#source: twitter but i changed it up a bit

[schnitzelsemmerl]

jane: ok gang why dont we all play a fun lil game of UNO? it'll be fun! :D

lina: dont be ridiculous mi corazon

anna: the last time we played this, kitty locked herself into her room and we couldn't get her out for 2 hours....

jane: but annaaaaaa, games bring out the best qualities in people! cmon

cathy: games literally bring out the worst qualities in anne

anne: (slams loaded pistol onto the table in frustration and screams) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[xo2dee]

ᴊᴜᴊᴜᴛꜱᴜ ᴋᴀɪꜱᴇɴ ᴍᴀꜱᴛᴇʀʟɪꜱᴛ

ʟᴀᴍʙᴇɴᴛ

⛧ᴘᴀɪʀɪɴɢ: Sukuna x (Fem)Reader

⛧ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢꜱ: true form!sukuna, pregnant!reader, heian era customs, pregnancy, mentions of cannibalism, sukuna being an asshole (what do you expect)

⛧ᴡᴏʀᴅ ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ: 3767

⛧ꜱᴜᴍᴍᴀʀʏ: Carrying the King's of Curses child, you knew wouldn't be easy, but you were more than happy to have a baby of your own. Even if said baby was growing rapidly while being the source of your bad back and changing appetite.

⛧ᴀ/ɴ: sukuna fluff is hard to come by in my opinion and so sorry if he's ooc but i wanted him like this. also, this is for lemon and ava, two of my favorite sukuna babes 🤍

⛧twitter - ao3

Wrist flicking out, you fanned yourself, eyes heavy with the sleep you had been fighting as you pursed your lips and eyed the blooming trees of the garden. Spring was rounding itself off, the scorching weather approaching you knew in weeks as you could only prepare yourself to be practically bedridden due to your ‘condition’. You’d only arrived a year and a half prior, and you quickly realized you had not seen much of the palace still after taking a husband, be it due to the duties of a noble person who were bound to spend most their days inside and entertaining themselves another way.

You held back a snort, fanning yourself harder as you stopped and eyed a nearby bush full of bright fruit and as red as your husband’s eyes.

…Husband.

In your youth, you supposed the daydreams of living in nobility were only achievable through luck. Or perhaps told through a fortune told from the Omikuji you required as a teen, taking the fortunes of ‘blessing’ and ‘marriage’ with a grain of salt until you had grown into an adult and ran off to be elsewhere from the clutches on an arranged marriage. Into serving nobility, to becoming nobility wasn’t necessarily on your list, your marriage by all means was an unlawful one. Forged from blood and flesh when you remembered instead of sipping sake in front of the Gods, your husband-to-be curled his fingers around your wrist and bit into your palm to instead partake in you.

You had been enamored by him since you first met him, eyes memorizing every inch of his unusual face before taking his thumb into your mouth when he smeared his own blood across your lips. It had sealed your fate that moment, your love and lust for him bursting forth like a raging inferno then and during the commutation of your marriage. Something that had finally taken into effect and was weighing down on you heavily.

One you supposed was the reason for the wariness when it came to serving you.

Cutting your eyes to the side and slightly behind you, you held the sigh in, your attendant keeping her eyes on the ground (perhaps watching your feet when you walked) as to shield her pensive expression from you, however you were not the unobservant type and focused on the knot between her eyebrows. Mai, your first and most loyal attendant, was never one to shy away from pestering over you, speaking her mind and filling in for advice whenever you needed it, so to see her quiet and on edge grated your nerves more than you liked to admit. She had been your first friend when you arrived, and you absolutely despised when she reverted back into the meek and submissive attendant she played whenever your husband was around, and it was enough to make you frown and worry if you had done something wrong.

You sighed loudly, snapping your fan shut and turning to the woman slowly, “You look like you have something you want to say.”

Mai’s eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks, long and curled as her doe-like eyes rose to meet yours. She seemed to mull over your statement, before bowing her head in submission and speaking quietly, “Permission to speak?”

A smile graced your lips, softening your expression and nodding to her in return, “You always have permission with me, Mai.”

And just like that, Mai’s entire attitude flipped at your nonchalance. Straightening herself up, she dropped the service act and eyed you with suspicion and wary, mixed in with tired disappointment at having to cater to your more… reckless wants. “It’s just that Lord Sukuna has told us to monitor you and keep you in the palace when he’s away. And you’ve disobeyed that… again.”

Ah, there it was. With a scowl threatening to mar your face, you turned your back to her and began to pick through the strawberries in the bush you had been eyeing before, “I’m in the gardens. That’s still the palace… Is it not?”

“Yes, but –”

“This one looks ripe…” you cut her off, not necessarily wanting to hear her prattle on about how your husband made it horrifyingly clearly that you were to say inside at all times when he wasn’t at the palace. You’d heard it all before so many times it had been practically engraved into your skull with ink, and you were fed up with sitting on your knees inside away from the outside world and learning calligraphy constantly. Lips downturned you plopped a good-looking strawberry into your mouth, humming at the juice and tangy sweetness that exploded upon your taste buds, before your stomach gave an abrupt twist and a foot kicked out against your ribs. You winced and rubbed at your belly while the fruit suddenly tasted foul, and you swallowed with a grimace, “I hate how hungry I get nowadays, especially when I seem to crave more than just human food.”

Mai had been watching you like a hawk, leaning forward to intercept you whenever you reached for another fruit, “Oh, let me get it for you –”

“Please, Mai, I can pick my own strawberries. You worry too much.” Batting her hand away, you plucked it, hiding it in your sleeve and turning to her with an exhausted smile as she took your fan from you.

“Yes, My Lady. But please consider my words, we can keep you entertained in the palace.” You watched the lines on her face carefully, creased at her eyes and wrinkles forming at her forehead, and you could only wonder if your pregnancy had been the cause of her newly formed stress (partly, you knew you could’ve blamed it on your husband, his aggressive and aloof behavior all in one keeping most of the servants on the tips of their toes, but you quickly squashed it whenever you remembered she tended to you entirely).

Of course, you knew she was only doing her job, however her job was also giving you a severe case of claustrophobia being cooped up inside all the time. It wasn’t like you were planning to ever leave the palace’s premises either, just small strolls in the garden or spending time by the pond to cool off. Honestly, you had reason to believe she and your husband were just worrywarts (yet for the latter, you would keep that strictly to yourself).

You nodded your head in the direction you wanted to go, signaling Mai to walk beside you as you sighed and lowered your voice, “The midwife told me exercise will help…” you caressed your palm over your protruding stomach, “The baby is already huge and only seems to keep growing. A little sun helps me too, Mai… I can’t stay cooped up forever.”

Mai took a few moments to respond, her shoulders relaxing and her voice regaining familiarity, “I’m only worried since the last time you fainted out here.”

Lips thinning outwards, you remembered it all too well. Not necessarily fainting, though you blamed it on the many layers you wore around the palace and how warm it was getting outside, but you remembered the aftermath and how your husband had all but slaughtered a few lowly servants in retaliation as to letting you out (and because of his temper). You had thought the gore would’ve had you running, but you’d grown so used to him murdering someone whenever they slightly pissed him off you could only sigh at the thoughts. Of course, you knew Mai’s worry also came out of fear, however you weren’t about to let him do anything to her. “I know, but I feel fine… Just swollen feet and my back aching every time I move.”

And the baby kicking at your body whenever something displeased him.

Mai sighed your name exasperatingly, dropping the formalities, “Please, given your condition I think it’s best if you return to the palace.”

Irritation began to seep in your muscles, your baby moving in response to your emotions as your feet marched faster to walk. If you wanted to walk around the garden, you were allowed to, you would deal with your husband later if he found out. “What my husband doesn’t know won’t hurt him… Just another stroll and we can go back in, I’m getting tired anyways.”

“My Lady – oh!”

Mai abruptly skidded to a halt, body bending quickly into a low enough bow for the towering sight of your husband appearing before you both. You spared her a quick glance, flickering back to your husband, Lord Sukuna, when you realized he wasn’t the least bit concerned over her. He kept all four eyes on you, a challenging glare in them and you nearly wanted to laugh at the sight of two of his arms crossed and the other two planted on his hips. He looked every part of a disappointed husband – a father in the making, and you could already feel the talking your ear was going to get. Ah well, you could always feign falling asleep on him, that seemed to always make him softer.

Bending slightly into your own bow, he spoke, addressing Mai with a singular command, “Leave,” and you only returned back to your own height whenever you peeked that she was gone. You held back the groan at the pull your spine gave, wincing slightly at the shine of the sun before his large form eclipsed it as he finally moved close to you with no one in sight. The familiarity of his warmth and scent eased some of your irritability, wondering why he was back to early and ecstatic that he came to look for you once he couldn’t find you.

You smiled up at him, rolling the strawberry around your fingers before gesturing with your head to the path you had been walking, “Walk with me?”

Sukuna was ever-so unwavering in his staring, watching you practically dawdle in your place with the world’s most unamused expression, “Weren’t you told to stay inside?”

You repressed a shudder at his rough voice as your skin prickled, another sigh leaving while your shoulders slumped; caught. “I might remember you telling me that.” He seemed to not be in the mood for your sweettalking.

A loud exhale made your smile turn sheepish. “You piss me off.”

You knew that was coming, pulling out your hand from the sleeve to produce the strawberry from before, letting his eyes follow the way you rolled it into your palm, “But you’re here now… Nothing could really happen now since I have you.”

Sukuna’s eyebrow furrowed, eyes narrowing inward before he scowled at you enough to let his upper lip slightly curve over his teeth, “Changing the subject won’t help you. Are you gonna walk back, or do I have to carry your ass and –"

In a bold move you silenced him, pressing the strawberry to his lips with two fingers and slightly pushing it forward in hopes he would eat it. His eyes couldn’t narrow or glare any further, shooting from you to the fruit, and holding them there for a few moments and you wanted to giggle because it nearly looked like he pouting. Your husband never really ate human food, perhaps to humor you before he would spit it out and complain about the horrid taste it gave him, however there were a few times his interest would peak and want a bite of whatever you had in your hand – especially when said food seemed to satisfy you so much. You supposed it was his curiosity to understand you better, having a human in such close quarters and as a wife was perhaps as jarring as it was to have him as your husband.

