#my own twitter account is pretty bland

[elizabethan-memes]

Every time I think to myself "history twitter isn't too bad" I have to remind myself that I have muted most of the history twitter accounts that are recommended to me. And of the people I DO follow... most of them started on history tumblr so they don't really count as history twitter.

[softomi]

now accepting boyfriend applications.

based on my fic idea: you’ve just become newly single, in a drunken fit, you posted a status indicating you’re accepting applications for your next boyfriend. Oddly, three boys take you up on that; sending in their most professional resumes for the position. It seems there’s some fierce competitors. 

next up: literature

It hurt, why wouldn’t it hurt. Your boyfriend of almost two years dumped you over text message with no warning and his reason? He just wasn’t feeling it anymore, what the fuck. Well, twenty phone calls, a hundred text messages sent to him, and a pretty nasty voicemail. The moment you realized just how crazy you were being was when you began pounding on his door at almost ten at night. His neighbors poking their head out to stare, and it really smacked you in the face how stupid you were being.

So you threw caution into the wind. it’s a Wednesday night, your first class tomorrow didn’t start until noon and you’re literature teacher was more of a lecturer so she probably won’t notice if you’re hung over. If anything, you could always ask the guy next to you for the notes.

Thus, you decide to throw back shots to your heart’s desire, sitting in the middle of your tiny studio apartment, on your bed to scream and cry at the romance movie. Love is dead. You groan loudly when your neighbor knocks against the wall, trying to tell you to promptly shut the fuck up.

Halfway through the movie, your mind is already swaying. Your throat stings just momentarily and you sip your cheap wine in hope it’ll dull the shots you had taken previously. When the male protagonist kisses the beautiful female of his dreams, you promptly chug the rest of the wine in your glass. Upset at their love, you wrap your lips around the tip of the wine bottle, drinking straight from it.

“I can find someone better.” You’ve reached a different point in your post break up sadness, you were mixed with anger, sadness, and an overall feeling of I’ll find someone with a better dick.

It’s never a good decision to post on social media while drunk, but it’s a great decision right now. You were going to post a ‘newly single’ status. Just to be nice and not spam everyone, you think you’ll just post it to your private account for your five friends to see. You’ve clearly neglected that step when you press post and it uploads to your public twitter account.

The urge to hurl takes priority over the sudden notifications on your phone. Your hair disheveled as you’re trying to hold onto the toilet, hold onto your hair, and throw up at the same time. The romance film comes to an end once you’ve fully emptied your stomach. You shove all the things off your bed, food falling onto the floor, empty bottle of wine rolled under your bed, remote lost somewhere. You fall asleep despite your cell phone going off.

The alarm jolts you, it causes you to scream, your palm slapping the snooze button and you aggressively pull the wire so that it comes out of the socket. Your head is throbbing and your cell phone is ringing at the same time. Annoyed, your hand stretches along the bed trying to find your cell. When you come emptyhanded, you sit up. Your hand steading the pulsing of your brain and you spot your phone ringing and vibrating on the ground.

“What?” You spit out, not bothering to look at the contact as you try to block out the sun.

“What do you mean what?” The voice snaps at you, “You post about boyfriend applications all of a sudden, did you guys break up?”

Of course he would be the one calling you, the person who loves gossip more than you do, “Tooru, can you like shut up for a second.” Your brain is dying and he’s over here trying to get the latest dish on your love life, “He dumped me okay.”

“That asshole.” He gasps, “Do you want me to come over?”

You look at the time on your cell briefly, “No. I have class all day. If you’re free later?”

“Of course!”

The phone call ends and rather than getting ready for the class you have in an hour, you’re checking your notifications. You have about twenty missed calls from Oikawa, another thirty text messages from him, he even left a voicemail; god he must have been desperate. Facebook is bland, you spent most of your time on Instagram deleting the photos of your now ex, and rarely do you ever get Twitter notifications. Oddly, you have fifteen notifications; all coming from your public account.

haha, boyfriend applications are official open. only taking serious apps lol

“No.” You sit up.

It wasn’t your post that freaked you out, it wasn’t that somehow it ended up on your public account, no you could delete it and pretend as if no one saw it but people saw it.

Is she serious?

If she is, I’m down.

What does serious applications mean?

Three comments, five likes, and four retweets.

And three unread messages.

Your finger rushes to delete the tweet before it can be retweeted even more by random classmates. All was good now. Your finger presses onto the message icon, you’re confronted with the icons of three of your classmates.

The most recent is from Miya Atsumu, a terrible flirt in your biology class. He chose the seat next to you in lab when his friends ditched him and hoarded their own table. He spun around in his chair, shooting you a cheeky grin when you briefly looked at him.

His first sentence was, “Hey you’re cute.”

And yours was, “I have a boyfriend.”.

You skip over his message upon spotting his use of sweetheart in the preview.

The next icon is of the guy in your intro to business class, Kuroo Tetsuro. The first time you saw him was outside of the classroom, you two ended up accidentally reaching the doors at the same time. He lets you go in first and the both of you chose the seats farthest from the board, and closest to the door. Despite his bed hair that made him look like he was going to sleep the entire class, he was a rather studious guy; chill but smart, he was a business major after all.

“Did you understand anything he was saying?” You murmur to him as you grab your bag.

“Of course!” He states, “I don’t look at twitter on my laptop when he’s lecturing.” Ah, he caught you.

Your eyes briefly scan the preview, he’s saying something about a resume and you think he’s talking about the homework assignment. You’re about to click on his first when the last catches your eye.

It’s from Akaashi Keiji. On the first day of class, you were late due to waiting in line for coffee. You awkwardly opened the door to the classroom, everyone turning to stare, and you lower your head, choosing a random seat that now you’re stuck with for the rest of the semester because that’s just how college works. The professor goes over the syllabus and suddenly announces that the person sitting to your right will be your revision partner for the semester.

“Hey.” You stop him and for a brief minute you feel your heart skip a beat because he was absolutely pretty, “Sorry, I’m Y/n. Since we’re going to be partners, do you want to exchange info?”.

“Uh. Sure. I’m Akaashi Keiji.”

“I’m going to be late for my business class. Do you have twitter?” You were never a fan of giving your phone number out. Before he can answer, you’re scribbling your username onto a piece of paper, placing it on his desk before running out to catch your next class.

His message is brief: Did you get my email?

You click his message first; it must have been urgent if he messaged and emailed you. There’s nothing else to his message, his previous one dates almost a week before his current one, telling you that he finished reading the book you recommended and that he enjoyed it.

The screen is pulled up with your finger, alternating apps to your personal email. The subject of his email simply reads Application.

Curiously, you click the attachment he’s sent with no body text. Your jaw dropped, hand placed over your open mouth and a small scream emitting.

“Is he fucking serious?”

His name is displayed at the top, along with his birthday, star sign, zodiac sign, age, even the pronouns he uses. There’s a short sentence under it. I am submitting an application for the position of Boyfriend. You’re internally screaming, blinking fast hoping that this was a joke but his ‘application’ reads like a resume. It lists his education from middle school to his current, his previous jobs, his skills, and his own personal goals for the future.

Your blushing profusely, you want to pull your hair, scream, even throw your phone but you shove down the feelings that want to have you die of embarrassment. You don’t have the energy to sadly explain to him that you were drunk and weren’t serious; ugh and you’re going to have to continue seeing him for the rest of the semester.

You revert back to twitter; your heart suddenly drops when you think about Kuroo’s message. Quickly, you pull up the messages, clicking his and suddenly you want dig yourself a grave because he’s sent a link to a pdf and it’s simply titled Resume. He probably used a resume template and never changed the title.

And sure enough, it’s a fucking professional resume declaring the certain skills he has to be your boyfriend. In fact, like the professional business major he is, he includes a letter of intent; indicating his reasons of interest for the position. It details the little quirks he finds cute about you. You want to break your phone in half with how red in the face you feel.

As you exit his message, you’re slowly praying that Atsumu’s message is just a random flirty comment that he occasionally likes to throw you once in a while or perhaps you’re hoping that he fell in a ditch and you won’t have to work with him for the rest of the semester since he almost blew up the lab station last time.

Nope, it’s a link to a google document. Oddly, you click it. Your heart has sunk to the pit of the earth because when you open the document, you see his fucking name in the upper right corner indicating he’s still on the stupid document.

Fuck fuck fuck. You’re running away from the document, aggressively leaving the page but it doesn’t help that when you end up back at your twitter messages, you can see the three dots, telling you he’s typing.

Morning sweetheart hope you enjoy the app

He sends it with a flirty wink and you stare at it for five full minutes. Curiosity gets the best of you and you click back onto his link, he’s no longer on the same document and you sigh safely. For someone who’s barely passing biology, his document was rather professionally detailed. Damn, he’s on the school’s volleyball team? Weirdly the page cuts off halfway, you continue to scroll until the next title page boldly states: Bedroom skills.

It didn’t help that you were scrolling a little too fast and caught sight of an image showing off his toned upper body. There goes his professionalism.

Your phone suddenly blares low battery, your screen turns black and now your anxiety is through the roof. You jump on your bed, trying to plug in your phone and you’ve just now realized that it is thirty minutes until your first class starts and it is literature. You’re scrambling to find your laptop, you trip on the bag of chips from last night, awkwardly trying to stand as you reach for your school bag.

“Shit!” You scream. You suddenly remember letting your stupid ex-boyfriend borrow your laptop.

You fall to the floor, fingers pulling your hair as you suddenly think about the deep shit your in. First, your boyfriend dumped you, now you randomly have three guys who sent you applications to be your next boyfriend and you’re still going to have to see them for the rest of the semester if you reject them. Lastly, you’re going to have to go to your ex’s place to get your laptop after having made a scene yesterday, and your phone is dead so you can’t cry to Oikawa about the deep shit you’re in.

[orionsangel86]

Ah the sweet smell of statistics on a hot summer evening...

@dotthings shared the latest AO3 shipping stats with me on Twitter and I am fascinated (and not surprised) with the numbers presented, because they provide a truthful outlook on fandom trends and ship popularity that silences all screams from hateful factions. Basically AO3 is dishing out some truly delicious tea over there...

https://archiveofourown.org/works/19963579/chapters/47258239

Destiel of course is once again the most popular ship on AO3 with 79,650 fan works. It has 20k more fan works than the next most popular ship. Let that sink in. The even sweeter tea is that the next most popular SPN ship only has 26,287 fan works on AO3. Destiel has 53k more fan works than W*ncest.

Chapter two of the AO3 link presents us with the most popular ships of 2017-2019 which I find even more interesting. This is showing us active ships. How many fan works have been created for that ship over the past three years. In this list, Destiel is in third place. Again, let that sink in. This is a 14 year old fandom, and in the past three years alone Destiel fandom created 13,537 fan works. So still a very active very popular ship basically.

Comparing those figures to that of W*ncest - 3,493 fan works on A03 in the space of 3 years. This is actually far lower than even I would have expected, baring in mind how loudly that side of fandom likes to scream about how popular their ship is... I guess that’s what happens when you waste all your time attacking people/actors/writers etc on social media, and not spend it actually doing what you love...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So if you ever get some asshole on social media screaming at you that you are delusional for shipping Destiel, are a loud minority, and are told that incest is a popular and acceptable ship in Supernatural fandom, just link them to the actual facts to shut them up.

Also, the 2017-2019 stats indicate that whilst Destiel has only dropped 1 place, W*ncest dropped 30 places. From this I think we can conclude that the show in the past three years has kept Destiel shippers engaged but put off W*ncest shippers. This also gives a nice indicator for how fandom in general sees the source content at the moment. It probably helps that Destiel shippers tend to be a very active and encouraging bunch, with several writing bangs throughout the year and a general focus on encouraging content creation and nurturing new talent. I would consider this at least somewhat proof that no matter what haters say, Destiel fandom is a welcoming and encouraging place for fans to meet like minded people and it inspires us to share our work and our passions.

So I consider that another blatant lie crushed by the stats - Destiel fans are by FAR the least problematic of Supernatural fandom - When we are loud, it is because we are passionate and excitable. But we are not hateful, if we were really all that bad, we wouldn’t still be churning out new content at such high volumes because we’d be putting people off. 

Something to be proud of anyway guys. :)

Disclaimer: I am well aware that the purpose of these statistics is to draw attention to how M/M orientated fandom shipping is, and the huge lack of femslash and female character shipping that exists in fandom - however I personally consider this less about misogyny within fandom and more about misogyny within the film/TV industries where male characters get more focus, are better developed and whose male relationships have more emotional weight, compared to female characters who are perpetually forced into stereotypes or bland pretty Barbie dolls and don’t get deep and meaningful story lines or relationship arcs. This is a completely separate topic of conversation and not one I plan to get into right now, so please no one come at me with your lectures.

