#for people who use this weird measure of time called years: this was in 2019

[innitmarvellous]

Once summer/any kind of warm weather is over for real I definitely have to do some kind of regular fitness workout again....

[tchaikovskym]

anyway i came here because i had the spark on to write something for my thesis but then that spark died

anyway did you know we are living in global obesity pandemic (source: articles and statistics i read like a year ago) and that obesity rate is growing in almost every country there is, it's not the 1st world country problem anymore (source: there was this WHO statistics sheet i think). this honestly calls for concerns in how society is operating, not the individuals (source: my own mind figured it out), because, like, if it is affecting so many people, it smells like systemic issue, ya'know?

and since the abundance of food we have now is historically recent event (Paoli et al. 2019), we could just say. Hey! It's because there is so much food that we are fat now! We are all like cats and dogs with an owner who always fills the bowl with food when it's empty.

And honestly, yeah, that would be an actual hot take that's probably it.

But for god's sake, I have some faith in humans. I think it is an issue that could be solved. It don't think it's the stupidity of people that is to blame. I hope.

I think, if we modified our lifestyle, we could get some better results. And by our lifestyle I mean politically. On a large level.

What are the characteristics of a modern human? A modern human is busy as hell, I don't think I have to look up source on this. I just believe it's true.

No I can't. that's against scientific method.

Yeah, well, if we take working hours, that's a big fat lie. If we look at the time period of like 2 centuries. I'm too tired to look up sources on history before that. If I recall correctly, the 19th century was, like, the start of this whole boom in the whole work week stuff (source: middle school history lessons), and of course our life is better now than it was when the average guy was breathing deadly fumes to feed his family.

Besides, are working hours really the measure on how busy a human can get? Don't you think our lives have become overly fast? There is so much going on in one day, thanks for the advances in technology. And it's a good thing, but it's a lot! Don't you think?

Anyway, regarding our society, sleep is weird with us too. It is quite possible that people did not sleep the same way we do (Source: an article I read like 5 years ago where the author mentioned literature work. was it Charles Dickens? who mentioned two sleeps of night. like you go to sleep for about 5 hours and then wake up, do something, and then go asleep for 5 hours more. or 4.).

And besides, our sleep is all messed up. Who is getting enough sleep nowadays?

ugh

anyway. i am tired of making my point (i want to go to sleep and i won't finish this).

but my suggestion for better health is to let highschool kids sleep in the mornings, like make the shool start at 10am earliest, move their extra-curriculars in the mornings so they get up earlier in some days, but not all. let the kids sleep. moreover, make a shift towards promoting lunch as the main social meal, not dinner. forget dinner. and. slow the society down a bit. don't make something new for the sake of something new. please. im begging. you just have to wait for my thesis process to finish to see if my statements have some value.

[nbmsports]

America’s Foreign Vacations Tell Us Something About the U.S. Economy

Forget Emily. These days, a whole flood of Americans are in Paris.People spent 2020 and 2021 either cooped up at home or traveling sparingly and mostly within the continental U.S. But after Covid travel restrictions were lifted for international trips last summer, Americans are again headed overseas.While domestic leisure travel shows signs of calming — people are still vacationing in big numbers, but prices for hotels and flights are moderating as demand proves strong but not insatiable — foreign trips are snapping back with a vengeance. Americans are boarding planes and cruise ships to flock to Europe in particular, based on early data.According to estimates from AAA, international travel bookings for 2023 were up 40 percent from 2022 through May. That is still down about 2 percent from 2019, but it’s a hefty surge at a time when some travelers are being held back by long passport processing delays amid record-high applications. Tour and cruise bookings are expected to eclipse prepandemic highs, with especially strong demand for vacations to major European cities.Paris, for example, experienced a huge jump in North American tourists last year compared with 2021, according to the city’s tourism bureau. Planned air arrivals for July and August of this year climbed by another 14.4 percent — to nearly 5 percent above the 2019 level.“This year is just completely crazy,” said Steeve Calvo, a Parisian tour guide and sommelier whose company — The Americans in Paris — has been churning out visits to Normandy and French wine regions. He attributes some of the jump to a rebound from the pandemic and some to television shows and social media.“‘Emily in Paris’: I never saw so many people in Paris with red berets,” he said, noting that the signature chapeau of the popular Netflix show’s heroine started to pop up on tourists last year. Other newcomers are eager to take coveted photos for their Instagram pages.“In Versailles, the Hall of Mirrors, I call it the Hall of Selfie,” Mr. Calvo said, referring to a famous room in the palace.Robust travel booking numbers and anecdotes from tour guides align with what companies say they are experiencing: From airlines to American Express, corporate executives are reporting a lasting demand for flights and vacations.“The constructive industry backdrop is unlike anything that any of us have ever seen,” Ed Bastian, the chief executive officer at Delta Air Lines, said during a June 27 investor day. “Travel is going gangbusters, but it’s going to continue to go gangbusters because we still have an enormous amount of demand waiting.”Transportation Security Administration data shows that the daily average number of passengers who passed through U.S. airport checkpoints in June 2023 was 2.6 million, 0.5 percent above the June 2019 level, based on an analysis by Omair Sharif at Inflation Insights.And in many foreign airports, the burst of American vacationers is palpable: Customs lines are packed with U.S. tourists, from Paris’s Charles de Gaulle to London’s Heathrow. The latter saw 8 percent more traffic from North America in June 2023 than in June 2019, based on airport data.In a weird way, the rebound in foreign travel may be taking some pressure off U.S. inflation.International flight prices, while surging for some routes, are not a big part of the U.S. Consumer Price Index, which is dominated by domestic flight prices. In fact, airfares in the inflation measure dropped sharply in June from the previous month and are down nearly 19 percent from a year ago.That is partly because fuel is cheaper and partly because airlines are getting more planes into the sky. Many pilots and air traffic controllers had been laid off or had retired, so companies struggled to keep up when demand started to recover after the initial pandemic slump, pushing prices sharply higher in 2022.“We just didn’t have enough seats to go around last year,” Mr. Sharif said, explaining that while personnel issues persist, so far this year the supply situation has been better. “Planes are still totally packed, but there are more planes.”And as people flock abroad, it is sapping some demand from hotels and tourist attractions in the United States. International tourists have yet to return to the United States in full force, so they are not entirely offsetting the wave of Americans headed overseas.Domestic travel is hardly in a free fall — July 4 weekend travel probably set new records, per AAA — but tourists are no longer so insatiable that hotels can keep raising room rates indefinitely. Prices for lodging away from home in the U.S. climbed by 4.5 percent in the year through June, which is far slower than the 25 percent annual increases hotel rooms were posting last spring. There is even elbow room at Disney World.Even if it isn’t inflationary, the jump in foreign travel does highlight something about the U.S. economy: It’s hard to keep U.S. consumers down, especially affluent ones.The Fed has been raising interest rates to cool growth since early 2022. Officials have made it more expensive to borrow money in hopes of creating a ripple effect that would cut into demand and force companies to stop lifting prices so much.Consumption has slowed amid that onslaught, but it hasn’t tanked. Fed officials have taken note, remarking at their last meeting that consumption had been “stronger than expected,” minutes showed.The resilience comes as many households remain in solid financial shape. People who travel internationally skew wealthier, and many are benefiting from a rising stock market and still-high home prices that are beginning to prove surprisingly immune to interest rate moves.Those who do not have big stock or real estate holdings are experiencing a strong job market, and some are still holding onto extra savings built up during the pandemic. And it is not just vacation destinations feeling the momentum: Consumers are still spending on a range of other services.“There’s this last blowoff of spending,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist for the insurance company Nationwide Mutual.It could be that consumer resilience will help the U.S. economy avoid a recession as the Fed fights inflation. As has been the case at American hotels, demand that stabilizes without plummeting could allow for a slow and steady moderation of price increases.But if consumers remain so ravenous that companies find they can still charge more, it could prolong inflation. That’s why the Fed is keeping a close eye on spending.Ms. Bostjancic thinks consumers will pull back starting this fall. They are drawing down their savings, the labor market is cooling, and it may simply take time for the Fed’s rate increases to have their full effect. But when it comes to many types of travel, there is no end in sight yet.“Despite economic headwinds, we’re seeing very strong demand for summer leisure travel,” said Mike Daher, who leads the U.S. Transportation, Hospitality & Services practice at the consulting firm Deloitte.Mr. Daher attributes that to three driving forces. People missed trips. Social media is luring many to new places. And the advent of remote work is allowing professionals — “what we call the laptop luggers,” per Mr. Daher — to stretch out vacations by working a few days from the beach or the mountains. Mr. Calvo, the tour guide, is riding the wave, taking Americans on tours that showcase Paris’s shared history with France and driving them in minivan tours to Champagne. “I have no clue if it’s going to last,” he said. Source link Read the full article

[the-river-person]

Secrets of the Deltarune

Okay so I was taking a closer look at the Deltarune and I started to notice some really weird things. It’s a symbol for the Kingdom of Monsters, right? Wrong. Gerson tells us “That's the Delta Rune, the emblem of our kingdom.The Kingdom...Of Monsters.” Okay so its the same thing, right? Nope. I looked up emblem and its distinction from Symbol. A Symbol represents an idea, a process, or a physical entity. While an Emblem is often an abstract that represents a concept like a moral truth or an allegory. And when it is used for a person, it is usually a King, a saint, or even a deity. An emblem crystallizes in concrete, visual terms some abstraction: a deity, a tribe or nation, or a virtue or vice and can be worn as an identifier if worn as say a patch or on clothing or armor or carried on a flag or banner or shield. So what does it matter? Well Gerson even tells us why. “That emblem actually predates written history.The original meaning has been lost to time...“  Hold up. Predates written history? The beginning of written history is approximately 5500 years ago. Somewhere around 3400 B.C.E. Thats a long time. And the prophecy that goes with the symbol talks about the Underground going empty, so it can only really be as old as The War Between Humans and Monsters. But...when was that? The game doesn’t tell us the exact dates. Well we have a couple clues. At the beginning of the game we have a little cut-scene of the war and then a bit where we see a human going up the mountain only to fall down into the Underground. Most players assume that this is you, beginning your adventure. Except its not. Later in the game, when you SAVE Asriel in the True Pacifist Route, we’re shown another cutscene with the exact same human figure in EXACTLY the same position, being helped by a very  young Asriel and the silhouette of Toriel. It’s Chara, not Frisk. So our date of 201X (2010-2019) takes place long before Frisk even arrives. We don’t know how long before. That really doesn’t help with when they were first thrown down there though. So I took a look at the images before that, of the war. The first image shows a human who is very different from the later pictures. Both the make of the spear and the animal hide-like clothing suggest that it’s probably stone age. The text tells us a very general “Long Ago”when describing how both races ruled the earth together. In the next two images we’re shown the actual war. The crowd of humans have various things like torches and spears. Those diamond type spears are very similar to Roman Pilums. The Human figure with a sword was interesting though. He bore a mantle (cape or cloak) and is sporting a sword. Though there’s not much detail, we can still identify the general time period of the sword. The size isn’t big enough for a proper claymore or longsword, or even a hand and half sword. Since our figure appears to be moving forward, and we can guess that it’s not in a friendly manner given the context, yet still holding the sword in one hand instead of two, it’s probably a one handed broadsword. It also has a cruciform hilt (cross-shaped) that is slightly curved. The blade is quite wide with what appears to be straight edges (based on two images with limited detail). And it has a very narrow Ricasso, an unsharpened length of blade just above the guard or handle. Ricassos were used all throughout history, but they’re pretty notable for the Early Medieval Period in Europe. And the rest of the sword (blade type, length, crossguard, and method of use) is very reminiscent of a Medieval Knightly Arming Sword, the prominent type of sword in that period from the 10th to 13th centuries. So I had to take a closer look at my spears. Turns out, they actually more closely resemble a medieval cavalry lance or javelin. And many Javelins have their root in the style of the Roman Pilums, including the sometimes diamond shaped tips. The sword and mantle of the figure suggest heavily he’s a knight, and backed up by the spear carriers we can guess that its the Early Medieval Period, possibly the beginning of the Romanesque Period. So that would place us all roughly a thousand and at least ten years before Chara fell into the Underground in 201X. Asgore was certainly alive back then. In the Genocide Route Gerson says “Long ago, ASGORE and I agreed that escaping would be pointless...Since once we left, humans would just kill us.“ and in the Post-Pacifist when you go back to talk to everyone he’ll say this when talking about Undyne “I used to be a hero myself, back in the old days. Gerson, the Hammer of Justice.” He even talks about how Undyne would follow him around when he was beating up bad guys, and try to help, by enthusiastically attacking people at random such as the mailman. This tells us that Gerson and Asgore are as old as the original war and both had been part of the battle. And both lived long enough to survive till now. Gerson is quite old looking, while Asgore is not. He explains this by saying that Boss Monsters don’t age unless they have children and then they age as their children grow, otherwise they’ll be the same age forever. But Undyne doesn’t appear to be old. And I started to wonder how long normal monsters lived in comparison to Boss Monsters. A long time for sure. From the Undertale 5th Anniversary Alarm Clock Dialogue we can learn that Asgore once knew a character called Rudy (who also appears in the Deltarune Game), who he met at Hotland University and appeared to be generally the same age as Asgore. Since it takes place in Hotland we know that it was already when they were underground, Asgore was King and was already doing his Santa Clause thing, and that Asgore was trying to find ways to occupy his time aside from actually Ruling. In the dialogue he tells us that Rudy began to look older than him. “I was there for it all. His Youth, his Marriage, his Fatherhood. Then, suddenly, one day... he fell down. ... Rudy... I... was never able to show you the sun.” Monsters can live a long time. But Boss Monsters, as long as they don’t have a child, can live nearly forever as long as they aren’t killed. Based on that, Undyne is probably quite young and Gerson is incredibly old even for a Monster, and yet only recently he’s stopped charging around fighting bad guys. Since Undyne was with him, those bad guys were in the Underground, and his distinction of her attacking not so bad folk like the mailman, means that he was probably in an official capacity to fight crime, such as a guardsman, or maybe captain of the royal guard. So. Even though there’s plenty of time for a prophecy to spring up naturally. We have a number of Monsters who have actually lived that long that would be more than happy to correct mistakes and assumptions. Gerson is quite elderly and is a tad forgetful, but he still knows much. Characters such as Toriel and Asgore are still hale and hearty, and both had witnessed so much. Though we know very little about the character, Elder Puzzler is also implied to be quite aged and knows a great deal about the “Puzzling Roots” of Monster History. You’re probably wondering what all of this is leading to. Well with these characters in place to maintain knowledge of history in the populace, then we have an Underground which created a prophecy AFTER it was trapped there, which leads me to conclude that when the prophecy was created, it must have been referencing something older than the War of Monsters and Humans.

