#climate change isn’t playing around guys

[faerytale-wings]

Can anyone from colder climates help a poor freezing Floridian out with tips on keeping a drafty old house warmer?

Please, my cats are very unhappy with me T-T

[cheriladycl01]

ANGST ( friendship ended, ego battles, Championship, Ferrari, Red Bull, Dutchman, American Girl, unrequired love, Title battle)

Y/N and Max have been friends since their go-karting days. She was a driver for Alpha Tauri and achieved spectacular results with the team and was hoping to take the second seat at Red Bull, but as other drivers are ahead of her to take that spot, she accepts a million-dollar proposal from Ferrari. Max is bewildered by her decision and breaks up a years-long friendship for a trivial reason, as she is thinking about the good part of her career and at Ferrari she has a chance to fight for titles. She is devastated by Max's reaction and his contempt for her, the Dutchman starts to pretend that the American doesn't exist and ignores her both in the paddock and in Monaco, where they live. Fans, fellow riders and the media are devastated how such a lasting friendship ended in such a heavy climate, the American media blasts Max, while the Dutch media trashes Y/N. Y/N and Max enter into a brutal and fierce dispute for the 2024 championship, more tense than 2021, due to the entire context that involves the two. Max felt betrayed by her leaving Red Bull and by her never realizing that he always liked her, but now she's the one who doesn't want anything to do with him in her life anymore and she's going to do whatever it takes to be world champion. They arrive in Abu Dhabi tied and in the wheel-to-wheel dispute, Y/N becomes world champion, and Max realizes that he made a mistake with the love of his life and is humbled by her forgiveness.

This is the story of us! - Max Verstappen x FerrariDriver! Reader

Plot: In the style of a documentary find out what really happened in the year of 2024 between Max Verstappen and Y/N Y/L/N.

“Audio test in the studio please Y/N” the Documenter asks from behind cameras.

“10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1” you say your face on camera as some continues to fix your hair.

A News Broadcaster pops up from 2023 on Sky Sports News.

“Today the shocking news has come that rather than signing with Red Bull Y/N Y/LN has made a million dollar move to Ferrari”

“Y/L/N to drive in Red for the 2024 season”

“Red Bull decision to not sign Y/L/N leaves them out no options says Adrian Newey”

News articles play in overlay over each other as they get more frequent about your career change 2 years ago.

“Hiya Y/N” the interviewer for the documentary asks.

“Hello” you smile back politely on the footage.

“So this documentary is about the Formula One season of 2024 and … your intense battle for the championship”

“Mmmmm all very interesting no?” You joke before serious music comes on. Showing some shots of you racing, and some of the radios that came from that season.

“This isn’t right! Why isn’t my team working together” your voice come through.

“Y/N it’s time to back off. You can’t win this one”

“I’m never going to give up, it’s me or him in this dust and I don’t care which as this point as long as I know I pushed”

“Y/N are you okay? Y/N?”

“What the fuck was that?”

“Guys this is my last chance let’s put it all in”

“FUCK THIS GUY MAN”

“Yes it was … a heated season for sure” you chuckle.

“So start by telling us about your early life” she asks after a small compilation of early photos of you karting before it’s edited to flick back and forth between your interview and clips of you karting and in the feeder series.

“I started karting from a very young age, around 6 and worked my way up like any other driver. Eventually Red Bull … saw potential in me and decided to sponsor me and make me a part of their Young Drivers Programme. That eventually fed me into a seat in AlphaTauri or what is now Visa CashApp RB” you start, hands clenched together.

“I saw everyone else get a chance at that Red Bull seat before me regardless of my performance. And when they signed Sergio Perez, someone from a different team, that tipped me over the edge” you admit, knowing that it was one of the hardest heartbreaks you experienced.

“And that’s when Ferrari came in?” The interviewer asks.

“That’s when Ferrari came in, they wanted something fresh and new and I’d pretty much grown up with Charles just like I had Max, so there was no concern about us being Team-Mates. It was … despite Ferraris struggles in recent years, my only way forward” you nod your head, before the documentary shows your driving in your AlphaTauri and your incredible win in that car, that should have been the reason Horner wanted to sign you.

“Max … wasn’t happy with this decision” she asks and you nod.

“He wasn’t … i thought if anything was to ruin our friendship it would be an external relationship that didn’t appreciate our bond. Not … because of a job” you laugh thinking of his reaction and how he’d cut you off in all aspects of life.

That year was difficult for you, even though you’d had more people around you than you’d ever had in your life you had never felt more lonely.

Max had pretty much axed you out of his life. He’d blocked you on every social media, every messaging platform and even put your emails into his junk folder. You thought it was a step too far writing to him so, you left it.

You left an eleven year friendship to just go down the drain. You didn’t realise until he was actually gone how much of an impact Max Verstappen had on you and your life. He was there for you for every major thing that happened in your life and this move to Ferrari felt like your next step. But he had no longer wished to be a part of that.

“What did it feel like when you announced going to Ferrari?” Your asked and your paused for a while before you face the interviewer.

“I think everybody dreams of driving for Ferrari, no matter what team your currently with as … it’s the pinnacle of motorsport. But to be the first female to drive for Ferrari is a statement. The day I made the announcement and it went onto the F1 page that my contract was up with RedBull and AlphaTauri for the 2023 season I couldn’t have been happier because it felt like I was finally moving forward and not stuck in the same spot” you answer and she nods.

“And how did that affect your friendships?” She asks and you almost scoff.

“Why didn’t you just say Max” you chuckle before sighing. You never mind talking about it especially now, of course you were upset and heated back then. You normally tending to be after racing if it didn’t go your way anyway, but when it came to Max leaving you there were times you were pretty nonchalant about it because you didn’t know how to react.

It was the later reaction that was more frightening.

“Well, that would spoil that kind of answer, clearly there’s more of an issue here than with any other driver” she asks.

“You’ve done your research, you know exactly what happened”

Media floods in the documentary American News anchors sending hate to Max Verstappen especially when he came to home turf for a race and the Deutch fans butchering you in the Netherlands.

SkySports -

“Max Verstappen is brutal, can’t imagine ever being as petty as he is”

ESPN News -

“And today we have news that Red Bull Driver Max Verstappen has cut all ties with new Ferrari Driver Y/N Y/L/N, for her change of team”

Fan at the Track -

“You know Max is incredibly overrated and childish for what he did to our American pride and joy”

News in the Netherlands

“ze is gewoon een vreselijke chauffeur”

Fan at Zandvoort

“neuk haar”

It pans back to you looking down at your hands before the interviewer speaks up again.

“So before the season started did you and Max have any heated arguments that contributed to the start of the season?” She asks and you shake your head.

“He blocked me on everything, I was with my ex-boyfriend at that point and we were travelling during the winter break so it didn’t bother me too much. I tried to keep myself distracted knowing I had great support around me, a new team to get to know and work with.

But as the 2024 started to get closer and you came back home to Monaco, sensing Max had disappeared from your life finally sunk in. You had many days at home wrapped up in blankets crying, wondering where it all went wrong.

Making you feel lonely in Monaco was one thing, but it only got worse in the paddock when racing resumed for the testy 2024 season.

A video plays of the Bahrain testing in 2024 you on track in a semi fast Ferrari that people cannot tell whether you are sandbagging or not Max breezing past you.

Strangely that was the closest you’d been to Max in months.

“Monaco was different now that you didn’t have your best friend … how did you occupy your time instead?” She asked.

It showed videos of you partying in Monaco with Charles your soon to be team-mate, Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo.

Then it flicked to you and Lando golfing with Max Fewtrell, while vacationing.

It flicked to a very public argument between you and your boyfriend which proceeded to your breakup.

“Well, it was an interesting build up to the season. Let’s just say that” you smirk knowing at the start of 2024 before preseason testing you caused a lot of chaos all to try get your mind off the absence of Max.

“Then we find ourselves at Bahrain 2024… a race I think that will be in the history books as one of the most tense season openings ever” she admits writing something down on the notepad she had that she really didn’t need.

“Yes, it was an interesting race. I think that was the first time I was in equal machinery to Max, at the start of the season we didn’t start off as good as RedBull but Charles and I were giving him a run for his money” you admit knowing Sergio Perez didn’t have the greatest start to the season and now that you were locked into Ferrari, Red Bull were beating themselves up over the loss of you.

“So Max took pole and you were only 0.003 seconds behind him, what a margin! You started P2 both front row” she smiles and you nod.

“Yeah I think that’s the most scared I’ve ever felt in a race car, P2 has been my best qualifying position and I couldn’t let it go to waste. But having Max next to me with everything that was going on was a massive headache” you tell her and there’s a clip of you looking over at Max sat next to you just before the formation lap was about to begin.

“Let’s talk about turn 1 Bahrain …” she asks and you nod.

“I mean, I was racing and I was racing hard. I gave Max plenty of room, I had the inside line and I got past him and led. It was a good overtake and the team didn’t exactly tell me not to go for it” you explain and she nods.

“But after your pit stop stuff got real” she adds and you nod with a roll of your eyes.

“Tell me about it” you laugh.

“AND VERSTAPPEN GOES FOR THE OVERTAKE GOING INTO TURN 5, Y/N DEFENDING BEAUTIFULLY AND HE GOES AGAIN EDGING HER INTO TURN SIX AND OMG HES OFF INTO THE GRAVEL! MAX VERSTAPPEN IS OUT IF THE BAHRAIN GP” it shows the commentary from Crofty when this was all happening showing Max getting out the car and slamming his helmet down.

“WHAT THIS Y/N HAS DAMAGE THERE WAS IN FACT CONTACT AND SHES HAD TO PULL OVER NOT MAKING IT BACK TO THE PITS FOR A NEW TYRE” is shown also you getting out of the car, your escorted back to the pit wall while Safety Car is deployed.

“Yours and Max’s argument that day while the race was still underway and Charles was leading, was intense who actually started it?” She asks.

“Oh Max did 100%. I was just talking to my race engineer and he came over all pissy and yelling in my face. Seeing him so red and angry was funny though” you admit.

“I think that’s the first time people had seen seriously Mad Max since the Ocon incident”

“I guess I just bring that side out of him” you admit with a nod.

“What the fuck was that” Max came over to you, you took a step back hoping to defuse the situation knowing their was cameras around and you didn’t really want to bring attention to either of you.

“Look Max we were both racing hard. It happens, you went into me, we both ended up out the race … it happens” you explain and the camera men all get closer.

“You went into me! Are you having a laugh!” He says until he starts ranting in Dutch and his PR manager and a Marshall take him away from you.

“Bahrain was incredibly dramatic for a race. The champion of last year was sat at the bottom of the leader board and Charles, Lando and George were looking at the top spots. How did the make you feel?” She asks and you nod.

“Obviously it’s concerning. Coming back isn’t easy after a feat like that, so we knew we’d have to come back in Saudi and make it better than it was. It’s also hard to come back from something like that mentally? Yano. So Saudi was hard especially all the media around me” you explains and it cuts to clips of all kinds of media swarming around you asking you stuff about Max and your race in Bahrain.

“In Saudi you and Max raced hard but eventually it ended up with Max in P1 and you in P2 and Lando P3… that podium was tense” she explains and a video of the podium came up, showing Max celebrating with everyone but you. You ending up leaving him and Lando and leant over the fence of the podium to spray your team down below.

“Lando and Max are close, but you and Lando are aswell so how did it feel having no celebration up there with you?” She asked.

“Lando is actually the sweetest person I’ve ever met. He cares about everybody and everything and he worries when he thinks he’s upset someone. He messaged me after that podium, apologising for leaving me out of the celebration and he didn’t even realise he had as he was so caught up in Max spraying him he thought it was both of us. I obviously replied saying I wasn’t upset and that it was okay. I had my team and that’s all I really needed at the end of the day” you nod knowing it WAS a hard podium to be up on but you made the best of a bad situation.

“The comes Australia, and this is your first time to regain the points lost in Bahrain. So what did you do?”