Also - I don’t give a damn if you ship W*ncest. Do what you do. This isn’t about shaming W*ncest shippers. What I care about is lies, and hateful bullying in fandom, and a constant false narrative being pushed by a few loud assholes that I have seen first hand. The manipulation of new fans by certain big accounts in fandom run by W*ncest shippers to encourage this notion that Destiel is a minority ship is laughable, but unfortunately new fans won’t realise they are being lied to until it is too late. Hence my sharing this and my sassy tone. Anyone trying to claim Destiel isn’t supported by a majority of SPN fans must actually be living in fairyland. We even have our own official T-Shirt now (technically, we have two). Get over it. 

[lunaathorne]

As a fellow Amy March fan, I'm curious what your opinion on Jo is? Her and Amy's relationship? I do like Jo but personally I think she gave at least as good as she got with Amy (who was 3 years younger anyway)

Hmmm. Jo has always been the one sister about whom I've had severely polarising opinions through the years. Little Women was pretty much the first English book I ever read and since then Amy has always been my favourite while Jo, despite our mutual love for books and dislike for overtly sentimental issues, has always been a grey zone for me. I love her as a character and kinda hate the reception and portrayal of her in media and by fans. Obviously, it's only in very recent times that I've come to appreciate her for her complexities and nuances. She's a well written character, but also a flawed one (as the best characters are always.)

Carrying over from my Amy post, where I spoke of how much I related to Amy as the baby sister of my family, I could see Jo in my older sister. Fiercely brilliant, very loyal, completely no-nonsense about issues in life and love and often coming off as terse or brash. I quite loved her and I also loved her and Amy's dynamic. It's a well-written sibling relationship that's neither completely saccharine nor murderous fratricide. I also liked her friendship with Laurie (although never shipped them romantically).

The reason I began feeling meh about her was really some Jo March fans who always sought to single her out from the rest of her "inferior", "girly girl" sisters with their "homely ambitions". I have spoken about this internalised misogyny before, I'll not elaborate here but it quite spoiled the experience of reading her POV for me, which is funny because Louisa Alcott CLEARLY didn't want to glorify the "not-like-other-girls" thing that Jo does display in flashes in book 1. However, because Jo's fate comes off as less glamorous and less satisfying than fans would've liked, they make her the martyr of bad writing and the One Wronged Woman of Good Wives who Was Obviously Better Than Her Sisters Because She was Not Like Other Girls.

It's easy to point out Jo's great qualities but she has an equal number of flaws that stan Twitter and Tumblr ignore. Assuredly her defiance of suffocating social norms was great but in turn they make her a tool to demonise or simplify Amy and Meg. Her quotes are empowering, theirs are sentimental period drama nonsense. The 1994 film was an offering at the altar of Jo March, with practically every other character reduced to bland one-dimensional roles.

This is not right. Amy and Meg are not to be held accountable for everything Jo does. It's not Amy's fault that she is well mannered around adults and is offered the Europe trip by Aunt March. Jo is reckless with her opportunities, speaks rudely and obviously loses her chance. She often antagonizes Amy whenever she can (especially in the early Good Wives chapters). She is quite juvenile initially about the way she treats Brooke and Meg's relationship. People just forget this. Because she is the quirky heroine archetype for them. In doing so they oversimplify her. Just as Game of Thrones oversimplified Show Arya, who said stuff like "most girls are stupid" where her book counterpart would NEVER. Jo loved and admired all her sisters. She was actually in awe of Meg and Amy's grace and classy attitudes. She was wholeheartedly happy for them when they got married and found happiness. And she loved Laurie but didn't care for him as more than a brother (again, when will people understand it was HER choice to reject him) and yes THEY WOULDN'T BE COMPATIBLE. Sorry but that's the truth.

The thing is- a) since Jo kind of takes up centre space in the latter half of book 1 and 2, she plays a pivotal role in how the audience sees her world. As a result many people are biased to like and dislike what she does. b) many compare her to Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, which is ridiculous because that was a social satire novel where the other sisters where clearly objects of ridicule (except Jane) and the story was centred on love and marriage much more than sisterly bonds, whereas LW is based off Alcott's own sisters and is a much more sombre and reflective tale, heavy in nostalgia with its focus on all 4 sisters. Elizabeth is also much more poised and mature than Jo, who is only 15 when the story starts. I went on this tangent to show that much of Jo's character is fundamentally misread and misinterpreted by many.

I love Jo and Amy's relationship the most out of all the familial relationships in Little Women. We never actually got a proper bonding scene between Beth and Jo to appreciate their love for each other before Beth became ill. Meg and Jo almost always have Marmee as a third person moderator in their conversations. But Amy and Jo are real, actual siblings with a raw, honest bond. They are the two primary March girls in Good Wives. They work as foils and parallels to each other. They both are somewhat self conscious about their perceived "lack of beauty" (Jo after her haircut and Amy's nose), are both creative and ambitious, brilliant verbal sparrers, quick to notice and deduce, their stories are quite intertwined. And people just reduce them to ships.

So in conclusion, I do find her an interesting, very human character. However I am unable to relate to her and a majority of her stans piss me off a LOT, therefore I do not emotionally connect to her as I do with Amy.

I have other thoughts too (about her New York storyline and Bhaer and her dreams) but then we'd be here all year 😅😅.

[bondsmagii]

MUN anon back again, it was literally so fraught. Everyone seemed to be fighting for the 'right cause' while, trying to destroy the city in our own ways. There was a wedding that turned into a trial, there was a point where the city was dying from spores falling from the sky, a giant fire in the finite forest, rabies in all the animals, a murder mystery with the Denouement triplets and a communistic revolution lead by Larry Your-Waiter at the same time. We had a twitter account @PunctilioDaily

god this sounds like the definition of fraught! I remember one time in school (around the time my friends and I were Peak Obsessed™ with ASOUE) we had this group task to do where we had to budget for an imaginary school, just to illustrate the fun that is trying to work out money. so we were given an amount set by the teacher and we had to work out what we thought the school would need and how much should go towards it, but we didn’t exactly get the memo that it was supposed to be a pretty bland school. my friends and I decided that as well as knowing the layout of our imaginary school by heart, we should also make up the school’s history and the current drama that was going on – because that would influence money, right?

naturally the school had once been one school operating in one building, but after a schism involving a sugar bowl missing from the staff room, it was now one building with two schools. the budget was theoretically split evenly, but due to lots of espionage and villainy, amounts kept getting stolen and reclaimed and stolen again. with this backdrop we managed to make a semi-manageable budget for the various departments, the cafeteria, supplies, etc., but our teacher spotted that a very large amount of the money was still left over. where was it going? he asked us, and we solemnly explained that it was in savings, going towards extensive repairs in the mathematics department after the devastating arson attack that had recently occurred there.

we were also told that our library budget for new books was far too high, but we vehemently disagreed. I have yet to encounter a book budget I would describe as “too high”.

[btsybrkr]

Here’s A List Of Things I Hate

I've reached something of a mental block recently when it comes to writing. I think it's because, despite sometimes coming off like I'm mocking things or just being a general smart-arse, I usually write about things I genuinely love. I love The Apprentice. I love Come Dine With Me. I love the idea that the Saturday night schedule, currently occupied on ITV1 by The Masked Singer - a horrifying cross between The Voice and a recurring nightmare I had between the ages of 6 and 8 - might one day be livened up by a post-apocalyptic The X Factor-style talent show in which we choose the next Prime Minister from a roster of Average Joe’s that just feel like giving it a bash.

I usually have lots to say about things I love, but recently, for some reason, I’m struggling to even think of anything that I love enough to write about. Maybe I’m being dragged down by the fact that this January alone seemed to last three long months, or perhaps because January itself included ‘Blue Monday’, the so-called ‘most miserable day of the year’. Maybe it's neither of things, maybe I’m just suffering from a bad case of The Realisation That We And Everything That We Do Are All, In The End, Meaningless, And That Every Day, We Are Collectively Hurtling Closer And Closer Towards The Endless Void And There Is Nothing That Any Of Us Can Do To Stop It. There's probably a snappier name for that, but you know what I mean. In any case, I’m just finding it much easier to think about things I hate recently.

Anyway, what do we do with these feelings of negativity to get rid of them once and for all? We express them. So, for anyone willing to read it, here’s a list of things I hate.

Stephen Mulhern

ITV mainstay Stephen Mulhern arguably belongs on television - not for any positive reason, just because it’s only the barrier of television between him and the viewer that allows him to appear as a cheerful friendly presence, rather than an insufferable know-it-all prick, whose repeated condescending glances to the camera during interviews with rejected Britain’s Got Talent contestants just wouldn’t fly in real life. I mean, really, imagine you were having a conversation with someone, and they reacted to something you said by looking off into the distance, à la Fleabag, with an expression that quite clearly reads “This person is an idiot!! Laugh, everyone!! Laugh at the idiot!!” You know what, Stephen? You’re the idiot. But I won’t laugh at you, because then you might think that you’re funny, and I’m just not having that.

Coleslaw

I saw a tweet years ago that said “what was the first person to milk a cow thinking?”, and honestly, it raises a very good question. I can only imagine that there was some perverted ulterior motives at play, for someone to not only milk the cow’s udders in the first place, but then to drink it, at a time when that just wasn’t done. They must have been a pretty nefarious character, it almost doesn’t bear thinking about. Instead, I’d like to question the motives of the even dodgier character who first looked at grated carrots, cabbage and onions, and thought ‘You know what might really tie these bland individual tastes together? Mayonnaise. A fuckload of it.’

You know what, though? It's not the existence of coleslaw that confuses me the most about it - it's the popularity of it. It has pride of place on the table at every family buffet, it’s disappointingly included in otherwise-appealing wraps in the Boots meal deal fridge, and it's an option on the menu in a shocking majority of takeaways, despite the fact that nobody has ever emerged, staggering and bleary-eyed from Walkabout at 3:30am and thought ‘I could absolutely murder some coleslaw’. Most annoying of all is the way some restaurants chuck a bit of paprika in the mix and use it as an excuse to rename it ‘POW POW GROOVY SLAW’, or something equally ridiculous. Why are we trying to sex up a bowl of vegetables covered in mayonnaise? I can't think of anything less sexy, and I don't particularly want to try.

Let's face it, coleslaw has long overstayed its welcome. It's the last stubborn hanger-on from the pages of stomach-churning 1970s dinner party cookbooks (probably found somewhere between the recipes for spinach and tuna pie and a boiled, unglazed joint of ham suspended in gelatine), and it's time we admitted that and stage a renaissance for the real king of the veg/mayo combo. Rise, Sir Potato Salad - your rule has begun.

Facebook

I recently deleted Facebook off my phone, and immediately noticed an improvement in the overall quality of my life. I promise I don’t mean this in the typical ‘phone bad, book good’ way that fake-’woke’ holier-than-thou characters preach about (usually on Facebook itself, ironically). I still happily waste away hours of my life on Twitter, and Instagram, the latter of which arguably has the most negative influence on my brain out of all the social networks. The thing with Facebook is that it doesn’t necessarily have a negative influence on my brain, so much as it has no influence on any part of me whatsoever. Facebook is a vacuum. It's completely, entirely pointless. In fact, it’s where ‘point’ itself goes to die.

Considering there’s probably no two Facebook users out there with the exact same friends list, I'm willing to bet that everybody’s News Feed looks eerily similar. Every scroll through is the same - a former workmate announcing a pregnancy, someone you forgot about from school sharing a vague, ‘deep’ quote about their hurt feelings, an elderly relative you didn't realise was racist until literally right now, when they began sharing posts from a page eloquently titled ‘MUSLIMS!! it is TIME to go HOME so we can have BRITAIN BACK’, or something along those lines. If you ever have nothing better to do - although, I'm sure there is always something, anything, better to do - just set a timer, open up Facebook, and see how long it takes before you come across a single thing that genuinely resonates with you in any positive way at all. I just redownloaded Facebook to try it for myself, and it took me 46 minutes.

Sound like a lie? Well, to be fair, it is. But there's more truth in that than almost anything you'll see on Facebook.

Those Slush Puppy Straws With Tiny Spoons On The End

Plastic straws are on their way out, and quite rightly. The Sea Turtle Conservancy estimate that around half the world’s sea turtles have ingested plastic, and straws are believed to have accounted for a lot of that. With everything you read or learn about the effect of straws on the environment, it's surprising that it's taken this long for us to do something about it.

With that said, it's not just the turtles that are benefitting from the rise of the paper straw - I'm pretty pleased about it as well. Why? Because using paper instead of plastic might mean that we stop manufacturing those evil straws with tiny spoons on the end of them.

