#anyways you mean more to me than any social media post could say

[pomefioredove]

could you perchance do a part two to the yuu getting sold to the highest bidder? like how would that characters treat them if they actually get them? sorry if this doesnt make sence!! but thank uu!! ^_^

more than happy to! <3 I'm writing this as a follow up/pt. 2 to this post but if you'd like something different don't be shy! I love getting requests

parts 1 | 2 | 3 | kalim | bad ending

summary: joining their dorms + wearing the uniforms (for some). a proper ending to this type of post: short fics characters: trey, cater, leona, rook, idia, lilia, malleus additional info: yuu is gender neutral, rook is weird, both fem and masc french words are used during rook's part but reader is still gn, I need to replay book 2 to get leona's voice down, Idia being fun to write, maybe a little ooc

If you thought it was bad before, the news that Malleus intended to marry you made everything about twenty times more chaotic. Bids were upped to insurmountable sums, rumors were spread like the plague, fights were raging through campus as the deadline to donate approached. Even Crowley was starting to feel a little antsy, despite all of the brand new amenities he had already ordered for his office.

Finally, the day came. The announcement was held in the courtyard, where just about any student who had stakes in the matter had shirked whatever after-school responsibilities they had to gather. The prefect themselves was nowhere to be found, though only few noticed their absence.

"Maybe it'll be nice," you say to your direbeast companion, the both of you tucked away in a dark corner at Ramshackle.

"It'll definitely beat living in this dump. You think they got good food in Diasomnia?" Grim murmurs.

You grimace. "Uh... sure. I can't imagine they wouldn't, right?"

Crowley clears his throat, pulling a thin, delicate envelope out of his coat pocket while the crowd eagerly watches on. He takes his sweet time opening it, much to everyone's utter dismay, and when he finally withdraws the contents the entire courtyard falls quiet enough to hear a pin drop.

"And our winner is..."

Trey and Cater's Ending

"Cater Diamond and Trey Clover!"

Everyone stops dead and turns to the back of the crowd. There's a certain sense of unity that, for a brief moment, everyone can feel in the form of a single thought: Them, of all people?

Cater, ever the people-person, can already tell what's on everyone's minds. "What can I say? I run a mean social media campaign. I had some sick infographics,"

Trey can only smile and shrug at the growing disdain coming from the other students, most of which from his own housewarden, who is s currently turning a lovely shade of crimson.

"...Right. Well, the prefect will be ready for you shortly," Crowley says, folding the envelope and setting it back in his pocket. "I trust your housewarden will help you sort out the details."

Riddle looks more like he's about to start throttling them.

"Nah, it's cool. We got this," Cater smiles, though he's only half paying attention as he posts an update to Magicam. "The prefect is in great hands. Right, guys?"

Ace and Deuce shrug. Not the best outcome, not the worst, and either way it's still their friend coming to stay with them. Riddle is gritting his teeth so hard you could practically hear them grinding from Ramshackle.

"Was anyone going to tell me you two had pitched in, as well? Or was it a surprise?"

Trey smiles, almost nervously. "Well-"

"We were only giving the dorm a better chance. It's basic statistics- more Heartslabyul names in the hat, more of a chance one of us will be drawn, y'know?" Cater beams. "No disrespect, of course."

"None whatsoever," Riddle hisses back.

---

"And you're sure he's not really mad?" you ask, trailing behind the two third years.

It had been almost an hour since you'd updated your Magicam feed and read the announcement firsthand, but the shock is still wearing off.

Cater scoffs. "Whaaaat? No, he's totally cool about it,"

"Well. Now he is, anyway," Trey murmurs back. "But he certainly won't kick you out. As long as you're in the dorm uniform, you're one of us. He's just upset we went behind his back."

"...Understandable,"

Cater holds the door open for you, letting you inside to see a precariously placed mannequin with a dorm uniform in your size already on it. You hate to admit it, but it's lovely.

"Riddle had one ready. You know, just in case," Trey says, gesturing you forward. "And don't worry, we'll all be taking it easy on you while you adjust."

You run your fingers down the durable fabric. "Hm. Thanks,"

"You should get changed, I need a post to commemorate the moment," Cater says, beaming. "And I kindaaaa want to rub it in for everyone else who lost out on the best giveaway ever."

Leona's Ending

"Leona Kingscholar! Please... be responsible. Ruggie, I hope you'll keep an eye out for the prefect,"

Ruggie rolls his eyes but doesn't say anything. Leona, who had been absent-mindedly picking his teeth before the big announcement, flashes a big smirk to the audience while swaggering to the front of it.

"Well, well. Look who's come in first place, after all. What, didn't think I'd bother to try?"

Vil grimaces, crossing his arms. "Is there a point to this?"

"Obviously. I'm showing off," he rolls his eyes. "I guess I'll be seeing the rest of you lot around my territory a lot more, then?"

He snickers and then disappears back inside the building. Ruggie can only shrug at the disgruntled crowd before tailing after him.

---

"Well, that felt nice," Leona sighs, stretching out on one of the lounge chairs. "Pity that I couldn't see the lizard's reaction, but I'm sure we'll get to that eventually."

You're sitting at the table across from him, playing cards with a very invested Ruggie. You raise an eyebrow. "Who?"

"Malleus," Ruggie mutters, shuffling his cards around in his hand.

"It's never a party without him, right? He was probably off cowering somewhere with his tail behind his legs," Leona chuckles, picking his teeth again. "But everyone else's faces just about made up for it."

"Whatever," Ruggie grumbles. "I'm all in."

Though you're not exactly invested in the game anymore. You set down your cards, much to Ruggie's dismay, and stand over Leona with your hands on your hips.

"I hope you know that I won't be one of your errand runners for you. I've done enough of that with Crowley,"

He pauses, sharp eyes scanning you over. "You certainly know how to rain on someone's parade,"

"This is not a parade. This is my sanity we're talking about,"

"Tch. And what're you gonna do? Run away?" Leona rolls his eyes. "Hide in the jungle? Maybe you can take Ruggie with you and make it a party!"

"Hey, leave me out of this," the aforementioned says, shuffling the deck.

You stand your ground, though you don't know what else to say. Eventually, Leona sighs.

"Fine. I won't make you do anything you don't want to if you're just going to whine about it,"

He pauses, and a small smirk crosses his face. "But you'll at least have to wear the uniform. I need the satisfaction of seeing the look on everyone else's faces."

You smile triumphantly, and sit back down across from Ruggie for another round while Leona watches on, pretending not to care about the game.

It could be better, but it could also be worse.

Plus, something about that smile of his let on more than just a little self-satisfaction.

This could definitely be interesting...

Rook's Ending

"...Ah. Rook Hunt!" Crowley says, folding the paper back in his pocket and leaning down to whisper to Azul in the front row. "Tell the prefect I said good luck."

At the heart of the crowd, Vil turns to Rook, hands on his hips. "Rook..."

"Ah, magnifique! How happy I am, my heart could weep for joy!" he says, completely ignoring whatever disappointed comment Vil was about to unleash. "I must run to my prize at once, there's not a moment to lose!"

Vil grimaces as Rook bounds off into the school, moving so swiftly that he cuts through the crowd of confused (and mildly concerned) students like an arrow.

As always, Rook is genuine with his words- he truly feels as if his own heart is about to leap out of his chest and race him towards Ramshackle.

What a chance, what an opportunity! Not only to be close to someone he has his own private fan club for, but to truly, finally possess beauty in physical form. He would display you on a shelf if it were feasible.

The idea so overwhelms him with joy that you barely had time to ask what was going on before you suddenly found yourself sitting beside him in the Pomefiore lounge as he smooths out the crinkles in your new uniform.

He murmurs under his breath, kneeling before you while inspecting the uniform. "Magnifique, joli, belle, quelle beauté, une rose parfaite..."

...Leaving you in a torn state of embarrassment and shyness. You look across the room to Vil for help, and he rolls his eyes.

"I coulda get used 'ta this!" Grim shouts, lounging on a nearby silk pillow with a mouthfull of pâté. Two freshman are tediously brushing his fur with the nicest set of combs you've ever seen.

"Comfortable?" You ask, only a little sarcastic.

"Uh-huh! Ya know, when I found out the winner was Rook, of all people, I was a little worried. But this is way nicer than collecting dust in Ramshackle!"

You couldn't have said it better yourself.

Rook smiles. "Tsk, tsk. I would never let anyone harm a single hair on your precious head,"

The question is directed to Grim, but he looks straight at you when he says it. "Like a delicate porcelain doll, I will handle you with the utmost care,"

You're not exactly sure what you had been envisioning- maybe he'd release you on a remote island and hunt you for sport?- but this had far exceeded any of your expectations.

Though his gaze is as unsettling as ever, and any hopes of personal space are gone out the ornate glass windows, his usual guarded demeanor had softened just the tiniest bit.

It was unnerving. But nice, in a way.

"Mon trickster, this is just the beginning for us. We have many shining days ahead, and I plan on spending every beautiful breath of them with you. Do you hunt?"

"Oh, sevens," Vil murmurs.

Unfortunately for Vil, Rook's smile is contagious and you can't help encouraging him. Just this once. "Not usually, no,"

"A merveilleuse opportunity! I will teach you all I have learned, then. Ah, this reminds me of a poem I wrote for this exact occasion!"

He may or may not be watching you sleep tonight. Hopefully you're the kind of person who can live with that.

Idia's Ending

LOL. Normies.

Look at them, crowding around like a bunch of sheep. As if anyone has a real chance. SMH.

I knew it was pointless to begin with, but getting into Crowley's banking account and seeing the bids... now I feel lame for even trying at all.

That money could've gone to some new parts. I've been itching to build another PC...

The door flies open, slamming against the wall behind it so loudly that even if Idia wasn't completely absorbed in watching the announcement on his biggest monitor, he would've jumped anyway.

He whirls around in his chair, wide-eyed and shaking like a prey animal, expecting to see some high level boss or classic horror game antag waiting for him.

Instead, it's Ortho. "Idy! You'll never believe-"

"Geez, Ortho, you nearly killed me. And I don't have any extra lives this time," Idia says, spinning back around to face his screen. "Something wrong?"

"Actually, I have some really great news! Wanna guess what it is?"

Idia grumbles, powering off his computer. "Nah, not in the mood,"

Ortho's brow furrows as he catches a fleeting glimpse of the camera feed playing over his brother's screen before it flickers to black. "You've been watching the announcement on the courtyard cam footage?"

"No! I mean- well, I was just curious," Idia says. "I watched for like two minutes. Who even cares about this thing, anyway?"

"Well-"

"I mean, it was a game over from the start. Taking on the highest level bosses at our school with my measly stats? Forget it,"

"But Idia-"

"Who even cares where the prefect ends up, anyway? I doubt they'd wanna be trapped in a basement like this for all eternity,"

"Idia!" Ortho shouts, loud enough to shake his brother from his ensuing pity party. Idia can only stare as he moves to the side, revealing a rather surprised looking you, dressed in the dorm uniform, behind him.

"Idia, you won!"

And then he dies.

That's what he thinks, anyway. Really, Idia goes into a state of complete shock and blacks out so hard that, for a moment, the blinding light shining through his eyelids feels like the light at the end of the tunnel.

"Is he okay?" you ask, tentatively watching as Ortho clicks off the small light he'd been shining in his brother's eyes.

"He's displaying symptoms of a panic attack. Don't worry, he gets them quite frequently,"

A distant groaning pulls the both of you back into the present moment and you watch Idia slowly rise.

"His heart rate has steadied to 70 BPM," Ortho says. You raise an eyebrow. "That's normal. Idia, can you hear us?"

He takes a long moment to respond.

"This isn't real. I'm sleep-deprived from my last speed run and now I'm hallucinating. There's no way,"

You look between the two brothers. This hasn't exactly gotten off to a stellar start.

"Your vitals are normal, although you're lacking Vitamin C. Might I suggest having a fruit cup while we talk?" Ortho asks. Idia shakes his head. "Yuu? Snack?"

"I could go for something,"

Ortho hovers out of the room, leaving the two of you alone. You're too nervous (or is he too nervous?) to ask to sit, so you stand over him while he practically rocks back and forth. His face is so red and hot with embarrassment you could cook an egg on it.

"Um..."

He mumbles back. "Just pretend I'm not here. IK you probably wanted one of those epic SSR students to pull you, I don't blame you for being disappointed,"

He talks so fast and quiet it's hard to make out what he's saying... but you get the gist of it.

"Hey, don't put words in my mouth. This is a hell of a lot better than it could have been,"

He seems to genuinely consider your words for a moment before you're interrupted by Ortho coming back with snacks.

Idia is back on high alert the second he's returned. "This doesn't make sense. I got into Crowley's online bank info and saw all the bids, I wasn't even close to the top five. How?"

"Oh, easy!" Ortho chirps. "I simply rewired funds from Crowley's bank account to up your offer!"

"You... took money out of his account and sent it back to him?"

"Clever," you murmur.

Idia grumbles. "I guess that's not technically stealing... fine. But why? I thought I told you not to bother!"

"My user intel indicates that the prefect is very popular amongst the student body. Their top three descriptors are helpful, kind, and friendly! I thought you two might be able to practice your social skills together... Perhaps you could show them around the dorm as a starting point?"

You turn around to look at Idia, who's sheet-white. Nonetheless... he sighs and stands, muttering a quick "Let's get this over with,"

You watch, as still as stone, as he stops in the doorway and turns to look at you from over his shoulder, his face and hair a pleasant shade of pink.

"Well? Are you coming?"

Lilia's Ending

"And our winner... is... hm. I don't even remember seeing this one in the pile," Crowley grumbles, scratching his head under his hat. "Um, Lilia Vanrouge!"

Silver is the first to look at him. "Fa-Lilia, I thought we talked about this,"

Lilia, currently hovering in the shade of one of the courtyard's signature apple trees, simply shrugs. As if it were the most normal thing in the world.

"Oh, we did. I really thought about what you said, about the prefect's freedom, and I decided that you're right! But how could I guarantee their safety from everyone else?"

Silver groans (which turns into a yawn) and Lilia puts on his best cute look as everyone else in the audience turns to him.

Crowley clears his throat. "The prefect will be ready for your-"

"Oh, no need! Thank you, though," he says, and then disappears into the building.

---

You've been distracting yourself by counting cobwebs for far too long, as evident by your headache and the taste of dust on your tongue.

You turn to look at Grim. "Should be over by now. I'm surprised I haven't heard anything yet,"

"Surprised, you say?"

No matter how many times he does that, you're never quite prepared.

You jump, nearly hitting your head against the table you'd been taking refuge under. Grim yowls, clawing into your sleeve (and just barely missing the tender flesh on your arm, thank goodness), and you both stare at the fae ahead of you.

Lilia is sitting on the table, hanging his head upside down and staring right at you. Grim mumbles.

"Don't even tell me. I'm out!"

Lilia waves him goodbye as he makes a swift exit, and then turns back to you.

"I have a secret. Wanna guess?"

You're a little curious (aren't you always when it comes to him?) but that isn't enough to overpower your rising dread.

"No,"

"Aw. Really? I'm sure you'll like it,"

"Definitely not, then,"

He slinks off the table and lies on the floor, cupping his face in his palms and kicking his legs back and forth.

It would be amusing if you weren't so sure of what he's about to say.

"Well, despite your best efforts, I'm not surprised at all. But Malleus couldn't even come here to get me himself?" you sigh.

Lilia tilts his head to the side. "Now, why would he do that?"

There's something written within the margins of his tone that makes your eyes lower at him. Something he's keeping from you.

"...Well... he did win, didn't he?"

"Oh, my. You were hoping for Malleus to win? Now I'm sure we both feel silly,"

You raise an eyebrow. "Hoping is... a strong word. But I was expecting it, yes. So he didn't win?"

"No, dear, Malleus is not the winner,"

"Then... who is?"

Lilia gives you a sweet, self-satisfied grin, his fangs glinting. "You're looking at him,"

Ah.

If there's one thing Lilia Vanrouge is good at, it's surprising you. No matter how stoic you act, no matter how clever you are, he always manages to catch you off guard.

This might take the cake, though.

"I didn't even know-"

"No. Initially, I wasn't going to. But Silver and I... we had a long talk about valuing your freedom and independence, and thus I so valiantly threw myself into the flames to save you from becoming someone's slave," he pauses to smile. "Chivalrous, yes?"

"...Charming," you mutter. "But what was that thing about-"

"Oh, yes. Don't worry, you'll be treated as any other student at Diasomnia. In fact, I'm sure we already have some uniforms in your size!"

"This is... quite the turn of events,"

"Ah, isn't it? I haven't felt this elated in... well... a long time," he grins. "Come along, now. I plan on treating you to a hearty welcome dinner!"

