#i talk to myself a lot but i don't think tumblr is the place to do that so HDLFKAJSFDL i will rlly fix my account .

[galacticfire]

Wout interview (in french) on Bistrot Vélo (FR Eurosport)

(starts at 3:00, ends at 25:20)

says hi that he's good and he did a long training today :)

asked if he's not getting a break after liévin and (jokingly) calls liévin a little pause before the classics training, he has lighter training tomorrow then leaves for mallorca on wednesday

Does he have regrets about liévin and his 4th line start:

"Yeah for sure, after the race when I saw it was possible for me to keep a bit of the same gap to mathieu, it's too bad that I wasn't here at the start in the first lap with him because then I could've put a little bit of pressure on him. Now, he has the luxury of controlling the race and not have the necessity of taking risks so... yeah that's a shame but when I decided to do the race I knew I was starting 4th line, it was my own choice to not do many cross races this year so it's stupid to wonder about it"

Added a bit about being blocked right at the start because of the tumblr in front of him and losing all of his speed. Took him almost one lap to have enough space to begin his own race.

asked about any belgian team strategy (teammates braking in front to let him come back etc) and if there was any in the first place:

"No no we talked in particular about the first lap because I thought at the start it was almost impossible to, when you're 2nd line you can think of a strat and someone lets you pass or something like that, but 4th line there are many other riders. We only discussed that they'd let me pass when I was here in the first lap in the top 10 so I can move faster towards Mathieu or towards the leaders of the race." adds they didnt discuss anything else because he doesn't believe strategies like that are doable, to which he's told "except with Tim Merlier in Zolder!". But it was another start and Tim was 2nd line he thinks. Calls it the "good old times".

Why make the choice to not do many cross races?

Talks about his vuelta crash, how he couldn't train until november but his condition was bad and he couldn't really go on runs, they decided it was possible to race some crosses in december. He didn't think his form would be good enough to get any result on a championship at the start. Few cross races with a lot of training between races but not a real racing block. Really happy to be at this level and was really happy to be able to go to wk.

When was the decision to go to wk made, big talks about they were soooo sure he was gonna go if he was good at maasmechelen and had been talking about it the whole season (they're just like us fr). They ask for the REAL TRUTH:

He doesnt seem to be saying the full truth :) but before maasmechelen he discussed with the belgian coach about wk being a possibility but it was a question of being able to wait until the last race to make a decision. Felt great in maasmechelen and had more and more fun. Said indirectly the beginning of the season was just one hour of pain (so I'm believing he's referring to loenhout?). Also heard the stories about liévin being a good course for him which helped him make his choice.

THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION: When you see how good you are at Maasmechelen or Liévin don't you want to do more cx next winter? What if you gave it all for cx?

Says yeah the belgian crowd would love that but the belgian crowd also loves to see him do well in classics.

"I think towards the end of my career I see myself doing much more cx with a calendar of maybe 15 or 20 cx races again but at this point, all my friends from the road peloton are doing long trainings, long stages already all winter, so when you "lose" (hand gesture) to do cx, it gives a lot of advantages but you lose a lot of training time. It's difficult to find the balance and I think, what Mathieu and I did the last few years is possible, but it's difficult to do more."

Talking about RVV / PR (mostly PR 2023 and how they want to see that Wout again) :

This is what he wants to, he was here many times furing the dinale but many times not even here at the start. Talks about 2020 rvv sprint against Mathieu and how he thought he'd have so many opportunities but we're in 2025, was here in PR 2023 with the puncture but other than that wasn't even here to fight. Kinda says we must let things pass now and it's not easy but he stays focused on the best he can do and what is in his control.

Does opening weekend then 3 weeks training break for flanders classics. Last year, thinks he was maybe in the best form of his life but Yeah the crash. This is why they're trying the same strat this year and he thinks it's the right one.

Asking him which race of his program he wants to win the most:

Cant decide between RVV and PR, he thinks Roubaix is more specialn extraordinary, but as a flemish guy he can't not say RVV.

Doesn't want to choose, but says he's almost 80kg so he likes the flat roads of PR better. But likes the atmosphere of RVV the best out of all races, it's a bit like cross to him.

Race schedule talk. Asked if his more far away objectives (giro / tdf) aren't taking too much space in his mind and his training, comparing it to Mathieu's pinpoint race schedule:

Yes and no, but he's not doing any mountain / ITT training, only classics training until RVV / PR, so he stays focused until mid-april, but it's more about using the good condition he should have at this point to get good Giro results.

Mentions how fucking serious the tour always is with his team and thinks the giro will be more relaxed for him, more opportunities for him to control the race and sprint.

Hautacam dropping Pogi mention:

One extraordinary day in his life when he climbed very well, likes to watch the pictures of that day but he likes the flat routes better ^_^

Jokes that he's gonna win RVV / PR this year and go on vacation for the rest of the year.

Ciclamino/pink jersey objective?

Ciclamino : doesn't really have a goal for it because Olav Kooij is here and it will be complicated to lead him out AND take points in flat sprints. Would rather focus on stage wins.

