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kelin-is-writing · 1 year

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ok so uhm i might've submitted the first ask sonner than i wanted to xD i accidentally used a shortcut to submit it. i had no idea this was a thing lol (i think it was ctrl + enter) aaand then i misclicked and unfollowed you so i followed again and ye... it's one of those days today 💀

anyway - more dabi thoughts :')

imagine the sheer amount of rage that overcomes dabi when you get catcalled in public. you were supposed to meet up at some place and he was waiting for you since he arrived a little early. he could already see you walk down the street when suddenly a stranger whistled after you and said smt that clearly made you feel uncomfortable.

good luck trying to keep your man under control bc he's about to go feral.

- 🥛 (this feels so much better. the milk needs to be there.)

HEAR ME OUT— dabi would be so pisssed at witnessing someone catcalling you, basically treating you like an object or an animal.

you ain’t a dog, so why are these bastards whistling your way? ohh he’s so gonna burn them to fucking ashes, whom the fuck do they think are saying “let’s go have some fun” to? he will show them in person something fun.

while walking toward dabi, you see him raise from his spot on the bench he was sitting on and walk your way which makes you beam instantly, those three molluscs forgotten already as soon as you saw your pretty boy stomping heavily to you “hey baby! how–”, but then you noticed the grim expression on his face and when he reached you dabi walked past your silhouette, immediately you froze on place not understanding his behavior.

“i dare ya bastard to try whistle my girl’s way once more, i’ll burn those ugly lips of yours!”, at hearing his roar you gasp loudly before turning and rushing to him, arms closed around your boyfriend’s waist in a useless try to stop him, who had his hand lifted mid-air with blue flames bursting from it, reminding the dark haired young man that he’s a wanted villain.

those three leave right away after recognising dabi and while that was a good thing, it wasn’t a relief because now the citizens around you were going to call the cops (or even worse, the heroes) on you two, which is why quickly you grab his hand and drag him along in your impromptu escapade, rushing as fast as possible somewhere you two won’t be find by whoever was probably were on your tracks.

getting into an empty alley of a secondary road that would easily get you away from danger, once made other few shortcuts and checking that no one was on sight, you finally slowed down until you didn’t came to an halt. dabi in silence behind your bended figure, watching as you try to catch your breath.

“everyone ‘s gonna be on your back now, dumbass!”, you scolded punching him on his stomach, making the boy spurt air, before glaring at him menacingly. dabi was about to talk back at you, about how it’s crazy how you’re screaming at him, when you kept talking “if you’re gonna burn those trashbags, at least do it when no one is looking.”, and that was your actual point for screaming at him, which made the villain snort amused at you, an hand lifted so his wrist could hide the little smirk curling up his lips.

he then turned to you with a tender smile on his lips, a lifted eyebrow as his right hand went to rest on top of your head gently, cerulean eyes looking down at you in that soft way he reserved to you and no one else.

“sorry i made you worry baby, next time i’ll make sure to burn them in a way that won’t put me in danger.”, with an expression that’s a mix of worry and weak menace because you’re pouting so cutely, you nod firmly at his words. his face suddenly went serious, eyebrows knitted together and the corners of his mouth downwards “it’s just... it pissed me off so much how they were objectifying you, that i didn’t really think about where i was...”, he explained frustrated, hand going now to the back of his head, still boiling with rage at the thought of those three vermins.

you stared at him in awe for a long while before wrapping your arms around dabi’s chest and snuggling against, feeling reassured right away the moment his scent surrounded you “i love you so much, best boyfriend in the world!”, at your full of energy response, the arsonist simply melted while groaning in conflict before closing his arms around your shoulders, chin resting on top of your head as he stared forward with pursed lips and cheeks tinted of red.

“what am i gonna do with you?”, he blurted out exasperated, because damn... wasn’t he one lucky man to have an amazing girlfriend such as you.

“uhm?”, you hummed looking up at him confused after not hearing well what he just said, his voice was too low.

“nothing. shall we go now?”, with that dabi just held your hand and walked slightly ahead of you, trying extremely hard to hide his flushed cheeks but failing miserably as you got a small glimpse of them as soon as you had lifted your eyes on him, a small giggle leaving your mouth as you jumped at his side all happy and giddy.

you call him cute, then he calls you out on it horrified by you saying something like that about a villain, which you argue that it’s nonsense and while bickering lovingly with each others you two finally start up your date.

#kelin responds #answered #🥛#bnha fluff #mha fluff #dabi fluff #touya todoroki fluff #bnha x reader fluff #mha x reader fluff #dabi x reader fluff #touya todoroki x reader fluff #PLEASE HE'S THE TYPE OF BOYFRIEND WHO'S WHIPPED AS HELL FOR HIS GIRLFRIEND #and no i don't accept 'constructive criticism' or contrasting opinions on this one. you guys can keep 'em for yourselves 😋#BECAUSE HE JUST IS. AND I DO NOT ACCEPT ANY OTHER OPINION THAN THIS ONE.#he literally fanboys so damn hard and would be in awe at everything his gf does please 😭💔#i want to date dabi so fucking bad guys... even more than usual...

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libellule-ao3 · 1 year

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After Kettleburn I wanted more and continued on Ao3. I wanted to just go at your tumblr pace at first, but now I needed more. Anyway I was typing a comment that got out of hand and thought it might be better for here 😂

But I had to stop and comment here (chapter 15) because omg Merula just let Jacob get away with torture. 😭 I hated him when he hit her and then she said she could never do it to him 💔

How dare he. She did not deserve it. And how dare she let him get away with it.

I was already miffed when he inmediately assumed the worst in Little Bird, but he was still simping hard as well at that point and I liked that. Go be a simp Jacob! Not a torturer.

Also I feel like I'm missing information. What was the betrayal? Why was he a prisoner? Why is she a deatheater if they are on the same side? What made him so mad? I looked through your other stories and couldn't find it. In English at least 😅

Sorry if these are a lot of questions. I have a lot of feelings. 😅 You have such a way of evoking emotions with your writing. I mean you had me laughing at Kettleburn, goosebumps for Tonks, crying for Badeea and Talbott. Ugh so many emotions.

I'll stop the comment here before I go on any further 😂

(If you get a notification about me following you. I followed too much. So I unfollowed many blogs and accidentally yours too.)

Hello, 🙂

No worries. Feel free to share your thoughts wherever you feel most comfortable. I'm flattered that what you've read here has made you want to know more and I'm happy to answer your questions. I'm sorry if everything wasn't clear when you read it (I guess it's the disadvantages of the limited POV and the fact that the chapters do not follow each other😅)

Jacob went undercover with the DE to spy on them, and then to kill Nagini on Snape's orders. Jacob and Merula, daughter of Death Eaters who does not denounce him because she is torn between her desire to reconnect with her parents and her own values, get closer during this period until they fall in love.

Alas! Jacob is discovered at the moment he was supposed to kill Nagini and the DEs want to question him about his motives - most of them are unaware that Nagini is a Horcrux - and about the presence of accomplices. In these circumstances, the Cruciatus Curse is usually used by the DEs on their prisoners. To avoid this and in the hope of having an opportunity to free him, Merula takes over the interrogation and inflicts various abuses on him, less terrible than the Cruciatus Curse but torture is still torture.

She plays her role of executioner so well that everyone believed her, even Jacob. And after hours, days, of mistreatment by the one he has grown to love, he feels betrayed and thinks only of revenge, hence his violent reaction when he is released. When Annie reveals that Merula could never have used the Cruciatus Curse on him because it is imperative to take pleasure in the suffering of one's victim in order to cast it, Jacob realises his mistake.

And if there's anyone in my HPHM universe who knows what it's like to do bad things for good reasons, it's Jacob so he goes back to Merula.

As for Merula, she knows what it's like to want revenge after a betrayal and she recognizes the ambiguity of her own actions. Moreover, torturing someone you love yourself in the hope of saving them takes a lot of guts, and now that Jacob has figured it out, he recognizes her value and offers her what Merula has always wanted: recognition. It gives her wings and encourages forgiveness.

Beyond their good intentions, they have done a lot of damage to each other but their relationship has never been and will never be a smooth one so... 😅

I hope this message answers your questions. If not, don't hesitate to ask for clarification. Thank you for your kind comment. 💙 I am very flattered to see such engaged readers.

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passable-talent · 4 years

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AHHH I am in love with ur writing u r so talented and I love how inclusive u r. I was wondering if u could do zuko and reader feeding turtle ducks and it being summer or spring and just softness and cute vibes. Maybe fixing his hair for him or having him lay in ur lap under a cherry blossom tree? I love u king u r truly ugh 💖💖 I accidentally unfollowed u and panicked when I didn’t see ur acc in my following I sprinted to refollow u.

ACSVDBSGS IMAGINE ENJOYING ANYTHING I DO

Zuko spent a lot of time under the tree in the courtyard gardens, right at the edge of the turtle duck pond. You knew that it reminded him of his mother, and so often, whenever you couldn’t find him anywhere else, you knew that you could find him there.

He’d had a lot on his mind recently. Even with Aang’s help, undoing a century’s worth of aggressive imperialization and colonization was hard work, especially when so many noble families in the Fire Nation didn’t quite agree with him.

He vowed not to let it stop him. Fire Lord Zuko was going to be different than his forefathers, he was going to bring about true change and peace. But still, the constant opposition he felt from within his own cabinet, subtle or hidden as it may have been, wore him down.

So he went back to the tree, by the pond, where his mother taught him how to be good.

You loved to join him there.

He would hear you coming, always. You supposed that even with bare feet picking softly through grass, you made more noise than he needed to give yourself away. He’d spent time on the run, after all, and needed to be able to hear an ambush. It didn’t matter, as you never meant to surprise him.

“Afternoon,” you said in greeting, the green of the grasses contrasting starkly with his dark red robes, drawing the eye to him. Not like yours wasn’t already.

“Hey,” he said back, not turning to look but instead tearing another small hunk of bread and tossing it to the turtle ducks, the little splash creating ripples a few inches from the nearest duck. It was close enough that they wouldn’t need to approach the edge of the pond to feed, but not too close, so that they wouldn’t get hit.

“You know,” you began, settling down beside him, “bread isn’t actually very good for turtle ducks.” He paused his motions and looked at you, a lightly puzzled expression on his face.

“Mhm,” you continued, “the bread isn’t that nutritional, and it swells up with water in their stomach, making them think they’re fuller than they are.” You watched as guilt took over his face, and you smiled, scooting closer to lean against his shoulder.

“It’s okay,” you said, reaching over to take the bread from his hand and popping it into your mouth, holding it to free up your hand and replace into his hand a bowl you had filled with apple skin, then pulling the bread from your mouth and taking a bite out of it. “I brought the peelings from the kitchens. They’re making a pie for dessert tonight, and the shavings are good for turtle ducks to eat.” He fixed you with a smile, tossed a shaving or two to the ducks, and leaned in to kiss you gently.

“You’re so thoughtful,” he said, letting an additional peel slip from his fingers and flutter down toward the pond. It hit the water more gracefully than the bread pieces had, and the turtle ducks were forced to tear it with little pecks before they could quite eat it. You leaned your head on Zuko’s shoulder and watched the ducklings swim around their mother, a fond smile on your face. They seemed about half grown, having lost some of the yellow feathers they’d had in the spring. Still, the two of them followed their mother, and as you fed yourself another piece of the bread you admired the way their shells glinted away the sunlight.

You readjusted your head and heard a thin inhale of Zuko’s breath, making you freeze.

“What’s the matter?” You asked, straightening up slowly.

“I think something came loose in my topknot, it just pulled-“ he leaned forward, bringing his hands up to his head, but you pulled your knees closer to you to allow you to readjust.

“I’ll fix it,” you said, batting away his hands playfully and sitting down behind him, a contented smile on your face. You loved his hair- you loved the flyaways that fell around his face, and the sophistication that he had when it was up. He looked like a leader, and that was attractive, to you.

