#i couldnt tell you from memory which video he did this in

[helicidal]

since i NEVER see anybody talking about this (for some reason), krugston (the youtuber) uses the r word as an insult and has never apologized for it or addressed it so maybe don't support him thanks 😁

[elliebelliegirl]

okay following up though... i understand that you are jewish and Israeli but (not trying to attack you, just trying to understand) how can you stand with the state of Israel after seeing the numbers of atrocities that the IDF has committed - of course the hostages should be released, but palestine will cease to exist if this continues and this is an active genocide. people are being displaced and thousands have died. how can you in good conscience stand with the actions of Israel ?

im still assuming this is in good faith! i do appreciate that you're asking and not attacking, it's really nice change of pace tbh. please understand that my ethnicity and my political opinions are not the same thing and how i feel about the state of israel is divorced from my religious beliefs. i just also believe that my people have a right to live in our indigenous land. i also believe palestinians should be able to live in israel (many already do.) anyway, here's the deal.

first, im not israeli, but my family is. i was born and raised in the u.s. while most of my family is israeli, i am not (yet.) im an american jew with strong roots in israel.

second! israelis have been displaced since october, since the attacks by hamas, the governing body of gaza. they've been attacked and killed for years (the whole reason the iron dome exists is because missiles are such an active threat.) getting displaced or killed has happened to israelis and gazans. its terrible for everyone. i am human, and therefore uncomfortable with war, but i don't think it's a genocide. i am horrified by the deaths in gaza. i hate that innocents are being harmed. i don't want to add a however, but there's a big one- it's that the ratio of killed militants v.s civilians is unfathomably low. if israel wanted to kill everyone in gaza (which is 100% not the goal) they would be dead already. the war is active now only to eradicate hamas, which would be beneficial to gazans and israelis, and to rescue the hostages. israel has offered to end the war multiple times and hamas has refused.. because they refuse to return the people they kidnapped. the war could've been over months ago!!! months ago. israel did not instigate this war, and has repeatedly offered ceasefire deals. hamas is the one shooting these offers down. also, palestine wont just cease to exist.. im not sure what that part means, can you explain it? i want to understand you, too.

also. i have cousins in the idf. one of them was supposed to come over before last days on sukkot and couldn't make it in the end. over the weekend, october seventh happened. the next time we spoke, it was a phone call right after simchat torah ended. he was on his way to the airport, having been called back to israel to meet his unit in kfar aza and start collecting bodies. i only had a few minutes to tell him i love him and to stay alive on behalf of me and my siblings. the memory is so surreal. we turned on our phones for the first time in days to texts from our israeli family saying they were alive, not to watch the videos, not to look at the pictures. im still kind of stuck there on my couch, holding my siblings in a hug and wondering if someone who hadn't texted yet was dead. then we saw people celebrating the massacre. they haven't really stopped. so we knew we couldnt really count on anyone to protect us, and this was way before israel entered gaza. people were just happy jews were dead. don't know if this is a huge sidetrack, but. this is why i stand with israel. their goal is to keep my family alive. their goal is to keep as many gazans as possible alive. that is not the goal of iran and hamas. this goes further than zionism though, tbh. zionism is pretty simple as a principle 😅

[royalwilmon]

hi, first of all: so happy for you that you got to meet e & o yesterday!!!

you said we could ask questions, so i actually have one if you feel comfortable to share ofc:

what did you tell them and what did they answer? 🥺

hi omg thank you!!!!!! ofc!!!!

the memory is honestly Already getting fuzzy but okay first thing that happened they each hugged me and asked me how i was doing and i just made some sort of noise that wasnt a word and they laughed. i told them that i was from boston and that i got there at midnight and started waiting at NBC at 5am and they were all cute about it like "thank you for coming, oh my god". and then im majorly paraphrasing here but i said something along the lines of "i just wanted to thank you guys. these past two years have been the best of my life and ive changed so much through loving YR and i'm a different and better person because of it" and they both were like "thank you, youre so sweet". then i talked for a bit about groupchats/fandom friends and how ive met people from around the globe that i talk to every day and how im so grateful to them for indirectly introducing me to my favorite people and i just couldnt thank them enough for that. at this point i was tripping over my words a lot and both edvin and omar were putting their hands on my arms which did not help my speaking thing. edvin said "youre so sweet" at least three times. edvin asked if i wanted to take a picture and i think i just laughed. i turned around to pose with them and right before they took the pic i muttered "holy fuck" under my breath and edvin laughed and said something along the lines of "trust me we feel the same". after the pics i said thank you like eight times and as i was walking away they were like "oh say hi to the groupchat from us!!!!" and god i wish i was allowed to have my phone to record it but alas, phones were a strict no-no

sorry thats a big chunk of text but its all this weird fuzzy memory already, like. such a blur

the Thing about the interaction i keep telling people is something y'all probably already know from pictures and videos but i'm just going to confirm it. edvin looks at you while you're talking like every word you say is the most important word he's ever heard. i'll never in my life recover from actually being on the other end of that.

and omar was ALL smiles. he was just so clearly OVERJOYED to be there talking to people, like. so happy. he's an actual puppy dog, so adorable, my heart melted. also, it might be because im short but he's not as Small as he was in my mind!! sorry to confirm that omar is in fact normal sized

okay thats all my brain is letting me remember right now, lmk if y'all wanna know more!!

[paranormeow7]

this post is late and idk if the hypes died down but i have THOUGHTS on catalyst (SPOILERS AHEAD)

okay alright we'll go scene by scene here sorry if any of these have been debunked or anything THIS IS GONNA BE SUCH INCOMPREHENSIBLE WORD VOMIT SORRY

who was watching that tv and where. i mean im pretty sure it was in mandela or maybe werksha. did they lift the television and mirror destruction act?? and that blank face that showed up. was that six?? also, SAINT GABRIELS CHURCH. OH MY GOD. apparentely no one goes anymore (most likely due to religion being shown to lead to MAD), which makes me wonder why dave even believed "o'brien" when he said he'd had a job there, if the place was pretty much abandoned anyways.

okay next up the hospital scene. oh my godddd. i think maybe the whereabouts of daves eyes will be important later, since they went out of their way to report that they couldnt recover them. and his brain?? can alts like, liquefy your brain now???? what the fuck happened????? maybe we'll get to see. also these nurses. they could be important, maybe, maybe not. also, we also now know that most of mandela's population have migrated to werksha (depsite there also being alt activity there i think), which i believe will be the county we'll be getting to see next.

chat logs with sarah and evelin my favorite girlbosses!!! apparently adam hasn't been talking to anyone for a while (most likely because of the Horrors, maybe since his talk with six) and eve is worried. she already seemed pretty sus about him in vol4, asking him to talk to her, which as far as i know he never did, and especially after she found his TSA results. based on whether or not you think she died in the MCPD station that day, these logs can either take place before or after she paid her visit. Sarah doesn't seem to think anything is wrong, despite it being implied that she hasn't been able to reach him either. either she's lying for whatever reason or she genuinely doesn't really know what's been going on with him. what is her MOTIVE??

TEASER SCENE. this could take place either before or after vol4, but i also believe this could be the "fight" eve was talking about in Jonah's memorial video, where he said some "terrible, awful" things that she "wished he had never told her". she may be afflicted with MAD. it seems that she visited his house at some point and met Preacher ("ADAM WHO IS THAT??"), who may have been using his voice to lure her in. There's been a fuck ton of theories on Preacher and it's connection to Adam, with some people saying it's his overdriven form. Idk how that could work seeing as they seem to be seperate entities, but WHO KNOWS??

WAKE UP THATCHER, I AM YOUR INTUITION. this is the same red text associated with Gabriel, who in vol 4 shared his intentions to kill Thatcher. Was getting him to follow the screams he heard (idk how since he seems to live decently far off from the BPS house) Gabriel's way of attempting to do that?? Also, the return of Gabe telling people to "wake up." Why the hell would Thatcher follow this voice?? just to get away from the alts in his home, or to try and get back a semblance of his old life as a respected lieutenant? Or as some kind of suicide mission, perhaps. (OUGH.)

the next scene. OH DEAR GOD THE NEXT SCENE. ARGHSFHJFS (GOES FERAL). strap in this'll be a long one. This is where Thatcher goes to the house. I noticed how the radio got more and more fucked up the closer he got before it just stopped working, which could be due to alt activity, or i could just be grasping at straws here. He notices the BPS van, which, why would that just be sitting outside the house in plain sight if the BPS are literally wanted by the FBI??? This could be the house they all lived in, or just Adam's house, but when he goes inside it is TRASHED. there is shit just strewn around EVERYWHERE and i may be misremembering but i think thatch steps on broken glass?? anyways he makes his way into the bedroom (which looks to be the same room Eve met Preacher in) and sees Adam sitting beside the bed in a pile of trash (INCLUDING AN EMPTY BOTTLE OF BLEACH that he DRANK, meaning the rest of the trash might be remnants of other attempts), next to a mirror (with a very fucked up reflection, i might add), looking catatonic. This is the guy he's been hunting down for stealing government property and fucking with alternates and BOY has he seen better days.

There is a tape playing called "the fate of the jester", pretty much describing his situation to a T. It describes the loss of humanity to becoming "just a cog in the machine", and no longer being "the hero of the story". Theres a LOT of different interpretations for this, such as him "waking up" and losing himself to his alternate nature, although he's obviously trying to fight it. Throughout the series he was brought up as a very important character, as a tie between the humans and the alternates, even possibly being the "mandela prophet" described at the end of vol4. If he was being set up as such an important character, this may signify the loss of the Mandela's last hope (maybe, idk lol). There's a lot of moments to fall back on in this scene, such as in vol2 when Gabe told him to "wake up" and "don't make me wake the others" (the other kidnapped children turned alternate sleeper agents i believe), the memorial video in vol4 where he screams for something to "please just get the fuck out of my head", the death of his mother in intruder alert, and his talk with Six, which may have been the start of his spiral, and when he began to isolate himself. Anyways, SUSPECT IDENTIFIED there's your FBI wanted tortured blonde man!!

SCREAMING. THE MOST HORRIFIC TORTURED SCREAMING YOUVE EVER HEARD. JUST SO MUCH SCREAMING. Adam still seems pretty much paralyzed though, which could be from a number of things, maybe all the shit he just did to himself, maybe the FUCKING BLEACH?? idk. his eyes also seemed to have turned black (possibly signifying the beginning of overdriven assimilation)?? im still wondering why Gabriel sent Thatcher here, seeing as i dont think he died, like Gabe said he would to Dave. Did he want Adam or possibly Preacher to kill him? Adam can barely even MOVE, let alone kill anyone. Maybe he wanted him to try and kill himself, at the sight of yet another person he couldn’t save (AGAIN, OUGH.) Adam stops screaming for a little bit to BEG FOR SOMEONE TO KILL HIM before going straight back to screaming, which then dies down into tortured sobs (someone save him…). This was confirmed in a patreon discord server I believe. My opinion is that this is a sign that he doesn’t want any of this and that he never had any bad intentions (or at least didn’t have TOO many bad intentions). IDKKKK ive been rambling way too much- AGHHH IM JUST SO INSANE ABT THIS EPISODE IDK HOW TO END THIS LONG ASS POST THANKS FOR READING BYEEE

[rigelmejo]

Little things I did recently:

Listened to 20 minutes of Silent Reading chapter 1 audiobook, twice. Understood more the 2nd time around. But I'm relying on remembering the plot to follow the description heavy portions. The dialogue portions I can follow almost all details, so they help me identify which scene I'm listening to. Exciting and humbling. Exciting because I CAN mostly follow the audio Drama now (i listened to a bit last week) whereas in the past I was lost with nl descriptions to orient me and limited comprehension of comversations. But humbling, in listening to the audio BOOK now, because back when I was reading modu as chinese practice I was Very Familiar with the descriptive words and the descriptive paragraphs were how I guessed what scene I was listening to (compared to chinese chapters I'd already read before and looked the words up). Where now, the descriptive words have faded from my mind, and are the harder parts to grasp the meaning of now. I think that...overall, my chinese listening is Better now than it was 6 months ago. But I can tell that the reading-only vocabulary I've picked up is much rustier in my memory, and much harder for me to recognize in listening with no hanzi to look at for reference.

Read 5 panels (chapters) of 19天. Ended up looking up 聚会 because I couldnt remember the "gather" hanzi was pronounced ju. For some reason I kept thinking it was zi like purple 紫. But no, it was ju, for gather: 聚集 gather (juji), 聚会 (juhui) reunion. Again, I recommend that manhua if you like funny, physical comedy, slice of life. It's fun, and even if you can't read something then the pictures have a lot of the comedy anyway.

Watched 40 minutes of qi hun (hikaru no go cdrama adaptation) in only chinese. NO subtitles. First time I tried watching a show with zero subtitles including no chinese subs. I've been listening to audioboks with no text recently though, so I guess I felt I might as well try a show with no subtitles. Hikaru no go is on iqiyi youtube free (still free thank goodness), and iqiyi is one of the channels that has no hard chinese subs - you can turn on english or chinese subs, but they arent pre-made on the video. It was really cool to try! 1. I understood almost every detail! I got lost when Chu Ying said some "sayings" to kid Shi Guang, and when Chu Ying explained playing go I only understood him saying the size of the board/placement number choices, I was confused about the rest of the explanation.

I didn't understand a few lines kid Shi Guang said, but he's speaking like a kid muffled and quick during those lines and I got the gist. It was really exciting just being able to WATCH the scenes, my focus not half torn on the subs. To actually hear how the lines are said, without translation changes. Some words I could guess from context like xia qi 下棋 for play go, since Chu Ying keeps saying 我想下棋。 and shi guang keeps saying to stop crying ToT. But I do think I could have guessed the parts I didnt grasp, like Chu Yings "sayings" if Id had the chinese subtitles on and saw the hanzi to help myself figure out what he meant. So I may rewatch the episode with chinese subs. But since this summer is about improving LISTENING COMPREHENSION, I am just pretty exciting it went so well. Also the show is just so comforting. Id totally forgotten Shi Guang's little intro where he explains what the show/journey will be about!