Objective pink for the Albania start. Is not really interested in keeping it even tho he could keep it for 2 weeks. Thinks it's a waste of time + waste of opportunities for stage wins (not said but bc of not being late into every break obviously) and that he's gonna lose it in the end anyways

He's asked to come again for the last Bistrot Vélo of the season (since this is the first one) where they will discuss his cx planning 😃

[suffercerebral]

me having gone to bed at 6 am every day for the past week and generally spiraling mentally while rotting in bed waking up this morning: a 4 mile hike in the heat is a really good idea right now, and while we're at it let's start like 3 art projects

[eclarinet]

same soup... different day

[psalmsofpsychosis]

'

[buckleyseddie]

.

[neverendingford]

.

[sonicboomseason3]

a brief recap of what has been going on with the sonic movieverse in the past several months:

paramount has come out in public support of israel

keanu reeves, a man who has publicly rubbed elbows with none other than benjamin netanyahu, reportedly gets cast as shadow for the upcoming third movie

james marsden, the guy who plays tom, got exposed as having written a letter of support for a convicted pedophile

there's fucking??? zionist propaganda in the knuckles series???

kind of connected to the last point but adam pally, the guy who plays wade, is evidently pro-israel too

this is a complete and utter joke.

EDIT AS OF 4/30/24: if people see this version of the post, i'd really appreciate it if you reblog it instead of the other versions, as it's the most updated one with all the information that i want included. thank you :]

you know, it's been a few days since i've made this post, and some of you (not most) are staying determined in defending/justifying/giving the benefit of the doubt to keanu for that photo with netanyahu, whether it's because "it was a decade ago," "him being civil to someone he ran into at a party one time doesn't mean anything," "he's probably just silent because his pr managers won't allow him to speak up," etc. i've made my thoughts on the matter quite clear by directly responding to these people, but at this point, i'm tired of both seeing them in my notes and repeating myself, so take this as my final word on the issue.

i can't help it if you don't think the photo with netanyahu is damning, and i'm done engaging with everyone going out of their way to tell me that. i obviously disagree, especially after finding out that 1. the host of the party, arnon milchan, is a former israeli spy who has a history of developing israel's nuclear program and promoting apartheid in south africa (information that had broken out a few months prior to the party and thus would've been fresh news around the time keanu chose to attend) and 2. keanu has been caught hanging around at least two other weirdos, but if you don't find any of that to be cause for reasonable concern, then there really is nothing else i can say afaik.

with all that said, i'm beginning to realize how strange it is that these people's first instinct when seeing this post is to start debating about keanu's political stances without ever acknowledging any of the other bullet points. you guys realize that this isn't just about him, right? i know tumblr reading comprehension is known for being piss-poor, but like… you realize that i was trying to make a point of how there are MULTIPLE terrible things that have broken out about the people and company involved in the sonic movies, right? and yet, a lot of the people leaping to speak on keanu's behalf in my notes are completely ignoring the parts where i bring up paramount, pally, etc. all in favor of zeroing in on the singular point about keanu and making bad faith assumptions about me for holding him accountable. really makes one wonder where your priorities lie if, in a post that talks about so many other things, me accusing an a-list celebrity with, according to google, a net worth of almost $400 million is where you draw the line and apparently the only thing worth your acknowledgment.

ultimately, what i'm trying to say is that the intention of this post was just to gather up everything that i had been hearing for the past several months and put it all together in one place. there were a bunch of people who didn't know about at least one of the bullet points before seeing this post, and i'm glad that i could help inform them, that was what i was hoping to do! but as for the keanu thing, i've said pretty much all i can say for now, and i don't want to derail the original post even more than i may have already. unless something new comes up, i'm done talking about him.

[trans-axolotl]

my gendered experience growing up as an intersex person was overwhelmingly defined by my responses and resistance to everything that got me labeled as a failure: failure to quickly get a gender assigned at birth, failure to go through a normal puberty and grow up into a woman, failure at meeting the standards for "complete womanhood" because of my intersex sex traits, and yet simultaneously failing to ever be acknowledged as a "real man" and being treated as a threat when I expressed I wanted to transition.

before i realized i was a man and came out as trans, the ways that girlhood was denied to me was very often humiliating and painful. locker rooms filled with other girls were a frequent source of shame. there were many big and small ways that i was told that my intersex body made me insufficient, incomplete, broken. i was forced onto estrogen, forced into shaving my body hair, and was constantly being told to change myself to better fit this mystical idea of a "normal woman." and even though I ultimately ended up becoming a man, the denial of girlhood was painful.

but i think that these things would have been even more difficult to navigate as an intersex girl if on top of everything I already said, i was having to cope with the denial of my girlhood while i was forced into boys locker rooms. if my doctors were forcing me onto testosterone hrt and refusing to even discuss estrogen, if all my legal paperwork had "M" on it and was a logistical nightmare to change, if every support group for my intersex variation labeled it as a "men's support group," if the LGBTQ community spaces i tried to join were misogynistic towards me often to the point of exile, if my self determination as an intersex girl was denied in most spaces of my life, and on and on and on. while listing all these things out i also don't want to make it seem like it's all about suffering and pain--so much of transition for me has been about joy in my self determination and how much it feels like a reclamation of autonomy to decide what I want my body and self to be like--i know this is an experience i share with so many of my trans intersex friends.

as an person who was AFAB, although there were many ways that trying to grow up as an intersex girl were a painful, logistical nightmare, many times and places that i was excluded from woman's spaces, etc. however, there was a simultaneous affirmation that i was right to strive for that in the first place. which is logic rooted in some fucked up compulsory dyadism, but also which would have made some things slightly easier or even possible at all if i had wanted to embrace being an intersex girl within this fucked up system.

