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layniapetrovnaaa · 3 years

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Kinkmas Day 6 (cockwarming): Five Hargreeves

Five is physically aged up to 17/18 in all my works. Also, I am 18, so this is not like some creepy cougar situation.

Summary: Reader and five go to see their past selves with Luther at the pub. Trouble ensues, and you decide to then try and help Five relax.

Warnings: Language, suggestive banter, name calling, fighting, smut, cockwarming, light praise kink, hints of premature ejaculation.

This is pretty long because it was not originally a kinkmas fic.

***

A cold layer of sweat covers your entire body as you make your way to the pub that your past self was currently occupying.

You knew the dangers of paradox psychosis-- having been part of the commission for many years. Yet, here you were, about to try and negotiate with your two weeks younger self and significant other.

It wasn't you that you were worried about, however, it was Five.

You had been partners for quite a few years before you got together, that being said, you knew Five very well. You knew it would be unlikely that he would react kindly to himself

If the first four stages of paradox psychosis were any indication, he was already fumbling this task.

“You alright, Five?”

“Fine.” he says sharply, but in an unconvincing tone.

“Here we go.” Luther mutters as he swings open the door, holding it for you and your counterpart.

Upon entering, you catch a glimpse of you and Five at the bar, you turn and laugh at something he says, flirtatiously placing your hand on his arm.

What you would give to go back to those days, the ones where you weren't constantly worrying about the apocalypse, when you and Five could have a casual drink at the bar, then find each other in one of the empty bathrooms later to... blow off some steam before returning to your jobs as hitmen.

“Well, there we are.” you breath out.

Five’s eyes almost bug out of his head as he peers around to get a good look at the two of you together, Luther as well.

Despite the fact that you were also just as susceptible to paradox psychosis, you seemed to be the most level headed.

“How come [Y/N] looks the same?” Luther asks, stupidly.

“I told you already, I don’t age due to my regenerative healing factor, I’m like you guys.” your growl.

Maybe you weren't the most level headed, blame it on nerves.

“Huh”

He glances over at Five, who was anxiously rubbing his hands together and looking as if he just saw a ghost, before asking another stupid question.

“Why don’t we just grab the briefcase and run?”

You scoff, and Five answers him, almost hurt by his words.

“Luther, I would never let that happen. We’re trained to guard these briefcases with our lives.”

“Right.”

“Plus, it’s the inherit paradox where this gets tricky.We’re endangering our existence just being in the same room with our former selves.”

“Huh-- What do you mean?”

You roll your eyes.

“C’mon Ape-man, try to keep up.” you scoff out, biting your thumb nail anxiously.

“If the old me doesn't travel back to 2019 like he’s supposed to, the whole thing unravels itself. I cease to exist. Same goes for [Y/N], here.” Five explains to his brother, making exaggerated hand gestures as he does.

Luther nods, and Five keeps talking.

“So our best chance is to talk--reason-- with them. Usually, I would count on [Y/N] to keep me grounded in situations like this, but given that fact that she might experience psychosis as well, I’m not really sure how this is gunna go.”

“Ah” Luther lets out, a bit apprehensive.

“He’ll understand.” Five mutters to himself, itching his neck.

“You just itched your neck! That’s stage two of paradox psychosis.” Luther whisper shouts.

“Luther, don’t be ridiculous.” you speak, wiping the sweat from your forehead as you do so.

“No, I didn't. I didn't itch my neck.” Five says defensively.

“Well, denial is stage one, and you’ve both got it. “

“We are fine, Luther.” You say harshly and leaning in dramatically.

Five huffs and shakes himself out a bit before he starts towards your targets.

“Wait-” Luther says, grabbing his arm.

“What?” Five hisses out, still put off by his brother’s most recent comments.

“Maybe I should go first. I mean, the two of you will freak them out.”he explains before turning to your lover.

“Bumping into your own tiny doppelganger? He will lose his shit.”

You all turn to look at yourselves-- the couple-- at the bar.

“Just let me brake the ice.” he continues.

Five looks over at you for approval and you give him a nod. This seemed to be the first time Luther actually had a decent plan.

As you prepare to meet yourself, the three of you take a few deep breaths in.

As Luther saunters over to the couple , you put a hand on Five’s back, rubbing soothing across his lean frame.

“This will all work out fine.” you hum, more to yourself than him.

He looks up at the ceiling, then back down at his hands, continuing to fiddle with any of the imperfections on them.

“Whaddya say, after this we’ll go home, finally have some alone time, release all that pent up stress?”

He looks into you eyes, and for a moment, his anxiety stops.

“That would be wonderful.” he pecks your lips quick before you turn around the corner of beam, hearing Luther introduce you.

“Hey there, stranger.”

***

“Well...this is nice, isn’t it? The five of us, together like this.”

You put your head in your hands as your lookalike glares over at Luther because of his unfitting tone and comment. The Fives are the only ones who respond verbally.

“No.”

The physically older five speaks.

“Somebody explain to me how I am having a pint of Guinness with my younger self and my girl.”

“Older, actually. I’m you, just 14 days older.” Five clicks.

“I have pubic hair smarter than you.”

And that was your cue to start and finish off your drink in one go.

“How is that possible?” the only other female at the table asks.

“I can explain. You see, one hour from now, on the grassy knoll, before the president is killed, you two will brake your contract with the commission.” he says, his eyes flicking over to the other version of yourself, and you noticed his eyes soften slightly.

“I already know you’re thinking about it. All those years in the apocalypse, we never stopped worrying about our family. Well, today, you are going to do something about it. Today, you are going to attempt to time travel forward to 2019. However you are going to screw up the jump and end up in this twip of a body, trapped forever, small, pubescent.” Five says, starting off soft at first, then becoming more vicious.

“Okay.” the other Five says nervously.

“How come I look the same then?” You-- well, not you-- speak.

“Because we don’t age, moron.”

Younger you sits back and scoffs, never breaking her glare.

“See! It’s a reasonable question!” Luther shouts rather obnoxiously.

“Ah yes, the burden of being young and sexy forever.” the white haired Five speaks, it’s meant to be humorous, but everyone is to stressed to acknowledge it properly.

Luther chokes slightly on his beer, whereas the Five that you are sat next to reaches for his and gulps it down rather quickly. You just roll your eyes.

“Look, we’re getting off topic.”

Regaining his wits, the man that sits across from you speaks.

“Even if I was to believe you, what am I supposed to do about it, not jump?” he says aggressively, with a hint of fear.

“No, no. I--We need you both to jump.”

“If you two don’t jump, we cease to exist.” you elaborate on his behalf.

“What I need from you is to jump correctly.”

“I’m listening.”

“The first time through, we got the calculations wrong. That’s how I ended up in this body. But now, I know the correct calculation.”

“What is it?” the other Five whispers sharply.

“I’ll be glad to tell you... in exchange for that briefcase you’re holding under the table.” the physically younger Five states, a bit too cockily.

“What do you think?”

It’s silent for a moment, and in that moment you hold your breath.

“I think...I need to piss.”

You let out a sigh and hold your head in your hands as he gets up and heads towards the back of the pub, Luther following shortly after.

“You’ll have to excuse me as well.” [Y/N] says and gets up. You recognize the slight mischievous gleam in her-- your-- eyes when she gets up and heads towards the bathrooms. Your suspicions are confirmed when you see her slip into the men’s bathroom instead of the women's.

You quickly turn to Five, who is bouncing his leg up and down anxiously and not looking away from the bathroom doors.

“They’re planning something, and they’re trying to get Luther in on it.”

He shakes his head before speaking.

“I know. I bet they’re gunna kill us.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” you say, a bit shocked at his accusation.

“Homicidal rage is stage seven, [Y/N], and all four of us are already exhibiting symptoms of stage six. Besides, that’s what I would do if I were him, and I am him.” he says very matter-of-factly, which makes you gulp, given the fact this he isn’t wrong.

A minute later, the three of them appear.

“We good?” Five asks cautiously.

“You got a deal.” The other Five speaks.

“We gotta hurry, Kennedy’s en route. Less than an hour till showtime.” the other version of yourself says, pulling her bag onto her shoulder.

“Why are you so anxious to get going all of a sudden?”

“Relax. Your getting paranoid.” The mustache donning Five lets out a scoffing chuckle, itching his chin on his shoulder immediate after.

“Oh, am I?”

They glare at each other for another moment before exiting the pub.

***

“What are you looking at?” Five asks the random stranger aggressively.

You try to push him along, but he continues.

“You see somethin’ funny?” he shouts even louder.

You notice that the other three members of your party are talking among themselves in front of you. Trying to focus hard on what they are saying, you miss Fives next insult, which was along the lines of “Something, something, asshole!”.

“Mind your business!-”

“Five!” you scold. “-Or I’ll give you something to stare at!”

“Stop it!”

“You wish you could pull off these shorts!”

You just roll your eyes and try to move him along.

Luther falls back and you immediately know something is up.

“Hey, lovebirds. How you guys doing?”

Five takes a look at Luther, then a deep breath in before descending the stairs and speaking.

“They’re gunna kill us, aren’t they?”

“What?” Luther lets out a nervous chuckle.

“What, him, her? He’s gunna kill you? Yeah, right. That’s ridiculous.” he chuckles again.

“Luther?”

“Yeah, hm?” he perks up too quickly when you speak.

“Promise me you will never go into acting. Because you’ve got to be one of the worst liars I’ve ever met.” and Five hums in agreement.

“You’re a worse liar than you are a spotter.”

At that, Luther drops his act.

“Okay, who’s fault is that? What good is having a spotter if you won’t even listen to him?”

“So you admit you’re all conspiring against us?” Five says, whisper yelling. You scoff.

“Do--Do you admit that you’re suffering from paradox psychosis?”

“Nuh-uh, don’t try and turn the tables, Luther.” you seethe.

“She’s got it too!” he points at you.

Five ignoring the both of you and instead defends himself.

“All I’m suffering from is bracing clarity about you and your murderous intentions.” his voice is like venom as he itches his chest.

“Look, it’s not like they’re gonna “kill you” kill you. They just want to kill a, um... version of you two.

“But I am that version of me!”

“Hey, I don’t love it, either, but he’s actually got a pretty good plan.

“You’re really not helping your case, Luther.” you say, your voice agitated.

“What? The one where you guys off us, then jump to 2019 to save the world?” Five asks, aggressively pushing his hair back.

“Yeah, wait, how’d you know that.”

“Because, Luther, we are the same people, we think the same way, and that’s exactly what we would do!” you spit, muttering “imbecile” under your breath.

“Okay, all I know is that we’ve got one of you too many,-- and you’re the mean one and this Five is a maniac.”

You clench your fists and try not to hurl yourself at the monkey-boy.

“Maniac? Luther, you have seen nothing. If you want a maniac, I will show you maniac.” Five growls. Maybe Luther was right.

“Okay, as your spotter,-” you and Five both scoff.

“I think the best thing I can do for you right now is put you out of your misery.” Luther says in a matter-of-fact tone, and that’s when Five’s had enough.

“Okay, Luther, listen,” Five starts, turning and grabbing Luther. You make sure to watch the show from a safe two feet away.

“I know your feeble mind only responds to age and authority, so listen very closely.” Five starts, and you got a feeling from the way that he was gripping Luther’s arms-- this would most likely end in an outburst.

“Yet again, you are experiencing daddy issues. This time with your own brother, which is honestly making me a bit crazy.”

“But remember this:” he says, and its the calm before the storm.

“I’m 14 days older than him. I have seniority here. So it is me you should be listening to, Luther.”

...and here it comes...

“I’M THE DADDY HERE!”

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner.

“Five, you need to calm down.” you finally intervene.

“What, I thought you liked it when I play daddy.” he says with a veil of smugness, coating his paranoid ticks.

Before you can huff out a retort, the Five that was walking in front of you alerts everyone that you all had reached your destination.

And, to say the least, things didn’t exactly go according to plan. At least you survived!

***

When you arrived home you knew your tasks were not yet finished.

Ah, yes, the trials and tribulations of trying to help Five relax after stopping an apocalypse...twice.

Five heads straight to the kitchen, ignoring his siblings, to get a cup of coffee.

You and Luther filter in behind him slowly, exhausted from the day you’d had.

Five hands you your own cup of joe and you place a hand on his arm, giving it a small squeeze, and offering him a sweet little smile-- as if to say “thank you”. He returns the look before taking a sip from his mug.

“Where the hell have you three been?” Allison asks, her voice sharp, but at the same time, caring and concerned.

“Doesn’t matter.” Five says bluntly before walking away, pulling you with him into Elliott’s old bedroom.

Allison just scoffs and shakes her head, walking away, Luther following quickly after her.

You set your mug down on the desk as Five closes the door.

He goes and sits at the desk immediately, muttering about how you all still had to find a way to get back to 2019.

“Five.” you say, your tone that of a parent who is correcting their child.

He looks up at you cautiously before determining that he wasn't in too much danger, continuing his scribbles.

“[Y/N] you know just as well as I do, we can’t stay here.”

“I’m not asking to stay, I’m asking you to take a break for 30 minutes and-” you walk over to him, standing behind his chair, starting to trail kisses up his neck, your teeth grazing the shell of his ear. “spend some time with me. Hmm?”

“I--” he stutters, trying to weigh his options as your hands start to massage his shoulders lightly.

“I need to finish this equation I just started.”

You huff and make your way around the chair to sit on his lap. His hands immediate rest on your hips. And, although he has and exasperated look on his face, you can tell he is enjoying this.

“But, I want you.” you whisper, your breath ghosting over his lips.

You grind yourself down on him unexpectedly, which makes him release a loud, and slightly high pitched moan.

You grin like the cheshire cat.

“Don’t get cocky.”

“Mmm, but how can I not be when I make the great Five Hargreeves moan like a horny schoolboy.” you mock, your eyes trailing down his sweater vest covered torso.

“Oh, shut up.” he says just before kissing you feverishly.

Soon, he is lifting your shirt, throwing it across the room, and groping your breasts.

You let out a content sigh at his actions, continuing to swish your hips back and forth.

“You’re so beautiful” he mutters and he leans in to kiss your neck.

You let out delicate moans as he sucks a hickey over your right jugular.

“I love those pretty noises you make, sweetheart.” He says, and you hum.

“Five,” you plead. “I need you.”

“Fuck” he curses at your words.

You get up to quickly take your bottoms off. he lifts his hips, sliding his shorts down to about mid-thigh.

You get back on his lap and start stroking him a bit before eventually lining him up at your entrance, and sinking down, letting out a heavy breath.

“Oh, that’s a good girl.” Five sighs.

“You always feel so damn good.” he hums, and you let out a soft moan at his words.

“Just-just let me finish this one problem and I’ll fuck you properly, okay?”

“Okay.” you sigh, sultry.

“Good girl.” he says, looking at you admirably, running a knuckle down your cheek softly, giving it a quick peck.

Any small thing, any move of his hips, made you let out small gasps and breaths.

It seems like forever before he is finished, but when you hear the sound of his pencil on the desk, you know he is finally finished. Ready to ravage you.

You start to move up and down slowly, trying to enjoy your first real moment of peace with your other half in a a long time.

Unable to take the slowness any longer, he orders you to get into the bed.

You comply and lay down.

He stands at the foot of the bed and grabs your ankle, dragging you closer to him before he lines himself up at your entrance again.

His hands rest on the undersides of your knees, pushing them forward so that they are near your shoulders

“You look so beautiful like this” he murmurs, taking in your appearance.

Despite occupying a body that he hadn't possessed in a long time, he still knew exactly what to do to make you a blubbering mess. However, that being said, this version of himself seemed to be...sensitive to more sexual things. Reaching his climax quicker than he intended, he lets out a string of curses.

He seems slightly embarrassed, but makes no note of it when he tucks himself back into his shorts and gets on his knees.

You let out a moan when he finally puts his mouth on you, a cocky grin forming on his lips.

“Who’s the cocky one now?” you ask rhetorically, breathless, and he dives back in. Your hands thread through his soft and thick hair, tugging on it ever so slightly when you feel a particularly pleasureful jolt.

And its not long before you reach your glorious climax as well.

“HEY, GUYS? WHEN YOU TWO ARE DONE BONING YOU MIGHT WANT TO COME DOWN HERE AND SEE THE NEWS.” Diego shouts, and you blush, knowing that everyone now knew what you and Five were up to-- that is, if they didn’t already.

“We should probably go down there.” Five says, helping you to get up and giving you back your shirt.

You agree and go downstairs, only to find that you and the Hargreeves siblings were currently America’s most wanted.

#five Hargreeves x reader #Five Hargreeves #five Hargreeves smut #five is always aged up in all my fics #the umbrella academy #kinkmas

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thesquidkid · 3 years

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Through the clouds, I see love shine

Little fic for @unbearable22, thank you for putting this song in my head while I was doing homework 😆 Hope you enjoy! (Read on AO3)

In my life, there's been heartache and pain

I don't know if I can face it again

Can't stop now, I've traveled so far

To change this lonely life

Michael was sitting on the bed of his truck, leaning his weight on his left arm, legs slightly crossed so he could fit. His hat was off, the fingers on his right hand playing with its hem. He was looking at the man in front of him, who was leaning his back against the truck, a laptop positioned on his thighs. Alex looked peaceful, even if nothing about this situation brought peace, the features on his face were relaxed.

They were somewhere in the mountains where Michael had driven them, following a certain signal, stopping every once in a while under a radio post, allowing Alex to connect the Lockhart machine to the post and observe the frequencies and code something that would lead to understanding the machine better. They had talked about the machine some more after Michael had been allowed into Deep Sky to get a look at it, Alex focusing more on the informatic part of it, whereas Michael was more interested in the mechanics and the alien tech used.

This time, their stop was quite long, Alex seemingly having found what he was looking for. In reality, they both knew that Alex could’ve done this all alone, it didn’t require any of Michael’s special skills, they weren’t after Jones or anyone, anything, particularly dangerous. They were just after radio signals for the Lockhart machine. But the fact that Alex had asked Michael to accompany him meant a lot to the both of them and so they drove away from Roswell.

When they were driving they would mostly talk about the machine, about the different theories they had. But once they stopped, Alex would take his computer out and Michael would sit silently, either next to him, or in front of him, and would think. He would think of Alex, of them together.

They didn’t really get a chance to properly talk after the kiss. They did talk about their relationship, and had agreed not to fall back into old habits. But, then, Alex had gotten Michael clearance to get into Deep Sky and the machine had been their main focus.

“Michael?” Alex said, with a smile. Michael realised that he probably had been talking and stopped seeing that Michael wasn’t paying attention.

“Huh,” Michael asked, bringing his thoughts back to the present, “sorry, you were saying?”

“Are you okay?” Alex asked instead, putting his computer to the side, his entire attention on Michael.

Michael breathed out deeply, gathering his thoughts before answering. They both were making efforts on communication, and Michael wasn’t going to stop there. “I, uh, I don’t want to mess this up,” he said with a faint smile, looking back up at Alex.

“I’m guessing you’re not talking about this very boring mission,” he said, with a smile, closing his laptop and waving to Michael to sit next to him.

Michael scooped himself up smiling back at Alex and sat down next to him, turning his upper body so that they were still facing.

“I don’t want to mess us up either,” said Alex once Michael had stopped moving.

“So what do we do then?” asked Michael, his voice low, barely a whisper, feeling like if maybe he said it louder it would curse them. “Because I know we can do better Alex, I know we can be together without hurting each other.” He breathed deeply and blinked a few times, feeling his eyes sting with the beginning of tears. “I am done with all the pain and heartbreak in my life, I just want to love you, freely.”

He raised his head, as if it was a challenge to the universe. Alex put his hand to Michael’s cheek, wiping the tears there with his thumb, ignoring his own. Michael however, not one to ignore Alex’s emotions, brought his hand to mirror the gesture, bumping their arms and making them laugh a bit, before it died down, and they were back in the current time, in the current conversation.

“I think,” started Alex, “that out of the two of us you’re the one with more experience with free love.” Michael shrugged at that, and Alex decided to move on, neither wanting to reminisce about the past, but rather choosing to look towards the future, their future. “I want you to show me what it’s like, Michael. I want to experience everything with you. I want-” he cut himself with a breath, “I want to know what it’s like to not be scared of loving you, Michael.”

They stared at each other, only now realising that it was the first time either of them said that word in present tense. I love you. Three words that for the longest time have been unspoken between them, and finally, breached the surface.

“And as for what we should do,” Alex continued with a sniff, “how about we start with dinner?” he asked, looking into Michael’s eyes.

“Your place or mine?” replied Michael, with a breathless chuckle.

“How about the Roadrunner Cafe? We could definitely make it there for 8 tonight,” Alex replied with a nervous chuckle. The Roadrunner wasn’t so different to the Crashdown - less good quality, obviously - and it wasn’t something too fancy. But it was different. It felt more important somehow, like there was no mistaking in what Alex meant. Not dinner as ‘friends’, but dinner as boyfriends.

