//me @ me reconsidering the 1.3 verse for the sibs once again

7 Anti LO Asks

1. Persephone’s character honestly just sucks. With everything that has happened I now see why Demeter was the way she was, her daughter has killed people and a nymph. “Oh I’m so naive and innocent but I won’t hesitate when I get tattled on for murder.” Like I know RS wants complicated more than 1 note characters but this is opposite sides of the spectrum.

2. what i dont get regarding LO is apollo's stupid plan is nothing to kronos coming back, who was awoken/revived by persephone's own lack of control, wouldnt that be even more valid of a reason to put her under lock and key? like she's genuinely a threat not just in her lack of control (which the comic frames as good) but she's creating more problems via kronos and having hades and co. being corrupt to keep her free of punishment. there is no peace and justice if she's walking free in the end IMHO.

3. ok but also with LO framing apollo as evil for wanting to overthrow zeus: it also frames zeus as corrupt and bad (despite no one minus hera and hades's personal grievances and i guess ares not liking him) so?? whats exactly the endgame supposed to be? hxp become rulers of all the realms? the monarchy is overthrown? hera rules solo a "yass queen" moment? you cant establish apollo is evil for wanting him out of power, but also keep saying zeus is a bad king! theres no happy ending for any of this!

4. I’m getting sick and tired of LO stans lying about the actual mythology just to make there shitty webcomic look better. Like one time i saw someone saying that they wished Apollo wasn’t evil in the comic so him and Hyacinth could be together (same) and you wanna know what a LO stan said? “You clearly don’t know anything about the myths Apollo killed Hyacinth in the original myths because a princess was also in love with him and Apollo being the selfish predatory bisexual yandere (yes they said yandere) he is decided to kill him because he’s a dick” they then went on about how Op only liked Apollo because ancient times ancient greeks where “barbaric”

(They where also low-key biphobic threw out the whole thing)

5. Does Persephone even feel guilty? Like now that the village people incident is known by the readers she doesn’t think about it or talk about it even tho it’s about her trial coming up. And then the other thing is that when it’s brought to light she turns someone apart of that team into a plant. She should have known something like that could have been coming since a -she killed some people and b she wasn’t punished for it. Like I’m sure Demeter promised she’d take care of it, but there’s only so much she could do. Like it’s fair Persephone committed a crime and used her powers for wrath and killed people. Like I know Zeus isn’t fair but still her life isn’t in “tatters”. Persephone cares more about not being like Hera enough and being called a “dumb village girl” once, rather than idk actual murder or taming her powers

6. its shocking to me that we're almost four years of LO and minthe is still more distinct than the actual lead. you see a red woman with pointy ears, a sleek business look, and a death glare, and you instantly knows that's her, meanwhile you see a bright pink, baby faced woman and instead dont know if its persephone, daphne, or some other random nymph OC someone made up. even Hera isn't unique anymore with Leto around. The majority of unique looks are villains and Hades, and that's it!

7. I haven’t read the fast pass, BUT from the little snippets I’ve read, how can you have a timeskip with so much happening right now? Daphne is waiting for Demeter, Demeter is waiting for someone just anyone to notice she’s gone and a bird (like I thought that was gonna be a Hecate and Persephone bonding thing where Hecate would treat Persephone as an adult) Minthe is still a plant, like shouldn’t some of that stuff get addressed before they pull a secret wedding? Wouldn’t the fans actually wanna read a wedding? I know I shouldn’t say too much since I don’t have fast pass so my view shouldn’t matter this much, but I can’t imagine these plot points being done with proper care and planning. I honestly feel RS wants to shove as much HXP she can and then remember there’s like sometimes a plot to follow.

Fic Writer Questions!

tagged by @palamedessextus !!! thank u i love to procrastinate on writing by writing about writing

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

110 on my main account (+ 4 on my sneaky sock for Crimes™ lol)

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?

614,551 on my main account which is. hm. a lot

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

obvi the main ones are the terror (50 fics) and good omens (35 fics). beyond that: TMA, the OA, doctor who, LOST, red dwarf, what we do in the shadows, the aubreyad, legends of tomorrow, banished, MCU, bbc ghosts, jeeves & wooster, russian doll, true detective, twin peaks, fleabag, & it's always sunny.

so technically 19, but wow a LOT of those are because i am a fiend for crossovers. (true detective x red dwarf... twin peaks x hannibal... the OA x lost.... russian doll x doctor who...) and many of the others were one-offs for yuletide. i'm pretty monofannish when it comes to writing!

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

lol they're all going to be for good omens... let's see

1. "it's a new craze" - the podcast fic. imho this fic is the definition of "The Claw," a.k.a. the phenomenon that sees some fics plucked out from the fray to become super popular. i'm not denying that it's good! i still think it's pretty clever! but its popularity was probably as much a function of timing as of quality

2. "what a way to make a living" - the uber driver fic. honestly still pretty proud of this one, it flows well and is structurally interesting and genuinely very funny and the perfect length. i had a blast in good omens fandom writing comedic fic, this one

3. "dearly departed" - another one i'm still very happy with. my first ever finished multi-chapter fic & the story that proved to me i could sustain a plot and original characters and also that people would actually enjoy it. so a pretty big deal!

4. "blame it on my juice, baby!" - the fake love potion one. i wrote this fic while delirious with horrible fever cooped up in a tiny council flat airbnb bedroom in london. i think it's still pretty strong although since writing it i've developed a severe aversion to the "meddling friend engineers a get-together" trope in fic & so cringe a bit when i read it back, lmao

5. "greatest hits" - the one with the original songs! the songs are still good.... the fic is ehhhhhhh i guess.

5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

i don't respond to comments on most of my gomens fic anymore because 🤷‍♀️ but i do try to reply to everything i get on my terror fic/smaller fandom stories! my replies are usually very lame but i do like to take the time to thank people for reading.

6) What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

i usually don't write angsty endings because i'm a weenie BUT the one exception is probably my terror/TMA crossover which cannot be said to end well by any means lol

7) What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

dearly departed has a very lovely ending... i will also plug my OA fic heat rises which is GREAT and has a GREAT ending and nobody read it because nobody watched the OA. i'm fine it's fine

8) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

as mentioned above, yes, compulsively... award for craziest simply has to go to It's Always Sunny In Another Dimension which is, yes, an IASIP x OA crossover. i apologize for nothing

9) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

not that i can recall, [bubbe voice] tenks gad!!!

10) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

i do i do.... when i first picked up fic writing again after college i thought smut would forever totally beyond me but after some very kind encouragement from friends i tried my hand at it & was off to the races.

i would not say i am an expert at it by any means but i have a lot of fun with it, & people seem to generally appreciate it, so i will keep going!

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

also no, phew

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes, a bunch of my gomens fics have been translated into chinese and russian, which is so so super cool!

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

yuh, i had a few legendary cowrites in GO! the slow show metafic with cherry @fremulon and the shitscript crossover extravaganza with hallie @kalelraejepsen !!! both tremendously fun experiences

14) What’s your all time favorite ship?

that is a very tough one. if you go by my ao3 bookmarks it's aziraphale/crowley, which might be true still tbh... but i dunno. maybe ten/rose because that shit never leaves you.

15) What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

in terms of fic i already started posting, there's my one terror WIP with amnesiac tozer that i swear i WILL finish one day... and same goes for my good omens music & lyrics AU, which i fully expect to pick back up and finish off when i inevitably return to the fandom for series 2.

as far as stuff that never made it out of drafts, i started a hodgson-centric fic a few weeks ago that i got like 4k into before realizing i need to seriously refine my approach. so hopefully after exe fest i will get around to that!

16) What are your writing strengths?

well i am funny. so i've got that going for me. other than that ummmm i don't know. i don't think of myself as a particularly good or strong writer bc i really am just here for a laff. i think i can turn a phrase well and get the most out of imagery; i'm good at coming up with compelling story concepts and weird gimmicks, i guess?

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

i fundamentally don't know or understand how People Actually Act And Feel so i have a hard time getting realistic or interesting reactions and conflicts out of characters. my plots (when my stories have them at all) are very powered by external events, i wouldn't call myself a character-driven writer by any means. for the same reasons i struggle with voice and dialogue beyond superficial signposting via vocabulary/syntax. also, sustaining a long story/finding enough Stuff To Happen to fill it up/having the patience to keep writing... is something i need to work on for sure.

18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

i'm a lame american who only speaks english so honestly i don't really have thoughts!

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

i distinctly remember hand-writing in my notebook two or three pages worth of a story about what happened to the main precog in "minority report" after watching the movie when i was like seven. the first fandom i actually wrote fic for and posted it online was probably doctor who circa 2010 ish? but my warrior cats RP career predates that by a few years and i did a LOT of writing there. oh warriorsforest39 dot proboards dot com you are missed....

20) What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

SEX GHOST AU! SEX GHOST AU!

tagging folks :))) @laissezferre @titleleaf @theburialofstrawberries @girdedheraround @flanneryoconnorfanfiction @wreathedwith if u want!!

I read more books this month than I anticipated. I should probably wait before doing a February book round up, but I already feel like I’m struggling to decide which ones to cut from my list so I’m doing it this weekend instead of next. If I read much next week I’ll bump ‘em up into March’s round up

Asterix and the Missing Scroll / Chieftain’s Daughter

I got the last two “new” Asterix books out of the library so I could officially say I had read them all. Over all my opinion is… they’re fine! None of these would ever become one of my favourites, but they’re all fine stories. The art is good, it is completely in-line with the original, and the stories are… fine. I liked The Missing Scroll quite a bit more than The Chieftain’s Daughter but I never find a ~hurr hurr teenagers~ plotline that interesting, whereas I do enjoy seeing Romans get chased down by unicorns so that’s probably not surprising. There’s some spark I can’t put my finger on that the new Asterix books just seem to be missing though… a bit of humour or cleverness or something. Still, they’re fine reads if you’ve been hungry for more Asterix and I’m glad I read them. (Though the library gave me the American translation of The Chieftain’s Daughter, something I didn’t realize until I started reading and realized that this is wrong??? I’ve been reading these books since I could read and I know this is wrong??? What the hell is happening??? The I realized the publisher was different and I simmered in fury the whole time I read it — WHY ARE YOU CHANGING NAMES AND WORD CHOICES IN A WELL ESTABLISHED SERIES THAT ALREADY HAS AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION YOU ANIMALS WHY ARE YOU DUMBING DOWN THE LANGUAGE AAAUGH

The Bride Was A Boy

This one was cute! The Bride Was A Boy is an autobiographical manga written by a transwoman recounting her experience with transitioning, meeting her boyfriend, and eventually getting married. It’s mostly done in a 4-panel style and is interspersed with lots of information about the LGBT community, particularly in Japan. A lot of it was stuff I was already familiar with, but I still found it adorable and a very worthwhile read. it would be a fantastic book for young queer people who are looking for more of an introduction into international queer space

Cul de Sac: Children At Play

Cul de Sac is just a weird, fun newspaper comic series about the children who live in a small neighbourhood. It fully taps into the children-as-semi-feral-chaos-agents, and there’s something hilariously nostalgic about the whole thing. Lots of times when stories try to portray children there’s always something… wrong about it, something that doesn’t mesh with true childhood, but in this comic I can see glimpses of my grimy, dirty-covered self as a preschooler running around the pages. I would definitely recommend trying them!

The Cremation of Sam McGee

I reread The Cremation of Sam McGee and The Shooting of Dan McGrew and man, they don’t stop being buckwild. These are two really famous Canadian poems that were then illustrated by equally famous Canadian artist Ted Harrison. Harrison’s style is gorgeous and distinct and given what strangely grisly stories these poems are they fit the mood perfectly. Everything feels just a little tilted and wrong and unsettling. If you enjoy an occasional poem (especially ones that are super fun to read out loud) and haven’t read these before, I would recommend them! Or do what my teachers did, and read Sam Gee to a young child in your life and watch them be baffled and concerned and horrified.