First, you slowly removed the Fire Lord’s headpiece- fingers almost tingling. You could touch Zuko, that was one thing, but it felt different to touch the headpiece itself, worn by the Fire Lords of the past. You set it down in your lap, feeling that to be the most respectful thing to do. You did the same with the ring that encircled his top knot, the gentle pull that let his hair fall accompanying a small exhale, as whatever was tugging at Zuko’s scalp was released. You took a second to let yours hands fall and enjoy him with his hair down- not that you didn’t see it at the end of every day, but you still enjoyed this moment all the same.

You started collecting his hair from his forehead, backwards, into what would be his topknot again, trying to do it as gently as you could, and encircling it with your thumb and first finger. Then came the curl, bringing his hair up and down again, and you pinched the knot closed to slip the ring of the headpiece over it. You smiled, seeing as it held its shape, and settled the metal flame back into the ring, satisfied that he hadn’t complained of a single tug. You were getting better at doing his hair.

You sat back, and released your knees, sitting instead with your legs crossed instead of tucked underneath you. You looked up, through the leaves of the tree, the last few blossom petals hanging on or fluttering down with each gust of wind. It was beautiful here- so much more beautiful now that you could be sure that the resident leader wasn’t someone whose cruelty contrasted the flora.

In fact, as he leaned back first onto his hands and then onto his elbows to rest his head against your thigh, you noted that his beauty almost rivaled that of the gardens.

“Enjoying yourself?” You asked with a calm smile, sweeping away the short strands of hair that didn’t quite make it into his topknot.

“Yes,” he said, his voice quiet but sure. You could stay here all day, your fingers gently sweeping across his face, making his eyes close. You loved when he got this relaxed, and you’d noticed, recently, that he only ever got this relaxed with you.

“I like when you sit with me, here,” he admitted, unprompted, and you responded for a moment with only silence, and a tenderness with which you traced the figures of his face. He had lovely high cheekbones, and a gorgeous, defined jawline.

“Me too,” you said, leaning down to press a kiss to his lips again.

It was cheesy, you had to admit, as he brought one hand up to the back of your head while you hunched over just to kiss him. But cheesiness was okay- even though he was a sovereign and a diplomat, the two of you were nineteen. Still only teenagers. You needed to have the clumsiness that accompanied youth, whenever you could get it.

-🦌 Roe

the bread thing is true for real ducks!! don’t feed them bread! halfed grapes (so they don’t choke), carrot skins, apple skins, and lettuce are very good alternatives for feeding ducks!! they love grapes!!

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porchwood · 5 years

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Hi just so I understand cause i keep waiting for it and it doesnt seem likely to happen have you kind of fallen out of love with wtm? and everlark in general tbh? cause ive been following you for a while now and you always had lil quotes and pictures and things that reminded you inspired you whatever it was about katniss and wtm and now alllll it is is gadge i followed you because personally i love what you did with everlark and im just wondering if thats gone and not foreseeable any time soon?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to answer this… It’s afair question - to a point. If you’re more of a drop-in person (like me) thanlive-on-the-dash, coming back to find my blog awash in Gadge might have beenquite upsetting. There are several reasons for the current state of things:

1. Life has been driving me into the ground since December26, 2013. (Yes, going on six straight years.) If you were a WtM reader from thebeginning, you may recall that I was pretty energetic and prolific in 2012-2013.Oh, there were tough times, but nothing like what started on the aforementioneddate (a car accident where I was in the “bystander” vehicle and it still got totaled)and has continued relentlessly ever since. Sometimes adversity leads to greatcreativity and sometimes it turns you into a depressed, exhausted, reclusivelump, and the past 5+ years have seen periods of both from me. These past 18months have been exceptionally awful (and expensive), resulting in very littlewriting at all, about any pairing.

2. Writing WtM takes a lot out of me. I don’t know whether thisis common knowledge or not, but it’s the gospel truth. I love that world, Ilove that version of Everlark, but every chapter requires so much hard work, itmakes me tired just to think of it. Not to mention, over the past couple of chaptersEverlark have been pushing for more intimacy than the plot/timeline allows, andso I’ve been struggling with how I want to handle that. Do I fight them andstick to the plan? (I can’t advance the timeline for several reasons.) Do I tryto figure out a cheat for them? They’ve got minds of their own and have changedmy plans multiple times, but this is something they genuinely can’t have, and Ihave to fight them on it. ☹ Which is sad, frustrating, and exhausting.

3. I’m a multi-pairing shipper, and have been from about 3chapters into WtM. Which means that my Everlark fics almost always feature asecondary pairing (or more than one), and sometimes I’ll get a plot bunny for afic about a pairing other than Everlark. Most writers in the THG fandom exclusivelywrite their OTP, whatever the plot bunny, but I find that some plot bunnies don’tfit Everlark as well as they do another pairing. (This is why I’ll never write aBeauty and the Beast Everlark fic unless Katniss is the “Beast,” if you will.)

4. The Everlark fandom is…tricky. I’ve never fit in there. Idon’t write Everlark the way the majority of fans see them (except for Peetabeing “sweet,” I guess), I hated the movies (I refuse to see MJ 1 or 2), and I’vemanaged to really rub some people the wrong way over the years –unintentionally, and for a variety of reasons – all of which leaves me feeling kinda down about Everlark in general. Don’t misunderstand me: I love Everlarkand WtM, but it’s really isolating to be this sad little island of unpopularopinions and unwelcome side-ships. That’s the part I really wish I could makeyou understand. For six years I’ve had Christopher Plummer in my head saying, “You’llnever be one of them,” and he’s so, cruelly, right. I want to cry every time Ithink of Embracing the Season (my E-rated Everlark modern AU oneshot for Lovein Panem - lots of daring for me!) because I poured heart and soul into that andit still wasn’t the Everlark that people wanted.

5. About a year and a half ago (when Strawberry Time reallytook off of its own accord) I participated in Gadge Day 2017, working my buttoff to find and schedule (and tag) over 100 carefully chosen Gale/Madge/Gadge aestheticposts, and for lack of a better way to say it: it turned on my Gadge-dar. After that, thosekinds of posts just leapt out at me whenever I had a chance to scroll, and forseveral months I wasn’t sure what to do with that. With a little encouragementfrom @ghtlovesthg, I came up with #march madgeness – wherein I turned my Tumblrinto Madge/Gadge-land for one month, and it was a blast. (Side-stepping Gadgefor a moment: Madge is a highly underappreciated and underused character,especially in fic/on Tumblr and I love splashing the dash with Madge-love.) Thenext month I launched a run of pent-up Everlark posts (i.e., regularprogramming), but I missed my Madge, so I instituted #madge monday – one day aweek when I could splash the dash with Madge/Gadge. At every juncture I gavepeople tags to block if they didn’t want to see this content (though I stillget unfollows every time I post, alas). I participated in last summer’s THG Reread– on the fringe of it, but my posts (reblogs and meta) were strongly Everlark-focusedagain during that time. So there’s definitely still been Everlark on my blog,but if you’re just dropping in (or for that matter, glancing at my archive), you’regoing to see a majority of Madge/Gadge.

6. Frankly, Gadge is fun. It’s a completely different dynamicthan Everlark, with less pressure to create something transcendent, and whenthe chips are down, I’m more likely to work on something that isn’t my six-years-runningopus. This spring, in the midst of lots of awfulness, I finally wrote a piecethat I’ve had in my head for years – The Best Part of Waking Up – with a differentpairing featured in each drabble “chapter,” including Gadge, Luka/Johanna (whoI’ve been wanting to put out there for AGES) and Jack/Raisa. I haven’t beenable to write quickly in years, and I think I finished those three “chapters”in about two days, maybe three. I completed the Raisa drabble in a couple ofhours and I consider it one of the best things I’ve ever written. (Honestly, ifa pairing was going to topple Everlark in my heart, it would be Jack/Raisa, i.e.,Mr. Everdeen/Mrs. Mellark. I love them to distraction.) Once upon a time I could drabble/sprint Everlark too – notoften, but I could manage it. Maybe it’ll happen again someday, but for thetime being, when I write in quick eager bursts, it’s usually about aside-pairing.

7. Because I just need to say it: about a year ago, I set up a secondary Tumblr for almost all my side-interests and ships outside of THG. When I first joined Tumblr, porchwood was just a fun page where I posted whatever struck my fancy (pretty things, funny things, whatever I liked), and over the next few years, I honed it into a pretty “writer’s notebook” for WtM and my other THG fics (related quotes, aesthetic posts, writing check-ins, etc.). When Star Wars: The Force Awakens came out, I shared a handful of posts pertaining to a new ship (not a new direction for my blog or writing, just sharing my excitement) and it was made very clear to me that people didn’t want to see that content on my page. So when I started watching Voltron: Legendary Defender, I had a sneaking suspicion people wouldn’t want to hear about those ships either. So I started an entirely new Tumblr for that content, and every so often I accidentally post something to the wrong page, which I immediately correct in horror, but people still unfollow. Point being: this blog is THG (and a few personal life updates) ONLY, with a pretty consistent aesthetic. I hide literally everything else that I’m interested in so you don’t have to be bothered by it. Is it really so unacceptable for me to have side-ships (complementary to the main pairing, not threatening to them) in the same universe??

8. Believe it or not, I’ve been working on WtM all along,just not making any massive strides. I tried to chip away at the current chapterduring Camp Nanowrimo last July, and it was a disaster. I thought joining awriting group would be helpful, but I didn’t realize that Camp Nano is basicallya lot of writing sprints in which you try to churn out as many words aspossible, which you then report to your “cabin” – and that’s the onlyinteraction with your fellow writers. I can’t write like that anymore (seeabove) and especially not when it comes to WtM, so I got discouraged veryquickly and sort of drifted away. I reattempted Nano on my own in April and wrotealmost 15K words, but in that instance I was really just using the Nano platform toset and reach a goal (which I didn’t ☹ ); I wasn’t in a cabin and didn’t interact with anyother writers, except my friend @ghtlovesthg, who read the finished portion.

9. I want to finish this dang chapter so much, and frankly, theonly way that’s going to happen is if life gets a little better and I holemyself up with my laptop for hours on end for weeks at a time – and somemagical being comes to support/cheer/comfort me while I do so. It’s currentlysitting at about 25K and I anticipate it will need to be at least double that,which is beyond ridiculous, but that’s the nature of WtM. The chapters are asmany words as it takes.

TL, DR: I still love Everlark and I’m still working on WtM, but my life has been extremely difficult for a very long time and I don’t have a great Everlark lifeline. Gadge and all my other ships are fun, and most of the Gadge you see on my Tumblr is aesthetic stuff for themed days/months/occasions. Anything non-THG goes on my sideblog.

#queued #i'm sorry to be snappy #i understand the confusion #and i'm not happy that i'm not finishing wtm either #ask #gade #side-ships #anon

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solarheiress · 5 years

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Aaaaaaaaaaa

I’ve got some words so if you don’t want to hear them I’ll be putting in a read more later.

I’ve seen some complaints circulating around about miraculous, unsurprisingly, but one caught me off guard.

Apparently, some fans that don’t like Marinette think that there is a double standard in the fact the a lot of fans encourage Marinette to find someone else, while chastising adrien for doing the same.

First, I’ve heard the exact same complaint mounted towards people encouraging adrien and being salty about Marinette, so, there’s that.

Second, this is... wrong? I’ve seen about the same amount of support and salt regarding both Marinette’s and Adrien’s pursuit of others. If you follow particular people or particular tags, you’re bound to encounter disproportionate amounts of each (I’ve tried really hard to keep my feed rather balanced in most regards to all subjects, just because bias can easily lead to misinformation). So, if you think that you’re encountering a lot of adrien salt/Marinette support and it upsets you, check and see if someone you’re following reblogs a lot of it and unfollow? Or block the tag they use or whatever.

Anyways! My thoughts, on this matter, are most definitely swayed by my interpretation and my opinion. So, I advise you to keep that in mind.

Between Adrien and Marinette, i do think Adrien deserves a bit more scorn than Marinette for his behavior. To be fair, they are both teenagers and learning how to express their feelings and understand them, so their behavior is understandable. But understandable is different from excusable.

