#i guess my answer's 'sure why not'

[seiwas]

for writing game, iwaizumi + assistance <3

hope this sparks some inspo and thank you in advancee

hi there!! thanks for sending in a prompt 🫶

contains: friends to lovers (ish), halloween parties, reader is dressed as catwoman, expletives, iwaizumi is thiiiiis 🤏 close to murdering seijoh4 (jk)

iwaizumi + assistance

this is a set-up.

iwaizumi knows he shouldn't have fucking believed anything the boys "promised" him back when they assigned him this costume.

the suit is fucking tight, spandex digging into his groins and all other crevices that definitely should be aired out after after a few hours. he's had to constantly readjust his stance almost every few minutes, the black fabric compressing his thighs and torso, significantly constricting the range of motion his shoulders and arms are typically used to. if anything else, it could double up as a back brace from how rigidly straight it's kept his posture all night.

he'll give it to makki though; he did outdo himself sourcing this year's costumes―this batman set looks pretty damn legit.

except for one tiny problem.

there's no fucking pee hole. it's a zip-up, zip-down one-piece situation. and that normally wouldn't be a problem, except that oikawa "accidentally" knocked over a cocktail straight into his pants, the sickeningly sweet liquid now seeping straight into the fabric and past his boxers―cold and sticky as it touches his skin.

and so, the problem: his pants are wet, it makes him want to fucking pee, and coincidentally, the only vacant bathroom is across the hall, at your apartment.

this is why he believes this is a set up. that, and the fact that you're dressed in an outfit strikingly similar―just with cat ears.

he's been asked five times in this party if you're in matching couple outfits.

it catches him off guard, flusters him because of how badly he wants to say yes. but, you're just friends, and he doesn't even think you like him that way (despite mattsun and oikawa practically begging him to confess. makki tells him he thinks you're going to do it first).

so he politely smiles and says no, but you look good, your costume clinging to you in all the right places. thank fucking god he has a cape because he's pretty sure he spent the first 30 minutes in the party hiding his boner.

"hajime, it's fine, i swear," you stand beside him in front of the conveniently locked bathroom in oikawa's apartment. from the other side of the door, he's pretty sure he hears mattsun and his girlfriend mumbling. maybe fucking? who knows. "you can just use the bathroom in my apartment."

he glances at you before closing his eyes, contemplating, before finally agreeing to you.

"okay."

if he's being honest with himself, friends is definitely an incomplete label to what you are. as oikawa's neighbor, you are conveniently around all the time; and oikawa being oikawa, the ever-social butterfly, he's somehow managed to carve a space for you in the friend group.

(never mind the fact that oikawa's sniffed him out from the moment he first introduced you.)

you were a crush, then a friend, and now you're someone he picks up from work and drives back home three times a week, because he "has to train oikawa." you don't question it, even when you both know he stays over for dinner way past the gym's open hours.

"you know where it is," you open your apartment and urge him in.

"sorry again," he turns to face you.

"yeah, yeah, just pee!" you laugh, shoving him towards the bathroom door.

getting out of the suit is manageable, and he's able to wipe off a bit of the cocktail that's leaked to the suit and his boxers just to make sure it isn't gross and sticky when he gets home later. peeing is a big relief once he gets it over with, but it's when he has to suit up again that things become difficult.

stretching out the spandex one body part at a time is a workout in itself―the hardest task being when he has to pull it over his shoulders, adjusting it to fit properly over his arms and chest.

but then the zipper breaks.

and he truly thinks makki has fucked him over.

iwaizumi contemplates what to do next for a good, good while. he tries calling oikawa, only to no success every time; no way in hell is he calling mattsun in the middle of having sex. and calling makki isn't even an option; he'd never hear the end of it.

then you knock on the door, your voice soft and concerned as you ask, "hajime? you good in there?" you hit it spot on, too, "do you need help with your suit?"

iwaizumi presses his palms to his eyes. he's a rational man, straightforward and logical in thinking. there is literally no other option for him right now but to ask help from you. again.

fuck.

