#i'm starting a new tag for when i fucking rant

[cosmogyros]

.

[helianskies]

ugly maths.

i hate maths, right. i don't usually like numbers, and if i do like numbers it's gotta be an 8 or a 48 and nothing else.

thing is, i've recently caught myself doing maths again. ugly maths. the kind of maths that, really, i've been trying to avoid as much as possible because, well, it's ugly!

you... wanna see?

okay, fine... but don't say i didn't warn you!

ugly, see? look at all those numbers! not a 48 in sight!

huh? what's that? you don't see what i'm on about? oh... oh! hang on, lemme just—

better? yes? no? no? okay, what if i—

mmh, yes. ugly numbers. see it now? can you see why they're ugly?

here, i can make it worse.

these numbers are ugly. the maths they make me do is ugly.

now i'll level with you: the worst ones by far are the yellow numbers. the maths they make me do it the ugliest.

why ugly?

because it makes me ugly.

those numbers turn me into not only a suddenly number-obsessed fool, but a fool who also cannot understand these numbers and what they mean and why i feel like they reflect on me and my ability.

87, 75.

the thoughts are as follows:

• the orange numbers are big, so why are you being ugly about the yellow ones? you should be happy with what you have. so many nice big numbers! not everyone receives that.

• is it that there are two different audiences for these two different fics? perhaps. they are quite different works, with different appeals, and different themes. maybe you are reading too much into it.

• why are you obsessing over numbers anyway? you don't like maths! you left maths behind when you were 16, put it down!

okay, okay, fine! i'll put the maths down. right here, in fact!:

that 87 was an 83 at the start of the year. the 6161 it is attached to was a 5453.

4, 708.

ugly maths.

the 75 is a nice number. in fact, compared to 87, it is beautiful, radiant, enchanting. at the start of the year, 75 was 48. wow. now that is one sexy number!

27.

mmmm.

6161, 1061.

5100.

87, 75.

12.

mmmm.

you know, my most favourite comment left recently on a fic of mine was 2 characters long: :(

it made me :)

well, actually, it made me >:) because it was left in response, presumably, to one of the key scenes in a new chapter which left the exact impression on someone that i hoped it would.

they must be the only one who reacted like that, though.

1.

have i mentioned that that 87 and 75 include author responses?

i won't try to do more maths, there. it might not end well for me. the maths is making me tired enough as it is, and i have an early start tomorrow.

oh! but, that being said, i have another set of ugly numbers to show you, so keep 87 and 75 in mind.

ready?

838, 245.

(want a hint? the green numbers!)

838, 87. 245, 75.

9.6, 3.3.

ugly maths. it's ugly again, see? i don't like it. i'm seeing numbers within numbers within numbers, and i can't seem to stop!

the numbers make me ask new questions:

• why is it not good enough?

• people seem to engage more with one fic over the other, so shouldn't you prioritise?

• is all this maths this really good for you?

no, it isn't.

i want to avoid ugly maths. ugly maths makes me want to tear my hair out. it makes me want to start from scratch. it makes me want to grab someone and scream. it makes me want to cry and press a button that has tempted me many times before when the numbers become too ugly to bear.

ugly maths turn me into an ugly person.

ugly maths make me obsessive, paranoid, anxious, regretful, vindictive, spiteful, alone.

i hate maths. i hate numbers, just like, it feels, the numbers hate me.

[storiedhistories]

Am I still pretty much on hiatus? Yup. But right now, I need to write something to get the feelings out, SO.

Like this post for a positive paternal starter from one of the many dads I have! That would be: Adama, The Doctor, Goliath, Macbeth, Tom Dupain, Hades, Hank, Kratos, Thor, or Joel.

[limoneads]

some guy at work tried to explain sci fi to me and proceeded to get it fucking wrong i'm cackling i think i just got mansplained

[amplexadversary]

.

[chipped-chimera]

I think the large part of the reason why people get extra pedantic about those with mental illness engaging in self-destructive coping mechanisms (because that's what all of these are! Coping mechanisms! Even for those who are not 'mentally ill') is because it is loudly showing the symptom of a larger problem - that society at large has let this individual down, and badly.

Mental health attitudes have improved a lot over the recent years, but there is a certain kind of bitterness around it for me as someone who has been living with mental health issues 'officially' for 14 years (but arguably might have been my whole life) to see governments (or mine at least) finally sit up and throw more resources into mental health support services post pandemic because they KNOW it's going to have a lasting knock on effect.

Like I am glad it is happening. I am glad there is more support. But at the same time I'm wondering where was this 15 years ago when I was diagnosed with depression which would turn out to be treatment resistant over the years? Where was the care that could have gotten me out of the hole I was in and identified root issues, instead of me largely having to figure out that shit myself at 30? Where is the financial offset for the really expensive treatment I now have to get just as a last ditch effort before literal BRAIN SURGERY just so I can fucking live as someone below the poverty line? Where is recognition of the fact that every medication I have to take to keep myself stable enough to keep going is basically life support and I shouldn't have to PAY just to keep my will to live?

I know my government has launched multiple different programs over the years to try and drive down the suicide rate, but it's never put a dent in it - in fact in recent years it's getting worse. And that's because they only treat the symptom, not the problem.

Highly distressed people show up to hospitals regularly requesting to be admitted for their own safety, and if they aren't turned away (I have read some SHIT let me tell you) or abused within that system that's supposed to help them (... again, I have read some shit) once they're 'recovered' they're turfed out into the world, right back into the same situations that made them so distressed in the first place.

Neurotypical people who are 'mentally well' only get so bent out of shape over those who are highly depressed or distressed engaging in self destructive behaviour because it is in a way showing them that they have failed. They have in some way, let us down. That they did not care enough. While that distressed person is engaging in self-destructive coping mechanisms to try and self soothe or just hold on to their scrap of life by a thread - they tell us to knock it off because they can't sit with the discomfort. We're inconveniencing THEM by just trying to fucking survive.

Any depressed person has the potential to reach that end point, and unless we actually sit the fuck up collectively and get our shit together, address the REASONS people are depressed like discrimination, ableism, racism, poverty etc. nothing is going to change. Telling someone to 'knock it off because you're making me uncomfortable' isn't going to solve shit. It's only going to make it worse.

Because right now when someone has depression? That's sad. But when someone commits suicide? Now it's a tragedy.

Depression was ALWAYS a tragedy of society. And it shouldn't take someone hitting the point of self harm or death for it to be taken seriously.

Some people really hate the idea of mentally ill people fucking up or making choices that damage ourselves and it's so exhausting. So many people talk about how people should be able to make choices about their own body until it's mentally ill people self-harming, or doing drugs/alcohol, not taking meds, doing things generally considered "unhealthy" and then they decide no, actually, people should be able to take control of your right to make decisions about your body because people deemed "mentally ill" just can't be trusted.

Somehow we're not allowed to do things that bother other people, or hurt our bodies, even if other people do shit like that all the time. Somehow people considered "sane" can exercise to the point of making themselves ill, can drink and "occasionally" do drugs, can refuse to take medicine and even self-harm in ways but we're often not allowed to without someone threatening to violate our right to decide about our bodies. Because we don't understand consequences or we "might kill ourselves" but it's so ridiculous.

Like yes, we might kill ourselves. We might fuck ourselves up. We might destroy our entire lives. And? People do that! It happens! It's part of living. People do dangerous shit, people fuck up, people hurt themselves. It's not like we're the only ones who do that but even if we were, you can't puppet other people's lives just because they're living them differently.

Not without violating their right to make decisions about their body. Not without being involved in a violent system that destroys mental health and bodily autonomy. Not without being a part of a violent system that will try to make sure no one is ever free.

[fairlyang]

Santa tell me ⚔️

w/c: 1.3K

pairing: wade wilson x f!reader

tags: 18+ smut. wade in a santa suit, barely roleplay, wade is a freaky frog, dry humping , grinding against him, yapping your ear off, dirty talk, praise

taglist: @reader-1290

smutmas masterlist | main masterlist

wade was never one to reject roleplaying in bed, it was one of his favorite things to do. so of fucking course, once the holidays rolled in he knew he had to put on the big fat man's red suit. 

there he was in all his glory with a santa suit and his deadpool suit just because he felt like it made sense to have both on. 

you were sat on his lap, in a tight red dress matching his santa suit because he couldn't be the only one dressed up. "so what do you want for christmas, gorgeous, beautiful girl i have never seen before?" 

you bit your lip, looking at him and trying not to laugh, "honestly a handful of things santa.."

"wow now we're getting greedy on good ole saint nick huh? alright, c'mon lay 'em on me, princess." he responds, his gloved hand snaking your waist and slowly going down to your ass.

"a new car would be nice… just so i don't have to hear my odyssey die on me every other day." you say while giving him a somewhat serious look only for him to break and scoff, "well who warned you about that piece of shit dumb excuse of a vehicle..."

"santa, i'm not sure i know what you're on about…" you joke, making him clear his throat. 

