#this is the most work ive put into an essay in like. fucking ages

[invisiblyvisiblejay]

ive somehow written a 3 page introduction using 10 sources 🧍

[marknee]

bts fanfics i think shakespeare and queen elizabeth i would’ve gossiped about.

chapter ii. ✷ chapter iv.

KEYS ON SEVERITY OF SHAKESPEARE’S STATE:

( ✮ ) — you can’t lie, shakespeare’s got a mouth on him.

( ♬ ) — they’ve ordered everyone out the room. peering through the window as we speak.

( ✎ ) — someone tell him to put that poor teacup down.

( ♛ ) — her majesty royally gasped. she’s clutching her pearls, bless her.

THE SHAKESPEARE SERIES.

WARNING: keep in mind, some of these authors are very strict on the rule that no minors should read their work if they’re underage, and i will honour that. but, at the end of the day, i am not your parent. so, there’s that. but heed my warning wisely. any smut or 18+ content is highlighted in bold.

NOTE: we’re on part three already? damn, times flies. if you’re new here, welcome to the shakespeare series where i write essays about fics that would absolutely annihilate shakespeare — hence the name. if you haven’t read the past two chapters, you can access them in the masterlist above! let’s get into it.

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( ♛ ) MATILDA — by @babystrcandy

!! yoongi x reader | 141.8k !!

brothers best friend au, angst, fluff, eventual smut.

my therapist would absolutely adore this fanfic. maybe i should recommend it to her. or just send her the link. she’d be thrilled.

this series is dedicated to anyone who felt like the second choice, the one always forgotten about, the so-called disappointment, the people pleaser, the perfectionist, the one whose family has let them down over and over again.

reading this, alike reading anything else, transports you to another world. however, the difference between this one and all others, is this makes you feel safe. secure. a safe place. a sanctuary you never realised even existed, where you feel accepted and loved. it takes the idea of home and really drills it in.

if you find yourself relating to this story, like i did, i want to you to know i see you and i truly hope one day you find everything you were deprived of growing up. you deserve peace. you deserve love.

while you’re at it, go give this author some love for seeing us, listening to us, and validating our experiences. and for writing such a beautiful story.

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( ♬ ) DILF JK — by @venusiangguk

!! jungkook x reader | 85.5k !!

strangers to lovers, dad!jk, friends with benefits, smut (18+), fluff.

if some army’s weren’t such delulu’s and so consumed by the imaginary idea that they’ll one day marry a bts member and live happily ever after, this is the type of shit we’d actually get. but no, we’re forever plagued by fiction because of a few overly obsessed wankers.

rant aside, dilf!jk is a concept. one that needs to be studied and researched for my own personal needs. because i thought dilf!namjoon was dangerous (and he most certainly is), but dilf!jk is a whole other… thing? being? story? i’ll leave that to the researchers.

personally, i love when authors mould fiction and reality into one body. they blend the two concepts together to create something beautiful, and this was duly noted within the topic of the age gap. deciding on something real for the benefit of both parties in a fictional story is so fucking applaudable. or perhaps i’m just an angsty fucker, sorry.

most definitely worth all the tissues and all the cheek aching. talking from experience.

i mean, it’s got ‘dilf’ in the title, is that not enough? it’s what made me click, anyways. i’m a dilf lover through and through.

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( ♬ ) A SERPENT’S FLOWER — by @jimlingss & @dovechim

!! jimin x reader | 34.2k !!

fluff, smut (18+), lil angst, hogwarts!au.

realistically, you knew at some point in this series there would be a harry potter!au thrown in somewhere, didn’t you? i mean, come on now. and i’m so happy this is the first one.

this two-parter and it’s sequel both are both due the respect they deserve. the perfect opposites attract trope? enemies to lovers? with a quick-witted slytherin reader and an even wittier hufflepuff park jimin? fuck me, don’t mind if i do.

i never say a fanfic has everything. but this fanfic has everything. character, romance, humour, angst, wit, the list goes on. it’s a fanfic buffet: it’s got it all, and you just help yourself.

and i realise some people don’t read the sequels to fanfics (i know), but i beg of you. read the sequel too. if anything, i think the sequel was my favourite bit. and i know some people don’t like the pregnancy trope, but i’m telling you there definitely is a time and place for it. and this is the time! and the place! trust me.

did i cry at the end of this fic? i can’t remember. but the probability is higher than i’d like it to be.

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( ✮ ) ZERO GRAVITY — by @luxekook

!! namjoon x hoseok x reader | 11k !!

space!au, poly!au, angst, smut (18+), crack, fluff.

if someone doesn’t drop me on a spaceship with two of the hottest men on the planet in the next fortnight, i’m suing. don’t know who that’ll be yet, but some poor sod will have his hands full, that’s for certain.

i love space!au fics with my whole heart and ass. honestly, every time one comes up on my page, i have to save it. it’s a reflex at this point, they’re just too good. you know what is also too good? the built up tension within this fic. jaw-dropping.

i’m not giving out any spoilers, but the author really said, bonk— here is the nastiest smut you’ve ever read in your life. take it, or get fucked. and of course, i took it. but nothing really prepares you for that atmosphere change. not even the sex club was remotely ready. and it’s a sex club.

not going to lie, before writing this essay, i actually went back and read it again, just to make sure i was in the right mind the first time i read it. and yep, sure was. it’s just shocking how insane this fic is.

btw, anyone fancy a visit to throbbing disco sticks? i need a word with the person who came up with the name. and perhaps a kiss too.

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( ✎ ) NO CHOICE (NEXT TO YOU) — by @gukyi

!! yoongi x reader | 13k !!

college!au, frat boy!au, neighbour!au, enemies to lovers.

miscommunication. my lover in fanfics, my worst enemy in real life. hence why i love this fic so much. because it’s not real life. (unfortunately).

we’ve all done that thing where we’ve accidentally eavesdropped onto something we shouldn’t of and one thing leads to another and boom, you find yourself misreading the whole situation. and you’re lying if you say you haven’t.

well, that’s this fic for you. times a thousand. honestly, enemies to lovers fics never do me wrong. they’re always a joy to read — the thrill and the very, very prominent sexual tension keeps you excited, waiting on the edge of your seat to see how everything plans out.

my point? this fic never bores you out. read it a thousand times and it still feels like the first. and not a lot of fanfics have that power, i’ll tell you that. a few, yes. but not a lot.

don’t take reading this for the first time for granted. wish i had that privilege. jealous.

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( ✎ ) THE PRINCE’S CINDERELLA SYNDROME — by @jimilter

!! jimin x reader | 39.4k !!

cursed!jimin, supernatural!au, strangers to lovers!au angst, smut, fluff.

this fic altered my brain chemistry permanently. there’s no going back. i’m officially ruined, you guys. i don’t even know who i was before i read this. it was just- bang, clean slate.

to begin with, i thought ‘this bitch saw him twice and her knees buckled. what the fuck.�� but then i realised that bitch is me, and the so-called him is referring to thee park jimin, so really. i got it. who wouldn’t absolutely power move it after seeing such a sight? i might just jog a little. sprint on a good day.

i would happily write a five thousand word essay for you on how fucking good this plot slash idea was, and an additional ten thousand on how sad, but i don’t think my fingers— nor my mental state would be able to go through that. not again. please.

but as i mentioned in the last fic above, do not take reading this for the first time for granted. however, only because you will lose all rationality.

shakespeare most definitely plagiarised this fic. he wrote it down and her majesty knows. that’s why he looked so proud of himself at tea. the sneaky fucker. just he wait until i tell @jimilter.

sobbing. again. or is this the fourth time?

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( ✎ ) ALWAYS IN MY DREAMS — by @kookskingdom

!! namjoon x reader | 15.4k !!

soulmates!au, fluff, angst, minor character death.

i mean, i already sleep too fucking much. only being able to meet my soulmate through my dreams would just make me comatose. you’d never hear from me. ever.

and yes, you saw the tag. it’s another soulmate!au because everyone knows how much nini loves her hopeless romance. but! who doesn’t. they’re too good to scroll past. so when i finally read this, i knew it was going in the series.

the unknown certainty between the pair of when their next encounter would be with each other, causing them to cherish every single second, that. that’s what i want please. someone who drinks up my existence knowing we will soon part from each other. i cannot.

i love, love, love the concept of soulmates, fate, destiny, whatever. the whole shabang. i bathe in it. so, of course, this fic was a big hit with me. and if that too is your thing, and you love the idea of two souls being intwined inside and out, this is your golden ticket.

@kookskingdom is mentioned in this chapter twice. but can you blame me? you find a ticket to the chocolate factory, of course you’re going to hold onto it as tightly as possible.

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( ✮ ) VOICEMAIL — by @joonary

!! seokjin x reader | 7k !!

fluff, humour, friends to lovers, college podcast!au.

you know those dramas where both the two main characters are so completely smitten with each other to the point you’re practically screaming at your screen for them to “just kiss already!” but won’t because they’re hopelessly oblivious, even though everyone is telling them how in love they both are? yeah, that’s this fic. in a nutshell.

though in their defence, i feel i would definitely do the same. but still, does it stop me from getting frustrated with them? no. i was absolutely raging.

this cute story was so, so sweet i was practically clutching the phone for an emergency appointment to the dentist. my teeth were rotting with all the added sugar, like hello? my teeth? but just like chocolate is, it’s addicting. and you can’t stop yourself.

perhaps i’m just a sucker for friends to lovers fics, but this one particularly caught my attention. it’s 5k of pure infuriation, and 2k of fluff.

but so worth the impatience.

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( ♬ ) FALL IN HATRED — by @jimlingss

!! seokjin x reader | 20k !!

divorce!au, angst, fluff, smut (18+), marriage!au.

first bullet point is just the thought of fuck me, ‘cause where do i start with this?

separation — in some ways — is the easy way out. you just get up and leave. walk out, whatever. boom, just like that. but the emotional repercussions are what make it so distressing. making that daunting decision to leave something— someone in our past, may be one of the hardest things we humans ever have to do.

this fic goes through the rough battle of what it means to be committed to a person. the battles of finally giving up on someone you once thought the world of. and honestly? that may be my worst fear. for someone to love me so deeply, and then lose that over time to see me as nothing more than an inconvenience of their past.

never been through divorce. hopefully you, nor i, will ever have to. but after reading this, i don’t think we have to experience it.

this amazing, yet painfully angsty fic does it for us. and a fucking incredible ending.

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( ♛ ) THE ROAD TO RADIANT — by @kookskingdom

!! jungkook x reader | 25.9k !!

gamer!au, streamer!au, fluff, angst, smut, rivals to friends to lovers!au.

this got a crown on the shakespeare state chart purely for the fact i have never played valorant in my life, and single-handedly managed to impress my friends — who are obsessed with said game — about my newfound knowledge of gaming, purely from this fic alone. felt like a fucking genius.

i was going to add this to part four, but i genuinely had to swap some fics around to put this baby in. i found space for her, so she’s here. and deservedly so. why wait?

this fic does a very good job of highlighting the deep misogyny and sexism that runs within the gaming community towards women. like, can women not be good at gaming too? do people really believe gaming is purely a man thing? is this really the society we live in? yikes.

and if you do happen to read this fic and reach that argument scene with jungkook, please let me know. i want you to know i, too, was absolutely fuming. phones were thrown. naughty words were said. angry voice messages to said best friend were recorded.

final special mention for the smut scene. had me sweating like a sinner in church. lord have mercy.

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( ♬ ) BRASS AND STRINGS — by @jimlingss

!! namjoon x reader | 113.7k !!

slice of life!au, fluff, slow burn, college!au, music!au.

take a shot every time this author is mentioned within this series. you’ll end up blackout pissed. it’s a shame they left this platform, but i hope they’re doing well. their fics have really left an impact on me. and i’ll forever be grateful.

ah, yes. the cheesy clichéd trope of the mean girl and the nerd. a mix of two completely different personalities and flavours that supposedly fit together like two broken pieces of a puzzle. the very foundation of a 2000’s romcom. an iconic pairing that has been hammered into us by the media since day one.

it’s the opposites attract that lured me in initially, but it’s the character development throughout the story that nestled itself into my heart, and got me to stay. this fic holds dear to me still.

i have gatekept this fic long enough, and i am trusting you to bear it with love and extreme care. like you’re holding a small, fragile baby in your arms. do not let me down. please.

one more thing, don’t share this with shakespeare. every time he’s brought it up, i’ve told him it was a really weird dream and he’s only just started to believe me. yes, i feel shit about it, but it has to be done. the man’s a menace.

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( ✮ ) TANGLED WEBS — by @ughseoks

!! jungkook x reader | 14.1k !!

spiderman!au, soulmate!au (yup), angst, fluff.

if any of you say a word about the second tag, i will fight. i will never stop recommending them. me and the soulmates!au are soulmates. irony at its finest.

i genuinely wish spidey!jk was a real adaptation. because even though andrew is my favourite spiderman, i fear there is a large difference between the pair that separates them. andrew can play peter parker. jungkook can (re: could) play peter parker. but could andrew play jungkook? no.

in this fic, the whole characterisation of both jungkook as spiderman and the soulmate!reader is so well written. you can perfectly picture jungkook being that awkward high school boy by day, and secret superhero vigilante by night. i mean, fuck me. how is he not knackered all the time?

mixing in that final zest of soulmates!au everyone (re: me) loves, you’ve got yourself a hell of a plot line.

romeo and juliet were not soulmates, shakespeare. they were children. why aren’t you taking notes? stop talking to the queen. she’s tired of all your bullshit. and so are we.