I wonder if they dubbed the show? I assume they dubbed it, probably, since most cdramas do. But kid shi guang and the other kids talk pretty natural sounding (not like trying to sound "acting" if that makes sense, with clear projected enough voices), which reminds me of To Dear Myself with zhu yilong which either used audio filmed During Scenes or instructed the actors to dub themselves speaking more realistically (i dont remember which, that show just had a Very realisticly visual audio and acting feel). Adult shi guang also has a very natural sound to how he speaks, like the sound of his voice we hear is how he would sound if talking to regular close friends.

In Japanese Glossika app, I've studied 1129 sentences, done 9137 reps (repetitions of sentences), and studied 24:39 hours. Glossika labels me in High A1 14.7%. While I've still got some significant complaints about the new glossika app japanese course, my stubbornness to complete all the fucking sentences and judge for myself how good/bad it is has definitely Motivated me to Study japanese more. I've studied those 24 hours in the past 3 weeks, so a little over 1 hour a day of studying on average. Thats way more than the ZERO time per week I was spending on japanese, and its audio so I've been able to do it with my regular life schedule.

(Truly glossikas Only Unique benefit to me is the listening mode, so I can press play and it gives me new sentences and reviews at time intervals it schedules on its own, so i do not have to put any effort into figuring out what to do next or take time away from other activities to constantly click my screen for an hour... i can just click play new, or click play review, and continue on with my life knowing I'm learning some new stuff and reviewing things i need to. If anything else fucking had this feature id jump to it instead. Clozemaster Kind of had this feature - and i paid for a while just for it - but clozemaster's Radio mode did not split new from reviews and did not spaced repetition schedule the reviews so there were a LOT of days i wouldnt hear new sentences or id review the same 300 sentences instead of different ones out of the 2000+ i had studied).

I am curious if the Chinese Glossika app course is better? I know the old cd chinese course was fairly good, as learner reviews mentioned some alternately worded things but nothing worded Wrongly. So if the new chinese app course, please please please, just used ANY of their people on staff who know chinese (like the maker of it) to human translate, then their chinese app course should be one of the app courses with the LEAST errors. Since its a language they, presumably, have the most access to human translators for. And im curious if therefore i could study using it. Or vice versa, if the new chinese app course is trash id like to review how fucking far their quality has tanked. I recognize more chinese than japanese, and i'd be able to tell within 500 sentences roughly what the error rate is in the chinese app course.

[selfundiagnosed]

Insane that my mom ran the most popular patrick stump archival blog on tumblr + was a full time lawyer + was raising two mentally ill kids + doing culinary arts school + having a cookie business. I think its her autism i wont lie. But now its all catching up to her and she has no energy which would be the ehlers danlos fault this time.. tried to convince her to steal her old url back but on cohost so she made an account but couldnt immediately make side blogs but boy oh boy. she would be giving the fall out boy fandom what they want and more. Shes like i cant do it again i have no idea how i did it before im like ma! its called having boundaries. Shes like i cant do that when i have a special interest its called autism. Im like right but queue posts for once a day and find 30 pictures from a photo set and boom one months worth of posting fall out boy and you can conserve your energy. But she doesnt know how to do her special interests in moderation. Im honestly just glad she went and accepted a bunch of access to her mega archive folder thingy. But shes so mad she doesnt have access to like her actual archive bc the website she used go archive everything changed their subscription plans and she has so many photos it would be like a zillion dollars she doesnt have 😭 like bogus i remember photo storing websites were so free. Take me back to 2010 for real :T Anyway she used to get so mortified when i told my friends as a teen about her blog i actually told her coworker once and her coworker somehow RETAINED the url and went home and looked at her blog and she was so upset at me 😭😭 but now like she kinda doesnt give a fuck anymore bc fall out boy was her special interest for an entire decade and she’s over it. Obviously still a big big fan but not in bandom anymore. Her new special interest is a band i introduced her to when i was 13 and its kinda cringe so i dont talk about it but she also ran an archival blog for THIS band and i told my friend at a sleepover who liked this band about her blog and they fucking FOLLOWED HER and shit bricks and my mom was MORTIFIED. But anyway yeah she doesnt gaf now if i tell people she was this blog and i even posted a tiktok about it once and people started doing detective work that would make her autistic self so proud…. Bc thats what she was good at! sleuthing stalking detective work on the band. Pete wentz privately answered several of her asks on tumblr i’ll see if she can send me the asks and their responses. But yeah she doesnt care anymore. her original url was scrubbed by tumblr and shes very angry about it bc it was an original bandom url for patrick stump so shes like wtf ever i dont wanna touch this im so mad. Which SAAAAME. ive done that so many times. She started permitting access to people who requested it for one of her photo archive website thingies she left in her last post. But yeaaaahhh… she was patrick stump for halloween in like 2008 and she won the costume contest bc she had rhe coolest sideburns and looked so much like him. My first ever concert was a fall out boy concert in spring 2007 i was 6 turning 7 within the next few months lemme just say the music video for carpel tunnel of love played on the screen as they played the song and my brother and i was so traumatized. But then immediately they played this aint a scene after that and we were like HELL YEAAAAAAAAA. And my brother (5 at the time) and i knew every single song and sang along and my mom went look at everyone else no one else knows these songs. You guys are so cool. And we looked around and yeah no one was singing the songs and were sooo excited! Oh and theres that one time she recorded us singing keep it simple by cobra starship and THEY PUT IT ON THEIR MYSPACE PAGE AT THE TOP WE FLIPPED SHIT. i wish THAT video was still up. Shes also met fall out boy so many times and walked away from patrick stump while he was talking to her bc she didnt want to take up his time at a meet and greet. Omg. so many memories. I was literally raised in online bandom thats so insane. Maybe thats why im a homosexual

[pacifymebby]

if you're feeling sinister / chapter six

Titch

I awoke on Monday morning wrapped up in Van's arms on the sofa, a blanket had been pulled up over my shoulders and a pillow tucked awkwardly behind Van's head. Probably his mam's doing.

Larry hadn't been found, hadn't come home. The police were looking for him, the woods were being searched. I hadn't had a proper night's sleep in days. I felt like I was the only one who knew the truth, the truth that he wasn't coming home, that something terrible had happened, that our town was too small for people to just disappear.

But still everyone said the same, they told me not to worry, they told me to try and get some rest. They told me that Larry would be back soon, that's he'd probably just gotten lost in the woods. I couldn't stand to listen to it but I couldn't look kind people in the eyes and tell them to shut the fuck up, so I looked them in the eyes and said nothing at all. I barely spoke.

Instead I stuck close to Van's side, smoking the cigarettes he rolled for me. Wearing the sweaters he chucked at me when I sat shivering. It wasn't that I was too cold.

Instead I wandered around in a daze, my mind replaying those haunted seconds when in the dead of night Id been sure I'd seen Larry standing there opposite me in the living room. His image flickering in and out of focus like the static at the end of a video. I was certain of what I'd seen and yet I didn't dare breathe a word of it to anyone.

That night I'd jumped, flinched at the sight of my friend quivering in front of me, his shadow strange and out of reach. The gasp which had escaped me had stirred Van and he'd found my hand with his and tried to squeeze my fingers to reassure me. Hadn't succeeded in offering me anything but his presence there beside me. And I hadn't told him what I'd seen. I couldn't bring myself to describe the uncanny shadow which had seemed so much like Larry and yet not at all. Like a ghost or a fragment of memory. Humans couldn't flicker in and out of focus like that. They couldnt dissolve into static right before your eyes.

That morning when I woke up I could hear the rest of the house already come to life, Vans mam in the kitchen cooking breakfast. Guests in the kitchen chatting away to her about her trouble making son and his friends. She was trying not to mention Larry and I could sense the tension bristling all around her when I slipped from Van's lap and into the kitchen to offer my help.

Her eyes went wide at the sight of me, shocked and sympathetic all at once.

"Pepper love, what're you doing up so early go on get yourself back to bed..."

"Thought you might like some help?" I said hoping she'd hear the raise in my pitch at the tail of my sentence, hoping she'd realise that bed was the last place I wanted to go, but if she did she ignored it and said again.

"Go on go back to sleep pet you look shattered."

When she shooed me out the kitchen with her tea towel she was smiling, making her guests laugh, but they didn't know how literally she'd meant that word. Shattered. I did look shattered. I looked like I'd fallen apart and been put back together by the most half hearted architect and when Van saw me as I fell back down beside him on the sofa he let out a sigh.

"What're we gonna do with you eh lass?" He asked as he put his arm lazily around my shoulder, "you wanna ditch today?" He asked but I shook my head.

"No point," I said softly thinking that if Larry were to turn up it wouldn't be at school. Thinking that if I had to spend another day troubled and haunted by the memory of his flickering ghost I didn't want to spend it in the very room I'd found myself haunted in.

"Could be good for you I guess," said Van, pretending like he was only talking about me, pretending like he'd been feeling just fine all weekend, "take your mind off everything..."

"Maybe I can have a nice wee gossip with my new therapist," I sneered making him laugh. Grinning when he made a joke about taking a packet of sweets to share with her whilst we talked about boys. But I'd already decided I wasn't going to be talking to my therapist, and I'd already decided that the only reason I was going in at all was to get myself out of the house and away from the woods and away from the memory of Larry watching us sleep.

"How're you gettin in kids I'll drive yous?" Called Van's dad just as we were kicking out trainers on by the door. I was crouched fiddling with the laces of my converse when I looked up at Van and shook my head, eyes begging him to come up with an excuse for us to walk.

I didn't want to go in straight away, I wanted to skip assembly and the fuss that would follow the announcement of Larry as a missing person. I didn't want to feel all the eyes that would turn to stare at us, his left behind friends.

"Nah you're alrate dad," called Van grabbing his keys and shoving them in his pocket, grabbing a box of cigs from the pocket of a jacket he wasn't going to wear. "Meetin the gang on the walk anyway!"

"Well be careful, make sure you..."

"Aye we will dunner worry!" He shouted back as the door swung shut behind us.

The second we were down the bottom of the drive he took out two cigs, lighting one before he handed it to me, lighting his and inhaling dramatically, exhaling with a sigh of relief.

"Don't sound so relieved," I said quietly as we wandered down the road at a more than leisurely pace, "that's gonna be everyone else for the rest of the day."

But it wasn't.

We met Bob first, he was just leaving his house as we passed along the garden fence and we didn't have to stop for him to catch us. He fell into step beside us and nodded good morning but didn't actually say a word. He wasn't a morning person at the best of times but he didn't look like he'd had much sleep. Safe to say we all looked the same in that sense.

Benji and Mia were already waiting for us under the tree at the end of their garden, hiding from the view of their kitchen window whilst they smoked. Mia was dressed almost identically to me, a pleated skirt, a pair of knee socks, converse with cream leg warmers scrunched lazily around her ankles. Her cardigan was too big, my sweater which was actually Vans sweater was also too big. She wore her hair the way she always did, half scraped back from either side in a little pony tail, the rest down, a beige scrunchie with a little tuft of hair sticking out. She only really looked like her brother because they had the same eyes and brows. The same frown.

It was the frown they were wearing when he stopped at the bottom of their garden.

"Bond phoned just before we left the house," said Benji, his eyes dark, "said him and Suki would meet us later," he said, Mia's eyes darting to mine and tearing away almost immediately as if she were worried to be caught showing concern for me.

It was a fair enough worry though she was right to be concerned. Benji's words had sent a bitter stab to my chest and when Van started grumbling about how we were all supposed to be sticking together I felt my irritation sharpen. When I snatched his hand and dragged him ahead he seemed shocked but he shouldn't have been.

"Ah c'mon love it ain't that bad I'm sure they're just..."

"Wankers." I replied quickly, stubborn and sullen, my sulk making Van laugh as I practically dragged him up the hill towards school.

"Slow down Titch you're gonna make us early!" Shouted Benji as we rounded the corner onto Larry's street.

I stopped when I saw the police car outside his house, when I saw the curtains drawn across the living room window. His mam didn't want anyone looking in on her, didn't want anyone to see her tears, her fear. She probably felt like everyone was watching her, probably felt sick with all the eyes turned to her front door. I knew how that felt and when I felt Van tug on my sleeve to shift me along up the road I pulled away from him and wrapped my arms around myself, holding myself, trying to keep myself steady and straight.

I watched the quiet street from behind my fringe, kept my eyes hidden from anyone who might have been watching me. People who were nosy, who lived for the drama, the excitement of watching someone else live through hell. In this town I was the girl at the center of the horror stories, I was the one they whispered about even when the story had moved on without me. Larry was missing not me, Larry's mum was grieving, not me. And yet it was me the mothers watched, me who made them shake their heads, me the other kids spoke of in hushed judgemental tones.

By the time we got to the edge of the playing fields the rest of the school had been shut inside the sports hall for assembly. That left us to throw out bags down right on the edge of the field behind the football goal, hidden in plain sight.

Bondy and Suki hadn't shown up and as Van lit a joint and passed it around the circle I hardly even noticed him waiting for me to take my turn.

"Titch," he half sang to me waving the smouldering roll up in front of my face until the smoke stung my eyes and drew me back to reality.

"Oh," I breathed, eyes scanning the field again for any sign of my best mates.

Van tried to distract me by playing me a strokes tune on his shit little brick phone, offering to Bluetooth it to me if I liked it, but I was hardly listening. My mind was on other things, other people. Not just Suki and Johnny but on Larry too. The strange flickering ghost of Larry who'd been watching me in Van's living room.

The shadow I'd seen fleeing the window in the dead of night.

"Do you have to go see her again?" Asked Mia with a sympathetic frown, head cocked to one side. She was following on from something Van had said in my defense. Something about how I was probably just worrying about Larry, about therapy about how people would treat me now that my friend was missing...