“Man … the first time I won was so nice … that I just had to do it twice” you quote Anthony Joshua with a little laugh. Before it shows you’re victory.

“AND FOR THE SECOND TIME IN HER FORMULA ONE CAREER THE AMERICAN TAKES HOME THE CHEQUERED FLAG TAKING VICTORY IN AUSTRALIA, TEAMMATE CHARLES LECLERC BEHIND HER IN P2 WITH LANDO NORRIS CLOSING UP THE PODIUM” Ted commentates.

“It was an incredible feeling, knowing I was now making my way back up the ranks and was in P3 in the championship, Max was behind me and I felt like I was back in the game. To DNF’s for him was almost laughable.

“The points were very amusing come China, you were leading the championship and Ferrari were at the top for the constructors championship. And Max, Lando and Charles were all on 76 points and you were on 78… how tight!?” She adds.

“Yes, it was crazy how varied this season was with wins, especially with how RedBull were insanely dominant the year before and RedBull took all wins bar Singapore. At this point I wasn’t just fighting Max in he championship there was word at Ferrari that team orders were going to come into play to help Charles win but when we were both so close in points it was easier to just let us race” you explain happily, knowing that it was a fun season to be a part of.

“But after China was a sort of turning point for Max correct?” She asks and you nod again.

“It was for both of us. After China it was a constant change between me and Max of who was going to win, Lando and Charles remained close, but not enough to win.” You explain but her look tells you you didn’t give her the answer she was after.

“I meant about Max trying to rekindle that friendship you both once had” she asks and you scoff.

“Mmmmm you’ll have to ask him about that… at the time I could only assume he wanted to be my friend to distract me from what was important … winning” you answer.

“Hello Max” the interviewer says as their special guest for the documentary comes in. He takes a seat, a stoic nod as he does.

“So, Y/N didn’t seem to be able to tell us what happened after the Chinese Grand Prix, it seems from sources that you unblocked her on everything and attempted contact?” She asks and Max nods.

“I- I did. After seeing her wins, and her face once she realised it was a full fight this year and how excited that made her I knew I was in the wrong for ever letting our bond go. I don’t think she even cared about the championship that year, just being in a team that was letting her drive a good car, with a good team and actually help her improve. I was in the wrong but at this point … she was only focused on racing” he sings and a compilation of videos of the pair of you arguing on track came up.

“It was just affecting you guys either was it?”

“No, it was hard especially for Lando, Daniel and Charles, we’re all so close and Lando and Y/n are like siblings so when it came to the both of us not talking it was difficult for them. Y/N being … well Y/N didn’t want to make it a big deal and started hanging out more with her other friends like Yuki, Logan, Zhou, George and Alex but it still meant it was … awkward to say the least” he admits.

“Yeah, that sounds rough, do you ever regret it?” She asks and he nods.

“For a long long time, I didn’t think that I would be able to reconcile our friendship like Nico and Lewis did” he admits.

“But you think that now?” She asks and he smiles.

“I know so” he smirks

It was the end of the season, you and Max were tied in points so for fans it was like Abu Dhabi 2021 all over again. Max was starting P1 and you were starting P2, you’d overtaken him down the straight having better straight line speed than his car did. You were practically flying round the track, Max chugging along behind you eventually setting the fastest lap, and you just knew the cheer from the crowd would have been phenomenal if you could hear it.

After great strategy from Ferrari you ended up winning that race, along with the Championship. Getting out the car was a feeling like no other, you bend down by the wheel of your car, tears streaming out your eyes and dripping on the still closed visor as your knees give out from a tricky and hot race as you sob.

You run over to the Ferrari team, them all pulling you into hugs along with Charles and his girlfriend who looks so excited to celebrated with you.

“OMG” you cried into Fred’s arms. What surprised you the mot was a tap on your back and a blue race suit. You were silent looking at Max.

“Congratulations” he says and tears are still in your eyes. You just nod at him politely.

“Please Y/N I’m so sorry, I - you deserve the seat and the championship. You’ve done so well this year and I’m so proud of you” he smiles and more tears flood your eyes. All you’d wanted to hear was those words.

“Do you ever think you could forgive me, because I love you Y/N and I cannot loose you” he says tears brimming his own eyes.

“I forgave you a long time ago Max, this was all really stupid” you smile at him. Before your team I pulling you away to get you to the podium.

“After the podium, come meet me at the bay, 3rd yacht along… okay I have to tell you something” he shouts after you and you nod grinning.

“What happened on that boat Max?” The interviewer asks.

“That’s for me to know and no-one to ever find out …” he smirks before laughing and giving you as kiss on the cheek as you come back into the room.

“Y/N?”

“Mmmmm I’m with Max, but let’s just say … we rekindled” you laugh and the cameras cut out the documentary ended.

“So you guys are obviously together … what changed?” She asks off camera curiosity getting the best of her.

“We worked out that we had feeling for each other for a very very long time before the fight!” You answer and well, that was that.

Taglist:

@littlebitchsposts @hockey-racing-fubol @laura-naruto-fan1998 @22yuki @simxican @sinofwriting @lewisroscoelove @cmleitora @daemyratwst @lauralarsen @the-untamed-soul @thewulf @itsjustkhaos @purplephantomwolf @chasing-liberosis @summissss @gulphulp @starfusionsworld @jspitwall @sierruhhhh @georgeparisole @youcannotcancelquidditch @tallbrownhairsarcastic @ourteenagetragedy @peachiicherries @formulas-bitch @cherry-piee @spilled-coffee-cup @mehrmonga @eiraethh @curseofhecate @alliwantisadonut @dark-night-sky-99 @i-wish-this-was-me @tallrock35 @butterfly-lover @barnestatic @landossainz @darleneslane @barcelonaloverf1life @r0nnsblog @ilove-tswizzle @laneyspaulding19 @malynn @viennakarma @landosgirlxoxo @marie0v @yourbane @teamnovalak @nikfigueiredo @fionaschicken @0picels0 @tinydeskwriter @ironmaiden1313 @splaterparty0-0 @formula1mount

[flurrys-creativity]

Dreamers

Pairing: Kang Yeosang (Ateez) x GN!Reader ft. WooSan; Genre: Fluff, friends to lovers, romance, humour; Rating: sfw, PG-13; Warnings: san saying he is sick, yeosang being a troublesome driver, hints of climate change, camping under the stars, mentions of deers barking; Wordcount: 3.318; Event: 1 year anniversary of @pirateeznet; Quiz result: Dreamers

Summary: A road trip with your friends turned out to be a road trip with only Yeosang and you. And going on a trip with Yeosang held all kinds of surprises.

“What do you mean you got sick?” You whined into the receiver of your mobile phone, flopping down on your bed with a pout adorning your lips. “We can’t go when you’re sick.”

You heard San coughing heavily on the other end of the line before he spoke: “We planned the trip for months and you guys can’t reschedule your vacation days. Just go and enjoy the road trip for me as well.”

You sighed deeply and turned on your back, staring up at the ceiling. How were you supposed to survive a road trip with Yeosang and Wooyoung when San wasn’t there to catch their energy before you’d burn out. “Fine”, you mumbled and got up, throwing the last things that you needed in your luggage. “But you'd better get healthy soon! Maybe you could meet us at the last stop then?”

“I’m trying my best.” San coughed again, excusing himself and hanging up the call. 

You huffed in annoyance, slightly dreading the road trip with the guys now. For a moment longer you simply stared at your stuff before you shook your head. You couldn’t just dwell on the negative. After all, the road trip was something all of you planned for quite some time and you truly wanted to enjoy it.

You actually got pulled out of your worrying when you heard a loud engine roar just outside your home. A scoff escaped your lips, grinning somewhat in amusement as you walked over to the window.

An old pick up truck halted in front of your home, making an obnoxious sound until it finally stood still. “I’m surprised that thing still works”, you mumbled and waved out of the window.

You grabbed your backpack and another bag, doing a short check around in case you might have missed anything, before you headed out of your front door.

As you opened the door to the backseats and threw your stuff inside you noticed how only one person sat inside the car. You halted your movements and almost mechanically turned your head to the front. “Where is Woo?”

Yeosang turned around to look at you, shrugging with his shoulders. “He had a short-notice business meeting of importance or something like that.”

You raised an eyebrow, not believing a single word you just heard. Wooyoung wasn’t a guy to let go of his vacation days. You would have believed it if it were San, knowing he always jumped at any kind of responsibility from his workplace. But Wooyoung? Never.

Nonetheless you closed the door and got to the front, sitting down in the passenger seat. “Don’t you find it somewhat suspicious that San and now Wooyoung too bailed on us?”

Yeosang looked at you in surprise, eyebrows raised and mouth slightly apart. “San isn’t coming either?”

You nodded and slouched back into the seat. “Got sick.”

“Wooyoung said we should still go on the trip”, Yeosang mumbled and looked ahead along the empty street, “but it’s just us now.”

You hummed. “San said the same thing.” You turned your head to look at him, silently appreciating his side profile. “Do you still want to go? Maybe Wooyoung and San can join us for the last stop. I mean until then San could get healthy again and Wooyoung should be done with his business meeting.”

“So just the both of us, huh?” Yeosang nervously thrummed his fingers on the steering wheel. He glanced at you out of the corner of his eyes. 

“I guess so.”

Yeosang turned on the engine again, driving down the road. He pressed a small button, letting the radio play music in the background.

You looked out of the window, letting the landscape pass by in a flurry for hours now. It wasn’t awkward per sé with only Yeosang, you were friends for years after all but you never knew what he was thinking. You laughed softly and closed your eyes, sometimes you weren’t even sure he was thinking at all.

“What’s so funny?” Yeosang looked over at you, raising one eyebrow in question. He quickly looked back at the road, before he swerved from the lane.

You shook your head. “Nothing really”, you told him as you opened your eyes again. You noticed his suspicion and smiled at him. “Isn’t it just funny how so many pretty places are at the side of the road but people only drive by every day.”

It was silent between you two again, only the music filling the inside of the car. Yeosang’s eyes wandered to the sides of the road every now and then.

You even thought this was the end of your conversation again, when Yeosang suddenly hit the brakes of the car. You groaned in pain as your body got propelled forward but held back by the seat belt. “Wha-”. Your question got stuck in your throat when Yeosang turned the steering wheel and got off of the land road and drove down some sort of dirt path through the trees.

You grabbed onto the door handle while your whole body shook from side to side with the uneven ground beneath the tires of the car. Your eyes darted between the path ahead and Yeosang next to you. What the hell was going on?

Even after Yeosang stopped the car at a clearing, you simply continued to stare at him with wide eyes, silently questioning him what he was thinking - if at all.

Yeosang pointed at the navigation system and you begrudgingly moved your eyes away from his face and studied the part of the map shown. To your surprise that dirt path was shown as a road, you could have sworn it wouldn’t have been on that map in the first place. “So?” You questioned, still not getting what Yeosang had intended.

“You mentioned places humans would only drive by and I thought this lake here” - he pointed at the map again, notifying you of the blue spot - “might be such a place and worth checking out.”

You couldn’t decide whether you thought of his actions as adorable and cute or crazy and reckless. It tugged on your heart strings nonetheless. Usually your friends listened to your thoughts and said something as a sort of support but you’ve never witnessed someone acting on the things you said.

“Alright”, you grinned and clapped in your hands before unbuckling your seatbelt. “Let’s check out that lake!”

Yeosang could feel the stone of worry lifting from his chest once you got out of the car, somehow accepting his seemingly random decision. He knew most people got spooked or weirded out by his behaviour and mannerism but you always surprised him with your reaction. He was ready to turn on the engine yet again and turn around to get back on the road while hearing your scolding about being stupid and reckless and completely disregarding the plans all of you had made prior. 

Both of you walked through the tall grass, hearing the cicadas and birds in the trees around the clearing chirp. The clearing wasn’t far from the land road but you couldn’t hear any of the traffic.

“It feels like we’re the last two humans on earth”, Yeosang mumbled, making you giggle and intertwine your arms with his. Yeosang momentarily stiffened but seeing your wide smile, relaxed him again.

