#but the difference between myself and other kids is I stuck with it (obsessively) because I really really liked it

[sluttish-armchair]

Why does everything I compose on the kalimba, for the kalimba, always sound better on a low whistle?

[bite-scars]

Recently fully contenting with the fact that I have a big brother kink,,

I blame being stuck as the oldest child but with horrible anxiety, autism, and emotional neglect making the idea of being any kind of role model without one for myself Terrifying, combined with being transmasc and having that pretty much dismissed or at the very least constantly undermined literally all throughout my teenage years 💀

I was also just an obsessively horny kid for no discernable reason dhzjhx maybe it was the only clear form of affection from guys I was at all familiar with being romantic/sexually coded and not really knowing how someone was meant to bond with them otherwise idk. Add that to me literally making an imaginary friend that was just a caring older brother at first and you can imagine the progression of that had a hand in this also🧍

I'm just. I think enough Tough Love type kinda loser older brother that's also just super overprotective and will back you/help you through anything while simultaneously insisting you should "man up" fantasies could fix me--

Older brother that on the one hand has a rebellious dgaf overall bad influence reputation to uphold but on the other hand had to deal with the same parents I did and can't help but be protective of his cute little brother seeing him going through the same or similarly shitty situations, doing his best to mitigate the damage when he realizes how much more sensitive I am to it than he was.

Being the only person in the house I'm comfortable going to for anything, always making me feel safe even when trying to get me to push a boundary for my own good (whether it's Actually for my own good or not-). Insisting any and all unhealthy coping mechanisms I've turned to (or he's introduced me to) are done in his presence only, he's just concerned about my safety and doesn't want me doing them alone (again whether true or not I'm too trusting or dependant to notice a difference). Basically singlehandedly supporting my transition, making sure I get any and all hand-me-downs he still has lying around (and there are plenty, his closet is like a museum of old shit at this point, like he's never gotten rid of a thing in his life even though he definitely has. There are still character-print boxers in there that are pretty much my size), going over our parents' heads to talk with my school about it (having to "correct" all that would be too much effort for them anyways, they'll just leave it be at that point) and interacting with our parents in general for me unless it's absolutely necessary for me to be there.

Finding any excuse to brag and show off his adorable little brother to his equally delinquent friends, letting me join in on smoke sessions since he knows I can't go 10 minutes without following him around like a little puppy, always wanting to be in his lap (he tries to act like it's annoying but he thinks it's cute, not to mention convenient), and hey, with how high-strung i am already he decides maybe the weed would do me good anyways. Keeping the less respectful of his friends on a short leash around me, not hesitating to kick anyone out that can't heed a warning (full-stop, better not forget anything on your way out because you ain't gonna get another chance to get it back-). Getting quietly jealous over any of the others I end up getting sort of attached to, but rather than starting actual shit with them he'll just find ways to remind me that he's the most important to me, even if his friend is cool he's always cooler, right?

Idk this general underlying setup is a theme in a lot of my fantasies tbh, there's a lot that can vary between them (sometimes either brother is grosser or more genuine, really just depends on my mood lol) but the dynamic is always some flavor of this and it probably says a lot 💀

[l1llina]

"Huh, me? Like him ?"

Alhaitham x Fem!Reader

18+, Minors dni

Synopsis: The Akademiya is pushing a big project to fight the Abyss Order. You along with the other students are assigned to work on it. This project will bring you and Alhaitham closer.

It’s another day, another day of zoning out. What annoyed you even more was this really stuck up guy in your class. He always seemed to look down on everyone else, including you, and you’re a sensitive bitch so this bothered you a lot. 

One day, the school reveals that every student will play a part in building a machine to fight the Abyss Order specifically the Abyss Prince. The pressure and excitement in everyone was of course very high almost overbearing. You couldn’t believe it. This was... amazing. Big ambitious projects with the whole help of the school. The school officially recruited everyone and everyone became an employee for the Akademiya.

Unfortunately, the way they assigned divisions were by class, this was all planned by the day you enrolled. The leader of your division who could order you to do anything he wishes was.. Alhaitham urgh. This went from being your dream to a nightmare. 

He actually didn’t put many rules but the goal for that semester was to finish an elemental laser gun. Surprisingly every person in the class had a different role. You received the Casanova role but why did they need one ? At first, you pondered maybe they just didn’t want to hurt your feelings but then you guessed it was because they still lacked sufficient funding for such a project so you were the leader of your own little crew. The marketing crew!

Your job was to convince people to invest in such a project, and honestly who better for the job hah. Additionally the school encouraged the students to actually date and find love within other similar types. You were kind of manipulated into dating the heads of the project. Since production would go up if a Casanova and Leader got along well.

You were “advised accordingly” to go on a date with Alhaitham, your enemy. You didn’t have any romantic/sexual feelings for him before the date but during the date, he seemed a little obsessed, a little too happy to be here. 

The Akademiya issued Friday to be a day to deepen relationships between the students. Admittedly they cared more if you had sex. They didn’t give the opportunity to buy condoms, since they hoped the students could bear kids to continue the project if the parents died. 

Alhaitham urged you to take a sip of wine, you did out of politeness and out of curiosity to see what he’d do. You didn’t want your gut feeling to be right, to think he’d do something terrible, however when you came to, you were in white lingerie in Alhaitham’s dorm. 

“Hey.. Y/N, I’m sure you know why I abused my position of power to get you here. You teased me on purpose huh, wearing that short pencil skirt. I don’t like helping the school with their corrupt ways but I can’t help but want to keep you to myself so let’s bear a child and we’ll rule the school”

He began teasing you, bouncing you on his thigh, you muffled your moans, refusing to yield to this asshole’s demands, but slowly, after being edged for so long, you started losing your rationale and following his demands. He worshipped the body that would give him an heir and the woman who clouded his mind for years. 

“I saw how you looked at me in class, such hatred and disgust, there’s nothing more satisfying than triumphing over my enemies but in this case, you’re my doll now and don’t worry doll I’ll make sure to treat you right and please you accordingly”

You thought he’d stop at grinding you on his laps but he got down on his knees and started stuffing your tiny hole and circling your clit with his tongue. Urgh the only thing that’s stopping you from giving yourself to him fully is your pride. If you gave in, he’d win and there’d be no guarantee you’ll find real love with him.

“Why are you still holding back, do you think I’ll hit you ? Insult you ? Never, not to the girl I’ve respected for so long”

“W-What, re-respect hngh..?”

“Yeah, you’re a little stupid but you always kept your promises and showed your hatred for hypocrisy and oppression of the system. You’re exactly my type, I love your character and I hope even after this little stunt, you can find a place in your heart to love me too”

“Al.. I didn’t wanna give in because I don’t like losing.. These past few years, I always thought you were an asshole, even now you’re proving my point but right now I couldn’t care less, you being an asshole also ties with your ambition and I couldn’t find anything more attractive than that, well devotion too but you’re that too so. More so, you’re fucking hot.. Are you kidding me ?”

“So, we’re a thing then ?”

“Yeah.. now fuck me with your cock already, just so you know though I don’t really like kids but I still wanna have sex with you right now”

He plunges his cock and makes you cum many times that night. The next day your dorm changed to Al Haitham’s and you shared a dorm now. Outside of school hours and even during, you would be in his office, dating and fucking him” 

At night, you found a new nerd pal to geek out with but he sometimes takes it too far and it ends up in passionate makeout sessions. The next morning, the cycle continues

TBC <3 Pls don't hate me

[justkindalivin]

Shotgun

a/n: AHHHHH hello!! I’m Lottie and I've been so horrifically obsessed with dealer Ellie that it's not even remotely okay. I had an idea for a fic and instead of requesting it from someone else, I decided why not write it myself! I’ve never posted any fics before bc I’m lowkey ass at writing so if any dialogue is awkward or the grammar is bad I'm so sorry :(  Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy it, have a great day I love you ♡    part 2

I kinda modeled the reader after me subconsciously, so the reader is a bit shy and bi (sorry to my lesbian baddies I luv yall, its only one line). Also, I just made up a random roommate named Sam, very sorry if your name happens to be Sam. 

Summary: After being dragged to a party by your roommate, you escape out to the porch for some air. Not realizing it was already occupied, you end up having a lot more fun at the party than you thought you would 

warnings: language, modern!au, dealer!ellie, weed, shotgunning, collage!au, things get the tiniest bit spicy (only a tad)

wc: 1.6k 

-------------------

The music pounded in your ears as you pushed past all the sweaty bodies in the middle of the room. Parties had never quite been your scene, but Sam had begged you to come with her and that girl does NOT take no for an answer

This all started with Sam bursting into your shared dorm, ripping your headphones out of your ears, and standing beside your desk with her hands on her hips. “Bitch, you never come out with me! It's like all you do is sit in the dorm all day, you gotta get out there!!” She excitedly screamed, pulling you to your closet to pick out what you should wear. 

You and Sam had been randomly paired as roommates but quickly got close despite how different the two of you seemed to be. Sam was always out at parties being social and seemed to know absolutely everyone on campus. You on the other hand... well were almost the exact opposite. You always joked that you were like the crotchety old man of your floor who only left for food or class, and just wants all those damn kids to quiet down while you’re trying to sleep. 

“Sigma Nu is throwing tonight, you HAVE to come with me. I’ll be lost without you please please please!” 

Sam was, in fact, not lost without you. She had practically ditched you the minute some frat boy asked her to play pong with him, leaving you alone and painfully sober in a sea of drunk college kids. As much as you loved Sam, she always seemed to do this whenever you come out with her. She’d beg that it wouldn't be fun without you but would leave as soon as you got there and you’d be stuck on babysitting detail for her drunk ass for the rest of the night. After about the fifth push and second drunk couple not noticing you leaned up against the wall and making out basically on top of you, you decided to leave in search of some desperately needed air. Weaving through sweaty drunk people should be a fucking Olympic sport because holy shit- you barely escaped with your life. After going through the kitchen, you finally found your way to a sliding door, quickly getting it open and stepping out into the cool night air. 

“Jesus christ why did I fucking come here,” you say under your breath, leaning against the porch railing and putting your head in your hands “And I can't even leave because I have to make sure Sam’s okay- god damn it”. Scrubbing your face with your hands, you look up at the sky and get lost in your own head until the sound of someone clearing their throat startles you. 

You quickly whip around, hand on your chest, to look at the other person who has also been occupying the porch without your noticing. A girl with short auburn hair and beautiful green eyes stands leaning up against the house. Her face is dotted with freckles and she’s wearing a comfy-looking flannel over a plain white tee, one hand shoved into the pocket of her jeans and the other holding a joint between two fingers. She is, without a doubt, one of the prettiest girls you’ve ever seen. You’re so entranced by her that you barely even notice when she says something to you. 

“oh...uhm- what?” you oh so eloquently reply, internally debating if you should throw yourself off the porch to make your escape from this awkward ass interaction. The girl smirks as her eyes scan you up and down- if you didn’t know any better you would think she was checking you out. 

“I said are you good? No offense but you kinda seem like you're freaking the fuck out” She repeats, smirk still present on her face as she brings the joint up to take a drag from it, blowing the smoke in your direction.

You blush, embarrassed that someone had been witness to your mini breakdown. “Yeah, I’m good. It's just a lot, you know? I don’t go to parties too often.” As soon as the words leave your mouth you cringe internally. Don’t go to parties a lot? You seriously couldn't think of anything cooler to say? Way to embarrass yourself in front of the hottest chick you’ve ever met. Your downward spiral continues until the girl breaks the quiet with a chuckle

“I get that, frats aren’t really my thing either but I get good business here so... here I am”. You nod your head, looking back up at the sky. “I’m Ellie, by the way. What's your name gorgeous?”. Your face feels like it's on fire, your brain practically short-circuiting trying to process that this actual goddess just called you gorgeous. You quietly tell her your name and when you look back at her, she has a wide smile stretching across her face. “Pretty name for a pretty girl.” 

