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#like girl 2022 is so many different months
jo-harrington · 2 months
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Stranger Than (Fan)Fiction - Prologue: Crossover
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Summary: Everyone wishes that they could have an Eddie Munson in their lives. In a strange turn of events, Eddie wishes that he could meet you, his favorite character from a cult classic 80's TV series. And he's about to get his wish.
Word Count: 3.9k
Pairing: Eddie Munson/Fem!Reader
Warnings/Themes: No-Upside-Down AU, Minor Angst, Fluff, Isekai, Mentions of FOI-compliant events
Note: Hello and welcome. I'm very excited about getting to expand on this idea; it's going to be a wild ride. Please note as you head in, and as we get into further chapters...this fic is going to be a little mind-fucky and a little bit self aware. This is my love letter to and my criticism of fanfiction, but at the end of the day, we're still gonna get to fall in love with Eddie and get some kind of Happily Ever After. This is my guarantee.
You can find my masterlist here.
Please do not interact if you are not 18+.
Enjoy!
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May 2022. Such a weird time.
A time of uncertainty, a time of change. A time where the world seemed like it had been torn apart and was slowly being knit back together again.
But then a switch was flipped. Something happened. An old season ended and a new one started and with that start came something new. Someone new. And suddenly, countless people began to yearn for this new person in their lives.
A new, old person. Eddie Munson.
Joy ignited. Creativity sparked. Millions of words written and read. Edits made. Art drawn. Merch bought.
So many voices crying “why isn’t he real. WHY ISN'T HE REAL.”
If there was a god, he would let them have their own Eddie Munson. And if there was a Satan, he would let them sell their souls for Eddie Munson.
That’s just not how the universe works.
At least…not this one...
October 1985. A different kind of place and time. Still weird.
But Eddie Munson was real.
Sometimes to his detriment.
And for the most part, it was alright.
He played guitar, laughed with friends, mocked bullies to protect the people like him that were considered less than. He'd overcome hardships of one sort or another for most of his life, he could keep at it for a little while longer.
It would be his day week month year sometime soon.
Wouldn't it?
But until then, he would bide his time. Hopefully, this year, he'd pass all of his classes and finally graduate. Get to flip that douchebag Higgins off and snatch up a long-awaited, and well-deserved diploma.
What made it all easier, what softened the blow...was you.
It was silly. He knew that. Ronnie used to tease him on Wednesday nights when he needed to run home because he had a "standing date with his girl."
"Your girl doesn't even know you're alive," she'd scoff as he bustled her into the van. "She isn't real."
No...no you weren't.
Why couldn't you be real.
See, for the past...however long Eddie had spent his late nights half-assing homework, planning campaigns for Hellfire, working on music, and watching a television show. His guilty pleasure, a show about the ups and downs and upside downs of living in a sleepy suburban town: Port Geneva.
A show where you were his favorite character.
And crush.
You weren't the main character--in fact, you were just the main character's quirky best friend--but you were a fan favorite, as much as he could tell. You'd only been in the background during the first season, but before long you were front and just-left-of-center. And last year, you'd even gotten a two-episode arc in the season finale as you turned the small town on its head by announcing, a month or two before graduation, that you were quitting school to follow your dream and become an artist.
And man...Eddie had been there.
He'd actually missed those episodes airing when...well, when everything happened with his father and the heist...and the house...and Paige.
He'd missed a lot of episodes that season. Missed seeing you come into your own as he tried and failed to come into his.
Thankfully Wayne--and Eddie wasn't a believer but whatever deity in charge needed to bless his Uncle Wayne--had the foresight to tape those episodes for him.
Those tapes would be cherished 'til the day he died, because they had truly gotten him through those tough days after everything.
He wished he had seen them when they aired, maybe...maybe he would have made some different decisions if he had.
Of course, Eddie had already loved you before then.
Since he had first laid eyes on you, actually.
He was sure that if you were real, you would be the one to understand him more than any of his friends. See the real him. In return, he would understand you, be there for you too.
He already had been. He'd seen you cry countless times, he'd laughed with you, celebrated your successes and mourned your failures. He'd been there for you when you crushed on that dickhead Mark, and then had your heart broken by the careless jerk.
And somewhere deep down inside of him, when he was sitting in that jail cell after he wasted his phone call on Paige and he felt the weight of the world bear down on his shoulders…he wished that you were real so he could have called you instead.
If you were real, Eddie's life would just be a little nicer.
He knew…he just knew.
Of course, in the mean time while he wished with every fiber of his being that you would walk into his life, he brought you to life in other ways. During mid-season and summer hiatuses, he would write you into his DND campaigns. His friends knew, they always called him out for it.
"Are you seriously making her an NPC man?" Dougie would scoff and throw a D20 across the table at him.
"No, what are you talking about?" he defended and threw the die right back at his friend. "This is Spiria the Bold."
"Uh huh," Jeff rolled his eyes. "Sure."
By his imagination and his pen, you became a powerful warrior, a sharp-tongued trickster, a seductive mage. You became anything he wanted you to be--most often with a companion and lover that mirrored him--and everything he knew, deep down, that you were.
And then the unthinkable happened.
September ‘84. He and Wayne were in the checkout line at K-mart. Cart stacked with new clothes and school supplies and groceries. When suddenly...there you were. Right in front of him.
Alright, not you. Per se. But your face, smiling alongside Samantha and Patrick and Scotty and Bill on the cover of the TV Guide.
On Set with the Stars of Port Geneva.
Wayne was the one to snatch the magazine from the rack and add it to their bounty, a knowing smile on his lips as he shook his head.
He knew Eddie needed a little pick-me-up.
Or a big one.
How could he have known this would be anything but one...
Eddie scoured over the pages once they got back to the trailer. He was hoping there would be a big enough picture of you that he could cut out and tape to the otherwise barren walls of his new room. And there was; you were leaning against the back of your signature pastel blue Volkswagen Beetle, arms across your chest, head tilted to the side with the signature scrunched smile you gave when you were embarrassed.
He adored you.
Before he took scissors to the page, he read the interview with your actress.
He wasn't too keen on her, even though she had your face.
The illusion that Rosemary Glass was really you had been shattered the first time he'd heard her voice on a radio interview; instead of your perfect and familiar middle-American speech...Rosemary's voice was accented.
Not to mention, she sounded pretentious.
Gross.
Still, he could look past that annoyance if he got some kind of insight to what the next season would bring for you.
Hopefully not a new love interest. His heart could only take so much.
...gives us a tour of the Patterson and Son's set, one that is forever enshrined as the setting of Patrick and Samantha's first kiss. "Oh I'm actually not fond of that scene," Rosemary confesses. "Yeah it's sweet, and the way I bring Sam in so Pat could confess his feelings but the...when I fell down? It was not scripted. And I was honestly shocked they kept that in. But fans seem to think she's clumsy now because of it. That I'm clumsy. When I just tripped over a wire. It's quite awful, really." We ask Rosemary to tell us what she'll miss most, now that the show is coming to an end...
Eddie went rigid as he read those words.
The show...coming to an end?
"What?" he exclaimed into his empty room. "No, no, no."
He carefully examined the article again, then turned back to the beginning of the feature, only to feel his heart stop in his chest.
The title of the feature was like crit hit.
The final killing blow to his already weak constitution.
One Last Summer in Port Geneva - On the Set of the Final Season
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The final season was a sham.
Eddie savored every episode, though. Of course he would!
He would enjoy every last moment with you that he could get before he lost you forever. But...he hated it.
It was lazy writing--seriously what were they thinking--and a quick, cheap means to tie up all the loose ends they'd set up over the years. He could tell they tried to deliver as fulfilling a finale for the extensive cast of characters as they could. Still, he was sure he could have done better.
Samantha and Patrick got engaged after graduation. That was lame.
Bonnie finally quit the bakery to open her own cafe the next town over. Didn't anyone remember that she wanted to quit because she wanted to be a vet instead? That was the whole point of her! She didn't want to follow in her family's footsteps and she was doing just that.
And you? You took a backseat.
Instead of leaving town right after graduation--something that you had followed through reluctantly to make your parents happy even though you had just resolved to put your own happiness first for once--you stayed to help Pat plan his proposal.
Your big adventure, your big push for your dreams, were on hold again. You played second fiddle over and over until the final episode.
Eddie was grateful to have you for a little longer, but...once again annoyed that you were looked over--over and over, just like he was--when you had already proved that you were worthy of top billing.
Worthy of being the main character for once.
Still, at the beginning of the series finale, you packed your bags, cashed in your savings account, and drove out of town. The future was yours, just like it was always meant to be.
And Eddie cried.
The whole time tears streamed down his face as you said your own watery goodbyes. He might have even waved as you stuck your hand out the windshield to say goodbye to your friends as your car idled at the last stop sign. You blew a kiss to everything you knew and loved then started on your way into the unknown, car getting smaller in the distance right before the commercial break.
He held his breath for the final scene: a walk through the house where it all started and then Sam smiled her signature hopeful smile as she shut the door on the audience.
The screen faded to black for one final time and he exhaled.
"It's over," he muttered in slight disbelief, suddenly unsure of what to do with himself.
Port Geneva was over, and you were gone for good.
It was a strange feeling.
Heartbreak, mourning, disappointment? He couldn't really know for sure. Empty was the best way to describe it; the lack of feeling. It was infuriating. Port Geneva was just a television show, he attempted to rationalize for the nth time since he started watching. You were just a character on a tv show; how could you mourn for someone and something that wasn't even real?
You hadn't actually died. He could still see glimpses of you if he wanted, whenever Rosemary Glass' next movie came out or something.
But that wasn't you.
You were gone, for all intents and purposes, and it was a blow that hit Eddie hard.
How could he go on without you?
Devastated, he got high that night after he stewed on his grief. He day-dreamed and monologued to an empty trailer about a universe where the two of you were together, where your travels took you to Hawkins, of all places, and you fell in love with him, just like you were supposed to.
If the walls could talk, they would have a fantastic tale to tell. One with heroes and misunderstandings and love at first sight. One with a horrible, unseen foe and many pitfalls and dangers that exceeded anyone's wildest imaginations. One with a magic door that led to the happily ever that was beyond well-deserved.
Grief did wonderful and terrible things, after all.
He woke up for school the next morning with cotton mouth and a vague outline of a story that did just that: brought you to Hawkins to fall in love with him and all of the other things that seemed like nonsense once he was in a more right-minded state.
The only problem was that it was all in his English notebook. And he didn't need anyone finding that.
"Fuck," he groaned and ripped the page out. He shoved it into his bedside drawer, where it would be doomed to a crumpled and forgotten future.
Or until he needed a condom.
Which, considering how everyone had doubled down on their disgust of him, wouldn't be any time soon.
But there you stayed.
Put away, like old obsessions and childish things, to be ignored and forgotten.
At least for a little while.
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Eddie tried.
He did.
He kept you and Port Geneva out of sight and mind as much as humanly possible. It was the most effort he had really put to anything tangible in the past year.
The series ended at a weird time--during the middle of the season--and some investigative journalism show took over its time slot. Barbara Walters couldn't hold a candle to you, so it wasn't difficult for him to keep himself rooted in reality on the nights where he typically indulged in his silly fantasies.
The daydreams that he had were limited to lyrics for Corroded Coffin originals and ideas for Hellfire, and nights were spent alone in the darkness of the living room, with his reflection in the television set to keep him company as he tried his best to do homework that he'd already done before.
Before he realized, though, the school year was coming to a close and he was--big shocker--on the brink of failure. It wasn't until Higgins called him into his office, again, that you made your violent resurgence into his life.
There was a tentative truce between Higgins and Eddie for a while.
Civility was a strange thing for both of them. They actively avoided one another, save for a snide jab here and there, and Eddie tried to stay out of the Principal's Office as much as he could.
That is, until Higgins was forced to tell Eddie that he needed to repeat his repeat senior year.
"Don't act like I want this at all," he sneered at Eddie who tripped over a reaction. "I'd rather have you out of these halls for good. You drop out one year, then you re-enroll and you fail another. Try to make the most of it this time Munson; I don't want to have this talk again."
Eddie grumbled the whole drive back to the trailer, and he fell onto the sofa with his head in his hands once he got in.
"Which one of the fates wrote this stupid plot for me now, as if last year wasn't enough. You can't make this stuff up sometimes."
He laid there, wallowing in his misery for hours, days, years, until it got dark enough for headlights outside to be noticeable as they shined through the window. There was a glint of a reflection that caught his eye and had him turn his head.
"TV," he sighed and reached out as though he could touch the set and stacks of tapes neatly piled below. “The cause-of and solution-to all of life’s problems.”
He contemplated his life for a few more minutes.
He could make the most of the final few weeks of the school year. He could set himself up as a willing and reliable pupil for these last few assignments and tests, even though they wouldn't mean very much.
He could do all of these things so that when he walked into the halls of Hawkins High in the fall, on his absolute last first day of school--whatever deity or powers-that-be willing, because how "getting the hell outta dodge or he would die here" turned into "two extra years in that shit hole" he could only attribute to cosmic intervention--the faculty would already know he would try his best this time.
It would show them he was serious about graduating and that he would succeed despite all odds against him. Finally.
He could do this.
Or...
He could put in one of the tapes from the stack and scrounge for loose bills left over from his last few transactions and order a pizza. Pretend like he didn't exist for a little while.
And given the choice?
Eddie Munson chose the latter.
And he continued to choose the latter throughout the summer and even into the fall.
Nights that he didn't already have plans were spent in front of the television.
They were cherished nights with you.
Aside from his VHS recordings, he found a channel that showed reruns of Port Geneva after 10pm. Two hours of small town shenanigans that might very well be found just outside of his own door--if he only went and looked--with you just there, making your appearance every so often and catching his eye.
Homework was sometimes left halfway done on the coffee table until he needed to switch out a tape, or change the channel, and he spent more time filling his heart than enriching his mind, so to speak; he knew all of this school stuff already anyways.
Third times a charm and all right?
He talked to the screen more often than not, tried to warn you against one disappointment or another. Sometimes, if he was watching one of his tapes, he'd pause right on your face and just talk to you. Mundane things, usually, like Ronnie's last phone call home or some album that got released and a song he thought you might like.
Other nights, like tonight, he got vulnerable. Moments where life seemed a little extra trying, and he'd confess his feelings to your image.
Knelt on the floor in front of the coffee table, warm light bathed his face promising comfort as he spoke, and the din of static emitted from the television set, akin to an angel's voice...beyond understanding of humans.
He'd never been one for church, but this kind of confessional was sacred enough.
An eternal bond, just you and him.
He stopped his ramblings at that thought.
It was a strange moment of clarity.
Where had that come from?
"I..." Eddie looked down at himself, a foot away from the television set, remote clenched in his hand. Then he looked at you, soul-filled eyes just beyond the glass, not looking at him, only...through him, just past him. "What am I doing?"
What was he doing? He was...he wasn't a kid anymore who could hide in his dreams; well, honestly he was always going to do that, but this was different.
One minute he felt the weight of the world lift off his shoulders as he told you about his troubles, and the next it was all back, heavier than ever, as he realized how silly this all was.
And here he was, wasting his life knelt at your altar.
It wasn't holy. It was pathetic.
You'd never answer; you weren't real.
"Why?" he asked aloud, jaw clenched. He gripped the remote tightly. "What did I do to not have...someone? Huh? What have I ever done to be alone? That I have to rely on a fucking television character to feel understood. And now I'm losing my mind talking to myself, talking to you, at midnight every night. Why am I here wishing that you're real? Why couldn't you just...be...real?"
If there was a God, he would let Eddie Munson have you. If there was a Satan, he would let Eddie sell his soul for you.
And that's how he knew neither of them existed: you didn't exist either.
Eddie hit the eject button on the VCR and was about to shut everything so he could go to bed, when there was a crash outside.
Crashes in Forest Hills weren't abnormal--someone backing into trash cans, losing traction on the icy roads in the winter, and the one time Mrs. Dawson kicked her husband out and threw all of his things out the window--but it was something he'd gotten used to since he came to live with Wayne.
This crash, however, started a ruckus.
Someone was yelling and that stupid dog across the way started barking.
Eddie was a lot of things...but a dramatic gossip was definitely high on the list.
