#not even to mention... labels exist for people to use not to be boxed into. i wouldnt be surprised if straight enby ppl exist!

[aspecpplarebeautiful]

im aromantic, and im in a queerromantic relationship with my girlfriend. it is functionally a romantic relationship, there is nothing that makes not a romantic relationship beyond my own personal discomfort with the term. its just a relationship, queerromantic on a technicality

but im aromantic. ive never experienced any sort of attraction. im not even sure if id label this romantic attraction, but its something very very very close to it. shes my world, i want to marry her and live with her and love her forever. she made me realise im not asexual (graysexual lesbian now!). im fine with our relationship being perceived as romantic, shes my partner, my lover, my significant other, were dating

except were not. and i feel so blinding bad for being that little bit uncomfortable with 'romantic'. and shes so nice, she doesnt even care about it, our relationship is just what it is, and labels are for my sake, mostly. she just wants me to feel comfortable, i know. and, shes my girlfriend. my girlfriend.

i post about her a lot. i cannot shut the fuck up about her, i mention her as often as i can because i just constantly think about her, i am, in all meanings of the word, incredibly lovesick. stupidly in love. but im aromantic. i post and talk a lot about being aromantic, its such a core part of my identity, ive helped irl friends discover their aromanticity. its the only flag ive up on my wall, ive a cardigan in aromantic colours, it was the only pride pin on my bag for a while

so i just... feel bad. because im aromantic. im aromantic. this relationship has not changed that. but ive gone from constantly talking about being aro and not understanding romance and always being annoyed by it and by people who are in love because i didnt understand how anyone could ever be like that. and im still aromantic, and i still stand by that romance should NOT be everywhere, but... i understand the people constantly talking about their significant others now, because im one of those people now. and it feels like a betrayal of myself. im someone who the past version of myself would find annoying beyond comprehension

it feels like im betraying the aromantic community and my aromantic identity, because im an aromantic person who found love that is functionally romantic. how can i talk about being aro when my every other post is about my lovely amazing girlfriend? how can i wear the aro flag if im in a relationship? how can i reblog posts about the aromantic experience when im just... not perceived like that anymore?

i feel like a traitor. im so sorry.

-⭐anon

You're not a traitor, I promise, Anon. Be careful with labels that you're not letting them box you in. Aromantic doesn't mean you're not allowed to have a partner or care about them a lot, in whatever way you do care them. And whatever your current relationship or your current feelings, none of that takes away from your aromantic experiences and feelings.

One of the big reasons why the label aro exists at all is because alloromantic society boxes us in, and tells us we have to experience things related to relationships, romance, etc. in a certain way and do them in a certain way. By doing things your way, using your labels, such as aromantic and queerromantic, and allowing yourself to feel a connection to the aro community are all ways of breaking out of that box and letting you do things your way and experience things in a way that's right for you.

Remember that aromanticity isn't a rejection of having partners, it isn't a rejection of love, some aros even experience romance in some circumstances or in their own way which may not be exactly how it is for alloromantics, but still valid (not to say whether this is the case for you or not, only you can decide if your current feelings are actually romantic or not, but instead to say that you're still good either way). Instead aromanticity is a way that you can take ownership of these things and make your own decisions whether these things are right for you or not, whether you want to participate in them or not, how you want to participate in them, etc. So long as you are doing things in a way that works for you, and you are being true to yourself and what you personally want, you're not betraying the aro community.

Remember too Anon, that there are so many ways to be aro. And your way is valid and it matters too.

I'm sorry you've been feeling so stressed about this, but I hope this helps, or at least gives you another perspective to consider.

All the best, Anon, and take care!

[cluescorner]

There's no feeling stranger than knowing that something is bad but liking it anyways. Not in a 'it's so bad it's good' way. Because that implies that it has become good. I'm talking like this thing is just kinda bad in the normal ways things are bad, but i like it anyways.

[lordcrumps]

The Sims 2 For Rent - CC EXPANSION PACK

Sul Sul!

~ More photos under the under the cut ~

Last week the Sims 4 got a new pack, this week Sims 2 players get that same pack! In a collaboration with @platinumaspiration and @tvickiesims and a HUGE assist from @episims, we bring you "The Sims 2 For Rent CC Expansion Pack!"

This is a large set, and advisable that it does not get merged even further than it already is! - I ran into some issues when trying to do this!

When you explore this pack, please take a look at the marble ring rug, it has some surprisingly cute rug swatches! I put a swatch in it to remove the marbles themselves, so you have a cute small rug! - I only mention this as I was going to bin the rug off once uploaded, but then I found it had some lovely swatches!

FUNCTIONALITY

So most of the items will function as they should and intended as. Its just not just deco items.

There is two collection files included, separated into build buy! Please note that fences and stairs and spandrels cant be but into a collection!

The squatty toilet that took me over 12 hours to make, yeah they squat, animation can be a bit bouncy but such is life. This toilet also can be flushed, get dirty and is cleanable!

Outdoor plants are seasonal!

Counters are animated with insides built, there is no drawer on the counter, I did not want to change the shape of the unit, and saw EA did the same - ignore the fact they grab something from a non existent drawer

Wardrobes have interiors elements, and have working doors!

Each Kettle have two versions, choose only one, one for the colour traits mod / one 'normal'. They function as Tea makers! Huazzah!

Spandrels in build mode are classified as fences. I made a variant with fence / no fence.

Several of the larger deco pieces such as the Arch Gate, or umbrella are actually lights!

Radiators act like radiators!

The Aircon Unit is completely functional, doesn't lower bills, but it does lower sims temperatures!

"Water Heaters" act like solar panels, they get money off your bills!

The Electrical Fuse box has 2 versions, I kept them both in, one wall deco and one functions as a burglar alarm - I wanted more alarms.

Most Sofas / Chairs have morphs!

Slots added to the Vanity and Bathroom Cabinet!

FENCES / SPANDRELS / STAIRS OH MY!

I have included swatch images of each of the spandrels, fences and stairs and labelled them to match, this is so that you can go in and take out any of the swatches you do not want. This is because there are lot of new fences and the menu can feel cluttered with them in for some people.

DOWNLOAD

ALT - SFS

~ Credits / Thanks / List of items not converted under the cut ~

MORE PHOTOS

CREDITS

Mini fridge is cloned from Targa over at MTS - so now it works just like a regular fridge barring a few animations (get baby bottle and juggle)

Kettles were cloned from @pforestsims's kettle, link here.

@jacky93sims for the base of the squat toilet! Epi for the code edits!

THANKS

@tvickiesims, @platinumaspiration thank you soo much for helping with the objects, really couldn't do it myself!! Your amazing, awesome, and some of the best creators out there! Thank you again!

@episims - YOU ARE DA BOMB! Thank you for all your help in getting those toilets working with me, and everything else you do when you answer my little annoying questions! Appreciated like you wouldn't believe!

LIST OF ITEMS NOT CONVERTED - @sims4t2bb

Due to the sizing / functionality of these objects, they will not be included in this pack!

All Yer Fixins Untenable Food Stand

Mali's Moonlight Market Craft Stall

Vegan Vittles Night Market

Late Night Snack Dessert Stall

Rice to Meet You Night Market

The Unrestroom

Fisherman's Slats Window - Tall

The Secret Maze Window - Very Tall

The Secret Maze Window - Super Duper Tall

Stained Glass Tomarani Shutters - Tall

Stained Glass Tomarani Shutters - Tall and Open Wide

The Save Us From Ruin Tallest Cinched Wall Curtain

The How Many Times Do We Need To Tell You It's Not Silk Taller Wall Curtain

The We Are Going To Jail< Tallest Wall Curtain So You Know the Truth Curtain

[pinksilkribbons]

COLLAGE: yan! classmate

CW/TW: non-consensual candid photos, elijah has a shrine of [name], mentions of praying to and basically viewing another human being as god, small implication of a boner, general yandere stuff ig.

You guys my last post on Elijah got quite a few likes I’m so glad y’all like him!! He’s my least developed OC so i decided to write more on him and develop his character. I’ll post some of my others soon!

Ever since he bought his new polaroid, Elijah has discovered a new side of himself. At the beginning he’d only taken pictures of you and hung them around his closet.

But eventually…he grew tired of it. Not of his darling, no! Of course not! But…it was rather difficult to sneak photos of you without getting caught. Not to mention the majority of them turned out blurry anyway.

Something needed to change.

He didn’t just want pictures of you at school. He wanted pictures of everything. When you’re angry, when you’re sad, when you’re eating. Pictures in normal clothes instead of a school uniform for fucks sake!

In the beginning school was the easiest (and only) way he could gain access to you, but now it’s proving to make his job that much harder. There’s too many risks involved.

With a dramatic sigh he shut his closet door, making sure to click the padlock into place. After hanging so many pictures of you on his closet walls he decided it would be wise to invest in a lock.

He knows it isn’t normal. Taking pictures of people without asking isn’t normal. Being so deeply obsessed with someone isn’t normal.

But not being normal doesn’t make him bad. Just…more passionate!

“Hey mama?”, He asks, trudging down the stairs.

His mother turns away from her phone with a quick glance his way. Her head tilts up as if to silently ask him what he needs.

“You aren’t using these magazines anymore, are you?”

A small stack of magazines with a bunch of ‘trendy fashion’ labels catches his eye. On the front cover a young lady with blonde hair is posed in a field of flowers. The lady, however, isn’t what he’s interested in.

She laughs playfully and watches Elijah pick up the stack. “Well, not exactly. But why do you need them? I’ve never known you to be interested in fashion.”

Elijah feels a rush of red to his cheeks. A part of him feel dirty. Perverted, even. It’s clear his mother is implying something dirty, and while she isn’t even wrong, he’s probably planning something much worse than whatever she’s imagining right now.

It takes a few good seconds for his mind to come up with a plausible excuse. “W-well, I’m not interested in fashion! I just need some material for this project in art class.”

Luckily his mom doesn’t question him further. She definitely rolled her eyes at him though, clearly not believing his story.

As soon as he makes it back to his room Elijah is quick on his feet. He rushes over to his closet so quickly he almost falls over. A pulse of excitement gushes through his body as he begins to unlock his closet door.

The password to which is his darlings birthday, of course!

Upon opening the door, one wouldn’t suspect much of anything. Clothes, shoes, some random boxes, but nothing out of the ordinary. The real magic is in the far right corner, at the very bottom of the wall.

So far his collection is pretty small. The few photos he does have are all taped beside one another, carefully placed to ensure nothing is crooked or overlaps with the other. This small corner is Elijah’s entire life.

He lives and breathes [Name]. In fact, every morning, without fail, he finds himself in this exact position; sitting on his knees, admiring his darling. He bows his head and prays to your existence.

The amount of sheer joy your being grants him should never be taken lightly. Elijah is a good boy. He’s thankful. And He proves it every single morning.

“I feel kinda bad, cutting up her picture like this”, he mumbled to himself. His hands carefully maneuvered the scissors, making sure to save as much of his darlings face as possible.

Believe it or not it came out pretty good! Next he needed to cut the cover from his mom’s fashion magazine, which proved to be the real challenge.

The blonde lady on the cover was dressed in a blue flowy sundress. From the moment he saw it Elijah knew that dress was meant to be his darlings. The chances of him getting a real photo of you in this dress were zero, but he’d like to think he’s quite creative!

To finalize his creation he glued [Name]’s head onto the models face, successfully dressing her in the beautiful gown. Just imagining her in such an outfit had his heart racing and pants tightening.

It made him feel proud knowing he found a way to grow his collection while also reducing the risk of getting caught. Next time he visited the library, Elijah would be sure to pick up a few books on collaging.

You truly did bring out a new side of him. Who knew he was so artistic?

[violettwritess]

Letters I can’t send c.s

Summary: After Y/n and Chris stopped talking, she spirals into a deep emotional void, unable to find a way out.

Warnings: Mentions of depression, heartbreak, Ed, mental health struggles, deep emotional pain, mentions of not wanting to live.

Wc: 1.8k

English is not my first language

The stars have always been beautiful, haven’t they? They just shine, effortlessly perfect, without a care in the world. Sometimes I wish I could be like them, just existing, without worries or flaws. But life isn’t that simple, is it?

I’m not even sure why I’m writing this, maybe it’s because I miss you so much it hurts. Every time I look at the sky and see the moon, I think of you. I don’t think I’m ready for you to be gone. Sometimes I hope you’re feeling the same way because I’d like to believe you still care about me as much as I care about you.

