#or that i'm just too sensitive

[inkskinned]

we were sitting on the floor and i was cutting out tiny pictures to make a collage for a friend's birthday. you were on your phone and you laughed about something, and i was still in love with you then, so i asked what had you giggling.

"sorry. i was just..." you took a moment and went back to texting. "i was telling someone about how you're afraid of the dark."

i'm afraid of the dark because something bad happened. "oh." i felt a little slinky of shame crawl down my throat.

you glanced up, and maybe it showed on my face, because you rolled your eyes and held the phone to the side casually so i could see the group chat. "what? was it a secret?"

i looked down to the scissors in my hand. "i just..." no, it's not a secret. it just felt like something private, something serious. saying why would you tell someone that just feels like an accusation. it's unfair. i honestly am not even ashamed of it, it's just a fact about my person that i don't usually share.

what a strange experience. is this a human thing or a generational thing? for our grandparents: did they need to worry about how quickly someone can just... share your personal information? again, i didn't even really have a true objection. what could i say? i want any person in my life to feel they can be honest with their friends. it's not like i said don't tell anyone this.

i cut out another letter to complete the rainbow happy birthday, started hunting for the exclamation mark. i heard you sigh dramatically.

"don't make a big deal about this," you said.

this entire conversation was a pattern for us, and this was when we got to my least favorite part of the pattern. i would get my feelings hurt in some oblique not-technically-terrible way, and then it would be making a big deal about something. you'd get frustrated for me for being soft, but i was born soft. you knew i was soft when you pierced me. it's one of the things that made controlling me so easy.

"i'm not," i felt my voice crack. the question came without my wanting. "why are you guys talking about me?" and why are you saying that thing? why not like - i'm telling them how you're generous and kind and pretty.

you let out this low, tragic groan. "oh my god." you tossed the phone away from your body. "there, see? i just won't talk to them if you don't like it."

the rest of the hour went the way it always went, between us: i said i don't actually mind if you talk to your friends but -, you found a way to call my minor expression of discomfort "being dramatic." you got upset that i had been offended. i ended up apologizing, even though i hadn't actually done anything.

afterwards, you picked up the phone again. after texting for a little bit, you snorted. "okay," you said, "but it is kind of funny you're afraid of the dark. i mean, when you think about it."

[arcadian-vampire]

If y'all need me, I'm busy lamenting my status as a Medical Anomaly. Yeah it'll be all day. Or two. Maybe six.

[detectivebambam]

hey btw Wymack recruiting people no one else bothers to look at also means recruiting the two incredibly good players who are considered "too short".

fyi.

YOU CAN ONLY PUT 30 TAGS???

[enemywasp]

I HATE tiktok and the Internet in general rn for the obsession with "oh this person's smellyyy" "Brother it STINKS over here" "BOO 💧🧼🧽🚿" and stuff like that. I wish I could put into words how demeaning and patronising that whole idea is and people implying anyone they don't like doesn't wash.

For one there's something grating about being insulted in a manner like we're in nursery again. But also WHY is that the go to insult. Why do you associate these things? Especially to those you deem "chronically online". Like I don't want to sound pathetic but it feels so nasty to me.

is it extreme to say this feels tied to ableism? And classism too?

[luvfy0dor]

incest and pedophilia isn't sexy

[bob-mirum]

Gaahh I CAN'T, they're so ADORABLE 😭😭😭

[thekittyokat]

you ever just have a lot, a LOT of feelings all at once about a character and not even remotely enough words or brainpower to FORM the words to describe everything you're feeling. so it feels like you may explode. yeah

[crystalflygeo]

Intoxicating desire ft Baizhu + gn!reader

cw/tags: This one is more sensual/suggestive than straight up smut tbh. Reader has some experience while Baizhu doesn't and is guided along. Biting kink (reader giving) making out, slight dry humping I guess?? dirty talk if you squint?? idk what to tag

notes: Feeling a little odd/unsure about this one but a little someone inspired me to just post it ehhhh hope someone likes it. Guess it also counts as a lil revenge againts that someone hmmmm. Also yes I like to bite I want to bite him xdcgbhjnmkas. He'll be fine..... probably

“Just tell me if it’s too much” You smiled, warm yet mischievous.

Baizhu is panting already.

The two of you have barely done anything in all honestly, but just the fact of being here, now, with you. Doing this. It was enough to make all his thoughts scatter out of control.

You back a little but still nuzzle at his neck “Are you ok? Your breathing is harsh.”

Your voice is low, velvet, he can feel your breath ghosting at his skin and it makes him shiver. “…Y��Yeah” He manages.

“Should we stop?” There is concern in your tone and you scoot back a little from the spot sitting at the bed, avoiding contact as to not overwhelm him.