What else was there to do in the Midwest?
He grabbed his cigarettes from the bowl full of junk on the coffee table and stepped outside, fully intent on plopping down on the old couch on the porch to smoke and watch the scene unfold.
A car crashed into the telephone pole; didn't look like there was much damage but it had run through some trashcans and might have clipped the drivers side mirror off of Mrs. Mayfield's car. The same Mrs. Mayfield who was on her own porch being held back by Max as she yelled.
"Are you kidding me? It's fucking midnight!"
"Mom! Stop!"
"The car, Max!"
Maybe there'd be a fight.
He barely got his cigarette lit when he noticed--really noticed--the offending car: a powder blue Volkswagen Beetle.
He blinked several times and then rubbed his eyes, thinking it might have just been a trick of the light or something.
Or it was a coincidence.
Or a dream.
Maybe he'd had a heart attack and died in front of his television or something?
Plenty of people drove Volkswagen Beetles. He was pretty sure he'd even heard Nancy Wheeler asking her parents for one as a graduation present.
But with the same license plate number?
The same one from the show, the same one that was in the TV Guide all those months ago. The same one on the makeshift poster he had taped on the wall next to his bed, that he'd run his fingers over to "kiss" you goodbye countless times, just like he did to his guitar.
"It's just dark," he tried to convince himself, "and I'm tired, and...and..."
It was a coincidence. It was a dream.
He repeated the mantra over and over in his head like a lifeline.
It was another fan like him who just used fantasy to make their life a little better. That's all he was trying to do too, right? He could understand; hell, if this was a new neighbor, maybe he'd be able to chat with them about the show. Wouldn't that be something?
Eddie was so distracted making up endless excuses for himself that he didn't notice Mrs. Mayfield as she threw her hands up in the air with an exaggerated "I'm calling the police. He didn't hear Max holler at her mom to calm down, or see the tail lights of the Beetle turn off either.
It wasn't until the driver's side door swung open and a sneaker-covered foot crunched against the gravel that he forgot all the excuses he was conjuring.
And his heart stopped as the driver got out of the car and stood in the faint glow of the streetlight.
Because that driver was you.
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Next Chapter: Alternate Universe
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danibeanie · 2 months
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SOLAR RETURN OBSERVATION W DANI🔥
*disclaimer just because you have these in your solar return chart doesn’t mean you’ll get the same outcome! astrology is different for everyone and I’m just sharing my experience 🖤
Mars conjunct chiron
-the year I had this was the year I had no motivation whatsoever. we know that mars rules drive and ambition well let’s just say I was in a funk that whole yr. I had no job, I dropped my English class, no motivation for gym.. I also had this at a 18 degree and this was when I turned 18 and in the 8th house… I went through a rebirth that year to say the least.
wow you guys starting off positive !!!����
Jupitier conjunct chiron
jupitier conjunct chiron in a solar return will open you up to many lessons that were needed. it depends on what house this is in but for me it was 7th and 8th house. I was in a partnership and got my heart broken (7th house) and this pain made me go through a transformation (8th house)
Neptune 7th house…
-I hate to say it y’all but most of the time if you have this your going to be manipulated/cheated on. just gonna be very foggy details that don’t add up when it comes to a breakup.
Venus conjunct north-node
- I discovered my inner beauty and outer beauty. not to sound corny but this is the year where I started taking more pictures of myself and just posting myself. this was needed and even though I got my heart broken I feel like I was discovering my self worth and standing my ground. This also conjuncted my natal rising.
Uranus conjunct north-node
-sudden changes in your life wether be a job, relationship, or yourself.
Moon conjunct Saturn
-EMOTIONS WHERE?!?😭 (Aquarius moon as well omg) no but literally I was putting my feelings to the back burner and BOOM it hit me 5 months later. I had this in the 6th house as well and I was overworking myself at the gym to the point where I just stopped going cause I was so frustrated with myself:/.
Sun in 10th house
-major boost in popularity!
9th house stellium
-this was the year where I started becoming more spiritual and started getting into astrology. I also changed my major that year for college which was a huge deal for me.
Mercury conjunct Venus
- I never shut up about my ex relationship lmao.
Pluto in 5th house
-I had read somewhere that when pluto in your 5th house which rules flings and dating that an ex is trying to come back into your life and girl let’s just say that’s true 😭😭😭
Virgo rising
-I felt the need to get my shi together and as you can tell from the posts above I was struggling! I felt very analytical about everything and was just trying to take care of myself more.
2022-June 2023 was quite a yr that’s for sure!🥲
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enderblogs-24 · 2 months
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"Everyone's autistic now," "Why's there so much autism," "So many kids faking autism these days."
You know. I had been suspecting I was autistic since I started to understand what that meant, around middle school. I was working with two different autistic kids in a Girl Scout troop I led with my mom, and they did/said things that felt familiar. But I didn't dare bring up those thoughts, because my little cousin was autistic, that was his thing, and I didn't want to seem like I was looking for attention.
I started looking into autism for real when I hit my 20's, because those suspicions never went away... just buried. I had been focusing on other areas of my life anyway - my transition. But that was over, and I could see that things were still "off" about me. I love diving deep into different disabilities, disorders, and mental illnesses, but avoided autism because I was scared of what I'd find. I took maybe one test, masked up and guarded as hell, and because of that it said I wasn't autistic. I didn't answer truthfully, so I went looking elsewhere. ADHD, maybe. I ended up trying to get an ADHD diagnosis, and got misdiagnosed with a personality disorder that can be misdiagnosed in autistic adults. I felt I didn't have an option but to accept the diagnosis, because I was on my way to Chicago; out of time and out of money.
Nearly six months after the misdiagnosis, while I had been looking into the personality disorder and knew for certain I didn't meet the criteria for a diagnosis, (but masked through the appointments, which is how I got it) I had worked extensively on unmasking. I learned many neurodivergencies masked, and thought I'd give unmasking a shot, soon realizing I'd been doing it forever. Once I got better at unmasking, I eventually looked into autism again. What would it hurt to be told no twice? I took a couple quizzes again. Slowed down, answered honestly, and gave every answer my full attention. And I scored high on every one. It was terrifying. But it was also... a relief? While a few of those quizzes weren't too be taken seriously, I did take tests on official sites made by and for autistic people. When I came home from Chicago in summer 2022, I told my mom and showed her all my past scores on official tests like the RAADS, one of which I take annually. Part of me still has doubts that I'm not faking it, I guess.
All of this, at least past 2021, has occurred while people have been posting their own stores about discovering and getting diagnosed as adults. While I initially started looking into things on my own, hearing these people's stories on occasion really, really helped. Random strangers on the internet in a reel telling me they'd been overlooked because they were afab, did well in school, and didn't have many other adults around to see a difference... really helped. I could sneak into the autistic tags on Tumblr and look around at posts, relate to them silently, write down my findings in my little notebook, and go about my day. This "autism boom" as it were really helped, just because everyone suddenly showing off who they are, telling the world "I'm different and that's okay," really, really... helped. I know why I've always felt different and wrong, I know why I struggle with certain things, and I know why certain things will likely never be possible on my own. That's so much better than going thrift my life wondering and beating myself up because I can't function like everyone else.
Everyone isn't suddenly being diagnosed as autistic, now. People are just... starting to listen. Starting to get more comfortable. Obtaining more resources. And it's really nice. ❤️
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landonorizzz · 1 month
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SUMMARY: marceline's valentines over the years (a short study of self love and a look into the past)
PAIRING: pierre gasly x ex! fem! redbull media team! oc , [redacted] x fem! redbull media team! oc (no faceclaim)
WARNINGS: mentions of cheating, cursing
A/N: this is a short valentines day special, marci is healing and we get a look into pierre's and marci's past relationship - this one's not really plot filled, just some valentines snaps over the years ;)
[carved my name] masterlist madi's library
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marcilazzaro1 and clairobernie_x posted to their story!
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liked by danielricciardo, lance_stroll, clairobernie_x and others
marcilazzaro1 this year, for valentines day, i am celebrating the strongest, bravest and funniest person i know, the curious soul that has been with me my whole life - myself. these past months made me realise that i wasn't always so kind to her, always putting her wants and needs on hold for people who weren't worth it, telling her to settle for something less rather that fight for what she deserves... now, i'm learning to love her and be happy for her in a completely different way and i've never felt more like myself. today of all days, whether you're single or in a relationship, please remember to show yourself some love too. you can spoil yourself a little - you absolutely deserve it.
all of my love goes to you x
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carrie_on whos cutting onions here what the shit
redleclerc she is actually so mother, you don't understand
clairobernie_x i very much agree with the home decor, mia bella 🤍
↳ marcilazzaro1 aw, are we about to kiss rn?
↳ clairobernie_x 😚
cuddlyxricc are you trying to trick me into loving myself with a very aesthetic valentines photo dump?
↳ marcilazzaro1 is it working?
↳ cuddlyxricc ......maybe
↳ marcilazzaro1 good.
quickstappen did you do anything special today to spoil yourself?
↳ marcilazzaro1 yes! i cooked my absolute favourite meal from my childhood, took a very long and relaxing bath all while sipping on apple cider (i'm not a huge fan of champagne) and binged the mamma mia movies again!
↳ marcilazzaro1 did you do anything to spoil yourself?
↳ quickstappen it was gonna be another sad valentines, but you've changed my mind. i deserved a break. i went shopping to my favourite store and i'm planning to treat myself to dinner night out!
↳ marcilazzaro1 you don't know how amazing it is to hear that 🤍
barbiegirl i just love how confident she's getting 🥹 i've waited YEARS for this
shithappens okay but the revenge dress???? absolute serve
↳ madi_races it looks like it was made for her, honestly
ilpredestinatox HELL YEAH. GIRL, YOU DON'T NEED NO MAN (especially not that cheating bastard)
sarah_scott 🥂💛
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FEBRUARY 2020
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liked by pierregasly, danielricciardo and others
marcilazzaro1 to the one who always listens to what i have to say and never complains about my weird shit - i thought i knew what it was like to love and be loved, but everyday you prove me wrong, you're like a breath of fresh air after a long dive.
all of my love goes to you x
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pierregasly there's no one i'd rather listen to in the middle of the night, you make me feel whole, i didn't even know i had so much love to give
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FEBRUARY 2021
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marcilazzaro1 another year, another letter. i've never felt such an overwhelming kind of love, no matter how many words i write, it's never enough. there's so much i want to say and so little words. i think i'll just have to write it out for the rest of my life and even that might not be enough time.
all of my love goes to you x
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pierregasly i've never liked reading, but i know all your letters by heart. i can't wait to spend forever with you
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FEBRUARY 2022
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marcilazzaro1 to pierre, my love - no words can explain what i feel for you (and yet i try every year), i love everything about you, even your dirty socks laying around the apartment, but most of all, i love your quiet. i was never good with silence, my life is chaotic and full of noise, i was scared of slowing down, but with you i am safe and i don't have to fear the quiet moments anymore
all of my love goes to you x
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pierregasly i can only be quiet with you, no one else
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FEBRUARY 2023
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marcilazzaro1 to the future us - i hope you're kind and loved. to pierre - another year with you and i still don't have enough. i think my love for you might be endless, like the depth of your eyes in the mornings. i am enamored, bewitched, but never lost, i've found myself in your arms.
all of my love goes to you x
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pierregasly here's to the future! i love you always
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madi's radio: here we have a bit of nostalgia for marci and pierre :)))) i don't know where this came from honestly, but i wanted to show that there was a time when they were happy and in love (on both sides)
taglist: @sunny44 @rockyhayzkid @biancathecool @unluckyyoshi @woozarts @janeholt3 @celestialend @formulaal @d3kstar @yoremins @rd14 @mess-is-my-aesthetic @callsignwidow @blaaahblubb @evans-dejong @lwstuff (xxx - couldn't tag you)
click here to be added to the carved my name taglist!
DISCLAIMER: i do not know anything about this people, this is not real life, this is just something for fun, i do not know anythings about their life or personalities!
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lonelyspacedragon · 3 months
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The one and olny thing I will say about this
as a brasileiro let me just give some context on some things
thoses jokes? yeah they were/are pretty lets say "normalisate" here, yes they are disgusting and horrible yes, but they are also very very common
FOR FUCK SAKE OUR SONGS HAVE "novinha" in them thats a way to say young girl, like 15 years young, in a sexual way, its disgusting YES, yes it is, but is so fucking common its almost normal, we have 14 years old boys singing, as in they’are singers sell music and stuff, about sex in a very heavy way
Lissen, my uncle he is like 50 something he has a daughter, (I didn't know this thill this christmas) and he was telling me about her, how she is so hot, and tall and when he goes out with her all the men (and he means men old men 30 something old men) keeps salivating over her and he is all like hey ehat u looking at, in a don't even think of getting close to her but also in a yeah thats my daughter she is hot, and I was like okay, I was envisioning a 18-20 years old by the way he was talking about her, and then he said SHE IS 11, ELEVEN YEARS OLD, I was in shock. It unfortunately is a very very common way of seeing and treating young girls, specially if they are "already all developed"
we have a culture of sexualising young kids, for fuck sake, we had a master chef kids here, one time and one time only, in 2015, and it was disgusting, the amount of men, commenting disgusting things about one of the participants that was 13 I think, and it was so fucking disgusting and bad that we didnt had another one till 2022, exclusively because of those behaviour, we grow up in a disgusting culture of sexualising kids and young teens
to be honest, it was shocking to me when I started accompanying Cellbit and Felps again after so so many years, to see that they are leftist
its a shock because I wasn't expecting that, because I watched those people when I was young and they were too and they said some shitty stuff back there
and yes he had already talked about wanting to delete his old tweets when people wanted to take Pierre out of the qsmp because of old tweets of his and cultural differences, he said the person he was years ago is not who he is now, he said himself that he wasn't happy with his old views on women and politics and lgbt people stuff like that when the stuff with Pierre happened,
He deleted 900 tweets, but did you guys stop to think about it? Would 900 tweets be all about making sexual jokes about minors? And no one would have seen those 900 tweets of him being creepy towards kids?
Or are these 900 tweets also his old views on politics, queer people, feminism? Thinks he had already said he wanted and was deleting because of stuff like this?
lissen almost everyone that is 23+ right now was banging pans for what was basically a coup in ixi 2014 i think? when Dilma was in power and they impcheamented (i don't know how to write this shit in portugues I don't know how in english either) her over something that they(the politicians that wanted her gone - right wingers) made legal a month later, and now those same people are leftists
so yes those are shitty jokes yes, those are shitty views yes, they are, but they are also from 8 years ago, he already said stuff about that, about how his views had changed, and how he was scared that people would do exactly this, get his old tweets and use it to cancel and judge him for it, for views that he no longer has
just think people, does this say anything about who he is now? does he still do this kind of jokes? say those types of things?
if you guys go after all of the qsmp members old tweets and content, I'm sorry to disappoint you but all of them will have things that people will want to cancel them over, if you have to go dig more than one year to find bad things to cancel people over, its that not indicativii that that person no longer thinks like that? that thats no longer who they are now?
Does your tweets from 8 years ago reflects who you are now?
does all of this means you have to forgive him, ignore, watch his stuff, interact with his content? fuck no, do whatever you like and feels better for you, but also have some critical sense for fuck sake
yes if he did something he deserves to be held accountable for it, and if is something worth of being in jail he should be, if he did something criminal he should be dealt with it with the justice, deplataforming him will do jack shit if he did something thing and still walks free, what will this have accomplished?
but if its just old tweets, old jokes, bad jokes at that, but still old, old views that unfortunately are ingrained with cultural context, and that that person no longer has and no longer behaves like and believes they no longer hold, lets just calm the fuck down please
all this to say people change, lets calm down, and wait to see what will happen
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outsideratheart · 1 year
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Christmas Miracle (Alexia Putellas x reader)
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A/N: This technically is not part of my advent calendar series but you guys wanted angst and who am iIto say no. To the anons who sent requests for this, i hope you like it. I know it isn’t quite what one of you asked for but I did try to use both of them to build the fic.
2022 was a rollercoaster of emotions for both you and Alexia. You had immense success with Barcelona despite failing to complete the quadruple. Then Alexia had her injury the day before your first game with England. Whilst the summer was one you will remember for the rest of your life, it is one Alexia wished never happened. 
