#not sure if this is being talked about elsewhere bc i really only use tumblr but I haven't seen anyone saying anything here

[stan-joe]

pspsps link click fans these are two different cars (and probably two different road trips):

First car ↑

Recent car ↓

#also very different backgrounds between the two sets #not sure if this is being talked about elsewhere bc i really only use tumblr but I haven't seen anyone saying anything here #thought i'd make a note of it #link click #the 2023 art with CXS leaning on the yellow car is also a different car but it's more detailed so idk maybe it's also meant to be car 1 #similar looking to a point but definitely different cars #but what do i know #could i ID these cars? probably. but im bad at IDing drawn cars. show me a live action car and i gotchu. once it's stylised im out. #btw does anyone think the recent car shots look distinctly different (in terms of composition/framing) than the typical style #distinctly might not be the right word there. there's just something about them that vibes different. it's 1am i don't wanna think about it

[more-cptham]

what has happened to the woso fandom??

so i leave the woso fandom for a year during a pandemic and have come back to find a lot of drama, conflict, performative activism, and toxicity in it since i’ve returned. idk how y’all got to this point, but it saddens me after everything else we’ve all had to deal w/ this past year.

there have been so many ridiculous judgments i’ve seen about players, but one i really couldn’t believe and hit home for me bc i’m in a similar situation is that i found out some of y’all are bashing alex for having a parent that’s a trump supporter and saying that means alex supports trump when she’s CLEARLY spoken out against him and doesn’t support?!?!? I—

what is wrong w/ y’all?? when did this fandom become so childish?? grown adults can’t help what their parents support!! like i said, i’m in the same situation as alex w/ being grown but having parents who supported trump and it has torn our family apart over the 4 years he was in office bc of the amount of fighting and arguing me and my sisters did w/ them over it. i’m sure many other people can relate to this in their own lives as well. i know alex is flawed and agree she gets overhyped but this kind of shit about saying she’s a trump supporter when she’s clearly not is just bullshit. why spread lies and falsities and create drama when it literally helps no one?!? you claim to care about blm or players of color but waste your time w/ this bullshit?? THAT HELPS NO ONE!!

the world has been to hell and back in the past year and i was hoping to come back to the uswnt fandom on tumblr and find some joy like i used to, only to find the opposite. haven’t y’all had enough of that after these 4 horrible years with trump?? and a literal year from hell w/ this pandemic and election and every insane thing that has happened??

it’s good to hold people accountable for their actions and i get some people have said problematic things and it’s valid people are upset or want to write them off. but we don’t know what goes on behind the scenes or in players’ personal lives to be making up such extreme statements or judgments about some players like i’ve seen on here. even if i do agree there are certain players who’s words against blm or the anthem protest DO rightfully deserve judgment....some of you are really REACHING w/ the stuff you say about other players. ofc we should critique and hold accountable people w/ big platforms but a lot of what i’m seeing on here now is performative activism, and people wanting to see players do THAT above all else which is just mind boggling to me bc performative activism helps no one!

it also grosses me out how some of y’all have decided to use the whole anthem situation and the very serious BLM movement as part of anti behavior and fandom wars when once again that does absolutely NOTHING to actually help BLM or poc. it’s performative activism at best and toxic fandom behavior and trivialization of racism at worst. black trauma should not be used as fandom fuel or fodder. like y’all should be ashamed of participating in that instead of amplifying BIPOC voices and finding ways to support the movement in the real world.

ofc people have a right to their opinion, but maybe just ask yourself if what you’re doing w/ picking apart every little action the uswnt players do, and over involving yourself in it as if you personally know these people, is something that actually helps blm and poc or not. OR if your efforts to “help” could be better spent elsewhere besides trash talking uswnt members and their actions on tumblr???

anyway, i’m very over “stanning” and idolizing people and players, but these are some of my thoughts on the matter and idk if this will get me hate or not but i felt it needed to be said.

#uswnt #alex morgan #tobin heath #christen press #woso #crystal dunn

[witchsickness]

different anon but i just wanna say i’ve been missing you’re writing so much!!! and not to discredit your feeling at all bc it must be disappointing to not get as much interaction as you were hoping for/used to get but i think maybe it’s also kinda a self-fulfilling prophecy or vicious circle where it feels like people aren’t interested so you post less which equals less interaction which just confirms what you already thought? Idk and I don’t just mean you I mean writers/artists in general! tldr i just wanted to pop by and i will read anything and everything you choose to share with us 💕

babe hi first of all thank you? so much for taking the time to send such a thoughtful message. i can’t even begin to explain how much i appreciate it. it feels really really really good to hear people have been missing my stuff and would be into more, like. can’t even tell you. it’s so freakin encouraging. makes me wanna maybe try putting my stories out there again <3

tbh i do think lack of interaction and validation is a problem lots of writers come across? like, not even just in this fandom. fanfiction, out of all forms of fan-made content, is the most time-consuming and not always easy to get into. which is totally understandable! nobody has enough free time to dive into 12-chapter saga-length stories every night after they’re done with real life stuff, like. i totally get that. it’s way easier to interact with fanart, and edits, and bite-length headcannons on a day-to-day basis and save long fics for when you have lots of time to spare. unfortunately, that automatically narrows the field for writers, whose reach is very limited to begin with

now, i’ve never tried writing for another fandom regularly, so i’m not familiar with how things work elsewhere, but harringrove is a small fandom, which means that most people active either on tumblr and/or twitter know one another, and promote each other’s work. which isn’t a bad thing by itself! the problem begins when the only works getting any attention are the products of The Fandom Famous and their mutuals. again, i can only speak for the writing section of this fandom, but i’ve been here long enough to see how things work, and it’s. not good. writers who consciously choose or don’t have the energy to be active on platforms like tumblr on a daily basis and only post their stories on ao3 will mostly never get any fandom recognition, even though their stuff might be pure gold. the reality is that, unless you’re willing to be here and constantly remind people you exist, writers tend to get ignored and forgotten

which is! super discouraging, given the time poured into composing a story, no matter the length. writers shouldn’t feel obligated to produce something on a daily or weekly basis to prove their worth, and they definitely shouldn’t have to beg for scraps of validation and encouragement. after a while, watching the same people get all the attention and praise over and over gets disheartening, and i’ve heard people deciding to give up before. which is awful, especially in a fandom this size, already running out of canon content for their characters

i’ve never been an active member of this fandom, and i’m pretty sure a lot of people will disagree with the way i view things, bc their fandom experience is totally different, and they personally feel safe to share their stuff, and, like, i hope so? i hope only a small portion of creators can relate, and most people have never felt this way. it’s been more than two years since we got any new st content, so it’s not a reach to presume that people have generally lost interest in the show, and the ships born from it, too. that’s definitely a major reason for this decrease in interest and interaction lately. but also, like, i genuinely believe that, fundamentally, the fandom’s algorithm for promoting content is skewed, and ends up being harmful for lesser known creators who are so enthusiastically willing to share their stuff, but ultimately feel it might be pointless

anyway i could probably go on but i already wrote a whole-ass essay you absolutely did Not sign up for alksnflasalsfj;sa i just? can’t thank you enough? hearing you say you’d be willing to read more of my stories means more than i could ever explain, and i’m super super grateful you shared your thoughts with me and gave me the space to talk about stuff i’ve had on my mind for A While. ‘i will read anything and everything you choose to share with us’ this made me cry, so now i, like, have to kill you, you understand. it is how it is 

#kinda wanna put this in the tag in case someone might be interested but im also not looking for a fight so. eh #anon youre a literal sweetheart and so considerate and kind and im? so grateful for this ask 🖤 #hope i did it justice and. jsyk you gave me like the biggest motivation to keep posting ty ty ❤️ #fandom stuff #ask #anon

[peculiar-shardscape]

Yo,,, could I get some info on your OCs? They look really interesting,,,

I saw the most liked post that had Ribbon in it and got interested,,,

Normally I’d ask to clarify what OCs because I have a good billion of them hidden somewhere but since you mentioned the post w Ribbon in it, I’ll be happy to talk ab my Multiversal Destruction OCs! Unfortunately i have too many of those so I’ll shorten it down to some specific OCs

Multiversal Destruction actually originated from past dramatic events that my friends and I took part in, one which was j*k3rp (triggering to most of us) and tcoop (The Corruption of Overpower) which is where MOST events originated from!

In a nutshell, a million years ago, species were at peace and then some God screwed with an Admin which then caused the start of racism and war! Shit went down yadda yadda, now some descendant of the lead Admins who is actually half Admin (SUPER RARE btw) and half Glitch is suffering his ass out because his entire admin side of the family are so dramatic and depressing!

Our roleplays haven’t been occurring for an incredibly long time but I hope it will someday, because I miss these idiots a lot! Currently my qpp Acurza has been working on our rp server and we are w Borelle and Florinaelle to do the roleplay! I’m not sure if others are joining bc we used to do the roleplays on Tumblr and not on discord lol (we’re not using tumblr bc it was VERY problematic at the time and we want no more remembrance of j*k3rp ever happening)

I’ll talk about my Half Glitch OCs since those are what Ribbon is! Usually it is Very well known that Glitches don’t ever have parents. They just spawn into existence, usually by mistakes and such. Half Glitches fuck with this rule by having a glitch parent and a parent of another species! Kevin(borelle’s glitch/admin oc with a problematic family) was assumed to be the only half glitch out there, but god damb that’s so wrong! There’s a team of uh.,? I forgor how many.., there’s a team of half glitches, also known as the MG-Switch (Mixed Glitch-Switch)!

Ribbon is a half Ribbon Demon! She was the leader of the MG-Switch after meeting two other half Glitches, Tide and Cider, who are Shadow siblings! Ribbon was an orphan for her whole life, but Tide and Cider were adopted by other Shadows who then adopted Ribbon! After a while, Ribbon was very indulged with the fact there could be more half Glitches out there and wanted to bring Tide and Cider along on the adventure!

Cider seemed excited, but Tide, not too much. Tide was always afraid of what could ever happen to Cider, and being the older brother, really wanted him not to be involved with anything dangerous, since in their era, Glitches are hunted down by Admins. Not too long later, they met a short piece of shit half Demon, Visor, also a half Glitch! Tide Hates Visor, but who’s there to please?

Ribbon had a diary on her for a long time and thought it’d be great to let the others take a look at it. They decided the book will be of them and their adventures as being half Glitches. Tide was okay with this, but wanted Visor to NOT have their hands on the book. Ribbon didn’t really know what to do there but wanted to always include her regardless. Cider couldn’t read and never got a hold of the book, but Tide wrote some small things about him in his entries

The real adventures started when Krylo had ran right into them while in the middle of running away from Glitch hunters. Krylo Never mentioned his other half and refuses to do so, so Ribbon never knew much of his backstory, but did end up developing a crush on him as they got to know each other better. With that, they all decided to be a group and wander around in hopes of finding others.

Then we got Korero, a half Angel. She sucks and is pretty much the stupider version of Visor. And that’s saying a lot since Visor is also very stupid. Cider was placed as 6th even though he had joined a long while ago. Next, Limbo, Bubbles, Silly and Naryx! Naryx is very important btw. Limbo I haven’t decided a species on yet, Bubbles is a half Point, Silly is a half Baxtrious (I THINK???? I FORGOR) and Naryx is a half Narrator :)

I haven’t put detail in much of these ones, but Naryx, uohoh… =) Naryx and Aaron O Nare are sibling in an AU I have (the one where Aaron is fucked up and Evil) and Naryx had gone missing ages ago. Turns out he was stuck with the MG-Switch before ending up leaving and wandering off elsewhere. Fun!

But yeah Naryx is pog and my friends love him lots hehe

I’ll probably ramble more ab these dudes lol

#pinty prints #pinty rambles #longpost #multiversal destruction #md #mg switch #ocs

[lilolilyr]

Fics I Wanted To Write This Year But Didn't, Part 2: Star Trek AU

For @spookyvoidangelskeleton for this ask

Now I suppose these would have been several fics, but in a series or a collection as they're all about the same main storyline: The collapsing of a (or several) universe(s).

If you've known me for a while, you know that I am very into Multiverse Theory, both real life and fictional, and Star Trek with the Mirror Universe is of course one of the first fandoms that comes to mind for me to write my batshit ideas in xD

Basically, in my personal little (fictional, bc I know and understand 0 about real life physics or whatever would be relevant for this) multiverse theory, there are an infinite number of universes, evenly spread around the multiverse, and a new universe comes into existence when a timeline/universe (same thing) can go into 2 seperate ways naturally, or when there is timetravel involved to manually change a timeline: The original timeline won't be affected, you can't change what's already there, but a new changed timeline will be created.

