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gojossocks · 4 months

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Anything For You

Sukuna x Reader genre: fluff, hurt/comfort summary: After a thousand years, Sukuna never thought that he'd find you again. Only this time, your goals have changed and you weren't the person he can rule the world with anymore. Would he give that up just for you? wc: 2.7K content: friends to lovers, lovesick sukuna, kinda ooc sukuna because of how lovesick he is, mutual pining. they were in a situationship for a thousand years, can you guys handle that?

“Sukuna, don’t you feel alone in the past thousand years? I mean, all you’ve wanted is to gain power and do other villain-y things. It’s pretty lame and sad in my opinion.” Yuuji, his vessel, says mindlessly as he chews on his food while he waits for Megumi and Nobara.

“You insolent fool.” He sneered, a mouth forming on Yuuji’s cheeks. “I don’t mope around like you do. I was not alone either.”

Contrary to popular belief, Sukuna wasn’t heartless as most people paint him out to be. In fact, during the Heian Era, Sukuna is always seen to be with a powerful sorcerer.

There was you. The only person he sees as his equal.

But after you were killed, your history with Sukuna was quickly forgetten as the men write history in their own perspective. You are a significant figure in history, yes– but you and Sukuna together were only briefly mentioned in the books.

People have forgotten about how Sukuna, the King of Curses, have ruled the Jujutsu World with you by his side.

In the bygone days of the Heian Period, You and Sukuna have a unique bond as you two had grown up together. You were the only one who witnessed how he rises up to be the King of Curses. You were a powerful sorcerer too in your own way, despite the lack of title. Your benevolent nature has gotten a lot of people to respect you. People were not intimidated by your power but by your wisdom.

Despite your personality which is in contrast to Sukuna’s, it never became a hindrance between your bond. In fact, he seemed to like you more because of it. You taught him how to kill and destroy with purpose. and together, the two of you wreaked havoc on Earth.

You were the first and last person who knows him inside and out, not even Uraume could compare. He even prefers your shitty cooking, for god’s sake. He feels weak in your presence. Sukuna kind of resents you for it, how you make him feel. How he’s willing to burn the entire world at your command. He’d kill anyone without batting an eye if you ask him to. You have him wrapped around your pretty fingers and you don’t even know it.

He remembers going into the gardens of your shared home after a battle and you’d welcome him with open arms, hugging him with your little frame. You didn’t care about the blood on his clothes or how he reeks of death. You look at him with such kindness, as if he has done nothing wrong in this world. You held his hands with such gentleness, as if he has hasn’t covered his hands with so much blood. And you smile and crack jokes around him after terrorizing villages, you wrap bandages around his wounds even if he can heal it in a heartbeat. He loves being doted on by you.

He was really good at keeping his emotions to himself unlike you who’d outwardly show how much you love him. He had a feeling that you knew of his affections slightly. After all, you were the only one allowed to touch Sukuna, to tease him and be alive after that. He chose not to tell you his feelings because he thought that he’d have all the time in the world to tell you.

Well, he thought he did until he received the news that you were killed.

Sukuna didn’t look at your corpse, refusing that seeing your cold lifeless body would be his last memory of you. After that was just endless rampage of destruction. In his mind, it was his way of avenging you. People have forgotten about you because of the amount of lives he had taken— his crimes outweighed any humanity he had left of him.

It goes like that until he was defeated and sealed. Well, that was years ago but even now, all he thinks about is you. So much that he could still hear your laugh.

“Really?” Yuuji exclaimed. “I think I should ask Gojo-sensei about—”

Yuuji’s rambling was cut off with a sound of laughter, which causes both him and the demon inside him to look where that voice comes from.

That all too familiar voice that even after countless lifetimes, he would still recognize anywhere. Sukuna felt like his entire world stopped when he sees where that voice comes from. Everything seemed to blur as his entire attention is fixated on the woman.

It was you, in the flesh.

Or rather, someone who is an exact copy of you.

He had found you! You had reincarnated as he hoped you would. You kept your promise and you’d see him again.

You were walking and conversing beside Gojo Satoru as you approach Yuuji who stood up straight and looked at you with wide eyes.

“Who might this be?” You gave the kid a playful smile.

Sukuna was able to examine you up close as you walked closer to Yuuji. You were as beautiful as the day he lost you. You fit right into this modern period— you’re wearing a uniform similar to Gojo’s, but instead of pants, you were wearing a skirt and knee high boots. If someone were to tell Sukuna that he’d find you like this, fighting against him, he would have howled in laughter before killing that someone.

“Yuuji Itadori, miss!” the young sorcerer said, exuding a bit too much enthusiasm.

“So he is the vessel.” You acknowledged with a nod before sharing a look with Gojo Satoru.

“This is Y/N Y/L/N! She’s a special grade sorcerer from Kyoto but will be transferring here to accommodate you. She doesn’t go to missions anymore just like I do so Y/N would be there whenever you need her.” Gojo explains, putting a hand on you and Yuuji’s shoulders.

Yuuji’s eyes widened as he registered the significance of your name “Like the one in history books Y/N Y/L/N?”

“I wish.” You quipped, inserting a playful note in your response. “It was nice meeting you. I’ve waited for you, you know.” Then you extended your hand toward Yuuji and as your fingers met his, Sukuna could feel the familiarity of your touch. You looked at Yuuji with so much intensity, as if you’re looking at the curse residing in him. Right at Sukuna. and he didn’t fail to notice the way your smile was gentler compared to the ones you’ve given the kid.

It was for him.

You’ve seen him.

“Well,” You let out a sigh when you’ve pulled away. “I better get going. I’m sorry to cut this short, Yuuji. I hope we’ll get to know more of each other. I heard you like rice bowls, I’ll treat you to my favorite restaurant in tokyo next week, yeah?” You pat the top of his head and Yuuji gives you a huge grin.

Once you’ve left, Yuuji could finally notice Sukuna’s silence. He had been silent ever since you’ve arrived and Yuuji was about to tease him for it until Gojo spoke up.

“It’s her if she wasn’t being obvious enough.”

-.-

In the week following his unexpected encounter with you, Sukuna’s demeanor underwent a subtle transformation. He was less mean to Yuuji and the snarky remarks had lessened.

True to your promise, you spent time with Yuuji, fulfilling your role as a companion and mentor. However, your newfound indifference towards Sukuna fueled a frustration that within him. Did he merely imagine the spark of recognition in your eyes? Was it truly still you?

He found out a lot about you during the time you spent with Yuuji as well as the information that Gojo discloses concerning you. It seems as though you have helped the Jujutsu World slowly gain back its glory just like back in the golden days. You’re a teacher too, and from what Gojo has mentioned, you’re still the same patient and kind person he fell in love with.

Sukuna feels a twinge of jealousy at the mention of how you’re close with the white-haired sorcerer. He finds himself scoffing at the thought of you finally replacing him. It isn’t far from reality, you’re too likable for your own good anyway. You make it so easy to love you that Sukuna failed to notice that this disease has swallowed him whole and now he’s stuck, absolutely pining for you like an idiot. How dare you move on from him if that’s the case?

He needed answers from you or else he’d go crazy. So he finds out where you live and he found out that you were living in the more peaceful side of Tokyo. It took him a while to get in control again and the moment he did, his feet carried him to you.

Your house is beautiful, it looked like the mini version of the place that you once shared with Sukuna. He entered it quietly and to his surprise, you were no where to be found but then he catches a glimpse of you in the window overlooking the garden.

Sukuna finds himself smiling as he reaches the garden. It had a variety of flowers and plants, the very ones you had planted with him years ago. You’re wearing a beautiful red plaid sundress and the modern age never looked so good in anyone but you.

You were simply ethereal.

You were too engrossed in watering your plants when he walks towards you.

“Old habits hard for you, Y/N.” Sukuna spoke up, his voice devoid of any usual domineering tone that he uses to other humans.

You turned to him, wide eyed. It was the first time you’ve seen him in ages. Sukuna’s still in the body of the young sorcerer that you frequently saw the past week but he looked like him—with his tattoos and demeanor. Your eyes are soon filled with tears and you shakily reached for him, engulfing him in a tight embrace.

“Finally.” You choked out, burying your face to his chest. Sukuna carefully snakes his hands towards your back on instinct. “It’s been so long. it was all worth it. I knew you’d come back.”

He rests his chin on the top of your head. Sukuna’s voice turned hoarse as he spoke. “I thought you were killed I-”

“I’m already here, Ryo.” You interrupted, pulling away to cup his cheek gently. Sukuna leaned in to the warmth of your touch, melting in an instant. “ I wasn’t. I was just sealed until I was let out by one of my dearest friends. I came to find you but you were already gone, so I waited.”

“You don’t know how much I’ve missed you, Y/N.”

“You were asleep for almost a thousand years. I was alive for most of it, clearly I missed you more.”

“Well, I thought you were dead. Cut me some slack, doll.” Sukuna teased with a smirk. You bite your lip to stifle your smile, playfully nodding inagreement.

“Come with me.” He murmured, pulling away to press his lips against your forehead. “After I kill this brat, I can take control and we can finally change the world.”

“By killing everyone in it?” You shakily asked. Sukuna thought that you were just shaken because of how glad you are to have him back.

He gave you a smirk. “Well, that was my idea. You know how I am.”

“Times have changed, Ryo. I’m afraid that it has softened me. I’m not the person you used to imagine burning the world down with anymore.” You calmly admitted, meeting Sukuna’s intense gaze and you tried to calm him down by tracing circles on his arm but he didn’t look convinced in the slightest.

“I’m here now. You could drop your act. I can protect you now, you know.”

“You don’t understand, dear.” you interjected, gently pushing a strand away from his face. “We have different objectives now. You seek to take over the world and be feared forever. I seek to live out my days in peace until I decide to end it.”

You must’ve noticed how Sukuna’s expression dropped at your words so you quickly clarified. “oh no, but don’t think I’d end my life after our interaction. In fact, I’ll live for a few more years until it will bore me to death. Literally. But there’s just so much to love and to do in this world, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t you want to be with me? Have you grown tired of me?” He demanded, his voice getting louder as he continues to talk. You weren’t fazed in the slightest and it aggravates him even further. It used to comfort him, that you know him so well, but now the butterflies in his stomach makes him anxious more than anything else.

You have always had the upper hand and he feels you cursing him the more you grant him your presence.

He feels disregarded as you implicitly rejected him.

“No.” You offered him a sweet smile, your eyes never leaving his. Sukuna thinks he might float with the way you’re looking at him right and his breath hitched once he hears you say the next words. “I love you, Ryo. In fact, I love you enough to know of your nature and I would be the last person who would stop you in achieving what you want. I wouldn’t be in your way but I couldn’t stay by your side anymore.”

Sukuna searched for a hint that indicates that you were lying and he found none. You had always been honest with him. He looks at you with a heartbroken expression but still trying to maintain his stoic face. He’s clearly hurt “Did our past mean nothing to you?”

“I’ve done everything I could, Ryo. I’ve done everything for you. You know I did that all for you. Wasn’t that enough? Didn’t you feel my love for you in the slightest? You could kill me now, if you want. It’d be a pleasure to die by your hand.” Your eyes are once again brimmed with tears again yet you continued to smile as you trail your fingers over his cheek “I’m sorry but I’m tired of seeing red. Gojo must’ve told what I did, you must know my change of heart.”

He did.

Of course he did.

He knew of what you did yet he still held on to the fact that he might be wrong. So is this really how it ends? Sukuna enjoys destruction and killing. He loves being in power and he will not admit that if you weren’t alive, he’s probably murdering civillians in Shibuya right now. But after he’d gain control over Yuuji Itadori’s body, the only thing that he keeps thinking of is coming home to you.

And what would the point be if you are not by his side?

“Then I’ll stay with you.” He declared.

A scoff escapes your lips and your bewildered expression makes him smirk even more. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’ll just finish this and I’ll come back to you. None of this matters anymore. I’ll abandon all of it. For you.”

You looked at him incredulously, your mouth agape. Sukuna wastes no time to finally pull you in a kiss.

It was a gentle one at first and he pulls away slightly to see you pout, eliciting a chuckle from him, only to pull you back to a deeper, passionate kiss. Sukuna smiles into the kiss as a soft gasp escapes from you.

He kisses you fervently, as if he needs your air to breathe. And as you run your hand through his hair, moaning to the kiss, he pulls you impossibly closer.

He’s home.

He returned to you 3 months later, in his original form. He entered your house with wounds and bruises, his body covered in blood once more. It was just like before, but this time, it feels so different. He had a soft look in his eyes and he feels like he’s floating on air now that he’s gone home to you.

Just like before, you welcomed him with open arms. He lifted you and spinned you around, eliciting a squeal from you. When he puts you down, you peppered kisses to his face and hugged him really tight.

“I love you.” Sukuna whispers, tucking your hair behind your ear before leaning in to kiss you gently. You smiled at his confession. There was a look in your eyes that you knew it all along.

“It took you a millennium to say that.”

wanna read more?

a/n: i bet he still murders in his free time after being retired 😻

#sukuna x reader #sukuna fluff #jjk fluff #jujutsu kaisen x reader #sukuna hurt/comfort #sukuna x you #ryomen sukuna x reader #sukuna x reader fluff #jujutsu kaisen fluff #jjk x reader #jjk x you #jjk fanfic #sukuna fanfic #sukuna x reader angst

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dumbseee · 10 months

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stalker.

f1 au: in which, you and charles break up after years together, because he cheated on you.

masterlist.

charles leclerc x reader. / ? x reader.

fc: lalisa manoban.

note: no hate to charlotte ofc!! but i needed a villain :(

liked by lilymhe, yourbestie, landonorris and 917 628 others.

y/n: his bitch used to ask me for makeup advices.

fan1: oop-

fan2: POP OFF QUEEN

fan3: that’s my girl

fan4: the caption >>>

fan5: y/n in her reputation era and we’re here for it!

lilymhe: yellow is YOUR colour!

y/n: @.lilymhe ikr?? for years i thought red was the deal, but i was so wrong.

fan6: Y/N????

fan7: not the charles shade 😭

fan8: destroy him queen make him regret loosing a bad bitch like you.

view all 158 800 comments.

taglist: @ferrariloverr

#f1 fandom #f1 fanfic #f1 au #f1 fic #f1 imagine #f1 instagram au #f1 social media au #f1 x oc #f1 x reader #f1 x you #charles leclerc x you #charles leclerc x female reader #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc #charles leclerc x y/n #formula one x you #formula one x y/n #formula one x reader #formula one

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hotvintagepoll · 27 days

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Propaganda

Josephine Baker (The Siren of the Tropics, ZouZou)— Josephine Baker was an American born actress, singer, and utter icon of the period, creating the 1920s banana skirt look. She was the first black woman to star in a major motion film. She fought in the French resistance in WWII, given a Legion of Honour, as well as refusing to perform in segregated theatres in the US. She was bisexual, a fighter, and overall an absolutely incredible woman as well as being extremely attractive.

Anne Baxter (The Ten Commandments, All About Eve)—her soft, gentle voice in "all about eve", those gentle eyes with something odd behind them, the way she flips from Sweet Innocent to Viper on a dime......there was something Built Different about anne baxter, man, and it makes her so good for playing people who are Built Wrong. also one of my favorite batmen villains (her joint episode w vincent price is a delight) and of course I'm obsessed with her columbo episode where she bosses around edith head and does fabulous movie star things for no good reason. and i would be REMISS if i didn't mention her slink—oh the slink—in the ten commandments...................pardon me i must go think of sinning again

This is round 4 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Josephine Baker:

Black, American-born, French dancer and singer. Phenomenal sensation, took music-halls by storm. Famous in the silent film era.

Let's talk La Revue Negre, Shuffle Along. The iconique banana outfit? But also getting a Croix de Guerre and full military honors at burial in Paris due to working with the Resistance.