You can only grimace at that.

Malleus' Ending

During all of the confusion, the fighting, the rumors that shook the school, no one, again, had remembered to invite Malleus Draconia to the announcement.

Not that it mattered. Not this time.

One knock at Ramshackle's creaky door and you were suddenly in the depths of the forest around the school, admiring a crumbled stone structure.

"What was it?" you ask, turning to your walking companion.

Malleus smiles slightly. "I believe it was a wall. Fascinating, no? Since you have inhabited Ramshackle, I come here when I want to be alone,"

Ah, right. You'd almost forgotten that you'd made a home out of his ruins of preference.

Ramshackle was in a much better state than this, though. At least you had four walls and a roof over your head.

"Are you alone a lot these days?" you ask, rather absent-mindedly for such a heavy topic.

You're well aware of the answer already. No, of course not. Malleus is constantly surrounded, whether that be his friends, personal guard, mentors...

"Yes,"

Oh.

"I'm... sorry to hear that," it's all you can think to say.

Fae don't seem to know the conventions of human small talk. Or maybe that's just him. Not that you mind. "What about Silver, and Sebek, and Lilia...?"

"Fine companions," he crosses his arms. "I owe them a debt of gratitude. But being physically surrounded does not amount to closeness."

Oddly profound.

You can't help but relate, thinking back to everyone you know. Even with good intentions, they're still out there, bartering over your life.

"I'm glad you came and got me," you say, breaking the tense silence. "I was afraid you'd gone to that... announcement thing."

He raises an eyebrow. "The what?"

"...Never mind. I guess my point was that I've been feeling a little lonely lately, myself,"

Malleus is quiet for a moment, staring directly ahead at the mess of stones and moss that once made up a sturdy wall. Now crumbled, scattered across the ground.

And the, he smiles.

"Well, there is a solution to this trouble of ours. But I'd need your consent,"

What exactly is he getting at? You raise an eyebrow. "Go on,"

"I've been so preoccupied with the formalities that I haven't had the chance to ask you properly, yet. Lilia suggested I might have more success this way,"

He pauses, and then smiles. "I would like us to marry. Does this agree with you?"

You thought you might be stunned. Speechless, even. But the answer comes so naturally.

"Yes, it does,"

#twst x reader #twisted wonderland x reader #malleus enjoyers this goes out to you. and rook being weird enjoyers (me) #cater diamond x reader #trey clover x reader #leona kingscholar x reader #rook hunt x reader #idia shroud x reader #lilia vanrouge x reader #malleus draconia x reader #the varying lengths of these... RIP. sorry everyone

[valeriehalla]

I don’t know what to do about the internet. It’s getting worse, and getting worse faster than I think any of us ever could have imagined even just six years ago. Tumblr shot itself in the heart at the behest of Apple, at the behest of whichever nameless evangelical finance perverts are in charge of credit card policy, whereupon people like me (artists and people who like art) fled in droves to Twitter, the present state of which I don’t have it in me to be funny about.

Even after that one-two punch, Twitter and Tumblr are still the only (major) social media platforms I can stand to use. I mean, they’re the last ones left where you can, for example, see posts that your friends have made. I might have said that that seemed like the whole point of social media; every digital elsewhere has now collectively agreed that it is, in fact, social media’s greatest flaw. Your friends like to hang out and post weird jokes and titty drawings — they don’t know the first thing about your favorite marketing trends, let alone your unslakable thirst for 30-second phone videos. We have to move on: I’ll die if I think about it.

Uh — I wanna let you in a little. Here’s where I’m at, okay? I’m working on this project. I like it a lot: it’s a writing thing and an art thing and a music thing all at the same time. I’m still struggling with art burnout, but every day I get to sit down and write or compose for this thing is an unending delight, so on the balance it’s been great to work on. It’s taken me a while to get here, though — I’ve blown past all my estimates about when it’d be done. Still, it won’t be much longer.

In the mean time, I keep having these compulsive worries. I feel that I should be posting, but the nature of a long-form project like this is that I don’t have anything to post. I tweet complete nothings now and then, as if to announce my presence, like a lighthouse pulsing in the distance. And every week the websites get worse. They’re bleeding out, and it feels like some of my blood’s in there, maybe. Like, maybe you’d call me naïve, but it wasn’t that long ago that I really, really liked all this online stuff. I never had the hustle culture mindset about it: by good luck alone I managed to make a living posting the stuff I wanted to post on the places I wanted to post it.

The places I liked to post don’t exist anymore. My experience of using the internet feels hostile, alien. The ground beneath all our feet feels eggshell-thin.

But I have to use the internet: it’s where my stuff goes. It’s where all of you are. Here is where art and artists and art-likers live.

The things I love live here, in precarity, as the saw blades and lava traps of our digital dungeon grow every day more numerous.

Anyway, what I’m saying is that the web sucks now, but as long as we’re here — and we will be here — I want to try loving it again anyway. I want to untangle myself from all this disappointment and expectation and try simply “vibing” again. I wanna use cohost more: I’ll even crosspost stuff to Tumblr like I keep saying I should. I’m making a cool thing and I should show it off! I should relearn how to draw a little doodle and post it without feeling like it’s a suboptimal use of my time or whatever!! I want to believe in what joy may find us, though our world be a dumpster.

#text

[izvmimi]

cw: fluff. pop star!bakugou. prior breakup mention. based on the story behind the eyes, nose, lips mv, iykyk.

Even if you guys are closer than can be, your friends are typically more likely to text before they call, especially at this time of night, and less likely are they to accost you in a sudden video call the way they are now. You were asleep, just by stroke of luck waking up to the sound of your phone vibrating on your end table, too exhausted to put your phone on Do Not Disturb. It’s just a few minutes after midnight, 12:06 am to be exact, and when you pick up the phone, both of them appear frantic.

“Oh, thank God.”

“___, please tell me you’re away from a phone right now.”

“Dumbass, we’re literally calling her on the phone right now.”

“Don’t call me a dumbass.”

Still rubbing your eyes, you let out a sigh.

“Why did you two call me?” You’re still horizontal, trying to orient yourself while lowering your phone brightness. It’s entirely dark in your room, and you’ve been exhausted all day between errands and other activities, including a single 25 minute cry over your failed relationship.

It’s been 3 months since you and Katsuki split, and while you’ve overall been handling it quite well, intermittently the sadness overtakes you. After all, it was abrupt.

Dating a pop star was not all it’s cracked up to be, especially when it ends abruptly over a dinner you could never afford yourself with the words “take care of yourself, okay?” from a man you’d planned the rest of your life with. The last thing you’d asked him to do before that was to go public, and he’d been hesitant to, and you don’t know what happened between then and that night, because it all ended all too quickly, with you crying on the limo ride home. 

3 months later and you were almost over it until you chanced on a photo you’d forgotten to hide away in your digital memoirs and proceeded to sob.

“So uh… have you spoken to Katshole recently?”

You roll your eyes at the nickname your friend has given him, not bothering to tell her now to be nice. “No.”

It still annoys you. “Please stop calling him that.”

“Fine.”

Your other friend sighs.

“So uh, anyway, he dropped a video.” You raise your eyebrow.

“I mean, sure. Is the girl in it hot?” you ask. You pretend you haven’t been looking at his social media intermittently, trying to see if there was someone new in his life, but either way Katsuki prided himself on keeping his private life hidden away, so you wouldn’t be able to tell unless it was someone equally famous or advantageous to his career.

Your two friends both grimace at the same time. One says, “I mean yes, but not in the way you think.”

You blink.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

You’re up and seated now, bedsheets pulled to your lap. You’ve minimized the video and are now typing his name into Google, and can see, indisputably, that he’s posted a new music video.

“Why did you guys wake me up for this?”

“Babe, listen to me carefully. If you’re not ready to get back together, do not click this video.”

Your heart thumps, while both of your friends watch you with bated breath, as your face contorts, trying to figure out what that means.

“I-”

“You’re in the video.”

You blink rapidly, your eyebrows still furrowed together, as your heart rate starts to pick up. Your mouth opens then closes.

You’re in the video.

“She’s done for,” one of your friends says, reading the look on your face, and sighs. “I’m gonna hang up, I’ll see you in the morning.”

All of you say your goodnights, and of course, you remain up, your face basking in the blue light of your cell phone, as you watch Katsuki’s urgent music video supposedly with you in it.

The video culminates in Katsuki, standing by a painted mural, and you recognize the photo, an image of your face from the first time he flew you out to paint in Italy, something that would have won any girl over just from the expense and planning, but won you over because he chose you as his model, because you can still remember how his lips parted as he mixed the right colors for your hair.

I’m sorry, please pick up my call, the video closes with the words written in his handwriting, and said with his voice, and you can feel the tears streaming down your face as you wordlessly cry.

And then your phone rings.

#bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #daydreams: bnha #mimi's notes

[echo-and-dust]

now that my brain has somewhat unscrambled itself i have gotten most of my thoughts in order about season 3.

and the first thing i will say is: i loved it.

while it was gutwrenching and polarizing in some ways and i feel that i am entitled to financial compensation for what its done to my mental health, i loved this season for pretty much almost everything it did.

i cannot fault people for having issues with much of the characterization and plot choices made—that’s been the trend during the entire run of the show after all, and imo it’s a testament to the phenomenal way it generates nuance—but i wanted to share my feelings on the recurring opinions i’ve seen about some of these things.

first, i do not blame simon at all for the things he said in the final scene. he’s a child who has been receiving endless verbal and physical harassment on top of all the trauma he is still trying to heal from. he just watched his boyfriend lash out in anger and hurt—while not at him, but it must’ve been a close resemblance of how he might’ve seen micke act. at least, that's what i thought, though i've seen others say otherwise.

and yes, wille is not micke, but just because wille’s source of outbursts is different from micke’s doesn’t mean simon is wrong in drawing similarities. at least he's finally getting a true glimpse into what wille has had to deal with. i've honestly grown to like that they didn't have simon immediately comfort him though; wille's mental illness is not his fault, but it is his responsibility, and instead of pushing a message of unhealthy co-dependence, the show has simon be honest: "but i see that everything hurts you and that hurts me too." and to me, that's so important.

plus, it doesn't make their love any less genuine. wille is a victim of the circumstances; he is not evil, and he is not undeserving of simon. he just has a lot of growing and healing to do, a lot of unlearning and exposure therapy because he's still blinded by privilege even when he tries not to be.

speaking of, i have so many thoughts about wille that i feel like i need to save for its own separate post, but to sum them up: i'll still defend him with my life, and he needs to get the fuck away from that institution.

also, the fact that the responsibility of controlling simon's media decisions was placed solely on wille confused me at first like—why wouldn't they get a professional to give him proper media training?

then i realized, this could be the royal court's way of sabotaging their relationship. they knew that making wille the one to tell simon what he can and cannot say or post would create distance and animosity between them. despite the ramifications of simon's behavior on social media, it seems they still thought it best to have his boyfriend be the one to try to mold him into the system. because they knew that's how they could get rid of him. in conclusion, fuck the royal court (we been knew but still).

one of the standouts this season was their transparency regarding the show's politics. it not only works well with the show's arc (wilmon is public, everything's out in the open now and there's nothing to hide), but also it felt necessary at a time where censorship has been rapidly gaining momentum. it felt so refreshing for these characters to talk so openly about racial discrimination and queerphobia and class disparities, forcing both character and viewer to acknowledge that they exist and you should feel uncomfortable about it.

i don't think i can add much more to what was already said about it—most of the fandom is more eloquent and observant than i am anyway—i just wanted to reinforce how important this season is to myself and the story even with how controversial it is to fans right now. a lot of people may disagree with me and that's fine.

#young royals #wilmon #simon eriksson #prince wilhelm #yr spoilers #yr s3 spoilers #ad speaks #i don't know how they're going to tie everything together in under an hour but so far this season is strong enough for me to like it despit #what ending we receive #and i know i'm in the minority in that sense but i've been spending most of the hiatus trying to keep myself from setting expecations #so i haven't really been let down too much #i really don't want to let this show go though :'( #forever my heart #yr season 3 #young royals season 3

[horreurscopes]

So, I could be out-of-bounds here since I think you meant it as dark humor, but what did you mean in the tags of that 'israel-hamas war' post? I suspect you(and op) are criticizing that framing because Israel is obviously demolishing much more than 'Hamas'(and probably doing a terrible job of actually targeting terrorists- they seem content to reduce Gaza to rubble even if the brass of Hamas escapes). I'm guessing that by saying "joining the Israel-Hamas war on the side of Hamas" you mean, if they're going to conflate Palestinians with Hamas unilaterally, then you're saying, whatever the media wants to call Palestinian civilians- you still support them. I am asking anyways though bc, given reports of increasing antisemitic activity in the US and Europe, I am worried about the potential for blurring lines between the cause of Palestinian civilians and the alt-right individuals who are likely masking their antisemitism in the context of being anti-Zionist. Although Israel's government has been the source of Palestinian loss for decades, (it seems to me that) even joking about supporting terrorism is enough to reinforce the persuasion that Israeli/Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs must be mutually-exclusive peoples. I don't think it's fully rational per se(tho I'm not claiming to have all the relevant information myself, and I'm white US American goyim so like- grain of salt-), but I think that existential fear is the incredible hurdle facing Zionist Jews. (Idc too much about the opinions of non-Jewish Zionists bc I don't grant that they are dealing with the same emotional complications at this time, although that doesn't stop me from arguing w my acquaintances abt their callous acceptance of US/Israeli propaganda.) I just think..... isn't it overall harmful to allow anti-semitic rhetoric, even used sarcastically, to enter the genuine humanist cause for Palestinian liberation? Or, have I misunderstood, and you actually are not in opposition to Hamas, or something else I didn't think of?

hi! thank you for approaching the question thoughtfully and with curiosity, i really appreciate it. i was being kind of flippant with that meme, but this is the only ask i'm going to reply to on the matter given that i am neither jewish nor arab, so i'm going to answer in earnest:

hamas is a political resistance movement with an armed wing, much like the black panthers party was, and like the bpp, a large part of the organization is dedicated to social welfare and civic restoration.

they have stated that they are not against judaism, but against the zionist project. they openly support political solutions.

labeling hamas a terrorist group is a propaganda tactic used by the united states and israel to justify the horrors of settler colonization.

hamas is palestine, a part of it, even if palestinians like any other demographic on earth, are not a unified, single-minded people. to declare hamas a separate entity falls prey to the imperialist lie that there is an enemy to fight "fairly" within the people they are displacing and exterminating.

am i rejoicing in the deaths of israelis? of course not. killing civilians and taking civilian hostages is a war crime, whether it is committed by the opresor or the oppressed. the israeli government is not its people, and many jews, within israel as well as in the US, are bravely risking their lives to publicly dissent the criminal acts of the israeli government. all loss of human life is a tragedy.

no one should ever be faced with the choice between annihilation and murderous violence after exhausting all other forms of peaceful protest and being massacred like animals.

but why is it that we consider a resistance group formed within a population with a median age of eighteen a terrorist group, and not the IDF, a US-backed military force with an annual budget of twenty billion dollars?

i am currently reading hamas and civil society in gaza by sara roy to learn more about hamas and the history of israel in palestine. i'll remember to post more excerpts which i am admittedly terrible at.

but all of the information above can be found by reading wikipedia. investigating with duckduckgo searches (not gonna pretend google isn't prioritizing propaganda, to be fair), and reading reliable news coverage like aljazeera and the many journalists who are at risk of, or have lost their lives, reporting on the ground.

i have also appreciated reading posts from @determinate-negation @opencommunion @fairuzfan @ibtisams and @bloglikeanegyptian amongst others

in conclusion:

#palestine

[caesarflickermans]

thg fans, we need to talk about the "rose map".

with TBOSAS, a new Panem map emerged diverging from previous map iterations. Fans have attempted to explain the stylistic difference as either a Capitol map or an in-universe artistic interpretation resembling a rose.

however, this map resembles a popular fan-made map. let's finally address this.