To put my mindset into a better frame of reference, I’ll explain, separately. Marinette is a 14 year old girl, in something similar to junior high (my attempts to understand the French school system have been.... less that successful). She’s reached a point where emotions get hard. She met a boy who completely took her off guard with his earnest attitude and overall personality. Marinette is known for feeling incredibly strongly about a lot of things, and can be a bit impulsive at times. She’s also got a strong sense of self, but can be incredibly impressionable at times (the characterization of Marinette flipping back and forth between impressionable and independent is a consistent pattern, despite the overwhelmingly contradictory nature of the pattern). Her emotions tend to get in the way, even in her own opinion, which is one of the reasons she’s so dedicated to the professional nature of her interactions as ladybug. She has, kindly, considerately, and patiently turned her partner down, not because she doesn’t like him, but because she likes someone else more, and has the emotional capacity to priorize her affections while simultaneously not wanting to distract herself from her mission in bringing down hawkmoth and protecting Paris. However, after repeated failed confession and date attempts, and seeing the boy she loves go out with someone else and assume said date went well, she can only really take so much emotionally. And here is another boy, with similar interests who’s never been anything but kind, and she doesn’t even have to tell him that she likes someone else, he noticed, and he wanted her to be happy, so he encouraged her to be with someone else. And he later confessed his own feelings, all while being clear that it would be her choice to be with him if she wanted, which is a starkingly contrast reaction to the passive aggressive and bitter behavior of her crime fighting partner. At this point, she’s been disappointed repeatedly by adrien, chat -in addition to being unreasonable (yes, I’ll explain after)- has flat out turned her down as her civilian self because of his love for her masked self, which is probably not a good feeling (he could have said it was because a hero could not date a civilian, or even just said he didn’t feel the same but he went as far as to say that he loved another person and not her).

Additionally, up until recently, Marinette has been bolstered by her friends and family, and adrien hasn’t outright turned her down (as far as she knows). Remember, being impressionable is something she is known for. Her dedication to her feelings for adrien is a bit.... icky, but that’s why I think the introduction of luka is a good thing. He’s got some qualities in common with adrien, which makes it even clearer why Marinette liked adrien so much to begin with. It also puts an axe into the “she likes him because he’s famous/connected to her favorite designer” angle that some people still try to use because luka isn’t really either. The idea of her dedication to adrien being broken down and rebuilt into something healthy when she eventually goes back to him at the end is fine by me.

So honestly, if Marinette decides to spare herself anymore pain with adrien for a while and try dating a nice boy who actually likes her back, I would be neither upset nor surprised. It would be a good arc too, emotional growth and being able to grow and move on, not to mention realizing what she really wants and having an amicable break up would be a great example for the audience of young soon to start dating peeps.

Adrien on the other hand....

He’s grown up privileged, no matter how sad his childhood is. He’s got a lot of skills and knowledge from being trained by excellent instructors. His story is harder to assess because we don’t know the whole story, just that his mom is gone (for how long? Who knows) and his dad is harsh (and also a super villain but adrien doesn’t know that). He’s at school for the first time sure, so you could somewhat excuse his lack of social experience, but he’s been with the class for a while now. As chat noir, he flirts overtly, a tendency that I kind of believe he picked up from Chloe. Outside his chat persona, he is selectively reserved in an attempt to not be kicked out of school, and attitude that melts away when he is allotted freedom.

As an aside, the fact being that he is a celebrity, I think that’s why his costume is so extensive. Even when he’s wearing a mask he’s still afraid of what could happen if he’s discovered and his father finds out what he’s been up to. All his extras on his costume, plus his ramped up to an eleven joker act as Chat Noir all serve to distance chat noir from the pristine and reserved public figure that is Adrien Agreste.

He decides day two that he loves ladybug, which is fast and strange even for a teenager. Like is one thing but love? It sounds a lot to me like a teenager desperate for something solid who recently lost a significant source of love and affection but that’s just me. On the other hand, it also sounds like he got a very strong feeling that he didn’t know how to identify (likely a combination of admiration and respect) which he mistakenly labeled as love. Also, we know everything Gabriel is doing is in dedication to his wife, so I can only imagine what he was like when she wasn’t dying. So, as far as we know for certain, his role model for the behavior of a male suitor was incredibly (overly) dedicated.

As soon as he decided he loved her, he followed suit and dedicated himself to that idea, so much so that he is in denial about his feelings for others. Normally, I don’t like the denial trope but this is one place where it makes sense a little. One overly dedicated role model (who famously is unaffected by the feelings of his assistant), plus a magic gem that indicates he is two halves of one whole with a magic problem fixing butt kicking superhero would likely lead to a similar problem of overfixation. However, unlike Marinette, he can’t gush with his friends without being dishonest, or accidentally revealing himself. He has no one to be honest with, or to encourage him directly except for Marinette (who had the right energy, but helped with kagami) and kagami (who he could be honest with to a point, but she misunderstood and also encouraged him to pursue someone else).

His idea of romance is dedication and extravagance, which is fine. However, as we’ve all seen, he does not take rejection well. Which is where my sympathy for him dies a little. He is bitter and immature, and while he eventually pulls himself together, he just goes back to flirting and forcing his affections on her.

As we move farther and farther into the series, I’ve also realized he’s incredibly selfish. It’s something I didn’t quite grasp at first and was willing to write off as teenager behavior, but it’s not just that. His attitude towards Marinette and Lila speaks volumes, as he prioritized a lack of conflict over Marinette’s obvious distress and the eventual anguish of his classmates, because he doesn’t like conflict, which is selfish no matter how much traumatic childhood you throw in there. His attitude towards Chloe was always hard to explain, however Chloe is a constant in his life and in order to completely tell her off he would probably have to run the risk of losing her, which is something he wouldn’t do if he was, well, selfish. It’s understandable, and putting ones self first isn’t always a bad thing. But there are limits, where it stops being understandable and starts being a bad thing. He took Kagami out without much thought of how she would feel if he decided not to go back to her, and continues to disregard feelings left and right for his own purpose.

Lastly, and most importantly. His moment with Kagami, and the rejection of the fist bump. at first, it was a sort of nice moment, and also a little sad. Marinette’s own insecurity relating to Kagami came through, first Kagami got adrien and now she might lose chat as well. She came over to fist bump, almost out of desperation. It was a nice reflection of her own feelings for chat that she beats down out of duty.

However, then Adrien did what he does best. He was petty. She didn’t want him, so he was going to flat out ignore their ritual for someone else. It was passive aggressive and inconsiderate, in the same way that his reaction to the oblivio kiss was. He assumed ladybug fell for him, completely ignoring 100 other possibilities and ignoring ladybug’s obvious distress in favor of his own interests (ring any bells?).

So, long story short, Marinette’s own insecurity and emotions would probably push her towards luka, who she gets along well with and probably wouldn’t mind dating. On the other hand, Adrien moves to Kagami out of pettiness and convenience.

Adrien isn’t getting what he wants so he acts petty in front of ladybug. Aside from that, Kagami seems like a convenience. He gets along with her, sure, but he only ever seems to move towards her romantically when he isn’t getting his way with ladybug. Outside of that it’s just him being kind, and ending up with her at places because of things his father signed him up for (voicing chat and the party following could only have been because of Gabriel, being on the train in the first place with Gabriel, even fencing is something he was put in, which is a tad suspicious considering Gabriel’s chats with Kagami’s mother). I’m not surprised if he was her friend, like the way that Marinette and luka are already friends.

That being said, when Marinette moves towards Luka romantically, it seems to be because of the two of them, either Marinette’s appreciation or Luka’s kindness and the time they voluntarily spend together culminates in them getting closer. Adrien’s affections for Kagami seem inspired by a natural feeling, however they only really show when he is being blatantly turned down by Ladybug or in order to spite her, and the time they spend together, while occasionally endearing, feels orchestrated by outside forces, which Adrien undoubtedly has little say in.

It’s a bit hard to explain. I have no doubt that he enjoys spending time with Kagami, however it feels as if his attitude towards her is passive. He ends up with her a lot because of things he’s signed up for, and he’s been corralled towards her by similar activities. If he wasn’t so bound by schedules, and she was just a regular classmate I have to wonder if she’d have caught his eyes at all (and in my opinion Kagami deserves better than that).

Also, she does, in many ways, look like ladybug, and has a similar can do serious attitude, plus she’s constantly wearing red. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I don’t like the idea of Adrien being okay with Kagami because she’s a suitable stand in for the actual object of his affections, ladybug.

So! That’s all my thoughts I think. I’m okay with Marinette pursuing other people because I can see an emotional and earnest reason for her to want to move on. Adrien on the other hand, I do think it would be okay for him to date other people, but the fact that he went with someone who was more of a convenient ladybug stand in that he was (theoretically) subtly pushed towards, all the while maintaining his serious pursuit of ladybug is less okay with me.

On a lighter note, to alleviate tension, I was very frustrated while typing this because Kagami kept autocorrecting to Alabama, a word I have never typed in my life, leading to a confusion and sadness and frustration smoothie.

#ml kagami #kagami tsuguri #ml marinette #marinette dupain cheng #ml adrien #adrien agreste #ml luka #luka couffaine #shipping nonsense #why are people so bitter

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bearofohu · 6 years

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Professor Layton Anime Theory - Luke’s Possible Betrayal (LMDA Spoilers!)

hi guys its luke today i’m making a callout post on luke

this is probably the most cursed theory i will ever create and i promise this is pure speculation, i don’t WANT this to happen i don’t think this SHOULD happen i know the layton community will systematically explode if it does so please don’t unfollow me i am a sensitive boy

summary of the theory: this theory analyzes the possibly of luke betraying layton in the relic stone mystery similarily to emmy based on several aspects of luke’s two appearances in the anime and what we know about the future of the anime so far.

warning: swearing, implications that luke is a good boy gone bad

ps: sorry for the typos im so fuckign tired

full theory under the cut!

alright, lets go lesbians

me and the bros were talking on the layton community discord, and i mentioned something that has been bothering me about luke, a theory if you will. @officialchampionred summed up my thoughts on my own theory pretty well after i told them about it

i originally was just going to not do anything with my speculation, but i figured since the one i made about luke being kat’s father was so well received, even if i ended up being incorrect, i would take another shot at a theory that i think has a good chance of being realized somewhere down the line

ok so the theory summary sounds like a load of baloney when you read it for the first time, right? well hear me out, because i have several points to bring up that may rattle ur bones. without further ado, here are the points:

1. Luke’s Design and its Similarity to the Relic Stone Thugs In Episode 10

im going to start with one point that several people have caught on with all ready, but i don’t think anybody has ever really tried to connect the dots here. so you know luke’s new design, right? the fedora, the jacket, very cute

EXCEPT

here is an image comparison of luke’s design and the outfits of the men, we’ll call them the fedora fellas, we see that attack by don paolo’s orders in the museum

now i know what you’re thinking, “that there is just coincidence” or, “THEY MUST ALL HAVE TO WEAR FEDORAS ON MONDAYS” but i assure you, the similarities here are not accidental. there’s just no way. the design team wouldn’t love the same horrible design enough to just use it on multiple characters just cause they want to. there is just no way this has no relevance.

while some accessories and colors may be different on luke and the men, the general design is still in place, especially with the hat being an exact copy every time. a uniform protocol is being followed here. luke is most likely not wearing choice clothes. this is a uniform, and the men are also following this uniform.

it’s also worth mentioning that even don paolo has a SORT OF similar design change to the color schemes we see in the henchmen and luke

its not entirely relevant, but the red color kind of fits the bill, and i don’t think they would also change paolo’s design for absolutely no reason.

