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#apparently toxic
serialunaliver · 2 months
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NTA
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c-is-for-circinate · 8 months
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It feels like there's this narrative that fandom keeps wanting to explore, with Steve Harrington, about this very specific type of martyrdom where self-sacrifice is an expression of a lack of self-worth. And, like, yes, write the narrative that's meaningful to you, and yes ok Steve does admittedly get beaten up a lot, but -- legitimately I do not think this narrative is actually Steve's story.
Like, without gendering things too much, there is something in the Steve fanon that I keep seeing that's so reflective of the specific kind of sacrifice and societal pressures exerted on girls, specifically -- this story of 'you make yourself worthy and worthwhile by carving pieces out of yourself', of believing that you must always give and never receive to justify the space you take up in the world. Yes, boys can experience this same pressure (and obviously trans and nb people of all genders run into it as well! sometimes a lot!), but especially in the mid-1980s cultural context where Stranger Things takes place, it's just...really not likely to be a dominant narrative for Steve to be operating under? It doesn't even really match the Steve we see on screen -- who is happy to make sacrifices for the sake of others, yeah, when needed, but who's not particularly kind or giving unless somebody asks first.
And Steve does get hurt a lot on other people's behalf! And this is a problem! It's just a completely different problem than the one fandom keeps writing.
Steve, and I'm going to say this forever, is a story about toxic masculinity, which the show may or may not even know it's writing. The archetypes influencing Steve's character as it shows up on the screen (and the stories and messages that Steve would actually be surrounded by in his actual life) are not deconstructions of suffering heroes who never should have had to fight in the first place and were destroyed by it. That's the Buffy the Vampire Slayer story. Steve's not Buffy. Steve's cultural context is Indiana Jones.
Steve is The Guy! And part of being The Guy is that you're expected to take the hits -- not because Steve is less important than the women-and-children he's supposed to protect, but because, the story says, he will get less hurt. Why should Steve get in between Billy and Lucas? Because Steve is an eighteen-year-old athlete and Lucas is in middle school, and of the two of them, Steve actually stands a chance. (And yes, Steve got badly hurt there, and Max had to save him -- but if Lucas, if Max had taken that beating they would not have been running through those tunnels later.) Was somebody else better-qualified to dive down to the uncertain bottom of a cold lake in the middle of the night? Steve doesn't list his credentials there as a way of justifying some ideal of martyrdom; he is literally the most likely person on the boat not to drown.
And make no mistake: when Steve's pulled into the Upside-Down, he survives the bats long enough for backup to get there. Realistic or not, he's apparently tough enough that he's physically capable of hiking barefoot through hell without much slowing down. Steve is the tank for the same reason as any tank: because he literally has been shown to have the most hit points in the group. You cannot honestly engage with Steve in this context without dealing with the fact that he's right.
AND THIS IS A PROBLEM! This is still a problem! But it's not the same problem that fandom seems to expect. It's not an expression of caretaking or the need for self-sacrifice; it's not an issue with Steve valuing himself less. It's an issue of toxic masculinity so ingrained that Steve doesn't even recognize he's suffering from it, because one of the tenets of toxic masculinity is that Big Strong Guys don't suffer. It's just a concussion, it's fine, he'll walk it off. It's not that Steve thinks he deserves to get hurt, or even that he's less deserving of safety than the others. It's that absolutely nothing in his cultural context allows him to admit that he can be hurt in a significant way.
There's still so much tension that can be gotten out of this situation, I swear. There's so much that can be explored in writing! Hell, the show itself is deconstructing some of this trope, believe it or not, by giving us a Steve who absolutely can take all the hits thrown his direction but still doesn't know what the fuck he's doing with his life. It turns out that doing his job as The Guy is only mildly helpful in horror movie situations (mostly by buying time for smarter, squishier people to do the damage from behind him), and somewhere a little worse than useless in everyday life.
But Steve does not go out of his way to self-sacrifice, he really doesn't. He just does his job. He's The Guy. Of course he's not going to let a kid or a girl or some scared skinny nerd who just learned about monsters yesterday take the hits. Of course Steve's got this.
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poorly-drawn-mdzs · 3 months
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Words Collide
[First] Prev <--> Next
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dragon-spaghetti · 2 months
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I'm addicted to you, don't you know that you're toxic? 🎶
(Please click for better quality!!)
Silly bonus:
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furylad · 7 months
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how is the ofmd fandom coping with the fact that Izzy Enjoyers were right about literally everything and the first three eps are just The Izzy Hands Show? I've peeked at Izzy hate blogs and have been amused that it seems like they're just pretending none of those scenes happened and are just latching onto the one Stede/Ed scene while ignoring. literally everything we just saw
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veinsfullofstars · 21 days
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"Still trying to intimidate me? Cute."