pretty much every time i've seen people on tumblr talking about "afab transfems" in an intersex context, people seem happy to collapse these experiences and act like there's no meaningful distinction or point in distinguishing between different types of intersex embodiment. it seems incredibly extractive, to be perfectly honest with you--taking terms already used by a community to make meaning of their experiences and to expand and dilute that term enough that it means something pretty different than the original.

it's making me think about the concept of epistemic injustice, which is a term coined by Miranda Fricker to describe oppression related to knowledge, communication, and making meaning of the world. There's two subtypes of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial injustice refers to the dynamic where marginalized people are labeled as not credible, excluded from conversations, and their testimony and knowledge is labeled as unreliable, even when they're the ones who are experts and have first hand experience of what people are talking about. (this is why i probably won't make this post rebloggable--i've noticed this pattern on tumblr many times where trans men speaking about transmisogyny get lots of notes and are given a lot of grace, where trans women are silenced, attacked for not having perfect wording, and otherwise delegitimized.)

the second type is called hermeneutical injustice. it describes how marginalized people are denied the right to make sense of the experiences in their own lives. this can look like preventing people from building community, terminology, a political understanding of themselves, and the interpretive resources needed to process how you live in the world.

this is a form of injustice that I think almost all intersex people are very familiar with--we are denied community and interpretive resources to the point that we're told we don't even exist, that intersex isn't a real word, and so many more examples that leave us isolated and with very few options for understanding what we're collectively experiencing. as an intersex person i really intimately understand how frustrating, confusing, and painful it is to not have words for your experiences, your identity, your life.

so it makes me really sad and pissed off when it seems like intersex people seem to be replicating this exact same type of epistemic injustice towards transfems and specifically towards intersex transfems. pretty much every time recently i see people talking about "afab transfems" they're doing so in a way that seems to deny that trans women even have the right to make sense of their own experiences in the world. there seems to be this mindset that these political frameworks, these interpretive resources that transfems have built up are just up for grabs for anyone. and then on top of that has come with it a lot of cruel, hateful language and direct attacks towards many intersex transfems who are facing so much harassment right now.

an important value to me is this idea of reciprocity as a foundation for solidarity. to me reciprocity means that we're prioritizing the ways we care for each other, we're thinking about how we can uplift each other, and we're watching out for extractive or exploitative patterns where one group is constantly expected to be in "solidarity" with another group without getting the same respect and care back toward them. i think that there could be so many ways that intersex people of all genders could share our overlapping experiences and actually be in true, meaningful solidarity with each other, but i barely ever actually see that happen on tumblr. and that pisses me off, because i do think that there's so much we have in common that we could celebrate and support each other with. i feel so much kinship with so, so many of my trans intersex friends, and ways where i see our lives converge. but i don't think that can happen in an environment where there's no acknowledgment of the ways that our experiences will sometimes (often) differ from each other, and the ways that we have unique needs.

another frustration i've had based on this most recent couple months of transmisogynistic intersex posting on tumblr is how intersex people have been mostly ignoring intersex community resources and devaluing the existing intersex terminology that people created to try to meet our needs. so much of what i've seen people describing on tumblr seems to really line up with the term ipsogender. Ipsogender is a term coined by an intersex sociologist Cary Gabriel Costello, and is used to describe intersex people whose gender matches the gender they were medically assigned at birth, but who might not feel like cis or trans fits them, might experience dysphoria, and who might feel like they've ended up transitioning medically or socially in some ways. this is a word that exists that an intersex person put time into coining because they wanted other intersex people to feel seen, embraced, and have ways of understanding themselves and communicating to others, and that's something that's super meaningful to me! and yet, i've rarely seen anyone reference it, and also seen multiple people making fun of it in other spaces online.

there's also intergender, which is another intersex specific gender term used to describe when your gender is inseparable from your intersex traits, and that your intersex identity is intertwined with your gender identity in some way. some people just identify as intergender, others use it as an adjective and exist as an intergender man or woman. intersex terminology like this is really important to me, especially because we're so often denied the right to make sense of our own experiences.

i think ultimately what i wanted to say with this post is just that when i think about intersex community, some of the most important values of intersex community for me are solidarity, care for each other, and affirming our right to define our own existence. and i don't think that can happen in a community where people are acting in extractive ways, harassing and attacking their fellow community members, and being dismissive of the realities of other intersex people's lives.

[utahlive]

Announcement

Hello UtahLIVE viewers, I have come before you today to talk a bit about recent events and how they will impact the future of this blog. Apologies this note is a bit long, but I would really appreciate it if you took some time to read this.

As I'm sure many of you know, within the past month Wilbur Soot/William Gold has been outed as an abuser. I want to make it clear right now that I no longer support him, nor do I accept his apology (mainly because it's not mine to accept in the first place). I stand with and believe Shelby and Alice 100%. This goes for any other victims that have or will come forward that I am unaware of, since I've been trying my best to stay offline. This aint about me!! But it's still hard when someone you look up to and who inspired you to create art turns out to be a shitbag. If you were somehow unaware of this, please go watch Shelby/Shubble's stream (VOD + transcript) and read Alice's post (and mind the CW/TWs) for more information.

