#also if you happen to see the url but it was not given to you specifically pls do not follow
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Firefox (for Windows) folks: A Way To Get Back Tabs From A Previously Closed Session
Normally I don't have hundreds of tabs open in a given session, but sometimes I might have ten or twenty or thirty of them open. I use them as a casual to-do list, shutting them down when complete. (shrug)
Sometimes, though—and I bet some of you have been there—Firefox will close down incorrectly, or close down secondary to an update, and all those tabs will be GONE when it restarts. ARGH!! —because these closed sessions aren't easily recoverable by using control-shift-T or whatever the command is.
This happened to me just this last week-and-a-bit. I closed the desk machine down before going to FinnCon, and when I brought it up again... zero tabs. Much cursing ensued.
But then I went hunting for a way to get tabs back from a previously closed session... and WTF? I found one.
So here's what you do. (NB: This presupposes you're working in Windows. I have yet to see whether the file structure we get into below works in a Mac. More on this later.)
First of all, bring Firefox up and load this page. This is a lovely tool called Session History Scrounger. (And all praise to Jefferson Scher who created it.) Its job is to parse the files in which Firefox stores session info—including info about your open and recently closed tabs.
Now: use the search box in W10 or W11 and enter the following:
%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
It'll take you to a directory where you'll see files with names like these.
Find the one that was most recently updated and doubleclick on it. You'll see a directory structure something like the following:
Doubleclick into the sessionstore-backups folder. (Save the contents of this whole directory to some other safe spot: maybe your documents folder or desktop.)
Inside that directory you'll find files that look like this:
You may also find files that look like "recovery.jsonlz4" or "recovery.baklz4", which would be the windows and tabs in your current session, or a backup copy of those windows/tabs, respectively.
What you may have most interest in, though, is previous sessions—and in my case, the one that was running on 21 June, which I knew (though it was an upgrade, as you can see by the name) would have the tabs I was concerned about having lost.
What you then do with that compressed .json file (the "lz4" signals the compression Firefox is using) is drag it onto the empty box on the Scrounger page: or else use the "browse" button in the page's right hand column to find and load it. Then hit the page's "Scrounge URLs" button and let the page process the file. (NB: this process stays "within the page" and does not go to the network.)
It'll then produce you a list of all the tabs you had open, as well as those you'd recently closed. (Here's a bit of mine so you know what it looks like...)
...And that's it! Click on the URLs to bring them up and save them as bookmarks, or just open them as tabs so they register as "new" in your history. Or whatever.
So. If you're a Firefox user and feel inclined, please reblog this so others can find it. (And also, if it helps you and you should feel moved to do so... oh, I don't know: buy me a coffee.)
Cheers, all!
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Doᥴtor's Assιstᥲᥒt
Summary: The Doctor needs an extra hand perfecting a new aphrodisiac.
...Well, you wont be using your hands, but that's besides the point
𓆩⟡𓆪 Pairing: Fem!Reader x Geb(Yunho)
𓆩⟡𓆪Genres/Aus: Against the Tide Verse (its an Au in an AU-), Non Idolverse, Smut
𓆩⟡𓆪Tws: Swearing
𓆩⟡𓆪Sws: (Everything is Safe, Sane, and Consensual), Consentacle Tentacles (Vines), Bondage, Fingering, Consensual Sexual Experimentation, Aphrodisiac Use, Fingering, Objectification
𓆩⟡𓆪Rating: Explicit/Mature (18+)
𓆩⟡𓆪WC: 800+
𓆩⟡𓆪A/n: For any of my non AtTiny who want to know who Geb is and how he’s tied to Yunho…idk maybe read a bombastic in progress work of art that explains it all cough cough.
This was a popcorn commission from the lovely @atiny-dazzlinglight that I finished a bit ago but life happened and I didn’t post it till now. Sorry for the hold up and I hope you and all my AtTiny can enjoy~
𓆩⟡𓆪AO3| Taglist Form (Please make sure your urls are updated and able to actually be tagged) | Commission Sheet𓆩⟡𓆪
𓆩⟡𓆪Network Ping- @kwritersworld| @k-vanity | @cultofdionysusnet𓆩⟡𓆪
𓆩⟡𓆪©atiny-piratequeen. do not repost, translate, or use my works𓆩⟡𓆪
⭑･ﾟﾟ･*:༅｡.｡༅:*ﾟ:*:✼✿ ✿✼:*ﾟ:༅｡.｡༅:*･
“F-fuck, oh my God-”
“My, that’s an interesting reaction.”
Had it had been any other day, you might have been able to conjure up a bratty response. Instead, you look up through the tears blurring your vision, lips quivering as you angle your head up for a kiss.
“I see the purple one has a stronger effect on you than the red one from earlier did. Poor thing, you look like you’ll melt right out of my lap if I weren’t holding onto you.” Geb mused, his vines writhing along your skin, pulling and tugging you close to his chest as he angled his head down.
You whimper, a sliver of pink slipping past your parted lips as you lick at his own, successfully enticing him to kiss you.
“More.” You beg as large hands find their home on your waist, caressing and mapping out every curve, tracing every stretch mark, all while stunning ice-colored eyes remain fixed on your face.
“I wonder what would happen if we mixed them. The warmth of the Flame Lily mixing with the stimulant enhancement in the Clivia-”He went off mumbling under his breath, humming as he wrapped his arms around you, idly rubbing your clit in circles as he talked himself through formulas for more nectar combinations.
He was off in his own world, truly and completely, and it made goosebumps rise on your skin to both be doted on, and spoiled, but also to feel like you were just another object in the room as the good doctor‘s fingers pinched and rolled your clit idly.
“Please-”
“Mm, maybe if I increase the dose by a few grams, it’ll last a bit longer, I don’t like how easily the other dose wore off.” He mused, resting his chin on your shoulder. You squirm, clenching on nothing, legs twitching in his vines. He didn’t say a word to you, muttering in English and another language you didn’t understand, sorting through his thoughts.
You open your mouth to whine again, but a gasp of surprise tumbles through instead. His hand had worked its way lower as he distracted himself-and apparently you-with his mutters. Warm, slightly calloused fingers curl over your thigh, massaging for a moment, before working between your lower lips.
You jolt the moment he touches you. It seemed the purple concoction he’d given you minutes ago had left you much more sensitive than you’d expected.
The vines twitch and contrast around you, tightening and keeping your legs spread as those long fingers push into you, and you’re flustered by the way his attention snapped into focus at the whorish moan the action drew from your lips.
“O h~ It seems like I found the perfect mix, did I?” He purred, kissing up the base of your neck and smiling as he worked those fingers in and out of you, scissoring them apart as you arch your back.
You’re almost embarrassed at how wet you are, arching your back and gasping pathetically as he curled his fingers up.
“My, this is wonderful news. I believe I’ve found the perfect balance for this.” His voice rumbles through your head, and it's now that you realize his fingers were coated in the aphrodisiac he’d been muttering out. You shakily glance down, cheeks flushed as the pretty liquid falls to the floor at his feet as you remain held up by the vines, joining droplets of your essence onto the floor.
Your eyes flutter as you clench around his fingers. Goosebumps rise on your skin as he alternated between thrusting his fingers in with deep, near methodical motions, curling and searching for that delightful spot, and quick, off-beat thrusts.
“Geb~ G-geb fuck, yes yes yes nn-” its now you realize you’re drooling, your arms being pulled behind your back by his vines as a slow, deceptively calm smile stretched across his face.
“You can make a mess. We’re only just getting started.” He promised, kissing you and pushing more of the sweet-tasting nectar onto your tongue through it. You feel your body jerk and tighten, kissing him sloppily as you make a mess of his fingers, hand, and the floor.
His eyes slowly drift down to the puddle that’s left behind before he ran his hand over the top of your head, kissing the tears that had fallen from the corner of your eye away.
“Are you still alright, my love?” He rumbled, his gentle voice bouncing around in your head. You nod, body buzzing in delight as you look at him, whining in offense when he pulled those long fingers out of you.
“No-”
“-ah ah.” He quiets you, holding your gaze as he ran his tongue over the mixture of nectar and cum on his fingers.
“Like I said. We’re only j u s t getting started. Catch your breath. I still have many more to try with you.”
⭑･ﾟﾟ･*:༅｡.｡༅:*ﾟ:*:✼✿ Tag List ✿✼:*ﾟ:༅｡.｡༅:*･
@kimnamshiks @atiny-dazzlinglight @angel0taiyo @jacksons-goddess-gaia @gettin-a-lil-hanse @yunhofingers @seomisaho @ateezwonderland @smallfrye @spooo00oky @shymexican @stardragongalaxy @horizonmoonfics @delphinium3000 @xuxibelle @twistedsiren @soluvcore @dreamyinception-world @justatiredhuman @serialee @yungiland @shingisimp @drunk-on-hwa @perfectlysane24 @asyamonet22 @bangteezbaby @universe-sighted @skmoonchild @babiebumm @jess-1404 @violetwinters @xlilehx @ateezswonderland
#fie writes#kwritersworldnet#cultofdionysusnet#k-vanity#against the tide#AtT#geb oneshot#jeong yunho smut#jeong yunho x reader#yunho x reader#kpop mythology au#yunho smut#AtT smut#kpop fanfic#ateez fanfic#ateez smut
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New year, new branding!
Well folks, here we go! Big announcement time! After a lot of thinking over the last year about myself and my art and writing and where I want to go with everything, I have decided to stop operating under just my name and rebrand everything under a shiny new umbrella! The name Aspen & Copper is inspired by my favorite trees and the place I grew up, which has copper in the name. And, as you can see, it's a very outdoorsy theme with topography and mountains and camping and such. I'm stupidly in love with it, honestly.
As for WHY this is happening, I needed a more clear dividing line between who I am and what I do, and operating under just my name wasn't allowing me to do that. But a big rebrand like this is no easy undertaking! It is, in fact, still in progress and probably will be for awhile yet given how busy I am. But the new website is officially done, and that was one of the biggest pieces. If you have time, please go poke around the new site. I'm quite proud of it!
What this means for YOU, my lovely subscribers and fans, is the following:
My books will still be by Katy L. Wood, but they'll be under the umbrella of Aspen & Copper.
I'm in the process of switching most of my socials over to Aspen & Copper. (More info on Tumblr specifically here in a sec.)
I'm retiring my old email address and switching over to [email protected], so if you want to reach out to me about projects or anything else, that's the spot to do it! The old email still works, but if you reach out to that one you'll be redirected to the new one.
The www.Katy-L-Wood.com URL will now redirect to www.AspenAndCopper.com.
That's about it! All my projects are still going ahead as normal, just with this lovely little new brand leading the way.
What this means for tumblr specifically:
This blog isn't going anywhere! But I do have a new blog, @aspenandcopper, (which isn't fully set up yet, shhhh...) which will eventually JUST be my art and writing so there's a (somewhat) cleaner way to navigate all that stuff just on Tumblr itself.
Also, I am toying with changing the name of this blog at some point, but I haven't found anything I like enough yet so for now it shall stay my name. Don't worry, if I change it I'll make sure to make the change very clear to everyone!