Yes, evil. How many times have you been enjoying a Slush Puppy on a hot summer’s day, only to realise you can't get to the bits at the bottom of the cup, because your straw inexplicably has a spoon on the end of it. What's that for? A Slush Puppy is a drink, and spoons are for eating things with. “It's for eating the delicious bits of vaguely-flavoured ice after you've sucked up all the syrup”, you might say, but then why? Mojitos are made with crushed ice, but you wouldn't go up to the barman and go "excuse me, mate, you forgot to give me a spoon so I could eat all these delicious bits of vaguely-minty ice", would you?

Anyway, you can't suck up all the syrup in the first place when the bottom of your straw just isn't a straw. This a problem we usually solve by holding the cup above our mouths and giving the bottom of the cup a gentle tap, usually sending the rest of it falling out of the cup and all over your face, shirt, anywhere but your mouth, faster than you can say “I can't believe I’m 23 years old and writing an angry blog about straws with tiny spoons on the end”. Another solution we often resort to is turning the straw upside down, which, in my experience, always leads to cutting the roof of your mouth on the tiny spoon that you were never going to use in the first place. No wonder it took us so long to show a bit of sympathy for the turtles - we've been ignoring our own straw-related injuries for years, probably just because we think it makes us look hard.

As far as I'm concerned, spoons are for food, and straws are for liquids. That's why, whenever I order soup in a café, I always ask for a straw. Yes, I get looks from the other customers, but I'm sure they aren't looks of amusement or confusion - everyone else just wishes they'd thought of it first.

Ladybirds

Ladybirds aren't cute. They are not ‘nice’ bugs. They are beetles, in a quirky disguise, who can also fly. With all that in mind, why are we taught to like them? Why do people spot one land on your clothes, or in your hair, and cheerfully announce “oh, there’s a ladybird on you!”, as if you’ve somehow been chosen by the ladybird and should feel honoured. Get it off me now, because I don’t know what it’s going to do! Don’t tell me that it’s ‘harmless’ and that I’m ‘overreacting’. We thought that cigarettes were ‘harmless’ before the mid-60s, cheerfully puffing our way through life, with one in each hand at any given moment, as we watched our darling babies speak their first words, which were usually something along the lines of “alright, mate, 20 Sterling Dual, please” - but then we learned. We learned that they weren’t as harmless as we first thought. And believe me when I tell you that, one day, we’ll reach the same conclusion about ladybirds. Just as soon as we find out exactly what they’re planning.

In fact, where have they gone? I haven’t seen one for a good while. Surely, they’re holed up in a specially designed lair somewhere, millions of them, carefully planning their next move in their efforts to overthrow the human race. Planning and watching. We may not be able to see them, but I’m willing to bet they have eyes on us. You know when you’re alone and you get the feeling there’s something or someone else present? It’s ladybirds. I’m sure of it. We need to watch our backs.

I’m not really sure where my fear of ladybirds has come from. Perhaps it’s down to a dream I’ve been having at least three times a year since I was a teenager, in which I’m leaving my Nan’s house and spot a ladybird the size of a Golden Retriever out in the alleyway, just sitting there, still and silent. I run around the corner to one of my friend’s houses, to warn him of the arrival of our ladybird overlords, but the entire front of his house is covered in millions of the things. I shout his name, up at an open window, and he replies that he’s coming down to open the door to me, but when he does, it isn’t him at all - it’s just a 6ft tall ladybird. I usually wake up in a cold sweat at that point, but when I try to go back to sleep, I can feel them crawling all over me.

I know I sound insane, but I promise you, I’m not - I just don't trust them, and I think that’s understandable.

Hate

If there's one thing I hate more than all the above, it's the very concept of hate itself. I don't just mean in a political or universal sense - although, I do agree the world might be a far better place if we all just hated each other a little bit less - hate has an effect on all our personal lives, too.

I'm really trying to make the most of my early twenties, and that means conserving what little energy I have left after I'm done working, drinking, and crying - just the usual daily activities that we all partake in - to be a little more productive. I can't be using that energy up on hate. In fact, in a scientific study that I've literally just made up, it was found that feeling hatred for even one fifth of a second uses up three times as much mental and physical energy as smiling at sixteen angry strangers, half of which are making fists at you. You can't argue with those sorts of statistics.

Anyway, I'm hoping to return to talking about things that make me feel a little more positive next time, because, besides anything, it's just nice to be nice, isn't it?

Not to Stephen Mulhern, though. He needs to learn his lesson.

If you like seeing me talking shit, but would rather it wasn't so bloody long, you can follow me on twitter here.

[earlyandoftenpodcast]

(A rather unflattering portrait of a young Thomas Hutchinson)

In this episode, we begin the first of a two part look at the life and career of Thomas Hutchinson, one of the last governors of colonial Massachusetts, and one of the last politicians of the old-school Puritan style.

>>>Direct audio link<<<

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Transcript and Sources:

Hello, and welcome to Early and Often: The History of Elections in America. Episode 31: Thomas Hutchinson.

Over the last few episodes, we’ve followed the history of several New England colonies through the middle of the eighteenth century, seeing how their cultures changed and how a new way of thinking about politics emerged, in which partisanship and factionalism replaced deference and restraint.

Today, we’re going to zoom in even further on this change, by focusing in on the life and career of one Massachusetts politician in particular, Thomas Hutchinson. We’ve already briefly heard about Hutchinson back in Episode 27. He was the contemporary historian who wrote the first major history of Massachusetts.

He was also a career politician, who was in office pretty continuously from 1737 to 1774. So his career spans most of the period we’ve been discussing. And it also spans these two political mindsets, the deferential and the partisan.

When Hutchinson was first elected to the General Court, it was as an old school politician, in that quasi-oligarchic way, but as the years passed the ground slowly shifted under his feet and, as we’ll see, he became increasingly out of step with the citizens he was trying to serve. Although he kept climbing the political ladder, eventually becoming governor shortly before the American Revolution, he also became a hated figure within the colony. In particular, he remained loyal to the British empire even as public opinion was shifting violently in the opposite direction. In the end, the War of Independence overwhelmed him and he spent his last years in an unhappy exile in England.

But let’s start from the beginning.

Thomas Hutchinson was born in 1711. He was a descendant of Anne Hutchinson, that religious dissenter who had been expelled from Massachusetts in the 1630s and gone on to become one of the founders of Rhode Island. But her descendants didn’t live up to her legacy of rebellion.

Since then, the Hutchinson family had spent the last few generations as merchants, slowly climbing up the economic and social ladder. By the generation before Thomas, the family had done pretty well for themselves and his father served as a magistrate in the upper house of the General Court for 20 years. According to the historian Bernard Bailyn, “They were accumulators, down-to-earth, unromantic middle-men, whose solid, petty-bourgeois characteristics became steadily more concentrated in the passage of years until in Thomas, in the fifth generation, they reached an apparently absolute and perfect form.”

A studious child who preferred reading to playing, Thomas Hutchinson began attending Harvard at age 12, a few years younger than normal. His class had only 38 students in it. Obviously Harvard was a bit different than it is today. It was a finishing school for elite teenagers as much as anything.

In fact, that sort of elitism was built into Harvard. At the time, Harvard ranked its students by the "supposed dignity” of their families. So students who came from prominent families were ranked higher, which determined who ate first in the dining hall and other symbolic things like that. Like modern legacy admissions on steroids I guess. It was very clear who was on top. And according to historian Richard R. Beeman, “those rankings had real relevance to political success later in life: in the eighteenth century if a general court representative had ranked in the top half of his Harvard class, he had an 80 percent chance of emerging as a significant leader of the House.” Further evidence for that old deferential politics I keep talking about. Hutchinson was ranked third out of 38. So pretty good.

He graduated with a master’s degree after three years. Afterwards, he got to work further improving his family’s position. He was a hard worker and I suppose being a merchant came very naturally to him. According to Beeman, “By 1776 he had increased the original capital inherited from his father fifteenfold; he owned eight houses, two wharves and assorted lots and commercial properties in Boston, and a wonderful ‘country’ home on a hundred acres in Milton, Massachusetts”. So under Thomas, the Hutchinson family’s self-improvement continued at a rapid pace.

Like most people back then, his life was marred by personal tragedy. He had 12 children, but only 5 survived infancy, and his favorite daughter died of tuberculosis in her early 20s, while his beloved wife died in childbirth. He never remarried afterwards, which was unusual.

So, what sort of person was Hutchinson? In his own words, “My temper does not incline to enthusiasm.” And that sounds about right. He was bland, maybe somewhat priggish. According to Bailyn, almost none of his contemporaries even described his personality in any detail. Nothing beyond calling him a “very good gentleman” or “a young gentleman of exact virtue [and] a good natural sense”. While he was an influential guy, I don’t think his personality left a big mark on anyone. He dressed plainly, he didn’t have much of a sense of humor. Even his writing was dull, according to Bailyn. Hutchinson carefully edited everything he wrote to avoid any unnecessary provocations. Bailyn describes his account of the American Revolution as “one of the most impersonal, bland, and circumspect accounts of revolutionary events ever written by a participant”.

Well, it may have been bland, but apparently he was a good historian by the standards of the day. He was careful with his facts and he took pains to be fair to both sides of every issue, unlike almost all of his contemporaries.

But, all in all he was a very buttoned down guy. A petty-bourgeois Puritan merchant down to his core.

Though actually in religion he was no old school Puritan. He remained with the Puritans his whole life, but by disposition he preferred a modern, tolerant, rational church. He didn’t care too much about doctrine. In fact, he himself said that he was sympathetic to Anglicanism and that if he’d been born an Anglican he would’ve remained one. Puritanism for him was more a matter of tradition than anything else.

Maybe that’s not too surprising, since his openly acquisitive career as a merchant would have been a bit frowned upon in previous generations. I’ve been calling him a Puritan, but it might be more accurate to say post-Puritan. The rigidity and uprightness -- or self-righteousness, maybe -- of Puritanism remained, even as the religious fervor receded. He tried hard to make money, but he was no big spender. He tried hard to move up in political life, but he was full of self-doubt.

Hutchinson began his political career at a very young age. He was only 26 when he was elected to the lower house of the General Court as a representative from Boston. He was by no means a beloved politician, but he was respected for his “disinterestedness and integrity” in the words of one contemporary.

Back then, service in government was mostly seen as a chore. Political office didn’t pay very well, and traveling to the capital was often burdensome in both time and money. There were opportunities for corruption and nepotism, but the financial benefits were much smaller than today, especially relative to the other options at hand. Still, it would’ve been expected that someone like Hutchinson would do his duty.

He immediately joined the house’s leadership and just nine years later he was chosen as speaker, the highest position in the lower house. This was a much faster career path than most politicians would’ve been on. More typical would’ve been to start out as a selectmen or some other town official and stay at the local level for a while before being sent to Boston. It helped a whole lot to have been born into a prominent family like that. It almost guaranteed you a position in the assembly’s leadership if you wanted it.

It was expected that politicians would come from well-established families -- and the higher the office the more well-established the family should be. Plenty of politicians in the modern era come from prominent families of course -- think about the Kennedys or the Bushes -- but back then it was an expectation, something that was seen as actively desirable.

Money was part of it. It was thought that wealthier men would be more immune to corruption, especially since holding office didn’t pay well. In the words of one New Englander, “a clear Estate and Independency of Fortune is no unnecessary Qualification, as it frees a Man from those Temptations which attend a State of Poverty.”

And it was thought that poor men would not be able to command enough respect to rule, if they somehow got elected to high office. How could you expect anyone to be respectful towards a poor guy? After all, it was the rich who were clearly blessed by God.

Not every small town was filled to the brim with rich people, but it was still the relatively well-off who got elected. For instance, in New Hampshire, less than a third of the representatives elected were farmers. Most were merchants, lawyers, doctors, etc. Two thirds had estates worth at least 2000 pounds, and a third had estates worth 5000 pounds, which was considerable, for back then. In the three largest Connecticut towns, three quarters of the offices were held by men belonging to the richest 10%. Even for minor offices like highway surveyor, you were expected to be of the appropriate social class.

But it wasn’t just money that counted when determining which families or individuals belonged to the social elite. Education also mattered, although of course only the wealthy could afford to give their children a college education like Hutchinson had. You were also expected to be religiously devout and a generally upstanding citizen. The idea wasn’t just to vote for the rich guy, it was to vote for the guy who was outstanding in numerous ways, only one of which was directly about money.

But even if this attitude wasn’t per se oligarchical, it still meant that power was restricted to a small group. According to John Adams, “Go to every village of New England, and you will find that the office of justice of the peace, and even the place of representative, which has depended only on the freest election of the people, have generally descended from generation to generation, in three or four families at most.”

So although New Englanders supported popular government, that meant something very different to them than it did to us. Social elites were expected to be in charge and they were expected to be above the need to campaign or to directly appeal to voters. In fact, open ambition to run for office was itself seen as a sign that you were untrustworthy. Of course, in practice there was plenty of maneuvering and politicking, but candidates often tried to keep up the appearance of disinterest, saying stuff like, “Oh I have no interest whatsoever in holding office, but if called upon by my fellow citizens to do so, then I guess I have no choice in the matter.”