This blog has brought me a lot of grief because of all of this. I do not want to support or perpetuate this man's image, but at the same time, I don't want to discontinue a story that I've put so much time and effort into. After a lot of deliberation, I've decided that I am going to continue this story until the end. I will also be adding a disclaimer in the pinned post, and I will no longer be tagging any of my posts from here on out with #wilbur soot or any adjacent tags. I don't think it's fair to myself or to anyone else who has enjoyed this blog to waste all the hard work that I have put in, because ultimately this is my project and my story, not his. If you disagree with this, I totally get it, but I ask you to just unfollow and/or block rather than sending me any hate because I promise you that whatever you say about me "supporting" Wilbur Soot by continuing this blog is something I've already considered myself. He is not (active) on Tumblr, he did not receive any of the money I got from stickers, I doubt anyone is looking at this blog and thinking "wow this Wilbur guy seems cool, let me go listen to his music and watch his vods".

Despite this decision, I'll probably still be taking a bit of time to myself to think about things and focus on school. Updates will likely resume in late March or early April.

I hope you can all respect my stance on this, and I want to reiterate how much I appreciate you all for supporting my work. Love you guys <3

[doberbutts]

What I never understood is like... I thought we all agreed that past trauma doesn't justify abusive behavior, and that intent isn't as important as impact. So when the people who say stuff like "I hate all men" and "All men are trash" try to justify that by saying that they've been traumatized by men, I really can't get behind that reasoning? I mean, I can empathize with wanting to vent about past abuse, but I just don't think it's ever cool to generalize entire groups of people in the process. If a man was abused by his mom and started going off about how much he hates all women, we'd tell him to go to therapy. It's just so blatant to me that they want to avoid seeing the impact their words have on the people around them & they don't want to see how their man-hate interacts with racism, ableism, transphobia, etc etc.

Anyway, thanks a bunch for speaking on this! While I have not read Bell Hooks myself, I agree with all the snippets I've read through Tumblr, and I'll be looking up The Will To Change during my next library visit so I can become officially acquainted with her work. Thank you for leading me in that direction, and thank you for making such thoughtful, informative posts. You're a delight, and I hope you have a lovely week.

I think as well that often times people confuse venting- which is good and even therapeutic- with political and/or actionable discourse.

Person who was attacked, assaulted, and now traumatized by men talking about how they have an inherent distrust of men and at times wish they could live in a world without men is speaking from the darkest place of their fear and is working through their trauma.

Person who then takes these opinions and turns them into actual theory and pushes for this to become the new social norm, however, is no longer venting nor are they acting in a therapeutic manner. This is where it begins to harm people, and thus where it begins to be a problem.

There's been people- feminists, even- a lot smarter than me who have discussed at length the difference between the two. How we need to make space for one, but need to ensure the other is not being used as a bludgeon to harm those who just happen to be in the same demographic.

[utilitycaster]

this may seem needlessly finicky but I do actually believe it's important: calling Verin a himbo is just one of many examples where like, one of the cast says something off the cuff and it's not exactly the right word or it is highly contextual, and that is fine because no one is perfect especially in improv, but then it gets repeated ad infinitum within the fandom when it never really fit in the first place. We have Verin's stats and he's decently more intelligent than average with a 13 (smarter than most of Bells Hells for one; as smart as Pike); it's just he's the guy with a bachelor's degree with good grades followed by military service in a family where everyone has two PhDs - Matt said "himbo of the family" the way in a family where most people are exceptionally tall you'd call the 5'11" child the short one. In Call of the Netherdeep he appears as thoughtful and competent and promoted to a difficult position at a very young age, and in the campaign his appearance is simultaneously as a leader of troops in a dangerous mission, and someone who cares enough about poetry from a completely foreign and distant culture to have tried to learn more about it. I'm sorry, but if you're using the word "himbo" I don't think you're processing a thing about the character yourself; you're just the latest repetition in a game of telephone that's been going on since mid-2021.

And that's not deeply bad on the surface, and I'm using Verin not because he is the character most wronged by this sort of thing but because he's recent and it's really clear where the word came from and that it's not a good assessment, but something I happen to have a decent knack for is pattern recognition in language. I usually find it really easy to pick up on when someone's plagiarized because of the language and pattern shifts. I tend to remember urls and out of place words well. So I do tend to notice when everyone suddenly starts using a single turn of phrase and I tend to flag it. Sometimes that's not bad; sometimes it means everyone came to a similar conclusion and that's the best way to express that conclusion. But like, when Taliesin called the Yios episode a gas-leak episode and the entire fandom started parroting it? The line "bone-dry takes"? The fact that a lot of ship defenses I see were phrased precisely as "I have eyes"? without actually talking about the ship itself? the fact that I've seen a spike in the use of the term "ontologically evil" including in myself and not all uses are actually correct? And extending this beyond strictly language but consider any headcanon with minimal textual support that catches like wildfire (sidebar: remember how we make, or made fun of the SPREAD THIS LIKE WILDFIRE tendency on Tumblr a decade ago? same concept of repetition of a specific turn of phrase without internalizing) all sort of ping this.