Holy shit this girl is going to be the death of you. You’re sure that your face is going to melt off from how hard you’ve been blushing, the ability to speak has left you altogether. You’ve had flings in the past, with both boys and girls, but no one has ever been so brazenly interested in you. You find yourself desperate to know more about her, maybe run your hands through her hair and cup her face as you lean in for a- WOAH. You’re goin wild right now, you need to cool down

“So um... what do you sell?” You ask, trying to change the topic and give yourself some time to chill out. Ellie looks at the joint in her hands, then back at you with raised eyebrows. “Right right, sorry stupid question” you huff while looking down, embarrassed yet again by your lack of rizz. Ellie lets out a full-on laugh, pushing herself off the house and making her way over to you.

“You ever smoked before, pretty girl?” she asks while leaning on the railing next to you, so close you can feel the heat radiating off of her. Looking up, you’re surprised to see that her face is so close to yours that your noses are practically touching. 

“A few times, not a ton. I cough a lot though, so it's kinda embarrassing to do it with other people”. Ellie taps off the ash at the end of her joint, seemingly contemplating something before turning her attention back to you

“Well if you’re down to smoke, we can try a different way that maybe will help you cough less. That is, only if you want to”. You’re surprised by how quickly you accept her offer, asking her what she had in mind. Ellie moves from beside you to directly in front of you, planting her empty hand on your waist and bringing the joint she held in her other hand up to your face. “Okay, so it's called shotgunning. Just open your mouth after I take a hit, sound good?”. All you can do is nod, mesmerized as she brings the joint to her lips. The moon reflects off her soft skin, the end of the joint burning a deep orange as she inhales. After her hit, Ellie looks over at you and you do as she said. 

Flicking away what little is left from her blunt, Ellie cups your face with her now empty hand and brings her mouth to yours. As she’s kissing you she blows the smoke into your mouth, but you can barely concentrate, too focused on the feeling of her lips on yours. After only a few seconds, Ellie pulls away but keeps her forehead pressed to yours and you blow the smoke in her face as you both giggle.

You reach up and brush away a bit of hair that had fallen to cover Ellie’s eyes, running your fingers down the side of her face until you are cupping her cheek as well. You look at each other for a beat before you both lean in, lips meeting again. Ellie caresses your cheek before her hand moves to join her other one on your waist, finding their way under your shirt and stroking the skin there. She tries to deepen the kiss, licking your bottom lip which you playfully deny. Suddenly, Ellie pulls away for a moment to lift you up onto the porch railing. Your legs fall open and Ellie steps between them, connecting her lips to your neck and kissing down the side to your collarbone. Letting out a breathy moan, you grip the hair at the base of Ellie's neck and throw your head back. 

-SCHWOOP-

The noise startles you and you pull away from Ellie, much to her annoyance. Looking at the sliding glass door, you notice some obnoxious frat boy has thrown it open. 

“Hey, you deal right? I need a pre-roll if you have em”. Talk about a fucking cock block. Ellie all but growls into your neck, whipping around ready to give this dude the verbal thrashing of his life when you stop her by placing your hand on her shoulder. 

“It's okay, I need to find my roommate and get going anyway. But um... do you have your phone on you? Maybe I can give you my number and we can do this again sometime?”. Ellie smiles at that, pulling her phone out of her back pocket and handing it to you. Feeling bold, you give her one last kiss on the cheek before heading past the frat guy and back into the house.

You really hope she texts you. 

----------

an: tf kinda noise does a sliding door make? Def not schwoop but thats all my brain could come up with lmao. so thats my first ever fic, my writing could use some work so i’m def open to any feedback! Stay super freaky, have great vagina, I LOVE YAAAA 

[northopalshore]

hi!! i recently found out my due date for my daughter, can you tell me what pisces sun aries moon is like?

Awww, congratulations!! 🥹🫶🏻🫧

She'll be a very sensitive kid, kind and sweet, she may be stuck in her own world at times. You might worry about her often, aries moons usually have mothers who are very goal driven & independent you will always push her to be her best self. (Also wanting the best of the best)

You'll notice that she'll be a little rebellious at times i.e stubborn lol. I'm sure with proper communication both of you will learn to see from each other's perspective soon enough.

I also recommend looking at her other personal planets and degrees a few months after she's born to look at more specific details of her personality!

There may be some constraint between you because of her aries moon as well but the degree it's in also make a big difference. The house it's in will tell you what she may associate you with or things she saw you focused around a lot. It's also something she will internalise into adulthood.

Aries moon is a "Tiger mom" placement.

1st House: Competitions (Aries moons usually have pretty competitive mothers in general but in this house it may seem like all you see in comparison/competition to her), sports, body image, control

2nd House: Money, materialistic, debts, speaking, singing (Taurus ruled)

3rd House: Communication, school, children, being busy in general, thinking

4th House: Homelife, house, kitchen, how your house looks, being at home, family, emotions

5th House: Creativity, arts, performances, school, children

6th House: Work, chores, house, cleanliness , hygiene

7th House: Relationships, marriages, business, partnerships, exes

8th House: Constantly changing, instability, forceful energy ( you may have a karmic relationship with your daughter), obsession, control, death/losses, debt

9th House: Travel, religion, distance, higher studies, education

10th House: Career, status, ambitions, obstacles

11th House: Friends, society, social life, environment, charity, internet

12th House: Religiousness, she may feel like you're always away from her life, she may feel distant from you in general.

For example: My moon is Aries (28° cancer) in the 2nd house. My mother has always made me join all sorts of competitions (usually involving speaking or communicating) from a very young age.

I've always seen her struggling with money and finances. Our relationship has had a lot of turbulence from both ends; her forcing her way & and myself refusing to comply (arguing).

Still I feel like I can't live without her because of the degree that it's in. She genuinely cares for me as her daughter, and I see that. As much as we may butt heads we still have a very close mother daughter bond.

Being a mother is very difficult, so don't put too much pressure on yourself. There's no "one true way" a mother should be. Just trust your instincts and listen to your child as not every child is the same as the other! May all go well for your pregnancy!

Hope this helps ♡

[melobin]

ship your mutuals with idols? ⋆⁺₊⋆🩵⋆⁺₊⋆

hmmm cute. i’m sorry if i missed anyone 😭🫶🏻

@starrypen .. jeonghyeon.. who would i be if i didnt? it’s not just because you ult him, you’d look so hot together and he’s just so?? you?? the domestic dominance, the puppy like personality .. feel like he’d love going on walks at night, wrapped up in cozy clothes.. you’d be the moon to his stars.

@ensite .. sungchan. possibly the only person i’d ship sungchan with … you deserve it. honestly he’d be so lovely to you, the dream, clingy boyfriend who’s obsessed with you and every little thing you do. the whiny boyfriend who begs for kisses and wraps his limbs around you even if he’s too long for it. stares at you everyday with stars in his eyes and heart full of love, lays in bed at night thinking about your future together …

@kissohee .. leehan. you deserve to kiss his pretty face every day. he’d be so happy to be a fish dad with you .. fish parents … he’d go with you to little pet stores to buy new fish for your tank .. even if he may try to force feed you fish food every now and then, he’d love you more than his fish!!!

@kkurokitty .. junghoon… i’d be heartbroken myself if i didn’t do that. he’s sweet and caring and tbh a little bit of a loser but that’s perfect for you !! every loser boy deserves a hot girlfriend!!! perfect for each other tbh.. we know his love for those certain type of women …

@seolboba .. ricky !! makes sense in my head.. he has that giggly, goofy side to him that i think you’d bring out in him.. always be holding his mouth to stop himself from giggling too loud .. he’d let you play with his hair whenever you want and would always giggle about being taller than you..

@ntoniac … minjae .. makes so much sense. you’re both so creative?? you’re both blessed with the ability to write such beautiful things, even if it’s in two different ways!! could easily imagine him letting you cuddle into him whilst he’s working on a song and you’re writing something … mood lighting in the studio .. so domestic and sweet.

@wonsy … sunwoo... that boy needs someone like you. you’re both so sweet and loving and a little delusional but it’s okay !! you make each other even more delusional with how in love you are but you fit each other so well, sunwoo would be so cocky walking round talking about his girlfriend being a hot nurse too…

@neosvcr … sung hanbin !!!!! he seems perfect for you .. the vibes are just there ?? you’re so sweet and talented .. just like him. soul mates? plus he’s such a girl dad and you give off girl mom vibes .. you’d have the cutest kids together i stg.. weekly play dates with the neighbours kids vibes.

@heesbaby .. jay!!!! the perfect, doting, domestically dominant boyfriend … the one who takes care of you and tells you he’s proud of you for every you do, the dream boyfriend .. the future husband .. the one everyone around you adores and thinks is perfect for you. he’d be so happy to cook you dinner and have everything settled for you for when you get home from work .. house husband jay just for you!!!

@hoondrop .. seungcheol !! always and forever will be. my parents. you’re so caring and sweet and loving, you deserve someone who’ll treat you the way you treat other people .. he’d take care of you.. support you in everything you want to do .. two pretty people would make the prettiest babies too.

@productiwity … johnny. i feel like you’d be well with someone older and more mature.. someone with their head on their shoulders? he’s sweet and loving and would take care of you and guide and support you through everything you do. not to mention the way he’d drive you to uni every day and make sure to be there to pick you up after .. classic dilf boyfriend everyone’s jealous of you for.

@ bunny … i was stuck between a few but i decided on anton. it’s probably not who you wanted but i have my reasons .. he fits you so well, he has two sides of him .. the sweet, fragile side that needs to be taken care of, loved and praised and you’d do that so well, he’d melt into you like it was nothing .. ice cream on your tongue. but he also has the doting, caring side, just looking at how he is with his little brother you can see how loving he’d be.. he’d be there for you when you need him, always reminding you how precious you are and how much he loves you .. his lovely bunny ..

[morocosmos]

Writer Interview Game

Tagged by @arcaneoddity, tyyyy 💜

When did you start writing?

I noodled at an unfinished story or two when i was a kid (i drew comics a lot more tbh), the first fanfic i wrote was when i was 13 (it is consigned to ff.net, never to be perceived again). i started developing my writing during secondary school, we had to for english class but i genuinely enjoyed those assignments so much that it didn't feel like schoolwork lmao, it was smth of an outlet. i did write a couple of fics for other fandoms between 2016 and mid 2020, but in late 2020 FFXIV revived my desire to create, while @stellarfatalism and @lemoncakedesign's fics inspired me to actually start writing.

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

I read a much wider variety of smut than what i could be convinced to write. other than that i think they mostly overlap.

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

@haillenarte, @rabbitprint and @sezja's fics have stuck with me the most in terms of "god i want to be able to write characters like this"....i've never been compared to another writer before, never even considered it and idk how i'd feel.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

I was writing on openoffice at first, but their software has a tendency to crash when you press two keys too fast, for example when you. try to save your work. moved to gdocs to avoid that and so that i could continue working on fic on my phone, but i also use the notes app on there, mainly to get down ideas that i don't want running away or to write more freely. it's easier to be experimental and loose when i'm writing in notes, idk, whereas i prefer sitting at the desk and working on my computer when it's a longer fic or a more """important""" piece.

What’s your most effective way to muster up a muse?