“what i meant to say was… what else?” he says through gritted teeth. 

“maybe one of those stuffed animals you can microwave, just for fun…” you respond with a smile making him chuckle. 

“kind of sadistic but okay.. santa doesn’t judge.” he mumbles and you cover your mouth to stifle a laugh back. 

“oh and one more thing…. i’d like for my boyfriend to stay home more often. it’s getting tiring to only be able to see him once a week at best and when he does come home, he’s always carrying a limb and staining our floors.” you say then slowly start going on a rant.

you took a deep breath for dramatic effect, then finally speak up after a few seconds, “so, santa tell me, can you give me these things?” 

he was quiet, too quiet for your liking until he nodded and took off the fake beard, throwing it behind him. you reached over for his own mask wanting him to take that one off as well. he grabbed his santa hat, handing it to you then taking his mask off. you put the santa hat back on his head and you get off his lap, only to climb back on, straddling him, "can definitely do a few of those for you princess."

"yeah? about fucking time baby." you murmur and bring your hands to his shoulders to help you. 

you make sure you're directly on his hard on, only barely swaying your hips back and forth, watching him let out a sigh as you feel his hands on your hips. "fuck.. just like that cupcake." 

you press yourself harder against him, now grinding on him properly as he lays back into the couch, “promise i’ll try to be here more, just tryna get all the money you deserve to live lavishly, sweet pea.” he coos making you shiver and bite your lip. 

his hands gripped your hips, guiding you while you brought one hand down to lift your dress over your ass. his hands immediately dropped down to grope you, not paying any attention to the santa themed thong you were wearing, “you should always be on santa’s lap with that ass, oh my fucking god.” 

you shake your head and laugh making him grin up at you, “think you can do that for me?” 

you nod and he lifts a hand up to smack your ass, “good girl, now don’t stop baby.” 

his pants were soft and since you were already soaking through your panties it was easier to grind against him. unfortunately for him, he had two layers of pants so he wouldn't be able to feel it like he usually does. but he was too busy moaning to notice and yet again, yapping his heart out while you moved faster, "fuck this is even better than that one time i was groping you in the victoria's secret changing room, god those fucking bras will always do it for me. no fucking wonder you love those and goddd the thongs- this one's real festive baby, glad i'm not the only one playing along."  

"baby that was two days ago.." you mutter and he shrugs, "still. i loved that day and you know how much i love playing with you in public." 

"oh i know." you chuckle and lean closer to his face, your movements not at all stopping.

"remember when we fucked on the balcony of the hotel we stayed at?" he asked and you hummed, "which one?"

he groans and you feel him twitch beneath you making you clench, prompting you both to moan, "fuck!"

"w-which one baby?" you ask and he gulps, all of a sudden losing his train of thought as his hands went back to your hips. 

the small fabric of the thong was drenched and it was getting harder to grind just because it was so slippery. you stopped for a singular second, quickly bringing a hand down to move it to the side then place yourself right on his leaking cock. you went back to the same pace and his moans filled your ears, "i didn't hear you respond, cupcake." you murmur inches away from his lips and he just twitches yet again. 

"mexico, definitely mexico. or paris." he quickly responds and you nod, "both were good, great views." 

"especially from my end." he mutters, making you whine. 

"yeah you remember me fucking you from behind princess? making sure we looked at the view to get our money's worth." he coos and you nod, feeling the sensation of your orgasm building up. 

"like thinking back to it baby? lord knows i do when I'm out working and jerking my cock at night thinking of you. im fucking always thinking of you." he rambles, hands roaming up and down your back while you lean you head against his.

"fuck baby- you really know what gets my gears going huh?" you joke and he eagerly nods. 

you felt his cock twitching and his breathing was becoming heavier meanwhile your legs were almost giving up on you but you had to fight the pain in your thighs. you kiss his nose then move to the right until you got to his ear, "think we need to do that again soon." you whisper and he groans.

“oh my god stop- you’re gonna make me come and this is a rental!!” he whines, making you smirk.

"you sure? i'm so close and you are too….." you tease, pulling back and slowing down just for the sake of seeing his reaction.

“fucking shit baby- never mind. keep going cowgirl, don't fucking stop.” he moaned and you did. 

you reached up and stole his santa hat before putting it on and then finally leaning in to kiss him. he kissed back immediately, greedy and sliding his tongue inside your mouth while you both quickly came at the same time, holding each other for comfort. you stopped and felt your legs shaking crazier than usual, while you were whining and whimpering into his mouth because the pleasure was just too good. 

he held you tightly, his hands running up and down your back to help soothe you while you buried your face to his chest and hands rubbing his chest and shoulders. you were both trying to catch your breath when his hand stayed on your head, gently stroking it then began to whisper, "promise i'll be here more often."

"with all your limbs intact?" you whispered back making him chuckle and nod, "yeah we'll have to see about that one sweet pea…" 

[saeun]

"suguru, shoko... it's been nice knowing you guys. i always loved you both. please, tell y/n i loved her too, yeah?"

it's a tense moment. after satoru received your social medias, he did some snooping around and found the harsh truth — or so he calls it. comparing himself to what he found did nothing but install a depressing, hallow sadness into his system.

"satoru, get the fuck down from that chair," shoko's having none of it. the moment she glimpsed group-chat's notification she practically teleported to satoru's. her heart dropped, palms got sweaty, throat dry at the thought of satoru ending his life. when she arrived, suguru was already there, weeping for his dear friend's life.

it must've been serious, right? it wasn't.

what came into her vision was a grown, silver-headed man standing on his desk chair. around his neck held one of his ties. now, this is where it got unserious. everything seemed true until shoko's eyes traveled to satoru's neck. his tie was wrapped around it with his very own hand holding the longer piece of the tie.

in short, he's fucking dramatic. suguru doesn't fall far, too. it must be hard on shoko for being the only one with a decent brain... kind of.

"shoko, how can you be so... so mean?! he's dying over there! your own friend!" suguru wipes his tears, furious at his other friend's own indifference to such a sight.

"don't," she begins, walking to satoru's position to kick him off the chair. "don't piss me off."

satoru's now on the floor; laying on his back, body straight, arms clasped on top his stomach. this must signal his final moments. it's peaceful in his mind.

"satoru, i swear to god. get the fuck off that floor." she nudges his body with the front of her shoes, eyes twitching at the foolishness.

it takes a mere minute before satoru's tired of ignoring the obnoxious foot harming his body. so he sits up, hanging his head low.

"i just can't, y'know? it hurts," his voice cracks, radiating sadness throughout the room. his words receive two varying responses.

from suguru: "it's okay, satoru. there are many other fishes in the sea."

from shoko: "this is why you mind your business sometimes."

at shoko's response, he sighs loudly, "it won't kill you to be nice, shoko ieiri."

she sits on his bed, placing a pillow on her lap, fixing her posture, and re-positioning her imaginary glasses. "well then, satoru. tell me what you felt, what you saw, and what you think. you can let it all out to doctor shoko."

suguru stifles a laugh, eyes switching between shoko's new persona and satoru's defeated expression.

"okay, doctor shoko. i felt horrible — no, nauseous. i went through her followings and saw that she follows other men. she knows other men. i'm sick to my stomach," his rant begins. it all started when he decided to go through your profile. this meant snooping through followers, followings, tagged photos, and even comments. you both are in — what the youngsters call it — a talking stage.

there are no labels within this relationship, nor are there any confirmed feelings but this? this betrayal? what do you mean he's not the first man on your profile? this is devilish. all went well until he saw one specific comment that said: "baby you're so sexy ily," to which you replied: "i love you more."

the fiend ( as he calls them ) had the profile photo of a man. when he did the internal math, the unbearable truth was found. he is not the only one you're talking to. he feels hurt.

suguru, too, shares his friend's pain. shoko, however, doesn't. why? it's because the commenter was in fact not a man. had satoru did deeper research, he'd have known that the profile photo is the famous singer the weeknd, and the profile belongs to one of your girls who's a diehard fan of him. well, who's shoko to tell the truth? she'll wait for satoru to come to a realization.

[yall-hate-kids-tourney]

Chloe Bourgeois (Miraculous Ladybug) vs. Alya Cesaire (Miraculous Ladybug)

Y'all Hate Kids: Screwed By The Writers

It's a Miraculous Ladybug showdown!

Propaganda below the cut

(cw abuse, neglect, racism)

-

Chloe Bourgeois (Miraculous Ladybug)

haven't been in the fandom in a while so my memory is a bit fuzzy but the writers hate her sooooo bad it's not even funny. she started having a redemption arc where she realized the error of her ways and started working on herself as a person bc she wanted to be a hero and then did a 180° by siding with the villain. writer called her irredeemable multiple times on twitter despite the fact that she's just a spoiled bratty teenager who was also emotionally abused by her mother. her dad gets victimized despite the fact that he was complacent in the abuse and never tried to help her be a better person. overrall what the hell were you guys THINKING!!!

