#how is he always finding new ways to make twitter fail

[shinybea]

Why do I feel like Elon Musk is a complete idiot?

[babyleostuff]

fanservice

𝜗𝜚 theme: fluff, established relationship 𝜗𝜚 pairing: idol!mingu x fem!reader 𝜗𝜚 word count: 944

・ ❥ ・ jealousy is a disease when it comes to kim mingyu and his fanservice

“i’m not your strongest soldier lol don’t play with me rn.” 

you rolled your eyes at the caption, and scrolled past the video that had been haunting you for the past couple of days. ever since the boys’ fan meeting last monday your fyp had been going crazy with videos of your boyfriend holding hands and comparing hand sizes with his fans. 

and that wasn’t even the worst part. 

your man was the definition of fanservice, him holding hands with others and making puppy eyes at them wasn't anything new, hell - how many times had he asked you to take his “boyfriend” photos he later posted on instagram, while looking like a literal walking dream. he loved making people go crazy on a daily basis, so it wasn’t like the hand holding bothered you. 

what bothered you was the lovestruck expression, the annoyingly gentle, sparkly eyes, the perfect fucking black hair falling over his forhead, the soft smile, the gaze that never left the person in font of him. 

you weren’t sure where the sudden surge of possessiveness came from, but oh my god, there was a limit of what you could take, and if only you remembered your twitter password you would’ve logged out a long time ago. you knew exactly who this look was reserved for, and it was you, and you only, so why was he suddenly going around looking at others like they hung the moon and the stars in the sky. 

“baby?” mingyu’s voice echoed from your bedroom. “have you seen my black dior hoodie?”

you were too busy scrolling past yet another tik tok to answer your boyfriend. besides, who cared about a hoodie when he was basically cheating on you?  

“and what are you gawking at, huh?” you muttered under your nose, as the girl in the video squealed when mingyu took her hand in his. you weren’t sure why you were working yourself up so much. it’s not like you were jealous of the way his thumb was running over her palm. or how their fingers intertwined perfectly.

thinking you didn’t hear him from the other room, mingyu gave up on his mission to find the hoodie he was sure he saw in the closet just this morning, and walked out to the living room to look for you. “baby, did you h-,” he didn't have to look at you twice to see who exactly stole the piece of clothing he was searching for. “there it is,” he beamed, a smile blooming on his face. his heart never failed to turn into mush whenever he saw you dressed in his clothes, especially the oversized ones that made you look like an adorable teddy bear. 

“i can give it back if you want,” you mumbled, your eyes still glued to your phone. 

“it’s fine, i’ll just find another one, but tell me,” mingyu crooked an eyebrow at your frown, and walked over to where you were not so happily occupying the armchair he and wonwoo decided on buying last month, “what the hell got you pouting like that?” 

you didn’t notice your boyfriend standing behind you until it was too late. “huh?” too slow to turn off the phone, you spun around to find mingyu behind you with an annoying smirk on his face. “i wasn’t pouting,” you tried to argue, as you slipped the phone under your thigh. he laughed, and tucked a loose piece of your hair behind your ear. 

“baby?” he crouched down, and placed his chin on your shoulder. 

“mhm?” maybe playing stupid would help. 

“why were you watching videos from the fanmeeting, hm?” he asked innocently, like he didn’t know exactly why. 

you groaned, and turned around, hiding your face in the crook of his neck. there was no way you’d admit to being jealous of some girls for holding your boyfriend’s hand when you literally did that 24/7. 

“you know you literally get to cuddle and kiss me, right? it’s not like they’re going to steal me from you,” he said. you didn’t have to look to know that he had this infuriatingly handsome smile on his face that always made your knees weak. 

“stop being so smug about it, kim mingyu,” you mumbled, and hit his chest. 

“never.” 

he grabbed the back of your neck gently and peeled you of him, much to your reluctance. a pang of self-consciousness suddenly hit you because what if he thought you were acting immaturely over this? “listen,” he walked around the armchair to kneel in front of you. “whatever you’re thinking, stop it,” grabbing your face tenderly, he ran a thumb over your cheek. “i’m yours, remember?” 

“i know, it’s just-,” 

“let me finish, yeah?” you nodded and kissed his palm, encouraging him to keep going. maybe that was just what you needed today? a bit of reassurance and his words of affirmation. because if there was one thing that kim mingyu was good at, it was making you feel secure and loved. 

“i know it can be hard looking at those videos and whatnot, and you know why i act how i act when it’s needed. but i love you. you. and no matter how many hands i have to hold or how many people i have to pretend to flirt with, it doesn’t change the fact that at the end of the day all i want is to come home to you. ‘k baby?” 

too overwhelmed to say anything, you just nodded quickly, and threw your arms around his shoulders, so he wouldn’t see your teary eyes. 

“you’re really mine?” you asked, sniffling quietly. 

“all yours. only yours.”

taglist (if you want to be added, check my masterlist): @jeonghansshitester @weird-bookworm @sea-moon-star @hanniehaee @wonwooz1 @byprettymar @edgaralienpoe @staranghae @itza-meee @eightlightstar @immabecreepin @whatsgyud @hyneyedfiz @honestlydopetree @vicehectic @dkswife @uniq-tastic @marisblogg @aaniag @daegutowns @carlesscat-thinklogic23 @embrace-themagic @ohmyhuenings @nidda13 @hrts4hanniehae @k-drama-adict @isabellah29 @f4iryjjosh @bangantokchy @mrswonwooo @bangtancultsposts @lllucere @athanasiasakura @onlyyjeonghan @haecien @caramyisabitchforsvtandbts @hannahhbahng @valgracia @ohmygodwhyareallusernamestaken @mirxzii @hhusbuds @wonranghaeee @rosiesauriostuff @gyuguys @tomodachiii @veryfabday @lilmochiandsuga @asasilentreader @mrsnervous @bewoyewo @sharonxdevi @wondipity @gyuguys @raginghellfire @treehouse-mouse @waldau @wonootnoot @hellodefthings @dokyeomkyeom @sourkimchi @bbysnw @hoichi02 @aaa-sia @haneulparadx @minvrsev @zozojella @wonootnoot @kimingyuslover @wntrei @honglynights @jihoonsbbygirl @uhdrienne @bloodcanbehot 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Enshittification isn’t caused by venture capital

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

Many of us have left the big social media platforms; far more of us wish we could leave them; and even those of us who've escaped from Facebook/Insta and Twitter still spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to get the people we care about off of them, too.

It's lazy and easy to think that our friends who are stuck on legacy platforms run by Zuckerberg and Musk lack the self-discipline to wean themselves off of these services, or lack the perspective to understand why it's so urgent to get away from them, or that their "hacked dopamine loops" have addicted them to the zuckermusk algorithms. But if you actually listen to the people who've stayed behind, you'll learn that the main reason our friends stay on legacy platforms is that they care about the other people there more than they hate Zuck or Musk.

They rely on them because they're in a rare-disease support group; or they all coordinate their kids' little league carpools there; or that's where they stay in touch with family and friends they left behind when they emigrated; or they're customers or the audience for creative labor.

All those people might want to leave, too, but it's really hard to agree on where to go, when to go, and how to re-establish your groups when you get somewhere else. Economists call this the "collective action problem." This problem creates "switching costs" – a lot of stuff you'll have to live without if you switch from legacy platforms to new ones. The collective action problem is hard to solve and the switching costs are very high:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/29/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms/

That's why people stay behind – not because they lack perspective, or self-discipline, or because their dopamine loops have been hacked by evil techbro sorcerers who used Big Data to fashion history's first functional mind-control ray. They are locked in by real, material things.

Big Tech critics who attribute users' moral failings or platforms' technical prowess to the legacy platforms' "stickiness" are their own worst enemies. These critics have correctly identified that legacy platforms are a serious problem, but have totally failed to understand the nature of that problem or how to fix it. Thankfully, more and more critics are coming to understand that lock-in is the root of the problem, and that anti-lock-in measures like interoperability can address it.

But there's another major gap in the mainstream critique of social media. Critics of zuckermuskian media claim those services are so terrible because they're for-profit entities, capitalist enterprises hitched to the logic of extraction and profit above all else. The problem with this claim is that it doesn't explain the changes to these services. After all, the reason so many of us got on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram is because they used to be a lot of fun. They were useful. They were even great at times.

When tech critics fail to ask why good services turn bad, that failure is just as severe as the failure to ask why people stay when the services rot.

Now, the guy who ran Facebook when it was a great way to form communities and make friends and find old friends is the same guy who who has turned Facebook into a hellscape. There's very good reason to believe that Mark Zuckerberg was always a creep, and he took investment capital very early on, long before he started fucking up the service. So what gives? Did Zuck get a brain parasite that turned him evil? Did his investors get more demanding in their clamor for dividends?

If that's what you think, you need to show your working. Again, by all accounts, Zuck was a monster from day one. Zuck's investors – both the VCs who backed him early and the gigantic institutional funds whose portfolios are stuffed with Meta stock today – are not patient sorts with a reputation for going easy on entrepreneurs who leave money on the table. They've demanded every nickel since the start.

What changed? What caused Zuck to enshittify his service? And, even more importantly for those of us who care about the people locked into Facebook's walled gardens: what stopped him from enshittifying his services in the "good old days?"

At its root, enshittification is a theory about constraints. Companies pursue profit at all costs, but while you may be tempted to focus on the "at all costs" part of that formulation, you musn't neglect the "profits" part. Companies don't pursue unprofitable actions at all costs – they only pursue the plans that they judge are likely to yield profits.

When companies face real competitors, then some enshittificatory gambits are unprofitable, because they'll drive your users to competing platforms. That's why Zuckerberg bought Instagram: he had been turning the screws on Facebook users, and when Instagram came along, millions of those users decided that they hated Zuck more than they loved their friends and so they swallowed the switching costs and defected to Instagram. In an ill-advised middle-of-the-night memo to his CFO, Zuck defended spending $1b on Instagram on the grounds that it would recapture those Facebook escapees:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/29/21345723/facebook-instagram-documents-emails-mark-zuckerberg-kevin-systrom-hearing

A company that neutralizes, buys or destroys its competitors can treat its users far worse – invade their privacy, cheap out on moderation and anti-spam, etc – without losing their business. That's why Zuck's motto is "it is better to buy than to compete":

https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/zuckerberg-its-better-to-buy-than-compete-is-facebook-a-monopoly-42243

Of course, as a leftist, I know better than to count on markets as a reliable source of corporate discipline. Even more important than market discipline is government discipline, in the form of regulation. If Zuckerberg feared fines for privacy violations, or moderation failures, or illegal anticompetitive mergers, or fraudulent advertising systems that rip off publishers and advertisers, or other forms of fraud (like the "pivot to video"), he would treat his users better. But Facebook's rise to power took place during the second half of the neoliberal era, when the last shreds of regulatory muscle that survived the Reagan revolution were being devoured by GW Bush and Obama (and then Trump).

As cartels and monopolies took over our economy, most government regulators were neutered and captured. Public agencies were stripped of their powers or put in harness to attack small companies, customers, and suppliers who got in the way of monopolists' rent-extraction. That meant that as Facebook grew, Zuckerberg had less and less to fear from government enforcers who might punish him for enshittification where the markets failed to do so.

But it's worse than that, because Zuckerberg and other tech monopolists figured out how to harness "IP" law to get the government to shut down third-party technology that might help users resist enshittification. IP law is why you can't make a privacy-protecting ad-blocker for an app (and why companies are so desperate to get you to use their apps rather than the open web, and why apps are so dismally enshittified). IP law is why you can't make an alternative client that blocks algorithmic recommendations. IP law is why you can't leave Facebook for a new service and run a scraper that imports your waiting Facebook messages into a different inbox. IP law is why you can't scrape Facebook to catalog the paid political disinformation the company allows on the platform:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

IP law's growth has coincided with Facebook's ascendancy – the bigger Facebook got, the more tempting it was to interoperators who might want to plug new code into it to protect Facebook users, and the more powers Facebook had to block even the most modest improvements to its service. That meant that Facebook could enshittify even more, without worrying that it would drive users to take unilateral, permanent action that would deprive it of revenue, like blocking ads. Once ad-blocking is illegal (as it is on apps), there's no reason not to make ads as obnoxious as you want.

Of course, many Facebook employees cared about their users, and for most of the 21st century, those workers were a key asset for Facebook. Tech workers were in short supply until just a couple years ago, when the platforms started round after round of brutal layoffs – 260,000 in 2023, another 150,000+ in 2024. Facebook workers may be furious about Zuckerberg killing content moderation, but he's not worried about them quitting – not with a half-million skilled tech workers out there, hunting for jobs. Fuck 'em. Let 'em quit:

https://www.404media.co/its-total-chaos-internally-at-meta-right-now-employees-protest-zuckerbergs-anti-lgbtq-changes/

This is what changed: the collapse of market, government, and labor constraints, and IP law's criminalization of disenshittifying, interoperable add-ons. This is why Zuck, an eternal creep, is now letting his creep flag fly so proudly today. Not because he's a worse person, but because he understands that he can hurt his users and workers to benefit his shareholders without facing any consequences. Zuckerberg 2025 isn't the most evil Zuck, he's the most unconstrained Zuck.