[image id: two pictures of a map. the first map has been made by a fan with its social media links included. the second map is titled "history of panem". the first map has several districts marked in a circular form moving inward toward the capitol. the second map is a similar design with the same shapes moving toward an inner centre. it's red colour makes it look like a rose]

Note the resemblance of the District placements and their shapes. District 4 and its island are especially noteworthy.

the original artist has spoken out today on a reddit post. this is their statement:

Hi, I'm aimmyarrowshigh who created this map, and I just wanted to thank you for pointing out here and when it was originally revealed that Lionsgate stole it from me.  They never contacted me to ask about using my Panem map (even though it is copyrighted as part of The Panem Companion) and did not give me any credit for its use. If they wanted to use it as the TBOSAS map, I would have gladly worked with them to update it to their design specs in exchange for whatever they paid their graphic designers and an acknowledgement in the end credits! I would have been thrilled! But instead, they stole it without any regard, and they're ignoring the Cease & Desist sent by my lawyers. (I am being aided by the legal team at the OTW.)  I am so disappointed by their decisions regarding this issue, from the initial choice to use it without just... asking... or even informing me... to their refusal to admit that they did such a thing. The fact that the graphic design company quietly removed it from IG after Lionsgate got the C&D, yet they still aren't going to give any credit or compensation for its use, is kind of depressing.  I think I can probably speak for any fan artist or meta writer in saying that having one of my crazy ideas made canon is super cool, and if they had asked me whether they could use my map design, I would have said yes AND probably been a lot cheaper than whoever they paid to steal it, just because I would have been so chuffed to see it in the movie. I'm kind of heartbroken that they didn't respect it, or me, enough to just... shoot me an email. You know? I know some people will probably reply and say "it's just a fanwork" or "you made it 13 years ago, get over it" or something like that, but fanworks are made out of pure love for the thing (in this case, THG) and Lionsgate took advantage of my love for THG to earn a little more money directly (on merch) and indirectly (in the movie itself). That's gross, imo. Just because it's a fanwork doesn't mean it isn't the intellectual property of the person who created it -- and especially in the case of something like this map, which exists specifically because it DIDN'T exist in canon at the time I created it.  Anyway, tl;dr: yes, they stole it, and thank you for pointing that out so consistently. 

what to do as fans?

boycott the "rose" map. do not buy the map / do not promote it / raise awareness / share this post.

uplift fan work. support fans / share & credit fan work.

supporty aimmyarrowshigh. buy or talk about the panem companion / share the original map.

#thg #the hunger games #katniss everdeen #peeta mellark #everlark #lucy gray baird #coriolanus snow #snowbaird #annie cresta #finnick odair #odesta #haymitch abernathy #effie trinket #hayffie

[keishawantskisses]

"Haven't you ever seen skin like mine?" A vault

Skin clarity + glow | Skin tone | skin clarity

∘₊ ✧───────────────────✧₊∘

⋆.˚ Skin clarity .𖥔˚

My skin is just so clear and beautiful, I can't help staring and feeling it. I am just in awe at how wonderfully blessed I am to be born with such perfect ideal skin. It is so gorgeously smooth, and while its firmness keeps me looking young and perfect, it is still supple and has a slight bounce to the touch.

I mean my skin is so perfect some friends ask me what brand of skin care I use to get my skin so even and glowing like it does, but truth be told.. genetics and positive assumptions about myself I guess😭?? I've never had any reason to use skin products because my skin has always been naturally flawless, and ive never had any reason to doubt myself because literally look at me- i am the proof. That's just my nature. But every now and then, I'll get gifted high-quality skin korean care sets and expensive most wanted skin moisturisers with the most delicious and entising scents by my mum "just in case" but also because the process is fun😋

It's also so fun being able to eat whatever I want without ever having to worry about my skin because nothing could ever affect its perfectness. I just eat what I want, and the after-effects are like a couple of crumbs on my lips and still looking pretty😭

But some people do be jealous tho🙄. "There is no way she can eat what she likes and still look that good" one says and "what about the acne? Has she even gotten a spot once?" another says. And it's even better when I post pictures or videos cus haters really be out here doing there best to convince themselves and everyone around them (like the clowns they are) that skin is impossible to look that perfect and it HAS to be makeup or it HAS to be a filter or she MUST have gotten some surgery of a kind and they all couldn't be more wrong lmao. I just be existing and nothing else and i am just that naturally radiant😂

∘₊ ✧───────────────────✧₊∘

⋆.˚ Skin colour.𖥔˚

I've had people pointing out how dewy and golden like my skin is like all my life and I never even thought about it until now. Well, I kind of always knew that I have the most gorgeous, jaw dropping skin colour that ranged between a deep caramel tan in the light and like a golden brown in the dark; I've even been accused of bleaching my skin to get a lighter tone once but how would that even make any sense when my tone changes slightly due to lighting?😭😭 But anyway other than that one person I've been getting remarkable amounts of compliments both in person and on social media about how glorious my skin colour looks. It's kind of overwhelming but ive been fighting though it.

skin colour in the dark | skin colour in bright lightings

∘₊ ✧───────────────────✧₊∘

1 dimple is ♡shaped | I sweat= I shimmer | cutest mole marks

⋆.˚ Unique features.𖥔˚

— Glittery skin when I sweat

I have a rare phenomenon that only 0.0001 in the entire human population have, with my skin where if I am to sweat, my skin will have a light glittery coat. Scientists have recently come to find out that the glittery coat left behind by the sweat is a natural skin protecting barrier. This is incredibly useful for preventing skin problems like rashes, strawberry skin, and uneven skin texture. Scientists have not found a name for this yet (im scientists and don't know what to call it)

— ♡Shaped Dimple

Another rare phenomenon for people to get is dimples. Only 0.01 of the entire human population have dimples, and an even smaller number of people (me) have a heart-shaped dimple. There is nothing scientific about this tho, it's just fun to look at

— Beauty marks / moles

I have a couple of cute beauty marks on my body and face. Also somewhat rare, somewhat not lol. Nothing more to add😊

@theshifterbear @livingmydreamlife5555 @4ellieluv

This was lowkey entertaining to script especially the unique features one too. ONTO THE NEXT!

#loa advice #loassumption #loa tumblr #loa blog #loa #4d reality #law of assumption #master manifestor #desired reality #drself #desired appearance #desired self #desired life #desired face #shiftblr #shifters #shifting #self concept #reality shift #shifted #reality shifting #shifting community #shifting antis dni #law of manifestation

[thepradapariah]

Mercury 🌬. Your Love Language 🖤. How Do You Flirt 🙈🙊?

TO MY KOSMIC BADDIES & SPACE KADETS 🚀 !!!!

Hello to all the Kosmic Baddies & Space Kadets! I have missed y’all SO friggin much…you have ZERO idea! (Just FYI: I have Ketu in the 10H— Rahu in the 4H…if y’know, y’know…lol. Consistency will NEVER be my strong suit.) But I am SO happy to be back. I hope you enjoy this post. As usual, shoutout to my sister— she encouraged me to get back on the horse! And THANK YOU to all the people who have subscribed to my page. It has been really moving to see all of you that have interacted & sent such positive feedback. I appreciate you more than you could ever know! I’m in the process of growing, and I want you all to know here & now, you are some of my DAY ONES, so be excited for ALL of the things I have in store for you! If you don’t already, please consider following me on my other social media.

✨Instagram: @thepradapariah

@thewiiikedwitchofthewest

✨YouTube: Kosmostrology

I would love to have you be a part of an already active & engaging community!

✨INTRODUCTION:

ANYWAYS, I wanted to start off with something fun & light! As we officially move into Spooky Season— I couldn’t think of a better time to sharpen the witchy sexiness within us all. We will be looking at the Mercury placement in your natal chart & how it influences your flirtation style, while also exploring the pros/cons of each. It’s IMPORTANT to note, that Mercury is neutral & so other placements matter with how this can manifest in your life. Are you more aggressive & upfront? Or are you a hopeless romantic, imagining your lover rather than speaking to them…hoping they will notice you through telepathic signals?…WE SHALL SEE!!!

Love Languages are very important for a deeper understanding of how you receive & give love. This is NOT a definitive list, by any means, but I wanted to use the Zodiac to highlight different love languages that you MAY resonate with. This post will hopefully be a tool for you on your journey of self-discovery though dating! And this could be a good place to start OR a fresh perspective on stale dating situations.

✨Definitions:

Mercury:

Mercury, known as Budh in Vedic astrology, is the prince of planets and governs your abilities of speech, reasoning, and communication, as well as your digestive system, nervous system, and skin. It’s a neutral planet whose effects on your life depend on the alignment of the other planets in your horoscope [wikihow]

Flirting:

(to) behave as though attracted to or trying to attract someone, but for amusement rather than with serious intentions. [Oxford Language]

Love Language:

Our "love language" describes how we [give]/receive love from others.

They are:

Words of Affirmation - Saying supportive things to your partner

Acts of Service - Doing helpful things for your partner

Receiving Gifts - Giving your partner gifts that tell them you were thinking about them

Quality Time - Spending meaningful time with your partner

Physical Touch - Being close to and caressed by your partner

Each of us differs in the ways that we receive love. By learning to give love in the ways that our partner can best receive it, and by asking our partner to give us love in the ways that we can receive it, we can create stronger relationships.

[psychologytoday.com]

✨HOW TO READ:

You can read for your Zodiac Sign & House Placement!

— In this case, one might resonate more than the other! So I encourage you read for both placements!

If you’re feeling a little frisky, you can also read for your Venus placement because we are talking about “love”/relationships/dating

🌹ON WITH THE SHOW:

🌬Mercury in Aries/First House

Tarot Card: Page of Wands

If you have Mercury in Aries/1H, then you are a “get it how you live it” type b*tch! When it comes to flirting, shy is NOT the first word that comes to mind. You like to be upfront with your partners & can’t stand someone who beats around the bush. You ARE the bush. A burning bush…to be exact. (S/o to you if you get the reference.) You are a playful lover & have an optimistic & sometimes naive approach to dating— this can make you a very childlike flirt. Being ruled by Mars, you are extremely reactionary. You are the definition of picking up what someone else is putting down— As you get older, you will grow into initiating more, but you will ALWAYS be down for a fun, banter with someone you are interested in.

You may be the type of lover to start verbal arguments, just to spice things up a little bit. If you find yourself getting bored with a potential mate…well…they might as well kiss you goodbye & keep it pushing because you won’t stick around long for someone not willing to entertain your more youthful whims. If you have Mercury in the 1H in particular, you may flirt by telling a beaux about your accomplishments and lead with your competitive spirit. You may be attracted to people you meet at the gym— something about seeing someone all sweaty & fit can really turn you on.

The Pros/Cons of this placement is you LOVE the thrill of the chase. When someone has sparked your interest romantically, you will desire to be in constant communication with them. As I stated earlier, you are not shy. You don’t mind sending 2/3 text in a row if they don’t respond back quick enough. This can be enduring to the right partner, demonstrating loyalty & engagement, but to others, you may come off as “too much”. Don’t worry about it!!!! If you are “too much” for them, then by default, they are “not enough” for you. Just be mindful that not everyone has the speed that you possess when it comes to going after what you want. You will do well with a fellow Mercury in Fire Placement or Air placement. I suggest you stay away from Earth & Water sign Mercury until you learn patience within your own self— & that can be a lifelong journey. Your mind is very goal oriented, but also very short-sighted at times. Learn to balance it if you want to be in a long-lasting relationship. Everything can’t always move at your time.

Now, as much as you love the chase, you may not love the stability of “winning” as much. After you win the number one spot, you may want to mooooovvveeee on to the next cute thing that crosses your path. This can lead to attracting & entertaining truly unavailable partners. Because this is just a flirty post, it’s important to highlight that you are a MAJOR MAJOR MAAAJJOORRR flirt, but not necessarily because you are seeking a permeant relationship. This can manifest one of two ways (mostly), you can either fall head over heels with someone very quickly & then lose the passion for them just as quickly OR you never take relationships seriously to began with & you just enjoy catching a spark & getting a rise out of someone— (sometimes) a mixture of both. Either way, you are a flirt to your core & you love a little competition when it comes to your dating life with your partners. You love a good break-up to make-up type relationship, particularly in your youth, but you’re flirty power truly shines for letting people know what you want/expect quickly. You are not about wasting anytime!

🖤Love Language: Words of Affirmation

“Words of affirmation are words that communicate your love, appreciation, and respect for another person. They're positive words and phrases used to uplift someone. What's more, these compliments and words of encouragement don't have to be said directly to the person.” - verywellmind.com

🎶Song- Maneater by Nelly Furtado

“You either wanna be with me or be me (Come on, now)

Maneater, make you work hard

Make you spend hard, make you want all her love…

Make you cut cards, make you fall real hard in love”

🌬Mercury in Taurus/Second House

Tarot Card: King of Pentacles

If you have Mercury in Taurus/2H, your flirtation style is quite subtle. You possess an elegance in your speech, that most would envy. You also constantly have beauty, luxury & pleasure on the mind, so you lead with your senses. You may have a beautiful & sultry speaking voice, you may carry scent very well, & you CERTAINLY know how to set the vibe with great music, food & wine. Why? Because you ARE the vibe. Opposed to your Aries predecessor, you believe that slow & steady wins the race. You are a flirt simply because people are always trying to flirt with you! When someone approaches you, they may lead with “where did you get that shirt?” Or, “What perfume are you wearing”, just to get your attention. And the answer probably will be “you can’t afford it”. (Just kidding. Lol, you may know how to ball on a budget, but you tend to have expensive/exquisite taste.) You set the tone for some of the most sensual lovers.

Because you are so tuned in to your senses when it comes to dating, you take your time getting to know your partners before you spoil them with the full effect. You are a flirt who loves more of a slow burn & passion that builds overtime. You don’t mind taking things slowly, as long as you know the time is worth your investment.

The Pro/Con of this Mercury placement, is you believe in brutal honesty. This is a blessing & a curse. On one hand, your love interest never has to worry about where they stand with you or how you’re feeling. You have no problem opening up (after a while) to speak your mind clearly. And open communication is KEY to successful relationships. So this is a big big big ole plus. But…on the OTHER hand…you can be so caught up in your own truth, you may forget to actually listen to &/or consider your partner’s truth as well. BE CAREFUL. Taurus is a fixed energy, but fixed doesn’t always mean right…even if you’re right a lot. In the beginning dating phases, you may be too cutting with your words & turn parters off. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, but just be mindful that there is an art to honesty & it doesn’t always require brutality. You can soften your tone from time to time— sometimes the truth is overrated. (Now, full disclosure: I aaammm a Mercury in the 8H native, soooooo….I do admit that I’m the opposite & a bit biased, but there is balance to everything! I believe in a “need to know basis” type communication style.)

Once you are in a more grounded dating routine, you are a loyal, stable, giving, kind & a disciplined flirt. You will be far more consistent w your lovers when communicating— keeping an open dialogue when you move past some stubbornness. You appreciate a lover who is well-kept for. You’ll dish out the compliments to a well groomed, articulate & financially savvy partner, but your REAL flirt style lies in the way you touch. You will most likely communicate to your partners through cuddling & quality time. You will cook for people you care about, enticing them with all the goods in the world. You are more comfortable displaying affection through a soft touch or a simple kiss on the forehand. You love your partners to feel present in the moment, enjoying being alive & indulging in the sensual pleasures that life has to bring. YOU are a flirtation connoisseur!

🖤Love Language: Physical Touch

“If your love language is physical touch, then that means you prefer physical expressions of love over all other expressions (such as verbal compliments or gifts). Note that physical touch as a love language is not all about sex, although sex can be an important aspect of a romantic relationship.” -verywellmind.com

🎶Song: Satisfaction by Benny Benassi, The Biz

“Push Me

And then just touch me

Till I can get my

Satisfaction…”

🌬Mercury in the Gemini/Third House

Tarot Card: Queen of Swords

If you have Mercury in Gemini/3H you were BLESSED with the gift of gab. You are quick witted, light hearted & know how to entertain a person of interest with your sharp intellect. Because you are the most curious of the Zodiac, your flirt style involves asking A LOT of questions. You may find that as you’re getting to know people, you learn a heck of a lot about them & they know close to NOTHING about you. You could be SO good at being elusive, lovers may not even catch your name! There is a certain mystique that comes from this energy because you are the ultimate shape-shifter. It’s giving very Taylor Swift, “Find out what you want, be that girl for a month” energy with a fun & enthusiastic twist! When you flirt, people are enthralled by your knowledge. You know a little about a lot & can make yourself seem like an expert. You keep up with current events, gossip— basically anything that peaks your interest, & this makes you a one of a kind type person, not limited by close-mindedness & simplicity. In fact, some people could find you really difficult to keep up with. When it comes to small talk you are the best of the best.

The Pros/Cons of this placement is your mind is constantly racing. People who are interested in you/you are interested in may not realize just how deep into logic you fall at the prospect of a new relationship. Although you appear fluid & unfazed by casual dating & could be really good at it, you either desire something deeper bc of other placements in your chart, OR the idea of commitment really scares you. You let your imagination run wild very quickly & have a difficult time grounding serious energy. Again, this is a blessing & a curse. You’re able to navigate the dating world really well because you don’t take it too seriously, HOWEVER when it comes to making a deeper commitment you could take it FAR TOO seriously or not seriously enough. This can be confusing for your lovers because they never quite understand where they stand with you. Sometimes you’re all in & sometimes you’re all out. It would take a special person that would be interested in getting to know you past the shallow surface level that could truly peak your interest. You of all signs are able to hide behind banter, although you have a deeply curious & possibly oversaturated mind when it comes to getting to know someone. Regardless of how you flutter into people’s lives, they are always awe struck in your presence & feel a void when you leave. It really is a super power.