-

SHE HAD SO MUCH GOING FOR HER.... The writers tried giving her a redemption arc but then the creator of the show said that she, a TEENAGE GIRL, was incapable of change and redemption so all of that development was thrown in the trash and she became a shallow character again. Meanwhile, the creator gives a mini redemption arc to the MAIN VILLAIN, who literally ABUSED AND NEGLECTED HIS SON. She deserved so much better man

-

Typical Mean Girl character with an aborted redemption arc. Chloe has bullied the main protagonist Marinette Dupian-Cheng for a very long time. However, in Season 2 there was a beginning of a redemption arc that was wholly abandoned because the new showrunner deemed that a mean girl (who had an absentee/abusive mother and a limp noodle of a father) is evil incarnate and therefore can not be redeemed in good faith. The one good influence on Chloe's life abandoned her at the time of need and the fandom belittles and blames her for reverting back to her abusive ways when really she was left behind by the narrative. Even her own half-sister never gave her the time of day.

OH MY GOD. DUDE.Ok so she was a main (ish) villain within the first 1-3 seasons, but over time she was slowly getting a redemption arc, and we were getting more info about her past, and it turns out she was pretty heavily neglected as a kid (WHICH EXPLAINS WHY SHE WOULD ACT LIKE A BAD PERSON). And then, Thomas "dipshit" Astruc decided to THROW AWAY HER ENTIRE REDEMPTION ARC, AND WRITE HER OUT OF THE FUCKING SHOW!!!! AND THEY *REPLACED HER* WITH AN RANDOM NEW CHARACTER, EVEN THOUGH SHE WAS LITERALLY ONE OF THE MAIN HEROES???? And when confronted about why the fuck he would write that, Thomas said that she COULDN'T BE REDEEMED. Mind you, this is a TEENAGER, and a abused one at that! I'm sorry if this sounds like like a 2010's YouTube cartoon reviewer ass rant but oh my lord ,,,Chloe I could've saved you

-

i havent watched nor caught up in a while, but from what i remember: she started out as a typical 1-dimensional mean girl, but then they gave her a surprising amount of depth?? like she got to be queen bee, learn responsibility as a superhero, she even is one of only a couple characters we know of to actually fight off hawkmoth's power. they were going to really interesting places with her character, and we were all excited for her redemption arc.

...and then they made her a flat villain again, taking away all of her complexity and development, and instead gave the powers and depth to a new sister of hers that suddenly arrived out of nowhere instead. what

Alya Cesaire (Miraculous Ladybug)

"The amount of hatred Alya gets in the fandom is absolutely insane. There are over 800 fics tagged with ""Alya Cesaire Bashing"", and that's just the ones that actually TAG it - many of them either use a a non-canonical tag or just take their demonization of her as canon. It's not just that a lot of fics bash her either, but that the fics that bash her are disproportionately popular. If you go through the ""Miraculous Ladybug"" tag on AO3 and sort by kudos, I'd say around a third of the top 500 most popular fics use this gross caricature of her in order to justify inflicting some sort of insane punishment on her, or at least replacing her with ""better"" friends and leaving her to wail in despair.

Basically, Alya is the best friend of the main character, Marinette. She's really into superheroes and aims to be a reporter someday, to the point that the first time a supervillain cropped up in the series, she immediately got out her bike and cycled after him so that she could be there when a superhero showed up to fight him (Lois Lane would be proud). She runs a blog called the ""Ladyblog"" which reports on what the superheroes are doing, and sometimes makes some fun videos, like about the most impressive feats of one of the superheroes. 

More relevantly though, she acts as Marinette's support a lot of the time, often being the one to push her to confess her feelings to Adrien, to help her with plans she comes up with, to talk things out with if she's having trouble processing something, and trying to act as the voice of reason if Marinette's gotten to into her own head. It can sometimes head into Black Best Friend territory of having her mostly stick around to support her bestie, but she DOES get a decent amount of screentime and focus at least.

Then the first episode of season 3 aired, and the fandom went BALLISTIC.

This character, Lila, debuted back at the end of season 1 as being this attention-seeking liar who pretended that she knew a lot more famous people than she actually did, including being best friends with Ladybug. Alya, being a naive 14-year-old, believed her and put Lila's interview on her blog. Since Marinette IS Ladybug, she knew this was not true, though she was initially more freaked out about the possibility that Adrien (the boy she has a crush on) would find her supposedly amazing life to be entrancing and that Lila would steal Adrien away from her, to the point that she actively wanted to stop Lila and Adrien from spending time together to prevent Adrien from falling for her.

Fast-forward to Chameleon, the first episode of season 3, and Lila's back and lying some more, this time about having Tinnitus (which would mean that she needs to sit at the front of class, next to Adrien). The class has a whole seating rearrangement in order to accommodate the move, and because some of them just wanted to change seats. Since Marinette was late that day, she didn't get to give input, so she wound up sitting alone at the back of the class, instead of next to Alya like she usually did. She's upset by this, but can't prove that Lila doesn't actually have the disability (she doesn't even have evidence that Lila doesn't have hearing problems, it's just that her story of how she supposedly got the disability is suspect), so she puts up with it for the class period.

Then lunch time rolls around and Marinette tells Alya and Alya's boyfriend, Nino, that Lila's a lying liar who lies. Alya asks why Marinette hates her so much, since she barely knows Lila (this isn't the first time that Marinette's nitpicked at Lila's stories, but she's never actually managed to prove that Lila's lying, Lila's good at coming up with explanations for any hole Marinette exposes in her tales). Marinette tells her how, after Lila first arrived at school, she followed her and Adrien, eavesdropped on them, and then saw Ladybug show up and tear into Lila for not knowing her. (Presumably that's what she says, the episode skipped past her actual recounting of what she saw). Alya and Nino are more concerned with the fact that she stalked Lila and Adrien, with Alya also being skeptical that what she heard might have been out-of-context, given how common out-of-context eavesdropping is in fiction for causing issues, with Alya saying, ""A good reporter always verifies her sources. Can you prove she doesn't actually know Ladybug?""

Since Marinette can't actually prove anything without revealing that she's Ladybug, she decides that the sane and reasonable thing to do is to throw a wadded up napkin at Lila while she's eating lunch, and when she catches it (Lila's pretending to have a sprained wrist), to loudly declare that she obviously doesn't have a sprained wrist. Lila quickly pretends that catching it did actually hurt, the classmates Lila was sitting with scold Marinette for hurting her, and then Marinette goes off to seethe in a bathroom, where Lila finds her and threatens to turn her friends against her if she continues trying to expose her lies. 

Then at the end of the episode, Adrien goes to sit with Marinette at the back of the class to keep her company, the teacher thinks that Marinette ALSO has hearing issues so she's brought back to the front (and away from Adrien again), Lila pretends that her hearing has been fixed so she can sit at the back with Adrien, and Alya spots that Marinette looks miserable about sitting alone at the front, so she chooses to sit next to Marinette to keep her company and everyone ends up going back to their old places, except that Lila's sitting at the back of the class now.

And that's it. That is, for the most part, what kicked off the entire Alya hatred and demonization onslaught. While there ARE more things that happening in following episodes, they have a pretty small effect on the demonization Alya's put through, almost all of it is derived from Chameleon and hasn't changed much since then.

So for starters, in fanfics Alya is often made to ditch Marinette constantly to hang out with Lila instead. This never happens. She's often exasperated when Marinette starts talking about how Lila is awful and points out that she doesn't have proof of that, but she doesn't avoid Marinette, and the closest she ever comes to hanging out with Lila outside of class events is when she called Lila over to babysit hers and Nino's younger siblings when Marinette canceled at the last minute.

But most Alya-bashing fics don't just leave it there. Oh no. If you look through a bunch of the most popular Miraculous fics, you'll see Alya made out to be some sort of ringleader for the class in bullying Marinette, hitting her, pinching her, poisoning her, destroying her things, saying nasty, heinous things to her, the works, and inciting the rest of the class to do the same, sometimes to the point that even LILA is shocked at her cruelty. Usually in these cases, Chloe, who is canonically the class bully (and Marinette's bully in particular) is inexplicably Marinette's primary protector against the eeeeeevil Alya, becoming Marinette's best friend and support and basically taking on Alya's canon role and some of her personality traits, despite the fact that canonically, Chloe's as susceptible to Lila's lies as anyone else, and that in season 5 Chloe actually became Lila's partner in crime in trying to hurt Marinette in particular. (I don't like how Chloe's treated in canon, but that's a different story).

I've never even seen any justification given for why Alya's so frequently made to be outright violent or cruel towards Marinette, it's just widely accepted in fiction now, even with nothing pointing to her ever being malicious like that. There ARE other things Alya canonically does that I see her taken to task over though, but that fall apart when you examine them.

One of the biggest offenders is criticism towards Alya over how she handles babysitting. In Christmaster, Alya and Nino pick up Nino's little brother after Marinette babysits him for them while they're on a date, in Timetagger, Marinette's slated to babysit for them while they're on a date but cancels at the last minute, so they call Lila over instead, and then in Simple Man, Marinette books herself to babysit Alya's and Nino's younger siblings and the daughter of one's of her mom's friends, a little girl named Manon, all at the same time.