@muzzable also made an amazing color comparison for this theory between luke’s uniform and the fedora fellas, so full credit there!

this image analyzes the color differences between luke’s outfit and the ones worn by those men. note that obviously its not exact, and its probably not supposed to be.

that’s because this is the shit akihiro doesn’t want you to pay much attention to while watching, and its WORKING.

this is so in the event of a betrayal it will smack you upside the jaw (my jaws been broken before, it hurts)

now another counterpoint could be, “maybe its relevant but it doesnt automatically mean that luke works with the fedora fellas or don paolo” and you’d be fucking spot on you funky little luke fanatic, but i got a lot more up my sleeve to tell you.

at the end of this theory, we’re going to move to discuss luke’s motives, but for now, we’re going to stick with the essential points. now we’re going to move onto point 2, which isn’t entirely as direct as point 1, but still holds relevance if you squint

2. Luke’s Nervous/Suspicious Behaviour in Episode 10 & ESPECIALLY 20

watch out, this point is the biggest one analysis wise

you wanna know something i noticed about episode 10 and 20?

luke looks and acts noticeably nervous in almost every scene he’s appeared in

for one example, did anybody else notice the repetitive anime sweat drop going on with no character BUT luke in episode 20, ESPECIALLY the closer they got to the relic stone chamber?

he’s sweating in a LOT of scenes, and on top if that, if you pay attention to his behaviour a lot of it is him just looking generally... worried. a lot of people discredit the anime sweat drop as a cosmetic trope, but a lot of animators actually use it to convey genuine fear or anxiety that offers hints to the direction of the plot.

it’s like he knows something we don’t about the relic stones, like he has something to hide, and he gets worse the further they go, like the closer they get to the relic stones the more nervous luke gets that he’ll have to betray the professor IN THAT MOMENT

and hershel isn’t worried or nervous at all because he TRUSTS luke and i know you could be like, “oh but luke, hes just a nervous boy” and thats all fair and good, we can safely say that luke COULD be a naturally anxious character, but these little details and luke’s general behaviour are VERY noticeable once you pay attention to them for the first time, and also the concept of him being a nervous character was never in place when he was a boy with no malicious motives that we’re speculating now

the pattern of looking luke generally troubled is also shown in episode 10, though perhaps not as noticeable as it is in 20.

while they’re discussing the relic stones and luke is explaning the situation to marina (who im pretty sure is not aware of luke’s outside motive), he gets a little nervous and hesitant when they start talking about why he was doing it. layton then finishes his sentence for him, saying it was for katrielle, indirectly saving luke from having to scramble for an explanation. he just looks OFF.

marina’s face is also the official mood for this post

anyway, level-5 loves using body language in their animations. in cutscenes, the characters often perform actions that define their thinking and their motive. for example, layton puts his hand on his chin and walks around, oh boy he’s going to expose someone. descole slams his hands on the piano keys in eternal diva, oh boy he’s pissed. layton points at someone, oh boy they’re the culprit.

was luke ever THIS nervous and hesitant in the games, when he was a boy? no, not passively nervous. he was only really nervous in the face of danger. as a boy, he was actually pretty confrontational and confident.

so why act so strange here? what changed?

luke looks pretty nervous in this anime, oh boy i wonder if there’s something bothering him that nobody knows about

i feel like now would be a good time to issue a disclaimer that also supports my points, this theory is NOT meant to imply, “oh luke’s a heartless bastard he hates layton and wants the relic stones for himself”

i have very little faith in the idea that, if luke is doing this, he would be doing it for himself, or because he wants to.

i’m confident in this theory, but im not confident that luke’s motives are just plain evil, because while his character can change and realistically SHOULD CHANGE, i don’t think he has it in him to just become evil. i think someone’s either forcing his hand (maybe similarly to clark’s situation), or giving him something he can’t refuse in return for layton.

but more on that later.

now we move onto point 3!

3. Key Hint Passively Given by Picarats

u guys know picarats, right? the guy that provides us with the streams, my bro, an awesome guy...

a guy that is in direct kahoots with level 5 and knows exactly how everything in the anime going to work out

beelieve it or not, picarats is actually a member of the discord server that i run (https://discord.gg/ZYxmPP) and he posts there occasionally. he’s pretty vocal with our community so it’s really not that much of a shocker that he would give us hints from time to time. we’re true bros. i love u my guy

but that’s not the point, the poINT, THE JUICY PART, the REASON why im bringing picarats up... is because he’s provided us with a crucial hint to support my theory, mainly during the episode 20 stream

THE KEY HINT THAT PICARATS HAS GAVE US WAS...

LMDA’s storyline, in its current form and in its future presumably, is a reflection of the events of Azran Legacy.

now this is something picarats DID say, though not entirely in verbatim, during the episode 20 stream. i promise u with every ounce of gay power in my body that he said that the anime’s storyline reflects azran legacy’s.

unfortunately, i do NOT have a screenshot because i was too busy having a psychiatric breakdown in the middle of the episode. if anyone took a screenshot of him saying that, pls send it to me, i will credit and love you forever. <3

that single hint during that stream is EXTREMELY crucial and most likely the most important one, it was one of the things that spurred my thinking about this theory, so essentially

BUT you may ask, lUKE, what is so important about the fact that the anime is supposed to mirror azran legacy?? whats the significance of that??

well.. u mere mortal... im about to give you a series of events from both azran legacy and LMDA

azran legacy was an adventure to discover the secrets of the azran, right?

right.

emmy, his loya resourceful assistant and friend of whomst he TRUSTS, is with him up until they are moments away from unlocking the secrets, right?

right.

then, this devastating shit happens.

youtube

emmy shows remorse for betraying layton but tells him she was doing it for someone else and wouldn’t have done it otherwise.

everyone dies.

are you following my thought process so far?

now lets go to LMDA’s current canon storyline

layton reunites with luke, who is acting nervous constantly and wears an outfit similar to the people who want the relic stones for malicious intent

layton, fully trusting luke, leave katrielle to go on an adventure to find the relic stones, a series of artifacts that are linked to the azran.

they go on the adventure and then become moments away from unlocking the secrets of the relic stones

LAYTON GOES MISSING.

thanks picarats, that single sentence you said in a stream has turned me into a conspiracy theorist

are we broken yet? are we all nice and broken yet?? good. now we get to talk about LUKE’S POSSIBLE MOTIVES.

Luke’s Possible Motives for Betraying Layton

now this is yet another juicy part of the theory, and probably where the biggest counterargument might come into play, which is:

“bUt LUkE WoUld NeV ER dO tHAT”

bUT i will give you my theories on luke’s possible motives for concocting a scheme that wild, but before i do, i would like to give u a memorable quote from clove dive that basically sums up the point im about to make:

we, as a fandom, are collectively forgetting that it is unrealistic to think luke has barely changed in terms of personality and motive

do i blame us? no. after all, we’ve known luke as an innocent boy for about 11 years now.

hino knows this. hino knows how good we think luke is. that’s why i said that his attempt to make us ignore the hints is WORKING.

and like i said, i can’t blame any of us at all for wanting to believe that luke hasn’t changed, but its simply unrealistic.

as much as we don’t like to believe it, luke and layton have basically barely if not at all interacted for several years up until this point

luke is not a boy. something about luke has changed.

and this theory attempts to connect just what that change might be.

like i said before, i wholeheartedly disbelieve that in the event this theory is accurate, luke has ‘turned evil’ just like we all believe emmy didn’t turn evil.

they were forced to do it for something that they deeply cared about.

they were forced to betray their friend for something bigger.

and i think that’s a damn exhilarating plot device.

Conclusion

now you might have guessed that in this point in the theory i’ve gone from being serious into shitposting as my thought process usually does, and also i’ve been working on this since 3 AM, so im gonna go ahead and wrap this up with a disclaimer before you throw a chair at me.

i am in no way implying that this is canon or SHOULD be canon. i love luke and don’t want to see him betray layton, but this theory is meant to purely speculate the possibilites of the future of this anime

in a nutshell...

its just a theory.

A GGAAMMEE TTH E EE O RR Y.

#professor layton #pl #lmda #lmj anime #layton anime #layton theories #layton anime theory #hershel layton #luke triton #shut up luke #luke's crackpot theories

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dynamiteabs · 5 years

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So I've been thinking for awhile now, and for my sanity, my blogs will be going private & selective this week as soon as I finish my revised rules page which is in the works right meow. For a good chunk of y'all nothing will change though. I accidentally wrote a lot so tldr at the bottom.

I hate the word selective, it sounds snobby. But I guess by now people understand it just means something like I can't think of any plots for these two, sorry, or I don't think these two characters/our writing will mesh/meshes well. Like there's only so many hours in the day, and as much as I love a challenge, you can't go forcing something if it's just not right. We're here to have fun.

Around this time last year I got burnt out on my main muses I'd been playing for years and took a break until November when I couldn't resist and Junkrat had to come out to play. During that break, I tried to figure out what caused the burn out, and I'm pretty sure most of it was me trying to make everyone else happy, which ironically, didn’t make me happy in the long run.

It was a ton of small stuff that added up over time, mostly. I don’t want to go into it all but to give an example -- I’d been RPing with someone’s oc a long time on one of my main canon characters. And yeah, her oc was kinda self inserty, and that was fine because I know how tough it is, especially for female ocs to get decent rp. I don’t remember how it happened but she said she wanted to rp with my oc, so I agreed but told her that I wanted to make icons first. So like a week and 300 icons later, I told her I was ready and we discussed it. I made the starter, and based on playing with her oc and knowing my oc’s personality, I thought they’d get along great. I’d also assumed she’d read some of my oc’s threads and knew how he was. Apparently not, because when she read the starter she laughed in a bad way and said her oc would punch him and storm off or something like that (he wasn’t being rude or mean or anything that would warrant a slap. Though he might have made a pun, but my canon muse made puns all the time and her oc loved them sooo). So I was like fine go for it, it’d be hilarious. But she meant she didn’t want to rp at all.

That really sucked and I tried not to take it personally, but when you think someone’s your friend, and you’ve worked years on a character only to get slapped down by someone who just pulled something out their ass to ship with your canon character, I couldn’t let it go so I confronted her about it. Ultimately she said something along the lines of, “I don’t owe you anything.” I said fine, I’ll remember that. And since that went both ways, I stopped rping with her since I didn’t owe her bending my character to like hers when he normally wouldn’t. I mean, it’s true, we don’t owe each other anything. I’m just a dumbass who believes in wanting to make their friends happy even if it inconveniences myself I guess.

Well not anymore! New Year’s resolution -- do what makes me and my muses happy and not worry about trying to please others. It’s going to be tough but by making my blogs private and selective, it’s a decent first step and will also help with keeping me sane with running multiple blogs. So yeah, I’m sorry in advance.

tldr; Going Private & Selective this week. Even if I unfollow you, you are awesome and an amazing writer and it is nothing personal! 💖 Some reasons I might unfollow you:

We’ve never interacted (ic and ooc).

We don’t have any threads going but I’ve attempted to send you asks for memes you reblog and you never answer them or send me any.

You don’t trim your posts. omg please trim your posts, friends! I even reblogged a tutorial of how to do it without any html knowledge. I don’t mind short untrimmed ones but when I have to scroll for like five to ten seconds at my desktop’s highass resolution... 👀

We have interacted, but our writing and/or characters just aren’t meshing. Again, nothing personal. Baby you’re a firewoooork~!

If you discriminate against OCs and/or ignore female muses (and no, giving female muses one liners every now and then doesn’t count as you rping with them).

I will be soft-blocking those I unfollow for their convenience, so no worries. If, on the small chance you were following just to read my threads, feel free to re-follow and let my Junkrat entertain you. 💖

#this turned out longer than i meant it to #oopsie~#also mun fc has arrived!#・ ☢ * { psa }

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doctor-ciel · 6 years

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So I just cut the blogs I follow in half, and here's why you should too

And just before this, I went through all the tags I followed too and cut them down to about a third of the original amount. But I won't talk about that here, since pretty much all the same rules apply.

First of all, it feels great as hell. Start at the bottom, with the blogs that you've been following the longest, and unfollow the ones you don't want there. It'll make unfollowing everything afterward so much easier. So to help you get started, here's some things you should consider about each blog before unfollowing it:

When was the last time you saw this blog on your dash? Have you ever seen this blog on your dash? If not, unfollow it, unless it fulfills another one of the criteria below.

Does the content on this blog cause you anxiety, or make you feel bad in any way? If so, UNFOLLOW IT. This supersedes pretty much all the other things on this list.

