#i also bought them the things they needed so that they don't have to go to the shop
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woso-dreamzzz · 1 day ago
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If You Were My Little Girl II
Alexia Putellas x Teen!Reader
Summary: Things are looking up
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Alexia watches from the stands.
They're mostly empty, like almost all Barcelona B matches.
Women's football has only really started picking up steam recently but only at the top flight. The lower level leagues are still having a bit of a popularity issue.
But Alexia, for once, finds that she doesn't mind.
Because it means she can sit practically alone in the stands as she watches the home match.
A notepad sits on her lap, a pen tapping against the pages thoughtfully as she watches.
Barcelona B are good and Alexia has never expected anything different. She's seen the system at work many times as La Masia churns out players like Aitana and Pina and Jana, and more recently Vicky and Martina.
There's a reason so many clubs wants La Masia products.
They're all good players but even now, Alexia can tell a great player when she sees one.
You rise up among the crowd in the box and slam the ball into the goal, the net rippling with the force of the shot.
The best part, Alexia thinks, is that you didn't even need a moment to control the ball, hitting it in on the volley and grinning as your teammates practically dogpile you.
A hattrick in ten minutes is impressive in any league and Alexia makes another note in her notebook, humming softly to herself.
She rises out of her seat at the end of the match, disappearing into the building and out the doors.
It takes another half an hour for you to appear again, hair damp and an old crew neck sweater that Alexia's pretty sure is Alba's being tugged over your head.
You slip into the passenger seat, throwing your bag into the backseat and Alexia pulls your head down to press a kiss against the side of it.
You smile shyly at her as she offers up the fries she'd bought for a job well done.
"You did good, kid," She says," Very impressive."
"Yeah?"
"Yes. But I think we're going to work on evading slide tackles next," Alexia says as she drives off," We're trying to keep those ankles of yours intact, alright? I'm going to need them this season."
You roll your eyes and Alexia clicks her tongue.
"Don't roll your eyes at me," She says," I've got a good feeling about that meeting later in the week. A great feeling, actually. You should have one too."
"I'm managing expectations."
Alexia looks at you fondly. "Well, we'll see which one of us is right in a few days."
She lets you choose the music in the car, like she always does when you've scored a goal and you pull up to the apartment a lot quicker than you want to seeing as you're in the middle of singing along to your favourite song but, still, you drag yourself out of the car and up the stairs.
"How was the match?" Olga asks as she greets Alexia with a kiss on the lips.
"She did very well," Alexia brags," A hattrick within the first ten minutes and another goal in injury time."
"Exciting," Olga says indulgently as Alexia grins, already giving her running commentary of everything that happened during the match.
You escape though, hurrying to raid the cupboards before Alexia finally comes to her senses and tries to stop you 'spoiling' your dinner.
You don't know if there's any way to thank Alexia for what she's done for you.
Just three months ago, you were convinced that you were going to quit. You had no passion for the game, no hope of what your future was going to be but now all of that had changed.
You had direction. You had a manager. You had new boots and a place to live that wasn't a group home and support and love and everything seemed to be coming together for you.
A toe pokes you in the leg.
"Move."
"Alexia says that if you're trying to nap on her sofa again then I don't have to move," You tell Alba, who huffs and pokes you with her toe again," She also says that you have your own apartment and should stop mooching of us."
"But Olga's a better cook than me," Alba complains and you roll your eyes.
"Aren't you an adult? Even I can cook."
"Yeah but it's not like you could mooch off your sist-"
Alba falls silent quickly and you pretend to not notice what she was going to say for both hers and your own sakes.
The topic of your sister is kind of off limits when you're in the room. It's not completely banned because Alexia's still Jenni's national teammate but she's not really spoken about if you're in the room.
Alba's face flashes with terror for a moment so you pretend you don't notice her slip up ever though it sends a bolt of lightning into your stomach, a deep pit forming there.
It works for the most part, everyone in the house pretending Jenni isn't who she is to you, pretending that she's just Alexia's teammate and not her friend and ex, pretending that Alexia fostering you isn't her walking on a tight rope because Jenni doesn't know.
All Jenni knows is that you didn't quit when she told you to.