Newsletter:
I swear I'm going to get better about sending out my newsletter. 😭 To make it more fun for anyone who signs up, I'll be including an exclusive look at new art and writing stuff in each one! The most recent one had a sneak peak of a little doodle of Royal and Shiloh that I'm cleaning up and finishing, and a piece with Dustin and Vivian I've been working on for awhile! Plus a fun snippet from my book, Camp Daze, which is (finally) launching on Kickstarter very, very soon!
You can sign up for the newsletter super easy on my website.
Speaking of Kickstarter
Like I said above, Camp Daze is FINALLY launching soon, so be sure to sign up to be notified about the launch. More info about that coming soon.
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YouTube Downloads through VLC: Step by Step
So this guide to easily downloading off YouTube is super helpful, but there's enough important information hidden in the reblogs that (with the permission of OP @queriesntheories ) I'm doing a more step-by-step version.
Please note: these downloads will be in YouTube quality. My test video download is coming through at 360p, even though the video I'm starting from is set to 720p. They're legible, but they won't look great on a TV. For high visual quality, you'll want to seek out other methods.
This guide is written for Windows 10, since that's what I can test on. It's been tested on Firefox, Chrome, and Edge (which is a Chromium browser, so the method should work in other Chromium browsers too). So far, I haven't tracked down a way to use this download method on mobile.
BASIC KNOWLEDGE:
I'll try to make this pretty beginner-friendly, but I am going to assume that you know how to right-click, double-click, navigate right-click menus, click-and-drag, use keyboard shortcuts that are given to you (for example, how to use Ctrl+A), and get the URL for any YouTube video you want to download.
You'll also need to download and install one or more programs off the internet using .exe files, if you don't have these programs already. Please make sure you know how to use your firewall and antivirus to keep your computer safe, and google any names you don't recognize before allowing permission for each file. You can also hover your mouse over each link in this post to make sure it goes where I'm saying it will go.
YOU WILL NEED:
A computer where you have admin permissions. This is usually a computer you own or have the main login on. Sadly, a shared computer like the ones at universities and libraries will not work for this.
Enough space on your computer to install the programs listed below, if you don't have them already, and some space to save your downloaded files to. The files are pretty small because of the low video quality.
A simple text editing program. Notepad is the one that usually comes with Windows. If it lets you change fonts, it's too fancy. A notepad designed specifically to edit program code without messing it up is Notepad++, which you can download here.
A web browser. I use Firefox, which you can get here. Chrome or other Chrome-based browsers should also work. I haven't tested in Safari.
An Internet connection fast enough to load YouTube. A little buffering is fine. The downloads will happen much faster than streaming the entire video, unless your internet is very slow.
VLC Media Player, which you can get here. It's a free player for music and videos, available on Windows, Android, and iOS, and it can play almost any format of video or audio file that exists. We'll be using it for one of the central steps in this process.
If you want just the audio from a YouTube video, you'll need to download the video and then use a different program to copy the audio into its own file. At the end of this post, I'll have instructions for that, using a free sound editor called Audacity.
SETUP TO DOWNLOAD:
The first time you do this, you'll need to set VLC up so it can do what you want. This is where we need Notepad and admin permissions. You shouldn't need to repeat this process unless you're reinstalling VLC.
If VLC is open, close it.
In your computer's file system (File Explorer on Windows), go to C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\lua\playlist
If you're not familiar with File Explorer, you'll start by clicking where the left side shows (C:). Then in the big main window, you'll double-click each folder that you see in the file path, in order - so in this case, when you're in C: you need to look for Program Files. (There will be two of them. You want the one without the x86 at the end.) Then inside Program Files you're looking for VideoLAN, and so forth through the whole path.
Once you're inside the "playlist" folder, you'll see a lot of files ending in .luac - they're in alphabetical order. The one you want to edit is youtube.luac which is probably at the bottom.
You can't edit youtube.luac while it's in this folder. Click and drag it out of the playlist folder to somewhere else you can find it - your desktop, for instance. Your computer will ask for admin permission to move the file. Click the "Continue" button with the blue and yellow shield.
Now that the file is moved, double-click on it. The Microsoft Store will want you to search for a program to open the .luac file type with. Don't go to the Microsoft Store, just click on the blue "More apps" below that option, and you'll get a list that should include your notepad program. Click on it and click OK.
The file that opens up will be absolutely full of gibberish-looking code. That's fine. Use Ctrl+A to select everything inside the file, then Backspace or Delete to delete it. Don't close the file yet.
In your web browser, go to https://github.com/videolan/vlc/blob/master/share/lua/playlist/youtube.lua
Click in the part of the Github page that has a bunch of mostly blue code in it. Use Ctrl+A to select all of that code, Ctrl+C to copy it, then come back into your empty youtube.luac file and use Ctrl+P to paste the whole chunk of code into the file.
Save the youtube.luac file (Ctrl+S or File > Save in the upper left corner of the notepad program), then close the notepad program.
Drag youtube.luac back into the folder it came from. The computer will ask for admin permission again. Give it permission.
Now you can close Github and Notepad. You're ready to start downloading!
HOW TO DOWNLOAD:
First, get your YouTube link. It should look something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abc123DEF45 If it's longer, you can delete any extra stuff after that first set of letters and numbers, but you don't have to.
Now open VLC. Go to Media > Open Network Stream and paste your YouTube link into the box that comes up. Click Play. Wait until the video starts to play, then you can pause it if you want so it's not distracting you during the next part.
(If nothing happens, you probably forgot to put youtube.luac back. coughs)
In VLC, go to Tools > Codec Information. At the bottom of the pop-up box you'll see a long string of gibberish in a box labeled Location. Click in the Location box. It won't look like it clicked properly, but when you press Ctrl+A, it should select all. Use Ctrl+C to copy it.
In your web browser, paste the entire string of gibberish and hit Enter. Your same YouTube video should come up, but without any of the YouTube interface around it. This is where the video actually lives on YouTube's servers. YouTube really, really doesn't like to show this address to humans, which is why we needed VLC to be like "hi I'm just a little video player" and get it for us.
Because, if you're looking at the place where the video actually lives, you can just right-click-download it, and YouTube can't stop you.
Right-click on your video. Choose "Save Video As". Choose where to save it to - I use my computer's built-in Music or Videos folders.
Give it a name other than "videoplayback" so you can tell it apart from your other downloads.
The "Save As Type" dropdown under the Name field will probably default to MP4. This is a good versatile video format that most video players can read. If you need a different format, you can convert the download later. (That's a whole other post topic.)
Click Save, and your video will start downloading! It may take a few minutes to fully download, depending on your video length and internet speed. Once the download finishes, congratulations! You have successfully downloaded a YouTube video!
If you'd like to convert your video into a (usually smaller) audio file, so you can put it on a music player, it's time to install and set up Audacity.
INSTALLING AUDACITY (first time setup for audio file conversion):
You can get Audacity here. If you're following along on Windows 10, choose the "64-bit installer (recommended)". Run the installer, but don't open Audacity at the end, or if it does open, close it again.
On that same Audacity download page, scroll down past the installers to the "Additional resources". You'll see a box with a "Link to FFmpeg library". This is where you'll get the add-on program that will let Audacity open your downloaded YouTube video, so you can tell it to make an audio-only file. The link will take you to this page on the Audacity support wiki, which will always have the most up-to-date information on how to install the file you need here.
From that wiki page, follow the link to the actual FFmpeg library. If you're not using an adblocker, be careful not to click on any of the ads showing you download buttons. The link you want is bold blue text under "FFmpeg Installer for Audacity 3.2 and later", and looks something like this: "FFmpeg_5.0.0_for_Audacity_on_Windows_x86.exe". Download and install it. Without this, Audacity won't be able to open MP4 files downloaded from YouTube.
CONVERTING TO AUDIO:
Make sure you know where to find your downloaded MP4 video file. This file won't go away when you "convert" it - you'll just be copying the audio into a different file.
Open up Audacity.
Go to File > Open and choose your video file.
You'll get one of those soundwave file displays you see in recording booths and so forth. Audacity is a good solid choice if you want to teach yourself to edit soundwave files, but that's not what we're here for right now.
Go to File > Export Audio. The File Name will populate to match the video's filename, but you can edit it if you want.
Click the Browse button next to the Folder box, and choose where to save your new audio file to. I use my computer's Music folder.
You can click on the Format dropdown and choose an audio file type. If you're not sure which one you want, MP3 is the most common and versatile.
If you'd like your music player to know the artist, album, and so forth for your audio track, you can edit that later in File Manager, or you can put the information in with the Edit Metadata button here. You can leave any of the slots blank, for instance if you don't have a track number because it's a YouTube video.
Once everything is set up, click Export, and your new audio file will be created. Go forth and listen!
#reference#vlc media player#youtube downloader#youtube#uh what other tags should i use idk#how to internet#long post
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a lesson on style - vi . [ ljn | njm ]
pt. i, pt. ii, pt. iii, pt. iv., pt. v, pt. vi
you’ve always been content with being associated with one word and one word only: average. average in looks, academics and social skills, you’re just looking to graduate high school without causing disasters you’ll have to live with until you kick the bucket. when you’re paired with school king lee jeno for the semester-long physics thesis, you can’t help but think the entire situation has pretty much set itself up for failure. that is, until you strike a deal with your partner.
alternatively: an au tale involving lessons in popularity, eleven consecutive B minuses, a secretly sensitive, chess-loving jock, and an amateur sex tape.
pairing: jeno x fem!reader, jaemin x fem!reader
verse: high school au { jocks!nomin ft. a super cute whiny ap physics genius renjun }
rating: M
chapter warnings: none
word count: 8.1k
author’s note: this was actually supposed to go on for a lot longer but... it might've reached a solid 13-15k and i just thought it would be better to split it into half-ish, so nothing major happens, although i definitely enjoyed yet another mc/jaemin real talk session that i also hope you enjoy! :^)
tagging: @justalildumpling, @spiderrenjunfics (no longer available, please give me your new url if you're still interested!)
You think now is as good a time as any for you to say something that’ll easily impact the trajectory of your life forever; after all, Jeno’s essentially given you the floor after such a strange and honestly shocking turn of events. You’re aware of the fact that his thumb is still traveling across your cheek, more idle as an action than anything else, but you seem to be experiencing the feeling as something closer to an out-of-body experience than an actual first-hand one; the tingles they send to your heart are weird and blurry, like your body can’t process his touch well enough to understand it fully. You suppose it’s because of your confusion at what he’s saying, which leads to your second option: asking him what he means.
There’s little to interpret at face value, but what his words do is essentially unlock a torrent of other weird questions in your head. For instance: how long had he known that you liked him? Had he known this entire time? Did something you did make it painfully obvious? If he wants you to like him — and, as he says, only him — does that mean he’s essentially accepting your feelings? Does this mean… he likes you back?
You assume this is one of those moments where, because your mind is going a million miles a minute, a lot of time feels like it’s passed even though it’s just been a small handful of seconds. This assumption is quickly broken by Jeno’s expression of concern.
“_______________? Say… something.”