Related to this was the idea that you shouldn’t vote for someone because they agreed with you on policy, you should vote for the man with the highest character. The idea that voters should have a say in policy was objectionable, not desirable. It was assumed that popular opinion was too fickle for men to govern themselves directly. Rulers had to be willing to push back against public opinion and do the Right Thing when necessary for the greater good.

In fact, you might not even know what policies your representative supported. Sessions of the General Court were closed to the public, and no minutes were taken. They didn’t even record vote tallies until 1740. Before then they just said which bills passed and which didn’t. And after 1740, they still only recorded the votes on particularly important or contentious bills, like for the land bank, say. So it was almost impossible to even figure out how your representative was voting, which meant that there was no way to hold them accountable for their policy views, if they even had any clear views in the first place.

And politicians were expected to remain above factions and parties as well. You were instead supposed to exercise independent judgment in all things. That was also more of an ideal than something that could always be practiced, but it was still an important standard for the New Englanders. Basically, they wanted to vote for a patrician statesman rather than a grubby politician. And that was a pretty standard attitude in the other colonies as well, though of course the specifics varied from place to place.

Sometimes this deference could be taken to ridiculous lengths. For instance, the election sermon given in Connecticut in 1713 basically argued that elected governors had a divine right to rule. “In Elective States, where persons are Advanc'd by the Suffrage of others to Places of Rule, and Vested with Civil Power, the Persons Chusing give not the Power, but GOD. They are but the Instruments of Conveyance.” In the words of another Connecticut minister, to resist the will of the leadership was “as it were to wage War against GOD himself.” Even if they were elected, officials got their power from God and not the voters. Supposedly.

Hutchinson himself wasn’t quite that melodramatic. He was more of a pragmatist. What mattered in government was not the principles you adhered to, but whether or not you got good results. For example, even as he disapproved of much of old-school Puritanism, he admired the society which they had built in New England. But he was certainly happy to keep the people out of politics. If the people became too involved, then, in his words, “the interest of party prevails over all other considerations, virtue, religion, private friendship, and public good are all sacrificed to it.”

Undoubtedly Hutchinson had self-interested reasons for thinking that it was good that men like him should have unquestioned dominance, but it wasn’t just the elite who thought this way. Practically everyone did, at least nominally, though I’m sure you could find a thousand exceptions.

We’ve seen in the last few episodes how this elitism is being eroded, but it’ll linger on for a long time, well after independence. The Federalist party, which was the very first political party in America, and which had its base of support in New England, was the heir to this tradition. The Federalists weren’t believers in the sort of populist democracy that would come to define America. They were more old-school. And in fact that was their downfall, since they were unable to connect with voters the same way their less elitist opponents were, not unlike the Old Lights in Connecticut.

It was hard to keep up the pretence that your elected rulers were divinely ordained when they were so obviously bending over backwards to get your vote, and when the other party was constantly slinging mud at them. And when Americans were given free rein to vote for who they liked, the emphasis in politics naturally shifted from representatives as leaders following their own best judgment to leaders as servants of the people. What previous generations had seen as rightful dominance was seen by their children as burdensome if not tyrannical. As one later election sermon put it, “Societies were not formed for the sake of Rulers, but Rulers were made for the sake of Societies.”

You can still hear rhetorical echoes of the old colonial mindset from time to time, and I’m sure to some of my listeners it sounds rather appealing compared to the endless tumult of modern politics. But I don’t think it was ever more than metastable. It might last for a while, but sooner or later it was going to collapse into a modern democracy.

Anyway, back to Massachusetts in the 1740s. This was a time when the money supply was becoming a big issue again, one of the factors that was slowly eroding elite dominance.

Hutchinson, when writing about this period in his history of the colony, tended to downplay the importance of the currency. In his mind, the populist anger which was aroused by monetary policy was still less important than the petty factionalism within the elite. Other than monetary policy, the elite all still shared the same basic worldview, and as a result any differences between them could be bridged with a bit of diplomacy. The dispute over paper money was a partial exception to this rule, but it was only one issue. The factions disagreed occasionally, but they agreed on a whole lot more.

So most ot the time, politics was more about personality than ideology. How well did the governor get along with the members of the General Court? Was he competent? Was he a good negotiator? That was what mattered, at least in Hutchinson’s eyes. There’s probably something to be said for this view. I’ve naturally been emphasizing the conflicts within New England society, but all told things were pretty calm by world-historical standards and popular agitation was only ever intermittent.

However, “calm most of the time” does not mean “calm all of the time”, as Hutchinson was about to discover.

Now, Hutchinson, who was quite well versed in monetary policy, was a member of the hardline anti-paper money faction. He thought that paper money was necessarily some sort of scam. “Wretched”, he called it. And so he did what he could to block the creation of the land bank and so on, and even as a young man he was drawing up plans for how Massachusetts might go back to a gold and silver standard.

This put him very much at odds with his constituents in Boston. They were all for paper money and they issued instructions to Hutchinson that he should support paper money too. However, Hutchinson flatly refused, calling the instructions “iniquitous”. In his mind, he ought to be free to vote as he thought best. Voters trying to tell delegates how to act was a bad precedent.

But partly as a result, he lost his seat in 1739, though he got it back a few years later. Clearly paper money was an important enough issue that the old rules didn’t always apply. Voters were willing to punish Hutchinson, though only for a little while.

But Hutchinson didn’t learn his lesson. He kept right at it with his opposition to paper money. In fact, he was one of the principal reasons why Massachusetts ended its paper money experiment.

Back in episode 28, I somewhat briefly talked about how that happened. Let me go over it again, with a focus on Hutchinson this time. Basically, in 1749 the British had decided to give the colony some money in order to help pay for the costs of King George’s War, which had just ended. Hutchinson decided to use that money to buy back all the paper money that was in circulation, and return Massachusetts to a hard currency standard.

Now, this was still a mostly unpopular idea. Possibly opposition to paper money had grown over time, but it was still probably supported by a majority of voters and a majority of elected officials. So, in order to get this passed, Hutchinson had to use some underhanded tactics, and even then it took over a year.

He managed to get his biggest opponent expelled from the house, and then in order to get the bill passed he waited until most of the supporters of paper money had gone home for the winter. (Back then, attendance at the assembly was so low that it was often possible for the leadership to get bills passed simply by waiting until a different set of legislators happened to be in Boston and having them vote again until the leadership got the result it wanted. Yet another way in which New England politics remained unresponsive to popular pressure.)

In any case, even with these sorts of tricks, Hutchinson’s bill only passed by a vote of 40-37. But that was enough, and it soon became clear that paper money was on its way out. Needless to say, Hutchinson’s constituents were furious. He lost his next election very badly, winning only 200 votes out of 684 cast. Many other delegates lost their seats as well.

Surely this humiliation -- and Hutchinson certainly saw it as a humiliation -- would be enough to get him to change his ways, to adapt somewhat to popular pressure. Nope, not at all. He had lost his election, but that next year he was appointed to the council to make up for the loss. He was out of electoral politics, but not out of politics altogether. And of course he promptly became the most important member of the upper house. So for Hutchinson, the loss actually turned out to be another step up.

He had friends in high places, who made sure that his career remained on the right track. He was a favorite of several of the governors, because of his opposition to paper money and his abilities in wrangling the legislature into doing his bidding. He was also an important figure in helping to coordinate the war effort during the French and Indian War in the 1750s. Because of his usefulness, he kept ascending the political ladder, often holding several offices at once. He became lieutenant governor in 1758 and chief justice of the highest court in Massachusetts in 1760.

But even from those new, unelected positions, he couldn’t remain entirely insulated from popular pressure, as we’ll see next time. Change was coming to Massachusetts. A nationalist, ideological fervor was about to sweep across the country, and Thomas Hutchinson was no fan of ideology.

The historian William Pencak compares Hutchinson to Edmund Burke. If you’re not familiar with him, Edmund Burke was one of the founders of modern conservatism. He was a big opponent of the French Revolution, and he wrote a famous attack on how the revolutionaries were attempting to overthrow ancient tradition in the name of their abstract belief in natural rights. Burkean conservatism is above all else about caution towards change and skepticism towards grand theories of society.  

Hutchinson had a similar attitude, although he never expressed it as fully as Burke did. He favored compromise and was against pushing principles to extremes. He favored liberty for the colonists, but not if it threatened British rule. He favored British rule, but he wanted the British to govern the colonies with a light touch that preserved as much liberty as possible. While the other colonists were busy trying to get one principal to prevail over the other, Hutchinson was busy trying to smooth over the differences. To him, principals were important, but it was better to get 75% of what you wanted, rather than risk a war to get everything.

But this attitude was, from the 1760s onwards, increasingly out of step with the times. The colonists wanted to establish firm limits on British authority, while the British wanted to show that their authority was unlimited. In such an environment where theory mattered more than practicality, compromise was becoming impossible. To Hutchinson, this was a disaster, but there was little he could do to stop it, no matter how hard he tried. And in the end, the fires of revolution would destroy him.

Next episode, we’ll continue the story of Thomas Hutchinson, and see the first flames of that revolution rise up around him. So join me next time on Early and Often: The History of Elections in America.

If you like the podcast, please rate it on iTunes. You can also keep track of Early and Often on Twitter, at earlyoftenpod, or read transcripts of every episode at the blog, at earlyandoftenpodcast.wordpress.com. Thanks for listening.

Sources:

The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson by Bernard Bailyn

The Varieties of Political Experience in Eighteenth Century America by Richard R. Beeman

From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 by Richard L. Bushman

Voting in Provincial America: A Study of Elections in the Thirteen Colonies 1689-1776 by Robert J. Dinkin

Thomas Hutchinson and the Province Currency by Malcolm Freiberg

America’s Burke: The Mind of Thomas Hutchinson by William Pencak

Power, Influence, and Status: Leadership Patterns in the Massachusetts Assembly 1740-1755 by Robert M. Zemsky

[big-tony]

1-100 hoe

I hate you so much.

1. Spotify, SoundCloud, or Pandora?

Spotify for sure

3. what color are your eyes?

Ugly ass brown

6. describe your personality in 3 words or less

Really obnoxious

8. what kind of car do you drive? color?

I have a black 2013 Nissan Altima 

9. where do you shop?

As much as I hate them, I do most of my shopping on Amazon. I’ve started using Thrift Books when I buy books, but I also want to start going to local bookstores since some have opened up nearby.

10. how would you describe your style?

The stereotypical person who listens exclusively to music on Bandcamp but doesn’t want to commit to buying clothes at Goodwill

11. favorite social media account

Tumblr but I’m kind of warming up to Twitter

13. any siblings?

Yeah I have an older sister

14. if you can live anywhere in the world where would it be? why?

I would say at this stage in my life I would like to live in Spain or Argentina. I’d really like to just be somewhere out of North America where I can speak Spanish all the time. I feel like it would be a nice change of pace

15. favorite snapchat filter? 

I deleted snap like four months ago but I really liked the one that just hid all of your blemishes lmao

17. how many times a week do you shower?

Like 10-12 on average

18. favorite tv show?

Either Eric Andre or the Twilight Zone

19. shoe size?

16 which makes shopping for shoes impossible

20. how tall are you?

6′5″

21. sandals or sneakers? 

Sneakers. I only wear sandals if I’m running somewhere for less than 30 minutes

22. do you go to the gym? 

I kind of neglected that this semester but before that I was going about 5 days a week

24. how much money do you have in your wallet at the moment?

$5 lmao

25. what color socks are you wearing? 

White

26. how many pillows do you sleep with?

Just two I don’t like having too many

27. do you have a job? what do you do? 

Not rn I just finished up working as a research assistant and I’ll be applying for that position again this summer

28. how many friends do you have? 

idk if I had to guess somewhere around 30 but I see about 10 of them weekly the rest kind of rotate in and out

29. whats the worst thing you have ever done? 

This girl was going to sit down when I was in high school and I thought it would be funny to pull the chair out from under her. It was not particularly funny and it still haunts me because it was so unnecessarily mean

30. whats your favorite candle scent? 

Fuck I don’t know what it’s called but when I’m home for the holidays my parents always burn this one candle that just reminds me of Christmas. Very cinnamon-y but also smells like pine needles

31. 3 favorite boy names

James, Antonio, David

32. 3 favorite girl names

Autumn, McKenzie, Maria

33. favorite actor? 

I don’t think I watch enough movies to have a strong opinion on this one

34. favorite actress? 

Same

35. who is your celebrity crush?

Shakira for sure

36. favorite movie? 

I watch so few movies that my favorite movie is basically the last good movie I watched so I’d say Madeinusa. If we’re going for movies that are so bad that they’re awesome I’d say Bloodsport

37. do you read a lot? whats your favorite book? 