“I wouldn’t mind being the last human with you, but I fear you might get super annoyed with me after only a day.” 

Yeosang immediately protested, telling you he’d never get annoyed with you and thinking it would be the other way around. 

The both of you continued to argue as you reached the edge of the clearing and walked through the trees, dry leaves now crunching underneath your feet.

Your argument stopped the second you stepped out between the trees and looked over the open space. Instead of a large lake with clear blue water you only saw green plants spreading over the place. 

Yeosang frowned in confusion, pulling his phone out of his pocket and checking the map again. “The lake should be here.”

You let go of Yeosang’s arm and walked closer to the plants, noticing they were water plants that grew near bodies of water. “I think there used to be a lake here. But the past years have gotten warmer and warmer with rain decreasing as well. There’s still water underground, otherwise these plants wouldn’t be growing here.”

You got up and turned around, ready to walk back to the car. “Well, that was a let down”, you said light hearted, meaning it as a teasing joke but you stopped in your tracks when you saw Yeosang still frowned and stared ahead. You walked over to him and placed your hand on his upper arm. “Hey, it’s alright. You couldn’t have known this.”

“Yeah”, he sighed, his shoulders dropping in disappointment. Yeosang wanted to apologise, to say something else - anything - but he couldn’t bring himself to say another word. Instead he opted to turn around as well, letting you lead the way back to the car.

Once you two reached the car Yeosang was about to get into the driver’s seat when you slammed the door shut and stopped him. He turned to look at you with a raised eyebrow.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere”, you told him, feeling giddy from the idea that just popped into your mind. “There won’t be any light pollution.”

Yeosang tilted his head, not getting what you wanted to tell him with that information.

You chuckled softly at his cluelessness, shaking your head before you pulled him to the back of the truck. “The weather forecast didn’t look so bad and I just thought we could turn the car around so the back faces the clearing and then we could just stay here overnight and look at the stars.”

Yeosang turned his head to look up into the sky, mulling over your idea for a moment. While he had packed a sleeping bag and several blankets just in case, he didn’t have a mattress and remembering your luggage he was sure you hadn’t one either. “Won’t it be uncomfortable on the bare metal?” As much as the idea intrigued him, he didn’t want you to sleep like that.

“I got an inflatable mattress. We just need to pump it up. With our lungs.” You opened the back doors and pulled your stuff out, carrying it to the cargo area of the pick up. 

Yeosang carried his stuff to the back as well, following your lead. He could feel you wouldn’t back down from that idea anymore and he wasn’t too opposed to it either. “Will we both fit on the mattress?”

“If you’re willing to cuddle.”

Yeosang nearly choked on the air he just inhaled, feeling the heat rising to his cheeks as he turned to look at you with wide eyes. 

You stopped in your movements, seeing his reaction. While a part of you hoped it meant he might like you just as much as you liked him, another part feared he hated the thought of it. “I mean there will be enough space even without cuddling but we can also just drive to the next motel and each get a room if you’re more comfortable with that.”

“No!” 

You stilled, looking with equally wide eyes at Yeosang, who never yelled an answer this fast and this loud in his whole life so far. He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck, avoiding eye contact. “I mean, when else would we get the chance to see the night sky like this. I don’t mind sharing the mattress with you, really.”

Ever so slowly you got out of your stupor and nodded, returning to unpacking the things you needed for the night.

After the initial awkward air between the both of you, you slowly returned to the easy flow of conversation. You two complained about your work and the missing free time, talked about the wishes you two wanted to fulfil in the near future and long-term dreams you had. You two also joked around a lot, making fun of each other for looking totally wasted after blowing up the inflatable mattress for longer than ten minutes.

“Wooyoung would be really helpful here”, he whined - out of breath and red in his face. “That guy can scream so loud I’m sure he could blow this up within a minute.”

You laughed loudly, still clutching your side and gasping for air from your turn before. “Or San. He has so much energy he would do it all himself!”

Both of you snickered again, struggling to return to the tasks at hand.

It had already become dark when you finally finished making the improvised bed. You sat on the edge of the cargo area, your legs swinging slightly back and forth when Yeosang appeared in your view with several snacks in his hands. You realised you hadn’t thought of the food for the night but you hoped it would be alright for one night only.

Yeosang leaned against the car and handed some of the snacks over to you, placing the rest on the platform behind him. His eyes wandered around the clearing, barely being able to see the trees on the other side now. He tilted his head back to look into the sky, fascinated he saw already a few stars even though somewhere to the west the sun was still in the process of setting.

“I wonder how cold it will be out in the open”, you said out loud, staring into the sky as well. “Or if wildlife will approach us. I swear, if I hear a deer barking close to us, I will freak out.” You laughed softly and shook your head, turning to look at Yeosang, who was already looking at you.

He cleared his throat, his gaze dropping down to his hands. “If it gets too cold”, he hesitated and licked over his lips, “we could still cuddle to keep each other warm.”

You scooted closer to him and rested your head on his shoulder, grinning at him. “Let’s do that.” You even wrapped your arms around one of his arms again, holding him in place and giggling softly. “Do you have a solution for the deer part too?”

His eyes darted from side to side as he tried to think of something. “I’ll bark back?”

You snorted involuntarily and quickly hid your face in his shoulder. Once you calmed down again you glanced up into his face, looking at him through your eyelashes. “Or you could hold me and protect me”, you whispered so softly you weren’t even sure Yeosang would be able to hear it.

But when he turned a little and wrapped his free arm around your form to pull you closer against his body, you knew he had heard you. “I’ll just do both”, he said with a deep chuckle. Yeosang jokingly barked a few times, ignoring the embarrassment crawling up his skin and heating up his face and ears.

You giggled and wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him close and hiding your face in the crook of his neck. “I guess two against one would be a little more scary”, you mumbled, “so maybe I should join your barks then?”

Yeosang tightened his hold on you when he heard your hesitant and small bark, feeling as if he would melt into a puddle from the cuteness you radiated. “Maybe we should howl though, or we’d be risking that deer thinking we’re one of it and it comes even closer.”

“So impersonating a wolf should be the way to go?”

You would have never dreamt of a situation where both you and Yeosang were in the middle of the wild, howling like two idiots while being in each other's arms. Yet here you were. Only the light of a glowstick you found in the truck illuminating the both of you.

“Your howls are way too weak”, Yeosang laughed and raised his hand to your face. He pushed your lips together with his forefinger and thumb, telling you to move your lips as if you wanted to say ‘u’. Yeosang even followed his own explanation, pursing his lips in the process.

You stared at his lips, trying to mimic the form. Both of you unconsciously drew closer and closer to each other, barely leaving any space between your faces. As if on cue you two looked up, realising how close you were but neither of you pulled away.

Yeosang moved his hand from your face to your jaw, his long fingers wrapping around the back of your neck while his thumb caressed your cheek. His gaze dropped back to your puckered lips as he licked over his own. 

His breath fanned over your skin and you could feel the goosebumps rippling all over your body from the rising tension between you.

Yeosang gave you enough time to pull back or push him away but when you didn’t do either of it, he ever so slowly moved forward, closing the distance between your lips.

You involuntarily closed your eyes. The anticipation to feel his lips was even higher than before. At first you barely felt the ghost of his touch, the pressure so soft you couldn’t even tell whether it was real or your imagination. You chased that feeling, pressing your lips against his.

Yeosang hummed in satisfaction, pulling you even closer against him as he deepened the kiss. His lips moved with yours, guiding you like a dancer would guide his partner.

You gasped for air when Yeosang pulled back a little, leaning his forehead against yours. You couldn’t think straight, your thoughts tumbling around as if you just stepped out of a rollercoaster with wobbly legs. “Didn’t know distracting me was also an option you had up your sleeves.” You giggled and pecked his lips once more before you scurried further onto the cargo area and crawled onto the mattress.

Yeosang chuckled and pulled himself onto the platform, following you to the mattress. He dropped down next to you, immediately grabbing you and pulling you into his form before draping the blankets over your bodies. 

You snuggled into his side, smiling softly and pushing your face into his shoulder when he kissed the top of your head.

He hid the glow stick under some fabric, engulfing both of you in total darkness. Though both your visions adjusted soon enough, seeing the clear night sky above your heads. Neither of you had seen so many stars before - at least not in real life.

“It was a good idea to stay here.” Your voice was barely above a whisper, afraid if you spoke any louder the magic of this moment would vanish.

“Maybe we should throw all the plans overboard and just follow what we could dream of.” Yeosang agreed, his voice equally low.

You turned on your side and snuggled into Yeosang, wrapping one arm over his middle. “Sounds good”, you chuckled softly, “we should also tell San and Wooyoung we won’t be meeting up with them at the final destination.”

Yeosang raised one of his hands and brushed his knuckles over your cheek. “How about we don’t meet up with them at all and just have the time for us? Since I have an inkling they purposely told us they couldn’t make it.”

You snickered along with him, agreeing with the suspicion. “Works for me!” You leaned into his hand, pecking his wrist too.

You could feel Yeosang lean closer again, his lips brushing over your skin ever so softly. He kissed you again and you simply melted into his embrace. 

While the start of this road trip seemed cursed and destined to fail, it now shone as bright as the stars above you, leading you into an evenly bright future ahead.

© all rights reserved

Taglist: @xavi-in-kpopland​ @songsoomin

[frostfall-matches]

[ hello autumn - paired ♡ ]

@shadow-wolf-03 : spending fall with…

✧ Wyll Ravengard

-> [ Though he’s been out on his own for a while now, his upbringing definitely plays into his tastes. ] Besides, he enjoys a good drink here and there, and he may as well drink something halfway decent if he can find it! Given your fondness for warm cider, Wyll is going out of his way to procure what he can that’s labeled cider or cider-adjacent. He definitely has his preferences and recommendations (spiced mead, or other drinks that tend to be popular in the cooler climates of Faerûn), and is happy to try out whatever you two happen to come across.

-> [ Fall is nice enough… but like you, it’s not Wyll’s favorite season. ] There are things you each enjoy about it, but both of you tend to look forward to the cold snap passing so spring can roll around once again. And yet, there’s just something about the way you two are able to spend time with each other by the crackling fire as you rest at camp for the evening, huddling up on nights where the chill really seeps into your bones. You two aren’t particularly chatty during these times; perhaps you’re writing, though Wyll finds it amusing when you’re hunched over, squinting in the low light, trying to scribble across parchment.

-> [ Autumn makes Wyll sappy and poetic. ] It is a season of change, and yet his adoration for you remains steadfast. You are the sweetest apple in the orchard, and you warm his heart more than a fire warms his body. He’s so cheesy that you can’t stand it… Even if you do melt a little on the inside. You might tell Wyll to shut his mouth, but he doesn’t take it to heart. But, he’s not cruel - he will let up a little on waxing poetic to you for the time being.

-> [ Exploring the lands while summer transitions to winter is inevitable when you’re by his side. ] Doesn’t matter if you’re still in the middle of getting the worms extracted from your heads, or if you’ve put an end to the absolute and simply traveling together while The Blade continues to protect the Sword Coast - you’ll be seeing plenty of the outdoors. The forests are absolutely gorgeous when the leaves start changing color, and it’s honestly kind of fun trekking along if the fallen leaves are dry and crunchy.

-> [ Not much of a cook, but he likes the idea of making sweet treats with you. ] When you two are actually in the city, it’s easy to pick something up from a bakery - it’s easy, and perhaps better than what either of you can whip up at home (much less on the road). Still, it’s fun getting together to make something in order to satisfy your craving for sweets. Even if the end result isn’t particularly appetizing, at least you two have fond memories.

✧ Gojo Satoru

-> [ Who has the bigger sweet tooth? ] Fall and winter are the perfect times of the year to find this out, given the tendency for most people to seek out sweet treats in the cooler months of the year. Most of the time, you two are heading out and hitting up all the bakeries and cafés that have themed treats (he buys, of course, since he’s loaded). The two of you may end up with stomach aches because of your overindulgence, but it’s so worth it in the end. Besides, you know you’ll just be out to get your fill again the next weekend.

