#it just feel like i saw it and now i must quit the internet

[shaottzang]

why I feel like I shouldn't be seeing this..

photos taken from x.com

[savanir]

A sister's love

The justice league hurriedly responds to a call for backup at a little in the middle of nowhere place by the name of Amity Park. 

The situation had seemed so simple. 

A Star Sapphire had suddenly shown up on Earth which isn’t immediately cause for concern but she was unidentified, so a lantern was definitely going to have to look into it if only just to make sure that nothing bad was going on. There are two planet side green lanterns, Simon and Jessica. So they responded to handle the potential situation. 

Things rapidly spun out of control when they realized it wasn't just a Star Sapphire. 

"I hate to say this but we're gonna need backup" Simon tells Cyborg, "the Star Sapphire has brought something with her. My first guess was a white martian but..." The other one can do some manner of density shifting, and he can go invisible, but they know ways around that. Whatever this one is doing isn’t that though.

"Why isn't this working!?!" Comes Jessica's slightly panicked voice in the distance, "he keeps just going through my creations! dammit, think think Jess" She tried to contain him with a flamethrower construct but he just ignored it, like he’s seemingly ignoring everything else she’s throwing at him.

"Our constructs have zero effect on the other one, the alien, meta? man I don’t know he’s human shaped" 

"What is the situation other than the two hostiles?"

"Uh we got some government agents who are retreating because of the Star Sapphire wrecking their stuff. And the civilian people here seem to be falling under her influence, so she must be human. She's from here, she needs emotional connection to pull that stuff off."

The people are furious, the violet glow around them clearly indicates that the girl is using her ring to amp them up but if Simon didn’t know any better he’d say this was red lantern stuff.

Well there are more ways to whip people up into a frenzy, by hurting their loved ones for example.

There is a brief moment where it can be heard that Simon and Jessica try to get into a more advantageous position. 

Simon grunts, "dammit, those agents seemed to have weapons that actually worked on the other guy but the Star Sapphire used her violet constructs to shield him and destroy their guns and we've been struggling since" this whole situation stinks, he has a weird feeling about all of it.

"Simon this is really really bad, i can't keep restraining all these civilians, we're running out of energy fast!"

Cyborg tries to get a visual on the situation from his position in the Watchtower while he’s notifying any league affiliated heroes who are nearby and available. 

But all of a sudden he realizes there is just nothing, just a big lap of void where the two lanterns are supposed to be, there is no cctv footage, no cell towers, no internet connection. Just what the hell is going on here.

Then the audio transmission starts to violently crackle.

A new voice laced with static can suddenly be heard, "There you two are"

"Shit"

"Is the justice league coming yet? Are they finally going to do something?" the staticy voice continues.

"Stay back you-"

"Or maybe they still need more of a reason to act" 

The audio cuts out. 

"Jessica! Simon! Come in!" ... "Shit!" 

Cyborg finally gets a clear picture with the satellite cameras and now sees the entirety of Amity Park has been covered with a crystalized violet dome. It’s then that he remembers the story Hal told quite some time ago now about a Star Sapphire who managed to put a whole planet into love stasis.

They are gonna need more help with this one he thinks.

Meanwhile Jazz is still shakily trying to figure out how her new pink powers work, now that all the fighting is over (for now), the GIW forcefully expelled from Amity, and the two Justice league people captured and restrained.

Everything happened so fast, one moment the GIW had knocked out her brother and were forcefully taking him away and while she saw them drive off (she was pretty sure she was screaming) a pink thing just froze her in place, She was pretty sure someone said something about “great love in her heart” and then she was… well she was flying and- and there wasn’t really any time to question things then so she may have kinda gone and ripped into the van that had Danny.

She’s pretty sure she healed him, and then things just completely spiraled out of control from that point on. and now she’s here.

She’s pretty sure this is crazy villain behavior, she’s going to get put on some sort of watchlist and then she’ll never get to be a psychologist but it’s fine.

Her little brother is safe, that’s all that matters. And she will keep it that way.

[saerotonins]

biggest scandals they have faced

ft. actor!nanami kento, fushiguro toji x wife!reader (separated) 

content warnings: fluff, light angst, jjk actor au, celebrity issues, cheating allegations, divorce allegations, none of them are true, misogyny, mentions of infertility, just cruel stuff based on the issues i see online, slightly suggestive (making out), toji and wife call each other "ma" and "pa", mentions/hinting of sex, internet trolls, horrible people online, pls don't read if these issues are triggering to you, shitty article names lol

wc: 2052

note: this got too long, will do other parts for the other actors instead <33 happy holidays, everyone!

NANAMI KENTO:

Jujutsu Kaisen Star Nanami Kento Facing Trouble in Paradise: Leads to Divorce

to say he was irritated when he saw the headlines from the tabloids was an understatement, he is beyond livid. but the comments just made everything worse.

user_1: wow aren't they married for years already? maybe his wife can't conceive any babies? LOL

user_2: must be, or maybe nanami's just realized his wife is just using him for his actor money 

user_3: the wife doesn't know to make a sandwich i fear 

user_4: maybe he got tired of his wife's ugly face, no wonder he hides it from the internet hahaha

kento doesn't give a fuck if people were dragging his name left and right but god forbid it involves you, his loving wife who has been nothing but utterly supportive of his career. for someone who stuck by his side for years, it angers him that people immediately assume that you were the problem. he knows the news isn't true, he literally just cuddled with you last night, so to say that you were getting a divorce almost makes him laugh if it weren't how stupid this situation is. 

when his manager informed him about the situation, he immediately cancelled every schedule that he has for today, he will call the lawyers to settle this later but for now, his main focus is you. 

you are someone who is used to the privacy of your own space which is why you opted to keep your face off his socials and remain anonymous to the eyes of his fans. kento hates it that your peace is getting disturbed due to his stardom, so he is willing to drop everything just to go home to you and comfort you. no one knows who you really are but the way it made people talk like they do, makes him angry. no way his wife is going to be disrespected like this.

the moment kento opens the door the your shared home, he's panting, sweat evident in his forehead and worry present in his eyes as he looks at you across the living room, sitting on the couch with your phone in your hands. 

"shit," he thought, he knows you already saw the news, and worse the comments. he can tell just by your body language. your eyes sunken in sadness and your lips form a frown. he doesn't see it but he knows your heart is breaking too.

"honey," kento breathes out as he walks towards you. he knows you heard him, but you stay in your position, disbelief flooding your senses. suddenly, you came back to reality when you feel kento's warm embrace, his large and quick hands getting rid of your phone before placing it on your head and immediately feeling his chest against your head.

his breathing his ragged, unstable deep breaths as he tells you, "it's gonna be okay," and a thousand apologies to go with it. you nod instead, finding yourself difficult to talk. you opt to rub onto his arm, a silent reply to his comforting and kento seems to understand your gesture. he then kisses the crown of your head as he pulls you tighter in his embrace.

"am i holding you back, kento?" you asked, your voice quite muffled as you speak through his button down blouse.

"oh god, darling you will never hold me back, if anything, you keep me moving. don't listen to them, alright? i'm happy and contented to where we are right now, don't worry about it." he lets go of the embrace and cups your face with both of his hands. he looks at you with loving eyes as he brushes your lower lip with his thumb. you close your eyes as he leaned closer, then you finally felt his lips against yours. he gives a peck, another, and then a third one before he crashes his lips onto you for the last time as he takes his time to explore your mouth.

kento knows a lot of ways to apologize, and this is one of them. he is gentle, but his love is loud as he allows his tongue clash against yours, the wet squelch filling up the room as he allows himself to be drunk with your lips.

when kento lets go, his breathing is heavy but satisfied. "i'll take care of everything from then on, okay?" he says as he caresses your face and a smile creeps to his face when you lean towards his touch with a nod. "will you be releasing a statement?" you ask.

"yeah, i'll contact our lawyer about it and then we'll see what we can do." his answer earned a curt nod from you. kento noticed pursed your lips, obviously thinking about something.

"are you still bothered by the comments?"

"no, i mean, i'm a bit upset about how people were talking about me online but i'm just curious as to where all this came from." 

"hmm, yeah, we'll take care of that too, for now, just rest your pretty mind and always remember that i will never leave you. that okay?" his gentle voice makes your heart feel full, and that's you know that your husband will always be at your beck and call. "yeah." you answered as you give his lips a quick peck, "i love you," you added.

"i love you too."

not a even a day later, the JJK LABEL had released a statement and an article regarding the fake news that had surfaced.

Nanami Kento Slams Fake Divorce Article: "Don't project your problems in your love life through me and my wife."

"the article itself and the comments are horrible and people are stupid enough to believe something that came from a tabloid known to release fake news. maybe this just tells about how gullible and stupid people are for believing groundless rumors and not my relationship." the artist stated.

"to everyone involved in the release of this article, we will see you on court and i hope you have any evidence about your claim. to the people who threw disgusting comments about my wife, please worry how alone you are instead of snooping around our relationship." he adds.

that day, kento's fanbase rejoice as the tabloids finally got their karma when it was reported that their company was finally shut down.

FUSHIGURO TOJI:

it was a normal day in the fushiguro household until megumi bursts in through the door with a loud and resounding—

"dad, what the fuck?" 

"megumi, language, please!" you warned him.

your word goes through megumi's ears and went to his dad who is currently lounging in the living room reading his script. he paid his son's words no mind and gave him a raised eyebrow, urging him to continue.

"your name is all over tabloids because of a forum post. look," megumi says as he faces his phone screen to toji's face. to say that he's horrified to what he just saw is an understatement. so, with a worry mind, you go behind toji's lounging chair and read what's on the screen.

Acting Veteran 'T' Caught in An Affair! 

At the night of Tuesday, Actor 'T' is caught leaving a hotel with a seemingly younger woman clinging on his arms. The two are being lovey-dovey in their Shibuya rendezvous. Actor 'T' is currently married with a child which makes everything even more scandalous. What would actor 'T'’s wife and child think about this? Seems like the man really took a liking towards sneaking away with younger women.

Actor 'T'’s identity will be released by [MM/DD/YY] so stay tuned! For now, let us know your thoughts below.

user_1: actor veteran and the code is T? must be toji then?

user_2: this is definitely toji lmfao he looks like someone who would fool a younger woman

user_3: his wife must be so rusty now so he's running to the younglings LOL

user_4: respect for having the balls to cheat on his wife after this long, ik his ass is itching

user_5: @user_4 LMFAO should've done it sooner! bet he doesn't want to pay child support so he's staying 😂

user_6: NOOOO the GOAT got caught damn we were rooting for u 👑

"what the fuck?" both you and toji's voice were erupting in the whole room. out of shock? anger? rage? megumi is not sure but there is one thing he's sure of, both of you are being scary right now and the red in both of you and husband's eyes are almost showing due to the high range of emotions you were both feeling right now.

despite knowing that toji is utterly in love with you and he was actually with you that day, it scares him that his father is facing this kind of scandal. people are horrible out there trying to ruin his father's career that he worked hard on and this is the proof.

toji might be used to having false rumors spread about him all over the years he is in the acting industry, but what he can't take is people talking shit about his wife and thinking less about her. the comments that he just read just woke up the rage inside of him.

"mom?" megumi had called you since it's been minutes when you had gone quiet. the sight before him broke his heart. 

your eyes are trying not to let your tears fall, but the comments are too hurtful to ignore, too cruel to set aside. even though you know that it's covered with a codename (barely), you exactly know it's your husband that they are talking about. you're hurt about the comments but you're most scared of your husband's career coming to a screeching halt.

you suddenly feel your husband hug you so tight and you let it all out. his shirt might get damped but toji doesn't care, comforting his wife comes first. he then tells megumi, "call our lawyer, tell him what we just saw, they'll know what to do," megumi frantically nods and gets out of the house to do what toji had said.

"come on, ma, let's go and get some rest." toji had urged you to go with him.

"pa, this is so ridiculous, i know you know how to deal with these but this is just too much, they're targeting our family now." the sadness in your voice and the tears that flow through face break toji's heart. you don't deserve this. these assholes needed to be taught a lesson, and he knows he won't be nice about it. "i'll take care of this, 'kay? i love you and megs so much, angel."

toji's voice somehow calmed your senses and you let yourself cry in his arms until you're left with no tears. "i'm sorry, i'm too old to cry like this." you said as you try to wipe the remnants of your tears from your face.

"no one's too old to cry, darling," toji coos, glad that you're finally able to calm down, and caresses the back of your head. then, a sly smirk forms on his lips, "you know what else we're not too old for?" 

genuinely curious, you look up to him, "what?" you asked. 

toji leaned down and whispered, "another child, think we can give megumi a sibling?" and gave you a mischievous look.

"toji!" you exclaimed as you smack his chest, flustered of his words. 

"gross, get a room, and is now really the time for this?" you suddenly let go of yourself from toji's grasp the moment you heard megumi back in the living room. toji chuckled, "i got it all covered, both of you rest up and i will deal with all of this." toji walked towards where megumi is standing and gives his head a gentle pat, "no one's gonna ruin us, alright?" 

the conviction in toji's voice made it clear to both of you and megumi that he already has a plan in mind, and you trust him enough to believe him. he has never let the both of you down, after all.

the next day, news break out the the person who posted the rumor on the online forum is caught with other criminal charges aside from the defamation he just attempted to do. the horrible comments also seem to magically disappear.

Fushiguro Toji Busts Down Anonymous User, Other Criminal Charges Involved

"I hope this serves as a lesson to everyone else. I'm not backing down until everyone gets what they deserve for ruining the names of the people I care about. I will not let go until every single horrible person who rises their tongue against my family is punished." Toji stated.

