that.

18. When I was in college, and completely broke after just paying for books and classes, she said that she wanted me to go to the water park with her and the client. Admission was $50. I assumed she was paying since I was being required to go for work, and this was always what was done in the past. In the car, I asked if I could ride a roller coaster that the client wouldn't be able to go on while they ate ice cream. She said "Sure! You can ride whatever you like!"

So, I start getting excited. We're chatting pleasantly until the moment when she says "OK, when we get out of the car, you can go pay for your ticket first, and then I will bring..."

My stomach dropped. I told her there was a misunderstanding, and that I could not afford my ticket. She acted like it wasn't right that she should have to pay for mine. I told her that if she didn't want to, then I could study at the Starbucks across the street while they attended the park. She said no, because obviously she still wanted my help with her daughter. She paid for my ticket, making passive aggressive comments the whole time about everything I did, from how I pushed the wheelchair to how long I took to go to the bathroom despite the line.

I was no longer permitted to go ride the roller coaster, and I sat in silence while they ate their ice cream.

19. Recently, due to Covid, I do not have child care for my own daughter on Fridays. I have been bringing her to work with me, which my client's mom was supportive of. Then the client had drastic behavioral changes that I won't detail, but that O can say was significantly stressful on my daughter, and made it stressful for me to manage both of them at the same time. I told the mother, 2 weeks in advance, that I could not come in on Fridays until the behavior was consistently resolved. I do not want to get a sitter outside of maybe my aunt, due to covid, and I wouldn't expect her to do that every week. My client's mom was very understanding of this at first, seeing as we both now have special needs children, but the night before the next Friday I was scheduled to come in she berated me for not finding babysitting to the point that I started to panic. I firmly told her that I gave her plenty of notice, and then blocked her number up until the day I was scheduled to come back in.

20. When she is home at the same time I am helping her daughter, she micromanages everything. I think she is incapable of just letting me do the same work I've been doing for over a decade without standing over my shoulder and looking for something wrong.

Some background info:

I wanted to write this, first of all, to document all the reasons that I am justified in leaving, so that I can refer back to it no matter how hard she tries to get me to stay. This is like my anonymous way of getting it off my chest since no one who follows me on here knows me irl. Second of all, I want all the young professionals on here to know that, if they are treated like this in the work place, it is ok to leave!

I started working for this family when I was 18, and I am now 31. I have worked as many as 60 hour weeks, and as little as twice a month when I was full time with the state, but I have always cared for her in some capacity since 2008. I am currently working 15-20 hours a week with her.

You may wonder why I've stayed so long, and in regards to that I will say first of all that abusive relationships are hard to leave. The abuser may convince you that you are bad and won't find anywhere else good enough to take you. This can pertain to any type of relationship, be it romantic, professional, parental, or friends.

Another factor is that I love my client deeply, and my employer takes advantage of that. We grew up childhood friends, which is one reason maintaining professional boundaries with this family has been so hard.

The last reason I have stayed may be the hardest to explain, but I will try.

Sometimes she is good. My employer has made improvements over the years. Most of the worst things on here happened when I was in college. I don't know if her improvement is due to a genuine change in heart, or because she knows deep down that her behavior is why all the other caregivers left.

Whatever the reason, we do actually care for each other. We do actually connect and have a good time. She is kind to my husband and my daughter. She often tells me that I am a godsend to her family, a loyal and talented caregiver, and the best friend her daughter has ever had (although she will contradict this the moment I am not doing what she wants).

What I want people in similar situations to know is that the good moments do not erase the trauma of the bad ones. It is not my responsibility to "get over it" because she is trying to do better. A lot of the stuff she has said and done run too deep, and when she lapses into her old ways, I find myself reacting in a panic-driven, irritable way that's not really me. It's a reaction to trauma. I am not required to continue to stay at an underpaid job with an environment that evokes such emotions.

So please, if you are being treated like this in your job, then leave. You will find something else. For me, I intend to have another job lined up before leaving, but I'm on my way. For the first time in years, I've revamped my resumé, and it felt so empowering to work on a document that highlights my strengths!

For anyone in a similar position, you've got this. There are a lot of great jobs out there. There are a lot of humane employers. If you are treated like this, then label it for what it is. It is abuse. It is unhealthy. It is not ok. It is not erased by the times they are nice. And you deserve better.

[ouranoshoroscopes]

𝐀𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐬 𝐉𝐨𝐉𝐨 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬

A very specific post for people who like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and vedic astrology (assuming such people exist). After all, Tumblr is the place for very specific stuff, like Marquis de Sade memes.

Now let's get to the point.

Sun ☉

Giorno, DIO, Diego Brando, Jonathan

All of them are natural leaders who hate being bossed around. All of them crave power (except, maybe, Jonathan), though for different reasons. Having lots of pride, Diego and Dio take their hatred of humiliation to extreme levels, desiring to rule the whole world in order to be treated like gods, and finally erase their underprivileged pasts. They are also very narcissistic and put themselves above everyone else except their moms.

Jonathan and Giorno represent the holy side of the sun. Giorno shares with his father the same pride and deep hatred of humiliation, though he wants to be the king of his own world so no else will be humiliated like he was. Like the sun that share its light to all beings, Giorno and Jonathan love justice and treat everyone equally, punishing people only according to their wrongdoings and never for sadistic purposes. Both have warm and dignified manners. Jonathan is also the patriarch of the Joestars, a very solar status, given that Sun represents both fathers and authorities.

Giorno is canonically an Aries, so he has an exalted sun.

Moon ☾

Enrico Pucci, Guido Mista

Father Pucci is intelligent, passionate, devoted, attached to his kin, has a nurturing side and treats Dio's children as his own. The moon is a mirror of the sun, and Pucci is the follower of a solar figure, Dio. Also, he has a stand called C-Moon, which evolves from a baby raised by himself. No villain is more lunar than Pucci.

Mista is the faithful peer of another solar figure, Giorno. He also has a very childish stand and never forgets to feed salami to all six of them.

Mercury ☿

Josuke

Josuke is very light-hearted, youthful and witty, and can keep his cool even in the hardest moments. I don't even know his sign, but that's a pretty Gemini thing. Apart from his Peter Pan like personality, he also has a quick mind and great analytical skills.

Mars ♂

Jotaro, Jolyne, Iggy

All three of them give zero fucks to your feelings and are aggressive, athletic and action-driven. Jotaro is also a man of science and as a marine biologist, he's probably very good at math*, which is a lesser known trait of Mars.

Venus ♀

Mariah, Straizo, Shigechi, Yukako

I don't even need to explain Mariah. Straizo is very attached to his physical body and has a total aversion to the idea of becoming old, weak and ugly, which resembles the materialistic and vain side of Venus. His personality is very rajasic but at the same time cool, composed and noble, just like the vedic god of Venus, Shukra.

