#someone get that 28-year-old away from the teenager

[britneyshakespeare]

Yesterday I met this guy at my friend's birthday party, and he was talking at first to my twin sister but then later on I was chatting with him and he said "wait, you look younger than her."

And I was like "wait, do you know how old we are?"

"No."

"How old do you think I am?"

And he paused for a minute. Knowing I have a sister there who is my age which gives him not one but two observations to guess based on.

"18."

And I was AGHAST because I'm 23. I also don't think he could've thought I was a minor because there weren't any there but I did laugh because he still guessed as low as he could reasonably estimate, and I still get mistaken for a teenager all the time.

But then he guessed "how old do you think I am?"

And I was like "oh I really don't know. I don't know. I never know. I have no idea."

"Just guess. Guess something."

"Uh... uh... twenty... eight?"

"WOW. I'm not even old enough DRINK."

He turns 21 next week.

Man idk what to say. We both assumed you were older than me at least.

[steddielations]

- nsfw, age gap, rockstar Eddie, drummer steve

Eddie should not be wearing a plug here.

It’s stupid. It’s reckless. But that inner voice that led to decades of being stupid and reckless says it’s fine, it’s just for Eddie. Steve doesn’t have to know, unless he wants to find out.

It really is just for Eddie. It’s more for confidence than kink. It’s a trick he learned back when he was still getting comfortable on stage, back when he could still handle the fast life. Started way back when he was a teenager, dear old dad made sure to turn his talent into cold hard cash.

Now here Eddie is, way too many years of coping with drugs and never any therapy later, retired rockstar doing the whole studio owner mentoring baby rockstars thing. Someone’s gotta keep rock and roll alive so long as Eddie’s still kicking.

So the first thing that comes with years of being stone cold sober is realizing he spent too much time on the road and in the closet, not enough time growing roots so he’d have someone to settle down with when he stopped being so afraid of it.

The second thing is a dick that doesn’t work half the time because maybe if someone told him doing drugs would land him limp-dick at 40, he would’ve stopped sooner. The third thing is that he’s going to die alone with his floppy dick and trust issues.

So with the wild life Eddie lives nowadays, it’s no surprise that a couple smiles and smooth words from a good looking young drummer sent him into a spiral.

Steve’s a session musician, an independent guy that looked good on paper and even better in person. He’s got more heart and grit than the last few ‘frontmans’ Eddie tried to get something real out of. Steve knows it too, the way everyone does at 28.

He’s got the same cockiness in his skills as Eddie, but he knows he’s more than just his skills in a way that Eddie wishes he could’ve known at that age. He’s confident enough to make his own suggestions to Eddie, calls him old fashioned and he’s smooth about it, strikes up debates about music and he’s fucking sassy about it.

Eddie’s gotta be under some kinda spell to be considering Springsteen is one of the greats like Steve insists.

It’s not just because Steve’s younger, there’s always been girls much younger than late 20s trying to get with him for his name, status, money. Bless their hearts, maybe if he was still 20 years deep in the closet. It’s not just because Steve’s a guy either, there’s plenty of young guys now that dare to bat their eyes and call him Daddy and want to get fucked.

No, it’s because Steve’s different. The opposite, even.

Eddie slips up and calls him sweetheart once and it’s like Steve was just waiting to open that door and let every babe and handsome and honey slip out from his lips.

He notices Eddie checking out his biceps as he’s banging away on the drums once and sends him a wink that nearly makes him flatline.

He’s not intimidated to get in Eddie’s space. He has no reason to ever be in the control room, but Eddie doesn’t question it when Steve’s close, leaning over him with a warm hand pressed to the small of his back for one second. Eddie’s so hot faced and flustered that he gets his long hair caught in some of the board switches.

“Fuck, fucking, god damn it,” Eddie curses, tangling it even more trying to yank it free and vowing to chop it all off later.

“It’s alright, here, let's get you sorted out.” Steve’s steady hand closes over Eddie’s, gentle and warm as he eases the lock of hair free. Eddie’s breath lodges in his throat when Steve reaches up, fingers brushing Eddie’s face as he combs through his long silver streaked waves and says, “Don’t ever cut your hair. I love it too much.”

God. Steve makes Eddie feel like he’s a pretty young thing getting moves put on him in the kinda club that he was always too famous, too busy and too afraid to go to at that age.

It can’t be real. Steve can’t be serious. Eddie’s mean. Bitter. He talks shit about everyone and everything. He’s nothing without a guitar. He’s got the prickly rind of daddy issues and doesn’t even have Wayne to make it better anymore. The whole world adoring him all his life only fed his ego. He’s worth millions of dollars and feels like nothing most days. His only real friends are his bandmates that he doesn’t call often enough because they love each other, but they’re sick of each other, being stuck together all those years.

Surely, Steve’s just bored and playing with him. Eddie needs a kick of confidence to deal with it until Steve’s contract ends and he’s done playing with Eddie.

So that’s why Eddie’s got a plug up his ass at the studio. At work, technically.

It helps. It gives him all the inner fire he needs to ignore when he feels Steve’s eyes burning into him, and push his hand through his hair that Steve loves, and sway his hips as Steve’s gaze follows him walking out to the bathroom.

Oh yeah, Eddie’s still got it.

And he has to piss. Really bad. His bladder just ain’t what it used to be and when he’s gotta go, he’s gotta go and for whatever reason, he can’t do it with the plug inside him.

Eddie’s locked in a stall so he doesn’t hesitate to undo his belt and reach inside to pull it out. He holds it while he uses the toilet, so distracted sighing in relief like such an old man that he doesn’t realize how lube-slippery the thing is.

It’s too late. He drops his plug and it rolls out from under the stall just as the bathroom door opens and shuts slowly.

Then Eddie feels both relief and panic when it’s Steve’s voice that asks, “Eddie, did you drop something, honey?”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Doublethink sump linkdump

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

Trigger warning for #eikositriophobia: this is my 23d linkdump (Hail Discordia!), an erratic Saturday purge of the open tabs I haven't managed to blog this week; here's the previous 22:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

When I was a kid, I idolized Harlan Ellison. I loved his prose styling, his stage presence, the way he blended activism and fiction, and the way he mixed critical nonfiction with fiction. As a 17 year old, I attended a writing workshop that Ann Crispin was giving at a local science fiction convention and she told me that I had the makings of a great writer, just as soon as I stopped trying to be Harlan Ellison.

But Harlan was a complicated figure. I attended the Clarion Workshop in 1992 specifically because he was our instructor, and came away bitterly disillusioned after he targeted one of my fellow students for relentless, cruel bullying, a performance that was so ugly that the board fired the director and permanently barred him from teaching the workshop.

Later on, Harlan became the kind of copyright maximalist who called for arbitrary internet surveillance and censorship in the name of shutting down ebook piracy. During a panel about this at a sf convention, he called one of the other panelists a "motherfucker" and threatened to punch him in the face. He took to badmouthing me in interviews, painting my position – whose nuances he certainly understood – in crude caricature.

But Harlan and I had many friends in common, people I really liked, and they were adamant that Harlan's flaws were not the whole story: if Harlan liked you, he would do anything to stand up for you, no matter the cost to himself. Famously, when Harlan taught Octavia Butler's Clarion, he demanded to know why she wasn't writing full time, and she replied that there was the inconvenient matter of making rent and groceries. He replied, "If that's all that's stopping you, come live in my guest house for as long as it takes, eat my groceries, and write." Which she did.

Which is great, but also: one of my own Clarion students told me about when his then-teenaged mother met Harlan at a sf convention and told him that she dreamed of becoming a writer, and he propositioned her. She was so turned off that she stopped writing forever (her son, my student, is now an accomplished writer).

So Harlan was a mixed bag. He did very, very good things. He did very, very bad things. When Harlan died, in 2018, I wrote an obit where I grappled with these two facts:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/06/28/rip-harlan-ellison/

In it, I proposed a way of thinking about people that tried to make sense of both Harlans – and of all the people in our lives. There's an unfortunate tendency to think of the people that matter to us as having their deeds recorded in a ledger, with good deeds in one column and wicked deeds down the other.

In this formulation, we add up the good deeds and the bad deeds and subtract the bad from the good. If the result is a positive number, we say the good outweighs the bad, and therefore the person is, on balance, good. On the other hand, if the bad outweighs the good, then the person is bad, and the good deeds are irrelevant.

This gets us into no end of trouble. It means that when someone we admire slips up, we give them a pass, because "they've earned it." And when someone who's hurt us does something selfless and kind and brave, we treat that as though it doesn't matter, because they're an asshole.

But the truth is, no amount of good deeds can wipe away the bad. If you hurt someone, the fact that you've helped someone else doesn't make that hurt any easier to bear. And the kindnesses you do for other people make their lives better, no matter what bad things you've done to others.

Rather than calculating the balance of our goodness or badness, I think we should just, you know, sit with our sins and virtues. Let all the harm and joy exist in a state of superposition. Don't cancel out the harm. Don't wave away the good. They both exist, neither cancels the other, and we should strive to help more, and to do less harm. We should do everything we can to help those we harm. No one owes us a pass because of the good we've done.

That's the lesson Harlan taught me, and he taught it to me by absolutely failing to live his life this way – a fact that exists alongside all of the good he did, including the great art he made, which I love, and which inspired me.

Not long after Harlan's death, I got a phone call from J Michael Straczynski, Harlan's literary executor. As part of his care for Harlan's literary legacy, Joe was editing a new anthology of short stories, The Last Dangerous Visions, and did I want to contribute a story?

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/harlan-ellison-last-dangerous-vision-1235117069/

Of course I did. Harlan edited Dangerous Visions in 1967: a groundbreaking anthology of uncomfortable science fiction that featured everyone from Philip K Dick to Samuel Delany. The followup, 1972's Again, Dangerous Visions, was, if anything, even more influential, including Le Guin's The Word For World IS Forest, as well as work by Joanna Russ, Kurt Vonnegut, David Gerrold, and James Tiptree, Jr.

Though some of the stories in these books haven't aged well, together, they completely changed my view of what science fiction was and what it could be. But The Last Dangerous Visions was a different (ahem) story. For complicated reasons (which all cashed out to "Harlan being very difficult to work with, sometimes for damned good reasons, other times for completely petty ones), TLDV was, at the time of Harlan's death, fifty years behind schedule. It was "science fiction's most famous unpublished book." Harlan had bought early work from writers who had gone on to have major careers – like Bruce Sterling – and had sat on them for half a century.

Then Joe called me to tell me that he was starting over with TLDV and did I want to contribute a story – and of course I did. I wrote a story for him with the title "Jeffty Is Five," part of my series of stories with the same titles as famous works of sf:

https://locusmag.com/2012/05/cory-doctorow-a-prose-by-any-other-name/

Joe liked the story, but not the title. He thought Harlan wouldn't have approved of this kind of appropriation, and he wanted to do right by the memory of his old friend. My first reaction was very Harlan-like: this is supposed to make you mad, it's my art, and if it offends you, that's your problem.

But I remembered the most important lesson I learned from Harlan, about good deeds and bad ones, and I thought about Joe, a writer I admired and liked, who was grappling with his grief and his commitment to Harlan's legacy, and I changed my mind and told him of course I'd change the title. I changed the title because Harlan would never have done so, and that's rather the point of the story.The story is (now)) called "The Weight of a Heart, the Weight of a Feather" (a very Harlanish title), and it's about the legacy of complicated people, whose lives are full of noble selflessness *and careless or deliberate cruelty. It's about throwing away the ledger and just letting all those facts sit together, about lives that are neither washed of sin by virtue, nor washed of virtue by sin.