Now, in some cases that works out well, with the timetraveller ending up in the new timeline and never knowing that their original universe is still out there- in other ways of time travelling, not so much. If the person trying to make a change manages to do just that but never notices, because they or a version of them is stuck in the orginal timeline, what do they do?

Try again, with the same result, many many times.

And that's where it gets problematic, because the multiverse gets unbalanced, and whether you see it as a sentient entity connected to the Qs in Star Trek or just as something that Works That Way automatically: the multiverse doesn't want to be out of balance, so the new universes start to collapse in on each other, creating a Splitter-verse and leaving its inhabitants to a fate arguably worse than death (in this fictional world): they completely stop to exist. This doesn't just affect the new universes but the surroundings ones, which would have split earlier and are already more different from each other, too, to make sure the one that was the cause for it all falls, too.

Now (of course, because I can't help myself) this would be part of @thelucyverse , with there being Central people trained in spotting such time anomalies before it is too late, but with there also being time-bombs (yeah hahah) created in inter-universal wars to create smaller, controlled splitter-verses (I say small and controlled here but like. We're still talking about entire universes), and with Central having back-up plans to get people out of the 'verses, in order as follows: anyone visibly IDing as Central (the organisation is still largely volunteer-based, shit's got to have some perks), then everyone whose energy indicates recent travel in-between universes, as these are also most likely to a) be Central and b) be okay in a new 'verse, after that, if there is still time and anyone willing to go back into the falling universe, children as they are also more likely to adapt in a new world. If there is enough warning, they also get out whoever people Central members want to have saved, but usually it just turns into whoever stands close enough to grab and get the hell out of there.

Whether taking people out of a universe against their will is a good thing or nah is ...debatable and still being debated amongst those who do it and those who think that taking someone away from the possibility of dying death in their own universe is vile (as amongst most religions, it is thought that you can only reach the same afterlife as those who died in the same umiverse- but again most also think that there probably won't even Be an afterlife in a splitter-verse).

Sometimes, people are also pushed out of the universe by the explosion itself, but they then tend to die upon impact as they seldomly end up exactly at the coordinates where they left, which leaves them either suffocating in hard matter or in space.

If you want to use these ideas for your own fanfic feel free, just give me credit and link this post as inspired by/ link to my ao3 or @ my tumblr!

Anyhow! To Star Trek... and I suppose this is now SPOILERS not rly for any Star Trek canon but for these fanfics, if I do end up writing them!

I tend to forget which characters are canon and which are complete OCs because I spend Way more hours on tumblr and ao3 + thinking about my own headcanons than I spend consuming the original media, but I am fairly certain a canon Joana McCoy, daughter of Leonard 'Bones' McCoy exists? If no and I stole the idea from sb else's fanfic I am sincerely sorry. Gotta look that up.

In one universe close to what would be the centre of the splitterverse, Joana- as a young child nicknamed 'Jojo', but now as a young teen trying to get rid of the childish nickname- has a younger part-vulcan girl as a friend, and this girl, nicknamed Aka, has, through having sticky fingers and connections to Central, a device that allows you to jump between universes. She's used it before and gotten into a lot of trouble for it, but to her it had always been great fun- until reality is starting to collapse around them while she is visiting Joana, and Joana is the only person she can reach in time and take with her to the next universe.

Distraught, the children are left in a new world, debating what to do, waiting for Central to contact them, hoping that they saved their families- but of course, Central has quite some different problems right now and won't contact them any time soon, and even if they did it wouldn't be with news of their parents: the adult families of non-Central members who only happened to have jumped between universes before themselves are really not the top priority, and the universe is collapsing too quickly to even get down the prio list to 'children',

Aka wants to leave the universe again and look for Central elsewhere, hoping that her moving around will attract their attention. Joana has enough from universe jumps for a lifetime. Thus, they part ways.

While Aka at some point does run into a group of Central troubeshooters who more or less adopt her as one of their own and teach her how to work their equipment and use magic and weapons and starships (not what a child her age should be learning. But then, none of the adults there ever signed up to be a parent, so who's to blame them), Joana goes looking for her family in this world.

Now I could write entire novels about Akas adventures and how it may or may not be healthy to not have a home at all and decide to not rely on anybody instead of either finding new versions of her original parents or letting someone new into her life properly (spoileralert: it isn't healthy at all), and how meeting a girl from one of the original splitter-verses (the not bombed ones) telling her not to make the same mistakes she made finally makes her think about her choices and and and, but this post is already going to be Long so I won't. That would all be a seperate fanfic anyways.

Joana finds a girl her age who looks just like her and acts almost exactly like her, too- the only difference seems to be that there's no Aka around, which made this version of her less used to adventure but also less wary of it.

The version of Joana from this universe- she decides to call herself Joan when they are alone, while the Joana we already know goes with 'Jojo'- her once loathed childhood nickname now a connection to her past- is thrilled to meet her and begs her to stay, I mean what is cooler than suddenly having a twin, and won't it be fun there is so much they can do! As their parents are seperated, they manage to spend their time mostly at one of their homes, either together when the parent is too busy to notice that there are two kids around, or one at each place, guessing correctly that if the parents were to talk about it, they wouldn't even think of the possibility of there being two children and instead just get mad at each other.

This goes on for a few months during the summer, with Jojo feeling vaguely guilty both to her original dead parents and these new ones who think that she is their real daughter, and the girls are just deciding about what to do when school starts again when-

Reality breaks apart around them.

Jojo clings to Joan in fear, and- as Jojo is now on the list of people who have travelled between universes in the past, she is saved by Central, and Joan with her. They are placed into a universe further away this time, a safe distance to the only slowly contained Splitters.

Meanwhile, in the same universe, two people were currently out on a space-walk: Michael Burnham and Philippa Georgiou.

They are thrown out of the universe in the explosion, and as they are wearing their suits, they survive as they end up somewhere in space again, but- they don't end up in the same universe. Michael ends up about 20-30 years earlier in a universe further away, and she doesn't even end up in what would've been federation space in her old 'verse. Philippa is only thrown one universe to the left and picked up by Central. As Central likes to name their acquaintances in some way that makes it easier to identify just which version of a person you are talking to without having to add the long universe number (even harder when the universe was destroyed and there isn't a known number), they ask Philippa to pick a new name. She is way too rattled and desperate to go looking for Michael as quickly as possible to care about what name she is supposed to have, so she goes with the first option given to those who don't have their own nickname ideas: lastname for firstname, making her Georgiana, short Gia.

Through Central, she finds out that the universal explosion left her and Michael connected- but it won't be much help in the search, basically just a way to say 'alright this verse is closer to it than that one', it's still trial and error... (I could also involve some body switching here, idk I already wrote a long fanfic with that trope in the Andromaquynh fandom, but I happen to Like that trope so yeah maybe I'll recycle some parts of In Your Stead if I ever do manage to write this Milippa story. Which, btw, if not already obvious, would again be a seperate fic from the Joana universal-sister story. On the other hand, Aka runs into Georgiana a lot, even calling her 'auntie Gia').

Meanwhile, Michael doesn't have to jump through universes but make her way through just the one universe to get to federarion space. Except what she find's isn't the federation at all... you guessed it, the 'verse she ended up in is more similar to a mirrorverse than to Prime. However, the Georgiou of this world isn't the emperor yet, she's young and Michael is able to influence her enough over the years so that she turns her back to the Empire.

Yes, it takes years for Michael and Gia to find their way back to each other, maybe decades... they also wouldn't have spent exactly the same amount of time apart as they aren't in the same 'verse. In fact, Cleo of Central carefully tells Gia that Michael might have died by now, but of course Georgiana doesn't want to hear this.

Michael and that universe's Georgiou also get quite close, though Michael doesn't want to cheat on her Philippa... of course, after years of this, she might think that she will never see Philippa again... (We are approaching ot3 territory here lol, and I don't even want to think about the potential of ot7 with the two canon mirror and prime versions adsfghjkl because if I finish this story here, I would 100% write a lil fix it where Central! Gia Mikay and Phil go fish Mirror! Michael and Georgiou out of a splitter-verse into the next prime verse in which Michael already knows that Georgiou... and ad they're already at it they also get half dead! Prime Philippa away from the Klingons... heheh sounds like the kind of poly chaos I would enjoy writing, but sadly I have to make it through all the Plot first)

Anyway! Back to Jojo and Joan: they decide that while they maybe should have told Joan's family about Jojo's existence soon if they had stayed in that 'verse, the initial idea of staying with one's universals wasn't so bad, so they go looking for this universe's Joana McCoy. The girl- (nicknamed Anna, which makes Joan decide to change hers from Joan to June because she doesn't want to be half Jojo and half Anna), is happy enough to meet them, but often feels left out from the other two as they act as if they've known each other forever even though of course it's only been a few months... In turn, Jojo and June aren't sure whether Anna really wants them around, whether she might think they're trying to steal her life and family from her...

Lots of potential for conflict! Yay! XD would of course come to a happy ending, with at least Bones accepting his three daughters, dunno yet whether they'd tell the mom... also Aka ends up in the same universe at some point, together with a version of her vulcan birthmother who she had never known the original version of but now gets along with alright... oh and if I do write aforementioned Milippa ot7 bullshitery, this would also be the Prime!verse for that, so all stories in the series or collection interconnect again!

this got... long... and I could obviously go on but I need to go back to writing my Bachelor thesis :(

@whoever read through all of this, do let me know whether you like these ideas and which you would like to read proper fanfic for! Might influence future writing decisions.

#fanfic idea #lverse #thelucyverse #star trek #joana mccoy #joanna mccoy #jojo june anna #milippa #georgiana #x #lilo writes #lilo rambles #answered #spookyvoidangelskeleton #my post #mine #multiverse #dec'20 #22.12.20 #my milippa

[joshler]

regarding my last post

tw// topics relate to suicide/suicide prevention, racism, and bullying

before i get put on blast for “being white” or whatever the replies have accused me of: no, i’m actually a queer asian poc! my dad is a chinese immigrant from hong kong and my mom is cambodian who immigrated to america from vietnam during the vietnam war. i support blm 1000% bc i feel that as a fellow minority, we are on the same team. we’ve felt oppression, in different degrees, yes, but oppression nonetheless. i wanted to clear the air in regards to myself personally because the things aimed at me in the replies of my last post were insensitive and ignorant when you do not personally know me.

i would like to say i’m more of an update page at this point for TWENTY ONE PILOTS. i’m not here to get political, but i do want to say some things in regard to yesterday’s twitter incident with tyler joseph. first of all, YIKES. the joke was distasteful and the entire “thread” on everything he made yesterday had the worse timing in the history of ever. the platform “joke” was in regards to everybody pressuring for him to say something on current events such as blm, lebanon, etc. those things are very important and i have already done many things on my part to support blm and lebanon including donations, signing petitions, and posting on my main social media accounts (i’ve really ghosted tumblr) with ways others can help. i put links to resources, petitions, and places to donate among other helpful sites. the way tyler handled things yesterday was really idiotic on his part. with that dumb joke, he could have immediately linked blm and apologized right afterwards which is what should have been done. instead, he moved on into a tangent regarding mental health and suicide awareness. i understand what he was trying to say, but in the heat of the political movement RIGHT NOW, shifting the conversation to mental health while it should have been about blm was a terrible choice on his part. even if he connected how mental health and blm tied in together, it would have been great for what he was trying to say.