Michael looked at him with a smile, “I don’t know about you but I’d probably feel bad, you know? Cheating on Arturo like that.”

Alex laughed at that, “Fair enough, rumors go around quickly in this town.” He looked at Michael with so much softness in his eyes, his face and his body relaxed, that Michael needed to actively fight his instincts, not to jump Alex and kiss him, right here and there, but he also knew that they couldn’t fall back into who they were before. Not if they wanted them to work out. And judging by the way Alex cleared his throat, looking pointedly at Michael’s lips, he would say he wasn’t the only one in that state.

“So, it’s a date, huh?” Michael asked, wanting to make sure they were clear, on the same page, before they did anything else. “Us, tonight at the Crashdown. And not as friends, right?”

Alex chuckled and leaned closer, “I mean I thought we were friends.” At Michael’s teasing raised eyebrow, he quickly added, “but yes, tonight we’re having dinner in the best place in town, as boyfriends.”

As Alex talked, he leaned in closer and closer, until the final word was whispered, Michael feeling it more than hearing it, the two men crashing their mouths together. But unlike all the times they kissed in the last decade, until the night at the Wild Pony, that kiss was slow. Still burning like fire, but without an expiration date.

In the end, they drove back into Roswell, and parked outside the Crashdown. From the moment they walked out Michael’s truck, until they sat down at a booth, their fingers were intertwined. And once they were seated, their bodies touching, from shoulder to knee, Alex on Michael’s left. They knew that people were looking at them, but neither cared. They were too busy getting to know what being loved felt like.

I wanna know what love is

I want you to show me

I wanna feel what love is

I know you can show me

#this song is 100% a malex song #michael guerin #alex manes #they both deserve all the love #roswell new mexico #rnm fic #malex #malex fic #also lmao as i am typing these tags #wanna bet that this will be more popular than any of my delmanes fics?#😂😂😂#also please forget anything about science #i do not know what they could be doing here #i just wanted them to talk #thesquidkid writes

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1ddotdhq · 3 years

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🍌Wed 2 Dec ‘20💚

Harry Styles Reacts to Banana Innuendo Rumors by Making EVEN MORE Banana Innuendos part TWO

Good morning/evening/night to Harry’s post and Harry’s post ONLY! (Okay that’s not true but it was definitely a highlight of my day). In case people haven’t seen it yet, it’s Harry in a light blue custom made suit putting a penis banana in his mouth. The picture is captioned “Bring Back Manly Men” so take a suck on THAT Candace Owens! It was only one of many great pictures in his variety shoot (including another, um, fruity picture of him biting into a pomegranate okay Persephone we get it), but Harry did indeed choose That One to post on This, the day after banana necklace dickscourse, BLESS. Harry’s interview was a little more in depth than they have been in the past, touching upon his feelings on race (“Historically, I can’t think of any industry that’s benefited more off of Black culture than music. There are discussions that need to happen about this long history of not being paid fairly. It’s a time for listening, and hopefully, people will come out humbled, educated and willing to learn and change”), as well as his tattoos (the only time he regrets them is in the DWD makeup chair), his love of reading, fashion and art, his exercise routine (Kid Harpoon couldn’t keep up!), and his feelings on success and acclaim (“It’s never why I do anything...it's always nice to know that people like what you’re doing, but ultimately — and especially working in a subjective field — I don’t put too much weight on that stuff...Fans are the best A&R”).

The problems arose - as they so often do - when One Direction was mentioned. The article said that “The proof [of the band’s benefits] is in the relatively seamless solo transitions of at least three of its members- Payne, Malik and Horan in addition to Styles- each of whom has landed hit singles on charts in the U.K., the U.S. and beyond”. Leaving aside the bad math (that's 4 people!) one name, of course, is notably missing: Louis has in fact enjoyed quite a lot of success both with Walls (remember when his album went #1 on iTunes in the UK AND the US literally 2 months ago?) and his pre-Walls singles like “Back To You” and “Just Hold On”. It got worse because the author tried to back up her claim with Harry’s quote, “When you look at the history of people coming out of bands and starting solo careers, they feel this need to apologize for being in the band...but we loved being in the band...I think there’s a wont to pit people against each other. And I think it’s never been about that for us. It’s about a next step in evolution. The fact that we’ve all achieved different things outside of the band says a lot about how hard we worked in it”. By linking her own words with Harry's quote she made it seem as though Harry said it to agree with her biased take, which we'd know he didn't even if we hadn't heard him say this exact quote without that slant multiple times before. Fans were quick to point out both to the author and to Variety that they were wrong (to describe the reaction mildly), and the author rather than fixing the mistake, doubled down and began blocking fans. Plenty of people were quick to say that of course HSHQ and Harry had approved this content, despite more knowledgeable fans trying to be heard protesting that that is not how it works. (Remember how just recently Vogue got Harry’s whole ass FAMILY situation wrong and it was not corrected until after print, for example?) In fact, even the magazine didn't really proofread this- the print version of the article is different and says, “The proof is in the relatively seamless solo transitions of at least three of its members - Styles, Malik and Horan”, effectively erasing both Louis AND Liam. It's an annoying take either way, but it's one the author more than likely picked up by doing her research on harrie twitter, not on orders from Jeff.

And because we DO NOT STAND FOR LILO ERASURE ON THIS BLOG, let’s talk about Liam’s Web Summit panel! It was 25 minutes of Liam and Marian Dicus (VP of Spotify) being interviewed about the current and future state of the music industry. Both of them, of course, noted that things had changed very quickly in their careers back at the beginning of lockdown, and how it had seemed surreal, at first, but that Liam had found that the way he was operating now (with Veeps and Tik Tok and Instagram lives) had made his platform a two way interaction with his fans. “For a long time I've been living in a dream world where I thought I was speaking with my fans but really I was just talking at them whereas we as artists ask a lot of rhetorical questions... I wanted to start a conversation”. Marian discussed how engaging fans differently WAS one of the most difficult things to puzzle out at the beginning, but that as months have passed, it seems artists like Liam have found a viable virtual future in the music industry (Liam tells us that he's been doing “stadium size shows” on Veeps which is an exciting clue about the mystery of how many tickets they're selling). They also went into the way music trends change as a response to social and political occurrences, how comfort songs gave way to protest songs this summer. Liam said, “People want their artists to have an opinion nowadays it's not that we can stay out of the conversation anymore-- and nor do we feel that we should in many places-- but for me it's a fine line because I realize what I do for people is an escape, people don't want things rammed down their throats every day and news messages from me about things that they don't want to hear about if they've come to listen to music, so its a real fine line that we kind of teeter on”. And about his opening acts, he acknowledges that his fanbase are mostly young women (based on the data breakdowns he gets from his team), and so he feels a responsibility to mentor young female artists in the industry so that more people like his fans have a voice. In an interview full of really fascinating music and technical discussions, this remained my favorite moment from Liam. Just like we won’t erase HIM, he refuses to erase US! And let's not forget our Liam alarm of the day-- it starts out absolutely adorable (“good moooorning!”), is hilarious in that apparently he just rambled completely unscripted and then they awkwardly cut it into 25 parts, but today's installment is frankly not relaxing! “only 23 sleeps til christmas have you done your shopping are you prepared” excuse me Liam YOU ARE STRESSING ME OUT. The promised relaxing sleep story affirmations are still 'coming soon'-- hurry up please I need them to decompress after that alarm!

Now for a lightning round of epic proportions: DWD darling pictures and vids keep comin’ and Harry and Florence are both looking GORGEOUS as Jack and Alice, after the Variety shoot dropped ‘THE CAPTION’, ‘BRING BACK MANLY MEN’, and ‘LOUIS IS SUCCESSFUL’ trended worldwide on twitter, Tan France said “yes please” to Harry's banana post, Harry reiterated that London was home and he didn’t want to be in LA for longer than he needed to,Variety has its virtual show tomorrow at 5 pm PST so see you there! Veeps is sending out emails promoting Louis’ show to people who bought LP show tickets, fans have already started to receive their Louis Tomlinson Live From London merch, Trinity College in Dublin’s Law society presented Niall with an award for, uh, his Irishness, I guess? (Just kidding, it’s for “his incredible talent and work ethics which is famously underscored by a distinct humility despite unthinkable success”). It looks like he will be giving a talk when he’s presented with it, and I’m honestly really interested to see what it’s all about - is he...gonna be talking to law students? Idk but tune in on December 7th at 12 pm GMT to find out!

#harry styles #liam payne #louis tomlinson #niall horan #also i am seeing discourse about H's COOP and how he loves the Manchester music scene #but that this stadium will be changing it irrevocably #i mean it will be adding jobs (4000 of them!) but it will also be pushing out the small music scenes that benefits small independent artists #who are trying to break through into the indusrty #*industry #and i think thats a really interesting and important convo #of which i dont have any knowledge but i did want to shine some light on it #also!! tumblr has finally recced me something that i like! a store called 28cultures.com #and its NOT larry merch but it COULD BE its SO COOL!!!!#this isnt spon con i just thought it was so funny!#anyways!#song of the day~#savior complex by phoebe bridgers #(and rob moose!)

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miraculousmarifan · 4 years

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Felinette Month 2020 - Day 12: Reunion

The prompts on @felinettenovember are gold and everyone should check out what the others are doing for this month!

Theirs are also most likely on time, and this one is only 3 minutes away from being posted on the wrong day... but it’s still the right day for me!

Approximately 3100 words of absolute Lila salt. Her character is poorly enough written in the show that I had to make her villainy almost cartoonish to a certain degree.

Also before anyone takes my word for it at the silk part, just know I have the bare minimum of knowledge about the intricacies of fabric as I’m just a data analyst. I did however read a really interesting article earlier this year discussing the difference in modern and ancient forms of fabrics (it was specifically discussing cotton, if I remember correctly) and how industrialization of fabric production had drastically reduced both the initial quality of the fabric and the durability. Which they were using as an explanation of why it’s still possible to find cloth artifacts in archeology, whereas it’s suspected that the “same” fabric now wouldn’t have survived due to the poorer quality. So I willy-nilly applied this logic to silk weaving. If you are an expert in this stuff and want to pass along actual knowledge, I’d love to hear about it.

Marinette had found that going to university for fashion design was both easier and harder than it had been doing it during school. There were similarities with the existence of homework and specific class times to schedule around. Working at a smaller fashion house had been another beast entirely. Marinette had been offered a 5 year contract as the only pupil to the head designer, working both with the team of designers and working apart from them. Her ideas first needed to gain the approval from the head designer before she could put them through peer review with the team. She was required to have her designs be closer to a final product before she would get approval to proceed to peer review than the designs of many designers on the team had after multiple reviews. Marinette kept her head high, as her designs often went through fewer changes in the review stage as a result of this additional standard.

However with less than 10 designers doing all stages of the process, from researching ideas and sketching to actually assembling the final product and altering them for the models that would wear it, they were always busy. As a result, Marinette found herself more devoted to work outside of their standard hours, sketching variations on most outfits for potential changes she thought may be suggested while she sat at home.

At 25, Marinette found herself married to her career, with only two nights per week that she had set aside for her friends and her family and refused to budge on that time. This had left dating relatively untouched outside of some short high school relationships and a few first dates that never went further.

Alya never could understand why Marinette was so content on her own. She married Nino at 22 and had been happy in her marriage, but she was able to have her career and her relationship. Sometimes her journalism interfered but often she would just finish typing up any articles or notes she had while home and returned her attention to Nino.

Marinette often didn't disconnect from her sketchpad until late in the evening and then she simply wanted to eat, relax a little, and sleep. Dating required too much effort and time during the week and she only had so much time on the weekends, especially because of the occasional work event on a Saturday night.

This Saturday was one such event, a black tie party in a ballroom, where many designers were getting together under the pretext of a party, however most realized it was an important networking event. Designers would be discussing the styles that were in currently, some boasting about what they expected the next trend to be, and many would try to woo the various models in attendance to sign on for a certain number of shoots or shows in the upcoming seasons.

Marinette knew that she had to show her best at this, as she was entering the fifth year of her contract and would need to get her options in order. She was determined to have at least one outside offer waiting at the end of her contract, so she felt more free to decide if her current company was the best fit.

She had invited Alya over before to help her solidify her outfit by reassuring her choice in dress and accessories, as well as providing suggestions with make-up choices as requested. Marinette really needed a hype woman to get her in the right mindset for dealing with pretentious models and designers for her entire evening.

The ballroom hosting this event was as decedent as Marinette had anticipated and each designer eyed the others' appearance critically. Many of the compliments bestowed on others were backhanded, in the most subtle manner possible. The more inexperienced often missed the jabs but Marinette had expected them. Her mentor had arrived shortly before her and gestured for her to join his conversation upon seeing her entrance.

For nearly an hour, her mentor paraded her around, introducing her to each designer he personally knew and discussing with them her strengths. She was grateful for his support when he could have easily left her to flounder. The designers that had taken a liking to her brought others to meet her the moment he left her side to fetch a new drink. After dealing with their undivided attention for a while, she tried to find a polite way to excuse herself so she could breathe and let her face rest a moment.

The opportunity to slip away came when Gabriel Agreste entered, accompanied by his assistant and three others. The designers commented on his boldness to bring three young models and speculation started about which of the blond men was Gabriel's heir and if they knew the woman with them. He had brought Lila, Adrien, and Felix. She should’ve expected to see at least two of those three here. Time had allowed her to forget about their presence in this world.

Marinette murmured to the closest person that she was going to grab herself a beverage, then quietly slipped away while the designers speculated amongst themselves. She wouldn't contribute with an explanation of any person in that group, let alone bring an opportunity for her past relationships with them to come up.

She instead had snuck around, hiding amongst the various crowds filling the room to get to the hallway where the bathrooms were located. Rather than going into the bathroom, she walked around a turn in the hallway past them and stopped, leaning against the wall to take some deep breaths and think.

If Lila was here, she was definitely still employed with Gabriel and in good standing. She had cut contact with Alya and Nino after the graduation day incident so Marinette hadn't heard much about her since then. Luka didn't talk much about Juleka outside of their time together at the houseboat or in Kitty Section, but Marinette was sure he wouldn’t have let any news of her reach Marinette anyway. Mr. "High-road" Agreste was here so she would likely need to stay hidden or leave so he didn't try to be overly friendly with her. She didn't want to deal with his attempts to catch up and accusations about not staying in touch, even though he hadn't been a great friend of hers after trying to convince her to be a doormat, even if it nearly got her akumatized. Ice King Felix was a wild card. In school he had been a strange mixture of harsh and quietly supportive (primarily in dealing with Lila or Chloe). If Marinette had to deal with any of those three, he would be her preferred. He had potential to be on her side simply on the conditions that Lila still despised her and that Felix still disliked Lila or/and Adrien. Regardless, Marinette preferred if she could just make it through the night without needing to speak with any of them. Slowly she was considering going back to attempt navigating the party. Pushing herself off the wall, she took one more deep breath with her eyes shut.

And promptly fell to the floor due to the unexpected force of something ramming into her. Her head bounced off the carpeted floor and she felt like her brain was trying to restart.

“Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t see you around the corner and ran into you. Are you alright?” The man leaned down next to her, while Marinette blinked a few times, trying to get her bearings. Then she slowly started to sit up. He spoke again, “Do you need to have your head examined? It looks like you may have bumped it and messed up your hair.”

Her hand came up and ran across the back of her head, over the hair, still blinking as her brain started running again. She turned to look at him and felt a little bit of dismay.

“Felix. I’m okay. My head is just pounding a little bit. I should really check to see what I need to do to make myself presentable again,” Marinette slowly moved towards getting up, hand reaching out to the wall. Felix took her hand and offered his other for more support. She took it without thinking, balancing herself as she stood. Then she turned her body, releasing his hands, and leaned against the wall again. “Thanks. It is Felix right?” Maybe if I play my cards right, he won’t recognize me and will think I just know from his ads.

“Yes Marinette. One and the same,” he smirked at her efforts and she groaned inside. “Did you know that you’re the hot topic in that room? Well actually you’re right behind whether Adrien or I will inherit Gabriel. As if the man is even considering retiring at this point.” Felix leaned one shoulder against the wall next to her, grinning like a cat.

“It seems that you made a splash socially, then disappeared right as Gabriel Agreste showed up. They’re speculating and Lila seems to have convinced enough of them that the two of you are friends. She’s so sure you have a surprise planned for her, even if she hasn’t figured out that you’re the same person yet. That only brought more speculation as to why you aren’t working at Gabriel. ‘Is it perhaps because she has an indecent relationship with an heir? Or is she the victim of nepotism?’ If you don’t make an appearance again soon, these rumors may live on past the evening.” His eyes had narrowed slightly as he brought up Lila and the rumors starting around her, trying to read the slightest reaction. Marinette just deflated. She had just been ready to go back before their collision and now she just wanted to curl up in a ball. With this last statement, she let out a little sound of exhaustion.

“Why did she have to be here? And how is it that even the people that are used to dealing with snakes don’t recognize her as one?” she groaned out, hands pressing her eyes. After a moment she straightened her back against the wall, breathed deeply and sighed. “Alright. We’re adults. Might as well act like it.”

“You’re going back now?” Felix stood, sounding more curious than before. Marinette had stood straight up, and was taking a step from the wall to walk back into the main hallway and looking at Felix as she replied.

“Of course I’m going to go back. I’m a professional that doesn’t lie and pretend to get places. I do the hard things and succeed--” she raised her eyebrows and smirked back at him “--Of course I need to fix my hair first, since you messed it up. Are you going to hide here longer?”

Felix faintly blushed at her expression as she told him he messed her hair up and thought about another way he could mess it up. As she slowly walked he turned to follow her. “Did you have a companion with you tonight? It’s not uncommon for designers to bring one…”

“I did not. I have been networking. Why do you ask?” Marinette slowly stepped towards the restroom door, nearly laughing at his stalling tactics.

“Would you like one when you’re finished fixing yourself up?” Marinette couldn’t believe how warm he was being with her, even with his mocking way of warning her what she was walking into. Is this really the Ice King I knew in school?

“I guess you’ll have to wait if you want to see…” Marinette pushed into the bathroom, walking up to a mirror. Luckily my hair wasn’t too extravagant and the back is just a little messed up. With a little bit of water on her fingers and some adjustments of her bobby pins, her hair looking untouched and she was exiting the bathroom.

Felix had moved to stand against the wall near the bathroom, and straightened to join her. Marinette liked the way he was acting with her now and made a split second decision that at worst, she didn’t need to keep him around if he changed his tune. She could push him back out of her life. She reached a hand out to beckon him and he offered her an arm. Their strides matched as they walked back to the party.

Whispers started in the groups closest to the door as they saw their up-and-coming sunshine designer enter on the arm of the model known for his aloofness and cold professionalism. Felix’s face slipped back into it’s icy indifference, looking harshly at specific individuals that dared to make too inappropriate of a comment in his earshot. Marinette smiled and nodded at different individuals that she hadn’t spoken enough with at length. A small squeeze to his arm and twist of her head had the pair walking towards one of Marinette’s first choices for her next employer.

Other groups had taken notice of the pair, drawing more eyes, and conversations turned to theories about their relationship. The two ignored stares and managed to strike up a pleasant conversation with a woman that could drastically improve her prospects. With the increasing curiosity of most guests, one young woman noticed and began to formulate a plan.

“Marinette! Over here! It’s me! Why didn’t you tell your best friend that you were coming?” Lila loudly exclaimed as she began prancing across the room and waving a hand wildly like a child trying to catch attention. Her dramatics went unacknowledged as Felix used his most winning smile, describing Marinette’s designs throughout their school years and then drawing attention to the dress she was currently wearing. She couldn’t help but blush that he had recognized her craftsmanship even after years apart. The woman seemed to be swept up in the warmth and friendliness he was using, as well as the atmosphere those two formed around their group. Others paid particular attention to the hand Felix had rested on her side.

Marinette had been gaining attention up to this point, however the entire party noticed the atmosphere tense as Lila appeared to trip, right as she was about to reach the designer. Felix moved behind Marinette, having her twirl in front of him to show off the patterns embroidered into her dress, and felt the liquid on his back before Lila collided with him. Felix had made note of Lila as he was gesturing to Marinette’s dress and guessed at her plan with a fair bit of accuracy. Marinette was completely dry and far enough forward to avoid being bumped by Felix when the force from Lila’s impact pushed him. The icy glare returned to his face as he turned to deal with her.

A few men from nearby moved over to help Lila, who faked a sob story about how clumsy she was, because she was just so excited to see Marinette since “our schedules have just been so busy that we haven’t gotten to see each other!” when Felix interrupted her.

