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rosazoldyckk · 2 years ago

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-Yandere Chrollo X Reader-

⚠️warning⚠️mentions of obsessive actions, stalking, breaking an entry.

Fandom: Hunter X Hunter. Character(s): Chrollo Lucilfer

A/N: in honour of 100 reblogs🥳🥳

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Is this love?

The overpowering feeling that drives one to the brink of insanity. The sensation of absolute euphoria prickling at the flesh. To dream of drowning in one's utter admiration, submerged in their welcoming warmth. To be all they see, the only one they trust. To be so close that you could sink your teeth into their skin, their lips beckoning your presence. Lost within the poisonous gaze of one another, the sweet breaths that slip past their lips. Love, that's what they say it is, yet could Chrollo truly call this feeling love? No, it cannot be, it's something more perhaps frightening, intriguing...

Dare it be... an obsession?

If it means Chrollo is guaranteed their endorsement, or even an ounce of their recognition, their time; would you call it that? The overpowering selfish desire to monopolize every last drop of their days as each second leaves them more hopeless than the last.Clockling each and every second you two spend apart...a bit obsessive wouldn't you agree?

Desiring to be lacerated open and stitched together, sharing both blood and skin. Lips locked with no intention of breaking from one another. Longing to sink into the endless depths of hell if it means you'll belong to him and him only. Screaming out hysterics such as "You are mine! No one can have you!" or "You belong to me now!"

But sadly Chrollo cannot.

For you still remain unaware of his everlasting love for you.

Though Chrollo did wonder, what has been stopping you two? Was it the fear of rejection? abandonment? The undeniable fear that due to Chrollo's reputation you may be...taken away from him?!

For Chrollo even imagining such a cursed thought would send him to the brink of madness. He'd tear off his own fingernails if such a thing were to happen. His blood boiling with complete rage.

You must understand that he needs you in order to live. Don't you see that he'd get down on his hands and knees and kiss the very ground you walked on? Must he rip out his heart and lay it on a bed of roses for you to acknowledge his undying emotions for you?

Oh well. As irresponsibly naive as you have been, Chrollo has waited long enough, he is growing impatient of your ignorance. If he waits even one more second he just might rip his eyes out. For months now the seemingly 'patient' man had been stalking watching you, observing every single thing about you, eliminating any distractions for you, doing all that he could to understand something what he may be feeling towards you.

Already this night was going way better than it had started. Chrollo wasn't surprised though, not when he had found his way back to you before the night was even half over. Things couldn't be going anything but great when he was standing watch on your windowsill, looking into your bedroom and watching as you slept.

Although, Chrollo's night hadn't begun with such promise.

No, on the contrary, he had started his night so far from you—much too far, in his opinion. Hunched over at the bar, Chrollo had been nursing a heavy glass of whiskey, tipsily sipping the glass as he gazed at you across the bar. Ignoring the chatter of other drunk bastards scattering around him. Chrollo guzzled the rest of his whiskey, his gaze never leaving your dancing form as you chatted happily with your friends. Chrollo wanted to memorize every inch of you—until he could pull them you from his mind whenever he needed the comfort of your presence.

You looked so impossibly adorable, what with your tranquil expression and your hypnotic voice. Chrollo couldn't help but wonder how it might feel to have you so at peace in his arms, with your steady and gentle breaths pushing against him. He wondered how it might feel to have your hands so securely wrapped in his own, with the softness of your skin soothing his.

Chrollo's fingers scrape against the table as your fingers touch the forearm of the man next to you. A charming smile on your face as you leaned in close to the strange man; as if there was some beautiful secret you had to share. Chrollo watched as your head dipped backward in laughter. Your laugh, a beautiful sound, that echoed through his mind despite the fact he couldn't hear you. But all Chrollo could do was stand at his table and watch on, his teeth clenching and grinding.

"Excuse me sir." The bartender interrupted, snapping Chrollo out of his thoughts. "Are you planning on paying for your your drinks anytime soon, the bar closes in an hour?"

"I'll pay when the hours up then," Chrollo growled as he took another sip from his glass, not wanting to be distracted from you. "Or at least when that gorgeous person leaves."

The bartender rolled his eyes as he tried looking for what he was seeing. So what if the guy wasn't going to pay? Heck, he was practically getting payed peanuts. Just don't cause a fuss 45 minutes before closing.

"What's the point of being in love with someone if you aren't going to do anything about it?"

Chrollo froze as the man walked away whistling, though not in anger as he had expected. No, the bartenders pointed question did not enrage him, although he wished that it did. Instead, all it did was drain him. Rooted to the floor, all that Chrollo could hear was those words echoing in his mind, piercing his heart with each painful repetition. When he was finally able to move again, which felt like it took hours but in truth only took about two seconds. Chrollo let go of the glass and looked back at where you were standing, only to see nobody there anymore.

After running out of the bar, Chrollo hadn't stopped to think about where he would go. He just needed to find you, to get away from the questions that had seemingly been pried out from his own heart. All he wanted was to move closer to you, he didn't care where he was moving towards. Perhaps then he should have expected—or perhaps he did expect—that when he allowed his instincts to take over, the only place he could have ended up was where you were.

And that left Chrollo outside your bedroom, his face practically pressed against your window. The moment that he had reached you, had first caught sight of you curled up under your covers, he felt his pounding heart begin to calm, felt the burning of his blood subside. You were a god/goddess to him, his salvation, his mantra, his church. The only one Chrollo could ever lay his eyes upon. Yeah, he might have a weakness for you, but he still has the ability to control himself. So long as he could take these moments, ones where all he could see was you, Chrollo knew that he could keep things under control. He just had to wait until he had gotten his fill of you and then move on. You were just a short-term craving, he told himself, one that would disappear soon enough, even if he ended up having to wait another two months or more for it to do so.

At least, that was what he had hoped.

But as Chrollo gazed at you through that fogged-up window, his hunger for you refused to lessen. No matter how long he looked or how closely he stared, that ever-present desire to melt the glass that separated you from him did not budge an inch, staying firmly front and center where Chrollo could not ignore it. His yearning for you, to feel your soft skin brush against his and to have you wrapped securely in his arms, did not weaken. No, it only grew stronger, until Chrollo was trembling at the sight of you, trembling at the effort it took to hold himself back.

*"What's the point of being in love with someone if you aren't going to do anything about it?"*

As Chrollo clenched his fists with all of the strength that holding back his most basic instincts required, that haunting question once again resounded through his ears, his mind, his heart. What was the point of holding himself back, he asked himself. It wasn't making him any stronger, Chrollo realised with a look towards his shaking hands. And it sure as hell wasn't making him any happier. Why not just give in then? Why not just let himself indulge in you then?

Before he even realized that he had come to a decision, Chrollo found himself clutching the lock on your window tightly, using one of his nen abilities to burn it until it completely melted away. Unable to take any longer now that you were so close, he pushed your window open, clambering through it with all of the silence he could muster while rushing so much. From the moment that he stepped into your room, that he was able to breathe in your scent, your presence, Chrollo felt himself be soothed. But still, it wasn't enough. He couldn't turn back now when he was so close.

"Oh god, fuck it," Chrollo sighed, climbing into bed beside you as slowly he could force himself. When you did not so much as stir, Chrollo had no choice but to wrap his arms around your waist and pull you close.

And with you finally enveloped in his arms, where he could sample the taste and touch of you as much as he wanted, and oh dear god was it glorious. He was a dangerous sinner that no recognition of the taste of heaven that you so mercifully provided.

After tonight nothing is going to be the same ever again. He will make you love him, he'll make you so obsessed with him that it will be impossible to live without him, you will need Chrollo just as much as he needed you. After all, you are the beginning and end of who he is. You are everything he could ever care for and more. He would praise every hair on your head, every breath you take, every glance you give in his direction. You fill his mind to the point that it's difficult for him to focus, seeing you in the dark when he closes his eyes. He feels himself reaching out to your shadow. He just wants you. Chrollo wants you. Chrollo needs you.

Deep down he knew he shouldn't have perused you in such a way, especially with the reputation he has made for himself, but, when you smile, even if it isn't directly towards him, he knew he had to protect something so... fragile. In his eyes you were fragile. Something so soft, so breakable, and didn't have any self-protection.

And what better way to protect you than to follow you, to hold you, to make sure you were safe. Everywhere.

#hunter x hunter x reader #hxh x reader #hxh x y/n #hunter x hunter x y/n #yandere #yandere x darling #hunter x hunter #hxh fanfic #tw obsessive behavior #yandere x reader #yandere chrollo #chrollo lucifer x reader #chrollo x y/n #chrollo x you #chrollo x reader #chrollo lucilfer x reader #chrollo lucilfer

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unclewaynemunson · 1 year ago

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Read from the beginning | Read on ao3

Eddie finally manages to let it go. Truly, he does. Whenever he and Karen Wheeler accidentally cross paths, he doesn't stare at her, follow her, or try to strike up a conversation with her; he doesn't do any of that inappropriate shit anymore. He keeps his distance, gives her no more attention than a polite nod in passing. He keeps wondering, sometimes, if she knows who he is – but he mostly manages to shove that thought to the far back of his mind, where it belongs.

When Nancy starts dating Grade A Douchebag Steve Harrington, he suppresses the hell out of any lingering Concerned Big Brother feelings and he doesn't spare the two of them a second glance whenever he walks past them in the Hawkins High hallways. And even when Barbara Holland goes missing, he doesn't fantasize about being a hero or a shoulder to cry on for this girl who has no attachment to him in any way. In another life, he'd be the one comforting her or helping her look for her best friend. But in this life, he's just some guy who has nothing to do with her business.

He does think it's odd that both of the Wheelers' best friends have gone missing within a few days of each other; but hey, what does he know? It's not his business, so he stays out of it. He stays far away from Will Byers' funeral and doesn't think about this other life, the life in which he'd help little Mike put on a suit and dry his tears. He merely lets out a relieved breath when he sees the two boys reunited about a month later, both giggling about some private joke with matching innocent smiles on their faces.

He doesn't fantasize about punching Steve Harrington in the face when the douchebag drags Nancy's name through the mud on the front of the Hawk and he doesn't reach out to her when she seems to grow smaller and paler over the course of the months that follow with still no news about Barbara. He doesn't even talk to her after the news breaks that Barbara is dead. He knows his place. He has learned to keep his distance.

Which is why he's taken by utter surprise when someone knocks on the door of the trailer one night and he's suddenly face-to-face with none other than Nancy Wheeler.

She doesn't exactly look like the little miss perfect he's come to know from the glimpses he caught of her over the years at school or in town. She looks... Well, she looks distressed, that's probably the best word for it. Her resemblance to Eddie has grown over the years, especially since she started sporting curls and her girlish features made way for something more grown-up. She looks like the loss of her best friend has forced her to mature quicker than she would've if her life was still the picture-perfect suburban dream it should've been. It suddenly strikes Eddie, when he looks into her eyes for the first time in years, how much more similar they've become exactly. They're not as different anymore as they once were. They both know more grief than most of their classmates. They're both haunted, in a way. They've both been forced to grow up when they weren't quite ready for it yet.

'Wheeler,' he says, keeping his voice as distant and careless as he can, complemented with an indifferent nod to make the whole thing as convincing as possible.

'Can I come in?' Nancy asks him.

He's got to say he's surprised. It's not an uncommon thing to have people knocking on his door at odd hours, shielded by the dark and with varying levels of desperation in their eyes while they ask Eddie for whatever it is they need to calm themselves down from whatever demons they've got going on. But it's not exactly something he was expecting from Nancy Wheeler, even though he supposes she has plenty of reasons to need some help calming herself down after the loss she suffered last year.

He knows he should keep his distance. He remembers the promise he made himself, for his own good, more than a year and a half ago. But the look in Nancy's eyes is making his heart weak.

'Sure,' he says before he can stop himself. With a bow he opens the door further and steps aside to let her in.

She looks a little lost, standing in the middle of the trailer with her perfectly styled hair and expensive-looking clothes.

'Whaddaya want?' he asks when she says nothing. 'Just some weed? I'm guessing something not too strong, you don't strike me like a particularly experienced person – do you even know how to roll? I can do it for you, but I'll have to ask for a fee of –'

'I'm not here to buy anything,' Nancy interrupts him. 'I – I just need to talk with you.'

'Talk with me?' he repeats, confused. ''Bout what?'

'About my mom.'

The implications of that simple confession hang heavy in the air between them. It's quiet for an endless amount of seconds, the two of them merely caught in each other's equally wide-eyed gazes.

'You knew, didn't you?' Nancy asks finally. 'That's why you were, like, stalking me back in my freshman year.'

He still doesn't know what to say; the only thing he can do is nod slowly.

'Can we talk?' she asks.

He sinks down on the ratty old couch with the faded cushions, which Nancy seems to take as an invitation for her to take Uncle Wayne's worn-down but insanely comfortable armchair.

Never in a million years would he have expected things to play out this way. Oh sure, he's imagined it, Nancy sitting across from him in the exact same chair she's sitting now; he's imagined it countless times. But he never actually thought it would happen. And certainly not like this.