"Yeah," I sighed, "I honestly think it's a legal requirement I can't remember... all I knows I got into a lot of shit last time I started bunkin em..."

"A legal requirement? Seriously thats insane!"

"No love," I said, "that's me..." I smirked taking a drag on the joint and passing it to her, "that's the point."

As we smoked I began to feel at least some of my worries dissipate. I wasn't so worried about Suki and Johnny anymore. Those kinds of worries began to feel trivial. I wasn't so nervous to go to class, though if I'd known what the day had in for me I'd probably have turned around and headed home again.

The weed didn't however ease my worried mind when it came to thoughts of Larry. When it came to thoughts of the ghost in the living room. The shadow in the window.

Those thoughts I couldn't shake to save my life and when it finally came time to wander into school, into our first class of the day, it was those thoughts which left me scowling. Too preoccupied to notice that the usually vacant seat beside me at the back of English had been taken.

"Ahh Pepper lass," sighed Mr Oakes, he'd grown up in this small seaside town, only ten years older than my parents, both of whom he'd taught English to when they'd been in school. He was looking at me now with the expression of someone who was trying to hide their sympathy. "Wasn't sure you'd be in today lass but eh, glad to see you cause we've a new lad joined us an I reckon you're the only one I trust to look after him..."

"Uh... oh," I said looking up at Me Oakes and then down at my desk where I saw that he was in fact right. There were two hands resting on the desk beside me, one hand holding a pen, the other tapping it's fingers on the blue surface.

I followed the hands up the arms to the shoulders and neck to see a scruffy mop of brownish blonde hair, and then when I looked back between my teacher and the lad sitting in the seat beside mine I saw an awkward smile.

"Sorry," he winced, "am Sam..."

"Hi Sam..." I said quietly, trailing off, so taken by surprise that for a moment I forgot I needed to sit down. I hovered for a moment looking back at Mr Oakes in confusion, a small frown knitted on my brow. Why was he giving me someone to look after today of all days? He would have been told about Larry... he would know what I was going through...

And yet there we were. Him offering me a small smile, nodding to my seat to remind me to sit down. This lad next to me... Sam, offering me another tight awkward little smile as I sat down beside him. Me, trying not to glare at him, trying not to be too hostile in my state of confusion.

I had that stoner anxiety as I sat down and took my pen out only to realise that I didn't really need it. Reaching for my book instead, I was rereading Carrie but when I placed it down on the desk in front of me and saw Leah Smith smirking, not bothering to hide her mouth as she whispered the word "psycho" to her friend, I thought twice. Hesitated before opening it, pretending to read because I was too shy to speak to this "Sam."

"What're you reading?" He asked after a moment reading over my shoulder with a small smirk.

"I'm not really reading it..." I started feeling awkward when he smirked and leant forward on his elbows, tilting his head in towards mine conspiratorially.

"So you're just pretending to read are ya?"

"Not because I don't wanna talk to you..." I started with a guilty blush, knowing that one look at me would tell him that that was exactly why I was pretending to read.

"No?" He asked with raised brows, at first he looked amused but when he leant back in his chair and shrugged his shoulders, the way he tried to laugh me off made me feel terrible and awkward. "S'alreet lass I wouldn't wanna be lumped with the weird new kid either.." he said with a smirk, "a was gonna tell ya yas don't need to pretend to be me friend like..." he chuckled, "just let me know who all the cunts are and then I'll piss off..."

I bit back a guilty smile, looking at my hands on the desk.

"well I'm bein a bit of a cunt right now for a start..." I said quieter, a stricken mumble which made him crack a laugh, turned a couple of heads back in our direction. Stirred another barely concealed whisper from Leah Smith. I looked up, glaring at her sullenly, only half hearing when Sam spoke again so that he had to nudge me with his elbow and repeat himself.

"She one an all?"

"Would you believe me if I told you she used to be my best mate?"

"Nah," he said shaking his head subtly, following my gaze where I remained holding her icy glare.

"When we were little, like preschool, apparently we were bezzie mates," I said chewing on the tip of my pen, opening my book again, barely skimming the pages this time as me and Sam carried on talking awkward and quiet through to the end of class.

By the time the lesson was through my anxiety had begun to settle and as I scraped my chair along the floor pushing it back to stand and sling my backpack over my shoulder, I caught Sam's relieved smile with one of my own.

"Who have you got for maths?" I asked him as he shoved his things in his bag and stood up, only milling around for him. Usually id have been considering skipping maths to hang out at the back of the bike sheds with Johnny and Van but I didn't mind staying for maths if I had class with Sam because so far he'd proven to be alright.

"Mr Dunwoody or somet I think.." he said only wincing when he saw me wince.

"Ouch," I said chewing my cheek, "I can't walk with you cause my class is only across the corridor and I'll end up getting dragged in won't I..."

For a second I thought I saw disappointment in his eyes, his smirk faltering only for a second before he was shrugging me off.

"Nah," he said shaking his head, "you're alright lass, don't need mindin everywhere like," he grinned, "just glad a know there's someone sound in English like," he grinned, the two of us stopping in the classroom doorway. I was looking for Suki and Mia who were usually just coming out of the class next door. Sam was looking at me.

When I looked back at him I felt stunned for a moment, I hadn't expected him to still be there, hadn't expected to find his eyes studying me.

"Reet well, wish us luck.." he smirked holding his hand up in a still wave before turning to walk away. Leaving me behind to wait for my friends.

I stood alone for a minute or two, slipping my earphones out of my pocket, putting one in, listening to mazzy star as I watched other kids bundled past me in a flow of relentless traffic. When Mia materialised beside me she was smirking, her eyes following someone down the corridor.

"Who was that?" She asked nodding in the general direction of students dawdling to class.

"What?"

"Who was that lad you were talkin to just now?" She asked her smile impish and naive.

"Oh," I breathed nodding my head, "new kid," I shrugged, "Oakes sat him next to me..."

"And does this new kid have a name?" She asked verging on a giggle as she knocked her elbow into me.

"Sam," I said, "can we go?"

"You can... I actually intend to get my GCSEs..." she smirked pushing away from the walls we'd been leaning against, "you're really not coming?" She asked but I shook my head, I didn't exactly feel good letting her down but I had my reasons.

"Got to meet my new bestie in half an hour anyway," I said with a dry smirk and dark malicious eyes.

"Oh," she said swallowing a little lump in her throat, "right... yeah... listen Titch... you gonna talk to her bout Larry?" She asked, I could see her trying not to wince. Could tell she was getting nervous not just because she'd mentioned his name, but because she was now late for maths.

"Not gonna talk to her about anything Mia,"

"I dunno Titch, it could be a good idea..."

"Won't bring him back," I shrugged feeling like I was stating the obvious, not realising until I saw her awkward smile falter that I'd said the wrong thing. "Shit sorry Mia," I sighed, "look I'll see you later yeah, don't worry about any of it yeah, sure it'll all be sound," I said, hating myself when I heard my voice, the lack of conviction.

Hating myself when ten minutes later I found myself behind the bike sheds with Van and Benji, playing with matches as if we were victorian street urchins, suddenly taken faint and silent at the sight of our friend grinning at us from the edge of the path.

Our friend who I should have been happy to see. Our friend who I couldn't bring myself to be relieved was walking towards us now, bright eyed, one hand raised to call out to Van.

"Canna believe yous are back here without me!" Called Larry, his voice startling Van and Benji who hadn't noticed him until he'd spoken.

"Shit... Lau!" Grinned Van, his voice shaking despite the smile on his face. That was just relief though. If I'd felt relieved perhaps I'd have done the same.

But I didn't, and I didn't feel like smiling. I felt hollow. Couldn't stop thinking about how he'd looked that morning standing in the dark of Van's living room. Dead.

[felikatze]

WHO KILLED ALL OF THESE CLOWNS CHRIST ALIVE

also i rlly like the way text box names reflect junpei's perception of people. akane's name changing to kanny as he's crying out for her using the childhood nickname he was too ashamed to use until then nearly got me to crack

it's also very interesting that all of akane's dearest memories solely revolve around her childhood? they're both college age adults and to junpei they're childhood friends. like he's happy to reconnect cuz those memories were dear to him but convos in room 3 make it clear those memories are a lil faded, too. akane gets very upset at this, that junpei might forget any moment they spent together, showing that the attachement she has to those memories is.. disproportionate to his.

ofc it is touching to find out the love was mutual. door 3 route is rlly just the game going. hey. akane time. you should care about her. and it's here that junpei's old feelings bubble back the strongest.

i feel like on a surface level so far the characters all feel rather static and shallow EXCEPT u just gotta think abt it. and read into them. esp bcuz of the premise of "nobody fucking talk abt ur pasts zero might be listening" so backstories only get revealed in dire straits, re: lotus thinking she might get electrocuted to death

taking lotus as another example i rlly didnt like her at first (also bcuz. her design.) bcuz she just seemed the annoying "did you just call me old" trope over and over. the gag gets OLD FAST just like lotus (i am immediately hit with a rock.) BUT. i really liked the ruthless and pragmatic side to her, that she often takes charge and says what the others are afraid to say (i.e. having to leave someone behind at the second door choice, rushing for the sun door when everyone's dead, cuz What Else Is There To Do?) and the door 3 route rlly shows more depth to her character here. she NEEDS to get out and she will leave behind anybody to do it and her only last regret would be not telling her kids she loves them one last time bcuz she feels like a failure of a mother. also inch resting that she absolutely kept a tight lid on the kids even EXISTING until this point re: zero might be listening, dont paint a target on your family.

another example of a character who seems shallow at first but has more depth is santa, who seems the hollow headed jock at first but talking to him more shows that he IS actually incredibly observant and keen. and the guilt w his sister i wanna find out more about. him bringing up a story abt someone murdering an evildoer and then wondering which he is has. implications certainly.

tldr. yeah this game is a real good treat for analysis brain. bcuz i was pretty enraptured just starting from my first playthru but couldnt quite pinpoint why until essay mode booted up to review my feelings on it.

second playthrough nearly done, god that was fucking fast.

also i'm still surprised they just say fuck in this game. shit and damn? i believe it. but fuck in a video game? very rare. a real treat.

HUH. OKAY. MAYBE SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH AKANE. LIKE. THE THREE DEAD BODIES I JUST FOUND.

[thisbisexualbrainrot]

Alright clowns, here are my thoughts on 15x20. This is all just hopeful speculation but even my straight male friends think Cas will be back based on my points here.They never considered Destiel before episode 18 and now they see it. 

Reasons I think Cas will be back: 

- The title card for the season is the empty goo, not anything to do with chuck??? thats just weird. Could episode 20 focus on the empty? What else could it focus on now? WHY IS THE TITLE CARD EMPTY GOO? 

- The whole “chuck ending” vs “free will ending” theory is BRILLIANT and I LOVE IT. If you are unaware of this theory, basically people think 19 was chucks shitty cliche ending and we will get the real ending in 20. It makes so much sense because...

- no ones relationships got resolved in the 19th episode. Where is Eileen? why doesnt Sam seem to care??? why didnt Jack bring his DAD back when he became god? He loves Cas, he wouldnt just leave him in the empty to relive his worst memories over and over. Why didnt dean ASK Jack when he asked Chuck earlier in the episode? Its all just really weird. Plus at the end of the montage they shut the impala trunk which has ALWAYS indicated “we have work to do” like “this isnt over yet”. Its never symbolized the end. That would make no sense to use if it was the real ending. 

- Jensen did not say Cas was dead in his panel, in fact he didnt talk about it at all. True the questions were filtered but WHY unless Cas was a character he couldnt talk about???? I think if Cas was really gone Jensen would say so outright and talk about how much he loved working with Misha. Weird. Plus when asked Misha was like “Im not telling you if Cas is in the finale” WHY if Misha already said Cas is gone would he not say “no Im not in the finale that was it for Cas”? Other actors have said they are done outright, why not Misha? 

-Jensen said he KNOWS how much Destiel means to people and he and Misha traded fan react videos to 18 and Jensen left it open to interpretation in 18. He said Dean was procesing what was happening just like we thought, he didnt say Dean doesnt reciprocate. BUT Even if Misha isnt back in the last episode I dont think Jensen would ever agree to have Dean say he doesnt love him back romantically. He knows it would hurt us. 

-Jensen had to talk to Kripke about the ending. Kripke wrote Dean as this straight playboy initially so this would line up perfectly. And Kripke told him he was too close to it and to step back and look at it from a fan perspective. Interesting because...fans love Cas. Fans love Dean and Cas together. So obviously fans dont want Cas to stay in the empty right? Even if they dont explicitly make this full canon, they could imply it and maybe thats what Jensen needed to wrap his head around for a minute? He said he gets the ending now. But he said Kripke had to break it down for him before he got it. Maybe Kripke was like the shows evolved since 2005 and thats not a bad thing and its fine if thats the direction its gone?? It’s just INTERESTING that he had to talk to the shows creator about the end. 

- The confession scene was the FIRST SCENE they wrote for Season 15. Weird. Odd if it wasnt going to be a huge focal point of the season. Why write that first? I went to film school (not that I work in the industry now but I still studied this shit) and thats WEIRD to do for a first scene if its not super important to the season arc. 

- You cant discount all the build up throughout the show. Even if it wasnt their original intention, the comparisons of Dean and Cas to Cain and his love interest were a HUGE turning point. Exact parallel of “she asked me to stop” flash foward to Cas literally asking Dean to stop. Just...wow. Obvious much? They know all this from fans now and are like wow we really laid some groundwork here didnt we? Why do you think they gave us that confession? If they didnt realize all the groundwork laid they wouldnt have done it because it would have felt out of nowhere. Clearly they didnt think it felt out of nowhere. Clearly Dean’s happiness depends on Castiel being there. As a friend, as a lover, WHATEVER it might be, Dean needs Cas to be happy. Period. 

- Andrew Dabb created the Empty. Andrew Dabb loves Cas as a character. Andrew Dabb is writing the last episode. How INTERESTING.