© marknee, 2023. all rights reserved.

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[candycane969]

✨🎧🌆ROTTMNT DONATELLO HEADCANONS🌆🎧✨

made by me! candy! :3 no major spoilers

A quick guide!✨

💜 - Supported by canon (things that are pretty sure out there, maybe not confirmed 100% but yeah)

❤ - Kind of supported by canon (things that happened in the series that miiiight lead to some other stuff)

🧡 - My source is that I made it the fuck up (still trying to fit it into the character tho)

⭐ - Not sure if I'm taking this headcanon or not, but I do think It's pretty neat

💋 - Kinky! DISCLAIMER: Ive always seen the rottmnt boys (and April) in the age group from 17 to 19 and thats what I headcanon them as (as it is my own age group!). Ive seen the show and was fucking sure theyre my age and then a month or two later I was slapped in the face with thier actual age lol. I dont support any pedo shit, I also dont think minors can consent. Just putting it out there

Lets go!🌆💜🎧⭐✨

The 'Tism

• 💜 I think Its pretty fucking obvious that this boy is autistic, pretty much everything in the show supports this.

• ❤ Donny's headgear also works as noise cancelling headphones! He's often overwhelmed by background sounds and his gear makes it easier for him to live his life (either on missions or just spending time with his brothers and/or April). He still loves blasting his music on the highest volume tho. It's different when you consent to hearing your jams then when several people are talking at once and youre going crazy.

Tagging as kind of canon because he might have audio sensory issues because of his autism and you can reraly see him without the damn googles.

Different stims

❤ Foot stomping

❤ Hand flapping

🧡 Repeating a song/part of song over and over (yes, even if it has no words)

❤ Spinning on chairs

🧡 Pacing around the lab/the lair

• 💜 He knows ASL! Though It's never said in the show why he learned it, I believe that because he goes nonverbal often. Everyone in the lair can sign a bit because of that, but not everybody is too good at it. Donatello can communicate in ASL fluently.

Gender

• 🧡 Donatello never really felt connected to being "a men" and categorising things as "for boys" and "for girls" always seemed dumb to him. Shortly after Leo's coming out as a trans men (SURPRISE LEO HEADCANON) he went to talk to him about his gender experience. After some thinking and digging, Don came to the conclusion that he is in fact nonbinary. He still uses mostly male pronounces but always appreciates gender neutral pronounces coming his way.

Sexuality

• 🧡 While realising his own gender he also figured out that he doesn't really sees gender that seriously in others either. Men or women, its pretty much whatever to him. He doesn't like to label himself much when it comes to his sexuality, he accepts reffering to him as a pansexual or bisexual.

• 🧡 When it comes to dating Donatello doesn't imagine himself with anyone, really. He finds himself attractive, but doesn't think anyone would fancy him in a romantic way. He's not interessted much in dating either way. But he doesn't exclude dating someone in the future. It's just he won't go out of his way to look for love.

• ❤/🧡 Its obvious Don is a men of science, he's a genius when it comes to coding, math, engineering, I would say chemistry as well. Thats the field he feels the most comfortable in, but he loves learning new things in general. As long as there is interesting knowledge he can obtain, he will be there, soaking it like a sponge. He likes listening to info dumps, and probably listens to long ass video essays and/or podcasts.

• 🧡 Don likes to learn about others people hobbys and takes interest in learning about it. He likes showing others that he cares about something, even though Its something totally indifferent to him. For example, he knows lot about art making process from Mikey (Angelo even made him paint with him a couple of times!) even tho he doesn't really likes drawing and/or famous artists. No many people appreciate his work so he wants to show his appreciation to others.

• 💜 He is pretty low empathy most of the time. It's hard for him to relate to others, and can often feel like someone is overreacting. It's also challenging for him to put his feelings "out there". Which often makes him look unloving or unfriendly. And it couldn't be farther from the truth. He loves his brothers even though they bother him most of the time. And he loves April as well (though she never really troubled him much). He never really thinks that his low empathy is a flaw (more often he thinks about it as a blessing) but there rare are moment when he feels helpless because of it. He is glad that his family knows that he truly cares about them (and accepts any effort he puts in to express his feelings, even if it seems small).

• 🧡⭐ I've seen people headcanoning Donny as a baker and honestly I like it a lot. Cooking is Mikeys domain, and it suits him well, as it allows a lot of freestyling and just overall feeling. Baking and pastry making is very calculated and one miatake can ruin the whole thing. It reminds Don of engineering in a sense. Also baking is an easy way to get love and appreciation from his family because, cmon, he just made the most angelic fruit tarts in the whole universe, of course they're going to praise him. It also works as a stress relief. When feeling stumped and/or overwhelmed over a project or a situation he'll make something easy like brownies to get his mind of it.

• 🧡 He's very sentimental. He loves receiving gifts and will cherish and use them (even if he doesn't like it). He still has every "gamers dont die they respawn" Tshirt and every "dont fuck with my brother he was born in october and has autism" mug. Sometimes he REALLY wants to throw something away but god damn it this is painting Mikey did when he was ten and is just five splats of paint and thinking about him somehow finding out and crying about it might destroy him forever.

• 🧡⭐ This bitch reads fanfics, thats it. It started when he was around 13 or smth with Atomic Lass x Reader and now he knows all the fanfic lingo. He still might read something from time to time and writes very long and well written comments (with constructive criticism).

• 🧡 Speaking of which, Don writes perfect sentences while texting. All the correct spelling and punctuation. He also communicates with emojis and gifs like a millenial.

Food, TW: drinking!

• 🧡 He has a rather strong head, you cant make him drunk that easily. But when it finally happens, youre in for a ride. Shutting him up is near impossible, he will talk non-stop but with much less eloquence then while sober. Its extremely easy to make him laugh, so Leo absolutely loves it. He often looses track of what hes saying and starts completely different rant. Overall a chaotic mess. Really fun to witness it at least once. His beverage of choice is either fun cocktails or beer (tho rarely and/or only with some kind of juice because he doesn't like the fizziness on his tongue).

• 🧡 And that takes us to Donatello that hates fizzy drinks. He hates carbonated beverages, no matter if its cola or champagne. The feeling on his tongue and in his mouth makes him really uncomfortable. When there is no other choice but to drink up some bubbless, he leaves it open for as long as he can to get rid of them. His brothers despise him for that.

• 🧡 He doesn't like weird food combos either and is rather picky. When ordering food Don sticks to what he knows not to risk an uncomfortable texture touching his mouth. Texture is the most often reason for him not liking a specific food. Donnys pretty strict to preparing food as well (the way he does a thing is The Correct Way and no other exception is acceptable). Also he puts milk first so his cereal doesn't get soggy.

• 🧡 I feel like he likes fruit juices in boxes and fruit mousses but this is pretty random 🤷

• ❤/🧡 He wears contacts! We've seen little Donny with glassess, so I assumed he wears contacts now. When he knows he will be spending all day in the lair (for example because of an injury) he still has a pair of glassess he uses. And yes, he tapes them to the head. Because he rarely ever wears them, he never came up with a solution for not having ears and needing glassess.

• 🧡 ABSOLUTELY hates smoking. Will go on a rant if he sees someone he knows smoking. He absolutely despises the smell and WILL take it out of someones mouth/hand and throw it away. Appreciates the fun smells of vapes but still hates them. Will call vapers losers (maybe not exacly in these words but he will for sure).

• 🧡 Really good at makeup, but not as good as Leo is (ANOTHER SURPRISE LEO HEADCANON). He spend years perfecting his eyebrows of course. He also wears eyeliner because serving cunt is important even on the battlefield. From time to time you can see his nails painted as well.

• 🧡⭐ While being flustered or simply distracted he stutters a lot, mostly in a way of repeating whole words or parts of a sentence ("Its good because- Its good- Its good because I um- Its good-")

• 🧡 Enjoys taking very long baths, and actually prefers them much more then showers. Can stay underwater for a rather long time as well!! Being fully submerged calms him down a lot and its overall very relaxing for him.

• 🧡⭐ Ive seen a lot of takes that without his battle shell, he is really flexible (due to having a soft shell). And I like the idea. I think, that before sitting infront of a screen (or a desk in general) to do his work for several hours he stretches deeply so his back won't be so sore later. Also a reason to draw Donny in yoga poses and thats always cool.

• ❤ Makes up shit to fuck with his brothers. Like just spreading misinformation and gaslighting them for shit and giggles. Or to get them to leave him alone for a while. Also will gaslight them if they somehow find out that he was lying ("what? you must have heard me wrong then 🙄💅")

• 💜/❤ Loves singing and dancing!!! Aint the best singer (tho I love his songs in the show Im kissing him as we speak) but is a gorgeous dancer! He finds it incredibly fun and feels fabulous while doing it. Also Im pretty sure dancing counts as stimming so add it to the list. Dances solo like 90% of the time but really enjoys dancing in pairs (dances with April a whole lot when they get the chance!).

• ❤ He rarely laughs out loud, but when he does it is loud and messy. A good joke can make him think about it all day and continue laughing for a long time. Not my og take, Ive seen this headcanon before and I love it so so much :3

• 🧡 From all his brothers, he kind of wishes to be human the most of them all. Its not a big big wish, he does think of himself as very unique individual and takes pride of being a mutant. But sometimes while hanging out with April he can get lost in his thoughts of "what ifs". Maybe in the process of making a cloaking accessory.

• 🧡 His handwriting is god-awful. All scribly and fucked up like Doctors writing. Unfamiliar eye would not decipher a word out of it, but Don knows exactly what everything means. But he mostly writes digitally.

• ❤ Dons dislike of hugging is canon, but I do believe he likes being touched on his head and face (head pats, cheek rubs, scratches). He enjoys hand holding when it's appropriate as well.

• 💋 Im headcanoning the boys to go through mating season once a year (except mikey cuz he small) everyone at a different time. It would be similiar to an ovulation but much more horny (with also fever symptoms). Don would be the second after Raph to get it. While in heat he doesn't go feral or anything, but after a few days stops working because he cant focus on his craft. Waves of sudden temperature changes (mostly high heat) with really horny thoughts and hypersensitivity to pretty much everything...yeah not the best work environment. He spends his  most intensive days closed off in his lab or room because he really doesn't want his family to see him like this (the rest of the turtles are in thier rooms during thier mating time as well for the same reason). Also add being possessive while having a SO, and also veeery easy to irritate.

• 💋 Donny takes on a more submissive role while being intimate, even though he loves to be in charge all the time. But he isn't a bottom either, I would put him perfectly in the middle as a switch (more leaning on that sub part tho).

• 💋 His biggest turn on is smell. Like someones natural smell, no perfumes and all. He likes to snuggle in the crook of the neck and take it all in. This becomes cranked up to eleven during mating season, as he absolutely cannot stop sniffing. Would love his significant other to leave him clothes with thier smell on it and sleep and/or snuggle with it.

Might add more later but thats all for now :3💜

Hope you enjoyed it⭐✨

[bozepomagaj]

i was 15 when i watched made in abyss as well, finished the 1st season and promptly never touched it again because of what i learned about the author. From what ive seen from koreans they say that the version shown on korean tv is censored (which sounds plausible) which could mean that the weird parts that we skip may be cut out entirely(?dont quote me on that idk) soobin is on thin ice cause the 2nd season is worse and taeyong is in deep shit because i dont think there is any reason why someone should own the manga😟

I'mma preface this by saying I completely get everyone who couldn't stomach this series. It contains a lot of disturbing topics and at the end of the day, it's a horror series, of course not everyone is gonna be able to handle that, and again that's fine. But I can also say that this arc was surprisingly handled with a lot of care, wasn't fetishized nor glorified just... disturbing. Think of Outlast 2 or the ending of Amnesia:Rebirth.

TLDR:

Second season is way more disturbing but not as sexual in nature and Soobin most likely was talking about the fight scenes when saying how cool it was. And if he wasn't then who knows what he was yapping about, don't know him personally so I can't put words into his mouth unless he says something. As for Taeyong, can't defend him at ALL but calling him a p3d0 would still be a bit too much for me.

AND I wanna add after further investigation, Mingi said he didn't even watch it and instead dropped it because it was too much for him, so there's that.

For a more in depth explanation, here you go:

I'm gonna have to explain the lore in order for you all to understand this FULLY, so heres a summary:

The arc introduces us to Vueko, a victim of trafficking who was thrown into the Abyss with the rest of the now villagers because she wasn't deemed as someone useful. So obviously, when she meets Irumyuui, who has been exiled from her village for not being able to give birth at the age of 8, she immediately takes her in. As a victim, she understands her, and the author explains how, through helping Irumyuui, Vueko is able to heal her own trauma and heal Irumyuui as well. It's extremely well written, and as a fellow victim, there was something so sweet about seeing someone heal with the help of another. Especially when that someone acted like a mother figure. But of course, this is the Abyss. The point of the Abyss is that despite you thinking there's some light at the end of the tunnel, there isn't. Wazukyan takes that away, and Irumyuuis wish backfires (think of it like the wishes in Madoka, you get what you want but at a cost), and she gets turned into a horrible monster. But despite everything, she's happy because to her, she's fulfilled her purpose.