I've let it happen when it happens, for the most part. i was forcing myself to power through job around the time i really grew into writing, so i needed it to be a space where i wouldn't do it if i didn't want to. my feelings about that are more mixed now, because i'm a slow writer to begin with, and i can't help but wonder if more people would read my stuff if i updated more consistently. but i digress - the only time i've had to bring the muse in myself was for to sail your seas, and that was because there was accountability and a deadline. so i guess my most effective tricks are ADHD hacks and brainworms.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

Until recently i didn't approach fic writing with themes in mind, when i get an idea it's usually about throwing a character at something and seeing what happens. that something tends to be another character, sometimes it's more existential like touch starvation. that said, i do have a WIP where i sat down and thought about what i want the themes to be before i know how it's going to pan out, but it's baby's first attempt so i don't have an answer to this question yet, really.

What is your reason for writing?

Processing things i know and exploring things i don't. when i got back into writing in 2020 it was extremely cathartic, i've burnt out on several creative pursuits over the years and having that spark come alive was, and is still very precious to me. i spent two years writing simply because i had ideas and a vice-grip compulsion to write them out. now that that's slowed down, i've started to think more about craft, and how i might try to hone that when i'm lowkey afraid of this stage of learning, and there's no formal institution to kick my ass into it. but in some ways, i think i write because i can't afford not to.

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

I've been told by a friend that i'm good at continuity, which is nice considering it lines up with the obsessive approach i take towards trying to tie plot/character threads together lol. personally, i still consider descriptive writing to be my greatest strength. it's what i keep going back to, maybe because it was the first thing i discovered i was good at that wasn't influenced by someone else's decision.

How do you feel about your own writing?

I miss the honeymoon period when i thought my writing was the hottest shit LOL. that tapered off towards the end of 2022, but it's not like i think my writing is bad now, just that over time i became more aware of my shortcomings, and how much knowledge and experience i lack. i did have to fight a little to keep my relationship with writing from souring last year, but in hindsight it was more about frustration that i didn't have the energy to write (work burnout wooo) than a problem with writing itself. after a year plus of stalling and big fic projects i just want to have fun again, be a bit silly.

[xx-purple-jester-xx]

HI @frillsand ! ever since i saw your little thing about actor wally being insecure about his masculinity, i was thinking about the specifics of him being shorter, not having broad shoulders, and just being "cute", and couldn't help but think of what he would do if he met my oc, who is the exact same, but in the opposite way!

this is my oc olive (zoom in to see them better sorry about bad picture) they're biologically female and just about the same as actor wally. they have broad shoulders, are very tall (6'5 without shoes, 6'8 with them) not really curvy at all, and overall just very masculine, so much so to the point that lots of people actually think that they are a guy when i draw them. which i mean like they are, but they're also a girl. sorry gender is complicated essentially if you asked them their pronouns or gender they would respond with yes (anyone know a name for that btw? is it just unlabled or or something? totally not asking because i totally took that trait from myself and put it onto them).

anyways though my point with this is that it makes me wonder what it would be like if wally and olive met since they're like, the exact opposites of each other. i figure olive wouldn't care much, as they don't really see much differences between people it's just like, "oh you're shorter/different from me, cool".

little thing of mine is that if i thought they met then it would be at a childrens hospital entertaining children where they both just happened to go there on the same day, because olive also goes to childrens hospitals to hang out with children and play with them (they aren't an actor they're the owner of a big factory that makes toys/other things that may or may not be violent but i ain't delving into that cause i'm gonna do lore stuff with my little guys)

yeah but i figured they would just meet that way. although if they met in a childrens hospital entertaining children olive would probably be in a outfit like the one as seen below

they would be wearing the rainbow mask thing by the way, don't wanna scare the children. btw the little things that come off their mouth and go up their cheeks are scars, they're light pink in the picture. olive would keep the mask on with the children but wouldn't care about wally seeing them without it, so if they got like, a break or something where the children weren't there, then olive would take off the mask, they don't really mind adults seeing the scars but they keep a mask on around the children in the hospital so that they don't scare any of the smaller ones.

that's another thing i wonder how he would react to btw that's why i'm telling you that information, i kinda wonder what he would react like if they had the mask on the whole time when they were with the kids and then just take the mask off not caring about the scars at all once all the children are gone.

sorry for the long post thingy i just can't help but be obsessive over small details and must put them in

also you don't like, have to respond to this, i just kinda put it out here as a little wondering thing, it's not gonna bother me if you don't respond. but i will be immensely happy if you do end up responding cause that's cool ya know? if you somehow end up drawing stuff for this "prompt" btw, i will draw something back. tbh i'll probably draw actor wally stuff at some point anyways but if you draw something for this then it will be my top priority i tell you here.

sorry if this is kinda weird too, i know i'm being weird sorry i've just had this stuck in my head for like, a week since i saw the post you made and needed to get it out before i went insane. if you got this far thx for reading ',;) <3

[liskantope]

I'm getting pretty irritated at how Freddie deBoer is discussing and handling the issue of large proportions of his comments sections revolving around vaguely anti-LGBTQ views. I'm sympathetic to him in having to deal with the general dilemma of attracting an audience whose views on certain culture war topics tilt in a direction that he finds offensive, or that he doesn't want to have on the face of his blog. (Scott Alexander also had to struggle with this, at least in the earlier Slate Star Codex years.) But I find myself shaking my head at the way FdB is scolding and disciplining his audience about this and right now am inclined to say that it's the wrong approach and that a good bit of FdB's framing is unfair here.

First of all, there's a stigma in general against talking too much about culture war stuff, one which I've internalized myself and struggled with, and in the end I'm not sure the stigma makes sense. Certain topics become culture-warlike in the first place precisely because people care a whole lot about them, because they stoke strong emotions, so why should we be shamed for continuing to care and be emotional about them? I'm tempted to posit that the stigma is a subtly misplaced aversion to getting bogged down in toxic discourse where debaters because of their emotions too often in practice argue in a really low-quality and unconstructive way.

Secondly, FdB himself blogs a ton about culture war stuff! He just avoids certain issues and prefers others. One of the main issues that he's passionate about now is the recent boom in youth mental-illness-happy, diagnosis-happy culture (or at least, that's what he might call it). In his earlier months ranting about this on his blog, a number of commentators chose to take note of some very obvious parallels between what he was pointing out and what appears to be happening with a boom in young people identifying as transgender (note: by "very obvious parallels", I don't mean "absolute parallels" or "without room to rebut by pointing out very salient differences"). Many of the commentators, by being pretty passionately on the side of those issues that is most analogous to FdB's side of the mental illness cultural issue, chose to devolve the comments threads into long discussions about it. FdB decried it as creating an unfriendly environment for trans readers, made vague blanket statements about supporting trans and other LGBTQ rights, ducked addressing the parallels others noted between the opposing views and FdB's views on mental illness stuff, and forbade the topic of transgender youth culture from being discussed going forward.

Commenters mostly stuck to this rule. The comments section of the recent post about drag culture seems to be an unfortunate flagrant exception (you have to dig into the comments a bit, but not terribly far). So I do get why FdB is upset.

But... his characterization of commenters ranting about gender culture war issues -- that they have an unhealthy obsession and would turn any debate about any topic at all however dry into an excuse to rant about gender stuff -- seems way off base to me in multiple ways. First of all, he's angry because commenters started talking about gender stuff in the comments section to a post about the normalization of drag culture which discussed the recent trend of taking kids to drag shows. There is not exactly far for them to reach to get to their favorite topic! And I've never seen them reach from, say, tax cuts for the rich to trans issues (as FdB likes to claim they would when mocking them).

Secondly, I think it's pretty mean to insinuate that they (and conservatives in general, which he lumps them in with, even though my impression is that many of them aren't particularly conservative) are obsessed with gender to the point of it being a mental health problem. His general way of framing it takes only one side's behavior into consideration. You would think that the segment of youth culture in favor of focusing on gender-as-whatever-you-feel-it-to-mean and tons of gender identity labels and so forth is passionate about this in a "proportionate" (to use Freddie's term) way. Has he seen Tumblr? Has he considered the trans activist segment of the current "woke" social movement and its push to incorporate it into our culture? That's a dumb question, of course: he just wrote a post on it, or the part of it having to do with drag shows becoming normalized/sanitized/corporatized -- that is a part of basically said movement promoting trans activism (again, it wasn't exactly a far reach for commenters to jump within it). There is a major subset of the "woke" culture warriors who are visibly passionate about gender issues to the point that the more extreme ones seem obsessive, and there is a major subset of the "anti-woke" culture warriors who are visibly passionate against what they feel are harmful changes the other side is trying to impose to the point that the more extreme ones seem obsessive. (For example, Hasbro bothered to decide and announce that Mr. Potato Head is gender nonbinary, and conservative outlets took the trouble to sneer and whine about it. To me, this is a clear instance of both sides being obsessive. I'm not saying equally in the right -- I'm much more on Hasbro's side here -- just obsessive. I would have to argue that Hasbro has closer to the right idea rather than just point at the Fox News side and say, "Look how freaked out they're getting over a stupid potato toy, lol!".) It's pretty narrow-sighted to point to one side appearing obsessed without realizing that a culture war, or any war really, is about actions and roughly equal reactions happening on both sides.

(Also, more minor point: if you look at individuals in these comments section back-and-forths, rather than considering the comments section as a whole, I find it easy to empathize with them as each simply writing a few long comments thoroughly expounding a point of view, then naturally wanting to respond a couple of times once someone has pushed back on it. Which is... all pretty normal behavior for someone who cares enough and has thought enough about a topic to feel like commenting on it under a blog post and responding to pushback. It doesn't, on the individual level, come across to me as an unrelenting obsession, at least not with most of the commenters?)

I get that FdB wants to be an ally of LGBTQ people and doesn't want his comments sections to turn into a place that might feel hostile to many or most of them. I'd like to feel that my attitude would be similar if I ran a blog like his. I don't know exactly how someone in this position should deal with this, given that a lot of the controversial-among-progressives views he does espouse have, as I've said, pretty obvious parallels to certain other views that run counter to today's LGBTQ-activist model of gender and society. Naturally a lot of his audience is going to make those connections either way (and even some LGBTQ members of his audience might also be unorthodox in their views on some of their community's activist rhetoric and gender views, I'd tend to imagine some would be!).

One thing that occurs to me he could do is ban all comments that he deems unnecessarily aggressive, hostile, sarcastic, sneering towards LGBTQ issues, etc. -- in other words, gross, mean comments. When banning discussion of trans issues, for instance, he cited a commenter calling women's prisons an "all-you-can-rape buffet" for trans women. This comment is really gross, and in a way that's completely unnecessary to the discussion. So ban those comments and the commenters who make them. In other words, follow Scott Alexander's original maxim that SSC comments should satisfy at least two of the qualities of being true, necessary, and kind. The "all-you-can-rape buffet" comment, even if true in the mind of the commenter, very clearly was neither necessary nor kind. Sure there will always be some subjectivity in what "kind" entails, so it's not a perfect system. And ironically, Scott did eventually have to override this criterion for admitting comments and just start banning people who turned every single discussion into an excuse to propagandize neoreaction (remember when that was a thing?). So I don't know.