Mom suggested I should call you, but what would I say? Would you even reply, or would you just ignore me? The uncertainty scares me. I’ve been rehearsing our conversation in my head, maybe I’d ask how you are, or invite you to that coffee shop downtown where we used to go. Maybe you’d say yes, and we’d talk like old times, or maybe you’d tell me you’ve moved on and forgotten about me.

I’m scared because I see how happy you are now. Your career is taking off, you have new friends, and so many people who love you, but I wonder, do you ever think of me and miss us? Do you miss our late-night walks, the way we could talk forever without getting bored? Because I do, and it’s killing me a little more every day.

Sometimes, just before I fall asleep, I remember when we were neighbors and saw each other every day, I wonder if you’re mad at me, if I did something wrong. Is that why we don’t talk anymore?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m genuinely happy for you, Matt, and Nick, but sometimes I wish you hadn’t left me behind. You’ve got everything you ever wanted, and here I am, stuck in the past, clinging to something that will never come back. You might see it as a small thing, but to me, it feels like my world is ending, I feel like I’m falling apart, and I don’t know how to move on from this.

I don’t even know if I’ll send this letter, maybe it’s enough just to write it all down, but if you do read this, I hope you understand how much you meant to me, and how much you still do, but maybe that doesn’t matter to you anymore.

Maybe you’ve already closed the door on this part of your life, sealed it away in some box labeled “things that used to matter” Maybe I was never as important to you as you were to me.

That thought alone makes my chest tighten, I hate feeling like this, like I’m the only one who’s stuck, like I’m the only one who still looks for pieces of you in my everyday life, in the smallest moments.

Do you ever feel that? Or am I just a passing thought you don’t even realize you’re having?

I don’t know why it hurts so much. It’s not like you promised forever. It’s not like you even owed me that.

I keep wondering if I should let go, if holding onto you is only making things worse, but how do you let go of something that shaped you? How do you forget someone who felt like home?

They say time heals everything, that one day I’ll wake up and you won’t be the first thing on my mind, that I won’t feel this dull ache in my chest every time I hear your name or see someone who walks like you, dresses like you, carries themselves the way you do. But what if they’re wrong? What if I never stop missing you?

I wonder if you ever talk about me. If my name ever slips into a conversation by accident, and for a second, you remember the way things used to be, if maybe, just maybe, you feel even a fraction of what I do.

~

I took a break from writing, I kind of forgot about this letter, but today I found it in my drawer and read it. I cried. I couldn’t help it. Honestly, I still think about you constantly, I barely even sleep, I wake up a thousand times in the middle of the night, swimming in an ocean of memories, and I feel like I’m drowning.

I tried calling you the other day, but the call didn’t go through, maybe you blocked me, maybe you’re closing every door that led to us. But here I am, still looking for an opening, a way back into your life. Could I ever do that?

If I’m being completely honest, I feel like I’m getting worse. I know I should’ve moved on already. I could meet new people and be happy, but I don’t want to be happy if it’s not with you. It just isn’t worth it.

Mom’s starting to worry about me. I think I understand why. I’ve been barely eating, barely sleeping, and failing all my classes. I stopped hanging out with my friends. I told her she doesn’t have to worry about it, but even I am starting to worry. I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t have the energy to do anything, I feel like I’m draining, I’m not even alive anymore, I’m just there.

How do you call it when that happens? My mom thinks I’m depressed. Maybe I am. She wants me to get help, but should I? I know how therapists work, they just listen to you for money, and most of the time they don’t even give you solutions. So why bother? Maybe that’s how I’m destined to be now, alone and stuck in the past. I honestly can’t even picture anything past 25, I don’t have the motivation to keep it up, but I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this, maybe because it feels like I’m not allowed to tell anyone else. I don’t want to burden them with how lost I am, how hard it is to pretend like everything’s fine when it’s not. I don’t think anyone would understand the weight of this and how hard it is to just keep going, pretending I’m okay.

I keep telling myself that I’ll be okay. That eventually, I’ll stop feeling like I’m drowning in this. But the truth is, I don’t know if I ever will be okay, I don’t know if I’ll ever stop missing you, if I’ll ever stop looking at the stars and remembering how we used to talk about them like they were ours, maybe I’m just not ready to let go of the person you were to me, the one I thought I’d always have.

~

I’ve been getting thinner. I’m starting to worry. Everybody’s worried. Mom took me to the doctor, and I still don’t have the results yet, but from the looks of it, I think it’s not good. What do I do?

I feel like I’m falling apart even more now, like my body’s betraying me. I don’t even recognize myself anymore, physically, emotionally, mentally, everything feels like it’s slipping through my fingers. I try to act like I’m fine, like I’ve got everything under control, but I don’t, not even close. The weight of all of this is starting to break me in ways I can’t even put into words.

It’s hard to admit this, but I think I’ve been punishing myself. I’m scared to talk to anyone because I’m terrified they’ll see how broken I really am, I can’t help but wonder if they’ll think I’m being dramatic or weak, maybe I am weak, maybe I should be able to pull myself together by now, but I can’t. And that’s the hardest part, feeling so out of control, like everything is spiraling, and I don’t know how to stop it.

I keep thinking about how you used to make everything feel better, how you’d be there when I needed someone, maybe that’s why this is so hard, because I can’t find anything to fill the void you left. Not even the stars, no matter how beautiful they are, can make me feel the same way you did.

I just wish I could talk to you. I wish I could reach out, hear your voice, and somehow make all of this better. But I know that’s not possible, maybe it never was. But still, there’s this tiny part of me, a part that refuses to let go, that keeps hoping for something that will never come back.

I miss you, Christopher. I miss you so much, and it pains me how much you seem to not care. We used to be everything, and now we’re nothing at all. I still don’t know why I’m writing this, and I still don’t know if I’m sending it, maybe I should, but I’m scared, I’m scared you’ll think I’m a freak, but maybe I’ll send it someday.

I just need you to know, you were everything to me, Chris. You were my safe place, my constant, and now I don’t even know where I belong. I feel like I’m floating through life, disconnected from everything and everyone, like I’m just waiting for something to change, something to make me feel whole again. But nothing does. Nothing ever does.

I wish I could go back in time, back to when everything was simple, but I know I can’t. I can’t turn back the clock, and I can’t change the past, I can only try to figure out how to live without you, even if it feels impossible right now.

I don’t expect you to understand, or even care, but I had to say it. I had to write it down because it’s the only way I can make sense of all of this. It’s the only way I can make sense of you.

Maybe one day, someone will tell me that time heals all wounds, but for now, I’m starting to think this wound is one that will never close. And maybe that’s just my fate, to carry this pain forever.

~

I’ve decided that I’m going to send you this letter, I’ve read it many times and I know it’s kind of ridiculous, but I feel like you need to read it, part of me wants you to so, here it is, here I am, all of me, all of it, I hope you answer, if you don’t, I’ll understand, but I really wait for your response.

I miss you, I’ve missed you for months now, and I’ll always miss you, please reply to me.

Your dearest, y/n.

Authors note: I don’t really know why I wrote something like this but I finished reading a book like it so I got inspired

Part 2

[notafraidofredyellowandblue]

Flake (from about 0:04) reading for Drecksack evening 2024-10-18

Topic "His better half" which Flake first mentions is his wife, who everyone who knows them will say is definitely his better half, but then moves on to the actual subject of the reading: his keyboard ❤️

While doing so, he mentions a couple of nice side-notes (like Flake always does) like the disadvantages of playing with Rammstein

like wanting a little painkiller at the dentist only to be laughed at '....but you play with *Rammstein*!"

or people charging him to pay double for stuff because Bild wrote how many millions Rammstein earn, without mentioning the costs they have

or his place getting burgled because the tourdates are published so everyone knows when he's away (but his place is a bit of a mess anyway so he still doesn't know if something went missing)

has a little dig at guitarists who give their guitars a women's name, Flake names his keyboard just what it says on the label. Keyboards and samplers all have nice long names like Ensoniq EPS 16 Plus, not like guitars which are just called 'Gibson' or something.

When Flake got a real keyboard that he could take along to concerts, his dad got him an old violincase, a straight box, which fitted the keyboard perfectly. For concerts further away it also had room for a toothbrush and some underpants. After Flake got a new keyboard that was a little bit bigger, it still fitted the case, but there wasn't room for underpants anymore.

(After 20 minutes and turning another page he says "such a long text...who writes something like that" 😄)

His band (and himself) got a bit tired of the keyboard and got the idea of getting a sampler, with which you can take random noises and play them with the keys, at 0:30 he mimickes how a sampler works 😊

Flake loves music because it just exists in a moment, then it's gone, there's nothing left. Just air being moved in specific waves (at abt 0h32 he mimickes this) which create sound, it's there when you play it, and then it's gone, and evrything is back to how it was, but different because the music changed things. Just like a concert, it's there in that moment, but after that it's over and that's it, everything back to normal. Just like life..

The Ensoniq sampler was very complicated and you had to think of a whole lot of things to use it, and even had to take care to remove the bits you didn't use, because storage space on the device was very limited, for storage you needed floppy-disks (Flake says he sounds like opa before the worldwar talking about it)

At one show (0h36) Flake wanted to play his solo with a broken down micstand, but then the sampler didn't play any samples anymore...when he tried the old trick of turning the sampler of and on, it didn't even do that. At Rammstein Flake's sampler starts the sequencss at which the whole band takes direction to start songs, so when the sampler broke down, the others just stood there and waited (Flake chuckles mischievously at the memory) 😊 after that he got an external harddrive, and a UPS (in case electricity failed) and had to schlepp more and more stuff to shows, but nobody really noticed because by that time the guitarists had started to a (gear) competiton (bringing ever more stuff)

As there came more songs and Flake wanted to have them all on one sampler to avoid having to changes storage in between, he ran out of keys to put the samples on and often shifted an octave to different keys, until no key actually matched the right note anymore... at this point the band 'with soft pressure' to move with the timds and made him start using a keyboard device linked to an Apple notebook, and Flake was amazed how much music he could now play with the one keyboard. He had to redo all his samples, get used to playing this all new, and what was worst...because all the others in the band used a similar system and actually did understand it, they all felt they could help invent new samples and keyboardmusic, some even better than his own.

With all these electronics, when a loud bang happened on stage or a huge pyro or light went on, sometimes the computer froze and had to be elaborately restarted which took it's time. Maybe that's the reason why you can see Flake dancing or walking around on stage so often.

In the end all the electronics failed too often, and the Ensoniq got too old (like Flake himself he says) so he bought a Nordstage organ, two of them, both having the same sounds on it so he can choose which to use. Problem with that one is that everyone has it, you see it everywhere, like a Volkswagen Passat car, everyone has it, it works, but you'd rather have something different.

(0:43) Imagine saying that about your better half, Flake realises he is a lot better off with his wife 🌺

(couldn't help doing a little 'take'...i miss his podcasts)

[ass-fuehrerin]

The Line

Hwang In-ho/Seong Gi-hun

Word count: 3.4k

Summary: Gi-hun’s mind is a patchwork of missing time, blank spaces where memories should be. His life is simple — work, drink, exist — until nightmares start clawing their way into his waking hours, and the man at his side stops feeling like an anchor and starts feeling like a trap.

There was a before. There will be an after. The only question — where to draw

the line?

CW: post-Gi-hun’s second Game (with implied ending); psychological trauma (amnesia, PTSD-related dissociation, hallucinations, paranoia); physical trauma; complex emotional entanglement & gaslighting.

✐ᝰ

Gi-hun remembers nothing. As in nothing at all. Not a single fragment of that goddamn notorious incident and almost not a single one of the past several years has survived in his memory. It's as if someone took a scalpel to his mind and cut them out, leaving only the phantom pain of something missing. Something important.

He, along with several others poor desperate bastards, was kidnapped by collectors due to their gambling debts, and forced into some sort of slave labor in an isolated facility, enduring physical and psychological torture until he managed to escape.

At least that’s the story he was told — the supposed cause of his severe memory loss, leaving him with only fragmented recollections of the past.

“Dissociative amnesia,” the doctor had called it. A defense mechanism. The mind, in its desperate bid for survival, buries the unspeakable so deeply that it might as well never have existed. “PTSD.” Gi-hun’s mind simply decided the past was a wound not worth carrying.

So he didn’t carry it. Simple like that.

Instead, he built a life. Brick by brick. Well, at least he tried. He tried to wake up, get dressed, work, eat, drink, and kill his free time that was dragging like a chewing gum (so, more like survive it). Usually together with a man he knew (or thought he did), but didn’t remember meeting.

Young-il.