This is the part that I could discuss for hours because to me, it was commentary on how young girls even nowadayas are convinced by others that 'they have to find a man one day' and how having no kids is looked down upon. Especially in 3rd world countries. I could write an entire essay, but we're not here to do that.

I can tell you immediately that none of this was fetishized nor glorified in an yway, it's just supposed to make you feel absolutely empty because again, author is really trying to push that "oh you think you got the good end of the stick? Think again!" The manga if FILLED with situations like this, from Rico's origins to Nanachis arc, the subplot of this entire manga is 'how far are you willing to go to survive?'. Think of it like Fire Punch. Disturbing? Yeah, I mean, even I had to drop it once they began talking about trafficking women. Once again, I am comparing it to Madoka Magica but far more gruesome. Nothing explicit was shown, Irumyuui's private parts were never exposed, and her giving birth was also never shown. Her transformation WAS shown, but it's your basic body horror, like in most Junji Ito works.

SO, obviously if you're not a fan of the horror/seinen genre this is deeply disturbing and fucked but after seeing games like Outlast 2 and Amnesia: Rebirth, I wasn't as disturbed PERSONALLY. Again, recommending this publicly might've not been the smartest idea because you really do have to be into the horror genre to be able to handle topics like that. Even I just had to sit in silence for a couple hours after reading that backstory cuz damn, it hits you right in the feels. And most of the manga past that part just has badass fight scenes and when people praise it, they usually talk about that. From what I saw it was well animated and lots of clips were shared on tiktok, twitter etc. So there's a big chance he was talking about that.

(Examples of why people were hyping it up, even non-fans who had no idea about the series were going crazy because of this fight scene)

Now as for Taeyong... see now the reason I didn't mention him in the original post is because of that specific thing. I love the series and have come across physical copies of the manga but I know damn well I'm not buying cuz I don't wanna be seen supporting the author, purely out of spite. And saying 'oh well maybe he didn't know what the author is like'. Unlike some sites, physical copies DO include the extra chapters which contain stuff like this:

Totally unnecessary, not relevant to the plot and while some say it was added as a "haha funny joke" c'mon now. Let's use our brains. Now, would I call him a p3d0? Absolutely not. Would he be weird for this? To me, yeah. For anyone reading this, it's up for you to decide. I'm only here to answer questions about the series because I see people saying random stuff and making it seem FAR more worse just cuz they saw a couple tags.

[iliveforyouilongforyouvesuvia]

oh god you have foolishly provided me a chance to dump the contains of my soul and heart out in the open through throwing all my favorite songs to listen to and think of Muriel at you in this essay i WILL

ok first i know its on his official playlist already BUT i feel a need to emphasize just how much it is ABsoLUTEly HIS song most of any of them: drumroll please::: 👏Wolf�� by 👏First Aid Kit👏 any muriel simp reading this right now i am pounding you with my brainwaves of intent to go listen to it Right Now and Read those Lyrics and just try to tell me its not literally about him god if could draw id be doing such a cool animatic about it but alas it dies with me anyway WAYWARD WINDS!!! A VOICE THAT SINGS!!!! OF A!! FORGOTTEN!!!! LAND!!!!!!! SEE IT FALL!!!! CHILD OF WAR!!!! OH LEND!!!! A MENDING HAND!!!!!!!!!!! i believe ive made myself clear kbgxkyhfhkvd

https://youtu.be/6PmuuiXgIZE

i dont know if links work on anon but i had to try gjzghfdtomfg our wedding song straight up this is in my language and also like. about a girl but the words are easy to switch around so it fits lol it basically just goes like "you just had to know (to do something? like in a you know how to work me way lmao linguistics hard), that i cant forget you at all/i forgot my mother and father/my sister and my brother but i cant goshdarn forget you" and i dont know i probably cant translate that so it hits right but god its absolutely perfect to me cause like I DIDNT! FORGET HIM!! MC REMEMBERS HIM AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT!!!! EVEN WITH THE CURSE I DONT KNOW LET ME HAVE THIS ITS TOO GD ROMANTIC I CANT BELIEVE HE GOT ME ACTING LIKE THIS AGHGF im sorry for yelling i got excited

NEXT a classic we gotta pepper some hozier on this thing so here goes Nothing Fucks With My Baby cause thats my ultimate serenade for him in my head especially the "if i was born/as a blackthorn tree/id wanna be held by you/felled by you/fuel the pyre of your enemies" part as it perfectly describes my sentiments towards my man: hes my bby i will kill for him👁️👁️

theres Always Forever by Cults, i dont have that much to rant about it i just always think of him when i play it lol theres hozier again It Will Come Back which is on his official playlist too but i play around with perspectives in this one cause i put myself in the "it" position, like. im chasing here bro👀 oh my god i have got to shut up this is entirely tmi

https://youtu.be/mLycEitwJCA

i made a whole post about this one its a whole thing lmao long story short muriel on a murderous revenge quest au MOVING ON

OH i remembered another folky one

https://youtu.be/NrgwIo8GWDI

its SUCH a banger and i love it and it goes like i saw a Wolf a Fox a Rabbit so i just imprinted on it with Muriel Asra and MC respectively cause i dont know i had a phase where i decided mcs spirit animal is a rabbit cause of that scrapped introduction chapter with the labyrinth thing i guess idk im scrambling here ngfsfugc anyway it slaps listen to it and imagine a bangin tavern party and maybe youll calm down /meme

ohh ok we're on a folksy roll thats probably because i just mostly associate old timey sounding songs with arcana in general lmao i mean its like middle ages over there right

https://youtu.be/t9PUlNQOZ8o

this ones in my language again i know annoying but i found a translated version look!!! AND theres a bunch of people correcting the mistakes in the comments too if you were wanting to get deeper into research hkdggjyecb and its white voice style so depending on your taste it might sound silly but yeah this ones got some fitting lines too tying up with Murmur and its so cute and so cheesy and hopeful and sappy and it cheers me up aw

oh my god i wonder if anyone gets this far reading this ever if youre seeing this its probably during a scroll roll slow just enough to make out the letters Hello godspeed you continue on your journey with my blessings cause im noT EVEN DONE YET HAHAHAHAHAA

Motha Motha! Problems! nuff said

https://youtu.be/artn9fErRp8

this ones gonna take explaining gjxgkhpgz but maybe not that much

https://youtu.be/_h9V94b4R2g

i just had a eureka moment one day and so another animatic concept to take to my grave was born lmao but mostly its just playing into Muriels & MCs "nO i cOULd hUrt YoU Go aWaY" + "ayo hold my flower ima kill them real quick" dynamic theyve got heehee like the whole "~Dangerous~ ooh that sounds good ya" bit and also yes im in your house no im not leaving jgdghkfhgd and like i just imagined the song fitting the vibe of the whole murder lucio quest road trip with MC all "yo we Getting this shit DONE dont fuck around w my crew" (The Crew: feral milf & bear with anxiety) AND LIKE i always get to the "party like we all gon die tonight" basedrop part with the whole visual montage of us finding khamgalai and then the graveyard fight and Absolutely Everything Going to Shit and the mood shifting to "well fuck maybe we do not in fact got this" but its good we kick lucio all the way to hell at the end we good💕

https://youtu.be/ZxWiG6UJr0w

MMMMMMM THIS ONEE AWW im literally just scrolling through my endless unsorted playlist to find these gdiyyfgfz this ones just cute it doesnt really relate to anything at all actually when i think about it but its nice so here

https://youtu.be/6FEDrU85FLE

.....nope i got nothing on this one just plop it right in here

oh my god. its over. weve done it. we're free

man i hope those links work. definitely not on mobile lol whatever

Hi! and oh, WOW, this was one of the most delightfully wild essays I've ever read for Muriel and I loved it. Especially describing the dynamic on the trip south as "feral milf & bear with anxiety" XD

I've found that links don't work in asks, even with the media option turned on, so I'll include them below. Thanks for your suggestions, anon, I'll put them on the tag! ^.^

[transxfiles]

hii bailor how are you. have you read or watched anything cool recently. i just started fellow travelers (the book) and it's making me feel so crazy i had to put it down and like go walk around to feel normal again

HIIIIIIII i have been doing so mcuh with work and art and everything so i haven't done much reading since june (i read like 7 books in a row i was doing so well) BUT i have been watching movies bc i found out that the local arthouse theater gives a really good student discount. also i have been hanging out at the video store and befriending the ppl who work the front desk there so i've watched a bunch of fun movies recently. SO!! some movie recs from things i've watched recently

humanist vampire seeking consensual suicidal person (2023)

dark comedy film about a young vampire who cannot hunt for food bc she cant morally justify killing people. after her parents stop hunting for her (finally forcing her to confront her fear of taking human life) she realizes that she might be able to work around her issues when she meets a suicidal teenager who wants her to kill him. genuinely such a sweet coming of age movie. and VERY silly. and beautifully filmed.

latter days (2003)

found the dvd at the local tax evading secondhand bookstore and bought it as a joke but genuinely this movie was very good. how do i even begin to describe latter days. blowjob scene in the first 5 minutes. the "sweet home alabama" screenwriter's passion project that he described as him trying to figure out what his repressed mormon past-self and his young newly out queer self would've done if they'd met. the answer is gay sex. apparently. this is an insane movie. i really enjoyed it but tbh i had the unique viewing experience of watching the movie with my old homoerotic best friend from high school so idk if my opinions on it are valid. they may indeed be tainted by that viewing experience. some insane fucking one liners though.

scream, queen! my nightmare on elm street (2019)

really great documentary for queer horror fans. follows the life of mark patton, the man who is most well-known for being the "first male scream queen" after he starred in nightmare on elm street 2: freddy's revenge. this was a video store rental and did not disappoint! experienced a positive jumpscare when i heard the first voiceover and was like "WAIT!!! cecil gershwin-palmer??????" it is indeed voiced by mr cecil welcometonightvale himself, cecil baldwin 👍

this ask also gives me an excuse to share some of my journal pages about movies i've seen recently so !

(+ bonus photo of my latter days dvd. insane fucking movie. btw fun fact the sticker on this dvd says 3 dollar but i did in fact get it for free bc the bookstore ladies love me. so)

i should add fellow travelers to my TBR probably,,, i need to read again. im always saying that when i haven't read for a while but it's true. i've been reading so many theater related nonfiction books recently for work and school and independent study and stuff but i gotta read A Narrative again soon.

i also need to go insane over A Narrative again and i think that'd do the trick........

rn i'm reading "standby" which is this book about theatrical design theory and it's so SO good but a little dense. i will say the last book that i devoured was andrew rannells' book of essays "too much is not enoguh" i read that in like 3 days and that was me pacing myself. it also got the stamp of approval from my mom who i lent the book to pretty much as soon as i saw her after i finished it.

also read this weird script a while ago called "the last thing i'll ever write" by adam lauver but i really don't know how i feel about that one. it was fun to read in the moment bc reading it was like putting together a puzzle of trying to figure out how i would actually put the show on a stage but idk if i;d recommend it. it IS weird art though and i do love weird art.

ive also been watching falsettos pretty frequently. idk why. its been scratching a theatre itch in my brain.

[lonely-soul-02]

Noel's Letter To My Younger Self - The Big Issue

Quotes that stood out to me from Noel’s personal essay Letter To My Younger Self with The Big Issue magazine.

Note: for those outside the UK, The Big Issue is a newspaper style magazine that offers homeless people an opportunity to earn money. Homeless people stand on the street with an armful of magazines and will shout out to passers-by if they want to buy one, so to get a physical copy, you need to buy it direct from a homeless person selling it. This might provide some context for Noel's political comments.

“I was always a hopeful child if not always a happy one.”

“All I was interested in was music and escapism.”

"If my upbringing taught me anything, it was resilience, I got that from my mum."

“[Peggy’s] bark was fucking ferocious.  Her bite was non-existent. She had very, very bad language.  That’s where I learned to swear, from my mum.”

“When I was a teenager I romanticised everything…I didn’t know it at the time but I was already laying the groundwork for what I would become - an artist, a romantic.”

“[the Irish folk musicians] can make the most miserable subjects sound amazing and almost spiritual. I love that and I love it to this day.”

“Singing is good for the soul. It releases endorphins in the brain, you get high from singing.  It’s why people sing at church.  Football stadiums are the working man’s cathedrals.”

“And then one day Liam just said, you write songs, play us one of yours…It was only when other people joined in on my music and Liam started singing that the light bulb went off.  And it was like, wow, actually, this could be really fucking good.  I can’t articulate what kind of emotion it was. It was not a massive eureka moment, but it wasn’t indifference either.”

Translating Noel: it was a fucking massive eureka moment hearing his brother sing the songs he’d written

“You never knew what mood Liam was going to turn up in and I found the whole thing really fucking stressful.”