Jenni doesn't know that you live with Alexia. Jenni doesn't know anything. You doubt she even thinks about you when she's got a life far away in Mexico.
She lives there, far away from you and your life here in Barcelona.
She lives there and her presence is hardly ever mentioned around you.
Life is good at Alexia and Olga's house. Life is even good at training, though you could do without the smug little smirk Alexia has on her face when she picks you up.
"You already knew!" You accuse her, waving a finger in her face.
"Knew?" She asks, lips curl up in what can only be described as pure smugness," Knew what?"
"Right, who told you? Go on. Who was it?"
Alexia grins. "You do realise I am the captain? Any time they're looking to bring someone in, they ask me my opinion."
You roll your eyes. "Yeah and I'm sure you gave it."
"You're a good player. A great player," Alexia says," All I did was tell them what they already know."
You look down at your lap, fidgeting with your fingers. You want to be mad at her, to yell at her for keeping this from you. Maybe even yell at her for promising to the staff something you're not but you know she hasn't done that.
If she thought you weren't ready, she would have told them that.
But Alexia didn't. She didn't tell them to let you have a bit more time with the B team. She didn't tell them that you don't quite have what it takes.
"Thanks."
Alexia smiles at you as she drives home, a comfortable silence enveloping you both until your hand is on the door handle.
You stop.
"When I open this door, there's going to be a party, isn't there?"
"I may have told Olga...who told Mami...who told Alba...who told the rest of the family..."
"Is that a yes?"
"Possibly..."
"And there's no getting out of this?"
Alexia ruffles your hair, a soft kiss being pressed to the side of your head. "They're here to celebrate you."
You suck in a breath, just ready to turn the handle when the sound of the lift doors opening chimes down the corridor.
Both you and Alexia turn your heads towards.
It's just a fleeting second.
Just a moment.
But your good mood plummets as the door opens.
Alexia's hand tightens on your shoulder, pushing you slightly behind her and putting herself between you and the elevator.
Between you and Jenni.
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dailyrickastley · 8 months ago
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Once upon time in 1987...
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ihamtmus · 5 months ago
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I SAW MY NEPHEW FOR THE FIRST TIME TODAY 😍😍🥹🥹😭🥹😭😍😍💗💗🥹💖🥹🥰😍💖🥰💕
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silveredsticks · 3 months ago
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icewindandboringhorror · 8 months ago
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Misc. photos from the past year or so ~
#image commentary in tags once again since they don't allow captions anymore and I feel weird using the alt text for that --#1. napping bapy boye sneeping on his own foot as if it were a pillow#2. The little primrose that I have seems to bloom sporadically all year around as long as I bring it inside and don't let it freeze#in the winter. This was a flower that came up randomly like mid november lol#3. Rainbow where you can see a little bit of a second rainbow near the bottom of it :0#4. CHILDREN.... love to see them.....#5. Halloween Candy ranking tierlist. not important enough to post on it's own. so throwing it in with one of these I guess lol#I am also not really a candy person at all and prefer bready stuff like cakes rather than chocolate bars (if I even have to have sweets#at ALL which usually I prefer savory food). I suspect the apple is controversial but.. I do love apples .... huzzah#actually am having applle and peanut butter snack right now as I'm writing this lol#6. Various bowls/cups/etc. that I got from a store at COMPLETELY different times like.. years apart from each other#yet at some point realized that they all mostly match in paint color and seem to be part of the same pattern#But I totally didnt make that connection until a few years ago when I was putting up dishes. I just bought them all invidually because it's#like 'oh cool! a cat' *1 year later* 'oh cool! a cat!' etc. lol.. I guess it must be a popular design if it's been around being sold that#long.#7. carne asada burrito and matcha bubble tea... oughhgh.... again one of my very rare meals where I actually go and get something..#probably my favorite meal currently. Something about the Chronic Anemia makes me crave beef burritos madly despite only having one#maybe twice a year or so ghjbhj.. plus the beans.... onions.... many of my Diet Forbidden foods... Also of course the little aishas#are there.... somehow they shall split the meal together even though it's like 10x bigger than their bodies.. they are also hungry#and vastly anemic... huzzah to them...#8. I've had this shirt for a long time but it fits very weird so I can never find a way to use it in outfits?? But I recently had#an appointment where a doctor needed to be able to look at my back and it's one of the only actual Shirts that I have (mostly i just own#long robes or tunics or jumper dress type of things that would be hard to lift up or etc. like... I dont even own a single normal 't-shirt'#or anyting aside from one giant tshirt that I sleep in in the summer lol.) So I wore this there.. I forget how much I love the pictures on#it.. how pleasant... little hummingbird... AND I think one of the flowers is supposed to be columbine ... !#photo diary