Their relationship didn’t fit into a neat little box — didn’t come with a label Gi-hun could slap on and say, "Yeah, that’s what this is." It felt old, like something that existed long before he even became aware of it. It felt odd, as if they’d been connected, but he didn’t really know how.

It was complicated.

When he woke up in a hospital bed — blank, erased, empty — it was Young-il sitting beside him and filling in the gaps, helping him piece together the puzzle. The one who told him they used to work and gamble together. Three of them — including Jung-bae. The explanation made sense. It didn’t feel… right though. And yet right enough that Gi-hun didn't question it. Maybe that is what bothers him. How easily he accepted that.

But maybe it wasn’t that difficult due to their common language — loneliness.

Gi-hun had lost his mother and never mustered the courage to insert himself into his daughter's life. Young-il had told him to go — offered to pay for the trip, even — but Seong refused. Money didn’t fix things like that. It was enough that Young-il had gotten him a job at the same vague company — or something like that (to be honest Gi-hun didn’t know a thing about it) — where he himself worked as a manager. Some low-level work, driving deliveries, moving packages, sometimes people, never asking questions.

There were no friends either. Sang-woo was still buried somewhere in America, his only contact — at least, Gi-hun thought so, though he didn’t remember it well — being a single wire transfer, hush money, sent to his mother, as if trying to buy back his absence. Jung-bae had vanished after his divorce — for reasons Gi-hun never managed to figure out. That left no one.

Just Young-il.

Young-il didn’t have anyone either. His wife had died in childbirth. He once mentioned a half-brother somewhere, but it was a passing remark, long lost in the haze of soju. He never brought it up again, and Gi-hun never asked.

Despite the glaring differences in their social standing, they spent a ridiculous amount of time together. Drinking in dingy pojangmacha stalls, playing endless rounds of janggi (Young-il taught him the rules, and over time, Gi-hun even started winning occasionally), or just sitting in silence for hours — either meaningful or empty, he wasn’t sure.

Talking, though — that was rare.

There was a subtle tension between them. It wasn’t spoken, but it was always there, lingering in the space between their words, between the clinking of bottles and the shuffle of their feet on cracked concrete.

It should have been uncomfortable, but it wasn’t. No, that wasn’t the right word to describe that.

It was something else.

Their “twoness” was quite strange, and Gi-hun could never brush off that disturbing feeling, no matter how used to it he had grown.

Every conversation, every glance, every shared game left a strange, crawling itch under his skin. Like something half-remembered, like a dream that was slipping through his fingers just as he was about to wake up.

Like an answer trying to claw its way to the surface, only to be shoved back down before it could breathe. Gi-hun didn’t know what the answer was. What question was he even trying to answer? He only knew that when he looked at Young-il for too long, he wanted to scream.

Or hit him.

Especially after waking up in a cold sweat from yet another shitty dream.

A nightmare too vivid to be a nightmare.

The same setting, over and over — a surreal maze of pastel walls and twisting staircases, like a playground built in hell. Masked garish-pink figures. A cocktail of terror and a faceless green mass. The gut-wrenching horror of a game where survival had nothing to do with skill and everything to do with luck.

And always, always, that one figure dressed in black. A shadow at the edge of every nightmare, the sight of which filled Gi-hun with something primal — dread, rage, betrayal, and a searing loss he could not name.

The figure bled into reality. Hallucinations. Another PTSD-gift. A distorted, mechanical voice that whispered in his ears. And also blackouts — minutes, hours, sometimes whole days gone.

Young-il knew.

It seemed like he knew him better than Gi-hun knew himself.

He was the one who dragged him to therapy. Psychiatry, to be specific ("You'll need meds," he had said, too sure, too knowing). Gi-hun went. But after the first session resulted in the worst blackout ever spitting Seong out into reality after God knows how many hours, with his fists still in Young-il’s shirt and a bruise blooming on the man’s cheek, Gi-hun started rationing his appointments — just enough to get a prescription and leave.

The doctor said all this was normal.

Young-il said all this was normal.

Gi-hun knew all this was anything but.

Yet, he swallowed the pills. Drowned himself in alcohol. Ignored the sick, festering contradiction that clawed at his ribs whenever Young-il was near — because he couldn’t tell if this man was keeping him afloat or dragging him under.

Young-il’s presence became a constant pull on Gi-hun’s thoughts, a weight he couldn’t shake off. It was not even that Young-il was a bad person, or that he’d done anything that should set off alarm bells. Nothing like that — quite the opposite. Sometimes when Seong managed to shake off the tenacious claws of dark feelings, he found comfort in spending time with him.

Besides, when he woke up from his nightmares — breathless, shaking, throat raw — the name that burned on his cracked lips wasn’t Young-il.

For absolutely no fucking reason it was In-ho.

The only In-ho he even remotely knew was the owner of the nearest pojangmacha to his house. And this decrepit old man — the kindest soul ever to walk the earth — was far from the concept of a menace.

But sometimes — when Gi-hun’s vision blurred and the hallucinations took hold, he saw the black mask slip over Young-il’s face.

To cherry-top this pile of shit — sometimes that was exactly when he wanted to kill him.

Sometimes.

"Sometimes" had a way of turning into "too often."

His mind was a damn mess.

Gi-hun feared himself — his fractured self, his unpredictable outbursts — but he feared for Young-il even more. He brought it up only once, and he could bet he saw it: the way Young-il’s sharp features grew even sharper, which made something in Gi-hun want to recoil.

He never mentioned it again.

Instead, Gi-hun kept taking the pills. He kept drinking. He kept ignoring the way Young-il looked at him — curious, sharp, like he was peeling Gi-hun apart, layer by layer, like a frog.

Seong couldn’t pinpoint when he began to sense the shift in his own perception of… huh… them? — from what seemed like just two people passing time together to something deeply unnatural, something fucked up.

But it was exactly in that very way Young-il watched him sometimes. Like he was waiting for something. Like he was checking whether Gi-hun remembered anything. Whether it was all coming back.

There was a contradiction in everything between them — an undercurrent of trust that felt like a lie. Gi-hun didn’t know if it was something Young-il was hiding, or if it was something about him that he couldn't understand. But the more time they spent together, the more it felt like a trap he’d walked into without realizing it.

Young-il didn’t seem to mind. His calmness, the ease with which he existed in Gi-hun’s life, was something both comforting and suffocating at once. Gi-hun felt as though he was being swallowed whole, piece by piece, and still, he couldn’t help but want to trust that man. Even when that trust made no sense at all.

The distance between them was narrowing. Every small talk, every joke, every half-smile from Young-il started to feel too loaded, too meaningful. A kind of slow drowning that Gi-hun couldn’t fight, even as he started to wonder on rare occasions if he even wanted to.

There were moments when their bodies and hands brushed against each other, just barely, subtly, like an accident. But with too much intention in it and too much awareness. As if Young-il was pushing the boundaries. Gi-hun told himself it was nothing. It was just the alcohol. The late hours, the heat of the games, and fruitless conversations. But when he looked at Young-il, he saw the flicker of something odd in his eyes — something he couldn’t even begin to understand.

A question, a challenge.

Gi-hun didn’t know if he was ready to answer it. He wasn’t even sure it wasn’t just his imagination. Another hallucination among many.

He refused to think about it altogether.

And still, somewhere in between those “sometimes” and his pathetic attempts to exist their meetings grew more frequent, their time together stretched longer as did their exchanged glances and accidental touches over shared games and meals — kimchi jjigae, banchan, steaming bowls of rice.

Gi-hun didn't even think he could embrace it, watching everything as if from the sidelines, as if it were happening to someone else.

And still, one night, in the quiet of his apartment, beneath the gentle rustle of cherry blossoms in the April breeze flowing through the open window, their fingers brushed against each other on the floor once more — and for the first time, intertwined — twisting their lives even tighter into an already intricate, tangled knot of red threads.

He refused to acknowledge it.

And still, the moment he clutched Young-il’s hand tighter he felt a jolt of electricity, a shock piercing his chest that he couldn’t ignore.

Gi-hun wasn’t sure if he was holding on to Young-il’s hand because he wanted to or because he was scared of what would happen if he let go. And still, —

at that very moment, he drew a line — separating the foggy “before” from the clear “after.”

To early though.

The line was still to be drawn in two months. The happiest two months in Gi-hun’s recent memory.

ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ

Young-il’s nearly week-long business trips had long since become a mundane routine for Gi-hun. What hadn’t was Young-il showing up in a horrifying state — head bloodied, stomach riddled with a bullet — after returning from one of them.

To Gi-hun’s own astonishment, he neither screamed in a panic nor froze in shock. Instead, something in him clicked into place. Without a moment’s hesitation, running purely on instinct, he loaded Young-il into the company car and drove him straight to the private hospital — the same one where Young-il had once sent him for psychiatric care.

In the small, dimly lit waiting room, no one so much as acknowledged Gi-hun’s presence. Doctors and nurses flitted past without a glance, as if the rigid figure on the couch — frozen like a wooden idol — were merely part of the furniture. No one asked questions. No one inquired what had happened (not that Gi-hun himself had any answers), who he had brought in, or why.

His emotions, dulled by the sheer force of stress, barely registered. And yet… something gnawed at him. An elusive, intangible detail. His hand clenched the black leather armrest so tightly that his knuckles blanched, but the buzzing, persistent thought refused to fade.

Something’s wrong.

Hours of empty waiting bled into each other before a nurse finally approached with a polite nod, inviting Gi-hun into the private recovery room. Whoever they thought he was, Seong didn’t know. But they let him in without hesitation, granting him unmonitored access to an unconscious Young-il. The nurse gave a brief report — he would need some time to recover from the surgery — but assured him that the patient’s life was not in danger.

Gi-hun sank into the small chair opposite the hospital bed.

Young-il’s breath was slow and even, deep in anesthesia-induced sleep. For once, Gi-hun saw him truly relaxed. The man was always composed, as if every muscle in his body, down to the cellular level, operated under strict control. But now, his face was strangely serene. Gi-hun let his gaze linger.

Almost absentmindedly, his hand reached out, wrapping around Young-il’s — warm, solid, real. A genuine, fleeting (more like unconscious even) smile disrupted the grim tension on his face. His eyes drifted, following the tangled web of wires looping over the bed and pooling onto the floor, before flicking back up to Young-il’s peaceful features.

Something’s wrong.

The thought stabbed through his skull with razor-sharp clarity. But why?

His gaze flickered downward again, drawn toward something at the edge of his vision — something his mind had registered before he had.

A patient file. Hanging just beside the headboard.

He wasn’t even sure why he was looking at it. He didn’t even mean to. And yet his eyes found the name printed across the top, and —

Nothing.

What the..?

For a second, absolutely nothing happened. Just the quiet hum of the hospital lights, the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor. His brain refused to process what he had just seen.

Then, the world tilted.

Not physically — no, the floor remained where it was, the chair still solid beneath him — but his sense of it shifted, like a sudden, nauseating drop on a rollercoaster. A slow, creeping wrongness sank into his bones, spreading from the base of his skull to the tips of his fingers. The air thickened. He tried to swallow but found his throat dry.

His fingers twitched. He reached for the clipboard. But the movement felt distant, like his own hands weren’t really his. Like he was operating a puppet on invisible strings.

This isn’t real.

His pulse hammered in his ears as he forced himself to look again, eyes scanning the printed letters, trying to make sense of them.

Wrong.

The name was wrong.

But that wasn’t possible, was it?

His grip on the clipboard tightened, a cold sweat prickling at the back of his neck. He should know this. He should remember why this was wrong.

He shook his head. No. No, this isn’t right.

His breath stuttered — short, uneven gasps — but he forced himself to sit still. Forced his fingers to loosen around the clipboard, forced his mind to obey.

The doctor said this could happen. Hallucinations. Memory distortion. His brain was just playing tricks on him. That was all this was. He had grown used to it, hadn’t he?

He gripped the armrest again. Pressed down until his knuckles go white. Focus. Ground yourself. Breathe.

But his lungs wouldn’t work. His eyes kept dragging him back to that name, over and over, until the letters weren’t letters anymore, just shapes carved into his skull.

The answer was right there, dangling just out of reach, like something seen through fogged glass —

And then, without warning, the glass shattered.

And this time he didn’t plunge into some sort of a blackout or a fever dream. It wasn’t some twisted game of his mind.

Game.

A rush of images — too fast, too chaotic, too real — slammed into him like a truck.

Blood. The scent thick in the air. The taste of copper on his tongue. A voice — his own? Someone else’s? — screaming.

Concrete. Cold beneath his knees. A sharp, searing pain tearing through his body.

A number. White. Painted. Flickering in the darkness behind his eyelids.