.

it's 30 minutes later when oikawa barges in your door, and the sight that greets him is iwaizumi in nothing but a hoodie (the hoodie you borrowed some time ago) and his boxers, with his hands on your waist as you hover your hairdryer over the crotch of his batman costume―cat headpiece off and all.

"you finally got together?!"

[luck-of-the-drawings]

"I think this is the most inhuman; and human, that I've ever felt.." MUCH CAN HAPPEN IN A YEAR. IN FIVE YEARS. A DECADE. imagine how much can happen in a century. just ONE (1). How will you grow? what phases do you find? even in 5 years, you will find patterns.

[taravangians-storming-balls]

a moash trait I don't really hear people talk about is how much the guy will just. ask questions.

he's confused on why kaladin picked him to be a subsquad leader when he had been most vocally resistant to kaladin? he stops and asks him immediately. rock's story doesn't make sense to him? he interrupts to ask about it. fused are acting weird? he just walks up and asks to see a supervisor. dude will always stop to ask questions if something is confusing to him

[ouaw-facts-i-just-made-up]

Frost and Kremy are metamours

Don’t ask me who’s dating who to make that happen but the one thing that is certain is that they are *not* dating each other

This is a true fact.

With my personal home-baked lore it's probably Gideon. Kremy doesnt seem like a guy who can stand dating that many people. Frost and Gideon have canonically slept together. Gideon has two hands and for some reason he chose the gator and the cat.

Frost and Kremy don't have a rivalry about it but it's more like they are so far from each others type that it's comical. But they are otherwise good friends who happen to share Big Fire Man

[cathodic-clairvoyant]

Oh hi there transfem discussing her experience in the trans community i just had a quick question about your post

What does tme mean?

Oh okay i see i understand, thank you.

What does transmisogyny mean?

Ah I see, I get it.

What's a trans woman?

Oof scary. One last question.

What's a woman?

Thank you for being my own personal google (not like you had anything better to do right?) and derailing the point of your post for my own personal education. I will now add nothing of value to this post in return. Bye bye!

[danawinter]

at first i thought the idea of the witches' road just being a hex controlled by billy was pretty unlikely, but i just now remembered that interview where someone asked jac schaeffer if wanda had ever walked the witches' road and her replying that she did not know how to answer that.

which has brought me back to this theory, because why is that question so hard to answer? sure, it might be a bit more tricky than a yes/no answer, but it was the only time i've really seen jac stumped in this press tour.

why wouldn't she just say something along the lines of 'well, wanda's pretty early in her witch journey, but perhaps' or even a simple 'i don't know'? she's not the sole authority on mcu wanda (even though she probably should be, but that's a different story) so admitting that she's not in control of a backstory fact like this, or just avoiding/circumventing the question would not be weird.

so her not being able to answer this question has got me wondering if it might be true that the road (or at least this road) might not be real. since then of course wanda wouldn't have ever been there, but jac wouldn't be able to be honest about that without giving this plot away.

some other facts that have got me thinking about this theory below the cut:

when they arrive at the road, billy says "it's exactly how i imagined it"; is that because he actually imagined it into existence?

him being the one coming up with the trials could explain why the third trial was so weird (besides the fact that it looks like it was never a trial to begin with);

coming up with a trial for jen was simple since he'd been in her store and knew she was a potions' witch, so he knew the aesthetic to build there;

coming up with a trial for alice was simple because he knew about her mom's music already and even had bonded with her a bit during the first trial;

but what was he supposed to do next? he barely knows rio, lilia is just spacing out the whole time, so agatha was the best option, but still pretty tricky. (was he asking about her son because he was curious, or so he had a better shot at planning her trial?)

this could also explain why the third trial had this 80s aesthetic; we have no idea why that era would be connected to agatha, but billy (and tommy) met agatha for the first time in the 80s episode of wandavision, so he might've intuitively connected that decade to her.

of course a lot of people have already commented on how typical it is that he's always been the one to kick off the trials, even when everyone was pretty thoroughly looking around in the second trial, so what's that about?