“Um,” you start before you can even figure out what you want to say. The easiest answer comes to mind: It’s always only been you. But that’s weird, and this isn’t a 90’s Western movie, and if it were, you certainly wouldn’t be the eloquent main romance interest, even if Jeno’s gaze could easily fool you into thinking that. You think about making a joke, but you’re befuddled and also fresh from tears that — if Jeno’s abrupt story is actually true — were totally useless and unfounded in nature.
Also, you’re really not that funny to begin with.
“I just…” you try again, and his eyebrows raise slightly in anticipation for your next words. Nothing else comes out after a few seconds, though, and he realizes this is just another false start, his hand falling onto your shoulder (maybe he’s tired of trying to coax it out of you with the thumb-on-cheek method, which admittedly had you clamping up more than anything else).
“You can just tell me how you really f—”
“I think I have to go.”
No. No. Why would you say that? The surprise on his face quickly morphs into something that looks almost crestfallen, an expression you’d never imagine seeing on bright, confident Lee Jeno, let alone ever be the cause of. His hand slips from your shoulder quickly, like he’s now worried touching you will electrocute him.
“Oh. I’m sorry — I didn’t… mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“I’m… I’m not.” You’re not, are you? “Maybe a little, but it isn’t really you —”
“Something I said, then—?”
“No, I…” Your fingernail digs into the pad of your thumb, with you trying to use the sting of the pain to jolt you out of this nervous, inarticulate state. “I just don’t think… I have anything of value to say right now.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because…” Grappling for words is like trying to break through the surface of water; you’re almost there, but somehow you’re still floundering, and that only seems to be making it much worse. “Because I never really thought about what I’d do… if you really found out I liked you.”
When you say it, it suddenly makes sense. For some reason, you’d always lived your life shuttling between point A (liking Jeno quietly in the comfort of your own mind palace) and point Z (fantasizing about your life with him where you live in a quaint townhouse with a cute mailbox and three kids), but you’d never really given much thought to all the points in between, especially not one that contains a scenario in which he’d find out and seemingly be okay with it, which, based on the current conversation, somehow seems like a reasonable thing to assume about him.
You’ve always wanted it — him knowing, him accepting it, maybe even him liking you back — but it kind of felt like, deep down, you hadn’t really believed it would ever happen.
And you were kind of content with that, because you wouldn’t ever really have to deal with the complications of it. Right now, you’re feeling unprepared and a little exposed, weirdly vulnerable to his gaze. It once again, for the hundredth time tonight, it seems, triggers some kind of flight instinct in you that has you looking anywhere but at him all of a sudden.
“You can think about it… now,” he suggests carefully. Being put on the spot doesn’t really ever bring out the best in you — a fact that might be known to people who were actually paying attention to your failed impromptu speech about whale hunting in your sixth grade English class — so you just pretend that the silhouette of Jaemin’s front yard tree is supremely interesting to you all of a sudden, never mind the fact that it’s about a few inches from Jeno’s ear from your vantage point. You don’t really want to see his expression right now, especially if that means it’ll only fluster you back into speechlessness.
“I don’t really know if I can,” you admit. From your peripheral vision, you see what seems like a flash of discomfort pass across Jeno’s face; you’re sure you just imagined it, considering you’ve never imagined cool, aloof, king of your heart Lee Jeno as exuding anything other than utmost confidence. Still, his next words do make you question that notion twice over.
“Did I… misunderstand something? Is it that you don’t have feelings for me?”
“No, I… you know. I… yeah, I do, but I just —”
“You’re seeing someone else?”
“No,” you say more fiercely, and for a brief moment, you’re so appalled at the thought that your eyes flicker to his, which ends up being a terrible mistake because the confusion in his gaze is so profound that the guilt in you swells tenfold.
“Because I thought… maybe the reason Renjun and you —”
“He’s — honest to God — he’s just my friend.”
“And Jaemin is…?”
“My… next door neighbor?” You blink rapidly at the lights still coming from his house, wondering now what Jaemin has to do with all of this in the first place. For someone who seems like he would be extremely uninvolved in this general progress of events, he seems to crop up time and again, weirdly always around when you need someone. Maybe it’s a neighbor thing, or maybe he’s a little nosier than you thought. But thinking about another element in this situation is starting to give you a headache, and you’re way past the time you’re usually already in bed avoiding homework and watching shitty dating reality shows instead. “I don’t really understand what he has to do with this either. I just don’t think I’m prepared to have this conversation at all.”
“But you like me, don’t you?”
It’s weird, actually, now that you think about it — why does he have to confirm the fact time and time again? It’s almost like he’s worried, although you can’t imagine why he would be. More than anything, you’d kind of assumed that he would find that information pretty repellent, but with the way he’s asking in earnest, it almost seems like he wants to keep the knowledge of that like a talisman.
“I do,” you admit, mostly because it’s out in the open, but also partially because you’ve made the mistake of looking at him again, and you start wondering how he could even wonder when everyone seems to like him (you, perhaps, to a somewhat unhealthy degree).
“More than them?”
“I—” Your brow furrows, another wave of confusion washing over you. But his eyes are much too honest in their questioning, and you speak before anything else can come to mind. “More than anyone, Jeno.”
What looks oddly like relief settles on his face, and you notice only then that his shoulders have been tensed up because he seems to relax them all of a sudden. “Oh. Good. Great. So listen, now that we’re on the same page, I—”
Jeno’s interrupted by one of the guys in a university sweater calling out to him from across the two lawns, voice booming to a degree that sets off a few annoyed dogs in your area. Jeno raises a hand to signal him to wait, his mouth still open on whatever words he wanted to complete his sentence with, but the sounds he was trying to make quickly die into silence anyway, drowned out by a huge crash inside Jaemin’s house.
You’re not entirely certain of what he wants to say — on the bright side, he could have been ramping up to a point that could easily make all your dreams from middle school to now a perfect reality, but he also could have been setting you up for some kind of grand, embarrassing failure — not by his design or by malice but just by the pointing out of the fact that you two lead different lives and things would likely never work out, anyway, but it’d be cool that you liked him in your own time, and he’d allow it as long as you didn’t get drool all over his notebook in class.
Either way, you don’t think now, with a bunch of inebriated college people shouting profanities on Jaemin’s lawn and a gaggle of high school kids panicking about what sounds to be a broken table and a whole bunch of pizza on the floor, is the best time to be processing those things.
“I actually,” Jeno turns his gaze to you again, strangely alert, like you’d just whistled for a dog’s attention. You’ve never seen him like this, and it’s weird to think that, at this awkward moment, you can still find him painfully endearing. You have to shake yourself out of the grip of the already beckoning force that tells you to sigh dreamily about how adorable he is. “Think I should really be heading inside. Looks like they also need you for some kind of damage control, anyway.”
The same college kid calls for Jeno again, dragging out the vowels of his name kind of annoyingly. Jeno sighs, nodding slowly enough for you to know he’s caught on — this probably isn’t the right time to have such a weirdly heavy conversation.
“Yeah. I probably need to help clean up, anyway. No one’s going to want to do it, and Jaemin’s already chewed me out for bailing on mop duty a few times.”
“Why’d you bail?”
“Just… got busy, personally.” He looks sheepish, and it doesn’t take a bunch of lightbulbs going off for you to cotton on as well. Now, you’re just wishing you hadn’t asked, so you didn’t ever have to imagine it. Still, what’s done is done. You have to focus on keeping the discomfort out of your face this time. “Um… that’s not important, though. Anyway —I’ll talk to you soon, okay, ________________? Like… maybe we can catch up at school? You know, talk about our thing — the project, I mean — and like… et cetera?”
“Yeah, for sure.” Your smile’s weak, and so is your joke, but you should at least try to hold up casual pretenses as much as he does, even though he’s obviously much better at it. “I’ll tell on you to Hwang if you don’t, you know.”
His laugh is soft, but it at least sounds genuine; his smile still reaches his eyes, which already makes your heart feel a little lighter. But instead of trekking off immediately, he lingers, strangely, until his grin winnows down into just the ghost of a smile on his lips. Even weirder are his hands, slightly outstretched towards your waist, like he’s trying to cross the gap between you (even if it’s admittedly very minimal) but suddenly decides not to. The result is him looking strangely stiff and uncharacteristically hesitant, but you chalk it up to him simply not knowing how to end such a weirdly situated conversation. You know you’d have an even worse time doing it if it were up to you, so you can’t really blame him.
In the end, he closes the dialogue with ‘see you around, ________________,’ and a quick pat on the shoulder, which, if you think about it, seems a little disappointingly different from when he’d had his hand against your cheek a few minutes ago. Then again, you’re not sure you could handle something like that again, anyway.
You watch him walk off back towards Jaemin’s house, and some pitiful, pathetic part of you is expecting him to look back, say one last goodbye to you, or something, but the university guy that had belted his name out so vigilantly just swings an arm around Jeno’s neck and drags him to a corner where a bunch of other similarly dressed people, to whom Jeno starts talking to almost immediately.
Cutting this conversation short was probably for the best, anyway; you have no idea what he would have said, but you’re very sure you wouldn’t have been prepared for it either way. You trudge into your house and up into your room, already mentally prepared to spend the rest of the night obsessively mulling over what it all meant and what he had really been planning to say at the end. The process starts some time in the shower, while you’re shampooing your hair and you embarrassingly remember the feeling of Jeno’s hand tangled in it. The moony expression that the thought of it leaves on your face is present up until you see how stupid it looks in the fogged up bathroom mirror.
Renjun still hasn’t texted you, which is honestly starting to be a source of mild anxiety because you can’t be sure if he’s dead in a ditch somewhere or just ignoring you for some unknown reason. Whatever it is, you leave like three messages wondering where he’s at and asking him to call you. You’re on your fourth message, which is asking to confirm about tomorrow’s movie (something you’d almost forgotten about save for the fact that you’d remembered this would be a point of argument for you both once again if you spaced on it) when a notification pops up that once again gives you a heart attack.
Lee Jeno: u looked pretty tonight, btw :)
You: oh!! thank you…!
You: you looked great tonight too…! :)
Lee Jeno: haha… cute :)
Lee Jeno: goodnight, ____________ :)
This is the most emojis you’ve ever seen used in a single brief conversation, and you can’t help but feel like it might be a little juvenile, but it doesn’t even matter because Lee freaking Jeno called you pretty and cute in the span of five minutes. Your thumbs are shaking as you type back a typo-laden goodnight that takes you a full other minute just to edit before waiting a little more, but nothing else comes. Maybe he’s driving home, or something. You toss your phone onto your bed, away from easy reach, before you can start overthinking what this silence means again.
Your reflection in your window mirrors the same scene you’d encountered in the bathroom: you, hair bundled up in a wet towel, bare-faced with a stupid grin across it. You’re so caught up in the act of reeling from Jeno’s three texts that you belatedly notice a square of light beyond your bedroom window. You almost duck out of sight when you see a shadow there, thinking about crying bloody murder, until you realize it’s Jaemin, who’s watching the ridiculous expression on your face with a curious gaze from a distance. He’s still in the same clothes he’d worn to the party, but you can see, even from this far away, that there’s this dark patch on it that looks suspiciously close to the way your shirt had on the day his coke had emptied itself out on your back. That must’ve been from the crash earlier, you deduce.