Toying with him, you said, “It gave me bad taste earlier… Want to try it?”

Sukuna’s lips twitched behind the fruit, a clear sign he’d indulge you that time and when you went to move your hand away from him, one of his hand snatched your wrist with a small squeeze. An unspoken word for you to leave your fingers on the fruit and indulge him. And you did so with coquettish blink, pressing the strawberry harder against his lips until they gave way and his teeth were biting into it with the juice from inside sliding down your fingers as he slowly and sensually ate the strawberry from your fingertips. It didn’t help that he kept his eyes on your own the whole time, your cheeks burning as you never were able to get used to your husband’s forward assertion on sensuality.

Your breath caught and eyes widened when his tongue slid over the length of your fingers before slipping in his mouth and sucking on them until they were free of any residue stickiness. You couldn’t help the rapid beat of your heart, lips parting as his thumb tapped in rhythm to your pulse point before he let go of your fingers with a loud ‘plop!’ and a satisfied hum rumbling out of him as you could only gaze dumbfounded at the saliva coating your fingers. After a few moments you cleared your throat and swallowed, eyeing him warily as you knew his stomach probably wouldn’t last long and he’d be hacking it up with loud complaining.

And on cue, you watched fascinated as the mouth on his stomach frowned.

Oh, here it comes. It never lasted long in his system.

You sighed as he spat it out, licking his lips and scowling at the ground, “You’re right, tastes like shit.”

“Would you like me to say something to the servants?” you asked, mentally cheering with a soft smile on your face when he fell into step with you to walk along the gardens. It was never hard to get what you wanted out of him.

“It’s not poor gardening skills, it’s you.” You opened your mouth, ready to backtalk at the insult, yet he silenced you with a hand raised before one of his fingers traced along your cheek, “Weren’t you waddling in and practically whining for some of my food?”

How could you forget, a week ago you’d been lured out of your bed chamber by the most mouthwatering smell and your baby kicking incessantly once your stomach growled. You had stumbled upon Sukuna and Uruame, the latter making Sukuna’s dinner and the dinner something you never were to partake in since his appetite did not quell your hunger. However, when you found yourself salivating with your stomach rumbling and your baby kicking, it was a jarring experience to come to realize you were indulging in cannibalism and liked it. Liked it so much your child never rolled in a fit that night and Sukuna had been extra attentive to you afterwards with his praising.

An answer was on your tongue, though you chose to neglect saying anything when your taste buds twitched at the thought of that dinner and instead enjoyed your walk in peace. Your husband only snorted, a slight laugh leaving him at your pout before he returned his limbs to himself and rolled his gaze forwards on the path you’d been on. Times with him were normally relaxing as he was actually rather lazy when he had nothing to do, his affections ranging from just enjoying your presence in silence to twirling your hair around his finger whenever you were close enough. You never minded, glad to spend time with him though it was equally as nice whenever he seemed get even clingier once finding out you were pregnant.

Even his soft, lingering touches moments ago set your heart ablaze, and you wondered if he felt the same whenever you ran your fingers through his hair whenever he felt like resting his head in your lap.

Minutes into your relaxing walk you felt it, an agonizing cramp pulsing in your back and the soles of your feet screaming in protest at being mobile for too long. Of course, you get some time to do something with him and your body halts that and screams at you to stop. You didn’t want to say anything, not wanting to bother him nor ruin the peaceful moment you were so grateful to have. Although the pain in your body had other plans, cramping upwards and throbbing whenever you tried to take another step so much you immediately had to double over with one hand resting on your stomach.

You stopped, the other hand moving to hold your aching back, and you were vaguely surprised he stopped at the same time. A wince and awkward bouts of silence later, you groaned and straightened back up, “I’m sorry, I think it gets worse every day.”

Sukuna remained silent and still, before a rumbling from his chest prickled the hair on the nape of your neck. “Hm, almost like you should’ve listened to me.” He was back in that disappointed husband stance, and you knew if you were to look into his face you’d see the smug grin at your misfortune. Gritting your teeth you didn’t give him the satisfaction, watching glumly as he sighed rather loudly and moved away from your side to continue walking in the direction of this palace.

You reaped what you sowed you supposed, having to walk back alone after being told not to be out of the palace when he wasn’t there. And your body complaints for moving about too much agreed, a quiet moan of frustration leaving you as you closed your eyes and counted to ten to calm your nerves, reopening them when the pain muted itself into a dull ache for the time. However, you completely clammed up at the sight of your husband bent down in front of you, the black of his haori draped over his shoulders shielding your view of his sculpted back and his face turned forward giving you no indication of what he was doing.

Yet, he did seem like he said something, though you were too befuddled to even understand what he had said.  

“What –”

“Are you deaf?” he interrupted, turning his head slightly and motioning with his head from you to climb onto him, “I said get on, before I change my mind.”

He wanted you… to ride… on his back? Never once did he ever engage in something like that with you (besides carrying you in his arms, but that had been the night of your wedding and he’d practically tossed you on your beds afterwards), though you weren’t about to pass by the chance for him to carry you. Though you weren’t too sure how to climb on his back and hold on so heavily pregnant, Sukuna didn’t have four arms for nothing you supposed.

Not wanting him to change his mind and keep him waiting, you clambered onto him to best you could dressed in several layers with your legs kicking free to slip underneath the lower set of his arms. You held back a squeal when your baby kicked at all the movements, arms flying forward to nearly constrict Sukuna’s airway off as he in return grunted and stood to his full height while beginning to move forward in a slow pace. You were grateful he was taking it slow, still trying to get comfortable and trying not to think about how bad it would hurt to fall off his back from his enormous height…

“Stop fucking squirming…” he grunted again, readjusting you with his arms as your body reclined higher up on his back and he continued walking, “Acting like I’ve never touched you before.”

“It’s not that. He – “ you cut yourself off, you hadn’t necessarily told him that you believed your baby was a boy, and you didn’t want to hear any of his teasing, “the baby kicks and squirms whenever I move too much.” Or whenever he hears your voice, you groused, further proving your point when he kicked at you again whenever Sukuna spoke once more. You wondered if he could feel the kick on his back.

“Damn.” A pause of silence and Sukuna was jostling you on his back, “How much does that prick weigh? Or is that all you?”

Your hand itched to slap the back of his neck, though you held yourself together and only offered him a scoff while making yourself comfortable, “He takes after his father.”

“And he wiggles like a worm, just like his mother.”

You had half a mind to say something about him referring to your child as a boy, your cheeks hot when you rested your chin atop his shoulder and eyes growing lidded with sleep while he inadvertently rocked you with his steps. You bit the inside of your cheek in a girlish thought that your husband was walking slower on purpose, rolling your ankles to stop you from kicking your feet at the idea he wanted to spend more time with you alone. Then again, he was doing all of it for you when he could’ve just left you alone, or not come out to find you at all.

Maybe some days he missed you as much as you missed him.

In a bold declaration, you pushed yourself forward until your nose was skimming Sukuna’s cheek, a chaste kissed you placed there seconds later whenever he didn’t say or do anything to push you away, “Thank you, my Lord.”

Sukuna hummed low in his throat, a deep rumbling that vibrated against your arms and soothed your aching ribs, “Don’t get used to it. I just didn’t want to wait around for your slow ass to waddle back in.” Though he sounded rather harsh, you knew he was just doing roundabout affection in his own way.

Your head lolled against his, the leaves on the trees above swaying you into a warm midday nap the longer you watched them through your eyelashes, “Take me to bed?”

You didn’t necessarily hear his response, though you weren’t dreaming it when his fingers tightened the hold he had on your thighs, the warmth he emitted doing wonders for the pains in your body as he secured you further into his back to ensure you didn’t fall off. You couldn’t help the smile, your cheek smushed into his shoulder as you took one final look at the sunlight path before you both and closed your eyes as exhaustion took its hold over.

With a last conscious thought, you reminded yourself to thank Mai later for allowing you a nice stroll in the garden – especially when you were doing it with your family.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

You should be using an RSS reader

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

No matter how hard we all wish it were otherwise, the sad fact is that there aren't really individual solutions to systemic problems. For example: your personal diligence in recycling will have no meaningful impact on the climate emergency.

I get it. People write to me all the time, they say, "What can I change about my life to fight enshittification, or, at the very least, to reduce the amount of enshittification that I, personally, experience?"

It's frustrating, but my general answer is, "Join a movement. Get involved with a union, with EFF, with the FSF. Tell your Congressional candidate to defend Lina Khan from billionaire Dem donors who want her fired. Do something systemic."

There's very little you can do as a consumer. You're not going to shop your way out of monopoly capitalism. Now that Amazon has destroyed most of the brick-and-mortar and digital stores out of business, boycotting Amazon often just means doing without. The collective action problem of leaving Twitter or Facebook is so insurmountable that you end up stuck there, with a bunch of people you love and rely on, who all love each other, all hate the platform, but can't agree on a day and time to leave or a destination to leave for and so end up stuck there.

I've been experiencing some challenging stuff in my personal life lately and yesterday, I just found myself unable to deal with my usual podcast fare so I tuned into the videos from the very last XOXO, in search of uplifting fare:

https://www.youtube.com/@xoxofest

I found it. Talks by Dan Olson, Cabel Sasser, Ed Yong and many others, especially Molly White:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTaeVVAvk-c

Molly's talk was so, so good, but when I got to her call to action, I found myself pulling a bit of a face:

But the platforms do not exist without the people, and there are a lot more of us than there are of them. The platforms have installed themselves in a position of power, but they are also vulnerable…

Are the platforms really that vulnerable? The collective action problem is so hard, the switching costs are so high – maybe the fact that "there's a lot more of us than there are of them" is a bug, not a feature. The more of us there are, the thornier our collective action problem and the higher the switching costs, after all.