I could just be clowning but all of this is just so weird that I think we are onto something here people. Jensen said 20 is going to be BIG. HOW COULD IT BE BIG UNLESS THEY ARE HIDING HUGE PLOT POINTS FROM US? 

PS why hasnt Dean had a serious female love interest since season 5/6?

[wooahaes]

follow up to the fire emblem ask 😵‍💫 yes i found another blog who likes fire emblem and seventeen ! i won everyone !! ps sorry for the mini rant i got excited

anyways … let me tell you that the conquest route of fates was something! (i got sad) and then third dlc route revelation, writing was confusing but eh its dlc im not mad. i’m trying to find a way to get birthright soon so i can finally play that path.

ALSO TELL ME WHY I ALSO KEPT UNITS AWAY FROM OTHERS SO THEY COULDNT PAIR 😭. like i play as a f!unit so i kept her away from everyone but like one character so they had to be together. i personally did chrom and sumia just bc everyone said but i also chrom has funny supports and i heard his support with sully is sweet.

i actually talked to one of my moots abt someone making a video game based smau, they asked me to do it but im not at that level yet… but then fire emblem popped into my head. like the class system is so cool and usually connected to the type of person the characters are! i kept trying to see which members of seventeen + other idols would fit into each class role. sorry i got carried away 😅

hi lovely <3 no need to be sorry! i like talking abt stuff that makes ppl happy

god yeah i can imagine. i remember getting sad over birthright too :( i played through most of conquest and revelations tbh but its been like. at least a year or two so my memory's pretty foggy lmao i just remember not liking jakob

im always like "stay away until i get ppl married and then u can pair up however tbh" (still pairs married couples or parents w their kid bc i think them working together is cute).

god... i feel bad but im not a huge fan of sumia as a unit. some ppl say she's great but she always goes down so easily for me. i cannot imagine playing the game on classic. chroms support w sully is v sweet tho! if i wasnt trying to get lucina some specific skills from olivia, i probably would have pushed chrom with sully. they arent optimal according to a lot of ppl, but their supports would make up for it <3

ngl with this playthrough though ive had my f!unit like. sticking around multiple men to get the supports up to A so that i can figure out who i wanna romance......... homie i didnt expect for so many of them to have cute supports??? gaius's is cute (im p sure he calls the mc "bubbles" regardless of gender but i like his nicknames for ppl dsfkhdsf + his sweet tooth is endearing to me), stahl being the kind of person who looks out for people is sweet, lon'qu slowly growing more used to f!unit and being kind of endeared by her... and also henry just being the weirdo he is ksfdhdsf like ??? how am i supposed to pick. i mentioned it but i managed to get inigo (my favorite slutty man /hj) last night and his supports w f!unit are also kind of cute? just him going from a skirtchaser to trying to be more conscious of everyone else around him and taking care of ppl... ugh hes sweet <3

also last night i realized that olivia sparkles. like ??? girl straight up sparkles. i love that for her dskfhsdf also someone asked me if u have the option to be gay in awakening and im like NO bc god i love cherche and sully... and also lissa... and also maribelle... theres so many pretty women :(

ooo a video game based smau would be so fun... if i could do it, i would since theres like. so many games w so much potential there. i've had a vague idea for a life is strange-esque au (mc with powers dealing w that, basically) and since im already writing a one-shot w felix... idk, it just feels like a fun idea to play with. my go-to would be 3 because its the only game w a viable male love interest, sorry warren and whatever the guy from 2 was i love 3 the most and like ngl a smau would be an interesting way of doing it...

ooo do you have any thoughts on who would be in what role? i'd love to hear them! i talked with an anon about it a while back but i'd have to go find those asks bc i admittedly can't remember anything we picked out rn :(

[thesibfiles]

Courtney going on tour right after?

Theres a misconception that after Kurts death, Courtney went straight on tour right away. This is false. The album was already set to release a few days after and they couldnt change that on such a short notice. Promotion for the album was cancelled and she pushed back the tour 4 months.

“Live Through This was supposed to provide Love an opportunity to step out from her famous husband’s shadow. “It’s annoying now, and it’s been annoying for nine years, Love said in a 1999 Jane Magazine interview of always being connected to Cobain. Released four days after Cobain’s body was found, the album’s promotion was put on hold. Rather than retreat from the public eye, Love openly mourned and helped fans of Cobain and Nirvana make sense of the singer’s death. She sat with grieving teenagers gathered outside the couple’s Seattle home and recorded a reading of parts of his suicide note that was played at the singer’s memorial that gathered near the Space Needle. In the days following his death, Love showed a very raw and emotional side and admitted that, like many fans, she didn’t have all the answers. 

It was, and still is, impossible for people to discuss Live Through This without noting the irony of the album’s title. Love has said the name was not a prediction at all, but instead a reflection of all she had endured in the months leading up to its release, including a very public custody fight with the Los Angeles Department of Family Services over daughter Frances Bean. Rumors suggested that Cobain had written much of Live Through This (it’s Miss World, not Mister, just FYI). “I’d be proud as hell to say that he wrote something on it, but I wouldn’t let him. It was too Yoko for me. It’s like, ‘No fucking way, man! I’ve got a good band, I don’t fucking need your help,’” was Love’s response to critics in Spin’s oral history of Live Through This. Love and Cobain often shared notebooks and lyrics with each other, and while there is talk of Cobain’s influence on Love’s work, or the writing of all of it, less is mentioned in the press of her impact on his lyrics and music. Rather than sucking all the life out of Nirvana or threatening the success of the band, like many assumed she would do, she inspired Cobain. Fun fact: In Utero, Nirvana’s last album, was named after a line from one of Love’s poems.

Sadly, songwriting rumors would be replaced by other rumors. Women are often vilified and condemned for the deaths of their male partners. Love, like all women, was supposed to save her partner from death and addiction. Fans of Cobain projected all their anger and resentment over the loss of the Nirvana front man onto Love, and soon she was blamed for not only his addiction but also his death. There are even two movies devoted to the theory that Courtney killed Kurt: the awful Soaked in Bleach (2015) and the equally awful Kurt & Courtney (1998). If you think we’ve come a long way, baby, sadly we haven’t. 

One year after Anthony Bourdain’s death, Asia Argento is still being blamed, and in September 2018, Ariana Grande had to take a break from social media after fans blamed her for the death of her ex Mac Miller. A few months later, she would be blamed for new beau Pete Davidson’s mental health and addiction issues. It’s amazing she finds the time to write hit songs what with all the dude destruction she has going on. When women are not being blamed for the deaths of the men in their lives, they are being attacked for not grieving properly. “She wasn’t crying. She’s got $30 million coming to her. Do you blame her for being so cool?” a hospital staffer said of Yoko Ono following John Lennon’s murder in 1980. 

About four months after Cobain’s death, Love went on tour to promote her new album. Some questioned and judged why she would go on tour so soon, but Love has said it was a necessity. She had a young daughter to support. She needed to work. She also, sadly, still needed to prove herself. “I would like to think that I’m not getting the sympathy vote, and the only way to do that is to prove that what I’ve got is real,” Love told Rolling Stone in 1994.

Twenty-five years later, Cobain’s death still hangs over Live Through This. In the days leading up to the anniversary of Cobain’s death, former Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur wrote an open letter to music magazine Kerrang saying she “would not stand for Kurt’s death overshadowing the life and work of the women he left behind this year.”

“We were extremely well designed for each other,” Love has said of her relationship with Cobain. In a letter reprinted in Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love, she calls him “my everything. the top half on my fraction.” The two had similar upbringings, both came from broken homes and spent childhoods shuttling between relatives and friends. They both grew up longing for love and acceptance. When we tell the story of Kurt and Courtney we talk about drugs and destruction, but we don’t talk enough about love.

The two also shared an intense drive and ambition. “I didn’t want to marry a rock star, I wanted to be one,” Love said in a 1992 Sassy interview. Evidence of her drive can be found in the many notes and to-do lists she kept, some of which are collected in Dirty Blonde. There are reminders to send her acting résumé to agencies, to write three to four new songs a week, to “achieve L.A. visibility.” A scene in the documentary Kurt & Courtney features an ex of Love’s reading from one of her to-do lists, which has “become friends with Michael Stipe” as the number one task to complete (not only did Love do this, but he is her daughter’s godfather). This ambition is not surprising from a woman who, when she was younger, mailed a tape of herself singing to Neil Sedaka in hopes of getting signed. Love knew what she wanted at an early age, and what she wanted was fame.

She was certainly living by the “do not hurt yourself, destroy yourself, mangle yourself to get the football captain. Be the football captain!” motto she championed in the 1995 documentary Not Bad for a Girl. Ambition is often a dirty word when it is used to describe women and Love is no exception. She has been repeatedly described as calculating and controlling when she should be rewarded for her blond ambition and viewed as an inspiration. Critics and the press often call her a gold digger who only married Cobain for fame and money. They fail to mention that when the two met Pretty on the Inside was actually selling more copies than Bleach, Nirvana’s debut album. Even post-Kurt, Love’s intentions were always under scrutiny. On the Today Show to do press for The People vs. Larry Flynt, Love refused to talk about her past drug use, despite the host’s repeated questions, saying the topic was not an appropriate fit for the show’s demographic. She was right, but it didn’t stop a writer from describing the move as “calculating” in a 1998 Spin piece.

Cobain was ambitious too; he was just much slyer and more secretive about it. He was known to call his manager and complain when MTV didn’t play Nirvana’s videos enough, and he would correct journalists who misquoted the band’s sales figures in interviews. While success is typically celebrated and rewarded for men and it certainly was for Cobain, he also had to be mindful of the slacker generation that loved Nirvana and greeted success — and especially mainstream success —

While female celebrities like Love are criticized for their rebellion, male celebrities, like Cobain for example, are celebrated and mythologized for it. Cobain and Love both struggled with addiction, but it is Love who is repeatedly vilified for her drug use. “She was vilified for being a mess, for being a drug addict, for not being a great parent — in other words, all of the things we expect in a male rock star,” said Bust magazine in a piece in the magazine’s 20th anniversary issue, which featured Love on the cover.

We make jokes about the drug antics of male celebrities from Keith Richards to Charlie Sheen, idolizing their debauchery and depravity. The new Netflix/Lifetime movie by Jack Daniels, The Dirt, about Mötley Crüe, takes the band’s excesses to almost comic levels. Check out crazy tourmate Ozzy Osbourne snorting a line of ants by a hotel pool! Such zany antics! I would love to see Lindsay Lohan try to get away with that. We never allow women to live down their arrests and their addictions, but we repeatedly allow men to have a redemption arc. Robert Downey Jr. was in and out of jail and on and off drugs for much of the mid to late ’90s, but we rarely, if ever, talk about his past.

When Love isn’t being attacked for her addiction issues, she is being judged for her parenting. Love’s first unflattering press was “Strange Love,” the much publicized 1992 Vanity Fair profile by Lynn Hirschberg. While the piece talks at length about Love’s drug use and constantly questions her parenting ability, it doesn’t paint Cobain in the same light. “It is appalling to think that she would be taking drugs when she knew she was pregnant,” says one close friend in the piece. Hirschberg relies on many unnamed sources and focuses often on the tabloid-like aspects of Love’s life and addictions. “Courtney has a long history with drugs. She loves Percodans (‘They make me vacuum’), and has dabbled with heroin off and on since she was eighteen, once even snorting it in Room 101 of the Chelsea Hotel, where Nancy Spungen died,” she writes. “Reportedly, Kurt didn’t do much more than drink until he met Courtney.” (Even when it is reported by Kurt and Krist that Kurt tried heroin in 1989, way before Courtney, It was also known that he smoked weed and used caugh syrup to get high in 1989 and 1990.)

This double standard was common in coverage of the couple. In Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the 2015 documentary by Brett Morgen, Love asks her husband, “Why does everyone think you’re the good one and I’m the bad one?” Later in the film we see a scene of Frances Bean’s first haircut. The child sits on Cobain’s lap while Love searches for a comb and scissors. The camera shows Cobain nodding off, and while he maintains that he is just tired, it’s clear he’s not. The scene is painful to watch, especially because those around Cobain carry on like nothing in wrong, giving the feeling this is just like any other day in the Love-Cobain household. The scene is a reminder of how the press treated Cobain’s addiction when he was alive. They just carried on like nothing was wrong, instead directing all their judgement at Love.

[muwur]

snapchat headcanons

✧ hc’s ✧ for using snapchat w ur boi toi ft. the pretty setter squad

❧ gn reader

✎ 3.1k words

a/n: kinda a combo of how they use sc and the kinds of snaps they send you! along w wat u send them, and uh... dating stuf n shenanigans? texting/snapping habits? my fantasies? IDEK ANYMORE EOFHEFJ

this was born from the recesses of my mind , which desired nothing mor than snapchats from suga , us sending cute selfies , others bein dumb n chaotic , no context videos , n him snapping me photos of some mangoes on sale he said he’ll buy for me DXX it’s too late for me now

doing research on hq bois and surfing thru sc features (im just now realizing theres quite a bit?? im hoping i address most of them at some point lolol) instead of real life tings aHHhhhHAHA

requests: open! will be working on a suga one i got, dw, requester!

sugawara

✧ sends good morning and good night snaps

✧ so he’s rlly good at keeping streaks, probs has the longest ones (one of them being y’alls streak)

✧ posts tidbits of volleyball practice on his story every once in a while

✧ snaps you pics of his sleeping teammates when they’re coming back to school after a long day of matches , adding a single ‘❤️’ as a caption

✧ he will also create colorful masterpieces on all of them

✧ gives daichi a santa beard, tanaka a squiggly stache (i imagine it to look like spongebob n patrick’s seaweed ones now that were mEN), n kageyama sum angry brows,,, wait he already has them lolol u good der kags

✧ posts a picture of you when you’re hanging out, captioning it: “🥰“

✧ has conversations with you purely via snaps

✧ ranges from casual chats and checking up on u to crackwhoring ( ** indicates the photo, while the “” quotes indicate the caption, all snaps are italicized, otherwise its regular dialogue)

✧ suga: *peace sign* “hey sweetheart, how r u?”

