#this post brought to you by the only way i get news about the UK: Adam Hills The Last Leg

[mangedog]

idk much about uk politics but i can say that having a "minister for common sense" strikes me as very orwellian.

[pudgedork]

fatness as an act of resistance

one of the news stories doing the rounds in the UK today is about the government’s new proposal to push weight loss drugs on unemployed people (presumably including those classed as unable to work, based on their previous rhetoric), in an attempt to get them into employment.

if you’re seeing this post you probably don’t need me to explain the extremely dubious ethics of such an idea, or the way it stereotypes unemployed people, or indeed the way it frames fatness as something that must be “cured”.

but something that’s been stuck in my mind all day is the concept of fatness as an act of rebellion. it’s an idea I’ve been interested in for ages (I’d love to write a longer-form story using it at some point), but it’s been brought to the fore by this story.

fatness is already a rejection of so many toxic aspects of society, but particularly so in the case of choosing to be fat. to decide for yourself that actually, you do want to allow yourself to overindulge. you want to live a little hedonistically, because you only get one go at life; you don’t want to waste it living a life of compromise and restriction.

to be fat, and to enjoy being fat, is to stick two fingers up at every expectation placed upon you by the world we live in. when we’re innately expected to hate fatness, to be scared of it; I think it’s beautifully disobedient to reject that mentality and choose a different outlook.

we’re expected to view fatness as undesirable and disgusting, but why? fuck that, fatness is magical. a life prioritising pleasure and joy sounds infinitely more fulfilling than one centred around fetishising control and shame. as a culture we only perceive fatness negatively because that’s the mentality that surrounds us; there isn’t really any substantive justification for that view.

to then hear the government itself stigmatise fatness in a cheap attempt at winning favour with a particular section of the public; it doesn’t half make me double down on viewing fatness as a fundamentally bold and rebellious state of being. if it isn’t already – though you could certainly argue it is – it would make deciding to be fat a political choice in its own right.

tl;dr it’s punk as fuck to be fat and happy about it, and I think you’re cool as hell for it

[dnpbeats]

Why I Don’t Think the Secret Project™ Is a Tour—This Time With Facts!

Let me start out by saying I do think they’ve brought up another tour enough that it will happen at some point, I just don’t think it will be this soon! (Also keep in mind Dan did imply there are two things coming up in his Tweet.) That being said, obviously I could be totally wrong. But hey, if they do announce a tour in a couple of weeks, there has to be someone that gets clowned by the announcement, and I’m happy to take the fall <3 Post under cut as it's long (1.3k words 💀)

The main reason I don’t think they’re announcing a tour is timing, but I do also have something to say about the hints they’ve been dropping and why I also don’t think it necessarily points towards a tour. So, to start, let’s look at how long they spent planning TATINOF and II. In “The Making of TABINOF,” Phil says they are releasing the book (on October 8th 2015) after working on it for a year and a half, which would be April 2014. Presumably, this is around the time they started working on TATINOF as well because they were supposed to be companions. TABINOF and TATINOF were announced together on March 26th 2015, so almost exactly a year after they started planning them. Even if you want to guess that TATINOF planning started a few months after TABINOF planning, keep in mind that they originally only planned the UK leg and planned the US tour after that. The UK leg ended November 15 2015 and they announced the US leg February 26 2016. So that’s a little over two months of them planning the US leg alone, when they already had the show itself all sorted.

With II, we know they were actively planning it for about a year. Phil follows that up to say they planned it for “the majority of this year [2018],” so let’s just call it 10-11 months. More so than that, Dan said that they realized they wanted to do a second tour “halfway through” TATINOF, which in my best guess places that decision around summer 2016. This means they seriously considered doing a second tour for ~6 months before they even started planning it. 

Now, if the new project coming up is a tour, they’ve only been working on it for 6 months max. They only brought back the gaming channel 7 months ago, and we know from the end of Dan’s bday live stream that they didn’t start working on this project until they realized how many people still liked their content: “We were so shocked about how much people care about this light entertainment, sat-in-this-chair-ass content. [...] It took us by such surprise, and now we’re like, where is this going. [...] It was supposed to be a ‘let’s just do this for a bit and see what happens.’ [...] So now we find ourselves going, well okay, this channel, this content, the people, the future of it. What else are we gonna do? 'Cause it seems like there's a thing here.” 

So it’s up to you to decide when they realized that, but I think it was probably sometime in November at the absolute earliest, and then they still needed time after that to decide what they’re going to do, and then actually plan it. (And honestly, I doubt they started actively planning anything in December during gamingmas, but you never know!! Also like I said in my original post about this, Dan was still doing WAD stuff up until February and then some book promo stuff after that, so he was busy with that as well.)

So, that’s all to say, I really don’t think they’ve had time to plan an entire tour. At the very least, not a world tour, but I don’t know if they’d announce a UK-only leg and plan the worldwide tour later based on what they said about choosing to plan II all at once, rather than the split up way they did with TATINOF (also keep in mind that Dan announced WAD all at once, like d&p did with II). Idk I just don’t think they’d announce a tour without having it all planned!

Okay, so, besides the random hints that they’re busy planning something, we also have Phil’s comment about saving money in his Cactus Club post. He wrote “I also just wanted to make your cactus a lil more affordable as Dan and I get busy on what is …. next… ??” Now while this seems to imply saving up for something (hence why the membership needs to be affordable), he doesn’t outright say that. Then in his Q&A vid, he answers a question about what he’s cooking that specifically asks, “Should I save my money?” And interestingly, Phil doesn’t address the money part of the question. Now maybe he just couldn’t say anything about saving money, maybe it would've been too on-the-nose. But I’m also sure plenty of other people asked that question without asking about saving, which means he chose to specifically ignore that part. To me, it seems kinda weird to outright exclude that if the project is something people will have to pay a lot of money upfront for (i.e. tour tickets), but again that’s just my opinion.

(Also just a secondary note on Phil’s answer—he actually says, “Look, I can neither confirm nor deny something might happen in the next month.” I find the phrasing he chose really interesting. He didn’t say an announcement was coming, he said something was going to happen. Dan also never explicitly said to look forward to an “announcement,” he just said they’ve been cooking and to give it a couple of weeks. Obviously this could all mean nothing and maybe it is an announcement (whether it be for a tour or something else), but I actually think whatever the project is might be getting released not just announced. But idk!)

A moment of me speculating based on vibes (that also negates the note I just made about this potentially being a release rather than an announcement): part of me thinks this project might be something/similar to something they tried to get off the ground before but then never came to fruition! This gifset by @reunitedinterlude got me thinking about projects that they didn’t get to do for various reasons (namely COVID lol). I think one of these (either one of Phil’s ideas that he’s now brought Dan onto, or something they were trying to do together from the get go) would actually make a lot of sense for what’s getting announced. It would be something that they had already started work on, so it doesn’t take as much planning as something brand new, meaning it could be announced sooner. Additionally, I just feel like they’ve been so vague about what’s coming up, but they’ve also been super excited! They seem really proud about whatever they’ve been cooking. While I obviously think they’d be excited to do another world tour, part of me just feels like they might be this excited because it’s something new that they’ve never done before. Also, if it’s some kind of game show type thing, it would make sense that Dan said the project is a “celebration” of the gaming channel. But again this is just based on vibes lol.

In conclusion, I do think we’ll get a third Dan and Phil tour, I just don’t think it’s what’s getting announced(/released?) in the coming weeks. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the next thing they announce after whatever this upcoming thing is! If you think I’m dead wrong and actually other people have planned world tours in <6 months please let me know, I’m happy to be proven wrong bc I would love another tour :)

[k-s-morgan]

"many people insist he was in the Blitz ( I don't mean fics, I don't mind that, I mean in canon discussions) so my post was specifically for the Blitz. For the 40's bomb, that you brought up, not my post, Tom left soon after, 7 days after. And as for the '44 bombings- Tom has already killed 4 people by that time- FOUR. I think it's safe to say death and suffering of the people around him wasn't one of his concerns.

Tom's fear of death doesn't have to come from bombing. Plenty of people fear death that had never been bombed. It is stated that his fear of death is because he thinks himself above all humans, it's in relation to his power, he says this to Dumbledore at 11 BEFORE ww2 started. He already said 'mom can't have been a witch because she died'. But yes, this post was about Dumbledore not sending Tom into the Blitz, like many people say, as if Dumbledore personally delivered Tom to the Nazis."

What do you think about this argument? I've written fics of Tom witnessing the Blitz. I thought that it was canon but I have had people argue that it is not. What do you think?

Hi! That's a really interesting topic, but one I came to dislike because it feels like most people have very black-and-white takes on it. I actually got involved in one of such conversations just recently. Maybe even the one you quoted from? I don't recall at this point.

Since I prepared a lot of materials for ATLWETD before writing it, I can give you a full answer supported by the research and some news clippings. It's going to get long, though!

So, first - the Blitz. Indeed, Tom never had to face it. It lasted from September 7, 1940 to May 11, 1941, and Tom spent this period at Hogwarts. However, the Blitz was neither the start nor the end of London bombings - and bombings of the surrounding areas and UK in general.

Citing from Mark Clapson, "Air Raids in Britain, 1940–45":

"A common misconception of the Blitz in the United Kingdom is that London was the only city under attack from September 1940 until the Nazis also turned their fire on other cities and towns in mid-November. Yet even before the Blitz on London began, other urban areas in the UK had been attacked from the air.

As the Battle of Britain drew towards a defeat for Germany, the first significant raid on a major British city took place in Cardiff and Newport on 10 July when over seventy German planes attacked the South Wales docks. In July and August, Birmingham, Coventry, Hastings, Liverpool, Newcastle and Southampton were all subject to air raids, signifying that when the main Blitz on the provinces began, industrial and coastal towns and cities were going to be key targets for the Luftwaffe … As Tony Mason shows, the first raid on Coventry had been on 18 August 1940, when both industry and housing were bombed."

Most of these locations are within the 200-300 km of London. Hastings is less than a 2-hour drive away. People don't live in a bubble, so hearing and reading about the bombings getting closer had to be terrifying for a child-Tom.

Now, getting even closer to London. The timeline taken from this website:

"16 AUGUST 1940

A series of raids were leveled against Norfolk, Kent and the Greater London area with airfields as the main targets, including Manston.

London suburbs were bombed, including Wimbledon and Esher, where shops and houses were hit. Bombs on Maiden, Surrey, railway station killed staff and passengers and put both lines out of operation. To the north, Gravesend and Tilbury were attacked, and bombs fell on Harwell and Farnborough aerodromes."