[coquelicoq]

j'ai l'intention de lire tout ces livres un jour ou l'autre, l'ordre seulement est en question.

il y a une réponse incorrecte et c'est du côté de chez swann. j'ai déjà lu les trois mousquetaires et madame bovary, mais seulement en anglais. j'ai regardé le film hiroshima mon amour, et j'ai lu quelque poèmes des fleurs du mal. quant au reste, je n'en connais pas grand'chose.

you can vote in this if you don't speak french btw. roman=novel, scénario=screenplay, poésie=poetry, pièce de théâtre=play, dictionnaire des synonymes=thesaurus, ouvrage de référence=reference work, roman-mémoire=autobiographical novel

[suusoh]

okay girl I don't even know what you're on because recent johan liebert fans have been spoiled with the gift of actually having so much to read in the johan liebert x reader tags. Before you I swear to god everything was SO DRY AND EMPTY. We have talented authors and fics of course which we eat up in seconds, but its so few and far between that it feels like a dead fandom sometimes. The second you came in it feels like a dam of water exploding over a dessert.

ANNNOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

I WAS JUST KIDDING ON THAT POST BECAUSE I JUST FOUND IT FUNNY BUT NOW I LEGIT DON'T HAVE ANY WORDS IM SOO ????? FHDSKAFHJKASHF FFH MMNN ?/ ?? FHSN H GGGG2382392 FDFA34??????????? FHADHFHFHHHFJDAKFAHJFHAFH NCNDMSNF,MC,MSDFH653742I8746783264HFDSKFBJASLKFJKSCMMMAMAMAMA8F8888123897198381NDSFHJKASHFAR8920NFKLASN @#$$#%^^&%

[inkesse]

For the first time ever, I used tarot as a method to try and contact Lord Apollo. I've been anxious about it for a while, but today the sun shone brightly and I saw some beautiful art of him, so I just.. felt compelled to give it a try. It went better than I ever could have expected and I truly do feel cared for, and that what I do in devotion to him is enough.

[love-is-a-pearl]

What do you think ash X Dawn x Zoey is like in the mirror world

Eh, honestly? I dont care for Mirror world nor any alt version of the characters like that 🤷

I know some people like them a lot, but I personally cant get attached to characters just because they are "the same but from another universe". I really need to know the characters to get attached to them, so alt versions like that are not interesting to me. Like... That's not the Ash nor the Dawn I like, so why should I care for them?

so yeah... Is not something I'm interested in *shrugs*

[passthroughtime]

yagami, WHY do you have to be such a bitch around kuwana. i'm going to strangle you.

(P.S.: he didn't tell kuwana that tesso said not to feel bad about it. obviously.)

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

Still haven't messaged my mom back. And I don't think I'm going to.

[lillotte17]

..

[greensaplinggrace]

🔥🔥 Zoya Nazyalensky unpopular opinions

okay I don't really engage with her character enough to bring out the big guns, so I'll go with the only two opinions I really have on her at all (which by the way I know fandom loves to blorbofy her so please spare me from any hate for this 😭)

my first opinion is that zoya's character arc throughout the entire nikolai duology felt ridiculously overblown - like a child playing at dolls. aside from the terrible implications lb tried to hammer home about grisha powers that actually somehow made things more racist, zoya's pov itself was incredibly obtuse. the only way to get through it is to view it as a study in unreliable narration, because otherwise you have to deal with the fact that this is just a self insert for lb at this point, and zoya's real character has practically been erased.

also I'm not even going to get into how offensive zoya's rise to power is, especially the way she keeps control.

my second unpopular opinion is that fandom has such a hate boner for the darkling that they forget everything zoya builds is off the back of the darkling's 400+ years of sacrifice. which is to say that the darkling does 99% of it, zoya takes all of that effort and claims it for herself and alina completely, and then there's a deus ex machina that saves them from the consequences of somehow ruining the most important 30% of it and making things worse for the grisha.