And then I had a realization: the conduit through which I experience Molly's excellent work is totally enshittification-proof, and the more I use it, the easier it is for everyone to be less enshittified.

This conduit is anti-lock-in, it works for nearly the whole internet. It is surveillance-resistant, far more accessible than the web or any mobile app interface. It is my secret super-power.

It's RSS.

RSS (one of those ancient internet acronyms with multiple definitions, including, but not limited to, "Really Simple Syndication") is an invisible, automatic way for internet-connected systems to public "feeds." For example, rather than reloading the Wired homepage every day and trying to figure out which stories are new (their layout makes this very hard to do!), you can just sign up for Wired's RSS feed, and use an RSS reader to monitor the site and preview new stories the moment they're published. Wired pushes about 600 words from each article into that feed, stripped of the usual stuff that makes Wired nearly impossible to read: no 20-second delay subscription pop-up, text in a font and size of your choosing. You can follow Wired's feed without any cookies, and Wired gets no information about which of its stories you read. Wired doesn't even get to know that you're monitoring its feed.

I don't mean to pick on Wired here. This goes for every news source I follow – from CNN to the New York Times. But RSS isn't just good for the news! It's good for everything. Your friends' blogs? Every blogging platform emits an RSS feed by default. You can follow every one of them in your reader.

Not just blogs. Do you follow a bunch of substackers or other newsletters? They've all got RSS feeds. You can read those newsletters without ever registering in the analytics of the platforms that host them. The text shows up in black and white (not the sadistic, 8-point, 80% grey-on-white type these things all default to). It is always delivered, without any risk of your email provider misclassifying an update as spam:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/10/dead-letters/

Did you know that, by default, your email sends information to mailing list platforms about your reading activity? The platform gets to know if you opened the message, and often how far along you've read in it. On top of that, they get all the private information your browser or app leaks about you, including your location. This is unbelievably gross, and you get to bypass all of it, just by reading in RSS.

Are your friends too pithy for a newsletter, preferring to quip on social media? Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to get an RSS feed from Insta/FB/Twitter, but all those new ones that have popped up? They all have feeds. You can follow any Mastodon account (which means you can follow any Threads account) via RSS. Same for Bluesky. That also goes for older platforms, like Tumblr and Medium. There's RSS for Hacker News, and there's a sub-feed for the comments on every story. You can get RSS feeds for the Fedex, UPS and USPS parcels you're awaiting, too.

Your local politician's website probably has an RSS feed. Ditto your state and national reps. There's an RSS feed for each federal agency (the FCC has a great blog!).

Your RSS reader lets you put all these feeds into folders if you want. You can even create automatic folders, based on keywords, or even things like "infrequently updated sites" (I follow a bunch of people via RSS who only update a couple times per year – cough, Danny O'Brien, cough – and never miss a post).

Your RSS reader doesn't (necessarily) have an algorithm. By default, you'll get everything as it appears, in reverse-chronological order.

Does that remind you of anything? Right: this is how social media used to work, before it was enshittified. You can single-handedly disenshittify your experience of virtually the entire web, just by switching to RSS, traveling back in time to the days when Facebook and Twitter were more interested in showing you the things you asked to see, rather than the ads and boosted content someone else would pay to cram into your eyeballs.

Now, you sign up to so many feeds that you're feeling overwhelmed and you want an algorithm to prioritize posts – or recommend content. Lots of RSS readers have some kind of algorithm and recommendation system (I use News, which offers both, though I don't use them – I like the glorious higgeldy-piggeldy of the undifferentiated firehose feed).

But you control the algorithm, you control the recommendations. And if a new RSS reader pops up with an algorithm you're dying to try, you can export all the feeds you follow with a single click, which will generate an OPML file. Then, with one click, you can import that OPML file into any other RSS reader in existence and all your feeds will be seamlessly migrated there. You can delete your old account, or you can even use different readers for different purposes.

You can access RSS in a browser or in an app on your phone (most RSS readers have an app), and they'll sync up, so a story you mark to read later on your phone will be waiting for you the next time you load up your reader in a browser tab, and you won't see the same stories twice (unless you want to, in which case you can mark them as unread).

RSS basically works like social media should work. Using RSS is a chance to visit a utopian future in which the platforms have no power, and all power is vested in publishers, who get to decide what to publish, and in readers, who have total control over what they read and how, without leaking any personal information through the simple act of reading.

And here's the best part: every time you use RSS, you bring that world closer into being! The collective action problem that the publishers and friends and politicians and businesses you care about is caused by the fact that everyone they want to reach is on a platform, so if they leave the platform, they'll lose that community. But the more people who use RSS to follow them, the less they'll depend on the platform.

Unlike those largely useless, performative boycotts of widely used platforms, switching to RSS doesn't require that you give anything up. Not only does switching to RSS let you continue to follow all the newsletters, webpages and social media accounts you're following now, it makes doing so better: more private, more accessible, and less enshittified.

Switching to RSS lets you experience just the good parts of the enshitternet, but that experience is delivered in manner that the new, good internet we're all dying for.

My own newsletter is delivered in fulltext via RSS. If you're reading this as a Mastodon or Twitter thread, on Tumblr or on Medium, or via email, you can get it by RSS instead:

https://pluralistic.net/feed/

Don't worry about which RSS reader you start with. It literally doesn't matter. Remember, you can switch readers with two clicks and take all the feeds you've subscribed to with you! If you want a recommendation, I have nothing but praise for Newsblur, which I've been paying $2/month for since 2011 (!):

https://newsblur.com/

Subscribing to feeds is super-easy, too: the links for RSS feeds are invisibly embedded in web-pages. Just paste the URL of a web-page into your RSS reader's "add feed" box and it'll automagically figure out where the feed lives and add it to your subscriptions.

It's still true that the new, good internet will require a movement to overcome the collective action problems and the legal barriers to disenshittifying things. Almost nothing you do as an individual is going to make a difference.

But using RSS will! Using RSS to follow the stuff that matters to you will have an immediate, profoundly beneficial impact on your own digital life – and it will appreciably, irreversibly nudge the whole internet towards a better state.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and 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/2024/10/16/keep-it-really-simple-stupid/#read-receipts-are-you-kidding-me-seriously-fuck-that-noise

[alltimefail]

ATTENTION DEAD BOYS FANDOM:

We have some unfinished business and a case to solve: The Case of the Curious Cancellation! 💀🔎

Here are the ways you can help (be sure to read until the end).

I'm not sure how many people here on Tumblr are also over on DBDA Twitter, but there have been MANY developments in the last 24 hours and it's important for all of us to be on the same page if we're going to have a chance in hell of saving our show.

First and foremost, we need to get Dead Boy Detectives in the Netflix Top 10 again. This means running it as much as possible. Read about that below:

(SOURCE x)

As the graphic says, the goal is to have it running on a loop constantly, as much as you physically can. Be sure to have some level of volume on or else it won't count. If you're on Twitter be sure to post your rewatch (photos of your tv, commentary, etc.) with the hashtag #ReviveDeadBoyDetectives !!!

Also, there's no better time to do this: the Tweet below brings up a great point! 👍

(SOURCE x)

Second, and easiest thing: KEEP TALKING ABOUT THE SHOW AND CREATING CONTENT ABOUT THE SHOW. Analysis, fics, fanart, shitposts, gif sets, memes, tik tok videos, so on - do not stop! Reblog other people's stuff and talk about it! Give fics kudos, comment, make fic rec lists and post that WIP or sketch! The most important thing to remember is to TAG YOUR POSTS AND CREATIONS. We need to trend!!! On Tumblr make sure you continue tagging your posts as you probably already are (look at my tags on this post if you need help, and remember not to use "DBD" on here because that is another fandom! We use DBDA here). On Twitter you want to use the hashtag #ReviveDeadBoyDetectives for the rewatch and #SaveDeadBoyDetectives is a popular one, too. You can also use #DeadBoyDetectives. Hell, I usually use all three if I can! Hashtag every post you make about Dead Boys, no matter how annoying or "cringe" you may feel. Flood the fucking tag and do not stop.

Third, everyone needs to sign and keep circulating the petition. We've surpassed 5,000 signatures in a day which is fantastic, but we need more. Get everyone you know to sign it; tell them it takes no more than 15 seconds. Be annoying until they do it just to shut you up.

Fourth, request "Dead Boy Detectives Season 2" through Netflix's support website. It's a small thing but if we all do this a couple times a day it will get their attention. They really do vet these suggestions, and an influx of requests for a canceled show will raise eyebrows.

Lastly, if you decide to write Netflix (via email or a letter - their office address has been floating around) please remember to stay concise and professional. Don't curse at them, don't call names. State that you are disappointed with the cancellation of the show, maybe add an anecdote about what it meant to you, and I would even recommend attaching some articles that emphasize people's displeasure with the platform abandoning shows on a whim and Netflix's flippant attitude toward queer shows in particular. Dead Boy Detective Agency on Twitter has retweeted every article on this topic so far, you can find their page here.

You can also use graphics such as the ones below to affirm that the cancellation was unjust.

(Source 1, Source 2)

I know this feels like a lot: know your limits and take care of yourself. Whether you do every single one of these things or just a few of these things, every llittle bit helps!

Even in the worst case scenario where nothing changes, this gesture will mean so much to everyone who made this show. We owe it to the writers, cast, crew, and each other to TRY. We can all agree that this show deserves at least another season and if Netflix isn't going to do it, they need to be open to selling it to someone who will. We cannot keep allowing them to axe these queer and diverse shows with little regard for their customers and their employees, but also because it sets a harmful standard in the industry that is destroying television.

Let's crack this case and bring our agency back! I truly believe in this community!! 💜 We can do this!!

If there are any spelling errors or issues with links let me know! I did this on mobile because I want to mobilize this information as quickly as possible! I'll be adding on to this with new developments and can answer any questions you all might have. Lets save our show!

[mywritersmind]

DOOMED FOR ONE ANOTHER - LN4

summary : Forced to never forget. He loved her, she loved him. It seemed easy but the moment those words met the cool air, everything changed. They had the type of love that wasn’t in story books about romance, it was the type that was in horror stories.

listen up : crazy moody today ig. hope u like bc it’s actually interesting and deep for once. dual pov!!

word count : 2040

⋆｡‧˚⋆

The first time they met, he saw her sitting at the bar.