Tom would have definitely experienced the impacts of these bombings at least in some ways because the sound of explosions travels miles ahead. People would be in an increased state of panic, not knowing if London was going to be the next target any other second now.

A photo of the news clipping from August 17, 1940, titled: Germans Bomb London Suburbs:

From this website:

"A still earlier, and better recorded, raid took place the night before, on 15 August. 30 bombers targeted RAF Croydon aerodrome, which was then considered part of Surrey rather than London. Several people were killed, with damage to the aerodrome and nearby housing."

The distance between Croydon aerodrome and London is just 10 miles. Again, this is something the impact of which Tom would have very likely heard personally - add to this the feeling of fear and uncertainty over when and where the next attack is coming, and you get a recipe for a serious psychological trauma. Tom was only 13 at this time.

From the same website:

"Many sources state that the first bombs to drop on London landed in the early hours of 22 August 1940, affecting Harrow and Wealdstone (technically not then in London, but within the London Civil Defence Area). These caused damage to two cinemas, a dance hall, bank and houses, but nobody was killed. A further strike on 24 August [in London] killed nine people, and prompted retaliatory attacks on Berlin."

So, by these accounts, Tom experienced the bombing of his city directly at least once and likely heard the impact of bombings from the suburbs at least twice. Could be more - there were several bombings close, and we have no idea where Tom was in those specific moments. He could be taking a walk to the West End, going to the suburbs with his orphanage, and so on.

He was lucky to miss the bombings that followed (until 1944), including the Blitz, but I really hate when people dismiss the psychological impact of seeing your city in ruins, witnessing the massive destruction, and not knowing whether the bombs are going to drop again today. It's not like the Germans announced, "Hey, the Blitz is over, you're safe now!" Of course Tom thought he might experience another bombing, and of course this thought scared him.

The summer of 1944 was terrible for London because that's when the V1 were dropped. Quoting from The Blitz Companion by Mark Clapson again:

"Yet during the summer of 1944 worse was to come, and it would manifest itself in a frightening new weapon. For some months rumours had been circulating in Britain about a flying bomb that had no pilot and which could be guided almost mysteriously through the air at great speed to attack the capital city. This was the V1, the ‘V’ standing for vengeance … The V1s killed over 5,000 people and injured 15,000."

The timeline for these attacks is here.

This one is trickier, though, because based on Harry's era, by 1944, Tom already came of age by wizarding standards. So there is an argument that he could finally use his magic and leave London. On the other hand, he was still a minor by Muggle standards, and we have no idea what Hogwarts rules and laws of his era stated - meaning that it can all be up to interpretation.

For those who prefer to imagine that Tom was there: maybe back in 1944, a wizard had to be 18 to be considered an adult, and the limit was dropped closer to Harry's era. Or there was a rule stating that Hogwarts students must continue to live in their assigned places up until they graduate, especially in a Muggle world - because if a minor disappears from Muggle care when they are still enrolled in a magical school, it could trigger the involvement of authorities, which might be something Hogwarts would want to avoid.

We can't make strong arguments here because the canon says nothing about these details. So, if someone wants to imagine that Tom missed the bombings in 1944, there are very logical reasons to support such a view, but if someone wants him to have experienced it, it's also easy to imagine.

Either way, whether Tom lived only through the bombings of 1940 or both 1940 and 1944, to deny that he was affected by the war is to reject the most basic human psychology, in my opinion. Anyone would be terrified when they are surrounded by destruction and death, when they are confronted with the idea of their own mortality and when they feel helplessly trapped. And Tom saw the war horrors every summer even when there were no bombings.

I'm a war victim myself, and I don't feel safe on the days my city is not attacked. Because I know that the situation can change every other second. The psychological effect of bombings is devastating even when you aren't physically affected.

Does Tom's trauma justify his canon actions in any way, though? Of course not. Did his war trauma cause his fear of death? I think it was definitely at least some part of it. How couldn't it be? It's exactly because he considered himself above others is that his fear could be this amplified. He probably hated sitting stuck in a dangerous zone with the people he despised, threatened by the beings he didn't consider proper humans.

Maybe the war didn't give birth to Tom's fear of death, but I think it obviously contributed to it heavily since, again, he was living in one of the very targeted places, and he lived through at least one London bombing.

Also, yes, I do think Dumbledore and Dippet were absolutely abhorrent for sending an orphan child to a war zone when it was so easy to give him shelter. They were responsible for Tom's well-fare, and this responsibility shouldn't disappear in the summer. Tom could have easily been killed - again, it's not like the Germans announced when they were going to bomb or not bomb London and other areas. Letting him stay at Hogwarts or finding some family to take him in - or an inn! - would have been beyond simple.

Dumbledore also definitely knew Tom is related to a Slytherin bloodline, so there had to be families willing to take him in for this alone. Sure, it could be dangerous in other ways for a child as self-focused as Tom, but he was still a child, and his safety had to come first.

Finally, there is an argument that Tom was moved along with other children from London since it was supposed to be mandatory. This is also something that can be looked at from different angles. The reality of people following a law always differs from the theory of it. There were many issues with evacuations at that time. About 7,736 children died in London from the Blitz alone - not everyone could evacuate, especially the poor. Maybe the Wool's lucked out, maybe not. There are claims that only children within the ages of 5 to 14 were evacuated. But also, if Tom was moved, then there is no telling if he was more or less safe there since the location is unknown. It once again depends on what a specific person wants to imagine as a part of his life.

Now, anon, as for your fics in particular: if you wrote about Tom witnessing the Blitz, it's all right - I mean, the entire universe of Harry Potter is made up. Maybe, in a world where these characters might exist, the Blitz could have happened differently - why not? We have no idea about the dates of HP canon-Blitz. The events there don't have to take place in our specific world.

So, strictly speaking - yes, it's not canon, but more in relation to our world than to the world of HP.

[herejusttosufferalong]

There is an off the rails live happening right now talking about L getting a restraining order against A and other legal things which is why it has been so quiet…people are recommending to check out our WH, so be prepared for an influx of a new kind of unhinged.

Okay, so when this was brought to my attention several days ago I decided not to share anything about it because we know fuck all about it honestly.

Now I don't know how things work in the UK but here in America you can find any court request like this online in a matter of minutes as it is public record.

The reason I ultimately dismissed this is because of his SM like on her post. That is a form of contact. Full stop.

Now, again, it may viewed differently in the UK but folks going on about this need to need to stfu either way.

This is the only time I will be acknowledging it.

Do not bring it back into my asks.

[aristidetwain]

“Legends of Earth”: The 2020s “Doctor Who” Anthology Which Never Was

Something very special today. Usually, when it comes to the production history of more or less Doctor Who-related fiction, I natter about the obscure and deuterocanonical — but did you know that around Summer 2020, Emil Fortune was working on creating an anthology of Doctor Who short stories riffing on “Myths & Legends” of Earth, whose title eventually settled as Doctor Who: Legends of Earth?

Due to the poor sales with which DWU books increasingly became saddled during the Chibnall era, it was ultimately canned. Had it happened, it would have constituted a rare case of an official Doctor Who book in the ear of NuWho opening up pitching calls to first-time writers, with the point of the book having been to reach out to beginning writers from outside the UK, to write about elements of their native cultures in particular.

As another reliable source explained: “It sounded really really cool, and [Emil] was trying so hard to do it right. Reaching out to all the right people. Getting totally new voices in. It would've been amazing.”

Perhaps more pitches will become known in time; for the time being, I have only been able to track down one of the prospective writers, S. Brennan, who submitted two pitches related to Irish folklore — archived here after the cut with permission.

(I was actually meant to do this months and months ago — my heartfelt apologies to S. for letting it slip through the cracks.)

Coat of Charms

S. Brennan's first suggestion was a Sixth Doctor story riffing on St. Bridget of Kildare.

The pitch was developed further after this initial offer, with it being confirmed to Brennan that an extended-universe companion such as Evelyn unfortunately could not be used for this project, and would have to be replaced with a TV companion.

With Coat of Charms eventually proving difficult to develop into something which fit the intended tone of the book, they pushed onwards with another pitch, this one featuring an even more prominent figure from Irish folklore.

The Way of Battle

Per S. Brennan's connection, however, this pitch was never discussed further, with them assuming that the book had already been “canned” by then.

A sad end to what would have been one of the most interesting offerings of the BBC-licensed EU of the 2020s. The only silver lining is that no exclusivity contracts or NDAs had been signed with prospective writers — meaning that those lost stories can be discussed, and perhaps brought into being through some other medium, whether it be something like BF's Lost Stories range (it would certainly beat scraping through Terry Nation's drawers for first drafts) or beyond the aegis of the BBC altogether.

At any rate, if anyone reading this post has more information on Legends of Earth and related stories-that-might-have-been, please get in touch!

[sleepanonymous]

i saw in a passing comment somewhere, i believe it was on a video of iv’s vocals in rain, someone said he previously did harsh vocals in another band and my brain.. oof. if that is indeed true i wish there was a way to listen to them without things being spoiled. but for right now if the closest we get to appreciating his growls are from rain, vore and tmbte we are blessed. and the antIVist performance, never forget 🙏🏻 that one altered my brain chemistry in the best way

I’m feeling ballsy today, I guess, so I’m gonna answer this one. Under the cut though, so people can scroll past if they wish 🖤

Okay Anon, ty for bringing this up because I’ve wanted to talk about this forever. It’s likely, of all the band's he's been part of, that the comment you saw was talking about an EP IV made with a total of five members from two other bands, one being Wilderness. (UK) and the other being another band that IV was a tech/guitarist for.

This group called themselves Mourn, and IV was the vocalist. They unfortunately only released four songs on an EP titled The Next Life. Mourn’s genre was metalcore, and they described themselves as delivering “a powerful sonic experience of crushing instrumentals, vicious vocals and relentless energy.” The lyrics have a heavily religious undertone, backed by the The Next Life’s artwork being a distorted rendition of the Annibale Carracci painting Christ Crowned with Thorns.

It’s unclear exactly who wrote what for Mourn, as all five members are listed as composers. There are also no credits to a producer, so the EP may have been produced by one or multiple band members as well. In Wilderness. (UK), Mourn’s bassist is credited as the lyricists, and Mourn’s drummer is credited as the recording, mixing, and mastering engineer. In a playthru video on the band’s YouTube channel, IV is the lead vocalist and he is backed up by the bassist (he’s definitely been working on breath control and stamina, compared to some recent videos of his screams in Rain). I was thinking about taking the Full Band playthrough on YouTube and editing IV out, but I have no energy for that 😅 I do have the ripped MP3 in the Lost Media folder, if you want to give it a listen.