She exuded sex, was a beautiful dancer, vivacious, and her silliness and humor added to her attractiveness. She looked just as good in drag too.

So I know she was more famous for other stuff than movies and her movies weren’t Hollywood but my first exposure to her was in her films so I’ve always thought of her as a film actress first and foremost. Also she was the first black woman to star in a major motion picture so I think that warrants an entry

Iconic! Just look up anything about her life. She was a fascinating woman.

Anne Baxter:

The prettiest murderer in that film. Just so beautifully evil as Nefertari.

Anne Baxter was part of my Bisexual Awakening. My family has a tradition that every Palm Sunday we watch The ten commandments on TV together... And starting from a very young age, I essentially developed a crushes on Anne Baxter's Nefertiri & Yul Brynner's Ramses. Dude, the woman was HOT! They both were! My crush definitely wasn't helped by the fact that Anne Baxter's costumes were a bit on the sheer side. She had a way of capturing you with her eyes, and I never understood why Charlton heston's Moses didn't just have a threesome with Nefertiri and Ramses. LOL

Her Nefertiri in The Ten Commandments was FORMATIVE TO ME. If not the hottest old movie lady, then she definitely played the hottest old movie character. if that makes sense.

Look. Listen. I only *just* discovered her on a post from the Have You Seen This Romcom poll blog. Saw she had the same last name as me and went OOH hi hello. Went to her IMdB and saw she was born in Indiana like moi. I am now even more intrigued. Been eagerly telling my partner this, and he was like "maybe you guys are distantly related?" And after 2 hrs of going down the tumblr tag + her imdb photos, I'm In Deep(tm) and I can't stop looking at her like 😍 When I go to my grandma's house, bet your ass I'm gonna check my grandpa's genealogy and see if we're somehow related. Sorry that's not really propaganda I just got real excited, esp when I saw that the submission deadline was extended (bless your soul). Narrowing down the movies where she's hottest in was Hell tyvm. I've only just discovered her, she looks gorgeous to me in every movie still I see of her gdi lol.

#josephine baker #anne baxter #hotvintagepoll #fuck that old woman #ladies 4

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redclercs · 1 year

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DELICATE✰ CHARLES LECLERC.

iii. one for the money, two for the show.

— the one where you were never ready, so you watched him go.

warnings: war flashbacks to the miami gp, more insight into y/n (look i have to give a lot of context for my own sanity), not really proofread sorry, 2.4k words.

masterlist ✢ next

FROM “WHAT’S NEXT FOR AIDAN KIM?” POSTED IN THE US WEEKLY YOUTUBE CHANNEL MAY 2023

You are looking at the top comments.

aidanbabes nooo my baby😭 he looks so sad!

flowerbedkim I swear to god y/n better count her fucking days

halleyc don’t come at me but this sounds like he proposed

ynbby why is he talking about this though? y/n has been super private and he’s telling US WEEKLY THIS?

ynaidan i hate being a child of divorce😭

Miami, Florida May 6th

GRAND Prix number two with Elix, attempt number two by Mr. Stuart Schafer to get into your pants. Can it get any worse?

Yes, yes it can. Because as long as you have “a job” you don’t have to come to these sponsor events. Which sucks for you, not having an acting job for the moment has never felt more like a punishment from the universe.

Artists, from actors to singers are here promoting their gigs while all you do, again, is take pictures with men in jeans and loafers and try not to barf every time you consume Elix.

You’re watching your career crumble in front of your eyes and you can’t do anything to save it from burning when it hits the floor. Mildred has called you several times during the course of the weekend to inform you of canceled interviews, revoked invitations and “sorry we’re just looking for something else” calls from casting agents.

Part of you is in disbelief that a five minute interview from your ex-boyfriend is feeding the fire, part of you expected it all the same. Women are the preferred villain in the narrative, and if it means putting a man above them, the media has had the choice made for a while.

Did you really have it coming, though? There have been endless comments about how it was about time people realized the type of person you are.

But what are you? Who are you really?

You’re a coward. You tell that to yourself in the mirror first thing in the morning.

Many people have the luxury to say they can’t pinpoint the exact moment where they went wrong. You can’t afford the pleasure of such obliviousness, because the exact moment everything went wrong was when Aidan got down on one knee.

And when the question that left his lips went from "Will you marry me?" to "Why won't you?" You knew there was no turning back.

Marriage wasn’t a foreign concept to you, but while it is generally seen as a milestone, for you it was just another stepping stone. The roles of The Wife and The Mother were something you might eventually grow into, but on the night of your third anniversary, you realized you weren't even ready for that of The Fiancée.

Was it genuinely a surprise for Aidan that you had to close the velvet box he was holding in front of you, hiding the diamond ring from your sight, before he dropped his other knee to the ground and whispered 'Why?'

Never, in the three years you'd been together, had you seriously talked about marriage. It was another bridge you would cross once you got there, and in your mistaken calculations, you thought it would be around the time your relationship turned five. That's the limit for romantic relationships without a ring involved according to most women's magazines, and your own mom. At least neither know the ring was the cause of the breakup.

It's a little pathetic how lucky you consider yourself that the tabloids don't know you rejected an engagement. They're cruel enough as it is, things can only go further downhill, straight to hell.

"You good?"

Your best friend in the world, Victoria Presley, is able to join you in the VIP area of the Paddock thanks to a couple pictures on instagram where she tagged Elix. God bless the era of influencers. Or, family connections. Being the daughter of Sony Music executive Luke Presley and celebrity life coach Claire Walker can open many doors. Well it isn't Vic's fault being born into a rich and influential family, at least she's doing her own thing with her beauty products.

"Yes, I am," you shrug. Q3 is going on right now and although you try your best to keep your focus on the two red cars around the circuit, you find it hard to get out of your head. Plus it's so hot in here you feel sticky and gross.

"I lost you for a moment there," she insists, sipping her glass of champagne, the eyebrow raise she gives you after means she needs more info into what was going through your head just seconds ago.

"Not getting any call backs right now," you sigh, taking the flute from her although all it would take for you to get your own is a few steps. "I'm kind of frustrated."

"I'm sorry babe," Vic rubs your back, unbothered by your stealing. "You'll get something soon."

"And E! cancelled my interview, AND—"

Tires screech and an 'ooooh' goes through the grand stands before the screens show a red car embedded in the barriers. A groan of "It's Leclerc!" passes through the people around you in the VIP Lounge.

You grimace, focused on the circuit again as Charles leaves his car, shaking his arms before hitting the halo several times, frustrated.

"See everyone has bad streaks," Vic has gotten her own champagne again and is pointing to the screen, where the Ferrari driver is being followed on his way out. "It's his second crash, no?"

Other people's disgrace doesn't soothe your own, so you give Vic a stern look, causing her to shrug.

Q3 is done and Ferrari has mixed feelings about their two drivers' results. As for you, the faster you can get back to your hotel, the better.

─────────

Vic drags you to dinner with a couple of her influencer friends. Everyone and their mother is in attendance at Miami, and they’re here to have fun.

"They're here!" the girl to Vic's left whisper-yells, stretching her neck to look over at the entrance of the restaurant.

The place has been completely full the whole time you've been here, which has been a while, you're done with your dinner and have a few drinks on you, yet Vic has begged you twice to stay 'just a little longer'.

Of course Vic is having the time of her life, talking about promotion agreements and posting schedules, and although you hang out with lots of influencers and social media stars on your daily life, you're not clicking with any of them tonight. Have you become bitter? No, of course not.

"y/n knows them, she can just introduce us," another one giggles, and she cheers with her tequila sunrise to your own half-empty drink that's resting on the table.

"Hmm, what?" you chuckle, unsure of how you missed the part where you entered the story.

"The Ferrari Drivers," the first girl answers in that 'obviously' tone you hate when people use with you. "You're with Ferrari all the time lately, aren't you?"

"I'm with Elix," you clear up, best as you can as they're not really paying attention, their eyes following the group of men that are being escorted by a hostess to their table. "So you know, it's not really—"

"But you've met them,"

"Well, yes but..."

Yes but, you've seen them in scattered moments where they nod and smile at you passing by and the three times you've had to take pictures drinking Elix. You don't even get to the coworker level of knowing them.

"Well let's go!"

"Hold on Holly," Vic speaks up for the first time, "I mean, they literally just got here."

"Which is why we came here," Holly can't seem to get rid of that know-it-all tone, and it's frankly starting to annoy you even if she has a different target now.

It's time to use the angry eyes with Vic, again,in less than 24 hours. That's why she kept asking you to wait just a little longer.

"How did you know they'd be here?" you question, although you already know what a cleveage can do to get any information you want. Can't blame a girl for using her tools.

“I have my ways,” Holly says, and does in fact, fix her cleavage. Fair enough.

"Vic..." you whisper, as the rest of them regather in their own conversation. "What's happening?"

"I just– they said they really wanted to meet the Ferrari guys, y/n," Vic half whines. She's doing the most to impress the other girls, which is a very Vic thing to do, but still you don't like it. "And since you work with them, well it would be easier to approach them, right?"

Wrong.

"I- Vic, I don't work with these guys. We don't even work for the same people, and... it would be weird to approach them while they're trying to have dinner peacefully."

You are not a big fan of interruptions because you've heard enough of your coworkers talk about how annoying it is. As for yourself, sometimes you mind, sometimes you don't. It all depends.

You can barely distinguish their table with all the movement around the restaurant, but you manage a peek at Carlos' hair. Both of them are there, surrounded by a bunch of other Ferrari guys.

"So? Let's go," Holly is speaking again, downing the rest of her alcoholic Shirley Temple.

"I have to use the bathroom," you announce, dropping the napkin that covered your lap on the table.

"Right now?" the other girl—you feel guilty for not remembering her name— groans.

You refrain from replying, and try not to stomp to the bathroom like a toddler throwing a tantrum. If there’s anything that you hate is feeling used, and it hurts a lot more when it comes from Victoria.

It’s something else when she uses her doe-eyed stare and says “please, please, please” to get her way even with you, rather than set you up to impress her other friends.

You take your time to reapply lipstick in the bathroom and soothe your annoyance. You have told Vic before that she needs to ask for things, not just push you into awkward situations. At least she didn’t follow you to the restroom.

Taking a deep breath, you step out of the bathroom, wondering how to go on about this. It’s very likely that things get twisted and it is you who’ll look like she wants to brag about knowing the Ferrari guys, which you’re sure they’re used to—being bragged about. But you don’t want that.

There are many clichés that you have experienced, both as a character in RomComs where the biggest makeover that is done to your character is to apply a little mascara and remove the glasses (you hate that, what’s wrong with wearing glasses?). And in real life, with big romantic gestures like receiving a bouquet with a hundred roses and one is artificial… Blah blah.

This cliché is a little more ridiculous, though, as you crash into Charles Leclerc while leaving the restroom.

“Oh, sorry,” you half-smile back at him, he’s already smiling, showing dimples and everything. You see his appeal no matter how much you don’t want to notice it. Tall, green-blue eyes and those stupid dimples. Not to mention the fact that you suddenly find accents charming. Again, stupid.

“Hey y/n,” he says still smiling, “Did you just get here?”

“Uh, no actually we’re leaving in a few minutes,” you move out of the way of a lady that wants to get into the restroom, she eyes you both for a moment before continuing on her way.

“Are you here with your friends? Or is it with Elix?”

“My friends. Thank God I get to be away from Elix for a few hours.”

Charles chuckles and the moment runs long enough to become awkward. You’re still outside of the bathrooms and another guy has too given you an off look as he made his way inside.

"Let me walk you back to your table," Charles offers as a way of breaking the silence and you shake your head no.

"You don't have to, my friends are probably on the way out already, anyway."

Are you being selfish by keeping Vic's friends away from him? It doesn't matter to you, not really. But really a small part of you doesn't want things to go their way.

Charles doesn't listen to your refusal anyway, and asks you to lead the way with a gesture.

"I didn't see you at the Ferrari Suite after Quali," he mentions as he follows you a step behind.

"I was in the VIP Lounge with a friend," you explain, "I'll be at the Suite tomorrow, though."

You stop at your table, where the three girls are still doing their best to ogle at the Ferrari guys.

"Hey," you get their attention back and not one in the three of them even attempt to hide the pleasant surprise that Charles' presence gives them. "Are you ready to go?"

It's Vic's turn to give you a look. One that tells you to not be unfair, things have just started to go as they planned.

While you return the pointed look to Vic, Holly strikes a conversation with Charles. Lightning quick.

"Let's go," you repeat, "Gotta be up early tomorrow."

"Can we get a picture, though?" the other girl—lord, if you could remember her name you'd feel a little better —adds quickly.

"Do you mind?" you ask Charles before he can reply. You don't want to make a fuss and have half the restaurant acknowledging his presence and his disposition to take pictures and sign autographs while he's trying to have dinner.

"Not at all," he shakes his head and waits patiently for everyone to be camera-ready while you stare. "Aren't you getting in the picture?"

"I'll take it," you hold your hand out for an iPhone, and get Holly's bedazzled one. Charles frowns but you just say 'okay, ready?' before pointing the camera at them.

No one else argues the fact that you're not in the picture.

A chorus of 'thank you's' passes quickly as you return the iPhone and the three influencers start checking the picture. They're probably better photographers than you, you can accept that.

"So I'll see you tomorrow, y/n," Charles leans towards you, leaving the group to their own thing after he pleased their request. "Right?"

"I'll be the one drinking Elix," you joke, half-whining.

"I'll be the one in the red car," Charles jokes back, a wide smile spreading on his face.

You laugh, fighting against the sudden shyness caused by the familiarity.

"Goodnight," he calls quietly, and the girls wish him a goodnight and good luck for the race before he snakes through tables back to his friends.

Not another thank you is directed at you as your group leaves the restaurant to wait for the Uber back to the hotel.

─── team principal radio: ❝hello! thank you for reading! I'm really grateful for everyone who has interacted with this story, I hope you're enjoying it so far ♡❞

#charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc x female reader #charles leclerc x you #charles leclerc fanfic #f1 fanfic #f1 imagine #f1 imagines #f1 x reader #formula 1 imagines #formula 1 fanfic #formula 1 x reader #f1 x y/n #cl16 imagine #cl16 x reader #formula 1 imagine #formula 1 x you

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mrwinterr · 6 days

Text

The Nerve

Pairing(s): former!Steve Harrington x Female Reader; eventual!Eddie Munson x Female Reader

Summary: The nerves of some people.

Warnings: Cliché af. Toxic behavior. When they go low, I go lower. Revenge. Not a girls’ girl here bc once you fuck around w/ another girl’s man it’s “yes, and?” from there. Implied smut. Language. We’re probably not gonna like Steve (or even the reader for a bit) here.

Disclaimer: Typical !former and !eventual pairing. Some time hopping. None of the spooky events of the Stranger Things (2016) series take place in this piece. Everything is just where it’s at because this is made up.

Pre A/N: This is embarrassing. I was in my villain era. I was certainly in the business of misery. I was angry (still am sometimes), so I wrote this. We all cope differently.

The nerve.

She had the nerve to steal your boyfriend.

It had been a few weeks since Steve broke up with you, only to start dating a girl you had harbored no ill will toward until that night. He even had the guts to reveal who she was and how long he had been losing interest in you. You weren’t going to lie, it hurt – a lot. Discovering his real need for “space” during the last two months of your relationship was painful to realize because in that time, while you were being understanding, he was finding a way to end things with you.

Looking back, you couldn’t help but dissect the memory. It was an ordinary day. School was let out for the weekend, and you were spending it with Steve, a cozy night in without interruptions since he was often left alone at home. The two of you lay on the couch, cuddled up, bodies parallel, his arms around you, the room dimly lit by the TV screen.

“I have something I wanna talk to you about…and it’s been on my mind for a while,” Steve says, loosening his grip and pausing the movie that was mindlessly playing midway.