There are strange things done / in the midnight sun / by the men who moil for gold...

The Gryphon’s Lair

The second book of the Royal Guide to Monster Slaying series written by Kelley Armstrong; I’ve been eagerly awaiting this book! It’s a very cool fantasy series because it really leans into environmental stewardship and the importance of studying animals and conservation so you can find ways to live alongside a healthy ecosystem. In this book Rowan is officially accepted as the Royal Monster Hunter, which means a whole new set of trials and burdens. She has to contend with a baby gryphon that is becoming increasingly large and dangerous, plotting family members, doubt about her abilities, a potential curse, and a daunting quest deep into the mountains in order to set things right. If you’re looking for some very gentle high fantasy, this series delivers.

Hogan’s Heroes comics

What to say here. Anyone following this blog has suffered the knowledge that I’ve been rewatching Hogan’s Heroes lately. When I found out that there was a short-lived, shitty comic series in the 60s? Of course I had to hunt them down. And so I’ve read them! And they sure were a shitty comic series from the 60s! They were, shall we say, of wildly varying quality. Some were actually really funny (like #5, it easily had the best art and best jokes imho), others were a slog, and most were fine and amusing enough to read the whole way through but not much more.

If you don’t know what Hogan’s Heroes is about: it was a 1960s sitcom that took place in a WWII POW camp, in which the Allied prisoners trapped there had a massive, complex sabotage/spy ring right underneath the camp. The whole show is about constantly outwitting the bumbling Germans while keeping up the pretense that they’re all just normal prisoners. The show is hilariously funny and I would recommend that, even if I can’t say the same for the comics unless you’re like me and are just really thirsty for more content...

Magic Misfits: The Fourth Suit (Ripley)

The final book of Neil Patrick Harris’ middle grade series, The Magic Misfits. In this fourth book, the group is fragmented and forced to meet in secret to avoid notice from the mysterious and powerful Kalagan whose cruel machinations have already turned the quiet little town on its ears, putting people’s lives in peril and destroy Leila’s fathers’ magic shop. The Misfits are going to need all their skills to finally unmask this sinister magician and break the mesmerism he seems to have placed over the entire town before it’s too late to save no only the town, but their friendship and trust.

Super charming series, and the illustrations are gorgeous.

Marsupilami

HOUBA! I watched a very bad TV adaptation of this as a kid that still managed to find a place in my heart, and so I decided to finally try reading some of the original comic! On one hand: it was exactly what I had hoped! The art is cute, the marsupilami is so dynamic and fun to see on the page (and has a way better characterization than he does in the show), and it’s really funny! Unfortunately! It is also pretty racist! Yikes! That seems to be a reoccuring downfall for some of these older Belgian comics... I also tried reading the first book of Les Tuniques Bleues and aye ye ye… I couldn’t actually get through that one. That being said, these were older volumes and frankly, North American media was also real fucking racist at that point so I’m not gonna write them off either. I really liked most of this book, and will probably try to get my hands on one of the more recent volumes of both Marsupilami and Les Tuniques Bleues to see if they get better with time. (If you’ve read either of those series and have volume recommendations hmu)

The Pagemaster

I’m a sucker for novelizations, I have no excuse beyond that. I recently rewatched The Pagemaster and decided to read the chapter book. And it was a solid little adaptation! It’s about Richard Tyler, a young boy with a head for statistics which unfortunately means he lives in constant fear of (in his opinion, statistically likely) injury or death. However that fear is put to the test when he gets caught in a horrible thunderstorm and has to shelter in a nearby library with halls and shelves that stretch beyond the imagination and with untold perils hidden among the pages of the books. Richard, with only his library card and three novels that hope to be checked out, has to venture through the different genres and horrors housed int he library if he ever wants to find the exit and get home to safety.

Pumpkinheads

A very charming little graphic novel. Cute art, and really loveable characters. Josiah and Deja work every year at a local pumpkin patch, and are best friends during those weeks. However this is their last year working there before going off to university and as the last day at the patch comes to a close they realize that they both still have regrets. Deja sets off on a mission to avoid work, eat all the interesting snacks around the patch, and get Josiah to find the girl he’s been crushing on every year and has never worked up the nerve to talk to.

After being deprived of human contact for almost a year, this book really hits you right in the heart.

The Screwfly Solution

A deeply upsetting scifi/horror short story! I read it on the recommendation of a friend and, yes, can confirm that this fucked me up a bit. I honestly don’t even know what to say about this that wouldn’t spoil it, but frankly with everything being as it is, this hit a little bit too close to reality. (That being said, it was very well written, like this is a very good story on a literary level and it does exactly what it sets out to accomplish.) If you feel like reading twenty pages and being really disturbed, give it a go! Otherwise go and read any number of the much happier books on this list!

The Whipping Boy

This was a book I remember reading as a lit circle book back in elementary school and really loving. After telling myself I’d reread it for years, I finally sat down with it again. If you somehow got through school without reading this one, it’s about a brat of a prince and his whipping boy — since it would be unspeakable to strike a prince, when the prince misbehaves it is Jemmy who gets whipped. Unsurprisingly, there is no love lost between the two of them, because the prince is always intentionally causing problems that Jemmy has to suffer for. Things begin to change though when the prince decides to run away and drags Jemmy along with him. On the run, being chased by highwaymen, and desperately trying to hide their identities, these boys go on a fast-paced adventure beyond the castle walls. It wasn’t as special as I remembered it being as a kid, but it’s a fine little chapter book.

Moodboard #3

I was not able to make another moodboard since February because there's not much difference from what I was feeling from back then to now. It was pretty much all the same. Still wanting to get away and have freedom, yk same old shit but it wouldn't be a surprise that some things did change throughout this 5 mos like :

My lovely Calico cat Jimina gave birth to 5 kittens originally. She was pregnant at the start of this year and blessed the world with 5 cute mini jiminas on March 9 (same birthdate of BTS Suga)

3 of the kittens inherited her orange and white fur while the other one inherited the dark, striped fur completely devoid of any white fur. Only one kitten out of 5 got her triple color coated fur.

Sadly only 3 survived. Jimina hid the kittens briefly first and then abruptly one day she brought them up again already grown up, able to walk and with their eyes open but she only had 3 kittens with her. I never got to find out what ever happened with the other 2 babies with one of the missing of the kittens was the one that fully inherited the Calico cat status of Jimina which devastated me the most and I'm still heartbroken to this day that some of her babies didn't get to live like their siblings. I don't want to think that they died, I want to actually believe that they somehow survived without their mother miraculously but it's only the plausible reason why they never showed up at all 😞

The 3 surviving kittens tho is a lot of fun! They were rumbustious and full of energy. They were always playing and running around in my mom's garden. Climbing up a tree or an orchid branch, playing hide and seek through the plethora of plants. It was a treat to see them just having fun and I took lots of videos. I decided to name them after the BTS maknaes nicknames which is Kookie, Mochi and TaeTae. All 3 kittens have a very distinct personality from each other like you could immediately tell that Kookie is more introverted than the other two, his more reserved and prefers to be alone most of the time, TaeTae is more adventurous and playful but he doesn't trust that easily while Mochi on the other hand is the most extroverted and trusting out of all (FYI: I named them first without knowing their personalities believe it or not). Overall they brought so much life and extra joy in me. Now that they are 4 mos old, they don't play that much anymore, I guess it's really part of growing up regardless of what species. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now onto my summer. I was dreading it's arrival. It's not fun when you don't have an AC at your house in the hottest season. But anyways this summer I've been having this strong desire to experience Italian summers. I just wanted to be in Italy soooooo bad. I just want to ride my bicycle anywhere in rural Italy in a summer floral dress and eating a delicious gelato after while listening to Love my way by the Psychedelic furs. Yes this strong desire got even stronger after watching the movie Call me by your name. It envoked so much nostalgia within me which is weird because I've never set foot in Italy before but the feeling of longing that I experience just thinking about spending your summer in Italy is very strong.

Additionally, speaking of bicycles I successfully finished my remodeling or rather repainting of an old bicycle we have here which is perfect for summer aesthetics. I mentioned before on my previous moodboard back in February that I was in the process of painting this bike and I included a picture of a bike that I would like my own bike to look like after I'm finish with it. And I'm very happy and satisfied with the end result overall! And I would love love to ride it around Italy!...... perhaps.

These are 3 of the most impactful things that had rocked my world within the past few months and they are in a form of a documentary, an animated podcast and an anime film!

1. Grey Gardens

I first discovered Grey Gardens when I was actively looking for any good documentary to watch so I went to Reddit recommendations and one user suggested grey gardens. Its description peaked my interest enough to go check it out and luckily the full documentary is uploaded in YouTube for free. And I must say I'm glad that I took the chance to watch this wonderful hidden gem!

Little Edie quickly got my full attention on her. She's one of the most wonderful and fascinating people to exist in our world and her mother big Edie was just as interesting of a character as well. The way they live their life, spending most of their time in a rundown mansion near a beach was truly a sight to behold in a weird, peculiar manner.

What gives me the most profound impact about this documentary is the topic of wasted youth with wasted potential and the ironic part when your very own lifeline equally imprisons you as well. And we see this most evidently with little Edie. There was a part in this doc that stuck with me the most and it's when the mother-daugther duo was sunbathing in the balcony and little Edie mentioned about wanting freedom from her mother and the grey gardens then big Edie answered:

"you can't have freedom when you're being supported"

And this has struck a chord on me so strong because I relate to it so much especially with my current situation. I also crave freedom from where I am right now but I couldn't because I'm not capable of freeing myself.

What's more tragic was little Edies rebuttal to her mother's hotknife realistic take which was you can't have freedom both ways. That you couldn't have freedom when you're not being supported as well. And it's very true. If you decide to go out in the world by yourself you will definitely be freed from the shackles of your former home & life but you will subject yourself to another imprisonment.

Basically We're never truly free in this life.

2. The Midnight Gospel

I think I've heard of TMG when it was about to launch on its release year and I remember i was anticipating for it to come out because i just took one look at the official poster & I knew I would like the animation then I learned Pendleton ward is a part of it & I'm a huge fan of his creations so it's a double treat but I didn't had the opportunity to watch it back then bcoz of my busy shitty life & I actually don't have Netflix. But I remember i downloaded one of its ost first things first.

Now fast forward to this year. I now have the time to watch every content out there that I missed from all the years of slaving my life away for absolutely nothing. one of those is TMG & it was a perfect timing. Ever since i took an hiatus from the rat race I decided to strengthen my spirituality & this time I want to try delving deep to Buddhism and certain philosophies which I don't have the time and energy to learn before and TMG was a great and perfect medium for me to learn further about this subjects as they tackle topics like mindfulness and meditation and much more other significant things, not to mention the superb,epic, psychedelical, full of awesomeness animation on top of equally superb awesome soundtracks is*chefs kiss ( I still have an LSS to the prisoner's song.. 🎵drinking blood from a stump of a prison guard that I just chopped up....🎶)

I felt like the universe intended for me to watch this later than sooner because if I had the opportunity to watch it back then, I think I wouldn't/couldn't appreciate this show as much as I do now. So thanks universe!

TMG is honestly one of the best show to ever grace the planet imho. An easily perfect 10/10 for me.

3. To the Forest of Firefly Lights

Now I've watched a lot of animes last and this year and I can tell in full confidence that this is the best of them all. I'm sure it's subjective but this one checked all the box for the most compelling story & amazing artwork for me.