It's a good story, I think, and I'm proud of it, and I'm interested in what the rest of you think now that the book is out:

https://www.blackstonepublishing.com/products/book-fyhm

Harlan was the writer who made me want to get good at reading my stories aloud. I was a charter member of the Harlan Ellison Record Club, as you can see for yourself from the time Harlan (accidentally) doxed me:

http://harlanellison.com/text/paladin.txt

After nearly 20 years of podcasting, I'm actually pretty good at this stuff. I'm going to be podcasting a reading of this story – eventually. I am nearly done "de-googling" my podcast feed, ripping it out of Feedburner, a service that I started using nearly two decades ago to convert a WordPress RSS feed to a podcast feed. In the intervening years, WordPress has come to support this natively and Feedburner has become a division of Google, so I've been methodically removing Feedburner's hooks from my feed, which is now proudly available here, without any surveillance or analytics:

https://craphound.com/feeds/doctorow_podcast

I'll be writing up the process eventually. In the meantime, I'm about to embark on another podcast fiction project, serializing my novella Spill, a "Little Brother" story that Tor's Reactor just published:

https://reactormag.com/spill-cory-doctorow/

The first part of "Spill" will go out tomorrow or Monday. Reactor also just published another "Little Brother" story, "Vigilant," which I read in last week's podcast:

https://craphound.com/littlebrother/2024/09/29/vigilant-a-little-brother-story/

One of my long-running beefs with Harlan was his insistence that the answer of copyright infringement online was to create an obligation on intermediaries – like ISPs – to censor their users' communications on demand from anyone claiming to have been wronged by a post or upload.

This would be bad for free expression under any circumstances, but it's an especially dangerous vision for ISPs, who are among the worst-run, most venal businesses in modern society ("We don't care, we don't have to, we're the phone company" -L Tomlin).

It's hard to overstate just how terrible ISPs are, but even in a field that includes Charter and Comcast, there's one company that rises above the pack when it comes to being grotesquely, imaginatively awful: Cox Communications.

Here's the latest from Cox: they sell "unlimited" gigabit data plans that cost $100 for the base plan and $50 to add the "unlimited" data. But – as Jon Brodkin writes for Ars Technica – Cox uniquely defines "unlimited" as severely limited:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/cox-slows-internet-speeds-in-entire-neighborhoods-to-punish-any-heavy-users/

Now, you're probably thinking, ho-hum, another company that offered unlimited service and then acted like dicks when a customer treated it as unlimited, ::laughs in American Airlines::

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesasquith/2019/11/13/unlimited-first-class-flights-for-lifehow-american-airlines-made-the-most-expensive-mistake-in-aviation-history/

But that's not the Cox story! Cox doesn't just throttle "unlimited" customers' internet to 2006-vintage DSL speeds – they slow down the entire neighborhood around the unlimited customer to those speeds.

As Brodkin writes, every Cox customer in the same neighborhood as an "unlimited" customer named "Mike" had their upload speeds reduced by more than two thirds, from 35mbps to 10mbps, to punish Mike. And they're not the only ones!

https://www.reddit.com/r/GNV/comments/gkicjg/comment/fr670cx/

Cox confirmed they were doing this, saying "performance can be improved for all customers in the neighborhood by temporarily increasing or maintaining download speeds and changing upload speeds for some of our service tiers."

Cox has been on a roll lately, really going for the shitty-telecoms-company gold. Back in August, 404 Media published a leaked pitch deck in which Cox promised advertisers that they were secretly listening to their customers' smart devices, transcribing their private conversations, and using them to target ads:

https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-listening-ad-targeting/

This isn't just appalling, it's also almost certainly fraudulent. As terrible as "smart" devices are (and oh God are they terrible), the vast majority of them don't do this. That's something a lot of security researchers have investigated, doing things like hooking up a protocol analyzer to a LAN with a smart device on it and looking for data transmissions that correspond to ambient speech in earshot of the gadget's mic.

My guess is that Cox has done a deal with a couple of the bottom-feedingest "smart TV" companies (as a cable operator, Cox will have relationships with a lot of these companies) to engage in this conduct. Smart TVs have emerged as one of the worst categories of consumer technology, on every axis: performance, privacy, repairability. The field has raced to the bottom, hit it, and then started digging to find new lows to sink to. This is just my hunch here, but I think it's highly likely that if there's a class of devices that are bugging your living room and selling the data to Cox, it's gonna be a smart TV (top tip: buy a computer monitor instead, and use your phone or laptop to stream to it).

Ask a certain kind of very smooth-brained, Samuelson-pilled economist about the enshittification of smart TVs and they'll tell you that this is a "revealed preference":

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

As in, sure, you may say that you don't want your TV to secretly record your private conversations and sell them to Cox, but actually you quite like it, because you have a TV.

While this is a facially very stupid argument, it's routinely made by people who think they're very smart, a point famously made by Matt Bors's "Mr Gotcha":

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

Comics turn out to be a very good medium for stringing up the revealed preferences crowd on their own petards. This week, Juan Santapau's "The Secret Knots" added to the Mr Gotcha canon with an equally brilliant webcomic, albeit one with a very different vibe, entitled "Remind Me Later":

https://thesecretknots.com/comic/remind-me-later/

Santapau really catches the zeitgeist with this one, which is more of a slow burn than a zinger, and which shows how online "revealed preferences" nonsense grooms us for the same bullshit in every corner of our lives, even our psychotherapist's office. Highly recommended – an instant classic.

"Revealed preferences" comes from the Chicago School of Economics, a field that decided that a) economics should be a discipline grounded in mathematical models; and b) it was impossible to factor power relationships into these models; so c) power doesn't matter.

Once you understand this fact, everything else snaps into focus – like, why the Chicago School loves monopolies. If you model an economy dominated by monopolists without factoring the power that monopolists wield, then you can very easily assume that any monopoly you discover is the result of a lot of people voluntarily choosing to spend all their money with the company they love best.

The fact that we all hate the monopolists we have to deal with is dismissed by these economists as a mirage: "sure, you say you hate them, but you do business with them, therefore, your 'revealed preference' shows that you actually love them."

Which is how we end up with absolutely outrageous rackets like the scholarly publishing cartel. Scholarly journals acquire academics' work for free; get other academics to edit the work for free; acquire lifetime copyright to those finished works; and charge the institutions that paid those "volunteer" academics salaries millions of dollars to access their publications:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/16/the-public-sphere/#not-the-elsevier

These companies don't just lock up knowledge and tie an anchor around the scientists' and scholars' ankles, dragging them down. Their market power means that they can hurt their customers and users in every way, including through rampant privacy violations.

A new study from SPARC investigates the privacy practices of Springerlink, and finds them to be a cesspit of invasive, abusive conduct that would make even a Cox executive blush:

https://zenodo.org/records/13886473

Yes, on the one hand, this isn't surprising. If a company can screw you on pricing, why wouldn't they scruple to give you the shaft on privacy as well? But The fact that a company as terrible as Springer can be the dominant firm in the sector is still shocking, somehow.

But that's terminal-stage capitalism for you. It's not just that bad companies companies thrive – it's that being a bad company is a predictor of sky-high valuations and fawning coverage from the finance press.

Take Openai, a company that the press treats as a heptillion-dollar money-printer whose valuation will eventually exceed the rest of the known universe. Openai has a lot of problems – a mass exodus of key personnel, a product that doesn't work for nearly all the things it's claimed as a solution to – but the biggest one is that it's a bad business.

That's the theme of a fantastic, characteristically scathing-but-deep Ed Zitron article called (what else?) "Openai is a bad business":

https://www.wheresyoured.at/oai-business/

Zitron does something that no one else in the business press does: takes Openai's claims about its business fundamentals – its costs, its prices, its competitors, and even its capabilities – at face value, and then asks, "Even if this is all true, will Openai ever turn a profit?"

The answer is a pretty convincing "no." Zitron calls it a "subprime AI crisis" in a nod to Tim Hwang's must-read 2020 book about the ad-tech bezzle, Subprime Attention Crisis:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/06/surveillance-tulip-bulbs/#adtech-bubble

The fascinating thing about both Zitron and Hwang's analysis isn't that there are big companies that suck – it's that they are able to suck up so much money and credulous excitement, despite how badly they suck.

That's where power – the thing that neoliberal economists say doesn't matter – comes in. Monopoly power is a self-accelerating flywheel, as Amazon's famous investor pitch explains:

https://vimeo.com/739486256/00a0a7379a

Once a monopolist or a cartel wields market power, they can continue to dominate a sector, even though they're very bad – and even if they use their power to rip off both their customers and very powerful suppliers.

That's the lesson of Michael Jordan's lawsuit against NASCAR, as Matt Stoller explains in his latest BIG newsletter:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/michael-jordan-anti-monopolist

Jordan is one of the most famous basketball players, but after retiring from the game, he became a NASCAR owner, and as such, has been embroiled in a monopoly whose abuses are both eerily familiar to anyone who pays attention to, say the pharmacy benefit manager racket:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/23/shield-of-boringness/#some-men-rob-you-with-a-fountain-pen

But on the other hand, the fact this is all happening to race-cars and not pharmacies makes it very weird indeed. As with, say, PBMs, NASCAR's monopoly isn't just victimizing the individuals who watch racing, but also the racecar teams. These teams are owned by rich, powerful people (like Jordan), but are "almost always on the verge of bankruptcy."

Why is that? NASCAR rips them off. For example, teams have to buy all their parts from NASCAR, at huge markups, and the purchase contract prohibits them from racing at any rival event. There are a million petty schemes like this, and NASCAR carefully titrates its bleed-off to leave its victims almost at death's door, but still (barely) solvent enough to keep racing.

NASCAR also bought out all the rival leagues, and most of the tracks, and then locked the remaining tracks to exclusivity deals. Then the teams all had to sign noncompetes as a condition of competing in NASCAR, the only game in town – forever.

Hence Michael Jordan, a person who steadfastly refused to involve himself in politics during his basketball career, becoming a firebreathing trustbuster. Stoller cites Jordan's transformation as reason to believe that the anti-monopoly agenda will survive even in the event that Harris wins but bows to corporate donors who insist on purging the Biden administration's trustbusters.

That's a hopeful note, and I'd add my own to it: the fact that the NASCAR scam is so similar to the pharma swindles, academic publishing swindles, and all the other monopoly rip-offs means that there is a potential class alliance between university professors, NASCAR owners, and people with chronic health conditions and big pharmaceutical bills.

That high note brings me to the end of this week's linkdump! And here's a little dessert in case you've got room for one more little link: Kitowares "Medieval Mules", a forthcoming clog styled as trompe l'oeil plate armor:

https://www.kitowares.la/

Pair with old favorites like lycra armor leggings:

https://loricaclothing.com/collections/leggings-1/products/the-augsburg-legging

And a DIY crotcheted knight's helmet:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/590854477/knights-helmet-w-detachable-visor

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER s tories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; a nd SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/05/farrago/#jeffty-is-five

[aboxofcereales]

Currently trying to collect all the information about our companies’ life before the events of Baldur’s Gate 3. Mainly, about their family and age. Any suggestions/editing will be very much welcome.

Huge thanks to everyone who aiding the cause in comments and reblogs.

Last update - 10 April 2024.

Wyll Ravengard: is about 24, has left the city when he was 17, in origin introduction states that he’s been exiled for 7 years. According to Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, he's in fact 24 & Neutral Good. Apparently his dad, Grand Duke Ulder Ravengard, raised him by himself, Wyll’s mother, Francesca, passed away in childbirth, when Wyll was born, as stated by Ulder’s longsword description, Wyll mentions her during a romance scene in Act 3, also calls himself “a single son to a single father”. According to Murder in Baldur's Gate: Ravenguard has never married and has no interest in domestic matters, moreover the said sword description calls Wyll's mother Ulder's love, not wife, which makes me think that Wyll was born out of wedlock. Supposed to have 3 uncles. I’ve seen a note about Wyll diving to see a mermaid as kid, written by his dad, in the high security vault. Florrick seen him grow up, had a crush on Stelmane as a kid, also during his childhood enjoined fishing with his dad, but sucked at it. Also, Ravengard's Scourger states that "Duke Ravengard's father was the sort of man who works with his hands, and communicates in grunts. In his heart his son vowed to do better. But when Wyll was born, Ravengard felt a strange gravity that drew him away from his son.", that strange gravity might be Francesca's death in childbirth(?). Generally, I strongly advise to take him around the city in act 3, as he tells plenty stories of his boyhood.