For fuck's sake, just when he managed to let it go, it all comes crashing back... He doesn't know what to think, doesn't even know what to feel right now.

'Did she tell you?' he blurts out.

A humorless laugh escapes from Nancy's mouth.

'God, no,' she says. 'I think she's planning to take it to the grave with her. I snooped around in her stuff.' She doesn't seem too ashamed about it. 'I met this P.I. a few months ago, when I was trying to find Barbara. He said some weird things, about my mom. That she was hiding shit, keeping secrets. Johnathan kept telling me to let it go, but I couldn't, so I started digging and...' She sighs. 'I never expected this. But I just – I needed to meet you. To talk with you.'

She seems to hesitate for a moment, biting her lip. 'I'm so sorry she did that to you,' she finally says.

Eddie wants to tell her a million things: that it's not her fault, that she has nothing to say sorry for, that he's beyond glad she showed up at the trailer... But he feels pressure building behind his eyes and finds himself stunned, only able to blink rapidly in order to keep his tears from falling.

He tries to hide himself behind his hair and his hands, but there's no use; Nancy is smart, he won't be able to hide anything from her...

And suddenly she's right next to him on the couch, wrapping her thin arms around him and nudging him until he's leaning against her and his head is on her shoulder.

'It's okay, I'm here,' she murmurs, putting a hand in his hair.

And it's all so goddamn ridiculous. He can't count the times he imagined himself being the big brother this girl never had. All the times he dreamed about catching her when she'd fall, being a shoulder to cry on whenever she suffered loss or grief or pain in any way... Not once had he thought about a reunion where he would be the one breaking down in her arms like a fucking child.

But when he looks up, trying to get his breathing under control again, her face shows him a reflection of what he himself must look like: Nancy's lip is wobbling, her eyes are wet and traces of tears are visible on her cheeks.

It takes his breath away in a whole new way: he doesn't think he's ever cried with someone before. Sure, Wayne was never above comforting him when he was younger. But he's nineteen now, an adult who no longer lets his uncle see him when he cries. And no matter how close he is to Jeff, Freak and Gareth, he has never let any of them witness his tears.

'I'm really glad I found out,' Nancy says, her voice unsteady but sincere. 'You must've felt so lonely.'

Eddie can't help but return her tentative smile.

'Are you gonna confront your mom?' he asks.

Nancy sighs. 'I don't know,' she quietly confesses. 'I honestly don't think I can even look at her right now. I just – I needed to get away from there. I think I need some time to process all of it.'

Eddie almost bursts out into unbelieving laughter with what he's about to propose.

'Wanna make this a sleepover, then?' He makes a broad arm gesture towards their surroundings. 'I mean, we don't exactly have much here, but my uncle's at work all night and I think I got enough room in my bed for two. If you want to.'

Nancy gladly takes his offer, borrows one of Eddie's old shirts that don't fit him anymore, and crawls under the covers beside him. It all feels more than a little bit surreal; like Eddie will wake up the next day to a cold and empty bed, and the sisterly love he's been yearning for will turn out to have been nothing but a dream all along, slipping through his fingers yet another time.

But, surreal or not, they keep talking until well into the night. They're lying in mirroring fetal positions, facing each other from their own pillow. They let words rapidly stream out of their mouths as they desperately try to catch up on seventeen years of not being together before the sun comes up, in a race against the clock. Maybe Nancy feels the utter outlandishness of this whole situation as well, making it feel like they'll only ever get this night, instead of a whole lifetime to properly get to know each other. As if everything they tell each other will be gone by the time they'll wake up the next day, and they have to cram as many words into it as possible.

Finally, Eddie can stop imagining what it would've been like to grow up in the big house on Maple Street. Nancy tells him all about her parents' loveless marriage, her annoying little brother and spoiled little sister; about what it's like to eat in the spotless kitchen and play in the neatly maintained garden. About how she feels like that picture-perfect life has its fingers wrapped around her throat and has been slowly choking her for years.

She tells him about Barb: about how she's been feeling as if she's walking around with a gaping, throbbing wound in her chest ever since she lost her. About the guilt that's still consuming her more than a year later. About how she wishes every single day that she had done things differently on the night Barb disappeared.

She also tells him about her mother: about how she resents her sometimes, for settling for a marriage devoid of love and willingly inhabiting the cage of being a housewife. About how much she looks down on her for caring too much about things like tablecloths or apple pies or smudges on freshly cleaned windows – and about how much she loves her despite it all, for knowing how to listen when Nancy needs her to, and for encouraging Nancy to become something unlike herself. She confesses to him how fiercely she hates her right now, for abandoning a baby and keeping that from her family. She tells Eddie how she feels like she never truly knew her.

And he tells her things, too. He tells her what it was like growing up as the son of Clyde Munson. What it was like to be a child without a mother, to have nothing but a father raging about some bitch whenever he'd ask questions about this mystery woman who brought him into this world. How he could tell that his father still loved her, despite everything, because he refused to give up her secret.

He tells her what it was like when his father got locked up for grand theft auto and arson, what it was like to come and live with Wayne. He tells her how he found out who his mother was; how he ended up in the Wheelers' yard on the night he learned the truth, and how he could never stop staring at any of the Wheelers during the all the years that followed. He tells her how he let his obsession grow big enough to make him fail his senior year. He even tells her the one thing he's never told anyone before, not even Jeff: that he feels guilty towards Uncle Wayne every single day. The supply of love he gives to Eddie is endless, and yet it will never be enough: he'll always keep standing in the shadow of this fantasy of a family.

But he doesn't only talk about his messed-up family. He also tells her about good things: about his friends, his band, and his other passion projects. When he finds himself talking a mile a minute about D&D, Nancy smiles and tells him it must be a family trait, because her little brother is equally obsessed with that game.

They talk until their throats are sore; until Nancy's eyes are falling shut every two seconds and she can't stop yawning.

He has so many things to tell her, so many things to ask her, so many lost moments to make up for. He understands all too well that they're both almost adults and that there's no possibility to turn back the clock and pretend like they're little kids again. There's no way to get back the versions of them that might play hide-and-seek on the street in front of their house, or egg each other on to see who can swing the highest in the playground. Those are the memories they'll never get to make. But they're here. Against everything he ever expected, he's having a sleepover with his little sister. They're sharing secrets while wrapped up in the same blanket. They're only properly meeting each other for the first time, but they're already connecting like they've known each other all their lives. And, against all odds, they get to build something neither of them ever thought they'd have.

#don't mind me rambling about stranger things #they're siblings your honor #the saga continues #eddie munson #nancy wheeler #karen wheeler #stranger things #fruity ficlet

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lizzybeth1986 · 8 months ago

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Reader Fatigue

Book: The Royal Romance

Rating: G

Pairing: Hana Lee x Kiara Theron

Word Count: 2, 501 words

Summary: Over a year after she has settled in with her wife in Cordonia, why does Hana not feel the same joy when she reads??

Tagging @hanaleeappreciationweek and @sazanes for HLAW Day 3: Bookworm, @choicesficwriterscreations for FoTW and LGBTQ Archive, and @choicesmaychallenge24 for the theme "Athena: Wisdom".

Three months.

Hana stirs in her bed, frowning drowsily at the abandoned book on her bedside table. The thought is small, fleeting, a tiny grain of doubt that could be swept away in the wind. Yet it persists, in the harsh, too-bright sunlight streaming in from the French windows in her bedroom, reminding her that it's mid-afternoon; the time she typically would use to enjoy a cup of tea and a light read.

Hana allows herself a small smile as the figure next to her groans and inches a little closer to her, her arms still wrapped loosely around her waist. It's usually Kiara who gets up earlier from their afternoon siestas, teasing her over wanting to read "when your eyes aren't even half-open yet, chérie!"

On weekends, Kiara would encourage her to sleep in a little more. She knew Hana would appreciate the opportunity to binge-read cover-to-cover - perhaps re-read if she really liked the material.

It's been three months now since she's been able to complete a chapter, much less a book.

Hana stretches, catlike, before blindly groping for the book she'd left abandoned on the bedside table. The Crown and the Flame. It's an abridged version, one she'd carried from her childhood home and always found herself devouring in less than two hours...yet somehow she hasn't been able to move past Dominic Hunter's account of his first encounter with a young Princess Kenna at a Beltane festival.

Hana wishes she know how - when! - it had come to this.

When she got married to Kiara last year, it was almost as if the floodgates had opened on everything. Whatever Esther had predicted in that patisserie in Paris - maybe you're fated to be a prim, girly girl adventurer who has unknown depths just waiting to be found! - seemed to be on the cusp of becoming a reality.

Back home in Shanghai, almost every morsel of literature Hana managed to devour was a guilty pleasure; she'd hidden books in secret corners, savoured words and worlds unknown underneath the comforting cocoon of a blanket, uttered half-truths to keep the more scandalous material out of her parents' hands, weaved happy endings and bright futures for favourite couples and charactes, long after she had put the books down.

Hana wonders now if half the fun, back then, was in the secrecy. If half the comfort had come from sharing space with Father and Mother, and knowing they would never truly be able to capture the joy she experienced from reading or make it their own. There was a freedom in that - and for Hana, any freedom would be a luxury to be savoured, like a bonbon from a visiting relative, savoured bite by tiny bite just so the pleasure could last a bit longer.

That shift in circumstances when she married Kiara, had been overwhelming. And perhaps the way she had just gone rogue the minute Kiara gifted her her own personal library, was to be expected.

No rules, no restrictions, no restraints on what she could or couldn't read. The cocoon of her blankets gave way to the vast expanse of her library, with its wide welcoming spaces, its winding staircases, its comforting, velvet seats that allowed her to sink into them, whenever she felt like having a reading marathon.

(Which was often).

Hana had spent so much of her childhood looking over her shoulder as she devoured her books, that the idea of just reading whatever the hell she wanted felt overwhelming. But she grabbed it. With both hands. And embraced the prospect. With all her heart. Hours and hours perusing over every possible scrap of reading material she could find - history, mythology, mystery fiction, true crime, even gothic horror (which she didn't expect to wholeheartedly love the way she does now!).

Whenever the two of them got even a sliver of free time, Kiara would come to expect that Hana would suggest sneaking into the library first.

(For a reading session? To ravish each other against the bookshelves, sending an entire pile of French Renaissance literature tumbling to the floor? Both possibilities held equal appeal)

Hana would even give the occasional gossip rag the once-over, though the abysmal editing and the awful typos made her grit her teeth on occasion.

It was glorious. Novels, poetry, essay collections, her favourite mythological retellings. There was nothing Hana wouldn't read; this library was her oyster. Some evenings when Kiara came home later than Hana did, she wouldn't even bother searching anywhere else in their manor - she'd just make a beeline to the library.

That was a year ago.

Wearily, Hana places a bookmark (handmade, laminated, with pressed dried flowers she had selected herself) on the very page she'd opened, letting out a soft sigh. It's almost as if - after the exhilaration of reading whenever and whatever she liked - her brain has decided it's had enough, and has shut down.

In the first two weeks of this strange predicament, Hana had tried to put it down to different things. Overwork, or the aftermath of juggling all her new roles and all the new skills she'd managed to learn. Perhaps her reading has suffered because she doesn't have the time.

But she knows in her heart that that isn't quite true. Hana isn't sure she has been as free in her life as she has been these past few months. Her calendar has been freed up considerably; she's managed to have more romantic dates with Kiara in the past month than they'd had all year. It can't be a lack of time or even general fatigue, because these days she doesn't do much else that taxes the mind.

No - she has the time. She has the resources - thanks to Kiara, far too much of the resources. And there's no question that she has the desire to keep reading. She just can't ever bring herself to finish.

As she places the book, dully, back on the bedside table, Hana feels a slender arm snaking its way around her waist, a chin nestling against her shoulder with a murmur of approval.

"Mon ange," Kiara whispers, her voice rough, grainy, deep, like freshly-ground coffee. She plants a kiss on Hana's shoulder, lacing their fingers together.

Lazily, Hana turns in Kiara's arms and moves her hands so she can lightly finger her curls, marvelling at how soft they feel in her hands. Kiara takes a long, hard look at Hana as her vision clears, probably wondering what she's hiding. Hana wishes her wife wasn't so good at guessing when something doesn't feel right.

She tries hard to school her features into something more neutral - more fitting for someone who just woke up and wasn't ruminating over something she has lost - but Kiara has never been that easy to fool.

"Everything's okay?" Kiara says, "You've been looking a bit...off for the past few weeks."

Hana looks down, pretending to busy herself with the crocheted fringes of the blanket. Could she laugh it off? Claim that her wife is probably overthinking, that she is worrying over nothing?

Because in the grand scheme of things, it is nothing. She's been doing well. She's never been happier than she is now - she has a home, a purpose, a wife she is madly in love with, passions that she's never felt more free to pursue!

She curses herself as she begins to feel that tell-tale burn in her throat. Struggling to read a book shouldn't affect her this much.

She looks up at Kiara, and almost begins to lie. But Hana knows she's not the best of liars, that most times her eyes give her away. Kiara's fingers are already moving towards the corners of her eyes, brushing the teardrops away.

Hana sniffles. "It's silly."