His breath hitched. His vision blurred at the edges. His entire body seized.

The hospital room flickered, shimmering like a heat mirage, bending at the edges.

His ears ring — no, not ring, scream, a piercing high-pitched wail that swallows every other sound. The nausea comes next, curling in his gut, thick and relentless. The air is syrupy, clinging to his lungs like tar. His stomach twists. His pulse is wrong, pounding too fast, too hard. His throat spasms.

The taste of metal floods his mouth. Copper. Blood.

A voice. Distant. Mechanical at first. And then — human, painfully familiar —

“Player 456.”

No.

White. Black. No — Red. Blue. Floor flooded with corpses. A bright shiny room. Twisting, suffocating. Hands grasping at empty air.

A staircase. A scream. A gunshot. Another one. Not here. But inside his head, cracking through his skull like a fucking lightning strike. Too loud. Too real.

The scent of sweat and fear. The rough fabric of a black coat beneath his fingertips.

And then —

he wasn’t in the hospital anymore. He was —

No. No, no, no.

His stomach lurched. The room was wrong. The air was wrong. He was wrong.

He wrenched himself back into the present with a violent jolt, his body convulsing with the effort. His head snapped up, eyes wide and wild, chest rising and falling in sharp, erratic gasps.

“Young-il” hadn’t moved.

Nothing in the room had changed.

Except for Gi-hun.

ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

Hwang wakes an hour later.

His senses return to him in pieces, sharpening one by one like a blade being drawn from its sheath. Awareness seeps in, cold and mechanical. The first thing he registers is that he isn’t alone.

The second is who is with him.

Gi-hun.

And something is very, very wrong.

He isn’t just sitting there. He isn’t waiting.

He is staring.

Hwang should speak. Move. Do something.

But his hands won’t unclench from the sheets. And for the first time in years, his pulse stutters — with something dangerously close to fear. Seriously?

Dark eyes, too wide, pupils blown wide open in the dim glow of the hospital monitors. Not with confusion, not with worry, but with something else. Something raw. Something dangerous.

Hwang hates (sometimes to an extreme degree) that the gaps in Seong’s memory — minutes, hours, or even days of lost time — are his own routine by now. They are threads woven into the tangled web of his life, and he knows each one intimately.

He knows Gi-hun.

Three years have passed since Gi-hun’s last games.

Three years since a blank spot carved itself into his memory of them — and everything they entailed. The fleeting, fragmented return of those memories, surfacing in unprocessed bursts of aggression, is a passage Hwang has memorized cover to cover.

He’s studied Gi-hun like a well-worn book, returning to its pages time and again, willingly — almost religiously. A book meant to be owned, displayed neatly on the shelf of his personal library, within reach whenever he pleases.

To Hwang’s vague irritation, what began as a mere ”scientific” interest has degenerated into something painful, like an ingrown toenail he refuses to remove, for no reason at all. Or rather, for a reason he refuses to even put into words.

So, wehether he wants it or not, he knows Gi-hun.

And yet —

Something in that book has changed.

A new passage. Or, the old one, crossed out?

He knows Gi-hun.

He knows the way his body moves, the way his face twitches when he’s trying to hold something back.

This is different. This isn’t just confusion. It isn’t frustration or a hollow aggression. It’s understanding. A sharp, jagged awareness flickers behind Gi-hun’s eyes.

Hwang swallows. So that's how it is. So many years, and that’s how… — well, how stupid.

Awareness.

In his gaze.

In his posture.

In his voice.

Hwang blinks once. Twice. No surprise. No confusion. Just a quiet, detached acknowledgment. This was inevitable. But why the hell… why the hell was he so… disappointed? Upset? Really?

Silence. Thick. Suffocating.

Gi-hun breathes in. Then out. Slow. Deliberate.

Like he’s tasting the words before saying them.

Like he wants “Young-il” to feel it — deep in his ribs, where the knife Gi-hun pulled out of himself twists the hardest.

He tilts his head, eyes dark and steady: “What was the line? ‘Young-il. Just like my number.’ Yeah… —

A pause. A breath. “Young-il's” face barely shifts, but Gi-hun sees it anyway. The moment he registers the change.

A heartbeat too long.

Hell of a joke,

In-ho.”

[allwormdiet]

Sentinel 9.1

Weld's lucky he's endearing, bc oh my god the ways he manages to step in it this arc

Bro, the city has been kaiju'd to hell, everyone who could use the airports to get out has gotten out, no money is gonna be made any time soon so business isn't happening, and nobody is dumb enough to come to Brockton Bay for pleasure right now. No shit the airport is empty. I'm more surprised that you're surprised by that.

Hey Piggot, sorry your job has gotten like a million times more stressful, hope you're hanging in there

Is robbing part of an airport profitable? That doesn't sound right but I don't know enough about airports or robbery to dispute it.

Also it's interesting to see economics and class inequality come up again, especially in the context of disaster response and response to disasters. The gap between rich and poor only gets wider in times of crisis, and the gap was already pretty fucking wide.

So, finally the PRT power classifications get laid out, having been introduced in Interlude 6 and mentioned again in 8.7. And it's mentioned explicitly as something that was used to sort out villains before eventually getting applied to heroes as well. Presumably an effort to know how to respond in case a hero goes off the rails, or maybe just trying to find more justifications to use the system. Dunno. Don't think it matters a ton in the grand scheme of things, trying to shove every power into a neat labeled box seems unproductive after a certain point.

Also yeah "Brute" is a bit of an unfortunate choice, with the additional yikes factor that they were specifically using it to describe villains at first. Like oh, don't worry about dishing out the punishment, it's a Brute after all.

I think Armsmaster would sooner chew off his other arm than retire, so there's definitely a story there

Also yeah Flechette locked in, as expected

This is the only real thing I can ding Piggot's standing for, I don't think it's hard to tell that a friendly rivalry would mean nothing in this context, so the fact that she's coming down on it for even existing feels like an overreaction. Then again, she's trying to bail out a battleship with a bucket, being humorless is hardly the worst offense in a time like this

"They weren't strictly homeless because they were squatting in abandoned commercial and industrial buildings" is certainly a perspective. When they talk about the intentions of Leviathan, it almost makes me wonder if the Docks were targeted to exacerbate things, get more people pissed and hurting and desperate. Between this, being able to target cities based off of social instability and potential media coverage, and possibly trying to eat or free Noelle, that's a lot of different factors possibly urging this attack and its behavior during said attack, and it might just be all of them at once. That's fucking freaky.

Also I think there was a mild slip-up here, calling Moist a Shifter instead of, I'm assuming, a Changer.

Shaper instead of Changer again

Interesting that Hookwolf is the head of the second Empire successor group, wonder if Krieg just didn't have the drive for leadership or got killed after the Endbringer stuff (thus not showing up on the memorial). Also mildly surprised that he's got the biggest number of parahumans.

The fact that the Pure have been rejected "for the time being" raises my hackles though, I've gotta be real. If the Protectorate/PRT actually stoop low enough to cooperate with fucking Nazis I'm gonna start feeling a lot less charitable

So three Masters is Skitter, Bitch, and Regent. I would guess that Skitter is the one they're concerned about, knowing Shadow Stalker's face, and that the other two would be who they consider possible sociopaths.

"Faultline's Crew" is a terrible name honestly. Coil and Faultline both just suck at naming teams...

Also 12 is the highest number we see here, which I guess means Labyrinth is on paper the most busted cape in the city. Good for her.

That's gotta fucking suck, never having a moment away from prying eyes whenever you're in public. How much of this is Weld being a champ and how much of this is Weld being resigned to this being his life?

That. Is rough.

So, that's something interesting. There's an interesting dichotomy between how parahumans can utterly wipe the floor against regular human combatants, even facing 25-to-1 odds with no purely defensive abilities (Grue's darkness can't stop a lucky hit) and coming out of it totally clean, and now there's this concern. We know that the early independent heroes got their shit rocked, Vikare got killed by a blow to the head during a sports riot of all things, so is there an upper limit on how many humans a parahuman can face at once? Does it hinge on how many parahumans are working together to face the threat, like could Grue only take on ten guys on his own if Skitter and Gregor and Spitfire hadn't been there to watch his back?

I'm probably overthinking this, but Piggot apparently considers it worth worrying about, so I won't dismiss the topic out of hand. Parahumans seem to end up above, below, or otherwise apart from the rest of humanity, and that separation could prove troublesome.

Gotta be strange to have your boss act like your dad, but needs must when you don't even remember who you are.

Also yeah fingers crossed Piggot holds to principles here, she doesn't seem the type but I've been disappointed before

Jesus Christ that's a really long-term plan. They've been at this since what, the late 80s?

Also interesting that the terminology uses is stated in-universe to be dated

So what's the "core" Protectorate team in this context? Is that at or above the standing that Armsmaster had before he derailed his own career? Are we talking Triumvirate level, or is there a middle ground I'm not aware of?

I also really really want to know what the meme was involving Weld, that's such a specific thing to have happen

I'm shocked that this would be considered frivolous. That's the kind of opportunity you'd normally seize with both hands, the idea of waving it off seems bizarre. Do they need the Wards too much to fight homicidal supervillains and disarm megaton bombs to let them *checks notes* get more kinds of training in? That feels shortsighted.

Then again a lot of things in Brockton Bay seem shortsighted. The greatest threat against Coil's grand scheme is his own impulsiveness (although easy money says that Taylor will become his biggest problem down the line), the Empire for some reason bothered with petty street crime and protection rackets while being run by, really cannot overstate this, the CEO of a pharmaceutical corporation that was doing well enough to have an entire skyscraper, and Lung put in like 1% of the effort he could've given to running the city. Maybe nobody is coming up with five-year plans because nobody is confident they'll live another five years, or maybe it's something in the water supply.

This is funny but it's so fucking rude, oh my God

Oh Weld, Weld no, do not think about Shadow Stalker like that, she'd corrode your dick off your body with her personality.

Oh, Weld. You have put your foot in your mouth already.

This story takes a pretty dim view of humanity, honestly. Poisoning an entire apartment block with chlorine gas just so you can loot it and take over feels extreme; I'm not gonna say it could or would never happen, unfortunately people are just as capable of evil as they are of good and there's not really a limit to how far either of those things can go, but for me at least it's somewhat curious that we don't hear more about any altruists in the city outside of the Protectorate; there would have to be good Samaritans somewhere in the mix, and not even most of them would've already been stabbed or beaten to death by opportunists.

Maybe that's just the perspective the Wards are giving us, but call me crazy, I don't think Taylor is going to be any more optimistic about how things are going.

Also, Clockblocker is jumping down Weld's throat here, but he's not strictly wrong. He's coming into this fresh-faced, having not dealt with any of the aftermath of Leviathan. The strain being put on these kids is intense, not least with the losses that the Protectorate suffered and the teammates they're still grieving. Fifteen hour patrols, Jesus Christ.

Bro got owned by a thirteen-year-old.

How did he not get briefed on the dead Wards? How did he not already look them up for himself? Someone, I think multiple someones, dropped the ball there. I'm also surprised that Weld even asked the question instead of just drawing his own conclusions or looking into it when nobody could catch him being a fool.

Current Thoughts

I do not envy Weld for the situation he's being thrown into. Whatever happens in Boston is clearly a different kind of ballgame from what they're doing here in Brockton Bay, and he has not been read into it yet.

I don't envy any of the Wards, this might be the most thankless position anyone in the city might be stuck with, and none of them are even old enough to buy cigarettes or vote, but they have to fend off looters and wade through waters tainted with death and ruin for hours at a time.

How many rights do you sign away taking this job, getting your ass put on the line like this when not even the military takes kids this young into combat? I think Skitter was right, this whole arrangement blows chunks

[vyl3tpwny]

Music Genres

When I was kid, you would have probably heard me say something like “I don’t believe in genre labels”. To a degree, there is still something about that sentiment that I agree with; I don’t think you can really put music and styles of music in neat little boxes. But otherwise, I was pretty much wrong about everything else.

Let’s go over that.

pictured: Mala, one of the godfathers of roots Dubstep

—

To be blunt, “genre” isn’t just about approximating what a song sounds like. If you say “I love pop music”, that honestly doesn’t mean much. The more specific you get, the more you will approach something someone can imagine like “I like experimental progressive noise pop music”. Ok, I can start to imagine things that likely approach what you're talking about, but even then it will usually not help someone fully understand what something truly is. In categorizing and approximating music styles, genres only go so far. So what makes them important then?