Same goes for Twitter. I mean, obviously, there's been a change in management at Twitter – the guy who's enshittifying it today isn't the guy who enshittified it prior to last year. Musk is speedrunning the enshittification curve, and yet Twitter isn't collapsing. Why not? Because Musk is insulated from consequences for fucking up – he's got a huge cushion of wealth, he's got advertisers who are desperate to reach his users, he's got users who can't afford to leave the service, he's got IP law that he can use to block interoperators who might make it easier to migrate to a better service. He was always a greedy, sadistic asshole. Now he's an unconstrained greedy, sadistic asshole. Musk 2025 isn't a worse person than Musk 2020. He's just more free to act on his evil impulses than he was in years gone by.

These are the two factors that make services terrible: captive users, and no constraints. If your users can't leave, and if you face no consequences for making them miserable (not solely their departure to a competitor, but also fines, criminal charges, worker revolts, and guerrilla warfare with interoperators), then you have the means, motive and opportunity to turn your service into a giant pile of shit.

That's why we got Jack Welch and his acolytes when we did. There were always evil fuckers just like them hanging around, but they didn't get to run GM until Ronald Reagan took away the constraints that would have punished them for turning GE into a giant pile of shit. Every economy is forever a-crawl with parasites and monsters like these, but they don't get to burrow into the system and colonize it until policymakers create rips they can pass through.

In other words, the profit motive itself is not sufficient to cause enshittification – not even when a for-profit firm has to answer to VCs who would shut down the company or fire its leadership in the face of unsatisfactory returns. For-profit companies chase profit. The enshittifying changes to Facebook and Twitter are cruel, but the cruelty isn't the point: the point is profits. If the fines – or criminal charges – Facebook faced for invading our privacy exceeded the ad-targeting revenue it makes by doing so, it would stop spying on us. Facebook wouldn't like it. Zuck would hate it. But he'd do it, because he spies on us to make money, not because he's a voyeur.

To stop enshittification, it is not necessary to eliminate the profit motive – it is only necessary to make enshittification unprofitable.

This is not to defend capitalism. I'm not saying there's a "real capitalism" that's good, and a "crony capitalism" or "monopoly capitalism" that's bad. All flavors of capitalism harm working people and seek to shift wealth and power from the public and democratic institutions to private interests. But that doesn't change the fact that there are, indeed, different flavors of capitalism, and they have different winners and losers. Capitalists who want to sell apps on the App Store or reach customers through Facebook are technofeudalism's losers, while Apple, Facebook, Google, and other Big Tech companies are technofeudalism's great winners.

Smart leftism pays attention to these differences, because they represent the potential fault lines in capitalism's coalition. These people all call themselves capitalists, they all give money and support to political movements that seek to crush worker power and human rights – but when the platforms win, the platforms' business customers lose. They are irreconcilably on different sides of a capitalism-v-capitalism fight that is every bit as important to them as the capitalism-v-socialism fight.

I'm saying that it's good praxis to understand these divisions in capitalism, because then we can exploit those differences to make real, material gains for human thriving and worker rights. Lumping all for-profit businesses together as identical and irredeemable is bad tactics.

Legacy social media is at a turning point. Two new systems built on open standards have emerged as a credible threat to the zuckermuskian model: Mastodon (built on Activitypub) and Bluesky (built on Atproto). The former is far more mature, with a huge network of federated servers run by all different kinds of institutions, from hobbyists to corporations, and it's overseen by a nonprofit. The latter has far more users, and is a VC-backed corporate entity, and while it is hypothetically federatable, there are no Bluesky services apart from the main one that you can leave for if Bluesky starts to enshittify.

That means that Bluesky has a ton of captive users, and has the lack of constraint that characterizes the enshittified legacy platforms it has tempted tens of millions of users away from. This is not a good place to be in, because it means that if the current management choose to enshittify Bluesky, they can, and it will be profitable. It also means that the company's VCs understand that they could replace the current management and replace them with willing enshittifiers and make more money.

This is why Bluesky is in a dangerous place: not because it is backed by VCs, not because it is a for-profit entity, but because it has captive users and no constraints. It's a great party in a sealed building with no fire exits:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/14/fire-exits/#graceful-failure-modes

Last week, I endorsed a project called Free Our Feeds, whose goals include hacking some fire exits into Bluesky by force majeure – that is, independently standing up an alternative Bluesky server that people can retreat to if Bluesky management changes, or has a change of heart:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/14/contesting-popularity/#everybody-samba

For some Mastodon users, Free Our Feeds is dead on arrival – why bother trying to make a for-profit project safer for its users when Mastodon is a perfectly good nonprofit alternative? Why waste millions developing a standalone Bluesky server rather than spending that money improving things in the Fediverse.

I believe strongly in improving the Fediverse, and I believe in adding the long-overdue federation to Bluesky. That's because my goal isn't the success of the Fediverse – it's the defeat of enshtitification. My answer to "why spend money fixing Bluesky?" is "why leave 20 million people at risk of enshittification when we could not only make them safe, but also create the toolchain to allow many, many organizations to operate a whole federation of Bluesky servers?" If you care about a better internet – and not just the Fediverse – then you should share this goal, too.

Many of the Fediverse's servers are operated by for-profit entities, after all. One of the Fediverse's largest servers (Threads) is owned by Meta. Threads users who feel the bite of Zuckerberg's decision to encourage homophobic, xenophobic and transphobic hate speech will find it easy to escape from Threads: they can set up on any Fediverse server that is federated with Threads and they'll be able to maintain their connections with everyone who stays behind.

The existence of for-profit servers in the Fediverse does not ruin the Fediverse (though I wouldn't personally use one of them). The fact that multiple neo-Nazi groups run their own Mastodon servers does not ruin the Fediverse (though I certainly won't use their servers). Not even the fact that Donald Trump's Truth Social is a Mastodon server does anything to ruin the Fediverse (not using that one, either).

This is the strength of federated, federatable social media – it disciplines enshittifiers by lowering switching costs, and if enshittifiers persist, it makes it easy for users to escape unshitted, because they don't have to solve the collective action problem. Any user can go to any server at any time and stay in touch with everyone else.

Mastodon was born free: free code, with free federation as a priority. Bluesky was not: it was born within a for-profit public benefit corporation whose charter offers some defenses against enshittification, but lacks the most decisive one: the federation that would let users escape should escape become necessary.

The fact that Mastodon was born free is quite unusual in the annals of the fight for a free internet. Most of the internet was born proprietary and had freedom foisted upon it. Unix was born within Bell Labs, property of the convicted monopolist AT&T. The GNU/Linux project set it free.

SMB was born proprietary within corporate walls of Microsoft, another corporate monopolist. SAMBA set it free.

The Office file formats were also born proprietary within Microsoft's walled garden: they were set free by hacker-activists who fought through a thick bureaucratic morass and Microsoft fuckery (including literally refusing to allow chairs to be set for advocates for Open Document Format) to give us formats that underlie everything from LibreOffice to Google Docs, Office365 to your web browser.

There is nothing unusual, in other words, about hacking freedom into something that is proprietary or just insufficiently free. That's totally normal. It's how we got almost everything great about computers.

Mastodon's progenitors should be praised for ensuring their creation was born free – but the fact that Bluesky isn't free enough is no reason to turn our back on it. Our response to anything that locks in the people we care about must be to shatter those locks, not abandon the people bound by the locks because they didn't heed to our warnings.

Audre Lorde is far smarter than me, but when she wrote that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," she was wrong. There is no toolset better suited to conduct an orderly dismantling of a structure than the tools that built it. You can be sure it'll have all the right screwdriver bits, wrenches, hexkeys and sockets.

Bluesky is fine. It has features I significantly prefer to Mastodon's equivalent. Composable moderation is amazing, both a technical triumph and a triumph of human-centered design:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-13-2023-moderation

I hope Mastodon adopts those features. If someone starts a project to copy all of Bluesky's best features over to Mastodon, I'll put my name to the crowdfunding campaign in a second.

But Mastodon has one feature that Bluesky sorely lacks – the federation that imposes antienshittificatory discipline on companies and offers an enshittification fire-exit for users if the discipline fails. It's long past time that someone copied that feature over to Bluesky.

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/20/capitalist-unrealism/#praxis

[jedimaesteryoda]

Every once in a while on Twitter (not X, Elon can go screw himself), someone circulates a complaint about A Song of Ice and Fire that is basically some version of "GRRM's series is nihilistic where everyone is gray, there are no heroes and villains, or heroes die and villains win compared to Tolkien's magnum opus where there are clear heroes and villains with the heroes being upright and good always wins."

It's written by people who either never read nor understood the series nor understands the author.

Firstly, Martin himself is a fan of Tolkien stating "I revere Lord of the Rings, I reread it every few years, it had an enormous effect on me as a kid," and is such a huge fan of Tolkien he complains of "Tolkien imitators" who "cheapened it. The audience were being sold degraded goods. I thought: 'This is not how it should be done.' "

Tolkien was a clear inspiration for Martin's magnum opus given in the same interview he stated "I wanted to combine the wonder and image of Tolkien fantasy with the gloom of historical fiction." You can even find nods to Tolkien throughout the series from names like "Oakenshield" to a dwarven heir to a mighty mountain fastness filled with gold. Underneath the gloom on the surface, there is a layer of Tolkien-esque romanticism.

ASOIAF isn't nihilistic. No one would call characters like war criminal and murderer-rapists like Gregor Clegane, Ramsay Bolton and Euron Greyjoy or the vivisectionist and torturer Qyburn morally grey. There are heroes like Brienne of Tarth who risked her life in a hopeless fight to save an inn full of orphans, Sam who stayed with Gilly and her babe beyond the Wall in a forest filled with wights and Dunk who defended a puppeteer from a prince. Then, there is Daenerys whose experience as a domestic abuse victim and child bride lead her to put her plan to take back the Iron Throne on hold to liberate slaves.

My own heroes are the dreamers, those men and women who tried to make the world a better place than when they found it, whether in small ways or great ones. Some succeeded, some failed, most had mixed results… but it is the effort that’s heroic, as I see it. Win or lose, I admire those who fight the good fight. -George R.R. Martin

These characters go out of their way to help others and live up to their ideals in a world they know won't reward them for it. That's what helps to make their actions truly heroic. In the end, it's their striving that sets them apart.

The ones who are villains don't seem to win in the end. Tywin was killed by his own abused son on the privy over his mistreatment of a peasant girl, and his legacy is already crumbling. Jaime lost his sword hand and is becoming increasingly disillusioned with his house, slowly realizing that they're not the good guys. The Boltons are facing a rebellion and their new bannermen don't want Ramsay as their liege lord. More Freys have been killed as a result of the Red Wedding than fighting for Robb, and they're being overextended. Not to mention, one of their victims has come back from the dead to enact vengeance on their house. House Greyjoy is destined to fall to ruin as the Greyjoys suffer and die in their fruitless pursuits for crowns.

It's also a superficial reading of Tolkien. Tolkien has moments in his series where heroes fail like Isildur, the guy who slew Sauron, failing to do the one thing he needed to do to end the threat for all time by keeping the One Ring, and Frodo, the purported hero of the series, doing the same thing at the end. Thorin Oakenshield refused to provide money to the people of Lake-town over the destruction of their city at Smaug's hands as a result of his party's actions. There's also plenty of stories of heroes failing in The Silmarillion like Turin.

Both are great series in their own right, and if you don't like Martin's series, that's okay, no series is for everyone. But don't mischaracterize it and pit it against a dumbed down, mischaracterized version of Tolkien's work.

[writerblue275]

Ranking the Heartsteel members from least to most romantic (with some explanation).

Inspiration: A post from @strawberrydoesthings discussing the fact that (confirmed by Riot via Twitter) Sett is the best cook in the group. Not that I didn’t think Sett could be romantic beforehand, because I ABSOLUTELY thought he could be, but this definitely got me thinking about who in the group being romantic comes easy to.

Genre: Ranking? First time I’m doing this style so we’ll see how it goes!

Category: Fluff

Gender: Gender Neutral Reader

TW: Swearing

Important context: I fully believe all Heartsteel members have the ability to be romantic for their partners. So even those I rank “lower” could definitely still make your heart flutter. It just might come more naturally for others.

Least

- Ezreal

Ez’s vibe is a little….chaotic? I just can’t see most romantic gestures being a natural everyday thing for him, and definitely not at the beginning of your relationship.

But I do believe that he’d really make an effort for you on special days (birthdays, Valentine’s Day, etc…). It’s clear to me Ezreal is a very passionate person. And when he has an occasion or a person to focus all that passion on, he doesn’t half-ass things (especially when it comes to you).

LOTS of planning and stress though because he doesn’t want to disappoint you. He’d definitely ask the members and Alune for their opinions on things.

The first time he asked for their opinions, everyone stared at him for a few seconds in surprise because they truly weren’t expecting it. Then of course they helped him plan you the best surprise party!

One small romantic gesture I do think Ezreal would be very good at is playing with his partner’s hair (if his partner is cool with that of course). I feel like he needs something for his hands to fidget with at almost all times (fucking mood). He’d love brushing your hair and, if it’s long enough, braiding it.