You think he’s just zoning out facing in your direction, and you find there’s no need to meet his gaze, but there’s still something a little unsettling about having someone spacing out in your general direction, so you reach up to pull your blinds down. Your hand almost reaches the string, but Jaemin’s hand suddenly starts going up too, like it’s trying to follow you, and you freeze in your movements. His keeps going, though, up until it’s close to his face, and suddenly, he’s moving it side to side, in some weird regular pattern.
He’s waving, your tired, overworked brain tells you belatedly. The string of your blinds tickles the tip of your fingers.
Unsure and a little self-conscious, you wave back, hoping he doesn’t notice that you were about two strong pulls away from drawing yourself out of sight. This is clearly the right response, because even from this distance, you can see the brilliant white of his teeth as he smiles, fully and unabashedly, at you.
The first thing you do when you wake up the following morning is check your phone. You’re not even really sure what you’re looking for — maybe a text from Jeno, who, if you think about it now, probably has nothing to say in response to your boring ‘goodnight’ anyway (but you can still dream), or maybe a missed call or two from Renjun, who should at least be offering you some explanation as to why he was completely out of sight after parting ways with you and Mark Lee last night.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing on your screen, apart from the stupid 번장 notification that tells you the pocket punch board you’ve been wanting for no good reason has been discounted by the seller to a price you still can’t reasonably afford anyway.
You certainly can’t do anything about Jeno’s lack of contact, and to be completely honest with yourself, you’re not even really that sure if you want to. Something about yesterday’s conversation, while not exactly a train wreck, makes you very nervous to have a full conversation with him, and you’d much rather it stick to very basic, kindergarten-level things, like ‘you look cute’ and ‘haha’ and ‘:)’, but since that isn’t completely in your control, you decide you simply don’t want to do anything about it.
Renjun, however, is a completely different matter. You don’t understand why he’s ignoring you if he is, considering you had spent the better part of the night (at least, the parts during which you weren’t crying on your lawn) looking for him, so this silence, if deliberate, doesn’t seem fair or even reasonable. You decide that it’s much too early to be getting an earful from you in the end, so you just send a very emphatic ‘WRU?????????????????’ through both text message, KakaoTalk, and Facebook Messenger to him, hoping the repetition of both sentiment and punctuation mark through multiple platforms is enough to faux-yell to him what you’d otherwise be real-yelling to him over the line. You can’t tell if it gives you any sense of comfort to see he hasn’t been online and active for the last 15 hours.
All the tossing and turning of last night, courtesy of the endless loop replay of “I want you to like me — just me” Lee Jeno edition, had consequently left you worse for wear; you’d gotten up at the rising of the sun (something you’d sworn never to do during the weekend) and had opted to just stay in bed for another hour, trying so hard to get over the feeling of his fingers against your skin that you end up committing it to long-term memory. The sunlight peeking through your blinds is what gets you to throw off your covers and admit defeat to the fact that sleep would never come back at this rate, and you decide to just head down, rubbing the lethargy out of your eyes before you make a poor man’s breakfast. You’re halfway through the jelly slice of your sandwich when your sister comes through the doorway, yawning loud to announce her presence.
“G’morning, bedhead baby,” she greets, and you use the non-knife-holding hand you have free to rake through your hair. “Big rager last night, huh?”
“Yeah — wait, how’d you know?”
“We live a door down from Jaemin oppa’s house? Na Jaemin? Our next door neighbor and his whole family? We can see out the window into his lawn? Sometimes we get our sidewalk trash cans mixed up with theirs? Hello?” Sooyeon smirks, albeit a little sluggishly, as you wave her grating words away. “I saw you out there with him, you know.”
“With who? Where? Who?” You demand, your jelly-laden knife freezing in mid-air, the grape blobs slipping dangerously off the edge onto the middle of your bread.
“You. And Jaemin oppa,” she says each syllable slowly. “In front of our house.”
“Oh.”
“So usually how these conversations go is: I bring up a juicy piece of information pertaining to you, and because you experienced it first hand, you have to then expound on the piece of information, thereby making it juicier. ‘Oh’ doesn’t cut it. Not by a long shot.”
“There’s not much to tell.” You wonder, briefly, if you’re now obligated to bring up the Jeno aspect of the night — which, for all intents and purposes, honestly felt like more of a big deal than anything else — but you quickly decide against it, chickening out when she approaches you at the counter and starts unscrewing the lid of the peanut butter jar. That might be giving too much away, considering she didn’t even seem to notice that you’d been bawling when you’d crossed the property line. “He just walked me back here.”
“Oh, yeah, because that’s what people who live next to each other in a not-so-close-knit community do: walk each other two steps home, to keep the baddies away.”
“He’s just a naturally nice person, I think. Most people are, aren’t they?”
“I thought you guys were close. Didn’t he give you his varsity jacket? That sounds like a closeness thing.” She knots her index and middle finger together, and you slap it away.
“We’re close only in the same way as you are.” When she gives you a quizzical look, you sigh. “Proximity-wise.”
“Still doesn’t explain why he was out there, caressing your hair lovingly.”
You freeze, as opposed to Sooyeon’s comically relaxed posture as she scrapes the peanut butter across your other slice of bread. “He… was not. Caressing me. My hair. Lovingly.”
“I have eyes for the sake of seeing.”
“There was just something in it. In my hair. A leaf.”
You’re not sure why you lie; the largest part of the reason is that you don’t want to have to go into the horrifyingly awkward details of your emotional state last night, but there’s something oddly nagging at you that you can’t quite place. It takes a minute of staring at your sister spreading the peanut butter evenly across the bread and humming to herself while closing the sandwich up that you realize that you don’t want her getting the wrong impression about anything.
Which is weird, because there’s nothing to misunderstand.
Jaemin, albeit the fact that he’s been chattier to you as of late, more so than any other time in your life, is still just your neighbor. Maybe he’s graduated from being your sort-of acquaintance to something that vaguely resembles an arm-distance-ish friend, but the notion that you’re anything closer than that makes you feel a bit strange — almost like it… scares you, which is extra weird to think about, because there’s actually nothing inherently harmful about being casual buddies with some guy who lives close enough to wave at you from his window.
Maybe it’s because it’s Jaemin, and that’s what might be tripping you up the most. He’s not just Jeno’s friend; he’s practically some kind of counterpart to him, and it feels weirdly like a line you can’t cross. Or maybe it’s because… Jeno had asked you about him last night, which had made you feel even stranger. Like he’d been worried about something — like Jaemin was a no-go zone for him, specifically.
As you dully watch your sister take a bite off of your breakfast, it dawns on you: maybe you just don’t want people to think you like anyone other than Jeno.
“Okay, well, you know better than I do,” she singsongs in a tone that tells you that you actually don’t. Sooyeon doesn’t press, but she also doesn’t make you feel like the conversation is over — even if she trills I’m going back up; thanks for the sandwich in that same voice before leaving you alone in the kitchen with half of it on the plate.
Because the truth is that you don’t really know; you don’t know what’s so unsettling about being associated with Jaemin. Your sister’s not aware of the intricate ins and outs of your (delusional) relationship with Jeno, apart from your (apparently evident to everyone) crush on him, but you also know she’s not really deeply invested in where your heart lies; all she does is make conversation, as is her personality, as a form of bonding you’ve never really quite been able to navigate well.
You just don’t get why the mention of Jaemin, now, makes you feel… something. What that is, you’d rather not dwell on. So you just won’t.
You’re walking out of the kitchen, cheeks filled with peanut butter and jelly, when you see block letters on cloth, spelling out a familiar last name: Na.
You still haven’t given back Jaemin’s stupid jacket.
Today is the day, you decide. This seems to have started the whole conversation to begin with: the jacket that somehow brought Jaemin two steps closer into your life, the article of clothing that had opened the door to what shouldn’t even be a talking point between you and anyone else.
This should be the proverbial swan song for this whole topic; you snatch up his jacket (and immediately regret doing so in such a brutish manner, noticing you’ve got a few specks of breadcrumbs on the lettering) and head out of your house, your bedroom slippers absorbing morning dew as you march yourself over to your neighbor’s. You should’ve done this earlier, really; there was no reason for you to hold on to it.
Honestly, you’d just forgotten, given that you were more preoccupied with things that started with L and ended with ee Jeno, but you’d rather not extend any more misunderstandings.
And even if Jeno isn’t here to see this grand closing gesture, maybe, just maybe, this will help you stop feeling so cagey about everything he’d asked last night.
I want you to like me — just me.
Because why would he even think you liked Jaemin at all? Or make it sound like he thought you did? Ridiculous. Unfounded. Kind of alarming.
There’s noise in the air the closer you get to the Na household porch; it sounds a bit muffled, like it’s fighting the breeze, but you realize thereafter that it’s music coming from a tiny speaker sitting on the hand railing. It’s playing Dongbangshinki’s Here I Am, and something about that song stirs your stomach into swooping ten miles down as you approach.
Your initial plan was to ring the doorbell and pray that Jaemin was still knocked out cold on a Saturday morning so you could pass the jacket off to one of his parents and be done with it, but you’ve no such luck; it seems like he’s an early riser, considering how he’s seated right there, on a wicker chair by his door, hunched over a half-played chess board. There’s no one across him to block his view of you coming up the steps, and he looks up the moment he hears the creaks of the wood under your feet.
“Hey, ______________,” he doesn’t look surprised; in fact, he looks a bit relieved, for some inexplicable reason. “Didn’t think you’d be up so early.”
“Could say the same for you.” You have no idea what causes heat to flush across your cheeks; has Na Jaemin’s gaze always been this intense? “Um. Good morning?”
“Morning.” His laugh is an easy one; it always has been, and it kind of suits him, you note, before you realize how weird it is to think that. “What’ve you got there? Gift for me?”
“Wha — oh, yeah, I mean — no, but it is for you.” You hold up his jacket, hooked on your forefinger, to reveal it to him. “Sorry it took so long to give it back.”
This time, he actually looks a bit taken aback. “Did you stop needing it?”
“Um… I haven’t really used it, if I’m being honest.”
“Oh. Well, there wasn’t any rush. You could’ve kept it for as long as you needed. No pressure, or anything. I’ve got others.”
“You don’t need it at practice, or anything like that?”
“No; most guys don’t even keep theirs. They give them away, for… you know. So it’s no big deal.”
You fall silent; for some reason, his tone makes it seem like he wants you to keep it, which is just preposterous. You instead hang the jacket onto the back of the wicker chair opposite him and step back, like you’ve just set up a land mine you’re afraid of detonating.
“Well, thank you all the same. I really… appreciate your help. That day. You know.” You’re not sure why you can’t form any sentences long enough to signify you do actually belong in the same year level as him, but he at least doesn’t comment on your ineloquence.
Instead, he just stares for a bit, at the jacket and your retreating hand, before piping up over his music.
“You wanna play a round?”
“What? Oh, I’m…” You wave your hands aimlessly. “I’m not good at chess. Actually, I barely know the rules. Plus, you seem kind of busy playing against… your imaginary friend?”