WHAT HE MEANT for all of the sjws jumping on this bc “a white man is being racist and using his privilege”: september is suicide prevention month. tyler’s intensions with the platform tweet was to make fun of everyone mass tweeting him for the past few months (you cannot make people do things). he was NOT mocking blm or any political movement. that platform joke was supposed to lead into talking about mental health. for anyone who doesn’t know, tyler is a very meticulous person. there’s no doubt he’s planned talking about this stuff for a long time. the fucking band’s moto is “stay alive” so of course mental health is a huge part of twenty one pilots culture, and tyler would want to talk about it. at the same time, that doesn’t mean i’m at all excusing him for not immediately speaking on behalf of blm in yesterday’s tweets. once he saw that what he was saying was not received as he thought it would be, tyler apologized for hurting anyone and sent out the links.

this is not the first time he has talked about blm either (as seen above). his band mate (josh) and wife (jenna) have spoken on behalf of blm as well. debby ryan (josh’s wife) has been the most vocal in regards to everything going on right now. for you strangers out there to jump on here and to call him this and that is doing nothing but spreading negativity. you are wasting your own time. instead of badgering people, how about taking your business elsewhere or at least trying to educate others. do not come onto my replies just to make trouble. as fans, you can’t just say “we don’t personally know them” while you know even less than we do since you just popped in when shit hit the fan for them and they turned “problematic.” tyler did what was right at the end of the day. i am not praising him at all, but he has at least apologized and learned his lesson.

in regards to them being rich and not donating: nobody knows what they’ve done behind the scenes. i personally donated to many blm funds and to the red cross in lebanon, and nobody knows that until now! just because you donate does not mean you are obligated to publicly blast that for everybody to know. your money is going to a cause that you support, and that should only really matter to you. celebrities are no exception to that idea.

fun fact: tyler has a niece named mercy on his wife’s side! she is black and tyler and his wife are extremely close to her and her family. to come out of no where just to call him racist and all that when you in fact don’t know a thing about him besides some surface tweets is uncalled for. in regards to being silent on the crisis in lebanon, tyler is part lebanese! without a doubt, he’s donated to some sort of lebanon aid fund. but again, we will never know.

for those of you upset about the platforms: dollskill isn’t the only site that sells those boots! dollskill is certainly the most popular brand the shoes are on, but if you look them up, the platforms pop up else where as well. to blatantly say “oh he supports dollskill so he’s racist/homophobic/supports the police/all the shit that company stands for” is just as ignorant as you think he is!  dollskill as a company is complete shit. i don’t support them at all. many people think they’re from dollskill mainly because of this one instagram page that’s all about finding the exact/similar clothing to what tyler/josh/jenna/debby have worn, but we cannot be 100% sure that they were purchased from dollskill. that shit company steals from other smaller artists/designers, remember? (that same instagram account reuploaded a link to a different store who is selling them, as found here)

if you still have beef with tyler and what he said, there’s really no point in bickering just to call complete strangers “stupid” or “clowns” or just really hurtful names! you are screaming into an abyss and hurting others at the same time. there is a fine line between straight up bullying and educating others on bettering their understanding with what is currently going on. my intensions behind the post was to show that he had become active again. we are a fandom, and i like to update my page when they post new pictures. that is simply what i did. i made THIS post to clear the air on what people were saying about ME. i deleted tumblr off my phone because what was being said was just belittling and i didn’t want to see that when this whole situation with what tyler did already made me upset. feel free to dm me if you would like to talk about anything. i would be happy to discuss any points that i’ve mentioned. i would much rather have a civil conversation than be picked on through replies and anonymous messages.

at the end of the day, not everyone can always have satisfied and that’s okay. if anything, this entire situation truly opened my eyes to that. hopefully you read through this whole thing before you put anything on blast again.

here’s this, too. they do care.

summary: sorry on behalf of tyler joseph. he needs to work on reading the room better.

#k talks

[homebody-nobody]

these skeletons got ways of coming out

k so I actually published this a few days ago but tumblr was being a butt so I couldn’t cross-post it til now anyway This is a Pope Heyward character study that ABSOLUTELY NO ONE ASKED FOR and I wrote anyway bc I needed to fix him before I could use him as a character in the rest of this series. If you disagree with the way that I've extrapolated very little data into detailed headcanons, I don't blame you but also just like read elsewhere

title from "Brother" by Kodaline ------ ao3 ------

And that -- the intersection of John B and Kiara -- the overlay of his two best friends in his heart -- that’s what scares him.

Pope realizes some things after the Phantom goes down. Things that change the way he lives his life ------

I used to be free Of any fear of emotion But these skeletons got ways of coming out I used to believe That someday you'd see That baby you got devotion in every little motion

And I won't see the storm When the rain's coming down Never let you go Never let you go Even when the madness has broken you apart Even when the madness has broken you apart

Objectively, Pope is not an idiot. He knows this. He gets good grades, and he knows more about computers and physics and a lot of other things than the rest of any of his friends. He’s a smart kid. Even though he skipped out on his scholarship interview and his grades took a very sudden dip at the end of last semester, he has a solid GPA, a fantastic ACT score, and a glittering array of colleges waiting for his application in the fall. He’s spent his entire life waiting for his chance to get out of the Cut and prove all of those motherfuckers on Figure Eight wrong. He has potential. So why, when it comes to the simplest of things, does he feel so lost?

He was sure he was in love with Kiara. Dead certain. Everything lines up. She’s kind and beautiful and intelligent, everything that matters. He feels comfortable around her, natural, like he doesn’t have to try to be funny or charming, like he’s not constantly afraid of fucking up. Everything he’s read about being in love, all the books and the articles -- it all follows. And it’s a good story, one other people will nod their heads and smile at, high school sweethearts, best friends who found solace in each other during the most difficult part of their young lives. But there’s something about it that still feels -- wrong. Uncomfortable. Like there’s the Pope that everyone else sees and then the Pope that he is, and the one in love with Kiara isn’t the same one who lays in his bed at night and stares at the ceiling fan begging for his brain to shut up.

It’s strange, to feel so separate from himself and the life he lives. He doesn’t think it’s normal. He wishes he could talk to his friends about it. It’s not like they’re dumb, the rest of the pogues. Well, not fundamentally so, anyway. John B and JJ definitely make interesting decisions sometimes. But they all inhabit their bodies without question, so sure in their skin and the feeling that they belong with each other. He slips in and out of that too readily to feel completely comfortable at every boneyard party and through every misinformed adventure. The ease is less a standard and more a pleasant surprise; there are some nights when his friends fall quiet around a bonfire and Pope realizes he can’t stop smiling, that he loves every single one of them with his whole heart and he knows they love him, too. And then he starts doubting himself, and gets nervous and quiet and weird again, and they all brush it off as Pope being Pope -- but he’s an outsider even in their little chosen family and that starts to chafe, after a while.

Honestly, he was doing a pretty excellent job of not thinking about it until John B died. Or disappeared. Or whatever you call it when your best friend goes out in an open boat in the middle of a storm and disappears off the radio and the capsized boat is found three days later with no sign of him or his kook girlfriend. Pope’s angry at him, for that. He also really, really hates Sarah, for driving him to make that choice. For her. If it was him, he would have made John B turn around. He should have tried to stop him in the first place. He shouldn’t have helped get him to the Phantom , shouldn’t have let him go.

He hasn’t been haunted by guilt like this since JJ took the blame for sinking the wakesetter, and, for some reason, this is worse. It chews at him, a constant gnawing in the center of his chest that leaves him empty and hurting every second, swallowed by a hunger consuming itself. He hasn’t stopped thinking about John B since that deadly, neverending moment of radio static. Memories flash on a constant film reel through his head. Surfing at Rixon’s, parties at the boneyard, bonfires at the chateau, afternoons on the HMS Pogue. All the moments this summer when John B smiled and Pope followed, unquestioning.

Surfing the surge. That was so beyond stupid, and Pope knew it, even before they got to the beach and saw the huge, angry waves. But John B asked, with that insane glint in his eye that he always got when he caught hold of an idea, unable to let it go, so Pope went. Someone had to keep him alive when Kie wasn’t around. And that -- the intersection of John B and Kiara -- the overlay of his two best friends in his heart -- that’s what scares him.

The whole summer, he’d watched them, first their strange tension with an undercurrent of possibility that tugged at his stomach and made him feel sick, and then their familiar platonic intimacy as they finally became comfortable in what they were to each other. Jealousy pinched and prodded at every moment of eye contact, every kiss on his cheek or lighthearted shove of her shoulder. And the way his heart soared at the salvage yard when John B told them she’d rejected him. That had to have meant something -- and what followed logic was that Pope was into Kie, and he wished himself in John B’s place.

Right?

The night the Phantom goes down, Pope thinks he’s the one who should be dead. His parents arrive to take him home, talking to him about how worried they were, how happy they are to see him safe, but his head is still full of that gut-wrenching radio static. He doesn’t hear anything they say as he watches red and blue lights dance across their faces. They pull him into a fierce hug, JJ tugged in next to him, and all he feels is hollow.

Every step he takes echoes off the side of the tunnel of his thoughts, black and void. He stays as still as he can, spread-eagle across his bed, still dressed, just to avoid the clanging of the empty air when he moves. The barest stimulation is too much, the dimmest light blinding. His chest feels like someone has reached in and turned his ribs inside out, split them with a chest-cracker and opened him up on a steel table. In the far, unexplored regions of his imagination, he can see his own autopsy, surgery performed on a perfectly silent boy, hands at his sides, eyes still open, heart still beating.

Night falls around him, from grey dusk to the unforgiving ink-black you can only get in power outages on a tiny island fighting to breathe through the salt marsh. The only thing that drives him from his bed is the urgent cry of his bladder, and it’s easier to get dressed for bed once he’s already moving across the floor. The floorboards creak under his feet and while he would normally walk lightly for fear of being hassled for waking the house the next morning, his steps are heavy and dragging. Staring at the counter, he reaches for his toothbrush and squeezes toothpaste out onto the worn bristles. He puts it in his mouth and looks up, making eye contact reflection for the first time.

You love him.  

The realization hits him as clearly as if someone had whispered directly in his ear. It’s like an icepick through the center of his exposed, defenseless heart. He lowers the toothbrush slowly, the silence of the house ringing in his ears like sirens. His breath quickens, his bare chest rising and falling as he backs away from the counter, fear and grief and disappointment and a thousand other things he can’t name swirling in him like the storm that ended life the way he knew it. The tears start, flowing down his face silently at first and then, as he loses all control of his breath and his hands find their way into his hair, accompanied by gut-wrenching, heartbreaking sobs, broken sounds of grief and loss in too many respects.

Heyward rushes down the hall, throwing the door open, fear for his son wild in his eyes. He finds Pope doubled over, hyperventilating, face a mess of snot and tears, eyes squeezed closed, as he shakes and sobs. After a moment in the door, he pushes in, pulling Pope into his chest, wrapping firm, solid arms built from hard work and weather-beaten skin around him. “It’s gonna be alright, kid,” he whispers as Pope shivers violently against him. “It’s gonna be alright.”

Pope doesn’t remember being folded into his bed, or how the glass of water and bottle of Advil ended up on his bedside table. He wakes up well into the afternoon, the room heavy and sticky with the day’s heat, the air conditioning rendered useless with the lack of electricity. The golden light fools him into a pleasant kind of ignorance for half a moment before the reality of the previous night crashes over him ,and suddenly the comfy nest of his bed feels like a prison, sucking him down like quicksand into the mattress. He puts his hands over his face, pressing fingertips into aching eyes, trying to keep himself calm by counting backwards from four hundred, a number with each breath. When he reaches three hundred and fifty four he feels like he might be able to move again, and he reaches for the water and gulps it down, a note stuck to the bottom fluttering to the floor.

He swings his legs out of bed to pick it up, recognizing his mother’s handwriting on the pink post-it note, smudged and running from the condensation. Breakfast in the fridge , it says, don’t worry about the store. Rest. We love you. It makes his skin itch, rather than being comforting. The storm in his head turns a tide toward guilt, like he’s keeping a secret that he just learned, himself. The bed calls, but he knows that if he collapses back into it he won’t move for the rest of the day, and that he should stand before he changes his mind. The ache in his belly forces him up, and he pads through the empty house, feeling halfway like a ghost. Eggs with peppers and cheese, sausage, and hashbrowns are on a covered plate in the fridge, and he unwraps it and puts it in the microwave, watching the food rotate as his mind comes to grips with consciousness.

He’s in love with John B. The boy that taught him how to play beer pong and smoke a bowl, the surfer that pushes him while they’re out on the water, daring him to bigger and bigger tricks, making him better. The idiot that chases gold and kook girls without a glance at impossibility, simply because he has no understanding of the idea. The John B that died last night.

The microwave beeps and he takes his food to the counter, hunched over it, twisting a fork between his fingers and feeling like his stomach might feel better on the outside of him. He takes a few bites, to see if maybe just the potatoes might go down easy, but they taste like ash, and he sits back from the plate, sore and exhausted. He wanders through the house and eventually back up to his room, standing in front of his closet, knowing he should get dressed but overwhelmed by even the simplest choice. Finally, he just pulls on a plain t-shirt over his basketball shorts, and, after catching a glimpse of his hair, puts a snapback on backwards. He doesn’t feel like sitting, so he doesn’t, tucking his keys in his pocket and sliding on a pair of flip flops, leaving the house without his phone or any sort of destination, just walking as his thoughts churn and crash over each other without being much of anything at all.

The heat sends sweat rolling down his temples and between his shoulder blades but he barely feels it, keeping his eyes on his feet as he shuffles down the side of the road. Normally, he’d be listening for any sound that might indicate Rafe or Topper coming up behind him, constantly judging the proximity of the cars, quietly bemoaning the blister forming under his left big toe from the strap of his sandal. But the only thing he senses is the slap of his shoes against the asphalt, carrying him aimlessly across the island.