(ID: Kirby series fanart of Meta Knight and Galacta Knight based off of a couple dynamics template by @/ReddsMess on Twitter. Original template and source below the cut, as well as a HAL language variant. Top-left panel - high-angle shot of MK lit from above, standing firm and glaring up through his mask, his wings curled out and breaching the panel in places, subtitled "Well well..." Top-right panel - low-angle shot of GK lit from below, looming in the air and leering down through his mask, his wings curled out and his hands spread wide in challenge, both of which breach the panel in places, subtitled "Look who came to see me..." Bottom panel - MK & GK stand next to each other, the latter leaning towards the former and gently caressing the side of his mask with the back of one hand, grinning smugly and wrapping a wing around the knight, subtitled "My Knightmare." MK stands stiffly with his fists clenched at his sides, blushing vividly and glaring away from the warrior. A little flurry of white hearts emanate from GK, while one small one hovers above MK. END ID.)
Started 03/30/24, finished 04/02/24.
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HAL language variant:
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Original by ReddsMess (template link) NOTE: The artist has marked 16-18+ in their bio, so browse at your own risk!
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miss-sweetea-pie · 6 months
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Okay but some of the k.ataang crowd is already complaining about how katara looks to big compared to Aang in the trailer. And already hating it. Wow it’s surprising that a 12 year old boy and a 15 year old girl are different sizes crazy.
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zennore · 2 days
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"Toxic Yuri"?! Is that what the cool kids are calling it nowadays?!
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anna-scribbles · 21 days
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h-how do you ever finish any of your work? genuine question because you seem to be productive despite your agreste syndrome and I need to learn your ways. but also how do you ever finish any of your work
unclear. last night i stayed up and finished a report worth 25% of my grade at about 5am, arrived on time for my 9am lecture, and spent about half of it zoned out while thinking about seventeen year old emilie agreste. and i was one of the most active participants in the class discussion
#in some ways it IS the move to go to grad school right out of undergrad#because your body can still sort of operate like a college kid#i’m on about 3ish hours of sleep rn and this morning it felt SO over but now i’ve eaten something and we’re so back#i also don’t really do caffeine. except sometimes i’ll go get one of those panera death lemonades#i might be able to snag a short nap before work#but anyway about seventeen year old emilie. i was thinking abt how she was in that movie solitude and adrien said she was seventeen#WAIT. NO. HE SAID SHE WAS SEVENTEEN IN THAT PHOTO ON HIS DESKTOP NOT IN THE MOVIE#well. okay whatever i’m gonna tell you what i was thinking about anyway#OKAY i’m back i just checked the wikipedia page and then i watched the end of gorizilla. to make sure i’m not lying. because i’m normal.#anyway i was thinking about the solitude film and how it’s super rare and old and obscure and whatever. and how apparently#emilie wrote it herself and andre produced it#and i’m thinking about how gabe was discovered by audrey and that’s how he got his start in the fashion industry#so now i’m like?? did gabe and emilie first meet on the set of solitude? because gabe was designing costumes or whatever?#and that’s how audrey found him? have people already thought about this??#also i just checked and it doesn’t say emilie’s last name in the credits and also it’s ‘graham films’ with the twin rings logo m#so i’m assuming she’s still emilie graham de vanily at that point#anyway it comes back to seventeen year old emilie because i started imagining seventeen year old runaway emilie having her new life in pari#after escaping her british nobility life#and the first thing she does is write and star in an original movie. of course.#and she meets this repressed bisexual punk upstart costume designer who is so the opposite of everyone she’s ever known#and he’s immediately so unhealthily obsessed with her. which she appreciates.#and then they proceed to have the most toxic doomed evil relationship of all time#also she gets cheated because once gabe gets money he represses himself SO hard that he is now exactly like all the people emilie grew up w#but at least he’s still obsessed with her#this is what i was thinking about during class today. i don’t know how i get anything done either.#ml#anna rambles#asks
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nico-di-genova · 25 days
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strollonso + marriage proposal.
Genuinely, thank you so much for sending this, it is such a simple request, and yet the idea of them married has now fully consumed me.
Warnings: NSFW, they are fucking nasty style.
The thing about them is that they’ve never been normal. Not when Fernando kissed Lance for the first time post Bahrain, all sweaty and roaming hands, crowding Lance against the door of his hotel room and then standing before his father the next day saying Lance was already like family. Not when Lance went down on him for the first time, choking himself on Fernando’s cock while the man sat on the phone with his engineer discussing set-up of his car. Normal was not something that came to them easily, Lance supposed their proposal wouldn’t be any different.