Maybe I long for something similar with the characters, It was just so fascinating and huntingly beautiful to have someone or something (whatever your preference is) from a different realm to be by your side. Maybe I would also like to look forward for summer season to come for once, to get excited and get rejuvenated on a hot summer that otherwise would make my life hell. Or maybe and most definitely I just needed someone like Gin as a source of my utmost happiness and comfort.

Overall this anime had made me feel so much warmth in my heart with its unadulterated poignancy and I just couldn't get enough of it. What a masterpiece ✨

Ps: I recommend listening to Warning Sign by Coldplay after watching to the Forest of Firefly Lights 🌹Check it out ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

summary:  akira and goro are in coronavirus quarantine and akira has some relationship questions for reddit.

cw: bad jokes about murder

"My [22M] roommate [23M] has been weirdly nice to me during the coronavirus quarantine. Is he attempting to kill me again?": A relationship subreddit post by u/arsene_throwaway.

read on ao3 here

EDIT 1: No, we didn't go to the police about the first time he killed me. The police weren't going to do anything useful, anyway. It's fine, I promise.

EDIT 2: Why's everyone so hung up about the fact that he killed me? I knew he was going to do it beforehand, we didn't exactly have a relationship conversation about it but I basically let him do it because I wanted to see what he was capable of, and it was really fun to figure out how to escape his murder attempt. It was pretty close to consensual imho. And I had a good time and we discussed it a few years later after he came back from the dead.

EDIT 3: Please stop DMing me to define consensual murder or explain how being murdered was fun. I understand that not everyone has the same tastes as I do but I would appreciate if people were a little more understanding of my hobbies.

EDIT 4: Please stop DMing me to explain how both of us died and came back to life. I just want to know if our feelings are mutual, not go to jail for revealing the government's human rights violations.

EDIT 5: Stop DMing me about the government's human rights violations and how that relates to my rival.

EDIT 6: Thank you to everyone who responded with advice. It turns out that he was so happy all the time because we're stuck together in quarantine and he's in love with me (?!?!), and wasn't actually planning my murder.

EDIT 7: We did have the conversation about the murder and he said he's not really into murdering me, unfortunately, partly because he's in love with me and really wants me to be alive. It was just a thing that he had to do for family reasons. Either way, I think we're dating now, and I'm just really happy to be with him. :)

***

ORIGINAL POST

Hi, making a throwaway account for this post. So like a lot of people lately, I've been holed up with someone I've known for a long time for the coronavirus self-isolation, and some weird stuff has been happening in our relationship.

For context, I've actually liked this guy since... forever? Since I was 17 I think? We kind of met by accident and hit it off right away. The more I talked to him the more he seemed really lonely, he kept making time to meet with me even though he was really busy, so even though my friends were a little wary of him, I kept thinking, Hey, he's actually really nice underneath. I kind of just wished that more people would know that about him, or that he'd let other people see that side of himself. But he had a lot of crazy stuff going on with his family and his job at the time, so he didn't really have a lot of room in his life for a relationship besides a few dates here and there, so I just sort of kept it to myself.

I sort of figured that my crush would go away on its own, except that then he killed me. I can't stop thinking about it. It was kind of a rough time for other reasons, but the actual murder itself was one of the best nights of my life.

I think I was pretty much sold on him ever since. I tried dating a few other people to get over him, but it never really worked out. I dunno, I think it's just really a once-in-a-lifetime that you find a guy who can outsmart you, betray you, and get his hands dirty and murder you all in one. He's just really special, you know? Can you really blame me for not being able to get over him?

For a long time I thought that it wasn't ever going to work out because he died a couple times of his own (he got better), but then it turned out that I was staying at his apartment for a few weeks to avoid my parents when the coronavirus quarantine hit, and now we're stuck together all the time. He's working from home, but I work at a cafe, so all I have to do all day long is play ACNH and wait for him to do stuff with me.

For reference, he's a really aloof sort of person, with a really mean sense of humor, who pretends he's not interested in things when he is. But nowadays he basically gave up pretending that he doesn't want to do things with me, so now we do everything together, like playing board games or watching movies or cooking food. It's really weird because my favorite thing to do right now is go for grocery runs with him every two weeks, because we'll do things like get the types of rice that we both like, or get eggs for his breakfast and sweet pastries for mine, and he always looks so weirdly pleased about going grocery shopping for two people that it makes me really happy? Sometimes we'll go out on the little balcony outside his apartment and we'll just talk for hours in really quiet voices, and he looks almost... peaceful...?

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I've never seen him smile this much in his life—except for the time when he killed me. Am I getting my hopes up? Am I reading too much into things? The last time he seemed to be this happy, he was faking a lot of it so that he could plot my downfall. Most of the time, when he's being honest about how he feels, he's either mean, tired, or sad. So I keep thinking maybe, now that he looks so happy all the time, he's planning some other scheme to surprise me, and he's being friendly and smiley to make me let my guard down so he can murder me.

But on the other hand, I think he didn't really want to kill me the first time around (I'm not actually sure, he doesn't like to talk about it, but he doesn't like to talk about things that bother him). But I don't really know why else he'd look this happy?

Honestly, I think getting murdered and escaping death would be a really fun thing to do during quarantine because I'm really bored whenever he's working. Maybe I just want him to pay more attention to me? It's really nice to think that maybe when he's working on his computer, he's still thinking about me and ways to kill me :)

If UtaPri had/gets a 5th season...

What would it look like? So this is a question I have thought about for a while because of the fact that I think a lot of people (Myself included) believe there is more of a story to tell in the world of UtaPri.  I think with enough time we could get a very interesting idea for a season and honestly I think WHATEVER this project we got coming up actually IS could be an interesting testing ground for something. Let me explain

So if we think about how Season 4 ended it seemed rather definitive.  Like the way that message was wrote made you believe ,to a degree, that the series had ended as far as an Anime project.  Then we got the end card AFTER that and that kind of made things turn on its head cos no one knew what that was supposed to be until 6th stage happened right? One thing that always stands out to me is the fact that Season 4 was a bit of a mess and I say that in the most objective and neutral way possible because...when you have an Anime that is based on a Manga we typically get a story based around that in some fashion.  It might not be panel for panel and word for word but we get one and that is always fun to see how certain scenes get animated for sure.  When you do an Anime based on an Otome game you almost always do whomever is considered the “true route” or just leave it open ended so people will want to play the games (which is what I think DiaLovers did when it had its run). UtaPri has a very interesting situation because the series DOES have an idol component (and the Anime made sure to really focus on that mostly) but it is also an Otome game so the studio (A-1 Pictures) had that to work off of for the most part.  The problem is that when they were done with the material they DID USE it created a problem because Season 4 was a mess if I am being as objective as possible about it. So here was the problem You had 3 groups in play here STARISH QUARTET NIGHT HEAVENS Forget whom your group was for a second...this was going to be a problem because 2 of the 3 groups had content that was used in the first 3 seasons but Season 4 was going to be a problem.  How this would have been remedied I have no fucking idea!  Like if Broccoli knew they were going to do this season they needed to get something out BEFORE IT so people would have had something to go off of for HEAVENS so we could have had 7 episodes that made sense instead of episodes where it felt like they didn’t know how to have the HEAVENS member that was being featured in it not look like a complete ass!  If we are honest this is what happened and its frustrating to remember One of the biggest issues with the season was that you had a group that HAD been Antags during Season 2.  I said HAD because I genuinely believe that the marching orders for A-1 was to write a season where STARISH was still THE focus but HEAVENS could be rehabbed into a group that was more “likable/marketable” so when the time came to sell CDs and merch that they would fly off the shelves and could be a contender to at least QN if not both them and STARISH.  As we saw during the Oricon charts it was a puzzling time because the duet CDs sold like garbage in the sense that only TWO our the 7 actually charted in the top 10 Ren/Van - Lovely Eyes Syo/Yamato - Justice Impulse This was the most puzzling thing I ever dealt with because I tried to figure out WHY and to this day the best thing I could come up with is the fact that the CD releases were slated to come 10 days after the episode aired which seemed like the dumbest thing to do (IMHO) because when I looked at Season 3 all of the releases charted in the top 10 and a big reason for that was the gap between CD/Episode was only 4 days...well we got to QN and HEAVENS’ CDs they did VERY WELL in Season 4 and its because of how close they released them (I think) to the episodes...funny how that works! What was really weird also was during the “Duet Project” episodes the writers didn’t know WHO to make the focus of the episodes and that was weird BUT ,looking back on it, this whole season was gonna be weird because of how quickly the season was coming in the turnaround vs. its normal time for a season.  Typically a UtaPri season gets a 2 year window and this time they were going under that...about a year and 4 months so this was going to cause a crunch and also a mess of a message as to what the writers wanted to do!  I personally believe that the writers wanted to make HEAVENS all the more sympathetic and they were able to get SOME of the backstories in that they could for certain characters but a few others (Nagi and Eiichi for example) “kind of” tried to show you the “why they were acting the way they were” but it felt (at least Internationally) that the episodes didn’t register or if they did not as well as they hoped.  I do wonder if a big reason that the content is as out of sorts in terms of balance for HEAVENS vs. the other two groups is because of how jacked up that season got.  I genuinely wish I could sit down and discuss that season with someone that was in the room when they were given the orders on how that season was supposed to go vs. what actually happened after the fact! So this brings me back to the “What would a 5th Season look like if we got/get one in the future?” The weird thing is I think A-1 already knows but they have to get the reference materials FIRST before they start writing it.  I genuinely think they saw/heard about what happened Internationally when it came to the “NEXT DOOR” saga and they didn’t want to see that happen again so NOW they want to work on these projects to get the idea other there right now that all the groups are separated as first we have STARISH and then no doubt QN but the big question of course is HEAVENS...can they do a concert with them at some point with hopefully more songs under their belt OR will Broccoli start to really consider them a lost cause and that the fandom just doesn’t want them.  You can only go with the “Round peg/Square Hole” philosophy so much before people get mad and don’t want to deal with the series (or at the very least HEAVENS) anymore. The other big issue is HEAVENS’ role in Dolce Vita because, As of this writing, we still don’t know ANYTHING about that game...like we don’t know if its a straight up VN or is there going to be something similar to the original La Corda back in the day which ,fun fact time, had Kishou and Mamo in it.  Like if anyone would know how a game like that worked it would be them (And they ARE in the new game “Starlight Orchestra” btw) so they HAVE to have had given some input about how the mechanics worked and all that...right?! (Oh and unrelated but Kishou’s original character in Len Tsukimori is a special character in that game.  He was unlocked through a campaign we had in that fandom a bit ago) So again...what would Season 5 look like? Well my guess is that it would have to be a STARISH/HEAVENS season again but with new duets unlike last time.  The other possibility (And I think they were teasing this at the end of Season 4) is that it would somehow be a HEAVENS/QN season which could be interesting especially if they did something like how Season 2 was probably supposed to go...and in a way didn’t because of how the story worked. The thing is its been almost 5 years since we had a proper season...FIVE! Let’s assume that the “Anime Project” as we know it is over alright?  STARISH and QN’s brand is already established so what do you use to help HEAVENS’ get on the same level?  That’s a big reason why I don’t think they could/should end the “Anime Proper” because to do that you literally would be cutting off a way to properly market a group that actually needs it vs. the groups that clearly don’t.  I won’t go so far as to say that the STARISH/QN Animated concerts are going to be “Vanity Projects” because they aren’t.�� They are clearly something that Broccoli believed in as far as a project to do for the series BUT I will say that having 7th Stage so close to this project is a bit...weird?! Like okay to be fair this probably was planned well in advance and the Pandemic fucked everything up because it was supposed to be announced at 7th stage in 2020...okay cool fine but let’s say it was right?  What stopped them from revealing it at 10th Anniversary when it would have been a bigger “Holy Shit” moment?  What was really so important that they had to do EVERYTHING ELSE and not that?  Just seemed weird to me. But anyways HOLY SHIT did we go around the block here...I need to stop If you were going to script out a proper 5th season when would you do it and how?  The thing to remember is we have a 3 group scenario and now HEAVENS is trying to become an even better group to finally beat STARISH and QN so do you have QN and HEAVENS do a thing together or do you do a 3 cour season where each is dedicated to a particular group? Love to hear your answers on this and take care

PLAYLIST SHUFFLE TAG!