Instead, Baizhu pulls you closer eager for the grounding feeling he gets from you, slotting your hips together.

“No… it’s fine.”

Your cheeks warm up as you stare at his sharp golden eyes. One of his hands cups your face and your own arms surround his neck, though you take note of the fast pace of his heart “Are you sure? There’s no need to force it.”

Baizhu just nods, then pulls you in for a kiss. He really doesn’t feel up to talking. Right now, he wants to feel you as close as you can get.

You smile into the kiss and your hands start roaming, fumbling a little with his top. It’s intoxicating… these feelings.

You just want more.

Baizhu inhales sharply and his skin prickles with goosebumps as you slip your hands under his clothes, you lean in once more to kiss at his neck again.

“Ah… darling, what are you…?”

You bite down and Baizhu gasps.

You lap and suck at his neck softly, almost ticklish, threading your hands through his beautiful long green locks, and he shifts awkwardly. It feels so good. Once you’re done with that spot you move to another place down to his shoulder.

“Hng-” He’s desperately trying to stifle any sound wanting to escape from his mouth. Though that doesn’t stop the whimpers caught in his throat, reacting to his quickly heating cheeks.

“Holding back isn’t going to do you any good.” You suddenly mention, and he can almost picture your sly grin. “The whole point is for you to test out all these sensations.”

Baizhu’s glad you’re focused on his neck, he was sure he’d die if you saw his red face.

Both of your hands are at his bare torso now, they’re warm and incredibly soft making him shiver, until you lightly run your nails across his skin. A moan spills out of his mouth, low and needy, and he’s overwhelmingly embarrassed.

What kind of person gets so shamelessly turned on from just a touch like that? He feels stupid. Stupidly exposed. Stupidly turned on.

“Does it feel good?”

Don’t ask something like that!

He doesn’t answer and instead rests his forehead on your shoulder, panting softly. In response you bite again, lower on his collarbone and your right hand brushes down on his pants daringly. He gasps sharply in surprise, a burning heat settling in his stomach.

“Bai come on, tell me.” You mumble with a pout.

Oh, you’re not playing nice.

He nods, head buzzing with pleasure. “Nnng-... Hmmm” He can barely think straight. He just feels. Feels your hands teasing, your hair tickling his skin, your weight pressing on his body, your breath, your lips, his heart rattling, and he feels hot, so hot.

Suddenly his back presses against something soft yet firm: the bed covers. And he realizes he’s now lying on his back while you straddle his hips. Your mouth is hot and you whispers tiny things -he doesn't even know what anymore- while your lips work on his skin.

Baizhu's hands find their way onto your hips and they rest there while you kiss him. Right then you decide to bite yet again (you’re certainly keen on marking him aren’t you?) and his fingers dig on your sides.

You shiver in response and murmur in his ear, and he tries his best not to flinch. His skin is sensitive, his groin is sensitive and he doesn't think he can handle all this contact without exploding.

And then.

Then you grind your hips slowly and his breath catches.

He groans, deep and throaty, and involuntarily bucks into you, cock twitching in his pants.

"Sweet Archons" You hiss out. Clothes and all, you can feel him, and you want him so badly.

There is a pause, a moment of silence as both of you seem to catch your breaths and process what is happening. You look at the man lying under you, he's a totally new sight, so much different from the usual calm and collected Doctor of Liyue you know and love. Instead, his face is flushed, a sheen of sweat already forming, his eyebrows twitch slightly, golden viperine eyes staring right back at you and you can feel the lingering passion, excitement, lust.

For a moment you simply stare, as if analyzing him, peering deep into his being and committing this moment to memory, and it only makes him blush harder, his face getting way too hot. He finally averts his gaze in an attempt to calm down.

At that you blink back to reality, quickly pulling back and away from him -although reluctantly- giving him some space and rubbing at your arm awkwardly, biting your lip in apprehension. Did you just- That was- What was that? Did you go too far? Too fast?

“Um… w-woah” You babble. “Ah s-sorry! I promise I’ll take it slow...” ‘And control myself’ you add in your head, shoulders raising in embarrassment as you curled up and hide your face.

You shake your head, pushing that aside and turning to him.

“Baizhu...?”

The green-haired man lays still dazed and flustered, arm draped over his clearly red-hot face, still catching his breath, he gives a light cough an clears his throat “Hmmm you’re going to be the death of me, my dear...”

At that, of course, you promptly face-plant on a pillow.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I know you don't like discussing the muses but i love your takes and perspectives and i had to ask you about this. after listening to ttpd, did you have the impression that she really loved matty more than any of her exes/previous relationships?. And listening to the whole album as a whole would you call it the ''matty album'' or do you think there are more prominent themes in there than their period together?. (hope this doesn't bother you, feel free to delete if you don't feel like answering it)

hey anon! You're right, I don't really like to get into the muses as I don't really think there's anything to add to the conversation at this point, and ultimately I don't think it matters.