“Okay,” you reply, pushing yourself up from the couch to make space for him to sit up. He shifted, swinging his legs over to plant his feet on the carpeted floor, settling into a seated position and scooting aside to allow you room to sit back down next to him.

The atmosphere shifted noticeably, and it made you nervous. The way he ran his hands through his hair and avoided meeting your gaze – it all felt ominous, and you couldn’t prepare yourself for what he was about to say.

“I met someone,” he revealed.

It wasn’t the news you expected, and you could feel your heart sink into your stomach as you absorbed his words.

“Oh,” is all you manage to say, now turning your gaze to the ground too, unable to look at him.

A whirlwind of emotions swept through you – hurt, anger, brokenness, betrayal. The signs had been there. Why hadn’t you seen them? He had been growing distant – more withdrawn, fewer “good mornings” and “good nights”, less calls, more canceled dates. You had been looking forward to tonight, thinking he was just preoccupied with work or his upcoming graduation, believing whatever he needed space for was resolved. Turns out, he needed space from you.

You had so many questions, even though you weren’t sure why you needed the answers. In that moment, you wanted to know what you had done to make him lose interest in you. You had thought the relationship was salvageable.

What? He was breaking up with you.

When? He’d been feeling like this for almost two months.

Where? At work.

Who? The other girl he worked with, also attends Hawkins High, but she's a year above you, therefore had more classes and events with him.

How? It just happened.

Yeah, that last one was a classic, but not as much as him telling you that you did nothing wrong and that you both could stay friends. Bullshit. With Steve, would come her, and you couldn’t believe the nerve of her to pursue another girl’s boyfriend. You’d seen her while visiting Steve at his job, but you hadn’t felt threatened by her. The hurting phase was brutal, but now all you could feel for her was anger – after all, who didn’t know that you were dating Steve Harrington?

She had the nerve to act all innocent.

The school hallways were not pleasant for you. A few days after the break up, rumors circulated that Steve left you for someone else, though apparently their relationship hadn’t been made public yet, sparking widespread gossip.

How would you have known that though? His business wasn’t yours anymore. In fact, you’d made a deliberate effort to distance yourself from them because the breakup was still fresh. Fuck trying to be friends. This time you were the one that needed the space. The last thing you wanted was to think about them together.

Steve had the audacity to point the finger at you because you were supposedly the only one aware of the relationship. Even when you tried to explain, he left you hanging. The disbelief on his face hurt to witness. He didn’t believe you.

“How do they know about us?” Steve demanded as he approached you at your locker, hands on his hips in typical, upset Steve fashion. No hey, hi or hello. He just went right in.

“I don’t know,” you scoffed, continuing to unload your textbooks from your backpack.

“Well, you’re the only one who knows,” he persisted, leaning in closer, determined to get an answer. “And your name is going around.”

“Look, Steve,” you finally turned to face him, your tone sharp, catching him off guard. “Your new relationship isn’t my concern.” This is a side of you Steve isn’t used to. “Why would I go around telling everyone that you left me for her? In all the time you’ve known me, have I ever given you a reason to think I’d do something like this?”

You could see him reconsidering his accusation. The questions seemed to stump him, as if he knew the rumors were absurd and gossip wasn’t something you partook in.

“Why don’t you go talk to your girlfriend and figure it out?” you suggested, turning back to your locker, not in the mood to continue the conversation.

All Steve did was stare at you before shaking his head then going into a tangent of how some of the rumors were negatively affecting her when they weren’t true and how she shouldn’t have to endure them or receive any of its backlash…as if you did. But when he started saying something along the lines of how she wouldn’t do that because she told him she didn’t, you knew this was all a wasted effort on your end because he had already made up his mind. He believed her.

Did he truly think you cared that much about them? Did he really think you'd stoop so low as to announce his new relationship? Did he ever really know you?

She had the nerve to lie.

Steve apologized to you when he discovered it was actually his new girlfriend that spread the news. He recognized his rash behavior and conceded that he should’ve believed you. Why would you waste energy on them? They weren’t worth your time anymore.

“Hey,” a voice calls from behind, and you turn to see Steve standing there, looking contrite. Unlike before, you receive a greeting.

“Hey,” you reply, briefly acknowledging him before returning to organizing your locker, now cluttered by your chaotic friend’s belongings - stashing the shit that no one would suspect the good girl to possess. It didn’t bother you much, except for the occasional stench it left behind.

“You were right,” Steve admits, hands in his front pockets and moving to the side to look at you. Pausing your task, you wait for him to continue. “She was the one going around telling everyone that I left you…for her.” Boy, that was awkward and lowkey stung. It hadn’t even been that long and he didn’t fail to remind you how you all got here.

“I’m sorry I doubted you,” he continues, visibly ashamed, “I should’ve known better than to believe that.” His apology didn’t really move you. The damage had already been done. You were branded as the ‘psycho ex’ and all Steve had to do was trust you from the start.

She had the nerve to act like a girls’ girl.

She never directly apologized, but she had the nerve to claim that she harbored “no hard feelings” toward you. Hard feelings? Why? Because you’re the ex? Was she fucking stupid? How did she expect the girl whose boyfriend she stole to feel? Everything that came out of her mouth infuriated you.

It was no ordinary day – it was your birthday, and your friend had organized a night out to celebrate. You never liked to make a spectacle of your birthday, but it was also a good reason to go out, distract yourself, and avoid dwelling on unwanted thoughts.

“You’re lying,” your friend responds, baffled by what you just told him, “she really said that?”

“She fucking did!” you exclaim, still grappling with her impeccable timing. She wouldn’t know it was your birthday or would she care.

“Jesus. Of all the days…” he says with a low whistle before attempting to lift your spirits, “But, hey, we’re not gonna let her ruin your birthday!”

“I know, and I won’t!” Your voice wavers as you try to convince yourself this wouldn’t affect you. You were determined to not cry today, but the truth was, it still hurts. Her little stunt reopened a wound that was almost healed.

“He’s such a fool,” he remarks, followed by a brief silence. You were preoccupied with regaining your composure, fighting back tears, unable to respond. “He didn’t know what he already had in front of him. Lucky son of a bitch,” he added, and you’re not sure if he was speaking to himself or he meant to say that outloud, but you heard him nonetheless.

“Stop,” you reply, turning your away from him. You’re not gonna cry. “I know what you’re trying to do, Eddie.”

“What am I trying to do?” He asks adjusting to move to your line of vision, but you keep your focus averted.

“Hype me up, make me feel better…I don't know,” you answer, finally meeting his gaze, the tears now freely falling.

He understood how hard you were on yourself, replaying what could’ve been avoided. Your relationship with Steve wasn’t something you anticipated. Steve pursued you, and initially, you were fine with a casual fling, but he insisted on something more serious. You had doubts about whether he was the right person, but what if he was? It’s a reminder that life isn’t planned; it’s lived.

Eddie’s support during your breakup was invaluable. He watched you cry a lot – at home, at his trailer, at school, at work. He watched you criticize yourself for the breakup. He watched the light go out and he was determined to reignite it. He simply wanted his friend back.

“Sweetheart, I promise you,” he assures, hand over his heart, “everything I’ve said is sincere,” accompanied by that charming, stupid trademark Eddie grin. He was so endearing.

“Well,” you begin, but he’s got you. He had a knack for flipping the script, leaving you wondering why you were arguing in the first place.

Despite your curiosity about what attracted Steve to someone else and away from you, you had to accept that you probably wouldn’t ever know.

If there was one thing you knew about Steve, it was that when he falls, he falls fast. With that realization, it sparked a wicked plan in your mind. If you could bag him once, you could probably do it again.

The nerve.

You had the nerve to lie.

The only person you had confided in about your breakup with Steve was Eddie, and you had the right to do so. You needed a friend. You also knew he had no interest in high school gossip, so it couldn’t have been him that told the whole school. You trusted him.

People liked to talk and they didn’t hold back. Although the lies bothered you, you had a strong support system in Eddie and his friends. If any group could shrug off that nonsense, it was the Hellfire Club.

“Are you sure you didn’t tell anyone?” Steve asked, continuing to badger you, even suggesting Eddie as the culprit. You knew Steve well enough that he couldn’t take gossip about him for this long. After all, he had a reputation to uphold, and not all of the rumors were in his favor.

“Eddie?” You asked, confused but also guilty because you had done just that.

“Yeah, I know how much time you’ve been spending with him lately.”

“Why is that any of your business?” You countered, a bit snappy.

“Because,” Steve began, grasping for an excuse, “people talk.”

“And you really think Eddie would? He doesn’t care about shit like this or you-”

“Please,” he interrupts with an eye roll, in the annoying way Steve always did.

“You don’t know him,” you defended your friend, “so get off your high horse and go talk to your girlfriend about your problem,” leaving him questioning everything again.

You had the nerve to act all innocent.

The birthday incident, as you tried your best to keep thoughts of Steve at bay, she unexpectedly approached you, alone, feigning sweetness and innocence. You listened as she spun her lies – lies about overhearing people gossip about her, Steve, and you; lies about rumors allegedly started by you; lies about having “no hard feelings” toward you. It was all fabrication.

Politely, you attempted to have her understand your side of the story, clarifying that you had not spread any rumors and had discussed the situation with Steve, as civil as that could’ve been, and ultimately, how she should address the matter directly with him. What were you now? A couples counselor? You didn’t have time for this or them.

You weren’t going to start lying to yourself now, but it angered you. All you saw was red. So, you gave it right back, feigning innocence yourself, doubling down on it, subtly planting a seed of doubt in her mind.

“Watch out for him,” you said sincerely, your warning devoid of malice.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She asked genuinely curious. God she was fucking stupid. Did she think she would walk out of this situation without a scratch? She had just proven she was not a girl’s girl for actively pursuing your boyfriend while he was with you. The world is a jungle, and it was every woman for herself now.

“Nothing,” you shrugged, maintaining composure, “...just a girl looking out for another girl,” you added, offering her an innocent, warm smile.

“Okay,” she replied, sounding confused and a bit shaky. You could sense her discomfort, and she deserved to feel uneasy.

Ultimately, you weren’t lying. Yes, she should watch out for Steve – what made her think he wouldn’t treat her the same way he did to you? However, if you were in her shoes, you’d watch out for yourself.

You had the nerve to not act like a girl’s girl too.

The sudden breakup with Steve left some unresolved feelings, but he was now with her, not you, yet that didn’t stop the urge to act on them. Steve was weak and you realized that soon enough.

With your head turned to the side, you observed him, listening to his ragged breathing, how his lips parted, emitting small puffs of air, his chest rising and falling, the sweat that dripped from the top of his forehead, and eyes closed in post-bliss. Your gaze traces the freckles that speckled his skin as you studied his profile, wrestling with the questions swirling your mind.

“Do you want to talk about it?” you asked cautiously, breaking the silence. Why fight for him?

He didn’t respond immediately, but didn’t linger too long before replying, “Not really.”

“We’re gonna have to,” you said and it sounded almost pathetic. Why were you trying to hold onto him?

“I…I think we shouldn’t talk for a while,” and when he said that, you knew that actually meant this was done. He was done with you. Why did you want to change his mind?

The realization hit you like a ton of bricks. You knew it had to end eventually. There was no intention or hope of remaining friends.

That night, you went home feeling hurt, broken, angry, and disgusted. You knew what you did was wrong, a sad attempt on your part. He probably wanted that reaction from you. You were more than willing to feed his male ego. What guy didn’t enjoy the idea of two girls vying for him? If it was easy for her and it was easy for you, it would be easy for another. What made him so special?

You had the nerve to try to steal her boyfriend.

It was a toxic situation. You found yourself doing exactly what she had done to you. What did that accomplish? Bragging rights and a fleeting sense of revenge, perhaps, but it didn’t bring you and Steve back together. It only highlighted how destructive you both could be. You sought revenge at the expense of homewrecking a relationship. You were no better, yet in a twisted way, you didn’t care. You wanted them to feel the same pain you did, even though deep down, you knew Steve was capable of sabotaging his own relationships.

You told Eddie of the misdeed, feeling ashamed. He wasn’t upset with you. He understood that you would follow your own path no matter what. He didn’t have the right to control you. Both of you recognized that this would only lead to your own suffering. Unfortunately, you had to learn this lesson the hard way.

“I know you’re upset and that’s okay,” he tries to console you, “...your feelings are valid. But I don’t think you need to find the answers to everything. They’ll just lead to more and it’ll never end.”

He was right. The more you held onto what happened between you and Steve, the more questions arose. He was living rent free in your head.

“I just-” you struggled, trying hard to make sense of the situation, “I just wanna know. What did I do wrong? How did he get bored of me? When was I not enough?”

“Have you ever heard of the 80/20 rule?” he asked, and you shook your head. “It’s basically a theory that when someone cheats, they are drawn to the 20% in another person that is missing in their current partner.”

You’re not sure how much that helped you because it begged the question…”And I know what you’re thinking, so stop that!” Eddie’s quick to read you, “you’re lacking nothing, alright?”

“Everyone knows I’m not a big fan of Steve Harrington,” he said, scrunching up his face at the mention of his name, “...but he’ll regret this. His type always comes back…fucking roaches.” That last remark elicited a small cackle out of you.

He then took your hand in his. It’s a stark contrast to your own hand – larger, a bit rough, warm and slightly clammy – but it provided a sense of comfort. You don’t realize how long you’ve been staring at your hands clasped together until he gives it a light squeeze and says, “He’ll realize he was much better off with the 80% he already had.”

Damn Eddie Munson. He was too good to you. It gave you a new perspective. Why were you being so hard on yourself? Why were you trying to convince yourself that the relationship’s downfall was your fault? It was Steve who started pulling away from you. It was Steve who did pull away from you. It was Steve who was actively pulling away from you. Everything that happened wasn’t solely on you.

These kinds of things happen to everyone every day. Feeling hurt, broken, angry, betrayed and ashamed were normal and acceptable emotions. You just have to learn to swallow your pride and accept this as part of life. You live and learn – not necessarily forgive or forget, but move on in your own way.

You were once happy without Steve, and you could be happy again. You gave up or changed a lot for Steve, losing sight of what made you happy. Now, you were committed to reclaiming your happiness. Fuck, when did you start crying?

“You alright, sweetheart?” Eddie’s voice laced in concern, bringing his other hand up to wipe the stray tears running down your face.

“How do you do it?” you asked, looking down to compose yourself.

“Do what?” he responded, amused. You didn’t answer verbally, but twist your hand in his to thread your fingers between his. The small smile on your face conveyed your question, softening his features. It’s a rare emotion from Eddie, mixed with vulnerability accompanied with a newfound awareness.

He brings your now interlocked hands to his lips but not before saying, “...because I’m a big fan of you,” and kisses the back of your hand gently.

The nerve.

Steve had the nerve to lie.

Several months have passed with minimal communication from Steve. Occasionally seeing them together around school and town didn’t bother you anymore – well, not entirely. You can’t deny it still stirred up certain feelings, but you didn’t give it a second thought and eventually they weren’t a blimp on your radar. The past no longer consumed you, but unexpectedly, it started consuming Steve.

Evidently, he still knew your schedule and had been desperately trying to find a chance to talk to you – just the two of you, without Eddie, other friends, teachers, classmates, or family around. When he approached you, you were confused; unsure if he was still with her or anyone else. You intentionally tuned out gossip and never paid attention to their situation. Besides, you had a better reason to not care about Steve anymore. So, when he starts pouring out his feelings, you take it with a grain of salt, this time with a clearer mind.

“Hey,” Steve calls out as you step out of your front door, ready to head out with your ride nearby.

“Uh, hey, Steve,” you reply with uncertainty.

“Can we talk?” he asks hesitantly.

“Now might not be the best time,” you respond with unease.