“I might step in to press pause on my younger self a few times and say hang on a minute.  Can we just go back a couple of months and fucking fix this?”

“I feel sorry for young people growing up in this country now, Brexit has been a fucking absolute unmitigated disaster…Politics has come to a fucking dead end…I don’t understand what any of them stand for anymore."

“The Tories are going to run this country into the ground and then pass it over to Labour and say good luck with that."

"[the politicians living in London] might want to get on a train once in a while and get outside of the M25 and you'll see how much of a fucking shithole this country is in."

"In the outskirts of Manchester where I was born, everything is boarded up. Everything is gone. This was supposed to be a modern world where nobody was gonna get left behind.”

N.B. It was David Cameron who said nobody would be left behind in a Tory Britain.

“Music of all forms is so fucking middle class now.  The working class musician is at the bottom of the pile now.  That’s why music is shit because youth culture, 99 times out of 100, comes from the working class.  That’s why so many kids now are loving Oasis. Because we were the real deal."

"Part of me is a little bit sad that no-one came to take our place. No one's come along to speak for them [youth] about their lives and their culture and where they're going next."

"Ive got two young sons...and I feel anxious for young guys. They don't really know how to behave with all this woke shit that's now foisted upon everybody. Angry white middle-aged women telling young guys how to behave and all this bollocks. I look at my sons and I have to put them in a headlock sometimes and say, don't worry about these people, just be who you are...They're shackled by the internet and wokeism and by living in a country where fuck all works."

"My 40s were the best decade of my life."

"Every day since I turned 50 has been a fucking ballache."

"If I could have one final conversation with anyone in my life...I'd talk to my ex-father-in-law who passed away recently. I didn't really get a chance to say goodbye . I'ld like to tell him what a great man I thought he was. And I'd also like to talk to my old granny, my dad's mum. I'd like just to say, you'll never fucking guess what happened to me and the other fella."

[planetsnakes]

I get this y'all right. I've never used AI to write an essay and never will

why the hell am i only given three months to write four different essays tho? Like sure some of the problem is my poor time management because I literally just became an adult.

For my dissertation I had to submit 3000 words (all jam pa ked full of fucking research) I had a couple of months to write this essay so what they did was wait until we had two months to show us how to write the essay, on a retreat which I couldn't go to thanks to getting sick. I asked if i could see the example essays another time and this just never happened due to copyright bullshit.

Now I didn't just get sick. I got really sick. 3 days in A&E just to be kicked out because they didn't find the problem. Literally everyone in my life is worried about me im so brave. The uni assured me this would be taken into consideration as long as I could get a doctors note.

I could not get a doctors note. They wont even pick up the phone it's been a month since I submitted this request.

So I spent ages setting up meetings to discuss with people in the uni my problems so they could write me a note. They didn't.

Now it's too far into the year to defer. I will lose so much fucking money if I give up now so here I go!

I completed the essay in like two weeks and I think i got something wrong on the timescale but ive been sick since november on and off getting better and worse.

I cant even remember writing a single essay for my university im fairly certain I'll never use these skills again because the only people who write academic papers are academics and I don't want to be an academic.

I can hear you saying "this isn't the norm"! Everyone goes through this at least once.

I know a lot abt uni life, I know a degree can be taken away if they found out someone cheated to get it no matter how long it's been since they got the degree. I know I didn't work this hard to never know if I could make it on my own merit

Yet there are places where the university could have supported me better. Students are expected to do so much and im gonna be so real the you're only cheating yourself narrative is just annoying. I could do this much better if every time I wasn't rushed because they gave me the resources last minute or constantly told me to check back later.

I'm fortunate enough to always get an extension when I ask thanks to my DID diagnosis & I actually considered myself lucky when I caught covid (yeah I also caught fucking covid I was sick for so long I missed so many lectures that I can't catch up on at all) but like seriously?

I haven't even mentioned the poverty, living conditions, the fact most of us have to work through uni, ow the internet changed the way unis talk to students, covid messing students up or international students and how unfair the system is to them.

I feel this could be a chance at a brilliant conversation about how much stress students are put under because even when we have the skills we don't get the opportunity to use them

[chococookiez]

nightly ptv posting in random places until i see them live (123 days left!!) - not in the greatest place rn as this cold covid continues to fuck with me both physically and mentally so im gonna get really sappy and talk about how significant each album is to me cause i could write a whole essay on this. under cut cause this is gonna be long

collide with the sky was the album that got me into this band. one of my irl friends was reposting tiktoks about them, i heard the hell above transition and instantly ran to them for recommendations cause i was HOOKED. that night i think i listened to them for around 3 and a half hours straight, i think i went through the entirety of collide, selfish machines and afftd (im not sure if i finished afftd or if i looked at misadventures yet) and the only thing that stopped me from continuing the binge was a massive headache that came over me. hold on till may inspired two of my ocs as i imagined them taking the roles of both people in the song, their personalities and how that'd fit into an existing universe we (me and my friends) had. they're still the two ocs i think about the most since i connect them with ptv very often and - yknow, hyperfixation. fun fact: i timed the "im sorry but ive made up my mind" in bulls in the bronx to happen when it hit midnight on my birthday. no clue why, just thought it was cool ig

the jaws of life was the first album i owned physically, accidentally managing to acquire both the cd and the vinyl on my birthday (cd was spotted in hmv, vinyl was my grandma's gift. there's a certain cashier at that hmv that i think happened to be working that day who shares my music taste, they recommended my dad listen to them since he said he got the cd for me lmaoo) the songs on that album were the first ones my parents heard, as my dad's car has a cd player so i popped it in on the way back home. much later on due to some shenanigans involving a shitbox car thats best music source was cds and oh look ptv is the one band my mum didn't mind listening to and i had 2 of their cds (i'll talk about that later), it ended up becoming her favourite album of theirs so we'd very often listen to it on journeys even when she got her car back as it was one of the few things we shared taste wise after i took a dive bomb into rock/metal, so while its my least favourite in terms of songs as im writing this (i don't dislike them!! some of my faves are on there!!), im incredibly sentimental towards it regardless.

misadventures was the second album i owned physically, finding the cd buried in a local record shop (it has the acoustic bonuses on it!!), and i think i can sorta call it my favourite album of all time. almost every single song in that album has been put on loop at least once (i mean that very literally. every single one. except sambuka? idk, just wasn't in my head as much...) it was also involved in the shitbox car shenanigans which might have influenced my love for it too. the divine zero in particular had (and still has tbh) a strong chokehold on me, being a little too relatable for me as i was going through a very dark patch in life that im not sure is entirely over yet actually, though it at least feels like it might be. i still can't listen to that song only one time whenever it comes on, i have to replay it at least once. it was my top song on spotify and i barely even fucking use spotify. can you tell im normal about the divine zero?

tl;dr - ptv are cool. im normal about them. thumbs up emoji.

a flair for the dramatic and selfish machines, while not having a big long story behind them, have been incredibly important to me during The Cold Covid as their songs are the main ones im obsessed with currently. some noteworthy songs off them are she sings in the morning/yeah boy and doll face (ok this one's kinda silly: i found out people found the first song through osu which i hadn't played in ages and these two was some of the first plays i got in a very long time so i currently hold them very close. fun fact: i like rhythm games!), wonderless/chemical kids and mechanical brides (INCREDIBLY calming to me, go tos when i need to lower my energy levels), million dollar houses (very closely connected to one of the two hold on till may connected ocs) and fast times at clairemont high (ok it's just a banger to me. the high notes make me fucking feral and i listened to the song 10 times in a row once. oops)

[justalitlecreacher]

I’m here to prove that Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of Spider-man/peter parker in The Amazing Spider-Man is objectively the best love action adaptation of the character. In this essay I will....(yes this is really happening)

Edit: 10/20/20- i want to indulge myself in spiderman content but finding non mcu spiderman content is exhausting so imma update this instead

TL;DR

Andrew Garfield is my favorite of the 3 Spider-Man actors. TAS’s Peter is more fun and dynamic than the cookie cutter “shy introverted nerd that has a crush on a girl who’s way out of his league” Peter in Tobey Maguire’s movies. I enjoy Tom Holland’s portrayal of the character, but hate the way Disney has written the movies.  I enjoy the characters, plot, and humor of The Amazing Spider-Man far more than the other 2, and i deeply wish we had gotten the third movie with the canon BIder-Man of Andrew’s (and my) dreams.

[DISCLAIMER: I HAVE NOT SEEN THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN 2 OR ANY MCU SPIDERMAN MOVIES OUTSIDE OF CLIPS AND REVIEWS ITS ALSO BEEN A VERY HOT MINUTE SINCE IVE SEEN A TOBEY MAGUIRE MOVIE]

Characterization

  Most arguments against Andrew Garfield’s Spidey( AG’s from now on) begin and ends with “he was a good Spider-Man but a bad Peter Parker”. This references an outdated post comparing all three Spidey actors.(Id attach the image here but i dont want the post to be too long(thats a lie this is so long what am i doing with my life)) The post also claims that Tobey played a good Peter and a poor Spidey; and that Tom is good at both “roles”.(Honestly I think it seems silly that this seems obey the “third time’s the charm” rule but thats just me).  Most people using this seem to be Tobey stans who have forgotten or ignored the rest of the post funnily enough, but the ones that go further into the WHY AG is a poor Peter are also incorrect. This argument also ignores the idea that there can be more than one version of Peter Parker which is blatantly incorrect.  Just look at Into the Spiderverse or the PS4 game; these provide 4(5 if you count the pig) versions of Peter themselves, and that doesnt even include the comics. 

 Arguments that go further in depth claim that the AS Peter is too cool or well liked by his peer to be a “true” Peter Parker. The evidence for this seems to be that Peter has a skateboard.(which what? didnt realize that having a skateboard would instantly make you cool brb guys). Adding to that i dont really see where people get the idea that Peter is popular or well liked. While looking for complaints i found this qutoe from reddit(theyve since deleted it looks like but i’ll add a link in the notes) “He's angsty, pretty socially awkward, has an aptitude for science, and is kind of an outsider. He gets bullied by Flash and he gets his ass kicked after trying to stand up to Flash. He isn't a "cool" person in any way (until the ending, in which he's best buds with Flash, so I'll give you that). While Maguire is more accurate to the 60s comics where Peter in high school is just a fucking loser with basically no friends, in the ultimate comics, Peter is more of the kid who has a small amount of friends, but isn't popular.”. Honesty i fully agree with this because once again, other versions of a character are allowed to exist. You can dislike one version, but its silly to dislike something for not being exactly like another thing.

Ive also heard that Peter isnt “nerdy enough” in this movie which really doesnt make any sense considering the entire plot happens because Peter was looking into some of his parents’ research. If he wasn't interested in looking further into his father’s work what reason would he have to go to Oscorp where he’s bitten by the spider? Why would he have become Dr. Conner’s assistant? If he wasn’t intelligent how did he develop the web shooters?(something that Tobey!Peter doesn't have to do out of plot convenience might i add).  

 Another complaint i see is that the quips he uses in the movie(the first one specifically it seems) makes him seem like an asshole. Honestly thats a fair complaint, but i think its a good bit of characterization; espcially if he does get better about it in the second movie like the internet suggests.The Peter in this movie is a rightfully angsty teen; of course he acts a bit of an ass to criminals(also i feel like its important to mention that he’s like that to criminals? its not like hes being a dick for no reason).

  Compare this with the Tobey Maguire(TM) movies. Like i said i haven’t seen these in awhile but as far as i’m aware TM’s Peter doesn't really do anything particularly nerdy in the film? I may have forgotten something( ok in the scene before he gets bitten he knows a cool spider fact) but he doesn’t have to invent the web-shooters because they came with his powers and he’s only at Oscorp in the first place because it’s a school field trip that he appears to be taking photos for. This Peter does fit the definition of outcast(friendless and bullied for it), but honestly i just dont like him. He’s weird and something about the character makes me feel like i should be a little grossed out every time he looks at MJ at the beginning of the movie.  

   I honestly don’t have any complaints for Tom Holland’s(TH’s)Spidey. Tom is a great actor and from what ive seen i enjoy his portrayal of the character.( He made me cry when i character i actively dislike died).  

Story

  I cant really say much for TAS story. It’s interesting but nothing special really. However, there is one scene that i don’t think i’ve seen anything like since( the closest would probably be the train scene in the original trilogy). 

 The crane scene. Early in the film Peter saves a boy from a car that has fallen off of a bridge, and at the end of the movie this becomes relevant again when it is uncertain that Peter will be able to get to the lizard to stop him in time.(as Peter is already injured and pretty far from the lizard’s location). The boy’s father is then revealed to be a construction worker who recognizes that Spider-man is going to need help to get to the lizard; he remembers how Spider-Man saved his son and organizes the rest of the construction workers to build a path out of crane arms for SM to swing from. All of them are putting themselves in danger by not evacuating, but SM’s actions in the first act of the film motivate them to do what’s right. 

  I love this scene primarily because it highlights something that i think is a really important part of Spider-Man’s character; his connection to the people he saves. SM is often shown interacting with and chatting with the people he has saved after the fact. One comic shows Peter accidentally scaring some bullies and then taking the time to ride the bus to school with them to continue their conversation and educate the students on bullying.( There’s definitely more but this is off the top of my head).