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tittyinfinity · 8 months ago
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when you're disabled, being financially abused by your parents never ends
#so you're telling me that you got 5k this week from claiming me on your taxes#while hounding me about how i haven't been contributing enough to bills & expenses (i was giving you what you asked for!)#and none of it will go to me because ''i owe it to you for living with you''#despite the fact that 5k nearly covers the mortgage for the entire YEAR#DESPITE THE FACT THAT I COULD PAY OFF MY OWN LANDLORD AND MOVE OUT#btw i literally only let her claim me on her taxes bc she said she'd be giving it to me. and this is the third time she has done this.#promised me it wouldn't happen again. she used me.#she does this thing a lot#where she acts like she's helping people but only does it to hold it over their head#i told her i could have been paying her more for bills but she told me i didn't have to#and now she's complaining that i don't pay enough#i will literally tell her not to help me sometimes#bc she'll do it anyway and then later on you hear ''i did something nice for you so if you don't help me with a favor right now...#...I'll do everything I can to sabotage your life''#so she literally only does it for personal gain#so that she can have an excuse to feel like she's better than all of her kids and that we're just stupid ungrateful assholes#all 3 of her kids could be telling her that her logic is wrong and she won't budge#another thing that happened recently is that she told me i needed to pay her back for a gift she bought me that got stolen#which is also something she does a lot. buys me things without asking and then telling me i have to pay her back for them#i had way more stuff stolen that i had personally bought#i didn't ask for that fucking keyboard sorry. I ALREADY HAD ONE.#and she's been going on about how ''she's the one who's ACTUALLY being affected''#she is FULLY AWARE that the dude she lets over has stolen from us MULTIPLE times#but apparently it's my responsibility to pay her back for something out of my control#STOP BUYING ME SHIT AND TELLING ME I DON'T NEED TO PAY YOU MORE IF YOU'RE JUST GONNA HOLD IT OVER MY HEAD#IF I'M SUCH A BURDEN MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR ME TO LEAVE#.bdo
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seaofreverie · 2 months ago
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The Me who bought tickets to see TMBG in february 2023 and the Me who's going to actually go to the show next month are two completely different people
#slash extremely negative#it's funny to actually live this whole sort of cliche of: the time between buying tickets and going to the show can be so absurdly long#with what was supposed to be my 1st 'real' concert no less#'i bought the tickets as a teenager but i'm going to see them in my 20s etc' and stuff like that#and then when it gets rescheduled too... well. a year and 9 months is in fact a pretty long time!!!#and i'm not even talking about rescheduling due to covid because god at least i didn't have to deal with that i guess#(it IS funny though that by the time the 30th anniversary of flood tour ends#flood will be 2 months away from turning 35. so yeah lmao a lot happened in the meantime huh)#anyways day two of going crazy going insane for no reason other than well i guess that's just my life now!!!!! 😃😃😃#me when i say i'll stop documenting my rapidly progressing mental breakdown online and then keep doing it anyway#but idk maybe this will heal me in some way. my only hope rn no joke#and my mom actually seemed to be unsure if i we should book the hotels and stuff because. ig i'm this obviously unwell even over the phone#but BY GOD this is the only thing i can really look forward to right now i really need this to survive#(trying to forget how i was doing in september of last year when they rescheduled the tour#and i couldn't even be sure if i'd ever get to see them in the end lollllll#and at the heights of my tmbg obsession this was my number 1 dream. i mean it still is)#also i think i'm finally entering my tmbg autumn era now with some more frequent listening after not doing so for a while#how could i let myself pretty much forget that i love tmbg??? and that their music is so good and makes me happy???#they're still my fav band of all time just like they were back then. THAT didn't change at least#it's just that now they share that spot with sparks also lol. can't choose between them and why should i anyway#what else. ig i just hope i get the energy to finally draw tomorrow at least#because if i don't turn the ideas i have into reality then they will never become real! and that would be so sad#so maybe this can be my main reason to continue for now. whatever#goosepost
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eats-the-stars · 4 months ago
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being an adult who makes my own income is also realizing i can actually buy some of the pretty art i see online. some day i might even be bold enough to directly commission an artist.