“Strange that you say that. I actually remember Marinette getting a restraining order on you after graduation, when you tried to poison her food. You claimed to be allergic to shellfish and said she was trying to slip clam broth into your food. However you had the broth container in your bag, it was slipped into her food, and according to her up-to-date school medical records, she’s severely allergic to mollusks so she wouldn’t come near the container. At the time, you were supposedly diagnosed with a disorder that causes you to compulsively lie. Regardless, the courts didn’t seem to believe that a disorder like that, which was unknown to and unheard of by medical professionals, wouldn’t have been grounds to explain trying to harm her and granted the order. Do you not remember that?” Felix recited the story almost impassively, as though it was simply a reminder of what she ate for breakfast, however he gave a mock confused look with his rhetorical question. The crowd had gathered around with her fall and were well within earshot as Felix described one of the worst incidents of Marinette’s life. The pale expression she wore and the Lila’s furious expression as he described it convinced even those that would’ve been inclined to side with Lila.

With one final look of distaste, Felix turned to Marinette and reached for her hand. The onlookers were surprised at the obvious tenderness as he spoke to her, “We should get you away from here. Do you want to stay at the party and talk to some more people or would you prefer I escort you home? We can see about getting some contact information before we leave, if you’d like.”

The room was deathly silent, even Lila having the sense to wait, in case she broke the tense quiet that had formed. After a deep breath and a shaky smile directed at Felix, Marinette turned back to the woman she had been speaking with before Lila’s act and politely said, “I enjoyed our conversation and hope we have the opportunity to speak again soon. I would love to hear more about your work to more effectively create silk patterns by hand. I know you said it before but hand weaved silk really is so much nicer than the machine weaved and I’ve read that it’s much more durable. Thank you for your time this evening!”

Felix moved to her side and Marinette slipped her hand into his before stepping towards the coat room. With coat in hand, the pair swept out of the ballroom to leave behind the drama of the evening.

Suddenly the room burst into chaos and Lila was escorted to a private room to wait for Gabriel to decide how to handle this revelation. He knew he would lose the respect of his peers if he kept a young woman on staff that they all knew had tried to murder another one. The cherry on that cake would be that the would-be victim is an up-and-coming designer that nearly all were considering making an offer to. It was clear to him that Ms. Rossi would be fired. Now it’s just a matter of the other clean up that would follow. Additionally, it seemed Ms. Dupain-Cheng also had a close relationship with his son, considering the show that he was putting on since they arrived. He would have to dig into his sons’ involvements with the designer's misfortunes, as that would impact how they looked to the public. There was one other aspect that Gabriel Agreste was rather certain of, one of his son’s was smitten with a good match and if they were happily married, it would help their careers immensely.

Marinette’s night out ended with a private car pulling up to her building, a kiss placed on Felix’s cheek, and her hand slipping a piece of paper with her phone number into his jacket pocket. She was pleased to find he messaged her immediately to make sure she made it into her apartment alright.

Felix was too lovestruck to sleep that night.

#felinette month 2020 #felinette month #lila salt #felinette #miraculous ladybug

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bedbellyandbeyond · 3 years

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Librarians

(Story Post)

After spending another night with Diederich, Nari was back at the library. There was a different guard at the front desk time which meant another hassle to get back in. She asked for both his patron card and ID and things seemed to be going well until she tried to have him leave his phone because ‘smartphones contain silver'. When he argued that there wasn't even half a gram of silver in the average smartphone, she then said it was to enforce their ‘no photography’ policy, something that was never even brought up the last time he entered. At that point, Nari asked for Kobann and had to be escorted inside again. Looking up at all the seemingly infinite rows of bookshelves, Nari sighed and tried to remember where he left off. He decided it might just be better to start with a whole new section and see what he could find. Like before, he'd started around noon, but he figured the sun was going down when he noticed more and more perusers passing by. Some of the vampires climbed the ladders like him but he noticed more and more were able to float from floor to floor, a vampiric ability he wasn't even aware of. It was the floaters that made him most uncomfortable because they made no sound as the went by, eyeing him with curiosity and disapproval, he bet. So, when one vampire floated up next to him on the fourth floor and placed a hand on his shoulder, he was caught completely by surprise. Instinctively, he spun around and went for a neck grab, but the other vampire was quicker and caught his wrist.

“Whoa! Sorry if I scared you,” the stranger said grinning. He was tall, he had dark hair like Diederich's, and he looked rather smug with his uncomfortably intense eyes. “What do you want?” Nari growled, yanking his arm back. “I don't like to be disturbed.” “I just noticed you're new around here, that's all,” the stranger said. He had some kind of British accent. “Maybe, I could help you out.” “I'm not looking for help,” Nari said. The strange vampire tilted his head. “Oh? Most vampires come to the library because they're looking for help with something. Whether it's learning about their own immortality, or discovering new powers, or…” He glanced at the book in Nari's hand. “…starting a family?” Nari blinked and closed his book. “Who are you? Do you work here?” “Ooh, I got it right, didn't I?” The stranger was quite pleased with himself. “No, I don't work here, but I might as well with how long I've been here.” He offered a hand. “Everett.” “Nari.” He took the hand to shake it but was quickly pulled close to the stranger's chest. “H-Hey!” “I could help you, you know,” Everett said, smiling down at him. “With the whole baby thing.” Nari curled his lip in a sneer. “Let go of me. I have a partner.” Everett let go and grinned as he pat Nari on the head. “Don't get so worked up, I'm only joking! I too am taken.” He leaned back, looking up towards the upper levels of the bookshelf they were currently standing on. “Wes! Come down here for a moment!” Another vampire floated down, this time with sandy curls and bushy brows, and he held a finger to his mouth. “Shhhh! We're in a library, remember?” “Wes, my dearest!” Everett went in for a kiss, but the other vamp blocked him with his hand. “Who are you harassing today?” he asked. Nari noticed this new vampire preferred to remain afloat whereas Everett had alighted on the floor beside him. “Ah, this is…Norris?” Everett guessed, patting Nari's back a bit roughly. “Nari,” Nari correctly, glaring at him. “Stop touching me!” “Nari, I'm Wesley,” the other vampire said, offering his hand. “I'm really sorry about my partner. He's a menace to society.” Nari just looked at the hand and wrinkled his nose. Wesley sighed and grabbed Everett by the ear. “What did you do? He won't even shake my hand!” “Isn't that a thing in their culture?” Everett asked. Nari just put his book back and started climbing down the ladder. “I'm done… I give up.” Wesley gave Everett's ear a good yank. “You racist shit, look what you've done! Apologise!” “Shh, we're in a library, my love!” “Apologise.” Everett dove down to meet Nari on the next level upside down. “Nari, I'm sorry if I offended you. I was just trying to make friends.” “I was not.” Nari got off the ladder and prodded Everett in the forehead. “Just leave me alone.” “Hold on, hear me out for a moment,” Everett said righting himself so he could stand with Nari. “I really could help you find whatever you're looking for with this baby business. Wes and I have been coming to the library almost every day for decades. We know the books. The one you had out was not going to help you, but I could tell why you might think it would.” Nari frowned. “You've read all the books?” “Oh no, it would take a millennium to read everything in here,” Everett said. “I'm only just hitting my 180s. But I have read my fair share and more. I know the system they've got here. I know what books are practical and which are just hogwash.” Nari exhaled through his nose. “…So, since you seem to know everything, what do you think I'm looking for?” Everett smiled. “You want to know how to increase your chances of having a viable pregnancy with your partner.” Nari blinked. “How did you figure that?” “The book you had out,” Everett said. “It was about some Russian vampire queen with fifty children; it's a go to for a lot of vamps like you. But it's completely fabricated.” “And you know that how?” Nari asked. Everett shrugged. “It was just classic sexism. They thought she was a vampire because she appeared youthful for many years and was able to produce children well into her fifties. Men just like to call women monsters when they do anything they thinking isn't normal for a woman. That's all.” Nari put his hands on his hips. “So, what do you actually know about vampire pregnancy?” “One moment.” Everett held up a finger and then floated away to a far-off shelf several rows down and several levels up. Nari just opted to climb back up to look for a different book. He forgot however that the other vampire was still there. Wesley smiled sheepishly. “You really do have to forgive Everett; he can be an asshole sometimes. But he means well.” Nari sort of ignored him because he was trying to pinpoint what was giving him a vibe that this vampire was different. Then it clicked. “You're American.” “That's right, pardon my accent,” Wesley said, bashfully rubbing his neck. “I'm surprised I still got it with how long I've lived with Evie.” “I've never met an American vampire,” Nari said, although he hadn't met a lot of vampires in general. Wesley nodded. “Yep, they really like to keep it in and among the Europeans, I've found out. I got lucky, I guess.” Nari wrinkled his nose. “Lucky? This is a curse.” Wesley continued nodding. “Yeah, I felt that way for a long time… But, Everett saved my life.” “…He turned you?” Nari asked. Wesley put his hands in his pockets. “Yep. WWII, nazi I thought was down picked up his gun, shot me right in the back. I would've died that day if Evie didn't turn me.” Everett came back with a couple books in hand. “He still blames me for robbing him of his hero’s death, though.” Wesley grinned and wrapped an arm around Everett's neck. “Yeah! You just had to be the hero in that situation, huh? Bitey bastard…” “I thought only ancient vampires could turn people,” Nari said. “Really, really old ones.” “The natural ability to do it did peter out a few hundred years ago,” Everett said. “But like a lot of vampiric abilities, turning can be learned by any vampire. I frequented the library many years before joining the military. I'd never turned anyone before though.” “Why'd you learn it then?” Nari asked. “It's a bit embarrassing…” Everett admitted. “He had a wife before,” Wesley said. “He wanted to turn her so they could be together forever. But she got pregnant while he was in basic training. Postman. You know, the classics.” “Ah…” Nari eyed the books Everett had. “So, these are supposed to help me?” “Yes, I can't remember which, but one or more of these talks about birth chance I think,” Everett said. “What do you think, Wes? Take ‘em back to the house for a study session?” “Yeah… We've only been here a bit, but I'm already getting tired,” Wesley said. “I found what I needed.” “You can't take the books out of the library,” Nari said. “Not with that attitude,” Everett said. “Come. Follow us.” “What?” They both started to float down to the main floor. Nari tried to climb down after them, but it took him a lot more time. Everett came back and met him halfway up. “I could carry you down.” “No, thank you,” Nari huffed. “Are you sure? I've got strong arms. I've carried Wesley around quite a bit.” “I'm perfectly capable of climbing down on my own,” Nari said. “I don't even know why I'm following you…thieves.” “We're borrowers, not thieves,” Everett said, setting foot down on the ground just as Nari made it to the first floor. “We’re strong believers that library books are meant to be borrowed. Come on, Wes can't hold out much longer.” “Don't rush me,” Nari said. They led him through the labyrinth of shelves all the way to a little fire exit guarded by what looked to be another familiar. “The library had to put in a fire escape a couple years back to bring the building up to code,” Wesley said. “But it's clearly guarded,” Nari complained. “Hey, Ozren!” Everett went up and patted the guard on the chest and Nari noticed him slip something into his chest pocket. “You have a good shift, buddy!” The guard just acted like he didn't see them at all as they slipped past and through door. Despite a warning on display saying an alarm would sound, everything remained silent. Once they were in the hall beyond the door, they stopped for a moment. It was a narrow passage leading to another exit door, but Nari noticed there was also a wheelchair folded up against the wall. Wesley floated to it eagerly and unfolded it, before taking a seat. He sighed happily and hung back his head. “Oh my god, floating is so exhausting!” Nari stared at him for a moment. “…Can you not walk?” “Nope.” Wesley used his hands to pull his legs up onto the footrests of his wheelchair. “Already told you, I was shot in the back. Hit my spine.” Nari blinked. “But you can float. Why don't you do that all the time?” Wesley frowned and tilted his head. “Did you not just hear me say how exhausting that is? I only learned it so I could use the library. I much prefer my chair. This place has zero accessibility. It's a nightmare.” “Oh.” Nari blinked some more. “I'm sorry, I didn't realise…” Wesley rolled over to him and patted his back. “Don't worry about it. Let's just get out of here.” “Right.” Nari looked at Everett. “What'd you give that guard?” “Cash, obviously,” Everett answered. “He’s a familiar. They don't pay him anything. It's so easy to bribe a familiar.” “Got it...” Nari said. “I still don't know where you're taking me...” “Just to our house,” Everett said going down the hall and opening the door for them. “You can meet the others!” Wesley said excitedly as he went outside. Nari followed them out nervously. “Others?” “You’ll see.” “You’ll like them.”

#lore #Nari #vampire #Wesley #Everett

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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Was planning on making this my own post, but I thought you would be more suited to discussing this sort of topic. Something I've noticed when it comes to the more prominent/important/strong female characters (Nora, Pyrrha, Penny, Robyn, Emerald, Sienna) is that RT often has the tendency of giving them masculine allusions (Thor, Achilles, Pinocchio, Robin Hood, Aladdin, Shere Khan) as if they are unable to stand on their own as characters unless they have that connection to a male character. 1/3

It is worth discussing! Yeah, I hesitate to call it a pattern just because, as you say, Team RWBY themselves are an exception to the rule — and as the title characters of the story, they’re a pretty big exception. We also have good women allusions turned into good women characters (Glynda with The Good Witch, May with Maid Marian) and bad women allusions turned into good women characters (Winter with The Snow Queen — I don’t think she was ever meant to enter full antagonist territory, but that’s another post). So it’s not just a matter of saying, “RWBY models their strong women after male inspirations and turns all female inspirations into male characters.” It’s not that simple. But the fact that it’s not simple doesn’t mean there’s nothing there to unpack because I definitely understand the feeling you’re pointing to, anon. Team RWBY feels like it has the most thought put into it in terms of changing up these allusions, specifically when it comes to subversion: the little girl in a red hood who previously needed a hunter’s protection has become the hunter herself, Belle overcomes both her Gaston and the now evil Beast, Snow White extracts herself from her own abusive situation (with a little help from the Dwarves still), and Goldilocks is no longer lost and in need of basic necessities, but can rather punch her way out of any establishment — like, say, a club. The execution of these themes aside (how Adam was handled, turning Jacques’ arrest into a joke, etc.), there’s a commonality here that works. Or at least, it works for me. Yet when we expand the allusions past our title team, things get... very messy. That’s when we start to hit on these concerns.

I’d say the problem stems primarily from that lack of thought, not the act itself of turning women characters into men or vice versa. Meaning, as I’ve said in the past, RWBY’s use of allusions is terribly unreliable nowadays, and that’s not just in terms of plot expectations like, “Why did Penny have to become a flesh girl because Pinocchio, but Ironwood didn’t stay good because Tin Man?” It also includes these questions of why these changes were made and what sort of messages they send. As you lay out, why are so many of our heavy hitters — the most talented huntress, the lightning-immune smasher, the Maiden android, etc. — based on men? Why are many of the effeminate and “weaker” men — Jaune the untrained, Ren the emotional councilor, Oscar the kid who wants to talk it all out — based on women? Again, I don’t intend to sling any hard accusations, but rather to point out what’s likely a subtle, unconscious bias. To provide another example, I’ve seen talk recently about how RT (again, unconsciously) depicts the faunus, where all the good characters have culturally established “good” animal features and all the bad character have culturally established “bad” features. It’s cat ears, rabbit ears, sheep ears, monkey tails, dog tails, and beautifully changing skin color vs. scorpion tails, spiderwebs, bull horns, tiger ears, bat wings, and crocodile scales. Is it a perfect 1:1 divide? No, Ghira has panther claws and Fennec has fox ears, but there’s enough there for us to go, “RT tends to give the good guys cute features and/or features we associate with safe animals, whereas the bad guys tend to get ugly features and/or features we associate with dangerous animals.” I feel the same way here, that there’s a bit of a trend at play, with the caveat that there are more complications simply by virtue of these allusions being, well, complicated. But there’s enough there to make us stop and think, “What were RT’s intentions with this? If they just chose something based on the rule of cool, what might those inclinations tell us about gender norms in America?” Meaning, when someone goes, “Idk, we just thought it would be cool to change this up” there’s a lifetime of media consumption driving that choice. It’s not actually random, but based on whatever has been normalized — unless you actively counteract that by thinking through what you want the change to do.

Unconscious biases are always at work. When we analyze something like this it’s often not a matter of saying, “The author is [insert accusatory term here]” but rather just, “The author is falling into expectations, patterns, and normalized decisions based on the culture they’ve grown up in.” Which includes things like thinking, “Well, if this character is based on a male god, she must be crazy strong. If this character is based on a woman fighter, he’s probably more emotional.” Such biases may be driving a lot of decisions because, as said in the past, I really don’t think RT is putting much thought into these allusions, if any at this point. For me, Penny was proof of that — the inability to see how following her allusion utterly destroyed her character growth — but even if we don’t agree about Penny, what about Salem? Far from just using her name, this volume gave us a blatant reference to the events of Salem Trails in the 1690s. Namely, the burning of the witch.

Except references like this can’t just look cool. This isn’t a video game Easter egg with no real connection to the story, it’s a cinematography/plot choice that carries meaning. So what is that meaning? Well, the thing about the women on trail at Salem is that they were innocent. This is what that reference says: “Hey, remember that real life event where women who weren’t witches were horrifically killed because others thought they were evil? None were actually burned, but culturally we tend to think they were. So that’s the image in our collective mind: innocent women on fire.” Except... Salem is actually a witch. Salem is evil. Salem is guilty. Or at least, the questions surrounding the extent of her guilt — How much responsibility does she hold in comparison to the Gods? How much agency does she still have after the grimm pool? — has not been acknowledged by the text. Yang just yelled at Salem for killing her mom and Oscar is about to blow her up. This is not a “Question Salem’s humanity” scene, it’s a “Kill the witch” scene... yet it uses an allusion that is contrary to what the moment is trying to achieve. So what are we supposed to take away from this? Do we adhere to the subtext and believe that Salem is innocent somehow, ignoring what the actual text says, or do we uphold the text and in doing so undermine the reliability of every other allusion in the show? If we can’t trust Salem’s, why would we trust, say, Penny’s?

RWBY’s allusions are all over the place and yes, I think that lack of consideration extends to who they randomly decided to genderbend. There’s no acknowledgment of — let alone engagement with — how many of these characters and historical figures were trying to pass themselves off as another gender, nor does RWBY acknowledge how the need to do so feeds into our current and historic assumptions about gender as a whole. Why does the man dress as a woman? To keep himself safe and seen as a non-threat. Why does the woman dress as a man? To gain access to places previously barred from her and to gain the respect she otherwise wouldn’t be afforded. And, of course, in 2021 there’s the expectation that media will include trans characters, GNC characters, non-binary characters, cis characters uninterested in practicing traditional femininity/masculinity, etc. None of which RWBY tackles outside of May, a woman who references a systematic transphobia we otherwise never see in the show. May, as a minor character, is great and I am in all honesty thrilled that she exists in the RWBY canon. However, the rest of the show is built on an anime conception of gender — combat skirts and bare midriffs in the snow — while nevertheless engaging with the very complicated question of how you re-imagine canonically/historically gendered people. As a “girl power” show, RWBY has opened itself up to questions like, “Okay, it’s great that you made these four fairy tale girls kickass, but can we talk about making Joan of Arc into a bumbling guy whose presence as a blonde, blue-eyed, sword-wielding man taking up lots of important screen time has generated accusations about this being a male-centered show?” It’s not a “RWBY is horrible for doing this!” issue, but a “RWBY is deliberately playing with gender and marketing itself as a progressive show, so... let’s figure out what these individual choices are actually implying and whether or not we consider that progressive.”

#rwby #mymetas #Anonymous

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girlsbtrs · 3 years

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How Countercultures turn Politics into Culture

Written by Lila Danielsen Wong. Graphic by Paula Nicole

In 1969, an academic named Theodore Roszak published “The Making of a Counterculture” and coined the term “counterculture” in order to describe the ant-mainstream youth movements of the 60s. Counterculture’s are not inherently good or progressive, both the punks and the skinheads are countercultures. Counterculture just means, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a culture with values and mores that run counter to those of established society.

I’m not here to critique these movements. I am not writing this to critique how the Bohemian Romantics won respect for the arts because they mostly came from upper class backgrounds, and I’m not here to discuss the lack of intersectionality in the riot grrl movement. After starting this article I realized I had pitched a whole academic thesis, and maybe bit off a little more than I had intended to chew (why can’t I just pitch a listicle?). So, instead of focusing on the nitty gritty of what prompted these social movements and academically exploring their effects, I want to talk about the “culture” part of counterculture.

Nearly all countercultures are birthed around shared political ideas, but many seem to start within the culture itself, perhaps as a musical movement, a literary movement, a visual art movement, or even a fashion or aesthetic. As the movements expand, they come to encompass more of those aforementioned arts, and thus the politics that prompted the original movement become a culture.