✧ you: *pics of homework* “ahh, drowning in school ;-; i cant wait for this week to be over fghjkl”

✧ suga: *close up with :o on his face* “let’s study together tmrw!”

✧ or

✧ suga: *complete darkness* “its 3 am n i cant sleep”

✧ you: *the top half of your head, laying on a pillow* “ ;( aw babe. do u want me to send something to help u sleep?”

✧ suga: *still in darkness* “y u still up?? go sleep. n 🥺 yes pls”

✧ you: *snaps pics of feet* “that’ll be 50 bucks, pay up” 

✧ suga: *darkness remains* “can we make a trade instead? i promise to make it worth ;)”

✧ ok now u BOTH cant sleep (im sry my crackheading be acting up around 2am eeryday, i stan a mischievous suga--)

✧ video chats (in the darkness lol) instead until you both pass out (im not in luv u r 😭)

✧ super down to take filtered selfies w you

✧ does all the silly ones with you (things like ’angry face’ or the frog one)

✧ but also rlly digs lookin cute with you using some heart crowns, y’all an aesthetic (n crakhead) duo fosho

✧ def subscribes to life hacks and tries them out himself, has a 50% success rate

kageyama

✧ doesn’t rlly use snapchat too much

✧ but when he does

✧ will either send you a picture to indicate he’s at volleyball practice (wow wat a sexi lookin gym floor)

✧ or some random picture of whatever he’s doing at the moment (*drinking milk*)

✧ this is mostly in order to save streaks

✧ he’s so bad at streaks

✧ “why does it matter?? what’s the point of sending just black screens or whatever’s in front of you at the moment??”

✧ can’t keep a consistent streak for more than 3 days and also doesn’t care (until hinata challenges him to see who can have the longer one)

✧ when you send him videos of him playing, he really focuses on them to try to improve his technique. asks you to send those vids to him (assuming u saved them, which u did)

✧ but when you look over his shoulder when he’s watching a video and give him some compliment (“i recorded at the perfect moment! that was a really good set, kageyama!”), he gets a bit flustered

✧ gets even more flustered but pretty happy whenever you post videos on your story showing karasuno winning some points with captions like:

✧ “footage of the legendary quick >.>” or “karasuno crows flyin high!” or “these bois make my heart 😭 im so proud”

✧ you WILL catch him off guard in photos, using filters that surrounds his head w/ emojis like 🥺💖🥰💘

✧ you also put these on your story (to his dismay)

✧ ppl comment on these mor than anything else (n for those who dont rlly kno kageyama, theyre kinda surprised to him like this)

✧ hinata snickers “hey kageyama you look pretty good here--”

✧ takes some selfies with you, mostly cuz you want them

✧ saves them after u send them over (n secretly cherishes them)

✧ occasionally watches his subscriptions, they’ll usually involve sports, mostly volleyball (who woulda guessed)

✧ you use his bitmoji to test out random facial expressions you would never see him wear

✧ you: “can you smile and wink like this? act like you’re the obnoxious charming guy in a shojo.”

✧ will actually attempt, but it looks so bad that you die inside and he never wants to try again cuz of ur laughing outburst (you: “😭😭 bb im sorry i couldnt help it”)

oikawa

✧ literally sends you anything and everything

✧ morning bathroom selfie to show off how good his hair came out that day, saying:

✧ “he has risen”

✧ or “i woke up like this”

✧ and my favorite, “you’re lucky you get this content for frEE”

✧ selfies with iwa, who just looks annoyed and exasperated at the camera

✧ sends you pics of his lunch and snacks (“bet u wish u had milk bread too”)

✧ always packs extra milk bread so he could convince you to stay at his practice after school--

✧ FILTERSS

✧ I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENUF

✧ will either use the filters that make him kayooottt (cute)

✧ loves the ones named ‘hearts,’ ‘soft,’ ‘peach,’ ‘butterfly cheeks,’ vsco filters LOL, etc

✧ uses ‘big mouth’ when he feelin a bit sASSY; also loves to use this one when he rants, it channels his inner valley girl

✧ sometimes he’ll be snacking or drinking something while he does so (“hey guys today im gonna eat these milk buns from my favorite bakery and this bomb orange juice and complain about this little kid who talked smack to me earlier and almost made me cry--”)

✧ takes cute selfies with you, is an aesthetic selfie king, puts them on his story to show off he’s hangin with you

✧ but on your story you only post the ones he looks bad in LOL

✧ has separate stories for his every need, some r private (and lucky you, ur included in all of them)

✧ titles them ‘mean things iwa said to me today,’ ‘ranting hotbox + mukbangs,’ ‘a day in the life of oikawa,’ ‘volleyball 🏐,’ ‘unpopular opinions,’ etc. 

✧ fitting room photoshoots lol

✧ “y/n, what do you think of this??” “and this?” “oOH WHAT ABOUT THIS??”

✧ ends up calling you through video chat so you can live critique his choices

✧ “oikawa, please no, i can’t be seen with you in public if you wear those--”

✧ also changes his bitmoji’s outfits from time to time, hopes you’ll notice, but you don’t LOL (oikawa: ;((((((( )

kenma

✧ uses sc usually just to reply to messages ppl send him

✧ indifferent about streaks, but keeps a few with ppl he’s closer to

✧ mindlessly plays the snapchat games with you, finds some of them kinda cute

✧ you both made his bitmoji for him, dressing his up in the orange cat suit

✧ you also helped make kuroo’s and put his in the black cat suit to match--

✧ snaps you every time he gets a new game, starts playing it, and once he finishes

✧ started to post some gameplays and reviews on his sc story (might as well add them to sc since he was already on other social platforms), and ended up amassing a large following

✧ follows the tech and gaming stories on sc

✧ as well as the ones with cute animals--

✧ open to selfies with you, usually wears a calm expression and holds up a peace sign

✧ even occasionally sticks his tongue out

✧ his story is occasionally heavily bombarded with candids of him w/ pretty sc filters, all taken by you

✧ but of all the filters, you love using the clout glasses on him

✧ especially when he’s just minding his own business

✧ “kenma, in his tru habitat” when hes cocooned in a blanket

✧ “kenma, on his way to steal yo manz” while on his way to the bathroom

✧ “kenma, next iron chef. watch out gordon” as he’s cooking instant ramen

✧ “kenma” n das it

✧ but he thinks it meme-y so he lets you do whatever you want, kinda digs it

✧ you end up dedicating your snap story to memes of kenma and the nekoma volleyball team. ppl are in it for the shits n giggles n hot bois

✧ you later discover someone else did the same thing with their volleyball team filled with hot bois from shiratorizawa, and you befriend tendou and share funni internet tings

akaashi

✧ 99% of his photos include either you or bokuto or both

✧ bokuto spams akaashi’s story and contact list with selfies and videos of himself using weird filters, often gets you to join him

✧ has several streaks, but will send something with more substance than a black screen or his bedroom window

✧ will usually involve smthng that just happened to him or smthing he saw, like:

✧ “a kind older lady offered me some apples in return for helping her”

-or:

✧ “how do i break the news to bokuto that the yaikniku place he’s been wanting to go to for the past week ,,, is closed today”

✧ o n let’s not leave out:

✧ “is it possible to conjure a ghost using a wooden spatula, ketchup, and a chalk drawn hexagram? bokuto’s been paranoid ever since he tried last night and i dont know what to tell him. seriously, help”

✧ looks through stories occasionally, comments whenever bokuto makes questionable decisions

✧ also comments on whatever you’ve posted. his words range from “you’re cute” to “why,” depending on the content

✧ ppl know when y’all are hanging out cuz he’ll post smthing to indicate he’s with you, usually it’s some candid and you’re not paying attention

✧ appreciation posts for you as well! esp if you got him something, like onigiri or his fav, Nanohana no Karashiae , for lunch! (akaashi: *snaps a pic of his food* “thank you y/n for feeding me”)

✧ prefers video calling over texting/snapping whenever possible tho

✧ occasionally reminisces thru his sc memories

✧ enjoys the flashback feature and will send them to you and bokuto (cuz they’re about y’all anyway lolol)

✧ also has secretly saved a bunch of selfies of himself, consists of him trying out a lot of the filters (he feelin himself)

✧ you, one day, looking thru his phone and discovering them: “akaashi, you’re so pretty wtf”

✧ akaashi: “...”

koganegawa

✧ sends you selfies of him before practice

✧ during breaks

✧ and after practice, usually makes a comment about how it went for him that day like:

✧  “i hit a decent toss today and futakuchi actually complimented me!”

✧ that, or:

✧ “i got yelled at 17 times today 😢😩”

✧ has quite a few streaks, his longest ones being with you and hinata

✧ def uses filters

✧ tries out every funny one he finds and sends you videos

✧ “look y/n im an aaaaAALlliiEEENnnNNN oo oo hoo hhhooOOh”

✧ “now im a chicky nuggy!!” (chicken nugget)

✧ also enjoys the doodle feature

✧ but he uses the filter with the clout glasses unironically--

✧ usually when smth good happens to him and he feels happy and/or cool about it

✧ “just beat the boss in this game on my 69th try B)”

✧ “kogane, that’s--”

✧ plays sc games with you and thinks bitmojis r cool

✧ kinda sad he cant find a hair option that matches him tho lolol rip

✧ you: “you hair’s just,,, unique,,,”

✧ subscribed to anything sports and fitness, as well as pop culture so he can stay in the loop

✧ also watches everyone else’s stories, pointing out whenever he sees smthing cool and/or interesting

✧ “woahh, karasuno’s at nationals right now! i wish we could’ve won, but next year for sure!!”

✧ you encourage him at all his games, hyping him up irl and online

✧ “koganegawa: best setter 😍!!”

✧ luckily you didnt record the parts he completely messed up LOL

semi

✧ before going out with you, snaps you a pic of his casual outfit like:

✧ semi: “does this look ok”

✧ you: “babe you look great, tendou was just messing with you”

✧ will make unwanted appearances on tendou’s snap and complains to you about them

✧ “i didnt consent to being part of his meme page” and

✧ “okay, but he didn’t only have to share all the moments i messed up--”

✧ also indifferent about streaks but will do them

✧ sometimes sends snaps/streaks indicating he’s practicing his music

✧ when you see these you usually ask him to send you vids or if you can come over n watch

✧ initially is a bit shy about it but he loves what he does and you and knows you’re genuinely interested and supportive so he agrees

✧ secretly rlly enjoys having you as his personal audience

✧ lowkey into asmr, like the soap cutting shit as well as chewing crunchy things

✧ also watches food porn and clips of mukbangs, then can’t resist going on youtube and watching the whole thing

✧  “y/n, can we try this, it looks so good--”

✧ will also often watch oikawa’s stories, especially his ‘ranting hotbox + mukbangs,’ and makes comments about him being an idiot

✧  “this kid he’s talking about is a savage”

✧ but admits they’re quite entertaining

✧ just looks serious in all the selfies you take with him

✧ you: “can you look like you’re enjoying yourself?”

✧ semi: “i look cooler like this tho”

✧ sc memories filled with shenanigans from you and the volleyball team, doodles, and mirror selfies with him experimenting diff looks (you: “tendou, you got him way too concerned about this”)

✧ also enjoys showing off he’s with you, taking a short video of you when you hang out

✧ you: “semi, i look bad right now”

✧ semi: “but you can never look bad”

✧ you: “🥺 bb”

✧ viewers: “aw”

✧ shiratorizawa: “can he be this nice with us LOL”

shirabu

✧ his main mode of communication with you is mostly through the regular messaging app, so he doesn’t use sc too much

✧ also doesn’t care for streaks and is bad at keeping them

✧ will answer to you or his senpais rather soon tho

✧ but lets all his other notifications pile up a bit before finally going thru them

✧ goes through the snaps he receives really fast, spending like 2 seconds each to look at them cuz aint nobody got time for dat

✧ doesn’t even rlly open goshiki’s LOL

✧ you have fun using filters on him and taking videos while he’s just doing his own thing peacefully like studying

✧ it takes him a second to notice and when he finally looks up, he just gives you an exasperated look

✧ cue you cracking up with laughter bc the filter finally shows up on his face

✧ his eyes and mouth are now on mike wazowski

✧ that, or his face becomes so disturbingly moRPhed like an alien

✧ caption: “ken-chan, my future medical man 😍”

✧ “y/n, please, this is like the 7th time in the last 20 minutes--”

✧ finally convinced him to take a study break and hang out with you

✧ which usually consists of snacking and light banter while you lay your head on his lap

✧ and scrolling through snapchat stories and showing him what everyone else is up to and cool things you’re subscribed to

✧ “loooook, dr. miami’s doing another butt job! is this the line of work you’re studying so hard for?”

✧ “no, it’s really not”

✧ is actually very soft with you and likes having the photos and vids for memories

atsumu

✧ sends you snaps where his brother looks bad, captioning it:

✧ “this is evidence that im the hotter twin”

✧ likewise, osamu sends you snaps where atsumu looks even worse

✧ like, the mans passed out, looking rekt and open mouthed, drool seeping into his pillow

✧ osamu: “u still have time to break up with him”

✧ also lucky for you, atsumu also loves to take unflattering photos of you and send them to you randomly at like 2 am

✧ you: “nani tf when did you even take this??”