Okay, so @viterbofangirl tagged me in this and I need to start learning to post my own shit, so what the hell, why not?

Rules: you can usually tell a lot about a person by the type of music they listen to! put your favorite playlist on shuffle and list the first 10 15 songs, then tag 10 people. no skipping!

(I couldn’t stop at 10 so I added 5 more, sue me)

I have very random music taste and I listen to my music on shuffle alot, so I made a playlist of the ones I like the most (that way I don’t hafta skip 150 songs to get to the one I feel like) so I’m gonna use that one.

1) History of Violence - Theory of a Deadman

Hoo boy starting off light huh?.... Yeah so, I was in the drive thru at Sonic when I first heard this on the radio and was immediately like “holy shit”. Instead of like metaphors and poetic subtlety, it’s just straight up like “here’s a poor abused woman who resorted to murdering her shitty boyfriend/husband cuz she couldn’t take it dum dum dum”. Even though the actual situation is not the same, this song is perfect for getting across the internal issues and turmoil of my character Mikey. Its so perfect I’m even planning to animate something for it...... if I ever get around to learning animation that is.....     

2) The Vengeful One - Disturbed

Two songs in and I look kinda emo.... But hey this song is soooooo cathartic! I love me a good heavy rock song, and the drums and electric guitar are perfect for my ears to absorb. This song gives off a feeling of overwhelming power mixed with a coldness and disdain for the bad in the world. Obviously, thats not my usual temperment, but its an interesting one to explore! Especially when I’m trying to get into the head of characters that exude that like my OCs Spark or Ryu. Plus its fun to sing in the car X)

3) Enter Sandman - Metallica

Okay this one is just a classic! Same thing with the drums and guitar they both slap SOOOOO GOOD. I don’t really associate this song with any of my characters or fandom favorites, but it DOES give me a super strong urge to learn the drums. EXXXXXXXXIT LIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT! OFF TO NEVER NEVERLAND!!

4) We Are Giants - Lindsey Stirling ft. Dia Frampton

I don’t really to listen to music by band or artist, but I LOVE Lindsey Stirling!!! She’s probably my favorite musician! This is such a good song, especially for someone like me. Its a positive song that talks about feeling alone in a crowd and unimportant to the world, but how you really do matter and shouldn’t be afraid to dream big and shoot for the stars. It really speaks to me and the vocalization is so good (especially for singing), not to mention the official music video is animated and AMAZING!

5) Cetus - Lensko NCS

I dunno if anyone knows this song, but damn its good. Its one of those Royalty-Free songs that people look up for their channels, which is how I found it in the first place, but I loved it immediately. Its a peppy 8-bit electronic bop that turns a little Irish jig at the end and honestly I think if I ever start an animation channel I’m totally gonna use it! (Also go support Lensko he make good beats!)

6) Sanctuary - Utada Hikaru

I did not grow up with Kingdom Hearts, and only played KH2 within the past year n’ a half. But good God, the moment that Cinematic Opening came on and this song started playing I swear I astral projected into a daze of feelings without names. I know that “Simple and Clean” is the quintessential Kingdom Heart song that gives everyone feelings, but IMHO Sanctuary blows it out of the water. As beautiful as the animation was, or how curious the occasional backwards lyrics are, or how weird it is having high-res Goofy and Donald in what is essentially an anime opening, I really can’t be distracted from this song when I play.

7) Chemical Plant Zone (Rock Remix) - Zerobadniks

Chemical Plant Song is like, one of the TOP Sonic songs by popular vote (and we know how awesome the Sonic series is musically so thats saying something!), but I could never quite vibe with the normal 8-bit version. I think I first heard this as someone’s ringtone and was immediately like “THATS PERFECT THATS EXACTLY HOW I NEED IT!”. The rock makes the song soooo much better and honestly gives the song the perfect vibe. Unfortunately, it took FOREVER to find cuz none of the Rock Covers of this song were the right one. In fact, tbh, I’m not even sure whether Zerobadniks is the correct artist..... that’s just who everybody was crediting when I found it. 

(imma include the link i found since its a little hard to find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqJiZEM6aPI )

8) The Wolf - SIAMES

YOU WANNA TALK ABOUT ANIMATED MUSIC VIDEOS???? THIS IS A GOD-TIER ANIMATED MUSIC VIDEO. I found the video first, and seriously, if you haven’t seen it YOU NEED TO!!! The beat works perfectly with the images on screen and the story being portrayed is really intriguing, with the lyrics adding to atmosphere without necessarily describing the visuals shown. Even without the animation, the song itself is a banger. It bring to mind the feeling of intense motion forward, but unable to decide whether its movement TOWARD something or AWAY from something. I love listening to this on a nighttime drive.

9) Burn the House Down - AJR

If you ask me, the best way to make a pop song better is to add either violins or trumpets. For this song, it was definitely the trumpets that first caught my attention, and the rest of the song kept me listening. I don’t really know how to describe the vibe of this song, and I don’t have a specific character or story in mind when I listen to it, so its a little hard for me to talk about it. I think the best way I can describe this song and what draws me to it is a feeling of nonchalant go-with-the-flow attitude to shenaniganry. Almost an undertone of “We’re hooligans in a situation that we probably should get out of, but hey we’ve got life and each other so why worry?” At least that’s the closest I can get to a verbal description heh...

10) Slim Pickens Does the Right Thing and Rides the Bomb to Hell - The Offspring 

DANCE, FUCKER, DANCE, LET THE MOTHERFUCKER BURN!!!

So this also has a KICKASS animated music video, but its technically combined with the song “Dividing by Zero”. Now the video works SO well with both, and the shifting artstyles reflect the differing tones of the songs PERFECTLY. However, I have a preference for both the animation and the song on the Slim Pickens half. Its fun to listen to and sing at the top of your lungs and its SO CATHARTIC. Again I cant really describe what my head does when I hear it, but I think you can probably feel a similar vibe if you watch the music video. 

11) No Heaven - DJ Champion

The first time I finished the original Borderlands, I had been playing for days on end, had just finished a long battle with the Destroyer, and sitting back relieved to have beaten it and reflecting on how much I had enjoyed the adventure. Then this song started playing. For what I believe was forty minutes this song looped on my TV while the credits rolled. By the time the credits finished I was pulling up the song to listen to again! What an absolutely PERFECT cherry to add to this experience. This song perfectly encapsulated the chaotic, trigger-happy, morally ambiguous craziness that I had enjoyed and absorbed in this game. Every time I hear it now, I imagine myself in the wastelands of Pandora, driving haphazardly across the sandy dunes as my companions and I shoot and blow up everything in sight. You know, living the dream.......     

12) Hit & Run (Wolfgang Lohr Remix) -  The Electric Swing Circus

I fucking LOVE electro-swing! The electronic beats and rhythm blend so well with the wild and energetic freedom of swing. A lot of electro-swing gives me a vibe of wild movement, reckless abandon, and freedom from constraint. I think this song melds all of these feelings the best! As the last song might have indicated, despite my general nice and sweet temperament, there is a part of me deep down that is an absolute gremlin secretly enamored with chaos, insanity, and a general disdain for law and authority X). But whereas anything Borderlands related has a more “morality is an illusion blowing shit up is real” air about it, this song is far more peppy. More of a “good-hearted but insane” type of chaos, like an 100mph car chase where you end up sailing over the train tracks JUST as the train passes.

.... I may have gotten a bit off track lol 

13) Kickstart my Heart - Motley Crue

I love this song, but I have to be VERY careful when and where I listen to this. I love songs that make me feel like I’m going a million miles per hour, like I’m gotdam Sonic the Hedgehog. Unfortunately, I may or may not have had multiple instances of listening to this song in the car and abruptly realizing that I’m going like 15mph above the speed limit...... So yeah, regardless of absolutely perfect it feels to play this song while speeding down a nearly empty highway, please be careful and drive responsibly!!!

14) I’m Born to Run - American Authors

Imma just up and say it. This song is a Sonic song; like not like actually from the series but a song for the character. This song encapsulates Sonic as a character better than some of his ACTUAL THEMES (and remember Sonic music are bangers!). Its a song about freedom, living life as it comes, and not letting anything slow you down. Frankly I’m surprised they didn’t make this song FOR the Sonic series, or even the movie! Speaking of which, ironically I heard this song right after watching the Sonic movie in theaters, so yeah there’s no way I can associate it with anything else. 

15) Opa Opa - Antique

Oh, what a PERFECT way to end this list! This may be one of my absolute favorite songs of all time! I don’t remember exactly how I found this song... I think I had just relistened to Dalar Mehndi’s “Tunak Tunak Tun” and was looking for other catchy non-english songs and BOY HOWDY I found one! I know nothing about the band or what the song’s about (its in greek and i dont speak it), but this song is just a masterpiece of retro, pop, and dance sounds. This song feels like the musical and lyrical manifestation of dance and movement. I really REALLY wish I could dance JUST so I can express how happy and free this song makes me feel! This is the BEST song for me to end this list with!

***********************************************************************************

JESUS, this got long..... Sorry about that XD. It was fun though, and hopefully somebody was vaguely interested in my ramblings.

Guess I need to tag people now? How about @tharkflark1, @rockmilkshake, @neonbuck, @drawingsdrawingseverywhere, @birthgiverofbirds, @puccafangirl, @kalcat, @biblestudybussybopsbabey, @monstrous-milktea, and @memecage! I think there are a couple of people here I haven’t talked to though soooooo..... hi, I hope you don’t mind the tag X)

 Anyway hope you enjoyed and/or want to do this too! This took for-fucking-EVER to type, so imma go fuck off and watch youtube or something now...

— THE UPSIDES OF 2019 ✨🎉🎇

It’s always the little things. I went a long way to learn to be content with being alive and even though most of it sucks ass and I have moments when I feel like quitting all, the tiny bits between that are good, are really good and worthy of staying alive to experience. I only hope there will be more of them, but for this year, it was mostly this:

I started being more social irl! Not gonna lie and you probs gonna be like “???? wtf Ambie thats a normal thing to do when you are a normal person” but JOKES ON YOU I am anything but normal - this year I: 1.) went to a social event all alone once 2.) went to a social event all alone where I didn’t know anybody and where people were talking to me. YEAH TALKING. TO ME. 3.) talked to strangers without problems 4.) went out with friends. yes this is an accomplishment, shut up

Probs meds working right but now it’s much much easier for me to turn from shy, aloof quiet creature to the funky little dumbass that will talk your ear off because she has no filter. Good for me. Next year will mean even more nonsense coming from my mouth without fear of being perceived as weird and having weird interests. Rip to people who encounter me, but I am different.

SUMMER! It’s the best time of the year and the only time where I feel truly, unconditionally happy to be alive. I love the sun (certified sun thot here, Solaire ask for my number). This time it was funny, because I had my wisdom tooth extracted in July and that was hell but ALSO I could stay at home and play DOS2 all over again (for the 5th / 6th or 10th time, I lost count). I was home alone for the bigger duration of the time and it felt so good to be playing undisturbed. Best times.