An early example of a western subculture is the Bohemian Romantics of Europe of the 19th century. In pre-revolutionary France, artists were lower class tradesmen. Artists were seen as dirty and immoral. However, in post-revolutionary France, disillusionment prompted young bourgeois men to reject the typical hierarchy and launch the bohemian artist lifestyle we are more familiar with today. A critical event on this timeline was Victor Hugo’s “Romantic Army,” or his mob of young men that he assembled to protest theatre censorship by absolutely trashing a theatre. The Bohemian lifestyle often manifested as wealthy young artists electing poverty to reject the traditions they were born into, and to spend their time creating art unrestricted. Bohemian fashion was more utilitarian and rustic than the upper-class styles. The music of the Romantic era is categorized by its vigor and passion, pioneered by Beethoven himself. Beethoven challenged the strict and sometimes formulaic sonatas and symphonies of the past, favoring expression and inventiveness. Thus, prompted by the rejection of bourgeois values and principles, a culture was created: a lifestyle, an aesthetic, a literary movement, a new musical style.

Nearly 150 years later and 5000 miles away from Bohemian France, the riot grrl movement was brewing in the Northwest United states. The riot grrl movement, created by a group of women working to combat sexism in the western Washington punk scene, was a counterculture within a counterculture. While the Romantic movement originated in literature, the punk movement, and then the riot grrl movement, was born as a musical movement.

In 1970s Britain, the government was nearly bankrupt and giant cuts to social services were making life hard and creating a sense of alienation between the ruling class and the working class. British Punk emerged from this alienation. The youth used music to communicate their frustrations and anger. The rips and safety pins of punk fashion weren’t originally fashion, the punks just owned ragged clothing. The disillusionment with the political landscape and frustration with older generations resonated with youth all over the world, and it’s not hard to see why a Post-Vietnam and Watergate America would embrace the Punk movement with open arms. However, where British Punk was rooted in working class frustrations, American Punk took root with the middle-class suburban crowd, who, similar to the Bohemians, choose to reject the comfortable life they were born into. A notable difference that this created in the music was British punk had more pointed and explicit politically leftist lyrics, whereas this was not the focus of American punk lyrics.

This is especially important to understand when talking about the riot grrl movement because they put the politics in American Punk lyrics. In the early 1990s, a group of women from the Olympia, Washington punk scene had a meeting to address the sexism they faced in Punk. They started writing lyrics centered around the sexism and misogyny they face in Punk and in life. They created their own literature through zines when they could not get coverage. They wore clothing specifically intended to look like what respectable women weren’t supposed to wear. Again, we watch a group of people turn their politics into a culture, as a way to spread and practice their ideologies.

If you want a modern example of turning politics into culture via a counterculture, look no further than cottagecore (yes, really).

As I said at the beginning, countercultures don’t need to be radically progresive to be countercultures. Cottagecore dwells on romanticized pastoral ideals of a fantastic yesteryear that never really existed. Cottagecore gained some traction on TikTok as an “aesthetic,” made up of imagery such as women in long button up dresses flouncing through fields and making picnics. Absent were the rise and grind aspirations of pre-pandemic America. Absent were any signs of the labor often associated with pastoral living. It is no surprise that a counterculture that emphasizes solitary retreat, rest, nature, and crafting blew up during the first year of the covid-19 pandemic during which many experienced forced solitary retreats, a change in work environments (not to mention the want to not work), and boredom that could only be remedied with solitary activities such as crafting and enjoying nature. The pandemic dismantled all of the systems of normal life as we knew it, and cottagecore invited us to grow from this space, perhaps embracing a simpler, slower life. This political message was so subtly delivered through our social media scrolling that if you weren’t paying attention, you might not have even realized cottagecore had political ideals at all.

The rise of cottagecore is important in the conversation of how countercultures turn politics into culture because it showcases very blatantly how countercultures are not created, or at least do not catch on, without need and reason. Taylor Swift most likely did not create her surprise albums Folklore and Evermore (the unofficial cottagecore soundtrack) solely to cater to the cottagecore TikTok crowd, she created these albums as a form of personal escapism from how her own life was turned upside down by the pandemic, as a form of connection with her fans who were also experiencing the effects of the pandemic on their lives, and as art that represented certain feelings that came along with the pandemic.

Her albums came about for the same reason that cottagecore really caught on in the first place: it was what some people felt that they needed due to the circumstances of the time. It was for this reason, I would argue, that Folklore won album of the year. It was indicative of the times.

So, countercultures are born from a need. From this need comes politics, be it post revolution anti-bourgeois sentiments, mid-century British leftism, or a quiet call to slow down and reject hustle culture for a simple life. From politics comes art, and from art, culture.

Let’s talk about this in terms of an up-and-coming counterculture, hyperpop.

Though Wikipedia currently defines hyperpop as a “micro genre,” hyperpop’s rise is looking anything but “micro.” Hyperpop is described in The Spectator as “catchy synthpop or bubblegum bass tune with elements of EDM and typically a focus on either queer culture or Internet futurism”. The term “self-referential lyrics” is often thrown around. In the least complicated words possible, hyperpop uses it’s sounds and lyrics to make a camped-up parody of popular music. Hyperpop pioneers that have some mainstream following include SOPHIE, Charli xcx, and Caroline Polechek. Hyperpop often uses carbonated synth sounds and vocal modulation, and many of the trailblazers are part of the LGBT community.

What will hyper pop fashion and literature look like? What are hyper pop’s politics?

As for politics, there is something inherently political about queer artists carving out a space for themselves in pop music. Orange Magazine describes this as “pushing pop music to its limits and satirizing the gendered music industry. There’s an enjoyable sense of irony and juxtaposition.”

As for fashion, if we’re following the patterns we’ve established, hyperpop might bring gender non-conforming fashion that satirizes what’s been proclaimed normal. In terms of literature perhaps a Hyperpop literary movement will come from the controversial direction of Alt Lit, a community of minimalist writers that use the internet form and often reject intellectualized creative writing, create things that are weird for the sake of being weird, and use all caps and other purposeful spelling and grammar mistakes. A hyperpop literary movement might share the “self-referential” themes of hyperpop movement, while examining gender, sexuality, and personal identity in the internet age, seeing as the need to examine these themes in music indicates a need to examine these themes in other art forms. Maybe it will find creative ways to use internet platforms, as Alt Lit originators such as Steve Roggenbuck, a YouTube poet (well, a poet depending on who you ask), already have.

What I find most exciting about hyperpop is that it has the potential to create a culture guided by music first, similar to the punks or to disco. Fashion and visual art and literature all inspired by the glittery new sounds created in music. Maybe hyperpop will stay a “microgenre,” but maybe we will get to witness the rise of something new.

SOPHIE once said “I think all pop music should be about who can make the loudest, brightest thing. That, to me, is an interesting challenge, musically and artistically… just as valid as who can be the most raw emotionally,” and isn’t that a phenomenal thing to bring with us into a pent-up, fed-up, thoroughly exhausted, and newly vaccinated decade?

Sources

https://monoskop.org/images/b/b4/Roszak_Theodore_The_Making_of_a_Counter_Culture.pdf

https://www.sfgate.com/books/article/When-the-counterculture-counted-2835958.php

https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/periods-genres/romantic/

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255/bohem/tlaboheme.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punk_subculture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_grrrl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roszak_(scholar)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemianism

https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/brief-history-riot-grrrl-space-reclaiming-90s-punk-movement-2542166

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/03/arts/music/riot-grrrl-playlist.html

https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/06/19/riot-grrrl-movement

https://wildezine.com/3528/opinion/a-brief-history-of-punk/

file:///C:/Users/8lila/Downloads/history_initiates_vol_iv_april_2016_01_brooks_alison.pdf

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/hyperpop/617795/

https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/9595799/hyperpop-history-mainstream-crossover/

https://www.stuyspec.com/ae/hyperpop-the-defining-genre-of-the-digital-age

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperpop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YRl4Kdnl2E&list=LL&index=4

https://theface.com/music/sophie-behind-the-boards-pop-scottish-producer

https://orangemag.co/orangeblog/2020/10/15/exploring-the-trans-roots-of-hyperpop

https://thebluenib.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-alt-lit-by-ada-wofford/

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pc-music-are-for-real-a-g-cook-and-sophie-talk-twisted-pop-58119/

#lila danielsen wong

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cloveroctobers · 4 years

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GENEVIEVE ALIU —

IG info/bio: @/genevealiu1 | 19k followers | currently on a journey as a junior doctor living in 🇦🇺🤎 | blm.card.co🖤 | sk💛

26 years of age

Born and raised in Glastonbury, England

Pisces sun? + libra moon?

Mother is Guyanese and works for a non-profit organization

Her father is Nigerian and works in property management

has one older brother who is a Prosthetist and resides in Nigeria with his pregnant fiancée

She can’t wait to be a auntie!!!

And a younger sister who is a medical laboratory technician

To say the least, their parents were happy that their children fell into the medical field. Based on their cultures it was a honor to have their children in these professions

Vieve grew up with a sassy demeanor and her parents have old videos on their camcorders to prove it lol, it never fails that the pair brings out the embarrassing vids during the holidays but vieve genuinely appreciates them

Although thanksgiving is a RACIST American thing, vieve never misses the opportunity to share what she’s thankful for in life and counts all of it as blessings! But it’s still fuck the pilgrims

Has held a friendsgiving before, loves any moment where she can host gatherings or attend them! either is quite fine. She loves being around people

the only time she likes to look back on the past is to see how she and her family carried themselves then and how the evolved into who they are now, it’s interesting to see

Loves “how it started vs how it’s going” posts and might have participated in a few

Always knew from a young age that she wanted to help people in some way, she was always doing something to help around the house and especially her aging/sickly grandparents

Felt offended that many people around school that she thought were her friends would stab her in the back labeling her as this “fake saint” since she rather spend her time volunteering instead of going to house parties in hs

Don’t get it twisted, she still went to those too & had her fun but definitely felt like it was the same routine and nothing ever felt fulfilling at these functions after awhile

Well known with all the cliques around school but had her own group of friends that fit into many of those cliques but she never felt obligated to stick to one social group. If you were nice and cool with her, she was the same to you, if you weren’t? Depending on her mood, she’d ignore you/say things under her breath or be “fake nice” as a form of being the bigger person

Has a curly hair routine that she consistently follows (after struggling to find the right products to make them flourish) and gets annoyed with if her curls don’t turn out the way she knows they can, it’s always frustrating when things don’t turn out the way you want them to but isn’t afraid to at least try

Three times is the charm! Is one of her mottos

loves bright colors, flowy attire, big hats, brimmed hats, bucket hats, berets, etc...

Has faced racism/prejudices and bullying growing up in public spaces—mostly school/uni & some of those same hatred actions online now that she’s dating seb

Because of that there were times where she felt insecure but deff grew to forgive, heal, and rise above the hate, she knows her worth

Has never been happier in a relationship than she is with seb, he’s her “moody long-haired, soft-hearted bby”

they’re both complete fools for each other and vieve is more vocal about her being in love/finding her soulmate whereas seb doesn’t mind showing it rather than speaking it—even tho he’s on a podcast but we mind our business okay?!

Seb is thinking of moving to Australia with vieve, he’s ready to risk it all for this woman, HIS woman 🤩

canon: gives more than she should/taken advantage of/not reciprocating in relationships... ex) how she dated a guy that she did everything for! especially financially and also struggled to find her worth but once she did? Her aura shined brighter than before— Ik chill out there Rocco

Also believes in loving yourself first to attract what you need in this world and found that in her career and seb. I hope they’re endgame! Since they’re the only couple I rooted for this season? Except for tai & ciaran maybe? They’re probably not endgame but whatever

They still get nervous/shy around each other even tho they’ve been together for months now + are in a long distance relationship which is too cute! I think since they’re in this for the long game they can look back on moments and still feel the way they felt in that moment. You know if you get the chance or have already heard elderly people talk about their relationships and how they get all starry eyed? That’s vieve & seb, that shit gets me right in my feels ew

Vieve’s love language is quality time, it’s what she shows and likes along with acts of service from her partner

Makes the best jollof rice & her fav dish is Metemgee

Trying to be on a plant-based diet only but will have her cheat days on occasion—mostly when she’s drunk and forgets her diet plan lmao that’s me getting double cheeseburgers or anything with dairy drunk af

now living in Australia, she tried to like vegemite but...the it’s a no for her, respectfully ofc! She never wants to disrespect anyone

besides the food, the atmosphere is much nicer since she feels like she’s on a holiday almost everyday and that there’s much more to see and do when she has the time

Loves the beaches and is thinking about surfing lessons

yes she enjoys those doctor shows and can agree that most scenarios are not the same as rl ofc but great question!

Since she’s a junior doctor now, and on her way to graduation! She feels so accomplished and having this chance to complete what she’s wanted her whole life in a different place, makes her super emotional

All those stressful all-nighters will be worth it. She mostly did it on her own but is nothing but humble and Is thankful to those that have helped her along the way, what kind of person would she be if she didn’t mention them?

and when COVID hit, she was one of many already on the frontlines. Her studies became altered but this wouldn’t stop her for her mission on this earth, this was her purpose and she knew we would conquer it all—but definitely has empathy and gets angry with how it’s being handled from time to time

She’s been exposed to it first hand which aboustely worries her parents, seb, her friends, and friends from the villa

Keeps up to date when all medical news, has a whole app dedicated to health

Learning French with some of her free time and is doing well at it

It was only natural for her to become closer to elladine since their men are homies and have a podcast together

They’ve hung out a few times on a double dates before the boat vacation & once just as girls before vieve left to Australia

Vieve is always offering advice but knows that every relationship is different and what works for her and seb won’t work for elladine and Nicky, she loves them together and knows everyone has bumps in the road

feels there’s some sort of tension between her and Harry now? Which she found a little off putting since they were supposed to be friends but she realizes that Harry has a condition but it’s also not an excuse for him to treat her shitty sometimes which he does and feels like it comes out of nowhere most times but he always apologizes yet vieve is slowly getting tired of this unhealthy habits

So they’re talking less these days, which he notices!

She wants Harry to find his happiness too! If he hasn’t found it in mc first that is

has met Tim— he’s a great laugh and seems like a nice guy—they follow each other, talia and jake in person when she was out with seb—they were also super nice and congratulated them on their win, she went up to miles once on a night out—he’s still a arsehole, priya reached out to her via dm about her new boutique that she wanted her to model in someday, Hope was just as stunning in person along with Siobhan, Chelsea & mc s2 were also kind, and a couple of the guys also wished her and seb well

She’s also noticed some of the shit talking coming from Elisa, Allegra, Lucy, and mc s1 (subtle shade from mc, basically about how vieve reacted if mc decided to give Harry a go but that was only brought to her attention thru fans) online but again, vieve peeped it and felt majority of it didn’t require a response. She was too happy in life rn and she had a man and they don’t

Plans to get a komondor, thinks they’re super cute! — seb does not “if you love me, you’ll love our child.” “It’s a bloody mop dog! And I’m a cat dad, you know that!” “Don’t talk about him like that, he’s got feelings just like your cat babies!”

I feel like she’s a matcha & Frappuccino lover, tries to keep her drinks simple and feels guilty when she has to make adjustments but the heart wants what it wants

Mini Countryman owner, she also drives like a “granny” better safe than sorry! She hates fast drivers, there’s absolutely no need for it!

Minimal makeup: eyeshadow, moisturizer, & a nude lip and she’s good to go

Secretly obsessed with among us, second life, and SIMS!!!

Celeb crushes? Heath ledger, Tyler posey, KENDRICK SAMPSON, Jordan fisher, Algee smith, Donald Glover, Mack Wilds, Khleo Thomas, Robert Ri’chard, Tahj Mowry, & Hasan Minhaj

Listens to: DaniLeigh, ABIR, Mary J. Blige, TORI KELLY, Us the duo, 11:11, Jacob Latimore, fifth harmony, joya mooi, & Greentea Peng, etc...

Anthem: The Cheetah Girls — Cinderella

#litg #litg3 #litg s3 #litg genevieve #litg moodboard #litg headcanons #litg headcanon #litg seb #litg Harry #litg mc #litg oc #litg elladine #litg Nicky #idk if I did her justice but my apologies to her and y’all if not lol #litg Tim #litg talia #litg jake #litg priya #litg hope

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that-shamrock-vibe · 4 years

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Movie Review: The New Mutants (Spoilers)

Spoiler Warning: I am posting this review the week following the movie first airing in the U.K, so if you haven’t yet seen The New Mutants do not read on until you have.

General Reaction:

A three year delay for the final instalment of a twenty-year franchise, was it ultimately worth it? Well as an X-Men fanatic I am always going to say yes, it wasn’t a swan song or a wrap up to the X-Men Cinematic Universe, far from as it was originally pitched as the start of a trilogy and does sew the seeds for that. However, while Dark Phoenix did feel like a sombre instalment not only for that “First Class” timeline but also the team movies as a whole, this had an air of sadness to it because this is the last time I will see anything X-Men related on the big screen for who knows how long.

In that sense, this was an emotional movie for me, more than just the fact that the emotion of fear is a running theme through the movie. However, in terms of my actual enjoyment of the movie, it was a very good movie for what it was.

When your very final movie is effectively an origin movie then there’s always going to be that sense of incompleteness, and what this movie teases both for these characters and who is the big bad behind all of this, it’s really frustrating to know it’s over before it truly starts.

With that in mind, The New Mutants is very slow to get started as there’s a lot of exposition and because it feels like it’s own branch of the X-Men Cinematic Franchise, similar to Deadpool, there is a level of “Beginner’s Guide to Mutants 101″ at play here with the explanation of what a Mutant is and when a young or “New Mutant” first discovers their powers that, to give this movie credit, I have never truly seen explored properly outside of the comics other than a quick explanation from Storm to Jubilee in the first episode of X-Men: The Animated Series.

It’s also disappointing to know that unlike X-Men: The Last Stand or Dark Phoenix, there isn’t a sense of finality for these characters as we have just been introduced to them. Outside of Sunspot who has briefly appeared in X-Men: Days of Future Past, this is the first cinematic appearance for all of these characters. The X-Men are briefly mentioned and Professor X is alluded to quite cleverly but every character outside of Sunspot is debuting here and to know they’re never going to be seen in this continuity again with a chance to develop is very sad.

In terms of the “horror” aspects of this movie I have to say this is very comic-book horror as in how Blade in the late 90s was horror. If you know the jump scares in this movie are coming then there are no jump scares, so basically if you’ve seen the trailers you know the jump scares.

As a horror movie, it felt very much like It-lite in terms of the theme of bringing nightmares into reality, only without the hard R-rating of the blood and gore because outside of one maybe two scenes there is nothing truly horrific to look at here.

There’s also a great parallel to the Gentlemen from Buffy the Vampire Slayer shown from their episode in this movie and the Smiley Men who are Illyana’s nightmare brought to life. They’re creepy like them but they’re not as sinister as them...and that is a great choice of wording considering who the big bad behind the scenes of this movie is.

As an X-Men movie, which is what this is as the New Mutants in the comics are basically younger versions of the X-Men, as I say the first half of this movie isn’t that power heavy but is about introducing and establishing this team, the second half/last third on the other hand is power heavy. Not exactly Days of Future Past or Apocalypse heavy but still heavy for the powers this group of Mutants have.

Overall generally as both an X-Men movie and a comic-book movie, this was really a great movie particularly for the first new movie I have seen since lockdown.

Characters:

So this breakdown will be easy as there’s only really six characters to talk about but I’m going to make it a seven-character breakdown as the looming presence in the shadows of this movie deserves their own section.

Illyana Rasputin:

Alright so it is somewhat difficult to say if Illyana is my favourite or if Rahne is my favourite but I ultimately landed on Illyana for first as Anya Taylor-Joy is really in the spotlight the entire way through this movie. Every time she’s in a scene she commands the attention, and all five of the New Mutants have solo scenes so for Illyana to stand out the most, this is why she is #1 for me.

I’m not entirely sure where this movie takes place in terms of the overall X-Men timeline...but considering it’s supposedly in the revised timeline and Colossus is a member of the X-Men in the late noughties/early 2010s, I imagine this is either around the same time or can even be modern day (2017 or 2020).

Anya Taylor-Joy is as suited to the role of Magik as Channing Tatum would have been as Gambit in my opinion. Not only does she have a reasonable Russian accent but she just simply looks like how Magik looks in the comics.

I loved the rebel teen angst she had all the way through from when we first meet her to the very end, not only is it fitting for the movie but in my opinion it’s fitting for the character. This is a girl that literally goes through some resemblance of hell and is effectively a serial killer so of course she is going to have this icy dark exterior.

In terms of powers, I am slightly disappointed she never fully armoured up, it was always just her left arm that she had armoured complete with Soulsword, whereas in the comics her main look is her entire body. I guess the argument could be made the majority of it is simply a uniform and her arm is the only part armoured but I would have liked to have at least seen her crown.

But Magik’s powers for me here are an interesting combination of Zatanna and Nightcrawler which is a very good combination. The scene where she first appears through limbo fighting the Smiley Men was very impressive.