His own denial fights vocally to be heard under the stifling realization, but it’s something he’s been pushing down for years, ignoring even as the obvious signs wiggled their way into his every day life, like the goosebumps at John B’s touch or the expansion of his chest when John B laughed. It was always there, waiting for him to see it, quietly growing and climbing its way like ivy from his heart to his head, finally bursting from underneath his skin at the worst possible moment.

He’s going to have to tell his dad. There won’t be any way to explain the grief crashing over him without the truth. That settles itself on his shoulders right next to the realization itself and everything else he’s been holding up for months. Knowing the name of it, at least, makes it easier to handle. He’s been carrying around his feelings for John B without knowing what they were, mis-assigning them to Kiara and fucking up what’s probably his favorite friendship. He’s gonna have to tell her, too. He’s not looking forward to that.

As he walks, it settles in, making a home along with all the other true things about him. Pope Heyward. Black. Sixteen years of age. Six feet tall. Pogue. And, he guesses, gay. Maybe bi. But probably gay. Looking back, no girl has ever made him feel the way that John B makes -- he swallows. Used to make him feel. With his stupid floppy hair and his kind brown eyes and that absurd jawline. Tears cloud his eyes and the path in front of him blurs. His best friend is dead . And it took that horrible, heart-shattering tragedy for him to figure out how he felt about him.

He keeps walking for a while, choking back tears and half-planning conversations with his parents and Kie, listening to the slap of his sandals on the cracked asphalt littered with long, dry pine needles and cracked seed pods, signalling the nearing end of summer. He feels, gratefully, a little more clear-headed, less freaked out than he thought he would be. He always feels better, having a plan, no matter how vague and ineffectual that plan may turn out to be.

After a while, he looks up, and finds himself in Figure Eight -- a very dangerous place to be, given the current social climate of the island -- not very far from Kie’s house. He heaves a sigh. Better now than later. Pausing before mounting the porch, Pope spares a second of a regret for his appearance. Kiara’s parents have never been keen on him or either of the other boys, and he knows that showing up in tattered shorts and flip flops won’t exactly help his case. Anna opens the door, looking surprised to see him, and Pope is momentarily relieved it isn’t Kie’s father.

“Good morning,” she says, wary.

“Hi,” Pope replies, lacking his usual magical parent-charming abilities, exhaustion and grief sapping the energy from his bones. There’s an awkward pause as Mrs. Carrera awaits the explanation of a rattily dressed pogue boy on her porch and Pope scrambles for one. He settles on the obvious. “Is Kie here?” He doesn’t know where else she’d be, honestly, but it’s the usual go-to for when they’re dragging Kie back to the Cut for nonsense and potential delinquency, and he’s hoping her mom won’t question it.

“She’s not,” Anna says, concern coloring her tone. “She isn’t with you?” Pope feels his eyebrows draw together, a betrayal of his own confusion, an immediate admittance of guilt.

“I, uh --” he says eloquently as panic overtakes Anna’s face. “I mean, she --” He’s saved by the girl herself riding down the sidewalk on a bike that looks like it’s seen better days, rattling loudly as she cruises toward the house. “There she is!” he says, with a disturbing amount of forced enthusiasm that puts the same expression on Kie and Anna’s faces. “So, we’re all good. Thanks, Mrs. C!”

But Anna isn’t gonna let her daughter slide so easily. “Kiara,” she says, “You weren’t in your room this morning.”

“I went for a bike ride,” Kie replies coldly. “I needed to think.”

“For three hours?” Anna asks, crossing her arms over her chest.

Kie shrugs. “I needed to think a lot.” Anna looks like she wants a little more information out of her daughter, but she looks at Pope, clearly reluctant to start a fight with him around. He feels caught, standing on the porch between mother and daughter, like he’s in a room with a half-constructed bomb. Kie’s hands fidget with the handlebars. “C’mon, Pope,” she says.

“No way,” Anna interjects. Kie opens her mouth like she wants to argue, but her mother’s words cut her off. “You two can hang out on the porch for a while, but when you’re done,” and here, she looks at Kiara like she might actually commit murder if her daughter doesn’t listen to her, “Come inside. We have a lot to talk about.”

Kie heaves a heavy breath. “Fine,” she says. Satisfied, Anna turns and goes inside. Pope drops off the porch and walks with Kie as she walks the bike over to the garage.

“Hey,” he says, his heart in his throat. This is a complete turnaround from the emptiness of earlier, every inch of him hyper aware of her body language, the changes in her expression and her attitude towards him. His entire life feels like a shipwreck, dashed against the rocks after careful years of building, after months of planning the perfect voyage. “Bike ride?” he asks, because he always knows when she’s lying.

She props her bike up against the side of the garage. “I was with JJ,” she blows out on a sigh. She doesn’t look at him as they walk around to the back porch. “At the Chateau.” Pulling her hair out of it’s ponytail, she splits it over her shoulders, fidgeting nervously with the ends. “I didn’t want him to be alone.”

He’s about to say that he was alone, that maybe he wanted to have his friends around him, too, but then he remembers his father catching him in the bathroom, waking up in his own bed, water and a note on the bedside table. JJ wouldn’t have gotten any of that. He can’t even go home, not after Luke Maybank finds out what happened to his precious Phantom . With John B -- gone -- JJ doesn’t have anyone left. Except for them. And Pope was too wrapped up in his own grief and bullshit to think about something like that. He takes a second to be grateful for Kiara.

They reach the steps to the Carrera’s back porch, and she sits down on the second-to-last one. “I have something to tell you,” she says, and she still won’t look at him. Half of him wonders what she’s upset about while the other hopes she can’t hear his heartbeat, it’s pounding so loud in his own ears.

Slowly, he sinks down next to her, the morning sun radiant across her skin, amplified by the reflection off the channel. He takes a deep breath. “I have something to tell you, too.” Her eyebrows draw together. He licks his lips. She pulls her knees up to her chest. He stares at his feet. They’re afraid of each other, and the awkward tension in the air makes him hate every wrong thing he said, every lie he told her, even though he believed them when he said it. She doesn’t say anything else, and he takes that as his cue to go first. He looks up, before he says anything, taking in her kind brown eyes, the soft lines of her kind, intelligent face. He wants one last picture of her before he changes everything. “I don’t love you,” he says.

Her face contorts in an expression of surprise and offense, and he rapidly backpedals. “I mean, I do.” he says. “Of course I do, but like, like a sister.”

“A sister,” she says incredulously, confusion rising in her eyes.

“Not -- Oh, fuck, that’s not --” He drops his head in his hands, his blood rushing so loudly in his ears he can’t hear himself think. “This is not going well.”

“No shit,” she says, but there’s a little bit of relief in her voice. This bumbling, tripping-over-his-words Pope makes a lot more sense than the one that lost his shit and nearly killed Rafe Cameron the previous day. (And God, was that only yesterday?) He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes, and she notices his breath start to quicken. “Pope?” she asks, leaning forward and putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Kie, I’m gay.” It falls out of his mouth like a boulder, hitting the ground and shaking the earth with its weight. It’s the first time he’s said it out loud, and it’s terrifying, to have it so concrete in front of him, no longer nebulous and trapped in his head. He can’t take it back, can’t lie about it anymore, to her or himself or anyone else. He has to live with that truth, now, no matter how he feels about it. Part of that, while intimidating, makes him feel just a little bit more free.

“Oh,” she says, and he’s too panicked to discern anything in her tone. “Okay.” He doesn’t want to look at her, doesn’t want to see the horror or anger or whatever else must be settling there.

He rushes to explain himself, like he didn’t hear. “I’m sorry that I thought I was in love with you,” he says, even as she feels a thousand worries slip from her shoulders like coming up from diving under a wave. “I just, I was jealous, and I thought that it was John B I was jealous of, but it wasn’t, it was you, and then he--” Pope blows by his name before he chokes on it, realizing what he’s said aloud, how dangerous and loaded a once-familiar thing has become. “It wasn’t him I was jealous of,” he repeats, lacing his fingers over the back of his head, dropping it to his chest. “It wasn’t him.” He squeezes his eyes shut, swallowing down the tears fighting their way up his throat.

Kie hesitates in reaching for him, but the moment her fingertips brush his shoulder, she falls against her best friend, wrapping her arms around him as best she can. “Oh, Pope,” she whispers, as tears well in her own eyes. “Oh Pope, I’m so sorry.” He falls into her embrace, all his anger and uncertainty dissipating like fog at dawn. They both cry for a while, her silently, him shaking. She does her best to comfort him, but his grief has taken on a different tone she can no longer imagine.

When his breath finally slows, he sits up out of her arms, wiping under his eyes. “You aren’t mad?” He asks, in true Pope fashion.

“Why would I be mad?” she asks, disbelief echoing in her words.

“Well, I was…” he sniffs, watching his hands fold over each other. “I was kind of a jerk about it.” He feels bad, about the way everything went down. He was drowning, in disappointment and confusion and a million other things he still doesn’t have words for that he wishes he could explain. He was an asshole to her when he should have listened and  

She knocks their shoulders together with half a sly smile. “Yeah, you kind of were.” It feels good to be joking with him like this again, after the last couple of days of chaos and anger and disappointment after disappointment. They’re best friends for a reason, her boys and her.

“And then --” he swallows, remembering the moments at the Dump after John B disappeared into the marsh, moments he still doesn’t understand. “Y-you kissed me, and --”

The smile falls off her face. “I shouldn’t have done that,” she says. She shifts her weight between her feet, her knees moving back and forth as they sit side by side on the porch steps, picking at her nails. “That wasn’t --” she looks at him, and he looks back. “I shouldn’t have done that.” She stretches her legs out in front of her, knocking her sneakers together, her hands dropping to her lap. “I have my own shit to figure out, Pope,” she says. “I shouldn’t have dragged you into it.”

Pope leans over, “You wanna talk about it?” he asks pointedly. He knows she likes to talk things through, make sense of them by pushing everything out into the atmosphere so she can see it all, pick out the pieces that make sense. He also doesn’t want to talk about him, anymore.

“No,” she says abruptly. He leans back into his own space, holding his hands up a little, and she bites her lip, like she does when she’s thinking too hard about what to say next. “I’m sorry,” she admits. “I just --” she knocks her feet together again before pulling them back up to the last step, her chin falling onto her knees. “I gotta think about it some more, I guess.” She looks at him, screwing up her face in that way that makes everyone agree that she’s adorable. “I’ve got some more I’ve gotta work out.”

“You know you can still talk to me, right?” he reassures her. He used to be the best listener, before he went and fucked everything up. Kie would talk to him about things John B and JJ would never understand, usually about parents or family pressure, things she felt guilty discussing with either one of their practically-orphaned friends. Pope understood, and it was easy to let Kie just let everything out, answering her own questions, defining problems and putting together solutions in the same breath. It’s part of the reason he assumed they would end up together, before -- well. Before. She trusted him, and he fucked that up, and now he can only hope that he can earn it back.

“I know,” she says, folding her arms on top of her knees and looking back out across the channel. “It’s not because of --” she stops, unsure of how to define it.

“Yeah,” he answers. He doesn’t want to talk about it either.

“It’s just --” she goes quiet for a second, picking through words like the wrong ones are rotten, and he watches her, the slight breeze off the water picking up strands of her hair. Her shoulder drops as she moves her head, and a few curls shift enough that he can see dark red marks tracking up the side of her neck. Hickies? “I don’t think I have words for it yet,” she says, finishing her sentence. JJ , he thinks, her confession about her absence this morning circling back through his mind. The word is JJ .

Pope isn’t blind. He sees the way JJ looks at her. He always has. It never unsettled him like the shared glances between Kie and John B, and now he knows why. It’s a little relieving, to not have to manufacture false jealousy in the pit of his stomach, to have to lie to himself in order to make his constructed, false worldview make sense. JJ and Kie -- they’re going to be something else to handle, with the inherent chaos of how they both handle their emotions and the forced bravado they both put on, but he supposes they were… inevitable, in a way. Kiara was misinterpreting her own feelings, just like he was, forcing herself to believe she loved someone who made more sense, someone that was easier to accept than confronting the truth. John B was his truth -- JJ is hers. He’s grateful, in a way, that they’ll have each other, through this -- once she gains the same clarity he’s come to.

“It’s okay,” he says, as everything slides into place. He’s not gonna rush this, not gonna make her take steps she’s not ready for. “You don’t have to talk about it if you’re not ready.” She smiles at him -- a weak thing, but genuine.