What I do feel fairly sure about is that FdB is not ultimately doing his cause favors by avoiding addressing what much of his audience sees as parallels between some of his views and the views he's banning on in his comments section. FdB just characterized his views on all LGBTQ issues and the current standard progressive ones as having no daylight between them. Yet, for instance, when asked about teenagers being put on gender-related medical treatments, he says things like he has to be agnostic because he doesn't know enough about that type of medicine, reversibility, etc. Which, fine, I'm basically agnostic too, for similar reasons. But he can't with a sweep of his hand declare himself completely in line with today's progressive Left on gender stuff (while being extremely critical of that same subculture on other, not entirely unrelated, things) and keep being vague when pressed on what he actually thinks about the gender stuff, without coming across as disingenuous. His occasional repeated proclamations of "I'm completely supportive of all transgender and queer activist issues [with a few extremely vague embellishments and minor qualifications]" in place of engaging in a discussion about why, say, his views on the social contagion aspect of the youth's mental illness culture do not imply an analogous criticism of the subculture focused on gender identity, honestly makes it appear that he is hiding something about his true views. In fact, it looks a lot like FdB doesn't feel like dealing with the backlash that would come his way if he fully exposed what his true views are.

Or to put it another way, I would like to see FdB actually address the reasons why young people over-diagnosing themselves with mental illnesses is distinct in a salient way from the boom among young people in identifying as transgender. Presumably he thinks such a rebuttal to the alleged parallels exists, so why does he appear to be strenuously ducking the question? I'm genuinely curious as to how he really makes these distinctions. And who knows, maybe whatever arguments he could put forth would nudge some of his more devoted readers into being more pro-trans-rights!

Instead, it really sort of comes across that ironically, the man who recently wrote "Be Independent -- No, Not Like That!", who happily embraces one side of the political spectrum while strenuously criticizing much of the rhetoric/narrative that comes out of the associated tribe and even celebrates his intellectual right to do this, is also someone who shuts down his commenters from strenuously criticizing a different strain of the rhetoric/narrative that comes from that tribe because, you see, he disagrees with and is offended by that other form of criticism. ("Be critical of today's progressive culture even if you're otherwise progressive yourself -- no, not like that!")

Uncharitable, I know, and looking at it another way I want to see FdB as just someone who likes the LGBTQ community and is simply concerned about not alienating it. Gaah.

[skeleton-in-a-hoodie]

I have accidently made myself emotional by thinking about Gyogi and what the word sensei means to Splinter.

This ended up being half about Gyogi and half about Yuuta. Under a readmore cause it got long.

There's some stuff that remains the same across all my au's, and Gyogi is one of them. He was Splinter's sensei and beloved uncle, as well as Yuuta's younger brother and opposite in several key ways.

The shortest explaination of the difference between Gyogi and Yuuta is that Yuuta was a good ninja but a lousy father, whereas Gyogi was a good man and a bad ninja.

The long explantion is this:

Yuuta valued the clan above all else, and was willing to go to any lengths to preserve the clan. This meant that even if he knew something was morally wrong, if he believed it was best for the clan, he would do it e.g. killing all the Oroku family and then kidnapping their son. Honour meant very little to him.

His family also always came second to the clan - whilst he did love his children, he was much more focused on the clan than on them, and it also influenced his decision to name Yoshi his heir rather than Saki. In my aus, Splinter was the younger son but was Yuuta's heir because, even though he did see Saki as his son and loved him as such, Yuuta saw Saki as Oroku Keiji's child and doubted that the rest of the clan's leadership would accept an Oroku over his biological son as the next clan head.

This had the knock on effects of him a) not caring about Yoshi's interest or dreams, because you're going to be the leader one day, put that paint brush down and practice your ninjutsu; b) fostering a rivalry between his sons and c) giving his sons an extremely warped view of what parental love should be like.

Point a resulted in Splinter dropping all his non-ninja related interests, because he was taught none of them matter.

B ended up destroying Splinter and Saki's relationship, because even before Shen they were essentially competing for any scrap of love and attention they could get. Also meant that they stopped relying on each other for help and resentment just grew and grew until one day it exploded.

C also gave both men trauma that massively effected how they raised their own kids. My au Shredders who are more similar to 12 Shredder (so, without spoilers: Stolen Child, Step dad Splinter au Shredder, GS2, Timeskip), all believed they were good fathers to Karai. Yes he hurt and threatened her, but as far as he was concerned you're supposed to fear your father's wrath. You're supposed to be terrified of disappointing him. Praise and affection are things that kids have to earn, not something you just give because that's your baby and all children deserve to know they are loved.

Meanwhile for my more canon compliant Splinters, he jumps between being over protective and not spending enough time with his kids, because he's trying to find a happy medium between stern authoritarian and letting his kids have space to be themselves and explore their interests, and isn't quite managing it. He's trying to be a better father than Yuuta because he recognises that Yuuta's parenting wasn't great, but Splinter hasn't realised that he didn't deserve to be treated that way, which complicates his attempts to be better.

The above just made the Tang Shen situation worse, because even though they properly didn't realise it, Shen was one of the few people that made those two feel safe and loved, which meant neither was going to back down. Also in a lot of ways, Shen chosing Yoshi was the straw that broke the camel's back, rather than being the sole reason Shredder went off the deep end. It's also why Shredder is still obsessed with her 15+ years post death - he sees her as the only person who ever truely loved him, and blames Splinter for taking that away from him.

So, er, Splinter has some very mixed and complicated feelings about his father.

Gyogi, by contrast, was a very honourable and compassionate individual. He had a strict moral code that he stuck to. He saw the value of all life, and regarded life itself as something precious and deserving of both protection and respect ("There is no monster greater than a lack of compassion."). Murder, to Gyogi, was also a last resort - he very much believed that you don't kill if you can main, don't main if you can disarm, don't disarm until you've tried to de-escalate, and don't de-escalate until you've offered your hand.

Perhaps because he was the second son, he was also able to put his family above the clan - if Yoshi was sick, Yuuta would tell him to push through, because one day he'd be sick during a mission and needed to learn how to handle that situation, whereas Gyogi would be like "Take the day off, and we will see how you're feeling tomorrow."

He was still a strict teacher and had high expectations for Splinter, mind, but he was the type of teacher where you know his standards are like that because he genuinely believes you're capable of achieving greatness and wants to help you get there. And if he pushed too hard, he was humble enough to admit to that.

This all means that Gyogi was kind of a terrible fit for being a ninja. He was ninjutsu Master from a long line of Ninjutsu masters, part of the last Ninja Clan, and he valued life and compassion whilst detesting murder.

Which does raise of question of why Yuuta let Gyogi train his heir. The answer to that is Yuuta wanted to keep an eye on Saki, and Gyogi was extremely talented in ninjutsu and also an excellent teacher. Yuuta saw his youngest son's horrible temper, and realised that Gyogi was their best bet on helping Yoshi get a handle of it (in ageswap, this also means that Raph trained under Gygoi, whilst Leo and Karai were trained under Yuuta).

So, when Splinter thinks of his father, he remembers a strict disciplinarian. He remembers a man who put the clan first, and his children third (maybe fourth, depends on how many problems the clan was having). Someone who pit him and his older brother against each other. Who loved them, he really did, but didn't know what to do with Splinter, and didn't really try because what was the point of encouraging Yoshi's dreams when his future was already planned out? Splinter remembers a man who did try, but fell short. He thinks of discipline and putting others before your family.

But when Splinter thinks of sensei, he remembers an achingly kind man who loved the world around him. Who put others before himself, and loved his nephews. He gave Splinter the space to be himself, and whilst his standards were high, they weren't impossible to reach.

So Splinter ends up with a complicated and somwhat reversed idea of what it means to be a father and what it means to be a sensei, which ends up clashing with his sons' understanding of those terms. (Generational trauma! Woo!) Part of GS2 will be about unpacking that, though this is something that will appear in my other aus too.

(Also, someone please get this man a therapist)

[daidoruyume]

Chapter 3 Being an idol can be tough sometimes!

 I supposed being an idol was my dream job. I was a born artist. All I wanted to do was convey messages to people through my lyrics, melody and dance. Still, it felt quite asphyxiating sometimes. It felt like I was stuck between the things I wanted to yell to the world, and the few words I actually could yell. Maybe I would still have supporters, maybe I would still have fans. But I was too scared to lose what I’ve built with so much effort, mine and the other girls’. 

 There was a way out, though… I had the option to vent through my lyrics, using a pseudonym. I felt like it was needed somehow. MiNA was the writer of almost every midnight☆RAINBOW song, and I’m pretty sure no one except for some staff, manager and members knew about it. I don’t think that even my craziest fans thought it to be me. Not to mention that whenever the song had a rap part, my legal name was credited, so there was no connection to make between MiNA and me. Although we were the same person. 

 For some reason, it was quite fun… it brought me freedom. I would also interact with ☆light way more often under the MiNA name. I would always give them sneak peeks and spoil something here and there. Yeah, thinking about it… this so-called “freedom” was what Miyuu needed. If I go back in my life, I think I’ve never actually had it. 

 I was a weird kid. It took me a while to even start talking, to the point my parents were worried… I didn’t really get people, and people didn’t really get me. I was completely different from my sister, who didn’t show this “weirdness”. At school, I did terribly. I didn’t want to do what the kids were doing, but I loved drawing. And I was pretty skilled! My mom was an artist, so I learned from her even advanced techniques and I was able to master them from a young age. But that wasn’t what society needed from me, so I was told I was wasting my time and that what I did was useless. I started being obsessed with music and I soon learned I was a skilled singer. My sister did ballet at that time, and although I didn’t fit in within the pink world of those ballerinas, I started to love dancing too.

 But I was still too weird. I didn’t grasp things with ease, and communication was really hard. I guess only my parents kind of understood me, but my way of expressing myself was through my drawings. Worried, they took me to a psychologist that then redirected me to other professionals, and within a long process they diagnosed me in the autism spectrum. 

 I didn’t understand it at first, and my mom didn’t want to make a big thing out of this. We had a little brother coming, and I guess she felt like taking me to appointments would only bore and sadden me. So she told me she would help me make my way through life, but that she didn’t want me to feel like I was different.

 I love my mom, and she did help me, but nowadays I think that being true about being different would have helped me. Little kids diagnosed me even earlier than professionals, and I can even come to tell how much I was bullied. Teachers didn’t understand I had special needs, and because my mother didn’t want to go further into the diagnosis, all they told me in my school years was that I needed to make some more effort, or that some situations couldn’t be helped. 

 I was very depressed by age 15, when all that brought me happiness was idols. But then, I realized… I could do that, too. I never felt like I was pretty enough, or that I even had the hang of it, but once I thought of it, I couldn’t take it off of my head. When I told my sister, she supported me instantly and she told me she wanted to do it with me. We weren’t that close, since she had her own friends and I guess I was too weird even for her, but as we started to practice and look for companies, auditions, etc. We grew a beautiful relationship. It felt, for the first time, like we were sisters and had something in common. My parents were very liberal and wanted to help us, so they supported us all the way to now. 

 We found this new company, Krystal Entertainment, that was looking for people like us. They had a different idea in mind, to be more human than other soul-eating companies. It’s not perfect, but way better than some others I know. Soon, other girls came and we were formed into this group. I was chosen as the leader because of how much passion they saw I exhaled. It was true… I wanted to do this more than anything else. The beginning was rough, but we slowly built a name and we’re pretty consolidated. Our schedule is always full, we’re selling high, we do concerts often and we’re on TV all the time… maybe we’re even getting our own show one day! 

 But, freedom… I had to give up on it. I don’t think that most people are free, either. Whether it is work or family, a relationship, social stigmas, prejudice, beauty standards, the internal battle between your giri¹ and your ninjō² ... I think that only very few people are free. I have the power of influencing so many people, and yet I can’t come clean and say “truly, I am…”. I have to keep a character, an image, be an idol… and yet, that’s the situation where I benefit the most from. Imagine me, in a boring office job… dealing with math or something like that. I think I’d die. 