- Kayn

Kayn is another member who has a bit more of a chaotic vibe. Definitely can’t see him surprising you randomly with your favorite flowers or slipping little notes into your pockets.

BUT!! I do think Kayn’s another member who would really send it on special occasions. Like when this man goes all out, he goes ALL! OUT!

Fully have a headcanon that one of Kayn’s love languages is physical touch (both giving and receiving). So if you’re someone who likes physical contact, this is a way he’ll inject a little romance in day-to-day life.

I’m talking hand holding, arm around your waist, hand in your back pocket while you two are in line, hand on your thigh while he’s driving, or a shoulder massage if you’re really tense (why do I think he’d be so good at those omg). And there’s also another reason he likes to have contact with you at all times.

He’s sweetly very protective of you. Definitely NOT in a toxic way (fuck toxic relationships), but in a “fans of my profession don’t always take the news of a relationship the best. And while I’m not hiding you, I’m definitely not letting anything happen to you,” way. Along with physical contact he’d do things like walk on the sidewalk side closer to the road if you’re walking with him. (Old-school rule I know but I still find it very sweet.)

- Aphelios

I feel like Aphelios hasn’t had a lot of relationships in his past. So it’s not that he’s unromantic, he’s just a bit inexperienced at the start of your relationship.

I don’t think he is necessarily the “big showstopper romantic gesture” kinda guy, but he’ll show tf out for you on special occasions. (Song just for you, anyone? Can you imagine the lyrics he’d come up with? I’m melting! 😩)

The quiet ones are always the most perceptive (#1)! And our man Phel is hyper perceptive when it comes to those he loves. And of course he loves YOU.

He would really excel in the small day-to-day romantic gestures department like sweet good morning and good night texts without fail (and regardless of the time zone he’s in).

Aphelios definitely LOVES how your face lights up when you find the sweet little notes he snuck into your pocket or bag. And how delighted you get when he randomly brings home your favorite takeout for dinner. And when you sent him a text thanking him for the beautiful bouquet of your favorite flowers he had delivered to you? He literally fist pumped and surprised the hell out of Sett.

- K’Sante

(I know he uses the yellow heart on his tweets but TUMBLR doesn’t have that so pink it is.)

I’m gonna start sounding like a god damn broken record, but I get such amazing vibes from Heartsteel K’Sante. He’d be a truly excellent life partner. Great listener, gives great advice when you ask for it, and knows when you just need to vent your frustration out.

Life with him would be safe, but never boring!You know where he’d thrive when it comes to romance? He’d be excellent at spontaneous romantic gestures.

Dancing/kisses in the rain/snow, turning chores around the apartment into a little dance party/jam session (mentioned in my first headcanon), or buying you flowers randomly because they made him think of you, are some things I think K’Sante would truly excel at. His ways of showing romance would be sincere, but fun.

The KING of spontaneous dates. Stuff like driving to the middle of nowhere to star gaze/have snacks or a picnic or driving up to a random out look because he heard the view of the city at night was amazing. (Spoiler alert: It absolutely was.)

I think K’Sante loves spontaneous gestures even more than full out planning things for you. It doesn’t give him a chance to overthink things!

(A/N: Holy shit deciding how to order these final two was WAY WAY harder than I anticipated. I switched them multiple times and honestly I feel like either could go #1.)

- Sett

Please repeat after me because I’ve said it before: “Mama didn’t raise Sett to be a jackass of a partner.” This man has damn good manners. Car door, opened for you. Your seat, pushed in once you’re sat. Walking w/ him on the sidewalk? He’s taking the side closer to the street.

And ESPECIALLY now that we know he’s the best cook in the group?? Oh my god I think soft Domestic!Sett is a go!! Fully believe acts of service (giving) is one of his love languages.

Due to his schedule, it’s very likely he’s out the door before you in the mornings but even then, he’ll always make sure to set up another pot of coffee/hot chocolate/boiling water for tea so that it’s ready for you when you start your day.

Always has a designated date night with you every week. Doesn’t matter if he’s on tour! Discord/FaceTime exists as do watch parties on streaming platforms. Fuck distance, all that matters to him is spending quality time with you in some way.

And I really think he’d be excellent at planning bigger romantic gestures for his partner. He loves you and he has no issues showing that fact off. (Could absolutely see him getting a tattoo that symbolizes you. Especially one that you help him design so it’s even more meaningful.)

- Yone

I don’t care what sort of scowl-y and hard persona Yone presents to the public. With you? That’s your Koala. (Lmao I will die on the hill that he is secretly a cuddle FIEND. Fight a wall.)

He gives me low-key old-school “gentleman” vibes. Always holds the door open and will push your chair in once you’ve sat down at dinner. Will ALWAYS offer an arm for you to hold. Protective (not toxic) of you. And while he’s not scowl-y with you, this is where his public-facing demeanor can come in handy.

*Clears throat* THE QUIET ONES ARE ALWAYS THE MOST PERCEPTIVE (#2)!

Within a month or two of you starting your relationship Yone knows all your favorites. Will gladly surprise you with them at random times, or especially when he senses you need a pick-me-up. Another member who would write love notes and sneak them into places you’ll find them (I feel like he’s heavily involved in lyric writing so this man is a fucking POET).

His favorite way to grandly express his love for you is through music. He has a list of songs that make him think of you and he’s made a whole mix of them. Would surprise you with it and dance with you around the apartment. (Omg slow dancing around the living room with Yone sounds so cute! 🥹) And little do you know but the very last song on the mix is an original he wrote all for you.

Most

As always, thank you so much for reading! I think I might need to do some more of these rankings because this was so much fun to write! I can definitely think of a few other ideas that would fit with this format!

[christronomy]

Hi!! Its the anon who sent in the chan car ride hard thought with the insta reel, if u remember me. But i have came to give u a new hard thought. First off, HAVE YOU SEEN THE VID OF CHAN DOING THAT LIL FINGER MOVE IN HALL OF FAME?!? i feel dizzy. 😵‍💫 anyways, onto my hard thought, picture this, y/n is scrolling on twt and that tweet that says imagine chan fingering you till you cry (or sum like that i hope you know what tweet im talking abt) and it has the chan vid attached to it, THEN BANGCHAN COMES INTO THE ROOM AND CATCHES Y/N AND FINGERS HEER OMGGGG (also i jus noticed that i used twt and tweet instead of X, sorry lol)

of course i remember you! hi, love! and YES, of course i saw that tweet, and i feel totally not normal about it! i would link them but i can't remember which accounts they're from sigh. also i hate calling it "x" bc cause wtf is that. LMAO

but onto this gem of a thought. honestly, he'd tease you so much if he caught you gushing over those tweets, he'd be so sweet about it though. if you don't mind i wanna add some more to this under the cut cause it just came to mind hehe (it's so long and i didn't proof read. help).

he caught you trying to finger yourself in his dorm room after spending almost hours scrolling through your timeline. you weren't really expecting to see anything interesting, but the only thing that popped up was the clips of him and that finger movement that caught your attention and immediately drove you insane. you couldn't help but keep watching the same clip over and over again in awe. it was just so attractive, especially when he made that certain expression and looked right straight at the camera, almost as if he were looking right at you.

so here you were now, desperately bucking your hips up against your hand, sticking your fingers as far inside your cunt as you could, palming your clit to gain some extra friction. you whined exasperatedly as you failed miserably yet again, not being able to get that stimulation you so desperately wanted.

chan got home a few minutes ago, so he's already been watching you, chuckling to himself softly cause you just look so cute like that—legs spread, face flushed a bright red, fucking your fingers in and out of your sopping hole. you keep going for a few more minutes, until you finally toss your head back to groan in frustration because it's just not enough.

his cock is already twitching, straining in his pants at the sight of you, so he can't help but open the door, and he finds it cute how you immediately close your legs and draw your hand back, the surprise of having been caught in the act showing on your face. he laughs softly and sits next to you on the bed. "what's wrong, love? you upset?" he asks, his tone teasing, yet sweet, and you can tell it's because he knows exactly what you were doing.

you nod and sigh, trying your best to come up with a reasonable explanation as to why you were naked on your boyfriend's bed, alone, when you knew he'd always expected you to wait for him whenever you needed to get off. "i was scrolling through twitter, and i saw these tweets about you... i got curious so i spent a while looking at them, and then..." you trail off with a gasp as he suddenly grabs your phone from where you'd put it next to you on the bed. you try to snatch it back, but he's a lot quicker than you. he scrolls a little bit, his expression serious, and then a smug smile plays at the corner of his lips as he looks at you again.

"aw baby, is this why you were so hot and bothered?" he asks, as he shows you one of the clips he was looking at, the same one from earlier, and your face turns an even darker shade of red as you nod. "that why you were using your cute little fingers, even though you know they're not good enough? you've got me right here. you could've asked me instead of just watching videos of me. i'll do whatever you want as long as i can make you feel good."

you feel like you're melting at the way condescension practically drips off his tongue, and you let him spread your legs for you again, this time using his own fingers to tease your swollen bud. he's such a dream come true. "'m sorry i couldn't wait for you," you start, but he shushes you softly. "that's okay, baby. i'm here now. i can help you," he says, and you want to thank him, but your words are cut short by the almost embarrassingly loud squeal that escapes your throat when he suddenly sticks his pointer and middle fingers in without warning, curling them just right, just like in that clip, finally giving you that pleasure you'd been chasing for hours now.

he watches you intently, from the way your back arches, to the way you clench around his fingers, but his expression stays blank. it doesn't take you that long to cum, and when you do, he doesn't stop. you look at him with furrowed brows, whining from the overstimulation, and he simply chuckles at your expression, not saying anything as he keeps torturing your walls with his fingers mercilessly. he's pushing you close to the edge all over again surprisingly quickly, and once you reach your second orgasm, you're already asking him to slow down, stop for a minute, so you can catch your breath. still, he doesn't. by the time you reach your fourth orgasm, you're already a sobbing stuttering mess as he makes you even more dumb on his fingers, begging him to stop, but that only makes him go much faster, his palm smacking your clit as he does so.

"this how needy you are for me? wanting to get yourself off without me cause of some video? you poor thing, thinking your fingers alone would satisfy you. you know you can't do it without me. guess i just have to remind you, hmm?"

[exorcqism]

⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀oliver aiku ･ karasu tabito

⠀⠀ "you’re an experimentalist—trying new things isn’t an issue for you, and you ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ always find yourself having a good time in the end. but how would they react ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ to your openness? only a little bit of convincing would help. "

⠀ ← [ BACK ] : HOME ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ [ NEXT ] : MLIST →

概要 ⌇ nsfw. fem!reader, female anatomy, smut, modern AU, jerking off (m!receiving), fingering, cunnilingus, whimpering, crying, drooling etc. lmk if i missed anything. ( wc. 1.07K )

⠀THANKS FOR READING ⭑ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ≡ © VMPIIRES, 2O24

⠀⭑ ⌜OLIVER AIKU⌟ ⸝⸝⠀

⠀⸻ jerking, whimpering, oral.

⠀⠀⠀whenever you were bored late at night, you found yourself on twitter, scrolling through the endless amounts of explict clips that appeared on your timeline along with the whimpering audios that occasionally popped up. you cringe a bit, thinking about how someone could record stuff like this without feeling odd themselves. they're getting money, right? you thought to yourself. you weren't knocking how someone made a living, but you definitely couldn't see yourself doing something like this on your own time.

⠀⠀⠀you take a glance over at you boyfriend who was turned over on his side and half asleep scrolling through tiktok, tiredly chuckling at whatever he found funny. on your screen was a couple, their noises kept at a moderate volume in your headphones. while you weren't totally focused on the clip, the small scenes you notice intrigued you. your eyes sparkled at how the woman slowly jerked off her partner while he whined and writhed under her touch.

⠀⠀⠀a smirk appeared on your face as an idea popped into your head. leaning over, you tapped oliver on his shoulder, disrupting his ridiculously sluggish scrolling. when his gaze fell on to your brightened screen, he squinted and his expression changed from one of tiredness to confusion then slight interest. oliver was aware of your experimentalist attitude. he was mostly down for whatever you presented to him, unless it was too odd for him to engage in, but slightly feeling bad for not letting you experience what you showed to him. with a plethora of 'hell no's and 'what the fuck?'s, oliver finally let you have a chance to explore.

⠀⠀⠀"i don't want this lasting too long, i'm tired," the male advised as he put his phone down onto the nightstand on his side of the bed and got into position, ready for whatever you were about to throw around him. with an excited smile, you turn your phone off also and sit on your knees and sit up on your knees. you untied the drawstring of his sweats and pulled them low enough to where his member was visible.

⠀⠀⠀the mattress creaked and shifted beneath the two of you as you continue to sit on your knees and oliver laid his head against the headboard, whimpering and shivering with need. his dual colored irises were glazed over and rolling back into his skull as he tried his best to contain himself but you could tell he was failing miserably. your hand moved tortuously slow in an up and down motion, feeling every ridge, every vein that ran down his thick shaft. a bead of pre-cum began to seep its way out of the slit on his tip and down onto your hand, nearly making a sticky mess of the surrounding sheets and the curly patch of hair at oliver’s lower end.

