husbeast watched To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar with me and he LOVED IT and i could just cry little tears of queer joy. this movie means so much to me as a queer person and as a gender nonconforming and a just generally socially non conformative person.

if you haven’t seen it, you gotta.

omfg so im reading your linguistics paper rn and im at the part where you talk about how its taboo to post abt the vday vid or dailybooths etc. but i feel like the chains have loosened over the years so to speak? cuz like, on twitter people have just. posted full dailybooth screenshots, or reference the 2009 phan song all the time which itself refs vday. and im wondering if thats like, because the community had gotten smaller after the dapg hiatus that ppl were more lax about it, or if it felt like dnp were more lax about it, or if these are all younger fans who werent aware of this etiquette at all but since so many younger fans have been joining like post coming out they just dont see it as taboo at all? some self-policing does still occur, specifically w ppl reposting dans nakedbooths, but its def not the case of YOU HAVE TO BE COMPLETELY SILENT ABOUT THIS anymore. i havent even finished reading yet but im enthralled

OOH thank you for the question i have so many thoughts on this actually. (context)

i think there's multiple reasons why the taboo on discussing the vday vid & other deleted social media things has grown lesser? under the cut bc i got wordy.

partially i'd chalk it up to the change in phandom demographics. like, there's a way lower proportion of us now who were around for the direct aftermath of the first major leak in 2012, or who even were a part of the phandom when a majority of folks had been present for that. things were so bad and painful then & in the era directly afterwards! people still learn about that but the knowledge of how bad things got is always going to be different from the lived experience.

so that's reason one: i think that within the fandom the strongest emotional reaction to the existence of the vday video & deleted social media posts will always exist in ppl who were around in 2011-2013 & similarly deeply ingrained in folks who joined right after that in 2014-15. and i think there's still a lot of us but there's also just like.. so many less of us now, too. the vast majority of my mutuals from 5 years ago have abandoned or deleted their blogs.

i do think another part of why things have gotten less taboo is bc it's no longer something that has the potential to out dan and phil/how directly they've acknowledged the social media posts (& to a lesser degree the vday vid)?

like. dan literally used screenshots that he almost certainly got from the phan directory in basically i'm gay. they acknowledged that the manchester eye meant something to them in giving the people what they want/witl (watched them at the same time, can't remember which had that in it). i know they knew how people would react to them mentioning iconic teen dalien moments in the big wheel in the sims.

there's also the fact that like... angry phil DMs/copyright strikes are a thing of the past? i'm not going to tell people where to find the vday video but it's stupidly easy to locate on more mainstream platforms at this point in time. shit, that brings me to another point: fans who joined more recently weren't around for the era where blogs were getting taken down for what they were posting. another reason it's more chill now.

like, the openness of the secret is like, something that makes seeking out the taboo less of a thrill?

but on the other hand! learning in detail abt the vday vid and old social media posts is something i think people find less necessary now? that used to be the most concrete like... phan proof. proof they were queer. and now that they're explicitly gay and openly together to the degree that they are it's like. the value of the information has lessened.

to go in a different direction. i definitely wouldn't call it a formalized etiquitte that the youngun's just don't know, especially when it comes to the social media posts—they've always circulated and even 5 years ago when i wrote that paper they were more openly talked about even tho the vday video wasn't (though again: 5 years ago was still wayyyyy more lax than 2013/14).

ultimately there's always just been so much clout tied up to knowing about the vday video & social media posts? so even though being too blatant has always been a taboo transgressing that norm with skill has also always been a phandom value.

i'm not going to get too far into the ways that dan and phil's fandom literacy and the fan response of archiving everything play into things bc i think i covered that well in my paper but yeah!

i don't have a good conclusion but: less % of the fandom being present for the aftermath of dnp being outed by the leak + greater aknowledgement of these subjects by dnp + less value for the information in the vday vid & deleted social media posts = more casual attitude towards vday vid & social media posts and a healthier phandom overall

Looking for that good queer yeehaw content on tumblr and finding nothing but modern rodeo cowboys makes me cringe so damn hard, how do ppl not see how clearly abusive rodeo is??? horses buck when they want you off, horses buck like THAT when they're scared and in pain, its not entertainment, are people just not noticing the cowboys ramming their legs (the classic cowboy spur ppl love the aesthetic of so much) into the animal???? the electric shocks before opening the gate which is basically an open secret, the horrific injuries that a lot of them get??? I thought it was common knowledge that horse racing is abuse do ppl not get that rodeo is very much the same, mistreating horses for money and entertainment.

I just wanted to see some queer cowboy content 😭😭

I FEEL LIKE I COULD'VE WRITTEN THIS ASK TO MYSELF!!! I completely feel your pain, anon. It's very frustrating to me that rodeo shit is just somehow STILL ACCEPTED in this day and age, it's legitimately insane to me. I think it's just so ingrained in culture that people don't think about it. It's almost in like with the whole "nobody draws tack right" because nobody like, can be bothered to do even 10 seconds of research?? Horses are continually considered accessories to an Aesthetic(tm) instead of actual living creatures and it's so so weird.

Even people irl at my barn have been fucking flabbergasted when I've very mildly said "I don't like rodeos because I don't agree with animals being treated poorly for entertainment". I get stares like I have 15 fucking heads, as if, how DARE I?!?!? Also rodeos and shit are way likely to be filled with tr*mp people who would call me slurs so, that's also great.

In my opinion it's not spoken about as much because it's not as easily accessible of an activism like not eating meat and speaking against factory farms. Because of course everyone hates factory farms. B-b-but cowboy stuff is so sexy and horses bucking and rearing looks so cool and fun! And big sharp spurs look so COOL! :( and god forbid people give up entertainment or reflect on the actual issues with this shit. Probably most people who are obsessed with Cowboy/Rodeo Aesthetic(tm) exclusively in art and stuff have no actual experience with horses and, again, consider them more accessories that living animals that have been historically and systematically abused in horrific ways that are so often ignored. Often just for entertainment.

I live very close to one of the most famous race tracks in the country and the entire city is obsessed with horse racing. It's an extremely rich city because of all the racing and it's so exhausting. All the horse people I know love the track and see nothing wrong with this and I feel insane. I personally knew ex race horses who had severe injuries and mental trauma from what happened. Though, I'll be fair, I do also know a few who wound up okay, though it was usually because they weren't raced for very long.

To me it's very close to if fucking dogfighting was some popular online Aesthetic(tm) thing and no one saw anything wrong with it. Both are horrible disgusting animal abuse practices and yet one of them is considered sexy and cool. It's very weird.

Thank you for this ask anon, I always feel like a weirdo animal rights freak when I mention this particular issue (I am an animal WELFARE advocate, NOT an animal rights activist) bc it's really inconvenient for a lot of people. I'm really glad and relieved to learn I'm not utterly alone on tumblr feeling like this 😵‍💫

it's funny bc i used to think harry potter was a story about inclusivity - a girl is excluded because of where/how she's born, a boy is excluded because his mom is the same way and he grows up in an abusive household where he's impoverished and ignored

but like. ive been thinking about it and this is a story about exclusivity

i never understood why magic had to be a secret - and it's never really explained, but i think i get it now - magic only belongs with the select few who deserve it, jk rowling is just saying that hermione is a unique special snowflake and she deserves it because she's so smart and brilliant in spite of being a girl, and harry deserves it because his mom is just like hermione, and his dad is a legacy - harry is what she sees as the ideal - a boy born from a woman so smart that she worked hard and "made her own success" and a father who was Right and Belonged the whole time, who chose that brilliant girl, in this world that JKR is so desperate to be included in

voldemort is just the epitome of like. nazis. the way white people like to pat themselves on the back for being oh so evolved and being the great big heroes of the story

you see this with hermione and the way she insists on helping the elves even though the elves never ask her for help. she leaves clothes lying around literally trying to trick them into homelessness and poverty, because by living in hogwarts and depending on them, they're weak, lesser beings that she needs to help. you also see that she moves on and gives up basically, instead of becoming an activist or starting a non-profit, she joins the ministry of magic and uses her intelligence to help the people she eventually realizes are the people who truly deserve her help - wizards (and witches) even the trio that she becomes a member of is a trio of two boys, and they are the only cross-gender friend group in the whole series - because hermione is so great that she can evolve beyond gender standards and reach past her "level" and become one of the boys (oh yeah and all the girls hate her)

even when they do eventually defeat voldemort - it's like, the death of nazism in the magic community, but they still keep magic a secret. the world never learns that someone tried to take it over, because harry and the good wizards were such great heroes at protecting them the whole time that they don't even need to know! and they don't deserve to know. because they don't have magic.

oh and the whole "love" ideology - we are the truest and best and most special beings because we know how great and amazing we are and how much we deserve magic and to benefit from this exclusive community we've created for ourselves

it's like the slytherins are the big bad nazis of their exclusive white community, the ravenclaws are the smarty pants who are brilliant but don't actually do anything, the hufflepuffs who are like, nice, but stand back and watch, and the Gryffindors. the big great Gryffindors are the amazing heroes who act and accomplish things and save the world

not to mention the consistent lack of poc and queer ppl, and the antisemitic themes, i mean, even the other two magical academies introduced are all white people; the human-like magical creatures are poc coded and always need the help of the wizards because they just can't seem to sort out their own problems

like, i can't believe i was ever into these books

hey, i can't praise you enough for the consistently good discussions of asexuality in your fics, on top of your already super quality writing in general. a lot of people talk about the absence of sexual desire, but not everyone gets the other desires/relationships that take its place. (yes, this is because of the clones--Fox & Leia are incredibly important to me now). many thanks!

THAT'S WHAT I'M HERE FOR BABY. THAT'S MY NICHE. THAT'S MY MOTTO. MY ETHOS. God I can go on for years about the weird position of romance's monopolization in media etc but I'll try to focus.

I do notice that allo people have difficulty writing ace (and from now on what I say applies to many aro people too, and all of this is especially aroace ppl bc I lean that way) people sometimes. Beyond just little examples where they just kind of assume we care about the same things they do, ace people are just generally written as Allo People: Now With Less Libido. I just spent ages in The Magnus Archives fandom, which had an ace main character (who was stated in universe not to really do the sex thing, but...), and I just saw this time and again.

There is so much variation in the ace experience. There are completely and totally tons of ace people who who do live lives very similar to allo people: just with less libido. But that's basically exclusively how fandom writes ace people. It is hugely apparent especially when people want to ship an ace character with an allo one. This isn't even getting into aroace people, who are given a spotlight so infrequently - because lots of fanfic basically don't put an emphasis on characters outside of a ship!