Gale Dekarios: still not sure if there any information about how old he might be, but I estimated around mid-to-late 30s, though it doesn’t really sit well with him meeting Mystra as a kid (btw there’s an absolutely wonderful post on this topic by @lairofsentinel, check it out), still I’d like Gale to be on the older side, alternatively, he may be around 28-30 due Mystra's return year. Personal headcanon - he's 37. According to Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, he's 35 & True Neutral. He casted his first spell as a babe - a score of rabbits in the panty. Apparently lives separately from his parents in his tower, at least as kid had them both (mentioned when he first tells about his friend-tressym, Tara), thou in his origin (at least as much as heard and played myself but @vitanithepure confirmed it) only his mother gets mentions, the state of the other parent is unknown. Has a very tender relationship with her, but didn’t inform her about the orbe for her own safety, her name may be Morena (godsblessdataminers), Mrs Dekarios really wants him to find someone to settle down with. Also, Tara hates his beard.

Shadowheart (Jenevelle Hallowleaf): is about 50, comments that Viconia documented about 40 years worth of her life at the hands of Shar, in the same note she writes that Shadowheart was able to keep her heart true to her child self, and was hard learning Shar lessons. As I understood when she was kidnapped, she was about 10-13, kidnapping was directly by the Shar command.According to Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, she' 48 & Lawful Neutral. Personal headcanon - she's 51. After her abduction made friends with tiefling named Nocturne (they might have be more than friends?), had a pet mouse for sometime called Nibbles. There’s a grafiti somewhere behind Jaheira house which she has drawn. Shares a questionable taste of romance literature with Wyll and his father. Her parents’ fate, Emmeline and Arnell Hallowleaf: is up to you decisions. Her mother mentions that they wanted Jen to have siblings.

Karlach Cliffgate: early 30s I think, the way she speaks about Gortash makes me thinks she was practically a teenager when she started working for him and spend 10 year serving Zariel. Personal headcanon - she's 29. According to Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, she's 30 & Chaotic Good. Her parents, Pluck and Caerlack, she moved them from Outer City to a nicer place. Her mom died due to fewer when she was a teen, dad a couple years later due to road accident. Both died before she met Gortash. Her mom seems to be behind her love for Minsc, Jaheira etc. You can meet her friend near Baldur’s statue.

Lae’zel of K’liir: seems to be barely 20. Githianky reach adulthood in their late teen, and as Lae’zel was yet to present a mindlflaer’s head, I think she’s the youngest in the party. According to Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, she's exactly 22 & Lawful Evil. Personal headcanon - she's in fact 20. She hates owls due to their necks, Karlach agrees.

Astarion Ancunin: according to translation of his grave he only lived for 40 years before becoming spawn, spend 200 year as such. Safe guess - there's definitely smt wrong with his grave stone or/and translation as it messes the current year - from 220 to 250. According to Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, he's 263, which doesnt seem right, & Neutral Evil. According the artbook he was a corrupted magistrate, which seem to be true atleast to pre-release version.

Halsin is 350, his family is from the High Forest, thou they are all gone. Spend 3 years captured by drow, loves honey and curving ducks. Jahiera is about 150-160, as she was a child in 1347. Has atleat five foster children: half-elf Rion, half-orc druid Jord, three humans - Jhessem, Fig, and Tate. Minsc was a statue from 1409 to 1480s.

[radkindoffeminist]

I am 13 years old. I have boobs bigger than any other girl in my year and I stopped growing in height a year ago. People tell me I could pass for 16-18 easily. Girls ask what size I am. Boys mock me for having tits. Men hit on me. Most people think I am a lot older than I actually am. I am confused by everything.

I am 14 years old. I begin turning to online chatrooms and camsex for attention because I am so lonely and horny. I don't speak about them to anyone in my life because it's never spoken about. Women and girls don't have sexual desires. I start speaking to a guy, Glenn. He's 28-years-old and knows how old I am. I speak to him for years and he's the first guy I camsex with. He speaks to me like a person and not a child and I love him for that. One day, he doesn't respond and I never hear from him again, but spend weeks hoping that I will see another message from him (he had a habit of disappearing for weeks only to come back). He doesn't message again. My heart is broken.

I am 15 years old, just about. I continue using these online chatrooms because I am such a lonely teenager and need some sort of attention and this is the only place I can find it. I meet a guy, David, who I ask to be my boyfriend. He was 21 years old. We speak every day for a month and have camsex all the time. He is sweet and mature and has his own car! Our plans to meet fall through and then he suddenly stops talking to me one day. Two months after that day, he messaged me again. His grandmother died so he couldn't deal with life. I feel empathic towards him but feel forced to take him back. When I realise that he won't take responsibility for the fact that cutting me off for months hurt me because he says that he was hurt, I break up with him. He insists on staying friends. I agree because I still feel bad for him.

I am 16 years old. I start college and I'm still speaking to my ex David, but then I see how possessive he is of me. He wants to meet up with me but will only do so on his terms, when he can kiss me all he wants because he still sees me as his. I try and speak to him about the guys at my college and he gets jealous. I stop speaking to him. I begin to realise just how toxic him and these chatrooms and camsex all is. I make a vow to stop it for my mental health, but it is hard to stop something when what draws you there is the fact that you're incredibly lonely.

I am 17 years old. It has been three years since I first opened a chatroom and had camsex and I actively try to stop. I have spoken to dozens, if not hundreds, of men by this point and they are all the same: they want to use me and will put on a little play to ensure they can get me. Some are just nice and upfront with me, using me and then never speaking to me again. Some put on a show, pretending that they like/love me so I become wrapped around their finger. Some are kind and caring, but then threaten me when they realise that they won't get what they want. Too many of them are angry when they hear the word no and if they aren't straight up agressive towards me, then they're making me feel guilty for having boundaries or trying to convince me to break them because they're different from the rest. I've met dozens of men who've claimed that they're different from the rest but they never are. They're all the same. After so many times of promising myself to stop, what really gets me to stop was someone threatening to share naked photos of me he'd taken while we were on a video call on my Facebook. I block him. I realise just how manipulated I'd been over the years and come to accept the fact that most, if not all, of these men had taken photos without my permission and some probably still have them saved somewhere.

I am 18 years old. I have managed to mostly stay away from the chatrooms and camsex, but I ended up speaking to one more guy. He seems so lovely and kind and caring. He is 26-years-old. We live far apart but he promises that he'll come and visit me sometime, even though he dodges the question every time I ask and never seems to be around or available when I'm available. We talked on and off for months. One day I tell him that I've decided to completely give up on camsex. It is too toxic and traumatic for me. I never want to do it again. He stops talking to me. I slowly realised how he was just nice to me because he wanted camsex and nudes. He never loved me but I loved him.

I am 19 years old. I start dating my ex-boyfriend. He is a genuinely wonderful and kind person. He does not disrespect my boundaries regarding camsex and nudes. He used to do a similar thing and understands how toxic and horrible these spaces can be. He's a good person, other than the fact that he mocks my interest in feminism and occasionally breaks some boundaries. We stay together for a year before we end up drifting apart.

I am 20 years old. I have severe depression. For the first time in my life, while I am incredibly drunk, I talk about my ex David and all the camsex stuff. I feel a weight lift off my shoulders knowing that other people agree that I was groomed. I had convinced myself for years that I was not groomed because I asked him out so everything that happened to me was my own fault. But I realise that while I was a stupid teenager, it still wasn't right for men to take advantage of me. I learn to accept that camsex and nudes will always be a point of trauma for me and something that I can never do again. I am so proud of myself for not doing it for two years.

I am 21 years old. I am the same age my ex David was when I dated him. I look at the freshers at my university and I couldn't imagine dating someone who is just out of college (high school). I had realised some years earlier that my relationship was toxic and pedophilic but it took me getting to the same age he was to realise just how horrible it was. I wish I could warn so many other women but I know I have to live with it because I was that teenage girl who dated that older man so I know that every single one thinks that they're the exception to the rule. They think that there's no way they're getting groomed by and older man because they really are that mature. I wish I could tell them but they'll just run into their groomer's arms even more.

I am 22 years old. I am off anti-depressants and glad that my sex drive is back. I decide that now, post COVID, would be the perfect time to have some fun. I sleep around, but the sex is so unsatifying for me most of the time. The women are good but the men spent five minutes inside of me and are then done. Half of them don't do anything to make me cum and never ask if I have. One of them complains that I take ages to cum after spending two minutes rubbing me off (badly). After feeling guilty for cancelling something last minute, I end up hooking up with someone who I shouldn't have. I cannot remember the last time I felt so repulsed by someone's touch. I stop hooking up with people. For the first time in years, I broke my no nudes, no camsex rule. I feel awful about myself.

I am 23 years old. I realise that my hooking-up with people phase was just a copy of my camsex stage. I realise that the men I hooked up with used the exact same tactics as the men I had camsex with: seemed like nice people so they could use me; got angry at me when I said no to them because they felt entitled to whatever they wanted for being nice to me; and thought that they could drop me for weeks at a time because I will always come running back to them. Sometimes I feel so assured in myself because I have spent years learning about all the maipulation tactics that they all use and because I can say no to them when they try to guilt me; sometimes I feel like that same 14 year old girl who ignored every red flag that she ever saw because she was so deperate for love and attention from anyone.

I am 24 years old. I am 2 years younger than my ex Sam was when I dated him and 4 years younger than Glenn was when I started talking to him. I look at the 18-20 year olds in our office and they are basically children to me. If I feel this way now, how much creepier will it feel when I actually hit 26 or 28? I tell people I have no interest in men and for the first time in my life I truly mean it. I stopped dating them years ago but all interest in them is gone now. Sometimes people tell me that I just haven't met the right man yet. I shrug it off but I want to scream at them. I have met dozens of men who have told me that they're different to the rest but they are all the same in the end. The right man doesn't exist.

[averagewriter-inthedark]

Hollywood’s Angel 🎬 | Javy ‘Coyote’ Machado Imagine

TGM Masterlist

Characters & Pairings: Javy ‘Coyote’ Machado x actress!reader (romantic)

Content warnings: slight profanity, fluff | female!reader (she/her) | wc: 5k

Requested 📨 Yes/no (for @stephthestallion 🤍)

Premise: Lights. Camera. Action!! Whether it be on the big screen in movie theaters across the globe or at home streaming the latest hit show, the name Y/n L/n would forever be known one of the world’s greatest entertainers. From humble beginnings the odds didn’t appear in her favor at first, but sometimes taking a risk could lead to endless opportunities. And maybe even love along the way…..

Note: This was so fun to write and I’m so sorry it took so long. I’ve been so busy lately with work and trying to get stuff settled. I hope I did this work justice for you 🥹 Also Y/Z/S stands for your zodiac sign.

—————————

“Hello, my name is Y/n L/n,” A beaming smile was sent to the camera once the producer gave a thumbs up. “And I’m here to do the Wired autocomplete interview.” She clapped her hands, “Let’s do this.” Handed a card stock with a printed google web search filled with blanks save for the, ‘Who Y/n L/n….’, her eyebrows rose with curiosity.

“You know I’ve watched dozens of these interviews in my free time. My favorite being the one with Ryan Renolds and Jake Gyllenhaal.”

“Have you ever searched yourself?” The producer asked off screen. Y/n’s response was a cheeky smirk.