“The original meaning has been lost to time... All we know is that the triangles symbolize us monsters below, and the winged circle above symbolizes... Somethin' else. Most people say it's the 'angel,' from the prophecy...” ‘Angel’. This is when we hear about the angel. We see the Deltarune on Toriel’s clothing and on the Ruins door. As well as behind Gerson himself. The thing he mentions clearly has wings of some kind. Surrounding a ball (note to self: Look into possible connection between mythical ball artifact from the piano room and the Deltarune Emblem). It looks a little like the fairy from the Zelda series. Those “triangles” are the greek letter Delta. That letter has a lot of connections and meanings to it. A river delta is shaped like the letter which is how it got its name. There are a number of maths and science connections. But the two connections you’d be interested in are that a Delta chord is another name for a Major Seventh Chord in music. The soundtrack of Undertale uses these chords to do fantastic things with the tone and aesthetic of its leitmotifs, changing them from a happy or hopeful tune, to a dark and despairing one without actually changing the melody. And in a subfield of Set Theory, a branch of mathematics and philosophical logic, it is used to calculate and examines the conditions under which one or the other player of a game has a winning strategy, and the consequences of the existence of such strategies. The games studied in set theory are usually Gale–Stewart games—two-player games of perfect information (each player, when making any decision, is perfectly informed of all the events that have previously occurred, including the "initialization event" of the game (e.g. the starting hands of each player in a card game)) in which the players make an infinite sequence of moves and there are no draws. But why is one of them turned upside down? I started looking things up again. Turns out there is such a symbol. The Nabla symbol is the Greek Letter Delta only inverted so that it appears upside down. Its name comes from the Phoenician harp shape, though its also called the “Del”. A musical connection is exactly what Toby would do. But its main use is in mathematics, where it is a mathematical notation to represent three different operators which make equations infinitely easier to write. These equations are all concerned with what is called Physical Mathematics. That is... Mathematics that calculate and have to do with measuring the physical world. Why is that relevant? Well the difference between humans and monsters is that humans have physical bodies while monsters are made primarily of magic. Well I also discovered that the Delta symbol for the ancient Greeks was sometimes used to as an abbreviation for the word  δύση , which meant the West in the compass points. West, westerly, sunset, twilight, nightfall, dusk, darkness, decline, end of a day. All this symbolism for a couple of triangles. There’s entire books devoted to them. And he calls the whole symbol, deltas and angel alike, the Delta RUNE. Whats a rune? Well a rune is a letter, but specifically a letter from the writing of one of the Germanic Languages before the adoption of the Latin alphabet. Interestingly... the Greek Letter Delta does NOT qualify as a Rune. In any stretch of the word. I searched for hours. What I DID find was the etymological origins of the word Rune. It comes from a Proto-Germanic word “rūnō“ which means something along the lines of “whisper, mystery, secret,  secret conversation, letter”. Interesting. So since its paired up with the Delta... it could be taken to mean “The Secret of the Delta” or “The Delta’s Secret”. If we make a few assumptions we might even get something like “The Secret of the West” or “The Mystery of the Twilight” or numerous other variations that have different connotations. It’s conjecture, certainly, and possibly a few stretches. But it is certainly there to think about. My thoughts centered around the positioning of the letters. The idea that the one facing up represented Humanity, and the two ordinary Deltas were Monsters. With the Angel above them all. Or rather, SOMETHING above them all. We have no proof that the idea of an Angel existed before the Underground’s prophecy. I like to think it did because usually that sort of thing draws on previously existing beliefs and ideas. For all we know the symbol could represent an abstract idea that governed both monsters and humans. Like “Kill or be killed” or “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” or other basic idiomatic ideologies of that sort. Other than the realization that the Deltarune is older than the prophecy and the Underground, I didn’t have a concrete idea of what the Emblem actually means. Just a lot of theories and connective ideas. But there’s certainly a lot to be found. I don’t really know how much thought Toby actually put into this, but he’s quite well known for secrets within secrets. So its possible he knew all this going in. If he’s anything like me, and I am notorious for writing this sort of twisting references within references within references into my stories, then he’s probably at least aware of an existing connection. Its quite probably that the Deltarune is exactly what Gerson tells us. An emblematic set of symbols that is used to represent the continuing Kingdom of Monsters and has been since before written history. But as he says... its so old that it might have had a different meaning originally, whatever idea the Monsters wanted to remember, wanted to uphold enough to use it for their royal family and their kingdom, a reminder. Of something, or someone.

[shuahoonie]

holidays with tom [tom holland]

PAIRING: tom holland x female!reader 

SUMMARY: life isn’t exactly back to normal. with another lockdown in place and the holiday season is vastly approaching, you and tom are stuck in quarantine with each other the problem? there was supposed to be at least 5 of you in that house and tom is the last person you want to be with. shouldn’t be too bad right? 

WARNINGS: in no particular order swearing—err foul language lmao, sexual innuendos, things get heated but not that much??? exuding sexual tension but also fluff??? alcohol consumption, a series of bad decisions??? idk writing this made me experience the 5 stages of grief tbh lmao it’s not that bad I promise lmao

WORD COUNT: 6.9k! 

A/N: hello and happy new year! I was supposed to post this during Christmas Day but guess who got into a writing rut—yet again. I didn’t want to abandon this because I actually had fun writing it. I hope you all had a festive and safe holiday. I know things have been hard but I still hope you guys enjoyed the holiday. 

2020 has finally came to an end and we’re all ending it the same way when the pandemic started—staying at home, hopefully following the appropriate health measures. I can only hope that 2021 is a brighter and hopeful year for all of us.

stay safe, sending u all my love. 

gif credits: @underoos-shield​ 

vanessa’s masterlist | taglist form 

Two hours. It’s been two hours since you found out that you were going to spend your holidays alone. You were aware that you weren’t going to spend your holidays with your family as you normally would, embracing the fact that working in a different country whilst in the middle of a pandemic was going to be challenging. 

Working in the film industry, constantly visiting sets while still living in a pandemic means that you threw away your chances of being home for the holidays. However, you weren’t entirely the only one who shares a similar struggle. 

“We should still do something for Christmas, you know,” Tom muttered as he watched you lay down on the sofa, your head is supported by the armrest. 

See—it should’ve been you, Ophelia, Alex, William, and Tom in that AirBnB, not just you and Tom.

The five of you reside abroad, however, you all had to fly to Los Angeles for work. You all collectively knew that it would be irresponsible to fly home for the holidays and it wouldn’t make any sense as you would all fly back for work anyway. 

The five of you had a brilliant idea of renting an AirBnB for the holidays since you were all in each other’s personal and work bubble anyway. Obviously, the three of them bailed as they’ve decided to stay with their partners instead, leaving you and Tom alone—which is the last thing you’ve wanted. 

“There’s just us two, Tom,” You replied as you sent a lengthy text to Ophelia, telling and reminding them about what happened between you and Tom.  “I’m not entirely sure if it’s worth anything if we did plan on doing something remotely festive.” 

There are four more days till Christmas and if you were being honest, the last time you felt festive was on the 18th of December...of 2019. 

“Surely there’s something we can do, right?” Tom’s optimism still shined beneath him. “This year has already been shitty enough, we don’t need to feed more into that.” 

The three dots bubble immediately popped up on your message thread with Ophelia as soon as you sent your passive-aggressive rant. Your focus was now on your phone. 

Suddenly, Tom’s face appeared on top of yours—his face was definitely close enough that it’s not CDC approved. He was standing on side of the sofa, both of his palms planted against the armrest as he loomed over you. 

“What do you and your family do during Christmas?” He dared to ask as if he wasn’t towering over you.

Your eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. “Uh—give each other personal space?” You answered out of sheer reflex. You always had a problem with keeping your mouth shut, especially when it sounds rude to other people. In your defence, being unable to do so has helped you put people back in place. 

To be fair, you were used to people standing at least 6 ft away from you ever since the pandemic started. 

Tom’s cheeks went bright red. “’m sorry,” He apologized, giving you a shy smile and scratched the back of his neck. You muttered a quick apology too, for acting so rashly. 

You rose from your position and sat upright instead. “Well, we never do anything special during Christmas,” You said as you threw your hair into a bun. “We usually just go to the movies on Christmas Day because that’s the only thing you can do back when life was normal.” 

Tom nodded understandingly as if he was taking this into account. Now you were curious. 

“Do you guys do anything special for Christmas?” You asked him. 

“Well, on Christmas Day, we would usually just lounge around the house and use it as a chance for me and my family to catch up,” Tom replied. “However, on Christmas Eve, my mum always made sure my brothers and I would have this scavenger hunt to look for our gifts—It’s really fun, actually.” Tom smiled sadly. 

You could easily see how Tom was genuinely broken about not being able to be around his family over the holidays. Heck—he really just misses his family. But who wouldn’t? Britney Spears didn’t sing the line “my loneliness is killing me” for nothing. 

“I’m sorry,” was all you could say. Aside from biting your tongue, being able to easily comfort people was one of your weaknesses too. 

“Oh, there’s nothing to be sorry about, darling.” Tom quickly dismissed the genuine heartbreak he was trying to hide. “We’re all making sacrifices and we chose to be responsible for the benefit of other people.” 

“Yeah, I know.” You said softly. “We’ll just try our best to make something out of this holiday season. I mean—we have to or else we’ll welcome 2021 with a fresh face of misery.” 

“I’m sorry!” Ophelia pouted at the screen as they mindlessly walked around their partner’s place, something that most people do when they’re on the phone with someone. “I genuinely forgot about what happened between you and Tom.” 

“Well, Ollie, it seems like you weren’t the only one.” You replied, adjusting your glasses. Tom seems to be genuinely fine around you, no awkward tensions or anything. If anything, it’s just you who feels weird around him. “But I guess that’s a good thing right?” 

Ophelia forced a smile but they couldn’t, for the life of them, say anything about it. 

“Oh my god,” You sighed “Seriously, Ollie?” 

“It’s just—how could he forget?! You were literally on top of him as I recall and that very much left a permanent image on my mind. I—You know, I really tried my best to forget that ever existing in my mind. So really, if anything, it’s your fault.” Ophelia rambled on. 

“I—I wasn’t on top of him. That’s absurd! I was merely pressed against him” You said defensively, in which Ophelia just laughed atrociously. “Why am I friends with you again?!” You asked rhetorically, bewildered by the fact that you two lasted this long. 

“First of all, that is a hate crime. Second, I’m cool—like everyone wants to be my friend and you should be glad that I gave you the privilege to be even on a nickname basis as me.” 

You rolled your eyes at them. Despite the never-ending banter, you were grateful to have Ophelia as your friend. 

“But seriously, Y/N,” Ophelia said, “You can always just stay with me and Ericka. She’ll be glad to have you over for the holidays.”

“Ollie, as much as I love spending time with you two—I can’t stand being a third-wheel, especially when it comes to the both of you. You two are inseparable when you’re together.” You replied. “I appreciate the offer though.” You smiled at her. 

“I’m just saying—” Ophelia replied, shrugging her shoulder. “Unless you and Tom really want to have the house by yourselves.” They sang teasingly.

“Ophelia!” You gasped. 

“What?” They feigned innocence. “I gave you an option to stay with us! Plus, I know Alex and Will are would’ve asked you to stay with them if they had any idea what happened between you two.” 

“I can’t leave him!” You started to whisper “Tom seems genuinely bummed being here. I can’t just do that to him.” 

It’s as if a light came on inside them. Ophelia started to smirk and you recognized that smirk from anywhere. For christ’s sake, their eyes twinkled like Christmas lights. It drove you nuts. “I fucking knew it.” 

“What?” 

“You like him don’t you?!” They teased, but all you could do was blush. 

“I do not!” You denied it as you could still feel the burning heat emitting from your cheeks. 

“His tongue is that good huh?” Ophelia decided to pry even further. They clearly find enjoyment as you squirmed your way out of this conversation. 

“Bitch, I am ending this call.” That was all you could say. Even if you did find a smart retort, it was no use, especially with Ophelia. They can see right through you and there’s no point in trying to hide it. 

“Honestly, Y/N, we’re living through a pandemic. If there’s any time to make any rash decisions, it’s now. Go get that dick, bih—” 

You drowned out whatever Ophelia was trying to say with your goodbyes and proceeded to end the call. The one time you asked your friend to be serious and they come up with this. 

So—what really happened with you and Tom? 

It was two years ago. You were at a party that you didn’t even plan on attending. However, you were dragged by Ophelia and their partner, Ericka—your new friends in the area. You couldn’t say no to them, they were your first friend in LA! 

You thought about it though, saying no. But when you got a message from your friend back in Canada sending a photo of your boyfriend ex-boyfriend (the same guy who had ghosted you ever since you moved to LA), swapping spits with another girl, you suddenly had the strong urge to drink until you die of alcohol poisoning.

You were burning with anger that you really felt tears pricking your eyes. You were so close to crying or punching someone—whichever comes first.  

One thing’s for sure, though, you weren’t going to cry over a man. So what did you do? “Ophelia, where’s the booze?!” You asked your friend whose eyes nearly popped out of their head. 

Well, you weren’t really going to punch a stranger. Though you felt this burning sense of violence, it’d be much more satisfying to punch the living daylights out on your ex. 

“Y/N, honey, are you alright?” That line always puts on the waterworks, no?  Ophelia was clearly concerned about your newfound thirst for alcohol. 

You furiously wiped the tears off your face. “Um just found out my boyfriend—er ex-boyfriend, who stopped talking to me as soon as I moved here, is seeing someone else now? I don’t know, am I allowed to feel angry when I don’t even know if we’re still together as soon I moved? Fuck—” You tried to explain as you wiped every tear that left your eyes. 

“Oh—of course, hon.” Ericka who handed you a drink. You weren’t exactly sure what it is, but you knew it has alcohol in it and that’s all that matters. You gulped the entire thing and you wanted more. “Y/N, you need to slow down.”

“Are you sure you want to stay? I mean we can crash at our place, eat take-outs, watch movies and be totally disconnected from the world.” Ophelia suggested, but you shook your head furiously. 

“No, I—I’m ok.” You answered “I can’t let the both of you be stuck in misery with me. I need this. I’ll get drunk and if I'm up for it, I’ll hook up with someone. It’s not a healthy coping method but I really want this night to be a series of bad decisions. I don’t want to be myself, even just tonight.”

 So that’s what you did. You were going from one drink to another in record time. Both Ophelia and Ericka kept an eye on you, just in case someone tried to take advantage of your drunken state. 

You were talking to some guy you met in the kitchen, one thing led to another and next thing you knew, you were making out with this dude in someone’s bathroom. Ophelia and Ericka were drunk enough to pester the guy you were making out with but not drunk 

As you were propped on top of the sink and your legs wrapped around his waist, you felt every bit of his lips explore the side of your neck as his hands explored every inch of your body. With his hand under your shirt and his fingers tracing every part of your skin, it just reminded you of how lonely you were. 

Here you were, a thousand miles away from home, all alone just so you could do the one thing you really love. Your family would sometimes call to check up on you but it just wasn’t the same. Your ex tried to guilt you into staying in Canada, but you couldn’t do that. You love what you do and you love yourself too. 

You were willing to risk everything, even if happiness came at a price. 

Now you were crying, and the guy you were making out with definitely noticed. 

“I’m sorry, am I making you uncomfortable?” He asked as he pulled down your shirt. 

“No—no, I’m just—” You tried to calm yourself down. “I’m not sure if I want to do this anymore.” 

“That’s alright,” He mumbled wiping the tears off your face. “Do you want to talk about it? You seem rattled.” 

“It’s just I’m so tired of pretending everything is alright—that I’m okay being alone, that I don’t need anyone. But it’s just so hard because I’m—” You sobbed “I’m so fucking lonely. I’m so tired of being alone.” 

The guy tucked the stray piece of hair behind your ears as he carefully wiped your tears with his thumb. He was just silent as he listened to you sob. 

“I’m sorry, I know you definitely didn’t come to this party to watch a complete stranger cry over something stupid.” You couldn’t even look him in the eye, you were embarrassed as this was the first time you felt really vulnerable—especially in front of a stranger. 

“No, you’re alright.” He tried to console you “I think that’s the beauty in strangers, no? You can act and do whatever you want in front of them because there’s a slim chance you’ll ever see them again.” 

You were definitely drunk enough that trying to make sense of who the person was a struggle enough of itself. You tried your best to look at the guy but your vision was getting hazy and you could feel your head thumping that focusing made you feel like you want to crack your head in half. 

A loud knock on the door caused you two to jump. “I’m coming in,” Ophelia yelled and opened the door. Ophelia looked at the guy for a while, trying to make sense of who he was before their eyes widened. “I remember now—You’re Tom Holland.”

Imagine your surprise when you found out that you were going to work with Tom Holland for a while. You tried your best to avoid Tom at work but of course, that didn’t work out. He never brought up what happened between you two and you assumed he probably forgot all about it.

You tried to rationalize that he meets a lot of people every day. Surely, one failed hook-up wasn’t worth remembering (especially with alcohol involved) and you held on to that. 

At least that’s what makes you sleep at night and also one of the reasons why you considered spending the holidays with him. However, you were also expecting your crew friends to stay with you and not just Tom. 

“Y/N, did you like the gift? It’s from me and Ericka!” Ophelia asked. It was the next day and you two were just chatting on FaceTime. You were sorting out your closet out of sheer boredom. You figured if you were going to stay here for three weeks, the least you could do was sort your clothes out. 

You stared at the neatly wrapped box that Ophelia and Ericka dropped off earlier this morning. “I haven’t opened it yet.” You said as you showed them the box. “I wanna open it till Christmas.” 

“Oh my god, just open it. Christmas doesn’t exist this year, babe.” Ophelia waved their hand, encouraging you to open it. 

“Fine,” You gave in. You opened the box and saw a very lush and well-made lingerie set. “Ophelia, what the fuck” You gasped. You held out the lingerie in front of the camera. 

“Y/N, I definitely outdid myself this time.” Ophelia sighed happily, staring at the screen. “Try it on!”

“Ollie, this is gorgeous but when am I ever going to use this?” You asked holding it out on your body and looking at the mirror. 