That being said, and with the caveat that I am not Taylor and I do not know Taylor so I cannot speak to her thoughts and can only make relatively educated guesses based on being an avid consumer of her work and a student of the human condition (lol), no I do not think Taylor loved Matty more than anyone else. I think there was maybe a brief period in the thick of things where she *thought* she did because she was not thinking clearly and was in full-on denial, but to me the message that is loud and clear in the album (and more or less explicitly stated in the epilogue) is that it was not any kind of real love affair. It was certainly infatuation and lust and the promise of something more, and there may have been some love as well, but he was in no way the love of her life by any measure.

I would call it a "Matty album" insofar as they're about events in which he was present, sure. But I feel it much more as a Taylor album, if that makes sense, even though I know that's a cop out because every album is to a degree. I can't explain it well, but I don't see TTPD as a Matty (or Joe) album in the way that I would maybe say Red is a "Jake" album or 1989 may be a "Harry" album or even Lover being a "Joe" album whatever, because even if they don't figure in all the songs, that kind of heartbreak permeates so much of the material.

The thing about TTPD and the Matty situation is that the Matty situation is really a Joe situation (which in some ways is actually partially a Jake situation). I always say I hate treating Taylor like a character so I hate speaking about her and her work in this way, but you don't get the Matty situation without the Joe situation precipitating it. It's @taylortruther's now-infamous donut vs. hole analogy. The reason Taylor makes the choices she does with Matty is directly tied to what happened with Joe that made her feel she needed to. Which is not to say Taylor isn't responsible for her own actions or doesn't have agency in her own life, but I mean it in that the situation in which she found herself with Joe, and the pain it caused, is what made the alternative so comforting and perhaps even necessary in her mind. It's why it makes it so hard to "paternity test" the album, because the stories are inherently intertwined and you don't get the former without the latter.

The major "theme" of the album to me is the loss of a very specific, very personal dream, and the way in which she lost it, and the way in which grieving that loss drove her to make the choices she did. We're all talking very delicately about it because it's a sensitive topic, but it's late on Friday and few people are going to see this, so I'm going to say it: it's the give you my wild, give you a child of it all. The yearning she expresses both overtly and sub-textually for having a family in the album is palpable in a very iykyk kind of way, and it's the realization that those plans are not going to come to fruition in the way she had once imagined that drives a lot of the pain she experiences, and makes her jump at the chance to find that again with someone else.

I started a draft post about the theme of womanhood and motherhood on TTPD three months ago that I never finished because I ran out of time and ran out of steam, but it was the most striking thing to me on the album, not because I didn't know that she wanted those things because that's been obvious for years (definitely since Lover, and again, peace put it all on the table), but because the vulnerability she expressed about it on the album is incredibly moving, and it's so generous of her to trust listeners with those feelings and experiences.

Again, it's the thirtysomething of it all.

She is in relationship A which she at one point believes is forever, one which she at one point believes is going to lead to marriage and children. She is so committed to that dream that she either ignores or tries to fix serious issues that may otherwise lead others to think the two people in the relationship are incompatible, both because she loves the person deeply and because she feels that this is meant to be the way she achieves that dream. She gives it her everything, and it still dies a slow, painful, onerous death, and she feels like it may take her along with it. The dream of getting married and presumably having a family gets taken off the table: how we don't know and will likely never know because that is private between the parties involved. All that matters in the context of the album is that those plans never come to fruition and never would.

Then you have relationship B, an old flame who knows just enough buttons to push both to trigger and to flatter. A person who she presumably trusts with very sensitive, personal information as her life slowly crumbles, and this person is telling her all the things she wants to hear because he knows about what is happening in relationship A because she's told him. Person in relationship B doesn't get an "in" with her and sell her this dream unless what happens in relationship A precedes it. It's not a grand love affair for the ages, it's not a mutual decision on building their own dream together. It's Person B learning about what is happening with Person A and saying "I can do that!" even if he can't or doesn't. The dream he sells her is a rental car; it's not his own, he's just borrowing it from someone else and selling it back to her.

And the reason she falls for it is because it is what she aches for the most in her personal life, and she is grappling with it disintegrating, so she (unfortunately for her) falls for the easy way out, and in turn sells herself a story about how this must be fated, and this must be meant to be, because this person wants all the same things she does and she didn't even have to bargain for it! Well, yes, because she fed him the dream in the first place. (Like a mark falling for a sleeper cell spy.) It's too good to be true because it isn't true. IMO Person B doesn't come running out of the gate with the marriage/baby/dream life promises unless he knows that is what she most desires. But what's left unsaid out of all of it is that: those dreams were her dreams because they were her dreams with Person A. It was a whole life they had together, and a whole life they had planned for in some fashion, and a whole life that has to be dismantled in the aftermath.