"Be careful what you read and comment online, please don't forget that the people you talk about are not just subjects, but real human beings." The veteran actor added.

the fake news spreader should have really known not to deal with a veteran who is powerful enough to protect the people he cherishes.

edit: i just noticed that i wasn't able to add the ending to toji's part 😭 my apologies, i fixed it now!

[oikarma]

number one girl

pairing: max verstappen x reader

summary: the story of ynmax is a very, very heated topic riddled with holes and chock full of conspiracies: a couple and split to rival brocedes. it's mostly an a f1 thing, though, until you release an album and the internet tries to deduce what ruined a decades-long friendship.

a/n: angst warning. bear with me, you're in for a long ride. we go from twitter to insta to reddit to sdfsd. this was SO FUN!

part one / part two / part three

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liked by stevienicks, georgerussell63 and 3,104,827 others

yourinstagram: "number one girl" out now.

view all 411,295 comments

user1: mother??? music???

user2: our multitalented baby <3

stevienicks: so proud of you ❤️

yourinstagram: so thankful for you 🥺 your support is immeasurable in worth

user3: max verstappen did you-

user4: george listening to this so he can justify bullying max next season

user5: please 💀 i choked on my water reading that

user6: CHARLES IN THE CREDITS FOR PIANO?? how many side quests has this girl roped people into

user7: they're still good friends lol just cause she and max stopped speaking doesn't mean she's not close w the rest of the grid user8: @/user7 right! she and alex have also posted each other quite a bit after the rhode collab

user9: is no one talking about the lyrics 😃 gut wrenching, yes, but the way it all lines up w max??

user10: no babe dw we're all talking about the lyrics user11: my roman empire...

user12: who's this max guy and what does he have to do with my queen y/n

user13: @/user12 he's a formula one driver, they ued to be best friends user12: @/user13 like nascar? omg what i only knew that she debuted in shadow n bone but WHAT IS THIS

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A PAGE FROM Y/N's JOURNAL November 15, 2021

Max is a plane right now to see Kelly. I feel like I've been punched, three times over. The nausea is getting to me.

How could you? Just say all those things, like you always do. Do you mean any of them? When you say "I love you, more than anyone in this life." When you say "You're worth it, really. "When you say "forever." Does anyone ever really mean forever? Forever is part of the foreseeable future. You cannot capture what is beyond that.

You were my life. The words, every moment. An inescapable reminder.

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

liked by charles_leclerc, brunomars and 2,819,305 others

yourinstagram: "toxic till the end (ft. lewis hamilton)" is up on youtube and all music platforms ♡

view all 309,418 comments

user1: what. the. fuck.

user2: is she dating lewis? what? y/n girl please stop being cryptic my head can't take all of this 😭

user3: if this is part of the press tour i must say i am now extremely invested in the ynmax drama and i didn't even know who max was until i saw a thread on number one girl...

lewishamilton: Best of luck with your future endeavors, Y/N 🫂 Will be by your side!

yourinstagram: you better be 🫰 user4: the friendship we didn't know we needed

user5: lewis with...pink hair...

user6: max emilian verstappen fumbled so hard

user7: imagine ghosting THE y/n l/n and then she drops this

user8: well, 4 years later but yeah user9: what even is a wdc...

user10: what does the heart mean y/n

user11: bro

user12: so i guess the harry styles dating rumors were all fake 😔 but omg lewis music!!

kellypiquet: Face and voice of an angel 😽

yourinstagram: me? please, pregnancy glow has been treating you good 💕 user13: at least they don't have any hard feelings...

user14: bruno in the likes is the most random thing ever

user15: acting career, check. singing career, check. formula one side quests??? multple checks

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liked by kellypiquet and 4,103,697 others

lewishamilton: Behind the scenes of Miss Y/N's "toxic till the end" music video

tagged: yourinstagram

yourinstagram: looking good there, lew

lewishamilton: Very kind of you to say user1: trust me we are witnessing the start of a great romance

user2: i don't want to delulu too hard but PLEASE tell me y/n's moved on with lewis it would be the ultimate baddie move

user3: imagine...you won abu dhabi but you lost the love of your life to the guy you beat 🤪 user4: we're all insane but i'm just going to keep dreaming

charles_leclerc: Why am I not in your dump?

yourinstagram: face card wasn't lethal enough user5: she's brutal 💀 user6: our charles's facecard could start wars idk what she's on

user7: daddy please give me ONE chance

user8: give me some of that maranello?? he looks so good oml

user9: focusing on music videos and not racing...no wonder he's washed

user10: @/user9 can you stfu and touch grass user11: @/user9 literally no one asked

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AN UNSENT LETTER FROM MAX November 2021

Dear Hey, Y/N.

I realized you blocked me. It hurts. I don't know what to say or what to believe anymore. I miss us. Overstepping was the wrong choice, if you must, but going back is not impossible.

We've been friends for so long. Why can't you won't you try?

I miss you.

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r/Fauxmoi · 1 day ago hamilton7xc

Max Verstappen and Y/N L/N's infamous split explained?

feralonsos: So she's been pretending he led her on when she lead him on

parking23: I don't know anymore. I know nothing. Don't even talk to me.

forzamcqueen: I want to say it's not about YNMax but 21 (as in 21, when they split?) and Y/N has been coming out with music recently. When you look at the "number one girl" lyrics from Boy's perspective it lines up with this submission. That Max wanted reassurance from Y/N and she gave it to him, but she couldn't give him everything he needed.

↳ roses_berg: @/forzamcqueen I don't know...it seems kind of unlikely. Y/N has a lyric about "chasing the prize" or something like that. What prize would she be chasing? On the other hand, you have Max who has clearly said racing is his passion and he loves winning.

↳ forzamcqueen: @/roses_berg I see where you're coming from but there are a few interpretations. Toxic Till the End suggests she thought his attachment to her was maybe unhealthy, and he kept trying to find ways to keep her by his side. Y/N has mentioned in past interviews (promo for her role in Shadow and Bone, when she was starting to do acting) that she's had bad experience with past relationships and is hesitant on starting a new one.

↳ januaryblues11: @/forzamcqueen Sorry, what interview? Could you link it?

↳ forzamcqueen: @/januaryblues11 No worries, I put it down below. The part I'm referring to is around 5:41.

↳ WolffHornerFan: @/forzamcqueen Okay, okay. I need a timeline then. She must've started filming Shadow and Bone in Oct 2019, then wrapped 4 months later in Feb 2020. This might be the "prize" she's chasing? Her own career. Before it was announced that she was in the series most news referred to her as "close friend" or "best friend" of Max Verstappen. Now a lot of people know her for S&B or Top Gun Maverick, etc.

↳ CautiousOwl: Might've not wanted her relationship to overshadow her career. It's understandable, if she wanted to be taken seriously instead of a "nepo friend."

↳ 4norrisop: She's amazing in Shadow and Bone! Definitely recommend checking that out, but I don't understand why she ghosted him.

↳ ynluv07: @/4norrisop he was dating kelly at the time. she might've thought it was a bad idea after it happened (i'm referring to the kiss, which i assume happened because she explicitly refers to it a few times in "number one girl") and distanced herself. maybe she told him it wasn't okay?

↳ ICEMAN_bwoah: Brain hurts.

↳ brooksies: Well if she did give up her happiness because she thought Kelly deserved better, that's great. No wonder they're still on good terms.

↳ DauntingParrot91: @/brooksies Yeah, sure...

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AN UNSENT LETTER FROM MAX January 2022

Y/N, I'm sorry I asked for too much; I'm sorry I pushed you. I'll take my bags and go quietly, this time. Maybe you'll open the door again someday. I love you too, my best friend always.

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liked by lewishamilton, taylorswift and 4,103,269 others

yourinstagram: Burnout.

comments on this post have been limited

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AN UNSENT LETTER FROM Y/N February 2022

Wish you'd take a little longer to pack up your bags. You're moving too fast. Make me want to hate you more than I hate myself, so I don't have to miss you. Make a mistake, please. So I have someone to blame.

Please, won't you stay a little longer? I would call you babe, just to make you smile. I wouldn't mean it that way, but I still love you. You're my best friend. Why wasn't that enough?

I'll be okay, sometime. You say it's written all over my face, and I wonder, what is? I'm fragile, now. I'm speechless, now. Don't leave me in pieces. I'm sorry, let me fix it. It won't be good for us, but oh-how I want to.

I'm already having trouble breathing. Please, stay a little longer. I can't stand these four walls without you inside them.

Come back, be here.

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

liked by kellypiquet and 1,249,805 others

maxverstappen: She stayed a little longer 🖤

tagged: kellypiquet

view all 91,432 comments

user1: GUYS HE DEF HEARD THE SONG

user2: do we think kelly asked him to post it

user3: tbf given on how sweet her n yns interactions are i wouldn't be surprised if she listened to burnout

user4: kelly. you are the strongest woman i know

user5: so i can convince you the minute i kiss you speak a little softer so i don't have to answer and make it okay before you can say

user6: i just know he had a little breakdown inside after he heard the album

user7: max rn: CHARLES HOW COULD YOU PLAY PIANO FOR HER

user8: max: alexa play that should be me user9: ho-olding your handdd

user10: who are we blaming today

user11: at least max is finally someone's number one girl

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AN UNSENT LETTER FROM MAX Summer 2024

Sometimes I look to the television and you're on, flying a plane or wielding magic, whatever it is you do these days. I knew you could act. I knew you'd make it far. I hear you were nominated for a Golden Globe, too.

I was mad for a long time. I was upset you kicked me out of your life so abruptly.

Kelly's expecting. I think she will be as good a mother to our child as she is to little P. A family is what I have always wanted, you know. It was not what you wanted.

I am sorry. I have said that many times, but one day I will need to say it to your face. I am truly, irrevocably sorry for all the hurt I caused you, in the name of love.

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

r/PopCultureChat · 1 day ago forzamcqueen

"Burnout" by Y/N L/N

How do we feel about the release of the full album? Moreover, how do we think it fits into the YNMax narrative? I, for one, have been listening non-stop trying to figure out the story.

lec_clerc16: I think it's funny how many people have gotten into F1 because of her music. Lol.

↳ NaturalOtter5: Well Lewis & Charles were on it so I would say the F1 community is pretty interested in the tea aswell.

↳ lec_clerc16: @/NaturalOtter5 Right, but YNMax is old drama. Sure, someone's posting in r/F1 every other week about an old photo or new quote. It's still been around for a while. This is fresh meat 😋

jennyowens1342: such a player...LOL who is gameboy about atp

↳ sassybanana: TBF Y/N's dating life has been a lot more quiet than Max's. There have been rumors but she hasn't hard launched anything. Maybe the one public "relationship" was enough for her.

museapollo: the more i listen the more convinced i am that y/n did not want the relationship as max did and decided it was best for them to stop being friends. the whole album is about a codependent relationship and the two people can't deal with leaving but they know it's better for both.

↳ janitorsclosetmonster: yess!! that's what i've been saying. we can't blame y/n for everything, it must've been confusing for her as well. having to navigate everything. idt she'd dated anyone at that point. max was her only close friend.

↳ EggplantParmesan713: But did max cheat...that's the real question. When did THE kiss happen? And who started it?

↳ museapollo: @/EggplantParmesan713 idk. i can't figure if she actually loved him (romantically) bcs it's clear he did but her side is a bit more hazy. you have: 1. "i just WANT it to be you" - it's not actually him she loves but she desperately wants it to be him 2. "cause even when i said it was over / you heard baby can you pull me in closer" - she's telling him it won't work out but he's not listening. 3. "please, won't you stay, stay a little a little longer, babe?" - she pauses before babe, like it's her trying to convince him to stay. mb she thought it was best to distance herself/end the friendship for a bit but she still loves him a lot because they've been friends for so long

↳ forzamcqueen: @/museapollo The best explanation I have heard so far. You can't force someone to love you the way you do. At least they've matured and moved on.

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January 2025

Dear Max:

Congratulations. I'm sure you will be a wonderful father, as I have always guessed. 2024 was a great year for you. I watched all a few of your races; you've still got it.

I'm putting out an album soon. I thought you should know. I already had a talk with Kelly, she's listened to some snippets and she likes it a lot. Some of the writing is about you the things I never said.

It was wonderful being your best friend. We had a good run, better than most.

Missing you Wish you the best, Y/N L/N

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

February 2025

Dear Y/N:

Occasionally, I think of all that could have been.

But we had many years together, and I will always cherish those moments.

Kelly loves the album, she puts it on while she cooks or does her makeup. P sings along in the car. She says she wants to go out for a tea party with you sometime. I listen to it even when they're out of the voice, for a reminder of your voice. You've made quite a name for yourself. I'm sorry I couldn't be there by your side.

Thank you for writing it. There are some things that you have to hear once, just for yourself.

Love Always Yours, Max Verstappen

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

what did you think?? i might do a part 2 of yn & max talking for the first time in forever but i wanna know if you guys liked this one first LOL

[mask131]

This is about Neil Gaiman's work - this is NOT about the rape accusations, but it is about the aftermath of them. I wanted to make a post for some times now about works you could read that were similar to Gaiman's works if you wanted to go see something akin to his fictional world without directly supporting him. Which would have been a VERY easy post since Gaiman kept listing everywhere the works that influenced directly or indirectly his own novels and creations. But I realized other people were already doing this, so I just thought "Heh, let's not bother with this".

And then I randomly stumbled upon this post which is trending on Tumblr. And this post got me a little mad. Because while I do agree that several of the facts in there should be more well-known and more talked about... I also think this post is quite unfair in its depiction of how Gaiman acted towards his inspirations.