#sometimes i forget that i can just...buy things that i like#obviously i can't go wild about it or spend an outrageous amount#but...i do have spending money and i no longer have to like justify purchases to my dad#or beg him to let me buy some cool art at the local ren faire#i can literally just...buy it#still keeping myself in check#but i am so used to only using my spending money to buy books and snacks#and sometimes notebooks and art supplies#but now there's no one to tell me that i'm too old for dinosaur figurines and cool prints and cute plushies#like i mean my dad is still around but i'm not a kid anymore so...#honestly i could've probably bought more things i just like and want because they're cool when i was younger#but i was just not great at doing things without permission#and my dad is simultaneously a penny pincher and a careless spender#in a weird way where he'll budget everything very carefully#and he saves up and has his Roth IRA and investment portfolio and so on#but then he will also like...spend a ridiculous amount of money on super expensive living room curtains#that will inevitably be destroyed by the cats within the course of a year#or he'll buy a custom made reclining chair from norway for way too much money and then never use it#like he carefully budgets all this stuff#and then is like 'ah and now i need to factor in my $1000 ugly lamp that no one asked for'#my sister ends up replacing most of these items with more practical cheap stuff from like facebook marketplace#so honestly he has nowhere to throw stones from#will say i do like his too-expensive giant abstract art pieces. they're pretty cool#not my style but i don't hate them#but those curtains...#maybe it's my turn to criticize HIS purchases
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kifu · 8 months ago
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Fencing through the autumn olive finished. Ran out of the last roll of wire, though.
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Chart b finished on shawl #10, which means I’m officially free from purl decreases. People who can do purl two together through the back loop and don’t want to cry are stronger than me. 
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jedi-bird · 1 year ago
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Partner decided they wanted to go to ikea today and I'm not one to turn down a trip to the labyrinth of interesting things. Managed to get the shoe cabinet we wanted as well as a coat rack. Found a very cheap but very nice small bookshelf for an awkward area of the work room. Partner wanted some sound proofing things for their office for recording purposes, so they for sound dampening tiles and a rug. I'm pretty sure the cabinet I've been drooling over is about to be discontinued and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Tomorrow I need to work on the Christmas stuff (decorations for the tree and sorting out ceramic village boxes and measuring the space under the stairs again), hang some prints I framed this weekend, and start building furniture if there's time.
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anonymusbosch · 1 year ago
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really truly Feelings about coming back to my hometown and seeing it as an outsider (I only knew it as a child with my motion constrained by school and parents and being under 18) and an outsider (it's changed since I've been away these last 8 years) and an outsider (showing it to my partner and finding it both familiar and unfamiliar, and special and inadequate) and an outsider (my parents and sister have all moved and my childhood home is no longer mine - staying in a building with a door code to learn and furniture still being moved in) and an outsider (my favorite places have changed, moved, closed, repainted) and an outsider (new murals! new buildings! new bike lanes) and an outsider (how the Fuck do the bike lanes on the east bank connect) and an outsider (it's changed [you can never step in the same river twice] and I have too)
#i think I need to make art about this#wanting to show off the things I love about it and realizing so much of that love is for the mundane details and tiny quotidian things#seeing people in the bike lanes and feeling the pang of just Being Around People Enjoying the Outdoors#how much fun you can have for free#at the same time not having lived here at all as an adult#i don't know the public transit here! i biked when it wasn't snowy and when it was snowy i was in school til like 9 pm#i don't know the flashy fun city things i know where me and my cousins would go to have a pretzel and maybe a beer and play board games#i know where u can do martial arts for cheap and fun but that's not a nice day out to show someone it's part of being there for months#years#i know where you can get food at 1 AM but they've moved#i don't know dinkytown or any of the north side#i want to show you how good it was to be a kid here in the summer but we're not kids anymore#i want you to feel the same pang of love when passing my best friend's childhood home#ALSO!!!! saw california friends/acquaintances in the home they bought together with dual software engineer california salaries#living in MN making CA money#a huge huge 3-story-plus-basement million-plus dollar home since that means something here#you're 28 what the fuck are you doing with a nicer house than anyone I knew here ever had#'this is what you get with CA money in mpls' yeah i fucking know actually except I don't make SWE money and I don't live here anymore#i know some local mechanical engineers who have got starter homes at like 300k a few years out of school.#that's like. good for them.#anyway I'm leaving the city today and still just feeling Things about it
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neverendingford · 2 days ago
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.