✧ usually posts a snap while he’s out somewhere like at a match, the gym, outside on a run, a party, or just hanging out with you or his frens

✧ however, makes sure you look good if you show up on his story cuz he wants to show you off

✧ doesn’t really care for streaks, but has a lott

✧ but also has a tON of unopened snaps

✧ is the type to send just a black screen n call it a day, or maybe spice it up by sending a pic of the sexi gym floor (a comeback) w his shoe in the corner

✧ will, however, consistently respond to you and kinda looks forward to ur snaps (secretly hopes you show ur face)

✧ but when you dont:

*in class*

✧ atsumu: *a smirk on his face* “your content’s kinda dry today” 

✧ you: *your sexi desk* “my nudez ain’t free, i demand compensation”

✧ atsumu: *grasped his chin in thought, but angled the cam up bc he needa hide his phone in class lolol* “what if i... take you out on a romantic excursion”

✧ you: * your face but with ‘sausage’ filter* “🥵🥵🥵🥵 yessir, what u want”

✧ rlly only wants to have pics of your face wat a closeted sOFTIE

✧ likes to have content on his flashbacks

✧ usually has other social media sources to keep up to date with things

✧ actually rlly digs using sc filters, mostly ones that’ll make him look like a queen

✧ captions a selfie of you two like: “me >>>>>>> y/n”

✧ but nearly everyone who comments on it is like: “i think you flipped the sign, bro 🤥”

✧ judges ppl who are into soap cutting asmr (you will never hear the end of it if you also like it)

a/n: sc kinda dying for me, my use went from suga to an atsumu to like nearly nonexistent LOL

also o gawd i already have ideas here n there for a pt 2 so stay tuned fjxnwfesd hope it takes me less long cuz this one took me fkin foreva LOL

idk y i made semi like mukbangs but i feel like he’d be rlly into them--

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

a poem for small things

by Admin 1 & 2

The time has come, the first proper post for this segment we’ve settled on calling a poem for small things, a nod toward BWL and its Korean title. Like we said in our call for submission post, this is supposed to be something like a place full of positivity for vminnies (and perhaps the occasional namjinist) where you (and us) can share whatever we’d like in connection to vmin, both as vmin and as Jimin and Tae the individuals, and have something to raise our mood and also strengthen our vminnie confidence. We’ve gotten several wonderful submissions and quickly realized that for this first post the theme is mostly how I became a vminnie, even if three submissions talk more about vmin moments they enjoy instead.

I think it’s a really interesting theme, especially since everyone’s story is different, and everyone seems to find something else about vmin that captured their attention and hearts so sharing these memories and experiences is a great way to start off this segment. We’ve said it many times before, though I don’t think you can say it enough times, but this bond that Jimin and Tae share is truly special and so one of a kind, it’s wonderful to see how we all relate to and resonate with it in our own way and find something in it that makes us fall in love with their loves, regardless if we see it as platonic or romantic love. Love is love after all. 95z is love.

For the order of these submissions, we’ll simply go in the order in which we’ve received them. Most of them came from anons, which is more than okay. We’ve also opened the possibility of submitting posts for those who would like to submit wordier posts/asks, should we do another edition of this. It all depends on how much you’ll enjoy it and if you’ll come through with more submissions that could be gathered for future posts.

Anyway, enough talking from our side, let’s dive into these submissions below the cut, shall we? Like we said in the original post (and demonstrated in the preview post), we’ll add some of our commentary and observations along the way, too.

From anon: This is going to be long winded story but Vmin is like a Serendipity to me. I've heard of BTS mainly from my hubby when he complains that times sq is packed because of BTS (when they’re in town and doing their rounds of morning shows). I knew they were very popular but it was a great surprise that i discovered them after watching ILand during lockdown. Their songs were great and i started playing their classics like Fire, DNA Fake Love etc. Then they did an appearance in the show...

I love how you heard about BTS because of your husband and Time Square being packed, this is honestly the most original and unique version of how I’ve come across BTS I’ve read over the years. Amazing!

I was drawn to Taehyung's beauty during their appearance in Iland. And my first Vmin ? moment was when Tae commented about being handsome and attractive are 2 things and being attractive weighs more - along those lines... then JM made a comment that its unfair that he's both and Tae was like Im talking about you... I went like ok he thinks JM is attractive- theyre good friends.... then Jimin did the FakeLove choreo and the camera focused on Tae and he had this wide smile...The Iland Tae/Jimin clips made me do a double take but I dismissed it since it was just only a few seconds worth of screen time but still...

I-Land vmin was really something else in both episodes. 

Fun fact: I-Land was the first Korean survival show I’ve ever watched, mostly because it had something to do with BH and since it was streamed online with subs in real time. Unfortunately, my faves—Daniel and Taki—didn’t make it into ENHYPEN, though I’m happy that Taki will be in a future Japanese BH group.

But, going back to vmin, that moment with Jimin dancing FAKE LOVE and Tae looking at him with that boxy smile as though Jimin hung the stars in the sky? I melted, even if it was just one of those brief moments, yet still it’s so cute! And it was all over sns being shared by vminnies and non-vminnies alike. What a great time that was.

Then VMAs Dynamite perf happened- both Vmin looking good. I saw a lot of their promos especially the Jimmy Fallon interviews... and I noticed in hindsight how JF was so careful when referring to Jimin ... Since Tae was my first bias, I searched YT for Tae related content eventually saw in my YT feed Vmin moments. Theres a lot of Vmin content in YT or maybe the T*ek*ok ones didnt really register as extraordinary to me. But defo the Vmin moments were extraordinary to me,,,the BV4 sleeping together, kitchen role play & BV3 JM excited to see Tae and them holding hands and then Tae crying and then Tae's busking with Jimin cheering him on were all amazing to see. Up to this day this specific YT vid stood out to me first 

I actually went to check what video this is, and also looked at the comments where my favorite was this one: The staff member went straight to Jimin to tell him V was crying. That's all you need to know. They’re not wrong with that one, are they? That is pretty telling. BV3 vmin were a work of wonder, truly. Jimin watching Tae sing that Sam Smith song during the dinner in the sky looking all soft and endlessly fond?

Jimin encouraging Tae to busk and gently petting his hair was just such a pure moment and showed how much Jimin appreciates Tae and the talent he has, how in moments when Tae might brush aside wanting to do something, is a little hesitant and unsure, Jimin will stand up for him and give him strength/encouragement, which reminds me of Tae’s vlive in April 2020 and the fact that Jimin had told him that he wants to be his source of strength. Beautiful. And it shows that it wasn’t just pretty yet empty words, but something he truly meant. They both do.

Then i came across vid trans of Friends & cried first time hearing it especially when it got to the part "One day when the cheer dies down, stay hey.." It felt raw and honest to me. Then there's MOT:E concert and that part in Dynamite where they bumped their heads seemed bizaare to me - i was like were they fighting? because JM looked really fierce(or maybe emotional) then i saw the close up. i couldnt remember the exact moment I became a Vminie but it made quarantine easier...

This, I’ve noticed, seems to be a recurring theme among quarantine ARMY and vminnies, the fact that becoming ARMY and vminnies made it easier, and it fits with what we’ve been saying about BTS for years: they will find you when you’ll need them most. And in these trying and uncertain times, it’s certainly proven true once again.

Thank you of much for your submission and sharing your story with us, and I’m glad they could make quarantine a little easier for you.

From anon: I've been following BTS on and off since BST, but only really consider myself a true fan late 2019. I can't recall having a bias at first, but I was captivated by Jimin's everything when I binge-watched all their content. I must admit, my first OTP is T*e/k*ok, where I fell down the route of considering Jimin 'an interfering 3rd party' in their relationship, and it shamed me. Since then I've been cycling through Jimin ships, namely yo*n/m*n, j*n/m*n, m*ni/m*ni, and I even thought that j*/k*ok was real at some point. Strangely, Vmin never struck me as something extraordinary. I don't want to blame anyone, but Vmin caught my eye after I watched official BTS content without filter (presumed bias/judgement) all in their glory. I realized that while other ships may go up-and-down as in one day there's a frenzy and another day quiet af, Vmin has been and is still going constant. That's what makes me love Vmin, and for the first time in my fandom life, I have no qualms about whether they are real or not. Their bond, whatever it is, is already precious and something to be cherished forever. Thank you for providing us vminies a special corner to speak up about our experience 💜

You’re very welcome! I hope you’ll like how this turned out as well. Thank you for sharing your story with us and personally I find it fascinating how, despite Jimin being the one who captivated you most at first, you still fell into the “he’s an interference for my ship” trap that’s quite popular with that particular ship. I’m glad though that that never ruined your love for Jimin. It’s also really interesting for me how you went through different Jimin ships yet it took you the longest time to notice vmin. I feel like, because vmin and vminnies are more “low key” than the other bigger and louder ships, as well as Tae and Jimin simply being quieter in their interactions (not always but you get the point) as compared to, for example, Jimin’s interactions with Hobi, Jungkook, or even Namjoon, it takes people a while to really notice them.

This is my favorite part of what you wrote, and I think it’s a great way to describe vmin in general and what makes them different from other ships in the grand scheme of things: I realized that while other ships may go up-and-down as in one day there's a frenzy and another day quiet af, Vmin has been and is still going constant.

From vminot7: So i fell into BTS hole after watching blood sweat and tears mv casually on youtube. Jimin immediately stole my attention with his unique voice, graceful moves and handsome features even though i didn’t know their names at that time. I watched more MVs and jimin continued to hold my attention but i was also extremely drawn to taehyung's voice and facial expressions. So i started looking for more content such as RUN BTS and other compilations and realized my love for all 7 of them. I also noticed how jimin always had a soft spot for taehyung and was curious about their dynamics. I started looking at more of vmin content and i was really surprised to see how in the early days they were nowhere near as soft with each other as they are now. I think they have a unique bond and i have never come across anything quite similar. Now vmin are both my biases and my bias wrecker is hoseok.

I admire jimin for being a hardworking, passionate perfectionist but also a caring soul who is always ready to offer love and comfort to people in need. I love taehyung for how he looks at the world in his unique ways and how he has a childlike awe for things and how he is so passionate over the things he loves. The thing i love about vmin together is how they are so different yet work so hard on their relationship when it would be easier to just not try that hard.

Ah, another mention of the queen that is Blood, Sweat and Tears. The MV truly is such a masterpiece so I’m not surprised that it caught your attention, and especially Jimin since he was…something else in that MV, or like Tae said, his eyes were temptation (this boy, I swear). Since you mentioned how in the first years they were nowhere near as soft with each other as they are now, I think watching their dynamic and relationship change and evolve over time showcases the one thing I think a lot of people (as well as movies and TV shows) forget or gloss over, despite it being so incredibly important: in order to make a relationship of any kind work, especially in order for it to grow as deep and strong as the one between all members and especially vmin, you need to put in the emotional work to make that happen. You have to make an effort, have to learn to understand the other person and teach them to understand you as well, learn to appreciate and love their little quirks and how to accept others. And it’s so clear that that’s what vmin did, continue to do, and it more than paid off in the long run. I’m glad you highlighted that in general but also as something you love about them.

While the overall bond between the members is a class of its own, I think especially what vmin have achieved is a whole masterclass in relationships and fostering strong ones, in and of itself. There is a lot I think we can learn from them and I’m so happy that people recognize how special they are.

Thank you so much for your submission!

From anon: There’s this small moments in Dear Class of 2020 that i just adore! I’ve watched it at least 20 times this past month

It starts with “Spring Day”- tae and jimin laugh and look at each other and it’s just so sweet!

Also, maybe it’s my delusional mind but after tae’s and jin’s small and adorable moment- it seemed that jimin did the same with junkook right after maybe out of i duuno if jealousy but like “pay attention to me too” kinda way- dont know really and maybe it’s me being extra🤷🏻‍♀️

I agree partially, in that Jimin watched Tae’s and Seokjin’s adorable moment, obviously must’ve thought of it as cute just like we did, and thought he could do the same with JK. I don’t think it had anything to do with jealousy, especially if we work off of the idea that vmin are a thing, but also because it’s a performance and these things primarily serve the purpose of being cute and entertaining use, in other words, it’s fanservice (which isn’t the evil word some portray it as). Also, within that same performance, Tae and Jimin actually sang some of the lyrics toward each other, therefore they, too, had a cute moment they shared with big smiles and everything, just like you mentioned.

But we’ve gotten to see much more of Tae’s friendship with Seokjin in 2020, and especially the second half, so it was really sweet to see them interact during that song. Their friendship and dynamic is really a beautiful one, just like JKs bond with Seokjin, which I feel we’ve also gotten to see more of in recent months. Part of me (and that part can very well be wrong) feels that perhaps once the members caught on to Seokjin feeling the way he said he did/does, they decided to give him an extra dose of love and affection, off camera but also on where we can see it. That isn’t to say that they didn’t show him any of that before, but maybe they increased the intensity a little, a reminder that Seokjin truly is loved, that he deserves all of this, that it’s just his imposter syndrome (or at least what sounds like it) lying to him.

I’m still so touched and moved by the fact that he trusted us enough to share his feelings with us, to gift us Abyss and how it came to be, and that Bang PD was on his side and coaxed him into pouring his feelings into music, even if it would be “bad”, that the fear of it potentially being “bad” shouldn’t hold him back (and Namjoon helping in even if just a tiny bit with the lyrics). It was one of those times where I feel like we were all reminded that regardless of our opinions of BH and their doings, the members are surrounded by kind people who have their best interest in mind. After all what’s good for Bangtan is also good for the company, a win-win for everyone.

…wow, okay, I kind of went off on a tangent, I’m sorry…

Either way , then we have “Mikrokosmos” where we have a sweet moment at their part and towards the end where they switch mic and hear each other

I love this performance overall and especially “spring day”- jin’s and j-hope’s lovely voices and of course tae’s!! This song fits them so well and all the members of course

Well this is my rent , i love your blog and always wait for another post! Also i love the new idea and look forward to it!

Thank you so much for your submission and for bringing up their Dear Class 2020 performance. It was a truly magical one, and after reading this the first time, I did go and watch it again. To this day I’d still very much like to know how and when and why the mic switch between vmin happened, and I kind of hope that we might get a Bangtan B*mb or EPISODE about this eventually and it might shine some light on that question. Overall it was one of my favorite performances on 2020.