"Humour me," Kiara nudges her gently. "I don't care how stupid it sounds."

Hana sighs, and tells her. Midway through it all, Kiara props up two pillows against the bedstand and gets them to sit up, Hana safely ensconced in her arms. She tells Kiara everything. How much joy she'd had every time she'd picked up a book. How that joy would spring up double fold if it was about something she barely understood. How easy it was, a year ago, to speed-read the first time, then savour re-reads. How - whenever she felt a little bit naughty - she'd read a book backwards, from the last chapter to the first; giggling as she came to the beginning of the book knowing how it would end.

How...of late...she can find no fun, no joy, in turning to the next page - much less the end of a book.

"It's a stupid, stupid thing to worry about," Hana rails on, "I can just imagine my people at Krysanthe looking at me and shaking their heads and thinking 'oh, the Duchess and her first-world-problems'."

Kiara laughs gently, snuggling Hana closer to her. She passes a small handkerchief to her free hand. "That's all of us, with our people. And they're not completely wrong - of course our lives have always been far better and easier than theirs...most times through their labour. But that doesn't mean that you have to ignore things that confuse or distress you, ma moité." Her hand caresses Hana's shoulder in an attempt to give comfort. "And learning that a pastime so beloved no longer gives you the joy you always got from it...is bound to confuse you."

Hana blows her nose into the handkerchief. "I think a part of it is that...I'm beginning to wonder if I was lying to myself about loving reading books, this whole time."

She takes a deep breath, running her hands back and forth over the soft blanket for comfort. "And if I did...what else have I been lying to myself about? What else will I find I don't like, now that my parents can't dictate the way I live my life? Fashion? Poetry? Music??" Hana takes in a deep breath, almost shocked at the things she's revealing because she hardly ever allowed herself to dwell upon any of this before, much less say it out loud. "What if there's nothing that I liked that I can't put down to parental pressure? What if I keep unraveling, and peeling off, everything I thought I was and find that I'm...well...nothing?"

For one moment, Kiara's eyes seem to search her face, frowning deeply. Then her body goes slack, only her hands enfolding her in a tight, comforting hug. She sighs softly against Hana's hair. "Oh, Hana."

For several minutes, Kiara says nothing - just cradles Hana in her arms, rocking her back and forth, her hands moving in a light caress up and down her spine. When she feels Hana go calmer, she moves her hands to her face, cupping her cheeks.

"What you're facing right now...that's something almost every book lover will have gone through, sometime or other. Especially if their passion was something they had to keep a secret, and they suddenly find that they're no longer bound by any rules or restrictions."

Hana raises her eyes to Kiara's face. "Even you?"

Kiara laughs. "I'm not exactly as passionate about reading as you are, but I've seen that fatigue in Baba often. And I've faced that often with my translation work too. It's what happens when you haven't learnt yet how to regulate your passions. You do too much, you overtax your mind. And maybe this phase...maybe it's your brain and your body screaming for you to find a little bit of balance, darling."

It's now Hana's turn to frown. "What do you mean?"

Kiara's eyes dart upwards, in that way it does whenever she is pondering deeply over the best way to convey a thought. And then she suddenly smiles, almost as if she's found the perfect way to get it across. "You do love chocolate, don't you?"

Hana takes a long, hard look at Kiara's face, then bursts into delighted laughter. "Well, it's impossible to argue about or deny that!"

"What if you gave yourself unlimited access to it...no restrictions, no holds barred, allowing yourself to have as much of it as you've wanted all the time? Would it always taste the same?"

Gazing into her wife's face, Hana marvels at how perfect this analogy is. How fitting. "Of course not. I'd maybe even grow a little sick of it at some point!"

"Does that mean you'd been lying to yourself about loving it this whole time?"

Hana throws back her head and laughs, a full-throated joyful sound this time. "You could even say I'd probably get back to remembering how wonderful it tasted if I spent a little time away from it."

Grinning, Kiara bumps her forehead playfully into Hana's. "Only a bookworm would understand a metaphor that quickly. I wasn't even halfway through explaining that."

Hana slips her hands into Kiara's curls again, just the way she knows her wife likes it. She lets out a watery giggle. "That's very nice to hear."

Kiara exhales and shakes her head. "So much has changed for you, Hana. And it isn't your fault that you found freedom in a thing you loved and pushed yourself into it so much. It's natural for someone who was expected to live her entire life on someone else's terms." She holds one of Hana's hands tight within her own. "When we got married, you approached your reading the way a child would approach a shop full of bonbons for the very first time. Now you're learning the more adult way of doing it - enjoy it... but never too much all at once."

Smiling, her eyes a tiny bit watery, Hana gently cups her wife's chin. "So wise, for one so young," she teases gently.

Kiara playfully punches her arm, pursing her lips in muffled laughter. "Stop sounding like my Baba and act more like my mrati."

In higher spirits now, Hana gives Kiara a quick kiss, then makes a move to get off the bed. "All this talk of chocolate is making me hungry. What do you say I make us a mug each of my special hot chocolate, now that it's almost teatime?"

Kiara smiles, sighing in relief. These are not the words of a woman who is trying to move away, unsuccessfully, from thoughts that disturb her, or an attempt to change the subject. Just a sign that her intrusive, self-flagellation thoughts are moving in a different direction. A better direction.

She nods, eagerly. "Hayati," she says, giving her wife a saucy grin, "when have I ever said no to your hot chocolate?"

Translations:

Ma moité - French for "my other half"

Hayati - Darija/Arabic for "my life"

Mon ange - French for "my angel"

Baba, Mrati - Moroccan Darija terms for addressing one's father and wife, respectively

A/N: Post the pandemic I've been struggling a lot with my reading, and had a lot of the same questions my Hana had running in my head. I guess this fic was an attempt to make sense of that, but using Hana's post-marriage context as a springboard.

#hana lee #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale #hanaleeappreciationweek #HLAW #HLAW 2024 #HLAW Day 3 #HLAW Day 3: Bookworm #lizzybeth1986 #content: fanfic #hana lee x kiara theron #series: petals and thornes

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cookiepotofchaos · 5 months ago

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As women's football grows, for all the positives, there is also a growing volume of homophobia, misogyny, racism and other bigotries. I dreaded it, hoped it wouldn't be the case, but knew it was a painfully likely possibility.

I've seen a lot of it this week and last, seems like more than I have before, so I'm just working through some frustration and anger.

(cont. below cut)

It's not like it didn't exist at all before. We know players have been subject to awful abuse previously; a quick search will bring that up. With those who hate women's football even existing, it has never been a surprise to see those abhorrent views, but it's increasingly coming from people who call themselves fans of women's football.

The overt bigotry is horrible: condemning players to hell, accusing them of grooming younger players, and throwing out comments like "I want all the gays out of my club" or "lesbians are ruining the women's game" or "lesbians should just not be allowed in football clubs, they fall in love and cause problems", as if lesbian and other sapphic players haven't driven women's football forward for decades. Haven't been the core of women's football, probably since its inception.

Jess Carter's social media comments sections on and off the last few months have been a source of an ever growing blocklist of homophobes.

I've seen claims that the USWNT are better again because they "got rids of the gays". As if there aren't gay players on the team, out publicly and otherwise.

But there's the less obvious bigotry growing, too, which I see and have to weed out of the algorithm constantly on TikTok. Using trends to insult players or demean them, pitting players against each other and using terms and implications rooted in bigotry to do so. Then claiming it's just banter or club rivalry and that's all "part of sports".

It's the edits where a player is juxtaposed with another one, claiming one is utter shit and doesn't deserve to be thought positively of compared to another player, and how often the player being put down is a woman of colour. At least half the ones from accounts I've blocked, the player has been LJ. The comments sections of those are awful.

It's the edits with those daft vertical bar charts of the amount of Talent vs Popularity a player has, asking which players are over-popular but terrible footballers, with comments sections filled with thinly veiled misogyny or racism or homophobia. You want to know who has that little talent in football? Me. Any footballer who is better than me is automatically excluded as a response to those silly edits.

Then people on heavily algorithmically reliant social media are stunned that their messages insulting players and pushing thinly veiled bigotry are attracting outright hateful people who despise all women's sports. "Why are there so many homophobes and racists finding my edit/post/tweet? How did it end up on that side of TikTok/Twitter?". Probably because the algorithm thought what you were saying would resonate with homophobes and racists and misogynists. Or one asshole found it, agreed with what you were saying, and as soon as they responded, you were pulled into that part of the algorithm.

Might want to consider why?

I hate that this is probably going to become more and more commonplace. I want it drowned out with positivity, with love of women's sports. I'll find a way to just keep looking at the good; like I said, just working through some feelings. But I wish this wasn't happening at all.

#woso #womens football

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penny00dreadful · 2 years ago

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Return of The King - Part 4

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 AO3

Eddie closed the back door quietly behind him and sat down in one of the lawn chairs, tipping his head up and staring at the scattered passing clouds as he smoked.

He could hear muffled conversation and an awful lot of tears from the house behind him and it nearly made him want to cry himself. There was so much relief filling him up both from Steve being back and finally getting to do what he’d been planning to do to him since he first got to know him but also that the healing within the Fellowship could begin. He just hoped it didn’t damage anyone further.

He had no idea how he was going to do it. How the both of them were going to do it. How on earth were they going to tell all these extremely broken people that the reason they were broken wasn't a reason anymore. That he was back? And how were they going to explain that he was back different but not bad?

It could go so very wrong.

But maybe it would be enough comfort to them to know that Robin was talking again. Hell, not even just that she was talking again but that she was even… conscious again. That she was existing in the world again rather than around it.

He must have been ruminating in his own head for at least a half an hour vacillating in between smoking and worrying about the fallout of all this and watching the clouds and feeling that giggly excitement that comes with a new relationship and all the things they had left to do to each other and experience together when the door creaked open behind him and a pair of thin arms wound their way around his shoulders.

“You’ve been hoarding him.” Robin’s voice came soft and thick from the floods of tears she’d no doubt shared with Steve inside.

“Hoarding, Buckley?” He reached up to grasp her wrist. His heart was soaring. It was so good to hear her voice again. “I wouldn’t call it that. Though I suspect my Stevie exclusivity is coming to an end now that he has you back in his life.”

She hummed into his hair and tightened her arms around him, gently rocking the two of them back and forth as much as she could without toppling them over. “If I was gonna share him with anyone, I’m happy for it to be you.”

Eddie smiled to himself and tipped his head back onto her shoulder. “Awh, you’re gonna make me all misty eyed.”

“Join the club,” she let out a wet laugh, rubbing her eyes against his shirt, “it’s what the rest of us are doing.”

“Where is the man of the hour anyway?”

“He’s giving us space to say my ‘thank yous’ for taking care of me and everyone else for the last month or whatever.”

“Ah.”

“So like, thanks or whatever.” She whispered, her levity coming through clearly despite her humour.

“Not a problem, Buckaroo.”

She gave him one last squeeze and placed a kiss against the side of his head before disappearing back inside.

Eddie followed not long after, desperate for a shower and to finally get back into his own jeans. The pair he was wearing last night hadn’t been his favourite but they were a worthy sacrifice especially considering just how they were destroyed. How Steve's supernaturally strong hands had effortlessly gripped onto the tough denim and ripped them clean in two right below him, all the little noises he'd managed to work out of him with his tongue and his hips as he'd slowly, torturously slowly, sunk in-

He turned the shower water icy cold, he needed to keep his head clear for the next few hours ahead and he definitely wouldn’t be able to do that if the only think that was knocking around his brain was the continued idea of fucking around with Steve.

When he came back downstairs, he and Robin sat Steve down and tried to summarise everything that had happened in the last month. The complete and utter fuckery that the California crew went through, Joyce and Murray’s little vacation to the Soviet Union where, oh yeah, Hopper was alive but imprisoned, the cracks in the earth that had split the second Steve died, inadvertently saving Max from mutilation, the wide open gates that creatures would crawl through every so often, the fact that Hawkins was half abandoned, his parents…

It was a lot to take in and Steve took it all surprisingly well, almost like he’d been waiting for some catastrophic events to hit Hawkins for a few years now.

The next challenge that was presented to him was just how they were going to tell everyone. If they just sprung Steve on them out of nowhere it would be disastrous. They could all collapse into grief, they could run scared, they could attack him, believing him to be some fucked up trick of Vecna’s, there was so many things that could go wrong.

At the very least Wayne was going to be out of the house for the rest of the day so he couldn’t accidentally get caught in the crossfire.

Eddie sat at his kitchen table bouncing his leg so quickly his whole body was jiggling. Robin and Steve had helped him write out what to tell the others over the walkie to get them to arrive.

It wasn’t easy.

He needed them to know that it wasn’t a world ending Code Red but at the same time wasn’t it? Steve was back and that was a huge thing on its own but definitely didn’t warrant sending them all into a blind panic and putting them on edge, especially when the thing that was waiting for them was enough to implode everyone in the worst ways possible if handled incorrectly.

So he had to tell them it was urgent without skyrocketing everyone’s collective stress levels.