Well, not to say that approximating a style when describing an artist to someone is a bad thing or that doing so isn’t meant to be valued, but it’s hardly the only reason these labels exist. Importantly, “genre” helps establish culture, history, and a musical identity. So when you're trying to tell someone you're listening to a "progressive rock” project, you’re not just imagining odd time-signatures and complex riffs, you’re also meant to understand and consider that whatever is being described as to you has some sort of relevance or importance with regards to the history behind progressive rock; the culture of college bands in the UK, the sound that the punk movement revolted against, the progression of musical storytelling in rock music since the late 60’s and early 70’s, stuff like that. There’s a distinct culture and history you can pinpoint and understand when you describe something as being progressive rock and you can’t just go around calling any complex electric guitar oriented music "progressive rock" unless it has those specific ties as well as understanding and iteration of the roots.

pictured: Genesis, because progressive rock mention

—

Genre labels help to clarify what kind of culture and histories a music project is being associated itself with and where a lot of its inspiration comes from. This is much more compelling reason for underlining the importance of genre labels and why they should be used correctly.

So, there is something I need to get off my chest then. There are a lot of misuses of genre labels all over the place, especially online. And I’m not talking about saying something is “Alternative Rock” when it’s clearly some kind of “Folk Rock” record instead. What I’m talking about is something like “Dubstep”.

Even as recent as a few years ago, I started personally reclaiming the term “Dubstep” as a genre label to describe any bass-adjacent music. At the time I did this, I thought it was cool, because the term Dubstep had been dubbed (pun intended) to be cringeworthy lexicon to some people. And while I feel that’s a noble reason to reclaim something like that, because some weirdos think it's cringe, in this case I actually think it’s wrong.

The term “Brostep” has been used to describe any non-roots bass-oriented music that originates from the proper roots Dubstep. It’s a term I didn’t like FOREVER, especially because the phrase was derived as a generalization of the kind of people who tend to listen to it. However, I actually think that Brostep is a title that people should be more comfortable and confident with labeling things as.

The original Dubstep came as a result of Jamaican immigrants bringing Dub music to the UK, which then fused with the remnants of 2-Step Garage which was prominent in the 90’s just years prior. Timbah.On.Toast made a great video called All My Homies Hate Skrillex and it is a really good breakdown of what separates roots Dubstep from the Americanized Brostep, which came after it. I think everyone knows by now that I have a deep, deep love for EDM based Broste and I am the biggest Skrillex fangirl alive. So being both a Brostep and Skrillex superfan, please understand that I think the video is one of the most important things you can watch as an EDM enjoyer.

Conflating the term Dubstep with things that aren’t actually Dubstep is honestly a slap in the face to all of the pioneers of Dub and Dubstep, which famously were both pretty much ENTIRELY invented by black people. I think it’s fair to say that incorrectly labeling music in this way has racist implications. It dishonours and twists the legacy of the music. You can find og Dubstep to listen to on the RYM Ultimate Box Set > Dubstep page. Check some of that out, then listen to some 2010, 2011 Skrillex and see how different things really went.

It confused me at first when I was a teenager, I didn't understand why so many people hated Skrillex back in the day. I came to realize so much of the hate wasn’t even really with regards music itself, but the total lack of understanding or care for the roots of the genre, which all of his work was founded upon and he then subsequently bastardized without caring at all. It was pure disrespect, it was practically cultural erasure and so many people will now only know of Dubstep as “that Skrillex transformer screech music”. Yeah. It actually fucking sucks.

But there is a LONG history of black music being erased from history and being undermined, whether entirely intentional or due to systemic unawareness.

I saw a post the other day talking about how it sucks that so much music is just lumped into being “video game music” when so much of this stuff has deep roots and cultural significance. The first example pointed how a lot of acid jazz music is just described as “Persona music” by the layperson now. Meanwhile, Acid Jazz as a genre is a huge development on things like roots jazz, disco, funk, and hip hop music. You know. All genres that were invented by black people. Fascinating, right?

Jungle music was also mentioned. And this one is very particular for me. Jungle music, when not being generalized as "PS1 Music", is often just called drum & bass or breakcore (also please Google the difference between breakbeat and breakcore, thanks) which are all fundamentally misunderstanding what Jungle music even is. Much of Jungle music, AS MANY THINGS DO, finds VERY prominent roots in Reggae, Dub, and sound system culture in Jamaica as well as countless other prominently black communities in the UK.

But it doesn’t stop there.

If you’re unfamiliar, there is a genre called “IDM”, otherwise known as Intelligent Dance Music. When I was a kid, and I first heard that word, I immediately was like “that is the most pretentious, stupid thing I’ve ever heard”. Eventually as I grew up, I just stopped thinking about that and started referring to more music as IDM. This style of music is generally characterized with “complexity” and being “not much danceable”. While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the music that is called IDM, I do think there’s everything wrong with the term IDM, intelligent dance music.

When asked how he feels about being labeled as an IDM artist, Aphex Twin responded:

"I just think it's really funny to have terms like that. It's [basically] saying 'this is intelligent and everything else is STUPID.' It's really nasty to everyone else's music."

pictured: Aphex Twin, the funnyman himself

—

I think most people would agree with this sentiment. It’s so strange to call one kind of music “intelligent”, out of the hundreds of thousands of genres out there. But let’s bring this back to Jungle music. The reality is that IDM started to become a term around the same time that Jungle music became prominent, in the 90's. Both styles of music are complex, introspective, skittery, and chaotic (but refined and often disciplined) genres. Except, of these two, Jungle music was the one pioneered primarily by black artists. IDM was a sort in competition with Jungle. To therefore call IDM “intelligent” in comparison to Jungle music ... well. I don’t feel like I really have to explain why that’s fucked up.

A lot of people have proposed different names for IDM. A quick look on reddit yields things like “Experimental Electronic” and “Brain Dance” (which was coined by Aphex Twin's label). Me personally, the term “Electro-Prog” comes to mind. Sounds cool.

Similar conversations are presently being had about the term “Riddim”. This brings us back to the dubstep side of this discussion again. Riddim, as an EDM genre, is an offshoot of Brostep music that focuses a lot on repetition over the downbeat, maintaining an insanely distorted sound design, a lot more than the average Brostep song. However, the term “riddim” originates — yet again — from the Jamaican Patois for “rhythm”. And Riddim as a musical style in Jamaica is actually more associated with things like dancehall and reggae, rather than the commercialized "Riddim" that is several hundred times removed from its own roots.

Last year, musician INFEKT proposed that what most EDM listeners call “riddim” should be referred to instead as “Trench” in an article on their website. This proposed name is derived from Getter’s use of the term on his 2014 record “Trenchlords Vol. 1”. I don’t personally know how much I resonate with the term, but whatever the consensus is, I don’t think we should be conflating a westernized, commercialized, and EDM-centric genre like this to Jamaican roots music. Over and over again, it seems that black music is constantly overwritten by developments like this, so I think more care needs to be taken in not allowing that to happen.

As a side note, a lot of people online seem very keen on appropriating Jamaican Patois quite often? There are so many examples of this. When the term “Bomboclaat” started making the rounds on Twitter a few years ago, so many white people were quick to either talk wildly about the term and trend or otherwise start saying it as well. There was a fucking article that sought to answer “The Bomboclaat >> Meme << Meaning Explained”, like they’re not dissecting an element of Jamaican slang lol. Then there was a period of time where people were constantly saying things like “On Jah?” as a stand-in for “On God?” even though this, again, is Jamaican Patois. And even now, you have tons and tons of non-black people going everywhere being like “what is blud waffling about?”, the phrase “blud” ONCE AGAIN also being Jamaican in origin.

I shouldn’t even have to explain what makes these kinds of appropriations weird and messed up. But black people lose jobs and are denied basic things in life over their hair styles, their expressions and slang, and so many other things that a white person can just appropriate and face zero consequences whatsoever for.

That aside, aside. Understanding and labeling genres correctly is such a big part of music history and highlighting and preserving cultures worldwide. When efforts are made to undermine the meaning of a genre label or otherwise use it incorrectly, so much damage is done to the communities and people groups that innovate and pioneer this art to begin with.

For these reasons, I will gladly use the term Brostep. I will happily call things Electro-Prog. And when you talk about genres like Jungle and Dubstep, say it with your whole chest. Be proud of the human race, show respect and love for the people who have forged the greatest parts of music with their bare hands. We will always stand on the shoulders of giants as musicians, so instead of pretending you yourself are the giant, build monuments and maintain the history of these people. You as an artist are nothing without them.

pictured: Augustus Pablo, one of the most important innovators of Dub. Without him, and without many of his contemporaries, I would reckon that half or more of all modern music would simply not exist.

CONTENT WARNING FOR THIS FINAL SECTION, THERE ARE LIKE LOTS OF STRANGE SLURS AND RACIST VIBES.

—

One last thing I wanna mention, this is slightly tangential but I think it's relevant to this conversation. It's always weird how lots of websites categorize things like this:

From Big Fish Audio... "G**sy*? "World/Ethnic Loops & Samples"? What the fuck are you talking about. Seems like racism to me.

On Loopmasters they have a "World" section. Any Americanized genre gets its own category, but the entire continents of Africa and Asia as well as the country of India and region of the Middle East (which are part of Asia, hope this helps btw) and lastly South America are stuffed into the nebulous "World Label". Seems like racism to me. Are you telling me you weirdos can't figure out a better way to represent these things?

But then Psy Trance gets its whole entire own category? Aren't there only like five people who listen to Psy Trance? /hj . But like come on.

Shoutout to WA Productions for categorizing a universe of suspiciously mostly black music as """Urban"""". And this company is a dime a dozen, hundreds of corpos do this shit.

East fucking West, what is this dude. There is a racism happening, I just know it. Please give me a count of how many poc are on payroll at your company, I am so curious.

And while we're at it, East West, what is this. Tell me. Fucking tell me.

Thanks for reading.

[childotkw]

In dark side of the moon, can we hear a little more about Riddle's take on things? Particularly regarding Harry?

Tom was, admittedly, a little embarrassed that it took him so long to really notice Evans.

Dumbledore’s son - and wasn’t that a disturbing notion, that someone somewhere had looked at the man who regularly wore outrageously coloured robes decorated with bumblebees and snitches and fluffy clouds and thought him desirable enough to sleep with - had initially flown beneath Tom’s radar. Oh, his arrival at Hogwarts had sparked much conversation, but his actual presence?

Tom hadn’t given the young man much thought. He had had him categorised and labelled in a neat little box from the very first mention of his existence.

Any son of Dumbledore was surely a steadfast believer in his father’s doctrine after all, and therefore not worth Tom’s time.

That impression has lasted only a few weeks.

Word had spread about Evans’ mentorship of the Shame of Slytherin, Nathan Ciro, but Tom had never seen the two together. It had been a point of discussion amongst the school and their House in particular - Dumbledore’s offspring taking a Slytherin under his wing, yet another sign he had dismissed - but for all that people were baffled by the choice, no one seemed to know much of anything about the relationship. How or even why it had come to be.

It seemed like fate that Tom was the one to stumble across the pair. Without even trying he had accomplished what so many others had not.

As it should be.

He had only seen Evans from a distant before, and the man had never struck him as someone particularly intimidating or imposing. He was short, slender, dressed plainly, and the frankly hideous glasses he wore were the only thing Tom could make out of his face - another point, everything about the man was so carefully constructed to be forgettable, Tom really was a fool - but his voice was distinct.

Tom slowed momentarily when he heard the muffled sound of a conversation, then crept closer. It was late in the afternoon, still an hour before dinner would be served, but the dungeons were normally quite empty at this point. Classes had let out ages ago, and most Slytherins enjoyed basking in the sun before they had to return to the cold hallways that bracketed their common room.

He peeked around the corner, and immediately felt his interest pique.

Evans was squatting before a curled up Ciro, staring at the younger wizard with a painfully kind expression.

“- it didn’t work.” Ciro was mumbling, hiding his face in his knees.

“It was your first try, you can’t have expected to get it right straight away.” Evans’ voice was low and patient, not dissimilar to how he spoke in classes, but with a heavy kind of intensity in it that caught Tom off-guard. “Most wizards and witches never master it.”

And that intrigued Tom more. Just what was Evans teaching Ciro?

The other boy said something else, inaudible from how his mouth pressed into his knobbly knee. Evans huffed a laugh, poking Ciro with his wand. “What’s the rule, kid?”

Ciro shifted, unfurling a little. “Head up,” he grumbled, clearly reciting this so called ‘rule’. “I said, you mastered it, and you were younger than me when you did it.”

“I was,” Evans agreed easily, his smile sliding into place with an ease Tom was briefly envious of, “but I also had a hell of a motivator to get it done.”