It feels kind of like how straight people write a gay relationship as Basically A Straight Relationship, But With Two Guys. And that's true, I suppose, but...is it? Does it actually capture the enormity of the queer experience? Do you actually see your life reflected on that page? Does this difference and marginalization start and end in a romantic relationship, or is it an identity that significantly impacts your life and who you are?

I write the relationships that are important to me. I like to just depict two people and their relationship, and not really put a name to that. Fox and Leia just loved each other, and that love saved each other. That's it. You don't really need to know more than that. You can read their feelings for each other any way you want, it would probably be valid. Relationships can take a million billion different forms, and the really important thing is how we affect and change each other. And aro/ace people are more likely to...search outside of romantic relationships for things that allo people are more likely to assume only belongs within the confines of a romantic relationship. And this isn't even getting into the incredibly isolating experience of being aro/ace in an allonormative world.

Everybody has different representation needs. It's highly meaningful to some people that Jeeves & Wooster live in secret 1920s gay love, while for others it's simply important that they're two people who were very dedicated to each other and loved each other very much. It's also one of those weird pointless issues that are only predominant in fandom. In real life and speaking to my mother, I don't want to settle for 'well they cared about each other', I want them to say explicitly they're in gay love. But I also think that there is something very queer about the way an aro/ace person experiences all relationships, much less romantic ones, and allo people have a hard time nailing that.

Many many thoughts. So many thoughts I have written a 60k fanfic on the topic of being an asexual person in an allo world, and also a romcom. I have also written a fanfic of a shoujo romance manga where both characters are (unknowingly) aroace and they struggle with the confusing nature of their love for each other. I got feelings. Oh, lord, do I have feelings.

TL;DR: Watch Mob Psycho because that show has done the most amazing job of any show of depicting a gigantic array of human relationships in the weirdest forms physically possible. It is the most asexual show. Study it like a bug.

I binge watched Our Flag Means Death yesterday and holy shit !!!!!! I'm in love !!!!! Everyone should watch this, I want at least 10 more seasons (or you know, however many it takes to get to a good conclusion)

- It is very much "Black Sails but a rom com" which already makes it a win in my book, with themes about stories and perception, piracy as this sort of very queer anti-imperialist space of freedom that also often really sucks. And it's hilarious but also there is a lot of depth and angst in there under the surface

- It's also What We Do In The Shadows with pirates instead of vampires in that there is a cast of mostly pathetic lunatics bumbling around and committing atrocities while also being surprisingly lovable, compelling and written with a lot of empathy. Also there is a slow burn romance btw a pathetic but caring little man who seems way out of his depth but has hidden reserves of badassery, and a scary badass with a dark past having a midlife crisis. But it feels less like an outright farce than WWDITS.

- Like i didn't expect it to be so actually romantic ? But there's a slow burn btw the two main (male) characters where they've both gotten dissatisfied with their lives and the roles they've had in life and so they really want what the other has to bring to their life and they're uniquely placed to understand each other and it's really sweet? And the show makes fun of both of them but not for having feelings (but definitely for being emotionally constipated lol). Now in most shows this would be haha broManCe "isn't it too funny that these guys are acting kinda gay hahaha because gay ppl are funny get it" material but in this one you have an actually confirmation that one of these dudes has been with a man before and when this guy shows up the other MC starts acting super jealous and they fight and the others actually call it a break up, also the crew textually says "you like each other" in a way that just doesn't work for friendship (the reviewers still calling it that are honestly delusional). There's tons of scenes that are straight of a fanfic - clothes swapping, practice sword fighting in the moonlight, sexy stabbing, loaded compliments, revealing secrets nobody else knows, longing looks, etc. It's great.

- Also it's just super queer in general, there are two crewmembers who have an open relationship and we see them kiss on screen, and then there's Jim, a really cool nonbinary character hellbent on revenge raised to be a killing machine by a scary nun (amazing) who gets addressed by they/them pronouns and also has an angsty thing with another crew member.

- Also it has lots of characters of color in rich, complex roles and some very blatant send up of racist cliches you can usually find in pirate stories (like the "savage island cannibals" thing). All the English present in the stories are buffoons (and the French are even worse it's very funny). There is a scene where two Black crewmates set some slaves free by basically inventing the Nigerian prince pyramid scheme scam. It's great.

- Taika Waititi delivers some amazing acting and he's also super hot walking around in slinky leather, which I think is totally on purpose as he's got guys swooning for him left and right, he's the hot girl of the show (also he's got 'cat energy' according to the creators) and that is just an incredible take on Blackbeard, scariest pirate of all time. Also he's created this bigger than life image of the terrifying pirate around him because he thinks he was doomed to be a monster but now he's tired of it and it's all very Captain Flint of him. Love it.

- Also saw someone call it "Ted Lasso with pirates" and that tracks, for the whole "lovable doofus who's way out of his depth tries to coach a team of losers and wins them over with his heart of gold even though it takes a while and he has no clue of what he's doing" (is Blackbeard Trent Crimm, with the long grey hair ? Lmao)

- The first two eps are a little slow, I would say it really gets its wings after Blackbeard shows up so it's worth sticking with even if the first two don't entirely convince you.

Watch it ! It's ridiculous and fun and sweet and probably everything you didn't know you needed👌👌👌

A story + some advice

Once upon a time, back in 2009, I was “cancelled”.

We didn’t call it that, back then, but basically, after making a shitty, sanctimonious post, nearly every online friend I had made told me to go fuck myself and stopped talking to me. [below the cut - the story, plus some advice to the TDP fandom about toxic fans, consequences, and bad fan behavior from someone who has both been both accuser and defendant. This isn’t a Pity Me post, btw, just me trying to neutrally describe a Bad Time and draw comparisons to an ongoing situation to express both sympathy and clearly state that sometimes consequences are deserved.]

Oh, I had my reasons for the post I made. I was living with my parents, and they had discovered my secret livejournal. After several hours of screaming matches I was given the ultimatum - quit livejournal and LJRP forever, or move out with nothing but my car, my clothes, and the $60 I had in the bank. I chose not being homeless.

As part of this, I was allowed to make one final LJ post - a goodbye, telling people where I was, a (heavily edited) version of what happened and a plea to all my LJ friends to consider that they too might be “addicted to the internet” and they should “save themselves”. It was self-righteous and unwelcome, and my mother had no compunctions showing me the comments telling me to kill myself, get fucked, etc. It was devastating, and I spent the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 completely socially isolated, with no one but my parents for friendship. Needless to say, it blew.  Some of those friendships came back, either because those friends had the patience and kindness to understand my situation/hadn’t taken it so personally, or because after years (and I do mean literal years, like... 5+ years), mutual forgiveness happened. But not all of them. There are people who I spoke with daily who i haven’t spoken to in 12 years and I wonder what they’re up to now. Good things, I hope. I wish them nothing but success and happiness. But I had been an asshole and made a post that hurt people, and promptly been shown the door. And I don’t expect anyone to forgive me for being an asshole, even if my own circumstances were pretty dire. I made the choices that I did, and live with the consequences of those choices. That’s... just being an adult. Now. Lets talk about TDP and a certain she who will not be named. Miss thing has said and done some things that are high on my bad-fan-behavior list. She’s tagged the official account in a plea to have them mediate her fandom drama. She posted a suicide threat in the main fandom hashtag, without any warnings or tw tags, just right there for any and everyone to see. She’s made some pretty harsh accusations of other fans of bullying, harassment and death threats, but has produced no receipts or proof, which - in this day and age - is pretty important when making such a serious allegation - meaning I have to assume she’s making it up. She’s defended JKR and said that calling ol’ Joanne a TERF is unwarranted, claimed that “biological gender” can’t be ignored, whined about “liberal privilege,” and claimed that white people experience racism too because there isn’t enough “Tuscan rep.” (girl, what? Tuscany? I guarandamntee you more white people know what Tuscan culture looks like than Fillipino or Indigenous culture, what the hell.) She asks her followers to brigade and harass other fans as well as the people she’s accused, and blows things out of proportion... and then has had repeated histrionic meltdowns in the main fandom  hashtag, the public square of fandom, over one of these big name fans allegedly getting other fans to block her (still, no receipts).  I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this, but the claims she’s making are not true. If you know the ppl in question and follow them for any length of time, that is not the people who they are and they would never. Furthermore, trying to get Wonderstorm involved like they’re the fan police is, as i have said in my most popular post this week, bad. It’s bad. It’s bad fan behavior and being called out for it is deserved. So why am I telling you my sob story and then whipping around to talk about a similar story? Because I deserved being cancelled. I said something shitty - even if my circumstances were understandable and sympathetic! But what I did with that is attacked and harmed other people.  Attacking and harming others and making your drama and mental health public is toxic. People have a right to call you out, block you, and stop interacting with you if your behavior is harmful to them and the people they care about. It’s not harassment, its not bullying. It’s fucking consequences for being someone people don’t want to be around. I get it, I really do. It SUCKS. But sometimes you have to grow up and realize that when you hurt people, they might hurt you back. Nobody in fandom wants to be around someone who is constantly making drama their problem. And nobody in fandom should have to deal with that. 

I want miss missy to take it out of the fandom. She keeps threatening to leave tumblr and honestly I wish she would? At least until she’s grown, matured and learned how to handle her mental health in a productive way that doesn’t drag everyone, of all ages, into the fray. As it is right now she’s just making herself and everyone else miserable. Redemption isn’t something magically granted because one has apologized - it must be earned by a good faith demonstration of change. Not a performative change, but TRUE change. Until then, well... Sometimes you gotta cut your losses and leave. If you’re young and riled and feeling like the big mean fandom BNFs are harassing this poor poor mentally ill queer woman? Consider, perhaps, that she isn’t the only mentally ill queer woman in the fandom (hi!), and that when people call her out for toxic behavior it’s not bullying, but consequences. (BTW, madam, if you’re reading this: I didn’t block you because anyone told me to - in fact, i was told by certain parties NOT to block you. I blocked you because I don’t want you looking at my posts and thinking you can use my platform to give your self-aggrandizing pity party legitimacy like you absolutely did whenever I blogged about forgiveness, fan culture or positivity. These posts are not for you. Nice to see you didn’t respect my boundaries and are looking at this logged out, too.)

Poor roman :( but that being said I am heka interested in 5

remus humiliates roman in front of jamal (but jamal is a sweetheart)

vote from this concept voting post!