“Please, just give me five minutes,” he begs, his eyes full of hope and pleading. What could there possibly be left to talk about? Despite your instincts telling you to stand firm, you reluctantly agree to hear him out, which you soon regret.

Steve begins with an apology and offers to explain his actions. What more was there for him to explain? You no longer desired an explanation. It was simple – he grew tired of you, became interested in another girl, and left you; perhaps grew tired of her too and now he’s back. You had moved on from your failed relationship with Steve months ago. However, he felt he “owed” you an explanation. Was this all a joke to him?

The more he spoke, the more you got lost in your thoughts trying to comprehend the reality that he was standing before you, admitting to his mistakes, and seeking a second chance. His voice started to fade into the background as you felt the weight of deciding how to respond, all while knowing your ride would arrive at any moment. When the pressure got too much, you finally managed to step up.

“Steve,” you interrupt, “I don’t know what you want me to say to you.”

“You don’t have to say anything right now. I just–” he’s cut off by the sound of loud, muffled music, causing both of you to turn your attention to the bulky van that just pulled up in front of your house.

You glanced at Steve sending him a tight lip smile before taking the short few steps to the curb, not looking back, knowing you were never going to get that "owed" explanation.

Steve had the nerve to try to act all innocent.

The atmosphere in Eddie’s van is tense the moment you climb into the passenger seat. Neither of you expected to see Steve today, let alone right before a date. And it happened. The lingering feelings had unearthed between you and Eddie and you welcomed it, a testament to your decision to move on from Steve. Right when things are looking up, life throws you a curveball in the form of your ex.

“Are you okay?” Eddie asks cautiously, stealing a quick glance at you before focusing back on the road.

“Yeah,” you reply unconvincingly, then quickly retract, “no,” followed by a sigh, “I mean, I was…I am. I’m just annoyed at Steve right now. I swear I had no idea he was stopping by.”

“You’re fine,” Eddie assured, dismissively waving his hand to convey that it wasn’t a big deal to him, though his mind was racing with a million questions. When he saw Steve with you, he couldn’t help but wonder: Why was Steve there? What were you two talking about? What did Steve want? Had you been in contact with him and not mentioned it? Not that Eddie could control who you talked to, girlfriend or not.

“I can’t believe he had the nerve to say he ‘respects’ my feelings!” Your emotions spill out as you unload on Eddie, “After everything he did to me, does that look like someone who ‘respects’ my feelings?”

“It is a pretty shitty thing for him to do,” Eddie agrees, not just coming from the boyfriend perspective, but from any perspective.

Steve thought that by acknowledging your feelings upfront, it would ease his case. However, upon reflection, you realized it was more about saving face for the hurtful way he left you, attempting to depict himself in a more favorable light.

“Right?!” The audacity Steve had to arrive at your door, unannounced, just before your date with Eddie. God, Eddie. It was a brief but uncomfortable moment. Steve knew you were friends with Eddie, he never bothered to understand the depth of your relationship because he didn’t care enough to meet your other friends. “I’m sorry, Eddie,” you say, feeling remorseful.

“For what?” he chuckles softly because can’t believe what you're apologizing for.

“I didn’t expect to see Steve today,” you explain.

“That’s not on you,” he assures, “remember, I told you they always come back.”

“True,” you agree, “but that’s not what I want.”

“What do you want, then?” he asks.

“You,” you admit, “just you, Eddie,” reaching for his free hand to hold for assurance.

Yeah, Steve wasn’t going to fool you.

Steve had the nerve to try to steal you from your boyfriend.

During the initial months, Steve made attempts to regain your favor. You questioned repeatedly whether you could genuinely consider being just friends with him. That had been his original intention after breaking your heart, but he failed to uphold his end of the deal. Was it worth attempting to rebuild a friendship with him? Would it reflect poorly on your judgment if you did? Could you bear being around Steve in any capacity? If Eddie hadn’t arrived on time for your date that evening, you didn’t know how much more of Steve's admission you could take before you hit another breaking point.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about you,” Steve begins, pausing, his mouth opening and closing as he carefully chooses his next words, “I miss you.” He observes your lack of response before continuing, “I miss us. We worked…and I really want to try and get to that again…to what we had.”

You can see it was difficult for him to admit this. Seeing your unphased reaction, he begins to ramble and talk out of his ass, “I mean, only if you want to. I can understand if you don’t. I do respect your feelings.”

You knew you didn’t have the mental or even emotional capacity to deal with Steve at that moment, and fortunately, the interaction didn’t progress any further. More importantly, it didn’t ruin your date with Eddie.

Steve’s graduation, once an event you looked forward to celebrating, was now a canceled event on your calendar. While you wished you could’ve joined in celebrating, Eddie had unfortunately not passed his exams again. Hopefully, on his third attempt, he will be able to graduate and walk the stage with you next year.

You had started working at a music store, which you enjoyed because it allowed you to be surrounded by something you loved – music. Eddie particularly appreciated the employee discount, a place to hang around during your shifts, though he seemed less excited about the store’s proximity to a certain video store.

It was inevitable that Steve would eventually walk in. Initially, your classmate and presumably Steve’s co-worker, now friend, Robin accompanied him. Over time, Steve started coming in alone, conveniently when Eddie wasn’t hanging around.

It wasn’t that you were afraid to be alone with him, and Eddie trusted you; he simply didn’t trust Steve. Despite Steve not being the same person from high school, multiple events humbling him, his efforts to revive your past relationship persisted. Although his approach was more subdued than before and masked as friendship, there was still an underlying motive. It was no secret either that you were in a relationship with Eddie.

Given the small-town geography of Hawkins, you accepted Steve wasn’t going to just disappear. You managed to adapt to his presence. While you couldn’t deny that this attention boosted your ego, you were resolute about not revisiting the past with him.

“So, I’ve got a copy of Pretty In Pink hot off the press,” Steve announced, showcasing proof of the video tape during another lunch break he spent at your workplace with you on a slow day. “Interested in watching it with me tonight?” he asked, trying to sound smooth and hopeful, adding and emphasizing “as friends,” though not convincingly considering you haven’t agreed to any plans with Steve let alone as that.

You glanced at him, then at the tape in his hands, and then back at him. “Thanks, but I’m not really into rom-coms,” you replied with a small smile.

“What? Since when?” he asked, visibly surprised.

“Since forever…” you answered with a light laugh that almost sounded like a scoff. It internally annoys you because as a former partner, he should’ve known that.

“Oh,” he said, setting the tape down on the counter between you.

“Yeah,” you drawled, trying to fill the ensuing awkward silence. Fortunately, the door chimed, signaling a new customer – saved by the bell, literally.

“Babe, you’re gonna love me! I convinced Robin to save me a copy of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and she fucking delivered,” Eddie exclaimed excitedly about tonight’s movie, barely noticing Steve’s presence until he reached the register. “Oh, hey, man.”

It’s amusing yet endearing to see Eddie straighten up and square his shoulders around Steve, as if they were in competition. You couldn’t blame Eddie for feeling that way, though he really had no reason to worry he’d lose.

“Hey,” Steve replied, shoving the copy of the romantic comedy aside, embarrassed that he had forgotten your preference for horror movies.

As you and Eddie enthusiastically discussed the sequel, Steve felt out of place, as if you and Eddie were in your own little world, completely forgetting he was still standing there. He couldn’t contribute to the conversation because he hadn’t seen the first movie and didn’t know anything about it to share in the excitement. Eventually, he quietly slipped away with the tape in hand, on the short trek back to Family Video concluding his lunch break.

The notion of ‘forgive and ‘forget’ was bullshit. While you could be civil, deep down, you still harbored hurt and anger over what happened. Much of the past year was spent in an emotional decline that affected various aspects of your life – home, social interactions, physical and mental well-being. Now, however, you were focused on reclaiming your happiness. Places and things around town that once reminded you of Steve and your past relationship no longer brought sadness; you were forging new memories with someone else.

Whether it be in a friend or significant other, Eddie was like your rock. He was there from the start, witnessing your first date with Steve and even expressing his reservations about him. Yet, he knew he had to let you navigate life, love and mistakes on your own. Despite any reckless choices you made, even those that disappointed him, Eddie remained a source of comfort and support because he genuinely cared for you.

Growing closer to Eddie was a breath of fresh air compared to Steve. You didn’t feel the need to impress Eddie; he was always impressed by you. Reflecting on it, you realized how much you had changed to fit in Steve’s world, which now seemed almost pathetic. With Eddie, you don’t have to change anything – your clothes, your diet, your friends, or your interests. He respected you for who you were.

It’s ironic that just as you’re back on track and happy, Steve wants to interfere. What’s even sadder is that he promised an explanation but hasn’t delivered, yet he’s actively pursuing you. So what? You tell your ex you still have feelings for them and miss what you both had. What did he expect? That he was Steve Harrington and you’d jump back into his arms? No. He had moved on, supposedly, and so did you, finally.

Part of you cherished early memories with Steve, and you weren’t going to fail to admit that during the initial attempts, you entertained the thought of what if you got back with him. However, he’s the reason why you struggled to move on and became recluse. Who knows? Maybe he learned from his mistakes or not. What he did to you, he did to her and would likely repeat to others. He only proved that second chances sometimes didn’t matter because rarely do people change. You concluded you couldn’t be more than what you currently were to Steve.

He was the one who chose to end the relationship. He was the one who decided you weren’t enough for him. He was the one who chose to engage with another woman. He was the one who strung you along. He's the one who decided to cut you off. And now, he’s the one seeking a way back in. It was comical because all the tactics he used the first time he convinced you to go out on a date with him didn’t work this time. It had him trying harder and he was failing miserably. You were now the one living rent-free in his head.

The events of this whole situation have allowed you to build emotional strength and learn to love yourself and someone else again. You were happy, and happy with Eddie. You weren’t going to let something silly as an 80/20 rule or a past relationship with Steve interfere with that happiness.

Yet, it goes to show the nerves of some people.

Post A/N: I wish I had this happier ending in real life. Please like, comment and/or reblog. It’ll motivate me to write more and you know also help my self-esteem.

#mrwinterr writing #steve harrington x reader #eddie munson x reader #steve harrington imagine #eddie munson imagine #steve harrington fanfic #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x female!reader #steve harrington x female!reader #stranger things fanfic #stranger things fic #stranger things #eddie munson #steve harrington

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damiansgoodgirll · 7 months

Note

i miss your writing so much, i hope your doing fine girl💖 we’re here for you

i was wondering if you could write if you feel like it, maybe having a fight with rhea? make it angst please 💘💘💘💘💘

thank you so much love <3

i would say i’m in my healing era but relapsing into old habits is easier than i thought.

i really hope you like this. sorry if it’s too short.

rhea ripley x reader

i care

“can you please look at me?” your girlfriend rhea begged you. you were arguing for the past two hours and not even for one second you met her eyes. too hurt to even look at her face.

“baby…”

“don’t call me baby rhea…just don’t” you were mad and she knew it.

she knew she fucked up and she had no idea how to make you forgive her.

you’ve been waiting at the restaurant for four hours before damian called you telling you that rhea was at the gym training with liv.

you weren’t jealous about liv. she was your friend and you knew rhea didn’t like her. no, you were mad that for the fourth time that month, rhea forgot about the dates you two had.

but this time it wasn’t a simple date. it was your two years anniversary and instead of making it special, she ruined everything.

“it feels like you don’t care…” you said when you almost threw yourself on the couch.

and for a part, you knew rhea didn’t care. she didn’t love you anymore like she did at the beginning. she knew it too but she was to scared to admit it. she knew that if she broke up with you, it would paint her as a villain, as a bad person. you were the kindest person alive and that was made rhea fall in love with you. your kindness and your affection towards people.

but rhea didn’t love you anymore and she was too coward to say it to your face. what would people think if she hurt someone as sweet and kind like you? people would hate her and she didn’t want to face all the backlash that would have happened.

“i do care about you…” she sat next to you.

“not like you used to…rhea, who am i kidding? who are you kidding? you don’t love me anymore, you don’t care about me anymore, you’re cold and distant and everytime i try to have a normal conversation with you…you just shove me apart” you didn’t want to cry but this was hurting you, really bad “you spend all the time in the gym just so you can find me asleep when you come back home…all because you know guilty is eating you alive…i know you too well rhea, you want me to hate you, you want me to scream at your face, you want me to make you cry and o break up with you so you could feel a little less guilty…” you couldn’t believe you knew rhea so well “but it’s not fair…it’s not fair because i’ve been putting all of my energy into this relationship and you aren’t even trying, you didn’t even try…”

“i’m so fucking sorry…” she whispered.

“stop saying it if you don’t mean it!” you didn’t want to scream but saying all of the stuff you kept hidden inside was making you feel better.

“i don’t love you anymore y/n…is that what you want me to say? i don’t love you anymore but gosh…i fucking care about you and i can’t imagine living a life without you in it…i’m so sorry for how things turned out to be…i’m already hating myself so i don’t need you to hate me more” she wiped away her tears with her shaky hands.

she hated herself for hurting you.

she hated herself for making you crying when she swore she would kick anyone who would make you cry.

she hated knowing how love your heart held that you probably wouldn’t even hate her in the end.

“it’s better if we end up this fucked up relationship now…or someone is gonna suffer more” you said and she agreed.

you’ve spent the night wondering where or when did everything start to fall apart.

were you too clingy?

did you gain weight?

did her fans hate you?

were you too ugly for being in rhea standards?

you couldn’t understand what you did wrong but you knew that being in a toxic relationship was way much worse than being alone - and in all honesty, you liked having time for yourself.

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tubchunk · 7 months

Text

me spitting out all my thoughts here as i watch tubbo's vod

"YEP innocent" "innocent to me" yeah like qtubbo doesnt give a shit if fred is bad, he will burn it all down to find her

"its time for me to step into the sun, you know? and who cares if everyone else burns?" HOLY FUCKKKKKKKK TUBBO??????

"this is more than a villain arc, this is a lifestyle adjustment" oh qtubbo you are going to fly so close to the sun and youre going to burn and i am here for it all

"you wrong me? you're not gonna be around to tell the tale" HES SODHDJDBFBFJ QTUBBO ENJOYERS WE ARE SO BACK

"this is not a story of villains and heroes, this is a story of revenge" WHAT WAS IN HIS FOOD TODAY WHAT WAS HE ONNNNN LINE AFTER LINE IS HITTING

qtubbo knowing the server underestimates him and is now ready to show what he really is capable of YOU GO BABYGIRL

"this is a conflict where there arr no winners, just mutually-ensured destruction" goddamn he is on it today

GIRL 26 STACKS OF TNT?????????

"anything to get the upper hand, am i right?" AND THEN MENTIONING THE FED OFFICE WARP PLATE IS ACTIVE OH MY GODDDDDDD FED QTUBBO ERA????

"in my own experience, the members of the islandhave been much worse to me than the federation ever has been" oh my gOD YES QTUBBO FEELING THE FED PUNISHMENTS ARE STILL "JUSTIFIED" CUZ THERE WERE RULES BROKEN BUT THE ISLANDERS HAVE BEEN POKING AT HIM FOR THINGS HE CONSIDERS UNNECESSARY OH VILLAIN ARC TIME IS REALLLL

HE CALLED FRED "THE ONE PERSON I CARE ABOUT ON THIS SERVER" IM SICK TO MY STOMACHDBDBFGBDBFJFJ

qtubbo deciding that morning crew doesnt need to know about what hes gonna do, cuz theyll always be his boys :(

"i think we show them a healthy does of regret" his qcellbit is coming out !!

just imagining qtubbo with his airpods in as he is dramatic, bumping classical music

"the suit stays on until he's found, safe and alive" thr fact that qtubbo does all this, still in thr suit for his date GOD its so sad

that post that said qtubbo, a machine guy, tearinf every block down by HAND is important cuz that shows how genuinely furious he is. cuz he needed to feel the catharsis of tearing it all down himself.

why did he research warp plate mods to figure out where fred is😭😭 gay love stories are getting out of hand

"i made a promise today. i said i would break every block he has ever placed. *i* will break. fire wont break. tnt wont break. *i* will break." holy fucking shittttttttt he got possessed by qtubbo

FIT LMAOOOOO

qfit noticing and asking why qtubbo was at quackity's but as qtubbo askes him to leave him be, he did. he knew qtubbo would come to him when he wanted to.