So all this to say, yes, on the surface, Matty is a "main character" on the album, but truly he's a side character to Taylor as the narrator and person experiencing it and Joe as the ghost bit-player-who-haunts-every-scene. (Again, I hate referring to real people as characters, it gives me the absolute ick, but in this case it's the only way to answer the question.) I jokingly call it the Matty album for shorthand or when I want to say something out of pocket, but really, it's a disservice to the album to say that because it's not a muse album as in it's about the romance (like, say, Red often is), it's about a soul-crushing heartbreak that goes beyond it. The romance is the symptom, not the cause.

The loss of youth is tied in with all this: she's not 22 anymore. She isn't even 32 anymore. She had a very specific idea of what her life was going to look like at this point and had planned for that life, and it goes up in smoke. But again, to bring the womanhood into it all: there is, unfortunately, a deadline for these things. You're with someone for over half a decade you think is going to be your life partner and father of your children and and then he's not. You spent half a decade building this relationship for it to crumble, but now you're in your mid-30s and you don't necessarily have another half-decade to build that trust and faith in someone else before being ready to start a family. And maybe you're scared that anyone else who may become your partner will need that much time to build that trust and faith, because that's kind of all you've ever know in relationships. But lo and behold, someone comes into your life you once had feelings for and maybe now do again and is offering you everything you want and thought you'd have by this point in your life right now. It feels like an elixir that as we find out is actually poison.

That youth is not just the chance for motherhood, but it's also the hopes and idealism and belief in the future that often gradually erodes as we age. But for Taylor as well, it's also tied into the trauma of what she went through particularly in 2016, which kicks off a lot of things on the album as well (her retreat, her relationship with Joe, the pivoting in her career, etc.). That event caused a pretty clear before/after in her life (like a few other events, I suspect), and another major theme in the album is her finally grappling with the full weight of that. They're all different branches of the same tree of the story of TTPD and her life.

I could talk about this stuff forever, but I'm going to stop here because it's long enough and I should save stuff for one of the dozens of drafts I have half-baked lol. But this is just something I needed to get off my chest perhaps.

[thelilylav]

The fact that Briar is listed as one of Rosabella's best friends in her profile but Briar's profile barely mentions her..

[sergle]

if anyone wants to know what kind of day mr. Hugo had today, it got to be So So Very About Him. let me take you through it - went to the lake first thing in the morning, got wet and ran around full-tilt and got tired - in the evening, came along with us to a christmas lights festival thing at the park. got to walk around and have fun, was petted by ~30 people - at some points, he was surrounded by a closed Circle of very small children patting him and saying he's nice. - received whippy cream at a coffee place drive through - got to walk around petsmart and do Dog Browsing there - got admired by two of the girls working the checkout bc they enjoyed his Sit Pretty so much - MET A POMERANIAN PUPPY AT THE STORE. (this is more important to me than him) touched noses with VERY SMALL pomeranian puppy. oh my fucking god. - got greeted at another drive thru (I got popeyes. only god can judge me) and got given, because they aren't pre-loaded with treats for drive through dogs, a girl gave him (after asking) (he can take it) (he was really locking eyes with her) An Entire Chicken Tender. Hugo's relationship with drive-through windows gets progressively more and more Expectant. anyway. very full day for mr. Hugo. We also got a couple pics of him doing paws / sit pretty / high five-ing in front of the lights. here are those!

[spielzeugkaiser]

[MASTERPOST]

It's not always easy being a teenager - and it's not always easy being a parent either. They are both a bit cranky at times.

[canisalbus]

AU where there is some sort of zombie-like (maybe something like a rabid vampirism?)

Where one of the boys is bit/infected and desperately wants the other to join them, while also wanting to resist?

.

[detectivebambam]

disliking Andrew Minyard? okay

shitting on Andrew Minyard? fine

saying that if Andrew Minyard were real, we would all hate him? wrong bad stupid. stop talking

(also biggest pet peeve when someone tells me how i would personally react to something. i am words on your phone. you don't know me)

[stimtfil]

thinking about elf kyle too much.... he is the prettiest thing in the whole world i CAN'T be cool about it.... (neither can eric)

[uncanny-tranny]

I know other adults like to joke about how much pain they're in, but genuinely, please try to get your pain checked out if you're an adult experiencing it, or at least adapt your life in whatever way lessens your pain.

Your pain deserves to be addressed. Please don't "let" it get worse because you've been told that to grow older is to suffer. No, you aren't being needy or selfish or annoying. Ultimately, you are the one who suffers the most from the state of your health, and it's entirely reasonable to want your health to be up to your standards.