I also started going out more often, especially into the forest. I literally live beneath it, it takes me 5 mins to get there, yes I am blessed, yes you can come visit me, I will share the forest experience with you. There is this meadow that is my favourite place in the entire forest and I always went there during summer evenings - it was still warm of course (don’t even let me start on summer evenings, they ARE the most joyous thing in life ever and I will not change my mind) and I often laid down and basked in the sunlight. That’s how I would describe happiness - it was so quiet and tranquil and warm and utterly as if I was in a different world. There was this doe who frequented the meadow and she was never afraid of me, even started walking closer and closer towards me with time. We ate berries together and just chilled. A spiritual experience.

Speaking of spiritual experiences, I finally found something I could believe in. Not any of the religions, it’s coming from my own heart and soul and it feels so right. I don’t need other people to make sense out of it, because it makes sense to me and that’s all I need. I love the sun and owe her my life more times than I can count. My absolute fave place in the entire world is the castle ruin in my city. I cannot really describe how much I love it there, but I love being there a lot. [I took some photos here] I was really really down one time, crying because I didn’t want to go to uni anymore and was afraid I will be suicidal again and long story short I sat there near the river and watched the sunset until it was pitch dark and people started going home and I just sat there and watched and cried and... I understood. It didn’t make the pain hurt less but somehow, I felt that letting all the emotions out that way helped.

I was more active with my photography! It felt so amazing to be able to go out into the nature and appreciate it by taking photos, trying to “freeze” the memory somehow. I love photography so much, it’s one of my most passionate hobbies.

Learned to love myself even more. Came a long way this year, even started to see myself as beautiful (! my biggest accomplishment probably because it took me my entire teenage years after being bullied at high school and then SOME to realise that) and started to EAT NORMALLY god yes. I still beat myself over that sometimes but I DO EAT quite healthily and my weight is not super alarmingly lower than what it should be. Still gotta go and stop blaming myself for having some extra treats but its GOOD so far!

Learned to let go. All three of my irl best friends left me this year and honestly, I didn’t think I would survive it. But I did. And I met a few nice people here too. I don’t believe that I am truly alone and I know that I will meet the right people who will appreciate me. Being single for 3+ years is very hard and I do cry a lot but... I know that I will not stay alone forever. And what is more important, I finally believe that I DO DESERVE to be loved right. Before, I thought all the people I had crushes on were way out of my league, but tbh? Maybe I was out of theirs.

CREATIVITY? IN THIS BODY? ITS MORE LIKELY THAN YOU THINK! Gosh I made so many beautiful edits this year, I am so proud! Especially of the World Building June event I was able to do and didn’t miss a single day! Creating something every day for 30 days is quite and accomplishment and I’m proud of myself. It feels awesome to be able to talk about my characters and even though I mostly feel ignored here it feels so amazing in the times when I am not.

WRITING! The thing I am the most proud of! I learned to be more open with my writing, publishing it online more often than years before and I am so happy that I came up with Dead Man’s Wish. I wasn’t this excited for a writing project in years. The support my friends put into my work is beyond amazing and I love you so much.

Meeting @fantasmagoriam irl for the first time was one of my fave things this year. I am so happy to call you my friend and it feels amazing to be truly myself with someone irl, talking about ocs and goofing around! Our talks enlighten my days in the best way and I love you so much.

Getting to know @blueraptorsmain was such a blessing! You are such a sweet and kind and talented person, I am so happy to have met you!

BIG shout out to @jennystahl who is such a delightful person and one of my biggest writing supporters. Thank you so much for having patience with me.

And a lot of others who made my experience here great! @ciriofcintras, @friendowldesign, @toreadours, @lavellane, @cryptcombat, @callmeredhood, @zephyrcrowthorne, @fillianore and all my treasured mutuals I love so much (you know who you are! ♥)

In the next year I wanna:

Get my first tattoo. And don’t faint or die from the pain which is very likely but rip to me I really want that tattoo.

LEARN FRENCH

Finally visit Provence and have a great time. Still in the middle of planning the trip and figuring out organization details but I got green lights and we are GOING. Don’t ever expect me to come back because once I am laying bare chested amidst a lavender field sipping rosé wine and eating grapes it’s over for y’all.

SURVIVE uni. Lol ok not gonna be grim but there is nothing in life I hate more than uni. Peace out. Disgusting, makes me wanna puke. Not cool. I wanna get that degree tho.

Learn to love myself even more. It’s what we all should aspire to, imho. And there is always ways to go.

WRITE. duh. *looks at camera like she’s on the office* Because my ideas are amazing and the world deserves to read about them.

Next year I wanna be more open with posting my stuff here - screaming into the void about my ocs, making edits, posting writing... I wanna be absolutely okay with it all and not feel the fear of being perceived as annoying or that people will not care. They might not care but that is not my problem. Next year is no filter only, baby!

Happy New Year to everybody and hope 2020 will be kind to us. I really hope it will because I want it to be a year when I finally spread my wings and flourish. It’s what we all deserve.

If they want me (a fan) to talk about it, I’ll talk about it.

Outlander S4 PR has been doing so well until this (IMHO).

My take on some Q&A from Cait’s Parade article. 

It’s 3AM where I am and there will be grammatical errors on this but I had to let it out. 

Really lengthy, snark, rant ahead. You’ve been warned. ✌🏻😊 Feel free to pass if not your cup of tea. I mean, I probably wrote a bunch of woozy anyway. But this is my space and yeah, haha! 

1. What’s with the title?

Yeah, Sam’s name just had to be inserted somewhere here to make it clickable, sure. I don’t know if the motivation for “total opposite” was to show “how different Sam and Cait are” or “how Sam and Cait will never be” - but all I know is...opposites attract. If it meant to hurt shippers, well, were just getting started here. 

But seriously - If I get a chance to chat with Caitriona Balfe about season 4 scoop, I’d prefer that instead of talking about fans and using the name of her supposed platonic co-star to speculate some clickbait on the article. If the latter was the goal, they probably succeeded a bit cause here am I writing this loooong post. 

2. A great mystery - Who is Maestro? 

First of all, Caitriona is NOT newly engaged - ITS ALMOST BEEN A YEAR. Second, I am yet again confused as to the nationality and job of the great maestro. I asked this once in my blog and an anon came through with a thorough explanation of Maestro’s “history” but I guess I’ll just go back to “NEVER being sure who he really is” again. 

3. Oh, I grew up watching car races and now I’m in a racing movie!

I get the PR - Cait grew up watching car racing and now she’s in a car racing movie, what a way to come round full circle. 

But I’ve read a couple of articles from Cait about her life in Ireland before and never have I seen before that she’s mentioned that watching car races was part of their family tradition holidays up until now. (or is there? I may be wrong. I’m not sure, could be. Some other people can share it, if there is) But nonetheless, true or not, it works well with the PR. 

Also, Cait, I know a guy (Sam) who goes and watches F1 races from the paddocks. Why don’t you guys drop by sometime and you know, watch together? *wink wink* It’ll be good for research and stuff. Not to mention going out with one of your best mate, am I right? ✌🏻

4. I spend the weekends by myself - as shown in the way this statement is filled with singular pronouns

She drags herself alone to go out for some food, She reads alone, she walks alone, she prepares her own food and putters around the house. (I am my own, independent person regardless of my “soon-to-be hitched” status)

Okay, the way I see this - she really doesn’t want to be defined who she’s in a relationship with or who she’s engaged with. Look how independent the statement above is. I get it - she wants to be known more as “an actress” and not as an “engaged and extremely in love with my fiancé actress”. 

Basically it kinda says “sometimes forget I’m engaged at all except when Sam and I are being too touchy-feely with each other.” 

But seriously, Cait, not screaming/vibing engaged here! Meaning saying his actual name and weaving your relationship in the public face, inviting him to pose with you in red carpets and events despite his “shy” stature, etc. Erm, maybe just don’t be engaged at all and don’t get married yet - I didn’t say break it up or anything, just straighten the confusing narrative first? 

5. I am not exactly like Claire but Sam, my co-star only, will be the first one to disagree.

Why do I feel like “and the other people who know me very well” line got added after a pause cause Sam got mentioned and she cannot mention only Sam because fans will suspect. Hahaha! (And suspect we well cause isn’t that the purpose of this article?)

Also, but why not “Tony, my fiance, will be first to disagree because he knows me so well” rather than her “were super platonic only” co-star? 

Oh, cause of the narrative. 

Which narrative again? I am getting confused now. 

Oh, the one where Sam Heughan is just her friend who loves her and knows her so well. 

Great. 

6. SINCE SAM GOT MENTIONED THE QUESTION BEFORE ITS ONLY NATURAL WE TALK ABOUT HIM...

OMG, my English grammar mind is like screaching those dangling modifiers. “Sam Heughan, who plays your soul mate...” HAHAHAHAHA! That’s the first thing that I noticed. Second, the question would be much clearer if phrased “Are you good friends with Sam Heughan, who plays Jamie Fraser, your character’s soul mate?” - SEE  sentence construction HERE, we would be talking about the show and its characters and not see anything else. But then, this is just me.

Also, why ask Cait if she’s good friends with Sam? Of course she is! (and I truly believe this regardless of whatever situation they chose). Other wise, if she says “no”, just imagine the PR nightmare it would entail. The repercussions, the bad PR from tabloids how the two leads “don’t get along”, the possibility of not getting renewed after season 6, a lot of bad will follow if she said the wrong answer. Hahahaha! Either this or the writer (don't know his history with OL) is super new to the fandom who don’t have an idea just how close Sam and Cait are.

Oh goody, we get the Hyde Park walk mentioned again! I always love this memory of theirs.

Comment on Paragraph 1: Why do I feel like Cait got caught off guard rehashing this story. The answer, if verbatim, is so jumpy and incoherent. Like I could summarise the story in shorter sentences. Eitherway, I’ve always loved that they spent the time together at the beginning and realised just how much of a relationship they were going to have. Also, the line” Who knows what this is going to be?” which they asked even before they started filming - so loaded the possibilities of the meaning of this simple question. 

Comment on Paragraph 2: Shouldn’t it be maestro’s job to be her biggest supporter, the first person she calls to have talking to about stress? Also, love the “vice versa”. Sometimes, I can’t imagine Sam being the stressed one between the two of them but I just love their dynamic. OH AND THEY HAVE SIMILAR PERSONALITY TRAITS (where is the complete opposite part?! (*see next question*, here we go)

7. HOW TO DESCRIBE BEING IN A RELATIONSHIP 101

Here it is....how opposite Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe are that it’s impossible to think of them ever being in a relationship. 

Cait is bullish and Sam calms her down before she gets too frustrated. 

Sam is a little passive and Cait gives him a nudge and a strength to stand up for something. 

OH WAIT

Erm, what you guys just described about each other is “being in a good, healthy relationship” - thanks, bye. Again...opposites attract. The statements just show that they’re both not as strong as one seem and really feed off strength from each other’s lives and company. Like, you know, being together or something to that effect. 

Also, if you guys, Sam and Cait, are dropping the fake narrative soon, you know - Cait can nudge Sam to stand up for them and publicise their “real”  relationship and then when the reality of their “real score” being revealed gets too frustrated, Sam just can calm Cait down. It’s honestly, a win-win, guys. 

8. ONTO THE “BEST FANS EVER”

This question was actually fine until the follow up...

