#all my social media is dead and I’m in bed so I can’t do much

[fairuzfan]

But the other images I had was like a mass refugee camp. So basically at that point in time, two months ago, about 20,000 people had sought refuge both in the hospital and outside the hospital. And these weren’t tents. They’re still not tents. They’re makeshift shelters with bed sheets or plastic bag sheets. The ones outside sleep on the floor. They’re lucky [if] they get a carpet or a mat. There was one bathroom at the time for about 200 people that they have to share. And inside, the hallways of the hospital were also made into shelters. There was hardly any room to walk, and there’s children running around everywhere. It’s important to remember all these people were not homeless. They all had homes that were destroyed. They’re all displaced people that took shelter in the hospital.

So that’s the kind of mass chaos that I encountered initially, and then I was told that every time there’s a bomb, give it about 15 minutes and the mass casualties come. That was the other thing that at the time shocked me: What we’d been seeing livestreamed on Instagram, on social media or whatever, I actually saw myself and it was worse than I can imagine. I saw scenes that were horrific that I’d never witnessed before and I never want to see again. You have a mother walking in holding her 8, 9-year-old, skinny — because they’re all starving — boy who’s dead, he’s cold and dead and [the mother is] screaming, asking for someone to check his pulse and everybody’s busy in the mass chaos. So that was kind of my initial welcoming scene when I entered Khan Younis the first time.

{...}

What I saw — I’m an eye surgeon, an eye plastic surgeon, and so I saw the classic, what I penned “the Gaza shrapnel face,” because in an explosive scenario, you don’t know what’s coming. When there’s an explosion, you don’t go like this [cover your face], you kind of actually, in fact, open your eyes. And so shrapnel’s everywhere. It’s a well-known fact that the Israeli forces are experimenting [with] weapons in Gaza to boost their weapon manufacturing industry. Because if a weapon is battle-tested, it’s more valuable, isn’t it? It’s got a higher value. So basically they’re using these weapons, these missiles that purposely, intently create these large shrapnel fragments that go everywhere. And they cause amputations that are unusual.

Most amputations occur at the weak points, the elbow or the knee, and so they’re better tolerated. But these [shrapnel fragments] are causing mid-thigh, mid-arm amputations that are more difficult, more challenging, and also the rehabilitation afterward is also more challenging. Also these shrapnels [are] unlike a bullet wound. A bullet wound goes in and out; there’s an entry and exit point. Shrapnel stays there. So you gotta take it out. So the injuries I saw were — I mean, I saw people with their eyes blown apart. And when I was there, and this is my experience, I treated all children when I was there the first time. It was kids that [were aged] 2, 6, 9, 10, 13, 15, and 16, and 17 were the ones that I treated. And their eyes unfortunately had to be removed. They had shrapnel in their eye sockets that I had to remove and, of course, remove the eye. There’s many patients, many children who had shrapnel in both their eyes. And you can only do so much because right now, because of the aid blockade and because of the destruction of most of Gaza, there’s no equipment available to take shrapnel that’s in the eye out. And so we just leave them alone and they eventually go blind.

{...}

I was on the ground, I toured the refugee camps, I went around Rafah, I saw, and if there’s an Israeli invasion, I can’t emphasize enough how catastrophic it’s going to be. It’ll be mass killing, mass destruction, because all these figures come in, 50 dead, 100 wounded. But what people don’t realize is, being wounded is a death sentence. Being wounded in this environment with no health care system, completely collapsed, is a death sentence. And the wounded often will lose everybody, like all family members, so they have no supports, especially children, have nobody left to take care of them, not even aunts and uncles. It will be catastrophic. I don’t know what to say to the world to stop an impending invasion. You’ve got to rein this prime minister of Israel in. You got to do something to stop this stupid invasion that he still wants to do, because it’ll be catastrophic.

{...}

I had one young man, about 25 years old, he lost one eye that I took out myself. He spent about five, six, or seven years, basically spent thousands and thousands of dollars in IVF treatment because he got married young and they wanted to have a child and they couldn’t have one. So he spent years on IVF treatment and finally had a baby that was 3 months old. And there was a missile attack by Israel at his home. He lost his entire family, including his baby and his wife and his parents and family. He’s by himself, single guy. I took his one eye out, and he has nobody in this world. He just kind of walks around the tent structures, just kind of walking around with no home and trying to sleep wherever he can.

#palestine #gaza

[formulaforza]

miss americana & the heartbreak prince

—05. Monte Carlo Ave. —word count: 9.3k —warnings: obvious implications of sex, no smut. club activities, so much fluff you'd wish you were dead. angst in the middle. love, mackie... so, just like chapter 4, there is a nsfw cut of this chapter whose link is embedded in the post. all nsfw warnings will be on that post. thank you for bearing with me while I took my sweet ass time writing this next part--there is no exaggerating how busy my life has become in the past couple months.

He wakes up at five-thirty-seven in the morning, exactly twenty-three minutes before his alarm is set to go off. Charles can’t remember the last time he was awake before his alarm, or the last time his alarm at home was set to go off before the sun rose. 

It was fear that woke him up—fear of waking her up. 

Her. Chris. His girlfriend, who is sound asleep next to him, in his bed, in his apartment, in his city. 

She’s a cute sleeper, he knew—he knew, because she’d fallen asleep on FaceTime calls half a dozen times, because he’d watched her for a nearly creepily amount of time in Abu Dhabi, when he couldn’t believe she was actually there. She’s a cute sleeper, and yet, the shine hasn’t worn off yet, because he still watches. 

She’d gone to bed in a hoodie from work and no pants, because, of course she had. Of course she had. She’s got one hand awkwardly craned under her pillow and another wrapped up in the comforter like it’s a finger trap, and her hair is messy, so messy and half-stuck to her cheek. It’s fucking adorable, and he feels so lucky. 

He gets nervous then, nervous that she’s going to wake up and he’s going to be staring and it’s going to be weird, so. Instead of continuing to ogle, he reaches for his phone from the nightstand, turns the volume all the way down and scrolls through social media pretending not to steal a glance every time she takes a deep breath or moves a muscle. 

It’s half an hour before she yawns awake, and he’s relieved that he doesn’t have to wake her up, after all. 

“Morning,” he says, clicks the power button on his phone and lets it fall face down on his chest. 

Chris smiles. “Morning,” she breathes, and leans over to kiss him. 

“Mmm,” he hums, pushes his index finger against her lips. “What happened to morning breath?” He asks. 

“Nope,” she speaks against his finger, threatens to bite it. He knows he wouldn’t stop her, but moves his finger anyway to kiss her properly, to let her smile out of it. “You’re stuck with me now, boyfriend and all that.”

“Gross,” he smiles. “I love it.”

She flops back against the mattress with a laugh, “What time is it?” she asks, leaning over to reach for her own phone. 

“Six,” he hums. She scowls at her lock screen. “We have plans at seven.”

“Oh?” She peruses, sits up to stretch properly, to yawn again and ruffle her hair and God, she is so beautiful. He might never get over it. 

“Padel…” he smiles, wonders if he’s about to get in trouble, to start their first fight as a couple at six in the morning on a Tuesday. He probably should have run this past her, he thinks, run all of it past her. He’d just gotten so caught up in the planning of it all. “...with my brothers.”

Her hands flop from her hair onto the comforter, landing with a soft thud on the padded fabric. When she looks at him, she’s still smiling, but her eyes are tired, confused. “Baby, what is padel?”

– – –

They cook breakfast together—well, Charles cooks breakfast. Chris spends the entire time leaning against the kitchen counter cradling her phone, watching a YouTube video on the basis of padel playing. Charles keeps leaning over her shoulder, plastic spatula in hand, and correcting the man in the video. That’s not what you do, he hums. They don’t know what they’re talking about. 

After the fifth comment in as many minutes, she turns to him with a chill-inducing glare. “I’m going to padel you upside the head,” she says, with a smile on her face—which only makes it that much more terrifying. He nods, steps back from her shoulder and returns to the crepes he’s butchering on the stovetop. 

– – –

“I have to know,” she asks, sat on the floor in the bedroom, in the limited space at the end of the bed, tying her shoes. “What was the plan if I didn’t pack workout clothes?”

“Eh,” he mutters, rifling through the hangers of sweatshirts hanging in his closet. “I would have put on you some of my clothes,” he continues, pulls his two best options down from the hangers and holds them up for her. One, a blue Ferrari crewneck. The other, gray, from his friend’s line. 

“You would have put me in your clothes,” she corrects his English, and if it was anyone else he’d find it insufferable. But he doesn’t, not with her, so he chuckles and his smile grows and he can feel his dimples. For the dramatics, though, he rolls his eyes. 

“Which one?” He asks, taking turns raising the two sweatshirts. 

“As tempting as the team kit is,” she laughs, and he tosses the gray one to her. He could have guessed the gray one, he thinks, but she’s surprised him more than once before. “Thank you,” she hums, pulling it over her head and carefully fixing the wisps of hair that fall from her ponytail when she does it. 

“Always,” he nods, holds a hand out to pull her to her feet.

– – –

Arthur and Lorenzo are already at the court when Chris and Charles arrive, attempting—and failing—to play a round of singles padel on the doubles court Charles had reserved for the morning.

Just as they approach, a shot ricochets off of Arthur’s racquet and flies past Lorenzo, colliding with the glass wall behind him with a thud. Lorenzo jogs after the ball, laughing, pointing at his brother in a sore act of celebration. 

Arthur is just as sore a loser. “Ah!” He calls out, gesturing with his own racquet to the tape that runs along the top of the net. “Filet!” Net!

Lorenzo blows air from his cheeks and scoffs, firmly bouncing the ball against the ground a few times before picking it up properly. “S'il te plaît!” Please!

“Mon pote, allez,” Mate, come on, Arthur groans. “Ça tremble encore!” It’s still shaking!

“Arthur, j'étais à trois mètres,” I was three meters away. 

Charles grins, pulls open the door to the court, holding it open for Chris to step in front of him. “Retiens ton feu,” hold your fire, he calls out to his brothers, “trouve ton anglais,” find your English.

Both boys' heads shoot over, scowls still apparent. “Do you see this? Do you see him run into this net?” Arthur shouts, still gesturing wildly with his racquet. 

“Do not let him convince you, you know what you saw,” Lorenzo interjects, carries on even though the game has been abandoned and they instead jog over to greet Chris and Charles. Lorenzo is first over, kissing either of Charles’ cheeks. “You saw this?” He asks, and Charles laughs, nods. 

“I did.”

“Bullshit,” he laughs, shoves Charles’ shoulder and turns to greet Chris. “You?”

Charles expects to find some apprehension on Chris’ face, something that shows she’s not sure of her place yet, but he doesn’t find any. Confidently, she speaks, “He’s crazy, you weren’t even close,” and then kisses each cheek. 

Lorenzo tosses his arm around Chris with a laugh. “Charles,” he speaks, points to her with the same hand that’s thrown over her shoulder. “My team.”

Charles chuckles. “I try not to make a habit of telling my girlfriend what to do.” Chris blushes at the very mention of it—girlfriend. If he knew it would be that easy to make her blush he would’ve asked weeks ago. He might’ve asked in Austin, if he’s being completely honest with himself. 

“Oh-ho?” Arthur’s already teasing, clapping his hands on Charles’ shoulders and laughing like a madman. “Girlfriend, huh?”

Neither of them—Chris or Charles, say anything. Between the flush of her cheeks and the depth of his dimples, they might as well have it spray painted on their foreheads. “Right,” Lorenzo offers, “well, Chris, as the only person around here with some sense, you’re on my team.”

“You can have her,” Charles teases, Lorenzo quirks a brow. “She has no idea how to play, but also she is a rule master.”

“Abandoning your own girlfriend,” Chris interjects, the same teasing tone laced in her voice. She pretends to shiver, grand and dramatic, even though it’s eighteen degrees and sunny and she’s got long pants and a sweatshirt—his sweatshirt on. “It’s cold, man.”

He rolls his eyes, sticks a racquet in her hand and moves to kiss her, which is more than close enough to Lorenzo for him to abandon his position next to Chris, retreating to the safety of the court, bouncing the padel ball as he walks. “Ready to take us?” Charles asks quietly, just to her. Arthur is somewhere in the space behind him gulping a water bottle in an almost comical manner. 

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she replies, half-chuckled, demeanor light and bouncy. There’s something about her that always seems full of energy, ready to take on whatever is put in front of her head-on.

“Don’t worry,” he practically whispers, winks and gives her shoulder a soft squeeze. “I’ll go easy on you.”

Chris clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, feigns offense and scoffs loudly, bringing the head of the racquet up to the center of his chest, pushing him back a few steps. “Don’t you dare.”

He doesn’t know what’s gotten into him, offering—practically promising—to let someone else win. There’s still a basket somewhere in a storage closet full of broken video game controllers from his childhood. And once, for three entire weeks when they were six and nine, he and Arthur weren’t allowed at the dinner table together because they would race to finish their food and promptly get sick. Then again, it is Chris, all bouncy ponytail and quick wit in his home in his clothes, so. Maybe it isn’t as far-fetched as it seems. 

As expected, it becomes apparent quickly that Chris is a beginner at a game the boys have spent years playing. She misses shots and struggles to find her footing and the best positioning, but it doesn’t crush her mood, dampen her energy. Lorenzo—her teammate, takes on quite a coaching role, offers an equal amount of encouragement and advice. 

She’s a quick learner, though. Charles knew she would be. So, despite the sound loss she and Lorenzo take in the first game, she manages a decent amount of solid shots and a spattering of genuinely impressive ones. She’s quick, that’s her advantage. She might not know what to do when she gets to the ball, but she always gets there. And, when she scores her first point, actually jumps into the air when she gives Lorenzo a high-five, he can’t help but find himself soft, a smile tugging on his lips, holding back on the points that follow in hopes of seeing her goofy grin again. 

“You did quite well out there,” he tells her when they’re between games. Her eyes light up and she hums around a mouthful of water, hurries to swallow it before she laughs. 

“Really?” She coughs, clears her throat. “You think?”

He nods. “You’re quick,” he mutters before taking a drink of his own water. 

“I ran track in high school.” He quirks a brow, which makes her smile, which makes him choke on a laugh mid-swallow. You’d think neither of them had ever had a drink from a plastic water bottle before. 

“Really?” She nods, hums her response, toying with her ponytail. Her bangs are loose, untucked from her ears and her hair-tie, and he feels the overwhelming urge to brush it from her face. “Why did I not know this?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “Why didn’t you know that?”

“Google said nothing about this.”

“You Googled me?!” Briefly. Briefly, he had googled her at the very beginning of it all. Really, it was more Googling her family than it was her, they are the ones with all the information out there. He needed to make sure he wasn’t starting something with a raging white supremacist or a murderer. 