From Sky: While I enjoy cute, physical moments with VMIN, I really do value how emotionally attached they are to each other. For example (I don’t know if it fits as vmin moment but), I love how Jimin asked V to take the Promise cover photo, and how he ended up putting V’s name for credits on the cover. (Special Thanks to V, Best Photographer) This really shows a lot. Coz he can easily choose any Bighit photographer to take it. He could have chosen JK because we know how he takes good pics and vids too (and also apparently alot of people say that vmin had a falling out and that Jimin and JK were much more closer, lol). Or he could’ve asked Suga too bec he’s into cameras too. But he didn’t. He chose V, and chose to shout it out to the world how thankful he is for V’s help. RM co-wrote Promise, and maybe had offered more help in this project, but he didn’t put it in the cover. I’m not saying Jimin is ungrateful for not crediting RM in the cover. The difference is that he and RM had a vlive regarding the making of this song, a lot of people already know RM’s participation, he was officially credited as co-writer and Jimin really showed how thankful he is to RM. But no one knows of V’s participation (except for a snippet in that Run ep), so Jimin felt the need to tell it to everyone. I’m sure it’s not only the photos, I think he wanted to acknowledge how V helped him through the process, whether directly or indirectly. Also, remember this is Jimin’s first non-album solo single. By putting V’s name in it, he is sharing this very special song with his soulmate. How endearing it is! V also included Jimin in his first full English song. He used the two bears given by Jimin as Winter Bear’s cover photo and he included the photo Jimin took (sleeping V in the plane) in the MV. Like, seriously, they are trying to consciously imprint each other in their life’s milestones, openly or subtly. I’m crying. 😭

This was lovely, and yes, Jimin could’ve asked whoever to take those pictures, could’ve chosen any other ones, and yet he wanted Tae to be the one to take them, wanted those specific ones as covers. It’s very sweet and creates this subtle connection between Jimin, the song, and Tae. Sure, it isn’t the first time a picture Tae took is the cover for a SoundCloud song (the picture of JK on the 2U cover was also taken by Tae if I remember correctly), but it’s the fact that Promise is Jimin’s first non-BTS song, his first solo release, that makes it that much more special. Even more so when you think about how meaningful that song is to Jimin, and by having Tae as cover picture photographer, he’s in a way forever attached memory wise to that song as well, right?

The same also goes with Winter Bear and the two ceramic bears. Remember how excited Tae looked when I kinda spoiled that gift being a thing happening in an upcoming RUN episode during Jimin’s vlive during the summer 2019? Adorable. It’s also curious how though the title is singular—winter bear not winter bears—there’s two ceramic bears. One for Tae, one for Jimin? Maybe, or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Either way, it’s really cute, and it was a very thoughtful gift, even more when we think about just how much Jimin loves that song.

From anon: Love this idea it's super cute!! 1st thing that came to my mind is a rather simple moment, jimin bopping taehyung's nose and making a lil game out of it

Taehyung asking for more and that dazed smile 🥺 he had the same expression in that concert when jimin placed his face just above him, tae's smile afterward... it was so pure u could almost read "love" in his eyes lol

What a lovely note to end this post at, thank you for that. I don’t know what got into them during that photoshoot for Season’s Greetings 2020 but this was so disarmingly adorable. I remember when that moment appeared all over every sns and everyone just melted, myself included. Their smiles, the cute clothes, Tae’s head on Jimin’s chest, the softness and innocence of it, just all of it. It truly was so pure and like this sweet visualization of ‘love’.

And with that, we’ve reached the end. Did you like this? I had a great time reading your submissions and adding my little comments to them. If you’d like for us to continue this, same rules as last time, send in a submission marked with “VMC” and once we’ll have enough of them gathered, we’ll do this again, if you’re interested in more, that is. Send in whatever positive vmin you have, a thought, a moment, a memory, whatever you’d like.

Thank you once again to everyone who participated! :)

[newtedison]

my thoughts on the crank palace

i touched about this a bit on twitter (@newtedison_) but i figured i would Try and touch on my points more here (spoilers obv) again, its sort of lengthy

1. im gonna start with talking about the ending because i need to get it out of the way. either i havent read the books in a while and i forgot some canon (which could very well be true, i literally forgot that Bliss was a thing) or this ending makes no sense and is (somehow) setting up for a tdc sequel? so first off, newt was shot in the Head with a Bullet and somehow didnt immediately die? i know that that can happen in real life but it just seems so unlikely that not only would he not die, but he would survive long enough for someone from WCKD to transport him back to their labs and try to revive him. and who the fuck was he talking to? did thomas get newt’s journal at some point and i just dont remember? like i said, either im forgetting stuff or this ending doesnt make sense and is setting up a sequel which...i’ll get to later

2. why was this written? like, what was the point? i understand that this wasnt going to be all sunshine and rainbows but i feel like i was reading torture porn. like, literally all that happens is newt gets tortured (which is described in detail) by WCKD soldiers, has bouts of insane-fueled rage where he KILLS MULTIPLE PEOPLE, and then he dies. ??? what did this contribute to the canon? what was this trying to accomplish? truthfully, i never really wanted a newt-POV...well, anything except for maybe those little nuggets he wrote some time ago. but even if i HAD wanted a newt-POV novella, this is not what i would have wanted. he KNOWS that newt is almost universally the most loved character in this franchise. you can tell because he constantly uses him as a way to get fans in his good graces again. so why on earth would he take that character that so many people love and write a novella where its torture porn and a descent into madness before death? i am not interested in that At All. i’ve read fics (and even written a drabble) where newt is a Crank, and those were more respectful and easier to read than tcp. the parts where newt is having bouts of the Flare were literally exhausting to read; it was described in such vivid and torturous detail that it made me sick reading it. and it didnt help that newt is a character i care a lot about. i didn’t need to know what becoming a Crank felt like. the way it was described in the other books (and even the movies) told me everything i needed to know. the way thomas and everyone found newt at the crank palace in tdc and hes described as obviously not well, but not knowing what exactly happened to him...thats good enough on its own. the mystery of what exactly newt had to endure is part of what gives his journey more emotional depth. not everything needs to be written out and explained. not every gap needs to be filled in. 

3. me saying “the characterization felt off” is going to make some people roll their eyes because ‘duh, sami, the characterization will be off because he’s going insane’ to which i say...exactly. we weren’t really reading a newt-POV novella, were we? even if he isn’t past the Gone in the beginning, hes clearly not the same person we knew him as. the whole novella felt like an uncanny valley situation; i knew i was supposed to be reading about newt, but it felt like i was reading about someone else who looked like him. and that is part of what made this such a disconnect and made me lose interest at parts. not only that, but the world building and lore is inconsistent. newt makes a comment about how it used to rain in the glade, and apparently (as ive been told) that is simply not true. keisha having somehow working cell phone that magically connects her to her family also doesnt make sense. how would they have each others’ numbers? what are the odds that they BOTH found working cell phones in an apocalypse? i get that its a novella but you cant just throw something that crazy in there as a plot convenience. actually work on your plot and world building in a cohesive way, please. and another thing that doesnt make sense...

4. ...is newt finding out that sonya is his sister. if there was anything i would have wanted from a newt-pov novella, it would have been this. him finding out that not only is sonya his sister, but he already knows her post-WCKD. something that would have made this novella actually captivating, contributing something worthwhile to the canon that i would actually want to read, is if newt found out while in the crank palace that sonya was his sister; the Flare would remove that part of the Slice in his brain, and he would realize it was her. then, knowing that he couldnt go past the Gone before seeing her, he would try to find a way to get back to her. he could learn this after thomas and everyone originally see him, so it could match up with the canon. and then, by the time 250 comes along, hes lost all hope of that actually happening, and lashes out to thomas in a fit of rage. the journey of him trying to find his ACTUAL sister would have meant more to me than the story of keisha and dante. trust me, i love a found family trope as much as the next girl. but this series is FULL of the found family trope. it pretty much is the backbone of the franchise. so to see a blood family dynamic would have been a refreshing change of pace that i actually would have been interested in reading. also, the way that newt DOES find out about sonya is...underwhelming. he just randomly says “you remind me of my sister, sonya” to keisha in the WCKD truck. first of all, sonya is not the name you would actually know her by. you would know her by her birth name (which is lizzy? elizabeth?). second, why does he act like he didnt already meet her in the series? when the WCKD doctor tells him sonya is his sister and is alive, hes so surprised. wouldn’t he have known that already? why is there not more emphasis on the fact he already met her? that would have been a really interesting dynamic to explore, and im sad they didnt

5. the pacing and dialogue of tcp is so dragged out. i remember specifically there was a section where newt goes to talk to keisha after she starts abandoning dante, and i swear to god there was a page and a half of text before anything ACTUALLY happened or anyone ACTUALLY said anything. dashner described a launcher at one point as “the energy dependent electric firing projectile device.” that’s SIX words to describe a stun gun. a fucking stun gun! we know what it is! why did you have to use six words??? it just felt like everything was dragged and stretched to the longest it could possibly be and it added to the exhaustion i felt while reading it

6. okay i cant end it without talking about newtmas. its very obvious by now that newtmas is a VERY large part of this fanbase. its clearly the most popular ship and what keeps a lot of people interested in this series. even the marketing team for the MOVIES used newtmas as a advertising tactic (i.e.; using thomas and newt standing face to face as a thumbnail for the trailer, emphasizing newtmas based questions in interviews, even making a fucking facebook memories video for them. yes that last one is real). not only does dashner use newt as a way to lure fans in; he also uses newtmas. the parts that were sprinkled into this were so obvious that it didnt feel authentic. i cant speak for the original trilogy; i dont know the culture around ships back then, and i dont know how much it influenced his writing at the time. but the scenes in those books felt more genuine than tcp. by genuine i mean; he wrote scenes without a relationship in mind, but the chemistry had noticeable subtext that, while unintentional, was largely agreed upon by the larger audience. the parts of newtmas he added into tcp felt artificial and forced, likely as a way for people to take snippets of and use as a free marketing tool for him. one example you might have already seen; “he had already gotten used to his post-thomas, post-WCKD life.” the fact that dashner SPECIFICALLY used the phrase “post-thomas” rather than “post-his friends” or something similar shows that he is using newtmas as a hook on purpose. not only that, but to make newt’s last thoughts as he died “tommy. tommy will understand...” is...wow. first of all, i never wanted to know what newt’s dying thoughts were, but thanks, i guess? and second, when we all initially thought newt died underneath thomas with a gun to his head, i was pretty much inferred that newts last thoughts would probably be about thomas; they would sort of have to be, given the circumstances. so adding that in gives me the same feeling that “i’m coming for you, newt” at the end of the fever code gave me. not as offensive, but written very much on purpose. and the ending is implying that there will somehow be a sequel where thomas gets newt’s journal from...someone. at this point, i can only think that this sequel will retroactively make newtmas canon somehow. now that newt has been confirmed as gay, it could happen. which brings me to my last point...

7. hearing dashner confirm newt is gay was already mind-boggling before. now that i’ve read the crank palace...im angry. im very angry. i think its safe to say that newt is the character that suffers the most in this series. you can argue with me but hes definitely high on the list, if not #1. so; you take this character. you give him a horribly sad arc in the original trilogy, then decide to expand upon it and tell us, your largely QUEER fanbase, exactly how painful and torturous his last days were, in detail. and then you tell us he’s gay. something that is never mentioned in the canon, only in an offhanded reply to a tweet of someone calling you out. on a base level, i can understand why people would be happy. representation (i guess), seeing themselves in the character, having their headcanons be confirmed. great. but what i see is you telling your largely queer fanbase “hey, you see the only confirmed gay character? im going to literally write torture porn about him before killing him off and offer it to you like im providing a service to your community.” how fucked up is that? “hey, kids, if youre gay, you WILL be violently tortured and become violent and a danger to the ones you love. then you will die and your love will never be reciprocated.” what a message! and if he DOES end up retroactively making newtmas “canon” in some weird sequel...i will start foaming at the mouth. THIS is an example of how not all queer representation is good or genuine.

i’ve definitely forgotten some points but this is long enough already. let me know if you agree or if theres anything else you want to add! im interested in what you guys think

(8. I JUST REMEMBERED!!! if WCKD needed to study newt so bad bc sonya is his sister and is immune while he isnt, why did they let him run around the crank palace in the first place??? you cant test his vitals or anything you’re literally just watching him. what is the point????)

[natromanxoff]

Queen live at Empire Theatre in Liverpool, UK - December 7, 1979

(x)

Freddie's black leather pants had both blue and red kneepads just to keep the football fans of both Liverpool and Everton happy, as Brian explained at some point during the show. For their own amusement during the acoustic set, Brian and Freddie played a bit of Mull Of Kintyre after Freddie mentioned how Wings had just played in Liverpool. Freddie jokingly said, "I'll be Linda McCartney." The band perform Liar on the second night in Liverpool, as they always did when playing two consecutive nights at a venue on this tour. The first picture was taken by Jim Jenkins, and the second by Ian Stewart Brown during We Are The Champions. The last photo set was taken by Doug Price and cleaned up by Ryan Newton.