She was alone, in a cocktail dress with her legs crossed, sipping on a martini. There was a faux fur coat hanging over her chair. She wasn’t on her phone, or listening to music, she was just sitting with the world around her.

Lando Norris was well acquainted with the female species. He’s met pretty woman, he’s dated pretty women, he’s fucked pretty women.

She wasn’t just a pretty woman.

“I’m Lando.” She didn’t shake his hand, didn’t smile or giggle… she just nodded.

“I know who you are.” She brought the martini to her lips again and Lando felt his mouth open a bit, “Do you know who I am?”

He slipped into the seat next to her, “No. Should I?”

Then it happened, the corners of her perfectly lush lips tugged upward. “Nope.”

And thus started a beautiful friendship. Yes, I say friendship because neither of them expected to fall in love with each other. Even if everyone seemed to hope they would.

⋆༺

Her apartment was a mess like usual. I pushed open the door with two coffees in my hand, house keys, and the purse she made me bring all the way from Monaco to New York.

I managed to get to her room without stepping on any of her loose clothes, books, or instruments. She was lying on her bed, her head hanging off the side and her hands lazily strumming her guitar.

She was wearing a pink nightgown that scrunched up on her thighs, a faux fur coat, and headphones. Her head finally tilted back far enough to see me standing there, staring at her.

I used to worry about her a lot because of her reaction time and how she never realized I was staring. Yet I stopped thinking about it after it allowed me to watch her before we would hang out.

That sounds creepy, I know. But just like the first time I met her, I could get a read on her body language or emotions, I would look at her outfit and how much jewelry she would be wearing, I would just look at her for one quiet moment.

��Lan!” She screamed far too loud and stood up at lightning speed, hugging me. “My angel, you’re back!” She grabbed the coffee she knew was hers from my hands and spun around, hopping back onto her bed and sitting on her feet.

I pushed the clothes off her chair and sat on it, “Someone came up to me and asked if I was your friend today.”

I rolled my eyes and sipped my coffee, “One day, we’re going to be walking around and people will swarm around you and ask who the idiot next to you is.”

She sighed, sipping her coffee, “And I’d tell them that if they’re true fans, they’d know who my best friend is.” She leaned back on her pillows and stuffed animals.

“Right!” I let out a laugh, “You would definitely say I'm some freak following you.”

Her eyes got serious for a second, “I’d never pretend to not know you, Lando.”

I shook my head, “How’s the writing coming along?”

“If you’ve come here just to bug me about my music, then I will kick you back onto the streets.” She’s a musician.

I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t know her… but she had just put out her debut album and I had just officially become an F1 driver.

She claimed she wasn’t a fan of the sport, yet would text me non stop about ‘gossip’ she heard from her ‘credible’ sources. Her sources were F1 twitter.

She let me listen to her music, humming along to the songs without lyrics and singing without any instrument to the songs without background music.

I don’t remember when I fell in love with her. It wasn’t a specific time or place, I just sort of knew one day.

⋆༺

I always loved him in a suit.

I liked his hair and the way the curls just fit with something so neat and tailored to him. Lando looked bored, an expression I didn’t see on his face a lot when he was with me.

But that day and that banquet… it was so slow and I was so off my usual game. I had secrets and Lando could tell. I thought he was going to confront me about them when he brought me outside.

“Lan, there’s a speaker!” I whispered to him as he took my hand.

“When have you ever cared about shit like that? Come on.” His hand was cold, I remember that. I actually remember everything from that night.

We slipped out the back door and he started laughing. I didn’t know why, but I also didn’t ask a lot of questions.

The banquet was in a stuffy hall, but the back garden was beautiful and miles long. I laughed with him, hurrying down the steps as fast as I could in my heels.

He loosened his tie and undid the top button of his shirt. “I couldn’t breathe in there.” He runs a hand through his curls, tilting his head back so his Adam's apple is more pronounced and his eyes are looking to the sky.

“Wanna get out of here?” I asked because I was getting cold and could tell he needed a change of scenery.

That’s when I noticed a difference. The way he looked at me just then, it was like everything I had dreaded came true in one singular moment. “No.” He had said it quietly but I felt like he had a megaphone. “I need to talk to you.”

“Lando…” I said his full name that time because I wanted him to know that for once in my life, I was being serious. I was warning him.

“I love you.” He was breathless and I'll never forget the look on his face. It was almost as heartbreaking as the look he gave me five seconds later, when I didn’t respond.

I loved him, of course I had.

But I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready for a relationship or for him. I wasn’t ready for everything to change or for him to suddenly start kissing me instead of hugging.

I wasn’t ready to be loved.

“Please…” He was holding my hands now, “I can’t not love you. I know you love me too.” That made me feel nauseous.

How could he know?

I kept everything close to me and had never tried to kiss him, I never even joked about it!

“I can’t…” Is all I said before pulling my hands away.

His face turned sullen, his arms limp at his sides, “You don’t have to be scared.”

“I’m not!” I didn’t mean to say it as defensively as I did.

“Bullshit.” Lando never raised his voice at me, but he did then.

“You don’t get to tell me my feelings!” I stepped farther away, ignoring every instinct to get closer.

His eyes were piercing me, “Tell me you don’t then.”

I was shaking my head as he begged, “Tell me you don’t love me! Say it to my face.” I couldn’t say anything, and he knew me too well because of it. “Break my heart, then. Do it.”

“Lan…”

“Don’t ‘Lan’ me!” He stepped closer, his hands going to my arms again, “Fucking break me or never talk to me again! I can’t pretend I don’t love you and I know you can’t stay friends with me when you know that I do.”

His voice broke and my tears started. Lando Norris knew every part of me. He watched my facial expressions, my body language. He watched me get dressed and he watched me break a million guys' hearts.

He watched me loudly do what I love but that was always music, and never him.

That’s why I had to walk away. It’s why I couldn’t admit loving him. It’s why I cut all contact, It’s why I hated myself. It’s why I pretended I didn’t know him, even though he haunted everything in my life.

⋆༺

I love my friends. But I think I'd rather be anywhere but here right now.

Carlos forced me to come to his girlfriend's party. Rebecca is nice and all but as I watch Franco get surrounded by models and Charles whispering in Alexandra’s ear, I’m seriously regretting saying yes.

I’m in a suit and zoning out with champagne in my hand, leaning against the bar as the noise around me gets louder.

“Lando!” I already know it’s Carlos, glancing back to see him hurrying over to me, “Lando!”

“What?” I ask, tired and wishing I was more drunk.

“Rebecca has a girl for you!” my immediate instinct is to run but he slaps his hand onto my shoulder and grips it tightly, “Hey! You’ll love her! She’s a musician and very pretty!”

I groan, “Carlos, no.”

“Mate, come on! You never date and I think you’ll actually love her!” He’s right. I don’t date. I have sex, I hook up, I have benefits but no friends. “It’ll be good for you.” And for a second, I believe him.

Maybe it would be good for me. It’s been over a year since my heart was ripped apart and stomped on by a type b, adhd, singer.

“Just meet her.” He says and I hesitate before shrugging, “Yes! Oh, here they come!”

I stand up straight and sip my champagne, hoping the alcohol will hit me fast. The moment I turn, The moment Rebecca smiles and starts to speak, I can’t breathe.

“Lando this is-” I don’t need to keep listening to know. She’s right there. In front of me.

The girl who ripped my heart out is right there, wearing the same shoes she stomped on it with. I’m not prepared for this, for her. Her face tells me she feels the same way but is far more calm than I am.

When she holds out her hand for me to shake, I feel sick. I shake it, not saying anything. She looks the same… but different.

Her hair is longer and her makeup is done differently. She’s wearing barely any jewelry but I can smell her perfume and I just know it’s the same one I got for her at some corner stone in brooklyn.

“It’s really nice to meet you.” She sounds strong. She sounds like she’s lying, but maybe that’s because she is.

“I wish I could say the same about you.” No one else would be able to tell, but after years of examining her, I don’t miss the way her mouth quirks. I say it because I would never pretend to not know her, no matter how hard it was to make eye contact with her today.

I know Carlos is horrified, “Norris!”

But I don’t care.

For once, I didn’t see her coming. I didn’t get to have that moment of peace where I could revel in her.

I avoided her, mostly. We never ran in the same circle… except for now, I guess… but I saw friends of friends posting about her concerts or new music. I saw her on Dominic Fikes album and I saw her kissing his cheek two days after that.

I heard the rumors and the second that one of the guys called her pretty, I clocked out.

I never saw her in person though. I would be paranoid every time I was at a music festival or even saw someone wearing close to the same faux fur jackets she adored. But I haven’t seen her for over a year, until now.

Rebecca looks uncomfortable and Carlos looks straight up scared. I’m lucky that they get pulled away but I'm unlucky that she gets closer to me. She used to tease me the same way she’s looking at me now.

I expect her to say something profound, maybe even an apology. But then I remember who she is. That Cheshire-like smile greets her lips again as her thick lashes blink, “I’ve always loved you in a suit.”

[directdogman]

Hi, I hope you're having a decent day! I'm sorry if this is an invasive set of questions - feel free not to answer - but do you still actively like DSaF as your own creation, or is it more of a "it was fun while it lasted but i outgrew it and it's for the best to leave it behind" kind of project? Do you ever regret making the games? If you knew they would get so popular, is there anything you would have changed about them? Is there anywhere I could read more of your writing.

It fluctuates a bit. These last couple of years, I've really just been sorta nostalgic for it. I've seen a lot of people discuss those games being a source of comfort during bad times in their lives, people talking about how much the characters mean to them and it's hard not to smile when you see that.

It's a funny thing for close friends of yours to see people WITH fanmade DSaF merch out in the wild, or to watch a random youtube video and being hit with a DSaF reference outta nowhere. It happens from time to time, even today. On a few occasions, I've even had a person reference my work to me in real life and not realize who they were talking to, believe it or not. It's really fun to play dumb and get someone to explain your work to you like you don't know what it is.