Shigechi is obsessed with money and Yukako is jealous and love-obsessed. Both can be taken as archetypes of the dark side of Taurus.

Jupiter ♃

Joseph Joestar

No matter how hard you try, you will never be as Sagittarian as Joseph Joestar. Joseph represents Jupiter's intense love of life and quest for thrilling experiences. Jupiter is also a planet of elevated intellect, and even though Joseph is a school dropout, his enthusiasm for literature and history can be seen through his many bookish references, from Sun Tzu to Jules Verne. Furthering your knowledge just for the sake of it and not because someone told you to is a very Jupiterian thing.

Not to mention Joseph's devilish good luck, which just can't not be Jupiter's work.

Saturn ♄

Johnny Joestar

The ultimate saturnine man, who attains wisdom through intense pain and suffering. Johnny is persistent, hardworking and resilient, still he doesn't believe himself, thanks to his cruel father and the death of his elder brother, of which Johnny feels guilty. Shame, guilt, death, a weak body, oppression, a harsh father and the weight of past experiences: all Saturnian themes permeating Johnny's life and making his sensitive soul thougher, until suffering becomes power, resulting in the liberation of mind and body. In short, Johnny's saga can be literally taken as a lesson on how Saturn works. In vedic tradition, Saturn is represented as a handicapped man (in analogy to the planet's slow moves) and is associated with the color blue; that's very easy to relate with Johnny's own physical condition and color aesthetic. Gyro describes Johnny as having "the eyes of a killer", and the vedic god Saturn is known for having a look so fierce no one dares to look at his eyes. Johnny Joestar is the incarnation of Saturn! This is going to be my headcanon from now on.

Rahu ☊

[Lunar North Node]

Funny Valentine

Power, ambition, politics and conspiracies are all under the domain of Rahu, and Valentine is among all JoJo characters the best representative of those themes. A master of deceitfulness with a one-track mind, he collects allies for purposes they can't even imagine, and that can change the fate of the entire world. It doesn't get more Rahu-ish than this.

Ketu ☋

[Lunar South Node]

Diavolo

Ketu is the shadow planet of ghosts, mysteries and everything otherworldly, which fits Diavolo perfectly: given the supernatural circumstances of his birth, we're not even sure he's a human being. Ketu is the planet of detachment, losses and disappearances, acting like a cosmic eraser; Diavolo's power is literally to erase time.

Speaking of losses and detachment, Diavolo has given up on his own identity, living as an anonymous hermit. Like Ketu, he's invisible and can be perceived only through his influence.

He was also raised in a church, which resembles Ketu's connection to the spiritual realms.

Finally, Ketu is the demon who lost its own head. That could be an accurate description of Diavolo.

*Yes, marine biology has lots of mathematics. This single piece of information ruined all my childhood dreams.

I don't know who made this Diavolo fanart but it's so pretty I just had to use it!

[sinceileftyoublog]

Robert Finley Interview: Ready for the Race

BY JORDAN MAINZER

At the risk of sounding cliché, it’s truly been a long, often hard road for blues and soul singer Robert Finley. On his new album Sharecropper’s Son (out tomorrow on Easy Eye Sound), he delves into his past. Ever since he hooked up with Dan Auerbach on 2017′s Goin Platinum!, Finley’s 60-year backstory has been more often chronicled in the mainstream, from being born and raised in Bernice, Louisiana and enlisting in the army as a teenager to suffering from a car accident, a divorce, and eventually ending his carpentry career after being deemed legally blind. And yes, he never gave up and eventually got lucky, being discovered busking by Music Maker Relief Foundation, touring, releasing an album, and eventually establishing a long-term collaborative relationship with Auerbach. Yet, until now, Finley hasn’t written about his early childhood, being raised along with his 7 siblings on a crop share in Louisiana.

Sharecropping refers to an agricultural legal arrangement where a landowner allows a tenant to use land in exchange for the share of the crops produced. It was a popular arrangement in the South from the Reconstruction to Jim Crow years following the abolishment of slavery; in reality, it was just another way for white Americans to maintain economic hegemony over Black Americans. “You get all the work, and the money never seems to come,” Finley told me over the phone in March from his home in Louisiana. “You always break even, and unless you own the farm, you really didn’t benefit. The checks from the cotton and from the corn didn’t come in your name.” In other words, Finley said, “Sharecroppers don’t get their share.”

Sharecropping was backbreaking, “out in the hot red sun,” Finley sings on the album’s title track, “where the work is never done,” Auerbach’s blistering guitar and keyboards shimmering like rays from the sun. That said, Finley never realized how rough things truly were. “We were poor and didn’t know it,” he told me, citing the fact that because they were never hungry, he actually thought they were rich. “We had cows. We had chickens. We had hogs. We had fresh milk...It was like we were really living it up!” he said. Moreover, since many of their neighbors didn’t have direct access to fresh food, Finley’s father would share their bounty, from meat to vegetables. And, as the youngest son, he spent a lot of time helping his mom in the kitchen, citing that experience as partially inspiring his love of cooking to this day.

With Sharecropper’s Son, Finley is not trying to provide a list of lamentations. “It’s not a pity party,” he said. Even more than not going hungry, Finley cites his father’s optimism and generosity as formative. “My dad, in his religious beliefs, always hoped for better things and a brighter tomorrow...at the end of the day, after picking the cotton, or pulling the corn, we had plenty to give away. I don’t know if my dad sold some of it, but I think he did way more giving than selling.” Eventually, his father “wised up” and gave up sharecropping, and to this day, Finley’s brothers and sisters, despite only his oldest and youngest sister graduating from school, live comfortably. Notably, Finley also holds where he grew up near and dear to his heart. On “Country Child”, he juxtaposes harsh memories of cotton fields with yearning for the more comforting aspects of the South, especially country girls who “give you a country smile.” He mentioned me that the sparse population of rural Louisiana meant that he had to cross rivers just to see his neighbors, but also that folks in a many mile radius knew each other well, to the point that “you could get a couple boards and put them in front of your house, and someone would ask you what you’re doing with them.”

Above it all, Finley learned from both his father’s mindset and his own ability to overcome. “That’s why I tell my story / So you could start dreaming too,” he sings on “My Story”, while the hand percussion-laden “Starting To See” details the symbolic perspective on life he gained after losing his sight. And the album ends with spiritual gospel waltz “All My Hope”. Even better, Finley offers himself up for his listeners, on tracks like “I Can Feel Your Pain”, a church organ hymn where he empathizes with folks suffering from everything from COVID-19 to police brutality. It’s why he stays positive and keeps on keeping on. As someone who walked again after an accident despite the odds and who was “discovered’ so late in life, he doesn’t let practicality tamper his ambitions. “Like a horse in the stall,” he said, “I’m ready for the race.”