The Next Life EP was released September 3, 2021, just a few weeks before TPWBYT. The band was only set to have played one live show, in February of 2022 supporting Decapitated, but it’s possible the band dropped out or the show itself was canceled. All I could find online for the date were some news articles/Facebook posts from the announcement but no photos or videos from the actual concert for any band listed on the bill.

It's theorized by fans that this band dissolved after IV left to focus solely on Sleep Token, but I’m not entirely sure that’s the case, or the sole reason. The first tour Sleep Token did in 2022 began in August, and the last tour they did ended in November 2021, so it’s not exactly like IV would have been incapable of performing with both bands. It wouldn’t be the only instance of one of the members of Sleep Token performing in multiple projects at one time.

I’m not confident enough to upload the music onto Tumblr, but I’ll happily share the band name and YouTube/Spotify links with anyone who asks. I ended up compiling the lyrics to the four songs on the EP in a Google Doc a while back for a fan who wanted to avoid IV’s name (since his name and face are plastered onto this band). Also, there were two posts from last month (? maybe September) that brought this band up, and I’m pretty certain they both had audio attached. Unfortunately, I could only find @kaddyssammlung's post for one song, and its the studio version of the same song I added to the Lost Media folder.

If anyone can direct me to the second post, please do so and I will link it here 🖤

I’ll leave you with this gem of a photograph from the band’s Facebook page. Man loves his hoodies and sneakers istg.

[wirewitchviolet]

That thing about 'the arc of history bending towards justice...'

I'm pretty sure I've gone on about this before, and I'm pretty sure I'm preaching to the choir, but I just had a well-intentioned acquaintance try to give an inspirational speech about American trans people's fears right now, and his heart was in the right place, but all his facts were wrong, in some really important ways. I feel like the perspective he has is the same one as... basically every decent person who isn't like, intimately familiar with WPATH, so please spread this around, and please if you only read one rambling history lesson from a trans person about the current state of things, make it this one.

So here's the big problem. Trans people get brought up in the mainstream media a LOT these days, but the framing is totally wrong. The impression people get is that there is presently a big push for new trans rights, where we want proper government recognition, and trans women in particular want to be able to use public women's restrooms, and play on girls-only sports teams, and a dozen other things. That is a lie you are being fed. These are all rights we ALREADY HAD, for decades. Possibly centuries depending what we're talking about specifically and where we're talking, even. The big issue right now is that a bunch of bigots just woke up one day about 10 years ago and decided that nothing else they were angling for was getting them anywhere with the general public, so hey let's make a boogieman out of this minority of a minority nobody knows the first thing about and act like all the horrors they're inflicting are just them enforcing some totally fictional status quo.

Speaking personally, I can say that The Trans Agenda in like 2014 was something like: 1- I'm gonna make a nice big pot of chili. 2- I'm gonna maybe replay some old video games from the '90s I haven't taken down off the shelf in a while. And OK maybe 3- It'd be cool if it weren't just the medical professionals who specifically specialize in trans stuff had enough of an education to know that when there's a difference in how a drug is going to effect men vs. women, it's for reasons directly tied to the levels of various hormones, or would at least trust their trans patients to know what we're talking about and not give us the wrong doses of things and maybe kill us as a result. And also like, treat us for regular things like broken arms (real example) without weirdly panicking about some prescription we're on they don't recognize.

There was absolutely not a point where some trans woman started petitioning the government or whatever to let her pee in a toilet with a little placard of a stick figure in a dress in front. We've just been doing that the whole time. Nobody's ever had a problem with that. You didn't know we were in there? OK. If I'm like at a restaurant and have to use the bathroom, I don't know how many of the other women in there have like, type O blood. I also don't care, and I think everyone would agree it was weird if I suddenly did care, and demand they post a guard out front asking to see driver's licenses. Just completely out of the blue some nutcases from the UK started foaming at the mouth and writing weird tabloid articles about their completely unfounded fears that... I don't even know. Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs might put on a wig and follow them into the bathroom, dose them with chloroform, and drag them to some basement dungeon through some series of secret passages or something.

This was based on literally nothing at all, to be clear. Like, people pushing for this went and did serious research for anything even anecdotal to back them up on this, and didn't actually find anything. Then they started walking into public restrooms with cameras throwing doors open on people and going "see? See? Some creep could totally do this if we don't ban trans people from using bathrooms!" And... somehow this got traction? I figure it's because coincidentally there was this whole other thing going where people were looking at how every building had equal numbers of men's and women's rooms and saying "you know, like, 90% of people who come in here are the same gender and we end up with really long lines, what if we just took the signs down and told everyone to just use whichever?" which... when it's happening at the same time Chicken Little is ranting and raving about the boogieman wearing a cheap wig, wires got crossed? And suddenly we've got waves of legislation passing all over about who's allowed to use what bathrooms with weird standards that'd involve like DNA tests to actually enforce properly. Absurd stuff.

Meanwhile, your average trans activist at the time was just like... sitting there eating a sandwich and going "huh, they're making a TV series based on Fargo? That's an odd thing to happen out of the blue. And yeah we started going "hey, what the hell?" when this stuff started passing because like... yeah that's what you do when you see an article in the local newspaper that says you can't go to the bathroom at work or whatever without swabbing your cheek and waiting for lab results for 3 weeks first or whatever.

Same deal with sports. Major sports organizations like the Olympics have been weirdly paranoid about men pretending to be women since 1950. And there have been, to the best of my ability to research... zero men who have actually done this. And while the weird standards used for this have been used to kick a good number of women out over the years, none of those women have been trans, for what that's worth. Really, the whole gender testing thing has only ever been used for horrifying stuff like forcing women to strip in front of random creeps, or let them do "invasive internal exams" and of course so many incidents where some woman who isn't white wins at something and people move the goalposts to in some way to get her specifically banned. You may be thinking, "wait didn't I just see a whole bunch of news coverage about someone getting banned after some gender testing thing? She was trans right?" No. You're thinking of Caster Semenya. She's a woman. A cis woman. F on her birth certificate, born with standard issue female genitals, has periods, all that. People are just being weird racists there and crossing the streams with random transphobia. That and just... half-reading stories and making stuff up.

To the best of my knowledge, the total count of trans athletes who have competed in the Olympics would actually be... three nonbinary people, who so far as I can tell all competed against people with the same gender they had on their birth certificates, nothing done medically, so, nobody should have any problem there. Caitlyn Jenner, who didn't come out as a woman until like... 40 years after competing, on the men's team, and Laurel Hubbard, the first and only trans woman to compete at the Olympics as a woman, who placed... dead last, flubbing all three of her lifts.

If we just look at sports in general, OK, there WAS one big famous where a trans woman wanted to compete in a major sporting event, was banned from it, took the organizers to court over it, and the eventual ruling was there was no reason at all she shouldn't be allowed to play against other women. Renée Richards. And this was all the way back in 1976. Nearly 50 years ago now.

And of course in more recent years, again, after a bunch of random bigots just completely out of the blue started losing their minds about trans people with no prompting and started lobbying for new laws banning us from all kinds of things nobody had had a problem with us doing forever, there was Mack Beggs, a trans guy, who was forced, by one of those aforementioned baffling reactionary new laws, to compete on his high school's girl's wrestling team. He didn't want to be there, they didn't want him to be there, but the law said hey, F on your birth certificate, we're classifying you as a girl despite how clearly wrong that is. And then there's been a bunch of other weird cases like that like one state banning trans girls from playing any sports with other girls which only affected one single girl in the entire state, who was playing lacrosse on a team that wouldn't have even existed if she hadn't personally organized it.

But the point here is, trans people aren't asking for anything here. We're just standing here, and people are flipping out and banning us from doing all these things without any prompting. And hell, I THINK this one got shot down in higher courts, but when Florida got the brain worms on this and started passing all the anti-trans legislation they could think of, they actually included a ban on us just standing there! The wording was something like (and I apologize that I can't find it, search engines are useless now), "if a child can potentially see someone who was assigned male at birth who is wearing women's clothes, it's considered sexual assault."

It's important to understand what's actually going on here, both because what's going on here is just plain terrifying, but also because there is this huge segment of the population who has this weird idea that people's rights only ever get better, there's just some weird arbitrary ratcheting where you have to take a number and get in line. Like, "hey, used to be only white men could vote, then eventually the Progress bar filled enough that we let white women start voting too. Then we had to wait for it to fill up again, hey, we're ending this whole segregation of black people thing. Gotta give it another 30 years or so to fill up, now hey, gay people can get married! Don't be impatient trans folks, you just need to stay in line and wait for it to fill again for your turn!"

That's not how anything has ever actually worked. It would frankly be absolutely insane if it actually did, but like, this is an idea people get in their heads because history textbooks really like to gloss over all the stuff that makes the country look pretty bad and promote this whole "stuff is just always getting better!" vibe. But no, sometimes, things just straight up get worse for people. Ten years ago I could go to the damn bathroom, I could have social media accounts, I could access all the medications I need to live, I could safely set foot in any given state in the country... at least if I kept some witnesses around at all times to verify I was not in fact hitting on my would-be murderer in any of the black states on this map.

The problem is NOT that with Trump in power, the pause button is getting hit on trans people climbing towards some state of finally getting to be regular people. We were (largely) already there, and there's been a huge push over the past decade to strip that away from us. And Trump plus the rest of the Republican party in general have made very specific promises to make that way worse real real soon, including several things that will straight up kill a ton of us.

Like, when I'm talking about losing access to necessary medical treatments, I'm not talking about "THE SURGERY" and magic pills that give you boobs or beards. A lot of trans people are trans because there's weird medical stuff that in addition to messing with what does and doesn't grow mess with things like whether your blood flows properly and whether various organs do what they should. Just one of those many things the average person doesn't know, because everything written about us is from deranged bigots making crap up.

[londonlights724]

I’m at a true loss for words, but also feel like I have so much to say? The last 24 hours haven’t felt real. I don’t think the news really sunk in until I saw the posts from Louis, Zayn, Harry and the official 1D account.

I created an account on Tumblr all the way back in 2011, specifically for this group of 5 boys from the UK who had stolen my heart. I can still remember the feeling of hearing them sing for the first time. Funny enough it wasn’t WMYB; the music video for Gotta Be You was recommended on YouTube and the rest is history.

I was a freshman-sophomore when the boys fame started to really take off, and my love for them as well. High school was a very rough time for me with body dysmorphia, anxiety and depression. I would self harm because I had all of these feelings that I didn’t know how to express or who to express them to. Until I found the boys.