He just hadn’t expected Fernando to ask him right as he was bottoming out.
Right as Lance was muffling a moan into his pillow and gripping the plush material in his hands with white knuckles.
“Marry me,” Fernando grunts, and Lance hardly hears him over the blood rushing through his ears.
He moans as Fernando thrusts with practiced ease.
“Yes or no?”
Lance cannot even follow the question. He’s too busy thinking of how Fernando’s cock feels inside him, too busy arching and pushing back for more. Fernando gives it to him, leans forward so he can rest a hand on the mattress next to Lance’s face pushed into the pillow, his other hand gripping Lance’s hip tight enough to bruise.
When Fernando begins thrusting at a brutal pace Lance lets him. He lets punched out noises fall from his lips and tangle in the sweat soaked sheets beneath them.
When he comes, it’s with the shape of Fernando’s name in his mouth.
"You did not answer,” Fernando muses afterward. Lance’s head is resting on his bare chest, his fingers threading through sweat soaked strands of jet black hair.
“Answer what?” Lance mumbles, fucked out and limp against Fernando – like a sack of potatoes Fernando had once teased, boneless and immovable. He was falling asleep, his voice groggy with the promise of it.
“Marry me,” Fernando says again, a statement instead of a question.
“Later,” Lance grumbles, curling closer to Fernando.
He is rarely the little spoon, what with the size difference between them, but his thigh slots perfectly across Fernando’s hips and his head can rest nicely beneath his chin if he maneuvers enough. He can feel Fernando’s come dripping out of him, his own drying against his stomach, but the need to give into the oblivion of sleep is stronger than the need to shower.
“But yes?” Fernando asks, to which Lance makes a noise that might have been agreement, at least he aims for that.
It’s not romantic, certainly not how Lance thought his proposal would go. For one, he did not think he would be the one proposed to. In his mind there had been an expensive trip to Bali, rose petals in the sand, a girl who he’d get down on one knee for with a prenup and a ring. But the girl never had a face, nothing distinguishable about her other than the dress she wore that would flutter in the breeze and her giggle when Lance slid the expensive rock onto her finger.
This is better, half asleep against his childhood hero with his limbs still aching from how hard the man had drilled him into the mattress. Feeling warm, content, wanted – not just for his trust fund but because he was also really good at sucking dick.
Maybe it was a self-deprecating thought. He didn’t care. He falls asleep like that, with Fernando’s fingers in his hair and wrapped in the scent of him. When he wakes, it’s to the man easing him out of the bed and into the warm bath that waits with steam rising in tendrils from the water. It’s easy to let himself be taken care of, to let Fernando massage the knots from his shoulders and clean the come from his body. Easy in the same way it is to let a nameless driver cart him around Montreal or let the rotating staff dust his frequently empty loft, different in that Fernando presses kisses to his neck, his shoulders, his spine, the crown of his head and tells him how good he was.  
Lance rests his cheek against the curve of Fernando’s neck while water is poured down his back, soap lathered into his hair, whispers of praise warm against his ear. Fernando uses his own shampoo, his soap, so that Lance no longer smells of sex but of citrus and sandalwood.
Fernando doesn’t mention marriage again, but he does dress Lance in a pair of his own boxers and eases him into bed with a gentleness that Lance has learned to associate with post-coital bliss.
It’s the sun that wakes him up next, and Fernando’s hand thwacking against his face when the man shifts in his sleep. He smells of Fernando and is wearing clothes are too small for his frame, and it’s familiar. At some point, it became almost normal.
A month later he gives Fernando a ring, a silver band rimmed with a strip of carbon fiber from his own car and his name engraved in Hebrew on the inside. It matches the font that’s inked across his ribs. Hurt a hell of a lot less though and cost him significantly more. His dad’s accountant questions the amount, asks Lance if he bought a new place, and Lance just shrugs it off – says he bought a snowboard or a car or a race track just to see the way the man’s lips press into a thin line as he jots something into the books.
“I’ll marry you,” he says, when he slides the ring in its velvet box to Fernando across the table of the taco place they’re at. It comes to a rest beside the chips and salsa.
Fernando stares. There’s a stray piece of cilantro sticking to the corner of his downturned mouth.
“If, uh, if you still want me to. I’ll marry you.”
“A ring?” Fernando asks, motioning at the box with the overfilled end of the taco in his grip. A stray piece of carne asada falls, plops onto the paper lined basket beneath him.
“Yeah, it’s stupid, but you know-“
“It’s not stupid,” Fernando cuts him off, annoyance lacing his tone as he sets the taco down next to the escaped piece of meat, “Don’t say that. It’s not stupid.”