“You didn’t Google me?” She scratches the back of her head, not-so discreetly looks anywhere but her. “Yeah,” he laughs. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

With a playful eye roll, she promptly changes the subject: “you want to be on my team?”

“I…” he laughs, “...don’t know if we are there yet.”

“Oh,” She laughs, brows raised with a goofy smile and it’s official—her laugh is never going to not give him butterflies, never not going to be so much better in person. “The truth comes out.”

Chris is soundly defeated in three straight games, despite finding herself with a new teammate each round—first Lorenzo, then Arhur, and finally, after five minutes of her best puppy-dog eyes, the most competitive man alive ( her boyfriend) agreed to be her teammate. 

It’s hours later by the time they leave the country club—no, no, Charles said it was specifically a padel club. They part ways with his brothers and then they’re driving back through the winding streets to his apartment. She ogles, like she’s been doing since she got here, all the careful, intricate architecture and the perfectly manicured manner of the whole place. It’s like people don’t live here, like she’s in a made-up land. She latches onto every imperfection—a crack in the sidewalk, a shrub with a single projection, a half-ragged French flag on the stern of a super yacht. It makes it all feel human, lived in, like the place someone can grow up, the place he grew up. 

After two hurried showers and a change of clothes they set off for lunch at Charles’ self-proclaimed “favorite restaurant.” It’s a sushi place, which she finds interesting, because not once has she heard him talk about sushi when talking about his favorite foods. 

Charles parks in a garage that’s a fifteen minute walk from the restaurant because, as he puts it, she’s walking the streets with the nation’s best tour guide. He starts the tour with the middle three corners of the Grand Prix, in reverse order—the hairpin, mirabeau bas, and portier, and then they take the quarter-or-so mile walk to the first of many monuments that Chris wouldn’t even attempt to pronounce in her own head. It’s there, somewhere between the forced tourist photos he snaps of her at Le Pêcheur and the one at the Promenade Princesse Louise-Hyppolyte, the truth comes to light. 

“What do you mean you did not tell anyone you were here?!” He exclaims all dramatic-like, dropping the phone from in front of his face, abandoning the search for what he considers the perfect angle. “You left the country, Chris.” She shrugs, doesn’t really see the big deal in all of it. It’s not like she… no, it is like she purposely didn’t tell people. That’s exactly what it is, actually. 

“I thought we were keeping this on the down-low.”

“Not that low!” He scolds, but she can tell he wants to laugh. He should, she thinks. It’s funny. “What if you die?”

She rolls her eyes. “Are you planning on killing me?” He glares daggers, burns a you’re not funny look into her head. “Letting me be killed?” She’s sure it annoys him to no end, positive almost, but it’s not like she can go back in time and tell everyone, and even if she could, she’s not sure she would. She likes this being just theirs, at least for now, while they can still manage it. She likes not having to report back to her parents—to her dad, especially—about her hotshot, young punk racing driver of a boyfriend and the silver spoon he feeds her french delicacies with. 

He sighs, shoulders wildly heavy, and holds her phone back out to her. His eyes are soft, frustrated in a way she didn’t expect them to be. She really didn’t think it was that crazy of a decision. “You should have told someone,” he says, and she feels immensely guilty. 

“Hannah knows,” she blurts, an honest offer of anything she has to not get such a serious look from him. He’s not meant to be serious.

“Hannah knows?”

“She knows I went somewhere. I didn’t tell her where,” she says.  I didn’t tell her where because my brother and father don’t want me to date a race driver, she doesn’t say, because that would only make him more nervous. 

“You should have told someone you were here,” he says, drags out the vowel sounds and tosses an arm over her shoulder. He kisses her temple, pulls her into him and chuckles. Okay, okay. He’s not actually upset.

“Probably,” she nods, a smile pulling on the corners of her lips. “I can tell them when I get home, if you want. Start some drama over Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure making a good impression will not be hard after that.”

MayaBay, that’s the name of his favorite restaurant, Thai and Japanese and a sushi bar that Charles talks about for the entire walk there. Apparently securing a reservation at the restaurant was hard enough, but a seat at the coveted sushi bar was something else entirely, and, according to Charles, was his first failed call after Chris’ visit was planned. She tries to tell him that it doesn’t matter where in the restaurant they eat, but he’s insistent that he’s going to try again and again, and again every time she comes to visit until he can manage to get them in. 

Her cheeks flush red at the revelation and she continues to hold out hope he’s oblivious to the heat that radiates from her face every time he meets her with some sort of compliment or insistence of inclusion. She doesn’t even think he’s conscious of the latter, which makes it all that more special. He doesn’t have to take special care to include her in his life, he just does it—does it like he’s always been doing it, always been sharing these small parts of his life with her. 

Lunch is enough to leave her full for the entire day. Po Pia Kung and Ceviche and Roti and Nigiri—two plates, no wasabi, per Charles’s request—and she’s worried that she’ll be full before getting the chance to lay eyes on their entrees. 

“This place is so special,” she tells him from across the tiny table, around the too-big centerpiece. “Thank you.”

He hums around a mouthful of Roti, brings a napkin to his mouth when he swallows so he can start talking that little bit sooner. “For what?”

Chris shrugs. Thank you… for. For. For everything, she supposes. “For wanting me here.”

He smiles, dimples digging deep, cheeks turning a rosy shade of pink when he adjusts in his seat, leans forward enough that it’s just barely perceivable. “Thank you for wanting to be here,” and you blush right back. 

It’s got to be quite the sight for any onlookers, the two of them acting all middle-school. They aren’t aware enough of the other people in the restaurant for it to be of note, and even if they were, they wouldn’t care. 

It’s Pad Thai for the main course with a side of three bites of Charles’ Kadou Yang stolen in the midst of quiet conversation, and then, as if they haven’t shared everything else already, they split the restaurant’s signature, meant to share dessert. 

“So,” he hums, somewhere on the walk back to the car—or, to the surprise Charles refuses to reveal that’s on the way back to the car. He swings their interlocked hands between their body, drags the action out in the same way he does the vowel. “When do I get to come to Georgia?”

It takes her by surprise, puts a kiddish smile on her face. It should be obvious that he would want to come, because, well, it’s where she lives. But, every conversation has always been about her coming to him. And it makes sense to her, because he’s always moving and she’s always in the same place. It makes sense that he wouldn’t come to her, but now that she thinks about it, it makes more sense that he would. “You want to come to Georgia?”

“That,” he laughs, “that is a silly question. Of course I want to.”

“Well, I mean. You’re always welcome, but I don’t know what your schedule looks like.” She knows it’s a mess, undoubtedly, even if she’s never laid eyes on it. She can only imagine the amount of people wanting him in places year round, and having all of that squished into a couple month period of time? She wouldn’t be surprised if he spends more time traveling in the offseason than he does when he’s actually racing. 

“I don’t know what it looks like, either,” he takes out his phone and clicks through half a dozen apps with his free hand—the one not intertwined with hers. “Uh…,” he chuckles at the screen like even he can’t believe just how in demand he is. “Next month I’m in Italy for some days, then France for Christmas and London for New Year.” Chris leans over to look at his calendar. 

“What about there?” She asks,  pointing to the block of dates that are empty between his color-coded trips to Italy and France. “My brother’s wedding is that weekend,” she says, and then realizes how crazy the proposition sounds and instantly attempts to retract it, “but you probably don’t want to go to that.”

She’d love more than anything to have him at Chase and Hannah’s wedding, but she can understand why he would want to do anything else. It’s one thing to make him travel all that way, but then to make him travel all that way for a wedding, where he’ll have to meet the parents and the siblings and dog—that’s just a cruel thing to imply is expected of him. It’s certainly no way to keep him wanting to come back for another visit. 

He bumps his shoulder against hers. “I love weddings.”

“Yeah?” She bumps back, dumb little smile on her face. “When you don’t know anyone there and your girlfriend is in the bridal party?”

He nods. “Yes.”

Unconsciously, she puts distance between their arms, to keep from getting too hot or to keep them from tripping or maybe for no reason at all because she really doesn’t notice that she does it. “My whole family’ll be there,” she continues meekly, and their arms are almost taught. 

“Good,” Charles scoffs, and pulls her right back to his side, like even an arm’s length is too far.  “I can fix the first impression you’re going to break.”

Chris rolls her eyes, both at his words and his actions—painfully endeared by both.  “Why are you so convinced I’m going to have something bad to say about you?”

“I’m not worried really about what you say, but your father is not going to like me if you say to him, ‘this is my boyfriend who I saw in two different countries without telling to you.’”

“Yeah,” she nods, bites back a laugh against the skin on the inside of her cheek. It shouldn’t be as funny as it is to her; the state of her life. “Yeah, you definitely have a point there,” she cuts the vowel short, chokes on a laugh, sucks in her own lips in an attempt to keep them from spilling, the laugh escaping silently through her nose. He meets her with a matching—no, a somehow dramatized mirroring—of her expression that only makes it that much harder not to laugh. When she finally does break, there are practically tears in her eyes, and it was never even that funny. 

He smiles at her laugh, like always, and shakes his head. “I will have to come to this wedding to do damage control.” 

“Probably,” she nods, still laughing. It’s like it’s all just sunk in for her—the boyfriend. The long distance boyfriend, as in, long distance. Whatever everyone else considers long distance, times the distance of the Atlantic Ocean and the average net worth of his hometown. The fact that he was a stranger just a few months ago, and now she’s in her second foreign country in three days with him and it all feels so normal. The fact that she didn’t even want to go on that Hot Lap—hot laps, plural— or that she didn’t have any interest in going to the race. If she’d tried just a little bit harder to get out of it, or stayed in the beer tent for just ten minutes longer or, or, or. It’s not funny at all, and yet it’s hilarious. 

“You’re ridiculous, you know this?”

“I know this.” She sighs, deep and slow and grounding, one stray chuckle slipping through her lips before she can continue. “Don’t book any flights, then—Until I make sure it’s all good with Hannah.”

“Yes ma’am,” he says, salutes her with his phone still in his hand and everything.

“Okay, so,” Charles sighs, drops his head against the pillow with a soft plop. Lunch was hours ago, now, succeeded by a walk around the Japanese Gardens, a trip to the supermarket because his fridge is, as Chris so affectionately referred to it as—bachelor pad chic—and a personal tour around the Prince’s Car Collection where he got to show off his favorite memories. It’s after dinner, even. After half-stale pasta made by him and meal-saving chicken expertly prepared by her, after two episodes of a French reality show with English closed captioning, after a day he won’t soon forget. It’s then, in bed, while she reads the final pages of the book she’s been cutting away at for weeks now, that he tests his knowledge on the information he’s been quizzing her for afternoon. “Chandler is the oldest, and she’s dating Alexis.”

“Correct,” Chris says, turns the page on her book. 

“But the drama is that Alexis doesn’t like any of your family, so she and your sister moved away and don’t come to anything.” She hums her response this time, and he wonders if she’s even listening all that much or if he could get her to agree to anything right now. “And then Chase is in the middle, he’s marrying Hannah. But the drama is Hannah was—” before he can even get the next word out, she’s glancing over at him to interject. “Hannah is your best friend, and was before Chase dated her. And she has a little boy named Reid with a dickhead.”

“Yup.”

“And then you, my perfect little angel.”

She smiles at the pages of her book. He likes making her smile. “Don’t forget it.”

“Your parents are Bill and Cindy, short for… William and,” he pauses. She pauses. He has no idea what Cindy is short for. “Lucinda?” Chris blinks, hard, dog ears the corner of her page and shuts her book. If he didn’t already know it was a pretty shit guess, he sure knows it now. Sometimes a blink is worth a thousand and one words. 

“No,” she says, furrows her brows so subtly that it shouldn’t be recognizable, but it is. And then she blinks again. 

“I knew that,” he boasts, his best cocky tone and a matching smug expression on his face. “I was just testing you.”

She chuckles, leans to her right to set the book down on the bed-side table there. “On my own mother’s name?” She questions, tucking herself under the covers and scooching over, leaning against his chest comfortably. He would let her lie like this as long as she wanted. It’s so sweet to have her in his arms.

“Well, you call her ‘Mom,’” he explains, even down to the forced American accent when he says ‘Mom.’ “So maybe you did not know.”

“Cindy isn’t short for anything.”

“Like I said,” he twists her hair around his finger slowly, mindlessly, without any sort of purpose or intention. When she uses him like a pillow this way, he can always smell her shampoo. He’s been trying to place it for days now. Coconut, he knows—but there is something else there, too, something he can’t put his finger on.  “I know this.”

“Okay, continue then.”

“I will,” he says, lets the twirled hair fall from his finger and kisses her head with a smile on his face. “They have a dog called Beans that you call Beanie-Baby,” he pauses. “And the drama is, your parents do not like me.”

He can see the apples of her cheeks flare in his peripheral, a laugh stirring in her chest. “The drama is: there is no drama with them,” she says. “They’re all bark no bite.”

He adjusts underneath her, sighs all heavy and deflated because the thought of it—her family, her parents. It’s so fucking intimidating, it is. Because he knows how important they are to her, how highly she regards their opinion, even if she pretends that she doesn’t. He knows that it’s everything to her, and if he makes even a single mis-step he could ruin it all—their opinion, her opinion, all of it. And something in his gut, a pit in his stomach tells him that she’s already made a mis-step for him when she came over here without telling anyone she was coming. Why wouldn’t she tell anyone she was coming? “What do I even talk to them about?”

“I don’t know,” she says, adjusts to accommodate his adjustment, and eventually they’ll get properly comfortable. “Racing.”

“We race in different cars.”

“But it’s all cars.”

He opens his mouth to speak, pauses, clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth and then finally, “it’s different.”

“I think you’re overreacting a bit, here,” she says, and he rolls his eyes. He’s not overreacting, she’s underreacting. “I get along with your Mom and your brothers and I don't know what anyone is saying half of the time.” Okay, okay, maybe she has a point there. He did kind of throw her to the wolves this week—not that his family are wolves, just. Meeting the parents before the relationship is even a relationship is. It’s just messed up for him to do, and she’d handled it gracefully, perfectly and flawlessly charmed everyone. 

But then again. “Yeah, but you’re you.” Anyone would be charmed by her. She’s very charming. 

“And you’re you.”

He shakes his head. “You don’t understand.” She can’t possibly understand it because he doesn’t even properly understand it, the way he feels about her. The fear he feels about losing all the indecipherable feelings. It’s just good, everything about her, about being near her. It’s all so sweet and nice and good and he really, really doesn’t want to screw it up.

