#i found an email thread of me talking about it

[blu-wingz]

I discovered blue exorcist in march 2014...so close to the anniversary now...

My first introduction to anime and manga and other things. Wowie :)

[gh0stsp1d3r]

ℳ𝒶𝓎𝒷𝒶𝓃𝓀𝓈 𝓈𝒾𝓈𝓉ℯ𝓇

Part 2, chapter 6- eviction notice

Series masterlist

Warnings- This one’s a lot more jj centered, but some rafe and reader moments (: two exes still pining for each other Is my favorite

Summary: you’re finally back home, the pogues missed you and Rafe can’t get over you

A knock on the door interrupted your nightly routine, you sighed, standing up and opening the door.

“Hi.” You said, a little shocked at Rafe’s appearance this late.

“Okay, so…” he pushed past you, sitting down on the bed, next to you. “we’re leaving tomorrow.”

“You mean… back to Kildare?” You asked him.

He nodded. “I- I already asked if you could use a phone, but, my dad doesn’t really trust you right now. But… I can…” he sighed. “I can see if I can try and email one of them or something.“

You nodded at him. He stood up, going to the door before you called his name.

“Rafe.”

“Yeah?” He turned to look at you.

“Thank you.”

A million thoughts ran through his mind as he walked back home. When he got there, he saw yellow tape on the door, along with an eviction notice. Going up with furrowed eyebrows, he held back tears.

“What?” He mumbled, confused. You told him that you were paying for it, that you were just staying at Ricky’s because you couldn’t bear to be at the house. Not because you lost it.

He looked on the back when he saw some marker bleed through, you had written on it.

“I’m sorry, JJ.” You scrawled out on it, he saw some tear stains on the paper as well. With a small sigh, tears threatening to spill, he entered through the window, grabbing the pills from the counter, sitting on the couch, and throwing them.

He ran his hands over his face, beginning to cry into them while taking a sip of the beer his dad had left.

He was outside, fixing his bike with Kiara came up behind.

“Eviction notice. For like, non payment or whatever. My sister didn’t even tell me.” He stood up, facing her now. He sighed, looking back at the house.

“Doesn’t matter. This place sucks anyway. Great to be back in the outer banks, right?”

“So get this. I uh, had an email waiting for me when I got home. John B actually found Big John. He’s alive..”

JJ paused, turning his head to Kiara now.

“Seriously?”

Kiara nodded. “Yeah. He’s at the Chateau.”

JJ smiled, standing up again. “Damn.”

“Yeah, he thinks we’re close to the same treasure Singh was talking about.”

JJ nodded, sniffling as he grabbed a towel.

“Hey, look. My parents didn’t even wanna let me out of the house. But I told them I had to come check on you.”

“Well, it’s not me you have to worry about.” He exhaled.

“JayJ, what’s up? Is it something Pope said? I know he’s not all obsessed about what happened between me and him. We’re both past that, but something’s bugging you. And it’s not just your sister.”

“It was just weird, what almost happened on the boat with us. It was just weird.” He said, inhaling.

“Yeah, Yeah, I mean it was… it was weird for me too, but… not bad weird.”

“No. Not bad weird.” He came closer to her, the both of them staring at each other.

“What are we doing?” He asked, heart picking up. “What are we doing? We shouldn’t be doing this, nah.” He repeated, moving his face away from hers, walking away. “We shouldn’t do that.”

“Yeah..”

“We shouldn’t!”

“If you say so.”

“I mean, it would like all blow up anyway. You know? Like…” he panted. “Look at you. You got your new threads on, look at me what do I got? This?” He pointed to the house. “This piece of shit?!” He picked up a rock, throwing it at the house.

“Getting kicked out of this place in like a week anyways. Shit, I don’t got parents right now, or my sister. Why would you care? Why would you care? I’m just some loser that- that-“ he stuttered.

“jj…”

“You don’t do care.”

“I do-“

“No, you don’t!”

“I do care!” She argued.

“No, you got parents that live in figure 8, you know? You know… you…”

“That’s not my fault.”

“That’s your future. You got that.” He walked away again, his hands on the back of his head.

“Look if you need us, we’re gonna help you. I’m… I’ll help.”

“It’s that right there! Okay? Like- it’s so easy for you to say that. You know why? Because you’re a kook. You’re a kook, Kiara!”

She nodded, looking down. “Yeah, I’m a kook. I was such a kook when I was living in a cave with you for a month. Soaking in the kook life.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. God!” He threw on his hat, getting on his bike, and starting the engine.

“JayJ, don’t leave.”

He didn’t listen, just ran away. The only thing he knew how to do.

On the dock, he paced, staring out, even breaking it and throwing things down, kicking and throwing shit.

He paused, looking over you sleeping for a moment. You looked peaceful. He missed this. He would do anything if it meant he could have you so peaceful like that with him again.

It would take time, though. Even Rafe knew that.

“Rise and shine,” Rafe spoke, hitting your shoulder to wake you up.

You mumbled something incoherently, rubbing the sleep from your eyes and sitting up with a yawn.

When you opened your eyes, you had a small smile at the sight of the island. Finally.

His eyes were set on you, while you looked out at the island.

When you got to Tannyhill, you helped Rafe with the boat and went up the dock.

Rafe lead you to to the front, both of you standing in front of each other now.

“Thanks, again.” You told him, staring into his baby blue eyes.

“Yeah, yeah.” He waved it off.

“You know, Rafe, you could be a really good man when you try.” You told him when you began to walk away.

He rolled his eyes, a small smile gracing his features when you turned. “Whatever.”

But when you left, you spotted Sarah leaving as well.

“Sarah?” You questioned, making her turn to you.

She said your name, her tone confused and shocked.

“Holy shit, y/n?!” Kiara practically shouted when you came up on the boat with Sarah. You smiled at her, and she came up and embraced you.

“Hey, Kie.” You said with a laugh,

“I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to push you off-“

“It’s fine. I know.” You shrugged.

“I went to go grab some clothes and a phone, and I found her, but…”

“Rafe is back.” You finished her sentence.”And the cross is coming back. To Wilmington tomorrow night. I heard him on the phone yesterday.”

“And I heard him not that long ago.”

“What?” She looked at Sarah and back at you.

“I was gonna tell Pope at the Chateau.”

“He can’t. He’s on lockdown.”

“Okay, um… then.. I’ll hit up Pope, and then maybe you go to the Chateau and tell John B. And JJ?”

Kiara swallowed at that.

“Wait, is he.. at the chateau?” You asked them.

Kiara shrugged. “I don’t know. He blew up on me earlier. He… uh.. was at the house.”

“Shit..” you murmured.

JJ pulled up to the Chateau, whistling for John B. You stood up, Kiara was inside, not wanting to intrude on you two.

“JJ.” You spoke quietly.

He turned around at the sound of your voice. He whispered your name, repeating it louder now as he came up to you.

He wrapped his arms around you, tears falling down his face.

“Holy shit. You’re- you’re-“

“Yeah.” You laughed, tears falling down your own face now.

“You didn’t tell me we got evicted. I would- I would have helped..” he told you, looking at your face now.

“I didn’t want you to. That’s why I didn’t tell you.” You shook your head feverishly. “I’m saving up for a better house, now.”

He smiled and shook his head again.

“I missed you so much, dude.” He said, pulling you in for another hug.

Kiara came out, waiting. He turned to Kiara now, clearing his throat and wiping his tears.

“Is uh… John B not here?” He asked with a sigh.

“Nope.”

Kiara cleared her throat, cutting through the awkward silence.

“What’s up?”

“Uh, Rafes what’s up.” Kiara spoke.

“He’s back on the island, JJ.” You continued her sentence. “He said he’s staying for a little, for business or some shit.”

“Spectacular.” He said sarcastically.

“It’s not just that. I overheard him saying the cross is coming into Wilmington tomorrow. Wards trying to sell it.” You said.

“Great. Does Pope know?”

“Yeah. Sarah went to tell him. He’s locked down.” Kiara told him. “And I guess John B and his dad went and got the Twinkie. They’re off to God knows where.” Kiara handed him the envelope.

“Yeah, of course. Just when we need them.” He threw his hands up, staring out into the water.

“Wait, hold on though.” He stopped, turning to you both now. “We know where the cross is gonna be. That means it’s still on the field. Okay, alright. So we can come in and swoop, we’re still in this. We gotta get everybody together, then we’ll come up with a plan. Get our asses to Wilmington.”

Kiara looked at you. You urged her as he walked away.

“Hey, hey, JJ, before we can formulate some crazy plan, can we talk?” Kiara spoke, catching up to him.

JJ took a deep breath, talking was never really his thing.

“Yeah. Yeah, we can talk.”

“Something almost happened. Between us on the boat.”

“Mmm-hmm..”

“And I know that’s got to freak you out. It caught me off guard too. And I know, your whole life, I know you freak when people get close, and I get it. I don’t blame you.”

He looked away, because he knew she was right.

“Just please don’t ever say that I don’t care about you. And you called me a kook…”

“Okay, well, hold on-“ he started.

“Which is lame.”

“I know. That was lame..”

“It was uncalled for. Yeah, it’s a low blow.”

“All right, Kie. Look, Kie,” he put his hands on her shoulders. “You’re right. I flipped. You know how I be. Just uh.. just… look. We should just… just call it a truce. Just.. etch a sketch it. Clean slate. Truce?”

“Truce.” She held her hand out.

“So, how we gonna jack this cross?” You came up to them suddenly, both of them jumping at you.

“Jesus! You just got back and you’re already trying to give me a heart attack?”

don’t like this chapter too much ugh

Tag list:

@cassie0sstuff @rafesgiirl @fals3-g0d @tiaamberxx @callsignwidow @saintnourah

[wingzie]

Speaking to the media as a UK Army

Earlier in the week I mentioned in a local group chat that the UK’s attitude towards BTS and KPOP overall had changed. It felt like everyone was excited during Dynamite and then interest was quickly lost. Things got worse after the Festa Dinner. Because of previous experiences with a certain boy group, it was reported that the members would never return. These stories were soon edited, but it was obvious that there was a certain bias against the members now. The previous hype posts for them and their new releases were less present. Instead, we have gone back to having to do everything ourselves during chapter 2. 