“A long time ago when I was teenager and social media was first becoming a thing—you know when we had MySpace, but since then I have not. While I love the internet sometimes it can be a little,” she makes a face, “too much you know.” Focusing back on the card stock, Y/n takes a deep breath as the nerves start to arise. “I’m starting to feel a little worried but what I’m gonna discover is searched about me on Google.”

Her fingers grip the first piece of paper, reading off the statement as it peels away, “Who is Y/n L/n?” An instant chuckle leaves her lip, turning to the camera. “Y/n L/n is um…,” she shrugs, not sure how to really answer the question, “a 28-year-old woman who started out as a child actress in the mid 2000s. She’s a Y/Z/S, a newly-wedded wife, producer, and sometimes sings and dances or models in her free time.”

In truth, Y/n L/n was so much beyond that. Her name and legacy was embedded into history at such a young age the whole world knew who she was by the time she was 14.

Born to a middle class family in 1995 in New York City, Y/n’s parents were hardworking people who raised her and her siblings to appreciate the beauty in life. Though there were times of struggle, living paycheck to paycheck and having to sacrifice the lights in order to have food on the table, there was always love, support, and care in their family. Y/n witnessed her parents do everything they could to provide for them, her mom working double shifts at the hospital and dad on the road thirty weeks out of the year as a truck driver, and made the vow to repay them. Whether it be working her ass off in school in order to graduate from a prestigious university with a degree that would get her a stable career, or succeed in her dreams of breaking through in the entertainment industry.

Acting, singing, dancing. One could consider it the love of her life. Being on stage to a crowd made Y/n feel on top of the world. Playing dress up and house with her friends and family, pretending to be someone else was so much fun to the little girl. Y/n loved the little school plays she would do in preschool and kindergarten.

“One day,” she said to her childhood best friend while they swung on the swing set, “I’m gonna be on Tv like Disney Channel,” a squeal left her when she leaned back a little too far. “In front of cameras where I get to be someone else.”

Little kids always tend to dream big. Their desires and goals often shift. One day they wanna be a popstar. The next a veterinarian or an astronaut. But Y/n always knew what she wanted in life. To be in Hollywood with her face on the big screen for the world to see. To give back to her parents and support her family so they could accomplish their own dreams and aspirations.

She was destined for greatness. Now fast forward to the present, and Y/n is celebrating 20 years of being in Hollywood.

“Who was Y/n L/n’s first TV role?” The next question read, mentally traveling the actress back to the year 2003 when she was eight years old. She had been in Los Angeles to visit her grandparents and practically begged her grandma to take her to open auditions. Whether it was for a commercial or as an extra in a show, Y/n simply wanted to at least try despite being so young. She’d maybe auditioned for six roles in various media before getting a call back.

“My first role,” she begins with a grin at the memory, “was Rosie Whittman on Law & Order: SVU. Season five, episode 25 which was the season finale and the most viewed episode of the season,” Y/n remembered how intimidating the whole experience was, but loved every minute of it. “I was eight-years-old. No agent, no experience in Hollywood and was only in town to visit my grandparents for the summer. My grandmother took me to auditions that were open—because I didn’t have an agent and was a nobody,” she couldn’t help but laugh. “My parents obviously let me watch SVU as a child, but I wanted to audition for every open casting I saw so it took a lot of convincing on my part for my parents to allow my grandma to take me.” Boy it sure was a lot. Y/n was fighting for her life on the phone while her mother voiced disapproval.

“I was a pretty confident child,” a smirk takes her features, “I went in and did my thing—impressing the casting director, the producers, and Mariska Hargitay who happened to be there to do a chemistry read— since the character I was auditioning for was being questioned by Olivia Benson for what she witnessed.” Y/n pauses for a brief moment. “And yeah, Mariska was very impressed with me, going as far as to set me up with my first agent. I really owe my entire career to her and I love any chance we get to work together. She took a chance on me when I was just a child with big dreams with little connections and,” Y/n lifts her hands, “look where it got me. Here with Wired to see what people have been searching for about me over the years.”

After a few more questions about her personal life before she was an Emmy winning actress, Y/n moved to the next card. “What was Y/n L/n’s breakthrough role?”

Y/n made a face to the camera, “This is an interesting question. And I say this because depending on who you ask, the answer might be different.” She tilted her head back and forth, “Most would say Wren Stone—after all I played that role for nearly a decade. I got quite a bit of recognition in the 2000s as Viper in the X-Men films and of course as Padaline in the Hunger Games franchise—you could say people who grew up with those films know me best by that. But,” she licks her lip, “I would consider my run as Jodie Pip to be my breakthrough role.”

Jodie Pip, the longest running companion to the Tenth Doctor in the BBC hit series Doctor Who threw Y/n into worldwide recognition. After appearing in episodes of television hits like Criminal Minds, Grey’s Anatomy, Gossip Girl, and Dexter, Y/n took a risk by traveling to England in hopes of securing a main role in a show rather than a supporting one. She was itching to play a character for longer than one episode. And sadly, Hollywood just wasn’t doing it for her.

Therefore going across the Atlantic seemed to be the solution. A decision which would change her life for the better.

“Picture this: you’re twelve-years-old in a country you’ve only been to maybe once and this time around you’re looking to permanently move there. Your family is back in America waiting for the call from your Agent, who’s your legal guardian at this point, to tell them you’ve got a contract and will be there for God knows how long.” Y/n lets out a sign, reliving the nerve racking first few months in England with only her agent and Godmother with her. “It was a stressful time. I was losing hope while waiting patiently for a sign. Getting the call that I got the part—I was going to be the companion to one of the most iconic television characters of all time…” she shrugs as if it was obvious, “Getting to work with David Tennant, Freema Agyemen, Catherine Tate, and Alex Kingston….It was the best day of my life.” Placing her hand on the next slip, she adds, “I cried for a good couple hours—pure happiness.”

“Is Y/n L/n British?” A full blown laugh escapes, hand flying up to muffle the sound. “Oh my Gosh this is too funny. The amount of people I meet every year—whether it be costars, colleagues, or fans at cons—who are so surprised to discover I’m not British,” she raises a hand in defense, “It doesn’t happen quite as often as it did ten-fifteen years ago. And I understand why people assumed I was because for so long I played characters who were.” Making herself comfortable in the chair, Y/n explains her career further in depth.

“First was Jodie, who I played for three years from 2007 to 2010 and then again in 2013 for the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special. Playing her put me on the map in the UK. I was on Skins for several episodes, one season of Merlin. I had supporting roles in the Golden Compass and Nowhere Boy. And because I had worked with Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall on Doctor Who, I booked Eurydice on Sherlock and Shania on Broadchurch years later—getting to work with the lovely, talented, and amazing David Tennant for a second time.” Y/n’s face turns semi serious, “I love that man. He’s like my work dad for real—he was at my wedding,” she counts off on her finger, “I was at his. I’m Godmother to his daughters..he’s my ride or die.”

Getting back to the original point, Y/n snaps her fingers twice, “But back on track. Jodie, Eurydice, Shania..then of course playing Wren Stone on Game of Thrones for eight years had everyone on the planet believing I was British.” Wren Stone was the bastard of Jon Arryn in HBO’s critically acclaimed series Game of Thrones based on the books by George R. R. Martin. A ward of the Arryn family due to her status, Wren was introduced in the first season and went on to become a close ally to the Starks as well as a one of the longest running characters on the show when she appeared in all eight seasons. A fan favorite, her surviving the last season was one of the only good things to come out of it.

Cause…well we don’t talk about season 8.

“The last BBC show I did, what had me move back to the U.S permanently, was Killing Eve since it was with BBC America. By the time I booked Hunger Games and Ellie,” she corrects herself, “Negasonic Teenage Warhead in Deadpool, people were like, ‘you do a great American accent.�� And I just smile and nod, going, ‘yeah, I’m from New York.’ Their reaction,” she laughs, “every time was priceless.” Going to remove the next strip, Y/n pauses and looks back at the camera, ending with a wink, “Considering I’m joining Bridgerton this upcoming season as Sophie Beckett, I feel I will be having this question come up again a lot.”

‘What are some movies Y/n L/n has been in?’

“Well,” the actress rubs her chin with a knuckle, deep in thought. “I’ve been in a few—give or take,” she winks again. “My first movie role was X-2 in 2003, playing Viper although the role was minor compared to what it was in The Last Stand and Days of Future Past. In Spider-Man 2 I was in the train scene for a brief moment,” she pauses to laugh, “now that I think about it I have been in several projects related to Marvel. X-Men, Spider-Man and Deadpool. Not to mention I'll be taking on the role of Felicia Hardy in the MCU—that I’m really excited for. Umm what else,” she clicks her tongue to think.

“I had a small part in Constantine with Keanu Reeves, who along with David Tennant is someone I’ve worked with several times and love him to death,” she points a finger up, “The Golden Compass and Nowhere Boy as I mentioned earlier. In the 2010s I was in several features like Snow White and the Huntsman, The Help, New Year’s Day, Furious 7. I was in Catching Fire and parts 1 and 2 of Mockingjay—again I would say is one of my most recognizable roles. John Wick Chapters 2 & 3. In 2017 I was in The Greatest Showman. Oh!” She exclaimed with a grin, “Can’t forget I was in three Bond films: Skyfall, Spectre and the most recent No Time To Die. Another example of why the whole world believes I’m from England. Honestly England is my second home and where my career initially took off. I miss it there terribly, but coming back to the States has been a blessing—being close to my family and getting to do projects in Hollywood which was my dream since I was a little girl.”

Biting her lip the actress finishes up with, “my most recent movie roles have been Annihilation in 2018, Knives Out, Dune, The King’s Man, Uncharted, and Mortal Kombat—both of which are based on popular video games.” If she were being honest, playing Mileena in Mortal Kombat was one of her favorite movie roles to date—especially after having to fight with the studio to give the character justice when they were the ones calling her for the role. As a fan of the game and character, Y/n wasn’t going to settle for a small cameo. Ed Boon loved her interpretation of the character so much he asked her to voice Mileena in the next installments of the game.

Not to mention in the last several years any project with Y/n attached to it already had support and a loyal fan base to promote the show/film. After winning five Emmy’s—for her roles in Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, Sherlock, and Euphoria—Y/n was a household name.

So yeah, she wasn’t gonna be cheated out.

“Last year I was in Elvis plus back to back features with A24. X and Pearl were a lot of fun—and we’re currently filming the final installment to the trilogy, maXXXine.” Moving on she revealed the next statement, “Who was Y/n L/n in Euphoria?”

“In Euphoria,” she clears her throat, trying not to physically cringe at the thought of its creator, “I played Rue’s cousin Reece, who like every character on the show was dealing with difficult issues. I did a lot of research into my role so I could remain authentic and true to the character and the real life struggles people like her face.” Y/n softly smiled, “I won the Supporting Emmy next to Zenday’s leading—and it was a wonderful feeling to be recognized for a fifth time by the Academy while next to one of my best friends. Zendaya and I met when we were teenagers and have been so close. Working together on Euphoria was a wonderful experience and I’m so blessed to have received the honor alongside her.”

‘What episode of Black Mirror is Y/n L/n in?’

“Nosedive,” she turned to the camera, “it was in season three with Bryce Dallas Howard and Michaela Coel—both whom I adore. Aaaaand the episode was terrifying.” She simply said with a blank expression. “Watching it back gave me actual chills because one day technology will be so advanced that what took place in the episode could become our reality. And when I read the script my immediate reaction was like, ‘this is gonna be intense,’ and sure enough it was.”

‘Does Y/n L/n sing?’