People are currently screaming that Neil Gaiman plagiarized stuff by "taking huge inspiration from things and not crediting people". Except... he did credit people. It's just that his fans never bothered to go look for what inspired him. I was there back in the old days - so I saw exactly how it went. Don't start telling me Neil Gaiman purposefully stayed "silent" about the works that inspired him - I clearly saw how people were just apathetic. Myself when I compiled lists and made posts about all the works that preceeded Neil Gaiman or that he explained were his inspirations for things, people didn't bother and had no interest... but when I made a list of Gaiman's work suddenly everybody reblogged. Whether Gaiman plagiarized or not is not the thing I want to talk about today - but I want to HEAVILY criticize the way people are saying "Neil Gaiman never said he took X from X" when in fact, he did, and people were just too lazy to do their research. (Or, if you take the "Gaiman is a villain " angle, Gaiman counted on the fact people would not bother to read the original books and he won his bet!)

I am deeply sorry for this rant but it is a little trigger for me, since I have been studying and exploring the "chain" of inspirations and rewritings throughout literature and the fantasy genre (half for university work, half for personal hobby), and I have seen people literaly ignore all the bibliographies given to them under titles like "If you want to read more of the sort". [For example the original post talks about how Martin was very honest about how he took inspiration from Druon's book series. Fair. But nobody is talking about how he indeed kind of "plagiarized" Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. A lot of people don't know about this series, despite said series having literaly almost all of ASoIaF's supernatural - in fact, the reason Martin seems to be under-using his own supernatural creations, like the White Walkers, is precisely because they don't come from his mind and they are just a copy of Williams' Norns and he seems to not really know what to do with them. But that's a talk for another day.]

EDIT: I realized the post got very long, so all my personal objections and my argumentative points against the post I linked above will be under a cut. And if you want a conclusion to my long rant below the cut, it is this one: You can shit all you want about Gaiman, but at least get your facts right. It is not because someone turns out to be a bad person that you must feel the need to blast cultural misinformation. Heck, I will directly compare it to how the entire Internet wished and wanted Rowling to have "plagiarized" Gaiman's Books of Magic, because of their similarities, only for Gaiman himself to point out, no, it was not plagiarism, it was just a set of similarities and coincidences due to both works coming from a same British culture with a specific background in children literature and fantasy works. It just happened that people didn't know anything outside of Harry Potter and Gaiman's works and so assumed it was the only two pieces of a much vaster puzzle...

Yes, Neil Gaiman is very derivative. Yes he is very imitative. But he never hid it? He always said he was, he always pointed out the works that influenced him, he always listed the stuff that he based his own works upon - down to sometimes helping these works come out of obscurity when they were too forgotten (like the Lud-in-mist novel?). People are doing a "surprised Pikachu face" today but... he never hid his derivatiness. In fact it was a certain part of the "charm" people found in his work back in the days. He never hid anything, it's just that a lot of people didn't want to see it or didn't care about it...

Gaiman posted an entire page on his blog for American Gods (back in the early days of Internet, he had a blog to follow his writing process for American Gods, weeks after week, you can still find it somewhere) listing the three dozen of books that inspired him/that he took elements from/that he learned stuff from. People can accuse him of having plagiarized Zelazny's work in American Gods because of one scene - Wednesday having Shadow drive into the "Backstage", which is a rewrite of the "driving to Amber" scene from The Nine Princes of Amber. But the accusation of "plagiarism" becomes a bit muddled when you know that A) Gaiman has been screaming for years about how the main source of inspiration for American Gods were all of Zelazny's mythological works and B) He literaly dedicated American Gods to Zelazny, first page you open.

When does an homage becomes too much? When is plagiarism allowed? Is taking after public domain a bad thing? What are the moral consequences of your work overshadowing your source of inspiration? These are questions I am not wanting to answer today and this post isn't about them - plus things are even more complex when you remember Gaiman was one of the most fervent defensers and advocates of fanfiction, reacting positively to it and encouraging people to do it a lot ; as well as one of the main celebrities on Tumblr to warn people to NOT send him fanfics so that it wouldn't cause legal troubles of potential plagiarism.

Anyway, my actual angry rant is below.

I/ Tanith Lee and Sandman

The post that got me angry starts with Tanith Lee. I do agree that it is a shame Tanith Lee is not more talked about and didn't receive as much fame as she deserved. I do agree that Neil Gaiman's work was heavily inspired by Tanith Lee's writing. I do agree Gaiman's work overshadowed Lee's own (for a long time I didn't know she was the first one to do a vampiric Snow-White twist, before Gaiman's own). However I have to recuse the idea that Sandman is a rip-off of Tales from Flat-Earth.

It doesn't help that the person who made this original claim clearly doesn't know very much about either Lee's Flat-Earth or Gaiman's Sandman (with easy to debunk claims like how "Delusion" is one of Gaiman's Endless - no, the character does not exist). For example the poster rightfully compares how the top-dogs of the supernatural pantheon of Lee's Flat-Earth are the Masters of Night, Death and Delirium, wth the Master of Night's physical appearance echoing Dream of the Endless' appearance... However the comparison stops there, unlike what the poster tries to claim, because the Master of Night is a demon who rules over hatred, fear, curses and malevolence first and foremost - and is this world's equivalent of Satan/Iblis - and is not a personification of dreams, imaginations and sleep like Morpheus. Also, unlike what the OP claims, the Demon Princes are not like the Endless, "eternal entities beyond gods" - on the contrary, it is shown by book one the Demon Princes CAN be killed, and that there are gods who are a distinct species far above the Demons.

It is also incomplete to try to claim that having Dream and Death be siblings is a "proof" of Tanith Lee plagiarism... Because Gaiman is very explicit in his narrative of how Dream and Death are transpositions of the Thanatos & Hypnos/Thanatos & Morpheus twinship present in Greco-Roman mythology (Ovid's "Gates of Horn and Ivory" are literaly there in the first issues). Plus, since we do have the original manuscripts and the proposition draft Gaiman sent to DC (it is in the bonus of collected editions and in companion books), we know Gaiman originally had just three Endless in mind, Death, Dream (who was a reshape of DC's Sandman super-hero), and Destiny (who pre-existed in DC's universe), Delirium only coming far later.

That being said, I am feeling very sad for Tanith Lee through the testimony of her friend - how, again, she had trouble becoming a recognized author despite her work being very influential and frequently talked about for the fantasy genre (all the fantasy manuals and guides and encyclopedias of France list her among the authors to be read), and I do feel her distate for Neil Gaiman's work vampirizing hers is very justified. But to jump into saying Sandman is a copy-paste or a full on rip-off of Flat-Earth is unfair and very limiting. Flat-Earth was one of the inspirations of Sandman, but it doesn't own "everything" to it.

Plus, the OP also gets very angry at how Gaiman "never" talked about Tanith Lee and ... you know how I got to learn about Tanith Lee, and how I got encouraged to read her? Through Gaiman's Tumblr blog, where he regularly listed her as part of the authors that inspired him/the fantasy authors he enjoyed/the authors he encouraged others to read. I saw her appear like five different times on his Tumblr, and without him I probably wouldn't have started getting curous about her. So he did talk about her and he did present her as one of his inspirations and favorite authors... At least on Tumblr, and for several years.

II/ Coraline and Thief of Always

The comments mention Coraline and the Thief of Always as possibly being another "plagiarism" of Gaiman... I remember when Neil Gaiman was asked on his Tumblr about how similar Thief of Always and Coraline were, and he simply answered with the fact he and Barker had a similar thought process and came up with akin works though very different in the results.

You could say it is a form of copy or plagiarism (though Gaiman at least did an effort to make Coraline the almost opposite of Thief of Always in several ways). But I will have to point out that that Neil Gaiman and Clive Barker know each other, and that it has been reported, talked about and evoked a lot of times how they hanged in the same circles, with the same people, and exchanged thoughts, and talked about their mutual creations. We know Gaiman talked of the early Sandman issues when they were created with Alan Moore and Clive Barker, while Moore talked of his creation of From Hell. We also know that a part of the Sandman's universe was indirectly created by Barker - as Gaiman explained the idea for naming Desire's domain "The Threshold" came from a story Clive Barker had planned but never wrote, exploring the puns "threshold" could offer.

To my knowledge Clive Barker never claimed that Gaiman plagiarized him or stole from him with Coraline? But I might be wrong.

III/Other details

The comment about the "Lovecraft and Doyle" comparison is clearly taken out of context, because it was literaly about a story which WAS a literal Sherlock Holmes meets Cthulhu fanfiction, "A Study in Emerald". The commenter seems to think this comment applied to Gaiman's entire work? No it does not.

I don't know anything about the Lenny Henry situation, I will have to look for this.

[mythbringer-mayhem]

GODDAMNIT

man, I was just scrolling and now I'm a goddamn Raidioapple shipper what the FUCK

Ok ok-

And now I'm going to elaborate just because.

I was expecting someone out there to ship Lucifer and Alastor the second I heard Hell's Greatest Dad. I mean- two people singing/arguing over being father figures? Sounds gay to me /pos. The internet sure does love it's enemies to lovers (me included. I'm hopless lmao.)

BUT. I have specifics for this ship.

I hate it when people just look at Alastor's aromanticism/asexuallity and just go "nah. I'm just gonna do it anyways." I used to headcanon Alastor as complete aroace in the sense that he just can't feel that way for someone (this is not meant to sound like "oh he can't love anyone :( he's incapable" I mean specifically a romantic/sexual relationship.) Then fucking short ass king of hell arrives, and Alastor just IMMEDIATELY chooses violence.

I didn't think much of that besides "oh that's a little interesting," and then I stumbled across Radioapple and had to take a double take. My brain needed to figure out how that would work, like how it would start, flourish, ineract, yadda yadda-

.....so now I consider Alastor Demiromantic-

(I'm still goddamn writing jeez-)

Read on if you like random people looking wayyyyyy too much into fictional characters.

Headcanon timeeeeeeeee

When Lucifer and Alastor first meet, Alastor is surprised Lucifer doesn't know who he is. Up to this point, everyone knows about the terrifying radio demon, so it must be a little weird for someone to be completely ignorant to his existence. Especially when that person should probably know the ins and outs of what's going on- ....because he's the fucking king of hell.

This is something new for Alastor. It made him curious. When you're curious, you try to learn more right? So, Alastor starts pushing Lucifer's buttons, seeing how he reacts. On Lucifer's end, Alastor's just being a smug asshole. However his true intentions are information on the esteemed oh-so-powerful king of hell. Maybe Alastor doesn't quite know where this fascination comes from, but regardless he wants to learn more. I can picture him progressively bothering Lucifer more and more (this is his unique way of getting to know him semi-discreetly)

As well as figuring out what ticks him off, Alastor would also probably passively learn things Lucifer likes. For instance, he finds out what Lucifer's favorite alcoholic drink is or something- bare with me- Let’s say Lucifer has a rough day, and it's very clear to everyone in the hotel. While he's frustrated in his own room, he hears a knock at the door. Answering it, he finds his aforementioned favorite drink. At this point, he wouldn't know who left it. But after a while, he'd be able to figure out it's Alastor through process of elimination. (This is inspired by a comic I saw! :))

Now we've got Alastor trying to discreetly be kind to Lucifer, and Lucifer is aware without his knowledge. And Lucifer would call him out for it lmao. Slowly, they'd start acting friendlier towards each other. It would take a long, long time though. The slowest slow burn of them all. They'd hang out more, do things, kick angel ass, have friendly banter, do stuff with Charlie. Untill Alastor finally realizes that he might have a crush on Lucifer. Though, I feel he'd take a while to fully figure that out, do some soul searching, maybe go to Rosie for advice.

Then they'd confess. Or they wouldn't lol. I can totally see them going on what is essentially a date, even though they just consider it "hanging out". It would be a quiet relationship. Something you'd miss if you aren't looking for it, but it is there. They both just need someone they can rest with in my opinion.

These ideas are probably sporadic and nonsensical- but I ✨️don't care✨️ I just needed to rant about the old timey deer man and the short depressed apple gremlin.

[itsa-me-lily]

Work sucked and just...yeah.

Simon & Thimble playlist

MPS AU master playlist

Simon knew something was wrong as he shut the door behind him. Typically you had something playing; music or some sort video from the internet. But the inside of your home was quiet, and you were just laying on the couch, staring up at the ceiling in this solemn way. His first instinct screamed that something had happened with the pigs again, but a quick look told him that all three were fine, save for the staring they were doing. Probably wanted another treat if he had a guess. So at least the boys were safe. That just left everything else in the world...great.

He made a point to make as much noise taking off his boots as he could, just so he wouldn't startle you. Last thing he needed was you falling off the couch and hurting yourself. You didn't move much, just turning your head enough to look at him. He noticed that your eyes were red rimmed and it instantly made something in his chest tight. You'd been crying.

He was going to ignore the way it made him want to hunt down whatever or whoever did it.

"Everythin' alright?"

You sighed like the weight of the world was pressing down on your chest, looking back to the ceiling.

"It's stupid."

"Let me be the judge of that. I do work with Soap."

It didn't pull a full smile from your lips, but Simon could see the corner of your mouth twitch as he went to get himself a glass of water. Small victories and all that. He didn't rush you for an answer, letting the sound of the water faucet fill the space before the silence came again.

"They took the holiday party from me."

"Isn't it already December?"

At least it was the last time he checked, and from what he recalled of your ranting, you'd had that wrapped up a month prior.

"Next years. They want a fucking committee to plan it next time."

Simon was...confused. By his reason it seemed like it would be a win for you. You wouldn't have to deal with any kind of deadline or planning issues. All you had to do at the end of the day was just submit the bills. He must have taken too long to answer because you just sighed again, turning so you were facing the back of the cough.

Fuck.

Yeah to him at least it was kind of stupid for you to be all upset about some office holiday party. Planning them sounded like a pain in the ass. But you were upset and just ignoring it would be a dick move on his part. Not to mention he'd still have to deal with it, he liked sitting on the couch now and again.

Resisting the urge to sigh himself he took his cup over to sit on the ground at the end of the couch where your head was. He saw with his back to you. Maybe it'd make it easier for you.