As I am sure many of you are aware, it has already been a tough week for UK Army. We found out that MUSE had inclusions, making it harder to chart. We got backlash from solos for something that wasn’t our fault and the emails we sent were ignored or received weird responses. We are a resilient bunch though and we continued to promote and gain more funds. I figured that things for us couldn’t get any worse. I was wrong. On Sunday I was sent an article from the BBC by a friend. They asked my thoughts on it and I quickly understood why. Something else worried me though. I recognized the journalist. He is someone that we have history with. He kindly wrote about Persona and Wembley in 2019, but he also sneaked in a line that he thought that the members were miming through the concert. At the time, a few Army tried talking to him about it on Twitter and he was receptive to the feedback. I decided to try and do the same and to do it privately in the DM’s. Something which he told me himself that he appreciated. I spent a good amount of time drafting my message. I made sure that it was polite, but also included the reasons why a certain part of the article was troublesome. During this, a friend of mine also made a detailed thread correcting the misinformation. Once the message was sent, I went on with my day and waited to see if I would get a reply. Much to my surprise, I did indeed get a reply. I don’t have consent to share our messages, but we replied back and forth a few times and he said that he would look into changing the wording. I quoted my friend's thread, explaining that I messaged him privately and that he was working on it. As someone who posts about Jikook on a regular basis, you could say that I am used to getting unnecessary abuse. However, I was not fully prepared for the response to this. As more hours passed and there weren't any changes made, the more anger and hate I received. This greatly confused me, as I wasn’t the one who wrote the article itself. I just wanted to try and help and we had to be patient. 

A day later the edit was made. I messaged the journalist again to thank him and he responded back, explaining that the reason it took so long was because there was a debate internally about the best way to respond. I then shared on TL about the edit being made. It wasn’t the best edit, but that’s all we got. Unfortunately, the hate towards myself increased even more. Some said that the article was my fault, that I failed BTS or that I was an anti. Plus a few words that I daren’t repeat here. Some saw what was happening to me and sent kind support. These included people who I have never interacted with before and I will be forever thankful for that. I also spoke with some about the response of the general public towards the article. The article was heavily advertised so there were discussions in relation to Seventeen going to Glastonbury. This hasn’t been done before so some were curious and some were confused. It was interesting to see the reaction to it, even if it was poorly written. I was personally exhausted though.

This whole ordeal started on Sunday and I woke up on Tuesday still feeling a bit wary of receiving more hate. On top of this, I had gained around 300 more followers from all of this and didn’t know how they would react once I started posting Jikook. If I’m honest, I felt a bit uncomfortable with everything going on. What did shock me though, is that some of these new followers were going through my “pinned” post and liking the threads on Jikook. It made me a bit self-conscious, but I didn’t want it to overcome me and Jimin’s promotions though, so I came up with an idea. 

July is my Birthday month and to celebrate I am doing a giveaway for other UK Army. This gives them a chance to get any albums they currently do not own and to try and boost sales for Jimin at the same time. The UK fanbase don’t really want to be associated with me because of my account, so I decided to do everything myself. To help boost morale, positivity and the community spirit that Army has. Overall, I do not regret reaching out to the journalist. He was rather difficult to speak to, but an edit deserved to be made for the way in which it was written. I appreciate the discussion we had and those that supported me. My focus will continue to be on Chapter 2. Look after yourselves and each other. 

[wonjnz]

love, like it always has been

₊˚⊹ summary: gyuvin sets out to defeat some old white man's quora answer about love.

₊˚⊹ genre: fluff, best friend!gyuvin, high school!au | wc: 1k

₊˚⊹ warning(s): some swearing | inspo: —

₊˚⊹ a/n: very random slice of life moments with bsf!gyuvin so the timeline is kinda.. 😭😭 got the idea when i got sm quora emails today

whenever gyuvin wonders what love is, he thinks the amount of "expert" answers in a random quora thread about it doesn't seem to click with him.

he didn't feel some sort of fireworks when he saw you, so some doctor specializing in 'love' is automatically eliminated. and his world certainly didn't slow down when you walk in, so now a random old, white man talking about his wife of 25 years is also eliminated (though gyuvin admits it's cute).

gyuvin sighs and puts his phone down, placing his hands on both cheeks; god, this is so stupid, he thinks. if only his friends weren't the loudest speakers in school, he'd probably be ranting to them about this, but he remains determined to find out what love means to him.

ever since that night, gyuvin made it his goal that one day, he'll have the most upvotes on his quora answer and everyone will reply this is exactly what love feels like.

old white man be damned, gyuvin is going to have a more relatable answer. just watch, he thinks.

gyuvin swears he felt love when he watched you introduce yourself on the first day of school, he found it hilarious. after school, you almost cut him off from how much he teased you about it. only did he redeem himself when he willingly became your servant for 2 months, to his friends surprise (and ultimately gyuvin’s embarrassment).

and he feels it once more while you're slowly losing your mind over a chemistry assignment. the way your hair sticks out in all directions from all the times your hands kept running through in frustration, the way your eyebrows furrow when you finally get a logical answer after five grueling minutes, that's when gyuvin confirms it.

“what?” you ask, noticing how gyuvin has been awfully quiet and smiling to himself. “is my answer wrong or something?” you worry, looking back and forth from your paper to his.

he's in love.

gyuvin immediately comes back to his senses and waves you off, “it's nothing. just thought of something.” he says. to be fair, what he said wasn't much of a lie. he was thinking of you after all.

you scoff at his half-assed answer, "whatever. i'm going back to number 6." mumbling as you look back at your paper. "yeah, i'll go back too." gyuvin says, smiling amusingly at his answers (he's only done 4 questions).

“seriously, gyuvin. you're disgusting.” you laugh, pointing at the dried-up ice cream stains at the corner of his lips. "you look like you drooled or something."

gyuvin rolls his eyes, “at least wipe it off for me. both my hands are occupied.” he says while holding up his ice cream and a small plastic spoon, obviously finding a reason for you to do it. “what a loser..” you mumble before trying to find a few pieces of tissue in your backpack, putting it up to his lips to wipe the remnants off.

and gyuvin fights the urge to say “i'm in love with you,” at that moment. opting to share a few details about his day instead since he knows how you're always invested in whatever drama he manages to dig out.

damn his demons are hard to beat today, he curses to himself.

as he looks at you, eyes purely focused on his as if you're anticipating more, gyuvin's heart feels lighter than ever. he feels the slight click one quora user said in his answer, albeit very softly, to the point he might've missed it.

“that's all i have today.” gyuvin shrugs, in his defense, you were always his highlight of the day, not some random drama he heard from gunwook every lunchtime, but he can't tell you that just yet. “boring.”

he smiles amusingly, “i might have something else cool in mind though. but i don't know if you'd wanna hear it.” mentally preparing on the spot is something gyuvin wouldn't wish even on his worst enemy.

you look at him incredulously, mouth slightly agape. “what? of course i'd wanna hear it.” setting your cup of ice cream down just to show gyuvin how interested you were.

“well, i’ve liked you for quite some time and —”

"so ricky was right!"

gyuvin feels his inner demons creep up on him right after, he swears he could hear them laughing at this very moment. “..so, you knew all this time? because of ricky?” you chuckle at how quiet his voice became.

“he told me last night since he thought you were being kinda weird lately, and he knew we always go out after school, so he warned me you might confess or something.” gyuvin puts his head in his hands, whining at his now spoiled confession, “i wanted this to be cute..”

it's an understatement to say ricky and gyuvin were on bad terms for a while, though you couldn’t stand the amount of shade they kept throwing at the other, so you forced them to make up on gyuvin’s fifth day of his villain origin story against ricky.

“you know i can't kiss you right now if your breath smells like the cheeseburger you ate, gyuvin.” you point out, snickering at gyuvin's exaggerated pursed lips and dramatic reaction to your words.

“the cheeseburger you bought for me. so technically it's not my fault.” he shrugs nonchalantly, a stark contrast to how he kept whining about wanting even a small peck a minute ago.

you watch gyuvin, who's on the verge of losing his mind at the thought of at least 10 minutes with no affection, “okay, fine. i'll drink something to get that burger taste out.” he surrenders quickly to your amusement.

laughing at his defeated walk to his fridge, “not my fault you wanted takeout after studying.” you heard him mumble under his breath.

“you agreed to it!” you retort, gyuvin comes back with the iced tea he ordered along. “of course i would, why would i say no to you?” he says before drinking.

“plus, if i didn’t confess to you on a whim last week, i’d probably kiss you right now and i wouldn’t know you hate cheese breath. imagine how horrifying that would be for me.”

once he makes sure any trace of cheese in his breath is gone, he smirks at you expectingly but in reality, it's his usual goofy smile. “can you give me a kiss now?” he says, paper cup still in his hand as if it was some cliche house party scene.

“now that i think of it, cheeseburger and iced tea breath is even more disgusting.”

“oh fuck you.”

[lingthusiasm]

Lingthusiasm Episode 88: No such thing as the oldest language

It's easy to find claims that certain languages are old or even the oldest, but which one is actually true? Fortunately, there's an easy (though unsatisfying) answer: none of them! Like how humans are all descended from other humans, even though some of us may have longer or shorter family trees found in written records, all human languages are shaped by contact with other languages. We don't even know whether the oldest language(s) was/were spoken or signed, or even whether there was a singular common ancestor language or several.

In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about what people mean when we talk about a language as being old. We talk about how classifying languages as old or classical is often a political or cultural decision, how the materials that are used to write a language influence whether it gets preserved (from clay to bark), and how people talk about creoles and signed languages in terms of oldness and newness. And finally, how a language doesn't need to be justified in terms of its age for whether it's interesting or worthy of respect.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Here are the links mentioned in the episode:

Lingthusiasm episode 'Tracing languages back before recorded history'

'My Big Fat Greek Wedding- Give me any word and I show you the Greek root' on YouTube

Glottolog entry for 'classical'

Wikipedia entry for 'Complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir'

Wikipedia entry for 'Bath curse tablets'

Wikipedia entry for 'Cuneiform'

Wikipedia entry for 'Mesopotamian writing systems'

Wikipedia entry for 'Home Sign'

Lingthusiasm episode 'Villages, gifs, and children: Researching signed languages in real-world contexts with Lynn Hou'

Wikipedia entry for 'Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language'

Wikipedia entry for 'Kata Kolok' (also known as Benkala Sign Language)

True Biz by Sara Nović on Goodreads

Gretchen's thread about reading True Biz

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.

Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, and our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

[llama-named-pizza]

Anyone talking yet about how Elon fired someone right after publicly mocking him, and for what? Asking Elon for some contact after being ignored for days?

Meet Haraldur Ingi Þorleifsson. Born in 1977 with a genetic congenital muscle disease that forced him to use a wheelchair since age 24. That didn't stop him, though. In 2014 he founded the company Ueno. Ueno was a company that designed digital brands for various companies. The company was pretty successful, since it won various awards and Haraldur was named Icelandic businessman of the year in 2019. You can see more things he's done on his website - http://haraldurthorleifsson.com/

In 2021, Haraldur sold his company to Twitter. Not just that! He sold it as a salary so that he could pay higher taxes. He ended up paying the second highest tax in Iceland for that year (for an individual).