And it's fine, truly, to come to fandom and turn off your brain. I know this will sound sarcastic from me, and that's because I don't personally agree, but I do strongly agree that you can do what you want in fandom and you don't have to listen to my opinions so in the end, yeah, it's fine because I am not the arbiter of "fine". But I think critical thought is a vital exercise and I think precision with language is part of it and so if you find yourself using the same exact words and thoughts as everyone else, that should, ideally, trigger a process of "but are these the right words? what do I see when I see this character and how would I describe them? do I agree with this assessment?" Fandom is an interesting and easier microcosm than reality in which to start doing that.

[rottenaero]

AO3

Part 1

Part 4

Part 6

Part 5 of the roommates idea

Okay okay, so before this starts, a lot of people have mentioned me posting this on ao3, and my question is if you guys mean it as it is, or if I should make two or three new parts to make up for the first part.

Because in the first part, we miss a lot of possible moments between Steve and Eddie since it skips to the basic idea.

This whole thing was meant to be a messy and quick way to get my ideas out, but then people ended up actually liking it, and well, I just want you guys to like the outcome.

Basically, I wanna know if I should;

A.Post it on ao3 as is

B. Post it on ao3 with two to maybe four parts instead of the original post, and have me do part six after I make those. (I'm a decently quick writer when I'm motivated, all these parts so far have been within a day or two)

C. Make the parts instead of the original post, and have this be a big one-shot on ao3(meaning it wouldn't be posted on there until this is finished)

I am really leaning towards B, just cause I wanna do those interactions (one of which would be Eddie coming out to Steve), but I wanna see what you guys think first.

This whole thing is kinda a wreck cause I don't usually post fics on Tumblr but hopefully it will get better with time.

After Dustin explains the upside down, and Eddie talks about what really happened, they come to a sort of agreement.

Eddie was to stay at the boathouse, and someone would occasionally come over with a supply of drinks and food.

Steve, of course, despised this, because Eddie is his best friend-(And who was he kidding? Goddamn crush, too)-dammit, but he let the plan go on anyway.

Before they left, Steve turned to Eddie, brows pinched together.

“Stay safe, alright? If you get hurt because you do something stupid, I’ll beat the shit out of you.”

Eddie laughed, loud and full, “Kinda counterproductive, aye sweetheart?”

He stopped when Steve didn’t laugh or make a joke back. “I’ll be fine, and I’ll walkie if things go to shit.”

“Good.” Steve gave him a little peck on the corner of his lips, “Don’t die, man. Can’t take care of these little shits by myself.”

He turned to face Max, and a gaping Dustin and Robin.

“Lets go, nerds”

-

Steve stared at the ground, unblinking.

One of his kids were gonna die.

Eddie had had apparently left the boathouse

Eddie was being hunted.

Two more students have been murdered.

He licked his lips, and his eyes flicked up to watch Powell talk about the town hall meeting.

They were royally fucked.

“Dustin, can you hear me? Wheeler? Stevie?”

Steve’s eyes widened and he turned around in time to see Dustin snatch the walkie.

“Eddie, holy shit. Are you okay?”

The walkie took a second to crackle back to life.

“Nah man, pretty uh, pretty goddamn far from okay.”

“Where is he?”Nancy asked, already halfway back into the car.

“Where are you?”

“Skull Rock, Steve knows it.”

Steve smiled, grabbing the walkie and clicking down on the button, “Hold on tight, Ed-stefer, we’re on our way.” He tossed it back to Dustin before turning to Nancy.

“I’m driving.”

She scrunched her nose, but didn’t question it and swapped to the passenger's side.

-

“Dude, I’m telling you, you’re leading us the wrong way.”

“It’s North, I’m positive! I checked the map.”

Steve sighed and pinched his nose, “This is literally Eddie and I’s spot, we come here all the time.”

“That doesn’t have to do with it being a make-out spot, does it?” Lucas asked hesitantly from his spot in the back.

“Jesus, no Sinclair, this does not have to do with- Eddie and I are just friends.”

Robin scoffed, “Didn’t you kiss him earlier?” She asked.

“As friends. He doesn’t like me like that.”

“Right, but you like him like that, though?”

“Oh wow, suddenly we’re here, y’know, at the place you said we weren’t gonna end up at?” Steve yelped, gesturing broadly at the rocks around him.

Lucas has to physically bite his lip to keep from mentioning that he had absolutely picked that up from Eddie, or that Eddie had picked it up from him.

“See? You little butthead, I was right.”

Theres a rustle of leaves and then,

“I concur, you, Dustin Henderson, are a total butthead.”

Steve turned to face the man and almost collapsed in relief, hes not hurt.

“Jesus Eddie, we thought you were a goner.” Dustin sighed, as he made his way past Steve to hug Eddie.

“Yeah, me too man. Me too.”

The hug goes on for maybe ten seconds before Eddie’s pulling back and bringing Steve into a side one, you know, like some kind of dad. “I tried calling you guys, but uh…”

His face turned sheepish and he stepped back a bit to grab some water from a canister. “My walkie was busted, man.”

“Drenched.” He adds in after a second, laughing a bit.

He took another sip from the bottle before wiping and extra drops away from his mouth. “So, uh, I did the thing that I do now apparently. I ran.” He let out another laugh, this one was a little bit more self-deprecating.

“Do you know what time this was? The attack.”

Eddie perked up, and grabbed at his wrist, “ Yeah, no, I um, know exactly what time it was.”

He held up a watch, the dials on it weren’t moving. “My walkie wasn’t the only thing that got soaked.”