I certainly didn't think any of that would happen when I first made the series, or even during development. I think the normal assumption would be to look at DSaF as it exists now and assume its release was a peak for it, but believe it or not, the official discord only had 30 people in it shortly before 3 dropped! The archive listing of the series (reposted to a single page after the series ended) is now sitting at over 1.1 MILLION downloads.

People kinda assume the true heyday of something is when it's new, when it's fresh and novel. For instance, some people look back at when FNaF itself was new and see that time as its peak because it had a lot of internet cultural relevance as big new indie thing on the block. But, raw numbers don't lie. The series has been continually growing since its conception and that growth has similarly bled over to its fan projects. This explains why DSaF, despite not having a new series release in almost 6 years, seems to be inexplicably growing.

Just recently, I saw someone post footage of a scene from DSaF 2 on Twitter, which got over 16k likes. People praised its writing and largely celebrated the scene. The ironic thing about that particular scene is that I remembered being unsure if it was good or not, so I showed it off in one of the FNaF community hubs. The response was broadly lukewarm to negative. Now, it's held up as one of the best scenes in those games. That's kind of the point I'm trying to make, my thoughts on the series have certainly changed with everyone's else with years of hindsight.

Heh. I'm not sure if I've talked about this in a long time, but y'know, the very first scene I implemented in-game was actually the very first Phone Guy scene in DSaF 1, more or less exactly how it appears in-game today. This was before I'd even written the bulk of the game. I was pretty unfamiliar with visual novels as a whole, pretty unsure if something like this would be palatable to a fandom that was really just used to sit 'n' survive stuff that were far more gameplay than text. I mean, there wasn't any FNaF fangames really LIKE DSaF before that point. Closest was FNaFb, a jokey turn based RPG made in the same engine.

The engine I made the game in is also not exactly fit for VNs out of the box either, and I wasn't 100% sure the idea would actually work. But, the very first time I added the image of the prize corner, Phone Guy, the audio of that iconic cheesy stock track and booted up a test screen, I had a little moment where I said "Oh. I think I'm onto something interesting here." I kinda remembering instantly realizing in that single moment how much potential the idea had. Over 8 years later, I still remember that moment like it was yesterday.

I think lately, that's the sort of stuff I think of when I see people coming to me and asking about the series. Yes, it's really rough around the edges, yes, there's jokes that've aged poorly. But, it is a source of comfort for people and entertains tens of thousands of people each month. And that's gotta count for something, right?

[lgbtlunaverse]

heads- up: someone is taking jc-centric fics and turning them into jc-bashing wangxian fics

I don't usually like to bring twitter drama over to tumblr but since the perpetrator in this case explicitly said they do this ON TUMBLR I felt it was pertinent to do so.

Today user DyuaLan on twitter, aka @jiaoji on tumblr, publically bragged about finding chengxian, xicheng, and zhanzheng fics and changing the names to make them wangxian fics with jiang cheng bashing.

When authors (understandably) reacted to this by blocking them, they boasted about still having 15 stolen fics in their drafts on top of the ones they've already posted.

And that they do all of this stuff on tumblr anyway, not twitter

If you have written any kind of Jiang Cheng ships, or Jiang Cheng-centric fic in general, and are not a fan of your work being stolen, it's in your best interest to block them.

They also said that they block everyone they steal from. Though if you go to the blog now and are blocked, please don't panic, that might just be for fanwar reasons.

Here's proof that DyuaLan is in fact the same person as Jiaoji:

(@jiaoji and @jiaoji2 lead to the same blog, it was probably called this because they at some point lost access/moved from their previous blog @jiao-ji)

And here jiaoji is bragging on their tumblr about feeling too lazy to even rewrite someone else's work

Their ao3 is "Jiao_ji" where they have 16 works total, most of which are in portuguese, making it harder to verify which ones are stolen, as a lot of their "sources" are probably in english. (Most of the fics they have written on tumblr itself are also in english) They also have a wattpad account with the url "Dilf_ji"

As a bonus here they are 2 years ago whining about zhancheng authors blocking them because it means they can no longer steal their fics, this has been going on for a while.

And talking a bit more about stealing from chengxian and zhancheng authors:

While I haven't written any jiang cheng ships, I am a fic writer, and I know the work that goes into it. I can work on a single oneshot for months on end. So this kind of attitude, where if you hate a ship the author's work is just free for the taking, is appaling to me. Inspiration is normal, fandom is inherently transformative. Hell, ao3 has a "works inspired by" function for exactly that. But wholesale lifting someone's else's writing, only changing the ship and adding salt about a character you hate? Yeah, no. "Character bashing" fics aren't my cup of tea in the first place, but if you're going to do it, at least have the decency to write the damn things yourself.

I don't like doing callouts, so while I know that I can't really control anyone else's actions, I want to say for my own peace of mind... please just block this person. I don't wanna cause even more discourse. Remember: you don't feed trolls. I posted this because i think writers deserve to be warned when someone is maliciously stealing and editing their work, not to instigate harassment.

[likeadevils]

talk more about taylor lying to make a cleaner story! i also find it hilarious but am only aware of a few examples (love story, i wish you would). are there others that you can elaborate on?

yeah! a lot of these are going to be splitting hairs a bit, and i understand her reasoning for all of these, and also this is by far one of my favorite things about her like i love every time she does this.

speak now:

famously, taylor said originally speak now being solo-written was an accident, because she was spending so much time alone in hotels and writing at werid hours of the night. this is not true, she's said many times she lied about this and did it to prove that she was writing her own songs and not getting pity credits or whatever

(THIS IS THE MOST SUBJECTIVE AND OUTSIDER PERSPECTIVE ENTRY ON THE LIST) back to december makes it seem like taylor had much deeper feelings for taylor lautner than she did. i dont think they were ever exclusive; she wrote both enchanted and ours about other people while her and taylor were ostensibly dating. i think taylor squared just went on a couple dates and when lautner tried to make it exclusive in december, swift turned him down

the secret message to mine is 'toby', which is the name of the guy who starred in the music video. i have heard persistent rumors that mine is about a college guy she dated in early 2010, and his name might be toby, but at the very least she's trying to trick us

red:

taylor told this to the la times: “I knew I wanted to bookend the album with 'State of Grace' and 'Begin Again' because they're inspired by the same person who inspired a few songs on the record. I wanted to start and end the album with the first and last song I ever wrote about that relationship." i can't definitively say state of grace wasn't the first song she wrote about that relationship (though she has said all too well is the first song she wrote for the album), i can definitively say she wrote wanegbt four months after she wrote begin again

taylor said this about red: "When I'm writing a record, I kind of don't listen to much music [...] the only artists that I really listened to were Snow Patrol and Ed Sheeran, and that's the reason why I wanted to collaborate with those people on the record." taylor gave many updates on what she was listening to throughout writing red, most notably the arm lyrics on the speak now tour. she gave occasional shout outs to what she was listening to on twitter and instagram into the spring of 2012, and various artists have talked about her complimenting recently relased songs at the time. this is one of my favorites like this made me laugh out loud when i first read it

the secret message for everything has changed, a song she wrote in may, is "hyiannis port", implying that it is about her relationship with connnor kenedy, who she met two months after writing the song

every single time she implied ikywt was about harry in 2013. i don't think it's a complete lie, but she did start writing the song about three months before she met him. finished it after the first time they broke up though

1989:

while taylor (as far as we know) did not have a long term boyfriend in 2013, she did go on dates (funniest one is with tom odell, who wrote this song about her), and it seems like some of those dates were with the intention of finding something more permanent (hence her disappointed "Dating is awful. Love is fiction/ a myth. I’m over it all.").

this and many, many interviewers where taylor says that she got the idea to make a 80s album after losing album of the year at the grammy's (she tells a lot of different stories about that night). bonus points if she says she had “accidentally” been incorporating 80s synths before that. it seems like taylor had the idea to make an 80s pop album around may of 2013 (to many little sources for this one, check my 1989 timeline), and taylor explicitly requested ryan tedder to make 80s pop for her before the grammy's where she lost album of the year.

taylor did not move to new york until after 1989 (at least non-tv) was finished

taylor didn't move from nashville to new york. she largely moved out of nashville to LA in early 2012, and spent a good portion of 2013 split between LA and rhode island.

reputation

taylor: "'I Did Something Bad' I wrote after Arya and Sansa conspire to kill Littlefinger." that episode aired in august of 2017. we have video proof of her writing idsb in october of 2016. now, filming for that season did begin in august of 2016 and lasted for another 6 months, so she could've been receiving insider information? but in the same article she said she was avoiding spoilers and she seems to be unaware of the upcoming events in season 8. i don't know what's going on here i love it

various sessioners have reported that taylor said she wrote all the songs on reputation for reputation, not years in advance. it seems like she had some lyrics for ready for it, dress, and new years day written years in advance. this is the most nit picky entry on this list and i’m annoying myself just by writing it

lover

taylor: "I posted [the seven palm trees] the day the I finished the seventh album." taylor did not finish the album in february, she definitely added death by a thousand cuts after april 24, and likely added london boy in july, something she knew at the time of giving the interview.

this interview about the making of lover (the song): "Interviewer: [Jack] was calling that the Paul bass, is that Paul McCartney? Taylor: Yeah. [Two seconds later] Jack: It's not a true Paul bass at all."

folklore and evermore

the statement that inspired this post, that folklore was the first time taylor wrote non-autobiographical songs! not true! large swathes of debut, fearless, and speak now are about made up scenarios! best believe taylor swift, born in 1989, did not meet bobby on the boardwalk in the summer of '45!

this interview with paul mccartney, where she says there is a song on folklore about "a pioneer woman in a forbidden love affair" (ivy, a song on evermore), and when asked what books inspired her on folklore, named Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, the book that inspired tolerate it (another song on evermore).

edit cause i forgot: those joe credits on folklore are. so funny. no he did not. like i generally take taylor at something approximating her word but i'm gonna need some proof on this one. exile and betty i buy everything else is ridiculous. queen shit though

as for midnights-on, only time will tell. she also just does less interviews now so there’s less opportunities to catch her flubbing

[ilikestuff69]

Question for some Critical Role and LOVM fans.