Outside of his company, he also aided in a project called Ramp Up Reykjavík, the intention of which is to help in installing wheelchair ramps around the city for better wheelchair access everywhere. After the success of the first project, a second one called Ramp Up Iceland was launched, with the intentions of building 1000 ramps around the country. This seems to be the site for the project - https://www.rampur.is/ - it would be great if someone who knows Icelandic can help with explaining how to donate to it?

He also created Bueno, a project that, by his own words, "a non-profit that donates money to good people doing good things". He was given The Order of the Falcon by the president of Iceland, the Icelandic medal of chivalry for contributions to social issues. He was Person of the Year in Iceland in 2022. Honestly, there's probably even more.

And this is the person Elon Musk decided to take the mick out of.

Queue March 6th, 2023. Haraldur tweets out to Musk.

[id: Dear elonmusk,

9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees.

However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You've not answered my emails.

Maybe if enough people retweet you'll answer me here?]

[id: Elon Musk: What work have you been doing?

Haraldur: I would need to break confidentiality to answer this question here.

If you have your lawyers share in writing that I can do that then I'd be happy to discuss that openly!

Elon Musk: It's approved, you go ahead.]

[id: Two consecutive tweets by Haraldur: Among others:

- led the effort to save about $500k on one SaaS contract. Supported closing down many others

- led prioritization of design projects across the company to make sure we were able to deliver with a small team

- led design crits to help level up design across the company

- was hiring manager for all design roles

- worked on efforts to steer the company away from focusing on power users and on to younger users (because our user base is aging)]

[id: Elon Musk:

- Level up from what design to what? Pics or it didn’t happen.

- We haven’t hired design roles in 4 months

- What changes did you make to help with the youths?

Elon Musk: Would you say that you're a people person?

Attachment to the second tweet: A YouTube video named "What would you say...you do here?". The video depicts a conversation between two men, presumably higher ups, and a third man, presumably someone who works at the company. The conversation is condescending towards the third man, implying his job (a type of customer service) is useless. The video ends with the third man outbursting "What the hell is wrong with you people!" before he leaves the room - based on his body language (looking down when he almost bumps into a colleague), it is implied that he was fired.]

There are other threads with the two conversing, this one is the most notable though as this seems to be when Haraldur learns he is fired. Musk later attempts to imply that Haraldur didn't work, saying that Haraldur "claimed he had a disability that prevented him from typing". As I mentioned above, Haraldur has a disability that forced him into a wheelchair. This same disability is slowly forcing Haraldur to lose strength in his upper body and arms. Not to mention, you don't need to type to work, mister "Lines of code matters". Newsflash, people can do work without typing. Musk thinks he's the only one who can do work without typing, I believe.

It's unknown (to me) if Haraldur was fired during this exchange or before it. At any rate, don't forget that Haraldur was on a "Don't Fire" list, yet Musk still laid him off.

And definitely don't forget that Musk seems to be avoiding paying him.

[id: Tweet by Haraldur: But ok, fair enough, I've been laid off and I'm ok with that.

Next up though is finding out if Twitter will pay me what they owe me per my contract.

Or, will elonmusk, one of the richest people in the world, try to avoid paying?

Stay tuned!!]

[redflagshipwriter]

Reassembly 4

ch1 ch2 ch3

Kon and Peter: clown to clown communication commences.

New York had some massive craft stores. Peter had to direct Kon to one, which was fair but nerve wracking since he didn't actually know for sure it existed here. 

Luckily it did. 

Kon’s stepdad must have been loaded, or maybe Kon didn’t understand finances the same way that Peter did. He loaded up a cart with everything that Peter pointed out. He got two pairs of sewing scissors, which was a wild decision Peter could barely wrap his mind around. Was Kon planning to cut with both hands at one time, or for buddy crafting sessions? Those things were like fifty dollars a pop!

Some consultation with the staff helped them get metal decorative bits and three different sturdy mesh fabrics, one of which had glitter on it. They were all black. Peter eyed Kon for that, kinda impressed by the commitment to an aesthetic. Kon was like a little kid in the store, rolling down aisles on the back of the cart and tossing everything in without even checking prices. Peter found himself caught up in the euphoria and talking waaaay too much shit about projects he wanted to do, despite knowing he definitely couldn’t afford it. He really shouldn’t have. But Kon actually seemed interested when Peter talked about his design for a spidersuit- in a subtle way! And Kon just wheeled back to the big section and started trying to talk him around on the merits of red and blue tinted leather instead of athletic fabric.

It was funny, so he went along with it. And then Kon tipped the entire rolls into the cart and went in search of thread to match.

Peter stared at the back of his head for a long moment processing. Was he for real?

“Hey, I didn’t mean today,” Peter said, scrubbing a hand through his hair and trying to sound casual. “I don’t have any cash with me. I mean, I’ve got some, but not like that much-”

“Don’t worry about it.” Kon interrupted. His voice was a little weird. Almost short. Like he really didn’t want to talk about money. “I have that covered. Luther pays for whatever I want as long as I keep in contact.”

“...Okay, thank you,” Peter said, because that seemed like a great minefield to stay out of. He mentally reclassified Luther to an estranged and possibly financially abusive Dad, not a Stepdad. “Hey, if we’re sewing leather, I don’t think we can do that by hand. You want to look at the machines?”

Two industrial sewing machines and a serger later, Peter desperately and unsucessfully tried to talk Kon down from buying his very own bedazzler. He slouched behind Kon in the checkout line, wondering if this was just the kind of mistake a man had to make for himself. No way was he actually going to get enough use to make it worthwhile, right? Right?

The total made Peter feel kind of green. Kon paid for it all with a swipe and not so much as a blink. Then he bundled up all the bags and hefted them with no apparent effort. 

“Hey, let me help,” Peter protested, strategically snagging a couple. They had two sewing machines for jiminy cricket’s sake, that had to be heavy for a normal guy. 

A moment too late, he realized that Kon was a big strong guy who lifted a lot of weights. He’d probably deliberately taken the heavy bags because he had good reason to think he was stronger than Peter. Aw, fiddlesticks. Should he pretend this was heavy? Had he just given too much away? Kon seemed like a nice guy but Peter really didn’t know-

Kon just let the bags go with a bemused smile and a, “Thanks, dude.” He appeared to have not a single thought about the situation as he started walking to the door. 

Good. He didn’t know that these were like, heavy. It must be nice to be a big strong guy.

Ah, well. Peter trotted after him.

His day had gone off the rails. The library was open now for sure. He had planned to be there by now, refreshing his website design skills. Maybe he’d gotten an email back about a possible job. He really should check-

But it was only one day at the absolute most, Peter justified to himself. And it was really really nice to feel normal again and do something impulsive but harmless with another teenager.

They wound up in an unsettlingly clean, empty apartment. Kon carelessly threw their loot on a pure white rug and walked in without kicking his shoes off. He pulled off his leather jacket and threw it at the couch without looking in a show of coordination that Peter could respect.

Peter shucked his tennis shoes carefully and lined them up against the wall before he ventured in. Kon was already opening up the fridge and pulling out cans. He threw one to Peter. 

Peter caught it without a thought and then blinked at it. Carbonated juice? Weird, but probably good. He said, “Thanks, man,” as he cracked it open. He took a sip and made a face. It was good, but very weird. He looked at it again and noticed that it was also somehow a yogurt drink. Fruit carbonated yogurt was a concept that he had not encountered before. 

‘Don’t be a dork. It’s probably a rich person thing.’

Kon perked up like a dog hearing a car approach. “I have to-” He gave Peter a distracted smile. “I’ll be right back. I have to do something. Could you uh, entertain yourself? Maybe set up our stuff?” He was already edging to the door.

Peter shrugged, confused at the sudden turnaround but amiable. “Okay, I’ll wait,” he agreed easily. 

Kon was gone so fast that Peter almost thought there was something supernatural about it. He shut the door, bemused.

And he did what he said. He cut off tags and threw away packaging. He plugged in the machines and set them up, one on the desk and one on the table. He mused that the apartment was furnished like a fancy hotel room. He sat down on the sofa to wait. 

It took a while. He couldn’t track the time without turning on the evil janitor phone, but Peter was pretty sure that at least like, ten minutes passed. He shifted uncomfortably. Was this weird? 

Kon was awfully casual about leaving someone he’d just met in his space. Peter didn’t mind, exactly. He knew that Kon wasn’t dangerous to him because his spider sense hadn’t gone off at all. But Kon didn’t know that! Didn’t he, like, know about stranger danger? Objectively, Peter could be a pretty dangerous person. Not by temperament, but still…

He sat there for a while and worried about Kon’s self preservation skills. After that, he ended up just getting started on his spidersuit.

Frankly, the leather idea was… Well. He had to rethink some of his concepts, that was for sure. It was easy to make a spandex suit. The hardest part of that was dealing with the endless teasing from Mr. Stark. But leather didn’t have the same stretchiness to it. So he sketched out a few ideas, tossing out numbers and proportions and trying to figure out how much he needed around each joint to accommodate his spidery range of motion. 

And then he remembered that he uh, was doing this with another person present. 

The jumpsuit thing? It made sense when he was wearing Stark tech. There was a big benefit to having no seams. But there was a reason that his first ever suit had actually been in two pieces: that was how normal people dressed. 

‘I can’t exactly tell Kon that I’m a misplaced superhero.’ Peter choked down a laugh and borrowed the leather jacket off of the couch. It would work as a pattern.

He traced the main pieces onto the scrap material they’d gotten. It was a real pain in the ass to do without cutting the clothes apart, but he had a pretty good understanding of how a 3 dimensional object was made from a bent 2 dimensional object and figured out something that he was mostly confident was accurate enough.

Peter put his hands on his hips and looked at his tracing victoriously. Then he frowned. He looked at the jacket again.

Aww, man. He sadly started drawing another line, a couple inches inside the first one.

Kon was big, okay? Kon was a big strong jacked guy! Peter was pretty jacked for his size, too, shoulders way bigger than his waist. But he was uh, just built smaller. The shape would work for Peter, but the size was going to be way off if he just replicated the pattern. He bit his lip as he worked.

“What are you doing?”

Peter jumped four feet straight up in the air and flipped onto the couch. He landed in a spidery crouch on the balls of his feet with both hands splayed down for balance. 

He stared at Kon with wide eyes. Oh, shit. Oh, shit, oh fuck.

Kon laughed. “Sorry, did I startle you?” He draped himself over the couch backwards, head pointing towards the floor and knees over the backrest. The smell of smoke wafted over.

…smoke? What had he been doing?

“Yeah, sorry,” Peter said slowly. 

‘Did he- he didn’t notice that wasn’t normal? Or maybe that’s something normal humans can do here. I mean, Kon can fly!’