"Come on. Explain it to me so I get it."

He could only imagine the look on your face. You probably had your brow furrowed, lips all puckered so it made your cheeks puff out a little.

"I worked really hard on the holiday parties."

Simon hummed, hoping it would encourage you to keep going.

"I made sure that it could work for everyone but it still isn't good enough."

He didn't expect for your voice to start to get creaky, like you were trying to talk through a throat full of tears. He also didn't expect it to feel like a stab to the heart.

"I'm trying to help take something off everyone's plate, make sure that its a nice way to end the year and they're just throwing it back in my face."

Oh. Oh no. Simon could hear a sniffle behind him. This was a terrible plan of his and he couldn't just tell you to just stuff it now could he?

"I'm not respected enough to do my job right, helping just ends up with people being angry with me. I'm so frustrated and I just want to be done with it all."

Simon was tempted to tell you that technically speaking, if you wanted, you could quit your job and just stay at home with the boys. He had enough saved. But he didn't. Didn't think it would actually solve the issue.

He let you both sit in the silence of it all for a while, until the sniffling dwindled back down.

"So what'cha gonna do."

"My job."

Well that didn't seem very satisfying to Simon at all.

"And just my job. No offering to do anything, no going out of my way. Follow the job description to the letter and not a single thing above it."

Simon should have fond it concerning how attractive he found the idea of you being spiteful. Well a little malicious compliance never hurt anyone right?

"Atta girl."

[drdemonprince]

When other people say that they do not have enough time to get something done, they (often, if they're quite healthy) mean they are taking into account the time it takes to do the laundry and arrange new pieces of furniture and cook dinner and meet up with friends to see a movie and run to the post office or the hair dresser and take the dog for walks and do the dishes and paint their nails and drive to the store and go to their cousin's wedding and go to the barbecue their friend is throwing on the weekend

they don't winnow their life down to just spending time at the computer, working from when they wake up until they cannot focus their eyes anymore, granola bars, coffee, and bottles of water all around them because of course they did not take time to have lunch or breakfast, only dragging themselves away from work when they are truly too exhausted to do any of it anymore, and then lacking the energy to do much of anything that remains of life but to eat a tiny bit more, sponge themselves off, and go to sleep.

i just saw a video of a fursuiter on their bed, legs kicked back, head propped on their hands, delightedly announcing that after many years of hard work they had finally finished their Master's degree. And some part of me, some sick withered part, thought really? you had time to do a Master's degree while also getting a fursuit done? and going to conventions, presumably? you had time in the day to research fursuit makers, have a sona designed and drawn by someone else (or to draw it yourself), to contact a maker to make a duck tape dummy of yourself, and to have a friend over to help you make it and to cut it off of you, to send it in the mail to the maker, to then get it and make videos? you had time to set up this beautiful bedroom that i see in your video, with a soft pink sham on the bed and LED lights behind your bookshelf and lamps and all kinds of stuffed toys? you had a life? you were out playing, and dancing, and pursuing your hobbies, and you did a master's degree?

because when i was working on my doctorate, there was nothing. three layers of foam on the floor with a fitted sheet over it. a folding card table from aldi that had cost $40 that my grandparents got me. no food in the fridge. no time to even get the internet installed, just stolen wi-fi when my laptop could pick it up. i woke up, got dressed, and slunk into the office. i sat alone in the dark working until my hunger made me furious and i could not write another word. and then i walked to the grocery store, got something to subsist on, went home, ate, kickboxing video, went to sleep. every day. with almost nothing breaking the routine.

and ive gotten better, so much better, but my brain still kind of works that way. i feel like i have to quit my job and stop being a writer if i want to have hobbies. to paint my bedroom. to marinate a meat for longer than fifteen minutes. to get a driver's license again. to take a trip. but i dont want to be like that any more. how do people know when to stop? i feel like i have to give everything my absolute all until there is nothing left or else i have done nothing. i feel that i would have to treat a hobby like a job to get it done. I feel that anything that takes more than two minutes is a huge waste of time i must feel guilty for. i am working on all these things. jesus i have been working on them for years at this point. but because i have been so successful at telling people to do less, i get pulled in. interview. workshop invitation. email. urgent in the subject line. call from my agent. meeting request from my boss. new book idea, better sell it now while my sales figures still look good. recording studio session. deadline. writing. can you talk about this. can you talk about that. tag. email. book idea. deadline. long heartfelt email. still so often i have to take my own damn advice.

and this is why i am getting a fursuit made!! and going to cons! and going to leather and latex events! and making socials that are separate for these things!! i am going to let myself be silly and soft and do frivolous things. i am so sick of what i do to myself, all the pursuit of seeming like a strong mature adult.

[haveyouseenthisskeleton]

SO works at an animal shelter and our skeleton walks in once and is now ever animal in the shelters favorite person

SO is really jealous

Undertale Sans - Well sorry not sorry about that. What can he say? He's very popular. You told him you were concerned about what type of skeleton he is. Now it's pretty clear he must be some kind of gigantic sloth skeleton or something. Every animal wants to nap on him.

Undertale Papyrus - Papyrus is actually a little overwhelmed by all the dogs around him. He doesn't know who he hasn't pet yet and it's stressing him out knowing one dog might feel less loved than the other ones. He doesn't care about what you think right now, he's too focused on trying to understand why terrible people would abandon such sweet babies. By the end of the day, he's asking you to adopt one.

Underswap Sans - He swears he did nothing, stop looking at him like that! He didn't even know that guinea pigs, which are neither from guinea or pigs, were a thing! He's lying in the enclosure, entirely covered with guinea pigs and he's not regretting anything. They're all squishy!

Underswap Papyrus - If I were you, I wouldn't be jealous about that. You should worry about how the hell you're going to convince your giant golden retriever of a boyfriend to go home without his 150 new dog babies. Honey never wants to leave again. That's his people. What do you mean he can't take all of them home? You can't let them sleep in this horrible place in the dark! That's abuse! What is they cry and no one hears them? D: He's devastated when you drag him out of there, begging you to at least take one home or he could never forgive himself lol. He's going to guilt trip you for weeks to get his fourth dog and he's not going to change his mind so good luck with that.

Underfell Sans - He's a bit uncomfortable, a lot of parrots on his arms and on his head. He doesn't understand why you're mad, he's literally terrified to move right now. Please take them back? Red is not exactly an animal person, not with birds at least, and he's a little confused right now. He's not sure how to escape this situation.

Underfell Papyrus - What? You're jealous? Good! He's a volunteer in a rescue as well and he told you he had a nice touch with the cats. Now you can see how true this is because he is clearly the best in all he does. Cry like a loser while he pets all the cats like an epic villain. Don't you know cats prefer scary people because they are better at protecting them from predators? You swear he just invented that. You're so mad.

Horrortale Sans - Well, you saw how the animals are all attracted to him in the farm so it's not a bit surprise all the dogs and cats are dying to come to see him. Even the most fearful dogs are all crawling on his lap to get affection. He just sits in the dog playroom while you work and have fun with the little furbabies. You wish you could do the same.

Horrortale Papyrus - He acts smug and silly because he likes to tease you, but you can see he's actually really happy about that. He didn't have that much love in a long time and even if it's little rabbits and not humans or monsters, he's happy. He even sits on the floor to stay with them and it's quite a while now, to the point you're a bit concerned about his back. But he's too happy to disturb him for now. He can have that moment.

Swapfell Sans - You can't believe it honestly. Chinchillas only choose one special person and somehow it's Nox. You wanted to be their special person! That's so unfair, you're trying to socialize them for weeks! Nox acts like he doesn't care and all but you surprise him by searching the internet to see what he needs to buy to take care of chinchillas. He's not asking you by the way. He's taking them home.

Swapfell Papyrus - You stop watching him for two minutes and then he comes in the room holding a huge raccoon in his hands and asks you to adopt him. You're so confused. There's literally no raccoon in your shelter??? Where the hell did it come from??? Rus is very proud of himself though. And he's definitely getting home with that thing, either you say yes or no. He's ready to squeeze it in his ribcage.

Fellswap Gold Sans - Wine is not happy. He has cat hair everywhere on his handmade suit and he's slowly dying inside. He hates cats. He hates all animals really, why the hell are they clinging to him like that? He's distressed and keeps staring at his S/O intensely to have some help. Unfortunately, you're way too amused to come and save him. It's rare to see Wine lose his mind.

Fellswap Gold Papyrus - You let him have his fun. Coffee is crying right now, buried under a pile of big dogs. He's a bit overwhelmed and can't control his feelings anymore. All you can see are his two arms, trying to hug as many dogs as he can. He's never getting out of the pile. It's the best day of his life.

[wordsmithic]

Hi, sorry if this comes out as a ramble, but your Troy ask made me rewatch the movie (for the umpteenth time, lol), and it brought a lot of old feelings back, both good and bad. The good is how much I adored the Iliad as a child and that's something that still thrives today—since I was a kid, I loved Greek mythology in general, partly because I'm Palestinian/a fellow Eastern Mediterranean, so there is a lot of overlap in our histories, cultures, customs and myths, but the Iliad has always been a favorite. Hektor is my favorite character (and I love him and Andromache), but I also have an immense soft spot for Briseis... and now to get to the bad, rewatching Troy reminded me how a lot of people erase her and her role—and her romance—to Achilles in modern retellings. Now, I'm not going to argue which Achilles ship is the best (especially because that man is a hoe, if we're being honest), I don't care. My problem is the modern erasure of Briseis and the other women in Achilles's life that are romantically entangled with him being reduced to, "He's gay, actually." It reads biphobic if you believe him queer (Patroclus too, who had many named women concubines/slaves), first off, misogynist second. He has a son with his foster "sister," Deidamia, and in some versions even married. In the Iliad especially, Patroclus tells Briseis Achilles will marry her and Achilles himself refers to her as his wife/bride, stopping a whole war when she's taken, and she's even allowed to aid in Patroclus's funeral rights. In some versions, Achilles falls for Polyxena, and tries to make peace with Troy so he can marry her. In the afterlife, Achilles chooses Helen as his wife for some reason. Just... all these women, with complex situations and feelings, are all reduced or erased in modern tellings (and usually for a man/Patroclus), and it makes me want to scream. People use the excuse of, "We don't like the romantic situation they're in," but then claim to "better" it by... erasing or reducing these women and their complex roles and feelings from the story overall? Brieseis, for example, mutually loved Achilles and saw him as a husband... he also killed her first husband and brothers, and you can argue part of her love is out of the need for survival. Yet, she greatly mourned him when he was killed, too. And if exploring this complexity is still not your yum, what about Polyxena? Wouldn't she fit the girlboss archetype of using Achilles' affections to gain his trust, before stabbing him in the back (literally)? Or Deidamia, who's young and left at home, bereft of her husband and son? Heck, try and fill in the gaps how Achilles x Hellen happened, if you must. All these women have an important role in the story, and to Achilles, that could be explored—but people don't because they dismiss what's already there or don't know anything about The Iliad outside modern retellings (mainly The Song of Achilles). So, we get people claiming things that are untrue ("Achilles and Patroclus are exclusively gay!"... in some myths, they're actually relatives/distant cousins, fun fact 😭), and acting like they fixed something by "adding" onto "flat female characters" in a way that reads inauthentic and ignorant to the source material. I get wanting to prop up one's chosen ship, it's just the hypocrisy of promising to be more progressive in one area, but diminishing the progressiveness of another, that kills me. Anyway! Sorry for the rant, I just have a lot of feelings I wanted to share because of the movie and I know you've talked about all this before—it's just something hard to discuss on the internet without people coming down your throat 🥲. Anyhow, justice for Briseis, is my rallying cry, I love her so much, queen made a whole war stop for her and managed to escape from Agamemnon unscathed. Queen who launched a thousand ships to my heart 🫶🏻.

I'm glad you re-watched it! It's a beloved of many Greeks since the movie is quite epic and makes you understand some of the original's glory. Hector, Andromache and Briseis are some of my fave characters in the movie, and it made me also look out for those characters when they appear in the text.

Btw, I would love to know a Palestinian's pov on our shared traditions and myths, how do you guys learn the Greek myths, what parts of them have had perhaps an affect on your heritage and since when, etc! 😍

Briseis' situation is complicated one because many people won't catch the nuance of her living in a patriarchal society as a war captive and thus developing a strange co-dependence to her captors. In addition, the Homeric Epics are a work changed by time in the Greek society, as people added and altered stuff, so many storylines have been affected by other layers of patriarchal societies. So of course the notion of "slave girl mourning her captor's friend" would seem natural, because they probably don't consider a slave woman's POV. Or perhaps she was in the mourning because she had to be there as a woman "belonging" to the Greeks, and the text does not mention it explicitly because it a given for the era. (I don't recall the whole relevant text sorry)

I am not sure if the average author - judging by what is published in the Anglophone market - can handle the complexity of Briseis and other women in the Trojan war. For Briseis one could go for a romance there but they'd have to depict all of her psychosynthesis properly, so it doesn't come off as "Achilles killed my family but he is hot so I love him". To be fair, it is a challenging task but I am still sad that I haven't heard retellings that do this well. Such a retelling done well would be chef's kiss!

As you said, unfortunately, the writers for now focus on the couple Achilles x Patroclus which, ok, let's accept it since it's a ship and there is some background to it (although those guys are most likely 1) cousins 2) very close to each other like brethren in a way westerners misinterpret). I've enjoyed Song of Achilles and I am surely not against such works, but you are right that the female heroines are reduced to flat characters. A fandom full of women manages to be misogynistic - again. We shouldn't be surprised because misogynistic influences are very strong in our societies still, although many don't see it 😕

[astroboots]

*oliver twists voice*

“Please sir may I please have some more?”

hamster steven 🥺 my little sister asks for updates all the time lol

Series Masterlist | Moon Knight Masterlist | Astroboot’s Masterlist

Pairing: Steven Grant x female reader

A/N: omg nonny! this is the world's most effective way to make me write more Hamsteven content! How could I ever deny your little sister... and a Charles Dickens reference?!?!? Aye aye!