He chuckles again. “Just playing myself.”
“Trying to outfox the old fox?”
“Sometimes it helps to know how you’d get out of a sticky situation you made by your own doing. Helps you see what your opponent sees when it all boils down to it.” He gestures again at the chair across him. “Humor me a little. It’s not as fun just talking to yourself.”
You hesitate for a second; you came here to return the jacket, and that much was done easily, albeit a little more awkwardly than you ever wanted to. Jaemin’s aura is laid back and friendly, but you’re not sure why you’re teetering on the edge of panic again. Jeno’s words seem to be echoing in your head.
And Jaemin is…?
Jaemin is your next-door neighbor, it’s true, but you can’t say that’s really your only point of connection; if it were, he wouldn’t be expectantly waiting for you to take the seat across from him. And when you look at his hand now, idle against the chessboard, you can’t say you aren’t thinking of the way it patted your hair soothingly the night before. All that does is make you wonder the exact same thing Jeno asked you.
What is Jaemin to you? A friend, perhaps, and definitely a nice person — nice enough to help you out, keep you company during a few low points. He’s a person willing to listen to you, funny enough to lift your spirits, and genial enough to not break your fingers for returning his things way too late (a low bar, but a good one nonetheless). Na Jaemin is a good individual, with pretty good music taste (based on the fact that his playlist, trudging on next to him, is now playing H.O.T.’s Happiness), and a good disposition about him that seems to make no small amount of people gravitate towards him.
But you don’t really want to dwell on what Jaemin is to you; more than that, you can only really be reminded of what he isn’t.
He isn’t Jeno.
And Jeno knows you like him; he’s not only noticed it but confirmed it multiple times in a single conversation. Surely, then, nothing else should matter to him — or, for that matter, to you.
You swallow down the refusal and nod, trying not to read into the fact that Jaemin’s face lights up when you pull the chair back and settle down on it.
“So let me get this straight; you don’t know how to play chess?”
“I know a couple of pieces go in weird directions,” you admit. “That’s about it.”
“Perfect.” His long fingers drum against the wood of the table. “I’m going to whip you into competitive chess-playing shape, my young pupil.”
What starts off as a casual, humor-filled lesson on the roles of each chess piece suddenly becomes an actual lecture; you’re not sure if Jaemin is getting a kick out of instructing a rookie like you on the different plays — which are infinite, a fact he’s drilled into you several times — or if he’s really just enthusiastic about the game (no, sorry, sport, since he’s chastised you about three times on this terminology already), but whatever the reason is, you have chess pounded into your brain for the better part of an hour. By the time he asks you to actually start playing against him, the sun’s fully up in the air and you’ve had to tie your hair up to keep it from sticking to your neck.
“I’m glad you got home safe last night,” he hums, pushing his black pawn to meet yours in the middle of the board. The Italian Game, he called it — not to be confused with serenading someone over pasta, a different kind of Italian game. That had gotten a long laugh out of you. Your hands flit over the white pieces, unsure of your memory. You only respond when you’ve moved your bishop to the same row.
“Well, it was a very long and tumultuous journey, but I managed, with some help.”
His knight comes out next, smoothly and quickly; you pause, rubbing the back of your neck. Surely, there was something else he’d taught you?
“What a chivalrous, ah, knight, that person must’ve been.” He raps a knuckle onto the table, starting you out of the act of racking your brain. “Perfect joke. Well-timed. Excellent chess pun. I think I deserve an award.”
“Does whooping my ass two moves into the game count as a prize?”
“I don’t want to rob you of the feeling of hope this early in the match. Take your time,” he chuckles, leaning back against the throw cushion behind him. He fiddles with the speaker, and the songs skip one by one, until he lands on a song you don’t know — some Japanese track that sounds suspiciously like an animation opening. It’s lively and admittedly a bit loud, and Jaemin hums to the guitar riffs with surprising accuracy. “Anything interesting happen when I left?”
You freeze for a moment, your fingers still hovering over your own knight in hesitation. You know what he’s asking, and for some reason, you’re tempted to tell him — then you remember that it actually isn’t really his business, and you don’t want to embarrass yourself.
“Not really.” You feign casual disinterest as you move your knight above your pawn line; from here on out, you have no clue what to do. Jaemin, on the other hand, is so sure-footed about his own skills (which are infinitely more advanced than yours) that he doesn’t even take his eyes off you to look at the board as he moves his next piece. You’re stuck thinking about what to do again — in the game, that is. Not about his gaze, which you try to avoid. “Just, you know. Talked with Jeno for a bit. Nothing major.”
Nothing major to him, you remind yourself. To you, your entire world had just been flipped over onto its belly.
Jaemin hums again, this time in understanding, but you notice (from your very surreptitious glances of him) that this time, it seems like he’s choosing what to do. You think it’s for the game, but when he counteracts your own (poorly planned) move with a swift response from his own pieces, you get the odd feeling he’s trying to choose his words carefully.
“Was it a conversation where you all got along?”
You hadn’t argued, but you’d never really thought about the whole stint long enough to classify it as good or bad. You supposed it wasn’t anything horrible in the end, although the fact that it had robbed you of precious hours of sleep wasn’t exactly the best outcome. But Jaemin’s not watching your expression now; he’s intently looking at the board, even if he’s not the one about to make the next move.
You get the feeling he’s suddenly avoiding eye contact too, which is weird, because he’s never been one to shy away from looking you straight in the eye. For some reason, that makes you feel like he doesn’t want to hear an answer.
“It was fine. Nothing… bad happened.” You know that’s true, but somehow you feel like it’s still not truth. “He explained… stuff. Who she was. Why it happened. Totally understandable stuff, I think.”
You choose not to mention anything apart from that — that he’d asked you to like him, nor that he’d asked you about your relationship with Jaemin. More than deciding it wasn’t going to be anything contributive to the conversation at hand, you also just didn’t want to.
Jaemin stays silent for a while; he moves his piece, then taps his queen — for some reason, he’s letting you know something about his next move. What it is, you haven’t puzzled out; it’s not like you know which direction he’d be taking, and even if you did, you’d surely not know how to respond to it, anyway. You guess he’s just throwing you a bone, but why he would, you also just don’t see the reason for.
You’re pushing your pawn hesitantly diagonal to capture one of his when he speaks up again.
“Did he tell you how it ended? With the two of them, I mean.”
He says it so calmly, capturing your bishop with his queen in the process, that you feel like you’re just talking about the weather and who won yesterday’s league basketball match. You shift uncomfortably in your seat, clearing your throat, but you only actually manage to shake your head.
“She cheated on him. Some college guy that she met during her orientation; you know she’s older than him, right? He’s never dated seriously since then. I think he was really hung up on her for a while — until recently, that is. I think. He hasn’t been that close to many girls.”
“That’s… that’s awful.” You’re not sure why Jaemin’s telling you this; it honestly feels illegal to know. “I didn’t think… anyone would. Cheat on him, I mean.”
“Even good-looking bastards like him can have rotten luck.” Jaemin’s smile borders on wry. “I don’t know why she showed up, honestly. Word probably got around… but she probably just wanted to know what would happen if she stirred something up with him one last time. He likely didn’t see it coming.”
You stare at the board, unsure of what to say. It makes sense, but something doesn’t really sit right with you either — why Jeno would let her come close to him at all, let alone allow her to completely eliminate the distance between his mouth and hers for longer than a second. Even thinking about it makes you want to throw up all over again.
“But deep down, I don’t know if Jeno completely got over her.” Jaemin continues, snapping you out of your short trance. “For a while after, they kept in touch. I think they even tried to work it out, but… obviously, it wasn’t easy. Until now… I’m not really sure.”
“Why,” you swallow hard. “Why… are you… why should I…”
“It’s not easy to be a player when you don’t know much about the game, is it?” He’s still staring at the board, but you get the sense that he isn’t just talking about chess. “Like I said, Jeno’s a pretty complicated guy. It’s not really my place to say anything, but…” Jaemin’s eyes flit upward for a second, and he offers you a small, almost pitying smile. “I think you need to know anyway.”
“But it has nothing to do with me. His life… I mean, his ex, and stuff.”
“I’m not too sure about that. If you like him that much… doesn’t that just mean you want to be part of his life?” He topples a pawn of yours, but you barely register the clattering noise or the fact that he drags it unceremoniously off the board. “I think you should at least know what you’re getting into. Jeno hasn’t liked someone seriously for a while, but you seem… to be the opposite. How much do you actually know about what he’s like?”
You don’t know why that kind of hurts your feelings; maybe it’s just because you have to face some kind of truth about how you don’t know much about Jeno’s private life, as badly as you want to. You even have to hear about it from someone else — someone easily kicking your ass in a dumb chess match.
“I think everyone has baggage,” you say slowly, pushing your rook forward. You realize it’s trapped behind two different pawns, so you’ve essentially backed the piece into its own corner. Jaemin doesn’t seem to care; he’s too busy executing what clearly is a ten-stage strategic win on the other side of the board. You don’t really care.
“That’s true,” he concedes, toppling your knight. “But some more than others, I think.”
“If he wanted me to know, he would’ve told me, right? Yesterday, I mean.”
“That’s may also be true, although I can’t say that with absolute certainty.” He looks thoughtful, and the pause gives you a bit of reprieve — enough to make a bad move that you instantly regret the moment you put your one remaining bishop on a square. Something like amusement flickers across Jaemin’s face, but he doesn’t make a move immediately. “Do you know what makes chess such a great game? In my opinion, anyway.”
“No?” The uncertainty in your voice is from a lack of understanding at the sudden shift in topic.
“Whenever you play someone, you get to see what they’re like — what their priorities are, you know?” His finger lands on a rook, inching it back and forth with idle intent. “You see how their mind works, what they’re like when they’re winning or losing, and what they think of you. Check, by the way.”
You’re silent as his rook captures your bishop, and he picks your fallen piece up and sets it aside with his growing pile of white.
“I’ve actually asked Jeno to play with me a few times, just for the fun of it. Sore loser,” he laughs lightly, one hand reaching out to lower the volume of his music. You notice the opening bars of Winner’s Really Really come through moments before it’s toned down. “Doesn’t really know or care about the rules, but he really likes to win. That’s kind of what makes him the star player on the team, actually. He really hates being backed into a corner, but all that focus on winning kind of tunnels his vision sometimes. Leaves him open to some attacks from another angle. He really hates that — which is probably why we barely play chess together in the first place. Apart from the fact that he thinks it’s boring.”
You’re staring at your pieces, now very pitifully winnowed down in number, and you feel stuck. You’re not sure what to do, but you’re pretty sure any move is going to make you look dumb in front of Jaemin, who’s clearly a pro — so much so that he seems to know what you’re going to do before you even decide yourself.
“You know what I like about your playing style, though?” He interrupts your train of thought again. You look up from the board, bemused; you’ve just been struggling to humor him since your first move, and it obviously isn’t working, since he seems more invested in the conversation than in the game. “You’re just trying your best, even if you’re new at this — even if you think you’re going to lose.”