“Uh—you’re stuck at home with your failed but also potential hookup,” Ollie suggested, wiggling their eyebrows. “Who knows what might happen?”  

You rolled your eyes at them. “Bold of you assume that something might happen.”

“Something won’t happen if you don’t try that one,” Ophelia said. “C’mon, I wanna see.” 

You shook your head and went out of frame in order to strip off your clothes. You tried on the lingerie—it’s a black lace teddy with a very exposing back. IT fit you perfectly—it accentuated your figure and definitely showed off your boobs. You weren’t really fond of showing off your body but you still tried your best to show it to your friend. 

“What do you think?” You asked, stepping back to the frame. 

“You look gorgeous, babe!” Ophelia squealed. “I knew I made the right choice with black.” 

“I still don’t know where I should wear this though—” You were stopped mid-sentence when your door swung open. 

“I know what we’re doing this—Oh shit. I’m so sorry,” Tom stood there, frozen, his eyes widened and immediately shut the door. 

You couldn’t even say anything. You were frozen in shock.

“Was that Tom?” Ophelia asked from the call, briefly forgetting that you were talking to them through FaceTime. 

You nodded slowly, unable to talk.

“What did he think?” Ophelia asked excitedly. 

You snapped out of this haze. “Ollie,” you groaned. “I think he was mentally scarred. 

“What do you mean scarred? You look great!” Ophelia said, appalled. “If he doesn’t think you look banging in that lingerie then it’s his loss.” 

“I gotta go, I need to change.” You said, bidding Ophelia goodbye. “Thanks for the gift, Ollie. Tell Ericka thanks too.” 

You ended the call and changed into comfier clothes. You couldn’t help but wonder how on earth you’re going to face Tom now that he’s seen you practically naked. Well, it’s not like that’s a new sight. He did see you with your bra on when you were making out in the bathroom that one time. But still! 

Are you actually going to spend your Christmas in your room?

It was the next day and there are only two more days till Christmas. You spent the entirety of last night in your room after the incident between you and Tom. 

You were about to make yourself some coffee when you found Tom in the kitchen, making tea for himself. You stood there frozen, wondering if you were going to proceed to the kitchen or just run back to your room since Tom hasn’t noticed you—

“Oh—good morning, Y/N.” So close. 

You smiled at Tom and said, “Good morning, Tom.” 

You grabbed a coffee pod and waited for the Keurig to make your coffee. You leaned back against the counter and fiddled with your phone—all in the hopes that things move quickly and for this awkward tension to be over. 

Honestly, why were you so worked up about it? People have seen you in a bikini before and that’s no different from lingerie. If anything, lingerie is itchier and has lace. You should be able to feel confident in your own body and you shouldn’t have to mind what other people think of it. It’s yours alone and it’s your opinion that should matter—

“I’m terribly sorry about last night, Y/N.” Tom apologized, sincerity was written all over his face. “I should’ve knocked and I just got so bloody excited about what we can do over Christmas—but that’s no excuse for what I’ve done. What I did was incredibly intrusive and you deserve a proper apology.”

“Tom, I—”

“I wanted to apologize last night—over dinner—but you didn’t come down to eat, so I figured you didn’t want to talk. “ He rambled on. 

“Tom—” 

“But even then I should’ve asked you to come down and eat dinner because that’s what any decent human would do! And yet I didn’t. God—I’m just doing one wrong thing after another—” 

“Tom, listen to me.” 

“Hm?” He finally snapped out and looked at you in the eyes. 

“It’s okay. It was an honest mistake and you sincerely apologized, and for me, that’s enough.” You smiled softly at him. “So—what’s this thing you planned over Christmas?” 

“I was thinking we could do both our family traditions over the next two days. My family and I usually do a roast dinner and open our Christmas stockings on Christmas Eve. Then on the 25th, we can watch movies all day just like you do with your family.” Tom grinned, clearly satisfied with his plan. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s a great idea,” You smiled “However, I don’t think we have any ingredients for a roast dinner and we don’t really have Christmas stockings. Well—I don’t have any Christmas stockings and stocking stuffers.” 

“That’s true,” Tom mumbled “But I have to do the food shopping anyway. We’re running low on food and I couldn't really book one of those online delivery things that most groceries now offer.” 

You nodded. “Okay, so I guess I have to get the house sorted then.” 

When you two first arrived in this AirBnB a few days ago, it had already been decorated for Christmas. It had a massive tree in the living room decorated with stunning and intricately-themed ornaments. Christmas garlands were wrapped around the stair-bannisters and foliages were placed by the fireplace and the tables. 

All you really had to do was clean the place—do a bit of vacuuming and get things nice and neat for Christmas. It didn’t take you too long to do it too. It had only been a couple of minutes since Tom left to do the food shopping and you prayed to the gods that he doesn’t get too much attention whilst out. 

You figured you might as well do some last-minute shopping while Tom was out, so you can grab gifts for him as well. After all, this whole thing was orchestrated by Tom and you don’t even have anything to give him for his stockings. 

You arrived at your AirBnB a tad later than Tom. He was in the kitchen putting things away when he saw you walk through the door. 

“Ah, I was wondering whether I spooked you with my plan,” Tom commented, making you chuckle and roll your eyes. 

“Trust me, I would’ve made it very obvious if you did.” You replied, earning a laugh from Tom. “I went out to do my last-minute shopping. Granted, it’s not ideal since we’re still living through a pandemic, but there’s not actually that many people where I went to considering it’s the Christmas rush.” 

You made sure to hide the stuff you bought using the handmade tote bags that a friend gave you for your birthday. No retail bags, no clue. “How did you survive the groceries? I bet it’s busy out there.” 

“Yeah, it was.” Tom chuckled, scratching the back of his head. “Remind me to never do that again for Christmas.” 

“Sure,” You said, “That is if I spend another Christmas with you.” You said jokingly, hoping that Tom didn’t find that rude. 

“You’ll never know,” Tom shrugged. “What if you liked our Christmas this year and you’d be begging to spend Christmas with me and my family in London,” Tom smirked, playing along. 

“Yeah, right.” You scoffed playfully, crossing your arms. “If anyone’s begging, it’s going to be you.”

Tom stepped closer, “Wanna bet?” He whispered, a teasing look in his eyes. “Whoever has the most fun during our respective holiday traditions would have to spend the holidays with them next year.” 

“Oh, you’re on, Holland.” You took a step closer. “We will both film our holidays for the entire two days and then we’ll ask Ophelia, Alex, and Will to vote whoever looks like they had the most fun.”

“Okay,” Tom nodded “But no editing! We’ll give them raw footage so there are no chances of tampering.” 

You laughed but you agreed anyway. “Of course, we’ll give them hours of footage. The least we could do is make them sit through hours of content after they ditched us all alone on the holidays.” 

Tom gave a broad smile. “Let the festivities begin.” 

It was the 24th of December—Christmas Eve. You spent the entirety of last night wrapping Tom’s presents for later. Not that you despise Christmas, but it’s been a while since you were actually excited to celebrate it. It was pretty clear that the magic of Christmas dies once you grow up. 

Today was different; you were looking forward to whatever Tom has installed for tonight. 

You went downstairs to make some breakfast only to be greeted by Tom blasting Christmas music and preparing some ingredients for breakfast in the kitchen. 

“Good morning, Y/N, happy Christmas Eve,” Tom greeted with a huge grin. “Say, hi to the camera.” 

“Oh, we’re starting this early, huh?” You asked, putting your hair into a loose ponytail. 

“Why of course, we have to make the best out of this,” Tom said, holding the camera to your face. “I made you coffee.” Tom handed you a cup of coffee. 

“Are you using my love for coffee as an advantage?” You tried to hide your smile while drinking your coffee. 

“Obviously not,” Tom feigned his innocence. “I obviously did not know you were obsessed with coffee—it’s not like I don’t see you on set without one.” He mumbled in which you definitely heard, giving him a smack on the head. “Ow! I’m kidding.” He laughed.

You rolled your eyes at him. “So, what’s for breakfast?” 

“We’re going to make french crèpes,” Tom replied and propped the camera on the kitchen island, facing the two of you. 

“Do you know how to make french crèpes?” You asked, washing your hands. 

Tom blinked, almost trying to decide whether he wants to be honest or impressive. “Do you know how to make french crèpes?” He returned the question. 

“Oh honey, my mom resents me in the kitchen.” You replied, taking a sip from your coffee. “But you know, I manage.” You murmured.

“That’s giving me a lot of hope, darling, thank you.” He said half-heartedly. 

“Shut up,” You nudged him playfully, rolling your eyes. “Tom, honestly, most of the footage is just us bantering for 20 minutes.” 

“To be fair, that’s part of the fun.” Tom smiled. “Okay, I think you just mix all of these in a bowl. Start with the dry ingredients first.” He said, looking at the recipe on his phone.

“Okay, that shouldn’t be too hard,” You commented pouring the ingredients into the bowl. As you started all of the ingredients together, you noticed small lumps forming in the batter. “Tom, did you sift the dry ingredients by chance?” 

“You were supposed to sift it?” He asked, completely clueless. 

You nodded slowly. Panic was now clearly painted on his face. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.” You tried to reassure him. 

It was not fine. The first time you two tried to pour the batter in the pan, you burnt the entire thing. It’s not even the cute, lightly burnt crepe. It was activating the smoke alarm-burnt crepe. 

The next one was pancake-like. The next one after that had pocket flours on the crepes because you two didn’t sift your dry ingredients beforehand. You ran out of the batter when you two finally got the consistency right—you managed to get one proper crepe from the entire batter. 

“I feel like Sam would probably curse me out as soon as he finds out I fucked up a simple crepe,” Tom said, delicately filling the crepe with creme and berries. “My brother’s done so well in culinary school.” He cut a piece with his fork and brought it to your mouth.

“Well, you can’t have everything.” You said taking a bite out of the crepe. “This is better than the last one.” 

Tom nodded, taking a bite of it himself. “It’s not as tasty as Sam’s but I’ll take it.” 

“Now, I’m curious as to what your brother’s cooking tastes like.” You commented taking another bite from the crepe. 

“I guess I’ll just take you home to London to find out,” Tom teased with an annoying grin. 

“As long as I’m being fed, I’m fine with it.” You remarked. What in god’s name are you are you two playing?!

The day rolled by very quickly. It was already evening when you finished wrapping the presents for your friends. You plan on dropping it off tomorrow before you persuade Tom to glue yourselves on the couch for the entire day. 

You grabbed all of Tom’s gifts—Christmas stocking included— when you went downstairs, only to be greeted by someone yelling at Tom through his phone. 

“I did everything right, Sam. I don’t know why you’re yelling.” Tom yelled back at his phone. His back was turned against you as he was putting away the pots and pans that he used. 

You quietly walked up behind him and said calmly, “Why are you yelling?” 

Tom probably jumped six feet away from you, making you laugh. You always forget that he gets scared easily. “Holy shit, don’t scare me like that, Y/N.” Tom breathed out, putting a hand over his chest. 

“I’m sorry,” You said whilst laughing. “I promise I won’t do it again.” Tom rolled his eyes, murmuring something about you being insincere about it. 

“Please do it again!” You heard, whom you assume is Sam, say from the background. You looked at Tom’s phone that’s propped on the island and saw his brothers on FaceTime. 

You beamed at them. “Any recommendations?” You asked, hearing Tom groan behind you. 

“Well, he hates—” 

“This is the last thing I want in 2020, for my brothers and Y/N to conspire against me,” Tom said loudly on purpose, drowning his brothers' voices.

“Tom, don’t be rude. Let your brothers finish—” Tom put his hand against your mouth. 

“I’ll call you guys later,” Tom said “Wave goodbye, Y/N.” He used his free hand to grab your hand and forced a wave towards his brothers. The call soon came to an end and you could only roll your eyes at Tom. You seem to do that a lot around him. You also do a lot of that when you try to hide your feelings towards a person you like but that’s beside the point. 

“So are we going to have dinner first or are we going to do presents first?” You asked fixing your Christmas sweater, a gift from your parents since you and your family usually wear matching sweaters for Christmas. “Or are you the type to wait until Christmas Day to open presents?” 

“We can do the Christmas stockings after dinner tonight, then do the presents tomorrow, if you’d like,” Tom answered with his arms crossed. 

You shrugged, telling him it doesn’t matter since you don’t really go all out on Christmas. Your family on the other hand—the house is always full of people, especially since most of your extended family are usually around during the holidays. You had this ongoing game you made for yourself whether or not you’ll be able to greet everyone with the number of people in the house. 

You could only guess how quiet your family’s Christmas is going to be. You definitely needed to call your parents later. 

“Is the sweater that itchy, Y/N?” You heard Tom ask, breaking away from your thoughts. 

“Huh?” You asked, confused. You didn’t even notice that you’ve been scratching yourself subconsciously. 

“You’ve been scratching yourself since I saw you.” Tom said, chuckling. “It’s a cute sweater on you.” 

You smirked. “That reminds me—I got something for you, Tom.” Tom raised his brow as you grabbed the bag you stashed behind the tree. “Actually my parents got this for you. A little thank you gift apparently for having the tolerance to stay with me over the holidays—as if you had a choice.” You mumbled the last part. 

Tom curiously opened the bag and there revealed a matching sweater such as yours. This year’s sweater was green and had red tinsel all over it, probably the reason why you’re itchy. The real kicker is that—

“No way,” Tom gasped “It lights up?!” He asked laughing. It lights up. 

“Yeah, I don’t recommend turning that on. I did it earlier and I’m pretty sure I was about to combust—it’s a real fire hazard.” You replied, enjoying the genuine joy that Tom is showing on his face. 

“Oh but we have to turn the lights on when we take pictures,” He commented as he put on the sweater. “Thanks, Y/N.” He said softly, surprising you with a hug. 

It’s the first real physical contact that you two had ever since that night when you made out and you were pretty adamant that people were just making up this notion of having butterflies in their stomach—they weren’t. 

Tom’s roast dinner went surprisingly well. You kept teasing him that it’s Sam that you had to thank because you knew that Tom wouldn’t last in the kitchen without his brother’s instructions. Tom pouted the whole time. You eventually had to tell him 

“It was sweet.” You told him as you helped him clear out the plates. 

Tom was confused. 

“I don’t think I’ve known someone that went through hell and back just to make a great effort Christmas dinner —even if it means getting yelled at by your brother.” You said, smiling softly at him. “I mean it’s just us two, really. We don’t even have to do this.”

“Think that’s the reason why I wanted to do it,” Tom replied. Now you’re confused. “It’s because it’s the two of us—that’s why I wanted to do it.” 

As soon as you heard those words come out of Tom’s lips, you tried your best to stay calm. To say that you weren’t overwhelmed with emotions would be a huge lie. For someone who couldn’t hold their tongue, you were speechless. Tom’s giving you a run for your money and you weren’t exactly thrilled about it. 

After dinner, you and Tom opened your stocking presents. The presents were pretty tame at the start—you both got each other socks, which was hilarious but greatly appreciated. You love socks, especially comfy and cushiony ones. You came to learn that Tom does too, which prompted you two to wear the socks immediately. 

You got him candy canes, he got you chocolates. You also snuck in those small, in-flight alcohol bottles in there too—which he ended up loving. He got you those 10-pack skincare face masks, in which you let out a huge gasp, making him laugh. 

“Oh, we have to use this at some point!” You exclaimed happily “Like, we need to have a spa night—where we just watch movies, doing face masks, eating takeouts. Oh, that’s the dream!” You sighed happily. 

“We still have two weeks left till we go back to work, I'm sure we can find the time to do that,” Tom said with a permanent smile on his face, watching you with pure joy made him feel like he accomplished something big. 

You got him one of those Instax polaroid cameras—true, it was a bit too much for a stocking stuffer especially since the box definitely stood out against the stocking, but you figured he’ll like it. 

“Darling, this is too much but I’m thankful,” Tom commented as he took out the camera from the box. “I can’t wait to use this and keep memories using it—why don’t we start right now?! Let’s take a photo of us and our matching sweaters!”  

Tom took a lot of photos of you two, in the end. A couple of overexposed photos, one with the matching sweaters, one with your faces pressed against each other, one with your faces way too close to the camera, and one where he gave you a kiss on your cheek (he asked if that’s okay, of course, you said yes. it’s not like he hasn’t kissed you before— still no conversations about that, by the way). It was a good thing you got him at least 3 boxes of those 20 pack films in his stockings as well. 

The real kicker was Tom’s “small” stocking present for you. He got you this dainty, gold necklace with a crescent moon charm. You were pretty sure it was expensive because of the teal box it came with. 