TWs: swearing, emotional humiliation, arguing, remus is generally pretty mean in this - not "unsympathetic" but his behaviour is not ok, brief alcohol mention but it isnt a main feature

first some background info on remus and ro:

roman and remus' friend groups actually run parallel to each other by pure councidence in that theyre the same age and are both in the local queer scene

usually they only run into each other on nights out and avoid each other like the plague... until one of romans friends and one of remus' friends become a very serious couple and the friendship groups merge

remus tends to hang it over romans head whenever they argue or remus just feels like teasing him that he could so so easily spill romans secret littlespace to all his friends

and while roman claims to not care he also really doesnt want that to happen, especially the specific things remus threatens to reveal (namely him calling his cgs mommy and daddy, and his fear of the dark - which remus knows are romans biggest embarrassments)

and remus never USUALLY actually follows through on his threats, he loves to freak roman out but he doesnt mean to be intentionslly cruel.

but one night theyve had an argument recently and remus is out to hurt roman and finally follows through on his threat to reveal romans secrets. in front of jamal

((the actual incident below the cut))

all the friends are walking back from a night out, and remus hangs back from the group to talk to jamal. roman is just glaring at remus and not saying anything and holding jamals hand tightly. remus hasnt embarrassed him too bad so far, just asking jamal questions and referring to roman as his "baby brother" which is so annoying, but the thing is roman can tell hes building up to something

then suddenly remus smirks when he sees a completely pitch black side street thats theyre about to pass by, and he calls out to everyone "hey guys, there's a 24/7 mcdonalds through here and its a shortcut to the bus stop" and everyones like WOO mcdonalds and redirects to go down the side street

and romans heart pounds watching the friends all filter down the street without a second thought, theres no streetlights down there, theres light on the other side quite far away, but before that its SO DARK. and he freezes in place and jamal is tugged back by it and looks back at him. "babe, come on"

romans starting to feel shaky and he literally cant move his feet. his eyes flick between the street and remus' sadistic cocky smirk.

"whats wrong baby bro? you stuck or something?" remus leers with that stupid stupid smirk

and roman HATES him so so much

"ro, what's the matter?" jamal asks

"i- um," roman stutters, trying to keep his voice from shaking too much at the sight of his friends just having DISAPPEARED into the darkness - how are they okay with that?? "i- im not hungry"

"okay well i am, and remus said it was a shortcut anyway so-"

"i-i -- no i can't"

seraphina, romans best friend, looks back and notices whats happening and quickly jogs over (knowing roman is scared of the dark) "hey roma, it's okay we dont have to go down there" she soothes

jamal is supportive but he doesnt get it. he thinks roman is scared of criminals or smth. "i promise theres no one bad down there, hun. and i'll be right next to you the whole time, i'll protect you" and he smiles and tugs romans hand to pull him towards the side street

romans eyes quickly tear up and he panics and rambles "nononono dont please please i cant i cant" in a broken voice and plants his feet firmly on the ground, paralysed with fear

remus starts cackling "ohhhhh thats right~" as if he just remembered. "my baby brother's terrified of the dark, isn't he?"

"f*ck off, re" sera barks, standing between the twins, protective of roman

"wait, are you?" jamal asks sounding surprised. roman doesnt let himself look at him, too busy watching remus warily and knowing thats not all he has planned to embarrass roman

remus goes on, shouting out to jamal over sera's head "he's petrified!" he confirms sounding delighted. "yknow that massive blackout last summer? he cried like a baby. literally sobbing for his daddy patton to make it go away"

theres a brief silence because no, sera and jamal didnt expect remus to refer to patton as romans daddy - they both know roman calls him dad but this is a surprise.

and that one second of silence drags on for ages for roman, all he can hear is his heart pounding in his ears and remus' obnoxious laughter

he is shaking, frozen in shock rather than fear now. for all of remus' teasing threats at home, he didnt expect remus to actually do it. hes devastated and humiliated that remus told to his best friend and especially his BOYFRIEND of all ppl

and honestly he's not even thinking about the pitch black side street right now because the streetlights on the main road are blurred by tears welling in his eyes anyway

"why dont you just leave him alone!" sera hisses furiously after her mild shock

then jamal bounces back rlly stern to remus "yeah i already know about that! roman told me and it was HIS choice to tell me"

roman stares at him in disbelief but jamal is too busy staring daggers at remus to notice

remus looks suddenly offended and frowns. hes clearly hurt that the others dont think its funny "jeez youre both such bores. im just having some fun"

"youre demented if you think thats fun" seraphina growls and shoves remus away towards the sidestreet. remus rolls his eyes and runs ahead to join the others who are all oblivious to that coversation, howling with drunken laughter in the pitch black and jumping out and scaring each other

"f*cking prick" jamal calls after remus, seething

sera quickly throws a concerned look to roman "you okay?"

roman just swallows thickly and looks between seraphina and where he saw remus join the others in the pitch black. his stomach churns at the idea of remus telling more people. "i-is he gonna--"

"im on it" sera nods and starts turning around "i wont let him tell anyone else, roma, promise" then she runs ahead to keep an eye on remus and to give him and jamal some privacy

after a moment jamal turns back to roman looking so worried and holds his hands and asks very gently "babe, can you tell me how youre feeling?"

and roman is teary but he whispers "i - you stuck up for me"

jamal looks suddenly sad and cups romans cheek "of course i did"

"but you said i told you about it. i- i didnt tell you that i-" roman gulps after his voice wobbles "i didnt tell you about it"

and jamal smiles sadly and goes "i know babe... im sorry, i just didnt wanna give him any more power. it seemed like he's held that over you for a while"

suddenly the tears in romans eyes overspill and he doesnt really know why but he can't stop them

jama gasps a little "oh roman, its ok" and just pulls him into a tight hug

roman clings and sniffles, glad that he can hide his tears from his boyfriend even if it is in his neck.

and jamal just strokes his back and whispers "its ok baby, its ok" **

they talk about it quietly as they take the longer, well-lit route instead. roman admits he would never have told jamal abt his fear on his own - and the reason he's been avoiding staying overnight at jamals apartment is bc the one time he did he got so scared of the dark that he couldnt sleep and was just anxious all night but wouldnt wake jamal to tell him

after jamal finds out hes like baby why didnt u tell me its okay and comforts him about it not being embarrassing or childish. then:

"so you do actually want to stay at mine, its just because its so dark that you didnt?"

roman nods shyly "yeah... im sorry i know its a dumb fear i just-"

"its not dumb ro. i meant to say if it works for you, we could leave the hall light on and the door open. its not like i live with anyone who can walk in."

roman blinks "wait you - really? it wont make it hard for you to sleep?"

jamal smiles softly "no hun, honestly i could sleep anywhere. i fell asleep in the middle of the day in the staffroom just last month"

roman laughs, so so so relieved

"so... maybe next time you come over for dinner you could stay the night, yeah?" jamal says with a smile and a blush. he wraps his arm around romans waist and pulls him in, hip to hip

roman bites his lip and blushes. after a moment he suggests shyly "im free tonight..."

and jamal smiles so big, stops walking and puts his arm up to romans chest to stop him too then angles romans jaw down to kiss him

in the near future jamal promises to buy a plain nightlight and always leaves it on for roman when he stays overnight from then on

**side note: roman could never stand anyone calling him baby before because he felt infantilised at school becaus of his undiagnosed adhd. so he sees it as a derogatory name more than anything. but when jamal says it roman feels so warm and respected because he knows jamal would never mean it in that way. so jamal has "baby" rights basically

so, I made a meme for JoL ships that I either ship or have seen other ppl ship. my thoughts on all of them under the cut.

Chen Pingping/Xiao En--you mean to tell me there was never any hatefucking? Chen Pingping literally dedicated 20 years and ruined 3+ lives to get a few secrets out of Xiao En. There was hatefucking there at some point. 

Ye Ling’er/Lin Wan’er--friends with benefits. I have never seen a more lesbiany lesbian than Ye Ling’er and Lin Wan’er is bi. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules

Ye Ling’er/Fan Ruoruo--butch/femme lesbians. Also they made eye contact once and I immediately said “that’s my ship” (then I got yby/sxj but that’s aside the point)

Zhan Doudou/Si Lili--idk about this one folks. I don’t call them lesbians bc I hc Zhan Doudou as transing his gender but there’s definitely something going on there

Xie Bi’an/Li Chengze--there is a lot of devotion going on here, though I personally don’t see what all the fuss is about. I don’t think Xie Bi’an is fleshed out enough for it to be NOT disproved by canon.

Li Yunrui/Yan Xiaoyi--this is basically the same as Xie Bi’an/Li Chengze except I personally am more invested in it and therefore read much further into their actions

Chen Pingping/Ye Qingmei--this might be outright stated in the show? I’m not sure. The whole mama mia plotline with the dads and Ye Qingmei is confusing

Fan Xian/Si Lili--book love interest, yadda yadda yadda, I guess they have chemistry? But they also kinda get over it sooo…. I don’t see it, personally. I could ship them for a deadly one night stand, and canon could too, I guess, but canon also pushes the monogamous!fx agenda against the book so they say fx/sll don’t get it on

Fan Xian/Haitang Duoduo--book love interest, but she friendzones him hard in the show (and i think the feeling is pretty mutual too). The only reason this is NOT disproved by canon is because of the stunt Fan Xian pulled with the empress dowager about being in love with htdd

Fan Xian/Lin Wan’er-- this is literally canon. And I thought they had a lot of chemistry, tbh, even though not everyone agrees. I also just really like Li Qin lol. I just think she’s neat.

Yan Bingyun/Shen Wan’er--may I direct you to one of my three joy of life fics, all of which have some form of yby/sxj? This is my favorite ship in this show. The enemies to lovers. The mutually requited pining. The ‘I lied to you.’ The continued lying. The cold one likes the sunshine one. Betraying king and country. Self-sacrifice is a love language. I just really love yby and sxj guys. I love them a lot.

There are some double standards in my shipping, such as the fact that Fan Xian/Si Lili has very similar circumstances to Yan Bingyun/Shen Wan’er, but fx/sll is a v specific circumstances ship while yby/sxj is an otp

Xie Bi’an/Li Chengze and Yan Xiaoyi/Li Yunrui are also very similar, but Yan Xiaoyi is a much more compelling character to me, so his ship has more meat to it than Xie Bi’an. This is not a knock on the Xie Bi’an/Li Chengze shippers out there; it’s just an explanation of my personal tastes.