Alya receives heavy criticism for not paying Marinette for her babysitting, for having Marinette babysit for her secretly behind her parents' back without their knowledge, and for pressuring Marinette to babysit for her even though Marinette's so busy.

A few problems with this.

1. We see babysitting happen several times, sometimes with Alya helping Marinette with babysitting Manon and sometimes with Marinette just babysitting Manon without anyone else's involvement. At no point is payment brought up, and yet the absence of such a discussion is only ever used to demonize Alya.

2. There is no evidence that the babysitting Marinette does for Alya's sake is done behind her parents' back, the only thing pointing to that is a lack of Alya ever flat-out saying that she has her parents' permission to have Marinette babysit for her, but there's no evidence of sneaking around. MARINETTE, however, DOES canonically ditch her babysitting duties by having Alya babysit for her without the parent's knowledge. In Prime Queen, Marinette accidentally double books herself to do an interview as Ladybug at the same time that she's supposed to be babysitting Manon, so she calls Alya over to watch the interview with her, lies to her that she's just gonna go downstairs for a few minutes to talk with her parents and for Alya to please watch over Manon while she does that, and then leaves to do the interview while Alya watches over Manon the whole time. Nadja definitely didn't know that this happened, because she was surprised and worried when Alya and Manon called in during the interview with Marinette nowhere to be seen. In addition to this, in Simpleman, Marinette foists off all the children she's babysitting onto her grandpa against his will so that she can run off and help with Adrien's photoshoot after he calls her. The people demonizing Alya for supposedly having Marinette babysit for her secretly are not upset about the examples of Marinette canonically doing these things.

3. Of the three times that Marinette has, to date, been scheduled to babysit for Alya's sake (Christmaster, Timetagger, and Simpleman), for Christmaster she spent the next several hours after finishing with babysitting making Adrien's 50th birthday present (he's currently 14 years old), so I wouldn't say she was pressed for time, for Timetagger, she literally called Alya at the last minute to say she was too busy to babysit and Alya said it was no biggie and made other arrangements, and for Simpleman, Alya offered to cancel her date and take care of her younger siblings herself the instant she saw that Marinette was already babysitting Manon, and Marinette told her to go ahead and go on her date and that she'd look after her siblings.

So clearly, the people clutching their pearls about how horribly irresponsibly Alya is handling babysitting and how she's wronging Marinette in the process don't actually care about babysitting ethics here, because otherwise, Marinette would be getting the brunt of the hatred, not Alya. Despite this, I've seen a fair number of posts in the past tearing into Alya's babysitting for the reasons I already gave, and a bunch of fics that make it so that Alya pressures and guilt-trips Marinette into babysitting for her when she's struggling to keep up with all her work, only to have her parents find out and be horrified by how Alya's lied to them about who's been doing the babysitting and that Alya's been getting an increased allowance because of that, so they pay Marinette out of Alya's allowance and ground her, take away privileges, just have this be used as an excuse to punish Alya for supposedly wronging Marinette.

And then there's the subcategory of Alya demonization towards her for putting up Lila's interview on her blog without verifying that Lila was telling the truth. Admittedly, this was foolish, but she's 14. Retractions exist for a reason. And yet, fics frequently have her reputation be completely destroyed because she put up one interview that had a false statement by the interviewee in it, and sometimes even to be completely blacklisted from ever being a journalist in the future, things that are completely insane and would have even the most storied and well-respected of reporters be unable to ever get a job. 

She also frequently gets demonized and bashed for ""believing Lila over Marinette"". My major issue with this: what she's specifically believing Lila over Marinette for is on the topic of ""is Lila an awful person"". I don't think it's unreasonable to have a higher standard of proof for believing that someone is an awful person than for believing that your friend might just have some biased interpretations. Alya thinks that Marinette doesn't like Lila mostly because Lila has hit on Adrien, Marinette's crush, before. This isn't unreasonable considering that Marinette's first reaction to Lila is to freak out about her stealing Adrien away, and that when this other girl, Kagami, started hanging out with Adrien, she freaked out about that too. Specifically, she called a meeting of all her female friends to try and stop Kagami and Adrien from going away together to London for the weekend in Backwarder, helped Chloe in trying to get Kagami covered in food at a fancy red carpet movie opening in order to drive her away and steal her seat next to Adrien for the movie, and when she and Kagami were paired up for a ""friend-making game"" where the goal was to locate where Adrien was in Paris and the prize was to spend time with him, she pretended to genuinely want to be Kagami's friend so she could sabotage both of them and prevent Kagami from spending time with Adrien. So it's not like the belief that Marinette might be unfairly biased against Lila because she's made moves on Adrien is an unfair assumption.

In addition to that, on the occasions when Lila HAS tried to frame Marinette for something, Alya hasn't believed it, or hasn't been shown to believe it at least. In Ladybug Lila tries to frame Marinette for cheating on a test, for stealing a necklace from her, and for knocking her down the stairs. Despite the evidence Lila planted, Alya doesn't believe it and investigates to try and find out what really happened. She doesn't uncover any solid proof, but she still believes in Marinette. She doesn't believe that Marinette's assumption that Lila's behind this is necessarily correct, since Marinette's leaping to that without presenting proof, but she doesn't believe that Marinette's the culprit either. And in the two following cases when Marinette's framed, Alya never actually gets a chance to say what she believes after the accusation is made against Marinette.

Just... the amount of demonization towards Alya TO THIS DAY, often for things she NEVER EVEN FREAKING DID, is absolutely insane. Even over 5 years since Chameleon aired, fics with Alya being made into this malicious, awful bully so that Marinette can get some new friends to publicly denounce her, get her arrested, or otherwise be punished are frequently on the front page of the most recently updated fics on AO3, and are often some of the most popular ones. If you go to ""Fandom-Specific plot"" on Tvtropes, saltfics like these have multiple files going through all the common salt tropes. When looking through fics, I frequently search for Alya's name because she's often the first person to be unfairly demonized, so if she's safe, then everyone likely is. 

I suspect that racism plays a major factor in this. It doesn't make sense that Alya's often painted as being a violent, malicious bully and leader in getting the rest of the class to physically hurt and terrorize Marinette, I haven't even seen analysis arguing that she'd do that... but it tracks with the ""Black Brute"" archetype. This becomes even more obvious with Chloe, who's white and canonically DOES do some of this stuff, taking on Alya's canon role and some of her personality traits in these sorts of stories.

Then there's the standard Alya's held to for how she handles her blog. It's way higher than anyone would hold real-world reporters to, much less 14-year-olds. But it makes sense if you factor racial bias into account, and how Alya, being Black, is going to be held to a higher standard than anyone else, and be punished more for failing to meet that standard.

For things like the babysitting double standard, it makes no sense if you're actually looking at the stated criticism, given that the same criticism isn't leveled at Marinette... but it makes perfect sense if you're going off the assumption that Alya, as Marinette's Black Best Friend, is supposed to solely function as her support and that she's simply fulfilling her duties by always being there for her when needed, including for babysitting, but that if Marinette ever attempts to repay in kind, then Alya's being unfair towards her because Alya's obligated to always support Marinette, but that relationship is supposed to be a one-way street. Alya is supposed to function as Marinette's support, never the other way around.

And as for the way Alya's demonized for asking for evidence before believing that Lila's lying, well... again, Alya's expected to act as Marinette's support, and her ""failing"" that in any way, even if it makes sense from her point of view, is viewed as a betrayal. She's supposed to be loyal to Marinette, and only to Marinette, not to think for herself or to have multiple other friends or values that she needs to weigh. And anything that she does to go against that ""justifies"" Marinette intentionally trying to hurt and punish her for failing to live up to her role.

In conclusion, the way Alya's treated by the salt side of the fandom is grossly unfair, often has little connection with anything she canonically did, and has some gross racist implications, and is likely at least partially spurred on by racism, especially with how common and popular it still is to this day."

"(Note: This is an addendum to my earlier essay about the fandom's mistreatment of Alya. Here, I'm focusing more on how the writers' treatment of her helped to exacerbate that, since I saw that this version of the tournament had more of a focus on that. Please add this on at the end of my previous essay).

While Alya is primarily screwed over by the fanbase, there are some aspects of the writing that exacerbate her ill treatment. In season 4, Marinette confesses her secret identity to Alya, letting her know that she is Ladybug. Despite now knowing why Marinette was so convinced that Lila wasn't friends with Ladybug, and that Lila's interview stating that she's best friends with Ladybug is a lie, the subject just... never comes up, even when Lila starts being important again. It's not that Alya's ignoring what Lila lying on those subjects means, it's more like the writers just completely forgot that Lila told those particular lies, since Marinette doesn't bring them up either. This creates an inconsistency with the fanbase, who really, really, REALLY haven't forgotten those lies. 