“Stop,” You gasped “Tom, now this—this is too much.” You stressed out. “I can’t have this. Nope, you have to return this.”

Tom shrugged as if it was nothing. “You deserve it. Darling, you deserve something nice after this shitty year.” 

“Tom, I’m serious. This is too much.” 

“I’m serious too, Y/N. Keep it, please. I’d be offended if you don’t.”

After the roller coaster of emotions due to the stocking presents, you gave your parents a call to wish them a merry Christmas. They insisted to do a video call because they wanted to see Tom in the family sweater—which your mom wouldn’t stop gushing about. 

“I think your mum loves me,” Tom whispered closely in your ear. He didn't have to try too hard. With the laptop propped up on top of the coffee table, you two were sitting close together on the living room floor—knees touching, maximum close skin contact. CDC would never approve. 

“Yeah, I think it’s the accent,” You mumbled jokingly. 

Tom moved his head to take a good look at you, smiling. You could feel his eyes burning your skin. Why does he have to look at you like that? Why does he have to be this close?

The initial video call with your parents turned into a whole family reunion when you found out they set up a group call with your extended family. Imagine the dread and fear in your eyes when you heard your one aunt ask, 

“Finally, Y/N, is that your boyfriend?” 

Your eyes widened as you stuttered to say your defence, making Tom chuckle. You frowned at him and nudged him saying, “Don’t laugh, tell them no or I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“No, unfortunately, I’m not,” Tom replied, laughing. “However, I do believe we make a cute couple, don’t we?” He teased, earning an earnest yes from your mom. 

You could only wish for the floor to swallow you whole. 

As the clocks rolled to twelve, it was officially Christmas. You and Tom figured you might as well start opening gifts again because Christmas Day is going to be a drag for the two of you. 

“Okay, start with this.” You said as you handed him a gift bag. You didn’t give him a lot of gifts for the actual Christmas Day because you went all out on the stuffers. 

“Pyjamas?” He asked with a grin. You made a signal for him to give you a minute. You ran to your room and changed into pyjamas. 

“Not just pyjamas, Tom, but matching pyjamas!” You exclaimed, laughing. “I saw it and figured we should do this for my day.”

“Sick!” Tom laughed. Tom got into his pair of pyjamas as well and of course, he didn’t forget to pull out his new polaroid camera to take a photo of you two. “Shit, I forgot to film our entire Christmas Eve.” He said as he saw the camera that was still sitting on the kitchen island from earlier that morning. 

You shrugged. “I’m pretty sure you’ll win either way. Just that content from the breakfast crepes was enough to secure your place.” You said jokingly.

“All I’m hearing is that you’re going to spend Christmas with me in London next year.” Tom sang teasingly. 

“Yeah, maybe bringing you to our big Christmas holidays is a bad idea.” You wondered out loud. 

“I like your family,” Tom commented with a smile “and I think they will love having me there for the holidays.” 

“That would be a nightmare.” You mumbled to yourself. 

The rest of the night dragged on. You and Tom finished the rest of your gifts—you got him a watch, he got you a vinyl player. You two managed to watch the first Harry Potter film before you called it a night. 

You were about to head into your room when you heard Tom say, “Mistletoe.”

“Hm?” You hummed, confused. He placed a finger under your chin and gently tilted your head. There you saw a mistletoe hanging by one of the light fixtures. 

“How did that even—” 

“Can I kiss you?” Tom asked, cupping the sides of your face. 

“Hm?” Tom was definitely giving you a run for your money. How can a girl with a speech turn speechless?

“Can I kiss you?” He asked more softly. All you could do was nod. For if you even dare to open your mouth, all of this would cease to exist.  

His lips gently touched yours and then soon moulded into one. It was soft, sweet—familiar. His lips were something you never thought about—at least not a lot but you craved it. You crave his lips, his touch, him. You were riding a new high and you thanked every single god that you were sober to remember this—because this, this is something you want to cherish. 

“You told me you’re tired of being alone,” Tom whispered against your lips. “You don’t have to be anymore. Not when you have me, not ever.”

PERMANENT TAGLIST: @quaksonhehe @dark-infernal-instruments @trustfundparker @emsma11​ @tomshufflepuff​ @spider-babe​ @goodgirlgonetom​

[beevean]

SEGA and its most recent Sonamy side – more canon than ever

[Translator’s note: this article was originally written in Spanish by @latin-dr-robotnik​]

Hello again! Today we’d like to discuss about something that’s been happening recently, and probably taking Sonic fans by surprise: what is going on with SEGA and its stance about Sonamy?

At the beginning of this year, to celebrate the 200 articles on Seaside Hill Paradise, I finished what I call “the Sonamy trilogy” of articles that I started in 2018 and which cover different themes, such as:

SEGA and the eternal issue of the Sonic-Amy dynamic

“I love you” – Forbidden words in Sonic

SEGA and the eternal issue of “Sonic’s girlfriend”

The idea was to offer a more-or-less complete analysis about the many facets of their dynamic in the last 27 years; a dynamic that, you may have noticed, is not that easy to pin down, and that we’ve been updating almost regularly (although I also intended to investigate on other dynamics, like Knuckles and Rouge’s for example, and write about them). Generally speaking, in these articles I don’t draw objective conclusions about the status of the ship in canon (despite the fact that the available information tends to confirm it in various occasions). I also like to repeat myself and say that shipping is supposed to be for fun, not for tearing each other’s hair in that black hole of misery that is Twitter, but recent events left us slightly perplexed, and this is why we’re here once again.

We left the status of the Sonamy canonicity with these two peculiar instances back in August: Sonic mentioning his “girlfriend” in the Japanese version of Sonic Battle, and the Twitter account of SEGA of Europe saying Sonamy is their “favorite videogame romance”. Now, let’s recap a bit…

Sonamy in Sonic IDW... Round 3

[SPOILERS ALERT FOR IDW SONIC #14-#35]

In 2018, when IDW just started, I decided to study a little how the Sonamy dynamic worked in this new universe. To our surprise, the comic didn’t waste time in dropping its biggest bomb, in one of the cutest scenes we had seen in ages. Since the very beginning, IDW proved that it didn’t intend to deceive those fans that looked for a bit of development of both characters.

I wrote an article about it in June 2019, and it coincided with the beginning of one of the most infamous arc I’ve seen in a Sonic comic for a long time: the Metal Virus Saga. The question is, what has happened since then?

Well, in 2019, with the same accuracy of an aimbot, I said “We’ll probably see some new interactions between Sonic and Amy sometime around IDW #20”. And wouldn’t you know, as misery and tragedy settled in that arc, it was exactly around IDW #20 that we saw some Sonamy interactions: both exhausted, to their limit, with a Sonic that couldn’t even touch Amy to soothe her pain, due to him being infected with the virus.

The arc developed like this in what felt like an eternity, to finally conclude in one the most absurd ways in Sonic history. But it wasn’t a complete disappointment, as, after months and months of asking and discussing on the internet about how much Sonic and Amy deserved a hug at the end of the arc… it actually happened.

Since that moment in IDW #32, we shippers thought that it was what both of them deserved after so much time spent separated and pushed to their limit to survive, but also that after the end of the arc everything would go back to normal. However, what we didn’t know was that the Sonamy train had no intention of stopping, not in IDW, nor anywhere else.

A recurring detail in IDW Sonic is that Amy’s tail starts wagging every time she sees Sonic, as if she was a happy dog. I swear, it happens every time.

Come IDW #35, once again we have some hugs and bits of dialogue between our hedgehogs. For sure, the question here isn’t their relationship itself, as it was for IDW #2, but rather the issues this arc is slowly dealing with. But it’s really nice to see them again, sharing that closeness that they’ve had in the comic since the beginning– be it with some gestures of affection, a wink, a gesture, a private joke.

My favorite image is the first one, Belle’s reaction to seeing Amy hugging Sonic. It’s like she’s thinking “oh, is she his girlfriend?”, and she wouldn’t even be wrong in thinking that.

It can’t be denied that IDW Sonic provided us the conversations and the emotions that the games seldom do. Certainly, the comic has its share of issues and it’s not really a story that I personally follow for its own merits (it’s more because it’s still Sonic, for my interest for things like this, and Belle’s existence… whom I already ship with Tails, sorry not sorry), but what it does well it does really well.

For now, we have to see how IDW Sonic will follow the development of the characters, especially in view of the closure of the current story and beyond. And we may be done with this part of the article, but there is still a lot left.

Sonamy in merchandise

Taking us completely by surprise, recently SEGA launched, in collaboration with Hot Topic, a series of Sonamy-themed t-shirts. No, seriously.

So many people told me this as soon as the voice spread (you know who you are, thank you guys for thinking about me <3), and I can’t help being still surprised that this is actually a thing. T-shirts with lines like “You’re my favorite”, “Love in the fast lane”, and my personal favorite, “S&A Forever”, with drawings of Classic Sonic and Amy… in SEGA-approved products. I don’t know if you realize how much of a big deal this is, even more than “Celebrate the 25 years of Sonic’s girlfriend” from 2018.

One of the things that surprised me the most (aside from how explicit they are in officializing the relationship, and the fact that there are still 2 months left before Valentine’s Day 2021), was the decision to use Classic Sonic and Classic Amy. I tried to understand this decision by analyzing the simplicity and easiness with which the Classic designs convey a message (let’s not forget that Classic Sonic was so iconic because it was specifically designed to convey his expressions without words), besides the fact that they’re inherently cuter than their modern designs. There’s also the controversial aspect of post-Adventure Sonamy, with all the dubbing and weird interpretations that the fandom made over the years… By comparison, the Classic design are a much simpler choice.

What is actually going on?

Well, let’s take a step back and think about what we just saw. The way SEGA has been recently trying to push Sonic and Amy in front view (and for the entirety of 2020, based on the articles I mentioned in the beginning) tells us the harsh truth we all have to accept sooner or later: Sonamy sells, and it sells a lot.

From a strictly business point of view, the ship is so iconic and popular, with fans and detractors alike, that it would be absurd for SEGA to ignore the chance to print these two characters and get a load of money. As I said in my 2018 article, despite the fact that in Japan Sonic isn’t as big of an icon as it is elsewhere, they know pretty well that Sonic + Amy = love, and they have huge amounts of merchandise to back it up. It’s in the West that because of different cultural values, of which we’ve already talked about, along with some internal resistance, left this aspect of the franchise a little on the side. But they’ve been trying to fix it… and how…

Let’s not forget that a decade and a half ago Sonic Team seriously favored Sonamy. They officially said it, Sonic X was their purest view of Sonic they had at the time.

Outside of the business perspective, I believe we’re facing the moment that we’ve been waiting for: it’s time they’ll establish once and for all the dynamic of these two characters, following more closely the original Japanese vision of Sonic. I said many times that, in trying to change canon, the West, especially SEGA of America, did nothing but confuse fans and generate more discussions than needed, by introducing different data and portrayals that contradict the canon established by Sonic Team.

We’ve talked about Unleashed and emotional support, about Sonic X, about the major moments that opened the door to interpreting this dynamic as something more. We don’t threaten at gunpoint those who would rather stay away, but we respond to those declarations that still try to violently discredit the simple fact that Sonic and Amy, who are most of all close friends, form in some measure a couple that, even with its imposed limitations, manages to captivate fans and not fans everywhere in the world. Even the Simpsons used it as a joke, and that says a lot.

What the future has in store for us.

Unless something else happens in this last month of 2020, this is the most complete compilation I can offer at the moment about the status of Sonamy in the fandom and in the official canon. Yes, canon.

It’s impossible to ignore the signals. As you may have noticed, I’ve been considering Sonic and Amy as an official couple, with its clarifications (for example, that at the end it’s more of a friendship, that it’s not a romantic relationship in the most explicit way, that it’s more of a personal perspective to justify a more mature vision of the relationship in the future, not right now), but nowadays I think that SEGA has spoken loud and clear. I think canon is ready to negotiate the idea that Sonic and Amy, apart from being excellent friends who would risk their lives for each other in a heartbeat, have something else on their hands (probably the other’s hand). This won’t automatically translate into a kiss, or a complete love declaration (although Sonic X came close…), or a commitment to a formal relationship like we know them in real life. SEGA canon affirms that Amy is “Sonic’s girlfriend” and nothing more. Outside of that detail, they still pretty much function as friends interacting with a little flirting here, and a little Sonic running away there. It’s the basis of their dynamic, now enhanced by the fact that SEGA is giving us a clearer message.

I think that this all may culminate in a game or an animated series, but I wouldn’t completely count on that. It is good to recognize how far the official position goes on this issue, but at the same time I want to reaffirm that there are things that are better left in the hands of the fandom, and in the meantime that IDW or any other continuity gives us hugs, winks, gestures and words of encouragement, we as the fandom will take care of exploring other avenues and hypothetical scenarios.

This is all I have to say on the matter for now, and I hope you’re happy with this wonderful Sonamy experience we’re going through – I certainly am. See you next time!

[nietp]

The AI behind Bots of New York: Who will monitor the governments monitoring AI?

If you've ever been intrigued by Bots of New York, and specifically by the texts it generates, or if you were ever skeptical these texts were actually generated by a bot, it's worth looking up the model this bot is using, GPT-2, released in 2019.

Bots of New York was the first Facebook bot to use that model for text-generation, and unlike most bots we were familiar with until then, the text it generates is complex and creates a coherent, believable narrative, just weird enough to be intriguing. Though Bots of New York is looking for texts that always sound funny or chaotic, GPT-2 can generate more believable text: "people find GPT-2 synthetic text samples almost as convincing (72% in one cohort judged the articles to be credible) as real articles from the New York Times (83%)". The release of GPT-2 raised ethical issues and its creators, Open AI, published regular updates on their choices, doubts, and findings. What's especially interesting is that the concern that GPT-2 would be used for propaganda was raised from the start, which should have made the creators especially wary of collaboration with governmental organizations and of governmental use of GPT-2 in general, especially since Facebook had already publicly admitted at the time that its platform has been exploited by governments to manipulate public opinion and it has only been further confirmed since then. Instead, Open AI doubled down on the necessity to work with governments, encouraging them to introduce penalties and monitor AI-use, specifically for what they call "extremist" ideologies which include "white supremacy, Marxism, jihadist Islamism, and anarchism". We'll come back to that later, but first, this is an excerpt of what the creators of GPT-2, Open AI, released on February 14, 2019 when they made part of that model open-source:

Our model, called GPT-2 (a successor to GPT), was trained simply to predict the next word in 40GB of Internet text. Due to our concerns about malicious applications of the technology, we are not releasing the trained model. As an experiment in responsible disclosure, we are instead releasing a much smaller model for researchers to experiment with, as well as a technical paper.

GPT-2 is a large transformer-based language model with 1.5 billion parameters, trained on a dataset of 8 million web pages. GPT-2 is trained with a simple objective: predict the next word, given all of the previous words within some text. The diversity of the dataset causes this simple goal to contain naturally occurring demonstrations of many tasks across diverse domains. [...]

[O]ur model is capable of generating samples from a variety of prompts that feel close to human quality and show coherence over a page or more of text. [...] [The] samples have substantial policy implications: large language models are becoming increasingly easy to steer towards scalable, customized, coherent text generation, which in turn could be used in a number of beneficial as well as malicious ways. [...] On other language tasks like question answering, reading comprehension, summarization, and translation, we are able to get surprising results without any fine-tuning of our models, simply by prompting the trained model in the right way (see below for examples of how we do this), though we do still fall short of state-of-the-art for specialized systems.

[...] GPT-2 achieves state-of-the-art scores on a variety of domain-specific language modeling tasks. Our model is not trained on any of the data specific to any of these tasks and is only evaluated on them as a final test; this is known as the “zero-shot” setting. GPT-2 outperforms models trained on domain-specific datasets (e.g. Wikipedia, news, books) when evaluated on those same datasets. [...]

Policy Implications

Large, general language models could have significant societal impacts, and also have many near-term applications. We can anticipate how systems like GPT-2 could be used to create:

AI writing assistants

More capable dialogue agents

Unsupervised translation between languages

Better speech recognition systems

We can also imagine the application of these models for malicious purposes, including the following (or other applications we can’t yet anticipate):

Generate misleading news articles

Impersonate others online

Automate the production of abusive or faked content to post on social media

Automate the production of spam/phishing content

These findings, combined with earlier results on synthetic imagery, audio, and video, imply that technologies are reducing the cost of generating fake content and waging disinformation campaigns. The public at large will need to become more skeptical of text they find online, just as the “deep fakes” phenomenon calls for more skepticism about images.[3]

Politicians may want to consider introducing penalties for the misuse of such systems, as some have proposed for deep fakes.