I don’t actually think Zhan Doudou/Si Lili is a canon ship, at least in the show, but it’s fun to imagine. I know some fans think of them as lesbians, but my reading of Zhan Doudou is that he’s trans, and thus they are not lesbians, though still very queer.

found truthers and eb ppl while looking for beeduo stuff and almost vomited! diversity loss. i hope they all either go to therapy and learn to be normal human beings who dont read into real fucking peoples relationships and statements to say that theyre secretly trans or gay or whatever or that they fucking die because shit would it make this world easier to live in. esp for the ccs that have to deal with their own "fans" constantly reading into their every little move

like wow!! wonder why ranboo doesnt like ppl talking abt his sexuality or birthday when theres ppl who legit try to guess at his birth chart or say that hes queer or why tubbo wants his sexuality to be private when any time he interacts with another boy theres a million ppl clamoring to say its flirty or that he likes them. its all obvs hurting them, even if they were queer once they come out its going to b w the knowledge that now even more people are going to make fics and art that overstep their boundaries or act Weird about it or act as if theyve known all along (gross bc u rlly shouldnt read into someone like that)

like damn no wonder they want to keep shit abt themselves secret even when they are open abt their identity they get bitches pressuring them into accepting something else (ranboo having his pronouns listed as he/him only for someone to send him multiple donos asking if he uses they/them too). not only does it show that those ppl are unhealthy and need to take a step back n get help but it also just. isnt good for ny1, not them, not the ccs, n not the ppl like me who r triggered by that stuff but keep seeing it nyways

just. its so so sickening. i cant imagine how the ccs feel, its already so clear that many of them have had their mental health plummet bc of their "fan"bases, i just. god, they really have to deal with ppl constantly reading into their every little move, ppl misgendering them saying that its bc they "found out" that theyre actually trans, ppl making gross content and saying its ok bc the ccs wont see as if its okay to do shitty things just bc you wont be found out (newsflash: a shitty thing is shitty no matter who sees you), ppl assigning them labels and getting into their old content (a bunch of fucking ppl were obsessing over believing they found ranboos old tumblr and caused him to delete it by interacting, which even if it was his i. he actively says not to seek out his old shit whats wrong with you), ppl reading into their real life relationships, etc etc. i couldnt even deal with rumors of me in school when i was a nobody, i doubt popular ccs are doing too hot when its thousands of ppl spreading hundreds of rumors at all times. i hope i never lose sight of having basic compassion and respect for other humans and their boundaries like truthers have

OKAY FUCKER ALL THE QUESTIONS FROM THAT ASK MEME THE LGBT ONE

1. Identity and pronouns.

I'm agenderfluid and they/them pronouns. My sexuality is aroflux and asexual.

2. How did you discover your sexuality?

Pretty much at 14 was like "idk i don't relate to everyone else i don't find celebrities hot or sex remotely something i want. If i could reproduce without sex i would. Oh. I'll just call myself asexual, like a sponge!" (Which asexual is incidentally what the creators of Spongebob were going for, fun facts. Spongebob is ace rights.)

3. Have you experienced being misgendered? How do you overcome it?

Mmmm I am constantly misgendered bc I'm nonbinary and live in a binary society and the way I compartmentalize it is basically just dressing how I want and not making an attempt to pass as anything tbh. The only time I feel misgendered is when someone knows my pronouns and doesn't use them anymore tbh. So basically. Letting go of how I want to be perceived helped. I will say tho, I refuse to come out to my dad bc he won't respect it and it'll be more painful hearing him misgender me knowing how I identify, but. That's certainly a privilege I have since I'm not transitioning. (ATM at least.)

4. Who was the first person you told? How did they react?

I technically didn't come out as ace. My ex-best friend knew bc I talked about it, but neither of us knew it was an identity. So the transition upon finding the label was virtually nonexistent and all of my friends were LGBTQ as well so it wasn't stressful or shocking. It helps that around the time I discovered the label I'd met two friends who were ace and felt the same way I did. My experience with my asexuality is definitely the model that should be the norm with the community and what we as a society should aim for.

As for my gender I'd made comments in the past that I wished I could just be genderless and it really kind of sat with me when my ex-best friend came out as trans bc I was like "Oh? You don't have to be the gender you are at birth?" Belial from Angel Sanctuary was a character that resonated with me at the time, and this was right around the time I made my ace friends. It wasn't until a year later that I discovered the nb community and one friend who was genderfluid that I decided to start trying different pronouns. And basically I came out as questioning and transitioned to nb without a formal declaration, which I also feel should be the goal for society.

I was at a con with my best friend at the time who was trans and he'd come out with my now ex-best friend while they were dating. And I was really anxious bc I felt like ppl would assume I was a transtrender and shit, and my friend said something about gender and I kind of awkwadly implied I might not identify as female and he was really great about it! He was like "If you wanna talk about it or try different pronouns you can." :D

5. Describe what it was like coming out.

I pretty much did this im question 4 hehehe.

6. If you're out, how did ppl react?

I'm not out to family, that I know of. They found my facebook which has my identity listed in my about, so I'm in limbo with them where none of us talk about it so idk if they register it as an LGBTQ thing or not.

My friends were all supportive! It helps that I have like no cishet friends lmao.

I also came out to my class on TDOV two years ago for a project where we step outside our comfort zone. I'm luckily in the social work program which has social justive built into the tenants of the profession so it was pretty positive! People still misgendered me after and were more concerned with "but i'm scared of ppl getting angry at me what should i do to talk about this with them" which. 9__9 Not surprising. But there was a mom whose kid and her kid's partner are both genderfluid and bigender so it was a good experience and I had an ally which made me comfortable in sharing it in the first place.

7. What is one question you hate ppl asking about your sexuality?

Inevitably when I say I'm ace, non-aces assume I have no interest in dating which. Way to conflate being aroace with ace and ignore that there are aros and aces who want relationships. That's my biggest pet peeve.

8. Describe the style of clothing you often wear.

I wear flannels and ripped jeans or shorts mainly. I basically dress like a butch lesbian. I'll wear dresses and stuff but I do not like dressing femme and prefer to offset softer things with hard things. Like. When I wear dresses I have to wear clunky combat boots with them or have short hair or something.

9. Who are your favorite LGBTQ+ ships?

Hmmm. Depends if you mean canon or not. Canon, it's probably FigAyda from D20 and Catradora from She-ra. Shion/Nezumi from No.6 is also one of my faves. There's also Chie and Ai from Virgin's Empire. Blupjeans from The Adventure Zone and JonMartin from The Magnus Archives.

As for Not Confirmed ships, I like Flick/CJ from Animal Crossing, Tsuna/Enma from Katekyo Hitman Reborn, uhhh. Reigisa from Free!, Kanji/Naoto from Persona and Chihiro/whatever the fuck his name is Mondo? Or the other guy I forget, from Danganronpa. Also RenLaw, RenStrade, and VinceLaw+VinceFarz from BTD.

(I am including straight relationships involving trans ppl obv.)

10. What does makeup mean to you? Do you wear any?

I hate how I look with make up it makes me dysphoric. But to me makeup is a good expressive outlet and bomb as hell, so when I do wanna wear makeup, I prefer wearing eyeliner and lipstick (esp in black or blue or green or purple) and glitter.

11. Do you experience dysphoria? How does it affect you?

I experience what I refer to as Silhouette Dysphoria a lot. I experience chest dysphoria but a lot of times it's less about me having them at all and me not liking how I look with them. The same goes for my hips and overall shape. Hence silhouette. I also experience genital dysphoria to a lesser degree, and when I do it's less hating my genitals bc they should be different but more just having any at all. Luckily I was born with internal genitalia so I don't have to think about it as much. Social dysphoria I also experience, but I've talked about that already.

How I deal with it is binding and stuff.

12. What is the stupidest thing you've heard said about the LGBTQ+ community?

Hmm. The ppl who genuinely argue that accepting the community means you'll be forced to accept pedophilia or beastiality. Like. Lmao no?

13. Favorite thing about the community?

I just love how great it feels to be in it tbh. It can be so positive and loving and just genuinely make you feel good about yourself.

14. Least favorite thing about the community?

Exclusionists.

15. Have you ever been to your city's pride event?

No, but I went to Pride in Des Moines!!! IT WAS GREAT!

16. Favorite LGBTQ+ celebrity?

I don't really follow celebrities, but probably Ian McEllen and Tim Gunn.

17. Have you been in a relationship and how did you meet?

I was in a relationship for a while with a friend of mine and it was wonderful tbh. We met in a server and started talkng more, and started out as qpps then became partners and like we broke up, but I still enjoyed the experience and wouldn't go back in time and stop it from happening. My other qpp tho. That's something I would do lmao.

I also have a bf but that's a secret~

18. Favorite LGBTQ+ book.

I haven't read a lot of books, so I guess I have to say The Raven Cycle bc that's the only one I remember reading.

19. Have you ever faced discrimination?

Mmmm the only time I have experienced direct discrimination I was giving a friend valentines chocolate in high school and some kid called me a d*ke when i walked past him.

The other stuff is like. My therapist telling me to check for a hormone imbalance when I said I was asexual.

20. Favorite LGBTQ+ movie/show?

She-ra, "To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything", The Runaways (the movie not the show), No. 6.

21. Favorite LGBTQ+ bloggers?

I don't have any lmao.

22. Which slur do you want to reclaim?

Queer, bc it's already been reclaimed and it fits me.

23. Have you ever gone to a gay bar or drag show? How was it?

Nope. Never, but it'd be fun!!

24. How do you idrntify your gender?

Already answered this lol.

25. Interested in having kids?

Nope. I'd be too scared of screwing them up.

26. What identity service would you give your younger self?

I wish I'd known there was an ace community before I was older tbh. So that, probably.

27. What do you think of gender roles in relationships?

I personally like playing a feminine role, but I also think gender roles are unecessary, so like. As long as I'm an equal I don't care what role I play lmao. If you wanna treat me like the handmaiden, as long as you're not doing it bc you see me as a woman I don't care.

28. Anything else you wanna share about your gender?

Nah. Just. I don't bother trying to pin it down anymore bc the more I analyze it the less I understand it.

29. Something you wish ppl knew about being LGBTQ+?

Hmmmm not really. It's fun outside of the systemic oppression?