Spoilers for Critical Role and Legends of Vox Machina you have been warned.

Do some of y’all genuinely believe Percy is permanently dead? Like I’ve seen people post on here, TikTok and Twitter saying “I can’t believe they’re doing this”, “I can’t believe they’re deviating from the source material”, “I’ve lost faith in the writers” and I’m just over here like ???

The cast and crew know that Percy is not only a fan character, but an important character. He’s literally shown up in the campaign 3 aka the campaign they are CURRENTLY running. I seriously doubt that they would just kill him off and not bring him back. It wouldn’t make sense narratively and they’d be shooting themselves in the foot doing so.

Also, we still have 3 episodes left? Like, from the way some of y’all are acting, you’d think they killed Percy off in the series finale.

ALSO also, of course they’re gonna make changes. bringing Percy back to life immediately would cheapen the moment, imo. Percy was able to show sympathy to some that wronged him in the past and they immediately hurt him again. If he was immediately brought back, the general audience would feel like death doesn’t matter and there’s no stakes in this story. Cause like it or not, they do have to write this show to appeal to both fans of the original source material and new audiences seeing this story for the first time. But I seriously doubt they would make a change this big. Percy coming back at a different time is way different from Percy isn’t coming back at all.

Also also also, I’ve seen some people say that the writers said they’re not reviving him, and don’t even know if or where they said that but if they did, yeah. They’re writers. They don’t want you to know the story before it’s been told. Why would they go “yeah he’ll come back” and spoil it for the audience? Actors and writers do this all the time. Andrew Garfield lied about not being in Spider-Man No Way Home, Kit Harington lied about Jon Snow not coming back to life. Every marvel actor lied about their character not coming back in Endgame. No writer or actor would tell you how the story is gonna go because they want you to keep watching.

Basically, I don’t think Percy is permanently dead and I fell like we should all wait a little bit before acting like the show is ruined forever. But hey, maybe I’m wrong and am putting too much faith in the cast and crew, but we will see.

[gentlebeardsbarngrill]

01/17/2024 Crew Recap

Well, today was once again a day of new and exciting things happening, and some fun progress on all fronts. Anything I missed -- as always please add. Links to all the threads are in the pictures so please visit them, I want to make sure people who actually posted them are credited :) I realize this is a lot, so if you don't wanna read it all, please at least hop to the bottom for a special message.

===Today's Impact===

Petition Status: We broke 58,000 Signatures! Great job everyone!

Our Flag Means Death Status on Television Stats -- Numbers went up a bit!

#SaveOFMD Trending #4 in Hungary, way to go friends!

Source

Wondering if your calls are working? THEY ARE! Apparently they are cataloging and categorizing calls.

Warner Bros Discovery Inc is still trending downward!

Our Flag For Palestine - Care for Gaza Fundraiser is up to $7535!

The team on this is pretty great about transparency, feel free to check out the twitter thread here

===Cast / Crew Sightings===

Chaos Dad, David Jenkins posted about the 35th Annual Glaad Media Awards Nominating Our Flag Means Death for Outstanding Comedy Series!

Con O'Neill started posting stories on IG with #SaveOFMD and also he showed up in a Screen Rant Plus interview! Our Flag Means Death Interview: Con O’Neill On Izzy & Blackbeard In Season 2

And our Pirate Queen Ruibo Qian was reposting save ofmd art on IG!

=Latest Twitter / Other Platform Insanity=

So apparently someone updated the Our Flag Means Death Wikipedia page to say one of the Production Companies was Astroglide, you cheeky little fuckers.

Source

Squishables joined the fun with Astroglide.

Astroglide Announced a Live Reaction Video to OFMD they'll be doing on Friday. Thanks to IG: _Irene_Adler for bringing this to my attention! Somehow I missed it looking at this post this morning.

===Articles===

1. Could HBO’s Beloved ‘Our Flag Means Death’ Jump To Another Ship After Cancellation?

2. Our Flag Means Death's "numbers weren't there" for renewal says MAX's boss - but it is welcome to sail to another platform

3. OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH CANCELED AT MAX, BUT IT COULD FIND LIFE ON OTHER PLATFORMS

===Ways to Help===

So I found of a new way to keep engagement up that I hadn't heard of before-- I apologize if you all already know about it and I'm repeating it! Daily Clicks to help with Engagement: Clickable Links below:

Our Flag Means Death Wikipedia Page Google Search for Our Flag Means Death Google UK Search for Our Flag Means Death Our Flag Means Death IMDB

Fundraiser for LimbPower

Looks like another fundraiser going on by our fellow OFMD Crew, right now is by For Our New Unicorn, that benefits LimbPower. This has been going on since December but has had some ramp up since the cancellation announcement. If you're looking for somewhere to donate, seems to be a good cause!

Calls / Emails / Faxes

I don't believe anything has changed in terms of calls and emails but here's the latest info in case you're just joining us, there's a lovely post over at @renewasacrew's post.

Postcards / Outside the US Fans

@renewasacrew has the following awesome post about how to send mail from outside the US: Are you outside the US and looking to send Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav a letter? 🏴‍☠️

Petition

As usual, sharing the petition with posts is super helpful, and @merryfinches has a cool guide on how to get additional email addresses if you want to help send more signatures here

Hashtag Updates from yesterday

#RenewAsACrew #SaveOFMD #TheNumbersWereThere.

================================================

❤️❤️Lastly because even if you are tired of hearing it, I'm going to keep saying it, so suck it up buttercup here comes some love ❤️❤️

================================================

Every single one of you is enough.

If you bust your ass for this campaign, YOU ARE ENOUGH.

If you signed the petition and that was it, YOU ARE ENOUGH

If you lurk and keep an eye on things, YOU ARE ENOUGH.

If you do nothing at all, and just take care of yourself, YOU ARE ENOUGH.

There is NOTHING in this world that you could do to make you not enough.

Remember that.

You are amazing-

and beautiful-

and everything you do every single day is wonderful-

and YOU are worthy of love.

You are doing a great job just being you. Keep doing that.

We are so lucky to have each and every one of you here on this planet with us.

Remember to drink some water, and take care of yourself if you can. Even if it's just a few minutes a day. You got this, and you're loved. 🥰

Love you crew. Have a good night/day, wherever you are on this little blue dot. <3

[argentinagp]

hi lourders! do you have any gif tutorials for beginners? i tried searching on your blog to not bother you but nothing showed up :(

Okay so I looked for the tutorial i had made in my other blog but it's not updated so

GIF TUTORIAL: argentinagp version - example this gif ⬇️

So for starters, of course, you get your source material: the video. What I use for F1 is: 4kdownloader for youtube videos, some instagram/twitter/tiktok downloader, I torrent dts and I screenrecord with OBS (here are my settings) for some longer youtube videos or the post sessions interviews!

Then you need to get your video in photoshop, there are some ways on doing this, but what I do now is open the video directly: [file -> open...] and then click on the video you want to gif. Once it loads it should look like this

Now you need to adjust the speed of the videos, I put it at 50% if it is not screen recorded, and if it is, I put it at 60% most of the time (other times 50% too)

After that I crop the video, I use W: 540px and any height (beware that more height, the file wheights more, and tumblr has a limit of 10mb), I usually go for 540 x 380 or 540 x 400!

after this you will have to convert the video group to smat object:

Now comes one of the most important parts: SHARPENING!!!!!!!!! What I do here is [Filter -> Sharpen -> Smart Sharpen]

Now you a window will pop up and I use the following settings for starters:

Then I duplicate that layer and in this second one I use the following settings and I change the opacity to 50%:

Then I color the gif for that I use:

CURVES: Okay so this one I use to control a little the big 3 colors and give the gif a bit more light. The thing I do for starters is click on the "D" element and click on a a part of a gif that is the most lighter and then change fron "RGB" to red, blue and green and play around w the "I" element to control the colors a bit.

EXPOSURE: here is basically shadows and highlights. I play around till im okay w how the gif looks! Exposure and gamma correction in positive numbers and offset in negative (the photo is for the names, do not pay attention to these numbers)

SELECTIVE COLOR: okay, lowkey, one of my fave tools. What I do w this always is put more black so the light parts come more alive and the dark parts dont look pixelated! Sometimes, when the skin is too red or too yellow I play around w those colors too and see if I can fix it.

HUE/SATURATION: here basically is giving life to some colors, specially the lips (inspired by @princemick). But basically you put the color you want to pop up/change/make black and play w it. Important part if u want to play w the lips is using the slider in the bottom to make only the most red/pink part of the gif to saturate, bc if u dont change that the face can also saturate!

and sometimes color balance (did not use it in these gif), this one is basically if curves and selective color did not work for me, i just play around w it till i like it

Then, final step, you export the gif [File -> Export -> Save for Web Legacy...] and my settings on the open window is the following one:

and VOILÁ! your gif is done!

[safety-pin-punk]

Punk 101: A Guide To Critical Thinking

We all know that critical thinking is important, and it's something that any punk will tell you is an essential component of advocacy and pushing for societal changes. But, what exactly is critical thinking? As defined by the dictionary, it's “the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment”. And that's a good, short definition! But it can make the act of thinking critically seem a bit hard and over complicated for some people. So lets phrase it in a way that seems more manageable:

Critical Thinking is the act of taking in information, understanding it, and forming or connecting ideas because of it

Sounds easy enough, right! So then what are the steps one has to take in order to be a critical thinker? I’m glad you asked! Here's a list in no particular order:

Learn About Things - In order to fully understand information and evidence, you need to know about the topic! Whether the issue is social justice or environmental protection, you need to have a base knowledge on the topic in order to form opinions on it. Researching topics on your own or taking classes are great ways to get informed!