“You’ve already met my Dad,” she starts, clearly trying to calm him down, to ease his nerves. “My brother is just like him but more annoying,” she laughs, and even though he’s half deflated, her laugh still puts a weak smile on his face. “My sister probably won’t speak to you, and my Mom loves anyone that calls her ma’am and tells her she looks young. Just don’t talk about racing with her.”

“You just told me—”

“With the boys,” Chris clarifies.

“Your Mum doesn’t like Chase racing?”

“Does yours?” Good point. Is there a mother on the face of the planet, over all of history, that loved the idea of their kid racing other kids around high speed corners without any regard for their own lives?

“Then why did she let him?”

“I’m sure the same reason yours let you. Dad’s can be very convincing.”

His stomach drops. “Yeah. Yeah, they can be. My dad was.” His fingers trace mindless circles on the skin of her arm, soft and warm and clean. His eyes focus on the little red light on the bottom of his television, the one that’s only on when the TV is off. “He would spend so much time at the karting track with my brothers and I, you would not believe it. Sometimes my Mum would say that we lived there and should take blankets to sleep in the karts,” He says, and Chris laughs, makes him aware of his tracing fingers, but doesn’t stop them. “She would always say to us, ‘be careful, drive slow,’ and my Dad would always say ‘be careful, have fun.’ Now Mum will say to us just to be careful.”

“Did your Dad drop the ‘have fun,’ too?”

Red Light. Soft skin. He knew it was coming, it’s always coming, only a matter of time before he had to tell her. Honestly, he’s surprised it had gone this long, that she hadn’t asked about his father the moment she met the rest of the family and he was absent. He can’t stomach the look of pity she’ll give him. She can take it from everyone else, always had—but the image of that look on her face, the dead dad look. He never wants her to look at him like that. 

Red light. Stupid shapes. “No, uh,” he drags out his own words, putting off the inevitable by even a few more moments. “My father died when I was a teenager.” 

At least he knows her google search of him months earlier wasn’t too in-depth. “Oh my God, Charles,” She says, voice quiet and soft, like she thinks her words will break him. They won’t. He wishes she knew they won’t. 

“No,” he chuckles, kisses the top of her head. “No. Don’t look at me like that,”

“I’m not,” she protests, but he doesn’t have to look at her to confirm. Nobody is above the look of pity. 

“You are.”

“You’re not even looking at me,” she says, sits up off his chest. He keeps his eyes on the red light. “Look at me,” she insists, a soft hand on his jaw, pulling him back to her. 

He rolls his eyes before he looks, before there’s an eternity of silent eye contact because she doesn’t have the look on her face. Anyone can tell she feels bad, especially him, but it’s different. It’s different, and he doesn’t feel like some pathetic puppy in a cold corner. He doesn’t feel like a nineteen year old who’s world is in shambles. He just feels like him. Like it’s all okay. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t know,” she finally speaks, and he hears it now. She doesn’t think he’s going to break, that’s now why she’s meek. She feels guilty, guilty that she brought it up, that she didn’t know, that he thinks she would ever think he would break.

“How would you?”

Sincere in her apology, in her guilt, she doubles down. “I’m still sorry.”

Her eyes are filled with something pure, some innocent kind of affection and he feels awful that she feels awful. “I’m sorry for going on about him.”

“I’ll listen as long as you want to talk.”

He smiles, a genuine laugh falling from his lips. “I can talk forever.”

“Then,” she smiles, leans over to kiss him before getting comfortable again, snuggling into his chest like before. “Tell me all about him.”

They sleep late the next morning. Maybe they’re adjusting to the timezone—unlikely, especially in Chris’ case—or they were just up to late talking, but Chris is stretching against the sheets, against Charles, just after nine.

It’s no surprise that she wakes up tangled in a mess of limbs, not even something she minds. Even with her hand asleep and painfully tingley. She knows that she won’t get to wake up like this tomorrow morning, or the morning after, or every morning for at least a month, so. She doesn’t mind the heat and the sleeping limbs and the threat of a knot in her shoulder. 

She wiggles out from his grip without waking him, grabs her phone from the bedside table and checks the time. She scans the room, eyes floating over all of her things scattered about. She should start packing up, she thinks. Start packing and getting ready to leave. 

She tiptoes across the room, around the corner into the bathroom to start there, far away from his sleeping body. Quietly, carefully, she brushes her teeth, washes her face and tugs a brush through her hair, tying it back into a ponytail. Slowly, she gathers her stuff—makeup and hair tools and skincare—and packs it away carefully into her toiletries bag. 

When she comes back into the bedroom, still cringing with every creak of the floor under her feet, she finds Charles awake in bed, soft, sleepy smile when she turns the corner. “Come back to bed,” he’s pleading before she can even mutter a good morning. 

“I have to pack,” she argues half-heartedly, because she wants nothing more than to climb back into bed, and his voice is no help—all hoarse and raspy with sleep. 

“Why?” He asks, drags the letter sounds out into a yawn that makes her smile. 

“Because,” she says, draws out the e-sound to tease his cadence. “It’s almost nine-thirty, and I'm leaving in two hours.”

“You don’t have two hours of stuff,” he protests. 

“I don’t like to be late,” she continues over her shoulder, opening her suitcase and laying it flat on the floor at the end of the bed, readjusting the still-folded clothes she hadn’t ended up wearing. 

“Well,” he says, stretches against his sheets and then he’s getting out of bed with another yawn. “Let me help you, then.”

He steps around her open suitcase carefully. There isn’t exactly a surplus of floorspace for him to find his footing in. He disappears into the bathroom, locks the door behind him while she continues to gather her things, reappearing ten minutes later. “Give me a kiss,” he says, trudging over to her with open arms. 

“You’re so needy this morning,” she quips, slinking her arms around his neck and pulling him down into a kiss. He hums against her lips in agreement and the vibration makes her giggle into his mouth. 

Chris makes an attempt to return to the task at hand, but he has different plans, and follows around right behind her. His arms wrap around her torso everytime she stills for even a moment and he hugs her from behind, kisses her shoulders and her neck and her hair. 

“You make it hard to pack,” she tells him, and he laughs into the crook of her neck. What she really means is: you make it hard to leave. 

“Come back to bed.”

“I want to,” she sighs, leans back against his body.

He turns with her so they’re facing the bed. “It is right there,” he says, and she groans. “Look at it, all warm and comfy.” He’s right, the sheets look so soft, the pillows so fluffed. It’s a bed begging to be slept in, to be lounged on, to be snuggled by. 

She wiggles from his grasp, backs away from him towards the door and makes a challenge that she knows she has no intention of winning; “We can go back to bed,” she starts, still inching further away from him, further away from the bed, “if you can catch me,” and then she bolts. 

Chris’ high school claim to fame might have been that she was an all-state track and field athlete, but she’s got nothing on her boyfriend, who’s made a career out of his reflexes. It’s all pants and squeals and laughs that go on for entirely too long. 

She realizes that she’s trapped when they’re stood on opposite sides of his dining room table, and she couldn’t be the least bit bothered. She tries to fake him out, to move left and then right, but he predicts the move before she even makes it, catches her with a strong grip around her waist and lifts  her off her feet, carries her into the bedroom and tackles her onto the bed. 

click here for the nsfw cut

Chris’ flight leaves Nice at 12:30 pm, and then it’s a two and a half hour layover in Amsterdam, until finally, she lands in Atlanta long after sunset. She Ubers home and by the time she’s flopping down onto her couch, it’s almost eleven. Charles is the only call she makes before crashing. Then again, who else would she call? He’s one of two people who knew she was anywhere but home, and the only one who’d made her promise to call—despite the time difference and the Uber delay—with the threat of calling the first Georgia police number he could find on google to report her missing. 

He answers on the third ring, voice with the same rasp of that morning. “Hello?”

“Hi,” she speaks through a yawn, lays the phone beside her ear on the couch cushion and leaving it on speaker. 

“Hey,” he laughs, and she can perfectly hear the smile on his lips. She can almost feel it, the way the room reacts to it. 

“You gave me a hickey,” she says, fingering the bruise that lies an inch above her collarbone. His giggle on the other end is loud and boyish—particularly teenager-ish. 

“So, you made it home safe?”

“Well, if you ignore the vampire bruise on my neck.”

“Sorry,” he says, but he’s still laughing like a little kid. 

“It’s not funny,” she warns, thinly veiled because even she can hear the tired laugh at the back of her throat. 

“It’s a little funny.”

Chris rolls her eyes. “I have to see my entire family tomorrow!”

“Eh,” he hums, and just like the smile, she can see the shrug. She can see him so well it’s like he’s here or she’s there or that they’re somewhere together. Somewhere that doesn’t really matter, because they’re both there, smiling and laughing and shrugging. God. God, she already misses him so much. “They already don’t like me.”

“Charles!” She scolds, but she’s laughing now, too.

“I’m sorry,” he smooths. “I am. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“I know,” Chris sighs, pokes her own neck. “I’m not upset, I’ll just have to whisk it all morning.”

He chuckles. “You have to do what?” 

“You know, like. For eggs…or baking. A whisk,” with every word that leaves her mouth, another letter is types into her phone’s search bar. Google Translate: whisk.  “Le fouet?”

“Le fouet??” He questions with a tone that would make her think she’d called him a slur. “I do not think that is right.”

“Le fouet à…” she trails off, debating internally over the pronunciation of the words in front of her. “How do you say the ‘o’ and the ‘e’ when they’re together?” She asks, butchers it before he has the chance to give her any answer. “Œufs?”

“I have no idea what you are telling to me.”

“Telling you,” Chris corrects. “What I’m telling you.”

“Oh, mon dieu,” he groans. “This is sad. We can talk in the morning.”

“Okay,” she nods, yawns again. It’s long past her bedtime, and she has no idea how many hours now she’s been awake for. It’s gotta be going on twenty or more, surely. Surely. 

“Thank you for calling me,” he says, softly, genuinely grateful for the call. She’s grateful he’s grateful. It’s sweet, all the little things he does to show he cares. The way he does most of them without realizing it. 

“Thank you for wanting me to call.”

last chapter masterlist next chapter

#ma&thbp #charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc fic #charles leclerc fanfic #charles leclerc smut #charles leclerc x reader #Charles Leclerc x oc #Charles Leclerc fluff #Charles Leclerc blurb #Charles Leclerc angsst #f1 edit #f1 fic #f1 fandom #f1 fanfic #f1 2023 #f1 imagine #f1 x you #f1 x reader #f1 x oc #ferrari #Charles leclerc #cameos from #lorenzo leclerc #arthur leclerc #I think its just them

[nico-nico-suavecito]

Trans Year of Gratitude

Despair mitigation in the face of unceasing tragedy - a reflection on the last year following the Club Q shooting.

One year ago on Trans Day of Remembrance, I was scheduled to speak at my friend’s church about the nonprofit I work for. I was going to talk about queer joy and trans youth and all the work the church has supported us in doing. Then, I was going to pick up my partner and we were going to drive to Phoenix to visit my chosen family there, with a stop in Santa Fe.

I woke up that morning to a deluge of text messages and notifications, asking me if I was okay. I couldn’t tell you which headline first crossed my vision that finally pieced it all together. Just the flash of words. Club Q. Shooting. Injured. Dead.

In the months before this, I’d been in a state of trans revelry. I was back on testosterone. I was experimenting with self-expression and letting myself be the alt boy I never got to be in high school. My friends and I were going out dancing each week. I’d just entered a T4T relationship and was head over heels in love. I’d just restarted the queer open mics in October after a covid hiatus and was excited for them to be a regular event again.

I still went to church that Sunday morning, for possibly the first time in years. I struggled to be present — I kept scouring social media for news, reading my friends statuses and comments. “Has anyone heard from…” “Can someone confirm if they’re safe…”

I still went up to speak. Through tears, I wondered at our holidays. Trans Day of Visibility. Trans Day of Remembrance. I felt so much rage, the kind of rage that is love at its fiercest. We deserve better holidays than this. We deserve trans days of joy, and love, and everything beyond survival.

When I sat back down in the pew, I opened my phone. I saw that Daniel, who had been to my house multiple times for hair cuts and parties and who I admired as an out and proud trans man in our community, was gone.

I broke down in the pews. As the congregation sung “We Are the Ones” by Sweet Honey in the Rock, I started to write a wishlist of everything I wanted for trans people instead of what we were given. I wished us everything from bleeding bigots to coffee in bed with those we love. That’s how trans day of i love you was written.

That day, as people were sharing my post to their story, I started collecting people’s additions to the poem because they gave me hope and gratitude.

On the way to Phoenix, my partner Brin and I cried, wondered at the future that was feeling ever more uncertain, and we sang at the top of our lungs with Say Anything - Alive! Alive! Alive with love!

That night, when we made love in a Santa Fe hostel, I felt a certain urgency. Life felt so precious, so fleeting. I wanted to devour her. I wanted to be swallowed up by beauty.

She woke up the next morning with a cough and chills. One positive covid test and a six hour drive later, and we were back in Colorado Springs.

Like last year, I am in my house today, quarantining because of covid. This time, it’s been near impossible to find a PCR test to confirm it. My rapid test was negative, as it often has been when I’ve had covid. Still, in trying to keep my community safe, I can’t go to any memorials. I’m writing this instead.

In the months following, I was often asked, in interviews, by allies, in loaded how are yous, about how things are for queer people in Colorado Springs in the aftermath of Club Q. Whether things were better now that Colorado Springs has double the rainbow flags on display than it once had.

I think people want to hear that things are better. Increased support for the queer community in the aftermath would help our human desire for life to have a narrative in which tragedy serves a greater purpose. But it doesn’t. People are dead who should not be dead. They should be here, living their lives, with countless moments of joy before them. People are alive and still suffering their wounds, both physical and mental, with insufficient support. The needs of survivors have been buried beneath greed. Queer- and transphobia continues to be alive and well.

I don’t go dancing without knowing the emergency exits. Hiring security is now an essential part of hosting queer open mic, and this precaution is also salt in the wound.

What I can also say is that this community is so strong. The queer people of Colorado Springs continue to organize, fight, and live with a vibrancy that inspires me every day. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Still, following Club Q, the world feels more uncertain than ever. It’s an uncertainty that’s been growing — long before Q, long before covid, long before Trump.

It’s hard to look at the shooting in a vacuum. After all, every piece of anti-trans legislation that was introduced this year feels like salt in the wound that Club Q tore open. How can anyone heal when every day there is a new headline about a new group of people who want to legislate against you and people like you.

These years have begged so many questions, questions that many people in this country have been asking for decades: What does America hold in store for us? This country that cares so little for all its people that it would feed them to the maw of capitalism, a hungry god that can never be satiated? A country that let us down to the tune of one million covid deaths and counting? A country that shows time and time again how little it cares for the most vulnerable, with every mass shooting, every piece of anti-trans legislation, every new covid case, every instance of police brutality against people of color, every gallon of petroleum that will push us over nature’s tipping point, every dollar funding the genocide of Palestinians?