You are an amazing flirt! You get an A++ on the flirt test! Just be mindful that when you want something more serious & to explore truths in deep relationships, you will have to stop shape-shifting & be your authentic self—whoever that is. You have to truly let people in to your brain because people won’t naturally be able to keep up with how quickly you move. You could meet someone, imagine your life together and then “ooooo squirrel” & never think about that person again. Don’t hide behind your gift of being able to steer conversation— make an effort to have deep and meaningful conversations & you’ll be surprised how much people adore your natural, flighty & curious selves. I would stay away from Water Mercury placements more than anything. It’s not impossible, but because they operate from a more empathetic space, you would REALLY have to work on your communication because you may appear to cold & distant even if that isn’t your intention. It’s a catch 22 to have Mercury in a Mercury ruled sign because Mercury isn’t the most sexual of planets. You intellectualize relationships & could definitely find yourself on the Sapiosexual spectrum: meaning “Sapiosexuality is a type of sexuality that involves being more attracted by the contents of a person's mind than by the appearance of their body. In order to feel sexually attracted to another person, a sapiosexual person must first feel intellectually stimulated” according to verywellmind.com. You may not grasp the depth of others emotions because you feel flirting & dating is more of a mind game at times. Just be aware & have fun! Use your gifts wisely!

🖤Love Language: Words of Affirmation

“Words of affirmation are words that communicate your love, appreciation, and respect for another person. They're positive words and phrases used to uplift someone. What's more, these compliments and words of encouragement don't have to be said directly to the person.” - verywellmind.com

🎶Song: Thinkin Bout You by Frank Ocean

“I'm thinking 'bout you (Ooh no, no, no)

I've been thinking 'bout you (You know, know, know)

I've been thinking 'bout you

Do you think about me still? Do ya, do ya?

Or do you not think so far ahead

Cause I been thinking bout forever, ooh”

🌬Mercury in Cancer/Fourth House

Tarot Card: Page of Cups

If you have Mercury in Cancer/4H, your flirtation style is sweet & wholesome. You may be VERY VERY VERY VEEERRRYYYY shy when it comes to expressing your emotions because you can be caught trying to rationalize your emotions logically which is inherently a trap door. You may not even consider yourself much of a flirt like your Gemini predecessors. Of all placements, Mercury in Cancer is one that may be most likely to be a demisexual; meaning “Demisexuality is a sexual orientation in which a person feels sexually attracted to someone only after they've developed a close emotional bond with them,” according to clevelandclinic.org. (You may or may not resonate with that label, it’s okay!!! I am not trying to define who you are & how you love. I’m just offering an outside perspective! Take it or leave it! Love you either way :)) Even if you are a flirtatious person, who is comfortable meeting people & having light hearted conversations, depending on other placements in your chart, you are most moved by relationships that make you feel comfortable enough to truly express how you’re feeling— even if you don’t know how to put those feelings into words just yet! There is a natural loving quality that you have within your speech. You love nurturing those you care about & would make sure that their basic needs are taken care of if you are truly interested in them. You’ll want to know if they ate, how their day went & if they need anything from you when they get home. This is the true power of empathy this Mercury placement can posses. It is truly enduring to the right person of interest!

The Pros/Cons of this placement is you are so deeply in tune with your own emotions, you can make the poor assumption that those around you can read your mind about how you’re feeling. TRUTH BOMB!!!! They absolutely can’t. In fact, I would suggest that you partner with a fellow Mercury in Water sign because there can be SOME telepathy (still not mind readers though), particularly Mercury in Scorpio/8H OR Mercury in Earth placement because they MAY have more patience when it comes to your communication style. You may be the type to burst into tears before you even start talking because you are so overwhelmed with emotions. THIS IS NOT INHERENTLY A BAD THING! This is just something to beware of and I suggest you channel this energy into something creative! For instance, instead of crying about how your lover didn’t notice that you cut your hair…write a song about it! This can be a highly creative placement as long as you’re able to express what you’re feeling in a constructive manner. You’re empathetic nature is a wonderful gift to give to the world, but most importantly to your partners! They will appreciate the care & consideration you give to them during the courting phases of a new relationship!

When you are able to balance your own emotions with understanding your partners communication style as well, you can have one of the deeper level connections— hence why flirting may work for or against you. If you are a flirt flirt FLIRT, you could be hiding behind your deeper emotions, not wanting to let anyone take advantage of your kindness…but on the other hand, if you prefer to stay in your shell, you should put yourself out there enough to meet someone who fulfills your needs for companionship— someone who cares about you the same way you care about them. Try not to be emotionally manipulative when it comes to dating either. You could fall into the trap of flirting by playing the damsel in distress role. Again, not always a bad thing (some placements play too tough & that’s not great either, there is always a balance) but when it comes to developing true & authentic connections, the victim/savior dynamic can only take you but so far & ultimately leave you feeling more abandoned than loved in the end. Lead with you caring side & you will find the partner who understands your need to be emotionally understood!

🖤Love Language: Quality Time

“People who speak the love language of quality time want to be the object of their lover's undivided attention. They want to feel cherished and prioritized, and rather than receiving gifts, words, acts, or touch, they prefer to simply spend meaningful time together.” — blinkist.com

🎶Song: Loveeeee Song by Rihanna ft. Future

“Boy, lately you've been stingy with your time

Got me wondering, I'm wondering if I'm on your mind

Boy, I just wanna be in your possession

You say I'm the one you want, so come express it…

I don't wanna give you the wrong impression

I need love and affection

And I hope I'm not sounding too desperate

I need love and affection”

🌬Mercury in Leo/Fifth House

Tarot Card: King of Wands

If you have Mercury in Leo/5H, your flirtation style is bold & in your face. You KNOW your worth & you get off on letting people know you know it! You know how to make an entrance & people are naturally entranced by your regal & authoritative nature. People of interest may find it hard to approach you because you seem so out of their league. It’s only natural that you get put on a pedal stool. You care a lot about your appearance & how you come off to others. You don’t like to be outshines when it comes to flirting, so you may be drawn to individuals who are well liked or already in relationships. Why? Not because you’re a home-wrecker, but because you may prefer some competition. You carry yourself in such a way, you are hard to miss. When you speak, people listen. You may also be HIGHLY creative, so your need for expression can draw in an audience that is amazed by your talent & beauty. Being ruled by the Sun, you really know how to light up a room.

There is an aura about you that screams “don’t talk to me, unless you can buy me a diamond ring”. You may or not be materialistic, of course this depends on other placements in your chart, but you do come off that way regardless. You only want the best of what the world has to offer— the best food, the best friends & the best lovers! You can be quite selective about who you chose to flirt with because you are naturally an extremely loyal person. You want to make sure that you are aligning yourself with the best, the brightest & the most beautiful. You are the definition of having standards when it comes to dating! And that’s an amazing gift.

The Pros/Cons of this placement is that you can come off as very “me” centered. People can take your need to feel important as you assuming they are less important, which isn’t necessarily the case. You are a very open & caring person & would fight for anyone you love— however, in the dating phases, it may seem as if you only care about yourself. How do you combat this? Just remember to take a step back from time to time & spoil your partner by listening to them & giving them your undivided attention. Combat your urge to interject with your personal antidotes. Don’t worry, you’ll have your time to shine again! I highly suggest you seek out like minded Mercury placements, like other Fire signs or even Air Signs. They will be able to understand that you are not so self-absorbed, but rather just speaking from your personal experiences. You will just have to be careful to not create an atmosphere that feels as if you & your person of interest are fighting for dominance in communication. This can be done with patience & understanding.

You are a razzle-dazzle kind of lover & anyone who is amazing enough to peak your interest is a lucky-ducky indeed! You will go to war for those you care about & your unwavering loyalty is something to envy. Those that are attracted to you will be overjoyed with how much fun & creativity you bring into their lives. You have great taste & only enjoy the best for you and your loved one! A great flirt you are indeed…to the rich— I mean “right”— person, of course!

🖤Love Language: Giving/Receiving Gifts

“If one's love language is gift giving, it simply means that one received early in life the clear communication that giving a gift is an important, acceptable, and/or clear way to show others how you feel about them and that you love and appreciate them” — womenshealthmag.com

🎶Song: Get the Party Started by Pink

“Get this party started on a Saturday night

Everybody's waitin' for me to arrive

Sendin' out the message to all of my friends

We'll be lookin' flashy in my Mercedes Benz

I got lotsa style, check my gold diamond rings

I can go for miles if you know what I mean

I'm comin' up so you better get this party started

(I'm comin' up, I'm comin')

I'm comin' up so you better get this party started”

🌬Mercury in Virgo/Sixth House

Tarot Card: Queen of Pentacles

If you have Mercury in Virgo/6H your flirtation style is particularly unique & interesting. Why? Because you tend to be very shy & to yourself. You’re a deep thinker, constantly problem solving & attempting to get the most perfect outcome to any given situation. You tend to be EXTREMELY detail oriented & focus on the little things in life. Because you have this desire for perfection, you are very cautious with your words & expressions. You, like Cancer Mercury placements, tend to stick to yourself— you may not be the most open person when pursuing a new lover. Instead of talking about your feelings…you would THRIVE in the Era of love letters! You are beautifully articulate & well spoken, so when you are able to physically write your emotions out, you can use words & written language as a tool to express your most loving thoughts. If this placement was a movie— it would be The Notebook. Truly a romantic placement, but quite honestly, misunderstood when it comes to flirting. You, like your Leo predecessor, care A LOT about how you come off. You keep manicured nails & toes, clean hair, because you care about cleanliness & this is a subtle way of letting your person of interest know you are, in fact, interested. When you truly desire someone, you want to appear your best at all times. You get voted most likely to cancel a date because you broke a nail. Again, others may perceive this as shallow or you using it as an excuse to distance yourself, but that is so far from the truth. As Mercury is your ruling planet, you are a master communicator— particularly when it comes to poetry & prose— but Mercury is arguably the most a-sexual planet, so it is a bit of a catch 22. Like your brother sign Gemini, may THINK too much about love, instead of actually experiencing it. The difference is Geminis LOVE to flirt, kind of like an intellectual sparring match, where you love the idea of love & would rather write about it in your journal, rather than approach that person in real life. How cute!

The Pros/Cons of this placement is that you can be hard to read for your person of interest. You really have to make it a point to communicate how you’re feeling about them in poetic/artistic ways. Virgo/6H placement naturally carry a hermetic type energy, craving solitude to think things through. This is not inherently a bad thing, it just means you have to do due diligence of incorporating potential lovers into your life/routines & ultimately into your mind. When this placement is in a low vibration or simply underdeveloped, you may “flirt” by being nitpicky & starting petty arguments with your lovers. This placement can have an undying need to be right & miss the big picture because they are too busy focusing on small details. BE MINDFUL! This is something that makes your mind great & quick & honestly, necessary in the world to have such a wonderful problem solver— HOWEVER, this can be a turn off when in the early dating phases because it can come off in a way that you feel as if you a better than someone else OR that the people you date need fixing, & aren’t already good enough. This may not be your intention, but be sure to let people express themselves in the best way they know how. Critique to help, but don’t get stuck just criticizing to criticize. This can be a very thin balance, but vital for the longevity of any relationship.

You are a dedicated & service oriented type lover. You would much rather demonstrate your love through doing, rather than just out right “flirting”. You show up 15-minutes early for a date you are truly excited about & make sure to wear the finest linens. Although you may appear to go above & beyond for lovers in the beginning phases, if you feel as if you are being taken for granted, you are on to the next quick, fast & in a hurry, like you brother sign, Gemini. You don’t hesitate to keep it pushing. This is the beauty of having a Mercury ruled sign in the Mercury placement— your mind is quick, so sometimes you can go through lover’s quickly. Leaving them in the DUST for some of the pettiest reasons! While you’re young…enjoy!!! But as you grow, you may need to understand that the perfect partner doesn’t exist, so you’ll never find what you’re seeking if you don’t allow a little fluidity into your love life. Learn to have fun & be open! You’d probably do best with a fellow Mercury in Virgo person, simply because Virgo energy understands Virgo energy best…if not, Taurus/Capricorn COULD be a great match also!

🖤Love Language: Acts of Service

“In terms of intimate relationships, Acts of Service is a language that can best be described as doing something for your partner that you know they would like, such as filling up their gas, watering their plants, or cooking them a meal.” — verywellmind.com

🎶Song: Cater 2 U by Destiny’s Child

“Let me cater to you

'Cause baby this is your day

Do anything for my man

Baby you blow me away

I got your slippers

Your dinner

Your dessert and so much more

Anything you want

Let me cater to you

Inspire me from the heart

Can't nothing tear us apart

You all I want in a man

I put my life in your hands”

🌬Mercury in Libra/Seventh House

Tarot Card: Page of Swords

If you have Mercury in Libra/7H, You. Are. The. ULTIMATE. Flirt. Only rivaled by Gemini, although you can be FAR more touchy-feely. Of course this depends on other placements in your chart, but you KNOW how to turn on the charm. You are charisma personified. You are most likely an attractive person on the outside, but regardless of your outer appearance, you have an extremely attractive mind. You are balanced & logical & want nothing but fairness when it comes to your relationships. Unlike your opposite sign, Aries, you lead with the other person. You flatter them. You don’t mind dishing out the compliments & don’t see your romantic interest as competition, but rather a compliment to you. You, like Leos, have HIGH standards when it comes to your lovers. You won’t just settle down with anyone. You go through a LONG process of LITERALLY weighing your options, so you can be hard to pin down. You, of all signs, are able to find beauty & equality in all things…hence why you are SUCH a flirt. If you see something/someone you like, you have no problem telling them you like their shirt with a quick wink, HOWEVER, very rarely are you truly trying to make something last out of a simple playful interaction. This can lead you to having a plethora of admirers, but no one that you see anything seriously with. This is a great placement to have for business dealing & if you’re interested in politics. You know how to read a room, read a person & act accordingly. You are so dang likable it can be sickening! The irony in this placement is you take your relationships VERY seriously. You actually prefer to be in a commitment more than any other signs. You enjoy being dutiful & find purpose when you are integrated into someone else’s fabric of life. BUT. When it comes to casual dating, you are gone with the wind fabulous. You are here for a good time & not a long time. You can separate a serious commitment from a fling like no other. This can be INFURIATING to people who are trying to pursue you because you seem so unbothered even though you gave them a wonderful compliment & treated them so well.

The Pros/Cons of this placement is how long is can take for you to pick a partner to settle down with. In the dating realm, this is almost a perfect placement. You are considerate, passionate when you need to be, lovable & fun! But on the other hand, when it comes to taking a dating situation to the next level, you can get cold feet— again, weighing the pros & cons of being in a relationship because you actually understand the sacrifice that it takes to be in a commitment. And sadly, if you don’t think the person if worth sacrificing for entirely OR you’re just not in a space to sacrifice to being with...that lover can FORGET IT! As much as you enjoy beauty & light-hearted dating, Libra is still very much a masculine sign. Regardless of gender (or lack of gender), you tend to want to be the provider in your relationships. You enjoy the delicate balance of give & take, feminine & masculine energy, in any of your longterm commitments. And if anyone disrupts that, you will not stick around. On the outside looking in, you may seem wishy-washy & non-committal, but that actually isn’t the case. You WILL commit, but only after you have thought about it from all angles & sides. You are rational minded & sometimes this can hurt the people around you because what you said in passing may have meant nothing to you, but everything to them! PLUS, when you are in a full blown commitment, you may still come across as flirty, whether you intend to or not. Your partners will have to require a lot of trust & understanding about how you express yourself. You’re just a “nice” person who wants the world to be a more beautiful place— one flirt at a time. I recommend you stick with other Air Signs or Fire Signs Mercury placements, because other people may misinterpret your nature. But if you’re with a Fire sign, they will desire fast communication & that may overwhelm you from time to time so just be mindful.

All in all, this is a wonderful placement when it comes to communication & flirting in casual relationships because you are so fair minded. You don’t like to stop on people’s toes, but sometimes you can feel like you’re leading people on if they don’t understand that you’re just a naturally flirty person. You can hand out words, kisses & compliments out like candy! Be careful that you’re not rotting someone’s sweet tooth!