It sounds dramatic to say they saved my life.. but they truly did. Something clicked after that first song, and suddenly life didn’t feel so hard and scary. I made friends because of One Direction. My first “adult” concert (aka old enough to get the tickets myself) was their first tour of America - the Up All Night tour. Olly Murs opened and even though I was up in the rafters, it was the greatest moment of my life up until that point.

After that concert, I wore the T-shirt I bought from the merch tent all the time. After a while it got so gross and old, that I didn’t have any real reason to keep it. But I did. Something inside of me wouldn’t let me get rid of it.

Today I pulled that old shirt out and just held it. Lord knows it doesn’t fit anymore but even just holding it flooded the memories back into my brain. Memories of waking up at 3AM for album releases, of waiting in line for special editions of the albums, of seeing This Is Us in theaters many times. The memory of skipping class the day Zayn left to sit with the shock, and the memory of how it felt to hear the word hiatus.

All that’s to say once the boys went on hiatus, I started to drift away from the fandom. I still followed all the boys’ careers loosely, but really only Harry I followed in detail. So seeing the news a few years back about Liam’s substance abuse struggles, I was pleasantly surprised to hear about his sobriety in 2023. Especially after the interviews he had done during the time when he was struggling with addiction (ahem Logan Paul).

To then all culminate into the abuse allegations brought forth by Maya in the last few weeks. It was so disappointing to hear. That someone that I looked up to as a teenager could be capable of the things being reported. I wanted justice for Maya and I wanted Liam held accountable but to also be able to get the help he has needed for years, but doesn’t seem to have gotten.

I think one thing I’ve struggled with is mourning for the person I loved as a teen, who wasn’t the same person as an adult that did terrible things. It’s complicated. But understanding both things can be true, helps make processing this grief easier.

I send all of my love, thoughts and prayers to Liam’s parents, sisters and family. To his son, Bear. To his brothers, Harry, Louis, Niall and Zayn. To Kate. To Maya. To his friends and all those close to him. And lastly, to all the fellow Directioners processing this together.

Please remember to take time away from social media when things feel heavy. If you’re struggling, please reach out to someone - heck, my inbox is always open if you just need someone. Just don’t feel like you have to carry anything alone.

If you’re in the US, calling or texting 988 will put you in contact with someone from the suicide hotline, NAMI (Nat’l Alliance on Mental Illness). If you, or someone you know, struggles with substance abuse, you can contact the National Drug Abuse Helpline at 1-800-662-4357.

Love, Jo. ❤️‍🩹

[aseriesofsmallthings]

Hello!

Welcome to my writeblr! I'm very new to this whole thing, and while I have *had* tumblr for a while now, I've never actually used it, so please bear with me :)

About my writing

I started out writing fanfic and short stories over a decade ago (ouch, now I feel old) and am hoping someday to become a published novelist. I mostly write horror, fantasy, and dystopian fiction, (with romance often playing quite a big role), though I am incapable of resisting dabbling in other genres too from time to time. A lot of my writing tends to deal with themes of loss, mental illness, suffering, and the inevitability of the human condition. In a bid to see myself and others like me represented more widely in the media, my longer fiction works often include neurodiverse, disabled and lgbt+ characters.

About me!

First things first, my name is Shannon, though online I mostly go by Shay. Feel to free use either :)

Now, a few fun little facts to break up those hefty chunks of writing (make the most of it, this might be the last time in a while).

I'm from, and currently live in, the UK. And I use she/they pronouns.

I'm a (twenty-something year old) child living an adult's life. And I am not having fun. Please, send help.

My reading tastes tend to be quite similar to my writing, in that I'll read just about anything I deem interesting in most genres but my preferences lie in dystopia and fantasy.

I have AuDHD and a whole host of other funky little brain things that keep writing (and life) all that much more fun! On a serious note, this may mean I'll disappear from time to time and posts may not always be consistent. (It also means interactions may be somewhat difficult for me, so again, please bear with me :)

I'm an amateur field hockey player with no other interest in sport besides playing it.

I have studied creative writing at uni briefly but I'm currently in the midst of switching to a social sciences and anthropology degree - expect a little academia related content maybe.

I'm a fur-parent - pictures may follow (they definitely will) of my little demon child.

I love to travel (especially solo) and often take a lot of inspiration for my writing from my little adventures, from setting and plot ideas to character development and world-building. Also, train journeys have proven quite fruitful in producing some pretty solid sentences... that have yet to be of further use.

A few pictures (below) from my most recent solo trip.

I also occasionally play video games, listen to an unhealthy amount of rock music, obsess over fictional characters (other than my own), and partake in multiple other creative pastimes, most of which get abandoned rather unceremoniously (thank you, ADHD).

About my writeblr

My username 'a series of small things' comes from one of my favourite Van Gogh quotes; "great things are not done all at once, but by a series of small things brought together", which I think is really apt, not only as a writer but also just in everyday life too. Also, inspite being rather artistically inept myself, I have a fondness for ol' Vinny, which makes the quote even more perfect.

I hope to use this space as a way to start getting my original work out into the world and to hopefully make some like-minded friends along the way too! I'll mostly be posting some of my short stories and progress reports on my longer wips, but may also post some poetry and other random ramblings from time to time.

Feel free to ask me any questions and interact with me :)

[wonderland-productions-blog]

Drinking Games: An Orc Erotica Pt. 3

NSFW Warning; Sexual Themes & Content

Word Count: ~ 6,000 (~10-15 min read)

Fem Human X Male Orc

Size Difference | Slight Praise Kink & Dom/Sub | Shower Stuff

AO3 Link Here:

Alone, again. Bur-uke was back to work after gracing me with this quick time together during his break. It’d been hours and I’d done enough to entertain myself. All the chores my room required and all the hobbies and projects that fit in my luggage had distracted me as long they could. Still I could hardly get my mind off of him. Every spare second was filled wishing he was filling me. I sigh, hoping a drink for the early evening could clear my mind. 

I sip away at my drink, in the lively tavern reading a book I’d brought from my room. A booth tucked toward the end of the room have a couple uproars, though nothing that elicited more than a glance across my shoulder every now and then. A few tables and booths had filled since I sat down, with passerby coming and going filling the bar stools at any given moment. 

I hear the booth mention a girl, with one gesturing toward the front of the room. I look around, finding there to be no other women about, even the servers must have been busy elsewhere. I shrug it off, until I hear it again followed by snickering. 

I get up and they fall silent, only solidifying that it was me they’d been discussing. “Can I help you boys?” I sneer, looming over their booth. I slam a hand onto the tabletop, their beer bottles and tankards clinking as everything shifts.

“Figures he’d like ‘em feisty,” A drunken man mutters with a giggle, sinking into the booth. 

“Excuse me?” I raise my voice.

“Ah, ignore him. Absolutely sloshed. We just noticed you chattin’ with one of our lads is all,”  One man says waving a hand, trying to diffuse the situation. 

“Good to see him back in the saddle after so long,” Another chimes in.

“Settle a bet and tell us if he paid you, would ya?” the drunken man snickers.

“Like he needs to pay me,” I smirk. 

One of the fellows elbows another, each of them chuckling amongst themselves. My face reddens, realizing what I’d said. 

“He’ll be ready for you soon, showerin’ now,” the man sunken in the booth mutters, gradually becoming more incoherent.

So he’s in the shower, huh?

“Sorry about him,” one of the more sober men apologizes. “Hope to see ya around again,” he smiles and waves, attempting to silence his friend making a fool of himself. The drunken lad makes a remark about watching me go, though improperly recited and articulated worse. I roll my eyes, heading straight out the tavern doors after the embarrassing encounter. 

I set my book on the porch fence, running my hand down the wood post. My eyes lock with the ground, watching the wooden porch steps turn to loose, powdery earth. I trace a footpath woven in the sand for a few moments, happy to find shade soon in the heat. I look up to find what is providing the shadow I retreated in. I’d led myself to the bathouse. My breath hitches. I am a few feet from the men’s entrance. 

My heart pounds, and I look around. My hand trails down the door on instinct, shaking as soon as it makes contact with the handle. I slink my way into the bathhouse, shoving the hefty door open and carefully shutting it behind me. My fingers run down the door handle, twisting the lock to ensure my privacy. I do my best not to make a sound, though the water running should muffle any minor noise. My heart was racing; maybe this was a mistake. 

“I’ve made it this far,” I remind myself, deciding to push onward. I could see steam billowing out above only one stall that is tucked away in the very back corner. After fetching a folded towel from a stack, I begin stripping off my clothes. Forcing the fabric into a small balled-up clump, it makes its new home for the time being on a bench near the entryway. I fasten my towel around my body and carefully make my way over to the stall in use.

Stopping just before the closed shower curtain, I kneel down, attempting to steal a peek beneath. On the pale tile flooring, I caught a glimpse of two firmly planted evergreen feet. This was undoubtedly Bur-uke. I take a deep breath, attempting to steady my shaky nerves as my fingers grip the thin fabric between us.

Flinging it open, my eyes lock onto Bur-uke for a mere moment before my vision becomes blurred. A breath escapes my throat as pressure is put against it, as well as the length of my back. Bur-uke’s gaze meets mine, and I see his eyes soften. His grip on my throat loosens, though does not completely lift. 

I straighten my spine, feeling my towel come loose with the motion. I reach for it, knowing I won’t be able to grab it in time. It hits the floor, instantly growing darker as it saturates. A sigh escapes me. I kick it over against the wall with a wet thud. My fingers find their way to the curtain once more, drawing it shut.

I make sure not to break eye contact with Bur-uke as I do this; watching his eyes widen makes my heart pound faster. He takes me in for a moment, looking me up and down with his mouth slightly agape. I make the first move, cupping his face in my hands and pulling him closer. He hesitates a moment, trying to hide his shaky breath. He plants his hands on my waist before pressing his lips against mine. 

He stumbles back a couple of steps, putting us beneath the running shower. Hot droplets of water glide down our bodies, and all the while Bur-uke hadn’t stopped kissing me. He pulls back for a breath before planting one more kiss on my lips. He begins a quick trail of kisses down my cheek, eventually burying his face at the nape of my neck. His canines once again graze my skin, provoking a strange flurry of excitement and fear. 

A hushed moan is pushed from my lips as he kisses my neck, only giving him more reason to persist. I run my fingers through his hair, settling halfway through with my other hand braced on his shoulder. His hands slide down my waist, and I feel his fingers kneading my hips for a moment. A gruff breath escapes him, and his hands travel down, cupping the back of my thighs. In one swift motion, he’d pressed me up against the wall. My legs had already found their way around his hips, and my grip on his shoulders tightened. 