Recently, a friend of mine posted on Facebook asking how anyone can feel any peace and joy in the world these days.

I’ve spent the majority of this year trying to figure that out after years of burnout that, despite the fact that I have so much to be thankful for, had embedded a deep exhaustion in me that left me often anhedonic and withdrawn from, not only the world, but myself as well. I worried that this exhaustion would mean the end of my life-long career in activism and organizing at best, and the ultimate succumbing to despair at worst.

I am a person prone to despair, and have been since I was a kid. Not just sadness, but despair — a helpless emotion, a sadness without hope. I’ve always taken the world very personally. The first time I met depression and suicidality were in middle school when I watched An Inconvenient Truth. This started a year-long spiral, during which I was convinced that human beings were parasites destroying this earth, and as a human being, there was no way I could logically justify my existence. Despair has accompanied me since, even when I eventually realized that people are capable of immense love and beauty, and that the real drain on this earth is capitalistic greed and fascism.

I want to share here what has helped me as the case for despair has only continued to grow, in the hopes that it may offer a way forward for those who, like me, struggle at times to get out of bed, and who feel like they are often at the precipice of being consumed by said despair. And, as with everything I write, this is also a series of reminders to myself, as knowledge doesn’t always equal practice. I have been in a very despair-forward place lately, so I am hoping I might course correct myself in writing this all out.

I believe the three prophylactics against paralyzing despair are gratitude, hope, and action. I believe them to be three sisters unified in a dance, their chalices held to the air in service of joy. When I speak of joy, I don’t speak of the mythology of capital-H-Happy. I don’t think there is such a destination. I think of joy as a tool of resistance. I think of it as that which fuels us forward, in even the darkest of times.

If I am to continue to be an engaged and active resistor against that which seeks to annihilate all of us - corporate greed, bigotry, fascism, I can't be overcome by despair, despite being very prone to despair, as I've been for as long as I can remember. In that way, joy serves a vital purpose in the revolution.

Gratitude is a muscle I am trying to work out every day. I think we owe it to this world, this world that continues to be so full of beauty, despite all of the terrible things that happen within it, to try and be grateful for what is here and good right now. These moments — my boyfriend bringing me coffee in bed, the bird stopping by my bird feeder, sitting on the dock of the lake by my house, every time I go out dancing at the gay bar and nothing bad happens — these moments feel more precious than ever. I try to savor them, despite the knowledge that 1. terrible things are happening or can happen at all times, and 2. these good moments are likely to become more and more scarce for all of us if fascism and climate change progress at the rate they are. If I become overcome by despair with this knowledge, the reserves of my hope go unfilled and I can’t be of service to this world. So, I have to be grateful. I have to savor what’s good.

Gratitude also provides the foundation of hope. Hope is an intentional choice, and not one made easily.

“People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go.” — Tweet by Crowsfault

Without hope, there is nothing to fight for. There is nothing to build toward. We have to have a vision of what can be. So many forces seek to take imagination from us, but we have to be able to imagine the future we want to build, not just the systems we want to dismantle. Admittedly, my imagination isn’t what it used to be — chronic stress has weakened it, but the gratitude that I am present with helps rebuild my imagination of what could be.

I am grateful when I see my trans friends happy and safe. What if all trans people got to be happy and safe. What if we could live their lives without an ounce of fear. What if we got to dance with abandon, without thinking of the emergency exits.

I am grateful when I see my trans friends have access to gender affirming health care. What if all trans people had access to gender affirming health care. What if it was free, and easy to access. What if that was the case for all health care for everyone.

I am grateful when I get to be in nature and feel how I am part of it, how I am, in the words of Alan Watts, “the universe experiencing itself.” What if we all felt that way. What if we all realized we create ourselves in the forge of how we love the world around us.

I am grateful for the organizers, the activists, the changemakers, the artists. What if the world was guided by people like them, people who lead with such a fierce love?

When I feel overcome by dread, it is their words that buoy me. One poem I return to often is Ross Gay’s “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.” If I go outside and listen to it and watch the birds, and the clouds, and the people pass by, I can mainline enough hope into me that I can at least do what must be done. Work. Love the people I love. Create. Organize and advocate. If I’m lucky, there will be enough beautiful things that happen that day that I can find more gratitude and hope to keep me going.

Hope and gratitude would be empty platitudes without action, the truest triumph over despair. I think that we all have roles to play in this world inundated with pain. I think we as a community are in the process of learning the power of our voices. The ways that we can amplify gratitude, and hope, and action in all we do, all we share, all we write, all we create.

I have started to see it as a cycle. Act. Act until you must rest and remind yourself of a future you can hope toward to motivate you. If you can’t envision a future you can hope for, be intentional in being grateful for what is so that you can see what can be. If you need to be reminded of what is, seek and create moments in your life that kindle the flames of your gratitude.

I say all this, and still, there are some weeks I can barely leave my bed. I always try my best, but my best isn’t what it used to be. But I have to try and try and keep trying. And gratitude, hope, and action, however foolish and futile they might feel at times, are the best ways I’ve found to try right now, so that we might be able to continue to fight like hell for the people we love, both dead and alive.

P.S. A note for you, reader. I am grateful you’re here. What if the world had more people like you? What would be possible then?

#lgbtq #trans #transgender #club q shooting #lgbtqia #trans day of remembrance #tdor #mass shooting #queer joy #trans day of i love you #poetry #art #activism #club q #colorado springs

[hhighkey]

Haunted // Chapter Five, kyoto p1

Inumaki Toge x OC (female)

Chapter Rating: general

Story Contains: unhealthy relationships, strangers to lowkey!friends to lovers, family issues, OC is in high school going into university after summer, she thought curses were ghosts, bad parents want their child dead, 18/19 character ages, toge is so in love, eventual sex prior to relationship, soft dom toge, dacryphylia, over protective/ possessive toge, jealous toge

Word Count: 2573

KEY: 'text written with single quotations are writing/typing in notes or messages by toge' and bold text is when japanese sign language comes in

Tags: reply to be added

Masterlist

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THE afternoon sun bathed down on the buildings that sat up upon the hills looking down onto the Kamo River, paths alongside. The blue sky above was dotted with fluffy white clouds that drifted in the gentle breeze above the city of Kyoto. Tourists and locals alike were out and about- many walking, cycling, and or relaxing on the banks of the river. Two girls in specific had gotten up early to begin their long walk to see different temples and end up sitting on a tiny hill where rocks went down to meet the water. They were enjoying their trip and no school, giggling about recent social media posts, etc.

It had been five days since they were attacked by a curse. Four days since Keiko was given the choice to join Jujutsu High. Three days since Aki's Grandma took the two to Kyoto. The friends didn't know how to talk about what happened that afternoon, when they saw each other for the first time after they just laid in Aki's bed watching television. No words could describe the schock and how they were trying to come to terms with how fast it happened.

Keiko's long black hair continued to whip into her hair as each time she'd laugh annoyed trying to tame it. Finally, she used a hairtie from her wrist to put it back; which she hated low ponytails. Aki was glued to her phone searching up things for them to do, where to shop, and pictures of Kyoto in other seasons.

"I wish we could come back in the spring, look at these pictures of when the cherry blossoms are fully blooming." Aki showed her the phone, where it showed pretty pink blossoms adorning the trees, sky and ground.

Keiko glanced around and back to the picture, she could only imagine how majestic it would be to experience that in real like than a picture. Few months earlier and they would be, "wow.. I mean we can during uni, we’ll have much more time.. hopefully."

"That's a great idea, I can’t wait."

"Let’s just pray rumors of uni being easier than high school are true."

"I know! Sort of an oversight there in my opinion to make high school more demanding." Keiko laughed, "I can't believe that's coming up... we’ve worked so hard."

"Don't even wanna think about it! Parents started getting all emotional lately." Aki groaned, "too much work, let's just not go. Convince your parents to let us mooch off them forever."

"I wish! But hey, if we hate University of Tyoko we can just transfer here." she thought back to Aki's grandma forcing them to do a small tour to get the girls thinking about university, "it's too close to home really.”

"Not like we knew your parents would suddenly let you leave town months after we decided.. though the six hours to get here was pretty lengthy.”

"I knowww but probably because we didn’t take the train." Keiko poked her.

"Ah true, but hey we really lucked out getting on the same dorm floor."

"Though I was gonna cry when we got the placement emails! If was smart of your grandma to have us email housing.” Keiko smiled.

"Literally! I swear if somehow fucking Emiko ended up in our building I’m dying."

"You still hate her?" she laughed at Aki's face of disgust,

"Always will!"

Keiko knew they’d be in different major taking different classes, around new people. They had their different hobbies and strengths in school and life. With Keiko having had private tutoring and being stuck at home, she found herself enjoying books on anything she could get her hands on. So suddenly math and science made sense to her as numbers just solved themselves, whereas Aki was torn between economics and teaching. Keiko had safety in her family life so leaving home seemed like it could be a great idea. Sometimes it felt like there wasn't much for her in Tokyo besides Aki; why stay? University was a touchy subject for a lot of students she felt. Keiko didn't necessarily have any strong emotions about it besides a mixture of laziness and excitement. Primary thankfulness to still have her best friend by her side.

A sudden VIBRATING snapped Keiko from her thoughts. She stumbled to reach into her purse to grab her phone.

"Oh?" Keiko murmured as she saw a text message from a number she didn't recognize.

"What's what?" Aki asked trying to see her friends phone screen,

"Text from an unknown number."

"Who!?"

"Inumaki.. forgot I gave him my number for a second." Keiko flushed red.

"What does it say?" Aki only knew the little about what Keiko told her- he'd saved them and he had been the most welcoming to her.

"Just saying that it's him."

"Oh, lame." Aki huffed, "you better tell me everything about this boy! I am gonna get you a boyfriend somehow,"

"Shut up, it's not like that! Lemme just respond," Keiko giggled shaking her head, knowing this she'd be spilling everything she knew about him to her.

4:55 pm

UNKNOWN: Hi it's Inumaki Toge:)

KEIKO: hi!! do u prefer to go by toge or inumaki? people seemed to call u by ur surname but i have to know what to put your contact as :)

UNKNOWN: Both is fine!

KEIKO: cool! also cool u texted

TOGE: So how are you doing?

KEIKO: well, i feel a lot better now knowing i'm not losing my mind or seeing things.

KEIKO: sorry I left abruptly btw...

KEIKO: Aki is okay, so i'm okay. we're in kyoto rn it's nice

TOGE: That city's nice! n glad you guys are okay. Injuries looked bad

TOGE: And you're good, sorry about Gojo

KEIKO: yeah, it's like all i see when i sleep now. and i am liking it here, much different than tokyo 

KEIKO: and its k, i wasn't doing great

TOGE: Can I ask you something?

KEIKO: yeah sure

TOGE: Would you mind coming to visit when you're back?

KEIKO: uh oh did your teacher put you up to this

TOGE: Yes and no

KEIKO: i don't have much of a choice do i ? lol

TOGE: Not exactly, but I'll stay by you if you'd like.

KEIKO: that'd be nice. ur teacher's a little straightforward

TOGE: He's interesting. You'll also be meeting the principal too

KEIKO: oh great :/

TOGE: You'll be fine :)

"Sounds like they want to see me back at Jujutsu High." Keiko groaned as she figured there was no point in responding right now. She wished the conversation with Inumaki didn't go that direction, "yeah it's super pretty there and cool to learn about curses and what not I guess, but I just want to be left alone right now."

"Aw his texting seems cute, glad he cares about us." Aki proclaimed looking through the texts, "At least go to see this boy! And when have you been such a debbie-downer? This could be that adventure we wanted."

"Seems a little dangerous to me... and I guess I would like to see Toge again."

"Uh ohhh crush incoming!" Aki teased.

"Oh my god, no way, I don't even know him. I'm just glad someone's being nice over there it's weird." Keiko scrunched up her face to give Aki a playfully annoyed look. She put her phone back in her purse so her friend couldn't stare at the messages some more.

"Maybe I can meet him sometime."

"Of course! He saved us. I hope if I have to go back I can meet some other people, being stuck with Gojo will definitely have me running again."

Keiko knew that eventually she'd have to explain more to Aki. It was all on the tip of her tongue ready to spill out, she knew she'd be ready to talk soon. It was also obvious that Aki was itching to as well.

"God I am burning up, I need some more of that breeze," Keiko growned as she stretched her legs out more letting a soft groan out.

Keiko studied her friend's features with careful eyes as she felt more precious than normal. At times, Keiko only saw the 'unconcious and bloody' Aki when she looked at her. At first it startled her, made her stare because she didn't know what to say. But now, at least, she could push the dark thoughts from her mind and appreicate the fact she still had her best friend.

"Ready to go get some tea then?" The two had one more thing planned for the night- Ippodo Tea. It was located in a quiet neighborhood almost an hour from where they currently were. Aki had chosen to go shopping the last few days and stop at known food places, besides seeing Kyoto University the tea shop was the one place Keiko wanted to go. "We should catch the train to get there it'll get you out of the sun," Keiko continued excitedly, "did you know they celebrated three-hundred years last year? They opened in 1717."

"Three-hundred? That's insane... and you would know that,"

"I know." she rolled her eyes pretending not to hear that last part, "I heard their tea is the highest of quality, like top in the world. Literally so happy we're going. They do tastings so you can try different kinds. Finally get to make my own matcha," Keiko was practically drooling over the thought of fresh, high quality tea that would surpass what she made by a long shot.

"You know, you're cute when you get all excited about things!"

"Thanks," Keiko stuck out her tongue at Aki as she watched her friend bounce up to her feet, where she stood above Keiko with her hands on her hips, in a triumphant manner. She grinned down and said,

"Come on lets go slowpoke."

-

Maybe it was the fact neither had the experience of a trauma together, or separately that bled into the other's life to know how to handle it. They were still children in the eyes of society as a whole, but adult enough to choose paths that would take them to the rest of their lives. They shouldn't have been subjected to the evil that appeared in the alley that day, the curse that almost killed them and changed their trajectory forever. The mood was sullen between the two girls as they sipped their tea they so dutifully learnt to make and understand the history of. It was like dark, tear filled clouds hovered over their heads as their gazes evaded the others- like it was hitting them in the moment of silence.

"For the first time I haven't known how to talk about something with you." Keiko said, a solemn look in her eyes as she stared down at the half empty tea.

"I don't think we've been ready the last few days. Had to process, it's weird because it feels like it didn't happen. Like it was all a dream at this point."