On a similar note, does the person(or people) running this blog have views that contrast yours, or that are discriminatory towards marginalized groups that you are a part of? That last one is particularly important. If having them on your dash is just going to add toxicity to your life, get rid of them. Even if they have some content that you like. "Oh, this person is sexist and homophobic, but he has the same niche interest as me"? Unfollow him. "I like their art style, but they're blatantly ableist"? Unfollow them.

If it's a blog about a certain topic(in my case most of the stuff pertaining to this bullet point was fandom blogs), are you even that interested in it anymore? Do you see yourself being interested in it again in the future? I myself unfollowed a lot of Voltron blogs.

Are you following a lot of blogs about one topic? Pick a few and unfollow the rest. I used to be following a buttload of MHA blogs, but I've unfollowed almost all of them now.

If you followed a bunch of blogs back when you were still figuring out your sexuality/used a different label, but have figured yourself out now(like me), you might want to go back and unfollow some of the blogs that don't fit you anymore. For example, I identify as a lesbian, but back when I was still questioning/later identified as aroace, I followed a bunch of blogs for pretty much every sexuality, and then later a bunch of aroace ones. At least a third of my purge came from getting rid of those.

Pretty obvious, but do they still even post? If it's a dead blog that hasn't posted in three years, unfollow them.

Sometimes you'll find a blog that you don't even recognize. This could be because they change their url at some point, or you accidentally followed them. I know that when I'm scrolling through tags on mobile(I don't know if this ever happens on desktop), I'll accidentally click the "follow" button next to a person's url. I usually catch that I've done that and go in and fix it, but not always. I probably unfollowed ~10-15 people from that.

Sometimes you just don't like a blog. You don't like the person, you don't like the content, the general vibe you get from it, whatever, but you don't want to seem rude by unfollowing them. Trust me when I say they won't notice, and it's better to get them off your dash than to just put up with it.

This is especially important when you start, but don't be afraid to unfollow because of nostalgia or whatever. It doesn't matter how long you've followed them, if you want them gone, they're gone.

I think I got all my thoughts down. Obviously this doesn't apply to mutuals, because I only have like two or three mutuals that I've ever talked to so I can't help you there. If any of you have something to add, please do so, and also maybe share this so other people who are following blogs in numbers close to or in the thousands can clean out the trash most efficiently.

#self care #self-care #mine

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monachopsicalwhimsy · 6 years

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// So remember last night when I said there was going to be some tea spillage?

I didn’t because I wanted to give myself a bit to calm down and actually think rationally about what I wanted to say. The full story will be under the cut and I’m going to queue the post too so I won’t know when it’s coming out and have anxiety over it.

Roleplay writing is supposed to be fun, a hobby to relax and escape the real world for a little bit. But I had someone ruin that for me for quite a while. As many of you know @vitrexanima (I can’t actually tag her because unfortunately she blocked me) and I used to be best friends and we wrote with one another every day.

Now? I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could throw her. And I want you guys to know the havoc she wreaked on not only myself but my muses.

For starters there was a lot of personal stuff between us and I soon came to find out how selfish and manipulative she is. I don’t think it’s necessary to go into detail there though.

She had said when we first started writing that her muse Aeron was an “asshole”, a very difficult character to get along with and that it would take some time for him to warm up to my muses. Never ever was I warned that he is abusive nor was a toxic relationship between our muses discussed. Both of my muses have been through hell and honestly I would never write a toxic ship for them.

But, unfortunately that’s what it became.

James and Aeron had a soulmates plot, and it started out with some angst to shake things up. It took them a lot to get somewhere even civil, let alone anything resembling a relationship. Even then James was treated like shit, insulted, and dragged through mud.

And as for Aeron and Adain.. well she’s pretty much one of the sweetest and most giving muses I have ever seen. She gave and gave and gave to Aeron but anytime she tried to get anything in return it was met with a harsh attitude and a shitstorm.

James tried to kill himself twice, the first of which landed him in the hospital. Aeron brought him, but he was still treated like shit and caused a freak out for James, which made Aeron have to leave the hospital. Nothing got better.

The way Aeron was treating Adain started reminding her of the way her ex treated her, stirring up those triggering thoughts and memories. She’d started contemplating ending her life too.

Again… none of this was ever discussed as okay. I kept trying, my muses kept trying and giving but absolutely nothing would change. It messed them up and wore me down. I started thinking we were the problem, that I was an awful writer and my muses were too underdeveloped. Otherwise why weren’t things getting better??

Over time it destroyed me and my muse for writing in general. I could hardly get any replies out. Things just kept getting worse and worse. It caused my depression and anxiety to act up badly. I had my first panic attack in years over my draft count, but I couldn’t bring myself to write.

Meanwhile, Wyntaire (the mun) kept manipulating me into thinking she cared and that the muse’s relationships would get better.

It didn’t get better.

After talking to a couple of my friends on here, I realised how much messed up stuff had been going on and got the courage to call it quits. So I messaged her, basically calling her out about the abusive things Aeron was doing and how it destroyed my muse.

I didn’t get an apology. Not once throughout this whole ordeal, nor did she even seem like she cared. Instead she moved on to one of my other mutuals and closest friends. It seems like she’s doing the very same things to me that she’s doing to them. I pray it isn’t the case and that they get out before they get destroyed…

Anyway… so. I called her out. Said that I am not going to write with her anymore. She said something about changing her muses (bc her muse Eira was a problem too but it’s less relevant). And we stopped talking. I unfollowed her.

Meanwhile- she still continued to tag our old ships in things. Constantly. I did my best to ignore it. About a week passed. And then the other night happened, which is why I’m writing this.

Over the course of the night she reblogged 7 of our threads. All of which were tagged as from the queue… but that seemed highly suspicious considering:

I know her writing speed.

Her queue never posts that many at once.

Several of them had to have been written after I decided to quit writing with her.

None of those threads were talked about in her posts that kept track of what was in her drafts/queue.

It honestly really upset my muses and I. So I decided to message her and ask why she posted them. I was given the excuse that they were from the queue, which let’s be honest I knew she would. And she supposedly didn’t want to delete them because the time was taken to write them. I tried to be nice and say that I might still reply to the ones she had posted with Adain and Oliver, because he was completely unproblematic so I figured no harm done..

I was told that she couldn’t do that because it was “uncomfortable” for her.

Uncomfortable for her?!

Are you kidding me?

After all the shit she put my muses and I through yet SHE was uncomfortable.

So that was the end of that conversation. Except I had seen that she continued to tag our ships, and she had reblogged another one of my posts. I went to message her and ask her to stop…

And she had blocked me. Mind you she had also “accidentally” blocked me here and on discord a few days prior to this and even after slipping up that she did it on purpose refused to admit what she had done.

And here we are.

@vitrexanima is a snake. Don’t trust her.

I just wanted to warn you guys about the awful experience I have had. I don’t want the same thing to happen to any of you guys as well. Not just with her, but with anyone in the rp community.

If something doesn’t feel right, please, for the love of rp DO NOT go on with it! You’re allowed to back out if a situation makes you uncomfortable.

#ooc #vitrexanima #personal #rp warning #call out post #tw; abuse #tw; panic

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cookinguptales · 6 years

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So this came up on Twitter yesterday and I thought I’d post about it on Tumblr today. Frankly speaking, I’ve got a lot of young followers and this is some truth I wish someone had taught me when I was a lot younger because I would’ve gone through a lot less stress.

I know we’re all starved for outside validation on this site, but I wanna talk to you about when compliments are used by creeps. Now, you probably know about negging (when someone uses a backhanded compliment on you to make you feel bad about yourself, often in order to pick you up more easily — i.e. “you’re really pretty for a fat girl”), creepy sexualized comments on the street, etc. But I’m talking about really nice compliments about your work or your personality or your drive. Even the sweetest compliment can be used as a weapon.

(All this is going to be a pretty gendered discussion; I in no way want to say that only guys can be creeps and only women have been socialized in the ways I’m about to discuss, but, well. Let’s all be real here, there are definite patterns.)

Discussion under a cut for length and possible triggers

I don’t want to get into a lot of my own painful personal experiences with creepy guys, but I do have to bring up some examples from my own life, so I’ll use one particular guy as a case study. Let’s call him Dick. (Look, I never claimed to be mature.) I’ve had these experiences with guys IRL, but Dick was a guy I met online. At first, Dick was my friend. He clearly had a bit of a crush, but seemed to accept it when I said I wasn’t interested. It was nice having a bud who shared my interests and I knew he had some issues with socializing, so at first I was pretty patient with his problems with boundaries. But by the time my longstanding friendship with Dick ended, he had become a full-blown stalker — and my friends were on his side.

How did this happen? Well, my friends, it’s the art of the public compliment. Dick was All About Me. He loved me. He treated me right. He praised me for my mind and my heart, and he didn’t care who heard him do it. Or so I thought. It took a long time for me to realize it, but he cared very much who heard it. That was exactly why he said it. To be heard.

Over time, I started to become more and more uncomfortable with Dick’s attentions. He wanted to talk about me more than he did the media we’d bonded over. He kept talking about how our (respective) children would grow up together, and would maybe fall in love. (???) He told me that he’d gone to a place I often vacation at — and he’d looked around for tangible traces of me. Long story short, Dick had become pretty creepy.

But, like many women, my first instinct in this situation was to be nice. I wanted to go to him privately and have a polite conversation about all this. And, to his credit, he seemed truly and honestly repentant. Until he did it again. It became a pattern of me trying to establish boundaries and Dick stomping all over them. Finally, despite feeling guilty, I told him he was really upsetting me and I wanted him to leave me alone for a while.

This is when the second creepy pattern emerged. The compliment trap. When I told him to stop contacting me, he didn’t…technically. He didn’t talk to me. He talked about me. He publicly talked about what a great person I was. How smart. How kind. How forgiving. He said it to my friends. He said it to people I respected. And he tagged me.

Now, this looked nice on the outside. He was just complimenting a woman he respects! How nice! But on my side of things, it felt like a trap. All of my friends were waiting for me to acknowledge these compliments. The situation left me with three choices: thank him (in a demure, polite way befitting a modest woman, ofc) and be forced to interact with a man I’d told to leave me alone, ignore him and look like a stuck up bitch, or say publicly that he’s a creep — which would make me look like I was “hysterical”. (See: rape culture, women “overreacting”, punishing men who “just want to be nice”, etc.)

Left with this choice, I chose option #1. I chose option #1 a bunch of times. Because this would become a pattern. I’d tell him to stop contacting me, he’d do this public complimenting game, I’d feel like I had to interact with him — and worse, I’d question my own feelings of fear. I’d say “Well, look how nice he’s being. Maybe he’s just awkward. He clearly likes me. He doesn’t want to hurt me. Maybe I really was overreacting.” And I’d talk to him again. Until he’d ask me for my address for a Christmas card or something.

And I didn’t realize for a really long time that he wasn’t being nice! This behavior! It was not nice! It was deeply emotionally manipulative! He’d put this horrible emotional onus on me to forgive and forgive and forgive, steadily gaslighting me into forgetting how scared I’d been until I blamed myself for being so quick to react… and let him back into my life. Because this was all public. All our “fighting” happened in private. All those times I begged him to just ease up a little were privy to only the two of us. All our friends, all my support system, only saw a nice boy with a crush praising a girl he liked and her refusing to give him the time of day.

Guess what happened when I finally put my foot down and stopped engaging when he did this? Oh boy. Oh boy. He started sending me literally dozens of messages a day, sometimes over a hundred. Have you ever had a person sending you @s on tumblr and twitter, private messages on tumblr and twitter, public and private messages on Facebook, emails, LJ messages, IMs on two different clients, and forum messages? Every single goddamn day? Dozens of times? Have you ever had a guy start showing interest in something you know he never liked before — just so he can “coincidentally” run into you on every community you’ve ever joined?

Honestly, I was so stressed. In tears all the time. My school work was suffering. No matter how many times I tried to tell him to stop, to avoid him, etc., he just kept going. I told him that we were done. No more forgiveness. I wanted absolutely zero contact — and I wanted him to never mention me on social media again. I didn’t want him to @ me. I didn’t want him to say my name. I didn’t want him to make thinly veiled sad posts about me. Zero contact. If he did that, I wouldn’t block him on every single platform and tell everyone we knew.