“Eds, it’ll be fine.” Steve tried to soothe him as the three of them sat waiting. He had a gentle grip on the back of Eddie’s neck, rubbing his thumb in small circles. It wasn’t working. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Eddie and Robin shared a look for a long moment while Steve glanced between them.

“Okay, I don’t love this,” he said, pointing to each of them in turn, “whatever this is.”

“D’you think you’d be able to dodge a bullet if it came down to that, Stevie?” Eddie asked from behind his hair with his head hung low.

“Nance wouldn’t shoot me.”

“Yes she would.” They answered at the same time.

“She’s gonna think you’re some Vecna trick like I did.”

Robin nodded, agreeing. “Yeah, and you can’t fuck the doubt out of her like you did with Eddie.”

Eddie lifted his head just a fraction to glare at her but she didn’t back down, just raised her eyebrow.

“That’s not what happened.”

“No?”

“No, I wouldn’t have let him fuck me if I still thought he was the spawn of Satan.”

Robin scoffed with a cheeky smirk on her face. “That’s a lie. But maybe it’ll be Hopper who’ll try to shoot you, Steve.” She blinked innocently over to him. “You could try to fuck some sense into him?”

“Robin.” Steve hissed, his whole face turning red.

“You had a thing for Hopper?” Eddie couldn’t help the shit eating grin that started to pull at his mouth, quickly joined by Robin as Steve tried to glare at the two of them with as much venom as possible.

“You never heard those words come out of my mouth.”

“No, but Robbie insinuated which is as good as a confession.”

“I hate the both of you.”

Eddie and Robin shot to their feet, cooing and crowding around Steve, squeezing him tight in between the two of them with a downight dramatic level of sarcastic comfort and affection. Steve just scowled harder but wormed his arms around the two of them squeezing back, unable to hide the upward curl at the corner of his mouth.

They only broke away from their mocking ‘you love us’ ‘you looooove uuusss’ when they both felt Steve tense under their arms.

“They’re here.”

Eddie shot to his feet, his adrenaline and anxiety coursing through his whole body. He needed to move, he needed to get it all out somehow. Fuck this was it. Everything was about to change. Again.

God, it could all go so wrong.

But it could be so good too.

It could fix everything.

“Are you hidden?”

Steve nodded. “Yeah. Only you and Robin can see me.”

“Okay good, you know them, they'll just burst in-”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than the front door was thrown open and a gaggle of teenagers spilled into his hallway. Eddie felt a short kiss be pressed to the back of his head, just a silent reminder I’m here before he took a deep breath in and tried to steady himself as best he could.

There wasn’t the usual noise and chaos that used to be so normal with the kids, there were no childish arguments or rapid fire discussions. They filed into his house quietly and without bluster, each finding a spot to sit around the dining table or lean against a kitchen cabinet looking at him expectantly, barely sending a glance in Robin’s direction who had marginally retreated back into herself. Whether it was the pressure of the situation or so many people around he didn’t know. He couldn’t really blame her or the group for their reactions.

Steve was staring around at all of them with wide eyes, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. But instead of any kind of delight or smugness or smart remark about finally getting them to quieten down, he looked heartbroken. Like he hadn’t realised just how changed everyone was.

“Well?” Nancy snapped. Short and eager to get to the point as she always was these days and Eddie could never hold it against her.

He realised he’d been watching Steve’s reaction too closely. It probably looked like he was staring off into space while they all filled in around him.

So he took a deep breath in and began.

“Okay, uh,” he started to thread his fingers through his hair, picking out individual curls and twisting them, anything to keep his hands occupied, “it’s not bad news. It’s actually good news, or it might not be good news depending on how you view it and how we had to get here, but it’s news! I’m gonna be honest, I’m having a bit of trouble trying to figure out how to tell you all because it’s gonna be really hard to swallow at first-“

“Eddie.” Dustin interrupted, his voice lacking its youthful energy and his face as grim as it had been for the last month. “Does Robin really need to be here for this?”

Robin startled at the mention of her name and seemed confused for a second. Eddie supposed it was a fair question, Robin hadn’t exactly been present in the last month and the rest had mostly gotten used to talking like she wasn’t in the room. Most of the time she wasn’t, really.

Eddie looked over at her along with Dustin who’s eyes widened at the sight of any emotion on her face apart from blank despair.

She looked up to meet Eddie’s eyes and gave a small nod. The whole room seemed to have caught the tiny movement, automatically straightening up and becoming much more engaged. Because if it was something that had the power to pull Robin out of the pit of her mind, it must be something extreme.

“Get on with it.”

“I’m trying, Nance, but this is actually very nerve wracking-”

Nancy glared at him, hard and cold. None of the warmth he’d seen in her before was present now and it hadn’t been for a while. She crossed her arms before speaking in a very stern tone of voice.

“Eddie, I don’t have time to waste with this bull-” she stopped herself short, swallowing harshly before continuing, “with this nonsense. So just-”

“It’s Steve.” He blurted out before he could stop himself, sudden and loud and impossibly catastrophic.

Silence crashed in around all of them in the wake of his statement, filled with so much tension he could feel it tingling against his skin. They were all staring at him, some with anger, some with devastation and some with just blank expressions that hurt more than anything.

The sound of a chair scraping against his tiled floor screeched loudly through the kitchen, almost too loud to bear. Dustin stood and without a backwards glance, began to walk away.

Eddie opened his mouth to call after him, his heart breaking in two but before he could say anything a voice made itself known from behind him.

“Dustin!” Steve called out to him, cracking through the air in the kitchen like a hammer against stone.

The air was sucked out of the room like they’d all entered a vacuum chamber. Dustin stopped dead and the silence that permeated around all of them felt both fragile and immovable at the same time.

The delicate click of a gun being cocked echoed around them and there was a heartbeat where nothing happened before the room erupted into chaos.

Eddie whipped around but it wasn’t Nancy that had drawn her weapon, it was Hopper. He couldn't even make the appropriate salacious jokes at Steve's expense about that because such a panic had gripped him at the room's collective response, he found himself frozen solid.

This wasn't going well.

Shit.

Shit!

Robin threw herself in between Steve and Hopper with her hands out, screaming at him to wait!

Everyone else looked a mix in between terrified and shocked. Like Vecna himself had just manifested in front of them, Max and Lucas were shouting, their heads ping ponging between Steve and Hopper, Mike and Will were shouting questions at Eddie. Joyce had pulled Will back, trying to push him behind her, Jonathan and Argyle were trying to stand defensively in front of Joyce but Jonathan also had a hand fisted in the back of Nancy’s shirt, who was pulling a pistol out of her bag, El was staring up at Steve, silent and considering, Erica oh god Erica was crying, she was just a child, Hopper was barking at the kids and Robin to stand down and Dustin…

Dustin hadn’t moved. He still had his back turned to everyone, both fists clenched so tight the colour had left his knuckles.

“Shut up!” He screamed, high pitched and cracking, somehow making himself heard over the cacophony of noise that swiftly came to a halt at the sound of his voice.

Steve had an arm around Robin’s waist, having pulled her out of the line of fire while she scrambled against his immeasurable strength to try and get back in front of the barrel of the gun but he too froze at the sound.

Dustin took a deep breath in. “Eddie. What makes you so sure?”

Eddie looked in between Steve and Dustin. What could he say? He couldn’t exactly tell everyone what had transpired in the last twelve hours, he definitely wasn’t going to mention the sex. What had originally convinced him? Would it be enough?

“He…” Eddie swallowed. Somehow he’d never felt more vulnerable than right now, every single eye in the room was on him and he had the power to make or break everything. “He laughed at me? I insulted Vecna to his face and he… he thought it was funny.”

It sounded stupid, it sounded so stupid when he said it out loud. He couldn’t even bear to look up at them all to see how that explanation landed.

After a few seconds of heavy silence, El spoke up.

“What was your insult?”

Eddie glanced at her, she had her head tilted slightly to the side and her face was calm but curious. “I, uh, I called him a lump of unseasoned bolognese.”

“A dickless lump.” Steve interjected, a small smile on his face despite the tension in the room. Like a spell had been cast through the group at the sight of that smile, the strain on them seemed to lessen. Steve probably didn’t even realise he was doing it, there was just something about him now, something about his smile brought calm to them all. Maybe he’d always been that way. Eddie couldn’t really be sure.

Dustin whirled around and stomped his way over to Steve, the rest of the group parting like the Red Sea for him.

He stared up at Steve, an angry tilt to his brow and his jaw set, like he was ready to punch him in the face if he moved wrong.

“How many puffs?”

Eddie supposed the question must have been some kind of test, he certainly didn’t know the answer to whatever the fuck had just been asked, and no one else around him seemed to know either. No one else except for Steve.

“Four.”

Dustin’s lip quivered for just a second before he gathered himself, slamming his eyes shut again and turned his face away.

“El.” He called over his shoulder.

“Dust-” Steve started, reaching out, but was cut off.

“No!” Dustin yanked his shoulder away, his voice sharp and cutting. “I can’t- St-” swallowing harshly he continued a little quieter. “I need to be sure before I can- I need to be sure.”

Steve retracted his hand slowly, letting it fall to his side where it was quickly snatched up by Robin.

“Okay.”

El took a step forward but was halted by Hopper’s hand on her shoulder.

“We don’t know if this is safe.”

“I’ve been inside Vecna’s head.” El took her fathers hand and gently lifted it away. “If Steve is an agent of Vecna he will not be as strong. This is not the most dangerous thing I have ever done.”

“And that makes this okay, does it?”

“What else would you rather do?”

Hopper scowled at her, the downward tilt of his mouth making it clear he didn’t have an answer.

“I still don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it.”

El stepped out of Hopper’s space and towards Steve, holding her hands out and waiting.

Steve nodded down at her before leaning forwards, effectively slotting his head carefully in between her hands and they both closed their eyes.

For two and half long, long minutes the room collectively held its breath, waiting in anticipation for her to draw down her verdict.

Eddie was sure as shit that he hadn’t had sex with Vecna in Steve’s body but god damn if the thought still didn’t make his skin crawl.

El’s brow furrowed and her grip tightened around Steve’s head as though she was trying to burrow her fingers into his skull. Steve grimaced as she dug in hard but held himself steady, his hand still clutched in Robin’s.

Dustin had moved to stand beside Eddie, staring wide eyed at the scene before him. Eddie had never seen him look so young, so small, so lost. He slung an arm around his shoulder and pulled him back towards his chest, holding him firm, trying to impart comfort in any way he could. Dustin sagged into him, barely holding on by a thread.

A small hand slipped into his. Erica refused to look at him but the shake of her hand and her silent tongue told him all he needed to know. For all her bravado and all her snark she was still the baby of the group and by a long shot too. While she protected herself and made herself seen with her attitude, it often made them forget that she was barely out of elementary school.

In some ways she was the biggest victim of all of this, no one else had been thrust into this apocalypse as young as Erica Sinclair.

And based on the little he had heard about how she had gotten introduced to all this, Steve was there. Steve, Robin and Dustin were the ones around trying to keep her safe against some kind of underground Russian spy operation or something. No wonder she was affected by all this.

Eddie pulled her back towards him too, his other arm around her shoulders, all three of them huddled in close together, watching and waiting.

“There’s something else there.” El muttered as her fingers relaxed, gently combing through the parts of Steve’s hair she’d messed up. “This is Steve. You are Steve. You are here. But there is something else here too.”

Steve’s face paled just a fraction. “Vecna’s not in my head.”

“No, it’s not Vecna, it’s something else. A cloud.”

“A good cloud?”

“No.”

The tension in the room ramped straight back up.

“A b- a bad cloud then?”

“No. It’s just a cloud, but pushed and tugged. Made into long legs-”

“The Mind Flayer?!” Will shrieked out in a burst of panic.

“El, is he Flayed?” Joyce asked, somehow calm but straight to the point.

“No. No it’s not like-” not like Billy. “The Flayed were Vecna. Vecna puppeteering The Mind Flayer. This little bit in his head… it’s free.”

“So he’s…” Dustin huffed, his voice cracking again. “El, please, in plain English? Is he safe? Is he Steve? Is he- is he back?”

El nodded. “He is safe, he is Steve, he is back.”

She barely had the words out of her mouth before Dustin had ripped himself away from Eddie to throw himself at Steve. Steve unwound himself from around Robin quicker than should have been possible to be able to catch Dustin in time but catch him he did.

“You- you died. You died! You told me you loved me then you just went and died on me like an asshole. How could you- please, please don’t ever do that again. Swear to me, I can’t… I can’t-” Dustin was screaming, wailing into Steve’s neck, the sound echoing loudly around the room while everyone simultaneously tried not to intrude on their moment while not being able to bear the thought of leaving Steve.

“I know, I’m so sorry, Dusty. I’m so sorry. Never again, I swear on your mother.” Steve tried for humour but even he couldn’t push past all the emotion in his voice. “Never again.” He had his own face buried into Dustin’s hair, his arms wound tight around him, unable to keep his voice from wobbling.

Once Dustin had stopped screaming and cursing and was able to take a few deep breaths, he loosened his arms slightly, allowing Steve to glance up towards the other kids.

It was all the invitation Max needed.