-> [ Gojo is more of a sugary-sweet coffee guy rather than a cider guy. ] But he’ll still steal a sip of whatever you happen to be drinking, because he’s an absolute pest. Sorry. He’ll share some of his overly-sweet coffee (that you can barely call coffee at this point, but hey, you’re willing to give whatever he has a shot). Cider probably grows on him a little, mostly because you enjoy it. Then again, he really doesn’t like alcohol, so any proper cider is not something he’s going to indulge in - he’ll just have the glorified apple juice that gets called cider. That’s good enough for him!

-> [ Gojo sees autumn as the last hurrah before winter. ] He doesn’t have a huge preference between seasons, finding pros and cons to each of them, but winter tends to feel a bit more tedious and troublesome as a whole. But this means that he’s gonna want to do as many outdoor things with you while he still can. Scenic walks start out normally enough but always end up with him tossing you into a big pile of leaves. Maybe he’ll let you shove him down into a pile in retaliation, but that depends on how much he wants to push your buttons.

-> [ Regardless of your opinion on Halloween and costumes, Gojo is going to make you dress up with him. ] That said, this will probably just be a fun at-home thing, like a private little costume party with snacks and movies (unless his students want to do something as a group). Couple costumes are always funny, but he doesn’t care if you two dress up as completely different things either. There’s a very good chance that he decides to dress up in something absolutely ridiculous - which you find hilarious, but you almost don’t want to be seen in public with him at the same time.

-> [ If you have a few scary, suspenseful games that you enjoy playing, invite him for a spooky play session! ] Gojo is insanely busy, so he wants to have fun and relax when he can. While he does sneak in a few hours of sleep at night and a few naps during the day, if he can spend time with you then that’s even better. As the weather gets cooler, he’s more eager to cozy up with you. Doesn’t really matter what the two of you are doing, but if you’re playing something interesting, his attention will be on the game rather than his phone or napping. And a scary game would be the perfect fit leading into Halloween!

[galaxythreads]

Hello! I’ve liked your fics for a long time, and was wondering if you would write something with fem- presenting Loki? There are some gender-fluid Loki fics on ao3, but I Need More To Live. I would write one, but I wouldn’t ever finish it.

I really want Loki to join the avengers in 2012 so that the other stuff doesn’t happen. sometimes I want Loki and Natasha to make fun of the rest of the avengers.

Idk I just really like the idea that Loki and Natasha would be friends. Or Loki and Wanda. (Except for all of the aforementioned characters got done so dirty by MCU. Isn’t that like a trope? Kill off the girl so the guy has a motivation to defeat the bad guy? Like from Green Lantern or something?

And Loki and Wanda got rewritten.). Whatever. I’m PERFECTLY OKAY! *eye twitches*

That kind of turned into a rant. Sorry.

Here are more of my headcanons, because I’d rather dm someone on tumblr instead of actually making a post on my blog. I’m weird.

-Loki was friends with Tchaikovsky and Mozart and Shakespeare. Maybe even Paganini, or like Ada Lovelace. Or Albert Einstein. Basically a lot of historical figures and also musicians from the 1980s.

-Loki is an honorary gay, because he’s an alien and aliens don’t have human concepts of gender and sexuality. But also you saw that 🏳️‍🌈hand flip🏳️‍🌈 he did in the 1602 episode. I mean, he was just being so gay in that 1602 episode. It was beautiful.

-Loki is a sad little boi. 🥺🥺

-Loki is a good little boi who got did dirty by MCU and Odin. (🥺🥺)

-Loki isn’t always a boy.🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️(unfortunately no gender-fluid flag emojis so 💕🤍💜🖤💙)

-Loki knows all the languages.

-Loki would watch anime and Kdramas if HE WASN’T DEAD.

-Loki is a theater kid.

-Loki is cat

-Loki knows how to play ALL the instruments. He likes cello the best though. Also he has perfect pitch.

-Loki needs therapy. Like two blue whales worth of therapy.

-If Tony and Loki ever had a long conversation, they would figure out how to solve world hunger and climate change and overpopulation AND THEIR MOTHERS. (It doesn’t make sense but just roll with it)

-Loki is a Major Fucking Nerd About Everything.

-Loki likes calculus as a hobby.

-Loki is, (un?)fortunately, a British stereotype.

-Loki ships appledash and narusasu.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk. Bye, and thanks for letting me dump headcanons on you.

Hi! Thank you so much for sharing all of these with me, it's so fun to see other people's headcanons about Loki and their excitement about his character. I love discussing this blorbo and cracking him open like an onion to peal away layers of trauma and reveal the nerd beneath.

Lol, the amount of times I've thought about doing an MCU rewrite post a1 to fix everything is insane. If I did do this, I'd actually probably start at civil war, because personally, I feel like everything was (generally) actually okay and enjoyable until infinity war. Civil war is just a good place to kick around the fix-its because everything is such a mess.

As far as your request goes, it might surprise you, but you're actually NOT the first person to approach me about a genderfluid, fem-presenting Loki. More like the....4th? or maybe 5th? Idk. I've definitely been approached by multiple people over the years about this. Firstly, thank you for trusting me with your idea and your headcanons, I'm humbled and honored that you would approach me about this because you believed I would be able to write the story in a way that you would find meaningful and enjoyable <3

Second - I really just don't know. My first inclination is to say no, not because I'm not interested or don't care, but mostly because I'm so busy right now I really don't know when I'll be able to get to the story. Plus, I'm really not sure how to go about this. I'd need to figure out what direction I wanted to take the story, because Loki being genderfluid wouldn't change that much except their outward appearance. Loki + genderfluid + Natasha friendship is an amazing concept, but it's not a...plot, if that makes sense? "Fixing" a1 could be 50,000,000 separate things, and if it goes out as a fix-it for mcu, that would be an enormous project. Easily 200k-400k+, which would take me like...uh 1-3 years to write.

Loki being genderfluid IS something I've thought about just adding to my fics in general now (i'm really not sure, because I love cis male Loki, and I know it's canon that he's genderfluid, but I kind of disregard most things from the series anyway?) but Idk?

+ and this is just a personal one for me, but I don't know how to include Loki being genderfluid as a major part of the plot/story right now. Like, for example, I've been in the process of dumping all of my religious lgbtq+ trauma on peter parker in a (massive) one-shot that revolves around Peter learning to accept himself as being gay, but the point of the story is that Peter doesn't accept himself at first and the conclusion is when he does. (I don't know if I'm ever going to share or finish that fic by the way, so don't look for it) I don't know how to take the concept of this story, turn it into a fix-it for Avengers 1 with Natasha, and have a meaningful story about being genderfluid at the same time?

Like to me there's two different ways to go about lgbtq+ stories: a story about being gay that is intended to talk about lgbtq+ experiences and focus heavily on that, vs a story where the character is lgbtq+ and it's just part of their character and not something we spend a lot of time talking about because we don't need to. The story isn't about them being lgbtq+ specifically, it's about the character. Recently, a lot more media has started doing the latter, which is really, really nice because I don't feel like being lgbtq+ has to be justified every 20 lines.

The story I'm writing about Peter Parker is the former. It's about being gay. The entire story revolves around it. What I can tell from what you're saying is that you want something where Loki just IS genderfluid, but it's not something we spend a whole lot of time discussing because the story isn't ABOUT being genderfluid, it's about fixing mcu with genderfluid Loki as the main character, if I'm understanding this correctly? Which is fine and I absolutely support it because there is nothing wrong with writing genderfluid Loki and I wholeheartedly support those authors.

So i guess to shorten this - because this isn't just like a ~5-15k one-shot (which are about the only length of requests I can successfully complete right now), as respectfully as I can, I'm going to have to lovingly turn you down. I'm not saying no, I'll never write about genderfluid Loki, because I'm like 90% sure I will eventually, but I just don't know about a fix-it for MCU from the first Avengers. One suggestion I have is maybe, if you really really need to see this come to fruition, is to just write a bunch of one-shots that are interconnected based on each of your headcanons and then publish it as an interconnected series, not so much a full length novel like I would write. I can easily see this being a really enjoyable series. Best of luck

~galaxy <3

[rotzaprachim]

on another note on something i am SURE media analysis has been done On but which has really been digging into my brain is the whole zombie apocalypse as distinctly bush-era and onward conservative fantasy. it’s about the situation where 99% of the world dies but the Guy with a Gun lives and there being almost a sick enjoyment, sometimes, but if not that then the world weary sigh about how This is what it Takes to keep living. it’s about the literal creation of a world in which there’s some reason one HAS to have guns to survive, HAS to put up walls around every inch of their *space* to keep those Guys out. a lot has been written about lovecraft’s violent racism and imperialism in terms of how he saw the Hordes of literlaly everyone not a white anglo-saxon, but to me there’s something in the whole zombie plague of internal invasion and home invasion that really plays into the most violent aspects of anti-immigration sentiments - and of course, those guys have to be shot. there’s a lot to say too i think about the zombie genre therefor as evolution from the frontier-thesis western genre. if there is no more obvious enemy at our borders one comes from the inside.

and it’s all really interesting, and has aged in fascinating ways in terms of how i think us-based conservatism itself has shown a collection of ideologies incredibly brittle in the fact of pandemic and upheavel. (this isn’t so much about the broader structures of corporate-capitalism, obviously, which i think can be said to be both brittle and disturbingly strong in how it can feast off disaster and instability in terms of financial gain and control of power, which is... not something i can think of zombie narratives discussing much?) i’m taking more about individual people and communities. i don’t think the zombie genre is paradoxical to conservatism’s brittle nature, but rather, part of it entirely. it’s the odd fantasy- what if there was a problem we could SHOOT? we live in a world in which conservatism has refused to prepare adequately for financial crisis (many insurance measures are of course Bad for Business) and ultimately turned a completely blind eye to the very real apocalyptic nature of climate change - so much as it might be bad for Business, the  climate change  hoax narrative has very much been swallowed by many in the working class without systemic benefit from that business and much to loose from climatic disaster. and in recent history us conservatism turned a completely blind eye to coronavirus. what do we do with a real pandemic when there’s no one to shoot? looking back retrospectively at the last fifteen years of zombie media comes with the weird realisation that with a supposed virus on, no one is wearing a mask- and if anyone is quarantining or practicing social distancing, it’s never the good guys. 

which leads to the odd feeling that the zombie apocalypse genre provides an odd catharsis, even fantasy. we live in a world facing apocalyptic times and with many global governments (not to mention corporate-capitalist structures) doing exceptionally poorly in the midst of it. the zombie apocalypse genre takes that existential fear and recognises it through the prism of conservative and settler colonial ideologies, but also through comic book and horror movie and video game logic. the end of the world may come, you can shoot the end of the world! it’s the worst case scenario written down in a Comprehensible way. i find the fantasy elements therefor entwined fascinating. the zombie virus on whole is both wildly more contagious, kill-everyone, world-endingly terrible than any virus in human history (or rather, it appeals to a sense of Absolute Extremism that... 80% of the world dies immediately or whatever rather than looking to the very real fact that a few percent of infected dying is STILL AN AWFUL LOT OF PEOPLE and the mechanics of social breakdown in the fact of pandemic throughout history are complex and horrific within those *lower* death rates) but also less contagious than most viruses because our Protagonists have to be scratched or bitten in order to be Infected - those up close knock-em-down hatchet fights that leave already scratched-up protags covered in zombie organs or blood don’t pose a real threat of infection! the end of the world virus has to be.. a lot less infectious than many real world viruses. a watered down virus.

 likewise a lot of the issues of social organisation and supplies. zombie apocalypse narratives rarely venture into legitimate exploration of post apocalyptic agriculture, pharmaceuticals, energy or medicine- all those pesky aspects of human existence that highlight how interdependent and fragile our needs may be, and how complex communal structure would have to be to build anything anew- so people live off Raided items years out into the apocalypse. they drive massive cars and tankers years past the apocalypse even though most gasoline has a six month to three year shelf life, depending. they rarely need insulin or b12 injections or thyroid medication, and if a medical problem comes up can usually just take the raided drugs for it, regardless of any need for medical equipment or facilities. they can also just eat canned goods decades past their point of edibility. the fact that for a Zombie apocalypse things to WORK a lot of the day to day struggles with survival have to be glossed over fascinates me. i think it even further reflects aspects of the white male conservative working and middle american worldview, which sees itself as particularly up-by-the-bootstraps fending for ourselves TOUGH when living in a social and system that softens their lives through the exploitation of the labour of people of color and women and global us-based exploiation. who cares about who farms the food or does the cooking in an apocalypse? but to elude those questions - and also zig zag around the whole nature of the post-apocalyptic feudal societies humanity is narratively edging into being based around agriculture- requires living in a world where canned goods last ten years past when they probably would be edible. but at least you might not have to talk to your neighbors

[chattercap]

New Project Announcement: The Deepwater Witch

drumroll It’s new project time!