⠀⠀⠀“damn..baby, can you go a little faster?” oliver’s hips bucked upward into your hand while his free hand squeezed the fabric of the sheets beside him. he was never a whiner but to see him making a mess of himself tonight only spurred you on. your hand moved a little faster and oliver’s writhing only got more urgent. another loud whine escaped his lips as your thumb rolled slowly and deliberately over his throbbing head. you hadn’t seen anything so pretty in your life until now. to add on to oliver’s pleasured torture, you brought your head down, pushing his dick into your warm, wet mouth.

⠀⠀⠀“fuck,” oliver cursed, his moans still being stifled as he bit down on his lower lip. his hand made its way up to the crown of your head and gently pushed you down onto his shaft more, making you swallow his entire length. your hand continued to move, jerking him off slowly, your lips following its movements carefully.

⠀⠀⠀oliver’s grip on your hair grew tight the moment you decided to pick up the pace. his hips snapped rapidly upward once more, fucking your face and nearly gagging you. his eyebrows furrowed as pleasure took over and a final groan escaped him before he released his load into your mouth—you swallowed, licking your lips and smiling with hooded eyes that were filled with satisfaction.

⠀⠀⠀

⠀⭑ ⌜KARASU TABITO⌟ ⸝⸝

⠀⸻ fingering, cunnilingus.

⠀⠀⠀karasu was more than happy to indulge in whatever disgusting desires you had. the two of you were the same in a way, watching stuff on twitter and getting ideas⏤but he was worse than you in every way you could think of. the male had his face pressed into your core while he sucked and slurped loudly on your folds, the tip of his tongue curling inwards to fit into your needy hole.

⠀⠀⠀while you whined and begged him to slow his ministrations, he wasn't listening. every plea and every attempt to move him away failed. his head raised and his mouth retracted from your core, only to give you a simple warning, "quit running". with that, he put his hands on your hips, squeezing them a bit before pulling you closer to him.

⠀⠀⠀the male continued to lap at your core before he raised his free hand and pressed two fingers into your wet heat, making you moan louder than you expected. his digits pumped in and out of you slowly, remnants of your arousal coating his occupied fingers. when he noticed that you seemed to be enjoying it, he started to move his fingers a bit faster, curling them up into that spot that made you see stars.

⠀⠀⠀you writhed under karasu's smooth but harsh ministrations and your back arched with every torturous yet pleasurable moment. once again, you attempted to push your thighs shut bur karasu wasn't having it. he gripped onto your thighs and pushed them farther apart than before.

⠀⠀⠀a low growl came from beneath you, vibrating against you, causing you to squirm and writhe against the mattress, ruining your once neatly made bed. your fingers gripped onto the sheets as tears blurred your vision and streamed down your face. soon enough, karasu pulled back, his face glistening with your fluids and his own saliva.

⠀⠀⠀"as much shit that you talk, you should be embarrassed that ya could barely handle that," the male smirked at you before climbing off of the bed. "let's clean up, yeah? i hope you don't wanna sit there looking like a soggy mess." karasu continued to tease before taking your hand and leading you to the bathroom to clean up.

⏤ 備考 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑒. im kinda back :D.. i made this for my friend since her birthday is today (@5kstxrz love you :3 go look at her stuff) and she love her some karasu. i also tried a new layout at the top (working on this from my mac) but it looks so weird on my phone...so don't kill me if it looks ugly.

i'll try something different next time because it was so hard and irritating to make. anywayyyy BYE i hope this short lil thing i made was enjoyable. (also im getting on AO3 fr this time. i have stuff saved in notion)

[hellishattempt]

𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐢𝐭 - false positive

cr 101strk on twitter, src from pin

🢥 summary : celebrity!au jjk men and rumours swirling around your established relationship, wc 2.4k 🢥 series includes : choso, fushiguro toji, geto suguru, gojo satoru and nanami kento, part two of five 🢥 content : celebrity!au, female reader, mostly angst, some fluff, married, body dysphoria, pregnancy, photoshopping / body editing, miscarriage, sickness, blood, fake newspaper used, paps being an ass, lying, use of pet names, suggestive content if you squint so hard your eyes are almost closed, i hate winter so this is set in like summer, jasper simping for nanami the entire time, the ending is what it is, not proofread we die like robins /ref

. . . BEING MARRIED TO AN AUTHOR has its perks, especially when you're a reader yourself. you always got to read the first drafts, and the second, and the final drafts before anyone else, including your husband's editors. nanami claimed that if it wasn't good enough for his wife, then it wasn't good enough to be published. you always thought that was a bit extreme, but you loved his writings either way. however, sometimes it was hard to find the time to read the latest chapter he sent you, because your job drained you. you were an influencer, and had currently signed a promotional deal with koh gen do, a popular japanese makeup brand. recently, you were barely home, busy with photoshoots and videos for koh gen do, on top of the content you had to make yourself.

neither of you really liked the limelight, nanami especially. you were young and naive when you joined social media, rising quickly to popularity. it was something you enjoyed, and you still do enjoy it, but it felt more like a tiring obligation than an aspiring career. you blame the paparazzi, nanami blames societal expectations, although he's not the paparazzi's biggest fan either. throughout your dating, and going on six year marriage, you and nanami have had your fair share of scandals. this one had to take the cake, however.

you were out, doing one of the last rounds of photoshoots for your endorsement deal. nanami was home, trying to churn out the latest chapter on his to-do list. he wasn't very successful. the mostly blank document had two words on it: CHAPTER THIRTY in the fancy font you had selected to be chapter headers. any attempt to write after that failed. every paragraph had been written, rewritten and deleted. so the buzz of his phone was a welcomed distraction.

it was an article post from red sun times, a relatively newer newspaper company in japan. nanami preferred them because they were quieter, at least compared to japan newsline or tokyoto sistership news. but the article title cause a deep frown to wrinkle nanami's sculpted face.

. . . "IS NANAMI KENTO'S WIFE PREGNANT?" was in big bold print on your phone screen. you didn't see it right away, but your makeup artist did. she got your hairstylist's attention, who read it just before your phone shut off. they both began to pepper you with compliments.

"congratulations, nanami okaa-san!" aki, your makeup artist beamed. your eyes widened at the term. 'okaa-san' literally translated to 'mother' of which, you were not. she should've used 'oka-san', which meant wife literally, and ma'am respectfully. "you look so skinny, i couldn't even tell!"

"yes, congratulations! how did nanami-san respond?" your hairstylist added, smile wide on his face. "better yet, how did your families react? oh, i bet they were overjoyed."

you sat there confused, racking your brain over what the two were referring to. "wh-what? what are you talking about?"

they stared at you with blank faces, their excitement slowly fading into a confused expression that matched yours.

"y-your pregnancy," aki stuttered out, as though it was obvious.

"pregnancy? i'm... i'm not pregnant," you stated, getting out of your chair. "who told you i was pregnant?"

"we just saw the news flash on your phone," your hairstylist defended, gesturing to your phone. "there was an article from red sun times and the title read: is nanami kento's wife pregnant?"

"i'm not pregnant," you repeated, growing in frustration. the fucking nerve. "do i look pregnant?" you snapped, causing the pair to furiously shake their heads and protest the article. you scoffed, grabbing your phone and your bag, storming out of the dressing room. the directory of photography called after you as you exited the studio, but you paid no attention to him.

safe inside your car, you opened the article. you also had a slew of texts and missed calls from your husband, but you didn't have the patience for him right now. the article was crudely written, at best. red sun times had been losing subscribers and readers lately, and this seemed like a last ditch effort to get their subscriptions up again. it didn't make sense to you, however. neither you nor nanami were a-lister names in the celebrity world. nanami didn't even consider himself a celebrity. sure, you both had a hefty fan base, but it was nothing compared to some of the other celebrities of japan, like the model gojo satoru or the mma fighter fushiguro toji.

it didn't matter, anyways. it wasn't the words of the article that hurt. it was the pictures. all them were of you with nanami on your latest outing. your anniversary was coming up, and nanami always got really sweet around that time, taking you out on dates on the days leading up to your anniversary. your anniversary was in three days, and a couple of days ago, nanami had taken you to a strawberry farm where you each filled a bucket's worth of strawberries, that were then all eaten on the picnic following the farm. the picnic spot was the riverside where he had proposed about seven years ago. you had an amazing time, and fell a little bit more in love with your caring husband. his sensible attention to detail, his doting words, his thoughtful actions, all of it made the date, and your relationship, perfect. now this article and its malicious pictures tainted that saccharine memory.

. . . THE IMAGES HAD CLEARLY BEEN EDITED. that's what your logical brain was trying to scream at you, but your emotions weren't listening. a small bump had been added to your stomach in each photo, your hips had been wider, and in a couple, your breasts had even been adjusted, as though they were full with milk. you felt sick. it was so hard to tell the difference between what was edited and what wasn't. did you really look like that? did red sun times even have to adjust these photos? "you look so skinny, i couldn't even tell!" the words of your makeup artist bounced around your pounding head. if you were so skinny, why did she still assume you were pregnant?

you had tried so hard that day to look pretty for your husband, wearing his favorite yellow sundress of yours, with the sweetheart neckline and puffy sleeves. nanami always said he preferred your natural look, but you had still glossed your lips, tinted your cheeks a faint pink and dusted your nose with highlighter. you had tied your hair up with a soft yellow ribbon, curling the loose strands. you had checked your reflection at least fifteen times before deeming yourself fit for the day. you had looked good in the mirror, so why didn't you look like that in these photos?

tears threatened at your eyes, but you swallowed them with the lump in your throat. you were almost home now, and you were sure that nanami had seen the article. he loved the red sun times because they didn't do stupid stuff like this. guess they just lost another reader.

"darling?" nanami's voice rang out as you entered your home. he walked into your vision, looking worried. you hadn't answered your phone at all, hadn't even read any of his texts. "oh, koibito..." his voice softened as you raised your head to meet his gaze.

you look so despondent with your watery eyes, and sullen posture. you hadn't even removed your shoes before he had scooped you into his arms and you were sobbing into his shoulder. you don't know how long you stood there in the foyer of your home, everything silent except for your choked breathing. there was a dark blemish on his wool sweater now, but nanami waved it off when you tried to apologize.

he guided you to the living room, helping you sit on the grey sofa that you had bought together six years ago. nanami worked wordlessly as he removed your shoes and coat; he took your phone and bag, placing them on the stand by the front door. a high pitched whistle echoed from the kitchen, and moments later he returned with a cup of steaming sencha, your favorite kind of tea. you felt so pathetic, sitting there sniffling while your husband tended to you.

when he returned for the final time, nanami had changed into a black t-shirt, and sat on the leather ottoman opposite from you. his elbows rested on his knees as nanami watched you sip the tea he had made you. he didn't speak, but only because he couldn't find the right words.

nanami prided himself on his syntax and vocabulary. he was the type of person who always said the right thing at the right time, it's why being an author was the only career option he cared for. but here, you sat in a stifled silence. he knew he should say something, but what? what were you were supposed to say in a situation like this? you were clearly distressed, and it was nanami's role as your husband to offer you words of encouragement, but his tongue was dry.

if nanami was honest, he almost wanted there to be some truth to the article. you hadn't exactly been trying for kids, but you hadn't not been trying. kids was something you both knew you wanted, but you hadn't discussed it in further detail. reading further into the article and viewing the photos made it clear that it wasn't true, at all. nanami knew almost immediately that when you saw this, you were going to breakdown, and he would be there to pick you up. so he ordered your favorite ramen, made your favorite tea and held you in his arms until you had calmed down.

nanami knew that you would believe the edits, that you would see yourself like that. despite how much he praised your body, you hated it, and he hated that. anytime you made some side comment about your stomach or thighs, it almost started a fight. he loathed the way you saw yourself, and nothing he argued stuck with you.

in the last few months, however, nanami was starting to see some progress. you stared less in the mirror with your meticulous eyes, pinching flaps of your skin between your fingers. you began to buy less healthier foods, and stopped mentioning the stupid diet you had placed yourself on. you wore clothes that you specifically avoided unless you had nothing else to wear, because of the way they displayed your figure. he knew that this article had erased all of that progress.

"i'm sorry, nani" you croaked, curling your knees into your chest.

"shh, no, koibito," nanami disregarded your apology. "you don't ever have to apologize about your emotions, especially not to me." he moved from the ottoman to take the spot next to you, pulling your small frame into his. one hand held yours while the other stroked your hair amorously. "the article was cruel, and any person with a heart would be reacting the same as you. don't worry, i've already called their editor and he said he doesn't know why the piece was published when it wasn't supposed to. it's being removed as we speak."

your heart welled at his words. he was so patient and understanding. moments like these made you love nanami more. and it gave you the confidence to tell him the truth.

"kento," you began, pulling away from him slowly. you used his given name over your nickname, nani, for him. you only used it during fights or confessions. he immediately perked up. "i..." you sighed. words were always nanami's thing, not yours. "i'm not upset about the photos."

"oh?"

"okay, well, i am, but for a different reason than you think."

"and what reason is that, koibito?" his tone was emotionless, as if he hadn't decided how to respond yet.