A childlike grin appeared once again, “I do sing! Anytime I get a chance to sing I immediately say yes. It’s something I love. All the time on set I’ll be humming a tune or belting out lyrics to whatever music is playing. I got to sing a lot in The Greatest Showman so I was very happy about that. It’s my actual voice in the karaoke scene in season 2 of Euphoria. The one at Maddy’s birthday party—I had to beg them to let me do it live and not pre recorded. So when you see Lexi, Maddy and Kate filming me it’s actually Maude, Alexa, and Barbie using their personal phones, not the ones their characters use.” Offering a smirk she finishes with, “A little BTS you may have not known.”

‘Who does Y/n L/n model for?’

“Hmmmm” the actress puckers her lips. “As someone who was a fashionista growing up, I am filled with gratitude at being able to answer this.” Where could she really start with this? Having been labeled a fashion icon in 2020 Y/n had a long resume of working with brands and designers. “To start, I am an ambassador for Prada as well as its subsidiarie Miu Miu. We’ve partnered together for years and I’ve gone to the Met Gala with them a few times—most recent being in 2022. I’ve done campaigns for Calvin Klein and Stella McCartney. I recently did a collaboration with Dior. This year I went to the Met with Chanel—wearing vintage Chanel and ended up doing a campaign with them. Donatella Vesache and I have worked together.” Y/n scrunches her nose, “Every year I look forward to fashion week as you can imagine.”

‘Does Y/n L/n have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?’

“If you asked me this the other day I would’ve said no,” she replies cheekily, “But….if you’ve seen the news recently then you would know that I’ve been selected to receive one this year and I….can’t even put into words the feeling. I better stop before I get emotional,” she felt her eyes well up slightly. “I’m extremely honored and blessed to receive such recognition. All I dreamed about as a kid was to have my name on one of those stars and now it’s coming true. I’m overjoyed.”

‘What did Y/n L/n win the Tony for?’

“I won the Tony back in 2018 for my role in Wicked.”

“Will Y/n L/n be in DW 60th special?” Throwing a look to the camera, smirk threatening to appear on her lips she goes, “I don’t know…you’ll have to watch and find out.”

“Is Y/n L/n in Stranger Things?”

“I am not, but I would love to be,” she shrugs with a smile. “I love that show and everyone is so talented. I can’t wait for season five—it needs to hurry up before I lose my mind.”

‘Who is Y/n L/n in Star Wars?”

“So I voiced the absolute badass and Jedi master Ahsoka Tano during Clone Wars from 2008 to 2014, returning for the Rebels series form 2014 to 2018,” she pauses to cross her legs to make herself more comfortable. This was one of her favorite characters to play and despite the criticism and dislike for Ashoka in the beginning, she grew to become a fan favorite in the Star Wars fandom. “I was thirteen when I first voiced Ashoka and I got the privilege to bring her to life again by playing her in live-action for the Mandalorian and Book of Boba Fett—not to mention getting to have a voice cameo in The Rise of Skywalker.” Y/n gets ready to move on, “Now you’re about to see Ashoka again for her spin off show coming this summer on Disney plus.”

‘What all has Y/n L/n and David Tennant worked on?’ The question made her chuckle, surprised it was a top search on Google.

“David Tennant—the man, the myth, the legend. I’ve been lucky to work with him on several projects over the years,” the memories appear in her mind as she recalls them. “We first met in 2006 after I got the role of Jodie Pip opposite his Tenth Doctor. That lasted almost three years but during that time we both did Clone Wars—he voiced Huyang and he actually will be retuning as Huyang for the Ashoka series.” The moment she got the news the woman had FaceTimed him screaming. Although he was only voicing the droid they still made plans to reunite since they hadn’t seen each other since before Covid when Y/n moved back to the states.

“Broadchurch happened a few years after we both left Doctor Who—around the same time as the anniversary special—and then I got to work with him again when I appeared in an episode of Good Omens as one of the demons passing judgement on Crowley. Finally I wanna say before the Ashoka series the last thing we did was Staged back when quarantine was a thing.” Y/n’s face turns serious, “Anytime I get to work with David I take it. Like I said, he’s my ride or die,” she crosses her fingers, “we like this. And I love when people send me those YouTube videos where it’s like, ‘Jodie Pip and The Doctor sharing a brain cell for 10 minutes straight,’ or ‘David Tennant and Y/n L/n being a father-daughter duo on and off screen.’ Really brightens up my day.”

A few more questions went on, Y/n answering as best as she could with details. Doing this interview really gave viewers a more personal outlook on the actress. She was known for being reserved and private in her career expanding two decades. As a child star, her agent really shielded her from a lot due to the cruel nature of Hollywood and the media. And as a result of criticisms Y/n only was active on social media when it came time to promote projects and events.

She had a large and loyal fan base. Probably one of the largest for a celebrity due to her being in so many popular shows and high-grossing movies. On TikTok she & her characters were the most edited when it came to fancams. Pinterest had its own board dedicated to all the outfits Y/n wore.

She was Hollywoods Angel. Fans loved her, celebrities adored her. Before joining the cast of Bridgerton she met them at the Bafta’s the year prior and had them all starstruck when she approached. Nicola Couglan, who plays Penelope Featherington, even mentioned in an interview how the cast pretty much lost their minds when they found out she would be coming onto the show.

“No one knew about the end credit scene at the end of series three,” she told Graham Norton, seated alongside her costar/leading man, Luke Newton aka Colin Bridgerton on the show. “It was a big secret between Shonda and the crew. After we wrapped up, they went ahead and secretly filmed the scene with Sophie getting ready for the masquerade ball,” Nicola raises her hands, grinning from ear to ear, “and when I tell you we all were freaking out.” The audience laughed, Graham leaning foward in his seat with an awe-struck expression.

“So how did you find out? Was it when you watched the finale?”

Luke was the one to answer. “When I watched the episode,” he points to Nicola, “and I think you said you did this too—same with some of the others, I exited Netflix once the credits started to roll. Not thining much of it,” he shrugs, “then later that night Claudia Jessie who plays Eloise FaceTimes the iMessage group chat we have—.”

Nicole gently cuts in, “I’m surprised so many picked up.” That ignites a laugh from everyone.

“Yeah,” Luke agrees as he sits up. “Luke Thompson, Johnny Bailey, Simone, Nicola, Bessie, and I all answer—one after the other—and Claudia is shouting, ‘Did you see the end credit scene!?!’ Of course I’m confused because I’m like, ‘what is this, the MCU?’” Nicola bursts into laughter along with Graham. “Everyone’s asking what the hell she’s talking about because we’ve all seen the finale and were texting about it—but nobody mentioned an end credit scene. It completely went over our head. So…as you can imagine we all turn our tv, still on FaceTime mind you, and low and behold not only is there end credit scene….but Y/n L/n is gonna be Sophie Beckett.” Just the name alone ignites eruption from the crowd.

“Wow,” Graham exhales, “And you guys met her at the Bafta’s last year, yes? I remember seeing a picture of you two and other cast mates from Bridgerton with her.” Nicola nods excitedly.

“We did. It was such a surreal moment. She was with her then fiancee and the Euphoria cast—it kinda looked like a school mixed with Euphoria cast on one side and us on the other. But she came over and we were all buzzing in the corner, ‘Y/n L/n is coming over here. Oh my God-oh my God.’ Most of us have been watching her since she was on Doctor Who so this was like meeting your childhood idol,” Nicola used her hands to emphasize the point, “And she expressed how she was a fan of the books and loved the show. She even made a joke like, ‘Tell Shonda to call my line.’”

“And did you?” Graham asks for the audience and viewers at home, on the edge of his seat. “Cause didn’t they work together before on Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal?”

Luke nods, “we brought it up during press for series 2. I forgot Y/n was on those shows actually so when I told Shonda I thought ‘there’s no way they’re gonna get her’.” He glances at Nicola, excitment on his features, “I think everyone is ready to get back to set and start filming series four. I know I’m already missing everyone and I’m excited to pass the torch to Luke and Y/n.”

Coming down to the final cardstock, Y/n was sad to end the interview. It was fun seeing what people searched on the web and giving a more in-depth look at her life.

Peeling back the paper on the final card, the statement read, “Who is Y/n L/n’s husband?” Cue the butterflies in her stomach, picturing the man’s gorgeous face. “My husband is Lieutenant Commander Javy Machado. Although he is known to his colleagues as ‘Coyote’.” Lowering the cardstock she went on to say, “Javy and I met four years ago in 2019, he’s a fighter pilot for the Navy and was stationed in San Diego for an assignment. It happened to coincide at the time I was filming a small part in ‘Friend of the World’.” A small independent film her friend was producing and asked if she would take a small role to help promote the project. It’d been the first film Y/n had taken on after moving back to the States following her nearly 12 year residence in the United Kingdom.

If she thought hard enough, Y/n could feel the warmth of the sun on her arms and smell of the ocean salt water as her eyes landed on a group of people playing football with two balls. Instantly drawn to the man sticking his tongue out at his friends when running backwards to the end line. “My costars and I had wrapped up for the day and decided to go to the beach. We were waiting for this bar to open at five so we strolled for a good bit to pass time. That’s where I saw him playing football with his colleagues,” a shy smile stayed on her lips the entire time Y/n relayed the story.

“And then when the bar opened that night we formally met.” Man what a night it was. Every social media platform was buzzing with pictures and videos of Y/n behind the bar of The Hard Deck surrounded by patrons. The bartender, Penny, was so cool and didn’t mind the actors coming in despite the madhouse they caused. She did, however, have to close the doors once it got too packed due to locals sending word the five-time Emmy award winning actress was there. Before she knew it, Y/n was making drinks with her while taking pictures and signing autographs to everyone who approached. Y/n even rang the bell a couple times and bought the first round for those in attendance.

And when Javy appeared in front of her, it was like time had stopped. The noise eloping them was muffled, movement slowed to where the only clear focus was on each other.

“Hi,” he beamed, looking at her like she was the only person on the planet. “I know you’ve heard this all night, but is it alright if I get a photo with you?”

“Of course,” Y/n found her voice after a second, smiling wide as she inched closer to the bar counter. Javy thanked her, moving so his back was to the surface since the bar stood in between them and positioned his phone so it captured both of them. They posed, Javy snapping a couple pictures with Y/n making a kissy face at one point. When it ended Y/n motioned to the draft beers beside her, “Can I get you anything? Round is on me.”

Well Javy couldn’t say no could he? Pocketing his phone he replied, “Whatever you recommend, I’ll take.” Had he been to the hard deck several times in the past two weeks? Yes. Did he know what all was on draft and bottled? Sure did. But he wasn’t gonna pass on the chance to flirt with one of the greatest actors Hollywood had ever produced.

It was Y/n L/n for Christ’s sake. Hollywood’s Angel as they called her.

But what the pilot didn’t expect was to have found the love of his life. The same went for Y/n. Sure they had a moment movies often depicted as ‘love at first sight’ but c’mon, that was only in the movies…right?

Well perhaps it wasn’t just in the movies.

“Okay I see you!” Javy hollered from the side, standing on the red carpet a few paces away from where Y/n was posing for the cameras. Dressed to the nines in a black tux, Javy hyped up his fiancée like he always did at premieres and carpet events. This one happened to be at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of Elvis. “Give me face—yes ma’am! Work it-work it! Mmmh.”

Giggling the whole time, Y/n reaches out with her hand for him. He skips over, stopping to snap a picture on his phone. Pressing a kiss to her cheek, the two embrace for the photographers—who eat up every second they get with the couple. Ever since they announced their relationship in 2020 they were the it couple of Hollywood despite Javy not being in the industry. But his energy, personality, and of course his adoration for Y/n, made him well liked by her fans.

He worshiped the ground she walked on. Never did he give any indication he was with her for malice. Social media accounts he had were private and mostly to keep in touch with people he worked with. Her family loved him and his loved her. Whenever reporters approached him to try and ask invasive questions Javy would redirect to whatever project was staring in. “Isn’t the show amazing? I would say this is her best work yet—and the cast was amazing throughout.” He was definitely a keeper.