🖤Love Language: Physical Touch

“If your love language is physical touch, then that means you prefer physical expressions of love over all other expressions (such as verbal compliments or gifts). Note that physical touch as a love language is not all about sex, although sex can be an important aspect of a romantic relationship.” -verywellmind.com

🎶Song: Nevermind by Dennis Lloyd

“All I, I ever ask, ever ask

Are you gonna, are you gonna be my lover?

Tonight, and take it with, take it with me

Take it with me, hmm…

What if I left and it made no sense

And you tell your friends

And they hold your hands

Baby, nevermind, nevermind

Nevermind, nevermind”

🌬Mercury in Scorpio/Eighth House

Tarot Card: King of Cups

If you have Mercury in Scorpio/8H, your flirtation style isn’t so “flirty” in the traditional sense. With this placement, you tend not to trust people too easily, so you’re not the biggest fan of small talk. This inherent contradiction of a “non-communicative” mercury makes you an interesting & complex lover that people are drawn to get to know. You more so operate from “energies” & “vibes”, & people are either drawn to you like a moth to a flame or repelled by you like a moth to flying insect spray…lol. However, you have an unmistakable allure & you shift energy when you walk into a room. Just as elusive as a Gemini & yet somehow as dreamy as a Pisces— this unique combination makes your lovers fixed on you, projecting their deepest darkest desires on you, wanting to uncover whatever it is you’re hiding. Almost as if you are a lost cave of hidden knowledge & gems, just waiting to be discovered. Truth is…you’re most likely just shy! Now, don’t get me wrong, you are certainly one of the deepest thinkers of the Zodiac. You have fascinating interest in the occult & keep your feelings close to your chest, but this is usually a defense mechanism to an extent because you fear if people know what you’re thinking, then they may be able to control your mind. And as Mars as your ruler, you are all about control— and in this case, mind control. This works 2 ways. When you flirt, it may come off as obsession. Much like your brother sign, Aries, when you “want” something/someone, it’s not just want, it’s desire, it’s craving, it’s intoxicating infatuation. You can be a bold lover, striking when the time is right…but if the time is not right…you will wait & wait & wait & wait & wait— like a Jaguar hunting its unassuming prey.

The Pros & Cons of this placement is that you have a mighty powerful gaze & aura surrounding you. If the color black was a person, it would be you. You’re beautifully dark, but yet the depths & hues of the nuances of your personality are hard to tell unless someone is REALLY looking. You test lovers more than any other sign to make sure they are truly giving you their undivided attention— much like what you have given to them. You expect loyalty & honesty from your lovers ALTHOUGH you may not give them the same in return. Your version of honesty can be quite controversial. You believe in the “Policy of Truth”, if you truly care about someone & want to know them on a deeper level, you will leave out things that don’t put you in the best light. This placement can be very manipulative when it comes to how & what you choose to communicate to a person that you desire. Your lovers will have to earn your trust before you give them truth & this can be a SLOW process. Because of this personality trait, you may or may not be all that “flirty”. In Western Astrology, Scorpios are almost always described as the sexual beings of the zodiac & that is true…HOWEVER, you crave a deeeeeppppp level of intimacy & connection that casual dating/flirting usually doesn’t allow, making you one of the most difficult partners to actually end up in the bedroom with. You can come across as very fickle & hard to pin-down to people you are not equally trying to connect with. With this placement, you will not connect with just anyone, thus making you one of the least “flirty” Mercury placements at first glance. Although you may be able to develop a way with words as time passes, you must at least feel you will be able to gain something out of the exchange. You are far too intense for casual love affairs. Now passionate love affairs— is right up your ally!

Having Mercury in such a deep sign, again makes you a deep thinker, unlike other placements who gloss over people, you want to know EVERYTHING & I mean EVERYTHING about a potential mate. The irony here is, your way of flirting can be a form of stalking. You will dig & dig & dig & dig into the personal life of lovers, or you will ask the deepest questions to attempt to get into their psychology— deep psych evaluations & damn near hypnotism is your way of “flirting”. Many of your lovers may not even realize you are in pursuit of them, while on the other hand, you may not comprehend how deeply someone is wanting to connect with you. Due to the mixture of pure shyness & mystique, you are an astounding lover that oozes of pure, unfiltered, sex appeal WHEN IT IS EARNED. The trickiest part of this placement, is people will want to fill in the blanks about you if they don’t know. You can be subject to nasty rumors or people making CRAZY assumptions about you, but it’s simply because they want to explain the inexplicable. You have a certain energy that people dream of exploring, yet may not be up for how deep they would have to dive in order to truly get to know you. Any lover that only gets to know you in a causal sense will always be left with a lingering feeling of wondering what you were truly hiding in that closet of yours.

🖤Love Language: Quality Time

“People who speak the love language of quality time want to be the object of their lover's undivided attention. They want to feel cherished and prioritized, and rather than receiving gifts, words, acts, or touch, they prefer to simply spend meaningful time together.” — blinkist.com

***For you of all signs, I probably say you’d need the most love languages to be demonstrated in order to feel safe & secure in a relationship. Everyone identifies with multiple, but you NEED to see all the proof in the pudding before you take a leap of faith with someone.

🎶Song: Every Breath You Take by The Police

“Every breath you take

Every move you make

Every bond you break

Every step you take

I'll be watching you…

Oh can't you see

You belong to me?

How my poor heart aches with every step you take.”

***hehe, this is one of my all time favorite songs…& it is FAR from a love song, but as a Mercury in the 8H person myself…I think it’s a funny song choice aaannndddd somewhat accurate! You know how we are! Lol

🎶Bonus song!!! (Don’t tell the others lol)

To The End- My Chemical Romance

“If you marry me,

Would you bury me?

Would you carry me to the end?

🌬Mercury in Sagittarius/Ninth House

Tarot Card: Queen of Wands

If you have Mercury in Sagittarius/9H, your flirtation can take quite a few different forms. As a mutable sign, you’re like Gemini & Pisces (Virgo, yes, but not so much in this case), so you are able to adapt to any environment, possessing a shape-shifter type energy. The major difference between you & the others is, you believe the truth will set you free, so after awhile, your true colors will always shine through to your romantic interested. You could be attracted to people who are different than you in some way. Sagittarius/9H energy is all about expanding your horizons, & connecting with people of different cultures & backgrounds is a way to see the world through a different set of lenses! This is a wonderful trait because you almost always carry an exoticness within your essence. You may not feel super special in your home town, but once you travel to different areas, people will know that you are not from around there. In this case, seeing as we are talking about Mercury, it shows up particularly in the way you think/communicate. Perhaps you have a distinct accent. You are just as curious as Gemini about the outside world, but instead of focusing on the day to day mechanics & “gossip”, you’d rather talk about more philosophical questions & debate about religion, meditation & yoga. You honestly flirt by preaching to those you are interested in. You crave someone who is a free thinker & can talk about anything. You are as much of a student of life as you are a teacher and you will not be caught DEAD flirting with a dumb-dumb. Intelligence is what turns you on, but it doesn’t have to be “book smart”. You are so open to different ideas in the world & you value someone who can teach you the laws of the land & navigate the way of the streets. It’s giving very Princess Jasmine & Aaladin vibes in this case. You will flirt & be attracted to the “street rats” of the world because they can offer you a different experience than what you are used to.

The Pros/Cons of this placement is you can come off as self-righteous and kind of a know-it-all to potential suiters. More than likely, you have received some form of higher education or have traveled around more than your next door neighbor. This is not inherently a bad thing, but this is the magic of knowing when to turn on and off the charm. You could easily want to lead with how worldly & experienced you are, which is an amazing thing, but understand, that is a privilege! So please be mindful not to “rub it in” everyone’s faces that you are an interesting and well-traveled person, and also try not to judge others for not being on the same level as you. Just smile & keep it moving, there is no need to argue. On the other hand, because this can be such a spiritual placement, you may find yourself to be quite “close-minded”, when it comes to YOUR religion, YOUR philosophy of life, & YOUR truth. The passion you posses about your views is something that most will admire, BUT if you’re coming off as someone who assumes they are better or have the moral high ground, again, this can be a turn off to any potential love interest.

Your love for learning & teaching is unique & extraordinary. You carry within you a vessel of knowledge & experiences that some would only dream of! It puts you in a little bit of an awkward situation when it comes to your love life though, because student/teacher relationships aren’t *supposed* to be “sexy”. This is a bit of a mixed bag. In today’s society, it can be assumed that a teacher is abusing their power by pursuing a student. (I am not speaking about elementary school through high school!!! I’m speaking about adult relationships!!!! Think Guru/Yogi student, Preacher/Subject in Congregation etc.) But in your case, you most likely wouldn’t have it any other way. You desire to learn from your partners. If they can’t teach you something, then they can kick rocks! You are humbled by a knowledgeable person, who has also spent their life seeking truth, the same way you have. You may find yourself drawn to certain professors or people in powerful positions where people listen to what they have to say. Or, you may be the person who draws a lot of people towards you because you have such a database of wisdom that people find attractive! This has the potential to be a GREAT love affair with the right person, but I wouldn’t say you are much of a “flirt” in the traditional sense. You’d hand your love interest a book that you found insightful before a bouquet of roses!

🖤Love Language: Quality Time

“People who speak the love language of quality time want to be the object of their lover's undivided attention. They want to feel cherished and prioritized, and rather than receiving gifts, words, acts, or touch, they prefer to simply spend meaningful time together.” — blinkist.com

🎶Song: Part of Your World by Halle Bailey

“…And ready to know what the people know

Ask 'em my questions and get some answers

What's a fire and why does it, what's the word?

Burn?

When's it my turn?

Wouldn't I love, love to explore that shore up above?

Out of the sea

Wish I could be

Part of that world”

(yes, the black one!! S/o to representation, but also s/o to Jodi Benson, the OG Little Mermaid, she served on this song!)

🌬Mercury in Capricorn/Tenth House

Tarot Card: Page of Pentacles

If you have Mercury in Capricorn/10H, your flirting style is business, business, business. This is not to say that you are NOT flirty, because you definitely can be— particularly as you get older— but you flirt with a goal in mind. You’ll flirt for a job promotion, you’ll flirt for priority seating at the fanciest restaurants, you’ll flirt for a discount at Trader Joe’s. You flirt to save money & flirt to earn money. That is what really matters to you. Again, this may come off as shallow, or “gold-digger” type vibes, but there is nothing more than this Mercury sign craves more than mental SECURITY, which goes hand in hand with financial security. You depend on stable relationships, so you can take dating toooooo seriously. If you don’t see the benefit of investing in someone longterm, then…you just won’t. It’s open & shut. With this placement, you are VERY selective with your words. You don’t like to waste time on meaningless conversations because you are a firm believer that time is money. HOWEVER, when you find someone that is worth your time, you give everything to that person & more. It is worth noting here, that Capricorn energy is represented by The Devil card in Tarot. Meaning, that Capricorn energy is the embodiment of temptation & desire. You, more than any other sign, actually know how to entrance your person of interest by talking. You can speak of wonderful plans & goals you have, expensive things that you’ve bought, rare wines that you’ve tasted & lure in an unassuming subject like pray. You even may have a very distinct & sultry voice that is low & earthy. You have a resonance with others because you appear so grounded, cool, calm & collected when you speak. This can instantly be a turn on to the target you have in mind.

The Pros/Cons of this placement is you can take quite a long time to learn how to express yourself, leaving your partners in a very confused state. You, like your Cancer opposite, can spend too much time trying to rationalize your needs in a relationship, rather than actually experiencing the relationship. Because you can be so goal oriented, you don’t leave much time for error or fun in your early years. This can come off as cold & distant to people attempting to pursue you in a romantic way— it’s almost as if you are always just out of reach because you are too busy working on your next big project! This isn’t a bad thing, per say, it just means you have to carve out time for your lovers & be intentional with your dating. Dating & getting to know people just for the heck of it, isn’t a waste of time! It can be nice to go out, laugh & take your mind off of the stress of work or your ambitions. So there is magic in remaining open to potential lovers, you may be surprised at how much you enjoy other people’s company that aren’t talking about work work work. You are WAY more of a do-er than a talker & this can be taken for granted in your relationships. Make sure you end up with someone who understands your need for validation when it comes to the work you do & the bacon that you bring home. You will be the BIGGEST flirt on the planet for someone who acknowledges & appreciate the level of focus & discipline you exude when it comes to your work & romantic relations.

You honestly have the potential to be one of the more flirty signs of the Zodiac, because Saturn, your Mercury ruler, is all about delay and NOT denial. You could have had issues reading or writing as a child that have made you shy, but I bet you’re one of the best readers & writers now! Same with flirting! You may feel awkward in your teens & young 20s, not knowing how to navigate such a crazy dating world, but as you learn the tricks of the trade, you will be able to have one of a kind banter with powerful & influential people. You age like wine, only getting better, tastier & more expensive with time!

🖤Love Language: Acts of Service

“In terms of intimate relationships, Acts of Service is a language that can best be described as doing something for your partner that you know they would like, such as filling up their gas, watering their plants, or cooking them a meal.” — verywellmind.com

🎶Song: Chemtrails Over the Country Club by Lana Del Rey

“I’m on the run with you, my sweet love

There's nothing wrong contemplating God

Under the chemtrails over the country club

Wearing our jewels in the swimming pool

Me and my sister just playing it cool

Under the chemtrails over the country club

What to do next? Maybe we'll love it

White picket chemtrails over the country club

My love, my love…

It's never too late, baby, so don't give up”

🌬Mercury in Aquarius/Eleventh House

Tarot Card: King of Swords

If you have Mercury in Aquarius/11H, your flirtation style is hard to easily put into words. You’re really not much of a flirt UNTIL you are SUPER DUPER comfortable with someone. You flirt by making friends. You’re open-minded, like Sagittarius, but you’re retrained like Capricorn. This puts you in a very delicate balance when it comes to casual dating. You tend to be extremely futuristic & innovative in your thinking— in fact, this placement can signify a genius level comprehension skill, great scientist & technical/skilled artist have this placement— so it may be awkward for you when first meeting new love interest. You may have deep interest in Sci-Fi or technology. You like gadgets & can constantly be tinkering with things, or have a very niche interest like…Vedic astrology for example, so it can be more difficult for you to connect to people on a day to day basis just because your ideas can seem so radical and “out-there”. This is a BEAUTIFUL thing to someone who understands you. They will never be bored with the conversation, although at times, they may have trouble keeping up. I suggest you date fellow Air sign Mercurys because they will be interested in the same things you’re interested in, or at least be curious enough to look into it! Because you march to the beat of your own drum, your flirt style will be equally as unique as you are. You could flirt by explaining to someone quantum mechanics or by telling them how Picasso was an absolute genius when it came to the color blue in his blue series or the difference between the tropical astrology system & the sidereal. The conversations are limitless with you and a person of interest!

The Pros/Cons of this placement is you may feel quite isolated when it comes to communicating your ideas to potential lovers. You may feel as if your ideas are “too weird” and you don’t want to scare them off! OR you just have troubles relating to the “common man” because your brain is just far beyond keeping up with Kardashians. You care about world peace, and helping others, so you may not be super interested in the latest gossip. I mean C’mon…THERE ARE KIDS DYING IN AFRICA, KIM! (That’s a joke…lol) You care more about how the algorithms work on instagram, rather than scrolling through the content, so this can make you feel outcast in the dating scene. Feeling excluded is the hallmark of Aquarius energy. THIS ISN’T A BAD THING!!!!! It just means it may take you a longer time to find your soul tribe & chances are, your soulmate will be a friend first before a lover. Because you have a fixed placement, you cherish the people who come into your life that understand you on a mental & spiritual level. You may not care as much about looks, gender or social class as some of the other placements do when it comes to dating— you can be very flexible when it comes to who you fall in love with, just because it’s so hard for you to find people who vibrate on your same wavelength. YOU have the mind that keeps the culture moving forward. You are the inventors & creators of the generations! You’re the trend setters & trailblazers which can be a lonely lonely road when it comes to causal things like dating. Again, it is imperative for you to find likeminded people who get you or get that they don’t get you but still don’t judge you for it! You’re more of a mental flirt than anything else! You enjoy intelligent conversation & would die of boredom listening to someone who is small minded.

You will be one of the most fascinating & intriguing lover to anyone who actually takes the time to get to know you! In some cases, a Scorpio/8H mercury may be compatible because they will view you as a never ending puzzle they need to solve. Either way, you’ll need to be with someone who wants to dig deeper into you, past your seemingly eccentric nature & get to know the loving kind side of you. You are more likely to fall for a friend or someone in your friendship circle because you know you have things in common. You could also be far more comfortable dating on an online setting, in virtual realities of some sort! Things in common/true compatibility in the most important thing to you when it comes to flirting & dating. You don’t care much for frivolous banter although you may be good at it— there will always be a voice inside of you saying “this person is sooooooo dumb”. All I ask, is that you remain humble when meeting people, different people are in different areas of life & we can’t judge them on the level they are on. The moment you do that & start accepting people for who they are, the “Right” people will be drawn into your energy field & you’ll feel truly accepted by those that love you & that you love!