  Another scene in TAS that i love is shortly before the crane scene when Peter is originally attempting to make his way across the city to stop the lizard, and he is shot down by the police. They manage to unmask him before Peter comes to his senses( he had just been shot and fallen pretty far out of the sky in his defense). From there Peter is able to deal with the police while keeping any of them from getting a good look at his face. The one cop he cant take out happens to be Gwen Stacey’s father who had previously had an argument with Peter about Spider-Man(Peter obviously on SM’s side and Mr. Stacey against SM). Peter turns and allows Captain(?) Stacey to see his face. I believe that this is an example of an unwilling identity reveal done right. i really enjoyed this moment because Peter had just shown that he likely could have gotten out of this encounter with his identity in tact as he had just taken down however many men. This implies that it was an active choice on Peter’s end to trust that Captain Stacey would ultimately do the right thing and allow Peter to go fight the Lizard, rather than a final desperate attempt to get away unscathed. Whether or not this interpretation of the scene is correct or not it still gives the character a bit more agency than some versions have done with their identity reveals.

  In Spider-Man 2 Peter starts to lose his powers because he’s having internal conflict about wether or not he should be Spider-Man. Honestly thats kinda neat and i might want to give that a rewatch. As for the one i have seen i don’t have any complaints. I do however prefer the way that Peter was bitten in TAS because it was a result of him poking around where he shouldn’t’ve been rather than him just happening to be standing in the right place for a spider to land on him. 

  Onto TH’s movies; the way Disney has treated Spidey in the MCU is why TH’s is my least favorite version of the character. I feel like too much of the story revolves around Iron Man; Iron Man made Peter’s suit and equipment, Iron Man introduces Peter to the MCU(via blackmail but thats another rant for another annoyingly long post), its Iron Man that “makes” Spidey in this universe rather than Spidey being self-made. In Homecoming(which remember i havent seen outside of clips so bear with me) most of the conflict is cause directly or indirectly by Tony’s refusal or inabilty to communicate with the teenager he’s meant to be mentoring

 For one the entire incident with the ferry could have very easily been avoided had Tony bothered to communicate with Peter enough to tell him that the situation was being taken care of. On top of that at the moive’s climax Peter is shown trying to get in contact with Happy(from what ive picked up isnt he a chauffeur? like idk his deal i just know he’s someone Peter got pawned off onto after Civil War). Peter even goes as far as to somehow hack into Happy’s phone(i think thats what happened it was a weird tech thing that shouldve been a red flag that the call was important though) but instead of listening; Peter is ignored. If this was a different kind of movie Peter literally could have died and itd be the fault of Happy and Tony like..... A large portion of conflict comes from characters being incompetent and not communicating and thats just poor storytelling.

Before this turns too much into an anti mcu rant id also like to say that the way they did Civil War was really dumb considering that Peter defects to Cap’s side in the comics, but whatever.

 Also i loathe the way they handled the identity reveal at the end of Far From Home. With MCU movies most people know to expect an end credits scene by now, but typically that scene is not important to understand what’s happening in the films; they just aren’t important. Putting an identity reveal here makes it seem significantly less important than it is. On top of that i dislike their use of J Jonah Jameson for this scene.

  JJJ is a character who has been repeatedly shown to have a genuinely good heart. All of his anger comes from a place of love for his city(he even says this hemself in the ps4 game when May writes in to tell him that he needs help). He hates Spider-Man because SM reminds him of the masked man who killed his wife; JJJ has never been able to get past that( and Peter’s antagonism of him definitely doesnt help) However, JJJ has been shown to care for people; he has a son who he often brags about, and one comic shows that JJJ is paying Peter for “amateur” quality photos because he knows that Peter is having a hard time and “just need some help”. JJJ has even learned Peter’s identity before and kept his secret for him(seriously though i cant remember the name of the comic but its defiantly worth the read), and in the original trilogy when Goblin threatens JJJ he claims that he doesn’t know who sends in the photos of Spidey because he does it via email( this is a lie). The MCU will have a very difficult time convincing me that JJJ would ever out a teenager’s identity and put him in danger like that. It goes too far against his character.(this could be hypocritical of me to say considering how i just insisted that multiple versions of a character can exist but whatever ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) 

This is accidentally turning into an MCU rant but id also like to say that i hate the lack of a TH!Spidey origin movie because it gives you no motivaion for Peter becoming SM or explanation of his powers; most people will know these things but if youre unfamiliar with the character its bound to be confusing(and im a sucker for origin movies)

[lit--bitch]

Current-Reads (20/04/2020 - 26/04/2020) 🍓🐢

(Disclosure: I don’t know anybody I’ve been currently reading this week. 😊)

Adding the preface again here: every Sunday without fail I throw up the freshest literature and photography I’ve read over the week, sometimes it’s a book, sometimes it’s a piece I saw in a magazine or an online zine, sometimes it’s something I saw on social media, etc. Sometimes I add ‘RECOMMEND’ next to a few of the titles, but that’s not to say I don’t recommend all of them, I just love some pieces more than others. Not everything will be everybody’s cup of tea, yanno, c’est la vie. And any titles that you see in bold are hyperlinked so if you click or tap them they’ll direct you straight to the source… or shopping basket. 

This week I’m gonna throw in a red herring and tell you about something I’ve been watching as well as what I’ve been reading, because I think it’s really cool and definitely appropriate for the age we’re living in at the moment. 

So I’ve been reading: Susan Sontag’s As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh (Diaries 1964—1980) which was edited by her son, David. I also read an interview on Granta from March between Rachel Long and Morgan Parker. I’ve also tucked into a couple pieces on Fence, Lexi Welch’s ‘Astroturf’ and Anthony Michael Morena’s ‘The Whale’. I also saw Cecelia Knapp’s poem in Bath Magg Issue Three (but the whole issue is an absolute smacker, it’s great). Last but not least, I’m up to episode 5 of a brand new thing called The Midnight Gospel. It is crazy good. And it’s on Netflix right now. 

***

Cecilia Knapp, ‘I Used To Eat KFC Zingers Without Hating Myself’, Bath Magg Issue #3: I really loved the whole of Issue Three, I guess I was quite struck by this particular poem for its “staccato-ness”. This poem is buttered with present-day references. But they’re not necessarily about creating a familiar environment. Rather the object of familiarity is found within the assemblage of places, snacks and thoughts, all of which compound the grief ‘I’ is experiencing. The ‘I’ ruminates on life’s banality and their personal insecurities in living banality: ‘I need a thigh gap. I use emojis / to avoid conflict. Worry I’m a gentrifier. Watch docs about murdered women’. The vapidity is funny. The pain is not. The insecurities deepen. Your body, your life, continues the ache of day-to-day routine, and finds no resolution in the things which may or may not stand to comfort oneself when ravaged by loss. The poem feels quite loose, and disinterested. It’s a sore poem, but its array of references make it colourful. It sort of reminded me of Édouard Levé’s work a little bit? But if Édouard Levé had been a pop culture fanatic chewing HubbaBubba bubblegum on the London Overground.  Bath Magg is a pretty exciting new magazine, (been around just under a year I think?) and they’ve published a lot of great writers, many of whom are emerging and I’ve spotted some quite established peple in there too. Kudos to their rubber ducky logo. It’s run by Mariah Whelan and Joe Carrick-Varty. 

In Conversation with Morgan Parker and Rachel Long, Granta Magazine: I deeply love Morgan Parker’s work, she’s, in my opinion, the master of titles. I can’t think of anybody who titles their work as well as Morgan Parker does. And I love the depth of honesty and charisma in this interview. Like yeah, it appears to be a generic Q/A but, it genuinely feels like a conversation, and it’s welcoming and unpretentious. Rachel Long asks some penetrating questions, and Morgan’s answers are so detailed and self-aware. Most of the discussion revolves around the action of writing poetry in general and where does that impulse arise from, but they do discuss Morgan’s latest collection Magical Negro which came out February last year. It’s a narrative on black womanhood, on micro-aggressions and reoccuring violence, it’s about breaking down white perceptions of blackness, and dissolving those projections. What I love about Morgan Parker is she’s tackling this fucking idiot thing where (mostly) white people think she’s attempting to represent all black women in her writing, which is, by Morgan’s own admission, impossible. Her work is a duty to herself, to the background she’s lived and lives, and to unpack that discourse in her own way. And if it resonates, then great! I felt all this was inherent in the interview and only adds to my respect for her, and to Rachel for being such an attentive interviewer. BTW Rachel Long has a debut collection coming out this July, My Darling from the Lions.

Anthony Michael Morena, ‘The Whale’, Fence Portal (Streaming) (RECOMMEND): I can’t tell you how much I adored this beautiful mass of whale and word. It’s an essay which references the American Natural History Museum’s Blue Whale model. The writing is thick with feeling and fat with concern. It blends monologue, memoir. It’s non-fiction and documentary. It’s elusive, enigmatic, fragmented. It’s like broken biscuits and blubber. To me it felt like a note on the offences of climate change, the emotional response and grief as we bystand erosion and corrosion, the loss of life, and the urge to merge something back together as it dissolves and fragments before our eyes. It’s as personal as it is public. A gorgeous and complex piece.

Susan Sontag’s As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh (Diaries 1964—1980) (RECOMMEND): I felt so afflicted reading Susan Sontag’s diaries, because y’know, it’s the equivalent of invading an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb. Like, leave people alone. At the same like, this woman. These diaries are still shaping me, and each section leaves you with the weirdest aftertaste. Her personality permeates through every detail, every line-break, every reference and articulation of feeling. You learn so much, you gain so much from her perceptions and observations. How do I contain Susan Sontag? How do I describe these diaries? Not at all. Just buy it. 

Lexi Welch’s ‘Astroturf’, Fence Portal (Streaming) (RECOMMEND): My eyes locked onto this piece and just didn’t really stop reading. Lexi’s voice is enamouring and hypnotic. It’s so violent too. You’re lunged into friction burns and sports injuries, time and progression, the tensions between collectivity and individuality, family and sexuality, or as Fence put it, ‘lesbian eros’. This piece felt acidic. At times you can’t tell if the ‘I’ is indifferent or hurting to the point of numbness. It straddles so many different thematics, and breaks down a lot of conventions pertaining to the “ideal experience” of family relationships and team work. The resolution seems to be that in spite of people, our collectivity is defined by our collective solitude. This essay kicked me around a football field. It takes a good few repeated reads to appreciate its kaleidoscopic shifting, but it’s definitely one of my favourites.

The Midnight Gospel, from Pendleton Ward and Duncan Trussell, Netflix: (RECOMMEND) So the other day my friend Ben linked this to me and I had seen the trailer ages back and thought “Oh yeah I really wanna watch that”, but just forgot. After his reminder, I started watching it and ever since I’ve been saying to loads of other friends “Have you watched ‘The Midnight Gospel’ on Netflix?” because I’m d y i n g  to talk about it with everybody. 

I literally can’t categorise this “TV show” to you. It’s like if animation had a baby with a philosophy podcast and then put that baby onto an IV drip of psychedelics. It’s this swarm of different stimuli which you kind have to zone in on and absorb individually and yet somehow collectively. 

So like, “Clancy” is a spacecaster who sets up “spacecasts” (podcasts) with creatures from other simulated worlds and he interviews them. But when Clancy transports himself into these worlds, it’s not like they’re sat down on some cream sofa with two glasses of water like it’s animated Oprah. No, his interviewees are like in the middle of fighting off a zombie apocalypse or meditating on a mountain or trying to find and save their lost lover. And Clancy just joins them on the journey and interviews them about their “specialism”. These are real people that are being interviewed like, the first episode is with Dr. Drew Pinker. And when you’re watching it, you think that the animation is totally separate to the conversation exchange the characters are having, but that’s not true. They have intersections, they have meaning. It only becomes obvious that it has meaning right at the end of each episode, but if you lock on you’ll see it’s all relevant throughout. 

One of my friends was like “Oh I might stick that on tonight and have a joint” and I was like, don’t fucking get high when you’re watching this because it’s already intense enough as it is, like you know that Pendleton Ward and Duncan Trussell have felt some real shit to create this absolute rare jewel. In my opinion, you don’t need cannabis to appreciate these discussions. But if you wanna do it, then hey it’s a “free country”. And it’s not as though there’s a serious, central core plot like there is with Rick & Morty, I mean there is a kind of overarching plot but it’s not always integral. Like ultimately we’re invested in Clancy’s story but also all the stories of all the other people that come his way. There’s multiple plots, there’s multiple dimensions and ways of seeing. It’s a programme which delivers on multiplicity, which manifests itself in everything and everyone we see and know and touch and hear, etc, etc. 

This production articulates some of the revelations that psychedelics can give you. Psychedelics don’t make you see the world literally like these animations do, but the sensations of the animation are reminiscent of an acid trip’s oscillating moods and sensitivities. It’s really cool, and it’s very poignant, and it’s my new favourite show to watch. And what’s so great about it is that, it requires multiple watches in order to really absorb everything in its entirety, so it’s a series you can just keep going back to even after you’ve seen them all. It’s re-watchable. Just fundamental goodness all round. Best way to indulge in it is with ice cream. 🍨

***

So that’s it for this week, next Friday’s review is Annie Ernaux’s A Girl’s Story translated by Alison L. Strayer, published with Fitzcarraldo Editions. 