Below, read my conversation with Finely, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: What made you want to sing more autobiographically this time around?

Robert Finley: I guess it was a chance to express myself and talk about these true stories. It’s not a made-up fantasy. It’s real life. It’s a chance to tell what life was like being a sharecropper. I was talking to all my siblings--4 brothers and 3 sisters, so there were 8 of us. My youngest sister doesn’t remember that much about it, but I’m the second youngest, so I wanted to get it out while all of us siblings would be able to form their opinion on it.

SILY: Would you say that the pandemic and the reckoning around the Black Lives Matter movement and subsequent increased awareness among White Americans gives these songs extra resonance?

RF: Yeah, I feel like it really opened the world’s eyes to what’s really going on. A lot of times, things happen we just don’t want to talk about, but that don’t stop ‘em from happening. In this case, it was a blessing to be writing about the right thing at the right time. 

Even me and Dan Auerbach meeting, that was heaven intervention, too. What do a 30-something year old man and a 67-year old man have in common that can reach the people? It would have to be the music. Music is not a racial thing. Music, to us, is what comes from the heart and goes to the heart. If you need a blood donor or kidney donor, you’re not gonna ask what color the person was or what race the person was who’s giving the blood and giving the kidney. The whole purpose is for you to get the kidney and stay alive. Music is pretty much the same thing. Even if people can’t speak the language, they can feel the vibes of the music. There’s always somebody that can translate what the artist is really saying, but if the music is right, and the message in the music is right, it really doesn’t matter what color the person is or where they come from. It’s all about what comes from the heart and goes to the heart. 

That’s where my songwriting comes in. To be able to reach out and touch people, because you want to give people something they can feel, that they can relate to. Not just a cool beat, not just a pretty voice, or whatever. The song needs to have a message that people can relate to. [And] as far as whether it’s soul, blues, country-western, jazz--if you’re looking for rock and roll, you can find it on the album, if you’re looking for soul, if you’re looking for country and western. It’s got a little of everything. That was the goal, and hopefully it’s being accomplished.

SILY: It seems like everybody who works with Dan has a musical connection and shared love of the same thing, even if not a widely known song or album. Do you feel that connection?

RF: Yeah. You gotta have something positive going even for Dan to reach out to you. Dan is looking for originality. People who want to stand out, not someone who’s trying to fit in. He looks for raw talent and gives them [opportunity] to express themselves. He’s open-minded and open to suggestions. He wants to know Robert Finely and produce Robert Finely and not to make me into something I’m not. 

SILY: On “Country Child”, you talk about driving by a cotton field as an older man and still feeling your back hurting. But on the same song, you talk about preferring a country girl to raise a country child. Was it important for you to talk about that complex relationship with where you came from?

RF: Yeah. Don’t get me wrong--I don’t have a thing against city ladies--nobody in the city smiles because it makes them look tough and look hard. In the country, they wave at everybody whether they know ‘em or not. It doesn’t matter because everybody’s just saying hi! In the city, people live across the hall or across the street and don’t know their neighbors. It’s a whole different lifestyle. They don’t let their guard down. I was trying to keep it as real as possible.

The country girls, they just wave and smile, and if you say something they don’t agree with, they move on. But they’ll talk for a while, and they give you the benefit of the doubt.

Sometimes, if you’re too friendly, you can become a victim. If you go in the city smiling at everybody, they automatically know you’re not from the city. It’s not what they do. Unless you’re properly introduced, the person across the hall won’t talk to you or know you. It’s all about the approach. But I have learned that a smile is universal. It doesn’t matter what country you’re in. If you smile, people will smile back. If you’re open-minded and open-hearted, there’s always somebody. People will be glad to see somebody who looks at them and smiles. It breaks barriers and opens doors, even for people trying to look hard and tough.

SILY: On a couple songs on here, you improvised the lyrics, calling it “speaking from the heart.” Do you find that the way to go when the subject matter of the song is more difficult to talk about?

RF: Yeah, I mean if you stay real with everybody, it’s not a problem. You’ve gotta be open-minded and open-hearted. Put yourself in anybody’s situation. If you do that, you can see it from their point of view. With all the stuff that’s negative in the world today, it’s good to be positive every chance you get. It needs to be something people can relate to in the real world, or that people can say, “I’ve been through that or I’ve done that.” It’s not something that’s been made up like a fairytale. It has to have meaning where people can say, “Yep, I remember those days.” 

I have 7 siblings. They all have to tell the story from their point of view. I try to leave the door open [in case] they want to tell what they remember, because they might remember something I don’t or had to experience something I didn’t. So when I was writing [the title track], I talked to them about it. In reality, I wanted it to be a true song that dealt with real life. Not made up. It needed to be something real they could identify with and their friends identify with where people could say, “I remember those days.” I also definitely didn’t want to make it seem harder than it already was. I only went back to the cotton field and put on the overalls for the video because nobody was wearing shiny shoes in the cotton field. They might have had a pair they put on on the weekend, but they definitely didn’t wear them in the field. The video could have been done anywhere, but to keep it real, I thought we needed to take it back to the country.

SILY: What did it mean for you to play with so many of the same session players as on Goin’ Platinum?

RF: It was like a family reunion. We toured together in the East Coast and West Coast. It was really an honor because everybody knew everybody. Everybody was excited to get back together because of the success of the first album. We built more or less what you could call a family relationship. Everybody knows everybody, and getting back in the studio, we got straight to work, what everybody came for. I don’t know how much time Dan spent with the musicians before I got there. When I got there, it was to lay the vocals down.

What I really noticed is that all the musicians played what they feel. They listened to the groove. And all the local musicians were in a 50-mile radius of each other. I could have them all together within a couple hours.

I was probably the youngest person in the band, besides Dan--I’m almost twice his age. When you’re with the band, it breaks out the best in you. Learning from their experience, everything they’ve done and who they’ve done it with, it makes you feel privileged to be in the company of them. They’re not on big ego trips and nobody has a big agenda. I’m easy. I don’t put no pressure on nobody--I just want the best out of everybody.

I love working with the Easy Eye Sound label because to me, I walk in, meet and greet, we break bread together, and we go to work. The work is hard, but I don’t know if you’d even call it work.

SILY: What’s the story behind the album art?

RF: The label mostly [does it] and asks me for approval. There’s not much I’d object to anyway. It’s a picture of me. I seldom walk outside even to go to the mailbox without my hat on. That’s one of my trademarks. I always wear hats or caps. I love the artwork. To be honest, I haven’t met the individual that did the artwork on it, but it very much had my approval when I saw it. Meeting everybody, sometimes it’s way down the line where I can actually meet them face to face.