Lance blushes, ducks his head, stares down at his own untouched taco and the box that Fernando still has not reached for. There’s chip crumbs sticking to the velvet. His dad would have a conniption if he saw, the same way he did when Lance would show up to events in a suit that was too big on him with an untucked button-up peeking out from beneath the oversized fabric. His dad would hate that they were even eating here, which is maybe precisely why Lance had chosen it. Something bold, something his, something that wasn’t stamped with the Stroll name and wrapped in a pretty package.
“It’s not stupid,” Fernando repeats, “But it’s for me?”
Lance feels his palms go clammy, feels suddenly like he is getting hit by a bus. His appetite leaves him with the whoosh of breath from his lungs. They hadn’t talked about it since Fernando proposed the idea when he was balls deep inside him. When Lance was moaning his name into the pillow and choking on his own tears from the pleasure. He feels suddenly stupid, hollow, the same way he feels when reporters ask him why he bottled it into the wall on the easiest part of the circuit with condescension lacing their tone. Like they could do any fucking better.
“You- fuck.”
“Lance?”
“You didn’t mean it did you? Oh, man, uh. I’m- fuck.”
Lance doesn’t cry, at least not in public. He’s become well trained in blinking back tears and biting off the quiver in his voice that gives him away. But he comes close, feels the stinging heat of them building in the corners of his eyes and has to blink violently until his vision clears. Fernando watches him, watches as he fights against the rising tide of not good enough, stupid, never enough that rises inside him suddenly and rapidly and threatens to drown him while he swallows down the bile and sour cream taste that’s building at the back of his throat.
It takes him longer than it should to stop the shaking of his hands.
“Sorry,” he says when the world settles a little beneath his feet, when he doesn’t feel like he’s going to say something spiteful just so he can see Fernando’s expression twist with the same hurt he feels. It wouldn’t work anyway, Lance has thrown nearly every well aimed bullet Fernando’s way and they land, but they never seem to hurt.
“Let’s just- let’s just forget about it, yeah? It was a dumb thing, I don’t even-,” he reaches to grab the ring box but is halted by Fernando’s hand over his own. Fernando’s fingers wrap around his wrist, strong, sturdy, unyielding.
“Stop calling it that. Let me answer, yes?”
Lance nods, braces himself for the inevitable rejection, for the floor falling out feeling and the rush of wind in his ears and the impact of his body against the pavement. It’s not a strange feeling, to be dumped by his hero and hung out to dry, doesn’t hurt any less the second time around though. He just wishes Fernando would be mean about it, the niceties hurt more, he’d rather it just be quick – it’s what he would have expected from the man anyway – a sharp dagger to the side or the bite of a blade against his throat, not the gentle press of the knife sliding between his ribs in some false semblance of mercy.
Fernando brushes his thumb along the inside of his wrist, over his pulse point, parallel to the surgical scars left from his accident. He sometimes gets phantom twinges, the memory of a snapped bone, but nothing now. Now he just feels empty.
“I did not ask you properly,” Fernando explains, sounding, strangely, sad.
“I didn’t answer properly,” Lance counters, nodding to the box that still sits between them, unopened, next to the chips and a bottle of hot sauce like it is another spare condiment. It cost him a quarter of a million, and Lance threw it down like it was the spare jalapeno sauce the waiter had left them.
“I should have,” Fernando presses, exasperated, like he’s frustrated that Lance is not understanding him, “it’s important to me. This. Us.”
Us.
Lance feels like that twelve year-old boy standing in the Ferrari garage when he says, “I don’t understand.”
Like he’s watching the race unfold with noise muffled by the earmuffs over his head and his father’s hand heavy on his shoulder. Like he can see it all, close enough to smell the rubber and the gasoline, but far enough away that it still seems unobtainable. Fernando may as well still be in that car, separated by a screen and Lance’s idolization for all the difference it makes now.
“You want to marry me, yes? Honest. This is- this is you? Your choice?”
“Who’s else would it be?” If Lance has a gun held to his head it’s one that he hasn’t spotted yet, metal pressing against his temple, and he’s somehow mistaken it for a kiss.
Fernando’s lips press into a thin line, the curl of his lips curving further downward.
“I’m sorry, Nando.”
“Stop being sorry. You do not need to be sorry. I am sorry. How I asked, when I did, it was…wrong. I should have waited. I should have asked correctly.”
Fernando’s grip on his wrist tightens, instinctively, enough that Lance winces when it shifts something beneath the skin, and he feels the hint of pain. More of a familiar ghost than anything real. Fernando pulls away anyway, sudden, leans back in his seat and tucks his hands beneath the table like his touch has somehow burned Lance.