His gaze was intense, and his cheeks had shifted to a darker, more vibrant green. “I missed you,” he finally says, breaking the silence between us. 

“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” I breathe. His grip weakens for a second, and I slide down his torso. After steadying myself, something stiff finds its way between my thighs. Bur-uke readjusts me, pulling me up closer and smearing a kiss on my forehead. 

“Think you’ll be okay?” He asks, planting his hands across my haunches. He rubs against me, and I am only able to respond with a quick nod as I catch my breath. I feel his hard tip prodding and sliding up and down my slit. He lets out a breathy groan, feeling the first few inches of his member becoming slick. My fingers curl, bracing onto his shoulders as I feel him spread me. 

My gasps and groans cloud the air with the steam rolling from the hot shower. Slowly I sink onto his cock, feeling him fill me inch by inch. I do my best to force down a couple of winces, knowing I just needed time. Bur-uke presses his hips against mine, and pushes deeper into me. My knees lock up around him, and a moan escapes through my clenched teeth. 

Again, another thrust. This time a bit faster, and I feel him practically forcing against my cervix as gravity pulls me onto the base of his shaft. Another, and another. Each time my body bouncing and gliding on his. He keeps his pace, lifting me with every thrust as if I weigh nothing. 

Bur-uke lets out a breathy groan between thrusts, leaving just enough time to make me shiver before shoving his way back into me. His brows furrow, and he shudders. His hand covers most of my forearm and he gives me a small tug, forcing me to grind down further onto him.

Pain and pleasure swirls in the bottom of my stomach and I know in either way I’m pushing my limits. I pull myself up a bit, burying my face in the crook of his neck. I can only plant a few kisses on his neck before Bur-uke goes even faster. I feel tension ramping up inside of me. Each quick thrust both pushing his member deeper in me and forcing moans out of me. My shakey arms wrap around his slippery body, and I know I can’t take much more. 

“What do you want?” He asks in a silky voice. His pace slows, teasing me. 

I bite at my lip and let out a begging whine. My cheek falls to his shoulder, and I let out a huff with every leisurely thrust. His steady, rhythmic pace leaves me wondering whether it is the shower water or drool pooling on his shoulder.

“You’re going to have to tell me what you want,” he says, lifting me off of him. 

I can hardly think while watching him pull me off, his cock bouncing back up as soon as I am off. I try to speak, though nothing but a breathy moan rolls from my lips. He grabs my wrists, holding them both in one hand, his thumb and middle finger touching to secure his grip. My wrists are pinned behind my back and he turns me around.

“Tell me or I’m going to have to guess,” He teases, pressing me against the shower wall. Bur-uke plants a hand on one of my hips, gently kneading my skin as he lets out a breath. 

“Come on, beautiful…” he takes my chin between his thumb and forefinger with his spare hand. He drifts his hand down my neck and braces it around my collarbone. He frees my hands, which find their way pressed flat against the tile. I stick my ass out more, partially to get closer to him, but also because I felt my knees grow weak for a moment. I fail to realize that with my feet now on the floor I’m exactly at ideal height. Something glides along my spine and tailbone, forcing a gulp down my throat.

He trails a finger up and down my slit, only teasing me for a moment before pressing his way in. A winey moan escapes me, though I still can’t muster a response.

“Still can’t think of anything?” He asks, starting a rhythm with his finger.. “Or don’t want to tell me?” 

My breath hitches, and my ragged breathing reveals how close I am. He moves onto two fingers, penetrating that much deeper. He picks up speed, and something builds in me.  “I don’t want you to stop until you’ve filled me,” I gasp.

“D-don’t say that,” he stutters, shocked at my response. His grip around my collar weakens, and he slides his fingers out.

“Why not? Don’t think I can take it?” I tease. My eyes widen as I feel something different pressing against my slit. 

“Are you sure?” He whispers in my ear. 

“Oh, yes,” I breathe. Bur-uke presses his body against mine, leaning over me and running his hands over my hips. One hand trails up my side and over my breast, while the other finds its way between my thighs. He slowly guides his way in, spreading me apart with his fingertips. I brace myself against the wall, eager to feel him drive his way into me. Despite how slick I was, Bur-uke still has to inch his way inside me. 

He slowly coaxes me further onto him. “I can’t keep my eyes off you… every inch of you looks so amazing” I hear him utter under his breath.  

“Every inch of you feels amazing…” I barely manage between breaths.  He holds my hips and teases his way in and out of me. Every move pushing him that much deeper, covering his member with my arousal. I feel his fingers knead deeper into my hips, and his breath was ramping. He is still for a moment, and I wonder if he is going to say something. “So tight…” he whispers and swallows. I look back, and see him mouth something. I barely make out “I can’t stop,” before feeling my cheek pushed against the cold tile a moment later. 

Pressure thrusts its way through my stomach, and the air is forced from my lungs. A small squeak conveys the slight sting deep inside me.

“S-sorry, I thought your arms were braced against the wall,” he admits, pulling halfway out. My fists had already balled up and found their place on the tile in front of me once more.

“I’m alright,” I chuckle, glancing back. I wonder how much more he would’ve done if I hadn’t hit the wall.  I find myself arching my back, and pulling myself onto him again. Those ivy-green hands find their way snugly around my waist, with his fingers nearly touching. A wave of shame and exhilaration rushes over me as I realize just how big an orc can be. I grind against him, pulling myself back until I feel his thighs against mine. 

I take a breath, feeling his full length deep inside me. He presses a tiny bit further, and I twitch around him. One of my legs flutters up for a moment and a gasp escapes me. My face is hot, and I find myself waiting for his next move. He starts a slow pace, a mix of his own thrusts and his strong hands pulling me onto his cock. 

By this point I am sure I’ve never had more fluid on my body. Between the shower, my sweat, the few tears that had rolled down my cheeks at some point, and the drool running down my chin and throat. Despite this, I still want more. I want him to use me however he wants for how long he wants, and I want him to cum on me everywhere he wants. 

He’d sped up his pace, keeping full, fast strokes while refusing to sacrifice any of his length. His breathing has become heavier, and his grunts now resembled a growl more than anything else. He was getting close, I can feel it.

A ragged breath escapes me, and I can hardly keep my eyes open. All I can focus on is his presence inside me, overflowing me with waves of pleasure and pain every thrust. Just as I’m sure I can feel him in the pit of my stomach he shifts to shorter, even faster strokes. 

His stamina seems endless, but all I could ask for right now is for him to finish before I can hardly move after this. The stimulation is far too much for me at this point, sending shocks rippling through my body with every movement. I can do nothing but take it, I could hardly keep my head from hitting the wall and my feet on the tile. Every ragged breath feels as if I were on the brink of death, but I never want it to stop.

A hand shifts from my waist to my shoulder, with a firm grip confirming what I anticipated next. He shoves his full length into me, his warm, steady body looming right over mine. He lingers deep inside me, pumping me as full as he can. He sinks his chin into the nape of my neck, planting a small kiss after catching his breath. 

He slowly eases out, quickly finding how horrible my balance has become. He catches me before I fully slip. He glances down at my legs, and I noticed his eyes widen. Bur-uke retrieves a cloth and wipes away what had been running down my leg. 

“I can clean myself, I just need a minute,” I chuckle.

“It's… it's my fault. It's the least I can do really,” he insists. He looks up at me, pausing for a moment. His eyes catch mine and I can't pull away. He slides his hands up my legs, wrapping them around the back of my thighs. I lift a wet lock of hair from his face and tuck it behind his ear. My hand trails down his jaw, and he rests his head on my chest. He lets out a small huff with a smile, and stretches for our lips to meet. 

“Let me wash you off,” he insists. I put my arms over his shoulders, lingering a moment to feel the water cascade over us. 

“You don’t need to do that…” I tell him.

“I want to. What if I let you wash me in return?” He reasons. 

I can’t help but let my eyes trail down his body. Anything to touch him again. To feel his skin against mine. I shudder. 

His touch is gentle, starting at my shoulders he massages and lathers me. Gradually working his way down, he rubs away every sore muscle and washes out any worry I may have. He reaches my legs once more, leaving a trail of suds down my hips and thighs. He suddenly averts his eyes, and grabs my hand. His grip twitches in both hands, squeezing my palm with one and spewing a jet of bubbles from the cloth in the other. He clears his throat. 

“You’re bleeding… tell me if I’m hurting you next time,” he sternly tells me. His brows furrow, and his mouth turns to a frown. 

“How can I make it up to you?” He utters. 

My heart skips a beat. I can’t answer. 

Bur-uke’s grip shifts back to my legs, only derailing to hold my haunches, seemingly on instinct. He clears his throat, focusing on the bubbles gliding down my body once more.

“You don’t need to make it up to me, everything else made up for the tiny bit of pain by comparison,” I reason, shaking my mind from all the ways he could make it up to me. 

“I insist. Maybe not now, but soon. Let's focus on getting you dried off,” 

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” I ask, wiping a few soap suds down his chest. 

He chuckles and holds his hand over mine. He passes me the cloth, and I take great pleasure in cleaning him. Bur-uke’s burly shoulders are firm and rugged. Sunburnt skin rubbing off with ease. His face has been covered with dirt and sweat most of the sweltering day, I can’t imagine how relaxing this must feel after construction work. 

As I start to scrub his shoulder blades he lets out a relieved sigh. Over and over, I rub his back, with Bur-uke letting out small gruff moans and breaths. “I haven’t felt this clean in a long time… Ironic all things considered,” 

“You should bring me into the shower more often,” I laugh.

“Don’t test me. But we should get you out of the men’s section now, huh? Gods forbid anyone tried to shower recently,” he chuckles.

He throws a towel over my shoulders, patting me dry before putting a towel on himself. 

I tuck myself into another stall to finish drying and change into my clothes. I pull aside the thin white shower curtain to see Bur-uke waiting for me… Still in a towel. 

“Are-aren’t you going to get dressed?” I ask.

“Why would I? You go ahead, I’ll be right behind you. It’ll make it seem like we aren’t together. I’ll just be going back to my room anyway,” he shrugs. 

“People will stare,” I smile and roll my eyes. 

“Oh, and I suppose you don’t want people looking?” He raises a brow. 

My face flushes.

“If you want me all to yourself that’s all you have to say,” He smirks. 

“You know that’s not what I meant!” I sheepishly exclaim. 

“Mhm,” Bur-uke chuckles, tipping my chin up to make my eyes meet his.