She threw herself against Steve and Dustin, clutching on to them for dear life. She had barely made contact before the rest of the kids were rushing forward, grabbing onto any piece of Steve or each other they could reach.

Dustin unwound an arm from around Steve’s neck, opening his body up, looking back towards Eddie and Erica.

She shot forward, being pulled right into the centre of the group hug, right up against Dustin, Steve and Robin.

Robin still had herself pressed in close, her arms around Erica and Dustin while the kids all muttered and cried and punched and breathed. They told Steve they couldn’t lose him again, they practically fell all over themselves to tell him how much they appreciated him, how important he was, the guilt at thinking him dead and having never told him how much he meant had been eating away at all of them for a solid month. They even turned to Robin and told her how happy it made them to have her back too. They’d missed their Aunt Buckley.

That started a fresh round of tears from everyone.

Movement to his side caught Eddie’s eye. Nancy was standing a little bit away, pale faced and swallowing repeatedly, trying to keep her emotions in check. She looked like she was desperate to throw herself into the fray but didn’t know if she’d be welcome, didn’t know if she was allowed.

Her eyes were shining and her mouth was tight as Eddie approached her. He took her hand in his and pulled her forward. She turned her wide gaze on him as he led her closer, scared and apprehensive but Steve raised his head and held his own hand out to her. Will and Mike almost immediately shifted to the side, pulling her into the group with them.

Steve sent a short thankful glance Eddie’s way before turning his watery attention back to that wild eclectic group of people that loved him so incredibly.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 AO3

@romanticdestruction, @darkwitchoferie, @justforthedead89, @didntwant2come, @estrellami-1, @warlordess, @goodolefashionedloverboi, @weeennussy, @studentlife-with-sassyaf-friends

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blackvelvetmuffin · 1 year ago

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I’ve been hearing much about Hazbin Hotel coming out this summer except...it didn’t. With news of WGA Strikes and the Actors Guild joining them, it would make a lot of sense for the show to be delayed.

However even that news feels extremely suspect out of these facts.

1. Hazbin Hotel season 1 finished production nearly six months ago - meaning its ready to be marketed with a trailer not far behind it except...

2. It still doesn’t have a platform to air from and...

3. Despite the completion, it had little to no marketing whatsoever which for me, is a VERY BIG red flag. With mini pics, character redesigns, and 1 sec gifs from the show to hype up the audience.

But how the hell does Vivziepop ever expect for her show to be successful on a mainstream platform if she’s only showing teasers and speaking with her little club house of fans that is a very small minority on twitter?

I understand being presumedly gagged by a company you sold your rights too out of fear of violating a contractual legal agreement but come on...

Everyone wants to deny it but I’m gonna say it.

There’s a lot of smoke from this.

It was back in 2020 that A24 bought the rights and property of Hazbin Hotel with the big fallout of the entire VA cast being replaced with those that are a part of a union and with some hoping that the show didn’t need the helping hand of ANY corporate middleman or assistance so the show would remain an indie project from start to finish.

Most projects are marketed at completion with a trailer out at least a season away from release. This level of silence and underexposure and sending just GIFs and design work is just extreme BIZARRE, even more so, from the creator herself!

We should have gotten interviews from the new VAs, a TV opening, a trailer, a soundtrack, ANY SOUND OR HUMAN INVOLVED OR ATTACHED TO A GIF with the project especially with the release date being this summer! None of what is happening with Hazbin Hotel is making sense on any realistic or creative level.

We haven’t even gotten any word of WHO IS VOICING the cast this close to scheduled release with radio silence from both A24 and BentoBoxAnimation about it, that is also a big red flag as its listed as current work but they aren’t bringing attention to it with it so dangerously close to scheduled season release.

Everyone has a right to be concerned about HH by this point but blaming the delay on the strikes seems more like a very convenient excuse and cover by this point as Vivziepop said the season is finished....or is it?

It makes me wonder if all the social media selfies with her merch is covering up a very probable fire involved that she doesn’t want anyone catching on too. The lack of VAs involved or exposed almost makes one wonder if she even managed to hire any union VAs to voice her cast in time, let alone getting voices recorded and OST made for the show. It makes one wonder she only managed to complete the animation part of the season to make room for finding VAs to cast later to finish up at the last minute.

But that would be crazy right? It would be utter batshit on a stick. No creator, let alone a professional production team, would be THIS crazy to do a reckless career and reputation killing move as to do false advertising on a half-finished product to keep the hype and traffic moving on said product and keep moving the goal post on release?

But how else do you explain the near radio silence on HH with barely any real marketing or advertising and with the series still not finding a streaming home?

Now is the time to question Vivziepop’s transparency and credibility as this is truly getting out of hand with the teasers and vagueness and excuses.

This is not about her personal life or past as I’m completely and utterly uninterested in the drama even though half of which is debatable. This is about her transparency and credibility as a creator in her field as this is not the first time she has been dubious and creative with the truth or avoiding it all together when it comes to her work.

I see so many flags that it might as well be a crime scene and it feels like a big scam. If my theory holds any water, then Vivziepop is playing an extremely dangerous game with her own fanbase.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel criticism #vivziepop criticism

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daytaker · 9 months ago

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Oh No, This is a Horror Movie Setup with Satan?

Finally, FINALLY, I am doing what I said I'd do months ago and actually writing this drabble. It's rather silly, I'm not as proud of it as I am of many of my other fics, but in my defense, that prompt was actually way harder than I anticipated.

Nine Fish

Starring: Satan & MC Genre: Silly Word Count: ~1.7k CW: mentions of blood, Satan getting angry and making threats, overall lackluster writing

“It’s only natural I would be a skilled fisherman,” Satan says with an obnoxious level of nonchalance as the two of you head back to the campsite. He carries a cooler stuffed with about ten hell salmon, nine of which he caught, and one of which somehow accidentally managed to get snagged by your own fishing line. “I’ve read up a good deal on fishing technique in preparation for this trip, and I think it paid off.”

Beel managed to talk a few of you into going camping with him. Not ‘glamping’, not backyard camping or indoor camping… actual camping. He managed to recruit you, of course, but also Lucifer, Mammon, Satan, Belphie, and Solomon. Belphie presumably came along because it was Beel making the request, Solomon probably just came to see what stupid situations you’d all end up in, Mammon came because you were coming, Satan came to get away from Lucifer, and Lucifer decided to come along at the last minute, either to make sure you all didn’t end up burning down half of Darkwood Forest or out of some instinctive need to enrage Satan.

You and Satan had been assigned fishing duty on the second morning. Unfortunately, it was almost two in the afternoon as you returned to camp. After Lucifer’s impressive haul of eight fish last night, in a display of one-upmanship truly fitting a demon of his pettiness, Satan refused to give up before catching a ninth.

“We’re back,” Satan declares as the tents come into view. He holds up the cooler proudly. “We brought ten fish, nine of which I caught myself.”

You approach the tents, and you’re met by an eerie silence. You and Satan glance at each other, then approach the tents.

“Hello?” you call, peering into the tent shared by Satan and Mammon. It’s empty.

“Hmph,” Satan snorts, annoyed. “Of course they’d leave without seeing my successful catch.”

You ignore his harumphing and go to check the other tents.

“Anyone here?” you say, peeking inside Lucifer’s tent. Nothing. The same was the case for Solomon and Asmo’s. But when you looked inside the twins’ tent…

“Satan?” You take a few steps back. “There’s blood in there.”

“Beel was probably just eating ketchup in his sleep again,” sighed Satan, but you grab his arm and point at the tent.

“It’s blood,” you insist. “Maybe someone got hurt and they all went to get help. But there’s definitely blood on the pillows.”

And when Satan checks it out for himself, he has to admit you’re right. That’s blood on Beel’s pillow… A lot of it too. He sighs irritably. “Let me text someone to ask what’s going on…”

You check your own DDD. “I don’t have any service,” you notice.

“Neither do I,” grumbles Satan, shoving his device in his pocket.

“So what do we do now?” you ask. “I guess we just sit here and wait?”

Satan hesitates, then shakes his head. “Something’s not right,” he murmurs thoughtfully, putting a hand to his chin. “Even if someone was hurt, why would the entire group of them leave? Wouldn’t they have left one or two people behind to let us know what had happened?”

“I guess,” you admit. “But what other explanation is there?”

Satan looks at the bloody pillow and crosses his arms, speaking in a voice of utter seriousness. “Murder most foul.”

“Excuse me?”

“Look at the quantity of blood. This isn’t from some superficial cut. Someone bled a lot.”

You shudder a bit, but you have to admit he has a point.

“So someone was severely injured… Not an easy task, you know, getting a demon to bleed so much. I have trouble imagining that this was unintentional. So presumably, the others have either apprehended the offender and taken him to the proper authorities, or…”

“Or…?”

“Or…there’s someone here capable of silencing even the most powerful demons in the Devildom, along with humanity’s most powerful sorcerer.”

“Why don’t we see any victims, then? We don’t even see whoever bled in here. I think you’re overreacting.” ��is what you would have said. If you were boring.

“Gasp!” …is what you actually say. Because sometimes you just need a little spice in your life. “Now that I think about it, this is kind of like a horror movie scenario… Out in the wilderness, friends go missing, no cell service…”

“Someone carved the word ‘Croatoan’ into this tree,” Satan adds.

“Also that,” you say, nodding emphatically. “Honestly, Satan, things aren’t looking so good for you. Odds are, you’re either the killer, or a victim.”

Satan glares at you. “What do you mean? I can’t be the killer. We were together all morning.”

“Then…” You shrug awkwardly and make a slashing motion across your neck with your forefinger sympathetically. “I mean… I’m the final sheep, that much is obvious.”

“What do you mean, the ‘final sheep’?”

“I’m the innocent, virginal survivor who outlives everyone,” you explain. “You know. Like a sheep, brought to the slaughter, but subverting expectations by surviving.”

“Is it really a subversion of expectations when you’re practically glittering with main character energy?” Satan snaps, and he glares at the puddle of blood in the tent. “Well, I don’t intend to die today. I’m subverting this entire text by shifting the genre.”

“Wait, what?”

Satan begins to pace up and down the treeline of the clearing, his hands folded neatly behind him as he seamlessly pivots into a detective story.

“I propose that I can solve this mystery through deductive reasoning and the scraps of evidence we’ve uncovered. Let’s consider our cast: Lucifer, Avatar of Pride and consummate asshole. Mammon, Avatar of Greed and consummate moron. Beel, eternally hungry. Belphie, presumably slept through whatever happened. And Solomon, a cryptic, mysterious sorcerer of great power. Then we have a potential third party—or sixth party, as the case would be. An unknown villain from outside the camp who enters the clearing wielding an unknown weapon or weapons, somehow overpowering all four demons as well as Solomon.”

“That sounds pretty unlikely,” you say.

“I agree. In fact, I’d say blaming this on an outside party would be ridiculous, because the true culprit is obvious.”

He pauses dramatically, an obvious cue for you to react. “It is?” you say obligingly.

“It could be…none other… than Lucifer!”

He points at Lucifer’s empty tent. You stare at him.

“How could I possibly know, you’re probably asking yourself,” Satan continues when you’ve stood in silence for a few too many seconds. “Well, consider the simple fact that Lucifer is far stronger than any of the others. None of the others could possibly have overpowered him. Next, consider motive.”

“Yeah, consider motive,” you echo. “Except he didn’t have one.”

“Patience, Watson,” chuckles Satan, folding his arms and closing his eyes with an obnoxiously smug expression. “Because Mammon and I were forced to share a tent, last night, I was made to endure the smell of his weed pen. Mammon, evidently, packed it before he realized Lucifer was going to be coming with us, and when he found it last night, he couldn’t help himself. He took a hit right in front of me.”

“...And that’s the motive?”

“Not directly. I believe Lucifer discovered the contraband, and Mammon ran.”

“He ran?”

“Mammon is the fastest demon in the Devildom. He can outrun anyone, even Lord Diavolo, which comes in very handy for him when he’s fleeing creditors or, as the case was today, Lucifer.”

“Oh no…”

“I posit that, with Lucifer already enraged at his failure to capture Mammon, Beel approached him and complained about the lack of breakfast, given the…amount of time we spent fishing.”

“We?”

“Lucifer snapped. And before he knew it, Beelzebub was bleeding out on his own pillow. Recognizing the magnitude of what he had done, Lucifer quickly apprehended Belphie and Solomon and took them to—”

“Why are you being so loud?”

You and Satan both jump and turn around to see Belphie leaning out of your tent and rubbing his eyes, yawning.

“Wh—you’re here?” Satan stammers, looking extremely agitated to have this wrench thrown into his theory.

“Uh-huh…” Belphie yawns and smiles sleepily at the two of you.

“I thought you said you checked all the tents,” Satan snaps at you.

“I mean… I only didn’t check mine. I know where I am. Belphie, why were you in there?”

“There’s too much blood in my tent, so I borrowed yours while I waited for you two to get back. Lucifer is pissed at you, by the way. You guys took so long that Beel ate some food Solomon offered him.”

“He didn’t,” you gasp. Satan purses his lips gravely.