Today, malicious actors—some of which are political in nature—have already begun to target the shared online commons, using things like “robotic tools, fake accounts and dedicated teams to troll individuals with hateful commentary or smears that make them afraid to speak, or difficult to be heard or believed”. We should consider how research into the generation of synthetic images, videos, audio, and text may further combine to unlock new as-yet-unanticipated capabilities for these actors, and should seek to create better technical and non-technical countermeasures. Furthermore, the underlying technical innovations inherent to these systems are core to fundamental artificial intelligence research, so it is not possible to control research in these domains without slowing down the progress of AI as a whole.

Release Strategy

Due to concerns about large language models being used to generate deceptive, biased, or abusive language at scale, we are only releasing a much smaller version of GPT-2 along with sampling code. We are not releasing the dataset, training code, or GPT-2 model weights. Nearly a year ago we wrote in the OpenAI Charter: “we expect that safety and security concerns will reduce our traditional publishing in the future, while increasing the importance of sharing safety, policy, and standards research,” and we see this current work as potentially representing the early beginnings of such concerns, which we expect may grow over time. This decision, as well as our discussion of it, is an experiment: while we are not sure that it is the right decision today, we believe that the AI community will eventually need to tackle the issue of publication norms in a thoughtful way in certain research areas. Other disciplines such as biotechnology and cybersecurity have long had active debates about responsible publication in cases with clear misuse potential, and we hope that our experiment will serve as a case study for more nuanced discussions of model and code release decisions in the AI community.

We are aware that some researchers have the technical capacity to reproduce and open source our results. We believe our release strategy limits the initial set of organizations who may choose to do this, and gives the AI community more time to have a discussion about the implications of such systems.

We also think governments should consider expanding or commencing initiatives to more systematically monitor the societal impact and diffusion of AI technologies, and to measure the progression in the capabilities of such systems. If pursued, these efforts could yield a better evidence base for decisions by AI labs and governments regarding publication decisions and AI policy more broadly.

In June 2019, OpenAI testified in Congress about the implications of synthetic media, including a discussion of synthetic text in an Open Hearing on Deepfakes and AI. 6 months after the release of the small 124M model, they released the 774 million parameter GPT-2 language model (so still not the full-size GPT-2 model) and some observations made in the meantime:

Humans can be convinced by synthetic text. Research from our research partners Sarah Kreps and Miles McCain at Cornell published in Foreign Affairs says people find GPT-2 synthetic text samples almost as convincing (72% in one cohort judged the articles to be credible) as real articles from the New York Times (83%).[2] Additionally, research from AI2/UW has shown that news written by a system called “GROVER” can be more plausible than human-written propaganda. These research results make us generally more cautious about releasing language models.

[...] Detection isn’t simple. In practice, we expect detectors to need to detect a significant fraction of generations with very few false positives. Malicious actors may use a variety of sampling techniques (including rejection sampling) or fine-tune models to evade detection methods. A deployed system likely needs to be highly accurate (99.9%–99.99%) on a variety of generations. Our research suggests that current ML-based methods only achieve low to mid–90s accuracy, and that fine-tuning the language models decreases accuracy further. There are promising paths forward (see especially those advocated by the developers of “GROVER”) but it’s a genuinely difficult research problem. We believe that statistical detection of text needs to be supplemented with human judgment and metadata related to the text in order to effectively combat misuse of language models.

In November 5, 2019, the largest 1.5B-parameter model was released by Open AI, though in the meantime NVIDIA Research trained a larger 8.3 billion parameter GPT-2 model. With that came a list of findings, including this:

[...] GPT-2 can be fine-tuned for misuse. Our partners at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies’ Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC) found that extremist groups can use GPT-2 for misuse, specifically by fine-tuning GPT-2 models on four ideological positions: white supremacy, Marxism, jihadist Islamism, and anarchism. CTEC demonstrated that it’s possible to create models that can generate synthetic propaganda for these ideologies. They also show that, despite having low detection accuracy on synthetic outputs, ML-based detection methods can give experts reasonable suspicion that an actor is generating synthetic text.

The Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism is not a governmental organization as such but their research "informs private, government, and multilateral institutional understanding of and responses to terrorism threats". Until 2018, the current director, Jason Blazakis, served as the Director of the Counterterrorism Finance and Designations Office, Bureau of Counterterrorism, U.S. Department of State. Blazakis was "responsible for directing efforts to designate countries, organizations, and individuals as terrorists, also known as State Sponsors of Terrorism, Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and Specially Designated Global Terrorists". Before that, he held positions in the Department of State’s Political-Military Affairs, International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Intelligence and Research Bureaus. Until 2016, the director of the CTEC (then called MonTREP) was Brigadier General Russell D. Howard, a "retired Special Forces officer with thirty-seven years of military service, more than twenty of which were spent in some type of counter-terrorist capacity". The CTEC also partners with a "Master in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies" at the Middlebury Institute, which also partners with the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), giving students access to courses with the Department of National Security Affairs and Department of Defense Analysis. The Master's webpage describes this partnership as follows: "You will learn in a military environment, gaining new perspectives on international security issues and expanding your professional network through NPS faculty and students. This opportunity is only available to U.S. citizens." The curriculum includes a wide array of courses such as "Global Jihadism", "Evolution of Chinese Nuclear Policy", "Terrorism in Southeast Asia", etc. The Middlebury Institute also offers a Terrorism Studies Certificate with courses such as Terrorism and Media in the Arab World, Militant Islamic Movements, Eco-radicalism, State Terrorism, Global Jihadism, Apocalyptic Millenarianism, Terror and Counterterrorism in Africa, Terrorism in South Asia, Terrorism in Southeast Asia, Islam, Islamism, and Politics in Central Asia. The CTEC also partnered with a startup called Spectrum Labs to develop an AI detecting "extremist messaging" in non-English languages, starting with Portuguese and Spanish, and the CTEC "lead research into Brazilian and Latin American extremist movements and trends" (I wonder why they're focusing on these specific countries?). Although Blazakis teaches a seminar on the "Radical Right", there is no mention of white supremacy, far-right ideology or neo-nazism anywhere in the curriculum available on the website. But weirdly enough, when the CTEC trained a local journalist on "how to search for online extremists tied to a certain geographic region", the local extremists they found were a neo-nazi highschooler whose "goal is to become a U.S. Air Force pilot", whose "preferred authors are George Lincoln Rockwell, Julius Evola, Benito Mussolini and Machiavelli" and has "just started reading Mein Kampf", and more damningly, Dave Overton, "an associate professor of warfare of the Naval War College who teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey": the same Naval school the institute the CTEC is attached to partners with. "At least once, Overton promoted the #plandemic conspiracy theory, which serves to undermine public health efforts aimed at sopping Covid-19. He also amplifies dangerous rhetoric by using hashtags #EnemyOfThePeople to attack the press. But his primary issue of concern appears to be the exoneration of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser."

Though Open AI was right in raising ethical concerns about the release of GPT-2, considering it can generate fake articles, comments, and social media content at a dangerous speed and in a way that's very hard to detect for AI and for humans, it ended up looking for support in these ethical decisions from those who would most profit of it as a propaganda tool. Though online propaganda against socialism and communism can be laughably unconvincing these days, as we've seen with the thousands of identical tweets supporting a coup in Venezuela and more recently Cuba, it wouldn't take a lot of effort to make it much more complex and believable.

[desbiztech]

Acceptance

In the early pandemic, a friend of mine joined our weekly video call, shared that she had just been diagnosed with ADHD, and apologized for certain instances of her behavior over the years. Now that she had a diagnosis, she could explain why she struggled with time management, follow through, inhibiting impulses, and other executive functioning problems. As she described how her internal life worked and how she was working to address some of her issues and habits, I was struck with the thought, "isn't that how *everyone* thinks and acts?" I identified with her executive functioning struggles to such an extent that I brought it up with my therapist the next week, who literally said that she was embarrassed that she had not realized that I am a textbook example of combined-type ADHD. Because I excelled in school and because I am female, my diagnosis had been missed by every health professional I had seen until I sought out a clinic specializing in ADHD at age 27. I had a formal diagnosis within a month, and I have been dedicated to addressing my executive functioning issues ever since.

Here's an example of a behavior that previously was a "weird quirk" but is now explained as a coping method I discovered for my ADHD before diagnosis. My bookshelf is in the style of "cubbies". It has 5 rows and 5 columns. The cubby in the leftmost column and the middle row is where my keys live. Every time I walk in the door, my keys go there. If I put my keys down in another location, I will have no recollection of where I put them, and perhaps not even a memory of setting them down at all. It's almost like the keys will magically disappear from my hand, and I have to hope that they reappeared in the key cubby. I am extremely insistent that anyone who needs to borrow my keys (to get into the garage, for example) returns them to that spot, and I will recurringly ask about it to the point of their annoyance. This is just one example; almost everything in my apartment has some version of the "key cubby", and if the item is not in its designated place then I have no idea where it is. For whatever neurochemical reason, my frontal cortex cannot keep track of items, so I have created a rigid system to cope. If the system is disrupted by me, a friend, or a roommate, I am disproportionately thrown into disarray. There are many instances of small-to-others, significant-to-me issues that I face daily because of my ADHD. Needless to say, if I had an AR app that could carry some of the executive functioning burden for me, I would use it every day without question (as long as I did not lose the AR headset by failing to place it in its designated location!).

Part of my reasoning for returning to school at this point in my life is that I love and miss the experience of succeeding at difficult, collaborative problems. I look forward to seeing how far the AR team will go with our problem. Any amount of success would be delightful. Regardless of how feasible or complex our solution is, I expect to feel some measure of success simply by moving through the design thinking process with this group of people. I can imagine the mental state I would be in as we joyously celebrated our success. I usually find that these moments are accompanied with relief at the resolution of a big push to the final deadline (and sometimes anxiety at what comes next, although this is only our first term, so there's no "what comes next" like there was with my thesis project).

Being involved in this project (and this program as a whole) is pushing me to bring my knowledge of the cutting edge up to date. I have let my awareness of technological progress fall behind since 2019 or so. Additionally, this project is a great opportunity to learn how to function as the person with a technical background on a diverse team. It has already been challenging to work on a project that is tech-heavy but in a team dynamic where it is not appropriate to slip into technical jargon. Learning to work within these constraints would be immeasurably valuable for me in many of my potential future career paths.

[whatiwillsay]

off topic - let’s talk about gaylena 👀

selena gomez is one of taylor’s oldest and bestest friends and given that she is in the 22 liner notes, a huge part of taylor’s life, and maybe fruity herself it seems like possibly we don’t talk about her here at the blog enough!

i don’t want to do a timeline of selena and taylor’s friendship - you can read more about that here, but they met back in the day when they were both dating jonas brothers and to me this idea of finding a real friendship in the midst of these contrived promances is pretty adorable.

ofc most of y’all think taylor is a fruit basket but i think there’s a good chance that selena is too!  i’m not saying she is for sure but y’all know me.  i’’m here to make a compelling case that everyone and their dog is gay so let’s gooooo! 

Part I - At least one fake rs!  

Selena “dated” Taylor Lautner in 2009 and he’s definitely gay.  Of course, that doesn’t mean she is, it could just be PR, but y’all know I gotta note everything!  We stan our fruity bffs dating the same gays 😍

Part II - Selena x cara delevingne

i feel like there’s a chance they met through taylor but everyone in that squad adjacent circle knows one another.  cara dated michelle rodriguez for the first half of 2014 and then got with annie clark in March 2015 but it feels like it’s possible something has gone on between her and Selena from summer 2014 - early 2015? ...maybe something casual on and off a bit?

August 2014 - Steamy pics surface in Saint-Tropez, France

Selena and and a freshly single Cara vacation together in part to celebrate Selena’s 22nd birthday.

They party together and look cozy!

Pictures such as this surface and spark rumors around the two:

Selena apparently loves the rumors and gushes about being shipped with Cara.

Quote:

You say Selena drag queens were the true measure of success for you. But isn’t it true that you’re not truly famous until you’ve been the subject of a gay rumor? And last year, the tabloids had a field day with photos of you and Cara Delevingne. I’ve made it!

How did you react to those rumors? Honestly, I loved it. I didn’t mind it. Especially because they weren’t talking about other people in my life for once, which was wonderful. Honestly, though, she’s incredible and very open and she just makes me open. She’s so fun and she’s just extremely adventurous, and sometimes I just want that in my life, so I didn’t mind it. I loved it.

Notice she doesn’t deny them?  Now of course she could just be being cool, if she freaked out about it that might be even weirder but hey, it’s still kind of interesting.

Then she admits to questioning her sexuality???

Have you ever questioned your sexuality? Oh, I think everybody does, no matter who they are. I do, yeah, of course. Absolutely. I think it’s healthy to gain a perspective on who you are deep down, question yourself and challenge yourself; it’s important to do that.

(Selena btw, this is cool and all, but not everybody questions their sexuality, maybe you’re just gay 👀)

November 1 - LACMA Art + Film Gala 

they even left the event together 👀

and they hung out earlier that day as well:

They were seen the next day partying for Kendall Jenner’s bday singing to her:

a few weeks later Cara tweets Selena’s lyrics!

In December 2014 they are travelling together in texas:

in january 2015 they get cozy at the golden globes together!

and they leave together again:

January 19th/20th a bunch of gay nonsense happens

They post this gay shit with matching shoes and linked fingers:

then they say this to one another:

Enty says they were hooking up!

then we don’t get any more content that i can find for about six months! perhaps they had a fling from summer 2014-jan 2015 and then it ends, Cara gets with Annie in March?  Then after half a year apart Selena and Cara resume a friendly relationship?  Perhaps!  Selena is seen with Justin a bit off and on during this time but this was in their Style/Heat Death Era imo (tbh i probably shouldn’t give a hetty pairing including Justin that designation 🤢but y’all get what I’m saying - it’s fully possible Selena was hooking up with both of them!

Now I’m not super familiar with Selena’s discography so y’all lmk if I’m missing anything major - lyric wise that point to her not being straight.

Selena’s album Revival that comes out after this relationship has a few songs with some vibes, even though I get the feeling a lot of it is probably about Justin, allow me to reach.  The title track could be translated as someone coming to terms with their sexuality (among other things):

I feel like I've awakened lately The chains around me are finally breaking I've been under self-restoration I've become my own salvation Showing up, no more hiding, hiding The light inside me is bursting, shining It's my, my, my time to butterfly

Good for you, imo, is too sexy to be about a man even if it’s not super queer lyrically it’s a vibe ok?

Me & My Girls might be a bestie anthem a la 22 (oh wait, no 22 was gay too) but I mean...could be about a girl gang of lesbians too!

And if we want it, we take it If we need money, we make it Nobody knows if we fake it You like to watch while we shake it I know we're making you thirsty You want us all in the worst way But you don't understand I don't need a man 

Quinn Fabray indeed!

Nobody feels probably like a retrospective on Justin 🙄but...there is a hint of sapphic craving in there!  Saying this particular lover loves them differently than everyone is a bit 👀 plus this stanza:

No oxygen, can barely breathe My darkest sin, you've raised release And it's all because of you, all because of you And I don't know what it is, but you've pulled me in No one compares, could ever begin To love me like you do And I wouldn't want them to

Is Perfect about some bitch Justin started dating?  Probably but bear with me here this song is actually pretty fucking gay.  Gay enough that I’m gonna add it to one of my gay playlists.  Could this song actually be about Cara moving on to Annie?

Ooh, and I bet she has it all Bet she's beautiful like you, like you And I bet she's got that touch Makes you fall in love, like you, like you

I can taste her lipstick and see her laying across your chest I can feel the distance every time you remember her fingertips Maybe I should be more like her Maybe I should be more like her I can taste her lipstick, it's like I'm kissing her, too And she's perfect And she's perfect

Part III - Selena x Julia Michaels

Julia Michaels is a singer/songwriter known for her song Issues.  I don’t know her sexuality but she at the least has gay vibes!  It seems they met around this time perhaps because Julia wrote on Revival.

They have a friendly enough friendship for a few years, liking one another’s posts on IG from time to time, posing for a photo a time or two and then they seem to get swept up into this very intense friendship in 2019.  They write some music together and Julia goes whole hog in promoting the shoe brand Selena is hawking this time 😭

2019 - The Superior Sapphic Jelena Timeline:

It starts, for some reason with a lot of shoe promotion:

chill, chill

more shoes

but more gayness?

this homo shit

ok...