 And, well, being an idol is exhausting by itself. Practicing daily, not being able to go out whenever you want to, everything you say is documented and regulated… It is tough. But whenever I see my fans, whenever they sing along with the lyrics I wrote, whenever they wave their towels and penlights, whenever they comment on my photos, whenever we talk during meet & greet sessions… It all makes sense. It all feels fair. It all feels beautiful. But a very small piece of me wonders if they would still love me if they knew the truth. If she would still love me. 

☆☆☆

 Setting my worries and monologue aside, I went to meet the girls. We were rehearsing for the upcoming concert. I was going to do something different, something bigger… announce that me, Rin-tan, Yume and Ayu were going to form a band. I was so happy when the manager heard our idea and said it was great. I was on the vocals and guitar, Rin-tan on the vocals and bass, Yume on the keyboard and Ayu on the drums. I felt really blessed to finally show the fans what we had been working on. We were planning on releasing a digital single after the next album, but if the reception is good, we might release a full on physical one. 

 The rehearsal went fine, everything seemed to be okay. We needed to improve in some parts, but that was time who would fix. Being done, we reunited for a selfie to post on Twitter for our fans. I wanted them to know we were working hard to make them smile. They spend so much time (and money) with us, and I think the least we can do is give them lots of good content. I was anxiously waiting for the replies to come up… it just felt good to be known and loved, coming from someone who had absolutely no friends as a child. Obviously, I was waiting for her, too. But, I guess something happened and she was busy, because I kept checking and checking, and there was no comment in those first minutes, which was pretty uncommon for her. 

 I decided to not be crazy today, so I went home. I shared an apartment with my sister, but she had other plans for that night, being the extremely social person she was. I wasn’t, so my only wish was to eat a good homemade meal, take a bath and go to sleep. I guess… I guess that was the most important thing for me. Maybe I was wrong… maybe it wasn’t a matter of being Miyuu or being MiNA, maybe it was a matter of who I was with. And, being with her, I guess I was free. I had a long night waiting for me. In a world where I could be the ruler. Where I could be with her. Where I could be free.

 After my desired meal and bath, I stared at that photo once again. I looked at it as if I wanted to burn it into my mind, as if I wanted to transfer it to my soul. Only with a deep, full of love, true and bright wish could I be able to do that. I looked at our youthful and lonely eyes, and how I wish we were still together. We would be. Soon. 

Notes:

¹Giri: social obligations.

²Ninjō: human feelings. 

[x----tine]

You recently published your second book of poetry, Goodnight Sweet Thing, and you’re known as a visual artist and filmmaker, too. At what point did you feel it was necessary to move between these different disciplines?

Well, I’ve always written poetry. I remember we first started studying poetry, in fifth grade, just Shel Silverstein and Robert Frost type stuff. We would have to write a lot of poems, and people liked my poem so much they would let me read them to them during the class, and I really enjoyed that. They were pretty silly poems, but ever since then, I didn’t really stop writing poetry. I didn’t really start taking it that seriously until I was 17 and that was the first time I was trying to get published.

I was very solitary, I had a best friend and she was also writing poems in high school, so I could only talk to her about it. I saw the Basquiat movie, the Julian Schnabel one, and I saw René Ricard’s character in it, and I was drawn to him because I was like, “Oh, he’s Puerto Rican,” and I’m Puerto Rican, and I hadn’t really seen anybody who was cool and Puerto Rican, into the things that I was into, that was also Puerto Rican. I looked him up and I found his book of poems, God with Revolver, which is my favorite book of poems. Most formative, for sure. His writing really influenced me, because I didn’t know that poems could be like that before I had been exposed to him. Very confessional and candid and like a knife being stuck into you.

I finally got published when I was 24 or something. I have a lot of poems from that time. A lot of the ones that I think are good enough are in the first book, which is the second half of [Goodnight Sweet Thing], that just spans a decade. I was being extremely picky.

To answer your question, though, when I was in high school, I was in TV production and had a crush on this punk kid who introduced me to Miranda July and David Lynch. I really wanted to impress him, and he used to stay after school and use the analog video editors to make video art. I was like, “Well, I guess I have to make a cool video, too.” I didn’t really think about it as video art then, but it totally is, and I was just making weird videos to impress him.

Because he was obsessed with The Wizard of Oz, I gave him this aluminum foil Tin Man that I made, and I put it in a Barbie box and painted it all and I made it look like it was prepackaged. I remember his impression of that. I didn’t really think about it as, “Oh, this is a sculpture,” or something, but I remember he was just so impressed by it. I guess he was the first person that really made me see myself as an artist. Seeing his response to it is what really made me feel like it was something that I really wanted to do. I think that experience was really formative, and he’s like a brother to me now.

What is your way into a poem? Does it start for you with a specific idea or an image, or is it something that’s kind of more malleable and amorphous, and is it similar with other mediums you work in?

They’re kind of different for me. With poetry, I would say it’s both. It depends on the poem. Sometimes I write a poem just for the sake of exercising the experience of writing a poem, which can be very playful and malleable, and I don’t usually know where that’s going to go. It’s just kind of a lot of word games, or just play with language, or just thinking about how the words connect. Also, there’s a natural impulsive intuitiveness to it. I would say most times I’m writing to document a feeling that I’m having, and I see them more like emotional pictures or something, of experiences that I’m having that I can’t really articulate or document in any other way, because I think those kinds of feelings are very fleeting, and I think that poetry is really good to capture fleeting emotion.

Earlier, when you were talking about how some of the poems that you didn’t put in your first book of poems, you were being really picky about it. What is it about looking at those that makes you say, “This is not something that I want,” or, “This is not up to my standard”?

I definitely have really high standards for what I reveal to the world, because I don’t want to embarrass myself, and I don’t like wasting people’s time. I feel like poetry in particular skirts a fine line between being really profound and beautiful, and being extremely corny and contrite. I’m always super mindful of that distinction.

I think poetry is definitely so vulnerable to me because it’s extremely personal, and it’s kind of the only space I give myself to be very direct and unapologetic. I feel like with my artwork, even if it has probably accents of that, it’s very mediated, just the very nature of it, the way that I’m presenting it.

Even if not all the poems are about me or about anybody, it’s very confessional. It’s funny because I looked back, I found the drive with all the really old poems, and I found all these ones that I’d never published, and I was like, “These are good.” I feel like it’s almost like, with the distance, I feel so removed from myself from over 10 years ago that I could look at it with more clarity. Whereas before, I don’t really know what that inhibition is, that kind of self-censorship feeling. Maybe I feel more sure of myself now that I have a lot more public validation.

In terms of reflecting on the totality of your career in arts, what is one thing that you wish you’d known when you were first starting out? Do you ever look back and say, “Maybe I should have done something differently?”

It’s funny because I was having a conversation about this with somebody the other day, and it’s a very dialectic thing. On one hand, choosing to be an artist, and I wasn’t the kind of artist that was like, “Oh, I want to do graphic design part-time or get a part-time job.” I was just like, “I’m all in.” I was a waitress. I’d done a lot of really random jobs, and the benefit of that is that I had preserved my own energy and my own time. But on paper, it was harmful in terms of kind of financial security. It’s really just a question of financial security versus your psychic security, because the time of the you afford yourself, or being on your on your own schedule. My energy gets really easily polluted by my environment, and if I’m in an environment that is really in opposition to myself for a very long time, it’s very hard for me to feel like I have the mental space to be where I need to be, to be creative in a way that is realistic.

My energy levels are so sensitive. I guess you can have a lot of critical acclaim, and it doesn’t mean that you’re going to have financial security. That’s all I need to say. It’s a very practical thing, but especially now, more than ever, the way social media has engineered this massive machine where we all have our own channels and we’re all kind of competing for attention to have the most visibility, and if you have the most visibility, then you have the most chances of having financial security, I think that’s what [people expect] the end result [to] feel like. After a certain point, you have a moment where you look back and you’re like, “Was it all worth it?”

I have asked myself that a lot lately, as I’m getting older, but for me, it was worth it. I wouldn’t be who I am. Material things aside, I feel very complete as a person, mentally, and I feel very happy with my internal space, and I think that’s just a trade-off. It’s what I need.

There’s a poem in Goodnight Sweet Thing titled “Change My Money with Your Life.” I’m thinking of the lines: “making cheap outfits yet again / poverty solutions.” How do artists, especially young artists, rectify that anxiety between needing to just make money and have our basic needs met, and also then time to create, while trying to build that career? Is it just trying to say yes to every opportunity that you can? Is it a mindset?

I think it depends on how young we’re talking. You do have to be careful about what context you place yourself in. I think when you’re really young, it’s normal to make a lot of mistakes or make decisions that you’ll regret later, maybe be embarrassed of. I certainly, have had to learn a lot. More than anything, I think you just have to have the drive. If you don’t have the drive and the will, this kind of urgency to express, then I think it’ll be very difficult, and maybe directionless, too. You have to have a strong drive in order to get anywhere with any creative field of this nature, like writing, when you’re the sole author, and it’s not a kind of commercial job. There’s a lot of loneliness in it, you’re doing it alone for so long, and you might always do it alone, and you just don’t know. It’s just probably one of the few jobs where you could work your ass off and do everything right, and there’s no promise that anything’s going to come of it.

If we were doctors, or, I don’t know, if we were in some corporate structure or something, there would be upward mobility that was very clear and delineated, for the most part. I know there’s issues with that too, but at least you would get a paycheck, I guess.

Do you ever hit a point where that urgency has ever gone away, and you’ve had to figure out how to get it back?

After I accomplished a certain number of things, I felt more subdued in my urgency, because I think before, it was like, I had to prove it to myself that my work was worthwhile or that people could connect to what I’m doing, but I have enough proof to know that people like what I do and that people do connect with it. Now, I still have compulsions to create things, and I could do so much more if I had more resources. Because I have had so much experience with various types of ways of presenting my work and working with other people, that I feel like probably this next decade would be the best for me creatively, and that would just depend on—mean, with or without this—but if I do get more financial investment on making things, I know that I could do stuff that’s really brilliant. I’ll just have to wait and see.

What is day-to-day life for you as a full-time artist?

Well, out of a lot of chaos, I have managed to create a very structured way of working for myself. That was not natural. It took many years for me to get to the place where I could organize my schedule. I can say I’m going to be at a certain time in certain place and do certain things, so I like to start my day with exercise. I like to go to the gym, and then I like to go to the studio. Because I have different mediums, it depends on what the deadlines are like, what the priority is, and if I don’t have any pressing deadlines, then it’s what’s most compelling to me personally. I juggle the filmmaking stuff, art stuff, and then the poetry. Poetry is more… I see poetry more as a hobby, if that makes sense, because it’s kind of like the performance art of literature. Only people who really like it do it. Anybody who does poetry is because they’re a real poet, I think, and I think that’s very beautiful, because you don’t have to censor yourself to kind of cater to any commercial needs. You can just let it be.

Is there anything that has surprised you about the business side of having to be an artist, even with poetry?

I have a lot of feelings about it. I mean, the artist has to do everything. They have to be their own administrator, manager, at least until you can afford to hire somebody to do it for you. We have wear so many hats throughout different phases of creative production. I feel like it would be very helpful if professors could have space to talk about the business of art in school. I don’t know how it is now, but when I was at school, it was kind of a taboo thing to talk about the practicalities of this profession, and I think I just felt so blind when I graduated from my bachelor’s. I had no idea how to make anything feasible in a kind of economy of art. It was only self-taught, really.

What would you say is the most useful thing that you’ve had to teach yourself about that process?