Yeah, I was dumb. I still wanted to be nice and polite. He’d been my friend, y’know? I didn’t want to ruin his life. I just wanted him to stop ruining mine. Even then, I didn’t understand how manipulative he’d been. I still believed he was just kind of awkward, and that I was probably the dick for being unable to deal with it. After all, I’d been friends with him, right? I’d encouraged him, right? It’d felt good to have someone like me so much, right?

(Yeah, until it didn’t.)

I almost got out this time, though. He almost made it. Sure, he “accidentally” replied to my posts every few weeks. (Somehow I didn’t put together that even though I’d unfollowed him, he clearly hadn’t unfollowed me. I guess I just thought that he’d kept seeing my posts when our mutual friends replied to them.) I felt pretty good. In fact, I was at a point where I felt almost silly for being upset in the first place. And then our mutual friends started asking me why we weren’t talking as much. He’d liked me so much. We’d had such good conversations. They talked about maybe reconnecting with him. After all, they’d only ever seen him being nice.

And god help me, I said okay. I figured he must have grown! Learned his lesson! Nah, that fucker was back to sending me tons of messages, talking to my friends (who did not know him), inserting himself in conversations I was having with others, making plans for the children I never wanted to have, etc.

I finally blocked him. E v e r y w h e r e. And I felt so fucking relieved that I was actually angry with myself for not doing it earlier. This man had harassed me for years, and I’d been the one to feel guilty over it.

Still private, I contacted our mutual friends and told them very briefly that he’d been harassing me and I was cutting off contact. I asked them to support me. Some people did.

A lot of people didn’t.

They’d only seen his public face. They’d only seen the avalanche of love and compliments. He hadn’t known better!! He just didn’t know how to express his feelings!! Next thing I knew, they were forwarding messages from him to me. Even after I’d blocked the fucker, he was still using compliments and romantic gestures to get to me! Through the people I’d trusted!

I’d finally had enough and was very public about this man who’d harassed me. I told people everything I’d been putting up with. I aired all our dirty laundry that I’d tried so hard to keep politely private. And some people believed me.

But a lot of people didn’t.

(This, coincidentally, is why I don’t answer tumblr asks privately anymore, not unless the person specifically asks me to and they haven’t been creepy at all. I had another guy pull this on me and I found myself in this same position again and all I had was private harassment. So no more of that! Public contact all the way.)

But Sarah, you say, isn’t this an isolated incident? Why are you making this huge tumblr post about one guy? Well, number one, it wasn’t one guy. This happened to me several times before I recognized that this wasn’t one man — this was a pattern of behavior that many men share. Number two, it speaks to wider issues that I’d like to address.

Media pushes this idea that if a girl is mad at you, you just have to work hard to be romantic and win her back. Piss her off? Hold up a boom box outside her window! Romantic, right? No, bruh, you’re lurking outside a girl’s bedroom window when she said she doesn’t be around you. She’s terrified and you’re being a creep. This isn’t gonna win her back. It’s just going to tell her you don’t know how to respect her boundaries.

Women are socialized to be nice even when they’re scared. We’re supposed to ignore the alarm bells in our head because it’s not socially acceptable to pull away. When we are complimented, we are supposed to acknowledge it graciously. When someone likes us, we are supposed to like them back. If we draw strong boundaries and enforce them, we often face strong social consequences. I’m here to tell you that every one of those consequences is worth it to help you feel safe.

Hell, I’ll reiterate it. It’s okay to be a bitch. Don’t sacrifice your mental and emotional well being for someone else’s. Women are supposed to be self-sacrificial, too… but you don’t have to be. A truly good person wouldn’t want you to be.

A PERSON WHO REALLY LIKES AND RESPECTS YOU WILL NOT WANT YOU TO FEEL UNSAFE AROUND THEM. IF THEY’RE OKAY WITH YOU BEING SCARED OF THEM, THIS IS A DEEPLY UNHEALTHY RELATIONSHIP.

Compliments are not always kind!! You do not always need to be grateful for them! Even nice compliments, ones that are more “you have beautiful writing” vs “nice tits”, can be utilized to emotionally manipulate you and those around you. If a compliment is making you uncomfortable because of the context in which it’s given, you do not need to even acknowledge it. It doesn’t make you stuck up or a bitch. Compliments are supposed to build you up and make you feel good, y’know? If it’s hurting you, it’s still a shitty compliment and that’s on them.

We’re taught that it’s best to be discreet. Naw, man. Be as public as possible, especially if someone’s giving you weird vibes. Keep things on the public record. Like, don’t be an asshole or anything, don’t publicize private information, but you don’t have to keep your conflict in the dark away from prying eyes. That’s only going to benefit the person hurting you… because there will be no established pattern of behavior. Establish establish establish.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, no one is owed your attentions. It doesn’t matter if they like you. It doesn’t matter if they do nice things for you. It doesn’t matter if there’s social pressure to acknowledge them and/or their efforts. It doesn’t matter if they do every single thing right. If you don’t want to interact with someone, you don’t have to. It doesn’t matter if they just give you vague creep vibes — or if you just plain don’t like them! No one is owed your attentions! Never feel trapped into interacting with people because they make you feel guilty!

(And for that matter, never let someone make you uncomfortable because “they’re just socially awkward”. You can be sympathetic towards someone’s social issues without letting them make you feel unsafe. Believe me, I’ve fallen into this one so many times.)

Anyway, tl;dr? Live bitch is better than dead sweetheart. Don’t fall for the compliment trap. Tell him to fuck off. If friends try to act as intermediary between you and someone you cut out of your life, they’re trash. Tell them to fuck off, too. You have my blessing.

#I literally have no idea how to tag this #but if my bad experiences help anyone else I'm happy

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deehollowaywrites · 7 years

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I excerpted part of a chapter from Losing the Bug in July’s rewards, and now I’m posting it here, mainly for noted Benthusiast @lilbit4point0.

The sets at Natural Art were solid that morning, a thick white-capped wave rolling in every twenty minutes or so like we’d ordered them special. Dario sat next to me on his board and we hung out for a minute while a couple of the other regulars peeled off.

“You’re wasting time,” he called. The wind blew wet tangles across his face. Blond as he already was, in a month or so his hair would be Barbie-bleached thanks to the sun and salt water and the chlorine of the pool on his parents’ back patio. “What are you waiting for, dude?”

I shrugged, curling my legs up under my board beneath the water. “Not in any hurry. Calm your tits, Kelly Slater.”

“First good waves in a month and you’re not in any hurry,” Dario repeated. He clipped the side of his hand across the water to splash at me. “You better be. We need to leave in like ten minutes if you don’t want to be late for your date.”

“Uh-huh. Fifteen hands tall, long black hair…” I laughed, thinking of the first colt slotted onto my morning work-out schedule. “Shitty temper. Exactly my type.”

Dario laughed too, his face turned south to where a tiny figure was barely visible carving the froth off a wave. “I can’t be your conscience, Benjamin. Leave it up to me and we’ll just hang out here all day.”

That sounded ok, actually--better than ok, a day spent surfing and swimming and walking up to the snow cone hut on the bend. Watching the sky get light, working on my tan, checking out guys. It was June and that was what summer was for. It was the other reason kids from school still blew up my phone, requests for tips and cajoling to get them into the fancy lounges at Gulfstream one day, then gossip about the upcoming Surfriders competition on Fourth of July weekend the next day. What was the point of living in a place everyone else vacationed if you didn’t avail yourself now and then?

I slid down into the water until my chest pressed the grit of my board and started paddling. After a minute Dario did too, calling, “You’re no fun!” into the breeze at my back.

“You really aren’t,” he continued when we hit the sand and picked up our boards. “Seriously, you used to be Ben the good-time boy and now you’re, like...dour.”

“Get the fuck out of here with your SAT vocabulary. I’m a shimmering delight.”

“I hate to be like this,” he said, digging in the zipper pocket of his board shorts for his keys. “But like, if I don’t tell you, who will? That’s what best friends are for. Ben. Seriously. You need an intervention.”

“If my parents thought I was working too hard I’d be hearing about it from Mom.” I levered my board into the rack on the roof of his car. “As it is, I’m pretty sure Dad thinks I don’t work hard enough, so what’s your point?”

Dario snickered as we got into the car. “Man, I don’t care how hard you work. I care how boring you are lately. You think it’s fun to surf with some uptight princess who won’t shut up about how he’s winning the riding title, not Joel Canseco?”

I frowned at my reflection in the car’s side mirror, even though the salt water was doing nice things for my hair.

“Who the hell is Joel Canseco anyway?” Dario leaned his arms on the steering wheel and stared at the line of cars inching down 3rd Street. “God, look at that, we left at exactly the right time. Ben, for real, usually you’re just bitching about that redneck homophobe or whatever.”

“Mason Waller,” I muttered. That asshole should’ve been riding Guava Grove in Tampa, or better yet hauling his ass out of the state of Florida altogether, maybe to Mountaineer or some shit. “Whatever, Dario. Look, this is how it goes, if there’s more than one apprentice around that’s who your competition is. Same weight allowance, all the trainers want that. So it starts being about who’s actually better, not just who’s tacking less than the regular jocks.”

Dario blinked at me as we waited for the light. “So kick his ass, Ben. This is kindergarten math.”

Dario had managed to be friends with me since middle school without really figuring out how horse racing worked. I scrunched my toes up inside my flip-flops, wiggling them so that sand scattered across the floor mat. “God, why didn’t I think of that?”

“Look, if he’s as high and mighty as you keep saying, he’ll fuck up eventually,” Dario said. He hit the gas to squeak through the four-way stop sign at US1, throwing me back against the seat. “Snap, you know, Jockeys Gone Wild.” He giggled, glancing at me over his Ray Bans. “No offense, but I’d probably watch that.”

“You’re mixing metaphors,” I grumbled, then dug in the center console for my phone. “He’s just...a dick. I try to be nice, why shouldn’t I be, and he’s just a dick! He’s a dick, Dario.”

“So you’re saying he’s a dick.”

“Total dick.” My phone displayed its morning reminder from Dad not to be late, a few spam emails, something from the community college about autumn classes. I flipped to Twitter. “And boring. God, he’s boring.”

“If he spends all his time bitching about you to his best friend, yeah, he’s boring.”

“Just, like--he rode in New York, right, that’s pretty tight, bugs who start off at Aqueduct and Belmont usually get really good mounts. And his fucking Twitter is one hundred percent class, all retweets of trainers whose horses he’s on and--” I waved my phone at Dario. “You know. Nothing embarrassing. He’s making me look bad, man.”

“You do that all on your own,” Dario pointed out. “Like, for real. The tiniest bit of finesse, just a thought. You need a social media manager? I’ll run your Twitter account, keep you from wrecking your career with too many accidental dick pics.”

He took a hand off the steering wheel to make air quotes, just in case I missed the heavy sarcasm.

“That was one time, and there were extenuating circumstances.” Dario scoffed. I flipped him off, grinning. No apprentice avoided jock hazing, and social media made it easy to capture the egg-drenched hair, the water-soaked breeches, the pantsing and shoe polish. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure he’s a robot. Can robots win riding titles? I’m pretty sure it’s in the Florida statutes that they cannot.”

“Google it,” Dario said.

I tapped Gulfstream’s official account and scrolled down to where they’d tweeted something about Joel. I wasn’t following him, of course--I had been, because it was usually fun to chat with apprentices at different tracks, and then I’d promptly unfollowed him about two minutes after meeting him in person. “You know he told me I’m--”

“Sloppy,” Dario filled in. “I remember you mentioning that about twelve times this morning, actually.” He snorted and braked for the Hallandale Beach exit. “Maybe he’s just shy.”

“Shy?” I stuck my head out the window and howled. “I never met a shy horseman in my life. You can’t be shy in this business. You either know how to talk to people or you think you’re too good to need to.”

“Ok,” Dario said, ignoring my dramatics. “Maybe he thinks you’re cute.”

“Everyone thinks I’m cute,” I said. “Because I am. It usually works in my favor.”