In a world ravaged by pollution and climate change, a “prince” has an encounter with a “mermaid.”

This will be a slightly dark retelling of the Little Mermaid set in a post-apocalyptic future, where you play from the perspective of the “prince.” In reality, the POV character, Ramil, isn’t a prince at all; he’s a down-on-his-luck scavenger, struggling to survive while facing crippling debt to the Somnatan Syndicate, the local criminal gang. After an incident in which he nearly drowns, he has a fated meeting with a mysterious girl on a beach. As the girl’s identity unravels, will Ramil’s story end with the happily ever after…or tragedy?

I plan to release the Deepwater Witch for the Once Upon a Time VN Jam, so expect to see it released around the end of the year! Like Karamu, it will be a dark romance with a couple of twists, featuring one LI with a defined MC (though you’ll play from the POV of the guy this time). However, the scope is quite a bit larger (currently estimated to be about 3 hours of playtime). Quite a bit of progress has been made on this project already, and I’m excited to share the details!

(I’ll be posting a lot of WIPs on my Patreon, if you’re interested!)

[otenvs3000f23]

Week 1

BLOG PROMPT: Describe your current relationship with nature. How has this developed/evolved? Who offered you “a sense of place,” as described in our textbook?

Hello, my fellow nature interpreters!

I look forward to getting to know you all through sharing our thoughts on Tumblr – I honestly forgot this platform even existed! Nonetheless, I wish you all luck in your studies and am excited for this semester with you!

Do you guys ever think about the things that have shaped who you are and your interests? What influences and experiences made me who I am today? If you’re anything like me and coming up to your ‘quarterly-life crisis’, you might spend countless hours pondering (and stressing) over who you are and what you’re meant to do; what is going to bring me happiness and a sense of meaning? At least for me, I think this is where the natural world comes into play in my life.

Let us begin…

For as long as I can remember, I could always be found reading some book or encyclopedia on wildlife. I’ve always been fascinated by animal behaviour, animal physiology, wildlife conservation, and pretty much anything animal-related. Was anyone else obsessed with BBC’s Earth nature documentaries? I would argue that David Attenborough must be one of the best nature interpreters of our time. He encapsulated millions by sharing breathtaking landscapes and all the life that depends upon it. His impassioned rhetoric brings meaning to conservation efforts and displays the beauty of our home. His documentaries profoundly enriched my admiration and awareness of the fragility and adaptiveness of nature. As I grew older and as my knowledge of animals expanded into the natural world and the environment, I began to notice the interconnectedness of life; I learned of issues our planet was facing, such as how climate change was affecting wildlife and biodiversity, the inequalities and ethical concerns found within so many industries, and most importantly, how utterly crucial it is to protect our beautiful little planet.

After the release of several articles all over social media explaining that we are in the ‘decisive decade’ and on the brink of the sixth mass extinction, there seemed to be nothing but bad news everywhere. Essentially every article and social media post alluded to the idea that humanity is doomed and that we’ve completely screwed up our planet. I honestly struggled with a lot of anxiety around this, and I took this issue personally (and still do).

On a side note, I like the idea that amongst chaos and ruin, nature and life on Earth will continue to rebuild itself – maybe we can look at times of hopelessness and chaos in our own lives this way, we are forever transforming and learning, perpetually being rebuilt despite it all. I think if we all look at nature as our friend instead of trying to be separate from it and viewing it as a commodity to be exploited we can instead appreciate our planet, and then perhaps we can save it too.

While I always felt that anything I did would be insignificant in the grand scheme of things, I still do my best to live more sustainably and try to encourage others to do the same. After having such a defeatist mindset about the state of our planet for quite some time, I would say I grew quite proficient in appreciating the natural world around me and am in constant awe of its resiliency. If you pay attention to the beauty of it all, you too can feel a little more at peace. Take a minute to look up and be captivated by the stars at night, isn’t it neat that the longer you look, the more stars that seem to appear? Study the intricate chevron markings on the legs of a grasshopper. Stick your arms out and feel the heat from the sun on your skin and the wind blowing across your face. We come from nature, it is ingrained in who we are; so take a moment to be present and admire what our wonderful world offers – I hope it brings you as much peace as it does me.

[koifishhies]

(via @aq2003)

I do generally agree with op’s point about queercoding villains in media; it hasn’t stood the test of time because with growing acceptance we’ve just come to see those characters as cunty or whatever. it kind of devalues what actually made that character a villain. however I have to lean more toward aq’s point here; I don’t think “taking the gay out of” richard would really work in this instance… because he’s not a villain?

I mean, he was a shitty king and an asshole, but the whole play kind of revolves around the fact that they humanized him by the end.

I’ve said it enough times and so has aq2003 here, but “the point” is that richard goes from unsympathetic to extremely sympathetic. not because he does some righteous action to warrant this change of heart, but due to the way shakespeare frames the narrative. he purposefully gives you an obnoxious bitch you should hate, but then doesn’t give you the satisfaction of seeing his downfall. instead, by the end, you’re left feeling sad for him.

I think it’s interesting to consider how that puts the queercoding in a slightly different perspective. shakespeare baits in the stereotypers with the stereotype, and once he’s got them where he wants them, hits them in the face with these raw displays of humanity. he forces them to confront the fact that, gasp, they are sympathizing with the queer character.

in a social climate (england ~400 years ago) where queerness was seen as nothing but sinful, richard ii subtly made the audience sympathize with a queercoded character!

the whole switch up also makes you stop and confront how you actually feel about the guy. all those reasons you thought you hated him, whether it be his arrogance, his pettiness, his fail twink swag; they don’t actually matter. after all, he didn’t get more sympathetic because he stopped being a gay little freak. he got more sympathetic as he lost power. the real problem was power.

while I agree that this doesn’t work as well for modern audiences because we probably like him a little too much right from the get go, I don’t think the modernized equivalent would be to make him a nepo baby, or a tory, or whatever. I don’t know about you, but if I saw a play that had the objective of making me feel bad for a tory, I would gift the playwright a box of my own shit in the mail. the play needs you to hate him at first, yes, but also to have the ability to sympathize with him by the end. and I feel like in this social climate, no one’s getting sympathetic for a republican.

am I making sense??? do you get what I mean?????

also there is something to be said about the fact that half the reason they deposed him in the first place was because he was too “queer”!! that’s a whole other angle of analysis in which him being queercoded is literally essential to the plot. but I’ll leave that analysis to someone else.

one last thing, though: let’s not forget, this is a historical play at the end of the day. you can’t really take queerness out of this story, because, drum roll, the real richard was probably a bit fruity! robert de vere is often named as a potential lover of his. this is still kind of debated, but even if it isn’t true, him being deposed for being too “queer” very much is. they literally didn’t like him back then because he was too “effeminate.” he tried to stop the war. he prioritized the arts in his court. he was born in france.

so I guess the real fail twink swag… was in our history books all along…

I know that Richard2Shakespeare is played as an obnoxious little twink for political and drama reasons (you’re telling me a queer coded this tragedy etc) and to let the actors chew the scenery a bit, and the indecisiveness is a tragic flaw that sets him apart from the clear penetrating masculinity of eg Bolingbroke etc etc. it’s great that there is a whole play about “the deserved downfall of cunty little maximalist who changes his Starbucks order 3 times with a huge line behind him.” However, I have forgotten what I was great revelation I was going to write here, so here are some richard2shakespeares I found while trying to remember

[forabeatofadrum]

Just Some Guy (3/9)

AO3

–

Year 3

MATT

I do not really pay attention to the rumour mill at Watford. I have enough stuff to deal with, namely my parents’ inevitable divorce. I am so glad to be at Watford and away from home. I realised something was off during the summer.

Another issue that I have is that I have to admit that Arnold was right about one thing: I like looking at Agatha Wellbelove.

Quite funny. The first situation makes me lose all doubt in romance, but the second one turns me into a hopeless romantic. I got paired up with Agatha during an experiment for Elocution and it went terrible, since I couldn’t speak around her.

So yeah, I have a lot on my mind.

This is why it completely escaped me that our Chosen One, Simon Snow, is out here telling people that his nemesis Tyrannus is a vampire.

“It’s not as if anyone believes him,” John says.

“Believes who?” I ask.

“That Baz Pitch is a vampire!” Leslie exclaims, “Oh come on, Matty Chris D., you must’ve heard. Simon Snow practically shouted it.”

“Who is Baz Pitch?”

“Tyrannus,” John says as an explanation. Huh. So his name isn’t Tyrannus?

“Have you been living under a rock, Matt?” Ryan says with disbelief, “Everyone knows of the heir of the Pitches Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch, or Baz for short.”

“Of course I know of him!” I say, “Wasn’t his mother the Headmistress before the Mage? The one who died in the vampire attack? I just didn’t know people call him Baz. I don’t really care about him, to be honest.”

“Fair, me neither,” Sam says, “But even I know him, and even I know about the rumour.”

“The stupid rumour,” John says. It’s as if he is making sure no one believes it. “Simon Snow probably knows about the Watford Tragedy too and now he thinks he’s connected the dots. I won’t be surprised if those Gates are impacting his thoughts.”

“Gates?” Scott raises an eyebrow.

John nods.

“Yeah, that’s why he’s been missing classes. He’s looking for some sort of Gates. And those Gates are dangerous!”

“Honestly, it must be nice to have a reason to skip class,” Luis jokes and others laugh along, but I don’t. John doesn’t either. We lock eyes and I know we’re both thinking about that moment of last year.

--

Simon Snow does miss class. I don’t care.

But then he misses again.

And again.

And again.

Not only that, but his friend Penelope Bunce isn’t attending classes either, and that’s extremely weird. Weirdly enough, she’s not the reason something feels off. Sure, she usually is very present in class, constantly asking questions and adding her own commentary, but it’s Simon’s absence that is weirding me out.

I usually do not care about his presence in class, since he doesn’t participate as much as Penelope Bunce or Tyrannus- oh, I mean, Baz Pitch, but his absence is noticeable because there is a lack of magic surrounding us. I didn’t know I had gotten so used to the great Chosen One leaking magic until now.

Not only that, but we’re safe. There hasn’t been an attack on Watford since he went missing. I’ve only been personally involved with an attack once, when some worsegoers disrupted a meeting of the Watford Chess Club. Humdrum attacks are terrible, because the empty, sucking feeling of a dead spot always comes with it.

(Call me an arsehole, but I prefer climate change over this magic sucking thing.)

Of course Simon Snow saved the day and we were able to continue playing chess.

So yes, I am aware of the smaller attacks that happen on a regular basis, even when I am not personally affected by them. Everyone is, because everyone seems to have a Simon Snow story.

And now there’s nothing. We’re safe, hooray, but this doesn’t feel right either.

It’s… unsettling in its own way.

--

Simon Snow and Penelope Bunce are officially missing.

Mitali Bunce, Penelope’s mother, is also a woman to watch out for, because she had no issues blowing up in the Mage’s face in front of the entire student body. The moment it became clear her daughter had gone missing, she’s been in a state of determined disarray. I didn’t know that was a state anyone could be in.