Off the pitch you spent endless hours at media events and photoshoots, luckily you had each to lean on when things became too much. 
It was the reason why your final appearance of the year was bearable. FC Barcelona requested that the captains of the female team attend the gala so that they can talk about how the women’s game is progressing. 
By the time the event ends both of your social batteries are drained and you are ready to go home. 
“Tonight has been the best so far” you lean back against the leather seat letting the coldness of the fabric calm you. 
“That’s because it was our first one where the world knows we are together. We didn’t have to hide our love” Alexia rests her head on your shoulder. Her fingers interlock with yours as they lay in your lap. 
There were many reasons why the night was a success but none came close the one Alexia said. The summer was a test for many reasons yet despite this your relationship with Alexia grew stronger than ever. Being in a different country when your girlfriend was going through the hardest time of her live didn’t stop you from being there for her and Alexia’s injury didn’t stop her from cheering you on from Barcelona. It was during the final when Alexia asked you if you she could tell the world about the two of you. You obviously said yes having been waiting for her to comfortable enough to do so. 
“I got to dance with the most beautiful girl in the world and everyone else had to watch on in envy” you recall the moment in your head, it was one that had never happened before. The music slowed yet you and Alexia stayed on the dance floor as you swayed to the beat. The crowd around you becomes less relevant with every verse that is played. 
“We certainly stole the show” Alexia says. 
“What’s next? We are officially on winter break. I didn’t really get an off season due to AMOS cup, I’m ready for a holiday” you ask Alexia knowing that she has been working with your manager, who just so happened to be hers, to make sure you got at least two weeks off. No photoshoots, no interviews, no distractions in the slightest. 
“I’m thinking Australia. Me, you, mum and Alba fly out on the 22nd then have an open invite for anyone to join us between Christmas and new year” Alexia used the words thinking loosely. Truth is she has been planning this for a couple of months. 
“That sounds like heaven” you dip your head slightly to kiss her temple. A smile dugs at your lips when you feel her relax into your touch. 
The two of you sit in comfortable silence as the radio plays a Spanish Christmas song that Alexia seems to know all the words to. You make a mental note to ask her about it later having never heard it before.
You are calm and still in that moment, holding the woman you love but then out the corner of your eye you can see a set of car lights getting closer and closer. You think it is going to stop but when it becomes clear that the driver has no plans to do so, you do what comes naturally. You protect Alexia. You quickly shift in your seat so that your back is against the door. Alexia doesn’t have a chance to question the movement as the car is hit. 
The force of the impact causes the car to roll but enough times that it remains upright. 
All Alexia can hear is ringing through her ears, her vision is blurred but she tries her hardest to come to her senses. She squeezes her eyes shut then focuses on her breathing. When she opens them again everything is back in focus. The sight she saw filled her with panic and struck fear within her. 
“Ale” Your voice is strained and she can only guess how much pain you must be in.
“Baby, you’re ok” Alexia words are more a form of reassurance for her than you.
She is frozen. What does she do? Does she try to move you? No, in the TV shows they say never move the person as it can cause more harm. There is a deep wound on your side no doubt from the car hitting you. She reaches one arm behind your head whilst the other one applies pressures in hope of stopping the bleeding but she feels warm liquid on her hand which is near your head. When she pulls it away her hand is covered in blood.
“Can you lean forward for me?” 
You eyes fail to focus as they stare into space but you do as she says. When you do Alexia can see a cut on the back of your head. This only fills her with more panic as she knows head injuries are very serious.
“Are you both ok?” The driver, who has managed to get out of the vehicle, asks the two of you.
“I am, I think. Y/N is hurt badly, she has cut to her side and a deep cut on the back of her head. It could be worse I don’t know. What do I do?” The panic grows tenfold as Alexia says your injuries out loud.
“Alexia are you hurt?” the driver asks.
This earns a scoff from the midfielder. How could he not see the shape you are in. Why would he ask about her and not you.
“She is hurt” it is all Alexia can bring herself to say.
“I know and I have already called 112. I have told them that Y/N is injured but they asked me about you”
This made more sense.
“I’m ok, I think” Alexia looks herself up and down and repeats her words.
“You have” you cough suddenly “a cut on your eyebrow”
If the situation wasn’t as serious Alexia would have laughed at your selflessness. Here you are, clearly in pain with god knows how many injuries yet you have taken the time to check her out.
She wants to make a clever remark but when she looks back you she see’s your eyes slowly closing, as if you cannot take no more. The pain rushing through your entire body is becoming too much to bare.
“No, No” Alexia begins crying as the severity and the possible outcome of this becomes real.
“Y/N, baby, mi amor, mi alma” She uses every nickname she have ever given you in hopes that one will register.
“I love you Alexia” It was said like a last affirmation of your love for her “If this is where my story ends then I want you to know I have loved every minute spent by your side and I wouldn’t change it for the world” a single tear runs down your cheek and Alexia is quick to wipe it away.
“Don’t cry for me baby. Focus on the good times we have had, they are ours and will stay with you until the end of time” 
Those are your last words as your body succumbs to the pain. 
The paramedics arrive not long after. As they load you into the ambulance the driver, one that the team had used and who had gotten to know you and the rest of girls well, tells Alexia that he called Jonatan and he has let the team know what happened.
The hospital waiting room is eerily quiet as multiple families wait for updates on their loved ones conditions. Alexia is sat alone in the corner, her hands stained red with your blood. The white trousers she wore are now more pink. Her mind wanders to what happened. She soon finds herself angry with you, which angers her more given the current condition you were in, you chose to put yourself in harms way to safe her. It reminds her of when you were watching some action film, the name escapes her but she remembers you saying that you would sacrifice yourself for her, you said you would take a bullet for her, she never thought for a minute that you would ever prove this to her.
She is so caught up in her own mind that she doesn’t see that she has company.
“Ale” Alba takes a seat near her sister.
The feeling of comfort that her little sister brings shocks Alexia but in that moment she has never been more grateful for her.
Words fail Alexia as every negative emotion rises to the surface. Her body racks with sobs as Alba pulls her close whilst fearing the worst.
“Is Y/N —“ Mapi cannot say the words out loud in fear of getting the answer she didn’t want to hear.
Ingrid pulls her close now knowing how her girlfriend would react if the worse were to have happened to her best friend.
“No, No. Y/N is fine. She is the strongest out of all us. Tell her Alexia” Pina all but begs.
Still, Alexia cannot bring herself to face the team. She cannot look them in eye and say that she is reason why you are in surgery, all because you made the split second decision that her life holds more value than your own.
“Alexia” Leila whispers as she crouches down in front of her friend “are you ok?” 
Again Alexia didn’t expect it. Why was she getting asked about herself when you were in much worse shape. Then it hit her, the nurses must not have told them anything about your condition, they weren’t family. At least not according the the hospital. 
“It was bad Leila. There was nothing I could do. One minute she was holding me then next thing we got hit by a car. She’s hurt Leila, there was so much blood. Her side and her head” 
The team hang on Alexia’s every word as they get told what happened. 
“She is alive, yes?” Mapi asks and for the first time since entering the hospital she has hope. 
“She’s in surgery” Alexia looks up and faces her team “she was unconscious when we got here but the doctors said she had a heartbeat” 
“That’s good Ale” Alba tries to reassure her sister. 
“No Albs, you didn’t see her. She said goodbye, like she was already giving up” 
The girls listen in shock. You had never given up on anything in your entire life, you were too stubborn to do so.
“Y/N doesn’t give up and she won’t leave, not without living her life with you. She has plans for the two of you Alexia. She has told me over and over again about how she plans on marrying you and having a family with you. How one day your children will celebrate with you both as you win games and trophies. Trust me Alexia, she has plans for the two of you and she won’t leave this earth having not done any of them” Mapi uses every ounce of positive energy she has to reassure your girlfriend knowing that you would do the same if you were in her position.
“I don’t if we will get that future maps. I know this is hard for you too, I know she is your best friend and I know that you must be just as scared as I am” Alexia stands for the first time since the team arrived. She stands so that she can embrace her in a hug.
“She’ll be ok Alexia. Our Y/N doesn’t give up without a fight. She needs us to be strong because she can’t” Mapi responds.
The team sit, pace and stand in the waiting room as the doctors work on you in the operating theatre. A hour passes before they see a man, in his late 40s, dressed in scrubs approach them.
“Are you the family of Y/N Y/L/N?” the surgeon asks and everyone nods in response.
Alexia is front and centre as she listens to him explain the surgery and what is next for you.
“I know it must be scary but the surgery went well. She had a brain bleed and some internal bleeding, both of which we were able to control rather easily but due to head trauma she is in a coma” 
Upon hearing this several girls gasp in shock whilst Alexia’s face remains stoic. 
“A coma?” she needs him to confirm what she heard was correct.
“A medically induced coma. Head traumas can be difficult to recover from. You don’t realise how much we use our brain because the tasks come so easily to us. Y/N needs to heal before she come back to you, ok?” 
“She is going to be ok though? The crash was bad, I thought I was going to lose her” 
She can tell the doctor is thinking carefully about his response. The chances of recovery were high but the truth is they won’t know how well the surgery went until you wake up.
“Your girl is a fighter Alexia” 
What she does next is unexpected. She pulls the doctor into a hug, thanking him over and over again for saving you. He of course says it part of his job and that the hard part is all on you. Visitors are allowed and he explains that due to the circumstances and with it being the holidays he will allow everyone in to see you.
“You go in first Ale” Alba hesitantly pushes Alexia towards your room.
Alexia froze at the threshold almost as if she was waiting to be let in. There you laid, unconscious, helpless and unrecognisable. If you were to ask anyone who ever met you and they would say that your eyes were unforgettable yet in this moment as your eyes remain closed Alexia tries and fails to remember what they looked like. The tube that was helping you breath causes a level of panic and fear inside Alexia that she never thought possible. 
When she plucks up the courage to enter the room she doesn’t go straight to you. Instead she chooses to stand at the foot of your bed, her mind running a hundred miles an hour as flashbacks flood her mind. 
She has seen the movies so she knows that she should talk to you and that could help but in there moment she is speechless. 
Then she sees your personal belongings on the table beside you. In the clear bag was your jewellery. Some was what you wore for the gala but what she wanted the most was your everyday Jewellery. Your necklace and the ring you always wore on your middle finger. Every since you met you had these items having been given them when your grandmother passed away. 
She proceeds to place the necklace around her neck and places your ring on her finger. The small sentiment brings her peace having it feel like part of you is with her. 
“Mi alma” she takes a seat beside you bringing your cold hand to her mouth as she places several kisses on the back of it. 
”You talked about our story ending but it is only just beginning. I have so much planned for us, you have to wake up that I can show you” Alexia wipes her nose “Please Y/N”
You don’t answer her, how could you. 
Alexia is alone with for you almost half an hour. Alba knocks gently on the door as not to scare her sister. 
“They can come in” Alexia says like she knows what her sister is about to ask. 
With that rest of the Barcelona girls enter your hotel room. Some go straight to your unconscious form, others watch from afar. 
It’s when Alexia sees Mapi frozen in the door way, much like she was, does she move from your side. 
“She saved my life Maria” Alexia confesses almost like it was a crime. 
“I know” the defender nonchalantly replies. 
“How?” 
“It something she would do. She loves you and I could tell my the way you were acting that there was something more to it than just a car accident” 
“I’m so mad at her. Is that wrong?” Alexia knows that she shouldn’t be mad that you saved her live but the cost of that it sit well with her. Should the worse happen, how could she live with herself. 
“Oh I’m mad at her too Ale. When she wakes up she will have us both to deal with” Mapi tries to lighten the mood knowing that the alternative wasn’t an option. She had to remain optimistic and plan for the future. A future in which you wake up. 
Hours pass, the moon takes place of the sun in the sky and the team get told that visiting hours are over. Unfortunately these rules applied to Alexia regardless of how hard she argues. 
“Ale” Alba grabs her sister’s shoulder “you’ll go home, get showered and get some sleep then we will come first thing in the morning”
“I can’t go home. I can’t go back to our home without her” the vulnerability of Alexia’s current state is not something Alba is used to. 
“Then we will go to mama’s and the three of us will come here together tomorrow”
And that is what happens day in and day out. The Putellas women visit in the Morning, the doctor allows Alexia to stay throughout the day and then the team visits in the afternoon. 
4 days after the accident, the doctors are happy with your progress so they take the breathing tubes out. The hope that was slowly leaving Alexia get reinstilled. 
Everyday Alexia talks to you. She tell you stories about what has been happening in the world. She shares her favourites moments that the two of you have shared over the years. Mapi brings in her iPad and talks you through the tattoo designs she has come up with, even stating which ones you should get. 
When Christmas Eve comes the energy amongst the team is down. So when Jana and Bruna suggest decorating your room for when you wake up everyone agrees it’s a good idea. 
Alexia allows it but doesn’t join in. Every year the two of you decorate your house and doing it without you feels wrong. 
“Mija, why aren’t you helping?” Eli asks as she sees her daughter sitting outside your room instead of with you. 
“I can’t do it anymore” she runs her fingers through her hair in frustration “I have tried to be positive but what if she never wakes up or worse what is she—“ 
“Ale you can’t think like that. Y/N is strong. From what you and the doctor have told me her injuries are bad which is why it is taking so long for her to heal” 
“I really love her and I don’t think I can do this without her” Alexia collapses in her mum’s arms as once again her emotions overwhelm her. 
“I know you do and I know she loves you. Your story isn’t over, this is just a story you will tell your children” Eli says. 
“I will not tell my children how their mother almost died protecting me” Alexia is quick to respond. 
She hopes to never talk about this every again. Once you wake up this can be put in the past. 
“I spoke to the doctors. They said I can stay here tonight with it being Christmas Day tomorrow. Will you and Alba come visit us?” Alexia asks her mum. 
“Of course. Who needs Australia when we can come to the best hospital in Barcelona?“ 
Her mothers joke causes Alexia to laugh maybe more so than necessary. She couldn’t believe how much had changed in just under ten days. You are suppose to be in Australia right now and instead you are fighting for your life. 
When the next morning arrives Alexia feels hopeful for the first time since the crash. It wasn’t just ‘you will be ok’ hope, it’s something different, something more powerful. 
“Merry Christmas Y/N” Alexia kisses your temple. 
“I don’t know what you have got me this year or if you even had the chance to get anything but I want you to know that the only thing I want is for you to wake up. These past ten days have been the worst in my life”.
She wipes her tears for the umpteenth time. 
“I need to see your beautiful eyes, hear your infectious laugh, I need you Y/N” 
Alexia goes to her bag to get your present. The small black velvet box which she had bought almost a year prior is held firmly in her hands. 
“I had plans Y/N” Alexia opens the box to reveal the silver band with a small diamond in the centre. 
“Alba helped me pick it out so I know you’ll like it. She misses you by the way, mum too and Nala, Ay Dios Mío she has no idea what is going on” 
“I love you with all my heart and I planned to go into 2023 with you as my fiancée” Alexia pulls the ring out of the box as she plays with the diamond. 
She then places it on your ring finger, breathing a sigh of relief when it fits perfectly. 
“You suppose to ask me first” your voice is hoarse. 
You slowly open your eyes, squinting slightly due to the brightness of the lights. It takes a few seconds to realise where you are and how you got there but then you remember. 
“The crash. Alexia, are you ok?” You reach for her face. 
“I’m ok, thanks to you. You saved me Y/N” 
You see Alexia start to get emotional. A sight that doesn’t get easier no matter how many times you see it. 
“Come here mi amor” you use all of your strength to move yourself across the bed so she can fit. 
Alexia wants to argue. She wants to tell you to be careful but she is craving your touch. So she buries herself into your side. 
“Careful. That hurts” you tell her and her hand reaches to where the wound on your side is. 
“There was so much blood. I thought I was going to lose you” Alexia has told many people this but it is much harder saying it to you. 
“Hey. We don’t have to talk about it. Let’s talk about this” you hold your hand up for the two of you to look at. 
The ring was beautiful. 
“I bought it last year when we were in Dubai. I was waiting for the right time to ask you” 
“And you thought that now, in a hospital, was the right time” you tease her. 
“I never actually asked you” Alexia rises to the teasing. 