Recognize Bias From The Source And Prejudices From Yourself - No source of information will ever be without bias. A good example of this is how different new networks discuss the same event. One might praise it, while another says it was bad. When trying to understand the information to form your own opinions, it's important to separate the information from the biases of the source. In general, it's good to remember that a pure fact is just the information without an opinion attached to it. On a similar note, you also need to be aware of your own bias! When you form opinions, ask yourself *why* you have that opinion. Do you have a reason? If you were to have grown up with different life experiences, do you think your opinion would be different?

Go Straight To The Original Source - A good way to try and avoid bias is to go to the original source. Maybe news network A and news network B have differing opinions on a Tumblr post. Instead of trying to navigate those conflicting opinions to find the facts about the post, you can just go straight to the post itself!

How Reliable Is The Source And The Evidence - How much should you trust the source that you got the information from? Do they have a reputation of giving factual information? Can you find the information on any other sources? Or maybe someone is yelling about something online, but they’ve failed to add a link. It might make sense to trust what a well established researcher says without a source for their information, but maybe not some random person on twitter. Even if you have a primary source for where the information came from, it’s good to be cautious of the information itself. Sometimes false information is spread around on purpose or because of misunderstandings. 

What Is Being Excluded - Because biases exist, it is always possible that the source you are getting your information from is excluding more information either by accident or on purpose. To avoid missing information about a topic, it's good to check multiple sources and see if any have information that the others didn’t. A simple example of this would be two children playing on a playground. Child A pushes Child B, who gets hurt. When asked about what happened, Child A would say that Child B got hurt, but exclude the fact that it was their fault to avoid getting in trouble. Meanwhile, Child B and any bystanders would likely provide that information. 

What Is The Other Side Of The Issue And Why Does It Exist - You don’t have to agree with other sides of an argument, but it’s very important to be able to understand what they are, who thinks that way, and why they think that way. This will help you to see other points of view and counter any points they make in a discussion with understanding rather than anger or frustration. This is also important because it can expand your own opinions and judgments on a topic. Maybe the other side has points that you have never considered before, but now thinking about them has developed your own beliefs.

Avoid Black And White Thinking - Remember that the world does not exist in a good/bad duality. Everything will have problems, and the things that have problems might even have benefits. The world and its problems exist on a grayscale. To incorporate this into your thinking, try to understand *why* someone or something is doing something, the impacts it may have on multiple different communities, who it helps, and who it hinders. It's important to understand all facets of something before you form your opinion, otherwise you may be lacking very important details.

Don’t Forget To Fact Check - Never trust just one source, no matter how reliable it is! I usually recommend finding the information from at least 3 different sources before you confirm whether it's true or not!

Be Willing To Change Your Mind - Part of being a critical thinker that is often forgotten about is remembering to keep an open mind. Because critical thinking is based on the practice of learning new information, understanding it, and then forming/linking ideas, it is an opportunity to grow and change. You may start out advocating for one thing, but then through time, experience, and thinking, end up advocating for something slightly (or majorly) different. That is more than okay, and it's a sign of growth and maturity!

Resources to help learn how to think critically:

The Foundation for Critical Thinking https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/index-of-articles/1021/

The University of Tennessee https://www.utc.edu/academic-affairs/walker-center-for-teaching-and-learning/thinkachieve/critical-thinking-resources

The Element of Thought https://theelementsofthought.org/further-exploration/links/thinking/

The Better Future Program https://www.betterfutureprogram.org/liberation-library.html

My entire masterlist can be found here!!

[ofmdrecaps]

10/29-30/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; David jenkins; Rhys Darby; Taika Waititi; Samba Schutte; Con O'Neill; Nathan Foad; David Fane/Rachel House; MCM Comic Con Coverage w/AdoptOurCrew; In Person Events: Calypso's Birthday in Pittsburgh; Fan Spotlight: Gay Pirate News Hour; NeverLeftPodcast; AMuseOfFyre: Badmintons!; Love Notes;

Hey lovelies, my dad is once again trying to come home from the hospital tomorrow, and I am learning how to help with wound care, and tube feeds, so I have been completely and utterly wiped after coming home from that while also working full time (and no sleep because my kiddo had too much candy)-- so to be honest I have been taking some time to rest and doodle because I need it for my mental health! I'm slowly catching up, things are gonna be a bit bare bones while I get back into the groove of things. Hope you're all staying healthy and safe out there!

= David Jenkins =

Just a lovely picture of David and Kinga from earlier this year that Kinga shared a couple days ago.

Source: Kinga's Instagram

Also-- David's been sharing the adorable twerking gif by @smolbus over on twitter!

Source: David Jenkins Instagram

= Rhys Darby =

Rhys is keeping up with his Daily Doodles on his Substack! The last one there is.. uhm, well very specific (I love these goofy doodles btw I hope he never stops, reminds me of the Buttons McGinty illustrations). Check out the Darby Daily Doodles on his Substack!

Source: Rhys Free Substack

There are still tickets available for Rhys's Indianapolis show on Nov 7 at Helium Comedy Club! You can still get tickets here. The St Louis - Nov 8 - Helium Comedy Club is sold out!

If you're going to the IN show-- one of Rhys Buddies is really catering to the Rhys Darby fans and trying to giveaway his red solo cups that have been touched or looked at by Rhys! I'm so glad they know just how feral everyone is for Rhys Lightning.

And a quick clip of one of Rhys's Routines from the 25th anniversary!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Helium Comedy Club Indy (@heliumcomedyind)

Source: Helium Comedy Instagram

= Gizmo & Bumbles Darby =

As you know, I can't resist cat content, especially of Gizmo and Bumbles, so here you are-- Thanks Rosie for keeping us fed!

Source: Rosie's Instagram stories.

= Taika Waititi =

Taika was out at the world series, and the Dodgers won!

Source: Taika's Instagram

= Samba Schutte (and Con) =

Reminder! Samba's Death by Cheese class is one week away! Sat Nov 9th, at 10am PST online with Be Momentus!

Also check out this very goofy video of Samba and con Re: The dish you'll be making!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Samba Schutte (@sambaschutte)

Source: Samba's Instagram

= Nathan Foad =

When Nathan's not interviewing Kristian at cons, he's out with friends!

Source: Michelle Collins Instagram

= David Fane / Rachel House =

Moana2 just broke the 2024 record for most day 1 ticketing presales for an animated feature! Congrats Rachel, David, and Taika! So excited for you!

Source: Fandango's Instagram

= Con O'Neill =

After the recent showing of 'The Men' starring Con at the Alnwick Playhouse in the UK, Con did a Q & A with Rebecca of The Northern Film Blog! Check out the article below!

== MCM Comic Con Coverage ==

Our friends over at @adoptourcrew and their correspondents were kind enough film and transcribe some of the questions Nathan asked kristian at his panel at MCM Comic Con a couple weekends back! I'm sharing a screencap + the link to their tumblr posts with the videos (tumblr only lets me share one at a time on any given post) so please head over there and check them out! Question 1: "Nathan asks Kristian about his personal style and how the way he presents himself has changed over the years."

Question 2: Regarding Kristian's first time working with Revlon

Conversation About Kristan's Life Part 1

Conversation about Kristian's life PART 2:

== In Person Events: PA ==

It's that time again! Harold's Haunt in Pittsburgh PA will be hosting another Calypso's birthday, this time on Nov 9 at 6 pm!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ringa Sunn (@ringasunn)

Source: Harold's Haunt Instagram

== Fan Spotlight ==

= Gay Pirate News Hour =

It's time for another Gay Pirate News hour! Catch it on Our Flag Means Fanfiction's Youtube at 1PM PT/ 4PM ET!

Source: Our Flag Means Fanfiction Instagram

= Never Left Podcast =

New episode of Never Left! This time talking about Flags! (Part 1!) Check it out on your favorite listening platform on their linktr.ee!

Source: Never Left Podcast Instagram

= A Muse Of Fyre =

Our crewmate @amuseoffyre is back -- this time with the Badminton's! The Nigel flicking off the camera one is legit the funniest thing I've seen all week. Love it!

Source: Amuseoffyre's Instagram

== Love Notes ==

Hey lovelies, just a quick one tonight. I feel like TheLatestKate is basically just following me around because she always has new and appropriate love notes each week. Please please please go easy on yourself right now, you're doing so much, I know we all are. Please be kind to yourself, drink some water, and take a few extra moments of rest. You deserve it (whether you did a million things today, or just survived). Take care lovelies. See you soon.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @thelatestkate

Source: The LatestKate Instagram

[palskippah]

Hmmmm

Preg!Mario but hes in his cat or tanooki suit >:3

Hi!

Anon you're the smartest of the anons ever and also thanks for giving me an excuse to feel less embarrassed of posting preg cat Mario here ajskdjak

Here's some ideas regarding the cat suit when Mario's preggy bc about the tanuki suit I've got like one:

-When Mario's with the cat suit, his body becomes cat-like (surprise :0 omg) and that means he's much more flexible, so he really likes to use the suit when he feels overwhelmed at how much he can't do now that his pregnancy's so advanced. When he's a cat he can stretch like he wants, his belly doesn't feel as cumbersome and he can even loaf for a lil' while (until it becomes uncomfortable, and he has to change positions).

>It's for those reasons that, let's say that at the last weeks of pregnancy, Mario sleeps at night with the suit on. He sleeps soundly and wakes up feeling very rested, never mind whichever weird position he was in, he feels great.

>Now this is a problem for Peach's sleeping, because since Mario's able to pull weirder positions to sleep in, she often finds herself with a very pregnant cat just sleeping on top of her and snoring the loudest he ever has. The whole night. She doesn't say much about it, she's glad that Mario is resting and sleeping well, because before they figured out the Super Bell, he couldn't move much when sleeping, since any change in position could alter his comfort. He could be laying in his side, and if he tips a bit too forward his belly starts pulling at his back and makes it ache, but if he tips too backwards, the weight of the babies makes him feel short of breath- so basically he can't do anything without feeling discomfort.