There ARE ways to explain this - Lila lying about being friends with Ladybug in order to try to boost her reputation, especially when she's the new girl, isn't really all that heinous. Marinette lies a lot as well, even if you don't count lies told to protect her secret identity or other ""necessary"" lies, sometimes out of embarrassment, sometimes to to try and prevent someone's feelings from getting hurt, and sometimes because she thinks it's the fastest, easiest, or most certain way to get the outcome she wants. And yet, even though Marinette lies a lot, she's not ostracized for that since it's usually not for malicious reasons - foolish reasons at times, but rarely malicious. It would make sense that Lila too, wouldn't be thought too badly of for merely lying in an attempt to make friends.

None of that actually comes up though. Alya later, in Confrontation, states that, ""Marinette, you know we'll always believe you. But every time you've accused Lila, there's been no evidence. And at worst, it was just a misunderstanding."" Marinette doesn't say anything about the previous times Lila has been proven to lie, so it seems like either it was decided offscreen that the more understandable lies she's told don't matter, or that the writers just plain forgot about them.

There were other opportunities created by Alya knowing Marinette's identity that were ignored. Alya concludes that Adrien backing up Marinette's statement that Lila's bad news was just due to him wanting to defend his girlfriend. This is also a bit of a writing flaw, while wanting to back up his girlfriend's stance IS a decent reason for Adrien to be biased against Lila, this is Adrien we're talking about here. He's nice and understanding to a fault, and is known for giving people the benefit of the doubt and second chances. It makes far less sense to believe that he'd believe the worst of Lila, even if Marinette does, than it does for Marinette to be biased against Lila. That being said, Adrien wouldn't have been present for Lila's more indisputable threats and statements directed against Marinette, so he can't actually verify for sure whether or not there could've been some misunderstanding.

There WAS, however, someone who was always with Marinette, and who could actually back up Marinette's statements more definitively. 

Tikki. She was present for every threat Lila made, for everything she ever claimed. While it's possible that both Tikki and Marinette may have misunderstood Lila in the same way, it's far less likely, especially since Tikki would have had different biases from Marinette. Tikki could be an important witness. Yet that never comes up, is never proposed, because that would end the plotline too quickly. 

Alya was also screwed over in the immediate aftermath of Lila being exposed, though not by the writers per se? There was a short scene planned after Lila's exposed where Alya apologizes for not believing Marinette about Lila being a liar and generally an awful person, we've even got leaked footage of it, but it appears that it was cut somewhere between being written and voice acted, and the episode being aired. 

All of this only really affects detailed arguments about how well (or poorly) Alya's story arc with Lila was handled, its affect on the actual fanfiction produced about Chameleon salt was minimal, I saw no change in its frequency, severity, or general handling of the characters with any season after season 3. I highly doubt that even the changes I suggested here would have done much to persuade the saltdom against Ron the Death Eatering Alya, especially since a lot of the hatred against her has so little to do with the show.

There IS some hatred thrown at Alya for non-Lila related reasons - well, reasons that aren't DIRECTLY Lila related, most of that hatred still stems from people hating her for Chameleon stuff and then retroactively justifying it by looking back at other things she did that irked them. The most common one (that actually has some sort of argument to it, not the ""Alya's a horrible babysitter and is abusing her friendship with Marinette"" nonsense I listed in the main essay) is that Alya's pushy about getting Marinette together with Adrien. 

This is more a product of Alya's usual role in the story than anything. I mentioned in the main essay how Alya sometimes falls into ""Black Best Friend"" territory, and this is one of the biggest examples. One of her most common roles throughout the series is as the person who pushes Marinette to actually confess to Adrien, to hang out with him, to pursue her romantic desires even with her anxiety holding her back, and to be honest with herself during the times when she's trying to deny her feelings for him. She's Marinette's sounding board whenever she's having an anxiety spiral about... actually, just about anything, and acts as the voice of reason when Marinette gets in her own head too much.

Thus, Alya sets Marinette and Adrien to end up somewhere alone together, or tries to push her to talk to him, or to be honest during the times when she tries to ""move on"" from Adrien by denying that she still has feelings for him (which is blatantly untrue). She IS okay with Marinette dating someone else though, if she honestly seems to want to do that. She had no problem with her dating Luka, for instance. She DID protest Marinette's seemingly sudden interest in Chat Noir, but that was mostly because Marinette seemed to be grabbing at her new attraction as an attempt to run away from her feelings for Adrien, something that Tikki ALSO noted.

That's another thing - Alya's the character who's most frequently thrown into this role, but she's not the only one, nor even the most extreme one. A new character that was introduced for the Miraculous New York Special, Jess, observed how Adrien and Marinette acted around each other, and decided to try to get them to confess their love by faking a supervillain attack on them, with the supervillain kidnapping anyone that no one loves in order to compel Marinette to FINALLY confess to Adrien. (Alya thought it was stupid, but agreed to help since it might actually work). When Marinette, Adrien, Luka, and Kagami went out to the wax museum together, Luka intentionally locked Adrien and Marinette in a room together so that Marinette would stop running away and would be forced to talk to Adrien. Marinette is written in such a way that other characters are compelled to meddle in her lovelife, because otherwise she'll continue making her own extreme plans and pining away, but never actually confess her feelings. 

So while Alya could be said to be ""pushy"" to an extent, it's mostly for Marinette's benefit. I would like if this was a less frequent role for Alya - I think it does her a disservice, since it locks her firmly into Marinette's orbit rather than emphasizing who Alya is as her own character. Most of the hatred towards Alya for this is tied up in ""Die For Our Ship"" being directed at Adrien though, with Adrien bashers hating that Alya's trying to set Marinette up with what they see as an inferior option. Ironically enough, while Alya's role in this situation is one of the primary examples in the show of her being treated by the writers as a ""Black Best Friend"" who exists to serve Marinette's character, it's actually one of the cases where I think racism is a pretty minor part of the hatred by the fanbase over it, since I think that's mostly motivated by hatred towards the Lovesquare.

In conclusion (again), there is an issue with the writers bending Alya's character in order to tell a particular story, particularly a Marinette-centered story, while ignoring how little sense that makes with what happened earlier on in the plotline, or how it centralizes Alya's role and character around Marinette in ways that exacerbate already existing writing patterns in media.

[on-a-lucky-tide]

As someone who wants to join the fandom more but it’s too scared to do so, I’m wondering how did you cultivated this community…? It’s so sweet to watch the way you talk to others and helping their works and such. How did you meet like…??? people ??? Like I always see you tagging the artists (ngl I found your blog because of Gomz) and I’d really want to learn, I’ve tried joining previous fandoms and it was always too competitive in some sense, like everyone was busy pushing their works for likes and retweets (maybe it’s more of a twitter thing)

Oh yeah. That's a Twitter thing. Twitter is a cesspit and I only go there for porn. The whole thing is set up to make people feel shite because people that feel shite scroll for longer/look at more adverts. Lock your account, bud. You'll feel a lot better.

But everywhere else? Gratitude and humility. Also, understanding what I wanted from fandom; a small community that hypes each other and encourages new people. Those are my bros (non-gendered). My Cakeshop Bros I found five years ago in fandom; they have slept in my spare bedroom, I've gone drinking, played boardgames, and we laid on the floor in London in a space art installation near Soho being weirdos drunk off our heads. Not just fandom friends now, friends for life.

When I first started posting for CoD, I was dead nervous as I'd been stung in a previous fandom. People took a chance on me as a new person; they reblogged my work with the sweetest tags. They hyped me. They took the time out of their day for a stranger, and they didn't have to. They coulda just read it and moved on. So, I said thank you in their inbox, or in their DMs. We started talking more, I was a bit weird and they vibed back. They are also good people. Genuinely. You mentioned Gomz; literally, so kind, so sweet. Deserves the world.

When I can, I make sure I hype them back; I wish I could do more but my job is absolute pig in terms of time. It's mock season (now over, woohoo) so I have a backlog of fics to catch up on - Nekro, Mikey, T, Oliv, Nikkie, Hexx, Gomz (who I deffo know have written), but there are probably more! I'll set a few hours aside over half term with a beer and crack on.

Also, I guarantee everyone is as nervous as you are. Everyone gets imposter syndrome. And also, everyone gets jealous. Jealousy is a natural human emotion that you need to process into something productive. "I'm jealous" = "this person is really fucking good, has worked hard, I'm gonna encourage them and learn from them because they clearly know their shit". Reframing rather than ignoring or letting it fester. They're just people after all and probably shitting themselves as much as I was.

I also guarantee you I am not everyone's cup of tea. And that's ok. Letting go of the burning desire to be liked by all, sometimes at the expense of my own bloody happiness and seeing it as a personal failing if I wasn't, was probably one of the most powerful things I did for myself over the last five years. The only thing I care about in regards to others is if I acted with integrity and kindness (not necessarily niceness). That's all I can control.

Sorry, mate. That came off as a bit of a rant! But uh, don't be scared. Keep reaching out. Be feral.