Slowly, Lance understands.
“Wait- you- baby did you think I wanted a proposal? Like down on one knee ‘will you marry me’, proposal?”
Fernando arches an eyebrow, “You do not?”
The floor stabilizes slightly, stops feeling like it’s going to fall out beneath him. Lance breathes and when he exhales a laugh accompanies it.
“No, Fer. Fuck no. Please no, actually.”
“But you got me a ring,” Fernando points out, points at the jewelry itself, like rings and proposals must always go hand in hand. Like they’re supposed to be the blushing bride and groom. Like there’s not a seventeen year age difference between them and their first kiss wasn’t accompanied by Fernando spitting the name ‘princess’ into his mouth like it was a slur.
Lance can’t stop laughing.
Fernando still can’t seem to find the joke.
“This is not funny.”
“It’s kind of funny.”
Funny that his boyfriend became his fiancé when he was fucking him so hard Lance probably wouldn’t have even remembered his own name. Funny that he bought a ring before they’d even discussed it when their dicks weren’t out. Funny that Lance mistook Fernando’s chivalry for abandonment. It’s funny in a way that isn’t, and so he can’t help the laughter that bubbles out of him in heaving breaths and spills across the table, the floor, the whole of the crowded restaurant. He knows what he must look like, wide grin and crinkling eyes, and the familiarity of his face nagging at the brains of those who turn to stare at him.
He doesn’t care if they recognize him, or, more realistically, Fernando. He doesn’t care and it’s one of the first times that he thinks it and realizes it’s probably true.
“Stop laughing.”
“I can’t,” Lance wheezes, “We’re both so fucking stupid.”
Fernando rolls his eyes, shifts in his seat, waits until Lance’s laughs fade into breathy little huffs and passes the time by picking at his now cold taco. Lance watches him, watches the twitch of his lips and knows Fernando is biting back laughter too.
Finally, he leans forward on his elbows and says, “I want to marry you. Of course I want to marry you.”
He pushes the ring box further along the table with an index finger, until it’s touching Fernando’s plate. The man looks from the velvet box to Lance’s finger and travels along his arm until there’s nothing between them, but the table and the chips and Lance’s name engraved in Hebrew on a solid gold band.
“Do you want to marry me?”
He doesn’t have to wait for Fernando’s answer, it comes in the darkening of the man’s expression, his pupils blowing wide with want and the way he hooks his foot around Lance’s ankle beneath the table.
“Come with me. I will show you how much I want to marry you, Lance Stroll.”
Three months later, Lance wears a matching gold band, Fernando’s name engraved across the inside and resting warm against his skin. When people ask if he’s married, always as a joke, always assuming the impossibility, he laughs and tells them yes. Fernando wears his on a gold chain tucked beneath his nomex. It is the last thing they take off before getting in their cars, the first thing they put back on when getting out.
“Mine,” Fernando will whisper to him at night, Lance’s fingers pressed to his lips and warm breath ghosting along the ring.
“Yours,” Lance will say when he loops Fernando’s chain around his index finger and pulls until the man comes to him, and there is no separation between them at all.  
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impishtubist · 3 months
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I think it's really telling that people see two people as devoted to each other as Sirius and James are and immediately call their relationship unhinged, deranged, and toxic lmao.
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Are all the watcher girlies done throwing their collective tantrum? Y’all were so vicious and cruel to three people that you don’t even know, and for what? Because they made a business decision you didn’t agree with? The amount of people that suddenly became financial experts this weekend was astonishing
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okay Lev's baby trapping fics have awoken something in me, and it's horny hours on this blog until I write something absolutely deranged with very graphic descriptions
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aq2003 · 4 months
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i need to turn myself into a shrimp in front of russell the davies in order to change the trajectory of his life what do you mean "he said if he had wrote martha today he wouldn't have done the unrequited love aspect" WE WERE SO CLOSE TO GREATNESS. WE WERE THIS CLOSE TO TENMARTHA TOXIC QPRISM BUT FOR REAL. IM GOING TO DIE
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mirroredmemoriez · 5 months
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I don't ship Cecilia and Amanda myself, but my best contribution to the ship names has to be Slapshipping and Amandalia/Amandelia.
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hearts-hunger · 1 year
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you know what's actually so important to me is that four guys in a rock n roll band decided to name their next album starcatcher. like, in a world of men's anger and men's greed and men's pride, there are also men who look to the sky with awe and humility, one hand extended to touch the stars with a wondering and eager reverence, the other hand offered in love to those who might need a little help and encouragement as they start to look skyward.
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