"I feel that," Keiko replied, "but also you were definitely unconscious for the worst parts... not that I'm trying to minimize anything, I swear."

"I know." Aki wanted to reach across and grab her hands, try to console her but she felt frozen, "I'm sorry I wasn't there to protect or help you, or experience it too. I don't know what I'd do if I watched you almost die."

"It's not your fault. I'm okay, really. And I think the fact it was me who did something about it helps. Just the pure pain of losing you and even Kaito made something just... happen. I can't explain."

"I'm proud of you. And thankful we didn't die that's for sure."

"Me too and Aki, I have to tell you about when I was at Jujutsu High without you guys," Keiko took a deep breath as she talked about Gojo wanting her to join the school, figured she could be useful. And as she began to talk about her dad, her voice cracked. With a kind look from Aki she took a deep breath and continued. Keiko couldn't even believe her own words as she said "they're jujutsu sorcerers Aki... My dads one of their leaders or something. Gojo told me to be careful."

"Wow. I-I don't know what to say about that. Now you have some answers..."

"There's no way about any of it." Keiko knew it would be a dangerous denial for her to keep thinking that way; but, it was eating her up. For days she tried not thinking about it while they began their trip, but as things slowed down she had more time to think. Keiko never kept things from Aki like this so she could think, however family ties seemed like an okay thing to keep private as she tried to sift through everything she knew.

"Maybe you should consider joining Jujutsu High to some extent... what if you can really help people? Find out the truth about your parents?"

Keiko frowned as she was suddenly deep in thought. What Aki asked was a good question- she literally saved her friends. What if more people would need her? There was a nagging feeling in her that Gojo or Jujutsu High wouldn't be leaving her alone anytime soon. Keiko didn't want people dying but she also didn't know if she could be the one to help. She didn't think she was fit to take on something like that. But she always wanted to help. Make a difference. However, the world of curses seemed dangerous, not anything she signed up for or thought that would be how she'd help.

"Don't you think it's weird my parents suddenly gave me freedom. How my mom's been so strange towards me...." her voice grew quieter with each world she spoke. In her mind it seemed absurde, questions her parents; but, as she said it aloud she realized maybe it wasn't so crazy after all, "what if they didn't want me knowing about this? And not to protect me..."

"I-" Aki stopped herself before she said anything. It was a complicated situation for two girls aged seventeen, normally she'd have something to say if it was about a boy. Boys and school were always the biggest issues in their lives, mostly.

"I feel stupid, confused Aki. I feel like I can't stop thinking about it unless we're engrossed doing something. At night I've been laying awake while you're fast asleep. It's terrible."

"I'm so sorry... that jujutsu doctor gave Kaito and I someone's number if we needed to talk. I think I'm going to take them up, maybe we could go together. Or I think you should go back to Jujutsu High."

"Or we can pretend like we didn't almost die?" Keiko laughed with a tinge of bitterness.

"That feels like it would be easier..."

Aki watched her friend with sad eyes as she reached across the table grabbing her hands in her own. She knew things may not get any better if they tried to run. She also knew that everything happening was well out of Keiko's comfort zome, she seemed to be struggling this whole trip, seeming absent-minded, "I promise we'll get through this. Together and with Kaito too, he barely knew us and this happened. Us three need each other at the least even if we decide we want nothing to do with the jujutsu sorcerers."

#jujutsu kaisen #inumaki toge #inumaki x reader #inumaki headcanons #gojo satoru #anime #jjk toge #jjk fanfic #toge fanfic #inumaki fanfic #AO’s haunted #text #slow pining #dealing with trauma #strangers to friends

[kittyprincessofcats]

Okay, I think I’m finally able to at least write a post about it: I’m seriously not okay after the latest RWBY episode.

[trigger warning for mentions of suicide, death, child death, animal death]

And I don’t mean this in a hyperbolic “oh no, the angst!” way, I mean I’m genuinely disturbed and upset and really angry at CRWBY for not putting a better trigger warning on that.

Like seriously, what kind of a lame warning is “might have distressing content” supposed to be? WHAT content, CRWBY? How is this supposed to help anyone decide whether to watch or not? It’s like one of those tumblr posts that put “[trigger warning]” at the top without specifying for what and it’s like... thanks, this is useless.

And it’s especially useless after the episode before had the exact same content warning and there the “upsetting content” ended up being some silly paper people. How the hell was anyone supposed to guess that the next episode with the exact same warning would have such an intense tone shift and so much genuinely disturbing stuff?

And I’m seeing Miles Luna warning people more explicitly on twitter, but like dude... y’all told us to stay off social media before these episodes, no one’s going to read that if you tweet it an hour before the release. Put it on the actual episode.

(And I don’t get it. For V8E14 they did so well with the Content Warning and putting the suicide hotline in the description! What changed to make their warnings so much more vague and useless now?)

I was visiting my sisters - who I hadn’t seen in months - over Easter and if I’d known what this episode was, how much it would upset me, heck if I’d had even a vague “Hey, this episode is genuinely really dark, that content warning is no joke this time” warning, I would have waited with watching until I was back home alone and could watch it alone, at my own pace, in small digestable pieces and where me breaking down about it wouldn’t be ruining any plans.

Instead I let my youngest sister talk me into watching it together (and because we’d spent the day doing other stuff I of course hadn’t checked any social media or seen any warnings), and voilà - the entire second day of my stay was completely ruined because of how down I was feeling. I won’t see my sisters again for another two months (maybe longer) and one of the TWO days I was supposed to have with them was spent lying in bed alone and feeling sad.

PUT TRIGGER WARNINGS ON STUFF FFS.

And to be clear here - what I’m upset about is Little. Everything else in this episode I can live with and enjoy even if it’s heavy, but that one is such a hard no for me that I can’t enjoy the rest. I have a whole thing about how I can’t handle children (or really young, vulnerable and sweet animal sidekicks, it seems) dying or getting hurt in media. That’s my one hard line when it comes to media. If a child dies in it, keep it away from me. (It’s why I was never able to get into The Hunger Games, for example.)

And yes, I know Little’s not dead for good, they’ll ascend - but that doesn’t change that it was extremely disturbing. And yes, I know it was thematically foreshadowed - Ruby had to lose the last bit of hope she still had - but I was still really hoping the writers wouldn’t go there (and definitely not in such a disturbing way, so suddenly and without warning).

And it’s a shame because the rest of the episode is so good! I could write a whole meta on that delicious Nuts and Dolts angst (and semi-confirmation?), which was exactly what I've been asking for for weeks. Not to mention how now that we’ve seen that people from Remnant can in fact ascend (contrary to what the cat previously said), it makes Penny being alive somewhere (and/or Penny being Little) way more likely again - normally I'd be eating all of this stuff up. But yeah, unfortunately I couldn’t really enjoy or appreciate the entire rest because what they did with Little took me out of it too much.

And I’m just really upset that it ruined my visit to my sisters.

#RWBY #RWBY Vol 9 #RWBY v9 spoilers #tea amidst terrible trouble #RWBY Little #personal #tw suicide #tw death #tw major character death #Ruby Rose #tw torture #tw animal death #Nuts and Dolts #Penny Polendina

[autism-spectral-theorem]

hi posting third chapter of my death note fic on this account whatever. not a lot happens yet but L appears in this one. (ao3)

(first chapter)

(previous chapter)

It was as if only a second had passed when he opened his eyes to the ringing of his alarm. Usually, he could wake up at whatever time he wanted with no need for an alarm, but he had set it as a precaution so he would not be late to school in case he accidentally fell asleep during one of the last few sleepless nights. He sat up in bed and stretched. It would probably take several more nights of good sleep for him to be completely well rested, but he no longer felt so sleep deprived, and his hand hurt less. For the sake of his health, he was definitely going to have to ease up on the judgements.

“Thought you’d never get up.” Right. There was a demon in his room.

“Good morning, Ryuk. I hope you didn’t cause any trouble at night.”

“Hyuk, hyuk. The human world is fun. I flew around and ate some apples.”

Light decided not to press about where exactly he had acquired those apples, but made a mental note that the shinigami’s affinity for apples may come to be a useful piece of information. “Alright. Have fun, but don’t let other humans know you’re here, or they might catch me and your fun will be over.”

***

A group of his classmates was gathered by the entrance to the school. Everyone appeared to be animatedly discussing something. Could it be? He greeted them. “What’s going on?”

A quiet girl from his class whom he had never really talked to previously (though he did recall watching her draw in class, creating near photographic representations of their classmates and teachers) turned towards him. “Have you read the news?”

“I haven’t really been online the past few days. Busy studying. What happened?”

“So busy with your studies that you barely remember us simple mortals, of course, Yagami. Last night, in the span of less than an hour, ten of the world’s richest people donated all their wealth to charity and dropped dead. Then, people on social media started noticing that the past few days, people have been dying under similar circumstances. Some members of criminal organizations around the world have turned themselves and their accomplices in before dying immediately after. Serial killers, rapists, child abusers. It would seem obvious that this is the doing of some government, maybe the CIA or something, but the thing is, corrupt government officials have been dying too, and the events of last night probably eliminate this possibility. Some people have even been saying it’s divine judgment, that those who harm others are being eliminated. It’s just speculation of course. I’m sure everyone here would be curious to know what you think.”

It was all going according to plan. Light suppressed his smile and pretended to be deep in thought, as if taking in this information for the first time. “Very interesting. I can’t say I have heard of something like this happening before, though that much is obvious. Normally, I would say these are just accidents that happened to coincide, but the probability of such a series of coincidences happening is so unlikely that if this was a scientific study we would be forced to conclude something else is going on here. My guess as to what exactly is as good as yours though.” He told everyone he would see them in class and politely excused himself. 

For once, Light was grateful he did not have to pay attention in class because it gave him time to reassess his situation and plan ahead (while ignoring Ryuk’s antics in the background). His initial actions were hasty and based on limited information. He had done the best he could with the large number of unknown variables, but now that he knew for certain that he was in for the long run, it was essential to assess every aspect at play and pursue the optimal course of action.

So far, he was pleased with the results, but it was too early to tell how everything would play out, and if any unpleasant surprises would surface. What he did the day before was a necessary gamble. It was a bold move to go for some of what would seem like the most important targets so early, and he had hesitated. He was not an idiot and it was obvious to him that it was unlikely that all billionaires would suddenly start giving away all their money and restructuring their enterprises according to the principles of worker democracy. The far more likely outcome would be that they would store their assets in offshore accounts, with the bonus of tax evasion, and it would be anywhere between extremely time-consuming and impossible for him alone to figure out who owns what. Perhaps at that point he could rely on his supporters (at this point in time, he did not know of any supporters, but he was sure there would be many people who would see his righteousness eventually).

Given this, it would seem to any reasonable observer that this was an impulsive move expected of a teenager given too much power. But to Light, this was a lower-risk move compared to starting by eliminating “bad” political leaders to make a point, because it was more attention-catching yet did not pose as much of an issue with finding replacements. And just as one cannot win a game of chess using only pawns, he could not achieve his goals by going only after small targets.

***

Bathed in the blue glow of monitors in his dark office, L stacked a dozen sugar cubes into his tea and pressed on them with a spoon, watching the hot tea seep into the sugar, softening and dissolving it. He stirred it slightly, took a sip of the slightly crunchy sugary slush, then brought his eyes back to the screen.  

An unlikely series of deaths around the world had caught his attention in the past week. Such things were not extraordinary in his work, but what was extraordinary about this case was the worldwide spread of victims, lack of any kind of physical evidence, and almost deliberate conspicuousness, as if the killer (if there was one, and this was precisely the point that led L to suspect there was) wanted to be noticed. It was so conspicuous, in fact, that he predicted it would be a matter of a few days before law enforcement agencies noticed and contacted him.

Something caught his eye. Impossible! He took this thumb out of his mouth and stared. There was no doubt now.

His phone rang.

#death note #iso.txt

[garebearandnan]

LITG | S2 | Day 1 Part 3 | First Night in Paradise: Priya

(Narrator) Iain Stirling: The Villa gets a shake up with a new arrival. Will the arrival of a fiery new bombshell cause trouble in paradise Time to meet Priya!

Villa entrance: Priya is feeling a little nervous about coming in as the first ‘bombshell’ of the season. The camera films the new islander’s back as she enters the villa. "It looks so much lovelier in real life," says the bombshell. She opens the exterior bedroom door. She looks at the camera and sends a cheeky wink as she exits. She straightens her shoulders and puts on her sexiest smile before beginning to stroll toward the garden. You got this girl!

The screen switches to Priya's introduction Montage

"I’m Priya, 29 and I'm from Manchester." She smiled and crossed her legs. "I am an estate agent, but I'm definitely one of the good ones!"

Pictures from her social media feed flash on the screen behind her.

"I’ve been single for about 18 months, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. She smiles and flips her hair over her shoulder. "I’m your dream girl," (she giggles) "Oh, my God. I’m going to get slated for this."

"My ideal man is someone who's taller than me," she chuckled, gesturing to herself. "Someone who is chill, hard-working and can have a laugh with. I do love a bit of a flirt." She giggled again.

"If I had to describe myself in three words, it would be confident, quick-witted, and feisty enough that if I want something, I’ll go for it."

"My biggest turn off would have to be a guy who doesn’t keep it clean, you know, down there."

Her social media pictures and posts continue to roll on the screen behind her. She had a lot of work related posts and clubbing with friends.

"If I had to describe myself in bed, it would be... passionate, fun, and adventurous," said Priya with a flirty wink.

"My best feature? I get a lot of compliments on my eyes and my boobs (she pushes up her breasts and giggles), and I like the fact that I have hips. I like my hourglass figure." She laughs.

"My celebrity crushes are Channing Tatum and Anthony Joshua."

"I have my eye on a few boys. They're all so gorgeous. Noah and Ibrahim are both tall, dark, and handsome. Gary is extremely fit and his eyes are just lovely," she smiles as her hands form a heart shape. "Bobby is super cute and seems like fun, and he bakes too, which is a huge plus. I'm not afraid to step on toes to get what I want!"  As Montage finishes, she does a little twirl and laughs.

+++

Beach hut (BH) confessions:

Priya: The guys are like, really, really hot. Walking into the villa tonight was honestly so scary. But, the boys gave a really nice welcome.

Gary: Priiii-ya. Bloody hell. Damn! Oh, she’s gonna cause trouble.

Bobby: She is a weapon. She is really fit. A bombshell is an understatement.

Noah: Priya really knows what she wants. She’s so confident. I think our girls, until now, were a bit confident. The girls will have some grafting to do now if they still want our attention, if you know what I mean.

Grace (MC): She is, like, perfect. But no one is that perfect. So hopefully she’s, like, really hairy or something.  Or maybe she has like a third toe… or, like, a third nipple. Because you can’t be that perfect. It’s really frustrating. You can’t have everything!