Then we go into the REALLY GAY NOVEMBER OF 2019:

Then they perform together:

And...actually kiss...on the mouth on stage???

Sure it’s just a peck but still...if that were a guy people would say they were dating.  

Somehow kissing on the mouth isn’t the gayest thing these girls do over this period because these fucking dykes got matching tattoos.  I’ve read enough Larry blogs to know this actually means they’re secretly married.  All jokes aside this is fruity behavior. 

From their IG stories:

Selena gets Julia a very nice christmas gift:

Covid sets in and content drops off but god damn!  It’s possible they just had an intense friendship but if a man and a woman collabed on music together, kissed in public, and got matching tattoos everyone would say they were dating!

Selena, as far as I can find, didn’t have any public boyfriends around this time so who are some of these love songs about?

Rare comes out in January 2020 and perhaps has some gayish songs?

Don’t tell me why but boyfriend lowkey, has a gay vibe.  Don’t ask me to explain it but it’s just the musicality of it.

Crowded Room could be a love song for Julia?  (or by Julia for Selena, since they’re collaborators?)

Baby, it's just me and you Baby, it's just me and you Just us two Even in a crowded room Baby, it's just me and you, yeah

These are general gay vibes, our secret moments in a crowded room tease

It started polite, out on thin ice 'Til you came over to break it I threw you a line and you were mine

It would have started out polite between them, since they worked together for years before whatever 2019 was happened.  And throwing someone a line first of all makes Selena sound like the aggressor but also “throwing someone a line” could be a reference to writing songs together.

Yeah, I was afraid, but you made it safe I guess that is our combination Said you feel lost, well, so do I So won't you call me in the morning? I think that you should call me in the morning If you feel the same, 'cause

Lots of people are afraid at the beginning of a gay rs.  Treacherous tease 👀

In summation!

Selena does gay stuff like fantasizing ab kissing other women in her music, getting very touchy with famous dykes on vacay, hangs out with Taylor Swift, has chronic mental health issues, dated a jonas brother and a twilight gay, has admitted to questioning her sexuality, and loves being shipped with women.  Is she gay?  I don’t know!   But all she’s missing from her celesbian bingo card is a suspiciously intense friendship with a Glee Cast member! What do you guys think?  Selena fruity or just weird?

Edit to add: so apparently I missed an entire ship and Selena supposedly acted really gay all the time with her backup dancer Charity Baroni.  Exposing SMG has posted a lot about all that.

Also Selena has been cast in a gay role! edit to add: @bisluthq went and found this for me - julia is indeed a fruit queen

[howaminotinthestrokesyet]

When It Started: Julian Casablancas

The Strokes lead singer was born on August 23, 1978 in New York City. His father John was the founder and owner of Elite Model Management, while his mother Jeanette worked as a Danish model and former Miss Denmark. At the age of eight, his parents would divorce. His mother would later marry painter Sam Adoquei, who heavily influenced the young Casablancas by introducing him to classic rock artists such as the Doors. Julian has several half brothers and half sisters through his father’s multiple marriages. The future frontman of the Strokes would attend a variety of schools throughout his early life, which led him to meet many of the future members of the band through schools such as Lycée Français de New York, the Institut Le Rosey boarding school in Switzerland, and the Dwight School in New York. At the latter, Julian would start to informally play music with Nick Valensi and Fab Moretti, which ultimately was the beginning of the Strokes. The singer would never finish high school, but did receive his GED in place of it. He would later attend music classes at Five Towns College, which became the very first time that Casablancas actually enjoyed going to school.

Throughout the history of the Strokes, Julian has served as the principal songwriter for the group. Some have said that he would insert a large measure of control over the music, but he and other members have said that does not seem to be the case anymore. Each member of the group brings their own ideas about future songs, then the band decides what to use and what to discard. Nick Valensi would say this about the singer. “His ear is so sharp. He's the one with the ear for detail in this band. Creatively, he is a force to be reckoned with." In 2009, Casablancas released his first solo album entitled Phrazes for the Young through RCA. He would talk about releasing music as a solo artist versus material from the Strokes. “It’s like touring with me or with five of me." The singer would also go on to say that as a solo artist he is able to experiment with his music and lyrics in ways that he would probably avoid in the Strokes. He has always been quite adamant the brand name that is the band should be protected. The title of the album had been inspired by the Oscar Wilde book, Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young, while the album itself embraced a very 1980’s new wave sound that had a heavy emphasis on the use of synthesizers. He talked about this new direction in his music. “I would've gone weirder with the music, but I wanted to be smart. I didn't want people to say, 'Okay, this is his weird abstract thing,' and dismiss the album. I worked too hard on it for that to happen... I wanted to be crazy original and bridge the gap between traditional music and modern music." The LP would be recorded in New York and Omaha, Nebraska with producer Jason Lader and some additional assistance from Mike Mogis of Bright Eyes. A tour would follow the release with a backing band called the Sick Six including Jeff Kite (keyboard), Nelson London (synthesizer), JP Bowersock (guitar), Danielle Haim (percussion) and Alex Carapetis (drums). The first major shows in North America took place over the course of a month at the Downtown Palace Theater in Los Angeles. This venue had been previously used in the Michael Jackson “Thriller” music video.

In 2013, Julian began another side project called Julian Casablancas + the Voidz. Other members of this new band included Jeramy "Beardo" Gritter and Amir Yaghmai on guitar, Jacob "Jake" Bercovici on bass (as well as synthesizer), Alex Carapetis on drums and percussion, and Jeff Kite on keyboard. In 2017, the group wanting more recognition as a band rather than a side project changed its name to simply the Voidz. The goal of the group was to create music that represented a quality of being both very aggressive and quite complex. As lead vocalist and songwriter, Casablancas began to explore musical scales within Middle Eastern music, not any traditional Western scales. Jake Bercovici has said, they are interested in “exploring [music] from the margins.” The singer looked upon the group as a vehicle in which he could create music that embodied characteristics much more experimental than anything that the Strokes ever offered. Their debut album Tyranny was released in September 2014 through Casablancas’s own record label, Cult Records. The album would also feature an 11 minute single entitled “Human Sadness,” which Julian actually wrote originally for a short documentary film about his stepfather, painter Sam Adoquei. Their second album would be released in March 2018 entitled Virtue, which took on a much stronger political point of view emphasizing the paradox between truth and lies.

Over the years, Julian has collaborated on a number of tracks with other artists. In 2006, the Strokes teamed up with Eddie Vedder and Josh Homme for a cover of “Mercy Mercy (The Ecology)” by Marvin Gaye. On the track, Vedder sang backup vocals, while Homme would play drums. In 2008, he recorded a collaboration with Pharrell and Santigold for Converse on a track called “My Drive-thru.” In 2009, the singer lent his vocals to the comedy trio the Lonely Island for a parody song on their debut album Incredibad called “Boom Box.” The Strokes frontman would later record a cover of another Saturday Night Live parody, “I Wish It Was Christmas Today.” He would eventually perform the song live with Jimmy Fallon, Horacio Sanz, and the Roots on Fallon’s talk show. In 2010, Casablancas sang vocals for the track “Little Girl” on the 2010 Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse album Dark Night of the Soul. In 2011, Julian performed the song “Rave On” for the release of a Buddy Holly tribute record. In 2013, he would also provide vocals, lyrics, and guitar to the Daft Punk song instant crush on their 2013 record Random Access Memories. The album would go on the win the Grammy for Album of the Year, which he would receive recognition for his work on it. In 2015, Julian created a cover with Jehnny Beth of the 1983 song Boy/Girl, which would be released through Cult Records. In 2016, he would also provide covers for the soundtrack to the HBO series Vinyl performing three tracks by the Velvet Underground, “Venus in Furs,” “Run Run Run,” and “White Light/White Heat.” That same year, the singer would pen a song for Har Mar Superstar on his album Best Summer Ever entitled “Youth Without Love.”

In 2009, Casablancas started his own music label, Cult Records. The company currently includes a roster of The Growlers, Har Mar Superstar, Songhoy Blues, Rey Pila, Karen O, Promiseland, The Strokes, The Voidz, Exhibition and Cerebral Ballzy. Past artists were Albert Hammond Jr., The Virgins, Reputante, INHEAVEN, Exclamation Pony and Nelson London (C O L O R). The company first began as an imprint in order to release his first solo album Phrazes for the Young. As for his influences, the earliest ones were the Doors and Velvet Underground. He would say this about the latter group. “The way Lou Reed wrote and sang about drugs and sex, about the people around him — it was so matter-of-fact. He could be romantic in the way he portrayed these crazy situations, but he was also intensely real. It was poetry and journalism." Other influences include Bob Marley, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam. He would later say that the song “Yellow Ledbetter” inspired him to start making music. In his personal life, the singer would marry the Strokes assistant manager, Juliet Joslin in 2005. They have two sons together, but divorced in 2019. In the early days of the Strokes, Casablancas struggled with drinking, but he has been completely sober since 2009. Julian would say in an interview about trying to quit drinking, he was “hungover for five years.”

[mariaiscrafting]

Thoughts on Wilbur Soot? I want a full-blown essay at least 10k words/j. All jokes aside, this is an amazing blog, I come to it every day to see if you've posted something new :]. Keep going forward OP, you're truly amazing.

That is so sweet 😢 (/gen)

I was really  gonna write, “I dunno, I just think he’s a nice dude,” but then you asked for 10k words, so now Imma actually rant. Wilbur’s probably one of the first people who got me back into Minecraft, around 2019, and he was the first person I felt comfortable enough watching the Dream SMP vods from, back in November. 

First of all, the guy’s fricking gorgeous, like, ???? I never see any simping for him on my dash, and I’m just like ??? I’m not very good at simping over people’s appearances myself, so all I will say is that he’s fricking beautiful, jfc.

Second of all, I’m a music nerd, okay, and I really fucking like his singing. Back then, I listened to his music covers so much that I learned the lyrics from songs I’d never even heard of before I started watching Wilbur, by heart. Lol it helps quite a bit that a good chunk of my musical taste is made up of Life is Strange-esque, shitty indie songs that fit right into the covers he made back when he first started streaming. I’ve listened to YCGMA so many times that I have that same familiarity I have with songs I’ve listened to for literal years, knowing exactly what song comes next and when each measure ends and when the breaths are taken, etc., etc. He doesn’t have much finnesse when it comes to the technical qualities of his singing abilities, but he’s a damn good musician. His lyrical composition, chord progressions, little guitar riffs, emotion - ahhh, I just love Wilbur Soot’s music so much. I’m certain I’ll be listening to YCGMA in the middle of the night, when I need a good cry, for years to come lol. 

Third of all, I really, really appreciate his openness about his mental health just, so much. He talks about his anxiety and getting depressed so candidly, he so easily lets his audience know about what kinda mental state he was in during uni and as a teenager and while he wrote YCGMA, and it makes me feel so normal. As dumb and cliched as it is to need a public figure to validate my own lived experiences, I do, and for someone like Wilbur Soot to succeed and be so talented, encouraging, empathetic, and socially active, despite losing motivation and energy at times, gives me a little bit of hope for myself.

Fourth of all, I mean, the guy’s fucking hilarious, are we forgetting this? People always talk about his talents music-wise and writing-wise, or how nice he seems to be, but they always gloss over his genuine comedic ability, and I ??? It takes so much to keep my attention these days, and Wilbur Soot’s videos are still some of the only ones that can manage that feat. He has undeniable chemistry with practically any CC he meets, his editing style is just *chef’s kiss*, and his laugh somehow makes even the most mundane of jokes seem fucking hilarious, it’s just such a delight to watch or listen to him do bits, man.

I left the best for last, lol. The main reason I fricking love Wilbur Soot is his political consciousness and the fact that his political beliefs align pretty well with my own. I’ve dealt with cishet, mostly white guys, both on and off the Internet, for so many damn years, and it’s exhausting. I am so tired of deconstructing myself and suppressing myself for the sake of social interaction, community-building, preventing ostracization, and being able to consume content without feeling enraged or hopeless. It is an exhausting endeavor to want to like and love all the gamers I’ve watched since middle school, and having to just push down and numb the parts of me that want to flinch at offhanded jokes and comments and exclusion from online spaces. Wilbur Soot is a whole other breed of CC. Lol uhhh, I guess he’s what most of the people in the social media circles I used to frequent would call, “a feminist cuck” and “self-hating white guy.” Which all really just means that he goes just beyond human decency. Don’t get me wrong, I do not by any means let white, cishet guys dictate my self-worth anymore, or even let them educate me; that’s what all the wonderful female and POC and queer CCs that I’ve discovered over the years are for. But there’s still something deeply satisfying about listening to this person who fits all the demographic checkboxes of the kinda person who used to make me feel so Other and Wrong, instead rant about how teenage girls can’t express their interests without being denigrated for them out of deeply-entrenched misogyny, or about how society needs to stop villanizing poor people and realize that government aid and social services do a great service for community betterment and are not just used by people supposedly leeching off the taxpayer’s dime. That’s not even to mention the fucking beautiful satire of the E-Girl Trilogy. I always wanted to rant about this, but I don’t know how exactly to put it into the proper words... Basically, as someone who has spent years and years retconning, observing, and caught in the midst of incels, conservatives, and just extremely depressed cishet men of all races, I am deeply familiar with all the resentment, anxiety, misogyny, homophobia, gender essentialism, and self-hatred that goes into creating the average 20-something man’s view on women, society, romance, friendships, and sex. The E-Girl Trilogy is fucking brilliant because it so accurately captures this cocktail of emotions and ideologies, creating a fucking perfect caricature of the average man who looks and is just like Wilbur Soot. The persona is so well-crafted that most listeners who aren’t familiar with Wilbur as a person, or his political views, actually believe these songs are genuine and empathize with the narrators, can you imagine? And the fact that, in the process, Wilbur himself realizes that all of it is a fucking joke, that the narrator’s views on his love interest are weird and creepy and not at all normal or correct, is what makes it genuine satire. He embodies something so perfectly, only to mock it in the process of showing off how much he can embody it... I love satire, but I fucking suck at writing or accurately embodying it, so I’ve always been so fucking jealous of and beyond impressed by the E-Girl Trilogy’s use of satire. 

Lol this isn’t 10k words, but it was much longer than I fucking thought it’d be. Basically, I really like Wilbur Soot, and writing all of this made me realize just how much I missed watching his VODs and streams...

[hermannsthumb]

Please do holiday prompt 85 (unexpected apology)!

85. we haven’t been friends for years but we both end up at a mutual friend’s holiday party and you apologize for how things went down between us (which I wasn’t expecting in a million years)

from winter writing prompts here

it’s that time of year again everyone.....ive been so busy with school and zine stuff that im taking a little break to write this today ☺️ set very late 2019, before the Events of 2020

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

It occurs to Hermann as he stands amongst a handful of society’s most monied and high-ranking—mulled wine in hand, stiff suit buttoned too-tight around his neck—that he is not only completely out of his element, but residing at a level of desperation that he cringes to even consider. Hermann does not schmooze; Hermann has never had the capacity to schmooze; in all of his previous attempts at schmoozing (typically at the bequest of his father, who would tote Hermann around as a conversation piece at fundraising events), Hermann would come across invariably as disingenuous, uptight, and arrogant, and certainly not someone with whom one would entrust large cheques made out to the PPDC for.

Yes; desperation. To borrow the cliché, desperate times call for desperate measures. To borrow another, war changes man. Robots wage war on monsters from another world, the UN wages war on the jaeger program’s budget, and Hermann must wage war on prospective PPDC donors if he wishes to still be employed by the New Year. He can’t decide which sounds more horrendous, really.

“Would you like more wine, Dr. Gottlieb?” a passing waiter asks Hermann, and Hermann shakes his head.

“No, thank you,” he says. Hermann has always been a maudlin drunk; he doesn’t fancy risking over-drinking tonight, and making an embarrassment of himself by confessing to perfect strangers that his parents never loved him or that he fears he’ll never make a true human connection.

“Dr. Gottlieb?” someone says, incredulously.

Oh, bugger. He’s been found out. Hermann sighs, flattens down his cowlick, and plasters on a fake smile: the time has come for him to, er, lie back and think of the PPDC, so to speak. Hopefully it’ll go fast.