Yeah I love reading! I’d say it’s tied between The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway and 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

38. money or brains? 

Brains for sure

39. do you have a nickname? what is it? 

People used to call me Chief Keef all the time but I don’t have one anymore

40. how many times have you been to the hospital?

I think like when I was born was the only time lol

41. top 10 favorite songs

In no particular order:

Smashing Pumpkins - 1979

Sun Kil Moon - Pancho Villa

Algernon Cadwallader - Fun

American Football - Stay Home

Shakira - Se Quiere, Se Mata

Sun Kil Moon - Micheline

Sufjan Stevens - Impossible Soul

The Microphones - The Glow, Pt. 2

Frank Dominguez & Elena Burke - Imágenes

Sufjan Stevens - Romulus

42. do you take any medications daily? 

Nah

43. what is your skin type? (oily, dry, etc)

I’d say pretty oily I have to shower the moment I wake up because my hair looks like a mess from the oil

44. what is your biggest fear? 

Heights

45. how many kids do you want? 

If I decide I want kids, probably just one

46. whats your go to hair style?

I like to keep it pretty short and put some gel in it it’s pretty basic

47. what type of house do you live in? (big, small, etc) 

I live in an apartment right now but my parents’ house is kind of small compared to all my friends’ growing up.

48. who is your role model? 

I try not to have a role model per se because every time I learn about famous people they disappoint me in one way or another. I had a lot of respect for Anthony Bourdain though

49. what was the last compliment you received?

My friend told me yesterday that I’ve made a lot of positive changes in my life this past month, which meant a lot to me

50. what was the last text you sent?

“Dead af” which is pretty par for the course

51. how old were you when you found out santa wasn’t real?

I think I was 9 when I decided he didn’t exist. No one really confirmed or denied it until I was like 12

52. what is your dream car? 

I used to say corvette but I can’t fit in one lol

53. opinion on smoking?

I can’t really get on a high horse about it because I smoke when I’m very drunk but I don’t enjoy the really strong smell of a smoker’s house

54. do you go to college? 

Yeah! I’m studying history and Spanish and I should be graduating spring 2020

55. what is your dream job? 

I want to be a professor and hopefully teach Latin American history

56. would you rather live in rural areas or the suburbs? 

Since my indie folk days are behind me, suburbs for sure

57. do you take shampoo and conditioner bottles from hotels? 

No my hair seems to hate those so I have to bring my own shampoo when I go places

58. do you have freckles? 

nah

59. do you smile for pictures?

Yeah I like my smile a lot so

60. how many pictures do you have on your phone? 

1629 according to my camera roll

61. have you ever peed in the woods? 

Oh yeah absolutely

62. do you still watch cartoons? 

I keep up with Steven Universe by force of habit but otherwise no

63. do you prefer chicken nuggets from Wendy’s or McDonalds?

McDonald’s. Wendy’s chicken nuggets are whack

64. Favorite dipping sauce? 

Chick-Fil-A sauce

65. what do you wear to bed? 

Basketball shorts

66. have you ever won a spelling bee?

I won this in-class one and they asked me to go to the school-wide one but I didn’t go

67. what are your hobbies?

Reading, writing, and learning languages mostly. I’d like to get more social hobbies at some point like get into playing pool but I haven’t gotten around to it

68. can you draw? 

Oh hell no. I tried super hard up until like 7th grade and then I accepted fate

69. do you play an instrument?

I am trying to learn the banjo but I need to get more consistent

70. what was the last concert you saw? 

I saw Fleet Foxes in March, which was an amazing show. I missed American Football in August which I’m still really upset about

71. tea or coffee?

Coffee, though I’d like to learn more about tea

72. Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts?

Dunkin Donuts just because it’s cheaper

73. do you want to get married?

Yeah I have a crippling fear of ending up alone lmao

74. what is your crush’s first and last initial?

I don’t really have a crush but the girl I’m seeing’s initials are BS which is interesting to say the least

75. are you going to change your last name when you get married? 

No but I probably should because my last name is bland af

76. what color looks best on you? 

I think I look good in a deep purple

77. do you miss anyone right now? 

Unfortunately yes but I’m getting over it slowly

78. do you sleep with your door open or closed?

Closed. I have this irrational fear that I will wake up and someone is watching me, but in all reality an unlocked door won’t stop them if that’s what it is going to come to

79. do you believe in ghosts?

Nah

80. what is your biggest pet peeve? 

People who read, watch, or hear something slightly out of the ordinary and go “WOW I WONDER HOW MANY DRUGS THEY MUST HAVE BEEN ON TO COME UP WITH THAT”

81. last person you called`

My parents like two hours ago

82. favorite ice cream flavor? 

Cookies and cream

83. regular oreos or golden oreos? 

Regular, I didn’t know people liked the golden ones

84. chocolate or rainbow sprinkles? 

Rainbow

85. what shirt are you wearing? 

A UCF football shirt! Go Knights

86. what is your phone background?

Salamovka at Night (Judy’s Window Lit) by Lois Dodd

87. are you outgoing or shy?

Very outgoing lol

88. do you like it when people play with your hair?

Ugh I love it so much

89. do you like your neighbors? 

Never talked to em but they’re quiet so I can’t complain

90. do you wash your face? at night? in the morning?

Yeah before bed and after my shower

91. have you ever been high? 

Many times

92. have you ever been drunk? 

Many times

93. last thing you ate? 

I got a chicken tender sub at Publix!

94. favorite lyrics right now

Don’t leave home, again

If empathy takes energy

‘Cause everyone feels just like you

But that’s life, it’s so social

95. summer or winter? 

Winter because I like when it’s a bit chillier, even though Florida does not get very cold. It’s been in the 40s and 50s this week which has been incredible and I wish we had more days like that.

96. day or night? 

I like the night during summer and the day during winter. 

97. dark, milk, or white chocolate? 

Milk chocolate

98. favorite month? 

October

99. what is your zodiac sign

Libra

100. who was the last person you cried in front of? 

My ex-girlfriend about three years ago.

I still hate you for this.

[tedtcnk-blog]

e.m.t. - intro

I’m abigail but I go by either abby or gail and i go by she her pronouns. I live in edt timezone and I’m a seventeen year old junior in high school. I’m a pretty busy student seeing as i take mainly ap classes and am involved with several extracurriculars so i may not be EXTREMELY active, but im going to try my best to get to know you all and interact with everyone!! <3

&&introducing your character

[ marlon langeland. seventeen. he/him. ] EDWARD TONKS  has stepped through the barrier to platform 9 ¾. the SEVENTH  year HUFFLEPUFF  student is most looking forward to FEELING AT HOME AGAIN.. their peers describe HIM as ELEEMOSYNARY & FACETIOUS, and has dubbed HIM as the SOILED DOVE. TED  feels FORLORN  about the war raging outside of hogwarts plans to JOIN THE ORDER when the year is up.

&&aesthetic loud and echoing laughs, summer rains, late nights sitting in the dewy grass, watching fireworks light up the stars, goofing around and wrestling for fun, catching fireflies in mason jars, hair frizzing in the humid air, faces lit by lampposts and the moonlight, poofy and patterned duvets, spending all day wrapped up in the sheets, the smell of freshly cleaned clothes, sad songs played on low, tattered jeans caked with mud, sneakers with the soles falling out

&&bio

Ted Tonks, born with the full given and strictly biblical name Edward Michael Tonks, was born to a family who had three very cut and clean rules. For most of his life, at least the first eleven of them, he followed these rules without a hiccup. The first one was fairly simple; never bad mouth mom and dad, seeing as they feed and provide for you after all. The second was that everyone ate together as a family every other night, and that meant the whole family, including great-grandma and grandpa. The last was the trickiest being that it seemed to be about 100 rules in one. It, however, was the one that was the most unforgivable if broken, that being that it demanded that everyone in the family was to follow, without question, every word the bible said.

Though Ted’s family was fairly huge when you factored in cousins and such, it was mostly easy for him to follow these rules. Being the only child, he absolutely adored his parents and they somewhat adored him back. As a child he was always on his father's heels, begging to go to work with him in the summers and waiting by the front door for him to get home on school nights. The second rule, as well, was easy because he never questioned spending moments with his family and enjoying the good food that was always passed around. It was the third, however that stopped Ted in his tracks.

The way his mother was, it seemed like everything he did broke some rule. She’d snip at him for running in from the garden and dragging mud into the house, claiming that he’d broken some holy rule when really all he’d done was get a bit of dirt on the floor which was mind you, fairly easy to get up. He bit his lip and dealt with it, however.

When he turned eleven however, and it came time to go back to school, everything in his family dynamic shifted. He remembers distinctly the day when he got home from a friends house to his mother who looked like she’d never been more angry in her life. Without a word he fled to his room, not daring to pester her about what was for dinner or when his father was going to be home. Dinner time passed, and as he heard the typically clanking of forks and spoons he also heard bitter voices, speaking in hisses and whispers. Not sure what he’d done, he sat at his door, feeling guilty at every sound he heard as he picked at the dirt that was still smushed into his hands.

Eventually his mother explained to him that he had done something wicked, though refusing to explain, she allowed him to come down and eat his food which had already grown cold. The whole time he ate, he felt his father’s eyes from the living room watching every move he made and the way his mother stationed herself at the kitchen sink made her look like a hawk circling its prey. He finished and was led straight back up to his room, where his mother shoved a letter into his hand and left him to his own devices to figure it out.

During the week that led up to the date that had been so bitterly circled on the paper, Ted had been kept under the hawk eye of both his parents. They hushed him at dinner when he attempted to get answers about what the school was like and his father look down right offended when he asked when they were going to go get his supplies. On the day of departure, Ted was more than ready to leave and finally get answers on to why everything was so hush hush. He known he’d seen something about wizardry around the logo of the school’s letter, but he thought it was merely a joke or some sort of metaphor. Surely he wasn’t being sent to do magic, his mother always told him that it was evil and not real anyways.

Sure enough, only after a few minutes aboard the Hogwarts express did he really understand why his parents had been so quick to mute him and hide him away. Feeling awful, his first few months at school were awful. The kids laughed at him for not having the right supplies and wearing homemade robes that his mother had very obviously made with no care in the world.  Even after he finally was provided with the right things and fully grasped what Hogwarts was, not many seemed to even bat an eye in his direction. He learned, however, to make the laughing into background music and grew accustomed to the fact that both of the two worlds he belonged to would never fully see him as a member of their society.

&&some place magical

Ted has always adored the magical and home-y feel that hogwarts has given off. Though both parts of his life have it’s downsides, he finds hogwarts more of a home to him than his official “home” He adores the way the whole castle is detailed unlike his old shed-like house he grew up in. He was raised well off enough, but seeing as his family had a shared farming business, his parents never found it sensible to upgrade from their first home they’d ever gotten together. The house was fine, just bland. The walls were bare, the house was small, and felt more temporary than anything. It just felt like a home until they got a new one, like a halfway unpacked house.

The detail of the castle, the nooks and hidden halls and ornate paintings, all of it, captured his fascination. He never gets tired of roaming the halls, finding new places to stop for a quick moment of silence or a spot to do homework when his roomates get to loud.

&&anything else

Ted himself can be a bit opposite of his parents fuddy-duddy ways, and while this is a good thing, his childish like humor and attitude can get him into a bit of trouble at times. Its been with him since he was young. His mother was always on him for trekking mud through the house or spending too much in the yard and not inside studying. Now that he’s a bit more mature he knows better, yet his childish ways still sometimes get ahead of his conscious mind at times.

&&ted vs. tech

Ted is actually really well versed with technology and it’s ins and outs. Probably seeing as he grew up in the muggle world, he was used to always being surrounded to these devices and working with them from a young age. That and the only real way he connects with his father anymore is through their love for technology. His father, though his professional occupation is a lot more boring and repetitive, really enjoys messing with technology and figuring out how everything works. While Ted isnt THAT interested in the mechanics of it, he pretends to like it anyways. He’s more interested in the social media side of things.

That being said, Ted is a snapchat GOD and don’t you dare break your streak with him. He’s that bitch that sends streaks every HOUR to make sure none of them are broken and will give his password away to someone if he gets in trouble and has his phone taken.

He’s that person to put his phone on airplane mode as well while he reads dms. Rather be safe than sorry bc that way he can avoid whoever he wants :))))))

His twitter is also nothing but retweets from the account @garyfromteenmom

Want to see Ted go buck wild bananas? Literally play 1 second of goofy goober rock and he will be up and dancing faster than you can turn it off

[monunilight]

Insult to Injury

Reader x JHope (BTS)

Angst | Dating an idol

Word Count: 1,478

Warning: Cyber bullying 

A/N: I’m not even sure where this came from and I’m not sure where it’s going. But I feel like it’s going to be a big ‘ole pile of angst right now. And I wanted to try this different style out, so let me know if you have any feedback on the style or the story itself! More parts to come soon!