all in all, the nikolai duology is a performative piece of garbage where lb is basically the main character and the realism that even fantasy worlds sometimes need is gone. most of it seems to be an attempt at justifying the choices made in sab, yet with worse writing that actually destroys the already spotty lore incorporated previously and makes all of the choices seem less justified. the only way to get through it is to think zoya is hallucinating or braindead, because otherwise she looks ridiculous, and I actually like her character when she's not badly written.

send me a 🔥 for an unpopular opinion (x)

[rushingheadlong]

I’ve anonymized this ask because I actually want to talk about this publicly but I want to respect their desire to not have their name attached to this conversation.

(Usual warnings for length, also CW for discussions of homophobia. Because of how this ask was worded we're going to engage with the possibility of Brian being queer, but there are criticisms about some specific ways the fandom discusses that. If any of that sounds upsetting to you, just skip over this post.)

First, a fairly significant correction: I didn’t say that Harold wasn’t the biggest contributor to “Brian staying in the closet” at all. I’m going to talk about that assumption of queerness later, but this is what I actually said in my tags:

#it's really REALLY clear that at the VERY least his upbringing by Harold impeded Brian's ability to fully explore himself #and his identity/attractions/etc. the way he should have been able to #(tho I don't think Harold was the biggest/only contributor to that but. idk.)

Which I think is fairly self-explanatory but, to break it down more simply, based on all the evidence we have of what Harold was like as a person it seems that he was an extremely traditional patriarch who expected Brian to grow up and fulfill the same role within his own family. We know that they had major clashes over this and from interviews we know that Brian struggled with feeling inadequate as a husband and father specifically because he couldn’t step into the patriarchal role that he felt pressured to fill.

From there, I don’t think it’s unfair to extrapolate out and say that an upbringing that pushed that very traditional view of manhood would likely have also included other “traditional” ideas i.e. misogyny, homophobia, etc. The misogyny is easy to confirm, not just through Brian’s earlier songs (like Son and Daughter) but through later comments on his parents’ marriage that revealed specific ways that Ruth May was absolutely subservient to her husband while he was alive.

The homophobia I don’t think can be “confirmed” in the same way, although I do recall once reading an interview with Brian where he admitted to having to let go of homophobic ideas he used to hold in his youth (though I cannot for the life of me find that interview now, so take that with a grain of salt). But regardless of the extent of homophobia, if it was there I again don’t think it’s unfair to say that that would have impeded any potential experimentation with men at least in Brian’s younger years - I mean for one thing, Brian has already specifically said that he declined the advances from men while on tour even though he didn’t decline when propositioned by women.

If you want to theorize that Brian is some form of queer you can look at him turning down offers from men as possibly a sign of internalized homophobia due to his upbringing. It’s possible that even after Brian unlearned those prejudices with regards to other people, that he couldn’t unlearn them with regards to himself. It’s possible that Brian privately acknowledged his queerness, but felt that acting upon it would be somehow a “worse” betrayal of his marriage than cheating with another woman.

However, it’s also possible that there was no internalized homophobia at play at all and that Brian’s actions and comments (or lack thereof) are driven by concerns about the band, with really nothing to do with Harold at all. We already have Freddie saying, on multiple occasions in both the 70s and 80s, that if he were to be more open about his own sexuality that it would ruin Queen forever. If Brian were also queer it would make sense for him to have the same reservations about saying anything, and those reservations could have been enough to make him hesitant to be with another man at all for fear of rumors spreading.

(ETA: Not to mention, the AIDS crisis could have been a deterrent to try anything as well, especially if he hadn't already by then. That wasn't too uncommon among men who lived through that time.)