Side Side Side note: You are also the sign that would most likely thrive in a polyamorous relationship (multiple partners at once), because you are capable of loving multiple friends at one time. You very well may not be interested in open-relationships, because you are a fixed sign & value loyalty 
& stability…but you may do well in one. You wouldn’t fall victim to jealousy & possessiveness as much as other signs.

🖤Love Language: Words of Affirmation

“Words of affirmation are words that communicate your love, appreciation, and respect for another person. They're positive words and phrases used to uplift someone. What's more, these compliments and words of encouragement don't have to be said directly to the person.” - verywellmind.com

🎶Song: Dirty Feeling by Lolawolf

“I got a dirty feeling that it's going down

I got that dirty feeling

Look at ya, look at ya

Move slow

Slow on the low, slow on the low

Low, low

Low

Boy you should go now

Boy you should go

I can see what's coming, oh no

I know you've been gunning

I got a dirty feeling that it's going down”

🌬Mercury in Pisces/Twelfth House

Tarot Card: Queen of Cups

If you have Mercury in Pisces/12H, your flirtation style works on a cosmic level. You radiate vibes, like sonic waves, that lure in your object of desire. You can be quite shy in real life, but there is an elusive quality about you that causes people to yearn for you & be drawn towards you. You are extremely slippery when it comes to the dating field, because you, like Aquarius, your predecessor, are naturally extraordinarily other worldly! (After all, you are 2 houses after the 10H of the world, so you’ve busted out of the matrix in some way). You seem to be neither here, nor there. You float through life & people may never know or not know where they stand with you because chances are, they may not even know where you are. Your dreamlike nature is a literal dream come true for some, & so flirting with you seems as if they met someone from the movies. You’re real, but are you real? You’re here, but are you here? That type of energy. When you like someone, you will want to dissolve into each other’s world. You’ll want to be with them, meeting on such a spiritual level, that language isn’t the prime way you communicate. You feel your partners rather than listen to them…which can work for and against you, depending on how strong your relationship is with the other person. Because you are one of the most empathetic placements, when it comes to a person of interest, you want to be valuable to them by helping them through their personal spiritual journey. Due to this nature, you may be attracted/drawn to lost souls & lost souls may be attracted/drawn to you as well. You prefer a partner with a past, because you desire to show them a bright & escapist type future. You are called to break chains for your lovers, so your flirty style can be wholesome & very loving.

The Pros/Cons of this placement is exactly what makes it great— you’re otherworldliness. You understand the world through vibrations & energies, not necessarily though words & actions. You see deeply into people & have an extremely psychic ability that only a privileged few are privy to. You probably communicate through music & sound. You would be far more comfortable sharing a song or writing a song about your feelings for someone than being able say it! And to be fair, the songs you write/share may not even have lyrics! You would be more likely to flirt by telling someone “you make me feel like the color orange” or “you remind me of the discord in Beethoven’s Fifth” than being like “hey, I think you’re cute!”. This is wonderfully romantic, but if your partner doesn’t think like you do, well, then you run the risk of feeling rejected & emotionally abandoned by them. This mercury sign, more than other, has to learn how to communicate on a practical level. With your opposite sign being Virgo, master communicators, you get left holding the bag of trying to figure out how to put your experiences into words that people can relate & identify with. Of COURSE, I recommend that you channel your energy into art, you will be understood by some, but you have to put yourself out there & not get lost in the fantasy of it all. Jupiter, your ruling planet, is all about blending the lines & expansion, which is a beautiful thing, but sometimes the real restraints that we have in the world can limit people being able to connect— especially when it comes to fleeting relationships.

Your nature can be so light & inviting, or it can be like a dark black abyss with no end in sight…much like the oceans fish inhabit. People will want to project their deepest desires/fears on to you, because you reflect back to them like clear water. They see a distorted version of themselves in you & this can be very challenging when it comes to dating & flirting. You will need partners who are grounded & level-headed, but also understand your need to be understood in non-traditional communicative ways. You have a gorgeously creative mind that sees the possibilities in the world, rather than the poverties. You are able to find beauty in the most broken of people, places & things, because you perhaps feel broken and forsaken by the world yourself. This is not an easy placement, but it has the most potential for true spiritual enlightenment! Dating may not be your strong suit, but connection to source sure is! You will find people who appreciate & celebrate the gifts that you have to offer, even if it gets lost in translation from time to time! You are an exquisite mermaid from beyond the sea!

🖤Love Language: Giving/Receiving Gifts

“If one's love language is gift giving, it simply means that one received early in life the clear communication that giving a gift is an important, acceptable, and/or clear way to show others how you feel about them and that you love and appreciate them” — womenshealthmag.com

🎶Song: In My Head by Lil Tjay

“I got some funny feelings in my head

And girl, I don't know what to call it (call)

Too iffy and quick, I can't say that it's love

But I know that I want some more of it (more)

These feelings, been stuck in my head

Ain't too big on love, but with you, I'm all for it (no)

See the world, me and you, we can tour it

Fuck all them bitches, they ain't shit, they ignorin'

Daily you be on my mind

My heart hurt beat and bruised, from the owner before it

Got a good feelin' this time”

#Spotify #music #astrology #vedic astrology #astro notes #astrology observations #sidereal astrology #astrology notes #astro observations #tarot #witchlife

[cultofsappho]

In honor of AGCD 🤠, a list of my berserk findings in roughly chronological order RE: A RWRB Sequel:

1. When the movie come out, Casey did an AMA on Threads for both Alex, then Henry. In Henry's AMA, they posted this:

Meaning at the very least they'd be open to writing/sharing/creating more for Alex and Henry, if not a direct sequel [more from the AMA: X]

2. Casey also had an interview with Out Magazine in Nov '23 where they were asked if the want to write a sequel and they said "Of course I'd love to! 😉 I don't think i'm allowed to say anything more than that.😊" They're so fucking precious. We all know what 'not allowed to say' means. [twitter video: X]

3. Taylor has had a bunch of interviews recently, mostly as an ambassador to the SAG awards. He's been asked a dozen times about a RWRB sequel and everytime he says something along the lines of "Anything could happen! But I don't know, they don't tell me these things aha! 🤪 Give me a call!" And he's so unbelieveably obvious that his interview clips have already been compared to Andrew Garfield denying having any role in Spider-Man: No Way Home: [tiktok: X]

4. PrimeVideoUK has been bringing up RWRB & Firstprince more on social media recently. It could be for any number of reasons, it's their movie they can market however they feel like. Especially since Nick has a bunch of projects releasing rn (one of which, The Idea Of You is also releasing on Prime this summer), they may want to capitalize on the attention on him. Or, it could be to test RWRB's engagement #s... [tweet: X] [tweet: X] [twitter poll w/a rwrb sweep: X] [tiktok: X] And all the comments on these posts (and more) are begging for a sequel. So, if their social media manager is passing on the message... 👀

5. This is def a reach, so if you don't mind, i'm pulling out the red string for this conspiracy corkboard. But Casey was recently in London, it could have been a trip for literally anything. But, the first movie was filmed (and maybe produced idfk) in London. [insta post: X] they sold the movie rights for RWRB before the book was released, if I'm remembering that right, but maybe they retain rights to sign off on a sequel.

so anyway i was thinking about all those little things adding up in my head and thinking i was on to some kind of conspiracy then Nick goes and does press for Mary & George (which i just started, and is amazing btw) and says this shit:

6. Nick confirms in an interview with HitsRadio that they're talking about a RWRB sequel. Just flat out: "Yeah obv conversations are happening, duh! 😇" energy. God bless him. He says there have been conversations about a sequel. And, they're all on the same page that the script needs to be right and "all the components" need to be right. [X minute 15:50 they bring up the rwrb sequel, but the whole interview is great and you should watch it!]

ANYWAY i'm in a land of delusion, gnawing on the iron bars of my enclosure, etc, but also maybe not bc they're talking about a sequel and now we just need to wait for the greenlight

And (pseudo point #7), it would be a dumb business decision for Prime to not make a sequel. RWRB did way too well for an LGBT product, releasing during a dual actors and writer's strike, with little to no promo and zero press tour. From the RWRB Wikipedia page: "For the first three weeks after its release, it was the top watched film worldwide on the platform and provoked what Prime Video described as "a huge surge" of new subscribers." [X] And subscribers are all these streaming services care about.

I can't wait to reblog this with a screenshot when they inevitably post an offical confirmation for a sequel movie...

#the special intrest popped out here ngl #but im having fun with my red string and frantic gesturing towards social media screenshots #let me have this #rwrb #red white and royal blue #casey mcquiston #nicholas galitzine #taylor zakhar perez #rwrb sequel

[genericpuff]

Can’t wait for someone to make a copy of RS’s coveted “signature” stamp and just buy a few dozen books, stamp them, and sell them as “autographed” at a huge markup, and goofballs will buy them all.

I mean seriously, that stamp will be incredibly easy to copy if it’s not already been copied, it’s the polar opposite of exclusive or personal. Why anyone would pay $20 for that is beyond me but it proves that RS is a shrewd business person by any means necessary and will be richer than I ever will be. No wonder Hades is her idol.

No joke, there are pictures of Rachel using the stamp at SDCC and-

That stamp is literally just a standard one that you could order through any custom manufacturer. It's not a roller in any way, there's no unique cut they're working off of, it's just a round press stamp.

And it shows because this is the quality of the actual ink when it's on the paper-

Basically low grade printer ink on glossy paper. It's not gonna last at all, and it turned out exactly how I was expecting - there's too much solid color with too thin empty areas so the ink is bleeding into what's supposed to be 'white' (we deal with the same concepts in tattooing so I knew this was gonna happen as soon as I saw the stamp design).

Anyways so that's my long-winded way of saying that I took the stamp that was on Rachel's IG from her promotional posts, desaturated it, added a tone curve layer to adjust the sharpness/clarity, and threw it into VistaPrint. Just for science, and because I'm an asshole trying to prove a point.

Would literally only cost me $20-$30 for the stamp after shipping.

Now for obvious reasons I'm not saying anyone SHOULD do this, like... I'm showing you this for science but really, don't go making counterfeits because of this LOL This is really just to demonstrate how easy it would be for anyone to make a convincing replica, which is the unfortunate drawback to using stamps as your "signature" - and with a very low quality printer shop stamp to boot - because it makes it pretty easy to copy. Not to mention showing off the stamp design beforehand through social media means that people (like me, oop-) can rip it out of your image posts and reverse engineer it into something that can be uploaded and purchased. I get she wanted to make sure that people knew what they were getting, it would have been a HUGE piss off to go see her for a signature just to find out she was doing a stamp, but like... these are the risks that come with stamps.

Don't get me wrong, you can just as easily forge a signature, but it's a little harder to nail someone's personal signature vs. a stamp and you can usually find ways to make it more unique (like what Junji Ito did by giving out little doodles on each signature). It also doesn't help that that stamp is made so cheaply that a poorly done replica would probably be on the same level of quality as the authentic one. And of course she added insult to injury by deciding to sell ACTUAL HAND-SIGNED BOOKS WITH ONLY ONE BOOK THAT HAS ONE CRAPPY DOODLE INSIDE AT ONLY ONE SPECIFIC BOOKSTORE A WEEK AFTER SDCC WAS OVER THAT YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR EVEN IF IT MEANS YOU'RE GONNA HAVE AN EXTRA COPY OF A BOOK YOU ALREADY OWN-

sigh This isn't an uncommon thing to do, it's not unique to Rachel, but it gives me grifting gacha vibes and it feels like such a fuck you to the people who travelled all the way out to SDCC and paid for the ticket prices just to get a shitty printer ink stamp and then find out a week later after they've undoubtedly gone home that one bookstore in San Diego actually has hand-signed copies. I've seen Youtubers pull this kind of shit with vinyl printings and Youtooz figures and it's equally tacky.

If she had done it either with handwritten signatures or at the VERY least a better quality stamp design and higher quality ink, then yeah, it would be harder to make it seem legit for anyone who's not privy to creating things like lino cuts or using roller ink and thus make it a much more valuable collector's item. But the books at SDCC were literally made with a stamp that anyone can replicate for $20 and then the hand-signed ones were offered at only one bookstore after Rachel had already flown home. It feels so impersonal and cold to the audience that has supported her through all the bullshit she's pulled in the last year.

#anyways does anyone want my totally real signed copy of volume 1 #$100 or best offer #for legal reasons this is a joke #insert sarcasm here #lore olympus critical #lo critical #antiloreolympus #anti lore olympus #ama #ask me anything #anon ask me anything #anon ama

[bqstqnbruin]

See You Again

I'm actually posting a fic for the first time in seven months aka the first fic I've finished in seven months peace love teaching

anyway, I wrote this for the lovely @wyattjohnston's summer fic exchange! I got to write for @selfindulgentpoorlywritten but I've never written for Nico before, so I hope you like this (I was fully inspired by my own mess of a life)

Edit since I’m a dumbass thank you to @kat-hearts for reading this first and being amazing ily 😭

One of the characters, Nat is nonbinary, and I did my best to make the reader gender netural, which I haven't done before on either account, so I hope I did it justice (if something is glaringly wrong, please let me know!)

Warnings: I was mean with the ending? A little? Also, some swearing, drinking, almost physical fighting

Word Count: almost 2.8k

_______________________________________

“When was the last time you saw him?”

You tried to shift through your memory to figure that out. In person, the last time was sometime in the first week of December about two years ago. Thinking about him, which thankfully didn’t count, would involve you giving a much more recent answer, way more recent than you would really like to admit. “I don’t remember.” 

“Well,” your roommate Nat says, looking down at their phone. “I have bad news.”

“Fucking hell,” you moan, tilting your head to hit the back of the seat of the Uber. You knew what they were going to say before the words even started to come out of their mouth.

“Nico is going to be there tonight. With all the guys.” You let out another groan, the Uber driver giving you a scowl through the rearview mirror. “I’m sorry! Jack didn’t know he was coming, or he would have told us way before we got ready.” 

You stare out the window, trying to think of all the ways that you could get out of this situation. You already paid for the Uber and didn’t want to pay for another one. You weren’t about to go somewhere by yourself, especially since the bar you were heading towards wasn’t within a reasonable walking distance if you were to go somewhere by yourself, and no way was Nat going to leave with you without Jack, and Jack, of course, wasn't going to leave without his teammates. 

“We can go back right now and I’ll tell Jack to have fun with his team instead,” Nat tells you as if they could read your mind. They put their hand over yours, trying to give you any sense of calm that was setting into your panic. “We do not have to be around Nico.” 

“What kind of person tells someone they like them but not enough to date them?” you mutter, knowing you and Nat have had this conversation many times on your kitchen floor, drunk and crying together at 2 in the morning. They had introduced you to Nico one night after a game when the team went out to celebrate. They had been dating Jack for about a year at that point, meeting him through his brother at Michigan and reconnecting when they both realized they were going to be in New Jersey together. Quinn had used the reasoning of, “he won’t know anyone in the state,” only for everyone to realize later that he knew Jack had been smitten with Nat since they met. If only you had been so lucky. 

You had known of Nico, obviously. How could you not? He was the captain of the Devils, the team you grew up surrounded by, the number one draft pick in the sport your roommate never shut up about. He covered your social media feeds without you really wanting them to and everyone you knew talked about what a great game he had the night before. You couldn’t escape the idea of him, no matter where you went. 

When you met him that night a few years back, there was something about him in person that you were drawn to. He had been just an idea to you, not someone you could think about as being real. You spent that entire night with him, your friends either wandering off or you too enthralled with Nico to notice that they were there. Nat and Jack were heading back to your place before last call, and you were left knowing that you had to see Nico again.  

He asked if he could kiss you, making you melt as his hand gently snaked its way to your cheek, pulling you close when you said yes and covering your mouth with his. You waited for his text the next day, anxiously checking your phone until he finally did after 3 pm. From then on, you told each other everything, texting each other whenever you could, him calling you and heading over to your apartment whenever he didn’t have an obligation to the team. You fell hard for him and you had believed that he felt the same about you. 

“The kind of person who doesn’t know what they have until it’s gone,” Nat tells you, trying to pep you up. “Hey, we can find you a guy that is just as hot as Nico tonight.” 

“I’m gonna move to Ireland and isolate myself with the spuds.”