I’ve never felt so small next to a man, so fragile, helpless, yet so safe. He makes my stomach flutter and my knees weak. This wasn’t intimidation, it was temptation. 

“I’ll see you sometime after we’re both changed.” He says, sounding more like an order than a request. “I understand if you’re tired, but it would be nice to have dinner with you,” he tells me, sending me off with a kiss.

[themathomhouse]

I haven't seen this posted about here but it's going round Twitter and tiktok, and I'm so beyond angry I can't let it go.

The UK imprint of Simon and Schuster have announced a history of Gaza is forthcoming from writer and academic Dr Anne Irfan. She's a professor at UCL specialising in Palestinian refugees and their treatment under the UNRWA. She's done extensive work and volunteering in refugee camps, advocates for Palestinians in the UK directly to government, works with a number of projects including in asylum applications, and writes articles both in academic journals and in newspapers about Palestine. Whilst studying for her thesis, she was denied entry into Palestine by Israel.

Sounds like a highly qualified person to write a history of Gaza, right?

WRONG!

According to activists on social media - all of whom have comparable work backgrounds and experience I'm sure - it's completely unacceptable for her to write this book!!! Some of which is due to her being a white woman (we'll get to that), and some is due to her husband being a soldier in the IDF and clapping for genocide (we'll get to that too).

The vitriol and backlash has been awful, and I haven't seen many takedowns so under the cut I will dissect the issues here.

1) she's not Palestinian.

This one seems to be true, and I do think that it's important that we allow people from a region to tell their own stories. This isn't the worst criticism, however given the other problems people have I think it's being brought up disengenuously.

She is an expert though, and I am deeply concerned about this progression to an idea that we should only learn about or discuss our own cultures. Palestinian voices not being elevated is a systemic issue, not the fault of one woman who we can at least say possesses the requisite expertise to write a history book.

She's actually already written one book - Refuge and Resistance: Palestinians and the international refugee system.

Here's a list of recent news articles she's written.

2) she's white.

This one I can't verify. There are claims from people purporting to be former students of hers who say she's Jordanian and has family in Palestine. Certainly her surname is Arabic and she's listed as being fluent in Arabic on her academic profiles, so I'm not willing to assume from the single photograph I've seen that she's white.

We have also seen from the rise in antisemitism recently that whiteness is entirely conditional, and I think in this case it's being thrust upon her to justify saying she has no business writing a book. I think this is trying to get at systemic issues with publishing, but without any of the facts.

Source:

3) her husband is an IDF soldier.

Her partner (not husband as far as I can tell) tweeted out the book announcement. He's a fucking marketing data guy who works for Twitter. He's not in the IDF. He's just Israeli and so probably did national service, but that's an assumption as he lives in London.

Source:

I can't add his LinkedIn or other profiles as they've all been deleted, likely due to this shit. This will have to do.

4) he supports genocide.

No.

He had a take that I don't personally agree with - saying Israel shouldn't agree to a ceasefire until the hostages have been returned - but that is an extremely far cry from any kind of support for genocide. His Twitter has been deleted so I've only seen screenshots, possibly someone made this claim but failed to procure the correct evidence; but that seems extremely unlikely.

Even the original person who tweeted about this has tried to walk it back (not the husband part but some of the other stuff).

There were no receipts by the way, possibly due to a change of heart.

Babe you called it coloniser apologia and attacked her personally as well as her partner, you're kind of the one who made it personal. Feel bad all you want but this is just you being defensive.

What now?

If you are going to make claims about someone supporting genocide or any of this shit, be really fucking sure before you throw a Molotov cocktail into the dumpster fire of this discourse. The publisher, an unrelated book news website, her editor (who's made her account private after being @ed in the comments), and she and her partner (both deleted Twitter) have been inundated with tweets and videos on tiktok yelling about it - most of which has been at best unhelpful, but comes from a place of xenophobia and an entirely misapplied desire to crusade for justice - and I'm being generous calling it that.

Has this helped? Has it? Did posting her university email and calling for people to call her a fascist in her work inbox manifest some Palestinian writers? Has tweeting shit like this helped?

Getting rid of academia is definitely A Good Take and not the step authoritarians take.

I've personally written to the publisher to express my sadness at this whole thing, agreeing that Palestinian voices are extremely important to uplift but also saying that Dr Irfan is clearly more than qualified to write this book. I admire all of the work she has already done spending more than a decade working with Palestinian refugees, and I hope very much that everyone involved is doing okay.

I don't know what else to do. All I can do is once again say that people need to really, properly fact-check before you post. This woman is actually doing the activism. She's an historian, yes; but also does work directly in camps and with the preservation of archives. Her crime seems to me to be that her partner is Israeli, and if that's where we're at then I don't even want to know where we're going.

[therealdisneyfan2319]

The Spider and The Witch Chapter 3: The Athletic Supporter and the Frozen Peas

Summary: Y/N arrives at the Avengers compound where he begins his winter break internship. Along the way, he learns being a superhero is a lot more difficult than Peter made it out to be.

Pairing: Wanda Maximoff x Male Reader

Warnings: Mild language

Word Count: 2.7K

A/N: Hey y'all! Apologies for the inconsistent posting schedule. I've come to a bit of a roadblock writing Chapter 5 and I have no idea where I'm going with this. Any thoughts or suggestions please send them my way!

Series Masterlist | Masterlist

The last day of the semester brought mixed emotions.  There was a wash of relief having finished all your finals papers, projects, and exams, but apprehension loomed overhead with your upcoming Stark Internship.  That’s the story you told your parents when you explained you wouldn’t be able to come home for the holidays: it was a Stark Internship upstate at the Avengers Campus.  There was no way you’d tell them any more than they absolutely needed to know, bless your mother’s heart if she ever found out you were slinging webs.

Peter worked tirelessly to catch you up to speed, filling you in on everything he thought you needed to know.  Most of it was small stuff that wasn’t all too important in the grand scheme of things: don’t eat Bucky’s almond butter, never hand Tony anything, Pietro is always down for Mario Kart, and if you ever see Natasha curled on the couch with a plush orca whale, no you didn’t.  

******

“Okay, do you have everything you need?” May asked as she loaded your suitcase in the car.  “Toothbrush, retainer, deodorant, athletic suppo-?”

“Yes, May.  I’ve got everything I need,” you interrupted loudly.  

“Alright, let’s get a move on!” She slammed the trunk closed.  “We’re on a tight schedule and we do not want you to be late on your first day.”

You buckled yourself into the passenger seat of May’s car.  She was the only other adult besides Tony who knew what was really going on.  Naturally she offered to take you upstate once the semester ended.  It lessened the risk of your parents finding out the real purpose of your internship.  Peter was on vacation in the UK with Ned otherwise he would’ve joined you on the trip upstate.  You knew he missed the rest of the team and would love to see them again.

The trip upstate was pretty quiet once you got out of the city.  May turned the radio on and you stared out the window most of the trip, your head resting on the seatbelt as the landscape slowly transitioned from urban to rural.  The Hudson River on your left, a sense of calm washed over you as the world became quiet once more.

“So,” May started as she turned the radio down.  “Peter told me you aren’t really sure if you want to do this.”  You shrugged in response.  “It’s a lot.  He was in high school when he started messing around with this whole superhero thing.  He tried to balance homework and friends and saving the neighborhood and for a while he couldn’t keep up with all of it.”

“Peter loved being an Avenger, but I don’t want to be a superhero, May.  I just want to be a normal guy doing normal college guy things.  Honestly I only took this to get him off my back.”

May sighed, readjusting her grip on the steering wheel.  “You have to understand that the past few years haven’t been easy for Peter.  He misses it a lot.  Maybe watching you become Spider-Man is the next best thing for him.  I don’t know.  I do think he’s got a point in wanting you to have better control of your powers so you don’t accidentally stick yourself to my ceiling again.”

“Sorry about that,” you mumbled.  

“Give it a chance, Y/N.  You owe it to yourself to at least try.  Worst comes to worst it doesn’t work out and you come back to college and move on with your life.  But who knows. This could open up a whole new world for you.”

“Thanks, May.”

******

As you pulled into the Avengers Compound, you noticed Tony standing out by the circle.  He stood nonchalant, sunglasses on and hands in his pockets as he watched your car pull around and park by the main entrance.  He smirked as he sauntered towards you.   

“May!  Looking lovely like always,” Tony called as May got out of the car and headed to the trunk.

“Hi Tony!  Good to see you again.”  She hugged him and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.  “Peter sends his regards.  He’s over in London vacationing with Ned.”

“He should’ve said something.  I would’ve set the two of them up in my penthouse had I known.  Good for him, though.  He needs to live a little.  Oh, allow me.”  He lunged forward and grabbed your rather large suitcase out of the trunk.  “Mr. L/N, glad to have you here.”

“Thanks, Mr. Stark,” you replied as he shook your hand rather aggressively.  While you had already met him once, Tony Stark was still an intimidating figure.  

“You’ll take Peter’s old room while you’re here.  Don’t worry, I’ve already told Vision to mind the phasing.”  He handed you back your suitcase as you slung your backpack over your shoulders.  “Most everyone has gone home for the holidays, so it’ll be quiet around here until the new year.  But don’t worry, we’ll still keep you busy.”  You smiled weakly, thinking about the unknown future that lay ahead of you.

“Well, just call if you need anything,” May yelled as she rolled the passenger side window.  “I’ll see you in a few weeks!”

“Thanks May!” you shouted as the car pulled around the drive.  She honked twice in return.  

******

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, you settled into a routine with those who remained over the holiday season.  Monday through Friday you woke up at 6 to lift weights with Bucky.  After weight training, Natasha took you over to the mats for sparring practice.  In terms of strength you definitely had the upper hand.  That didn’t phase Natasha, who was undoubtedly the better combatant.  You’d never sparred a day in your life and she didn’t go easy on you.  More often than not you ended up flat on your back.

“I don’t know how I’m ever supposed to be good at this,” you complained as she helped you up after a particularly nasty hit.

“Y/N, you’ve only been at this for two weeks.  Give yourself a break.”

“Nat, I can’t even dodge a punch properly and I’ve got this weird Spidey sense thing.”  She hemmed and hawed as she looked at you.  It was true: you were totally uncoordinated when it came to fighting.  You were clumsy enough in your everyday life that it probably seeped into other areas of your life, too.

“Focus and patience.  That’s all this is.  Focus, patience, and practice.”  Natasha pushed a sweaty strand of hair off her face.  The two of you had been at it for the better part of two hours and were equally exhausted.  Your ineptitude wasn’t a reflection of her abilities as an instructor, but you could sense her disappointment in your lack of progress.