“See,” he said, sighing. “That’s the problem. You’re spoiled, Ben, you’re used to smiling and people dropping their shit to get you a drink or let you copy their homework or throw a horse at you or whatever. Cute guys never have to work like the rest of us.”

“Please,” I said as we paused at the light for the horsemen’s lot. “This from Coconut Grove’s own Dane Dehaan.”

Dario pulled into a visitor’s spot and leaned across the seat to look at Twitter with me. “Oh my god. Thinking you’re cute isn’t the problem, clearly.” He grabbed my phone, Ray Bans sliding down his nose. “Is he Cuban?”

“Cuban-American,” I said. “I think. He’s from Miami, so...I guess it’s unfair, really, for me to feel all threatened. He’s got as much right to be riding here as anyone else.” I brooded for a minute while Dario started up his commentary over the pictures on Joel’s Twitter. “Still. He could’ve stayed in New York. No one would have minded.”

“So I don’t think he’s a robot,” Dario said. “Or if he is it’s the kind where they have multiple emotional settings. His Instagram is a little more human.”

I snatched my phone back. “How’d you find his Instagram?”

Dario cocked his head, smiling like I was a newborn. “There was a picture link in one of his mentions. God, Ben, do you understand how Twitter works?”

I scrolled slowly through the Instagram feed. “I just figured he didn’t have one since it’s not in his bio.”

“Not all of us put our entire life stories in a Twitter bio,” Dario said. “Cultivate some fucking mystique, hon, I swear.”

I didn’t say anything back, being a little distracted by how different Joel’s Instagram was from his Twitter. His name wasn’t in the handle, jjockeyc, which I guessed made it harder for creeps like me and Dario to find. There were track shots, sure, kind of artsy-lite pictures of horses at weird angles and sunrises, but it was mostly other stuff: bookstores and alley cafes captioned things like ‘pho yeah @ tha strand’ and New York skylines and marquees of movies. I hadn’t heard of most of them. Here it was, a whole little world that was hard to imagine him fitting into. My skin felt strange--almost crawling--like I was peeking through his window, even though it wasn’t like the Instagram was private.

Not many of the pictures featured him, a lone selfie for every five basically-identical shots of Aqueduct’s main track. For some reason I was glad.

“Shit,” Dario said. “I thought you said he was gay.”

“Pretty sure he is,” I said. “I told you about that interview, right? And like...people are sometimes nasty to him online. You know how it goes.”

“So who’s that girl? Maybe he’s bi.”

I tapped the photo Dario was pointing at, a picture of Joel and a girl with their tongues stuck sideways, arms looped over each other’s shoulders and the phone held out from the girl’s hand. She was pretty, fantastic skin and a pair of silver door-knocker earrings poking through wavy brown hair.

“‘Mi hermana la supermodelo,’” I read off the caption. “His sister, I guess.”

The shot bothered me, Joel’s eyes creased like he was about to laugh, or had been laughing before his sister took the picture. He didn’t look like himself at all.

“Awww,” Dario cooed. “See? Not a robot.”

#diana's writing #project: losing the bug #oc: ben goldfarb #u: honeycomb hills

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sofreeupthecheaperseats-blog · 5 years

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Day 02 [12/15/18]

My bed and trash can are starting to look like that of a horny teenage boy, minus the lotion and crusty bits. Needed my oil changed. Apparently Walmart does that. Left the auto center and was immediately greeted by the Midsummer’s Night Car Scent hangy thing I first saw in your car. I had one before, I removed it just before walking into the Whataburger after noticing it was now empty.

I held it. It reminded me of you.

I need one anyway.

I walked around aimlessly for the next two hours thinking of how much better it would have been with you. Pushed on bought some depression food and RDR2, my new faithful companion in this trying time.

For Chistmas I’d like to have given you one of those instax cameras that prints the picture on the spot. Joe has one but his was fucked right out of the box. I’d have broken it out of the box to test it first because fuck that. I’m not good at gifting. But I mean I didn’t get much chance to put in more thought. I knew the Gaypot would have a role but, yeah.

I spoke to my coworkers from store, I let them know what had happened. I didn’t need them asking how you were doing while I’m at work. I don’t know how that would have blown over. I did get better advice than I got from the guys. We talked about all my previous questions and my worries. How I’m not supposed to give exes Christmas gifts, to give it time, how best to establish contact at some point.

“Send her a card.”

How convenient.

I had already ordered one a while back. It was from a kickstarter that makes LGBT cards and was based in the UK. I needed this one specifically because it had 2 gay ass foxes on it. It was perfect. Don’t think I would have guessed how it’s purpose would change...

I drastically underestimated how long it would take for me to receive a card from the UK in the mail. I think I ordered it on the 3rd of December to go with The Gaypot, a la The Office S2E10 “Christmas Party.” I don’t think you got the reference. How could you? Yer fake news.

Anyway, I thought this was a solid plan. It gave me a time frame, which let me pretend there was an endgame, a goal. Something to look forward to. This being because everyone at the fort is gone already and there’s no way I would get my hands on that card until January, right around the 14th. A month. At least. Right? I don’t know. There isn’t much precedent. My self control can’t fuck this up now. I need to be patient.

How will I get this to you?

You’re supposed to be leaving your coworker’s place and moving in with Jared from Subway. Where can I send the fucking card if I don’t fucking know where you and Jafar are moving because I. Can’t. Talk. To. You.

I need to establish communication to establish communication.

Sounds like communist propaganda but okay.

Maybe I can send it to your mom, she might be able to get it to you. I hope she’d do me this favor. That might also give me an excuse to double envelope it because I’d lose my shit if it got fucked in the mail. Exterior to her interior to you, with a note inside the first asking her to please relay the card (and Hi, how are you, by the way? Is Lux still fluffy? Tell her I love her. I officially have 0 cat access. I’m going through withdrawal. Please send kitty pics.)

I’m overthinking this.

It’s not unusual, but I mean, hey. I have time. Forced time. is gud

I’ll figure it out. It’s a start.

I saw your Instagram post today. You looked like you belonged a renaissance painting. Beautifully draped across the couch.

I stared at your expression.

It seemed familiar, the same one I’ve worn these past couple days.

I felt it. It hurt to look at.

It’s not your fault. I don’t hold anything against you. You were only doing what you thought was best for you. For me.

I wish I could hold you and tell you that it’s okay. That I understand.

I hope you know.

Today I changed your contact and snap, “Bri” it says. I backed up text messages as I typically went back and read them, deleted the conversation. I cleared the Snapchat conversation, I thought about excluding you from my stories. I don’t know if I want you to have to see them. I didn’t do it now but it may be for the best. I deleted instagram. I see the USS Fuckhorn is gone, oh whale. Not that I ever really went in there. I never really felt as if I should, I was only invested in you. I uninstalled discord from my phone, it sits on my desktop as of now but maybe not for long. I removed you from my phones’s edge favorites thing, slid everyone up a tile. Accidentally opening that useless slidy bit wouldn’t suck. I closed the ex urna resurgam and oh my god im gay tabs that were permanently open on my phone. That sucked, but I knew leaving them there would dare me to look at them every time I used chrome. I put all the pictures I had of yours and your creations into a safe style app.

I’ll miss those.

For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to unfollow your spotify. I guess I felt that occasionally being able to see that you were listening to some happy music meant that you were okay.

I can’t let go of that.

I had Joe erase the “cunt” you had hidden on my whiteboard which I had kept, put away the rainbow dragon I held against it, take down the hiss cylinder, get rid of my collection of reeses cups I had been stockpiling, which are and have always been gronst, and cleared my room of anything that could punch me in the throat upon arrival.

Clear it.

Queen, Metallica, Bowie and Low Roar are going to be my lords, at least until I can bury my head in what’s left of my degree.

For now it’s just me and RDR2.

I hope you’re doing well.

There’s only up now.

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insecure-hbo-the-recaps · 7 years

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hella disrespectful

REMINDER/ALERT: Tumblr has locked me out of my original account and from now on I will be posting from this address. PLEASE FOLLOW ME HERE. Do me the additional favor of unfollowing the previous account though I have not yet figured out how to get Tumblr to delete these accounts that I am no longer able to access but that will probably simplify things a little, idk.

Previously on Insecure: "I don't want your conversation - get in my line up;" "Woot-Woot's dead;" "This whole open thing sounds super messy;" "I can't believe Issa's still out here seeing this dude;" "Did you really just do that in my fucking face?"

Issa's in the crib getting some moral support from Molly and I just gotta say I got kinda a bone to pick here:

Issa ain't riding no bike! You know damn well Issa ain't riding no bike! If she were she wouldn't be so fucked up after getting her car smashed. My ex lost a bunch of weight randomly biking all the time and I would get so worried about him biking in subzero temperatures. Getting worried about a partner was new to me, btw. I realized I never worried about it possibly happening that someone I was dating would die lol, like while I was dating him. He'd drop me off and I'd ask him to text me when he got home and if he didn't I'd wake up in the morning seriously thinking "omg what if he got in an accident and died last night?"

Molly is on Issa's team regarding the "surprise" facial. She wants Daniel to be fucked up on sight. Where is Molly? This room looks old fashioned and kitschy as fuck, and the headboard is different from the one she has at home. Issa doesn't want to see Daniel again, but that's not a problem for Molly, who wants to BRRRRR-TATTTT on Daniel with a water gun full of raw eggs.

Issa's pain is deeper though - she was trying to show Daniel that he was special to her and he embarrassed her. To be honest I am still having a hard time getting on the same page with Issa and her deeply insulted reaction to Daniel's surprise facial. On the other hand - I had that happen to me once and I literally never spoke to the guy again. Like in Issa's case, I assumed he did it on purpose... buuuuut, me and that guy kind of hated each other so it made sense. I guess I'm having a hard time relating to why Daniel would have done it and as such why Issa's so offended. It's a little contrived, I think, is what I'm saying. I repeat: a good dude wouldn't do this to you. So either Daniel is a good dude, or he's exposed that he's not. Accidental unwanted facials aren't a thing.

Molly is being a good friend, validating Issa's feelings, and ranting about how men watch too much porn and think that shit's ok. Molly possibly had an ulterior motive, because being in a safe space she feels ok to tell Issa she's still seeing Dro. "I thought that was a one and done?" Issa asks. "It's more like a seventeen and not stopping no time soon," Molly says, and SIGH. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS MOLLY? IT'S A TERRIBLE IDEA. Why would she even want this? Aren't some men just generally off limits? Dro seems like the kind of guy, with the kind of history, that should just be not an option (particularly considering he's married). Issa still isn't buying that anyone, especially Molly, benefits from this alleged open relationship, which Molly is offended by. They are telling each other hard truths, softened by years of honest friendship, and although they aren't on the same page, they agree to love each other through the stupidity.

Yaaaas, bitch. Issa' still on the bus. She spots the latino kid again, who removes his backpack and Entemann's donuts to give her the seat. When he pulls out a PSAT prep, Issa sees an opening and tries to chat him up about the teacherly and tutorly pursuits her job offers. Surprisingly to both Issa, and the audience I think, the kid says he tried to go but was told by Mr. Gates that the program was full. Issa finally appears troubled by this now that she is confronted by someone she sort of deliberately left behind.

Lawrence Tech Start up. Lawrence is wearing a Santa Claus/footie pajama red thermal and it looks crazy. Colin the Clueless White Guy sidles up to him (in an equally ridiculous printed button up - buttoned all the way to the top naturally) and burgundy pants and makes small talk while Lawrence pours himself a coffee. Colin is all in Lawrence's business for no reason in a gotcha conversation that just serves to prove Lawrence and Arpant have been kicking on the side and trying to hide it at work. Cliffs notes they suck at it and their coworkers have sniffed them out.

Molly is riding around somewhere with Quintin in his wood grain Lexus. He brought her popcorn from Garrett's and while I appreciate the shoutout I've literally never heard of such a thing as RANCH in Garrett's - like - what? It's cheddar and caramel. Stick to the script. Don't try to be new and exciting. You tell someone in Chicago Garrett's is doing ranch popcorn and they will look at you wondering who lied to you. (Note to self: get some Garrett's for the first time since high school.) Molly tries it and is hooked. Quintin asks about Molly's "white boy" meeting: apparently she is going to shoot her shot and ask for the raise. Quintin says he's going to be in LA soon and asks Molly to show him around. Molly: a beat passes before she goes "mm, ok," because she understands the pass he has made at her.