Lottie: I was 100% right. My tea leaves never lie. I was like, ‘There's a female, I can smell her hormones.

Hope: Let me spill the tea, right? I’m telling you, the girls are rattled. I’m not gonna lie. But I’ve got to back myself, cos if we don’t back ourselves, I’ll be, like, in a heap, crying.

+++

(Narrator) Iain Stirling: Let’s get the goss on how the boys are really feeling.

While the girls have retreated to the daybed with Priya for a girl's chat, the lads huddled around the fire. Gary looks over at the girls, “Brilliant. Fuck me dead. Fuck me…” They all grasped what Gary was conveying, so he didn't need to clarify.

“I know, mate,” Ibrahim said nodding in agreement and Rocco added, “She flames and has an enticing aura.”

"Fucking hell," Noah said, as the boys were unable to prevent themselves from glancing at Priya. Bobby is looking over at the girl's huddle as he added, “That means one of the girls is going. All will change now. You watch.”

BH Rocco: “I think she is gonna shake up the villa massively.”

“And she starts walking down,” Bobby says, practically jumping on the spot.

“Oh yeah, yeah!” says Ibrahim as his smile widens in excitement. “I couldn’t stop looking.”

“You were like,” Gary chuckles, and emulates his hands in prayer.

“Exactly, bruh.” Ibrahim imitates the cross sign. “Priya definitely is a bit of me, mate.”

Noah turned to Ibrahim. “Would any of them get you away from your partner?

Ibrahim replied, “Yeah, mate. She’s my type. 100%.”

BH Ibrahim: “Seeing Priya, she’s like my perfect girl. She’s got the eyes, the bod, crazy, it’s mad.” 

Rocco asks Bobby, ”If Grace, Hannah, and Priya both step forward, who are you picking?”

Bobby hesitated to respond and glanced at Gary. Gary claimed he wasn't bothered and didn't seem upset when Bobby mentioned earlier that he may fancy Grace a little. He shrugged and replied, “Based just off just looks. Priya.”

BH Bobby: “It’s crazy. Like, I’m enjoying myself and then this girl walks in and she changes the whole thing. The girl is quite fiery. She is confident.”

Noah was taken back by his response and questioned, “Would you?”

Bobby's grin broadened. “Yeah, definitely, lads.”

“You fancy her?” Gary inquired.

“I don't not fancy her.” Bobby winked and each boy laughed.

“I keep saying, remember where we are,” says Rocco. “We’re here on Love Island, we are not on Loyalty Island.”

Gary expressed his agreement. “I agree. We’re here to fuckin’ find the girl of our dreams, not to just stick with the girl that we’ve been partnered with from the start if you don’t fancy her.” He said sternly, “That is the point of it.”

Ibrahim sighed deeply as he placed his head on his hands. “My head is gone in the last few minutes.”

“She came in here with a lot of confidence, a lot of energy. She seems like she has her head screwed on as well,” Gary observed.

“So Gary, does this mean you're feeling her?” Rocco prodded a little too eagerly. “Straight up, is she your type?”

Gary wasn't taken in for a second. He knew the other boys fancied Grace as she was the only girl who had four of them step forward for her. He couldn't really blame them. If she was coupled with someone else, he would want to get to know her too. The crane operator remarked, “Of course, all the girls are really fit. It’s gonna be interesting tomorrow to see how it goes. But, at the same time, I’ve had such a lovely day with Grace.”

“So, who is more your type?” asks Bobby. “Grace or Priya? Be honest.” 

Gary didn’t hesitate to respond, “Really, I’d say Grace is more my type, but I don’t really know Priya like I do Grace.”

“OK, fair enough,” Bobby nods.

Gary does offer next, “But, let me throw it out there. She is really attractive.”

“Yeah, of course,” says Bobby with a smirk.

“When Priya fucking looks in your eyes and starts flirting… Ohh those assets are hard to miss.” Gary says as he rolls his head upward and shakes his head.

“Fuck, just when she gives me that look… ” Bobby beams at the others and says, “Being cheeky? It’s hard, hey?”

“Oh mate, like, this is trouble. Like… Oh, fuck.” Gary smirks and shakes his head. “But, yeah, I bloody can’t help myself sometimes.”

Bobby chuckles, “Lord, I have sinned. Forgive me…” (he moans) “The devil wears Prada and she has the lips of an angel.”

The boys all laugh.

BH Noah: “The lads' heads have definitely been turned by the new girl, and there’s gonna be trouble.”

Beach Hut

Lottie and Hannah have been called to the beach hut for their interviews. “My feelings were fairly obvious! I don't trust her.” Lottie shrieked, dramatically flinging herself back in her chair. “I realise that it's all part of the competition, but I’m calling it now, she’s not going to respect girl code.”

“This is horrible. I didn’t think I’d be bothered.” Hannah had a melancholy expression on her face as she spoke to Lottie. “She’s all, like, sugar and spice and everything nice.”

“Yeah, but so are you, Hannah!” Lottie responded, reaching for Hannah's hand and giving it a consoling squeeze.

“She is beautiful. And… that’s fine. She’s excited. She wants to chat to the lads. But, I think you’ll be fine with Rocco,” Hannah confesses.

Daybeds

Marisol looks Priya up and down. ”So you’re the girl who's going to shake things up. I wonder what Ibrahim thought of you?”

Marisol thinks I’ll turn some heads... “I’ll take that as a compliment. If I turn heads, I’m doing my job right?”

“So like your initial, like, top islanders when you came in,” Marisol asked Priya, hoping she was one of them. 

Priya responds cautiously, “I would say Ibrahim is my type straight away. But, Gary has got gorgeous eyes, too.” And with that Marisol and Grace's smiles vanish. “I can’t pick the third one.” Her gaze lingers on Noah at the fire pit for a little longer before moving her eyes to Bobby. “Bobby, seems really sweet.” Priya admitted apologetically, “But I'm not trying to tread on anyone's toes." 

“D’you know what though? You have literally just got to do you.” Marisol supported her.

“Yeah, It’s still early days. We’ve literally known each other for a few hours,” Grace admitted.

BH Priya: “I feel like the girls want to keep me close, just to see what I am thinking. Like, they were really wanting to know what guys I’m into. Other than that, they’re still really nice as well.”

Fire Pit

“What do you do?” Noah questioned.

“I am working in real estate right now.” She smiles, “But like one of the good ones.” The boys all chuckle.

“That’s really cool!” Bobby said. The boys proceeded around the circle, revealing their ages, what they did for work, and where they resided.

Priya then inquired, “Like, where do you guys stand? Is everyone a happy couple then?”

“Not everyone,” Bobby answered.

“Oh?  Let’s go around and see who is happy,” she said.

Gary started off by saying, “I’m coupled with Grace. Things are great right now.” ”And you’re coupled up with Hope?” Priya questions Noah.

“Yeah, I’m happy at the minute.” Noah informed her. He smiles and the light from the fire catches his face.

“I’m trying to follow my heart here in the Villa.”

Priya nods agreeing. “I’m the same way. I’m going to ruffle some feathers no matter what. So I may as well go with what feels right.”

“At the moment, I am with Lottie. I think she is a cool girl.” Rocco concluded with, “It is early, early days. Seeing who I have the best vibe with, ya know.”

“You're just going with the flow!” Priya replied, nodding.

"Yeah," he replied, winking at Priya. “Exactly. It’s only been a day. We’re not, like, married or anything.”

Bobby said, “I wonder what Lottie would say if she heard you say that.”

Rocco just replies, “She gets it. Things a pretty casual with us right now!”

“That’s not what she said. Anyway, so I’m coupled up with Hannah.” Bobby said next. “She’s not my type, but I think she’s lovely. Nothing romantic there. We’re both keeping our options open.”

Ibrahim was on the other side of Priya. “I’m with Marisol. We’re having a good time, but like, I don’t know if we’re really set. I see her keeping her options open and likely looking elsewhere,” Ibrahim says tentatively looking over at Gary. “So I guess my options are open too." Priya looks at Ibrahim's muscular arms and nibbles her lower lip. Ibrahim returned the smile by puffing up his chest.

BH Priya: First Impression: First off, the boys are really fit. Ibrahim is my usual type. So I would go for that. But Gary is nice and I would get along with him. I feel like I would have so much fun with Gary. And Bobby. And even Ibrahim as well! Noah is really quiet but is really sweet. Rocco is a little too flirty, but he does have great hair and a sexy smile. They’ve known each other for, like, what, eight hours.

Daybeds

Marisol is facing the two girls in the other day bed. “The thing is, they're getting excited because it’s fresh meat, basically.”

The sound of Priya and the boy's laughter causes all three girls to look over. "Oh!" gasps Grace, looking across towards the fire pit at Gary.

“No, no. That doesn’t mean anything, girls,” Hope tries to reassure the girls and herself.

BH Marisol: It’s Priya Island right now!

Priya’s laughter carries over to the daybeds. “She’s ballsy,” says Marisol, admiring the beautiful girl chatting away with the boys at the fire pit.

Grace is stretched out on her side facing Hope, who is sitting against the daybed frame. “She will nick your man,” Grace quips, jokingly and Hope said teasingly, “She will fuckin’ take him.”

Marisol chuckled and nodded her head, “She will take him from the table.”

Grace smirked and said, “She will take him from the table and buy him a drink.” The girls all laugh.

“The thing is, I really hope she doesn’t fancy Noah,” Hope then smirks. “But how am I supposed to expect Noah not to stare, when I can’t take my eyes off of her tits?” 

Marisol burst out laughing. “I couldn’t stop staring at her boobs either!”

Hope offers a suggestion, “Tomorrow, we’ll wear some push-ups.” Hope gestures with her hand as though pointing and adds, “I’ll be like, can you not wear that to her.” There’s another round of giggles from the three girls.

BH Grace: "I hate this. I’m not a jealous person. It’s just augh." (She shakes her head, disappointed with herself.) "I just don’t get all the giggling and all the laughing. I feel the girls are well aware. It's just boys." (She pouts and runs her fingers through her hair.) “Tomorrow is a big day, but this isn’t my true form. I’m like a Power Ranger. Tomorrow I’ll be washed, bikini on. It’s game on.”

#litg #loveislandgame #loveislandthegame #loveisland #litgs2 #fanfiction #litg s2 #love island game #abitofme

[itsdeathofabachelor]

I’ve started to re-watch stardust crusaders and everytime I do I need a twenty minute break between every episode to recalculate the fanon Jotaro in my head to the canon one. I feel Kakyoin is pretty justified in my mind (even if I make him just a teensy bit more socially inept for giggles) but Jotaro is always tricky because there’s so much fan-made media that, yeah, I enjoy a lot but also he would not fucking do that— don’t get me wrong, it’s the funniest thing in the world to think he would have a secret stash of sea plushies but it’s even FUNNIER to think he keeps all his beer bottle caps and counts them everyday before he goes to bed because if he doesn’t the world is going to explode or something.

Like, anxiety is a pretty common reaction to trauma, especially with Kakyoin, whose stand literally has the ability to control someone (to an extent). So OCD symptoms such as daily rituals and avoidance to change seems like something both Kakyoin and Jotaro would have.

And while that’s also not canon I like it a lot more because I’m projecting and Jotaro and Kakyoin are my traumatized OCs I’m about to cut the arms and legs off of.

Also, I like the idea that Jotaro and Kakyoin’s bedrooms are either decrepit or spotless. And I don’t mean ‘spotless’ like clean and organized, I mean sterile, nothing on the walls, bed dead centre in the room and a desk, lamp, shelf with two books on it, and maybe a drawer with a keychain in it one of them got from a festival two years ago. Psychiatric ward vibes. But for the LIFE of me I can’t decide which one would be which.

I see a lot of fanart where it’s like, Jotaro has dolphin posters and Kakyoin has a Minecraft bedspread and yeah, I fucking love that, but I love the idea of Jotaro having to sit on a towel on Kakyoin’s floor so his ass doesn’t go numb because Kakyoin won’t let him sit on the perfect, wrinkless bed and his mom won’t let them play Mario in the living room so much better.

#Kakyoin seems like he’d be the don’t touch anything or I’ll have to rearrange it again type person #but also Jotaro being that way would be so fucking funny to me #jojo headcanons #jojo shitpost #jjba kakyoin #noriaki kakyoin #jotaro kujo #jojo stardust crusaders

[28whitepeonies]

Born in Doncaster, Tomlinson was part of the boy band One Direction, who sold more than 70 million records worldwide. After they split in 2016, he launched his solo career and returned as a judge to The X Factor, the show that launched the band. He has a son, Freddie, six, from a previous relationship with the stylist Briana Jungwirth, and lives in north London.

I’m not an early riser. When I was touring with One Direction, I used to wake up at 4pm as the adrenaline of being on stage and after-show partying meant staying up until 3am was normal.

I’ve been touring solo all year and the post-show energy is still intense, but I’m out of bed by midday now.

If I’m not touring, Doncaster is where my heart is, but I split my time between my house in north London and LA, where my son lives.

The first thing I do every day is have a strong coffee. I love a full English but I’m lazy, so I’ll probably have a bowl of cereal.

I’m very good at just watching shit TV all day, but if I’m trying to be productive I like to inspire myself by watching interviews with other artists I admire, like Arctic Monkeys or Liam Gallagher. It’s dead interesting hearing the way they think.

If I’m having a lazy day, I’m not gonna lie, I rate Bargain Hunt. I love it when someone pays well over the odds. I’ve not been invited to the celebrity version yet but if my career starts winding down one day, who knows? If I’m writing or recording, I’ll never start a session before 2pm. I’ve learnt not to get too carried away when a tune gains momentum. Sometimes you think it’s a f***ing banger, then you come back to it three days later and it’s not quite as good as you remember.

There’s a different sort of pressure being a solo artist, and the lows are lower on your own. In One Direction we made decisions collectively, but now it’s all on me. That also means the highs are higher. This year I did a concert in Milan in front of 34,000 fans. The adulation was almost overwhelming, but I could take all the credit — not just one fifth.

For lunch, I love a tuna sandwich with salad cream — not mayo — and some prawn cocktail crisps on the side. I’m a shit cook. I’ve survived on microwave meals for years, but I do feel sorry for my son — he must be sick to death of cheesy pasta.

I never work too long away from LA, so I see Freddie as much as I can. After my LA gig he came on stage and played the drums, which he loved. I think he assumes that it’s normal for everyone’s dad to tour the world performing.

Being a father has changed me but because my mum used to work nights and I was the oldest, the responsibility fell to me to feed, dress and bathe my younger siblings, so I’ve already had a parenting crash course. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t challenging, but it’s so rewarding too.