30. Why are you proud to be LGBTQ+?

For me it's less about pride in being LGBTQ+ and more being proud to express myself authentically. 🤷

Questions from this ask meme: https://thecaffeinatedkansasbabe.tumblr.com/post/165163508337/random-questions-for-queer-ladies-wlwask

SEXUALITY & COMING OUT: 1. How do you define your sexuality? Grey/demiromantic, grey/demisexual, bi leaning 2. What pronouns do you use to identify yourself? Any are fine 3. At what age did you first suspect that you are sexually attracted to other girls? 23. 4. At what age did you come to terms with your sexuality? 23. 5. Did you have an “aha I like girls” moment or was it more of a gradual realization? I had an “aha, I like THIS girl” moment 6. How did your sexuality make you feel before you came out? I’m still not really out, but I’m out in most online spaces I’m on.....mostly it made me feel like I had to keep it secret. 7. How did you become comfortable with your sexuality? Honestly that wasn’t too hard for me. I guess having LGBT friends and being familiar with that kind of stuff, + already having come to terms with orientation from a theological perspective, helped a lot. 8. At what age did you first come out? 23 9. Who was the first person you came out to? How did they take it? Well, my brother, and he kinda reacted badly, like “ew, that’s something I didn’t want to know”. But then, a few years later, he realized he was bi!  10. Do your parents know about your sexuality? HELL. NO. 11. How out are you? Only a little 12. Do you now identify as something different than when you first came out? Instead of bisexual I identify as being aroace spec with biromantic leanings, now 13. Was anyone surprised when you came out or did people seem to already know? I don’t know. 14. Has coming out lost you any friends? Maybe. Idk. 15. How soon after meeting someone do you usually tell them about your sexuality? I don’t, typically. 16. How difficult do you find it to sympathize with straight women? Eh. I just feel odd when people assume I’m straight, lol. 17. Have you ever wished you were completely straight? Not really. 18. Agree or disagree: Everyone is at least a little bit gay. I actually do think it’s likely that a lot of people are at least somewhat bi.  19. If you are not a lesbian, about what percentage of the time do you find yourself attracted to other girls? Less than 1% of the time, but the same goes for men. 20. Do you think it is possible to be a true 50/50 bisexual, or is the percentage always skewed towards one gender? Maybe, but I think more often than not it leans one way even if only a little. 21. How often do you find yourself trying to sneak a peek or stare at a cute girl? Not really. 22. How accurate is your gaydar? Meh.

GETTING SERIOUS:

109. What does equality mean to you?
 Equal opportunities and rights 110. Do you consider yourself a feminist? No. 111. Do you eat meat at all? Yup. 112. Are you religious at all? Very. 113. How do you feel about the terms “woman crush” and “girl crush”? I mean......lots of words in the English language have different meanings than they do at face value. 114. How do you feel when platonic female friends refer to each other as girlfriends? Confused, like are you gay or just friends 115. How do you feel when people use the word gay to mean things such as stupid, dumb, boring, or idiotic? Meh. I’m not too concerned with it. 116. Are you comfortable with terms such as lezzie, lesbo, dyke, homo, or tranny? If people of those identities want to use them, then let em 117. What are your views on gender identity and bathroom use? Trans people been using the bathrooms of their choice for decades, it’s only an issue now because trans people are more visible than previously. 118. Do you have any opinions on LGBT people in the military? Eh. For trans people on hormones and stuff who have to take injections, maybe there’s a valid reason for banning them, cuz like....diabetics can’t serve in the military either cuz medical reasons. But I don’t know much about it, and feel free to correct me. 119. Have you ever been called a gay slur? Yes. 120. Have you ever been queer bashed? Yes. 121. Have you ever been discriminated against because of your sexuality or gender identity? If so, please explain. I actually had a sitch just recently where I was threatened on account of my sexuality.....basically, since I’m bi-ish, there was some people who felt I shouldn’t be allowed around children, and they were threatening to call my church and out me to the church elders. 122. Does it really get better? Idk. 123. Americans: How did you feel on June 26, 2015? It was a good time 124. How accepting of LGBT people is the city/community you live in? No idea. 125. Have you ever tried to “pray the gay away”? No, never felt I had to. 126. How annoyed are you with how heteronormative society is? Meh. 127. What LGBT stereotype do you most disagree with? The. Hecking. Pedo. One. It burns me up! 128. Is there anything about the LGBT community that you wish you knew before coming out? They aren’t very accepting of us side B ppl 129. What advice would you give to a girl who is struggling to figure out her sexuality? It’s okay not to be straight, God doesn’t love you any less, and it’s also okay not to be sure. It’s also ok to if it turns out you are straight! 130. What advice would you give to a girl who is struggling to come out? Only come out when you are in a safe place to do so tbh. Other than that, idk, cuz I’m only a little bit out myself.

by this point im p sure u all know the drill.... i’m nora, 23, she/her, gmt and tonight matthew im going to be greta o’driscoll, a terrible person but a hot one which frankly makes it almost ok. here is her pinterest..... this intro is literally just copied n pasted frm the last time i played her so soz if u’ve read it like 10+ times.... 

「 diana silvers. cis-female. 」have you seen greta o’driscoll around yet? i hear she decided to be in POTENTAS for their SOPHOMORE year as a CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY major. the 20 year old SHEPHERD is known to be tenacious, magnetic, capricious and evasive. ➨ the muse is written by nora, she/her, gmt.

was adopted as an infant. had two foster moms and two older sisters so always surrounded by women. lived in a boarding house, very much like the one in 20th century women, with lodgers coming in and out all the time, mostly artsy young women because her gay moms were both high school teachers trying to set up their own arts collective. one of her moms left when she was 4, n she doesn’t really remember her.

while living with entirely women made her super into catlin moran and the guilty feminist, as a teenager she often let boys walk all over her bc she just craved male attention jst bcos she’d never really experienced it. saw it as something aspirational, like sitting in the back of chad’s second-hand truck while he drove you to macdonalds and offered you and his five friends with identical haircuts weed was the height of being cool to greta, she wanted to be their dream girl, even if it meant compromising her beliefs

was always a really sporty bitch. it started with a junior athletics squad, which turned into athletics and cheer, which then became athletics, cheer and hockey until she basically was doing a different activity every night. she came to see her body as a tool that she could make work for her if she trained it up and this attitude’s always kind of stayed with her that as long as her body is strong she is capable of anything. runs every day. 

bubbly bitch but also massive snake. metaphorically and literally, always shedding her skin. loyal to few, ruled by none, out for herself, babey!! every place she goes, she becomes a new character, someone who’s a figment of her imagination, as if each city is repertory theatre and she’s a character actress, so as a result som ppl think she’s called rita, some ppl know her as margot, she just flicks through identities like nobodies business.

left school at 18 n went backpacking around the states making money in the casinos by being a shot girl (yeehaw) and trying to make it as a mysterious 1920s widow with a smoky voice, a dark secret n a heart of gold, looking for love in the big city. all she found was producers and acting agents who’d promise her stardom n actually just fuck her in a motel n then ignore her calls.

TW domestic violence, TW gun, her watershed moment came when she met luke in sioux falls while she was working at a strip club. he was a few years older and had a car, and they kind of went from seeing each other to being that super intense couple who are just necking all the time.

they got engaged like 3 months after they met n rented a flat together, much to her family’s annoyance but she was 19 so there wasn’t much they could do. their relationship was super super intense though, often really heightened and when they fought it could become quite violent, but she’d pass it off as just him being really passionate.

one of their fights got really heated and greta threatened him with the gun he kept in the glove box of his vauxhall corsa, but the safety was off and she accidentally shot him. she pleaded self defence in the trial n cos of the amount of times she’d been hospitalised for various concussions n things like ‘fallling down the stairs’ the police were like yea… pretty watertight evidence that he was a bastard who [chicago voice] had it coming….. 

she’s now under witness protection, rehoused in livingstone as a sports-scholarship student, due to the amount of police involvement in the area, it would mean should one of luke’s family members try to track her down, she’d be relatively safe

massive sports fanatic. plays tennis. on the cheer team. was a track superstar in her high school. honestly just that sporty bitch, you’ll see her doing lines at a party at half four and then on your way to your 9am lecture you see her running across the park like a fresh fucking daisy who is this bitch. maybe it’s maybelline, maybe its coke.

massive feminist. low key quite scared of powerful men bcos of her ex. wants to start a female only lesbian commune bc she misses her childhood in a south dakota boarding house and has endless support for women. honestly annoyed that she is attracted to men, would so be 100% gay if it was a choice. cuffs her jeans and can’t drive. is That bisexual. skateboards. wears backwards caps.  i hate her 

isn’t a foward-planner, however. greta prefers to leave her options open, play the field, live in a spontaneous manners so her study style is mostly cramming a few days before a test, or staying up all night writing an essay on a massive adrenline boost powered by red bull or probably adderall, scribbling (or typing) furiously into the night.

has an addictive personality. seems unable to do anything in a small dose, she has to let it utterly consume her. with sports, she’s fiercely competitive. with alcohol, it’s never a shot, it’s a whole bottle – wine or whiskey – she’ll be table dancing before the night’s up and making out with someone she’ll regret in the morning. 

not afraid to go after what she wants !! ambitious academically and romantically thirsty !! she loves the adrenaline of the chase. when someone’s easy to get, she becomes bored. very bisexual and very proud of it. feminist as fuck nd part of a queer representation in the arts group which holds fortnightly meetings to discuss lgbt representation in film, literature, art etc.

old soul in a young person’s body. all the shit that has gone on has kind of aged her. she’s quite cynical about everything now. always smoking smoking smoking. very edie sedgwick in that way.  little girls skirts bought for next-to-nothing at the market because she’s skinny enough to get away with it, barely long enough to cover your bum, and then the ugliest baggy sweater you’ve ever seen thrown over it.

likes old things. old books, old music, old houses, it reminds her of happier times like when she wasn’t alive. buys all her music on vinyl and has a gramphone because “The Sound quality is Better” kfdsjj.

super into pop art and andy warhol. puts female friendships above everything but at the same time, would fuck her best friends man

her clothing style is like…. vintage thrift store but make it preppy. berets and cute hats, neck scarves, large fluffy cardigans or like those leathery jackets with big suede fringes on them, mini skirts (very 70s), and knee high socks or boots. quite often she’ll be in sports kit, maybe a cute tennis skirt, n when she’s feeling casual she’ll wear like, a talking heads tshirt with a pair of mom jeans and converse, but otherwise, the library is her catwalk.

aesthetics:

a bubble of pink gum on chapped lips, mom jeans, a beaten up pair of adidas, denim jackets, strawberry laces, knee-highs, chapped lips, peeling sticky plasters, split knuckles, bruises you try to cover with concealer, stick and poke tattoos, hot coffee, sleep caught in your eyes on a lazy afternoon, kissing girls, cigarette smoke shrouding you like a veil, alien conspiracy theories and sci-fi paperbacks, doc martens with fraying laces, the red string of a thong peaking out purposely from jeans, leonine arch of your back and that stellar smile that says ‘you have no idea who you’re dealing with’, a rucksack permanently packed for the move, a streak of red across your lips, roller blades, cut knees, not eating your greens, smiling with a mouthful of blood, and piercing your own ears with a safety pin when your mom wouldn’t take you, kate moss posters lining the walls of a teenage bedroom, his name scrawled in rage across the pages of a diary, thumb holes poked through the cuffs of your sleeves, a tennis racket you punched through in a fit of temper, feet pounding the earth until your soles bleed crimson, sleeping in a cherry lip balm and scrunchies to keep the wild locks from your eyes.