Holy shit, he was in the clear.

“I was going to cut myself a jacket pattern,” Peter explained. He got back off his crouch on the sofa cushion. He tried to be as normal as possible about it. Wow, he was killing this. “I used yours to make a pattern, hope that’s okay. I didn’t mark it up or anything.”

“It’s cool,” Kon assured. He tilted his jaw upwards so that he was watching Peter upside down. “Sorry about how long I was gone. I got caught up helping my neighbor’s cat.”

“...With a fire?” Peter asked before he’d thought about it.

Kon frowned at him. 

“I mean, you smell a little smoky,” Peter demurred. 

The other guy laughed nervously. “Yeah, my neighbor is a bad cook.”

Peter nodded and accepted that. He knew all about bad cooks. “Do you cook?” he wondered. “I’m not great, honestly, but I can do a few things.”

Kon perked up again- and wow, this guy was like the world’s largest, most handsome golden retriever sometimes. “Cooking? I ordered everything in- can you show me?” His eyes sparkled like he had never before considered that he could cook for himself. 

Wow. Peter smiled, but he silently judged Kon’s parents. Why didn’t he have any practical life skills? “Yeah, of course. What do you have for groceries? Your parents won’t mind if we cook?” He started cutting out his pattern pieces in the test fabric. He had 5 main ones- two sleeves, a back panel, and two front pieces. Shit, he’d need to get a zipper, wouldn’t he?

Kon snorted and let his head fall back and hit the bottom of the sofa. “I live alone,” he said. “No one is going to even notice.”

“...How old are you?” Peter asked.

“Two,” Kon lied blithely. 

Peter made an aahhhh of comprehension. Fair enough. “I would have guessed like, 17,” he said.

“Is that how old you are?” 

“...Yes,” Peter lied, remembering that’s what his ID said now. He finished cutting out the back panel and put it aside.

Kon flipped himself up and back onto his feet. “Cool. I’m like, 16,” he said. “Basically.”

…That was a weird thing to say, but Peter noted it. Maybe he meant he was 15 going on 16. That would actually make them the same age.

“Are you from here?” Peter decided to move the conversation into more neutral territory. “I am, I’m from Queens.”

“Baller,” Kon said. “Nah, I’m from Hawaii. I recently moved to the mainland. I still have a place back there, but I have some things to do over here and they’re always kinda last minute, you know?” He scrunched up his face. “Flying over everytime someone has an errand gets kinda tedious.”

“That’s true,” Peter agreed. 

Kon seemed to brighten. “Plus, my friends are here.”

“That makes a big difference.” Peter smiled at him, genuinely happy for the dude. Maybe he had a shit time at his high school in Hawaii. Maybe he got bullied for being too big and handsome and friendly. “Hey, did you think about how you want to add the mesh to your jacket? It is this jacket you wanna alter, right?”

“I want to replace the back panel,” Kon said instantly. “Like, the seams and structure are the leather, and then the back is see through. Wouldn’t that look so fucking cool?”

“It would look cool,” Peter had to admit. It was the kind of look he wouldn’t go for, personally, but he might if he had traps like Kon. Still, he had to check. “You don’t use this for protection, right?”

Kon stared at him blankly.

“Like, for riding a motorcycle or something?” Peter prodded. Wow, he felt awkward. This was dumb. Kon wasn’t actually a 2 year old with no life experience. He should have kept his mouth shut.

“No, but why would that matter?” Kon asked slowly.

Peter felt his shoulders ride up, like he could turtle away from the conversation “Uhhh, well the mesh isn’t going to be as strong as the leather. Obviously. So if you fell, you might get more scratched up. That’s all.” 

God, why did he talk? Why did he ever talk?

“Ohh,” Kon said. Then he huffed out a laugh. “Nah, that’s not an issue for me. I’m tougher than that. Also, I don’t ride a bike.”

“You don’t do anything dangerous, then,” Peter confirmed with some relief. “Cool. So, I was thinking that we should leave a bit of the leather to attach the mesh to. Gimme? Thanks.” He took the jacket. He barely noticed that Kon was giving him a really weird look. “So, if it was my project, I would cut out a rectangle…. Well, it curves by the neck, but still. I would cut out the leather, leaving like an inch beside each seam. What do you think?”

“Sounds good.” Kon took the jacket back and picked up one of the sets of scissors. He played with the scissors for a moment, opening and closing them at high speed. “Vroom vroom, let’s go.” He flung himself onto the floor, back pressed to the sofa, and started cutting.

…Peter took a moment to hope that he hadn’t given advice that would ruin Kon’s jacket. He went back to his project until Kon said, “I’m done. What’s next?”

“Which mesh do you want?” Peter asked. Then he sucked in a break. “Ah, fuck.” 

“What?” Kon was standing so fast that Peter didn’t actually see him move. He looked tense and ready for action.

Peter didn’t notice. He was pressing his thumb and forefinger on either side of his nose and wondering why he was such a dummy all the time. “We need to wash the fabric first,” he said apologetically. “Obviously not the leather. But the mesh needs to be washed. Where’s your washer?”

He gathered up the fabric and followed Kon’s instructions. Kon trailed behind, obviously curious. “Why do we need to wash it?” he asked.

“Uh, it’s never been washed before, right?” Peter explained. He shoved the fabric inside and started looking for detergent. “Usually fabric shrinks when you wash it for the first time. So if you cut it first, sew it in place, and then eventually wash it, it’ll shrink and like, warp, and ruin your stuff.” He grimaced at the memory. Kon had bought the supplies like the cost was nothing, but Peter remembered vividly the crushing disappointment and pain of accidentally ruining something he’d made. Fabric wasn’t expensive, but it was expensive when you didn’t have money.

‘I just lucked into this,’ Peter thought, and felt guilty. ‘I’m going to be able to have a spidersuit just because I happened to meet Kon and he was nice enough to spend money on me. Am I taking advantage of him?’

He put the detergent into the load and started the washer. Man… He needed to make sure he was a really good friend to Kon. Because that’s what this actually was, wasn’t it? Kon had immediately started hanging out with him and bought him things because he was lonely. He was trying to get a friend. It was kinda like Mr. Stark, except less pathetic, because Kon wasn’t a super rich superhero with awesome super friends who could just tell them he needed help. Kon was a teenager who lived on his own and had an estranged Dad and maybe like, no one else in his life. Did he even go to school? Was whatever was going on with him even legal?

“...Do you want to get started on lunch?” Peter suggested. He was hungry, but that wasn’t why he asked. They had time to kill and he wasn’t going to make Kon watch him work on the spidersuit. 

“Yeah! What do you want to make?” Kon followed him back to the kitchen and watched with a sort of pleasant curiosity as Peter checked the fridge and cupboards. Literally the only things sitting out on his countertop were a bottle of dish soap and a sponge. That was it.

The fridge had canned drinks and take out leftovers in it. The cupboards had two cups, one of which was storage for a fork, spoon, knife, and pair of chopsticks. 

Peter gave Kon a strained smile and bent to check the lower cupboards.

They were empty and eerily clean. There weren’t even any cleaners in there, so that was wild. “Kon,” he started, and then didn’t know where to go with it. “Do you own a pot or pan?”

“No, why?” Kon cocked his head at him. He honestly seemed just curious and not a bit embarrassed. “Should I?”

“...We need one to cook in,” Peter said. And a few other things. Did– did Kon not own any plates, either? 

‘I guess he wouldn’t need one if he gets take out and uses the containers all the time,’ Peter rationalized. ‘But who lives like that? Why didn’t someone teach him how to live like a person?’

And who was cleaning this place? It hadn’t seemed so weird when he entered. But now that he knew Kon lived alone, this was just bizarre. If Kon wasn’t living with a neatfreak parent and he didn’t own anything but dish soap, how was his apartment so clean? Did he have a maid service or something?

Kon was way weirder than Mr. Stark. Peter gave his new friend a queasy smile when he realized that. Man, this guy needed help. “So, if we don’t wanna do takeout, we need to go shopping,” Peter said. That was an understatement. “A pan, a couple of plates, and groceries.”

Kon pulled the wallet out of his back pocket and waved it around. “That’s fine. Lexy has it covered.”

‘Lexy? Not Luther? Is Lexy his stepmom or something? Or is that a nickname?’

Normally, Peter would feel bad about spending someone else’s money. But this time he felt a kind of vicious satisfaction in the idea of running up this dude’s credit cards. Wherever Kon’s Dad was, he was a dick and he owed his kid some vegetables and a frying pan. “Yeah, okay. Do you have reusable bags we should grab on our way out?”

“I don’t think so. What are those?” Kon asked.

“...We’ll buy some,” Peter decided. “They’re usually made of canvas or something. It’s so that you don’t have to buy the one use plastic bags all the time. Let’s go.”

“Cool.”

Kon in the group chat: guys I have made a CIVILIAN FRIEND. 

Bart: neato im happy for u!

Cassie: big if true

Tim: What’s his ssn i just wanna check something

Kon: I don’t think he knows I'm a superhero. It’s nice, but is that weird?

Cassie: probably because you’re not famous enough yet sorry

Tim: get gud

Bart: get good

Kon: fuck u guys. I’m undercover. I’m being so normal.

[stateswscarlet]

Hi Scarlet! I saw your twt bio said no dms so I thought I would share my successes here that I got from your threads and content!

Bit of a background: I hovered over from the a+p girlies after affirming for 9-10 months for all my desires, using everything they taught and even putting full faith into thoughts and science manifesting. I would affirm almost nonstop (during work, school, even as I was eating/talking to others) for the entire time and I eventually got super frustrated! Not a single manifestation came in or even the slightest movement, maybe a butterfly and a car here and there (looking back at it its because I accepted seeing them internally and didn’t contradict that state, it wasn’t even the affirming). In March-ish I found your account on my timeline and previously I would ignore any states related information because I thought states were the same as dominant thoughts, but something about your thread at the time caught my attention which led me down a rabbit hole (positively!) of consuming your threads. I realized a lot of it actually made sense and explained why I didn’t see success so far.