Simon Snow is famously an orphan. That’s why he’s the Mage’s Heir, after all, but if what Mitali Bunce is saying is right, then the Mage is doing a shit job being Simon’s guardian.

“Do you believe it?” Scott asks later that day at chess club practise.

“What?” John asks.

“That the Mage is responsible for the disappearance?” Luis adds.

I don’t know and to be honest, I don’t care, but I also cannot deny that today is a weird day. And, well, Luis has a point. It seems like Simon Snow has been investigating some Gates, because the Mage ordered him to. And Penelope Bunce is the perfect best friend-slash-sidekick, so of course she accompanied him, whether the Mage wanted to or not.

Apparently, these Gates turn people a bit mad, which is why Simon Snow was yapping all about Baz (still weird) Pitch being a vampire. (Really, why give your child a name like Tyrannus, only to not use it?)

“Isn’t it a bit weird?” Arnold pops in.

“How so?”

“Well, these Gates have negative consequences,” he says.

“Like the whole vampire disillusion,” John adds.

Arnold nods.

“So, why does the Mage keep sending him and Penny back to them?”

I suppose this is all part of a grand plan to defeat evil, but Merlin, I have no clue how any of this works. My friends keep gossiping about today’s occurrences and I move a chess piece that greatly limits John’s next move.

At moments like this I am glad I am just some guy, because I much rather would play chess with my friends than investigate creepy gates with my friends.

--

Months pass and the disappearance of Simon Snow and Penelope Bunce almost becomes old news. The Coven and the Mage are still searching, but it becomes a thing that lingers in the background. It’s kind of sad how people, like me, move on. Clearly, some people who were closer to them are more upset. I hear Rhys and Gareth talk about being worried during Magickal History.

Agatha Wellbelove also seems very upset by all of this. Since I am kind of obsessed with her, I did know that she’s friends with the both of them.

Interestingly enough, Baz Pitch is the other person who seems to be in a bad mood, or in an even worse mood than usual.

My suspicion is confirmed when Rhys arrives late to Greek one day.

“They’re back!” he yells as he barges through the door. He’s so erratic that he hits the wall with his wheelchair. “Simon and Penny… they’re back!”

Rhys babbles incoherently about how Simon Snow and Penelope Bunce just seemed to pop back into existence, both of them confused and disoriented, but seemingly unharmed. Class erupts into chaos since everyone needs to know the latest gossip.

Agatha retreats. She doesn’t ask permission to leave, but the Minotaur doesn’t stop her. He’s too busy trying to calm everyone down to even notice one student quietly slipping away. The only person who’s not in a state of chaos is Baz. He’s looks shocked, more like it. Even his minions are yapping excitedly, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“I wonder what’s on his mind,” I say to John.

“Ah… well…” John doesn’t say more than that. Sometimes, John is as much as a mystery as Simon or Baz.

The class ends abruptly because the Minotaur cannot keep order. I sigh. I am not a big fan of Ancient Greek, but I was really hoping to pick something up, since we have a vocab test next week. I am definitely going to fail now.

I gather my books and follow the stream of students outside and I know I should be glad that Simon Snow and Penelope Bunce are safe and sound, but did they have to return during Greek of all classes? Why not next period during Elocution?

Goddamnit, Simon Snow.

--

I go to the leaving ceremony with John and Ryan. We don’t have to, since it’s a formality for last year students, but we all have time to kill.

Afterwards, my dad picks me up by himself. I don’t ask him where my mum is.

We drive home in silence and I send John a message, saying I miss him. This will be a long summer.

[gatherthesuspectspod]

A GTS Short

This script is the first in a series of shorts intended to flesh out some more of the world of Gather The Suspects. One day, we hope you'll get to actually hear them! But in the meantime, we hope you enjoy!

SCENE 1 - INT - JACK and KARA’s Flat

Computer games are playing in the background and we hear JACK shout the occasional thing at his game. “Ooh, shoot him, quick!”  “Aaah you lousy thing…”  “Hey, that was my health pack! Give it back” end abruptly with a click.

JACK: (shouting) Kara! The bloody electric’s gone again!

KARA: (entering) Oh, for goodness sake. I thought we were done with all of this…

JACK: I’m sooo bored!!!

KARA: Jack, it’s been off for like five seconds, seriously?

JACK: (shrugs) Genius like this takes a lot of mental stimulation!

There is a knock on the door and the door opens

GERAINT: (calling in from the hall) Just me… you guys lost power too? 

JACK: (sarcastically) Nooo, we often just sit here in the dark and try to connect with our primordial selves... You know, really get in touch with that inner caveman.

KARA: Ignore Jack, he’s in a bad mood because he can’t spend an eleventh hour straight playing video games.

JACK: (Grunts) I’m going to find my Gameboy (rummaging around in the draws)

GERAINT: The whole city’s out I think, look, no lights across the Bay at all. 

JACK: Gaah! No batteries, stupid bloo-

KARA: Jack! I’m sure you can spend one night without gaming-

JACK (interrupting) Bored!   

KARA: Oh, for god sake, you’re such a child-

JACK (interrupting) Bored!

GERAINT: Aaaaanyway, I thought that you might be, so I dug out the old wind-up radio.

JACK: Oh, good! The radio. We may as well go live in the middle ages.

KARA: Oh, stop being so ridiculous, Jack. You like listening to the radio!

JACK: Yeah, when I choose to. Now it’s forced on me it feels just like work…

KARA: (pointedly) oh, I’m surprised you know how that feels… 

GERAINT: Aah, come on, it’ll be nice. You know, like the good old, bad old days. At least this time we won’t have bombs going off every five minutes. I’ll turn on WBC, I think that phone-in show with the really horrible callers is on…

You like shouting at that one… I’ll turn it on...

[Radio crank winds up and Jingle fades in. A voiceover announces  “WBC radio - Wales’ premier music and talk radio.”]

JEREMY: Welcome back to This Evening with Jeremy on WBC radio - 64.5 FM and online. Today we’ve been discussing climate change and the upgrades to the Cardiff Bay barrage. 

With low lying parts of the coast already feeling the effects of rising sea levels, what more can we do to keep everyone safe? Give us a call and have your say...Giles Hampson from Cardiff is on the line. Giles, Good Evening.

MR HAMPSON: Good Evening, Jeremy.

JEREMY: What do you think about the proposed upgrades to the barrage Giles, do you think the plans go far enough?

MR HAMPSON: Well, Jeremy, it’s all nonsense really, isn’t it?

JEREMY: Oh, so you agree with our earlier caller, John? You think it would be better to add to the sea defences around Tremorfa, rather than spend more money on the bay right now?

MR HAMPSON: (bluntly) No, I mean that man was clearly an idiot. A typical mentality for those tree-hugging do-gooders that got us into this mess in the first place. I meant the whole (emphasising with disgust) ‘Global Warming’ thing. I mean, it’s nonsense, isn’t it? Nothing but a fairy tale for simple minds.

JEREMY: (sighs) OK, Giles. There’s a lot to unpack there. Let me make sure I’m understanding you correctly… You don’t believe in climate change but you also believe that people like John, who do, are somehow responsible for the thing you don’t believe exists? 

MR HAMPSON: Uh, no, no. You are twisting my words…that’s just like the ‘mainstream media’. 

JEREMY:  Uh, ok… I mean, I’m recording this in my bedroom thanks to budget cutbacks - we’re not exactly the old BBC... But go on…

MR HAMPSON: I mean, all we’ve heard for the past 20 years is Global warming this, the environment that. It’s just a way to scare us into being controlled. I mean there is nothing we can do about it now, is there? 

JEREMY: We just heard from the Environment minister today, on this very programme, talking about yet another coastal town that’s been abandoned thanks to rising water levels… I mean I’m still slightly confused. What do John’s - and I quote - “tree-hugging do-gooder” views have to do with all this? 

MR HAMPSON: Aah, well they are the engine of control, you see. They make us feel guilty and try to force us into doing things at tremendous cost to the economy. All to perpetuate this...this myth.

JEREMY: So you do think it’s a myth? Even you said a few moments ago it was real.

MR HAMPSON: The myth is that this ‘climate change’ can be affected by us mere humans. 

JEREMY: So now you’re saying it is real?

MR HAMPSON: No, no, no. You’re putting words in my mouth…

JEREMY: You just said, “there is nothing we can do about it now.” 

MR HAMPSON: What I’m saying, sonny, is that even if it IS real, which I highly doubt that it is -

JEREMY: Why do you doubt that it is?

MR HAMPSON: (not put off by the interruption) WHICH, I highly doubt it is. BUT, if it is then it’s likely part of some natural earthly cycle, baked in on the seventh day... so, who are we to try and stop it? All these arrogant lefties do is cause unnecessary panic. We are British after all, and we - 

JEREMY: Actually, I hate to break it to you Giles, but Britain doesn’t exist anymore.

MR HAMPSON: (sardonically) We are inhabitants of the British Isles and will deal with it in the way we always have. A quiet stoic dignity. Just like the old Blitz spirit…

JEREMY: Or the civil war in 2023... 

MR HAMPSON: I’m not sure I like your tone, Jeremy. 

JEREMY: I’m sorry Mr Hampson. It’s just you have said a lot of things already... most of which are contradictory. You don’t seem to have made your own mind up. Is it fake or is something above our control or something we can control but left it too late to act on? So, which is it, Giles?

MR HAMPSON: Well, really does it matter? Either way, me downgrading my Jaguar to some crappy little Japanese hybrid isn’t going to save anything is it? It’s costing the economy millions. In my day we didn’t have any of this PC nonsense about -

JEREMY: But, I mean some may argue that it might be a little late now that entire towns are disappearing beneath the Irish Sea, but what about before, Giles - when it was in our power to change it, did you do anything?

MR HAMPSON: What do you mean, did I DO anything? What did those little tree-hugging do-gooders do about it? They are the ones so concerned about it after all. What did THEY do, eh? 

JEREMY: (sighs) but, Giles -

MR HAMPSON: And anyway, how could I possibly have done something? Surely if it is real - and I’m not saying it is - then it’s down to the government to do something about it.

JEREMY: Aah, so now we may be getting somewhere… so, when there might have been a chance to change things, did you vote for a party that would have tackled it? 

MR HAMPSON: Well, of course not, why would I? I may as well vote for the Toothfairy party! Look you and your lot -

JEREMY: My lot? 

MR HAMSON? Yes the liberal media elite

JEREMY: Again, recording from my bedroom which also doubles as my kitchen and lounge…

MR HAMPSON: You know I’m right, Jeremy. I’m speaking for the majority here. We’re sick of people in positions of power telling us, the real people, what to do and how to act. Me driving my Jaguar around the place isn’t going to solve global warming.

JEREMY: I don’t think you repeatedly bringing up your Jaguar gives you the 'man of the people' vibe that you think it does… 

MR HAMPSON: See, looking down at the little people again, while encouraging propaganda for such rubbish.

JEREMY: What rubbish?

MR HAMPSON: Climate change, of course. The mainstream media are constantly talking about it -

JEREMY: Because towns are literally disappearing, half of the Southern Hemisphere is on fire. We are a current affairs programme, we talk about the topics that are having a real-world impact on our listeners -

MR HAMPSON: Well I’ve not seen it. Are we just supposed to take your word for it - these things could be down to a number of natural things. Why aren’t you talking about the real scandal of our times - how people like us, the rea- 

JEREMY: Sorry to interrupt you, Giles. We’ve had another caller who’d like to get in on the debate. Jack from Cardiff, I understand you have a different view to Giles?

JACK: Hi Jeremy. Yes, that’s right. Loving the show, by the way… 

MY HAMPSON: (muttering) Oh, not this cretin... Jeremy, I must protest, he’s completely ill-equipped to be discussing-

JEREMY: (ignoring this) Oh, well thank you, Jack. And what was the point you wanted to make about this discussion?

JACK: Well, I just thought that it was important to interject a bit of science into the debate.

JEREMY: Oh, you are a scientist, Jack?