You raise your eyebrow in response. A smirk pulls at your lips as you wait. 
“I love you Y/N. I had so much I wanted to say but I don’t want to waste anymore time. If I have learnt anything in the last few days it’s like life is short and I don’t want to spent another day without you as my fiancée. Y/N Y/L/N will you marry me?”
“I will” it was the easiest answer you have ever given. 
When Alexia shifts her weight you know what is coming. The kiss is likr something you have never experience before. The passion in it makes you emotional and when you feel Alexia’s tears on your cheek you know she must be feeling the same thing. 
“I wished for a miracle and here you are” Alexia pulls away. She lets you hugs her, hold her in your arms whilst reassuring her than you are ok. 
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mariacallous · 5 months
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Google’s and Microsoft’s search engines have a problem with deepfake porn videos. Since deepfakes emerged half a decade ago, the technology has consistently been used to abuse and harass women—using machine learning to morph someone’s head into pornography without their permission. Now the number of nonconsensual deepfake porn videos is growing at an exponential rate, fueled by the advancement of AI technologies and an expanding deepfake ecosystem.
A new analysis of nonconsensual deepfake porn videos, conducted by an independent researcher and shared with WIRED, shows how pervasive the videos have become. At least 244,625 videos have been uploaded to the top 35 websites set up either exclusively or partially to host deepfake porn videos in the past seven years, according to the researcher, who requested anonymity to avoid being targeted online.
Over the first nine months of this year, 113,000 videos were uploaded to the websites—a 54 percent increase on the 73,000 videos uploaded in all of 2022. By the end of this year, the analysis forecasts, more videos will have been produced in 2023 than the total number of every other year combined.
These startling figures are just a snapshot of how colossal the issues with nonconsensual deepfakes has become—the full scale of the problem is much larger and encompasses other types of manipulated imagery. A whole industry of deepfake abuse, which predominantly targets women and is produced without people’s consent or knowledge, has emerged in recent years. Face-swapping apps that work on still images and apps where clothes can be “stripped off a person” in a photo with just a few clicks are also highly prominent. There are likely millions of images being created with these apps.
“This is something that targets everyday people, everyday high school students, everyday adults—it's become a daily occurrence,” says Sophie Maddocks, who conducts research on digital rights and cyber-sexual violence at the University of Pennsylvania. “It would make a lot of difference if we were able to make these technologies harder to access. It shouldn't take two seconds to potentially incite a sex crime.”
The new research highlights 35 different websites, which exist to exclusively host deepfake pornography videos or incorporate the videos alongside other adult material. (It does not encompass videos posted on social media, those shared privately, or manipulated photos.) WIRED is not naming or directly linking to the websites, so as not to further increase their visibility. The researcher scraped the websites to analyze the number and duration of deepfake videos, and they looked at how people find the websites using the analytics service SimilarWeb.
Many of the websites make it clear they host or spread deepfake porn videos—often featuring the word deepfakes or derivatives of it in their name. The top two websites contain 44,000 videos each, while five others host more than 10,000 deepfake videos. Most of them have several thousand videos, while some only list a few hundred. Some videos the researcher analyzed have been watched millions of times.
The research also identified an additional 300 general pornography websites that incorporate nonconsensual deepfake pornography in some way. The researcher says “leak” websites and websites that exist to repost people’s social media pictures are also incorporating deepfake images. One website dealing in photographs claims it has “undressed” people in 350,000 photos.
Measuring the full scale of deepfake videos and images online is incredibly difficult. Tracking where the content is shared on social media is challenging, while abusive content is also shared in private messaging groups or closed channels, often by people known to the victims. In September, more than 20 girls aged 11 to 17 came forward in the Spanish town of Almendralejo after AI tools were used to generate naked photos of them without their knowledge.
“There has been significant growth in the availability of AI tools for creating deepfake nonconsensual pornographic imagery, and an increase in demand for this type of content on pornography platforms and illicit online networks,” says Asher Flynn, an associate professor at Monash University, Australia, who focuses on AI and technology-facilitated abuse. This is only likely to increase with new generative AI tools.
The gateway to many of the websites and tools to create deepfake videos or images is through search. Millions of people are directed to the websites analyzed by the researcher, with 50 to 80 percent of people finding their way to the websites via search. Finding deepfake videos through search is trivial and does not require a person to have any special knowledge about what to search for.
The issue is global. Using a VPN, the researcher tested Google searches in Canada, Germany, Japan, the US, Brazil, South Africa, and Australia. In all the tests, deepfake websites were prominently displayed in search results. Celebrities, streamers, and content creators are often targeted in the videos. Maddocks says the spread of deepfakes has become “endemic” and is what many researchers first feared when the first deepfake videos rose to prominence in December 2017.
Since the tools needed to create deepfake videos emerged, they’ve become easier to use, and the quality of the videos being produced has improved. The wave of image-generation tools also offers the potential for higher-quality abusive images and, eventually, video to be created. And five years after the first deepfakes started to appear, the first laws are just emerging that criminalize the sharing of faked images.
The proliferation of these deepfake apps combined with a greater reliance on digital communications in the Covid-19 era and a "failure of laws and policies to keep pace" has created a “perfect storm,” Flynn says.
Experts say that alongside new laws, better education about the technologies is needed, as well as measures to stop the spread of tools created to cause harm. This includes action by firms that host the websites and also search engines, including Google and Microsoft’s Bing. Currently, Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaints are the primary legal mechanism that women have to get videos removed from websites.
Henry Ajder, a deepfake and generative AI expert who has monitored the spread of the technologies, says adding more “friction” to the process of people finding deepfake porn videos, apps to change people’s faces, and tools that specifically allow the creation of nonconsensual images can reduce the spread. “It's about trying to make it as hard as possible for someone to find,” he says. This could be search engines down-ranking results for harmful websites or internet service providers blocking sites, he says. “It's hard to feel really optimistic, given the volume and scale of these operations, and the need for platforms—which historically have not taken these issues seriously—to suddenly do so,” Ajder says.
“Like any search engine, Google indexes content that exists on the web, but we actively design our ranking systems to avoid shocking people with unexpected harmful or explicit content they don't want to see,” says Google spokesperson Ned Adriance, pointing to its page on when it removes search results. Google’s support pages say it is possible for people to request that “involuntary fake pornography” be removed. Its removal form requires people to manually submit URLs and the search terms that were used to find the content. “As this space evolves, we're actively working to add more safeguards to help protect people, based on systems we've built for other types of nonconsensual explicit imagery,” Adriance says.
Courtney Gregoire, chief digital safety officer at Microsoft, says it does not allow deepfakes, and they can be reported through its web forms. “The distribution of nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII) is a gross violation of personal privacy and dignity with devastating effects for victims,” Gregoire says. “Microsoft prohibits NCII on our platforms and services, including the soliciting of NCII or advocating for the production or redistribution of intimate imagery without a victim’s consent.”
While the number of videos and pictures continues to skyrocket, the impact on victims can be long-lasting. “Gender-based online harassment is having an enormous chilling effect on free speech for women,” Maddocks says. As reported by WIRED, female Twitch streamers targeted by deepfakes have detailed feeling violated, being exposed to more harassment, and losing time, and some said the nonconsensual content found its way to family members.
Flynn, the Monash University professor, says her research has found “high rates” of mental health concerns—such as anxiety, depression, self-injury, and suicide—as a result of digital abuse. “The potential impacts on a person’s mental and physical health, as well as impacts on their employment, family, and social lives can be immense,” Flynn says, “regardless of whether the image is deepfaked or ‘real.’”
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eth-edwards-73 · 4 months
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the 3th of December
Héctor Fort x reader based on Heather by Conan Gray warnings: angst, misscommunications
I still remember the third of December, me in your sweater You said it looked better on me than it did you
3/12/2022
You and Hector had been friends for almost your entire lives, so it wasn’t unusual for the both of you to spend time together. Everyone in your life was always telling you how perfect you’d be for each other and recently you had started more like a couple with Hector although you didn’t put a label on it and it never came up in conversations so when Hector gave you his sweater on the third of december, you swore your heart was going to burst. You wore it for weeks on end after it, every time you did, taking in his smell. He smelled perfect to you and it soon turned into your favorite scent. 
Only if you knew how much I liked you
From that day on you really started developing feelings for him but you were too scared to admit them to him so you kept silent. For you the glances, the hugs and the quick kisses were enough for now, but truth to be told you wanted more, you wanted there to be a label since you weren’t the only girl that had your eyes on him. 
But I watch your eyes as she walks by What a sight for sore eyes Brighter than the blue sky She's got you mesmerized while I die
You didn’t really remember when everything changed but you did know why, it was because of her. Heather, even the name made your heart churn with heartbreak, she was a transfer student from America and the second Hector saw her it was over for you. The girl truly was everything you could only dream to be, beautiful long, straight blonde hair and gorgeous ocean blue eyes. Hector was mesmerized by her, looking at her like she put the stars in the sky whilst you watched him look at her. The way he looked at her made you want to die, everything hurt when he was around her. All the hope you had in ever being official with Hector was shattered the first of September but still you kept holding on. 
Why would you ever kiss me? I'm not even half as pretty You gave her your sweater, it's just polyester But you like her better
3/12/2023
Any hope you had left was now six feet under as you looked at Hector and Heather, she was wearing the same sweater he had given you just a year prior. You truly didn’t know how he could’ve ever wanted you and why he had kissed you so many times because in your eyes you could never even come close to Heather or the other girls that wanted him. He gave her his sweater, whispering the same words he had whispered to you. The sweater was just made out of ordinary polyester but when you looked at him looking at her you knew the difference, he looked at her with love, he had never looked at you like that. He liked her better and you could see and understand why but that didn’t make it hurt any less. 
Wish I were Heather
After that day you became distant to Hector, almost never replying to his texts, not interacting with him anywhere, it truly was like you hadn’t been friends since you were in diapers. It felt confusing to Hector so during your annual Christmas dinner, which he attended with Heather he confronted you.
“Why are you ignoring me all of a sudden?” He asks you, already looking agitated as you stand there with a glass of red wine in your hand, you truly look beautiful, a gorgeous cherry red, silky dress hugging your body perfectly, your make-up looked flawless and to anyone you looked breathtaking but not to Hector or at least that’s what you thought.
“I’m not.” Your voice is cold and distant and you give him a weirded out look as you reply, obviously you know what he’s talking about but you don’t want to talk about it. Now he looks angered and he takes a step forward, making you take a step back. He frowns in confusion because you never used to do that. “Why are you lying to me?” He asks you, desperately wanting to know what’s going on because even though he didn’t show it in the months that just passed he still cares about you and your friendship. 
“I’m not.” You tell him in the same monotone voice as before. Oh, how badly you wanted to tell him why you had been ignoring him but you didn’t because you didn’t want to ruin it for him.
A boy approaches you from behind and puts his hands on your hips and you turn around, your face lighting up when you see who’s holding you. You look at the boy with so much love and he does the same to you, Hector feels his heart break and he backs away, back to Heather who’s wearing a plain blue dress.
The four hearts of the teenagers are all broken, yours had broken months before, Heather’s had broken when seeing the way Hector looked at you whilst confronting you, Hector’s had broken once seeing your face light up when looking at the boy you had brought with you and Ivan, the boy you had brought with you, had his heart broken when he saw the heartbreak in your eyes when looking at Hector, knowing that deep down you still loved the brunet. 
If only you and Hector hadn’t been so blind…
~~~~~~~~~~~
Dedicated to today since i'm single af and because i haven't gotten a sweater from anyone this year (i really wished rugby boy would give me his but he's in England and i'm in Belgium so it's basically impossible unless he sent it with the post weeks in advance but we're not even together and he doesn't know my adress so also impossible)
I hope all of you aren't going through too much heartbreak and i wish every single one of you a sweater from a guy
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futbol16 · 1 year
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Just tell her! ・ Clàudia Pina
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Request: "Hey, if you're taking requests, could you maybe do an Aitana or Alexia (whoever you prefer or someone from Barca) x Reader where R joins mid season from a top European team in a shocking transfer? Really just Barca team getting to know R & devolping a relationship along the way. Please & thanks. Love your work BTW."
Hope I this turned out better than I think it did, but enjoy!
Word count: 1,5k
Your transfer from the top women’s football team in Italy to Barcelona was shocking to say the least. Fans and players collectively were surprised and confused at the news, especially after your phenomenal 2020/21 season.
The whole Barca team was astounded by your signing, but they couldn’t help but feel excited at the prospect of having you on their team. They’ve seen how good you are.
Your first training session with your new team was at the very beginning of the 2022 year and you felt good as you pulled the Barca training top over your head.
You had met the team a couple of times since you’ve signed, but they were yet to learn your reasoning for the sudden transfer. Yes, they believed that you’ve always been a Barca fan, but many of them felt like that wasn’t the full extent of your story.
 As you tie your boots you feel a nudge to your leg and you look up at the person.
“Aitana was asking you why you signed with us.” Claudia repeats the question and you look at Aitana confused.
“I’ve told you guys already, I’ve always wanted to play for Barca.”
“But is that all to it?” Aitana questions carefully and she studies your face for a second. Your expression falters at her heavy gaze. “We’re just curious and want to get to know you Y/N, but if you’re not comfortable you don’t have to.”
Taking a look at the rest of your teammates who all nod at the girl’s words and you take a deep breath, readying yourself.
“The coach didn’t like me, I was constantly benched from the bigger games. Barely brought on for the last 20 minutes.” you start explaining and suddenly the floor becomes very interesting to look at. “He said I wasn’t playing good enough, wasn’t fast enough and that he couldn’t risk bringing me on for the more important matches.”
The girls around you share a look and you feel a hand on your shoulders, Claudia smiles at you softly.
Your training session soon begins after your talk and as you near the end of it, you’re put into groups of 5, an end of session scrimmage 5vs5.
The players currently standing at the side, those who aren’t playing at the moment, watch dumbfounded as you dribble up the field with insane speed, nutmegging and outsmarting the opposing team before you cross the ball to Patri for a tap-in.
“How the fuck?” is heard from Jenni and Alexia smacks her in the arm for her use of language.
“No, but seriously, how the hell did her coach think she wasn’t good enough?” Claudia also comments and yelps as she gets smacked in the back of the head.
“Language!”
For the remaining 15 minutes of your scrimmage, the ten Barcelona players watch stunned as you manage to pull tricks on every single one of their teammates and your team eventually wins the game.
This wasn’t the first time they’ve seen you play, they've watched plenty of your games before, all of them big fans of the energy you brought with you every time you stepped foot on a pitch. But seeing your magic right in front of them was a whole different experience.
They couldn't be happier to get to call you their teammate and they’d make sure you’d never get disrespected by anyone ever again.
As the months passed by, you formed a close bond with most of the girls on the team and you were performing better than ever, Joanatan actually put you in for the majority of the games you’ve played so far.
There was one person in particular who you got extremely close with.
Claudia and yourself have been named the most iconic youngster duo at Barcelona. The two of you spent every waking moment together, becoming bus buddies not long after you joined, rooming together at away games and always reserving a seat for the other during team lunches. 
It didn’t take you long to realize your feelings for the shorter girl went beyond those you were supposed to have for a friend. 
With the Spanish already being a very affectionate bunch, you relished in the feel of Claudia’s soft skin on yours every time the girl would scoot closer to you.
Those not so subtle touches the girl sent your way wasn’t missed by your teammates who were counting down the days to when the two of you would finally admit your feelings.
Patri and Leila have already approached you on more than one occasion as they tried to convince you that your best friend did have feelings for you. You denied their claims though, you didn’t want to believe them, to have false hope. 
It wasn’t until the Barca team went to the beach on a random weekend towards the end of the season that things changed. 
You were currently wrestling with both Leila and Mapi in the sand, hair full of sand as the three of you laughed your asses off over nothing.
Claudia watches as your arms flex when you flip Leila over, her heart fluttering at how you still make sure she lands softly on the sand before you get knocked over by Mapi who laughs at the two of you.
Patri and Alexia sit on each side of her and she already knows what they’re going to say. You weren’t the only one who was constantly pestered by your friends.
“Come on, just tell her! This is becoming pathetic!” Patri exhales loudly as she throws her hands up frustratedly.