Part 2 | 3

You met him when you bumped into him in a restaurant. You were on your way to the bathroom and he was just coming out. Somehow, you two began to talk before your friends came searching to see if you had fallen in the toilet.

Before you left the restaurant, he had managed to slip you his number through the waiter with his name scribbled on the top. Hoseok.

At the time you didn’t know who he was, but that wouldn’t matter until later anyway. For the time being, you were having a blast texting him. He would make awful jokes, but they always put a smile on your face. He would also ask so many questions about you, he was so genuinely interested in getting to know you. You hadn’t had anyone do that before and you had to admit you were quite smitten by his charm.

After a month of talking, you grew frustrated enough that he wasn’t asking you out that you took the initiative to do so. You were a bit worried when he didn’t seem super thrilled about the idea, but he agreed to it.

He insisted that you guys go to a movie for your first date, which you were a little bummed about. Movies were fun, but it didn’t allow for much time to talk. You were at least happy to be going out with him.

You met him at the theater, but you barely recognized him as he was wearing a ball cap and face mask. You two sat in the back of the theater, not because he was planning to make out with you the entire time, but because he wanted to crack jokes constantly. It had you in stitches the whole movie, even when it was a serious scene.

You were surprised when, at the end of the night, he asked you on a second date. You ecstatically accepted.

For the second date he took you on a hike and that’s when he told you what he did for a living. You couldn’t say you were completely surprised, with his charms and his looks it would be a shock if he wasn’t in the public eye somehow. But an idol?

It wasn’t until the fifth date that he asked you to be his girlfriend. But, it came with caveats. There was no way for this to be a public relationship, and you wouldn’t want it to be anyway. You feared his fans and what your family would say about you dating a kpop idol. You also wouldn’t be able to go on super public dates, obviously. Both conditions sounded manageable to you, so you accepted.

It was after a month of officially dating when he first stayed the night. The snow had been pouring down all day long, even before Hoseok came over to your apartment. When he arrived, he was covered in white and shook it off himself like a dog. This made you laugh while pulling him inside for some hot cocoa and movies. By the time night fell, there was a full foot and a half of snow on the ground. He was a little reluctant, he had practice early the next morning, but he agreed that it was silly for him to try to make it home that night.

You were so nervous when you two climbed into bed, you hadn’t had anyone over like this for a while. Hoseok simply pulled you close to him and held you tight all-night long. You woke up in the morning to find him already gone, a note on the pillow next to your head.

‘Let’s do that again soon.’

Another month and it was finally time to meet the rest of Hoseok’s band. Nervous couldn’t even begin to explain how you felt. Hoseok tried to reassure you, but you knew that this was a make-or-break moment. If his band, some of his closest friends, didn’t like you, then it was all over.

Thankfully, all the members were super sweet and welcoming to you. Namjoon was the first you met, and he was all smiles and soft conversation. Jin was busy cooking when you arrived, but he called out for you to come taste test the food for him. You were then pulled into the living room where Yoongi, Taehyung, and Jimin all sat watching TV. They told you to sit down and chatted with you until dinner. It was only when the food was finished that the final member, Jungkook, emerged from playing video games in his room.

Dinner went smoothly, and you could not even remember why you were worried in the first place. Being with the guys felt like spending time with a family.

That was also the first night you stayed over at Hoseok’s. You were a little embarrassed because it was such a small dorm and all the guys were there, but you couldn’t resist the temptation of sleeping in Hoseok’s arms. You didn’t find out until the next morning that Jimin hadn’t slept in his bed because you were there, making you feel a little guilty.

It was soon after that that you received the first message. It was sent to you on Twitter, from an account that was obviously an ARMY fan account. It seemed like an innocent enough message, just asking who you were and how you knew BTS. You ignored it, sure that someone had just seen some of your own fancams you had posted from a concert you went to a couple weeks ago.

Everything felt like a dream. While Hoseok was busy, and you were too with work and school, you made it work very well. He would come over as often as possible, usually two or three times a week, and would take you out on the weekends. It involved a lot of late nights and early mornings to accommodate your schedules, but it worked.

Another month and you two decided to celebrate your three-month anniversary, because, well, why not? You planned the evening, dinner at a nice restaurant and then star gazing in a park on the outskirts of town. An evening both of you were sure to enjoy.

Hoseok picked you up and drove to the restaurant. When you made the reservation, you made sure to ask for a table that was secluded and they had been happy to accommodate your request. You wanted to enjoy the evening without being worried about fans spotting you two.

After dinner, you headed out to the park. It was a very clear night, and you had brought a couple of blankets, one to lay on and one to lay under. You cuddled up close with Hoseok under the night sky, content with life.

That night, under the bright stars, Hoseok told you he loved you for the first time.

It was also after that night that you started to get more messages.

Apparently, someone had spotted you and Hoseok walking into the restaurant, holding hands. They had snapped a picture but, thankfully, hadn’t tagged you in it. That didn’t stop the crazy fans from finding out who you were. You woke up to about ten messages of varying degrees of questions and outrage.

Who are you? Are you dating Jhope? What do you think gives you the right? What are you doing with Jhope? How dare you touch my oppa! You’re not even pretty, why do you think you can be with him?

The responses on the pictures themselves were even worse.

She’s got no sense of fashion, who would even wear something that ugly? She looks so bland compared to our Hobi. So ugly. Is it just me or is she a bit fat? Oppa, you deserve much better. Just drop her and go out with me. He is way out of her league. If he truly loved her, he wouldn’t hide the relationship, right? He’ll always put us first. Ugly cow.  

You were sure they weren’t all insults in the comments, but that’s all your eyes could find. It didn’t take long of reading these comments to have you in tears. You weren’t sure what to do, so you just called Hoseok. He told you to come over immediately and not to worry, they would take care of it. You made your way to his dorm, now terrified of being spotted anywhere near the building. Hoseok greeted you with a hug and multiple kisses, trying to calm you down as much and as quickly as he could. He pulled you up to his room, sitting on the bed with you cradled in his arms.

“I can’t take this.” You whispered into his chest, letting the last of your tears fall freely. “They’re so mean.”

“I know, I know.” He murmured, rubbing your back gently. “It’ll be ok, though. I promise. I’ll protect you.”

[scifimagpie]

Evil is Boring, and Other Unexpected Things

Like a chipmunk crouching in a forest next to a nuclear reactor, Canada is in close proximity to the slow-motion disaster that is the United States of America. With a president who coasted into office on a wave of electoral fraud constantly compromising the safety of the country's information and people.

A part of me - perhaps unbelievably - is a little embarrassed to be excoriating Trump as thoroughly as I am, even though it's nearly a universally understood truth at this point - and even though his party's legislation has directly resulted in the caging of immigrants and their children, and their detainment in concentration camps.

That said, I think one of the hardest things to understand about Donald Trump is that, inasmuch as he's basically as evil and villainous as it gets, he's not the kind of villain I was raised to to expect.

What is evil?

That's a complex question, but for our purposes, I'm going to reference both aesthetics and intentions. My personal stance on evil is that it's more of a verb than a noun. One's actions, weighed in the balance of their impact, as well as the current historical or contemporary perspective, tend to determine whether or not one is classified as evil. For instance, Winston Churchill tested mustard gas on Kurdish villagers before deploying it during WWII, and the otherwise admirable Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who created the "New Deal" and a number of important social security measures for American citizens, also was responsible for the internment of Japanese-Americans. Canada has its own examples of leaders with similarly mixed legacies. In the context of colonialism and that resulting violence, it's hard to canonize any leaders, especially those in the "New World."

That being said, Adolf Hitler's actions and his legacy are pretty good examples - nearly archetypcal examples - of what we see as evil nowadays. (Well, those of us who are not neo-Nazis, anyway.)

But do they look evil?

Between Disney and other fantastical films, very clear portrayals of "a villain" emerged - a villain was supposed to be stylish, attractive, usually or frequently non-white, damaged, and either coded-gay or overtly homosexual (sometimes asexual). In contrast, heroes - especially in the nineties - were usually laid-back slackers, usually white, straight, and male; always heterosexual, and both mentally and physically well, often athletic or extremely nerdy, and usually lacking self-confidence and/or social skills. Frequently, said heroes were disproportionately popular, due to some inexplicable "leadership quality," and I'm sure many of my readers will be familiar with the token reward girlfriends usually accorded to such heroes as a matter of course.

The state of the present

Much hay has been made of the idea that young white men grew up seeing themselves as heroes based on their birthright, and therefore, have not had to do anything to deserve that mantle. Said young and less-than-young men are also increasingly fond of mocking marginalized people who dare set boundaries on the portrayals of their cultures, sexuality, and themselves.

Given that white men and white women voted for Trump in droves, and have continually shuffled out of the way when held accountable for inequality issues, I feel it's fair to say that both the left and right have come to see straight, white, cisgender, heterosexual, and able people as - well, the "enemy," or at least a source of antagonism - and as a "persecuted minority," respectively. That said, from what I can tell black people and other people of colour don't really hate white people, not really - but centuries and decades of persecution and marginalization and abuse have led to a lot of pain and entirely reasonable resentment.

More recently, in addition to the many nigh-endless microaggressions and larger acts of violent discrimination perpetrated against people of colour, images of the cargo shorts-clad and tiki-torch wielding racist protesters trying to "defend their white heritage and children" are inescapable. For white queers, a similar dynamic exists with "the straights" - it's not that we hate straight people, but we exist in a constant state of trepidation, wary of that moment when a friend or relative will suddenly reveal that they hate people like us, or have no interest in preserving the rights of people like us.

Because narratives cut us out of the spotlight or cast us in antagonistic roles, queers and people of colour grew up fixating on minor characters and often, on villains. When I thought about it tonight, my heart cracked to realise that the people who were supposed to be the heroes fighting injustice - ordinary white men - seem to care little about our rights and their so-called birthright - and those who were always cast as villains had ended up being, well, the ones fighting for people's rights to marry, control their own bodies, vote, and not be incarcerated or killed on fatuous or fabricated charges.

Coping with it

On the other hand, I finally had the emotional resources and the chance to watch Black Panther recently, and I think the movie - which did not disappoint - offers both hope and some potential solutions. Martin Freeman's (hilariously) American CIA agent is overtly (and rightly) called a colonizer, but he learns to listen to Nakia and Shuri rather than questioning them or assuming he knows better. The movie nods to the historical reality of American interference in other countries' governments, but unlike Andy Serkis' character, he doesn't refer to the Wakandans as "savages."

The peaceful resolution at the end of the movie brings tears to my eyes as I recollect it. Conquest and murder won't make reparations for the sins of the past (and present). But resources and nurturing might, and will save the current and future generations - as well as enriching all of us.

And personally, that's the future I want. Let me be clear - as a scary leftist, all I want is for everyone in my city, my province, my country, my continent, and this world to be housed, fed, and safe; for people to be happy, healthy, and loved. That includes the straight, white, cisgender people, not just the marginalized.

I want to see what the world can be if we work together to take care of it. I want to see what kind of art we can produce when we have the opportunity to make it, and what we can discover if we put the resources towards the sciences. And from what I've gleaned from talking to anarchists, communists, socialists, and even many people on the liberal spectrum - that's what all of us want.

But to do that, we have to figure out what we're fighting for, and maybe, who we're fighting.

As a writer...

I was never prepared for this eventuality. Will Ferguson's Happiness (TM), a book in which the end of the world is wrought by a self-help book, had some excellent points about the banality of evil. I think a lot of us still think of evil as stylish and classy, but where in that schema do we place a tasteless human vuvuzela like Trump? The bland and smiling "worst teacher you had in high school" persona of Mike Pence has something of a place in the rogue's gallery of archetypes, especially in dystopian fiction. But how do we reconcile with the fact that the people we were taught to trust and idolize - for instance, cops and parents - are only too happy to hurt us?

Honestly? I don't have an answer, so I want to know how all of you feel about this. Reblog, comment, and answer - how do you feel about this reversal? How are you going to write about villains and antagonists?

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime, housemate, and their cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and nightmares, as well as social justice issues. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. Catch up with Michelle's news on the mailing list. Her books are available on Amazon, and she is also active on Medium, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and the original blog.

[klaralachman]

Case Studies

do Today's post is dedicated to case studies of two creators I highly admire. I will look at their websites, social media use, and branding to seek inspiration as well as possible improvements. The main question today is: What can you take away from them and apply to your own industry?

The first creator I am going to look at today is Matt D'Avella.  He is a well-known filmmaker, YouTuber, and minimalist who is passionate about challenges, coffee, and his biceps (his own joke, lol).

https://mattdavella.com/

This is Matt’s website and in order to analyze, we need to answer the following questions:

How do they promote their work and skills?