[purplesurveys]

1154

[created by: joybucket]

What was the last thing you ate? We had adobo for dinner. I didn’t find it filling though, so I might get some of my mom’s bread pudding sometime tonight as a midnight snack.

What is one thing you're a hoarder of? Receipts, for no reason whatsoever other than the frequent nagging feeling at the back of my head telling me I might need to pull out a certain receipt one of these days just in case I get into any issues, so I end up keeping all of them.

Do you collect magazine clippings? No. I used to but they’re all gone now.

What rating do you normally give surveys? I just take them on here. I visit Bzoink pretty often but I never made an account so I haven’t been able to rate the surveys I’ve taken.

Name someone you wish acted the way he/she used to. I wanna say Gab, but she’s better off figuring out who she wants to be and is meant to be for now. Otherwise, I don’t really have an answer to this; all the people I know are pretty dang fantastic.

Have you ever worked in food service? No.

What was your favorite job that you've had? I’ve only had one job, and I definitely can’t complain about it.

Does your stomach hurt currently? Nope. I’m actually on day 2 of my period, but fortunately the pain really ever only takes place on day 1 for me. The rest of my period usually goes smoothly.

What's one medication condition that you have? I don’t have any. I have one medical condition – scoliosis – but I don’t take any medication for it.

Do you forget passwords a lot? LOL yessssss, because websites have varying rules on what they can count as a password – some want 8 characters, some want 12, some want upper case letters, some want a symbol; so even though I use the same password for everything I typically have to make 84954983573475 variations of them anyway that I end up forgetting.

What is the most you've ever weighed? Not sure, maybe a little over 100 lbs.

Do you plan your wedding on Pinterest? No, I never understood how Pinterest worked :/ I lasted all of 5 minutes on there until I felt bored.

Would you want your first child to be a girl or a boy? I’d love a girl.

Who are the cutest babies on Facebook? The Song triplets will always be babies to me, no matter how big they get.

Do you refer to coral as pink, orange, salmon, or coral? Those are four different colors/shades that you’ve just named right there.... < Lmaooooooo same thoughts. I would just call it coral because that’s what it is.

Name someone whom you wish would apologize to you. I have a name in mind and you guys already know who it is. I’m at peace regardless if I get an apology or not (I definitely won’t), though – and I count that as a win. It’s absolutely batshit insane that I never heard one apology but instead got a million “Can’t you give me credit for trying?” I can’t help but chuckle every time I take myself back to those moments. Thankful I got out of there :)

Do you own a record player? I don’t, but I’d love to have one.

Do you have many regrets? No.

Do you wish your regrets would stop coming back to haunt you? I don’t have a lot of them, so I don’t let them bother me to begin with.

Have you had any regrets in the past week? Can’t say I’ve had any.

What do you not know how to say no to? Requests/favors. I’m a people pleaser through and through.

Have you ever been mad at God? Yup, that’s why I let go of religion at a very young age. I was going through shit no kid should’ve been going through and the idea that some deity is making it happen because it was supposed to encourage me have more faith was utterly stupid. I had no problem disowning whatever god I was desperately trying to latch on to by the time I was 10.

If you don't have a car, do you feel like you're missing out? I have a car. I don’t own it, but it was designated for me.

What is your favorite cousin's name? Jereth. I keep forgetting where they got his name from, but it was from like a German movie or something like that.

Who do you wish were your best friend? Hayley Williams.

Would you ever consider moving to L.A.? Never. Just never seemed like my kind of city. Not to mention the amount of Asian/Asian-American hate crimes I’ve been hearing about recently. The US is undeniably out of my list of places I’d want to step foot in, much less live in.

List 5 other names that start with the same letter of your name. Rhiannon, Riley, Rocky, Rachel, and Russell.

Have you ever known anyone who's name started with a "Y"? Yes, I went to college with a girl named Yumi. Yanna is also still a good friend of mine and we catch up every once in a while.

^If yes, what was it? Oops, mentioned them already. There are also a couple more Y people I know but I’m not close to them nor are we in the same social groups, so idk how to classify them. 

Did you hear laurel or yanny? It’s been a while since I let myself get carried away by that ~meme, but I think I heard yanny.

Owls or penguins? Penguins. But owls are great too.

What is your go-to comfort food? Probably something with grease that is fried. < This is an awesome answer. Right now though, I’ve been frequently getting spicy tuna salad every Friday to reward myself after a work week.

What is the best coffee shop in your town? Tim Hortons. < Tim Hortons is greeeeaaaat, but all the branches are in Metro Manila and not at all near me :( That said, my pick would probs be Starbucks. There’s a new local coffee shop where I live called Ghost Coffee and I had been meaning to check it out, but quarantine part two happened.

Do you prefer Pinterest or Tumblr? Tumblr, but then again don’t they have different features and purposes?

Do you think blonde is the best hair color? No.

In your opinion, what is the best hair color? I don’t think that there really is a “best” hair color... < Same. Tbh I’ve noticed that I only ever get attracted to brunettes, but I don’t think that necessarily makes it the best hair color.

If applicable, what is the name of your YouTube channel? I think it’s just my name since my account is linked to my Google.

Do you wear glasses? Yes, but I haven’t worn mine in a while since one of the legs snapped. I’ve been managing well without it, but I plan on getting a new pair soon. At least as soon as I grow the pussy to book an appointment HAHA

What's one nickname you have? Leigh calls me Robs. It’s not my favorite, but Leigh is like a sister to me so she’s the only person permitted to call me such.

What's one thing you miss? Being in crowded places and living in those moments.

Do you have a favorite spot in church? I hate being at a church; but to answer this, my very enthusiastic mom used to always pick the very front and center row for our family to sit at, so you can imagine how glad I am not to have to do this anymore because of Covid :)))

Who was the biggest bully in your high school? Bullies stopped being a thing in high school. All the friend groups just minded their own business for the most part, ours included.

Which news story has still stuck with you years later, and why? Manila hostage crisis. It was really scary and the fact that the entire thing was being streamed live on the evening news at a time when livestreaming was still a fairly unfamiliar concept made it even more unsettling.

Have you ever REALLY had a celebrity crush? On Kristen Stewart and Kate Winslet, yep. These days my eyes are on Kim Seon Ho hahaha, and I also feel a future crush on BTS’ Jungkook coming through.

Did you ever have to wear a school uniform? From preschool to high school. Didn’t have to anymore once I started college.

Do you collect washi tape? No. I neverrrrrrr saw the big deal, but then again I’m probably just not craftsy enough to see the point lmao.

Tell me something random that happened to you today. I took an afternoon nap for the first time in many months, and I woke up feeling completely disheveled and confused about the day and time. It’s been a while since I got that sensation and I did not miss it.

If you're a girl, are you on your period? I am, actually.