“Thanks, Pope,” she says.

He shrugs. “What are best friends for?” She drops her head against his shoulder, and for the first time since Shoupe confirmed their worst fears, he feels like things might, someday, be okay again.

They stay like that for a while, and then she asks him if he wants to talk more about it, and Pope recounts the moment of clarity in the bathroom, his thought process on his walk across the island. Kie listens, because he’s still her best friend, and it’s one of his favorite things about her, the way she makes it so easy to let everything out, the way she makes him feel seen. She doesn’t say much, but she doesn’t have to, because everything is still so fresh and bleeding that he doesn’t know what he wants to hear, yet. She reassures him she still loves him, that she’ll stick with him no matter what, just like she’s always promised to do, and that seems to do the trick.

Eventually, Mrs. Carrera comes out and offers to drive Pope home, a very pointed instruction to the both of them. She goes to get the car, leaving the two of them to say goodbye on the porch. Kie stands with her arms crossed over her stomach, like she’s holding herself together. “My parents are probably gonna have me on lockdown for a while,” she says, biting on the corner of her lip.  

“Mine too,” he answers, with some inkling of what she’s about to ask him.

“Do you think you could --” she starts, and she’s staring somewhere around his collarbones, because JJ means more to her now, and makes this request, somehow, different. “I mean, with service down, it’s gonna be hard to keep in touch and I just --” She sighs, frustrated with herself, that she can’t get the words out. “When his dad figures out what happened --”

Pope interrupts her this time, reaches a gentle hand out for her arm. “I’ll keep an eye on him,” he promises. “I’ll talk to my parents…” he says, automatically, his usual main resource for help or assistance, and pauses, remembering the note he left on with his father, how things might go without the overhang of a recent disaster. His parents. They’ll be out all day, at least, won’t know about his sojourn to Figure Eight. But they’ll be back, and he has a lot to face.

“Will you just make sure he’s safe?” she asks, small and scared, and, in true Kiara fashion, ashamed to be asking for help.

“Yeah,” he answers. He wraps her in a tight hug, grateful to have his friend back, to be centering somewhere at least slightly left of normal, to be spiralling down from the insane high of failure and the chaos of being half a fugitive. “Yeah, of course.”

Mrs. Carrera drives him home, and even though she tries to ask him how he’s holding up, he answers monosyllabically, avoiding small talk by staring out the window and doing his best to stave off the encroaching panic as he anticipates the upcoming conversation with his father. Anna watches him carefully, and he can feel her eyes on him. It makes him uneasy.

Watching Figure Eight slowly melt into subdivisions and condominiums and then, as houses get smaller and the weeds get wilder, into the Cut. In a matter of minutes, fantastic wealth descends into abject struggle and poverty, a jarring display of privilege and elitism that Pope and the others are no longer shocked by. They grew up in it, cut down over and over again by a system that simply wasn’t built for them, grew up before their time because the kooks never will, abdicating responsibility and ignoring the fallout. Pope’s thoughts wander to Topper’s wakesetter, bile rising in his throat. His impulsive mistake ruined JJ’s life at sixteen, and the Thorntons, well. They’ll just buy another boat.

When they reach the Heywards’, Anna cuts the engine, and Pope doesn’t move, staring at his family’s little house, shabby but well-kept, his mother’s vegetable garden in full swing, bursting with a physical manifestation of love and care in an explosion of green leaves and colorful fruits and vegetables. He thinks about the Carrera’s neatly kept lawn, the decorative plants placed carefully on their wraparound porch, the contrast between the two images. Chaos and love, wealth and precision.

“I love your mother’s garden,” Anna says, almost like she doesn’t mean to. “I wish she’d tell me her secret.”

You can’t have it , Pope thinks, selfishly. He wants this one thing, for his mother, for his family. Instead, he answers; “I wouldn’t know.” This, he realizes, is unfortunately true. When was the last time he helped his mother with her garden? Asked her what she wanted to do on a Saturday? He helps with the store, of course, but in that, he doesn’t have a choice. He’s spent so much time chasing John B, first his promise of adventure, and then his approval, and then, desperate to help him in his hour of need. When was the last time he helped with the yard work? Helped make dinner? Stayed in on a Friday night?

His parents love him violently, work hard to give him opportunities they never had. His father breaks his back, works the store, the delivery service, any hard labor job he can get, used to being a tool, something to be taken advantage of, a means to an end. He does it so Pope can go to school, have a laptop to do homework and apply for colleges on, have a phone to text his friends and stay in contact with his parents. His throat thickens with the realization that his father was right -- he has been ungrateful. He’s been disrespectful, and rude, and if it was him, he wouldn’t even let himself back into the house, much less comfort him, leave him breakfast and reassuring notes.

Anna takes the emotion in his eyes for something else, and she puts a hand on his shoulder that feels so distinctly different from Kiara’s that it’s fundamentally wrong, and he freezes under her touch. “I know this is hard,” she says, in a tone that tries for concerned mom and lands somewhere closer to patronizing school counselor. “But you’ll get through it. You have each other, and that’s the most important part.”

“Thanks,” he says coldly, reaching for the door handle before climbing quickly out of the car. When his feet hit the packed-dirt drive, he stops, feeling like an asshole. “And thank you. For the ride.” He goes to shut the door, but she interrupts him.

“Pope,” she says, and he looks up at her, making eye contact for the first time since he got in the car. “If you -- or your family -- needs anything…” She bites her lip the same way Kie does. “Just, don’t hesitate to ask.” Pope usually rankles under the suggestion of charity, pride bred into him alongside a stubborn willfulness that rivals even his father’s, but she knows life in the Cut, has faced the same things he and his family deal with every day. It’s an odd juxtaposition, her inherent compassion and her dislike of her daughter’s friends. It’s what, at the end of the day, separates her eternally from Kie.

“Yeah,” he answers. “Of course. Thanks, Ms. Anna.”

When he reaches the door, he hears tires twist in the dirt, and Anna Carrera drives away, back to her house, her daughter, her life on Figure Eight. Pope lets himself in, showers off the sweat from his trek to Kie’s, and sets about cleaning the house, both as a distraction and a desperate appeal for his parents’ forgiveness. The whole afternoon, he rehearses a million different versions of the same speech, apologies and admittances, going back and forth about copping to the sinking of Topper’s boat, afraid of his father’s wrath and the legal consequences, but still guilty and anxious to the point of nausea over it, desperate to do the right thing.

Pope was raised with a strong sense of right and wrong, a deep and little-discussed Catholic faith, and a strong sense of familial pride. What Heywards are and aren’t, what they do and don’t do -- it was all drilled into him from a young age. Heywards pay their debts. Heywards don’t complain, don’t argue, don’t talk back. Heywards work hard. Heywards work honest.

Heywards aren’t gay.

It was never said, but Pope knows his dad. He knows what counts as acceptable behavior, the future his father imagines for him. A college degree, a Good Job, a house, a wife, kids -- he knows what’s expected. He tries to wrestle with the disappointment that he’ll never own up to that image as he scrubs the stove, tears welling up as he works at a particularly stubborn grease stain. He’s already disappointed them so much, just in the past few days. What will they say? What will they think of him?

He knows he’s lucky, as a kid in the Cut with both parents still around, still willing to work, still willing to love him. There are too many kids like John B and JJ, left behind, ignored and neglected, the victims of vicious cycles and cruel tragedies. Pope still has a whole family, as small and broken as it may be. He should start acting like it.

He’s just finished dusting the living room when he hears tires in the driveway, the rattling engine of his father’s old pickup, and he freezes like a prey animal caught in an open plain. They’re home. His mother makes quiet comments on the improved state of the house as they toss keys in bowls and remove shoes, speaking calmly to each other, the soft noises of domesticity and routine. Routine he is about to monumentally disrupt, more than he ever has.

Pope has a speech planned. He has things he wants to say, sentences he needs them to hear in the same way he has them planned. Everything needs to follow the course he’s laid out, or it could be open to misinterpretation. He’s prepared. That’s what he does -- he plans, he structures, he researches and prepares. All of that disintegrates the moment his father walks into the living room.

“Pope,” he says. “You cleaned.”

“Dad, I’m sorry,” Pope says, and the words choke him, tears welling and spilling in the same instant, like a faucet turning on after winter. He tells him everything, about Topper’s wakesetter and the failed treasure hunt and the impossible hope that drew him from his scholarship interview, the desperation and the certainty that he was following, determined to be the final piece of the puzzle, the thing that saved his friends. He begs for forgiveness, crying and broken, looking for himself in his fathers eyes. Heyward doesn’t say anything for a long time, soaking in the information. His wife is struck dumb, at Pope’s heart breaks with the horror in his mother’s eyes, at his admittances of all he’s done.

“Please,” Pope begs. “Say something.”

The silence that hangs in the living room feels like a gun against his temple, his father’s finger on the trigger. “Well son,” Heyward says, “What are you gonna do about it?”

“What --” Pope’s brain stops, too overwhelmed to process this reaction from his father. There is grief and anger, guilt and fear, and a thousand other things he cannot name. He is out of words, out of ideas and out of power. He wants someone to tell him what to do, because cannot possibly summon the energy to determine a path himself.

“You sunk that boy’s boat?” Pope nods, dumbfounded, answering on instinct. Heyward looks tired. “You let your friend take the fall?”

“I --” It’s hard, to hear it in his father’s voice, to hear the disappointment there, to feel it, real, metallic, and cutting in the air. “Yeah.”

Heyward shrugs, like it’s simple. “What are you gonna do about it?” Maybe it is. Pope got himself into this mess, and now he needs to get himself out.

“I don’t --” he starts, with nowhere to go.

“You gonna do the right thing?” His father asks, his tone implying that there is one answer.

Pope straightens up, closes his mouth, swallows down all the tears, all the uncertainty and vulnerability. He has asked for guidance, and his father is providing it. There is no more room for weakness here. “Yes, sir.”

Heyward nods, and turns to Yvonne, who has tears in her eyes. “He’ll be fine, sweetheart,” He says to his wife. “We’ve got a good boy here. He’ll be fine.” He wraps his arms around her, folding her into his chest in a familiar, nostalgic gesture. Pope feels awkward, watching his parents comfort each other, but he knows that his feelings are not the most important in the room. His chest hurts knowing he’s the one who caused their pain.

But this conversation still isn’t over. “Dad, um,” he says, and Heyward looks at him with exhaustion in his wizened eyes. “there’s one more thing.”

Heyward turns toward him again, leaving one arm around his wife. “Well I don’t know if you can shock me anymore today, Pope,” he says, “so go ahead.”

The words dam up behind his lips, and his hands flex at his sides, clenching into fists and spreading out again, and there’s no way out of this, not anymore. It was easier with Kie, for some reason.  “Dad, I’m gay.” It hangs there, bigger and somehow more terrifying than anything he’s said since his parents came home. The air in the living room doesn’t move, stale and muggy in the North Carolina evening, without the hum of the fridge or the air conditioner for reprieve.

Heyward blinks. Once, twice. Yvonne shakes on a silent sob, a noise that cracks Pope’s ribs open. “Okay,” his father replies.

It is somehow relieving and disappointing all at once. Pope doesn’t lie to his parents, at least, as much as he can help it. “Is that all?” he asks, because he expected -- something more? Something beyond indifference. Maybe rage, maybe affirmation. Maybe some indicator that this was just as big of a deal as he made it out to be.

“What else do you want me to say?” Heyward asks, knowing this is the most he and his son have talked about anything in years. The last mention at vulnerability came before the ill-fated scholarship interview, less than a minute of conversation before Heyward left his son to take a job. Sometimes he kicks himself for that, wondering about what might have happened if he’d waited, been there when his son made one of the most impulsive decisions of his young life. Could he have caught him coming out the door? Talked him down? What would today be, if Heyward had been there?

Pope looks at his father through a haze of tears, his breath somewhere other than his chest, uncontrollable and foreign. “You don’t hate me?”

Heyward shrugs. “You’re still my son, ain’t you?” Pope nods, sniffling and backhanding tears off of his face. “Well then, I guess I still love you.” Pope doesn’t remember the last time his father said that to him. “Pope,” Heyward sighs, heaving himself off the couch. “You’ve done a lot these past few weeks I don’t understand. I’m not gonna pretend I’m not upset with you.” Pope looks at his father’s feet, weary and sore on the threadbare carpet. “But you bein gay? That ain’t why.”