Matt has his own website, a youtube channel (with more than 3mil subs), an Instagram account  (350 k followers), and a podcast called The Ground up Show. Also (as if that wasn't quite enough), he has filmed two Netflix documentaries and created his own course Simple habits where he gives guidance to people trying to stick to their habits.

Website pro’s and con’s

Pro’s

Everything is clear, very minimalistic, and easy to find. He has linked all his social media accounts as well as his course and podcast.

Con’s

In my opinion, his website is a bit bland and uninteresting, on the other hand, he really is a minimalist, so it was probably an intend of his. I do not like the Sign up for emails option on the main page – If I were new, I would want to get to know him a little bit first, before signing up for anything.

How do they describe themselves on their ‘About’ page?

His description of himself is, again, very minimalistic and I think he could have added a little bit more information or informality to make it interesting and to connect to his audience on a higher level. For example, I really like this 'about me' piece by Jenny Johannesson (that we were shown as part of our module), it's informative and funny at the same time and that makes it way more memorable.

http://www.jennyjohannesson.com/

What social media do they use and how well do they use them?

Matt uses Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. His branding is very consistent – the same profile picture, username, and even the descriptions are pretty similar. He lacks a logo, but I don’t think that it’s big of an issue in his case, his profile photo is quite memorable itself.

He does have all his social media platforms cross-linked, but except for his youtube channel, there are no links for his website.

Do they have any advice about their industry? How they got the job? What skills they needed?

He doesn’t really have an article or a saying that I could quote, but I watched one of his videos about becoming a professional filmmaker ( and he says that education is really not that important (or in his case not important at all). What matters is your love for the subject and your will to work hard and to grow as a creative. You need to enjoy it first, and down the road, it turns into work in many ways. But in the beginning, you really need to push through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd9mMqL7s1I

From some of his other videos, I remember him saying that in the beginning, he was in 100 000 dollar student debt, was living with his parents, suffered from anxiety, and was terrified of dating. He talks about the beauty of rules and how they help us to achieve our goals, dreams, and better lives in general. He loves setting rules for himself and his channel is full of 30-day challenges that are really interesting and encouraging to watch. He says that rules and hard work were what made his life 100% better. He started as a freelance filmmaker and eventually became a full-time Youtuber. He has filmed two Netflix documentaries, countless youtube videos, created his own course, and is now happily engaged. To me, that’s pretty impressive.

The second creator I am going to analyze today is Brandon Woefel, young portrait photographer based in New York.

He is known for the distinctive look of his photographs and his love for pastel colors and lights.

How do they promote their skills and work?

Brandon mainly uses Instagram where he has a huge following base of almost 3 million followers. He also uses Facebook, Youtube, and his website with an embedded shop where people can buy his art. He also taught a photography course on Skillshare (which is great btw.) and had some partnerships with Adobe Photoshop.

Website pro’s and con’s

https://www.brandonwoelfel.com/

This is Brandon’s website layout. You can either click on the actual website or shop his newest photo book Ultraviolet. This is the look if you proceed to his website.

Pro’s

His website is pretty clear, minimalistic and everything is easy to find. It showcases a lot of his artwork, which is obviously amazing. All his social media platforms are linked and there is a contact form available. What I really appreciate are his ‘before and afters’ where you can see his photographs both edited and unedited. I really like looking at these, and it shows his editing mastery. Another nice feature is that he has a page on his website dedicated to recommending cameras for beginners.

Con’s

I do not like the fact that you need to click ‘website’ to get on his actual website. It would be much more elegant if he just had a ‘Shop’ page where you could get everything you need. Another con is that his website lacks an ‘About me’ page, which is really a shame. – Therefore I am not able to answer the following question ‘how do they describe themselves on their ‘About’ page? Also, I think the font families on his website are not consistent and neither is his branding. He does have a logo, but it’s very inconsistent, and his social media platforms only have the link for his book Ultraviolet, not his website.

What social media do they use and how well do they use them?

As I have mentioned, Brandon’s primary platform is definitely Instagram. He is pretty consistent with posting and his feed has great aesthetics to it. He also uses Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, where he shows a lot of behind the scenes, which is quite interesting. He has a consistent username @brandonwoefel and his accounts are linked across. The only shame is that he doesn’t link his website, only his book Ultraviolet, but that is apparently his priority right now.

Here, on his youtube channel, he uses a font family that looks 'handwritten’ but unfortunately it doesn’t match the logo nor the fonts on his website.

Do they have any advice about their industry? How they got the job? What skills they needed?

https://fstoppers.com/business/photographer-brandon-woelfel-shares-shooting-and-editing-secrets-gained-him-3-408866

In this article, Brandon talks about his story of becoming a famous freelance photographer. The funny thing is that he didn't even intend to be a photographer at all, he studied computer graphics and eventually found his way to photography. He says that consistency is the key and having a signature style to your photos is what's gonna get you recognized. "Having a certain aesthetic can get you recognized, instead of blending into the crowd." He also actively engaged with his audience and paid attention to what they responded to which has helped him to improve his craft even more.

His youtube channel is also full of videos, where he shares his tips and tricks on how to take better photos as well as behind the scenes. How to take self-portraits, how to manipulate colour in Photoshop, how to use the light – these are just a few among many, and they are all really useful. He also advises on how to find your unique photography style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq7wLHEkYnY

Even though I have criticized some aspects of their branding I highly respect both of these creators and I think their work is spectacular. They are a great inspiration to me and they encourage me to get better every day. Thank you for reading and see you next time

Klara

[xtremedespair3d]

My Lukewarm History with Pixelbuster/Nitomatta

Yesterday, independent gaming journalist Pixelbuster, or Nitomatta, has been under controversy for taking advantage of small gaming news site Final Weapon for getting review copies of games and don’t review them all, basically getting the games he’s supposed to review for free. He’s been fired from Final Weapon and put his journalist career to an end.

This post is copied and pasted from a thread I made yesterday, so think of it as a complete and more accessible guide to my rant about Pixelbuster/Nitomatta with a few changes from the thread. This post isn't about what happened to Pixel and owning games for free, since people talked about him, I decided to take an opportunity to rant with my own perspective about why do I dislike the guy.

I never liked Pixel the moment we started talking a little bit more and even brought me to his server in 2018. There are times that he contradicted me on certain things and seeing his tweets really drove me insane a lot in 2019 to the point that I had to mute him. 

I also never understood why did Pixel make me a mod on his server. I mean, I appreciate it but at the same time I need to understand what am I worth to him. But then I kind of abuse the power of being a mod by deleting people's negative comments I don't like. Not to mention I seriously rant and vent A LOT in his server which almost nobody didn't really care about comforting me at all, but at the same time I always thought I might be getting everyone on their nerves. And speaking of his server (which is now deleted lol), that's one of the worst servers I've ever been, the people in there are so bland, talk shit on a couple of things a lot, and they share all kinds of porn I wasn't a huge fan of the Western art style of. To top it all off with sharing NSFW content on his server, he's absolutely okay with having people share furry porn but not loli/shota porn because it would make some people uncomfortable. Like, really? Come on. Sure, you don't really have to like loli/shota porn, but still, learn to have more balls on bearing that shit, especially if whether or not you're those "Fiction = Reality" purists (Which I hate these kinds of people). 

Lastly, at one time, I left his server because I was getting tired of it, then I came back for a little bit to take a quick peek to see what has changed after announcing I was leaving, and then I left again.

Then Pixelbuster DM'd me on Discord saying to please come back to the server, I was getting bored anyways so I decided to return (along to the RPG Site Discord server where we first met and the one server I despise to death). Now I regret returning to his bland ass server. After returning to his server, Pixel told me "Thank you, I promise you we will help you" probably about my problems I constantly talk about. Then I constantly rant and vent on his server a lot and he and his friends continued to do NOTHING to help me. I also felt sorry for talking ill of him and a bit of his server, but afterwards, I took back my apology as I still loathe him and his server.

The only thing I'll admire Pixel for is that some of his viral clips get retweeted by Japanese people, particularly artists and most recently, I saw a tweet of a RE3 mod video where he was retweeted by bkub, the creator of Pop Team Epic.

For a while I’ve always wanted to randomly tweet that Pixelbuster is a clown, he’s a total piece of shit, and with all this scandal, I finally took the opportunity to say it, but not because of what he did with Final Weapon, because I never liked him. I never liked Pixel at all, part of me feels like he deserves the hate he's getting, and I wish to completely disassociate with me for good. Also, he hates Yumi. He likes all Senran Kagura girls except Yumi. Like, seriously? Fuck Pixel.

The most baffling things he's ever said is that he would get better from his mental health issues and negativity. I'm really sorry but I seriously can't help but laugh so hard at it because he seriously can't help himself on the way he is. His behavior and his opinions are the major reasons why do I despise Pixel to death, he's just absolutely destructive on a lot of things media related. Sure, you could say that most of his opinions attacking large corporates like Disney and such are valid, but it's just the way he expresses them and everything are something I seriously couldn't take him seriously for. That's why I muted him on Twitter this year, I couldn't stand a word he said and it drove me insane a lot last year. I know I already said that but I must stress that out.

What are the things that he contradicted me? Well...

On the RPG Site Discord, the time we were watching the Sega panel from Tokyo Game Show and there was a segment that featured the mobile game called Kotodaman, which they were talking about a Kemono Friends collab. I randomly said that I recognized the game from watching VTuber Noja Loli Ojisan Nekomasu, and he said "I don't care." In retrospect, that sounded very forced. (The thing about the Kotodaman and the Kemono Friends collab was around the same time Tatsuki got fired by Kadokawa when Kemono Friends turned out so successful.)

The time he shared a later Captain Marvel trailer and said that he's finally sold on it, I told him most trailer are fine and he told me "No."

The time when the One Punch Man fighter game was announced, I simply said that it probably was to capitalize on season 2 and he said "No one gives a shit about season 2." I mean, sure but you didn't need to tell me that. Hell, you didn't even HAVE to force your opinions saying that you don't care, can't you just simply learn to ignore, you fucking idiot?

Let's not even get started on the time Pixel banned BlindedOtaku (Who I really despise because he's annoying) from his after some internal drama on his server on December 30th 2018. I wouldn't like to get into details because I can't remember what exactly happened nor I care. The last thing I remember about the drama is that I brought BlindedOtaku to the server after being kicked because he told me so and elaborate on his account on what happened. Then Pixel banned him for good and told me "You tried."

What's the point of this post? The point of this thread is just pretty much ranting about my history with Pixel as "friends," even though I've always had a distance with him and to show off that I wholeheartedly don't recommend you talking to him for the faint of heart, especially after this whole drama happened.

I would say that he can be a very difficult person to talk with, but he's not, the last time I had a relatively normal conversation with him is that if he gets the laggy cutscenes in the PC port of Persona 4 Golden, which he told me it only affects laptop users (Well shit).

Now, here comes the ultimate question: Should Pixelbuster be cancelled?

Well, I'm an edgy person so I would say yes, but at the same time, I don't condone cancel culture and he should own up to his mistakes, so absolutely not. I don't like Pixel for what he is regardless of the drama, I probably won't redeem myself on liking him more, but for the faint of heart, I don't want him to be cancelled. I heard that he's admitted his mistakes so it's something. Even if he were to own up to his mistakes and apologize, he’s now been fired from Final Weapon, if shit goes a little too far outside of Final Weapon, then his career as a journalist has indeed been ruined. To reiterate, no, Pixelbuster should not be cancelled. (At this point he’s probably indeed cancelled.)

I was feeling tempted to talk about Pixelbuster since he's still present on Discord, I would probably talk to him about the situation, but because I need to keep my word about why do I dislike him, I decided to block him on Discord once and for all. I doubt I'd want to talk to him ever again. I was genuinely feeling soft on wanting to comfort the guy and I feel absolutely disgusted and I want to drill my head to suck all the blood from my brain for thinking that.

My biggest gripe with Pixel is that once I become a successful creator, when I make some despicable stories or say some dumb shit, he'd put me on the vein of MatPat and Disney, that’s how despicable he is. I’m sorry if I may sound egotistical and biased because I hate people’s opinions and stuff, but he’s one of the many things that turned me into the kind of person I am right now, an egotistical dude who has a deep hatred for literally anyone’s opinions, criticims, everything else, even small complaints, because I’m easy to get my thoughts dictated and I always disagree and refuse to believe anyone by (occasionally) insult and fight back directly at them.

A few hours ago, he had returned to Twitter only to make a TwitLonger about his statement, I probably wouldn’t care to read the whole thing, but the most important parts is that he’s gone off the face of the internet for good and he’s getting a proper job now. I wish I could have tell him some final words for him, but I can’t even bother.

And there you go, that’s the end of my experience with Pixelbuster. Totally unrelated to the review copy drama, but I wanted to tell everyone how unlikeable he’s always been. And with that said, I’m finally free! I’m finally free from being associated with this scumbag (even though we probably hadn’t interacted much but I’ve always seen his activities that seriously drove me insane), he, his Discord server and the people on it, everything can go to hell with him.