Don’t expect anybody to do anything for you, advocate for yourself and don’t low-ball yourself. I think a lot of times, artists and writers are put in a position to be grateful for any attention, because we’ve been vying so hard for attention for so many years. In the beginning, at least, I felt like it was like, “Oh my gosh, they want to do this thing.” You don’t think to yourself, “Oh, let me just ask for proper compensation.” With poetry, too, it’s the same, even having to… I know with bigger book deals, it’s not like this, but with smaller presses, you can get more fair royalties, 50/50, after production or whatever, of the cost. It’s very reasonable, but that seems like a hard thing to ask for, too.

I think a lot of people take the work for granted in terms of financial compensation. I can only speak for myself, but it felt like, “I’m going to get in trouble if I ask for it.” There were so many years of me selling myself short, but now I’m very clear about that, and I think creating a very practical way for you to get compensated fairly that fits for you, you’d be surprised. Most times you can get it.

How did you learn to make this shift?

Well, I think it’s just, maybe it was catastrophizing, thinking that, oh, if I ask for something, the other person’s going to be so insanely reactive that they’re going to want to rupture all ties or something, which is insane. That’s never happened to me. Really, the worst thing they can say is no, and that’s how I operate now. It’s good to exercise even thinking about what that looks like for you. What does fair compensation look like for you? Because, I felt like for a lot of time, I was just waiting for somebody to tell me, to be like, “Oh, this is what we give you.” If you just learn how to negotiate, you usually can get a little bit more, or everything that you wanted, and very rarely is it a hard no. Then, if it’s a hard no, you can decide if it’s worth any of it.

In terms of when you are working on a poem or a project or a film and it’s there, you’ve done it, how do you know when that feels ready?

It’s very personal. I generally don’t show work until it’s done unless I want feedback, but each process is different. Filmmaking is very communal, and it’s very collaborative, so it’s very natural to share multiple drafts and stuff of scripts and things with your producers or trusted people. With art, sometimes I’ll ask my husband. We share a studio and he’s an artist, too, and so we talk about that. I’ll ask him for feedback sometimes, but for the most part, I feel like I know when it’s done. It’s when I feel like, as I try to put myself in the position of the audience, and if I were to look at it, how would I assess it? I’m very strict, I have very definitive things that I look for that I find make me feel that it’s complete, it’s my own inner critic. Satisfying my own inner critic. When my inner critic is satisfied, then I feel like the work is done.

Are you willing to share some of your very strict rules that you have?

Don’t be lame, don’t be corny. The craft has to be there. I feel like I’m just such a craft snob. I just don’t respect people that don’t… I mean, whatever, it’s your thing if you don’t care about it, but it’s like, if you know about it, you know it when you see it. Also, every masterpiece has incorporated so much craft into it, and there’s no way that you can do it without thinking about it. Very rare, I think. I definitely have my own checklist across painting, film, poetry. Like, is it clean? Everything absolutely has to be there. If there’s anything that doesn’t have to be there, it doesn’t belong there. Making sure that it’s well-made on top of everything. Don’t sell yourself short. This is your product. This is what you’re giving to the world. There’s nothing worse than wasting a person’s time. People who spend time reading a book or watching a movie or going out of their way to go to a museum or art show to see something, why would you waste their time, but also waste your own time? Why would you waste your own time to not ask yourself these questions? It’s just, I’m a very rigorous person, I guess is what I want to say, and I expect this of other people, and I expect it of myself, so I’m not lax with myself, because when it’s there, it’s there.

It’s about being hard on yourself, but in the right way, right?

Yeah, because you don’t want to be hard enough that you don’t do anything. It’s really having the kind of distance where you can really be clear. Don’t have a big ego, because if you have a big ego, you’re setting yourself up for a lot of failure. I don’t think things should feel too easy. Sometimes things are easy and they’re flowing, but I mean, there’s so much that we digest culturally and in media, visually, words. We consume so much, so you want to be able to distill or separate the stuff that your brain is just processing from what your actual expression is, versus repeating another expression. Or maybe this expression feels normal because of our societal roles or something, but you don’t realize that your expression is hurtful to other people, because you’re not thinking about your societal role. It’s hard articulate. I’ve never really had to think about it in this way, but I just expect the same for myself as what I expect from the things that I love most, that I feel are really moving, strong works, and that’s what I aspire to do, is to make really strong, moving works. I see it as an Olympian challenge.

Some Things

Cristine Brache Recommends:

The books: God With Revolver by René Ricard, Making Of by Mara Mckevitt, and The Kiss by Kathryn Harrison.

The film, Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) by Toshio Matsumoto.

Weegee’s 1940s photo series of New York City’s moviegoers entitled, Movie Theaters and Kohei Yushiyuki’s 1970s photo series, The Park.

The song “Cowboys and Angels” by George Michael.

[starshipsofstarlord]

Can I request a Kai Parker smut

stuck in 1903

kai parker x reader / masterlist

summary; being trapped in the prison world after sacrificing yourself to protect your friends, leads to some very embarrassing and frustrating situations / warnings; kai being an annoying lil shit, mentions of death, smut, possessiveness, imprisonment,

the prison world, perhaps it would have been slightly peaceful if an entrapped witch was not following your every move like an obsessed ghost. he was relentless, stalking his threatening footsteps after your own, prowling for a manner of attention.

“if you stop this whole, ‘let’s walk in y/n’s shadow’ charade, i will have sex with you. can we pursue a deal concerning the matter?” instantly, the witch muted his movements, gripping onto the side of the aisle shelf as he studied you, searching to see if your prospectus contained serious regard.

once he had come to a conclusion, he raised his eyebrows. kai had tried his darnest to keep you contained in that house that he likened to call a home. there was something he didn’t wish for you to discover, he was keeping you isolated from everything within the empty world that his family had banished him to.

that made you think, that it was possible, that perhaps other souls had entered the enclosure of this world, and that was why you were seeking, in the hopes of providing yourself with the comfort that you weren’t alone in this cursed nation with the one, and the only, to your misfortune, kai parker.

there wasn’t much that you knew about him, he was a practical talker, rather than a personal one. he had stocks of questions about the modern world, so that he could relish in the imagery of how much it had evolved without him. a part of you pitied him, but another worried that there was a wisp of darkness that he was hiding.

you didn’t know him, he was a stranger, and that truth made him potentially dangerous. it was safe to always remain on your toes, even if he had a habit of trailing huskily after. it gave him no chance of envisioning you as a sitting duck, every day was the same, but he was the one thing that could change that.

one tip of his mindset, and he could remember that he preferred being alone. and he could kill you, piking you on a stake, despite being human, or using his siphoning hands to drain all life out of your body. this wasn’t your first rodeo with the aftermath of death; bonnie had found a way to bring you back, her power flowed through you, keeping you logically alive, to a fault that was.

parker licked his pork rind exploited lips, collecting the dust from the treat, and bringing it into the cauldron of his mouth. the man was thinking, and that idea alone scared you. however you waited for him to persevere with whatever was unravelling in his mind, although you could have easily passed him by, finding elsewhere to seek salvation.

“is there a due date for that offer, because i’d like to take you up on it right now?” a smirk curved his mouth. perhaps not every day was the same, this was certainly going to be different, that was one thing that was for sure.

he noticed how your shoulders withered from the thought; sex in a grocery store, you had never been so filthy, and despite there being nobody around to bare witness to the sin, it still had your skin crawling. hugging your arms across your chest, you sighed, giving into his slick prompt, leaning your head down out of self disrespect.

kai couldn’t be trusted, you knew that. not for the fact that his own family had sent him here, to wallow in nothing more than the loneliness of his own company. there had to be a reason! nobody’s mother nor father would do such an act for no resolving purpose.

gulping, you finally grew the guts to adjust your gaze on him, and how he tapped his foot, silently demanding a response. “i mean it kai, we have sex, and you stop trailing after me like some stray. you got that?”

he got it. his footsteps came closer to you as he backed you into a shelf along the outer wall, enclosing you against the packets of rustling pork rinds, accidentally crushing their interior contents, as you raised your chin up, obscenely glaring at the mysterious man.

“oh, i heard every word.” he held out his pinkie finger to make a promise, and sickeningly you reached your own out, shaking on it, before he rasped his hand around your wrist, pressing a kiss upon the thin flesh. leaning down, kai attached your lips, humming contently, it had been so long since he had endured the contact of another person.

with his unoccupied hand, he slithered it down your chest, dragging his knuckles down your stomach, before he reached the tender edge of your trousers. he toyed with the band, the action making you stifle any sounds of admitted likening to his teasing; if you did, then he would only continue to do so more.

it felt like forever since you had gotten laid, a large portion of you wanted kai to take you on the spot, which it looked as though that was his intent, and that he definitely would do so. but another felt sick of yourself, these were the extents that you would go to to be left alone, and there was not exactly a plan b if he didn’t.

you wanted to obtain a way out of this place, and possibly the only chance that you had of doing so was to wander away from his ever watching eyes, and strive on your own, trying to discover any evidence of life throughout this semi detached world. you felt like a cattle, being guarded by their herder, he was protecting you from anything that could daunt your mind with realisation.

it wasn’t the fact he was protective, it was more in the terms of possessiveness. though he wanted to leave, he claimed that there was no way out, he was intent on descending your hope of uncovering an escape, from not only the ghost town of your home, but from him also.

“what to first? should i just fuck you or make you blow me?” his teeth toyed with a sly smile, as though he were trying to convince you into a conflict regarding the answer. but instead of growing a fuzzy brain, you simply glared at him, pushing his fingers out from where they had slipped under the top of your bottoms, leaving the man to be a confused mess; it was kinda cute, but for all you knew, his often sublime attitude.

“i didn’t say foreplay parker, only sex was on the table. and that will be all you’re getting, unless you want me to leave you high and dry, and find another resolve to rid myself of your attached escapades of following after me like there’s a wire attached from me to you.”

“fine.” he raised his hands in a motion of surrender, chuckling lightly to himself. “i was just testing my luck, which is clear that i don’t have.” he turned, his brows going up higher on his face as he saw a variety of boxes stacked on one of the shelves. he picked one up, reading over the scripture as you scoffed.

“i don’t think your gonna need xxl, unless you’re going to cum that much since nobody has had their hands on you for a long time. you’ve had to suffice and please yourself for how long again?”

“spicy, i like it. eh, you’re right anyways.” he tossed the box down the aisle, grasping for another like a kid in the candy store, this time it was for the variety of average sized men. kai aggressively ripped the box open, causing the contents of packets to spill all over the ground.

“are you incapable of doing anything like a grown ass man?” it was irritating just watching him fail to do ordinary everyday tasks. he was destructive, and it seemed to be a large part of his personality.

“you won’t be asking that in a minute y/n/n.” he sent you a gruelling wink, making you inherently gulp, watching as he plucked a singular condom off the ground, holding it between his teeth as he began to unbuckle his belt, starting towards you.

“whatever you say kai.” rolling your eyes at his constant cockiness, you pried open your jeans, dropping your panties to the ground, as you caught kai frozen, with a slight swab of drool bathing his bottom lip. “come on, i am waiting, so hurry your ass up before i get bored of doing so.”

“you want this as much as i do, you just won’t admit it.” he lightly sneered towards you, and you felt your body flush with composed embarrassment. perhaps you had thought about the ordeal a little during the time you had been there, but there had to be some excuse! he was the only guy in a worldwide radius, that was a reasonable enough purpose.

when he was rid of apparel on his lower half, he rolled the protection onto his length, as he pinned you completely flush against the shelves of the aisle, one of his hands cupping your ass, before he helped you clamber into his arms, as he held your weight up.

you wrapped your legs expertly around his waist, biting your lip as he ran the tip of his cock against your clit, and then pushed into your walls, his moans reverberating erotically along the column of your throat, as he trailed his lips against your tender flesh.