“Patri!” Alexia scolds the younger girl who just raises her hands innocently. “It’s not pathetic..you just, you have to admit it Claudia. Go up to her and be brave.”
Contrary to you, Claudia was aware of your feelings, but she didn’t know how to approach you. You were her best friend and even though she knew her feelings were reciprocated, she couldn’t help but be afraid of actually having to confess to you.
A not so gentle push to her shoulder brings her out of her thoughts and she looks at Patri confused. Her friend just nods towards where you are making your way towards the water, presumably to wash the sand off you. 
She takes this as her chance and as she stands up she’s again encouragingly nudged, this time by Alexia. She takes a deep breath when she nears the water, seeing your head reemerge from the water, she starts swimming towards you.
The giggle you let out when she finally reaches you is music to Claudia’s ears and she grins back at you before her expression becomes nervous. 
“What’s wrong Pina?” you ask concerned. She holds onto one of your shoulders as the waves seem to want to pull her under and you quickly follow by placing your arms around her waist.
She blushes at the contact and circles her own arms behind your neck as you hold her above the water. She realizes that she hasn't yet responded to your question and clears her throat.
“So uh I actually wanted to tell you something?” she starts “No, I need to tell you something. I erm..well you see..I-” she stammers nervously and you look at her, patiently waiting for her to finish.
She soon gets frustrated at not knowing how to confess and as she sighs, she momentarily closes her eyes.
You lean your forehead against hers, hoping your touch would calm her enough so she could say whatever she wanted.
Your thumbs rub circles into her skin soothingly and when she next opens her eyes she has this look in them, one that you can’t describe but it makes the butterflies go wild in your stomach.
Claudia opens her mouth again, seemingly wanting to speak again before she abruptly closes it. Her eyes bounce across your face as she stares at you before her gaze settles on your lips.
Your mouth grows dry at that and your breath hitches as she starts leaning in.
You close the distance between the two of you as your lips hug hers and the both of you sigh into the feeling of being so close.
She pulls you closer as she enjoys the softness of your lips and it’s only when you hear loud wolf whistling from the shore that you pull away and look towards your teammates.
They’re cheering, many of them have their phones out and Patri is standing with a huge grin on her face as she shows you two a thumbs up.
You giggle at the girls, pulling Claudia out of the water with you and pressing a kiss to her cheeks as the two of you get wrapped in a big towel.
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eviekensington · 1 year
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Delicate Chapter 10: May 2022
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A/N: Happy 2 months of Delicate! I feel sick posting this. I’m so nervous! Please lower your standards for the heartbreak in this chapter because I ain’t no professional writer (I work in a call center) but I hope it gives a little feels. If there are any extra feels it’s because I’m in my feelings about the Chiefs releasing Frank Clark “Clark the Shark.” NOT JUJU TOO! I might have used my sadness for that as angst for this chapter or maybe it was my sad fanfic playlist I dunno. I’m babbling because I’m hella nervous. Enjoy you angst lovers. "Down." By Jason Walker ft Molly Reed was the song I used as background for this chapter.
Word count: 5804.
Chapter 1
Previous Chapter
~~~~~
April flew by. Flew by like a sloth reaching for a leaf. Like waiting for pizza rolls to cool off while starving and you just stare at them and then you tempt fate and take a bite and have to go OH OH OH because they're too hot and you burn your tongue. Those things should really come with a warning. Flew by like you were back in Romania for 6 months - it did not fly by. Once Jenna had set a date for you to come visit her in lovely Massachusetts you both started the countdown. Each trying to beat each other in the morning via text with how many days were left until you saw each other again.
It was as if Wednesday never happened. You both fell back into the pattern of texting and FaceTiming. Back to Jenna putting forth effort of showing you were important to her. She even had Starbucks delivered to your apartment every single morning. A peppermint mocha with a heart on the bottom of the cup.
After spending a few days with Damon in Vegas it didn't make you feel any better about his dialogue Yes, you were right - Jenna did put forth a lot of effort with you, especially while filming a movie. Yes, Damon was right too, this was going to change. It gave you too much to think about. Things you did think about the rest of the month carrying out the plans you were supposed to be doing with Jenna.
Before you even flew into Massachusetts the weight of doubt settled over your body. You just had a gut feeling that something for lack of a better word, bad - was going to happen. While you called this a baby step it was actually greater than that.
Jenna was about to bring you into her world. You were a part of her day to day life but she was going to introduce you to her work. To the crew and cast. You knew exactly how it worked due to working on sets before but you were going to be a guest.
You were going to show up with Jenna and she was going to sign you in and take responsibility for you. A lovely 'guest' name badge was waiting for you. You'd have to leave your cell phone with security and sign another legal document about not disclosing information blah blah blah. She had texted you and asked if you wanted to be an extra in the background and within seconds you sent a gif of 'HELL NO.' No way. Nope. Nay. Nix. You'd leave being on camera to your brilliant, accomplished and skilled girl. Not you. They could ask you to just stand there and pretend to drink water or something you'd probably choke on it.
Another reason you didn't want to be on camera was because you were content being in the background hiding. The bar in Romania was the closest you ever got to doing anything THAT public. Most people played guitar to be able to go be in a band or something, you only did it to piss off your parents who wanted you to learn something different. Mom said piano and your stubborn 8 year old self said GUITAR. You compromised by doing both. First 2 years piano then guitar. Music seemed to be the only time you felt like you could pick something you wanted to do. Probably why you had an obsession with song lyrics.
The day you flew in Jenna had half the day off. She surprised you by being in the car that came to pick you up. The driver had opened up the car door and she had hurdled herself onto you. It was probably one of your better times you were reunited. She gave you a tour around the city they were currently filming in. You didn't need security but she was still stopped at every place you went to. You took over the role of being the one to take the pictures of her with her fans. You found it so adorable when one of the girls started crying when you both walked into a book store. This was Massachusetts and if this was what was going to happen in a random city, you knew in a year it was only going to be worse. Or 100 times worse according to Damon.
You tried to bring it up to Jenna. What she was going to do once her life became public property. She refused to talk about it because according to her: That wasn't going to happen. Seemed like you weren't the only one who was content to live in Denial land. You almost pushed for her to talk about it with you but the crinkle of her nose and the pursing of her lips when she said 'Meh' was so damn cute you got distracted. You ended up pulling her into some random closet and making out with her. The bathroom scene all over again except it was you keeping her pinned against the door as your lips went to her neck. You weren't able to leave a hickey though. Pfft.
The following day Jenna woke you up at 5 AM, coffee and breakfast at the table in the room. You sat at the table while she got ready, half asleep due to her keeping you up all night. In between the sex, the talking and her looking over her script you barely slept. When it was your turn to get ready you tried to look somewhat nice. Regret over drinking coffee paired with your nervous jitters you were quiet on the way to the set. Jenna was prepping herself for the day and didn't notice. She did leave her hand in yours on the way, using her free one to flip the pages of the script.
The foreboding air got thicker when the car pulled into the parking lot and Jenna kissed the back of your hand before letting go. She didn't seem nervous at all, which was peculiar to you. Maybe she didn't view this as such a big deal as you did? That or she was ignoring it and in her OSJ mode. You watched as she led the way through security and onto the set, the script tight in her free arm.
“Hi! This is Y/N. I think I gave you a heads up she’d be here. This is Tim Daly.”
Oh Em Gee. OMG. Oh my God. Tim Daly?! Your eyes widened as you start floundering like a fish. Jenna didn’t hold back her smug look at you getting speechless and like some of the fans yesterday.
“What she’s saying,” She speaks for you and pats your cheek before playfully pushing your jaw back up, “Hello! I am a fan. I can’t think of anything else you’ve been in at this moment but Grey’s and Private Practice is one reason why I am a nurse. I dream of working in a clinic on the beach so I can see hotties come in and out and drink green smoothies.”
“I do not!” Yay! You found your voice and you shoot her a PFT look, your cheeks turning red. Half of what she had said was right. Dramatic medical shows you did like to watch when you were way younger. “I am a fan. Yes.” Now you were back to bashful not sure what else to say. To your credit Tim just laughs at you and steps closer, telling you it's nice to meet you before pulling you into a hug. Again your jaw drops as you stare at Jenna who covers her own mouth to hide her own amusement.
"We better get to hair and make up." You were still hugging Tim which made it a little awkward and she coughs, nodding her head at the exit. That snaps you out of it and you pull away unable to look at him before following Jenna to hair and make up. It was so weird being on a set and not working.
Jenna's dressing room had a bed in and as she changed into her outfit for the day you kick off your shoes and start jumping on it.
"Stop! We might nap in that later."
"So? If I don't jump on the bed I'll jump you." You wink at her and do a spin before jumping again. "This is so crazy." You hear the door open and immediately sit down on the bed as Jenna leaves the room. Dang it, you'd hope she'd let you jump her. Quickly you get off of the bed and slide into your shoes heading after her.
It was time for blocking and you hung out to the side, watching as they go through the scene. Basically Tim and her were driving in a car talking. Seemed like a short and sweet scene! You weren't exactly sure where to stand so you tried to blend in with the people in the background, standing next to the PA's. They were chit chatting amongst themselves and when you tried to join in the conversation they just stared at you long enough to make it very awkward. Sheesh, jerks. Maybe they were just tired?
You waved them off and moved to the other side of the scene, right to where the director would sit and listen to the scene. Behind them was the sound mixer with a few headphones so they could test the microphones as well. You remember the scene in Notting Hill where Hugh Grant overhears Julia Roberts telling some other actor that Hugh Grant was no one, just some guy from the past. Nope, not something you wanted to do.
Before you get the chance to walk away the sound mixer turns around and spots you.
"You want to listen? I saw Jenna giving you a tour earlier, you can take a listen." The Sound mixer holds out the headphones and there is a brief second where you start to say no but your hand ignores your mind as you grab the headphones putting them on.
"Can you hear them?" He asks as he turns up the volume. You hear both Jenna and Tim joking about driving the fake car off the pier and you give the sound mixer a thumbs up, taking a seat in the chair. It felt wrong to eavesdrop but this was only rehearsal.  The sound mixer walks off as you peek around to see your girlfriend and Tim in the car ahead on the monitor from where the director would sit.
"I wish we could really drive this car. It's nice." Tim pretends to turn the wheel and you watch as Jenna leans back in the passenger seat.
“You could ask! They let me drive this nice car down the street once. I couldn’t go over 20 miles per hour!”
He starts laughing as he pushes on the horn once making you yank the headphones off your ears for a second before putting them back on.
“That’s pointless! I want to feel the car shifting gears while speeding up.”
“I could have y/n steal it. She’s never been in jail before.” Jenna looks out the passenger window for you. “I’m not sure where she went. Probably to where the food is or wandering around.”
“Is she allowed to? You sure she’s not some crazy stalker and will be hiding in my dressing room? How do you know her?”
“No!” Jenna let’s out a laugh that you recognize as her uncomfortable one and your toes curl up in your shoes. Normally that was a sign when you were around to save her but you couldn’t. “Actually I’m not sure. A mutual friend was supposed to hang out with her today but asked me if I could take her and let her have a tour of the set since she’s interested in going into film. She’s adorable isn’t she?”
She lied. She lied so easily too. Your hands are frozen on the headphones, you forget to breathe for a few seconds, your fingers gripping the headphones as your whole body tenses up and you start to shut down.
“Really? I thought you said she was a nurse?”
He caught her. Tim Daly caught her in a lie. You wanted to hear the excuse she came up with to cover but you rip off the headphones setting them down in your lap as your heart starts to race. You couldn’t take your eyes off of her, examining her body language as she says whatever she uses to cover up who you are. Her hand was rubbing her neck with what you knew was a fake smile on her lips, her eyes looking out the front window and then out his window looking for you but you’re hidden enough in the dark to know she won’t be able to see you. It was in this moment you realize: You were one of the stories she couldn’t say out loud.
Fight or flight. Freeze or Fawn.
You let out a laugh, a loud enough laugh that Jenna hears it through the window that's down and she looks for you again. Still, you're hidden and the laugh slipped out due to shock. This wasn't funny. It was funny. It wasn't funny. Did you seriously just have a Notting Hill moment? Jesus. At least she didn't say you were no one, or someone from her past. You could understand her maybe not telling---No. You were not going to discount your feelings any longer. You wouldn't do this anymore.
You couldn't sit there, getting up from the chair you set the headphones gently before patting them as if they were a dog who just bit you. The director calls out 5 minutes until scene and within those 5 minutes you're off the set, going through security and getting your purse and your cell phone. You were refusing to allow yourself to feel or think anything. Nothing but getting out of there - Getting away from her. Once you reach the parking lot, that's when your feet start to feel heavy and you slow down.
"Don't cry don't cry don't cry." The phrase was being repeated in your mind and through whispers under your breath as you reach the driver and the car that had brought you here. You open the back door and get in shutting the door, waking the driver up from his nap.
"Hi!" You probably scared him with how perky that greeting sounded paired with your reddening eyes. "I don't feel good so if you don't mind can you take me back to the hotel?" You cling to your purse like a life vest and unlock your phone starting to try and distract yourself with Tetris.
“So I’m playing Tetris and I think it does give you some life skills!” Keep talking: don’t think, keep talking. “Like, if you travel it can help how you organize your clothes and shoes! Or organizing your tupperware! Or grocery shopping for a huge family…” Jenna’s family flashes through your mind and the shopping trip you took with her Mom when you needed two carts. You gasp feeling the 2nd emotional stab wound piercing your heart. “I-a huge family and you have to put the food in the cart a specific…way.”
Oh my God. You were going to lose them too if you stopped doing this. No. You force that thought from your mind but it’s not able to be forced from your body and your tone comes out strangled.
“Did..did you know Tetris also he-helps, memory.” Ah shit now you were crying in the back seat staring at your phone playing this stupid game. “Remembering that only specific shapes fit with others and then it goes faster and faster the better you get, then harder and harder and sometimes when it gets too hard you want to give up but you can’t because all those shapes aren't completely wrong, you just don't have time...time to make it fit."
Your words came out rushed as each flash of memories in your mind felt like another dagger slicing into your chest: The very beginning with Jenna having lazy rainy days, coffee dates and flashcard dates when you were about to graduate school. The middle, before Romania - her tooth brush in your bathroom, her clothes taking over half your closet and the dresser drawer you cleared just for her. The end, at least the start of the end for you - Romania, every lonely night, every bar night, every hidden look...You just felt like you had all the time in the world with her to fix it, but you can't fix something if someone else would rather ignore it.
"Why is it like that? You'd think if you get enough right it would just say YAY you win but no, it just speeds up throwing block after block. If something fits that pe-perfectly why can't it just be left alone?" You ask the driver between sobs dropping your phone as you pull your legs up to your chest to hide your face in your knees. You couldn't fight it. You knew the answer. You weren't talking about Tetris. The pieces no longer fit. You and Jenna, no longer fit. The harder it gets the more you try and bend to make it fit, but here come more things that while Jenna can choose to ignore, you no longer can.
This was just going to get worse. If she can’t even introduce you as a friend to a coworker how could you expect her to reveal something as personal as that she’s not single? Yes, you visited her on set today but in the grand scheme of things this was so small. She was precise in her control of everything in her life. Your relationship was contained and brought out when it fit for her and being on set it didn’t work. Not even a hint worked.
The car came to a stop and you lift your head peering at the driver. With puffy eyes and a smile that didn’t reach them you grab your phone and your purse.
“I can’t believe I just cried over Tetris!”  You let out a fake laugh still tears falling down your cheeks - you couldn’t stop them. He shoots you a look through the rear view mirror that reminds you of Marcia Brady going Sure Jan. It makes you smile for just a second as you get out of the car. Now you really were on autopilot as you make your way to the hotel room.
Once you get in you drop everything in your hands, not caring about your phone before you make your way to the bed. You drop onto it and curl into a ball just letting the feeling of your heart shattering into pieces wash over you. You had to let go of her. There shouldn’t be this struggle of what was right and what was wrong.
It was wrong to pretend you weren’t hurt every time she denied you to others. It was wrong to pretend not seeing her as often as you could didn’t hurt. It was wrong to pretend that her job wouldn’t ever affect your life, it did. How long did you feel like you had been pretending everything was fine?
Romania.