With similar personalities, though Y/n was more reserved in the public eye, the two were like a lock and key. Fitting together with a love so natural they couldn’t believe they got to experience it. They enjoyed going to concerts and the movies—getting into disguise whenever they didn't want the paparazzi following them. Sang and danced in the kitchen while they cooked, having their own karaoke parties with friends.

At one point in their relationship Y/n was to play a fighter pilot. So, what better way to prepare for the role than to shadow her partner and his colleagues. Once they got the green light from the Navy, Y/n had to do all the necessary training a pilot did to get into a jet. From there she was allowed to get in the backseat with either Javy or Natasha flying.

Flying with Natasha went smoothly….but her boyfriend was a different story. Of course she trusted him with her life and knew he would never put her in harm's way, but damn did he unlock his inner Maverick when she got in the plane with him.

“Javy Machado!!” She screamed, holding onto her seat for dear life when he flipped them upside down. “I swear I will kick your ass in the afterlife if you kill us!”

“Relax, baby,” he laughed, earning a groan from his girl. “I promise we’ll have a graceful landing.”

“It won’t be graceful when I’m puking my guts out!” She actually did vomit in the bag he provided her with before they took off. Instead of embarrassment she was just annoyed with him, but still enjoyed the ride no less. “I’m sticking with Natasha from now on.”

When it came to the squad, they were Y/n’s biggest supporters. After the initial shock and fangirl/fanboying—nearly shitting their pants at the fact their best friend was dating an absolute Icon—Y/n became part of their family. They pre-orders tickets to her movies, attending midnight premieres and after parties the actress invited them too. Sunday nights were reserved for watching her HBO shows, while Netflix series that were to binge watch were planned accordingly.

Nat loved having another gal in the group. It was a breath of fresh air and the two would go to lunch or have their own movie nights. “I’m surprised Machado hasn’t crashed in yet,” the pilot commented with a mouthful of popcorn as they sat in Y/n’s living room. Javy was in his office playing COD with the guys after pouting when Y/n said no to him joining in on their girl time.

“He’s occupied with his game. I’m surprised we haven’t heard any screaming at the tv yet.”

“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT, JAKE??”

“Spoke to soon.”

The couple were stars at award shows. It was no surprise they were always the best dressed. People constantly tweeted their excitement to see them attend, and expressed disappointment when they would not. And often the two’s reactions to cringe/unexpected moments resulted in them becoming popular memes—something Y/n already had a reputation of long before they got together.

2022 Oscars? Y/n’s Twitter froze due to the amount of tags from the snapshot of her and Javy’s expressions to Will Smith slapping the shit out of Chris Rock. “Did he just—?” “he did.” “Holy shit. Where’s the popcorn—I feel I need some right now.”

2023 Met Gala? People kept replaying the moment the couple did a double take at seeing Doja Cat dressed up as Karl Lagerfields cat. “What the actual…” “now that’s what camp should’ve been.”

And of course they couldn’t forget the most recent one of their unimpressed look from Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue at the most recent Oscars. “Should I go up there and pull a—.” “Don’t you dare finish that sentence, Machado.”

Expect YouTube to be filled with videos complications titled, “Y/n L/n & Javy Machado being flabbergasted at award shows for 15 minutes straight,” and, “Y/n L/n & her husband Javy being Hollywoods favorite couple.”

Then there was Javy’s to die for reaction to Y/n recieving her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at only 29 years old. The only other day besides their wedding day where the man was in a heap of tears. “I’m just—,” he sniffed, “so proud of you, baby. You’ve earned this.”

When it came to live reactions at events years after getting married and Y/n embedding her legacy as the greatest actress of her generation, let’s just say Hollywood’s Angel and the Navy’s Coyote would always be its champions.

………….

TGM Tag List: @avaleineandafryingpan @caitsymichelle13 @poppyalice2001 @cutelittlepotatofry @luckyladycreator2 @americaarse @elenavampire21 @back-tooo-black @wildellaa @artemissunn @pinkpantheris

[stargazing-sapphire2]

Beth Ashford

Full Name: Elizabeth Marie Ashford

Date of Birth: January 7th, 1999. Camp Pendleton, California.

Nationality: American

Occupation: United States Army / Task Force STALKER

Rank: Lieutenant

Age: 28 years old (2027), 31 years old (2030)

Family / Relatives:

-Henry Ashford - Father (Alive)

-Helena Rorke - Mother (Deceased, KIA)

Evangeline Ashford - Twin sister (Alive)

Gabriel Rorke - Uncle (Alive)

David "Hesh" Walker - Love interest (Alive)

Elias Walker II - Son (Alive)

Julianne Foster - Paternal grandmother (Deceased)

George Ashford - Paternal grandfather (Deceased)

Marie Henrikson - Maternal grandmother (Deceased)

Samuel Rorke - Maternal grandfather (Deceased)

Appearance:

*Hair color: Blonde; cut short into a bob

*Eye color: Blue

*Height: 5'9 / 175 cm

*Scars / Blemishes / Beauty marks: A jagged, faded red scar sliced across the bridge of her nose

*Faceclaim: Annabelle Wallis

Affiliation(s):

-Elias "Scarecrow" Walker

-Henry Ashford

-David "Hesh" Walker

-Logan Walker (Unknown, MIA)

-Thomas A. Merrick

-Keegan P. Russ

-Alex "Ajax" Johnson (KIA)

-Eva Ashford

-Kick

-Riley (the goodest of all good boys)

-Jemíma Ámbar del Mar Hernández (@thatonesillyducko )

-Juliana “J.J” Jiménez Rojas ( @deeptrashwitch )

Personality:

A sharp contrast to her more soft-spoken, feminine sister, Beth is every bit a loud, rough and tumble tomboy. Initially, her brash and blunt attitude can often scare people off and prevent her from making friends, but beneath the rough exterior, Beth is caring and compassionate, and will watch the backs of her teammates in a firefight, so she is someone you want watching your six.

Beth's biggest flaw is her arrogance and tendency to get in over her head about her skills. Although this is stemmed from her own insecurities about wanting to be seen as relevant and a good soldier, so she tends to overcompensate and with a constant need to prove herself. Although it can be an admirable trait to be seen as hardworking, she often tends to get carried away with it and will find herself in sticky situations, although she has been able to pull herself out of it. This attitude lessened with time and as she got older, although she can still be a bit cocky.

Background:

Beth was born on January 7th, 1999 on the Camp Pendleton base in California, to Henry Ashford and Helena Rorke, and 10 minutes older than her sister, Eva.

Growing up, Beth was disinterested in girly things, such as dresses, makeup, and whatever was considered traditionally feminine; starting with her cutting her hair short in order to distinguish herself from Eva (being identical twins), and thus she was much more athletic, choosing to sign up for most sports in school. Although there were times Beth was jealous of Eva for being seen as the prettier and smarter one of the two, but this fizzled out as they both became adults, as well as Beth's original disdain for feminity, and she became more open to exploring it.

In 2011, Helena was killed in action while deployed. Beth and Eva had been 12 years old at the time of their mother's death, leaving Henry to look after both his daughters alongside the help of their uncle, Gabriel Rorke. Being so close to her mother and viewing her as her biggest role model, Helena's death crushed Beth, and she had slow morphed from a happy, go-lucky little girl, to a reckless, angry teenager who had no respect for authority and got into trouble at school. While Beth struggled to make friends, her one companion was Elias Walker's eldest son, David Walker, who she developed a crush on and carried it well into adulthood.

In 2017, the ODIN strikes occurred, and the Ashford residence was one of many places destroyed that day. The small family of three lost everything, from their pets to their sentimental belongings. This was a day that served as a wake up call to Beth that the world had changed, and she would to change herself and adapt in order to survive.

Shortly after the ODIN strikes and after her 18th birthday, Beth would eventually enlist into the military, although much to her own chagrin and reluctance due to pressure from her father.

[officialromaniantranslatiuni]

happened to stumble upon a sociopath who thinks she invented ecology and neo-feminism and i need to vent a bit

coming from someone (yeah same old story) who had struggled with infertility for years and who is very set on adopting and has been since I was a teenager: someone being a horrible parent and birthing an army of children just to use them for financial benefits (children for whom others fought to keep them afloat and to be taken away by the system) doesn't have to automatically deny someone else's reproductive rights

"why pay money and struggle so much to have a biological baby when there are so many children in the system?"

BECAUSE

JUST BECAUSE

"it's selfish to go through 4 years (or more) of treatments with 0 painful results when you could have used that money to adopt a child"

that's not your fking problem!

marilu started this journey when she was 21-22 and the process of adopting a child is a nightmare here (tho I've heard that it got a bit better I the past years? Not 100% sure) and maybe her financial status would have helped, but the work/travelling thing and marital status... not much (again maybe things have changed but I do know someone who died of breast cancer before the adoption was finalised and her husband was no longer allowed to get the child)

an example: 2 girls (the eldest between 9-12 and the youngest 7-8) from my school were finally taken by a foster family from their mom because they were forced to beg and steal, they were malnourished, abused and the eldest had just been sold to a 28 year old man as a "wife" and all the efforts from the school regarding their protection and well-being were in vain (the clothes were destroyed by their mom because she needed them to look raggedy for begging, the house gifted by the mayor with furniture from the parents of classmates and everything else paid by the townhall was destroyed and turned into a brothel, etc)

anyway long story short - the woman had over 10 kids in total and she did this to ALL of them until they were old enough to say that they want to be taken away (only one baby was taken with the other siblings and I've met her before meeting the youngest siblings and mother and she's doing amazing - now she's about 16)

not once did anyone dare to disrespect or deny her reproductive rights and TRUST ME she is a vile woman and this goes far behind any trauma or upbringing

she was suggested means to stop making babies she despises and uses anyway but she denied and no one dared to force her to have her tubes tied or anything else

ALSO she has close family who are middle class and had kids in the same class as her kids (some even keep in contact with the 16 year old girl) and they didn't do anything for her or her children (technically, they have the money and everything to take in the girls but they refused because they were not their concern)

this fine apparently

but a 21 year old girl struggling with fertility issues for 4 years and deciding at 25 to give up for her own physical and mental wellbeing is a monstrosity

middle aged sabrina (the embodiment of uwu feminist uwu on threads who hates kids and doesn't want to adopt anyway) can judge and laugh at a young woman and call her one of the reasons why orphans become "delinquents" (thanks for assuming that orphans become delinquents by default)

fk this shit

you can judge marilu for being out of touch with reality or selfish or bratty or whatever

but her body and women's bodies in general are none of your business even if you are a woman yourself

[georgieluz]

Hey Jules! 2, 9, 14, 19, 24, and 28 for the HBO War positivity ask game please ☺️

hi lou!! ofc ofc!! :)

2 - who are some your fav creators/mutuals?

i love all of my mutuals and every creator in the fandom bc everyone is just amazing!! but to list just a few @footprintsinthesxnd, yourself!! (@luckynumber4), @ep6bastogne @lamialamia @thewayisset @lewis-winters @jenkil @mads-weasley @hellofanidea @liptonwashere @malarkgirlypop @panzershrike-pretz @sweetxvanixlla @whollyjoly @samwinchesterslostshoe @next-autopsy @iceman-kazansky @heystovepipeboys @theflyingfin @cody-helix02 and many many more!

special shout out to the cult!! zim zam, my friends, zim zam!!! also i'm so sorry if i forgot to tag anyone!!

9 - a ship that you can't get enough of?

bradnate, andyeddie, snurgie, ronnix, lipluz, webgott, and no matter how much winnix i consume it never gets old so them too!