"i know you think it's because i'm always stressing about my body and the way it looks, and you're worried because i haven't been fretting over how i look as much, right? well, that's because i was pregnant, and i decided i couldn't care about that when i had bigger concerns, like the tiny life in my stomach." it became harder to speak, your sentences broken by tears and sobs.

"...was?" nanami's voice cracked, and his misty eyes matched yours.

you nodded, "was. i... i had a miscarriage."

"w-when?"

"about a week ago. i was about a month and a half along."

"you mean that time you canceled girl's night because you were sick? you told me that it was just your period, and you sent me out to get you stuff from the store." nanami's brows furrowed.

"yeah, that's.. that's right." you took a breath to steady yourself. "there was just blood everywhere, and i was a wreck and i didn't have the courage to tell you. i know how badly you want kids of our own, and i just didn't want to hurt you."

"hurt me? baby, you were the one hurting, and i just played it off like it was normal. i feel terrible."

"you couldn't have known," you reassured him. "but that article, and those photos, it just tore me apart all over again. that's how i should look, that's how i want to look, but i lost that part of me, that part of us."

nanami didn't respond at first, just reached back out for you. you both sat there, quiet sniffles and crying the only sound in your home. he continued to comfort you, even though you felt like you should be offering him comfort. after all, nanami is learning that you were pregnant and now no longer pregnant all at once.

"koibito," he murmured after a while. "i want you to know that i love you no matter what. i don't care how you look or how you don't look. you're my wife, and i didn't marry you because of your body and figure. i married you because i fell in love with your laugh, your smile, your unpredictable personality, and all the other beautiful things about you. i'm always going to support you and love you. and if you want to be pregnant, then i'm happy to oblige."

you laughed despite your sadness, swatting at him playfully, which elicited a "what? i'm serious!" from nanami.

"shut up," you muttered, still chuckling. he smiled, happy to see that you were laughing along with him. nanami pressed a kiss to your temple, humming an "i love you" against your skin.

you snuggled deeper into him, craning your neck to meet his eyes. "i wanna be a mom, nani."

he wrapped both arms around you, meeting your gaze. "then a mom you shall be, my koibito."

[suzannahnatters]

I blazed through the first 25% of my FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING audiobook reread in 3 days whoops

nb this is like the 9th or possibly 10th time lets go wheeee

FOREWORD

it's SO iconic of JRRT to come out swinging with "some people are wrong about my book and I have chosen to make it everyone's problem"

PROLOGUE - CONCERNING HOBBITS

"after the book is over Celeborn is going to go and live at Rivendell, and Sam is going to preserve Bilbo's and Frodo's literary legacy, and Merry Brandybuck is going to become a loremaster in herbology and history and linguistics, and Pippin Took - well, Pippin doesn't do diddleysquat"

CH 1 - A LONG EXPECTED PARTY

Gandalf is the personal emissary of the gods wielding a ring of power crafted thousands of years ago by the legendary elven-smith Celebrimbor under the tutelage of Sauron, Dark Enemy of the World. he uses this artefact, among other things, to create fireworks for children.

CH 2 - THE SHADOW OF THE PAST

this is THE chapter to me. I cracked open LOTR for the first time when I was 10 and noped out somewhere around chapter 3 because it was SO SCARY HELP but chapter 2 had got me, I HAD to find out whether Frodo ever found the Cracks of Doom

instead of One Chosen Hero who Saves the World JRRT gives us the One Dreaded Artefact which Must Be Destroyed, doesn't matter by whom though ideally it'll be a complete nobody - nobody is doing it like him. this might possibly explain why I've always wanted to read fantasy books about the one person in the world with NO magical abilities at all

the way that Gollum gets so humanised in this chapter drives home how this book plays with notions of heroism/protagonism. Aragorn is the classic fantasy hero, the promised king whose main function is to run distraction while the hobbits get the job done. Frodo is the protagonist through whose eyes we see the story but in the end he fails his job. Sam is the true protagonist because in the end he is the one with agency. Gollum is the tragic hero whose fall becomes a vehicle of grace in bringing about the Ring's destruction. and right from the start he's honoured that way by the book bringing us into his perspective.

it's always DELIGHTED me that on a re-read you can track more or less when Sam starts listening in by the fact that his shears stop snicking in the background

our boy Frodo is so relatable for how he reacts to the news that the dark lord of Mordor has probably heard his name and knows where he lives, it's like he's become twitter's main character for the day...but I think the main reason this chapter terrified me so much as a child is because of how strongly as a child you identify with Frodo, being so aware that one is only a small hobbit in the grand scheme of things. it's something I think that as a kid you identify with.

huge drama going down in the sitting room as Gandalf recoils halfway to Gondor at the thought of being asked to take care of the Ring himself. smash cut to Sam outside pretending to be bustling around the garden whistling to disguise the fact that he's been eavesdropping on the whole thing.

love the way that Gandalf is coded as wise and prophetic in this chapter. he takes on a sort of old testament prophetic role, not in terms of being able to look into the future but in terms of being able to look at the present with heightened vision to perceive the workings of divine providence

"THEY'RE MIGHT SUS DOWN IN BUCKLAND" says Gaffer Gamgee to a several thousand year old incorporeal nightmare fuel phantom

CH 3 - THREE IS COMPANY

it will never not be utterly delightful to me that given the strength and terror they later achieve the ringwraiths come into the story getting sassed by hobbits and later, falling off things

never not losing it when Frodo, on leaving the shire, suddenly recites the same poem Bilbo spoke when returning to it. cept that when Bilbo spoke of "wandering" feet Frodo speaks of "weary" feet 😭😭😭 MY BOY

"cannot imagine what information could be more terrifying than your hints and warnings" MOOD, I think that Gildor's vague alarms are part of the reason I DNF'd the book age 10, I simply could not handle that

a bit difference between the SILMARILLION versus HOBBIT and LOTR is that in the latter we get a look at the elves from an outsider perspective and it's so fun, the Mirkwood Sindar come across as tricksy folklore elves but Gildor's Noldor are coded quite differently, as fair back-of-the-north-wind elves

CH 4 - A SHORT CUT TO MUSHROOMS

we're getting so much character development for the hobbits already - Frodo already isolated by his burden emotionally in a way that foreshadows the severe physical isolation he'll undergo later; Sam manifesting prophetic wisdom and foresight under the Elves' influence; Pippin just being a happy-go-lucky boyy and we even get a strong sense of Merry as the practical, capable one handling logistics in the background (am I still sore at the movies for making them both comic relief? yea verily)

"short cuts make long delays but inns make longer ones" spoken like a man who tried to go on multiple walking tours with CS Lewis

the vibe of these chapters is impeccable, it's like cosycosycosy SPINE MELTING PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR cosycosycosy

but it's also actually super reminiscent of Stevenson and Buchan - this whole sense of being hunted relentlessly through an otherwise beautiful peaceful landscape.

[novacorpsrecruit]

The Missing Poster

This image is making rounds on Twitter and having people arguing Eddie’s age again so I want to throw my head canon out

This is ignoring flight of Icarus because I haven’t read it.

T | wc 1,903 | tw: death/murder, abuse

Wayne had prayed he’d never have to make another missing poster again.

In 1984, Eddie went off on a bender. It was a series of unfortunate phone calls that fell like dominoes.

First, the school.

His grades were low. He’s failed too many classes. He wasn’t going to graduate.

Then, Eddie’s dad, Ricky.

He was in the Marion County jail. Waiting to be processed. He had two charges: manslaughter and second-degree murder. He had no bond. He was to be kept at Marion County until his court proceedings take place.

Then, the coroner’s office.

Ricky failed to mention to Wayne who was dead. Who he killed. If Wayne knew Ricky had strangled Elizabeth, he would’ve told Eddie not to answer anymore phone calls.

But the third call came, Eddie already on his breaking point. He picked it up, and was met with the terrible news, given to him by someone so mechanical with their words. As if they were telling him that there was a coupon for milk in the grocery’s ads.

His mom was dead.

The coroner’s office needed to know which funeral home to send the body to. Not her body. The body.

Eddie dropped the phone, taking off outside. Wayne was quick on his heels for someone who complained about how his knee ached.

“Eddie! Eddie!” Wayne called, following after him. “Eddie, boy! C’mon home.” Wayne reached out, gently touching Eddie’s arm to lead him back to the house. Eddie snatched his arm away, as if Wayne’s touch was hot like fire, turning around tears streaming down his face.

“She was supposed to be okay!” Eddie shouted. “She wasn’t supposed to be around him! She was supposed to get clean! She promised! She promised!”

“Eds —“ Wayne started, a soft sigh and he reached back out. Eddie took a step back, shaking his head.

“No — no, I —“ he shook his head again, running his fingers through his hair. “Fuck this. I gotta — I gotta go.”

“Go where?” Wayne asked, taking a step towards Eddie like a baby deer. Eddie shook his head, taking two steps back.

“I gotta get out of here —“

Gravel crunching under tires pulled both their attentions back to the trailer house. Wayne recognized the Chevy Blazer immediately. Chief Hopper has made stops to the Munson home a few times since Eddie moved in with Wayne in ‘79. Eddie always seemed to find trouble. Or trouble always seems to find the Munson’s.

“Eds, we should —“ Wayne turned to look back at Eddie, already taken off into the woods. Wayne sighed and approached Chief Hopper.

“Wayne,” Hopper said, taking off his hat and holding it to his chest. He nodded at where Eddie once stood. “I’m guessing Marion County called.”

“My boy answered the phone,” Wayne supplied. “So I’m not sure what was said, but the way he was talking ‘bout his momma, I can assume the earlier call from his daddy was related.”

Hopper nodded, glancing towards the forest where Eddie disappeared. “You know where he took off to?”

“Nope,” Wayne said. “He’s got friends in town, and a few spots near the lake ‘nd the quarry.”

“He take off like this before?”

Wayne let out a half laugh. “A few times. Usually back in the middle of the night or by mornin’. Never gone for a full day.”

Hopper let out a hum. “He ain’t back by sunset tomorrow, give me a call.”

Wayne gave a nod, looking out towards the forest. “He’ll be back by mornin’.”

Hopper nodded. “Sorry about Elizabeth. She was a kind soul.”

“Just kept findin’ that trouble named Ricky,” Wayne sighed. “Thanks, Jim.”

Hopper started back towards his car, stopping in his place. “Hey, uh, I wouldn’t … be surprised if they called your boy to testify.”

Wayne wrinkled his brow. “What do you mean? He was here.”

“Character witness,” Hopper supplied. “He — I remember those bruises and cuts he had when we dropped him off on your porch a few years back. The prosecutor might call ‘im up to recount Ricky’s abuse.”

Wayne let out a deep sigh. He remembered that night all too well. Eddie had always been tall for his age, even at 13. But scrawny teen looked small with his arms crossed over his chest, more purple bruising on his body than his pale skin, standing behind Jim Hopper. It didn’t take much for Wayne to connect the dots, and it didn’t take much convincing when he called Ricky a week later to let Eddie stay with him in Hawkins permanently. He watched that buzz cut kid grow into his larger than life personality, leaving his hard edges back in Indianapolis with his father. But now, Ricky came crashing back into Eddie’s life, knocking the walls of security down.

“Thanks Jim,” Wayne said. “We’ll keep that in mind.”

Hopper gave one more nod before climbing into the Blazer and driving off. Wayne sighed, walking back to the house and sitting on the couch outside. He pulled out his cigarette pack from his shirt pocket and lit a cigarette between his lips.

Wayne wasn’t sure how long he waited outside for Eddie. Longer than he should’ve. He finally moved inside when the sun started to blush the sky. He crashed on the couch, hardly sleeping as he waited for the sound of the trailer creaking with Eddie’s heavy footsteps.

But it never came.

The day came and went, and Eddie was no where to be found.

Wayne tried his friends, calling down the list of the guys who played Eddie’s dragons game with him. No one had seen him since yesterday. He tried the Library and the Hideout. No luck. Wayne went through Eddie’s little black book of phone numbers. Hell, he even tried a few places in Indy. The more numbers he called, the more he grew wary.

What felt like hours later, he called Hopper.

He told him to come down to the station, bring a recent photo. So Wayne grabbed the one off the fridge — the one he took at the beginning of the school year. It was way too hot for Eddie to be wearing his long sleeve under the t-shirt, but arguing with Eddie on what to wear was like arguing with a wall. The sun was in Eddie’s eyes. Eddie barely wanted to take the photo in the first place. Wayne made him. Said they would send the photo to his momma. To remember senior year.

Fucking hell.

When he got to the station, he was directed to one of the administrative ladies. She took the photo and took information about Eddie. His height. His weight. His age.

Shit.

He was turning 18 next week.

The woman finished making the flyer, using the Xerox in the back to add Eddie’s photo to it. She handed him a stack of copies and the photo back.

“What now?” Wayne asked.

“We wait,” she said. “He’s officially a missing person. Officers know to keep a look out. We’ll let other stations know as well.”

Wayne nodded, taking a step back. Her words echoed in his head. We wait.

He took the flyers and hung them around town. Taking them to every business, every office, posting them on telephone poles. A few passbyers took it out of politeness, barely looking at Eddie’s photo as they walked by. At least, the woman at Melvard’s was kind, looking at him with sympathy and promising him he would turn up. Her own boy turned up last year, even after he was pronounced dead. Maybe she had enough hope to bring Eddie back safe as well.