MR HAMPSON: No, of course he’s not a scientist, Jeremy. The boy is an idiot.

JACK: Well, I have spent many years working on this theory. Testing and revising my hypothesis but I always come to the same conclusion.

JEREMY: Exciting, well let us know what you’ve found?

JACK: Well, after much observation, I have concluded that Giles Hampson is a massive fu-

JEREMY: Oh.. uum… thank goodness for the cough button, eh? On that note, I think we’ll leave that discussion for today. While I go outside and have a large whisky, here’s the news… When we come back, we’ll be talking about… um.. I dunno, something fun. 

[Jingle again and the news begins it slowly fades into the background as focus shifts back to our trio in the flat]

NEWS REPORTER: Tensions in France continue tonight as the civil war continues. With food in short supply and much of Northern France under control of Front National, the embattled liberal government has demanded an immediate halt to all separatist action on French soil. 

Meanwhile, closer to home, the English government have denied all reports of the mass starvation event that took place in Kent last month. A spokesman for the government told the EBC last night that the story has been a clear plant, to undermine the superb work by the UKFree party to unite the country. The denials come hot on the heels of similar denials last month when allied drones spotted large funeral pyres being built on the banks of the Medway. 

We go over to our English correspondent, Harriet Graves, for more:

NEWS REPORTER 2: Thanks, Seren. Yes, the UKFree party aren’t taking these latest revelations very well. Two inside sources told me yesterday that senior government ministers had been shot because of the leaks. 

We have reached out to the English government for comment, but do not expect a reply. Back to you in the studio. 

NEWS REPORTER: Thank you, Harriet. Finally, researchers at Cardiff University have reported finding a way to increase fertility in mice. Should they be successful, then human trials are expected to start by the winter. This is one step towards the Welsh government objective of redressing our ageing population and productivity issue. In the Senedd last week, the opposition described the plan as “crap of the highest order, even if we did manage to increase the working-age population, where exactly does the first minister propose they work?"

And that’s your news round-up for this evening, join us again tomorrow at 6am. Nos Da. 

JACK: hah, you were right! Listening to the radio can be fun! 

GERAINT: I feel like I should have put more emphasis on the ‘listening’ part. 

KARA: We’ll be paying for that one at the next residents meeting…

JACK: Meh, it was worth it. 

[power clicks back on and things start humming again]

GERAINT: Ooh, the power’s back on… do you want to keep… oh, he’s already back on the Playstation…

KARA: Come on, let’s go grab a coffee...

Sound of shooting and clicking as Jack plays his games mixes with the grim news reports. Jack shouts, "hah, take that. Try steal my kill will you! That'll teach you to mess with StabathaChristie69" 

~CREDITS~

POST CREDIT SEQUENCE

JEREMY: Welcome back to this evening with Jeremy. Well after that eventful few moments, let’s see what else is on your mind, Wales.

Next up we have Jillian from Cardiff. Jillian. What’s on your mind this evening?

MRS HAMPSON: Hello? Hello? Yes, is this the Jeremy show? 

JEREMY: That's right, you're through live on the air with Jeremy. What's on your mind? 

MRS HAMPSON: I’d like to speak to the manager, please. 

JEREMY: (sighs) Why didn’t I take that tv job. 

[inland--empire]

So basically I would call the manga ‘スターダスト: 終わる世界のアイドル’ (which translates to 'STARDUST:Idol of the Ending World’) and there would be one volume per song with the exception of the first two, because Five Years doesn't really have any plot and is basically all establishing the world so l'm just gonna put it and Soul Love in the same volume. So, the plot I have down thus far would be as follows:

Five Years/Soul Love (volume title: 'That's All We've Got'): Introduces the world (alternate Earth, vaguely England, 1972, climate crisis going strong, climate-crisis-induced doomed complex going stronger) and the characters of Jackson Hunter and Gertrude 'Gilly’ Utterson, who have been close friends since childhood, opening on them seeing a news report confirming that if things continue the way they are, Earth will be completely uninhabitable in five years' time. We see both main characters play music as a way of coping (Jacky being a guitarist and Gilly a bassist). We also see Jackson going home (his house is on the very outskirts of the city whereas Gilly lives smack in the city center), crossing streets, seeing that there’s still love in people, there’s still reasons to live out there, but there seems to be something missing. The volume ends with Jacky going home and immediately getting a call from Gilly, who’s calling from a phone booth not far from him and seems really freaked out and excited, telling him to come where she is. Jacky runs to meet her at a corner of the city long abandoned only to see a small crowd of people in a wide circle around a building with strange lights glowing all around it and stranger sounds coming from the top. The volume ends with a bright red lightning bolt striking the top of the building…

Moonage Daydream (volume title: ‘Keep Your ‘Lectric Eye On Me’): Where the lightning struck the building, a glittering androgynous figure with a gold circle on its forehead descends from the sky. It begins to sing, and the crowd is absolutely captivated by its song, united in its passion for the music. After the song ends, however, the figure seemingly passes out on the roof, and the crowd goes into a bit of a panic. Jacky and Gilly spot a guy (who later turns out to be William ‘Weird’ O’Leary, the future band’s future drummer) unlocking the door to the building and follow him inside, burning with curiosity to get a look at the stranger on the roof. Together they run up the stairs and gently carry the stranger (who is, of course, Ziggy Stardust himself, and the reason he passed out was because he wasn’t used to the strength of Earth’s gravity yet and it got too much for him) off to Gilly’s car so they can get him to a safe place to recover. Eventually Ziggy wakes up on the sofa in Gilly’s apartment, and explains that he came from space ‘by an act of the Infinites’. Gilly is absolutely ecstatic about this extraterrestrial visitor, while Jacky isn’t all too excited at first but does admit Ziggy’s music was something special. A little intermission follows as the newly formed gang arrange for Ziggy to stay and see as much of Earth as possible while he’s here. The gang bond over having fun around the city as much as they can, and Ziggy’s first true impressions of humanity are rather positive, though he does also see a lot of suffering in the background and is made aware of the near-apocalyptic state of the Earth…

Starman (volume title: ‘Waiting In The Sky’): Ziggy is listening to music alone in the apartment the gang is renting for him late one night when suddenly the music changes to something absolutely otherworldly for Earth but strangely familiar to him. Then Ziggy receives a vision where the creator of his universe, the master of the Infinites, the Starman Eternal himself, comes down from a doorway in the sky and takes him to see the beautiful, boundless future of humanity, admitting he doesn’t want to appear to the humans personally quite yet but telling them all to keep going because he knows it will all be worth it in the end. Ziggy returns to his body and is absolutely overjoyed, running to the nearest telephone booth and calling up all three of his new friends one by one to tell them the good news. They all dance and sing in the street together of pure joy, even Jacky can’t help but share Ziggy’s happiness, and a bunch of children and teenagers, who are usually just as disengaged from the world as adults are in this world, join in with them. This is when the gang decides that the best way to share this hope with humanity and give them the best chance of ‘not blowing it’ is to start a band, and they call themselves the Spiders From Mars, after a particularly strange part of Ziggy’s vision of the future where he saw a bunch of Earth’s creatures, including spiders, inexplicably wandering the red planet.

It’s getting late so I’ll explain the rest tomorrow but holy sparkles I can feel the pieces falling into place…

Oh that is amazing!!!!

[legendtraineremily]

Day 2 of My Pokémon Yellow Nuzlocke Challenge!

So, yesterday was interesting. Not altogether different from past play-throughs but that’s how it goes for the first bit of Generation 1 Pokémon games. The trouble is when you get to Brock and his Rock-type gym. Granted, his Pokémon are…not great. They don’t have any Rock-type moves in this generation, relying instead on Tackle and Bide which are both normal-type moves. The difficulty is in their Rock/Ground typing which makes Pikachu almost useless and their own defenses which make most attacks you lob at them bounce off almost harmlessly.

Oh. And Onix has Bind in Yellow version. Remember what I said in the post for yesterday about how trapping moves would basically end your own actions? Yeah, that’s a potential 5 turns of nothing but pain with no chance at retaliation.

Over-leveling will be the name of today as well as hoping for a Nidoran that can learn Double Kick, which is super effective against Rock-types. Enough talk, let’s do this!

Where was I? Oh, right. Getting through Viridian Forest and training my lower-leveled newbies. Side note, I’ve been a fan of using wild Metapod for easy EXP since I first played Pokémon back 20 years ago in Crystal version. (Wild Metapod don’t keep Tackle in their moveset for…reasons, I guess.) LeafGreen was a breeze as well with that trick.

Okay, out of the forest, healed up in Pewter city, and now it’s off to test my Route 2 luck. Please be a Nidoran; male or female, doesn’t matter, they all work for me. (Shoutout to my Bi and Pan friends! Hi friends!)

Success! I was worried about getting another Rattata, but Nidoran(Female) appeared for me. That is a great relief for the gym but not for my time—I’ll have to train her up quite a bit to get Double Kick.

Route 2 Encounter—Nidoran ♀/Lily

Lv. 4

Hp: 17

Attack: 9

Defense: 9

Speed: 9

Special: 9

At least we can hope little Lily will survive the gym. She can be pretty useful in the rest of the early game if we play it right.

🎶A-grinding we will go, a-grinding we will go…🎶 These poor Metapod are getting wiped out by one of their own. Dark thought, if it weren’t for the fact that canonically the Pokémon just get knocked out. We’re just beating them up and taking their money (EXP).

I gotta take a break. Might hit up the museum. “Hey guys, can I get that Aerodactyl early? That’d be nice.” In reality I’m also enjoying some hometown festivities and homemade baked goods. Y’all ever tried strawberry-rhubarb pie? My wife makes an amazing pie—everyone who tries it loves it, I’m not even joking!

More grinding. More fallen foes. More MtnDew Spark. How’re y’all doing? Drinking water? You should go drink some water. I have a bottle on standby when I’m done with my soda. With all the crazy weather (thanks radical climate change), dry spells can spell doom to your hydration levels. So make sure you’re drinking your water!

All right, I’m about leveled up enough to try the gym. Watch out Brock-y! I’m coming to win.

Pre-Gym lineup:

Pikachu/Zippy- Lv.13

Nidoran♀/Lily- Lv.12

Butterfree/Stinky- Lv.11

Pidgey/BIRBY- Lv.11

Rattata/Remy- Lv.5

Here’s the plan: Hit Geodude with Stinky’s Confusion attack since his Special isn’t really high. Next, we’ll be switching around to keep from being ripped to shreds by Onix’s Screech and Tackle combos. That double drop to defense is no good for anyone. Bide won’t be an issue as I just won’t use damaging moves for the duration. The big problem will be Bind stalling me out; however, if I need to, I can use Remy as healing fodder to allow myself to heal up either Zippy or Lily and finish the battle off on a high note. Now to see if this all works.

Welp, Geodude went down as expected but in an effort to switch out of a Bind, I Double Kick-ed into a Bide. Now, Bide gets stronger the more a Pokémon has been hit during its charge-up so I can hope I get off a critical hit Double Kick and end Onix or end up using poor Remy as cannon fodder. Neither option is preferable. I’ll risk it—wait. Wait, the Bide went off before I could switch and didn’t end Lily. And she Crits for the final hit! Woo! You go little girlie! One badge down, seven more to go.

And so we come to Route 3 leading to Mt. Moon. I can’t use TM’s so I’ll sell off the TM for Bide I just got (why Brock? It’s such a junk move! Rock Tomb from Gen III was the right choice for the remakes). Now I’ll grab some more Pokéballs and a couple Escape Ropes just in case and head out to beat some other trainers and get to the Mt. Moon Pokémon Center.

Hey, did I mention before that Sand-Attack really annoys me? Well I’ll say it again just in case: Sand-Attack really frickin’ annoys me. At least I have a chance to level up Remy a bit more. Your potential, eventual sacrifice will be well worth it buddy, don’t worry!

Another fun fact that I almost had the displeasure of experiencing while beating up the trainers on Route 3 is that in Gen 1 games, Poison is super-effective against Bug. So if Stinky hadn’t wrecked the Weedle with one Confusion, the little bugger’s Poison Sting would’ve really ruined my day.