There’s also the issue that if Brian were queer, any reservations he had about coming out were likely compounded after Freddie’s death, because there’s simply no way to make that announcement now without Freddie’s name being attached to things whether it should be or not. There would be speculation about whether Brian and Freddie were ever more than “just” friends, speculation about the full extent of Brian’s history with men, speculation about the validity of his marriages to Chrissy and Anita, speculation about Roger and John and if they knew or if they were also queer… The tabloids would have a fucking field day with an announcement like that and it would reverberate throughout Brian’s life, impacting not only himself but his closest friends and family, as well as all his relationships suddenly becoming hyper-scrutinized by people intent on “proving” what is “real” or “not real” about any of them.

Even if you want to believe that that wouldn’t happen and people would only react positively to such an announcement, I need you to step back and consider what sort of comments you consider “supportive” and if that’s actually how they would be received. An entire fandom of RPF shippers crying “I told you so!” and descending on his IG to ask invasive questions isn’t supportive. A world that nitpicks identities to make sure that people are using the “right” ones isn’t supportive. A culture where “jokes” about single-gender schools turning people gay are still prevalent isn’t supportive (and when I am still seeing people defend comments about Freddie’s boarding school playing a role in his own identity, you can’t tell me that people wouldn’t make the same jabs about Brian if they got the chance).

I think it’s safe to say that Harold’s view did have an impact on how Brian explored himself and his identity because we already know for a fact that those views deeply impacted the entirety of his first marriage, to the point that Brian has said that he likely wouldn’t have gotten married to Chrissy at all if it wasn’t for pressure from his father.

(ETA: But I don't think you can safely say that Harold was the biggest/only contributor to how Brian explored his own identity when you consider the overall time period we're talking about, and the complications of both the band and Brian's existing marriage. And with regards to his attraction to women specifically, Brian has already made it clear that that was impacted by the lack of socialization with girls at school, not his father.)

But to engage with your question, if Brian is queer I think it’s far more likely that Brian has stayed in the closet due to concerns about the response, to protect the privacy of himself and those closest to him, and out of respect for Freddie’s own legacy, rather than because of specific views of his father, especially since both of his parents have been dead for decades now.

Now, this isn’t what you asked in your question but I do also want to address the phrasing of “Brian staying in the closet” because I think it’s actually rather worrying that that’s what was taken from my tags.

Is it impossible for Brian to be queer? No, of course not, and to be honest if he did ever come out I wouldn’t actually be surprised. However I am begging this fandom on my hands and knees to remember that Brian has said that he’s straight on multiple occasions.

Here’s him calling himself heterosexual in 1993, shortly after Freddie’s death:

And here’s him saying that he’s not attracted to men a decade later in 2003:

There’s nothing wrong with talking what-ifs but you have to keep in mind what Brian has actually said himself. Even more importantly, you absolutely have to be mindful of what you’re using as “evidence” of queerness because, while it doesn't happen all the time, it is very common in this fandom for that sort of speculation to run straight into stereotyping and, by extension, homophobia.

A man will never be queer simply because he wears jewelry/nail polish/women’s clothing/etc., or because he’s friends with other queer men or wrote songs for them, or because he was unhappy in a heterosexual marriage, or because he’s done drag a few times, or because he’s spoken out about queer rights and history, or because his music resonates with queer people today.

These are all reasons I’ve seen given for why Brian “has” to be queer… but why? Why do you think that wearing things typically worn by women makes a man queer? Why are you so quick to disregard the existence of any femininity in straight cis men? Why do you think that people can’t support the queer community unless they’re queer themselves? Why do you think that your feelings about Brian’s music are any indication of what he actually meant, when it's incredibly common for people to attribute meanings to songs contrary to what the artist intended?

I don’t think that most people who point to these sorts of things as “evidence” of queerness are being consciously, maliciously homophobic but it absolutely is homophobic to reduce these traits down to one-dimensional stereotypes in order to argue that because Brian does XYZ that means he must be queer. I mean, do I really have to break down why it’s problematic to enforce binary gender norms by saying that Brian wearing necklaces is proof of queerness, as if straight men are somehow physically impossible of also wearing necklaces?