COY PISO INTERMISSION!!!

qtubbo's action plan just being pushing qquackity over the edge that is so fucked up and i am here for this downward spiral !!

"i could mentally destroy him until hes a quivering ball of tears and regret on the floor" HOLY FUCK???????

"youre trying to turn me against the federation while actively doing thr same exact thing they're doing, the fucking hypocrisy" GOD i think qquackity is justified in his reasons BUT QTUBBO ISNT WRONG HERE!!!! IN HIS EYES, WHY WOULD YOU SAY THEYRE BAD AND THEN DO THR SAME THINF AS THEM???

him still saving all the stuff qquackity got from the eggs and others cuz "those seem important" GOD

"he doesnt need a hoise, cuz home is where the heart is. and i feel like thats a lesson he ought to learn. too bad that his is dead and cold" QTUBBO HOLY?????

"its like you never existed at all. thats my mission" girl youre speedrunning that descent into insanity and evil and i love you for it

"youre crazy. maybe i am! i dont give a shit!" wow hes so aware

"i didnt have a purpose before. but now its to make sure quackity never has a mark on this server" he didnt have a purpose and now, after losing fred, his purpose is to make qq pay holyyyy

"i never said i was morally grey, i said i would fuck up all his shit" LETSGO BABYGIRL

HIM GOING TO THE FED OFFICE TO PoSSIBLY SNITCH, CUZ THE ENEMY OF HIS ENEMY IS HIS FRIEND

NOT THE SERVER RESTART STOPPING HIM LMAOOOO

him literally saying he doesnt care and the enemy of his enemy is his friend yoo

qtubbo not being silly and walking into fred's office and just quietly moving on STOPPPPPP

NOT THE LORE SPOILERSSSSS LMAO

RETURN OF CUCURUCHO OFFICE PODCASTTTTTTTTT

"if youve become as bad as the thing you are trying to destroy to destroy it, yourr not better. youre just a replacement" BARS 🔥🔥🔥

qtubbo's voice instantly softening looking at fred's office and the desk plant he got STOPPPPP THEY MEAN SO MUCH TO ME

him replacing the flower on fred's desk with a poppy :(((

QTUBBO REPLACING THE WARP AT HIS HOUSE TO THE FED OFFICE OH I CAN FEEL HOW THIS GOES DOWNHILL

"why do i bother making anything to help the server? this is the thanks i get" oh yeah he is fully turning against everyone soon

oh god convo with qfit

oh i know qfit is concerned hearing qtubbo talk this way but theres nothing he can do to make him change his mind, so he just stays by him

"just to watch him. not say a word. just watch him" WATCHER QTUBBO??????

oh qtubbo is actuslly scaring me rn

"theres an old sayinf that 'if youre on the quest for revenge, dig two graves" "thats alright. i dont care if i burn as long as he does as well. maybe ill dig 3 graves. maybe ill take some other people along with me on the way" HOLY FUCKCJDJFJDJFJFJDJFJ QTUBBO YOURE INSANE I LOVE YOU SO BAD

"so i take there was no date?" "i was invited on one. it was real to me" GODJDDHFB IM GONNA END IT ALL

qfit still reassuring qtubbo that fred is okay, he still cares for qtubbo so much thats someone he has grown to care for

TUBBO SHOWING FIT WHAT HE DID TO QUACKITY'S HOUSE AND SAYING "like i said. like he never existed" AND THEN JUST BOUNCED????? GIRL.

qtubbo gaslight gatekeep girlboss

"is it more satisfying to destroy a person. or watch them destroy themselves?" AND WE ARR WATCHING AS QTUBBO ALSO DESTROYS HIMSELF BIT BY BIT OOOOOOOOH

his ass spoiling stuff again😭😭

snack break!

PHIL HOUSE TIME

qtubbo instantly leaving when he sees quackity joined and fred joined god

the curse of bad nees bringer tubbo about to strike again with wilbur LMAO

distracted to spy on wilbur so real

QUIRKYDUOOOOOO

qtubbo just carrying thr flower from fred's office in his offhand im sick

qtubbo warning qpac that he may hear some stuff about him that isnt true i. coming weeks, and qpac saying he trusts qtubbo 100% MORNING CREW MY FAMILYYYYYYY

PAC MY BELOVEDDDDD

not pac and tubbo arguing over who has to break the news to wilbur lmaoooooo

qtubbo qquackity's biggest hater rn

damn im sad tubbo crashed before the event but that laptop was hanging by a THREAD

#q!tubbo #qsmp #qsmp tubbo #qsmp liveblog

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twst-rose-prisms · 22 days

Text

Twst boys and their respective Vocaloid songs

Part 2 of this post!

Characters: All NRC students Warning: Some of these songs contain angsty/dark themes or imply self-harm, however it's nothing too much as that's the nature of Vocaloid songs in general and I recommend you checking them out if you guys can!

Part 1 | Part 2

🕌 Scarabia 🕌

Kalim: Tondemo-Wonderz

This song is full of fun, excitement and upbeat, colorful beats that make you want to smile and dance along, just like the ball of sunshine Kalim he is! The song talks about embracing the unknown and excitement the world offers to us while also having fun, encouraging us to have faith in the wondrous possibilities, while also embracing the failure and mistakes with laughter and positivity. I’d say it’s a perfect song for Kalim, from the vibe to the lyrics!

“Even in this sort of era, We still believe in "wonders," no, no, no? Know! The adult's sharp, money-making memories Make us worry too much! I'm gonna go cross-eyed!” "Why?!" "Do it like this!!" I love everything! That's fine, isn’t it? In this plot to make everyone laugh I can call them rival monsters, right?! We live in a wild, awesome world.” “I reckon it's fine to have troubles you can't do a thing about! I make a pose like I'm gonna save everyone. How about this smile, it's not gonna crumble at all! Even if I fall 100 times, I'm like a phoenix. I won't get upset! Wan wan, too quick, three four! Everybody, showtime!” “Come on professor! This exam is so tough! Agh! Alright, done? Is it final? If I don't get 0 points, it's OK! Let's rain a shower of arrows on those true and false questions! Right and wrong answers are important memories." "There are days when I fail too. You still deny "wonders", no, no, no? Know! Before I'm taken to pieces, listen, wait! This slanted society is too on edge. Charge in, leap in, one more time! Are you ready?!”

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Jamil: Ghost City Tokyo

Like a ghost who is almost invisible to other’s eyes, Jamil used to do the same too, he always makes sure everything he does is at an average level so nobody will notice him. That’s why I picked this song for him, also because of the lyrics - he’s used to losing, to not be able to shine and stand out for the sake of others, and it’s not something he dreamt of at all. Also I think the city here can be interpreted as Scarabia too, because he still wants to be here despite everything that happened in Book 4.

“The lights of the brilliant shining city Shine down on me in stark contrast They mix with the neon colours changing and escaping from the spaces between those buildings" "I trade my time and this world And sink into the night” “It’s fine, someday it will all be fine How many days I’ve thought so, that have piled up on each other But even today, the me who fades into the Tokyo scenery all alone Seems like a ghost” “Even as I grow used to losing These important feelings that I haven't lost - When I held them close to myself, my tears fell suddenly Because I think I still want to Keep living in this city”

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👑 Pomefiore 👑

Vil: Cinema

This song is pretty self-explanatory with the lyrics, it’s like someone views their life as a movie, their story is like an unchanged script, yet they’re being satisfied with everything - they want to be the leading star, the protagonist of the movie. Being someone who always has to play the villain role, I picked this song for Vil because it just fits him so much with his backstory and his goal as a whole!

“A delusion of dawn Invaluable escapades and A misunderstood hero play-pretend Traffic's already jammed up now- Oh well, nothing I can do about that anyway” “No, it can't be this, not this. This is a bad fit for me I'm not suited for it- Should I quit it now, or— But that's not right, right! I wonder, when will I get to be The leading star of this show?” “We're not here yet, yet. This can't be the end, so If you're not suited for the role Then just rewrite the script! Look, for the most part, I'm sure it'll always just be me The leading star will only be me!” “The future I wanted to change has come. Whatever you like, however you like it, This is it. I made it here, all the way from the bottom. Just like a movie, this is my story.”

-----------------------------------

Epel: Telecaster B-boy

A song talking about the struggle of growing up, trying to find one’s place in this vast world, the singer desires to be loved and appreciated but always gets misunderstood and underappreciated and also frustrated with society, just like Epel himself. He hates being the stereotype, cliche thing. If you know his story and goal then this song is very fitting for him! Also the funky, youthful but somewhat fast beat and lyrics fit him very well too!

“The more I grow up DeDeDe The less I fit in, a vacant temple. The girl the life philosopher spoke to Turns into a bird … With just lip service PaPaPa I'll tie up my raggedy shoes … The boy whom a believer in digitization cursed Turns into wind …” “No matter how you look at it DeDeDe It's a stereo bias, sadistic The girl who sang like she was stung by a bee Turns into a flower... Even if you cover your ears PaPaPa Those guys' voices become loud The boy who got these words stabbed in his chest Turns back…” “In this world where I can't Even breathe for a bit Declaring a goodbye to reality Won't you just forgive us? We, the weak ones Let's meet up again somewhere”

-----------------------------------

Rook: Liar Dance

Rook is a bit hard to find, but in my opinion this is the best song for him. It talks about a couple who both hide and lie to each other. But it also means that the singer’s POV is them knowing they’re a liar, a criminal just like other people. Rook himself is not an exception, he also lies and hides many things away even to his friends or someone like Vil. Also I think the lyrics fit him really well, with constant mention of love and lies many times throughout.

''Stolen? Just whatever do you mean?'' Feigning ignorance today as well Having made a vow, to you and you alone Declaring this loveless love of mine in front of you" "Stolen? Just whatever do you mean?" Committing myself to this performance, set lines and all Those memories we've desperately created and clung to, they blend together and feelings between us intensify” “Dance away liar This love has swelled up like a balloon let's turn it into a lie with the prick of a needle On the count of "I-love-you" “Dance away, liar It's too late to apologize We're already partners in this crime called "love" Who cares if there's no going back?”

-----------------------------------

💀 Ignihyde 💀

Idia: All I Need are Things I Like

While there could be many other songs that fit Idia, I decided to pick this one because of the lyrics and overall meaning. The song talks about indulging solely into one’s interests and favorite thing everyday, almost every time without paying much attention to reality much at all. Even though the singer sounds happy and satisfied, they also sound lonely, deprived of energy and strength and also longing for actual companionship instead of coping up to the things that they like. It sounds like Idia himself after what happened to him and also his backstory!

"I don’t like weekdays, I like the weekend I don’t like work, I like going back to sleep It’s impossible to live on slacking like this My consciousness recedes" "I don’t like vegetables, I like hamburgers I don’t like barley tea, I like juice Don’t be sweet on me, but I like sweet tasting things My lifetime’s first page" "Only looking at things I like gradually my eyesight gets worse Only being filled with things I like gradually my mind gets duller" "I don’t like living things, I like machines I don’t like the real world, I like the virtual Your tastes were always biased deteriorating and ceasing to think" "Surrounded by the things I like I’ve become unforgiving to the things I don’t like Living only with the things I like I'm resented by someone, somewhere"

-----------------------------------

Ortho: Near

This song is gentle, yet emotional and bittersweet, its meaning also fits Ortho and Idia + their relationship a lot if you take it into their backstory context too. At first, Ortho is just a robot that only acts according to how he was programmed but gradually, he starts acting outside his intended programming and learns his own sentience and emotions - just like the robot girl as the song progresses. Overall, I think this fits him a lot!

“Hey, Near. If I don't make fun of someone And if I won't be able to forgive myself How do you feel about This horrible person?" "Hey, Near. Watching other's strides Stepping out without a purpose How do you feel about this Dull person? Hey Near” “Hey, Near. I think living every day with a smile Is something natural How do you feel about This arrogant person?" "Things that do not take any form and cannot be predicted Will interfere with the calculation process" Even so" "Ah, I'll still continue to believe And ask you who doesn't have a heart Because your hand was So much warmer than mine”

-----------------------------------

🐉 Diasomnia 🐉

Malleus: Hare wo Matsu

I feel like this song fits Malleus the most with how the lyrics constantly talk about one’s loneliness and about past’s memories. For Malleus, his biggest fear perhaps is his dearest, most cherished people leave his life, like Lilia - his guardian that raises him up ever since he’s still a little lizard or maybe even MC - his ever first friend that treats him so dearly despite his status or his fearful magic power unlike others who is afraid of him. Even the beat is also beautiful but sad, full of longing for your loved one when they leave - just like Malleus himself.

"I'm not getting tired of this morning, One that I've waited for. Very faintly, I'm laughing while appearing to be sorrowful, And wishing to completely forget you." "Because there's no end to this curse Of sleeplessness and the painful past. I'm singing a song in the morning glow, If only I could completely forget, it would end." "There's just one thing I can't yield, And still, without knowing the reason, I live, even now..." "Since I don't have a dream I want to protect, These are days with no answer, But that isn't kindness, isn't it?" "Look, since absolutely nothing hurts, It's alright," I say. Someday, when you'll be gone, ah~ Will I be living alone?”

-----------------------------------

Lilia: Kanade Tomosu Sora

I feel like this song fits Lilia the most in terms of the vibe, the lyrics that matched well with his backstory. This song, while sad, full of longing and reminiscent from the past yet it’s like a glimmer of hope somewhere in the deep, dark sea of sad memories. Lilia was the same too despite how we see him acting outwardly. He gives love to others, but he also needs love and hope. He went through events that could crush him easily and yet, he still stayed strong - for a whole 200+ years, for the sake of others. (I recommend checking out the 25ji, Night Code de version too!)

“Every time I trace back my memories, I feel as if I’m going to be crushed, yet Since I have no place to take refuge, I just keep questioning myself over and over. Ah…” “There are too many things in my way, It’s as if there are only things I can’t see Is it alright if I try touching it a little? I want to say it. Even though it might surely be impossible, I want to somehow. Hey, more; hey, more; I want to see more” “So I can turn the images I’ve found of your world still unknown to me Into song" "Blaming myself all this time, I simply live and breathe but only just barely I’ve always shut it away in a cage I’m not asking for a plain, simple story. I simply wish to hear your voice” “It still hurts. Words keep tightening the cord round my neck, but... These eyes of mine I closed so gently as well, still hurt a little, but… I want to say it. Even though now, I still don’t know when it’ll be but someday for sure. Hey, more; hey, more; I want to see more”

-----------------------------------

Silver: Ice Drop

I think this song fits Silver a lot mostly because of the lyrics, and the deep sea could symbolize the dreams that he dives into in Book 7. Although it’s upbeat, the lyrics are full of longing and reminiscing of the past and also his father, but eventually move on and “grow up” from it. Not to mention, you could even take it as a SilverMC song if you think about that aspect! But even if it's not in a romantic sense, it's still a song talking about how much the past affects us and how we long for our loved one even if it's just a memory, that's why to me this song is really for Silver!