“fuck, fuck, fuck.” he uttered as he began to thrust. it had been a long time since kai had endured any physical contact, let alone like this. the siphon was relishing in it, slipping his cock in and out of your folds as though that was his lifelong purpose.

for the first time in many years, he no longer felt trapped, he had inched into a small paving of freedom, all because he was inherent not to leave you to abandon alone. you too were also caught up in the web of pleasure, you didn’t here two specific sets of footsteps enter the store, searching for the witch that had claimed that he knew of a route out of this subordinate hell.

they had survived the enduring loss of their own freedom, being sucked from the force of a collapsing vacuum into this lonesome reality. the other side had fallen, and so had their jaws, as they saw kai not only having sex, but with you, their lost friend whom had given her life to previously save them from complicated doom.

bonnie felt borderline disgusted as she watched you shut your eyes and try to bounce yourself on the man’s cock, whilst damon was specifically disappointed. your hands rasped around his shoulders, though their grip tightened as your name was called.

as you turned and saw your friends, it all suddenly made sense. from kai’s behaviour, to his lack of inclination to leave you alone, it was clear that he was hiding you from them and vice versa. “bonnie, damon!” you gasped, unsure of how you were supposed to compose yourself throughout this predicament.

“yes, bon bon, damey.” kai mocked with a roll of his eyes, as he remained still to his own dismay. “could you maybe give us five minutes, we kinda weren’t done here. just let us finish, and- ow!” you slapped the side of his face, scrambling to situate yourself out of his menacing grip.

with downturned eyes, you hastily pulled your clothes back up into place, glaring at the siphon. “you knew didn’t you? you knew that these were my friends and you purposely made sure i was distanced from them!” you growled at kai, your eyes fluttering with disregard for the imprisoned magician.

“well if i had, then you’d be less inclined to spend time with me, and this, would never have happened.” his fingers pried at pointing between the pair of you, amusedly he would say, though you would think otherwise. “welcome to 1903 baby! the world of lies and disgrace.”

“you’re the disgrace, you killed your own family, your younger siblings.” bonnie spoke, and her words made you feel physically sick. “get away from him y/n.” you followed her command, rushing over to her and damon, with shock established in your eyes. you had just fucked a sociopath.

“well, i guess that the jig is up.” he shrugged as he conformed his own clothes to be put in place. the fact that you still felt a rouse to finish what you started made you feel disgusted with yourself, though he deserved to rot here. why did the bad guys always have to be so hot? it just was not fair.

[mandoalorian]

Hiii!!! Could you please do a oneshot of things din likes about you? What he admires about you?

Summary: Your crew mate, Din Djarin, is away for the first time in a long time. During this period of isolation, he begins to realise just how much he misses you.

AN: This is destined to flop because I’m still flagged and nobody is going to see this in the tags :( I know I always say reblogs mean a lot but this time — they genuinely mean everything to me. I’m still trying to write despite knowing that my work will get barely any reach. The only way people are going to be able to read my work is through reblogs/shares. I’m still trying to get through to Tumblr because honestly, being wrongly flagged sucks. 😭 Anyways enjoy❤️

A Letter From Din

Hi,

Hello,

How do you start letters?

I don’t think I’ve written a single letter in my life. There’s no need. I know I’m bad with words, and I know this was your idea— to write to each other. Maybe it’ll help me better my communication skills. Who knows. I’m staring to feel like I’m a lost cause.

The past few weeks have proven to be more difficult than I could ever even imagine. I’ve been alone my whole life, you know that. And it’s been fine. I’ve been fine. But now, when I’m camping out in-between bounties, and I’m alone, and it’s dark, I find myself yearning for your company.

Asking you to become crew on the Crest might’ve been the best decision I’ve ever made. Don’t let it get to your head. I was reluctant at first, but you know how much help I needed with the kid. And... even though he’s not with us anymore, I still keep you around. I suppose you’re not as bad as I probably make you out to be.

You make me laugh. I hate laughing. But sometimes you crack the dumbest joke, and I wonder to myself: how could anyone possible come up with something as ridiculous as that? But you do. I don’t know how you manage it, but you make me laugh. I live for the way you laugh too, I like it when you laugh too, it’s infectious. Your smile and the way the corners of your eyes crinkle up... I know you can’t see me under this helmet but— when you smile, I smile too.

I’ve never really had any friends. Sure, there’s Cara and Karga, but you know how it is. More than anything else, we’re in each other’s debts. You, on the other hand...

You’re just great to be around. You can read me like an open book, which I know isn’t possible because you can’t exactly see my face. But somehow, I just feel so connected to you. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Do you feel it too? This connection?

I’m surprised you’ve stuck around this long. I know it can’t be nice, sleeping on the floor in the hull of the ship, but hey— at least while I’m gone you can take my bed. Do you sleep in my bed? Remember I have some sourberries stored for you in carbon freezing it you ever crave anything sweet.

It’s hard to sleep without your company. I don’t know how I managed it before you were around. The caffeine tablets you packed for me were a great idea though. I know we sleep in different areas of the ship but it’s just nice knowing that you’re there, you know?

I miss the way I’d wake up to the smell of you cooking breakfast too. You make me feel like the luckiest hunter in the rim. Your bowls of Meilooran fruit are the best I’ve ever tasted. You just can’t buy them like that. I must admit, this portion bread is getting pretty dry. I can’t wait to get back to the ship.

Hey, maybe I don’t even miss you that much. Maybe I just miss the way you cook for me.

I think I’m liking this whole writing letters thing. It’s much easier for me to tease you this way, and you can’t retort back.

I’m beginning to feel like I’ve been taking you for granted. When I return to the ship, I’m not sure if I’m ever going to be able to leave you again. I’d bring you with me but... bounty hunting is dangerous, complicated profession. I know you say you can take care of yourself, and I don’t doubt you for one second. You’re one of the strongest people I know. But, I worry about you. Even right now, I worry about you. What if someone raids the ship while I’m gone and hurts you? I feel the duty to protect you. And I know that you tell me that you’re not my responsibility, but it’s like... this primal feeling. If something happened to you, I could never forgive myself.

Truth is, I don’t take you with me on bounties because your dumb jokes would just annoy me the entire time. What was that one you told me before I left?

You said: The only reason you���d win me in a race is because you have the beskar.

And I was like: What?

And you meant: Beskar— best car.

I didn’t laugh at first, but I remember the way you doubled over and fell to your knees, giggling hysterically at your own, stupid joke.

I love your stupid jokes.

Anyways, I hope this letter finds you safely.

The galaxy feels small without you.

I miss you.

—Mando

———

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[visit-ba-sing-se]

hey it is me again rewriting a scene from the comics with no compliance to canon nor context just because it was on my dash and bothered me 

“You know it wasn’t, Zuzu.” The words came out before Azula had thought them through, and she directly scolded herself for that. Sure, the current situation was bad, but she liked to believe that she had been in way greater danger before. And in those moments, her brain had usually worked pretty well. Which was the reason why she was even still alive now to be stuck in this mess. Of course, she had to admit, a few times it hadn’t. Which was again the reason behind the mess. “What?”  At least she had managed to catch her brother surprise. His grip loosened a bit, and the anger in his eyes faded a little to make room for confusion, which turned into disbelief and then again quickly into scepticism. After everything, his face was still like an open book, and she could see him shifting through the different pages as he tried figure out her intentions.

“Like this. Between us.” Azula shrugged, as much as that was possible in her current position. “You know. me trying to kill you…you locking me up..me trying to kill you again…you holding me over a cliff…” 

Azula did her best to sound casual as she spoke. As if she was telling a funny remark, not recounting the shambles the relationship between her an Zuko had fallen into, each one a sharp dagger of its own. But she herself could hear how much her voice sounded like it was about to crack. And a part of her did not even mind. That part that was just so tired of keeping her act up, again and again, everyday and at all times. She had played it so well. Had done so much to keep to keep everything, but first and foremost herself in control. And where had that even gotten her? On the edge of a cliff, from which her brother would may or may not throw her to death. So, if there had ever been a moment to put her cards on the table, wasn’t it now? 

“Azula, I have no idea what you are getting at.” 

The anger had returned onto her bothers face, and Azula did not know what was worse: the fact that she actually wondered if he would have it in himself to kill her, or how little she cared about the answer.

“And to be honest am really not in the mood for one of your mind games right now.”

She could not help but laugh. It wasn’t real laughter. Too bitter and too dry.  Not like she really remembered what her real laughter even sounded like.  Of course, that was what he thought. That she was still scheming, with her feet in the air and the abyss below. And had that not been the picture she had always tried so hard to convey? Why was she mad at him for buying exactly the show she was selling? Because he does not even try to look behind the curtains, a voice in her head whispered the answer. Zuko opened his mouth to say something else, but she interrupted him before that.

“I am not playing anything. I am just answering your question. Truthfully.” She emphasised the last word. Not for him, but more for herself. It was about time she did that. “You know we were different when we were kids. How we used to play together. How we snuck in the kitchen to steal food.How you taught me the first bending moves. How we warned each other when dad was in a bad mood. That was not us against each other. That was us against the rest.” She paused, to give her words the room and weight they deserved to have. “You cannot tell me you do not remember what tricks we used to play on the staff. Or what stories you used to tell me about the dragons when I had snuck into your room at night. Or what you swore me when Lu Ten went to war.” 

Her brothers reaction reaction told Azula that he did, just as well as her. Even though that night had been so long ago, and at least to her felt like it had happened in another universe. 

The day that their older cousins, who had kind of been like a second bigger brother to her, had announced that he would leave to conquer Ba Sing Se. Of course the adults had tried to play it down, but Azula had not fallen for their tales. She knew what war was. Or least, she had thought so. At. least she had already understood that sometimes people went there and did not return. And that now one of those people would be Lu Ten. 

She had refused to join the family during meals and even missed her lessons, for the only time in her life. All she had done was sit at a turtle duck pond and stare into the water, which no amount of yelling nor nice words from either parent had been able to change. Azula did not remember what excactly she had been thinking back then, except for the she sworn herself to never talk to any of them ever again. Which had worked quite well. Until Zuko had shown up to sit next to her and put a hand around her shoulder.

“Hey, don’t be so sad, Azula,” he had said, obviously trying to sound more cheerful than her really felt. “Lu Ten surely will come back soon and well.”

Azula did not know why, but after that her tears has just started to flow.

“Zuzu, he is abandoning me. Abandoning us.” She had sniffed, hiding her face between her hands. “How can he just do that? I thought he was our friend.”

“Because he had to fight in the war. Like our uncle. It’s important for our nation. And his duty.”

“Stupid duty!” Today, her own reaction seemed hilarious to Azula. But she knew that she had meant each word she had said, the way only a child can mean them. “I think if you really care for someone, you do not just leave them behind. Not for any duty.”

“Well, I know that I would never abandon you.” Her brother had responded, he too as convinced of his words as only a child could be . “Not for anything in the world.”

“Promise?” she had asked.

“Promise” he had said, and they had shaken hands dramatically, while looking each other deep in eyes. As if they had just sealed a very important and serious deal.

Now, Azula was staring at those exact same and yet so different eyes again. Still the same shade of gold, but one of them now scared.

In them, she saw understanding. And then a very, very deep regret. A regret not limited to the events of today, but that seemed to span over all of their lost days. She recognized it not only because it was so obviously written on his face, but because she felt it too. When her brother carefully put her down on her feet again, its weight on her shoulder nearly made her legs give in. 

“How only did we end up here?” Zuko asked finally, shaking his head. There was no more accusation in his voice. Just sadness and disbelieve. Azula wanted to reach out to him. As close as they were standing, it would have been easy to put her arm on his. But at the same time, he seemed to be so far away, and the divide that had built between them over years just felt uncrossable. 