Stay safe and well as always, my little caramels. 💁🏽

[gotatext]

TASK OO1 / OOC SURVEY.

[kermit voice] hallo.... its me 

YOUR ALIAS & NICKNAMES — nora

AGE — 23

TIMEZONE — gmt

PREFERRED PRONOUNS — she/her

MBTI — enfp-infp border cos im an introvert who Masquerades as an extrovert :)

HP HOUSE — i spent 10 yrs of my life thinkin i was gryffindor.... to find out.... huffle....puff...... 

ARE YOU A STUDENT? WHAT DO YOU STUDY? — i fuckin wish! being a student was dope af i got stressed about essays like once a month and apart from that i was just chillin, surrounded by really intelligent people every day n livin it up on the party scene. adult life fucking sucks no one wants to have fun cos we all work fuckin tonnes of hours so we can afford to eat and get paid peanuts xx

ARE YOU ENJOYING IT? — im really afraid of bein one of those jock types who peaked in high school but i deff peaked in uni like 100% i was way more interesting 2 years ago

LINKS TO OTHER ACCOUNTS & SOCIAL MEDIA — im not showin u my instagram bc im a fuckin embarassment but this is pinterest , this is my personal blog, this is my writing / 1x1 blog i never use any more n this is my trash talking twitter where i mostly just cry about timothee chalamet and bash the tories. 

DISCORD USER — kristine’s forehead vein#8664

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE FICTION GENRE? — i dont read fanfiction much but when i do u can be sure it’s slow burn angsty enemies to lovers mutual pining heart attack every time one of them accidentally brushes the other’s hand

TOP FIVE FAVOURITE FILMS — suspiria (2018 luca guadagnino version rogue i kno but i prefer the remake), the lobster, before sunrise, baz luhrmann romeo + juliet, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind,  thoroughbreds (REC!! so underwatched pls watch it. compelling female characters), hunt for the wilderpeople (also so underwatched), swiss army man, call me by your name, atonement, moonrise kingdom, trainspotting, the florida project. i rlly like films ok

A BOOK YOU FEEL “CHANGED” YOU? — the song of achilles by madeline miller n also fen by daisy johnson

A MOVIE YOU THINK ABOUT OFTEN? — booksmart cos its fuckin dope

WHAT IS YOUR SIGN? — libra

ARE YOU INTO ASTROLOGY? —  i like to pretend im super invested in it mostly to anger my friends but tbh.... i just use it as a rough guide for character creation.... its fun but i dnt .... fully invest in what it has to say..... altho i am the most unbalanced n indecisive bitch on earth so i guess they got that right !! i just live to please baybeyy!

WHAT PLATFORMS HAVE YOU ROLEPLAYED ON? — tumblr for about 8 year (omg) n before tht facebook..... i was very embarassingly in a twilight rp..... i wrote jane..... i also rped as a scene kid oc n when i was like 12 i was on some weird forum harry potter roleplay where i basically played a self insert with georgie henley as the fc......

WHAT OTHER HOBBIES DO YOU HAVE? — i used to have so many hobbies but now i jst lie in my bed staring at the ceiling. but before i was workin like a dog i loved reading, writing, acting in theatre productions..... going out on the town getting bevved..... big druggy EDM nights in warehouses tht probably weren’t liscenced for tht many ppl..... gigs... costume-design and making, spoken word poetry, acrylic painting n rollerskating but my sister broke my skates abt two years ago in vengeance and i’ll never forgive her that fuckin bitch

HAVE ANY PETS? IF SO, TALK ABOUT THEM! — no my landlord is a fascist

IS THERE A TV SHOW YOU RECOMMEND A LOT? — i’ll never stop reccing euphoria!! also i was pleasantly surprised by looking for alaska!! but i also rlly like bob’s burgers, parks and rec, good omens.... black mirror, n sharp objects. lovesick on bbciplayer (n netflix i think) is also rlly fun

ANY SHOWS YOU LIKE SOME MIGHT BE SURPRISED TO HEAR THAT YOU DO? — maybe love island, idk if i talk abt that much bc i am ashamed but i am so obsessed with it. i even got the love island game n got so invested in my fictional relationship w bobby tht i had to delete it

WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ? WOULD YOU RECOMMEND IT? — god god... i haven’t finished a book in ages.... i recently started reading milkman by anna burns, the bees by laline paull and everything under by daisy johnson.... bt the last book i read cover to cover was probs circe. defs read it. feminist and witchy

CURRENTLY READING? — i jst said this but the bees, everything under and less so milkman cos im finding milkman a bit tough

LAST FILM? REC IT? — i watched ladyworld the lord of the flies all-female remake n even maya hawke could not save it.... dnt get me wrong from an art film point of view i loved it but it felt a bit underdeveloped n a level media studies for me..... apart from tht?? the runaways (yorkshire film not released yet at a preview screening) and threads (also a yorkshire film from the 80s about nuclear apocalypse)

THREE MOVIES YOU NEED TO WATCH — portrait of a lady on fire, i work at an independent cinema n we recently had a preview screening and everyone said it was SICK, uhhhh short term 12, n the new eliza scanlen movie babyteeth

WHAT MOVIE DO YOU THINK YOU’VE SEEN THE MOST TIMES? — madagascar because when i was 12 my parents bought me a little television with a dvd player in it for my birthday and madagascar was the only dvd i owned for like..... the first two years of havin the absolute luxury of a tv in my room so i just used to watch it all the time n i now basically know the script inside out

WHAT ALWAYS PUTS YOU IN A GOOD MOOD? — nothing, life is pointless n i hate fun, let me rot in peace

WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE MUSICIAN / BAND? LIST IF THERE ARE MORE THAN ONE. — ughhh god probably lcd soundsystem. gorillaz, the streets, tame impala, talking heads, soft hair, i also love lizz tho n also angry twangy guitar girl bands like girlpool, courtney barnett, best coast, cherry glazerr,

WILD NIGHT OUT OR QUIET NIGHT IN? — quiet night in my party days are over i cant even be bothered to go to the shops if its past 4.30pm and dark these days

ANY PHOBIAS? — clowns n rats

DO YOU LIKE BUGS? — absolutely not

BIRDS? — yes but not if they fly in my face

ARE YOU A CAT OR DOG PERSON? BOTH? — i love both i want one 

BIGGEST PET PEEVE? — tory middle aged boomers who treat me like actual shit on their shoe because i work in the service industry like thats my choice and their poor economic decisions didnt mean i have to do a shitty job to afford to live bcos of austerity n cuts to arts funding meaning i cant get a job writing unless i self-fund :)))

FAVOURITE THING ABOUT THE RPC? — that everyone ive met through rp is a fuckin LAFF

TOP TEN FAVE FCS TO USE? — god .... diana silvers, timothee chalamet, margaret qualley, kristine froseth, froy gutierrez, zendaya, elle fanning, astrid berges frisbey, hunter schafer, leonardo dicaprio

FIVE YOU LIKE WRITING AGAINST? — herman tomeraas, hunter schafer, saoirse ronan, timothee chalamet, froy gutierrez

FAVOURITE TYPE OF FOOD? — linda mccartney 1/2pounder mozzarella veggie burgers, sweet potato wedges, tomato soup, mozzarella sticks, brownies

WORST FOOD? — green things like broccoli n sprouts gross. baked beans cos as a kid ppl used to do baked bean baths for comic relief / red nosed day a lot n i thought when they were finished in the baked bean bath they just put all the cold beans back in the tin. actually anything small that moves around on your plate. peas. spaghetti. sweetcorn. i dont like small things i cant control.

DO YOU PLAY VIDEOGAMES? IF SO, WHAT ONES AND ON WHAT PLATFORM DO YOU PREFER? — last year my housemate had an xbox n i went through a phase of obsessively playin fable 3 it was amazing. i had like 5 husbands and 3 wives and loads of kids but they all ended up leavin me cos i spent so much time out doing quests neglecting them

ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE WITH THE TAG? — this

LASTLY, HOW DID YOU FIND US? — im one of those bitches who was in this grp all the way back when it was swipe... so quirky and original!! i knew the band before u! anyway im goin now this has been sufficiently embarassing..... i am lame

[anarchistsuggestion]

hey, vaccinate your kids you jerks!!!

thanks for coming to my essay! now that i have your attention, i think we should stop talking about anti-vaxxers like theyre all backwards hyper-religious dumbasses. like, im frustrated too, and i agree that "personal/religious reasons" should not allow someone to keep their kids unvaccinated. furthermore, as an autistic person, i despise the myth that vaccines cause autism. i especially hate that it scares people into avoiding vaccines, because theres nothing wrong with me.

but ridiculing these people will only make the problem worse, and here's why: i think that a lot of anti-vaxxers and their communities are used to feeling like the most important aspects of their cultural identities are universally mocked or demonised (im not qualified to say whether these feelings reflect reality in every case, but either way im just talking about feelings, ie, what people think we believe about their culture). for instance, my only knowledge of amish people comes from jokes ive seen others make about them. yes, none of these jokes were very serious, and its easy for me to laugh at them because im not amish, but despite my low empathy i can understand that it just feels bad to hear a whole bunch of jokes about something important to you. i'll get back to this point in a moment.

anyway, i bring up the amish because in 2014, there were measles outbreaks in some amish communities in Ohio. and i think that a lot of the people who dont vaccinate their kids are used to being ridiculed for their "weird" or "new age" or "hyper-religious" or "unchristian" lifestyles, so they just see our concern as more of that mockery. we all sound the same to them, and cant you see why?

"ughh all these people ignoring science and being stubborn about vaccines because their church said--" you sound like one of those atheists. if you cant say anything productive, please stay out of the discussion. why do you act like ridiculing people will change their minds? we should be reaching out, instead.

we need to make the effort to approach anti-vaxxers in a way that distinguishes us from those who only converse with them to mock them.

i want more people to understand that the best way to change someone's mind when they're defensive is by listening. you need to be willing to accept whatever they might rant about, and respect that, even if their fears seem ridiculous, even if their fears are rooted in ableism, their fears still terrify them. thats why theyre called fears. you can validate someone's feelings of anxiety and confusion without validating their bigotry, and you must be willing to accept that this is work. this is difficult. it's much, much harder than yelling your opinions. it's exhausting, and sometimes it doesn't even pay off. sometimes you just can't convince somebody, and you have to be able to accept that.

if this seems too hard for you, i have good news: you do not have to do it. this kind of thing is not for everyone, and it's okay if you just don't want to. this doesn't have to be your responsibility.

i only ask that you stop making things worse by (performatively, in the case of yall who arent in danger of dying/losing a loved one to a preventable disease) mocking anti-vaxxers, because we are the ones who need something from them. we are asking them to face their fears (which were sometimes instilled in them very early in their childhood) for the good of humanity. i don't know about all of you, but i'd be hesitant at best to face even my third worst fear (spiders) for the sake of strangers who regularly mock my culture and heritage, and i know for a fact that most spiders cannot harm me!

this is natural. this is human. it is easy to dismiss things you dont understand, and it's even easier to dismiss them when all the scientific evidence agrees with you. however, your evidence does not make these people's experiences and fears less real for them. it does not lessen the effect their fear has on their choices. knowing that a tarantula won't hurt me if i follow certain guidelines will not stop me from shaking and having a breakdown if i think too hard about touching one. knowing that nothing bad would happen doesn't motivate me to go over to the science building at my college and ask to hold their fucking tarantula.

there are no shortcuts here. if we want anti-vaxxers to accept vaccines and stop putting so much effort towards keeping their children unvaccinated, we have to convince them that they don't need to be afraid of vaccines. we need to actually address their concerns. telling them their fears are ridiculous is just not convincing no matter how much scientific evidence you have. this discussion has become too performative. people just tell anti-vaxxers to vaccinate their kids, and they dont bother to address the fear that motivates their opponents. they don't care that they're asking people to trust a yelling internet stranger with their child's health.

it is inconsiderate to demand things from people without stopping to think about what you're asking for. please think about it from their point of view. if vaccines were dangerous, and they vaccinated their kids, then anything bad that happened to their kids due to the vaccines would be their responsibility. and remember, these people have not been given a convincing reason to believe vaccines are harmless. okay? they do not want to be at fault for their children getting hurt. yes, they are wrong. yes, they are frustrating. yes, they are endangering immunocompromised people like my dad, but there is a huge difference between being malicious and being misguided. please do not treat them like they set out to hurt you.

also? stop telling them to care about other people when you don't care enough about them to respect that they're doing their best with the resources they have. stop saying "i dont know how to explain to you that you should care about other people" when you really just want them to magically stop being scared. maybe you say it out of genuine frustration and bewilderment, but when everyone is saying it, it comes across like a smug 'gotcha!' phrase that excuses you from spending more energy on the debate. you can just say youre tired and stop.