Social media has been really important for connecting to my fans, but I’ve got a funny relationship with it. It can be a toxic place and I’ve had some unhinged messages sliding into my DMs. I can’t keep up with these people posting 20 photos a day on Instagram, though, as all I’m doing is watching Bargain Hunt and that’s not that interesting.

If I’m performing in the evening, I have a double vodka and Red Bull to calm my nerves. When I was in One Direction, that pre-show ritual made me feel like a rock star. It just gives you such a great f***ing feeling on stage. I’d love to say I don’t get more nervous if I know Harry [Styles] or any of the other boys are in the crowd, but I do. You want to give your best.

When I come off stage I need five minutes to decompress, but I’m still buzzing so normally a big group of us will go out. I won’t be touring like this for ever, but while I am I want to have all the fun I can. That usually ends at about 3am with me crawling into my pitch-black bunk on my tour bus before we start the whole process all over again the next day.

Tomlinson’s album Faith in the Future is out on Friday on BMG

Words of wisdom

Best advice I was given

Always be a student of music

Advice I’d give

Have faith that if you’re not happy with where you are, eventually you’ll be all right

What I wish I’d known

Make the most of the lack of responsibility that youth brings, as being young won’t last for ever

#for my nice anon #I’m pretty much always willing to post these things i just usually only do it if I think folk are interested #or if I have something to comment on #so if I haven’t it’s because of that and if u want it u can slide in my inbox anytime #and I’ll post it for you #as always I get irritated by UA’s posting selectively edited articles #baby he doesn’t need you editing his life #Louis Tomlinson #the times #unedited #a life in the day

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

New Rule: All Scolds Day | Real Time with Bill Maher

New rule: If Halloween is too much for your fragile sensibilities and you're worried about seeing someone wearing something that's on the Forbidden Costume List, just stay the fuck home.

Every year we go through this bullshit. Lists of costumes you better not wear, lest a night of irreverent dress-up spiral into something that resembles fun.

Here's an idea, click-bait websites: I won't tell you how to harvest and sell my personal data, and you don't tell me what I can wear on Halloween.

Because Halloween is supposed to be outrageous. It's a festival of the sacrilegious and a celebration of the grotesque. From zombies to ghouls to bobbing for apples in other people's saliva. Yet every year, there's a new list of offensive things we shouldn't do on the day that's all about being offensive.

You know what I want to cancel? November 1st, All Scolds Day when the good people announce which costumes the bad people wore.

BuzzFeed - I mean BuzzKill - has a list of 23 costumes they're literally begging you not to wear.

Of course this year the number one no-no is serial killer, cannibal and Netflix sensation Jeffrey Dahmer. eBay has already banned selling it, because otherwise it would be impossible to find a blonde wig and aviator glasses.

Simone Biles tweeted “put the Jeffrey Dahmer costumes back in the closet, we ain't having it.” Who's “we”? What's with the "we”? Who died and made you the Great Pumpkin?

I'm so tired of a handful of emotional hemophiliacs on social media telling us what we can't do on Halloween. And by the way please put drugs in my candy.

Listen to these other verboten costumes on stupid lists this year. Including Queen Elizabeth, because it's too soon. Yes, 96, practically an ingenue.

Of course, don't even think about characters outside of your race, and no Genies, because Genies were slaves, okay. No sexy school girls, no Playboy bunnies, no celebrities accused of pedophilia including Elvis. You can't dress up as Elvis? That's an entire industry.

No zombie versions of deceased celebrities. Well there goes my zombie Angela Lansbury idea. No unhoused person, what we used to call a hobo, the default costume of every kid in history. No one with an eating disorder, so goodbye skeletons, and no transphobic costumes because if kids want to see drag queens they can go to Story Hour.

Also listen to this: no Putin, no Trump, no anything related to the Will Smith Oscar slap, no Johnny Depp and of course Amber Heard is out, no shit. And nothing related to vaccines or COVID or monkey pox.

So have fun kids, and let your imagination soar!

Can I tell you something kids? These are all great costumes. Listen to me, I'm your last connection to fun. You should wear all of them. In fact, combine them if you want. Have the queen shit in Johnny's bed. Have Will Smith smacking a hobo. Kevin Spacey hitting on a mariachi band.

Jeffrey Dahmer is the perfect Halloween costume. What is scarier than a guy who fucks you, kills you and eats you, not necessarily in that order?

For fuck’s sake, it's Halloween, which is not just a fun holiday, it's a necessary psychic release. Yes, societies going back thousands of years knew that you had to have some release valve on the calendar to flirt with the macabre and let the demons out to role play so they wouldn't come out later for real.

Mexico has Day of the Dead, Japan has Oban, Haitians have Fête Gede. It's not a coincidence that Carnival comes right before Lent, and Halloween right before All Saints Day. Much the way getting blown at a bachelor party comes before the wedding.

You know, I find it so interesting. You would think that a “Handmaid's Tale” costume would be acceptable, since it derives from a completely woke-approved show that condemns the patriarchy. BuzzKill says no Handmaid's Tale costume either because it “hits a little too close to home right now.”

Okay, this is the life philosophy of Zillennials. Things that are interesting might also contain something which could cause a moment of discomfort, so ban it all.

It's not your fault kids. Your parents ruined you by over protecting you, and now you're these assholes. And that is the craziest part of all this. Being irreverent, unclenched and playful should be the province of the young. But it's not.

Boomers are supposed to be the “get off my lawn” crowd. But when someone in a problematic costume shows up at your door, it's literally Gen Z telling them to “get off my lawn.”

Except it's not even your lawn. Because you live at your parents house.

#Bill Maher #Real Time with Bill Maher #New Rule #Halloween #halloween costume #woke scold #woke scolding #cultural sensitivity #emotional fragility #emotional hemophiliacs #woke fragility #woke #wokeism #woke activism #cult of woke #wokeness as religion #religion is a mental illness

[farfrompleasant]

Happy Freyja Friday!!! 💖🎉😘

It's almost your actual one year anniversary with the freyby! What a beautiful journey and union you two have had 💞💞💞 to many more!!!

TWO sheds in two months?! Miss Thing is back to doing the most I see! How are you two faring these days? How's school treating ya?

Philly actually planted a lot of honey locust for beautification/urban green planning, and I've read/seen that you can take the seed pods and boil the sweet um goo (??? I'm not a scientist lol) out of them to make a natural plant-based sweetener! But, obviously all the seed pods I see have been crushed by cars and feet and rained on and peed on etc etc so that's a no go 😢

One day, my foraging dreams will come true lol have you seen Alexis Nikole Nelson's (aka the Black forager) content on social media? She's super awesome.

A feeble attempt was made to revive the book club but it's still pretty dead lol at least we have this 😘

I made a dog fort out of our bed when it was really cold last month and Nova was hogging it the other day 😂

Happy Freyja Friday!!!

I’m actually on time chdhhdhdhdjskendbjdjf, absolutely insane!💀 it will be an entire year I’m just two days and I can’t cope! It feels like we’ve been with each other for a much longer time, and I’m just baffled at the fact that she grew to love me in just a year😳 it’s giving fall in love at a certain amount of time trope, if you know what I mean then you know! (I hope you do…) but still, thank you friend… you’re the sweetest evers!🥺❤️ and I want you to know that with every union, you’re also apart of it as you were there during the early days of my journey with this scaly girl c;

I still can’t get over the back to back shedding, and apparently neither can Freyja. Her beard has been dark during the process😅 anywho, I am doing okay. Between school, work, and having minor health issues going on I think I’m tackling things rather well. As for our girl, she’s a lot happier these days; we’re expanding her diet, and gathering accessories for her enclosure in hopes of sprucing it up! And she’s always warm despite the bitter winter biting us all in the rear before it’s officially spring. Seriously, thank goodness for ceramic heating!

Honey locus? I have to look that up, friend! I didn’t know that was a tree 🥺 very mesmerizing tree with a cool base and warm, autumn favored leaves… I want to see more of those! Philly has good taste. Got me romanticizing a type of tree 🤭 wait— so you’re saying that with this sweet goo that is extracted from these pods, you can make an organic sweetener?! That’s amazing 🤩 I hate that there’s no real opportunity to do that given that you’re living in a city where plant life/resources aren’t necessarily considered(?) Like, if it was cleaner and plants weren’t looked at as embellishments, then that it would totally be doable imo 🥺

I can’t wait to witness your foraging, I just know that it would bring me so much joy as a) you are doing your hobby and b) you’re sharing it with me and teaching me a few things along the way c; I can’t say that I heard about Alexis Nikole Nelson or any of her work but I’ll check it out whenever I can find some time ☺️

And 😭 rip to our bookclub! It was initially productive, and I loved being apart of it along with just hearing everyone’s perspectives on the material c: not to mention I totally bragged about it to my therapist at one point 🤭 it’s a flex, okay! I feel that there may be a revival period if someone finds a really good read 😂

That is soooo cute friend! A doggie fort sounds so cozy and I know for a fact that some cuddles took place 🥰 and of course Nova is basking in the comfort of it all, I really love that for her❤️ I hope Abbie and Lizzie are getting their turns whenever they can lolol and that Wallace and Heller are experiencing great comforts as well in their own feline way c: I feel like they probably squeeze their way into certain nooks and crannies that would incite a war if bothered or removed 😂😅

And of course, I hope Philly weather is being kind to you my good friend 🥰 hope you are feeling well and will continue to prosper in any way you see fit!

This is a day after her second shed, she’s obsessed with resting here again for whatever reason c:

#badatwritingstuff💓 #farfrompleasant #freyja friday #beardies i love #dogs i love #cats i love #stay warm ❤️

[lovemesomesurveys]

In the morning... Is there usually a text message waiting for you? No. Do you set your alarm early so you can lay in bed awhile? If I have to set an alarm I do like to leave myself some extra time cause I take awhile to get up. I often end up setting several alarms or hitting snooze to the point where I have to hurry and get up, though. Ha.  Breakfast? I gotta have my coffee. If it’s too early for me I don’t eat anything yet, but if it’s later I might have something quick or grab something on the way. Shower? or save it for later? I shower at night.  First person you usually see? My mom.

Pick out clothes or did it the night before? I just pick something when it’s time to get dressed.  Do you go over your plans for the day in your head? Yes, constantly.  Spend any time with a pet? Yep.  Moan and groan or get up ready to face the day? Oh, I’m a moaner and groaner for sure. I wake up feeling dead.  Put music on? Not typically.  Facebook, Myspace or Twitter to start the day? Myspace, who’s she? lol. Anyway, yes I check my social medias and any notifications I might have.  Friends, lovers, acquaintances... Do you have more than one best friend? No. Do you know anyone who legitimately is mentally ill? Yes.  Anyone who is always taking food from you? No. Anyone you snitch food from? No. Right now, would you rather be single or in a relationship? I’m honestly perfectly fine with being single at this time. It’s for the best.  Have you ever run interference between a friend and someone they liked? No. Hell, I actually helped a friend get with my ex. :X Boyfriend's mom asks you to go to church with their family, do you go? Yes.  do you say "love you" to any of your friends (not boyfriend)? I wasn’t one to do that, honestly.  Did you feel good or awkward if opposite sex says I love you? I mean, it depends.  did anyone ever ask for your number then never call? No. Do you go out for ice cream with your friends? Back when I had friends, yeah.  Do you ever hang out with a parent for fun? My mom and I are very close, we hangout all the time.  Is your SO comfortable around your parents? -- Are your friends comfortable around your parents? Yeah, my friends always loved my parents.  anyone who acts like they want to be your friend that you are avoiding? No. When you are mad at a friend do you straight out tell them? I often kept it to myself or downplayed it like it wasn’t a big deal. I also would be distant and short.  anyone you feel is trying to avoid you right now? No.

How did you meet your newest friend? -- Have you ever been talked into doing something really uncomfortable? Yes.  Do you keep notes your friends write you? My cousin and I used to write each other little notes in middle school and some in high school, a lot of which I still have stored away. Who's the last person you called "stupid" or said was stupid? Myself.  Oh no, I HATE when this happens... Last time you stepped in doggie doo Thankfully, it’s been a very long time. Doing so in a wheelchair is even worse.  Burped in public *shrug* Probably the last time I was out in public at some point, which was a few months ago. I just do so quietly and discreetly. had someone fart in front of you and it be really awkward Uhhh, I don’t know.  someone tells you a secret and you don't know what to say Recently. I was just a bit shocked initially.  wanted to cancel on a friend and didn't know how I had to deal with that a lot a few years ago when I still had friends because my health started taking a bad turn.  spilled something on someone Hm. I don’t recall. That doesn’t tend to happen.  ruined a favorite piece of clothing I’m still sad I spilled coffee on my Disneyland hoodie. Those aren’t cheap and I can’t easily go back and get another one.  cried when you tried not to Yesterday. I was fighting back tears much of the day and often tears won.  did something stupid while driving with a passenger I don’t drive.  mistook someone and talked to them thinking they were a friend I’ve never had it go that far. I’ve mistakenly waved to someone I thought was someone I knew, but not have full on conversations. I would think I’d realize it wasn’t them.  Had a friend's parent ask something embarrassing I haven’t experienced that.  drooled on your pillow Yesterday, lol.  burned your tongue I don’t recall.  Something you lie about... What do you lie about liking? I don’t like hurting people’s feelings so I’ve said I liked something of theirs or regarding them that I didn’t like. I don’t always do that and if I do tell someone I don’t like something I’m not mean about it. It’s just awkward depending on the person. I’ve also said I liked or was familiar with something that I actually didn’t like or wasn’t familiar with.    What do you lie about DISliking? Hm. I can’t think of something specific at the moment, but I know I’ve said I didn’t like something because the other person didn’t.  to make a friend feel better? Same as I said before, like if they asked me if I liked their outfit or something. To get out of doing something with a friend? I’ve said I had something else to do when I didn’t or that I wasn’t feeling well when I felt fine. I truly did feel crappy a lot of the time, though. 