wanted plots

frinds !! unlikely friends !! toxic friends !! former best friends separated by sports rivalries ! sporting friends who are on other teams but who she absolutely loves playin against!!! 

since greta literally can’t differentiate between romantic and platonic love, she’s got off with so many of her mates, so i want awkward friendships where they nearly dated, or exes that have now just turned into weird friendships

 girls from the cheer team who she’s like, weirdly intimate with like the shower together but its not a Thing cos the other girls straight !!! what do u mean !! aha just fun !

and I want like, fellow criminology students who are like?? how is this bitch still passing?? i swear she goes out every night?? 

she works part time at a fast food restaurant, i want a mate that just goes and sits in there talking to her until her manager gets angry. 

ppl she did a few modules with ie. art history, bio-med, film studies, before changing course and somehow sort of remaining in touch with

 ppl who she runs track with. 

someone she’s trying to make a zine with. 

here’s a list of plots on her old blog if u want any of them w her.

would love plots of any type, throw them all at me please, i cnt wait to interact w all of u. like this if u want me to message you about connections / plots! xo

full biography if u can be bothered

trigger warnings: drugs, domestic abuse, gun.

you never meant for it to happen. you’d heard the stories, of girls who let their man walk all over them, and thought to yourself “i’ll never be one of those girls…” the kind that eat low-fat yoghurt and drink slim fast to shred a few extra pounds because he said she was getting round in the tummy, or the ones who spent their evenings tied to a kitchen sink drinking wine while him and the boys played poker, wishing god, if only I could get out of here. not you, not you raised by strong women, four bright shining beacons. single mother with her hard-as-nails attitude and her stony glares, elder sisters (twins) one ginger, one blonde, one doctor, one lawyer, both determined to take a bullet to the brain and a hammer to the patriarchy before they let a man touch them without asking. you were always so inferior, so insecure and small, like a bird (like a sparrow) with blonde plaits down your back sucking tropicana whilst your busom buds sucked dick, their lips permanently ripe with stories of their sexual exploits, fake tan and glittered nails whilst you sat in the unbroken egg of virginity wondering what it was like to be loved. one day you found out.

lily milligan’s parents gone and a free house for the night, bottles of ouzo and tequila swiped from your mother’s liquor cabinet thinking she wouldn’t know (she always knew) your legs, hardened from pep squad, slut dropping on a kitchen table because the boys thought it would be fun to get the quiet girl drunk. you’d never had a sip before that night. band t-shirts, denim shorts and the split soles of rotten converse that you refuse to let go of, you still clutched with both hands to your youth, but in a tube top now (borrowed from alice carmichael who had a sister in college) and a short tennis skirt, your feet not in trainers but in thigh-high boots. uncomfy as hell but lily said you needed to look sexy. you didn’t know if you wanted to be sexy. you didn’t know what kind of girl you were, if you were even a girl at all. but robbie looked at you like he knew exactly who you were, like he knew you better than you knew yourself, and his lips had the pink cupid’s bow of a movie star, and his hair was dark locks, curling like a mane. his hands were soft, and suddenly on your waist, and after three more shots his lips were on yours and his name was the only sound in your head and on your lips as you lost it in lily’s college sister’s bedroom beneath the glare of a T-Pain poster. you bled for what seemed like hours, his hand still in yours, kissing on the sofa as truth tellers and dare devils continued to spin a bottle of unprecedented youth. you thought it was love. robbie was the one. he loved you, you knew it, how else could someone be so soft? but soon he grew bored, scrunched up your paper heart and set it alight. then came the tears, the hatred, the ‘fuck robbie, in fact, fuck all boys.’ and that you did.

you were known for being easy. any boy could be yours for a night, as long as he promised to love you for those few short breaths and pants before you cried yourself to sleep. you felt poisoned, but poisonous as well, as if by ensnaring these young boys you were gaining power over them, and not the other way around. soon it started to work. they’d want more, but you’d deny them it, sick of sucking off silly schoolboys, they’d call you a tease, a vixen. maybe you were, but you couldn’t help but want older men. you got the history teacher first time, him bending you over his desk to sneak a hand up your tennis skirt as the after-school clubs carried on next door, unawares. love didn’t exist, not for you. it was nothing but a game for pretty young girls to play, bubble gum in their canines and a hand tugging at the hem of their cheer skirt.

there was so much anger inside of your small body, ‘beware of boys and their hook-like words’. hockey helped. there was something formidable about the feeling of a stick like a weapon in your hands and the thwack it made against thighs in the heat of a scrum - “slipped, sorry!” - you’d utter with a snakeskin smile, millicent quinn knowing that you’d hit her on purpose because she shagged robbie at that party last week. she couldn’t prove it, cobbled acne on her forehead turning green with disgust. ben came into your life like a car crash. two years your senior, with a baseball jacket and shoulders like a god. he became your personal hero. on the pitch, he was lethal. together, you could bring anyone to their ruin. each day after last period he’d be waiting in his car. you’d leap into his arms like a girl-half starved, love me, love me, love me, your heated kisses the envy of every junior girl. he was yours for three blissful years, utterly yours, and you were his, his star-spangled girl, and he was your knight - you were both the same, playing games, always difficult to predict. it was a shock to all when he proposed, high-school sweethearts find love in south dakota.

the engagement was a bittersweet affair; three months – you barely out of your gingham print skirts and into a graduation gown, him, a surly quarterback towering above your sisters, cigarette at his lips and a scowl like a fart in a lift. they hated him. so did you. but you were eighteen and in love, and he fitted the cookie cutter mould. everyone wanted him, and you had him. you had him and you were happy, happy, happy, and he loved you. he said he’d give you the world, anything you wanted hand-picked and given to you. instead, he gave you a jack russell terrier and a flat you couldn’t swing a cat in, wallpaper peeling like the rotten bits inside of you, the bits that only he knew. and you got tireder and tireder of the sad excuse of a life he’d picked out for you, him out doing god knows what to pay the bills, and you dancing on tables to pave your way to stardom, and this was love, this was real, until the shine wore off and your fresh-faced, dimple-cheeked cheerleader facade faded and the ugliness started to reveal itself, the whining, the petulance, the sharp-tempered cruelty, the mind games, the need to always win, win, win. he was dull, he was boring, he was nothing like the boy the girls had said he was and no chiselled six pack could hide his lack of anything remotely interesting, your patience wearing thin until it snapped like rubber, a rucksack on your back, running shoes on your feet and the joint bank account emptied into your eighth grade birthday wallet.

you built your small fortunes working the casinos of sioux falls, a crimson dress and an attitude to match. bookish archie with his little dipper freckles was fun for a month, before he became just as dull and dreary as the rest. a three hour bus and you were in minneapolis, bright eyed and bushy tailed, fresh meat ready for the pickings. a hostel here, a friendly co-worker’s sofa there as you made what you could by taking off your clothes and shaking your ass like you were back in pep squad, doing what you did best. you met your fair share of creeps, and soon it was back on the road to escape a wide-eyed stalker and a restless itch for more. milwaukee, chicago, you made the roads your own. log cabins and lodgings, and the occasional motel, a beaten up pick up truck purchased at a scrap merchants – you got a few miles out of it before it bit the dust, and when you finally set it alight after nights spent lounging across the driver’s seat, a parka tucked over you as a duvet, you were sad to see it go. you’re nomadic by fault, never attaching to place, people or things, creating a new personality in every place you go like a character actress; each town is a different repertory theatre, and you’re the star. a compulsive liar, you even fib about your own name, to some you’re ellen, nineteen, bookish, a law student who likes smoking and cosmos. to someone else you’re rita, you’re twenty five and look young for your age, like smoking, comics and fucking in public places.

in the bright lights of michigan, you found charlie, sweet charlie, too good for you, though you let him spoil you while he thought you were the small town girl of his dreams. next came abigail, who was fun until the jealously kicked in, and then luke, gorgeous luke, dangerous, exciting, who despite his temper, despite the fights, despite bruises down your spine and your teeth marks on his arms, loved you with the strength of a wild fire. there was destruction in your wishbones, a savageness from the field, from the pitch and now somehow in his arms, you were godly. he was cruel, he was careless, and he refused to fall at your feet like so many other boys had, which only you made you want him all the more. you were rage incarnate. you hated him so fiercely you thought you might kill him, so he played the only card you wouldn’t predict; proposed.

the house you shared was a backstreet flat in detroit, you making your name as a downtown singer while he footed the bill with pills. they had a drug for anything these days, to dull the senses, to pick them up, to drive you to insanity or pull you out of the madness hole. the two of you lived like criminals on the run (you never told him that you were, living out your days as the enigma he wanted you to be), you with your voice like caramel and fishnet legs. you were his and his alone until his hand was at your throat and the gun was in your hands screaming at him to stop, stop, stop, until a bullet stoppered his brain, crimson staining linoleum as you cast yourself out like lucifer. self defence was decreed the moment they saw your violet neck, black tears and headlight eyes and mind screaming red, red, red like the pom-poms you shook so willingly in school and the insides of his skull. you were gone, and “you” was born, renamed “greta”, boxed, shipped-out, and next-day delivered to livingstone where under witness protection you were a student, blank slate, fresh-faced in a place where no one knew your name, doing what you always did and starting again.