But when Hermann turns, it’s not to find some acquaintance of his father, or a perfect stranger familiar with his work, or even a distant colleague; it’s to find one Newton Geiszler (who Hermann may have considered a colleague, once, but certainly not anymore), dressed in a horrendous eyesore of a gold (gold) suit, nursing a large red cocktail in each hand, and staring at Hermann like he can’t decide if he wants to say something or turn and run. Hermann mirrors his stare. A pin could drop between them, and Hermann reckons, despite the undercurrent of music and chatter, they would be able to hear it.

Hermann is the one to break it. “Newton,” he says. Then he amends, quickly, “Dr. Geiszler. I wasn’t aware…” He coughs. He suddenly wishes he took another mulled wine, and wonders if it’s too late to summon back the waiter. “You are…here.”

“Uh,” Newton says. “Yeah.”

The last time Hermann saw Newton Geiszler, they were standing under an awning outside a Starbucks while a torrential downpour of rain pounded against the sidewalk and soaked their shoes. Hermann was shouting. Newton was shouting, too, and he may have also been crying. They had been asked to leave the building on account of it. That was nearly three years ago. “Er,” Hermann says. “Business? Or pleasure?”

Newton has hardly changed in the almost-three years; his hair remains thick and unruly, his jaw in bad need of a shave, his glasses smudged and slightly crooked. The suit is a bloody eyesore, though. Hermann imagines Newton thought it was festive. “Business.” Newton snorts. “God, you think I’d come here for fun? I haven’t had the money for a new sample in months, it was either this or, I don’t know, sticking mutated fish under microscopes. Kaiju blue poisoning. Been there done that, and not what I need to be doing now, you know? And you can thank your dad for that too, not having any fucking samples to work with, I mean, and his stupid wall—but I guess that’s why you’re here too. I heard they’re talking about pulling the plug on the jaeger program.”

Newton speaks quickly, and with a bewildering tendency to leap between topics like a game of hopscotch, something Hermann had quite forgotten. (They’d only met the once, after all, and Newton disguises it better in writing.) He follows it nonetheless. “Yes, well, they’re still only just rumors,” Hermann says, though he knows (with a certainty) that one more major failing of a jaeger might spell the end of it, “and I certainly hope they stay as such. I take it you’re with the PPDC now, then?”

Newton jerks a thumb towards the waistband of his gold suit, spilling a bit of his cocktail on the floor; Hermann at last notices the PPDC badge clipped to it. Newton’s grin is identical to the one in his photograph. “Hell yeah, dude,” he says. “They finally hired me about a month after we—” The corners of his mouth twitch down, ever so slightly. “—uh, got coffee.”

It had been a long-standing complaint of Newton’s, back when they wrote each other, that the PPDC was perfectly happy to use his research but turned a blind eye whenever he submitted yet another application for their k-science research team. Personality conflicts, Hermann always presumed. He and Newton certainly had plenty. Perhaps Hermann’s not the only one who’s grown desperate—a thought he scolds himself for the unkindness of a moment later. Newton is a brilliant scientist despite his difficulties and their past. “Of course,” Hermann says. “Well, congratulations. I hadn’t heard.”

“Wine?” a passing waiter asks them.

Newton shakes his head. Hermann takes one this time, gratefully.

“It’s been alright,” Newton says. He downs the entirety of the red cocktail in his right hand. “Like I said. Not many samples to work with. They had me stationed over in Vladivostok, but I got leave for the holidays. And for this I guess.”

“I’ve been in Seattle,” Hermann says. “I reckon they’ll be transferring me soon, though I haven’t an idea where.” More rumors, of course.

For a moment he allows himself the brief fantasy of being transferred somewhere with Newton, or perhaps it’s more of a fear than a fantasy—year after year of this sort of insufferable awkwardness? Being forced to work together? It’s something Hermann had longed for in the past, spending every day with his marvelous penpal at his side. It instills a sort of nausea in him now. Newton touches his arm before Hermann has the chance to excuse himself hide in the loo. “Hey, dude, listen,” Newton says. “About us getting coffee. I feel like I owe you an apology.”

Hermann can’t help it; he snorts, though he immediately regrets it. Newton, at least, does not look offended. “Do you?” Hermann says. Two and a half bloody years too late.

“I mean it,” Newton says. He blinks earnestly at Hermann, and squeezes Hermann’s arm. “I screwed it all up that day, and I could’ve—I don’t know, written, or texted, or anything to apologize, but I didn’t. And that was shitty of me. So I’m sorry, I really am. And…yeah. That’s it, I guess.”

It’s the last thing Hermann expected to hear today. It’s the last thing he expected to hear from Newton. The radio silence following that disastrous day at the coffee shop had been awful—and it’d been infuriating, too. Where had they even gone wrong that day? Hermann can’t remember anymore. Probably a fight over something inconsequential. “I see,” Hermann says. “Well. Er. Thank you, Newton. Your apology is...appreciated.”

“Cool,” Newton says.

He stares at Hermann expectantly.

“Oh,” Hermann says. “And I’m sorry, too, I suppose.”

“Cool,” Newton repeats.

He smiles at Hermann, and Hermann is momentarily suffocated by it, and the sudden reemergence of feelings he thought he’d quashed years ago. Newton is still very attractive. Very, very attractive. Hermann’s arm is warm and tingly from where Newton touched him, and he realizes the warmth is spreading up to his neck and cheeks—he’s blushing. “Hey, wanna check out the snack table with me?” Newton says. “I love the rich people food at shit like this. The last one I went to had oysters, which is totally weird. Like, it’s a gala.”

Hermann decides to accept it as the strange peace offering it obviously is meant to be. “Alright,” he says. “Though, I insist you explain your monstrosity of a suit first.”

“It’s classy,” Newton says. “Anyway, you’re one to talk, buddy.”

[duhragonball]

BEGIN: Hellsing Liveblog Ch.1

Okay, so in 2017 I tried to do a minimalist log of my experiences watching/reading  JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.    At first, I tried to confine myself to posting one zany  screencap from each episode, but as I got deeper into the story I couldn’t help but write giant blocks of text about my thoughts.    So by the time I got to Part 6 I was essentially doing an honest-to-goodness liveblog.  I even went back and re-covered Part 5 in more detail, just because I barely understood it on the first read.   

In 2019, I decided to do a full-on liveblog of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, since I thought it would be a cool big thing to do.    It was a lot of work but I found it immensely satisfying to discuss the whole story in order.  

After that, I thought it might be nice to tackle something smaller, and Hellsing seemed like a good pick, because I really loved the Hellsing Ultimate anime when I watched it in 2016, and for a while I craved More Of That.    Only there wasn’t more, the Hellsing TV series was a hot mess, and that’s about it.   That just left the manga, which I didn’t want to read right after consuming the anime adaptation.    So I decided to liveblog Hellsing in 2020 and... I didn’t.    I just never felt like getting started.    Call it apathy, call it real life getting in the way, call it me being too busy to commit to the project.    All I know is it’s 2021 and I’m just now getting started.  

I meant to start yesterday for the New Year, but work kicked my ass this week and I needed to decompress more than I realized.   But today, I’m like “No more delays, I’m going to break ground on this, because I want to make this happen.   So here we are. 

I think there’s fan translations of the Hellsing manga out there, but I found them nearly impossible to read, so I purchased the digital editions of the official translation published by Dark Horse Comics.   Unfortunately, they don’t seem to sell that on their website anymore.   The only reason I still have my copy is because Dark Horse let’s you keep your purchases even after they stop offering them for sale.   For example, I’ve got a bunch of Star Wars comics from them, and they’re still on my account, even after Dark Horse lost the Star Wars license to Marvel when DIsney bought Lucasfilm.   I... don’t like to think about that too much.    Let’s just get rolling here.

The story starts on June 14, 1999.   At least, I’m pretty sure it was 1999, but that’s one of the reasons I’m reading this, so I can get my facts straight.    There’s a new vicar in the town of Cheddar, up in northern England.    The comic makes it seem like he just wandered into town one day.   I always figured he was an established member of the community who just happened to become a vampire, but this probably makes more sense.    Everyone calls this dude “The Cheddar Priest”, which leads you to take that description at face value.    It’s easy to think that he’s a real priest who’s lived in Cheddar for a long time.  

But it makes more sense if he’s not.   He just dressed up as a vicar so he’d have an easier time preying on the villagers.    The local church would accept him, and his clergy robes would give him an automatic authority.    On June 21, the first incident happened, where a young man on an errand to the next town over never came back.    So the Cheddar Priest played it very carefully to start out.   He waited a week to start feeding, and his first victim was someone who was going to be alone for a while.  And he took ten more victims over the next ten days.   Finally, someone caught sight of the priest with blood trickling from his mouth, and he managed to survive the encounter long enough to tell the cops about it.   But when they questioned the priest, he just attacked them, which brings us to July 5.

By this point, the police have sealed off Cheddar with roadblocks, since no one has come out of the village since they first confronted the priest.   At some point Sir Hellsing shows up to take over, and everyone’s like “Sir Hellsing is a g-g-g-g-girl!?”  It seems kind of odd to me that all these people would be expecting Hellsing but know so little about her, although she did inherit the title from her father, so maybe they were thinking of him when someone told them who was coming.  

The really distracting thing about Sir Integra Hellsing in this manga is how... curvy she is.   Both anime adaptations focus on making her very thin and angular, probably to emphasize her visual distinction with Seras, but also probably to play up her masculine traits.   She wears suits, never dresses, goes by “Sir” and not “Lady”, and immediately takes charge of every situation she’s in.     The Team Four Star abridged parody of Hellsing Ultimate has a few bits where other characters mistake her for a man.    I don’t thing Ultimate went that far with her design. But I could see someone slipping up on that.   

But the manga Integra looks a lot more feminine, maybe because Kouta Hirano was going in the opposite direction.    She wears a suit and goes by “Sir”, so he wanted to make her look more babelicious for the sake of contrast.   That’s a technical term, by the way.    Also, this is literally chapter one, so making her look different from Seras isn’t necessarily an issue yet.  

Anyway, Integra explains what most readers probably already knew from the back cover of the book: that there’s a vampire in Cheddar, and the cops have no idea how to deal with this.    She has already found visual evidence of “ghouls” in the area, which are humans that have been turned into zombies by a vampire bite.    If the human wasn’t a virgin when they were bitten.  We’ll get into that later.   

The cops think she’s talking crazy, because they think vampires and ghouls are fictional, but Integra explains that supernatural monsters are real, but highly classified.    That’s how she got called in to this matter, because her Hellsing Organization, aka the “Royal Order of Protestant Knights”, is responsible for destroying these creatures.   

What doesn’t make a lot of sense, though, is how Hellsing can properly respond to these kinds of incidents if no one knows to report them.    The tragedy of this chapter is that a lot of innocent people got killed because the police tried to handle it themselves.    What they should have done was to contact Hellsing immediately, except no one knew they were dealing with a vampire because no one thought vampires were real.  And no one knew Hellsing was the agency to contact, because Hellsing’s mission is a secret.  

For that matter, why should any of this be kept a secret at all?   If vampires are a real thing, why not tell the public about it?   That may sound like a stupid question, but tigers are real, and everyone knows it, no matter how big and dangerous tigers can be.   I suppose there’s a fear that if people knew it was possible to become a vampire then they’d try to do it for the immortality, but keeping it a secret didn’t stop the Cheddar Priest.   If anything, all this secrecy gave him a three-week head start.  

While explaining the plot to the police, Integra also explains how vampires work.    By drinking the blood of a virgin of the opposite sex, they can turn that virgin into a new vampire.  Any other victims just turn into mindless ghouls, which are “nothing more than the vampire’s servants”.   So sending cops into Cheddar only makes the problem worse, because the Priest will just eat them and generate more henchmen.   Her solution is to send in a single “special anti-vampire expert” to take care of the whole thing.   His name is Alucard, and one of his first lines in this story is about how he wants to suck some blood.     So he just sort of strolls into Cheddar while...

Of all the police they sent into Cheddar, only one remains, and the Cheddar Priest and his ghouls chase her into the woods.    This is Seras Victoria, as we later find out, and she’s in deep shit right here.   All her comrades are ghouls now, and her gun doesn’t work on vampires.   I’m guessing the only reason she survived this long was because the priest had to take the time to kill and feed on the others.  

Here, we see the Priest is also aware of the vampire rules Integra laid out.    He seems to want a devoted army of ghouls, so maybe this was his plan all along.   If he just wanted to feed, he probably should have moved on to the next town before everyone got suspicious, but instead he’s making a stand in Cheddar, steadily building his army while the police are powerless to stop him.   And maybe this is why Hellsing is a secret.    He thinks he’s unstoppable because he doesn’t know what measures are in place to stop him.  

With Seras, ol’ C.P. decides that he should rape her before drinking her blood, because he figures there’s a nonzero chance that she might be a virgin, and he specifically doesn’t want to turn her into a vampire like himself.   I’m not sure why, but I always figured he was concerned that a vampire Seras would turn against him or at least make things difficult for him.  

But then Alucard shows up and introduces himself.   The priest orders his ghouls to gun him down, but it turns out that Alucard is a vampire himself (gasp!), and the guns don’t work on him, just like they don’t work on the priest.   Then Al whips out his gun, which does work, because it fires bullets laced with silver from a cross that was in a cathedral.   Wait, I just got a clue.  I always thought it was weird that silver bullets kill vampires in this story, since that’s more of a werewolf thing, but that’s why the silver was from a melted down cross.    That way it’s good for vampires and werewolves.    There might also be some Blue Kryptonite in there for possible Bizarro infestations, but it’s never outright stated.

So then the Priest gets nervous and takes a hostage.    He never dreamed that there was another vampire running around, let alone one working as a  vampire hunter, in the service of humans.   He assumes that Al will let him go in order to save the girl, but instead he asks her if she’s a virgin, and the priest realizes there’s only one reason he’d even bring that up: Alucard isn’t here to save anyone, he’s just here to kill the Cheddar Priest. 

For some reason, despite saying the bullets would kill vampires, Alucard runs his arm through the Priest after he makes the shot.   Maybe that was just for flourish.    The real reason he used the gun, of course, was that he knew Seras would die in any event, but at least this way he stopped the Priest before he could decapitate her or something.    Seras’ wound is fatal, but at least there’s time for him to offer an apology and give her a chance to consider his (implied) offer.

When Alucard returns from the village, he’s got Seras wrapped up in a blanket, and it turns out she’s a vampire now too.    And this is kind of the most important moment in this whole story, because Seras is the best character, there are no elections, and this her origin story.   

I think a lot about Seras’ fateful decision here.   It’s often framed as a choice.   Whenever she gets frustrated with her situation, Alucard reminds her that she could have just refused him, but what kind of choice is that?   She could either “live” as a vampire or bleed out in the middle of nowhere.    Seras is a survivor.   She kept fighting the priest until the bitter end, and when there were no other moves to make, she accepted the one path that would allow her to continue.   

Also, I think a lot of their relationship is based on Seras seeing what Alucard is and wanting that for herself.    He marched right into Cheddar like a badass, ready to beat all the bad guys, but that’s the same thing she did earlier.    The only difference is that his gun actually worked and he had the power to use it.   I don’t think Seras wanted to become a vampire, but becoming a vampire hunter? One as strong as Alucard?   Yeah, she would want that.   Especially after the utter despair and humiliation she just experienced.   But we’ll have plenty more to say about Seras, don’t you worry.

I was planning to cover three chapters in one post, but this one is pretty important, and I kind of went overboard, so I’ll save Chapters 2 and 3 for later.   Doncha dare miss it!

[snarkytiara]

A loooong post, and I know long essays can be annoying, so putting behind a cut, but I have some Thoughts when I see a post like this by @willandkate

- First: I’m not sure who you are trying to convince with your post? Also, you start with William’s 2016 statement, but then the rest of your post tries to make a case for why statements are not the BRF thing and that other gestures were made. The statement from William shows there is precedent for statements supporting Harry and Meghan, so your argument isn’t very strong.

- Small gestures were not going to cut it! The response to Meghan is on a whole other level, and that should have necessitated other measures IMO. If you are having to sum up all the small moments for fellow royal watchers, who pay attention to this stuff, how is anybody else even going to notice?

- Stop normalizing the press abuse of royal women. If your response to the abuse Meghan gets, is to sum up what other royal women dealt with in the past, you’ve lost the argument. The amount of abuse any of these women got is not ok, and you going straight to mentioning that abuse is a means to deflect from talking in depth about all the facets of what Meghan has been dealing with. A big issue in the royal fandom is still the amount of people unwilling to talk about and understand what only Meghan deals with within the BRF (racism and xenophobia). It makes some people uncomfortable to talk about it and it’s fucking sad. The BRF wasn’t ready for growth, but neither were some people in the royal fandom. It’s a big problem to continue to see this conflating of Meghan’s treatment with the treatment of other royal women in the BRF.