>Before Mario was pregnant, he moved everywhere too when he slept at night, but Peach could easily hold him and pin him down and whenever he moved, she just hugged him and manhandled him to her own comfort, he always slept so deeply that he didn't really notice that he was being thrown around like a doll. BUT it's much harder when the small guy is pregnant with twins, it isn't just harder to move him since he's heavier, but also, she doesn't want to cause him discomfort nor jostle the babies too much. She doesn't want to move him around this time either, and yeah, she could just scoot away from Mario, but he always unconsciously looks around for her body to get closer. So, Peach stays right in the middle of the bed, it's much better being uncomfortable there, than at a little corner where she's still going to have Mario right over her.

-About tanuki Mario, the fact that they gain some weight when they have the Super Leaf was not pulled from my heart, the source is here SJDKSJ from Super Mario Broth's twitter. Also, I think it was the racoon power-up, but honestly I don't get the difference between that one and the tanuki one hwdwh

>So, he just feels a bit less agile with the tanuki suit on, so he doesn't use it as much unless necessary- prefers the cat suit the most :y

-One morning Peach finally snaps, and pretty much yells at Mario that she can't take it any longer and she's so sleepy. Mario jumped in place from her outburst but kept listening silently while she rambled about how Mario stays almost on top of her ALL night and he wouldn't let her fall asleep and it's been so many nights already and if she goes another night without sleeping, she'll go crazy- and when she's breathing to get her air back after all that, he says almost shyly, why don't you use a Super Bell too?

>And Peach pauses to look at him and then at the ceiling in such a deep disappointment directed to herself that Mario feels bad for having to resist the urge to laugh. Why didn't I think of that-? she asks herself, raising a hand as if ready to smack her own forehead, but then she redirects the hand and points a finger at Mario, You- I think the pregnancy brain is contagious, she mutters, with a crazed look in her eyes that completely comes from not getting her usual eight hours of sleep each night. And now Mario can't resist the giggle that left him.

>From then on, each night both sleep soundly, yippie!!

-Btw I love drawing sleeping characters with drool, it's like they're having a really good sleep aksdjsaj

-BTW look at the first drawing I made of tanuki Mario last night, to figure out how it was JSKSJD the silly

-ALSO, it was Peach who gave the solution initially askjdasd

[Mario's laying on his side partially while complaining about his back, Peach comes up with the solution of the Super Bell, and then there's Cat Mario deeply asleep in the same position as before aksjdsa]

[calliesmemes]

YET ANOTHER ROUNDUP OF ASOLUTELY UNHINGED COMEDIC RELIEF

ASSORTED SENTENCE STARTERS FROM AROUND THE INTERNET, including quotes from Tumblr, Pinterest, TikTok, and X (formerly known as Twitter), for when a muse wants to be a bit silly <333

CHANGE gendered words and in-universe phrases as needed.

SPECIFY muse for multimuses.

❛ I am not merely a clown; I’m the entire damn circus! ❜

❛ I will bite you if you continue this behavior. ❜

❛ Being a dramatic ass bitch isn’t a personality trait; it’s a lifestyle! ❜

❛ Trauma? Oh … you mean, my lore? ❜

❛ why must I cite sources? is it not enough to just say ‘trust me, bro’? ❜

❛ sorry for being a perfect sweetie and a genius it will likely happen again. ❜

❛ forget about touching grass; I need to touch WATER I NEED TO GO INTO THE OCEAN I NEED TO DIVE INTO THE SEA!!! ❜

❛ I’m attracted to men with muppet energy and no i will not be explaining. ❜

❛ you want me to make friends with people? the thing that killed julius caesar? ❜

❛ what’s your birthstone? mine is rock bottom. ❜

❛ I absolutely hate that I’m not bioluminescent. Pathetic. ❜

❛ ohhhhh my god i have got to stop mourning the past or whatever. ❜

❛ you expect me to act like a normal human being? I’m wearing a turtleneck! ❜

❛ i don’t struggle with same sex attraction I’m actually very good at it. ❜

❛ unfortunately i often find out without even getting the chance to fuck around. ❜

❛ I’m bisexual which means that I’m attracted to anybody who can defeat me in physical combat. ❜

❛ all anyone needs to know about me is that i’m a dumbass and i love women. ❜

❛ sorry but philosophers aren’t impressive i came up with stuff like that when i was 12. ❜

❛ I pay my own bills; I can cuss all I want! ❜

❛ I don’t have rizz; I have sad eyes and a weird presence. ❜

❛ my demons are chasing me and they’re doing the Naruto run. ❜

❛ honey we are ALL doomed by the narrative. it's not that serious. have some fun with it. ❜

❛ dating me is like interviewing a psych ward patient. ❜

❛ being a girl with very large brown eyes comes with great responsibility. ❜

❛ i’m autistic in ways that you can’t even begin to imagine. ❜

❛ being a loser may be a phase to you but its a lifestyle for me. ❜

❛ entering a magical portal in the woods would fix me. ❜

❛ I’m lonely but not in a hot mysterious way; more like in a pathetic way. ❜

❛ life is so unserious just say womp womp and move on! ❜

❛ you’re vibing? In this economy? ❜

❛ just because I’m small doesn’t mean I can’t kick your ass. ❜

❛ my primary motivators are fear, spite, and aesthetic longing. ❜

❛ sorry about the chaos; I needed attention. ❜

❛ WHAT IS UP GIRL you look foreboding and malicious! ❜

❛ baby i can be your problematic bi wife. ❜

❛ i don’t think any of you understand how important i am to the plot. ❜

❛ what if we are both red flags? what then? ❜

❛ any dream can be a prophetic dream if you’re willing to do some really weird shit. ❜

❛ my hobbies include being right, being gay, and being a hater. ❜

❛ i have a phd in Loving The Color Pink And Also Glitter. ❜

❛ being a menace to society is a full time job and I am dedicated. ❜

❛ my life has been a bouquet of oopsie daisies. ❜

❛ i survive on spite, anxiety, and blasphemy. ❜

❛ if you’re not obsessed with me, why would I wanna be with you? ❜

❛ the hottest thing a man can be is a little afraid of me. ❜

❛ my love language is being a hater. ❜

❛ i don’t get enough credit for acting far less insane than i actually am. ❜

❛ the A in my name stands for always right. ❜

❛ Jesus is my homeboy but God has a lot to answer for and I will continue to be rebellious until he does so. ❜

❛ I’ll see a man with long hair and then remember that I’m not above temptations of the flesh. ❜

❛ i’m going to be honest with you I’m not going to be honest with you. ❜

❛ stop asking me if I’m ok I’ll literally make out with you. ❜

❛ part of my masculine charm is that I’m literally insane. ❜

❛ are you sure those are demons bro? or are they consequences from the choices you made? ❜

❛ i do not identify as a boy or a girl. i identify as a nuisance, an irritant, a fool, and a problem. ❜

❛ praying on someone’s downfall isn’t enough i need to participate in it. ❜

❛ we all need to chill. i won’t do it first but it’s something i noticed. ❜

❛ not to sound like a Victorian woman suffering from hysteria but going to the sea would fix me. ❜

❛ the silly goose convention called; they asked if you could be their keynote speaker. ❜

❛ i deserve unrestricted access to old castles and old churches i want to know all the secrets. ❜

❛ doesn’t matter if you’re cringe or based we’re all just here to suffer. ❜

❛ I’m no longer comedic relief I’m now serious panic. ❜

❛ this is getting difficult to romanticize. ❜

❛ done healing my inner child. next up is my inner teen. her highness needs a sword. ❜

❛ i am God’s silliest experiment. ❜

❛ i’m very vulnerable right now if anyone wants to take advantage of me. ❜

❛ sorry i overshared do you still think im hot? ❜

❛ I can yap for days and still maintain my air of mystery. ❜

❛ good luck sending me mixed signals; I don’t even understand normal ones. ❜

❛ not all of your life decisions have to be smart. some can be purely for cinematic value. ❜

[valenschmidt]

question cause i’m new to 911/buddie. i’ve seen people say buddie was supposed to go canon in an early season but higher ups shot it down. is there proof of that, or is it fans wishing they’d gone canon earlier? do you know?

Ok anon let's start from the beginning

There is this one twitter account (who we call Marvel account) that has been posting inside information since at least 2021. This account had legit info and would post things that ended up being canon with MONTHS in advance. We don't know who this person is or how they get this info but his source is 100% legit. This info will be useful later so we're leaving it for now

Back in s4 when the sho*ting/Will storyline was created, it was created with the purpose of establishing Buddie canon. Of course at the time we had no idea this was happening. The problem??? Fox didn't like that one bit, so they decided to shut it down. We still got that scene but after it happened we never got it mentioned again

This is the reason why I personally especulate Tim Minear decided to leave the show and go work in LoneStar full time (this is not confirmed but it would make sense since he probably had been building up buddie since at least s3)

Fast forward to 2024 Oliver confirms in a podcast inteview post 7x04 that he had been approached with the idea of Buck being bi a couple of years ago (he doesn't especify the time frame but we can guess) but then it was shut down from above (I'll leave the video below as proof)

ALSO! It was also confirmed thanks to Lou Ferrigno Jr. in an interview that the Tommy storyline (the kiss and relationship) was originally going to go to Eddie but then changed direction and went to Buck instead...

Ryan ALSO confirmed in a post S7 interview that he didn't know to whom the storyline was going to go in the very beginning (I'll post it below when I find it)

So going back to Marvel account... during pride month this year after getting mad because of certain shippers (bt) Marvel account posted this

It confirms that Eddie has always been a gay character and they tried to make that canon during 5A (the panic attacks and the whole EddieAna break up being HEAVILY repressed gay coded) and in s7 with the Tommy storyline which gave us bi Buck in the end...

SO! Putting the pieces together we come to the conclusion that Eddie was introduced as a heavy gay coded character and with the chemistry Ryan and Oliver had Tim decided for Buddie and was shut down by FOX

Now on ABC they gave us bi Buck in the first couple of episodes and intensified the repressed gay Eddie storyline

We ARE still missing gay Eddie but it's only a matter of time in my opinion until we get Gay Eddie and Buddie canon

Hope this helped Anon!!!

FOR ANY OTHER QUESTIONS YOU HAVE MY ASK IS OPEN