14 - your fav underrated character?

ooh this is always hard bc everyone classifies underrated as a different thing.. are burgie and harry underrated? if so, them! chuck grant, tab (this man is so loved he's can't be underrated but i couldn't not mention mr lover lover himself), alton more??? one of the most interesting easy co men for sure!! wish we had more of him (lol)

19 - what's your fav universally-accepted/fanon headcanon about a character?

ooh either all the nix childhood fanon or the andyeddie ghosts/afterlife/grief fanon.. yeah.. that hits the spot

24 - what wip from another creator are you most excited about?

all of @ep6bastogne's wips (yes i read all your tags about them in utter anticipation), @luckynumber4's burgie wip! anything @footprintsinthesxnd writes! same with @lewis-winters ALL of your wips sound so so sooooo up my street/my thing!! there are so many more but despite my plans to spend the day at home i actually have to leave the comfort of my bed and brave the cold outside, and i'm late already so i'm gonna have to stop listing, but it's very likely that i'm excited for almost every single wip any of you guys have!

28 - what's something that lives in your brain rent free and you want everyone to know about the show/the fandom/your works?

outside of hbowar??? oooh i have LOADS of things!! the thick of it!! it has such clever funny writing, the best dialogue and political satire ever, because it's just so true to life and accurate for uk politics. peter capaldi is fucking amazing in it! and you'll see a lot of uk actors that are famous for other things here. but yeah, it's just hilarious and witty and clever. love it. go watch it. ummm other than that, the korean band onewe!! please go listen to them, they are ridiculously talented and have the kindest most lovely and accepting fandom in the world. in fact, the hbo war fandom and onewe fandom are the only two fandoms i've ever felt happy and comfortable in. onewe write beautiful songs with the most gorgeous lyrics (they have a space series which is one of my all-time favourites). ALSO pride (2014) as a movie recommendation! this film is my comfort film but it tears me apart as well. some people watch it for the queerness and come away learning about welsh history too.. for others, it's the opposite. but as a welsh gay man for me both those elements are so important to who i am and my own identity, that this film is just feels so incredibly special to me. especially the character gethin who i really feel i can relate to a lot due to our circumstances. tim roth is someone who i always wanna shout about and who lives rent free in my head too. love that man so much. also the band the libertines!! because them and the strokes were my entire teenage years and i pretty much grew up with their music as my 'soundtrack'. ok i think that's enough, even though i definitely have way more to shout about. sorry i rambled!

for this ask game!

[heretherebedork]

Absolute Zero is what happens when someone writes time travel while hating their audience.

Because seriously.

Ongsa gets into a car crash on their tenth anniversary.

Suansoon goes back into the past, falls in love with teenaged Ongsa all over again but as an adult and tells him to stay away because otherwise he'll die on their anniversary.

Ongsa ignores him and meets him anyway and experiences the same ten year romance but wants to prevent being in the car crash.

Alt-Future Ongsa comes back and tells him that if he does that Suansoon dies in a car crash so Ongsa chooses to be in the crash.

While he's in a coma, all of his memories go back to the teenaged Ongsa (yep that's a thing now) and he chooses not to meet Suansoon which finally changes and ends the loop.

But Suansoon is also getting destiny averted flashbacks now, apparently. Oh, now almost everyone is getting echoes of adult Suansoon's no-longer-existence.

Oh, also, there's a Suansoon somewhere out there who did this loop and is now alone and is probably in the future of this timeline but we only saw him once for like five minutes. Thrilling. (This might come back but if it does it's gonna be so far removed that I dunno how I feel about it.)

And Ongsa is basically stalking teenage Suansoon instead of meeting him. Also, definitely 28 year old Ongsa in a teenage body now and just mourning everything. They even have Ongsa going to the movies he knows that Suansoon won't go to so he can relive the pain of choosing not to meet him.

Aaaand now the whole thing is coming out again.

Also, as a bonus, really bad CGI butterflies that follow directions absurdly well.

(The fact that their entire romance can only happen because of the loop of Suansoon going back to meet teenage Ongsa before they actually meet because if he doesn't do that then none of the story makes sense is the most frustrating thing in the world. That kind of time loop is the worst. Like, if Suansoon doesn't meet teen Ongsa then Ongsa wouldn't make so many choices and so he stops himself from meeting him but like... ugh, time travel.)

Why and how does the store owner have the letter from future Suansoon who has officially not come back to the past? Why does that exist? Excuse me, nothing else of his original time travel exists so why does that!? Oh, right, mystical old guy powers.

[fullofmuses]

Hey everyone, the name is 𝘿𝙀𝘾𝙊, he/him, and 28 years-old. I run on Pacific Time (PT) where I happen to be online for vast majority of the day. Definitely way more reachable on discord for chatting & roleplaying purposes. Writing has been an integral part of my life now and it's continued to grow and evolve with time. In between a very busy schedule where I work full-time of roughly 40-50 hours on any given week. My job is flexible and allows me time to be responsive throughout the day, hence why I don't foresee anything stopping our time from writing. Should anything defer me from being active on here for a few days or weeks, any emergencies that would see my time decline, I promise to always be responsive and make sure that whoever I'm writing with is kept in the loop. More about me, I love zodiac signs and conversing about them (ask me about mine), love talking about traveling and nature, goals as writers that we want to accomplish and love films / television. Overall, I'd say that I'm a writer that isn't all about just writing, ooc chat and swapping memes is something I also enjoy doing!

one. The writers that I'm hoping to engage with should be 20+, just for my own comfort based on previous experiences.

two. Male roles are the only roles that I will be playing, preferably roles that aren't a teenager or child.

three. A huge fan of mature / dark storylines as we progress into some unorthodox themes that others might be afraid to play. No children or abuse to any sort of a animal, but open to hearing out what anyone is comfortable with as long as it's consensual for both.

four. Themes and genres that I find myself drawn to happen to be : 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞, 𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐝𝐲, 𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐥, 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐞, 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞, 𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞, 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥, 𝐬𝐜𝐢-𝐟𝐢, 𝐟𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐲/𝐦𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐥, 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐜 (𝐃𝐂/𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐥), 𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬 / 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧. If there are any other storylines or themes that you might want to try out, feel free to let me know as I usually keep an open-mind to anything worth writing.

five. Intimacy & smut are themes that I do write, however, I understand that many don't feel comfortable with so I can also fade to black if that's what you're comfortable. Ship storylines are highly coveted and intriguing as long as we don't make it a perfect fairytale.

six. No godmoding by any means necessary.

seven. Be respectful, this is just a roleplay site where I'm giving my time to you guys … please do not expect me to revolve around your world. I've had this encounter with many writers on tumblr before and it's unfortunate how some use this platform as a means to truly be cruel and weird. Treat me as if you'd be treating someone in RL and not on the internet, do that and we'll have no problem getting along.

eight. Banned face-claims or faces I just don't want to interact with / or use: Johnny Depp, Sydney Sweeney, Jenna Ortega, Barry Keoghan, Timothee Chalamet, Halle Bailey, Justin Bieber, the Sprouse twins, anyone that is deceased.

/ - If you have any other questions, feel free to ask away. I do try to answer all of my messages or asks, but definitely let me know so we can begin writing incredible stories.

[gch1995]

I always find it hilarious how often casting directors of Wuthering Heights film adaptations portray Ellen “Nelly” Dean as this elderly housekeeper next to Catherine Earnshaw, Hindley Earnshaw, Heathcliff, Edgar Linton, and Isabella Linton because that’s not who she is in the book at all.

In actuality, she’s about the same age as Hindley Earnshaw, who was only around 27-28 years old when he died, due to alcoholism. She’s only roughly six years older than Heathcliff and eight years older than Catherine Earnshaw/Linton Sr. She was only 14 years old when Mr. Earnshaw brought Heathcliff to Wuthering Heights, and they met. She was only in between her early-mid 20s when Cathy Sr accepted Edgar Linton’s proposal, and Heathcliff ran away after overhearing about how “it would degrade [Catherine] to marry him.” She was only in her late-twenties when Cathy Sr and Hindley Earnshaw died.

By the time we get into the second generation coming of age, Nelly’s story to Mr. Lockwood about these fucked up people she’s known and worked for from these two families since she was a child, Edgar Linton’s death, Isabella Linton’s death, Heathcliff’s death, and Cathy Linton Jr’s and Hareton Earnshaw’s engagement/upcoming marriage, Nelly is between her early-mid 40s.

At the end of the novel, Nelly has still just barely approached the beginning of “middle age” by the time Heathcliff and all this family drama surrounding the Earnshaws and Lintons. It’s why it just cracks me up how she’s always portrayed as this much more cynical and mature elderly lady in nearly every film. I guess, her being everyone else’s caretaker/servant everyone else’s favorite confidant, and her practical makes her attitude and personality comes across as someone you’d expect to be much older than her actual years

Granted, they also have often cast actors and actresses who are between their late-twenties to mid-thirties to portray Heathcliff and Cathy Sr as teenagers to early twenties. Of course, it’s also not uncommon for many people between their late-twenties to thirties, and sometimes even early 40s, to still get physically mistaken for being between their late-teens to mid-twenties since those are still fairly young years in adulthood, too. Juliet Binoche looked to be her actual age of 28 years old when she played the much younger 14-18 year old Cathy Sr and Cathy Jr Earnshaw/Linton, though.

Ralph Fiennes is actually my favorite actor’s portrayal of Heathcliff. I think he captured the anger, the charisma, the instability, the moodiness, the mystery, the obsessiveness, and the vague underlying sense of sympathy in Heathcliff the best. Physically, Ralph Fiennes is a white Caucasian actor, but to the the costume/make up department’s credit, they did have him wear a black wig and tan his skin enough to make him come across as mixed Romani in descent for this movie. Yeah, Nelly says his skin is “blacker than the devil,” but we also know that England was a very racist country towards outsiders who were not of pure white Anglo Saxon British descent back then, so Heathcliff could have been a lighter shade of tan than she said or he could have been dark brown. We don’t get a clear answer.

I also do love this scene of him talking to Nelly about being tired of getting revenge at the end of the 1992 Wuthering Heights film adaptation. They both appear to be around the right ages from the book here, and I love Nelly’s exasperated “Oh, for God’s sake…Can you please, stop staring like that!” She is so over and done with Heathcliff’s crazy bullshit, and the actress portraying Nelly here portrays that so well!

[cvttmutt]

fuck it im doing all of them :P Skip any you're uncomfortable with btw! /nf

0: Height

1: Age

2: Shoe size

3: Do you smoke?

4: Do you drink?

5: Do you take drugs?

6: Age you get mistaken for

7: Have tattoos?

8: Want any tattoos?

9: Got any piercings?

10: Want any piercings?

11: Best friend?