- The abuse Meghan gets is contributing to a national (and international lbr) debate about racism in the UK. POC in commonwealth countries are looking at this and it reflects badly on the BRF. This is a huge added element to the treatment of Meghan, that is not present in abuse that other royal women got in the past. That Kate got called ‘Waity Katy’ by the press, dit not lead to the possibility of negative sentiment in CW countries towards the monarchy. This was said last month:

“This week a senior Commonwealth figure told me that the tabloid treatment of Meghan – so clearly racist to observers in other parts of the world, while large parts of the British public remain in denial – is having a knock-on effect in making it harder for him to promote Britain abroad.” - Afua Hirsch, The Guardian

- You summing up all these perceived gestures, does not say anything about how Meghan (and Harry) experienced that ‘support’. Are you deciding for Harry and Meghan that it was enough? Did you really expect them to say otherwise during the engagement interview? And those small moments William and Kate spoke about them, what else were they going to say? On the surface, a show of support, but tells us absolutely nothing about how things are behind closed doors. Your post decidedly ignores that.

- After all this supposed support, Harry and Meghan still left. Fact. Is that all on them? The warm embrace of the Cambridges must have felt a bit too warm for them I guess. They couldn’t handle all the love. Your post lacks analysis into the possible reasons for Harry and Meghan and the shared blame of different parties in things coming to a head in this way.

- I also have the following question: if you are going to call out the Sussexes for overshadowing other royals, you have to be fair. What did you think of Kate launching her 5 question survey on the same day as Charles’ big speech in Davos? Is that not overshadowing him? Kate had been working on this for two years, but she just has to launch on the same day as a big Charles speech, that is important to him? Genuinely curious how you view that. And if a promo for Harry and Meghan’s documentary overshadows a Cambridge tour, seems to me that is a Cambridge problem. Harry and Meghan have no say over when ITV airs a promo. 

- Harry and Meghan didn’t deserve a statement of support, because they made the announcement that they were leaving, without consent? Weird take, as it’s odd to say in retrospect that they didn’t deserve a statement earlier in 2019, when things were at their worst, because at the start of 2020 they made an announcement. That’s after the fact. The BRF knew about Harry and Meghan entertaining the possibility of stepping back. Fact. There was a reason they felt the need to go public with it now, as it has been mentioned they were halted and sent away by courtiers when they were trying to discuss things with the queen and Charles. Your post doesn’t explore the reason for why Harry and Meghan may have done what they did and incorrectly places all of the blame on them. 

- I don’t know if you watched Harry and Meghan’s documentary? A couple obviously struggling, and Meghan’s hard time as a royal is not going to be made better simply by a pat on the back from Kate after Serena lost at Wimbledon. It’s wild that you, and others, think that is doing enough to show support.

- None of what you’ve said takes into account the KP press approach over the past couple of years. For example, any small gesture of support from Kate to Meghan gets severely undermined when KP is completely fine with a press narrative meant to embiggen Kate, at Meghan’s expense. It’s naive to believe that KP has had no part in that and I’ve yet to see a Kate/Cambridge fan accept that reality and own that it’s been happening. The reality has always been that the BRF are fine throwing each other under the bus. PR and actually thinking about how that makes them look has never been the strong suit of this family.

- You know what else undermines any small gesture of support for Meghan? The seemingly huge gestures of support from the queen to Andrew! If Liz keeps taking Andrew out and about, I sure as fuck am not still giving her kudos for taking Meg on an engagement back in June of 2018! And sure, it would’ve been smart optics for Harry and Meghan to visit Balmoral, and I would have advised them of that if I worked for them, but also; should they have visited before or after the queen was seen going to church with a smiling Andrew the day after Epstein died? Effectively showing she doesn’t give a fuck about her own image either. You could argue that isn’t a great advertisement for wanting to visit the queen.. Plus Harry and Meghan live(d) in Windsor, where they queen spends most of her time anyway.

- Speaking of the Queen, it is so often ignored how much influence she does have over the press. I’m sure over the years there has been many a time where she has intervened on behalf of the likes of Andrew. Why is it that Meghan has to have the stiff upper lip? Because this is what all royal women just have to face?

- I find it odd that you are only blaming Harry and Meghan for possibly feeling isolated. A struggling couple, dealing with a lot, should receive most of that blame? That darn Harry and Meghan are just being so difficult because they didn’t feel that William and Kate standing near them that time in Westminster Abbey was enough!1! They are so ungrateful. 

- Harry and Meghan leaving looks bad for the BRF, however you slice it. It reflects badly on them. Even if you don’t believe that, I’m sure you still feel that all this drama should have been prevented, for the sake of your faves? If this has been a topic of conversation with Harry and Meghan since last year, then why not also make it a topic of conversation how the rest of the BRF could and should have done more to prevent them choosing to leave? 

All in all, your post on this is very superficial and lacks nuance, but that tracks with what I’ve seen from most Cambridge fans. I know there is no point convincing you, and others, just like there is no point in your post trying to convince Sussex fans. But this had to be said and honestly I’ve been sitting on this since after the documentary aired.

[victorianwhitechapel]

Joseph Carey Merrick (5 August 1862 – 11 April 1890), often erroneously called John Merrick, was an English man with severe deformities. He was first exhibited at a freak show as the "Elephant Man", and then went to live at the London Hospital after he met Frederick Treves, subsequently becoming well known in London society.

~ EARLY LIFE AND FAMILY ~

Joseph Carey Merrick was born on August 5, 1862 at 50 Lee Street in Leicester, to Joseph Rockley Merrick and his wife Mary Jane (née Potterton). Joseph Rockley Merrick (c. 1838–1897) was the son of London-born weaver Barnabas Merrick (1791–1856) who moved to Leicester during the 1820s or 1830s, and his third wife Sarah Rockley. Mary Jane Potterton (c. 1837–1873) had been born at Evington, Leicestershire, her father being William Potterton, who was described as an agricultural labourer in the 1851 census of Thurmaston, Leicestershire. She was said to have some form of physical disability and as a young woman worked as a domestic servant in Leicester before marrying Joseph Rockley Merrick, then a warehouseman, in 1861.

The following year, Joseph Carey Merrick was born, apparently healthy. He had no outward anatomical signs of, and no symptoms of any disorder for the first few years of his life. Named after his father, he was given the middle name Carey by his mother, a Baptist, after the preacher William Carey. The Merricks had two more children,  William Arthur, born January 1866, who died of scarlet fever on 21 December 1870 aged four and was buried on Christmas Day 1870; and Marion Eliza, born 28 September 1867, who was born with physical disabilities and died of myelitis and "seizures" on 19 March 1891, aged 23. William is buried with his mother, aunts and uncles in Welford Road Cemetery in Leicester while Marion is buried with her father in Belgrave Cemetery in Leicester. 

A pamphlet titled "The Autobiography of Joseph Carey Merrick", produced c. 1884 to accompany his exhibition, states that he started to display anatomical signs at approximately five years of age, with "thick lumpy skin". According to a 1930 article in the Illustrated Leicester Chronicle, he began to develop swellings on his lips at the age of 21 months, followed by a bony lump on his forehead and a loosening and roughening of the skin. As he grew, a noticeable difference between the size of his left and right arms appeared and both his feet became significantly enlarged. The Merrick family explained his symptoms as the result of Mary's being knocked over and frightened by a fairground elephant while she was pregnant with Joseph. The concept of maternal impression—that the emotional experiences of pregnant women could have lasting physical effect on their unborn children—was still common in 19th-century Britain. Merrick held this belief about the cause of his affliction for his entire life.

In addition to his deformities, at some point during his childhood, Merrick suffered a fall and damaged his left hip. This injury became infected and left him permanently lame. Although affected by his physical deformities, Merrick attended school and enjoyed a close relationship with his mother. She was a Sunday school teacher, and his father worked as an engine driver at a cotton factory, as well as running a haberdashery business. On 29 May 1873, fewer than three years after the death of her youngest son William, Mary Jane Merrick died from bronchopneumonia. Joseph Rockley Merrick moved with his two children to live with Mrs. Emma Wood Antill, a widow with children of her own. They married on 3 December 1874.

~ EMPLOYMENT AND THE WORKHOUSE ~

Merrick left school aged 13, which was usual for the time. His home-life was now "a perfect misery", and neither his father nor his stepmother demonstrated affection towards him. He ran away "two or three" times, but was brought back by his father each time. At 13, he found work rolling cigars in a factory, but after three years, his right hand deformity had worsened and he no longer had the dexterity required for the job. Now unemployed, he spent his days wandering the streets, looking for work and avoiding his stepmother's taunts.

Merrick was becoming a greater financial burden on his family, and eventually his father secured him a hawker's licence which enabled him to earn money selling items from the haberdashery shop, door to door. This endeavour was unsuccessful, since Merrick's facial deformities rendered his speech increasingly unintelligible and prospective customers reacted with horror to his physical appearance. Housewives refused to open doors for him and now people not only stared at him but followed him out of curiosity. Merrick failed to make enough money as a hawker to support himself. On returning home one day in 1877, he was severely beaten by his father and he left home for good.

"I was taunted and sneered at so that I would not go home to my meals, and used to stay in the streets with a hungry belly rather than return for anything to eat, what few half-meals I did have, I was taunted with the remark—'That's more than you have earned.'" — "The Autobiography of Joseph Carey Merrick".

Merrick was now homeless on the streets of Leicester. His uncle, a barber named Charles Merrick, heard of his nephew's situation, sought him out and offered him accommodation in his home. Merrick continued to hawk around Leicester for the next two years but his efforts to earn a living met with little more success than before. Eventually, his disfigurement drew such negative attention from members of the public that the Commissioners for Hackney Carriages withdrew his licence when it came up for renewal. With young children to provide for, Charles could no longer afford to support his nephew. In late December 1879, now 17 years old, Merrick entered the Leicester Union Workhouse.

Merrick became one of 1,180 residents in the workhouse. Joseph was given a classification to determine his place of accommodation. The class system determined which department or ward he would reside in as well as the amounts of food he would receive. Joseph was classed as class one for able bodied males and females. On 22 March 1880, only 12 weeks after entering, Merrick signed himself out of the workhouse and spent two days looking for work. With no more success than before, he found himself with no option but to return to the workhouse. This time he stayed for four years.

Around 1882, Merrick underwent surgery on his face. The protrusion from his mouth had grown to 20-22 centimeters and severely inhibited his speech and made it difficult to eat. He was operated on in the Workhouse Infirmary under the direction of Dr Clement Frederick Bryan and had a large part of the mass removed.

[Part 2] • [Part 3]

***

TO KNOW MORE

Wikipedia

Biography 

Britannica 

All that's Interesting 

BBC 

History

BONDESON, Jan (2018), Strange Victoriana: Tales of the Curious, the Weird and the Uncanny from Our Victorian Ancestors.

DRIMMER, Frederick (1985), The Elephant Man.

DURBACH, Nadja (2009), The Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Shows and Modern British Culture.

GRAHAM, Professor Pete W.; & OEHLSEHLAEGER, Fritz H. (1992), Articulating the Elephant Man: Joseph Merrick and His Interpreters.

GROVE, Milford (2018), The Secret Life of The Elephant Man.

HOWELL, Michael (2001), The True History of The Elephant Man.

LAMONTAGNE, James (2018), Merrick.

MONTAGU, Ashley (1971), The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity.

SHERMAN, Kenneth (1983), Words for Elephant Man.

SITTON, Jeanette; & STROSHANE, Mae Siu-Wai (2015), Measured By The Soul: The Life of Joseph Carey Merrick. 

SPARKS, Christine (1986), The Elephant Man.

TREVES, Frederick (1923), The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences.

VIGOR-MUNGOVIN, Joanne (2016). Joseph: The Life, Times and Places of the Elephant Man. 

WOOLF, John (2019), The Wonders: Lifting the Curtain on the Freak Show, Circus and Victorian Age.

[solarishashernoseinabook]

So there’s a post going around saying JKR wasn’t always a bad person, bringing up her good politics from a decade ago, and saying that it just goes to show that even good people can be radicalised.

Well...it’s important to realise that not all TERFs were necessarily “always bad” before they went down the rabbit hole. If you say “It could never happen to me!” then you’re just making it so that you won’t recognise the radicalisation techniques when you see them.

But it’s also important to consider that JK R*wling has always had highly problematic tendancies, has always been racist, and has never been as good as her one-time politics would indicate.

Consider...

She openly appropriated elements of Native cultures in 2016, before she displayed any even slightly TERFy tendancies. finding-my-culture, an Ojibwe blogger, did a magnificent take down of it here and I will not presume to speak for them. I can’t add anything to that discussion. But in sum: R*wling spent nearly seven thousand words writing a thoroughly colonialist, white view of Native Americans with no thought to the real people she was doing harm to. Oh, but she comes from another country, you might say. She didn’t learn the same history Americans and Canadians did about colonialism. Bullshit. She has the entire sum of human knowledge available to her through the internet, she could have done basic research to try and portray things slightly more sensitively, or even just research enough to think that maybe that wasn’t her story to tell and not write that background, but she didn’t do that. She used lazy stereotypes to write a racist story to promote her new series of movies instead.

Closely related, R*wling is thoroughly colonialist in her outlook, as displayed by what she does with Bill Weasley, who, you’ll remember, is a curse breaker in Egypt: he breaks into tombs, steals the gold inside, and delivers it to the antisemitic stereotypes goblins. He’s portrayed as a cool guy with a great job who gives his family tours of tombs for fun. Rowling doesn’t go into any details about the culture of ancient Egyptian wizards (probably a good thing given her track record with non-white cultures), but unfortunately that doesn’t exactly make things better. Literally all we know about the tombs Bill is breaking into is that they were made by ancient Egyptian wizards who, like their real-life counterparts, had a lot of gold and treasure in their tombs and went to great pains to guard it. Here’s what we know about why real life Egyptians did this: 1. They would be reborn in the afterlife, which necessitated preserving their bodies 2. The items inside would guide the deceased person in their afterlife, be objects they would use in their new life or would protect them. This was taken very seriously If ancient Egyptian wizards did this, that’s because they likely had the same beliefs as real life ancient Egyptians. Egypt was under British colonial rule from 1882 to 1956. Before and during this time, Britian and other European entities plundered and looted their way through Egypt and stole untold numbers of precious cultural artefacts. Calls from Egypt to repatriate these have been ignored. No mention is made of Bill having any problems carrying out his work, meaning R*wling apparently can’t conceive of a sovereign nation taking issue with a foreign power stealing from them. This indicates a pattern: non-white cultures are tools to R*wling to prop up her white characters, and have been for twenty years. 

Literally from chapter 2 of Philosopher’s Stone R*wling established herself as fatphobic and went on to prove she’s got a healthy dose of internalised misogyny as well. Vernon and Dudley have a lot of disparaging comments made about their weight even though they weren’t needed, the characters are just mean people. Feminine girls in the series are continually ridiculed, from Cho Chang to Lavender Brown to Fleur Delacour. Fleur isn’t treated with any measure of respect until she “proves” herself worthy of it by proving she *gasp* isn’t shallow despite being pretty. Though she apparently made efforts to get to know the Weasleys while she was engaged to Bill (she spent time living with them, after all), we’re never shown any of the Weasleys actually trying to have a conversation with her, or even try to make her welcome and find things she would enjoy doing. Girls and women in the series who are too feminine for R*wling (which appears to mean anyone who is naturally pretty without effort, who puts effort into how they look, and so on) are treated as lesser until they prove they‘ve got more going for them than just their looks.

Look, I get the point of that popular post. Instead of making her out to be evil so her becoming a TERF was just a natural progression, its supposed to remind everyone that radicalisation can happen to anyone, and that’s a good goal. But we can’t pretend R*wling was this paragon of leftist virtues before this. She was incredibly problematic and pretending she’s only been doing things worthy of criticism since December 2019 when she tweeted in support of Maya Forstader ignores the harmful portrayals of non-white cultures that POC have been talking about for years. Pretending R*wling was perfectly good before erases the toxic beliefs she inserted into her books. Now that more people are critical of R*wling we’re finally in an environment where we’re talking openly the other stuff she did that she deserves criticism for. Let’s not erase that. Even progressive people have things they need to work on, especially white, first-world people who otherwise seem to care about social issues, let’s not forget that or pretend that bringing all that up is a weird new trend.