Before that you were fine. Completely happy yet stationary. You both were stationary. If you had stayed while she went to Romania you’re honestly not sure if she would have FaceTimed and texted you with the schedule she had. You’d like to believe she would have but then she  would have been warned it was going to be huge. She would have had to call you about signing the NDA and while your words of signing it without hesitation because your relationship was stable probably wasn’t entirely true.
You didn't notice you were no longer crying until you started hiccupping. You needed to pick yourself up off of this bed and gather yourself. You thought Valentine's day was the hardest thing you'd ever have to do but no, this - letting of Jenna would be. You'd take Valentine's day over doing this because at least back then you still believed.
You had to plan, plan a way to get home. Plan a way to word things in a way that wouldn't place the entire blame on Jenna. Even in your lowest of heartbreak, you didn't want her to slip and slide and not be able to do her job. You didn't want her to hate you and you didn't want to hate her.
You sit up slowly rubbing your eyes before taking a deep breath and holding it.  You had to get rid of the hiccups and distract yourself until Jenna got back. Step 1) Get up off of the bed. Step 2) Grab your phone. Step 3) Find a flight home or rent a car. Step 4) Take a shower. Step 5) Get dressed. Step 6) Pack your bags. Step 7) Take them to the front desk to be held. Step 8 ) Don't break down. Step 9) Wait.
You get through steps 1-7 but # 8 is a problem. Renting a car was the quickest way to get home so you chose that, having them deliver it to Valet in about 3 hours. It cost more than half of your months rent but you felt like if you stayed any longer afterwards you wouldn't be able to do it.  You rented the car for 5 days when really it'd only take 3 if you stopped to sleep. Step 9 was easy.
It was easy to sit there and just be numb. It was easy to sit there and stare at one spot on the wall. You didn't know when Jenna would be back. It could be in a hour, 3 hours, 9 hours. You didn't know. She had previously texted you and called three times but you ignored them all. You didn't even look. Once you decided you were done with something, it was unfortunate how effortless it was to block the pain. At least, that's what you were praying. You had done the same thing with your parents but you did that without standing in front of them.
You hear her before you see her. Her card sliding in the lock of the hotel room door, her hand on the handle as she opens the door. It closes behind her and you close your eyes trying not to concentrate on the sound her heels make on the hardwood floor as she makes her way to the bedroom. There's a pause and you know she's reached the bedroom.
"No." The word makes your eyes open and you finally look at her, only to see the tears forming in her eyes. "Don't...Please."
Damn it. She knew. How she knew you didn't know, but she knew what you were about to do. Were you that easy to read? Did you look that defeated and horrible?
Shaking your head you hold your hand out to her, needing her to take it as you try and word what you were thinking and what you knew. You couldn't do this anymore.
She gets out of her heels and moves to you, placing her hand in yours as she sits next to you. You squeeze her hand gently and clear your throat and speak.
“We have to.”
It takes everything - every breath, every beat of your heart, every blink, every ounce of your waning self control not to change your mind. That was as far as it went. You reach your free hand up and with trembling fingers you wipe away the tears that had started to fall onto her cheeks. The words repeated in your mind that this was going to be for the best but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to hurt like hell.
While you could try and control yourself from not pulling her into your arms and taking it all back, you couldn’t control your own reactions to seeing her in pain. No matter how much you held back your own tears they still fell. Your throat was hurting all over again.
“I love you."
She says the words like they were supposed to magically fix it and now you understood that stupid song of 'Sometimes love just ain't enough.' You almost laugh at the absurdity of it all. The playful argument you and Jenna had over whether love was enough to face the world. You believed love would be enough to keep anyone together, Jenna disagreed. It had actually hurt your feelings how adamant she was in her belief that love wasn't enough for everyone. You argued over that and the quote 'I love you but I'm not in love with you.' What the hell did that mean?!
"I love you too. I will always be completely and desperately in love with you Jenna," It was amazing how steady your voice sounded when you felt like you were drowning, "But we have to stop this. I have to stop pressuring you for something you can't give and you have to stop believing you're anywhere near ready to love me like I need you to."
Her bottom lip quivers as she shakes her head at you. "I am ready."
"No, no you're not baby." You hated calling her baby, it was a term of endearment yes but ugh you hated it. "It's not completely your fault okay? You are someone who needs to keep things apart and that is completely okay. You should never be made to feel bad for your own boundaries." Good lord you were sounding like a therapist. Stop it. You reach your hand up to brush her bangs from her forehead, trying to move them behind her ears to reveal her whole face. "We are both just so young and we just need to get our ducks in a row."
"You are not quoting that one movie right now?" Her laugh was bittersweet because it was cut off by her lowering her head and placing your hand against her cheek.
"It's a good movie. We all should know how we take our eggs." Great, add Runaway Bride now to the movies you'll never watch again. This one was your fault. You feel your tears slowing down, either from not having any left or because you were finally accepting what you were doing. She wasn't moving your hand from her face and you close your own eyes so you don't have to see her cry, it was enough feeling it. "I want you to go, kick ass and take names. I want you to thrive and learn everything you ever want to learn. I want you to make friends and flirt and one day..."
This next part was completely going to kill you to say and the words die as you open your mouth. You take a minute, fresh tears rolling down your cheeks and you open your eyes. Lifting her chin you look into her beautiful brown eyes. Gathering yourself you continue. "One day, years from now when you feel like you've learned all you can learn and your ducks line up and you know how you take your eggs..." You briefly smile at your joke, she knew how she took her eggs it was just a few other things she needed to figure out.
Jenna moved closer to you, dropping your hands and placing her own on either side of your face before resting her forehead against yours. Her sobs were getting louder and all you could do was sit there. You needed to continue but at that second you couldn't. You felt like you were being gutted, pulled into every direction all at once. "I -"
She presses her lips against yours, holding your face in her hands. "Please."
You inhale sharply at her plea and you swear you'll never forget the way she says that word for the rest of your life. You want to so badly take back the last 24 hours and stay home. You'd still be in this same position and she'd still be who she was.  You'd still be a story she couldn't say out loud and you needed more than that. That thought is what makes you pull back from her, your hands moving to her wrists as you gently remove them from your face.
"Listen to me okay? I believe we're kismet. Which sounds ridiculous and cheesy but you deserve to hear this from me. Maybe it's naïve of me to say or think that but I do believe it. One day when you are more steady and you know who you are and you aren't, I love you when I say this, so controlling over things you can control and hiding from the things you can't...We will find each other again."
Saying it didn't help either one of you. She wasn't letting you leave without a fight and you were just as torn inside. You wanted it to be now but good things come to those who wait and without you around she would be forced to face things that your presence was hiding. You were going to be a catalyst of either things getting better or things getting worse and you were praying it'd get better for her. She deserved it.
You move her wrist to your lips and lightly kiss her skin before standing up, letting go of her. She gets up with you and pulls you into a hug, hiding her face in your shirt. Allowing yourself a moment of weakness you hug her tightly, inhaling her scent for one last time. The wings you had she gave and you barely had the breath to breathe, much less to fly away.
You weren’t going to pull away first, neither it seemed was Jenna. You rub her back before moving your fingers to her hair, smoothing it out. Her weeping wasn’t slowing down and instead of you remembering everything you were losing you try to remember everything she was gaining.
“Just think! Now you won’t have me buzzing around. No more sad looks, no more questioning, no more pressure to have to make sure you text me or FaceTime me or…”
“I don’t care about doing that. I want to do that.” She pulls back to look up at you but you really can’t look at her. You just can’t.
“You were doing that Jenna.” You whisper, the mere presence of her being in your arms was making your heart ache at the contact. How can you let this go? How can you let her go? You just had to. Remembering Damon’s speech you pull from it. “You are about to explode and turn into something only the best can touch. As much as you keep hiding from it, I swear on never drinking Starbucks again, you are meant to do what you do and what you do is working for you. I don’t understand it and why you keeping me completely separated works but I will not ask you anymore to do it. It’s not healthy for you and I do hope one day you realize that."
Your voice softens to speak this next part, just wanting her to understand. "When your light does brighten and everyone sees how talented you are you won't be able to hide. I know you'll want to. It's going to freak you out and that is okay. Stay close to your family. With me not there, it's one less big thing for you to hide from the world. Please find the time to recover from the last year. Take a month off, travel the world, sleep in and get lost in a good book. When you think of me just know that I love you with all of my broken pieces and when I see you happy, because I want to - a part of me will heal."
Your fingers tangle in her hair and you gently tug her head back to lean down and kiss her one last time. There is desperation in the kiss, you from saying goodbye, her from wanting you to stay. Now you were the one who had to pull away. Letting go of her hair and resting your forehead against hers with your eyes closed. "I'm so sorry." You force yourself to let go of her and rush out of the bedroom, almost tripping over your own two feet.
You hear her call your name one last time but keep going through the living room and out the hotel room door. You skip the elevator and head for the stairs opening the door. If you pause for any amount of time you just know you’ll turn around and go back to her. Each step you make down the stairs, through the lobby, getting your bags from the front desk and going out to Valet, you’re caught in a daze.
It wasn’t until you’re on the highway and see the LEAVING TOWN THANKS FOR VISITING sign that you pull over on the side of the highway and sit there. Your daze was wearing off, so was the numbness. You did it. She was free to do whatever she needed or wanted to do. You were free to do whatever you needed or wanted to do.
You wanted to turn around and go back.
You needed to keep driving.
Your phone starts ringing but you don’t even look to see who it is, pushing the side button to turn it off. It was time to go to a gas station for a paper map. You were about to old school road trip your way home. Still you sit. Still you stare ahead at the highway. Still you feel frozen.
The monsters in your head had always told you you would lose her in the end, you just didn't know you would be the one to walk away. You did believe you and her were fate but there was that tiny part of you that recognized that you were both so young. She was just so young. How can you know something that life affirming when you were just starting to figure out who you were? Even in your questioning there was sense of calmness settling in your mind.
You could be patient. You would be patient. There will be a day where you will see her again and maybe, just maybe - you'll see the flash in her eyes and you'll be home again. She will be home again. With that small shred of faith you put the car in drive and pull back out onto the highway.
~~~~~
A/N:  If this was the real world (lol)  I believe this would be the ending of Jenna/Readers relationship until they got older. Oddly enough what Jenna’s doing now fits with the fanfic. Actually creeps me out how well it fits. 👀 Let’s say a prayer for real life Jenna because if she’s like fanfic Jenna sheeeeesh.
Anyways, I hope y’all enjoyed this journey with me! Thanks for reading. Please click here for end of fanfic authors note.
Chapter 11: June/July 2022: Here.
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vera-deville · 1 year
Note
Could you ask for a female S/O? she is very shy and cute, she is also super kind and tries to help everyone, she is also easy to cry and short. For Leona, I imagine this very cute because they are opposites and Leona being tall and the "bad guy" and your S/O all cute and shy
Of course! Thank you very much for your request! As usual, I'm really sorry for not getting this done sooner, however, I've been caught up in the show that is life.
12/03/2022 - 01/18/2023
Pairing: Leona Kingscholar x Reader
Word Count: 723
Warnings: None that I can think of!
Gender: AFAB
Notes: Okay, so I know I haven't posted a fic in ages, but the thing is, I REALLY wanted to. A lot of things kept me busy, and I also lost motivation for a while. However, I'm trying to come out of that funk.
Having said that, I absolutely love this request. I'm actually a sucker for soft readers with, well, not soft characters, and I love Leona's character, so this works just fine for me.
Furthermore, when I first read this request, I was planning on writing a headcanon, but I ultimately decided to write an imagine, because of two reasons. One, I wanted to write more, which I can't really do with a headcanon. The second reason is that I just really like this request and I want to write a long ass fic-
So, the thing is, I actually started writing this over a month ago, and only now am finishing this (I'm so sorry), and I got so caught up in making this the best thing I've ever written that it turned out...not so great. I'm really sorry about that!
In which Leona is your typical "bad guy" and Y/N is your typical "soft girl."
Y/N was notorious at Night Raven College. On the surface level, one might thing the reason behind her notoriety was the fact that she was this magicless student from a totally different dimension that just one day popped into Twisted Wonderland.
But they'd be wrong.
Dig a little deeper, and you'd think that perhaps her notoriety is due to the fact that she is the only girl in an all-boys school.
You'd still be wrong.
The notoriety lied within the way Y/N carried herself. One interaction with her, and you'd think that she was at the wrong school and that she probably should have been at Royal Sword Academy (or even better yet, whatever world she came from originally).
The girl in question was short. Add in her shy, timid, and cute appearance and nature, and you'd incorrectly guess her age (only the Great Seven know how many times people mistook her for a child). Furthermore, Y/N was a bit prone to waterworks.
It's not that she'd cry for absolutely anything whenever, but rather her brain seemed to be replaced with her heart, thus absorbing things with such force that the faucet to her eyes is turned on.
And the one who enjoys her reactions the most is the lion often seen lounging in the garden.
Leona Kingscholar. The perfect opposite of Y/N. And yet, they compliment one another so well.
Leona also had a reputation of his own at school. He was one to not be trifled with, one to respect, and one to fear. It also didn't really help his case seeing as he was something of a beanstalk, towering over most the students at NRC.
When Leona and Y/N made their relationship public, it shook the school, and hushed whispers could be heard as the passed through the halls together. Eventually though, the whispers settled down into the occasional murmur (though part of this was due to the fact that no one wanted to be on the receiving end of Leona's wrath due to the gossip making Y/N and himself uncomfortable).
And so the two went through the days together, in bliss.
One fine day, Leona was looking for Y/N, and asked Ruggie where she was. Ruggie told him that Y/N had gone to the garden, something about checking up on the birds.
Leona sighed.
Of course she went back to the garden for the umpteenth time that day.
Swiftly maneuvering his way to the garden, his steps stopped when his gaze landed on Y/N.
She looked ethereal, her back facing him, and her hair framing her figure so perfectly. She wore the school uniform (specifically tailored to better fit her small stature) so well in his eyes.
Leona drank in everything about the scene that he possibly could. Everything from the sunlight, the flowers, the greenery, and Y/N's body shaking in a convulsing manner.
Immediately, he was snapped out of his reverie, and that was the moment his ears consciously registered the sobs escaping from the crouched figure. He rushed to the said girl and tried to calm her down.
He asked Y/N what happened for her to cry so unabashedly, and that was when he noticed the little bird cradled in her hands.
Sniffling, tears seemingly endless, Y/N managed out, "Henry fell!"
Leona had never been more confused in his life.
It's obvious the bird in her hands was "Henry" and that he fell, but what was so bad about that? It's not like the thing died, or even injured itself.
But, Leona also knew just how deeply Y/N felt for the world around her. So, he comforted her, telling her bluntly that Henry would be alright, and that he wasn't mad at Y/N, or anything that she was probably currently thinking.
A few minutes later, Y/N had calmed down for the most part, a sniffles escaping her, when Henry flew away, in a roundabout, back to Y/N and perched on her shoulder. This seemed to completely cheer up Y/N and she went back to playing with Henry as though she hadn't been intensely sobbing for the past who knows how long.
Leona shook his head while sighing. The girl was a handful, but...
He wouldn't have it any other way.
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chussyracing · 2 months
Note
Hello just saw your tags on the Charles post… what’s the theories about Ruth B? 👀
I'm glad you asked!! This might get a bit long so I'm putting my whole word vomit under the cut
It all stemms from Fred Vasseur's lead of the team. He made it pretty obvious he has the highest ambitions, that it is a long term project for him and that the team is getting built around Charles and he has the priority in contract extension.
Ruth left the position of Head of Strategy Department for Alfa Romeo during the end of 2023 season with this post on social media
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She has been a part of the Italian brand for 8 years and worked closely with Fred during thst time as he was previously the team principal in Alfa Romeo. And on top of that she was the race strategist of Charles when he started in the team in his first F1 season (so they got to know each other well, worked closely together, went together on track walks, basically the stuff you see Xavi do these days... or stuff you should have see him doing lmao).