“I just don’t want you to think I’ve forgotten everything you just said,” you respond, smiling weakly.
“You can’t always predict what’s going to happen in a game, even if you know the pattern anyway. Isn’t that just natural about anything in life?”
“You seem to know, though,” you grumble, tugging on your ponytail. You throw in the only option you have left: pushing your queen in front of your king as a last line of defense. “You’re barely paying attention to the board.”
“It’s just constant practice — a lot of hard work on my part. I don’t mind the grind of it, if it gets me somewhere good in the end.”
“So is that the kind of player you are? Just… a hard worker?”
“Maybe. I like to look at things from every possible angle. I guess that’s why I like chess when most people find it a headache.” He picks up his queen, rolling it in his palm. “Although, I guess Jeno and I have one thing in common — as players, that is.”
“What’s that?”
“I also really hate to lose.”
His queen knocks over your own with a pitiful clatter, taking its place on the board. When he picks up your piece, instead of adding it to his knockout count, he offers it to you. You take it gingerly, opting to focus more on it than on the soft smile that’s now playing on Jaemin’s lips.
“Checkmate,” he announces lightly. “Good game, _____________. You’ve got the makings of a star player.”
“You’re patronizing me, aren’t you?” You sigh as the two of you start resetting the board; you have to watch Jaemin’s pieces get rearranged to position your own.
“Only a little bit. I see a lot of quiet drive in you.”
You place the last of your pawns in a neat row; the board looks like it hadn’t even been touched. “Jaemin, how did you and Jeno become this close? You seem… I don’t know.”
“Yeah, we’ve definitely got our unique quirks,” he chuckles softly. “But Jeno and I… we just go way back, I think. When you’re friends with someone from a young age, you tend to grow with them. He’s a good dude, really, even if our personalities are different, and it’s always a fun event so long as he’s around. Well — mostly. I’d say a good ninety-nine percent of the time.”
You pointedly ignore the sheepish smile he throws your way.
“You said before that you’re not the type to… you know, share your feelings, and all that. Then how do you… like what do you guys even talk about?”
“What do you and Renjun usually talk about?” Jaemin grins. “Anything and everything, really. Movies, games, why the jerk from Yongsan International gets on our nerves when he chews his gum. We just… have a tendency to be interested in the same things, no matter if our perspectives are different.”
While talking to Jaemin is fun, you can’t help but feel like he has a tendency to speak in riddles. You still don’t really see any strong similarities in their approaches to their interests, similar as they may be, but what do you know, anyway? It isn’t like you and Renjun are exactly peas in a pod on paper.
His eyes lose focus for a second, hitting somewhere behind your ear before they quickly turn back to you. You have no idea why this makes you feel a little put on the spot.
“Hey, you want to have brunch here? My mom makes a mean soybean paste stew.”
“Oh,” you press your hand against your stomach, wondering if the swooping feeling in it is from hunger or something unrelated. “No, I actually just ha—”
“_____________?”
You swivel around in the chair, and your heart stops; you're not the least bit prepared to see Lee Jeno standing at the foot of Jaemin’s porch steps, a quizzical look very clearly etched on his sharp features.
#jeno x reader#jeno x you#jaemin x reader#jaemin x you#jaemin scenarios#jaemin drabbles#jaemin imagines#jaemin scenario#jaemin drabble#jeno imagines#jeno imagine#jeno scenarios#jeno scenario#jeno drabble#jeno drabbles#nct x you#nct x reader#nct dream x you#nct dream x reader#nct dream drabbles#nct dream scenarios#nct dream imagines#nct scenario#nct scenarios#nct imagines#nct imagine#nct drabble
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hey, it's miu/nagisa now my name is clove. i want to explain my situation and why im an anti radqueer now. i dont want to debate, i just want to explain myself. i sent this to a radqueer blog as well.
it started when i made my first blog, @/transnpd. side note i think its silly that someone took my old url/pos. anyways, thats where it started. i was starting to go into an episode, and i had just discovered the rq community. i liked it, i felt like i related to some people. i was comp-c, and my main ids were transnarcolepsy and transnpd. i had delusions of being miu, but i tried to fight them at this point. people encouraged me, not mant people talked to me but i had a few supporters.
and now my second blog, @/purepunk and later @/puritypunks. this is where it got worse. people encouraged me and my delusions more and more, i had more and more supporters. during this era i mostly just coined things and made flags for them, i feel like most are lost to time though.
then the third blog, the big one, NAGISAISM (also nagisaisms and nagisa-ism) i was at the height of my multiple year long manic-psychotic episode. i had delusions of being a goddess, i refused to take my meds, and i was openly fucking PRO CONTACT. ew. and ALL of this was encouraged by my little cult (or im sorry "fult") following. i thought everyone loved me and i was famous, i could do anything i wanted, i was delusional and on top of the fuckin world. i loved it. but my mental health got worse and worse and worse. i got hospitalized at some point after getting fired for wearing radqueer pins after my supervisor asked me what they were and looked it up. i was MANAGING a place. i thought it was okay because of this community and my following who praised the gd ground i walked on. sure, you guys didnt MAKE me do it but you made me think it was OKAY.
the aftermath? well like i said i was hospitalized, put in the psych ward. i was given heavy doses of antipsychotics and bipolar medications, and slowly i started to see things clearly. im still transid, im still a paraphile, but im not the way i used to be about it, euggh even thinking about it makes me feel gross. anyways, yeah im an anti now
i'm so sorry that happened to you. radqueers will deliberately feed into people's delusions and won't take responsibility for it even though they know what they're doing is wrong.
i'm proud of you for changing and growing as a person. you will always be welcome on my blog.
i wish you well, and congrats on being able to leave the rq community.
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carry on pornbots, what we know:
okay, so i’m sure many of you have noticed the carry on pornbot phenomenon that’s started happening, and i’m obsessed, so here is what i’ve put together so far. big thanks to the folks in the carry on server who found all the bots (at least, i think that’s all of them) and decoded some stuff!
if you’d rather see this all unfold for yourself, don’t click read more. but if you want to catch up or just keep your head straight, here’s everything i know:
so, the bots we know of so far, in no particular order. are:
Gareth @bucklemeup342
Daphne @strawberry-spreader-342
Natasha @headmistress-pitch-342
Smith Smith-Richards @the-real-chosen-one-422
The Minotaur @greekfurry342
Lamb @i-assure-you-im-real-223
Braden @youre-an-apocryphal-concept-223
Mitali @head-milf-in-charge-342
Jeff the were-badger @stay-out-of-the-quiet-zone-223
Ginger @level-me-up-223
Lady Ruth @i-eat-the-cake-422
Ebb @other-girls-definitely-count-342
also worth noting @real-cryptid-friend-shep-239, but we will get back to him.
we still don’t know what the numbers in these names mean.
most of the links in the urls lead to the ao3 page for their respective character or a ship they are involved in (for example Braden and Lamb both take you to their ship tag, which is woefully empty). however Jeff’s takes you to his ao3, the imdb page for I Was A Teenage Wereskunk and the wikipedia page for Carhenge.
so, the bots started appearing a few days ago, i think i got my first follow from one on boxing day, or maybe the day after. i didn’t pick up on the first few and blocked them. like many people, they came to my attention when Rainbow posted about them.
since then, Lamb, Braden and Mitali have been active.
first, Braden and Lamb had this exchange:
then Mitali responded to this ask from @thewholelemon
i messaged Ebb asking her to open her asks, and a few hours later when i checked again, all the asks that had previously been closed, such as Ebb and Daphne, had them opened. I’ve sent an ask to Ebb but she hasn’t responded yet.
then Braden reblogged this aftg art
i presume this was an accident and whoever is behind this meant to post it to their main account. or maybe it was a hint? Braden later added:
now seems like a good time to mention that Braden is double verified, which means not only time and effort but money has gone into this. i truly applaud whoever is behind it!
Braden also responded to another ask. this one is anonymous so it could have been sent by anyone.
finally, Gareth just posted this
and then there’s Shepard…
so, this account that resembled the others and was impersonating Shepard was found. in his bio is the link to his ao3 page and a rickroll.
but it isn’t like the others. it was created 3 months ago, it hasn’t followed anyone, and it posted some puzzles.
the first was this
which @raenestee figured out was hexadecimal code and spells out ‘Las Vegas’.
then came
which @thewholelemon worked out was page, line and word numbers in Wayward Son. that spells out “This is not Shepard”
then finally there was this wordsearch
@onepintobean found the word ‘contact’, then @yellobb solved the rest
and that’s all Shepard has given us. it’s funny, but personally, i don’t think it’s the same person/people behind this account as it is behind all the others.
but that’s it for now! i’ve reached the limit for photos i can add and that’s about all the information i can think of. i might add to this, we’ll see how complicated it gets. but either way it’s a lot of fun, especially to keep track of in real time. massive kudos to whoever is running all this!
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A Rant Consideration about Mr. Scratch and his origins (Alan Wake 2 spoilers):
I've been seeing a lot of posts on various social media about who/what Mr. Scratch is. Before AW2 i've visited the youtube channel "Gaming University", which i think it's the most complete source of information about all things Remedy related (i'll put the url to his channel in the comments), and it's been eye opening.
SO first things first, let's make something clear: Alan Wake is about psychology. Ok? Ok.
Remedy uses psychology themes through all the remedyverse. Collective Unconscious? Psychology. Archetypes? Psychology. The Hiss? Polaris? Well, not exactly psychology, but it comes from it.
Sam Lake has been using tropes and themes inspired from a especific psychoanalyst named Carl Jung (the man below). The Jungian philosophy perceives the human mind as the modeler of the world, and not just it's spectator. To Jung, inside the mind we all have a set of actors, who regulate our behavior and at the same time makes us remember (on a conscious or unconscious state) of who we really are.
One of these actors is called the "Shadow". The shadow represents our repressed desires, the corruption, the will to violence, etc. The shadow is a key factor to the process of self knowledge: the ascension in the spiral (weee) of consciousness, and is natural to all humans.
When Alan comes back to talk to Agent Estevez after the Scratch boss fight, she asks "Isn't the shadow possessing you anymore?".
The FBC files mentions the shadow multiple times. Ilmo Koskela states through the game that everyone who leaves the Dark Place "gets out unwell". The Dark Place is a place of creation indeed, but its also a realm of the mind: it feed of memories, messes with emotions, causes despersonalization, psychosis, etc.
Reuniting all that information, we can safely assume that:
Mr. Scratch is the Shadow of Alan Wake given boost and agency by the Dark Place: they ARE NOT separate entities.
It is Alan, his corrupted desire to be the best writer, to feel wanted and loved, through all means necessary. Scratch is not exactly obsessed WITH Alan, he's obsessed in giving Alan what he wants in the most fucked up part of his mind.
And let's be honest: having an eldritch variant of you throwing at your face what you really are - beyond all morality and social rules - through its actions is pretty disturbing, traumatizing even. It's natural that Alan understands Scratch as his worst enemy, he still doesn't recognizes it as a part of himself.
Saga has her shadow messed up as well, when she gets to the DP, which was also boosted by the darkness. Her shadow humiliates her as a mother, Casey's partner, and a detective, representing her worst fears. "Seems like i'm my own worst enemy.", she states.