I would have also enjoyed it if we had spent more time in Limbo, given that we always saw cameo flashes of it whenever she manifested a portal, but we never actually had a full scene of her in her “special place”.

Not being too familiar with the comics however, I am almost completely unaware of Lockheed as a character. My only prior knowledge is his appearance in Pryde of the X-Men as a pest and I have to say I much prefer him here. The animation of both Lockheed and the Demon Bear were stellar.

As I say, I feel we have only just scratched the surface with where this version of Magik could go. I doubt very much Kevin Feige would bring Anya Taylor-Joy back if/when he does bring the character into the MCU because he doesn’t like playing with used toys but if ever there was an exception I would hope it would be her.

Rahne Sinclair:

It is slightly obvious to think of when Maisie Williams was filming for this movie as her hair, unless it’s a wig, is in that “Arry” phase of her Game of Thrones tenure.

Because of the current entertainment climate and the non-starting stance this movie finds itself released in, I think the lesbian romance between Rahne and Dani is going to go unnoticed. But considering this is the first major LGBT romance in a comic-book property I feel this movie will be cheated out of that representation in favour of what is to eventually come from Marvel.

Outside of the romance, I feel Rahne’s story rooted in her religion and mutation was fantastic. I love me some werewolf action and I feel I saw enough actual wolf to satisfy Rahne spending most of her time in “halfway form” as the character has been known to do in the comics.

The fact her nightmare was that religious leader branding her as a werewolf and thereby a monster, not only was it believable given her character but also the parallels to devout religious views on homosexuality were subtle but there.

I do feel the character spent way too much time screaming towards the end of the movie. This girl is a werewolf but spent most of the final battle as the screaming protector of her unconscious lover, I mean she was I guess helpful in waking Dani back up but never truly let rip like I feel the character could have.

I’m not entirely sure if Williams has any Scottish heritage about her but the slipping in and out of the accent was slightly distracting at times. When she was able to be loud the accent was often broken but in her quieter moments or longer dialogue scenes you could hear it.

I do appreciate keeping the nationality of the character from the comics, considering the mess they made of Banshee and Moira MacTaggert, and I do understand having an at the time name talent like Maisie Williams in the role, but there are surely Scottish actresses out there and the casting pool wasn’t exactly high for this movie.

Dani:

The main character in this movie, or focal character I guess as it’s an ensemble movie, is either Illyana or Dani, but because we start with Dani and are introduced to the other characters through Dani I guess she is the focal character.

Again, I give credit to the movie for keeping the nationality of the characters from the comics, but while Anya Taylor-Joy and Maisie Williams border on appropriation as they are not Russian or Scottish themselves, although Anya is of Scottish Argentine descent, Blu Hunt is at least Native-American as Dani is. I think they come from different tribes but I don’t think people are going to focus too much on that technicality.

Similarly to all these characters I don’t really know much about Dani so have no frame of reference to compare her to. I remember she appeared in one episode of X-Men: Evolution and I know her powers involve dreams, which similarly to the majority of the characters in this movie lends itself beautifully to a horror movie, but that’s about it.

I felt her relationship with Rahne was genuine and her own “survivors guilt” over being the only member of her family still alive after the Demon Bear attack was well explained.

I just didn’t understand why it was decided that Reyes had to kill Dani because of the severity of her powers, maybe it was the unpredictability of her powers because their limitations are literally the power of imagination, but I thought Reyes was responsible for sorting out those capable of being killers...surely the power to bring nightmares to life as many times as it takes to kill the person qualifies?

With the Demon Bear being tamed at the end of the movie, I kind of don’t see anywhere for Dani to go if they did continue, she still has the power to solidify nightmares, and I guess she can always call on the Demon Bear, but unlike Rahne or Magik I do not see any further development for her.

Sam:

Sam Guthrie aka Cannonball was an interesting one for me as I knew the character and I knew the actor, but hadn’t properly seen either one fully explored before. I have not watched Stranger Things so do not really know Charlie Heaton’s acting potential...but what I do know is he is from Yorkshire and cannot really do a Kentucky accent.

As for the character of Cannonball, I thought that early scene of him strapping himself to that weight while zooming through the air to either test himself or hurt himself was really well realised. There wasn’t enough of him going full cannonball throughout the movie, mostly it just came across as a sort of super speed which in a way I guess it is but projecting that force-field while he is zooming about is what makes the power set unique.

Similarly to Dani he had guilt over his nightmare which was him causing a mining accident which killed his co-workers and dad, but unlike Dani who never really developed the thought of it being her fault for her family’s death because of her conjuring the Demon Bear, Sam did at least hold a lot of guilt over what had happened...despite his nightmare being probably the weakest as the main effect it had was totalling a washing machine.

I also didn’t understand the back-to-back scenes of Sam suggesting he was meant to be in the hospital and felt he had to be there, but then in the next scene him trying to walk out saying he doesn’t belong there. Maybe it was the editing but it just seemed like a complete 180 from scenes that were literally back-to-back.

Roberto:

As I said this is Sunspot’s second cinematic appearance and I guess in the revised timeline he has gone from being portrayed by Mexican actor Adan Canto to now Brazilian actor Henry Zaga.

I didn’t feel the boys in this movie had that much to do, with both Sam and Berto it did feel like them simply coming to terms with their powers. I did like how both had that fear of hurting people and both had to learn I guess to push past that fear.

With Berto’s fear though, I do feel his power first manifesting in conjunction to him reaching sexual maturity was very well explored, because of course the combination of testosterone and becoming a living solar flare are not exactly two things anyone wants to mix. So when the result is burning your girlfriend to a crisp it is going to shake you.

Outside of his powers though there wasn’t a lot to the character and it is hard to remember a good line that he or Sam had that weren’t douchey, but for what we got he was a good character.

Reyes:

Wow this woman deserved to be eaten by the Demon Bear, which by the way I found almost as humorous as Katie McGrath being carried away by a pterodactyl in Jurassic World.

But yes, this doctor was the “villain” of the movie as she was the agent of the big bad Essex Corporation in charge of determining the new mutants’ powers and whether or not they’re worth progressing to their facility.

Outside of that I didn’t really think much of her as a character, she wasn’t a sympathetic character, she wasn’t believing to be doing this for the benefit of these young mutants, she was simply following orders.

It’s a deviance from the comics where Reyes is a hero and member of the X-Men, whereas here she is far from it.

Alice Braga is also regionally appropriately cast as she is Brazilian whereas the character is Puerto Rican, although whenever she spoke I kept thinking about Gal Gadot a lot, even looks wise there are similarities.

Sinister:

Now let’s talk about the looming big bad who I imagine would have been the major big bad of this supposed trilogy. Despite the new mutants believing the facility to be owned and run by the X-Men, it is in fact run by the Essex Corporation...Essex as in Dr. Nathaniel Essex, a biologist obsessed with evolution who became the Mutate supervillain Mister Sinister.

I want to see Mister Sinister in a live-action movie so badly it’s unreal, they’ve done Apocalypse so why they can’t do Sinister I don’t know.

This isn’t the first time Sinister has been alluded to as the Essex Corporation was in an end credits scene of X-Men: Apocalypse that acquired samples of Wolverine’s blood presumably to create X-23, but because those events took place in the 80s and these events take place in somewhat modern day it’s hard to correlate the two.

Obviously we are no longer going to get X-Men movies in this universe and continuity, but with the seeds being sown for Sinister more than once now, the baton has been laid down for Feige to finally bring this villain to life.

Reccomendation:

If like me you are more or less interested in just completing the twenty-year franchise because you love these characters and any interpretation of them then this is the movie for you. However, don’t expect wall to wall action, and I would recommend not getting too attached to these characters. It’s too late for me with Illyana I already love her and already feel Anya Taylor-Joy has set a high bar for whoever plays Magik next.

But for me personally, this franchise has been my favourite movie franchise and my favourite property. Even the bad movies I can at least find something good about them regardless of if the overall movies have been good or not. But just to reiterate, I do feel this is one of the good movies.

In a ranking of the 13 movies (not counting Once Upon a Deadpool), this ranks somewhere between #6-8 for me.

Overall I rate the movie a solid 8/10, by no means the best or a perfect X-Men movie but by no means one of the worst. The movie benefits from new characters (aside from Sunspot) but suffers due to the inevitability of this being the definitive end for the current franchise.

So what did you guys think? Post your comments and check out more Movie Reviews as well as other posts.

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reddrobins · 4 years

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curiosity killed the cat and perfection killed the bat

tim drake x reader

summary: you were the batgirl to Tim’s robin. his everything, that is until you started to deteriorate away.

warnings: depiction of eating disorders, angst, hurt/comfort

You hadn’t always been a perfectionist. Really, if anything that was a new trait. But of course, all new things become old and all good things must come to an end, and you were the best thing in Tim’s life.

Bruce had taken you in under circumstances like any other of his children. Small child, carrying absurd amounts of trauma on their back. He saw potential in you the minute he laid eyes on your scared shaken form back in Crime Alley.

You were quickly welcomed into the family and not long after made friends with Bruce’s newest son, Tim.

You and Tim were inseparable the moment you met. Bruce could tell there was a bond like no other between the pair and would never dare to break the two of you up. So when Stephanie decided to go solo, the role of batgirl was open and Bruce saw no other option than you to be Tim’s new crime fighting partner.

You were thrilled. I mean what average child gets to go ham on criminals nightly and punch out their aggression? Though you knew batgirl was a more strategic role within the duo, you still couldn’t have been more excited to be a part of the team.

However, that joy didn’t seem to last too long.

Your first week as batgirl you decided to watch some footage of old fights on the batcomputer. It was videos of when Barbara and Dick were batgirl and robin and boy, were you blown out of the water.

You were drawn to Babs. Her moves, her brain… Her body. Everything just seemed so superior to you. You started to feel inferior, to feel like you weren’t good enough, like you didn’t deserve the mantle. It was basic comparison at its finest, however when you add comparison on top of years of trauma, it shifts into something different. Something more sinister.

Tim was the first one to notice your mood shift. Of course he was, the teen was your partner both in life and at ‘work’. The first signs he noticed was your increase in irritation and newly adapted short temper. The most prominent example being the one fateful night on patrol.

“Batgirl, do you have the location of the drug circle?” Tim asked as he scoped out the area from atop the WE building.

“Yes, it should be right under the pier. A small ship where they’re beginning to load up cargo for a trade.” You responded as you grappled from building to building - catching up to Tim.

“Okay. Here’s the plan, I’ll go in first, quietly. Then you can swoop down and take out the two thugs by the boa-”

You interrupted him, “Why are you going in first?”

Tim furrowed his eyebrows behind his domino mask. “I- I just thought you would’ve wanted to do some recon before we go in fighting…”

You crossed your arms, “do you think I can’t handle it myself?”

Red Robin was at a loss for words, beyond confused. You were a partnership, were was this sudden burst of irritation coming from?

“What? No, (Y/N) - I mean batgirl of course not. Why would you even think that?”

Rolling your eyes you sneered, “You just always calls the shots Tim. I’m starting to think you don’t think I’m capable enough.”

He was taken aback by the accusation, you were never normally like this. “That’s not that at all. No way, I think you’re more than capable, I just… I just thought that’s what you’d want?”

“Sure Tim.” You glared at him, “if you think you can pull this off on your own, then why don’t you get on with it. I won’t interrupt your work anymore.”

And with that you left, grappling away from Tim and back home to the Manor. The raven haired teen was left astounded. What the hell had just happened? Did you really just sacrifice the mission for what, a mild argument? He’d definitely be talking to you about this later.

The second sign he noticed of your change in personality was your avoidance of dinner. Or all meals for that matter.

“(N/N)! Alfred’s calling us for dinner! You want to come down?” Tim hollered from the stairs.

You however were busy in your room, music up to a volume that drowned out Tim.

Downstairs, the teen groaned and clambered up to your room knocking once before entering.

There you were, on the floor doing crunches, eyes squeezed shut due to over exhaustion. “(N/N)” he called again, this time from the doorway.

You sat up and pressed pause on the speakers, facing Tim. “Oh. Hey, what’s up?”

“Um, Alfred made dinner and wanted me to come bring you down… am I interrupting something?“

“What? Oh that, no. It was nothing. Just some pretraining workouts before patrol tonight.” You laughed, looking off into the left.

Though Tim was a great detective, it didn’t take skill to know that you were lying. However, he let it go. “Okay… so, you coming down?”

You bit your lip in contemplation and then finally shook your head. “Uh, I had a big lunch and am still not really hungry. So please tell Alfred I’m really sorry and I know whatever he made was wonderful.” You lied, hoping he would let the conversation go.

Luckily, he did.

“Sure. Just please come down if you get hungry. With all of the extra training you’re doing you need to make sure you’re staying nourished.”

You quirked your head at his response, “extra training I’m doing?”

Tim sighed and ran a hand down his face, “Do you really think I don’t hear you sneaking down to the batcave every night? The floorboards are old you know.”

Not knowing what else to do, you put up your walls. “What are you spying on me or something? The fuck Drake, I thought we were a team?”

Tim faltered at your response, not knowing what provoked this outburst, “What? No. Of course not. I just care about you okay?”

The teen walked over to you and lifted his hand, bringing it up to caress your cheek. However before he could make contact, you pulled away instantly. Hurst flared in Tim’s eyes.

He sighed, “Okay. Well I’m going back down, feel free to come down if you need anything.” Walking to the door, Tim shut it behind him and waited for a few second, seeing if you would change your mind.

However all he was left to hear was floorboards creaking and pained counting as you continued your workout.

The third thing Tim noticed was a change in your clothing style. Suddenly all of your favourite dresses, crop tops and t-shirts were swapped out for baggy hoodies and men’s jumpers. Tim swears you steal them from Jason.

The two of you were sat on the floor of the batcave, Damian off in the distance spearing dummys with his katana.

“So” Tim started, “last night I was looking into our case and I found out some pretty interesting facts. The guy were looking at, his name is Gregory Jacobs and guess what, he works for Sionis. If we crack him, he could be a huge lead to whatever- what’re you doing?”

“Huh?” You looked up at Tim.

The teen pointed at your wrist which you currently had two digits wrapped around. Immediately, you unclasped your grip.

"That?” You laughed, “That was nothing. Just something I do when I’m nervous.” Based on the inflection in your voice and your lack of eye contact, Tim could instantly tell you were lying. However, like last time, he decided to drop it.

“Uh, Sure… what’s your opinion on the Jacobs thing? Say we go on patrol tonight?” Tim quirked an eyebrow, obviously really intent on taking down Sionis’ men.

“Yeah. Sure.” You said distantly. Tim was about to respond when you opened your mouth again. “Hey Timmy, you mind if I take a nap. I’m just really tired right now and want to rest up before patrol, you know?” You stood up from your spot on the floor.

“Um yeah. Go take a nap. I’ll catch up with you later about the case.” Tim stood up too and leaned in to kiss you on the check, only for you to once again pull away abruptly.

You gave a weak smile and ran up the stairs from the cave, heading towards your room.

“Somethings wrong with her, Drake.” Tim turned around to find his little brother, sheathing his katana.

“I know. I just wish she would tell me.” The older teen sighed.

“Do you wish me to talk with her?” Damian asked, shocking Tim. Why all of a sudden was he being nice?

Tim shook his head, “No, it’s fine Damian. She’ll just get annoyed with you. I’ll just wait for her to talk.”

The younger Wayne nodded, “I’m only asking for her well-being, Drake. Don’t get any ideas I’m going soft on you.”

Tim smirked, enjoying this unusual moment with his brother, “of course not Damian, I wouldn’t expect that of you.”

“Good. Now I am going to go play fetch with Titus. If you decide you’d like me to talk with (Y/N), I shall be in the yard.” Damian went up the stairs leaving Tim by his lonesome. Lost and confused on how to help you get through… whatever you were going through.

The fourth time Tim noticed something was off was when you fainted on patrol. And man, was that the scariest night of his life.

“Red Robin to Batgirl, I’ve located Jacobs, are you in place to attack?”

It was the night of the mission. Tim was overly stoked whereas you, well you had your mind on other things. The suit felt really tight, almost like you were too big to be in it, you’d much rather opt for your oversized hoodies. You kept thinking about the breakfast you had that morning, everything was just too much. “Yeah...” you responded.

“Good. Batman,” Tim spoke into the coms, “we’re moving in.”

You swung your grappling gun to the nearest ledge, jumping off your current perch, and ow, why did that hurt? Your shoulder felt like it was on fire and when you landed on your feet, you felt like you broke both your ankles.

You hissed in pain and Tim heard, “Batgirl, are you okay?”

You nodded, “Fine, dunno why that hurt all of a sudden though...”

To say Tim was worried about this mission was an understatement. For the past few weeks, though you had been working out, you seemed to be quite frail, walking slowly, speaking with no energy - it was scaring Tim. But still, you insisted you come on the mission.

“Okay, just please be careful... I’m going in, are you behind me?”

You mumbled a ‘yes’ into the earpiece and followed your partner into the building.

Flipping down from the awning, you stumbled on your landing, luckily Red Robin was there to catch your fall. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he whispered to you.

You shrugged him off in annoyance, muttering an ‘of course I am.’

“Okay, we’re going to split up from here, I’m going to take the two guys in the back and you can handle the one by the cargo, then we’ll both go after Jacobs.”

Though you didn’t see why Tim insisted you only take down one goon, you complied with the plan and snuck over to the cases of drugs.

Quietly, you reached out behind the thug and pressed your hand to his mouth, pulling him behind the crate. You tried to use your core strength to flip and straddle his neck but to no avail, you were just too weak.

He got the better of you and wailed a punch at your temple. You stumbled slightly, blinking away the dark spots in your vision. Cursing, you charged at the man again, batarang in hand.

You threw it at your target but alas, the force wasn’t strong enough and it clattered against the crate, limply falling to the ground.

was the room spinning or was it just you?

At this point you couldn’t even tell. Nonetheless, you tried to attack one more time, sliding onto the floor you stuck your leg out in means to trip him, but it just barely made the man sway.

He laughed, “So this is Batgirls replacement? A weak little twig like you?”

You felt a flare of anger in your chest, how dare he call you a replacement!

You let out and angry growl and with all of your might pounced at him, tackling the large man to the ground.

He laughed again, and easily threw your body off of him, leaving you to crash into a wooden crate.

You laid on the floor staring up at the ceiling, was the ceiling always that high up? Where are those dots coming from?

Weakly, you tried to sit up, ignoring the heaviness of your head, at least that was until you passed out.

When you came to, you realized you were in fact, tied to a chair, however not by yourself. Tim was tied behind you on his own chair.

“Timmy?” you mumbled.

The teens ears perked up, “(Y/N)? Oh thank god, you scared me so bad.”

“Tim, what happened? Why are we tied up?”

He sighed in response and craned his neck to look at you, “After you fainted, the third thug came at me. There was just too many of them for me to handle while thinking about if you were dead. God, (Y/N), you scared me so bad. Please don’t do that again.”

“It’s not like I chose to faint, Tim.” You sneered, upset that he was putting the blame on you.

“Well you are the one that chose not to eat. The one that chose to overwork them self. The one that didn’t ask for help when you were clearly struggling... I mean, am I wrong?”

You gulped, so he knew...

“Tim... I-”

“(Y/N) I’m not mad at you, I just want to know, why? Why put yourself through that?” He pleaded with you.

You sighed and then out of frustration and exhaustion, let out a cry. “I had to okay?! I saw footage of Babs and saw how much prettier and skinnier and smarter and just better than me she was. I didn’t have a choice but to fix myself to live up to her legacy.”

Tim’s heart broke at your sobs, god he wish he cold take away your pain and just tell you how naturally beautiful and smart and unique and talented you are... He just didn’t know how.

“(Y/N)... you didn’t have to do any of that. You, you’re amazing just the way you are. And, and I know I wont be able to change your mind but, but... I love you. I’ve loved you since the moment I met you. I never wanted you to be any more than you already were because in my eyes you’re amazing. You’re my (Y/N) and I wouldn’t ask for any different.”

You gasped, I mean you knew there was something between you and Tim, but love? He loved you? You cried again, overwhelmed. “Tim, I love you too. I just thought I had to be better, to prove myself to you all, to show that I actually deserved the title of Batgirl.”

“Oh love, if you want to talk to someone about deserving their title, hell talk to me. I’ve struggled with that for years. But I would never, ever tell you to do something like this. You’re so much more than a body. You’re just a beautiful soul, inside and out.”

“God Timmy, you’re such a sap... But you’re my sap. Or, is that okay?”

Tim smiled, leaning his head on your shoulder, “That more than okay.”

The two of you stayed like that for a bit until you were brought back to reality. “Hey Tim...” The teen in question gave a loving ‘hmm?’

“Um, how are we going to get out of this?”