There are…so many trainers on Route 3. Like they keep popping up on my screen like the wonderful EXP harvests they are. They would be taking much longer but because my Pokémon were apparently built faster, I’m landing Critical Hits all over!

It’s also getting late where I’m at so I may just call it a night and sign off. See y’all and love ya’! -Emily

[astrophyta]

Reading rambles?

so uh I’ve been among other things catching up on a very long to-read list of fiction that’s sitting in my apartment cluttering my space up and I do kinda want to just talk about some of the reads to the void instead of on a platform like goodreads so that’s what this tag will be for, I suppose? my reading speed is pretty slow so these won’t be frequent

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

This book has a pretty bad rep for being preachy about climate change amongst a lot of reviews I’ve seen, but tbh with the exception of maybe one scene I read last night where Ovid has an Ecology Professor Meltdown in front of a newsreporter who felt more like a caricature the second time around than in her first appearance, I have to say I disagree, and the aforementioned scene is probably my biggest gripe with the book so far (with less than 40 pages to go, though).

A lot of people do not like Dellarobia either. She is emotionally cheating on her husband for the majority of the work, the novel opening with her attempt to flee her family life to go be with some younger guy she doesn’t seem to know very well. No one has to like a character, even when their flaws are addressed and fleshed out and the author makes no excuses for them, but for me Dellarobia’s response to her lot in life makes perfect sense even if it isn’t pretty or likable. She was smart and curious enough to have gone to college, something unheard of in her small hometown, but she got knocked up by her now-husband and failed her ACT. Her parents are both dead and had very little money to their name despite her mother (iirc) running a successful business of making and mending clothes in town. Her husband’s family are farmers. Until meeting Dr. Byron, she is a stay-at-home mom pinching and scraping pennies to feed her family and literally keep the lights on. It is due to an ecological disaster that she is given her first job, one that pays more than what her husband makes - serving as a lab technician for a make-shift research group operating out of her family’s barn, the best spot in town to be close to an unusual phenomenon of a monarch butterfly migration wintering in tennessee when they would normally be in mexico.

Dellarobia loves her children. she tries her best to love her husband. she plays wife, daughter-in-law, and mother as best as she can, but she knows her life is also the result of a mistake she made as a teenager and that it might not have been so hard if she hadn’t made that mistake. you can come to love another person despite these truths, but this is not enough to surmount the chasm between her and Cub. so, her eye wanders, and she indulges in her delusions of these feelings being reciprocated, not because she truly knows these men well enough to love them but because it is a distraction from the disappointment she feels from her own life. it’s not pretty, it’s unlikable, but I find Kingsolver’s portrayal of Dellarobia to be very honest, and I appreciate when authors are not too afraid to write women like her.

I also feel like there’s so many ways that you can write about Dellarobia that this brief summary feels so grossly inadequate to convey all of the different roles and expectations she deals with in her community and from outside of it. Kingsolver handles these tensions beautifully. She is a celebrated and accomplished author who I had honestly never heard of before picking up this book from a neighborhood little library box while on a pandemic walk three years ago. I consider it serendipitous.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Now this book is highly acclaimed, and despite a rough start for me initially, I consider myself no exception to the hype. It is well-deserved.

I’m reading this as an audiobook and still have about half the book to go, so it’s not yet time to write at-length about it, but Zevin already accomplishes so much in the first half that I’m on my toes thinking about how long she will keep us with Sadie, Marks, and Sam. Also, I am convinced that it is not possible to read this book and not get an itch to delve into game development yourself. I’ve seen a couple of tutorials for creating very very simple games with python on freecodecamp’s youtube channel, and I was interested in those before even touching this book but now I’m like…is it too late for me? Maybe I’ll make a game too when I’m 60 and retired.

Misc. other reads

I started a third genshin account for a lore post I wanted to make (my zhongli sq 2 screenshots are lacking, also just need an interactive refresher) and so I’ve been passing the time grinding by listening to audiobooks. I listened to Broadband: the Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet by Claire L. Evans, which was wonderful and illuminating. I also listened to Life in Code: A Personal History by my programming idol Ellen Ullman. She has the most compelling argument against AI and machines as analogous to the biological (and vice-versa) that I’ve seen, of course illustrated through a history of her domestic companion Sadie, her cat. I was making my way through Artificial Intelligence by Melanie Mitchell, but the book lends itself better to reading a physical copy rather than passively listening while playing a video game. It utilizes a lot of diagrams to illustrate its points, and it expects you to view these diagrams as supplemental pdf’s delivered with the book as you listen to it. Nope, not for me. But I was thoroughly enjoying it before deciding to put it on-hold.

[sunflowersandthestars]

I only said this for a billion years.

Look nothing wrong with being an attractive person. But fans are kidding themselves if they said they were a fan for his work only. He’s had hits, don’t get me wrong and I’m not trying to downplay that. But every single fangirl is a fan simply because they think he’s hot. He’s been plenty messy himself & yet everyone willingly overlooks that. Is it because he’s a man and women are just held to a different standard? Who knows. But it’s always the attractive ones who tend to get away with more.

Look, if the problem with him suddenly was because of who he’s “married” to and all her issues, people would just leave and never look back. There’s been plenty that have done so because they believed so strongly in those convictions and moral principles. The ones still around, hate watching? Nah. As soon as he’s “single” again, the thirst will fully come back and people will easily forgive. The issue isn’t work: it’s the fact he was taken and aged like ya know, humans do. People pretend to care about these moral principles but they’re still here talking aren’t they? There’s a pattern with that fandom anytime he’s been connected to someone and this one is no different.

The blogs saying they only focus on his work? No where do they talk about how good of an actor he is or how well he emotes, his pacing, his delivery, etc. No, they’re focused on what he looks like or his hair, or grey or no grey. What outfits or more specifically what less of outfits he is wearing. They write fanfic solely based on characters they got wet for which again is look driven. No way can they say it’s just the character they liked. I see no one writing fanfic over Danny DeVito characters. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Missed opportunity to write about the “sausage king.”

They can kid themselves all they want but his career has solely always been driven over looks and his personal life, not him as an actor. It’s a harsh truth but the truth nonetheless. He’s made his millions off of shallow, surface level, horny women. He gets some marvel fanboys jizzing themselves but you hardly hear men talk about his work otherwise.

I’m tired of all the comparisons to seb btw. I’m sure he’s a nice guy and he’s a good actor, but let’s not kid ourselves that he’s played the HW game too. He’s done the PR for roles (especially a role based on a real person that said real person was not happy was made), he’s name dropped Chris in his lastest GG campaign as much as he could, he’s gone after award roles solely. He wants the fame and recognition. He’s a Leo man after all and it shouldn’t be surprising. But yet he doesn’t get as much hate for doing essentially the same fricken thing. Him and Chris have done the same thing for money and roles….just because one didn’t sell it doesn’t mean it’s not the same thing and they both lack principles and are willing to ruin mental health for the coin. Fans are deluding themselves if they think they can make the comparisons nonstop when he’s just as guilty. He even thanked CAA in his acceptance speech so…. And Trump?? Really? I lost some respect for him taking that role especially in a climate like today. Let’s not add more fuel to the fire when some of us live around these real Nazis and are scared & have to watch what we say so we don’t get attacked. You’re not gonna get one of them to watch that movie to change their mind. I digress though. I will say I appreciate Anthony for never doing the cheap PR stunts. He keeps his private life private and actually seems like a genuine real one. He says what he means and I appreciate that.

And even though this is exactly what women go through all the time in real life and HW, women will make excuses for the extreme thirsting behavior saying it’s harmless. That’s what men say about catcalling us too but we don’t find it harmless? It’s all hypocritical. Some rare men and women don’t mind but HW has this way of saying only “hot” people can be front and center. Many male stars have broke the mold. Ed Sheeran & Lewis Capaldi aren’t necessarily the world’s sexiest men, but their talent & personality outweighs all that so everyone is willing to overlook. But if a woman who is less than pretty enters the stage with raw talent and a great personality, she is shunned because “no one wants to watch that.” The heavy actresses that do get in, have their 10 minutes of fame only to be slowly faded away to the point you ask “what happened to them?” Or they have extreme weight loss which the media then covers nonstop and that becomes their #1 identity: the fat actress that lost all that weight. The real kicker: they’d rather make the “hot” actors/actresses gain weight for a role rather than hire talent that is already that weight. Make that make sense. Fat suits are so disrespectful especially when they do behind the scenes to show “oh this was the worst!!!” Ok - just tell half the country to kill themselves I guess.

So while it’s deeply engrained to be an unjust and unfair advantage men will always have no matter what, women unconsciously help keep this toxic environment alive with the thirsting and saying which men are hot and which women are pretty or not and who deserves to be with the hot dude. They say they’ll support sisters and help each other but when push comes to shove, they are the quickest to put each other down judging what they look like, what they wear, how they wear their makeup or hair, etc. And that particular fandom is filled with them who live for gossip & judging every woman he’s ever been in the presence of. He was aging already years ago and people were loving it for embracing the grey. The only reason people are like “ewww he’s old” is because again they project it onto this mess and her. It’s part true but realistically he’s gonna be 44…people age? 😮 imagine that. This girl was no different than his past problematic exes & no one cares about the race issue because more than half the people still talking about him right now and thirsting are WOC.

I just wish people would stop lying to themselves. At the core, the sad old comeback “you’re just jealous” stands absolutely true.

Must suck for you, Boston Dumb Fuck, to realize people only adore you when your ass is tight, your lips are full and your hair is long.

How does it feel to be on this side of objectification? Not great, huh? At least you have an eye droplet sized sense of what your female costars experience on a daily basis (still will never make you a feminist, you performative asshole).

If only you had bet on yourself and worked on your craft instead of investing in this manipulation that made you unrecognizable and deformed- inside and out. I mean not the enablers you are related to, but there are good acting teachers who won't shy away from the trauma that is holding you back from being a good actor and a good man.

Since I feel bad so many people hate you right now, including yourself, here are some gummy worms (the sour kind):

[elliottkay]

So I'm a couple weeks of regular play into Marvel's Midnight Suns game and while I don't know how much I have left I think I can give it a solid thumbs-up.

You have a customizable PC ("Hunter") and your companions are a mix of Marvel heroes. I expected to wind up wishing I could just main one of the Marvel heroes but it turns out the PC is fine. The gameplay is this combo of turn-based tactical/JRPG and card game, where you run three heroes and get a random draw of their individual "moves" in each round, and you improve & get new moves over the game.

Between combat missions, there's a 3rd-person "Run around the base and have conversations & build friendships" thing that feels VERY Mass Effect/Dragon Age with the other heroes and it's kinda great.

I was dubious about the card-game-combat thing. Turns out I'm enjoying it a lot.

The storyline does some odd revisions to character/world histories to make things work (weirdly, Wanda has no history with the Avengers...?), but it's fine. Can’t really blame them, and it’s not like incorporating the full 616 continuity into a game is feasible, anyway. And while I have a bucket of nitpicks about individual character portrayals, as a broad brush they're all fine and in all the important ways they're GREAT.

Like, Cap/Steve is a little stiff for me, but he's also warm and friendly and generally right about everything, and also trolls Tony, so that's good. Tony's a little too aggressively obnoxious, but meh. Steve, Peter, and Carol play in combat like the reliable MVPs they should be. Blade's edgelord thing isn't bad at all; I expected nails on chalkboard, but I actually like him a lot. And this is like the friendliest and most easygoing version of Wolverine ever.

Other nice points: Tony throws shade at Elon Musk (no names, but it's unmistakable); Steve explicitly says if he wasn't punching bad guys he'd probably work with a social justice nonprofit or work on climate change; the game has at least one queer couple (no romancing, they're kinda split, but it's in the text); and the narrative often centers the women on the team like Nico Minoru and Magik/Illyana (who are GREAT). This game is built to upset all the right people.

I had some doubts when I bought it, but I’m having a great time.