Anyways so after a few weeks of learning about states I decided to stop overconsuming and stick to your account and edward art ONLY for all my manifestation needs. It was a little hard breaking free from the affirming mindset but I decided to focus on embodying how it would feel if I no longer had to worry about my thoughts and allowed that to wash over me. I used your “embody being the solution” thread SO SO much and I realized I was able to quickly solve all my internal issues using that because anytime I felt stuck, I just had to assume the feeling of being unstuck and what the ideal situation would be! I also fell in love with fulfilling my imagination and although I did care about experiencing it in the 3D, it was more like me not even thinking of it reflecting because its a LAW. I remember you saying you don’t even have to think about stuff reflecting because it does so anyways and my only role is to naturally give it to myself. So here is a list of some of my *bigger* manifestations that came in within a month-ish of me APPLYING states of being after I learned about it:

SP and I got back together after 8 months no contact and 11 months separation

My top choice graduate school which rejected me months ago actually reaching out to me offering me a spot saying the rejection was a “system error”

Free coachella tickets all expense paid in a luxury hotel that sponsored not only me but my boyfriend and 3 friends

My favorite makeup brand randomly sending me a HUGE package of makeup that I never ordered or asked for (I wanted more makeup from this brand)

My dad receiving a random check to clear his entire credit card debt of around a decade

A better job for my boyfriend that pays him double of his last one and has flexible hours that he didn’t need to apply for or interview and hes been loving it!

Free first class plane tickets to Bali this summer! I had already booked normal ones months before but last week I got an email saying my party had randomly been selected for a free upgrade. This happened like a day or so after I for fun assumed the state of someone who has a live of luxury.

I have other smaller successes but these are some of my main ones!I really want to thank you scarlet you have honestly changed my life and I can’t believe it truly was that easy all along! Thank you for your amazing threads, please continue dropping more (I literally have your notifs on haha)

AWW YAYYYYYAYAYS IM SO HAPPY TO HEAR THAT!! You’re absolutely amazing🫶🏼

I dont even use this platform but just thought I would share this ❤️

[chershare]

Comments

So I've been seeing stuff about commenting lately going around. Reading them and having readers assume that they "bothering" authors or "being weird" about it is blows my mind.

Please bother me??? Be weird??? I am also very weird so please be weird with me about my weird little fanfic???

Where did this "don't interact with the author" thing come from? Where did the "don't talk to other people in comment threads" thing come from?

I routinely go through and reread comments on my fanfic. It reminds me that other people also enjoy the fact that I share my labors of love and occasional silliness. Sometimes it's people yelling at me - or each other - about something I did, but they still interact.

I love repeat commenters! I love seeing the progression of the story through their eyes and words! It's so fun to know that little thing was noticed by at least one person even if it's been years since the original posting or update!

Sometimes I see the Hit counter on Ao3 and notice it jump by a lot, but that I don't get any comments. It's usually on a completed fic that I notice traffic with no interactions. Why don't people comment on completed fic anymore? Why don't people comment at all anymore? I don't care how old it is if you liked it I still wanna know what you thought! I want to know if you liked it! Kudos are great but sometimes people just hit that button automatically and i wanna knoooooow.

Just because it's from years ago doesn't mean I don't remember how much I loved writing it. It doesn't mean I don't still love it. I wrote it for a reason, because I wanted to, the same reason I shared it with you. There's no time limit on love or appreciation, and no one will be mad if you show and communicate your own thoughts.

I would love those thoughts as well. Like, okay, if you thought it was shit just say nothing - and don't put it in your bookmark notes please jesus christ we can read those - and hit the X button. Life is hard enough please don't shit on my labors of love.

Anyway.

Did you like a certain line? Were you angry about a cliffhanger even if you could read the next chapter immediately? Did something confuse you before it was answered later? Was it not answered?

Hell, people don't even seem to Kudos very often anymore. It used to be I'd get a laundry list of Kudos in my email every day. Now I really only get more of them when I update, and only for a few days. (which might be a me problem yikes maybe I'm just not cool in the fandoms anymore (＞﹏＜) ).

Anyway, I love comments and definitely go through and reread them often. Reminding myself of things people liked or found or just felt something about. I reread the incoherent rambling and the quoting of my own sentences back at me. I reread the essays and the screaming. Everything, I reread it.

Sure, I'm really bad at answering comments, but I still read them. I still want to know what you thought, how you feel.

I write for me but I share for you readers. It's just nice to know I'm sharing for a reason.

[kytsuine-blog]

Ok so I'm going to do a better, Tumblr-focused writeup soon and also track down those blogs to talk about them more specifically, but I fell for a misinformation scheme today and want to talk about how and why. Here's an email I sent my little cousin about it.

This morning, I encountered a Tumblr post talking about the TikTok ban and the government's attempt to severely curtail digital privacy rights as part of it.

I had heard that the TikTok ban was currently up for debate in the Senate, after passing the House with strong bipartisan support. I was not surprised by the information in the screenshots; it matched with things I knew the government had tried to do often in the past, and often under similar circumstances. I looked up the bill linked to verify, and yeah, it was an active bill that had been introduced in the Senate. (I should have realized then that there was an issue with what I was reading, but in my defense it was about 6:00 AM, and I was just glancing over things in the parking lot before going in to work.)

Concerned for the digital privacy and security of my family, and especially the ones I can't just drive to, I drafted the following message to you:

"I haven't had time to read all the way through the RESTRICT act that the Senate proposed, but summaries I've seen indicate that as written it's a massive overreach. It's better known as the TikTok ban; the news has been focusing on that part as it passes through Congress so far.

I always sign my emails to you with my public key. Both of you should look up how to use PGP to send me encrypted emails with that. It may become even more important soon to normalize secure encryption in Internet communications, and there may also be things that we wish to discuss that state or federal laws may frown on in the future.

I planned to introduce topics related to computer and information security more gradually, but making sure that talking about those is possible at all is an important part of that.

Congress.gov page on the bill

Tweet thread"

(As an aside, I do still think that normalizing encryption is a very worthwhile thing to do; it makes the web a safer place for activists and informants needing a way to communicate without surveillance, without being singled out as enemies of the surveillance state.)

I then checked through the notes of the Tumblr post to see if there was more context I wanted to share, and noticed people who called out a detail that I missed. That post was first posted in March of 2023, a little over a year ago. It refers to an entirely different bill than the TikTok ban which is currently going through the Senate, one which activists successfully stalled (and likely killed) last year. This year's bill is much more targeted (though, as implemented, I still have issues with it); its text can be found here.

This is a classic example of how misinformation spreads. I did not have bad intent when I went to share that commentary on last year's bill with you, and I did not find it from someone with bad intent (in fact, she subsequently shared a commentary I posted on the actual bill, in reply to her original incorrect post.) From what I can tell, on March 14, a number of mostly inactive politically-focused blogs all shared that post directly from the original poster (not from someone who had it in their feed, like a normal Tumblr interaction). Each of these was tagged with fairly popular political tags. None of these blogs has posted since, keeping it at the top of their page to get more eyes on it.

Misinformation is spread deliberately, and it takes caution and checking of your biases to combat it. I almost fell for this one because I expected it to be true. I should have checked on it before sharing anything at all. Looking at it now, I ask: who benefits from this?

Most directly, proponents of the current TikTok ban benefit from activist efforts being directed towards a functionally dead bill. This, apparently, includes the strong majority of the House, on both sides of the aisle; it may be assumed that it also includes the government's surveillance agencies (as it is easier to compel data from American companies than from foreign ones, particularly Chinese ones). It could also include other social media sites, especially those like YouTube and Instagram that compete directly with TikTok in the realm of algorithmically driven short videos.

More abstractly, though, this misinformation benefits the status quo, and conservatism as a whole. By causing people who are invested in the TikTok ban (mostly left-leaning people) to engage with more stringent and concerning bills, stress is increased on activists and burnout becomes more likely. Targeting the mental health of left-leaning activists is a tactic we've seen multiple times recently in misinformation campaigns; another example is the "the Guardian is doing a story on DIY HRT" hoax that recently circulated among my trans friends. This type of stressful lie misinformation serves the dual purpose of causing activists to burn out and decreasing trust among communities that share it.

This is a new specific strategy to me, but the solution is the same as ever. Check your sources when you speak publicly, check how your biases affect what ideas seem "clearly correct", and aim for your statements to maximize quality, rather than quantity. That's a discipline I still need to refine, but it's not hard. Just requires a bit of diligence.

[foone]

The Four Candles

I got kicked out of the SCP foundation after wasting over 80 million dollars to contain an artifact that I genuinely thought was incredibly dangerous. It was a set of candles in a gold frame, which never burnt down and could not be extinguished. Just weird, right?

(reposting of a formerly-twitter thread where I made up an SCP fanfic joke, under the readmore)

That's what we all thought and it was simply kept in a safety glass box in one of the many warehouses of weird things, until The First Event. January, 1981, it's being moved as part of a cleanup and someone notices its changed: one of the candles is out.

We'd previously tried sticking this thing in a vacuum, under water, smothering it in CO2 or in a pile of asbestos… Nothing. You can't snuff out these candles. And one just went off while no one is looking? That can't be good.

So obviously we have to upgrade this thing in severity. Out of the warehouse, into a separate containment area, and we do endless tests. Nope, we can't relight it. We tried.

But now we've got 24/7 redundant monitoring, cameras and guards, we've got water and fire and everything else on hand in case another event happens and we need to try to douse or relight it in a hurry.

And we wait. Endless beta tapes (and later, hard drives) are filled up with footage of these candles burning unchangingly. Guards get assigned to watch it and then retire a decade later, having never seen it change.

But 20 years into observation, a second candle just goes out, without any fuss. We hit every panic button we can find.

Endless studies are done. This thing was found in a ruin in North West England? Send every researcher we can spare there. Are there any legends or folklore or stories or ANYTHING about this?

Because it took 20 years to go from 3 to 2. We can do math. If this thing is counting down at a steady pace, we have only 40 years to get ready for the last candle to go out.

And we don't know what happens then.

Maybe nothing.

Or maybe there will be nothing left.

We work backwards; we only found the candles in the 70s, but if it goes down by a candle every two decades, then maybe it was created in the early 60s? We search for any clues about what might have happened in the 1960s in Manchester and Liverpool.

I'm on the ground with another field researcher when I get a message that we're all being recalled, immediately. No explanation.

I get back to the foundation site and all my researchers are being reassigned. My boss wants to talk to me. I check the candle monitoring site on my phone: we're still on two. I'm confused.

I enter my boss's office. It's uncharacteristically dark. She slides me a printout, on fan fold paper still with the little dot matrix tractor holes along the sides. It's an email.

Another researcher had a random hunch, and looked into the monitoring records, specifically as to when the second candle went out. November 29th, 2001. And the previous one was unknown, but happened sometime between December 1st, 1980 and mid-January 1981.

My boss asks if these dates look familiar to me, and if I listen to much music.

I think I may know. She tells me they were able to confirm the second event happened within 5 minutes of the time of death.

The candles are going back in the warehouse, and only a simple webcam will be used to monitor for the next event, just in case it proves us wrong.

And she gives me a lecture about how the purpose of the SCP Foundation is to secure, contain, and protect... From dangerous anomalous artifacts and people and places. Things that break all our scientific theories and could cause untold devastation if they get loose...