#tag talk#learning language just makes my brain vibrate on just the right frequency#my goal for the rest of this year and the year coming is to get really good at Spanish#between Language Transfer (really fucking good go check it out thanks to my sibling recommending it to me) and then#then all the immersion I've been doing with music and TV#I feel like I stand a chance of getting genuinely good at it#I have this dream of knowing several other languages but I need to start by developing the skill with a language I'm already familiar with#and now I'm medicated I can finally push for like.. an actual goal and achievement#this feels like an extension of my obsession with communication.#which now that I think about it. a lot of things I love have a strong communication aspect to them.#music. fashion. art. they all communicate ideas.#that's even maybe what I like about porn. it's a work that's designed to communicate a very specific feeling and idea#and kink is an expression of power and trust. control and release. poetry.#do these tags read like the ramblings of a mad man? am I just throwing darts at a wall and connecting them with red string?#maybe I am crazy. but I'm not wrong. I'm autistic I'm incapable of believing I'm wrong.#is that joke in poor taste? probably.#anyway. I love communication and learning Spanish is my gateway to an entire world of ideas embedded in the structure of language itself#plus it would probably help my ability to keep up with my brother's dreams of traveling abroad#and I could help him learn languages cause I love teaching and he's not as hardwired for it as I am.#oh also I bought a vocabulary book to work through because language transfer is teaching me the grammar and structure#but I need vocabulary to back it up#I have a small work vocabulary I use with the customers who don't speak English very well. shit like “this. it works?”#but even like. idk. I'm really good at understanding people with difficult speech.#one resident at my nursing home had severe muscle degeneration and couldn't do much outside of vague flopping#but she would still try to speak and I got pretty good at understanding her and having conversations while feeding her.#she was in the navy and ate a bunch of neat food in Korea and she's the reason I finally watched Jaws for the first time#and like.. my ability to understand is what let her influence my life like that. I got to connect with another human being.#like. it's a gift that enhances my life and I want to choose to shape my life around this gift.#my love and obsession with communication is something I've had my whole life and if is something constant I need to consider it#so many other things in my life are shifting and uncertain. I want to chase the constant source of joy that's a part of who I am.
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thedissociatives · 3 months ago
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ok so that's two bands who i almost definitely won't be able to see on their next tours :|
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ktempestbradford · 9 months ago
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I have been on a Willy Wonkified journey today and I need y'all to come with me
It started so innocently. Scrolling Google News I come across this article on Ars Technica:
At first glance I thought what happened was parents saw AI-generated images of an event their kids were at and became concerned, then realized it was fake. The reality? Oh so much better.
On Saturday, event organizers shut down a Glasgow-based "Willy's Chocolate Experience" after customers complained that the unofficial Wonka-inspired event, which took place in a sparsely decorated venue, did not match the lush AI-generated images listed on its official website.... According to Sky News, police were called to the event, and "advice was given."
Thing is, the people who paid to go were obviously not expecting exactly this:
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But I can see how they'd be a bit pissed upon arriving to this:
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It gets worse.
"Tempest, how could it possibly--"
source of this video that also includes this charming description:
Made up a villain called The Unknown — 'an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls'
There is already a meme.