Fan Stories

“I was fortunate to see Queen make their debut on T.O.T.P. in early 74. This was the time that Glam rock was at its peak, as a 10 year old I used to enjoy watching the likes of Mud, Slade, Sweet and Gary Glitter. I had never heard of Queen before seeing them on T.O.T.P, from that appearance I was hooked! The sound and visual image of the band took my appreciation of music to a level which was far ahead of the other acts that i used to enjoy. The song that they performed, Seven Seas Of Rhye, has stood the test of time so well over the last 29 years. For the next 5 years I would always listen out for a new Queen single release hoping that i could see the band perform the single on the TV. A couple of months after my 15th birthday I had the opportunity to see the band play live in Liverpool on the Crazy tour. It was to be an early Christmas present off my parents and they were taking me to the concert 80 miles away from my home town with another Queen fan called Elizabeth (good name for a Queen fan!). To say I couldnt wait was an understatment! Just over a week before the gig I went down with chicken pox, my Mother said "You can't go to the concert as you might give it to Freddie!", but, it was going to take more than chicken pox to stop me seeing the band for the first time! The concert took place on a Friday, I remember being in school and a couple of mates being almost as excited for me as i was for myself, as i was always telling them how much i loved Queen! We had excellent seats, in the 4th row, on Brian's side. There was no support band, so, when the lights of the theatre where dimmed you can imagine the atmosphere in there, a cloud of dry ice slowly wafted into the audience with the intro tape playing, I'm shaking my head typing this as I can remember it so well, just goes to show that you never forget your first one! This is what I had been waiting for, for so long, the opportunity of seeing Queen live, I had heard so many times of what a great live show they would perform, before this I had only seen their Christmas eve gig on the TV in 75. I hadn't even heard a bootleg tape before I purchased Live Killers, an album that I couldn't wait to buy, and played to death in my bedroom in the summer of 79! The lighting rig was suspended about 6 ft high above the stage, this was slowly raised to reveal the hundreds of white, green and red lights piercing through the dry-ice and into the noisy, excited crowd, an explosion was the cue for the band to enter the stage, they ripped into Jailhouse rock, with the customary, as I was to learn, always, last on stage appearance of Freddie. There he was about 10 ft away from me, unbeliavable, first impressions? He was smaller than what I thought, on the TV he seemed to give off the appearance he was a lot bigger, or was that just the way his stage presence came over on TV? He was dressed in all black leather, including the hat, and the "fly" eye shades. Not to displease any of the city's football fans in the audience Brian later revealed that was the reason, why Freddie was wearing blue and red kneepads! The set list was similar to Live Killers, but included Save Me which wasn't to be released as a single until the next month. The majority of people reading this will have seen Queen in concert, so you know how brilliant a Queen gig was. With the glorious benefit of hindsight I was fortunate that I had such a great seat to see the band in action for my first time. A year later and my first gig could have been at the back of the N.E.C. in Birmingham. All too soon the gig finished, on leaving the theatre O noticed that my ears where ringing from the volume of the concert, the ringing didnt stop until the next Tuesday! December 91, two weeks after Freddie has passed away and I'm back at The Empire for the first time since my first Queen gig, of all the places to go back to... I explained to my partner that it was a gig I wanted to miss as it would be too painful to visit the Theatre in the circumstances, she talked me around, so I took my seat in the circle to see the gig by Paul Young, who I had seen before, and to this day I still like. Whilst the support act was on, I looked down into the stalls, from the right of the theatre I looked at the 4th row and counted the seats until I got to the 12th seat, the seat I had for my first Queen gig, the memories came flooding back of that night, my throat was choked as I took a journey on the gigs that I had seen after I had been in that seat - 3 trips to Paris, 2 to Brussels, Cologne, Hot Space tour, attending the 7 gigs in the U.K. on The Works tour, down the front at the Live Aid gig, The Magic tour, every opportunity I had to see the band in action I took, they would never happen again, being a Queen fan you can probably realise how I was hurting at that time? A couple of years later Brian performed in Liverpool at The Royal Court Theatre, just down the road from The Empire, I was made up that he was playing in Liverpool as this was a chance to see Brian's first visit to Liverpool since my first concert in 79. It was a great concert with a brilliant atmosphere. On Brian's next tour 5 years later I was fortunate to meet him, and he signed a photo of a picture I had taken from his gig in Liverpool in '93. On telling him of the gig it was taken at, he commented on what a great night that had been, and how he was disappointed he couldn't book the venue on the tour he was on. The Brian gig in Liverpool was just what I needed after my return to The Empire, perhaps I am asking for too much, but, it would be great to see Brian perform sometime at The Empire! If your ticket for the gig is Row D, Seat 12, after reading this you can understand why I would want to swap tickets with you?!” - Kevin Hughes

“We set off for Manchester early Saturday morning one day in September 1979. I had to bribe my brother in-law(not a Queen fan) with the promise of a ticket and petrol money as I couldn't drive at the time. We arrived at Manchester Apollo before opening hours but found to my horror that they'd already been open an hour. We got to within sight of the ticket office and the inevitable happened - the sold out sign came out. Two long months later, concert day at last. I had a stomach like a child on Christmas Eve. I had a few cans on the way (Tartan bitter, remember them?) When we parked up I was physically sick due to the excitement of course(nothing to do with beer, honest). After a bit of banter in the queue we finally got to our seats. We weren't near the front but with it being a theatre we were never going to be that far from the stage. The lights dimmed, there was dry ice everywhere, the pizza oven began to rise, then Queen exploded on to the stage singing We Will Rock You. The crowd rose as one everybody jumping up and down like demented animals. We had a burst of Millionaire Waltz, Brian playing piano on Save Me. The crowd kept on singing Crazy Little Thing Called Love long after the music had finished and Freddie doing the dance he did in the video. I remember singing Love Of My Life the whole way through with the crowd as Freddie listened, then singing it all again with him. Roger's big drums, Brian's guitar solo, then Freddie and the boys whipping the crowd into another frenzy with Bohemian Rhapsody, Sheer Heart Attack and Tie Your Mother Down. Then Freddie on the shoulders of Superman singing We Will Rock You and then the song to end all concerts - We Are The Champions. As that was my first Queen concert, it was a very special one for me. I was lucky enough to see them six times and I can say "hand on heart" every show was a different experience. I think some of you will know what I mean. I'm no writer(as you can probably tell) so I hope this all makes sense to you and I hope you got a little bit of the excitement and emotion I had in 1979.” - Ducksoup

[witchcraft-in-wonderland]

Poor Little Anxious Crybaby (Pt.13)

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

Virgil seemed to be spending more and more time with Remus and Roman, not that anyone involved minded this change. But it wasnt the only thing that seemed to be changing.

This was the third week in a row in which Virgil seemed to be kept up for most of the night by dreams he couldnt understand. Sometimes he could make out the shapes of rabbits cats or mice, but rarely could he understand them.

"Maybe you just wanna be a mountain lion, I mean mountain lions could literally get away with ripping someone limb from limb, I'd wanna be a mountain lion," Remus said, running his fingers through Virgil's hair as Virgil lay across the couch.

"What I don't understand is why it would be waking you up, I mean, it's not like being a mountain lion is generally upsetting, right?" Roman said, pulling the hem of his sweater over his knees.

"Yeah. . . ." Virgil said, burying his face in Remus' stomach.

"Careful there bud, I gotta use that to digest stuff," Remus said, letting out a cackle as Virgil blew a raspberry against the skin.

"Well we dont need to focus on dreams now, anyone up for a game?" Roman said, shaking a controller.

"Ooohhh! I'll order pizza!" Remus said, bolting up off the couch. Virgil let out a whine at the loss of contact as his head landed on the couch pillows.

"Aaaawwweee, sorry Vivi, I'll come back in a little, but can you give me your order, Ro? You're usual?" Remus said, looking at both boys in turn.

"Cheese,,," Virgil mumbled.

"I'm not hungry," Roman said, bringing his legs closer to his chest. Remus seemed slightly upset by the response, but simply nodded and went to call the pizza place. Virgil moved closer to Roman, who draped an arm around him.

"Roro?. . ." Virgil said quietly.

"Hm?" Roman leaned his head on Virgil's.

"When we get back to school are you still gonna have to be friends with 'You-know-who' are you?" Virgil said, he hadnt thought about the kids at school for most of the summer, but it was nearly September, so the memory was slowly creeping back in.

Roman sat there for a few seconds, rubbing circle's into Virgil's back.

"I dont know Vivi. . . He's not exactly easy to get away from y'know?" Roman said sadly, Virgil buried his head in Roman's shoulder.

Virgil had known Inigo since they were kids, and they had never been friendly. But since becoming friends with Roman, Virgil had learned of even more reasons to despise the boy.

"I hope he and Brennan get together," Virgil muttered, casting a distinct glance at the sewing kit on the coffee table. Roman let out a soft chuckle, burying his head in Virgil's hair.

"That can be arranged," Remus said, sitting down next to the pair and draping himself across Virgil's back.

"Guuuyyyssss- you're crushing meeeeee," Virgil said, pouting.

"Not my fault you're so tiny," Remus said, resting his head in the crook of Virgil's neck.

"I'm only 4'8!" Virgil whined.

"Tinyyyyyy~" the twins chimed in unison.

Virgil had to admit that the feeling was nice, he was warm and happy, and for once in his life, he felt safe.

He and the twins spent a good portion of the day beating the crap out of fictional characters in a video game and stuffing their faces with pizza, Remus had taught Virgil how to make a volcano out of melted metal and an ant hill, much to Roman's distress.

"I'll see you guys tomorrow ok?" Virgil said as he stepped out the door to go home.

"Did you have fun kiddo?" Patton said as Virgil walked into the kitchen.

"Mhm," Virgil smiled as he rested his head on the kitchen counter.

"Dont forget to take your medication before dinner Virgil, I'm hoping the doctor will be right about it helping you sleep easier," Emile said, setting the bottle down next to Virgil.

"I wish they made this stuff in liquid form more often- how do you take all your stuff so easily?" Virgil said, raising an eyebrow at Emile.

"Its hard for me to, but usually if I take the water first and slip the medicine in after it's easier because it's already floating," Emile said, shrugging.

Virgil thought on this for a moment before nodding slightly. Virgil liked Emile a lot more than he'd first expected, of course sometimes he was a little different, but usually he and Virgil could just sit on the couch and talk about cartoons, and Virgil could even tell him about his nightmares without getting scared.

Of course there were some things he still didnt know about Emile, but if Patton or Emile didnt want to tell him things, he wasnt about to ask for information he shouldnt need.

Settling down for bed that night still felt bad, but Virgil didnt mention it, he didnt want to bother anyone.

Virgil awoke in a patch of soft grass, which upon closer inspection, seemed to be more of a dull teal color than the green it ought to have been.

"There you are! We've been looking everywhere for you!" Said a voice, Virgil looked up to see what looked to be a girl with white rabbit ears, wearing a waist coat and khaki shorts, a boy with a hat, a tux, and hair that varied from shades of brown and blonde on one side, and various other colors on the other, between the two was a girl with brown bunny ears, her outfit seemed to be an attempt at formality which only ended in the tattered remains of what could have once been a met gala dress.

"Who are you?-" Virgil said, sitting up and shaking his head slightly in confusion.

"Aaawww, you dont recognize us?" Said the brown bunny.

"Well of course he doesnt! When's the last time you saw him at the tea party! I mean look at his clothes! Hardly appropriate for such a special event." Said the man with the hat. Virgil looked down at his clothes, he was still in his pajamas.

"Come on- we have to get you dressed first, I cant imagine what would happen if we brought you to the king dressed like that!" Said the white rabbit, dragging Virgil off the ground and marching toward a small house on a hill.

It seemed like hours before the mission the three people seemed so set on completing was finished, and by the end of it Virgil found himself in a dusty purple dress with white sleeves, a black bow and buttons on the chest, white lace on the skirt hem, white stockings, and black boots. If he was being honest with himself, he'd never been happier to look at his reflection.

"Well come on then! The king is waiting for you!" Said the boy with the hate.

"Now hold on a second- I dont even know your names, how am I supposed to trust that you'll take me to the right place?" Virgil said.

The three figures in front of him exchanged glances.

"Hes right you know, I'd never trust someone without a name,"

"I made friends with a nameless person once, they stole my cat,"

"But if we give him our names outright then it's no fun!"

Virgil looked between the three of them in confusion, waiting for the conversation to end.

"Ok, we wont tell you our names, but you can guess them," said the boy with the hat.

The white rabbit stepped up first, she mimicked placing a crown on her head, and then mimicked a sword being pulled from something and swinging it around.

"Well- it cant be Arthur, you dont strike me as an Arthur- so is it. . . Gwenivere?" Virgil said, the girl shook her head but made a motion of begging him on.

"Gwendolyn?" Virgil said.

"You got it!" Gwendolyn said excitedly, clasping her hands together and bouncing from foot to foot. She stepped back and allowed the second rabbit to take her place.

This one held out two fingers first, dropped one, and began to imitate what seemed to be waves.

"Waverly?" Virgil said, the girl nodded and held up two fingers again, proceeding to drop them and hold up a full hand, pointing to calendar that had floated down from the ceiling.

"Waverly-Mae?" Virgil said, the girl nodded and spun on her heel to walk back next to Gwendolyn.

"And that leaves me for last I suppose," said the boy with the hat, making a sort of disappointed face to the girls as he walked up to Virgil. He mimicked both a face that Virgil would describe as angry, and one he would describe as having a few screws out of place.

"Mad?" Virgil said, the boy nodded and kept going, placing one finger on either side of his head and digging his foot into the ground.

"Maddox?" Virgil said, tilting his head. Maddox smiled and nodded.

"Well now that you know our names, you'll have to meet our king!" Gwendolyn said, grabbing Virgil by the arm and rushing off.

It took ages for them to reach what Virgil believed to be the palace. It was large and black with red and green accents along the sides, this left a sinking feeling in Virgil's chest.

"I present to you, his most gracious majesty, King Rhea!" Gwendolyn said, backing into a line with several guards dressed in red and white. Maddox and Waverly-Mae fell in line with the knights in black and green.

Virgil looked forward, in front of him and sitting on a throne was a man who shared much to many similarities with the twins to be comforting.

Though one eye was green and one eye was red, and rather than red or dark brown hair, his was black and white, but he still had the same smirk, the same demeanor Remus and Roman had when out on the town.

"So glad you could finally make it, your excellency," said Rhea, now turning his head to look at Virgil.

"I-" Rhea held his hand up, Virgil's mouth closed almost immediately.

"I know what you're going to say, and you are absolutely correct, you are not royalty, you are something much more important,"

Virgil woke up in a cold sweat, and it wasnt until he looked at himself in the mirror that he realized, he was still wearing the very same dress as before.

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

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