P.S. What’s with the Nitocris thumbnail? Well, Nitocris was his waifu, he’s always had Nitocris images as his profile pictures, but recently he had a new icon of a commission of his OC. That makes me think his love for Nitocris has ceased.

Check out my Carrd.

[petitalbert-blog]

Tangential thinking about Chumbley thoughts: When I came up in the 90s and 00s, they hadn't figured out how to monetise the internet yet. Most people has disconnected personal websites, which they maintained for pleasure and rarely had expectations of others reading. Later, this became blogging - something which was still decentralised, where readers were rare and interacting with them uncommon. In my lifetime, those things have gone. Now, central microblogging platforms like tumblr and twitter make connection with readers immediate and interactive - and made "attracting more followers" a goal in a way you really didn't before. I've definitely lost my ability to write happily for an audience of one, content without knowing whether or not i am read. And one is able to monetise what one makes and offer it for sale. Bear with me: I'm sad about this. A sharing culture has vanished. I'm into historic dressmaking, but when you look for tutorials and free patterns online they are all on blogs not updated since 2013. What changed? Where did the people writing incredible free content and sharing their work with the world go? The only people who seem to be maintaining blogs are people running a brand. And I've followed plenty of great blogs which, at some point, have launched a small business - and diminished, either through loss of pleasure or a greater need to be private and middle-of-the-road. Look at Sidney Eileen's website - there is no way anyone would produce a comprehensive free guide to making corsets nowadays. Some of Eileen's most recent posts talks about being ill, so I hope she is still well wherever she is - but where are the next generation like her? The current corsetmakers mostly write for a paywall-locked site. The site does as well as any could: it still offers a lot of free articles, it pays contributors, and I know several of their authors who have reuplodded their work for free on personal blogs with permission after a period of time has elapsed. It's about as open as any site can be while still generating a profit, and I have gratitude for that; but it's still a change from Eileen's generous sharing culture. Something which made all the drama particularly irritating is: I am full time working artist. I am pretty acutely aware of the importance of paying people for work, and have to explain why I cannot lower my prices once or twice a month. And yet - and yet. It's making my grief for the early internet all the more acute. I put 100 hours into a crochet pattern and maybe three people buy it. At that stage, is it really worth me charging anything? People can and do make their own working wages online, and that's great. And yet - and yet. Maybe the culture where i was sharing my patterns for free and downloading them for free from others was better and more optimistic, than one where everyone charges £10 for a pattern and once a year £3.67 minus PayPal fees slinks into my account. Barely anyone is making much more than pocket money, and everyone is disadvantaged. I probably lose more money in a year now paying for patterns than I do by producing them, and so does everyone else. It's definitely causing me a tug of war where, I hate this new norm and I miss the old culture even as it's the only way for me to make rent. And I barely do that. The only place where this sharing culture still exists is the programming community, where it's a core value. You can generally download programming languages and full guides and documentation for free, and people are keen to help. That culture then translates into big tech workplaces who have both the money and the ideology to give employees paid time off to work on personal projects. I love that. Imagine every company gave a months paid leave to everyone each year, imagine the world we could build if underpaid and tired people had those gaps to be creative and explore, or even to spend that month at home with their children or supporting their parents. Changing the culture to recognise the value of this unpaid labour, and then finding a way to support people doing it. I also think a lot about the Universal Basic Income - where the government reinvests the national revenue in giving every citizen a poverty-line yearly wage. I dream about the way this would revive the open culture. I don't need much to survive, and I think a lot about how much happier I was blogging for pleasure and producing content for free than I am now, maintaining a bland blog for my brand and making less back in revenue than I spend buying online content from peers; more aware than ever of the importance of supporting niche artists, but ironically, too broke to do so. If I didn't worry about buying food, if the government took that worry away from me, I'd have the freedom to embody my ideal and share what I make for free. I like youtube's model, where sufficiently large creators get a share of advertising revenue. It enables people to make free content, and be paid for it. I think a lot about how a collectively-owned tumblr, where high traffic posts earned a proportion of ad rev, would work. Or perhaps tumblr's profit could be divided by each user, who could then choose to gift it to bloggers they wished to support. Economically speaking, running a tumblr is working for free: it generates revenue for the site owners. I think patreon is ok, but it still creates too direct a link for me between "producing middle of the road content acceptable to backers on a regular schedule" and "being able to afford gas". And I liked models where things are released for free and for pay simultaneously. I have ordered Dver's books, which republish free blog articles, because I like them. I own Joan Bunning's Tarot book because her website "learn tarot" made the whole book available for free, and I wanted it enough to read it in hardcover. I buy my fave musicians LPs every time, but he still releases them on youtube for free. Perhaps this economy is governed by the same economics of piracy. Studies have shown that people who pirate books and films are people who were never going to buy them anyway; people who would have bought your content still do. For spellbooks, can you even doubt that if creators released them for free online, sufficient people would still want that gorgeous hardback to make a good profit? In short - while I have some specific red flags about religious information being locked behind a paywall, I'm also at a place in my life where I'm thinking a lot about the value of releasing things for free. About that lost culture. About how existing online for profit as a content creator has made my life, the lives of my customers, and the culture of the internet generally - worse. Where I'm turning the idea of "artists should be paid" over and over in my head, and I guess trying to find radical alternatives where people can still support themselves, yet also work for free on things they want to share with the world. I'm not in a place where "more exhange of money for goods and services and survival" sounds like a great ideal to promote. Like most things I blog about, I'm not yet at an answer, and I don't really have a great solution or the power to implement the ideas I do have. And i am up for feedback, though not of the shouty and snarky kind. I just know that when I was a teenager, many people were able to share knowledge and produce outstanding resources online for free, and now they do not. I miss that. It was a better way.

[frazzledsoul]

For the salty asks: 5, 20 and 22, please (:

I’m going to pick Gilmore Girls because I haven’t watched enough Grey’s Anatomy to answer this question and those are the only two shows I think we have in common.

5. Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

Not in this fandom. I mean, even during the OS it drove me crazy with how nitpicky some fans could be with Luke/Lorelai but the forums I hung out on (TWOP) really encouraged that behavior everywhere so it wasn’t just this fandom. I dropped out when a lot of the rationalizing of Lorelai’s behavior post-Partings was going on (I feel pretty strongly that what she did was really bad and it can’t be excused or blamed on anybody else, which is not the same as hating her forever for it) and that might have ruined things for me but I wasn’t around to listen to it so it didn’t make a difference. I think the post-AYITL fandom is a lot funner and healthier than what I was exposed to years ago so I’ve had the opposite experience. 

20. What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?

I think hate is probably too strong of a word, but I don’t like how in some quarters the word of ASP is seen as inviolable and that everything she does is majestic and can’t be questioned. I see more of this on Twitter than on Tumblr but she’s done a lot of stuff that ranges from merely inconsistent to outright infuriating and I think those of us like myself who don’t trust her have earned that right.

I also don’t like how a lot of people a) blame what happened at the end of Partings almost entirely on Christopher and b) assume if we didn’t have a turnover of writers that the issue would be dropped almost immediately afterwards. I just don’t think that was what was going on there.

22. Popular character you hate?

I sort of already answered this in the last one, and I don’t hate this character, but I don’t really get the appeal of Dave. I mean he’s adorable in his own little nerdy way but the relationship he and Lane had was kind of juvenile for their ages and seemed like it was going through the motions just so they could have certain experiences. I don’t think he would have wanted to continue a musical lifestyle like Lane did and he was always so … bland. In my head he became an accountant and married another nice accountant and settled down in the suburbs with her and their kids but he always is one of the first funders to Lane’s Pledge Music campaigns.

[ourheroictommo]

THERE'S nothing wrong with letting your imagination run wild when it comes to celeb crushes - we've all been there.

There's the big house in Beverley Hills that you share with Zayn Malik and 25 puppies, a Seychelles wedding with Liam Payne... but is dating a 1D boy actually all it's cracked up to be?

Last week, it was revealed that heartthrob Harry Styles has found love in food blogger, Tess Ward.

And, it seems, it hasn't been an easy ride for her.

Since the relationship was unveiled, the blogger has received a marked increase in negative reviews for her book on Amazon.

One comment stated: "Don't bother wasting your money! The recipes were bland and unhelpful. Another gimmick diet that doesn't work. End it. Fullstop."

While others took a much more direct approach: "This book is horrible."

And it seems the trolling has taken a toll on Tess as she took to Instagram this weekend to say: "I am thankful but please be kind to me. All I want is to share beautiful food with you all."

And she's not the only lady linked to a One Direction star to suffer some seriously unpleasant side effects.

From trolls to physical attacks, perhaps we're better off without our flawed fantasies after all...

Briana Jungwirth

In 2015, the LA stylist hit headlines as the news broke that she was pregnant with Louis Tomlinson's child.

Briana got pregnant after a very brief stint of dating the 1D singer which, apparently, was enough to get Louis fans raging.

She was forced to weather 'sickening' abuse and bizarre conspiracy theories that her pregnancy was 'faked', even after the first One Direction baby, Freddie, was born in January 2016.

Sadly, it doesn't look like she's going to be rid of the trolls any time soon either.

Louis fans recently slammed her for a picture she shared of her on a night out.

One comment read: "For having "rendezvous" you end up pregnate of someone who doesnt even want to see u [sic]." and another: "Lol ok drink while you leave your son alone at home."

Caroline Flack

We should have known dating Harry was a doomed mission as soon as we caught wind of the ruckus Ms. Flack caused.

In 2011, a 17-year-old Harry Styles started seeing the then 32-year-old TV presenter, Caroline Flack.

Surprise, surprise, Caroline soon started receiving hurls of online abuse via Twitter from Harry's fans.

In a 2012 interview with the star, she told Fabulous: "The best one I got said: 'F*** you, I can't believe you're going out with my boyfriend, I hope you get eaten by an angry elephant.' An angry elephant? You've just got to think these people are in front of their computers and probably don't even see it half the time. I just don't think anyone deserves to be bullied. That's just not on... It hasn't been easy. I'd try not to take it too seriously, because I think that's the way you've got to try to deal with it. But some of it was quite hurtful. It really was."

Danielle Peazer

Liam met the The X Factor dancer, Danielle Peazer, when they were both on the show in 2012 and were considered a 'thing' for two years.

The on-off nature of their relationship made her bait for online trolls, though.

A common theme of the Twitter abuse was that her success as a dancer depended totally on her relationship with the 1D singer.

Forever holding her own, in 2012, Danielle tweeted: "You don't have to like me or think I'm pretty, but at least give me credit for my own career. I've been doing this job for the past 5 years and for u to think I've only got somewhere because of Liam is disrespectful and plain f***ing stupid. [sic]"

Now with a hefty 1.2m followers on Instagram, she certainly seems to have set the record straight.

Celine Helene Vandycke

Last summer, Danish student Celine Helene Vandycke, sparked a 1D Twitter frenzy as photos emerged of her hanging out with Irish heart-throb Niall Horan at London's British Summer Time Festival.

However, things became a little confused as the relationship appeared to fizzle out almost instantly with no more pictures or stories surfacing.

Just a few weeks later, an image was posted on a now suspended account that showed Celine and a brown-haired boy she referred to as 'her boyfriend' that was definitely not the blonde 1D signer.

OK reported that one fan went as far to comment: "Celine don't you ever cheat or hurt Niall or else I'll hunt you and kill you - make him smile and laugh. Mark this tweet Celine."

Even with fleeting flings, it seems no one can come out of the Directioner fan base intact...

Eleanor Calder

Before Briana, there was Eleanor. After Briana, there was Eleanor, again.

After four years together, the couple split in 2015 as a result of hectic schedules but, earlier this year, it became clear they were very much back on.

But just a couple of weeks after the news of the rekindled relationship broke, the couple were in the media spotlight for totally different reasons.

In March of this year, Louis was arrested at LAX airport while they were travelling together.

It was reported that as a photographer became more and more insistent on filming the pair, Louis attacked him.

Reports claim that it was to defend Eleanor as he worried for her safety in the situation. Thankfully, no criminal charges were brought against him.

Online trolling is one thing but getting caught up in a full-blown public scrap... we'll opt out thanks.

Cheryl

Yes, you read that right. Not even our beloved Cheryl is exempt from the One Direction girlfriend curse.

In February 2016, it was revealed that the pair had been secretly dating and fans were NOT happy.

On Instagram, Cheryl was hit with abuse on innocent selfies with one commenter saying: "I can't believe you are dating a child" and another: "If you hurt my baby liam, ill break your face [sic]."

Soon after the abuse, Cheryl changed her Instagram bio to read: "All love... Good vibes only"

You go girl!