“9:27…”

“Same times our flashlights went kablooey.” Robin says, and her eyes light up like she connected the dots.

Steve hadn’t, “Which means what exactly?”

“That that surge of energy was Vecna attacking Patrick.”

Steve half-zoned out, silently going through the events in his head, while maintaining conversation.

“Skull Rock was North.”

“An electromagnetic field.”

“What say you, Eddie the Banished?”

Steve tuned back in, a hundred percent now. He turned to look at Eddie, who was still crouching, and damn how did his back not hurt?

“I say you’re asking me to follow you into Mordor,” Steve perked up, he kind of knew this one, “-which, if I’m totally straight with you, I think it’s a really bad idea.”

And Steve nodded along, because yeah, this was a terrible idea.

“But uh, the Shire, the Shire is burning, so Mordor it is.”

He whistled at Eddie when everyone got up, and he was by Steve’s side in seconds.

“You’re not hurt or anything, are you? Cause you don’t look it but…”He trailed off, and Eddie grinned.

“I am all-good Steve-O.” Steve nodded, “Good, good.”

Suddenly, there was a sharp gasp from right next to him, “Were you, perhaps, worried?!” Steve kicked a rock instead of answering.

It just made Eddie’s grin widen further.

“You totally were! Stevie Harrington, The-Former-King-Of-Hawkins turned sweetheart, worrying over lil-ol-Eddie-The-Freak-Munson!”

Steve scoffed, “ First off, I’d like to think I’ve always been a sweetheart, second off, keep it in your pants, dude.”

Eddie cackled, leaning into his side, “Yeah, yeah! You’re right. You’ve kinda been like that for the past two years, Mr.Eddie-Cant-Carry-A-Fucking-Hot-Pan-Anymore.” He laughed, ignoring the second part of Steve’s statement.

He huffed, “Just don’t want you getting hurt.”

Eddie booped his nose, “Yeah yeah, you’re just you like that.”

Tag List

@bxlthazar@i-have-three-feelings@leverage-ot3@mightbeasleep@badcaseofcasey@joruni@original-cypher@aceflavouredyougurt@flustratedcas@lovelylilbadone@labels-are-for-the-weak@steddieassheg0es@gregre369

[ms-demeanor]

I think I knew you’d posted some risqué things but I didn’t know you were once the porn guy? If you are also accepting questions about porn - have you ever had fears or issues with those sorts of photos/videos being out and about impacting your career? I’ve always been told it would be a terrible mistake but I’m always curious to do it anyway.

Also, head shaving fetish videos? I got paid to shave my head for a commercial once but this intrigues me all the more!

I've been the porn guy kind of forever; my first real jobs were doing porn (commissioned art of some stuff that was actually really distressing largely because of the business relationship and nude modeling that was fine) and I've done random fetish stuff and custom videos over the years.

When I first started doing any of that the internet wasn't the way that it is now so it didn't make a difference, by the time it made a difference my career was already dogshit and I'd spent some time working for a feminist magazine that made me use my full legal name on their publication and I got myself a nice collection of howling MRAs to follow me around for the better part of a decade. That was genuinely more professionally damaging than porn has ever ended up being because at least with porn nobody expected me to have my legal name on anything but a release. (It turned out that one of the guys I worked with was fans of one of the MRAs who made an entire video about one of the feminist comics and kept using my name through the whole video so there were like several years where I was trying to be nice to this dude who was pretty awful so that he wouldn't tell this youtuber's audience where I worked. That fucking sucked)

I guess it could come up and it would probably have some pretty bad fallout at work but also there would be other places that I could land; I know several former sex workers in infosec because infosec is a weird space with weird norms and I'm sure I'd land somewhere stable if I had to call in favors. I mean, hell, two of the guys I'd tap for help if I got fired tomorrow work places that host porn where part of their job is making sure that the porn sites get support.

It is definitely something that I would be more concerned about if I were not already relatively toxic as far as employers are concerned. I don't think they'd get as far as being put off by the porn, they already hate the motormouth and the haircut and the eye contact and the labor organizing. (This blog, my current online presence, is not exactly an asset if I'm looking for work, you know? Most employers are not a real big fan of people who talk about abolishing copyright and establishing worker protections - and it's inextricably tied with my legal name because of the feminist magazine that wanted me to leverage my social media presence for their clicks.)

But if it's something you're thinking about and you're not already radioactive it's worthwhile to be cautious. Talk to other porn producers online, read up on it (I've got some stuff written by other people about sex work in the digital age on @safe-for , which is my porn blog, but it's a bit of a scroll to get to it. I had more on my other porn blog, where I also had more porn, but that got deleted. I was really starting to pick up what I was producing online and promoting on tumblr when the porn ban kicked in, then I basically stopped doing pretty much anything SW related when my spouse's health imploded then there was covid and wham bam here we are)

I don't know. If I was starting new at all of this and it was post SESTA/FOSTA would I do it? The internet and its attitudes about porn are VASTLY different now than they were just a few years ago. I would probably be a lot more hesitant now than I was in 2004.

The headshave stuff is fun though, and there's a lot you can do with that that doesn't ping as sex work the same way to a lot of people. There's still SW in the performance for the clients, and in the way they treat you, but it's less of a concern as something that might rear its head and shame your family line in thirty years.