“Act like you can be away from me for that long,” they tease, earning a laugh from you. “I’m serious, though. Tell me what you want to do, or who you want to do, and Jack and I will make it happen.”

You didn’t want someone just as hot as Nico, you wanted Nico. You hated the fact that there was more than one time that you had pulled up his messages on your phone, part of you unable to delete that conversation thread even though you knew it would be the healthy thing to do. But you weren’t known amongst your friends for doing what was best for your mental wellbeing, so you kept them, going back through the conversations you had in the four months you were seeing him. The last text was what haunted you the most, him telling you that he was going to be back in Switzerland for the summer and that he ‘didn’t want you tied down to one person’ while he was gone.

He said he would text you when he was back. 

He never did. 

There were multiple times when you wanted to text him, but you never did, either. 

“Yeah,” you manage to choke out. “Let’s do it.” 

You spend the rest of the ride in silence, trying to think of where in the bar you would be able to hide from Nico so that he wouldn’t see you. The guys were already inside, Jack telling Nat about 10 minutes ago that they went to start drinking as fast as they could. 

The bar was somehow muggy inside, as if the beer itself hung in the air rather than the sweat of the nearly one hundred drunk people that were crowding every square inch of the floor. Jack was easy to spot for Nat, his five foot eleven frame not the largest of his teammates, but still distinct enough that your roommate had left your side within seconds of entering to be with their partner. 

So much for finding you someone tonight. 

You tried to stay away from him, closer to Nat and Jack as best as you could, but they kept wandering off from you. The last thing you wanted to do was go with them when they were both on their way to drunk and have a history of doing slightly illegal things in the bathrooms at bars. 

You had to find someone to talk to. Any person who looked interesting. Any other guy on the team who you were friends with, but that was really only Jack, and that was really only because he’s dating Nat. Your phone was your only comfort, finding a table that had been pushed up against the wall and hoping that there was something you could doom scroll on that would distract you from looking towards Nico. 

He had the right to do what he wanted at the bar with his teammates. You weren’t together. 

“You ok?” you hear during a lull in the music, pulling you away from your phone for a moment. You didn’t know who was standing in front of you, one of the newer guys from the trade deadline that Nat definitely hadn’t introduced you to. He was waiting for you to respond, looking like he had wanted to sit down with you.

“Yeah, just, not a big ‘going out’ person.”

He lets out a nervous laugh, a smile that sends a jolt through your system that you hadn’t felt in a while. Since Nico, if you were really willing to be honest with yourself. “Me neither, honestly. I’m just here because I didn’t have anything else to do.” 

“I got dragged here with my roommate so they can be with their boyfriend,” you tell him, gesturing to Nat and Jack trying their best to sneak out of the bathroom, Jack’s shirt buttoned wrong, both of their previously neatly styled hair in a mess that you only saw after hearing them the night before. 

“So that’s the infamous Nat,” he says, taking the seat beside you. You nod as he continues, “Jack never shuts up about them. Not that Jack shuts up about anything or anyone, ever, but especially not Nat.” 

“I always knew he was a good one,” you tell him, introducing yourself so he knew you as more than just, ‘his teammate's partner’s roommate.’

“I’m Timo.” 

You spent the rest of the night bouncing between the table and the bar with Timo, him buying you every drink you wanted. There was something about him that was different, but you couldn’t focus all of your attention on him. 

He was talking about his time in San Jose while you were waiting for your next round of drinks. You couldn’t focus on a word he was saying, Nico within your line of sight talking to a girl. A really attractive girl, you might add. You felt your heart drop, feeling a lump in your throat forming faster than you could lie to yourself about that scene having no effect on you. Naturally, Nico would talk to other people. You hadn’t talked to him in two years, let alone seen him in person. Just because you couldn’t get over him, no matter how hard you tried, that didn’t mean he didn’t get over you.

“And then I got traded here, and I love it, so far,” you tune back into Timo, who is suddenly much closer than you remember. It’s just because the bar is loud, people are starting to crowd for drinks, and, fuck, you have to admit, he’s pretty hot. 

Nico was still watching. 

Timo took your hand, leading you off to the table where you were before, the drinks in your hand probably not ones that you needed to begin with. His free hand snaked its way to your waist, pulling you close to him. You could feel your heart racing faster with every inch he got closer to you. You wanted him to kiss you. 

You thought you did. 

“I’m sorry,” you pull away right as his lips were about to meet yours, tears starting to form in your eyes, leaving the drink he bought you in his hands as you ran from him. Your breath catches in your throat while you try to find Nat and Jack, just praying that they weren’t back in the bathroom or too intoxicated in general to help out. 

You heard Timo calling after you, somehow, through the volume of the music and your own drunkenness, breaking through and getting to you. You didn’t want Timo calling your name, you wanted it to be Nico. 

You needed it to be Nico. 

“Hey, hey,” you hear, feeling a familiar hand gently place itself on your arm. You turn around, Nico’s face a mixture of concern and fury. “What did he do?” 

“He, he,” you stammer, the tears falling faster the more you looked at him, every memory you had with him suddenly rushing back into your mind. “He didn’t do anything. You did.”

You yank your arm from him, trying to find anywhere to be in the building that didn’t have one of Nico’s teammates looking at you causing a scene. You knew he was following you, calling your name again and again over the music. People were starting to stare, but no part of you cared, trying harder to not let the tears that were burning your eyes fall down your cheeks. 

Nat and Jack were nowhere to be seen, the rest of Nico’s teammates trying to figure out what was going on when you burst through the front door of the bar, the cold fall air hitting your face as soon as you did. You let out a sob, trying to steady yourself against the wall of the building, sliding down to the ground while people waiting to get in tried to figure out if they should help you or if you were just another drunk person having some sort of meltdown that was none of their business. 

“Hey,” you hear, a soft voice coming from above you. “I’m so sorry if I did something wrong.” Timo slid down next to you. “I read the situation wrong, I thought you were also into me.”

“I am, I just,” you start, trying to think of what to say. 

“Hey, what the fuck did you do?” Nico yells, pulling Timo off the ground. “What did he do to make you cry?”

“Nico, stop,” you let out, Timo looking both confused and terrified by his new captain’s hand on his shirt collar. “He didn’t do anything.”

“What the fuck did I miss?” Timo asked, slowly trying to back away from Nico staring you down. 

“Why can you talk to other people and I can’t?” you ask him, feeling your sadness turn into anger. “You had no issue not talking to me for the last two years.” 

“I’m gonna go,” Timo lets out, barely loud enough for the two of you to hear and sneaking away before you could notice. 

“You didn’t want to talk to me,” Nico counters, taking a step towards you. “But you wanted to talk to TImo instead?”

“Where the fuck did you get that idea?” 

“You never texted me. You’ve spent the entire night avoiding me. You think I didn’t see you when you were by yourself on your phone?” 

“You were in Sweden. And you could have come up to me and talked to me, what was stopping you? Oh, that’s right, your new girlfriend.”

“Switzerland. And she’s not my girlfriend. I haven’t seen anyone in ages.”

“Wherever you were, you weren’t here,” you tell him, your back against the wall. How long had it been since he had last seen someone? There was no way you had been the last person he was with. “You told me you didn’t want to be tied down while you were back home. You didn’t even want to talk to me, because if you did, you would have.” 

“You’re joking,” he scoffs. “You think I didn’t want to talk to you? Every fucking day I have thought about how our conversations would go when I saw you after you get home from work. I would think about you telling me about your day, about everything you would tell Nat, or whoever you were seeing at the time. Every single person I saw in the last two years, I wanted them to be you.” 

You didn’t know what to say, letting Nico’s words sink in. “Then why didn’t you text me when you came back from Switzerland?” 

Nico took in a deep breath, closing his eyes and tilting his head up to the sky. “Because I thought there was no way someone else wouldn’t have realized how amazing you are. There was no way I could be someone who you thought was worth waiting for.” 

Nico takes a step towards you, his hand gently taking yours. This was a moment you had been thinking about since he left for Switzerland two years ago. You knew he was going to kiss you, having you pinned against the wall of the building. His free hand cupped your cheek.

“There you guys are!” Nat interrupts, them and Jack clearly having just finished up doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing. Nico steps away from you, clearing his throat, the red in his cheeks so noticeable there was no way even your roommate wouldn’t comment on it later.  “We’ve been looking for you, for um.”

“Long enough,” Jack finishes their sentence, a stupid smile covering his face. You knew he was lying, but no part of your brain was letting you focus on that. Nico leaned against the building, his arm up over your head. “The uber’s almost here. Are you ready to go?”

No. “Yes.” 

The three of you leave Nico standing there by himself, Nat and Jack falling asleep in the Uber as soon as it gets on the highway. 

You check your phone for the first time in a while, a lone notification popping up on your phone that hadn’t been there in almost two years. 

‘Nico, iMessage.’ 

#nico hischier #nico hischier fic #new jersey devils #devils #new jersey devils fic #devils ic #summer fic exchange 2023

[asteria-argo]

fuck it I'm elaborating on that last post actually. My preface is that I don't work in or study marketing, but I had to do extensive unit on it for my actual course which means while I'm not an expert I do know enough that the arc annoys the shit out of me! This is a disorganized rant on my part, no one read too much into it.

POINT A.1

a lot of the work we see Keeley do in season one and two isn't actually PR, it's brand coordination. That's a separate department to Public Relations. They both fall under the marketing department umbrella, and there is an overlap in responsibilities depending on the size of the corporate entity but they aren't the same thing!

This doesn't actually matter that much, and sometimes it varies from company to company how marketing teams are structured anyway but it bothers me that it's called PR when she's doing Brand Coordination! They aren't the same thing!

POINT A.2

jumping off from point A.1 into the actual rant, the show likes to treat Keeley as an all-rounder, which I'm sure is just for convenience sake so they don't have to write in or hire actors to actually be Richmond's marketing department, but I think that's stupid! Most corporate marketing and communications roles in real life require at least a bachelors degree, she wouldn't have the necessary knowledge or experience to fulfill multiple of these roles at once.

Which leads me to my actual point, which is that Keeley is supposed to be a self made character but they consistently just hand her things.

Rebecca just hands her a job she isn't qualified for, very similarly to what she does to Ted, only with Keeley her motivations are to provide Keeley with a new avenue* in life rather than Keeley actively seeking these opportunities for herself! It's not self made if Keeley isn't trying to make it happen for herself.

I will admit it's been a while since I properly watched season one, so I might be wrong about that above statement, but it doesn't change the fact Keeley, much like Ted and probably even moreso than Ted who is at least qualified to coach to some degree, is not qualified for the job that Rebecca just hands her in any formal capacity.

(*side note; I can't remember if Rebecca was being genuine or trying to sabotage the club some more when she offered Keeley the job, but if she was doing the latter that is an entirely separate rant)

Then, they just hand her her own company she is equally underqualified for! She has maybe a year of formal marketing experience at the time, she has no formal training and she is a free lancer with one known client. They never show us Keeley working for anyone but Richmond! in fact, she works within Richmond, so it's safe to say they are literally her only client!

look, I'm not saying it's impossible for her to have gotten a free lance PR job at Richmond, that isn't actually my main concern with Keeley's arc, it's a good starting point, but it's important that it's acknowledged that Keeley isn't as prepared for the role as she could be. It's a conflict and conflict is what makes stories interesting.

My main problem is that they ignore the fact she isn't qualified, make her seem perfect and on top of everything, give her multiple legs up via friendship nepotism and dumb luck, and then when she is finally shown to be struggling, the rug is swept out from under her due to external, bullshit factors that have nothing to do with her actual professional struggles. And then she gets bailed out, via more friendship nepotism. It's BORING! You had a perfect plot sitting right there and you stepped over it!

POINT B

But Asteria, I hear you asking, why do you keep calling Keeley a free lancer? Because, dear reader, if she actually worked for Richmonds Marketing department, she would be in their marketing department!

There are mutliple interconnecting roles in a marketing department, data analysts, social media teams, media coordinators! They typically work together in an office building, similar to Keeley's PR company! There are a lot of different roles and a lot of different employees involved! think cubicles and break rooms, not a private office in the dungeon of a stadium.

So, Keeley from what the show tells and shows, is a free lance PR consultant not for the stadium itself, but for members of the team and later the greyhounds as an entity. This is where I would veer off course!

Instead of ending season two with a bullshit out of the blue here's your own company girl boss arc, I'd have Rebecca offer Keeley some kind of formal training avenue to get some more experience, build up her portfolio, and make progress in her career via some kind of internship or traineeship with Nelson Roads marketing team.

Why does this cause conflict? Because Keeley sucks at it! Keeley, for as friendly and sociable as she is, is not a corporate team player. She canonically doesn't understand corporate etiquette, she doesn't respect a lot of corporate practices, and to the people who have actually spent years of their lives studying and working for their positions, she doesn't deserve to be there!

She's there because she's a rich model whose friends with their millionaire boss. She's not self made to them, she hasn't come from nothing, she owns a mansion and wears designer almost exclusively. She has weekly lunch with the owner of their company, she was dating their star player and now she's dating the assistant coach, she got hired with no experience or education because she has friends in high places, if I was some poor marketing employee with student debt who worked my ass off to be there? I'd be pissed off, I wouldn't like her!

and Keeley is a very make her own way person, she isn't prepared for the rules and parameters that working in a corporate environment has! She also isn't used to not being liked! The team all love her, she makes friends really easy! It isn't an environment that she is comfortable in or used too, and she struggles with it!

Her arc would be about deciding if it's worth it! Where to compromise and where to hold to fast! Proving that she does deserve to be there to herself and to others! Realizing that she has had a lot of things handed to her, and that she is not as self made and independent as she previously claimed to be! Deciding how to proceed with that realization! Working on herself to understand the perspective of others!

You can give her a crisis of confidence and self doubt with that! You can make her actively trying to learn more and better herself! Give her the Elle Woods Arc She Deserved! She doesn't have to be The Boss, she just has to be an active character in her own story!

POINT C

Splitting Keeley from the main cast was dumb! It was just a bad choice! It's an ensemble show, ensemble shows never work when you split up the ensemble. That's part of why season three felt so weird to watch!

I love Keeley, I really do, but her story was not substantial enough to stand on its own! She needs to be connected to Nelson Road and Richmond one way or another, or she might of well have been written off because the KJPR story line doesn't serve the over all plot or Keeley's character development. She starts and ends the season in the exact same spot, and she contributes almost nothing to the main story line.

This point of mine is more of technical perspective on writing but if something doesn't serve a purpose in a story, especially a story that is actively trying to be concise like the third season of ted lasso allegedly was, you need to either change it so that it does serve a purpose or cut it. Characters aren't people, they are tools used within a narrative to tell a story. Keeley wasn't used effectively as a tool to the narrative in any capacity.

Also I just think it would've been a lot more interesting to explore Roy and Keeley's relationship breaking down in real time. Them breaking up off screen and then ignoring each other for most of the season was, once again, boring!

In Conclusion

I hate the KJPR story line because it was so easy to fix and it could've elevated the narrative in so many ways but nooooooo we had to have THAT shit show. You could even keep Barbara in my version. Like,, she can still be there and it would work better. They fumbled so bad, Keeley deserved better.

#Keeley Jones #I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this as you can probably tell #does this count as meta? #I think so #ted lasso meta

[scientia-rex]

Some Thoughts on Antipsychotic Medications

Ok, enough of you seemed interested in this when I asked in my antidepressant post (don't ask me for a link, search my goddamn tumblr for it, oh my GOD people were so lazy about my post on bariatric surgery). Once again, this is NOT medical advice, medical advice must be TAILORED TO THE INDIVIDUAL, that's the whole POINT of a professional field, literally every answer is "it depends" and without being your doctor, which I better not be because if you're my patient reading this I need to nuke my entire social media presence, I can't give you good advice and I wouldn't anyway because I already work 115% time and I'm very tired and you don't pay me.

There's a lot of crossover between "antipsychotic" and "mood stabilizer." I don't have as much experience with antipsychotics as I do with antidepressants, but more than your average bear. So you may see a med here and go "wait, what?" because of that overlap.

It's also worth discussing what psychosis is. There are a lot of media representations, and they are generally very stupid and bad. About 3% of the population will have a psychotic episode in their lifetime, so keep that in mind when you're talking about psychosis. There's about a 1 in 30 chance that the person you're talking to will actually have had psychosis, and a much higher chance that someone they know or love will. So don't be a dick about it. Psychosis involves losing the ability to distinguish what is reality and what is not. It seems to involve overactivity of dopaminergic transmission in specific brain pathways. It tends to be very frightening for its sufferers, although not always. Psychotic symptoms can range from a persistent delusion--I have one patient who is quite simply certain that they have worms in their lungs, despite all the tests indicating that they don't--to hallucinations of voices, to visual hallucinations, and any combination of those. Delusions and hallucinations are often negatively valenced, which means that they make the sufferer feel bad in some way, whether it's an auditory hallucination of someone telling you you're the devil, or a delusion that you're being persecuted by conspiracies for unclear reasons, or hallucinations of shadowy figures out of the corner of your eye. Delusions, when I see them in my patient, often reflect a patient's deepest fear. I had one patient who was a caregiver and they were fixated on the idea that there was a conspiracy of people watching them and setting up "tests" to make sure they weren't hurting patients or doing drugs.