But days past and nobody heard from Eddie. Wayne grew more and more worried, feeling like his all efforts of searching were going to waste. Wayne found it harder and harder to sleep at night, worried about his boy.

It wasn’t until he got that faithful call from Hopper.

“They found him.”

Wayne can’t recall the details or where they found him or what drugs was in his system. All Wayne could remember was Eddie lying in that hospital bed, paler than the sheets looking at Wayne like Wayne was Ricky.

Wayne sat in the chair next to Eddie, slowly and gently placing his hand on top of Eddie’s, running his thumb against his skin. “What a way to spend your birthday, huh?”

Eddie let out a wet laugh, relaxing against Wayne’s touch. “Sorry, Wayne, didn’t mean t’scare ya.”

“Don’t do it again,” Wayne said, leaning up to press a kiss against Eddie’s hair. “Please.”

Wayne doesn’t blame Eddie for this time.

It’s that Munson trouble that found him. He knew Eddie didn’t kill that girl. It wasn’t his nature. He’s not like Ricky.

Eddie isn’t like his father.

It’s been almost a week since he heard from Eddie. A few days since the teens were around the trailer park asking about him. Nobody has heard from Eddie. He knows the police are looking for him, placing him at that girl’s murder.

But it wasn’t Eddie.

Wayne had just hung up that missing poster this morning at the gym, where the City had called for a shelter. He went to the library and Xeroxed a couple of copies of the missing poster he kept folded up in his wallet. There wasn’t enough resources or time to make another. A quick change to the missing date, thanks to the type writer at the front desk. Wayne folded up the original, placing it back in his wallet. It served as a reminder of to keep his boy close. To make sure he felt loved.

And someone took a damn marker to it, vandalizing his boy to hell. Wayne pulled down the destroyed flyer, trashing it. He replaced it with the new one, feeling his heart ache as he looked at young Eddie, beginning of his first senior year.

Now, he didn’t know where he was.

“Mr. Munson?”

Wayne turned around to see a boy with curly hair, the same boy who stopped by the trailer park with the other teens, now sporting crutches. Another boy, about Eddie’s age stood behind him, with a red ring around his neck. He stood strong, almost like a soldier, holding something gently in his hand, as if he was afraid he would crush it.

The younger boy leaned forward, the older boy nearly shot out his free hand, grabbing the other to stabilize him. The younger boy lowered his voice. “We know where Eddie is.”

The older boy extended his bandaged hand, opening it to reveal Eddie’s guitar pick necklace.

And that’s all it took for Wayne to follow them to the old Hawkins lab. Wayne nearly jumped out of his truck as he followed the boys into the lab, down the hall and into a makeshift hospital room.

There laid Eddie, like he did not even two years before. His hair matted and dirty, his face and arms bandaged like he went through hell and back. He looked up at Wayne, his eyes watered. “Wayne —“

Wayne leaned down and buried a kiss into Eddie’s hair. “You’re safe, son,” Wayne whispered. “You’re safe.”

“I didn’t — I didn’t mean t’scare ya,” Eddie said with a lopsided smile. Wayne let out a soft laugh, relieved his boy was alive.

“Don’t do it again,” Wayne whispered into his hair. “I mean it this time.”

[half-an-hour-hence]

Some random headcanons for the ghosts if they were alive today (part 1)

JAMES

I’m so unoriginal but he works in a war museum as a tour guide. He’s often assigned to showing kids on school trips around because he’s always so excited to answer all of their questions.

People call him ‘Captain’ because of his obsession with war (specifically the events of WW2), not because he’s actually served in the army. He did apply, but failed his medical exam.

His joint pain gets really bad sometimes, so he occasionally carries a cane to help.

James met Havers when he was in a cafe with Humphrey; he caught his eye when they were in line waiting to order and couldn’t stop glancing over at him after he’d sat back down. Humphrey - ever the wingman - caught on immediately and asked Havers to join them in the hopes that James would actually speak to him. It worked, and they’ve been together for two years now.

MARY

Works as an independent artist and sells her abstract art online. She’s had multiple exhibitions as well. She can also sew and crochet, and she sometimes sells what she makes at markets. Most of the time she just gives things away to her friends, though.

She lives in one of those loft apartments with her girlfriend, Annie. Annie runs the cafe that the Captain met Havers in, and they met at one of Mary’s exhibitions. They’ve been together for three years.

Goes out of her way to slag off men on Twitter.

Was internet best friends with Kitty before finding out she lived literally down the road from her. They’ve been inseparable ever since. They go travelling to little villages in the middle of nowhere specifically to spend hours in those quaint antique shops.

ROBIN

He works at the local university as a physics professor. He’s quite an enthusiastic and entertaining teacher, often giving visual demonstrations of how things work to try and make his lessons more interesting and enjoyable.

Co-runs a conspiracy blog on Tumblr with Sophie, Humphrey’s girlfriend.

Robin is obviously very passionate about space, so he owns several telescopes and frequently hikes up hills in the middle of the night to study the stars and the moon. He also runs an astronomy club at the university.

This isn’t necessarily a new thing, but he’s an excellent listener, and wants to include everyone. He’s the only one who’ll stick around when James starts talking about the Second World War. He’s doing a French Duolingo course with Humphrey. He isn’t afraid to try new things, like sewing with Mary or cruising with Julian (although he’s never doing that again).

[lemonlover1110]

The Insincerity of the Stars

Suguru Getou

[Chapter 25] Moving On

← Previous Chapter - Story Masterlist

Pairing: Suguru Getou x f!Reader

Chapter Warnings: Angst, Mentions of Stabbing

Discord +18 - Twitter - Ko-Fi

*Can't believe this is the end, I had so much fun writing this

Suguru doesn’t come to your apartment that night. You’re thankful for the loneliness because it helps you figure out what you want to do. You’re obviously going to leave him, but you’re not sure how. Do you want to leave town again, or do you want to stay and attempt to move on?

You work together, so leaving seems like the best option. But running away feels like what you always do. You learned that Suguru will find you anyway. Maybe you can move on, find someone new and start over right here. It also seems like a sweet method of revenge. Suguru watching as you move on. But that thought leaves your mind quickly. You don’t know if Suguru even cares for you, plus moving on just to get revenge isn’t good for you.

Thinking about yourself is what you should do. Getting revenge should be the last thing on your mind. Moving on with your life, and trying to be happy– Whether it’d be by yourself or with someone else, here or in the middle of nowhere. 

The raging side of you wants to break it off the worst way possible. Have Suguru catch you cheating on him with some other guy, however, that won’t end well. You don’t want Suguru to look down on you for that, in fact, you want him to end things somewhat well so he’ll forever think about how severely he messed everything up. You’ll confront him, and that’s it. That’ll be the way you end things off.

Just thinking about it makes you feel as if your heart is about to beat out of your chest. Your blood boils while tears flood your eyes. You knew Suguru would mess up, just not like this. You never expected Suguru to betray you with another woman.

You can’t sleep that night, you toss and turn on your bed until the sun is nearly out again. That’s when your body can finally fall asleep. You wake up around four hours later, extremely tired but even more nervous about how you’ll deal with everything today. You know that he’ll show up here soon. He’ll show up, apologize for everything, and then ask what’s wrong. You can already hear him ask where your engagement ring is. Just that mere thought fuels you up, and you grip your toothbrush a little too hard when you brush your teeth.

You find it hard to get ready that morning, but you refuse to stay in your bed and cry for him. You won’t waste your day nor your tears on him.

You want to text Shoko, but you know better. She was opposed to the relationship since it began, so you doubt you’ll hear words that will make you feel better. You have no one to comfort you at this time, and it’d be one of the things that pain you the most, if it weren’t for the fact that your fiancée has literally been lying to you for the past six months. He’s becoming a father.

You sit on your couch, just looking out the window. Feeling lifeless. You shouldn’t even be feeling like this because you swore you were ready to take it when Suguru would screw up again.

You’re so lost that you fail to hear the door open. You feel him kiss the top of your head, and you feel nauseous. You regret giving him a spare key to your place.

“Good morning, my love. How are you doing?” Suguru asks, and your jaw clenches. He takes a seat next to you, and he grabs your left hand. He immediately notices your engagement ring missing, you never take it off. “Where’s your ring? Did you forget to put it on?”

“I gave it away.” You answer, not bothering to look at him while you take your hand back. Just touching him makes you want to puke. You have to scoot away from him because he’s too close for your liking, and his cologne is a pungent smell. “I was thinking about selling it and going on a nice vacation, but I saw this homeless woman and thought about how she needs it more than me. I have enough money to go on a vacation.”

“What? Are you crazy? That was my mother’s ring. A very expensive ring, dare I tell you.” Suguru sounds agitated when you respond. You stand up and begin to walk to your bedroom. He stands up and begins to follow.

“Yeah, I know it’s expensive. That’s why I gave it away.” You nonchalantly reply. You begin to look through your drawers for your scissors, and when you find it, you go through your closet. You pick Suguru’s clothes and begin to cut them up, and Suguru’s eyes widen.

“What the hell has come over you?” He asks, trying to take the scissors out of your hands when he sees you cutting up one of his favorite shirts. It’s why you picked that one to start on. “What the hell?!”

“Over me? I’m fine, Suguru!” You raise your voice when he takes the scissors out of your hand. You push him away since he stands too close to you, “What the hell is wrong with you?! You really thought I wouldn’t find out?!”

“Find out what?” Suguru questions, attempting to act confused but you can’t buy it. Even if you tried, you couldn’t. Your bottom lip quivers and you can’t even look at him. You’re not going to break down in front of him, “Find out what?!”

“Don’t play dumb, Suguru! I’m so fucking tired of your shit. Why did you get back with her?! Is this some kind of joke to you?!” You yell at him, and Suguru freezes. He’s been caught. “You know what? Congratulations. You’re becoming a father.”

“Baby… Please. Let’s talk about it.” Suguru changes his voice so it’s so much more gentle. He takes a seat on the side of your bed, scratching his head. “It’s not what you think–”

“That baby is yours, isn’t it?” You ask him. Suguru doesn’t respond until you raise your voice, repeating the same question, “That baby is yours, isn’t it, Suguru?!”

“Yes! It’s mine but–” He begins but you cut him off as you laugh in utter disbelief. 

“Take your stuff and leave. You’re a fucking idiot. What were you even planning on doing in marrying me? Were you planning on leaving me at the altar?” You question, your voice breaking as you speak. This is much harder than you thought. Suguru just thinks of what to say, and the silence slowly kills you. “Answer!”

He grabs your hand and pulls you closer to him, before wrapping his arms around your waist. You try to push him away, but he won’t let you. “Let go of me, Suguru.”

“I love you so much, please…” He begins and your hands go to his face, only for your nails to dig into his skin. It hurts him, but he isn’t going to complain when bigger issues are on his plate. “Please… You’re the love of my life. I wanted to get married fast so we could move away and forget about everyone and everything here. I landed a job in a town that’s two hours away, and that was going to be my excuse. Let’s move away and pretend as if nothing happened.”

“Suguru, you cheated on me. You don’t understand how big that is. I can’t just look past that.” You respond, a million thoughts flooding your head. “How can I even trust you after you left me last night just to meet up with her? Who do you even love?”

“I love you. Just you. I’d die without you. Let’s just move away.” His voice is so soft while speaking to you. He looks up at you, his eyes so tender, and there’s a spark behind them. He isn’t lying, but at this point what the hell do you know.

“Move away? You’re becoming a father… What are you planning on doing? Abandoning your child?” You’re baffled. You furrow your eyebrows while looking down on him, as you remove your fingernails from his face. You’d almost feel bad for the bit of blood that comes out, but Suguru deserves that and more “Abandoning your child for what?”

“I love you. You’re the only person I need in my life. I’m sure he’d grow up fine without me.” He responds.

“I’m the only person you need?” You scoff. “Then why did you go back to her when we started dating? Don’t fucking lie to me.”

“My mother asked me to! She asked me to see her for a while and see if I wanted to get back with her. I was planning on leaving her after a month or two but she got… Pregnant.” He ends up confessing. “But we can leave, baby. Just me and you. We’re all we need. We can start our own little family somewhere else and–”

Instead of cutting him off by speaking, you cut him off by spitting on his face. When he feels your saliva on his nose, running down, he can’t speak. He finally lets go of you and wipes it off. “You’re an idiot if you think I’m ever starting a family with you.”

You begin to look through the closet again, picking out his clothes and throwing them on the floor. He stands up and gets in front of you before getting on his knees, tears welling up in his eyes and they spill when he begins to talk.

“Please… We can work this out.” He begins and instead of throwing the clothes on the floor, you throw them directly at him. You’re trying your best to make it hurt. “Can we please talk about it?”

“Suguru, if you’re not out of this apartment in five minutes–” You pick up the scissors that he tossed aside. “I’m stabbing you.”

“Baby, please… Let’s give it some time.”