And that, that breaks the tenuous control he has over his emotions, and he sobs, loud and hard and echoing in the small living room. “I thought maybe -- maybe you might --” Pope tries, his arms at his sides, fists clenched, chest shaking. Heyward steps forward, wrapping his arms around his son, because he may not know what Pope is going to do, what he’s going to do as a father, as a man. Even though neither of them know how they’re going to get through this, how they’re going to deal with the police department, the Thorntons, John B’s death, and the rest -- they  know this, they know the faith they have in each other, the love and respect that lives there, even after everything.

Pope’s father pulls back from the embrace, places his hands on his son’s shoulders and levels him with the same stare that Pope has known his whole life. “What are you?” he asks, the same way he’s asked a million times before. This is a routine, between father and son, in moments of desperation, a way of taking a step back up from the most crushing of lows, of taking back control, setting their shoulders and facing into the wind.

Pope knows the answer. “I’m a Heyward.”

#pope heyward #pope #obx #outerbanks #pope x john b #john b x pope #kiara carrera #anna carrera #heyward #mrs. heyward #outer banks #outer banks fic #my stuff #my writing #season 2 spec #angst

[bifurious-rex]

bc you’ve talked about this a little before... how do you work thru feeling ugly & disgusting for poverty-related things? like i’m under 30 but ppl tell me i look older. i have chronic pain and frankly appalling genetics so retail has been so so hard on my body. i have adult acne that i don’t have the money to treat. i feel so ugly and in turn worthless bc i can’t afford to look “pretty.” i try to tell myself that my value isn’t in my looks but the world sure says it is.

hi!! sorry i sat on this ask for a little bit i wanted to think on it and give you a response that felt worthwhile bc this stuff is really important and close to my heart. if you want/feel comfortable, i’d be happy to talk about this more in-depth privately in DMs and stuff! i relate a lot to what you said and i hold strongly to the belief that the best thing in healing from this stuff is what we can offer each other. (not to sound like a new age therapist lol)

(also i do want to preface with the face that i am able-bodied so chronic pain is not something i can personally attest to living with, tho much of my family has chronic pain and other health issues and their experiences have definitely influenced the way i look at things.)

full response under the read more because wow i typed for FOREVER.

honestly? it’s overwhelming, though it definitely is better some days than others. i think being online and surrounded by media is such a loaded thing because it can be super comforting when you feel alone, especially if you’re able to curate a space of stuff and people that reflects the things you value and need to see in your life, but those same spaces still carry the same biases and burdens that the real world does. 

for me, it’s been a matter of trying to be aware of how i’m feeling and why i may be feeling it. sometimes the self-hatred/self-disgust does get really intense, especially when you’ve been conditioned over your entire life to think that the things that you are (and may always be) are ‘disgusting’. i’m a very socially-minded person, and despite having my own complicated relationships with my family, i do find it helpful to think about the standards i’m putting on myself when compared to the people i love who come from similar lives. when classist stuff is really digging into my brain and i can’t shake it off, i think about the people i love who look the way i feel afraid to look, and what they deserve. i can’t always get it in my head that i deserve the same things i want for my loved ones, but at the very least it helps me reinforce that, no, i DON’T believe this thing society has schooled in me because believing that thing hurts people i care about. 

i know that body positivity on tumblr and elsewhere online, for me, comes off very superficially and then i’ll feel guilty for not feeling comforted by it? but i try to remind myself that the things i’m trying to deconstruct aren’t just like “oh this is ugly,” it’s more like “our society has brainwashed us into believing that poverty is a moral failure and thereby any physical traits that imply our social status as lesser is humiliating and should be avoided at all costs,” so of course i won’t feel better just because an upperclass person on the internet tells me they think wrinkles and yellow fingernails are cute. there is a value in our society trying to rethink how it views beauty, but that’s a very big ask to put on yourself, especially when you’re marginalized and hurting emotionally. i try to remind myself that i don’t have to think i am beautiful to have worth. that’s a cliche thing to say rip. but uh, i try to reframe the things i think of as flaws not as beautiful but more of a mark of survival? 

again, this gets a lot easier for me when i think about my loved ones. 

my dad had a stroke about a week before he turned 47. he’s one of my favorite people in the world, i love him so much. even though the stroke didn’t really cause any visible stuff for him to be self-conscious about, it did still royally fuck him up mentally. he has permanent vision loss and got his driver’s licence taken away for months despite the doctor’s recommendation that he was fine to drive. the doctor told him it was likely because he was overworking and he wasn’t treating his anxiety and depression, and he’s still paying the medical bills off three years later. he couldn’t work, couldn’t drive, and was forced to sit at home and reevaluate the way he was taking care of himself and what he valued about himself. i think a lot about the life that he’s lived and the things that he’s survived. i don’t know that he sees it the way i do, but when i think about how easily my dad could have died, i feel genuinely grateful for the fact that partial vision loss is all that happened. obviously it doesn’t make the actual loss any easier, but it is a reminder that he’s survived. 

this world is not kind to poor people. a lot of it doesn’t give a fuck if we live, much less if we live happily or healthily. i try to remind myself that the scars we wear (even the ones that don’t look like scars, ones that look like skin disorders, crooked or missing teeth, stretch marks and fat rolls, hair that’s months due for a cut and clothes that you tried to patch because you really can not afford to get a new pair, whatever it is) might never be beautiful but it is a reminder that we got through it. and, if this helps you, when i see other people on the street who look like me or my family, i feel a little less alone. the people who the flaws we’re so afraid of actually stick out to, they usually notice them because it’s something familiar to them? and maybe it’s not beautiful, but they see that and know it for what it is. whether they see it as beautiful or not/good or bad, it’s a fact of life, and sometimes feeling normal in our imperfections is almost as good as feeling beautiful in our imperfections. 

this is a really long answer (i’ll probs edit a read more in here once i post it) and i’m not sure that this is even helpful so much as kind of my own vent about it??? but i hope you know, anon, that you really aren’t alone in what you were saying. i don’t know that i’ve figured out how to live with it, i know it’s likely only going to get more complicated as i get older and the health issues my genes got cookin starts popping up, but i’m working on it. i do know that i always feel better when i think about people like me, so i hope that brings you some comfort? take care of yourself okay? survival is beautiful, even if it feels like the stress marks it leaves aren’t. 

#anon #ask #classism #hick manifesto #disability #ig?? not so much for me but when talkin bout my dad and stuff #anyways ima little brain dead now ima go eat smthg and get ready for work as usual take care of yourselves!!! #Anonymous

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

Athenas Masterpost

This is going to cover everything Athenas, like the official page and trailer, both new trailers, the art book preview, and some stuff shown in the ign trailers. It’s a lot.

There will NOT be endgame spoilers in this post. If there’s anything that comes up that I want to discuss, you can find it in a spoiler post I’ll be making soon :) I DO discuss a thing that occurs during the first 3 hours of BL3, though I think that’s pretty okay with y’all lol

tl;dr: there’s too much to summarize. 13 days until bl3. lmao im screaming on the inside.

“A misty, tranquil planet that has recently attracted the wrong kind of attention. Athenas is mostly uninhabited, save for a sect of monks known as the Order of the Impending Storm who have made their home in the high peaks of the mountains. What secrets do they guard here, inside ancient walls that were built long before humans set foot on Athenas?”

We definitely got a lot less info for Athenas than the other planets, and I can see why. They want to keep it mysterious.

Also, I’m not saying I totally called it that the pyramid was Eridian, but I totally called it. I am surprised it��s implying that the entire area was built by them, but what can ya do 🤷‍♂️

Anyway, since this post is long overdue, let’s just jump right in!

The Athenas video is nearly half the time of the Eden-6 one, so there’s not a lot to cover unfortunately:

We’ve seen this shot multiple times before

also the emphasis that Athenas is ‘tranquil’ and ‘peaceful’ ahahahaha no it’s not.

i love these dudes! Order of the Impending Storm!!! I wonder if their funky goggle things have anything to do with Sirens, like how they have Siren-trackers. I also really love their outfits. lowkey want one of these robes.

a great overview look of the area leading up to the pyramid. I got more to say about this... but it’s probably best if i leave it for later on in the post after we get more info

also, note the water and the rocks and stuff on the left there. This will come into play later... not even in this post. a later post.

also i totally called this being an ancient aliens reference lol

Vault logo on the flag there. definitely shows how much these guys worship the Vaults

This!!! I have so much to talk about here!

alright so now that we know what the vault keys look like.... this doesn’t appear to be part of any of the Vault Keys we’ve seen. especially not the Promethean one. not even the pyramid shaped one.

im mostly interested in this because this is obviously a monk, her robes match the ones we saw above with the hood. she doesn’t appear to be Eridian because we’ve seen the Watcher and the other Guardians, who are built in the image of the Eridians, and she looks wayyy too human. We’ve also seen statues of the Eridians in that one shot of the Pandora temple.

so it seems like the monks have gone inside the pyramid before and... built this statue? for some reason??? It’s interesting that she has an extra pair of arms as well. I wonder if she is like the Siren ancestor of Amara. which could prove my theory that the next successor of Amara would have another set of arms... it might also explain why Amara’s tattoos are everywhere on the buildings (outside of her being the Tiger)

it would also explain this shot, the skeleton with the book, which we now know we’ve seen before with Maya:

so even though they’re protecting the pyramid/temple, i don’t think they’ve been avoiding it entirely- at least not for the first time after discovering it. maybe they stopped going in after they discovered something bad, somethin like iunno... the Rampagers?

it would be Really Weird if the Eridians built that statue, especially when they probably didn’t know what humans looked like at the time. unless of course they helped shape humanity or smth. meaning they probably personally created Sirens. oh that’d be wild... i wonder if we’re going to learn about how early Sirens shaped humanity in that case. discovering fire could be entirely different lol

“hallowed land” 

i wonder if this is where we’ll have anointed gear explained to us... i imagine the order is still worshipping Eridian/Siren stuff, so them having all sorta knowledge of this stuff would make sense

more Maliwan. you guys notice we see cultists purely on Eden-6 (outside of the crashed ship), but Maliwan purely on Athenas? a mix on Promethea, tho that’s bc we’ve actually gotten gameplay. 

So my guess is Maliwan has joined up with the cult (be it through whatever means: Maliwan is in) and they’re looking for the Promethea key. which makes sense. they’re attacking Rhys on Promethea, so when he helps us out, word probably gets back to Maliwan (somehow) and they swap from wanting to take over Atlas (either by defeating them w/ Zer0/that giant space laser/whatever or just changing priorities) to wanting to open that fuckin Vault. Teaming up with the CoV is the best way to ensure that happens. I’m sure there will oodles of betrayal going on between the two parties.

I LOVE THESE THINGS

THEY’RE AMAZING

GOOD BOYS

in all seriousness, actually, im curious why we don’t see these good boys on Promethea. maybe they’re only for the top-tier squads? (mechanically, probably higher-level enemies) they look super high tech, so i would not be surprised if Maliwan thought Atlas would be an easy takeover so they didn’t send everything they could have

Nog! not much to say here tbqh

“Protect Athenas Before It’s Too Late”

I imagine before Maliwan gets the Vault Key or some other wild power, like power over the Rampagers. seriously, in the We Are Mayhem trailer, there’s a rampager are fighting on the side of Maliwan (altho if this is The One Rampager, or just One of Many is hard to tell. it could morph depending on which element it is. we just don’t know. personally i think there’s 1 per planet... i’ll explain later)

From the Art Book Preview:

Alright yes. “Maliwan forces have already seized control of the monastery, where part of the Promethean Vault Key has been located, turning a simply recovery mission into a vicious firefight...... A large and foreboding crypt built into the side of the mountain was also designed, and might perhaps have housed the Vault Key fragment deep within its gloomy interiors”

i don’t think this means the crypt is like an actual area. it would be interesting to discover that the pyramid is a giant crypt because... jesus. it would fit with the whole pyramid theme, at least. altho im wondering if this is more like a labyrinth situation where they’re trying to keep a Rampager inside as well as the treasure... which MAY be a Vault Key Fragment

Actually, this brings up a great point: did Atlas spread the Vault Key out throughout the planets? Is this where Typhon originally found that Key fragment? wtf was in the Vault that Atlas needed to disassemble the Key and return its fragments? oh boy i hope it’s something scary

From the Moze Eden-6 E3 Gameplay:

oh ye this. okay so this is definitely 100% Eridian. I’m guessing we get this from Athenas because this seems like a fairly important object and, well, Athenas is all about Eridian stuff. When we go through the next few videos, keep an eye out for the temples. You’ll see the glowing red diamond shape constantly reappearing there.