#tim drake #tim drake imagine #dc comics #dc x reader #dc comics imagine #batman x reader #batman imagine #batfamily #batfamily imagine #ryan potter #tim drake x reader #batman

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path-of-my-childhood · 5 years

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The Rolling Stone Interview: Taylor Swift

By: Brian Hiatt for The Rolling Stone Magazine Date: September 18th 2019

In her most in-depth and introspective interview in years, Swift tells all about the rocky road to 'Lover' and much, much more.

Taylor Swift bursts into her mom’s Nashville kitchen, smiling, looking remarkably like Taylor Swift. (That red-lip, classic thing? Check.) “I need someone to help dye my hair pink,” she says, and moments later, her ends match her sparkly nail polish, sneakers, and the stripes on her button-down. It’s all in keeping with the pastel aesthetic of her new album, Lover; black-leather combat-Taylor from her previous album cycle has handed back the phone. Around the black-granite kitchen island, all is calm and normal, as Swift’s mom, dad, and younger brother pass through. Her mom’s two dogs, one very small, one very large, pounce upon visitors with slurping glee. It could be any 29-year-old’s weekend visit with her parents, if not for the madness looming a few feet down the hall.

In an airy terrace, 113 giddy, weepy, shaky, still-in-disbelief fans are waiting for the start of one of Swift’s secret sessions, sacred rituals in Swift-dom. She’s about to play them her seventh album, as-yet unreleased on this Sunday afternoon in early August, and offer copious commentary. Also, she made cookies. Just before the session, Swift sits down in her mom’s study (where she “operates the Google,” per her daughter) to chat for a few minutes. The black-walled room is decorated with black-and-white classic-rock photos, including shots of Bruce Springsteen and, unsurprisingly, James Taylor; there are also more recent shots of Swift posing with Kris Kristofferson and playing with Def Leppard, her mom’s favorite band.

In a corner is an acoustic guitar Swift played as a teenager. She almost certainly wrote some well-known songs on it, but can’t recall which ones. “It would be kind of weird to finish a song and be like, ‘And this moment, I shall remember,’'” she says, laughing. “‘This guitar hath been anointed with my sacred tuneage!'”

The secret session itself is, as the name suggests, deeply off-the-record; it can be confirmed that she drank some white wine, since her glass pops up in some Instagram pictures. She stays until 5 a.m., chatting and taking photos with every one of the fans. Five hours later, we continue our talk at length in Swift’s Nashville condo, in almost exactly the same spot where we did one of our interviews for her 2012 Rolling Stone cover story. She’s hardly changed its whimsical decor in the past seven years (one of the few additions is a pool table replacing the couch where we sat last time), so it’s an old-Taylor time capsule. There’s still a huge bunny made of moss in one corner, and a human-size birdcage in the living room, though the view from the latter is now of generic new condo buildings instead of just distant green hills. Swift is barefoot now, in pale-blue jeans and a blue button-down tied at the waist; her hair is pulled back, her makeup minimal.

How to sum up the past three years of Taylor Swift? In July 2016, after Swift expressed discontent with Kanye West’s “Famous,” Kim Kardashian did her best to destroy her, unleashing clandestine recordings of a phone conversation between Swift and West. In the piecemeal audio, Swift can be heard agreeing to the line “…me and Taylor might still have sex.” We don’t hear her learning about the next lyric, the one she says bothered her — “I made that bitch famous” — and as she’ll explain, there’s more to her side of the story. The backlash was, well, swift, and overwhelming. It still hasn’t altogether subsided. Later that year, Swift chose not to make an endorsement in the 2016 election, which definitely didn’t help. In the face of it all, she made Reputation — fierce, witty, almost-industrial pop offset by love songs of crystalline beauty — and had a wildly successful stadium tour. Somewhere in there, she met her current boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, and judging by certain songs on Lover, the relationship is serious indeed.

Lover is Swift’s most adult album, a rebalancing of sound and persona that opens doors to the next decade of her career; it’s also a welcome return to the sonic diversity of 2012’s Red, with tracks ranging from the St. Vincent-assisted über-bop “Cruel Summer” to the unbearably poignant country-fied “Soon You’ll Get Better” (with the Dixie Chicks) and the “Shake It Off”-worthy pep of “Paper Rings.”

She wants to talk about the music, of course, but she is also ready to explain the past three years of her life, in depth, for the first time. The conversation is often not a light one. She’s built up more armor in the past few years, but still has the opposite of a poker face — you can see every micro-emotion wash over her as she ponders a question, her nose wrinkling in semi-ironic offense at the term “old-school pop stars,” her preposterously blue eyes glistening as she turns to darker subjects. In her worst moments, she says, “You feel like you’re being completely pulled into a riptide. So what are you going to do? Splash a lot? Or hold your breath and hope you somehow resurface? And that’s what I did. And it took three years. Sitting here doing an interview — the fact that we’ve done an interview before is the only reason I’m not in a full body sweat.”

When we talked seven years ago, everything was going so well for you, and you were very worried that something would go wrong. Yeah, I kind of knew it would. I felt like I was walking along the sidewalk, knowing eventually the pavement was going to crumble and I was gonna fall through. You can’t keep winning and have people like it. People love “new” so much — they raise you up the flagpole, and you’re waving at the top of the flagpole for a while. And then they’re like, “Wait, this new flag is what we actually love.” They decide something you’re doing is incorrect, that you’re not standing for what you should stand for. You’re a bad example. Then if you keep making music and you survive, and you keep connecting with people, eventually they raise you a little bit up the flagpole again, and then they take you back down, and back up again. And it happens to women more than it happens to men in music.

It also happened to you a few times on a smaller scale, didn’t it? I’ve had several upheavals in my career. When I was 18, they were like, “She doesn’t really write those songs.” So my third album I wrote by myself as a reaction to that. Then they decided I was a serial dater — a boy-crazy man-eater — when I was 22. And so I didn’t date anyone for, like, two years. And then they decided in 2016 that absolutely everything about me was wrong. If I did something good, it was for the wrong reasons. If I did something brave, I didn’t do it correctly. If I stood up for myself, I was throwing a tantrum. And so I found myself in this endless mockery echo chamber. It’s just like — I have a brother who’s two and a half years younger, and we spent the first half of our lives trying to kill each other and the second half as best friends. You know that game kids play? I’d be like, “Mom, can I have some water?” And Austin would be like, “Mom, can I have some water?” And I’m like, “He’s copying me.” And he’d be like, “He’s copying me.” Always in a really obnoxious voice that sounds all twisted. That’s what it felt like in 2016. So I decided to just say nothing. It wasn’t really a decision. It was completely involuntary.

But you also had good things happen in your life at the same time — that’s part of Reputation. The moments of my true story on that album are songs like “Delicate,” “New Year’s Day,” “Call It What You Want,” “Dress.” The one-two punch, bait-and-switch of Reputation is that it was actually a love story. It was a love story in amongst chaos. All the weaponized sort of metallic battle anthems were what was going on outside. That was the battle raging on that I could see from the windows, and then there was what was happening inside my world — my newly quiet, cozy world that was happening on my own terms for the first time. . . . It’s weird, because in some of the worst times of my career, and reputation, dare I say, I had some of the most beautiful times — in my quiet life that I chose to have. And I had some of the most incredible memories with the friends I now knew cared about me, even if everyone hated me. The bad stuff was really significant and damaging. But the good stuff will endure. The good lessons — you realize that you can’t just show your life to people.

Meaning? I used to be like a golden retriever, just walking up to everybody, like, wagging my tail. “Sure, yeah, of course! What do you want to know? What do you need?” Now, I guess, I have to be a little bit more like a fox.

Do your regrets on that extend to the way the “girl squad” thing was perceived? Yeah, I never would have imagined that people would have thought, “This is a clique that wouldn’t have accepted me if I wanted to be in it.” Holy shit, that hit me like a ton of bricks. I was like, “Oh, this did not go the way that I thought it was going to go.” I thought it was going to be we can still stick together, just like men are allowed to do. The patriarchy allows men to have bro packs. If you’re a male artist, there’s an understanding that you have respect for your counterparts.

Whereas women are expected to be feuding with each other? It’s assumed that we hate each other. Even if we’re smiling and photographed together with our arms around each other, it’s assumed there’s a knife in our pocket.

How much of a danger was there of falling into that thought pattern yourself? The messaging is dangerous, yes. Nobody is immune, because we’re a product of what society and peer groups and now the internet tells us, unless we learn differently from experience.

You once sang about a star who “took the money and your dignity, and got the hell out.” In 2016, you wrote in your journal, “This summer is the apocalypse.” How close did you come to quitting altogether? I definitely thought about that a lot. I thought about how words are my only way of making sense of the world and expressing myself — and now any words I say or write are being twisted against me. People love a hate frenzy. It’s like piranhas. People had so much fun hating me, and they didn’t really need very many reasons to do it. I felt like the situation was pretty hopeless. I wrote a lot of really aggressively bitter poems constantly. I wrote a lot of think pieces that I knew I’d never publish, about what it’s like to feel like you’re in a shame spiral. And I couldn’t figure out how to learn from it. Because I wasn’t sure exactly what I did that was so wrong. That was really hard for me, because I cannot stand it when people can’t take criticism. So I try to self-examine, and even though that’s really hard and hurts a lot sometimes, I really try to understand where people are coming from when they don’t like me. And I completely get why people wouldn’t like me. Because, you know, I’ve had my insecurities say those things — and things 1,000 times worse.

But some of your former critics have become your friends, right? Some of my best friendships came from people publicly criticizing me and then it opening up a conversation. Hayley Kiyoko was doing an interview and she made an example about how I get away with singing about straight relationships and people don’t give me shit the way they give her shit for singing about girls — and it’s totally valid. Like, Ella — Lorde — the first thing she ever said about me publicly was a criticism of my image or whatever. But I can’t really respond to someone saying, “You, as a human being, are fake.” And if they say you’re playing the victim, that completely undermines your ability to ever verbalize how you feel unless it’s positive. So, OK, should I just smile all the time and never say anything hurts me? Because that’s really fake. Or should I be real about how I’m feeling and have valid, legitimate responses to things that happened to me in my life? But wait, would that be playing the victim?

How do you escape that mental trap? Since I was 15 years old, if people criticized me for something, I changed it. So you realize you might be this amalgamation of criticisms that were hurled at you, and not an actual person who’s made any of these choices themselves. And so I decided I needed to live a quiet life, because a quiet personal life invites no discussion, dissection, and debate. I didn’t realize I was inviting people to feel they had the right to sort of play my life like a video game.

“The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Because she’s dead!” was funny — but how seriously should we take it? There’s a part of me that definitely is always going to be different. I needed to grow up in many ways. I needed to make boundaries, to figure out what was mine and what was the public’s. That old version of me that shares unfailingly and unblinkingly with a world that is probably not fit to be shared with? I think that’s gone. But it was definitely just, like, a fun moment in the studio with me and Jack [Antonoff] where I wanted to play on the idea of a phone call — because that’s how all of this started, a stupid phone call I shouldn’t have picked up.

It would have been much easier if that’s what you’d just said. It would have been so, so great if I would have just said that [laughs].

Some of the Lover iconography does suggest old Taylor’s return, though. I don’t think I’ve ever leaned into the old version of myself more creatively than I have on this album, where it’s very, very autobiographical. But also moments of extreme catchiness and moments of extreme personal confession.

Did you do anything wrong from your perspective in dealing with that phone call? Is there anything you regret? The world didn’t understand the context and the events that led up to it. Because nothing ever just happens like that without some lead-up. Some events took place to cause me to be pissed off when he called me a bitch. That was not just a singular event. Basically, I got really sick of the dynamic between he and I. And that wasn’t just based on what happened on that phone call and with that song — it was kind of a chain reaction of things.

I started to feel like we reconnected, which felt great for me — because all I ever wanted my whole career after that thing happened in 2009 was for him to respect me. When someone doesn’t respect you so loudly and says you literally don’t deserve to be here — I just so badly wanted that respect from him, and I hate that about myself, that I was like, “This guy who’s antagonizing me, I just want his approval.” But that’s where I was. And so we’d go to dinner and stuff. And I was so happy, because he would say really nice things about my music. It just felt like I was healing some childhood rejection or something from when I was 19. But the 2015 VMAs come around. He’s getting the Vanguard Award. He called me up beforehand — I didn’t illegally record it, so I can’t play it for you. But he called me up, maybe a week or so before the event, and we had maybe over an hourlong conversation, and he’s like, “I really, really would like for you to present this Vanguard Award to me, this would mean so much to me,” and went into all the reasons why it means so much, because he can be so sweet. He can be the sweetest. And I was so stoked that he asked me that. And so I wrote this speech up, and then we get to the VMAs and I make this speech and he screams, “MTV got Taylor Swift up here to present me this award for ratings!” [His exact words: “You know how many times they announced Taylor was going to give me the award ’cause it got them more ratings?”] And I’m standing in the audience with my arm around his wife, and this chill ran through my body. I realized he is so two-faced. That he wants to be nice to me behind the scenes, but then he wants to look cool, get up in front of everyone and talk shit. And I was so upset. He wanted me to come talk to him after the event in his dressing room. I wouldn’t go. So then he sent this big, big thing of flowers the next day to apologize. And I was like, “You know what? I really don’t want us to be on bad terms again. So whatever, I’m just going to move past this.” So when he gets on the phone with me, and I was so touched that he would be respectful and, like, tell me about this one line in the song.

The line being “. . . me and Taylor might still have sex”? [Nods] And I was like, “OK, good. We’re back on good terms.” And then when I heard the song, I was like, “I’m done with this. If you want to be on bad terms, let’s be on bad terms, but just be real about it.” And then he literally did the same thing to Drake. He gravely affected the trajectory of Drake’s family and their lives. It’s the same thing. Getting close to you, earning your trust, detonating you. I really don’t want to talk about it anymore because I get worked up, and I don’t want to just talk about negative shit all day, but it’s the same thing. Go watch Drake talk about what happened. [West denied any involvement in Pusha-T’s revelation of Drake’s child and apologized for sending “negative energy” toward Drake.]

When did you get to the place that’s described on the opening track of Lover, “I Forgot That You Existed”? It was sometime on the Reputation tour, which was the most transformative emotional experience of my career. That tour put me in the healthiest, most balanced place I’ve ever been. After that tour, bad stuff can happen to me, but it doesn’t level me anymore. The stuff that happened a couple of months ago with Scott [Borchetta] would have leveled me three years ago and silenced me. I would have been too afraid to speak up. Something about that tour made me disengage from some part of public perception I used to hang my entire identity on, which I now know is incredibly unhealthy.

What was the actual revelation? It’s almost like I feel more clear about the fact that my job is to be an entertainer. It’s not like this massive thing that sometimes my brain makes it into, and sometimes the media makes it into, where we’re all on this battlefield and everyone’s gonna die except one person, who wins. It’s like, “No, do you know what? Katy is going to be legendary. Gaga is going to be legendary. Beyoncé is going to be legendary. Rihanna is going to be legendary. Because the work that they made completely overshadows the myopia of this 24-hour news cycle of clickbait.” And somehow I realized that on tour, as I was looking at people’s faces. We’re just entertaining people, and it’s supposed to be fun.

It’s interesting to look at these albums as a trilogy. 1989 was really a reset button. Oh, in every way. I’ve been very vocal about the fact that that decision was mine and mine alone, and it was definitely met with a lot of resistance. Internally.

After realizing that things were not all smiles with your former label boss, Scott Borchetta, it’s hard not to wonder how much additional conflict there was over things like that. A lot of the best things I ever did creatively were things that I had to really fight — and I mean aggressively fight — to have happen. But, you know, I’m not like him, making crazy, petty accusations about the past. . . . When you have a business relationship with someone for 15 years, there are going to be a lot of ups and a lot of downs. But I truly, legitimately thought he looked at me as the daughter he never had. And so even though we had a lot of really bad times and creative differences, I was going to hang my hat on the good stuff. I wanted to be friends with him. I thought I knew what betrayal felt like, but this stuff that happened with him was a redefinition of betrayal for me, just because it felt like it was family. To go from feeling like you’re being looked at as a daughter to this grotesque feeling of “Oh, I was actually his prized calf that he was fattening up to sell to the slaughterhouse that would pay the most.”

He accused you of declining the Parkland march and Manchester benefit show. Unbelievable. Here’s the thing: Everyone in my team knew if Scooter Braun brings us something, do not bring it to me. The fact that those two are in business together after the things he said about Scooter Braun — it’s really hard to shock me. And this was utterly shocking. These are two very rich, very powerful men, using $300 million of other people’s money to purchase, like, the most feminine body of work. And then they’re standing in a wood-panel bar doing a tacky photo shoot, raising a glass of scotch to themselves. Because they pulled one over on me and got this done so sneakily that I didn’t even see it coming. And I couldn’t say anything about it.

In some ways, on a musical level, Lover feels like the most indie-ish of your albums. That’s amazing, thank you. It’s definitely a quirky record. With this album, I felt like I sort of gave myself permission to revisit older themes that I used to write about, maybe look at them with fresh eyes. And to revisit older instruments — older in terms of when I used to use them. Because when I was making 1989, I was so obsessed with it being this concept of Eighties big pop, whether it was Eighties in its production or Eighties in its nature, just having these big choruses — being unapologetically big. And then Reputation, there was a reason why I had it all in lowercase. I felt like it wasn’t unapologetically commercial. It’s weird, because that is the album that took the most amount of explanation, and yet it’s the one I didn’t talk about. In the Reputation secret sessions I kind of had to explain to my fans, “I know we’re doing a new thing here that I’d never done before.” I’d never played with characters before. For a lot of pop stars, that’s a really fun trick, where they’re like, “This is my alter ego.” I had never played with that before. It’s really fun. And it was just so fun to play with on tour — the darkness and the bombast and the bitterness and the love and the ups and the downs of an emotional-turmoil record.

“Daylight” is a beautiful song. It feels like it could have been the title track. It almost was. I thought it might be a little bit too sentimental.

And I guess maybe too on-the-nose. Right, yeah, way too on-the-nose. That’s what I thought, because I was kind of in my head referring to the album as Daylight for a while. But Lover, to me, was a more interesting title, more of an accurate theme in my head, and more elastic as a concept. That’s why “You Need to Calm Down” can make sense within the theme of the album — one of the things it addresses is how certain people are not allowed to live their lives without discrimination just based on who they love.

For the more organic songs on this album, like “Lover” and “Paper Rings,” you said you were imagining a wedding band playing them. How often does that kind of visualization shape a song’s production style? Sometimes I’ll have a strange sort of fantasy of where the songs would be played. And so for songs like “Paper Rings” or “Lover” I was imagining a wedding-reception band, but in the Seventies, so they couldn’t play instruments that wouldn’t have been invented yet. I have all these visuals. For Reputation, it was nighttime cityscape. I didn’t really want any — or very minimal — traditional acoustic instruments. I imagined old warehouse buildings that had been deserted and factory spaces and all this industrial kind of imagery. So I wanted the production to have nothing wooden. There’s no wood floors on that album. Lover is, like, completely just a barn wood floor and some ripped curtains flowing in the breeze, and fields of flowers and, you know, velvet.

How did you come to use high school metaphors to touch on politics with “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince”? There are so many influences that go into that particular song. I wrote it a couple of months after midterm elections, and I wanted to take the idea of politics and pick a metaphorical place for that to exist. And so I was thinking about a traditional American high school, where there’s all these kinds of social events that could make someone feel completely alienated. And I think a lot of people in our political landscape are just feeling like we need to huddle up under the bleachers and figure out a plan to make things better.

I feel like your Fall Out Boy fandom might’ve slipped out in that title. I love Fall Out Boy so much. Their songwriting really influenced me, lyrically, maybe more than anyone else. They take a phrase and they twist it. “Loaded God complex/Cock it and pull it”? When I heard that, I was like, “I’m dreaming.”

You sing about “American stories burning before me.” Do you mean the illusions of what America is? It’s about the illusions of what I thought America was before our political landscape took this turn, and that naivete that we used to have about it. And it’s also the idea of people who live in America, who just want to live their lives, make a living, have a family, love who they love, and watching those people lose their rights, or watching those people feel not at home in their home. I have that line “I see the high-fives between the bad guys” because not only are some really racist, horrific undertones now becoming overtones in our political climate, but the people who are representing those concepts and that way of looking at the world are celebrating loudly, and it’s horrific.

You’re in this weird place of being a blond, blue-eyed pop star in this era — to the point where until you endorsed some Democratic candidates, right-wingers, and worse, assumed you were on their side. I don’t think they do anymore. Yeah, that was jarring, and I didn’t hear about that until after it had happened. Because at this point, I, for a very long time, I didn’t have the internet on my phone, and my team and my family were really worried about me because I was not in a good place. And there was a lot of stuff that they just dealt with without telling me about it. Which is the only time that’s ever happened in my career. I’m always in the pilot seat, trying to fly the plane that is my career in exactly the direction I want to take it. But there was a time when I just had to throw my hands up and say, “Guys, I can’t. I can’t do this. I need you to just take over for me and I’m just going to disappear.”