12: Relationship status

13: Biggest turn ons

14: Biggest turn offs

15: Favorite movie

16: I’ll love you if…

17: Someone you miss

18: Most traumatic experience

19: A fact about your personality

20: What I hate most about myself

21: What I love most about myself

22: What I want to be when I get older

23: My relationship with my sibling(s)

24: My relationship with my parent(s)

25: My idea of a perfect date

26: My biggest pet peeves

27: A description of the girl/boy I like

28: A description of the person I dislike the most

29: A reason I’ve lied to a friend

30: What I hate the most about work/school

31: What my last text message says

32: What words upset me the most

33: What words make me feel the best about myself

34: What I find attractive in women

35: What I find attractive in men

36: Where I would like to live

37: One of my insecurities

38: My childhood career choice

39: My favorite ice cream flavor

40: Who I wish I could be

41: Where I want to be right now

42: The last thing I ate

43: Sexiest person that comes to my mind immediately

44: A random fact about anything

THIS IS SO EXCITING TYY :3

0. 5'7"

1. 16

2. X

3. Sometimes if I'm bored I take my dad's cigarette butts

4. I wish

5. I'm actually 2 months sober off marijuana! :D

6. If I've ever been mistaken for an age I haven't been told but I guess I do look a lot younger than 16

7. nope

8. Yes!! I definitely want some matching ones with my best friend when we're older

9. Only ear piercings unfortunately

10. Yess I want my lip pierced, my eyebrow pierced, and maybe some more ear piercings

11. Hes not on here but I've been trying to get him!! He's a shedtwt user 😢

12. Single!! If anyone has a crush on my cuts dm me I don't bite (unless you want me to)

13. X

14. Whenever someone misuses you/you're and their/there/they're

15. Smile tbh.. and I just watched it for the first time a few days ago

16. You carry the conversation but still enjoy talking to me

17. My best friend 😢 (he's a text away)

18. My dad almost beat my grandpa to death with a hammer LMAO I don't think I've actually fully thought about that

19. I'm very anxious irl!! I act like a loser

20. I can't talk to strangers without stuttering and its not even a cute stutter I mispronounce every single word I hatteee it

21. Im good at art ig

22. X

23. Love them even if we fight a lot

24. Honestly I'm eh with my parents but also I'm a teenager and it's normal to hate them at this time so

25. Having lots of fun, no worries about prices, no worries about time limits

26. Refer to question 14

27. Blonde, chubby, SO PRETTY AND BEAUTIFUL

28. 5'4" twink with commitment issues

29. So they don't worry about me

30. Having to sit on my phone the entire time, or having a really hard assignment I can't do.

31. "That's freaking fire"

32. X

33. Any praise

34. Not an asshole, gives me attention

35. Not an asshole, gives me attention

36. Washington or maybe somewhere in Europe but idk if that's happening cuz I'm BROKE

37. X

38. Astronaut. I still want to be an astronaut deep down but realistically that's never happening 😭 My grades r ass and I come from a poor household so that means no fancy college and I can't just pay to see the stars

39. Chocolate!!

40. A four year old boy

41. Right where I am right now

42. Mashed potatoes with onion gravy

43. X

44. Ankylosaurus' tails are so strong they can break their own bones just swinging them

[tallulahkia]

Name: Tallulah Kia Occupation: Part-time librarian at Growden Public Library & part-time marketeer at Portside Flea Market Age: 28 Sexuality: Lesbian Species: Human Hometown: Cape Town, South Africa Relationship Status: Single Personality Traits: Insecure, selfless, loving, loyal, spontaneous, cheerful, positive, radiant does golden retriever puppy count as a personality trait?

Born in England, her biological mother of 16 years old was forced to give the baby away without granted a single glance at the newborn. A newly wed couple adopted the girl and took her with them to South Africa, where she was raised as their own. Never knowing she was adopted, adoring her parents and obedient to their rules. Her foster mother being a redhead herself, she never once thought or questioned if she'd been adopted or not.

Tallulah danced through life, with lots of laughter, lots of love to give and always putting others first. Even when she wasn't allowed to have friends over at home, she trusted her parents had their fair reasons for them. They owned a farm, away from the city, with a big stable owning quite a few horses. Tallulah got her own foal at a young age, grew up with the majestic animal as her best friend. She didn't have many human friends, mostly because her parents were really restricted and kept to themselves.

In her teenage years, she spent most of her time studying, getting good grades and worked the hardest on improving her English. This granted her the opportunity to study abroad, to participate in a student exchange program and move to Port Leiry for a year. It was a big step, but with the help of a friend of the family, Adrian, her parents let her go knowing there'd be someone keeping an eye out on her. Adrian acted as her guide and second dad in the city, so much so that when she moved back home; she always longed to go back. She graduated college and after a few years of job hopping back home, she made the big decision to move to Port Leiry.

Entirely lost in what 'dreams' she's supposed to follow, she has taken up a part-time job at the Growden Public Library and part-time at the Portside Flea Market. There she helps out, one of many, local florists that sells flowers at a stand - either place she'll be spending most of her time. She's only been in Port Leiry for a month, aside from the year she spent in Port Leiry at the age of 25, and ready to finally live her life to the fullest.

____________________

YOU'VE GOT A FRIEND IN ME; to make up for the lack of friends Tallulah had back home, she needs someone - of any species really - to be there for her and teach her about letting go of the restrictions her parents put her up with

A BOOK NERD; Tallulah works part time at the library, absolutely loves to talk all things fiction, mostly feel-good fantasy and happy endings

LET YOURSELF GO; someone who could be a good or bad influence on Tallulah, depends on how you see it, who drags her through the city to truly let go of herself and experience the joys of life

[stvbbcngs]

(   JACOB ELORDI  +  CIS MAN + HE/HIM  )     ⸻    meet  FELIX LOOMIS .  the  agent at LOOMIS REAL ESTATE is  glen  ellen's  very  own   THE HELLKITE,   who  has  been  in  town  for  28 YEARS .while  they  are  only  twenty eight years old,    they  can  be  very   SELFISH    but  if  their  friends  mentioned  them,    you'd  think  they  were  more  MAGNETIC.   in  a  town  where  every  one  knows  everyone,    it's  hard  to  keep  a  secret,     but  i  think  the  killer  knows  that  (REDACTED), and  it's  bound  to  get  out  sometime  soon.

name. felix loomis. birthday. december 22, 1996. sexuality. closeted bisexual. birth place. glen ellen, california. presently. glen ellen, california. occupation. real estate agent.

+ allocentric, alluring, charming, assertiveness, brave, eloquent -- quick-to-anger, abrasive, acrimonious, nefarious, resentful, solemn

TRIGGER WARNINGS BELOW ; Addiction, Death, Overdose, Car Accident, Surgery Mention

Felix once had it all. A full ride scholarship to a prestigious university for D1 football under his belt, he was going to make something of himself… until the accident. But let’s rewind a bit…. Born December 22nd, 1996, Felix was the bright, shiny, new bouncing baby boy to Mary and Lyle Loomis. Lyle owned the real estate business in town as well as several properties under his belt, Mary had been the younger woman whom he had an affair with. Ending things with his previous marriage to be with Mary, he was proud and cast away thoughts of his previous family in order to welcome Felix. (Felix has two half-siblings from his previous marriage whom he’s never really known - though he has no remorse about that.) Some would say that the way Felix turned out wasn’t really their fault, that the boy just turned sour at a certain age, but Felix knew better.  His mother had developed an addiction to pills in the midst of the marriage with his much older father and addiction just seemed to stick to Felix like a tick after he discovered his mothers lifeless corpse in her bedroom following an overdose. He was thirteen. He grew to resent his father and their relationship became strained. They have a rocky relationship to this day following Felix’ most recent stint in rehab for the same addiction to pills his mother died from. When he was a teenager, his father sought to nip the addiction, sending his son to therapy where Felix would only half listen to the therapist instead of really trying; you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.  The only real saving grace that staved off a similar fate to his mothers and killed him too young was football. Felix was a hell of an athlete, popular and charming when he wanted to be; he had everything a guy could want in high school. But his addictions came in the form of alcohol, sex, and drugs. His coach was in on it too - warning him when they would have a drug test for games and things so Felix could clean himself up in time. It worked well and no one really seemed to worry much about Felix as he could throw one hell of a party. Having no one around to call him on his attitude or his addictions, he pushed the limits of his drug use. Driving home intoxicated one night, he drove off the road and crashed into an embankment where he injured his right knee so severely that he had to have a series of surgeries when he was eighteen - a month before graduation and moving onto a Division One school for football.  His football career was over after that.  Losing his mind to his grief over his failed future, hating himself more every day and letting the anger overtake him, he sunk further into his addiction. This would prove nearly fatal as he overdosed on the anniversary of his accident, and (REDACTED SECRET). After this, he knew he needed to get sober. At the time, he was around twenty five-twenty six and admitted himself into a treatment program to try and combat the addictive tendencies he’d harbored for many, many years at this point. He was successful but it took two more tries to get him sobered up and done with the stuff. Even though he couldn’t stand to look at his father, he went to work at Loomis Real Estate as an agent because he truly had no idea what else to do. He’s been sober for around a year and a half now, trying to keep it that way.

[elxctrics]

"yeah it's 2 a.m and she's out there in the sheer white dress, wearing last night's makeup. all coquettish in the pictures, with the flash on. she's in her mid 20's, real intelligent. hedonistic with the gravel, drawing dead eyes."

(—) ★ spotted!! CATERINA 'CAT' VETROVA on the cover of this week’s most recent tabloid! many say that the 28 year old looks like KAYA SCODELARIO but i don’t really see it. while the SOCIALITE/NEPO BABY is known for being WITTY my inside sources say that they have a tendency to be ALOOF i swear, every time i think of them, i hear the song MEAN GIRLS by CHARLI XCX { she/her cisfemale }

  ˗ˏˋ ＊ ‣ 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐬    :  

connections || musings || instagram || headcanons

𝓼𝓽𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓲𝓬𝓼

name: caterina vetrova

age: twenty eight

nicknames: cat

date of birth: october 16th, 1995

astrological sign: libra

place of birth: beverly hills, los angeles

occupation: socialite

label: the nepo baby

positive traits: witty, adventurous, blunt, bold

negative traits: aloof, sarcastic, crude, improper

characters/celebrities she’s like: rachel gatina from one tree hill, serena van der woodsen from gossip girl, nicole richie, kim kardashian, simon cowell, venetia catton from saltburn

𝓫𝓲𝓸𝓰𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓱𝔂

stemming from the infamous vetrov family oil fortune, being the youngest daughter of the vetrovs meant that caterina never had to want for anything in her life, but her mother wasn't just going to just let her sit around and do absolutely nothing.

with her brother going against the grain, living the life of a 'starving artist' as her mother liked to call it, caterina was forced from a very young age to parade by her parent's side, putting on the image of the perfect, dotting daughter who was incredibly bright and had so much going for her.

from etiquette classes, horseback riding, ballet and violin lessons, her parents enrolled her in everything that they could to make sure she learned how to be proper, but caterina wanted no part of it.

she hated the pretense, hated how phony and forced everything was and as she got older, began speaking up - making snarky comments when someone said someone pretentious or mocking those around her, which often resulted in a scolding from her parents. but while they had raised her to be elegant, they also managed to raise her to be tough, and caterina wasn't one to take shit from anyone.

it was her teenage years when she really almost put her parents into an early grave. sending her off to boarding school in london only made things so much worse. throwing wild parties in the dorms, sleeping around and purposely releasing footage of her doing drugs, drinking, and many other scandalous things meant her family had to reach deep into their pockets to keep all of her debauchery under wraps.

she barely passed school, only graduated because of her parents' hefty donation, and once she graduated and returned to the states, she didn't return to the vetrov family home and instead, ran off with the first guy who paid her any attention and had a whirlwind wedding in vegas.

naturally, once her parents caught wind, they made sure to have annulled right away, which caterina really didn't care about - she didn't love the man, she was just bored, and she was fairly certain she'd never have the capacity to love anything given her cold upbringing. but she wasn't going to sit around and wine about it, she was going to enjoy her life.

she continued to get herself into wild situations and scenarios - jet setting across the world, two more marriages and divorces and many other things that the family has invested insane amounts of money to keep underwraps.

caterina plays the act well - standing by her family's side at various charity functions, galas, sundays at the russian tea room that they own in new york city and so much more and because of her willingness to cooperate and the lack of it on her brother's end, she truly believes she's the only one who deserves an ounce of the family's riches. because it's always been her that had to carry the brunt of responsibility while dimitri was out following his 'passions.'

she's a completely aloof and bored person - chasing temporary fixes and highs, but nothing truly interests her and she finds most things to be dull, uninteresting and terribly drab and boring.

she's blunt and crude to a fault, always saying whatever comes to mind and getting a little rush out of the shock that her words bring to people's faces.

other than her family's last name, she has absolutely nothing going for her and has no interest in anything other than enjoying the perks that being born into wealth have rewarded her.