“Even the memories of the past are merely a thousand-year tale I take a deep breath as I fall into the deep sea” “Uh- that voice of yours drenches my whole heart Tangled up and captivated by each other, we sing our unchanging love once more You, not letting go of your hands become a rule of mine It's a heart that will melt away the rusted last page That one and only magic will turn this world around” “I’ll be waiting. Inside my dream, I reach out my hand” “Uh- On this planet, I fell in love without sleeping I longed for you and hesitated what to do, but from now on, I'll grow up You, If it’s with you, I’ll dive in without hesitation”

-----------------------------------

Sebek: Kashika

Sebek was the hardest to find for me in the entire list mainly because while he has his own character, he doesn’t have too much depth but I tried my best and I think this song fits him the most! This song is powerful, full of willpower and hope towards tomorrow despite the hard, tough times. The song encourages us to keep living, even in the most uncertain moments, you need to cherish each moment of your life as well your living heartbeat, which represents the tenacity and perseverance of life. I feel like the energy as well the meaning of the song fits Sebek a lot overall for his character - with the desire to rise, stand up and protect he always have.

“When my quivering voice breathed life into a song, It was then I realized, That was the first time my breath could be seen. They say that in the end, the value of music is subjective– Well then, I'll sing as I please, I'll show you the message I want to convey. I won't despair over Or be afraid of my mistakes. They say to "live the right way," But I want to fight against that. My whole life has consisted of "it's my fault." Even if I'm treated like a fool, I'll be hurt and I'll hurt others, I'll live, causing both kindness and injury. The present I see is everything to me, So I don't want to cling onto ideals of the past or the future. Beat, beat, o heart of mine! It might be unsteady, but even so, this is my pulse.”

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#twisted wonderland #twst #disney twst #twst wonderland #disney twisted wonderland #vocaloid #vocaloid music #kalim al asim #jamil viper #vil schoenheit #epel felmier #rook hunt #idia shroud #ortho shroud #malleus draconia #lilia vanrouge #twst silver #silver twisted wonderland #sebek zigvolt

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mikelogan · 28 days

Text

ttpd thoughts

for the record, i'm not trying to be like. purposely hateful or anything, i'm just so deeply disappointed with her. this last year has been a mess and she's repeatedly acted in ways that, at the very least, rub me in the wrong way and at their worst have disgusted me and made me lose so much respect for/faith in her. miss americana has become a piece of performance art rather than any sort of meaningful activism.

she made a very public display of dating/hooking up with a bigot and basically said "fuck you, i do what i want" in response to valid criticism and then tried to smooth it over by working with one of the women he'd called slurs. almost every time she spoke this year, whether in an interview or through tree, she reinforced my worry that she views herself as untouchable and that any sort of negativity or criticism directed toward her should be discounted because she's an "underdog" and a woman, despite the fact that there are very real issues with her words and actions. and don't get me started on everything with football guy and his trump-loving ass.

she is absolutely allowed to do, say, date, fuck, etc. anyone and anything she wants. she can write songs about all of it. she can do damage control and pr and control the narrative however she chooses. she can run smear campaigns and drag names through the mud while maintaining she's the perpetual victim when she's arguably the one with the most power in any given situation. i can appreciate that fame presents a set of challenges that i will never experience or fully comprehend.

but i'm also allowed to have my opinions on it, especially when so much of it is so heavily publicized. there is so much we will never know and there is also so much we do know that we never should have. pretty much since eras was announced, she's become so deeply oversaturated and it went from being cool to see so much hype and getting a new album and new re-recordings to feeling like everything is about money and breaking records. it's become a machine, a content factory, and so many decisions feel rushed, incomplete, and incongruent. it doesn't feel like there's been real thought about the material itself and instead it's become about aesthetics and sensationalism.

i think that's why i'm so frustrated right now and it's highly likely that these albums will grow on me or at least some of the songs. i've been listening to the 12 songs i liked on repeat since i finished my initial run through each album and i already like them even more. but i wish that it could truly just be about the music for me. that's what's always been most meaningful to me about taylor is her lyricism and the stories she tells through her songs. but knowing everything i know and having seen everything i've seen over the past year, it's tainted my perception of the albums and the songs on them.

i think that taylor has a lot of growing to do as a person. i've heard people say that sometimes celebrities are frozen at the age they became famous and i think that really shows in taylor's case. the irony of a song being titled "so high school" was certainly not lost on me. a lot of her phrasing feels very juvenile, just as her treatment of joe and everything surrounding the end of their relationship has been. i never really had feelings about him one way or another, and as i mentioned above, there's a lot we'll never know about what happened between them. but she's been pushing her victim narrative so hard and the only thing i've seen from joe is his support of palestine. actions speak a lot louder than words. it changed so drastically from the initial news of their breakup being amicable to turning him into yet another villain. i have no doubt in my mind that taylor has been treated very poorly by a lot of the men in her life, and joe is likely not an exception. but i'm to the point where i have to take everything she says with a heaping tablespoon of salt.

at the end of the day, taylor's music is her own and i understand why she's said that she wants her work to be about the music and not about the men. i can see how it would feel invalidating to have her songs picked apart and attributed to the men they're written about. and i'm not even trying to do that here. but i can't recall a time when she's been so public about her relationships? in the past, it's felt a lot more like speculation, but jesus, between ratty and tk this past year, we've just been inundated with so much that unless i was an extremely casual fan that managed to escape her face on every news show, billboard, and social media website, i can't fathom not knowing what she's singing about on these albums. she can't have it both ways.

i still have all the music that came before ttpd, and like i said, with subsequent listens, ttpd will probably grow on me a bit, but idk man, i'm over it. and i think it's important to be willing and able to criticize or at the very least analyze your favorite media, whether it's music or tv or film or literature or whatever else. your favorite thing probably sucks in one way or another and pretending it doesn't doesn't make you a better person than someone who acknowledges it. these are complex, extremely nuanced things i take issue with and when it comes down to it, i will never know taylor personally and be able to talk to her about these things and get her point of view and her thoughts. that leaves me to say my piece, which is what this post is.

as a recovering swiftie, i'm just so very tired.

#ramblings #ttpd lb #ttpd2 lb #i have a blood draw in a few hours im gonna go lay down #im more than willing to discuss any of this btw #but im not going to argue or respond to hate if i receive any #also from a purely sonic perspective?#there is nothing special vocally apart from waolom #and the music sounds so similar in almost every song #okay to rb if anyone is so inclined

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urlocalrambler · 1 month

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DN fanfic: an exploration into Kai Mori's mind while he's in prison. Introspective piece. So get ready for self-loathing, the woes of the disgraced son and the Banks reminiscence and yearning that we deserved.

My first Devils Night fanfiction ever. Actually, it's my first writing piece in a long time in general, but fuck it, we balling. I've always struggled a little with understanding Kai, but I think this piece helped me get more of a grip on my characterisation of him <3.

Kai sits in jail, and he knows he's a scrouge on his family name. He’s the shameful blot in their lineage, the fuck up who keeps on giving even when all they want is for him to stop. Kai's the shadow in his family's illustrious life. A good boy gone wrong, the ungrateful child, responsible for his mother's tight smiles and fervent worry — he’s the parasite leeching away at his mother's kindness, carelessly ruining the happy life his father fought to give her. It took one blow of a hammer slamming against a gavel, and his parents have a sword of humiliation rammed into their guts. The pain is only dug in deeper with the indignity of a sentence of 28 months lost to the confines of walls crammed to the brim with prisoners, with his fitted suits for interviews traded in for a standardised orange jumpsuit, as a lifestyle befitting of an animal is thrust into the hands of their only son.

The worst part is that they still loved him despite his neverending failures.

"–Gave him three broken ribs. So he fractured his fucking spine."

"Who?"

"The rich brat. Mori. He didn't even hesitate."

"Shit, he might belong here, after all."

Yeah, maybe he does belong here.

From the start of it all, he's been the defining reason for the lines marring his father's forehead, those were wrinkles etched in from worrying about Kai's unfortunate tendencies, but he's still forgiven again and again for every indiscretion that they catch him in and he learns to forgive himself for the thousands that they don't know about as a default. Kai's allowed to follow his own path even if it means spitting at his father's feet and disparaging the legacy that Katsu built with his roughened hands. It's wrong, grievously so, but he takes the chances and the freedom, Kai proves he's a certified fuck up. Useless boy who's worth nothing much when compared to the father who tried to give him every head start in life no matter what it cost. Katsu's a man who pulled his family out of poverty, he gives his wife her old life back tenfold, and Kai’s the worthless son who ruins it by gorging himself on endless vices, amusing himself by toeing the lines, and eventually, he gets a crew and starts obliterating the lines. Never improving even as they ardently pray for him, Kai only gets worse as the years pass.

Everyone knows it in Thunder Bay. Kai Mori's a cautionary tale in the flesh.

The good boy who gets caught up in the wrong crowd and suffers for it. Prince amongst the heathens, gilded gold stained by their tar, a demon playing at being an angel. Kinder smiles and 'thank you's' on his tongue don’t get rid of the taste of sin, but they mask it well enough. Until it suddenly doesn't anymore, and they see that he's made of the same strokes as his friends. Demon, not an angel. Predator, not the prey. Villain, never a prince. Sins can't be hidden forever in a modern era of phones to the ear and the glimmer of cameras catching their every move. He should’ve known better than to have expected zero consequences – Kai hid his truths better than his friends ever managed to, but an unchained nature couldn't be hidden forever.

People were predisposed to making assumptions.

In Thunder Bay, they accepted and revered the version of him that they thought they knew, and they share their aggrieved regrets as his fall from grace occurs in the brightened spotlight. Analysed just like Icarus, with a tragic fate of his own making – Kai can't meet his father's eyes for the first couple of weeks after his wrongs are aired to the public. Kai Mori had potential in spades, the gossip somberly chastens, and he squandered it away on freedom ravelled within insanity, he wasted a guaranteed future on the kind of lust that made priests look away in discomfort, and he ruined himself due to a useless loyalty towards friends that should've never amounted to much more than a footnote in his life.

Outsiders never understood how the blood of the covenant could run thicker than the water of the womb. They didn't feel the allure of darkness in its fullest form. Nor could they understand the power that control gave him when it was cradled in his palms, and he had chaos biting at his neck. She had, though, that one girl who hides in his mind just like she'd veiled herself into that confession all those years ago– she understood it all, and she even fed into it back then.

He wonders what she felt when she saw him in cuffs.

Mystery Girl was among his worst mistakes, mostly because she quickly became his darkest daydream and a favourite nightmare.

Kai's quiet when he does it. In the showers, when heat spindles against the mirror, he washes off the heat of shame by engaging in more depravity. He thinks about her often. And he's not gentle, not even close to it. Whenever he thinks about girls wrapped up in men's clothes, in shirts that aren't his, he's harsh and angry because they should've been his clothes, she should've been his girl. He thinks of smart quips on the curve of her lips, and he wonders how sweet it would've been to have held her and shut her up in the way he'd desperately wanted to whenever she said the name of a man who wasn't him. Kai's got a hand on his cock and he jerks it hard to the thoughts of her.

Chocolate hair. Green eyes. Golden skin. Daydreams and nightmares.

She's the only thing he never got that he'd desperately wanted in his golden years; she's the thing he still wants so carnally even in his darkest hours. Wants her thighs wrapped around his torso, wants his name to be the only thing she's capable of saying by the time he's done with her, wants her marked and ruined by the touch of him and him only. Indulging in her, Kai knows, would've been his favourite sin. Back then, he got only a speck, got nothing more than a touch, and he'd still been hopelessly addicted, high on fumes when he had the wisp of her silhouetted in his arms, and he was in withdrawal whenever he lost her to a man he hated and loved in equal measure. Just a taste back then, just the thoughts now, and he's still maddeningly hooked on her. Pretty girl, harsh girl, but never his girl. Sweet like candy with a tangy kick to her. She's the only drug in his veins, inching in without warning, putting him in a trance and an unruly high.

In the dead of night, she visits him, and Kai welcomes her.

He is a fuck-up, Kai knows it well. Somehow, he's still so ready to engage in the betrayal of his brother in everything but blood. Damon's down in a living nightmare in solitary, and he dreams of stealing his girl. He dreams of using her up. He yearns to take her and have her feed the desires of his concupiscent flesh for as long as he wants, and he thinks he wants to keep her for months, for years, for as long as it takes until she feels more his than anything else.

Irreverent lust, onerous fingers, amatory desires, and all for what? A girl he had known all of a couple of weeks. And he thinks he'd sell the flesh on his back to go back to that time with her. For her, he thinks he'd do anything because if she's a reverie then he's a victim to the ghost of her. Kai thinks of her and that hotel room, and he wonders why he let his dream girl go.

She's the only person to ever make him feel alive, to make him feel desire on an impulse, the only one who could easily stoke his dangerous need for control, and she did it all without ever trying. No fight to take and no need to make his blood boil; there was no need to force himself into those conversations with her because he was already obsessed with her voice from the second he heard it. Everything came naturally when it was with her.

He thinks she could've been his if she hadn't been Damon's to keep.

Kai laughs when he grips the plexiglass, breathes harder, and strokes faster– she's certainly not either’s now, and she wasn't his back then, but she is all Kai’s in the darkness of his mind. Smooth skin pressed against his chest, lips to his neck, and she's begging for it, for his dirty criminal's hands to stay on her neck. Moaning, whining, crying for more. He's undone by the idea of her, air caught in the chasm of his lungs, knuckles tightened to a pale white, as he gives into his favourite nightmare. Kai's spent by the thought of her, the evidence washed away by water, as his back presses against the shower wall.

Suddenly, he's almost glad that he doesn't see Damon here at all. Kai tries to convince himself that he should be relieved that he'll likely never see her again either (it doesn't work but he tries). If he doesn't see her, then it means the fantasies, the output of those unreachable desires, can stay intact.

There's no Damon to stop him. No dancer in a hotel to distort what they could've had. No blood to mop away and no nights to hide away. It was just him and her again.

In his dreams, Banks is everything he still desires.

In his dreams, she belongs to no one else.

In his dreams, Banks is all his.

#nikova banks #kai mori #devil's night series #devils night #devils night series #damon torrance #emory scott #michael crist #winter ashby #rika fane #kill switch #devils night fanfiction #penelope douglas #kaibanks

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guesst · 2 months

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OKAY MANHWA REC LIST

CONCUBINE WALKTHROUGH

the main reason i made this list lol concubine walkthrough is a video game isekai with a. a really REALLY cool artstyle b. very well thought out plot that kept me guessing and c. lovely characters. the game itself is set in historical korea so if youre a fan of that id rec. super super good

the art btw ⬇️

THE VILLAINESS EMPRESS' ATTENDANT

this one i started reading recently! the art is cute, plot is also fun w a healthy dose of comedy and i really like the empress akfjsm her and the mc have such a good relationship its great

could be yuri but its not and honestly i love it either way

FOAM OF THE SEA

okay well this one i dont have much to say about cus only 2 chapters are out so far lol BUT its intriguing!! the premise so far is that the main character, having been pushed off a cliff by her lover, is resurrected in a different body by a sea witch n is now out for revenge. has very strong little mermaid elements and againnn the art is lovely. look at the cover!! the art !!