Are you referring to when a white-supremacist site suggested you were on their team? I didn’t even see that, but, like, if that happened, that’s just disgusting. There’s literally nothing worse than white supremacy. It’s repulsive. There should be no place for it. Really, I keep trying to learn as much as I can about politics, and it’s become something I’m now obsessed with, whereas before, I was living in this sort of political ambivalence, because the person I voted for had always won. We were in such an amazing time when Obama was president because foreign nations respected us. We were so excited to have this dignified person in the White House. My first election was voting for him when he made it into office, and then voting to re-elect him. I think a lot of people are like me, where they just didn’t really know that this could happen. But I’m just focused on the 2020 election. I’m really focused on it. I’m really focused on how I can help and not hinder. Because I also don’t want it to backfire again, because I do feel that the celebrity involvement with Hillary’s campaign was used against her in a lot of ways.

You took a lot of heat for not getting involved. Does any part of you regret that you just didn’t say “fuck it” and gotten more specific when you said to vote that November? Totally. Yeah, I regret a lot of things all the time. It’s like a daily ritual.

Were you just convinced that it would backfire? That’s literally what it was. Yeah. It’s a very powerful thing when you legitimately feel like numbers have proven that pretty much everyone hates you. Like, quantifiably. That’s not me being dramatic. And you know that.

There were a lot of people in those stadiums. It’s true. But that was two years later. . . . I do think, as a party, we need to be more of a team. With Republicans, if you’re wearing that red hat, you’re one of them. And if we’re going to do anything to change what’s happening, we need to stick together. We need to stop dissecting why someone’s on our side or if they’re on our side in the right way or if they phrased it correctly. We need to not have the right kind of Democrat and the wrong kind of Democrat. We need to just be like, “You’re a Democrat? Sick. Get in the car. We’re going to the mall.”

Here’s a hard question for you: As a superfan, what did you think of the Game of Thrones finale? Oh, my God. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. So, clinically our brain responds to our favorite show ending the same way we feel when a breakup occurs. I read that. There’s no good way for it to end. No matter what would have happened in that finale, people still would have been really upset because of the fact that it’s over.

I was glad to see you confirm that your line about a “list of names” was a reference to Arya. I like to be influenced by movies and shows and books and stuff. I love to write about a character dynamic. And not all of my life is going to be as kind of complex as these intricate webs of characters on TV shows and movies.

There was a time when it was. That’s amazing.

But is the idea that as your own life becomes less dramatic, you’ll need to pull ideas from other places? I don’t feel like that yet. I think I might feel like that possibly when I have a family. If I have a family. [Pauses] I don’t know why I said that! But that’s what I’ve heard from other artists, that they were very protective of their personal life, so they had to draw inspiration from other things. But again, I don’t know why I said that. Because I don’t know how my life is going to go or what I’m going to do. But right now, I feel like it’s easier for me to write than it ever was.

You don’t talk about your relationship, but you’ll sing about it in wildly revealing detail. What’s the difference for you? Singing about something helps you to express it in a way that feels more accurate. You cannot, no matter what, put words in a quote and have it move someone the same way as if you heard those words with the perfect sonic representation of that feeling... There is that weird conflict in being a confessional songwriter and then also having my life, you know, 10 years ago, be catapulted into this strange pop-culture thing.

I’ve heard you say that people got too interested in which song was about who, which I can understand — at the same time, to be fair, it was a game you played into, wasn’t it? I realized very early on that no matter what, that was going to happen to me regardless. So when you realize the rules of the game you’re playing and how it will affect you, you got to look at the board and make your strategy. But at the same time, writing songs has never been a strategic element of my career. But I’m not scared anymore to say that other things in my career, like how to market an album, are strictly strategic. And I’m sick of women not being able to say that they have strategic business minds — because male artists are allowed to. And so I’m sick and tired of having to pretend like I don’t mastermind my own business. But, it’s a different part of my brain than I use to write.

You’ve been masterminding your business since you were a teenager. Yeah, but I’ve also tried very hard — and this is one thing I regret — to convince people that I wasn’t the one holding the puppet strings of my marketing existence, or the fact that I sit in a conference room several times a week and come up with these ideas. I felt for a very long time that people don’t want to think of a woman in music who isn’t just a happy, talented accident. We’re all forced to kind of be like, “Aw, shucks, this happened again! We’re still doing well! Aw, that’s so great.” Alex Morgan celebrating scoring a goal at the World Cup and getting shit for it is a perfect example of why we’re not allowed to flaunt or celebrate, or reveal that, like, “Oh, yeah, it was me. I came up with this stuff.” I think it’s really unfair. People love new female artists so much because they’re able to explain that woman’s success. There’s an easy trajectory. Look at the Game of Thrones finale. I specifically really related to Daenerys’ storyline because for me it portrayed that it is a lot easier for a woman to attain power than to maintain it.

I mean, she did murder... It’s a total metaphor! Like, obviously I didn’t want Daenerys to become that kind of character, but in taking away what I chose to take away from it, I thought maybe they’re trying to portray her climbing the ladder to the top was a lot easier than maintaining it, because for me, the times when I felt like I was going insane was when I was trying to maintain my career in the same way that I ascended. It’s easier to get power than to keep it. It’s easier to get acclaim than to keep it. It’s easier to get attention than to keep it.

Well, I guess we should be glad you didn’t have a dragon in 2016... [Fiercely] I told you I don’t like that she did that! But, I mean, watching the show, though, maybe this is a reflection on how we treat women in power, how we are totally going to conspire against them and tear at them until they feel this — this insane shift, where you wonder, like, “What changed?” And I’ve had that happen, like, 60 times in my career where I’m like, “OK, you liked me last year, what changed? I guess I’ll change so I can keep entertaining you guys.”

You once said that your mom could never punish you when you were little because you’d punish yourself. This idea of changing in the face of criticism and needing approval — that’s all part of wanting to be good, right? Whatever that means. But that seems to be a real driving force in your life. Yeah, that’s definitely very perceptive of you. And the question posed to me is, if you kept trying to do good things, but everyone saw those things in a cynical way and assumed them to be done with bad motivation and bad intent, would you still do good things, even though nothing that you did was looked at as good? And the answer is, yes. Criticism that’s constructive is helpful to my character growth. Baseless criticism is stuff I’ve got to toss out now.

That sounds healthy. Is this therapy talking or is this just experience? No, I’ve never been to therapy. I talk to my mom a lot, because my mom is the one who’s seen everything. God, it takes so long to download somebody on the last 29 years of my life, and my mom has seen it all. She knows exactly where I’m coming from. And we talk endlessly. There were times when I used to have really, really, really bad days where we would just be on the phone for hours and hours and hours. I’d write something that I wanted to say, and instead of posting it, I’d just read it to her.

I somehow connect all this to the lyric in “Daylight,” the idea of “so many lines that I’ve crossed unforgiven” — it’s a different kind of confession. I am really glad you liked that line, because that’s something that does bother me, looking back at life and realizing that no matter what, you screw things up. Sometimes there are people that were in your life and they’re not anymore — and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t fix it, you can’t change it. I told the fans last night that sometimes on my bad days, I feel like my life is a pile of crap accumulated of only the bad headlines or the bad things that have happened, or the mistakes I’ve made or clichés or rumors or things that people think about me or have thought for the last 15 years. And that was part of the “Look What You Made Me Do” music video, where I had a pile of literal old selves fighting each other.

But, yeah, that line is indicative of my anxiety about how in life you can’t get everything right. A lot of times you make the wrong call, make the wrong decision. Say the wrong thing. Hurt people, even if you didn’t mean to. You don’t really know how to fix all of that. When it’s, like, 29 years’ worth.

To be Mr. “Rolling Stone” for a second, there’s a Springsteen lyric, “Ain’t no one leaving this world, buddy/Without their shirttail dirty or hands a little bloody.” That’s really good! No one gets through it unscathed. No one gets through in one piece. I think that’s a hard thing for a lot of people to grasp. I know it was hard for me, because I kind of grew up thinking, “If I’m nice, and if I try to do the right thing, you know, maybe I can just, like, ace this whole thing.” And it turns out I can’t.

It’s interesting to look at “I Did Something Bad” in this context. You pointing that out is really interesting because it’s something I’ve had to reconcile within myself in the last couple of years — that sort of “good” complex. Because from the time I was a kid I’d try to be kind, be a good person. Try really hard. But you get walked all over sometimes. And how do you respond to being walked all over? You can’t just sit there and eat your salad and let it happen. “I Did Something Bad” was about doing something that was so against what I would usually do. Katy [Perry] and I were talking about our signs. . . . [Laughs] Of course we were.

That’s the greatest sentence ever. [Laughs] I hate you. We were talking about our signs because we had this really, really long talk when we were reconnecting and stuff. And I remember in the long talk, she was like, “If we had one glass of white wine right now, we’d both be crying.” Because we were drinking tea. We’ve had some really good conversations.

We were talking about how we’ve had miscommunications with people in the past, not even specifically with each other. She’s like, “I’m a Scorpio. Scorpios just strike when they feel threatened.” And I was like, “Well, I’m an archer. We literally stand back, assess the situation, process how we feel about it, raise a bow, pull it back, and fire.” So it’s completely different ways of processing pain, confusion, misconception. And oftentimes I’ve had this delay in feeling something that hurts me and then saying that it hurts me. Do you know what I mean? And so I can understand how people in my life would have been like, “Whoa, I didn’t know that was how you felt.” Because it takes me a second.

If you watch the video of the 2009 VMAs, I literally freeze. I literally stand there. And that is how I handle any discomfort, any pain. I stand there, I freeze. And then five minutes later, I know how I feel. But in the moment, I’m probably overreacting and I should be nice. Then I process it, and in five minutes, if it’s gone, it’s past, and I’m like, “I was overreacting, everything’s fine. I can get through this. I’m glad I didn’t say anything harsh in the moment.” But when it’s actually something bad that happened, and I feel really, really hurt or upset about it, I only know after the fact. Because I’ve tried so hard to squash it: “This probably isn’t what you think.” That’s something I had to work on.

You could end up gaslighting yourself. Yeah, for sure. ’Cause so many situations where if I would have said the first thing that came to my mind, people would have been like, “Whoa!” And maybe I would have been wrong or combative. So a couple of years ago I started working on actually just responding to my emotions in a quicker fashion. And it’s really helped with stuff. It’s helped so much because sometimes you get in arguments. But conflict in the moment is so much better than combat after the fact.

Well, thanks. I do feel like I just did a therapy session. As someone who’s never been to therapy, I can safely say that was the best therapy session.

#uhhhh #just by copying and editing text I see it's gonna be good =)#can't wait...#taylor swift #interview #by taylor #lover era #Rolling Stone magazine #Brian Hiatt

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ardenttheories · 4 years

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Homestuck's always been antagonistic and insensitive, but I don't recall seeing any of you try to dox Hussie? But please, continue to rationalise how cyberbullying lgbt people for not being nice enough and having opinions about a fictional character you disagree with puts you in the right. A story doesn't go the way you'd like and this is how you respond? You COULD have just not bothered reading it instead of CHOOSING to make your online life about something you hate like a toxic weirdo.

Hi, Kate. I’m so glad you could find my blog. (Edit: that was a joke. Apparently, some anons find it impossible to tell that I don’t actually think you’re Kate). It’s clear to me that you didn’t take the time to read through any of the content that’s actually on here, since you’re throwing around rather wild accusations, so let me take this down step by step.

Homestuck has only rarely been antagonistic and insensitive. Things like the Alpha Trolls - which were clear criticisms of fandom culture - were relatively few and far between, and when we complained about them, they actually stopped. Remind me, for instance, how relevant the Alpha Trolls were to the plot? How long they stayed as mockeries towards the fandom? Yeah, not long. I actually have talked about this before on the blog - alongside other things I thought were negative towards the fandom from the original comic - but the difference here is that... in the entirety of Homestuck, these things were outliers and inconsistencies. They stuck out because they were in stark contrast to the otherwise wonderfully handled content Homestuck went over.

For instance, Homesuck is critical of abuse - especially in terms of relationships. We see through a critical lense the shit normalisation of parental abuse can do to a child - with actual talk of triggers and of the mental and emotional scarring left behind, and the complexities of the child’s feelings towards the parent’s death through Dave - and we see how self destructive relationships can be, how harmful they are, and how hard it can be to leave them - such as Terezi’s very toxic blackrom with Gamzee, which was always portrayed as something negative and harmful especially with how worried Karkat was for her and how withdrawn she became during its run, and Dirk’s relationship with Jake, which goes very much over how communication can cause a deterioration in romantic relationships especially when the two participants have conflicting mental illnesses.

It also goes over how men, though they can be mired in toxic masculinity, can choose to be good. How sometimes we’re not born as good people, but we can become good people through the love we have for the people around us, through frequent attempts to check what we’re doing, through the sheer willpower to be good. Dirk’s entire arc, knowing that he could very easily become Bro but deciding he doesn’t want to be, that it’s something he wants to work on, is so important and incredibly powerful. Mental illness in men is often just given as an excuse to make them violent with no attempts at betterment - so Dirk actually existed as proof that you don’t have to be that stereotype.

In contrast, Homestuck^2 completely uncritically gave Jade, who was cis, a dog dick, made her, a bisexual woman, a sex maniac and the yaoi “woman who gets in the way of the gays” trope, made her a cheater and someone who forced her partner into the relationship to begin with, and made her a neglectful mother after having cheated with her best lesbian friend in something that has incredible recall to just about every futanari video ever - and they tried to claim that this was good representation of trans women, actually, and that the only reason we didn’t like it is that Jade is “a woman” who “has sex”.

Likewise completely uncritically, they made Gamzee, an anti-black stereotype, enter a relationship with Jane, a fascist, and then made the entire thing into a cuck joke wherein Jake being frequently drunk and sexually assaulted was funny because he wasn’t “man enough”. They then forced him to go back to his abuser after he left her in a scene that read very much like, “ridiculous man thinks woman is abusing him, go back and do your manly job”.

This, of course, doesn’t even go into the travesty that is any form of trans representation in the comic. Roxy, a trans man, is barely even focused on as trans; they make no attempt to enforce in the fandom that he’s a trans man the way they do that June is a trans woman, and even then, they seem to think that just saying someone is a trans woman is actually good representation. Not, like, bringing it into the comic - just saying that it’s a thing. And of course, that’s not even going into the completely uncritical lense they have of Vriska, wherein her being a trans woman completely frees her of any and all blame for the past abuses she has comitted, and once again she becomes an amazing character to save the day without a single flaw - which in turn inherently associates trans women with abuse apologism, abusers, and the ideology that just because we’re trans we can get away with anything scott free.

I honestly cannot think of one instance of good and genuine representation in Homesuck^2, nor can I think of any scene where negative content was actually treated as the negative thing it actually is. There’s no critical lense at all, not like we have in Homestuck; there’s just no fucking comparison. And this isn’t a one-off situation, either. Whereas Homestuck does do fuck ups - isn’t perfect - in between the otherwise brilliant content, Homestuck^2 is just founded upon these horrific takes. There’s almost no good content in between, and what is left is a slog to get through when surrounded by the thick slurry of shit that compromises futa Jade, abuse apologism Vriska, and victim blaming Jake.

Of course, we didn’t “doxx” Hussie. Hussie actually listened to our complaints, for the most part, and worked with us to create something that worked well. The way Homestuck^2 was touted to work. You know, since it was meant to be written with the fandom in mind, influenced by the things we suggest and react to. We went into Homestuck^2 with the explicit idea that we were going to be listened to and taken into consideration when it was being written - the way we were with old Homestuck. I’m very sorry to say that, when you make these expectations, people are going to be a titchy bit upset when you then commandeer the entire thing and exclude the fandom from any of the process that you said they were going to be part of.

Additionally, it’s rather funny, isn’t it, that what you call doxxing is actually just people upset with how triggering content is being handled, and going to the people who actually wrote the content in order to voice their complaints? It’s almost as if social media exists to allow this communication between reader and author, which is a fundamental thing you’ll learn in any creative writing course, such as the one I’m on currently, wherein you’re actually taught how to respond to social media and to build up your image with your fans.

Homestuck^2 is an ongoing piece of media. We’re well aware that we have a potential to change these uncritical takes and the horrific way they’re being handled if the writers will just listen to genuine criticism. This is, frankly, no different to the people who go to J. K. Rowling’s Twitter to tell her how harmful her transphobic comments are; because if she believes these things, they will work their way into her texts and will perpetuate harmful ideologies.

The literal same thing is happening in Homestuck^2 - again, such as futa Jade, which normalises the point of view that bisexuals are cheaters and completely trivialises what it means to be trans, or Gamzee, which perpetuates just about every anti-black stereotype possible. Media does have a very powerful impact on what people see in the real world. This is why, for instance, positive black characters are so important in media; if they’re always portrayed as villains, then people will see real world black people as villains as the ideology is perpetuated to the point of fact. This is especially true if the people already believe in the ideology.

Fiction is one of the best ways that we can counteract this cycle. If you make a character that they like, and they happen to be positive representation, and then they watch more media that is likewise positive representation, it’s more likely to stick that these positive representations are the actual experiences of minority groups. Also? It’s important TO those minority groups. A black person, especially right now, doesn’t want to see an anti-black stereotype fuck a fascist, engage in sexual assult, and then enact pedophilia - only to die at the hands of a hero and be laughed at for the death. Surprisingly, shit like this is why we need to tell the writers that what they’re doing is harmful, that they’re perpetuating phobic ideologies, and that we need better representation - especially in a comic that is this widely read, and also has a very large minor fanbase.

I shouldn’t need to explain why exposing minors to anti-black stereotypes, transphobic, homophobic, biphobic, abuse apologism, victim blaming, and the trivialisation of rape and sexual assault (especially towards men), might be a federal fucking issue.

So, no, we’re not actually cyberbullying LGBT+ people. We’re trying to hold shitty writers accountable for the incredibly toxic and harmful ideologies they’re forcing into a text that has always been written with critical thought in mind.

I should also point out how funny it is that you’re focusing on how some of the writers are LGBT+ - as if we’re not? I’m trans, I’m gay, and I’m ace. Yes, I can actually be these things and absolutely furious that a trans women is writing some of the most transphobic shit I’ve seen in a while into characters she then claims to be completely free of blame. We can be furious that people within our own community are enforcing negative stereotypes.

Being LGBT+ does not make them free from blame. We cannot give them a free pass to be racist, to be transphobic, to be homophobic, biphobic, to be abuse apologists, just because they’re LGBT+. Not only because that’s just a terrible fucking idea to begin with, but because it also reflects so, so badly on the community as a whole. As if being part of the community instantly means that you can do no wrong? As if there can be no toxicity within our own community, despite the fact that there very much is and it is still an issue to this day?

That is such an issue, one of the biggest issues even shown just in Vriska and the way Kate handles her as a whole - and, once again, is WHY we need to get them looking at this shit more critically. This view that LGBT+ people can do no wrong and cannot be criticised is shoved into Homestuck^2 and, once again, perpetuates the ideology. This isn’t something to be proud of. This isn’t something that’s actually okay.

Also, your point that the writers aren’t nice enough and that we disagree on fictional characters - well, I’ve already been over the second part. But for the first part, I would like to remind you that they aren’t just random LGBT+ people on the internet that we’re going to because we think their takes are a little shitty. They’re actual writers working on a piece of media. They are official content creators.

Again, one of the first things you learn on any creative writing course is that when you become a writer, you gain a significant amount of responsibility for your interactions with the fandom. This is something that you genuinely have to expect, and if you don’t, then, unfortunately you just don’t know what it means to write something that thousands of people have a potential to read. As a writer, it is your responsibility to portray your image online; it is your responsibility to engage with the fans in a meaningful way; it is your responsibility to not cause drama and to listen when criticism is brought up, to have genuine discussion and not to perpetuate hatred - especially towards your own fanbase.

Consider, for instance, the way I’m talking to you right now. This is the sort of tone that someone should take when talking to a fan about genuine criticism. When things are brought up, you go over them step by step, you listen, you write back - you don’t go on a flurry of “fuck yous” to a minor who asked you why your team didn’t post anything about the BLM movement on the official Twitter, and you definitely don’t respond to every comment with genuine criticism with the word “pigshit”. You almost definitely don’t tell your trans masculine and masculine-aligned nonbinary fans that their opinions don’t matter.

As a writer, Kate and the rest of the team have a responsibility with their interactions with their fans. They aren’t just normal fandom voices anymore; they’re official fandom voices, voices that have more weight behind them than anyone else. They’re who people are going to turn to when it comes to anything regarding Homestuck^2. Their words now reflect literally everything about Homestuck^2, the future of Homestuck as an expanded universe, and the opinions of the group as a whole. They have to be careful with what they say. They have to be held to the same standards as industry voices because that’s essentially what they are - especially now that Homestuck is something you pay for.