“He did. And Beel started puking blood all over his pillow. So between that debacle and the weed pen he found in Mammon’s stuff, Lucifer called off the rest of the trip and left with Mammon, Beel, and Solomon. He left me here to explain the situation to you since I’m the only one he can trust, apparently.” Belphie’s lazy smile morphs into something of a smirk. “So you two had better start packing.”

“What? Wait, he expects us to clean up this entire camp?” Satan rages. “He leaves all the grunt work for us, and doesn’t even stick around to see that I caught more fish than he did?!”

“Satan, calm down,” you say soothingly, but he’s having none of it.

“Beel, that idiot! He knows better than to touch Solomon’s food! And Solomon! That bastard should know better than to let anyone, human or demon, eat anything he’s touched!”

“Well, they wouldn’t have been in that situation if you’d gotten back from fishing a little quicker,” Belphie counters with a yawn.

“Shut up! Just shut up!” Satan fumes, clenching his jaw. “This is all Mammon’s fault! If it wasn’t for that stupid vape pen…! I’ll kill him!” His demon form manifests, and you know it’s too late to calm him down. “No… This is all down to Lucifer… It’s always Lucifer! Why does that arrogant, self-satisfied, humorless prick—”

He continues in this vein as the two of you pack and Belphie naps in a folding chair.

You never do eat the fish.

#ask response #nyansatan #writing event #obey me #obey me satan #obey me fanfic #obey me drabble #daytaker fanfic #satan #fanfic

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strqyr · 1 year ago

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I think, Salem, is a wonderful gal yknow, she's seen the rise and fall of humanity, the good and bad, I think if all of humanity needs a villain to hate, she'll take that role. Is she bringing back the gods, to finally die, or is she ready to remove them, what good has the gods done to her and her people, all of them lived a life forsaken. I have no idea what I'm mumbling about here, but basically everyone in the rwby fandom hates Salem because she's a woman with a mixed moral compass, and thus must been seen as a bitch, she's 'evil' so she must of course have all these flaws, but in reality, remove the context and compare her to Oz, and you'll find similarities, if the genders were swapped, I think Salem would have been someone the fandom praises, for being a hot immortal man

i've been along this ride since day 1 and lemme tell ya, at this point it's mostly just funny to watch the absolute pretzels people will twist themselves into to "prove" their point, like.

salem (allegedly, can't exactly say for certain at this point of time) lying to her followers about her true goal is manipulative, but ozpin lying about salem being immortal, the actual reason he was made to reincarnate by light, and the true nature of this war (it's unwinnable y'all) isn't. he's just some guy :( he has trust issues, of course he wouldn't trust team rwby with everything right off the bat even when yang made it clear that she'd follow him as long as there were no more lies and half-truths... eh, qrow branwen? never heard of him! yeah he's made some missteps but he learns from his mistakes!!... let's just ignore how he's been running in circles for who knows how long. he's doing his best :( and he cares about people :( that makes everything he does actually okay, right? at least, you shouldn't bring his mistakes or fucked up things up or blame him! that's bashing :(

salem though. what a bitch, she should have accepted the death of the only person in her life who truly cared about her (pyrrha and penny though, they're coming back any day now, even if it's in someone else's head). it's not like watching humanity get wiped out and the utter solitude she would have lived in for thousands, hell, millions of years afterwards would have some effect on a person. no sir, she's always been mean and manipulative and evil and have you considered her father kept her locked up since she was a baby for a reason????

the last part about her father is a hyperbole... i think. i hope.

anyway. the double standards are funny.

there's also the aspect of people taking a simple statement like "salem isn't planning the destruction of the world and instead wants to fight the gods and this is a good thing bc the gods are the main problem here", read way too much into it and end up turning it into "so you think salem's the actual good guy and oz is the villain???" and it's like. no one said that but you. like, man...

my dog has a better reading comprehension than this, and he's five months old and chews walls. c'mon.

#anon #ask.strqyr

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perexcri · 2 years ago

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isn’t it messed up how i’m just dying to be him? - [byler week 2023 - day 3]

everyone give it up for Mikhailgate!

title from: sugar, we’re going down by fall out boy

dedicated to: bbc’s sherlock for scarring 14 year-old me and making me leery of getting invested in and interacting with fan theories for fear of the writers choosing to never answer any of their open-ended questions! also my freshman year Russian phonetics class, which was slightly useful for at least one of these sentences

To say that things had been odd since they returned to Hawkins would not just be an understatement, but a flat-out lie. Odd implies bizarreness on conceivable terms, and what has happened in the last three months–nay, two and a half years–surpasses any preconceived notion any of them had about anything. Certain immutable laws of the universe have been casually broken ever since Will disappeared and El showed up in the woods, monsters are real, and the government is in on all of it, and oh, yeah, Will and Mike are best friends! Except they’re not.

Well, they are?

Kind of?

Maybe?

Is there a term for very clearly friends but there’s something under the surface that keeps pushing into both of them, and neither person knows what to do?

Well, there should be a term for it, because whatever it is, Mike is feeling it pretty hard right now.

See, even when they fight, there’s this unspoken law of the universe itself that still makes them the closest out of anyone in the party. They understand each other on a fundamentally different level than most other people, can communicate entire conversations in glances–in short, they know each other almost as well as they know themselves. Despite how much every other conceivable point of stability has been torn apart in their lives, they know that they at least have each other, that no matter what, despite the fights and whatever thing keeps occupying the empty spaces of their conversations and glances, they’ll always snap back to each other, just like how they’re supposed to.

Mike is very calmly mulling these things over when El, who’s sitting a little too close for comfort, pulls the plastic fork that had somehow broken in half away from him and sets it on the table. Her fingers linger on his for a beat too long before falling away. “Mike?”

“Hm?” he hums with pointed exasperation. He’s too busy–thinking, of course.

But also staring.

“Do you not like the new guy?”

Well, first of all, new guy is another one of those phrases that’s not simply an understatement, but a complete and utter lie. New guy implies somebody unfamiliar, somebody they’ve never seen before.

And this guy–well, he’s definitely not that. He’s got hair just as wavy and dark as Mike’s, except instead of flattening his bangs and the top of his hair out like Mike takes painstaking time to do every morning (despite the fucking apocalypse happening outside the government base’s doors), he lets them hang wild and loose all over his head, like if a bird’s nest just looked effortlessly cool and flawless despite it undoubtedly being a mess to comb through. His eyes are just the same shade of brown as Mike’s, freckles spattered in nearly-identical constellations all across his skin, and his bones stick out of his body at awkward junctures, in nearly all the same places that Mike’s does.

The only difference?

The heavy (and we’re talking honey thick) Russian accent that drawls through every last bit of Mikhail Antonov’s speech, that omits articles wherever it so desires and can’t pronounce an H without sounding like he’s hocking up a lung. And yeah, sure, Mike gets it: all languages are different and unique in their own ways! If he tried speaking Russian, he’d probably sound abysmal, and all the Mikhail Antonovs of the world would make fun of him in their language for not pronouncing a word right or mixing up sounds so he ends up saying Jesus instead of vinegar, or whatever, but to hell with propriety and understanding, because Mike doesn’t care about any of that shit when Mikhail won’t unglue himself from Will’s side.

“Mike?”

With a huff, Mike momentarily peels his eyes away from Mikhail’s confident–nay, imposing–posture towards Will, how his hand casually rests against Will’s arm as they sit at one of the cafeteria tables a few rows down.

And Will?

Well, Will isn’t exactly trying to dissuade any of these advances. No, ever since Hopper called in a favor and smuggled his buddy Dmitri and his family out of the Soviet Union and into the swirling hellscape that had become Hawkins, Mikhail Antonov has been positively enamored by Will Byers, and Will doesn’t seem to mind. He leans into Mikhail’s touches, calmly tries to explain any weird American things to their new peer–hell, they even have inside jokes now! Something will happen, and they’ll immediately lean in towards each other and begin muttering and laughing, like they’re kids in the back of class trying to entertain themselves to keep from falling asleep.

Just like how Mike and Will used to before monsters became real and physics regularly decided to go on vacation and let all hell break loose.

So, yeah, Will doesn’t mind.

Mike minds, though. He minds very much.

And, sure, maybe this is him getting a taste of his own medicine after he ditched all of their friends for the better half of last summer to hole up in Hopper’s cabin and alternate between making out with El and then not making any kind of conversation with her. Okay, yeah, maybe this is karma’s sweet, sweet revenge on him. Fine. Whatever.

It doesn’t mean he has to like it or agree with it.

“Yeah?” he finally asks, but he has to grind the single syllable out from the notches between his teeth.

“You’re glaring at Mikhail again,” El notes, nodding towards the broken plastic fork.

“Yeah, well, maybe he should talk more quietly,” Mike grumbles.

As if on cue, the rest of the cafeteria grows a little quieter just as Mikhail is reaching the crescendo of one of his many long-winded stories about surviving winter on the Kamchatka peninsula (of which he has certifiably too many for them all to be true, if you ask Mike). He and Will burst into laughter, and Will’s doing that cute thing where he tries to hide his mouth, but it doesn’t stop the laughs from seeping out between his fingers, and the light hits his eyes just right and highlights the crinkles on their edges, and for once, he doesn’t look troubled by the supernatural.

And Mikhail?

“See, Will–”

Oh, and that’s another thing: since their totally unasked for adoption of Mikhail into the Party and subsequent crash course on Russian phonetics and that language’s intricacies, they’ve learned that there is no W sound in Russian, so Mikhail doesn’t even say Will’s name right. He doesn’t say Will, he says Oo-Ill, and fuck being brave enough to speak two languages, because it makes Mike’s blood boil every time.

He absconds from his moment of disgust to tune back into the (incredibly loud) thrum of Mikhail’s voice in the cafeteria:

“I told you,” Mikhail coos, “Call me Misha. It is much better than Mikhail.”

Will responds, but because he’s a sensible human being who doesn’t shout in public, Mike can’t hear what he says, but he does grin and nod his head and look the teeniest bit bashful.

He looks cute. He really does. He used to look like that at Mike, back when they were younger, before Mike let his own big mouth run, before the mall became a battleground, and before Will had put up a wall of silence after giving him a painting that El had supposedly commissioned.

The fact that Mikhail looks strikingly similar to Mike himself just adds insult to injury, really. Like the issue isn’t something physically defective with Mike, but some core nature of himself that’s thoroughly rotten and Will knows he doesn’t deserve.

“Mike,” El consoles, turning in her seat so she’s more properly facing him. “It’s not like he could ever replace you for Will. You guys are best friends.”

Best friends. Yeah, that’s a funny term.

“I’m gonna go take a nap,” Mike mumbles under his breath, and before El can ask him to repeat himself, he scoops up the leftovers from his meal, pushes his chair out from the table, and begins the shuffle of shame down to the front to dispose of his trash and dunk his dishes in the gray dishwater.

Worst of all is the fact that he has to walk by Will and Mikhail’s table. That when he does so, Will’s eyes snap up, and just for a second, they alight with interest.

Mike keeps his eyes down. He focuses on what he can see of the core of an apple he only got halfway through, and he pretends like Will’s gaze doesn’t send spikes of guilt into his chest and skittering down to the bottom of his gut.

The cold dishwater doesn’t do anything to dispel the heat of embarrassment currently settling over his skin like a blanket made of hot coals, and his hands shake. His mind automatically drifts to his relationship with El as well as with Will, and he can’t tell if they ever had proper breaks, or if they simply just fell away; if Mike let them fall through his fingers like this, just so he could tell himself this pain could mean something.

As he stomps out of the cafeteria and down the long hall of dorms, his thoughts remain on one track:

Fuck Hawkins. Fuck the apocalypse, and Vecna, and trauma, and feeling like you have to conform to society’s expectations for you.

But most of all, fuck Mikhail Antonov.

---

um hi i do feel the need to say that Mike’s jealousy-induced views on speaking a language that isn’t your native one do not reflect mine! his views here are exaggerated for laughs because it’s a silly thing :)

#byler #bylerweek2023 #ficlet #mikhailgate #ok i actually have a story about the Jesus/vinegar thing but i will save it for the ao3 endnotes

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talkingpointsusa · 1 year ago

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Drowning in the Pool; Debunking the December 6th, 2023 Edition of the Tim Pool Daily Show.

From what I know about Tim Pool, he is a generally great source for completely ridiculous and inane takes. Despite seeing people talking about how dumb most of the crap he says is on YouTube, this is my first time listening to the entirety of one of his shows....yay?

I would say that Tim is a step above the Daily Wire on the path to alt-rightness. While he is still alt-lite, as most of the guys we cover on here are are, Tim does things that the Daily Wire wouldn't dare do if only to avoid complete and total embarrassment. He has interviewed Alex Jones, which the Knowledge Fight podcast did an excellent episode on, and regularly spews alt-right talking points...that is when he isn't blatantly contradicting himself.

We are talking about the Daily Show Podcast here as "TimCast IRL" is mostly just him interviewing people and I want to see how Pool stands on his own without anyone else.

Turns out, not so good. While I want to save my full rant for the conclusion, Tim was such a complete and utter dipstick not just from an opinions standpoint but from a journalistic one that he makes the Daily Wire look like the New York Freaking Times. So let's get into it shall we?