“What, were you being harassed by dementors?” Ciro asked, his tone far more snide than Tom was used to. He could count on one hand the amount of times he had heard that level of life in Ciro’s voice. Certainly not in the last year had he shown that much fire.

But that knowledge felt secondary to the implication behind his words.

Dementors. A difficult spell. Surely they weren’t talking about the patronus? And Evans had supposedly mastered it before he was fourteen?

“Well, maybe not ‘harassed’, but I had a few run ins,” Evans said blandly, as if most wizards would survive one encounter with such a creature. Ciro goggled at his mentor, mirroring Tom’s own incredulousness. “The point is, I learned the patronus under a lot of pressure. I needed it to protect myself, so I pushed myself. You don’t have that driving you - and you should be bloody glad for it,” Evans added when he saw whatever expression crossed Ciro’s face.

“Then why are you trying to teach it to me?” Ciro’s voice was small. “If not everyone can master it…why bother at all?”

Evans sighed, his face creasing fondly as he ruffled the boy’s hair. “Because I know you can do it,” he said simply, as if the very idea that Ciro would not be able to produce a fucking patronus had never crossed his mind. “Kid, Nathan, you managed to produce mist on your first try. That alone is incredible. It took me weeks to get that far, and I had a far better teacher showing me the ropes. You’ll get there, but you have to be patient with yourself. I’ll be right behind you every step of the way, okay?”

Tom stood there, feeling oddly breathless as he watched the scene play out. He couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation, his ears flooded by the rush of blood.

He felt, strangely, as if something fundamental had just shifted inside him, and that was -

Exhilarating.

[hauntingofhouses]

i know I've mentioned my interpretation of mizu's gender a million times on here but i don't think i ever fully elaborated on it.

so on that note i just wanna ramble about that for a bit. basically, it's my reading of the show that mizu is nonbinary, so let me dig into that.

putting the rest under the cut because it ended up being pretty long lol. also here have a cute mizu pic of her being happy and most at ease with herself, symbolised by her letting her hair down. <3 ok let's proceed.

thus, when i refer to mizu as nonbinary, i am interpreting mizu as a woman, but not ONLY a woman. not strictly a woman. she is also a man. she is also neither of these things, she is something in between, while at the same time she is none of these at all. i've said as much many times, but i just don't want people to think that when i say nonbinary, it inherently means a "third androgynous gender" that essentially turns the gender binary into a gender trinary. not only is that going against what the term nonbinary was crafted for (to go against rigid boxes and categorisation of gender identities), but also, not all nonbinary people fall under that category or definition, and that's definitely not the way i interpret mizu.

okay before i go deeper i'd just like to address some important things. first of all, this post is an analysis of canon, and thus everything i am arguing for is about my own interpretation of the show, and not some baseless projected headcanon i am projecting onto the character. please remember there is a difference between an interpretation (subjective; interpretations will differ from viewer to viewer, but ultimately it is firmly rooted in evidence taken from the source material) VS a headcanon (unrelated and often even contrary to what is presented in canon; opinions wildly differ and they cannot be argued for because there is no canonical evidence to back it up).

ALSO please note that nonbinary is an umbrella term. this means that it applies to a vast range of gender identities. other identities that fall under the nonbinary umbrella include agender, bigender, genderfluid, and so on. however, it's my personal preference to use the term nonbinary as it is, simply because i'm not a fan of microlabels (more power to you if you do like them and find they suit you more though!).

also, before anyone fights me on this, let me clarify further that gender means something different to everyone. it's not your biological sex or physical characteristics. but at the same time, gender is not mere presentation. you can be a trans woman and still present masculine—either because you're closeted and forced to, or because you just want to—and either way, that doesn't take away from your identity as a woman. same goes for trans men. if you're a trans man but you wear skirts and don't bind or don't get top surgery, that doesn't make you any less of a man. because gender non-conformity exists, and does not only apply to cis people! some lesbians are nonbinary and prefer using he/him pronouns while dressing masculinely, but that doesn't mean they're a man, or that they're any less of a lesbian. neither does this mean that they're a cis woman.

the thing about queer identities in general is that, like i said, they mean something different to everyone, because how you identify—regardless of your biological attributes and fashion or pronouns—is an extremely personal experience. so a nonbinary person and a gnc cis woman's experiences might have plenty of overlap, but what distinguishes between the two is up to the individual. there's no set requirements to distinguish you as one or the other, but it's up to you to decide what you identify as, based on what you feel. either way, by simply identifying yourself as anything under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, you are already communicating to the world that you are not what a conservative, cisheteronormative society wants you to be.

which is why i find all this queer infighting on labels to be so ridiculous. because we're all fighting the same fight; the common enemy is a societal structure that divides us into set roles and expectations purely based on our biological parts. that's why biological essentialism in the queer community is a fucking disease. because by arguing that women are inherently weak and fragile and soft and gentle and must be protected from evil ugly men, while men are inherently strong and angry and violent and exploitative of women, these people are advocating for the same fucked up system that marginalises and abuses women as well as effeminate and/or gay men.

anyway. i'm going on a tangent. this was meant to be a blue eye samurai post. so yeah back to that— the point i'm trying to make is that there's no singular way to identify as anything, as everyone's views on gender, especially their own, is specific and personal to the individual.

so with that being said, yes you can definitely interpret mizu as a gnc cis woman and that's a totally valid reading of the text. however, interpreting her as nonbinary or transmasc also doesn't take away from her experiences with misogyny and female oppression, because nonbinary and transmasc folks also experience these things.

me, personally, i view her as nonbinary but not necessarily or not always transmasc because i still believe femininity and womanhood is a very inherent part of who mizu is. for example, from what we've seen, she does not like binding. it does not give her gender euphoria, but is instead very uncomfortable for her both physically and mentally, and represents her suppressing her true self. which is why when she "invites the whole" of herself, she stands completely bare in front of the fire, breasts unbound and hair untied. when she is on the ship heading to a new land in the ending scene, she is no longer hiding her neck and the lack of an adam's apple. we can thus infer that mizu does not have body dysmorphia. she is, in fact, comfortable in her body, and relies on it extremely, because her body is a weapon. instead, what mizu hates about herself is her face—her blue eyes. she hates herself for her hybridised racial identity, hates herself for being a racial Other. hates that she has no home in her homeland. thus it is important to note that these are not queer or feminist themes, but postcolonial ones.*

* and as a tiny aside on this subject, i really do wish more of the fandom discussion would talk about this more. it's just such an essential part to reading her character. like someone who's read homi k bhabha's location of culture and has watched this show, PLEASE talk to me so we can ramble all about how the show is all about home and alienation from community. please. okay anyway—

nevertheless, queer and feminist themes (which are not mutually exclusive by the way!) are still prevalent in her story, though they are not the main issue that she is struggling with. but she does struggle with it to some extent, and we see this especially during her marriage with mikio, where we see her struggle in women's domestic spaces.

on the other hand, though, she finds no trouble or discomfort in being a man or being around other men—even naked ones—and does not seem stifled by living as one, does not seem all that bothered or uncomfortable navigating through men's spaces. contrast this to something like disney's mulan (1998), where we do see mulan struggle in navigating through men's spaces, as she feels uncomfortable being around so many men, always feeling like she doesn't belong and that she's inherently different from them. mizu has no such experiences like this, as her very personality and approach to life is what can be categorised as typically "masculine". she is straightforward and blunt. her first meeting with mikio, she tells him straight to his face that he's old while frowning and raising a brow at him. she approaches problems with her muscles and fists (or swords), rather than with her words or mind. compare this with mulan, who, while well-trained by the end of the movie, still uses her sharp wits rather than brute strength. this is a typically "feminine" approach. it's also the approach akemi relies on throughout the show—through her intelligence and persuasive tongue, she navigates the brothel with ease. mizu, in contrast to someone like mulan and akemi, struggles with womanhood and femininity, and feels detached from it.

thus, in my opinion, mizu is not simply a man, nor is she simply a woman. she is both. man and woman. masculine and feminine. she has to accept both, rather than suppress one or the other. her name means water. fluid.

as a side note, while i do believe mizu is nonbinary, i also primarily use she/her pronouns for her, but this is a personal preference. i find it's easier to use in fanfic (singular they is confusing to write stories with, but again, that's just my feelings on it, and this is coming from someone who uses they/they pronouns). i also lean towards she/her because it's what the creators and all the official promotional copywriting of the show uses. and even though i am a "death to the author" enjoyer, i feel that when interpreting things that are left open-ended, it does help to look at the creators' take on things. also because, in general, being nonbinary simply doesn't necessitate the use of they/them pronouns. nonbinary is not just a third gender. it's about breaking the binary, in any which way, and that's exactly what mizu does, constantly.

also, i'd also like to mention that one of show's head of story even referred to her with the term "nonbinary", rather than simply "androgynous" (see pic below). and it's possible this could be a slip up on his part, in which he believes the terms are interchangeable (they're not btw), but regardless i find it a very interesting word choice, and one that supports my argument.

so anyway yeah that's my incredibly long rambling post.

TL;DR nonbinary mizu rights 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 congrats if you reached the end of this btw. also ily. unless you're a TERF in which case fuck off. ok i'm done.

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #347

It was a very long day. It is currently 1:48 in the morning. At least for now, I feel somewhat amped up; I'm not especially worried about falling asleep while writing to you, despite the circumstances.

It is Saturday, which is my normal work day! Though I was tired when I woke up, I was still pretty stoked about going! I like what I do there, and I like the people I work with. It's not glamorous work, being a bakery assistant at an ordinary grocery store. But at this time, I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing; this seems pretty perfect to me.

So. Do you remember when I talked about wishing that there was a such thing as a seeded pumpernickel bagel with everything seasoning? I think I mentioned it in this one:

Well. I mentioned wishing that such a thing existed to Tr, my boss. And do you know what she did???

She made me a loaf of seeded pumpernickel bread with everything seasoning on top!!!! She made it special just for me!!! And I was SO HAPPY!!! It is not a bagel, but that's okay!!!! I'm inclined to think that this is even better!!!

I didn't open it and try it yet. I wanna do it tomorrow, when I'll be a little less frazzled and stressed out! But!!! Oh!!! Sephiroth!!! I'm gonna try so many things with it!!! I'm gonna try it on its own, and I'm gonna try it with melted butter, and I'm gonna try it with cream cheese, and I'm gonna try it with tzatziki sauce, and I'm gonna try it with spinach and ranch bread dip, and...! and...! and....!!!!

Today, it was just me and Tr working together! I did all sorts of stuff, from labeling boxes, to putting things out on display, to arranging cookies to be baked, to washing dishes, and... well... all sorts of stuff!! Haha!

This is gonna sound really weird, but I actually like doing dishes at this place, because they have this big giant industrial sink, and you wash the dishes by spraying them with a hose that shoots out a powerful jet of hot, soapy water!!! All of the goop on the dishes and the grease and the crumbs and the sugar all melts right off of whatever I'm washing, like ice beneath a blowtorch!! It's so fucking cool!!! I wish that the sink in my house worked like this!!! Next time, I'll see about getting a picture for ya!!!

Oh, and I made muffins today!! And Tr made bread!! And I think I told you before all about how amazing the bread smells when it's mixing in the giant machine!! And so I got to fill up muffin tins, surrounded by the scent of freshly mixed bread and freshly mixed muffin batter!! Check it out!!

Once the muffin batter is ready, we put muffin wrappers in muffin tins, like this:

I filled 5 muffin tins with muffin wrappers, and then set up my workstation like so:

And then I got to work!!

In the end, I almost completely filled all of the muffin tins; I think I could have filled all of them if I had gotten a chance to scrape muffin batter off of the mixing paddle, but it got put in the fancy dish washing machine (for lack of a better term, I've decided to call it the “washamabob”; it's a play on the word “thingamabob”, which is a word that people like to use when they don't know the actual word for a specific noun) before I could get to it. Ah, well!! Maybe next time!

I wasn't able to stick around long enough to see the results of these baking, sadly; I had to pick up a few odds and ends and then hurry home to prepare some noms, because today was supposed to be Friendsgiving at a friend's house!!

So, I picked up supplies to make spinach bread dip! Do you remember me writing about that a long time ago? Here:

I didn't use cream cheese this time – just sour cream, spinach, and ranch dressing mix. Easy peasy.

When I got home, I started by making another batch of pumpkin brownies; J likes them a lot, and so did a few people at work, so I figured maybe the folks at Friendsgiving would like it, too!

While that was baking, I put together the bread dip. You'll need two 10-ounce packages of frozen spinach...