9. WAS ASKING THIS QUESTION FREAKING NECESSARY?

I think I’ve mentioned this before but IF PR WANTS TO STAY AWAY FROM FANS TALKING ABOUT SAMCAIT, then they have to stop allowing these kind of questions. They could’ve asked the author to not include this question in the publishing because what is the freaking point. If the writer have done his research, he already knows the answer to this (heck we know from various and numeous sources). And if he knew the climate of the fandom, this should not have been asked published - yet again.  I’m sure Sam and Cait hate answering these questions because, lets admit it, it takes away some of the magic. But here it is and there again is their punchline and I’ve seen this same answer as before. 

But Cait had to add something new: “But I think things are pretty clear now that I'm engaged to someone else. Everyone gets it now” HMMMMMMMMM...So was the purpose of the engagement to put off the stench and speculation that Sam and you aren’t together? That the main purpose was for all shippers to stop shipping you and Sam cause you’re engaged some someone else whose name you’ve yet to mention yourself in public or social media and your fans have no total idea who he is and what he does for a living? 

Oh and uhh, Cait - NOT EVERYONE GETS IT NOW. If anything, were all the more confused. Also, regardless of what you guys do, you can never ever avoid the shipping (real or show) cause that’s just fanning is. Oh, and you’re not the first and only ship with OTP that have spouses. Seriously, you’re not the first nor the only experiencing this and the other fandoms have actually embraced this instead of trying so hard to shut it down. 

9. REHASHING SEMI-FAMOUS FANDOM HISTORY

Seriously. 

If the author had done his/her research, these are semi-famous stories already from before and he could’ve asked about book 4 or season 4 or anything RECENT that would make sense why this article was even written in the first place. 

I just think it’s a missed opportunity to ask something else, something new. Meh. 

10. Cait’s Faves

Maybe it should be Cait’s current fave things.

TSWDM as her favorite movie? I mean no offence to TSWDM but considering how deep her book choices are, I thought she’d choose a “deep, serious” movie as her favorite but choosing her “platonic” co-stars recent comedy flick as her choice (maybe in support of them having each other’s backs, you know) she chose that one - or maybe she really, really loved the movie too. 

Race Car Documentaries - lets push the PR for her upcoming movie, yes!! 

The Fiery Cross - EARLY PROMO FOR NEXT SEASON!!

Yeah, so I wouldn’t assume this is Cait’s “all-time” faves... 

-

SO, WHY DID I DO THIS?!

BECAUSE I THOUGHT I’D FIND A POINT ABOUT THIS ARTCLE AND NOT SOME OBVIOUS HIDDEN AGENDA BEHIND IT?

WHAT EXACTLY WAS THE POINT OF THIS ARTICLE? WHY DID IT NOT TALK ABOUT OUTLANDER OR SEASON 4 AT ALL INSTEAD OF FANS AND NARRATIVES?

WHAT IS THIS PUBLICITY ALL ABOUT?

TO REITERATE THE “THEY’RE NOT TOGETHER” NARRATIVE CAUSE THE “SHE’S ENGAGED TO ANOTHER GUY” WASN’T ENOUGH OR DIDN’T WORK? TO PROVE JUST HOW WEIRD SOME CORNER OF THE FANDOM IS (as per the writing of this lengthy, rant post)

SERIOUSLY. I AM FLARING.

BECAUSE ALL THESE IS IRRELEVANT TO THE PROMOTION OF OUTLANDER SEASON 4 AND IT IRKS ME THAT THEY HAD OR TRYING TO PUT SHIPPER FANS IN, YET AGAIN, A BAD LIGHT, WHEN WE’RE TRYING TO STAY IN OUR LANE FOR MOST OF THE YEAR AND MAKING SENSE OF WHAT’S GOING ON. 

IS THIS WHAT THEY WANTED? FANS TALKING AROUND HOW IRRELEVANT THESE THINGS ARE? OR SPECULATE HOW WEIRD OR AMBIGUOUS EACH ANSWER IS?! 

Oh, Lordy. 

COME ON, PR.

SELL YOUR SHOW. 

NOT THE “NOT IN A RELATIONSHIP”. 

NOT THE “BEST FANS EVER”.

NOT THE “DELUSIONAL” FANS WHO NOW FINALLY “GETS IT”. (cause, as per this article, we still don’t)

SELL YOUR SHOW AND WHAT IT’S ABOUT - JAMIE AND CLAIRE FRASER.

BECAUSE ALL I WANT IS OUTLANDER SEASON 4 COVERAGE. 

TALK ABOUT CLAIRE AND JAMIE. TALK ABOUT BREE. TALK ABOUT THE BOOK. TALK ABOUT THE RIDGE. TALK ABOUT THEIR CHARACTER’S AND BOOK’S LIFE. 

SUCH A WASTE OF SPACE AND TIME AND ALL FOR WHAT?

TO IRK SHIPPY FANS TO MORE EYE-ROLLING MOMENTS?

TO GET RID OF THE 20 SHIPPERS REMAINING?

CAUSE GUESS WHAT OUTLANDER/STARZ PR?

THE (RESPECTFUL) SHIPPING WILL NEVER STOP EVEN IF CAIT AND SAM ARE MARRIED - EITHER TO EACH OTHER OR OTHER PEOPLE.

THAT’S JUST HOW IT IS AND HOW ITS GOING TO BE CAUSE THAT IS FANDOM AND THAT IS SHIPPING.

SO, JUST FOCUS ON SELLING THE SHOW AND WHAT ITS REALLY ALL ABOUT.

JAMIE AND CLAIRE FRASER.

NOTHING MORE. NOTHING LESS. 

Thanks. 

*end of caps lock writing*

It’s 4AM and I’m going to sleep. 

-

Updating this the following day after reading some comments and theories as to why this ever seen the light of day: 

1. Could this be a follow up “aggressive shipper” article by EW?! A ploy put into place by Sony/Starz to, yet again, attack the “shipping” community? 

IT COULD VERY WELL BE. WHY ELSE PUT UP THIS NONSENSE OF AN ARTICLE THAT DOESN’T PROMOTE THE SHOW ONE BIT. 

Like to control shippers yet again after the love fest the past two weeks at cons? To control shippers after releasing S4 promo photos of Jamie and Claire?

I mean if they put this same effort in shutting “shippers” down to promoting their show, they might increase their ratings and subscribers!! UGH. 

2. Could Caitriona be that Caitriona did NOT actually say some of the things said? 

Possibly. I mean, now that I think about it, some statements were contradictory to what she’s said before and the language seems a little too forward that she usually is (e.g. “But I think it’s pretty clear now. I’m engaged now so everyone gets it”). Yeah, maybe it doesn’t feel like Cait saying this - cause I think she knows it’s NEVER clear but - yeah, could be. Could be that the this article was written deliberately to counter the “aggressive shipping” happening since the cons and using Cait’s “engagement” was their weapon of choice this time. 

{{ Fandom asks: F? J (if there is one)? M/N? V (I gotta call you out honestly)? W?~ Y (if you even have one)? Aaaand... Z!

hooooo boy, this is a LOT and I LOVE it, but we’re gonna put it under a cut so i don’t stretch everyone’s dashes ok? ok.

F- longest i’ve been in a fandom would have to be 5 in online years, but like. if we can count talking and making art and playing with other kids who fuckin’ LOVED TT like i did, then easily 13+ yrs. I’ve been in deep man. I’m counting it.

J- Bombshells? Bc i hadn’t even heard of it till tumblr and probably only would’ve stumbled upon it by reading up on it somewhere else otherwise. I know there’s not necessarily a ‘fandom’ just for that line, but dammit! it DESERVES ITS OWN FANDOM UGH

M/N- I’ll pair this one up too bc idk if i strictly have a fav fanartist rn, but i am OVER THE MOON over squiddy’s writing. G O D. i need to read her damirae stuff soon, bc i know i’ll love it, i just don’t like fic for them in general yknow? i’ve got Personal conflict with shipping damirae that i won’t get into here

V- ZIRA THATS NOT FAIR YOU KNOW THE ANSWER. yeah I’m completely incapable of watching something and NOT shipping SOMEONE. i mean, it took a good 20+ issues for me to start shipping cass with other characters in this reading of batgirl but DAMMIT ITS NOT LIKE I WAS PRESENTED WITH MANY OPTIONS BUT STILL AHH

W- 5 charas from 5 fandoms-Raven, TT03 (obvsly) - Zatanna, Bombshells - Oracle, Arkhamverse - Robin/Nightwing, YJ aaaaaaand - Wonder Woman, DCEU. idk, its hard to divide up DC into more particular fandoms sometimes AND YETi just realized i probably could’ve pulled from the arrowverse too shit, can i add Alex Danvers bc I love that funky lil lesbian.

Y-No real ships in the YJ fandom. if I’m being totally honest? like, yeah there’s stuff all around that I’m like ‘sure ok thats cute’ abt (like, i’ve reblogged a little Chalant if i remember right) but???? honestly, YJ is so damn plot heavy & the relationships are given such a surface level treatment overall, its just boring trying to ship while watching. the fandom def supplies more shipping than what the source material offers IMHO

Z- RAMBLE TIME:it still makes me so sad when????? people like but don’t reblog ur work, or reblog and don’t give comments in the tags or on the work or just?????? and i get it I GET IT. sometimes ur just too tired or cant put the energy into giving feedback, sure. i’ve been there plenty of times myself but???? its so fucking AWESOME when someone DOES give feedback and just that little push that little bit of ‘hey, here’s what you made me think!’ its such a damn high. the best feedback i’ve ever received was on a piece that i did for theater that i revamped and shared on FF.net. it only got 4 reviews and THOSE WERE HANDSDOWN THE BEST COMMENTS I EVER RECIEVED they were so thoughtful and reactive and just. i quite writing after that piece for the longest time bc it really made me stop and think abt what i was doing as a writer (i’d done so many crackfics until that one and one Highly Ambitious fix-it fic that never panned out bc it was Hella self indulgent) and just, even now I look back on that piece and wonder if i’ll ever get feedback like that again? rn btwn a couple of y'all i get really awesome comments. but i really want to write something that brings back that feeling for someone yknow? that makes them want to start a conversation about these characters and these ideas and just

ok thats getting to be so damn much and i want to GO AND WRITE AGAIN SO WE”LL STOP THERE AAHHHHHH

6 Anti LO Asks

1. where is the "harmful nature of purity culture" in LO tho?? bc the only example i can see is the maidens, and idk having three lesbians being the oppressive force to persephone's ~heterosexual sexuality~ and hades banging a barely 20-year old who acts like a child is not the progressive hot take i think rachel seems to think it is? also its just historically wrong, the reason we have any records of female doctors/poets/historians etc was bc they made the CHOICE to be life-long maidens 🤷🏿‍♀️

2. i mean LO was promoting purity culture by always having persephone in white literally from the first moment we see her. the fact minthe is introduced before in revealing black lingerie while persephone had a literal heavenly halo glow around her while shes in a virginal white dress is the most on the nose madonna vs whore visual ive seen. RS can claim all she wants shes against "purity culture", but LO is all about reinforcing it as long as it props up Persephone while tearing other women down.

3. what i dont get is like persephone easily could have just hooked up with apollo because shes been told she shouldnt chase after hades and she should have the choice to try her options and maybe even make it a point they date but her heart lays elsewhere like?? theres so many better ways to have gone about these conflicts and characters and dynamics and rachel just picked the worst possible options that dont even make sense then claims everyone are "haters" for pointing out its bad??

4. ok honestly thats the thing too like at BEST couldn't hades just have given persephone a bunch of money then just let her do what she wants with it? like if he wants to be financial support then fine, but it could have been one single transaction and then he cuts it off so she has the free reign to make her own choices while he's hands off. the fact instead LO is showing us him controlling where she lives, her finances, and is even her "protection" is a HUGE red flag, IMHO.