When had it started? She wondered. When had she started seeing Zuko as friend and brother and more like an opponent? Like a rival for her parents approval? Had it been when her training had gotten more serious? Or when her father mood swings had gotten worse? Azula could not remember. What she remembered was how there suddenly had been this fear. This fear to fail and disappoint, that had come and chased every other motion away. That had numbed her feelings for anyone and anything else, except for this one need. This one need to be perfect. To be the best. 

“You know”, her brother continued after a moment, while Azula was still deep in her thoughts,  “I usually tell myself that this is what we were destined for. That we just were made to stand on opposing sides and fight. But-“ his voice cracked, and took a while until he continued talking. “But that’s not true. That’s just what they taught us. What he taught us. He just was so good at it.” 

She truly wanted to believe that he was right. But she had just reached another conclusion before. One that she hated to have had, and one that she even more hated to share. But she had wanted the truth in first place. So now there was no turning back.

“No. It was me. I ruined it. I was so obsessed with making father proud and…..I”,

 Azula forced herself to continue speaking even though she felt like she was choking on her words, “I sacrificed you for that. I…I sacrificed us.” She felt hot, burning tears on her cheeks, but she did not care enough to even swipe them away. What were a few tears for so much that was lost? 

“And now it’s all ruined. I….I`m sorry.”

“Azula…no”, she saw her brother reaching our his hand. Slowly and hesitant, as if he was afraid she would back away. But she did not, and so he put it down on her shoulder. “Azula, you were child. We both were. And I am sure there were times I could have been a better brother, but I was not. Like back then. But also today. And for those I am sorry, too.” 

There were tears in his eyes as well, Azula noticed, just like the slight crack in his voice. And she knew that he meant everything he said.

“And of course I am sorry for the years we lost, and I wish we could turn back time and make things different. But-,” Zuko paused, and Azula could tell that he was carefully considering each word, “we still can have so many years ahead. Maybe we can try to make this right. Maybe we can at least take our future back from them”

He brother looked at her, a glimmer of hope in his eyes, but also nervously twitching his free hand. 

Azula knew that he was excepting an answer to his proposal. She also it would be difficult, and that it might not even work. She also knew that there had been a time where her answer would have been a clear no. No risk. No trust. No dependency. That had been her default, and part of her strategy to success. And also how she had lost everyone that had ever mattered to her. But now, more than anything, she just wanted her brother back.

“You really think we could?”, she said therefore, “because I really do want these years.

“Yes I do”, Zuko smiled through his tears. “After all, I have a promise to keep.”

And then, after what had felt like an eternity, Azula hugged her bother again. (submit another scene if you enjoyed this?)

[storiesforallfandoms]

we’re too stupid ~ the vlog squad

word count: 1885

request?: yes!

@iawaythrown​  “May I ask for a vlog squad x popular youtube reader

The reader has their own very popular youtube channel/podcast like a scientific/space podcast. (Like a Vsauce\GameTheory channel) The vlog squad and the reader fan base (somehow) always wants them to collab. One day David says "It won't happen because the reader probably doesn't like us." This ends up getting everyone on the podcast.”

description: when their favorite youtubers show interest in being on their podcast, they jump at the chance to invite them on

pairing: vlog squad x gender neutral!reader

warnings: swearing

masterlist (one, two)

“You know what I’ve been listening to a lot lately?” Scotty asked David on the newest vlog David had uploaded. You were watching the vlog on your TV while you prepared to upload the newest episode of your podcast. You had a drink half raised to your lips when Scott responded to his own question, “The Spaced Out podcast.”

Your drink nearly slipped from your hand at the mention of your podcast. You were sure you had imagined it, so you went back and repeated the part just to be sure. The name of your podcast slipped from Scott’s lips again and you had to pause the video to scream with excitement.

When you placed the video again, David spoke next. “Oh wait, is that the one about space and shit? You played it for me before.”

“Yeah! Man, it’s so interesting. I could honestly listen to the host talk about space all day,” Scott said.

“He keeps bringing it up during the Scottcast, too,” Jeff commented. “I’m starting to think he’d rather co-host that podcast instead of our own.”

“Man, I’d love to be on that podcast!”

You could hardly contain your excitement. Your favorite YouTubers knew who you were?! They knew your podcast?! You had to be dreaming, you were sure of it.

“There’s no way they’d ever have us on the podcast,” David was saying. “We’re too stupid and immature, they’d probably hate us.”

“Speak for yourself!” Zane, dressed in some weird costume for a bit, called, causing the boys to laugh together.

This gave you an idea. You put your laptop aside and opened Instagram on your phone. You searched the name “David Dobrik” and went to his DMs.

~~~~~~

A week later, your podcasting room was filled with 11 extra people than there normally was. The room was only small with a handful of seats, so a lot of your guests were squeezed in together or basically sat on one another. No one seemed to mind, though. Every single person in the room was super excited to be there.

“What’s up all my space geeks? Welcome back to another episode of The Spaced Out podcast, the podcast where we discuss super nerdy space things,” you started with your usual intro. “Today’s episode is a little different, though, as today I am joined by not one, not two, not even three, but eleven special guests. You heard me right, eleven. Special guests, wanna say hi?”

All eleven of your guests rang out with a chorus of, “Hello!”s at the one time, making it all come out as just a shouting mess. You laughed and waved a hand to silence them.

“In case you had trouble understanding what they were saying,” you said, “my guests today are David, Scotty, Toddy, Zane, Erin, Carly, Natalie, Heath, Mariah, Corinna, and Jeff, better known as a large chunk of YouTube’s biggest vlogging group: The Vlog Squad!”

The Vlog Squad cheered at their introduction as you just clapped your hands.

“Can I just say,” Heath said once the noise started to die down, “that I am impressed with how fast you said our names and how easy it was. You didn’t even stutter once.”

“I’ll be honest, when David told me exactly who was coming I prepared myself for this,” you admitted. “I’ve never had so many guests on the show before. Actually, I don’t know if I’ve ever had any guests at all. I don’t really know anyone in my real life that’s as interested in space and science as I am.”

“To be fair, none of us are, either,” Jeff joked, causing the room to laugh.

“Yeah, you picked the wrong people to be on your podcast,” Corinna added.

“You don’t have to have any sort of interest to be on the podcast, really. As long as you don’t mind me talking about my nerdy space obsession every now and then anyone is welcome on the podcast.”

Your heart was beating so fast you were sure everyone else could hear it. You were shocked that you were managing to remain so calm in that moment. Your favorite YouTubers were sitting right there in front of you, being guests on your podcast, and somehow you were acting as though they were just friends that you had convinced to come on the podcast.

“Is there any cool space facts you can share with us to get the ball rolling?” David asked.

“Dude, I’ve made over 300 episodes of this podcast that is literally all about space, you gotta narrow down your parameters there,” you told him.

“What’s your favorite space fact then?”

You thought for a moment, going through all the little facts you had in your mind. There was so much you could share with them that you really didn’t know where to start.

“Okay,” you said finally, “I have one. I think David will like this cause we all know he’s made of money: there is a planet that is called 55 Cancri e. It is over twice the size of Earth and it is potentially made of diamonds.”

They all gasped and made comments of astonishment at the same time at this.

“Like, literally made of diamonds?” Corinna asked.

“It’s hard to know for sure. It’s roughly 41 lightyears away so it’s not exactly easy to reach, but they think it’s made of graphite and diamonds,” you explained. “My favorite fact, and one that’s a little scary, is that it’s actually completely silent in space. Like not a single sound, because atmospheres around planets are what contain the soundwaves to make noise.”

“I told you,” David said, turning to face Scott. “We’re too stupid to be on this podcast.”

You all laughed together. “You guys aren’t stupid! I was just fascinated with space as a child and my parents let me feed into that fascination. They always bought me books about space and brought me to visit certain space centers. I was that kid that always said she was gonna grow up and be an astronaut. Instead, I just talk about them on the internet.”

Everything was going so well. You were getting to know your guests and they kept urging you to tell them facts and stories about space. You knew a lot of what you were telling them you had talked about on the podcast before, so devoted listeners probably wouldn’t be too interested in a lot of what you had to say in that episode, but you didn’t mind too much. You just loved to see the looks of astonishment on everyone’s faces as you continued to tell them fact after fact.

When you came to a segment you did in the podcast in which you would read messages from fans, you decided to your guests choose which messages to read and respond to. David took the tablet you used for this first and read through the thousands of messages you received between uploading your most recent episode and recording the current one.

“Are you going to talk about the new 4K pictures of Mars?” he read.

“Oh my God, yes!” you responded. “That will be next episode. I haven’t looked at them all yet because I wanna have a live reaction to them, but I did see one picture and it looks absolutely stunning.”

“It blew my mind how it just looked like a desert here,” Carly commented. “Mars is a lot more like Earth than we think. Sucks that we’ll never be able to live there or anything.”

“I don’t think we’ll never be able to live there, but I don’t think it’ll happen in our lifetimes,” you commented. “But that’s a whole other thing, let’s move on from that.”

“What has been your favorite space related story of the past year?” Natalie read the message she had picked.

“I don’t know if it’s my favorite, but it’s definitely one that I was very interested in reading: a star just vanished in 2020,” you responded. “Apparently that’s something that can just happen, stars can just suddenly disappear and no one knows where they went. This star from the Kinman dwarf galaxy that shined almost brighter than the sun just vanished between 2011 and 2020, and they have no explanation for it. That story stuck with me the most cause I just find it funny that a star that bright just vanished and no one can figure out where it went.”

They continued reading you messages for a while before passing your tablet back to you.

“While I wish I could sit here with you guys and talk about space and your vlogs forever, unfortunately we are running out of time,” you said. “I want to thank the Vlog Squad again for joining me on this episode, and I hope I didn’t bore you guys to death with my stories and facts.”

“Not at all!” David spoke. “I can’t speak for everyone, but I really enjoyed myself. Listening to you talk was really interesting.”

The rest of the group agreed. You tried not to blush from all their kind words.

“I always wanna thank our sponsors again. As always I appreciate them supporting my show, and of course I want you guys, the listeners. Your constant support for the show means so much to me. If you wanna hear more fun facts about space that you’ll never use in live, follow me on my social media. If you’re not already following the podcast, follow the podcast! I upload episodes every Friday, and if you want to be involved in the show be sure to send me your space related messages and maybe I’ll read them out on the next episode. Have a good weekend, little space geek out!”

You ended the recording and the group almost cheered for you. You smiled and stood to thank them again for coming on the show. You were shocked when Corinna pulled you into a hug, which caused the rest of the group to hug you one by one.

“This was the most fun I think I’ve ever had,” Erin commented. “Would you be open to having more guests on the show? I’d love to come back and to just listen to you talk for a full hour.”

The rest of the squad agreed. You really didn’t think you could feel any more excited or on cloud nine, but they kept surprising you.

“I would definitely be open to having guests again,” you replied. “If you guys ever wanna be on the show again, just send me a DM. I’d love to have you!”

“We’d love to have you on the vlogs sometime, too, if you’d be open for that,” David told you.

There they go again, making you feel like you had passed cloud nine and now were on a completely different planet with excitement.

“Y-Yeah!” you managed. “Of course, I’d love that!”

After some more small talk, you showed the group out and thanked them again for coming. Once you were sure they were gone and unable to see you, you began jumping for joy and exclaiming with excitement. You couldn’t believe it! You had just hosted a podcast with your favorite people, and they asked you to join them for filming sometime?!

“This is the best day of my life!”