RP POSITIVITY MEME

DAY 14: FREE DAY!

so this whole week i’ve kept myself from mentioning joly when possible. i promo joly on my dash every day. my very existence is a joly promo. it was mostly a way to make sure that i gave other people attention, and also b/c i saw the last day was a free day and wanted to use it to write about how much i love joly’s characters.

if it weren’t for joly i doubt i’d still be here. that’s not to say that i didn’t love rping solas beyond what i have with joly, but after my hiatus it was the desire to rp with joly again that really brought me back. and i’m so thankful for that b/c it’s allowed me to meet ppl like merc and lisa and kae, ppl who either weren’t around or i didn’t know before. also just when i was having a rough time last year and whenever i’ve had a rough time since then joly’s been there for me. they’re a really special person, who deserves even more kind words written about them than their characters do. but if i keep going i’ll probably make myself cry.

suffice to say if you like my blog, then you have joly to thank. not just for me being here, but how their ocs have shaped my solas. i cannot recommend joly’s blogs enough. they don’t have as much time as they did to write, but it doesn’t make them any less dedicated to their characters as someone who posts a dozen things a day.

before i get to their actual blogs, i want to talk about the npcs or characters that no longer have rp blogs.

first, deshanna. i’ve loved how they made a mother who is flawed and sympathetic, and who i don’t feel 100% good about solas disliking her in modern. it’s my secret desire to be able to rp in a thread where she’s npc’d one day, either in modern or batb. next, layne. what a piece of shit. i don’t know TOO much about layne, and i’m in this position where i want to know more but also i dread it. hoping one day solas and mio can shank him. and then, june. june had a blog (and may again one day??) and he was a fuckin hermit mamma’s boy that was too boring for fen to want to have anything to do with. joly’s recently been toying with some ideas for his character that i think only strengthen what they have, and i’m excited.

@ancientimpudence -

mio is petty. mio is mean. mio is stand-offish. mio is loyal. mio is driven. mio is honest. i love mio.

if you want a character who is flawed and not always nice, you’ll love mio. they’re a really good example of how you can make a character not always be a very pleasant person, but still get plenty of rp mileage off of them and develop meaningful relationships. how two characters’ relationship can somehow be incredibly deep and yet broken. i love what joly and i have built for mio and solas, two ancient friends who aren’t always the best friends.

i could really talk about about their relationship. solas goes through a period where he becomes very empathetic and in-tune with the problems of everyone around him, but mio’s somehow always escape him. i love the gap, and i love how it’s both not his fault b/c mio hides how they feel, but also he needs to do better by them. i love how mio wants what’s best for solas and their cause, while simultaneously suggesting things that actually wouldn’t be best for solas, because mio isn’t omnipotent and is also, to an extent, still trying to keep solas as he was.

i love how mio doesn’t like ian but is still there to help him. i love how mio expresses themself in ways not everyone understands. i love how modern mio has purse dogs and brings vher food b/c they spent all weekend playing the sims.

and vher / mio?? one of those ships that just kinda happened. one of the best things about talking to joly about characters is how often two just kinda cling to one another. vher is aro and can’t return the romantic feelings mio feels for them (and open enough to be accepting when mio finds romantic love elsewhere) but they still care for mio so much. everything about mio that i listed above, even the petty and vain stuff, vher loves. also sometims vher decides they wanna kiss mio and i can only imagine what it does to the poor child.

basically, what i’m getting at here is, joly lets mio be flawed but also shows how those flaws can still lead to positive interactions. joly lets mio be unadmirable at times, but still likeable and lovable. joly introduced some extra diversity in background to the rebellion and i’m eternally thankful tbh.

@betterthanmaps​ -

harding is one of those characters everyone adores, and so it makes sense that joly, one of the most adorable ppl on the planet, chose to write her. i love seeing characters with stable and normal backstories. harding is just such a steady influence, and i’ve loved seeing her contrasted with the sad backstories most canons and ocs possess. which i wanna be clear isn’t a criticism of sad backstories! i merely mean that it’s also nice seeing variety. not everyone has had a past that has made them cruel or kind, some people were raised by caring parents and lived simple lives until they heard the call to adventure. those people are just as interesting and worthy of telling stories about.

joly’s harding reminds me somewhat of tolkien’s hobbits, i suppose, now that i’m writing this out. and they’re some of my fave characters in literature. only w/ harding we also get fun dragon age dwarfy lore-- someone who is as un-dwarfy as varric but not quite so loud about it and we get actual queer representation.

@spiritualjourneys​ - 

i adore spirits? i do not adore how the fandom treats spirits. things like treating human cole as superior to spirit cole, rather than a person making different choices, both paths making them happy, even if one is for reasons we can’t all understand. pinning everything wrong with anders in da2 on justice. assuming lord woolsey, an innocent spirit-ram who has done nothing but help, has always been a rage demon (even tho the ways in which he has been shown to help the family that adopted him aren’t typical rage-related qualities) but ANYWAY.

the point is, spirits are given something of a raw deal by the fandom and are almost always judged by their ability to conform to human standards. joly’s spirit multi is fuckin fantastic and making spirits different and complex and alien, while also familiar and very much people rather than set pieces in the stories of others. though all of them started out as npcs created by either joly (love, sincerity), myself (joy), or bioware (wisdom) it took joly no time at all to establish their stories. love and joy especially...

what i appreciate about love is the path they took to get where they are. how they weren’t always love, how they focus upon a specific kind of love, how they can’t always see when love is best working past. though i’ve only just started rping peace, i’m in love (get it) with the dynamic the two of them have formed. how they balance one another out and keep one another from straying too far into their own interests, and thereby corrupting themselves. it’s a dynamic that i wasn’t expecting at all when i made peace as an au to my zenyatta blog, but i think that’s the amazing thing about writing with joly. something falls into place and then it grabs you and the idea just won’t let go.

and as for joy, it’s probably the least developed of the spirits, having no form that’s recognisably alive nevermind a person. but it demonstrates well, i think, how “humanity” in elvhenan wasn’t defined by shape. when solas says he dislikes when people see him as just a pair of pointed ears, and that he doesn’t necessarily identify much with modern elves, the idea is expressing multiple things. one of them, i think, is that being an elf sometimes meant being a physical body with pointed ears, but sometimes you could just be bubbles and you’d still be considered a valid member of elvhen society. joy doesn’t exist as we do. joy forgets, joy prefers to never touch the earth, and it exists in a state of cycles to keep itself from becoming something like despair. joly depicts the beauty and the drawbacks of existing in this state and i’m just??? so glad they decided to write joy. b/c they do it more justice than i ever could.

@paragoninexile -

tam’s new blog isn’t fully set up but i wanna talk about her anyway. tam is a good hero and a good person, and in many ways sort of made to be a hero. when i found out about tam i was rly excited simply b/c she was very much like my warden, only with so much more care and thought put into her that now she’s basically replaced my canon warden in my heart.

i think my favourite thing about tam is how much of a front she puts up for everyone. crowning bhelen, even if it meant the death of another father figure. recruiting loghain, even if it meant losing her friend or possibly lover. it shows that even neutral good heroes still have to make decisions that could be considered ruthlessly practical. bhelen is not necessarily the better choice morally, especially not as an aeducan (especially especially not as an aeducan who doesn’t kill trian). i imagine tam knows that crowning him will have dire consequences not just for harrowmont, but the entire harrowmont line. she does it anyway, not because she wants to, but because for orzammar it’s the best choice.

i’ve loved finally having a chance to write one of my fave dragon age ships: gorim/aeducan. i have a weakness for ships who have been together since they were only young, and the progression they take in the au is so good?? being able to find freedom for their love in a life that is literally killing tamar, and the reason they only get 12 or so happy years together rather than 50. but tam is so good that i’m honestly proud to be able to give her those twelve years with gorim. one day i’m gonna make joly hurt w/ thoughts about the kid gorim adopts after tam dies and who he tells them all about. 8)

@cadashsmash -

cadri i think was the first joly character i interacted with, though i believe i remember ian from way way back when i tried rping merrill and couldn’t quite get a foothold like i did with solas and thora.

i’m in love with dwarves u all should know this, so ofc i’m in love with cadri. i love how rough around the edges she is, how she tries to do the right thing, and how doing so can lead to some messed up shit like killing abelas. the work joly’s done with reaver lore is perfect, working with how dirty and raw the specialisation is without making it too hardcore for an inquisitor to ever hope to specialise in it (stop assuming all reavers are cannibals fandom smh). one of my fave threads on thora continues to be the post-battle thread where both are recovering from the drawbacks of their own specialisations and clash because of them. it’s just a really unique idea that is what makes writing with joly so... rounded? like i’m never just writing one thing with joly. they push me as a writer in the best possible way.

overall cadri is just a rly excellent character who, like tam and harding, do credit to dwarves that the series doesn’t always. i’ve loved exploring how differently her and thora react to their position in life, i’ve loved seeing cadri’s anger or indifference towards dwarven society. it’s so valid and realistic and good. i’ve loved exploring the specific ways in which she bucks the presumptions solas has about dwarves, how even in universes where she’s not inquisitor her individuality is still nothing he expects from her kind and how she changes him anyway. i also will always be fond of this being their friendship song.

cadri: hey solas, what d’you call a flower before it opens? solas: a bud. cadri: I LOVE IT WHEN YOU CALL ME BUD. solas: UGHH.

@dalishfreckles -

it’s really hard to not write a post just about ian, honestly. all of joly’s characters are special to me, but i won’t deny ian is my favourite and has a very important place in my heart. if i were to truthfully answer those top 5 fave characters questions, ian would be on there no question.

as someone who goes through some of the same struggles as ian, he’s inspirational. seeing him struggle to keep surviving, to keep loving, to keep helping even when everything inside him is screaming to stop. i love seeing him make mistakes, honest ones or ones born of anxiety. b/c anxiety is more than just hating yourself or having trouble talking to people, although that is very real. sometimes anxiety can cause you to project some really terrible things onto people, things that aren’t really fair to them.

when i see ian doing things like... projecting his own feelings of worthlessness onto solas, assuming he must think the same rather than giving solas a chance to explain? it’s realistic, and it’s not good. it’s trying to pull people into the same destructive game you do to yourself. it’s also realistic, esp since in the thread i’m referring to solas fucked up and has shit to apologise for. idk, it’s just really comforting to see ian pull the same shit that i do, but knowing he’s still a good person and that i love him is an act of self love.

ian’s an important character for so many reasons, that i could probably write a 20 page thesis on him and his development / how much he means to me. i’m proud of him so much. i’m proud when he finds the strength to tease solas, i’m proud when he stands up for himself, even when he’s standing up against the people he loves. especially when, tbh. how as he grows he can see inara’s faults but doesn’t hate her for them, and tries to help her, when he’s under no obligation to. how he still tries to connect with solas after solas coldly brushes him off the first time ian admonishes him. and i love how joly shows it’s not easy. none of it is. and that ian has to keep choosing to be good, it makes everything he does that much more meaningful.

finally, ian isn’t a hero, necessarily. he’s not the sort of person people tell stories about, which is one reason i love the solas/ian pairing so much. it’s really all about the person for solas, and ian is just so much about what solas loves about people. it’s not always about battles and heroes, sometimes it’s just about a person who has the patience and love in them to make a tree grow in the middle of a desert alienage. sometimes the most wonderful things about people are the little, radical things they do for themselves and those they love rather than how they change the world.