You'll wanna let it soak in hot water for a bit to thaw; I put the frozen blocks of spinach into a wire mesh strainer, then put that into a colander, and then put that into my wok:

Leave it to sit for a while, and the hot water will thaw the spinach nicely:

This is normally the part where we use a cheesecloth to squish out the water. But I am a derpy little nugget who forgets things, so I failed to pick up a cheesecloth at the grocery. Instead, I made do with some paper towels...

Once I got out as much water as I could, I put it in the mixing bowl. I then added one 16-ounce container of sour cream, and one packet of ranch dressing mix:

Here is the result:

This time, instead of using a seeded rye bread, I went with a sourdough; I selected one that was baked and packaged this morning; it was so soft and fluffy!!!

I hollowed it out like this:

...And then I filled it with the bread dip!!!!!

I cut the rest of the bread into cubes for dunking into the dip, like this:

And then, before I knew it, it was already time for us to go to my friend's house!!

J had a shift at his job, so we left an hour later than we would have liked, but that's okay! There was still plenty of food left to enjoy:

...Fixed you a plate. Want some...?

…

…Yeah, I... I know. I know...

…

...Sigh...

...

Well. Everything I tried was very delicious. J and our friend Me and all the others there played a board game called Tales of the Arabian Nights. It's basically a story generator; you go to places on the map, and in those places, you get encounters, and you have a great big list of things you can do in response to those encounters; there are hundreds, if not thousands of outcomes!! There is a scoring system, but... I'm not sure that anyone pays attention to the scoring system. Mostly everyone just listens to the stories that are happening to the other players, and... it's a really nice time, actually.

I was cold and tired, though, so I relaxed in a nearby plush rocking chair with a blanket and a playlist. And I took the most amazing nap. I had some truly wonderful visions during that nap – visions of being held and rocked and quietly sung to. It was as lovely as it was bizarre.

Hey, Sephiroth? I know I've asked before, and I know you can't answer me, but... do you sing? Have you tried it? And... if you have, then what songs do you carry in your heart? For me, it's still this one:

I've thought about my old interpretation of the lyrics. Do you remember the letter in which I wrote about it? Here:

So... I wondered how my interpretation would change if I replaced the “I” with “ai” - the Japanese word for “love”.

I originally interpreted it like this:

---------------------------- What terrible news: it's all mere replicas of everything that came before. But the man at my side says, "It's still not a lie..." and I know that the vision in his eyes reflected back at me is true. Maybe it's all just fabrications and culminations, but maybe that doesn't make it all lies. The wing on his back speaks of the vision I see within his eyes... ----------------------------

But, you know? What if this interpretation was also correct...?

---------------------------- What terrible news: it's all mere replicas of everything that came before. But the man at my side says, "It's still not a lie..." and I know that the love in his eyes when he looks at the world is true. Maybe it's all just fabrications and culminations, but maybe that doesn't make it all lies. The wing on his back speaks of the love I see within his eyes... ----------------------------

...

...Hey, Sephiroth...? Wouldn't it be kinda neat if the man in the chorus... was you...?

...Hahaha... Silly, I know. ...I know. Never mind it...

...

Well. After I woke from my short nap, lots of weighty, but ultimately pleasant conversation was had. For whatever reason, people tend to trust me with the things that are troubling them. I try to help in whatever ways I can; I have a lot of experience with navigating toxic interactions with people, and I have a lot of experience with cleansing toxic behaviors from my own way of interacting with the world, so I guess sometimes folks like to think that my perspective is worth something.

Often enough, my advice boils down to things like, "take care of your body", "practice self-awareness", "hold yourself accountable for your behavior", "challenge your beliefs", "don't try to manage others' emotions for them", "tell the truth", "speak your needs directly", and "remove yourself from people who are unable or unwilling to treat you with basic decency". But... unfortunately, for a variety of compelling reasons (usually stemming from trauma), these things are really hard for lots of people.

Still, one must never underestimate the power of planting a seed. Maybe good things will happen, even if I'm not around to see them. Who knows?

I ended the evening with trying to explain a little about REBT to my friend, Me. Do you remember when I first talked about that? You'll find it here:

Well. I guess that's all I've got rattling around in my noggin for today. I think I'll stop writing and go to bed. Maybe I'll sleep in tomorrow. Maybe I'll have another nice dream. I hope that you can see nice dreams when you rest, too.

Hey. I love you. I love you a whole lot. So please stay safe out there. Please keep working on turning your face back towards the light. Please keep holding yourself accountable and working towards a softer, kinder, brighter tomorrow.

I'll write again soon.

Your friend, Lumine

[the-s1lly-corner]

hey, may i request hcs of laughing jack + slenderman x nonbinary, afab!reader who gets misgendered/bullied a lot but is too scared to correct/stand up to ppl? happens to me a lot :[

laughing jack and slenderman x afab!nonbinary!reader

im so so sorry you keep getting treated like dookie- as a fellow afab nb i totally get your pain with the misgendering, people just need to hush up

notes: reader is afab and nonbinary, established relationships, both canon characters have limited knowledge of lgbt topics but thats mostly because they hardly interact with people or media

cws: transphobia, canon typical violence, mentions of stalking

laughing jack

doesnt get to interact with many people much, so hes a little limited on his knowledge- and given that he originally started existing in the Victorian era? hoo boy- hes not transphobic or otherwise lgbtphobic but there is some ignorance

can see himself as using some labels once he gets more educated on it, though! always headcanoned laughing jack to be gnc!

tries to help you appear more androgynous or masculine if thats what you want! he doesnt mind playing dress up with you, and hes definitely going to take it as a moment to turn it into a game and try to cheer you up!

openly mocks the people who bully you, as well as outright saying that theyre just a bunch of jerks who... dont deserve nice things to head their way.. to keep the description vague

similar to slenderman, hes going to go out and get some vengeance if things get ugly enough

he doesnt like going out without you, hes a bit clingy.. but the sight of you being so distraught really makes his insides coil like snakes.. does not like it at all

even tries to push for you to carry him around in his box so he can just jump and slash anyone who says anything- though thats not a very good idea... would give him away quickly

slenderman

he doesnt understand much about gender, and honestly? i can easily see him being agender, or maybe gender apathetic simply due to him not showing interest in his own identity. he rarely wants to be perceived anyway

despite not knowing much about it and not caring how others see him, he can understand just a little bit on why it matters to you- especially when youre seen as something youre not and harassed for it

rest assured that if he ever finds out someone is harassing you, he will silent them quickly. out right offing them or stalking them over a period of time, the result will end in you having one less person on your back... then two.. then three.. and so on

actually the fact that people seem to either go missing or skip town not long after messing with you makes many keep their mouths shut- and before you even think that might prompt someone to harm you under the guise that its YOU doing it, slenderman isnt going to let that happen

he listens to you if you need to talk about your feelings on it, hes unsure of how to verbally help you affirm your gender identity but if you outright ask him how he views you; he tells you that you pass in his eyes regardless of if you present more femininely, masculine, or androgynously.. though that may be because of his aforementioned limited knowledge on the topic... hes supportive nonetheless!

[expression-of-doubt]

oddities.mp4

She stood there, the pitter-patter of the rain beating against the ugly, purple nylon of her umbrella; paramedics, journalists and disinterested cops circling all around her, arranging the scene to be picture-perfect for this afternoon’s and ostensibly the whole month’s worth of breaking news reports.

After all, what could be more compelling to a general audience than a disfigured corpse, of what was presumably a man, with his skull so caved in, it had painted a spiked halo of dark red blood where there once used to be a head and a face. If only he could have died whilst holding up a “V for victory”, so that the iconography of it would single-handedly provoke a stencilled mural be drawn in its place in two week’s time. The words “gruesome scene” basically wrote themselves on the collective phone screen of every journalist from the seventeen rival TV stations present on the scene, all trying to spin some different angle for what was just simple, cold, bloody murder.

No one really wanted to be there, mostly because it was tough work in even rougher conditions, or maybe because it was just work. Terrible weather, and the only coffee nearby came out of an ancient vending machine, which was barely pretending to hold off on the sugar, when you’d press the button for none. It was enough of a mess that it would handily occupy them for the rest of the day, which most seemed to take in stride, as well as anyone could a free paycheque, anyway. No moving parts or reasonable doubt to be had either – just “We’re currently investigating.” and “You’ll be the first to know, when we know.” License to make shit up, and hope that further developments would end up proving you right, and the guys over at CTV wrong. It was the kind of gamble, where no one would end up being the loser, since most stations would end up reposting each other’s work by the end of the first week, with their readers and viewers becoming about as half as interested by week two. Though, most of these young urban professionals were morbidly hoping that there’d be some other gruesome scene to write about by that point.

Everyone would race to be the first to publish, but in this day and age it wouldn’t amount to nothing more than forcing your colleagues into the choke-hold of having to cite you as the guys that pressed “Publish” seventeen milliseconds earlier, because the intern had a momentary tremor. The average consumer of said news couldn’t give any less of a shit who broke it first, since those articles would be sandwiched in between a photo of a scantly clad girl, advertising her private page, and this week’s hottest meme of a chipmunk struggling to swallow an overly large nut.

Ivy wasn’t really in the head-space to have much of a reaction to anything, since anyone who’d spend any time living in The Capital would know this is just about par for the course in this town. All she could think about is how the rain would scare off all the clientele, and there’d be nothing to do but shuffle boxes from lower to higher shelves all day. No reason to take the headphones in her ears out either. Another day wasted before it had even started.

She’d stand there, eavesdropping on the conversations the people unrolling police tape would bark at each other for several minutes at a time before looking back down at her feet and thinking to herself when someone would notice the tooth sitting on the ground right in front of her – some kind of molar. A dentist would probably know, she’d think to herself, as if affirming to anyone listening in on her thoughts, that she didn’t really need to know. Several police officers would almost step on it, which would surely reveal its existence or instantly destroy it, but no such luck. She’d smirk to herself one last time, before stepping away from it and through the door behind her, into a store-front labelled “Oddities” – her place of work.

…

There are only two things really worth mentioning about that place:

One was immediately apparent – it sold antiques. Old, musty, and as far as anyone could tell without going in – probably expensive. While partially true, the real nature of it was something closer to a boutique, which had at some point over the years failed, and then forcibly diversified in various—if not too many—directions, in a desperate attempt to keep the lights on.

The second was its proprietor – a man, known to his acquaintances, and unknown to just about everyone else. A rather unpleasant to be around—by anyone’s guess—sixty-something year old man, who had, so far, blissfully coasted through life, in a state of perpetual melancholia. It was the kind of thing you’d immediately sense radiating off of him, if you ever got to meet him in-person. It’s what ultimately must have earned him the nickname “Eyes”. The only thing that really betrayed that caricature was the way he’d loom over people in stature, broad shoulders and all. That and you couldn’t shake the feeling that, despite it all, he was never really unhappy. There’d be this air of dignity about him, which no one ever seemed to really question or deny about him. Maybe it was the way he’d handle himself, or maybe it was just his age, finally growing to suit him. At least, that’s what Ivy would say, whenever someone asked.

Gonna be another slow day, huh Ivy? How was your date?

The asshole never showed up. Stood me up like some dumb bitch, that doesn’t know better.

That’s a shame. . . I’m guessing you have him an earful?

He’s been ghosting me ever since. He should probably keep at it, if he knows what’s good for him!

‘Attagirl. You deserve better. You just let me know if you need anything, alright?

He’d run Oddities with an iron fist – a fact that would become apparent the second any unseasoned clientele managed to somehow find his shop, and naively think to enter it without proper defensive countermeasures.

The ideal customer was one who would enter, give a polite, yet short greeting, and would then proceed to browse through the shelves and the displays in complete and utter, deeply contemplative silence, for at least ten to fifteen minutes. Only after, would they be capable of asking, or be offered, any help. This “help” would usually consist of a couple of leading questions, with which he would internally gauge the client’s level of familiarity. If the client “had a pulse”, as he liked to put it, the conversation would be brief, and it would result in a guaranteed purchase within the next minute. If no such vital signs were found, and he was able to diagnose the cause of brain death sufficiently quickly, there was about a fifty-fifty chance they’d walk away with something, which he’d deem sufficiently expensive and profitable enough to justify having gotten up from his chair. Whether or not they had come in with the intention of leaving with said thing was seen as irrelevant, and/or their mistake.

Anyone that acted outside of the “mandatory browsing period”, was booted out kicking and screaming.

As you might imagine, this didn’t really fall under what some would consider conventional business savvy, but to him that never was the point to begin with. To him, this mercantile venture was an exercise in providing a service to the public. A service that no one was explicitly begging for, but was provided nonetheless.