S-Class Hunter Doesn't Want to Be a Villainous Princess

IF YOUVE READ BEWARE OF THE VILLAINESS AND YOU LIKED IT AND HAVENT READ THIS YOU SHOULD. same artist!! same energy!!! tower dungeon protagonist is thrown into a romance plot and now has to clear this to get back home . i love her so much shes so op lmao. anyway its a good action/comedy so far and the constellations are funny too

I SEE YOU

i am rereading this yet again. its so good its so so good you will cry and your heart will feel warm and happy i promise. it handles grief and friendship and the side characters so well the backstories are so !! pain inducing !! and good !! and honestly its so easy to like the characters !! if you pick one thing to read from the list please make it this. also theres this silly man

MY FAVOURITE IDOL

super super super good take on the idol genre !!! i will admit i dont read much manhwa about idols (like. at all) but i am really enjoying how they explore the industry in this one. plus theres some bodyswapping :D and the character arcs are great too !! both mains learn a lot from each others lives :]

they are good kids

THE REDEMPTION OF EARL NOTTINGHAM

INSANELY GOOD !! the author clearly did a lot of research into the era this is set in -- early 1900s, during WW1 (which on its own is pretty unique like im not seeing a lot of historical manhwas set this time) and definitely has some very heavy themes. the mc time travels back to her twenties just before ww1 breaks out, after her marriage goes wrong w her husband and she dies from. falling down the stairs. RIP. i just think its really well written and the pacing is lovely - the author is not infodumping all the bad things that happened in one go and its working really well. also look at this guy

okay ive hit image limit cus im using app, truly terrible. TBC

#manhwa #manhwa recs #rec list

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comfortfoodcontent · 2 months

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2024 X-Men #35 cover by Pepe Larraz

2019-2024 - RIP Krakoa Era X-Men

I love this cover. The art is amazing. It marks the end of the Krakoa era X-Men. It's been on my mind a lot lately and I had to get some thoughts out on it. If you know me, if you ever followed me or my comics site or whatever, you know I was a very loud, very big fan of the Krakoa era at the start, basically up until X of Swords and Hickman's decision to leave. It's finally ending.

2019-2024 - RIP Krakoa Era X-Men

But truthfully it may as well be 2019-2019 -RIP Krakoa Era X-Men. It pretty much failed from the start. I loved HoxPox when it dropped. It was, embarrassing to say now, life changing for me. I thought Hickman was a genius and had found a way to reinvigorate the line and render death as a cheap storytelling gimmick useless. A bunch of my faves were being used and ressurected. I was happier than a pig in shit. I joined Twitter and all the insane X-Fans on there. I started a website and a podcast dedicated to comics. Soon the Covid pandemic started. I was terminally online, my brain rot started and grew worse by the day. It was an insane wild ride that started high and died soon thereafter.

It's hard for me to separate my pretentious Comfort Food Comic media brand time with the pretentious Krakoan Era. Both started out so happily, so full of potential and optimism. To run a site or a podcast in these hellish times you must also play the social media game. Constantly be on there, constantly push your product. Being on Twitter during that time and being part of the X-Community, you start to see how much being on social media fucks you up. You constantly feel like you need to have an opinion on everything, and that it actually matters. You need to be a critic to every piece of media, every decision, every little thing someone says or posts. You lose your grasp on reality, the real world, how to function and interact like a normal human being not stuck hidden behind a screen with your dual public twitter profile and private locked one (something I'm glad to say I never stooped to). It brings you attention. It brings you friends. It pushes your product or brand. It gives you validation and the dopamine rush. It's an addicting, disgusting, fake as hell experience. I was fully caught up in it. It didn't help that I was quarantining and barely leaving my house for a few years. It got me through the pandemic but it also left me so much worse than when I started. Much like how the Krakoan Era treated the X-Men franchise.

Why am I talking about social media so much when I started with X-Men? Well, it felt like this era of publishing went hand in hand with what was being put into the comics. Every creator was constantly on Twitter interacting with fans, always seeing what they had to say. Even Hickman was on there. Dude just wanted to post photos from movies and talk about like what Gen X members he liked. He eventually left because insane X-Men fans wanted him to talk about George Floyd and compare real world race issues with some superhero comics and weigh in, OH GOD WHY ISNT HE WEIGHING IN PUBLICALLY??. It was really weird how fans dealt with that one. Vita Ayala, Tini Howard, Leah Williams - constantly interacting with fans, friends with many of them. A pretty cool thing really, but that shit started influencing their comics throwing in characters or scenes specifically to make some X-Men fan they know on Twitter squee real loud. Shatterstar is not your favorite AEW wrestler. We do not need a book of human X-Men fans who pretend to be mutants influenced by dorky X-Men fans online. We do not need longtime villain Apocalypse to become our "Blue Dad". Jordan White should be editing or at the very least reading any old X-Men comics instead of being on Twitter. We don't need to know what the X-Writers do on their Slack, or worse, what X-fans do on their own incestuous Slack. Gerry Duggan, a writer I loved and thought could do no wrong, joined this group and upped his Twitter usage and the brain rot commenced and his work was so influenced by it. I'll never forget when white people started using fuck around and find out on Twitter and then it was in like 3 of his books the next month. My point in this ramble is the books were being influenced by and written for the loudest X-Men fans on Twitter. The art was dead. The books were a product made in that echo chamber for that echo chamber. They got bad real fast because of our society's addiction to social media these days.

Now that the honeymoon phase is over and I've revisited a lot of these books I do still feel HoXPoX was a wonderful series, one of the best X-Men series, masterfully executed and a perfect jumping off point with so much to explore. I also see the usual Hickman faults. The my series starts some time later, not really addressing anything prior to it that all his books share, the insanely detailed long term plans that he nor the comics business machine will actually follow through on after a year or so, and the shadowy superior group of power that exists in all of his comics. The Moira retcon, while brilliant, quickly falls apart when they never develop her further, or deal with the fact Xavier and Magneto went on to have an entire publishing history knowing what amounts to their entire future until the Krakoa Age must be established. That never really worked and was ignored by the creators and fans alike, including me. So it never really worked from the jump.

Rather than keep the line condensed and maybe just let Hickman write his own story, they expand it out from there involving a bunch of different creators and new ongoings. Plenty of series to explore the ramifications of these retcons, the perceived ethnostate the mutants have established and their abandoning of the coexistent dream the X-Men always fought for, grappling with identity and what it means when death no longer matters, and the conflicts that would arise from having all these villains live with them now. Sadly we instead basically just got Utopia 2.0. Surface level shit where the mutants are on an island surviving that rarely ever went in on all the amazing story ideas we could have explored. But hey certain fans were happy because they could go "Hey Synch is here for a few panels!" or "this horrific out of character gladiator death ceremony is TOTALLY the same thing as my real life transitional phase". Nobody really wanted to question any of this in the comics or in real life. And hey sour grapes aside, we did get some cool stories and some fun character interactions and moments, mostly in the Hickman books. But even from the start, some of it is horrible, more of the same schlock - Fallen Angels a great example, or Hickman's more boring Giant Size issues or his Shi'ar issue, or half of every other title. What should have been being explored or dealt with in the text often went ignored and we got X-Men being superheroes or Otherworld nonsense, which at the time I ate up because I'm such a fan of the old Captain Britain material. Sadly that never really went anywhere either, just making nebulous dimensions that were out there somewhere, don't question it LOOK IT'S JIM JASPERS! ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED! Even things that should have been celebrated like Betsy and Rachel pushing through Gal Pals territory to being together felt largely flat and hollow and forced rather than natural or fun. And that was a common theme as it kept going. Everything felt forced, felt wrong, the writing felt amateurish and simple as it ignored more major issues or reasons to exist. Things just seemed to start happening for no real story reasons. No real further development or exploration. A ton of plots don't make sense as established history and characterization is thrown out the window. Nothing really matters. Rockslide is ruined forever just because. Arrako will never REALLY make sense, Loa and Mercury are psychopathic sex fiends, Pixie of all people is a callous death pervert, Banshee is a Ghost Rider, Warlock's doing something, Colossus joins the Quiet Council and just sits there, Children of the Atom is designated a "red" important book and does nothing of value or import, Moira gets pissy so she turns into a no shades of gray villain robot who skins her soul mate and wears his skin and joins Orchis, mutants are fucking so much and I guess just quickly going to term and they just abandon countless babies in the forest, Anole and a few others are brainless dolts who love the Shadow King, Onslaught is bouncing around, there's an old X-23, Synch is now the best and can recall any power ever magically but never talks to any member of his old team or deals with his death, Inferno as a whole essentially just didn't happen or matter, Sinister isn't Sinister at all he's a clone and there's 3 more of them, Casandra Nova is on a team, Doug knows secrets, Magneto buys a lighthouse, characters are randomly and indiscriminately put into The Pit, Shaw and Selene are maybe the only two villains ever that get examined in a way where maybe they shouldn't be buddy buddy with the X-Men - I need to stop now before I get more angry and depressed but I could go on and on and on. Point is things got bad. Like a ton of this was just bad writing and bad comics. I'm sorry. I get it. I was blinded too. I ignored things. I made my own head canons. I focused on the good stuff.

By the time Hickman actually announces he is leaving, things are already falling apart due to him and Marvel deciding to expand and stretch this shit out instead of just letting him do his shit and end it as a complete story or era. He does Inferno which as I said did nothing and didn't matter. It's good but it's a big ball of nothing. From there the books get worse and worse. Duggan's superhero X-Men book is fluff. Nearly every other series declines more and more. Hellions is a fun dark comedy, but sloppy and lacking that depth and exploration. Al Ewing's work tries hard to reach those Hickman highs and I found myself quite enjoying his work on SWORD and later on X-Men Red but mainly because it all ends up divorced from Krakoa as part of his larger Marvel Cosmic work, with great characterization. I really dig that work and it's common theme is really how off to the side not involved it is.

Later writers, including some real Literal Whos? and pretentious "novel authors" further dilute the line with their less talented work(I like Steve Orlando as a person but I desperately wish he'd try harder to write actual stories instead of being a human youtube video that summarizes obscure 90's comic characters for modern day zoomers). Kieron Gillen, bless him, tries to be the new Hickman and he does have some of the best Krakoa era material, but even he starts failing pretty badly. Sins of Sinister was a clusterfuck of boring nonsense for people who want to seem or sound smart, same goes for this current Dominion plot.

Looking at the art now I'm struck by how none of these characters are TRULY changed from this era, let alone had a lasting or defining story. It's crazy to me we went 5 whole years with this and really what has changed, ESPECIALLY with the current Orchis wrap-up story. X-Men fight some nasty humans who don't like them. We're back to that ALREADY. We aren't getting to the end of the Krakoan Era, we've been in it for quite some time. As I look at this art I see only 3 wholly new characters, which they'll be lucky if they are used after this. One of them is Pogg-Ur Pogg, a perfect example of this era. A big Aligator man, not much thought behind it, that fans LOVED. Sadly, he wasn't actually an alligator man. It was all a fakeout. That was some suit a little boring gremlin wore. A little boring gremlin. Nothing unique, nothing fun. Same old shit you've seen in thousands of comics. That's what the Krakoa Era was. Something that seemed SO DAMN COOL, SO DAMN THOUGHT OUT, but really it didn't have much thought behind it. It was a flashy suit of potential hiding the same old gremlin you've always seen. Even after the eternally online creators saw how popular he got, they didn't change any of this, they just thought we've got it. The suit/gremlin thing is good. It wasn't and they tried to bring it back for further stories but it was so lame at this point it was pathetic. Much like the repeated attempts to salvage and course correct after Hickman.

So here we are at the end. I can't believe I'm actually THANKFUL it is ending. That I actually want to regress and return to the X-Men as superheroes fighting their villains again. I've been rereading old X-books and I crave that big, bold excitement of what truly made the X-Men superhero team work. It's such a bummer and such a failure of execution with so many to blame. What DISGUSTS me so much is already seeing fans eulogize this era as perfection that was cut short by Marvel and not a fun experiment that was botched from the start. I'm with you, I was the biggest believer and supporter at the start. I joined Twitter, I examined every panel, made countless threads of discussion, debated and discussed every little thing with fellow fans. I wanted so much for this to be what it could be. Please, examine it honestly and critically. It's a failure. It's time to pull the plug.

It's ironic to me that I deleted my Twitter this year, the Krakoan age having the same amount of life my Twitter fandom life did. It went from such excitement and fun to soul sucking everyday nonsense. It seems fitting and emblematic of what this age was and turned into. This era, just like Twitter which influenced it so much, is/was a stupid, ugly, brain rotted mess dotted with sparing gold with the unrealized potential for so much more. I for one, welcome it.

Peace Out Krakoa Era, you won't be missed.

#krakoa #krakoa era #x-men #mutants #me #my writing #writing #comics #comic books #marvel #marvel comics #pepe larraz

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piosplayhouse · 1 year

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Horse Isle 3: The Yandere Sim of Horse Games

(or, an extended study in how to hate your own playerbase as much as humanly possible)

(or, or, tldr there's pretty much no updated information on just how ridiculously bad this game is so here's a writeup on how I got banned and all the subsequent information I found during my time playing for documentation's sake)

Part I. The Backstory

My beloved followers will know that a few months ago I began playing Horse Isle 3, a horse-raising MMO surprisingly released in the year of our horse 2019 despite its 1997-era website and Runescape-esque graphics. Some of my play through (mostly just horse pictures) is chronicled in my tag #homophobic scum horse chronicles ¹ if you want to see how drippy my horses were before they killed me.

Now, don't get me wrong. I have endless respect for small teams of game devs that manage to create insanely impressive products-- which HI3's elaborate real-genetics breeding system, its main draw, certainly is. Coding is hard, modeling is hard, moderation is hard. Tip a coin to your local small indie teams that work hard to make incredible art.

However, HI3 is far from an admirable success story about a small dev team that triumphed over its obstacles.

The game is known for a variety of things, chief among them being the staff's rampant homophobia (which has earned it the moniker "the homophobic horse game"), hilariously uncharismatic mods (to the point where one of the main moderators, Connie, is mentioned by NAME in the majority of poor reviews of the game), the dev team's unrepentant rejection of criticism, and racism with a side of downplaying war crimes.

(Screenshots taken from Sitejabber, here)

Now, it's marketed as a game for ages 8+, which, as I've briefly talked about before, is unfortunately a rarity in today's hostile internet climate. I grew up on a variety of typical child friendly MMOs like ye olde Pixie Hollow and PetPet Park, and truly lament that so many of these have been shut down over the years. As such, I have no issue with strict rules or word filters in games, with the caveat that they are effective and genuinely intended to keep people safe. Kids are naive, and can and will say things that they shouldn't (I, for example, got kicked from a Minecraft server when I was 8 because I posted in chat that my mom told me sex wasn't a bad word. things happen). Filters are a very appropriate tool to aid manual moderation of chat features, especially in an environment where mistakes will be made.

However, HI3's, as shown below (words that are forbidden from chat are marked in red), are... questionably selective.

(Screenshot taken by Alice Ruppert, from here)

This appears to be attributed to the fact that along with having horrible moderators, HI3 also seems to have a remarkably horrible developer backend, which is a trend that you'll see pop up quite a lot in this post. Taken straight from the horse's (haha) mouth, the lead developer is the only person who seems to be able or willing to add to the filter list, and for whatever reason only wants to block the "most common inappropriate words"- because saying transgender is more of an issue than nazi and gulag I guess.

(Screenshot taken from Top R.'s Sitejabber review, here)

¹ I'm not sure how far this will reach out of my audience, and since people have already assumed weird stuff about me I thought I should probably clarify-- I'm not calling the game "homophobic scum" ghghg, my play through was focused on making horse versions of characters from a novel called "scum villain", so I took the scum and added horse (I actually have another tag for a different horse breeding game called "scum horse chronicles" so I needed to distinguish them easily but am not very good at tagging). That's it.

Part II. The Game

The game itself is, putting it simply, a mess at best and openly hostile towards newcomers at worst. The game's UI is comparable to your average petsite with 20 thousand things to click on but if you tried to navigate that while also watching the Pilgrim's Progress movie by Scott Cawthorn on 90% of your screen. This is a very good overview of what your experience first logging in will be like, with the added caveat that talking in global chat costs in game currency and that the game doesn't tell you this at ALL until you try to type in chat, and that depending when you log on it's entirely possible that you'll spawn into a completely dead town miles away from anyone who can help you, wilderness survivor-style.

To make things more complicated, information about the game is split between the game itself and the laughably horrible website/forums. Spectacularly enough, the forums, which provide vital game information and rule elaborations, cannot be searched in any way (not via Google or any hard-baked search bar) and are regularly purged by admins to erase evidence of scandals and poor moderation complaints.