5. LO Hades and Persephone are Joker and Harley Quinn for 14 year olds going through a Greek mythology phase.

6. thats what i find so troubling about these recent develops in the story, because the seeds where always there, but you were just hoping rachel wouldnt go down that road and yet there she is, making hades make all the choices for persephone and holding all the power over her, yet LO tries to play it off as him "caring". take his name off and replace is with demeter, and everyone would say she's abusing her, but because it's hades it's ok. this is all pre-dating, how will their marriage go then?

Allllllright so here we are, as promised, a masterpost of some of the crazy stuff that has happened in the One Direction fandom since the beginning of time. This list definitely isn’t exhaustive because I’m pretty sure it’s virtually impossible for someone to remember absolutely everything so feel free to message me/reblog with additions, but with that said lets get going:

1) #LETNIALLSING

off to a great start!!! this hashtag was started during a one direction performance pretty early on in their career, when fans noticed that Niall’s mic pack had been turned off during his solo. people immediately thought that it was management (shocker) who turned off his mic because they didn’t think he was talented enough to have a solo during their live shows, and so #LetNiallSing (LNS for short) was born. fans created a petition on change.org (seriously) so that Niall could have his fair share of solos during 1D’s performances, and tons of fan videos and edits were made (example) -- they’re literally amazing please google them. turns out that during the performance that started #LetNiallSing, Niall had accidentally sat down on his mic pack which caused it to turn off which was why you couldn’t hear his voice, so LNS kinda just died. it’s a good memory though.

2) The time that fans “hacked” the CCTV at Auckland airport to watch One Direction wait at their gate

i don’t really have a lot to say for this one but here’s a pic

3) That time a girl "killed" her chihuahua so 1D would follow her on twitter

this is not real, it’s a little graphic so sorry about that but if you’re gonna blame anybody blame @ illumivato on twitter for tweeting this mess. so theres that.

4) Stalker Sarah and her accidental feature in the What Makes You Beautiful music video

Stalker Sarah (heres a little background info on her) (is she still around????) was basically a girl who had met like literally every celebrity and had a particular fascination with one direction 

one day someone noticed that Sarah had made a surprise appearance in the background of the What Makes You Beautiful music video. I’m pretty sure this one isn’t real but its still funny and there were a lot of good memes about it back in the day (example)

5) Lewis Jones

Jumping a little ahead in time here, meet Stalker Sarah 2.0, LEWIS JONES. again, not a whole lot to say about him, more of a reminder that all of those pictures exist

6) @ PlasticBieber on Twitter

that one time in 2012 when an 11 year old girl made a twitter account to harass directioners online. here are some of her choice tweets:

and a video of her falling down and hurting herself????? (read the comments)

7) One Direction (Zouis) vs The Wanted

that whole thing was..... a lot, so here’s an article with a full timeline of the fight. also p.s. The Wanted blame 1D for their breakup which imho is funny to this day 

8) That one pic of Louis and Eleanor where people were seriously trying to say that Eleanor was actually Liam in drag

not kidding, that happened. here’s the pic:

9) The Calder Triplets

This fancy little theory came out of ~2013. The idea was that 1D’s Management recruited 3 actresses to stand in as Louis’ girlfriend on a carefully calculated cycle for reasons that I’m not gonna get into on this post but you can easily google them. 

Eleanor (the only actual Calder) apparently had 2 sisters, Gretchen and Tina, this was mainly because of a number of pictures in which Eleanor’s face looked different, or because of Eleanor’s height differing in comparison to Louis depending on the picture. Here’s a good post that’ll walk you through the whole debacle.

10) Mr. X

Mr. X was this anonymous twitter account that “”””predicted”””” stuff about One Direction and then one day he was like oh yeah btw someones gonna kill Harry and people freaked out and #HarryBeCareful was trending on twitter

11) Niall Violently Masturbating in Japan

MY PERSONAL FAVOURITE. This is probably one of the funniest One Direction rumours in the world, maybe one of the best pop culture rumours of all time and I am not being dramatic. It is so funny like I don’t know how else to describe it it’s so good. LETS GET TO IT. The story is basically that while One Direction was on tour in Japan, a fan found Niall up in his hotel room “vigorously masturbating”, banging the walls, swearing, and yelling some phrases that could only have been brought to us by the comedy gods themselves; “wey hey”, “up the lads”, and “that’s the craic”. The girl apparently had a video and was blackmailing Niall, saying that if he didn’t “hang out with her” she would release the video.

This is (obviously) fake but it’s seriously one of the funniest things that I can think of at any given moment. Here’s a link to a masterpost of some of the jokes that came out if it. So good.

12) The fanfic about Harry that got published into a real legit book

I actually hate this one, I think it’s awful but it was dramatic at the time so here it is.  For completely obvious reasons, Harry’s name in the story had to be changed, so the author changed it to Hardin. I’ll let you mull that one over.

13) One Direction’s trip to Australia when Liam had his underwear stolen straight off of his hotel balcony by some girls who also tried to break into his room

(read these from the bottom up)

this was also the day that this infamous pic of Liam looking for his underwear was born 

and so was one of my fav moments of a 1D tour ever 

14) Harry accidentally favourites some 18+ content on twitter

Harry was looking at some good old fashioned twitter porn when he accidentally faved a pretty graphic pic, and then in true Harry fashion made a joke about the weather and faved a bunch of pictures of puppies and kittens to cover it up. Here’s a decent timeline of that day, you can also check out #HarryDontLickAnything on twitter, and scroll down a bit in Harry’s twitter favs to see the aftermath (a.k.a the puppies)

15) Last but definitely not least, Conchobar Tomlinson

Before sweet lil Freddie Tommo (here’s a pic of him just because he is so cute that i cant stand it) was named for real, someone started a rumour that his name would be Conchobar, which is an Irish name that is apparently “pronounced like Connor”. I honestly dont know......but it was hilarious. Here are some of my fav tweets from that day

and there we have it, hope i reminded you of something you forgot about :)

4/23/21:  It was 50 years ago today, April 23rd, 1971, the Rolling Stones finally made their true arrival to the 1970s with one of the all-time great Rock and Roll records ‘Sticky Fingers’.  This one’s a whopper, and for some reason it used to be a little underrated by me... I always liked ‘Exile’ better, but probably this record is perhaps their best... it’s close.  There are a couple filler tracks, but overall at least THREE of songs here are absolute classics in my mind, and perhaps fourth that critics tend to think is great too.  'Brown Sugar’ opens the album with what should be very familiar, kinda awesomely sloppy, Keith Richards guitar chords... everyone in STL above the age of 40 probably remembers the KSHE-95 commercial featuring the song in it... I’ll cover this ROCK CLASSIC in it’s own entry in about a week.  The B-side to this single, and also the opening track on side two is ‘Bitch’... I would say this is just as good as ‘Brown Sugar’, making it one of the best non-double-A singles ever (probably a stretch, but hey it’s my blog).  ‘Bitch’ is fucking vicious and furious, and interestingly Keith switches places with Mick Taylor, who is normally the lead guitarist, with Taylor providing the rhythm and Keith providing the little flourishes and the solo... it’s really awesome, then the horns kick in towards the end... wonderful, WONDERFUL stuff... also, and I’ve not even gotten to the infamous album cover yet, the Stones of the ‘70s exploited their already known bad-boy image to include a ton of vulgarity from here on out... personally, I like it... so you have a semi-naughty word (hey, I don’t allow my kids to say it) being the actual title of a song.  I’m jumping around a bit, but in my mind the Stones’ greatest song is on here, and one of the greatest songs of all time IMHO, the epic, seven-minute ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’‘.  My god, what a song... starts with this stinging riff from Keith that is repeated throughout the song... Mick Jagger virtually screaming the lyrics (as are the background singers, Richards and Taylor) and talkin’ about them ‘cocaine eyes’ ... then the song turns into a fucking JAM... a jam?? in a Stones’ song? Yup, and it turns out that much of the guitar solo at the end was a happy accident, as Taylor just kept on going... it’s an incredible solo, and ends at just the right time.  I’ve not even mentioned saxophone player Bobby Keys contributes to a bunch of these songs, including this one... he’s invaluable to the proceedings.  'Knockin’’ is a TOP 5 song for me any day.  Probably the other ‘classic’ here that is not really one of my favorites but I respect it is ‘Wild Horses’... like ‘Brown Sugar’ the song is actually a little older than the rest of the material, and unlike ‘Sugar’, I think ‘Horses’ could have easily fit on their previous studio album ‘Let It Bleed’... kinda slow sad country-ish tune... it was released as a single with ‘Sway’ as its B-side.  I like ‘Sway’ much better actually... mid-tempo, but it rocks and it has this epic-sounding ending with Taylor solo-ing in the middle of a wall of sound, including what I swear sounds like Buckmaster strings (like Sir Elton was using at the time).  Easily the darkest song here is the anti-narcotic Marianne Faithful-penned track ‘Sister Morphine’, with Ry Cooder assisting with the solo on that one... certainly one of the bleakest songs recorded by the Stones, going back possibly to ‘Aftermath’ days... not something to brighten your day, I tell ya.  Before I get to the last song I want to talk about, there are a couple filler Blues-y tunes here, ‘You Gotta Move’ and ‘I Got the Blues’... they’re fine, honestly could maybe fit on a Zeppelin album if they were heavier, where they’d be filler also.  No, the last song I want to talk about is ‘Dead Flowers’ where, like ‘Knockin’‘, I think Taylor really really shines with his guitar fills after every lyric... in fact, the song hardly sounds like a Stones song, if you take out Jagger singing... more like Gram Parsons, which is supposedly what they were going for.  Anyway, it’s a great sing-a-long song, even with it’s druggy (needle and spoon, yup) lyrics... pretty too.  Finally, that album cover... yessir it’s a closeup of a still unknown dude’s crotch in jeans with a working zipper, which you can unzip to show his briefs... this was designed by Mr. Andy Warhol himself.  In a way, the johnson in your face exemplifies the entire Stones’ approach from here on out... would we want it any other way?  If you do not know this record, your music knowledge is truly feeble... there I said it.

so a while ago someone asked me what my hcs on phoenix’s (lack of canon) parents/guardians was and I gave some boring answer but recently I’ve changed it !! a lot !! here’s 2.5k of hc under the cut !!

spoilers being that I don’t think he actually had parents

more spoilers, I specifically hc he was a child in foster care who was never adopted and had to leave for independent living once he became a legal adult (and if my wording on any of this is off, plEase do message me about it!! I’ve been doing some research/have a bit of personal experience with this on my own but yeh; also localization-based so)

my hc for phoenix’s parents used to be that they were just pretty okay people who supported him well enough but they were never /that close of a family, they moved somewhere else after high school and he stayed behind for college and then the rest of his life basically - they were fairly average people who just. didn’t quite care enough to keep in touch with their son and vice-versa for phoenix

and I love when people give him loving parent(s) hcs (like him having two moms being so popular on the kink meme a few years back) and it’s sweet and hell yeah for aus, but it just? doesn’t make sense to me in canon; there’s no mention of his parents anywhere aside from a passing comment about his mother (and if I remember right it’s because someone brought up I want to ssaaayy morgan? maybe? as a sort of ‘[someone’s] mother’ comment and phoenix being phoenix just went ‘my mom?’ like Babe), no one was there to help him during his disbarment/trucy’s adoption except for a handful of friends, no one showed up for him during college when he was on trial for murder, so ??