Summary: You try to create a special meal for Hamster Steven so he can regain some normalcy.

You will be the first one to admit that you spend way too much time on tiktok. It's a slippery slope, and ever since you looked up tutorials on hamster care tips, your FYP seems to have picked up on the trail and now every two videos you flick through is hamster related.

Hamsters in tiny teddybear hats. Hamsters put in elaborate escape labyrinths, Crystal Maze style. Hamsters being treated to miniature meals inspired by human meals.

The internet is a wild place.

There's a squeaky noise next to you on the pillow that interrupts you just as you are about to scroll onto the next video.

You peer up from your screen, to see the big shiny eyes of your boyfriend-turned-hamster, standing on his hind-legs, as he's staring back at you. You're not sure if it's just your imagination, but he doesn't look happy. If you didn't know any better, you'd think he was giving you the stinkeye you for spending so much time on tiktok.

You glance up at the clock on the corner of your phone. 00:51.

Okay, maybe it's not just your imagination. You've somehow unwittingly spent more than two hours on your phone, without paying attention. Steven is definitely judging you for that.

"Sorry, Steven. I must've lost track of time," you tell him, and at your apology he lowers himself back on all four paws, waddling over to your chest and curls himself up on the curve of your breast.

It's become his favorite spot to rest... certain things don't change regardless of what form he takes.

You run two fingers over his head, stroking the soft fur and he seems to melt at the touch, the round shape of him going flat with relaxation. It's adorable. Steven has always been fond of having his hair stroked like a particularly cuddly pet.

It really does seem like certain things haven't changed much at all despite his transformation into a hamster.

... Except, that's not really true though is it.

In the past few days since Steven has turned into a pet, his limitations has been more than apparent. Because of his tiny size, he's in constant danger.

You had left the window open to air out the flat while you were cleaning, only to have a particularly menacing seagull make a dive for him and had to chase it out with a flyswatter so it wouldn't devour your boyfriend whole.

In his current form he's not quite able to do any of the activities that he normally enjoys, reading is out of the question, even if he could turn his own pages (which is difficult when you do not have opposing thumbs or no grip) you're not sure what his vision must be like, the letters must read gigantic to him.

He doesn't seem to particularly enjoy the yoghurt drops you got him from the pet store, and the enthusiasm he had at first for the almonds and walnuts you'd given him seems to be waning and on more than one occasion you've caught the wistful and longing gaze Steven has had on his expression when you sit down for a meal by the table that he couldn't partake.

But ramen doesn't really seem fit for a hamster's diet, so you could hardly give him a taste.

Poor Steven has had little to no normalcy left since his transformation and as the days go by and the solution to his dilemma isn't anywhere near in sight, you feel a pang of sadness for him.

Absentmindedly, you continue to pet his fur as you pull up your phone again and scroll through the videos when your eyes linger over the video you saw earlier of a hamster being treated to miniature spaghetti meal.

The video has a full on painstakingly detailed tutorial, step by step, on how to make the tiny meal. Cutting regular sized spaghetti into tiny lengths, Sizzling small portions of minced meat on the frying pan and huh... who knew that hamster are actually omnivores, and likes eating meat... you always assumed they were vegetarians. In the video, the person takes two cherry tomatoes puts them through the blender for the sauce and it all looks rather simple.

You look down at Steven in his hamster form, sound asleep on your chest. He's curled up into a little ball, his nose and whiskers twitching in his sleep as his hind leg kicks back in response to whatever dream he's dreaming.

Adorable as he is, the pang of sadness from before returns as your chest constricts. You want to give him a sense of normalcy after everything he's been through. However small.

Carefully, you scoop him up in the cup of your hands and place him gently on the pillow. Luckily Steven is a sound sleeper and sleeps right through it as you move into the kitchen to prepare the meal according to the video instructions.

There's leftover spaghetti in the fridge, saving you from having to boil it fresh. You forego frying any meat, because even though hamsters may be omnivores, your Hamster Steven is a full blooded vegan.

You also decide to forego the blender. It's late and you don't want to wake up Steven so instead you end up trying to smash up the cherry tomatoes with a mortal and pestle that leaves an absolute mess.

With your sad attempts at a culinary effort completed, you pick up the tiniest little sauce bowl you can find in the cupboard, as you start to plate up the spaghetti and mashed tomato sauce, topping it off with fresh basil that you had luckily picked up from Sainsbury the other day.

It looks nowhere as good as the video, just looks like wilted spaghetti with a tiny pile of crushed tomatoes rather than a miniature version of spaghetti bolognese. but you guess that's why you're an office worker and not a hamster content creator. You try to tease the spaghetti back into place with your fingers until it looks a bit more decent.

Better.

But it's still a long way to go from the special dinner that you had wanted to make for Steven to make him feel pampered.

Turning to the kitchen drawers, you try to find the small tea candles to set the mood. It's as near a romantic ambient as you are able to create for Steven.

Then you find one of the nicer dinner napkins stowed away in the back of the drawer and set the table. While you're at it you grab several sprigs of rosemary and whatever fresh herbs you're able to find in the fridge and set them in a shot glass that you use as an impromptu mini vase, for the bouquet of herbs you have gathered. You place down your creation in the middle of the table, then you stand back admiring your work.

Not too shabby.

Almost looks like a tiny hamster restaurant.

You return to your bed, where you had left Steven to sleep. Paws still twitching peacefully in his sleep when you gently wake him by picking him up, and set him on the table.

He blinks slowly and blearily, sleep still clouding his gaze, not fully taking in what you are trying to show him. It takes a few moments, until his eyes clear and then they go wide at the meal in front of him and he darts forward like a sprint.

His little paws grabs at the straw of spaghetti voraciously, as he slurps up the spaghetti, flecks of red sauce painting the fur around his mouth. He eats it with an enthusiastic frenzy, gobbling up the whole of it and drops it in his excitement only to round the plate and pick it up again to eat the remainder.

"Is it good?"

His head pops up to meet your face, with the tiniest of nods.

He squeaks happily, then he dives right back into stuffing his face and you can't help but smile.

It's a little moment of normalcy even in this craziness and that's good enough for now.

Dedications & Credits: To my lovely @guruan / @guruan-is-not-here who has finally been freed from tumblr jail. This chapter is dedicated to her because she sent me the cutest video of a hamster having a tiny bowl of pasta and sitting on a chair like it was a restaurant.

[miumura]

i saw your other moot game, you're so sweet! :( your friends must love you so much. i'd like to give you another moot game: your moots as songs and why?

HI ANON !! awh tysm 😖 !! i love my friends veryvery much ♡ with another game,, more moots this time !! so doe those who i have missed, it’s truly not on purpose as this was a little bit harder to be able to find the songs i thought would best suit you … so there might not be much because of that :’(

@macapunoz — dandelion by grentperez ; BECAUSE GRENT>>>> anddd other than the upbeat (?) energy this song brings, i also chose this for this lyric: “if i could choose anywhere to be, i’d wanna be with you”! i believe it very much describes me with rhin🤞!! because no matter where i’m at, with rhin, nothing else matters than her presence 🫶 (pftbz together forever and ever 🤍)

@juyeoz — tick tack by illit ; if i had to pick one song to associate and reserve to alya forever, it would be this one. it’s just a song that instantly gets you energetic and happy, which gives off her personality A LOT. and honestly, whenever i see a pic or vid of her smiling, this always plays in my head LIKE ITS ACTUALLY SO BEAUTIFUL 😊 so yes! tick tack! (pftbz together forever and ever 🤍)

@htaesan — serenade by boynextdoor ; now, what’s a soph moot game ( ik it’s only been two shush ) without mentioning or associating bonedo with my love lili??? ( my gongfourz ❤️‍🩹 ) like let’s look at the eng translation for one of the lyrics ( which i think it’s right? ) “i love you baby, baby, baby! i’ve been screaming the whole neighborhood knows (i like you)” … yeah that part & as well as the entire song, that’s pretty much how i act for lili on blr and insta because … that’s forever my bae !! 🤍 #willforeverserenadeher

@saemisic — candy crush by artms ; I FEEL LIKE THIS SUITS SAE SM??? like let’s go look at her navi rq and tell me it doesn’t SCREAM this song?? YOU HAVE TO GET MY VISIONNNN 🫣 it’s such a cutesy song w/ a sweet vibe that instantly makes you feel 10x better when listening to it ( which is happening rn as i write this HAHAH) and leads to my thought of believing this song matches her pretty well !!

@antoncyng — unplugged boy by tws ; NINI!!! okay my logic for choosing this song is that… it reminds me of big suki by &team ( ME AND NINI UNITE AS LUNES 🤞 ) ! this is because of her message / reaction to that song recc i put in the k-films song reccs channel 😊 !! SO THIS CONNECTION WAS MADE… THIS SONG IS REALLY GOOD and it’s quite upbeat which seems to suit nini’s character / personality when i’ve chatted with her so far !! #lookingforwardtowayyymore!!

@flwrstqr — washing machine by vanishing girl ; this song is so cutesy and like ??? okay that’s the epitome of dani ??? like whenever we’ve talked, she gives off that energy & her instagram reflects this song to me imo ?? this song has been on LOOP . it’s addicting just like her & her awesome works 💗

@ourhees — hold on by the internet or valentina by daniel caesar ; THERE’S TWO SONGS FOR SAV BECAUSE… i was a little conflicted and couldn’t stick to one !!! so !!! first off, hold on, because… the song has a soothing / calming vibe to it ?? and that feeling is always common with me when interacting with sav ^^ like the song itself is very alluring and i think that speaks for itself… AND THEN VALENTINA!!! similar to hold on, and was my original choice for this until hold on appeared in my liked songs & played… so i had to assign it to sav!! these songs just make sense to me in my head 🫠

THE END ♡ who knew choosing songs could be difficult.. i tried to match it accordingly !!

[svnaaaaaa]

Paper Rings - Lando Norris Imagine (one shot)

pairing : lando norris x fem reader

summary : based on taylor swift's paper rings.

warning(s) : fluffy, mention of sex

masterlist

author's note : so hi, i now wanting to try writing new things n this being one of them. hope you enjoy it! this is me being excited for this week's grand prix eventhough lando isn't in his best position.

The moon is high

Like your friends were the night that we first met

it was that one of the nights where my friend took me out to a club where only elites are allowed to enter. i don't know how but i am enjoying this. as i stood by the bar, attending to my drinks, i could feel stares on me but i didn't know which directions because the club itself is kinda full so yeah, how could i notice it.

then i felt my hand being grabbed and pulled. i look at it and it was my friend who brought me here, fay. "come y/n, i want you to meet my boyfriend!" fay said excitedly as she pulled me away from the bar and into mindless direction that myself could recollect.

then i felt we stopped and i saw a bunch of guys right in front of me. a bunch of hot guys. "hey baby." one of them spoke up and fay let go of my hand to go and hug the guy. "this is y/n, my friend. y/n, this is carlos." fay introduced as carlos held out his hand. "nice to finally meet you, fay has been nonstop talking about me meeting you." carlos said as he chuckled and me included. "same." i replied shortly. then i felt the same stare again.

i looked at my left and saw a curly haired guy with green eyes.

Went home and tried to stalk you on the internet

as the night goes on, i finally found out the guy's name. it was lando norris, under mclaren, as he used to be a teammate to carlos before carlos moved to ferrari.

lando and i talked for hours and i found him quite charming, yes i enjoyed his company. "so are you coming to the race tomorrow?" lando asked as we sat next to each other, in the corner reserved for the formula 1 drivers.

i nodded my head yes. "i might say hi to you also." i replied to him as i could see his eyes brighten up. his smile, oh his smile is so captivating!

later that night, carlos sent fay and i back to our hotel room as i entered the room, carlos and fay were talking at the front door. me minding my own business, went into the bathroom and take a warm, late night shower to rid off the sweat from the club. not that i want to sleep with ickiness of my skin from going outside.

after i finished showering, fay already on her bed, playing with her phone. "are you sleepy?" fay asked me as i finished dressed up into my shorts and tank top. "yea, aren't you?" i asked while going onto my hotel bed. fay nodded her head slowly. she's terribly sleepy lol. i smiled weakly and turn off the light on my side. "night fay, tomorrow's a big day." i said to her but not hearing any replies. 'must be really sleepy then.' i thought to myself and grabbed my phone from my night stand.

curious about lando himself, i googled his name and there were numerous results from searching his name. 'oh he's british-belgian, didn't notice that on him.' monologues to myself until i bumped into his youtube channel.

let's just say i have 20% knowledge about him from watching his youtube channel videos.

Now I've read all of the books beside your bed

after the race, me and fay separated as i went to the side of the stage where lando did his fan stage alongside with the mclaren's team. 'wow, the crowd really loves him.' i looked at him from the side and smiled warmly. he looked back and saw me, waving shyly as i waved back.

later that day, i followed him back to his hotel room as the sexual tension between us were rising up. as we went out of our clothes, assisting each other, i gotta be honest though, that was my first time being this close to a guy.

yes, i am a virgin. was a virgin.

lando was in shower after we did it. he asked me to shower together but i declined as i want to attend to my sore. being a virgin who never had an intercourse did take a toll on me. i looked at lando's night stand and saw books on his night stand. i took it and look at the book cover.

lando went out of the bathroom and saw me with the book in my hands. i looked up at him and he smiled sweetly at me. "you wanna read the book together with me?"

later that night, we went into bed really late due to wanting to finished the book together but ended up snoozing with me wrapped in lando's arms and me holding the book to my chest.