Weapons training wasn’t that much better.  Your first foray into that world came from Rocket the Racoon.  The Guardians dropped by shortly after Christmas for a meeting with Tony and upon learning of your arrival, Rocket took it upon himself to teach you everything he could about weapons in an hour and a half.  To say it was overwhelming was an understatement.  Rocket rattled off names, specs, calibers, warnings, makers, anything and anything he could think of involving weapons so fast your head spun.  Nothing you heard made any sense.  It wasn’t until Rhodey took over that he broke things down into manageable snippets of information.  Still, you felt like a fish out of water.

******

The first time you walked into the gym, an oversized room situated with mock building tops, scaffolding, lampposts, and mats, AC/DC thundered over the PA system while Tony messed around with a couple of foam blocks.  You nervously walked in, bottle of Gatorade in one hand and grippy socks in the other.  

“Hey!  Underoos Two!” Tony’s face lit up as he looked up from the screen.  “How’s it going?”

“Good,” you answered, dropping your drink to the floor close to the exit.  

“Don’t sound so enthusiastic there, kiddo,” Tony smirked.  You plopped down, untying your shoes and pulling your socks off.  “Woah, hang on.  Got something for you.”  You grunted as a ball of spandex hit you clear in the face.  “Put that on!”  As you removed it from your face, you looked at the red and blue bundle in your hands.  Black strands that resembled webbing traced up and down the fabric, and a large nanotechnic spider adorned the middle of the suit.  Little suckers peppered the hands and feet of the suit.  A mask with wide white eyes fell out of the bundle and landed face up on the floor next to you.  As the eyes stared back up at you, you couldn’t help but feel that it was Peter watching your every move.

“The design is the exact same as Peter used to wear.  I’ve tweaked it a bit.  There’s a gap in the wrist so you can shoot those, what, are those actual webs you shoot?”  

“I don’t know, I’ve never actually analyzed its molecular structure,” you shrugged.

“Alright, so there’s a gap for you to shoot those web-like thingies from.  That’s new.  Plus, you know, some general upkeep, maintenance, and, of course, a complete OS update for the training wheels program complete with your very own Karen.  She’ll be your guardian angel.”

“Hello Y/N, my name is Karen.”  The robotic female voice greeted you as you pulled the mask over your head for the first time.

“Uhh, hi?”

“Mr. Stark has authorized you to begin the training wheels program in accordance with the commencement of your training as Spider-Man.  Would you like me to go through a complete tutorial of your suit?”

“Maybe later, thanks.”  You pulled the mask off, your Y/H/C flopping in your face as it poofed free of the constraint.

“So,” Tony quipped from the corner, programming the last of his drones with the anticipated training schematic.  “Let’s get started.”

******

To say your first foray into Spider-Man-ing was a disaster was an understatement.  It was the first time you’d ever tried swinging.  The mechanics of it were awkward.  Swinging was meant to be fluid, one smooth web shooting from your wrist at just the right moment as you propelled yourself forward with the one you just shot.  Peter made it look easy.  The reality couldn’t be further from the truth.  

“You alright?” Tony asked as you face planted into the wall for the umpteenth time.  

Groaning, you peeled your sticky body off of it and landed on the floor with a thump.  A dull ache thrummed throughout your entire body.  Peter hadn’t warned you about this part.  The sudden jolts and abrupt stops sent shocks of pain zapping through every painful web swing.  While the impact alone was enough to kill a normal human being, your mutated body could somehow withstand the worst of it.  Still, it hurt like a son of a bitch.  You sensed a cold shower and multiple bags of frozen peas were in your future plans.

“Why don’t we call it a night?  Go get cleaned up, we’ll go again tomorrow if you’re up for it.”  Tony switched off the lights, leaving you lying in the dark as he sauntered out of the gym, whistling all the while.  

“I’m detecting multiple contusions,” observed Karen. 

“Yeah, no shit.” 

******

You winced as you opened the freezer, piling as many bags of frozen veggies as you could find into your bruised arms. You planned on throwing them on every aching inch of flesh you could find and resigning yourself to your bedroom for the rest of the evening.  Dinner?  That was out of the question.  Maybe some Tylenol if you could find it.  Otherwise, you just didn’t have the energy to do anything.

As you turned the corner, a bounding figure crashed into your already sore body.  Frozen asparagus and corn flew all over the hallway as the bags flew out of your arms.

“Oh geez, I’m sorry,” a soft voice apologized.  The figure knelt down in the dimly lit hallway, reaching for the scattered bags. 

“No, sorry that was me,” you apologized in return.  “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”  You reached for a bag of peas, your hand lightly brushing over hers.  It recoiled quickly at your sudden touch, leaving you with the phantom feeling of her soft skin under yours.  “Oh, Wanda, hi.”

Bright green eyes stared back at you from the shadows.  You hadn’t spent much time with the witch or her brother in your two weeks at the Compound.  She was quiet, keeping mostly to herself outside of business unless she was with her twin, Pietro, or Natasha every so often.  Peter hadn’t talked about her much.  The most you ever got was an exaggerated tale about the Scarlet Witch controlling corpses to fight off a barrage of HYDRA agents.  Staring back into those bright orbs made you wonder whether or not he was actually telling you the truth.

“Y/N, right?”  She raised an eyebrow questioningly as you nodded in response.  “Nat’s told me about you.  Says you’re a terrible fighter,” Wanda chuckled.

“She’s not wrong,” you groaned as you pushed yourself off the floor.

“That’s the nice part about magic.  You don’t have to worry about getting punched.”

“Next time I get my DNA re-written, I’ll be sure to ask for magic powers instead of webs,” you joked.

“How long are you staying?” she asked, offering you a bag of corn.

“Just for another few weeks.  I’ll head back to the city before the start of the semester.”

“That’s how you know Peter, right?  You both go to the same college.”

“Yeah, Empire State.”

“What are you studying?”

“Biochemistry.  I’d like to go to med school after I’m done.”

“Oh wow,” Wanda’s eyes widened in awe.  “I’m always jealous of people in college.  I didn’t spend a lot of time in school when I was younger.  I wanted to.  I loved school when I was a kid.  I just never had time for it after my…” Her voice was tinged with sadness as she trailed off.  “You’re very lucky.”  Suddenly you felt a rush of shame for complaining about your packed schedule next semester.  

“Well, you know, it’s never too late to go.  I just wonder what the Scarlet Witch would major in,” you teased.  The throbbing in your knee was too painful to ignore by now, begging you to go back to your room and sit down.  But there you stayed, talking to Wanda Maximoff in the dulled illumination of the hallway.  This was the first conversation you’d ever had with her.  She was incredibly entrancing, her deep emerald eyes luring you in the longer you stayed and talked to her.

Wanda shook her head, eyes drifting to the tiled floor as she pondered your question for a moment.  “I don’t know,” she shrugged.  “I’ve never really thought about it before.”

“I’m sure you’d be good at whatever you wanted to do,” you offered.  

“Thanks, but I think I’ll stick to the magic for now,” Wanda smirked.  She wiggled her fingers, a flicker of red illuminating them as magic danced around her hand.  “I’m pretty good at this.”

“Fun as it is to watch you do that, I’m literally about to pass out.”  The magic faded just as quickly as it appeared.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” she countered, walking past you and into the kitchen.

“Hey!” She turned.  “That story about the bodies and HYDRA…is that true?”

“Peter tell you that?”

“Yeah,” you admitted sheepishly.

Wanda opened her mouth as if to say something, closing it and tilting her head to look at you.  Even in the dim light you swore her eyes glowed the faintest hint of red.  “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear, Y/N.  But then again…” A devilish gleam spread over her otherwise angelic face.  

“I’ll remember to put a line of salt outside the door before I go to bed then.”

“What?”

“You know, to keep the-you know what?  Never mind, I’ll see you later.”  You turned on your heels as fast as you could manage, which wasn’t very given the state of your battered body.  With the thought of the Scarlet Witch puppeteering a corpse into your room fresh in your mind, you made sure to lock the door before collapsing into a deep sleep.

[padme-amitabha]

I just saw a post calling ahoska and obi wan anakins truest loves and uh what? It brought up the mortis arc of tcw and essentially minimizing the anidala love for one another as some form of escapism and how its poison ( even tho vader literally gets saved bc of luke - padmes son🙄) Its so strange how ahsoka fans want to make her a more prominent character than she really is. Also a recurring opinion that gets brought up is ahsoka knowing/understanding anakin better than padme and obi wan when she didn’t even know things about him (like he was a slave) and we consistently see anakin confide in padme its just so odd how alot of star wars fans diminish her

That doesn't surprise me at all since Star Wars is Ahsoka Wars at this point. And even if it wasn't, you have to give the Skywalkers at least some rest uk? The constant retconning and addition of new stuff most people didn't even ask for is tiresome. Ahsoka from the start felt very OC-ish to me because she was constantly hyped and favored in a way not even Anakin was. She felt like a self-insert jedi character so her place is canon is just weird. And forcing her to be important in places where she's not needed just shows Filoni's favoritism. At least GL wasn't ever really biased towards Anakin and Luke. Anakin mainly suffered through so much and had enough flaws and complexies which Ahsoka never had. She's constantly in a plot armor and just overpowered imo. But ofc she's a badass Jedi so she is more popular than Padme. I cant even.. I just hate the way TCW and Filoni wrote her. I don't see Anakin as being a big brother to anyone. Or being a teacher. The only other natural interaction he has except Padme and his mother is with Obi-Wan and even that took time. They didn't get along well in the first two movies and although he does joke around with Obi Wan in ROTS, he has his own slightly awkward and shy way of doing it. And I imagine he's semi reserved and shy with other Jedi. Or when we see him interacting with Padme's family. But to make him a responsible master is strange because even in ROTS he was too young and not mature enough to be level-headed and responsible all the time. And I like that because he has flaws but he was trying to learn and wanted to be a good father. And I do believe he really gained that maturity (which was stunted due to obvious trauma) and fatherly affection for Luke after ESB and not before. I think he would have had trouble connecting with Leia as well post ROTJ because he wasn't prepared to and had no experience being a role model for anyone. Meanwhile, 22 year old TCW Anakin with Ahsoka acts like a 30 year old man with anger issues...