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Oh yes, the Wish.com Oompa Loompa:
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Who has already done an interview!
As bad (and hilarious) as this all is, I got curious about the company that put on this event. Did they somehow overreach? Did the actors they hired back out at the last minute? (Or after they saw the script...) Oddly enough, it doesn't seem so!
Given what I found when poking around I'm legit surprised there was an event at all. Cuz this outfit seems to be 100% a scam.
The website for this specific event is here and it has many AI generated images on it, as stated. I don't think anyone who bought tickets looked very closely at these images, otherwise they might have been concerned about how much Catgacating their children would be exposed to.
Yes, Catgacating. You know, CATgacating!
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I personally don't think anyone should serve exarserdray flavored lollipops in public spaces given how many people are allergic to it. And the sweet teats might not have been age appropriate.
Though the Twilight Tunnel looks pretty cool:
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I'm not sure that Dim Tight Twdrding is safe. I've also been warned that Vivue Sounds are in that weird frequency range that makes you poop your pants upon hearing them.
Yes, Virginia, these folks used an AI image generator for everything on the website and used Chat GPT for some of the text! From the FAQ:
Q: I cannot go on the available days. Will you have more dates in the future? A: Should there be capacity when you arrive, then you will be able to enter without any problems. In the event that this is not the case, we may ask you to wait a bit.
Fear not, for this question is asked again a few lines down and the answer makes more sense.
Curious about the events company behind this disaster, I took myself over to the homepage of House of Illuminati and I was not disappointed.
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I would 100% trust these people to plan my wedding.
This abomination of a website is a badly edited WordPress blog filled with AI art and just enough blog posts to make the casual viewer think that it's a legit business for about 0.0004 seconds.
Their attention to detail is stunning, from how they left up the default first post every WP blog gets to how they didn't bother changing the name on several images, thus revealing where they came from. Like this one:
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With the lovely and compact filename "DALL·E-2024-01-30-09.50.54-Imagine-a-scene-where-fantasy-and-reality-merge-seamlessly.-In-the-foreground-a-grand-interactive-gala-is-taking-place-filled-with-elegant-guests-i.png"
"Concept.png" came from the same AI generator that gets text almost, but not quiiiiiite right:
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There are a suspicious number of .webp images in the uploads, which makes me think they either stole them from other sites where AI "art" was uploaded or they didn't want to pay for the hi-res versions of some and just grabbed the preview image.
The real fun came when I noticed this filename: Before-and-After-Eventologists-Transformation-Edgbaston-Cricket-Ground-1024x1024-1.jpg and decided to do a Google image search. Friends, you will be shocked to hear that the image in question, found on this post touting how they can transform a boring warehouse into a fun event space, was stolen from this actual event planner.
Even better, this weirdly grainy image?
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From a post that claims to be about the preparations for a "Willy Wonka" experience (we'll get to this in a minute), is not only NOT an actual image of anyone preparing anything for Illuminati's event, it is stolen from a YouTube thumbnail that's been chopped to remove the name of the company that actually made this. Here's the video.
If you actually read the blog posts they're all copypasta or some AI generated crap. To the point where this seems like not a real business at all. There's very specific business information at the bottom, but nothing else seems real.
As I said, I'm kinda surprised they put on an event at all. This has, "And then they ran off with all our money!" written all over it. I'm perplexed.
And also wondering when the copyright lawyers are gonna start calling, because...
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This post explicitly says they're putting together a "Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory Experience" complete with golden tickets.
Somewhere along the line someone must have wised up, because the actual event was called "Willys Chocolate Experience" (note the lack of apostrophe) and the script they handed to the actors about 10 minutes before they were supposed to "perform" was about a "Willy McDuff" and his chocolate factory.
As I was going through this madness with friends in a chat, one pointed out that it took very little prompting to get the free Chat GPT to spit out an event description and such very similar to all this while avoiding copyrighted phrases. But he couldn't figure out where the McDuff came from since it wasn't the type of thing GPT would usually spit out...
Until he altered the prompt to include it would be happening in Glasgow, Scotland.
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You cannot make this stuff up.