one of the devs admitted that there are hunks of Eridian Writing left around the world that will ‘open up’ things for the players, so I imagine this is exactly what we’ll use to get to it. If this IS only for endgame stuff I’ll be slightly disappointed. I know we have access to this before Eden-6, since there are gameplay videos that show the player breaking the Eridium chunks with this thing. the above one is from the Moze Eden-6 gameplay, tho I’ve also seen newer footage from the Balex gameplay with this same tool

The following clips can be found in this video:

im mostly interested in the wall art here

what looks like a sun or a planet

this symbol which makes an appearance elsewhere

these two are the same area, im imagining this is the fight up to the pyramid, with Maliwan forces and barricades everywhere

the sun again in the background (middle top)

this cool piece (bottom left of the above pic) which looks like a hand covered in glowing blue. i imagine this is some sorta representation of Phaselock? mainly because of the blue orb in the palm of her hand

not much to say about this area tbh. looks like a residential area to me, so possibly not in the residential district

writing on the top mid-right. 

idk why i just noticed these trees are green and not red but yeah, that’s interesting. so probably a different area from Amara’s trailer aka: not Partali

and yet we see amara’s tattoos on the building in the back right. sorry for such terrible quality btw, tumblr ate these images and spit them back out

These clips can be found in the Borderlands are Yours trailer:

looks like the small building we see directly next to Maya and Ava

altho very clearly not the same exact area so im curious what these are supposed to represent. tbh im kinda reminded of graveyards. i really hope there aren’t corpses in those omg

another better look at the two pieces of art. i imagine the one on the right has something to do with the eridians given its in a diamond shape, which we know has something to do with the eridians now

also im not playing amara first (possibly last. depending on how i feel fl4k may go last) but HOLY SHIT her action skills are beautiful

THIS FUCKER

i know he’s probably a vault monster but like... 

idk i feel its kinda sad gearbox is showing off a VAULT MONSTER of all things in so much promo material. like why is he fighting with Maliwan/the cult in the We are Mayhem trailer??

sup with that?

does he have multiple stages?? is that’s why he changes elements? goes from two heads to wings to extended necks. like wtf is up with this guy?? he definitely looks like he can be elementally charged given his eye sockets aren’t glowing when he emerges like they do

here but then

this dude looks like he has an entirely different skull like...

this dude is a corrosive one who also seems to be working with Maya (who i guess IS probably the corrosive aligned siren)

and we’re guessing the nuclear charged one is the one from Athenas... for reasons i’ll explain below

AND honestly i've been thinking and maybe the fire one is actually from Promethea? and maybe there’s another that’s on Eden-6 and another on Pandora?

alright so i have 2 reasons for this. one involves spoiler talk with the cloth map, so that won’t be discussed here (but if you see the map and the planets, you’ll understand what i’m alluding to here, most likely). the other is that in this screenshot of all the quests from the Eden-6 demo:

we see immediately after “hostile takeover” is the quest “the impending storm”. which is, indeedy, a reference to the Order of the Impending Storm. We know they’re on Athenas, so I imagine we run over to Athenas to get part of the Vault Key. We’ve established from the art book that’s where it is.

but then after The Impending Storm, Space-Laser Tag (which we all know is that giant-ass laser thing in the asteroid belt), and Atlas, at Last, there’s a quest called Beneath the Meridian.

And we know this area... is definitely underground. we’ve seen with the fire-y boy that the ceiling is just rocks

then we see this shot with the nuclear (?) one where the window outside is clearly showing off mountains/sky, which we know is kinda Athenas’s deal

and we know these two areas are the same v ^

since there’s the same ‘Vault’ in the background

so my only problem with this entire theory that there’s multiple rampagers is that

we see the twins killing/absorbing the red/fire one’s power which is also on athenas since the background is the same as the vault area from the above two pictures. unless there’s a similar vault-thing on promethea and eden-6. we know there’s one on Pandora, but that one is outside so.

so i guess they are the same beasty boy but... why why why show us one of the vault monsters

it’s so cool going in blind and not knowing what you’re going to get out of it.

so im going to say this is a minor vault monster (especially given it’s not exactly the same rock-like design as the other vault monsters) and the ‘vaults’ are actually something smaller. maybe they hold keys, or the pieces of the keys, or they’re part of that teleportation network i keep talking about (and i guess i should just make a seperate post about it) but i don’t know if these are actual Big Boy Vaults. especially when the Rampager doesn’t match actual Eridian-created Vault Monsters

that said given we see a bunch of dead guardians on the floor, its possible the rampager killed them? but i get the feeling we might actually be the ones to pull the trigger cause... combat is fun

so. yeah. if the rampager is guarding something that’s fine. i wanna believe teleportation network. i’d love to see the twins come in, walk out of that vault, absorb the rampager’s powers, and then walk out after locking us in like ‘peace’ and we have to use the teleportation system to make it back to promethea with the vault key fragment or whatever

[im here after the cloth map reveal like... uh huh. i see. u dumb bitchard.]

idk i just thought this was a fun screenshot lol

BoRdErLaNdS

ah yes

that’s eridium

this also appears to be in the temple, but, like, again if there’s more than one temple this could also be on Pandora or even Eden-6. Kinda leaning towards Pandora. HOWEVER since we only know for certain this sort of temple area is on Athenas (from that one statue shot), we’re gonna analyze this bad boy right now (also lowkey think this is Pandora because of the varkid nests but shhh)

what do i actually have to say about it? uhhh not much tbh. i think i’ve said all that needs to be said concerning the twins mutating cultists with slag/eridium. 

i will say im pretty shocked at, like, the eridium HORNS and shit. so maybe this is just some cool little miniboss. (okay not mini because look how big he’s gotten!! just like Bloodwing :D)

you know what, it looks like he’s standing on one of these

floor tile things, and now im super curious. is the fire part of a trap? is it powering this lad up? i definitely know he’s a cultist because he’s got the neon light tubes on his shoulder pad

see here

you can see these on other cultists like goliaths and such and such

also this is pretty similar to what we’ve seen in the LLE (especially the powersuits) given their bodies also form eridium crystals when they’ve ascended

i feel like its powering him up

you know during the fight with bloodwing when Jack powers up bloodwing using the elemental flamethrower things? would be interesting if this is similar to that.

like dis

yeahhh

the radiation boy is back and he’s actually elementally charged this time

huzzah

also i love the chest mouth lmao

has anyone here seen stretch armstrong? like that one episode where Gabe (crostini man) gets turned into a bunch of flexarium monster chunks

but yeah, awesome mouth my guy.

im curious if it’s being elementally charged to cryo or if it’s stopped being charged. if this is like a cutscene between different stages in the fight, etc etc. 

this also looks fairly similar to this area here

but red this time. which... may tie into the elemental stages. which maaaaay tie into those floor platforms elementally charging that demon baby up above. bloodwing 2.0!

You can find the following clips in the Official Guide to the Borderlands:

god i keep telling myself to be on the lookout for athenas clips but i get so distracted by the gorgeousness of this fucking game i forget and have to keep going back

if that dude in the back floating was t-posing i would have lost my shit

new Siren tattoos!!! we haven’t seen these before. they’re very flowy, i love them. i hope we get to meet the siren with them!

i also loooooove this area in the back. i hope we get to climb it and explore. i would love to just be able to climb to high up areas in bl3 and look down and see the area i just came from. it’s possible! we have the technology! thousand cuts / bnk3r ascension 2.0!!!

more of amara’s awesome looking powers

zane has 2 trans pride skins im so happy 😄

also look at how teeny tiny that ‘Vault’ is in the back!!! it’s only like 2x the size of Iron Bear!!! gimme BIG vaults!! GIANT VAULTS

also also

the VOID vault

i get a feeling these are connected somehow.

sniper spoooot

not much to say about this tbh. zane’s claw things look fucking dope tho. i want one irl.

we’ve seen this shot a few times before already

alright before you get mad, let me explain why i think this is athenas

you see this picture

this maliwan jackass. the building to his left is 100% athenas architecture.

the rocks in the top picture look identical to the ones next to him. plus we’ve seen water in the distance of some of the areas of Athenas

it could also be Eden-6 (which honestly i would not be surprised if it is instead) but given the ivy and the rocks i felt it was worthwhile to put in. plus the moving eridian structures are so cool looking. i feel like that’s going to be a puzzle.

oh oh also

maybe that area leads into/exits from here? because they’re both underground in cavern-like areas

but like... it could also be eden-6... because of that one shot of the temple area in the side of the cliff ASDFHDGJFJGFHSD

still radiation charged. 

also seriously this ‘Vault’ is wayyyy smaller than a regular Vault. like... the one in BL2 that you can walk right up to... huge. and nothing even comes out of it. the Warrior climbs up from over the edge

the bl1 is much bigger than this one, too. also the vault of the traveller, i would argue is the biggest out of all of them but eh

for the Vault of the Sentinel, the actual arch we see... i’ve already gone over why i don’t think that’s a ‘real’ vault and that its all more of a simulation, but you can read that whole thing here bc i am trying my damndest to not get off topic for this post because holy fucking shit. this got long.

Alright so. Onto the website pictures

another cool shot of the academic district, really showing off the pyramid in the background. god i wanna know what that is. could be the temple (underground things notwithstanding). it’s probably holding that statue with the vault keys in either arm

you know the one, it’s at the beginning of this post. but damn that thing is huge!! i am hoping it holds more than just the promethean vault key. 

did i already talk about how there are siren tattoos written along the edges of this area??? because... damn.

also the symbol for what is probably Vault Key sitting right smack dab in the middle??

also sorry i just noticed those blue shapes are moving. like a fountain or something?? weird light.

i mean... the trees are also warping in the background. wonder wtf is going on here... 

anyway whatever she’s holding actually doesn’t match up with any of the vault keys we’ve seen so... wtf are you???

a very nice shot overlooking the water. also a wind turbine in the background. i think the area on the left is where we’ve seen ava and maya? but dont hold me to that lol

definitely looks the same. even has the tree

another shot of that area i think we’ve seen Amara fighting in

big shot of the pyramid with the vault symbol everywhere. and the planet with the beams coming out of it. which in retrospect...

anyway that’s spoiler talk so let’s talk in another post.

another shot of athenas from a slightly different angle, we’ve seen this one before, too, and i remember because i complemented the road signs

annnnd im tired. good night everybody.

#borderlands #bl3 #borderlands 3 #athenas

[pepperpatrol]

So I’ve only been blogging jokes about the Tumblr guideline changes

I’m gonna take approximately five minutes of your time to be serious about it.

I do not post NSFW material (for the most part) nor do I log into tumblr with the intent on seeing it. In fact, I have used xkit to curate my experience as such that I almost never see it. Theoretically this ban doesn’t affect me. Except....It does.

For all that can be critiqued and complained about Tumblr, it is a unique place on the internet where I can be presented with ideas and concepts I literally had almost no access to whatsoever in any other facet of my life until I joined it.

Tumblr is the first, and actually only, LGBT heavy community I’ve ever joined. 

Tumblr is the first time I’d ever seen anything even remotely resembling sex positivity.

Tumblr taught my white ass about racism and helped me understand how to be a truly compassionate person.

Tumblr shitposts taught me tips and tricks about cooking, home repair, calling officials and making appointments that my abusive family members never did. 

Tumblr hasn’t quite gotten me to go back to therapy yet, but the tips and tricks shared by users in the recovery tag have helped me manage my mental illness and be a happier, kinder and more productive person.

Tumblr shitposts and the donations to my paypal that came therefrom helped me out of an abusive relationship and the resulting homelessness.

These things could not, or would not, have ever happened on another platform.

The thing is, is that many things I would not consider NSFW is considered so outside the context of this website. Protest pictures from feminist marches with topless women, two gay men sharing a chaste, loving kiss, informative sexual education diagrams even just talking candidly about kink and consent can be banned elsewhere depending on how stringent their rules are. Truth Coming out of Her Well to Shame Mankind is not anywhere near the realm of intentionally sexually explicit and yet it’s been flagged and the staff are not going to unflag it.

When you make an adult content ban you then need to define what is and is not actually prohibited content.

Many of the communities that exist on tumblr simply cannot exist on another platform. Even if they could, with the Apple Store Terms of Service being what they are, you can expect at least 90% of them to also ban explicit images and “female-presenting nipples” if not now, then eventually. As a casualty of this puritanism, lesbians holding hands and picking flowers will somehow be pigeonholed into the same group as hard core dom sub pain play.

This isn’t just a ban on horny ppl and the casualties of this ban aren’t just NSFW artists or sex workers. It is everyone. We curated a community and an atmosphere that was so much more open than other platforms and being able to openly talk about things that may be uncomfortable has made it easier to identify those things, to identify why they’re uncomfortable and whether or not they’re really harmful.