i am trying to explain to you that you should care that these people have felt scammed/hurt by the medical industry enough times that they feel justified in risking the health of their whole family (assuming they even think vaccines work). you should care that theyve never been given a convincing reason to trust remedies promoted by rich strangers who make claims that sound too good to be true. the government has promoted harmful things to underprivileged people before, like milk (it took me a half hour to sift through unrelated stuff about soy milk to confirm this, so i'll go ahead and link my source). it is logical to mistrust an industry that operates for the profit of people youve never met. not everyone trusts the FDA to keep the pharmaceutical industry in check, and it's actually pretty smart to rely on direct accounts from people you know personally when you aren't sure how well something actually works, and you dont trust the ones selling it to you.

with that in mind, talking to people is probably the best way to tackle this issue, but many of you haven't bothered to compile introductory information about vaccines. you havent bothered to present these resources in a way that doesn't ridicule people who are scared. i am trying to explain to you that you shouldn't debate with people if you won't treat them like humans. i am trying to explain to you that "you dont actually care about others" is a hurtful and manipulative sentiment, and when you say it to people who are trying their best, you become part of the problem. you reinforce their mistrust. i am trying to explain to you that trusting doctors doesnt make you morally superior.

put yourself in their shoes for a moment. imagine that someone comes up to you and makes it clear that they think the choices you've made as a parent are ridiculous. they make claims about your child without offering proof, or the only proof they offer also mocks you and people like you (or they just tell you to "google it"). furthermore, they tell you that unless you give in, something bad will happen to their own children, and it will be your fault.

this is manipulative. even if you are correct, it is manipulative. demanding that someone treat their child in a way that they consider harmful is just ridiculous and i don't know why you expect people to listen to you. do you expect this to be easy? do you honestly believe that if someone isn't converted within minutes, they're just being stubborn? do you think these people know the truth, and only persist out of spite?

these questions are necessary, because many of you talk about anti-vaxxers as though the answer is 'yes.' there is a difference between being correct and treating people right. please be more aware of that line in the future, and do your best not to cross it.

oh, and by the way, if i see any of you using this year's measles outbreaks as an excuse to be hateful towards jewish people, i will block and report you. antivaxxers usually arent malicious, and if you perceive orthodox jewish antivaxxers as being worse than other antivaxxers, you need to rethink your beliefs. they arent rejecting vaccines just to hurt you. maybe theyre tired of being demonised and blamed for everything from climate change to unemployment to dead kids*, and theyre unwilling to trust random people with something as important as the health of their children when a lot of us have never bothered to listen to their struggles. (* ive seen a whole lot of people saying things that border on blood libel without quite involving blood during these discussions, so can we all agree to be careful not to do anything that resembles that shit now that ive provided a handy link about what it is? thanks)

lastly, all of this criticism of anti-anti-vaxxers is very easy for me to say because i have less of a personal stake in the issue. i know it must hurt in a way i can't currently understand to lose someone to a preventable disease. if i have made anyone feel dismissed or invalidated in this essay post, i'm sorry for doing so, and i want to make it clear that it is okay if you hate anti-vaxxers. i know their fear has hurt you, and i wouldn't ask you to pretend otherwise. i dont want to make any of you feel like you shouldn't talk about your experiences and fears. i'm just asking that, before you hit the post button, you read through your post and edit out anything manipulative or guilt-trippy. your contributions to this conversation are valuable, and i want the people youre trying to convince to be able to read them without feeling like they have to defend themselves instead of listening to you. the culture around this debate has become almost hostile, and while we dont all need to work directly with anti-vaxxers to make it better, we do all need to agree to stop making it worse.

[hakuteeth]

Harry Styles and the Concept of Gender

I have a lot of thoughts and I wanted a place to lay them all out so I’m sorry this is gonna be probably indecipherable but disclaimer I’m not saying harry is a gender he’s not this is just really exploring the concept of freedom with or without gender and expression of oneself thru clothes not so much about identity but the wider concept of the binary based around my own interpretations of it. A femme take on femininity thru a white man’s exploration of gender if u will so if u dont like that i dont care

also.... ive never taken a queer studies class but I love sociology so..... all these connections I make are from my own knowledge and arent meant to box harry in...

Gender defined from a sociological standpoint is based around how we behave and what actions we are expected to perform and for the most part a little give and take people can stick within this binary as it can be safe and comfortable and black and white. What’s interesting is when people step outside the norm and are more willing to explore that grey area that most people simply dont understand. This is interesting because it extends beyond clothing or makeup as most people don’t realize a man wearing makeup does not subvert gender because the gender binary is also inherently shackled to the concept of heteronormativity just as a woman completes a man, the soft counterpart to his masculine ways. 

Harry Styles and the concept of gender started for me with a dress. It never quite occurred to me that harry would wear a dress and reading the rolling stone article that harry had worn or would ever wear something quite as feminine as that. I think for a lot of people solo Harry Styles was a strange and beautiful uncharted territory of course many people came to suspect the new age rock n roll harry had to usher in but what’s fun is not so much deconstructing Harry as a soft rockstar but the idea that Harry has a femininity to him something I never saw until I noticed it everywhere in his clothing and even more interesting his actions.

The most interesting thing is Harry doesn’t quite believe in a gender binary when it comes to fashion possibly attributed to Alessandro Michele’s take on gender or perhaps the work of a really good stylist but I think if anything Harry also believes in that mission that gender could be redefined within the confines of fashion.

Harris Reed described his vision and Harry ended up wearing five different looks on his world tour introducing a student and relatively unknown LGBT designer to the masses and Harris has went on to say that Harry completely understood the connection clothing gender and sexuality have all shared since the dawn of fabric and it’s interesting when one also thinks about the time and effort this collaboration took considering Harris designed all these looks himself over a very short period of time. Harry wasn’t looking for somebody to dress him as what we normally see male popstars wear onstage, he was looking for a risk.

Gender like most things is more complicated than somebody might think. It extends beyond putting on a funky print before leaving the house it’s about the mannerisms, the actions, the behavior of the individual and the overall societal imprint. And Harry’s always been a bit softer than most. He’s always displayed his self as overwhelmingly kind to the point it makes my teeth hurt sometimes and he’s never overbearing. He’s quite quiet and subtle for somebody who can wear a loud pink custom gucci suit. 

Since 2013 he never shied away from looking or being a bit more feminine and he’s always exuded this calming energy or at least I believe if he had an aura it would definitely be soft pink. During his 2018 tour, every night he would tell fans that they were allowed to be whoever they wanted be in that room and it was all about fostering this environment where crying is manly and babies could choose their own gender  (which he said twice on tour). Also something that sticks out quite vividly is when a fan told him his mermaid has saggy boobs and he replied that everybody should love themselves. 

“We are men!” Then he prances away. That’s always how I picture Harry now him using his kilt to curtsey or him twirling like a ballerina on a football pitch. The concept of gender has extended more beyond fashion and into comfortability but also exploring what somebody may not be comfortable with at first but finding they quite like it. 

When men wear nail polish or when you gift your boyfriend flowers for valentines day. It all lies inside the confines of gender. Subverting gender doesnt mean men should wear makeup but it encompasses a vast majority of actions AND behavior or as I like to call it being a bit softer than most. Men have a tendency to bathe themselves in aggression and to assert their dominance and I’m not saying Harry can’t be masculine as well. One of his favorite hobbies is boxing but even then I’d argue that’s less about aggression and more about control and analytical power where taking down an opponent requires more than brute strength.

I believe there’s power in being feminine and there’s power in owning yourself, 100%, and what’s interesting is Harry is the one who taught me that. I think a lot of people see Harry as this mysterious figure and while he is more private than some people would like I also think he’s shown us a lot about himself and it all depends on us to draw our own conclusions. The thing is I don’t like Harry cause I think he subverts gender or I think he’s feminine. I like him cause he’s authentically himself without any concern for others and he’s different. I’m not a man I present as a woman so I’m subjected to an oppressive environment. I am wary at people who are unwilling to learn who are afraid of stepping outside the box ANY box and hold themselves so tight they can barely move. I see Harry as somebody who moves freely.

I could make an entire essay on Harry and the concept of heteronormativity but I’m going to stick with toeing the line on gender for right now but I do believe a lot can be said for cis heterosexuality and attending a harry styles concert. It felt a bit like a pride parade which was interesting how somebody who essentially had for years this show of heterosexuality somehow ended up being followed by lesbians and bisexual women as well as many gay and trans men fans. 

Well it’s not that hard to see. Harry’s concerts are more celebrations of being yourself and I’ve never seen Harry ever discourage that or shy away from defending his fans to him we are a group of strong men and women and girls are the future. Once again bringing the concept back to the gender binary, girls can do anything despite being told they are only good at some things.

I don’t think this vision of Harry is a product of fan pressure. I think Harry genuinely supports things like LGBT rights and I think he believes in it just as much as we do I can’t ever imagine him not doing so. He made pride merch and wasn’t getting a cent of it because it was all donated to an LGBT charity to benefit youth in schools. If we’re talking in the ways in which Harry explores gender the number 1 community for that has always been the LGBT community historically we tend to fuck around with the concept of gender so it’s not surprise to me that’s a community Harry advocates for. 

Harry’s solo career from the beginning has been about reinventing masculinity. He wore a women’s suit for his album photoshoot and bathed in flowers and pink lemonade for his album cover and though his album had some rock n roll tropes he’s never shied away from talking about women’s rights or lgbt rights. And even within One Direction Harry never felt like just another man to me. He’s somebody special. Not afraid of vulnerability, not afraid of being called gay, not afraid of expressing who he is thru clothing. 

To me it’s always felt like Harry wanted people to know this is who I am you can take me or leave me. Harry I feel is somebody willing to take risks putting himself in a dress in a booklet as tour merch. Saying we’re all a little bit gay on tour. Like moths to a flame outsiders are drawn to him at least I was. 

To me Harry Styles is carving out a place for himself in a world that can be very rigid. Harry isn’t following anybody’s path but his own setting out to reinvent rock n roll and always and forever being a bit softer than most. It’s an admirable trait in a world that has become quite scary as of late. 

[marvmacdonald]

“she's fucking impetuous and daring, a little too bold and way too fucking fearless.”

MARY MACDONALD is 21 years old and works as an JUNIOR AUROR and is loyal to THE OOTP they were an GRYFFINDOR and are a MUGGLEBORN. SHE look like CHRISTIAN SERRATOS. 

CHARACTER PARALLELS: jessica jones ( jessica jones ), leia organa ( star wars ), arya stark ( asoiaf ), johanna mason ( the hunger games ), nancy wheeler ( stranger things ), rosa diaz ( b99 ), ellie ( the last of us ), raven reyes ( the 100 ), kat edison ( the bold type ), nina zenik ( six of crows ) AESTHETIC: red lipstick stains on drained cups of tea, leather jackets, cigarette bums crushed under doc martens, sitting down in the shower and letting time pass by, always wearing your gold cross necklace, messy ponytails, beer burps, laughter that’s filled with desperation, jean dungarees, screaming in your pillow, mud stained clothes, denim on denim on denim. LINKS: stats. pinboard. character tag. playlist.

history

mary had a little lamb? WRONG. mary had a little calf. because she was born on a dairy farm in the highlands of scotland ( laugh at my joke pls i worked hard on it ). she was born third to two muggles – a scottish father and a mexican mother, who loved each other deeply – and would eventually become their middle child. she could have become overlooked, but mary never felt discounted at home: while her parents were very often busy with the cows, their love ran deep.

her youth consisted of this: running through fields of grass, attending a muggle elementary where people sang songs at her ( old macdonald had a farm and mary had a little lamb, the former of which was, of course, accurate ), playing with the animals, building tree houses with her brothers and sister and playing football every spare moment she got. it was good and simple and wholesome.

of course, strange things happened, as they tend to with muggleborns: she’d explode her brother’s toy when she got angry, or let things fly around the room when she was laughing. when she found out she was a witch at age eleven, things fell in its place. and the macdonalds, while traditional catholics, accepted mary, which is the most important thing of it all. her parents were shocked, yes, but they squeezed her shoulder and promised to discover this all together.

which?? very much influenced mary greatly? because it went against a lot of things they – and she, too – believed in. magic was deemed evil by the church they attended. everything about this was supposed to be wrong, but her parents shifted their views because their love for their daughter was greater than their desire to cling to all the rules the church laid down for them, this has allowed her to have a faith in people, and while she may be cynical and bitter at times, that faith is still there.

i mean --- her parents accepted her, they were capable of openmindedness despite being traditional people in most other situations. other people can too.

hogwarts was as chaotic as home, and mary settled in quite nicely. sorted into gryffindor ( she guessed it was for her rambunctious nature, but who knew ), she found herself a second home and loved it. as it turned out, she was rather good with a wand as well – she didn’t do so good at essays, though – and genuinely liked learning ( except for history of magic. fuck that. ).