But truly, honestly, I do not even understand why they didn't take the money and run. Clearly this was all set up to be a scam. A lazy, AI generated scam.
Everything from the website to the event images to the copy to the "script" to the names of things was either stolen or AI generated (aka stolen). Hell, I'd be looking for some poor Japanese visitor wandering the streets of Glasgow, confused, after being jacked for his mascot costume.
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HE LIVES IN THE WALLS, Y'ALL.
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hedgehog-moss · 2 months ago
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I usually buy one stere of firewood per year, one and a half at most, but this year I saw an ad at the farm store promising a discount if you ordered 5 or 10 steres and I thought, well, I have a brand new wood shed, so let's go, five steres, why not!
Then a big truck came to my house and threw up this lava flow of wood in front of my shed and I realised that my mental representation of 5 steres, in terms of volume, was a bit off.
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But that's okay! My friend D. was coming to visit. She's very convenient to have around in early autumn because she enjoys the real-life Tetris aspect of stacking wood—not only that, but she's uncannily talented at spotting blackberries, and September is blackberry season. (I do also invite her in other seasons so she doesn't feel exploited for her gifts.)
I was a bit concerned about the wood-stacking part of her visit though, partly because of the truckload of wood awaiting us and partly because this year's wood is completely shapeless and looks like whimsically sea-sculpted debris from an ancient shipwreck.
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(On the left: the pretty logs that /I/ cut, which are shaped and easy to stack. On the right: the nonsensical wood that I bought.)
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(My friend saw this and almost went on strike. She was like, "Not a single log has a shape that makes sense with the others... it sucks. That's not Tetris 😠") (Me: "Think of it as having reached a higher, more challenging level of Tetris." Her: "😠")
On top of that, because of the cold and rainy summer we've had, blackberries were very scarce this year, like everything else. Brambles are so ubiquitous in my woods I used to think I would always get more blackberries than I know what to do with, but last month I actually had to go look for them which I'm not used to doing. Every fence is usually covered with blackberries in September, and in some parts of the woods there are hazel trees taken over by brambles so that blackberries are dangling in front of your face temptingly and you don't even need to bend down to pick them. But not this year.
I feared this visit would be quite disappointing for D. if the wood stacking and the berry picking were less fun than usual—but the fact that blackberries were much harder to find than the previous years made her amazing berry-dar all the more necessary and appreciated, and she enjoyed our blackberry hunt. We'd get lost in mazes of giant broom bushes and I'd be like, let's go somewhere else there are no blackberries to be found here, and she'd stop dead and go, "Here!" And here they were!
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I don't know how she does it.
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One fun thing that happened is that at one point, while D. was somehow finding kilos of blackberries in a field I'd already searched two days before and which had seemed empty of berries, I wandered away into the forest to photograph some pretty mushrooms. Then I heard a strange bird call which, when I looked up and paid more attention to it, sounded more like my friend calling my name from afar. I figured I was being called out for getting distracted from the berry harvest, so I returned to the field. She was crouching down at the other end of the field with her back turned on me and didn't look like she'd just called me.
Half an hour later, when it was getting dark and we were about to go home, she told me, "Hey, did you have something to show me earlier? When you were in the woods." Me: "No, why?" Her: "You called my name."
...
Me: "I didn't call your name. You called MY name." On second thought, she said that it sounded quite shaky and high-pitched, not like my voice, more birdlike. Me: "I initially thought it was a bird too!" Problem: our names sound nothing alike.
We stood there mystified for a minute, wondering if there could be a bird capable of articulating both of our names, or if it was some other animal or thing that somehow knows our names. (We were quite sure there were no humans in the area, because Pandolf is very good at sensing nearby people and always wants to go say hi to them.)
We looked at the woods, then at my car parked nearby, then went, "Okay! Time to go home and never investigate this further 😊"
My friends are a good influence on me—there were people a bit concerned about my sanity in the notes of that post where I talked about going out into the woods at night because something was screaming, and I think they'll be happy with the moral of this story! We went home and sat by the fire eating blackberry tart and talked about what a great decision it was, all things considered, to not try to figure out what sort of creature wanted us to wander deeper into the forest at dusk. The end.
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