There are absolutely more respectful ways to talk about "evidence" of queerness and the OP mentioned in this ask is a great example of that, by using direct words Brian has said specifically about his sexuality, attraction, and relationships to make their point rather than relying on stereotypes about looks or behaviors.

Because if you're going to have these conversations, you have to acknowledge what Brian has actually said. That includes his comments about heterosexuality and attraction to women and, furthermore, acknowledging those comments is not the same as denying any possibility that he's queer.

Brian is an English baby boomer and you cannot separate that from these sorts of discussions. It’s very common for people of his generation to have ideas and identities that are directly at odds with the philosophies of younger generations, and pretending otherwise - or condemning those things for being “wrong” - requires you to completely ignore and rewrite actual queer history in order to do so.

If you look at how people have identified throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, you’ll find a ton of examples of people proudly using seemingly “wrong” labels for themselves. Tom Robinson, author of the song “Glad to Be Gay”, continued to identify specifically as a gay man for years after marrying a woman. Phill Jupitus, a former stand-up comedian, once had an entire 20-minute podcast where he talked about his past sexual encounters with and continuing attractions towards men while identifying the entire time as a straight man and not bisexual. Hell my best friend for over a decade is a queer man married to a woman who still identifies as a lesbian for deeply personal reasons that are unlikely to ever change.

As a queer man myself, I would love to see discussions about this that acknowledge that kind of nuance. I would love to see people approach this conversation by asking why Brian identifies as straight instead of just looking for proof that he’s lying about his identity.

Because if you want to talk about the possibility of Brian being queer, what does it then mean that he chooses to publicly identify as straight instead? Does he claim that label because he doesn’t identify with queerness at all, because he feels obligated to because of his relationships with women, or because he feels those relationships are more representative of who he is?

What does it say about the dynamics among Queen if the others always assumed something, but never said? Or if Brian only told Roger and John after the fact in the 90s? Or if Brian made the choice to never say anything to them either? Disregarding shipping entirely, what would it say about Brian’s friendship with Freddie if he knew the singer was gay but never shared a hint of his own queerness in return?

What does it say - about Brian, the band, the fandom, society - if Brian is indeed making a conscious choice to hide any attraction to men? And we do need to include the fandom here, because while it’s tempting to assume that nothing we do makes it way back to the band that’s really not the case at all. The official Queen discord server has had to make multiple statements not to post about shipping etc. and there were innumerable comments on Brian’s own IG page post-borhap accusing him and Roger of homophobia because of the movie. Discussions of Brian’s relationship to queerness have already reached his sphere of influence, whether we wanted it to or not.

We’re in a time where the prevalence of social media is wearing down the concept of personal privacy and making people feel entitled to information about celebrities that’s none of their business at all. We’ve seen this with Kit Connor being forced to come out after Heartstopper due to accusations of "queerbaiting" and F1nnster delaying coming out due to fears of backlash from not using the “right” label. Or if you want an example from an older generation, when Con O’Neill came out he said he was doing so because he felt ready but there is still rampant speculation in the fandom that part of his reasoning was in response to the queerphobia being leveled at Izzy Hands fans.

Let me repeat that: a queer man explicitly said he was coming out because he felt personally ready to do so, and a wide swath of fans have already made it about themselves and their fandom experiences.

These celebrities are far from being isolated cases. There are countless others who have been forced into making deeply personal decisions based not on what feels right to them, but what will appease the crowds of strangers who watch and follow them.

So, since the original question was about that post on Harold, let's bring it back to that point with one final question from myself:

If Brian is in fact queer, do you think that his long-dead father is really the biggest reason that a world-famous multi-millionaire twice-knighted astrophysicist rockstar may still be choosing to stay in the closet after all this time?

One final note that anyone who engages with this post in bad-faith is being blocked. I have neither the desire nor spoons to argue with anyone who insists that this fandom isn't homophobic or that their homophobia is somehow different because they mean well by it.

[slippery-domjot-balls]

Me when people are mean online