As per the post, Ruth made it clear that this has been a planned move to end her contract with Alfa Romeo at the end of the season. She also added "time for the next chapter 🏎" which sounds like a strong hint she already has a future in F1 planned out. (Side note: the emoji is red as per the factory settings, so we shouldn't let ourselves get fooled by it
She started in Ferrari as a Simulations Development Engineer but quite soon moved up to the position of a Race Strategist, first for Felipe Massa, then for Kimi Raikkonen - so she already has a history with Ferrari and/or its partner teams in F1 (Haas and Alfa Romeo/Sauber).
Fast forward back to Frederic Vasseur and how he is dealing with the new role of leadership in Scuderia Ferrari. He moved Inaki Rueda into a different position in Maranello. Now he moved him into the sports car department outside of Scuderia Ferrari F1 department altogether. Ravin Jain took a place as a Head of Race Strategy Operations for this year. Besides these changes there have reportedly been many others happening behind the scenes (we don't know details but many of those have been in the engineering department, with the department further extending in terms od employees).
This one is mostly rumour, because I didn't get it confirmed but Ruth might or might not have a partner Nathan Divey who used to work as Lewis' number 1 mechanic. Nathan left Mercedes at the end of 2022 and he came to work for... you guessed it, Ferrari.
And finally, as always in F1, you gotta look for subtle hints that usually mean nothing unless something happens and then you look back at them and they all make sense. And I think a part of those can be the amount of times when we saw Charles and Ruth chatting together randomly this year.
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Side note that has nothing to do with this topic but I want to mention it: she is a ambassador of Susie Wolff's organization Dare to Be Different which tries to get more female involved in all parts of motorsports and FIA Girls on Track Ambassador.
So summary: this is purely my speculation and it can all mean nothing but changes in Ferrari's strategy department, Fred's leading of the team and move towards Charles Leclerc's needs in the team, her history with both Fred and Charles but also Ferrari and its sister teams in F1, the message she left on social media and some pictures we saw this year all make me think she might be joining Ferrari in the months to come.
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mochinek0 · 1 year
Text
Daminette December 2022: 11-Art (PART 2)
PART 2 OF AMBUSH
Damian had been holed up in his painting room for the last 2 weeks. He went to school, but returned back to the room once he got back. Alfred had taken to bringing tea and snacks to the room.
Bruce knocked on the door.
"A classmate is here, Damian." Bruce announced.
Damian sighed.
'Father is going to make me act civil and go downstairs. This is going to be bothersome and a waste of my time. I would prefer to stay in here and paint.'
"Alfred has her in the kitchen." Bruce called out.
'Her? What annoyance decided to act like she knew me, this time?'
"Who?" Damian sighed.
"Marinette?" Bruce answered.
Damian thought of how she helped him get away from the harpies in the library. Marinette was quick and smart. She made him appear to be in a relationship, without placing herself in the line of fire. He recalled how she lit up when she talked about art and fashion. She didn't brag about her own accomplishments or tried to show off to him. She kept her focus on the assignment, the whole time, and barely looked at him. It had been simple to talk with her. It had been, as if, she completely forgot that she had been close enough for him to smell the mint off her breath, the jasmine scent wafting off her clothes, and the shine on her lips.
"Very well." he spoke.
Damian washed off his paintbrushes and made sure to grab his key. He walked out and immediatley saw the disapproval on his father's face. He looked down. Damian saw he was in black sweats a muscle shirt, revealing his scars. He looked at paint on himself and his clothes, but he locked the door, anyways.
"You should clean up." Bruce insisted.
"It's fine." he commented and made his way down.
Marinette easily spotted Damian walking towards her, with paint on his face and clothes.
"Oh my god." she gasped, "I'm so sorry! Am I distracting you from your painting?"
"I'll return to it later." Damian replied.
"No! I can come back tomorrow!" Marinette declared, grabbing her things, "I know I get lost when I design. I barely come out of my room. People have to remind me to eat and sleep."
Damian chuckled in response. Bruce thought Damian hadn't cared about his appearance because he was going to refuse them, but that didin't seem to be the case here. Bruce was shocked by the moment; He had never seen Damian act this way. Damian actually seemed to have a familiar sense with this girl and she didn't seem to mind his attitude.
"You....Your words inspired me, last time." the Wayne heir admitted.
"Oh?" Mari spoke.
"I was painting my mother." he stated.
'Talia?'
"Then, that is definetly more important than a class assignment that isn't due for two more weeks." Marinette declared.
"No." Damian replied, "This may help with the memories. As you stated, I must spend time away to refocus. We'll go to my room."
"I'm sure you don't want me to see it. I know I like my stuff private until I decide to share." Mari responded.
Damian smirked, "It's in different room."
Marinette smiled, "If we ever go to my place, we're staying in the living room. We might sit on a pin or needle in mine. I keep losing my pins and end up finding them later."
As they walked away, Bruce turned to Alfred.
"The boys can never meet her, unless he proposes." Bruce declared.
Alfred just smiled. It seemed the young Wayne was finally growing up.
A couple months later was Valentine's Day. Everyone in Gotham Academy was excited. Many of them had chocolates and cards to give to their friends or loved ones. For some of them, it was 'Confession Day'. Many students were shocked to see Damian Wayne hand Marinette Dupain-Cheng a box.
"Why is he giving her chocolate?"
"How long have they been dating?"
"They're dating?"
"Are you sure?"
"Some girls were crying last year about him making out in the library."
"Did they see Marinette?"
"I don't know?"
"I thought she was single!"
"Yeah, I asked her about her plans for today. She said she had none."
"Is Damian Wayne confessing to her?"
Marinette smiled as she took the box.
"May I open it?" she asked.
Damian nodded. Once she had gotten the wrapping off, she laughed and hugged him.
"These are so cute!" Mari chimed, "I've never seen these before."
"I made them." Damian admitted.
"He made her chocolate?"
"I thought he couldn't cook."
Marinette pulled out what looked like a giant round ball.
"That's not chocolate."
"What is that?"
"It looks like a hacky sack."
"Maybe he really can't cook."
"You made these pin cushions for me?" she questioned, looking at the hand made assortment of macarons, chocolates, and a giant loaf of bread.
"It seemed fitting." he answered, "You informed me you grew up in a bakery and that you kept losing your pins and sewing needles."
"I love them. This is better than any chocolate or card I could have gotten." Mari smiled, before kissing his cheek, "I-I do have some macarons for you."
Marinette pulled a small box out of her bag.
"You told me that you weren't fond of sweets so these are tea flavored. I have chai, matcha, salted caramel, and earl grey." she stated.
"I will try them at lunch today." Damian spoke, "Perhaps, with you?"
"I'd love to." Marinette smiled.
Word quickly spread throughout the school that the Ice Prince was after the Fashion Princess.
TAG LIST: @maribat-calendar-events @animeweebgirl @a-star-with-a-human-name @meme991001 @vixen-uchiha @abrx2002 @alysrose-starchild @fandom-trapped-03 @dood-space @moonlightstar64 @saltymiraculer @marveldcedits20 @09shell-sea09 @icerosecrystal @animegirlweeb @insane-fangirl-of-everything @blueblossombliss @nickristus-dreamer @megawhitleycalderonpaganus
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Text
What the fediverse (does/n't) solve
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No matter how benevolent a dictatorship is, it’s still a dictatorship, and subject to the dictator’s whims. We must demand that the owners and leaders of tech platforms be fair and good — but we must also be prepared for them to fail at this, sometimes catastrophically.
That is, even if you trust Tim Cook to decide what apps you are and aren’t allowed to install — including whether you are allowed to install apps that block Apple’s own extensive, nonconsensual, continuous commercial surveillance of its customers — you should also be prepared for Cook to get hit by a bus and replaced by some alt-right dingleberry.
What happens next is a matter of technology and law. It’s a matter of whether you have to give up your media and your apps and your data to escape the no-longer-benevolent dictatorship. It depends on whether the technology is designed to let you move those things, and whether the law protects you from tech companies, or whether it protects tech companies from *you, by criminalizing jailbreaking, reverse engineering, scraping, etc.
As thorny as this is, it’s even harder when we’re talking about social media, because it’s social. Sociability adds a new and pernicious switching cost, when we hold each other hostage because we can’t agree on when/whether to go, and if we do, where to go next. When the management of your community goes septic, it can be hard to leave, because you have to leave behind the people who matter to you if you do.
We’ve all been there: do you quit your writers’ circle because one guy is being a jerk? Do you stop going to a con because the concom tolerates a predator? Do you stop going to family Thanksgiving because your racist Facebook uncle keeps trying to pick a fight with you? Do you accompany your friends to dinner at a restaurant whose owners are major donors to politicians who want to deport you?
This collective action problem makes calamity of so long life. At the outer extreme, you have the families who stay put even as their governments slide into tyranny, risking imprisonment or even death, because they can’t bear to be parted from one another, and they all have different views of how bad the situation really is:
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2022/12/the-oppermanns-book-holocaust-nazi-fascism/672505/
The corporate person is a selfish narcissist, a paperclip-maximizing artificial lifeform forever questing after its own advantage. It is an abuser. Like all abusers, it is keenly attuned to any social dynamic that it can use to manipulate its victims, and so social media is highly prized by these immortal colony-organisms.
You can visit all manner of abuses upon a social network and it will remain intact, glued together by the interpersonal bonds of its constituent members. Like a kidnapper who takes your family hostage, abusers weaponize our love of one another and use it to make us do things that are contrary to our own interests.
In “Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media,” Cat Valente is characteristically brilliant about this subject. It is one of the best essays you’ll read this month:
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
Valente is on the leading edge of creators who were born digital — whose social life was always online, and whose writing career grew out of that social life. In 2009, she posted her debut novel, “The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making” to the web for free. Two years, and many awards, later, Macmillan brought it out in hardcover:
https://memex.craphound.com/2011/05/10/valentes-girl-who-circumnavigated-fairyland-sweet-fairytale-shot-through-with-salty-tears-magic/
“Stop Talking to Each Other” is a memoir wrapped around a trenchant, take-no-prisoners critique of all the robber-barons who’ve made us prisoners to one another and fashioned whips out of our own affection for one another and the small pleasures we give each other.
It begins with Valente’s girlhood in the early 1990s, where Prodigy formed a lifeline for her lonely, isolated existence. Valente — a precocious writer — made penpals with other Prodigy users, including older adults who assumed they were talking to a young adult. These relationships expanded her world, uplifting and enriching her.
Then, one day, she spotted a story about Prodigy in her dad’s newspaper: “PRODIGY SAYS: STOP TALKING TO EACH OTHER AND START BUYING THINGS.” The headline floored her. Even if Valente wanted to buy the weird grab-bag of crap for sale at Prodigy in 1991, she was a 12 year old and had no way to send internet money to Prodigy. Also, she had no money of any sort.
For her, the revelation that the owners of Prodigy would take away “this one solitary place where I felt like I mattered” if she “didn’t figure out how to buy things from the screen” was shocking and frightening. It was also true. Prodigy went away, and took with it all those human connections a young Cat Valente relied on.
This set the pattern for every online community that followed: “Stop talking to each other and start buying things. Stop providing content for free and start paying us for the privilege. Stop shining sunlight on horrors and start advocating for more of them. Stop making communities and start weaponizing misinformation to benefit your betters.”
Or, more trenchantly: “Stop benefitting from the internet, it’s not for you to enjoy, it’s for us to use to extract money from you. Stop finding beauty and connection in the world, loneliness is more profitable and easier to control. Stop being human. A mindless bot who makes regular purchases is all that’s really needed.”
Valente traces this pathology through multiple successive generations of online community, lingering on Livejournal, whose large community of Russian dissidents attracted Russian state-affiliated investors who scooped up the community and then began turning the screws on it, transforming it into a surveillance and control system for terrorizing the mutual hostages of the Russian opposition.
Valente and her friends on the service were collateral damage in the deliberate enshittification of LJ, band the Russian dissidents had it worse than they did, but it was still a painful experience. LJ was home to innumerable creators who “grew audiences through connections and meta-connections you already trusted.”
Most importantly, the poisoning of LJ formed a template, for how to “[take] apart a minor but culturally influential community and develop techniques to do it again, more efficiently, more quickly, with less attention.”
It’s a template that has been perfected by the alt-right, by the Sad Puppies and the Gamergaters and their successor movements. These trolls aren’t motivated by the same profit-seeking sociopathy of the corporate person, but they are symbiotic with it.
Valente lays out the corporate community’s lifecycle:
Be excited about the internet, make a website!
Discover that users are uninterested in your storefront, add social features.
Add loss-leaders to “let users make their own reasons to use the site” (chat, blogs, messaging, etc), and moderate them “to make non-monster humans feel safe expressing themselves and feel nice about site.”
The site works, and people “[use] free tools to connect with each other and learn and not be lonely and maybe even make a name for themselves sometimes.”
The owners demand that users “stop talking and start buying things.”
Users grow disillusioned with a site whose sociability is an afterthought to the revenue-generation that is supposed to extract all surplus value from the community they themselves created.
The owners get angry, insult users, blanket the site with ads, fire moderators, stoke controversy that creates “engagement” for the ads. They sell user data. They purge marginalized community that advertisers don’t like. They raise capital, put the community features behind a paywall, and focus so hard on extraction that they miss the oncoming trends.
“Everyone is mad.”
“Sell the people you brought together on purpose to large corporation, trash billionaire, or despotic government entity who hates that the site’s community used those connective tools to do a revolution.”
The people who “invested their time, heart, labor, love, businesses and relationships” are scattered to the winds. Corporate shareholders don’t care.
Years later, the true story of how the site disintegrated under commercial pressures comes out. No one cares.
The people who cashed out by smashing the community that created their asset are now wealthy, and they spend that wealth on “weird right-wing shit…because right-wing shit says no taxes and new money hates taxes.”
This pattern recurs on innumerable platforms. Valente’s partial list includes “Prodigy, Geocities, collegeclub.com, MySpace, Friendster, Livejournal, Tumblr,” and, of course, Twitter.
Twitter, though, is different. First, it is the largest and most structurally important platform to be enshittified. Second, because it was enshittified so much more quickly than the smaller platforms that preceded it.
But third, and most importantly, because Twitter’s enshittification is not solely about profit. Whereas the normal course of a platform’s decline involves a symbiosis between corporate extraction and trollish cruelty, the enshittification of Twitter is being driven by an owner who is both a sociopathic helmsan for a corporate extraction machine and a malignant, vicious narcissist.
Valente describes Musk’s non-commercial imperatives: “the yawning, salivating need to control and hurt. To express power not by what you can give, but by what you can take away…[the] viral solipsism that cannot bear the presence of anything other than its own undifferentiated self, propagating not by convincing or seduction or debate, but by the eradication of any other option.”
Not every platform has been degraded this way. Valente singles out Diaryland, whose owner, Andrew, has never sold out his community of millions of users, not in all the years since he created it in 1999, when he was a Canadian kid who “just like[d] making little things.” Andrew charges you $2/month to keep the lights on.
https://diaryland.com/
Valente is right to lionize Diaryland and Andrew. In fact, she’s right about everything in this essay. Or, nearly everything. “Almost,” because at the end, she says, “the minute the jackals arrive is the same minute we put down the first new chairs in the next oasis.”
That’s where I think she goes wrong. Or at least, is incomplete. Because the story of the web’s early diversity and its focus on its users and their communities isn’t just about a natural cycle whereby our communities became commodities to be tormented to ruination and sold off for parts.
The early web’s strength was in its interoperability. The early web wasn’t just a successor to Prodigy, AOL and other walled gardens — it was a fundamental transformation. The early web was made up of thousands of small firms, hobbyists, and user groups that all used the same standard protocols, which let them set up their own little corners of the internet — but also connected those communities through semi-permeable membranes that joined everything, but not in every way.
The early web let anything link to anything, but not always, which meant that you could leave a community but still keep tabs on it (say, by subscribing to the RSS feeds of the people who stayed behind), but it also meant that individuals and communities could also shield themselves from bad actors.
The right of exit and the freedom of reach (the principle that anyone can talk to anyone who wants to talk to them) are both key to technological self-determination. They are both imperfect and incomplete, but together, they are stronger, and form a powerful check on both greed and cruelty-based predation:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/19/better-failure/#let-my-tweeters-go
Small wonder that, from the beginning, the internet has been a fight between those who want to build a commons and those who wish to enclose it. Remember when we were all angry that the web was disappearing into Flash, the unlinkable proprietary blobs that you couldn’t ad-block or mute or even pause unless they gave you permission?