there’s just that single brief passing mention of a biological mother and he has no issues with calling yanni ‘dad’ for that bit in 1-4 / ema ‘what are you, my mom’ in 1-5 and obviously great-grandad ryuunosuke, but that’s all I can think of regarding canon mentions of any sort of family? which, wow what a lot to work with

so. yeah. maybe his biological parents died or couldn’t support him but regardless, he wound up in a home and was never adopted and just booted out once he turned 18 (or whatever the respective age for that state/district is, I do base most of my hcs off weird localization so heyo LA)

like. here’s all we know about phoenix’s childhood (and if I’m forgetting anything, hmu):

-what happened at the class trial (and a lot of homes do have their children attend public schools)

-he’s an only child

-it was raining during his elementary school graduation

-dahlia/his murder trial in college

-he fuckgh tipped cows once goddamit phoenix

like that’s…. it, that’s all we know about him/his past prior to college, so this hc does make the most amount of sense to me considering canon + just his character overall?

it explains his fear of abandonment/hatred of being alone and maybe why all the kids turned on him so easily in the class trial (if he was the ‘weird’ one without parents then imho it’d be even easier for those kids to believe someone ‘out of the norm’ could steal money, like if they were already so willing to turn on him based on the simple fact that he wasn’t in gym that day mmMMM add that in and you’ve got even more to it), why he clings so fiercely to people and will do anything to protect them (eating glass for dahlia, changing his entire career for edgeworth, running across burning bridges and kicking down doors for maya, etc), why he adopted trucy so damn quickly when he honestly had no real reason to other than being /phoenix and not wanting her to wind up lost in the same system he did

it explains his immaturity in college before mia rolled in, if he never had a lot of individual attention/guidance growing up it honestly does make sense he’d be a bit more immature than other 20-somethings (mia is 100% his mom but like. adding in this hc, mia is his mom, one of the first people who wanted to genuinely help and guide him when he never really had that before)

it explains his quiet jealousy/self deprecation of wealth/appreciation for finer things but why he still spends his money on things like taking maya and later pearl out to lunch so often (off-track but phoenix wright wants to be domestic ok he wants to be So domestic, he wants a big open home with comfortable furniture and nice dishes and a loving family and uGH HE’S GONNA HAVE IT ALL… SOMEDAY……), why he acts like such a big brother/paternal figure to maya and pearl right off the bat even at just 24-25 years old

it explains why he wants to help people so much and is willing to sometimes do it for free if they really have nothing, he’ll gripe about it later for sure but he does occasionally view his job as an attorney and helping those with no one on their side a bit more highly than a paycheck (also tangent but I never really understood the hc about phoenix hating ~charity?? it’s such a popular one and if there’s anything in canon that supports that plS message me because I genuinely just don’t get that one, in 1-4 he thinks something along the lines of ‘wonder if I can get edgeworth to pay this month’s rent, too’ after edgeworth posts bail for maya, like Yeah it’s played more of a joke than anything else but idk I? never really got that he’s too prideful to ask for help, financial or otherwise - he’s never been the greatest with money between sometimes letting clients off the hook/only taking a handful of cases per year and that’s a flaw on its own, but disliking any sort of financial assistance so vehemently I never understood for him? ANYWAY TANGENT SORRY)

it explains why he kind of just did whatever the hell he wanted with his life (I’m a third year in college right now which was the same year phoenix was when he switched his major from art to law and if I changed my major rn my parents would be sO pissed with me lmao ((another hc that the reason phoenix is so poor is that he’s still paying off fuckin 7+ years of student loans ,bye)) 

so. yeah. phoenix who hit the respective age limit for foster care and wound up entirely on his own, lost and clutching vague ideals like a family through theater (getting to that, hang on), then to dahlia’s love and then the desire to save/see edgeworth again (phoenix has pretty big issues with motivation too, especially when he’s alone (why he gets all mope-y whenever maya’s gone djfld) so if something more tangible shows up he’s more likely to see it through; he’s extremely single-minded and he clings a lot to people who are important to him, like he was willing to swallow poisoned glass for dahlia and change his entire goddamn life for edgeworth So these leaps make sense to me here too considering the shift from something less concrete to /more)

and I’ve fully embraced takumi’s idea about him wanting to pursue shakespearean acting in college rather than any sort of visual arts (‘I’m in the art department!!!’ college phoenix says, 'WHAT KIND OF ART’ I yell at my DS), and when I factor this new hc into his college life it makes a lot of sense there too?

his wanting to be an actor was never his Dream or anything, he dropped it in a heartbeat for law and he explicitly says he never once regretted the change in 3-5, but? I have a fair amount of theater friends and they all agree that being in a theater company is like having a family and that’s something he would have really wanted; he always liked language and the drama and tragedy and comedy and romance of shakespeare’s works too (hc the only other thing he bothered taking with him besides clothes and a bit of money when he left was a dog-eared volume of shakespeare’s best), but those being the only reasons he kinda just decided 'why not, I’ll go into acting’ - there wasn’t anything deeper beyond that, he just. didn’t have anything else /planned for his future, no matter what he chose it didn’t really matter so why not pick something he had an interest in and where he’d be guaranteed to be around other people?? 

my mom never went to college and she says a large part of that was because her family didn’t support her so she never felt she could amount to anything in school (she wanted to go into theater herself, interestingly enough), so kinda just? phoenix never having that attention and support from a parent/guardian/anyone (again, leading back to his lack of maturity in 3-1), he just picked something he thought he might enjoy in acting and the second he saw that newspaper article about ~demon prosecutor edgeworth he started hunting down some law books on the side too

because acting never meant /that much to him, not over saving someone (especially /this someone hahHA)

I always had the impression that miles and larry were some of phoenix’s first real friends, so if you think about miles being his first friend/first person to stand up for him in the class trial when !! kid with no parents that no one liked !! it makes it all the more aaAAAAAAAGHH and his determination to save edgeworth /back even !!! more !!!!!

plus phoenix later learning that miles only has a single father himself and finding a bit of comfort in that is really sweet to me too? miles doesn’t have the most conventional family either but he loves gregory and gregory loves him and they’re doing just fine on their own; gregory meeting phoenix a few times and being so happy that miles has friends/phoenix always being genuinely interested whenever miles brings gregory up is. pure

((another random bit soRRY LMAO I DON’T POST MY OWN META A LOT, BEAR WITH ME - my hc for miles’s biological mother is that they kind of just dropped him off with gregory as a baby and bowed out, they were never a part of his life and never really wanted to be but miles never felt he missed out on anything growing up either; gregory is like the Ultimate Single Father, he loves talking/thinking about miles in his flashback case but if I remember right he never brings up a partner or anything, so just ?? single dad gregory… ye boy….))

oK so that’s over, I’m almost done with this post I swear  

takumi put a lot of himself in phoenix and I always found it interesting that we never really got any information about his childhood/guardians beyond the class trial and random bits and pieces of memories, especially considering the fact that phoenix is one of our main leads (and would have stayed our only main lead in trilogy if capcom hadn’t wanted him back for AJ); for ema and lana we got a passing comment about how their parents died in a car crash and it was never gone into further detail than that but it was still /something, for phoenix we don’t even have that

aa deals a lot with broken families (fey and edgeworth and skye and von karma and gramarye and sahdmadhi and khura'in), intentionally or not, so? having one of its main protagonists be a man who never once actually /had a blood family of his own but works to mend/help others (like… ignoring… how trucy and apollo still don’t know… and that’s something I honestly can’t fault phoenix for entirely as he waited to ask thalassa what she wanted to do as their biological mother and she asked to keep her relation to them private for a little while longer, like it still drives me up the wall that it’s gone on this long and as trucy is his /daughter he should at least be able to tell them they’re //siblings if not necessarily reveal who their mother is until thalassa is ready lmmao, but I blame the writers for that more than anything else at this point) is something I really really love, and along the way he crafts his own family and clings to them so tightly and mMM YEAH 

I DON’T KNOW HOW TO END META POSTS BUT THERE U GO, THAT’S MINE

Uhhh do you have a bachata playlist that you wanna share? :D

Intro To Bachata 101: Bachata was invented by poor, rural Dominicans. Like most things that poor people create, it was frowned upon and considered “low brow” music pretty much the entire time I was growing up. Honestly I wouldn’t have been caught dead listening to until probably high school because that was considered straight up Hick music. The genre’s perception drastically changed around 2002 when one particular group of four Dominican kids raised in NYC made a band called Aventura to play bachata and they had a song that went global. There were people like Dominican Grammy winner Juan Luis Guerra making more palatable bachata for decades before they came to the music scene, but it never really transcended like the way it did with Aventura. Thanks to them all of a sudden Bachata became “hip” and cool for everyone across the social and class spectrum to listen to. This opened it up to people like me who, because of dumb prejudices and preconceived notions, had never given Bachata a chance before but now that we had been exposed to it, we began to see the real artistry behind the music. Since then it’s become one of the hottest global genres. 

Historically Bachata will only do one of two things: 1) it will turn you on or 2) it will make you cry. This is because the genre pretty much solely focuses on romance. Across the board songs will be about either intense love, devastating heartbreak, or sexual encounters. One thing Bachata artists excel at is their storytelling. It was invented so that poor people could communicate stories to each other while having a drink after work so the best bachatas will tell impressively good love stories. 

My favorite little fact about Bachata: Because Dominican culture is also all about hypermasculinity and it’s the kind of society where men aren’t really allowed to show emotions (specially decades ago when this genre was invented) men had to find a way to express their heartbreak so the guitar riffs and solos in Bachata are supposed to represent a man’s tears/a man sobbing. One of the biggest distinctive things in Bachata are the intricate guitar solos and it is quite common for an artist to throw a line that roughly translates to something close to “Go ahead and cry guitar” before or during the solo to basically give it permission to “express its feelings”. 

Now that you have some basic quick facts, here are some of my favorites across the years. 

1) “You” - Romeo Santos [2011] - Romeo was the lead singer and mastermind behind Aventura. He eventually went solo and this was his first single. 

2) “La Diabla/Mi Santa” - Romeo Santos (Ft. Tomatito) [2012] - The cool thing about bachata is that it lends itself to cool fusions. In this song you can see that. What is supposed to be the ever present epic Bachata style solo at the end of the second song is instead a Flamenco solo by the best Flamenco guitarist in the world and imho it’s just so incredible. 

3) “Su Veneno” - Aventura [2009] - This one has one of those classic calls for the guitar to “cry” during the last solo. 

4) “La Boda” - Aventura [2005] - Easily my favorite Bachata in terms of storytelling. This song is a full blown movie told in five minutes. 

5) “Mi Corazoncito” - Aventura [2007] - Has one of my personal favorite guitar riffs and solos from any bachata. It’s objectively not the best out there but I fucking love it to no end for some reason. Amelia Vega, the first Dominican woman to ever win Miss Universe (2003), stars in the video.  

6) “Rechazame” - Prince Royce [2010] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP4vgc2bnPI

7) “Muchachita Linda” - Juan Luis Guerra [2015] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWxCy2gvPak - I’m including this because it is important to note that there are different subgenres between Bachata and what Juan Luis does is very different than anything I posted above, but it’s still Bachata. His has a lot more Son (another Tropical genre) and Merengue influences so it’s almost more…mellow? Some people like this kind better, some like what I posted above better. It’s a matter of taste. 

Also, if you want to understand how intimate Bachata really is you have to see how it’s danced. (x) If there’s a skilled couple dancing Bachata (same thing happens with Merengue and Salsa) it is not uncommon for everyone to literally empty the dance floor at whatever club or party you’re at and sit down to watch them which is what I assume happened in that video. In the video you can see that a good bachata dance will have a lot of partner work, but it will also give room for the couple to split and show their own individual skills as dancers. It’s tight, it’s intimate, and it requires A LOT of chemistry between two people. That’s why 10/10 times if two strangers meet at a club and can dance well together they’re not going home alone.