I’ll be alright. I just don’t know why you even bothered opening up today. They’re not going to be done with that mess outside anytime soon.

Who knows, one of those journos might make a mistake and take a picture of the wrong wall. Have to look our best.

The one without the corpse with the blown off head?

They don’t know that. Their bosses probably just told them to go to this address and take pictures. I don’t think most of them can even perceive the corpse as something out of the ordinary. Besides, there’s a tooth rolling around out there they still haven’t noticed.

Oddities was Eyes’ personal crusade against the tides of mindless consumerism, brought on by nearly thirty years of attempts to establish a democracy, modelled after other capitalist countries. This was only his excuse to try and shape the unwilling masses; to turn them from a horde of grossly disinterested individuals, preoccupied with the turmoil of daily and/or biological life, to more full-bodied and well-rounded people, with at least one niche interest. It wasn’t so much an antiques shop, as it was a re-education centre. Ivy also liked to add that it was a place that forced upon people an intense kind of concentration, to make a really blunt kind of point.

She had worked there ever since she was almost done with high-school. The pay couldn’t have been particularly good, but as the sole employee of the establishment, she had a certain kind of irreplaceable autonomy. Though, everything seemed to indicate that she’d still stick around, even if that wasn’t the case. Something about all those carefree workdays, where there wouldn’t be a single person setting foot through those doors. She didn’t really see it as a job, as much as it was a place to hang out for a couple of hours and still earn a paycheque at the end of the month. Enough to cover a small one-room apartment, food, decent internet, and her tuition, anyway.

Though, the idea of giving money to that front of an institution they’d call a university seemed to irk her a bit. She had gotten roped into doing it, after her relatives had twisted her arm into getting a higher education. For her future, they’d say. Obviously they meant something like pursuing law, medicine, or architecture, but she thought the humanities would have to suffice. She’d never really talk about it, but made sure anyone concerned about the topic could rest assure, that whatever she’d come out the other end with would result in no prospects whatsoever.

Saw that too, eh? That’s next week’s shocking revelation, I bet. Also what… are you telling me none of those piggies wanna come in and look for some new curtains? No questions?

Yeah pretty much every single one of them came in, asking the same questions – efficient communication, they call it. I’m pretty sure half of them went out with the conclusion that I was the one who did it.

Well. . . you might’ve. There’s enough antique weapons in this building to arm a small army. Who’s to say you haven’t grown restless at your age and started lashing out?

Most days, she’d lounge around the shop on one of the many beaten-up sofas, which to her seemed to have been on display and available for purchase for at least the last thirty years. Clearly no takers.

Every once in a while, she’d get up and turn on one of several import high-end Hi-fi systems, on which she would play one of the many records Eyes had stashed away for discerning clientele.

Eyes would be over in the corner by the entrance, where he had set up his workbench all those aeons ago, when Oddities first opened. He’d say it was the best lit part of the shop, which would highlight the fact that he is, in fact, the most important article enclosed in these here four walls. He’d usually smirk to himself while saying that. In reality, his eyesight was getting worse, and the corner window gave him just enough light to not have to turn on a desk lamp all the time. He’d usually spend his days digging around the guts of some old, broken radio. Never seemed to know how to get it to work, though.

You’d feel very lucky then, wouldn’t ya? The beheading – sure; but that’s a high velocity impact splatter repainting that wall. Curious thing is, that there’s not even a single sign of gunfire anywhere around that body. Whoever hit that guy turned him into mist, and didn’t even use a gun. It’s sure to stump forensics for a while, if it ever reaches them, that is.

Definitely not going to burn this week’s guess on you being a gardener. I dunno. It just looks like some dead rich kid to me. Mummy and daddy’s silver spoon couldn’t bail him out of this mess, I guess.

Behind Eyes, would be a large modular bookshelf, which only housed books in the compartments that were physically out of his reach. Over the years, he had replaced anything within arms length for some kind of junk, he found essential to the upkeep of the shop – wire strippers, 12 gauge wire, planks of wood, cast iron pans, scrap electronics, technical manuals, coffee cups, depleted uranium rods – you name it. This was a man, who self-admittedly refused to understand the concepts of organisation and cleanliness, as he thrived in “the kind of chaos only he could make”. This was also part of the philosophy, which resulted in the glorified intimidation tactic that was hanging a quick-release sixteenth-century executioner’s sword off of chains from the ceiling, right above where he’d be sitting all day. Essential, he’d call it.

Ivy simply didn’t believe that it would have much of an effect on anyone, especially if someone were to be so inclined as to break in and try to steal, what was, to her, an assortment of mostly dust and worthless junk, no one saw value in, anyway.

What added to the intimidation factor were the dried flecks of blood, which covered part of the lower edge. The usual story would bluntly imply they were from the last client who misbehaved, or maybe the last intruder who thought they were going to get out alive, but Ivy knew that there was an equally funny story of someone getting up too quick from their desk one too many times.

Regardless, Eyes was unshakable in his convictions, and it seemed to fit in with his rather morbid sense of humour.

Who knows! That kid is going to end up having one hell of a swan song.

What do you mean?

Well… someone already took the money out of his pocket, so he’s at least gonna buy someone a good evening out. Suit is going to get ripped off him, cleaned up, and appear in someone’s wedding photo two weeks from now. Probably lived somewhere too, which means that there’s a free condo to crash in. . . at least until rent is due. And whatever ID he might have had on him is now someone’s blank slate to get out of this shithole, carte blanche. At the end of the day, this guy has done more for the citizens of this town than most. What’s left of him was committed to the city, regardless if he ever was.

You been thinking that one up the whole day, haven’t you? That’s a real fucked up way of looking at it, Eyes.

Ivy would grimace at the thought, but she knew that it probably wasn’t too far off from the truth. All it took was one look out through the window. The tooth – still just laying there on the wet concrete. Another footstep passing by it for yet another near miss.

Whatever he was running away from just caught up to him. Probably never even noticed. He got what was coming to him.

Eyes would look up from his little project and give the scene outside another once-over.

Everyone does. . . eventually.

The rain would patter against the glass, slightly eroding away the old, faded lettering on them. Another uneventful day in The Capital.

Next issue: October 23rd, 2024

[theshoegirldiaries]

Curiouser and curiouser. L'Amour Rose Saint Tropez (centre) is one of my favourite fragrances and probably my favourite Anna Sui scent, but there's something about the bottle that's always bothered me. Nowhere on it does it say "Saint Tropez" and the look of the bottle is very similar to the original L'Amour Rose, so how can you tell the difference? Well, a couple of months ago I bought the original LR EDP and the Versailles version, which strangely enough does have Versailles written on it, which just added to my confusion. Why doesn't Saint Tropez? Do I even own Saint Tropez or is it L'Amour Rose in the wrong box?

Let's go back to the beginning. I ordered LRST from Superdrug, a reputable retailer here in the UK (so I knew the item was genuine). There was very little information regarding this particular flanker at the time. The description of the notes was different to any other LR fragrances I could find on Fragrantica ("A rich sensual heart wrapped by flirtatious, feminine notes and a bright floral freshness. With the addition of salty beach notes and the scent of warm dry sand, this fragrance will take you on a luxurious vacation to Saint-Tropez"). The colouring of the bottle looked similar to L'Amour Rose, but didn't look frosted in the promotional image. The only information I could find back then, was a social media post by Anna Sui about their new Saint Tropez fragrance with notes matching Superdrug's description. So I figured it was new-ish and not many people had heard of it yet.

When it arrived, the box clearly states the size (75ml), Eau de Parfum and that it's the ST version, but the bottle inside was frosted (unlike the stock photo, though I've had this issue with other Anna Sui bottles before) and there's no mention of ST on the bottle itself. So fast-forward to a few months ago and I decided to take a chance and order a tester bottle of the LR EDP along with the LR Versailles EDP. V is obviously different to the others. The juice is more orange, the ribbon is orange velvet and it states on the front of the bottle exactly which version it is. The LR EDP however, looks identical to LRST EDP. Same black grosgrain ribbon (the EDT version in promotional pictures at least has a pale pink ribbon, so it looks different) and similar coloured juice . I put off testing this perfume as I was worried it would just be another bottle of LRST (worried I'd have two open bottles on the go at once, rather than worried about buying this scent twice). When I did eventually get round to it, I could immediately confirm they were very different scents.

You'd think the mystery would end there and I'd just consider myself lucky that I bought two different sizes and could therefore tell them apart that way. However, I decided to photograph the bottom labelling (my eyesight needs it magnified) and things just got stranger. Versailles is marked a 50ml Eau De Parfum (all correct), L'Amour Rose, a 50ml with no reference to strength (despite it coming in EDT and EDP). Saint Tropez says 75ml, Eau de Toilette. EDT? It's supposed to be an EDP! LRST has great longevity and is quite powerful, so I don't believe it's an EDT. I even dug out the box (above), to double check and it definitely says EDP.

I'm always lambasting companies that don't have enough differentiation between different flankers. We shouldn't need to keep the boxes or read the small (and always difficult to read) labels on the bottom to know which version we're using. Yet in this case, the label, bottle and box are all saying different things! It's all just so strange. It's like it never existed, it's still not listed on Fragrantica (but I saw someone else commenting on there regarding it) and I've had this in my collection for over a year now. All I know is, it's my favourite of the three LR scents I own, it's truly beautiful (the other two are too fizzy/sharp for my liking), it would just be nice for it to be acknowledged and for some confirmation that what I'm smelling is the scent and strength I'm thinking it is.

[pileofpawns]

Intro post!!! Wauuugh! Finally!

I have been meaning to make one these for ages but I've never gotten around to it lmao

Hi there, I'm Plum! I'm 17 years old and my pronouns are she/her (though idc if you use they/them on me either). I'm a disabled aroace cis girl. Nice to meet ya! This is where I tip my brain contents into - Consistency does not exist here! I mostly post about my interests (which can change very rapidly), but also make generally nonsensical shitposts and rarely post art I make.

Misc info about me:

I'm okay with any and all gendered language being used on me. I'm not a guy but you can call me one if it's funny (or even if it’s not funny)

Common speech quirks and things I say and type a lot include "wowzers", "eep", abbreviating "-ing" to "-in", and capitalizing words for emphasis

I LOVE turtles. Can't get enough of em. My favorite species is the three-toed box turtle!

You are always free to mention me on posts or send me asks for literally anything! People nudging me to show me something they think I'd like brings me SO much joy.

Fruity fella who loves (literal) fruit

🐢💕 <- favorite emojis

I am disabled!! (I know I said it at the top) My disabilities include ADHD, dermatillomania, misophonia, mitral valve prolapse, and major depressive disorder. I’m only sharing these because I’m comfortable doing so and I want to talk about them!

I have a habit of calling anyone who I am even slightly acquainted with "bestie". If this makes you uncomfortable please let me know and I will stop!

I make visual art, write, and craft things sometimes! You can check out my stuff under the tags #plums art and #plum writes . I've also been playin the violin for uhhh... 7 years now?

I HATE discourse and I'm a strict inclusionist. This blog is safe for endogenic and mixed origin systems, self-diagnosed folx, folx who use microlabels, and pretty much anyone not trying to cause harm to others. Please keep discourse out of here.

I'm a scalie and also alterhuman in some kinda way!! I don't really label it lol but I am a three-toed box turtle in some capacity.

You can find me on ao3 here

You can find me on YouTube here

And you can find me on Discord under the user pickledplums ! If you shoot me a friend request or DM please let me know who you are first or I will likely not respond.

My blog name is a lyric from the song “Ghostdubster” from the “Super Ghostbusters Deluxe Edition” album by Vargskelethor. Give it a listen, funniest shit I’ve ever heard.

Spam likes/reblogs are okay!! They make me rlly happy :))

Non-definitive list of fandoms I'm in/media I enjoy:

Sonic the Hedgehog

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (mostly 2003 and rise but I love all iterations)

Tales from the Stinky Dragon

Usagi Yojimbo

PaRappa the Rapper/UmJammer Lammy

Rhythm Heaven

Samba de Amigo

Magic the Gathering (not really versed in the lore but I do play the game!)

Dungeons & Dragons

Spongebob Squarepants (the main cartoon and the musical)

Kid Cosmic

South Park (I am not very active in the fandom anymore and have not watched the actual show in ages, but I will occasionally like/reblog fanart. I recognize the problems it and it’s creators have.)

userbox credits: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 (bottom two are by me)

Welcome to my silly little blog! I hope you enjoy your stay :}