Are there any balloons in the room you're in right now? Yeah, the balloons we had set up for my dad for his 50th birthday celebration are surprisingly still alive. We originally had them in our accommodation in Tagaytay, but we brought the balloons home and put them up on the 2nd floor corridor, and they’re still all up there.

Do you have the windows open? I do, because the wind is actually pretty chilly tonight. I’m even wearing a hoodie in freaking April, which never happens.

What's one good name for a new puppy? Depends on their personality. It took hours for us to name Cooper, so it wouldn’t be easy to think of a name for a puppy I’ve never even met.

Would you collect antiques if you were rich? Depends on what kind, but yeah, I might consider it.

Did you dream last night? Yes.

Do you forget dreams or remember them? (or do you not dream?) I remember them in the first few minutes of waking up, but my memories of them gradually fizzle out throughout the day.

What color is your phone? Black.

Do you often have your phone on vibrate? Yes, because I often have meetings and it’s a big nuisance whenever there’s a ringtone that chimes in the middle of one.

Name something that gives you headaches. Working in front of the laptop for too long.

Do you have a secret hiding spot? My car, sometimes.

Have you ever lived in a place that had a secret passageway? Nope.

Did you play with legos as a kid? Yes, but I was never too imaginative for it. I just liked making tall towers and then dismantling them right after.

If applicable, what color is the rim of your bedroom mirror? White.

Can you be scatterbrained? Sure.

[everydayanth]

STARTING AT 21:48

TRIGGER WARNING: The thumbnail doesn’t convey the tone here. This is footage of anti-protestors “protecting” a columbus statue in a park in PA. Things get violent, over-sensory, and include mob-mentality stress. Shortly after the timestamp indicated, there is mad disrespect to Native history and culture, a lot of ignorance and generalizations about the local Black communities.

If you don’t want to watch it: I am referring to a point where many white Americans are challenging a journalist asking them about policing, BLM, and politics, and one, to paraphrase, is worried that the journalist is going to cut it to make them look racist and call them white Americans, and he wants to be clear that they are “white Americans of Italian descent with deep roots in the area!” When pressed about Native American roots in the area, they erupt in swears and cuss at him, the same guy yelling “what do you want me to do about it?” Throughout the exchange, another guy is riling them up about media twisting their stories while the journalist continues to explain that he is live streaming and it therefore cannot be cut up. The Italian flag can be seen on shirts, bags, and waving in the background.

I can’t stop thinking about this. 

I ran into this in every corner of the US except the deep south cus I haven’t really been there yet (teen years don’t count). White Americans who want to belong to a cultural community continue to cling to their heritage culture in often stereotypic ways as a a way to separate them from the “whiteness” of white America and belong to a local community.

I can’t stop seeing it everywhere. But I know there is no one line, its all grey, and belonging to something bigger than yourself is a powerful connection for humans, as social creatures with dynamic identities and emotions, it can be a grounding place. 

But when I see stuff like this, I wonder how the heritage cultures see it. What do you think video clip of this in Italy? 

What do the Dutch think of all the Calvinists and Dutch Reformed Church communities in West Michigan? I actually asked a few Dutch people once, and one old guy goes “well... they left for a reason, and no one stopped them for a reason” lol.

Cultural identities were assimilated harshly, or else held onto in unexpected ways. When I look at it, my Dziadzia is Polish, from Poland, but he was a baby when they came, or born shortly after, so his siblings speak Polish (you know I hung out with great aunts and uncles all summer), but he doesn’t, he was pushed to be American. Technically, he’s a first generation immigrant, and I’ve connected to a lot of Polish-Americans and Polish people through experiences and linguistic pieces I never considered to be Polish before. 

In contrast, my dad’s Dutch parents lived in the Dutch part of town and went to a Dutch church and read from the Dutch (well, Frisian, I was in my 20s when I learned what that meant or why it was important) family Bible and my nana spoke to us in her thick accent and the d and v sections of my schools were the largest (de- and van- surnames) and we did Tulip Time and renamed areas Holland and Zealand. So while they had assimilated, it was in a VERY Dutch area, and assimilation was quite minimal. Some of my aunts and uncles are very... white-American, while others and my dad (he’s one of 6, my mom is one of 8) are very much Dutch and stayed in the Dutch neighborhoods and churches. It took me a lot of training to start capitalizing proper nouns guys, you don’t understand, then I studied German and I turned in a paper to this really harsh English teacher and he made me stay after class and yelled at me because proper nouns had been left uncapitalized while regular nouns were capitalized... it was a bad day lol.

The Irish are critical of the Americanized St.Paddy’s day (understandably) and the souvenir shops seem to welcome Irish-Americans with open-arms and family crests on every type of knick-knack tchotchke you can imagine, while I have also heard Irish-American claims of identity dismissed in documentaries and series about Gaeilge as their own separate thing, with their own history that has become distinctly not-Irish in culture, location, language, or history (though the British enemy stayed the same).

There are tons of anglophiles in America who idealize England and watch the royal wedding and consume British media with glee. 

I’m not too sure about Spanish or French identities in America because growing up in MI, I learned the basic French from Canadian friends and their families, but I associated that with Canada, not France. When did it become different? Like Cajun, is it its own identity? Seems like it, tbh. And I associated Spanish and Portuguese language with friends from Central and South America because I didn’t really know of anyone from Spain or Portugal heritages and learned about them in school as the colonizers (along with Italian). Strange how that framing works to displace blame/responsibility, huh. In that Dutch school and I had to learn about the Dutch East India Trading Co from frickin’ Pirates of the Caribbean? Psh, says enough.

Bavarian has become the American stamp of German heritage, despite many families being from the lowlands or surrounding areas. A German friend got so fed up with the association one time, he yelled at everyone about electronic music, jumpstyle, and green energy so long that we ended up not playing soccer and just listening to him rant about what “German” was not. It was Oktober, and it was a college town, so I get it lol.

Eastern Europeans seem to often get stigmatized while Scandinavians... I dunno, seem to assimilate or keep to themselves? There’s a Danish population in a small town in MI that is very proud of its roots but beyond a parade and some flags, some round pancakes and me struggling eternally with the Danish language, there wasn’t too much of a focus on it. There’s also a large Finnish population in the UP (NOT Scandinavian, Nordic, I know, sorry), and they retain many Finnish words and phenotypic traits, flags wave over porches, but again, for the most part, they’re just... Michiganders. 

My view of this could also be very skewed because while I’ve lived in tons of states over the past 6-7 years, that doesn’t change the 20+ I spent growing up in MI, a place that is very insulated and island-cultured, making a steady clash of hot/cold and high/low-context cultures in a concentrated area.

Anyway, European friends (or anyone), do you think about this? Is this a conversation topic for you? How do you view white Americans who stand by or maintain ownership of a European identity? 