It's also frustrating to see Padme being reduced to a love interest when she was a main character and part of the trio. She, like Han, didn't need to be a Jedi to be one of the main characters and it's boring to see a trio of Jedi only. I don't really blame Ahsoka fans - only Filoni for constantly dragging her into everything and I'm glad it's backfiring because I see fans who previously liked her are beginning to get tired of her being shoehorned into every single SW thing and acting all Mary Sue. Also, see the amount of concept arts and storylines they wrote for Padme during the prequels. She had more arts than Anakin and Obi-Wan. GL clearly wanted her to be important even more than Leia in ANH because we see much more of Padme and the first movie directly involves her and her planet with Anakin's discovery being a sideplot. It's disrespectful to reduce her to a love interest.

This video puts it really well (although he isn't a fan of the prequels as far as I can remember): "Dave Filoni's biggest problem as a writer apart from his complete inability to write interesting dialogue or craft stories that are more than just fetch quest for Magical McGuffin or create people who actually make smart decisions or his borderline fetish for the boring mediocre character he's trying so hard to insert as the driving force behind the entire Star Wars narrative is his constant [ __ ] around and reconning of past events and World building to suit the needs of his own narrow story. It's like he's staying in a hotel room for a couple of days and decided that he now has the right to completely remodel the place because he feels like it. This isn't your job Dave you're supposed to work within the rules of the world that George created not write a whole bunch of new ones just to suit yourself that now affect everyone else."

Lol applause for saying that out loud

[kickinganddriving]

Sweet nothings- Christian Pulisic

Note: This is so soft i cant, also wrote this for my homegirls @snownonthebeach @christian-pulisic @breakablehcaven and this discourse that happen in the comment section of that post

-I also brought out the poetry chops so I deserve an award

-Not proofread but if any of y'all wanna do that just message me

Song suggestion: Sweet Nothing- Taylor Swift

Word count: 1.6K

Summary: All you and Christian want from each other is sweet nothing.

Warnings: Swearing

Paring: Christian Pulisic x Reader

I spy with my with my little tired eye

Tiny as a firefly

A pebble that we picked up last July

Down deep inside your pocket

We almost forgot it

Does it ever miss Wicklow sometimes?

It was cold outside, but you refused to let the forecast in Cobham stop you from always being fashionable. That was until you were freezing cold walking home from the Pub that was 5 blocks away from Christians apartment.

Christian being the boyfriend that he is, thought it was his moral duty to make sure his beloved girlfriend does not get sick.

"Baby take my jacket."

"No, i'll be fine" you say as you start walking a bit faster to beat the cold weather.

"No you won't, take my jacket before you get sick"

"What about you, what if you get sick?" You quip.

"I have 2 layers under this, I'll be just fine"

"Fine" you said in a huff not wanting to admit you were cold, but you were actually about to freeze your ass off.

You put on Christians jacket and you reach into his pocket to try and warm your hands up. You felt a small object in his pocket, and fished it out. It was a pebble.

"What's this Chris?" You curiously remark at the tiny rock.

"I have no clue, wait, I think this was the jacket I wore when we went to Ireland last July." Christian says thinking back to last summer.

"We must've picked it up from somewhere then." You say while observing the rock and its features.

"We probably did" He remarks while pulling you closer to him while the both of you walk home.

"Do you ever think it misses its home?"

Christian silently laughs, and kisses your cold cheek in response.

"God, I love you" He whispers under his breath.

They said the end is coming

Everyone's up to something

I find myself running home to your sweet nothing

When the both of you arrived home, you went to your shared room with Christian, to choose something warmer and more comfortable to wear. After you changed you went downstairs to find Christian strewn across your couch scrolling on his phone with a pensive look on his face. Trying to see what he was looking at you joined him on the couch laying on top of his body.

He's always found your presence comforting, and you knew that, so you thought it might be the right time to ask him what was wrong.

"Hey honey, what's on your mind?"

"Nothing important" He says, trying to make it seem like it's nothing.

"If you have that look on your face, it's not nothing."

"Fine, there are rumors that Potter might want to trade me off the team." He says quietly trying to downplay what he said.

"What! Lemme see" you say after snatching his phone from his hand to get up so he would not steal it back from you. You silently skim through the article and you saw it was from the shittiest, most anti- American news publication in all of the UK.

"You realize it's bullshit, right? It's from the most unreliable news outlet in all of the country. Not to mention the vendetta they have against Americans." You say trying to comfort him in a way while you sit back down on his thighs.

"It could still be true." He says letting the worry get to him, as he pulls you close to him for comfort.

"Potter may be dumb, but he's not a complete idiot... also in the great words of Taylor Swift "You're the only one of you" and you cannot be replaced or I will go up to that man and fist fight him. Also we all know I would win, me vs an old, crusty, white man?!" Thankfully  your witty statement placed a small smile on his lips.

"How come you always know what to say?" He quietly says while placing a small kiss on your nose.

"It's easy when I have the best boyfriend on the planet" you remark as you place a small kiss on his lips.

"Let's go to bed" Christian says mid yawn as you play with his curls.

Outside, they're pushing and shoving

You're in the kitchen humming

All that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing.

The next morning you woke up before Christian, and all you wanted to do was to cheer him up and make sure he starts the day in a good mood. You decided to sneak out of bed and make him pancakes. You put your airpods in and play Christians happy music playlist, you make an effort to listen to the music he likes, as weird as it may be. You were quietly humming and dancing to one of the songs you are more familiar with.

"Good morning my dancing queen" you hear as you feel a tall figure hug you from behind you turn your head to look at your shoulder to see, Christians curls buried into your neck.

"Good morning my sleepy bug" you softly say as you pat him lightly. Christian holds you and sways with you for a minute.

"How long were you standing?" You curiously asked the brunette

"Longer than I'd care to admit" he chuckles as he admires your outfit, or lack thereof, as you are wearing nothing but underwear and his shirt.

"How are you feeling?"

"Better. You know I love you"

"I love you to, now sit down at the table so I can give you your extra special pancakes"

"Ok, are you packed for the flight?" he asks.

"Which flight?"

"The flight to Philly"

"You're finally bringing me back with you?!" You say while totally bear hugging him.

"I guess I am," He says as he smiles against your forehead.

On the way home

I wrote a Poem

You say what a mind

This happens all the time.

You and Christian were in the backyard of his childhood home leaning against a birch tree with you sitting in between his legs.

"Whatcha doing?" Christian asks as he looks over your head into his lap.

"Writing a Poem" you responded.

"About what?"

"Everything around us, the nature, the atmosphere, you"

"Me? I feel honored" Christian responds with slight exaggeration in his tone.

You've always loved poetry, it's always felt soothing and mind clearing.

"Do you want to read it?" You asked the man sitting behind you.

"Of course" he looks over your shoulder to read the world neatly written out on a page in his notebook.

Whose trees is that? I think I know.

Its owner is quite happy though.

Full of joy like a vivid rainbow,

I watch him laugh. I cry hello.

He gives his trees a shake,

And laughs until her belly aches.

The only other sound's the break,

Of distant waves and birds awake.

The trees is green, calming and deep,

But he has promises to keep,

After cake and lots of sleep.

Sweet dreams come to him cheap.

He rises from his gentle bed,

With thoughts of kittens in his head,

He eats his jam with lots of bread.

Ready for the day ahead.

"What a mind" He says in appreciation of you and the words in front of him.

"Do we have to go back Christian?"

"I think we do, but whenever I'm with you I feel like i'm here"

You smile and you slowly settle into him breathing deeply.

Industry disruptors and soul deconstructors

Ans smooth-talking hucksters

Out glad-handing each other

And the voices that implore

"You should be doing more"

To you I can admit

I'm just too soft for it.

It was Christian and your first day back home after your brief trip back to Christians childhood home. The both of you were mildly afraid seeing how his future at Chelsea is quite uncertain. Your nerves started to tense up as you heard his car pull into the driveway. 

"Babe, i'm home" Christian announces to make sure you are aware of his presence in your home.

"Hi sweetheart.. How was your day?" You carefully ask him not to say something that might set off a fuse.

"It was a day." He monotonously responded.

"Just tell me everything that is wrong, and I mean everything, you need to get it off your chest" You say with concern as you hug up to your boyfriend's figure worried about his mental state.

"It's just I am worried that I'm going to lose my spot on a team that feels like home, and I don't want you to have to up and move everything you've built your life around because of me. I'm trying to work harder to earn my place on the team, but with the entire internet saying I'm a shitty player, it feels harder and harder to accomplish the goals that are being set for me. Sometimes I feel like I'm just too soft for all of it" He explains as you listen and take every word to heart.

"Baby, I swear that if you get traded it will not ruin my life, it's like a new adventure for me and you, ok? Also, that's even if you do get traded, I am 98.88% sure you are staying at Chelsea, and all of the people saying that your a shitty player and that you are getting traded are people that are simply jealous of you, your talent, your hair,-"

"my girlfriend" he chimes in, putting a grin on both of your faces.

"See, you're going to be just fine, matter of fact, WE are going to be just fine" you assure him.

"God, I love you so much," he says, hugging his figure even more.

All you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing.

istg if y'all don't like this i'm throwing myself off a building-

-xoxo gossip girl

[comfyworlds]

Howl’s moving castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Genre: fantasy

POV: Sophie Hatter (3rd person)

Main characters: Sophie, Howl Jenkins, Calcifer, Michael Fisher

Settings: Kingdom of Ingary (magical realm) and Wales (UK)

Fav quote: “May your bacon burn!” (Write in the comments who is the one saying it;) )

I hope that all of you have watched the movie from Ghibli because it's beautiful! I mean the pictures are incredible and so is the story. Obviously the presence of a certain gorgeous mage is also a good point... I won't lie he was one of the reasons why I ended up reading the book. I heard many comments about how different the book was from the movie, especially regarding Howl and Sophie's personalities and relationship. So here I am telling you all that it was worth it.

In fact, I discovered that the feeling reading the book is the same you get from the film. Relationships between characters (not only Howl and Sophie) are deeper.

For example you might remember Michael from the movie. Ghibli’s version was a lil boy with ginger hair but in the book he is older and (spoiler! Don’t read if you want a surprise) in love with Sophie’s younger sister Martha. Yes because in the book Sophie has two sisters and there’s romance for both.

Eventually the book was verg good, different from the movie but in a good way and also made me appreciate the film even more. Some sequences of the book make much more sense now and I appreciated a lot some scenes that Ghibli brought in the movie identical to how they were in the book.

Atmosphere and plot are basically the same and also the ending is very similar. Fro someome it might be a deterrent but since I like to discover more about the evnts and characters I found it interesting anyway.

Probably I will write a new post with the differences between the book and the movie but for now I leave you with this review. Hope you enjoy!