Suguru wasn’t out of your apartment in those five minutes, and you stuck to your word. He ended up going on a trip to the hospital with a pair of scissors in his abdomen. A random pair of scissors he ran into, magically; or at least that’s what he told the doctor and nurses. His now ex-fiancée had nothing to do with it.

Afterwards he tries to talk to you about it, but you refuse to see him. You don’t share an office anymore so ignoring him is fairly easy. He tries to tell you how much he loves you, then he tries to guilt trip you. This time he realizes he’s lost you, and it pains him more than anything.

His last attempt to talk to you is by leaving the ultrasound picture of your baby, a picture he has carried around for years. In the back he wrote the name he wanted for the baby, and then how much he loved you. How he needed to talk to you so desperately. But it didn’t work.

On the contrary, you were gone the very next day. 

-

Five years go by, and Suguru just looks out the window, hoping that he’ll see you again. He hopes to randomly see you, but he doubts that he’ll ever find you in the suburbs. He still holds onto that hope though. 

He’s a father now, and he’s also married. He wishes he could say he loves his life the way it turned out, but he truly doesn’t. If it weren’t for his son, he’d absolutely hate it. He doesn’t like his home life, so he spends most of his time working. He adores his son, but Suguru holds this resentment– Which isn’t his child’s fault, but often he wonders what could’ve been. He wonders where he’d be right now if he had gotten to marry you. If you had chosen to leave with him.

Whenever Suguru gets home, he tries to do so as quietly as possible. He doesn’t like drawing the attention to him to then be bombarded by questions by his wife. None of them about his day, just nagging about things he has to do. It feels like he married his mother, and he hates it. He often thinks about getting a divorce, but that’s just dumb. He’s lost everything, he might as well stick with this.

“Daddy!” Suguru hears, and he smiles. That’s all Suguru has. He picks up the five-year-old that comes running to him, and Suguru kisses his forehead.

“How are you? How was your day?” Suguru asks, and as soon as he says that, he hears his name. A sigh escapes his lips before he puts his son down on the floor. “What?!”

“You got some mail!” His wife yells from the kitchen, and Suguru walks to the kitchen. He goes to the counter and grabs the opened envelopes. There’s truly no privacy in the house, and he hates it. “Who is Shoko?”

“Shoko?” Suguru responds, furrowing his eyebrows. He looks for the envelope that might have something containing anything from Shoko. He finds it, and he finds a wedding invitation. He feels his heart stop, thinking that you’re getting married to Shoko. But he sees the other name, and it’s not yours. “She’s an old friend…”

“Really? How long ago because I’ve never heard of her and she’s sending you a wedding invitation.” She says, making Suguru sigh. He wonders why she’s doing this. Shoko hasn’t bothered to communicate with him in the past five years. She doesn’t have to show off anything since she isn’t marrying you so… Why did she decide to send an invitation? “Suguru? Aren’t you going to answer? Don’t you think I forgot that little stunt you pulled while I was pregnant.”

“Shut up, you’re so irritating. I just got home.” Suguru ends up walking away. His brain is going a thousand miles an hour. He reads the invitation over and over again while he walks to the living room, and his son follows behind him. His son sits down beside him on the couch.

“What’s that, daddy?”

“Just got something from an old friend, buddy. Nothing fun.”

-

Suguru decides to go to Shoko’s wedding. He has nothing to lose, and he came to the conclusion that maybe he’ll see you there. Maybe he can convince you to leave with him this time. It’s been five years, you’re definitely less mad than before. Although his plan isn’t so easy. His wife wants to join him. 

His plan seems nearly impossible to accomplish when he doesn’t see you in the ceremony. You’re not the other bride, and he doesn’t see you sitting around anywhere. His wife sees how he’s searching for something, but she doesn’t get any kind of answer when she asks what he’s looking for.

At the reception is when he finally sees you. Looking as beautiful as ever, wearing a navy blue dress that’s outshined by the beautiful diamonds on your neck, your wrist and your ears. His heart skips a beat, and he feels his face get warm. And then he realizes that Shoko arranged for you to sit together. It feels like Shoko and the universe are on his side. 

You blatantly ignore him when you take a seat, and that’s what he focuses on until the blond man takes a seat beside you and kisses your cheek. His wife is glaring at you, remembering you as clearly as yesterday, while Suguru holds back tears realizing that you’ve moved on. But then he thinks about Hiromi and how he managed to scare Hiromi away, why can’t he do that with this fool.

“Kento, I have to use the bathroom. I’ll be right back.” You stand up and begin to walk away. Suguru takes a hint, or he thinks he does and ends up standing up. He’s thinking about his engagement party, and the very fun events which he thinks about way too often. 

Suguru walks into the bathroom, and locks the door behind him so no one else can come in. You’re the only one occupying a stall. When you finish using the bathroom, your eyes widen when you see Suguru leaning against the sinks, waiting for you. You begin to wash your hands, trying your best to ignore him.

“You look really beautiful tonight.” Suguru says, and you ignore him as you wash your hands. You promised yourself that you wouldn’t talk to him ever again, even if it’s been five years since you left him again. But you have so many questions.

“Meet me outside in an hour or so.” You tell him while drying your hands, and he holds back a smile. 

-

Suguru waits outside, his hands in his pockets as he looks around for you. It’s the beginning of summer, so he doesn’t mind waiting outside because it’s warm. He hears the distant sound of the music that comes from the inside but it’s overshadowed by the sound of crickets. He takes a deep breath and looks up at the night sky.

“Hi…” He hears, and that’s when he sees you. With your date right beside you. Suguru weakly smiles as he greets you two. Your lips kiss your date before you tell him, “I’ll be back inside in a minute, baby. I promise it’ll be okay.”

Kento cups your face and kisses your lips, leaving his lips on yours for a long moment so Suguru will take the hint. Suguru doesn’t have all night, he told his wife that he needed a moment, and he knows she’ll be out here in a couple of minutes to bother him. Kento pulls away and walks away.

“Is he your boyfriend?” Suguru questions and you furrow your eyebrows at the question. Mainly because his initial thought was that Kento was a boyfriend and not your husband.

“Husband.” You answer. “I just wanted to see how you’ve been..” You lie. You don’t really care. You just want to see where he’s at in life, and the petty side of you wants to see if you’ve won. Although that’s not something you can measure. And maybe you want to brag. “How’s your wife? Your kid?”

“They’re… Fine.” Suguru replies. He can’t ask you to leave with him now because he’ll get rejected. He does have a question though, “Do you… hate me? I mean you did stab me and after that I never heard from you– Not that I didn’t give you a reason to hate me.”

“Hmm… I don’t.” You respond. “For a long time I thought I did. But then I met Kento. I got a mother-in-law who loves me. A husband who used to put me above anyone else. I thought I still hated you until I got married, and on my wedding night I realized that if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have met the love of my life.”

“He used to put you above everything?” Suguru asks, sticking to one part of all you said. He’s trying to paint Kento in a bad light. “What happened? Shouldn’t he always put you above–”

“We had kids. We had our daughter and then our son. He puts them above everyone and everything else. I want him to. I don’t need a man that puts a woman above his own kid.” You interrupt him, and Suguru bites down on his lip, knowing that your last sentence is meant to criticize him.

“You’re a mother now? Congratulations. That’s so nice to hear.” He feels the tears welling up in his eyes, feeling hurt that you’ve moved on. Hypocritical. He chews on the inside of his cheek before he blurts out, “Are you happy?”

“I never thought I could ever be so happy.” You smile. “How about you?”

“No.” He ends up shaking his head, his voice breaking and a tear escaping his eye. You end up pouting, almost feeling bad for him. You wrap your arms around him and he returns your hug. You pat his back while he says, “I miss you so much. I love you. I hate life without you.”

“Aw…” You say, holding back on smirking, knowing that in the end you won. “This is what you chose Suguru. Maybe you should’ve thought twice before deciding to make your mother happy.”

“I know, baby. I know. I think about you all the time. About our life.” He tells you as you pull away from the hug, and he tries to hang on because he’s not ready to let go. 

“Shouldn’t you be happy? In the end you’ve made your mother happy by marrying her.” You respond, holding back on smiling. “This is what you chose. You should be happy. I know I’m over the moon with what I chose.” 

“I just… I miss you so much.” 

“I know.” You tell him. “I should get back inside. Kento is waiting for me. Plus, I promised Shoko I’d dance with her.”

“Okay…” Suguru awkwardly says, watching as you walk away. He tries to stop the tears before walking back inside, and while he does so, his wife walks out.

“Why– Are you okay?” She notices how he wipes away his tears. 

“I love her.”

🏷 @witchofoe @cactustattoo @hayatxlife @dearsunaa @dmnbby @mykyoon @luvs-wrld @b3ast1706 @crispmarshmallow @matchabluebeiry-for-nanami @nobody289x @brownskinnedgirll @watyousayin @lilith412426 @cloudsinthecosmos @todoroki-slut @pinkfilmcamera @nothisispatrick300 @lilithlunas @tojianddabisslut @thisbicc @rumi-rants @chloee0x0 @megumisemo @ingenii-supra-modum @shartnart1 @oi-loverboy @peachtrbl @didy-na @katykat71114

[liminalkittyfics]

I was tagged by @tracksuitponytail.

1. List of works posted this year:

I posted four public fics this year, in addition to a handful of anonymous ones.

Completed the last six chapters of Big Yellow Taxi after taking an eight-month hiatus.

In An Octopus’s Garden - a last-minute idea posted for the comfort fic fest

Not having a breakdown! (I’m just here for the kid.) for the omega harry fic fest on twitter

Find a light, hold tight - a Hanukkah fic!

2. Work you are most proud of (and why):

Although I’m proud of myself for finishing Big Yellow Taxi, and proud of the crafting of Breakdown!, I’m most proud of Find a light, as initially I planned on posting anonymously. I’m very proud of the characters, especially the original character of Evan.

3. Work you are least proud of (and why):

Octopus’s Garden. I’m so happy that people are reading it and enjoying it, and I do too! But… it feels a little shallow, even if it’s supposed to just serve this one-stop purpose.

4. A favorite excerpt of your writing:

It was like every wall was a bed for them to press each other against, like every second was an opportunity to make up for every millennia their souls had been apart. Louis had never felt like this, never been had like this either. He felt strong and delicate at once, worshipped and craved, on fire.

5. Share or describe a favorite review you received:

It’s not one comment in particular, but the general reaction to Breakdown! has been fascinating! While many people have prefaced their comments with something along the lines of either “I don’t normally read cheating fics…” or “I don’t condone cheating but…”, I can’t help but feel proud that Breakdown! got people to push their comfort zones a bit when it comes to fanfiction.

6. A time when writing was really, really hard:

Picking up Big Yellow Taxi again after taking a hiatus was really hard. While I was doing that, I tried and failed to plot out a fic I was excited about for the 1D Omegaverse Fic Fest. Big Yellow Taxi had gotten away from me as I got lost in the trap of trying to document every moment of every day. Yeah, it was just really really hard, but having cheerleaders helped immensely to keep the momentum.

7. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you:

All of Breakdown!. Seriously, every moment was a surprise to me, especially under the structure of the fic that I developed as I wrote - tying the flashbacks to the present via a common thread (image, word, feeling, etc). I’ve always been really good at working within a framework, and the challenge of this one stoked so much creativity. I really sometimes didn’t know what was going to happen in the next scene! I think the best writing experiences are when your characters take over and you end up just reporting on them.

8. How did you grow as a writer this year:

This year, promoted my works. I’ve always been a bit hesitant to connect my accounts to my writing, but it’s more fun this way to interact with people and talk with them about my fics. This year, I also challenged myself not to get so bogged down in details or documentation, a challenge which in part played into the structure of Breakdown!.

9. How do you hope to grow next year:

Next year, I hope to be more comfortable in that more abstractionist, impressionist writing style that I’m such a slut for.

10. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc):

@tiredtiredtz and @loudloudlove.

11. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year:

Yes! I always sneak in little references to conversations with friends and the like. Also, the only reason I’m ever able to write well when it comes to emotions and love and healthy relationships is my girlfriend.

12. Any wisdom you can share with other writers:

Let the characters take the wheel.

13. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year:

Yes! I’ve been working on a divorced Louis x widowed Harry fic for about two years (dubbed RWYA). I feel so protective of it, and want to get all the characters just right. HOPEFULLY I’ll be able to complete it this year.

I’ve got so many WIPs in drafts. I just kinda write whatever comes to me. I haven’t let go of the failed omegaverse fic fest idea…

I also have been writing a mega church au that I should probably finish too!

14. Tag three writers whose answers you’d like to read. ;)

@tiredtiredtz @loudloudlove and anyone who wants to do this as long as you tag me so i can read all about your writing 🙂

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 23/02/2024

Through the F​-​F​-​Fire and the F​-​F​-​Flames

Season 5 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume D

Ripped by R.L.99

In my excitement leading up to February 22nd and to finally get to write more in-depth about Kara's Flowers' meaning to the SiIvaGunner channel...it dawned on me a bit too late that I was ignoring another meaning to the very date before it. I'm still very proud of how the post on As Miku Collides connects together with Collision Clouds, but there was something far more important to remember from February 21st. The birthday of late ripper R.L.99.