01:19: "Last night, Donald Trump spoke with Sean Hannity and there was this tremendous exchange which has the Democrats losing their minds. When asked if he would abuse his power to go after his enemies, Trump said 'Only on day one. After that I'm not a dictator.'"

Ah yes, the "Dictator for a day" remark. I didn't hear Michael Knowles talk about it on his Wednesday show but I'd imagine that Ben Shapiro probably did since he's the guy who usually spends his entire show talking about pure politics instead of culture war drivel like porn turning your kids gay.

Trump has been hinting at abusing his power by getting revenge on his perceived "enemies" for a while now. He recently referred to his political enemies as "vermin", a pretty clear attempt at dehumanizing them in the eyes of his followers. Tim seems to think all this is pretty cool, I'd imagine if Biden said that he'd devote fourteen episodes and three interviews on TimCast to talking about the "evil Democrats".

01:52: "But Hannity was asking Trump 'Will you go after your enemies to get revenge?' and Donald Trump kinda dodged the question but I don't think it's necessarily fair to say that he dodged in just that Trump does what Trump does, I don't view it the same way."

This is the joy of listening to Tim Pool, half the time you cannot understand what the hell he is talking about and to be fair I don't think he does either. So Trump dodged the question but wait, he didn't actually dodge the question because Trump is Trump. What the hell is going on here?!

02:12: "Now, it's important, because a few months ago Rachel Maddow made the claim that Trump literally wants to kill her."

Hey guys, ignore this flagrantly dictator-y claim from Trump, look at this thing Rachel Maddow said!

Rachel Maddow did say that Trump wants to put MSNBC on trial for treason and "execute us". However if you watch the clip, it's clear that she isn't exactly serious about this claim. She says it in a pretty sarcastic and offhand tone as opposed to the cowering and insane woman that Tim is trying to portray.

Also, it wouldn't be shocking if Trump tried to engage in some form of retribution against NBC, he's threatened it before.

04:30: "This is a fundamental problem in the culture war. The right will interpret and translate for Democrats, stop doing that, use their words. It really is annoying, Joe Biden will come out and go (Tim then says gibberish) and people will be like 'We know what he's saying, he was trying to imply this' and it's like, just use his words."

So, according to Tim, every single time a politician makes a verbal gaff we should just take what they say on face value instead of trying to comprehend what they are saying? How does that make any sense?!

And what's more, Tim literally just brushed off Trump's comments about being a dictator for a day as just "Oh that Trump, getting all excited!". What happened to just taking words at face value? Oh wait, I forgot, the rules don't apply to Tim's team. Silly me!

04:55: "But what we're seeing now is that Taylor Swift doesn't like Donald Trump, or at least that's the assumption. So when she said quote 'if she doesn't win at least I tried' they are like 'Aha she hates Trump' and I'm like that statement implies she's trying to help him win, at least."

A): Why are we talking about Taylor Swift?! This has zero to do with the topic at hand. Focus Tim, focus. You're supposedly a journalist so you should know not to mix up two stories.

B): She wasn't even talking about Donald Trump in that clip! It came from a documentary made in 2020 called Miss Americana and the "he" was the democrat running against Senator Marsha Blackburn, meaning she wanted a Democrat to win in the context of this clip and more importantly wasn't even talking about Trump.

So to recap, god-tier journalist Tim Pool just grabbed a clip off the internet without fact-checking it first and just rolled with it on his show.

06:31: "I gotta be honest, if Sean Hannity said 'Would you abuse power?' Trump can be like 'I'm not going to abuse power because I don't need to. I'm going to instruct my attorney general to immediately seek out criminal charges for the people who have committed crimes'. That's not an abuse of power, that is the appropriate use of power, and that is upholding the law. That's what I'd love to hear."

WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?! I'm not even pissed, I find this hilarious in a depressing way. Not just because Tim is parroting long debunked election denial conspiracy theories and saying that Trump should throw people he thinks helped steal the election in jail, which is terrifying, but because this is awful from a pure journalistic standpoint.

We went from Tim introducing the topic, to Tim talking about the "culture war", to Tim talking about Taylor Swift, and now Tim is basically ranting about his stupid Donald Trump fanfiction. There is absolutely zero focus. At least with the Daily Wire the hosts can focus on one piece of hateful bile at a time. Oh yeah, and at least the Daily Wire pretends to do competent reporting and use rock solid sources. Tim's sources on the other hand are "I saw this video of Taylor Swift on Twitter!"

08:04: "In what world has anyone ever entertained the possibility that Donald Trump wants to put Rachel Maddow on trial for treason, which implies she's aiding and abetting a foreign adversary at a time of war."

First of all, I obviously think that putting journalists on trial for treason is disgusting and, like I said before, Maddow was being facetious.

But...does Tim not know what treason is? Treason isn't just "aiding and abetting a foreign adversary at a time of war", otherwise American's could betray their country during times of peace and get away with it because it isn't a time of war.

The official definition of treason is; “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.”

So for instance, leaking documents could be viewed as betraying the country. So could trying to overthrow the government, and Tim would know a lot about that since he likes to run cover for insurrectionists.

So either Tim doesn't know what he's talking about or he's misinterpreted the definition of treason, either one is painful to think about when you remember that people take this guy seriously as a news source.

08:56: "Donald Trump getting elected and going after criminals, liars, manipulators, and the corrupt is exactly what we need."

Ignoring the crimes Donald Trump has personally committed, Trump better start going after his own supporters!

Roger Stone is a pretty good example of a corrupt Trump associate, making false statements to congress and threatening Randy Credico with the removal of his service dog. Or how about George Santos, who's lies were so insane that he ended up recently getting thrown out of Congress.

09:07: "Look man, we have a Constitution-"

And judging by your idea of how treason works, you have read none of it.

09:51: "You see, Rachel Maddow is scared, because she knows she's one of the demons."

In between reading the constitution, Tim might have stumbled across this thing called the "First Amendment" that protects the freedom of the press.

We've gone down this road before. OAN tried to sue Maddow for comments she made about them on her show but the court ruled it was just opinion. Thanks to free speech and the freedom of the press, Rachel Maddow is free to express her opinion in the same way Tim Pool is. He's also allowed to criticize her just like how I am allowed to criticize him.

But Trump throwing her in jail for practicing journalism, that's a bridge too far.

13:13: "There are government actors who are working with media outlets. How many pundits for these cable channels are former intelligence officials or worked in the intelligence sector? A lot of them!"

Yeah, citation needed there buddy. You can't just drop "All left wing pundits used to work for the CIA" and not elaborate any further. And no, Tim doesn't give an example with proof of any pundits previously working in the intelligence sector.

I actually think this tops the Michael Knowles blackface episode for sheer ridiculousness. At least Michael did basic-ass shit like citing your sources when you make a claim and managing to keep track of the topic he was talking about. This episode is unintentionally hilarious. It feels like a parody of Tim Pool instead of the real thing.

Hey guys, remember when this was about the Trump dictator comments? I barely do. I was too blindsided by Tim saying that every anti-Trump pundit secretly works for the CI fucking A!

15:02: "I do believe that Trump lost 2020."

What?! Then what was all that crap about how Rachel Maddow is secretly a CIA Agent who intentionally spread misinfo about Trump and how Trump should go after all the "criminals" who helped take the election away from him? Tim is the most election truther-ish believer that Trump lost in human history.

But fine, I agree, Trump did lose 2020. I will take whatever win I can get here.

Tim then talks about how mail in voting messed up the election, so I guess he does believe the election was stolen. Whatever.

19:33: "Young people even saying they're more likely to vote for Trump now, at least in some polls. We're getting some new polls showing that it's actually going towards Biden, but these are different pollsters so we shall see."

Alright, so young people are inclined to vote for Trump, but actually they aren't. Even as pure right-wing propaganda this sucks. Tim contradicted himself and thus undermined his entire argument that the youth are swinging towards Trump in the span of two sentences.

21:13: "I think one thing we should do is remove party affiliation from ballots."

Wait what?!

I literally had to rewind that to make sure I was hearing that correctly and then promptly burst out laughing when I realized my hearing was correct.

But there's more, Tim tries to back this galaxy brained take up.

21:14: "Explain to me why we put party affiliation on ballots in the first place. Seriously, I mean it, comment, let me know. Because I think if you don't know who you're voting for, you shouldn't vote for them."

Well, since Tim wants an explanation, I'll give it to him.

Parties generally hold a certain set of values that voters identify with. For example; Democrats might push for more gun control whereas Republican's might push for less gun control. By putting party affiliation on ballots, it simplifies the voting process and allows people to vote for a candidate that they know will represent their ideals.

While I agree that people should look into their elected officials instead of just blindly checking the box beside their name, their party affiliation also helps give voters a general idea of what they stand for.

Also, if you took party affiliation off of the ballots, chances are people would just look up which party the candidate represents and vote partisanly anyway.

22:02: "If that was the case, people would actually be voting for who they thought should win and other people would vote randomly. Some might argue that whoevers on top would win because people would just vote for the first person. OK, the ballots can randomly align the names. I think this would result in Republicans winning."

So....people wouldn't be voting for who they think should win, they would vote randomly. But don't worry, that's ok because they can just scatter the names on the ballots and that will somehow lead to Republican's winning forever.

...

WHAT ARE WE-

22:27: "Because Democrat voters don't know anything and it's the ballot harvesting where they're like 'fill this out and vote for this person.' Now they could certainly do that still but a lot of this stuff is vote Democrat, vote Democrat, imagine if they had to refine this message and say 'Vote John Doe, Jane Doe, Jack Doe' in every district.

So essentially Tim's point is that Democrats will vote randomly because they don't know anything but voting Democrat. However I can think of a bunch of people who would be inclined to vote Democrat for really good reasons.

LGBTQ+ people would be inclined to vote Democrat because the Democrats have a more progressive stance on LGBTQ rights. Women who are concerned about their reproductive rights and abortion would be inclined to vote for the Democrats because they are firmly pro-choice. People who are concerned about gun safety would be inclined to vote Democrat because the Democrats want to reduce gun violence.

Also, does Tim want party affiliation to be removed during elections period and then when the person is elected they go "Surprise! Here's my affiliation"? Because it sure sounds like he does.

Even if party affiliation is taken off the ballots, it stands to reason that politicians would still campaign as Democrats instead of focusing it on "voting for Jack Doe" or whatever. And again, that info would still be up on the internet for anyone to find.

This makes absolutely no sense.

23:25: "But, for the time being lets stay focused on whether or not Trump is going to execute Rachel Maddow."

Tim is so insanely lost in the weeds here. The Maddow stuff was a sub-topic of Trump's dictator for a day comments which is supposedly what this segment is about and is also what the episode is titled after.

Make like a Ford and focus!

The segment ends about 30 seconds later, but the Tim Pool Daily Show podcast is an hour and a half of Tim's YouTube videos stitched together into one Frankenstein's monster of a show.

That first segment as we established was pretty damn bad. Tim was all over the place, contradicted himself a couple times, said batshit crazy things like that all left-wing political pundits used to work at the CIA, grabbed random misinformation from Twitter and reported it as news, and got some hilariously stupid takes about the election.

But hey, we've still got an hour left. Maybe Tim Pool was just having a bad day when he made that video, maybe Tim will swoop in and blow me away with his ingenious political takes in the next segment. After all, he is viewed as a valid source of news for the 1.35M people who subscribe to him, surely there must be some merit to what he says...right?

25:08: "When it comes to the issues that we're seeing at Harvard, UPen, and MIT where Elise Stefanik asked these representatives at these universities if calling for the genocide of Jews warranted bullying and harassment."

So, this story is making shockwaves through the right-wing grifter-sphere and all of them are misrepresenting the question, most likely just how Stefanik intended. The question was as follows;

"Dr. Kornbluth, at MIT, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT’s code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?"

The answer was as follows;

"If targeted at individuals not making public statements."

This is a loaded question. The universities bullying and harassment policies and really the general definition of harassment are that the act must be targeted at a specific person. This isn't about what their opinions are, this is about what the policy says!

Also, while I don't doubt that there have been instances of antisemitism on campus, portraying every single protestor as calling for the genocide of Jews is completely loaded. If Stefanik can give an example of an entire protest group calling for the genocide of Jews, I would love to see it! They are also ignoring that if such a group did exist they would be violating a litany of other rules and policies, just not this specific one that Stefanik has cherrypicked to create outrage.

By the way, considering that Stefanik is a big fan of Donald Trump who has a long history of antisemitism, she has zero right to call anyone else antisemetic.

27:04: "However, the woke left made the argument that they should be allowed to censor anyone and this brings us to the story and what I view as a major strike into the heart of the hypocrisy of wokeness."

First of all, Tim isn't being censored, he just isn't. I have yet to see one of these guy realize the total irony of them going onto their large platforms with millions of viewers and whine about being "censored".

Secondly, does Tim even know what the word "woke" means anymore? It's kind of just became his catch-all term for the political left to the point where it has lost all of it's meaning outside of "Left bad, get angry".