If you like someone and don't want to admit it? I just would say that I didn’t.  To a teacher? why? Hm. I don’t know.  To a friend's parent? Why? I can’t think of a time I did that.  last time you lied via text? I’m someone who downplays or maybe leaves things out more that just flat out lie. I’m not a habitual liar. Like an example for this question is my Nana texts me often to ask how I’m doing and I’ll say I’m fine, but really I’m not. When anyone asks me that apart from my mom or brother I’ll do that.  Last time you TRIED to lie to yourself? I’m brutal to myself.  have you ever told someone you loved them but you were lying? Yes. :/ My first boyfriend said he loved me and I said it back even though I didn’t feel the same way. He told me that like less than a month into the relationship and for me it was too soon, too fast. We were sixteen, he was my first boyfriend, and I just felt like I wasn’t ready for that. However, I felt like I had to say it back and it was really awkward. I didn’t keep the relationship going much longer, though. I knew it wasn’t fair to either of us.  broke something and lied about it? I don’t recall. I’ve owned up to the times I can recall breaking something.  the most supreme lie you remember telling when you were a little kid? I’m definitely not proud of it, but I had lied about taking one of my medications for several months and was actually hiding them in storage bin in my room. My mom ended up finding them one day :X  Something you lied about done..like skiing, seeing a movie, etc I mentioned this already, but I’ve said I’ve seen a movie or heard a song that I actually hadn’t. Or like saying I will check out something someone suggested or that I did check it out when I actually didn’t. That was just laziness on my part, ha.  Have you ever lied about something sexual you did or didn't do? No. I don’t have any sexual experience and I don’t feel the need to lie about that.  Lied about how you spent some money? Hm. I can’t think of a time I’ve done that. I spend my money how I want, I don’t see the need to lie about it.  Lied about having your feelings hurt? I’ve said I wasn’t hurt or upset about things when I was. That’s one I do often.  The truth can hurt or heal... Name a time you said the truth and someone got hurt. The first thing that came to mind happened so long ago when I was in middle school, which is the time I told a couple of my friends I thought they were annoying and immature. :X I had someone putting that in my head for some reason, perhaps they felt I spent too much time with those friends and they were feeling some type of way, or they didn’t like my other friends for whatever reason, but I let it get to me and I made the mistake of telling my friends that. I felt so bad cause it genuinely hurt their feelings and I tried to take it back and downplay it by saying like, “I can be annoying and immature, too, I’m sure you’ve thought that about me” and I probably gave an example of something they did that could be seen that way. I tried to say it wasn’t a big deal and apologized. I didn’t even really feel that way, they were my best friends and they were always making me laugh. One of them, Kyle, I had a crush on. And hell, I’m sure we were immature and annoying at times we were middle schoolers. They just really took it seriously and I felt so bad. It changed things between us after that. :/

Last time someone said the truth to you, and you were relieved. Hmm. I mean, during these past few months dealing with all these health issues and being in the hospital, God has revealed a lot to me and I realized some hard truths that I needed to be aware of.  Time you came clean with the truth and felt SO much better? I’m someone who just tends to hold things inside or downplay things like I’ve said and sometimes it does feel better to just say how I’m really feeling and let it out.  someone you ALWAYS tell the truth to I’d be lying if I said I always told the truth to anyone.  person you are most likely to fudge the truth with Some family members, but again more like downplay or leave things out.  have you ever kept someone's secret for ever? I’m good about keeping secrets.  Have you ever has someone divulge a secret you shared with them? Yes.  do you have something you wish you could tell the truth about? I think I’d just like to be able to talk to those I’m close with about things instead of keeping things to myself all the time. I know they’d be there to listen and offer any help they could if I wanted it, but for some reason I don’t reach out or ask for help a lot of the time. I have a really hard time expressing myself and opening up. I don’t like the attention or focus on me and I also don’t want to burden or worry anyone.

Do you feel there is someone who is witholding the truth from you now? I don’t think so.  Getting silly and liking it! Are you the one in your group who gets people laughing? Ha, no. I’ll have my moments once and awhile, but I’m not like naturally funny. Do you like stupid jokes? I am one for cheesy, corny, punny jokes.  Dirty jokes? Nah. Do you have a lot of inside jokes with friends? -- Are they mostly silly, or dirty? -- Which relative makes you laugh the most? My mom and brother.  What do they do that makes you laugh? They’re just funny and fun to be around. We like to playfully joke around with each other.  Do you have a pet that makes you laugh? Yes, my doggo is a goofball. Do you find sit coms to actually be funny? I find most sitcoms now to be super cringe. I know I’m biased cause I like the ones I grew up with like Full House and several others, which are cheesy, but I like them. But shows like The Big Bang Theory? Yikesss. 2 Broke Girls is reallyyy bad.  I like some newer ones, though, like The Middle.  Which pop song lately has made you laugh? I haven’t heard one recently that has made me laugh.  Anyone ever tell you you were funny and you have no idea why? Uhh, I don’t think so.  Last time you burst out laughing and realized no one else was? Ha, that’s definitely happened more than once. I’ve also been the one still laughing when everyone else has moved on.  when did you last laugh when something bad happened to someone? I don’t laugh at that.  Laughed at yourself for doing something dumb? That happens often.  The day comes to an end... Last thing you do before you turn out the light? I listen to ASMR and scroll through Tumblr until I doze off. I also keep my TV on.  anyone you send a good night text to? My texted me goodnight last night and I said it back. Bedtime snack? It used to be ramen. For quite awhile I had that every single night.  do you go to sleep with music on? No, just the TV and sometimes ASMR. is your homework done or will you finish it in the morning? I’m done with school.  jammies? Yeah.  do you sleep with socks on? Yes.  does a pet sleep in your room? No. She likes to sleep on her couch in the living room.  are you the last one to go to sleep in your house? Yes.  all the lights off? or a nightlight on? There’s the TV light and my laptop light. hard to fall asleep or easy? Ugh, it’s never easy. And then when I fall asleep, I wake up a few times. It sucksss. 

#personal #text #survey #surveys #categories #long survey

[eveningvoid]

There is so much chaos and suffering in this world. It’s all broken. Mothers and fathers losing their children to genocide, children dying/losing their families, and animals confused and lost in the midst of a chaos they don’t understand. Homes reduced to rubble. It’s difficult to not feel so heartbroken and lost. To be a spectator of so much pain without the ability to offer much needed comfort and help. I wake up warm in my bed and I feel guilty. I have three meals a day and I feel guilty and immense sadness…. I know it’s okay to feel lost and hopeless during such a horrific time in history. I know it’s okay to cry and I know it’s going to take time to feel okay again.

I read and hear the news that aren’t on mainstream media and I feel myself going crazy. Seeing the countless videos of children bloodied and alone crying out for their parents, dead bodies of children, parched lips, people carrying dead remains, and animals shaking at the sounds of bombs and gunfire.

I’m trying to not lose myself in despair and hold onto the little pieces of joy I have. To appreciate everything that I do have. To lively humbly. To honor all those lives lost in this silent way. To be worthy of being alive. But I simply can’t be on social media at this time. It just doesn’t feel right. Not that anyone cares. But I felt I needed to explain why I’ll no longer be present or actively posting on tumblr. Perhaps my blog will remain here forever or I’ll return to delete it one day. Not sure if some posts are still queued or not; I guess it doesn’t matter now.

Tldr; It’s okay to feel hopeless and broken right now, because it’s human. There is so much pain in the world, especially at this moment, there’s nothing wrong with feeling. You care.

Take care. All of you. I hope that you are warm and safe wherever you are in this world. Let’s not forget, at the end of it all, that the world still has humanity and hope left in it. And if you empathize with this; you are a big part of what makes this world beautiful.

Remember to be the reason people still believe in ‘good’ people.

Farewell.

#a departure

[violetsystems]

I think it’s less unsettling to me that you can go through a crazy time and say some crazy shit but the people you care about are still there. Not like I want to spend my entire life saying crazy shit. Especially when the world around can be so negative. And it isn’t like I don’t have a real world persona that casually flicks the past off yet helps strangers find the right bus stop on the same day. But since May it has been pretty bad for me. Although I’ve been dead sober that isn’t really what makes it hellish at all. Feels like now the summer is winding down it gets better. Which means I didn’t really do much at all except hang out here. Fall and winter will come and it will be the same thing but hopefully less tense. I don’t really care about social media. I don’t use it like other people. But I do like it here. And apologize how sometimes I can come across as intense. I really just want to watch anime in bed and play video games. I like to cook too. And shop at Costco without being projected to. But I live in a city and a neighborhood where I say hi enough to people to know I don’t need to perform. The side of the neighborhood at least that you can’t just bike through and expect civic engagement. Especially for people who try to hard to be seen. I save that for my dash. In this part of the world we don’t really pay attention to politics when they’re performative. Elected or otherwise. The #personal is political. And I’m sure you want me to be leas so. So I’ll go back to binge watching City Hunter. I may not be able to shoot a gun like Ryo but I’m sure good at sleuthing my way into a sticky situation. 🏡

[crazybigredlove]

5th December 2013

Dear Pete, 

Christopher slept in my room last night but no, nothing happened. He's taking it even harder than I am. The vet kept trying to assure us we'd done nothing wrong, but he was still running tests so I'm not sure how he knows that. Nearly two days had passed and we still knew nothing. 

It was another sleepless night, passed mostly in silence, and we were up before the sun this morning. 

"Should we get up?" There was still sleep in his eyes and he yawned loudly. "We could. But what would we do? At least we're comfortable here while we're stressing." 

"That's true." He nuzzled back into the pillow. "At least we know he stands a chance." "What do you mean?" "Geez, Liv. You called him Buffy. That chick came back from the dead at least twelve times. Our dog will be fine." 

"It's nothing personal, I get that you're a doctor and all that, but until the vet calls and tells us that that's the case I'm having a really hard time believing you. I'm sorry." "Don't be. I'm probably saying it to convince myself anyway." 

Already settled into work and struggling to focus, it was ten am when the call finally came. The vet called Christopher, Christopher called me, and all I heard was his voice saying, "He's going to be fine." 

"What did he say?" 

"He said we can probably pick him up tomorrow but they're going to keep him overnight again." "What's wrong with him?" "Nothing some strong antibiotics won't fix." 

"Are you sure?" "Yep, that's what the vet said." Relief washed over me. "I was so worried. That was the longest forty-eight hours of my life. Everything goes wrong at once, doesn't it?" I collapsed back in the chair and stared up at the ceiling. "Yeah, but we got through it. You're okay and he's going to be okay. Another little hurdle but it's done." "It puts everything in perspective though, doesn't it?" "How do you mean?" "Well, take Big Red for example. I was feeling like the world was ending and he was probably in bed with his girlfriend. Will? It was a weeknight so he was probably running name by name through his phone looking for the girl he could convince to come over. I was at home, wide-awake, staring into the darkness, worried about a dog. I don't want to waste anymore time on men who don't care enough about my stuff to turn up at a time like that." "You can't blame them if they didn't know." "Ha! You're wrong. I can and they did. Do you really think I didn't update my Facebook status?" "Liv..." Chris sighed down the phone. "I needed to know." "So did you actually care about Buffy or were you using him to get your ex-boyfriends attention?" "That's not fair! You know how much I care about that dog. I updated it because it felt important. It felt like something that should be shared. It wasn't till after that I realised they would've seen it because they are both addicted to social media." "You're doing better without them." I smiled. "Yeah, I know. But it can still bother me a little bit for a while longer." "You know what we should do?" "Shock me." "Come straight home after work. We need to get Buffy some welcome home presents." 

The smile on my face was so big it hurt my cheeks. "That is an excellent plan. I'll see you in a few hours." 

Things are going to get better. Sometimes they get a little worse first, but they are going to get better. I know it. I know it because I'm working to make it so. 

Liv x 

[chrryblsms]

I haven't seen this posted yet, but here's the full article from the times about Louis. Here.

Or here...

Born in Doncaster, Tomlinson was part of the boy band One Direction, who sold more than 70 million records worldwide. After they split in 2016, he launched his solo career and returned as a judge to The X Factor, the show that launched the band. He has a son, Freddie, six, from a previous relationship with the stylist Briana Jungwirth, and lives in north London.

I’m not an early riser. When I was touring with One Direction, I used to wake up at 4pm as the adrenaline of being on stage and after-show partying meant staying up until 3am was normal.

I’ve been touring solo all year and the post-show energy is still intense, but I’m out of bed by midday now.

If I’m not touring, Doncaster is where my heart is, but I split my time between my house in north London and LA, where my son lives.

The first thing I do every day is have a strong coffee. I love a full English but I’m lazy, so I’ll probably have a bowl of cereal.

I’m very good at just watching shit TV all day, but if I’m trying to be productive I like to inspire myself by watching interviews with other artists I admire, like Arctic Monkeys or Liam Gallagher. It’s dead interesting hearing the way they think.

If I’m having a lazy day, I’m not gonna lie, I rate Bargain Hunt. I love it when someone pays well over the odds. I’ve not been invited to the celebrity version yet but if my career starts winding down one day, who knows? If I’m writing or recording, I’ll never start a session before 2pm. I’ve learnt not to get too carried away when a tune gains momentum. Sometimes you think it’s a f***ing banger, then you come back to it three days later and it’s not quite as good as you remember.

There’s a different sort of pressure being a solo artist, and the lows are lower on your own. In One Direction we made decisions collectively, but now it’s all on me. That also means the highs are higher. This year I did a concert in Milan in front of 34,000 fans. The adulation was almost overwhelming, but I could take all the credit — not just one fifth.

For lunch, I love a tuna sandwich with salad cream — not mayo — and some prawn cocktail crisps on the side. I’m a shit cook. I’ve survived on microwave meals for years, but I do feel sorry for my son — he must be sick to death of cheesy pasta.

I never work too long away from LA, so I see Freddie as much as I can. After my LA gig he came on stage and played the drums, which he loved. I think he assumes that it’s normal for everyone’s dad to tour the world performing.

Being a father has changed me but because my mum used to work nights and I was the oldest, the responsibility fell to me to feed, dress and bathe my younger siblings, so I’ve already had a parenting crash course. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t challenging, but it’s so rewarding too.

Social media has been really important for connecting to my fans, but I’ve got a funny relationship with it. It can be a toxic place and I’ve had some unhinged messages sliding into my DMs. I can’t keep up with these people posting 20 photos a day on Instagram, though, as all I’m doing is watching Bargain Hunt and that’s not that interesting.

If I’m performing in the evening, I have a double vodka and Red Bull to calm my nerves. When I was in One Direction, that pre-show ritual made me feel like a rock star. It just gives you such a great f***ing feeling on stage. I’d love to say I don’t get more nervous if I know Harry [Styles] or any of the other boys are in the crowd, but I do. You want to give your best.

When I come off stage I need five minutes to decompress, but I’m still buzzing so normally a big group of us will go out. I won’t be touring like this for ever, but while I am I want to have all the fun I can. That usually ends at about 3am with me crawling into my pitch-black bunk on my tour bus before we start the whole process all over again the next day.

Tomlinson’s album Faith in the Future is out on Friday on BMG

Words of wisdom

Best advice I was given

Always be a student of music

Advice I’d give

Have faith that if you’re not happy with where you are, eventually you’ll be all right

What I wish I’d known

Make the most of the lack of responsibility that youth brings, as being young won’t last for ever

#louis #louis tomlinson #the times article #media #media on louis