I once had someone pay a five hundred dollars to clip my undercut and shave it down with a razor after. It's good work if you can get it, but it IS work and there may be weird emotional fallout if you're entering a fetish space you're not familiar with (LOTS of degradation in this particular scene; I'm personally okay with that but many many people aren't - if you're uncomfortable being degraded this may not be the kink space for you).

[dark-bakura1]

Okay lovelies, now that the year is almost over and there are only a few hours left, I have to use this time to get something off my chest. It's just been on my mind for a while and I want to end the year with a few nice words.

When I found my way into the DCA fandom by coincidence last year, I never expected to find a digital place where I feel so comfortable - besides various communities in the horse art role play game, in which I have been more or less active for years. I never expected to start REALLY enjoying drawing again, but these two characters just made that happen. For years I've been drawing just thinking about how many points I can get out of leveling my horses, how much effort I have to put into an event picture to have a chance at one of the top three places and somewhere along the way I totally forgot to have fun with this hobby. Fun has turned into a compulsion to always aim for the best possible result. I started to overthink pictures for so long and wanted to create something so complex that I ended up not starting at all: Because I could never have realized it the way it looked in my head.

But since I stumbled into the DCA fandom myself - by pure coincidence, I'd like to say again - and started being active on Tumbr, I've found my way back to the 'origin' for myself: Having fun with what you do. This fandom has captivated me so much that I started reading English fanfiction about our two beloved robots - something I NEVER thought would happen. Simply because my concentration is totally limited and it's hard enough for me to read and understand texts in German. For me, it was never even conceivable that I would read something in a language that is not my mother tongue: And now here I am, doing it more often than I thought. Not only that, I've even started writing again myself, have an account on ao3 and upload stories there myself. I take the trouble to write, translate, proofread and upload things… and some people even think it's really great :3

And do you know why? Because behind the DCA fandom there is an incredibly large group of people like me: Who carry around a lot of problems themselves and seek refuge with two fictional characters in a fandom that is incredibly cozy, understanding, lovable and friendly. Of course, I could also create things in a fandom that isn't that… but for me it makes an incredible difference. I have an anxiety disorder around people. Even the monthly supermarket shop is a huge challenge for me. Every trip out the door is exhausting and I don't really have contact with anyone in RL. I have my mother and grandma. I go to the doctors, to Ergo therapy and I have BEWO people on hand to support and help me… but I don't have any friends. Not because I don't want to, but because friendships are incredibly stressful for me. I can't maintain them. I haven't said a word to the person I would most likely call a 'friend' in a year - because I simply don't have the strength. Talking, listening, reacting… it's all incredibly exhausting for me. But as soon as I open Tumblr and especially Discord, I see a bunch of great people. I can join in if I can and want to, but I don't have to. And to top it all off, I see so much self-insert stuff that makes me think, 'Man, you're not so alone after all' - and on top of that, even more people who also think it's good and can relate. I know that not everyone in the DCA fandom is so nice either, but the ones I've had the privilege of getting to know are just balm for my soul.

If someone had told me at the beginning of 2023 that I would find my way into a great fandom with even better people at the end of the same year, I would have declared them crazy. I don't have it in for people and since I've almost exclusively had really shitty experiences so far, they're welcome to stay far away from me. Most of them have expectations: Expectations that I can hardly, if at all, fulfill. But there are so many great people behind Sun and Moon who are simply supportive. Not toxic, not mean, not patronizing. No. They are people who are super wholesome. I don't need someone who pushes me, teaches me, corrects me or otherwise wants to educate me with phrases that they themselves don't live by. I don't want someone who puts even more pressure on me. I want people with whom I feel safe and comfortable. people with whom I can get what other people don't want to give me. When I think that I didn't like Sun or Moon in the game, I find it amazing that they are now my refuge and straighten me out mentally so many times a day. And thanks to them, I found you. Yep - YOU. Anyone who wants to may now feel addressed. Even if we've certainly never had any contact with each other: You are part of the community that I have come to love and that I am addressing here. There is so much hate, I love a Safespace that simply has love for everything and everyone. I've been here for a year now… and I hope for MANY more years with one of the greatest communities I've ever been a part of.

Hugs to ALL of you, lots of love goes out to everyone. Happy New Year, stay healthy and I wish you and your loved ones all the happiness in the world. Thank you for existing and just being amazing people. please keep that forever <3

[armor-goblin]

okay given how fucking weird and rapid-fire everything is (already, has been for ages) and to remind myself too: We Need To Learn To Fact Check.

i am talking about anything we see about trumps antics and I am talking about international news and I am talking about local news and I am talking about nearly everything in our lives. it is tiring, and takes more effort. but i think this is the only way we get thru the world right now, is by checking what we share however we can. it won't guarantee we are sharing only accurate info, but it DOES help us focus on sharing more accurate stuff and not buying into mis and disinfo.

Context/why i know this: im an academic librarian. I teach classes and do research on misinformation and media literacy among other topics, and i teach about authority of information and finding and evaluating info all the time. when I teach people to evaluate information i use Mike Caulfield's SIFT method, which is great and adaptable, and consists of these four moves:

STOP. this is the most important one. it just means: take two seconds before you click reblog or share smth. ask yourself: what is my emotional reaction to this content? what does it want me to do with this post or information?

do I know this is true - bc I've already checked into it before or I know something related to it that corroborates it - or am I far enough removed from the situation that I don't really know? for ex: I know gazans fundraise on tumblr bc i have tunblr, and that conditions in gaza are awful bc of both user posts and news coverage I've seen. I don't have tiktok or see much from it that isnt reposted, so I paused more before sharing that last post bc im less aware of the cjrcumstances.