NOT A MAGIC CANDLE THAT TELLS YOU HOW MANY LIVING BEATLES THERE ARE IN THE WORLD AT THE MOMENT.

[honeyedboneset]

NOTICE: This post is under construction as of aug 17, 2024. it is not up to date. hello! i'm boneset (or bone). thanks for stopping by my super-specific search thread! if interested, please leave a reply or dm me!

a bit about myself: she/her. I'm currently in my late 20's and have been writing/roleplaying in some shape or form for 12+ years. i'm in grad school (and will be for awhile) and work full time in mental healthcare. occasionally, days are wild. 

when it comes to writing, i generally write somewhere between 500-1k words a post. the shorter the post, the faster i can write. i definitely value someone who's writing fits with mine over length or anything like that. i'm also super flexible when it comes to post rate. if it takes a little bit, that's totally fine! especially if we do build a rapport. i want this to stay as something that's fun for both of us. it's a hobby, so it comes after everything else.

doubling. i play a canon for you, you play one for me, and i love every character as my own. OR we both play two ocs who fall in love against their will. Idc.

m!canon x f!oc preferred (or m!oc x f!oc). I know who I am. I have no shame. I’m so super cautious about m// and f// after years of running into folks treating it as a fetish.

ooc chatting. for the rps that have survived my hiatuses, it's been because we made friends, or at least friendly. i like talking, sharing head canons, all that stupid crap. tldr: i need someone to send memes to.

ooc over discord, please, after we’ve graduated to that. DMs first if you don’t mind.

email, discord, gdocs, and tumblr in order of preference for the roleplay but I'm open to any.

i am a sap for romance. less so for super slow burns. sue me. I can barely read slow burn much less write it.

500-1000 words is my sweet spot for responses, but i'm not that fast of a writer, depending on what's going on. see: why i like ooc.

hard limits: be 18+ (21+ preferred) | will not write with people who identify as male (he/him) | incest | fetish stuff | abo | pwp | pedophilia | furries/beastiality | explicitly written sexual assault | abusive relationship dynamics between main characters | heavy substance abuse | main settings being medical | most highschool settings/underage characters | genuine love triangles or infidelity between main characters

pairings and all below the break!

for fandoms, I’m going to list what I’m looking to play the oc in. I am super duper happy to play nearly any canon character for you.

the walking dead:  ＊i haven't seen the spin-off series. super comfortable going as AU as we want. ＊looking for: glenn (pls pls pls), daryl ＊will play: rick, daryl, shane, negan, others probably ＊some vibes: people who knew each other prior to the zombies meeting each other again after, dead rising vibes, traveling through the wilderness, overgrown and rundown towns and cities, towns that have gone mad, human enemies, natural threats, fluff, megamalls, amusement parks, adventure, horror, fluff, uneasiness in the calm, found family, hesitant allies

the last of us: ＊i've played both games and watched the show ＊looking for: tommy miller, m!oc ＊will play: joel, ellie, others, m!oc ＊some vibes: FIX IT JESUS, protecting family, human enemies, natural threats, antagonistic towns, lost in the wild, weird periods of domestic easiness followed by hurt/comfort hell red dead redemption: ＊i've played rdr and rdr2. kind of familiar with revolver. ＊looking for: charles smith ＊will play: arthur, john, dutch, others (but not micah) ＊some vibes: railroad turmoil, dutch has lots of plans (very little outcomes), high society meets the old west, running from the law, causing problems, adventures in the big city, trying to leave old lives behind, forbidden love, enemies to lovers

fallout: ＊i've played 1, 2, 3, 4, 76 & NV. mainly looking for nv. ＊looking for: m!oc ＊will play: ask for canons, m!oc ＊some vibes: causing chaos in the wastes, embracing the local cryptid status of the player character, toxic people everywhere, attempting to survive, mercenaries, prostitutes, salt of the earth managing to do some good against their will, traveling to other locations

original(ish) story vibes:

zombies! please zombies. love it. media inspo: l4d, deadrising, resident evil, twd, george romero

fantasy. royalty, pirates, mermaids, adventures, curses, and extra doses of romance. some assassins? hiding from responsibility? childhood friends to lovers and enemies finding common ground. media inspo: ACOTAR, lord of the rings, ever king, damsel, fire emblem, (for modern of these vibes) new protectorate by abigail kelly

urban fantasy vibes. witches and monsters, and romance and weirdness. maybe some monsters. eldritch beings. small town, rural america? media inspo: x-files, teen wolf, supernatural, stay a spell by juliette cross, scooby doo, being human, folk haven by lauren connolly, old gods of appalachia

cowboys! Modern? Traditional? I do not care i love cowboys and the south, just minus all of those….you know, issues. media inspo: red dead redemption, man from snowy river, yellow stone, lyla sage books

[azure-firecracker]

Hello! For your TXF ask game (great idea btw!), please may I ask the following:

N - Now you’ve been given a pen and a chance to write your own episode. Describe it!

I - If you could change one thing about the show, what would it be? Why would you change it, how would you make it better?

Thank you :)

Ooh two fun ones! Thank you! It got long so I put my answers under the cut lol.

The ask game is here.

N: Because I am never done fixing the Season 2 kidnapping ratio.

This episode takes place sometime between One Breath and Irresistible. Throughout the episode, the viewers can see Mulder’s apparent fear for Scully whenever danger arises, and he throws himself in front of her to the point of recklessness whenever danger appears. The terror that her abduction has left in him is very raw. Scully, in this episode, is more reserved (à la beginning of Irresistible).

A cult is targeting victims who believe they’ve been abducted by aliens. They’re found alive - for all intents and purposes - but they’ve simply ceased to function. Scully determines some fancy medical condition as the cause of death, but Mulder is convinced that it’s abduction-related. The more the investigation goes on, the more he becomes convinced that Scully is the next target.

At one point, they follow some trail of evidence and they find one of the cult members who begins doing some sort of magic ritual. Mulder panics and tries to get Scully out of there, but he ends up getting her hurt (nothing major) and the cult member escapes. Scully and Mulder fight about her needing protection or not and Mulder’s paranoia - stuff they never talked about but should have.

Scully, at this point, discovers that one of the victims was actually delusional and had never been abducted at all. She begins reviewing some medical files again and notices that parts of the prefrontal cortex of every victim has been damaged (magically but damaged). She puts it together and realizes that the common thread between the victims isn’t the abduction but their belief. She rushes off to find Mulder - but he’s gone! Because he ditched her and went off to find the cult by himself! Without realizing he was a target!

Anyway Mulder is doing a voiceover as he drives off to the middle of nowhere to find the cult and it’s all about how sorry he is for everything and how he doesn’t want to leave Scully but he can’t lose her again (think End Game email coded). BUT the cult does this spell thing to make his car drive off the bridge and they drag him (unconscious) out of the river.

(Did we really think I was writing this without a damsel in distress Mulder moment?)

Anyway Scully puts together the cult’s location somehow and goes after him. She gets to do a high-stakes negotiation with the cult leader when Mulder is literally about to be ritual sacrificed and they’re going to drain his life force out of him (scary!). By the way he’s conscious but very out of it. She convinces the cult leader to let him go but the rest of the cult goes bananas and she has to fight them. Slay.

Anyway she wins and then she kneels down, face full of worry, as he opens his eyes, and they don’t say anything but they do hug.

We get a post-climax resolution to their fight where Scully is playing doctor and they’re talking about protection again and Mulder says he never thought she couldn’t handle herself but he was scared of losing her again, and Scully says don’t you think I feel that way too when you do stupid stuff like this? Anyway it’s not completely resolved but it’s a heart to heart. There’s probably a forehead kiss in here too.

But the last shot of the episode is Mulder leaving the office and Scully, who has been very calm and collected, if defensive, this whole episode, starts shaking and sinks to the floor as one single tear slides down her face.

Fade to black.

Would you watch this episode? Let me know in the comments!

I: TBH the Season 2 kidnapping ratio is my answer for this but I’ll talk about something else.

Disclaimer: I talk about racism and cultural insensitivity in this section. I am white, half Jewish, American, and I know a little bit about folk music. Please listen to fans of color on this subject when they speak on it, with more weight and attention than you give me.

The cultural episodes. The episodes that center a non-white or “other” culture in some way, and are usually done with good intent but poorly executed. First of all, get some goddamn writers of color in the room. And second of all, don’t bite off more than you can chew. These are nuanced issues, yes, but you have 45 minutes. Pick an argument and stick to it.

Kaddish was the only episode that did this well in my opinion. The episode had very strong themes of antisemitism, and its message on antisemitism was clear - it’s bad. Plus, the score actually used accurate Yiddish music instead of that goddamn flute.

Burn the flute.

Episodes like Teliko, Hell Money, and El Mundo Gira all tried to make similar points about marginalized groups, but the execution fell short because the marginalized groups in question were both villains and victims. There’s nothing wrong with having that nuance, but 45 minutes of a tv show that’s mostly about campy sci fi adventures is not the place for it. The result of this dilemma is that it’s unclear whether these episodes are trying to make a political point or if they’re just being lowkey racist.

So. If you MUST do these “cultural episodes.”

Pick a simple message and stick to it. Immigrants are being abused and it’s bad. Racism is bad. Antisemitism is bad. Etc. Etc. Your writers room has shown that you do not have the capacity for anything more complex.

Do not make up folktales for the purposes of your story. Use real ones or have the villain be something else.

If you’re going to have characters speak in a non-English language, cast actors who are fluent in that language (looking at you El Mundo Gira).

And for fuck’s sake, actually research the traditional music of the cultures you’re talking about and get rid of that fucking flute.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[hamofjustice]

I don't want to just painstakingly copypaste my triple-layered self-QRT thread about it on Twitter and any other ones floating around but

I am very emotionally invested in seeing Penny, Arven, and (personally) especially Nemona again in the Scarlet/Violet DLC, after GF followed up the best 3 hours of Pokemon game story ever by having to abruptly cut it off the second these lonely kids finish opening up to you and say you can hang out with them anytime. Which you never do. It was some pretty painful whiplash, and I was sure the main point of the DLC was to relieve that, especially when their arcs don't seem quite complete yet. Very clever, evil marketing! But uh... well... about that...

It is very worrying that aside from a little "the story so far" montage, they have not been seen or mentioned in promotional material/footage whatsoever. Y'know, DLC for the game that's about how the real treasure was the friends you found along the way (literally, in Nemona's case), and even if your family and support systems fail you, you still have each other? Written from the heart by someone who said Arven's story is inspired by their own life? With the sappy Ed Sheeran song about reaching out for connection with others, that also seems to be named after Team Star? The game where one of the features the devs seemed most proud of was going on adventures and into boss fights with 3 of your friends? The game that ended with a fully functional and quite immersive bonding adventure with these characters you'd gotten to know and care about, that basically everyone thought was the best part of the game by a mile, and were left wishing the whole game was like that?