The wine is cold

Like the shoulder that I gave you in the street

days turn to weeks. weeks turn to months. months turn to years. it has been three years since lando and i first met. we started to lived into an apartment together in monaco because of formula 1. i don't mind about being a fulltime wag if i can be with lando all the time, giving the supports that he needs. aside being a fulltime wag, i am also a part time tutor where i teach english to children here in monaco.

lately, lando and i have been distancing ourselves due to my schedule of being a tutor and him busy training for the next grand prix. we barely spend time together and rarely have time to sit and chat during dinner like we used to. until one day, i felt his side of the bed being cold as to he didn't went into bed last night, the previous night and also the night before.

the tension between us started to get cold like how the water in the shower room felt like and soon all i know was i want to give lando a silent treatment until he burst his bubble first.

Cat and mouse for a month or two or three

me and lando has been off with each other for completely three months and three months since i left monte carlo to come back to london because of my mom fell into sickness.

before left woking, i just sent him a message and never received any replies for couples of days until a week later, i received numerous phone calls from lando. but i never answered to any of them until one day i purposely left my phone at my mom's home and just went to the hospital like my usual routine of taking care of my mom.

it has been like that for three months and i just let it be and thinking that me and lando weren't meant to be because instead of calling, would it hurt him to sacrifice a practice to come and find me here in london? but no, it was all a wishful thinking.

mom started to get a bit better and allowed to go home but still need medical assistance. as i parked my car in front of my mom's house, i saw someone familiar at the front door. "sweetie, isn't that lando?" mom asked me as i glared at his direction. "let's just ignore him mom." i told her and turned off the engine. lando saw my car and he stood up from the front door pavement. i got out of my car and went to mom's side to assist her to go inside the house, ignoring lando as if he isn't there. as we approaching the front door, lando smiled weakly at my mom as i just looked down, not wanting to see him after three months away. "hello mrs l/n, good to see you this well." lando said. i looked for keys in my bag as i heard my mom replied chatting with lando.

got the key and i immediately unlock the front door. "come on in lando." mom asked him to enter the house as i rolled my eyes but not to my mom. lando was the last one to enter the house while my mom take a seat of the sofa of the living room and i went back to the car to grab things from the hospital that i brought to mom when she first admitted to the hospital. "let me help you." i heard lando's voice behind me. as i gruntly say, "no need to, just need to you to go away from me." lando sighed at my reply.

"look, i am sorry for everything. i miss you, i miss us." lando said as i sighed and slammed shut the car door. i looked at him in the eye. he did the same. "i love you y/n. i want to stay with you forever." lando said as he shyly held out his hand to grabbed mine. with me not reacting, he wrapped his hand in mine and i just look at our clasped hands.

"i miss us too lan, but promise me to never do this again."

"cross my heart and hope to die."

Now I wake up in the night and watch you breathe

now back at monaco, lando hired a caregiver for my mom and by far, the caregiver has given me an approval to leave mom entrusted into her hands. at first i was a bit hesitate to leave because my mom is the only person i have left but with lando convincing that my mom would be fine with this caregiver, i was ready to go back to monaco.

"y/n!" i heard lily's voice as i turned back and saw lily approaching me with open arms. it was bahrain gp so i get to see other wags to hang out with aside from fay. "lily! i missed you so much!" i said while giving her a hug. "me too, how's your mom by the way?" "she's fine, i'm glad she's getting better day by day." i explained to lily as we saw numerous of fan waving towards us. lily and i waved and smiled to them as we continue on with our conversation.

after the race, lando and i hang out in the resting room while lando taking a rest before move back to our hotel room. he was resting on a sofa in a sitting up position but leaning on me as i just watching him sleep.

he looks so angelic and i can't believe he's mine.

Kiss me once 'cause you know I had a long night

(Oh) Kiss me twice 'cause it's gonna be alright

Three times 'cause I've waited my whole life

(One, two, one, two, three, four)

it is finally a day off for lando and we are back in monaco. lando told me that he just want to stay in the apartment quietly, enjoying each other's company. i smiled to the idea but unfortunately, i have a night class at the tutor center so i left home at 4pm and will be home by 10.

"miss l/n, aren't you lando norris' girlfriend?" one of my students, lisa i believe asked me after we finished the class later that night. i looked up to her and smile sweetly while my hands were busying tidy up the mess on my table. "why yes i am." i replied as i could see a bright shining light in her eyes. "could you ask for a sign from oscar? i am a huge fan of him!" lisa exclaimed as she giggled at me, causing me to laughed a bit from her antics. "i'll try but i can't promise you on that though." "it's fine, i won't blame you for it."

park my car at my designated spot at the apartment complex, i could feel my back ache as i stretched up right after i got out from my car. 'what was lando up to, i hope he doesn't sleep all day.' i thought to myself as i got all my stuffs from my car and headed to my home sweet home with my sweet boy.

as i unlock the front door, i saw the house seemed clean. then i entered the house and saw lando leaning at the dining table, looking forward for me to be impressed by him. to be honest, i am impressed but i won't let him know that. "you like it?" lando asked ad he went towards me and hugged me tightly while leaning to kiss the top of my head. i wrapped my arms around him after dropping my stuffs at the front door as i inhaled his scent on his t-shirt. "i love it babe." i mumbled into his chest covered t-shirt. then i looked up at him and he leaned into my lips and peck it. i smiled into the small peck and wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him into a long kiss.

"i love you lando norris."

"i love you too future mrs. norris."

I like shiny things, but I'd marry you with paper rings

Uh huh, that's right

Darling, you're the one I want, and

lando and i were walking around the mall, looking for birthday presents for lando's mom, cisca's birthday.

we were walking hand in hand until i felt lando letting go of my hand and i turned back around to see what makes him stop. he stood in front of a jewelry store, a high-end ones, tiffany and co.

i looked up at lando and he was looking at me, grinning on that boyish face of him. before i could protest, he grabbed my hand and pulled me behind his back. "lando, what are you doing?" i asked in whispering, not wanting to cause chaos. lando who didn't reply to my question, just approaching to the display table full of jewelries from rings to bracelets to necklaces. i was mesmerized by the glittering of each accessories, not realizing that lando was staring at me the whole time until i heard him saying, "you like it?" lando asked smiling as the store assistant was looking at me and lando. probably judging on how we dressed to be in this luxury store, with both of us dressed in hoodies and sweatpants.

"lando," i started as i looked at him in his eyes. "i like it but what for?" i asked him as he turned his head and looked at the display of rings, ignoring me. "can i see that one?" lando asked pointing at the specific diamond ring with a three diamond stones design on it. as the assistant gave lando the ring, he held it out to me, asking me to try it on. not wanting to embarrassed him in front of the store assistant, i took the ring and slipped onto my ring finger. it fits perfectly. i admired it, wishing it could be mine but even my salary couldn't afford to buy this.

i pulled it out and gave it back to the store assistant. i looked back at lando and he keep on smiling at my way. "you like it?" lando asked, i shyly nodded my head yes as i grabbed his hand this time and pulled him out of the store. "never do that again please, you almost give me a heart attack!" i said to him as he pulled me into his arms and kissed my forehead. "just doing a little survey, there' nothing harm right?" he's right.

"but still, if you planned on purposing, i would have accept you even if you give me a paper ring." i said then kissed his lips.

"or a ring pop."

I hate accidents except when we went from friends to this

Uh huh, that's right

Darling, you're the one I want

2022 miami grand prix was the devastating race for both me and lando. it scared me the most because i am not a person who's into violance or action movies or whatever it is related to crashing things up.

and seeing lando being into an accident during race really trigger me up. one of the tires were come off from the car and there were sparks of fire, luckily it didn't ignited a fire. his car were placed at the site of the circuit as yellow flags were waved, i just stood in the waiting room, hoping that he is fine.

"lando norris is out of the race." commentator announced and i was sad.

after that, lando came into the waiting room and saw me in the room. i opened up my arms and allow him come into my arms as he wrapped his arms around my waist. i pat his back and whisper sweet nothings into his ears.

"i am happy that you're okay and you're still the one i want nevertheless."

In paper rings, in picture frames, in dirty dreams

Oh, you're the one I want

it was racing time in barcelona. on his 10th lap, one of the strategists called out for me to come to where the control station goes on. "here, lando have something to say to you." he said as he held out his headset for me to take. i was dumbfounded by the statement, why would lando have something to say when he's in the race track at the moment? i don't understand. i took the headset and wear it until i heard lando's voice through the headset.

"hello? y/n? you there yet?" lando asked. "yea lando, what is it? you're in the middle of the race." i told him. i heard him chuckled as the racing still goes on. then i heard him breathe out. "y/n l/n, will you marry me?" lando asked. did he just proposed to me? in the middle of the race? where everyone literally can hear it? seriously?!

the situation felt in silent. "lando," i started.

"yes, i will marry you." i answered as i could cheer from both lando and the team. i suppose i could hear cheering from the crowd as well but maybe because of the race and not the proposal that lando just made. nevertheless, lando norris just proposed to me. isn't that insane?!

as the race finished and lando placed in 10th place. i ran towards him where he readily spread out his arms for me. i jumped into his arms and wrapped my arms around his neck, tightly enough to realize that this isn't a dream, it's a reality.

who would have know that this situation will be framed up to be my favourite grand prix race ever.

xoxo future mrs norris, spain 2022

In the winter, in the icy outdoor pool

When you jumped in first, I went in too

I'm with you even if it makes me blue

after the abu dhabi grand prix, it was winter break. lando and i decided to go back home in england. both lando and i agree to celebrate our engagement right after the last grand prix of the year which was the abu dhabi one.

we went straight to lando's family home in bristol. ever since the first time i went there, bristol itself have a spot in my heart, it was lovely weather especially during winter time. as we arrived the house, we saw both norris couple waiting for us outside as we got out of our car. lando went straight to his parents' arms, hugging them tightly, knowing how have they been longing to meet their beloved, precious son again.

then they invited us inside the house.

"so what theme are you thinking of for the engagement party?" lando's mom asked as we were all relaxing at the lounging room of the house. "definately neon colours!" lando exclaimed as i pat lando's chest, signalling my opposition of the colour choice. "i'm thinking of warm colours, maybe autumn colours." i voiced out and lando's mom agreed to it. lando? he was making that weird face like how when he heard the question between seafood or steak choice.

for the party, we just decided to do at the backyard of the norris' house because it was quite spacious and i believe that it will fit both sides families and friends. both lando and i agreed to just do simple party because this is just an engagement not the wedding yet. it turns out very pretty i must say. less is more, right?

there were guests from lando's families and my families and also friends from formula 1, close friends and also some close by neighbours. the party was great because there were games such as find things from guest checklist, jenga games that have questions on it basically about the upcoming bride and groom, the racing carry partner game and lastly drinking game of course. what's a party without drinking right?

at the end of the party, i'm glad that everyone's enjoying it because i was having jitters the night before that lando had to calm me down and said 'everything's going to be fine' while pulling me on top of him and my head was placed on top of his naked chest, hearing his rhythmic heartbeat.

i felt someone grabbing my hand and pulling me. i looked up and it was lando himself, grinning towards me and then i looked in front and it was an outdoor pool. i tried to pulled off from him but he was gripping strong and it was hard for me to do so, endes up he went in first followed by me. luckily the water wasn't too freezing like in mid december but still, it was shivering cold and i swore my lips almost turning blue. i glared at lando and he gave me that boyish smile that he knew i melted for.

he's going to be the death of me.

Which takes me back

To the color that we painted your brother's wall

after christmas, lando's brother, oliver is getting married. so we were offered to redecorate his room. yippie (read : sarcasm). he told us to paint the room blue, like pastel blue with hint of ocean blue. quite interesting i must say.

as we painted the room, it was getting boring. then i felt something wet on my cheek. i turned to my right and saw lando giggling like a child. i turned towards his way and with paint brush still i hold onto it, i charged to lando and tried to paint him. but of course, the perks of a sportsman, he was quick at running and running away is one of it.

sigh.

Honey, without all the exes, fights, and flaws

We wouldn't be standing here so tall, so

'formula 1 race driver lando norris and long term girlfriend are officially engaged!'

the headlines read today, but it has been a month since we had our engagement party and apparently, someone has been leaking it and i don't want to point my finger at. nevertheless, i am scared for letting people know of my sort of private life. i know and realize that when you are getting yourself involve with someone who is famous, your private lives doesn't even matter to them. that was what i was told before by fay herself.

lately, lando has been weird and quite reserved, especially with his phone. i am a person who never snoop into someone's phone and i don't even care what you are going to do with your phone, cause it's yours and you know what you are doing with your phone so yea.

as lando went into bathroom to take a shower after practice for an upcoming grand prix, his phone lighten up and it was an incoming message. i walked over to his nightstand and took his phone. there was a message from one of his exes. i could feel a knife stabbed from my back by the time i saw the name of the sender. i put back down the phone and walked out of the room. grabbing my car keys from the hook next to the front door, and i immediately went into my car right after i walked out of the front door.

started my car engine and i drove off the apartment complex to somewhere that i didn't know where i want to go at this moment. 'how could he?' was what played in my mind. 'if he cannot move on from his ex, then why me? why he picked me to play of?' i sobbed to the thoughts. then i heard my phone rang. i didn't look who called but i think i knew who it was. i just ignore and keep driving. i want to go somewhere that can bring me peace.

as i arrived at a nearby cliff, i just sat outside of the car and inhaling the smell of salty breeze. it always brings me calm no matter what.