INVESTIGATE THE SOURCE. where did this come from and do I know that source of information? can i identify the author not just the website it was shared from? what position is this person in to know what's going on? they might have expertise, education, a job, they might also just be in a place where things are happening (ukraine, gaza, los angeles, etc) or have access to a place where things are happening (tiktok, for ex).

FIND ADDITIONAL COVERAGE. if this is the only place you've heard about an event or statement, look and see if there are others reporting on it. sometimes you are looking for broad coverage (lots and lots of reporters and civilians have reported on the conditions in Gaza independently) and sometimes for very specific coverage (i wanted to see more than one screenshot of the TikTok ban msg before I believed it was real), but what you really want is to see if others are talking about and reporting on something.

this is called lateral reading btw and it's a really critical piece of fact checking.

TRACE CLAIMS TO THEIR SOURCE. who was the first to say this? where did they say it? was it misinterpreted along the way? the internet is a giant game of telephone and messages get distorted. this one is particularly important if you're not finding additional coverage AND/OR if the coverage is all weirdly samey.

highly specific example here: in 2020 there was a brief time when ppl were saying that ibuprofen was dangerous for covid and could heighten your risk. i am ibuprofens georg and I was on it 2x/day high dose at the time, so this could be a problem for me. so I started citations tracing - following citations and references and news posts and academic preprints. and finally found a brief and uncited Twitter post from a French health minister that appeared to be the original source, and along the way I found NO other corroborating info that wasn't citing that specific quote in the end. and thus. I took my ibuprofen.

this part takes time and effort more than anything else, but it's also often illuminating. I dont always go all the way to TRACE. but I have that move in my pocket for when I need to. it is very similar to a wikipedia rabbit hole where you start somewhere and end somewhere very different - but if you looked at your browser history you'd see all the pages you clicked to get there.

thats SIFT! you don't have to do each move for every post u see. if you take anything as a habit, start from the top and just STOP for a second before you share or repeat something wild. ask yourself about it a little. this is what i consider the most vital step, and it makes it easier to do the others in time.

we can't know everything. we will sometimes share misinformation by accident. we will sometimes share malicious disinformation by accident too. but I think we owe it to ourselves to try and build these habits, and it makes it a little harder for the people in power to convince us of whatever they want this week. it makes us more skeptical and more informed. these are always relevant skills and they're more and more important every day.

[v88sy]

There are some blogs optimistic about Tommy back at some point, what are your thoughts about it?

I don't want to get too optimistic, because that's how we got ourselves here in the first place. Let's be honest. This was always a possibility and was even laid out as a possibility in the articles/interviews, we just chose to get too high on the hope. We were treating it as a sure thing and that was never the case. We duped ourselves a little on this one, and yes, I'm absolutely including myself.

Now, as many have pointed out (which I absolutely agree with) if you were to be completely oblivious about the articles and/or what they said, the breakup very much looks like it's open ended. It looks like something that's unresolved or meant to be resolved at a later date. They made it something that could be resolved. Something like moving away or wanting completely different things in life is a lot harder to work through and more definative. They clearly both want to be with each other. Tommy said he wanted to be Buck's last. He said he wouldn't be able to deal with the (what he thought was inevitable) heartbreak. You only get hurt that deep when you lose something you wanted that bad.

This is honestly the first time we ever heard Buck even utter the words "engaged" or "married" to any of his SOs. I do think it's something he wanted down the road, I just don't think he was there yet, and that's absolutely fine. The relationship was still very new. There was clearly a lot they didn't know about each other yet.

It was far too soon to make the commitment of moving in, and Tommy was just trying to stop things from getting any further before he got too deep (too late, me thinks.)

If you remove the clear bias of the journalists writing these "exit interviews" (is that even a thing in television?) they start to sound much like your run of the mill interview they do with every main after they have a major storyline play out on screen. Look at the direct quotes, not what the journalists are inferring for themselves.

All that being said, I'm not getting my hopes up, and I'm not planning on watching live again until I have a definite as to where the storyline is going, and if that takes until the final episode ever, so be it. I will get back to it eventually. Until then, I'll be keeping tabs on what's going on through Tumblr.

Now, this is just a little thought in my brain that has absolutely nothing to back it up whatsoever. I think maybe either Lou needed this break to get away from the bs and finish his role on SWAT, or they gave it to him and he's taking it.

We know he was surprised, but what he was surprised about was how soon it happened. Tells me that at least a temporary break was planned, just not until further down. Or maybe he only meant the disagreement.

We very much know Tim likes to plan out his story about 5 seconds in advance, there could be a tentative plan to maybe bring Tommy back down the road, say, after the midseason hiatus. Could even be the "project that may or may not be happening" that Lou had mentioned.

Buck is my favorite character, but I'm not interested in seeing him regress or go through the same storyline for the millionth time. If he doesn't at least try and fight for Tommy or talk things out with him, it's just more of the same season 5 Buck. I love 99% of the other characters too, but they also suffer from the Groundhog's Day writing and I'm just old and tired.