being a muggleborn had its downsides, of course, but mary never really allowed herself to feel discouraged. hurt? yes, definitely, but never discouraged. she wasn’t going to let it get to her, she told herself, but it did, especially when the harsh words turned into something more. it was during her confrontation with mulciber that mary felt true, harsh fear for the first time. she felt shut down, paralysed, depressed —– but then, after a while, she got up and took some important steps. she reported mulciber, which led to nothing, which caused her to feel angry, which in turn caused her to feel determination. if the system wasn’t going to be on her side, she’d just have to fucking change it, right? mary started throwing herself in her schoolwork, determined to join the dmle – hopefully as an auror, but any position would do. she suppressed her fear and the trauma that was there, and kept her head straight.

this entire situation is up for change and stuff when/if we get a mulciber! 

graduation rolled around and mary got the five required NEWTs to even apply. it was a nervewracking process, but once she got into auror training, she cried. like. for a full ass day. she was so proud of herself and she felt so determined and !! man. it was such a good, defining moment. around the same time, mary joined the order; she knew the ministry was corrupt, and that it’d not allow her to do everything she wanted to, when the order DID. mary had too much anger, too much determination to fight this bullshit to just stick with the ministry, and so the order seemed like the right place.

it’s only recently that mary graduated from her training and became a junior auror. it’s ... infuriating, at times, but also amazing. she hates the ministry and most of the people in it, feels paranoid in those walls, but knows that there are good people, too. people who want to better that place, like she does.

kaz brekker voice: brick by brick, i will destroy you.

also --- mary is ... very quite involved in the war. her time is divided between the order and work, and her dog. she’s determined to get this war to end. she doesn’t even care if she destroys herself in the process --- what does her life mean, if she could help save numerous people?

so right now, she’s fighting. she’s gritting her teeth and keeping her goals in the back in her mind and is focusing. and she does not always feel brave or confident or self assured, but that does not matter: mary macdonald always gets the fuck back up, and that’s what she will keep doing until she’s completely knocked down.

personality & tidbits.

mary is a human espresso. she’s so. damn. bitter?? despite the fact that she keeps on going and that she’s fighting her ass off, she’s tired and angry that things don’t seem to be moving in the right direction, she’s feeling bitter about the fact that this kind of discrimination is happening right in front of her eyes and that she does not have enough power to stop it. she feels powerless, which makes her feel bitter, which makes her cynical.

still! mary is not necessarily a debbie downer to be around. she keeps her bitterness ( and hopelessness, even ) carefully hidden in boxes in her mind. on the outside, she’s filled with quips and smiles and quick comments! just a sociable bean, but just a bitter one.

is a dog person and will fight anyone who prefers cats. has a cairn terrier called bowie. she loves him more than anyone.

obsessed with tea, tbh. her ma always said that ‘there’s nothing a cuppa can’t fix’ and mary definitely agrees with this statement.

though is also a ‘whiskey in a teacup’ kinda gal

can be spotted wearing either a rly nice ass blazer or a jean jacket, no inbetween. either office-fancy or farmer-chique

fucking loves muggle culture and loves fellow muggleborns and !!!!!! she loves it!!!

very much in a take-no-prisoners mindset at this point re: death eaters. it kind of scares her, tbh, but mary is very much capable of murdering a death eater, even if she could stun them — she’s just done. she’s very. done. with them. and this whole shbang? will only feed into this.

mary is ruthless, that’s what it boils down to. she’s a lot more than that, of course, but she’s ruthless — in small things ( football matches & boardgames ) but also in bigger ones, and of course the war is the main way it shows. mary is so angry. she’s so angry and scared and tired of feeling that way and tired of being scared to lose people and herself and of death and she’s so angry that people really are this way and that they really do these things — she wants it to stop. she wants the world to be right. and sometimes she thinks the ends do justify the means.

this is why she’s chaotic neutral and not chaotic good.

like ive had her turned to dark arts before just bc she’s so desperate to. fucking win. tbh i’m sure she has a growing interest rn. stop it mary :(

and she’s also like — mary doesnt care if she ruins herself? if she becomes a bad person who’s unable to live with the shit she’s done? as long as the world is better for it, as long as kids can go to hogwarts and feel safe and the world is a safe place for everyone. what does her soul matter in the grand scheme of things? she’d burn in hell forever if it meant the rest of the world changed for the better.

emotionally driven mess of a being

is catholic but struggles a lot with religion and feeling faithful, but she does still identify is a catholic, it’s just? complicated. it’s rly complicated and she hates it.

is a bit flighty when it comes to romance, def has a lot of one night stands/fwb situations though??? she’s just like??? i dont have time for romance its a WAR

has been trying to stop smoking for five years, but alas

a proud scot. a proud latina. proud proud proud. such a fucking lionness.

mary was a beater during her time at hogwarts and was Highly competitive. threw herself into the sport tbh after the mulciber incident. she still thinks football is superior, but you know, it isnt in the air.

she’s pan and out of the closet --- something that did put a strain on her relationship with her family. ( the fact that they could accept her magic but not her sexuality ... baffles mary, but bigots have never been very reasonable. ) she’s not very open about it at home, but otherwise ... she’s out here lovin everyone.

plot ideas!

roomies —– so mary is not Earning A Whole Lot Right Now but does not want to live at home any more because 1. its in the middle of nowhere and 2. most importantly, she’s afraid of endangering her family. she needs roomies! i’d love for her to live in glasgow/edinburgh/london/idk a city!!!

hook ups/fwb’s/etc —– mary is what the old ppl call promiscuous and she sleeps around. so ! let’s talk! former hook ups! booty calls! friends with benefits! etc etc etc!

party pals —- mary likes going to pubs and clubs in the muggle part of town bc it is a LIT way to escape the reality of the wizarding world and also, muggle clubs have better music. come party w her!!!!

in the dragon’s den together —- fellow ministry employees who side eye the ministry and whom mary can sip tea and judge their colleagues with

mudbloods club —- mary loves her fellow muggleborns and i would love some muggleborn friends that she can be buds with. ranting about dumb pureblood names and traditions and the fact that wizards dont have movies

general friendship ideas —- im just going to a bunch of ideas here: hogwarts friends, ride or dies, order pals, friendly exes, fellow tea drinkers that she can go on coffee/tea dates with, friends who are growing apart bc of the war (my fave), etc.

etc —- some other ideas i want to spitball: purists who h8 on mary’s life, fellow diagon alley employees, fellow order members, Annoyances, there is solidarity in being scottish, ministry connections, etc etc etc HIT ME UP

[bbhyuckie]

jaehyun x reader

librarian! au

genre: fluff

words: 1.7k

warnings: realistic portrayals of college life lol

ive said before that im being self indulgent with posts

but this is really it

im really out here writing this

lets get into this mess

so youre studying right

and you yourself do not have a laptop of your own

bc welcome to being a broke college kid im calling myself out

so you decide that youre gonna go to the library on campus bc sis,, cash in on the tuition money ok

so you go and youre like wow hahahaha i dont have a library card better sign up for one

so you go to the desk and theres no one there

just your luck really

you decide to wander around a little to see if theres anyone who can help you

and low and behold you stumble across someone

this young man knelt down by a shelf with a book rack next to him just humming softly and organizing books

and you catch his attention by clearing your throat slightly

he looks up and his eyes are big over the rims of his wire framed glasses that are clinging to the tip of his round button nose

and his hair is a little mussed from being bent down

but holy hell

youve read enough novels to know that this must be exactly what the characters are talking about when they say things like ‘love at first sight’

“sorry” he says as he standcs and brushes himself off “can i help you with anything?”

starstruck really

you manage to stutter out something about needing to register for a library card and he smiles so kindly it makes u want to melt

“sure!’ he says, motioning for you to follow him back up to the desk

is this what a trance feels like???

he asks you a few basic questions, like your name, your age, and what building your dorm is in so he can put it all on your new nifty library card

and then he turns around this lil webcam on top of his computer and asks you to stand in front of it and smile

and you do, awkwardly

and as hes looking down at the computer counting “3, 2, 1” he has this smile on his face like hes trying to hide it

and if that didnt make ur heart jump you dont know what ever would holy

so he prints off your card as youre still trying to recover from being in the presence of an angel

and he hands it to you and smiles

“library hours are 8 am to 12 am every day, but on the weekends i’m the one that closes. which means if you ever need some extra time to finish that essay you pushed off,,, i wont tell anyone”

aND HE W I NK S

and not lot a hot wink

but a cute?? wink??? if thats possible

like you have a secret with him now and its safe

you wonder absently as you stare down at the black and white picture of yourself on the back of your new card if he tells everyone about him closing on the weekends

and if he doesnt does that make you special???/

you smile and thank him again, maybe a little more confidently than before and head for the door

you realise as youre halfway out that you came here to study on the computers but you really need some time to sit down and process the fact that you just say an actual angel

you can do your math homework on your phone for one more night if it means you can turn down your body heat from screaming blushing mess to slightly embarrassed rosy cheeks

the next time you get a chance to run by the library on campus, it just so happens to be sunday

you catch yourself wondering if dream boy meant friday and saturday or saturday and sunday when he said weekends

thats not important right now

what is important is that you have actual business to do in the library today

and that business is to pick up hamlet for your english class

you check in and someone else is at the front desk

you try not to let yourself feel disappointed

i mean you met him once for christs sake

the guy at the front is equally as attractive as dream boy from the previous week, but a little more relaxed to talk to since he isnt giving you any flirty subtones

the kid is all business really

he tells you that his name is doyoung if you need anything else

you ask how he got the job there, out of curiousity

because really, both of the librarians youve encountered seem pretty young for the standard librarian stereotype

doyoung explains that its a work-study job, so nearly all the people that work there are students at the university and work in between classes or on their off days to make some extra cash or pay off some tuition

and you can get behind that!!

so doyoung is cool and you decide you can go to him to ask questions instead

because while dream boy is a dream boy with pretty cheekbones and nice lips and a smooth voice and a good sense of style and a great height without insoles and looks great with glasses and has the most captivating eyes

hes a lil distracting lol

anyway you find yourself in the shakespearean section

and you grab a hamlet off the shelf and head back up to the front to have doyoung check the book out to you

and as hes handing you the book back you get a classroom notification saying that, despite common belief, the book rental wasnt due by tomorrow, but the whole book reading is due by tomorrow

you wonder how the fuck professors get away with shit like this and then you remember that you didnt bother to read the syllabus so you cant really get too mad at anyone but yourself

so you find a table that looks like it has the comfiest chairs and cozy up for a long evening of reading and annotating

(depending on who you are you either love or hate hamlet, either way it is exhausting to annotate anything from that man so bear with me ok)

five hours later and ⅔ of the annotations later it is 11:56pm

and you havent noticed

you hadnt noticed much of anything happening in the real world after you popped in a headphone and started reading about guards seeing a ghost

that is until someone plops down in the seat in front of you and asks

“so what are you studying”

and you look up, a little delayed because youre finishing a notation

only to find that its dream boy

and your brain blanks for a sec bc wow every time you see him its kinda like?? ouch???? my heart bro

so you just kind of shake your head and mutter some “im not really sure anymore”

and theres some truth to that!! first there were ghosts and now theres dead girlfriends dads and dead girlfriends and talking about a skull in a graveyard

that play is really a wild ride brother

and dream boy sits there and laughs, wholesomely

you could die happy

“yeah i get that��� he says, rubbing the back of his neck

theres a pause that carries on a bit too long

“wanna hear a dumb joke?” he asks suddenly

you smile then, partially out of exhaustion and partially because wow?? cutie

“sure” you say

“okay. what do you call a nervous javelin thrower?”

you pause for a sec bc wtf

“dunno. what do you call them?”

he flashes this cute fucking grin that you know is supposed to be slick but just comes off as wholesome and says

“shakespeare”

and you shouldve seen that coming wow

and its so dumb that you actually??? giggle????? and that turns into a laugh??

youre probably just exhausted from annotations but maybe that was actually funny

and his smile softens like hes made progress on something

“y/n, right? i dont think i ever actually introduced myself. i’m jaehyun”

he smiles and reaches across the tabe and you take his hand

its warm and strong and you try not to think about it too hard

“well, y/n, library loses here in another two minutes or so.”

he sees the look on your face fall

“but never fear!” he leans forward and lowers his voice

you hold your breath

“i told ya you could stay, didnt i?”

his smile is closed lipped and cute and genuine

before you can say anything hes up and ushering the last few people out of the library, telling them good night and good luck with their classes tomorrow

youre kind of caught in a brain dead daze after finally being pulled from your studying to watching this cute librarian named jaehyun bustle around and lock doors and turn off lights

and when he finally gets back to you he clicks on the lamp on the table youre working at and sets a cup of coffee in front of you

he mustve made it as you were falling asleep with your eyes open

you thank him copiously before asking

“i thought you let everyone stay after hours when you closed”

he looks up over the rim of his mug with a surprised look in his eyes

he shakes his head as swallows the clearly too hot coffee

“not at all. most of the time i kick them out and study by myself.”

he blushes like its a confession and it makes you feel,,,, something

but you dont want to press

so you just reach out and offer your other headphone to him because if you dont know what to say then you can both enjoy some good study music

so he pulls out his homework for the night and the two of you sit there and study

you sip off your coffee occasionally and both of you nod your heads to the music playing in your ears

he hums along to the ones he knows and a thought skips across your mind

you could get used to this

(theres a 100000% chance there will be a part two to this)