At the end of the day, Tim has boiled the conflict in the Middle East down to another piece of his culture war bullshit, and that's pretty ghoulish behavior.

28:48: "These other universities, they will silence the moderate opinions of, say, conservatives, they will ban people from speaking, they will shut you down and then when it comes to people attacking quite literally someone for being Jewish they will say it's 'context dependent'."

Conservatives really aren't being censored at universities. How about the multiple speaking engagements that Ben Shapiro and Co at the Daily Wire do at universities where they perform speeches and then "destroy" college kids who aren't prepared to handle their rhetoric? Same thing with Turning Point USA.

Also, for the last time, the protestors aren't calling for the death of all Jews.

30:26: "They're fascistic, they believe there's no truth but power, they want to impose their view through authoritarian means."

When Trump says he literally wants to be a dictator it's "Trump being Trump", when students exercise their right to protest "Oh my God, look at how fascist they are." Tim is a complete and utter hypocrite.

Also, might I remind you that Tim pals around with Matt Walsh who is literally a self proclaimed theocratic fascist and an old favorite to debunk here at Talking Points USA.

30:50: "So I read an academic paper about the economics of Nazi Germany and guess what they used to enforce their economic plan; cancel culture. That's it."

The Nazi's blacklisting, killing, and shunning people for not supporting a literal genocide is extremely different from people getting criticism over saying slurs and general bad behavior. Also, again, why are we talking about cancel culture now? Weren't we supposed to be talking about what is going on at universities?

I can't figure out if this is some sort of strategy Tim uses to distract his viewers from how flimsy his points are or if he is just naturally that rambly.

30:56: "What would happen is if you are a steel mill and you wanted to produce steel for cars or something you would get people coming to you like 'Hey man, I heard you aren't helping the war effort' and then they would ostracize you, shun you, and cancel you. Nobody would wanna work with you, nobody would wanna buy your product, you'd be forced to bend the knee and produce and produce the product they wanted you to produce. Kind of like what we see with DEI movies."

So we have producing tanks and producing slightly more inclusive movies. I kind of think that the stakes with one are higher than the other.

I don't see how a film company interpreting a film differently for more modern audiences is such a big deal. The original Snow White cartoon was radically different from the original Grimm Fairytale because THAT audience probably wouldn't want to see cannibalism and a woman dancing in red hot slippers until she died a brutal death. How is changing it now any different?

Tim then plays the MIT bullying and harassment clip. I honestly came so close to forgetting that this was what Tim Pool was talking about. We already talked about this so there's not much need to repeat ourselves. Tim then waxes poetic for two minutes about the nature of free speech, nothing particularly important there, just Tim saying a whole lot of nothing. Then this happens;

41:24: "Most Conservatives and most Liberals would agree on certain things that cross the line into targeting someone with harassment and it's not just calling someone a name, it's typically-well I shouldn't say the left-"

If you think I am misinterpreting that quote, go to the time stamp I provided and hear it for yourself....oops. In case you aren't following along; Tim accidentally admitted that he knows the left knows what crosses the line into harassment then proceeded to backtrack and correct himself on air then proceed to just run with it as if it never happened.

And he doesn't go any further on "well I shouldn't say the left", he just goes on with his sentence! I suppose if you aren't listening to this show critically, which most of Tim Pools fanbase probably isn't because otherwise they would have turned it off during the ballot affiliation nonsense, it is easy to miss. But it is both hilarious and telling if you do catch it.

Considering that Tim's show is mostly YouTube, he could easily cut embarrassing shit like this out and save himself the face of looking like a complete doofus. And yet here we are.

43:08: "I think shining a light on this speech is the most important way to combat it."

If that's the case, I'd like to see the video of the hoards of university students calling for the death to all Jews.

46:46: "I had this conversation with someone recently and I said this, listen. People talk about white privilege, let's talk about white privilege."

I am so exasperated right now. So, Tim's point is essentially that white privilege doesn't exist (which might I add follows up three minutes of him basically saying that he isn't a racist in twelve different ways) and he goes about explaining why this is by telling this anecdote about him telling someone else an anecdote and *sigh*, let's just let Tim explain it.

46:53: "Let's say you go to a job interview and you wanna get a job at a bank and you show up wearing a dago tee and baggy jeans and sneakers and you walk in, you've got a sideways cap and you're like 'Yo whatsup dude. I think I could work your bank pretty good man' (Tim says this in what I think was his attempt at a stereotypical black accent) they're gonna be like 'I don't know if that's the right job for you', right. The people in the banks, they wear suits."

Ok, pause for a minute. What exactly do you think the likelihood is that anyone, minority or otherwise, would wear a dago tee and sneakers to a bank and proceed to say "I think I could work your bank pretty good man" to the manager?! I guarantee you that has never happened once, people are smart enough to know to dress up if you're going to try and apply to work at a bank.

I mean yeah, in this strawman universe Tim has constructed for his audience it would make sense for the bank manager to turn this hypothetical guy down. However what Tim is implying here is that all minorities stroll into job interviews poorly dressed and speak in stereotypical "hood" lingo and that's why the system tends to exclude minorities, if they just learned to act more polished (read; White) they'd be fine!

What Tim is ignoring is that even when minorities do try, the data shows that they still aren't getting ahead compared to whites. Here is a really interesting study about discrimination if you want to read further.

47:49: "It's not about race, it's not about language, it's about 'are you here to work with us? Are you gonna be a good worker? Are you gonna be able to help and cooperate and be part of a team?' Those things matter and culture matters. So when that guy walks in slouching (and) wearing street clothes, it doesn't matter what your race is."

Well, if you look at the numbers it clearly does. For example, the study I mentioned found that African Americans are twice as likely to be unemployed as whites.

Tim then switches to his next segment, it's about the border tensions between Venezuela and Guyana. Most of the beginning portion is just Tim reading about what the situation is so we can comfortably skip over that. Tim thinks this will lead to WW3 because if war breaks out and the US gets involved the USA will be involved in three wars. Given all the wars in the middle east America has gotten involved in, by Tim's logic we would have been in WW3 a long time ago.

Warning for this next part: Tim decides to (surprise, surprise) be a massive transphobic bully in this next segment. I you're not comfortable with that, I totally get you, I barely am either. Feel free to click off and I'll see you in the next one!

1:00:03: "Dylan Mulvaney recently spoke at Penn State and nobody showed up."

Absolutely nobody outside of these reactionary media outlets that want to mock Dylan because she is transgender is talking about this because who cares?

A speaker didn't draw a huge crowd, so what? She's still getting paid at the end of the day and it looks like the folks who did come had fun.

Also, it's exam season! I would imagine that part of the reason why there weren't very many people is because most students are studying for or writing finals.

1:00:29: "This is exemplified by Bud Light sales continuing to decline."

We're still talking about this stupid story huh? If you haven't heard of this story, it essentially boils down to Bud Light hiring Dylan Mulvaney to do a promotion and the entire right wing collectively throwing a bigoted tantrum over it because Dylan is trans and boycotting the brand.

Eagle eyed viewers might be thinking to themselves "Wait, didn't Tim decry this exact thing earlier in the episode?" Well, just to refresh everyone's memory, here is exactly what Tim said!

"What would happen is if you are a steel mill and you wanted to produce steel for cars or something you would get people coming to you like 'Hey man, I heard you aren't helping the war effort' and then they would ostracize you, shun you, and cancel you. Nobody would wanna work with you, nobody would wanna buy your product, you'd be forced to bend the knee and produce and produce the product they wanted you to produce"

What Tim claims to hate is exactly what he is doing here. Cancelling a company because they dared to have a transgender person in their ads. And yet apparently it's the woke left ™ who is doing all the cancelling. This story is a great example of how painfully hypocritical guys like Matt Walsh, Tim Pool, and Steven Crowder are. One minute they are all about the free market and how they hate cancel culture but the second a company decides to act more excepting towards a marginalized group that they don't like they become everything they claim to hate, a bunch of whiny snowflakes whining about a commercial that doesn't even effect their lives.

01:01:28: "But I think what we are looking at is a warning to the American people and to parents about what these machines will do."

Oh, heaven forbid we have a transgender person on the internet with a sizeable following. It can't be because of her content, it's got to be the algorithm! Seriously, do these guys just think about trans people 24/7?! I have trans friends who I guarantee you think about trans people less than these guys do.

01:01:50: "What we are looking at with Dylan Mulvaney is the story of an individual desperate for attention and the machine plugged Dylan Mulvaney in, that's it. Then you've got sideshow gawkers, carnival goers, who wanted to egg on an individual who was influenceable and suffering, and that's what they did."

I highly HIGHLY object to Tim's indirect comparison of transgender people to circus freaks. Also, this is obviously not true. I went on Instagram and looked at the comments on her most recent post and most were really positive and supportive.

01:02:24: "I don't believe Dylan Mulvaney is trans, I believe Dylan Mulvaney is getting surgeries that make Dylan Mulvaney fit a cast or a character."

First of all, downplaying somebodies sexuality by saying they are just "playing a character" is a nasty thing to do.

Second of all, what the hell is up with Tim using Dylan's full name all the time? Just say "she", come on, it's not that hard.

Tim then rants about how he has "more influence" than Dylan does and how his events sell out more, just basic immature "I'm bigger than you, nyanyanyanya." shit. Then he drops this gem.

01:07:16: "What if, there actually are no followers? What if the reality is that Dylan Mulvaney is mostly followed by bots and they're not real people?"

So a majority of 10 million people are bots?! She's clearly met a lot of her fans in person, a fair amount of them have posted about meeting her, hell three of my friends who I know in person follow her and one regularly comments. Plus she has a reasonable amount of merch which her fans have posted pictures of them wearing!

Do I sense a twinge of jealousy in Tim regarding followers? "Yeah, I have 9 million less followers than you but guess what?! Your followers are all BOTS while mine are real, ha!"

01:09:00: "We take a look at the average turnaround, or conversion, for a view on other shows compared to ours."

Careful throwing the c-word around Tim. Michael Knowles might accuse you of planting subliminal messages in TimCast to turn people gay.

01:11:21: "AOC makes shocking claim that all schoolgirls will be forced to undergo genital examinations if biological men are barred from woman's sports."

This quote is being taken out of context by Tim Pool and other reactionaries on the right. What actually happened was that she responded to Goss Graves who said "It's terrible, in some states any individual can challenge whether someone is a girl enough to play. In some states, it requires actual genital verification, it's shocking."

AOC responded by saying "Under the guise of not only trying to further marginalize trans women and girls, we are talking about opening up all women and girls to genital examinations when they are underage, potentially just because someone can point to someone and say, ‘I don’t think you’re a girl."

So right out of the gate, this isn't some unprompted thing that came completely out of left field like Tim is saying. AOC was responding to something Graves said.

It's not like what she is saying isn't without merit either. Ohio attempted to advance a trans sports ban with genital examinations, thankfully the genital examinations were later removed (although the bill itself is still transphobic and discriminatory so not too thankfully).

01:12:21: "I would like to introduce Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to something called a physical."

Again, she was responding to what Graves said about genital examinations and pointing out the slippery slope that trans sports bans can lead up to. Physicals weren't a part of the initial conversation, the conversation was about genital examinations.

Also, if it's a trans female who is suspected of being a "biological male", a physical could turn into a genital examination really quickly.

01:14:18: "So there are trans people, children, who are getting their birth certificates changed."

Yes, you can amend your gender to your preferred one on a birth certificate. I don't see how this is a bad thing, unless you're like Tim Pool and don't believe that trans people actually exist (and even if they do they are completely invalid and undeserving of the right to have their sexuality respected).

This is also only tenuously related to the topic at hand which is that out of context AOC quote. I am slowly coming to the realization that Tim's general lack of focus is probably a conscious decision. Blindside your audience by hopping from topic to topic in order to distract them from how completely without merit what you are saying is.

01:17:15: "AOC is claiming that trans people are criminals. That's right, that's what she's saying. She's saying that if we say that males should not be on female sports that the males will lie and cheat anyway."

Or, that more masculine females would be subject to genital investigations because the authorities would suspect them of being transgender. Castor Semenya is a prime example of this.

01:19:51: "Democrats are evil."

Can't get much more hatemonger-ey than calling an entire political affiliation evil just because of some quote on politician said that is being taken out of context. Isn't this guy supposed to be a centrist or something?

Conclusion:

Well, that was...an episode of a podcast. Ignoring allll the other dumb stuff that happened in this podcast, this was some of the most genuinely terrible journalism I have seen ever. From reporting on tweets with blatant misinfo in them to painful lack of focus to some of the dumbest takes I have covered for this blog so far this was one of the most painful yet fascinating things I have covered here.

I am both excited and dreading to cover more Tim Pool but other people and things need our attention first. We'll be dipping our toes into a new soon to be recurring grift-er-character on this blog next.

Until then, if you have any other suggestions for a right wing figure who you would like to see debunked/made fun of on the blog, I'd love to hear it.

Cheers and I'll see you in the next one.

#tim pool #right wing bigotry #right wing bullshit #journalism #conservative bullshit #fact checking #bad takes #conservatives #politics #debunking #bad journalism #misinformation #disinformation #bullshit

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