It's also worth mentioning meth. Meth is one of the major causes I see of psychotic symptoms (especially since I'm in a rural area), and you need to understand that the longer and the more you do meth, the higher the likelihood of persistent psychotic symptoms. When I was a med student on an inpatient high-acuity psych ward, I had a very pleasant gentleman who'd been doing meth for years. It's tough to get a clear history, but my impression was that he probably hadn't developed psychotic symptoms until multiple years into daily use of meth--but now, despite being on the ward for over a week, there was no sign of the psychosis going away. He believed he could say things to passing cars and the sound would travel with the car, and someone miles away would hear it. He also believed there were indistinct white figures who hovered around his campsite. (He was homeless.) Meth can break your brain. Don't do meth.

The original antipsychotics are old school. We're talking the 1930s. Promethazine was developed in the process of trying to come up with antihistamines. First-generation antipsychotics are dopamine antagonists, and that means that they're blocking a large proportion of dopaminergic transmission both in the brain pathways related to psychotic symptoms, but also in the pathways related to reward, which sucks. When you think of "antipsychotics," this is most likely what you're thinking of unless you have personal experience with antipsychotics. First-generation antipsychotics include haloperidol (Haldol), chlorpromazine (Thorazine), and a handful of others, but it's a smaller class than the second generation.

Second-generation antipsychotics were a game changer. These are serotonin-dopamine antagonists. They include risperidone (Risperdal), paliperidone (Invega-Sustenna), quetiapine (Seroquel), aripiprazole (Abilify), olanzapine (Zyprexa), lurasidone (Latuda), ziprasidone (Geodon), and also clozapine, AKA the antipsychotic everyone hates prescribing because it can cause your white blood cells to suddenly go bye-bye and boom, you're at huge risk for infection. The only patient I've ever seen develop clear, unambiguous serotonin syndrome was on clozapine. I don't prescribe it as an outpatient family doctor; it's a medication of last resort, and more often seen in inpatient settings due to the need for frequent blood tests to monitor.

Because the brain is a great recycler, we also use dopamine in the control of our movements. This means that one of the more serious side effects of antipsychotics is a problem with movement. This is typically going to be something called "tardive dyskinesia," which means "slow messed up movement," but in Greek because we're fancy. TD is dreaded because we can't always reverse it. A medication called benztropine can help, but the better option, if at all possible, is to get someone off the medication that called the TD in the first place.

If you're keeping track, you're noticing that dopamine does a lot in the brain: the reward pathway, psychotic symptoms, movement. Your body also uses it for stuff outside the brain, like affecting gut motility and blood vessel dilation. It is really hard to come up with medications that only affect one thing, because the body will use the same messaging systems over and over. This is a big part of why there's some much cross-talk between medications that are ostensibly for one thing but used for many other things.

First-generation antipsychotics can be particularly bad about making people feel flat and incapable of feeling joy. The technical term for "incapable of feeling joy" is "anhedonia," Greek again, this time for "no happiness." This is incredibly punishing and people will often go off their meds in order to feel something. I don't want to hear any bullshit blaming people who do this. You probably would too, and learning not to throw rocks from a glass house is critical to being a decent fucking human being. However, it does mean that I have much more success keeping patients on second-generation antipsychotics. There is both a lower risk of anhedonia and a lower risk of TD, so in general, unless someone doesn't respond to second-generation antipsychotics, they won't be started on a first-generation. I have absolutely used first-gen antipsychotics for patients but they're more typical in the inpatient setting, where it's okay--and sometimes a good thing--if someone is sedated. One memorable example was in an emergency department where a woman was violent and had to be restrained with both physical restraints and a spit hood. We can't just go around sedating people these days--that's a whole-ass thing, because for a long time "treatment" in inpatient facilities was too often taken to be "sedation"--but boy howdy, she needed some Haldol.

I also work part time at the county jail, and while I again try hard not to use first-generation psychotics in patients who didn't come in on them, there are patients who actively request Haldol because they hate how being totally wound up and psychotic feels. I write for them to have as-needed oral doses. This means if they ask the jail nurse for it, they can get it, and it helps immensely.

The leading cause of death for patients with mental illness is heart disease. Antipsychotics tend to cause weight gain, and that is not only psychologically distressing to my patients because we live in a fatphobic world, it's probably related to worsened insulin function. Unfortunately, just putting everyone on an antipsychotic on preventative metformin (a medication that improves insulin sensitivity) also didn't work when we tried it, so we don't do that. But it's scary. I'm actually really hopeful that this new GLP-1 agonist med class that's in constant shortages because it causes weight loss (Ozempic, Wegovy, etc.) will be an option to help improve long-term health for psychotic patients. Some antipsychotics are worse than others for weight gain, but there are few genuine head to head comparisons of effectiveness, so I can't say "X works better than Y," we just have to pick one based on a) my familiarity with it and b) whether it seems like a good idea. I also feel it is better to be fat than dead, so if someone needs one of the more fat-inducing antipsychotics to live their life and/or have a decent quality of life, I'll prescribe it and I fucking dare you to talk shit, I will eat you.

My clinical experience has been that Seroquel and Abilify are the best-tolerated antipsychotics. I don't know why. Someone else might, but those are the ones I usually reach for unless someone is having really severe symptoms, in which case I think risperidone works faster. Data are, again, generally pretty weak.

But mostly I want you to remember that psychosis is not a funny punchline, "psychotic" is a shitty fucking insult to use, and someone you know and love probably has psychosis. Some people have a single break and it never happens again, some people can control it with medication, some people need to be institutionalized. It's a life-changing illness and people with severe psychosis, yes, even the weird ones who scare you, are still human beings whose lives have exactly the same inherent value as yours, and who deserve the exact same inalienable human rights as you do. Any other approach is garbage. Human rights are not negotiable.

#the attending dr. kristophine

[transmutationisms]

do you think vaccines should be mandatory? my view has always been that public health would outweigh personal choice in this instance but i also see the bodily autonomy argument, though ultimately i think it’s flawed and weird to compare, say, abortions with vaccines. i was wondering if you had an opinion or any resources on this topic?

this is one of those questions where i think the framing conceals a lot of unspoken premises and social/political assumptions. what do we even mean by a vaccine mandate in the first place? the truth is that in many contexts, vaccines are already mandatory—the trick is that these mandates are generally designed and first enforced by employers, schools, and private business establishments, rather than coming through direct state intervention. incidentally, most censorship works similarly, despite it also being positioned discursively as a matter of direct state intervention. the truth is that you are far more likely to run into problems if you, say, have an employer who requires vaccination—which makes your paycheck (that is, your ability to continue living) dependent on a medical intervention—than you are to face some kind of right-winger fear fantasy of a shadowy government agent showing up to your doorstep with a syringe. these things happen by economic coercion far more than through direct state command.

with that in mind, to me the issue that 'vaccine mandates' point to isn't so much an idealist conflict between 'safety' and 'liberty' or however nyt is framing it these days—rather, it's the fact that employers have the structural position to impose their will on employees, who often must comply or face, literally, starvation. i am willing to say this is a bad social structure despite the fact that in the case of vaccines i obviously agree that the particular intervention in question is a good thing, and is something that anyone who is medically eligible should be getting. in order to make vaccines mandatory, you need an enforcement mechanism—the one we currently primarily rely on is economic coercion in the form of threatening loss of livelihood (again, this also applies to most censorship cases). while i, again, strenuously think that people who can get vaccinated should do so, in order to make such a thing compulsory you have to confront the issue of what power structures make the compulsion possible and actionable. prisons? relying on the political whims and economic threats of employers? too often, a 'mandatory vaccine' is presented as though it could be ethically debated in the abstract, without reference to these conditions!

anyway, i'm not going to pretend that i can solve vaccine hesitancy in the next 90 seconds in a tumblr post, but off the top of my head here are some factors i think are major contributors to this issue:

ableism (eg, andrew wakefield preying on the fact that many parents would rather risk their children catching preventable dangerous diseases than let them be supposedly exposed to a greater chance of becoming autistic)

public distrust of physicians and public health infrastructure, for reasons ranging from medical racism and eugenics to discomfiting and traumatic experiences with the inherently (in this system) power-imbalanced relationship between medical professionals and patients

the massive gap between expert and lay knowledge on medical topics, enforced by mechanisms like paywalls and benefitting the prestige and pecuniary enrichment of physicians and public health experts (this provides fertile ground for grifters and liars to prey on people's confusion and difficulty verifying information)

possibilities for lies about vaccines to lead to financial enrichment, as in the case of social media grifts, heterodox and alternative medical practitioners, or eg andrew wakefield trying to sell his own vaccine after publishing his now-retracted paper on the supposed link between autism and the mmr vaccine

these are all bad things; they are also all actionable things. i do not think that it's some kind of transhistorical condition of humanity that we must choose between either passing each other dangerous diseases or designing coercive or punitive measures to force compliance with public health recommendations. i think all of these things are in fact very directly resultant of capitalism, the way it values bodies and health (biopolitics), and its politics of knowledge and expertise.

#public health

[gayloringinplainsight]

why is all of your "evidence" so contridictory? if she came out on lesbian visibility day and all her past relationships are pr beards, why does it matter the bisexual hints she drops? AND if she IS bisexual, why come out on lesbian visibility day and have so many lesbian flag themed hints? why would she be in pr beard relationships if shes openly bisexual?

I DONT CARE ABOUT TAYLOR SWIFT. I DONT CARE ABOUT HER SEXUALITY. IF SHE IS OR IS NOT LGBT DOESNT HAVE ANY BEARING ON MY LIFE UNLESS SHE STOPS POLLUTING THE EARTH WHEN SHE COMES OUT. JUST EXPLAIN HOW THE EVIDENCE WORKS. NOT IN LYRICS. NOT MUSIC VIDEOS. NOT PICTURES FROM INTSTAGRAM. NOT SOMEONE ELSE'S TIK TOKS. NOT HINTS. JUST TANGIBLE PROOF.

Okay first idk why you need to scream at me. Calm the fuck down. And if you don't care about Taylor Swift then I'm not sure why you're on my blog screaming in all caps about her, but let's do this anyways cause I'm in a verbose mood.

Second, it's not my evidence, it's her evidence and her flagging, and I have eyes and a brain capable of a modicum of critical thinking.

And I don't think any of the evidence is contradictory but I kind of understand what you're getting at.

So let me begin by saying that I have no strong opinions on if she's bi or pan or lesbian or fluid or whatever. I think there was a lot of bi flagging in the 1989 era, both bi and pan flagging during the Lover era, and then there's been a lot more lesbian flagging during the Midnights/eras tour period. So if I had to venture a guess I'd say she used to identify as bi and now identifies as lesbian, but I don't feel super strongly about it and I also don't think there's really enough evidence to say for sure one way or another, only that there's more than enough evidence to be certain she's some flavor of queer.

What additionally contributes to the lack of clear answers on labelling is the fact that she does flagging on lesbian visibility day, and then mixes bi flagging and pan flagging in the same music video. But I don't think it's fair to say that if she's (for the sake of argument) bi, then she can only do bi-specific flagging. She can do any kind of flagging she wants, and that doesn't diminish the queer message she's coding. It might also be that she simply identifies as queer or unlabeled, and therefore feels free to mix and match all of these things. Or maybe her label is more complex and reliant on the split attraction model, like bi-romantic lesbian, or homo-romantic bisexual/pansexual.

To address some of your specific statements, she didn't "come out on lesbian visibility day". At least not explicitly. But she flagged very hard and said something that could be construed as coming out in a glass-closeted kind of way.

We also don't know that all of her public relationships have been PRships. They might have been, and I think a lot of them were, but we don't actually know. I think you're also asking, if every public relationship with men was PR, why would she ever flag as bi? But just because the relationships we know about were potentially PR doesn't mean there couldn't have been relationships with men that we don't know about. A great example of this is Martin Johnson, who many people think was a real relationship (and the muse for Dear John).

All this goes back to the point that she can do any kind of flagging she wants. She's not restricted to bi flagging if she's bi, or lesbian flagging if she's a lesbian. Perhaps she vacillates between labels. Perhaps her labels are more complex like bisexual lesbian. Perhaps in addition to whatever her own label is, she wants to give visibility to other queer identities.

Just because we don't know her exact brand of queer doesn't mean the evidence is contradictory. It means we don't know her exact brand of queer.

Lastly, to address your final demand where you want tangible proof except not lyrics or videos or social media posts or hints. Which is a request that's not really based in reality. Because that's exactly where the tangible proof lies. It's in the enormous pile of queer flagging that can't be explained away. It's in the performances where she sings "I want her midnights." It's in her panoply of rainbow outfits. It's in statements like "Gay pride…makes me, me!" It's in all the mv scenes of glass closeting. It's in Jack accidentally outing her. It's in the rep prologue. It's in lyrics that reference hairpin drops and secrecy and religious guilt and fear of being found out. It's in her literally telling us "I prefer hiding in plain sight." This is all queer flagging and if you know how to read it then you can read it. And if you can't or refuse to, then that's on you. If you want to wait for her to shout her identity from the rooftops before you think there's tangible proof, then feel free to wait for that day. I think it will come. But in the meantime, queer flagging IS proof. And the sheer volume and scope and clarity of it makes it tangible.

#gaylor #gaylor swift #Taylor swift #my asks

[qqueenofhades]

you can tell you work in academia with how much patience you have for some of these asks...."I don't know what is and isn't true anymore" is such an indefensible cop out of a way to exist in the modern world. morally clean "Leftists" could at least have the decency to learn the history of the people and places they pretend to care about for internet points, but hey, it's way easier to take the Opressor Approved route and give into despair and recycle repurposed right wing propaganda like the TERF version of geopolitics. a lot of people need to ask themselves, if there were no internet asspats involved, would you actually still care?? anyway thank you for your patience and willingness to engage, you're a better person than me :')

So far as the other anon goes, they have apologized and taken responsibility that it was a dumb thing to do, I have accepted that apology, and I think that matter is now closed. And yes, I do actually appreciate (as discussed in many other posts and asks) that it is difficult to always and automatically find reliable information, that it has been made deliberately even more difficult to do so by various bad actors, and that this results in a big ol' Bad Take Sea even by people who are genuinely otherwise well-meaning or want to make a positive contribution. So I really do have sympathy for that. Perhaps the previous anon did not put that sentiment across in the best of ways, but as I said, we should all have a bit more grace in remembering that we are real people behind the computer/phone screen and are dealing with different stressful things, and therefore sometimes make mistakes and do or say things we don't mean. (You know, for those of us who aren't pornbots. Oh tumblr.)

Where you and I absolutely agree, however, is that just because it is sometimes difficult to acquire that information, or that systemic and deliberate barriers/misinformation has been put in place to increase the difficulty, it does not excuse people from the responsibility of doing so, especially if they want to put themselves in the position of being the Perfectly Correct Social Media Oracle who will judge and criticize everyone else's responses and act as if that has some real-world impact or is a real marker of someone's "personal morality." And there are for sure plenty of people who are doing that with literally no self-awareness or other critical tools, because as you say, they want the Internet Asspats for being seen as a "Good Person" according to a very narrow and limited definition. But they can't think about what that entails, how to challenge it or correct it, or otherwise apply it carefully, so, yeah.

As I said, I am generally willing to answer asks that are made in good faith and show a real willingness to learn, because (as noted and which is doubtless visible again here) I am an academic and I enjoy having these kinds of discussions. But this topic in particular, and modern social media in general, is really not made for it, and it's easy to get sucked down the Discourse Black Hole that doesn't do anything for anyone, and I try to avoid that. So I answer only when I think I can contribute something useful to the discussion, which results in those kinds of long and careful responses where I do always worry that I haven't said enough or said it the right way, especially with the bad-faith reading police eager to leap on any small misstatement or sentence taken out of context. That is of course a hazard of being a person on the Internet in 2024, and since I am still here and still answering questions generally, I have clearly decided to accept it. But I also don't have an obligation to respond to *everything,* and I don't. It is a fine line to walk and again, I am a middle-aged tired academic and ordinary person doing my best. I appreciate your support. :)

#anonymous #ask