They’ve already demonstrated they aren’t going to follow their own rules by banning classical art. LGBT has been an unsearchable word for close to a year now. Their bot is a fucking joke and there’s no way they could hire enough people to actually, personally monitor the site. And honestly, saying non-sexual nudity can stay is ambitious of them, bc a bot can’t determine what nudity is and is not sexual.

I’m not leaving Tumblr or anything. But it’s not going to be the same. I have a twitter account and I’ve made a donation to Pillowfort just bc I’m curious about it. But yeah Tumblr is probably gonna be Twitter 2.0 with more nazis and pedophiles on it soon and i’m not sure I’ll stay very long after that.

[muselin]

This is more an any confession XD I don't want to talk about this on main bc it will seem like I'm whiny or something. Anyways, I have had my tumblr for sometime now but barely anyone talks to me. Every few days I ask for people to send asks or requests but I often don't get anything. When I do get some, every second ask is strange (i can elaborate if you are interested xD). But then I also see blogs that are new and immediately get spammed with good thoughtful asks and it makes me wonder what is wrong with *me* that people don't wanna talk to me. ( good for the other blogs that people talk to them, not saying they shouldn't get asks!) i often send asks to other writers if they ask for them so it's not like i don't put myself out there ... idk

So I have no idea which mutual of mine you are (or if you are?) and I'm not sure why things are like that? Please do elaborate, what sort of strange asks do you get?

I can only compare with myself and things I've noticed on other blogs. This is actually an older blog and I was very active in 2017 posting fics for a mobile game called Star Crossed Myth. At the time I wasn't getting any asks at all because our fandom just didn't communicate this way. I only really saw asks when I got into the kpop fandom on tumblr. I was away from this blog for a couple of years but some of my followers from the game fandom were still here and a lot of them were also into kpop. For me this meant that I was not starting from zero and I had some followers but not many at all, it was just over 100. Since I started writing kpop fics it's gone up to 800. I started posting kpop fics January 2021, I only posted two and I didn't start posting them more regularly until the summer of 2021.

A lot of the newer super active blogs I come across are younger folks who are still in high school or university, and that allows for a lot of time to be invested in their content which helps a lot. When I was at my most active in 2017 I was the same, I was in university and it allowed me extra time as it wasn't like a full time job.

I didn't expect asks or anything really, I didn't see myself as being that kind of blog because I was used to a more silent readership, like on fanfiction.net or Ao3 or just the non-ask heavy tumblr fandoms. The relationships I built with my mutuals were very much a one-to-one thing first, and a lot of them were direct messaging and comments on each other's fics first before we started frequenting each other's ask boxes. Then we connected we other people we liked and now it feels like a nice little community, which is where most of my asks come from pretty much.

I don't know what kind of blog you have but I find that if you actually put out content and tag it appropriately, that's when the interaction happens. If there isn't anything being created on your blog and it's just reblogs, then I wouldn't expect as much interaction. Tagging appropriately and accurately is also important, as well as the groups you write for.

4th gen groups are extremely popular now. What got me a lot of my following was when I started writing for TXT. By comparison, older groups like Super Junior or VIXX get a lot less traction now, even though they have a big bank of fics for them both here and elsewhere on the Internet. The most popular groups to write for tend be groups like Stray Kids, TXT, Ateez, NCT. Monsta X was extremely popular to write for and still is but is dropping off a bit now that they're in their 7th year.

I personally don't view asks as a measure of anything but i recognise that the people who are used to them enjoy them for a reason. Direct messages and comments has always been where I've had more interaction. I'm also not really a request blog and I don't put out new fics quickly like the bigger blogs, so that makes a difference too.

I hope this gives some perspective at least, I'm not sure

#confessional mondays

[wordsablaze]

Chapter Seventeen: Trust

Cinder’s life revolved around the garage, working as a mechanic, until that one male student came in looking for a Mercedes and changed her life… AU AH Kaider story. Enjoy!

A/N: Want a fic? I posted this elsewhere 3 months ago and only just found out as i was posting another chapter, ahh, sorry!! Not that anyone cares but still. Also, this was a right pain to format on mobile, ugh.

Cinder's heart falters as she watches Kai literally stumble away from their conversation.

She can't think after he leaves, she can't get the image of his contained tears out of her mind, she can't focus on anything other than what could have happened. She doesn't even trust herself to try and come up with a plan for the rest of the day.

"Cinder?" Iko asks tentatively, clearly sensing that something is wrong.

"Hey, Iko," Cinder replies, sighing.

Iko raises an eyebrow and places her hands on her hips. "Alright, spill. What happened with Mr Sexy Barista?"

Cinder cracks a small smile at the title but then shakes her head again. "It's nothing."

"If that were true, you wouldn't still be polishing that wrench ten minutes later."

She blushes, caught oil-handed, and places said wrench on the table, sighing as she turns to Iko with a grateful look. "He left."

"He broke up with you?" Iko asks, her voice neutral but her eyes threatening to explode with rage.

Quickly, Cinder shakes her head. "No!"

Iko's relief is honestly almost as intense as Cinder's curiosity. By the time Cinder's thrown out some explanatory words and Iko has understood the situation, the two of them are equally as confused about and worried for Kai.

Cinder stays silent as Iko paces and mutters things to herself because, while she can usually work out people's motives and judge their character, she's absolutely rubbish at figuring out emotions and feelings, especially when it's someone she actually likes, even more so when it's someone she truly cares about.

"If I had to guess," Iko says eventually, "I'd say it wasn't anything you did directly."

"Iko, there was nobody else here, who else could it have been?"

"No, I mean, you probably just reminded him of something else. If it was you, he wouldn't have made an effort to be polite before leaving, would he?"

"I don't know; people are confusing."

Iko snorts in amusement but recovers quickly, clearing her throat. "Look, he'll come back. Just wait for him."

Cinder bites her lip but she knows Iko is intelligent and can be trusted when it comes to boys so she nods and exhales. Well, she nods, exhales and stops whatever she's trying to achieve by passive-aggressively cleaning random tools. Iko finds someone to cover for her and she trudges back to the place she wishes she didn't have to call home. Luckily, Adri has no chores for her yet so she can go back to her room, almost missing the fact that her laptop is back on her bed.

"What?" she asks the air, then scrambles to plug the laptop in and switch it on.

As soon as the home screen fades into view, she opens tumblr, needing to message Kai, needing to ask him if he's okay. The ten seconds it takes for the website to load could be ten years for how slow they seem to go by but it matters not because then she's logged in and finding Kai's blog like it's a second nature to her.

-kai?

-are you okay?

And then, after a moment's hesitation...

-did i do something wrong?

Not surprisingly, she doesn't immediately get a reply back.

It takes over an hour for a reply to come through, during which Cinder aimlessly rearranges her room and makes sure everything is organised enough to satisfy even the pickiest of the organised. She jumps when she sees the little light flashing even though she'd been expecting it to happen.

-My apologies for leaving so abruptly.

-I needed to clear my head.

-You did nothing wrong, don't worry, princess!

-are u sure?

-Of course.

-im almost sure ur just saying that to make me feel better

-What a ridiculous suggestion...

-it's ok, you don't have to tell me anything

-just...

-i'm sorry, ok?

-A comma? You must be sincere.

-Thank you.

-shut up

-Make me!

Cinder blinks. She's only ever seen couples say that to each other, and it's usually just before they kiss or something. She doesn't know what she's meant to say to that, whether she's expected to do something romantic in return, and she's about to panic when Kai saves her.

-Did I do it right?

-I've seen people say that and I figured it was a more interesting response than a simple denial.

-My apologies if I did it wrong.

-u scared me

-I scared you?

-i dont know why i told you that. nvm

-If it's any help, you don't need to make me shut up. I'm not even talking...

-oh, bc ur typing?

-very original

-It worked, didnt it?

-depends

-You stopped being scared, right?

She laughs. He's right, it did work. She replaced her anxiety with exasperation and it worked. If it was anyone else, she'd probably be annoyed at them having figured her out so quickly. For some reason or the other, she finds herself being amused at Kai instead of irked, and she appreciates him instead of being irritated with him. She makes a mental note to ask Iko about that tomorrow before shifting her attention back to Kai's message.

-you wish

-Goodnight, Princess.

-And thank you.

-For understanding.

-are u okay? ur using three messages for one sentence

-I'm slightly in a rush...

-so ur solution is to send more messages?

-No, my solution is to send fragments.

-So that I don't leave you with awkward silence.

-I really have to go.

-Can't wait to check up on the car!

-me too

-okay i guess ur gone

-bye

Cinder's mind immediately tells her that saying 'me too' was a bad idea but she ignores it, instead focusing on her relief that Kai is okay.

She shuts the computer down so no battery is wasted and flops down onto her bed, sighing happily. She's done a lot of happy sighing lately, mostly because of Kai and his adorable eccentricities, but she won't complain because she likes the rush of warmth in her heart every time she sees his smile, the comfort she finds in his eyes, the sparks she feels every time they're close to one another.

With a start, she realises she might have found someone to trust. Trust doesn't come easily to her but, with Kai, she's all but ready to give him everything. And it scares her. Cinder's trust is the key to a friendship with her but it's also a weapon that she's giving away, making herself vulnerable. As her eyes become heavy and start to close, she just hopes that trusting Kai won't be a mistake. She hopes it's worth it in the end and, frankly, she'd never hoped for anything more.

like/reblog but don't repost, thanks!

#the lunar chronicles #tlc #emperor kai #linh cinder #iko #kaider #kai #cinder #selene blackburn #fanfcition #fanfic #Marissa Meyer #fluff #angst #romance #friendship #My writing #aboac

[autismserenity]

OK so after I answered that anon ask I scrolled and saw three more. For a second I was like “omg why do I have four suicidal anons all of a sudden” and then my brain figured out that it was all one ask. (I put them together below and added paragraph breaks) I don’t know if nonny needs me to reply to more than that last bit, but I need the non-aces at least to hear the rest. and i think they could use the support of the whole community tbh so get on those notes!!!!! please and thank you

(reg and suicide mention tw) aphobes and regs drove me out of this website. both with their vitriol directed at people like me, or towards me directly, inc suicide baiting by a lesbian ex friend who told me i was wrong about my trauma and oppression, gaslight the fuck out of me, all bc aces using the term 'conversion therapy' is disrespecting lesbians. i said talking abt that was triggering, she said she didn't care what i did to myself. i got suicidal bc of regs and left. i checked tumblr again today and it incited my suicidal thoughts again BIG TIME. I need to know i'm going to be ok. i need to know regs are not the majority, bc almost all my friends on this website turned out to be aphobes, and the remaining didn't care about regs. every ace article elsewhere is now inundated with regs from this website. i need to know they're not actually that many, they're not in the majority, they're being fought. i brought it up to my therapist. she brought up conversion therapy. i don't have a therapist rn bc i literally had to escape conversion therapy being forced on me. i'm terrified and alone and suicidal bc of the fucking regs. this is the second time a therapist has tried to put me through conversion therapy. idk what to do. i hate the fact that they're doing this. i hate that they've gotten to me. idk what to, i feel like hardly anyone cares. i'm sorry to burden, but you're in the deep of this- i need to know it's not as bad as i think, not everyone is dangerous

and then the ending bit I already posted was

i'm sorry to ask like this. i can't use the trevor project bc i'm not american. i'm latina. and i'm crying and upset and terrified idk what to do. you're not obligated to respond to this if this is triggering i understand i'm really trying to keep myself safe i'm really trying

anon, you're not a burden, asking for help and sharing your pain is not burdening anyone.

tbh there are probably people who will feel validated by reading this bc they've experienced the same thing.

you are doing a great job by reaching out!!!!

honestly it's rude af for someone to say that using the term "conversion therapy" is "disrespecting lesbians". lesbians for sure are not the only ones who are subjected to conversion therapy; even gay people as a group are not. bisexuals are too, a lot, and trans people are very heavily targeted by that industry, and you're definitely not the first ace person I've heard who has been pressured to do it or even been through it.

(And although way fewer people understand that it's the same thing because it's not around gender or sexuality, the ABA "therapy" industry that's forced on autistic youth is the exact. same. fucking. thing., as @wetwareproblem and others have talked about.)

And I do think that REGs/aphobes/whatever are a small and very loud group. The fact that as a group they have become very focused on personal attacks and harassment makes them seem a lot louder and bigger than they are. Everyone I talk to off of Tumblr is really surprised that anyone is even making this stuff an issue.

#suicide tw #allosexism #depressing discourse #conversion therapy