SILICON VALLEY IS SO MILLENNIAL AND COOL. Lawrence is looking for Arpana to make amends for blowing their spot. Arpana does that thing of being possibly offended at keeping things a secret WHILE playing standoffish at the implication that they are anything to be kept secret. Hmmm. Bold move, Cotton. Let's see if that works out for her. Lawrence confirms drink plans, Arpana teases him, blah blah.

At the office, Issa seeks out Frieda and asks to talk. Frieda isn't all that interested, but then Issa presents some research on how to increase latino enrollment at their school. Issa beams at her in approval because apparently they thought of the same plan. Frieda is relieved that she and Issa are back on friendly wavelengths again, and asks where Issa's change of mind came from. Issa acknowledges that she's been lost in herself and Frieda was right. It's a good apology and Frieda is cool with it.

Meanwhile at Molly's Dro shows up with a bag of groceries and Molly's keys. He asks her if she wants them back and she says no. MOLLY. WHY. I DON'T GET IT. There are literally billions of available partners for you. What the fuck is the draw of being emotionally open to A MARRIED MAN? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? WHY DO YOU THINK THIS IS GOOD OR WILL WORK OUT? If you're going to fuck a married man in an open relationship ok, I guess, do you even though it's a thing on its own. But why are you trying to give the motherfucker your keys to your apartment? Christ, Molly. Molly gives Dro her bag of popcorn - that Quintin gave her - which cheapens the rapport Quintin was trying to build in that she tried to transfer it to Dro. I don't get it, Molly, truly.

They change subjects to Derek's birthday party and Molly sours at the knowledge that Dro's wife will be coming. Goddamn that man is tall. Look at him. He's like a basketball player.

ISsa gets a text from Tiffany who wants to know if it's cool that Lawrence is coming to the party. Issa screenshots and sends to Molly who is also offended at Tiffany springing Lawrence out of nowhere. This prompts Issa to check Lawrence's facebook, where she learns he has blocked her. She is really pissed about Lawrence taking their five year relationship to the brink of actually blocking her on facebook, resulting in another angry mirror rap. But she plays it off to Molly.

Law firm. Molly is sitting in front of a panel of three general pale men, pleading her case. She is cool and confident, all Law of Attractioning that she's going to receive the value she deserves. She parries their comebacks with all the agility of Serena. The partners agree with her, but are a bunch of stingy bastards that want to put her off as long as they are able to - they agree with her pitch and simply offer that it will be taken into consideration at her yearly review. And ain't that some bullshit? The idea of wielding that kind of bias because you understand you are bartering with someone that may not have the collateral to be as competetive as she could be. Stupid generic white boy Travis that is already making significantly more than Molly could walk into this meeting and be a threat if he suggested he'd leave because he isn't being paid fairly. When you're a black woman - what's she gonna do? Quit? She should be grateful she has the clout of such an establishment lended to her. Yadda yadda yadda, BULLSHIT.

At the school, Issa has not only decided what has been happening with their program is wrong, she decides she has to confront Principal Gates with it. She tells him they are discriminating and he asks what the problem is being the program is full - "now you're coming up to me with some 'All Lives Matter'?" Ouch. Frieda tries to step in and Gates looks at her, offended. Issa tells him that the latino students are being turned away and it isn't far. Gates again plays the "your tone is offensive/it's not that big a deal/calm down" argument and literally laughs in her face and walks away.

Lawrence forgot about Derek's party and wants to switch drinks with Arpana from 7 to 10. Yeah, no, Lawrence. He tells her his ex would be there and for some reason Arpana offers to go. That's a little messy. Like, have drinks the next day. Why insert yourself?

Back at Issa's, she's wearing a crazy dress getting ready to go to the party and Daniel calls. He wants to apologize and move on but Issa is still mad. She offers vulnerability and asks why he'd do that to her of all people. Daniel seems contrite enough as he asks for forgiveness - even tacking on a "please," and Issa visibly softens. She tells him she hates him which of course is female for "I love you."

Issa asks why their thing is always messy and Daniel, overestimating the strength of their reconciliation, offers that now they're even; he equates what he did to squaring things after Issa dogged him at the charity event last year. And honestly.... I mean, i won't ever condone an unwanted facial, but Issa did get off the hook pretty scott free for telling Daniel he was just an itch she had to scratch and don't tell her boyfriend because their shit was nothing comparatively. Like, Issa had to have known that was scoring points on him too. So, I'm gonna call this a wash. Issa is mad all over again that Daniel intentionally humiliated her, calls him disrespectful and petty, and tells him not to ever call her again. She stomps to her brother's car pissed off, who is apparently accompanying her to the party tonight.

At Derek's party, Kelli brought that random ass dude she met the other night - and good for her. Relationships can start just as well from the club as anywhere else - and for some reason Molly is wearing a black dress with random red armbands attached. And Tiffany is so fucking extra bougie as usual, like, she is simply not a sympathetic character. I can't with her Lori Greiner blonde wig and gratuitous bragging about how much she loves her man. How is anyone friends with her?

Anyway there is a random aside about how Kelli thought "Sweetie" was just going to be some strange, but she's meeting his parents at the mosque next week. Okey dokey. Dro shows up with his wife. While she's getting a drink he takes a moment to compliment Molly in Spanish. Remember Eric Jerome Dickey on Black People in California and how you could tell a black woman was upwardly mobile if she was fluent in spanish? (I have a friend who works in IR who once commented offhandedly that you only need to know spanish to liaise with poor people, and if you want to mingle with the wealthy you need to know French and/or Chinese. At the time I thought it was horribly offensive but now I know she was right.) Candace is awkward around Molly which does suggest she is aware and knows that her open marriage has led to her husband sleeping with this woman. Also this is apparently Dro's favorite dress which explains that, I suppose. Candace is wear a feathered burgundy cape, affixed to her shoulders with, apparently, double sided tape. I repeat: okey dokey.

Oh damn. That space is nice:

Tiffany signals for an extra toast, clinging the glass with a knife, to announce dinner is served. She makes Molly move from the seat she chose, putting her awkwardly seated at the head of the table. Issa and her brother arrive, and he's such a good buffer. Issa makes note of Candace and checks in with Molly about it. "What's up with y'all?" her brother asks. "Nothing, I'm fine, she grown," Issa says in one breath.

Lawrence's ridiculous ass shows up - in a nice denim button up - trying to ignore everyone aghast at him bringing a random date to this friends only event. He claims he didn't know it would be a sit down event, and everyone awkwardly makes room to accommodate his guest. See? Extra. None of this needed to happen. Lawrence decides to address the elephant in the room and introduces Arpana, who makes a crack about knowing how awkward she's made things. Yeah, that doesn't work when you knew full well in advance the circumstances were going to be awkward. But everyone is adults and they try to laugh it off. Issa orders a whiskey.

Mid-dinner. They are having lovely pretentious cultural conversation. When Molly tries to chime in everyone ignores her. She feels very left out and alone. J from ABG asks Lawrence why he's there, basically, and has to be informed that they all know each other because Lawrence is Issa's ex. By the next cut of passage of time, Issa is drunk.

The dinner continues awkwardly: Tiffany is fucking annoying, Issa's brother is a bitchy gay, and Issa is poor. Nobody's showcasing their best self, I think. When the conversation shifts to Issa's building being sold, there is a moment of Lawrence openly pining about how he and Issa used to live together. When Tiffany makes a toast to "the Barack to her Michelle" - so extra - Issa drunkenly comments about Lawrence's random. Enough being enough, Issa walks out. Lawrence follows. Oh boy.

He lies that he wouldn't have brought Arpana if he knew Issa would be there. She calls him out as being full of shit and tells him she knows he's just parading that girl in front of their friends. Also, she knows that he blocked her. Lawrence admits it, because he couldn't "stand to see pictures of the nigga you fucked" while they were together. The fact that Issa wasn't the one who posted them - parading around someone in Lawrence's face as it were - and that he accuses her of still fucking Daniel, as if that's any of his business, is more than enough to clarify that Lawrence is in the wrong here. It's all about his hurt feelings and what Issa did to him or owes him; that she would still be wronging him to see someone else after they broke up. He's bullshit, basically.

When Issa doesn't refute this, Lawrence lets his insecure flag fly freely and asks who else she fucked while they were together. Issa's voice breaks as she asks whether he's serious, especially since he fucked her while he was dating his bank teller. "And being some fake music producer's jump off is better?" Lawrene spits back. And... jump off? Are we still saying that? Also, he's hitting way below the belt whereas Issa was not. This is something that I suppose is an inherent misogyny in the black community that frankly at this point is no longer normal to me and is almost unforgivably egregious. So at this point I don't blame Issa for hitting back that Daniel has "way more going on than Woot Woot."

They both know that Issa has hit him below the belt now too, so they both go for broke: Issa asks whether all this was worth her supporting him for two years while he was depressed, and Lawrence counters that it is worth about as much as all the time she "spent being a fuckin' ho." And, again. Maybe I'm too far removed. But I can't see having anything else to do with someone who showed up with, I'm sorry it has to be said, an exotical to your black friendship group, calling your ex girlfriend a ho, and stomping off in a petulant rage. You couldn't come back from that for me, but that's just me. If you want to make the argument that Issa cheating on Daniel is equivalent to Lawrence mooching off Issa and doing nothing with his life with two years (WHO WAS PAYING ALL THOSE LIFESTYLE BILLS, MOTHERFUCKER?) and trying to hurt her by flaunting a new relationship in her face, I may be biased, but I don't think there's much room for redemption there.

Back at the party, Molly follows Dro to the bathroom and he already knows where her head is. Molly admits she wasn't expecting not being able to see him with his wife, and how left out she feels knowing that he won't ever be that way with her. Being someone's dirty little secret isn't fun. Dro convinces her that they have something too, and she lets him fuck her on the bathroom sink. I hope I am never this desperate for affection. And I'm not being hard on Molly, really. But I think she's being very foolish with her emotions and it's hard for me to understand why she would put herself in this position, knowingly aware every step of the way that she's setting herself up for failure. Case in point: Dro asks her to wait for a moment and let him leave the bathroom first. Still, inexplicably, Molly is hurt by this. Girl, please. You wanna play that big girl's game, but on your big girl panties then. She steps out to find Issa waiting for the bathroom. Issa wordlessly straightens Molly's bangs and zips up her dress and Molly thanks her, for her nonjudgment.

Lawrence is driving Arpana back and she asks whether he still wants to get drinks. He doesn't answer.

Molly finally calls her mom back, and tells her she just needed some time. She asks why Mom stayed with Dad, and Mom replies that she just loves him. Apparently Molly is in the same headspace and asks how she deals with the hurt. I don't want to be redundant and point out that Molly's hurt is unreasonable, because on some level I do suppose that's insensitive. But, I just don't have any sympathy for this. We all do shitty things. But you can't ask me to feel bad for the consequences of your shitty things when you are fully aware what you are doing is harmful to you. If I'm doing something that hurts, I figure my options are to keep doing it and stop whining, or to stop fucking doing it. When she gets home, Molly responds to Dro's scheduling text that she can't do this anymore but we all know it rings hollow.

Issa comes home to a letter on her door informing her of her rent increase, and it's finally too much.

Her experimenting with ho-ness turned out to be a bigger blow to her self esteem than she could handle, and she's clearly stung behind Lawrence calling her a ho. That's what she was trying to do, right? But in reality it didn't work out so well. Her side pieces were not pliable enough, the one guy she was seeing relatively seriously compared to the others deliberately humiliated her, and her ex that she had partially built a life with devalued the time they spent by diminishing her as the thing she was afraid of being seen as - a tool, a joke, a ho. She kicks a chair then just lashes out entirely, breaking dishes, throwing tables, smashing furniture.

#issa rae #insecure hbo

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