[average-hyperfixator]

This is probably the weirdest way to show that I'm in the Mouthwashing fandom, and like nobody is going to see this BUT

If I see ONE MORE person compare Ted to Jimmy I'm going to LOSE MY FUCKING MIND. Is this another testament to people not understanding Ted's overall role in the story and his character arc? YES, YES IT IS. RE READ THE BOOK. RE LISTEN TO THE RADIO DRAMA. GAME IS IT'S OWN CONVERSATION THAT WILL TAKE TOO LONG FOR ME TO DISECT + IT HAS IT'S OWN STORY AND THUS WILL NOT BE INCLUDED HERE.

Jimmy is a jealous man, who assaults (and unfortunately impregnates) Anya, and then tries to crash the ship so he doesn't have to deal with the consequences, and when everyone lives, they live in misery BECAUSE OF HIM. He is the co-pilot, he has more power and authority over the others, and he ACTIVELY makes things worse, and is at fault for the crash and the subsequent fallout. (this section is shorter, simply because I've been in the IHNMAIMS fandom much longer and have way more thoughts on Ted) Ted, on the other hand, is not at fault for the world ending. He is just as trapped as the other five, he's more prone to mental manipulation and THINKING he's better off, but he really isn't. He doesn't have more power of the others because he's also a victim. He is by no means a great guy, or even a good guy; They key difference is that at the end of his story, the book, he actually fucking HELPS. Rather than make his friends continue to live in misery, he puts them out of it, and rather than end his own suffering, he spends those precious few seconds he could be ramming an icicle into himself, comforting Ellen as she dies. It doesn't make up for what he's thought and said, BUT, it's something at least. It's remorse, it's letting her finally be content, it's trying to give her the empathy she showed him time and time again. And he gets turned into a horrid slug creature after, he actively suffers more than everyone else for the rest of time- he self sacrifices so his friends could be at peace. TLDR: Jimmy is objectively selfish and doesn't change much throughout the game, save for MAYBE the very end (ig putting Curly in the pod is one brownie point for him) however Ted actually shows growth by the end of the story, and makes a point to end the suffering of his friends, while ultimately sacrificing himself in the process. If I catch another person equating these two I'm just gonna start throwing hammers at them I DON'T CARE. I am THE Ted defender, and I WILL stand my ground that, while he is no where near perfect, he DOES become a better person by the end of the story and deserves to have that acknowledged. anyway this has been sick rants with me, feel free to add on in reblogs or perchance spark a FRIENDLY debate. I apologize if I come off rude here, Ted and IHNMAIMS have been a hyperfixation of mine for months and I am very easily riled up about the story and characters. adding new tag ; Jace rants 🗯️ ! For all my ranting escapades from now on.

[vividiana]

wip whenever 📝

thank you so much to @xxnashiraxx @deadly-diminuendo @hellethil and @khywren for tagging me over the past week or so 💕 I've been feeling very uninspired lately so I didn't have anything to share

but! yesterday in a flash of fever-induced genius I had an idea for a modern au involving Eve and Astarion that I'm very excited about. I don't want to spoil things but the very basic premise is that Eve is in a witness protection program and she had to uproot her life and assume a new identity (for... reasons... don't worry about that yet.) and Astarion is, well... running from his past, let's say.

here's a draft of the not-so-cute meet-cute:

The white-haired man doesn’t look up when she stands before him, seemingly lost in thought as he scribbles something fervently in a journal in sweeping, messy handwriting. Through the scent of stale beer and fried food, she singles out a hint of his cologne—citrusy, fresh, and far more pleasant than anything the men around here usually wear, if they even bother. “Hello, my name is Eve–” He startles at the sound of her voice. There is a trace of panic in his eyes as he looks up, one that he instantly tries to cover up by straightening in his seat and donning a forced smile. The moment their eyes meet, Eve gets the strangest feeling of déjà vu she’s ever experienced. There is something familiar in that shade of blue, in the way his hair curls behind his ears. It catches her off-guard, the rehearsed introduction dying in her throat mid-sentence.  “I’m sorry, do I know you from somewhere?” she asks instead.  The man instantly tenses up with a loud scoff.  “Of course you would know me from somewhere. What else did I expect?” He gestures animatedly as he speaks, Eve blinking in confusion as she listens to his rant. “You move halfway across the country to finally get a break for once and– Are you one of those true crime freaks? Do you want to ask me how I did it? Do you want to know all the gory details? Fucking hell…” He drops his fountain pen on the counter with a loud thud and slips his glasses off to massage his temples, eyes shut tight in frustration. A couple patrons turn their heads to look in their direction, Eve’s cheeks growing hotter at the sudden attention. And perhaps, after this hell of a shift, that was simply the last straw. “Do not raise your voice at me,” the words slip past her lips before Eve can think better of it. The man seems genuinely taken aback and he opens his eyes, brows furrowed when he asks: “Excuse me?” “You seem to think you’re someone important. Sorry to burst your bubble, but I have no idea what you’re talking about. And no matter who you are, you shouldn’t speak to people that way, but especially not to those who handle your food and drinks.” She didn’t mean it to sound like a threat, but she has no emotional energy left to dull the edge of her words.  Maybe getting fired wouldn’t be so bad. Then I’ll never have to come back here. For a moment he just looks at her wide-eyed, opening and closing his mouth a couple times. Eventually he clears his throat and puts his glasses back on, sounding genuinely embarrassed when he admits: “You’re right, I’m sorry. It’s just– It’s been a long day. But still, that’s no reason to– I’m sorry.” The anger pent-up in her body starts to dissipate at his tone. He sounds… tired. In a way she recognizes all too well. “It’s been a long day for me, too,” she says. “Maybe we can try again.”  She turns away and takes a couple steps along the bar, then returns with a polite smile on her face to say: “Hello, my name is Eve, I’ll be taking care of you tonight. Can I get you started with something to drink?” He chuckles softly and now that his face is more relaxed, Eve can’t help but think that he is quite handsome, in a manner that feels utterly out of place here. “That depends,” he says. “Are you going to spit in it or poison it?” “You’ve apologized, so neither. But you’re on thin ice.”

tagging: @verbenaa @funniestbitchinfaerun @obsessedwhyyes (word on the street is you have some Bloodweave cooking 👀) @roguishcat @olivedrop if you have anything you'd like to share ✨

[sanjisboyfie]

one piece smau: dating eustass kid edition

-> male reader <333 + kid is so unhinged but this is how i truly believe he'd act on social media to be really real + also him being the definition of "i'm mean to everyone but u"

-> nsfw (mentioned and implied)

liked by dr.law, k1ller, and 7k others

iloveeustass: this is crazy he's actually doing the work instead of trying to kill a random passerby

tagged: [name]s.man

[name]s.man: if it's not you, i could honeslty care less on how i treat other people

-> k1ller: this is definitely not how u shd be living life

-> h34ttt_: and u wonder why no one outside of our friendgroup likes u

-> [name]s.man: i've never wondered this, i don't need other ppl to like me when i already have a wonderful boyfriend to call mine who very much likes me.

uso_pp: how a sweetheart like [name] is compatible with an ASSHOLE REPULSIVE AND RUDE man is beyond me. but as long as he's happy !!!

-> iloveeustass: he's not as bad as everyone says i swearrrrr

-> uso_pp: that's only cuz u don't have to suffer like the rest of us [name]. ur mans is fuckinhg terrifying to be around

[liked by dni_nami, bonneys.jewels, and 120 others]

liked by h34ttt_, k1ller, iloveeustass, and 10k others

[name]s.man: i lovveeeee my possessive boyfriend

tagged: iloveeustass

iloveeustass: you're the exact same way pls what is this post

-> [name]s.man: match made in heaven

dr.law: do u have to constantly post abt ur relationship eustass?

-> [name]s.man: someone here is just jealousssss

dni_nami: thankful everyday that we don't see each other at school i think id rather kms than see ur nasty ass (not [name] though, pls tell him we all miss him <3)

[liked by roro.zoro, uso_pp, and 40 others]

-> [name]s.man: WHAT TH FUCK IS THIS

-> iloveeustass: aww i miss u guys too nami hopefully we can hang soon

-> dni_nami: ofc! jus dont bring ur stinky boyfriend

-> [name]s.man: DONT IGNORE ME UNDER MY OWN POST

liked by iloveeustass, bonneys.jewels, and 11k others

k1ller: someone save me they're gonna start eating each other

tagged: iloveeustass and [name]s.man

bonneys.jewels: i ran away from them the moment i saw kid's lipstick on his face

-> [name]s.man: u guys are acting like we fucked on the couch and made everyone watch

-> bonneys.jewels: that's not what u guys were doing? i could've sworn ur pants were off or smth

-> [name]s.man: u fucking liar wtfff

h34ttt_: a business meeting and they couldn't be serious for a second of it.

-> iloveeustass: wym me and kid were very serious???