this has gotten to be very long, and probably rambling, but to be fair to me this is like two weeks of joly-positivity i’ve been holding in.

i’ll probably be doing one more free day tomorrow, even if today is the last day, just to do a v general positive post for those i follow. but i wanted to take at least one day to credit the person who has inspired me with their words and characters. like. this was just their characters? i didn’t even get a chance to go into the ways joly’s prose shines, how it’s descriptive and yet never difficult to comprehend. how many different types of plots they’re here for.

but to make a long story short, joly is an incredibly talented writer. i’ve said this before, but i can look back on things i’ve written years ago with joly and still like what i wrote (as well as what they wrote but that should go w/o saying), which is a rare feeling, simply b/c joly lets me access the best writer in me. we often here in the rpc use “muse” as a shorthand for “character we write that inspires us” and i’ve found it a difficult word to rly use-- simply b/c joly and their characters are as much my muses as my own characters. at least in the sense that thinking about them inspires me to write.

tl;dr- pls follow and write with joly. b/c the only thing i love as much as writing with joly is reading what they write with other people.

the omgcp harry potter world au i keep threatening to write but probably won’t

ok so for convenience’s sake (and bc I'm NOT fighting about houses ever) the whole team is in hufflepuff

in this au, squibs have only in the past decade been allowed at hogwarts

Bad Bob is head of the auror department, one of the most accomplished and celebrated aurors (and ootp members) during the first wizarding war

Alicia is probably a reporter for the prophet or, in a fun twist, captain of the holyhead harpies

Jack is the squib son of two of the wizarding world’s most treasured celebrities. his anxiety gets to a boiling point at age ten when he has yet to display any sort of powers and it's so bad that he has to take a year off before starting hogwarts at age 12

(Alicia wants to send him to muggle school instead, thinks it would be better for him, but Jack desperately wants to be at Hogwarts, to be an auror like his father.)

Squibs can't take classes like charms or transfiguration that require wand work, but things like potions, astronomy, history of magic, etc don't

Jack falls in love with history of magic, and later ancient runes

(I imagine there are like Squib Life Skills classes to round out their curriculum and they're basically How to Be a Muggle and Do Things Wizards Wouldn't Think Of)

ANYWAY so jack finds comfort in quidditch, bc in my verse you don't have to have magic to fly one, and is basically the Oliver Wood of hufflepuff

His fifth or sixth year, their seeker, wicks, gets sick or injured or fed up with jack’s surly behavior and two weeks before their first match they have to bring in the reserve, bittle

and he's the fastest fucking flier jack’s ever met, but there's one small problem: the kid is TERRIFIED of bludgers. One gets near him, he passes out -- IN AIR

their first practice bitty falls off his broom and jack barely catches him

and he's so angry about this. Bittle has MAGIC Bittle can easily heal himself Bittle could use any manner of spell to train himself against this fear and he DOESNT

(It's an irrational anger and jack does realize this. It's just. Hufflepuff hasn't won the cup in ages and jack’s already had to prove so much by being a squib and yeah ok the wizarding world is not kind to mental illness and jack’s anxiety is largely undiagnosed/treated it's not good)

Part of me really wants to make Bits a werewolf a la lupin (hello queer coding) and I guess his thing with his parents could be transferred into his parents knowing, obviously, but harboring the same, internalized prejudices and all of them dealing with the fact that he'll never live a normal life

ANYWAY jack works b through bludger drills in the mornings before breakfast and they happen to take the same care of magical creatures class (Bittle has like a sixth sense w them bc of the wolf thing and jack finds animals so much more comforting than humans) and really become friends

And like so rans and Holster are the beaters, obviously, and for rn Johnson is goalie (he'll graduate soon and chowder will take over). I want Lardo on the team so she'd be a chaser along with jack and shitty.

And they're in an intense game with slytherin and like some douche bag (parse? or some kid whose parents bob put in azkaban?) aims a really nasty bludger at jack

But Jack ducks, not realizing that bitty was behind him

Bitty hits the ground before anyone can react, out cold

They all lose their shit (and the game, without their seeker) and jack can't even care because Bittle is bleeding on the ground twenty feet below

They rush him to the hospital wing and he's fine but has to spend a few nights there

Unfortunately it coincides with the full moon and idk maybe Jack accidentally sees madame pomfrey fixing up the wolfsbane potion and Realizes

he freaks out a little because that's a huge secret he's just figured out but like...he sort of realizes that the entire team had already figured it out.

“he went home too often for someone who didn't like going home”

“bits didn't get those scars from quidditch, obviously”

“i have a uterus. I know a thing or two about cycles.”

so they sneak out to hogsmeade and get Bits a shit ton of sweets from honeydukes and surprise him the next morning when he's feeling like crap in the hospital wing

and bitty is starting to realize they all know and they aren't mad at him for losing them the cup they just love him a whole lot and are happy he's ok and it's all really overwhelming but happy

and jack, big loser he is, asks bitty out with, like, a candy snitch or something. a toy broomstick. and it's ridiculous and ofc bitty says yes

(they're that gross couple at three broomsticks just making heart eyes at each other the whole time.)

ANYWAY jack learns not to judge himself based on childhood expectations and Bittle learns that there are ppl in the world who love him unconditionally

Bits goes on to be the first werewolf player on a professional quidditch team. Jack becomes a historian, and teaches history of magic for a few years while Binns is on sabbatical (to...wherever ghosts can go? idk)

and they get married and live in the muggle world, content to only visit magic on the weekends.

I really didn't think this au through and this is why I probably won't actually write a fic for it lol

HAPPY MAGICAL BOYS thank you for your time

bedraft replied to your post “[[MOR] the older i get the more my dream stories are becoming...”

if you're interested in writing up a messy transcript, hell yes am i interested in reading it

24/11/17 nap, chill hang with the spy network

spy/infiltration/agent story? the extermely overly techy half circle underground base, there is a very developed actual AI, and a specialist codenamed "merlin" (this is blatantly a kingsman thing my brain did btw)? who is the specialist who does all the things the ai cant and in general is the person u go to support for....

prev dream with the setup, the half circle base that actually is kinda convolutedly directly linked via underground paths to the oppoing major big bad asshole base which in this dream is nazis :) good work brain. in prev dream our base was infiltrated, major capture of agents and specialists all held in the big bad base, plot is me (cause i'm one of the agents) basically sneak infiltrating and freeing my team - in that dream the specialist, not me, knew about the secret long windy path and showed it to me (which is a seperate big thing, i'm always the main fucking OP hero in my dreams, dream chars having info that i don't and kills that i don't have is a big thing the way it's becoming more and more of a thing recently)

anyway we get back to our base via windy underground paths and our base is overrun with baddies, i sneak lead ppl all around them to avoid them noticing us, to the escape/travel pods, mutiple ones, shaped like long capsules in the ground, just one of the ends of the capsules are out from the ground, control screen at the bottom (but voice commands work too cause AI), can be 4? or 5? people in a single capsule, one above other, footholds handholds in capsule, people filled in, all went to my base, big beautiful modern home ai integrated, (fuck brain, design is so good????) anyway as we escape, and as we leave we launch a chem poison purge of the base, leave as it starts, alls ok all safe assholes are dead

now i rmemebr setup dreams that i have forgoteen before better after i get a "part 2" dream so that thing above was just what i remember of the setup dream which i think happened months ago

this dream, is like, all ok, all chill, no big deadly plot, hanging out joking around at the main base, now clean of asshole corpses thinking about ones we lost (update to story, people were least in the whole mess of the previous dream). i had lost a man i cared for more deeply than i cared to admit, a fellow agent (stuff had happened?? casual but whoops i guess not)... "merlin" lost his wife? i think. hanging out, me, some specialists, agents, some new, at the main base of operations, socializing, planning a group chill/hang event

i notice accidentally stumbling in a young guy, aggreisve red swastika t shirt, bags, confused, startled, a bit panicked as he realizes where he's at, tries to bolt, i yell for others and go after him, me and others apprehend him, press him against the railing. you realize where you are, who i am. you joined their party, how old are you. "l8" i am disgusted. but he's a young idiot. he will be prosecuted we will hand him over to authorities, i will not kill an 18 year old. i show him one of the agents who apprehended him they are brown and queer and excellent. this is what you fear? the future is already here. you can't stop it.

a bit of a skip

i take a travel/emergency pod to my home base. it is agreed that event will be held at my place. me and AI clean place, order food (a human convo with ai gets interrupted by alarm so i can't rememebr it almost at all uuuurrggghh but i know it was about 500 times more deeper than i expected)

again a bit of a skip

patry is on people are at my place hanigng socialzing and having fun

me and merlin, spererately, at one of the seperate house builings. me enthusing again about a new addition to the house really unecessarily extravagant and stupid stuff that i don't actually need or want, but the goal is reached, he is amused and laughs and jokes about funding and how much of the agnecy's resources go to entertaining me

others arrive, it is nice, it is fun, as the evening goes on trhough social cues and general flirty, not flirty at all sort of just casual fuckery... me leaning against kitchen counter, white wine glass in hand, casual remark "perhaps you'd like to join me later", merlin, whiskey glass in hand, casual remark "i don't see why not should be fun". (omg this is the chillest sex convo i've had in me dreams ever what the fuck) me and merlin spend the night together. it is soft and caring and nice and not much else

skip

morning me in kitchen. (i was a wearing a nonsense white whispy robe that is bulsshit but also i want one) the narration (yeah, literally narration. didn't happen before or after, but this point me brian gave me a narrator that i disagreed with but narration in my dreams always follows "pretty poetic text (might not always be true tho)") goes smth like "and then you wake up the next day and really realize what happened last night. in retrospect, it was cheating. you may not like that it is, but that is what it is. both of you had so many chances to stop and turn away but both of you didn't. maybe it was needed". i feel a bit akward about it, juice glass in hand, go over to main, living room hangout area, some have left, others that stayed night are awake, greet me, (merlin not there) someone had spilt something on my nice white couch, there is stuff on the surface of the arm handle so the ai can't just do the cleaning itself, i absentmindedly log in the "ticket".

go to kitchen to pick up some stuff/food for me and people, come back, merlin is dressed, wiping away the stain. we lock eyes, and we both smile and laugh, others laugh with us. (he is my main support person and lol always catering to me and omg that is the joke) i wake up with the nicest warmest happy and content emotional feeling that set the mood for the rest of the evening. we both needed that feeling of support and closeness and fuck the narrator, there was no guilt, it was just nice