R.L.99 is the second known SiIvaGunner team member to have left us in tragedy, and its always going to be a very difficult topic for someone like me, effectively an outsider, to approach. The first was Marrow, who I've written about thrice now with Telling Fish Tales, Turnabout Fishters and 8​-​bit Fish With Dreams - a true friend to the SiIvaGunner team whose contributions are too many to list, but had been present since the very early days of Season 1. I can't claim to have known the guy, nor ever claim to have felt the same grief that his friends did upon his passing - yet althesame, through how recognizable and frequent his contributions were, losing him did hurt. Yet with R.L.99, my heart sank for a somewhat different reason. I'd barely had the time to truly appreciate him before he was gone.

As a ripper, R.L.99's most defining trait lay in his ambition - he was always seeking to outdo his last work, always shooting higher, yet higher. Joining the team early into Season 5, his twenty-one contributions across the year, ambitious or not, all feel crafted to a sheen. In a Season that already had some of the strongest output in the channel's life, his rips often still managed to impress beyond those expectations. I described one instance of this occurring on my one prior post on the ripper, One Winged PSYcho - V​.​S. Sepsyrop, but it needs to be reiterated that this was effectively standard procedure for each of his big projects. But despite the reverence I hold for him now, I'd chosen the worst possible timeframe to begin distancing myself from SiIvaGunner - during Season 5, I was at my most disinterested in the channel's goings-on, and thus paid far too little mind to the incredible efforts the entire team were making during the year. I'd check in, add some rips to playlists, and check out.

When the news of R.L.99 broke early in Season 6, I didn't know what to think, because...I didn't know R.L.99. But as I looked through my own playlists, looked through his list of contributions - I realized that just about everything he had ever made had found its way into my list of all-time favorite rips. I'd loved his work without ever truly acknowledging or understanding who made it. Without ever having had the chance to truly show my appreciation, until it was too late.

Linked under his username credit at the start of this post, you'll find a Twitter thread I made two years ago now, the day the announcement was made. I wasn't able to appreciate him during his time, but on that day I wanted more than anything else for other people still like what I once was, people far too blind to the talent and care individual rippers put into their work, to know exactly what kind of legacy he left. And so, I put the thread together as one of my first-ever forms of written SiIvaGunner analysis, trying to concisely convey all the ways that R.L.99's work truly was unique - in all the ways I'd failed to pick up on before it was all too late. There was, of course, a lot missing from that thread - notably the as-of-then unreleased rips he'd made that would be uploaded the day after in his memory, culminating in the downright breathtaking Dancing Masked. Yet, I still want to dedicate todays post to a rip I'd heard from before that day, one of those rips I'd loved for so long without knowing the man behind it. A rip like Through the F​-​F​-​Fire and the F​-​F​-​Flames.

A hugely ambitious project, it feels difficult to find one rip that quite so concisely encapsulates all the qualities of R.L.99's work. A distinct love for the MOTHER series, a love for rip arrangements of popular music, a love for Rock music, and the aforementioned scope - it all culminates in a nearly 8-minute long tribute to the legendary Through the Fire and Flames by Dragonforce. Althewhile, it adheres incredibly well to the expected restrictions of a Game Boy Advance game, each of the shredding guitar samples used being from MOTHER 3 itself, with vocals authentically bit-crushed to match. It manages to rock out incredibly on its own, and that's without mentioning the insane details strewn throughout, such as the song's occasional bumps in tempo to match other boss music within MOTHER 3, or the other songs from MOTHER 3 that become referenced throughout the arrangement. Released on the date of MOTHER 3's birthday, much like Jesus of the Underground - it's a beyond impressive tribute, with love shown in every second of its runtime.

The fact remains, though, that I never knew R.L.99, and never knew Marrow either for that matter. There's far, far too many rippers that I've still not been able to express my full gratitude and affection toward, and many of which I'll likely never be able to reach. But that's part of why I want to run this blog in the first place - to give myself, and other SiIvaGunner fans that chance to show genuine, outspoken love for rips and the people behind them while we all can.

Rest well, R.L.99.

[chevelleneech]

Saw a post on Twitter about BT shippers comparing Buck and T*mmy kissing in public to Jude and Zero (a ship from a show called Hit the Floor), and it honestly brings up issues on both sides. Mainly the fact that it once again highlights how poorly done Buck’s coming out was.

First, to get it out the way, comparing Buck and T*mmy to Jude and Zero is laughable. Zero was a professional basketball player who grew up poor, with no positive queer role models in his life. He did not believe he could be bisexual, let alone be in a relationship with a man long term. His choice to kiss Jude on the court, surrounded by cameras immediately after a professional and nationally broadcast basketball game, in front of thousands of people and fellow players, is not and never will be the same thing as two firefighters kissing in a hospital waiting room.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore Buck as a character and am so happy he realized his sexuality, but, and this is where the writers failed imo, there was never a question of “if” Buck would come out. Buck has always been a flirt, an exhibitionist, and very confident in his sexuality overall. Aside from struggling with using sex as a coping mechanism, Buck has ever really faltered in his attraction and his ability to seduce people. And he didn’t falter even after realizing he also wants to date men.

Even in the 7x05, his conflict with T*mmy wasn’t rooted in him not being ready to come out in general. He was specifically nervous about telling Eddie, and Eddie only. As seen by how despite him talking around gender when discussing his problem with Maddie, once he slipped up he literally said him dating a guy wasn’t a big deal. He did not care that people were bound to learn he’s bi, he cares that Eddie was going to find out and view him differently. Which… speaks for itself, but let’s keep Buddie out of it shall we?

Point is, the reason this comparison underscores how badly Buck’s coming out was, is because of two reasons. 1) BT shippers have either not watched the prior seasons or they are people who only watched in hopes of seeing Buck be queer, and disregarded his actual personality. Therefore they view everything he does with T*mmy as something new and different, when it’s not. So to them, their kiss in the ER was a big deal because it led to Buck coming out, but canonically, he was going to do that anyway. We were told in canon that him coming out wasn’t something he viewed as a big deal. And that leads to 2) the flip side to this conversation, where Buddie shippers are claiming T*mmy not telling Buck about the soot was him taking his choice to come out away, when it wasn’t.

Again, Buck was not concerned with keeping it a secret that he now wants to date men. He was only ever worried about what Eddie would think, however, the issue comes from the poorly timed joke during their dinner. T*mmy knew Buck hadn’t been with another man before, so having him make a joke at Buck’s expense wasn’t cool. Especially when it was followed up with him leaving Buck after the date, with almost no explanation. I do think T*mmy had every right to leave. I think the writers did well with having him decide he didn’t want to date Buck and removing himself from the situation. But, having Buck go back and plead his case for why he wanted to keep trying with T*mmy is where things fell flat.

That is where they made the mistake of wrapping Buck’s sexuality up in a relationship, instead of having him explore himself and his wants. So instead of writing T*mmy into the show half-assed, they should have used that screen time to show Buck (who didn’t do anything on the second half of s7) dating around. Then in the finale we could have seen Buck run into him again, thus creating a blank slate for s8, which would tell us Buck was going to try and date T*mmy.

Instead, we’re three months into them dating with nothing to show for it, leading to their shippers claiming them kissing in a hospital waiting room surrounded by strangers, is equal to a professional basketball player kissing his agent on the court, thus coming out to the world.

As such, their shippers are aggrandizing a storyline that is quite honestly, ass. Buck as a bisexual character, is great. He is a former sex addict who didn’t think enough about his actions regarding sex and where he was having it, who learned he was using sex and female attention to compensate for the feelings of neglect he felt from his parents, and he didn’t realize he was bisexual until he was like 31, yet it didn’t buckle him. He happily accepted it as a new fact of himself, and moved on. That’s fantastic. The storyline revolving his bisexuality, however, has done nothing for him as a character. It revolves solely around him kissing the same man twice, and that’s it.

Yes, it’s written that Buck and this man are good together, but canonically that is because Buck has not told his friends and family anything about the man really. He’s confident and has a cleft. That’s all we as an audience knows Buck likes about T*mmy, yet fans who dislike the pairing are supposed to backdown and accept that this is his big endgame relationship? It doesn’t work.

It’s “Fans will accept this because Buck is finally kissing a man!” scraps, and a good chunk of people gobbled them right on up. Yet these same fans don’t give a fuck about Michael, because if they did, they’d know Tim and co were in fact capable of writing fleshed out, late stage self-discovery arcs for queer male characters. If they cared about Henren and Josh, even, they’d know Tim and co are capable of writing questionable, borderline phobic arcs for queer characters, but they don’t.

They literally only care about Buck kissing a man, and that is enough. Even when it’s nothing, and that is why Buck’s bisexual discovery was shit. It was rushed, and made canon sense by a hair’s breath, simply because they got it right that he wouldn’t care if people found out.

[connoisseursdecomfort]

The Problem of Normality (Pt. 2) - Yor in Chapter 79

Due to Chapter 79 and the recent discussions on Twitter, maybe it’s time to continue overthinking about Yor’s characterisation (yay).

To me, how Endo plays with the idea of normality has always been very intriguing, because basically this is a story about a bunch of people trying to act normal in order to hide their secret identities. In a post-war police state where the sense of normality feels so fragile at times. Endo is a comedy genius to give this exceptional spy the best family ever - these two biggest weridos (affectionate) who know nothing about normality. Yor, especially, struggles with grasping the meaning of “normal”, which can easily be found in OED:

As I’ve mentioned in part 1, she is marginalised because of her assassin job. That’s why she tries so hard to “become normal”, and of course, as a result hilarity ensues. 

Normality, however, is the most difficult thing to achieve. Especially when you are hyper-aware you are not sure about what you should really do in situations, and when you feel that you are being observed. 

We talk about normality as if there is a set of doctrines, but no. Normality can be chaotic, as shown in Chapter 77 and 79. It’s just a range of behaviours and reactions that can be comprehended - even when they seem kind of out of place, it should still fit the bill as long as it is within the range. We don’t see how far and wide the range goes. But it does feel like an invisible boundary that you shouldn’t step out of.

One of the many interesting things in Chapter 79 is the different notions or versions of normality which confuse and frustrate Yor.

(manga spoilers ahead)

Yor tries so hard to look normal in front of her colleagues, but still processes it using her old ways - what was “normal” for Yor? She would receive orders/permissions from the Shopkeeper, and she would go straight to her target.

What’s kinda scary is it almost hints how the Shopkeeper maintains control by justifying killing for her:

Why did she become an assassin in the first place? She wanted to protect Yuri, the only family that was left for her. The shopkeeper would “help” her “if it will help make the world a more beautiful place”. Of course from the cruise arc she already knows she doesn’t really care about “the world” - this is just something the Shopkeeper likes to tell her.

Her purpose is gone when Yuri grows up, has a job and moves out. To hide her secret identity as an assassin, she marries Loid.

And so she comes to Loid.

Loid represents a new kind of “normality” in her life. He’s everything she isn’t. He’s charismatic. He’s good at people. And he’s always there to help her and make her feel better.

She goes to him if she ever needs advice on people’s problems.

And of course that panel with the transparent bubble.

So in her imagination, Loid is trying to tell her that’s not normal - but “he” is fake. Both of them maintain a false sense of normality by becoming a fake family. Didn’t she marry him so she can continue to work as an assassin?

Loid has been her go-to when it comes to “normality”, but he fails this time. Because it is not normal to have a perfect husband. He becomes part of her abnormality. They then started to fight.

At last, Anya appears and interrupts her imagination. 

Anya wants to keep the family together. She’ll do anything, including eating sweet omelettes. That’s when Yor gives up and runs back. It goes back to why she becomes an assassin. 

Chapter 79 echoes with Chapter 53, but in a totally different way. She likes to be an assassin. She finds purpose in it. But what if her job, or her need to act normal in order to keep her job, goes against her “purpose”?

The Shopkeeper and “Loid” both speak artfully - Yor doesn’t necessarily understand all of their intentions, but she does admire their words. They represent the two different kinds of “normality” she’s had. But these two versions of normality can easily be challenged - because “killing ish wrong”, and the perfect husband is fake.

It’s Anya who speaks to her. Yor fully understands Anya’s intentions. Yor kills because she wants to preserve something precious for her. She killed to keep her family together, and in Chapter 79, she stops killing because Anya pleads with her - Anya wants to keep the family together.

I’ve always thought Yor saw herself in Anya, and Chapter 79 kinda confirms that.

When did Yor want to be “more of a mother to” Anya? After the school interview. Anya said she wants to be with her papa and mama forever.

Yor could empathise with Anya more than anyone. After all, Yor did become an assassin to keep her family together. She got married and pretended to be normal because she didn’t want to worry Yuri. She did it for her family. And we can all see how hard Anya tries just to do the exact same thing.

And of course, now Anya’s family is becoming her family. She truly cares about Loid,

Just as Loid is starting to truly care about her.

Of course in her very drunken state she still thinks she’s doing it to “be normal”. But this is no longer an act for their colleagues or neighbours. If it’s not really for others, what or who is it for to “act like a normal couple”? Why do Loid and Yor still insist on becoming the lovey-dovey/perfect spouse for each other, especially when they now very consciously know “normal” relationships are imperfect and chaotic?

Just kiss already.