White Americans who know or claim a heritage often have a story about a family member who rebelled and came to America. Do you have those stories from the opposite POV, a wayward family member who left to America and was never heard from again?

For everyone: is there a point where a cultural heritage becomes an idealization? Where you are no longer an active participant but a bystander? Is there an American replacement or did assimilation remove that? Or did assimilation create it?

There’s an Ancestry.com commercial I think about a lot. The guy wears a kilt or Leiderhösen, I forget which one first, then does some research on ancestry, and finds that his family had their history wrong, so he traded in one for the other. Is this cultural appropriation? At what point do you lose ownership? Or do we always own our roots? What about when our roots get too tangled to trace, or cut off altogether, by our own family’s nonchalance (as in, not remembering or maintaining) or forced by a stronger power? 

Is it a different conversation when talking about personal costuming for an event vs anti-protests using their European heritage as a platform to deny change? Or is it the same act to different degrees or in positive/negative lights? 

If you are White-American, did you grow up with a heritage culture in your family or community? When did you start to notice it? How has it impacted your identity?

I know these questions also extend to BIPOC and immigrant/religious minority cultures in America, but due to histories of stigmatization, demonization, oppression, genocide, slavery, and appropriation, it seems like that has to be a different conversation. Clinging to roots when someone has cut you away or is trying to uproot you to assimilate is different than willfully leaving, which seems different than being forced out as a refugee or due to internal conflict/crises (famine, war, etc.), these are different conversations to me. 

I’ve just been thinking about this a lot. 

[thetierdslytherin]

Its nice to have a friend  Spencer Reid x reader

So this is a Spencer Reid song fic based on its nice to have a friend by Taylor swift. and I saw someone else to a songfic based on this song for another character and i felt inspired. there’s mention of bullying and divorce but other than that just a fluffy fic.

Mostly gender neutral reader x Spencer but at one point the reader wears a dress

School bell rings, walk me home

Sidewalk chalk covered in snow

Lost my gloves, you give me one

"Wanna hang out?"

School was finally over as the bell rang signaling the end of the day my teacher said something but I didn't hear her. No, I'm too excited to get home. It's the first day of winter break and I couldn't be more excited. I didn't really see the point of kindergarten and most of the kids are mean.

           Anyways my mommy lets me walk home by myself alot of the bigger kids do and it's only a 10 minute walk to my house. I finally stop running just outside of the school yard where a lot of the kids color and draw on the sidewalk too icy to do it now which reminds me i'm not supposed to run because I could get hurt.

           As I look up to continue my walk home I see a kinda frail looking boy with crooked teeth and glasses too big for his face, ah Spencer he's not in my class with me but I know him cause a lot of the kids tease him and hide his stuff. I don't really know why but my parents say if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all. Besides, I don't know why they do it all he really does is sit by himself and read. 

          He doesn't have any gloves on or a hat and it's snowing and I'm cold with my gloves and coat so I know he is too, maybe he doesn't have any. It's not really common to snow in Las Vegas but it's probably because the kids hid them from him. I run up to catch up with him. It's not that hard, he's not exactly moving fast, he doesn't seem really excited to get home, maybe he doesn't have anything to do. 

“Here take one of mine” I hold out one of my gloves to him so at least only one of his hands will be cold. He looks at me like he's expecting me to tease him or snatch the glove away at the last second but I guess he deems me trust worthy enough and takes it putting it on his furthest hand.

 “t-thanks i’m s-spencer”  

“I know i’m y/n you lost your gloves right?” I know the kids took them but I don't want him to feel any worse about it.

“Yeah I did thanks” he still looks really cold so I grab his hand closest to me and try to interlock our fingers so both his hands will be warm. He kinda flinches at first but then seems to accept that I'm not gonna hurt him. 

“So you won't be cold Spencer”

We walk for maybe a minute in silence before I get another idea 

“Wanna hang out?”

Video games, you pass me a note

Sleeping in tents

It's nice to have a friend

(Ooh)

It's nice to have a friend

(Ooh)

I'm now i'm second grade and Spencer is in third and ever since that day we've been best friends and do practically everything together and this is the first year without him in my grade and I miss him a lot but we still hang out everyday after school. 

          “C’mon Spencer it won't be bad I promise my parents are right inside and if you want to go you can but could you please try it”.

I'm referring to spending the night in a tent in my backyard.Sleepovers were a common thing for Spencer and I especially with his dad having left I think that's why he likes being over so much it lets him forget for a little while.Earlier this week I learned Spencer had never been camping due to his thing with germs but after a lot of begging and secret planning on my part he agreed “okay y/n but if I don't like it we can go in?” 

          I nod happily and lead him to the backyard where everyday after school I've been cleaning it and setting up a campsite in the cleanest way possible. “Did you know that 77 million american households contain a member that camps and 81% of households in America say they want to camp more?”

“No, I didn't Spence, do you have any more statistics about camping for me?’ this is one thing I love about him he can tell you something about any subject you ask him it's because of his Eidetic memory.He found out he had last year and its super cool he can remember and fact I wish I had his memory some times.

          I open the tent to reveal an air mattress with a bunch of blankets and some comic books my mommy bought earlier. It's not the big books like he likes to read but it's Marvel comics that I introduced him to a few months ago and we've been reading them together ever since.

           “w-wow y/n this is so cool, did you know the hulk was supposed to be grey in the original comics but was changed to green after a mess up with printer ink?” 

“No but i'd love to hear more comic facts”

He deserves someone to listen to him after everything with his parents and all the kids at school bullying him. I don't want him to ever feel alone. 

Light pink sky up on the roof

Sun sinks down, no curfew

Twenty questions, we tell the truth

You've been stressed out lately? Yeah, me too

Something gave you the nerve

To touch my hand

It's amazing how two people who are in such different places in their lives can still love each other so much while Spencer is the only 16 year old I know with 2 phds working on another i'm still in highschool. Not from lack of hard work though i’m graduating this year 2 years early so I can go to cal tech to be with Spencer. If i'm being perfectly honest if not for Spencer I wouldn't be graduating early but I miss him too much to stay any longer. I'm sick of highschool boyfriends and football games and dealing with the same kids who bullied Spencer for being a nerd acting like we’re best friends just because I made nice with them.

            Right now were on the roof of my house after a lot of convincing on my part to get him out here 

“Why are we out here y/n do you know how many roof related accidents happen a year?”

“No but I'm sure you do dr.” I think my favorite pastime of recent is teasing Spencer.

He's saying something to me as I nod along but I'm not paying attention to what he's saying. No, I'm too busy staring at him. 

          He's really grown into his features he still has a boyish look about him but now his jawline is very defined and his brown hair goes just past his hair curling at the ends after a long day of hanging out the gel has worn out making his hair as messy as ever and he’s traded his glasses for contacts but i still think he looks for lack of better word beautiful either way. I know I love him, I've loved him since the first day I met him and over the years at one point I guess the feelings went from platonic to romantic but I don’t tell him. I don't have to I know i'll spend the rest of my life with Spencer Reid 

“y/n y/n hello”

“Hmm, what were you saying Spence?”