Also, this isn’t a point of the story not going the way I want. This is a point of many of people in the fandom being upset with how content is being handled, upset that their voices are being shut down, upset that triggering content is being laughed at or used flippantly and without care or respect. This is people being upset that trigger warnings were removed specifically to make the comic unsafe for them as a punishment for daring to say that something was wrong. This is people being upset that a piece of media that used to be so fucking good at portraying sensitive content in a critical light, that used to be so good at normalising LGBT+ identities and healthy representations of those identities, has suddenly turned to this.

The story can go whatever way it wants - and frankly, that’s fine be my. What isn’t fine is that content is being used specifically to hurt and to incite.

And, of course, that final piece; nothing will improve if we don’t say that it’s wrong to begin with. Someone needs to voice the complaints of the fanbase, othrewise these toxic ideologies are going to go unchecked. One of the biggest things I’ve come to understand while making these posts is that a significant portion of the fandom feels isolated in their hurt; they don’t think other people feel the same way they do, and several people have mentioned feeling like they were going crazy because they were upset with things that the text and writers are normalising. It’s so important to make sure that these people know they’re not alone. It’s so important to make sure that our voices are heard. It’s so important to try and create critical discussion and debate over something that so many people still fucking love.

The thing is, I don’t hate Homestuck^2. I actually really, desperately wish I could enjoy it. I wish I could read through it and theorise, could go in depth about how amazing the characters are, could write long and extensive posts on how creative and engaging it is - could even just go on about how interesting the Meat-Candy divide is, and all the points they’re trying to make about canonicity. But I genuinely fucking can’t. There is just so, so much wrong in the text that is completely unrelated to plot and to the overarching Point that makes it impossible for me to read, to want to read, to try to encourage other people to read. They’re things that literally don’t need to be in there, either; stereotypes and toxic ideologies and uncritical or badly handled sensitive topics that could be rectified so, so easily.

Homestuck^2 could be amazing for a lot of the fandom. It could be something that we all rally around the same way we did for the original comic. For for a lot of people, it has ruined their fandom experience, has ruined their desire to want to read anything more to do with Homestuck, and has caused a significant portion of the fandom to just drop out entirely. That in and of itself should be a sign that this isn’t just a little fandom drama. That this is something much bigger and much more serious that, just maybe, needs to be looked into, talked about, understood - and, potentially, changed.

#homestuck^2 #homestuck^2 critical #long post//#ardenttheories #Apologies for how long this is. I wasn't going to finish it until I got every point across #And that ended up being... uh. Several thousand words I suspect #Anonymous

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trashcatsnark · 3 years

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What’s your opinion on Kerry being available to only male V when it’s mentioned in-game that he’s bi (correct me if I’m wrong, I have terrible memory)?? I feel like they should’ve had bi romance options if they were able to implement both gay and straight ones.

Oh anon, oooooh anon. I love you dearly, but you intentionally or not might as well have thrown lit dynamite in my ask box. This discourse has been such a strange beast within this fandom and I have definitely shared some vague thoughts about it before. I’m putting everything under a read more, to help stave off some....harassment or putting it in people’s lives who may not want it.

I still remember I was frankly heartbroken and upset when I first learned Kery wasn’t romanceable by female V when the game first officially came out, but before I played it; River and Panam weren’t even really known about, cause they weren’t talked about much in the promo material, plus Kerry was shown in romance scenes with what looked to be female V. So, if you go back far enough you’ll find me in December cope posting and being the saddest and angriest of beans, because other than Johnny who I knew was likely off the table. He was one of the only characters I wanted to potentially romance. Now, I’m further away from it, have processed my feelings regarding it and am more rational I believe regarding the issue.

But, that being said, a large issue of this sort of discourse is that; no matter what anyone says, someone somwhere is upset. I’ve been insulted, blocked, accused of fetishizing gay men, and so much over my opinion regarding this matter. I’m still currently debating if I even wanna tag this, cause the issue almost always brings negativity to my blog and to me. I have very little interest in being berated for this, so we’ll see how I feel after I finish typing this all out. I’m going to try to go through all my issues, my points, my troubles and feelings about the matter. But, at the end of the day, it is merely my opinion. If someone disagrees, fine, just don’t attack people or berate them over pixels in a video game. Just dont. That’s all I ask. Okay, so I’m gonna divide this into talking points and whatever, now.

Firstly, Kerry is bisexual. Point blank, period. I’ve seen folks try to argue that his wife was like comphet, which if you dont know means that sometimes exclusively homosexual people will try to force themselves into heterosexual relationships because society has conditioned them to believe they have to be straight. While, I’m not negating the fact that this happens, as a bisexual/pansexual (I use the terms interchangeably to define my experience and feelings) person I’ve struggled with it when making sense of my attraction to women. It genuinely is something that happens. This is not the case for Kerry; he doesn’t ever hide his attraction to men, between TTRPG lore and the video game he has had two wives , and he is stated by game developers and TTRPG creator to be bisexual.He is bisexual. Getting that out there, saying other wise, in my opinion is a level of bi erasure. That being said, I do still have my grievances with how the game chose to handle his bisexuality and bisexuality as whole, also imo, the game generally doesn’t seem...to treat players who are attracted to men well…

But before I get into that, I wanna make clear, I feel like Cyberpunk 2077 should have had more romance options for every orientation. If you’re not going to create a player-sexual style of romance; ie where every romanceable character is attracted to the player regardless and wish to focus on each character having their own predetermined sexuality; only have one character for each sexuality is kind of bullshit. If you’re a lesbian player and you’re not into Judy, you get nothing, except a fuck around with Meredith (who I will get to later). You’re a straight woman, but not into River, shit out of luck. You’re a gay man who’s not into Kerry, sucks to suck bud. You’re a straight man who’s not into Panam (kind dont get how you wouldn’t be but who am i to judge), well, you can fuck Meredith… so woooo. Oh also, if you’re not attracted to women, you will still be forced to watch in first person pov a sex scene with Alt and if you want Johnny to like you, you gotta date a girl. Also, all the male love interests will be sidelined mostly…. Hooray… But I digress, either go in with all romance options bi/pan/player sexual, or give more options for romance. Cause now you have the issue of people not getting the partner they hoped for and not liking their only option. Now, you got people trying to make the Judy bi, which is lesbian erasure and lesbophobic, along with people saying Kerry isn’t bi and can’t be with women which is bi erasure and biphobic. Whereas, if you had just gone in from the get go with either more options or a player-sexual romance system; we wouldn’t be here, CDPR.

Okay, so next thing, now that I’ve addressed my issues with the entire romance system and that yes, Kerry is bi. Should Kerry have been able to be romanced as female V? Yes and no. Which sounds vague, but I’m going somewhere. With the current set up of it; Kerry being romanceable to a female V would have unfairly given female players an additional love interest over male players. Female V would have the option of Judy, River, or Kerry. And Male V’s would have the option of Kerry or Panam. That’s not fair. I get that, inherently. CDPR painted themselves into a corner, by only letting there be two romances for “each” gender, one for “each” sexuality, and then using a canonically bi character for one of them. They played themselves, they were either gonna have to give an unfair amount of love interest to one side of their gender system or make a bi character who will only pursue one gender. So, they went for the latter.

Now, some people feel thats fine, because Kerry having a gender preference is fine and its okay for bi people to lean a certain way in regards to gender and its okay for them to not be attracted to people. And that is true. I am a bisexual woman who leans a little more towards men, I get that. However, I have only been given one reason for Kerry’s preference for male V over female V. And it was by a developer of the game who stated that Kerry pursues Male V and not Female V because Male V reminds him more of Johnny… And I hate that. I personally, hate it so deeply, because to me it does a complete disservice to Kerry and V’s relationship and Kerry’s arc. Because even with female V you see him being preoccupied with Johnny and V’s connection to Johnny, then you see him move past that. So, to then state, its still a deciding factor in him romancing V is so wrong to me. Like why???? Why would you do that to people who like Kerry??? Why would you put that in their heads, that Kerry on some level, subconsciously or not, was thinking about Johnny when he decides to romance V. Cause that’s not in the game, in the game you get the vibe he’s moving on past Johnny, like he’s growing, developing, genuinely likes V. But that stupid tweet, just radiates rancid vibes, whyyy???

And then, outside of that nasty tweet, I have to ask what other reason is there for why he prefers male V over fem V. They’re...the same characters essentially, just with different pronouns and body type. They also can look like whatever you want; they’re completely customizable. So, Its based off of what the game associates with gender characteristics and nothing else, meaning, his attraction is rooted solely in their gender and he turns down fem V by virtue of them being a woman and nothing else. Which, yeah, bisexual/pansexual people have preferences but when that preference completely excludes a gender based on nothing but gender…. Uhh????? See my issue????

And I’ve seen people saying, well, its better than CDPR playing into slutty will date anybody bisexual stereotypes. But, the thing is...THEY STILL DO THAT which is what drives me up the god damn wall; they managed to do slutty bi stereotypes and I don’t even get kiss the boy, which again, I get the need for fairness but wow, just wow. And lemme explain.

Meredith is the only character, other than joytoys, whom you can have sex with regardless of gender, body type, etc. She is the only character who shows that she is attracted to V on some level regardless of gender.

She is a one night stand. Her sex animations are the same as joytoys. She treated like a promiscuous love phobic woman. And having characters like that is fine, my own V is promiscuous and love phobic. But, we can acknowledge that in a video game by a AAA game company having the only character who is at least physically attracted to the player no matter what, be nothing but sex fodder...isn’t great bi representation, right?

Oh, and Kerry himself still is a promiscuous bisexual man, he just won’t romance female V because apparently, according to a dev, they don’t remind him of Johnny enough. AND THATS THE DEVS WORDS, NOT MINE, I HATE THAT. Like, Kerry is shown to have people’s lingerie around his house. He’s stated by Johnny to be someone who fucks around. He gets a blowjob from a man in a stairwell.

The two most blatantly canonically bi character in this game are promiscuous; one wont romance V at all and just wants sex, the other will only romance a male V because at worse, he’s comparing them mentally subconsciously to his dead friend and at best….because….reasons…. Literally, from what I understand for Kerry to romance V, they have to have the “male” body type and “male” voice. Meaning, fem V could literally by all appearances look like masc V, body type wise, but because she uses female pronouns and has a feminine sounding voice...no… the stars say no…

In my honest opinion, it is bad bisexual representation and a not so well thought out romance system for a game.

But, that being said, I literally never romance anyone, because I’m a Johnny simp. So, the fuck do I know.

oh god do i tag this.... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

#anon #asks #i can't put these in the main tags or kerry's i cant #im so weary of this #im sorry anon #im a pussy who's grown so weary of discourse #Anonymous

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bexterbex · 4 years

Text

A Soul to Mend His Own | Ch. 26

Warning, if it hasn’t been obvious in the movies there is Nazi symbolism within the First Order. I will expand on this much more throughout the story. If this is something that bothers you, please just exit the story. The author does not condone any Nazi ideals, this is just for fictional uses only.

A Kylo Ren x Modern! Reader in a soulmate au with some canon divergence. —————————————SLOWBURN————————————–

He is already the Supreme leader, searching the universe to find you, his Empress. Your name on his wrist has been the only constant in his life, while you have doubts about his existence and his acceptance of you. He isn’t in the database and why did the name Kylo Ren cover Ben Solo?

MASTERLIST

Chapter 26: Reconditioning and Lack of Information

Lieutenant Mitaka informed you that it was time to go, so you put your laptop away and headed to the hangar. Surprisingly it was not General Pryde waiting for you this morning it was Allegiant General Hux. “Good morning m’lady I will be joining you at the Health Committee today,” he said collapsing his hands behind his back following you into the shuttle.

“Is there a reason why General Pryde isn’t here,” you ask.

“The Supreme Leader thought it was best that his best general would join you today,” replied Hux while strapping himself in.

You received a message on your phone from Kylo, ‘Good morning. I look forward to having dinner with you tonight. It is my wish that you will have a better day today.’

You look back up at the general, “So what you’re saying is someone informed the Supreme Leader to what happened at dinner last night.”

The general lifted his chin and with a neutral face said, “It is my duty to make sure that any time you are not with the Supreme Leader that you are comfortable. Last night you were not comfortable and so I justly informed him of this. In our morning meeting, he informed me that I am to escort you today and that General Pryde is to remain on board the ship this morning. He also believes that some of the next few health committee meetings you will need proper assistance as the health officials from your planet have stepped down. I am also the most informed person as to where your education on the First Order is thus far.”

You shook your head slightly at this. So you were being watched by Hux, he was informing Kylo about you, seemingly behind your back. But why would your education come into play? You were discussing your planet, not the First Order. You just hummed in response. Your mood was not better, in fact, it soured from when you woke up this morning.

You arrived at the White House and entered the meeting room. All of the doctors and nurses seemed to sit up straighter in the presence of General Hux.

“Allegiant General Hux, it is an honor to have you join us for this morning’s meeting,” said Dr. Koroban.

“Thank you, Dr. Koroban. I will be assisting Lady Ren in the negotiations as we are now without help from her own planet. General Pryde will remain on board the Steadfast for the time being,” replied Hux who sat next to you, whereas General Pryde normally sat opposite of you.

“On our agenda today I believe it is best to start with the topic of exercise,” said Dr. Koroban.

“As we have discussed in the past there are many ‘first world’ countries that do not take care of themselves health-wise as they should. There is a large population that has a sedentary lifestyle. I believe your planet m’lady uses the term office jobs,” said Dr. Dabrini.

“Yes, currently it is recommended that people receive at least 30 minutes of exercise a day and at least 10,000 steps,” you reply.

“One course of action that we may want to debate is broadcasting morning exercise videos to the citizens. Nothing too strenuous, something like light aerobics. Stretching and basic exercises,” replied Dr. Dabrini.

“When you say broadcasted you do you mean something like public television? Because many local public stations in ‘first world’ countries already do something similar. Mostly for those who are of retirement age,” you ask.

“No m’lady broadcast as in mandatory. We do it on all First Order planets. We have found it to be very effective,” replied Dr. Dabrini.

You knew there were daily morale-boosting videos that were standard in First Order occupied planets, but you were not comfortable with something like this. Mandatory exercises for everyone on the planet? Flashbacks from world history popped into your head, specifically the topic of the Hitler Youth.

“You realize my planet has not been affected by the influence of the Empire like many of your other planets? Our people, for the most part, are used to their freedom or at least the ideals of freedom. While this might be something that some people might like, the majority of the planet will not stand for this invasion of privacy,” you respond.

An officer who you have noticed in the meetings but has never spoken up before says, “Privacy is something you give up for the good of the First Order m’lady. You only gain it back once you have served the First Order well enough. It is a privilege to be earned.”

You turned to look at the general trying to watch his face in response. “This isn’t something you have told me. You told me you give up personal desires. On this planet privacy isn’t a personal desire, it is viewed as a right.” His face revealed nothing, he just stared at the wall on the opposite side of the room.

The officer spoke again, “Allegiant General sir, was it not your father Commandant Brendol Hux who said, War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength when talking about those who have not learned of the ways of the First Order?”

“Yes, it was,” responded Hux who now has looked over at the officer his face still neutral or rather emotionless.

“If the memo that was sent out this morning was correct, then 85 percent of Earth’s population has already been registered and subsequently has effectively been taking their education sources. And with the 9 percent predicted to register today and 4 percent tomorrow then the majority of this planet has given up on their privacy already. Making that argument invalid,” responded the officer.

Hux’s demeanor changed at this, “Lieutenant Rodinon need I remind you that this is Lady Ren’s planet that you are speaking of. While you have been born and raised in the First Order, she has not. If you wish to remain in your position I suggest you remember who you are speaking to.” The was heat in his voice but the lieutenant did not back down.

“So has she not been receiving the enlightenment materials? She would know this by now if she were. What use will she be to the First Order if she constantly questions our motives,” asked the lieutenant who seemed to want to fight with the general.

“She is being tutored by me, lieutenant. I should not have to tell you that the Supreme Leader has asked that she receives a different education than others on her planet. Afterall she will one day be the empress of our empire. Apparently, I need to remind you of that fact since you have seemingly ignored it in your debriefings. Captain Pyre,” called the general to your usual golden guard. Who entered the room with two other storm troopers guarding the now open door. “Please have one of your men escort Lieutenant Rodinon for reconditioning. Make sure they tell Colonel Datoo that he should not only review the ‘Character Guidance Program’ but also the memos regarding Lady Ren’s status.”

With this, you saw that there was fear laced in the lieutenant’s eyes as he was escorted by the armed stormtroopers out of the room. Still facing the general you asked, “do you care to explain what just happened?”

His face emotionless once more, except for the muscle that you could see straining in his jaw. “Dr. Koroban if you would excuse Lady Ren and myself for the moment. I ask that you do not resume this committee until instructed to do so, we should be back shortly.” With that he gestured for you to stand and follow him, you made your way down to the familiar red sitting room to which you two were left alone in.

With his hands behind his back, he began to pace while explaining, “It is under orders from the Supreme Leader that you do not receive the same enlightenment as the rest of your people. For many reasons, as you are to know more about the galaxy and the meaning behind the First Order that you will one day fully help run. And the civilian enlightenment program has some drawbacks once you have received the first 3 lessons.”

“What drawbacks exactly?” There was now a present irritable tone in your voice.

“They tend to make citizens more docile to the First Order presence. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but the Supreme Leader has expressed the desire that he would not like that effect to happen to you.”

“So it is brainwashing them. You are brainwashing my planet into docile creatures. And Kylo approved this!”

At the mention of Kylo’s name, you saw one of the general’s eyebrows minutely raise. “We are not brainwashing them m’lady we are merely enlightening them to the path of order. They see how the First Order can help them and they accept it.”

You shook your head. “I don’t believe you. And he wants me to be not docile, but yet complicit because I don’t know what’s happening to my own people!”

“M’lady I believe this is something he can explain to you best,” the general’s arms were now in front of him in an almost surrendering position.

“But what about the reconditioning that you sent the lieutenant to? What is reconditioning?” You could feel the anger building and yet dissipating within you.

“That is something of a requirement in our officer and enlisted core. As you could see the lieutenant was acting in a disrespectful manner towards me and yourself. It is merely a relearning of the rules and regulations that they seemed to forget or deemed to ignore. I can show you it sometime if you wish m’lady.”

Your anger still hadn’t fully dissipated, “You also said that I would be an empress. That I would one day run the First Order. I have no desire to do this. I did not sign up to rule a military regime let alone a galaxy!”

The general had fully paused and turned to face you. His hands were behind his back and a stern look on his face, “My lady I do not appreciate you undo criticism towards me. This is something you should discuss with the Supreme Leader if you have an issue, not myself. Might I suggest that we return to the meeting? We can switch up the topic to one you would rather discuss and leave any other topic until you have had a discussion with the Supreme Leader.”

You relented. He was still part of the problem, being a part of the First Order and all, but he was not who you were directly angry with. He was right, Kylo really hasn’t told you much as he rather preferred to leave that to someone else, like Hux. You nodded to him and followed him back to the conference room. You knew that Kylo would have some explaining to do tonight at dinner. For now, you tried to focus back on the task at hand.

“I believe we should change subjects for now. Lady Ren is there a topic you would like to discuss,” asked the general.

“The topic of sickness prevention. I think we should right now focus on the citizen and not any major procedural items.”

“So you would like a campaign again for citizens to see talking about the basics of sickness prevention, and not any policies that any institution would put in place. Is this correct m’lady,” asked Dr. Koroban.

“Yes, although it may need to be discussed. There is also the matter of sick leave time as many who are sick must return to work sooner than they would like for things like the common cold. But yes I think a campaign, like the one for hygiene, should be done to prevent contagious sicknesses.”

“Something along the lines of washing your hands, don’t touch your face, stay home when sick, and don’t share food or drink with others? Common sense items but things that should be readdressed,” asked Dr. Dabrini.

“Yes. These were all things I learned in school but upon entering the workforce it seems like it is something people have either forgotten or just ignore.”

“I can have Petty Officer Tanau look into that, you have already done so much m’lady,” said Dr. Koroban.

“That’s fine, but could she send me what she finds so I can review it before it gets sent to the Supremacy for final inspection?”

“Yes, Lady Ren. I think that would be most wise. I’ll let Lieutenant Mitaka know when it is done as to not to disturb you. But I think we should wrap up this meeting for today,” with that Dr. Koroban dismissed everyone.

“My lady would you like to join me and Admiral Frantis Griss for lunch in the officer’s lounge,” asked Hux.

“Only if you allow Lieutenant Mitaka to join us.”

The general made eye contact with the lieutenant and noded. You were then off back to the shuttle to take your lunch.

#kylo ren #kylo ren x reader #kylo ren imagine #kylo x reader #kylo x you #star wars #first order #star wars imagine #Star wars soulmate au #sw first order imagine #star wars first order #first order propaganda #a soul to mend his own #hold onto your butts its about to get more spicy #I hope you liked this chapter

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