"y/n?" i heard lando's voice. i turned around and there he was, cheating bastard lando norris. i got up from where i sat and quickly rushed to my car. being athlete he is, lando was more faster. he grabbed the car door as i was and i halted my movement. "i can explain. please, let me explain first." lando said to me, not replying anything i heard lando sighed. "listen, i have no valid reason to defend myself but all i know is that i didn't even replying to any of her messages." lando explained and i just scoffed at him. "if you didn't reply to any of it then why were you being so .. on guard with your phone? you weren't like this before." i asked but lando just smile sadly. "well, i was going to surprise you on our wedding day but, here." lando said as he opened up his phone and showed me his screen, there was a sketch of a ring. he was designing my wedding ring!

"i was so sorry for not giving any engagement ring for you despite everything i have but i do have something in mind to make it more special when i give you your wedding ring later on." lando explained and i suddenly get teary eyes. lando didn't give me an engagement ring because i said so. i don't want something to make things official, just him proposing is enough. i didn't know that lando would make something this special and memorable. i hugged him tightly, where he wrapped his arms around my waist. "you're my one and only from the moment i saw you for the first time, why would you think otherwise sweetheart?" lando whispered into my ear and kissed it, making me hugging him even tighter. "maybe i was insecure, i am not pretty as her. i am no model." i replied and i heard him chuckled. "you're y/n, and you're mine. does it validate to you?" i nodded my head yes and later on, we went back home separately because yea. we came here separated.

I want to drive away with you

it was the day of our honeymoon. yes we got married yesterday. the wedding itself was so eventful eventhough we just invited close family and friends only.

right now, we're in positano. let me tell you, everything about amalfi coast are so beautiful! and positano has caught my eye ever since the moment me and lando were discussing about our honeymoon right after we finalized the wedding details with our wedding planner.

lando has entrusted me with his life by renting us a scooter. if you don't know, lando once got himself involved with motorbike before but after an accident, he hasn't been good with motorbike but still interested in moto gp. "are you sure sweetheart?" i asked for confirmation as the man of the rental shop handed me the keys. lando just smiled sweetly at me and nodded his head yes. "i trust you love." that was all lando said and off we gooo!!

we were cruising around the roads, enjoying the view of the sea nearby the coast. i feel lando wrapping his arms around my waist as he placed his head on my shoulder while i leaned my head on his head. "you okay back there lan?" i asked and i felt his head nod yes. "i am happy to be with you." lando replied and i smiled at his response.

he is such a cheeseball!

I want your complications too

for the first time in his formula 1 career, lando finished in p17. not his best record to start the season. i sat in his driver's room right after the race and there entered lando with his head hung low. i stood up and hugged him tightly, tucking his head in the crook of my neck.

"it will be fine lan, i believe in you." i said to him as we swayed left to right and vice versa, comforting him.

I want your dreary Mondays

monday has come by and you know what it means, monday blues. the job at the school was hard enough. with some students who are really sick still attending to school which caused other students were sick as well. as i entered the house by unlocking the door i sighed heavily remembering what an awful day i had. i didn't see lando at the living or in thr kitchen, he must be either sleeping or leaving the house for practices.

i entered our bedroom and yet, still no sight of lando. guess he's at practices then. which is good because i just want to soak myself into our bathtub and use the bathbomb that was gifted by our wedding guests.

as the bathtub was filled with water according to the level that i preferred, i dropped the bathbomb and let it infuse in the water as i undressed myself naked and placed the towel at the towel hanger. i swirl the water in the bathtub with my hand and then i entered the bathtub, sighed with ease because i have been having back aches and having a bath with warm water feels good. i closed my eyes to enjoy the water but then, i heard the front door being open and close, followed by lando's voice calling for me. "in here bubs!" i shouted back, fear that he didn't hear me.

then the bathroom door opened and reveals lando. "hey there you." lando said as he entered the bathroom and kneeled beside me. "hey." i replied back as he leaned to my face and gave a small peck. i smiled at the gesture. i saw that lando's eyes were getting droopy as that being a sign he's getting sleepy. "rough day?" i asked as he was nodding slowly. i chuckled as i went out of the bathtub. "let me get dressed up first yeah?" i questioned him as he nodded his head again and went out of the bathroom.

Wrap your arms around me, baby boy

right after i finished dressing up, i felt lando's arm wrapped around my waist as he pulling me onto our bed. giggled, i felt happy the most when he's being all affectionate and cuddly. lando nuzzled his face into my neck as i felt he was inhaling my scent from my bath, followed by flutter kisses.

"lando norris, i love you."

"i love you too mrs. norris."

[feminerds]

The thesis is: Desire I Want to Turn Into You (DIWTTITY) is an exploration of the many forms our relationships to billionaires take.

So I saw that advert (the amazon one - with Bunny is a Rider and the cat) last week, and I can no longer abstain from posting about it.

*club-horn blaring* Never Post Podcast Mentioned *bhrmmm bhrmm bhrmr*

My family and friends will no longer tolerate the Pepe Silvia timbre of my yelling about CARO POLO (Caroline Polachek). So I simply must turn to outlet of the desperate - making posts - and talking to strangers on the internet about my little obsessions.

(I joined r/Caroline Polachek and they are all disappointingly normal about her(!) it's nice and fun there. But c'mon now I wanna talk to the people who are being little freaks about her - I know they're out there - it cannot possibly just be me!)

I am making a slow series (there's like 2) of tikt*ks about the subject - and I've been posting Grenade Journals about it for quite some time!

CAROLINE POLACHEK's diwttity IS OBSESSED WITH BILLIONAIRES!

As you well know.

06 May 2024

Addendum: I don’t truck with billionaires - obvs, and this is by no means an endorsement of them. I just think it’s interesting that we all kinda have to - because of the *gestures broadly* circumstances - think about them so often. And because we have to think about them so much, I maybe feel it's important to notice how we conceive of this relationship "we have with them" and interrogate it's forms, functions and limitations!

[triflesandparsnips]

Lot of takes going around the internets about certain "deaths" in the ofmd season finale, so, uh-- guess it's time for me to try and lose some followers on tumblr dot com with

Some Thoughts on Why I Am Not Particularly Bothered or Concerned about Izzy's Apparent "Death"

Laying the groundwork first...

1. Narratively speaking, Izzy's been a dead man walking since the start of the season. Babe shot himself and got a rebirth-- but he still definitely intended to die. Every minute he was still around was borrowed time.

Did he have to die? Maybe not. I know I could've written a version of the show where he didn't. But then that would be my show-- not theirs. I can't know exactly what themes, bugbears, bête noires, catharsis, or artistic Vibes are driving that writers' room, and until the credits run on the finale of the third season, none of the rest of us can either.

2. Izzy spent the season being in a liminal state-- and there's nothing in the story saying that he can't continue doing that. Izzy spent the season having one foot in one space, one hoof in the other, and himself halfway through the door, a chimera of mirrored things right up to his "death": pirate and ship, hard and soft, old ways and new, etc etc. But "the gravy basket" is a weird little liminal space between life and death, a place that both Ed and Buttons have found (and returned from) before. We don't know where Izzy "is" right now-- he could be there.

(tbh, I wonder how much poor feeling we'd be having about all this if we'd gotten a final tag of a blue-washed Izzy staring down at a bowl of soup while helplessly saying "but this isn't gravy, what the fu--")

3. I think there is an unfortunate belief that "it's not real unless you see the body" is a universal -- or perhaps inarguable -- "fact" of storytelling. But it's not. It's just a bit of narrative shorthand that got popular, and now we're too ready to fall into the trap of believing the inverse is true too-- that if there is a body, then there must therefore have been a "real" death.

This season has spent quite a lot of narrative time and effort telling us that its story is using a different model, with different shorthands; specifically, that magic is real, that there is at least some kind of existence after death, and that the dead can be resurrected.

And that brings me to the meat of why I'm not particularly bothered or concerned about what, at this stage of the story, could still very well be just a minor setback--

4. This whole show, and particularly this season, is a fairy tale. It's a story that works with fairy tale logic and tropes, and it's in conversation with other fairy tales too, ones that the OFMD audience is likely to know well enough to spot their narrative beats in action. So "Pinocchio" gets mentioned a lot? Cool-- the audience applies what is commonly known of that story to this one ("a real boy", the mirror-opposite being a puppet with no nose, etc), and finds some Cool Shit. Then they're primed to keep looking for fairy tales, even unnamed ones, in case there's another little nugget of reward-dopamine for finding a connection.

So the fact that we saw a mermaid? Suddenly, I personally am noticing "Little Mermaid" motifs all over the place. That Ed was in a "sleep like death" -- after fucking around with a spinning wheel -- until his prince came to wake him? Well fuck, man, that's Blackbeard playing "Sleeping Beauty" for us all.

And bringing it all back to a "dead" Izzy Hands... when I add up a "dead" body surrounded by a bunch of laborers mourning the person who nominally kept their living space nice AND who was wanted dead by an authority figure for the crime of being the "better" version of what that figure wanted to be...

...well fuck, idk about the rest of you, but to me that all adds up to Izzy's story being Snow fucking White. Waiting for someone to come pull the bullet poisoned apple from his body so he can live again.

5. This is a second season. Of three. And Izzy Hands is the writer's favorite chewtoy, so there is lots of time, space, and incentive to bring him back. If there's a third season, we have a pile of ways he could be brought back over the course of hours of literal viewing time and possibly months of in-narrative time. That's ages.

And the solutions don't have to be difficult! For instance, we still have canonical hallucinations from Stede-- that's one route. Or fuck it, we could have Izzy's (very solid-looking) ghost be the embodiment of their being haunted by the Sea, that would work too.

And even barring all that-- his grave is right there with our heroes. The ship is out there hunting down his murderer. Even if you're happy he's dead... bad news, friend. He's all over the third season landscape. (uh oh, it's GNU Izzy Hands)

But those are just a few options that leave his body rotting but his character still alive. I happen to think we could all dream a little bigger, darlings. For instance:

A. You cannot tell me that these writers, on this show, with these actors, would not absolutely go all in on a zombie-esque hand thrusting out of the dirt mere hours after burial. Look me in the eyes and tell me Con O'Neill wouldn't pull off an entire digging-out scene only to end with himself panting beside the hole, looking around, hearing Ed and Stede being weird in their haunted hut, and wearily say, "Are you fucking kidding me."

B. Don't like zombies? Want to stay closer to the Snow White vibe AND introduce a love interest for him? One hyphenated word: body-snatcher. Gotta dig those bodies up fresh for the Definitely Historically Accurate anatomists of the time! But oh, says this New Guy, this corpse is-- wow, it's weird that they buried him with a rose and really amazing makeup and a truly extraordinary number of whittled whales, plus what's with that horsey leg grave marker, this guy must've been fucking fascinating, man, I wish I could've met him-- --at which point Izzy's hand shoots out and chokes the guy half to death and the lads come tumbling out of the house and ta da, mission accomplished, Izzy resurrected in 5 minutes or less with his horsey leg conveniently beside him and an entire season for himself and everyone else to Deal With It, amazing, fantastic, no notes from me.

C. Come to think of it, there is genuinely a non-zero chance that the crew just. Fucked up the burial. I mean... even though I was just arguing why we shouldn't see it as Law, we didn't actually see the body. We saw a grave. What did they bury him in? Was it a box? Was it some canvas? Did they definitely pick up the right one when it was time to bury him? Or did they maybe carefully make him an ahistorical safety coffin just in case a cat demon came to bother him and his corpse wanted to make a fuss about it, y'know, very common, could happen to anyone, and Frenchie just so happens to have Blackbeard's old collar bell right here--

6. Here's the bottom line, imo: The only thing that would keep Izzy really actually dead and completely removed from the story is a lack of narrative time and space-- and we have plenty of both. Stories are like Lego. If you've got enough time and you're willing to play with pieces from a whole lotta different sets, it's not hard to put the same elements together in different ways to get new, exciting configurations. It's why I'm actually rubbish at predicting exact details of stuff-- there are a lot of ways something could go, there are infinite doors out of problems the narrative seems to throw at us, and no two people will come up with the same thing because we're all different.

That, to me, is one of the big ways I personally enjoy and engage with stories. And it's why I genuinely can't be fussed about Izzy's death, not when we're only two-thirds through the story as a whole; observing someone setup and then try and execute a complicated narrative trick is my jam.

But my way of engaging with all this is by no means the best or only way. How we all interact with art, and what speaks to us, is extremely personal. If how this season and Izzy's death went just didn't work for you, that's okay. I'm sorry it wasn't the story you wanted it to be. That blows.

I just know I can't say yet that it didn't work for me. I won't know until I can take in the entire picture, just as I can't judge a finished Lego set by the one piece I step on midway through construction. I can see different ways Izzy's death/rebirth could absolutely work, but will the writer manage it? I dunno.

But I'm willing to wait and see if the stupid puppet can pull it off.

[cellarspider]

30/30 One last thing.

(Previous) | (Index) | ⛬

⛬

We have come to the end of Prometheus. But depending on how you’re feeling about death of the author right now, it’s not. Not quite yet.

Because Ridley Scott had some things to say after Prometheus came out.

Two months after the movie's release, Ridley Scott gave an interview. Its original home has succumbed to link rot, but it’s still available in a couple places, in the Internet Archive and within the corporate acquisition mass that is Fandango, featuring a weird note of brand revisionism in the relabeling of the interviewer’s affiliation.

Now. Let’s begin by saying this: A movie is a movie. The things around a movie are not the movie. This seems obvious, but it’s to say that a single creative work can be viewed entirely free of outside context, and in most cases it’s best to assume that it will. If a director comes out later and tells people what their intent was, then that’s not part of the movie.

…But it can still sit in your brain for years, leaping out to ambush unsuspecting passers-by.

So! This interview. Ohhh, this interview. I’d forgotten most of it, because the final lines of it just knocked the top of my head clean off, so we’ll be discovering bits of this together.

We start from the end of the movie, with the interviewer asking about the openness of the ending to a sequel. Scott, among other things, said:

“I’d love to explore where the hell [Dr. Shaw] goes next and what does she do when she gets there, because if it is paradise, paradise can not be what you think it is. Paradise has a connotation of being extremely sinister and ominous.”