“I-i’m sorry am i boring you y/n?” the worst part is he's not mad about it he looks upset like he feels bad for boring me.

“No never, i'm sorry I was just thinking” 

“About what?”

“You” why did I say that but it's fine it has to be Spencer won't care but I don't want to see his reaction to my words instead focusing on the pink orange sky 

“You know I love you right that i'll always love you”

I feel him grasp my hand interlocking our fingers and I let out a quiet gasp-but he heard it. We've only held hands twice our whole lives the first day I met him and after the goal post incident so this is well, completely out of character for him and our friendship.

“I love you too y/n”

Church bells ring, carry me home

Rice on the ground looks like snow

Call my bluff, call you "babe"

Have my back, yeah, everyday

Feels like home, stay in bed

The whole weekend

          They call us stupid-young and dumb-that well be divorced in 10 years but we love each other and known each other our whole lives hes just been accepted into the BAU at 20 he has to move to Quantico. I'm gonna go with him I can get a job i've finished my degree there's nothing keeping me here.

“Let's get married” 

“What?” it's rare that I make him speechless but this seems to do the trick.

“Why don't I love you and you love me. We've been dating for how many years now 4? I want to spend the rest of my life with you i've known that I wanted you in my life since that first day on the sidewalk I want to grow old with you and have kids and grand kids so why wait let's get married” I look up at him silently pleading with him to just agree with me.

“y/n 45% of marriages end in divorce and 20% of couples under 24 get divorced in the first year of marriage”. He’s cautious I don't blame him not after what happened with his mom and dad.

“Well this is one time i'm going to ask you not to trust the statistics. I may not know all the facts about marriage and life but i know us and i'd like to think that's enough. I don't want anything big just us we can go down to the courthouse and make it official” 

He moves over to the couch where i'm sitting and grabs my hand “yes”

          It wasn't anything big, him in the only suit he owns and me in a dime store wedding dress. The rings we have are cheap and the diamond in my hand may have been small but it means everything to me. 

          We didn't even tell our parents why his mom is institutionalized, his dad left and my parents don't approve of me leaving for Quantico instead its Spencer and I with 5 of our college friends. We both walk out of the courthouse as they throw rice at us-unnecessary but sweet of them-and get into his car driving off to go home. We aren't having a honeymoon unless you count moving to Quantico.

          He picks me up and carries me through the threshold of the apartment as he sets me down I ask “can we do our vows I know we both agreed not to prepare anything don't worry I didn’t I just want to tell you some things and you don't even have to say anything back I just need to say it. Spencer I just want you to know how incredibly proud I am of you and all you’ve acomplised and overcome even the first time I saw you I could tell we were gonna be friends.I am just so thankful to have you here right now and for sticking with me through all of the chess matches and late night adventure and stupid boyfriends and what I guess i’m trying to say is thank you for always being you I love you.”

          I look at him with tears in my eyes and with tears in his eyes too and he clears his throat “ y/n I will never be able to express how you have helped me over the years from school yard bullies to cal tech and my mom.And I know i'm not the best with words i'm better with analysis and fact but there is no fact or statistic that will let me describe how i'm love with you I am” I put one hand on the side of his face and pull him in for a kiss.

It's nice to have a friend

(Ooh)

It's nice to have a friend

(Ooh)

It's nice to have a friend

(Ooh)

(Ooh)

[wo-wann-was-wer]

WHAT I WAS THINKING: DARK SEASON 3 EDITION

EPISODE 1:

Who are these dudes with the harelip and what do they want

Why did she just take him to a cave and leave that’s kinda rude

So everything in this universe is just gonna be backwards. Love it

Ugh I’ve said this a million times but this show has such Fringe energy and I can’t wait to get a tattoo for this too

This is super freaking me out, i dont like that everyone’s in everyone else’s house.

Ooooh Katharina with glasses yes girl you better work.

I like Michael and this hat he’s rocking

Super into the fact that magnus and fransizka are involved in this universe too

There’s nothing cuter than sex before school. Ahhh the nostalgia

Ten bucks says that Hannah gets out of this bed and is pregnant

Fucking YEP

I am loving Martha in this Jonas journey

I know that all they did was flip the lens of the camera but my brain is breaking at this flipped Winden

Who the fuck is this random dude Martha is with

You know what he kind of looks like Jonas. I wonder if that's relevant or if I'm just grasping at straws

Bartosz looks like he's going to his first grade violin recital

I straight up just did not recognize Charlotte with makeup. She looks hot

There's got to be another person in that picture other than Ulrich because that's a lot of space to rip out for one person

okay hold up Woller looks so good and then when I saw that he was missing an arm I almost lost my fucking mind

Oh shit okay Hannah is living in Katharina's house.

Oh my God are Ulrich and Charlotte having an affair

Is it normal in Germany for kids to just walk into classes that aren't there’s and just sit down

follow up he has a clear noose mark on his neck

Aleksander looks so hot with this beard. universe B is the fucking glow up universe

It's weirding me out that the whole school is black and gray instead of light brown

The look of satisfaction on katharina's face

Wow honestly Louis just broke my heart with his facial expression when he realized his mom didn't know who he was

he looks so scared

Yes yes do it afffffffffair

Oh no you done got found out!!!

Oh the theme of the play here is red and set of gold

Fransizka looks so cute in this little outfit

Oh my God she's deaf!!!!

What the fuck. the fact that this actress can talk is blowing my mind

RIP to Regina a real queen

Peter's a fucking priest

All the fucking weird-ass freaky motherfucking trio is back

The dopplers have the same house That's cool

excuse me sir I think your child is broken

these guys are so creepy What the fuck

I definitely don't like the piano wire

oh this motherfucker is the one who gets lost

I feel like winden in this universe is just a little bit fancier

Well Charlotte and Ulrich just be fucking like crazy

Bartosz is the Jonas of this group and I love it

who was that??????

I cannot get over Aleksander in this beard

I like that things are opposite but they also have things that are different enough.