-> h34ttt_: serious in trying to suck each other off in front of everyone??? yeah. u two were very serious

dr.law: knew i made the right decision in staying home

[liked by k1ller, bonneys.jewels, and 90 others]

liked by dr.law, iloveeustass, dni_nami, and 11k others

bonneys.jewels: thank god [name] and kid started dating because kid's outfits have gotten monumentally better

tagged: [name]s.man and iloveeustass

iloveeustass: those leopard print pants he owned....

-> bonneys.jewels: tell me u burned them

-> iloveeustass: burned them and threw their ashes in the ocean

[name]s.man: i'll excuse u posting these photos of us without my permissions solely because he looks so good in these wowowwww

-> k1ller: [name] existing saving us from hearing kid rant for hours on end about smth unimportant <3 thank god

godfatherbege: eustass' fashion was always questionable to me, i assumed all kids your age dressed purposely terrible

[liked by hawk_ins, dr.law, and 100 others]

-> iloveeustass: LMDOOAOD BEGE IM DEAD

-> [name]s.man: don't show your face to me ever again bege or i'll kill you

liked by freeluffy, [name]s.man, and 12k others

iloveeustass: his new haircut is so sexy oh my god

tagged: [name]s.man

[name]s.man: i'm gonna have sex with you in front of everyone

-> k1ller: no fucking thank u

-> h34ttt_: OH MY GOOOOOODDDD a day of peace woujld be great thanks

freeluffy: OOOOO was the food yummy guys???

-> [name]s.man: fuck off my boyfriend's instagram bastard

-> iloveeustass: it was rlly good luffy <333 i know you would've love their steak, i highly reccommend!!!

xxxdrake: i bet kid didn't even pay for half off of the bill, his broke ass

-> [name]s.man: I PAID FOR THE ENTIRE MEAL??? WAT IS UR ISSUE DO U WNAT TO FIGHT OR SMETHING

-> uso_pp: FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT [liked by dni_nami, robinkills, and 90 others]

liked by freeluffy, iloveeustass, and 13k others

dr.law: all these two do is sit in a corner and bully ppl on their phone

tagged: [name]s.man and iloveeustass

iloveeustass: it's only kid that makes fun of ppl i'm the one telling him to stop

-> dr.law: fine i'll give u that one

[name]s.man: all i'm saying is - if you're not [name] why on earth should i b nice to u

-> dni_nami: a somewhat respectable trait to have

-> princesanji: NAMMIIII I WOULD DEFAME ANY PERSON YOU WNATED ME TO IF IT MEANS I COULD WIN YOUR FAVOORRR

freeluffy: not true traofoyyy ! me and [name] played supermario kart :)

-> iloveeustass: and i won all of the races >:)

-> freeluffy: NEXT TIME I'LL BEAT U [NAMEEEE]

-> [name]s.man: why is he flirting with my boyfriend right in front of me

iloveeustass' story:

stole his lipstick just for this pic

[name]s.man replied to your story: we should both wear my lipstick the next time we have sex it'll b like a painting

[amiizuki]

it will be forever funny to me how the flashback portraits of Wittebrothers made Caleb seem like he's had packing peanuts for a brain

(this post ended up becoming quite lengthy, and so did the tags somehow, because I kinda devolved into a rant closer to the end of writing this whole thing, so bear with me here)

so we know that Philip and Caleb became orphans when both of them were still kids. after that, they ended up in Gravesfield and, to fit in with everyone else who lived there, picked up witch hunting and started thinking that witches are pure evil. Caleb knew perfectly well that he's the only family Philip's had left and that he even may be his his only friend, since, judging by the portraits, they've only ever hung out with each other and we don't know if those two ever made any other actual friends.

until one day, during a witch hunt he and Philip were both a part in (something Caleb seemed happy to do, judging by his smirk there), he met a witch – Evelyn – someone he's been taught to hate and want dead by the townsfolk. someone who, again, in his mind, should be evil.

but he just suddenly does a 180 and goes "damn, you can make fire with your hands, you're actually pretty cool"

and then a few days (?) of talking to her later, he's running off to live with her in the Demon Realm, while simultaneously not giving a single fuck about the brother he's abandoning.

(he even runs off with a smile, with a literal :D face, I fucking can't lmao)

Philip ends up seeing Caleb get dragged off through a weird portal and later follows along, thinking something like "no, my brother wouldn't just up and abandon me without saying anything. he probably got captured by that witch we saw together that one time! she probably used some demon magic to bewitch Caleb and took him through that portal to kill him or worse! I gotta go save him!". and, after spending god knows how long in that realm, searching endlessly for his missing older brother, he eventually finds him. but he also finds that Caleb is not only perfectly okay and not hurt in the slightest, he's also peacefully walking together with the same witch who "captured" him, even holding hands with her.

and when enraged Philip tries to attack Evelyn, to protect Caleb from the witch who took him from his home, from his brother, still thinking that Caleb's under her control, Caleb just... gives him a hug and goes on to introduce the witch as his new wife to him (I'm assuming that portrait is the same day as the other three, if not the same scene), also adding on top of that that they're having a child. all as if nothing happened. treating the whole thing like everything's perfectly okay and just another normal day, fully ignoring the fact that he threw his brother away with no care or thought, leaving him completely alone, a full orphan, now with zero actual family left (in TTT, during their backstory, it's said that "Caleb did his best to take care of his younger brother", meaning that either they never got adopted in Gravesfield, or whoever adopted them didn't give a shit about the two, so they still mostly had to fend for themselves), all to go smash some random 5 out of 10 witchussy he talked to, like, 3 times. no fucking wonder Philip killed him!

(btw, jokes aside, it didn't seem like he intended to kill Caleb, because in that portrait where he's ready to kill with a knife in his hand, he's facing forward, while Caleb is actually to his left. so it just looks to me like Philip was gonna try to kill Evelyn again, and Caleb either jumped in front of her to protect her and got accidentally stabbed or he attacked Philip back, to, again, protect Evelyn, and Philip ended up winning that fight. but that's just my theory)

my brother in literal christ and literal titan – why in the FUCK are you just hugging it out with a smile on your face??? you ran off while giving absolutely no warning to anyone, especially your younger brother! why do you think he's here and actively trying to attack you and your new wife? you're not even trying to address the fact that you left him! at least when Luz ran off to a different realm without warning, she had a "I'm still at the camp" cover, so Camila wouldn't worry that much about where her daughter is, and even then she still felt bad for leaving her mother and planned to go back home once summer was over. this chucklefuck, on the other hand, just permanently portaled away to the Boiling Isles, knocked up a witch and fully settled down there, walking around with a big ol' smile and no care in the world. "Philip who? never heard of him"

the only thing that would sorta make this situation seem better (as in, not make Caleb seem like an overly naive ignorant brick), in my opinion, is if they added one more portrait – after the one where he meets the witch, but before the one where he leaves. in that portrait, Caleb would look like he's trying his best to convince Philip that witches aren't actually evil, and perhaps even try to get him to go live with them in the Demon Realm, all the while Philip's looking at him with either disagreement/disappointment/disgust or just rolling his eyes and full on ignoring him, while sharpening his witch hunt tools or something. then it would look like Caleb at least tried to make his brother change his mind, like he tried to offer him a chance to go with them. but no. with the way the portraits look in the final version it just seems like Caleb was fully on-board with killing witches since he was young, even pulling his younger brother along to think the same way, Philip also thought that Caleb was perfectly fine with killing witches, but once he actually meets a real witch (assuming they've never met one before) he instantly pulls an uno reverse card and just runs off with her, without so much as telling his brother beforehand.

I'm not trying to say that "Belos should've been redeemed, because he's the victim here and Caleb is bad and it's all his fault". he still murdered his brother and went on to manipulate everyone on Boiling Isles for centuries, with his end goal being the death of all witches, while simultaneously being stuck in the loop of "denial" and "bargaining" stages of grief – repeatedly trying and failing to recreate a perfect copy of Caleb, but also killing each one that came out wrong or went against him. Belos not being redeemed in the end was the right choice (ignoring the "Belos was always le bad" from King's dad), I agree with that. frankly, if he actually got redeemed in the end, I'd probably be seething for the next 3 to 5 years, like how I did after the Diamonds' "redemptions" in SU (yes I'm still pissed about that lol). I'm just saying that, from what was shown to us, Caleb didn't seem like that good of a person either, not as bad as Belos ended up being, but still not that great. and, once again, seemingly had a raisin for a brain.

(off topic, but during Masha's retelling of Wittebane's backstory, their "sounds like big bro got a hot witch girlfriend and little bro got upset" line was so fucking cringe, it gave me a fever for 3 days the first time I watched the episode)

k, rant over, I dunno what else to add

TL;DR: I think Caleb was dumb as a brick, because, from what was shown to us in their backstory, he seemed to have run off to Demon Realm and abandon Philip without telling him anything beforehand. when Philip came to BI to look for his brother, who he assumed was under control of the witch who "took" him, since he thought his last living family member wouldn't just abandon him, and when he eventually found him, and it turned out he wasn't in any danger at all, Caleb just brushed the whole "I left you for witchussy" thing under the rug and pretended everything was and is perfectly fine, even though it clearly isn't. rip bozo

[thisapplepielife]

Written for the @corrodedcoffinfest May warm-up round.