Remember when Microsoft tried, over and over again, to enclose the internet, first as a dial-up service, then as a series of garbage Windows-based Flash-alikes. Remember Blackbird?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_(online_platform)
But standard protocols exert powerful network effects on corporations. When everyone is adhering to a standard, when everything can talk to everything else, then it’s hard to lure users into a walled garden. Microsoft coerced users into it by striking bargains with buyers at large companies to force its products on all their employees, and then by breaking compatibility with rival products, which made it hard for those employees to use another vendor’s products in their personal lives. Not being able to access your company email or edit your company documents on your personal device is a powerful incentive to use the same product your company uses.
Apple, meanwhile, seduced users into its walled garden, promising that it would keep them safe and that everything would just work, and then using its power over those customers to gouge them on dongles and parts and repair and apps.
Both companies — like all corporations — are ferocious rent-seekers, but both eventually capitulated to the internet — bundling TCP and, eventually, browsers with their OSes. They never quit trying to enclose the web, via proprietary browser extensions and dirty tricks (Microsoft) or mobile lock-in and dirty tricks (Apple). But for many years, the web was a truly open platform.
The enclosure of online communities can’t be understood without also understanding the policy choices that led to the enclosure of tech more broadly. The decision to stop enforcing antitrust law (especially GWB’s decision not to appeal in the Microsoft antitrust case) let the underlying platforms grow without limits, by buying any serious rival, or by starving it out of existence by selling competing products below cost, cross-subidizing them with rents extracted from their other monopoly lines.
These same policies let a few new corporate enclosers enter the arena, like Google, which is virtually incapable of making a successful product in-house, but which was able to buy others’ successes and cement its web dominance: mobile, video, server management, ad-tech, etc.
These firms provide the substrate for community abusers: apps, operating systems and browser “standards” that can’t be legally reverse-engineered, and lobbying that strengthens and expands those “Felony Contempt of Business Model” policies:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership
Without these laws and technologies, corporations wouldn’t be able to block freedom of exit and freedom of reach. These laws and technologies let these corporations demand that the state obliterate anyone who gives users the tools to set their own terms for the communities they built.
These are the laws and technologies that transform network effects from a tool for openness — where even the largest, most vicious corporations must seek to pervert, rather than ignore, standards — into a tool for enclosure, where we are all under mounting pressure to move inside a walled garden.
This digital feudalism is cloaked in the language of care and safety. The owners of these walled gardens insist that they are benevolent patriarchs who have built fortresses to defend us from external threats, but inevitably they are revealed as warlords who have built prisons to keep us from escaping from them:
https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/
Which brings me to the Fediverse. The Fediverse’s foundation is a standard called ActivityPub, which was designed by weirdos who wanted to make a durably open, interoperable substrate that could support nearly any application. This was something that large corporations were both uninterested in building and which they arrogantly dismissed as a pipe dream. This means that Activitypub is actually as good as its architects could make it, free from boobytraps laid by scheming monopolists.
The best-known Fediverse application is Mastodon, which has experienced explosive growth from people who found Musk’s twin imperatives to cruelty and extraction sufficiently alarming that they have taken their leave of Twitter and the people they cared about there. This is not an easy decision, and Musk is bent on making it harder by sabotaging ex-Twitter users’ ability to find one another elsewhere. He wants the experience of leaving Twitter to be like the final scene of Fiddler On the Roof, where the villagers of Anatevka are torn from one another forever:
https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms-9fc550fe5abf
With Mastodon’s newfound fame comes new scrutiny, and a renewed debate over the benefits and drawbacks of decentralized, federated systems. For example, there’s an ongoing discussion about the role of quote-tweeting, which Mastodon’s core devs have eschewed as conducive to antisocial dunks, but which some parts of Black Twitter describe as key to a healthy discourse:
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2022/12/21/Mastodon-Ethics
But quote tweeting wasn’t initially a part of Twitter. Instead, users kludged it, pasting in text and URLs for others’ tweets to make it work. Eventually, Twitter saw the utility of quote-tweeting and adopted it, making it an official feature.
There is a possibility that Mastodon’s core devs will do the same, adding quote-tweet to the core codebase for Mastodon. But if they don’t, the story isn’t over. Because Mastodon is free software, and because it is built on an open standard, anyone can add this feature to their Mastodon instance. You can do this yourself, or you can hire someone else to do it for you.
Now, not everyone has money or coding skills — but also, not everyone has the social clout to convince a monolithic, for-profit corporation to re-engineer its services to better suit their needs. And while there is a lot of overlap between “people who can code,” and “people who can afford to pay coders” and “people whom a tech company listens to,” these are not the same population.
In other words: Twitter is a place where you get quote-tweeting if the corporation decides you need it, and Mastodon is a place where you get quote-tweeting if the core devs decide you need it, or if you have the skills or resources to add it yourself.
What’s more, if Mastodon’s core devs decide to take away a feature you like, you and your friends can stand up your own Mastodon server that retains that feature. This is harder than using someone else’s server — but it’s way, way easier than convincing Twitter it was wrong to take away the thing you loved.
The perils of running your own Mastodon server have also become a hot topic of debate. To hear the critics warn of it, anyone who runs a server that’s open to the public is painting a huge target on their back and will shortly be buried under civil litigation and angry phone-calls from the FBI.
This is: Just. Not. True. The US actually has pretty good laws limiting intermediary liability (that is, the responsibility you bear for what your users do). You know all that stuff about how CDA230 is “a giveaway to Big Tech?” That’s only true if the internet consists solely of Big Tech companies. However, if you decide to spend $5/month hosting a Mastodon instance for you and your community, that same law protects you.
Indeed, while running a server that’s open to the public does involve some risk, most of that risk can be contained by engaging in a relatively small, relatively easy set of legal compliance practices, which EFF’s Corynne McSherry lays out in this very easy-to-grasp explainer:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/user-generated-content-and-fediverse-legal-primer
Finally, there’s the ongoing debate over whether Mastodon can (and should) replace Twitter. This week on the Canadaland Short Cuts podcast, Jesse Brown neatly summarized (and supported, alas) the incorrect idea that using Mastodon was no different from using Gab or Parler or Post.
https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/843-god-save-the-tweets/
This is very, very wrong. The thing is, even if you like and trust the people who run Gab or Parler or Post, you face exactly the same risk you face with Twitter or Facebook: that the leadership will change, or have a change of heart, and begin to enshittify your community there. When they do, your only remedy will be the one that Valente describes, to scatter to the winds and try and reform your community somewhere else.
But that’s not true of the Fediverse. On Mastodon, you can export all your followers, and all the people who follow you, with two clicks. Then you can create an account on another server and again, with just two clicks, you can import those follows and followers and be back up and running, your community intact, without being under the thumb of the server manager who decided to sell your community down the river (you can also export the posts you made).
https://codingitwrong.com/2022/10/10/migrating-a-mastodon-account.html
Now, it’s also true that a particularly vindictive Mastodon server owner could summarily kick you off the server without giving you a chance to export your data. Doing so would arguably run afoul of the GDPR and state laws like the CCPA.
Strengthening these privacy laws would actually improve user rights — unlike abolishing CDA 230, which would simultaneously make the corporate owners of big services more trigger-happy when it comes to censoring content from marginalized groups, and make it all but impossible for those groups to safely run their own servers to decamp to when this happens.
Letting people set up their own communities, responsible to one another, is the tonic for Valente’s despair that the cycle of corporate predation and enshittification is eternal, and that people who care for one another and their communities are doomed to be evicted again and again and again and again.
And *federating these communities — creating semi-permeable membranes between them, blocking the servers for people who would destroy you, welcoming messages from the like-minded, and taking intermediate steps for uneasy allies — answers Brown’s concern that Twitter is the only way we can have “one big conversation.”
This “one conversation” point is part of Brown’s category error in conflating federated media with standalone alternatives to Twitter like Post. Federated media is one big conversation, but smeared out, without the weak signal amplification of algorithms that substitute the speech of the people you’ve asked to hear from with people who’ve paid to intrude on your conversation, or whom the algorithm has decided to insert in it.
Federation is an attractive compromise for people like Valente, who are justly angry at and exhausted by the endless cycle of “entrepreneurs” building value off of a community’s labor and then extracting that value and leaving the community as a dried-out husk.
It’s also a promising development for antitrust advocates like me, who are suspicious of corporate power overall. But federation should also please small-government libertarian types. Even if you think the only job of the state is to enforce contracts, you still need a state that is large and powerful enough to actually fulfill that role. The state can’t hold a corporation to its promises if it is dwarfed by that corporation — the bigger the companies, the bigger the state has to be to keep them honest.
The stakes are high. As Valente writes, the digital communities that flourished online, only to be eradicated by cruelty and extraction, were wonderful oases of care and passion. As she says, “Love things. Love people. Love the small and the weird and the new.”
“Be each other’s pen pals. Talk. Share. Welcome. Care. And just keep moving. Stay nimble. Maybe we have to roll the internet back a little and go back to blogs and decentralized groups and techy fiddling and real-life conventions and idealists with servers in their closets.”
“Protect the vulnerable. Make little things. Wear electric blue eyeshadow. Take a picture of your breakfast. Overthink Twin Peaks. Get angry. Do revolutions. Find out what Buffy character you are. Don’t get cynical. Don’t lose joy. Be us. Because us is what keeps the light on when the night comes closing in.”
Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg
CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
Heisenberg Media (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk_-_The_Summit_2013.jpg
CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
[Moses confronting the Pharaoh, demanding that he release the Hebrews. Pharaoh's face has been replaced with Elon Musk's. Moses holds a Twitter logo in his outstretched hand. Moses's head has been replaced with the head of Tusky, the Mastodon mascot. The faces embossed in the columns of Pharaoh's audience hall have been replaced with the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The wall over Pharaoh's head has been replaced with a Matrix 'code waterfall' effect.]
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maxellminidisc · 4 months
Text
youtube
TW for Flashing Lights
Gonna make it a thing where I try and draw attention to LGBT+ artist from all over LatAm every now and then cause I'm bi, trans, Latine, and I love sharing music with people cause it genuinely can and does do so much for us.
This time around I think a lot of you would like getting familiar with Urias, she's a Brazilian rapper and singer who wants to make a mark for the trans girls of the world. This single is a song for unapologetic trans existence and pride from 2019 called Diaba (or "she-devil" in English).
She's always pulling out interesting concepts with a constant stream of experimental electronic sound and eye catching visuals. She actually released a new album about five months ago thats mostly based in Dance genres with accompanying visualizers and dance videos (the videos for these are also pretty eye straining or also prone to flashing images and light), along with another album called FURIA in 2022 that is also worth a listen.
English translation of the lyrics of this song under the read more
Nice to meet you, I'm the eighth deadly sin
U-RI-AS
Try to understand, I've always been seen by many as evil
Can't you see that on your family I'm the mainstay?
I possess you, already possessed you
Your law made me illegal, they called me dirty, insane and immoral
Now you'll have to swallow me, whether you like it or not
Now that I've reached a global scale
Razor underneath my tongue, I'm ready to fight
Razor underneath my tongue
She-devil, argh
She-devil, argh
I'm not new here, don't need an excuse
Your permission never made any difference
With all my politeness, fuck your belief
Fuck your belief, ah
Razor underneath my tongue, I'm ready to fight
Razor underneath my tongue
She-devil, argh
She-devil, argh
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sinarainbows · 4 months
Text
First Love | J.T.K
Tumblr media
Jake Kiszka x OC
pure fluff :)
This is exciting. I had this idea for a few months after watching the creators videos on my for you page and finally found the courage to write it. I made my own character up and fantasized a little bit about their life together. If you want more please let me know.
Please consider that English is not my first language.
Nashville, TN Early 2022
Layla’s POV
I walk on the sidewalk, face straight ahead and trying to blend out the many tourists and strangers hurrying to get to their destination. With me I have my guitar case with my most prized possession.
“Excuse me, miss?”, a manly voice said, causing me to stop in your tracks. “Yeah?”, I answered, meeting a friendly looking face. A man with unruly wild brown looks, brown eyes und little shy smile looks at me and meets me eyes. “Do you mind being interviewed for my social media account? I ask strangers a few questions about different topics and post them on my Instagram and TikTok account”, the man asked.
“Oh hi, why me?“, I answer nervously, instantly wondering if he recognized me from my music or family. “You just looked really interesting to me and you have a beautiful aura“, he chuckles, gesturing with a camera in his hands. Thinking for a couple of seconds I finally respond:“Okay, thank you and why not. Are you famous or something?“ “I have a couple of thousands followers, but that should not pressure you. Is it okay to be asked about your love life?“, he replies back. I was taken aback a bit. Sure, my relationship was never a secret, more an open secret. In interviews, I never allow to be interviewed about my private life. And if, I always manage to get around the question and answer vaguely. But, discussing the topic of our relationship, rising fame and turbulent lifestyle made us realize, that we can’t live with the privacy we once had.
Knowing that probably a few fans will see the mans video I reply:“Sure, I like being interviewed. Just please don’t ask uncomfortable questions”, I laugh, tucking a strand of my dark hair behind my ear. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you“, the mystery man replies and sets his camera to get ready to film. I quickly come to conclusion that he doesn’t know me and just wants to be nice. “We should get to a quieter spot if you don’t mind”, he says, noticing the passing strangers around us. After getting ready to film his video the man asks:”Ready?“ “Yes, let’s go“, I smile.
“What is the name of your first love and why did you fall in love with them?“
Immediately smiling I look into the camera and say:“Well, that’s easy to answer. The first person I ever felt romantically love towards is someone I grew up with back in my hometown. He was always special to me and one day I came home from his house and ran to my mum and confessed her, that I fell in love with him. And she just laughed and knew it all along. She just was shocked that it took me so long to realize. We both grew up in a very musical household, played instruments, listening to music and just been together our whole life. I was probably around 14 years“. My heart grows warm from remembering about the past. “What’s his name and what happened after knowing that you loved him?“, he questions once again.
“His name is Jake“, I finally respond to his first question. “And I kept it for a secret for a few months and then confessed it when I was drunk to my best friends, who happen to be his younger brother and his best friend. They were taken aback a bit, but came to conclusion that it just made sense“, I laugh a little, remembering Sam’s and Danny’s face.
“Did you tell him?“, the man asks. “First, I didn’t. I just thought that he would never picture me differently than as his little brothers girl best friend. Not in a million years I thought that he loved me back. His twin brother was the person who encouraged me to tell him“, I tell him. For me, in the end Josh was the reason we found to each other. “So, you confessed it to him” - “Yeah. Well we both did”, I replied, not wanting to tell the whole story. ”What happened after that to the both of you?“
“I married him. Long story short. And that’s the best thing that has ever happened to me”, I tell him, holding my hand with my wedding ring up. “You did?! Wow, that’s amazing. Where is he now?“ - “He is a musician and is in a band with his brothers. They are on tour right now”, their Dreams in Gold Tour just started and I couldn’t be prouder of the boys. “What is he playing?“, the man questions further. “Guitar. We both are, I’m a musician too“, I smile to him and his camera and show my guitar case.
“What’s your name?“ - “Layla, and yours?“, I raise my hand to shake his. “Hunter, nice to meet you“ - “Nice to meet you too, Hunter.“
Layla is no longer a stranger.
Comments under Hunter’s video
flowerpower_gvf: Oh my god???? They are fucking MARRIED?? AND LAYLA TALKS ABOUT THEIR RELATIONSHIP ??? I’M BAWLING MY EYES OUT. HER NAME IS LAYLA KISZKA??
grestieforlife: JAKE IS A HUSBAND. HE HAS A WIFE!!!!!
laylaismysunshine: Not him not recognizing one of the most famous musicians right now lmao
kiszkawagneruniverse: HER EYES SPARKING AS SHE TOLD HIM THAT THEY ARE MARRIED. NOBODY. TALK. TO. ME.
thisoldguitardenver: Layla being the most beautiful woman on earth. No wonder that she is married.
gretavanlayla: HOW LONG ARE THEY MARRIED?? THE BOYS KNEW AND KEPT IT A SECRET?? LAY IS 22 AND JAKE 25 AND THEY ARE MARRIED!!!!!
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