Now, something you will find to be generally people's biggest issue with HI3 is their strict no "date-speak" rule, which sounds ok on paper but is worded *just* vaguely enough to give the moderators full jurisdiction over whether or not they think you're breaking the rules. Selective moderation is a major theme in the HI3 chronicle, but it is perhaps most documented with regards to this rule, because what the hell does "boyfriend/girlfriend talk" even mean?? Outside of vagueness, this rule has also been scrutinized extensively by others due to the fact that a pair of previous moderators were openly married with the igns "FrogLips" and "MrsFrogLips". I don't personally think this is super condemning, since kids usually address adults by Mr/Ms etc whether or not they know they're in a relationship, but regardless it's clear that the complete lack of elaboration on what this rule means can be easily manipulated to lodge any number of complaints against people.

(Screenshot from the Horse Isle website rules page, here)

What I will say, however, is that this rule would probably hold more water if the game wasn't literally about breeding horses.

You can pimp out your horses, you can pay others to breed your mares, you can put any number of special (real life currency-bought) amulets on your horses to make them more fertile/have twins/give birth faster. I paid $1000 to castrate Jiang Cheng. The word "stud" (which btw, is another word for a black butch lesbian) is used constantly. Perhaps most shockingly, horse inbreeding is very common and accepted among the community, to the point that it is explicitly mentioned and EXPLAINED in the game guide; the only penalization for it is that your incest product foal will have a lower intelligence stat. Call me old-fashioned, but I feel as though implementing and acknowledging that horses can breed with their own relatives is hmm perhaps more harmful than another player saying the word gay, but what do I know.

(Screenshot from the Horse Isle website game guide page, here (only accessible with an account))

Well, you might ask, after you breed and sell a horse, is there any way to put a brand on it so you know it's from your ranch? That's where the "prefix" system comes in. Prefixes are bolded titles that appear in front of a horses name in lists and in the overworld, and are described in the official game guide as follows:

(Screenshot from the same Horse Isle website game guide page as linked previously)

I think you can toggle them off if you don't want to see them, though I could be wrong. They're basically just 1-5 letter titles you can put on your own horses (nobody else's, importantly). There's no way to search prefixes, and you won't see them in game unless either a horse with a prefix is listed in auctions or you actually encounter someone in-game and see their horse.

In fact, I would learn later that not even the moderators monitor the prefixes, and apparently have no way to mass-delete them. At all.

(Image taken from an anonymous friend)

Now, it's not unusual that a game as complicated as HI3 would inevitably have a pretty taxing server-side code. Millions of multifaceted assets and features is really nothing to scoff at. However, the notion that your lead developer has to perform a manual search in the game's code to delete the equivalent of a stamp from every instance individually is hilarious. I'm not going to pretend to be a game developer, but there HAS to be a better way of coding a feature that intakes user-generated content that should probably be monitored regularly than that, right? Or, at least, there should be a robust filter system that could prevent any issues from occurring before they would need to be fixed so tediously. You might think.

On December 29th, 2022, I discovered how to register a prefix. It's very common to headcanon the characters I was naming my horses after as transgender, and I thought it would be cute to attach "TRANS" to my horses as a nod to this. However, a filter blocked the word. I was disappointed, but not surprised², and then tried to think of another word that was under 5 letters. To my complete and gay surprise, "GAY" was not filtered out, and henceforth, this worked as my prefix.

As you can see on the popup here, there are scant guidelines for what the requirements for a prefix should be. And, in this moment of apparently utter foolishness, I was under the impression that since "GAY" was NOT filtered out despite there clearly being a filter on this function, it was ok to register. Possibly it's not filtered because it's a synonym for "happy", I thought, which is also cute because I do like when horses are happy. Perhaps the staff had learned from their past criticism and had loosened the restrictions slightly because they felt restructuring was appropriate now that gay marriage is legal in the US, I imagined.

(My original post)³

What I could not imagine, however, was that the only reason the word wasn't filtered out, despite being possibly the most common sexuality-related word, was just because the lead dev couldn't be assed to add it to the filter list. And that apparently I was supposed to know this because it would lead to a permanent ban on my second offense with no warning.

² Hence typing "eat shit lol". Admittedly childish of me, but I didn't put a lot of thought into the post because it was just part of a casual silly live blog I was doing to blow off steam. The "if I get banned" tag surprisingly was not referencing "GAY", as I genuinely thought I was in the clear for that for reasons stated above, but because I tried to register "TRANS" and then posted about it online. You don't have to believe me, but I feel the need to defend myself since some people have wildly extrapolated that my actions were malicious instead of just a split second decision I made because I was bored one morning.

³ Despite the pop-up box saying that prefixes cannot be removed, they actually can at any time, given only that the person that owns the prefix unregisters the horse from it. The unregistering mechanic is for whatever reason not told to the player upon registering the prefix, but is mentioned in the official game guide linked above.

Part III. The Ban, The Report

I will preface this section by saying that I played the game normally. I do like being outrageous sometimes for my followers' entertainment, but I really don't like dragging random people into my antics if they aren't interested. Because of this, I really didn't interact with other players unless we were mutuals on some other platform. I rarely used the chat feature except to participate in server-wide events that required team participation, and I typically just explored on my own for fun. In general I think I was a pretty ok player, objectively, which lines up with my user trust score.

You see, the way moderators of HI3 allegedly keep track of rule breaking is through a "user trust score" with points added if you use features in the game, help people, etc, and points deducted if you violate rules. Anecdotally I've heard that around the -10 total points mark is when moderators put you on a sort of list to be monitored for suspension or punishment, which is pretty reasonable.

By the time I was banned, I had a score of +31. The -10 offset was a part of this debacle. The only thing I had ever done in the game which warranted any kind of violation was, as you will soon see, literally just naming about 30 of my own horses "GAY", a sin egregious enough to apparently offset about 200 hours worth of playtime with no issues.

Because of this, I was a little bit confused on multiple levels. For one, I had never even seen a moderator in game, nor been informed of discipline at any time before. On top of that, their permanent ban notification is extremely strange and vague. The text pop up when you try to log in just reads "Account currently banned -1 minutes ().", which is probably just copied straight from the server-side code for things and just wasn't translated into user-side comprehensibility. You'll also notice there is a "()" section in the notification, which I would assume is where they put the reason for bans, except for the fact that mine was completely blank.

The website which allegedly would hold more info just repeated a near identical code: "BANNED! -1min. Reason:".

So, with nothing else to go off of, I messaged support on the jankiest help center submissions I've ever seen on a website with this:

"Insisting" and "total disregard" are very strong words to use for a situation in which I just typed a word into a textbox because the game let me, I'd think, which is why I tried to reason with her. The prefixes mentioned in my message are well-known amongst the userbase and are much older and wider-spread than mine, so I would think that there would be at least some sort of precedent for this. The "geldings and yearlings" reasoning was mostly a joke, but also intended to express that the nature of an acronym (as the majority of prefixes seemed to be) is that it can be interpreted in many ways. Intent was thrown around a lot when I was discussing the issues of prefixes with other users, and it seemed to have been used to excuse previous behavior in situations where mods liked the users in question better.

I also cannot emphasize enough how much they did not warn me about my prefix being removed. When I logged in and saw my horses' names did not include it, I was suspicious that the moderators removed it just because of the history of their behavior. However, I had no hard evidence because they did not inform me at ALL. Not through in-game mail systems, not through server messages, not through the website. Complete radio silence except for the addition of an unexplained "-10" to my user score. I did complain to some people that I thought it was removed, but a combination of things suggested that it wasn't a huge deal, so I mostly let it lie. For one, I had over 100 hours of playtime and was mildly worried that one of my chat messages had been flagged without my knowledge. For another, my profile text had also mysteriously disappeared, probably because of a glitch, so who knows what could happen in this game. Lastly, I went to the prefix registry again just to check and hilariously enough, they didn't actually block "GAY" from the database. Yeah, they apparently individually deleted it from all of my horses, but couldn't be assed to add such an "inappropriate" word to their filter system.

So I just registered it again and publicly told people that I would do it again if the mods didn't actually tell me to stop. I didn't really care about the prefix because to me, the feature was purely cosmetic. All I wanted was transparency from the staff.

Well, anyway, I assume Connie couldn't think of a comeback, so she just closed my report. I was annoyed because quite literally none of my questions were answered and she didn't even refer to anything in specifics. It would take less than 1 second to type the number of the rule I violated, but I guess that was too much work for her.

I tried to give them as many outs as possible to just apologize about poor communication, but they didn't even take the bare minimum. I would also like to mention that this support ticket process is the ONLY way to directly communicate with any staff. There's no ability to upload files or images on this system, and no email listed that you could contact. So essentially, there's no way to give actual evidence for anything you say even if you want to.

Kat, who is known as the slightly-more-reasonable-but-still-pretty-bad mod then picked up the case. Her response actually provided specific information, which made it leagues above Connie's, but still included some very strange elements for sure.

The notion that this game is intended for a worldwide audience is especially funny to me because you would really think if they cared about other countries they wouldn't violate their own rule one by using a slur for Europe's largest ethnic minority, but ok. It's a weird hill to die on considering how USA-dominated the staff's opinions towards rules are (Connie justifies the usage of a slur for Rromani people based off the opinion of a single roommate she had who reclaimed it, Joe defends a store in-game being called "The Gulag" because Americans don't think gulags are that bad (discussed and cited in the conclusions section)). But then again, picking and choosing what parts of other countries' customs you want to respect is very American, which is why I think they should add an extra star rating for its patrioticness on the website.

As I mentioned before, the prefixes I included in my response are definitely older and more commonly-used than mine, so I'm not sure how they wouldn't have seen them before. This comment also ties back to the suggestion that the moderators have very little control or insight over a distinct feature of their game, which is not a great thing to admit so casually.

Kat has a strange habit of immediately contradicting herself in the same paragraph, as can be seen here. "The glitches never happen and bugs were quickly fixed, but games still have bugs". "People that break the rules usually write in to ask what was wrong, but most people usually never ask". At this point I think we can confidently say that they don't even make an attempt to proofread any of their responses, to be honest.

Her 7th paragraph has one of my favorite lines in this exchange. "If we had to notify players every time we made moderator changes to their account we would spend 24 hours a day" is giving huge Yandere Dev "stop emailing me because I have to spend 24 hours a day reading all my emails instead of coding" energy. You really have to wonder why these people that seem to hate moderating so much are moderators.

You can tell by my response, but I do not like the use of "most" and "usually" in this at all. What's your standard isn't others' standards, and this is a topic which needs to be navigated gently, especially when kids are concerned. I never played the previous Horse Isles. I had no experience with the mod team, or with violations, or with anything because no one bothered to take five seconds to send me a message. No, I did not know that you would permaban me for typing a word that's in one of the most popular traditional Christmas songs in a place were only people who interacted with me would be able to see it. Most games would not do this. To take a lackadaisical approach to your literal job of community management because you want people to moderate themselves is contradictory to your claims of keeping children safe.

I will admit I was being a bit cheeky here as a subtle hint that perhaps they should take feedback, but I also would have taken a genuine response. I try my best to be as polite as possible to tech support staff because not everyone is! But they're people too and a simple thank you is worth a lot in customer service, even virtual. But Kat... you're not really giving me anything to work with here! If anyone reading this has feedback for how I could've rephrased things, feel free to comment them honestly. I actually ran drafts of these messages through a few people before sending them to make sure I was as concise and polite as possible, even if support clearly wasn't interested in reciprocating the effort ("following out rules using the the GAY to begin with"...?).

Part IV. The Backlash

I won't go too into depth in this section because it's more personal than documentarian, so feel free to skip to the next section if you want!

After this, the girlies were not happy with me. The one saving grace of HI3 that I've heard pop up over and over again is that the community is great. And a lot of users are! Don't think I'm disparaging people who play the game because I'm not-- it's a really fun experience with the right people. I was in a Discord server with a lot of people who were extremely helpful and kind.

However, within the community, there's also a pervasive culture of silence. According to Alice Ruppert of The Mane Quest, a lot of people will refuse to go public with their complaints about the staff due to fear of retribution, which I feel is unfortunate but understandable. There's a pressure to shut up and eat your food lest you be seen as someone causing controversy for the sake of it and ruining the sanctity of the game, which is an attitude explicitly encouraged by the staff (discussed more in the next section).

I liveblogged my entire correspondence with the support team to a group of other players for the 2 days I talked to them, and did have a lot of acceptance from people who appreciated someone speaking out. After the 2020 Mane Quest article, public information had sort of just gone dark as the community was pushed further into niche seclusion, despite things not improving at all. However, towards the end of my messaging, a group of people that I had never even spoken to or seen online before accused me of a variety of things ranging from "displaying my sexuality to children" (note: all I ever did was name my horses "GAY". I never once talked about my own sexuality in-game, nor did I say the word in chat ever) to "joining the server to cause drama" to "mocking the lgbt community by throwing around the word gay" (actually I'll attach a picture of this one even though I don't want to put people on blast in this section just because its so funny).

I think most of this can be attributed to the game having gained such a notoriety that longtime players, especially those with strong nostalgic feelings, have become completely desensitized to it. And this compounds with the fact that the game is so niche it doesn't yet have a good alternative to turn to to create a toxic cocktail where people tell themselves that they have to be loyal to the staff to play this one of a kind game-- and that anyone who doesn't follow them just doesn't understand. It's really sad, honestly.

Part V. Conclusions

I don't necessarily think the devs of HI3 are legitimately consciously homophobic-- unfortunately LGBT rights are still controversial amongst the largely southern and rural population of horse enthusiasts, and I could understand if they felt it necessary to skim the line towards conservatism to maintain a userbase. It's cowardly and dumb but it's not a sin to do what you have to do to survive in a capitalistic hellscape as cutthroat as the game industry.

However, what I do think the devs are is power-hungry and hypocritical. They have failed at every turn at community management because they're unwilling to admit they make mistakes, instead choosing to issue non-apologies like "[we] regret you guys got so upset and did not realize neither our true intentions nor motivations nor the whole situation [that we said it's ok that a player has a shop called The Gulag because it's 'not direct or violent']". To respond this way to a userbase filled allegedly with young children as a fully grown adult with a wife and kids is laughably out of touch. 'Sorry your fee-fees were hurt by our adult moderator responding to a serious complaint about inappropriate user-generated content with "lol", but actually you just misunderstood us and we're going to ban anyone who brings this up again' is the sort of response you'd see from the teenage mod team of an Undertale amino, not the supposedly responsible head dev of a 'rare oasis of kid friendly content'.

Telling an audience of impressionable kids that the fact that their feelings are hurt is their fault for not intuiting the intentions of 40+ year old adults is unbelievably toxic, and it's no wonder why people are so nostalgia-bound to feverishly shut down criticism about the games. They've been guilt-tripped into believing the mod team can do no wrong and any controversy, even if valid, that springs up is just extrapolated by people that haven't been laboriously groomed to know what the mod team wants to hear.

Countless times throughout my time researching and playing the game, the number one advice I've heard has always been "suck up to the mods or they won't do anything for you". It's crystal clear that the moderators care more about the joy they get from having power over some 200 users who will kiss their ass if they say a buzzword more than they care about you, your child, or the game itself.

It's essentially a model scam Kickstarter's wet dream, a game propelled to release and popularity by its singular defining feature and left to fester on the shelf as the only game in its niche market. Because of this, I believe there's truly no better way to describe HI3, with its messy backend, refusal to improve, narcissistic moderators, broken features, poor visuals, and inefficiency than as the Yandere Simulator of horse games.

#img descriptions in alt text!#lmk if there's any way I can make this more accessible! It's my first time writing something this long on tumblr :)#long post #really long posts #long posts #really long post #essay #hi3 #horse isle 3 #horse isle #fandom drama #hobby drama #discourse #homophobic scum horse chronicles

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