The shadow traps her inside her mind place, since the process of giving conscious to a unconscious part of your mind is so unnatural, that they both cannot be separated. A human mind cannot survive without it's shadow.
Also, the way she'd dealt with her situation is really admiring - Saga proved to be a much more self-conscious and stable person than Alan, who stayed 13 years suffering by the hands of Scratch.
Want more proof that Scratch is a shadow? Look at his photo alongside Saga's shadow in the "Profiling" desk:
Everyone deals with their shadow on their own way
When Casey get's "possessed by Scratch", i don't think that's exactly what's happening: the Dark Presence enters Casey's mind, messing up with his Shadow, boosting his most agressive and corrupt parts of it, and since everyone is in Scratch's Story, Casey's Shadow will do what the Story mandates (world domination).
So TL;DR, Mr Scratch and Alan are the same person. The DP boosts Mr Scratch to a point where he/it becomes another personality, who takes hold of Alan's body to do it's biding. Same thing happens to everyone who gets "touched" by the darkness. Alan kinda understands this at the end of the game, when he shouts "Come on MF, COME HOME!!"
Now, like Jung said, the Shadow has the objective of reminding us who we really are deep down, and as much traumatizing that can be, is by embracing our flaws and accepting our Jungian Shadow, that we reach a state of mind the psychoanalyst calls the "Self": a perfect state of auto consciousness and knowledge, the top of the mountain in the ascension of the spiral.
Let's just hope that Alan is getting close to it.
#alan wake 2#remedy#mr scratch#remedyverse#psychology#carl jung#saga anderson#alice wake#sam lake#control
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Hi! So I have a rambling explanation that’s going to lead into a genuine question about making a website somewhat like a03 or finding alternatives to a site I will mention (it’s not a03 don’t worry)
I am a non/disney editor, crossover artist, amv maker and deep faker and any other term for “make videos of characters in canon or au type scenarios to music”. I’m also a fanficcer. And I remember when being wary of Anne Rice and Archie Comics and DC was a thing. A teacher, to cover his ass for an assignment of mine, taught me how to write an apology letter to a company on the offhand my hand written basically Batman fanfiction, made it’s way online or was heard about. I was in the tail end right before A03 but I am extremely grateful that the site exists. Okay. So now I need to talk about the Owl House. In season three episode special one, Luz Noceda makes an amv coming out to her mom.
Editor friends in a private discord were both happy and worried. Luz is one of us….but also Disney knows about us, to some level. Nothings happened I’ve just been stewing and I’m just worried something might hit the fan for the community given many of us use Disney media (hard not to when 80% of things put out is by them) So I’m asking how one would make a platform like A03 but for video media. Or if there’s things you know like that. YouTube is getting more and more difficult for anyone nowadays too.
Again, nothings really happened yet, I just can’t get it out of my head
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Video is worlds harder than text, but you know that.
There are a couple of approaches here: First, more is more. The more sites you have your stuff on, the smaller the chance that Disney can nuke all of them. Second, if you're not just using youtube and getting good at playing the algorithm, you need some way for people to find you or to keep track of all your alternate hosting.
Vidders of the oldschool sort have taken to using AO3. It doesn't have native hosting, of course, but it provides a stable URL and useful fandom-based tagging without algorithm bullshit. It's also a decent way to get vids out there if you only have download links and no streaming (though, of course, that means fewer views). You can embed a bunch of different copies of the same thing in the same work.
I don't know of a ton of fannish attempts at video hosting that are open to everyone. The only person I can think of who's heavily working on that is the guy behind Vidders.net who has a few different projects going.
For other hosting options, I'd see what AO3 currently has whitelisted for embedding. Two obvious ones are Critical Commons and Archive.org.
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Broadly, yes, fanvids and AMVs have been subject to even more disastrous mass deletions than fanfic has, and far fewer of them have been saved by other fans because video files are huge.
Oldschool AMVs in the strict sense (i.e. Japanese anime and not Disney) are catalogued and sometimes hosted on animemusicvideos.org. Oldschool Media Fandom has some vidding archivists, and really old stuff was released on tape and then disc, and people still have their copies of those. But online-only fannish video stuff from the 00s and 10s has massive gaps in the historical record already.
Disney is quiescent now, but they haven't always been, and neither have other rights holders. Worse, a bunch of hosts vidders liked just up and deleted their entire sites, wiping out eras of videos and commentary.
Your stuff is in less danger than it would have been 10 years ago, as far as anyone can tell, but video is always in massive danger of disappearing.
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If you actually succeed at video!AO3, more power to you! I'm just skeptical that you'll be up to the technical and financial challenge if you don't already know more than you currently do, you know?
Hosting video has, among other problems, the issue that people trading actual abuse materials will upload their videos to your service. Hosts often play whackamole with illegal and traumatizing content. I've known people whose jobs exposed them to this shit, and they were... not okay.
I guess you could make things slightly easier on yourself if you restricted video to cartoons only, but then you'd have the same issues amvs.org does where people who start as one kind of editor start working with other footage and keep trying to upload the wrong thing.
It's often not really viable to host unless you make everyone pay and/or you're authorizing a few dozen accounts of people you've vetted, not running a service just anyone can sign up for. Hosting a hundred videos for friends that you have reviewed and know to be fanvids/amvs is a lot easier than hosting enough stuff that you can't personally review it all.
If you or anyone else is interested in trying to start a site, I'd go check out the various writings by Denise (who runs Dreamwidth). She has some twitter threads and posts on enforcement and running a platform. I remember she talked about the tech people use to detect CSAM from known law enforcement databases.
I don't want to be a downer here, but there are serious legal implications to being the actual host as opposed to just running a discord or something on someone else's platform and reporting some fucker if they try to post illegal shit.
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If I were you, I'd get my buddies together, embed all our works on AO3, and then maybe make a collection or tagging standards so we could find each other's stuff.
For hosting, I'd add the Internet Archive, Vimeo, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. to Youtube and do a periodic audit of AO3 works to make sure links were still working.
AO3 already has a lot of tags that have been made filterable, like Fanvids, AMV, Video Format: Streaming, etc.
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2, 6, 8, 12 👉👈?
THANK YOU YINNIE 💓💓💓
2. a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom
this requires me to narrow down my favs, which is so much more difficult than i ever could have expected. yin if i don’t answer the ask quickly this was why. catelyn tully would never top because ned lays pipe and she’s a freak like that. saw a ss of a reddit post that was like ‘my wife likes to get blitzed and then come home and have me fuck her brains out’ and thats her. brienne is never bottoming and jaime is never topping because jaime has some kind of reversed gender thing going on that makes him want to be a girl but not to another man. and brienne lives to serve. she literally is a sword. and thats a penis metaphor as we all know. margaery is never topping men because despite being the first ally in westeros she thinks thats weird. these are compelling arguments to me! daenerys stormborn is NEVER. NEVER NEVER NEVER. never bottoming because A). thats the prince that was promised B). jon likes to get dicked down C). i personally believe that being sold and traded will lees her to discover (amidst her several trysts with irri jhiqui and doreah (bc u cant tell me otherwise. irri is canon first of all)) that she, as the breaker of chains and mother of dragons and khaleesi of the great grass sea, is not inclined to experience things at the whim of others but rather the opposite. is that appropriate to say.
6. which ship fans are the most annoying?
oh god. SORRY PLEASE DONT SHOOT ME EVERYONE! daemyra (this might be biased bc i just dont like daemyra) some sansan ppl really get under my skin…. LUCEMOND JESUS CHRIST. almost forgot about them (was almost free). wow sorry lucemond shippers first place for annoying. its not that im an omegaverse toxic incest yaoi anti its just. Its the people it truly is i cannot even enter that circle. there is a blog on here though i can’t remember the url of that makes cute sfw art that doesnt frighten me and ive been known to browse, even hit like once or twice. lucemond still stay away from me please
8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about
daenerys is not going to be queen of the seven kingdoms NOR SHOULD SHE BE. if daenerys takes the iron throne the whole series is pointless
12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them
what qualifies as unpopular. also what do we consider like. because i consider like as in ‘this is a fun character to see interact with the world’ and NOT!!!!!!!!! ‘i support this guy’. just to clarify for any other viewers at home. a character ive seen a lot of people Dislike but i think deserves to be heard out is criston because he’s funny and thats it thats why everyone should like him. but i dont consider him unpopular? hmm tough tough …… will i get flayed if i say larys like i mean he’s just sick i love wondering what is going on in that head. in regards to characters i think are not given enough attention: jaehaera targaryen. ‘she’s a little girl shes a non-character’ SHUT UP. she’s a little girl exactly. she didn’t get the chance to be her own person she is alicent’s pain helaena’s pain and her own. GOD MY BABY GIRL….. she names her dragon death…… AUGH DONT EVEN TALK TO ME DOONNTTT EVEN. um also rhaella, daughter of rhaena the lesbian AND! mother of daenerys. bc first of all rhaella and aerea switches thats true. so like. rhaella septa rhaella wondering if that was meant to be her. wondering if maybe it would have never happened if she hadn’t traded places. is it kinder to force her twin into the faith or to let her die? Augh. also daenerys’ mommy just… why dont we know about her i need more people on here like me willing to band together to make up canon. i guess thats not really a reason why people should like them. ALSO SHIREEN BARATHEON I DONT KNOW IF YOU CAN TELL BUT IM THE BIGGEST SHOOTER FOR SHIREEN THATS BABY THATS MOTHER THATS THE PRINCESS THATS MY DAUGHTER THATS ME I LOVE HER SO BAD OH NY GOD SHIREEN PEASE COME HOME THE PEOPLE MISS YOU. and i know everyone dgaf about baby boy bowl cut brown boba eyed broken bran. but i gave birth to him. and thats why you should like him.
i don’t consider myself a targ girlie and then it comes to questions abt asoiaf and i can only answer in reference to them 😔 tried to be diverse 🤞
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monk cleric barbarian for the meme :3
monk: what is your favorite canon relationship - loveletters. fcg & frida are two of my favorite characters, i adore robots discovering how much they can love, i adore their puppy-love sheer joy in the face of a second calamity, when the first wiped their people off the map. i remember the way fcg lied and said avandra saw them together forever, and await the grief of frida when they learn what happened to fcg, and what they will do, alone as an aeormaton again, in the face of another aeorian war.
i have a soft spot for shadowgast, and it once meant a lot to me, something i deeply related to as a burgeoning gay boy. i still think on it fondly even if it's been a bit broken by my experience in its fandom.
cleric: what is your favorite battle - the cathedral and the malleus key far and away are my favorites. the cathedral is an ICONIC massive scale fight for yashas freedom and stopping tharizdun with the iconic church glass shattering, yasha almost killing beau and finally getting free, ending in yasha killing her abuser in the best hdywtdt of the entire 1500+ hour show. the malleus key is also a juggernaut in scale, and masterclass in a hopeless fight as ludinus's 1000 year plan comes to the fore in terrifying clarity and you can only watch in fear as he (honestly rightfully given his power level) treats everyone, even keyleth, as hardly a fly to swat. his turning literal time and mad laughter of relief at the end of it haunt my brain every second.
barbarian: who is your favorite villain - look at my url and guess
no but seriously. ever since c2 i knew lud would be The Problem. to see my theories proven right and yet realizing hes more compelling than i imagined, more than a lawful evil politician but a brutal mutated cannibal traumatized beyond belief by the calamity who toes this desperate-evil line over whether he can be fixed or not, as he manipulates those who think that undoubtedly. thats what it's about baby!!!!!! i also really, really love avantika, i find halas fun-evil. lucien is extremely compelling (ft. the somnovem), and i have a feeling if zathuda is expanded on i will end up very interested in him too.
thanks!