Yeah, I (and everyone else) have been driving around alone in that game for 8 months ever since finishing that story. 8 months of minor updates with a ton of the beloved characters functionally or literally gone, while we go around doing online stuff with nothing else to do in the world, with a single player postgame more barren than we had on Game Boy Color (thank god for mints and bottle caps though). I'm left just... wanting to go back to the way things were before I beat the game. Not to be overly dramatic, but this world I supposedly saved feels like one I failed to save. And I'm getting really frustrated. (The framerate hasn't gotten any better, either, but this isn't about that.)

It's like Game Freak (or whoever forced this thing out a year early, or both) never expected you to boot the game up again once you got bored of the Ace Academy Tournament, which the game acts like is the entire total of what you could want from being friends and "rivals for life" with your squad (I mean I'm the sicko that loves Tera Raids, so I'm not that bored, but still). It makes a bunch of implications that your adventure is just beginning, and then it totally just... isn't. Why is the E4 building closed? Why do you only rematch the gyms once? And most of all, for me personally: Why did we get access to our friends' rooms if there's nothing to do or talk about there? (Besides look for character study clues, which they have lots of)

All they could come up with when asked to write a newsletter email about what you can still do in S/V and why you should still be playing it was Raids. That was it. Remember when you had an endless challenge in the Tower/Maison that you could optionally take on with a bunch of story characters as your partners instead of alone, that motivated you to keep getting stronger bit by bit? Remember rematching gym leaders multiple times and watching their teams grow and evolve each time? Yeah, there's none of that here, because that would take more than a week to implement. If you want friends and you want battles, you'll have to do it yourself online now. They're not allocating any budget for that.

Your rival for life, who's so excited you're on her level now, who seems to have the passion and skill to be the your Battle Tower gameplay loop by herself if she wanted to, who battles you for hours offscreen with multiple teams, whose whole character arc is that she finally has someone she can do this with... is fully static, with one kinda mediocre team that never grows or changes. She can't keep up with you and doesn't know what items or EVs are. You have to get lucky to even see her at all. She is no more your rival than your Home Ec teacher is (no offense Saguaro, you're cool too). I think it's really, really sad.

I'm left nostalgic and pining to go back, having to cope through fanfic because my character can't spend the day with - or even so much as take a new trainer card photo with - the girl who said they might be her greatest treasure, without resetting my save, because she and the others are standing somewhere that the camera and internet features are both disabled.

Like, legitimately, I want to keep being friends with these kids the way we were before, and have the ability to do post-game stuff with them, like being able to go out and adventure together whenever in some basic, non-story capacity, or just, I don't know, maybe give them more than one line of dialogue in their rooms? I don't want a new region or new characters. Not yet, anyway.

I thought I was preordering the continuation of their story and rewarding the company for making me care about Pokemon so much again.

But, uh... I'm really worried that the people who own these characters do not care. And as I said on the trailer's comments before they turned them off (lol), I'll be pissed enough to not buy any more games if I'm right, and we're forced to abandon these poor kids. At the very least, it's some pretty garbage marketing to leave the possibility of that up in the air. If nothing else, that is a frustration that I'm going to keep talking about for a while, even if it ends up being fine.

I thought it was impossible, and I was being silly. Why not have our friends in cute new outfits as promo art when the DLC was first announced, and all they had was promo art? Seems like an easy slam dunk. Oh, they didn't yet? Well, I'm sure it'll happen eventually.

And then they weren't in the trailer either, months later. Are they trying to sell us on it or not?

The whole reason I want the DLCs. Still not a single word acknowledging them, just that little opening montage. Still no hints of how the DLCs have anything to do with Area Zero's ongoing story, either. How is a sea turtle linked with a landlocked crater?

So like... At this point I have to assume both DLCs start with you making your friends cry as they're left alone again, arbitrarily excluded from events they're more than qualified to be invited to, to make room for some new dweebs we don't need, who won't be given nearly enough time to be as compelling as Nemona, Arven, and Penny were, because that makes the trailer look more like a new game, and that's the only way they know how to advertise. More. New. Buy. Consume. Throw away. Buy. Consume. Throw away. I should assume this so that whatever we get can't be worse.

But they're probably not (self-aware enough / allowed / both) to write that. Your lonely / orphaned / anime-binging friends might just cheer you on for getting to go do something cool like being forced to train a new legendary because the story said so, then go back to being statues with as much relevance to your life as an NPC in a third story apartment that tells you what a hold item is.

Can't I just live in Paldea with my friends, in the version of the game we would have gotten if it was finished, instead of being pulled into these adventures for the sake of looking good in a trailer? (which it doesn't btw lol) It's not an unrealistic thing to want when that's what it briefly was, and I was so excited that it would keep being that I've been thinking about it this entire time.

...

I hope I'm wrong about all this, and next year I can look back on this post, happy that the DLC did actually allow us to continue to take care of these characters, conclude Area Zero's mysteries in a satisfying way, fix up some technical issues, let us relive some things that are currently once-only (including letting us see that photo album our character made but we had to screenshot ourselves), and make it fun to keep playing for years afterward, and let that be the model for games going forward, but uh...

They really are not showing me anything I care about in the game I desperately want to care about, that I saw - and wanted to defend - the heart in, despite the circumstances it was produced under, and that really worries and frustrates me. The surprisingly many great things about this game got my hopes up for an awesome postgame full of warm fuzzy feelings and cool things to do 8 months ago that just didn't deliver, and now, I'm not sure if they'll even let me pay for one, at this rate, because they're not advertising one.

Just throw us a scrap. If whoever's in charge here stops caring about this story, I won't care about the next one.

Anyone else feeling this?

[kuwdora]

For the vidding asks: 10, 12, 21!

10 What was the best comment you've received on one of your vids?

Let me tell you about a comment that fundamentally rattled my soul to the core and made me extremely hyper-vigilant, but eventually I got less rattled by it and absorbed it into my creative process because it was so incredibly helpful for me and made me a better vidder.

I made this due South Fraser/RayK vid in 2007, it was my second ever vid I was trying to make. It's called Better Off. If you look at my original vid notes I wrote like 500 words talking about how much I hate I my vid. How much it sucks, how it’s awful. How I was apologizing for it and basically giving up on the vid. The whole self-flagellating nine yards. I got a lot of great feedback on it, like over 20 comments, so despite me hating my own vid of new hobby I was learning to do, people fucking loved it.

HERE is the comment thread that changed my life. Where j-s-cavalcante kindly said the greatest most wonderful things to me but also made me go 👀:

I wish you hadn't waxed eloquent on the subject of how bad this vid is, because now I feel like an idiot posting this comment: I LOVED it. It makes me think, it scares me, it makes me see DS in a slightly different way, and it's fascinating with ALL those action scenes and blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments. And, OMG, Dangerous!Fraser is freaking me out a little, here, and making me want to write, and that's one of the best things I think vids do for me. I find the good ones inspiring. I don't think anyone has quite dealt with this issue in a vid before, certainly not in this depth. But the idea that Fraser is deliberately risking Ray's life in these "wildly bizarre ways" for some unknown, maybe pathological, reason of his own is…scary and believable and intense! The use of so many of their action scenes all cut together so quickly is really, really effective in getting the point across. The song is cool and it inspired shivers up my back. Wow. (It also brings Speranza's "Wildly Dangerous Ways" (http://www.trickster.org/speranza/WDWays.html) to mind--one of my all-time favorite F/K fics.) And you did something so clever that I really loved…I'm not sure if I can express it properly, but there are a few clips that seem very obvious choices for the lyrics in question, such as the shot of Damian Kowalski on the " who's your daddy?" line and the scenes from Ray's messy apartment on the "I'll be hiding in your dirty room" line (there are more---"I'll not wake you," and the airport lines, etc.). And when those scenes show up matched to those lines, they seem like too-facile choices, but then in the very next line+clip combination, you reinterpret them: "I'm your daddy now" has Fraser holding the heavy bag for Ray, and so on. I found that very effective and just…intelligent. I think it's an intelligent vid. But you say it sucks, so I guess I don't know any better. I'll just live in blissful ignorance…and play it for writing inspiration…. :)

Dear asker, friend. @marahsarie. I want you to know that when I made this due South fanvid I was 100% sure in my belief that I was making a happy, intense adventure vid. Wholesome. Action. My beta sapote at the time was trying to say the same things j-s-cavalcante was saying but I was not grasping it. So when I read j-s’s comment I lost my goddamn mind. How could I have failed to understand what the fuck I was making? How other people might see it?? I was embarrassed and confused and and and...then I got it.

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiii...didn’t realize that the song I was using was the singer was about a cult leader. But because this song was about a cult leader and that was the reading that people who watched the vid were taking away from it... everyone lost their minds. It was a darker interpretation of Benton Fraser than anyone had ever seen in a vid before. Pathological? Fraser? In my vid? I guess it's more likely than I thought.

I stewed and chewed on this comment and reviewed my 300 emails I exchanged with sapote to understand what the fuck I was thinking when I heard the lyrics and how I made something so different than what I thought I was making. I wrote over 2k words about song choice and what I learned, which you can check out here if you want to see what thinking about song choice was like so early in my vidding experience.

That comment was so full of love, it was supportive, and specific and surprising. It meant the world to me. It made me think about how to intentionally approach a song, try to understand what the song is or might be about based on the song lyrics themselves, the singer’s confirmation of the song meaning, and what other people might interpret a song as. I also started thinking about how and when I will want to vid with or against specific song narratives and how I could make a vid successful in the process depending on what I did to make my case. Whether it was with symbolism or metaphor or technical efforts. Sometimes I still end up with happy accidents (as well as intentional horror, hahh) and there is always the possibility of more unintentional accidents and horrors because my brain is very squishy. I'm still human and I've fucked up before and will probably fuck up again but I will try to do my to know what's going on in what I make.

Truly that was the best comment ever. It really really helped me think critically about my work and how others might approach it even when I do or don't know what they might see. And it was just so kind and nice and reassuring and it really got me excited to make more vids after that, too.

— 12 Most underrated vid that you wished had gotten more views?

My Maya Herrara vid from Heroes! Racist fans were fucking awful about Maya as portrayed by Dania Ramirez. Fuckshit racists. The Heroes writers wrote the most racist shit, too, and did her character a great fucking disservice. It was awful. I’m still fucking pissed about it. You can read my extensive notes about Maya I wrote at the time on the original vidpost.