This came across well in the movie, though it was festooned with the random bit of organic bigotry from Shaw toward David. A short answer won’t capture everything, so I still have no idea if Scott intended for that to be so brayingly insensitive, this is the guy who was fine with Joel Edgerton as Ramses II. In any case, Paradise might be ominous, but Shaw’s not bringing along ideas that will improve it by any means.

This isn’t really the film we eventually got from Alien: Covenant. Is that bad? Honestly, I don’t know that either. Shaw as a character did not have a lot of depth in this movie. Noomi Rapace ended up playing her hurt very well by the end of it, but if that’s your standard of quality in horror acting, then Josh Stewart’s leading role in the grungy Saw-adjacent movie The Collector (2009) will serve you well.

I think they could have built something out of her character, but they didn’t. David is definitely the stand-out character from Prometheus, and they do at least focus on him quite a lot. But I’ve yet to watch Covenant, partly because the structure of it does not interest me. Also, because I’ve heard about what David does when he shows up on the new planet, and bad things happening to crowds are one thing that can make my brain wig out something awful.

Speaking of the Engineers, Scott speaks about their character:

“they’re such aggressive f**kers … and who wouldn’t describe them that way, considering their brilliance in making dreadful devices and weapons that would make our chemical warfare look ridiculous? So I always had it in there that the God-like creature that you will see actually is not so nice, and is certainly not God.” 

Again, we find ourselves at the casual gnosticism of the movie, in which the Engineers are kind of the demiurge in this context. Some christian-influenced people assume that if there is a true god, it must be omnibenevolent, and find the violent and threatening behavior depicted in the Old Testament to be at odds with their understanding of divinity. A lack of benevolence is seen as a sign that the figure depicted must be something else, something that may think that it is a god, but it is not truly, regardless of its role as a creator. Hence, the gnostic idea of the demiurge.

But Scott also seems to confirm my suspicion that he’s not aware he’s recreating gnostic cosmogony through Prometheus, because he doesn’t reach for any of the older sources or the language around him. He instead invokes a rather surface reading of Paradise Lost:

“ In a funny kind of way, if you look at the Engineers, they’re tall and elegant … they are dark angels. If you look at [John Milton’s] Paradise Lost, the guys who have the best time in the story are the dark angels, not God. He goes to all the best nightclubs, he’s better looking, and he gets all of the birds. [Laughs]”

Setting aside the fact that Paradise Lost ends with all the fallen angels having a bad time because God’s turned them into snakes, I will give Scott the tiniest bit of credit, there’s a bit of my brain that saw this in the first scene and thought “that is a strong start”:

Scott eventually continues on the Engineers, and the sacrifice scene at the start:

“That could be anywhere. That could be a planet anywhere. All he’s doing is acting as a gardener in space. And the plant life, in fact, is the disintegration of himself.  If you parallel that idea with other sacrificial elements in history – which are clearly illustrated with the Mayans and the Incas – he would live for one year as a prince, and at the end of that year, he would be taken and donated to the gods in hopes of improving what might happen next year, be it with crops or weather, etcetera.”

Scott is misremembering some things here, which is understandable given the off-the-cuff nature of the remark, but it’s still worth correcting. This is a misattribution of Aztec rituals that would involve the sacrifice of a “teixiptla” representative of a god (such as Xipe Totec, Tezcatlipoca, etc). The Inca didn’t carry out this ritual–they did engage in a human sacrifice ritual called qhapaq hucha, but its form and function was not the same. The Classical Maya also engaged in different human sacrifice rituals, but there was also an emphasis on non-fatal self-administered bloodletting–Maya nobility in particular were often depicted shedding their own blood for this purpose, because noble blood had divine qualities.

This also, to my memory, conflates stories of european human sacrifice rituals, where crop failures are sometimes linked to the sacrifice of kings, such as Dómaldr in the Ynglinga saga, and noted in the placement and treatment of certain bog bodies. The Aztecs did sacrifice to the god Tláloc for crop for good harvests, but the rituals involved were quite different.

It should be noted, of course, that Tláloc was later syncretized with the Christian god during the Spanish conquest, likely as a result of conceptually linking Tláloc’s sacrifices to the demand that Abraham sacrifice Isaac. And, y’know, that conquest was concurrent with the Spanish Inquisition, and the wider religious belief that a heretical witch army was being organized by Satan to stand against God to forestall the Second Coming of Christ, with crop failures being the most feared result of their rituals.

I’ve added all these details not because I want to say Scott is bad for misattributing this stuff, people make mistakes. I have several hours’ access to the internet, Scott did not. However, it is worth noting: How we frame an idea can say a lot about how we conceive of it. Variations on these behaviors are found throughout history, and across cultures. Sacrifices and martyrs are powerful symbols still invoked in western culture today. There’s a potential wandering back and forth between appreciation and exoticization that Scott’s engaging in.

Then Scott says something that made me get up from my chair to find a book to shake at my computer.

“I always think about how often we attribute what has happened to either our invention or memory. A lot of ideas evolve from past histories, but when you look so far back, you wonder, Really? Is there really a connection there?”

Yes.

Yes there is. Ancient peoples weren’t stupid. Ancient peoples didn’t even necessarily have less information to work with than any one modern human, they just had different information that kept them alive and finding solutions to their problems, be it “I need to find food” or “how do I meaningfully participate in my culture’s artistic and governmental traditions, and should they even be followed at all?”

If you want a great and thorough examination of that, check out the book I gesticulated with.

Highly recommended. Graeber was an anthropologist and Wengrow is an archaeologist, and the two of them together are a force to be reckoned with. There are definitely subjects covered in this book that I’ve seen from different angles before, and I feel like their interpretation pulls in more context than I’d gotten previously. Especially pertinent to this, the first part of The Dawn of Everything is spent examining the origins of modern western thought on “primitive” cultures and their character and capacity, and then digging into what evidence we actually have on the subject.

But the movie does not, fundamentally, engage with cultures outside of westernized, christian thinking. Not to any serious extent, anyway. It has a certain worldview, and that’s fine. That can be explored intelligently, although we’ve seen that I think it squanders that chance. It’s fundamentally a christian-centric movie.

And despite Scott’s protestations in the interview that they toned it down, quite a few readers have already guessed how far Scott originally intended to go on that.

“But if you look at it as an “our children are misbehaving down there” scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, “Lets’ send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it.” Guess what? They crucified him.”

Yes. Jesus of Nazareth was actually Jesus of Space.

This is why the movie says the Engineer corpse died about 2000 years ago. This is why they decided to destroy humanity. 

Presumably the original quote on the cross was “Father, forgive them, for they know not that we’ve got deadly black goo.” Engineer 23:34, I guess.

Now that the screams in the audience have hopefully settled down, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.

Alright. So, this is bad. Let’s break down why, beyond the obvious questions about “why does nobody ever draw Jesus as bald, huge, and ripped.” Fans have already tackled that–there’s a fake script circulating that has a decent interpretation of this. In their version, a human kid got zwooped up to be taught the ways of the Engineers, and sent back as an emissary. Why? Dunno. Also apparently the gospels that mention Mary and Joseph fleeing to Egypt with the baby Jesus were off the mark by a few lightyears.

No matter the details, this whole premise is laughable to christians, because “what if Jesus was an alien” is the sort of thing that twelve year olds come up with. It’s offensive if it’s taken seriously, because it says their literal god was actually a mortal critter from outer space. Ha! Your god is not all-powerful, or all-good. He’s not even All-Might.

But you know what’s almost worse? It implies that, sure, Christianity isn’t the inspired word of a deity. It also implies some level of exclusive factual accuracy to Jesus’ teachings, not shared with other religions. Jesus was a celestial emissary, endowed with the teachings that could save humanity, and his death doomed the Earth to the Last Judgment.

The Torah is insufficient, and all Rabbinic literature was produced following the rejection of the true way to salvation. The enlightenment of the Buddha counted for nothing, the Dao is not the way, Vishnu cannot defend or restore dharma, the Prophet Muhammad is only so valid as his acknowledgment of the Prophet Īsā ibn Maryam. 

All other faiths are superfluous under this premise. If people had just listened to Jesus and accepted him as their savior, everything would’ve been fine!

This is the one point of alien contact with western canon in the entire setting, after the deep prehistory of Skye. Every other literate culture that was contacted got the Engineers’ message wrong. Or they didn’t listen. Only christians got it right.

That’s incalculably bad. That’s not even counting the fact that the wall o’ artifacts that Shaw and Holloway presented included a notable oversight: the only two artifacts further from Europe than the Middle East are chronologically impossible, based on the movie’s own timeline. It implies the rest of the world was thrown in as an afterthought.

This whole Jesus thing is a piece, a big, jagged piece of why this movie drives me so far up the wall that I’m now residing on the ceiling. It’s not, as far as I can tell, actively malicious. It’s just dumb. It wasn’t thought through the way it should’ve been. If they wanted to do a movie like this, they should’ve gone all-in. Really dig into the implications of what they’ve done. 

And the movie seems wholly ignorant of it. There are basic questions presented to the audience, but there’s no deeper consideration that could make this respectful to anybody.

So, what are we left with?

A mess. A beautiful, stunted, confused mess that was poorly served by its script and lack of conviction.

The movie turned away from asking big questions, and focused instead on traditional horror. A genre that works best with good characterization to drive audience investment, but then it cut out most of the characterization, and what it left was scattershot. It gave us a flashback of Shaw’s childhood before we’d even really met her to understand why it was meaningful for her. The movie then failed to add any emotional weight to her.

The movie failed to give us characters with emotional weight or intelligence. It gave us a single, compelling character in David, driven largely by Michael Fassbender’s delivery and physical performance. It gave us a tactile, carefully constructed setting that was beautiful and often an accomplishment in filmmaking craft, but these spaces remained emotionally empty without a story that gave them meaning. It gave us the potential of something new, and then retreated to imitate the old.

I went into the theater in 2012 looking forward to a good film. I suppose this one has stuck with me more than a good film would have, but its primary value is as a flawed thing to critique, to learn from, and to put tooth marks on when the frustration gets to be too much.

Prometheus got one sort-of sequel in Alien: Covenant (2017), and it seems to have been abandoned. The first trailer for Alien: Romulus just came out the day I’m writing this, and it looks like it’s going to be just a monster movie.

If you want a good, modern Alien, play or watch Alien: Isolation (2014). Apparently its content was recut into a web series in 2019, though I can’t speak to the quality of that. For now, I’m done with the series. I’m not going to be rushing out to see anything new, because I don’t think it’s doing anything new. Prometheus could’ve been a chance to do that, but it failed.

Still. Writing this was fun, I will admit. My weird little obsession with this movie turned into a month and a half of writing and prepping this thing, totaling–Jesus E. Christ, over 82,000 words. I wish it could’ve been about something that hid more intellectual heft or careful thought than Prometheus did, but hey! There’s always next time.

And there will in all likelihood be a next time, as I’ve already started on another document. It won’t be for quite a while, though. This was a lot of fun, but a lot of work as well. I’ll be taking a break, and only releasing more stuff once I have it fully written ahead of time, as opposed to how I handled this one.

Thank you, brave readers, for making it this far. 

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Citations for alt-text rambles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023%E2%80%932024_Sundhn%C3%BAkur_eruptions#Eruptions

https://tubitv.com/movies/314320/the-collector 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dettifoss 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Magliabechiano 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tollund_Man 

https://youtu.be/nT2ueyFrVgk 

https://www.deviantart.com/pretty--kittie/art/Prometheus-Engineer-407316113 

https://nebula.tv/videos/hellofutureme-is-netflixs-avatar-any-good 

Overflow Ramble 1

Hey, does anyone else remember Stephen Speilberg’s War of the Worlds (2005)? I saw that in the theater, and I cannot watch that thing again. Yes, I was younger, but the overall content of that movie absolutely shredded my nerves to pieces. Even though I’d grown up knowing the full H G Wells story and reading things like The Tripods book series as a kid, Spielberg managed to make a movie that felt so viscerally unpleasant to me that it gave me nightmares for years.

My main theory is this: You know in movies that the protagonist is almost certainly going to survive what happens, doubly so in War of the Worlds because it was goddamn Tom Cruise. But my brain did not treat Tom Cruise as my viewpoint character. Something in me says “well, I’m not Tom Cruise, I’m one of those other people around him, and they’re all gonna die horribly.” 

This tends to happen with me in disaster films and similar stuff like that. I have to be real certain I want to be there if I watch a kaiju movie, for example. I can do Godzilla (2014), but I’m not so sure about Godzilla Minus One (2023). Shin Godzilla (2016) is off the table.

Horror movies have to hit a balance of giving people a rickety feeling of potential safety they want to preserve, rather than letting them feel too safe or too screwed. Too far either way and you lose people, either to apathy or just pure bad vibes. The paradox of enjoyable horror is that it can’t scare you too much.

Overflow Ramble 2

I personally don’t think the tone of Fede Álvarez’s horror fits with what I’m looking for in an Alien movie. The xenomorph life cycle worked best and most subversively when it was deliberately targeted, to take the sexual/reproductive menace usually placed on female characters in horror and forced it onto a male character instead. Álvarez has historically played that trope straight instead. From a horror perspective, that’s boring to me. The xenomorphs also appear to be aggressive monsters here rather than animals, more like Aliens than Alien. Not my favorite interpretation.

And to be honest, when I saw the trailer, my first thought was “Oh, it’s Sevastopol Station.” The setting looks exactly like Alien: Isolation, and there’s not a chance the movie’s going to outshine Isolation. That game’s only narrative sin was a bit of slow pacing toward the ending. Romulus’ trailer makes me think it’s going to go too far in the other direction.

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