#asks#van speaks#avantika#ludinus da'leth#yasha nydoorin#obann#tharizdun#lucien tavelle#the somnovem#athion zathuda#critical role#💛💚#fcg#frida
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Observations on ep 7:
"Learn to love yourself." Where's that gif set?!?
Wow. There's been absolutely NO talk of Ray's father so far (unless I forgot about it) and yet him just turning up at the hospital speaks VOLUMES.
I'm a simple girl...and a complete hoe for t-shirt slogans that comment on the storyline. "Make love not war" when Boston is going into battle: A+. But I'm not sure what the show was aiming for with "Friends don't let friends go to Stanfund" (I think that's what it says).
Oh poor babygirl Nick 😢 Vi has absolutely the right url. @disasterbabygirlnick
I agree with Mew not just giving Top a second chance. He's young, Top is his first partner, he'll have so many more opportunities to meet someone else if he wants. Why not just shut Top out. In other bls, their relationship and bond would be romanticised to the point where I would accept the fantasy of their 'destiny' to be together, but in this show I'd be telling both Mew and Top to leave it be. Move on. Find other people. (I'm also here for the mess that may arise from the situation and even if they do end up together but I'd also be ok with them not getting back together 🤷🏽♀️).
First's smile is something else, man.
Oh! It's The Scene!
*she squints* "Praying for forgiveness" and "I've been living with the demons that I got in my soul" on Cheum's top: 👏🏼Outstanding.
I think Book and Force work great together but I'd HAPPILY watch other shows with Book paired with other actors. HAPPILY.
Neo and Book. 🔥
Oh wow. MARK!!
And another. "Outkast". No notes.
DRAKE!! WHY IS HE SO NARAK?!
I think I like this plan by Mew...but honestly, I think he could have just asked for the video. I have a feeling Gap probably would have given it to him (or maybe not now that I watched the whole scene). But omg why does Gap not turn the damn computer off before going for a shower. Mew is a stranger to him 🤦🏽♀️
Also. Hello, Drake has been working out.
Is it just me or has Mew shifted his style/look this ep?
Wait. Is this house the same as in Mama Gogo (and something else)? @colourme-feral
Mew's face is DELIGHTFUL when Boston shuts the laptop. DELIGHTFUL.
N e o a n d B o o k again. 🔥🔥
Oh Mew. I wouldn't say out loud that you want the honour student title. That's exactly something Boston might use to retaliate against you.
And Top is just embarrassing himself now.
I understand Mew attempting to move out of the friend-zone with Ray, to give him a chance and to be with someone who cares about him and who he trusts about that, but I feel like if he never saw Ray as more than a friend, I can't see things changing that much - if it hasn't already happened, it probably won't happen. And as for Ray, he might always wonder if Mew really does love him or if he 'settled' and that Mew might get drawn away by an attraction to someone else in the future. It just doesn't feel like it would work out, and in the meantime Sand is right there if Ray could just let Mew go.
Gosh, next week looks so good.
#only friends#only friends the series#ofts#ofts ep 7#for the first week I haven't written than mew needs to be protected#I need time to mull over if my feelings on that has changed and why#I think he still does...but so does sand...and nick...#or maybe they all just need a hug and some time away from each other#🤷🏽♀️
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So I'm guessing, that out of context panel is from the upcoming iroh and june comic, and their gonna make iroh so consumed with grief that he didn't even given orders to his men and just went to mourn lu ten's death. umh not a fan of the idea
I think it's realistic for Iroh to go into BSOD mode, but as a means of trying to retroactively give Iroh "flaws," especially for the purpose of making the argument that Iroh was wrong for ending the siege, nope, sorry, absolutely not.
There are also enough people involved that even if Iroh refused to make the call, whoever was next in the line of command would be making a decision. Most likely, what happened is that Iroh made the call to retreat (which is what is implied in canon) and some soldiers and officers may have refused to withdraw. I can see those people blaming Iroh for abandoning them, but they're still enemy soldiers who made the decision to continue an unjust siege. This is very much a "girl, what were YOU doing at the devil's sacrament" argument.
Also, as an argument that "Azula was right," Azula's argument was that Iroh should have burned everything to the ground. She was not right. Please stop defending Azula for being awful. Especially if you want to criticize Iroh for being an imperialist.
The person who made that post also has "Jet apologist" in their url, and like I said, these people don't actually care about the victims of colonialism and are, at heart, huge hypocrites that just want to seem hip by voicing "controversial" fandom opinions.
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Addressing the Wattpad.
Hi all.
We have privately been handling a situation for the last 5+ months. We have tried to keep it behind the scenes as much as we could, but unfortunately it can no longer stay that way.
As many of you know, last night we were made aware by @time-for-a-lullaby of a Wattpad account reposting our original works. We were understandably heartbroken by this. It was the work we’ve dedicated the last two and a half years to, the work that had brought the two of us together originally, and it’s things that we wrote from a very personal place. Some things were therapeutic, some things were inspired by events in our own lives, but most of all, they came from US, and we never gave permission for it to be posted anywhere except our blog by us.
In the immediate aftermath of seeing this, we recognized the user's work and username from multiple accounts we have dealt with since early this summer. In late May/early June, we blocked an account for being a minor. Then, within a day, a nearly identical URL followed us. It was obviously the same user given the follows and URL. We blocked, and this process repeated itself multiple times. We also posted frequent reminders about our policy on being 18+ only. After several weeks of back and forth, we privately reached out and asked them to please stop, and any further action would spur a report to Tumblr for unwanted harassment. They blocked us both and, given the lack of any familiar looking URLs, we thought that was the end of it.
But once we saw the username last night, we recognized the user instantly. We then contacted the other blog with this information and both moved through the proper channels to get the works taken down via copyright claims. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it), the account deleted the plagiarized works from us and another writer before Wattpad could intervene. We don't believe it is a coincidence that immediately after the stories (5 of them, to be exact) were deleted, that a variation of the familiar URL tried to follow us, mere minutes later.
We privately reached out this evening to the user on Wattpad to try to get some clarity as to why this happened. Before we could discuss things clearly, and after repeatedly attempting to explain to the individual that we were indeed involved in this, and no, they did not apologize to me already like they claimed, they blocked us and ended the conversation abruptly.
Today we have done a lot of internal works to attempt to safeguard our blog against this in the future, including combing through our followers and attempting to find any more blogs of theirs, and in doing so we found several accounts, one of which we are certain is theirs, and two which we feel strongly about. We still are in shock that last night even happened, and we both are upset about it. We normally don’t handle things publicly but they continue to keep making blogs to follow us and straight up won’t handle things at all when we try to so we feel we have no other way.
If you see brodisddabest1 on Wattpad posting our stories or anyone else’s, please notify us, the author, and/or Wattpad. Never ever do we promote harassment and are NOT asking anyone to message her on our behalf (and we encourage the exact opposite!) or anything, but please help us keep an eye out so there is no more reposting or stealing of ideas in the future. We also ask that you continue to support the original creators instead of those who reupload work on different platforms. If you have reason to suspect someone’s work is not their own, do your research and always be supportive of the true creator. There is no good that comes of this!
Thank you all so much!
UPDATE 10/4: The wattpad account has been removed for repetitive copyright infringement violations!
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a little late, but lesb0 is a pretty noted transmisogynist actually, you can see some of this if you search her url and i think pitbolshevik might have some of her shitty posts saved. she plays "will i wont i" with cryptoterfs, and has repeatedly called harassment & misgendered trans women she doesnt like
ykw y’all i’m stuck here. i don’t wanna stake my reputation on someone i’ve never privately spoken to but i also think this is all complete heresay and rumors because if you dig around and go back years to find proof you literally will just find some posts that are well intentioned but worded badly, and even more than that you find radfems and terfs shit talking her so i’m really not convinced atp but i know y’all and i know that if i don’t just follow directions and block i’ll get a callout for it cause that’s what happened to adrian. if you have concrete proof of her being a malicious transmisogynist, i will block & you have my word, but i just do not trust that y’all have good intentions given the shit that’s been said about me too. this is the homeland of groupthink & dickriding
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i think a major challenge a lot of people are overlooking is housing. massive amounts of gaza's (already low quality) housing stock has been destroyed in the last two months, which forces people into even more crowded conditions. that's not a problem that's going to go away even once the current war is over. on top of that, there could be a lot more people migrating to palestine when peace is established. thirty million jews, palestinians, and immigrants are a lot of people and they presumably don't want to sleep four people to a room while paying through the nose for rent. honestly in terms of construction i think housing will have to be the top priority of a post-conflict state, above dismantling the walls and checkpoints, even. the future will need a whole lot of construction workers, which requires higher pay, which will increase the cost of housing; this pattern is happening in canada and i could very easily see it happening in palestine too.
this is a very important issue and one i have not given much thought to before today.
beyond israel's massive destruction of human life mostly in Gaza and to a certain extent, the west bank - people murdered by the thousands, entire families wiped off the face off the earth - there has been a massive destruction of already limited palestinian infrastructure. survivors will not have homes, neighbourhoods, schools, mosques/churches to return to. this is a massive issue that has the makings of yet another crisis.
i try to focus on ways we can end of the ongoing nightmare (and I don't have many realistic ideas for that one) because the truth is we don't know what the region or the world will look like and almost anything is possible.
in my opinion the only peaceful and just solutions include an end to the occupation and the creation of a functioning palestinian state, an end to the blockade, an end to IDF terrorism of palestinians, and a palestinian right of return, among other things. I think part of this also has to be reparations, which Israel should be responsible for, and this needs to include plans to restore destroyed infrastructure.
many people will point out here that Israel HAS given resources to Gaza and those resources have been weaponized against Israel, specifically Israeli civilians. this is true, so I must include that peaceful and just solutions, in my mind, also need to include safety and rights for Israelis of all ethnicities.
what you bring up about difficulties regarding migration in a hypothetical post-peace scenario is also very important and interesting. many things will have to be addressed and resolved. many israelis currently live on land that Palestinians were displaced from. decisions would have to be made about how to handle this.
I don't have a lot of good answers for this but there are people who have put more thought into this than i have. See below:
Of course we are purely talking in hypotheticals here. There is no way of knowing how things will end, and for any peaceful scenario warmongers on both sides need to stop holding the kind of power they do right now. i simply do not know how this could feasibly happen. everything seems to be getting worse.
and most immediately we need to make sure that Israel stops murdering palestinian civilians
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