These Keys?

Prompt: Get a Job | Word Count: 1000 | Rating: T | CW: Language, Off-Screen Recreational Weed Use | POV: Gareth | Pairing: Steddie | Tags: AU, Gareth Fakes It Until He Can Make It, Car Dealership, Gareth & Steve, Meet Ugly, Eddie Only Tortures Those He Loves Most

Gareth is dozing at his desk, when a knock on his office door startles him awake, "Your two o'clock is here." 

Gareth didn't remember having a two o'clock, but he stands up and tries to smooth out his suit. It's two sizes too big, and something Eddie found for him at a thrift store. It's ugly, but works, for now. He's just working this job selling cars, saving some goddamn money, until the band can start playing full-time. Hopefully. That's the dream, anyway.

He's not very good at it, not like Eddie would be, but Eddie was a no-go with his hair that he refused to cut to be a corporate shill, or whatever he ranted about.

There's a guy standing in the showroom, waiting. Preppy and coiffed within an inch of his life. Great. 

But Gareth approaches him, because he looks like he has money. And money means the chance at a commission. So, Gareth tries to shake the cobwebs out of his brain.

"I'm Steve. We talked on the phone earlier," this guy says, and Gareth reaches out to shake his hand. He has no memory of this alleged conversation. Maybe he shouldn't have gotten so stoned with Eddie during his lunch break.

Rolling out of the van loose and faded after lunch, probably wasn't the best idea he's ever had. 

But he hates this job. He can't sell cars. He knows nothing about them. 

"What can I help you with, Steve?" Gareth asks, and Steve's just staring at him, definitely annoyed. What's his damn problem?

"As I said on the phone, my lease is up. I need to find out how much it will be to buy mine out, or lease something new."

"Cool. Cool. Totally, man. We can do that."

"How about this one?" Gareth asks, looking at a BMW he's never seen on the lot before. It's shiny. Really, really shiny. He runs his hand over the roof. "Pretty, right?"

"Uh, yeah," Steve says, but sounds less than enthused, crossing his arms over his chest, and it looks a little aggressive, "Well, how much? What's the mileage?"

Man, he's bitchy.

There's no sticker, but Gareth can find out how much they're asking. He'll just bullshit until then. 

"It's new on the lot," Gareth says, and tries to pull up on the handle, but it doesn't budge.

"Locked, huh?" Steve asks. "Maybe you need the keys?"

Gareth presses his face to the window, to see if he can see the odometer from here, but can't.

"Yeah, I'll get the keys. I'll be right back. Wait here."

"Sure, okay. I'll be waiting," Steve snaps, and Gareth strides off towards the dealership. 

When he comes back, with no keys, Steve is talking to Keith. Goddamnit. 

"Do you know where the keys to this car are?" Gareth asks Keith, interrupting.

Steve pulls a set of keys out of his pocket, "These keys?"

"Where'd you get those?" Gareth asks.

"It's my car, Gareth. This is the car I drove here. The one I've been leasing from you guys for the past two years. The one I told you about, on the phone."

Keith shakes his head, disappointed, and points Gareth back towards the showroom.

He's been dismissed, and his potential commission, gone. Probably his job. A lease would have made sure they wouldn't fire him. Fuck. He didn't know that was Steve's car. How could he have known? Steve could have said something, for fuck's sake. Prick.

And now Gareth just has to stand by watching as Steve goes over the paperwork on his new car. The one Gareth definitely isn't going to sell him. Keith made sure of it. 

Today's not his day. 

At least it's winding to a close, and when Eddie pulls up in the van, Gareth walks toward it, relieved to be done with Keith, Steve, and this job for another day.

But then he notices that Steve is following him. Which, weird. Surely he's not gonna kick his ass over a dumb mistake. He was just a little baked. That's all. 

Gareth pauses. And so does Steve. 

"What?" Gareth asks. 

"What, what?" Steve repeats. 

"Why are you following me?" Gareth asks.

"I'm not following you," Steve says, clearly following him.

"You are." 

"I'm not."

They're still arguing, this childish back and forth, when Eddie gets out and leans against the van. 

"Soooo, I see you've met," Eddie says.

And they both turn to look in his direction. 

"You know him?!" they both yell, in unison. 

And Eddie just cackles. 

"You set me up!" Gareth accuses, pointing at Eddie.

"Well, maybe. A little. But it was mainly Steve I was harassing." 

And then Gareth gets it. 

"This is your Steve?" Gareth asks, pointing at the preppy-looking motherfucker standing next to him.

Eddie nods, pleased with himself, clearly. 

"Eddie! You lost me my commission!"

Steve is rubbing his eyebrow, "Gareth. Shoulda realized. How common could that name be?"

He's muttering quietly and Gareth is scared they've broken him. 

Eddie must be pretty sure about this one, if he's already picking on him this goddamn hard. 

Steve snaps out of it, suddenly striding over towards Keith.

Gareth follows.

"Hey, Gareth was helping me first. He's the one I had the appointment with, so I'd like to finish this up with him. See it through."

"But, are you, I…" Keith splutters, not wanting to let this one go, obviously, and Gareth just grins and holds out his hand for the halfway filled-out lease. 

Keith hands it over, and Gareth leads Steve and Eddie back to his office.

Steve signs on the dotted line, and Gareth will be able to pay his rent for another month. And he hit his monthly bonus, right at the end of the month. Hot damn.

"Thanks, Steve," Gareth says, "Sorry we got off on the wrong foot."

Steve just lulls his head towards Eddie, "Now, we had a little help with that, didn't we?"

And Eddie just cackles, like the shitty troll he is.

If you want to write your own, or see more entries for this challenge, pop on over to @corrodedcoffinfest and follow along with the fun! 🦇

Notes: Inspiration for this one, was I saw this video a couple months ago, and had to track down the original on TikTok to share it here. But: Graham, Gareth. It made sense. (And I found there were updates to the Graham debacle!!)

[silvermoon424]

Hi Katy! How are you? I hope you're having a good day.

I was wondering if you knew what's going with r/sailormoon?

I guess people have gotten fed up with the mods or something? I've posted on that subreddit in the past, so I know the mods can be rude (to say the least).

Most of the posts pertaining to this situation seem to have been removed.

Hey! I'm good, thank you! Hope you're doing well too.

Wow, okay, I had NO idea what was going on and had to do some digging. The information is very sparse but I think I was able to piece together what happened:

A few days ago, a popular artist posted a 3D artwork of Neo-Queen Serenity to r/sailormoon. The artwork was removed because it "reeks of AI." The artist very politely messaged the mods and asked them what happened, offering to send evidence that proves her authenticity. The mods muted- and later outright banned- her. One of the mods also blocked her on Bluesky when she tagged them asking what happened.

You can read the whole thread here:

People later started sending hate to the two mods (RockyCoon and lemonaid83), which the artist denounced. It got to the point where RockyCoon decided to shut down the subreddit and step down as mod. As of right now, the r/sailormoon subreddit is shut down and will remain that way until a new mod can take over.

Okay, so time to give my opinion on this whole thing.

Right off the bat, let me say that harassment is wrong; RockyCoon and lemonaid83 should not be sent death threats over a fucking fandom subreddit.

THAT BEING SAID- I'm glad people are acknowledging what a shitty place r/sailormoon is and how awful its mods are. It sucks that the mods were harassed into it, but I'm glad they're stepping down because they really do live up to the powertripping Reddit mod stereotype. You can see people in this thread (from a smaller Sailor Moon subreddit) talking about their negative experiences with the mods.

The mods' policies and strict adherence to an arbitrary set of rules really stifles the community. The biggest example of this is the whole "no self-promotion" rule. Artists get hit with the banhammer for daring to link to their socials where people can see more of their work or commission them (because fuck artists for trying to make a living I guess). Meanwhile apparently it's fine for people to post uncredited artwork.

Okay, I gotta rant about this because it still pisses me off so much. Just a few months ago an artist posted pictures of Sailor Moon props he'd made; he makes props and other replicas for a living and they're just gorgeous. Tons of people (myself included) asked him where we can buy his work or commission him. He had to DM us all individually due to fears of being banned for self-promotion. But then the mods caught on and deleted the post anyway.

The artist and I were DMing at the time and he told me how disheartening it was to get a lot of traction for his business only for the mods to derail it because of stupid, arbitrary rules. He wasn't really a Sailor Moon fan himself (he only made the props because his wife, a Moonie, encouraged him to) and I hate how this incident must have tainted his view of the fandom.

So yeah, ANYWAY, I hope this fiasco results in r/sailormoon getting better mods and not sucking anymore. Again, I don't condone harassment, but I can't say I feel too bad for the head mod. They've been super shitty for years and actively made the Sailor Moon fandom a worse place to be in.