I loved Maya and wanted to vid her. Even though I wish the show Wasn’t Like That. I wish that she had something better, I wish that actress had something better, too. I loved her so much and I wanted more of her. I love her and I'll probably cry again the next time I rewatch the show. I don’t know if Heroes fandom people ever watched my vid back in the day since it wasn't the main Slash Pairing. I made this vid in 2008 and it has like 18 views on YouTube so here we are. I love Maya. She deserved better.

— 21 How would you describe your vidding style?

My vidding style is passionate, earnest, irreverent. It’s also unhinged, deeply fucked up. I love utilizing internal motion in clips to create a sense of movement and use that energy with the musicality of songs. I’m also inordinately gleeful about vidding fucked up themes and sources and can’t bring myself to be apologetic about it. But I’m equally unhinged with my love and joy for the wholesome characters and shows I make fanvids for, too. I don’t know if I come off as balanced or anything but. I always approach my vids with love (for the show, the characters, the vidding process, the creative catharsis, etc).

Thank you kindly for these lovely asks!!!

[csashton]

Does He Know? - LH x (fem)Reader

Summary: reader and lewis had a relationship, she has a baby - he finds out.

Pairing: Lewis Hamilton/(fem)Reader

Warnings: mentions of pregnancy, childbirth, babies

Word count: 2171

my master list 🖤

“Does he know about the baby?”

“Why would he?” You mutter into the phone as you get her bottle ready. “It’s not like he answered any of my phone calls, texts or even emails after I found out I was pregnant.”

A sad sigh answers you,  she had heard this argument throughout your pregnancy. It wasn't any different now that she was born.

“Babe, you need to tell him. She’s five months old already, you can’t avoid it forever.” You can’t stop the eye-roll that follows, plopping down on the couch to feed your baby girl. “The most he’ll do is pay child support, I've got a wonderful job. I don't want or need his money. He doesn’t want a baby, Em. You’ve seen his instagram - he’s out living his life. He’s got another world championship to win.”

“You either tell him, or it’s going to get leaked to the press the first time you go out. Is that how you want him to find out?” She argues, “Look I have to go back to work, but let me know if you need anything. Please talk to him. I love you.”

Before you can even respond, the dial tone meets your ear. “Viv, she doesn’t understand, does she?” you question, tossing your phone to the side as you look down at the sleepy baby in your arms.

Fifteen months ago you’d called off your three-year relationship with Lewis. It was rocky for the last few months until you decided to call it quits. He wanted to focus on racing, you wanted to focus on building your life and family together. It hurt for a while, but you realized that you both were at very different points in your life. You had different priorities. 

It was pretty cliche how you got pregnant. You had spent one last night with him, the night before the movers were scheduled to show up. The shared apartment scattered in boxes full of memories of the last few years. Six weeks later you were frantic, calling your best friend Em saying you hadn’t gotten your period. After many positive tests and mental breakdowns, you were sure you were pregnant, single, and on your own. Em tried back in the early days, every day, to convince you to tell Lewis. It didn’t feel like the right thing to do. You’d sent him a few messages to let him know you needed to talk, but he wasn’t interested. After a few weeks, you gave up, not wanting to distract him from all his preparations for the upcoming season.

The last you heard from him was when he posted an Instagram story, asking everyone to give you privacy during the breakup. It made you going off of social media for the entirety of your pregnancy so much easier. No one questioned you or why you were gone.

Toward the end of your pregnancy, you’d sent Em to pick up groceries or had them delivered. You didn’t want to risk going out in public, your relationship with Lewis had been very public. The last thing you needed was for it to get leaked.

The weather was beautiful in Monaco. Once Vivian had finished her bottle, you strapped her into her wearable carrier. A floppy sun hat and some comfy shoes later - you were stepping out the door to soak in the sunshine. After a few hours of walking around down by the water, and a quick stop at your favorite cafe, you were headed home. As you made your way back inside, you see a thread of texts from Em and a few missed calls.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?”

“SERIOUSLY - ANSWER ME?”

“Oh my god this is such a mess, holy shit. Look at this.”

You lay Vivian on her playmat and click on the link as you sit down next to her. The bold tabloid title of “Lewis Hamilton’s EX  -  Baby Hamilton?” with a picture of you and Viv strapped to your chest down by the water. 

The feeling of your heart dropping to the floor is the first thing you notice, the second is a wave of nausea. You were sure the floppy hat and sunglasses would be enough to deter them. They hadn’t found you when you first moved here, how did they find you now?

“Oh fuck, oh fuck.” your voice cracks as you text her back.

“Em, I was wearing a hat and sunglasses, they’ve not found me before. How’d they find me now? Oh god, I’m SO fucked.”

After a few minutes, which feel like hours, your phone starts to ring with Em’s face popping up. You’ve got tears in your eyes when you answer.

“Oh god, Em. What am I going to do?” You ask as you watch her face morph into sadness, then into a guilty look. “Listen, babe. Please don’t be mad.” Her voice is wobbly as she speaks, and you can see that she’s in the bathroom at work.

“Em, please tell me you didn’t plan this?” Your voice is hoarse as you lean back against the couch, putting your free hand on your forehead. “Oh my god, no. I wouldn’t do that to you. I would never do that to Viv.” Her voice is laced with anger for a moment and you hear her take a deep breath. “Lewis called me, said you still had him blocked. I gave him our address.” She speaks so rapidly that it takes you a minute to realize what she’s said.

“You did what?” The level of your voice startles Vivian, who starts crying. “God, please don’t hate me. He was panicking, and he’s in town. His PR sent him the post. They’re scrambling.” she explains. You groan, tipping your head back onto the couch. “I hate you, Em. So much.” you grumbled, “But I also love you, and I know you’re trying to do what’s best.”

When you look back at the phone, she’s giving you a watery smile. “I love you too, and baby Viv. I’ll see you when I get home, and I’m sorry.” You give her a soft smile before you hang up, tossing your phone onto the couch to pick up Vivian to console her. It takes longer than it should, but you finally get her settled and asleep against your chest. You’re surprised the rapid beating of your heart doesn’t wake her.

Now you’re stuck, waiting for Lewis and probably his whole PR team to show up at your door to tell you how stupid you are. The clock on the wall ticks by slowly, until an hour later when a knock sounds at the door. Vivan shifts against your chest, settling back as you stand to walk to the door.

“Uh, hey.” You whisper as you pull the door open, your eyes trained away from his face as your heart climbs to your throat. “Come in.” you add on when he doesn’t respond, but you can feel the anger radiating off his body. He's pacing the living area when you turn around, his hands on his head.

“Is she mine?” His voice is raw when he speaks, not bothering to look at you. “Yeah, her name is Vivian. She’s five months old.” you answer, cradling her head to your chest with your hand as you rock back and forth to keep her asleep. “You went through a whole pregnancy and birth...” he starts, cutting himself off as he paces again. He's still pacing as you walk by, taking a seat on the couch. “You had a whole pregnancy and birth, and hid it from me?” he asks, eyes shining as he turns to look at you. Your heart breaks in your chest as you stare back at him.

“Only Em knew.” you admit, “Not even my parents until her birth, my mom was with me at the hospital. I stayed off social media, stayed out of the public eye.” You’re not even sure he’s heard you with how quiet you were.

“I’m her father, and you didn’t think to tell me?” his voice raises which causes Vivian to stir.

“Look, Lewis. We’d broken up. You told me you weren’t ready for a family with me, you wanted to focus on winning another title. What was I supposed to do?” you stressed, “I tried calling and texting in the beginning, I told you we needed to talk. You ignored me.” your voice was bitter when you spoke, eyes narrowed. “Then the season started. I wasn’t about to distract you, I know how important your focus was. What were you going to do? Give it all up to come play father?”

You watched as he pressed his lips in a thin line and started pacing again, his hands were shaking at his sides. “I deserved to know. I could’ve helped you, I could’ve been there for you.”

You shrugged, “I’ve been fine on my own. She’s been fine. I can pay my bills and care for her, that’s all I care about. She’s my whole world.” He stops pacing to stare at you for a moment, then moves to sit on the couch with you.

“But you don’t have to do it alone, you shouldn’t have to do it alone.” he breathes out, rubbing his face with his hands. “Why now? Why wait until now to do this?” he asks, resting his face in his hands.

“I didn’t plan this, if that’s what you’re asking.” you bite out at him,

"I went out for a walk today, I figured my sunglasses and hat would be fine. When I moved here no one found me, so I thought I’d be safe.” you explain, leaning back to close your eyes. “But I guess not, and now I’ve fucked up your focus for the season. I’m sure this is a PR nightmare too - I’m so sorry Lewis.”

He sits quietly for a long while, you’re not sure how long but it feels like hours. You hear him let out a breath before he pats his hand on your knee, resting it there. “What’s her name?” he asks, his voice softer than you’d ever heard it. His hand comes up to trace across her back. “Vivian.” you whisper, pulling her off your chest so he can take a look at her. “She’s got your eyes, and nose.”

“She’s beautiful.” His voice is teary, and his hand trembles as he reaches out to touch her cheek. “Do you want to hold her?” you ask, nervous that he’ll avoid it.

His head snaps up to look at you before he looks back down at Viv, who’s squirming in your arms. He nods, leaning back on the couch so you can place her into his arms. She settles with her face resting against his chest, a quick snuffle coming from her before she’s out again. You watch him for a few minutes before you decide to get up and make her next bottle. “Do you want me to take a picture?” you question, he doesn’t even look up from her face as he hands you his phone. After you snap a few pictures, you hand it back and sit on the couch.

“So what does this mean?” Even you can hear the nerves in your voice as you ask, bringing your thumb up to bite at the nail. He sighs, stroking his finger down her cheek as he thinks. “I want to be involved, if that’s what you’re asking. I’ve already missed so much.” You smile sadly at him, nodding.

“I’m sorry, Lewis.” He shrugs gently so as to not disturb her. “I get why you did it, you were doing what’s best for you and Viv. Also what you thought was best for me, even if you were wrong.” The bitter and angry tone left his voice. “I can fly you out when I want to see her, and I’ll help pay for her things. We can work on our relationship, if we’re going to co-parent we need to be able to communicate.”

It took a lot of trial and error, but two months later the two of you were easily communicating and co-parenting. You were getting along better than before, better than the last few months of your relationship even. He’d posted the pictures on instagram about a month after he met her, sending the internet into a frenzy. You’d stayed off social media for your own sanity and according to Em, you’d made the right decision. 

Lewis had been wonderful, it took him a while to come to terms with everything. But after that, he was sending bouquets of flowers weekly for “his girls”. He’d made a statement in one of his post race interviews that he would not be speaking about his family, or his daughter. He was doing his best to protect your privacy, and you were greatly appreciative. It really seemed like things were getting better. 

Maybe someday you’d be together again, but for now, this was perfect.