Like I'm so into the fact that they all went down into the bunker

who in the unholy fuck is that. who is that

Oh shit old Martha

What the fuck is this Tannhaus’ factory we're at

hold up Martha's in 1888

What the fuck. why is Jonas in 1888 and looking SO good

EPISODE 2:

casually sitting over your bed watching you sleep

he's look so good though

yo what the fuck everybody else is there too

Oh no things got really ugly at Mads’ wake

Not for nothing but Tronte is a dick

I kind of don't understand why Claudia would want Regina to live in such pain in this type of universe

Peter is such a good boy

lurking is the freaking national past time of this place

Oh shit we got some spin-off timeline stuff good

who is This is blind guy

I love Katharina so fucking much

I know what she's thinking and it's the same thing I'm thinking which is can I kill a child

why does this picture of Tronte make him look like Jimmy Smits

Katharina looks amazing in this jacket

Also I definitely did not just start yelling GO GET YOUR MAN KATHARINA

Regina just gets more and more badass as time goes on. Also all of the women of the tiedemann family are so fucking badass

I am so excited to watch this fucking relationship develop. they're both too cute

awwww he's using signs!

oh they're writing back and forth

DAMNIT PETER

I always feel like little Noah should do fuckboy sign offs when he leaves rooms because he's so smooth

yesterday Laurel said that this was back to the future but serious and just now Bartosz said it's not super easy to get nuclear fuel in 1888 and now I think that Laurel's right

I will never get over how good he looks JONAAAASSSSSSS

This guy feels like the OG inventor of sic mundus right

Katerina why are you even trying to check in at the front desk bitch Go and get your man

Is this Katarina's mom why does she just recognize that woman's name

everyone on the show is so talented.I spend the whole damn time being like oh my god the performances on the show and it's like yeah we know

Katerina get your man

I literally love them so much look at the look on her face She is a mama bear She is not going to let anybody take her man or her children and I love her

Not a huge fan of people who quote Shakespeare right before they kill other people or am I an enormous fan of people who use Shakespeare right before they kill other people

using a garotte to kill someone is ugly as fuck

I feel so bad for Jana

see this is one of the reasons why I'm like why would you bring Regina back to this world.

wowwwww TRONTE what's up dude

YO WHAT

Oh so how did Charlotte get back there but Elizabeth's still there too. didn't they switch places?

oh the head bump

Not excited for the mother daughter abuse stuff that's about to happen

I love these split sequences that they do at the end

anytime somebody stands and stairs for a lonely at a spot on the ground I assume to somebody died there

Oh shit that guy is a tannhausokkkk I see you

a religious images we love to see it.

This show is a whole series of pause that frame.

No I ruined something for myself!!!!

EPISODE 3

got to love those through and through Ariadne references

okay so Charlotte's great great grandfather has her watch?

who are these horrible traveler human beings

they look like less sexy Francis dolarhydes

I can't get over the fact that wollers missing an arm here I swear

we ARE the glitch BITCH

alternate universe Ulrich is a better person than standard Ulrich

what's this new like zoom-y thing they're doing

I was attracted to Magnus at this jump of the show but he looks better with dark hair

How did they not all die of fucking flu

eternally repeating deja vu

I looked at the production stills and I was like what the fuck is this hair do that Moritz has but he looks amazing

Also everyone on this show deserves an acting award

and Magnus is wearing a skeleton sweater

Hannah does that deep dive detective work any bitch knows the Nose doesn't lie

why doesn't anybody want to fuck wöller

omgggg eat the RICH

also he has that x tattoo on his hand that represents the no future thing

oh the light is rectangular and not circular ooooooh fancy

The show is also a lot of people catching each other's wrists as they walk away

I knew we couldn't trust this bitch

What did he give her

I love the parallels and characters behaviors between universe a and universe b

I want to know how Noah factored into all of this on this side

Martha has a type and her type is iconically Aryan

Oh Aleksander's back with that beard he's back

Hannah is such a snake

Omg that's her!!!!! I thought she was a trans actress.. hm. not super happy bout that :/

What is Helge talking about Ulrich did what??? omg

I would be like SIR DO WE NEED TO FIGHT STOP FOLLOWING ME

I stopped taking notes for the last half of that episode cuz I was really sucked in haha

EPISODE 4

FIRST OF ALL I'D LIKE TO GO ON RECORD THAT I DON'T CARE FOR THESE GENTLEMEN AT ALL

second of all why is this guy being like oh I took your name

why does he have Agnes's bracelet I don't like that

I don't like anything about this guy That's the end of the story

Also hold up a red hot second is Agnes dead cuz if so that's a hate crime

see what did I say

I knew that Hannah was going to get involved with Egon

from the second she walked in that office I was like that bitch has her eye on him and as she should he's handsome as fuck

Also he spoils her so much more than any other man she's ever been with AKA is Egon the only man she ever deserved

Is Hannah going to develop a heart cuz I'm not sure how I feel about that

Also what happens if Hannah gets pregnant

why is Ines a bitch I thought she was mad cool the beginning and now I feel fucking deceived

Also it's such a sweet gig that The kids who are playing kids can now play teenagers

poor Doris. Also he was shitty to her but he was far nicer than I would have been

Doris is so beautiful it's bullshit

older Magnus is so handsome

All I wanted was middle-aged Martha

bitch you have been having unprotected sex with him why do you think that pregnancy was not on the tabl

I'm like who's this guy in the church if it's not Noah I bet it's that little bitch

yeah I fucking knew it

Is this the dude that was married to Agnes I feel like this guy isn't real or something

I'm not surprised he let her go but I don't know why I'm not surprised. I feel like she's important to his timeline and I'm not sure why

look at these relationships forming between these sweet little bab

Hannah looks good in this red. Hannah looks good in all of these styles. 

who is this child

I like that already as a child Bernd had his eye on Claudia as someone who was smart and had a ton of potential

 I keep forgetting that I'm taking notes because I get so invested in episodes

Also I realize the zoomi thing which is going back and forth between the universes

Is Agnes Silja’s mom And if so with whom 

he gave her Agnes’ bracelet that dope All right Tronte

Wow Claudia needs to back off her man

Claudia force him into a relationship with her

I fucking hate Hannah but sometimes she speaks so much sense

ooh I don't need anyone Yes girl that's true You don't need anyone You needing people was what made you act fucking crazy You don't need anybody

This was always my big problem with Hannah was that I initially identified with her because she was such a survivor but then she did such horrible reprehensible things I just couldn't let it go and I absolutely couldn't identify with her anymore

Oh here's my daddy Noah looking so good

I mean okay so I have been in this position before where I was cheating and then my man cheated on me and I was like how dare you but also you cannot be mad if your partner cheats on you when you cheated too. You both fucked up

Is Hannah going to have a redemption arc cuz that's a lot

Oh my God she's not going to get rid of this child is she

Oh my great God I cannot believe that she gave Helene that necklace. 

I knew she was fucking connected to Katharina in the older generation I knew it

Louis and Lisa are a super cute couple and I know that they're not dating in real life but I think that they're very cute together

Oh everybody fucking

yeah they created the Apocalypse yeah

Oh no they have a child outside of worlds that's a mess How does that work so they had they gave birth to that ugly fuck

honestly I hate that he's their child for the most part just because he's ugly as fuck and neither of them are ugly as fuck so it makes me mad.